Mark Doten - The Infernal

In Dupont Circle I want to feel the presence of the cats of my life, the gray one and the orange one. They came to me my first year in Dupont, but now they’re gone 4CBQT1O BE=RMRF

I am telling you: I’ve had life-friends (Bill, Pretty Pauly, Helen, Sue) and life-cats (gray, orange) and I drew them for the ads I mocked up for me and my brother’s political consulting company. A dozen phony campaign ads, which are pretty sweet, or so says Helen. But everyone has more clothes than me!

In 1996 we come tumbling up out of the Red Line, white shirts, backpacks, and ties.

In 1996 we race through the sycamores of Dupont Circle and don’t see the sycamores. We dart between the sedans of Massachusetts Avenue, our train — the train we arrived in! — thundering somewhere under us.

Now it’s ten years later, and we’re in the briefing room, or some of us are. But it never lasts. Boys get elevated, and they think it will last, but no. Then it’s just Dupont Circle again, and the luxury vehicles, and the sea, the wind, the stars. And some boys are here, and some there, and there’s always new boys, and there’s always also the noose.

In November I hate my life-cats.

In February I miss them: the gray one I gave away, and the orange one who’s not the same. What I miss in the orange one is the way he was before. But they were always up there fighting in the trees, what was I supposed to do? They were tearing the shit out of each other, fur tufts like cherry blossoms drifting down.

In November the Senior Advisor makes some calls.

In November it’s my turn in a swank apartment.

Each morning I show up early to the briefing room with my trusty notepad.

The swank apartment says no cats allowed. But I bring them anyhow in a cat carrier I made. I tell the Senior Advisor, listen, you’ve got a lot of friends, but you know what I’ve got? Life-friends. There’s Sue. There’s Pauly, who yes I do hate him sometimes, but there’s reasons. Then there’s Bill, who was my boyfriend until you came along, so.

The Senior Advisor: I did not tell you to split up with your boyfriend.

Well it’s not like it was really working anyway! I say.

In 1996 we see cat prints and the crypt, we draw up our new life stories, build friendships in the House and Senate offices. Our shirts so white, and we press them every morning.

In January I get called on, I stand up with my notepad and ask a question, and boys in newsy caps won’t stop shouting about it.

In January all up and down Pennsylvania Avenue they thrust their papers in the hands of men going by and shout about everything I ever did wrong.

A thousand cats yowling overhead.

In January, February, and March I tick off the names in my Rolodex. My brother has to laugh— Brother , he says, you are connected.

In February the Senior Advisor takes up with Pauly.

In January he drops me.

In April my brother says, I can really only spare like forty bucks. He says, It’s a little tight right now.

My brother’s the best thing in my life.

Maybe someday he’ll move out here.

In October my eyes go wide and I say wow I haven’t eaten out in such a long time.

In October I say this is the best food I’ve had in so long. I wear the old white shirt and tie and the Senior Advisor reaches out and tousles my hair. He calls me crazy boy. He says, You’re going to make me insane. I’m not sixteen anymore, I’m twenty-five. I’m not a shirt and a tie on the floor of Congress, I’m just another shadow slipping between sycamores in Dupont Circle. But I feel so comfortable. He gives me money and takes me out places. I drink infused vodka, jump on the bed, learn the names of staffers. I lie back on his bed, and he says, Let me take you home. He means let me suck your cock.

We’re stuck in Dupont. You can’t leave, not really, even if you get a swank apartment. Soon enough you’re back, slipping from tree to tree. One day me and Billy and Pauly decide to find the way out — investigate how to get out of Dupont Circle for good. We all get out our trusty notepads, and then we have to laugh. We’ve all spent time in the briefing room. Maybe the notepads are part of the problem! So we throw them in the trash. Pauly says we need something all new. He says he’ll make us business cards.

But somehow we don’t find the way out. We spend a whole week investigating, but we never find it. And Pauly doesn’t make the cards — or he does, but it’s just our names and question marks, and what does that even mean?

We were pages once, and we were beautiful. Now we’re here. But maybe there’s some new use for me? For all of us, or most all of us?

That’s why I’m making my consulting firm. Maybe it’s K Street we’ll find our home?

In March it’s slim binders at the copy shop, plastic sleeves, eighty cents apiece on color prints. This is when the last of the ads is finalized. The cover shows three guys in funny hats pointing at a tree. There’s this word cut in the bark, Croatoan. That’s a historical word.

That word means something to me and my brother, it means something to our consulting firm, and it means something to AmericJP4+K SBMS11 61H XT

In 1587 Sir Walter Raleigh, intending to persevere in the planting of his country of Virginia, prepares a new colony of 150 men to be sent thither.

In January they churn out stories about me.

In January they won’t shut up!

Even when they get it right, they’re wrong. But I try to put a good spin on it.

I think how my face might look on TV, eyes cast up, and real cherry blossoms, so much torn pink and white, hitting my eyelashes. And the shadows of the sycamores that cut your cheeks until the wind comes along, until it shakes the patterns from the trees.

It’s March and it’s two in the morning, and sometimes I hurt people. It’s kind of cold out. Sue says: Why are you here? Why’d you come to Dupont Circle tonight? And I say, Well why did you? And she says she wanted to see how it looked empty. Not just when we were hiding, but totally empty. Because if it could just be empty of us boys for one night, she says, if she could just see it like that, well: maybe she could imagine a future with nothing to do with Dupont Circle, with the men who pick us up, who drop us back off.

I gave you money! she says, I saved up and gave you all money so you’d all have something else other than this! For one night!

She says, Don’t you want to stop all that? Hiding in the trees? Going in cars with men?

I say, We don’t hide. That’s the part you’ll never get.

Just because you can’t see us doesn’t mean we’re hiding, I say.

This is where we live, I say.

And sometimes you can’t see us.

Are you crying? I say. We’re sitting on the curb, knees to chin, lights cutting past in either direction. It’s pretty cold. She says: You all promised not to come here tonight, this one night!

I listen for the cats in the trees. Mine and all the other boys’.

But there’s nothing — nothing I can hear.

I say, I’m sorry I let you down.

In 1986 me and my brother catch a TV special, The Mystery of Roanoke. The voice-over’s so deep! like a dead person sunk way down in the ocean. They run quotes from the search party. The word Croatoan interrupts me and my brother, our normal lights-out talk.

We say the word — say it over and over. We lie in pitch-black beds chanting it until we’re terrorized into fits of giggling and shushing. We call out to the lost and long dead. We mark ourselves to be vanished.

In April the Senior Advisor says, I don’t want your ads, are you fucking crazy? I say, I just need you for a reference. Just for the sales kit! No one’s going to see them but me and my brother’s clients.