Daily Archives: March 6, 2006

The Museum, chapter one

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I

woke to the sound of the cat puking.

With a groan I rolled over, pulling a sofa cushion over my head, tipping an ash tray over my chest. I don’t smoke. Cursing through a throat that felt like the Mojave I rolled over and brushed ineffectually at myself, squeezing my eyes open just enough to watch my shaking fingers move over a sweater that didn’t look familiar. My eyes felt like they were filled with kitty litter, and in my head was a junior high marching band on the first day of practice.

I closed my eyes and willed my heart to stop. For a moment I thought I had won, but after a second or so it thumped again, the pressure almost popping my eyeballs out of their sockets.

I took off the sweater and threw it across the room, along with the blanket and anything else that had ashes on it. I laid back, closed my eyes, and reflected on what I had just seen.

The sweater had hit a painting I’d never seen on a wall I didn’t remember. I opened my eyes and looked up at the popcorn stucco ceiling (could be anywhere) punctuated by a moose antler ceiling fan, wobbling slightly as the antlers lazily spun. Now there’s something you don’t see every day. No wonder I felt like crap; I had been sleeping under the thing while it blew a steady stream of antler-dust over my helpless form. God only knew what sort of sick mojo had been visited upon me in that sinister chamber. As soon as I could get off the sofa, I was out of there.

I didn’t chance another glance at the painting; if memory of my first brief glance served it might have induced vomiting no matter what condition I was in. Some genres should not be mixed, and impressionist/western nudes riding bulls was the new top of my list of Very Bad Ideas. Vargas, Renoir and Remington in a horrible collision that left no survivors.

At least, some perverse voice in my head said, it’s not on bleck velvet.

The cat began heaving again, a mighty sound for such a small creature, breaking the otherwise perfect silence of the place.

“You all right, bud?” I asked the cat. My voice sounded like I was the ogre under the bridge, but the cat took no notice of me, and kept right on heaving. “I feel for you, man,” I said. “I’ve been there.”

The cat. I rolled over and, careful not to look towards The Picture, or any wall, or the ceiling, I opened one eye and watched the tiger-striped cat cough up another load onto a Navajo rug. When it was done it turned to stare back at me. I had seen the cat before, I realized, recalling a dislocated image of the yellow eyes staring at me over a potted plant. “I told you not to eat those flowers,” I said. “Now you’ve yacked on the only thing in the entire room that’s not ugly as hell.”

The cat turned and left the room, tail high.

I summoned all my strength and sat up, putting both bare feet onto the cold saltillo floor. I put my elbows on my knees and hung my head, staring at the dark grout between the earth-color tiles. I ran my fingers through my hair and over my grizzled face. Somewhere in this house was a careless smoker with unspeakably bad taste. More important, somewhere in this house was bacon, eggs, and potatoes. And a toilet, I added as I stood. Most important of all.

My peripheral vision warned me of the monstrosities that surrounded me, so I was able to avoid looking directly at any of them. Some more resilient part of my wounded and cowering brain cataloged them, a mad collection from plastic to solid gold (and, yes, John Wayne staring out from black velvet), all somehow western, unified by the lack of any aesthetic whatsoever. It was almost brilliant in its awfulness. Blinders on, I plunged forward, through the portal the cat had used.

And stopped short, mouth hanging agape, my mind struggling to turn the messages my eyes were sending it into some sort of image. Gone was the western theme; I found myself in Van Gogh’s worst absinthe nightmare, art deco gone mad. I was not in a house, I was in a museum. An art museum with a blind curator.

The cat was watching me from across the room. “Where’s the litter box?” I asked. Tiger-stripe just watched me, unblinking. Something about the annoyed kink in her tail told me she was female. I continued my search, squinting my eyes now not because of the dry grit that still clogged them, but because after deco came primitive, and then the bathroom itself was almost as bad as the western. (If you guessed nautical, no points for you. Sports.) I stood before the shrine, trying not to be distracted by the baseball bat flusher, and NOT LOOKING UP at Kareem Abdul Jabaar staring down at me, a mild sneer on his face, his crotch at eye level.

Screw bacon. I wanted my shoes and a ride home. The shoes were optional.

I washed, splashed my face, and stepped from the Chamber of Manhood Diminishment. The cat was sitting tall, waiting for me, her tail wrapped around her front feet. I crouched down and she allowed me to rub her ears. “Listen, Tiger,” I said, “It’s not your fault, I know, but this is the most bug-ass crazy place I’ve ever seen.” She looked at me for a moment, then rubbed her head on my hand. “Whachya say, Tiger? Let’s bust outta here.”

Thanks!

A Night of Dark and Light

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Let’s go backwards tonight. We’ll start with now, and see if I can move backward faster than time moves forward. If it’s a tie, you will be stuck reading about the same moment until my fingers fail.

Now: Listening to a cover of “I’m in Love with a German Film Star” by Linoleum at volumes that may not be healthy. This is good. Got the nice headphones on, so the neighbors are safe. I went looking for the original, a spacy, ethereal bit from around 1980, but this cover does justice.

Just as it was starting, Soup Boy withdrew his head and closed the door to my room. He had just come back from a quest to a bar/archery range. Yes, you read that right. Alcohol and deadly weapons. Of course it is not their policy to put the bows and arrows into the hands of dangerously drunk people. (I wasn’t there, mind you, but someone I knew once went there, and while they were going through the formalities he sat down and missed the chair, and after reassurances from his comrades the manager put a lethal weapon in his hands. Tonight, however, Soup Boy reported that the archery range was closed (hours are notoriously erratic there), so they were shooting pool instead.

I got a response back from fuego – he was home. We fired up Skype and discovered our favorite three words. He sent me a really cool tune called “Belladonna”. We unraveled bits of life and poked the decaying corpse of civilization with a stick. Or maybe I just complained that someone had consumed 2/3 of my hard-earned beers.

Soup Boy’s phone chimed on the sofa where it lay, to indicate it had received a text message. I unpacked my computer, plugged it in, and checked up on the ol’ media empire.

When I got home tonight, the place was empty. I wondered where everyone had gone, so I sent a message to Soup Boy and fuego.

I got off the metro just a little after midnight, and knowing that my beer supply at home was severely compromised, I turned to a haven I have not sought in a long time – Hanka’s Herna Snack Bar. The door was locked. It seems the place closes at midnight on Sundays. There were still people inside, and I might be mistaken, but the bartender may even have seen me and headed for the door as I turned my feet up the street. It’s hard to see into the place. I tromped toward home; the only other bar I knew was open between me and the domocile was a glitzy sports bar that is not the kind of place you sit alone with only your pivo for company and mutter to yourself in a vaguely insane manner. I decided to head home.

After Belladonna got off the metro at JzP and the doors to the train slid shut, I wondered if I should have offered to walk her home. Prague is a pretty safe town, but she had definitely wanted me to ride with her on the metro.

The three of us retired to a nearby café/club to discuss the movie and to just hang out. It was a pleasant time; the caffeine from the tea I drank combining well with the beer to make me jolly and chatty. Belladonna continued to try to hide the hole in her sweater, but I never did get the chance to suggest duct tape. Neither was in a position to stay out late, which was OK by me, although the conversation was pleasant. We spent a lot of time comparing cultures, and I would smile and nod as they discussed various med school classes. I was disappointed to learn that Firenze intended to return to El Salvador – Europe’s just not for her. I tried to talk her into running away to Shanghai with me. I don’t think she thought I was serious. I got a message from fuego saying he was at my place and had drunk some of my beer.

We got out of the movie and spent a moment looking at each other, wondering, what the hell was that?. I think the reasons we disliked the movie were not all the same, but the overall we agreed. Hostel blows. The movie starts with breasts and moves on to dismemberment; it is a movie that you would expect a group of fourteen-year-olds to write as they sit around a table at the pizzeria whacked out on Mountain Dew, each one trying to outdo the others: “You know what would be really, really sick…” All would laugh at the fingers-on-the-floor gag and then move on to the next shock-for-shock’s sake schlock. The writing was bad, the acting was poor, the editing was shit. There were points where the dancing and the music were so disconnected that the audience laughed. Continuity was a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t disaster.

One bit player put in a very good performance.

We settled into our seats while the ever-longer sequence of advertisements played. I am not exaggerating to say that movies here start twenty minutes after the projectors roll. Belladonna smelled good. I thought about the garlic soup and wondered if maybe I didn’t. She was fiddling with her sweater to conceal a hole in a not-too-embarassing area on her upper chest. I began to compose a duct-tape joke about it.

Firenze showed up and we bid farewell to Sophie. I gave Sophie a hard time because each time I’ve met her she’s left almost immediately.

I put away Kundera’s essays on the art of the novel when Belladonna and Sophie arrived. They sat down and I finished my Pilsner as we waited for Firenze. We talked about this and that, nothing earth-shattering. I reflected on my good fortune to be there, then, in a movie theatre lobby, sipping a beer, sharing conversation with two pretty and intelligent girls.

I think that is where I will begin the story for tonight.

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Thanks!