What We Talk About When We Talk About Abortion

Here's the thing: my opinions on abortion are no more valid than my opinions on panty liners. I will never have a kid.

No one will ever press a hand to my stomach and exclaim, "I feel it kicking!"

No one will ever observe, after an unfortunate up-draft billows my skirt over my head, "Perhaps you should consider Carefree. It's effective, and ever so much more economical than other brands of similar use."

True, I was once approached by a wonderful and wonderfully naive lesbian couple about contributing a sample of Marc. Both women were young, and about five minutes into their relationship, and had gathered their belongings into one concise duplex in northern Alabama. When they popped the 'pop' question, we were in a car headed down an even more concise road to pick up pizza for a party. As the car moved along the road, in a mostly dark Alabama night, there were stutters of light from street lights. Both the women were sitting in the front seats, one driving and one spun around to stare at me as I sat in the back seat. Flash of a streetlight.

"We love you," the non-driving lesbian said. "You'd be perfect."Blank of a streetlight gone.

Flash. Kids are not my thing. I like them in theory, and recognize they're necessary to keep the human race going, and to make my pizza, but it is a rare thing to be told by two women that they want you to contribute to their future disappointing offspring.

Blank. Mingling my DNA with their own, even in the most abstract, clinical of ways, reminded me of being a lab assistant in high school. Lab assistants had access to all the chemicals and specimens and vials and jars kept in the inner sanctum of our science classroom clusters. Usually we were supervised. When we were, on the rare occasion, left on our own, we lab assistants mixed random chemicals together to see what kind of reaction we would get.

Sometimes we got a satisfying explosion. Flash. Blank.

Sometimes we were rushed to the school nurse for treatment, and admonished by a negligent teacher, and forced to endure months of physical therapy.

Strobe lighting in the car as I paused.

"You'd be perfect."

"You'd need to ask my parents about how perfect," I replied. "And then maybe their parents to get a more informed opinion."

Flash-blank. Flash-blank. Flash-blank.

"Are you asking... I just jerk off into a cup, right?"

Flash-blank. Flash-blank. Flash-blank.

"I guess it's a cup."

"And then it's a kid?"

"If we're lucky."

Lucky. Right.

"What," I asked during a flash, so I could see her face, "would my responsibility be?" But then I continued talking during the blankness. "If I gave a part of the kid, I'm sure I'd want to be a part of the kid's life."

Flash. Face.

"It'd be our kid. Not your kid. All we need is the cup."

+++

True story: when I was growing up I didn't believe in a soul. Certainly I believed in life and existence and being present, but I didn't get the whole soul thing. And I grew up surrounded by soul-believers. Everyone I knew spoke of The Soul as if it were a birthright, as if the soul were more vital to existence than pacifiers, Sesame Street, and milk.

"We are all," I was assured, "born with a soul."

Another true story: I wasn't a planned pregnancy.

I know, right? Not many kids are. I mean, some kids are of course, but most pregnancies are a surprise. Inconvenient. Or if not inconvenient, at least accidental, brought about by kids in the science lab, dumping chemicals into chemicals to get a reaction and surprised when there are consequences.

Life, as John Lennon once said, is what happens when you're making other plans.

Pregnancy is what happens when you're making another life.

The soul, though? The soul is what happens when you're making... what? Just because a cluster of scientific rooms come together to create a reaction, there's a soul so suddenly?

The Simpsons, via poet Paplo Neruda, explained my view of the soul: It isn't given to you at birth. You have to earn it. Like everything else in life, one must work for a soul. A soul doesn't come from God. It doesn't come as a birth-right. There are no distributions of souls from mythical figures.

Also, there's this exchange from 'Into the Woods':

Witch: Since when are you so squeamish? How many wolves have you carved up? 

Red Ridinghood: A wolf's not the same. 

Witch:  Ask a wolf's mother!

Souls, it would seem, are relative. Murderers have mothers. Mothers are the givers of soul.

Fathers are the giver of life. Males: cups. Mothers: 9 months of being a cup. Mix gently. Ingredients will bring forth a soul contained in a screaming, mewling compact human.

+++

Flash-blank.

"It'd be our kid. Not your kid."

"Planned," I asked.

"Yes. Jesus. That's why we were asking."

Flash-blank. A long blank because a street light was out, or because I blinked at the wrong time. "You've only been together for a few months and you're asking me to..." Flash-silent.

"A cup."

+++

Straight couple! A few day ago, I had a conversation with a recent father who had begat himself upon a willing female, and together they'd produced a child, and that child was named [redacted].

The father, a liberal in all other ways, said this: "I used to be pro-abortion, but with the baby I'm now thinking about it."

And I replied that I understood. "Accident, planned, it's still your kid."

"It's just, it is murder. I'm surprised to feel that way."

I'm not a father so I haven't experienced the conversion. Maybe what The Simpsons Neruda meant is that the way we earn our souls is to give them to small, mewling humans of our own creation.

"Absolutely," I replied. "I don't like abortion." It's true. I'm married to an adopted son. "But rape. Incest. Choice. I'm a gay man. I have no horse in this race."

A lie. Flash-blank. Flash-blank.

"It's so complicated because there's this life that can't exist without you for a certain time, and then around six months, it can exist with the right, you know, the right medical care, and when do you draw the line? When do you call it a life and when do you call it a person, and when as a man do you get to say that it should be criminal to kill it? When do you, as a man, as a person who will never grow that thing in your own body, get to say..."

Say what? Say that the life should be brought to term? Say that it was just a chemical reaction, and then go off to the school nurse?

+++

I was an accident who could've easily been aborted. And my husband was more so. And we both struggle with abortion debates. We think of our own origins, and we thing of our own futures, and we both admit we'll never have a child in our bodies for months. We'll never be shamed for having sex out of wedlock. We'll never--not entirely true here--have to deal with long-term consequences of sexual abuse or rape.

Souls. They aren't earned. They aren't given. Souls are lucked into, like an inheritance, a rent controlled apartment, or a Duggar family birth. The truth is, those with get have, and those without get to have not. Some are lucky at birth, and some aren't.

There is not a reason to pretend those who are born got lucky to have a soul. Just as there is no reason to pretend that those who are unborn had a soul. In the end, we all have life. We have to earn the soul.

+++

Flash-blank. Flash-blank. Flash-blank.

"Will you do it?"

"Do you love one another?"

Flash.

"Of course."

Bang.

"Do you love the cup?"

Flash.

Bang. Flash.            

What We Talk About When We Talk About Bill Clinton

High school was a bitch. Everyone says it, and everyone means it.

High school. "Jesus," we think for the rest our lives. "I can't believed I survived."

Whatever horrible things befall us, we still think: "I survived high school. How bad can it get?"

A lot, of course, is the answer. We could be President.

But still.

+++

During high school, I kept a suicide note in my sock drawer and a knife underneath my stereo. True story! I'd look at the knife sometimes. I'd talk to it. After a terrible day, I'd run the dull blade along my arms, leaving dry white lines on my forearms because I was undermoisturized.

I'd also revise my suicide note, which was more of a suicide directive.

"Give my books a good home," the directive advised. "Complete all my half-written stories using the notes provided," it continued. "Play 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' at my funeral."

Then I'd revise the note. "Play 'Last Midnight.'"

Obviously I had no suicidal intent. I was just a trope in search of a TV show.

+++

Here's where I should mention what it was like being gay in Alabama. Here's where I should mention how it felt to be gay and alone. Here's where Dan Savage should throw in that 'It gets better.' Blah.

It does get better. And worse. It gets different, is what Dan Savage should say.

Gay people are like straight people, btw: some people, no matter who they want to fuck, have nice lives. Other people just have lives. The trick to having a life is to have it.

Don't let it have you.

+++

Anyway, so while I was having the life of a young gay kid with a knife under a stereo and a constantly revised suicide note in a sock drawer, there was this: I had a President who wanted to let gays serve in the military.

Bill Clinton made it a point of saying that, under his Chief of Commanderism, he'd make sure all willing volunteers--regardless of sexual orientation--would be allowed to serve in the US military.

Calloo! Callay! Put the knife away! The President himself was so sure that my existence was worthy that he was willing to trust I could serve in the US Military. Except of course I couldn't, really, because my eyes had already disqualified me.

Still, though, if my eyes weren't so terrible, I could serve as a gay man (surely I'm gay? surely I'm a man? My high school self still questioned both qualifiers) in the military, and be recognized as an actual useful citizen of my country.

+++

Quick history of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell': Bill Clinton ran on the intention of opening up the military for gay/lesbian service. He failed. He failed because he announced his intentions before he had the ability to make his intentions real. DADT consumed the first few months of Clinton's first term--vital few months--and to shut up his critics, Clinton signed DADT into law. Don't ask, don't tell.

+++

When Defense of Marriage Act happened, I was in college.

Fun fact: the knife had long since been returned to the kitchen drawer, and the suicide directive torn up. The suicide directive was as directional as I was, and ended up scattered in pieces in the wind.

+++

Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a horrible way to deal with gays in the military. DOMA--Defense of Marriage--was a terrible way to deal with marriage.

+++

Recently, I was asked by a friend what my thoughts were on Bill Clinton's recent op-ed about DOMA. Here are my thoughts: fuck Clinton.

Yes, I get that Clinton was dealing with a hostile Congress, and was living in a different time, the same time I was rubbing a knife along my arm and hoping I'd be validated as a citizen.

Yes, I understand that Clinton didn't really mean for DADT and DOMA to be longstanding law, no more than I intended my high school suicide note to become a directive.

But. Seriously. 20 years later, we're still dealing with Clinton's signature on those laws. Signatures, like elections, have consequences.

+++

DOMA! When Clinton signed DOMA into law, he was face-fucking an intern. He was inviting a 23 year old woman to use her vagina as a humidor. And he was telling me--and other gays--that our relationships were less important than any relationship he may have with his wife, or any service to our country we might attempt is lesser to his own service to the country.

Rather than a rainbow flag, I think the gay community should wave a stained blue dress during Pride Parades.

Because no matter how true or false the stories of Clinton's adventures with that woman--Miss Lewinsky--are, the falsehoods told about same-sex couples are far more vicious.

Bill Clinton in 1992: President.

Me in 1992: Not seeing a future.

+++

Bill Clinton had a chance to be a leader, and decided to be a follower. It has taken him decades to admit his failure. In those decades, he has enjoyed the privilege of a married man, and fucked around. I hope he doesn't keep a knife under his stereo, but I do hope he keeps revising his Will.

The man wrote an autobiography that Ben Johnson would deem 'a bit much'. He barely touched on DOMA and DADT.

And just now, when it is safe and sound, is Bill Clinton pushing for equality.

Duck Dynasty

Here's what it is like to go in just before visiting hours: there's a lobby. And it is like every lobby you've ever been in, with people sitting in chairs, and a desk, and more people sitting in chairs behind the desk.

The people sitting in chairs on one side of the desk are poorly dressed. They are wearing clothes they threw on at the last minute and both the people and the clothes seem anxious, full of angles and baggage.

The people behind the desk are more organized. They have on clothes that are neat and organized. Uniform. Uniforms.

And you meet with the Uniforms for a moment. You explain why you are there, and hope the Uniforms don't comment on your angular clothing and your baggage. You are told to come back in 15 minutes because no one with angular clothing is allowed in until 6pm, which is odd because just last night--and for most nights for nearly a decade--there have been no time constraints. You've been with him whenever you wanted. "He's just right there," you want to say. "Behind those doors at the end of the hallway." But you turn from the desk and from the Uniforms, and find a seat with the other angular clothes. You find a discarded AM New York, and pretend to read it. The clock moves. You don't.

When 15 minutes pass, exactly 15 minutes, you get up and do as instructed: go to the guard, show your ID, explain you're there to visit.

And the guard doesn't look at you at first. He tells you to sign in, and gestures to the paper clipped to a board on his podium. When you reach for the board, you notice a pack of Crystal Light beside the guard's Walkie-Talkie and computer. You say this: "I haven't done this before." That becomes a mantra to you in the next 10 minutes, as you pass through security. "Here's my ID," you say. "I'm new at this. I don't know what to do."

Also, you say this, to the guard: "You don't look like the Crystal Light kind." You say this while scribbling your name onto the sheet that makes you a valid visitor. You say it because you need to be more than valid, more than a visitor. You say it because you not only want yourself to be more, but you want [Person] to be more.

The guard looks up. Looks at you. Then looks down at the packet of Crystal Light. "That shit is awful," he says. "I don't know who that thing belongs to."

Then he does a kindness, and shows you where to go. Then he does more kindness, and leads you on a short cut. "See, you normally would have to go all the fuck around there to get to where you need to go," he says, "but really, you just need to go through here." And he walks you through the doors behind him, and into a hallway. He points generally to the left. "Go over there."

You go over there. Over there is another set of doors. You'll notice the sign over the door when you leave an hour later, and you probably notice the sign now but can't process the words. Spoiler: You won't remember what the words on the sign say. You'll just know what they mean: Emergency Psych Ward.

And you'll think of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." And before you notice the sign or after, you'll be scared shitless of what you will see when you go in, go out, go in.

You go in. Another lobby, much smaller, no waiting. Rather than wait, you're asked by a Uniform--who is sitting behind bank-teller glass-- for your reason for being there. "Why are you here?" Uniform asks, and you think how loaded a question that is, and wonder if there is a couch to lay upon to answer the question. Instead you mutter a name, show your ID, and are buzzed into another room where you are stripped of your precious iPad, phone, keys, and your signature. Again.

And you say, again: "I am new to this. Just tell me what I should do."

"The thing you can do is give me anything sharp in your pockets," Uniform says. Then Uniform hands you off to Nurse, who leads you past another desk housing more Uniforms, and past an alcove of Others who are now your brothers.

The brothers are sitting around a television. They are wearing angular clothing, and teal socks with white spots along the soles.  They all have angular hair. One of them acknowledges you as the Nurse leads you around the desk. "We don't get visitors," Nurse tells you. "Go into the waiting room and I'll send [Person] out." Then Nurse is gone. There is the desk. There is the alcove of brothers with angular hair matching your angular clothes. There is 'Duck Dynasty' on the television.

There are two bathrooms.

One bathroom is labeled 'Patients Only,' and one is labeled, 'Men Only.' You err on the side of caution, and go into the Men Only.

There is no lock on the door where you'd expect to see a lock.

There is some graffiti.  Scrawled in what you hope is a brown Crayon is, "Didn't do it." As you pee into the toilet, you reflect on the many things you didn't do, 'it' being the most not-done thing of all. And when you emerge from the bathroom, Nurse is there. "THERE you are," she says.

"I went to the bathroom."

"You're not supposed to go to the bathroom."

Then, you think, don't label the bathrooms as "Patients Only" or "Men Only". Also, where are women supposed to not go?

Nurse leads you into a room, and there is a television, and there are tables, and eventually [Person] joins you. You hug [Person,] who is also wearing angular clothing, and teal socks with white nubbins on the sole, and looks as if he's been on a terrible sea voyage captained by William Bligh's second cousin.

[Person] says this: "Why did you come here?"

And you say this: "Why ask me that?"

And Nurse says this: "I don't have food for both of you."

And at the desk, a Uniform says this: "Just stay calm. 'Duck Dynasty' will be over in a bit and we'll change the channel."

You say to [Person]: "It's okay."

After a while, [Person] agrees. "I was close. All of this could've been over, and I was so close. It has to get better."

[Person] puts his head on your shoulder, while you sit in a plastic chair that is facing a television. 'Duck Dynasty.' And there is another person sitting in the room, an angularly-dressed man in teal socks with white nubbins on the sole, and that man--his hair ragged--suddenly shouts, "It gets better!" Then he says, "That's the punchline, right?"

Dan Savage would weep.

You remain with [Person] until well after visitation, and then the Uniform at the bank-teller window expresses surprise that you are still in the Ward, even though the Uniform has your bag full of iPad and phone and sharp objects. You kiss [Person] as you leave, and say to Uniform, "Take good care of him."

Uniform replies, "You too."

"You too" is, of course, not the proper response. But the doors have shut, and [Person] is now away from you, and there's nothing to do but go back through the lobby full of angular-clad persons and out into the night. There's a dog to hug. There's a life, etc. etc.

Another spoiler: You get [Person] back. But you also get kind of scared.

More old stuff

Sounds of a Bronze World Part I

first ran: 10/21/99

(Note: The first part of this two-part fiction series is not very good. The second part, however, was a much stronger offering, so if you're up for reading the entire story, it might be a good idea to skim part one and go on to part two.)
 
    There was a man who lived down the block from me when I was a kid. He might have been thirty or he might have been ninety--in childhood, anyone over ten seems ancient to you--but he stooped, he dressed in black, he sighed whenever I saw him.
    At night, in summer when I slept with my windows open, I could hear him weeping loudly and bitterly, and in the daytime he would sit on his front porch, staring blankly at the emptiness of our dull residential street. When he sobbed at night he sounded like wolves and like water draining from a bathtub; as he sat on his porch in the daytime he looked like a ghost. Actually--since Mom was during this time reading Victorian ghost stories to me--he looked "spectral." He looked like a spectre from Dickens.
    Occasionally, I would speak to him as I passed by on my bike. "Good morning, Mr. Mirton!" I chimed often. "How are you?" I would do a lazy loop in front of his house, waiting for a reply. He never gave me a reply. Just an unfocused stare.
    If I were in an obstinate mood I sometimes continued looping lazily around and around in order to carry on a one-sided conversation. "Nice day, isn't it, Mr. Mirton! Wow, look at that sky!... Days like these make you want to kick back with a beer and just sit by a pool!... You like beer?... pools...?" And so on, a perfect imitation of my father when he was trying to get someone new to like him.
    Jay Allison, one of the few boys anywhere near my age living on the same street, developed a more subtle tactic for getting Mr. Mirton's attention. Jay threw things at him. On an evening in July, while the sun lingered for hours on the brink of death, Jay and I stood at the curb of Mr. Mirton's yard and tossed--first softly and then firmly and then desperately--an assortment of items we had gathered for the purpose. Appendages of slaughtered action figures, Jay's sister's dolls and tea set, buttons, pins, pens, notebooks, ice cubes, stones, bits of wood, a package of frozen peas, and old game cartridges. We struck Mr. Mirton more than once and made a hell of a racket but nothing moved him. He remained inert, distant, detached, dead. Mr. Mirton got a black eye from an ice cube and a bloody nose from the frozen peas but he did not even wince.
    That night, however, as I lay in bed listening to the sobs like wolves and draining water, I noticed a new sound. Usually there were the crickets chirping, and our dog barking, and the odd car or truck engine, and the voices of teenagers walking from house to house in addition to the cries. Not much else. Some variation but always identifiable sounds. On the night after Jay Allison and I attacked him, though, mixed in with the sobbing I detected a more menacing sound I could not name. Unsteady creakings, metal against metal, the sounds of a bronze world being split by an earthquake. The sobs began, as they usually did, around ten or eleven, and, as always, lasted until daybreak, but the new sounds started an hour later and lasted until just after midnight.
    It scared me. I thought of the stories Mother read to me in the day time--about spectres seeking revenge, mostly, and a terrible possibility crossed my mind: Mr. Mirton looked like a ghost because he was a ghost, and now Jay and I had wounded him. What if he would now seek his revenge, and what if the terrible new sound had something to do with his vengeance? To my mind, seeking revenge was the only purpose of being a ghost. Quite possibly, Mr. Mirton had spent years sitting on his front porch waiting for someone to do something to him o he might have cause to get back at them. He wept all night because he had not exacted a wrathful vengeance on anyone, Until now, he had not found anyone to revenge himself upon.
    I did not sleep that night. As soon as my parents began getting dressed for work, I went downstairs to eat a bowl of cereal, then stepped outside to feed my dog, Bosch. Though still summer, the morning was cool, with a heavy dew on the ground. The grass stuck to my bare feet as I crossed the backyard toward the fat oak tree where we kept the dog chained. Bosch, a collie, began leaping and dancing as soon as he saw me bearing his breakfast in a metal dish.
    Because of my lack of sleep, my mind was not as alert as it needed to be. I placed the food in front of Bosch, who took no interest in it. He was not happy, it turned out, because of his breakfast but because I had come to see him so early in the day. I kneeled down to pet him, the dewy grass soaking my thin pajamas at the knees and Bosch's we tongue soaking my face. As he nuzzled into me, I giggled and pushed him back.
    It was then that I noticed the blood. His mouth was a crimson red, his paws stained even darker with blood and mud. My own hands, from where I had touched him, were smeared a deep maroon. At first I thought he had managed to coax a cat too close to him, or perhaps a squirrel. Then I saw, in the entrance to his doghouse beside the tree, the blank and detached stare of Jay Allison's head, lopsided, resting on one cheek.

Sounds of a Bronze World Part II

first ran: 10/28/99
 
    You are Jay Allison. Everything you do is intended to get a reaction out of others because you feel unloved and insignificant. You are a spoiled child and the only time you feel important is when you hurt or anger someone else. Which is why you threw things at Mirton, the man who passes days and years on a front porch. The man who does not pay attention to anyone, including you.
    You succeeded in injuring Mirton. You bruised him. You drew blood and yet he continued to ignore you. It will require a more desperate act to get Mirton's attention and you have a plan. Instead of going to bed, you climb out of your window, drop to the ground, and walk in the dense summer night toward Mirton's decaying house.
    Despite the street lamps and full moon, the house is more of a dark implication than a tangible structure--the house absorbs light, it does not reflect it. The house reminds you of a vampire.
    You are dressed like a diminutive cat burglar. Black clothes, black shoes, a black hat. Like the house, you too absorb light. You make no sound as you rush across Mirton's lawn. You press your back against the weathered wood of the house to catch your breath. You know it is nearing midnight because you can hear the weeping coming from the within the house. Sobs, muffled shrieks. Mirton cries every night. He sounds like a cat you once tortured by setting its tail on fire.
    On the side of the house, there are tangles of bushes and vines which nearly conceal the three windows. It requires a moderate effort to twist and claw your way to the first window but you manage. A twig scrapes across one cheek and you bleed. There are no lights inside but the weeping assures you Mirton is home. The weeping is loud. It echoes and swirls. Uneasiness turns to fear but your need for attention is stronger. You want Mirton to know you exist. You want him to acknowledge you. You will bang on his windows, ring his doorbell, shout and laugh until he tells you to go away. It is a childish plan, of course, but you are a child.
    Without thinking, instead of tapping on the window, you push against the panes and the window begins to creep open. It does not occur to you to wonder why someone like Mirton, a recluse, would leave a window unlocked but the opportunity to get inside Mirton's private space is too good to pass up. As the window rises, so does the volume of the sobs. So do your expectations.
    You lurch into the house, which smells like dust and mold. You remain still for a moment, waiting for your eyes to adjust but it soon becomes apparent that your eyes will never get used to this absolute darkness. You begin the precarious process of sliding your palms along the wall, shuffling your feet across the carpet. Somewhere, perhaps from the basement, the bitter weeping flies at you and you begin to wonder. What if it is not Mirton who cries at night? What if he does not live alone?
    Or perhaps you do not wonder this at all. Perhaps the quiet breathing beside you makes you realize Mirton is not the only inhabitant of the house.  The breath becomes hot against your neck. It mixes with the scent of dust and mold to produce a stench so overpowering you begin to gag. And then a hand as rough as broken glass reaches around to grab you by the throat. You are lifted from the floor and then dropped.
    The overhead light snaps on and Mirton stands over you, his vacant eyes regarding you with detachment. His head is haloed by the light. The weeping echoes and swirls from deep within the house. Something inside your head snaps and you cannot move. You cannot scream for help. All you can do it stare at Mirton's face that is as blank as his eyes. When he speaks, his voice creaks like rusted machinery.
    "You are that kid."
    You notice the blood drying on his upper lip from the things you hurled at him earlier in the day.
    "You were with that other kid who is nicer than you."
    You notice the black eye you gave him.
    "You talked him in to throwing things at me."
    Because of the stench you are having trouble inhaling.
    "Do you know what a m'guffin is, kid?"
    You are suffocating.
    "No, I guess you wouldn't.
    A smile curls across his expressionless face like smoke.
    Mirton bends down. His skin is pale and, you notice as you begin to black out, his skin is also opaque. Vaguely, you can see arteries and veins in his face and neck. You can see the dark mass of his writhing tongue through the skin of his bloodstained lips. He is toothless. His right eye is swollen shut but you can just make out the eyeball beneath the lids.
    "I'm a m'guffin, kid. You came here tonight because I needed you. Whatever reasons you think you had for coming here are just the attempts of your flimsy mind to rationalize irrationality. Anyone watching you sneak over here and crawl in the window would have tried to warn you. Everyone would know that coming into this house assures you a violent death." Mirton chuckles. "But. You are under the control of a m'guffin, kid. I eat once every few hundred years and tonight I'm hungry."
    And you lose consciousness, unable to draw in a breath. The last things you hear are Mirton's voice and the terrible sobs rolling beneath his words.
 
    I am a m'guffin. I do as I please.
    Here you are, suffocating, nearly dead, unconscious on my living room floor while the ghosts weep in the basement. I can devour you, kid, but I cannot destroy your twisted soul. The soul I shall keep for posterity, like a book. You hear the sobs, my boy, of a hundred different volumes from a hundred different centuries. The souls of dinners past. My own personal library.
    I will take you down to the basement. I will remove your soul. I will keep it in a special room constructed of precious metals mined from Lemuria--which sank with Atlantis. You will be deconstructed, decapitated, digested. The process will be loud, messy, and painful. The process will last an hour and you'll be alive for most of it because I think the hormones of human fear add flavor to the meat. They make the juices cook.
    But what to do with your head, which does not interest me? Human brains are a small meal at best, and are usually full of excrement and empty calories. Your head has no innate value yet I think I can give it some superficial purpose. It will serve as a warning to the nice kid across the street. Thus we'll have an old-fashioned cautionary tale, a good bang with a moral.
    You noticed my skin is almost transparent. I am a m'guffin, one of many. We're a transparent people. You are a human being who wants attention and love. I am a creature who wants nothing at all. You lack complexity. I am many things--a bronze world, a platinum blond, a knock at the door, a cannibal, a recluse, a bandersnatch, a means to an end and an excuse for a beginning. You set tails on fire. I burn worlds.
 
    You regain consciousness. It is too dark to see but you know you are now in a subterranean cavern because it is cold and damp and the ground beneath you is made of stone. There is movement near-by. The only sounds are the shrieks of the dead, echoing in a metal chamber somewhere in the dark.
    And then the sound of creaking. Of metal against metal. Mirton has changed, has grown, has mutated. The m'guffin is sharpening its claws, gnashing its teeth, making preparations for its meal. You remember the man who passed days and years sitting on a porch and you understand nothing of what is happening to you. You only know it is going to take time and it is going to hurt.
    Your soul begins to slip out of the pores of your skin. Your mind remains trapped by your body, which gradually begins to disappear.
    Your sharp screams are matched by the screams of the imprisoned souls. The outer walls of the metal cell reverberate, singing and screaming along with you, along with the ghosts. The noise makes you deaf. The pain makes you numb.
    Your screams die out until you fall silent. The next morning, as the sun slides upward, your best friend's dog touches his tongue to your frozen, contorted face, nips your ears with his pointed teeth. Mr. Mirton, the recluse, pats Bosch gently on the head. "Here you go, boy. You like table scraps? Huh?... Yeah..."
    As he crosses the backyard, returning home, Mr. Mirton stops long enough to cast an expressionless glance up to your only friend's bedroom window. You again notice the transparency of his skin. The rising sun gleams through the palm of his hand as he raises it to wave at the empty window.
 

An older piece

As the date says, I wrote this thing in 1999. Not a bad piece, really.

Marc's Digression for 9/16/99

Concession Stands and Concentration Camps: How Hollywood Sees the Holocaust

(with *bonus*  info on Henry Ford!)

Soon, Robin Williams will unleash his personal spin on the Holocaust. Williams will star in Jakob the Liar, a sort of Good Morning, Dead Jewish Society for the Americans who refused to sit through the subtitled Life is Beautiful. I am sure Williams' heart is in the right place but I do wish someone would score him a mountain of coke and a nanny to diddle, and make him be funny again.
    The script for Jakob the Liar was rewritten beneath the watchful eyes of both Williams and his wife/exec producer, Marcia Garces Williams and therefore must reflect Williams' thoughts on the Jewish plight during World War II.
    I am not in the least interested in what Williams thinks about the Holocaust. Or medical care. Or smart-but-troubled young people. Or divorce. Or life after death. Unless he is standing before a live audience, wearing a Viking hat and grabbing his crotch, I don't give a fuck what Williams thinks about anything.
    Since the end of WWII there have been many films striving to put the Holocaust into perspective. Most of the best have been from Europe--Europa, Europa, for example. Or the misleadingly-titled The Nasty Girl, which sounds like a porno but is really the contemporary story of a young woman in Germany who digs into her hometown's past and discovers the citizens were actively supportive of Nazi ideals during the reign of Hitler (it is a comedy, by the way). Holocaust films from America tend to be didactic (Judgement at Nuremberg), melodramatic (the miniseries Holocaust), or evasive (out of all the WWII films churned out by Hollywood over the years, only a handful actually allude to even marginal discomfort of Jewish Europeans during the war). There are a few good American films dealing with the Holocaust but they are usually based on novels written by Europeans (Sophie's Choice is once exception. William Styron, born in Virginia, wrote an enormously compelling novel which was later turned into a film with Meryl Streep and Kevin Klein and, yes, it was melodramatic but in a good way).
    And then there's Schindler's List, a film about the Holocaust based on a novel by an Austrailian, Thomas Keneally.
    I saw Schindler's List twice in theatres--once in Tuscaloosa, where it began showing the first week of distribution, and once in Florence, where Hickory Hills began screenings several months later. In Tuscaloosa, the film was shown straight through and not a soul stirred. In Florence, the film got an intermission, allowing famished Florentines time to run to the concession stand and purchase overpriced refreshments before returning to the horrors of the death camp experience. After all, who wants to watch a scene featuring a group of children cowering in a latrine to avoid being carted off to the ovens--unless you have the comfort of Goobers and a Diet Coke?
    When the closing credits began to roll after the first time I saw Steven Spielberg's take on the Holocaust, a friend leaned over to me and declared in a hyper, movie-commercial voice: "Finally! A feel-good film about genocide!" And I laughed. While the rest of the audience filed out of the theatre with Clinton "feel your pain" winces on their faces, silent except for sobs and weary sighs, I chuckled my happy ass up the aisle.
    Which is not to say I was not deeply disturbed by the events depicted in the film but I agreed with my friend. It seemed that, in the ending of Schindler's List, Spielberg was trying to put a rational, hopeful spin on an irrational, hopeless situation.
    Elie Wiesel, author of Night, which recounts his experience in Nazi concentration camps, once said he wrote the book not to help us understand the Holocaust, but to help us know we could never understand it. He is right. How can one comprehend the methodical slaughter of 6 million people--of Jews, homosexuals, sympathizers, gypsies, people of color? Can there be a satisfactory explanation for the soap made of human fat or the couches upholstered in human skin? In the 1986 Woody Allen film Hannah and Her Sisters, a son asks his father why, if God is good, He allowed Nazis to exist. The exasperated father bellows back, "How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I can't figure out how the can opener works!"
    Perhaps that is as much as we should hope to learn from the Holocaust. Hollywood will continue to produce "important" films about it and American audiences will leave theatres with their Clintonian winces. Americans watch films about WWII with the knowledge that We Won. To our nation, WWII represents a triumphant period in our history, which is why I think American films about the Holocaust tend to end on up-notes and optimism and often try to give human faces to the madness of Hitler's Germany. Europe lost the war. The Jewish European popularion was almost wiped out. So European films about the Holocaust are usually more bleak in scope and vision, unconcerned with extending a humane context to the inhumanity.
    By the way, Elie Wiesel has repeatedly insisted he will never allow a film adaptation of Night to be made. At least not in his lifetime.
 
Digression on the Digression
In 1997, NBC broadcast Schindler's  List uncut and commercial-free. This unprecedented even not only afforded basic-cable subscribers with the rare chance to catch some network t-and-a, it also allowed the sponsor of the airing, Ford Motor Company, to collect favorable press coverage.
    Ford Motor Company, incidentally, was of course founded by Henry Ford. Aside from being an accomplished businessman, Ford also wrote a series of articles for a periodical he had purchased after the first world war. The name of the periodical was The Dearborn Independent. The articles, which ran once a week for 91 weeks, were eventually assembled into a 4-volume book set: The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem (published in 1920); Jewish Activities in the United States (1921); Jewish Influences in American Life (1921) and Aspects of Jewish Power in the United States (1922). Collectively, the 4 volumes came to be known as The International Jew.
    Were these tomes of erudite elucidation on Jewish contributions to world culture as laudable as they sound?
    Well, Adolf Hitler loved Ford's work so much that the Fuhrer awarded the carmaker The Grand Cross of The German Order of The Eagle in 1938, as a birthday present.
    Ford accepted the award.
    The International Jew has been in spotty circulation since publication--at one time copies were offered as a perk to anyone buying a Ford car. In 1927, following public pressure (and hints of finacial repurcussions) from such luminaries as Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, W.E. B. DuBois, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryant, Ford retracted his anti-Semetic beliefs and attempted to destroy all copies of his work. He issued an apology denouncing The International Jew.
    Yet, as I said, in 1938 he accepted accolades and awards from Adolf Hitler. reports circulated the world in 1933 that Ford was bankrolling Hitler's rise to power. During WWII, a Cologne, Germany subsidiary of Ford became an efficient, profitable forced labor camp. In 1998, a woman named Elsa Iwanowa brought a class-action lawsuit against Ford Motor Company alleging that she was forced to make trucks for the Nazi War Machine, that she and her fellow prisoners were treated inhumanely, and that Ford USA reaped a healthy profit from the efforts of the prisioners in the Cologne plant.
    Ford Motor Company of course denies the charges.