Tra-La

Left the house early, into the still morning, heady with fragrance, lilacs practically licking me as I walked up the street, little Daisy humming at my side, and, obviously, commas galore

Made a new playlist started off with Mr. Bojangles which I highly recommend, the version where after it’s over and you’re all quiet and buoyant because of it it, you hear the sound engineer guy say “that is a beautiful song” and he says beautiful like it’s what’s buoying you almost, you know, the word.

Also on today’s playlist:

Everybody’s Talking, Fred Neil

Martha, Tom Waits *sigh*

Early Mornin’ Rain, Gordon Lightfoot

Be My Yoko Ono, The Barenaked Ladies (this might have been the one got me going)

Perfect Day, Lou Reed (I think his love interest is heroin)

Landslide, The Chicks (I guess they’re afraid to put the Dixie in there now)

Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon, Queen (was my mom’s fave band)

Son Of A Preacher Man, Dusty Springfield

Gentle On My Mind, Glen Campbell *sigh*

By the Time I Get To Phoenix, also Glen Campbell also *sigh*

So you see my point, right? I mean who wouldn’t float?

I don’t remember what song it was but I thought of that quote people stick to their fridge Dance Like Nobody’s Watching and this trail we go on it’s nice and foresty but not exactly wilderness, people are on the easy stretches and sometimes houses, too, so you can’t really dance but I found myself digging the songs so much I wanted to.

Instead I Sang like Nobody’s Listening and sorry for all the gaspy incorrectness if you were

And then I thought of something to add to a story I started this morning – it’s the one at the end here – so I told Suri the part about middle C and she typed it into notes so I wouldn’t forget but I guess when I turned it off I pressed it twice which means back on and so I can see what I said to Daisy for the next little while and it’s mostly nonsense, you know, not even words mostly until a profanity-laced bit when I had to pick up somebody’s garbage “come come stupid shit fuckers over there garbage people are idiots man come on” but mostly just talking like nobody was listening, and then I thought that’s the way I write, too – I Write Like Nobody’s Reading – and I leave this blog sort of raw like that which is why you sometimes have to gallop like reading is fucking cardio but the stories I usually go back and add the missing words and punctuate, add paragraphs and mind my manners a little (although I do think clarity can be achieved without much grammarly fuss).

But today I decided to stick with the theme, you know, let’s just call it free prose – why should the poets get all the leeway with their free verse tra-la – so all I did when I got home from our walk were quick touch-ups and then I added the weird bit about middle C so this one’s a little more natural I guess you could say, and I hope you dig it, or at least can make your way through it.

And because I only post current stories here, my very latest, you aren’t going to know some of the people introduced in earlier stories – but it doesn’t matter, they’re all The Beatniks Next Door, and you can just imagine them and things should work out just fine.

So here it is if you’re interested, and if you’re not, here it isn’t, and thank you.

The Beatniks Next Door – Bo

No matter how I type his name it looks wrong and I never asked him. Think I’ll go the Bojangles way.

Bo was an art director and stylist for MGM in Hollywood, a serious man, sharp and handsome, stern jaw corners, diamond-cut cheek bones, acute chin, eyes that could sharpen on you put you under a spell so you’d unwave your posture, raise your chin, improve your silhouette, remember your waistline, and his eyes would go sharper still until your very clothes complied, your belt notched up, pleats and eyebrows rearranged, and there you were camera-ready.

He reminded me one of those sheep herder dogs – what are they called? – the black and white ones, pushy, testy, capable of rage.

Bo could tear you apart if he wanted.

When we were invited to one of his parties it was similar to going to church. Families went together, friends in groups. I’d just read Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and that’s how it felt going through his gate as if he had a pile of stones at the ready, perhaps buried beneath his perfect grass he winced when we stepped on.

But he never used these weapons. He got us into line by other means, my father uncharacteristically polite, the way he always was with flowers, and my mother as well, her hair too tightly curled, startled-looking – what was the mother’s name in that story?

Bo’s parties were all backyard ones, our canyon eternally clement for such affairs, the doors to his house firmly shut. Liquids were served gingerly accepted sparingly, no washroom offered.

The actors from the Gatsby house came, all of them in a rush, my Uncle Twist through the gate like Oscar Wilde, Pim before she was beautiful, her tender edges soft with morphine, a wounded bird who came to my side my little blood sister/sucker and fortified herself.

Jenny and Clive came separately, Jenny’s bare feet so bright in the grass, the flowers on her dress fragrant, seeds falling, so the following summer Bo wondering why the sudden roses. Clive arrived carnival style top hat glistening with Harvey’s gems, his shirt perfectly white buttons buttoned, thin black tie slick as the limo, the underside pale pink like its interior.

Cynthia, Daisy, Molly as if they had added up their ages divided by three and said let’s wear white.

Ritchie impossibly elegant, lone-ranger mask around his eyes like a beautiful stain, and everybody else was there, too, except Dr. Grace who was getting blood on his hands somewhere.

Caterers waltzed through the hedges offering pale slices of fish from distant oceans, dates so delicious you had to squint, perfectly round mauve berries like fragrant bubbles.

The music would occasionally make my eyes clash with Molly’s just the two of us knew it was her song.

Bo moving through us, between us, straightening us up, fixing us, he once moved me like a chess piece other side of the lawn beside Clive I thought perhaps so I could dilute some of his strangeness my ironed dress shorts, chalky Montauk shirt sleeves rolled into place, deck shoes invisible socks, bruised shins scabbed knees hidden in my deeply tanned legs.

Clive breathed middle C and I wondered where his tambourine was tucked.

The fish had no bones but everyone assumed that was what Bo choked on when he went down silent in an elegant curve.

Maybe because I was reckless or maybe because Pim was clumsy with painkillers, but I was used to injuries and falling and I sprung into action. I got down behind him in a spoon and thrust his sternum and something pink like an organ torpedoed from his mouth right at his little dog startled and hungry.

I ran inside drenched a towel and by the time I got back he was seated as before but wilted. I offered the towel which he touched to a temple before folding and placing on a tray offered through the hedge and the incident was forgotten by everyone but me and Bo, our eyes clashing well into the night.

I read everything I could get my hands on back then, whatever my mother was reading and my father’s spy novels side by side when you pulled open his corrugated desk and I practiced noticing things like the spies until it came to me naturally and I know I was only in Bo’s house for a moment but I remember everything.

It was full just bursting with his past – he’d only recently moved alone to our canyon – photographs his chin round due to smiles, a young boy on his lap the horizon same level as their eyes, a girl skipping from the frame in a pink bathing suit bare toes, a woman so beautiful it is her face I still see at night when I’m trying to arrange the angels.