Manhattan glowers from tenement towers. A fifth shot evening’s lined up for full-throated carnivores, lubricated, savoring the inevitability of the drink, if nothing else. Spat out from high balconies onto alley peasants, it’ll trickle down. Jamie enters center stage, a cradle-cage of solipsism. The blank is fucking with her as she marches her way into this paragraph. The blank is what tells her she has no identity and needs no introduction, like the anonymous virus that gave you that goddamn cold. She must be an archetype to enjoy a role in this story’s entry wound. How much of her unborn brain will she be able to keep, she wonders.
The blank bastard is kicking her ass through the streets, because she has to find the licorice if not the hall she’s looking for. Some monkey has climbed onto her back and she doesn’t know where it came from. It wants to be fed... Licorice. No ordinary licorice. Chadwick’s licorice. The blackest of all licorice. Where the hell does this licorice come from, she wonders. And how can she be addicted to it? It’s not even just a psychological addiction. Oh it’s that, no question. The imperative creeps into her dreams like a sly, soft-spoken cigarette demon, slips in through her brain’s backdoor. But damned if it isn’t physical too. The taste looms large in her imagination, a smorgasbord of synthetic nostalgia and pleasant association, tragically beautiful. But the imagined taste won’t satisfy. Soon enough, she is motivated to get the real thing. If nothing else.
The crave spills over the misty mind barrier into solid bodily functions. It’s an itch in the face and an ache in the ears and a pain in the joints. It’s a concrete slagheap of lethargy. It’s a dash of jaundice, a smidgeon of scurvy. And it all is blotted out, verboten, by Chadwick’s sticks. For a few minutes. A cheap fix. She needs. . . Licorice. Chadwick’s licorice. It tastes so good. A dark sweet, the absence of bitter. A void of anything but sweet. And the blank bastard is kicking her ass, because she asks it why she craves and it doesn’t answer. The blank bastard just wants one thing. Sweet. Dark. Licorice. She tries not to take the ridiculous crisis seriously but the habit is starting to cut into her welfare cheques. So she stews on it. It remains, stomach achingly profound.
And she needs those cheques to live with that nasty New York rent eating up her income. She lucked into her sort-of-stable situation by stumbling upon the welfare fountain. She found a hacker who would whore her into the government bureaucrazy, a network sitting inside some computers in a 55th floor office where money falls from the ceiling like rain, water in the circle of low-rent life, a giving river for cockroaches to consume in survival sans self-respect. Someone wormed their way into the machines, computers with lackluster failsafes and no auxiliaries, responsible for distributing the virtual mafia’s money, severed tentacles of P2 conspiracy still clinging in a ghostly layer to every transaction. Someone hacked into it for Jamie. A fairy hacker, her roommate at the time. They thought of it as forced-charity. No harm, really. A good deed, if you ignore that theft of a few binaries. Just a handful of digits yanked out of the system – a nano-percentile of the virtual pie. At the time, there were more dollars in the gross global product of the republic of planet earth than there were people, so it was no great shame to help oneself to a few thousand a year. Inflation was expanding the virtual universe to the edges of its infinite cage. Then the electricity ran out. The virtual cage collapsed in a big crunch, the universe in a lone server, plug pulled, zero. The final yin. But that’s another ghost story.
The harsh reality is that Jamie is going to be broke if she doesn’t stop buying that weirdly expensive licorice from Chadwick’s, and if she’s broke she’ll be evicted, and then where will she go? Back to the fairies? They won’t have her. Someone burned down the bridge to Fairyland. Not her, she thinks, but god knows who did it. When it happened she was fucked up and didn’t notice. That night choked on its own vomit. At least it won’t come back to haunt her in memory. Or in this story. Hopefully.
There is fear every day, primal fear in urban cavern honeycombs. Shelter seems to be shrinking away. It slinks away from her bed in nightmares, leaves her cold, on the streets of New York, blowing like trash, cementing to a foundation where she is absorbed into the city, thoroughly. They’re always tearing things down, old buildings massacred with wrecking balls and dynamite. They’ll tear her down too, eventually, after she’s absorbed. Her numb cunt won’t mind, her powdered organic frame will fall rhythm to construction and destruction. They’ll turn her into a bank tower. People will discuss the price of oil in her offices. Politicians will shake hands with CEOs and she will watch the consequences unfold on foreign shores in passive comprehension. In this reverie, she will no longer play a role. She will see it all and be it all, apathetic to her future, her fate, the fate of humanity or the fate of planet earth, no longer a republic. The universe will blink on, then off. Then on again if the great Switch Flicker’s still playing the strobe game. Maybe not. Either way, she’ll dig the universe. Ultimate empathy in the void of ego. Something like that. It could work. It would work better than this stupid society that calls itself “pragmatic”. That thinks it’s got it all figured out, and the checks and balances are in place, and we’ve got our economy afloat, and if you can’t get ahead it’s your fucking fault you whiner. This dismissal gives her the message that her night death reverie is a downer, or in Opeth’s mortal words: “serenity-painted death”. This means it’s an unrealistic fantasy. Maybe even a wishful thought or a sugar coat. Saccharine fluff. Fairy and airy.
And the question hammers at her in the glare of the day, keeps her up at night: If you die tomorrow, what have you done? What have you seen? She knows the answer but won’t allow herself to think it.
She lives in the pragmatic society. It hides ridiculous luxuries, esoteric technologies, secret societies, even a carefully rationed cache of magic. The horrors are right out in front of everybody. They’re on the news every day. They’re on film and in print, they’re in the screech of Schnitke’s strings and the bomb craters of Bahgdad. They soberize to the degree that they’re acknowledged. Some churches still flay their followers with the threat of eternal damnation but there are citizens of the republic of planet earth better versed in hell than Dante-wannabe priests. The ones who’ve gorged themselves under the tree of knowledge don’t fear hell’s degrees, nor do those who’ve been force-fed the fruit. Most anyone who’s bled the blood pixels you see on the other side of the grainy Times newspaper photo understands absolute pain. Unless opiated, which is becoming more common as new and subtler ways present themselves.
There is still literal opium for the public sector – the molecular classic. Privates enjoy something more figurative, but the bluecollar junkies lining Manhattan’s bourbon-hued avenues can’t figure out what it is. Some scientology-like thing probably, with megadoses of vitamins. A skinny trackmarked woman comes out of a den, opposite a glowing gowned lady who has descended the stairs of a clinic above the dingy masonic temple. The lady, though dazed, is present enough to veer right and stay on the high property value side of the street. It’s bad luck to cross a junkie’s path. Ms. Trackmark isn’t glowing because she’s out of junk and cash. Off to find more junk. If nothing else. Old Man Mason (known to many of the neighborhood yobs) grins smugly at both of them before hailing a cab to his next home or hall. Jamie tears through this block four hours later, her own hall on her mind.
The world has got a tinge of utopia and a fiery underbelly dystopia. The dystopia is where licorice-hunting Jamie has found a notch on which to hang her tired metabolism. It’s nice to take a spirit nap once in a while, because sleep is so good when you’ve got a warm bed in a warm apartment and the heat bills are paid, long moments where every cent spent on the miracle of petroleum-based energy seems worth it, and the crazy chaostrophy they call a city is enclosing you, washing over you like an alien wave, and you just turn off the light and let it flow. If you can get enough licorice, you’ll be alright.
But the body aches in the daytime, it aches when you think about it aching, it opens up a Pandora’s box of aches, aches in infinite fractal regression, aches upon aches. If everyone’s body is as achy as Jamie’s, she wonders, how can they go about their daily business with such apparent stoicism? Jamie’s not a stoic, she complains when she aches, but she has at least managed to eliminate some ache-inducing factors. She lives as ache free as she can.
One thing that causes Jamie to ache a lot is work. She’s had a handful of jobs in this absurd city and all of them caused aches eventually. The job that proved ache-free longest was the one where she had to stand on a street corner and count the number of taxis that went by. That was outside, but there was a roof nearby so the rain and snow didn’t take an intolerable toll on Jamie’s sensitive nerves. She kept a tally. It was a nine to five job. She worked seven days a week so she earned a lot of money.
No one had actually hired her for that job. The activity was done of her own initiative. Some cynics might have said it wasn’t really a job at all, and what was the point of it anyway? But the fairies were putting her up for rent at the time, so it was all good. That winter she got too cold and quit. The other jobs were realer, and all induced aches earlier, usually after a week. The McDonald’s job was the worst of the lot, closely followed by Wal-Mart and the computer chip factory.
But it was a good year, even though she was unemployed for most of it. Jamie had been taken in by the fairies. The fairies were a short-lived band of gay philanthropists. Not much was known about them. They took in homeless or soon-to-be-homeless people. They rented a vast stretch of condos in the Jackson Tower.
Of course, there were many appeals made to the fairies. In order to make an appeal, one was advised to visit the fairycafe, or as it was known by people not in the know, Robin’s Donuts on 72nd street. The fairy network would be informed of the request and a fairy agent would meet someone in the far booth at an agreed upon time. Fairies waited for no one, so the supplicant was advised to be early for the appointment. In would walk a tall, muscular stud trailing a red cape, adorned with bejeweled fairy wings and draped in paisley shawls designed by the local artisan and kaleidoscope maker, Jon Kaleidoscopesmith. The fairy would sit down and discuss the worthiness of the request. But the criteria for being allowed residence at the fairy condominiums was a carefully guarded secret. It was said that to be accepted by the fairies, you had to be a Virgo, and you had to have the manna. Nobody understood what the manna was. It was something like funk, and it helped to be on a particular drug, a little known synthetic tryptamine called 4HO-DiPT, which totally disappeared on the street around nineteen ninety-whatever.
What turned the fairies on was groveling. That’s all they wanted. No sex. At least, hardly ever. There were a few cases where the supplicant was asked to give up more than mere dignity. But generally, they just wanted you to get down on your knees and beg to stay with them, and maybe even cry a little. They were good at making people cry. It was rarely hard to nudge their clientele over the edge. All were made to supplicate but only one in ten would be selected.
Jamie won the fairy lottery, as did fifty others that year. Jamie cried and was granted free room and board. She got a room. She got bored. But she was comfortable, until she began hitting the Chadwick’s hard.
***
Jamie needs to stop thinking about licorice.
"Fucking fuck!" she seethes at the empty street. She rarely has the energy to curse aloud these days but tonight she’s on fire. Tonight she’s got a pulse and a purpose. She’s got a show to see. She’s got some blood in her cheeks. She’s not a frigid bitch. She already bought her fix, a big bulge of a fix, a goddamn bag of a fix, and she ate it all. She should be satiated. But it’s gone. It’s discomforting to lack a licorice surplus. She spent her last fifty bucks, are you happy Chadwick? She has just enough for the ticket now and she’s going to that show for lack of anything else to live for. It’s one of those "I can die now" things. Because life can’t be allowed to take its course. Life’s a bitch, and she’ll have to be a bigger one by killing herself. She wants to do it before whatever disease mother nature has planned to finish her off with does its work. Then she’ll be the winner. For once in her fucking life. And that fucking fairy lottery doesn’t count. She had to cry for that one. She was really the loser after all. Because her condo contract ran out, but she still feels the stinging humiliation of that forced weep which quickly turned into a real one. It wasn’t fair, in the end. Too high a price to pay. The year of free room and board is gone, except as grains of nostalgia she still shakes out of her shoes every now and then.
So she needs to forget the posh and freaky fairy facilities and find the hall. She doesn’t know how she got to this isolated canyon. She hasn’t been this far from her hole in years and she’s never been to this part of Manhattan. She didn’t know there were places like this on the island. Empty places. Unless you count the crackhead under the fire exit. But he’s empty, in his own way. And full of crack. He’s in that rare part of the crack cycle – the slim satiation section. A crack of bliss. He’s high. Jamie thinks maybe she can get directions from him. He knows where up is, at least. Right now he knows that preposition.
"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" Jamie calls. She doesn’t bother with formalities, politeness, politics, niceties. She’s a rude rat and she’s down with that. The head stares at his pipe for ten seconds, strokes his beard, and finally answers her:
"Practice, man."
***
Half an hour later Jamie is close to her destination, no thanks to the trite cracked-up bastard, but Carnegie is still at large. Her watch tells her the concert starts in fifteen minutes. She doesn’t know why she clings to the Timex but there it is, ten years after she got it. It keeps on ticking. Finally useful – for confirming her doom.
If nothing else, she can spend her ticket money on more licorice. Then she can kill herself while on that sweet high, a decadent luxury disguised as pure goodness that’s breaking her bank. She won’t really kill herself. Something is dragging her along for more life, still more, and whatever it is, it seems to be tied to the licorice.
Five minutes to showtime. There’s no way she can make it on time, assuming she can even find the place. She won’t ask for directions again. She learned her lesson from the last indignity. To be rebuffed from the bubble of cuckoo cloud land!
This is ridiculous, she thinks. I used to know where that damned hall was. Taxis pass but they’re not for her. She needs all thirty of her dollars to buy the cheapest seat in the house. Two hours ago she had another ten but it’s been added to the register of a Chadwick’s den.
Maybe I should go to Wall Street and invest in shit, she thinks. Then I’d be rolling in disposable income. I could buy all the licorice and taxi rides and concert tickets I want. That’d be the fucking life. But it’s too late for that sort of career change. And there’s no licorice. No consolation.
The digital watch ticks toward 8:30. Jamie sprints through neon-lit crowds. She’s definitely going to be late but she might still get in if it’s not sold out. And of course it will be, it’s Mung Williams for God’s sake. The toast of the town. Mother fuck buckets.
At 8:38, she comes upon Central Park and she’s got her bearings again. She zooms in on her target. She runs again, ignoring the cramp in her leg and the head cold that’s been brewing all day. She ignores the protesting pedestrians she shoves out of her way. She’s already missed eight minutes and no goddamn human entity is going to make her miss a second more. And if Mung has already played the piece she’s come to hear… Well. Heads will have to roll, though whose will be decided later. She eats everything else cold, why not revenge?
The grand arches of the entrance come into sight around a corner and Jamie notices a line down two city blocks. It seems she has time after all. A lot of it. Once again, the universe conspires to mock her petty paranoia. She joins the beginning of the line. It’s largely made up of what appear, at first glance, to be drag queens. They appear to be drag queens at a second glance too.
"Has the concert started yet?" she asks the thing in front of her.
"’Course not," says the tall trans with a tone Jamie pegs a diminished fifth too low.
"That’s weird. It’s 8:44".
"It’s 8:15", someone says behind her. A ballcap wearing muscleman has joined the line. He sounds like steroids but at least he isn’t a drag queen.
"My fucking watch is wrong? Jesus." She could have sworn it was right yesterday.
"I guess you’re relieved," the dude says. "I’d hate to miss this one."
"I’d hate to more than you," Jamie says. "He’s playing one of my works." She won’t admit it but a relief deeper than anything licorice can touch has settled over her frazzled spirit. The tall trans turns around and says: "What? Mung? Get out of here."
"Check the program. I’m Tiffany Lewis but that’s not my real name. Just the legal shit, you know? Inspiration in C sharp minor is my piece. I wrote it twelve years ago."
"Hey! This chick says her music is on the program," a punk girl calls to her friends up line. There is a storm of laughter somewhere. Jamie allows a smug grin to spread over her downturned face.
"There’s a lot of people ahead of us," Jamie says to the ball-cap wearing dude. "Do you think we’ll get seats?"
"I’m optimistic."
Of course you are, Jamie thinks. Another optimist. Another flipped-out flapping moth under the streetlight. As she is now, under the brick bulk of Carnegie Hall. But she knows the light is death. This concert will be the high point of her life, her new life. What else awaits? It’ll be licorice-flavored scrabbling urban grit from then on. Perhaps better to die, fry in the light. She should have brought a cyanide pill to pop in the cheap seat after the encore. Let the bow-tied management deal with her corpse.
The dark spell breaks, tears into shreds of anticipation. She sees the gleaming frame of the ebony instrument standing lonely on stage, awaiting its master. Mung. It will be a Steinway, that’s what they all use. Inspiration under Mung’s furry fingers on a Steinway Grand on the Carnegie Stage. The thought sends ripples through the composer’s cerebral-spinal fluid. How long’s it been since she’s even seen a piano? If only she could get a better seat. She will close her eyes and worship the sound – her sound – as it bounces off the walls. Swan song, absurd echo of a false start. How better to end this farce of a new life? It will be like back in the woods. It will be positively negative, ungodly, a renouncement of all but her... him... and... inspiration. In C minor. C sharp minor. It was in C sharp minor.
Licorice can wait.
But the line’s not moving. She fidgets, taps her foot, peers over the heads of her line neighbors to see what the holdup is. The cause is not clear. In this limbo, the dark thoughts flood in again, exacerbated by the lack of sweet... licorice. They take the nonshape of oblivion, cutting into her Steinway fantasy, dimming the moth light, robbing even death of consolation. The blank bastard is fucking with her.
THIS is the height of your life, the blank bastard says in its deep-throated God voice. This hopeful lineup for a slice of paradise. Not whatever fiasco awaits beyond the Carnegie doors – you know it won’t meet your expectations. Remember, the journey is the point, not the destination. Destinations are letdowns so enjoy your fantasy.
The blank bastard is annoyingly articulate, etching every nuanced subversion deep into her. Why is he ruining her moment? Because the blank bastard is infinite fractal nothingness, seeping into her thoughts at all scales. He demands licorice, even now, to keep the subversion at bay. Licorice feeds the blank in pointless metabolism, skin-blighting sugar saturation for the perpetuation of the achy sterile yearn. Jamie won’t submit to the demand so she is forced to endure an examination of her suicidal urge, or lack thereof. It’s a faux death-wish, she realizes, a voodoo doll of herself she carries inside to deflect the pain with an occasional stab. And it doesn’t work anymore because that Penn and Teller trick’s been made transparent. The blank filled her in.
How the hell’s she supposed to enjoy her fantasy now? And how’s she supposed to enjoy her reality? If the NOW, that revered-by-idiot-sages now is in ruins as it usually is, perhaps she can reverse time, revert to the past. It’s worked before. Maybe she can go all the way this time, gaze right into the navel. She shuts down empathic sensors. People in the static line lose their electric flesh auras and become plastic figurines in a grainy catalog photo. She turns and stares at the brick wall until it blurs. The blank etches cracks back into the color field but Jamie strains and makes them disappear. Shake off the blank, she thinks. SHAKE off the BLANK! As her blur flattens into a gray haze she feels the proximity of the time before like a draft or a current. It’s near. Accessible.
Time itself blurs, becomes a sea in which to swim. She backpaddles to the warm spot, the familiar spot, the spot that feels strangely masculine, a dollop of testosterone as the gray haze twirls and swirls with a riot of superimposed scenes morphing organically. They resemble the inscrutable cycle of an alien lifeform, cross-sectioned in time, cryptic and too quick to define. It’s a civil-warring hive of aliens, a chaos of cross-dressing gender-bending vignettes. He’s back across the divide, back in the presence of God. Goddamnit, he must go further back, this place is haunted. He must go back to the innocence of BG time, Before God – but he’s getting dizzy. He’s writhing in this timespace sea like a dolphin with epilepsy and nausea is overtaking him. The sea is raging, the vignettes are overloading his senses, and he’ll end up where he ends up – here? Because the froth sea solidifies, taking shape as ceiling tiles and he’s face up on the floor NOW, tasting vomit and medicine, remembering the original cough syrup sin, and remembering how he originally arrived at this point on the bathroom floor in backwards-flowing time, and how he stepped a little further back in time and willed himself to open the child-proof lid with a weathered adult mind which NOW pops off the bottle to the delight of the four year old with awkward hands and useless digits that WILL NEVER do justice to Beethoven’s fourteenth sonata. And NOW he snaps back to the four year old planted firmly in time, unable to escape into the past or the future, NOW on the floor trying to cough, enduring the sickly-sweet consequence, trying to breathe, trying and failing and seizing asleep...
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