Lance Olsen - Sewing Shut My Eyes

ERIC RESPONDS, “black code west boots levis turtleneck mirrorshades”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “no i mean really”

ERIC SAYS, “hey no fair.”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “…?”

ERIC ANSWERS, “jean black tshirt sneakers”

ERIC ASKS, “hey uu with me”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “tak em off”

ERIC SAYS, “???”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “u heard me go on”

ERIC SAYS, “as in realy”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “as in do it”

ERIC SAYS, “dun”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “ok jus a sec”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “so tell me what your doing right now”

ERIC ANSWERS, “sitting in my bed powerbook in lap its dark”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “cept for the glow from the screen”

ERIC SAYS, “right”

DIGITAL MATRIX ASKS, “dadd asleep?”

ERIC RESPONDS, “dead to the world. U?”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “at my desk next to my window lights off looking out”

ERIC ASKS, “what u see?”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “lonely city puddle on roof pink sky”

ERIC SAYS, “sounds sad”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “only i’m not in my apartment anymore.”

ERIC SAYS, “u’re not?”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “i’m in your bed eric putting your computer aside”

ERIC SAYS, “o’m runnjng my fingers througr your hair”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “straddling your lap reaching down hands warm”

ERIC SAYS, “i can feel it”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “i’m squeezing thumbing the tip”

ERIC SAYS, “reaching for your breats”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “nipples erect”

ERIC SAYS, “barely touching them with my tonge”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “mmmmmmm just like that i’m easing down”

ERIC SAYS, “and we can hear my dad in the next room”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “we’re rocking real gently sofly”

ERIC SAYS, “he cant hear us”

DIGITAL MATRIX SAYS, “but were colonizing his dreams”

SEATTLE: KEN: ALPHA

And so they made a date to interface two noons hence at the Naked Lunch, this cute little new red-and-white-table-cloth-with-candle café Alexis recently began to frequent in Capitol Hill because, they figured, it was time to meet on the grainy gray-and-brick streets of Seattle in the gritty Big Room. Because, Alexis knew, she had finally found (teetering on the very abysmal brink of her twenty-third year, not more than three months after swallowing the sour fact that she’d never find anyone with whom to feel anything save that she was talking French while he gobbled and clucked some version of Malayo-Polynesian) a sensitive, smart, and thoughtful guy who understood things the same way she understood them, felt things the very same way she felt them, as if the traffic lights on the corner of East Madison and Broadway had abruptly changed and they’d just stepped off the curb at the exact same second. This wasn’t, she told herself as she tried to work on her new series of triptychs, and discovered she couldn’t, obsessed as she was about what to wear (it had to be casual yet suave, hip yet fashionably non-threathening, black but not too black), and came up empty-closeted, something about the hoped-for future. No. Not at all. This wasn’t the abstract ether of the subjunctive, but the cold hard cash of the declarative. This was, she told herself as she tugged on her black tights and baggy black boxers, tied her maroon hightops with the dark green laces and clicked in place her matching choker, fastened her gaudy rhinestone earrings and puffed up her huge, floppy, maroon-and-olive-striped Cat-in-the-Hat hat atop her head, the bedrock on which to build an earthquake-proof edifice of safety, good feelings, and longevity. This was it , finally it, she told herself as she sat fiddling with her menu at the Naked Lunch, the moment of truth, cup of cappuccino steaming before her, the instant of enlightenment, twilit Saturday noontime shading the street beyond the picture-window into violets and pearls… at five past the hour, at seven, at twelve, at fifteen, her chemicals sizzling through her heart like so many luminous radioactive isotopes, her cliff-hanging apprehension equaled only by the big galoot of fear scratching its armpits and drumming its hairy finger stumps on the table beside her, breath a week-old morass of potential failure and loss — until, that is, that sugary, reflexive, plaque-filled smile buoyed up through the small sea of masticating mouths, artificial laughter, and burping babies, one of the most genuinely vulnerable and bewildered grins on a five-o’clock-shadowed deliverer-of-cigarettes-to-various-vending-machines-around-town face you are ever likely to see, and the firm fast realization swept across Alexis’s consciousness that this is how it would always work itself out, every time, pieces snapping into place when it no longer mattered whether they did or not, as Flynn pulled up a rickety chair opposite her, slouched into it, and waved at the approaching waitress for service, marrow-knocking whiff of patchouli in the air, while Alexis comprehended the concept of serendipity for the first instant in her life, really comprehended it, kismet, karma, providence, the way she had by chance been duped by a twenty-two-year-old musician and slacker in the warm gray glow of the matrix — and she sighed and leaned back in her own chair, a little less rickety than Flynn’s, a wide, glimmering, affectionate smile spreading across her lips like hope itself.

Because she understood that this was as happy as she would ever be, right here, right now, it would get no better, and so she wanted only one thing, really, longed for only one accomplishment: to savor its genuine sweetness and light till that moment in ten minutes or ten years when she would stand and walk out once more.

Daddy Grilling, His Head a TV Set

The dream won’t stop arriving. Every night. At the office, too. In the evenings with Mother & Uncle Billy & Panzer after dinner watching “My Three Sons.” In the dream, I have a golden doughnut. Sometimes it’s called the garden, sometimes a hair pie, sometimes where the monkey sleeps. But it’s always the same. It’s always there, mulberry moist & swollen. It’s always a miracle, like trying to imagine what comes after time & space. I spend hours investigating, palpating lightly as milkweed umbels, sliding in my middle finger, thumb & forefinger & middle finger, whole hand, arm to elbow, extracting a wedding garter, an invisible cat that won’t quit purring, three pennies, a 1927 Babe Ruth baseball card, an orb of light with iridescent bluebird wings. Then I feel someone tapping my forehead & open my eyes to magpies making bloody jam of my frontal lobes.

Uncle Billy in a Dress, Daydreaming

Oh! — it’s simply the most beautiful thing, isn’t it, dobos -torte sweet knowledge, because you can feel it underneath your smart dress & know it’s always there… when you’re eating, say, or when you’re talking to the postman, unfolding the Castro Convertible for well-behaved guests, pouring a cup of new & improved Tide into the washing machine, because you know it’s there & that’s the most indescribably stunning thing, it makes you feel free to know, no matter what you’re doing, vacuuming or head lowered Sunday morning, because its existence proves everything will be absolutely scrumptious, & I could stand up & dance, stand up & gambol this very minute, like Julie Andrews across the Alpine meadow, hair cropped short as mine, black-&-white dress a-billow like a penguin in billowing grass, arms stretched wide to the ambient possibility of music & to Disney executives at mahogany tables everywhere because, well, because I know I happen to look drop-dead gorgeous tonight in my carefully plucked eyebrows & tasteful, understated brooch that would make Jackie O. proud, neat as a just-turned-down bed: I could stand & dance while Nancy sweeps up her Kodak to capture this rich moment to share with the future, no matter what Robert is opening his filthy mouth to say, thinking you can’t see it but you can, opening his mouth to say across the room, lips parting, because what he says he says from darkhearted jealousy, never able to look as dreamboat perfect as me here, tonight, my spectacular secret alive between my meticulously shaven legs.