2 by david trinidad
Man with Toy This miniature plastic tea set survived unopened for half a century so he could find it on the Internet and purchase it via PayPal for $13.95. Barbie-sized but not Mattel (“Don’t accept imitations!”) the age-spotted label reads “Made in Hong Kong”— for one of Barbie’s wannabes perhaps, that not as expensively dressed clone, ponytail of molded plastic, that hung on toy racks in five-and-dimes in that bygone era known as the Sixties. He loosens two tarnished staples and removes, from the age-tinged plastic bag, a blue serving tray, pink teapot (with lid), pink pitcher, four blue teacups and saucers and slender “silver” spoons, and arranges them among similar treasures in the plexiglass display case on a bookshelf next to his desk— each piece bright and cheerful as the day it was manufactured, in an exotic land halfway around the world from the suburb where he coveted it (or one like it) as a boy, a trinket untouched by fifty years of wars and disasters, a ten-cent toy that traveled through time and space by virtue of its irrelevance and mass-produced grace: “Someone might want this one day.” What was I doing in Lawrence, Kansas,
in William Burroughs’ lakefront cabin, in the middle of a lightning storm— multiple bolts flashing from blue-black clouds, illuminating the violet night sky, jagged white laser beams randomly pounding, it seemed, the ground, sprouting veins, electrified tree-roots, advancing across the helpless terrain like an alien invasion. Ira was on the phone with James: Sure, we could go down to the basement, but it might be locked, he didn’t know where the key was. No one had been down there in years, god only knew what we would find—spiders and whatnot. We’d have to use a flashlight. It was stuffed with old furniture. From the kitchen window, I watched the strikes get closer and closer until, overcome with fear, I crouched on the bathroom floor. Thus passed the first night of what was to be a two-week “vacation.” Every morning, I chauffeured Ira (who didn’t drive) around the lake into town, to James’ house, where he and James would work all day on Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader, then doubled back around the lake to the cabin. I tried to read and write, but went stir-crazy meeting the gaze of the deer head mounted above the stone fireplace. So found myself roaming the area in our rental car. I hit every used bookstore and antique mall I could find. In a display case of collectible toys, I eyed Sheath Sensation, an early Barbie outfit (fireman-red cotton sheath with four gold buttons and two deep pockets, short white gloves and open-toe pumps, crisp straw hat with red ribbon hatband), NRFB, and bought it for $225.00. Not a bad price, though it would make Ira mad. This purchase, as far as I was concerned, made the trip to Kansas worthwhile. I bought a red felt Disneyland pennant (pristine) for $10.00. And a number of vintage DC comics, which I read late at night after Ira had fallen asleep: Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes in their colorful, tight-fitting costumes. Each possessed his own unique power: Chameleon Boy, Lightning Lad, Sun Boy, Invisible Kid. It was mid-July, and hot, so every day I found myself, after shopping, at the stadium movie theater on Iowa Street. Twelve films to choose from. I saw, in those two weeks, Men in Black, Contact (twice), The Fifth Element, Hercules, Breakdown, Nothing to Lose, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Operation Condor, Con Air, Face/Off, A Simple Wish, and My Best Friend’s Wedding. I wanted to see George of the Jungle because I thought Brendan Fraser was cute, but never got around to it. Each evening, we convened at Burroughs’ house for dinner. Dragonflies flitted above the tall grass in front of the famous bungalow— painted barn-red with white trim. A trellis on the side of the porch dense with red rose blooms. The screen door creaked open. Bone-thin and frail, hunched forward, Burroughs looked at me suspiciously. I don’t believe anyone bothered to tell him who I was. I had little interest in his work. I’d read Nova Express in college, only remembered that I’d found it difficult. Did he sense this? Or was it obvious—I didn't fawn. He wore a green army jacket— even in the heat—looked like he was shrinking inside it. But not from lack of sustenance. The literary lion was well fed: salad with Paul Newman’s Ranch Dressing, curried lamb, rice, snow peas, bread and butter, strawberry shortcake. We sat in a semicircle around him, holding our plates, while he talked nonstop throughout the meal, in that growly gangster drawl I was familiar with from his Nike ad. I don’t remember a word he said. Periodically he began to choke on his food, James futilely reminding him not to talk while chewing, and everyone froze. Dear God, I thought, don’t let him drop dead in front of us. (He would, in fact, die of a heart attack two weeks after Ira and I went back to New York.) Rather than sit there uncomfortably, I helped clear and wash the dishes. To me, the house felt dark, oppressive. His collection of hand-carved canes and walking sticks, in an umbrella stand in the corner, struck me as creepy—a far cry, admittedly, from mass-produced toys. Two red skull candles on a ledge—one of them unlit, the other burned halfway down. I noticed, on the coffee table in the dim living room, a burgundy-colored paperback, Tennyson’s Selected Poems. I asked him about it. There were great titles in there, he said, to be lifted. He showed me “Ulysses”; I sat and reread it in his presence. When I took my notebook out to jot something down (not about him), they all (even Ira) pounced on me: What are you writing? Note-taking was verboten—who knew. If I hadn't been chastised, I might not have secretly taken the few notes I did. That he liked gum drops. That he smoked pot throughout the evening. That feeding the goldfish in the pond in the backyard was the high point of his day. At dusk one night, two boys from Alabama knocked on the screen door. One of them blond, the other redheaded. Both utterly in awe. He went out onto the porch and talked with them, posed for photographs with them, signed books for them. On the sly, I recorded, on a pink Post-it, my impressions of him: energetic, fragile, childlike, lonely/sad, wounded in some fundamental and tragic way, sharp and manipulative, didn’t miss a thing. On another Post-it, what James told Ira to tell me to get at the market: vodka (Smirnoff), rice, lima beans, peaches 'n' cream ice cream. Dennis Cooper’s name came up in conversation. “He’ll get nothing more from me,” snapped Burroughs. (Dennis had trashed him, apparently, in print.) Toward the end of our trip, he invited Ira and me to go shooting with him. We declined. Neither of us wanted anything to do with guns. He produced a photograph someone had taken of him through the trellis, surrounded by red roses. “A venerable old fuck giving orders to his assassins through the roses,” he growled. “Message of roses . . . message of roses.” I locked the bathroom door behind me, pulled a pink Post-it out of my back pocket, and, like a spy, wrote it down— just because I’d been told not to. |
DAVID TRINIDAD's most recent books are Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera (2013) and Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems (2011), both published by Turtle Point Press. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches poetry at Columbia College. |