Visionary Losers Exploring the Perils and Power of Sado-Masochism.*

“Salem?”
“Ma’am?”
“You’re at least a few centuries older than me, weird one, don’t call me that. And where are we go-ing?”
“Woods.” On pops a spotlight. I can now see one circle covering shifting dimensions in the trees ahead of us; that and his practically stiff-with-grease do.
“I’m guessing you’ve already taken this into consideration, but I’m a little scared of the woods at night. Especially being here with you since we’ve got a kinda Stewie-and-Lois dynamic.”
Dismissively, as though I’m petering away his Q time talking about superstar nose jobs or toe lint, he says, “I’m not going to kill you tonight. Now shut the fuck up lest you scare it off. What -- whah …. J? Jane! Where are you going?”
“In the other direction. I’m not following you into thee dark toward some skittish creaturely IT you won’t describe. Due to the entirety of our relationship which hit its noxious crescendo just over one month ago, I do not trust you. So, I’m -- OW. What are you doing!”
Pained exclamatory: rhetorical. What he’s doing is spinning my hair around his wrist like a bracelet, pulling me toward the bobble-face light. Glaring back/down at me. “I’m performing literary CPR on you, ingrate.”
“How so?”
“Even though you are currently blaming your whole passel of weak-heels on me and therefore not trusting me, is it safe to say I still know you better than anyone else?”
All the old familiar animosities. “Yeah.”
“And I know you have to be obsessed with something to be functional and right now you’re not trusting me to provide any captivating material -- problem being your lack of faith rather than my, ahem, impotence, just want to say -- and I don’t like you obsessing over someone else’s muse.”
Even through the feeling of minor, wet eruptions on my scalp where the hair’s being tugged too hard, I laugh at him. “Still jealous of Heath?”
“Still annoyed at you calling him by his first name, still about yay much cheesed at you doodling your little figurative hearts all around him when you’re on the clock working for me. Yeah, Jesus, annoyed with the whole thing.”
“So what you’re saving me from, just to make sure we’re on the same page, is watching the Dark Knight DVD I bought with my own money that I’m excited to see because I’ve been waiting for it, like, three years now.”
“Your math is a concern. No, I’m saving you from fading into the mist thinking that I don’t have anything decent to fork over anymore, compromising yourself anymore than what you already have or -- in terms the lay-lady might wrap her arthritic brain around -- staring night after night at the product you consider to be the pinnacle you will never obtain. Do you know where the B to that A lets off, sweet fingers?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Annihilation. Failure caused by ceasefire. An utter waste of raw human material.”
The woods, I notice, are metamorphosizing. Turning into a barely shuddering scene from what I would describe as a communal fantasy of Christmas. I know its still nighttime, the way in dreams you sometimes know that you’re you even when you’re helming a different body. Now, I can see the sky-high Evergreens with white crisp bristles and holly berries that look more like plums, the snow that isn’t uncomfortably cold. Looking at it, rather than him, I say, “I do still trust you, dear. You know that.”
“Then why the dodgy attitude lately? Why all the edging me out when I try to talk to you at night -- which is the only decent time we have, by the by.”
Jolly, lithographic shit untold. There are blue jays and gray squirrels darting around, all chipper with stuffed cheeks and swimmy eyes. The eyes, I would guess, were designed to elicit coos like Hallmark cards that cost more than most paperbacks, but they actually cause the critters to look like emasculated, coked-out rodents. The whole ordeal of it makes me want to go back to the dark part of the woods. There’s something more acceptable about being aquiver over things you don’t see than things you do.
I sigh. I explain to him, “Because I don’t see the virtuous upswing in faith. It takes too much energy to develop it, and by definition, you’re spending this energy backing a venture that may or may not make it out the gate. Whose odds of making it out are incalculable even to people who can add past the point of fingers and toes. Having just suffered a collision so hard that my spine feels skinned, while on my faithful way toward these delusional nothings you kept whispering in my ear, it bothers me that I still have faith in you. There are a few small samples of evidence, but they’re few and far between, mostly collected from a bygone frame of reference. And I don’t like the reason I have faith in you.”
“Which is?” He seems to be in love, though from an obvious distance, with the Christmas trees of his own creation. His lips are tight together, his blueberry-stain eyes turning hard, turning cold. In one transient beat, my heart puffs out to full capacity as I notice this familiar devious expression taking him over. Patter, patter, patter, then back to its stymied reflexes. Jane back to warily eyeing this still footage from a Thomas Kincaide.
“That without you, I’m essentially a borderline personality with allegiance for hire, no center, no backbone, no context for related or unrelated morals. Nothing. Huh? Oh, yeah. Hahahahahahahahaha. I’ll write it down in a second. Anyway, like I was saying --”
“Like you were saying be reamed. Who were you just talking to?”
“Nonya, last initial Business.”
“Is that Charlie? The funny muse-guy? Dammit, Jane, you told me you weren’t seeing him anymore and we were exclusive.”
“No. What happened was I told you that I had to keep my options open since my future financial success is predicated on me selling something people like and that, therefore, you and me pal had an open relationship. You said no and threw a hissy. I pulled rank since I’m the person and you’re the figment, you did what you always do when we have a disagreement, you tried to kill me. Things were said. We hated each other for a week and then there was that steamy re-linking where I wrote for you until, like, four in the morning.”
He all but smiles. “Yeah. That was all right. But why are you talking to him now?”
“He’s gone, don’t sweat it. He’s helping me finish the comedy thing I was working on before. I’m going to give it what I’ve got, cross las digitas, hope that the change in direction will sorta jumpstart things and get a foot in the door. You never know, and NO -- Charlie is not a destination, not like you are. He is a means to you. Which should tickle you half to death, Egolo Jack.”
The corner of his eye is already filling up with something I can’t see. He beckons me to follow him into a thicket with a skateable surface. We’re barely on it when a chilly blast knocks me off of my feet, onto the glass. Fissures outward like veins. Intently, I search the world from my lowly angle, looking for whatever this it we came to see might be.
“Hey, do we …”
And then, thanks to the bastard’s stance and the aftermath showing in his eyes, I realize that he, rather than some amorphous riddle, hit me.
“Son of a bitch! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Beating you up. Oh, and in homey holiday surroundings. Which you could probably concentrate on for two seconds, entirely change your frame of mind and eliminate me. I wanted to drag you here just so you’d have to look around at it and realize this while I beat you up.”
“Weeeeeell. I’ve got to say, I’m not a hundred percent on board for this.”
“Yeah, but you have faith in me. And since I unlike retarded Charlie froo-froo am a destination and you lean on me at least as much as you lean on your own knobby stems, you will be depending on me for one whopper of a story when you’re done slutting it up with the comedian, righteo?”
“OUCH! You are really strong for somebody who looks like a heroin addict.”
“Right. And there’s somebody I’ve been trying to tell you about, but you haven’t been listening to me. In fact, I’ve been trying to tell you about her for quite a while now. And you always avert from this one because you don’t get it. And that’s a pitiful reason.”
All steady composition in my gut is gone-for. I close my eyes, more or less anticipating what he’s getting at and not wanting to. “Let me say something before you go on or, in your present enthusiasm, crack one of my ribs.”
“What.”
“If you want me to keep working for you, you HAVE to inspire a story that’s relatable. And I mean to people besides, you know, me. I cannot keep pedaling stories that are so dark and thrown into relief so little and expect to get anywhere with ‘em. You better be on the verge of telling me something that other people will be able to understand and feel good about, rather than feeling like they need to invest in deadbolts and ninja stars.”
He appears to be considering this but I would guess, from all previous experience with him, that he’s not. More likely fantasizing about how he would look on the cover of Rolling Stone with a thigh-thick boa constrictor dangling over his neck and explicit tats smattered across his chest.
Now that I dwell on it, this episode isn’t more than once removed from his usual assault-and-battery lite; this time, he’s just picked a spot for and announced it.
My stomach is a slat of ice. Busts into shards.
“Ow.” Much quieter this time.
He says, “Did you know 7 out of 8 people are a least somewhat masochistic?”
“Did you know you pull statistics out yo skinny ass?”
“Very misunderstood demographic. And one, sorry to report, that’s very interesting to me right now.”“No. NO.”
“Sh-sh-sh. Just a quickie, then you go do whatever you do with Charlie. First, you oughta know that you determine me as much as I determine you. That’s how co-dependency with bossy imaginary friends works. Second, when the primary, resting, go-to emotion in your life experience is happiness, you seek increases and resist decreases in it because, as a spectrum standard, we tend to embrace the familiar. And when we come upon a chance to assure that we’re going to keep on getting more of the same for the foreseeable future, most of us jump on it. And not for any deviant or sub-human reasons. Just because life is confusing and rife with, frankly, too much stimuli. When we can ascertain the continuance of something--especially in a big way--that we understand, we’d be fools not to go for it. Initially, at least. Now, is the path to all the ol’ familiar places sometimes examined and found to be inadequate and abandoned? Of course. But nobody questions the sanity of a person who’s always been happy and go-go-hearted seeking out things that increase that happiness, even if this person is just mindlessly tripping down a predetermined path. Even if this person has never stepped off the worn-down trail to ask what the meaning of it all is and whether or not all this blind walking is wise. But when another someone, who knows and is cozy with pain, sets up circumstances that invite it to loiter, this is viewed as a diseased mindset.”
“I am not a masochist. I’ve been conjoined to you since probably birth and you’re an unholy asshead and I’ve had to make certain adjustments over the years to accommodate this because I haven’t figured out a way to cut you out of my life and still exist. Don’t take that as a compliment, it’s not one.”
He cocks his head to examine me. He’s sitting on my chest and making me strain to breath properly. He says, “I’m not your psychologist. And I’m not talking about you, necessarily. I’m talking about her. There are exceptions, but people don’t tend to leap at opportunities that will take them somewhere they’re not accustomed to. We leap at what merely sounds different on the surface to satisfy those needs to tell ourselves, ‘Look, I can really change. I am progressing, I am making the effort to expand my boundaries.’ We leap at those things that are fundamentally more of the same, and maybe even moreso than the current same. Because we like the feeling of being home, of being … among friends, so to speak. Change, on a real level, doesn’t occur for most people until they are in ruins from doing things the way they do, they have kids and their current way is incompatible with lessons to pass along or they bone up on strong, mood-altering drugs. And then, often, it’s for a period of time. The shiny goes dull, we return to pattern. Or we manage to continually remind ourselves of the motivation prompting the change, probably with the ever-presence of therapy, and we remain changed but we live a counter script in our heads to make up for the feeling of being out of place in the real world.”
My eyes have frosted over from staring at him so long. I manage to weasel out from under him. Walking away, I shout over my shoulder, “Thanks for the pep talk, holmes. A joy as always.”
He catches up with me. Says, “Jane, honey, doesn’t it make you start to wonder about all sorts of unfortunate puzzles? To what extent there is free will and what exactly’s worth what kind of effort, and what it would mean for the flora and fauna of this world if we ALL really did follow our hearts.”
“Yes, fuckwad. But if you didn’t already know it would make me wonder, you wouldn’t be asking. It’s fine. It is fine! I don’t need to sleep ever again. I’m going to shrivel up like The Machinist starring the skeleton of Christian Bale, but whatever.”
He’s smiling. I genuinely want to throw him in the dryer on high heat and jam the door shut.
As I trudge further away from his letchness: “Jane! How do you feel?”
I turn around. I feel a bruise the size of a mallet’s face seeping into my brain. Drained and used and slippery on unfortunate surfaces thanks to the new blood, thanks to him. I shrug. “Like a million bucks?”
He nods. “And here’s a fifteen percent tip for you. This can wait. Go do your deed with the jester, let the s and m bit simmer and don’t pounce on it until you’re ready to take things a little more --”
“You’re not him and you never will be. Shut up.”
“ -- seriously.”

Which all goes to report, sadly, there will be a story about a masochist in my near future. I'm glad I have an imaginary friend to blame my out-of-bounds curiosities on. I recommend one for everybody.

*A mighty what-what to Ann Douglas, the Jack Kerouac biographer who knocked out the intro to Dharma Bums and coined (to the best of my knowledge) the peerless phrase "visionary losers exploring the perils and powers of", though, in her case, she capped it off with the word "obscurity" and not "sado-masochism". Just to be clear. All other phraseology in this blog is a direct result of what equivolates to a postal-nasal drip of the mind, and is original Jane and Salem.

Intro to the Muse-ick Man ... nish thing

For anyone previously onboard the Blogger blog o' Jane: I have redesigned and given this bad girl a second lease on life. And a redefined purpose. Having announced the kill date on my MySpace blog, I'm nabbing a post from there to jump-start things of the Salem persuasion. And the original read ...

Provoked by the late and magnificent blogs of J and M, I'm recording a snatchet of a talk I've recently had with my own muse -- a talk that sort of encompasses the chaos I've been hostess to for the past few weeks. It's a lengthy one, but if you've got the time, there's a possibility you and yours might relate to the gibberish tennish-match between me and mine, so please enjoy.
Mine's "resting gender" (I say because he's at the very least an androngyn who looks way girlish now and then) is male. Eyes sort of truffle-colored with violet rods. Hair is usually greasy, nine times out of ten under a hat. Persuasive to the eyes and gifted, a human-shaped continent with a hemisphere of horror and a hemisphere of laughter.
As a preamble: we have been raging at each other and then meshing in a possessed/possessor way that stomps down codependency for a while now. I'd managed a quick break from him, ran to McDonalds for a coffee for in the morning. On the way back, there he was in the passenger's seat looking peevish. So around I drove for a minute. He said nothing until the lights of a gaudy, southern-special truck (that would be the souped-up pick-up) showed up about three car-lengths back.
"He's going to run you off the road and drag you out of the car and probably spirit you off to some drug-free tooth-removal camp he runs for fun."
I look in the rearview -- ss truck hasn't gained a foot on us.
"I really don't think he is."
His legs crouch up like a frog's in the seat, elbow hangs over kneecap, the side of his fist butts into the door panel repeatedly. He's staring at invisible orbs on the horizon. He's pissed, and I don't know why.
He says, "I hope he does."
"Salem! That's rude."
There's no response, and no sense trying to pamper his whipped demeanor right now. Petulant despite the fact that I've run myself ragged crewing his ship lately, have caught the insomnia, have started feeling tilted on my own two feet, have existed in the static fringes of myself and gone to complaining about not sleeping as my stand-by in any conversation. He's made an especially egregious boss lately, but despite that I have done something to tick him, so I put on my mommy face. "I sense there's something on your mind."
"No, I just hope you die horribly."
"So, nothing beyond the daily?"
"Well..." He's a bad-tracks boy sharing an insecurity, so there's no eye contact to speak of. "I feel neglected."
I want to pull over and punch his stupid face in. "You WHAT?"
Now those brown-purple o's of a barrell turn to me. In a squealish voice of mockery I've never used in my entire life, he says: "Oh, he's so wonderful. He so blew me out of the water. He accomplished the ultimate feat of all artistic effort." (Yeah, imagine that last bit squealed) "He's soooo perfect. I think I speak for everyone in the universe in saying WE GET IT. YOU FREAKIN' LIKED DARK KNIGHT."
Ah. "You're jealous of Heath?"
"Like right there! What is that? You're on a first name basis with him? Sheesh, judging from ticket-intakes I think you're not a real individual for appreciating him."
"Don't you dare, you immature, needy prick. I am not dismissing you. It's just, it's like we -- as a nation, not me and you -- are clinging to each other right now. We've been collectively pistol-whipped and we're lying together dazzed because it's this newfound design of gun."
"This is not making me feel better." We've lost the truck. We're on a dark strip with no highlighting except that from my dims. He's back to not looking at me. "You've wallowed in this enough, Jane. It was a movie role."
"It was an evolutionary leap of art!"
"Oh my God."
"Look. What is the pot-o'-shine that all us story-making crazies have our hearts on?"
"Random House."
"Disappearance. To be crushed out like ashes under the new inhabiting presence. Julianne Moore -- do you remember this? Awesome awesome awesome in The Hours, she was like, 'I go so far under, I expect to see a different face in the mirror and I'm disappointed when it's the same old face.' It's like, final round, all the guys on the bases or whatever --"
"Are you trying a sports analogy because I'm more or less a guy? I do not like sports."
"Okay. I'm just saying, the moments in a creativity when the rightness reverberates through you, they're the moments when you're able to rotate yourself until you click in the unlock-combination of your character. Or characters. Maybe it's because -- and I know this seems corny -- but it feels kinda sorta valiant. Like, finally shedding the me-me-me bounds of circumstance. Seeing the striking imagery of a story, feeling the impact of the kernel of truth in it's gooey middle and just being knocked on your ass by the potential of it to spotlight THESE RAD PEOPLE and their lives to be gained from. Feeling that feeling and working and working until you pixellate out and give those characters proper, disciplined reign. When the accomplishment of that creeps into you viscerally you..."
"Oh, jeez. Stop the car, Jane. I didn't mean to make you cry."
"Don't worry, you didn't. I was thinking of Heath."
His head explodes.
There's a film over my dash reminiscent of a rainbow oil spill in a parking spot. He manages to pull it back together. Then he says, "What's going on with you, Jane? Really?"
"You tell me! You have been giving me hell lately. Everything I eat tastes like sand-pies. The radio won't tune loud enough and the car won't go fast enough and I'm bitching about stuff lately because bitchy things are what I can think of to say and my teeth hurt. Do you know how you're making me feel?"
"How?"
"I'm glad you think it's funny, cornhole! I'm serious, you are driving me rancid."
He wipes the funny-tears (lovely swirled globules) from his eyes. "Sorry. Your teeth hurt because you don't floss and drink diet Coke all the live long day. As for my part in your decline, I have to fight the clown for one milimeter of headroom. In MY girl."
"Sale, you know I've been this way about you before. Your stuff just comes in blinks, so I have time to assimilate. It's not a whole-body Ka-BAM like this. You remember how short of breath I was over the mirror beginning and ending in Lilac. And, and the paper flower in the hair. And that thing her boyfriend said after lights-out. And, oh my gah-ah, what Quinn -- of all people -- accused her of."
"I can't believe you didn't grab that before."
"I know what you tell me, homie. Nothing more."
"Are you scared Lilac is no Dark Knight?"
"No. No, nothing else will be Dark Knight, and that's as it should be. I think the fears are so spooled out they constitute a whole blog to be written after six Coronas at the coast after Hanna and Ike resign from it. Suffice it to say, I'm concerned about the ovation factor. There's this uncharted territory, for me at least, of the what-after of catching the thing you've been chasing. I could be totally wrong, dude, and maybe people won't catch the heebies and an artery full of love at the same moment like I did when I first got a glimpse of this story, but regardless -- it has been huge and hard to catch. It's done. It's now everything it can be, but..."
"Jane, I'm immortal."
"Well, you're an immortal flemwad for bragging while I turn to you in a moment of freak-out."
"YOU are not immortal. And I think it's a viable concern that you're not built for this extreme thinning-out and juggling act more than once."
"I don't know."
"I don't know either. But I think if the up-ahead really has you this sweaty, you're giving too much creedence to the notion of fixed patterns and predestination and all that. You do have to forge paths and, not in a chauvenistic way, but I'm usually a step or two ahead of you. I know you're worried because you think -- whether you'll cop or not -- that the clown --"
"Quit calling him that!"
"-- followed a natural guiding of force into sleep after... can I be dirty here?"
"Fine by me."
"The orgasm of orgasms. But give me some credit for forethought. I've been around since you were asking little five-year-old Britney what's-her-face "Did you hear that too?" and patting around for ghosts in the hallway. Some fears are true, but they don't mean the ghastly things we fantasize. There is no you without me, that's true. I may be demanding, but we're conjoined at the eyesocket."
The car is stopped. I don't really remember stopping it. "What's the upside of that?"
He winks. You just want to rip some people's spleens out when they do that. "I'll be waiting for you at the beach."
"No, no, no, no. You can't do that, this is hurricane mating season, that might not be --"
"Chill out, homegirl. Lay off the caffeine. Sleep. We'll pick this conversation up at a more peaceful venue and as long as you feel like we can come up with an answer, we can come up with an answer. We'll have an all-nighter, hash it out, let go and let the mighty weather. It'll be fine."
He's getting out of the car. Wow. I was just thinking I wanted him gone, and now my heart has the shivers. "Salem, promise?"
One last smile before he slams the door. "Promise. Eisenhart?"
"Yo."
"Don't be so serious."

Indeed, Jane: Why?

One day . . . I will write something interesting. But, today is not that day. That could near 'bout constitute the whole blog right now, but I'm expounding on the gripe, because I have a few minutes until I fall over asleep, and I've just been too damn perky lately, magically managing to get on my own nerves.

This is going to be brief and awkward. That's my guess anyway. Nothing important's happened at all, but Let Me Tell You about how my writing went yesterday. It all started . . .

So, night before last I got way too little sleep and overcompensated in the morning for coffee. By this, I mean that I incorrectly dosed it (yeah, my mathematical acumen doesn't hit fever pitch even when I'm at my most alert), drank a Campbell's Soup mugful in about two gulps, got another, then sat down and saw that I was scheduled to write the most serious, critical, emotionally difficult scene in my novel. It made me want to laugh, which is now reminding me of when my friend, Sundae, and I got the giggles at a friend's wake, which I'm going to say he would've appreciated greatly. He was all handsome smiles and fun balance--wakes usually aren't representative. So, in this state . . . I decide I can't write. And switch to present tense, no warning. Ha ha. I excersize madly to let out some of the caffeinated energy, which works enough for me to collapse and write one paragraph and receive the distinct message from god/theuniverse/myinnerperfectlyclearconciousness informing me that I have failed my characters on so many levels. I develop a spontaneous gratitude for the fact that I do not have children. I consider being sterilized. I consider what life would be like as a man. (No connection--free range thought.) I consider that if I were a man, I'd want to look like Matthew Gray Gubler, who plays Dr. Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds who has captured my undying adoration and misplaced breath every Wednesday at nine, and who has been mentally, inexpricably cast as a character in what I'm writing. So, it has all come together for me now, and Not Just Because I've knocked myself into the arctic, outer reaches of schizophrenia with the Maxwell House that, in retrospect, I should have just snorted. Would've saved time on that whole waiting-for-it-to-cool thing. But, I'm feeling confident that in my hours of staring at a single, inadequate paragraph on the screen, that I have reached the valuable conclusion that if time ever speeds backwards to spit me into this terrestrial realm reboxed, so to speak, as a male and not only that but gives me full creative control with my own looks . . . and voice (I love the dude's voice, too) . . . that I am thoroughly prepared for the situation. Not that I want to be a man; femininity, or my half-assed take thereon, has worked great for me so far and I don't really think there was a mistake of nature when my DNA was being basted together. But, you can still see as where this all needed to be ironed out.

Today went better. A tad more sleep last night, less coffee this morning. Suddenly realized I remember how to multiply fractions while squinting at the coffee can. Wrote six pages. Went to the day job to show of my newly dyed hair to my gay co-worker, Larry, who just fell up outside himself with praise. Oh! And this is unrelated to everything else (in the world), but it's great no matter how you look at it. I was in Books-A-Million the other day with a couple friends who shall remain anonymous just in case they care--doubtful. I was looking at the true crime section to, you know, see what's new and hot in crime these days. True Crime is next to Politics, which is what it is, nothing to unbraid yourself over. I get to the bottom shelf of True Crime and, while scouring, allow my hand to fall on this outstretched book that I'm not looking at because it falls more toward politics than crime (but, my, what a fine line that can be . . .). Then, I look. My hand is on The Lesbian Kama Sutra. I look next to it. Lesbian Erotica. Volumne II. A subtle one titled "Cunt" which makes for some delectable book-back laud: "I was deeply touched by Cunt." "Cunt changed the way I look at the world." Looked further. All gay and lesbian books, all sandwiched between crime and politics. And for the one that made my heart just want to pee itself (that's the way to get my heart to piss itself, by the way, in case you ever need to know much like with previously mentioned if-I-were-male scenario: unintentional irony): an instructive gay sex book wedged next to: "What's Wrong With America Today." I had the urge, brisk but brief, to remove its pages one by one and slip them in the front cover of every men's health, car and hunting magazine in the store. I did not do this. I am disappointing wreckage. And tired. And tense-hopping badly. Goodnight, and selah.