THE WALLS

by Jay Fox

  The bathroom is anything but prosaic. More than a few eccentric articles implore attention: an ancient scale, an advertisement for the same deodorant from last night, a table full of free magazines that cater to alternative demographics. “Its simplicity speaks volumes,” Aberdeen says as he walks into the lavatory. “To find truth in brevity like that. It's so perfect.” He pauses to take it in. “FUCK.” He turns to us. “That's all he needed.

  “It's reminiscent of a work by Friedman,” he concludes.

  “I think it's more like one of Joyce's epileptics,” Tomas counters (apparently because he's on something of a Joyce binge). Aberdeen scowls with a tinge of arrogance before turning back around to examine the four letters with greater scrutiny.

  I suggest a Salinger reference, but the two quickly dismiss this for reasons that are neither clear nor debatable. To be honest, I didn't believe my conjecture, either. It's not because I believe either one of them are correct; it's because I am not convinced that we are gazing upon a Coprolalia. It's not ironically juvenile; it's unadulteratedly juvenile. Furthermore, it is not on Sean's list. And while this is not something I feel the need to bring up, it is something that I take note of.

  We walk back into the main chamber, the argument now transcending the initial topic. None of the tables is occupied, not even the pool table. A young couple plays darts. They talk about Ilsa Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, though they refer to the latter celebrity as either Bogey or The Humpster. Blondie sings of rapture at a volume that discourages all but the most vigilant of eavesdroppers.

  “I think I'm just going to get a soda,” I say as the three of us wait to be served.

  “What? You fucking sick or something? Tomas asks.

  “No,” I begin, “I'm just hungover.”

  The bartender approaches. “Three bloody maries,” Tomas announces. He turns to me. “I'm buying,” he adds before launching into a tirade about the hair of the dog and dialectics of self-realization, which arouses a crooked brow out of me and a derisive shake of the head from Aberdeen. “This, alcohol, is a form of fucking catharsis, man; it's the only means we can abolish the super-ego, the self-for-others, and all of the other shackles that bourgeois society has imposed upon us. Dig it! It eradicates the…the…” as he turns to Aberdeen. “What's that fucking Hegelian word that I'm thinking of? Shitsklit?”

  “Sittlichkeit?”

  “Yeah; that shit. Fuck it! We need not be prisoners of society's puritanical morality, a morality that is as fucking antiquated as it is profane.” As the bartender looks for the celery stalks with which to garnish our drinks, Tomas begins to speak about his fight against the post-9/11 ethos of fear and repression, at one point referring to himself as “A Luddite engaged in a war against the mechanisms of Conservative nihilism,” perhaps to convey a love for words that sound more important than they actually are.

  “So how do you guys know Sean?” I ask once we take our seats at a horizontal Gallega arcade game. Tomas has calmed himself by this point. “You were students of his?”

  Tomas nods. “We graduated, what, five years ago.” Aberdeen nods. “Since then, we've been trying to make art our career, dig. It's only been the past year or so that we've been able to quit our day-jobs.”

  “And you live around here, right?”

  “Yes,” Aberdeen responds. “We live in a loft on Green Street. It's right around the corner.”

  The question and answer session continues for a while. I discover that the two have been roommates since their third year in college. They have lived in the loft for the past four years. “Been there since we got priced out of the Village. We lived on Avenue fucking C, man, and we still couldn't afford it. Even with both of us working our bullshit day jobs, the place was just too fucking expensive.” The new space is relatively cheap, they tell me; it is also large enough to allow three other roommates.

  Over the course of the years these spaces have been occupied by seven different people, two they consider worthy of being mentioned by their birth names. The three currently occupying the space—besides Tomas and Aberdeen, of course—are Barazov (which is not the man's surname), Lindsay, and Itchycoo (yet another cognomen). Barazov is a self-described anarchist with a trust fund that allows him a life of perpetual turpitude. His real name is Spencer Fitzgerald Bloodsworth. Tomas thinks he's a third or a fourth—as in Spencer Fitzgerald Bloodsworth III (or IV). “Real fucking blue blood, dig. He's the type who's got ancestors who came over on the Mayflower or some shit. Type of family with a manor or an estate instead of a house,” he adds. Lindsay is a receptionist in Midtown, who, as suggested from her lack of a mordant handle, is “a nice girl.” They don't seem to care for her boyfriend, Clyde. It's fairly obvious that the enmity Aberdeen feels for him derives from his attraction to the girl; Tomas, on the other hand, thinks little of Clyde because he's a mean drunk. Itchycoo is a hippie currently on vacation. He works two jobs nine months out of the year so he can spend the summer months touring with the Disco Biscuits and other bands that Tomas and Aberdeen don't know by name. They are dismissive of his taste in music, as well as his general orientation to the world, but at least Tomas acknowledges him as well intentioned.

  Aberdeen scowls. “He's a slob. And a hick, too; he's from Georgia.”

  “Good musician, though,” Tomas chimes in sympathetically. “You know, I don't dig all the music he's into, but you have to possess some degree of talent to play it.” Before I ask, he responds: “Guitarist. He also owns one of those mini guitars, too,” as he races up an imaginary fretboard with his right hand. “You know, the one with the eight strings. What's it called again?”

  “Mandolin,” Aberdeen and I respond in unison.

  Tomas continues: “He's not that good at it, but you can barely hear it if he closes his door. As I was saying, he's certainly polite so long as he doesn't drink the shit they sell down the street.”

  “Whiskey?”

  “No, the liquor store down the block sells this one hundred and sixty proof vodka. The owner won't allow anyone besides the Polska to buy it, but Itchycoo has a lot of experience with moonshine. Was it his father?” as he looks to Tomas.

  “Grandfather.”

  “Yes, his grandfather evidently ran a still. As you can probably guess, he's not from Atlanta—he's from the North Country.”

  “But he's not trailer-trash or anything like that,” Tomas interjects. “He's got an okay head on his shoulders.”

  “I guess. The music he listens to, though—that's what really irks me. Endless noodling,” with cumbersome grimace. “He has hundreds of these Phish shows on his computer, and he constantly listens to them. What is his favorite song again?”

  “The one about quitting heroin.”

  “I know that,” Aberdeen says with indignation. “What is it called?”

  “There isn't a Phish song about heroin,” I protest.

  “I remember,” Tomas exclaims. “It's 'Down with Disease'.” Aberdeen nods. “It's not that bad of a song.”

  “Yes, it is. The album version is terrible, and it would be tolerable live if the damn guitarist didn't take a twenty minute solo during the (pause, sigh, eye roll) jam.”

  “What about that other song, the one about the specter of white, male privilege?”

  “The ghost song?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That one's not so bad. It certainly touches on a very poignant subject.” Aberdeen pauses. “I still don't like them.”

  “What was that one band he really dug for a while? The one that was really out there?”

  “Tortoise,” Aberdeen answers. “We went to the show together. That was actually one of the selling points when he moved in. On top of that, he told us that he would be gone for three months out of the year, and that he didn't want to sublet his space.”

  “So he's paying for his room even though he's not there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like I said,” Tomas begins, “He's a good guy.”

  “How long ago was
that Tortoise show anyway? Was it last August?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Regardless, it was a great show,” he says with authority. “I think they're the only modern band the two of us both like besides Air and Radiohead.”

  “What about Wilco?”

  “Obviously,” he grants. It is as if enjoying the band has become something of a prerequisite as opposed to a taste, especially with the new album that came out this past Tuesday. “Tortoise, however, has a very unique sound,” Aberdeen continues. “They are too sophisticated for a lot of people. We also went to check out this new band that we both really liked right before he left. Yeasayer—ever heard of them?”

  “No.”

  “Was that the band with the really good xylophone player?”

  “No.”

  I try to steer the conversation away from the band and on to Coprolalia, but not before Aberdeen goes to the jukebox and returns chagrined by the absence of several bands residing in various realms of obscurity (though it must be said that almost all of these bands resided outside of the realm of obscure-for-obscurity’s-sake, which serves as the most garish theater for the most pompous of audiences for whom the Internet is the backbone of their identity—i.e. so long small bands in my town, hello alt-country groups from Benin). He broods for the duration of the bloody mary, and is the first to make the trek back to the bartender. He returns with what is more than likely a gin and tonic, as there are four slices of lime in his glass. A song accompanies his return; we are informed of its name, as well as the band that it is by, but this information is ignored. I am fairly certain that it comes from the bartender's iPod.

  Coprolalia once again becomes the focal point of the discussion, though the argument this time around is not about the four letters in the bathroom. As it turns out, Aberdeen is of the opinion that the real Coprolalia retired a few years ago. He has no evidence of this, of course, but there's no argument good enough to dissuade him. “He's another Willis Faxo,” he says with a roll of the eyes.

  “Another who?” I ask

  “Willis Faxo,” Tomas enunciates. I shrug. “He was initially big into Agitprop, although some would call his work Postagitprop—”

  “—Which Meinenshahldurgheim has argued is really a form of Cryptoromanticism that has become conscious of itself as such. But wouldn't this make it Neoromantic, perhaps Metapostromantic?”

  Tomas and I exchange looks. “Regardless,” Tomas resumes, “He's the artist who made the sculpture outside of the Keens Center.” He stops to scratch his head. “What the fuck is it called again?”

  “I don't recall. It's really a fantastic piece, though,” Aberdeen says as he turns to me. “Have you seen it?”

  “No.”

  “I totally dig it, man. You should check it out when you get the chance.” He drinks a good deal of his bloody mary. “Anyway, I'm not convinced that Coprolalia retired. He probably just moved out of the city, to, like, Long Island or something. There’s that one city that used to be all artists. It doesn’t even have stoplights. I totally think he’s there.”

  “On what grounds do you make that assumption?”

  “On what grounds do you make your assumption?” Caesura. “Dick.”

  “Look, he obviously retired back in oh-two or oh-three when his work started receiving so much exposure. Everything since then has been the work of copycat artists.”

  “No way, man,” Tomas protests. “He just doesn't live here anymore. How else can you explain the consistency of his work?”

  “It's not consistent at all! If it weren't for Sean, I wouldn't even think that it's the work of a single artist.”

  “That's total bullshit, man. You know that Coprolalia has a style. Look at Vis Inertiae. That's so obviously a Coprolalia.”

  “That's not what Sean says,” I chime in.

  “Who gives a fuck what Sean says. It's not like he's the only person who knows for certain what a fucking Coprolalia is or isn't.”

  “He knows better than you,” Aberdeen says quietly as he buries his face in his tumbler.

  “I don't care. I think he's fucking wrong. Okay: consider the one that's in that bar way out in Jamaica,” he begins. “What's that fucking place called?” he asks the ceiling. “I'm not going to remember. Anyway, it's the place right next to the Sutpen Boulevard F—you know, the one that's like two blocks away from the court.”

  “I think you mean Sutphin Boulevard. Sutpen is a Faulkner character.”

  “Sutphin, Sutpen, who the fuck cares?” as he rolls his eyes. “It's the one that reads Guardians Of Privilege with an elephant drinking a flute of champagne. It's almost the same joke as Vis Inertiae. And it's from a year ago, man.”

  “No, it's from two thousand and four—you know, when the election was taking place.”

  “Regardless,” Tomas counters with a particularly spastic motion of the hand, “This only proves my point. His newer pieces keep appearing in the parts of Queens and Brooklyn that you can easily get to from the L.I.E. or the B.Q.E. Dig it, man, he's totally coming in from Long Island.”

  “Yes, but here's why you're wrong….”

  This continues for the duration of Tomas' bloody mary and Aberdeen's gin and tonic. They demand that I finish what is left of my first cocktail, buy me another round (this time a pint of German beer with a name that I can't pronounce), and then come back in the mood to talk about something else. I feel slightly awkward after their arguments concerning Coprolalia have been exhausted. They seem to be immune to my presence.

  I've never been to this particular bar. While it is not the first location in Greenpoint I have visited, it is my first time this far up Manhattan Avenue. I don't think it qualifies as a dive, but some people would disagree. It certainly has that distinctly north Brooklyn feel to it—spacious, dark, unassuming. There are several pieces of art on the wall, more than likely the work of a single artist. It's an odd style, though the medium—oil on canvas—is straightforward enough. The palette is warm, filled with browns and abundant diagonals. The work is too abstract to describe without turning the process into a psychology experiment. (There is one exception to this statement: what appears to be the silhouette of a woman (you can tell by the breasts, the half moons shawled by arms crossed via St. Andrew) turning away from an ajar door. There is perhaps a man there, either opening or closing it. If opening, perhaps she sits clothed at the table quietly becoming enraged by “the fact that revolutionary women are always villianized.” If closing, she has shawled herself in only a robe, a birthday present from better days. If closing, I have said my goodbye. If closing, you twist a more recent gift in your fingers as you glare to the window as if in mourning, my Gabrielle with a rose. And perhaps you watch as I trudge down the stairs and continue along the walkway that bisects the snow, which glimmers like nacre in the sodium streetlights above, your eyes both glassy and gelid enough to disguise the relief that you are feeling, even if that relief only compounds the guilt that will eventually lead you to the liquor store, and then, several hours later, to the telephone.)

  Tomas and Aberdeen continue talking as I survey the surroundings. The people who occupy the seats at the bar are clearly regulars with the exception of a couple who each use the word “pretentious” to describe everything from television programs to drink prices at a club somewhere in or on Manhattan. The rest of the patrons attract less attention. A woman sits at the other end of the bar writing in fervent and infrequent bursts on a legal pad. She makes time to talk to the bartender with familiarity. She puts very little on the page as she writes, which suggests that she is a poet. She smiles with regularity, and laughs boisterously. The two young men next to her are discussing the Bush administration—its arrogance, its ignorance, its incompetence and belligerence. It's a laughing matter a lot of the time, not the type of laughter that makes you feel better, just the type that masks that feeling of impotent, of knowing there's nothing you can do but laugh while the Snopeses of the world keep on doing what Snopeses do. Two Polish
men down the bar bark with raised voices and amiable tones, their faces dotted with broken capillaries and two-day's worth of stubble.

  Though I struggle to find a seat in Tomas and Aberdeen's theater of dialog, it is quickly acknowledged that awkwardness swims poorly among the two. One drink turns to two, and two turns to three, and soon we're ordering shots even though the sun is still striving to escape from behind thick cloud cover. The Mets/Yankees game is on, but no seems too interested except for a woman who prides herself on being one of ten or eleven white people from within the actual city limits of Detroit. Her voice is of the type that invites eavesdropping: loud, hoarse, guttural—what you would attribute to one of those nineteenth century prostitutes whom you see in photographs from the old West (they are never called prostitutes, of course, but it is fairly obvious that any woman hanging around a nineteenth century saloon full of drunk, violent, horny, and unmarried men—in a town where the bank gets robbed once a week, even if no one puts money in it anymore (the clerk just hands over whatever is in his pocket, which is usually enough for a drink or two, and then goes to the saloon where the robber addresses him by first name and buys him a drink or two);—in a town that has one police station, and that one police station has one jail cell, even if the entire town is comprised entirely of criminals;—in a town in which people get shot for not minding their own business quietly enough—is very likely a prostitute). She entered just before the game, and has been less than clandestinely eying Tomas' hat ever since. It is only after the third inning that she inquires about the orange Old English “D” on his head.

  “My mom grew up in Hamtramck,” he responds with a delinquent grin. “I was born in Phoenix.”

  “What about you?” she asks either Aberdeen or me.

  “I was born and raised in Baltimore,” I respond.

  “San Francisco,” Aberdeen says.

  “No offense, but you guys don't look like the types that normally hang out together. We got the mechanic,” to Tomas, “the professor,” to Aberdeen, “and the…well, I don't know what the hell you are. What are you, dude?”