paul cunningham
from Green Jouissance |
FRANK ZAMBONI
Yessiree, Lutz the Boy-Wander’s a permissivist narcissist in denial if I ever saw one. The high-media rash of paparazzi knows he’s traded in his gewgaws for gauze pads and instead of bare-backed halter, he’s being bare-backed into wall after wall in more ways than one. He’s got sex appeal and piquancy and everything, but his instagram philters have lost their affect. He might have more moves than a belly dancer, but the ladies in town just aren’t biting. Old hat hat trick? Or is the ol’ togafolds unpeeling for a different audience these days. The sort of audience one finds behind closed doors only? I won’t say he hasn’t been caught with lace flounces on his trousers (because he has!), but those smockdressed fesses of his gotta fess up sooner or later. That dastardly Ice Land Ice Arena Cover-Ups ward knows never-publicized plans when they don’t see ‘em!
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IRIS
Do you find me attractive?
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LUTZ
(with hesitation)
(with hesitation)
Sure, why? You seem like a leading scorer, a smart shot that hustles to make anything but a desperation play.
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LUTZ
(aside)
(aside)
Deflected that one.
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IRIS
I just noticed the way you were looking at yourself. Wondered if I could compete with that.
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LUTZ
I mean, I hardly know what you look like. (Pauses) Do you like wearing all the armor we do? Always covered in wide-tongued awl holes; and these spiked collars and tablet-woven girdles? Maybe the spiked collars aren’t so bad, but the grozed glass disco spectacula and hexagonal breast plates? The copper-alloy buckles and sweat-corroded metal fastenings? Diagonal gunmetal widthways and acorn knobs? Thickly sleeved cod-pieces and a three-part slush cast? And the V-shaped vertical slit? I mean, really?
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IRIS
My codpiece may not be as thickly sleeved as yours, but no goalie in her right mind wants to suffer a puck to the crotch. Most of the time, skating amain, I forget about all the padding. Why, what would you prefer to wear? What’s wrong with your V-shaped vertical slit?
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LUTZ
I’d rather not say.
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LUTZ
(aside)
(aside)
When I was a little me my mother used to take me to her friend’s house where there were daughters just as little as me. My little me sometimes put on their little me dresses over my me. Once my new little me was on, my little me would take off my little blue jeans. I would chase little daughters around and lift up my me dress to show them my other little me. We would laugh little laughs at my me. My mother stopped taking me there when her friend’s house found out. When my me found out windows actually hurt the same way mirrors do.
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LUTZ
(aside)
(aside)
The mirror hurts less now. A poet I admire once wrote in his diary: Anything that brings two people closer is, theoretically, good—even to eating each other’s excrements. The Zany dressing room of the Ice Land Ice Arena has been a challenging space. (All their challenging gaziness, their intimidation tactics.) Dressing on the dressing room bench, their Zany, girthy arrows loosen me. I’m hooked in this thermal region. Bloomings of semi-dehydrated boys in the nearby mirror-fluid. Crude lead-coated discs, tin-chained joints. Worn-out sticks. Bone-panels bent inwards, figure-of-eight knotted breastplates. Bending, muscular bowing. Bow, and another bow, and another bow. And arrow. Another hookpump hits me. Another and another. Sweat-rusted angles, S-twisted lippings of slashed, of rilled. Shower moss, showered with plums. I feel soldered to their tongues. Their razor-beards. Their arrows disrepair me, feels good. Rotating suspension loops, leather filets. Photogenic ectoplasmic weedlings. I’m sitting slim. It’s humid. I’m cradled, near a bottomblown drainpipe. They wrote my name with their mirror-fluid. They showered their Lutz in Lund-excavated beads of sweat. Tell no one, they said.
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IRIS
Why the Ice Land Ice Arena? Why spend all your time here if you’re not happy? Why not tighten up the gaps, give ‘em less room in the neutral zone?
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LUTZ
It must be the way the ice sheens halogen amethyst before your eyes adjust to overhead arena lighting. The night I broke into the Ice Land Ice Arena and stole Frank’s Zamboni. Took it for a spin. Saw myself stream past myself in the glass. Reflected so many different ways. Test-driving. No spectators. Smooth resurfacing. I stared mostly at the reflections of the overhead lights cast down on the surface of the ice. White flowers, fireworks. I remember running my fingers over the flower-like tin mounts protruding from my uniform. Circling around in my Zamboni trance. Erasing all trace.
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LUTZ
(aside)
(aside)
Semen dripping from my skate-sharp eyes. I can always smell the locker room. Especially when I feel purest.
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IRIS
I see. You sound like a messed up messer-upper looking for a reason to settle down. Why are you in such desperate need of goals, such desperate need of points?
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LUTZ
I don’t know. Maybe I’m just fond of the cold.
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IRIS
You also never told me what you’d prefer to wear out there in this cold amethyst haven you’ve been teeth-chattering about.
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LUTZ
(aside)
(aside)
I want to skate out of a haute couture house in Warholian diamond dust skates. Sequins, bugle beads; bladey cock-feathered heels. I want to swan my neck through a black mink pullover or silk organza and crepe while reading spectator gossip in a popular discothèque. I want my V-shaped vertical neckline to go to my nipped-in waistline as I fantasize about newspaper hemlines. I want to be clean, taut, uncompromising. I want to skate in a silvery motorcycle suit, red fox stoles, bare-backed halter. I want to be lionizing, gold bangle flanked. And I want no one to mistake my sangfroid for petulance.
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IRIS
Well?
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LUTZ
No goaltender interference?
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IRIS
(laughing)
(laughing)
No, no goaltender interference.
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PAUL CUNNINGHAM manages Radioactive Moat Press and its literary journal, Deluge. He devotes the rest of his time to Fanzine, co•im•press, and Action Books. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Tarpaulin Sky, LIT, Bat City Review, Luna Luna Magazine, DIAGRAM, and others. He is currently pursuing a MFA at the University of Notre Dame where he studies poetry and translation.
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