How do you know if it’s going to rain? How do you make the world whole? How do you tell a complete stranger his fly is open?
An amber light burns, an eerie whisper blows through the station, the hush of anticipation, movement, and ultimate death. The trains roll by, one after another after another, like snakes in a burrow, hunting for riders to devour. This is your life, folks: You will be devoured.
Fifty feet below Third Avenue in the Metro tunnel, faces across the tracks become tenebrous and blurry, as if they’re melting into ectoplasm. But not this face. This face belongs to a tall, good-looking Black man in tight jeans, tan work boots, puffy black parka. He stands nearby, poised, serene, no doubt conscious of the effect he has on others, his handsome features blandly indifferent. Maybe. But halfway down the man’s magnificent frontage a hole gapes, and within the hole a patch of white. There he stands, legs apart, head erect (and maybe something else), eyes glinting. Fly open.
What can I do?
Nothing.
Society’s answer to the open fly is: deny, deny, deny.
As Society’s man-on-the-spot, I can think of no words to let the man know his fly is open. The Saltmarsh dance class tried to instill social graces in us, Society’s children, but it failed utterly in teaching me, A, the box step and, B, how to tell a stranger their fly is open. Dumbstruck, I say nothing and keep my eyes averted. Or try to.
Thirty-eight. No, not any more. Why do I pretend? Forty-three. A nondescript number and a nondescript age. Forty-three 365-day blocs of mornings I have survived to reach this point, including more than a decade of schooling. I ponder the main object of those 43 years: what exactly to do with the thing, the dangling dipper, the long-necked clown, the lurker in the dark (well, theoretically). The Beast, snug in his lair, poised and ready. So much energy wasted—if we could harness it somehow. Well, I guess maybe we do; otherwise, would any of this be here?
A young woman comes up out of nowhere (ectoplasm, maybe) and says, “Sir, I need to get to Kelso, Washington.” She is slight, her cheeks are pasty, her voice is whiny. “Please, sir, we need to get to Kelso, Washington.”
I’ve heard this scam before.
“Please, sir,” she says again, her eyes fixed on some distant object, “we need to get to Kelso, Washington.” She looks like she’s vibrating. Why does she keep saying “Washington”? And who is “we”? I look around and see leaning against the wall studiously ignoring us a feral-looking young man wearing a gray hoodie lettered “McDonald’s.” Why do people wear such crap? I feel bile rising.
“I can’t help you,” I say to her.
“You don’t get it, do you!” she screams, her mouth is an ugly red slit. “You just don’t GET IT!” She clenches her fists and backs away.
If you want something from me, at least look me in the eye. I want to pressure-wash her in green bile.
“Fucking shit!” she yells, and sidles away down the platform, one hand in her coat pocket, the other swinging violently. McDonald’s boy leans against the wall, pretending not to see. The girl goes up to a woman in a skirted suit and I watch as the woman, probably a lawyer or some other guilt-addled professional, lowers her head solicitously then digs into her wallet and hands her a bill. The girl shoves the bill into her pocket and walks away, arm swinging violently, the boy leaves his post and follows her, they disappear.
The pathetic little drama makes me angry. We are such marks. Be a bit of fun to give rat-girl and McDonald’s shill a good swift kick. Stuff your bleeding-heart bullshit—they are all scammers.
Apparently oblivious to it all, fly-guy stands with his back to me, gazing away across the tracks, lost in his own world. Eerie, that thing just inside, almost within view of the world—the civilized mechanical dressed-up world—raging to escape, to wreak havoc, found new civilizations, invent new machines. What is it “up to” just now?
I smell something nasty and see a dark lump on the pavement nearby. I walk over for a closer look and see that it is a pile of excrement. Someone’s dog, probably. Somehow, I’m not convinced.
A train bursts from the hole, I turn away from the noisome lump and am devoured. The fly guy is also devoured and takes a seat facing me. I have trouble keeping my eyes averted from the white slit, a crescent moon smiling out at me. How can a well-dressed, intelligent looking man not be aware that his fly is open?
But perhaps he is aware. Perhaps his fly is open on purpose.
The implications are both horrifying and intriguing.
My experiences with intimacy are limited, my knowledge pitiful. I have had only a couple of assignations in my 38—no, 43—years, both short and sour. And long ago I picked up a homeless woman with brown teeth and took her to my room. “Let’s go to bed,” I said. She smiled and shook her head and slept in the chair, and when I woke the next morning she was gone. Her name was Maddy.
As a teenager I was peeing in a public urinal when a dark shadow fell. A tall man in black—a priest, complete with clerical collar—stood at the next urinal staring at me with his enormous dark thing in his hand. He was bald, swarthy, stern-looking, he dandled his thing and stared at me thinking of flagellation and exacting confessions. The Inquisition must have been a riot.
The train rushes through the tunnel, the air compressing around it and forming a column of air that will blow on the faces of the people waiting at the next station to be devoured, and possibly remind some of them that death is coming. The fly man is moving his legs from side to side. Is he coming on to me? I think about casually slipping mine out, but of course I was brought up with social graces, so I abstain. We’re not mere animals, after all. And anyway, he makes no eye contact. I can only turn away and feign indifference.
I will have my reckoning later. Blessed later.
As for now: that is uncertain. It’s a day off, I’m free to be myself and not have to impress anybody or be the bereft little mole-man society expects from its male members.
I’m thinking it might be nice to force myself on someone
I’m thinking it might be nice to let someone force themself on me
I’m thinking I’d like to find a new art book today. Something in color—a black and white art book is stupid.
I’m thinking I’d like to see the water today. It’s been a while, and a nice harbor view might cheer me up, even give me some sense of purpose. I have purpose enough with my afternoon job at the photo shop, but longer-term, things remain obscure.
I like my job, but yesterday really pushed me. Mister never-satisfied, whose pictures were always too dark or too light, this time too light (so he thought), and of course he asked me to do them over, right when I was slammed with a pile of one-hours and the fucking printer was balking. I shoved back in my swivel chair and glared at him. Of course! I yelled, It’s always like this with you, isn’t it!
You’re incompetent! he yelled at me, then yelled to the owner, who was standing right there, Is that your employee? Are you going to let him talk that way to a customer?
Out! I yelled. Get out! He walked out with his free photos, which should have pleased him no end, and I hope I never see him again. Deliver us from the chronically unsatisfied—it must be hell being married to him, him and his obsessive, endless family pictures, family, family, his humanoid possessions, fruit of his loathsome loins and ripe for improvement. What a tool.
Society did not teach me how to handle people like that, and I still feel crappy. I asked for today off to reset myself. The boss watched the whole thing and only shrugged—I’m a damn good worker and he knows it—and he gave me the day off, so now I’m loaded aboard the giant people-eating worm hoping to find some way of resetting myself. I take one last glance at fly-guy, who is still looking away, and wrench free of the serpent at Pioneer Square. Fly-guy remains, to discover his situation in his own time and perhaps find someone more to his taste.
The light and the shrieking gulls and the salt air hit me and I feel liberated. Good old Pioneer Square, with its red brick and stinky plane trees and fetid alleys and crazy people, its ancient memories that make me feel like maybe I’d lived here back in the days of the old Lava Beds and tin pianos and free lunches. I would like to have seen that. I’m on the lookout for good photographic material, little reminders of those times. Maybe today I’ll get lucky, although I rather doubt it. I’ve reached the point where I suspect all the good material has been taken or destroyed. Still, there are riddles here, mysteries that might reveal something about this city and myself. I feel it.
But what am I missing? What am I looking for?
The Indians on the bench punching each other’s faces: I remember them.
The woman dropping her drawers on the sidewalk and loosing a thick yellow gusher: I remember her.
The horse droppings from the carriages that clip-clopped along the waterfront: I once saw one let go with bowling ball-size piles of excrement: To this day I see them in my dreams.
A hand reaching into my back pocket.
Can I help you with something, pal?
A muttered oath, a threatening gesture.
Slammed a fist into my face and shoved me back. I threw myself at him, rammed my fist into his face, and sent him ass-over-teakettle. I’d never been in a fight in my life. I felt myself go hard. Well, shit. Fuck you asshole, I said, and went into the J&M and listened to the old-time jazz band and felt like I was back in 1900, and thought about the guy and what the fuck kind of dude went digging into others’ pockets, and concluded: fuck him. No reset necessary. When I walked to the bus stop, keeping an eye out for the guy, I felt like I’d lived through a hundred years in one night.
Now, all is quiet, serene. I go into the Waterfall Garden and sit and let the falling water blot out the city sounds and dream I’m in the mountains. I feel myself resetting.
Are those German pants?
The voice comes from behind me. My back bristles, I swivel around. A lumpy man with a dark complexion peers dimly at me. Are those German pants?
I am wearing my cavalry breeches and engineer boots. I found the cavalry breeches in a surplus store years ago. The Filipina woman who sold them to me said, Are you soldier?”
No, lady, I’m not soldier. When did you last see a soldier wear cavalry breeches? And why are you selling them if you don’t expect people to buy them? I saw a young woman wearing some once, and she was stunning.
No, Mister, they’re not German pants. I know what he’s implying, know goddamn well, and I resent it, resent it violently.
They look like German pants.
I feel my reset fading, I want to hit him. What can you do with people like that? Doomed from birth. He looks like an Indian, maybe this is his home ground or something. He has a right to be pissed. I have the falling water and a good life in this city that we whites built on his home ground. Fuck me. I move to another chair across the park and he says nothing more. I am out of his orbit—and into something else’s, something violating the alpine aroma. I look around, and see under a nearby chair a pile of excrement. Another dog. Maybe not—something about it. I can only shake my head and focus on the waterfall and the smell of mountains and forests, and after a few minutes I feel reset again. I get up and leave, eyes firmly forward.
At an outdoor table at the Central, time smells like a toxic brew faintly muffled. The waitress smiles. I like your pants, she says. A sincere smile. She gives me a menu and walks away briskly, my thoughts return to fly-guy. Your fly’s open. That’s all I had to say, softly, no attention, no big deal. Why was that difficult? What was I afraid of? His being Black? Well, that’s lame. There had to be something else. I wondered if he would go through the whole day with his fly open. People did that, and many stranger things. And why is it called a “fly,” anyway? I don’t know.
I vacate that particular thought and watch the pigeons walking around hoping for a handout. A moment later I see a man in a t-shirt kick at a pigeon.
Hey, I yell, Leave the birds alone!
Fuck off, asshole! he yells, lurching toward me. Gonna call the cops?
I wish I had a blackjack. Oh, wait—I do have a blackjack. I whip it out and crack him on the head. He reels and goes down, I hit him again and I shove him behind a Dumpster and hit him some more, growing alarmed at how good this is feeling but not letting alarm stand in the way of a good time. I am aware that something is wrong with me, but only dimly.
A man walks by and stops. You want some of this? I say, waving my blackjack at him.
All this in the middle of eating a BLT and looking harmless. To be considered next time you see a harmless-looking man on the street. The Central does a nice BLT.
The waitress smiles when she picks up my tab, a beautiful smile, but she turns away so no future there. I stand up and a nasty smell hits me. Huddled in the ornamental cast-iron molding around the neighboring alcove is a dark lump. It is a pile of excrement.
Well, that’s odd.
More than odd, says the man at the next table. I thought I had said it to myself. He is staring at me, he has a nice face and he seems intelligent enough, and he says I like how you stood up for the pigeon. That guy was a total prick. With that in mind, I let him follow me into the alley and blow me. His hair is curly and his head bobs back and forth, he looks like maybe a lawyer, and I wonder if this is what Destiny looks like. He jumps up and scurries away into the sunlight, leaving me to wonder: I daydreamed the whole thing, right? I look around for the coshed pigeon-kicker, but see only pigeons. Perhaps they devoured him.
I walk on, aimlessly, and note that the smell of the pile of excrement lingering in my nose has actually increased my rigidity. That’s much more than odd. So, basically, I wasn’t done yet. Okay, so,
I could wait till later (again)
I could invent something.
I could form a new political party.
I could invite a random woman to go slow-dancing with me in the alley. I did, after all, attend the Saltmarsh dance class.
Love is nice when you can get it. I had a girl, once, long ago, and I thought I had lucked out, but then she began to find fault and ask questions like Why do you wear your pants inside your boots like that? I don’t know, dear, why do you leave piles of excrement behind you every day? I couldn’t blame her—I tried to tell her—but then again I did blame her. Blame makes so many things understandable. I don’t why she wasted my time if she didn’t get me. Plus, she had kind of a whiny voice, like this scammer girl. I let her go and was happy.
There was a bike messenger, but that was only once. Everyone’s allowed one, aren’t they?
I once shared a Greyhound seat with a man with no hands. Must be hard, I said, unwittingly. He only sighed and turned away, as if I’d come up short.
A woman raised an eyebrow at me awhile back and I considered a proposition: fifty bucks. But then I thought, No, don’t be stupid, probably get crabs or worse. And why am I suddenly that desperate? Fuck, man, grow up. I let them all go and was happy, and anyway sex can be just fucking tiresome. Not to mention depressing. I’ve found that it’s easier to “fly solo.”
Still, easy ain’t everything.
Around a corner, a stairway gapes, eager to suck people into the bowels of old Seattle, the ancient underground city where boxhouse girls and klootchmen and crimps still dance in perpetual twilight. It’s been ages since I was down here, I think I might find something new, so I descend and wander the sanitized public corridors lined with shops. I am alone. At the end of a short hallway I come to a rusty metal door.
The door is small, almost invisible, as if built in a time when people were shorter, or the entry not meant for general access. But I see it, just as I saw it years ago, when I was in my twenties, and I slipped in and poked around into a forbidden zone deep under the city ingesting air that made my nose tingle and senses go on high alert. I didn’t encounter anyone but I felt weird energies. Hello again, old friend. Let’s go a little further now, shall we? I give a tentative pull. Again, I’m surprised that it opens, and wonder idly if it’s some kind of trap. A human-devouring cellar trap. Fuck it, I slip through, into a shadow-world of broken arches and crumbling foundations.
My boots crunch on Duwamish potsherds and sourdough fantasies, leavings of generations of transient souls passing from one netherworld to another, the rabid scrabbling of humanity, scuffling and striving and searching for something “better.” I’m under a sidewalk paved with glass squares that admit feeble gray light, feet scuffle above my head, muffled voices try to penetrate, are lost. I feel lost, but exhilaratingly lost and beyond reach. I grip my blackjack and move deeper in, the way grows dimmer, lit only by the glass skylights and the odd bare bulb. I scrunch along, feeling suddenly ready again, feeling that I have come within a blackjack-length of destiny. I see you, you can’t see me. The air is musty, loaded with dried sexual residue, this is the perfect place to let yourself go.
So I do.
That’s better.
I like to think I was possessed
I like to think I was inspired
But I was just ready.
Readiness is the engine of civilization.
Far ahead the corridor dwindles to a black hole. Suddenly, I am afraid
Of what?
Falling into the stunted black hole of my life.
Of all life.
You will be devoured.
There are people in here, dull eyes locked on me, ready to spring and sink their teeth into my neck, fresh sustenance.
There are giant snakes down here, about to coil and strangle and swallow me whole.
Some jackass lets a python loose in the Everglades—what did he call it, Monty? Ha-ha—Here ya go, Monty, good luck—and look what happens. If there were any justice, it would let me catch the bastard and cosh him into bad health.
My point being, it could happen here.
Perhaps I am seeking concealment. Or perhaps I am anticipating a future reality for mankind: underground living, after the world above-ground has become unlivable.
I find an alcove near a series of arches that I see were once windows and are now props for the sidewalk above, and in the vitreous light I see the silhouette of a head.
Hello? A women’s voice. The head rises slightly.
Hey.
What do you want?
Nothing. I’m just passing. I see clothing, a pillow. A little stuffed dog. Do you live in here?
Yes, yes I do. A small, precise voice. She stands out from her alcove, a short, weary, raggedy woman, her gray hair hanging limp, her face ruddy, quietly desperate. She glares at me defiantly. If you’re thinking about fucking me, she says, you can forget it.
I shake my head, No, I’m not thinking about that.
I almost let you last time.
Last time?
When you let me stay over.
I cock my head at her.
You wore those pants. You picked me up. You were very gentlemanly.
Holy shit.
Her smile is sheepish, close-lipped. In the sepulchral light, she looks broken in a hundred places, her face a street map of decay. She’s gray and stooped, now. A hag. But still her.
Maddy.
I nod slowly, fighting for words. Hey, you’re looking good! Well…what…?
Well, yeah. She snorts—sardonically? I live here, and other places.
How do you manage?
I do. The steam keeps it warm, nobody bothers me.
Christ.
She shakes her head violently. No, not Christ, me! It’s my life and I don’t need some fucking man telling me how to live! She waves her hand and kind of flinches. Not you, okay? You’re a gentleman. She smiles—those brown teeth. Do you still live in the same place?
No. Same neighborhood, though.
She nods her head, moving her whole body up and down like a pigeon. Her eyes wander, her clothes stink. I tell her where I work and that she should drop in. I would like to keep in touch. I mean it.
She smiles her brown smile. Thank you. But no—I don’t know.
Well, open invitation. If you’re ever in the neighborhood.
She turns away and studies something on the ground. I hope it’s not what I think it is.
There is no more I can do here. I say goodbye and walk back to the stairs and climb back into open air. An overpowering loneliness grips me, I want to hug everybody, I want my spirit to live here forever, here in Occidental Park with the totem poles. One of the totems is a woman with pendulous breasts, outstretched arms, and a gaping O-shaped mouth. I sit down on a bench and stare into the black pits of her huge dark eyes. What does she see? She stretches her arms, toward me, but what can we possibly have in common? Me, some fucking man.
A man and a woman sit on a nearby bench, lost in each other, talking, talking, talking. About what, I can’t imagine.
Another man walks by quickly, a woman runs after him screaming, Cocksucker motherfucker! You didn’t wear my ring in Kodiak!
Maddy. How in hell did I find her again? Under the accusing eyes of the totem woman, I remember how intelligent she seemed when I met her, not at all like the feral beggar girl in the tunnel, and how her face was not unattractive, how she seemed like maybe she had not always been crazy, like maybe she came from a “good” family. “Maddy”—was it short for something like Madeleine or Madison? An upper-crust name. Maybe she had gone to the Saltmarsh dance class. What had happened?
And then I remember the rest: how the next night I came home late and saw her sitting on the front steps of my rooming house with her duffle bag, waiting. For me. And how, instead of going to her and offering her shelter, I ducked behind some parked cars and slipped around to the back door. Not very gentlemanly.
How long did she wait there? What did she think when I didn’t show up? It probably dawned on her that I’d given her the runaround—maybe she saw me slip behind the cars, maybe she saw it all: another rebuff, another rejection, another night alone. And the sight set her course forever after.
Fuck me.
I should go back, try to reason with her, coax her out, into—what? Help her find a safe place to live, get some social service help. Take her dancing, teach her the box step.
At least take her some food.
I sense that she wouldn’t go for that.
I sense that I am making an excuse.
I sense that I’ll never see her again.
I sense that she will die down there, or in some church alcove, or on some bench, all alone. Maybe she will die happy, never having given in to any fucking man.
I feel her hovering near but slipping from my orbit and drifting away into space. I look up at the totem woman’s O-shaped mouth and think:
O, lone star. O, valiant sojourner.
She gapes angrily at my uselessness. But I’m not wearing anybody’s ring and I’m not running anybody else’s life.
What’s that—a bassoon? Ragged notes, then silence. Some kind of message floating around. Voices, sibilants, something slithering. The others. Trying to break through, to me, to everybody here. Warn us, maybe.
Okay, I hear you. I consider myself warned.
I should have gotten some pictures down there. I wonder if Maddy would have let me take hers if I’d asked. I’m no good at intruding on people—I’m a wimp. I might have gotten some interesting shots down there, anyway. Ghosts, ectoplasm, spooky air, spooky juice, simmering, steaming. Others, maybe.
The totem woman reaches toward me, mouth open,
Ready when you are.
At the foot of Main Street I stop and salute the little corner space that was filled in the seventies by Shelly’s Leg and writhing young bodies, where I watched the most beautiful human I’ve ever seen play pool and flash his dazzling teeth and josh with his admirers and hangers-on. His name was Zanky. I know this because I watched him write it, on the chalkboard used to reserve the pool table—a big, proud, slashing “Z,” like Zorro. I watched Zanky write out his name, thereby immortalizing it in places he could not have dreamed of (or maybe he could) and wished I could know him, hang out with him, be with him. But I was not in his league. I was a man of the shadows, the periphery. Still am. Well, it will have to do; there is safety in shadows, safety in being a person of many time zones. I was there, it was good, I am here, this is good. Thank you, Zanky, thank you, Shelly, who got her leg shot off by a cannon and opened a club. Life is weird that way.
In a little pavilion on the bay, worlds meet, water and land, past and present, white and brown. It’s good to stand in the old iron shelter and stare out at the harbor and into a world so hostile, so alien it makes the blood run cold. What things lurk out there, waiting for their time? I should thank them for their forbearance.
I sit down on the empty bench and watch the light go soft. A hundred years ago Indians hauled out here with their canoes and rig, and dickered and sang and played bone games. I offer my meager salute and close my eyes. Sometime later I wake to the feeling that I’m being followed. I sense more than see a recurring face. Well, maybe not a face—more a presence, a familiar one. I will await further developments here and watch the sun go down and night roll in, feel the earth turn over in space, feel time slough off like dead skin.
The sun hits the peak of Mt. Constance and sinks behind it, making a jagged silhouette. Who was Constance, anyway? So many names forgotten. I stand and go to the railing and continue staring at the water and the sky and the stuff in between. I feel completely reset now, and resolve to myself:
No more dumb show.
No more gnawing desperation.
I am a desperado in shape only.
I feel a presence. I like your boots. A woman stands beside me, smiling. Her eyebrows are raised. She has slate-gray hair and brown skin. She is a sight both pathetic and wondrous.
I like your smile.
Do you ride?
Shit. Now for the big letdown. No, horses eat too much.
She chuckles, a deep, warm throbbing, and slides closer.
I won’t ask about you if you don’t ask about me, I say.
Oh, I hate a lot of questions, don’t you!
Very much so!
She touches my arm. Just like that.
Zing!
I think of the shimmering future now opening to me, then my brain lurches abruptly back to Maddy, waiting at my door, camped under the city, alone, with her little stuffed dog. I think I should offer an apology, then think it would only be patronizing. She is her own woman.
This other, new woman, a spirit who has just materialized out of nowhere, now feels comfortable enough with the tall stranger next to her that she nods toward a figure slumped at the end of the bench. That man. Her voice is dreamlike.
The slumped man wasn’t there a moment ago.
Mm?
His fly is open.
So it is. The awful aperture gapes obscenely, I fear he is not wearing underwear, hope she doesn’t see. Already, protective feelings. Oh, I say, so it is.
Should we tell him?
Go ahead.
Might be more effective coming from both of us.
Do you think so?
Hm.
Really?
You seem reluctant.
I respond with an expression of ambivalence.
Her smile is crooked, her clothes are shabby. She radiates warmth. I bet you think I’m crazy, huh?
Might be, might not be. Who’s to say? I think I love her.
Good answer! She wrinkles her nose, a dream of young girls gone by, and points at a dark lump nearby: Is that a pile of excrement?
Yes. It’s been following me all day.
You have strange friends.
I don’t even know it.
In that case, you attract strange things.
And, here you are.
I turn to face her.
A gull shrieks.
She smiles slyly. Sir, do you know your fly is open?