Monument Maker, page 21
I have resisted the reveal but not very well; I am barely a thousand words in when I reveal that I had sexy calipers on my legs. I have sexy calipers on my legs. I had issues with my joints where I flopped this way and that. But with my calipers on, and my heels, I was statuesque, monumental. Boys would slide money into my sexy calipers. I would slide my panties off—I wore bikini bottoms that fastened at the side—I would slip my bra off, and I would dangle them there, from my calipers; too much.
Poetry is time travel, Danny says, and we are right back there with his saying of it. Poetry relies on a form of verbal ellipsis, Danny says, where two words next to each other speak of a gap between them, a secret burrowing, which is meaning, in time.
Give me two words, he says to me.
Calipers calipers.
Two different words, he says.
Sexy calipers, I say, and I roll up close to him in bed on the floor and smoke a cigarette on his chest.
There’s no ellipsis, he says, that’s a statement of fact. Calipers are sexy is a statement of fact, I say to him, but there’s poetry in it, I say, and I insist. Yes, he says, but sexy calipers in a poem? Easy, I say, first line: sexy calipers.
Now put some new words in, he says, Danny says to me to put some new words in and he says it right now, which is poetry as time travel, sexy calipers is poetry as time travel, but where is the ellipsis?
Just above the heart, I say, in the crease at the top of my thighs, I say, in the cute wrinkles around my eyes, I tell him, in the punctures in my leg where the screws go in; and now we have located poetry. We have travelled back there and discovered it in the past without the aid of an ellipsis, but still it feels like a secret trapdoor, that somewhere behind the words there is ingress.
But this is coming from the future too, this is coming from the lessons of the future, from scenarios we have yet to run up against, so press on, long-lost lover, and let me return to you with all that I have learned, and lost, and wept over; dry, silent tears are all that we’re allowed, up ahead, so let’s have a right good weep in the past and be done with it.
Maximilian Rehberg is an older customer with one arm who introduces himself as a writer and film-maker. He wants to film me in a film, he says, and he says of film what Danny says of poetry, that in it there is a gap which allows us to escape in time. My sexy calipers are an ellipsis, I tell him, between my legs is a gap, I tell him, that leads into time, ha ha that’s a good one, he says, you are a good dancer, he says to me, and I would like to film you.
There is a man who wants to film me, I say to Danny, there is a man who talks about poetry like you, I say to him. No one speaks of poetry like me, he says, and he takes a cigarette and holds it up to his forearm and goes ahead and burns a hole in his flesh just to make the point; the point which is, I am the sexiest poet and I mean it. But he agreed to have me filmed; I will chaperone you with this clown and we will see about his command of poetry, was what he says.
He calls my calipers my bastard wings. And right there I can sense an ellipsis. That’s no ellipsis, that’s doggerel, Danny says, there’s no poetry to him, but no, Danny, I can’t tell you, Danny, what it meant when he gifted me my bastard wings, he said to me, there is a rare genetic mutation that little birds have (and my little bird heart has taken flight) where they grow a second, mutant wing, which allows them to fly higher, and with greater dexterity, and they call it a bastard wing because it is fatherless, and to be fatherless, Maximilian Rehberg tells me, is to be truly free, spread your bastard wings, he said to me, right in front of Danny he says this, and he films me dancing and I fall over, I trip over on my calipers and I fall to the floor and Danny goes to help me up but, no, Max says, no, be quiet, leave her, he whispers, and he holds Danny back, it is sexy that he has left me on the floor and is holding Danny back, he is orchestrating, is the word, he is orchestrating, which is what I love most, I love to be orchestrated, even as I am struggling to get to my feet, I am orchestrated, I tell myself, at last.
Danny is discouraging me by buying me baseball boots. What does a stripper want with baseball boots? I say to him. You don’t need to be going around in these stupid heels you can’t even walk in, he’s saying. But what about my lovely pins, and the pins in my pins, don’t they deserve a pedestal, is what I’m saying in return, by my expression, only but not by saying it out loud, because meanwhile the mysterious Max Rehberg with his one good arm, his one overdeveloped arm, I might say, with his single powerful arm is gifting me lingerie in secret cafes in the New Town and posting me unsigned cards that read Still Crazy About You. And then he asked if he could film me on my own and I didn’t tell Danny and when I showed up he said to me, simply, I want to make love to you, I am crazy in love with you, I want to make love to you, and he mounted me there and then, in front of the cameras, pulled my panties to one side and with his single good arm held me tight against him and with his good fingers around my throat and the first time we made love will live forever.
And buying me stockings. Danny had never thought to buy me stockings, why would he, one look at those calipers and it seemed an improbable purchase, but here’s Maximilian, here he comes, with a pair of sheer silk stockings called Gypsy all in gift wrapping and he takes my calipers off, he removes my calipers like in Cinderella’s shoes, and he dresses me in black stockings and a suspender belt and then when he helps me put the calipers back on again he pokes a tiny hole for each of the screws in the silk and he made me think of how everything that is unworthy and not up to life and less than life was down to a failure of imagination, as he poked holes in my precious black stockings and screwed great bolts through the silk and into the flesh and then held me up, in his arms, and ravaged me; life, I said to myself, life this is it come take me.
Max started undermining Danny and it made me hotter still. He called him a little poof. What are you doing with that crap little poof? he would ask me. He’s a total poofter, he would say. Please. Plus, he has dreadlocks. He does not have dreadlocks, I explained, he just has matted hair from not washing it and it’s musky, I said, and I giggled, despite myself. But Max kept up with the whole white-guy-with-dreadlocks-poof thing and I would grin maliciously when he said it, that’s how quickly he turned me around. I felt devious, alive. Besides, I said to myself, Nietzsche says that we should live beyond beliefs. Well this is me, living.
People talk about the anima and the animus and how all of that stuff is discredited now that everything is up for grabs, but I felt it, I felt him animate the anima in me, which is animal, and feline, and there it is on film. They must exist, somewhere, still, these movies. In this era of collectors I am sure that someone specialises in me, and the films we made, and now, as I tell you my story, I am rediscovered all over again, but really I prefer the immortality of a movie without credits, of an unmarked film tin, of a silent short wherein I make love for the best time, forever, and have become a reward for the true seeker, a bottomless mystery he will never solve but that speaks to the spaces in his own heart, which can never reply, but pursue astonishment, and that is me, on a secret reel, at a car-boot sale; I am a silent channel in time.
But not here, not any more, not now. Now I am wording as I set up the little ellipses my legs signified in letters, in words I am bracketing otherwise inexplicable gaps in order that we may reveal the hoops that we need to jump through in order to get to there from here. I miss my mother. Is it unfashionable to say that? My mother who shot herself in the chest and lived and who then shot up a whole concoction of pills and that did it for her when I was bare fifteen years old, I miss her, my mother. She shot a gap in her own chest just to be done with the future. I come from a family of time travellers.
So now he is curled around me, now, his one good arm is around me, tight, tights, he loved my punctured tights, he sleeps with his cock inside me, he is still hard, it is wonderful and hard as he tells me a story in Edinburgh about seeing a fish for the first time and I say, wow, you can remember the first time you saw a slimy fish and is that because when you looked in the water you saw yourself there, floating, on the gauzy film of the fish, gauzy film is the key to things as they are, I am thinking, I am picturing this fish in its perfect pool, it must be a pike, or a trout, or a flounder, though at this point I don’t know a flounder but it sounds like the best word for seeing yourself as a kid and knowing that you are seeing, as a kid, through this seeing, I think is best described as a flounder, I would imagine, because I have no memory of my first fish, never mind my first reflection, but still, I am picturing this fish, in my mind, beneath a reflection, where Max’s cock is inside me and I am held in his one good arm, once again, in Edinburgh, and it’s like those salmon that dash themselves on the rocks as I remember us, us two, that was us, the two of us, us two, but salmon without poetry or fiction or myth or reality, salmon, in a pool, with no need of any of it, is us two right now, then he said to me, I hate the what-might-be, I only want the what-is, which is what he said art was, this salmon, beneath the still clear water as if it is no water at all, this perfect flounder, which is a conjunction, between what longs to be seeded and what seeds it, lover, you and I, is sexy with your cock inside me as I squeeze you tight, because he tells me that art is what sees what is, because it allows you to see deeper into what is, what is this flounder, this perfect salmon, in this perfect pool, which is pupil, right now, on the rings of his fingers, in the ring of my pupil is the rings on his fingers as he holds me tight, and it is a perfect salmon motionless in time, with no need for time or motion, and no need for any of them, not even a story like the one I am unfolding, because I am delicate that way, because ideas allow us to see things as not ideas, which is sweet, and which is lovely, and which is a flounder, is the idea I have given it, which is no idea, at all.
He told me he had been initiated into a Sufi order in Africa, a Sufi order that practised Qutub meditation, which is one-pointed meditation, which is three, really, but we’ll get to that, and which is also known as the Stone on the Water, and he said that when he did it he could come with no hands and I said to him, that must be handy, and he said, no, I could still come with my one good hand, he said, it doesn’t as if it makes anything easier, he said, and then he said that basically you come in your brain and up your spine and out your third eye and your jap’s eye at the same time, only but when you come you comes with the force of a snake, spitting, and you comes on your own forehead, often, that’s what he says, what he says is that you come with velocity and with force on your own forehead, on a regular basis, was what he said when he said that and the first time he did it he said that he couldn’t believe it, he had been initiated into this Sufi sect who told him that the heart centre was located between the ribs, maybe between the fifth rib, I think, maybe, he said, on the left-hand side, and what on earth would they put a heart there for, but what happens then is you say to yourself that you will turn your attention to the heart centre, which is really when you turn your attention to the ribs, to that ticklish bit in the side of my ribs always gives me a giggle, and then you say that while you do that, your heart centre, which is the ticklish bit in your side, isn’t it, which turns its attention to the source, is what he said, which is the light of death, is what he said, which is called Monument Maker, he said, and I said, wow, and then you focus on that point, he said, and then you sit in meditation and then you turn your attention to the heart centre and it turns its attention to the source, which is holy, I might add, and suddenly you feel it surging in and through you and what it is triggers something at the base of your spine, I believe to be a chakra is the word, and you feel the energy rise, with every breath you feel it rising and rising and oh my God it is coursing up your spine, like water seeking its level it is slowly peaking up your spine and it feels like light, like ticklish light, and he taught me how to do it, and he said that when he told his inductor (because I believe you have to have an inductor in order to get the initial connection to the source, I believe it has to do with lineage, is the word), that when he told his inductor what was happening, that his cocked popped every time he meditated—I almost said mediated—that his inductor told him he had better stop, that he was messing with powers he knew nothing about, he said, and that it could damage him, well, but that’s what they said about masturbation back in the bad old days, he said, and he left them right then and there, or was he kicked out who knows, so that he could just as well practise on his own, and though I never saw him do the solo coming-with-no-hands thing, he did come inside me with no movement at all and it was like a snake spit in me with force all the same, he would sit in a meditative state, with his legs crossed, and when his substantial cock would rise I would mount it and wrap my legs around his back, I would place them there with my hands as they might’ve flopped this way and that—was what he liked about them, sexy flesh—and we would hum vibrate together without moving and he taught me about threes, why the number three was mystic, and it was because man cannot approach the mysteries alone and unveiled, was what it is, man needs a proxy or an interface, so it was 1-1-1, which was 3, the mystery of the intercessor, was what the word he called it, and when we would come I would feel like crying and couldn’t walk all over again although of course I didn’t have my calipers on because of the position but all the same I said to him, but it’s 6, surely, because I am 1-1-1 and you are 1-1-1 and that makes 6 and he said, yes, that a cube had 6 sides and what with me forgetting the top and the bottom I only went to say, no, but that’s only 4, but then I was right, it was 6, and I said to him, what’s so special about numbers and he said, well, how could I have called you to take naked pictures of you and to make movies of you and to mount you, he said, even though right then it was me that was mounting him, he said, how come any of that could happen without numbers and I thought, numbers without end, give me numbers without end, and he said, no problem, because every number is infinite, which I just couldn’t understood back then but of course what he was really saying was that there was no difference, but that it took infinite numbers—1-1-1—3—in order to realise that, and I thought, didn’t they say the same thing about monkeys, about infinite monkeys, and he told me he loved me and wanted a threesome with me every night cause I was so damned cute, was what he said, and I knew that the threesome was me, and that me and him was a whole other threesome altogether, threesomes on threesomes, and that there was literally no difference. I hope I haven’t given anything away that I shouldn’t have. I don’t know if these Sufis have to sign up to some kind of disclosure agreement, but you and I are a sexy ellipsis, I says to him, all the same, and just like the best poetry, we come with no hands, and with no movement.
I’m never going to fall for a stance, Max said to me, because ideas are there to cure you of ideas altogether, and I said to him, I’m stuck with ideas of myself, and he said to me, that’s your problem, and he shrugged, and I thought he was being rude but then he said, no, I mean it like that’s your problem so don’t let anyone else take it away from you or solve it for you or feel sorry for you because of here you have it, he said, say to them, that’s my problem, and own it, he said, only he didn’t say own it, that’s me saying own it, he wouldn’t have said own it, he would have said: embrace it. But that’s what he meant by compassionless love; this beautiful, tender embrace. He said that he refused to solve anyone else’s problem out of respect, was what he said, out of respect for the person’s problem, and the gifting of it, wow, I said, the gifting of it, this is in the winter in Edinburgh where I could barely pay the electricity meter in the snow-cold winter cause I had moved into a garret is the only way to describe it, and Max had given Danny a right good pasting, and gifted him a whole new set of problems, and me too, cause of I had to find somewhere new to live and I refused to move in with Max, at first, I refused because I wanted to be my own independent, I was fierce and shy that way, and so I got a place in a roof with leaking tiles and which I had to clank up into like Frankenstein, and Max is visiting me there, after giving my boyfriend a right good doing, and I had laughed, I had laughed wickedly while he gave him a kicking with one arm, I had laughed and got turned on and wanted him to fuck me but in motion, this time, in motion of great thrusts only I had early endometriosis so really deep thrusts were painful and ecstatic at the same time, which is exactly what Max was teaching, only this time in bed was where the teaching was taking place, and I thought about my calipers and the nature of my problem, which had led me to this garret under a roof where he fucked me senseless and the first plate I made had a picture of a fish on it, which was a flounder, which I found out what it looked like, underwater, and coming up for air, and Max said to me, well, what kind of an idea is that, being underwater and coming up for air at the same time, and I said to him, it doesn’t matter, I’ve cured myself of ideas now, and I walked off like into the sunset.
Max was in Edinburgh looking for a film that one of his friends starred in but when he fell into a love affair with me he extended his trip. He told me he rented some rooms in a house in Grez-sur-Loing (Stone-on-the-Water) in France that some of his friends had, but that he was often on the road. I’m a career adventurer, he told me, but what he didn’t tell me was that he was also a gun for hire, half of a science fiction writer and an amateur theologian with a bunch of published texts to his name with sexy names about God.
