Everyone at the Show

They had rocks in their pockets. The bodies did. And they were going to stone me to death with them. And I wouldn’t be able to plead because there were no faces to plead to. Just legs, arms, torsos, hands, heads. Turn them around. Eyes, cheeks, noses, other features, but no faces, none, can you prove they had faces? No. Only bodies. Pointed at the stage. Tuned in to music. Ears perked up like a German shepherd’s. Waiting for their cue.

Their cue?

To throw the first stone.

I had keys in my pocket, a serenity coin, chap stick. No stones. I was mostly defenseless, back hurting, legs hurting. I was obvious, too, my face teeming with tics. Standing out.

This is all I’ve learned in my many years. You can keep a body still, but not a face. Faces are no good at hiding.

There were three people in particular I was hiding from. They reminded me of past girlfriends. Spitting image replicas, but young. I was young, too, when I dated their originals, I guess. I won’t describe them. That would give them power over me.

They had very smooth legs.

Maybe if I described something less sensual, their hair or one or two other features you wouldn’t expect to love, like a deep clavicle you could sip juice from.

That’s it. One had an excessively deep clavicle. The other two, not as deep.

There you go. Your descriptions.

These replica girlfriends were grasping backwards and upwards toward the missing faces of the young men behind them, grinding up and down their pants like orangutans on a dance pole. They’d probably taken ecstasy or mushrooms, or an indica gummy, some dose of something light enough to keep the ceiling from collapsing on them, but strong enough to keep their feet off the ground and turn the room into a spaceship in time for the headliner to jump onstage.

I’d only taken lithium. At least, I think I remembered to take it. Could have forgotten in the rush to get to the show.

No, I never forget.

My face was telling me I forgot.

I never go to shows.

My tics!

This is what’s happened to me. You’ll love this one. I lasso things with my eyes and pull them toward me with my lips. Like this. I aim at a subject, roll my eyes around the subject, circling it, half wink to cinch the lasso, purse my lips, stare at my lips, and pull down with my head and neck to pull it to me. Try it out. Find a target, roll your eyes, half wink, purse your lips, and pull. Good. You have to concentrate. Nothing ever comes to you if you don’t concentrate. And nothing will come to you if you do concentrate. That’s not the point. The point, the only point is that you’ve made an insane face, repeatedly. Like you’re chewing a very sour candy, vehemently.

I was doing this to innocuous objects, every single one in sight. Trying to create a safe little nest of sweaters and beanies and foam trucker’s hats to comfortably enjoy the show in. But the work was arduous and I was beginning to be afraid someone out there might grow a face and look at me. Hell, I was afraid I might look at me.

Someone was looking at me.

One of my exes?

No.

Well, maybe. I didn’t dare to look directly at anyone to see.

I tried tapping my feet to distract myself.

The rhythm.

It was enough to distract me, if I focused.

Was there enough there to focus on?

Fortunately, yes. Early in the night, I’d bumped into one of the faceless bodies in the crowd and spilled some Coca-Cola on my shoes. Tapping now meant peeling and sticking my sticky soles off and on and off the floor. It may have looked like I was tapping to some nightmare beat that only I heard. But at least I could close my eyes. I may have been lolling my head like a dying bull. But at least I had no idea whether I was. Because I could feel the floor.

Sometimes you just have to be on the floor.

It was gross and sticky and there wasn’t anyone else in the room. Just sweaters and purses slowly floating toward me.

No one was looking at me.

The music was good.

No one was looking at me.

Tap, tap.

No one.

The calm before intermission.

Savannah’s place

Why are you looking at me like that? Savannah said.

I’m just looking. I can’t help it, I apologized.

You have a bad looking face, she said. Then she said, you have a bad thinking face.

It’s not good, I said.

The morning was coming in over her shoulder. You know, dust motes and long window grille shadows and beams of orange-blue light. You felt like you were under a magnifying glass at Savannah’s. But I liked it better than my place. She had clean furniture, pulled away from the walls so you could see she cleaned her baseboards and dusted her shelves, vacuumed her corners. All her books were in hardcover, that was the main thing. I won’t name the books because I couldn’t read them. They were so full of rulered highlighter marks and obscure margin shorthand you couldn’t possibly notice what she had been noticing. You sat there baffled over her penmanship, instead.

She sat up and took a sip of water from a glass on her bedside table. That’s what else I liked. It was a great space for staying hydrated. There were coasters on every surface. She kept a half glass of room temperature water always nearby.

When I was around her I drank water, too.

What are you going to do today? she said.

I had already skipped the first hour of work.

I’ll probably take a drive, I said.

You don’t have to work today? she said.

After the first hour’s lost the whole day’s free to flake.

It’s my day off, I said.

It was probably my last day.

Can I ask you something? she said.

I nodded.

That girl you were with last night, she said. Was that your girlfriend?

I think so, I said.

Don’t you think you should have told me? she said.

We aren’t a thing, I said.

You’re not a thing with your girlfriend? she said.

I nodded. The thing was breaking my heart. That’s why I kept coming back to Savannah’s place. My perpetually broken heart. That and I was frequently drunk where Savannah worked.

You should have told me, she said. I don’t want to hurt some other person, especially when your relationship is so new. That’s a sacred time, the new part.

I don’t think it’s new, I admitted.

How many months? she said.

About twelve, I said.

A year! she said.

My face made that face she didn’t like again and she grabbed it, like by the nose and mouth, like she was trying to stop my breath.

What are you doing for your anniversary! she said.

We’re not doing anything, I said. I don’t think she’s that crazy about me.

It looked like she was! she said.

She looks at me that way when there are other people around, I said. And when we’re at expensive restaurants.

It’s not expensive, she said.

The show before it was, I said.

She stood up naked in a sworl of dust and cast a shadow over me. God in Heaven, I fall in love every time the light’s just right.

You should probably go, she said.

Like now? I said, sensing what was obvious. Are we breaking up?

Breaking up what never was? she said.

Something was, I said.

We’ll probably find ourselves here again someday, she said. Or we won’t. For now, I have things to do.

Like what? I said.

Doesn’t matter, she said.

We’re not doing anything for the anniversary, I said.

Doesn’t matter, she said.

We’re not like that, I said.

Neither are we, she said.

You need to leave, thank God, was often (and in this case) code for join me for breakfast in the kitchenette. This was the routine. Minor argument. Asked to leave. Move to kitchenette.

She made herself a yoghurt and granola and frozen blueberries and sucked on it and crunched it in turn while I sipped a very bad instant coffee that she’d bought out of pity for me. She was a tea person. You could probably tell by looking at her place, couldn’t you?

Between bites of her poor person’s parfait she liked to tell me stories starring characters from her childhood. Today, it was her brother. I was just learning she had one. Apparently, he used to hunt birds in their yard with his BB gun, but he never had the heart to kill any, so he would just execute already dead ones around the perimeter. You’d be surprised how many you can find if you’re looking.

The road, too, Savannah said. But he didn’t like shooting the road birds as much because the BBs ricocheted off the gravel instead of sinking into the ground. His word, sinking. Makes me imagine slow motion roiling into the soil.

Good word, roiling, I said.

She said you don’t have to tell me and took a bite of frozen blueberry and sucked on it and said nothing more. I wanted to ask if her brother was dead.

You talk about your brother in the past tense, I said.

That’s because I’m talking about the past, she said.

I just thought maybe he’s, like, in the land of the birds, I said.

I wouldn’t tell you one way or the other, she said. We’re not like that.

She’d tell me next time.

I’m going to do you a favor, she told me. I’m going to let things play out between you and your girlfriend. It may not surprise you to know that I can pretty easily keep my hands off you until due time, if due time.

So, we’re not breaking up breaking up? I said.

Top off on coffee? she said.

Why do you keep such shitty coffee in the house? I said. You know what good coffee’s supposed to taste like, even if you don’t drink it.

Some things about me I like to keep shitty, she said.

It’s to keep my stays short, isn’t it? I said.

Not everything’s about you, she said.

Intermission

We were by the coat hooks, my wife and I, that’s where we were, among the coats and sundries, which gave me the impression somewhat that my tics to pull things toward me were actually working, actually pulling things toward me. I was reveling in this possibility, that I had powers, when I suddenly found myself alone among the coat hooks. I don’t know how that happened. I think my wife had gone to get a glass of water with ice. When she got back I would throw it all over her. Abandoning me at such a time, between the second act and the headliner.

When the house music plays.

When the bodies stir.

Some old gollum started tuning instruments onstage. As he plucked strings and shook plugs, faces grew onto the faceless bodies. One by one, that kind of horrific pace. One by terrible one. They turned my way and animated. A flotsam of drunk makeup and nodding and conversation and sham cogitation took shape and was flowing my way.

They were coming for their coats. 

Glistening arms shot up out of the roiling mass in waves. It was so like being engulfed in water that I held my breath. I was going to faint and sink to the floor and get it all over with when a wave splashed right up to my mouth, snapped me alert. It was a narrow-beaked boy with matted hair and bangs glued to his forehead. He reached out toward my cheeks and I trembled.

He grazed my ear.

Sorry, I said.

It’s not cold out there, is it? he said.

I don’t think so, I said, not really sure why I’d know any better than he would.

I don’t need my coat, a distant someone said.

The narrow-beaked boy seemed to respond to this. He let go of an item in his grasp.

He hadn’t been talking to me.

I don’t need my coat, the distant someone repeated.

I heard you, the boy said.

I turned my face to the distant someone. She had a deep, deep clavicle.

You don’t need your coat, either, she said.

I slackened and almost said okay. But instead of speaking, I lassoed the girl with my eye and tried pulling her toward me.

No luck.

Come on, she said.

I need my hat, the narrow-beaked boy said. And he dislodged it from a hood and rubbed it right over my head, pulling with it a truckload of feminine fragrance.

Inhale.

Wow.

Then the boy was gone, suddenly, like a shark. I hadn’t appreciated how much he’d rattled my cage until he was out of sight. He’d settled right in there. Could have hooked me and given me a noogie. Or a quick kiss goodbye. Hell, he might have.

Love ya.

I was still catching my breath. With difficulty. The scent the hat had diffused was heavy, both thick in the air and dense with olfactory visions.

It did not waft over me so much or blow into me or hit me as most smells do. This one was insistent. It clutched my hand and led me into a humid copse where tree fairies tuned their zithers and cats scratched their rattles, where drunk squirrels hummed and songbirds licked their tiny clarinet reeds. It appeared like a ghost from an afternoon shadow show, and it was here to conduct a little symphony.

High on the top notes.

Must have been cheap.

Or expensive. I don’t know. I wear one of the Old Spices. The one with a sloth fucking a marsh heath.

Gollum struck a chord.

I leaned back.

A song will take you places when you close your eyes.

Ohhh, I said.

A scent will drop you exactly into a scene from your past, no questions asked, no explanation. You don’t even have to blink or purse your lips.

Driving with Kat

The ink is still in your skin? Kat said. Ew! Have you washed up since the club?

She was looking at a stamp on my wrist.

It wasn’t really a club, was it? I said.

You want people to ask about it, huh? she said. You haven’t washed just that one spot.

She smelled one of my armpits.

Yep! Otherwise clean, she said.

Why would I brag about going to a club that made me broke for two weeks? I said.

You like to be so coy, that’s what you like, she said. Oh this? My skin absorbs ink, it stays longer than for most people. That’s all. Some club I went to.

It was a terrible night, I said.

Because you were being a real bummer, she said.

I couldn’t help it! Everyone’s drinks were on my tab. I didn’t even know if I could cover it, I said.

You could have asked me, she said.

To help with the tab? I said.

Are you such a chauvinist you can’t ask for a woman’s help paying? she said.

Not that, I said. I just like to pay.

Seems like you don’t, she said.

I like to be the kind of guy who pays, how’s that? I said.

That’s mature of you to admit, she said. Now, you just have to admit you never can pay.

I was starting to half wink one eye, a tic I was developing and trying desperately to get under control. But Kat’s teasing was hitting too close to home to keep it under control. So, I winked at the center lines in the road as she talked, and it was impossible to stop because Kat was now inching her underwear down below her skirt and pulling her bra out of her sleeve.

What was she doing? Was this some sort of seduction tinged with financial shame? Is that what she’s into now? Shaming me about money? I wasn’t turned on. Was she?

Drive alongside that truck. I want to show him something, she said.

That semi? I said.

She smiled. She did that, answered with smiles.

I will try to describe the trucker.

He had an outsize estimation of how many lanes he deserved, a prerogative that was mirrored in the way his body used space. From where I sat I could adduce, without seeing anything of the man below the window, that he was sitting with his legs spread like he had hip dysplasia. His non-dominant foot, the clutch foot, was swollen up to mid-calf and he had that foot resting as high up as he could for edema relief on top of his shoe and balled up sock. His toenails were yellow with a crumble crust. He wore Champion brand shorts as red as his face. His thighs were wide enough they touched no matter how far he spread them.

That’s what I saw that I couldn’t actually see. What I could see was a leathery arm air frying out an open window. His chubby fist was curled over the window like he was holding it down and it pained him. His elbow skin was loose and flapped in the warm eastern Washington wind.

I couldn’t see his face.

I often don’t see faces. Sometimes I feel I am the only person in the world with one, despite the fact I can only confirm I have one via reflection.

What are you doing? Kat said. She was noticing my half winks.

Trying not to drive off the road. What are you doing? I said.

She was naked waist down.

He deserves a peek, don’t you think, she said. Working such long hours. We should wake him up!

She had folded her skirt up over her belly button, exposing her hairless mound and vulva.

You shaved, I said.

It’s not very comfortable, she said. I’m sorry if I scratch you later.

She put her feet up on the dash.

I had an embarrassing thought that it was my right to know before she shaved if she was going to shave herself bare.

I should give him my belly button, too, she said. Don’t you think it completes the picture?

What does? I said.

You can’t really call yourself naked, she said, if you don’t have your belly button out.

Her tits were out now, too, her thin yellow blouse rolled up like a rope and held at the top of her chest by her armpits.

I could see a face now, the face of the trucker, it was watching Kat, this face. In the mirror. This mirror that is always aware of what’s behind it. It showed us the sunburned face of God the Father, all-seeing. And it did not blink.

Kat sat up and searched beside her seat and I heard a click and her seat went all the way back.

Vwump.

She rolled down the window and took off her oversize sunglasses and stowed them in her clavicle, safe from the wind that was whipping her hair.

Pass him slowly, she said. And she stretched out. And tipped her body his direction.

It was just them on the road together.

The trucker’s face went from red to a healthy pink. His lines went away. His liver spots disappeared. His graying beard even grew in some brown, right there on I-90. Just from looking at a supple, smooth body.

Kat yelled out a woo! that sounded a little wow-like and pumped the air indicating honk if you like what you see.

He honked.

I tried to step on the gas what I’d hoped was imperceptibly harder to get around the truck while smiling the smile of a not-that-uncomfortable man, but my change in speed knocked Kat’s feet off the dash.

Jesus! she said. Where are you in a hurry to get to?

I’m sunburned, I said.

And I was. That was true. I was burning on my driver side arm, just like the trucker.

Are you trying to outrace the sun? she said.

You’re not going to do them, too, are you? I said, indicating a Caravan or something or other ahead.

She turned to me and jutted out her jaw. I heard her lips part. She took her sunglasses out of her clavicle and put them back on.

No, she said. And she said it just like that. No. Naked no. You know when you’ve heard it.

I watched her roll her shirt down.

I watched her unfold her skirt.

She opened her purse and stuffed her underwear and bra inside it and I watched her grab sunscreen.

Here, make yourself tolerable, she said.

I looked in my rearview to see if I could make out the trucker’s face, to see what he looked like minutes after being flashed, to see if he was still a lecherous Benjamin Button, but there was a reflection off his hood and hood ornament. I couldn’t see a thing.

The gorge

We came upon a river gorge lookout later and Kat would try to help me salvage my broken pride and save me from prudishness with some redemptive, near-public, hiking sex. However, the location she’d chosen was just a little too near the trailhead for me, so I convinced her we should sneak farther off, over a guardrail and a fence and behind some dead trees along a steep clay and gravel incline overlooking the river. The danger was new now, and–sure–greater. A potentially mortal fall. But we wouldn’t be seen by strangers.

She leaned forward and put her hands against the dirt cliff face.

Oh, Christ, she said. Don’t let us fall.

Don’t let anyone see us, I thought. And I unzipped and looked around. No one. I positioned myself and she kindly made a noise like I was doing great. But my feet couldn’t find good purchase for thrusting, so I had to grab some plant roots above her head in order to put our whole event in motion. And in that one motion the event ended. Several of the roots had been tenuously holding a significant amount of soil from eroding, and when I clutched those roots they gave up their duty. Sand and dirt began pouring from the hillside onto Kat’s back and ass crack and my dick and before I could really think about what was happening I had the genius idea to thrust hard to cover her and seal her off from the falling debris. But the falling debris was by then fallen debris and I only ended up catching most of the dirt and sand between her taint and my pubic hair and pressing it into her crotch like I was rubbing a steak. Each of us recoiled from one another immediately and desperately. The instinct here, of course, is to separate and shake off right away, but we couldn’t separate or shake given our awkward, eroding perch, so we had to shimmy backwards until the path was wide. Once it was, Kat stood up and said something about what the fuck is this your first time, and I wasn’t sure if she meant first time ever or first time in public or first time in nature. It kind of felt like she meant all of the above. I got her a bottle of water from the car and she washed herself and saved not quite enough water for me. It was hot and the river below us was orange and ugly. I squinted to pretend it was a river at sunset. The world’s better in the dark or when getting darker.

A vision

I finally got to wash up when we got to Tacoma, Washington, where we inexplicably stopped specifically for sushi on our way to Vancouver, BC, where we would eat still more sushi. The restaurant bathroom where we stopped was the one bathroom for all guests, so I took the opportunity to lock the door and take off my shoes and socks and pants and underwear and shake them out and splash water all over my dick and taint and mons and rub myself red cleaning all the river gorge soil and soot off. I dried myself with about thirty paper towels and when I put my pants on I noticed the floor needed drying, too, so I mopped up my puddles with the remainder of the paper towels in the dispenser and filled the trash can with them. Afterward, I flushed the toilet for noise, so it would seem like I had been pooping or peeing, not cleaning up after unsuccessful sex.

I even sprayed air freshener near the door.

Then my feet felt dirty, having walked around barefoot on a wet public bathroom floor as I had. So, one by one I cleaned my feet in the sink and dried them each with their corresponding sock, which I then struggled to pull on and slide into its shoe without touching the floor barefoot again.

I’d have to leave the floor wet this time. No paper towels.

You all right? Kat said when I returned.

I was full of dirt, I said.

And now you’re clean, she said.

The dinner menu was daunting. I hadn’t seen real sushi prices anywhere in Montana. But then, I never went to sushi in Montana, except after paydays, and on those days I never looked at prices. That’s the problem with getting paid once a month. You blow all your money once a month, too. Life is easier if you can blow it two times a month, or even better, four.

What looks good to you? Kat said.

I don’t really eat sushi, I said.

Yes, you do! she said. I’ve seen you.

I’m not that hungry now, I said, hoping she would say the same and save me some money.

I’ve never seen you not hungry. Except when you do coke, she said.

I perked up at an unlikely idea.

Do you have some? I said.

Of course not, she said.

Of course, she wouldn’t. We’d been saving our piddly dimes for this trip, not for drugs.

Ooo, I want the specialty octopus roll, she said. Gochujang! On sushi? What a crazy fusion. My uncle says Tacoma’s all about fusion.

Do you guys know what you want? a server had come around to ask.

I’ll have a Kirin, Kat said. She looked at my stupid face and then said, two glasses.

I’ll get that right out, our server said. In the meantime, do you know what you’d like?

Yes, Kat said. She looked me in the eyes and said, I want to travel the world and fuck fabulous guys.

She swooned at what she’d said. And when she swooned, just then, I had a vision, and the ceiling above her lifted and her head split open and her terrific future burst out blue-white like a newborn star and I saw it all, even saw myself in there, fucked one or two more times, awkwardly, then not again.

That sounds great, our server said. I’ll bring out the Kirin and you two can decide what you want in the meantime.

Kat could see I had had a vision, because she had had it, too, so she grabbed my hands to reassure me of nothing in particular and she closed her eyes. It felt like we were about to pray. I felt her breath on my arms. Her fingers danced a little to the house music. It was terrible and her hands were having a terrific time with it. Her body had terrific times all the time.

We should have a song, she said.

Like a couple’s song?

Are you too old to have a song? she said.

I think so, I said.

It doesn’t have to be anything romantic or forever. Just fun, she said.

I think I picked Van Morrison.

Not that one, she said.

We didn’t pick it, for the reason she gave, which I’ve forgotten. I’ve heard the song at least once a week since.

Sea of faces

My wife was back with her water on ice and the headliner was on. The lead said what their name was and then he said something about gratitude and a beautiful river. What I pictured for the river was the Columbia River and its gorge. There were two old men in the crowd now, who must have come in at intermission and who took it up on themselves to talk louder than the music. When I looked at them in disgust I could see their faces. I mouthed the words shut up but not so clear they could read my lips or tell I was talking to them. When they finally looked at me I looked away and around the room. The three girls who looked like my exes were no longer in the crowd. Or they didn’t look like my exes anymore. In any case, I was grateful. Two visions was enough for one night. The third was probably going to be embarrassing.