ITERATIONS OF

LILITH AND ADAM:

AN ALIEN’S MEMOIR

CHUCK RICHARDSON

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Iterations of Lilith and Adam: An Alien’s Memoir
By Chuck Richardson
Copyright © 2019

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief
quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-345-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939461

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1. CLOAKING THE DESPICABLE


BEING SQUEAMISH
Watching her dog lick the other dog's anus strikes her
curious, so Charlotte gets a closer look while her kestrel
plucks at the still living rock dove. She puts away her
birdseed: "C'mon boy."
Sailors, enjoying “Fleet Week,” stroll arm-in-arm,
laughing raucously blue-eyed like Gene Kelly and Frank
Sinatra over some donkey show in Tijuana. She pretends not
to hear but adds that curious journey to her goddamned
“bucket list.”
She wasn't at all belabored by helping her brother
finish masturbating the other night. He's queer. It didn't mean
anything. His cerebral palsy was giving him fits. It's only incest
if you get emotional over it. And rub your genitals together.
That's what Dad says…
Charlotte was ecstatic going to a different church every
Sunday, standing up during the sermon and shouting: "I'm
God! Yes, I am, Goddamnit! And you should put no other gods
before me!" Whether she was arrested, wrestled away by
ushers…or stroked soothingly by the Ladies’ Guild…any way
she saw it she got attention. God always begs attention…The
ladies and gentlemen always obey her command…she was
always joyful…what she relished and they ignored was how
God's always trespassing…It's what God does…It is God…THE
TRESPASS BEYOND FORGIVENESS THAT MUST BE
FORGIVEN…THE ULTIMATE JUBILIEE…"attention must be
paid, goddamnit!"
Charlotte ate a ham sandwich for lunch. She had a
shrimp cocktail appetizer for dinner. She argued for the
destruction of the Palestinians with her aunt. "Zionism's the
new orthodoxy!" she shouted. It made her laugh. She was
jubilant. When her uncle tried interrupting, she stabbed him
in the neck with her salad fork, twisting until the blood spew
too fast to stop. Dipping her bread in it, she ate. Drank some
wine. She let her family go when the cops arrived.
A bit later, she emerged from an upstairs window,
waving a…
They fired…
She lurched forward, tossing the machete like an axe,
end over end, screeching, "All squeab for ice queem," or some
such…as the machete lodged in a squad car’s tire…wooosh…
she hit the ground with a pulsing thumpumpduh…tweaking
the insides of your nipples just so…
Everyone questioned, bearing Mona Lisa smiles, what
was it Charlotte had said. What she say? What she say? they

19
say they said, admitting to themselves if not others it’ll be hard
finding out. Can’t ask Her, they said.
She said, “YHWH[A]'S DEAD.”

THE CLUE

Why do people feel so isolated? What could she do to

help them?
Lilith heard echoes of what they felt happened beneath
the things they said. How they said things was more
meaningful than what they said. But any exact conveyance of
data was rendered impossible. It didn't matter that everyone
spoke the same language. No one believed each other anymore.
One’s ego was all one had.
As the political-economic scene evolved diverse
spandrels ranging from literal-objective to post-truth-asemic,
etcetera & et al, as the schizoid godhead tweeted absurdities at
all hours from his throne, Lilith discerned the most predictable
and employable man among them. More than any in his set,
Adam loved working and felt whomever would deny his “right
to work” was evil and felt righteous hating them. It was so
cliché to say Adam hated in people what he hated in himself
that no one ever said it, or thought it, on purpose anymore.
Feeling alienated and somewhat wicked, folks tabooed
habit…and totally banned hating weakness as a form of
novelty. Yet this set, of which Adam was the hardest worker,
preferred “doing the hard things because they were hard” [oh,
boy! Lilith thought, knowing she’d heard this before and felt its
consequences]. Trying to be a “great generation,” improving on
their parents’ exploits, these puffed up volken stooges edited
themselves always, as faith and tradition were for the weak,
the conquered…the managed…the employed…used…abused.
Their peasant baby egos boomed, striving for eternal life via
the absolute dominion of the ever-freer expression of their
socio-economic privilege, which made them feel like Hercules,
always laboring. They isolated themselves, living inside smart-
wired houses on fenced-in properties behind yonder gates in
communities patrolled by private security forces backed up by
public security officers supported by the feds, military and,
yes, if necessary, nukes to keep the Russians and Chinese out.
These Safists, motivated by the privilege of having so much
excess mental energy, for whatever reason [they preferred not
expending much psychic energy figuring out how their egos
emerged from the processes It engages them in], felt their
means of maintaining said energy levels was “not negotiable.”

20
 The problem with being Adam was tabled.
But there was something besides this childish fear of
“other” their egos were repressing, ta-booing [sic]. They
might've discussed It if It might've dawned on them to do so,
but It wouldn't. They could only feel resentment toward those
It did allow to perceive, sense or deduce It. They particularly
hated those who would share the experience through art,
which, due to Its nature, made irrelevant their political
achievements and belittled their economic ambitions. That was
Lilith’s hypothesis going in.
Her test: Have Adam, who no one could stop from doing
what he was paid to do, randomly ask 100 folks [who all ended
up being a wide variety of white Abrahamer males of all shapes
and sizes] whether they identified more with Extraterrestrials
or fauna; outsized-cranium greys with predatory eyes or
sensitive, lithe-bodied Bambi Earthlings [whose mothers were
hunted down and killed for the pleasure of killing]. Only one—
a likely vegan—said Bambi. He seemed a grateful outcast. And
something seemed confirmed by his answer that, more
importantly, the way it was given, helped Lilith relax…feel less
pre-sent…clued-out by It…as an evolving contagion…
What? What?
Maybe…beyond our memes’ parameters…with
implications that…when taken, as a whole after reflection…

MADE HER SHUDDER

One more hot night…his wife, lying next to him, smells
like freshly opened sardines…he sits up, scratching,
panting…his body doing what it will…a bead of sweat forms
over his left eye, dripping from the brow downward, stinging…
He hears the car pull up out front…shut
off…headlights out…Pat Boone's Tutti Fruity…a Vitalis
commercial starts static stops… silence…
A car door opens…thuds shut…the car leaves as the
front screen quietly screeches and closes with the soft clap of
wood on wood…with the familiar creak of the third step, he
slips out of bed…
When she reaches the top step, his sweatiness awaits
her in the hallway’s pungent shadows…she sees him touching
himself…she used to shudder, not anymore…he follows her
quietly into her bedroom and pulls down the blind…she takes
off her blouse and turns on the radio, he turns it off…pushing
her down to her knees where the routine begins…beginning as
it started after her first-ever date…He'd be able to blame the

21
boyfriend for anything…he thought …she didn't…She could've
not had a boyfriend, but she loved him…He respected her and
did nothing worse than what her father did…it wasn't that
bad, she thought…that's what she told herself…the pain's all
in your mind, Charlotte…Johnnie needn't know…this was the
John before our John…a kid who'd never know…going off to
Vietnam…
She never escaped. It was too complicated. When the
baby came, no one knew but her parents…handing it over to
the church was her only option…her baby was expelled from a
family that kept things in the family to a similar white family
who would take it in but, like some transplants…
A year later, feeling emptied, Charlotte drove into a tree
with her Dad riding shotgun…no one ever knew…no word was
ever spoken…

METHODICALLY
Somehow, the suction tube has the same effect on his
breasts as it does his penis: Each swells and drips white fluid.
She pulls it from her purse and the man stops crying.
The Method’s given them life. Thanks to It, they feel
alive. Some folks pay to watch her forcibly milk him dry. He's
used to It. Ever since taking the Risperdal. Copes by paying It
forward. Someday they'll show the next generation how it
works. It’ll be sad for them if they feel they’re letting all the fun
die out, popping the balloons of all future hopes. Pain’s secret
seams the present tense hope-infinitive, subjuncting objects of
desire for a better tomorrow. Yep.
The biggest challenge, of course, is overcoming the
squeamishness of others, but such unease remains only if they
remain uninitiated, unloved and uninvolved. The closer they
get to your juices, the better you’ll taste [every way they lick It].
The more the merrier [every time we look].
So, all non-sybaritic youth must be exquisitely
corrupted. The unborn must not emerge into naïveté…but
dissolute situations geared toward profligacy…pleasuring Its-
self…exercising the uncertain methods they cum by…not just
spectacle but situational orgasm…the spectacular jouissance
of “It’s complicated”…being free this way or Life ain’t worth
living…ain’t worth the saltiness It sticks by…
And so our Moloch school board's tasked with properly
corrupting our children with apt expenditures of bodily
energies for civilization's sake at our expense…and everyone
else’s, too…to make life worth It for more people and more

22
people only, except a few endangered non-peoples too cute to
snuff out…nor could they even consider stopping to look at
their carnage, the apocalypse they own which they write off as
samsara…filming the mass slaughter of CAFO chickens
focusing on the rhythmic beauty of butchery or taping some
French fuck talking about the evil writers do…esp. the ones
who don’t really give a fuck and know better about the
aesthetics of It but just can’t stop writing shit that’s…

FUCKING WITH GEORGES

Georges picks up the notebook and reads:

At sea. Two men in the sail. A hushed ocean massages

Leviathan’s radioactive HY-80 membrane, emitting iridescent
emeralds from the saline-on-steel friction…phosphorous diving
into ever-darkening sprays.
The 20-year-old watch, with the IR binoculars around
his thick neck, amazed by the number of stars…the shooting
ones…suddenly stiffens…

Something doesn't smell right. There's got to be more to

this. So much is missing.

His skipper, a 38-year-old the crew sardonically calls

The Old Man, puffs away on his Benson & Hedges, wishing he
were on his cabin cruiser with a martini and his wife, Jane.
His word’s law there. Here, The Old Man feels his word is
something else in action, something not quite hearable,
something unspeakable.
“We got male. And we got female,” he said.

That's it?

The young seaman’s incredulous. He’s expected more.

“We can play around a little but stick justly with yin-
yang things. Please. White and black. Us and them.”
The kid can’t help it. The setting…it’s other
worldliness…making them feel like the only humans breathing
the night surface air for thousands of square miles…feeling
The Old Man’s equal in the cosmos…in the working scheme of
things…acting within the conspiracies of Heaven…feeling he
could affect something now and no one below decks would be
there to witness it or stop him…to dispute the accidental
nature of what happened or the man-boy’s vainglorious

23
attempt at truth, justice and non-bullshit…trying to rise up,
courage-wise, the impressionable seaman might not help
blurting out the words crowding into his heart from parts
unknown if not for Georges…a disembodied voice from
elsewhere…those green stars, perhaps…reading and reacting
right now as this appears on the page…this sheet of the
universe…suggesting we should all…

What? You think we should what? Let's leave that to me.

You're better doing other things. Like running this stinking tin
can. As if Armageddon’s ever gonna happen or if it does anyone
down there’s going to let you participate in it. We'll keep our
subjects and objects divided by gender not sex, you pale-faced
bigot. It's a swarthy thing for us to do and might seem sensible
considering our excessive pallidity. We like living where we live,
keeping It real, but

“What? Armoire, porte et finetre are feminine? So is

trenche but not bifteck. Epee is feminine but not mortier. It
best not make sense. Relations between us must be
confused…now…swimming among them…your goggles
clarify…keeping It simple…the feminine doesn’t relate to
female any more than macho refers to male…at least not here,
right now, I guess,” sang the captain, amused, flipping his butt
into the sea…pssssst…

What? If not, when…then

“Your dreams are killing everything off! I know you say

you need them…the world's not a friendly place, but…I
know…I hear you,” said The Old Man, striving for actuality, an
order that might stick.
The seaman, progressively incensed:
“We were animals…beasts of leisure until you…”
“I'm not your slave,” said the skipper. “I'll overlook your
deplorable essence this time. Your odor's your body’s prayer to
me, taking my nose in vain. You’re scared shitless. You self-
indicate. You blame me for having lost your will to be fruitful
and multiply and assume dominion…you don’t deserve
to…you haven’t earned it…so we feel multiple things about the
one thing that matters, which doesn’t exist as a single thing,
only an entanglement with a mysterious other…someplace
else…wherever It goes…having various reasons for being there
and avoiding emergence, congealment, concretization…
something we might actually use…something quite odd…Like

24
that first time I recognized you by your floral redolence
alone…your drooling munchies, emitting the odor of your…”

Sensing his erection, Georges gags on the imaginary…the

fictional…his psychosomatic stench reiterating sauerkraut and
pee in the here-now, feeling his accursed share as some…

PECULIAR SENSE OF BEAUTY

John's first memory: Clinging to a translucent red wall
with gears grinding below. At birth, he was snatched up for
adoption. Being exiled from his mother traumatized him. He
was a sick baby. This red wall nightmare became the most
recurrent dream of his early childhood.
His next earliest memory: A house in the country. Aunt
Cookie drove. Mom was missing, but Grandma Claire and
Aunt Mabel were there, comprising one side…the visiting team.
At home in the house in the country were three strange
women. They were in charge. They lectured John's women and
slapped their faces, humiliating them. This pleased him. He
felt his skin stop itching. His hemorrhoids lost their pucker.
He could breathe easily and filled his diapers or pajamas. This
dream recurred until he went to kindergarten, where John
identified more with girls than boys. Only girls lived near John.
He enjoyed pitting them against one another and rubbing
himself against the loser.
As an adult, John's disturbed by his fetish. Making
matters worse is the fact it's so common. He didn't like
violence, but like many men the sight of two lesbians writhing
in oil to establish female dominance was more than he could
bear. Attending oil wrestling matches became taboo. John was
mortified of publicly losing his composure. He was alien, after
all, and didn't want to surrender his papers. Nonetheless
whenever he could he instigated female on female combat.
There was nothing more beautiful than a defeated woman…a
trounced upon Earth…needing his loving embrace…Feminine
mommy could redeem herself by fighting for him. Her losing
rouses his forgiveness, which, manifesting itself erotically,
evolved a peculiar sense of beauty…

25
GIVING HIM COOTIES
Ralph was tough, so popular by default in John’s eyes.
John was still new. Before moving to the city his only friends
were girls. His first day of school in Lockport, he swung his
hips and tossed his hair. The girls liked him. The boys hated
him. He liked the girls. The boys disgusted him. They played
cooties. He didn't know what that was. It was a game intended
to isolate boys from girls. You had to keep your thumb up in
case a girl touched you. Girls had cooties. The girls kept their
thumbs up, too, lest they be cootied by a boy. Sexism made
fun. A game of protection learnt yet instinctive. At first, the
boys were tagging John with cooties, as if he were a girl. It
went on for a couple of months before John figured out the
whole scheme. He wasn't too bright.
While learning the game he at first thought only boys
had cooties, but he was an exception. His confusion led to his
being able to give cooties to boys and girls. So, for a while,
both boys and girls disgusted John. Yet the drip drip drip of
quotidian isolation and alien behaviors nudged him to choose
sides...to be a little less alien…He felt a need to be strong and
tough and that's something the girls weren't. Title 9 was still
some years away.
So, the day came he chose to be a boy as he was being
told over and over again from a variety of sources that "It's a
man's world"…and when they were standing in line to come in
from lunch recess that day Ralphie took John's hat as he was
wont to do, but this time, rather than crying and chasing after
his hat as it was tossed from one boy to another, then one girl
to another, he just punched Ralph in the nose and kneed him
in the gut. Ralphie went down. John charged Rod Laser, who'd
caught his hat but then gave it up like a panicked QB before
getting John's soon-to-be-infamous ground and pound game.
By the time John finished with Rod, his hat had been placed
back on his head. John glared at the children. From then on,
cooties was a game they'd play in a more subtle fashion…if
John wanted to touch a girl, he would…so the children weren't
kidding about…

THE RADICAL INGREDIENT

After dinner, John would often go up to his room and
listen to his new 8-track. He had a Lazy Susan tape-holder

26
and possibly more eclectic tastes than any of his 11-year-old
peers.
Once the door was closed and locked and his night
stand pushed up against it, John would turn on his black light
and disco ball. His room became a stage. He stood in front of
the full-length mirror deciding who he felt like. What did he
feel like wearing? Did he feel like playing guitar or piano?
Putting on his purple velour bathrobe with his red vest
underneath, he retrieved the crazy large pair of women's
sunglasses he "found" at Briarwood Pool from his junk drawer.
After cleaning them, he put them on and looked in the mirror:
"It's a little bit funnay-ay/this feelin insi-ide."
Elton John it was. He sang through the album with it
turned up to 10. His parents, perhaps, tolerated too much, as
he played his wicked air piano, even using his feet during
"Crocodile Rock" while imagining Cathy Poissonberre, Sandy
Barracuda and Libby Granularski cheering him on in the front
row of Lockport's "Historic" Palace Theater.
He was a god to them.
When the concert was over, he stripped to his
underwear, humped his pillow, which was Marcia Brady, his
girlfriend, whom he turned over once kaput and went to sleep,
dreaming of Shirley Partridge.
Downstairs, his parents were grateful he finished…

FOR THE DOMINION OF CHILDREN

Phil didn't want to die, but…
Working in that office, the fruitful tortures he had to
endure, was what a man did to provide for his multiplying
family. It wasn't enough, however, to guarantee his lover's
love…or his wife's…his children would have loved him
anyway…despite…would have preferred he hadn't…At the very
least…
Phil hoped his women were pleased he endured…
…approaching dominion, perhaps
…lying for…Dad
Totally submissive to work…totally submissive to
Mom…totally submissive to…his imagined God in His illusive
Eden…haunting
Neither John, his son, nor Christine, his
daughter…supporting their assertions to his dying
breath…never submitting that

27
 He was, in the end, as ready for penetration and
pollination as any flower, adopted
Fresh as any Earth seaming Nature feeling up your
Holy Ghost in the name of…
…without ever feeling the guilt of Its unwonted,
repeated invasions…becoming one with Its worm in the
wood…alleviating the invasiveness...

FROM PARTS UNKNOWN

Goldie made a lot of noise sucking him off in the front
seat of his green Nova. Buying a prostitute was one of those
experiences, like getting tattooed, he felt every sailor was
expected to have. It was part of being a man's man. Making
things worse, for him, she was black and not very attractive. It
didn't occur to him she was a heroin addict, or worse, had
AIDS. He played by certain rules. Did she? He didn't know. He
was afraid. Overcoming fear was important. They didn't have a
name for AIDS yet. He never used a condom. The Doc could
give him a shot. He decided to act like he were in a porno,
moaning and grabbing her head and thrusting it onto his cock,
he stabbing the back of her throat like a murderer. She bit
down. He released her, gasping. She had her money. Got out
and left.
Tammy thought he looked lost when he walked into the
diner. He was usually a happy kid, if a bit confused—What's
wrong?—I paid for the wrong woman—And what woman was
that? He had no answer. He felt dirty. Eating helped him
forget—Well lick my grits if the sailor ain't tongue-tied—She
served him the usual. He ate. Drove her home at the end of her
shift. She kissed him goodnight—I could make an honest man
of you, said Tammy—That's what I'm afraid of, he said. Women
are trouble…but you're not a woman…I mean…—From parts
unknown—He found this alluring. She never let him…he
hadn't bought her anything yet. That would require money,
something he needed more of…but he was afraid to…
He wasn't man nor beast enough to tame an angel
long…in his opinion…

BEING DETESTABLE
John and June became The Elsewheres at Eagle Pass,
Texas on the sixth of July. They were 19.

28
 In this version of events, John was raised by Lutheran
Family Services. He disdained the people who raised him
because he felt they were boring and weak.
So did June, who met John in kindergarten at St.
Mark's. Her parents abandoned her and the Lutherans, at her
grandparents' behest, saved her from social services.
John and June often wondered if they might have
learned more about actual life if they'd been raised in the
system. Each was grateful they hadn't been raised in their
biological family, feeling it would've been even sappier than the
Lutheran homes that did coddle them. They detested the lies
these weak people told themselves. They never took shit, only
what they wanted. And they were proud of it.
They believed they were stronger and wiser than
everyone else. John and June would kiss no one's ass. When
they got married, they had $10k fresh from a series of
immigrant cash registers across three states. They were having
a ball. Unlike their kiss-ass mentors, they were living a movie.
Their lives meant something.
Unfortunately, their story doesn't end the way their
counselors would've liked. They crossed into Mexico without
trouble and made their way to Honduras where they're living
as happy, hedonistic atheists.
They’re unaware of the likelihood of tonight's shooting
at their bar, or the odds favoring how they might die
laughing…June with a baby in her belly and John with a joint
in his hand…
For now, they're taking a bath together, feeling pretty
damned good and proud of themselves…Damocles' sword
dangling over their Schrödinger cat heads…until
morning…when all, if they wish, may discover the dark matter
infusing their place, the invisible energy asphyxiating their
detestable suits of flesh and skin…smearing the transparent
staining drizzle of Its despicability all over the place…
Knowing there’s more going on here beyond whatever’s
meeting our eye…

BEYOND ANY PERFECTION PRINCIPLE

Igor push the button!
No.
Why not?
Because we're not that…
What? That what?

29
 Right. Correct. We're not right enough to push the
button.
Since when?
Since ever.
Ever?
Yes.
Igor and The Other stare each other down, trying to
think.
I know what we can do.
What's that? asks Igor.
Nothing. We can do nothing.
Yes! We'll do nothing, even if it's wrong.
That's right, Igor. Even if it's wrong. We'll do nothing.

Igor and The Other stare each other down, waiting to

see what happens.

Did you feel It?

Yes, Igor, I felt It.
So, what are we waiting for?
We're not.
So…so…anyway.
True…

SANS ANY SENSIBILITY

On his first day of school at NCCC, John runs into Ted
Paine. Turns out, they're in two classes together. Ted sells him
a bag of weed. It would be the first bag he’d ever buy, but
certainly not the last.
It made him feel more than good. It made him feel as if
he belonged with the Holy Ghost, was of God. It fed his
messiah complex. He was once again believing he had
supernatural powers that were not yet discernible. It would be
his duty in life to conjure them up out of himself, to self-
actualize in the name of the Lord and redeem the homo
sapiens sapiens…and therefore the whole world as It might be
known by humans.
Smoking weed made him certain of his own inimitable
immensity…his world class creative capacity, his cosmic
charisma. He was always laughing at himself, and it made him
happy.
He realized this for sure as he smoked a bowl for the
first [and certainly not last] time in the upstairs bathroom of
his mother’s house, with the fan on, blowing it out the window.

30
 He knew what he knew and what others couldn’t know,
counting on what he would learn and they would not,
replaying the game he’d have to play to make the climb, feeling
up his destiny with the ever so faint melody of "Hail to the
Chief" worming around in that perverse space between his
ears…
So now, as if being stupid weren’t enough, his
delusions, which were always present, began maturing and
taking off in a direction he knew not where…

PLAYING SYZYGY
Feeling Sophia's thought is life…wetting Itself…
quivered…loosening, slipping away into the exotic elsewhere of
speechlessness…
She and her son, Johnnie, have re-designed their
basement for a new kind of party. Sophia's idea is to give John
a place to play with his friends. He's 23. Trouble is Johnnie's
humiliated by it but does nothing. He has more important
things to do…let his brothers work the cancer.
But not really. Johnnie must break the spell Sophia's
cast over him, but he neither realizes it nor would know how if
he did. In the winter, the cellar will be totally dark when the
snow covers its windows.
There couldn't be anything closer than this kind of
darkness…could there?
Sophia angrily reproves any light on her behavior or
sensibility. She can't help it if she's jealous, wanting to keep
her son for herself. Her son longs to invade her divine space
and overthrow her, but Sophia's defenses defy his usurpation.
She told him not to go in the Navy, that submarines were
bullshit.
Each imagines a terrorized bliss in the other's
exasperation.
Before he can reach her, Sophia's body loosens its grip
and her mind slips away before Johnnie…
He knows it will be hopeless explaining the presence of
his semen on Sophia's body when the police arrive.

WITH BRUNHILDE AND THE HUNS

Doorbell’s ringing. He looks between the blinds from his
upstairs office window and counts six. The way they're

31
arranged he's sure there are at least six more beyond his
periphery. Brunhilde, unaware of the situation, marches with
purpose to the front door. She has the heavy boom boom boom
footsteps of big mama at home. He closes his files and begins
erasing them. They're saved on disk and safely hidden
elsewhere. He hears Brunhilde covering for him:
No, he's not here…
He's not writing anything…
I'm making sure of that…
yes, he's out looking for a job…
yes, I mind if you search my house…
but
John's too old and fat to nimbly climb into the attic
from the hall closet. They'd hear him for sure. He grabs his
demagnetizer, running it over his laptop hoping for the best…
I know I can't stop you…
John hears the woman enter the front door. She walks
through the living room to the dining room table, Brunhilde
stomping along behind her.
What are these? the leader asks.
Old newspapers, replies Brunhilde.
What do they say?
John looks between the blinds. The squad now seems
deeply involved texting loved ones and acquaintances re: this
and that on their Z-Tabs. Feeling he has nothing to lose, he
slides the window open, crawls clumsily onto the porch roof,
slides with starts and stops down the corner drain [leaving a
nasty gutter burn on his crotch] and walks away trying not to
rub his thighs together...impossible.
Once at the corner, John looks back and sees the AWS
escorting Brunhilde from the premises. Evidently, she
answered the leader's question, suggesting she could read. But
John seems amused. He knows better. Brunhilde's carrying a
purse. She never does that. She enters the van with the AWS
and then, just as the door's sliding shut, leaps out as the van
blows up.
John returns to the house. Brunhilde's turned the heat
back on under her chowder.
You'll need to go to Tops for gator bread.
Jesus Christ! You do it! I've got work to do and all I get
are interruptions!
Brunhilde loses patience with John and calls him a fat,
pathetic creep.
The least you can do is stir this occasionally and make
sure it doesn't stick to the bottom. I'll be back in 30 minutes
unless there's too many Huns at the market…

32
TO BURN OFF STEAM
John always wanted sex. He was stupid enough to
think he'd attract a woman with brawn. He pumped iron and
did drugs to overcome the neuroses preventing him from
achieving his goals.
He also needed money, so John took a job bouncing at
Zeke's, a nightclub in Lockport's Old City Hall that looked
down on the Erie Canal like some European castle…almost.
Not really. But that's what John imagined…
He wore a tuxedo without a jacket like the other
bouncers. Patrons generally treated bouncers with respect.
John liked that. He imagined the young ladies were hanging
around him because he excited them. The fact they were
probably drawn to him for security reasons didn't register. He
chose instead to let it boost his confidence. Whenever he had a
chance, he'd cop an inadvertent feel or grind while making his
rounds of the crowded dance floor. He believed this inadvertent
groping would attract his next girlfriend. He was also angry
because he knew deep down it wouldn't. He was upset when
the owner, Dan Johanessburger, promoted him from dance
floor to ID Checker at the front door. Dan told him to proof
every black person. Apparently, that was policy. John wasn't
aware of it. He looked down the steps at the beautiful blonde
coat check girl. She seemed rather spacy, and therefore a
potential girlfriend…or co-worker with benefits.
To impress her, he only checked ID of those black
people who didn't look old enough to drink. He'd also resolved
a while back to never follow fucked up orders from "superiors."
It worked. When he took her back to his place, he
groped her until she fled on foot into the frigid January night.
His only thought on the matter was "Women!"
He then lost sleep, exasperated…

VIA EROS' QUANTA, EMERGENT

Not knowing why he was doing it. Was it the 300 mgs
of phenylpropanolamine he was taking every day to eliminate
hunger and boost energy and stay below 5 percent body fat?
He pumped iron constantly. Ran 7 miles. Fucked like a bull.
Fought deranged. Ground and pound or corner and knee then
stomp to the ground. Targeting eyes and neck and balls and
kidneys. Liver. He wore boots and shirts applicable to go
time…

33
 First, he dated her sister, Rhonda. Rhonda had a
toddler and lived with Rori. When he then dated and stayed
with Rori, Rori would complain about Rhonda. She'd say "she
gets me every time" their conflict turned physical. It's been
something they've been trying to avoid since Rodney was
around. Rod was the baby. They had to keep things down
when he was up.
One time, the kid was up all weekend. John and Rori
spent most of it in Rori's bedroom being quiet. She whispered
about her sister's dating twin brothers. How'd they come pick
her up, grope her in front of Roddy when he was up. Rori said
Rhonda needed her ass kicked but she couldn't do it. Then
they had to stop for sex [of course]. This subject had the
Morticia-speaking-French-to-Gomez-effect on John. Post
orgasm, Rori said the twins, Peter and Dieter, always flirted
with her when they could. They're perverts, she said.
And then there was a knock on the door. John sprang
from the bed, marched through the apartment pushing
Rhonda aside, causing Rod, who was up, to fall on his butt
and scream. He opened the door and with each hand grabbed
a twin by the neck and jacked them up at the top of the
stairwell. The guys weighed about 130 each. John was a brute.
Way too much energy. Not really getting anything done. Four
feet dangling off the ground. Rod's up again but still
screaming. Rhonda and Rori shouting harmonies. Peter and
Dieter whining, it's cool dude it's cool. And again, something
else happened.
John felt alienated to the bone. The asininity of
humans measuring a slow-mo psychedelic metamorphosis
while tossing them down the stairs…

EVAPORATING
Maggie's break up with him was, John felt, the final
blow. He said he wouldn't be able to keep things under control
if he didn't lose It—that which is haunting him—this weekend.
Resembling the increasingly disordered state of his
consciousness, John imagined how the entropy he perceived
would feel untenable in his Love Hut. He followed her on her
date, fired a couple shots then called it quits. He sat by the
lake all night trying to figure this out…or forget about It.
Maggie joined him.
She washed up a week later. Psychic breakdown was
the excuse he gave everyone, and in the end, some fathomed it

34