Gabrielle Taylor's "Cockluck"

Part 1 | Someone We Can Dream On

Thursday, it was, Thursday September 6, and the year 2001, about eleven in the morning, when I read on kenlayne.com that the Reverend Tony Pierce had writ Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf's obituary. So it was Thursday September 6 when I drove -- the Mercedes, older than myself, that I inherited from uncle Caulk -- to the Elgin street courthouse -- when normally I would walk. The courthouse -- in case you ever must park in downtown Ottawa -- is extremely ugly, and has the cheapest indoor parking between the canal and Bank street.

Part 2 | Just Watch Me

The weekend was quiet -- no phone calls, no one dropping by -- a quiet fog. I fed myself all the drugs it takes to keep me going: drugs from Utah via one doctor, steroids from another, other pills I'd worked out on my own. I showered. I worked and threw the work away. The sun came in and went out. I walked to Blockbuster on Rideau Street and rented "Metroland", "Small Time Crooks" and "Everyone Says I Love You". Naked, I watched them, wrapped in a white duvet with yellow daisies on my hard narrow brushed steel futon couch. I drank mediocre red wine out of the bottle and ate pizza from Colonnade. As usual, I slept on the couch -- as usual when Fort's away. There's too much space in the bed when I'm alone and even both my fat fat cats -- Riesling and Offenbach -- were not enough. Auntie would advise me to fill it with a human presence; that's what she would do.

Part 3 | Burma Shave

The closer I got to Val-de-Mont-Ste-Lac the more I felt like an inflatable bell being inflated by compost gas. The sound of my clothes outstripped the car engine. The sounds were drips of lemon concentrate into white icing, needing to be padded and contracted. The sky was brittlely blue and time was crushed against not-time. This time had no worth. There was no need to take care. The time was damaged and useless. It was cracked. One need but wait for the gleaming little silver beads to justify the long, moldy cord.

Part 4 | The Wind and the Bass

I drove; Auntie fooled with the mp3 player. She made a sound like a snake in the brush and tossed the player down on the seat. "Got anything else?"

"Maybe in the glove box."

She rattled it. "Locked."

I unsnapped the car key from my key ring and tossed her the bundle. She snapped open the glove box and raked a handful of tapes into her lap. She snatched one up with a triumphant laugh. "Just what I wanted."

Part 5 | "They Always Said He Would Be Nothing but a Fish Head"

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."

Part 6 | Postmodern Declaration

"Hi Fort, it's me..."

"...?"

"Oh I'm sorry, I always forget the time difference. I usually just, you know, type to people in other countries. Not phone."

"..."

"I was worried. I know you're nowhere near New York or DC but... I miss you so much. I like that shirt. When are you coming home?"

Part 7 | The Correct Attitude

When one lives alone, as I have been since Fort went to Casablanca, one is immediately aware of another person in one's space. It was just as disorienting as thinking about the day before. It had the hyperreal quality of a sickness dream. I was not here; I was not here. I was still stuck in a dream where I was typing the same thing over and over but could never read the words. In the dream there was someone behind me; sometimes I was taking dictation and sometimes I was correcting an incompetent. I was not here; I was not here.

Part 8 | Where are You From?

Bertram fumbled around under the bar. "Where's the damn remote? The lunch crowd will be here soon and if I don't have CNN on they're likely to egg me at Halloween.

Part 9 | Centrepiece

Judith was out front, idling her enormous green Ford, with Bertram's bicycle wedged mostly in the trunk. "Sit on the dog blanket please." Then she looked at him. "You're not disgusting. You should be covered in beer."

Part 10 | The Bodies, The Voices

Auntie came home in the small hours and found me sitting on the living room futon staring blankly at infomercials in the dark.

"How was work?"

"It let out early, so I went on a date."

"A date? Already? Who with?"

She shrugged and turned off the teevee. "JB Dixon. I think he's a journalist. Why are you up?"

"Couldn't stay asleep. How was your date?"

"Brief. He has to kill again in the morning. Why couldn't you stay asleep?"

"Got up."

"Watched infomercials?"

"I guess."

"What is this, a game show?" Auntie said impatiently.

Part 11 | Voluntary Quicksand

After Judith left, Bertram had a long scalding hot shower. He read his email naked. Make $5000 A Week From Home Call Now! Buy Viagra Discreetly 4267! Credit Card Debt? Too Many Bills? Teenage Hotties Take It All Everywhere!

Part 12 | Never Trust a Man in a Blue Trench Coat

Judith thrust her cellphone into Bertram's hand. "Great. Use this. Call movers. Call the bar and tell them you're moving so you can't come in."

"Right now?"

"I want you to oversee the cleaners. I want you to make sure they don't mess up the place."

Part 13 | People Who Have Just Met and Sound the Same Must Have Ulterior Motives

Auntie was behind the bar messing with the cocktail shakers and I was lying across one of the lounge chairs, my knees over one arm and my shoulders against the other, reading last week's Macleans's magazine and marvelling at how simple everything was just then. People came in and went out of the bar. Someone, male, said to Auntie, "I'll take one of those Manchurian Candidates. Did you know there are psych majors wandering Sparks Street with camcorders?"

Part 14 | Can Write Music; Play Tennis

I dream the girl wears blue, blue satin, a long strapless dress slit up her left leg, and her honey blonde hair was pulled up in a little curly puff at the top of her head. She had blue eyes, two in her face and two in the back of her head, but to look through one set she had to close the other. I see her in the Duchess's private bathroom meticulously ransacking cosmetics and perfume. It's all going into a little white lace bag but she's not found what she came for yet.

Part 15 | Digerati and the End of the World Excerpt OR / Eric Clapton Versus my 25 Cents

"Napster is not a danger today," wrote Miles Copeland, founder of IRS Records, in 2001. "It may even act as a listening booth leading to increased record sales -- it is tomorrow that is the problem. As technology (players, broadband) becomes commonplace, three to five years from now, Napster-like sites will spell the death of the record stores and a total rethink, if not disaster, for the record companies."

Napster and gnutella are based on Blind Man's Bluff, where the user wanders around randomly grabbing anything that interests him that he happens to be able to find. The instant gratification offered by these services mask the pirate communities attached to Hotline, Carracho, IRC, and similar softwares based on servers and accounts and, in some cases, conversation.

Part 16 | White City

That afternoon I went downtown to the monthly editorial meeting for Silverdrop Quarterly, which was a small press literary zine run by my friend Larry. Larry was on disability -- he'd been in a car wreck a few years ago and was paralyzed from the waist down. His larynx was crushed in the accident so he had a Stephen Hawking voicebox. Whenever he got bored he reprogrammed his voice; when I'd talked to him last he sounded like Stephen Hawking impersonating Teddy Kennedy. Voiceboxes just aren't that good yet.

[more]

Part 17 | Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

It was Friday lunchtime in the bar, and quiet. Auntie and I were drinking Brandy Alexanders and watching teevee. She watched it carnally as she shook and reshook our drinks. Sometime during, Emerson Vorace came in and tried to ask what we were watching and we told him to shut up. During the midway set of commercials he said bitterly, "it's like political porn." [more]

Part 18 | Show Me the Way

Bertram called Alexei and said, "the challenge is to see how clean I can make this place while still losing most of the damage deposit. Want to help me move today?" [more]

Part 19 | Waitin' for my man

Bertram opened the door. He saw blond hardwood stairs leading up. He climbed to a small square landing, then went into a large open room over the garage, with enormous windows covered by bent filthy blinds, and varnished hardwood floors with long scorch marks. Pine 2x2s were screwed high on the walls at an angle, depending from which, on twine, were Mason jars full of sticky black sludge. Three-foot high plastic flower baskets full of sooty and half-melted plastic flowers stood in each corner. The room was stale with smoke. [more]

Part 20 | With six you get, etc

The next morning Bertram bathed in the sink.

He unflattened his shoes and put them on with yesterday's borrowed clothes. The chromy gold clock in the kitchen read 9:06. He watched it blearily for several minutes before he realized it wasn't working. [more]

Part 21 | If I Wanted Two, I'd Ask For It

The bar was usually slow between one and three. Today it was busy until quarter after two because of a magazine marketing convention in the Congress Centre and everyone was taking long, long lunches. Every seat was smeared with the round grey behind of a hustling thirty to forty year old man coloured somewhere between milk and coffee with milk. They all seemed to bald the same way, in an arrow up their skull, and a little round cap at the top. Even the fit ones had fat fat fingers with blocky rings.

Part 22 | But You, My Sweet, are Different

So that afternoon Emerson called and informed me politely that he was buying me dinner wherever I liked best.

When I hung up, Auntie said, "good, you'll have the place to yourself tonight. I've got a date with JB after work. So you can bring Emerson home after your date."

"It's not a date."

"Right, he's buying you dinner as a medical experiment." [more]

Part 23 | The Purple Light of a Summer Night in Spain

At 8:43am Bertram woke, showered, shaved, pulled new socks and shirt and underwear from plastic bags, and went straight to the back house. He slammed the side of his fist once against the door. The door drifted open, clanked against the chain, and stopped. [more]

Part 24 | Pleasant to Look at the Ocean

By the time Bertram got home that night a thick and lively stench hung over his entire lot. It seemed to loll openmouthed from the back house and multiply against the hedge like waves on a rocky beach. He took his shirt off and wrapped it around his face; the smell of his fading deodorant and armpit and other people's beer was better than that from the house. He clumped over and banged on the door, muffledly yelling, "hey! HEY!" [more]

Part 25 | Just Because the Sun Want a Place in the Sky

"Hey! What if I need that?"

"Call me. Come on, we'll get you some clothes. If you're good I'll even let you have a camera."

He unlocked the door, and opened it. They both fell back six paces as a malignant cloud of humid rot rolled out over them. [more]

Part 26 | Meanwhile, Across Town

"His stage name was Lynd Valentine. He called himself Val. I didn't know his real name. One didn't ask."

the phone rang and rang. the answering machine picked up. why wasn't I returning his calls? who did I love, him or... didn't I? didn't I? was it, was it just, was it nothing? [more]

Part 27 | The End

The next day I slept.

I woke at midnight when the front door rattled locked. The apartment was empty; more than empty quiet, desert quiet, early autumn quiet. There would be, I knew, a note from Auntie saying she was gone on location with JB and would be back when he was done. Which she undoubtedly meant, right now. Provided. Provided. [more]