Annotations Read online

  II

  IN THE FACE OF THE NIGHT’S HYSTERIA, WE SHOULD LIKE TO POINT OUT, QUIETLY, THAT WHATEVER HAPPENED IS EXPLICABLE.

  Samuel R. Delany

  AFTER ALL, IT WAS ONLY OUR LIFE, OUR LIFE AND ITS FORGETTING.

  Li-Young Lee

  FOR IN THE BILLOWING AIR I WAS FLEET AND GREEN RIDING BLACKLY THROUGH THE ETHEREAL NIGHT TOWARDS MEN’S WORDS WHICH I GRACEFULLY UNDERSTOOD

  Frank O’Hara

  CLEANSING, THROUGH THE ART OF REMEMBERING, A RENEWAL

  Picnics swarmed those summers as fervidly as bees, though he feigned to ignore the insects unless they graced him with a sting. Wasps and garter snakes composed a different cohort, sending you screaming through the screen door in out of the dark. “La Ba-Kair.” Certain sensations are unrenderable in sequential terms. Even small animals recognize this. To salve a yellowjacket attack his mother would apply baking soda. In essence she was redrawing the outer surface of his “lovemap.” Towards the end of May the city would parade its wares before the river like a tired, forsaken bride. This entails a “localized” notion of the subject. The two aunts, which is what we also called close female family friends, resided in the Laclede Town Houses, where Damie used to keep her beauty shop. Whether these still present advisable housing options no longer remains in doubt. Analysis involves a subtler mode of seeing. Chestnut Valley Sound. It was assumed that they would eventually own property like the TV families, though no one had taken much account of the difficulties involved in obtaining a mortgage. By then the flow of white residents away had become a hemorrhage but there was almost still no de facto desegregation. William Greenleaf Eliot. During the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July, they drove all day to Grand Rapids, where he imagined the ground wore a purple shawl of lilacs and the legions of “cousins” would greet us as though we were returning from exile. There, the earth lay parched and bare, though you remember more the orderly grid of streets. The trellis of names of his grandfather’s people climbed bewilderingly before him, thus he reconstructed each cousin’s relation on a daily basis. A Golden Gloves boxer, an amateur star. Who knew what to make of the other grandmother’s people, whose aloofness one took for granted. Vain vacuity. At first he would squirm in the barber’s chair, lest they inflict on him another Quo Vadis, but as he aged he learned to appreciate the barber’s focused attention, the tender, careful play of those fingers. “Tutti-frutti, good bootie,” Afro-Sheen, Congo Queen. The coolest picks, plastic, tricolored, with long metal prongs, flaunted their power-fist end first, and because they could not stay corralled in a pocket, one had to be vigilant so as not to lose them. Upright in our afros like coxcombs brought dismay to the faces of our mothers, but how else could we boys display them so that the girls would not fail to see them. “Well, how do I look?” knowing that no one with any decency would answer. The desire to be seen was an attempt to escape alterity, or in other words, to shift from the margins to the center. If he has to then he ought to, but he needn’t. One learned not to slam the oven door since the cake inside might fall, and to wash one’s hands with vigor before sitting down at table. Then the father would order a pizza since he could not cook, though by seven Jeffrey, the younger brother, had become handy with flapjacks. The effect is essentially novelistic, though its fictiveness remains another matter. Summer itself was often not a strong enough attractor, so they adorned it with a garland of festivals. At the Veiled Prophet Fair, or the Strassenfest, which was smaller, couples traded leers and melodies while waltzing about the grounds in lederhosen. One is often prone to reduce such situations to the results of lifestyle choices. Through the air interlaced the aroma of wurst and sauerkraut with almost visible ribbons of beer. Raus, Ihr kleine Mäuser, raus. Juneteenth, later, crowning the most torrid month, when the scions of the former slaves celebrated their ongoing battle for freedom. Inquiry thereby becomes a ceaseless aspect of living, its complement a vital and vigorous sense of improvisation. Against meaning. Lacking any concept of the “body” beyond its being the locus of received sensations, his self-esteem derived mainly from what others identified in him physiquely. In your case your hair was never considered completely “good,” which was why she quickly picked your friend instead. Imagine: one’s fingers as the branches from which the fruits of one’s desires tumble. You hid but they had quit the game some hours before, thus in the end no one came seeking. The problem is one of choosing. Daddy was always eager to play catch, since he felt society expected this from a loving, caring father. A confidence that soared and a glovehand that fell, still there was no baseball near either. Duplicity has killed more Black men than gin. In a southpaw, what they appreciate most is this sort of “live arm.” From his mouth words rushed like richly fed rapids, leaving him ever vulnerable to ascription.

  RECORDS, ACCOUNTS, ACCUMULATION AS EXPLICATION

  The sun rose and the sun set yet he did not leave the bed. Eventually you would come to rationalize these events as minor flaws of character. A clue, alcohol. Blue barge of our sympathies, float past this scene of woe. Melodrama substituted for melancholy. Holidays, folks buzzed and flitted about like fruit flies, yet as a child you lacked the power to shoo them. Inevitably epithets would detonate upon the driveway’s head or a fist would soar through the air to its punch, but we grinned as if suspended, gay lanterns through the outplaying of each episode, for we realized only twilight could ensure a dimming of the hubbub. Absent of all of these kernels of drama those occasions might have proven less festive, although the bitter winter months would have departed sooner. Easter, that Christian estuary. Caps, scarves, and Afros bloomed upon their heads like versicolored, April crocuses. We took pride in showing off our newly made suits, which testified to our grandmother’s artistry. Old shoes with their patina of brown polish, old socks where the heels had worn threadbare. The photographs document the changes in the family’s sense of fashion, but reveal no more than a hint of the unraveling of its internal social fabric. Creditors calling night and day. Complain, and you might be blamed. On Thanksgiving after Nana had cleared the turkey and dressing and the turnip greens from the dining-room table, everyone would gather to play Po-Ke-No. The grown folks gossiped and argued over bid-whist or poker while we huddled before the prime-time specials. “Whatever you do, don’t touch the cards in the kitty,” a command that they learned to obey. No niggers, renegers. The reviled and unschooled “Mississippi” types. Perhaps there are exaggerations that enhance the flow of a few of these stories, but each, on the whole, constitutes a regime of truth. Fleur-de-lys. Needless to repeat, someone kept saying that the troops were coming home, though the news commentator’s words contradicted this. A disproportionate number from that neighborhood, crippled in combat. One still identified with him and wanted him too. If the number of your dependent children has increased during the weeks claimed, you must report to your local office to claim the dependency allowance. Around that time they found lead in the wallpaper. Maudlin malingerers, lingering madly. Consider: images of Vietnam, the assassinations, and Watergate bear that fuzzy, bluish-white glimmer, since nearly all your recollections of that era’s major events are but the residue of each evening’s televised diversions. Despite the activism the uneven terrain of history remains, the challenge, however, no longer to write the unrecorded story. What’s going on. The Vanderfords, meaning Big Preston and Cleo, kept a pen full of beagles, “the hunting dogs,” which were loosed in that collision with the trailer. Marion, sleeping at the time like a cat in sunlight, did not even suffer a concussion. Accidents, like epiphanies, deplete one’s store of metaphors. Pannonica. “Don’t think you’re getting away with something, ’cause I know you better than you know yourself,” so how were we, mere children, to respond. However, they polished off a jug of Koolaid by themselves and lay sick to their stomachs during dinnertime. In other words, innocence, no sense, a nuisance. Blind-slight rendered the story that he was beginning unreadable, thus he settled for staging wars between his miniature militias. One’s back is the stairwell to
the attic of one’s thoughts, or the pilaster shoring up one’s shoulder-eaves. And so in her elaborate mythology of action, if it was not uncouth it was unorthodox, and if not unorthodox, obnoxious, and if it did not fit within this carefully constructed rubric, then it simply was not worthy of expression. Given this as your premise, you were lucky to continue down the path of literature at all. Turner Hall Turnverein. And so, encased in each attempt to make himself heard lies the aim to site his personal development within the broader historical record.

  SIGNS, SCENES, A PSYCHIC TRAIL OF ASSIGNATIONS

  Sex, that sublime sum of bodily attraction, served as little more than one factor in the algebra of their juncture. Would they kiss, as they were expected to, or go further, as their parents hoped and feared. Chances are. Yet the light and the hours spun out to their end like spindles spinning free of thread. At the party, given to introduce him to manhood, his hips turned with Peggy’s like finely tuned gears. She was thirty, he fourteen. Lion of the Valley. Guilt hung around his neck like an asafetida bag, warding off all but the most persistent fantasies. “Don’t be bringing no babies into this house,” uttered as much to persuade as to warn. They seemed incapable of conceiving of gay or lesbian people, except in terms of slurs or epithets. A word is a sword that cuts with less effort, though the wounds will often last longer. The man in the hat and trenchcoat approached him in a way that was not considered quite acceptable. A sly glance, espied, from the corners of the eyes. Shame, and more of the same. Oppression is most effective when its aims are effected voluntarily. The one or two girls that you raised the courage to call wanted more than anything to be considered best friends. Still one dreamt up schemes to enter that schema, which conferred on its residents the validation of “normality.” She giggled, then inched towards the passenger-side door when your hand flopped fish-flat onto her thigh. Primitive parameters. Intuition provided the first step, information the second, until he realized that by combining the two he was creating a handy index of being. We were always the first to grace the dance floor, for our self-esteem derived primarily from others initially identified in us physiquely. Evonce. Boys should not flap their arms when they run downstairs, or cover their mouths when they laugh. Dignity is occasionally a byproduct of discretion. Let’s get it on. By focusing on his footwork, he could think of the men he had spotted on the street and still not lose his rhythm. Meanwhile, her shawl slid down unhurriedly, to reveal lightly lotioned, amber shoulders. Who had no idea of how to meet another, or how to love another, and this was before our current plague era. Things were rumored to occur in “The Loop” in Forest Park, where the curtain of trees kept most actions hidden. One need not overlook the beauty cast by a man’s hands, though as with women the face and lower regions usually garner the most attention. “Watch your date and not the other guys dancing,” he chimed to himself as reinforcement. Reality, that rude intruder. After the fingers reached the chest and the legs locked, everything proceeded much more smoothly. A soothing stroke. Your penis is a woodwind that some play better than others. What two men do. He sang but they hardly listened and so they could not repeat what they had heard. “Who can make head or tail of these so-called stories,” as if this were not the aim of your aesthetic. The fundamental instability of two lovers’ relationship becomes most apparent when they must live together, since cohabitation tends to magnify the sharpest edges of any personality. Avoid contact with magnetic surfaces. Of course we knew the general proscriptions for comportment, but being teenagers frequently failed to follow them, imagining ourselves nearly men, on the adult side of twenty-one. Fun after dark, though of the sort best enjoyed by one alone. Later that night their fingers passed from the Ouija board to each other’s shoulders, thighs, yet not one rose to flee the room or uttered a single cry. Accusations flew, but we knew. Straight, no chaser. Though effective as an initial strategy, transgression devolves swiftly into an end in itself.

  A FATHOMING BENEATH A FLOURISH OF NOTES, AN EXIGESIS

  Desire, among other things, derives its force from repetition, or so your general pattern of behavior would lead you to believe. Neither parent had initially expected such a fragile character, though they hid their disappointment beneath a flurry of activity. Ut natura poesis: autumn arrived to our wonderment, introduced by the river’s murmur. Stands of birches, poplars, shuddered with delight, as the park glimmered with the embers of Indian summer. Carondelet. His hopes and dreams were maturing with each subtle change in the weather, like the peppers she had suspended from the gaspipe. Ambivalence towards the cool and fleeting day, towards the cold and stolid night hours. Play your number. Your mother was extraordinarily attentive to gradations of demeanor, which allowed her to catalogue, to cope with, the frequent shifts in attitude. Comprehension does not hinge upon an image. The view beyond the patio too was transforming as through a kaleidoscope, changing daily its array of moods and colors into ever more awe-provoking patterns. Our dreams are but hulls for our souls. Every house had a dog, but only one dog had a doghouse. We would leap upon the car hoods when a mad dog came charging, or failing this we shimmied up the telephone poles. The authority inherent in each of these words never exceeds the dictates of practical truth. Then they would put on the albums or forty-fives and dim the basement lights, and begin to perform the newest dance. Such delivery, a diva. Everyone studied their moves with care so that at someone else’s house they would not slip up. In this way, a sense of tradition was nurtured, which others wrongly attributed to their “nature.” He was afraid of standing with his back to the curb, for fear that the unknown might seize him. “Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat, too scared to know where your shadow’s at!” After a certain age it was not considered proper to sew, just as it had never been appropriate to knit, and yet in late adolescence and adulthood he would require these skills, as well as the ability to darn. The cooler boys built their own go-carts, while the wealthier ones received scooters or velos, but for him a bicycle would have to suffice, even though it devoured his mother’s entire paycheck. With glee they assembled the roadster, the chief pleasure coming from the effects of the glue. Bakai. Brief observation of any personality proves that human existence cannot be reduced to a science. “Fat meat is greasy, dark meat is sweet,” which always induced a burst of laughter, since they were expecting what they had been promised, a few lines from an Augustan. By choosing and extolling certain models to the exclusion of all others, he sought to deny the impending crisis of his own self-representation. Beneath the brownblack thicket of your hair a trove of information lies waiting. Then they remembered how, after supper, their parents had read to them slowly, which taught them to appreciate the aural potency of words. Analysis entails a subtler mode of seeing. The concatenation of names rose like a conjurer’s prologue: Brazil, Liberia, Nigeria, Cuba, Eritrea. Silence poses a unique dilemma. Language leads to one bank, knowledge to the other, yet little prepares them for fording the teeming river of expectations. Who would say “bed” when “grave” was more accurate, who denied a distinction between “naming” and “calling.” Yet a great fear inheres in much of what was discussed, for something points to behavior that was “trifling.” The dyspeptic Confederate doctor, however, consequently wanted no part of his son, and so he named him after the demoted Union general before abandoning him altogether. Later the mythology would fulfill itself, creating a whole new myth of their paternal origins. Soulard Market. Of course she was overjoyed that she could pass as a Filipino or when tanned as a product of some “Caribbean island’s gentry,” a fact which they derided with snide remarks, though they secretly envied her “passport.” In D.C. or Atlanta is where you’ll find a real landed Black society, he recalled his father preaching, in scorn of the rivertown’s provincial elite. “And don’t you get no airs cause ain’t nobody stuttin’ you,” advice so sound that whosoever could might risk denying it. The threat and the promise, Palmares. Our generation lacks more than a cursory sense of the world that our ancestors faced, which surprises no one cognizant of
the contempt in which the nuances of history are currently held. The function and effect of titles, as in most cases of naming, however, depends on one’s ability to differentiate signs. Ornithology. And so, in an effort to make so many shorter stories richer, these overtures ought to be read as a series of extended annotations.