Category: Penman Lounge

Time flies between Boren and Minor. That’s where mom and pops live. Their building is gray too. Slabs of Soviet style concrete. Patches of lighter gray where management has spray-painted over graffiti. Someone’s scribbled over the light gray in a final affront.
“Next time use 409. Spray paint looks bad.”
Jorjian grimaces. It seems a fire’s broken out on Boren and Union. 1400 block. Could be the Panorama House. Could be some other complex. It’s early, first morning of bitter air, sharp leaves and haunted light. Mom wouldn’t be awake yet. But pops, the news junkie, would be up by five, getting ready to work at the shelter. He is driven to the TV set by the sirens outside, warning him not of the nearby hospital entrances, but of fire, sharp and blazing, black smoke billowing outside his seventh floor bedroom.

Jorjian remembered that her mom used to chase firetrucks. Like blundering whales sounding throughout the city streets at night, the trucks would haunt each alley, softly moaning at one another. And Jorjian’s mom would sit in her black car, transfixed by the sight, meant for her eyes only.

People burned that morning on Boren. A kid heard his mom scream and glass pop into his room. Deep black ash billowed as Jorjian’s pops watched it all unfold on the tube a block away. Jorjian called Meghan, now across the world, who told her things would clear up soon. And then she called her cousin, Abbi, who told her that pepper spray was illegal in Europe, so it was a horrible idea to visit. Jorjian didn’t want to visit. She wanted to stay. Go to Berlin maybe, someplace free of Boren and its atomic heat.

Figures hovering above, and figures hovering below. The complex is like a jungle tonight. The rain beats the mud even deeper into the pores of cement. Leaves sag like aged breasts. An onion, discarded from someone’s putrid Thriftway shopping bag, grows its own family of others just like it; opal, pungent, sterile.
And in this lush, plunging, fern filled courtyard, reminiscent of Vietnam, voices bounce through the rain, off a puff of smoke, off an angry thump, off a deep moan, off a shrill laugh. The neighbors are doing it again above me. And Maurice screams from down the hall at Lewis outside the gates of Vietnam.
“What the f*ck?”
“I bent my key asshole, or else I coulda got in myself.”

Boys playing men on a chain-link fence, slick and white, sneakers sliding, bending at will. Who will be the first to fall? Crack their head like Bowman did that summer night.
“Yo. Whooo! Oh sh*t, homie.” Skip and slip, bend and pour their tiny boy hearts out. The metal pings in the night air. Blood pops through the torn skull of the last tightrope walker to have fallen. Jorjian knew this is what it means to have a shaved head, to eat “sh*t like you for breakfast,” to die hard, to remember nothing, and always be walking along that chain-link outside Vietnam.

Sirens stop a skateboarder’s rumble on the clay. The man in the halfway house across the street claps over and over. Relentless techno crashes through an open screen door, and a government paycheck blows threw the wind and smudges its inky blot against Jorjian’s window. She laughs. Things seem relatively calm.
“Whoa!” And more clapping from the halfway house. This time for a reason. Another tightrope walker has tumbled. The others burst out laughing.

Over the mountain pass it would be crickets she would hear, thought Jorjian. But for now it was the sounds of the city that would have to lull her. TV’s, intercoms, buzzers, frowns, all things dismal, these were her things divine, she thought, as the neighbors moaned in ecstasy above and below.

Holed up in our rooms afraid to leave, afraid of wicked. She lay screaming under a dead car, dripping in its grease. Naked from the waist up, in neon green shorts.
“Sean?”
“Sean?”
It wasn’t Sean. It was Jorjian. She was going to change her laundry.
“Do you want to come in and take a shower Calli?”
“It depends. Do you have any hard A? A cigarette? Are you gonna call the cops? Are you gonna call Gunnar?”
“No but I shoulda.”

Later that night, when Jen got home from her AA picnic, Jorjian and Jen made a promise to never let Calli in the apartment again. How’d she get through the gate anyway? Musta climbed over.
“But she was calling for you, asking about you.”
“There is nothing I can do.” But Jorjian wondered, who would Jen be able to turn away if they were naked, bleeding from the temple and screeching for her to save them?
“She swung a carburetor in my face, something rusty she had snatched while under the car.”
God she dug deep.
“Next time, you hold her put and one of us will go call the cops.”
Yeah, Jorjian agreed. She was sick of Calli’s sh*t.

Things had been queer since Kurt had left. Words seemed unjustified. Sounds seemed cruel. Dogs were rabid as they lay their pups of betrayal. She hoped she could get a ride from the station that morning. Maybe she could call Gunnar. But Jorjian knew that would be no use. He left her with a hole of no hope at all. Things had really gotten bad for Gunnar anyway. Bills piling up, medical and otherwise, from when he got hit by that car somewhere between Pike and Pine. His phone had shattered. His eyes red and gashes tracing the blades of his back. One time he made her bandage him up, thick gauze couldn’t stop the pressure of oozing blood.

She worried for him, because of his sister, and his mom. Word in the neighborhood, at least from the fat lady across the street with the smeared face paint and graying chihuahua, was that she had O.D.’d. Others wanted her kicked off the block. Too many late nights with her squealing, squawking at the cops. Her shirt always bunched over her tummy, her belly ring always glowing translucent. Others, including Jorjian, were jealous. Why did she get to have all the fun? Why didn’t Jorjian? Why was Jorjian now so cut off from all that she had been?

Things moved slowly on her walk home that day. Up one hill, two hills, three to where she had lived in that government housing or the next. All up the hill on Denny Way, apart from the rest of the city buried in grease. Things drifted for Jorjian, one could say. And then she recalled the bugs. Those tiny red beatles that had infested her mattress through the floor below her.
“No wonder,” the exterminator chuckled. “Just down below you there’s more bug than bed.” Crackhead we both agreed. And Jorjian watched as the man sprayed his soft patent air, white with chemical, clear of life, and she watched as he left her, now consumed with grief.

She went out to have an O’Dooles at the Redwood Tavern last night. In an attempt to make this okay, normal, alright. Jorjian spent most of her time sipping the luke-warm fizz, wondering why she couldn’t have just one sip of Georgia’s bourbon and sweet-tea. Maurice saw Terrell, and Lewis saw Adam and she saw Alexander with an Asian tart that wasn’t his wife, and Jen stayed at home, angry that her fake ID said she was thirty-four and Puerto Rican. She wasn’t in the mood to get kicked out of the Redwood.

There was a stabbing on the hill yesterday. Jorjian Brown couldn’t help but wonder what that meant for her. Was she selfish for wondering such thoughts? Wondering if she was going to get mugged too? Stabbed in the neck. Throat slit like a pig? How much blood there must have been and yet at five-thirty pm, did no one notice? Stop to help? She walked hazily on Harvard, peering up to Howell. Right there. Not far at least. She wouldn’t be a target in her thick scarf. At least Jorjian’s neck would be protected. She wanted to kiss someone. Hug the soft spot of flesh in between the ear and the face’s abdomen. It was a belly of sorts, the neck. A connection of this degree could be just the thing she needed. A warmth to ignite her drying lips.

Who’s next on this hill of lies and steel, motorcycle repair shops and dismal dreams of speeding to grandeur? Jorjian wondered if she could make it to Canada within a few hours. She would hop a train, a Greyhound, anything to get her out. Vancouver was safe of knives and crack. Or so it seemed. She knew this was untrue. Yet how could she not regret the time wasted sitting in a tunnel of furrowed cement, rising like a tidal wave on either side of her split associations. She took another sip but it didn’t suffice. Her appetite was for the bland. The smoke that made her jitter. And it was only twelve o’ two. She had been up for two hours and she needed a nap.

He was a tall gentleman. A spindly dandy of the olden variety. Yet even with him in front of her, Jorjian’s depression lagged on that Thursday and she challenged all that had taken place within the spectrum of a week. There and back. A lie here. A fall there. She was strangely drawn to this man. He poured coffee into already black cups of dusted beans. Did she need another haircut, Jorjian wondered? Anything to offset the pace of doomed repetition. Sometimes he worked there too. At Rudy’s barbershop. And Stumptown coffee. He would walk the shallow tunnel hiding behind the two businesses, lurking in the soot of grinded beans and shredded human hair. A brush. That’s what he needed. He haunted the hill. With his head of shaved skin. It seemed to fizzle on his face, his scalp, his palms. Everywhere but the neck.

Things seemed to be unraveling. Why had he pulled her so close when they were talking? It was raining hard. Jorjian’s scarf had tucked away her face into a plume of deep pink and black.
“What. Have you gone Muslim on me?” Rob snorted.
“Naw. It’s like she’s a pilgrim.” Vinny vindicated.
“It’s just a scarf. Because it’s pouring out.”
But it was more than a scarf. It was protection from them and everything they could do to her. He pulled Jorjian close to his lap, sitting on the counter. She could sense a magnetic attraction to his gun.
“You wanna touch it.”
“I don’t like guns.”
“You gotta protect yourself.”
“I’ve got mace.”
But she needed a tazor. Or pepper spray. Or tear gas. Not for him. But for herself. Jorjian went home and lit a cigarette. American Spirit yellow. Within a second she had a burn in the center of her hand. Not her palm but the back of her hand. Where a man would smack a woman. Jorjian hadn’t felt anything but a slight tug from God pulling her hand away from the smoldering brush.
“Drop it.” God said to herself. “This is not for you to decide.”
But the cigarette smarted and Jorjian smiled. A masochistic curse and pleasure. Where were the stabbers now? She howled up at the gray of the shelter above her. To the gray cement of balconies beside her. To the gray of blistering rock below her.
“Come and get me now!”
But they never came. And Jorjian was forced to go back inside again, intact and defiant. Solemn that her neck was still unslit.

If she were the age you were, when you were her age, then things would have been different. She would speak like an angel. She would walk with a fork in her step, a bow in her chippered limp. But she is not an angel. Jorjian Brown knew this. There were things she had done. People she had done. Men she had done. Girls she had kissed. That night Gladys Murphy. She had kissed her at a cocktail party—or as close to that kind of a party she had ever been invited to. She had noticed her for hours. Speaking softy to other guests. Wondering why no one had met her downtown last night.
“It was awesome. Killer booze-fest.”
Jorjian wondered. Amazed at Gladys’s brashness. Only Jorjian possessed such awareness, or so she had thought. She wondered why the world felt so ashamed that day. But it was only Jorjian that could speak about it, so she continued.

Jorjian counted the hours. She consumed goods and pillaged for more. Beer and junk, beer and junk. She counted candy in her mouth. Melting. She awoke in a trailing pool. Who had cut themselves above her? Why hadn’t anyone noticed and awakened? No. It was her that had vomited. On herself. ON the carpet. On the bed. Down her throat. And her roommate sat on the bunkbed across from her. Another distant drifter taken in by the grace of the Army, the Army of Salvationists, crying because the smell stung her nose and the sight frightened her upstate sensibilities. The roommate would return home to her cocker spaniel that week, forever to be away from Jorjian and all that she consumed.

She was wrong again, she supposed. She shouldn’t have eaten that joint. Jorjian grew sick with time, waiting for a mistake to take hold of her and drown out all worries. Things seemed forever frightened. Things seemed dismal under the shadow of her horrid bunk. Why had it taken so long for a world to be torn apart? Why had things corrected themselves so against her horrendous favor? She softly spoke the words of her counterpart, Jesus himself.
“I know you couldn’t be there. I know you had counted on me too.”
Drifting in and out of the day, things swung by gracefully that Friday. Into Monday. Someone cracked a window, letting in sooty fourteenth-street air. A can of mustard that was chilling on the windowsill’s outer point of no return, almost fell, darted towards the earth’s cold covering. She caught it. Whoever had cracked the window caught it. Jorjian sank under her wool, back till Tuesday eve.

She had to come up for life sometime. Her sweatshirt was ten times too big. A bleach spot stained her appointed air of confidence. Alone in her bunk, she was a sooter, an embankment of all things fractious. She shivered with an empty stomach. Ate a tortilla.
“Great party.” Someone mumbled from the bunk above her.

The heat impregnates Jorjian Brown. Like a car-jacker at night. Taking advantage of what isn’t his to begin with.
“Let me out!” a neighbor cries from Olive and Summit.
“B*tch. Let me out!” Or was it a meow? There were small cats that permeated the floors below her. Not kittens, but little tiny cats. They urinated on the shredding carpet, foul beads sweating in sun-faded, mutant orange.
“Stay here.” The brown man crosses the path of a crow flying jaggedly, a wild jackal, unseen to the crop of dealers just sprung up and hissing with spackle.
Fat raccoon in fence, slipping through metallic crosses and viper-laden wire. They never come out this early in the day. Finding that sparkplug of indecency in all of us. Time tranquil, passion resolute, Jorjian Brown sits steadily by her cracked windowpane, where a smudge of chapstick reeks its glutinous odor into the sun.

Gunshots on the hill tonight. Things like this keep happening. Weird sh*t. Jorjian called the police. She was the only one that called. Five shots and her knees were knocking. It must be her meds. She didn’t feel safe. Like that girl in second grade who got shot through the wall in her apartment. Like her uncle shot in the head. Like when she got shot at in Jamaica, Queens, ducked behind a van and got in some stranger’s car and drove off. And Jato wasn’t scared that night. But the kids in the projects scattered and things grew quiet and the air blew soft, and I knew sh*t was gonna go down.
“You think I’m playin’?” He howled through the bricks.

Now everyone would know she called the cops. Again. And they did know.
“They wasa just firworks.” But Jorjian knew they were shotgun sounds getting closer and closer to her complex with every thump.

Jorjian called Beatriz but all she said was,
“Wash your face and go to bed. I’m sending you big hugs.”
To herself she wondered, who the f*ck were you? Her mother-f*cking mom? If so, she’d rather take her mom. Jorjian hung-up missing Travis and feeling emptier than before. Someone kept howling outside. And Calli and her boyfriend lied to the cops.
“It was firworks. I saw him light ‘em.”
“A grown man with fireworks.” The young cop on a bike frowned.
“Man, weird sh*ts been goin’ down.” They took his word over Jorjian’s.
His word over hers.
He lied and they believed him. I sank into my covers. Ready to wake up at three am.

you grinned and broke into a smile
watching as you turned this way and that
taking inventory of your robust frame
proud of the BIG man that stands before you

watching as you turned this way and that
caressing your scars and stretch marks
proud of the BIG man that stands before you
holding innocence in the palm of your hand

caressing your scars and stretch marks
spying to see how each line connects
holding innocence in the palm of your hand
longing for love to touch you this way again

spying to see how each line connects
appreciation for your body to long denied
longing for love to touch you this way again
looking to see desire reflected in your eyes

appreciation for your body to long denied
a tear shed in remembrance for a lovers lost touch
looking to see desire reflected in your eyes
the heat of sex appeal ripples over your skin

a tear shed in remembrance for a lovers lost touch
taking inventory of your robust frame
the heat of sex appeal ripples over your skin
you grinned and broke into a smile