Month / May 2007

by Erin O'Brien

I. Love. Men.

I love their hands and hairy legs and the way they laugh softly when the rest of the world is quiet. I love their chests and arms and the way their mouths taste right after they’ve taken a sip of whiskey.

I love their dicks (I would normally use the word “cock,” but that seems a bit harsh for these pages, and even though I just used the word “cock” I did so within quotation marks, so that makes it different).

Despite my copious experience with men, there are limits on just how close I can get. No matter how many men a woman weds or beds or befriends, she may never witness the exclusive male experience. I’m talking men on men. Never.

Why?

As soon as a woman walks into a room full of men, the chemistry of the situation changes. This is true whether she is 20 or 80, gay or straight, wearing a burlap sack or only a thong. She has effectively added a teaspoon of Girl to a barrelful of Boy.

And that is that said the cat in the hat.

I want guys. Guys talking with other guys about guy stuff. Guys drinking beer with other guys. Guys talking about chicks. Guys, guys, guys. I love guys!

So here are four of my favorite guy books. Within their pages, my dream to be a fly on the locker room wall comes as close to fruition as possible.

The Music of Chance by Paul Auster delivers four men unto me. They are Pozzi and Nashe and Flower and Stone. There are Marlboros and poker, the International Brotherhood of Lost Dogs and one (ahem) “hostess.” Put all of this in a surreal mansion wherein headless statues lurk and hamburgers and Cokes are served every Monday night and I am so taking my pants off.

In the Blind** will prove to you that Eugene Martin (be still my heart) is the most brilliant writer you have never read. Don’t believe me? Marten is heartily championed by Gordon Lish. In the blind I find locksmiths and an ex-con, the cavernous cargo hold of an ore boat, a hooker and a roach infested motel. Yes, Mr. Marten. Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Dirty Work was Larry Brown’s first novel. In it, you will meet two Viet Nam vets who are in a VA hospital. One has lost all his limbs, the other’s face is hideously disfigured. Despite this grim premise, Brown will make you laugh, then gape in awe as his bleak characters shine in subtle moments of grace.

One Flew Over Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey. The Chief narrates this book. Candy Starr, McMurphy, Martini and Turkle are all there along withe the rest of the gang you loved from the movie, but does the Chief actually utter, “Juicy Fruit?” Read the book, sugar tits, and find out for yourself.

**The Administration warns all readers clicking the link associated with “In the Blind” to IGNORE the misspelling in the Customer Review section of the page. The Administration cannot control all things all the time and the Administration is sick and tired of stressing over some sniveling little shit who sits at his/her computer all effing day long pointing out shitty and lame errors that don’t amount for shit.

The Administration thanks the reader for the reader’s time.

The preceding post has been brought to you by Erin O’Brien.

by Edward Champion

My Two Minutes with Markson

Many thanks again to the guest bloggers filling in. I’ve been truly stunned and delighted by the remembrances, reading reports and general tomfoolery.

Since there have been a few emails, some news on my coordinates, cunning plans, and the like is forthcoming. But for now, I’ll simply confess that I chatted briefly with David Markson last night. My conversation went something like this:

ME: Congratulations! I very much enjoyed The Last Novel.
MARKSON: You’re drenching!
ME: I’d be interested in interviewing you for the…
MARKSON: You’re soaking wet!
ME: …sort of like radio, the…
MARKSON: You’re drenched!

Nobody informed me about the speed and manner in which starboard thunderstorms stub out sunny afternoons. More later.

by Patrick Stephenson

Dem Uribe Apples

I’m nervous the ROTR fans will think me a cornball for posting a poem, but what the hoo. This is from Kirmen Uribe, whose MEANWHILE TAKE MY HAND (what you say when there is nothing else to say) was recently published by Graywolf Press. I offer you “Apples,” first in English w/translation by Elizabeth Macklin, then in the original Basque:

Homer used a single word for body and skin.
Sappho slept on the breasts of her friends.
Etxepare dreamt of stark naked women.

All of them silent for ages now.

Today it seems we have to be perfect in bed, too,
like those red apples in the supermarket,
too perfect.
We’re asking too much of ourselves,
and what we hope for
from any of us, nearest neighbors,
almost never happens.
The laws are different when bodies tangle.

Homer used a single word for body and skin.
Sappho slept on the breasts of her friends.
Etxepare dreamt of stark-naked women.

Still I have in my mind
that epoch when we slept holding each other,
scared tiger cubs in our vigil.

Kirmen Uribe, “Apples.”

Okay, Basque now.

Homerok hitz bakarra zerabilen gorputza eta azala izendatzeko.
Safok lagunen bularretan hartzen zuen lo.
Etxeparek emazte biluzgorriekin egiten zuen amets.

Aspaldi isildu ziren denak.

Gaur badirudi perfektuak izan behar dugula ohean ere,
supermerkatuko sagar gorri horiek bezala, perfektuegiak.
Larregi eskatzen diogu geure buruari
eta norberaz, ondokoaz
espero duguna ez da ia sekula gertatzen.
Legeak bestelakoak dira gorputzak korapilatzean.

Homerok hitz bakarra zerabilen gorputza eta azala izendatzeko.
Safok lagunen bularretan hartzen zuen lo.
Etxeparek emazte biluzgorriekin egiten zuen amets.

Gogoan dut oraindik
elkarri besarkatuta lo egiten genuen garaia,
tigrekume ikaratiak gu, gaubeilan.

Kirmen Uribe, “Sagarrak”

So, I had no idea Basque existed till I read Uribe. According to its Wikipedia entry, and of course other sources, Basque’s linguistic antecedents are in contention. It isn’t Indoeuropean, for instance. It’s spoken by roughly 1 million people in north-central Spain and southwestern France. Uribe was, according to MEANWHILE TAKE MY HAND, “born in 1970, in Ondarroa, a fishing town on the Bay of Biscay whose port and canneries now handle much of the catch between Galicia and Bayonne on Spain’s northern coast.”

The town, the book’s intro continues, “is home to some 9,900 people now, down from about 14,000 when Uribe was growing up. Just one of his cousins goes out on the fishing boats. Uribe’s mother lives in a farmhouse set back from the cliff that overhangs Saturraran, and these last months he has been living there, writing in a room that looks out at the ocean.” Nice.