Face (5)

This Faulty Machine

how the body fights itself
my central blood pump
working furiously
sending oxygen to my muscles
preparing them for flight
when there is
no
danger
desperate, itself, to escape the cage of my ribs

my lungs are slow and sedate
hoping by their calm to quell
or at least conceal
my frantic struggle

a lesser machine would break down
a computer crash
a transmission grind
a cog bend or crumble
a pipe burst
when given these contradictory instructions
the body survives for years
decades
although never forever

how the body betrays itself
the private firing of neurons
written
in blood
on my cheeks
the tips of my ears
my neck
as a ballet across my face
a million tiny contractions forming
a shy smile or
a puzzled frown
before I can remind myself not to react

and even if I keep perfectly still
that over-zealous pump betrays itself
as a slight tremor of the gelatinous mammary tissue
strapped high on my chest
in the bindings of my elaborate costume

even my disguise reveals me

cellophane skin
ribs stretched wide
every function laid bare
the ocular organs
which should instruct
reflect
rather than reveal
they are the greatest traitors of all

this exposure penetrates deeper than nakedness.

Fried Chicken Nighmares.

I'm walking through the park but the path keeps changing and I can't find where I'm going. I get distracted by small mammals in the undergrowth. I think they are squirrels and then realize they are rats. They look up at me as they scurry by. They have human faces. They ask me for apple slices. I pull slice after slice of apple out of pockets I didn't know I had. Secret compartments. Extra-spatial dimensions. The rats thank me politely and patter off. I wipe the apple juice from my hands onto the thighs of my jeans, then raise them to my face for inspection. My hands smell like fried chicken. I find this deeply disturbing. When I move my hands away from my face I still smell chicken. The air smells like fried chicken, the flowers smell like fried chicken, my shirt smells like fried chicken.
I feel… gross.
I raise a hand to my forehead and wipe away a thick layer of gelatinous chicken grease. The smell gags me. My vision blurs. I nearly vomit. I start running to escape the smell and the grease and the nausea. I repeatedly roll my ankle on stones in the path, regaining my balance each time. But it hurts. Grease continues to flood out of me, puddling around my feet as I run. I slip and fall.
I keep falling. It's very dark.
When I am no longer experiencing the sensation of movement I open my eyes.
My entire world has rotated 90 degrees. I am conscious of this fact, but am, nonetheless, unable to orient myself. I am lying flat on my back, convinced I am standing up. My body is floating in a sea of stars.

Face (4)

Hell

I woke up in a white room. No, that's not right. I regained awareness. I was sitting up. I hadn't been asleep. I don't know where I had been.

I was sitting on a ledge. My feet didn't touch the floor, but I wasn't high up. I could hop down easily if I wanted to. For the moment I stayed put.

The room was incredibly white. Bright. Very clean. It was about the size of the kind of closet that would call itself a walk-in if it was vain and grandiose in thought. Closets don't usually think though. There were no doors or windows. There was no visible light source… despite the brightness.

What the fuck.

Directly across from me there was a rack hung with a random assortment of coats. Each hanger had a little numbered ticket on it. The room had no doors or windows. I must have crawled in through the… huh, no vent. Where did the coats come from?

I waited for an indeterminate amount of time.

Nothing changed.

I gradually became aware of an uncomfortable urge to urinate.

...

"Hello?"

...

I jumped down from my seated perch to further investigate my situation. There wasn't much to find. The room was smooth and featureless. White. Still no windows, no doors, no vents, no loose tiles or floorboards, no trapdoors, no secret passageways behind tapestries or paintings, no tapestries or paintings for secret passageways to hide behind.

No toilet.

Goddamn I had to pee.

At this point I knew it was futile, but at this point I had figured I may be trapped for a while so I kept searching. I didn't want to be swimming in a puddle of pee. So, anything. A sink, a bucket, a wad of paper towels, a wine glass, a helmet, napkins, a hole in the ground, a spade to dig a hole, a makeshift crowbar, a battering ram, a plastic bag, ANYTHING!

...

"Heeeyyy!!! Anyone there? I GOTTA PEE LET ME OUTTA HERE!!!!!"

Ugh, I felt like I was going to explode. I tried not to think about it. My bladder bursting and liquid waste spreading infection through my pelvic region. All that acidic yellow invading my bloodstream and going to my brain. Oh god.

"GODDAMMIT LET ME THE HELL OUTTA HERE, CAN'T ANYBODY HEAR ME?!?!?!?!?!"

...

Silence.

What the fuck?!

...

Coats. Coats are absorbent.

The thought was hardly formed in my brain before I vaulted myself at the coat rack, ripping coats off hangers and piling them on the floor. Once I had a reasonable pile in the corner of the room (slightly bowl-shaped, with the most absorbent materials on top, I'm no fool), I unzipped, pulled down, and squatted.

Oh thank god! Bliss beyond any measure. Golden relief shining down from heaven. Orgasmic in magnitude, magnificent in ecstasy! My life had been saved! Jesus himself swam before my eyes, blessing me, offering me absolution for my manifold sin of "holding it."

The glowing stream of divine love and forgiveness gradually abated. And there was silence.

Silence.

Then voices. Far off at first, but getting closer. "Just give me a second to find my ticket," "Yeah, I just want to get my jacket, can I get my jacket?" "It's the black wool peacoat with fancy buttons..."

I looked down.

There on top of the pile, soaked in the aftermath of my explosive jet of urine... Black, wool, peacoat. Fancy buttons.

Oh.

Shit.

Their faces started coming out of the walls. They were angry. They could smell my shame. I ran, my pants still around my ankles. There was nowhere to run, but somehow I kept going. The room must have been stretching. But they were always just behind me, snapping at my heels. Finally I tripped. It had to happen. It was a miracle I made it as far as I did, with nowhere to go, and hobbled by pee-pants. The faces came at me from the walls, screaming and snapping!

"NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!"

And I woke up.

I woke up in a white room. No, that's not right. I regained awareness. I was sitting up. I hadn't been asleep. I don't know where I had been...

The Things that Go Bump in the Night

My room is a tangle of wires and computers. Hard drives and flash drives and cables, hearts, brains, arteries, nerves. Things grow in the mess. Little bits of lint pull copper and silicon around themselves. They blink, whirr, and scurry, occasionally knocking over a stack of books or a pair of boots.

Chapter 21

She had a way of speaking with the openness of a child that sometimes made the people around her uncomfortable. Now she sat on the floor and sobbed. His blood pooled on the tiles and soaked into her dress. She had never been so alone.

Flash

The flash
The blink
And the image is burned into your eyes
Burned into your mind
Irretrievable
Non-erasable

Blast from the Past: Angel-face

Blast from the Past: Phallus in Pigtails

Blast from the Past: Worst Pies in London

Blast from the Past: Sketchy

Blast from the Past: Green Girl

Blast from the Past: Twisted

Blast from the Past: Face

Blast from the Past: The Acne Farm

Face (3)

truth will out

just relax
it'll be over soon
and I promise you won't feel a thing
I'll be there to catch you
if you fall too soon
you don't have to worry about anything

except the truth
don't let the truth
get
out
beware the truth
baby, the truth
will
out

let it go
let it enfold you
hold on to what you've been running from
there'll be someone there to uphold you
long as you don't ask where it's coming from

you don't want the truth
don't let the truth
get
out
beware the truth
baby, the truth
will
out

well the temperature is rising
in my freshly laundered bed
but the fever isn't breaking
and it's going to my head
oh my darling when you touched me
you infected me with dread
but the fever isn't breaking
and it's going to my head

beware the truth
don't let the truth
get
out
beware the truth
baby the truth
will
out

Face (2)

Creature

Deep Questions from a Philosopher Pirate.

Which phrase more authentically presents my parrot as an extension of my pirate soul: "Pieces of Eight," or "Shiver Me Timbers?"

When I bury my plundered treasure on a secret desert island, am I perhaps burying a piece of myself in the sand?
If so, which piece?

If I carry TWO brace of pistols along with my cutlass and dagger, will I be perceived as more fearsome, or will I just be overdoing it a bit?

What does it really mean to be fearsome anyway? If my cruel piratical ways are widely known and feared, does that not encourage my victims to surrender without a fight, thereby rendering excessive violence unnecessary, making my piratical practices in reality less cruel and, well, fearsome?

It's bad luck to bring *a* woman aboard... what if there are enough women to go around? Arrrr.

And what about mermaids? How do they...? Well, never mind.

My boots are too tight. Peg leg flask?

Whenever I meet a new pirate I always wonder... is he wearing that eyepatch because he actually lost an eye, or does he just want to fit in? (or see in the dark?)

Is the Black Spot representative of a pirate's life coming to a close due to sin and depravity or is it simply symptomatic of a lack of fresh fruit?

Hermit crabs. Think about it.

Do blonde pirates have more fun? I don't think they do.

Do Pirates Dream of Peg Legged Sheep?

Ben's song

*Author's Note: This is a song. It was written for a specific person. The lyrics were true at one point but are now irrelevant. It has a tune, but you can make up your own, it's that sort of song.*

Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin Bailey
Benjamin, Logan, Logan Bailey
Benjamin Princess Leia Bailey
The prettiest princess that I ever did see

Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin Bailey
Don't you know you're driving me crazy
I feel so lost and I feel so lazy
And I need your lovin' like a cat in a tree

Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin Bailey

Benjamin, Logan, Logan Bailey

Benjamin Princess Leia Bailey

The prettiest princess that I ever did see

Remember that night my head went funny

You held me close and you called me 'honey'

The situation weren't so funny

But there's still hope for you and me

Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin Bailey

Benjamin, Logan, Logan Bailey

Benjamin Princess Leia Bailey

The prettiest princess that I ever did see

Benjamin don't you know I love you

I just want to kiss and hug you

You drive me nuts and I know I bug you

But I still miss you laughing at me

Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin Bailey

Benjamin, Logan, Logan Bailey

Benjamin Princess Leia Bailey

The prettiest princess that I ever did see

I need your love so des-per-ate-ly

Like a cat that's stuck in a tree

'Cause you're the prettiest princess that I ever did see!

But if I call this story "Gregory" then the first bit won't make sense.

Once upon a time there was a young man named... oh dear, let's see... I've always been terrible with names. Oh, that's right it was Gregory. Once upon a time there was a young man named Gregory (he didn't like to be called Greg, he preferred Gregory and was a bit of a snob about it) and his favorite thing in the world was bubble wrap. Which was silly because he didn't actually encounter it that much, not being one to carefully pack fragile objects very often.
Gregory worked in an office, which was very boring. There is a formula in offices for stimulating boredom. Fluorescent lighting... that short, tightly looped, blue-grey carpet on the floors as well as on the cubicle partitions... that low murmur of small talk and business talk mingling with the click of ergonomic keyboards, the squeak of cheap desk chairs, the digital pings of telephones and fax machines, and the occasional bubbling from the water cooler... the smell of plastic and paper and toner and mediocre coffee and fast food... all of it made Gregory want to crawl under his desk and die.

So he did.

The end.

Guitar Strap

She didn't like guitar straps when she was a child. She thought they looked stupid. She preferred it when the musician simply held the guitar without the aid of a strap, and didn't understand why not everyone did this.
The man on the subway was singing.

My body is hot
My body is cold
My body will keep on loving you
Till I get too old

ooooo...

My body is drunk
My body is sober
My body will devise a way
To win you over

ooooo...

My body is stiff
My body is loose
My body is dangling limply from
A hangman's noose

ooooo...

My body is moving
My body is still
My body is debating the question
Of freeeeeeee wiiiilll

ooooo...

My body is healthy
My body is sick
The stars keep growing brighter but
The clouds are thick

ooooo...

My body is tired
My body is broken
But I will hide it here for you
As a lover's token

ooooo...

My body is whole
My body is strong
Still, I will retreat from you
Before too long.

ooooooooooo.....

Cloak Room

I was in a bad direction. I had taken the job in the cloak room at the Cannibal Club specifically because I didn't care anything for it. I could work without thinking and still have the time and energy to focus on building the New York Dream: an acting career. But I wasn't building an acting career. I wasn't even auditioning. I just wasn't trying. I'd go to work, I'd come home. Sometimes I'd date. What a waste of time THAT was. Mostly I slept, or just sat around thinking. And worked, of course. Mostly I worked.
More and more my job became a source of anxiety. My self-esteem became wrapped up in my ability to check coats and keep track of tickets with the efficiency of, well, something impossibly efficient. Like a bad boyfriend, the cloak room had become my entire life. Or so went my train of thought as I dragged myself out of the house that night.
I looked up at the Manhattan skyscrapers as I walked to work from the subway station. I felt the dizzying anonymity of living alone in a city with 8 million people, every one of them striving and struggling to get to that perfect penthouse overlooking Central Park. I could almost see them climbing the walls of the buildings all around me, kicking and spitting and reaching and grasping and stepping on each other's necks. They coated the skyline like bacteria and fungus and swarming flies, but flightless. Desperately flightless. They climbed, spurred on by the promise of affluence, recognition, freedom. Rooftop patios, sexy parties, and spectacular views. As they fought for Manhattan's zenith I remained on the street, slipping through the cracks, falling through sewers and subway tracks to the deep tunnels that supplied the city with water. I was drowning in those forgotten underground arteries.
Someone bumped into me from behind and swore. I wasn't drowning. I was standing on the sidewalk at the top of the stairs leading out of the subway station. I had stopped walking. I was getting lost in my head again. Bad habit. After a perfunctory "sorry" I hurried on.
There was already a gathering of club goers waiting outside when I arrived. Strange for a Wednesday night. Maybe there was a party? The managers rarely kept me updated about that stuff. I never knew what to expect. I guess I'd find out. The bouncer waved me inside wordlessly.
Groans and screams of laughter made their way through the thumping dance music to my ears. Someone must be fucking in the bathroom again. Not. My. Problem. Thank god. I ignored the sound and squeezed through the already pressing crowd to the cloak room.

* * * * *

"Can I put this with my coat?"
The woman standing at the window was tall, thin and fashionable. She had checked her coat (2 layers) earlier in the evening and was now indicating the light denim blazer she was wearing.
"Sure," I said, "I just need to see your ticket."
She rifled through her pockets. Pink ticket, number 357, ok. She removed her blazer and handed it to me. Her top was unseasonably scanty, but I hardly noticed due to the overpowering scent being wafted towards me by the movement of her unwashed body.
The small jacket was impregnated with the smell of alcoholic sweat, stale cigarette smoke, and at least 3 weeks worth of direct contact with that tiny torso. I took it from her gingerly and hung it with her other things. Dammit, now the cloak room would stink all night.

Faces passed by, one blurring into another. I chatted automatically. Hello. That'll be 2 dollars. No, you and your friend can't share a hanger. Yes, you may check your bag. Yes, I can break a $20. If you lost your ticket you have to wait till the end of the night. No you can't come into the cloak room. Thank you for coming, have a nice night. Coat check was killing my soul.
The pace picked up. The line was swollen with people waiting to pick up and drop off. Hello. 2 dollars. Thanks. Here's your coat. Goodnight. I was tired and bored, but I kept telling myself that the faster I could get through this line of people, the sooner I could go home. That was a lie and I knew it. Nevertheless, I worked frantically, rotating the mechanical rack, flinging coats, bags and umbrellas in and out of the tiny window, re-ticketing hangers, tossing used tickets haphazardly over my shoulder. I didn't even know where the rubbish bin was anymore and it hardly mattered anyway. Some tickets stuck to the bottom of my shoes. I ignored them.

The night wore on and the pace continued to mount. Where had all these people come from? Soon there was an inch-thick carpet of tickets on the floor. With every step more of them clung to my shoes, creeping up past the sole onto the toe, the heel, the instep, the ankle. And the line of customers just kept getting longer. There couldn't possibly be this many people actually going into the club. Where would they fit?
Pink, white, yellow, blue. How many times had I re-ticketed? 500 tickets in each box, and each box a different color. The swoosh of coats on and off the rack, in and out of the cloak room window, created a small wind, disturbing the ever-deepening layers on the floor. I was wading and slipping now. Tickets clung to me as high as my knees. I glanced down to brush some of them away as I climbed the small step-ladder to reach the upper rack. More coats, more tickets. Orange, purple, green. The mechanical rack spun faster, creating a whirlwind. It wasn't supposed to spin that fast, but I wasn't complaining. Small scraps of multicolored paper flew through the air. Soon I was covered in tickets up to my waist. I couldn't understand why they were being so sticky.
A ticket flew into my face, nicking my cheek near my eye. I reflexively touched the spot and my fingers came away marked with a tiny streak of blood. What the hell? I jumped down from the stepladder. As I landed I slipped in the growing flood of tickets on the floor and felt my feet fly out from under me. I heard my shoulder pop as it hit the floor, my full weight on top of it. Blindly reacting to the pain, I arched violently and cracked the back of my head on the metal stepladder. I lurched forward into the fetal position, clutching the back of my head with my good arm as fireworks exploded in my vision. There were no more customers, the rotating rack was still, no more coats in and out of the window. But tickets still zinged about as if a small tornado had descended on the tiny room. They seemed to be multiplying of their own accord. I tried to get up but I couldn't see for all the tickets flying in my face. I was disoriented from the bump on the head and could hardly tell up from down. The maelstrom of tickets spun dizzily around me, or maybe the room itself was spinning? I felt around for something familiar; the rack, the stepladder, the walls, anything! But my searching fingers met only the sharp and hostile edges of discarded coat check tickets. My hands were raw, stinging and itchy. "A person can't die of papercuts," I thought desperately, half laughing to myself, "that's ridiculous." But who said anything about dying? Suddenly I was in a real panic. I tore at the tickets that clustered themselves around my head, but for every handful that I threw away from me dozens more came rushing in. All exposed skin was now raw and bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts. I called out for help but when I opened my mouth a cyclone of tickets leaped down my throat as if they were being sucked up by a vacuum. I tried to cough but couldn't. I was suffocating. I could feel each ticket slicing at my esophagus, the sharp corners poking at my lungs. I gagged uselessly and more tickets flew into my open mouth. My eyes were bulging out of my skull, unshielded from the poking and slitting of the murderous paper. I covered my face with my hands, trying to protect myself, and still trying unsuccessfully to breathe. I thrashed and writhed on the floor, my movements echoing those of the non-existent wind that continued to animate these hitherto inanimate scraps of paper. Oh god, I was disintegrating, I could feel myself disintegrating. They were slicing and slicing and slicing and slicing from inside and outside and peeling me into paper thin 1-inch square replicas of themselves. I was pink, white, yellow, blue, orange, purple, green.

Red.

…

Black.

The flurry of tickets gradually died down. There weren't really so many of them after all. There wasn't much of anything, actually. No coats, no tickets, no customers... The security cameras showed just a few discarded tickets scattered on the floor of an otherwise completely…
empty…
cloak room.

Faces (1)

Doodles

Chapter 1

She was the only person she knew who, if she could choose her own death, would choose to be burned alive. She understood that it was strange and horrible. She understood why most people shrank at the idea. She didn’t talk about it much, for that very reason. But there was something about the incredible aliveness of a death like that. Going out in an explosion of life. The searing pain overwhelming every sensation to the point where all you can do is scream and writhe and not even notice that you’re doing it. Some people want to die during orgasm. It’s the same idea.

The moment she realized that she would enjoy such a death, she stopped being afraid of things. Except one thing. It’s not what you might think. It’s a bit of a let down actually, for an adventurous imagination. So we’ll skip it.

She worked at night. She never slept, or she walked through life asleep all the time, she could never figure out which it was. It wasn’t insomnia though, whatever you might think. She wasn’t one of those people living in the perpetual fog of sleep-deprivation. Her difficulties differentiating between sleep and wakefulness did not stem from a lack of alertness. If anything, quite the opposite. This will become clearer as the story goes. To define it too specifically this early in the game would be giving away too much. And we must retain some level of mystery.

She was not a drug addict.

As far as she was concerned she had lived in New York City her entire life. She neither remembered nor cared for any life before New York. In that sense she was very young. To her own mind her life had begun mere months before. She needed that sense of newness to buoy her up over the years of suffering in friendlier places. It made her feel old and broken down to remain connected to her former life.

She had no ties, no family, no friends. Her hyper-disciplined positive attitude allowed her to view this as independence. And indeed it was. She liked to wander, to follow her own impulse. She enjoyed a very small amount of routine, but found an overly regular schedule to be oppressive. This fit into her pattern. She was very strict and regimented with herself on some things, extraordinarily loose and free on others.

She had a very keen and personal sense of right and wrong. She would never speak on the subject without careful consideration. She felt that the world was not black and white, or even shades of grey, but a myriad of color. She felt that there was always a right and a wrong in any situation, but it must be decided individually, internally, subjectively. She chose not to comment on the judicial system.

She was young and reasonably attractive. She viewed her body as a tool for expression, rather than her self. She enjoyed preening and decorating herself with colors, textures, and sparkles. And when she did so there was a touch of art in it. But just as often she simply wore clothes for their practical purposes of warmth and protection, and on these days luxuries such as jewelry and makeup were deemed superfluous.

She loved deeply and passionately. She loved life. She loved people. She could find ways to be extraordinarily and sublimely happy in the most mundane situations. She often exhausted herself this way and subsequently would have to spend many days in bed doing nothing.

She was a perfectionist. She deleted that sentence. I deleted that sentence.

“You’re coming into the work again, you need to get out,” she said.

Today she was walking down 6th avenue towards 16th street. She was going for a pointe shoe fitting. She had difficult feet for dance. Average arches, long toes (the 2nd toe being the longest) and compressible metatarsals. Her ankles would strain to keep her balanced in releve and she had a tendency to develop swelling above the heel bone as well as tendonitis. She had internally violent struggles with herself when these injuries required her to stop dancing.

She was in love. She was dangerously in love. She was intensely ambivalent. She approached the issue with calm indifference. She was committed to being single. She was married to her independence. She was married to her work. She was married to her self. She was tempted to infidelity. She was in love with four different men. She could only remember two of them. She was only worried about one of them. She wanted to be with a woman.

She thrived on suffering. She was not a masochist; she found bliss in overcoming obstacles, facing challenges, purging emotional bile. Contentment was fine as a transient state of being, but as a lifestyle it bored her. She preferred striving. Hell below, stars above.

She was coming from her friend’s photography studio on the Upper West Side. Her hair had grown and she needed new headshots. She felt awkward in front of a camera without a character to dictate her behavior. Acting a character, playing someone else, was deeply rewarding to her. But she could only be herself, not play herself. The photos would come out stiff, but acceptable. He was a good photographer.

The sidewalk was crowded. Faces and details snapped through her field of vision. Eye contact was made and quickly broken.

She had a long walk. She walked fast. She walked faster than most New Yorkers. She found the tiniest gaps in the crowd and slipped through them like water through gravel. She preferred walking alone. She could lose anyone in those crowds. She had only needed to once. So far. It had been easy.

She wore practical shoes. She only had practical shoes. She had more dance shoes than street shoes. She had worked in a shoe store once. She had made a great deal of money and had amassed a huge collection of high heels and platform sandals and brightly colored fashion sneakers and rhinestone studded flip-flops and boots of every height and color. Now she had one pair of all-occasion black leather boots for wear with jeans or skirts, one pair of flats for when the boots wouldn’t do, one pair of flip-flops for swimming pools and beaches, and one pair of shearling boots for very cold winters.

Today she wore the black leather motorcycle boots. They had stacked, Cuban heels that resonated on the concrete. They were the loudest shoes she owned. She liked them for walking. The slight rise in the heel pitched her forward, gave her momentum. She preferred flats for standing. They interfered less with her postural alignment.

She had never killed a man before today.