zaziel
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I'tr�m breit vula�oz�o ye spalla ei�tlin nel�ffnes pieqi aummit su berwegr'ra'ao.

Seventeen

Monday, Apr. 22, 2002 - 4:25 pm
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

I didn't write much over the weekend, I just jotted down a few thoughts, like:

I don't have a muse, I am sure of it. Or if I do, he is one lazy sonofabitch.

Am I a slut for love?

Why do people have such a hard time finding their soulmate? Why has it been so easy for me? Four times already, in my short life.

Is Jer our hypotenuse?

Why are two of the greatest pop songs in history (Last Train To Clarksville, I'm A Believer) by the Monkees? Mickey Dolenz sang the lead vocal in both songs, instead of Davy Jones. Is this significant?

Why were Martians called Little Green Men? Why not Big Orange Women?

Why doesn't everyone drink Negra Modelo?

Why do horses smell so sexy?

These are what you call rhetorical questions, right? Which means they probably should be followed by some rhetoric, don't you think? I suppose I'll be exploring these topics, and more, in the days ahead, but right now I feel I should explain who Jer is.

Jer may or may not be the hypotenuse in a triangle that also includes the Rarebit Fiend and moi. (I'm sorry, you'll just have to put up with my predilection for hackneyed foreign words and phrases. S'il vous pla�t? Por favor? Bitte?)

Jer thinks he's in love with me.

Damn.

Jer mustn't think he's in love with me. Jer can't think he's in love with me. The Fiend thinks he's in love with me. I think I'm in love with the Fiend. Amor con amor se paga. I don't want Jer to be our hypotenuse. Jer is too tender, too green, too rosy, too buoyant, to be a hypotenuse.

Jer is a bud. Jer is the freshest, dewiest, bonniest bud of May, unfurling his soft, cool petals in the dawn of his manhood. Sweet Sixteen. Except he's seventeen. Do you know the poem Fifteen by William Stafford?

South of the Bridge on Seventeenth
I found back of the willows one summer
day a motorcycle with engine running
as it lay on its side, ticking over
slowly in the high grass. I was fifteen.

I admired all the pulsing gleam, the
shiny flanks, the demure headlights
fringed where it lay; I led it gently
to the road and stood with that
companion, ready and friendly. I was fifteen.

We could find the end of the road, meet
the sky on out Seventeenth. I thought about
hills, and patting the handle got back a
confident opinion. On the bridge we indulged
a forward feeling, a tremble. I was fifteen.

Thinking, back farther in the grass I found
the owner, just coming to, where he had flipped
over the rail. He had blood on his hand, was pale -
I helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand
over it, called me good man, roared away.

I stood there, fifteen.

That's Jer. Except he's seventeen. He's going to be a good man, Jer is.

Jer is mi compadre y mi amigo. A chum, a pal, a buddy, a bud. He is also my roommate. An upstairs bedroom is his. (There are three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, but he's the only one living on the upper level, except Jacob occasionally takes over his old bedroom when he comes for a sleep-over. Jacob, if you recall, is the five year old son of my former lover, whose name is Mario.)

(Don't worry, I'm working on a cast list.)

Jer is a baby fag. He figured it out only last winter, that he was not like other boys. He told his parents a few weeks before Christmas, but the upshot was not what he had hoped for. The upshot was disastrous: his parents threw him out on that cold winter's night.

Well, not really. It wasn't that cold, not even frosty, as I recall. (You may laugh, but we do have cold winter nights in southern California. Cold enough for me. I think people who live in places like Buffalo, New York are muy loco en la cabeza. And not in a good way.) Jer's parents didn't really throw him out. Well, they did, actually, but they didn't toss him out the door into the street and throw his clothes after him. Jer's father called me, in something like a panic, but still civil and coherent. He asked me to take the boy in and give him a place to stay for a few days. And I said, "Sure. Send him over." I made like it was no big deal, but I admit I was not feeling as insouciant as my words. In fact, I was rather shocked. I thought I knew this man, but the man I knew would never cast his only child out of his house, not for any reason.

Jer's father has been a good friend in business to me. When I need the big tools for big boys, like a cherry-picker or a dozer or a dump truck or a horse trailer, I rent them from Jer's father. And Jer's father is the brother of my former boyfriend's brother's wife. (Capisci?) Jer's father had first asked George, his sister. (Her name is Saffron but everybody calls her George. No one seems to know why, so don't ask. But wait 'til I try to explain to you that George's husband's brother, my former boyfriend Mario, has a new boyfriend who is also named George. But you can wait for that, can't you?) Anyway, where was I...? George couldn't take Jer because she had a house packed to the rafters with guests, so she suggested that Jer's father call me. It wasn't as much of an imposition as it might sound. When my grandfather built this house, the plan was to rent out the upper bedrooms to lodgers. But instead, most of the time, the rooms were given over to various relations who had fallen, more or less temporarily, on hard times. I kinda continue this family tradition, with friends who need a place to stay for a few days or a few weeks. George (the Saffron George) knew this, so she told Jer's father to call me. And that's how I got my bud, Jer.

A few days has since stretched out to include a few months, and it still looks like Jer ain't going home anytime soon. It's not his father's choice, his father has restored himself to my original estimation. It's Jer's mother, Katherine, who has disowned her only child. She can't even bear to look at the boy. And he's such a beautiful boy.

Katherine, I have learned, is one of those monumentally selfish people that can only be produced in the American culture, which emphasizes, rather emphatically, the fulfillment of the individual, and the individual's right to personal happiness. Nothing too horribly wrong with that, except the American people have some extremely screwed-up ideas about what makes them happy. Katherine is extremely screwed-up, in my less-than-informed opinion. From what I've gleaned from my conversations with Jer's father, it seems apparent that Katherine's ideas of happiness are centered on Jer, focalized on what she needs him to be. But she seems to have been totally blind to what he needs to be. A recipe for tragedy? I suppose so; she was definitely due for a comeuppance.

Katherine made an attempt at suicide last month. The traditional sleeping pills and booze recipe, but it wasn't done with conviction. It wasn't sincere. She called Jer's father as soon as she swallowed the pills. The ambulance was there within minutes. I'm sure Katherine planned it that way.

In the aftermath of that melodrama is when Jer told me he had fallen in love with me.

<~>
Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

last eleven:

Resurrection - Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Arts and Letters -
Friday, June 17, 2005
Domestic Obsessions -
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
The Kindness of Strangers -
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Gone -
Saturday, April 2, 2005
Coming Back, Little By Little -
Saturday, April 2, 2005
Effing Around -
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Explicably Yours -
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
Things Too Innumerable To Mention -
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Mr. Armstrong -
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
The Pope in Our Kitchen -
Saturday, October 2, 2004



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Sa r'ji�o oss�vel meninonceiv �o poshik m�'�nch uscantebatahla o�r musiu o�r muiko.
Copyright � 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 by gcs

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