[Make Me An Offer .]
Part One: Steeple Chase
I don’t recommend any of the processional wives. I wouldn’t take a dollar from a dead, dying man. I’ve tried to last without exploding into a million star pieces but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I could never be quiet or delicate. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Couldn’t mistake one for the other. This for that. Could not exhaust all of my options. Couldn’t swear at the steeple. Couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Couldn’t speak to droves of people.
No, I don’t recommend the processional wives.
Part Two: Cancer in April
I wouldn’t bother with any of the children. It wouldn’t be fair and they are far too needy. Tomorrow has a bellyache that can’t be driven out.
And that bitch still sleeps on my couch.
Part Three: Silly Myths
You needn’t look at the husbands. They are far too macho with grief. They never knew what bit them and now they spend their time avoiding their dreams and settling for something less. I am a fellow who gives a good goddamn about what is right and true and lean. I will throw down for you in a fight. But there are other men I have met, so many of them, who linger in a constant denial. Pretending or forgetting that they are not eighteen any longer. Real refuge and solace cannot be purchased at retail. Passion, devoid of all thinking, cannot be bought with a discount membership. National Public Radio is slowly trying to kill you. But for a dollar or two I can have these men beaten. And I will insist on being paid in nothing but pennies, or all bets are off, because I have always liked Lincoln.
From here on in you are on your own. No one is going to accept a note from your mother. Fuck you. I’d like to have time for the sick and the poor but hey man, I am one of the sick and fired and I need a much better saddle for this trip. My poncho was left out in the sun for too long and I think it’s starting to rain again. Not a damn thing you can do about it. Not anything at all. You can’t hop on a train and get off at Utopia Station. It just doesn’t exist. The God that I believe in knows that I have tried it all. Searching all the while for this abstract ideal that I fabricated for myself because I never could take your word for it. I built all of this up on my own after compiling years of coded and secret and illegible notations I left for myself on countless scraps of paper and in forgotten margins of paperback novels. I have documented every single basement room that I have ever slept in and have the notes to prove it. This is my own secret aspirin. This is my own private truth. It is more comfortable with mathematics, alcoholism, kissing, and comfortable shoes. It is equally uneasy with propositions of marriage and lawn furniture and babies.
I always think it will work out just fine. I expect that the results will always be perfect. Fuck off. She is always leaving, or she will be leaving soon, or she has already left. Replaying this departure in slow motion, frame by frame in my head, I try sometimes to imagine this scene of ours in reverse. I rewind and return to start over. There are these particular moments, where I am squinting almost, that I am able to envision her moving in closer towards me instead of away. She returns again, for that one instant, to the place where I think I was standing in time. And in every instance the results continue to remain unchanged.
Happiness is just a silly myth and I have grown bored of playing with the thought of it. I’m going to be constantly drunk and consistently stoned that I’ll be sober. I’ll be there in the spring. I will grow my hair out long again and discard all hats. Or maybe I should cut away my hair with no agenda other than flailing arms and sharp scissors and refuse to use a comb. I will look different than when I left.
Part Four: Decisions, Decisions
But goddamit. I just want it all to be the way it was before. Even if I was miserable half the time. It’s better
than being miserable all of the time. I think that I could have made good if I hadn’t blown my cover so quickly. No one has to know me somewhere. I am almost ready for a small town start-over. A small place is the best to be. I’ve got a pile of laundry quarters in one hand and a pile of porno tokens in the other. Which one do you want? You can’t have both. Which one will it be? Or would you rather have me instead?
I will stand on a freeway with my eyes to the sky if you want. I’ll trade pomes for peppers and red beans and rice and make you a Mexican stew. I’ll abandon all hope of recovery from this one and accept whatever comes, hanging by my thumbs. I’ll fight for you to the death. I’ll paint you paintings and leave you notes and conquer Philistines and submit to common laws. I’ll buy you tinsel and kite string and construction paper and we’ll make paper lanterns when it rains. And we can dance to Etta James and John Coltrane when we make love. We will drink fine bourbons and ride own damn show ponies and sell out crowds of one hundred and eight. We will dine on bagels with cream cheese and macaroni. We will laugh until our bellies hurt and we’ll struggle when we are apart.
I’ll be sick. I promise.
I’ll give you whatever I’ve got and we’ll negotiate for more. And hey, you aren’t getting a bargain here. You’ll have plenty of trouble whipping me into shape. You may have to learn things just so you can teach them to me and then I’ll claim them as my own and condescend to you because I am better at Jeopardy. I am in trouble with a capital “T” and that stands for trivia, baby. Hooo! And that’s what sucks about the whole goddamn thing. And “suck” is quite a deterrent, believe you me.
Part Five: Make Me a Star, Baby
A retrospective is not a wake. Or is it all right to want a signed, limited edition of your work before you are even published? But we should start out there, shouldn’t we? And hey, motherfucker, who asked you? Why isn’t my face on the box of Wheaties and the cover of Rolling Stone in the same week? Why can’t I be the darling of the press? Why can’t I be a star?
And I don’t even want to be a star right now.
I just want to be in need of nothing as much as I am in need of something right now.
I like talking in code so don’t ask me to change the tires, change this twenty, change the topic, the channel, the alarm clock to read a quarter past five and change your mind.
Part Six: Expensive Glowing Women
But don’t think for a lousy minute that I don’t have a Plan B. [Or see?] I am the phoenix rising from the ashes always in times like this and here is where I come to life. [L’enfant perdu.] This is my one real and true super-human power. Adaptation and acceptance. I thrive in these places and places exactly like it, or far worse, where the strongest of men are drowned by familiar rivers and entire families are nearly swallowed whole by a cancer that will only leave them for dead.
My face is just glowing lately. I experiment with my facial hair. [Mustache or no?] I look at the women who look at me and I can smell their fears as they float past me on clouds of cigarettes and perfumed lips. I could snatch them up in my left hand if I wanted to. Provided I had the inclination to do so in the first place. But I have grown weary of seducing and dodging seduction while Anais Nin is eventually found lurking off to the side and peeking in my window. [My name isn’t even Henry.] This whole thing is tiresome and my taste is far too fucking expensive. You can’t afford a guy like me, baby. Don’t even try it. I am the Ginger Man. Catch me if you can.
Part Seven: Molding Clay
It’s easy to be the wisest of fools and say exactly what others want desperately to hear from you. I am that wisest of fools and I will tickle those cute little ears of yours until kingdom come or God has a bad day. And when the laughter and the tears have passed me by, you will be the one left open. An outpouring of anger? Indeed. But please don’t act like it matters to you. I blame myself for it all. Really I do. If only to beat you to the punch because history shows that you always come out swinging.
It all comes back to this unattainable mold that I created for you in the first place. Do you still fit? Did you ever fit?
Part Eight: Truck Stop Love
I want a Heavenly Her. Not a Lucky Charms marshmallow trinket. I want to live in the place that feels like the perfect pint of Guinness. Enduring this thirst with parched patience, enough to leave the fucking thing alone, until it eventually settles and gently rests before you. Because of you. It does what comes naturally. As if it were designed to behave this way forever, almost, without pride or complaint. And this is where I want to be. Raise your hand if you want to come along. There are plenty of you out there. I am feeling up to anything that you can throw at me. I will hold your hand forever if you let me. I will hold your cup and we can dance on our tippy-toes, clumsily, with little regard for our downstairs neighbors. I will never stop feeling this way unless you ask me to. I will never stop feeling this way even if you ask me to.
And let God be called I liar if that’s not true.
I would even let you beat me in a game of chess every once in a while. That is how much I love you. I will stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign saying, “Will Work For Love.”
If I thought you’d be any better for it.
If I thought I couldn’t get any worse because of it.
Part Nine: Habits Galore
If only the mother of my children won’t pick a fine time to leave me with crops in the field. That bitch, Lucille. Where does she get off? And double entendre runs amok everywhere. And you look in the mirror and see wrinkles and graying temples and thinning hair and you brush your teeth and drink from the shower head and swallow and wash an older body and holy mother of God where does it all stop? How did I get here from there? And I will fall in love with a woman’s neck before I can even make it to her neighboring barstool. I watch your mouth every time I see you and imagine kissing you while I pretend to listen. I cannot help any of this. I am an endangered species. I am a Heterosexual renaissance man. I can even cook. And I am here on display. And I will give $100 and a blowjob to anyone that kills Oprah Winfrey, Rikki Lake, Judge Judy, Jenny Jones, Maury Povitch, [What, exactly, in God’s name was Connie Chung thinking?], Rosie O’Donnell, Susan Powter, or Caroline Rhea. Stop the insanity, my ass. Just somebody please stop this woman before she kills again.
Part Ten: Raging Bull
But more and more I feel like I’ll likely end up like poor old Dante. His Beatrice ended up dead and was gone forever before they ever really had a chance to make a real go of it. And I am really trying to hash this all out right now. And I am fighting it out with my heart on a daily basis. An hourly basis. And my brain never stands a chance in this desperate display but invariably tries to go the distance enduring these dizzying blows. I am left punch-drunk, freezing. I have been bruised, to be sure, in that sacred expanse between Right and Left. Yes and No. And yes.
And, yes, the women that secretly attempted to surround me had at least one old Kundera paperback just out of reach from their bed. Look for advice from God in the wood grain of my coffee table I found that old copy I carried in just reading his books for material and ammunition. Just to show off for that little sexy beat girl over there by proving just exactly how sensitive as hell I really am. “Care for an iced cappuccino?” “You like Kundera? I just adore Kundera?” But I really only do this thinking that if I can keep this little sham going for a week or so more I just might stand a chance at kissing the corner of her mouth. I just might be able to hold her hand and smell her hair when I kiss her goodbye. And that nervous butterflies feeling is where it’s all at for me. The entirety of my goal. Up in my chest and down in my belly is the thing I love best. And I will have a crush on you at the drop of a hat. And later, when we are alone and I let her read some of my silly pomes and dig on my art and my feelings on God and literature and all that business, I will move in for the kill. So there you have it. I let you in on my best part. Her cool company and me with eternally shy darting eyes laying it on thick. Real thick. “And I can only tell you this because you make me feel so comfortable.” “I really relate to you.” “Only you can understand the real me.”
Part Eleven: The Best One Yet
But here’s the deal. [And I’m not asking a lot here, mind you.] I am a simple high-cultured low brow. A dungarees and crew neck T-shirt taste. And my end of the deal is more than fair. A hug from behind as we sleep and hold hands. And I get to jump on you and wake you up at three o’clock in the morning when I can’t bring myself to sleep. And I get to kiss your belly and smell your stale morning breath and look you square in your tired puffy eyes and swear on God and man that you are mine.
[End.]
I don’t recommend any of the processional wives. I wouldn’t take a dollar from a dead, dying man. I’ve tried to last without exploding into a million star pieces but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I could never be quiet or delicate. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Couldn’t mistake one for the other. This for that. Could not exhaust all of my options. Couldn’t swear at the steeple. Couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Couldn’t speak to droves of people.
No, I don’t recommend the processional wives.
Part Two: Cancer in April
I wouldn’t bother with any of the children. It wouldn’t be fair and they are far too needy. Tomorrow has a bellyache that can’t be driven out.
And that bitch still sleeps on my couch.
Part Three: Silly Myths
You needn’t look at the husbands. They are far too macho with grief. They never knew what bit them and now they spend their time avoiding their dreams and settling for something less. I am a fellow who gives a good goddamn about what is right and true and lean. I will throw down for you in a fight. But there are other men I have met, so many of them, who linger in a constant denial. Pretending or forgetting that they are not eighteen any longer. Real refuge and solace cannot be purchased at retail. Passion, devoid of all thinking, cannot be bought with a discount membership. National Public Radio is slowly trying to kill you. But for a dollar or two I can have these men beaten. And I will insist on being paid in nothing but pennies, or all bets are off, because I have always liked Lincoln.
From here on in you are on your own. No one is going to accept a note from your mother. Fuck you. I’d like to have time for the sick and the poor but hey man, I am one of the sick and fired and I need a much better saddle for this trip. My poncho was left out in the sun for too long and I think it’s starting to rain again. Not a damn thing you can do about it. Not anything at all. You can’t hop on a train and get off at Utopia Station. It just doesn’t exist. The God that I believe in knows that I have tried it all. Searching all the while for this abstract ideal that I fabricated for myself because I never could take your word for it. I built all of this up on my own after compiling years of coded and secret and illegible notations I left for myself on countless scraps of paper and in forgotten margins of paperback novels. I have documented every single basement room that I have ever slept in and have the notes to prove it. This is my own secret aspirin. This is my own private truth. It is more comfortable with mathematics, alcoholism, kissing, and comfortable shoes. It is equally uneasy with propositions of marriage and lawn furniture and babies.
I always think it will work out just fine. I expect that the results will always be perfect. Fuck off. She is always leaving, or she will be leaving soon, or she has already left. Replaying this departure in slow motion, frame by frame in my head, I try sometimes to imagine this scene of ours in reverse. I rewind and return to start over. There are these particular moments, where I am squinting almost, that I am able to envision her moving in closer towards me instead of away. She returns again, for that one instant, to the place where I think I was standing in time. And in every instance the results continue to remain unchanged.
Happiness is just a silly myth and I have grown bored of playing with the thought of it. I’m going to be constantly drunk and consistently stoned that I’ll be sober. I’ll be there in the spring. I will grow my hair out long again and discard all hats. Or maybe I should cut away my hair with no agenda other than flailing arms and sharp scissors and refuse to use a comb. I will look different than when I left.
Part Four: Decisions, Decisions
But goddamit. I just want it all to be the way it was before. Even if I was miserable half the time. It’s better
than being miserable all of the time. I think that I could have made good if I hadn’t blown my cover so quickly. No one has to know me somewhere. I am almost ready for a small town start-over. A small place is the best to be. I’ve got a pile of laundry quarters in one hand and a pile of porno tokens in the other. Which one do you want? You can’t have both. Which one will it be? Or would you rather have me instead?
I will stand on a freeway with my eyes to the sky if you want. I’ll trade pomes for peppers and red beans and rice and make you a Mexican stew. I’ll abandon all hope of recovery from this one and accept whatever comes, hanging by my thumbs. I’ll fight for you to the death. I’ll paint you paintings and leave you notes and conquer Philistines and submit to common laws. I’ll buy you tinsel and kite string and construction paper and we’ll make paper lanterns when it rains. And we can dance to Etta James and John Coltrane when we make love. We will drink fine bourbons and ride own damn show ponies and sell out crowds of one hundred and eight. We will dine on bagels with cream cheese and macaroni. We will laugh until our bellies hurt and we’ll struggle when we are apart.
I’ll be sick. I promise.
I’ll give you whatever I’ve got and we’ll negotiate for more. And hey, you aren’t getting a bargain here. You’ll have plenty of trouble whipping me into shape. You may have to learn things just so you can teach them to me and then I’ll claim them as my own and condescend to you because I am better at Jeopardy. I am in trouble with a capital “T” and that stands for trivia, baby. Hooo! And that’s what sucks about the whole goddamn thing. And “suck” is quite a deterrent, believe you me.
Part Five: Make Me a Star, Baby
A retrospective is not a wake. Or is it all right to want a signed, limited edition of your work before you are even published? But we should start out there, shouldn’t we? And hey, motherfucker, who asked you? Why isn’t my face on the box of Wheaties and the cover of Rolling Stone in the same week? Why can’t I be the darling of the press? Why can’t I be a star?
And I don’t even want to be a star right now.
I just want to be in need of nothing as much as I am in need of something right now.
I like talking in code so don’t ask me to change the tires, change this twenty, change the topic, the channel, the alarm clock to read a quarter past five and change your mind.
Part Six: Expensive Glowing Women
But don’t think for a lousy minute that I don’t have a Plan B. [Or see?] I am the phoenix rising from the ashes always in times like this and here is where I come to life. [L’enfant perdu.] This is my one real and true super-human power. Adaptation and acceptance. I thrive in these places and places exactly like it, or far worse, where the strongest of men are drowned by familiar rivers and entire families are nearly swallowed whole by a cancer that will only leave them for dead.
My face is just glowing lately. I experiment with my facial hair. [Mustache or no?] I look at the women who look at me and I can smell their fears as they float past me on clouds of cigarettes and perfumed lips. I could snatch them up in my left hand if I wanted to. Provided I had the inclination to do so in the first place. But I have grown weary of seducing and dodging seduction while Anais Nin is eventually found lurking off to the side and peeking in my window. [My name isn’t even Henry.] This whole thing is tiresome and my taste is far too fucking expensive. You can’t afford a guy like me, baby. Don’t even try it. I am the Ginger Man. Catch me if you can.
Part Seven: Molding Clay
It’s easy to be the wisest of fools and say exactly what others want desperately to hear from you. I am that wisest of fools and I will tickle those cute little ears of yours until kingdom come or God has a bad day. And when the laughter and the tears have passed me by, you will be the one left open. An outpouring of anger? Indeed. But please don’t act like it matters to you. I blame myself for it all. Really I do. If only to beat you to the punch because history shows that you always come out swinging.
It all comes back to this unattainable mold that I created for you in the first place. Do you still fit? Did you ever fit?
Part Eight: Truck Stop Love
I want a Heavenly Her. Not a Lucky Charms marshmallow trinket. I want to live in the place that feels like the perfect pint of Guinness. Enduring this thirst with parched patience, enough to leave the fucking thing alone, until it eventually settles and gently rests before you. Because of you. It does what comes naturally. As if it were designed to behave this way forever, almost, without pride or complaint. And this is where I want to be. Raise your hand if you want to come along. There are plenty of you out there. I am feeling up to anything that you can throw at me. I will hold your hand forever if you let me. I will hold your cup and we can dance on our tippy-toes, clumsily, with little regard for our downstairs neighbors. I will never stop feeling this way unless you ask me to. I will never stop feeling this way even if you ask me to.
And let God be called I liar if that’s not true.
I would even let you beat me in a game of chess every once in a while. That is how much I love you. I will stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign saying, “Will Work For Love.”
If I thought you’d be any better for it.
If I thought I couldn’t get any worse because of it.
Part Nine: Habits Galore
If only the mother of my children won’t pick a fine time to leave me with crops in the field. That bitch, Lucille. Where does she get off? And double entendre runs amok everywhere. And you look in the mirror and see wrinkles and graying temples and thinning hair and you brush your teeth and drink from the shower head and swallow and wash an older body and holy mother of God where does it all stop? How did I get here from there? And I will fall in love with a woman’s neck before I can even make it to her neighboring barstool. I watch your mouth every time I see you and imagine kissing you while I pretend to listen. I cannot help any of this. I am an endangered species. I am a Heterosexual renaissance man. I can even cook. And I am here on display. And I will give $100 and a blowjob to anyone that kills Oprah Winfrey, Rikki Lake, Judge Judy, Jenny Jones, Maury Povitch, [What, exactly, in God’s name was Connie Chung thinking?], Rosie O’Donnell, Susan Powter, or Caroline Rhea. Stop the insanity, my ass. Just somebody please stop this woman before she kills again.
Part Ten: Raging Bull
But more and more I feel like I’ll likely end up like poor old Dante. His Beatrice ended up dead and was gone forever before they ever really had a chance to make a real go of it. And I am really trying to hash this all out right now. And I am fighting it out with my heart on a daily basis. An hourly basis. And my brain never stands a chance in this desperate display but invariably tries to go the distance enduring these dizzying blows. I am left punch-drunk, freezing. I have been bruised, to be sure, in that sacred expanse between Right and Left. Yes and No. And yes.
And, yes, the women that secretly attempted to surround me had at least one old Kundera paperback just out of reach from their bed. Look for advice from God in the wood grain of my coffee table I found that old copy I carried in just reading his books for material and ammunition. Just to show off for that little sexy beat girl over there by proving just exactly how sensitive as hell I really am. “Care for an iced cappuccino?” “You like Kundera? I just adore Kundera?” But I really only do this thinking that if I can keep this little sham going for a week or so more I just might stand a chance at kissing the corner of her mouth. I just might be able to hold her hand and smell her hair when I kiss her goodbye. And that nervous butterflies feeling is where it’s all at for me. The entirety of my goal. Up in my chest and down in my belly is the thing I love best. And I will have a crush on you at the drop of a hat. And later, when we are alone and I let her read some of my silly pomes and dig on my art and my feelings on God and literature and all that business, I will move in for the kill. So there you have it. I let you in on my best part. Her cool company and me with eternally shy darting eyes laying it on thick. Real thick. “And I can only tell you this because you make me feel so comfortable.” “I really relate to you.” “Only you can understand the real me.”
Part Eleven: The Best One Yet
But here’s the deal. [And I’m not asking a lot here, mind you.] I am a simple high-cultured low brow. A dungarees and crew neck T-shirt taste. And my end of the deal is more than fair. A hug from behind as we sleep and hold hands. And I get to jump on you and wake you up at three o’clock in the morning when I can’t bring myself to sleep. And I get to kiss your belly and smell your stale morning breath and look you square in your tired puffy eyes and swear on God and man that you are mine.
[End.]