'
The sermon for Nov. 23, 2002 is: untitled 11:46 p.m. Imagine a soul camera. Or imagine that in Heaven angels follow mortals like papparazzi, taking random photos of landmarks and interesting vistas. Imagine that that soul camera or heavenly reporter had taken pictures of my wanderjahr in the Midwest. So here's pictures of my summer vacation, taken in November:
I wake up. It's 6 am on my birthday. Stephanie is in the next bed over with my best friend Yong. She's sitting atop him. Langourously he folds himself upright and takes her in an embrace. They're both naked. Murmuring softly to each other, they look at the lights of Chicago as they burn against the invading morning. We're on the 17th floor. Yong slowly moves off the bed, as if reluctant to lose contact with Stephanie's skin, and goes into the bathroom. He closes the door to the sound of bathwater. I turn on the light. "GOOD MORNING!" I announce. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!" Stephanie pulls the bedclothes over herself and hides her face into her pillow. I move next to her and touch her hair. "Are you hungover, baby?" I ask. When I'd fallen asleep, she and Yong had just started making Stolli and cranberry drinks. I don't drink. I had thought that watching them drink would amuse me. Maybe this is the amusement I had sought. "Yeah," Stephanie says, nodding slightly into the pillow. I touch the back of her neck. "Did you have sex with Yong?" I ask. She nods slightly into the pillow. "Yeah," Stephanie says. I return to the other bed and lie down. Happy birthday to me. After an eternity of silence Yong opens the bathroom door, to the sound of escaping water. "Yong, it's my birthday," I say. "Happy birthday," Yong says. "Buy me a plane ticket to go home this morning." Stephanie gets out of her bed and goes into the bathroom. Yong sits down beside me and lays his cheek atop mine. "I'm in love with her, Jonathan," Yong says. "I think I want to marry her." He had met her the day before, when he had flown into Midway for my birthday. "Send me home, Yong," I say. "Put me away." "It's your birthday." "Buy me a plane ticket for my birthday present." "I already got you a birthday present." "Keep it. I want a plane ticket." "And we didn't do anything in Chicago that you wanted to do. Didn't you want to go to the museum and see that installation?" "I'd seen it before," I say. "I just wanted to see how it was now." "Well let's do that then." "I don't want to." "I'm sorry," Yong says. I start to cry. I stop crying. "Whatever," I say. Stephanie comes out of the bathroom, in a towel. Yong goes into the bathroom. Stephanie drops her towel and begins picking up the pieces of her clothing on the floor around our beds. I don't want to glimpse her body so I stare firmly at the complimentary copy provdided by the Gideons of MEIN KAMPF by Conrad Hilton on the bedside table. Stephanie finishes dressing and sits down on the bed. "Baby," she says. "Hello," I say. "I'm sorry." "What would you be sorry for?" "I think I've just broken your heart." I change focus from the Hilton book to the numerous plates, fruit, silverware and glasses brimming with cigarette butts that litter their side of the bedside table. Apparently I slept through room service. And other things. "I told you that you would break my heart," I say (actually here in Diaryland, somewhere). "I know," she says, sighing and patting my back. "I just didn't believe you." So if there is a soul camera, an angelic paparazzi, the photo that would contain this memory, the image that would summon all this up would be of my beloved Stephanie and my beloved Yong's luminous bodies, veiled with bedclothes, as they held each other in the dark and looked out whispering at the lights of Chicago below.
I had come to Chicago because I wanted to see Felix Guillermo-Torres' "Untitled" again. It's "just" a string of lightbulbs stewn, seemingly randomly, on the floor; tiny, tucked unobstrusively in the modern wing of the Art Institute, these lights are easily overlooked or dismissed, so seemingly banal. Guillermo-Torres worked almost exclusively with light bulbs, I think; and each light bulb is representative of a distinct memory of a distinct lover, burning on with continually dimming intensity until it extinguishes. When Stephanie and Yong and I got into the Art Institute, they went to check their coats in and I left them to go find solace somewhere in art. Even though I knew what I was looking for, I didn't find the installation for two hours. For some reason this made me incredibly anxious, as if I was losing my memory, my sense of things. When I found them, a tangle of little lights plugged into a wall socket, I sat down beside them and fought the urge to cry. Only one light bulb had gone out. The rest of the line glowed confidently, unwaveringly. Guillermo-Torres died of AIDS in, I think, 1997. These lights are all that remain of his happinesses. And someday too they will die. I looked at the dead light bulb on Guillermo-Torres chain of lights. A group of teenagers, probably a schoolgroup, surrounded me. "Hey," one of them said, more of them said. "Yo, dude. What you lookin' at?" "Shut you fool mouth, ass, can't you see he meditatin'?" Two girls sat down beside me, on each side. "We gonna meditate too. Oh. Oh, yeah." I don't have the energy to note how often they giggled. "Stupid," some boy said. "This be stupid. It just Christmas lights!" Laughter. "Shut up, we meditatin," the girls said. "Don't bother Mr Buddha here. We botherin' you, Mr Buddha man? 'Cuz all we wants to do is meditate like you. Achieve enlightenment." Loud shrieks of shrill laughter at this. Light bulbs, enlightenment. Oh, I get it. I stare at the dead light bulb. "This stupid," the same boy announces, exasperated. "This ain't no fuckin' art." "It is so fuckin' art," the girls retort, incensed. "Yo, Yolanda, can I meditate wit you?" says a new boy. "Shut up, I meditatin'. Why don't you all shut up so you can let Mr Buddha Man do his enlightenment shit in peace and quiet?" If there is a soul camera, a recording angel, then the photo that would contain this memory would be of that simple string of quiet light bulbs, strewn upon the floor, slowly going dark, alone.
I drive us from the Institute. Stephanie is sitting next to me, fiddling with the CD player, and Yong is in the back seat. I know that Stephanie is a nervous passenger, and moreover drives like an old myopic lady, so I make sure that I do not drive any less than 85 m.p.h. down Lakeshore Avenue and not use my turn signals. Stephanie opens a single-portion bottle of white zinfadel and slowly sips it. I run a car off the road when I move into its lane. Stephanie screams. "Stop driving like an asshole, you fucking dickface!" Yong shouts. I slow down and set cruise control to 52 m.p.h. Cars swarm around us, buzz beyond us. For some reason this makes me think of the first "Revenge of the Nerds" and this seems to me the most important revelation of all time. We wander very slowly onto the 30 West, then onto the 55 North. I take the Michigan exit and wander. I should note that Yong, Stephanie and I have never driven in Chicago before. "Where are we going?" Stephanie says. "Midway airport," I say. "I'm leaving." "But what about your stuff?" "There's nothing here I want to keep," I say. She nods and finishes her little bottle of wine. She replaces its screwtop and puts the bottle in her purse. Being from California, it seems logical to me that to find an airport all one has to do is drive determinedly in one direction and keep a visual lookout on the horizon for a few thousand planes. This approach lands us in Indiana. "Fuck," I say. "Jonathan, don't go," Yong says. "It's your birthday." I wait. "Jonathan?" "Oh, I didn't know you were finished," I say. "I thought you were going to say, 'It's your birthday, dickface.'" "It's your birthday, dickface!" Stephanie sings. Yong and I look at each other. "She's a little buzzed," I say. "And I ate some Xanex too," she says. She looks at Yong. "I stole them from you, honey. And a bunch of other pills." "You're a cute drunk," I say. "I am a cute drunk!" Stephanie sings, cutely and drunkenly. Yong leans forward. Stephanie smiles and moves her face to his. "If I stay, I don't want you two to touch," I say, talking to the steering wheel. "Yes," Yong says. Stephanie puts her head on his shoulder. "Physical contact!" I shriek. "Buy me a plane ticket NOW!" Yong offers to give me three hundred dollars and I can choose to buy a plane ticket or keep it. I consider this for a long, long time. We go inside the mall. I go to the Suncoast video store while Yong and Stephanie go into Victoria's Secret. They find me a few minutes later, I'm holding tapes for "Kiki's Delivery Service" and "My Neighbour Totoro." "If I stay, buy these and watch them with me," I say. "I've never seen them. I want to feel like a kid again." "Yes," Yong says, and buys them. I shall now skip over the following dramas: I don't know which photo to pick for this scene. Later on that evening Yong gives Stephanie and me some fancy drug called 2cb. It's like LSD, he says, without the mind stuff. The three of us snort it and then start screaming from the amazing amount of pain. The walls start to melt. Stephanie doesn't even fnish her line. I put on "My Neighbour Totoro" and after a while start crying uncontrollably because it reminds me of when I was young and believed in a god that would save my dying father. Stephanie switches tapes to "Rushmore." She sits on the bed with Yong and I sit on the floor. Yong goes and starts mixing cranberry juice and Stoli. "Watch it," I say from the floor. I start parroting lines from "Rushmore": Um, I don't know what photo would go with this. (Note to self: if I ever do record the songs I sang to myself about Stephanie and heartbreak over the last week, I want to call it Pert Sounds. Me clever.)
 
|
