Nicholas Grider |
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HOW TO DO THINGS WITH MEN (# 1) It’s Saturday morning so men and sugar are around the corner, problem solved. Go out into the night of Saturday morning and stay there until it starts to rain, stand on the front lawn and sing my body lies over the ocean my body lies over the sea in the glare all men are alike and so you get confused about which ones to flatter and which ones you can glance at for a few seconds before they stop pretending not to notice and what you’re looking for is underneath the bone, men are all bone and skin and nothing else, maybe horseflies and razor burn and gingham under the spokes of light of late summer, nevertheless some memories look great leaning casually with one arm against a brick wall, some men look great in emergency light everything being on the same level, no mazes or moral imperatives, no cards in the mail today saying “come home already” world traveler Mutual of Omaha presents: The Wild Kingdom of Men hanging by their ankles from the trees __ How to do things with advertisements. With teenage agency. Construct elaborate mid-morning narratives around their local wholesome heroes, where John or James wears khakis and suede mules to the park and writes his number on the bathroom wall and gets tied to the tetherball pole by the natives, a field of feral children waiting to grow up into something similar to men but looser-limbed in the head re-writing history, but so far there’s only one character and then there’s men and no narrative tension because “the war is over” pink flags, white noise, eviction notices Jack or Jimmy holding hands but nobody notices, that history is silent to men, waving hello from over there as if you know them Judases Thomas or William or Ben getting paid by the hour, if only not to be specific men still shortening a Sunday afternoon before winter finally begins a red flag to mark his body in the snow __ Men are in the backyard with their shirts tucked in, enjoying the scenic view, enjoying the science of the lawn as a kind of wilderness as side-glance affirmation, nowhere terror being forgotten handcuffed to the chain-link fence Incredible Adventures over the course of a few mimosas, or Magnolias, not the one in your childhood hit by lightning but orange juice with a slug of bourbon that’ll stiffen you up until the local wives and families and mistresses arrive (all of this as if behind a screen) behind a window, violence between neurons, followed immediately by twenty years of white sky * HOW TO DO THINGS WITH MEN (#2) Debate or erase you. Haunt you. Hunt you. Cross you out and start over. With you in the spotlight that old routine, with lamps with an exit strategy. Do this, do that. Men don’t come home, there aren’t any. Men and sidelong glances and silences, there aren’t any. Stay in one spot for a long time and the world begins to change, replace you, remanufacture you, return you to nature. You’re what happens to be there. Sucking you off while you watch MTV. You’re old enough to be my father. Things could be worse. Slowly, around midnight reintroduce you. Restate what in plain speech means too much: interrogate you, whomever you could be, and tell you who you are. Come here. Go over there and turn off all the lights. |
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