November 22, 2006
Fiction
Low Resolution
The street smells like burning bodies, warm beer, and sweat. It's carnage here, too, like everywhere else. The difference is, this is a carnage of luxury. The bodies are skewered chicken. It's a street fair.
You can't wait to get home and really experience this scene, in a room that smells of nothing but ozone and your own self.
It's hard for me to go out since the break-in. It's not safe anywhere. The whole world is a war zone. Even my apartment. But you can't make art in a vacuum and the everything happens for a reason. I was put on earth to make art that changes the world. And everything I come in contact is fodder for my mission. Even break-ins. Even chicken on a stick. And if I'm not safe here, in bright daylight in a crowd of people, In the Haight, then how can I have the heart for real artistic challenges?. Besides,I don't feel safe at home I jump at every shadow.
The ubiquity of high-fructose corn syrup is evident on so many asses these days; huge deposits like caverns full of government cheese. And it's chilly, too chilly despite the press of shoulders and sweaty chins. San Francisco - where everyone gets together and pretends that the weather is nice. Only a few skirts these days, mostly on the knee or even lower. You don't mind a sleek pencil skirt once and a while, but flowing hippie skirts and ragged jeans, not even low on the hip, not even with a single thin blue streak of satin string peeking out on a waist, God, fat girl jeans are everywhere.
Whoever broke in got the laptop and my digital camera; my lifeblood, my art, images of my body meant for waging peace now likely just deleted. Hours of work. They left my iPod and my jewelry. When I got home, my underwear drawer was gaping open, a pair of white panties hanging out like a new tooth. I didn't touch anything. The cops said it was barely a break-in since so little was taken — but it's easy for him to say. It wasn't his home that someone came into. After he left, I realized that one of the cat's toys was gone — her favorite — a pink snake that looked oddly . . . anatomical. It squeaked if you squeezed the tip. Naked photos of me on the laptop. Art. Naked photos of me on the digital camera. Not art. Would he even know art if he saw it? Since then, all I can do is I walk in circles around the house, trying to see it through his eyes. If he only was there for a little bit, what did he look at, what did he do? Did he use the bathroom? Did he look at himself in the mirror?
You duck in to a convenience store, the last ratty one in the Haight, it seems. It feels more authentic. Something about dust on the cling-film of last month's porn. Exotic drinks, like lemon soda, and tangerine soda too, from Egypt. Why won't Seagram's market that here? The music is all chittering; the man behind the counter is woofing into the phone in a slurpy Asian language. You want a candy bar, and even though it's been decades since you've had to plead with Mom for one - thrilling when she acquiesced, choking down a cloud of dour fury when she snapped "No!" - you still feel a bit more grown-up just from having a Twix whenever you like. You could buy one, pay for it with change, eat it right there in front of the cash register, and then buy another one if you wanted.
This place is pretty well-stocked otherwise too. The Nation, In These Times, This Week . . .caricatures of President Bush and Osama bin Laden leer and preen. They have the right-wing rags too, National Review and such. You wonder for a moment who on Earth would come to the Haight and end up buying a National Review from an Indian cashier. You don't get it at all. A lost tourist from Texas, maybe. Did he need something to flip through while getting his car fixed? Did he lick his lips nervously in here, squeeze his wife's hand. Did he freak out at the pictures of leatherboys in harnesses peeking out from over the tasteful plastic bands on the magazine shelves. Did he say something nasty to the cashier? Little men, you decide, little men with little dreams. They always want to tie themselves to something larger than themselves. A hundred million toadies for one big bully.
You catch a blur of womanhood striding purposefully along the street. Your mouth is full of cookie and caramel. Auburn hair snaps in the wind. You wish the bell wouldn't ring when you open the door to leave and follow her.
I feel like I'm always being watched, always being followed. On the street right now, in the sticky crush of the street fair. The cop said "Lady, you gotta get some security. You don't even have a man around." I said to the cop: "I don't feel safer with men around. Especially not armed men. No offense."
I don't want to live in a world where I have to have a security system to survive. I don't want to have to protect myself against people that the government won't provide for while business churns on and collects welfare. What will a camera do if someone tries to break in? Maybe if it's a really funny video I can sell it and buy new things. And a security system. In the meantime, I've got the people next door's neurotic dog, which never stops barking, and an unloaded gun that I use for performances. I sleep with the gun under my pillow. That's why it's unloaded. Now, though, it's down at the performance space. I don't know whether to be happy or upset that it wasn't here when he was grabbing everything. He found my underwear and some sex toys. I threw the white ones hanging out of the drawer away. When I picked them up, I felt whoever-he-was' hands on me. The cop scratched his face and grinned.
She's old. Crow's feet and smile wrinkles. Skin too taut over he jaw and cheekbones. Once she was undoubtedly a looker. She's now just a smoldering handsome. Not pretty, not cute. Maybe she still likes being slapped across the face, called a baby pussygirl, compelled to call her man Daddy in the sack. One way to find out. You follow her. Her skirt's about six inches above the knee. Good. Just a little too slutty for a woman her age. That means she's cock-hungry. She wears heels on the street instead of sneakers. The young girls carry their good shoes in their bags and switch in the elevators, which is a turn-on too, but a woman in heels on the streets is a shooting star. It's nearly noon. Please please please God let her be on her way to lunch. To meet a man. Maybe a younger guy; is she a dragon lady? Or an older man, a thin-lipped WASP with a yacht.
It's an older man. You take a seat, al fresco, at a small wrought iron table. "Water, thanks, with lemon," she orders. He makes a reference to a man named Roderick, to the summertime. She crosses her legs, uncrosses, then, and crosses them again. Your X13 minicam captures it all. You watch from your cell phone. Thong. It's dark between her thighs, but the thong is a shimmery purple. What a whore. The blood rushes to your head. She's yours now. You lick your lips. The world curves away from you as she opens her legs again, responding to the older man and his talk of a stolen weekend sometime soon. They clasp hands on their table. The waiter hovers nearby, wanting to leave their salads with them, but too polite and too eager for a tip to clear his throat or just dump the plates. Purple. Lacey. Cunt. The breeze smells like your sweat now.
It's the same cop working today. Or it might as well be. An army of cops with switchable faces. Here and now, it's an entire street fair full of cops. I should feel safe, but instead it's worse. They're going to get me for dissent, for making art, for standing up. Like a right-left combo: First they take your shit and then they interrogate you and when you try to do something about it, they stop you.
Peace and love in the Haight is No Justice No Peace all thanks to the boys in blue. There's one next to me as I cruise the earrings. One staring when I buy chicken on a stick. They know I'm subversive. They want me to fuck up so they can take me. I bet I'm on camera.
Frame by frame, at home. Open. O-o—o-o-pen. Then still. Upload. Touch yourself. Cock thick and stretched against the fabric of your boxers. Tap it like a joystick. God, what was Atari thinking in the 70s? The air cool on your knees, sweat hot just below, bunched in the fabric of your pants. You can't remember the last time you even turned on the TV, except for The Daily Show. But the Web, thank sweet Jesus for the Web. Out there you're just another guy pushing shoulders in The City. You weren't even a millionaire on paper when everybody else was, not even for a second. But here, in your apartment, with the door closed and the music off the TV silent and your roommate still at work, you're the axis mundi. It all revolves around you. Gaping cunts from schoolgirls going commando. Big white panties on brown Mexican thighs. And slick little thongs.
You miss her. She's still 11 on your speed dial. Give her a call.
I push into the middle of the throng to get away from the cops. It's packed now on the street, the end of the day, the bars and the streets have spilled together in one lurch. There are hands all over me. A camera sticks up over the crowd, blinks red at us. People cheer and whoop. I open my mouth and out comes a shrill, red scream. A siren joins in the distance. We shriek to each other. The crowd continues to whoop. In my pocket, my phone starts to vibrate. I scream and scream until the siren stops and the whooping stops and I can walk now because the hands have gone home. Not me. I stay out until it's unsafe on the streets; I stay home until it's unsafe at home. Whoop.
Find her gifs first. Remember that you had your cock in her ass, and not that long ago. There has to be something left of that attraction, that affection . . .no matter what she said. You were the one crying then. Your cock wilts, then you find the folder of those old pics. There she is, come on her face, eyes closed, tongue on lip. On her knees, tits cupped and presented, a smirk on her face. She was cooperative, if not always enthusiastic. You made her come though, and a lot, and she liked that. Was 2002 that long ago? No. Call her.
No message. No luck. No chance it's a friend who spotted me in the crowd, wants to grab a beer. I don't have anything to do tonight. I could watch the TV, but now I feel like the TV is watching back. I have never understood much about science. I only understand what I know from experience: If you hide and you can't see them, sometimes they can still see you. If you hide, they'll still come and arrest you. You can't do anything safely. You can't speak. You can't protest. You can't remind people that the U.S. is slaughtering people for oil every day. They think there's no war anymore. They think it's over.
Bitch screens her calls. Fine. Just fine. No problem. You've thought about doing this a few times already, but never had the . . .no, not the guts. It's not a matter of guts. It's will. Now you have the will. You find an anonymizer, attach her pics - your pics of her - to a message, and send it off to a few amateur porn sites. You sign her name. It'll take a few days for them to go live, and who knows, maybe some new guy will Google her one day after a first date and find out what a greedy cumslut she can be. It's a public service. Maybe one day you'll have a similar stroke of luck. It's karma: you get back from the universe what you put into it.
I could go to the theater and rehearse. I should go to the theater and rehearse. Only a few days away from the opening and I know I should realize, all this is showing me, how fucked up the world is. But I just want to be safe. I just want to be somewhere safe, in private. Maybe there's a way to bring the break-in into it, to tie it in. I already modified the piece so that the cameras shoot the bullet noises during the section about the American soldier on the torture squad who kills herself instead of the part with the dogs and the crawling.
And then I think, Christ, I'm doing performance art during wartime and who even the fuck cares? It's not like it stops the war. And if they come and get me it'll just be another dissident voice, silenced. And there I'll be, in prison. The other war we don't talk about. The war at home.
And the thing is, there's a war going on right in front of me, at 16th and Mission, as one guy passes another guy drugs and another guy nods out and another guy screams at a woman who can barely stand but staggers off to turn another trick for an audience of me and the surveillance cameras. We could You Tube our footage together and change the world. I could perform on the street with them and we could film it and change the world.
Or still no one would care.
What is it Claud always says? "San Francisco seems like a big city, but really only eighty-five people live here." A release and a crumpled tissue later, you feel a spasm of regret. You try to say to yourself Ah, the Internet is so huge, those sites so obscure...but you know better. It'll be all over the place in a week, that pic of her mashing her titties together. She was always small too, barely B-cups. It may even end up on one of those comedy sites. "Little Miss No Tits" you'd call her when fucking her chest. She got off on that sort of humil play. Got off, past tense. Some mutual acquaintance will come across them. She'll know it was you. She'll think you're a creep and a real bastard, and this time she'll be right. Christ, why couldn't she just pick up her fucking cell? Maybe you should just join the fucking National Guard and have your balls blown off in Iraq.
Or, you think, I can call her and say that I found them. I took the laptop in for servicing a week ago, and I really did too. I can blame the tech. Yeah, call her.
Pick up pick up pick, you think, pick up you dumb bitch. No. She won't pick up. Go to the fucking blackbox theater. Pop in. Ask her to lunch. Break it to her gently.
Performance space is dark and empty and quiet. First quiet place I've been today; the silence pulls me down to the floor to know it better. I put my head on the prop trunk. Under my head there's a black hooded robe and electrical wires, a dog costume, combat fatigues. Combat. Fatigue. This isn't academic. People have to care. Would they care if I fucked myself in the financial district with the gun? Would they run? Would they want to suck it? If I forced the gun in my own mouth could it stop the war?
How can I get people to watch?
How can art stop the war?
The door is open, ridiculous; you walk in. "Hullo?" you call out. "V_____? I was just passing by and thought I'd stick my head in . . ."
Fuck myself with the gun. That might work if I get the right context somehow. I unlock the prop box and pull it out — the unloaded gun. I rub it against the seam of my jeans — it feels hard and rumbly, like a small tractor driving across an oppressed nation. I rub and rub with the gun, then my fingers which are smooth, soft. My fingers unzip my pants and pick the gun back up. My left hand reaches lower, feels I'm slick, and maybe, yes, maybe this is a way to really somehow effect change if we can't make change through laws, through wars, maybe maybe oh maybe we can do it through kindness and it's when I touch the tip of the barrel against my cunt, cold metal kiss, that I hear footsteps. A man's voice calls, "Hello"?
You throw up your hands and say "I surrender!" and laugh, and bravely keep your eyes on her face, not her spread pussy or the firearm in her hand, which is far too close to her cunt to look at. "Uhm. In the mood-" you say, and choke on it, then recover. "For some lunch?" She stares, so you babble. "Well, I didn't mean to interrupt or disturb you. This isn't all pleasure, either, I do have something to tell you. Don't worry, it's not about us, I know there is no us. It's just, well, it may be upsetting to you, and I'd really rather tell you over some bok choy or at least when you don't have a gun in your hand." What you know you're not quite slick enough to pull off as the climax to your speech: So, you stopped shaving, eh?
I should have pulled the trigger. I could have pulled the trigger. Instead, I pulled my pants up. I want to stop the war and I get bok choy. I could sue. He walked right up after dark. I could sue. I didn't scream. Why didn't I scream. There's a guard for the building. I can't sue. It's open to the public. Why can't I stop shaking? The only cameras here point outside, not in. And he didn't do anything. I want to make art and I get bok choy.
You have the sudden and not entirely unwelcome urge to sneak a shot of her snatch with the X13 once she puts the gun away. Guns make you nervous. Don't they make everyone nervous? That's pretty much the line between civilized countries and Dumbfuckistan, America, you think. Fucking NRA. So you smile and shuffle and show that you're harmless and you pay for the bok choy, even, and you tell her, and you bite your lip like you do when you pretend to be nervous and you get so hard when her face goes from bright red to fatal gray, and you say that "Yeah, I just typed 'pussygirl' on images.google.com, and if you have the filters off, you see all sorts of porn, and then I saw something. I'm going to call my brother tomorrow. He's a lawyer, remember? He can get a warrant, and tear the computer shop apart looking for the files." You add, "I'm sorry" for the twentieth time. "I've deleted the files already. I know it's too late now . . ."
I should have shot him, even with the unloaded gun, when I had the chance. The bok choy dropped three times from my chopsticks before I could get the words out. "You don't have to feel bad about that," I said. I stabbed the bok choy with the chopstick and looked at him. "Yet. Why don't you apologize for lying, first?" I have learned more about violation than I'd ever have thought. Right now, I would like to learn about the violation of his chest cavity with a chopstick.
You open your mouth to lie, then a gong sounds. It was not the gong near the cash register and it wasn't ringing because the busboy had accidentally elbowed it while trudging past with a plastic bin full of dirty glasses, it was the gong of enlightenment. The ceiling opens and reveals to you the infinite glories of the vault of heaven. The sun spreads like a curtain and there in a flaming halo is the President in his suit and with his smile. He nods at you once and offers the crooked smile you, until this very moment, had loathed instinctively, as a drone in this hive of a city. You realize this: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter when you lie. It doesn't matter when you get caught. People only have the power you give them. Give them none and you are their God.
"Those pictures were mine. I took them, I own the copyright. I wanted to share them with the world, so I did. I wanted to see you again, so I did. Here we are now, enjoying a nice meal. What's done is done. Let's move on. Let's move on dot org, okay? It's not like anyone who wants to see you naked will have any problem doing so. Eight bucks on Saturday, five bucks during the week. You leave yourself open to these things, V____, with your-" hands in the air, fingers twitch twice - "art."
You can do a lot of things to a girl. Consent is consent is consent. What part of no did you never understand, Buddy, besides all of it. It's time for the performance of my life. I lower my eyes and let my lip quiver. "What you say is true . . . you do own the copyright. " My lip quivered doubletime and my eyes blazed the Hallelujah Chorus. But, see, copyright doesn't mean you get to take your copyrighted piece off my laptop without my consent. And taking a laptop without permission is theft. And entering my apartment without permission is breaking and entering. You talk to your lawyer cousin. You tell him you might have some trouble." I looked down from my speech, just one note shy of seizure, and realized I was somehow standing. My hands were in my rice, clenched. He was pale. If you fuck with a performance artist, expect a scene. I carefully took my hands out of my rice and sat back down.
Holding cells smell like flesh and steel. Two days, because your brother decided to teach you a lesson about fucking with your exes. But I didn't do anything, you think, and well, you didn't break in to her house. You're not a fucking criminal or anything. You're upset, actually appalled that V____ would jump to such a conclusion. Hell, it'd been four years. Four years of forced smiles at parties and saying "Oh, that's great" through clenched teeth whenever she emailed you a flyer to one of her little shows. And you had your memories, you had the photos; you had her. Ultimately, you had an alibi, and one that was indisputable. During the break-in, you were sitting al fresco, taking timestamped digital photos of a woman's purple-swathed snatch. It's true what Claud says, too - there are only eighty-five people in San Francisco, and eventually everyone meets. Who knew that Nancy Pelosi wears thongs?
• • •
San Francisco-based Performance Poet stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the editor of Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader (Soft Skull Press, 2005), as well as the author of Final Girl (Soft Skull Press, 2003), Why Things Burn (Soft Skull Press, 2001) and Pelt (Odd Girls Press, 1999). Final Girl was the winner of the Audre Lorde Award in Poetry for 2003 from Publishing Triangle and the winner of a 2001 Firecracker Alternative Book Award. She is the poetry editor of Other Magazine. Gottlieb currently teaches at New College of California, and has also performed and taught creative writing workshops around the country, from high schools and colleges to community centers. You can find her online at daphnegottlieb.com.
is the author of the novels Under My Roof and Move Under Ground. His short fiction has appeared in The Mississippi Review, Razor, Suicide Girls, and the sex anthology Short & Sweet. Nick's reportage and essays have appeared in the Village Voice, In These Times, Clamor, The Writer and many other magazines. A native New Yorker, Nick now lives near, but not in, Boston. Visit his inconsequential website at www.mamatas.com.
