a pretty piece of flesh, i
"… I was Brando — I was Dean.
Blaspheming blue-jeaned booted baby boy –
Oh, how I made them turn their heads!"
– from In Delaware, Loudon Wainright III
Of late, there have been certain people who have exhausted me. It takes a lot of energy to be friends with those who simply want to take and rarely give. I wish I had my own motorcycle to ride off on, while a deep male voice over cries, "a howling hellcat humping a hot steel hog on a roaring rampage of revenge" (the movie promo for Bury Me An Angel). But motorcycle thrill rides are a thing of the past for me. Maybe at one time Brando could have pulled it off, but not now.
Brando! Before Marlon Brando began to sag, long before he appeared in The Godfather, he was the embodiment of all teenaged ferocity, all leather jacket and baby face rage and machismo and the sad thing is none of us can even see that. It is interesting to see people's reactions, or their lack of understanding, now that too much has happened, too many bad movies, too many images of a bloated, slug-white body playing mockeries of himself. But there must have been a time, a long time ago, when local country girl Kathie asked the leader of the Black Rebels in the movie The Wild One (1953) "What are you rebelling against, Johnny?" and he answered in his trademark drawl, "what have you got?" and made it sound real.
How do you rebel when everyone you know is a self-conscious rebel?1 Now, of course, the whole concept of "teenage rebellion" (and everything that represents) is so cliched in our culture that I cannot watch a movie like The Cycle Savages or She-Devils on Wheels and not giggle. "Sure, guys, sure … keep slouching in a corner, you're all doing just fine."
So maybe it isn't a motorcycle I want to ride off on, but a desert caravan? Maybe take one of those Saharan camel trains and camp out under the terrible full moon by myself on a wind-swept sand dune, call the lonely spirits of the wilderness to me, Lilith and all her children, just so I can have a good conversation for once. Just so I can listen to a friend's woe and know it is genuine, "yeah, I say, "eternal damnation is a bummer, yeah!" It's time I start consorting with people who will take a little more interest in my affairs. I like that word, "consort." At one point in Romeo and Juliet Tybalt slanders Mercutio by telling him "Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo" (3.I.39) which causes Mercutio to explode into rage. To get the jest Shakespeare was playing off of requires knowing that "consort" means both to "keep company with" but was an ancient slang term to also imply "having carnal relations with." I think here it can mean either.
I have been consorting with the desert's
demons, things of air, lately. I know their
tastes, their humors and woes. Let the experts
scoff at these pale dreams, figments borne on air,
laughter at the eye's corner. Asleep I
am more grand than any phantasy. They
come; a few at a time, across sand, sky,
dune and under moon. They please me, they lay
down by my body. Passion is in birds'
breath, bat's wing; not in another lover's
words. Words! I am sick of all these words! True
delight is not a single word but herds
of night ghasts. Go. I'm the last of Ben Hur's
blood kin and I have no more use for you.
- I was in high school at the end of the Reagan era and it was a time, sort of like now, when you could buy every punk item you ever wanted at the local mall. What I remember is that the truly twitchy kids — the unpopular rebels, nonconformists no one ever "got," mavericks filled with hate — were the ones who came to school in ties and voted the Republican ticket. In a world where everyone wore black, it was the Neo-Cons that were the truly despised. [back]