B
Brighter Hell
Guest
Nobody but adma can talk so much while saying so little.
Except maybe miketoronto.
*backs slowly out of thread*
Except maybe miketoronto.
*backs slowly out of thread*
If there's a vague or not-so-vague eroticism to my reflections upon September 11 and all that followed, that may be because sexuality and eroticism is the ultimate transgression, the most viscerally transcendent violation there is. At best, a positive violation, mind you; it's what literally creates us. But we need to be ever aware of its violatory, taboo, guilt-ridden qualities; otherwise it becomes cheap and insipid and not worthy of our time or anybody's.
And its abstraction --its purest, most hazardous essentials-- is made clear through the "world's oldest profession".
On December 31, 2001, I booked time for 5:00PM through an ad in an alt-weekly's "business personal" pages. If anything, it was in a dabbling "George Plimpton" spirit --I'm woefully uncomfortable with stereotypical "erotic" rituals, sex talk, etc. And I didn't know what to expect, other than the physical and locational and monetary superficialities offered in the ad and over the phone. She was 19, sounded personable, and there was above all a dynamism to her location, in the outermost reaches of Scarborough, a short drive from the Rouge Valley and the Metro Zoo --in Toronto terms, practically geographically catercorner to where I was. As with Coney Island, getting there was half the fun.
As it turned out, she was what I'd consider a willowy all-Canadian "sensitive blonde", wavy shoulder-length hair, happily normal and natural --but thin. Very thin, almost A-cup thin, but in a way that was more physiological than an explicit signal of anything seriously wrong. Myself, I was giddy and rapturous more through the extended New York hangover than as a reflection of what was about to happen --in fact, I was in "inspirational" mode, knowing that this was in all likelihood to be mutually our last time in this horrific year. Thus, it had to be special --and I sought to pursue that end, at a level beyond the perfectly normal imperfections of the physical act. My spirit was positive --ecstatically positive-- and I was more than happy to share.
She was sweet; but there was a languid sadness about her. She had tattoos --which, in 2001, no longer signified very much. She seemed to indicate having a child --although she had the antithesis of a child-bearing physique. And she was sleepy-tired, and concerned over whether she'd endure going out for New Year's with a girlfriend; if I felt guilty about anything, it was that last point.
And then there was her slenderness --although, again, I had no sense of anything like morbid drug or anorexia problems. In fact, I probably felt a bit of self-identification, not only for having the kind of pared-to-basics physique and restrained dietary habits that've disturbed many an overzealous Polish aunt, but because I'd just been on a trip marked by Grays-Papaya-and-cup-o-soup malnourishment. (Intense travel does that to me. In Toledo, Spain in January 1987, staying in a cold and drafty pensione, sucking on bouillon cubes purchased from a cheese-odoury corner Spar store outside the town walls, desperately bundling up in the evening while listening to the Fifth Dimension's "Stoned Soul Picnic" on the radio and pondering those Plateresque sculpted escutcheons about town, really brought out the gaunt El Greco in me.) Furthermore, I've sometimes pondered if as a quick'n'easy no-experience-necessary desperation-tactic way to make money, courier work is practically the male equivalent to escort work. All about good, efficient service, satisfying clientele, positive work ethic, et al. And maybe, at worst, a little bit of a humiliating dead end…
But there was an additional landmark factor that took things into eerie, breathtakingly disturbing immediacy and a tragically reflective dimension --if her age is what it was, she was almost precisely half my age. May 1982, as a matter of fact --the same month that Musicradio WABC died. I practically remember as though it was yesterday what I was doing when she was born --in fact, for all I know, she may have a parent or parents who are younger than myself. Here, as partners, we were equals; yet she was of the next generation.
I observed the protocol of the transaction; anything else would be stalking. I shared my thoughts, perhaps inspired her --and then went away; a mysterious masked man. She, too, the fascinating mystery. As was proper, and safe. The soul of the moment; I would not want it any other way. It was less grotesque than anything deeper and more "genuinely" intimate with a person in her position would have been.
Nevertheless, her melancholia and, above all, her physique haunts me --and keep in mind, it's a physique which I experienced at close range. I couldn't consider it to be in any unappetizing danger zone; and besides, true to the archi-urban polymath, my inclinations are egalitarian. But it appeared brittle --very brittle. Brittle as a twig.
Brittle as the shimmering, shattered mullions of the World Trade Center --images now enshrined in photographic imagery, ideograms for eternity, familiar to all.
December 31, 2001, right after the last daylight of the year had waned. For a timespan just about equal to that between the fall of the Twin Towers, we were unlikely metaphors for the year that was.
adma: that a number of the surrounding buildings are sad reminders of our past acquiescence, is no reason for us to accept more crap in the area. We know better now, and we want it, don't we?