Mouthquake

by Daniel Allen Cox

  What about CD covers that are the same colour as the sticker I’m supposed to use? It won’t show up.

  The prospective candidate should not ask so many questions.

  Are you referring to me?

  I haven’t said whether or not you got the job.

  I thought this was a volunteer position. You mean it’s a job and there’s pay?

  Hush up. The prospective candidate, if not sure about the style of music, will listen again. Sometimes there are fine lines. Alternative may not be new wave. Brit pop may not be shoegazer, as vocal jazz may be so far from spoken word that people will question your judgment if you mix them up. Hip hop and dubstep and trip are not the same things. At all.

  I know that.

  The blue sticker is special. It means the record should go into the MCR, or the Master Control Room. This is music that the volunteer thinks is really, really good and should be played on the air. Like, it does something to you. So when the deejays go into the MCR to prepare their shows, they can check out the new arrivals.

  What do you mean “does something” to me?

  You’ll know.

  Can I go on the air?

  The prospective candidate may not speak on the radio. The volunteer is in charge of processing the CDs and putting them in the right stacks, alphabetically and based on the stickers. The volunteer may not smoke in the cubicle.

  Am I the volunteer?

  The prospective candidate is the volunteer. The volunteer must burn the call letters C-K-U-T into the inner plastic ring of every CD, careful not to damage the music. This is done with a soldering iron.

  No one told me about this.

  I’m telling you now. This is a key part of the job. It discourages theft. The volunteer can put the wrong sticker on the jewel case. It happens and the CD will be misplaced, but it’s not that bad. At least the CD will still be in the building. But if it’s not engraved, it will go missing. That’s worse.

  Why is that a deterrent? What thief would care?

  The thief will have a harder time selling the CD. The prospective candidate should not be the thief.

  I’m not…So, am I the prospective candidate?

  No. You are the volunteer. Congratulations.

  I installed myself in a cubicle the size of a phone booth, windowless and beige, barely enough room for the table and chair. I looked at the stack of envelopes, and it made me think of my old band. I felt a twinge of sadness that we never got to mail in our stuff, that it was absent from the pile and always would be.

  I opened the first envelope. It was from PolyGram Music Canada. I threw the letter in the garbage without reading it and tore the shrink wrap off the CD case. It was a single. “Regret” by New Order. I couldn’t believe it. I was still trying to fill the emotional hole that Ian Curtis had left in me by committing suicide. Strange that I had that hole, even though he’d died when I was a toddler. But we are all free to grieve whomever we want, and to choose our own fairy dogparents.

  I figured I’d give the CD a generous ten seconds. I stuck it in, pressed play, and something weird happened. Bernard Sumner’s opening chords hung in midair above me in the cubicle. Like an aura, a holy apparition, a fart. I didn’t know songs could be holographic, but this one seemed to have a three-dimensional presence. The song poured out of the headphones and into the room. Thirty seconds in, and I was Peter Hooked. Sumner sang about forgetting the name and the address of everyone he’d ever known. Was that even possible? The idea was so fresh to me, it made me light-headed. It was exactly what I needed to do at that time in my life: retreat from everybody so I could figure things out. Disappear. And this was the place to do it. I played the song twenty or thirty times and had a long cry, a head rush that turned from migraine to endorphin depth charge from one bar to the next, a nervous breakdown and consequent reassembly, hallucinations, visions of god that made me ask, if Ian Curtis had figured out a way to disappear among the living, would he still have killed himself? It took me another few listens to realize he would’ve done it anyway.

  Sumner sang about strangers in a way that made me understand how familiar they were and always would be. In the end, there was no need to worry about losing someone’s phone number. There was always another way to find them.

  “Regret” turned out to be the song that defined my summer. I was barely a teenager anymore, so it was uncouth to have single songs that changed everything, but fuck it. I reserved the right to prolong teenagehood, and so developed my love affair with the cubicle and its swirling claustrophobic madness, but also my intense disappointment with every envelope that followed, because it wasn’t New Order. I would never again hear bass so resonant that it shook everything I believed in.

  It was only my first day on the job, and the best was already over.

  I gave the CD a blue sticker.

  It just so happens that most of my musical research centres on letters of the alphabet I can’t pronounce. I swear, it’s a coincidence. When you’re looking for a specific song you think was the soundtrack to a significant moment in your life, you have to be thorough.

  Brought to you by the letter C:

  Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Clash, Corgan and the rest of the Pumpkins, all of them smashing, Callas peaking at l’Arc du Triomphe, the Commodores and the Vegas bootlegs, the Carpenters who taught me that Mondays were good for nothing (Karen still has to sing me through them), Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline mysteriously never on the same side of the AM dial, Costello, “Come to My Window,” cassettes on the verge of extinction, Crystal Waters was never homeless, cymbals, call and response, we all know that Marilyn Manson’s “Cake and Sodomy” and Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy are about the same thing, Cab Calloway, “Camptown Races.”

  The volunteer coordinator was right about the thief problem. We had an infestation. I could detect the presence of burglars even when I was locked in my cubicle and wearing headphones. That’s how sensitive I was. I caught them crawling through the window, using empty loot bags to protect themselves against the broken glass and then cushion their falls. Some of them pretended to be janitors or journalists or movers or even volunteers, and dared to walk straight through the front door. One dude had the nerve to say his volunteer job was to replace old records with new ones.

  They knew I could see right through their excuses, so most of them didn’t even bother. After capture, their fear was palpable. We were alone in a basement. Maybe they could sense that I took the break-ins personally, that I was indignant with them.

  The truth was that I wanted the music all to myself.

  Punishments: The first round was always a solid mugging. I’d handcuff them to the radiator and raid their pockets for bills and change. I wouldn’t know what to do with credit cards, so I left those. And I took their Discmans because they contained a substance that I needed. I think this kind of counter-robbery fucked with my head as much as it did theirs. They knew something much worse was coming, and I confirmed that suspicion by plugging in the soldering iron. When an animal is locked in a pen, that’s the perfect time to brand it. I got creative and chose different punishments:

  Some days, on the arm, the back of the hand, or the upper inner thigh, depending what they wore and where it would be visible, and where I thought it would hurt the most.

  Some days, I engraved into the flesh of these screaming, begging criminals the names of the artists they were trying to steal. It was particularly unfortunate for the detainee when it was a long name or an artist formerly known as something else, and out of fairness, I had to inscribe both names.

  Some days, I tried to carve a facsimile of the album cover, at least les grandes lignes with a reasonable amount of shading. Of course, this required a good stretch of uninterrupted dermal real estate.

  Some days, I engraved the time and date when I apprehended them.

  Some days, I administered anaesthetic in the form of gin and tonic made with premium Hendrick’s, cucumber, a dash of muddled bluebe
rries, rubbing alcohol, and unleaded gasoline. Other days, I wanted them to feel more, to be truly present in the moment that was marking us both.

  Some days, I made them watch the searing, the smoke of flesh. Other days, I blindfolded them and made them listen to it.

  Some days, I was a fickle bastard and couldn’t decide what technique was best, so I did all of them. So very me.

  Most days, I was jealous of their punishment.

  You’d think that the most logical thing was to solder C-K-U-T into these burglars, but it never occurred to me. It did strike me, however, to burn my name into every single one of them. My station now, my name always.

  Brought to you by the letter H:

  “Hey Yew Gotta Loight Boy” by the Singing Postman, Heart, Hammond B3s and other organs, hitting the high-hat a second too soon, Hole, “Hello, It’s Me,” John Helliwell without the rest of Supertramp, hipster warblings, Happy Mondays before ecstasy tabs melted through their guitar tabs, Harry Belafonte, “Horse with No Name,” hinting out of habit that this is the final show, heroin parties with Lou Reed, helicons and hurdy-gurdies, hammers on harpsichord strings, Harmonium, hemp T-shirts at the merch table, Hammerstein & Rogers, tell me that it’s “Human Nature,” “Hangin’ Tough” with the New Kids, “High School Confidential” (although “Hickory Dickory Dock” was more my speed), the Hornbostel-Sachs categories of sound-producing material including directly struck idiophones, Max Headroom stuttering through a Pepsi commercial.

  PENISES I HAVE LOVED AND NOT LOVED

  Sometimes I think that if I stare at enough cocks, cocks of all shapes and colouring, of varied ridge and vein formations, degrees of smell, shades of blond and brown and red in the pubic hair, protrusions and protuberances in slightly different directions, angles of piss never a certain gamble, that I will think, Hey, I have never seen this one before, the drooping foreskin, the skyward curvature; some penises take a greater or lesser interest in me, some of them inch over one at a time or keep an impressively measured distance, diffident to my glances, standoffish in a pocket of underwear, breaching through fabric here and there, curled and sleeping in a soft pouch, grossly indecent and outright puritanical, penises that have been abused by the rigours of soap and kept too clean, unsuitable for fucking but perfect for church; I stare from all angles and try to recognize a penis I have seen before, the ones that have stared me down, sidled over to cross swords, dripped hungrily onto my nose, anointed me on the forehead, sniffed out my bum, bouncing and glistening with pre-cum, either blithe or over-aware of my presence, a shaft that never worked out its kinks, I’ll say, Hey, a certain softness seems familiar to me, scrotal sweat moist and rank, droplets following the path of least resistance and onto my face; I am always the path of least resistance for some reason, reptilian skin constantly shifting with the temperature of my breath, testicles that are evenly weighted with the exception of pea-shaped cancerous lumps, sebaceous cysts that stare at me like eyes, pubic hair shaved into a baseball diamond, into a runaway runway strip like at Mirabel Airport, plumpers never fully hard, I’ll say, Hey, how could I have measured size back when I was growing at least half a foot a year, discharge in crayon colours, a mushroom head that swells in my mouth until it cuts off airflow.

  I figure if I steal a glance at every penis that takes a piss beside me, I’ll eventually see the one this is all about, the first one, unless the first one was mine.

  SPEECH THERAPY FOR THE BENT

  Our cart was full even before we got to the second aisle. That’s how it goes at the supermarket with Eric and me. He comes with a list balanced on the four food groups, taking into account the room in the fridge and the room in the cupboard, our impossibly small freezer, careful not to overbuy, and aware that things go rotten. For me, the supermarket is like a candy store or a bar, or like sex—I don’t want to have to hold back on anything. That would feel counterintuitive to the shopping experience.

  I’m not going to discuss the number of hard-ons I’ve had over the years as I’ve pushed the squeaky cart down the aisle, considering the implications: it’s the ultimate capitalist orgy where nothing is lacking, where overabundance conceals want, where denial is sold in bulk. Consumer excess in all its gaudy glory. Maybe I’m addicted to the guilt. We all have our things. It’s difficult for me to describe my love for the supermarket without getting emotional. The cereal aisle—I pass through it like it’s a parted Red Sea and weep over the breakfast possibilities.

  You’re not supposed to get off on capitalism, but I can’t help it.

  However, this is only when I’m alone. When I’m with Eric, I behave somewhat. He is my electrical ground. I simply and calmly throw more things in the cart than are on our agreed-upon list and hope he doesn’t notice. When I participate in the creation of the list, it’s a falsity because I don’t reveal my full consumer desires or the extent of my enslavement to them. Anyway, how do you know when your boyfriend knows your true preferences? Was eighteen months enough time together for him to have figured it out?

  I attempted to turn our cart down the dairy aisle, and Eric questioned the move.

  We have enough milk.

  I think we’re low on cheese.

  We have enough cheese.

  Then margarine. Ours has too many toast crumbs in it.

  Eric let us proceed. Toad the Wet Sprocket was playing over the sound system. Then he did something I didn’t expect. He picked up three cans of whipped cream and put them in the cart. I stared at the hole they left on the shelf. He was spoiling me. Showing off. I was so turned on.

  Eric preferred to start at the back of the supermarket so that we ended up in fresh fruit. That way, the fruit sits on top and doesn’t get crushed. I think there’s something inherently flawed with that system. In my opinion, it would make more sense to end up in frozen, so that our cold purchases would keep the whole cart chilled. A small but important difference of opinion.

  This was as good a place as any to ask him.

  I need us to try a new kind of sex.

  We should get some onions.

  Eric picked up a bag of white onions, two pounds, and then a lone red Spanish onion, which he weighed on the scale to determine the price. He squeezed a spaghetti squash for readiness, even though gourds are always hard, so I knew he was distracted. I had thrown him off with my question. I tapped him to make him look at my mouth again.

  What do you think about what I just asked you?

  I suppose I’ll need to know more.

  There are some things we can do in bed that would be, um, good for me.

  Okay.

  I feel bad for saying this, but it’s also something I need to experience alone. You know? Like, yeah. It’s kind of private. But—

  So do you want to be alone, or do you want to have sex with me? Which is it?

  That’s the thing. It’s both. I need to be alone sometimes while we’re having sex.

  You don’t have enough privacy when we fuck?

  He stares at my lips when I speak, especially when it’s something he doesn’t want to miss. This time, he was forced to watch, by virtue of the circumstances, a particularly rabid display of saliva, because I had stolen a cherry and once again decided to test my allergy to stone fruits. By then, I had stopped caring about reactions, the inevitable puffy lips and closing of the throat.

  No, that’s not it.

  You need me to leave the room so you don’t have performance anxiety about getting hard?

  Thanks for bringing that up.

  Babe, I’m just asking for information. Sorry.

  That’s okay.

  Well, tell me what this means for me in practical terms.

  Um, it could mean that I don’t explain why I’m asking you to do certain things to me when we’re in bed?

  Of course. That’s understood. I never ask too many questions of you.

  I know. I wasn’t saying that.

  Why do you always get so weird when we do groceries?

  Eric headed for the self-
checkout machines, and I started to get nauseated. That was the perfect way to ruin a shopping trip: a desultory passing of items in front of a laser. It made me sick. I would much rather have been at the human checkout a few feet over, where our mountain of purchases could be inspected, reviled, and envied by the voyeurs in line behind us. The cashier would touch every single item with their hands, feel every single perverted and irresponsible decision we made that day; the obscenely wasteful packaging, the toxic ingredients shaming us, delivering humiliation by turning the items over and over, looking for the bar codes. Then asking if we wanted paper bags, as if our purchases must be hidden. But those are just my preferences. Every experience is a sexual one for me.

  Back at home, we put the groceries away together in silence. There were limbo items, the ones that could go either in the fridge or the pantry. We took our time deciding. I was happy with the day’s shopping because our fridge was getting full. A full fridge can compensate for a lot of things: deficiencies, holes, hungers. New jars and cans of stuff hide the half-full and half-eaten. Sometimes I buy something I already have. Not sometimes. All the time.

  We made dinner together. Eric peeled the carrots meticulously. He threw half the peels into the garbage and ate the rest. I worked on the potatoes. Washing, peeling, boiling, mashing. I was annoyed when the potatoes boiled over and the scummy water dried on the stovetop. I prepared the dinner table with plates and cutlery and poured us some drinks. We waited for dinner to be ready. I think we were both busy imagining what was going to happen in bed. I had a pretty clear picture, but I wondered about not feeling anything. Sometimes not even a wild fantasy can give you what you’re looking for, especially if you’re looking for something buried in time.

  I can never get enough of Eric’s smell. That’s why I toss and turn so much, in a mad sleepy dash to get as much of his fresh night scent as I can. I always wake up jet-lagged and on the other side of the bed. I’m convinced that I float through the thick substance of him somewhere in a dream world, that his body is a kind of semiconductor. That’s when I’m open to Eric. Other nights, I seem to be closed off; we are two sarcophagi who don’t interact, our broken embraces a numb truth that hangs in the air as we lie awake and wonder how many hours until we roll away from each other into another morning both together and apart. The consistency of my spirit isn’t made for this madness.