James Pate - The Fassbinder Diaries

But other sounds continued. The soundtrack dealt with 17 recurrent noises. Other recordings played through the foggier arenas. The wolves made volcano noises. The owls made bone noises. The snakes made June noises. The vultures made scarlet noises. The panthers made soundtrack noises. The bears made lunar noises. The butterflies made gunfire noises.

But soon afterwards I found myself dating this woman who played in this punk band, this group called Demon Flower. I can’t remember when we met but it must’ve been around Christmas that year because I remember that New Year’s Eve we’d been planning on going to this party downtown but ended up screwing the whole night instead and I had had just gotten out of the military and she’d just gotten out of an awful job in some shit town and Dick Clark, he was counting down the final few seconds of that year and she was standing on the bed against the wall and I was kneeling in front of her rubbing my face between her legs, and here I was, just out of the military, just right out of it, and there she was, no longer in a shit job and in a shit town. Then one year ended and one began. One night ended and another began. And millions of years had already ended and millions more were waiting. Each like an unmade bed. Each like a night in a shit town you never heard of. Each like a cot with a thin clean blanket. She stood there, her back against the wall, and I knelt there rubbing my face between her legs and licking and feeling, I don’t know why, but feeling like a cat. There was no new year and no old year. But there were some years and then other years. And the military. And the other militaries. And the shit jobs, and shit towns.

I’m on the train under Berlin. I’m on the speckled train. The strangers look like gardens full of glass shards. They look like graffiti from a fading silent film. I’d had this dream before. The first part was a wall. The second involved a door that stared out into a cluster of blood clots.

I was on the train, waiting. There were other parts of the dream waiting too. The strangers calculated one ride for every cloud in purgatory, one feather from every rubble, one sea for every beach. The strangers examined their hair and their hair and their mouths and their mouths. Under the lights they were naked the way rust is naked. They made sounds like cities passing over into sleep. Like subways with the brakes missing. They’d dreamt about their mouths for centuries. They swallowed over and over, to prove they had tongues. They blinked to prove they had skulls. They bit one hand among the many.

Visibility in the Catatonic Room.

We watched others play ourselves on the television. They were zombies with glue for faces or figures of glue with flat eyes. They waited for a cloud to trust in the vast blue noise. They disrobed except for their watches. When they were done with each other they drank wine and devoured cold chicken legs in the tangled and ghostly and champagne-colored sheets. I hear, among other things, your fingers with their crowns of blood. Among other things, a crown of dried air, another impulse toward frescos of shit.

The film critic returned to his apartment and checked his email and finished the last piece of chocolate mousse cake in the refrigerator and took a bath during which he listened to the couple argue next door. The film critic squeezed lemon over a salad that included spinach, tuna, and red onion. The film critic returned to the lobby of the hotel just as night was falling. The film critic brushed her teeth while standing in the den watching a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film critic told the woman he’d met at the bar that his uncle had been close to John Ford and even though it was not true it was quite a relief to say it. The film critic walked down a hallway that seemed to go on for more than a year. The film critic took his cellphone from his jacket with his heart beating wildly, his hands trembling. The film critic walked around St. Louis with a gun in her jacket as if expecting an event of possibly tragic proportions. The film critic slept. The film critic turned his face to the wall. The film critic poured another shot of bourbon and lowered herself into the bathtub, into the sudsy water. The film critic watched 2001: A Space Odyssey every Christmas Eve and had been doing so since he was twenty-three.

The film critic tosses a slice of tuna to his orange and slender and expectant cat. The film critic argues with her mother while watching Klaus Kinski stride about in the rain, violet flashes of lightning in the mountains behind him. The film critic walks through one hallway after another, hearing a cellphone ring behind a distant door. The film critic dresses up as a dead Marilyn Monroe for Halloween. The film critic pours a bottle of wine over her bed while arguing with her husband over the phone, it saturates the sheets, it dribbles on the wood floor. The film critic plays a Johnny Cash CD during intercourse with the woman he met at a midnight showing of Liquid Sky. Behind them is a table with four empty cans of beer and a deck of old Soviet playing cards. The film critic cuts her hair in the mirror. She cuts it short. Then shorter. From an apartment across the alley comes the sound of salsa music playing. It is 3:12 in the morning.

The pig is born as a bleat.

The pig is a knot of bleating sound.

The pig is the knot in the dark.

The pig is shivering in the dark.

The pig is smart.

The pig has a human wail and the pig has a human tongue.

The pig is the first noise.

The pig will be the last noise.

I am fond of pig parties.

I have been to many pig parties.

I have stood in the corner of pig parties, drinking tequila.

I have heard what they say about the flesh at pig parties.

I have heard what they say about the meat inside the skull.

The pig is said to resemble a thick kiss or a red kiss.

Or a yellow kiss.

Or a rose kiss.

I’ve been to pig parties where the walls have been the loveliest pink.

I have worn the masks and I’ve listened to the whispers.

And I’ve heard the stories of war spew at pig parties.

I’ve felt the dampness inside those parties.

I’ve smelled the ash that remains from those parties.

I’ve heard of the smoke that appears from no apparent fire.

There was always Pig Radio.

You can hear it later in the night.

When I listen I think of angels in pink surgical gowns.

I think of shaved cats that look like small pigs.

I think of shaved human heads that look like starved pigs.

I think of thin kisses followed by thick kisses.

I think of the parts of us that spew.

There are so many parts of us capable of spewing.

Maybe there will be more parts soon.

Parts capable of spewing further and further.

At some point we could spew and spew.

I want to leave the thickest of pink stains behind.

The pig is the cause of war spew.

Or rather, the pig is the dream that ends in war spew.

I’m neither here nor there.

I’ve been at parties, thinking of something else entirely.

There were countless noises coming from Pig Radio.