by Gregory Hill
My point, before I started trying to speak Greek, was that those transition points are never flattering. And if you really want to see unflattering transition points, disrobe a human and pay thon to dance. The very name of the club, Jiggles, suggests motion. Remove the motion and you end up with body parts that look like they’ve been pressed against a cold windowpane. Squished, stretched, distended, lumpy, and extremely unsexy.
Even more unsexy were the patrons, with their faces frozen in lust, their back-slapping idiocy, the spittle launching out of their mouths. I removed all the cash from all the wallets of all the creepy back-slappers and distributed it to the dancers, giving extra consideration to the less-pretty women, the ones who didn’t have any money in their panties.
As I stuffed the cash in G-strings, I was struck by the warmth of the women’s skin. I confess, curiosity compelled me to cup the breast of one dancer who was standing sufficiently still as to retain an iota of dignity. It was like fondling the body of the recently deceased. I withdrew my hand, ashamed, and also a teeny bit aroused.
You’ll be relieved to learn that the shame outstripped the arousal. It’d take a lot of work to make myself feel comfortable groping one of these warm manikins. I am not willing to put in the effort to overcome that taboo. The world can rest easy knowing I haven’t been pawing and petting my way into its G-string, except to load it with dollar bills.
Which brings up a question that you’ve been dying to ask. What’s old Narwhal doing to address his, you know, perfectly natural human desires? I’ll say this just once: when desires arise, I satisfy them in the traditional method employed by lonely folks of all ages and creeds, and in a responsible, tidy fashion.
As an apology for fondling the innocent dancer, I stuffed an extra handful of twenty-dollar bills into the waistband of her panties.
So long, Jiggles. It was weird for me, too.
54
If this were a zombie story, this is where I would return to my childhood home only to discover the corpse of one adopted parent devouring the corpse of the other adopted parent. This would convince me that there’s no point in dwelling in the past. Buck up, load the shotgun, and splatter some brains.
My case not being zombie-related, I had much less to worry about. Unfortunately, there’s something worse than seeing your father bite a chunk out of your mom’s thorax: You could come across them in the act of intercourse on the living room floor, which is precisely the scene I’m not going to describe for you.
Of all the houses I’ve been into and all the privacy I’ve intruded, why is it that my parents are the only people I’ve found in a state of copulation?
Knowing that I’m adopted does not make it easier.
Me and the parents always got along well considering they acquired me when I was five and I had already gone thru several foster homes. I wasn’t a loner or a bad kid or anything; I just never connected with anybody. My whole life, it was just me, although sometimes it was me and my teddy bear or me and my bike or me and my hula hoop. Never me and a friend.
Young Narwhal didn’t interact with other humans, not in a loving way. Nor did I ever suffer from any actual ambitions, not as a little kid, not as a high schooler. I lacked stick-to-it-ive-ness. I spent my youth hidden behind a wall of sarcasm, and, briefly, behind a goatee. What do you expect from someone who was (apparently) found under a sagebrush.
I’ve got nothing bad to say about Mom and Dad Slotterfield, except that they were always more like roommates than parents. As long as I did my share of the dishes and replaced the toilet paper when the roll got empty, we got along. They gave me toys for Christmas. I made them construction-paper cards for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
They were semi-autistic, I think. I will offer no evidence to back up that statement other than to say they weren’t big into hugging, or discipline, or pets. And they were both super dorky college professors. Nothing they said or did even remotely suggested that they were capable of something so intimate as a good boinking. I always considered my adoption to be a concession to the limited nature of their sexual relationship.
Once upon a time. I have a pet story. I once had a cat. I adored it. I called it Orion. Let’s skip to the end. Like all pet stories, this one ends with someone digging a hole in the backyard.
This hole, I dug deep. I remember shoveling soil and worms out over my shoulder until the grave was significantly deeper than I was tall, and I was always tall for my age. I was probably eight years old.
With my feet buried under the soft dirt, I wiped my brow and looked up toward the circle of darkening sky above me, the crumbly walls around me. I’d gotten myself in too deep. I had lacked the pre-science to tie a rope around the leg of the trampoline and let it dangle into the hole as a means of escape. In my defense, I hadn’t anticipated that I’d dig nine feet into the ground. It’s a miracle I didn’t run into the sewage line.
Once I realized my predicament, me being stuck in a grave, I remained still for several dozen minutes, every now and then meekly calling for help. As dinnertime grew nearer, my calls grew louder, until I was actually shouting. My cries were answered some time later when my parents, both of them, appeared and leaned over the opening of the hole and reached their arms to me and pulled me out.
There were comforting pats on the head and then, together, we wrapped Orion in tin foil and lowered him to his new home on a rope of yarn, which I released into the hole to fall upon the foil like a beige scribble.
I’m fairly certain that if my parents hadn’t have pulled me out I’d still be digging that hole.
You know what? Fuck off. I didn’t go to that house so I could commune with my parents. I especially didn’t go to that house to commune with you about my parents. I went to that house in search of documentation. Specifically, I wanted records of my discovery, adoption, that sort of thing. And, no, this doesn’t qualify as a violation of my Personal Prime Directive. This is my childhood home, my life. I can do what I want.
I walked down the hall and entered the study, well out of sight from the coital horror of the living room. The study contained a grey, industrial, three-drawer filing cabinet. It was the kind of filing cabinet with a little metal frame on the face of each drawer, where you could slide a piece of paper for a label. Top drawer, Mr. Slotterfield. Middle drawer, Mrs. Slotterfield. Bottom drawer, Narwhal Slotterfield.
The Narwhal Slotterfield drawer of my permaparents’ filing cabinet was filled with magazines: Popular Science, Mechanics Illustrated, and good ol’ Omni. The mags were splotted with dried spaghetti sauce, hamburger grease, and various other types of dinner-related organic material. At the top of the stack was the October 1994 issue of Omni. The front cover promised articles about UFOs and God. But nowhere in that magazine, nor in the drawer, was there a single word about adoption agencies or county courthouses or anything that would tell me that I was the son of a Riles.
I closed the Narwhal drawer and moved to the ones labeled Mr. and Mrs. Mom’s drawer was filled with meteorites. Dad’s drawer was completely empty.
I checked drawers in the desk, looked under beds, poked around in closets, searched the entire house. Guess what I found? Nothing. Because this is 2009 and who needs paper anymore? Everything’s been scanned, saved, backed up on stacks of hard drives. My secret origins were beyond my reach.
I crossed back thru the living room, left Ma and Pa in their sticky embrace, and headed toward my next destination, the humble home of Vero and me. This trip was not going so good, so far.
On the way, I made a quick side trip to a neighborhood shoe store, where I picked up a pair of officially-sanctioned referee sneakers, black and springy. I left my old shoes balanced on the head of the kid at the cash register.
On to Capitol Hill, Greek Town, good old 14th and Fillmore, just across the street from the Waldorf School and the Seventh-Day Adventist church. My garden-level apartment had a hint of celebrity to it. The previous occupant had been a man named Cordon Pruitt, whom you may remember be
cause I mentioned him earlier. He wrote a bizarre exercise manual called The Funnercise Handbook and then froze to death in his living room and then some lunatic carved his heart out of his chest.
Fortunately, the gore had been thoroughly removed before I took occupancy. It was a cozy place. After Vero moved in, it only got cozier, although curious kids still sometimes peeked in the windows in hopes of seeing a ghost.
I went thru the place, wearing my absconded headlamp, sneaking around like a cat burglar. Shitty chair, shitty TV. A half-empty can of beer in the fridge, an unpaid gas bill on the arm of the sofa, the smell of Vero’s shampoo. Just a dumb apartment with some dumb stuff inside. Clue-wise, it offered nothing. Sentiment-wise, it only reminded me of what a loser I’d always been. I sat in my recliner in front of my TV. I climbed onto our bed and closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. Then I opened my eyes and pretended to wake up, in the off chance that this would trick the universe into shifting me back in my proper gear. It didn’t work. I missed Vero, that’s all.
Before I split, I stuffed a few pairs of underwear into my backpack. As well as, fuck it, my unread copy of On the Road.
One more stop and I could head home. “Home” being in the town of Keaton, in the backyard garden where I’d left Veronica Vasquez.
I walked Colfax Avenue toward downtown. Colfax is one of Denver’s great Hey-Zones. As in, every third person you encounter shouts, “Hey! Hey! Can I get you anything?” or “Hey! You got a dollar?” Also as in every time you try to cross a crosswalk, a car attempts to drive over you, so you shout, “Hey! Asshole!” and the driver shouts back, “Hey! Faggot!”
Twenty-nine blocks of Colfax and two more Vicodin brought me to the gold-domed capitol building, where I veered left and made the final three blocks to the Denver Art Museum, all modern angles and polyhedrons, as is the way of any architecturally-relevant art museum in the twenty-first century.
Turns out the museum closes at five-o’clock on Tuesdays, putting me two-and-a-half hours late for any kind of dignified entrance. I walked around the outside of the building until I found a service door whose rubber wedge prop hadn’t been properly kicked out by the last person to take a smoke break. Once inside, I followed EXIT signs backwards until I reached the public exhibits.
There’s a woman named Linda in the Denver Art Museum. She’s been there forever. She’s a hyper-realistic sculpture, sleeping on her side, a white cloth draped over her pelvic privates. There’s actual human hair in the follicles on her arms. I’ve always loved Linda. Everyone has always loved Linda.
Now and again, the curators move her to a new room. You never know where you’ll find her. When you do come upon her, every time, you shit your pants because some sexy, crazy lady with an out-of-date hairdo has stripped naked and passed out on one of the viewing benches. And then you say, “Aw, Linda, you got me again.”
After a great deal of searching, I found her in an exhibit of contemporary hairpieces. She didn’t startle me at all this time; sculpture Linda looked just like all the actual people all over Denver. Or all the actual people looked like sculpture Linda. I had been living within a still life for the last several weeks. Artistic renderings of it seemed redundant.
In my cloudy, Vicodizzened state of mind, I slid Linda off her pedestal and floated her to the men’s restroom and pressed her so she lay on the floor of the handicapped stall with her feet poking out from under the door. That oughta scare the shit out of the next person who comes in here, and what better place for that?
With that, any remaining shred of my Personal Prime Directive floated away, at least with respect to art museums. Whistling without sound, I followed empty halls and climbed dead escalators until I reached the abstract art exhibit. There, I flipped a Jackson Pollock upside down. Moving out of the abstractions, I switched labels on numerous impressionist pond paintings. I placed a roll of toilet paper on a pedestal that was meant for a Grecian urn, I put a Grecian urn over the head of a bronze Fredrick Remington horse. I found a black marker in a drawer at the information desk and used it, the black marker, to write “DADA” on the backsides of a whole wall of cubist paintings. I was having fun!
In the room full of big, old, symbol-strewn European works, I signed my name in the bottom right corners of several Madonna-with-baby paintings. And then I came upon a picture, nearly as tall as me, of this old, naked angel guy sitting on a blue silk cape. Upon the angel guy’s lap was a super pissed-off young naked angel baby. The naked angel baby was super pissed-off because the old man angel was chopping off the baby wings with a pair of old-timey scissors.
The picture was called Time Clipping Cupid’s Wings. I stared at it a for a while, then decided I’d had enough of symbol-strewn European works and set out in search of the dark soul of the Denver Art Museum.
As everyone in Denver knows, the art museum was born in 1897. Its first location was the Holly Woods Mansion on Logan Street. By 1905, the collection had outgrown the mansion. This was shortly after the conclusion of the Great Standing Plague and so fewer people were dropping dead in the streets, and those who hadn’t dropped dead were in need of some sort of spiritual uplift. In a win-win, the forward thinkers of the Holly Woods Foundation relocated the museum to the morgue that had originally popped up on 14th and Acoma at the beginning of the plague and was now, with the end of the plague, empty.
Although the building has been altered several times in the intervening century, 14th and Acoma remains the current address of the Denver Art Museum. It’s rumored that, in a variation of the technique employed by Mayan temple builders, each new iteration of the museum has been built atop the previous one. Further, it’s rumored that at the center of the art museum, one can still find vestigial evidence of the plague morgue.
I crept the lower halls of the museum, the places prohibited to the public. With my headlamp showing the way, I explored storerooms containing the junior varsity squad of human creative expression: archived collections of potsherds, shelved boxes containing fragments of mummified cats, and room after room filled with landscape paintings of the American West. Stuff you can’t throw away, but which nobody cares to look at.
I crept deeper and deeper into the museum’s guts. Down a dark hall, down a musty stairwell, to an ancient wooden door. The door was unlocked. I pressed it open, revealing a dark chamber. I aimed my headlamp. The chamber’s walls were solid rock. I had found the morgue.
It had a nice vibe. The room was furnished with lounge chairs, circa 1972, upholstered in orange. Also present: paper coffee cups, a microwave.
This was a break room, maybe a secondary break room. Duct-taped to the walls were flyers for local bands, as well as a series of publicity photos of Lucha Libre wrestlers. This wasn’t the place where the salaried employees hung out. Too dank. This was, like, a breakroom for the kids, the interns, the janitors, the fun crew.
In the center of this, like, breakroom was a long table of deep-grained wood. The edges were worn down and black with schmutz. The table was large enough to have easily accommodated several plague-dead human corpses.
Upon this table, in the absence of plague-dead human corpses, were two-dozen oversized glass jars. I leaned toward one of the jars. It was the size of one of those giant pickle jars you’d buy at a wholesale store for resale at the concession stand at the basketball game. The jar contained a squirrel floating in transparent liquid. The rounded glass distorted the image and reflected the glow of my headlamp in such a way as to grossly reinforce the Frankensteinian feel of the dead animal, all teeth and fur and glowering eyes. Written on the lid of the jar with a black marker was, What happens when I submerge a squirrel in water? 06/21/08.
The jar next to it contained another squirrel, this one considerably less solid. Small fragments of skin and fur were suspended in the water. On top of the jar, What happens when I submerge a squirrel in water? 03/21/08.
There were twenty-two more squirrels in twenty-two more jars, each one dated three months earlier than the last, each squirrel in a g
reater state of decay: fur at the bottom of the jar, skin dissolved, bones floating like wax in a lava lamp. At the far end of this incredibly long table, the oldest jar, dated September 21, 2002, contained nothing but grey liquid. I picked it up and shook it and it remained grey. No sediment, just a grey liquid that had once been a squirrel.
When does a squirrel stop being a squirrel and start being grey water? Somewhere around jar nineteen, I’d say.
A dot-matrix sign was pinned to the back of the wooden door: What decays in this room, stays in this room. At the bottom of the sign: If you come across a freshly dead squirrel please let Hillary know, and, I promise not to blab about this to the general public, followed by several signatures.
Huzzah, young ambitious museum employees. You’ve turned this Room of the Dead into a hangout and a home for your own private installation. I find your jars of dead squirrels to be more moving than all the impressionist ponds in all the museums in all the world.
55
I left the museum and headed downtown to hike the 16th Street Mall. The Mall is a pedestrian-friendly valley of consumption that bisects Denver’s cluster of skyscrapers. The concrete chess tables are occupied twenty-four hours per day, buskers sing their Jack Johnson songs, tweaker kids slouch upon concrete benches, ready to sell you drugs, tourists lug shopping bags filled with whatever tourists purchase when they’re in Denver.
On a hot summer evening like this one, people of all ages and skin tones lounge upon benches like basking seals, dressed in tank tops, flip flops, and, in the case of white males, cargo shorts. Apparently, all white Denver males between the ages of twenty and fifty are required to wear cargo shorts festooned with the requisite six-to-eight pockets, four-to-six of which contain absolutely nothing. I know. I checked.