When The Bronx Is Up And Your Battery’s Down (part 3)

He moved gladly into the rush of Grand Central. No one even paused. As he enjoyed moving along with all the leggy, bouncy women, he noticed the men seemed without color, moving without flexing anything. Vacant and rigid, they went along as though being shoved through a dream by their dreamer. Sometimes Warren thought of this rush like it was a current of squid flowing through channels jetted by the rut of dubious sex. He drifted with the current towards the subway entrance. Eager to find whatever waited to surprise him on the outside, he got to the platform just as the downtown #6 pulled in, and he felt his invisibility rising.

Downtowning became the familiar rock and shattering clatter of the train against the flashing tube of darkness. Poets he had read when he had read poetry said it, Lowell and Fearing and Connellan, had lent it a magic when all that wonder had a dream about it back then. But now within the coating grit and pancake and mascara, and to breathe the farted garlic air, it had become as ordinary as the split rail fences and cul-de-sacs of the Valley of the Living Dead. Warren clung to the cool plastic loop and stared at the tiled walls of the stations. Union Square. He would get off there and walk the longer distance tonight. It gave him the chance to look at more of them.

As he climbed from the bottom of the city towards its noise and lights, he felt a drizzle on his face. He stopped suddenly as a metallic taste rose into his mouth and his stomach folded into a thud. He had not expected the drizzle, had not prepared. It would mean fewer people, fewer walkers. He had not prepared. He always wanted to prepare for the important things, and now, twice in one day, he had not. Too many distractions, like the woman on the train and the failed Bash and that problematic TV addiction thing. As the discomfort rose, he knew he could not get himself ready to step into the possibilities of the sidewalk there at the mouth of the slippery concrete stairwell. He tried to step again but paused and leaned against the wall. He needed air. There against the coated wall, the smell of the subway’s current and the people passing him on the concrete risings, he paused and needed air. It would pass with air and time.

“Are you OK?” she asked.

She might have been someone he knew, but she was anyone. She was being nice, the same nice she probably always was. She meant nothing personal by it, no familiarity, no quest for intimacy, not to become involved with Warren. At least, it seemed that way.

“I’m fine. Thanks.” He smiled politely, automatically.

She was young, much younger than Warren, and she dressed herself professionally, unlike him. Much too covered for the weather. She wore a gray pin-striped business suit with its skirt tight and a little too short for her height. And her small feet were pinched into buffed black high-heeled shoes, frayed around the toes and just at the bottom of each heel.

“I’m sorry to keep staring,” she said.

“What? Oh, I wasn’t…”

“No, I mean aren’t you in my class? At the new school. You know, in the applied microlinguistics class tonight?” She gave him a boxy, toothy smile that wanted to be some kind of friend, a sharing classmate maybe.

“Yes.” Warren had lost something there on the subway stairs, something crucial, a part of his plans. But he didn’t know quite what yet.

A crowd rushed toward them, moving frantically for the streets, and Warren turned with the young woman so they could be swept along.

“I’m Amy. Amy Brumbauer.”

Then she got knocked abruptly away from Warren and jammed into the wall at the top of the stairs. But she laughed and leaned there to rest. He moved at least three steps along with the crowd before he realized he was alone again.

He turned to look for Amy, found her and stared for a few seconds. Amy’s talking had given him substance. People didn’t go through him, and Amy had touched his arm briefly in the rush of the crowd. Then the crowd was gone, and Warren stood alone, looking towards Amy, who still laughed softly into the drizzle. He noticed her dark red hair was wrapped neatly into a bun, like an older woman might, and the cut of her suit jacket sharply defined her breasts which seemed very large for such a short, otherwise petite body.

“I’m Warren,” he said and moved towards her, his hand extended stiffly.

to be continued

When The Bronx Is Up And Your Battery’s Down (part 2)

He noticed this invisibility thing during his first walk from the subway to his class. No one seemed to notice him there in New York. In his Cheshire, Connecticut, there in the Valley of the Living Dead, that’s all they seemed to care about, scrutinizing you, noticing you there, whom you were with, cross-referencing you. But on the streets of The City, where people actually rubbed against each other for want of space, they passed right through him. And from that first experience, Warren felt safe and easy, like he had not felt for so very long. He felt alive and excited in ways he had forgotten about. He became a part of peoples’ lives in ways they knew nothing about.

Warren cared intimately about those lives and longed to accompany them as a sort of spectral guardian, he thought. And he caressed them in ways they had never considered because they had the advantage of never having met. These became kinds of loving relationships.

Once, as he entered the building for his class, he considered that this whole thing might be something to try in the regimen of applied microlinguistics, much like the goal of the discipline, discover the substance behind the spaces between the words and the letters of the words.

The talk show began to end, and Warren squirmed. He stretched his legs and worked to untangle his memory and get back to the TV. It was time to close it. He snapped off the screen and listened to the crackle fade into the stillness. The late August crickets had ceased for a while. He tasted the rich tang of the cooling humid air. Margrit would be well into her rems, deeply heaving her certainties into a restful positivity for the challenges of the next day. Life held so much in its balance for Margrit. She even seemed to admire the way she appeared in the mirror. Despite the true globby image there, what she saw pleased the two most important people in her life, and they smiled approvingly at each other in the glass.

Warren shuddered at that thought. It complicated what had already become a swampy situation. He wanted more, not less accommodation in the house, its things, Margrit and the children. He wanted things there plain and stable. This brand of sarcasm that crept into his mind did him no good and tilted things out of control. He imagined that is what a therapist might say. So he looked away from it, shook it off. He focused on the coming day, looked forward to the rush from the Bash to the train that held the promise of his weekly sojourn to invisibility.

Once on the train, he looked out the window, as usual. That was his business, not to contemplate, but rather to observe things, the mundane, garbaged, scrofulous backsides of buildings, crumbling under graffiti. Each time Warren noticed different details. Sometimes he would even get a glimpse of a person he had never seen before, a chance sighting of a person unaware.

The train jerked and sent his sleeplessness clouded by his sediment of gin crashing into his wall of guilt. To be sure, he had failed at that morning’s Bash. Their eyes had told him that. They all had the ideas, and then they stared at him for some seductive syntax to package those ideas. But all he could muster were jumbled language, overly clever trivia and clichés. Something about the room urged that out of him. The firm considered oak conference tables to be inconsistent with their paradigm. The Bashes always met in the warmth of rose walls and oriental rugs, with the group seated on huge haremesque pillows, sipping herbal tea. Consumer Enhancing, Inc. knew how to ease one into the stress free, proper perspective in order to reach the appropriately profitable solution. None of that had worked on Warren, not that morning.

His glance out the window suddenly caught the flick of white. His head turned to see the panties roll and gait smoothly into the doorway of what must have been a bedroom. A freshening up just home from work. The naked back, tight and muscular, held her shoulders and head erect. The doorway framed her briefly, and then the train moved out of the station. Warren clicked his eyes to the interior of the car to see if anyone had noticed. A woman three seats forward lifted her thick eyes from her page and looked disapprovingly. But he couldn’t be sure. He would wait. They would be in the tunnel soon, anyway. He shrugged, sighed and decided that the apparent disapproval had been boredom.

The tunnel’s darkness sucked the car into it, and Warren closed himself into the headrest. Consumer Enhancing, Inc. might be thinking of someone else now after his performance. It had been an ordeal of personal shortcomings, and his anxieties this time had substance. But, there on the train, his shut eyes stifled the thought, leaving him feeling a neutral ease, relieving his doubt. In this place and darkness, the morning shame blurred. He was entering his weekly comfort and so would not be seen. He opened his eyes slowly. As the woman three seats forward leaned to get her things from the floor, Warren’s eyes snatched at her opened blouse, and he smiled that she was braless, and he looked away to avoid getting caught. The train began dragging slowly to its slot in Grand Central. As he filed off, Warren paused to make sure he would be the one to let this woman pass. As she did so, he smiled and nodded. And she ignored him, as though he were not there.

to be continued

When The Bronx Is Up And Your Battery's Down

a story

Warren never thought he might be a voyeur. Not ever. It muttered perversity, hidden motives, raincoats and humiliation. A little too abnormal for Warren.

He was watching this week's talk show. The producers had selected sexual addiction. The talk reminded Warren that he needed a drink.

He poured himself a Bombay over ice.

The show focused on this addiction with voyeurism as an example. The addiction expert talked about voyeurism as the singular manifestation of the sexually addictive personality. Those were his words. Warren shrugged off a tic of relevance. He looked at the panel of guests. They had been through therapy and had been freed. They smiled mirthlessly. Warren sipped some Bombay.

He thought of himself as an observer, but he wondered what they would think of him anyway.The host hadn't asked them that. About ambivalent or unconscious voyeurism. Warren investigated lives first hand, personally. He desired an intimate view, unobserved, from a distance, yet absolutely concerned and focused. Warren cared about people. He really did.From a distance. He could recall being that way as a child. But this was not an addiction. It was life. It made him feel good and safe. Like a child.

The screen's digital blinked 3:23. He had to be at Consumer Enhancing, Inc's brainbash at 8:00.After work, he had to get the 6:00 train to be on time to his Applied Microlinguistics class at The New School.

His recent lapse into self-absorption had been keeping him awake like this. Margrit, on the other hand, had discovered her own pace and moved more quickly. That made her sleep more peacefully, more deeply. Her Group had told her that it would, and it did. And that was all she needed. She smiled mirthlessly, too.

One of the show's guests talked about having high levels of low self-esteem. The key was to avoid negativity. That triggered guilt and obsessive behavior. Like sexual addiction. Warren suspected his self-absorption had to do with low self-esteem as well as obsessive behavior. He had gone to college, so he could make some connections. But none of the guests was discussing the anxieties part. Warren always thought having anxieties was one of those givens he kept hearing about. Givens are important for connections, especially when you discuss things like self-esteem. He had made the connection, but they hadn't. In fact, Warren had recently concluded that his anxieties had been his guide through adult life.

That's what first led him to take up the ad's teaser for the course on Applied Microlinguistics.He mentioned it to Margrit one day before she left for work, and she said it was something that would probably appeal to someone like him. So he enrolled. Margaret had also suggested some therapy, but Warren thought he'd try The New School first. The thought of applying the new technologese to the improbabilities inherent in language amused him. The experience also might give him an edge at work. That he could use. It would be an applied connection, sort of.

But the New School jaunts had tweaked something quite unexpected. It came to mind amid the gin and the talk show. He had never connected his observing with anything aberrant. It also never seemed addictive. Perhaps that connection was a bit too visceral. The New School trips had made him feel invisible. It brought a lightness, an airiness to him that had never before accompanied his observing. Someone else might have called it a liberating experience. Warren wouldn't concede that much. He held liberation in very high esteem, sort of beyond reach.

He first noticed this invisibility when he became conscious of following complete strangers down the sidewalk and into shops. An outsider might have thought they were acquaintances.But Warren's feeling was that he was invisible. No one knew him in The City. No one cared what he did so long as it wasn't overtly criminal or threatening. But now with this addiction idea and how important the trips to The City had become, he began to have some concern.

Perhaps one Bombay would be insufficient. He deferred to experience and poured another. Less ice this time. His diversions always led in this direction, especially late at night.

He liked the invisibility. It covered him like a cocoon, being there without being there, sort of.And The Apple provided the perfect environment. The chances of being sighted were as remote as a DNA match up.

Mostly he pursued females along the various strange streets and parks. He studied them like an artist auditioning models. They held only superficial interest for him, and then only so far as they brought him closer to a truer understanding of the female form.

to be continued

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Farewell

And Happy New Year!

This is the final post for Cyberspace Glass House. I decided that I'm neither sufficiently angry nor sufficiently happy to continue blogging. Besides, the more I learn about the Web and the scadillions of bloggers out there, the more I imagine this metaphor that we bloggers are like very small suns, sources of light, as we might prefer to think, in our average solar system that's part of an average galaxy that forms some sort of huge nova among millions of other novas.

I see blogging now as public diary writing, which is, of course, an oxymoron. When one's audience is oneself, one is engaged in rather boring onanism. And that doesn't make for very interesting public display. In addition Google is now tempting bloggers to place ads on their blogs and thus initiate the commodification of the blogosphere, where bloggers become new age commoditrons.

Anyway, I've enjoyed our little sojourn from our tribulations. I leave you with these thoughts from Neil Gaiman's American Gods:
"People believe…It's what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen...This [America] is a bad land for gods."

Fergus

Galway Kinnell is one of America’s genuine good souls. We know this from reading his poetry. I chose this one for our holidays, because it shows why we have this season of solstice celebrations: our humanity is grounded in the hope and trust of unconditional love.

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run - as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears - in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small
he has to screw them on, which one day may make him wonder
about the mental capacity of baseball players -
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across his little, startling muscled body -
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.

Misogyny

I don’t usually comment on this issue. I’ve been around many intelligent women who have taught me the nuances involved. The best of these women, some colleagues and my wife, are aware of the ways other women have turned misogyny into a discourse on the anti-Christ. On the other hand, they also clarify the subtleties that fly right past and over the heads of most men…even the well-intentioned ones.

To be sure, Chris Matthews is not a well-intentioned male. He’s a showman who apparently used to be a fairly good journalist. I say “apparently” because you couldn’t tell that he had any connections to journalism from his frothing on Hardball, which should be called “Puffball”, because of the effusiveness he showers on the DC insiders he has as guests. He’s the archetype of the media whore, doing everything he can to keep his place on the hierarchy of DC personalities. He’s come a long way from his Catholic schooling and Peace Corps days.

But he has retained his condescending, patronizing and schoolboy gender chauvinism. I don’t know which is worse, his blatant references to the beauty and brains and/or bitchy-witchy ways of the female guests on his show or his bumbling, fumbling attempts to cover them with apologies. Perhaps his producer shouts in his earpiece. In any case, he hasn’t learned, and the experience would make P.T. Barnum proud.

I could shake all this off as, well, how far some of us males have yet to evolve, except when it involves more serious matters. A couple of days ago I was talking with my wife about this Matthews business, and suddenly out of nowhere Martha Stewart popped into my brain. In case you’ve forgotten, Martha did actual jail time for what amounted to a minor felony, especially compared to what’s been happening on unregulated Wall Street. Now, I’m pretty careful about keeping up with the news about those crooks, and I don’t recall that any of them have even been brought before a grand jury. I know that Bernie Madoff (notice the current news media use of his boyish nickname) has been accused, but do any of us think he’ll actually do jail time? No, no. He’ll flip all over the place like a Mexican jumping bean, ratting out all and sundry, work out a plea deal and be off to his villa in southern France.

Misogyny comes in many forms, the worst being institutionalized misogyny, the stealthy kind that came down on Martha Stewart. Actually, the serious issue is how very little males and females know and/or want to know about each other. The little jokes and nostrums we make about each other’s behavior seem only to intensify that fact.