I read that Ted Turner has lost all his money and that there is some talk, commingled with the historical end of his father, of Ted Turner’s killing himself. I pray that this is not the direction Turner rides his sunset pony toward, and in fact now that the little teakettle is starting to whistle I say, and I say it out loud, in the apartment I think in France that I myself rent or do not, Ted, do not ride your sunset pony that dark way. Steer the mean little bastard into the light, Ted, and don’t let it bite you. You have a million dollars in your pocket and Kofi will just have to wait on the billion, so you keep on keepin’ on, Ted. If I can, you can.
Wearing a Meat Shirt and Killing a Snake
Taupist cold-cut shirt. We were wearing that. Them. A shirt of cold-cut discs, like shingles or chain-mail medallions. They were fragrant, the discs, the shirt. We were nervous, not knowing if large animals would attack us. We hoped that olive loaf would appeal even less to them than it did us. The Taupists make these shirts, we presume. We further presume they are some kind of monks, meat-shirt-making monks. The Taupist label in the shirt said Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Flogging, or We Will Make You Wear This Shirt a Long Time in the Sun. We could see ourselves in the sun in the meat shirt drying up like fish scales and being pink and rancid and then green and rancid and we were afraid to tamper with the Taupist label or to take the shirt off.
I broke into an apartment seeking information on snake hunting in the area and discovered three loose rattlesnakes in the apartment. One of them crawled near my brother whom I told to be still, but he was agitated and the snake bit him in the shoulder blade and hung on. I ripped it loose and slammed it on the floor, uncharacteristically. I was having trouble with 911 when the girl whose apartment it was let herself in, and I told her who I was and apologized for killing one of her snakes and said I was having trouble with 911. My brother was by this time in the bathtub to his jawline in hot water, giggling. Outside the bathroom the girl had taken off her shirt and bra and was on the floor in her skirt looking attractive (very brown and firm); she waved me away when I veered toward her. In the other room I found her brothers in karate gis. They attacked me with a lot of Oriental postures. I could not persuade them not to try to defend the honor of their sister, or of their sister’s apartment, or snake, or whatever it was they were defending. I could not control them, or their sister, or 911, or my brother. All I could control was the snakes, and I had stupidly killed one of them. Had I thought about it I’d have said it was not a good day overall.
And when we finally worked up the courage to take off the meat shirt and drop it in the desert, where it sent a spiral of delicious toxicity up into the nostrils of buzzards, and we were certain that Taupists, whoever or whatever they were, were not in pursuit of us, we felt like having ice cream. You would, in the desert, having shed your meat shirt, understandably want some ice cream, born of cream and sugar and ice and salt, and of course you can walk, or ride, a long way in the desert, whether in a meat shirt or not, afraid of Taupists or not, with a belief that such a thing as a Taupist who would manufacture a meat shirt and require you to wear it under penalty of flogging exists or not, before you find ice cream.
You can in fact walk a long time in the desert having shed your Taupist cold-cut-disc shirt, or still wearing it, hoping for ice cream and knowing, in equal measure, there will be no ice cream. Your walking and hoping, and knowing and despairing, will not abate. You will be an honest and clear-headed and perplexed and dishonest man, or woman, all at once. You will be like unto a dog. This, this steady trudge of belief and disbelief, is what you were made for. If you have shed your meat shirt and happen upon another meat shirt you might, and probably will, put it on and carry it on your voyage until you shed it, and then find another, and don it, and shed and don and shed and don all the livelong day. You will be approaching the end and denying it is the end. One step is knowing, the next step not knowing, one caring, one not, one presuming, one not, one believing and the next disbelieving and the next believing and the next disbelieving. This tiny pendulum is the engine of your heart, the motor of man. You will litter money and feces along the way. Kill and maim fellows and flora and fauna, and pollute. Wear meat shirts again and again. Be afraid of Taupists, then discredit Taupists. Debate the existence and nature of Taupists. And, finally, expire, to the relief of all.
We are glad to be rid of you, despite our maunderings at the cemetery, and we will be glad to join you, despite our hand-wringing and heel-digging. We’ll be there with you in the end, happy and done ourselves with the bipolar daily marching lies.
Spy
My daughter has become a spy. One prepares for surprises, but still. I had braced most against tattoo and mutilation, particularly the multiple perforation of the ear giving it the aspect of a python’s lip, and metal deep on the tongue also is very high on the low list of things I wanted to see, so her working for the CIA, if that’s who it is, has thrown me. She did not talk to me before her employ, and now she has official authorization not to talk to me. Trying to find out where she has been on a Saturday night may be a breach of national security. Instead of the hand, which I used to get, as she walked away from me, now I get a patronizing look as she holds her ground: Dad, the look says, please, I was on a date with Uncle Sam, okayee? She does not retreat into the cover of her room, but pours a bowl of cereal and begins to eat it, open-mouthed, a secret agent staring me, nosy security risk, down.
As a young man I protested CIA recruiting on campus and clearly failed. They got her on a high-school campus, apparently, where we never would have suspected they’d go. I have come to the horrible suspicion that I am directly responsible for her taking up with the CIA by buying her as I did last year a BMW. Can the CIA have a spy in suburban American without wheels? Without good wheels? I bought her the good car so that she would not be broken down on the side of the road, and apparently the CIA thinks the same way. This at any rate is one straw I grasp at. One may grasp at straws all day. As my fuddiness comes on, accelerated by having a daughter not out of high school working in government intelligence, it would be appropriate for me to be code-named Straw Grasper were I to get in the field. My daughter wears a wire, I a diaper.
Now the spy wants a better sound system in her BMW. You would think that a matter precisely up her employer’s alley, not mine. “Why can’t they add a CD changer and do a speaker upgrade when they install the transponder?” I ask her. She looks at me with a patronizing smile, slightly shaking her head in that universal gesture of condescending incredulity.
You are so sad, this little one-millimeter shake of the head says. “Who is they, Dad?”
“The transponder people,” I say. I don’t say “The Agency” because I know better. “The Man. Let The Man buy some high fidelity.”
The proposition seems to be that a girl in her BMW without a subwoofer lifting bark off trees does not look like a proper girl in a BMW but suspiciously quiet, like a spy. My daughter the secret agent cannot of course articulate this to me; she merely says her radio rattles at high volume, that, in fact, “My radio sucks if I turn it up.” It sucks.