I'm Trying to Reach You

by Barbara Browning

  I also started to feel a little guilty about slacking off myself on the aerobic exercise. I decided to head over to the gym, despite the rain.

  When I got to the cardiovascular room, the agile, aging hippie had arranged himself in a reverse position on an elliptical machine with his water bottle balanced precariously on his head. His arms were extended toward the ceiling and he was pedaling backwards with a look of concentration. He had a terry stretch headband wrapped around his forehead and his t-shirt was soaking wet. I found the whole situation somewhat intimidating, although nobody else seemed to be paying attention.

  I mounted a StairMaster and plugged into my iPod. I scrolled through my Artists list and paused at Aldo Ciccolini playing Erik Satie. I selected All Songs, and set the iPod on Shuffle mode. I closed my eyes and began to climb, measuring my steps against the anxious notes of Trois airs à faire fuir: d’une manière particulière. The tempo of the piece was varied, and I found myself alternately scampering and skulking.

  For the next twenty minutes, my heart was pounding at the recommended rate of 120 BPM as my mind raced through a course by now all too familiar to me and, I’m sure, to you: the shadowy corner of Nethermost’s YouTube interior, her fluorescently lit bathroom filled with the homey plucking and crooning of the nefarious ballet carper, the mahogany-paneled splendor of the NYU Torch Club reverberating with Galina’s infatuated giggle, and the various stark and steely pathology labs where I imagined emotionless professionals in medical garb solemnly prodding and puzzling over the ice-cold limbs of Michael, Pina, Merce, and Les.

  Even after I dismounted the StairMaster and unplugged myself from the iPod, my heart continued pounding. I stretched a little in the dance studio and then hurried home to check in on my moth.

  Living creature, vital dancer! She’d posted another dance – again partnered, but this time by an adolescent boy. Actually, he appeared first, though it was unmistakably her living room. The post was titled celebrate the body electric, and it began with a single, reverberating electric guitar as the skinny, shirtless, mop-haired kid wandered, apparently stoned, into the frame. As the guitar ramped up, Nethermost slowly edged her way in from the other side. Her long hair was unbound, and she was dressed, somewhat age-inappropriately, in a little denim skirt and high-tops. They both stumbled toward each other, eyes downcast, as the music collected speed and direction. Suddenly a drum began pounding, a high-pitched, girlish voice began squeaking, the two dancers began hopping, and then all hell broke loose!

  The song was nonsensical, epic, symphonic, and weird. For a moment there seemed to be a kind of a chant, which I think I deciphered as “Away we go now!” But it could have been “A baby girl now!” or even “Oh lady, hoedown!” As the bass drum thumped, Nethermost and her lanky friend jumped and flailed. There was a spastic, shrieking explosion, provoking a total choreographic paroxysm, and just as suddenly the pounding drums evaporated – poof – and there was just a shimmering of guitar strings as that uncanny, child-like voice swooped down and up in noteless glissandos punctuated by something like hiccups. The dancers floated on that eerie plane, responding to each gurgle and yelp with a corresponding shudder, a toss of hair, or a flick of the wrist. Then slowly the drum began its persistent thump again, and soon they were hopping and pouncing with abandon, jerking to and fro with each dramatic, electrified howl. The music crescendoed into a chorus of voices both human and instrumental: “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhh!” The dancers joined in the anthemic, ecstatic cry, repeated nine times, at the end of which the moth and her young friend smilingly embraced.

  As they walked apart he reached his long, skinny arm to the camera and switched it off.

  It seems she’d posted this just two days before, and the only comments thus far were from the usual suspects. The email jerk had perked right up, as usual: “THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY!” Indeed, they both looked pretty high. I guess by mighty he was referring to the kid, who was skinny, but certainly had that raw energy of youth. Actually, she was pretty energetic, too.

  ACabFreshenerOnTypos answered: “Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.” I couldn’t really tell if that was a rebuff to the jerk, or a nod of agreement. Bulk was a funny word to use, given the individuals in question (scrawny). It was also odd that despite his new moniker, the freshener typed with exemplary precision, at least relative to your typical YouTube commentator – and certainly in contrast to the jerk.

  Then Nethermost inserted the most alarming comment in the thread: “A Death blow is a Life blow to Some.”

  I shivered. There seemed to me only one reasonable interpretation: she knew about Jimmy and that “racquet” of his – and she was determined to stand up for the side of the Living. If he was out there playing whack-a-mole with the creative genii of our time, she would defiantly headbang in the celebration of youthful vitality.

  I could almost feel the irony dripping off his next comment: “Hm, its like the duke said, tomorow is the most impotrant thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. Its perfect when it arrives and it puts itslef in our hands. It hopes weve learned something from yestrday.” Was that a threat? A rebuke? His words had the creepy moralism of a judge at the moment of sentencing.

  Then he added, in a separate comment, as if an afterthought and a warning: “SPEAKING OF WIHCH WERES THE DUKE?!REmember talk low talk slow and dont say to much.”

  This exchange plunged me back into a state of low-grade psychosis which persisted over the next several days. I found myself lurking around outside the Torch Club, pretending to be waiting for someone or composing a text on my cell phone. I was really waiting to see if Jimmy would come by. Not that I knew what I’d do if he did. I also found myself opening my eyes and looking around every few minutes while climbing the StairMaster at the gym. When doing my barre exercises at home I’d look across the way at that balcony with the stationary bicycle, though I never again saw the rider.

  Sven had gone ahead and bought his plane ticket. He was arriving October 8, which was soon. Lepecki generously got us passes to see Forsythe’s Decreation at BAM on the ninth. I ordered a couple of movies for us to watch from Netflix. I bought some knäckebröd at Dean & Deluca.

  That was the only thing I bought at Dean & Deluca. My financial situation was bleak.

  My short-term cash flow was the least of my worries. I really needed to figure out what I was going to do when my post-doc ran out. I’d only dug up a couple of tenure-track jobs to apply for, both long shots, but I knew of some other fellowships I could go for that might stretch me out for another year or two. The MLA job list was already out. A couple of additional opportunities might materialize in the next few weeks, at least if past years were any indication. But then again, this year wasn’t really like past years.

  Dan Ferguson told me there was an Academic Jobs Wiki that I could sign up for. He told me, though, that it wasn’t for the faint of heart. People applying for the same job would post news to the Wiki if they’d been asked for follow-up materials or invited for an interview. That way, if you were up for the same job and hadn’t heard anything yet, you could be pretty sure your ship was sunk.

  I hadn’t yet registered myself on the Wiki, but when I took a look at it, I noticed there were a couple of other links. The Chronicle of Higher Education had a discussion forum called Leaving Academe. I took a look at it. Somebody named “greyeyes” said s/he was wondering if s/he might be able to get any “management and consultation” work from his/her humanities PhD. Some MBA types scoffed at this suggestion, and somebody named “untenured” said, gently, that while greyeyes surely had a lot to offer, corporations might not leap at the chance to give him or her work as a consultant if s/he actually had no business experience.

  untenured ended his/her post, “Sorry to be a mega downer.”

  Somebody else gave a helpful citation from a book called So What Are You Going to Do with That?: A Guide to Career-Changing for M.A.’s and Ph.D.’s: “One of the
most common mistakes made by career-changing academics is confusing their dissertation with their vocation.”

  I killed an hour or two combing through these disheartening bits of advice.

  Then I got back to work trying to excise a few more of those extended endnotes from my manuscript. I was trying to remind myself during the exercise that what I was grimly hacking away at was not my “vocation.”

  I took a break at one point, stepping out on my balcony. I looked west toward the Hudson River, which was barely visible. Every once in a while I could catch a glimpse of a big ship passing by very slowly.

  When I was doing that Merce Cunningham research on YouTube, I’d come across one interview in which Merce mentioned that you could very clearly see the Hudson from his studios on West Street, and that sometimes he’d look out the window while he was teaching class and see a big tanker moving by extremely slowly. He said sometimes when this happened, he’d try to time the particular exercise he was teaching to the time of the ship passing by. He said he never told his students that that was what he was doing. They just went along with his direction and danced very, very slowly.

  I looked across the way again at the stationary bicycle. I wondered if I couldn’t incorporate something about this anecdote of Merce and the tanker into that novel I was thinking of writing.

  Later that night I checked back in on that video that the moth had posted. The cab freshener had popped in again to leave what looked like an expression of frustration or anxiety: “Enough O deed impromptu and secret.”

  To which Nethermost had responded: “Big my Secret but it’s BANDAGED—”

  Which prompted this tender conciliatory message from the freshener: “I resign’d myself To sit by the wounded and soothe them…”

  Then somebody named Justinsmokes6 piped up with: “wanna make out?”

  It wasn’t very clear whom he was addressing. Maybe everybody.

  Anyway, his interjection seemed to provoke that braggart the email jerk: “OH TRUTH OR DARE IS IT?!! OK I GOT A SECRET. WHEN IT CAME TO KISSING, HARLOW WAS BEST.”

  wtf?

  Sven seemed okay when he arrived. He was tired, but he’d had a long and grueling trip. He has trouble sleeping on the plane. His hair was even longer, and it made him look very young.

  I met him at the airport in Newark and we got the NJ Transit train to the city. He just had a carry-on bag. I knew what was in it: seven pairs of carefully folded boxer-briefs, socks, three tank tops, three dress shirts, a sweater, dress pants, a Stieg Larsson book, some sock-weight yarn and double-pointed bamboo knitting needles, meds, condoms, and a few travel-size cosmetics in a Ziploc bag.

  I kept a big bottle of contact lens solution for him in my bathroom so he never had to bring any. I think he also liked knowing that the contact lens solution was there even when he wasn’t. I don’t wear contacts. I did start wearing reading glasses a few years ago.

  That first night we stayed in and I cooked. I made Indian food from a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook. I put candles on the table. After dinner we had a long cuddle and listened to Blossom Dearie.

  That night he fell asleep pretty early, but around 2:00 a.m. I heard him moaning in his sleep. I think it was his dreams.

  The next evening we went to BAM to see the Forsythe piece. It was based on an essay by the poet Anne Carson. Sven and I had nosebleed seats. The dancing, of course, was pretty amazing. Forsythe’s movement had morphed progressively away from a recognizable ballet vocabulary, and at this point the convulsive qualities were the dominant ones. Balletic references were like little tics of seeming civility that would pop up out of habit in the middle of all that flailing. The language was somewhat like that as well. It was a little difficult to decipher what, exactly, the piece was “saying.” There was a woman (Dana Caspersen) apparently freaking out about love and betrayal. “Is this it?” she wailed at one point. “The fighting, the lying, the affairs?” The voices of the speakers were sometimes distorted electronically, as if to represent sonically the distortion and monstrosity of the things people say to each other in these situations.

  Peter Boenisch had published an essay on “ex-scription” in Forsythe’s work. I’d cited it in my manuscript. He took this idea from the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. He said that Forsythe had his dancers “unwrite” their bodies. This seemed to be related to Anne Carson’s ideas about “decreation.” The article also cited Agamben on the function of “gesture,” which he differentiates from both acting and producing: “What characterizes gesture is that in it nothing is being produced or acted, but rather something is being endured and supported.”

  That also seemed to be a fairly apt description of what constituted “love” in this piece. It was, as “untenured” might have put it, a mega downer.

  This piece was not an ideal “date night” performance. Fortunately, most of the content appeared to go over Sven’s head. Or he may have been pretending not to make any connections to our own relationship, as I was.

  Of course, the shrieking accusations and floundering gestures flying between Forsythe’s dancers bore no audible or visible resemblance to what went on between me and Sven, ever. We are very understated. And neither of us is jealous. We agreed from the beginning that things would remain open. This got a little more complicated when he got that unexpected test result.

  I wasn’t angry.

  Forsythe’s dancers were virtuosic but they were not going for what you’d call “beauty.” There was nonetheless a poignant pas de trois. It was the quietest moment in the evening.

  When we were leaving BAM, Sven said, “I liked the trio.”

  I agreed.

  I was kind of hoping we’d run into Bugs Bunny’s sister that week so I could introduce her to Sven, but we didn’t. We did some walking around the Village. We went to some galleries in Chelsea.

  Most of the time he felt all right. The main problem was his dreams.

  We got a copy of Time Out New York to see if there were any interesting museum shows up. Of course, I felt a certain frisson when I saw there was a photography exhibit up at the Brooklyn Museum called “Who Shot Rock & Roll,” but I wasn’t really going to suggest that we go to see it. Sven wanted to go to the Luo Ping show at the Met.

  Luo Ping was an 18th-century Chinese artist who is best known for an enormous scroll called Ghost Amusement. Luo said he could see ghosts, and he painted them. He developed a special technique that involved pouring water all over his paper and then painting on the wet surface with ink, which makes the figures appear to be dissolving before your eyes.

  I was especially drawn to one section of the scroll depicting two of these ghosts. They resembled a couple of losers walking on the beach. One was fat with a slightly misshapen noggin and sparse, scraggly hair. The other was skinny but had a flabby belly that he seemed to be clutching. He was wearing a fishing hat. They both had on shorts. They really didn’t look like they were painted in the 18th century.

  Some of the other ghosts weren’t quite so comical. Sven was staring for a while at two skeletons. Later we read that Luo probably based his skeletal images on Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica, an anatomy book published (in Europe of course) in 1543. I just had to look it up again to verify the title and the date. The strange conjunction of centuries and continents, anatomy and mysticism, fat ghosts and skinny ones, was both bewildering and reassuring.

  When we walked out of the Met onto the steps, I felt like we were also dissolving into the scenery.

  During Sven’s entire stay, I avoided mentioning my furtive YouTube investigations, the moth, Jimmy Stewart, the weird lyrical outbursts of the cab freshener, or my evolving theories regarding the timely or untimely ends of several artistic icons. I also failed to mention my weekend in Woodstock. He never asked any questions about the photograph of Davy Crockett’s afro, or that weird comment about eating face cream.

  For his part, he mildly declined discussing his thoughts on that FOTO treatment option.

  On Sven’s last ev
ening in New York we decided to stay home and watch one of those Netflix movies. We chose I Want to Live! with Susan Hayward. It was loosely based on the story of Barbara Graham, “Bloody Babs,” a hard-boiled floozy who was executed for murder in the 1950s. In the film, she’s the kind of big-hearted gal who’ll take the rap for a john. After a life of prostitution and petty crime, she falls for a guy, gets married, has a baby, realizes her husband’s a dope fiend and then leans on two male “friends” who end up fingering her on a murder she didn’t commit. She meets another hottie named “Rita” in prison who seems to want to help her out with an alibi (lesbian overtones), but she’s as untrustworthy as the rest. There’s a sympathetic journalist who wants to help, but there’s not much he can do. Barbara Graham ends up getting gassed.

  Most people agree that the film’s portrait of Graham is highly sympathetic, and probably inaccurate. The real Graham seems to have cracked an old lady’s skull open with a pistol.

  The timeline of the film is the weird and brilliant thing. Years of Babs’s wayward youth whiz by. So does her marriage and motherhood (in real life, Graham had a few marriages, and a few babies). The botched robbery in which the old lady gets clipped (by somebody else) is a mere blip on the screen. But the last half of the movie practically takes place in real time.

  Barbara Graham has been sentenced to the gas chamber and she’s waiting to die. There’s some question of the possibility of her sentence being commuted. She’s hanging around in a cell smoking cigarettes and waiting for the phone to ring. She gets a reprieve of a few hours. That just stretches things out and makes them more unbearable. There’s a priest who says some generally unhelpful things. People keep looking at the phone. There’s a homely female nurse who grouses about how disappointing men are while smoking cigarettes with Bloody Babs. When it’s time to go, Babs asks for one of those satin eye-masks so she won’t have to see all the people watching her die.