Cheap Trick will be translating this evening: I need you to need me. This is the dead end of all of my devotion. It’s not altruism, it’s not servitude, it’s an obsessive compulsive disorder dictating if I’m not the first one she calls, I am a ladybug’s high heel.

And when she calls, oh…I am the mortar between the bricks. I am the important intercessor. When it’s my turn to take the floor, I pass. I don’t forfeit myself. It’s catharsis without vulnerability. What of the demonic dobermans running around inside, baring their teeth, tearing into one another? If I keep them inside the Century Fence, they can’t do any damage to anyone but themselves.

Tonight, I open the gate, just slightly: “What do you want know?”

She slams it shut: “It’s all right. I know you’re private.”

You may think you’re Mystique – my favorite villainess in the X-Men comics – shape-shifting into anything. But she pulled off blue skin, red hair and a white dress without looking patriotic (not to mention the audacity of her accessories – yellow skull belt?). You are just a back-on-your-word bitch. Don’t think for a nanosecond that we’re a dynamic duo of “don’t give a damn.” I am a frustrated counselor and you’re a frustrated collector. You want people’s dirty secrets in your top drawer so you can pull them out and prove them wrong. I want people’s dirty secrets so they won’t feel dirty anymore.

* * *

You are being seduced by suicide, his arm around you, whispering in your ear. You admit all that’s holding you back is hellfear. But, like I told us, “it’s going to get good again.” I meant it. And later, listening to you laugh, remembering what it sounds like. And still later, looking at you under layers of afghans, just about to request a first hug as I nearly tackle you. There’s an other side, and we’ll get there.

* * *

It doesn’t matter to me if artificial insemination is grafitti on God’s train. it really doesn’t. I want to be a father, and I want you to be a mother, and if we did it with someone else, we’d just call each other with observations and questions, so we might as well save the phone bills and be married. Obviously, we each have our own semi-truck trailer of sexual issues, but you see double-trailer trucks on interstates all the time, right? Don’t say yes or no, just remember the time in my dad’s library with the door closed (you a Freshman, I a Junior, both of us with acne) when you asked, “Ben, what are we?

He has planted me in a just-right-sized pot and placed me in a spot half shade half sunlight.  He sings “mon’enfant”  while persuading my leaves to the side, revealing withered vines which He quietly clears.  I have to look away when He does this.  I know they’re dead, they don’t need to stay, but they still hurt, and I feel skeletal without them, a movie star without makeup.  He throws them away.  And so it continues, with occasional breaks for water.

This is our relationship.  I don’t know how it could be any other way.  Even in this disassembling there can be such stillness – when I’m driving north on I-43 listening to My Bloody Valentine and the world becomes a hummingbird to be watched and appreciated.  Or watching “Murder She Wrote”, my grandparents in their leather loveseat, I on the floor, occasionally lapsing into a nap, understanding for once that my very presence is their pleasure.  It is not euphoria or apathy or even exhaustion, it is perspective.  He was, is and will be.  The only thought worth thinking.

We had been cruising in a work of art on wheels, the vintage Mercedes-Benz convertible, which father nervously waves off as “my father-in-law’s car” (they bought it with money he left them) to deflect the damning stares of church friends. We were paused at a stop light in Lake Geneva, the crosswalks bordered by local losers and out-of-towners. One such woman, from her curb of enlightenment (aka envy) cracked semi-drunkenly, “it’s going to rain tonight,” and her partner-in-criticism chuckled. I was only deciding which one:

A) “Who told you that? A bottle of Jack Daniels?”
B) “Then where’s your umbrella, saddlebags?”
C) “Here’s hoping it’s men, not cats and dogs – but I guess either way, you’ll have someone to take home.”

Then I remembered that anti-drug commercial and I ignored them. And anyway, at this point in the evening nothing could break our stride – pushing 80 on country roads, playing the original X-Men arcade game for forty-five minutes, talking real estate; we were unstoppable. My father is still magical – adulthood, parenthood, these are states he has stepped in and out of like a shower after swimming. We drove home, and the radio and I sang “Rocket Man”, interrupted by the occasional nanosecond nap.

Us Bank sends an envelope with a view. I see:

Ben Parman
1713 North Marshall Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202-1518

Ben Parman? In Milwawwwkeee? Working at a dating service, wearing North Face zipper-off khakis and various bland long-sleeved collared shirts? What about New York? What about love? What about us?

Stuff it like a turkey. There is nothing better than now. There is the savior’s love, and Billy Collins’ poetry, and http://www.classictvads.com, and Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”, and my parents’ thoughtless sacrifices. These blessings are flight attendants, bending down with perfumed bosoms. I have been taking their pretzels and water without looking up. This morning my face turns, squeaks open with a slow smile, and I receive with the beginning of gratitude.

I am starting to learn how to temporarily forget myself, like wet clothes at the bottom of the washer. Of course occasionally something reminds me and I run screaming to them, cradling their limp drippage into the dryer with mother hen concern. But I do forget for a moment here and there. They are moments worth framing.

Suicide is no longer my next career move. Now it’s telemarketing.

I realize this is only a minor improvement, but I’ll take twinkies over starvation. Perhaps. It would depend on the severity of the hunger (if there were grizzly-like growls) and the intensity of the hallucinations (if there were sheep in bikinis).

Anyway, I go in every day with a black nylon briefcase from my father’s basement, the plastic clips practically chewed off by our last dog, a terrier who liked swimming in my grandparents’ pool. The morning after the night he was hit by a car, my mother carried him into the front yard like he was a premature newborn. It was one of those few moments where the grief was so deep it had to be rooted, so I lowered myself unto the ground. Not prostrate, but everything bent and pulled inward. I spent the last few months of my life in New York in that position. Now I get so angry I can’t form anything in my mind but four-letter words, I get so apathetic that I have to prep myself whenever it’s time to piss, or eat lunch, or brush my teeth. I must be the next Manchurian candidate. I keep imagining myself as a skull wearing a wig and makeup. Or maybe one of those whitewashed tombs God talks about. I wonder when sorrow becomes a security blanket. I’m past that, it’s life support at this point.

The first thing that bastard in the basement (or Satan, whichever you prefer) takes is our perspective. Suddenly we think we’d gladly accept anyone’s struggles but our own, without understanding that we’ve been allowed them because they’re just within eyesight of what we can’t bear, so that we shrink back and bump into God.

I watch Mia Farrow watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  Mia is a commoner standing among many in the pit; instead of Shakespeare, it is the American musical, no less universal or eternal.

The ninety-some minutes of her life we’ve seen up until this point have been alzheimer’s, one minute there’s hope, then hell.  She’s sitting with a child’s sad slump right now, as the camera zooms in on her face, aflicker with cinematic firelight.  A secret glee starts in her eyes, as if an unseen lover is gently stroking the back of her neck.

She is just understanding for the first time that film and reality cannot date, they cannot even have coffee, because they are in two separate states of being.  Cinema does not change where you will sleep tonight, but it does change what you will dream about.  No matter how unrecognizable her life may become, she will always be a ticket away to someone else’s.

I ran the pen back and forth, tearing into the paper like it was Stalin instead of tree muscle. I was looking at a book on the top shelf of my closet called You Don’t Have To Be Gay. it has an infomercial-like confidence; by its conclusion you’re convinced it can slice, dice and de-fag any fruit you can find. But it doesn’t have an afterword explaining why I have nightmares about marrying girls I sat next to in junior high band or why I think unmarried middle-aged women are more beautiful than shooting stars. It all makes me wish my mother had done it sooner – one day when my dad arrived home from a business trip she had all of her bags packed, ready to leave unless he promised to stop traveling so much. But I was already promoting androgynous dress-up in preschool and parroting Shari Lewis records at home. Maybe if she’d got him a few months earlier I would have learned to like pick-up trucks or sitting with my legs spread. But you can’t push the car back through the assembly line. So why do I want to slip out for a smoke break and never come back? I am so sad, so separated, I could sing “Only The Lonely” by The Motels and make the wallpaper flowers wilt.

I can’t seem to get anything to go. It sputters and spits and sighs, but in the end it hasn’t moved an inch. If I could sneak up on myself and scream, I would. There are so many lives inside, just not enough roads leading out. If I was in prison I’d have an excuse. I’d make dreams out of cinder block and boredom. And then at last I’d walk out into the sunny, or rainy, or partly cloudy, or overcast, or humid, or frigid, or perfect, day, and I’d listen to the grass give beneath my feet like it was Beethoven. And I’d eat dairy products and buy Eddie Murphy’s pop album and make friends with the mailman because I would understand it was all being lent to me, graciously, miraculously. I don’t think there are watchers and doers, I think there are sayers and doers. I know what category I’m in, but I don’t want to stay there.

“The sun is still in the sky and shining above you,” the ABBA ladies sing, and I believe them, because Toby installed a china ball in the living room cieling. It casts an even warmth over the whole room; it’s almost like being in a microwave.

ABBA has always kept my feet from touching the earth. I dance, not sexy like Madonna, or skillful like Fred Astaire, or even stupid like Michael Douglas. I dance like Molly Ringwald, kicking and flailing and bobbing at the same time, dangerous, joyful. For the bliss I’ve found in brokenness. Have things gotten better, or have I just realized they were fine all along?

I’m sorry, I’m dancing, I can’t answer.

“New York doesn’t need anyone,” I said, a pro-lifer holding a fetus poster in front of an abortion clinic – unnecessary, over-emotional.

He didn’t agree or disagree, he told me he was working on a film with David Bowie.

“If you get hit hard enough, long enough, you go numb.  It isn’t until it stops that you feel the whole-body heartbeat of pain.  It wasn’t until I got away from there that I realized it was killling me.”  I said, and sighed one of those below-sea-level-sighs.

There was at least five seconds of dead air.  She was flabbergasted; it reminded me of my mother’s reaction when I told her Lily Tomlin was a lesbian.

“New York?  It’s like being a drum major of a marching band, 24/7 – the music’s getting loud, my arm’s sore from holding the baton and I’m starting to wonder why I’m wearing a Q-tip on my head.”  I said, sad, but smiling about it.

He nodded with aware ignorance and said he’s always heard it’s a different universe.

The first time we sang “New York’s not my home” (Jim Croce and I, he on vinyl and I on vodka) I was singing about Orlando.  I was done with French Onion Dip and a Play Misty For Me admirer and Paradise Island and Uninformed Film Instructors and…I was done.

Now I’m sober and we’re singing about the same place.  Dammit, it’s happening again.  I’m swelling under the skin of my city.  I have to leave it behind and move on.  New York was supposed to stick, it was supposed to be the super glue city, but it’s just a post-it like every other place.  But He knew I had to exorcise my ambition, so He let me be Macbeth for awhile – just long enough for me to realize how worthless it all is.

Because it is all worthless, except for when I’m in the church sanctuary, in my ripped jeans and white undershirt, my arms reaching upward like trees, and the sun humbling itself to meet them.