Bruce Wagner - Memorial

It would be better if he didn’t see Marj anyway. Probably just make her nervous. Besides, she knew

he wasn’t anxious to visit Mom after what had happened. Especially when he found out where they were putting her. He couldn’t believe it. Golden Grove: of all fucking places. That old devil karma, working against him.

Everything was conspiring to make Chess want to leave the country in a hurry. Some psychogroid had beat and violated his mother in a 76 station shitter. What the fuck. That’s what America was about: a horrorfilm rapeathon pileup. Listen to CNN: Wolf Blitzer talking about a commuter plane that went down and even though it was obvious he knew full well it was too early to get answers, the Wolfman was all necro’d out, breathy and methy and cockstiff for Death, husky-throated fratboy Peeper, a misery pimp hemming and hawing as he circle-jerked his pack of Nielsen jackals while they metaphorically peered through the submerged windows of a broken aircraft; he engaged on-retainer Talking Headless ghouls in redundant inane pointless dialogue, timekiller sexperts at dragging nonevents out for hours like Chess used to do when he snorted speed and flipped through porn rags. Jim Lehrer would probably have given it a minute’s worth but the Wolfman dragged Death and Time like a nigga tied to a bumper, police pursuit and arousal (speed-bumps relished for more pain), especially when it came to body recovery. They always got way hard whenever the moment came to say (coal miners/earthquakes/terrorist acts), The search and rescue has now become a recovery operation.

This morning, the headline shouted: LARGEST STUDY OF PRAYER TO DATE FINDS IT HAS NO POWER TO HEAL.

The Pentagon was blaming an antiquated computer system for the fact that it had hired collection agencies to go after stumpy, braindamaged, paralyzed soldiers for reimbursement of damaged “equipment” left on Iraqi battlefields.

Marj was probably going to get a bill for her reaming; he was afraid the search and rescue had now segued to recovery.

Wolf would be happy to hear it.

Fast food slow death nation.

LAXMI read about a zoo in Illinois that had a wake for the chief gorilla. All the apes filed by, sniffing and stroking the carcass, paying general respects. More dignity and nonbullshit nobility present than any human funeral he’d ever heard of.

THE more majorly free-floating pissed off he became, the more Laxmi tried to soothe. “It’s all about nonattachment!”—if you’re so nonattached, why still such fucked up emo re Suicide Mom and Molesting Dad? What am I doing. Why jump on Laxmi. Pull back, dude, pull back. You’ve been through too much. That stuff with your mom’s some sick, heavy shit. Pull back. The craziness with Marj, and Maurie…be glad your sis is handling it. Be very glad.

He did manage to find mystic comfort in letting the memory, if you could even call it that, of cubensis wash over him — compassionate teachings of the sacred shroom and Her imperial army. Tainted by more words from Laxmi and her avatars: one mustn’t get attached to anything, not taste, feel, touch. That’s gonna be tough. In India, the heat grew so strong that elephants sometimes drowned in the very ponds they jumped in to cool off. The great beasts, usually so careful about assessing water’s depth, got reckless because of their attachment to coolness and comfort, which proved fatal. So said Avatar of Unpronounceable Name.

You know what? The fuckin gurus ought to give elephants a goddam break. The gurus ought to check their own attachments. Tell me what my hoary, gerontic mother was attached to, to get herself raped in the Conoco head. Oh, right: she was attached to taking a shit then the rape-o attached some homeless lesioned pud to her fossilized mouth/cunt/anus. Jesus, who would want to fuck that? She looks like Mark Felt! And don’t tell me it was karma — there is no karma. Karma’s just some Catholic trip, Eastern-style. What’s karma got to do got to do with it what’s karma but a secondhand

devotion.

CHESS got the stones to visit “the Grove.” New carpets and lighting fixtures in the atrium. Lithographs he hadn’t seen during prior visits. Everpresent whiff of turds and urine and Lysol — you could throw money and pile on the designer touches but certain things you just couldn’t polish. As they say.

He was going to drop in on both of them: kill 2 birds, stoned.

Maurie was the same: some kinda tetraplegic, with only incidental blink of crusted eyes belying cognizance. Chess thought it a miracle his friend could breathe on his own, which he did, smooth and unlabored, without apparatus. That’s what felt eerie, dreamlike. It didn’t seem like he should be in such a state — waxy taut shinyskin, Schiavosmile, dandruffscalp, longish-nailed fingers beginning atrophied inward curl. Funny thing being that as Maurie “settled in,” so did Chess in his fashion; the tissue of guilt, warm diaphanous tube between he and bedridden friend, organic living bloodsausage umbilicus, began to dissolve. Maybe it was all part of a natural process, Time shifting and Space softening tired old concepts of accountability that maybe weren’t so solid (the gurus would say) to begin with. Shit happens never rang so true. In the words of the elegant old tribesman in that tsunami documentary: We remembered what our ancestors said, that land and sea always fight over boundaries. Things keep changing. Nothing is safe and intact. The earth rests on a gigantic tree that can be shaken by spirits blah blah but the dude had a point. Right? Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout. Strawberry fields forever.

Chess began to let things go. An audiotape Laxmi got him had some “tulku” (reincarnated being) saying that it was best to forgive, and if you couldn’t forgive then it was best to forget, forgetting was the next best thing. “Too much thinking about past or future created suffering.” Now, that was right on. He leaned over Maurie to beg forgiveness then ask him to forget. Forgive and forget, live and let love. Chess said he was going away for awhile. He told Maurie his mom died and he was moving to Hawaii or maybe Vancouver but would be back to visit in a few months, reflexively covering his bet against the astronomical odds that Maurie should wake up and start running his mouth. (If Levin was listening, and was in the know, he would definitely be confused that the Perp was announcing his plans to return to the scene of the crime.) He thought about the recent case of a fireman who was in a coma for like 20 years then suddenly talked a bluestreak for 16 hours before dropping dead a few months later. Anything could happen.

Soon they’d be leaving for Mumbai. He wasn’t sure what to call it— Moom-bye sounded weird. Peking/Beijing, whatever. Certainly was a strange turn of events. If you’d laid it out a year ago, the Jew and the Location Scout would have had a laugh (about everything but the coma part). Life was too fuckin strange and The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet only confirmed it; you’d never begin to be able to comprehend. That’s what Maurie was teaching him. That was our downfall — we thought we could understand. His own personal guru was staring right at him, or kind of, from the hospital bed, probably taking a crap at the very moment Chess was saying goodbye.

How beautiful and fucked up was that?

He changed his mind about seeing Mom.

He didn’t want to have that image in his head when he got on the plane.