Make Me An Offer

[This one has been going on for years and years and years it seems.]

Part One: Steeple Chase

I don’t recommend any of the processional wives. I wouldn’t take a dollar from a dead, dying man. I’ve tried to last without exploding into a million star pieces but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I could never be quiet or delicate. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Couldn’t mistake one for the other. This for that. Could not exhaust all of my options. Couldn’t swear at the steeple. Couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Couldn’t speak to droves of people.

No, I don’t recommend the processional wives.

Part Two: Cancer in April

I wouldn’t bother with any of the children. It wouldn’t be fair and they are far too needy. Tomorrow has a bellyache that can’t be driven out.

And that bitch still sleeps on my couch.

Part Three: Silly Myths

You needn’t look at the husbands. They are far too macho with grief. They never knew what bit them and now they spend their time avoiding their dreams and settling for something less. I am a man who gives a good goddamn about what is right and true and lean. I will throw down for you in a fight. But there are other men I have met, so many of them, who linger in constant denial. But for a dollar or two I can have them beaten. And I will only accept payment in pennies because I like Lincoln.

From here on in you are on your own. No one is going to accept a note from your mother. Fuck you. I’d like to have time for the sick and the poor but hey man, I am one of the sick and fired and I need a much better saddle for this trip. My poncho was left out in the sun for too long and I think it’s starting to rain again. Not a damn thing you can do about it. Not anything at all. You can’t hop on a train and get off at Utopia Station. It just doesn’t exist. And this is my own secret aspirin. I have acted badly and I know it.

But I always think it will work out just fine. The results have always been perfect. Fuck off. She has always been ready for this. She shouldered a different purse whenever she would leave the house. And there was pain in every one. She carried sex around with her in a brown paper bag. I replayed this breaking of us in reverse slow motion. I tried to picture her moving slowly in closer towards me. Even squinting, I can only ever see her walking away.

Happiness is just a silly myth and I have grown bored of playing with the thought of it. I’ve decided to be so drunk and stoned that I’m sober. I’ll be here in the spring. I will never cut my hair again. I will only wear coveralls with nothing on underneath. I will never tie my shoes again and will only wear the kind that you can slip-on. I have gone for months without ever saying a word to another human being.

And I can be so strong it’s scary.

Part Four: Decisions, Decisions

But goddammit. I just want it all to be the way it was before. Even if I was miserable half the time. It’s better than being miserable all of the time. I think that I could have made good if I hadn’t blown my cover so quickly. No one has to know me somewhere. I am almost ready for a small town start-over. A small place is the best to be. I’ve got a pile of laundry quarters in one hand and a pile of porno tokens in the other. Which one do you want? You can’t have both. Which one will it be? Maybe you’d rather have me instead?

I will stand on a freeway with my eyes to the sky if you want. I’ll trade pomes for peppers and red beans and rice and make you a Mexican stew. I’ll abandon all hope of recovery from this one and accept whatever comes, hanging by my thumbs. I’ll fight for you to the death. I’ll paint you paintings and leave you notes and conquer Philistines and submit to common laws. I’ll buy you tinsel and kite string and construction paper and we’ll make paper lanterns when it rains. And we can dance to Etta James and John Coltrane when we make love. We will drink fine bourbons and ride our own show ponies and sell out crowds of one hundred and eight. We will dine on bagels with cream cheese and macaroni. We will laugh until our bellies hurt and we’ll struggle when we are apart.

I’ll be sick. I promise.

I’ll give you whatever I’ve got and we’ll negotiate for more. And hey, you aren’t getting a bargain here. You’ll have plenty of trouble whipping me into shape. You may have to learn things just so you can teach them to me and then I’ll claim them as my own and condescend to you because I am better at Jeopardy. I am in trouble with a capital “T” and that stands for trivia, baby. Hooo! And that’s what sucks about the whole goddamn thing. And “suck” is quite a deterrent, believe you me.

Part Five: Make Me a Star, Baby

A retrospective is not a wake. Or is it all right to want a signed, limited edition of your work before you are even published? But we should start out there, shouldn’t we? And hey, motherfucker, who asked you? Why isn’t my face on the box of Wheaties and the cover of Rolling Stone in the same week? Why can’t I be the darling of the press? Why can’t I be a star?

And I don’t even want to be a star right now.

I just want to be in need of nothing as much as I am in need of something right now.

I like talking in code so don’t ask me to change the tires, change this twenty, change the topic, the channel, the alarm clock to read a quarter past five and change your mind.

Part Six: Expensive Glowing Women

But don’t think for a lousy minute that I don’t have a Plan B. [Or see?] I have lived here all of my life. [L’enfant perdu.] This is my one real and true super-human power. Adaptation and acceptance. I thrive in these places and places exactly like it where the strongest of men are drowned by familiar rivers and entire families are swallowed whole by a sadness that will only, can only, ever leave them for dead.

I feel invincible and crazy all of the time.

I have watched people up close whose passions have long since been turned into plastic. They float along past me on clouds of cigarettes and perfumed lips and speak in a language that I do not understand. I could gather them all up in my left hand if I wanted to. I have grown weary from tossing these ridiculous notions of seduction and passion back and forth. I’m always afraid that Anais Nin will eventually start lurking outside of window. [My name isn’t even Henry.] This whole thing is tiresome and my taste is far too fucking expensive. You can’t afford a guy like me, baby. Don’t even try it. I am the Ginger Man. Catch me if you can.

Part Seven: Molding Clay

It’s easy to be the wisest of fools and say exactly what others want desperately to hear from you. There are 750,000 words in the English language. I can talk it up with the best of them. Inside out and in circles. I can continue on like this until God has another bad fucking day. And I’ll end up blaming myself entirely. I will fly my flag of shame. [I am to blame.] Mea Culpa, indeed. Seriously. Really. Besides, it all comes back to this unattainable mold that I created for you in the first place. Do you still fit?

Part Eight: Truck Stop Love

I want a Heavenly Her. Not a Lucky Charms marshmallow trinket. I want to live in the place that feels like the perfect pint of Guinness. Enduring this thirst with parched patience, enough to leave the fucking thing alone, until it eventually settles and gently rests before you. Because of you. It does what comes naturally. As if it were designed to behave this way forever, almost, without pride or complaint. And this is where I want to be. Raise your hand if you want to come along. There are plenty of you out there. I am feeling up to anything that you can throw at me. I will hold your hand forever if you let me. I will hold your cup and we can dance on our tippy-toes, clumsily, with little regard for our downstairs neighbors. I will never stop feeling this way unless you ask me to.

And let God be called I liar if that’s not true.

I would even let you beat me in a game of chess every once in a while. That is how much I love you. I will stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign saying, “Will Work For Love.” If I thought you’d be any better for it. If I thought I couldn’t get any worse because of it.

Part Nine: Habits Galore

If only the mother of my children won’t pick a fine time to leave me with crops in the field. That bitch, Lucille. Where does she get off? And double entendre runs amok everywhere. And you look in the mirror and see wrinkles and graying temples and thinning hair and you brush your teeth and drink from the shower head and swallow and wash an older body and holy mother of God where does it all stop? How did I get here from there? And I will fall in love with a woman’s neck before I can even make it to her neighboring bar stool. I watch your mouth every time I see you and imagine kissing you while I pretend to listen. I cannot help any of this. I am an endangered species. I am a Heterosexual renaissance man. I can even cook. And I am here on display. And I will give $100 and a blowjob to anyone that kills Rikki Lake, Judge Judy, Jenny Jones, Maury Povitch, [What, exactly, in God’s name was Connie Chung thinking?], Rosie O’Donnell, Susan Powter, or Caroline Rhea. Stop the insanity, my ass. Just somebody please stop this woman before she kills again.

Part Ten: Raging Bull

“But more and more I feel like I’ll likely end up like poor old Dante. His Beatrice ended up dead and was gone forever before they ever really had a chance to make a real go of it. And I am really trying to hash this all out right now. And I am fighting it out with my heart on a daily basis. An hourly basis. And my brain never stands a chance in this desperate display but invariably tries to go the distance enduring these dizzying blows. I am left punch-drunk, freezing. I have been bruised, to be sure, in that sacred expanse between Right and Left. Yes and No. And yes.

And, yes, the women that secretly attempted to surround me had at least one old Kundera paperback just out of reach from their bed. Looking for advice from God in the wood grain of my coffee table I found the old copy I carried in. Just reading his books for material and ammunition. Just to show off for that little sexy beat girl or suicide blonde over there, by proving just exactly how sensitive as hell I really am. “Care for an iced cappuccino?” “You like Kundera? I just adore Kundera?” But I really only do this thinking that if I can keep this little sham going for a week or so more I just might stand a chance at kissing the corner of her mouth. I just might be able to hold her hand and smell her hair when I kiss her goodbye. And that nervous butterflies feeling is where it’s all at for me. This is the entirety of my goal. Up in my chest and down in my belly is the thing I love best. And I will have a crush on you at the drop of a hat. And later, when we are alone and I let her read some of my silly pomes and dig on my art and my feelings on God and literature and all that business, I will move in for the kill. So there you have it. I let you in on my best part. Her cool company and me with eternally shy darting eyes hiding behind my glasses and laying it on thick. Real thick. “And I can only tell you this because you make me feel so comfortable.” “I really relate to you.” “Only you can understand the real me.”

Part Eleven: The Best One Yet

But here’s the deal. (And I’m not asking a lot here, mind you.) I am a simple high-cultured low brow. A dungarees and crew neck T-shirt taste. And my end of the deal is more than fair. A hug from behind as we sleep and hold hands. And I get to jump on you and wake you up at three o’clock in the morning when I can’t bring myself to sleep. And I get to kiss your belly and smell your stale morning breath and look you square in your tired puffy eyes and swear on God and man that you are mine.

[That was it.]

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