Directing Herbert White (3 page)

Utah

In Utah I have a driver named Jason. I drink

The sour black coffee he buys every morning

When we head to the old furniture warehouse

Called GRANIT FURNITURE. On the tan brick

Façade, above the square portals where the big

Trucks used to line their backsides and birth

New couches, the lettering angular and squat:

The G like a spaceship escape pod; the R-A-N

Missing. Inside, an exact replica of a real

Canyon in Moab, where I work daily, screaming,

Covered in corn-syrup blood and glycerin sweat.

Jason is large, like an eggplant. He's quiet.

He's just the driver and he drives. He doesn't

Listen to music or talk. Two months in, the movie moves

To Moab, four hours away, where Jason

Drives me, through sugar-dusted mountains,

Following the white box of a Fritos truck, its red

And yellow logo leading us through snow, winding

Snakewise like a hypnotist's icon. On my phone

I make videos that look like 60s home videos,

With static lines and scratches, bars rolling down

The screen: sky, snow, Jason, Fritos. On the other

Side of the mountain is desert emptiness, the sunset

Dipping and exploding on the horizon for twenty minutes.

Then in Moab, it's dark. It's Marlboro Country.

Second Grade

Mrs. D. was Mrs. Donnelly and I

Know that that means nothing to you

But to me it is a round woman

With a white bob and sharp nose

Like poultry parts.

And she was strict.

I fell in love for the first time,

Jenny Brown.

Adam Cohn loved her too.

One day we dissected fish,

And I thought of Adam when I took out the

Little guts and lay them on the tray like pebbles.

The smart kids could read whole books already.

They read
Charlotte's Web
and

The spider died.

But I couldn't read it yet.

I was still on the basics

Of sentences.

Jenny came over,

Our mothers were friends

And when the mothers left the room

We kissed.

Another time Jenny came over,

And I propped open the bathroom window,

And watched as she crouched

Girl-like on the toilet.

Jenny's father died when she was still little.

And soon after, Mrs. D. died,

Like the spider.

I'm a sensitive pig, rooting in shit.

Lindsay

Do you think I've created this?

This dragon girl, lion girl,

Hollywood hellion, terror of Sunset Boulevard,

Minor in the clubs, Chateau Demon?

Do you think this is me?

Lindsay,

Say it.

Say it, like you have ownership.

It's not
my
name anymore,

It's yours as much as mine.

So go ahead, say it.

Lind-say,

Go ahead you bookworm punk

Blogger faggot, go ahead you

Thuggish paparazzi scumbag

With your tattoos and your

Unwashed ass—

You couldn't get a girl

If your life depended on it.

Does me in your blog

Make me yours?

Do your pictures capture me?

There is someone

That I have a strange

Relationship to

That is called Lindsay,

They say she is me.

She's this strange actress

That was very

Successful as a child,

People even said

She was talented.

And then she did a sweet

Teen thing called
Mean Girls,

And then she did a lot of other things

That got her a lot of money

And a lot of fame.

And yes, she really was a mean girl.

But that fame raped me.

And I raped it, if you know what I'm saying.

How many young things selling movies and wares

And music and tabloids fucked the kind of men I fucked?

I was 17, 18, 19.

And everyone knew it,

But they let me in their clubs,

They let me have their drugs,

They stuck their dicks in me,

And now there is not much left of me.

What do I fear?

Itsy bitsy Lindsay.

And?

One night—the year

When all was right—

Before things got bad,

I was in New York

For the premiere of a film

I did with Robert Altman

And Meryl Streep,

After the movie I took James Franco

And Meryl's two young daughters to the club

Du jour, Bungalow 8

In the Meatpacking District.

It was my place.

All my friends were there,

School friends, my mother

Looking her slutty best, bodyguards and Greeks.

We had our own table

In the corner, our own bottle.

I took two OxyContins

And things got bad.

The DJ was this bearded dude

Named Paul,

I remember requesting

Journey's “Don't Stop Believin',”

I remember sitting back down,

And I remember trying to speak up,

To talk to that cute boy

In a red gingham shirt, James.

My words rolled around

And got sticky

And didn't come out.

My friend from school

Kept talking to him,

Trying to be cute,

But she was only there because of me,

I told Barry, my bodyguard,

To take her away from our table.

And he banished her.

I took James back to the bathroom.

“You know why Amy put mirrors

All around in here?”

“Why?”

“So that you can watch yourself fuck.”

He didn't fuck me, that shit.

And what was he doing there anyway?

On
my
night. My night with Meryl,

My night when everything was right,

When I got everything I wanted.

Almost.

I fucked one of the Greeks instead,

A big schnozed, big dicked,

Drunk motherfucker.

We did it in the bath.

That was the best night of my life.

IV.

The Best of the Smiths

Side B

1. This Charming Man

I'm Tom, age twelve,

On my bicycle,

I'd fly over the bike bridge to the school.

My retainer flew from my mouth,

And I let it lie on the side of the road.

My buckteeth flung themselves from my mouth,

My ears shot from my head like handles

And my nose was a blob.

Tom, will you go out tonight?

Age fifteen,

In the back of her car,

I tried it, just because—Sharon.

Because boys get with girls, right?

Even ones like Medusa.

Age sixteen,

I found I had the love life of the octopus,

Groping and grappling,

And after, slunk sideways back to my home.

I would go out tonight,

But I think I'll pass.

Just because.

Age fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,

Erica was with Sterling

All those years,

And I was on the sideline.

•

We all grow older.

But they won't.

Erica won't and Sterling won't.

Sterling, please.

At home,

Nineteen-ninety-three,

There are songs on my stereo that tell me big things,

And I have a religion about myself.

Kurt Cobain tells me

Where I'm going.

Sterling, there is
this
life

And there are afterlives,

And I'll see you in one of those.

2. Reel around the Fountain

In the parking lot,

In the 'stang,

After school,

Before his practice,

They kissed, hard.

Lips to lips,

Sharp teeth to sheep teeth.

A ritual.

Everyday, from then on,

I would watch

From across the lot,

One practice,

Then another.

I'd sit at the top of the bleachers,

Trying to sink into the wood.

Watching Speedos and listening to faggot jokes.

•

I have dreams of water.

I have dreams of fire.

I dream of blood.

I am all of these things.

I will never marry.

3. Hand in Glove

No other love is like this,

This special-special,

Because it's us.

When I see your chest crest above

The level of the pool,

It is Christ splashing through the blue

With a yellow ball

Here to save me.

And when I see you drive in your Mustang—

Arched behind the wheel,

Ray Bans,

Blond—

It's sexy Satan.

Graduation day,

I'll be gone.

And you,

You never knew me.

I'll keep a room

For you

In my mind.

There is a table, a chair

And a candle

That burns forever.

4. William, It Was Really Nothing

It rains.

Sterling,

It was only your whole life.

In this town,

You were king.

How could something like Erica

Capture you?

You are a force

And so am I.

Can't you see that thinking is nothing?

That school is nothing?

That family is nothing?

That girls are nothing?

I have some advice for you—

I am the center of all,

I am the core,

And all the movements you ever made

Were made to fit this poem.

5. How Soon Is Now?

I am my father's son,

Shy and vulgar,

And the heir of shit.

You say I do it all wrong.

I fill my days

With video games of love

And television shows.

Nineteen-ninety-five

Was a bad year.

You were everything—

I wiped you clean

With alcohol.

Now

I stand alone.

Something is going to happen.

Things will change.

I've erased the past,

I'm ready for the future.

For a future of
me,

Without the need for you.

It's gonna happen

Now.

But when?

V.

31

It was birthday thirty-one,

I was in Suffolk, Virginia, directing

A short film called
Herbert White.

We stayed at the Hilton Gardens,

The only hotel in town,

The rest are motels, rented monthly.

There are no restaurants, but plenty of strip malls,

Prefabricated houses and little swamps;

People sit in their cars in gas-station lots

And eat and smoke.

This is eating out in Suffolk.

The actor that fucks a goat in my film

Was home-schooled because his parents didn't

Want him to be subjected to drugs, guns and violence.

“And blacks,” I think.

Indian River, the school is called.

Ramone is his name, a handsome, dumb-faced kid.

There were baby goats; they ran around their pen on stiff, stumpy legs.

•

I've had good and bad birthdays.

And boy do they make me think

About when I was younger,

When I had no friends and my mom drove me to school

Because I lost my license drunk-driving, and we wouldn't talk,

We would listen to
Blonde on Blonde

Every morning, and life was like moving through something

Thick and gray that had no purpose.

And now I see that everything has had as much purpose

As I give it, or at least it can all make its way

Into my poem and become something else,

And in that way all that shit, and all those bad birthdays,

And the good ones are markers in an anniversary line—

And they carry less and less of their original pain,

And become emptier, just markers really, building blocks,

To be turned into constructions and fucked with.

They Called You Sean De Niro

On
Fast Times at Ridgemont High

They called you Sean De Niro

Because of your dedication.

An actor as engrossed in his role

As De Niro was in LaMotta;

You were Jeff Spicoli:

Surfer, stoner, prophet.

You were smart enough to know

Not to give too much:

That ordering pizza

In class was the move

That would last.

Spicoli (in his dream) won

Surf contests, and had babes

On his arms, and was asked:

“A lot of people expected

Maybe Mark ‘Cutback' Davis

Or Bob ‘Jungle Death' Gerrard

Would take the honors

This year,” and you said,

“Those dudes are
fags.
”

And decades later,

When he introduced you

For your nomination for
Milk,

The real De Niro, now your friend,

Said he couldn't believe you

Had been cast in all those

Straight roles, because

In
Milk
you were such

A fine homo.

When you and I kissed on Castro Street,

It was for a full minute.

Your face scratched like my father's.

Fake

There is a fake version of me

And he's the one that writes

These poems.

He has an attitude and swagger

That I don't have.

But on the page, this fake me

Is the me that speaks.

And this fake me is louder

Than the real me, and he

Is the one that everyone knows.

He's become the real me

Because everyone treats me

Like I'm the fake me.