Lance Olsen - Sewing Shut My Eyes

He plummets like a starfish.

You wait one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three.

He plummets like a car heading through the railing in an action adventure.

There is no white bouquet of chute, no slowing of momentum, no noise save the whipping of wind far above the tiny red, white, and blue dot.

You watch him begin to flap his arms, a little at first, then harder and harder.

77. UNCLE BUDDY’S PHANTOM FUNHOUSE

Teenagers believe they are immortal , says this Rod-Serlingesque voice as the camera pans through the wooded night, which is clearly a Hollywood day seen through a special filter, fake car lights wobbling through fake pines on a lonely fake gravel road. They believe nothing will ever happen to them. They live on their own psychic planet in a world where deodorant, hair style, jeans length, acoustic preference and mouthwash products matter deeply. They sleep profoundly, steadily, having all the dreams they should have… except these five teenagers on their way to this desolate farmhouse somewhere in upstate New York, who are under the false impression they are moving through a sexual and psychic rite of passage called a Wild Weekend at Uncle Buddy’s Hunting Cabin that will involve alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, not to mention certain acts of unprotected mildly illegal bodily combinations, will die tonight, and die horribly, one by one, mostly in nothing but their underwear, their breaths a hive of plaque and pre-gingivital fear at the hands of

183. RUBBER WIG: CHILDBIRTH: HOMICIDE

“I’s a killer,” announces weeping Bobbie Joe Sue Alice Mary Bobson, who according to the ID at the bottom of the screen is a seamstress living in a trailer park in northwestern Florida.

Her hair reminds Kerwin of whipped cream in its hue and shape.

She will be buried in a piano case, it occurs to him, she’s so fat.

“Share your pain with us,” urges psychic healer Abbey Rode, whose hair reminds Kerwin of a red rubber wig. Abbey has that slack-muscled serious-yet-utterly-accepting face that only drugged children and talk-show psychic healers have. “We’re here for you.”

Abbey reaches out and pats Bobbie Joe Sue Alice Mary on the wrist.

Bobbie Joe Sue Alice Mary snorfles.

“My stepfather and his minister done abused my second cousin Pattie Bob Anne Frankie Patson when she was eleven.”

“Sexually?”

“Snorfle snorfle.”

Pan to empathetic audience faces riveted by the drama unfolding before them.

“What happened?”

“Done got her with child.”

“Pregnant?”

“Snorfle.”

“What happened next?”

“I didn’t know none of this till last year, see. Only one night I’s sittin’ in my hot tub out back with my boyfriend Billy Ray Tom John, and Billy Ray Tom John? He turns to me and says somethin’ real rude about my weight and all displacing the water and pretty much emptyin’ the tub out, so I’s feel liken to kill him. And then it all comes afloodin’ back.”

“The water?”

“The memories. All this red and purple. Scares me something awful. So I’s of course calls the Psychic Healer Hotline.”

“And one of my Hot Helpers talks to you… ”

“Betty Earla Clarissa Lisa Simpson. Yep. And they knows somethin’s real wrong right away, havin’ second sight and all, so they’s pass me on to you.”

“Dhambala be thanked.”

“Snorfle snorfle snorfle.”

“…?”

“And then you and me, we come to meet and all and you redresses me to my former life and all, only afore we get there I take this what you call it detour and sees me afloatin’ in my momma’s womb… only I ain’t alone.”

“You’re not?”

“I got me a brother I ain’t never heard about. I’s never had no brother before, see? I can tell he’s my twin. He’s in there with me. And then I start rememberin’.”

“…?”

“He done raped me in my momma’s womb. Every day. I’d just be, like, hangin’ there and he’d come up and whump me and have his way with me and all. I’s become my twin-brother fetus’s sex slave. It’s… snorfle snorfle… herbal.”

“Herbal?”

“Turbal.”

“Terrible. Yes. What did you do next?”

“I’s takes it at fust. What’s a baby-girl fetus gonna do? Only then, as my brain and amatomy develops some more and all, I’s starts aplannin’. Float and watch. Float and watch. And I’s wait till he’s asleepin’, see?”

“…?”

“It’s night time, I knows, cuz I can hear my cousin-momma outside snorin’ like a chainsaw gnashin’ on a metal flag pole, and I real careful like just reach over and slip his umbilical cord round his neck, see? Never forgets the way his eyes sorta pop open, neither, all filled with surprise and hurt and all, and how he just starts aflippin’ and aflappin’ ‘round in there like a hotcake on a griddle. Only thing is? Thing is, more he struggles, faster he dies.”

“You murdered your own brother?”

Pan to shocked audience faces.

“We was born premature, him and me, only I done survived. My momma never told me about him, except I knowed. I’m a survivor. Been survivin’ fer near a ten hunert years.”

“Ten hundred… ”

“That’s who I is. Ever since I’s fought the choppy Atlantic waters so me and my kin could discover Vinland.”

“Vinland?”

“Vinland.”

“As in… ”

“That was me in my purvious life.”

“The New World?”

“1000 A.D., give er take a month or two. Yup. Ol’ Chris Columbus couldn’t find a possum in his own britches… ”

222. PLAY: SIN

Not long ago our culture believed play was a waste of time , an avuncular announcer’s voice says, a distraction from the truly important matters that kept a society whole and functioning. Some even regarded it as a punishable sin, the devil’s work that chipped away at serious moral pursuits. But now most psychologists believe play is a necessary part of growing up. It helps children develop healthy attitudes and bodies. It paradoxically instills a sense of following rules and allows a chance for children to vent their excess energy. Recreational activities teach children to get along with others. The personality of a child grows as he or she learns new skills and develops confidence in sports — motor, sensory, or intellectual. In competitive games, he or she learns how to lose gracefully .

59. THE GREAT WHEEL SPINS

The great wheel spins. The audience shouts. The game show host smiles confidently. Mabel Utta, sixty-two, from Dayton, Ohio, with a son in the Navy, jumps up and down, her fat chugging, and claps her tiny hands in glee.

1001. PRIME: TIME: LIVE

6. ART: CRIMES

Yeah, well, um… this is it? We startin’?… What? Oh. My name is… my working name is Zondi. No. Just Zondi. No. Fuck the parental-naming thing. That’s all about social control and shit. I was raised in Hackensack, New Jersey. I live on the Lower East Side now. Yeah. I’m a performance artist…. What? Yeah. I knew it was my calling for like friggin’ forever. When I was thirteen or something I saw this thing in this underground zine about this woman who performed surgery on herself and televised the operations around the world. I forget her name. She’s dead now, I think. Liver transplant. Only I knew then I had what it took to be a performance artist…. What? Oh, so no, the fucking bourgeois art establishment wouldn’t accept me. That’s the thing. That’s how it all started. Fucking tight-assed fuckheads. I couldn’t get in to even like a single art school. They said I didn’t have no talent cuz I couldn’t draw or paint or nothing. So I said fuck that. Those guys’ conscienceness is like the size of a gnat’s butt. I majored in communications. Which is what took me to Fairleigh Dickinson, right, which is this nest of cheesy reactionary fascists. They flunked me in math and social sciences and composition and a couple of other things I forget. So I said fuck that. I’d make it on my own. Which is what took me to the city, where I met Mongo…. What? Right. Just Mongo. He’s a good guy. He thinks and everything. He once studied with what’s-his-face. And so he introduced me to the idea of AIDS… Arts In Denial & Shit… which it deals with art that denies it’s art and all, you know, as in graphic design, only that gave me the idea for my magum okus…. What? I’m nineteen…. What? One-point-two million. Yeah. So anyways, I go to myself: fuck the commodrification of the arts on the fins of the millemmium. Fuck the fascist market. Fuck art dealers who wipe their asses with the masters like, you know, everybody. And, blam, right there in this nice café on the Lower East Side this cool post-strucuralistic concept of my magum okus hits me: NOT. Get it?… What? Right. So I decide I won’t create a fucking thing for the rest of my life. See? That’s my project. It’s an act of negation deal, like. No paintings, no sculptures, no lithographs, no videos, no mobiles, no prints, no assemblages, no collages, no sketches, no nothing. See? I might do it with a punk rock band too. It’s a statement…. What? I don’t know. What you think it means?… What? Sleep late, I guess. Listen to music. Last year I took up sailing… right after I joined that yacht club thing over on Long Island… which is pretty cool. I really like tv. Cartoons, mostly. “N.Y.P.D. Blue” has a very naturalistic perspective on our fascist society today which is pretty cool…. What? Sure I got a VCR. Who doesn’t?… What? Yeah, I guess. It’s okay. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it at all. Lately I’ve been thinking about taking up teaching. I figure maybe it’s time to give something back…