Dear David, by Dodie Bellamy


`Dear David` `Dodie Bellamy`
	August 22, 1993 Dear David, No one's more elusive than a fan. I never thought I'd be writing to you but this letter refused to form itself around any other you are its sticky core the tar baby the narrative bits glom onto your postcard is propped against my copystand... unsigned... no zip code... you gave your sleep tips: "How about like extreme doses of lactic acid, counting sheep, reciting the tetragrammaton backwards, making peace with reality, waving the crucifix, hurling all your china at the wall, yogic postures, imagining yourself dead in the 23rd century." Your first letter was so sweet, you wrote my words were like truffles white chocolate, raspberry. Six months later all I get is sleep tips? The postcard's a thesis, on the front a distraught woman stands beside the Transamerica Pyramid comparing the landmark to the picture she's holding real Egyptian pyramids, the caption reads SAN FRANCISCO ANOTHER ILLUSION SHATTERED on the left edge of the card you've pasted an inch-square photo of a mannequin in a scholar's robe Mina Harker is studied and dissected beneath David's cool abstracted gaze dream on Love you won't gain control that easily. I'm willing to chop off my nose to spite my face. Where did you ever come from? Your postmarks say Washington D.C., but that's no answer. When you were a boy did you squat in the backyard learning to crow ur ur urur did you play Statue... crisp scent of freshly mown grass neighborhood kids in shorts and T-shirts twirl with their arms outstretched, when the leader yells freeze you stumble to a halt and hold whatever position you "happen" to land in, then the leader pushes the button on your shoulder and you act out the statue your pose suggests the revelation of subjectivity as an accident, as an intersection of extrasubjective circumstance... bear, soldier, scholar I always managed to throw myself into graceful swanlike relief, "Mina you're cheating – you can't be a ballerina every time!" my characteristic distrust of spontaneity if I left things up to Dodie I'd be grubbing the lawn like a worm. How often does a guy get his favorite heroine to write him back – it's as likely as a sign from a merciful God... "If you can't handle me as a fan, fuck you and the space-ship you rode in on!!" Molested by a compliment. David, you don't answer Dodie's letters but you ask for more Mina my writing is a speculum you press your lens against, my cervix round and puffy as a pair of tightly pursed lips a bead of mucus exudes from the center glue for wayward sperm Dodie snaps her knees together GET HIM OUT OF HERE! She stands between us like a Victorian chaperone – though you're pretty prim yourself: in your "decadent" novel men and women hurl their bodies together and then the quick dissolve. There is a bathroom to the left of my desk – whenever I'm dazed I stare at the Argento poster pinned above the porcelain tank, amid a crimson rectangle floats the horizontal profile of a woman, her visible eye is closed, her striated rosy lips relaxed sleeping beauty her nose points upward to white serif type TWO EVIL EYES the back of her head dissolves into an almond-shaped pair as large as my fists vertical black slits in a yellow field edged with bursts of vermilion – cat eyes – bowed skeletal fingers clamp on the gold chain of a pocket watch, the time is 11:30 – white helvetica bold on either side "WHEN I WAKE YOU... YOU'LL BE DEAD." I liked the image better before I saw the movie, before I found out what it "meant" if you die when under hypnosis you can't enter the land of the dead – the Others will possess your body – you'll end up a zombie that wails "WAKE ME!" The cat eyes are another story. To the right of the toilet a drainpipe is painted the same red as the poster, an artery in the belly of the beast like something out of a dream, a pipe dream – is that blood being pumped out of the wall and into the floor? Or vice versa? Is my bathroom a mortuary? And if I swallow anything evil put your finger down my throat. So what if you're out of reach, 3,000 miles away, I'm not a materialist – I see a man with dark hair designer glasses hunter green socks, a fortyish writer with a wife and child, a sketchy youth spanning South America and Europe, a businessman who grows wealthy framing art fragments dense with narrative possibility you eat cookies chocolate Tandoori drink Darjeeling jog suggestively displayed but not definitely arranged you think me the daughter of Genet Burroughs Almodóvar – well think again. Look outside my bedroom window you'll see my three faces spray-painted across red brick – the left Mina's yellow happy face is sandwiched between a mint green WORLD CAUSE her black dot eyes and crescent mouth are bleeding she has a cute red button nose I've never disputed the existence of objective reality the middle Mina is more literal, humanoid eyes nose lips arched yellow brows, two gold medallions – TITS – beam south of her throat – the Mina to her right is a Picasso baboon, swollen red eyes crooked wrought-iron lashes black slashes for tears frenetic curlicue nose, her face funnels down to four little humps: teeth or truncated fingers beneath her chin wriggling Hi, David. After six years of marriage I still wake to a love note stuck on the TV screen: three-by-five yellow Post-It: Sorry about last night. Don't ever leave me. p.s. Don't forget to tape the show – it's Inner Sanctum with Tanya Roberts – on Cinemax. That evening we press the Play button and enter another marriage cheating husband, crippled wife she dreams her lips have melted together and fused a taut wall of putty from her wheelchair she watches her husband fuck Nurse Tanya BAM squeak BAM squeak Tanya's garter belt is antiseptic white to match the mini-skirted uniform crumpled on the floor BAM squeak with each giddy thrust the wife's putty maw roughens and blisters hot studio lights metamorphosizing her non-orifice beyond the coordinates of character or plot BAM squeak her eyes bulge with tears her flat bubbly face grunts as the camera pans over her breasts beneath her gown they wriggle pale and urgent as hungry piglets there's nothing wrong with her legs beyond some muddled hysterical fear. Last week's movies were just as miserable – Freud and The Tingler back to back I could hardly tell them apart if something scares the shit out of you, sign up for therapy or scream because if you don't release it a hysterical symptom/multi-limbed monster will arise out of the base of your spine and crush you hysteria is more common than tinglers because memories are easier to repress than screams – when mad scientist Vincent Price tries to frighten himself to death with LSD the tingler zaps up his spine his eyes bug his hands clench the edge of a table I mustn't scream I mustn't scream it will ruin my experiment then he shrieks bloody murder and the tingler shrinks back to microscopic potential – Price's only recourse is the deaf-mute silent-movie-theater owner who already faints at the sight of blood the coupling of remembrance and reciprocal persecutions and tonight James Woods shoved a videotape into the VCR-cunt in his abdomen talk about a visceral response DAVID do I ever give you one? Fingers paralyzed above the keyboard terrible knowledge shocks your buttocks TZSSSSSSSZZZZZ you should have known that desk chair was electrified. Noisy demons crouch beneath pink matter yelping SHIT FUCK PISS FUCK SHIT SHIT FUCK PISS SHIT FUCK there's an ear inside me armed with a knife it won't stop listening. These are my symptoms, what are yours? Tarzan yodels from the Brazilian pizza place probably the Samoan boys playing pinball cats sleep at the foot of the bed a pair of overlapping fur circles jungle geometry when KK opens the door he's made up his mind, "Mina is heartless I don't want her in our bed" DAVID CAN YOU IMAGINE THE... Dodie's face goes blank but that doesn't stop him – no – he continues: any love or kindness is Dodie seeping in MINA TAKES FOR HER OWN PLEASURE SHE HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING NICE FOR ANYBODY! Dodie's vocal chords remain suspiciously limp so I take possession, muse, "What about sex – Mina gives a lot through sex." "Besides sex." I purse Dodie's lips, roll her eyeballs to the ceiling to give the impression of thinking: "Mina tells funny stories to entertain people." "Even a heartless person can tell funny stories." Dodie's hands flatten against his chest, her lips collapsing to grimace, "Mina's stories aren't heartless, they're warm and human in the tradition of Thurber." KK, that sly dog, latches onto Thurber, turns the conversation around to rabbits and then Jack Spicer. I untie Dodie's bathrobe spread her legs glide my hand across her snatch moist putty... I am the puppeteer I squeeze her labia open and closed like a mouth, "Mina says hello." Then I pull him down, circle her legs around his waist, rhythmically clench and rub her sex against him like a child humping the arm of a couch. My vocabulary did this to me. A presence arrives erratically in the mail its name is David it sends me its novel a long-haired American seeks God and fortune among drug-dealing Eurotrash whenever he walks into their rooms women in knock-you-dead shoes fondle his rod, ravenously fuck him anyplace they can lean their tushes against as long as you're up Menschkin it's a pity to waste it incredible shoes: red with short blue heels studded with scores of tiny rhinestones, black cardboard bows glued to sides – white polka-dotted purple open-toes – stack-heeled paisley, straps twining in helixes up her thighs – white cowboy boots – sequined scarlet vamps with silver buckles yellow bows and sharp heels wrapped in foil – red alligator boots – razor-heeled snakeskin, midnight blue bows straps painted in zebra stripes "I picked one up and held it in my hand like a tiny animal" what other kinks lie beneath his 100% USDA butch surface a box full of snapshots that reek of Deborah Harry and absence David I suspect I'm too stodgy for you – I type this with ratty terrycloth on my feet, colorless from dust and wear a humdrum Scheherazade how can I entice you to come night after night... what if I invent a new persona – Lilith she strips off her outer gear, throws open her chemise and shows her person and all the rondure of her hips – a construction so tantalizing even gay men have wet dreams about her Lilith will be anything you want the dimples on her ass are deep enough to cup the head of your dong tell me what really turns you on and I'll turn you and she'll turn you, believe me you'll turn. "As far as your skin collapsing and having your entrails pour out like sludge, I'd say it's a twenty-to-one longshot." I smear my dejecta on paper, a messy ambiguous space where pathology meets pleasure – let me smear Lilith, her Balinese hair ornaments her strutting vocabulary – I peeked inside her closet once, it was divided as Clark Kent's corporate drag colliding with skimpy nocturnals I've seen her purse her lips like red bouquets toss off sexual predilections with the ease of naming her favorite flowers cockscomb, virgin's bower, night-blooming cereus, vanilla, winter cherry. Tuesday at the Thai cafe she ogles the toys from Sunday's S & M party, "I didn't know what half of them were for – but did I find out!" Languidly she points to her lace stockings and announces, "I think I'm turning into a lace queen." Her lips sear with chili peppers and innuendo, "Though I plan to get more butch as I grow older." Ladling out seconds of lemon grass soup she muses, "After all, you can't be a cream puff forever!" Demure sip of water from a plastic glass – she peers over the rim with bedroom eyes – then sets it down and tilts her chin at a jaunty angle, "No, you can't be a cream puff forever!" You write me a poem, you want to perform magic, you turn to Mina's primal simultaneity. "I had to gain some kind of access just because of all the faulty rhymes the chinks in consciousness letting up for just a moment he fell through into some twisted little pigeonhole. It's two a.m. and I'm wearing pale blue underwear as I write this." David isn't it spooky down there in that pigeonhole? I bet you never twist that little pigeonhole with the lights off, I haven't met a man yet who enjoys doing it in the dark "but I want to see what you look like" PSHAW what you really want – all of you – is a visual anchor to tug you back from those godawful spasms, those cataclysmic lacunae you pretend your cock is a lighthouse, cry out not for pleasure but for rescue – chicken shits my life's work is clinging to borders, like the sweat that beads the kitchen window on icy winter mornings through the misty glass the twin golden domes of St. Joseph's church gleam in the first rays of sunrise standing before this vision barefooted in a ripped flannel robe I grind coffee and think of my color photography class back in Chicago if we don't clear the tubes between agitations, the instructor warns us, the whole contraption will blow up... not even a crack under the door to ground me among the living... the darkroom is a sweltering closet with sinks full of water I'm supposed to hold at an exact temperature somewhere above 100ş but the thermometer always wavers and my slides end up mottled with weird FX... in this absolute blackness the same tubing is used for both the hydrogen and the oxygen – my wet trembling hands grope for tanks and dials. Dennis and I emerge from the parking garage, walk to INTERNATIONAL ARRIVALS, wait in the airless fluorescence for Earl's flight from Amsterdam. A short woman in a shawl descends the gently-sloping ramp, her roundness and advanced age announcing a cozy Old Worldness... slowly she places – one – foot – directly – in – front – of – the – other, still she falters and grabs the rail. An eager triad man woman girl watch on, their faces rapt with her progress they reach out their arms spread their fingers suction cups pulling her closer "MOMMA!" When she finally steps off the ramp they run over the yellow line of NO ENTRY clamp onto her cabbage-scented body squirming and groaning – we stand beside this gyrating clump of three generations lips pucker shoulders are squeezed waists encircled cheeks rubbed their weeping escalates to wails, salty tears streaming down their faces MOMMA! MOMMA! Dennis is caught up in them too, he blurts out, "Can you imagine feeling that much?" I think of the night Quincey left me the door slammed and I ceased to be a woman or any abstraction for that matter I was a body that ate and shit and sniveled and resonated with pain basso profundo KK held me in his arms to keep me from vibrating off the edge of the bed – I think of those four or five days each month when the decision to keep Dodie alive is gruelingly weighed the Mina Harker slouched before this terminal is no accident Earl rushes towards us, hickeys blotching his neck, rope burns on wrists he checked out every sex club on Dennis' map black leather bag bouncing against his thigh he spent his vacation in a coffin. "Great," he exclaims, "It was great!" Lacking contact with flesh, pearls in bank vaults grow brittle and dull... Erica Jong could make a poem out of this. Lilith makes a living. "My glands are miraculous," she's been known to say, "I'm the best pearl reviver in town." When the tellers have all gone home to their lackluster lives Lilith arrives at the vault and strips, then a guard enters and drapes her flawless physique with string after string of pearls cold jolt of beads against her sternum she gasps but soon her bustling biochemistry warms them to weightless nursemaid to mineral deposits fat white orbs float about her neck soaking up oil and perspiration paid to be nude and to exude – finally a job that doesn't conflict with her principles Lilith grows drowsy, lets her eyes slip shut as the pearls' sheen swells translucent in the thin green air. Your first letter was an entry, an infection: "I close my eyes and cross my hands, touch the keyboard, reach for you across electricity, some kind of villain braille, some kind of synapse created for just this moment" that night I started making love with men I'd never seen... I've had these dreams for months now, precise masculine features that refuse to gel into memory their touch is always tender sacred is the love between character and fan one of the men was an artist and one as I held him turned into a baby David I never asked for this, never asked to be picked up by your smooth successful hands the groomed half-moons of your nails pinch my laser prints can you feel my phantom pain? I'm trapped inside a prison sentence who said words can't hurt you the ascenders and descenders are the bars of my cage, unknowable eyes keep peering through strangers with hats in their laps they expect me to entertain them – glistening with saliva I stretch and flex my text, my syntax sliding across the sentence like a pin-up girl across striated satin the naked truth mane of golden locks thrown back, reversed C of silken shoulder arched spine and buttock narrative twists limbs leaping like a Deco faun, leg thrown back arm thrown forward, Marilyn Monroe is in the throes her body a diagonal gash on the wavy draped backdrop she knows it's a frame-up her hand juts into the top righthand corner, splayed fingers poke and scratch if only she were strong enough to pull herself up and out of the page. And this with eyebrows all his passion writeth; And that with eyeballs all his passion readeth. I wanted to have the sex that KK writes about in his books I crawl into a strange bed in a strange room – the comforter is light as air, the bed is on wheels – whenever either of us shifts we roll across the hardwood floor a collision course to romance KK sticks his tongue in my mouth and I wonder if this constant shifting of ground had anything to do with his prose style I open my eyes to the wall above the closet door it angles upward like a German Expressionist cityscape or a funhouse room I moan my perpendiculars are shattered KK yanks me back to reality points out we're in an attic room – with a slanted ceiling I hate it when passion crashes into architecture then I start to get into it, pretend I'm in a rocket, muscular expenditure hurling me through the galaxy creak creak Jupiter here I COME, the only word I know is oh ohhh ohhhhhh ohhhhhhhhhhhh ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Lutz leaves a message on my phone machine meet me at the Best Western, 9th and Harrison – Saturday between two and four. When Sing and I arrive, Lutz in gold sunglasses is stretched out on a plastic chaise lounge beside a swimming pool littered with algae and leaves. Her husband is across the parking lot in a station wagon and Sing jokes that's a good place for a husband. Lutz smirks and points to a row of identical turquoise doors, "Go on up to room 202 it's open." We climb the concrete stairs, enter a coordinated cube of beige salmon teal, pastel cityscape above bed of blond veneer a space where the most elementary distinctions are constituted but also threaten to break down a muffled voice from the bathroom draws us in eerie flicker across white and blue tiled walls we pass the shower and face the toilet: seated upon it is a video monitor and inside the tube is a person, a looped tape of William Kennedy Smith on the witness stand: "I uh did have my penis" grimace "I uh did have my penis" grimace "I uh did have my penis" grimace "I uh did have my penis" grimace "I uh..." Professor Brian O'Blivion all over again the scent of lysol overlays his well-scrubbed charm... I think of operating rooms, of rubber-gloved specialists inserting video cameras up women's vaginas blobby pink hot spot – not rape but technical difficulties, lubricate the nozzle a few months later Leslie and Cecilia will fill this same space with flowers stick a label on the phone Beverly Hilton and film "Joe Orton" partying with "Peggy" (his agent, played by KK) when a fuse blows they hide the lights and camera before they find the motel manager we were blow-drying our hair while watching TV... yesterday they used me as an extra "Joe" wins the Viewers' Choice Award in hippie gown and stained-glass earrings I sat beside Rendezvous in the Art Institute auditorium (the site of my first date with Quincey remember we ate popcorn in folding chairs while the screen was orgy orgy orgy) this time I do whatever Cecilia directs me to do – for three hours smile applaud hoot first in color then in pixel vision instamatic flashes bubble like champagne the year is 1967 I'm still the audience but like you David finally inside. In ankle-strapped pumps of plum velvet Lilith handles filth manipulates waste buries placentas and burns the cauls of newborn babies for good luck she makes partial objects useful, puts them back into circulation, "I'm working toward a world where kitsch can masturbate itself." It's futile to try to rush to work... the ten-foot-wide sidewalk is packed with ambling bodies shoulder-to-shoulder "running late" what a joke I feel like a rebel corpuscle in a sluggish bloodstream I bump into a woman holding a cardboard sign Cancer colostomy patient PLEASE HELP specificity makes her dense, the Venus of Willendorf in a ski cap the light's turned green I try to evaporate her with a broader category homeless but she doesn't waver, looms on the curb before me wretchedly intestinal shoving her magic-markered plea in my face Cancer I unzip my coin purse and shake out all my change "Godblessyou" I can't remember if I dropped it into a cup or a palm so hypnotic was her voice, extremely low, without any inflection "Godblessyou" like a dictaphone at the slowest speed "Godblessyou" this repeated reference to the deity at the expense of all other conversation made me wonder if she wasn't really the dupe of some religious cult, dropped off on this corner out of a smokey-windowed van to gather funds for its campaign to zombie-ize the woebegone an entire fantastic world, made of bits and pieces, opens up beyond the limit, as soon as the line is crossed her cardboard sign gave a narrative to one of these incomprehensible bodies that line the streets with their arms outstretched, when you ignore them they yell after you have a nice day my quarters and dimes were buying a story: hospitalized heroine bravely beats every odd in God Bless You (ABC) an Emmy-winning role for Mare Winningham the line between them and us way too crossable a block later I saw a man eating a chewy substance disheveled in wheelchair, can for spare change in lap as I hurried past him I noticed a glob of white in his pink and brown "food" then FLASH I knew it was a lunchcake, the kind I hated as a child – Snowballs – rubbery marshmallow and coconut skin capillary pink stretched across a half dome of creme-filled chocolate a dessert that looks like rotting meat or ski tragedy then I went to work and on my way home I saw two men crossing the street at right angles to one another, their cheeks lips eyebrows were swollen and spackled with liver-colored welts and crusty scabs but each seemed nonchalant ears walk armed with a knife bird-headed bellies open recently KK was on Howard Street when a man emerged from the shadows with an arrow sticking out the side of his head, he staggered then collapsed at KK's feet – apparently dead – a group of people gathered round and a woman began to scream KK said it was like being in a movie the next day's paper reported that it wasn't an arrow but a child's toy which he thrust into his brain with a tremendous force – just last week, the article continued, another man hung himself from a street sign at 10th and Harrison his last willful act producing the desired visual result: body, metal, halogen and the ensuing chemical narration.
`(continue)`

lingo 6

Books in print by Dodie Bellamy