Its true, I confess. I am haunted by graffiti on a toilet stall wall.
At the Green Mill Bar. Home turf to Patricia Barber. That elusive chanteuse. I’m in love with her.
I make pilgrimages to hear her play. Amsterdam. Malibu. Manhattan. Now Chicago.
She sits behind the piano. Clears her throat at the microphone. Tests the levels.
Gets up, satisfied, walks behind the bar. Pours herself a drink.
Courvosier. In a snifter. Warms it in her hands. Cups it like a breast between her hands.
She’s out. Doesn’t change the lyrics to fit her gender. That, my dear, takes stones.
Maybe she’s the author of the graffiti on the wall of the stall in the ladies’ room at the Green Mill. She writes. Her songs are poetry. Maybe it was she who wrote:
PHOEBE HAS THE MOST
PLEASURABLE VAGINA THIS SIDE OF SATURN
EXCEPT 4 YOUR MOM.
Sometimes late at night I lay in bed, sleepless, wondering about Phoebe and her spectacular vagina. I dissect the poem line after line. “This side of Saturn?” Why Saturn? Why not Venus or Neptune? Or Mars?
And then there’s that last part. “Except 4 your mom”? Why YOUR mom? Why not MINE?
And how does she (assuming the author is a she), how does she know? The MOST pleasurable? That’s an awful lot of territory, my dear, my love, my motherfucker.
PHOEBE, huh? Fuck her. What does she know? I’m a connoisseur of toilet poetry. The good stuff makes me hot.
Touch me and then spread me open, check out my perfect vagina. It is my perfect vagina the best one and I should know, right? Goddamit? Right? Except 4 your mom? YOUR mom?
I sat there, awhile and thought about Phoebe. The smell of freshly swabbed floors wafted out of the vent below the bathroom window. Sweet. Maybe Pine-sol. The one that mimicked a forest. You’d be hard-pressed to distinguish the difference. Yeah, right.
And me? I’m dreaming…cutting through the alley, running back down to the Green Mill. Wear a coat. Its cold. Weary cold. The kind that makes you move to the West Coast and its June for chrissakes.
I’ll drink a double Courvosier tonight with Patricia Barber at the Green Mill. She’ll tell me all her friends call her Patty. We could do one of those go to the ladies’ room together thingies…pee side by side. Flush ensemble. Wash our hands with the watered down soap in the pump on the wall, dry them on rough, recycled paper towels. I want to touch her, blot the water from her magic fingers. Kiss her calloused palms. My muse. My heroine, perhaps a Phoebe of my very own.
I scat a fast rationalization. We peed together. I touched her hand. We could have a moment of conversation, some little gleam of recognition – artiste to artiste. I could come out. Make my love known. Caution be damned, goddamit.
“I celebrated when you won the Guggenheim,” I whisper. “Me, too,” my Patty says. She looks lovely up close, sans the spotlight. Softer. More androgynous. I imagine her in drag. Fedora, wing tips, three piece suit, standing up in the stall, pencil in hand, waiting for genius to strike.
-Alexis Rhone Fancher
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