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Tuesday, September 09, 2008
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Something Special:
Category: Writing and Poetry
We haven't posted anything in a long time, but this is something we just learned about, and it seems like a rare opportunity that Jesse fans will be very interested in, so we wanted to pass it along.
In 1991, the specialty artists book press, Flockophobic Press, run by Alexander S. C. Rower (grandson of Alexander Calder and Director of the Calder Foundation), collaborated with Jesse to publish a limited edition artist 'book' of 200 copies of Jesse's poem "Strip Poker" in a bottle. Glass "wine bottles" to be exact, with labels designed by Alexander S. C. Rower to look like traditional French wine bottles (see photos below). Jesse's poem was printed on one continuous strip of paper and sealed in these specially designed/decorated bottles. Now there are a few of the remaining Strip Poker in a bottle artist books being sold.
The price is $325 US, which includes shipping/insurance inside the United States, and add an additional $13 US for insured shipping outside the US via airmail, with a seven day delivery time.
Strip Poker in a bottle can be ordered from Horizon Books with a credit card, by contacting Don Glover, either via telephone 206 523 4217, or email; horizonbooks1@gmail.com.
With each copy of Strip Poker in a bottle will a copy of the full text of the poem. There is some variation in the color of the bottles, and the capsules (the seal on the bottle top).
This limited edition of Strip Poker is held in the Special Poetry Collection of the University of Rhode Island Library and the Special Books Collection of the University or Washington Library.
These remaining copies of this one of a kind limited edition poem/art work will be sold on a first come first served basis.
And as a taste of what's inside here are two brief excerpts from the long poem
From the opening of the poem Strip Poker:
"DEUCES ROLLED LIKE CANNONBALL TAPE PEELING HER NAKED BEHIND LIKE A PEACH ON THE SINK ROOM TABLE ATMOSPHERE OF BLEACH AND AGITATED STEAM. THERE IS STRIP POKER AND STRIP POKER – YOU GET NAKED AND THEN YOU GET MORE NAKED…."
and from the middle of the poem:
"SO WE GOT BUSTED IN THE LAUNDRY PLAYING STRIP POKER. THAT WAS IN YOUR OUTLAW DAYS. YOU WERE SO BEAUTIFUL WHEN YOU WERE A CRIME…"
(The poem was written by Jesse in all caps.) Vintage Bernstein, n'est-ce pas?!!
Here are two photos of the exterior of the bottle, showing the labels design by Alexander S. C. Rower:
**********************************
This is all the information we have, so please don't contact us with questions.
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Tuesday, November 21, 2006
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Short Story: Slides from Winter Vacation
Current mood:  nostalgic
Category: Writing and Poetry
This blog entry copyright 2006 The Estate of Steven J. Bernstein
Reprinted here by permission
SLIDES FROM WINTER VACATION
The eye with its painful rose shudders in a rush of sweating panic-riddles as the winter war sweeps by.
I always see the war as vacation slides. We sit together, you and me, in the dark, a dagger on the wall, gun stashed under the cushion, big white bowl of popcorn, bottles of 7-Up. "There's an old one of Pol Pot doing his cigarette trick." And we double over in a fake machine-gun attack. Mick Jagger singing "Ti-i-i-ime is on my side, yes it is." U.S. green berets giving torture lessons to government troops in El Salvador, hamming it up with severed body parts, mimicking the contortions of half-dead prisoners. "You'll come runnin' back, you'll come runnin' back to meeeee." Soldiers desert to Mexico holding their stomachs still choking on the smell of burnt flesh. Next is just a bullet hole in a foreign billboard. A stray. Bullet whizzing around the world nicking every human and every image of humanity. Finally, we'll all be slightly wounded and everything that is ours will be a little broken. Buzz gun encased in future ice will reveal to scientists the source motivation of modern war dropped from brittle fingers into waxy toilet mud. "Angel, hand me the bottle." Glistening helicopters cutting through the mist strafing a beach of shouting Libyans. Dripping fangs painted on one. Treetops zipped off like hot whiskers. Flashing to the interior with its stone temples and houses made of weeds. A heap of beat tires with squirming girl. Everything seen from the air. China, South America, Southeast Asia. Winter has hit and the shadows of bones hide every continent. Wiggling in a cage of woven intestinal meat. Ice twinkling on shoulders. Breathtaking. Pair of pajamas frozen in a barren field; sleeping man fled to Mexico with memories of tortured grandmother, lurid Americans eating canned food over her broken corpse. His dream needs a bandage. Hardened medical team at work. Unopened cigarettes on the coffee table. "Light me a smoke, hon." City on fire. Running secretaries and exterminators and private detectives swept away and delivered to the ash wall nailed to the undersides of the clouds. "Try to set the night on fiiiiire." "Wait, it's lit crooked ... There." I'm handing you the cigarette. "We could've gotten a real marble tabletop for the same price." "There's Idi Amin's mansion in Saudi Arabia. Whole thing made of shinbones and hair." The big inky man smiles in the shade of a stone elephant. Desert crocodiles wrestle at his feet. A whole war lies mummified in subterranean chambers. The screen lights with these stark arc-lit scenes. Man with mining helmet hunkers over decayed weapons and small dusty hands. Faces have been deliberately rubbed off. He takes a small caliber automatic from inside his shirt and fires point-blank into a slim powdery torso. Orange gel oozes from the holes. Picture of the man grinning, his helmet cockeyed. "We are lucky to have this machine." "And it wasn't expensive." I stick my hand into the couch and touch the big .45. Tactical nukes erase corners of war with spot-welding precision. The icy craft of computer warfare, a dazzling intricate pattern of purplish light seen from space and recorded a hundred thousand exposures per minute. "Wonderful, spectacular." The ground is left pitted and buzzing. No sign of anything having ever happened there. This appears on the screen first as an exotic glowing mollusk, then a whispering field of fine dirty white powder. Actual fighting is shouted down by imposing the sudden nonexistence of combatants, territory, cowering infants and all confused humanity. I am especially fond of this picture since it transcends conflict and shows the ultimate clean and mechanical dot-to-dot warfare. Explained by the wandering stray--the bullet has touched everything at this point and expanded its attack on humankind to include all life, and indeed much of the nonliving planet, as well. "It's so flat." "It's exciting." "Painted, painted, painted, painted black." The screen goes dark and fingers of ice dangle at the edges. "Let's go back to the beginning." Here the sun shines and groups of men approach one another screaming with long wooden forks and bludgeons. Children are hidden under piles of leaves, the old look on weary, women of all ages stand brave and motionless in low narrow doorways. Obsidian dagger jammed up under the ribs. The first to die. Clattering of wood and stone. Death howls. Slashed arteries spraying blood at the sun. The trampled grass is hidden from the sky by pierced and broken bones and fat and muscles. Now a slide of a sad village overrun by the thirsty victors. The old executed on the bare yellow earth. Girls raped and kicked under a thin passing cloud, dragged off by the throat. Not a man alive. These are thrilling and colorful photos with wild jazz of the early '70s. Unexpected slide: me in mud-soaked pants shirtless with fast smoking gun and dead naked coolies sinking into the ferns. Proud of this one. "There's me, babe." It was a quick kill. "You look really mean." I grab at the gun in the couch, but she gets there first, puts her hand around mine. "Not that mean." We drink 7-Up, burp, watch the screen through the glass bottles. "Yell like you yelled when you killed those guys." "I killed them with my mouth closed." "Close your mouth like that." Lips like a slice in dry white fruit. "Oh, that looks very hard." Thinking of the computer at war my whole brain hard and tightened around annihilation, searching on the keyboard monitor for something moving, looking for me. Painting out section after section of the planet's colorfully splotched and lined skin. Mouth sealed, smooth forehead, eyes dry and dull. Poking at the keys with a pointed stick. This picture. I am not mean. This is my game. Going to war is a vacation. Take the camera. Bring it home. I have a big collection. You come over to see my collection. "Stop the show I have to go to the toilet." Turn on the lamp. The screen goes grey. Chew a handful of popcorn. Take out the gun. Fat heavy blue-black weapon. Very clean with perfect little parts. Clip loaded with stubby penis-like cartridges, nickel jackets, big lead slugs. One in the chamber. Click off the safety. There is also the war between you and me. I'm going to win this war, a war you are not conscious of, but that exists all the same between me and you and me and everyone else. The bathroom door opens and closes. Running water. Turn off the lamp and switch on the projector. "You-ooo-ooo-ooo send me, darling, you-ooo-ooo-ooo send me." Picture of a dimly lit tunnel under Cu Chi, Viet Nam. Very tiny. Mexican with a .45 and a flashlight, sweating, poking the walls and ceiling for booby traps, edging along in sneakers, squeezing through the slender hole in the steamy darkness looking for a small enemy. "I thought you were going to wait." "I'm waiting. This is it." "This is what?" "That's my gun." "The one in the picture?" "This is the same gun." Take the gun out from under my leg. "Can I see it?" Turn on the lamp. Point the gun at your face. "Look at it this way. Look into the hole." Fascinated like a snake, head bobbing, eyes crossed. "It's hypnotic." "The war's over for you." I hold my arm rigid and ball up my hand, finger slowly closing around the trigger. "Are you killing me?" "Yes, yes." A whisper. Flash and deafening report. Your face is smashed open, blacked and bleeding, you lurch back hard and quick and collapse frothing on the couch. This is how to fight a war: by guile and hypnosis with a single bullet in the living room. Go for the camera. Gun next to my empty 7-Up bottle. I take a drink of yours. Shots from every angle. Drive you to a deep tangled canyon. Wars never stop. The soldiers bring them home and continue to fight the hardly noticed. Turn off the music and the projector. Wait for the enemy. Make an enemy out of you. I have a photograph of you.
Previously published in
I Am Secretly An Important Man (1996, Zero Hour Publishing)
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Currently
listening
:
Passover
By
The Black Angels
Release date: 11 April, 2006
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5:54 AM
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Friday, August 11, 2006
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Links: The Best of Bernstein on the Web
Category: Writing and Poetry
LINKS: THE BEST OF BERNSTEIN ON THE WEB
Here's a list of links to our favorite websites/pages and blogs featuring Jesse--from tributes by his friends and family, to articles, essays, and poems. We know there's more out there than what we're listing here, so if you have a favorite that we haven't included, please let us know.
ALISON SLO LORIS was a longtime friend, collaborator, and partner of Jesse's. This is her beautifully written tribute to him, which we have an excerpt from on our main page.
http://www.speakeasy.org/~loris/jesse.html
MADAME TALBOT was a longtime friend of Jesse's, as well as one of his artistic collaborators. Her blog, Victorian Lowbrow, features a series of entries called "Belltown Gothic," which often document Jesse's performances in words, photos, posters, illustrations, etc. There's some amazing stuff here, and it's ongoing, so be sure to check it out ... and often.
http://madametalbot.blogspot.com/2006/07/belltown-gothic-55.html
She also has her own MySpace page. You can ask her to be a friend.
http://www.myspace.com/victorianlowbrow
DAEMON BERNSTEIN, Jesse's son, has a wonderful website devoted to his father and the family. You can view that here:
http://www.daemonbernstein.com/jesse.html
"BLUNT INSTRUMENT" is an article from the Seattle Weekly about the 2003 EMP exhibit called More Noise Please: A Portrait of Poet Steven Jesse Bernstein. It gives a fun overview of Jesse's career in Seattle, and features an interview with Larry Reid, a Seattle promoter and curator of the exhibit, who first met Jesse in 1979.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/music/0341/music-emp.php
"PRISON DRAMA" is a great article from the Seattle Weekly about the recording of the Prison CD, and features an interview with Steve Fisk, who added the music and other sounds to the recording.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/music/0341/music-cassidy.php
"BERNSTEIN BOOK FINALLY APPEARS: JESSE LIVES" is a book review of I Am Secretly An Important Man, as well as an homage to Jesse and his writing, written by Seattle journalist Clark Humphrey. We have an excerpt from it on our main page.
http://www.miscmedia.com/Bernstein.html
"REQUIEM FOR A PUNK POET" is a February 2005 article about Jesse by Joseph Larkin, and features interviews with Daemon Bernstein and journalist Laura Cassidy.
http://www.furious.com/Perfect/stevenjessebernstein.html
"A LEGACY OF POETIC PROVOCATION" is the Seattle P-I's article regarding the 2003 EMP exhibit More Noise Please. Also included is the poem "Come Out Tonight," which we posted on this blog back in April.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/visualart/143250_bernstein10.html
THE ZEALOT'S LORE features a collection of Jesse's writing, and is an okay site, if you can get past the red type on the black background. It features an incomplete bibliography (some of which isn't on our main page), a prose piece, and many of the poems from Prison.
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~zealots/sjb/index.html
The only real gem on this site is Jesse's essay "Art or Anarchy?" The last paragraph, of which, might seem familiar to a lot of you.
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~zealots/sjb/anarch1.html
MOUTHFUL OF MOONLIGHT is a site of poems by Rick Parsons, where he also features some of his favorite poets, including Jesse. There are three poems here, including "The Difference," which we excerpt on our main page.
http://www.mouthfulofmoonlight.com/sjb.html
And last, but not least:
WIKIPEDIA has a somewhat inaccurate entry for Jesse. But, accurate or not, we think it's really cool that he has an entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Jesse_Bernstein
Happy reading!
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Tuesday, August 08, 2006
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Short Story: Any Way You Cut Me
Category: Writing and Poetry
This blog entry copyright 2006 Estate of Steven J. Bernstein
Reprinted here by permission
ANY WAY YOU CUT ME
At 15 I was a good piece, any way you cut me up. The old men would gulp back their spit, swooning quietly behind dark glasses. But I always spotted the sheen of sweat on their slick, purple noses. And the tired vapors of their bodies rising from their hair and eyebrows. An oily yellow halo swam like a half-invisible ribbon round the tables of such men. I often wept with pity while fucking them. Of course they mistook this for passion. And I suppose it was passion, of a sort.
"I'm not really queer, you know, but you're pretty cute, and I know you need the money. I'd just like to help you out. You're a writer? Isn't that what you said? Well I'm drunk, so what the hell? What the hell?"
At this point I always felt like killing them, knocking them over the head with a sap or a pipe, knifing or shooting them as soon as we were out the door. Instead I said: "Me neither. I'm not queer either, really. You're right: It's the money. I may be young, but I'm very talented."
And we'd leave, like two old buddies. Buy a bottle and head up to my room. I paid the rent on the room with that lost, lean body, too. Two old buddies: me and the landlord, me and every high-blood-pressure fatso on Broadway. And there were so many of them ... so many old buddies on the street, when I was a kid.
I wept, the different flavors of pity rolling down my face, licking the tears like green and pink and brown and white ice cream off my lips. But I always ate my dessert silently, alone. I shared this childhood pleasure with no-one.
I grinned as though I was a hard, youthful man, not a boy. Those fatsos always believed me, dove into my charade headlong ... by choice, of course. Come daylight they were shrewd as wasps, as hungry cats. When it came to business. Their business. But at night they were pussycats, fading moths. My business. My day.
"You want a blowjob? You want to suck me off? You want me to fuck you in the ass? What do you want? You put a fifty up there, on the nightstand, by the lamp, under the ashtray, and I'll do what you want. I'll give you what you want. It's a cold fifty." It was hard to lay it out in those terms, always. That was the hardest part.
Different flavors of piss: Feeling, if you like. But hunger played the greatest part in it. There were certain things I had to think of, to handle, day to day. They were just trying to help me out, of course, those old men. Fatsos. So I'd suck 'em off or crap on their bellies or fuck 'em good, as they wished. With feeling.
Abundance. On both sides. A couple of sissies, closing a deal.
But I felt, so often, like a pink sausage. A bunch of old Germans squabbling over my taut, clear young skin. Fat clockmakers. My ass in pawn. My balls lost in pawn, up there with a little tag on them. Half-price. A cheap little prince. Cheap, small. The big-boys with their filmy teeth, all crooked. Yeah, a little weiner. Ha ha! Teensie-weensie!
Any way you cut me up: bursting, juicy! I was an expensive little boy! Mmmmm. A hot dog. Sweet meat. Relish. Mustard. Onions. Gobble-gobble. A treat. Special. A good piece. Anyway, a fifty-dollar piece.
Now I'm 29 and married and have several teeth missing and the veins on my cock are blue and my ass is very sensitive. The icy tips of my toes and fingers may have something to do with my past. But my wife says I'm a very feeling man.
I'm still good meat.
Written in 1980
First appeared in the early punk rock fanzine East Village Eye
Was later featured in I Am Secretly An Important Man (1996 Zero Hour Publishing)
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Thursday, May 18, 2006
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Poem: More Noise, Please!
Category: Writing and Poetry
This blog entry copyright 2006 Estate of Steven J. Bernstein
Reprinted here by permission
Well, friends, we know we still owe you a posting regarding the circumstances leading up to Jesse's death, which we promised in our FAQ post on April 24th. We've undoubtedly fallen behind schedule, but promise to get that to you shortly.
In the mean time--encouraged by the response to our posting of "Come Out Tonight"--we decided to share with you another one of Jesse's famous poems; the title of which has become synonymous with the poet himself.
MORE NOISE, PLEASE!
I live on a street
where there are many
many cars
and trucks
and factories
that pump
and bang and
grind all night
and day.
It is a miracle
that I can write poetry
or sleep or
talk on the telephone
or that
my lover will
visit me here.
There is
so much noise.
Every few minutes
a jet comes in low
or a prop job
swings down like
a kamikaze.
There is an airport
at the end
of my street.
The new age people say
that you choose
all these things --
choose the cars
and trucks and
airplanes -- me and
all of my neighbors.
Maybe this is true;
maybe we can't live
without
all this goddamn noise.
Maybe I need the noise
to write poems
make love and eat.
I'm going to hang a sign
out my window
that says:
More Noise Please!
or:
Thank You for Making Noise!
Maybe we are the kind of people
who need to have
what we don't want
just to get along,
to do the basic things.
Myself,
I could not sleep
last night,
and I could not
close the window,
either. I tried
to tear the window
out of its frame
and put it
in a closed position,
banging and ripping
with the hammer
and a screw driver,
standing on the window ledge
in my socks
three stories up.
But, the window
wouldn't come out
and the factory was screaming
and the trucks were rumbling
and the whole world
was praying for silence
and it was up to me
to shut the window
and I couldn't
get it down.
I was just making
more noise.
A jet went by
and all the people waved.
Thanks, I yelled
as the shifts changed
without a lull in production
at the big plant
across the street.
The workers lined up
at the bus stop
watching me with my hammer
in the window.
I put sponge stoppers
in my ears,
but I can't stand those things
for more than a few minutes.
Finally,
I put my head
between two pillows.
It is the same
every night.
I love it
I need it.
Without you I could not live,
I would not have written
this poem,
I yell,
the window dangling
half on half off.
Written 1989
Previously published in
More Noise, Please! (1996, Left Bank Books)
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Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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Poem: Come Out Tonight
Current mood:  accomplished
Category: Writing and Poetry
This blog entry copyright 2006 Estate of Steven J. Bernstein
Reprinted here by permission
"Come Out Tonight" is one of Jesse's more famous poems. Some of the friends of this tribute page have sighted it as the poem that first attracted them to Jesse's work. For those of you who haven't had an opportunity to read it--or hear it (on the Sub Pop 200 release)--we are posting it here for you.
It's now possible to listen to the Sub Pop 200 recording of this poem right here on MySpace, thanks to our fellow, and complementary, tribute-page friend "Steven Jesse Bernstein." You can access that page here.
COME OUT TONIGHT
Forecast in chrome and plastic. Tyrants breathing alloy of slavery, planet hunger, versions of Jackie O. Sherry, Sherry baby, won't you come out tonight? And the stars whisper like old blood at the edges of the body of night. She stood with one hand on the phone for four hours, poised as though only a few seconds had passed. I watched her through the crack between the shade and the sill. She waited for a forecast in human trembling, together with other important women. Come, come, come out tonight. The world suffers for her: The clock hurries like a terrified animal, then stops, dribbling saliva. She has eaten chicken pie and bubble gum. For a month the Luftewaffe lived on raisins. Same with the French, after the war. Jackie O. received fresh oranges from John Kennedy. Silly girl. She cannot put down the telephone receiver. She is waiting to receive my body of work. She wants to take it in her ear. A mottled flush builds under her cheeks. She eats Xmas candy while she waits. The telephone rings and rings. I am not at home. I am with Jackie O. We are eating oranges from the president. We are alone on the roof of a Park Avenue penthouse. Picture of Marilyn Monroe in my back pocket molded by the heat and sweat to the shape of my buttocks. You are gripping the phone smiling, eating candy, crying. I am with the important women, now. I am secretly an important man. Hang up the phone. I can't dance with you, anymore. Go to your freezer and get a popsicle. Go to your TV. Turn on your TV. You will see me and Jackie O. She will be taking it in the ear, my body of work. In the planetarium. You will receive a forecast. I will always be more important than you. You will never be important enough. You will never be on the whip-hand end of slavery, never be the one to wield hunger against humanity. Heaven will never be an extension of your body. Your body will always belong to someone else. The picture of Marilyn Monroe flutters across the roof, steaming, shaped like me. Shaped like my ass. The sky is filled with oranges during the war. We eat them. The president is alone in a room. He is unimportant. As we eat his oranges the sky grows blacker. The moon ripens and turns red. It rots and is swallowed by the darkness. You are still by the phone. It is ringing and ringing, dead. Sherry, Sherry baby, won't you come out tonight? It is completely dark. The earth freezes. You put down the receiver and go to the window. Come, come, come out tonight.
Written in 1988 for "Critics"--a play whose text was cowritten with Susie Schneider
Appeared on the audio release:
Sub Pop 200 (1988, Sub Pop)
and in the books:
I Am Secretly An Important Man (1996, Zero Hour Publishing)
More Noise, Please! (1996, Left Bank Books Collective)
6:22 AM
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Friday, March 24, 2006
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Short Story: Pleasure on Platforms (for the Coming Generation)
Current mood:  horny
Category: Writing and Poetry
This blog entry copyright 2006 Estate of Steven J. Bernstein
Reprinted here by permission
PLEASURE ON PLATFORMS
(for the Coming Generation)
yesterday, i found a real hot porn magazine in the wastebasket in a filling station bathroom: "turned on teens: the coming generation." i was waiting for my ten-year-old son to finish with the toilet.
his mother (my ex) was out in the truck with barry and lea, joey's younger brother and sister (not mine). we'd been sitting there in the parking lot drinking and talking while the kids fought it out in the back for a couple of hours.
joey had started to crap his pants so i took him over to the filling station to finish and get rid of his underwear. meanwhile, i pissed in the sink ... no self control. after washing my hands, while throwing the paper towels in the wastebasket, i noticed the bag. sort of casually, without taking it out of the trash, i looked inside. i stood up quickly. hot stuff.
"hey, go back to the truck joey."
"i gotta wash my hands."
"never mind that. go back to the truck."
"you gonna shit?"
"yeah, now go on back to the truck." he just stood there. "look, i can't shit with you standing around in here." he threw his underpants in the toilet and flushed them down. then he walked out into the sunlight. i locked the door.
"jesus, this is some good looking snatch."
i had taken the magazine out of the wastebasket and was sitting on the edge of the toilet rubbing my crotch through my pants. the cloth was already warm. i undid my belt, snap, zipper and pulled my pants down around my knees. i wasn't wearing any underwear.
on the first page was a picture of a woman about 25 doing a very convincing 16 or 17. i was satisfied. i'd been looking at the same tired magazines for several months. somehow, the pictures seemed to get worn just from being looked at.
the next five pages of "turned on teens" were covered with pictures of the 25-year-old teenybopper. in every picture she was wearing platform shoes. the title of this series of photos was: "pleasure on platforms." in most of the pictures the shoes were all she was wearing.
she had one of those sassy little faces, still a trace of baby fat under the chin, pouting lips. you know the type. you see them on saturday afternoons crowding the buses bound in or out of the suburbs. you try not to look at them because you're afraid they're going to read the sad horniness in your face. not just the girl, but everyone on the bus will see.
she'll start screaming. they'll all gang up on you: old women with shopping bags pelting you with cabbages and cans of tomato sauce. the bus driver radioing for the cops. beefy characters with teenage daughters of their own--white t-shirts, bowling league jackets, smell of sweat, deodorant, brylcreem--pounding away at your face, snarling. little kids kick- ing you in the nuts. a woman's arm, that's all you see--loose white flesh, tiny wristwatch, one fine hair growing out of a mole halfway between wrist and elbow, but otherwise hairless. on the end of the arm is a red hand wrapped tight around the fronds of a potted palm. she's bringing the goddamn pot down on your head. a piece of the shattered thing cuts deep into your forehead, just missing your eye. you're spitting out blood and specially treated dirt.
"DON'T LOOK AT HER! DON'T YOU EVER LOOK AT HER!!!"
it's an uproar. you're lying on the floor in the aisle battered half unconscious making a weak effort to block a few of the shoes. tennis shoes, wingtips, silver high-heel sandals, grimy work shoes, new shoes, old shoes, earth shoes, spiked football shoes ... you're being attacked by a wild shoe museum--and since it's spring: garden tools. why not? some guy's rushing down the aisle. people are jumping out of his way. he's coming at you with a lawn mower.
"FUCKING CHILD MOLESTER!"
you manage to roll under a seat and out of his way. someone else clips your ear with a rake.
pant legs, smelly socks, shimmering nylons hugging white legs ribbed with varicose veins. red toenails, bedroom slippers, bowling shoes, golf shoes, walking shoes, lounging shoes. you look at your own feet. they're just inches away from your face. you're scrunched up in a ball. child molester shoes?
something heavy gets you in the small of the back. a boot, maybe.
"SLEAZY SON OF A BITCH CREEP!"
you can't move, panting and all sweaty. you piss your pants. the wet spot spreads out warm up your belly and down your thighs. because of the way you're balled-up, you've got your nose in it. it's like being a baby again: wet and scared. the familiar stink.
all the feet, the hollering, the pain; it's all receding, dying, growing dim. you stuff your thumb in your mouth and start sucking away at it. a little tinkling music box. mommy's winding it up now. "tales from the vienna woods" played by a small metal spool with fingers on a piano the size of a book of matches. all the shoes look like trinkets hung over your crib. one of them catches you under the chin. a man's teeth dig into your thumb: your teeth. you swallow the salt.
close your eyes,
baby, and dream ...
jacking off in a gas station bathroom looking at pictures of a 25-year-old 16-year-old wearing only a pair of platform shoes. god she's hot. the kind you make a point of looking away from on the bus.
i tore a long strip of toilet paper off the roll and wadded it up. i was just about ready to cum.
"dad? hurry up. barry got out of the truck and we can't find him."
i disguised my voice, trying to sound like i was taking a nice calm shit--got all the sweat out of it. "just a second, joey, i'm almost done. you keep on looking. i'll be right there."
i wadded up the toilet paper in my right hand. i always jerk off with my left: a true southpaw. the interruption had nearly cost me my hard-on, but i soon conjured it up again. now where was i? that's right: i'm licking one of those small, hot nipples. then: she's giving me a touchingly amateurish blowjob. she's trying to be careful with her teeth. her lips, wet and slightly cool, are sliding slowly up and down my cock. she's exploring it with her tongue. she has a slightly shocked, intense expression on her face. she can hardly believe what she's doing. she pulls back and kisses the rigid head of it, then puts her mouth over it and swallows as much of my prick as she can, goes down until she gags. her eyes are closed. suddenly her face relaxes. she opens her eyes and looks up at me as i cum. she makes a small choking noise, like someone coughing with a mouthful of food, and sucks hard, gobbles it up and swallows it.
i set the magazine on the edge of the sink just in time to catch the cum in the ball of toilet paper. the magazine slid down toward the drain as i finished myself off.
"dad! dad! barry's hiding in the dumpster. he won't come out."
"ok. ok. hold on. i'll be there in a minute. just relax."
i took the magazine out of the sink and slipped it back in the bag. threw the sticky ball of paper in the toilet. pulled up my pants. zipped, snapped and belted them shut. flushed the toilet. lit a cigarette while i waited for my hard-on to fully dissappear. walked out with the bag tucked carefully under my arm. the dumpster was about ten feet from the bathroom door. joey was chinning himself on the edge, peering in at his little brother.
"he's in there."
"all right barry, get your ass out of there immediately."
"fuck you, you smelly fart."
"here, hold this." and handed the bag to joey.
"what is it?"
"never mind. don't open it." and dove into the dumpster. i pulled barry out of the trash by the ankles. a blue paper towel was stuck to his t-shirt.
joey hadn't looked in the bag. it wasn't obedience, you understand. he was just more interested in watching barry and me fighting it out in that trash bin. it was a good fight.
"here, give me that." with my right i took the bag from joey, while i hung on to barry's arm with my left. (southpaw, remember?) the three of us walked around the fence and back to the truck in the parking lot behind the elite.
in the front seat, on the passenger side, anna fed the baby some yogurt.
"what'd you buy?" she asked, looking at the bag.
"some porn. i found it in the wastebasket in the mens room." she knows me well so there was no reason to be embarrassed. i wasn't.
"oh. we're out of beer."
i put the porn under the driver's seat and got back out of the truck.
i opened the back door of the tavern and went inside.
at the bar i noticed several women, all around 25 and wearing platform shoes. it was heart-rending, i thought. this whole row of women, all friends, working so goddamn hard at sixteen and coming out around fifty. they were all worn out. i looked at one of them and smiled. it's safe now. nobody cares who smiles at these women.
i bought my beer and went back to the truck.
Written 1979
Originally published in:
I Am Secretly An Important Man (1996, Zero Hour Publishing, Seattle)
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Currently
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My Foolish Heart
By
Bill Evans
Release date: 10 December, 2002
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Short Story: A Likely Story
Current mood:  hungry
Category: Writing and Poetry
This blog entry copyright 2006 Estate of Steven J. Bernstein
Reprinted here by permission
A LIKELY STORY
The sun comes up like a spent penny. Losers will be losers. Oh, it's windy on the bridge, and blues play in the fingerprint eyes. Checked it for signals and it doesn't remember the game. Shotgun in the groin. Baby-proofed. Burnt liver and pants. Taste of blacked out potatoes. No sign of work. Everything caved in around the shoulders like a collapsed building. Just the word "mother" and a dead battery. Never shaved. Scorched denim color iris. The big blue and red sign still lit up--it looks so pretty against the sky. A cloud like a silver letter opener. I got my own tears, my own troubles. Carpet needs a shampoo, etc. My family is dying one after the other. Broken music in left fingers. Rotating pelvis as water spills out. Nothing more. Into the sack and zip it. The van disappears among the many black streets. A piano at a stoplight. They play all night, or they start pretty damn early. Bus stops filling with the mad and the hopefuls--none of these have a chance, you can be sure. It is not my job to predict. When people turn to trash I sweep them up and take them to the dump. How'm I to judge that? Everyone looks so ratty. The president on TV looks like a pimp. Everyone looks like they are about to murder someone. That's how it looks to me. All the faces, they are lit from inside, they glow like jack-o'-lanterns. So eerie. Terrifying. A pinball machine ... bells, music, steel balls rolling everywhere. Replay! Replay! Tilt! Tilt!
The car rolls down into the parking garage. I do the report and go home. A door closes behind me. Everything seen through cellophane. The furniture like meat. The color of meat. Why did I buy furniture that color? Lettuce drapery. The place is white bread with mayonnaise. A sandwich. Wrapped in cellophane. I feel like a cockroach or a rat. Eyes bulging, little gnawing teeth. Bite through the glitz, the wrapper, get to the business. I am a tired man. I don't even drink. For me, drinking is like trying to inflate a slab of pavement, something very heavy with no more holes in it. Everything just runs off into the gutter. I have never puked on this carpet, but it looks like it has been puked on. And, it smells. It smells like oranges and catsup and sour cream. Like I throw my food on the floor and step on it. Just leave it there. Well, I can't shampoo the carpet, now. Fuck it. Lay down on the sofa. It's too big, the sofa. Big and square. Made of luncheon loaf. It stinks. That's why I smoke so much; so everything will smell the same. It's hard to find enough things in common from one moment, one place, to the next, to be sure it's all one planet. Ah, everyone's got some excuse. Something that needs an excuse. I'm just nervous, okay? Fuck you. Now I can't sleep. The sun looks green.
What is it about bridges? Blow off your genitals and jump. What does that mean? Many people get that same idea. I think it is a pun: Fuck off. But, it is not a funny pun. It is not meant to be funny. This is a pun for someone who really wants to get in the last word, who has never had the last word. It is the end of a conversation they are having inside themselves. "Fuck off," they say. And, in their mind, nobody says anything after that. But, maybe on the way down, as they are bleeding to death and drowning: "Sit on it, punk." Well, it's an expensive statement, and does it come across? I've seen it over and over, the same thing.
Eat the sun. Little wall with it. I am lying on the sofa in my coat hungry, like this is a bus station. It's my apartment. I hate it here. All the florid memories of people's opened up kidneys, brains like cactuses. My reports read like a naturalist's diary. I have got beyond the whodunit stage of police work, beyond crime and solving crime. I look at people like plants. Plants strangle each other as a matter of course, and no-one is offended. Unless it is a weed. But, who decides what is a weed? To me it's all the same. Someone shoots a politician, politician kills and rapes a four-year-old. The garden is overgrown. Everything's sense of its own importance is bloated. It's just people claiming the ground on which other people stand, buildings crawling over each other to get in the sun. I swear, I am learning to live off the smoky light in the room. No, I am not much interested in chasing people around. But, I do it. People pay me to chase other people, and I do it. Or to go out in a boat and pull someone up out of the water and make up a story about what happened--I do it. It is my job to make sure people do not have to think about these things. But, they think about it, all the same. People lose their appetites, can't sleep, go crazy and kill, thinking about it. I am hired so people will know I am there, and that's all. And, I go from one stained room to another. People cry, beg me to make it stop, and I promise to do what I can. Which I do. Which is nothing. I am a paid witness. I have seen. I see.
One up, one down. Two down. The other one up, and the other down. These are games I play with my fingers. Pinball machine. Replay! My coat sleeve is dirty and worn-out like I am a bum. There is everything on there--bone marrow, valve oil from a trumpet, cigarette burn holes, mayonnaise, coffee. I have gotten to be a mess. Like a flashlight dimming out in the dark. Watching. One points to the other, the other points back. Stab! Stab! Two boys standing on a pile of meat doing it to each other. Doing it. Fingers. They fall down. Go up the sleeves. Gone. No, there's a fingernail. The tip of the finger. The fingerprint. Each one is different, they say.
Music comes on. It's the radio. I get dressed, eat some cereal. But, I'm still awake. That fucking boy. God, the water was black ... black and shiny. Wrapper over a bowl of something in the refrigerator that smells for miles, all the way in the bathroom. I had a boy like that, and he got porked by another cop ... porked and cut up and shot to pieces. Then, his mother said, "You fucking cops!" And, so on. So, I moved into a place like a sandwich, so I would never have the feeling of starving. And, I don't. Ever have that feeling. I don't need to get up, but I let the music play. Made my report. "Go home, Roseburg. Eat, sleep--go on nights." Play with my hands, do it to the music. Dancing boys with knives. I have chewed my way into a sandwich, and I'll never be hungry, again. A dirty sandwich with music and a green light. Shit in the refrigerator, dead bulbs everywhere.
What does the green and blue--no, red and blue--sign say? It says, "Heaven & Stark!" What does that mean up on the bridge in big lights? All night, all day. Maybe it says something else. The light in here: it's changed, it's like margarine. Some of the bulbs are burned out. Reflected on the water. I can't remember. Men in the sign, on a scaffold: "Got the gun!" I am on the deck, wet hair on my shoe. "Okay!" One guy starts to cough, but I know he is trying to keep from throwing up. Now I don't remember what the sign said.
I am wearing a gun; coat buttoned to the chin; shoes wet and tied tight. If I fall asleep like this I will wake up sick and bruised. I am never going to fall asleep. My eyes are like warm asphalt. My dick has shrunk down to a cold little potato, nuts crawled up inside me, warming themselves against my intestines. I was wearing gloves. Where are my gloves? In the bag? They were a mess. Seventeen dollars. But, I should've thrown them in the water or the rubbish, not in the bag. Now, they will think they were his. Nah, they won't think anything. His mother and father will get the gloves. So what. They won't recognize them; it will give them something to wonder about. "Where did these gloves come from?" they will think. And, they will get cleaned and given away, or thrown out. If I don't fall asleep, I won't wake up, so I will be fine. My shoes will dry out, the radio will play. I will never fuck or jack off, again, and I will eat air. I live in a cafeteria: "Misery? Gravy? Guts? A fight between brothers? With or without cream?"
You know I am just feeling sorry for myself. I am in the dregs. Go for a walk. I live on a nice street. All families. People are happy to have me around ... in case something happens. But, no-one invites me in their house.
Walk back to the bridge. That fucking boy. I hate psychology. "Sit on it, punk." In the daytime it is so sad and busy. I am walking out there. There is a sidewalk. I can't tell if I am doing this in my mind, or if I am really walking. I'm hot. My eyes hurt. There's a workman with a hose. The cars are all covered with soot and dust. Stomach. My stomach is emptied for cleaning. Little colored rocks and plastic mermaids. The blue and white sign is off. Blue and red. Red and blue. One finger pokes another. They are up there changing the bulbs. The music from the radio in my left fingers. I am crushing it. Ha, ha! I can hear all the pieces falling on the concrete. Flutes and violins, a broken piano. I have fallen asleep. The gun hurts and I am holding it. Is this a re-enactment? "Don't move, I am a cop!" Nobody moves. There's nobody there. It's a steel girder. No, it's a man. Very stiff. I go up a tiny ladder. The city is white ... completely white. There is nothing to see. It is a throat gulping air, smoke. A poison frog, its lips turning backward on itself like a sleeve, up over its eyes ... the empty stomach pops out ... the heart, everything. It is an asshole. I am dreaming. It is the back of my head.
My fingers have a crappy conversation going ... dirtier and dirtier ... whenever I stop and look at them they are going at it: poke, poke! Tilt! Fuck you! They accuse and kill each other. They go up my sleeves. They start over. Nothing gets settled. The sun is green, the scaffolding is wet. There are little paint drops everywhere, like different colored stars. A wild shot. Then, one at my own body. Nothing hurts, I swear. That one went right through the palm of the other hand. Poke, poke! Ha, ha! They just don't know how to talk to each other, do they? Got a scissor-hold on the wet steel. Yellow and red squeezing out through a hole in my jacket. Ugly, wormlike and gasping. Had a boy like that. Fucker. Shoot him in the potato. It's like it's been in the freezer. My lips kissing the metal, paint coming off in my teeth. It's covered with frost, but it manages to bleed, music far below. A boat, or is it a truck? Shoot those fuckers back out of there--those little weasels hiding up in there. BOOM! BOOM! Right through the cloth. Everything falls out, it seems. Goes down my pants. I am so hungry now. Oh, I am hungry, really. There's no blood in my feet, and my forehead is cold. I'm asleep. I'm puking on the carpet, falling off the sofa into the puke. It's too big. It stinks. It's all one planet. I don't need an excuse. Fuck off.
Written 1990
Previously published in:
I Am Secretly An Important Man (1996, Zero Hour Publishing, Seattle)
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Currently
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Whipped Cream & Other Delights
By
Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass
Release date: 20 September, 2005
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6:58 AM
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Thursday, February 23, 2006
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Short Story: Sissies Suck It Up (Bad Boys Gulp It Down)
Current mood:  thirsty
Category: Writing and Poetry
This blog entry ©2006 Estate of Steven J. Bernstein
Reprinted here by permission
SISSIES SUCK IT UP
(BAD BOYS GULP IT DOWN)
These guys were very strange. They were into drinking piss--pissing right into each other's mouths, drinking the stuff out of bottles. I never understood them. They did it at night in the lavatory. It was like a cathedral in there. Thirty-six toilets--two of them worked; the other 34 toilets were full to the brim with the most horrible, stinking crap you can imagine. Just going in there was enough to make you gag, to puke your guts out. It was awful. At night, the lights were out in there. A dim, greenish light shined in through the high windows. Five or six men and boys stood and kneeled at the dark end of this room with their dicks out. No-one talked. There was a solemn, church-like atmosphere. You could hear piss splashing in throats, against teeth, on the tile floor; the sounds echoed in the huge, concrete lavatory. It would've been very stupid to be in there, uninvited. The dudes who were involved in this piss drinking thing were some of the roughest boys on the unit. Mess with them in any way, give them the idea that you think they're funny or fucked up; laugh at these guys and you are liable to find half your body parts floating in one of those dead toilets. These were no timid perverts, they were some real hard, crazy assholes. I used to stand by the door thinking, listening to the strange gargling noises, my mop leaned against the wall (I was the late night swamper) waiting for someone to say something. They should've been talking, degrading each other in there, that's what I thought. I waited for: "Drink my piss, sucker!" Something like that. Or: "Hey man, I'll give you five dollars if you let me unload in your face." But, there was nothing. They snuck in there silently, at night, did their business, and said nothing; then they went back to bed. One of them had a key to the door. I slept next to a piss drinker he smelled terrible.
One night I was in the big day room mopping, nothing going on between my ears--I was just staring down at the red linoleum and working my arms, that's all--when one of those bad boys came in with a quart plastic bottle. He walked over to me and unscrewed the top. "I'll give you a cigarette if you piss in here," he said in a low voice that was both menacing and seductive. He was completely straight forward about it; he could've been asking me to make his bed, or give him my dessert. I wondered what this might mean, pissing in his bottle; what did it signify in their piss drinking religion when they hit you up for some piss? It could be a very bad thing. I was afraid. But, not giving it to them--that could be a lot worse. There was no way to tell. It might just mean that they were all dry. I looked, indirectly, at the man's blanched, sullen face. "Okay, sure," I said, trying to sound carefree. I did it right there in the middle of the room, under the flourescent lights. The pervert studied me hard. I took out my dick, held the plastic bottle up to it, and let go.
"How's that?" I asked hopefully.
"Is that all you got, boy?" He leaned in on me.
"Hey, I can't.... You know.... That's all there was.... I was really squeezing...."
"You fucking sissy motherfucker."
"Do you want me to try some more?"
We both looked at the bottle.
"Fuck it, here's your cigarette."
He took the bottle, screwed the cap back on, gave me the cigarette, and walked off. I took out a match, struck it on the side of the bucket, lit the smoke and picked up my mop. A radio played behind the locked door of the office where the technicians hung out and bullshitted until six in the morning. They didn't hear anything in there. They never had any idea what went on on the unit, at night. People would get raped or cut up; no-one would know anything about it until morning. Then, everyone would say:
"Oh, what? Hey, I was asleep, man, all the way out. I didn't see a fucking thing, alright?"
Even the punk with the bloody asshole or the six inch gash in his face doesn't know what happened.
"It was dark. I couldn't see who it was."
The daytime technician would maybe make a short speech about raping and cutting. But, the technicians were as violent and twisted as the inmates. The little talks didn't mean shit.
I slopped the grey water around the big red floor, and thought about those bad men in the dark, back behind the toilets. It was a secret power ritual they were doing, using this urine, like a sacrament, to make themselves more than men. Drinking piss made them stronger, more brutal and depraved; it gave them an advantage over the other cranky motherfuckers in that place.
How did they recruit new men? Who was invited to join? Was this something that went on on the outside? I thought of men I knew on the street...hard men. I pictured them standing around in abandoned basements sucking on gummy glass jugs of old, old urine; laying face down in steaming pools of the stuff; down on their knees, on the cold damp cement, catching it hot from each other's half hard cocks. I tried to imagine men I knew well doing that. Maybe....
I guess I am not a serious enough dude to get let in on this piss drinking thing.
Now, eating shit: that's what a punk would do--down on all fours, gobbling it up off the filthy tiles, sucking up black pools of diarrhea. Guzzling hot, salty piss is for very heavy males. I thought what a sissy I was: "Maybe I should eat some crap." Get all the punks and sissies together some night late....
What people eat vomit? Is there a different supper club, a secret lodge for connoisseurs of every bodily excretion? Snot...blood...bile...tears.... It was hard to figure out. I was kind of a tear sucker. I felt for the men and boys who were getting raped over and over and over, night after night. The special favorites who didn't even moan anymore, but just gasped a little as it went in. And, then they would cry and cry, and I would lay awake, thinking of their tears, my throat stiff. So, there were reasons, things that happened in your life that made you hungry for something made by someone else's body.
I finished mopping the big room and leaned against the wall, waiting for the floor to dry. From the other end of the hall I could hear the piss drinker's voices, the whispers and gulping noises echoing in the enormous concrete and tile lavatory. An ordinary sound in this institution familiar and reassuring, like the wooden ticking of a grandfather clock in a big, empty house. And the crummy music and dull talk behind the heavy locked door of the office. The other madmen in there, with their huge salami arms and white buck shoes. I chewed a piece of gum. State gum, made in a penitentiary. "Tastes like a moth-ball." At the far ends of the halls were the dormitories.
The steel doors were locked until morning. I thought of the rapists and sadists in there working on their victims.
I couldn't hear anything. They were too far away, the doors were too thick. When the floor was dry I moved the chairs back--160 chairs. Then I started on the long, empty hall, slapping the mop against the office door, as I worked my way past it; I felt small and hollow, suddenly violently depressed, as I finished up the job. Miles of red linoleum, the color of dried blood.
The moproom was unlocked. I squeezed out the mop and put it in the corner, with the push broom. Then, I picked up the mop bucket and emptied it into the sink. I set the bucket on the concrete, walked back out into the gloomy hallway, and closed the door.
They were still in there doing it. I crossed the hall to the lavatory
door and listened. A dull voice said:
"Hey, Froggy, lemme have a taste of the swamper's stuff."
The man took a big swallow, choking and gagging. I could hear him struggling with his guts, in there. Finally, he got it to stay down.
"This dude's on some awful kind of drugs--that is some bad wee-wee."
"No," Froggy croaked, "He's a Jew. That's what Jew piss tastes like."
I went down to the office to get a technician to let me into my dormitory. A large, hairy man named Charles came out. We walked up toward the end | | |
