Eli and Kate grew up in a neighborhood of perfect blue lawns, of sealed black concrete that bled tar in the summer heat, of paperless immigrants trimming bush in hats that told any who saw how far they’d come. Retrievers and mutts made trails under hedges, school buses hushed children with hydraulics breaks exhaling as they slowed and although it rained more than it didn’t, all things considered they came of age in a time and a place that could be no less described as paradise. Never had so many walked gardens so perfect, the zeitgeist then longing for an invisible white citadel behind intangible walls, safe from all foulness ardent or faint. The prodigal sons and daughters of dear Roma traded their striped togas for barbarian chariots.
Sixteen miles to the gallon but hits sixty in 4-5 flat.
Nice.
But I must confess:
I am a spy.
A subversive.
A really unpleasant agent.
A total asshole.
A ruffian? No. Not a ruffian, I stay well shaved, meticulously dressed and always hold doors for ladies.
A rapist? Most certainly, in a loose sense of the word. Murderer?
Only through neglect, excluding naturally, the ways in which we are all killing ourselves and everyone around us, always. Am I the worst kind of person? We’ll I’ve never held office...but wouldn’t admit, to god or lover, that I’ve harbored notions and thoughts that may very well brought Alexander of Macedon, all the Kahn clan, Hitler, Germanicus, Pol Pot, Andrew Jackson, and Stalin to wipe their hands clean of my poker table and declare “game over” if I were to share what I could do with just a plastic desk chair of unassailable power. I haven’t a name or ambition. I am fire shaped and as certain as writing on water. I am living in the subconscious of an eight year old incarnate, as I am the spirit of Revolutionary General Horatio Gates. That’s “fondue” Gates if you know. Have you heard of the battle of Saratoga? Kind of important in the run of American history . I won two engagements at Freeman Farm, gave the Redcoats a fine blasting, then in the heat of the moment ran them down, butchered em proper, hung them from trees, then torched the trees, raped their filthy anuses with bayonets left idle in campfires until the white hot points committed searing flesh to a smoky sour steam. We burned so many of them the rocks along the Mohawk River ran slick with melted fat so when the rain came it slid in tears, leaving no residue or trace or wetness upon the stone. Tip of the hat the Khans for that. I mean fuck that General Tso, that’s not even a real dish anyway. All the Chinese eat are crabs and tofu and spring rolls, which, lets face it are about as phallic as they come, second only to the Almond Creamsicle or any baked good found in a San Francisco variety bakery. Yes, I said it, variety bakery.
But, and I cannot stress this enough, this isn’t about vagina fritters: its about Eli and Kate and how they are beautiful.
My vessel, the eight year old, is a decent enough carrier as far as reincarnations go. It could be far worse. That reminds me! True story:
While idle in the afterlife waiting for bipedal reassignment I ran into none other than Pericles the Athenian who, after fifteen lifetimes reincarnated as a grave digger, received notice he would spend his next life as a gooey duck in the shores of Hood Canal rolling tongue across mud in search of protein left by decomposing sea life. Shaking his head he told me ‘God must be a Spartan.” I disagreed, insisting God was simply a woman, or at least effeminate male, and that next time he gets a square shot at life he should do more to prevent the slaughter of his people. “Have you tried melting your enemies?”
There I go again! Loving the sound of my own voice. Back to the boy, my vessel, Ian. He’s a dirty bugger, about four feet in height, nearly fourteen stones , spends most his time mashing buttons on a game or something, making a glassy flatness flicker with some sort of witchcraft. The boy took to masturbating awfully early, at least by my opinion. Although he did not produce ejaculate he did marvel curiously at the phenomenon of his penis changing shape and consistency. For a time he tried to induce this by retaining urine that he thought would lead to expansion. Like a water ballon draped This made perfect sense. It made him piss his pants.
He wears mostly hand me downs from his brothers not because his family can’t afford better but because both his parents are lazy types who themselves donned hand me downs so like father, like son. He looks orphaned; swimming in the fabrics like a monk. He likes to tuck his knees to his chest during class and “turtle” up to nap. No one notices. The kids run amuck in that school of his and no one canes them into knowing better.
Ian enjoys dirtying himself in conifer forests around his house with other dirty boys in his grade year. They pluck frogs and newts from their families and drop them in tanks to do battle with other frogs and newts that, lacking both teeth and violent dispositions, make amphibious chit chat until they die of dehydration, becoming salty little crackers stuck to the walls of their death chambers. Thank god there’s a whole forest of them!
Ian lived with his parents, two aged hippies who push fifty but claim forty on account of the years 1967-1975 disappearing into a vortex from which they emerged married, broke, under investigation for conspiracy to commit grand bovine larceny and perhaps most strange, as capable musicians specializing on the Indian string instrument the Sitar. In eight years of their generation accomplishing absolutely nothing they accrued a great sense of accomplishment. One they demonstrated to Ian by relating stories from the era that made less sense to the boy the more he thought about them.
They sold a line of towels and bathmats made from recycled coffee cups. A guilt cleansing gold mine.
Each morning before school Ian’s mother served him half an ounce of wheat grass in preparation for the toxins Reagan let industrialists pump into the atmosphere. After that he’d hang out at the bus stop in front of his neighbors house sending little puffs of breath up to join clouds as the boys on his street pretended to smoke the cold. He fidgeted often, adjusting himself under clothes purchased for his brother in the late nineties. They never fit, as his brother Toby, now living in a commune outside Fall City, took after his mothers side of the family, tall and dark, while he took after his father’s side; anything but. When the bus came he’d hop on board sit somewhere near the middle, far enough back to avoid snot that covered the lips of kindergarteners in the winter and just shy of the loosely defined “back” where sixth graders held ass whooping court. He sat usually next to Scott a pudgy and clumsy delinquent or the unabashedly-dressed-by-his-mother Tommy (the odd man out being forced to sit next to pony and pink obsessed Melissa Ferguson, yuck!) to continue the shit talking that made their every morning a heated debate from minds that may have well been experiencing the world upside down like newborns. Scott once insisted his cousin, um, Craig, knew this guy in uuuuh, Bellingham, who got his thingy stuck in a woman’s thingy.
Vagiiina?
SHHHH!
What? Ian asked. Tommy feared trouble at the mentioning of genetalia.
Bus drivers aren’t teachers or anything, Ian reminded them, then stood on his backpack and leaned over the seatback in front of him to shout at the Driver.
VAGINA!
The woman driving: middle aged, curly haired, and in a wrinkled sweat suit that once screamed Japanese tourist, shook her bushy head and took another snip off her opaque water bottle. Looking up she caught a golden blur of retriever darting in the street and slammed the brakes as the students let out a choral whoa! Ian went ass over tea kettle off the seatback into Tommy and Melissa who sat next to each other but with their backpacks between them as a means of protecting themselves from the insidious other. He knocked the hair-thingy out of her hair, but being natural gentlemen directed most of his mass at Tommy who, unable to hold his weight, collapsed down, sliding on the grass and dew that collected under seats from sneakers every morning. The all screamed needlessly.
