June 2004 | back-issues, poetry
THE ANGEL OF FUGUE
BY ANDRES KAHAR
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Fugue
Noun 1. Fugue – dissociative disorder in which a person forgets who they are and leaves home to creates a new life; during the fugue there is no memory of the former life; after recovering there is no memory of events during the dissociative state
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Underemployment was a nasty, yet increasingly familiar, state of being for his generation of university-educated talent. Well, that’s what Guy Burgess kept telling himself.
Guy, you see, was trained as a journalist. Guy even worked as a journalist. But, one barely remembered chain of events later, Guy ended up on the fringes, working in a call centre.
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DATE: Dead of winter
PLACE: DeMens Market Research call centre (Toronto)
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Guy Burgess really hated his job. He really hated talking to angry North Americans about credit card debt. But he didn’t know how to break the cycle of never-ending, evening call centre shifts — it was as if he’d been there forever, and always would be.
He was suffering from some weird kind of middle-range memory loss, so the events leading up to his employment at DeMens call centre were fuzzy, shadowy outlines.
One day, he considered seeking medical or psychiatric help for his self-diagnosed condition, but that idea was nixed pronto: Guy was certain that if any professional documented the details of his life, there’d be a forensic trail leading straight to his Internet porn cache. He’d seen enough Internet pop-ups warning of likely job loss should any authority figure find out he was a regular visitor to www.sloppysausage.org.
Guy Burgess hated the thought of losing his job.
Bong-Bong: “Guys ride around in BMWs and pick up women. They pay her money to do it with them. Always end with the money shot. They call themself ‘Bimmer Bangers.'”
That was Bong-Bong making conversation one shift. Bong-Bong was an amiable colleague of Guy’s at DeMens.
But whenever Bong-Bong got to talking like that at work, Guy got nervous. Guy’s eyes began to dart, and he’d sweat profusely, watching out for supervisors.
Guy: [voice slightly raised] “Look, Bong-Bong, I don’t know about norms in Manila, but sex for me is a straight-up enterprise. One man, one woman. No bells, whistles or Bimmers.”
Bong-Bong looked injured, and Guy returned to dialing numbers for the current credit card survey.
Guy must have scrolled through that survey on the computer screen at least 100 times. So, 35 minutes later, when Guy got a live respondent willing to do the survey, he was basically on auto-pilot, almost reciting the script from memory.
Only this time — possibly the 101st — was different. The script on the screen was being rewritten before his eyes. The DeMens preamble about confidentiality was being overwritten by the following sentence, in big block letters:
‘YOU ARE AN AGENT, GUY BURGESS. AWAKEN TO YOUR DESTINY.’
Guy: “Uh, Bong-Bong, look at this. Something messed-up is happening with my computer.”
But Bong-Bong’s feelings were still hurt over the ‘Bimmer Bangers’ exchange. He wiped a tear from his cheek, and he stared ahead at his own screen, frosty and silent.
Guy turned back to his computer screen: everything was back to normal: there it was: the DeMens confidentiality preamble he knew by heart, and nothing about him being an ‘agent’ or his ‘destiny.’
Some 24 hours later, Guy found himself staring at the same screen and the same script, with a phone receiver sweating against his ear. At least he assumed it was 24 hours later. He didn’t remember going home or doing anything else since his last shift. All he had to measure time by was the DeMens clock on the DeMens wall in the DeMens phone room.
A few hours into the shift, just as Guy was starting into a survey, the script on the computer screen began overwriting itself again:
‘WE CAN HELP YOU CHANGE YOUR FATE, GUY BURGESS. THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES.’
Guy: “Hey, Bong-Bong, something’s gone wrong here. My computer’s talking to me.”
Bong-Bong: [hostile, sarcastic tone] “No thank you, Neo. I see that movie too. Bong-Bong is not talking to you.”
So Guy left his cubicle to look for a shift supervisor.
Guy: “My computer’s messed up.”
Supervisor: “No, you’re messed up. How many times have we said no web surfing. Especially porn. Hit the bricks, Guy. You’re fired.”
When Guy turned back to the screen, his jaw sank. His monitor displayed a looped Reel-Video clip of a man humping a woman in the backseat of a car, while the cameraman’s member bobs in and out of the bottom of the screen, poking the overzealous woman in the cheek. Then, up came the logo: ‘BIMMER BANGERS.’
As Guy was escorted out of the phone room, he glared over his shoulder at Bong-Bong, who looked just as surprised as Guy.
Guy: “Et tu, Bong-Bong!”
The allusion may have fallen flat, but Guy’s accusation was understood. Bong-Bong shook his head in confused denial.
Guy sat on the cold steps in front of the DeMens building, oblivious to the growing snow storm. What the hell just happened in there? he asked himself, aloud.
Then he noticed a weird car thumping down the midtown street, gurgling to the curbside at DeMens HQ: it looked like one of those Russian cars Soviet spies drive in espionage movies. And this car looked Soviet alright: there were red stars, hammers and sickles spray-painted all over the rusted vehicle, and words emblazoned across the passenger’s side, in blood red: ‘FROM BAKU WITH LOVE.’
The passenger’s door opened, and out stepped an old man, about 80-years-old by Guy’s guess. He wore a gray chesterfield overcoat and a snap-brim hat. He was tall, cadaverous, almost spectral. He spoke to Guy in what sounded like a British accent, with traces of something else Guy couldn’t place.
Old man: “Hullo, Mister Burgess. Smashing to see you again.”
Guy: “Do I know you?”
Old man: “Oh, tosh! Do you know me?!”
The old man turned to the Soviet car for a moment, as if to cue a studio audience. Tobacco-shaded laughter emanated from inside the car.
Old man: “Yes, you know me. I might be your dearest and only friend. And I’m here to rescue you. Change your fate. Awaken you.”
Guy: “That was you! On the computer screen! How did you do that? Did Bong-Bong put you up to it?”
Old man: “You’ll find I can do many things for you, Mister Burgess. And, no, Bong-Bong had nothing to do with it.”
Guy: “Who are you, man?”
Old man: “Oh, I have so many names. But you can call me Peter.”
With those words, Peter gestured to the backseat of the Soviet car. And Guy, not having much to lose that evening, got up and stepped in.
Once inside, Guy was introduced to the driver, a massive bear of a man who seemed only to speak Russian. The driver really did resemble a bear in appearance, size and temperament.
Driver: “Privyet!”
Guy nodded hello, cautiously.
Peter: “This is Alesker. Alesker the Azeri. My bodyguard, among other things.”
Guy: “Oh, so you guys–?”
Guy winked and made an inappropriate clacking sound.
Alesker roared with fury.
Peter: “Heavens no, old boy! Our relationship is purely business. Moreover, we fancy birds as much as the next chap. All meat eaters here–eta ny pravda, da?!”
Alesker, still looking disgruntled, growled affirmative: “Da!”
Guy: “Where are we going?”
Peter: “To a place and time far from here, my boy!”
Alesker ignited the engine, and with that, seemed to ignite the entire sky. As the Soviet car shot off in the direction of downtown Toronto, the buildings and lights of the city were smeared with red, orange, yellow and finally white light, and the car seemed to lift off the road into midair.
Guy couldn’t see anything outside of the car — only white hot light.
Guy: “What the hell’s happening?”
Peter: “It’s called time travel, Mister Burgess. Don’t soil your trousers yet–we’re here!”
In an eye-blink, Guy found himself sitting at a dirty bar, between Peter and Alesker, drinking vodka. Guy spun his stool around to take in a room full of sinister-looking mafia types, all of them sporting shaved heads and leather jackets. Everyone seemed to be speaking Russian.
Several of the mafia types nodded obeisant greetings to Peter, the old man in the gray coat. Peter responded in fluent Russian. He then demanded something (in Russian) from the bartender — a TV transmitter.
Guy: “You took me here to watch TV?”
Peter: “Oh, you really are witless in this reality, aren’t you?”
Peter switched on the TV. The first images on the screen were of another looped Reel-Video clip from ‘Bimmer Bangers’ — picking up where the cameraman’s schlong prods its way to centre-screen, toward the woman’s moaning mouth.
The mafia types pricked to attention, and stormed the bar, clearly enthused by the old man’s program selection. But Peter switched the channel immediately.
The mafia types grumbled and groaned in protest.
Peter: “Malchiki! Zatk`nis!”
Obediently, the mafia types fell silent. They returned to drinking at their respective tables.
Guy turned back to the TV screen, and he was astonished to see his own image on the screen — albeit thinner, healthier, younger. It was as if the old man was playing a home video of Guy several years earlier, circa his undergraduate years — except these were images of Guy in a life that never happened.
Guy: “Hey, man, that’s me! Don’t remember that, though.”
Peter: “Take mental notes. Retain as much as you can. Prepare to be overwhelmed–you big girl’s shirt.”
As the old man spoke those words, Guy felt as if he were sucked into the TV screen, becoming a real-life observer of the video images.
The images appeared before Guy like real life, but not real-time — all images rushed past him like a river, everything in fast-forward. Like dreaming, on Benzedrine.
Here’s what Guy saw, or at least what he remembered:
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Guy is walking through what looks like an old European city, along cobblestone streets …
Then he is in a room full of shouting people in suits and ties … Guy’s taking notes …
It’s an important news conference …
Then Guy’s embracing a beautiful, young woman, who calls him by the wrong name, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern of his at the moment … they have sex in what appears to be an office, on a poorly constructed table … Guy performs badly … she rolls her eyes and gets dressed … he apologizes, offering up explanations neither of them believe …
A gunshot rings out, shattering glass … Guy runs for cover with a burly middle-aged man, a friend … they catch a glimpse of a dark figure atop a roof wearing a mask … the gunman, the shooter … an assassin …
There are alarming international headlines on the front pages of international papers … an international crisis … terrorism … bombs … sex scandals …
Guy is at the centre of the crisis, and it’s all up to him … there’s a book deal … a big book deal …
Another shot rings out …
Guy’s vision goes black, in a filthy men’s room …
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And, in an eye-blink, Guy is returned to the backseat of the Soviet car, which is idling outside of DeMens HQ in midtown Toronto.
Guy: “What the hell just happened?”
Peter: “I gave you a glimpse of an alternative.”
Guy: “I was a journalist. A writer. That was a pretty cool life.”
Peter: “Um, yes, and the fetching bird on the table–er–it happens to many blokes. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mister Burgess.”
Guy: “There was another gunshot. Did I die?”
Peter: “Of that I am not certain–old boy.”
Guy: “So, when you say alternatives, are you saying I have a choice about what life I can have?”
Peter: “Let’s not jump the gun, Mister Burgess. I’m not a magician. And you are bounded by your reality, after all.”
Guy: “So what was the point of showing me all of this?”
Peter: “Oh, to make you think about things, I suppose. Tease you a little.”
Guy was no longer sure what to think about anything. At that moment, he couldn’t remember much from his real life. He couldn’t remember much from the old man’s video feed of his alternative life.
Guy only remembered the beautiful young woman. And the book deal.
Guy cleared his throat, and he stared hard at the old man.
Guy: “So, what now?”
Peter: “You go back to work. And you think about things. Think hard.”
Guy: “But I was fired from my job. I don’t have a job to go back to.”
Peter: “Oh, right. Hmm. Well, then, old boy, think of this as an opportunity.”
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Andres Kahar is a Toronto-based writer. He’s worked as a journalist in Europe & the ex-USSR. He’s worked in a Toronto call centre. Sometimes, his thoughts have wandered to themes of women and book deals.
© Andres Kahar 2004
May 2004 | back-issues, poetry
by Mita Ghose
[i]The following piece was published in The Statesman, Calcutta, India, on January 10, 2000. The subject of this piece passed away on 3 April 2004.[/i]
She is lost to me already, without having died, this woman I care for in more ways than one. Bound to her by indissoluble ties, I sometimes pause to wonder, guilt-stricken, whether my commitment to this stranger in all but name and appearance can honestly be described by the euphemism that pervades the literature available on the malady–“a labour of love”. For oftener than not, I am unable to regard it as anything other than an exercise in frustration, resentment, anger, futility and resignation.
The instinct for self-preservation urges me to ask a silent question of the cruel circumstances in which I find myself trapped: “Why me?” It is swiftly followed by an overwhelming sense of shame, as I realise that she is the greater victim. And then I am left to rage inwardly: “Why, for God’s sake, of all people, her?” Knowing only too well that there is no answer.
For who could have imagined that this woman, spirited, capable, hyperactive and compulsively hard-working, would, one day, choose to while away the hours in slumber, rousing herself reluctantly for meals, like a newborn responding mechanically to elemental needs?
Who would have thought that rows of books, unread, would gather dust in a room belonging to an intellectual for whom they had once been a passion? Who could have foreseen the possibility of an individual with an inexhaustible capacity for generosity and personal sacrifice, turning so deeply inwards as to focus single-mindedly on her own wants to the exclusion of all else? Yet, these are the more bearable aspects of her condition.
For there are days I have come to dread, when her dormant energy awakens to assume a malevolent form. Like one driven by mysterious forces which refuse to let her rest or relax, she will mark the hours in aimless movement and meaninglessly repetitive speech, petulant, demanding and irrational at best, enraged, deceitful and viciously abusive, when things take a turn for the worse. Which they do increasingly in the twilight zone of Alzheimer’s disease.
There are recurring episodes, still few and far between, marked by frightening lapses of memory, when I become for her merely “the woman who looks after me”. That hurts. Nothing, however, can equal the depths of the anguish I experience when, in her lucid moments (and there are still many), she clings to me helplessly, this former tower of strength in crisis, and whispers: “What has happened to me?”
I wipe away the fugitive tears she would have known how to hold back once and enfold her frail frame in an embrace meant to soothe and reassure us both, an uncomfortable reversal of the traditional roles we had grown used to over the years. And my reply to her bewildered query must remain unuttered: “The real you has gone away forever.”
Meanwhile, the living, breathing shell remains, to be tended and cared for as if it were the person herself. An illusion the tranquil phases of this treacherous illness can sustain quite convincingly. Until my gaze, unfocussed in preoccupation, is arrested by her old alarm clock, one of the objects she clings to possessively, although she can no longer read the time, because its familiar face gives her, perhaps, the fleeting sense of security that mine can not. Its alarm silenced by age, the gadget ticks away in a parody of precision, busily marking its own hours, and completely out of sync with time in the real world. And every day will widen the discrepancy a little further.
That clock, ironically as afflicted in its own way as its owner is in hers, can, with a bit of effort, be set right. There is no such hope for the stranger I continue to address, from force of habit, as “Ma”.
February 2004 | back-issues, poetry
bu Mike Boyle
It was many years later, I was around 40 now and I was relaxing on my back porch and musing on the past. The band had run it’s course with some success but we were ahead of our time, misunderstood. As things usually go, bands that followed us, that copied our style made all the money. They looked better, had better management, had vocal coaches and hairdressers and fitness coaches and image coaches. Some of the creeps even went to college to learn how to be a rock star. It was laughable how they came on all tough but were some of the most pampered individuals on the planet. The people wanted lies, the people wanted things packaged in something simple they could understand. And that’s what they bought. But I couldn’t complain, we had a good 8 year run, made a little money before the usual things happened; the power struggles, ego-trips and substance abuse. I had to walk away from it all before I Cobain’d out.
“Anthony! Are you coming in to lunch?” my wife called in from the kitchen.
I went in and looked at her. She had just turned 30 and looked great. Short dark hair and great ass. She was a runner and would wake early and run a mile each morning. The table was set and I sat down.
“Looks good Cleo,” I told her. Her name was Cleopatra. No, I hadn’t intentially set out to marry a girl named Cleopatra, cut it out. There was a salad and steak burrito’s. I loved her steak burrito’s, steak and cheese with homemade salsa and refried beans. I tore into it.
“How’s the writing going?” she asked. I didn’t like talking about it too much and she knew. Talking about writing was death to a real writer. You end up talking it away. That’s why there’s so much bad writing out there written by university professors.
“Don’t make me hate you,” I said between bites.
She laughed at me. She had a healthy laugh, a real lust for life.
“You could never hate me Anthony.”
“No, I guess not.” I smiled at her. “It’s going alright. Let’s fuck.”
“Let’s finish lunch.”
We finished and then she ran upstairs and I ran after her. Then I was slamming Tony jr. into her, in and out of her. She reached up and grabbed the bedposts and rolled her head to the side. I watched the veins in her neck pulsing as she moaned softly. There was a bit of drool spilling out of the corner of her mouth. Then she had an orgasm. I pumped harder and her head was bouncing a bit off the pillow. I had a momentary vision of my cock going up through her belly, her heart, up her neck and pounding into the roof of her mouth. I eased up a bit.
When I woke up later there was a note on the pillow that read:
“Went out shopping for food and supplies. I’m crazy in love with you Anthony.”
I got up and put on my clothes, went into my study. We had met 10 years ago in Mexico after the band broke up. She was just 20 then and was on spring break from college with 2 of her girlfriends. I had a hotel room in Oaxaca and was just starting to write but mostly I drank. After kicking heroin I spent a few months driving aimlessly through the United States and Mexico and had settled for a few weeks there in Oaxaca. She and her friends had stumbled into the bar I frequented and they had recognized me from the band. Like I said, we had been underground but had some fame, had a few records out, a couple of videos that they still played on the TV late at night. Her friends were all chatty but she was coy, didn’t seem like she was too into meeting a faded rock star. I liked that and then her friends asked me if I knew where they could score some pot. I had quit all drugs by then and didn’t want anything to do with pot but they persisted and I set them up with the local dealer who was sitting close by. They went off to his place a block away and Cleo stayed there with me, said it was OK, I seemed OK.
“You don’t seem to be having as much fun as your friends,” I said to Cleo.
“They’re morons.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Typical Americans run amok in Mexico on spring break. I wish I never came here. They talked me into it, they said I needed to loosen up, get laid, party.”
“So it’s not for you. That’s OK. The hell with them.”
She smiled. “Yeah. Right.”
We talked for a while till her friends showed back up. She was going to college to be an accountant, her family was poor and she had gotten into school on grants, had to work part-time. Her friends came from rich families. They had it made even if they failed in school but she was going to be the first in her family to graduate from college. Then she asked about my situation. What I was going to do. I gave her the lie I told everybody, that I was writing the great novel of the times and she said, “Cool.” She smiled again and it was a smile that showed in her eyes, a whole-face smile.
“Listen,” I told her, “Give me your address and I’ll write you.”
“Why?”
“I like you.”
“How do you know?”
“Just do it,” I told her and handed her my little notepad I carried around. She wrote it down and then her friends showed back up and they went off to rape and pillage the rest of Mexico.
I stayed there in Oaxaca for 6 more months writing and sending things out in the mail and finally got published in a few small-press magazines but it was mostly things that sounded like someone else. I couldn’t write like I talked yet, had to put on a combination of the personas of Bukowski and Burroughs and Ginsburg to get it done. All I wrote was poems. Drunken, mad poems of lost love and murder. Poems of the twilight and the night and the torn souls and the afterlife I had lived as a junkie. And I drank. I drank beer and whiskey and tequila with the locals. I ranted and raved into the nights with all Mexico.
Then I was contacted by a publishing house that wanted to print a book of my poems. Idiots! But they said I still had fans out there, fans of the underground music I had done and there was a market. I put together a collection and mailed it to them. That’s the funny thing about being a writer, when you’re writing, it all seems great. Then, a week or so later it all seems like crap. Like you don’t even want to be identified with it, there’s no place to hide anymore. That people see all the writers you know in all your words. You’re a fake man! A liar! A cheat! But that’s the funny thing because the readers don’t know. And you never know the readers. They might be smarter than you, smart enough to keep it to themselves. I thought about Bukowski stealing from Lenny Bruce’s autobio almost word for word for the first chapter of “Ham on Rye”. I thought about all the music building off the foundations of the past. How musicians aren’t held to the high standards of writers. How people on seashores with umbrellas were reading and listening to the radio, sipping drinks and watching the waves crash in.
So “Diarrhea of a Madman” was published and sold well. I had been writing to Cleo, off and on, and she had been replying. No great love letters or anything, just talk. Long letters of talk. Then I started roaming again, driving further south down into Central America and I lost her address, we fell out of touch. A year later I was in Peru and my car was on its last legs. I had gotten shot in Venezuela by an angry husband and had suffered crabs and clap but nothing bad. All the while the writing had been pouring out of me and they had published “Attempted Mullet”, a collection of short stories so there was some money coming in again but I was tired of living out of a suitcase. It was time to go one home or find anyhow. New York. And that’s where we met again. I was giving a reading at the St. Mark’s Church and she was there. She had graduated by then and was living in New York also, working for a bank there in town. I was drunk as a skunk, as they say, reeling around the podium, stumbling and slurring my words. The people wanted lies, something packaged in something they could understand and I was the Hollywood drunk, breaking bottles on the stage, winging them through the air, lighting my shoes on fire with lighter fluid and laughing. I was the drunken ex-rocker that had beat the system, had lived in Mexico in seclusion, had beat heroin and life. I was the lying son-of-a-bitch actor that gave them what they wanted; it was during that time that performance art was big in NYC.
Cleo came up to me after the show, said, “That’s not you.”
I opened another beer and said, “I know you from somewhere.”
We spent that night together and most of the nights since.
I booted up my computer and sat there waiting for it. I was working on a new novel now and the other 3 had done really well. The new one was about a murderer that always had songs running through his head. When he killed Pat Devine the theme from “The Good, Bad and Ugly” had been running through his head. He had Pat alone in a warehouse under the precepts of a drug deal. The song kept running through his head as he killed him slow. Something about, “You raped my sister.”
“I didn’t know it was your sister man!”
I blew off his left kneecap with my 9mm. I always wrote in the first person. He rushed at me, limping and it was funny. I blew off his right and he did a little pirouette and slumped to the floor. The song played on for a bit and then it changed to Donna Summer’s version of Macarthur Park.
“Mercy. Have some mercy!” he yelled as Donna sang in my head. Someone left the cake out in the rain…
Then there were the other murders. For one, Toni Basil’s “Mickey” ran through my head. That was a car chase. I had tried to pull up easy on the expressway and blow his brains out with my shotgun but he saw me. He floored it and I ended up running him off the road in North Carolina, into the swamp, the Great Dismal Swamp. He jumped out of the car and ran. Again, it was funny. They always think they can get away but never do. “Hey Mickey!” Toni sang as I shot him dead in the back. I had no sense of honor or anything. Then I took a can of gas and poured it over his car, lit it. It was pretty, watching the thing burn. Then I took the can and poured it on the victim, burned him up too. As I was walking away the theme from Baretta was running through my head. The night smelled like tar and it was poetry in motion….
It was 4 in the afternoon and I got up and looked out the window. 4 used to be the drinking time, it would start and it wouldn’t stop till midnight or beyond but those times were gone also and I didn’t miss them. The phone rang and I saw Cleo driving up the road towards our house. She saw me looking out and smiled, waved while my agent left a message. Something about a movie Cleo. I went back to the computer and started writing more ridiculous nonsense I liked to read and forgot the time until I heard her singing downstairs. Singing softly to herself. Walking in the sand.
