MARC PHILLIPS / FETISH LIFE
The curtain’s fallen atop the footlights, Ron. The fabric smokes a bit and it smells like poor children on the school bus. And out there where the World was to sit, where I was given to believe the World would sit mindful, there’s a cockroach taking wing from a gumspot on the upholstery, rising very slowly like a declining man from a southern state, not even especially offensive anymore, and there are humming exit signs back in the dimness. There’s a playbill with a boot print, with a word scrawled in blue ink, “Tacos?” Who carries a blue Sharpie? And here I stand in costume and abandoned by even my own assumptions and speechless and terrifyingly unafraid.
It’s not that I’m wrecked and raked and full of hatred for the persistent ignorance that mankind will reach Mars. I mean, who isn’t? It’s the fact that I believed until just this moment that guarantees could be tacit, that I need not hear anyone speak the words: There’s a grownup in charge and we have safeguards against this.
I realize I don’t know where the wipes are to get the stage makeup off my face. It feels untoward to object, trenchant like when a youngster I was regularly fucking suddenly achieved mastery of the obvious, it impacts my purpose and it feels further inflicting to ask anything. It strikes me that I’m the grownup. It strikes me in the chest until I don’t raise my eyes any longer.
Allegedly there are better days out there somewhere. That seems willfully deceptive to me, Ron, retail even. I keep breathing because I purchased this premise on predatory terms. What we’re calling life is just the currency I tender in service of the debt. Logically, I know the windows in this place were always mirrors, right? They had to be. Though I never before noticed the reflections are populated with kind unhelpful souls picking windblown tinsel from the briars. I’m thinking, hey, I could use a Sisyphean hobby just now and I could do worse than cracker-barrel company with walleyed conviction and newly straightened teeth, so I whorl, and the tinsel pickers are gone. Like they reconsidered their compassion, like they are righteous only in vicious ways. All the little shiny strings oscillate a moment longer at 1 hertz, the spectacular frequency of a sigh, an entire fallen cloud of silver linings and for that moment there’s a better day glinting back, Ron. Then even the briars are gone.
It's not the possibility of getting shot in America, Ron, it’s the near certainty of it if you do certain things, all the more so when you take to the streets in certitude of something. It’s what made America great again to begin with and repeatedly throughout the patchwork at the seams between swatches; denim from the dungarees worn by a Christian Indian, say, and page four of any prospectus. We can’t even donate this stuff to politicians as-is, so it makes sense to believe in the power of quilts, and very large ones. Lethally cold weather, they say, and inequity, grass burns, flu-like symptoms and the ugly disrespect in chronic tardiness, they say a big enough quilt will fix all that. Please stop fussing over thread color, by the way, it’s meant to clash, it’s meant to appeal to the child-minded who outnumber us, who make up nonsense words to crop the vulgarity from obscene notions, who present waist-up dick pics at the quilting circle and tell us this is what some people do now. Clearly, it is. But it’s also what some people have always done.
It could be so much worse, Ron. I could be in this alone. Instead I installed you here for my benefit and there’s something sociopathic in that. Meaning, I suspect you’re a sociopath. Sound that tocsin if you don’t mind, signal our escape as required somewhere in the Biscuit of Literature on Fleeing Maryland and Other Cul-de-sacs and at all costs, brother, keep vested: there’s a childfree Vandiemenlander among us now. You can’t see her, a prepossessing wordsmith I discovered in a place where mostly sane perverts gather and I temporarily need her like wind needs a witness, though her kinks are not appealing to me and we’ll likely never meet.
I want that you both should recognize along with me that we run now, stumble now, play despite worry for the future now and worry even as we sleep. On the bright side we finally live irrespective of light. It is convenient and molelike to disregard light. We pick up and dust off one another and continue through tall grass we can feel wet against our thighs now because, Ron, there are few genuine smiles left. The world cannot be complete without the insurgent’s smile. Shine it.
But wait. Now we must stop and hovel and stack shattered bricks beneath this window, Ron, rocks and furniture legs on Dr Pepper cans filled with sand, curse on prayer, and even as beer bottle glass eats our hands we must mound up filth against the wall to save our loved ones from grieving us. Hurry, Ron. There are incoming rounds. Put your rucksack here, nevermind what’s in it, and hold this mattress with your foot. Open your mouth to save your ears. Lastly, shelter in the lee of me, my friend, whether you believe me or not.
There’s no time to entertain me with newfound language about treasured important people in your life. Trust the dense meat of me whether you trust me or not. Look at me. Wink if you can hold fast because things are gonna rumble, Ron, and I need to know whether to forsake the memory of you in order to save myself.
Recover. Ron. Are you with me? Stand up, man. Try hard as you can to normalize what just happened and come see the night with me. My god, it’s upon us again and look, Ron, it’s wondrous. Come see the tanned tattooed lady in a tangerine dress, see her smiling and calling me Marc like it was her idea. Look, there’s a scrapper cat named Hi Honey and he lives in the chassis of an up-armored vehicle because he knows how funny that is. He comes out to rock and roll when he knows I’m depleted beneath all these stars and he notices me acting entitled to something. And how beautiful is that? He doesn’t recognize us and doesn’t flee for an instant and that makes me care for him with everything I am, Ron, makes me want to die for him, makes me say this is the line, here in front of my cat. Makes no difference how you interpret that. It's the line, and I stand upon it and for a time I am formidable. I can’t quit even if I want to. And grab your shit now, Ron, because we have to go.
Don’t be appalled, Ron. Wind gambols across the lips of the gorge sometimes, pulling mist upward from the river and allowing birds to rise unflapping. I know. When it rolls over the rim it seems like the forest is unloading portent upon us but this is one of those rare explainable things. The brimstone hue is just oak pollen, but the silence, Ron. The silence is so complete I can hear the dialogue in your head and I can hear you smile at my deadpan hubris in profile.
You’ll make this decision alone. You know I think we are many moments behind the curve. I should admit that dalliance here isn’t any more harmful than the prodigal hangovers we forgave ourselves sometimes twice a week, not any worse so long as we’re honestly satisfied with our current opinion of love and so long as we’ll stand before anyone anywhere and ask any question and not regret the answer. Are we at that point yet?
Should we dangle our feet and cut this apple and compliment each the other’s wisdom until a path is clear, or should we fly this phenomenon to the other side before it’s gone? I should say, the trees down there, when the air clears you will marvel that the trees along the water look soft as a tangle of green yarn from this distance. I should warn you that those are not trees, Ron. Those are leaves.
Marc Phillips lives in Texas and runs Phillips Protective, a private security agency.