Genesis
by Jardine Libaire
November 14, 2007
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
New Years Day, Dawn, 1950
Look at this, would you, my friends? The Block is quiet. Sunrise seeps through the development, spills on the identical homes in this South Shore of Long Island town, a town which is identical to the towns on either side. The milk is in the milkbox, mothers. The cars are in their ports, dads. Smoke hangs in the air from fireworks long spent tonight, the dust of great promises & fantasies of light. The bang & clang of pots & pans is dead.
Everyone's in bed.
Traces of war are chalk'd like hopscotch boxes on these streets. The war is fading like initials on the steam'd window of a ruby Lincoln Sedan. These neighbors, these veterans & their stunning wives, are sleeping, the fruits of their marriages tucked here & there in bedrooms & bunkbeds. The children are cover'd in sheets — like apples in tissue at the fruit stands back in Brooklyn.
The Italians — the Morettis, Rizzolis, DeLucas, Mancinis, Savorellis and Caputos. Dreaming in their lucky-red underwear, after a feast of lentils & Spumante. Those Callaghans & Mulligans, those Boyds & Dillons & O'Reilleys, those McMalleys. Their Irish eyes are clos'd, their ginger hearts at peace, lull'd by Bushmills & cabbage. The Palios family — the only Greeks — had honey on their table & a coin in the cake. The Shepherds, long-time citizens, no immigrants, these, are fallen from some Mayflower height, & they had nothing but a fight tonight.
The only souls awake are Grannies who look out attic windows, yellow pupils like lanterns. They're dressed in black. They darn. They judge. They're done with being sexual, their bodies seal'd like wounds finally heal'd.
The Grannies never sleep.
And in the basement of the only empty house, corralled there by the sparks & flames of festival, is a gangbang of cats. The Queen, in the dark, lowers her head, and bends those forelegs. Her tail is rais'd & twist'd to the side, the golden vulva exposed. One Tomcat mounts her, sinking fangs into her neck, which makes the egg drop. She yowls in pain & pleasure, while the barb of his penis opens like a flower of thorns inside her.
And the next Tomcat shall take his turn. And then the next. O, mother, what will your litter be? I must tell you. Your kittens will belong to no man, but to all of them.
Happy new decade, families! Happy dawn, beautiful Americans.
Block Party 1950-1960
Rollerskates & BB guns! Hula-hoops & polka-dots! Click your Starmite camera, so you never forget this gentle & perfect childhood summer day, the one that stretches like a shadow on the lawn, the one that ends in crystal drops from a garden hose used to cool down. O, you better cool down, you're getting hot.
You're all cousins — of blood and milk. You grow up on the Block, you youthful progeny and refugees of Sicily & Dublin & Athens — & Plymouth Rock. You have one great mother, and she raises her one great red gingham curtain in her one kitchen window. She looks out at you. You're playing ring around the rosy, your pockets full of posy. The one great father gets in his great car, and goes to the office. The one dog licks his only balls.
There are no fences; it's one backyard. Everyone can play after dark. These fields were potato farms before the earth was torn & planted with houses. Now it's a nursery for the next generation, kids born in deliberate & determined innocence. Souls raised in spank'd & spit-wash'd morality, so that they'll one day reign this suburban utopia with fairness & wisdom. They play now like puppies, writhing and whimpering, clumsily kissing & kissing, & chaste.
Which is not to say lions don't pace outside the cage! Bridget & Angela & Eileen & Kerry & Mona & Sylvia & Calliope & Natalia & Kaitlin & Marie & Jacinthe, you princesses in birthday hats, you dolls in saddle shoes. The world already wants you. The Voyeur is a widower. Like the moon, his face finds its rightful place in your window at night. He isn't the apoplectic kind. Not the rubbing kind. His eyes jiggle in his head like Sylvester the Cat. He's a man of order & discipline. He cums without friction. He stares, he loves, he doesn't move his hands of stone, he shoots his cream, he walks home, he lays down his head & goes to bed & he doesn't even dream.
G'night!
Raymond & Nino & Aidan & Jerry & Sergio & Riley & Sean & Cyrus & Conor & Angelo & the rest of you newspaper boys & baseball stars & boy scouts. Look out for Drunk Mary, the sister of Mrs. Shepherd, and the blight of the Block. She stays there when she's kick'd out of everywhere. She'll holler or whistle from the back door, as if in distress. She's post-bubble-bath; her hair is wet, face bloated, & the pink towel is too short. You see red bristle! Her legs are wide & varicose-vein'd, her waist tiny. She asks you to retrieve the vermouth from the shelf, where she put it fifteen minutes ago.
You'll hand Mary the bottle, & she'll slow-wink like a starlet on Valium. Now your wood is heavy as iron, weighting your torso forward. You rub her breasts like you're testing fruit. She's in an ecstatic daze, but doesn't touch you. She lets you cum in your pants, fondling her there in the sunlight. You, in your buzz cut, you, with your archery badge. She's opening her wet eyes as the door slams. Then she cries!
Mary, o lovely & beautiful Drunk Mary. You'll be the pin-up of the Block. You'll be famous, dear heart, & make movies & make millions in these boys' minds — even if you ended up on the cutting-room floor of your own world. Hush, now, little girl. Put your handprint in that cement.
The porn collector, the flasher, the bisexual housewife, the foot fetishist uncle. During these years, they mainly stay inside. They hide. Father O'Brian discloses his short red stub, sometimes, from the bat wings of his attire. But he doesn't actually interact with the choir.
Blue skies roar over the Block. American rain washes gutters clean. The flocks of family tend to life, baking their Alaskas & broiling their grapefruits. Love me tender! You're safe. On the playground, kids slide down the slide. You already know you like a good ride.
Maria gets her period! Bridget foxtrots! Raymond sets a fire! Sean plays the flute! Nino rubs his mom's black stocking on his face!
Step lively, little town. Let's grow up on the count of one. Marshmallows & corndogs & bottle rockets & martinis! Cakewalks & Cadillacs! Barbecue! Inflatable pool! It's our birthday, everyone! Let's blow out the sun.
Blocked 1960-1970
Hey ladies & gents. Welcome to the next round, to the big love song, with Mingus at the front, and Altamont in back, a song gone wrong.
Where are you darlings? Well, right now you're still at home. Trigonometry & batons twirl'd like exploding stars. Chemistry sets & Tang & butter'd peas. Dancin' to your radios. Learning how to tease, wondering how to please.
You girls — Mona & Catie & Jacinthe and all — put on your pedalpushers, dab mom's Evening in Paris & roll your hair. The boys, everyone from Alfonso to Connor, you got your Dacron shirts & crewcuts & streetcorner stare. You all try clumsy kissing, playing Twister in the dark, kissing someone's sister, twisting & wishing. O god, you want some more. You need to score.
This development boasts hundreds of blocks, but your Block in particular is ripe. The hormones pop like gum bubbles or cherry bombs, & you take your first steps away from dad and mom. You smoke your first cigarette. You drive your first car. You get your first girl to go her first far. You drink your first bottle of Night Train, you try your first puff of mary jane. You sneak into your first bar. You heavy-pet, you suck your first cock, you fuck, & then you make love for the very first time & forget the rest. You become obsess'd.
You say: O, he's a real gone cat! Or: she's primo, she's a fox. The summers & winters tumble over each other, you trade rings & promises & jackets. Then it's over. Then you fall apart. Then someone talks you into the backseat of their Chevy & into a fresh start.
The decade explodes like a grenade. You're blinded at first, groping to the door of a new society. The children of the Block scatter, like dandelion seeds sailin' on starbursts of fuzz.
Connor's in San Francisco, uncertain but alive, in tie-dye, sky high. Angela's in Chicago, she's in go-go boots, she's in hot pants, she's in love, she's in trouble, she's in Boston, she's in Florida, O baby she's in love again, she's in motion. Tommy's haul'd home by the pigs, their lights painting indelible blue & red stripes on the Shepard's house. He was pick'd up in some dirty Paradise of a highway rest stop, his face chafed by another man's beard. Bridget visits for Christmas with a black eye, & refuses to say why. She hangs tinsel on the tree, staring at the back door where the ghosts of her friends congregate to ask if she can play in the snow. If they came, & they ask'd, she would go. Nino gets a degree from Rutgers. Maria gets a diamond from the furrier in town. Cyrus makes a touchdown.
The mothers and fathers drink & Dream of Jeannie, eat Beef Wellington & leave the light on. You kids, you roam, but you can always come home. After shots are fir'd in Dallas, JFK visits the Irish wives, a royal incubus, fucks them perfectly, orders room service champagne, & mumbles about Cuba in his troubled sleep. A rose blooms on MLK's head.
An ivory comb in a Black Panther afro. A sapphire stickpin in Mrs. Moretti's church hat. Angel dust & hand guns! Falsies & flowerkids! Nehru jackets & clove sticks! Beatlemania tears wet everyone's dreams. The jokers are wild. Beware your own child.
A covey of bodies squatting in Canadian woods, threadbare silk scarves tied in branches. Draft cards burning for heat. Acid in the blood. Strung out souls watch two girls move together, stuck with honey and sweat.
O holy soldiers. You boys come home in dress blues and wheelchairs. You come home with Medals of Honor & venereal diseases & amphetamines. Riley comes home, clear-eyed, with a story about jumping naked from a chopper hundreds of feet in the sky & flying like a bird to a rice paddy where he lands & folds his wings. No one believes him & no one disbelieves him. Aidan comes home the father of a prostitute's newborn, the mother's exotic face inked upon his arm. Or you do not come home.
On Easter, you visit. You sit in service where violet light stains faces. You do not pray. At supper, you tell stories about jazz clubs & protests & communal cucumber farms in Oregon. When ask'd about your part in all this, you do not say. You drink a lot of wine. You might as well sleep in that childhood bed one more time. What is your body now? Can it remember riding a tricycle one April, the perfume of lilacs in the air? Does it know your mother bath'd you in the kitchen sink, her hands careful as god's as she wash'd suds from your small shoulders? Does it recall cream of wheat, or canned peaches, or anything remotely sweet?
In the morning, you leave. You kiss your old man's head goodbye as he once kissed yours. You take the railroad to Manhattan. You fly to Marrakech. You board a boat to Spain. You go underground. You go to the other side. You transcend. The Future is now & the Past comes to an end.
Your mother spoons leftover Ambrosia salad out of Tupperware for your father. Her hands shake. She just heard the Caputos' house sold. A black family is moving onto the Block. How bold! The center can't hold. Men are walking on the moon, & kids are grinding in the clubs, & there's drugs & more drugs & drugs, & free love. Bellbottoms & bottlecaps! Stovepipe pants & derby hats! Cat eyes! Government lies! Kiss the sky & let it rain! It's hard to tell it's hard to tell when all your love's in vain.
Bang August 25, 1972
Jacinthe's name means hyacinth in Greek, the stalk of flowers that grows in the shade. She explains it to people at work, because they think it's a strange name. Jacinthe works on 57th Street & Madison as a secretary for an advertising company. She doesn't mind the work, really, the filing & typing & taking dictation. No one bothers her; the executives swarm the desk of Linda Goreton, the strawberry-blonde in accounting, and Linda seems to like it, wearing those satin blouses that show in their sheen the architecture of her bra.
Jacinthe's days are predictable, & this is probably her salvation now. She just really needed to slow down. O boy, what a time she had! Squatting in a wrecked school bus in California with beautiful losers, stealing artichokes from fields, eating drugs, waking up with other naked bodies, sore & confused. Man, she could hate herself for the things she did. Swiping a purse from a stranger sitting in front of her at a movie theater when she had no cash. Fucking her best friend's old man, Stanley, in the garage of some party. Peyote & fivesomes. Shopliftin' & hallucinatin'.
And she got punish'd, it seemed, she did. Raped by two guys she met when a normal night of drinking & dancing to records got out of hand. She lay in the bathtub the whole next day, bleeding from the ass, dreaming of being someone else, somewhere else, reborn, regain'd.
She went to two weeks of university, but doesn't think she'll ever go back. Her baby brother Cyrus died in a jungle, in unexceptional circumstances. Just death. Just an ordinary day of war. She can't believe he's gone. She won't for many years. She's waiting for him to come home, chocolate eyes warm'd by tropical wisdom, his black, wavy hair still part'd on the side.
Jacinthe lives on Bleecker & Christopher, in a fifth-floor walkup with philodendrons, tapestries, a wicker chair swing. At the workday's end, she slips off her pumps, puts on socks & sneakers over her pantyhose & walks home. The walk does her good, through bustlin' Midtown and then into the Village. It's hot tonight, the sun not going anywhere for hours.
Her pay isn't huge, but it's enough to buy Chianti & the makings for lamb Souvlaki. It's been two years, almost, since Jacinthe's been with a guy. And tonight she's having over — of all people — Sergio DeLuca, from the Block. Mr. Palios is sick, & Jacinthe takes the train on Saturdays to see him. Last weekend, Sergio was there, mowing his folks' lawn. She hadn't seen him in so long, it seem'd, & he look'd older & strong in his snug blue jeans and mustache.
When Sergio makes it to her flat, she opens the door in a turquoise caftan. Her hair is coil'd in a bun, the curls at the neck tight from the shower. He hands her red roses with baby's-breath, & she smells the bouquet, smiles.
"Thank you, Sergio, you're such a gentleman," she says.
He feels suddenly nervous, even shy. He shrugs. "You're welcome, Jacinthe."
Sergio's been walking though his life these past few years like a mime — white & silent. He practices moves that should by now be true. He was born blind in one eye, an eye that's murky blue while the good one is brown. He's a 4-F cyclops; he tried a family doc for a favor, but no go. So Sergio rides scrawled-on trains in the dark tunnels, working at his uncle's carpet store, going to night school, smoking dope & watching Lawrence Welk while his best buddies in the world march through Asian twilights, through fire & nightmare, becoming men like his father did in his own war. Sergio can't believe there's any reason to find his fate here & not there. He can't imagine his fate is anywhere near.
"Sit down," Jacinthe says.
They eat at the tiny kitchen table, one candle burning between their plates. They talk & drink but from the moment Jacinthe kiss'd him hello on his cheek, the room has been suffus'd with hot, urgent tenderness & need. They don't even know what they're discussing. They're only thinking about each other.
"This is good," he says, with the last bite.
Jacinthe was never beautiful, he tells himself. What happened? Right now she's like a dark pool & the ripples move out, dispelling the reflection of a child. Between her gold hoops & her round hips, she's a miracle of circles, a simple & peaceful woman.
She's standing at the sink, rinsing plates with tremblin' hands. "I have ice cream — "
This is all she gets to say. He's behind her, pressed against her. His big cock impossible to ignore on her back. His hands feel down her thighs & come together in the center, gathering fabric to her cunt, she groans, puts the plates down, reaches back & grasps his own thighs with her wet hands.
He sits on the couch & watches her lush mouth take him again and again, he can barely see straight but he watches. White teeth. Her eyes are brimming. She twists her hand on him, licks the hard knob like she's hungry. She's kneeling sideways, dress pooled like a goddess's robe.
A cat jingles into the room, laps milk from a saucer & looks sideways at them & seems offended. They both smile as the cat jumps into the bedroom. Sergio wants to cum so bad but also wants to be inside her. He pulls out of her hot mouth, touches her under the chin, gently urging her to come up. His pulse is like liquid fire now, he tries to move slowly. Her cheeks are red, though, & he thinks she feels the same way.
She does. She stands in front of him. Pulls the dress over her head. Her underpants are soak'd, & she takes them off. She's open like a flower, & it hurts. He drags his fingers through there, & his breath catches. He looks at her, that oval face he knows from Halloween parties & foot races & snowball fights, those glistening eyes that have gazed out from the same window into his window his whole life.
"Oh, god, Jacinthe," he says in a desperate & low way, as she gets on top.
She takes the wet head & kneels high enough to rub it back & forth in her, swiveling herself, before she slowly sits down, hard, & tilts forward to feel it. Her breasts hang, her hair comes out of the bun as she works away two years of loneliness.
She fucks him there, on this second-hand blue velvet couch, with Greenwich Village honking & hawking & whistling outside the open window. She knows this boy she's known all her life. Sergio, who walk'd from church with his mother's hand in his hand, who lit a match for her first Merit, who played Cowboys & Indians as if the Block was a grand prairie.
"Hold up," he says, because he has to have a break or it's over.
They change positions, she kneels on the couch facing the Chinese calendar on the wall. He stands behind her, rubs his fingers again through that honey, he feels dizzy. He moves his hard cock back in & she squirms, her belly hanging low, her spine curving. He touches her by reaching around her hip. He feels it now, she going to cum with him.
"Oh come on," she whines, "come on," & he's sure.
He's red faced, & pumping like an animal & neither can last. When he starts to pull out, she wrenches him fast. "Come inside me," she pants.
And he does.
The candle sputters out, the cat stays hidden in the closet of trench coats & polyester skirtsuits & white heels. Jacinthe & Sergio lie on the couch, & listen to someone down the hall playing Miles Davis.
Meanwhile, inside her body, sperms fly like angel fish a million miles to her ovum. They pass the cervix, & race through the uterus. In the ampulla of the fallopian tube, they press the membrane of the egg, a thousand questions at the dome of one answer. The first sperm penetrates the corona radiata, sinks into the oocyte, in a blast of light. While these two lovers sleep through a humid summer midnight, their genetic material fuses, & the sperm sheds its matter like snakeskin.
Hours pass, they curl like kittens on the couch. Below the sidewalk, kids jump turnstiles & cops sigh. The sun bleeds through dark alleys, spilling light into dumpsters & onto bodies in cardboard boxes. An old man in an undershirt looks out his window, scratches his tit & farts. A sunflower trembles in a backyard on MacDougal Street. And a chihuahua leads its owner over cobblestones whose seams hold the dark juice of street water, past a broken car window that glitters like a brilliant eye. And into the apartment comes a slash of light: the first ray.
The zygote divides, its cells splitting, like a chandelier of sparks on Independence Day.
©2007 Jardine Libaire & Nerve.com