Gabrielle Taylor's "Cockluck"
January 20, 2002
After a while I said:
"Imagine what it must be like to be Bruce Springsteen. Or Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan or David Bowie -- or Pavarotti, or Maria Callas. You hear someone you really like and you call over one of your people and say 'John, I like Adrian Belew, go get him so we can make an album' and John says 'Ulright' and goes and gets you the Adrian Belew and you make an album with that sells at least enough to make it worthwhile even if it turned out to be a drag."
"Freedom needs upkeep," Auntie said. "A few years ago an old couple won the Powerball jackpot, millions of dollars, and when asked what they were going to do with the money, the man said he thought he'd finish renovating the patio."
I pulled off at the Wok N Roll and parked a skinny lot with cracked white lines. I got my emergency coat from the trunk: a tatty puffy blue ski shell. "Don't look at it like that," I said. "Iggy Pop once sweated on this jacket."
She pulled it over her dress. "I look like a Victorian gangsta rapper."
The Wok N Roll smelled of deep fried shrimp, potatoes, onions and pastry, and cooking meat. The walls glittered with signed pics of famous Chinese pop stars: Lennon Shen, McCartney Park, Harrison Shen and Starr Shing with their bowl haircuts and sober black suits; a fuzzy haired guitar-clutcher signed Hendrix Chen; the chameleonesque and androgynous Star Spoon Bowie. Queening over the lot was an oversized colour poster, generously signed, of famed Chinese blues chanteuse Holiday Bing Qing.
We picked a table by the window overlooking the buckled street. I laid my cellphone face down by my newsprint placemat indecipherably covered in tiny blue ads. The waitress pointed to it and said "cancer stick".
"Did you want to call anybody and tell them you're out, Auntie?"
"It's not like I was in prison. Although, wait, yes, excuse me." She took my phone and went outside.
I ordered a small salad and a glass of water, and for her, a cheeseburger and a Coke.
"What were you doing there?"
"Making a date."
"In the monastery?"
"Oh, that. Waiting to see if the world would end at the end of the millennium."
"Did it?"
She shrugged. "Maybe."
"So when it didn't end, why did you stay there?"
"It was good enough for Leonard Cohen."
"That was a Buddhist monastery."
"The Buddha doesn't have a monopoly."
Our orders arrived. Auntie ended up with a deep-fried cheeseburger and a litre of Coke.
"These restauranteurs are very traditionalist," Auntie said, swallowing half her shake and attacking her fries with chopsticks. I washed my salad with the water as we listened to the soulful, mournful jazz licks of Corea Chicku.
"Were you happy in there?"
"If I have freedom in my love and in my soul am free, angels alone that soar above enjoy such liberty, babe. How about you?"
"What about..."
"HitlerDemon? It's been ten times as long as I was actually afflicted with him."
"Why didn't you call?"
"Nothing to say. Maybe I had something worth saying -- if I was someone else."
She hunched down in my ski shell and glared balefully out the window until her sundae arrived.
"But enough about me," she said, licking the inside of her ice cream glass. "What are you doing?"
"Consulting. Technical writing. I got a grant to do a book."
"Oh? What kind of book?"
"Intellectual property research."
"I thought you were writing the Great Canadian Novel."
I bobbed my chin vaguely.
"Well? What happened?"
"I kept getting partway in and losing interest."
"That happens to all writers. Alfred Bester--"
"Bester was creating the cyberpunk genre -- sixty years ago. He had all the space he wanted. Now it's all autovoyeurism."
"Which is good enough for Woody Allen?"
"Woody Allen is a brilliant autovoyeur. I'm just a Christmas cracker. I feel insecure in the language. I don't feel like I know what I'm talking about."
"Nobody is secure in language anymore. Not since we stopped forcing Latin on preschoolers."
"I do feel that way. I do feel like most of the big names have no style. That authors are not required to develop economy and style because it would cut page counts and page counts sell. John Brunner and Ron Goulart and Robert Sheckley turned out dozens of novels under 300 pages and I enjoy those more than 600 pages of James Ellroy. Not that I don't like Ellroy -- I'd just like him more if his books were in better shape. Him and Sara Paretsky and Larry Elmore and... They're soft! I'm not saying I'm any better, but they've been doing it a lot longer... You know what I'm saying?"
Auntie brushed a stray french fry off my coat. "I didn't read much at the monastery. Let's get the bill and get out of here."
"You get the bill from her. I have to go to the ladies' room."
One stall had a coat draped over the door and I heard voices. I pressed at the other, which was also locked. I leaned against the white tile wall and checked myself out in the mirror. Not bad. Been worse. Exercise routines were starting to show even if my body needed a lot more work. My waist definitely curved in.
The door to the handicapped stall opened. A hawk-nosed woman with soft, plump silver curls and wet brown eyes held the door open for me. I reflexively said, "thank you" as I walked by. When I was finished in the stall I realized the people next door were out and the silver haired lady was also in the one meter by two meter space for entry and hand-washing. I thought of leaving without washing my hands.
I waited. The outer door closed. I came out to find two old ladies peering anxiously at the sink, which was full of bubbles. "These drains are so slow," said the newest old lady. She ran water into the basin and splashed over the bubbles. "I don't know why they make them so slow." She dried the counter with a brown paper towel. The original old lady made disapproving noises while applying a stumpy cranberry lipstick.
Eventually I was allowed to the sink, where I washed my hands with unusual care under their matronly stares. "Here you go," said the original old lady, handing me two pieces of paper towel."
"Thanks. I hate the air blower."
"So do we. Do you need another paper?"
"No, thank you." I handed her the used paper towel and exited.
"Where the hell were you?" Auntie said. "I thought you left without me."