Keck's Notes

Virginia Woolf

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:59:49 -0400

My wife came home slightly intoxicated one night, and so I had her read Virginia Woolf’s suicide note. That’s how it is in our house. I was working on another project at the time, and so I slapped this audio together.

If you haven’t read Virginia Woolf’s suicide note, I highly recommend it:

“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ‘til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.”

An Open Letter to the Students of Chester College of New England

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:05:00 -0400

I try not to be a cynical person; I find it’s not a healthy attitude toward life.

But I find it difficult not to be cynical when beautiful and essential things in this world are allowed to slip away. Chester College of New England, a small arts college in Chester, New Hampshire, was one of those beautiful and essential things. Last week, due to financial problems, the college was forced to close.

This may not register as any great loss to the bulk of the world—after all, Chester College served a little under 200 students at any given time. But the educational institutions that devote themselves sincerely and solely to the arts are a dwindling breed. University Art Departments and Creative Writing Programs function in a very different manner than their counterparts at a small, intimate college. Universities are factories and labor camps and survival of the fittest. Chester College lacked that nonsense and focused on what matters: nurturing artists, especially those who have been made to feel unwelcome in more traditional institutional communities.

Chester College invited me to their campus as a visiting writer on two occasions. I was struck by the serenity of the locale, the enthusiasm of the students, and the kindness and warmth of everyone I met there. It seemed idyllic and too good to be true, and it pained me when I had to pass on the opportunity to be a visiting faculty member. It pains me even more today because that is one opportunity which will most definitely not come around again.

The students of Chester made a valiant and heroic effort to save their school. In the end, I think the tide was more against them than they could have known. I’ve learned a little something about college administrators and trustees in my time as a professor: the financial troubles that afflicted Chester did not happen overnight, and someone must have known this day was on the horizon long before it was made public. That more was not done sooner is a permanent stain upon the people entrusted to care for Chester College.

There are far larger colleges and Universities all around Chester who could have dug into their endowments and loaned Chester the money to stay open. Hell, the community college I teach for in North Carolina has an endowment that would have more than covered Chester’s budget shortfall. It is utterly demoralizing that other institutions were not willing to lend the money to preserve a college that was not in competition with them. Chester College served a very unique niche, and the students reflected that uniqueness.

I was first invited to Chester in September, 2008, and I gave a lecture that picked up on a point that R. Crumb made: Everyone wants to be the meat; no one wants to be the butcher.

The thrust of that lecture was that artists are regarded as meat, and if you’re considering being an artist, you need to latch onto the fact that you will be treated about as kindly as a piece of meat. Often times, you’re lucky if you get treated as well as meat. But the publisher, the producer, the editor, the agent— the college president of an art school or its trustees— those people are in the position of the butcher, and at the end of the day it’s a much safer position.

Students of Chester College, you have now most certainly met The Butcher. You know what it is like to be regarded as meat, to be dispensed with at a whim. Art and Artists have never been valued much by this society, and these dark days of the early 21^st century find the Artist more marginalized than ever. I wish I had some words of comfort for those of you who have been deprived of such a magical place as Chester.

Do not be cynical. Do not despair. But do not forget what the Butchers have done to you. Your victory over them must be through the excellence of your craft. To paraphrase Whitman, through your art “You furnish your parts toward eternity; / Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.”

Kevin Keck reading at the Mesh Gallery, Morganton, NC,...

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:22:07 -0400

Kevin Keck reading at the Mesh Gallery, Morganton, NC, 12/18/2011

James Whale

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:20:22 -0400

James Whale:

Bass: Kevin Keck

Guitar: Ryan Johnson

Drums: Lloyd Rhome, Jr.

Vocals: Chloe Keck & Isabella Keck

Music: Johnson/Keck/Rhome

Words: James Whale

The Daughter Doctrine

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:57:00 -0400

The Daughter Doctrine:

Listen. Enjoy.

Audio Keck

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:17:51 -0400

Look, if you don’t like dirty words, don’t listen to this. Don’t even be tempted by the salacious tales of sordid sexual rapture! Go here instead. If you want the full audio notes, you can find that here.

Memory Fragment: June 1991

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:18:00 -0400

This brief excerpt from my book AYTG?IM.K. references events that took place twenty years ago this week.

* * *

I graduated high school on Saturday, June 1, 1991. A local television reporter who was comfortable speaking with the odd delay/echo of the PA system in the football stadium gave the commencement address. It was clear by his delivery that this wasn’t his first time speaking at a graduation, and afterward I watched him casually accept an envelope from the principal and then light a cigarette at the edge of the track that ringed the football field.

After I’d shed my cap and gown I spent the better part of two hours procuring five cases of Busch Light and two fifths of George Dickel Old No. 8 and then drove with my friend T.C. south along Highway 9 all the way to Myrtle Beach.

The week prior to graduation, Jimmy Robinson, a guy who stocked shelves and bagged groceries with me at Galaxy Food Mart, imparted this gem of wisdom: “Man, if you go to Myrtle Beach and don’t get laid, then just don’t come back. Shameful.”

I didn’t know if Jimmy was full of shit or on the level. I had a lot riding on the possibility of getting laid. I’d only had two sexual partners at that point in my life, and I’d yet to have an orgasm with a woman at all. My first two encounters were abysmally mismanaged—I had no clue what I was doing, and I’m not really sure that my partners did either. Or perhaps sex with me was traumatizing to the point that they knew there was no hope: I was a bad fucker.

T.C. and I had beachfront rooms waiting for us at the Paradise Inn. Since the summer of 1991 it has become a standard policy of mine to refuse lodgings at a place that advertises itself as Eden-esque. Our room resembled the type of cell in which political prisoners are executed with a small caliber weapon. The exception was that we had a mini-fridge, though it didn’t even hold a twelve-pack.

I stayed there a single night, woke to a cold, brown shower in the morning, and then took my share of the Busch to the Hampton Inn. It was a block off the beach, but they offered a continental breakfast and a heated pool. Also, it was the only hotel with a vacant room that week.

Several friends with whom I’d graduated were also staying at the hotel, though only three of them—Jeremy and Brent and John—were people I’d actually consider close friends. Everyone else was what I might describe as first cousin friends—people who were glad to see you at a party, but they didn’t necessarily think to call and tell you it was happening.

We were all out on the beach Monday afternoon, indiscreetly drinking beer that was sweating in a Styrofoam cooler. These were the movers and shakers of my class—Megan, Elizabeth, Tessa, John, Kim, Jason T., and Laurie (who had actually graduated the year before but who wasn’t one to shy away from a good week of partying). You probably know the same names, the same types—kids who inherited beauty and wealth and the knowledge of proper forks, or at least a little class of some sort. They usually all played a sport or were on the homecoming committee or were class president. Why was I with them? I was the son of people who didn’t have indoor plumbing until well into their teens—I was a few steps from being on the right side of the tracks yet. As proof, that afternoon on the beach Megan looked at me and said:

“Kevin, why are you wearing jeans?”

Everyone within earshot paused and looked in my direction; even in the sun’s glare I could tell it was a question that had been on their tanned minds—most of these kids lived on the lake; my house was built in a field that had been a cow pasture for the previous century. But I was nonplussed. I said:

“Hey, don’t you watch Magnum, P.I.?” I was a huge Magnum fan, and for some reason I thought it was cool how he sometimes wore jeans on the beach, as if to say, I don’t dress for geography; I dress how I feel.

No one said anything, and then I began to laugh, and then everyone laughed, and someone said, “Keck, come on. We need another player for volleyball.” I leapt up and dusted the sand off my jeans. I was at least blessed with the gift of self-deprecation, and pitiful as it sometimes is, it has endeared me to plenty of people in crucial situations.

We spent the rest of the day on the beach, our heads hot and heavy from the beer and the sun. At some point I shed my jeans and lay on a towel in my boxers. When I was in high school I was constantly taking off my pants or whipping out my dick at parties. I was that guy. And of course it never got me anywhere because I was afflicted with a terrible compass when it came to finding my way with women. The presence of my dick in the middle of a conversation was greeted with a mix of revulsion and amusement, and often times downright hilarity when I attired it with a onion ring around the head, acting out the mating ritual bit from the Coneheads on Saturday Night Live. But there seemed to be genuine disappointment on the beach that day when my wiener did not emerge to look for its shadow. The facades of proper behavior were on holiday, and half drunk, half asleep, I could hears the waves of possibility crashing ever closer.

My second night at the Hampton Inn, Brent and I went down to the vending machine. I’ve forgotten our exact purpose in descending to the first floor vending area, but whatever it was it led to some sort of debate about the selection I’d made. We were standing there going back and forth when two girls walked past, and then stopped and stood there staring at us. Brent I looked back at them:

“Hey,” one of them said.

“Hey,” I said. Or Brent may have said it. It doesn’t matter because the girls said:

“What floor you on?”

“Four. You?”

“Three. Room three sixteen.”

“We’ll remember that. We’re four twenty.” Brent said.

“You’re nearly on top of us already,” one of the girls said.

And that was it.

When Brent I returned to the room the lights were out and there was a lot of giggling and laughter, and then the lights would turn on suddenly, girls would scream, and the lights would go back out. There were only two girls in the room: Tessa and Laurie. Tessa was a fierce looking girl who’d been on the softball team. She was trying to work it with every guy in there (except for me; I’d already spurned her on the back of a bus during a church youth trip) and no one was having it. When the lights were out she was thrusting guy’s hands onto her shirt; I couldn’t see but occasionally I’d hear John or Brent go, “Tessa, stop making me touch your titty!”

At one point the lights went on and there on the floor was Laurie with Jeremy’s prick out, a can of beer poised over it. Then everyone screamed, the lights were out again, and amongst the giggles and laughter were the distinct sounds of slurping.

The next night I would hook up with one of the girl’s from the vending area, a sweet dirty blond named Elizabeth who was nineteen and from Buffalo, New York. She had a younger sister who had just gotten a pet turtle, and she worried again and again about reptiles and salmonella. She was only the third girl with whom I’d had sex, but the first to talk like the girls in the pornos I’d watched. Oh, the things she said to me those two glorious nights where our bodies were the lathes upon which the moon’s bright edges were sharpened, filling the heavens with our sparks!

Well, not quite. It was really a mess. She had a clue, I didn’t, but that time with her is as clear in my mind as waking beside her yesterday, and so where is she now, with those wet words, and whom does she welcome with them? When she and her friends left at the end of that week to return to Buffalo, she gave me her address and I kept it for years. I never wrote, and in one of those dramatic attempts to break with the past that cause people to throw away love letters and yearbooks, her address got tossed out with a box of other mementos that I felt had outlived their usefulness. I can’t count the times has my heart broken over that lost address, and not because I have any romantic notion of what might have been, but rather because I want to know what is. That brief intersection with Elizabeth from Buffalo fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life. Up until then the whispering voices in my dreams had me ready to bind myself to the mast, but her song of flesh was too sweet and wondrous and I came unlashed. I’m quite certain I did nothing of the sort for her. I think I believed that I would see her again, perhaps the following summer, but how can you ever know the final moment until after the moment has passed?

Elizabeth and I were going to use the bed in my room our first night together, but Jeremy and Laurie were already romping upon it, and so we diverted to the shower. But in that sliver of light from the hall that raced across the bed I saw Laurie’s tennis-perfect legs spread beautifully, and I would never see her again.

I am interested in those occasions when we become aware of doors opening, everything sweet and sacred when you finally understand the fragility of each moment, the possibility for tenderness or terror at each click of the second hand, but, dear God, how can you live like that? It’s impossible to have that much love for the world, because then you too would stand outside the tomb of every heart, weeping consecrated tears but without the power to undo what has been written, and yet it is equally holy to watch the final door swing heavily upon its hinges, dousing our little patch of desire, steel bolts sliding shut.

I know how it ended for Laurie. It happened just a few miles from where I’m sitting now, at an intersection I pass though at least a dozen times a week. It’s a common enough ending: she didn’t look because she had the protected left turn, but her stereo was on and thus she didn’t hear the sirens of the ambulance carrying the heart-attack victim to the hospital. He was 79; she was 20, and she died right there, and his story amazingly kept on going for a while. But here’s the uncommon aspect, the twist no writer can invent: the ambulance driver was the father of Erin Monthail, the girl to whom Jeremy had lost his virginity while Van Morrison’s Moondance played through on cassette, flipping over several times as Jeremy would later point out . But Laurie could not have known that, could not have been surprised at the collision of events and metal that marked her end, and what is similarly strange is the handful of people who know that peculiar quirk to her story. I doubt too many of them reflect on it with any regularity, or possibly they don’t remember, but I do, and I am unable to fully explain why I must attest to this and other eccentricities of fate. Can God worry so meticulously over the human affairs that momentarily unite the threads of various narratives—including my own—so that some design seems to briefly materialize? Whenever I hear any song from Moondance I am flooded with remembrances, only one of which I actually witnessed: Erin on her knees in her house, alone with Jeremy and taking his prideful member in her already well practiced mouth, the bare moon glowing through the sliding glass doors that framed their silhouettes; and there is the image of the light flashing on momentarily as Laurie pours beer over Jeremy’s erect cock on the hotel floor, her cry of surprise mixed with laughter and hoots from the spectators on the beds; then there is the surreal scene of an ambulance smashing mercilessly into a small foreign car of indeterminate origin, fragile as the hollow bones of birds.

Sometimes memory is the only act of faith I can manage.

Humor for poets and geeks alike

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 22:26:00 -0500

Humor for poets and geeks alike

Scrap

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 12:14:31 -0500

I think this was meant for one of my books. The last line alludes to Cicero (however please correct me on that if I’m wrong). I don’t know what else I might do with it, so here it is:

But I’d renounced that life and decided to forage down the same road that everyone takes: the golden road to unlimited capital accumulation. Well, not exactly like that, of course. I have a degree in poetry; clearly I am a man lacking ambition. I can speak the Esperanto of analogies and gleefully compare my nightly color to Hamlet, which means that I own a futon and an acoustic guitar and little else. I won’t be buying a BMW anytime soon, just mixing my own little portion into the GNP with that intangible commodity of education. Let the accountants dwell in the house of feasting; a wise heart is a sad place.

Five Things Bob Weir Said to Me Over the Phone in March 2001

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 23:49:45 -0500

“Basically, all the songs, at least that I do, are character driven, and I’m exploring different characters to find out who they are and what they’re up to. They come and introduce themselves to me, and I’m not sure where they come from. They’re probably all living inside me at all times. Half of what makes me up is spirit driven and half of what makes me up is flesh driven, to one degree or another. I guess that’s probably the same for just about everyone. I’m not going to celebrate all my demons as well as all my angels, but I probably should. I probably should be comfortable with all the components, with all these guys who are living inside of me.”
“Well, you’re moving air, but you’re also moving hearts and minds when you’re playing, and that’s where you achieve THE DANCE. When everybody is in touch, and everybody is moving at the same time to the same ethereal pulse. Those are some lofty moments, and that’s when those lofty bells are ringing.”
“I hate to write. I hate to put myself through it. I stop sleeping. When I’m writing I have to abandon reason completely. Writing is tough for me. It’s hard on my body. The best of it and the worst of it comes in…. the quietest hours, between 2 and 5 in the morning. I don’t sleep particularly well during the day, but when I write I don’t sleep, period. Like I say, that’s not easy on your body. I don’t feel good until that moment comes when you know you have something, and then I feel great.”
[In response to why he prefers not to listen to music that is currently en vogue]: “If I’m drawn into their moment, then I’m drawn out of my moment. And then the variety of music we represent is necessarily being compromised.”
“Asheville [North Carolina] is an oasis. I don’t know how that place happened.”

New Work for Those with a Sentimental Streak

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:52:46 -0400

New Work for Those with a Sentimental Streak

Fragment for Michael Burkard

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 03:00:52 -0400

Philip, Stephen, Larry: these are the names
of my fathers. Where is Michael?
He is off in the woods with himself
not being my father. Michael is a ghost,
Michael is unseen, and Michael
drags a fiery sword that unmakes
the world. Michael is un-is.

Michael, when I lost the words
I hated you. It’s in the poems, the ones
not found, not written: the unpoems
in the unbook, the names that tell the story,
and I wanted my name in the book,
St. Michael, if only as a way to show
with your fiery sword
a version of the world
where words
can rise from ash.

Honor Your Father and Mother

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:00:53 -0400

It all seems easy to an innocent mind: there’s a method
to the rules, with children wedged between adults
and dogs in God’s arrangement of the cosmos, and so as a kid
you take orders from the top down. But there’s no provision
for what to do when your parents start acting like fools,
for when your grandmother kidnaps you, when your
mother brandishes a knife at your sleeping throat.
Then you think about that God with his locusts, his plagues
and droughts, whole tribes of the faithful put in time out
for forty years or forty nights, depending on what
felt right. He’s as crazy as the ones who brought you into
the world; no wonder it’s all fucked up. Then one sweet
drunken night you forget the pill and wind up in charge of a life
as well. This is how it begins, how the madness gets handed down.

Rock, Paper, Scissors #2

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:50:33 -0400

We each start out as paper, I suspect—
just a name mused across some blank scrap
to tease out the way your identity will come
to sound and soon suit you, and before
you know it you’re being torn from the woman
who dreamed up your name, who slept
like a rock the night you first fused into her,
though she couldn’t have known at the time
what was settling inside her like a stone,
or how the weight of a child could sink her
in so many ways. She starts out as your rock,
looking after you as carefully as a swan folded
from origami, but quickly you find how easily she can
be cut or crumpled, and so you slice your own

path into the world, finding yourself
forever wedged between the hard places.
And the shortcuts that were supposed
to make everything easier just look
like knife slashes on a weathered map
where some other person, trying to roll
through this life, got fed up with the constant
figuring, the tedious, endless balancing
of life’s equations and remainders.
What are your options in the end?
Dear John or Jane? Cut yourself loose?
Get stoned and cope? The world isn’t
without hope, but there’s no best choice—
it all depends on what you do with your fists.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:18:09 -0400

There really isn’t one that wins
them all. Each time you go to choose
it could fall either way, and even
though it was just a silly game to pass
the long bus ride on the way to the
loathsome school, maybe the real
lesson was in those shaking fists
that met in the aisle on the slow
yellow barge. Maybe the teachers
knew that algebra wouldn’t save us
one wit when our ass was in a sling,
but deciding to cut or cover or smash—
this was what life had in store; no easy
calls, the only trump our vulnerability.

How Low Can You Go?

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 11:16:16 -0400

Everyone thinks loss is the worst, but worse yet
is what isn’t known. Those loves that ended in bitter
words, smashed glasses—we may wonder, What if…
but in our hearts we harbor the truth: no good
was ever to come of that. But the calls that trailed off,
the unanswered letters and drunken, late-night texts:
where did that other person slip off to,
what bright corner of the world welcomed her home?
It sets one on edge, gives the mind leave to roam
the alternative future with that absent kindred soul.
One can hear, in the lull of thoughts over time, the heart and its perfect
limbo beat, lowering the bar of expectations
until you’ll accept anything to rid yourself of the memory
of that dance where your moves were matched without hesitation.

Six Shooters & Sex

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:26:02 -0400

It’s a shame you’re not a fan of westerns because this
has all the makings of a good one: a woman alone,
her husband prospecting in New Mexico, the sudden return
of the fork-tongued old lover. She and that smooth
talker laze in her marital bed, smoking, blowing
rings that waft out the window and carry like beacons
across the dusty plain. (And the worst part is that even
the husband’s dog has been untrue.) In a western,
all of this would make for a hanging: I’d be strung up by your
man and some rowdy boys from the local saloon. Or if I wasn’t
done in by the limb and rope, maybe a shot of lead in the gut.
Then again, I could be the one quick on the draw…
Too bad this life isn’t a movie: we’d solve this fast,
but as it is our betrayals are just minor offenses we wallow in.

Not Quite the Caboose

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:51:01 -0400

Someone’s parents were out of town; it was mid-Spring, and those factors combined with the impending close of the school year were enough to warrant a party. Kegs were obtained, liquor cabinets raided, parents’ drug stashes pilfered— no expense was spared in orchestrating one of those parties which is destined to take its place in the annals of local legend and be reminisced about well beyond one’s qualification for senior citizen discounts.

As is the case at such events, everyone was looking to get laid, but Southern social customs bound us to be irritatingly coy about the business. Throughout the night gender specific huddles formed and reformed as territories were claimed, plans hatched and revised, and the complicated formalities of teenaged mating rituals undertaken. (Or it seemed complicated then; now I know what the formula was: act like you don’t want it and you’ll get it. It was that simple, but the perpetually dancing hormones made it impossible for me to reason clearly.)

Invariably, there was always some girl (often the least attractive of the bunch) who acted as the moral barometer of her immediate clique, weighing in on the various romantic treaties circulating, and usually stalling them in committee out of her own displeasure with being overlooked by the male faction. As the tactics of these girls were more effective than not (the female brain being more developed in the area of higher reasoning than its male counterpart at this time in life), the politics of circumventing the gyno-guardian involved one of two approaches: someone putting the moves on the gatekeeper herself for the good of the team, or separating a potential partner from her pack. The latter of these two strategies was the preferred method, but neither of these plans were as well coordinated as I make out: only through the lens of memory does the picture take on a coherent shape, transforming the past riddles of courtship into a banal replay of nearly everyone’s shared adolescent experience. We acted from instinct, our brains saturated with primordial urges.

I usually fell into the role of the one who would act as a decoy for the good of “the team.” In truth there was no team. Any of my immediate friends would have gladly blinded every other guy there with a fire poker if he thought it would get him laid. I would have done the same, but I was always fairly sure that I wasn’t getting laid; I wasn’t the most popular fellow in high school, and at this stage in my life I’d only had one miserable, floundering experience with a woman. It had been so terrible that I didn’t even fantasize about it when I jerked off. Plus I had a better vocabulary than most of the other guys my age, and such a skill meant I was a good conversationalist, and thus a better distraction.

But things went differently at this party. I was more in a drinking mood, and reluctant to chat up the sober girl who was mothering the prospective females. The host of the party was into classic rock and not the hits of the day (quite a relief, considering this was 1990, when popular music in general just flat out sucked), and so I hovered near the keg, bobbing my head to AC/DC and Nazareth.

By the talk that circulated as beers were being refilled, I could tell that something of significance was afoot. The girl every guy wanted, a new girl at school named Carmen, was being extremely flirty with all the boys— those with and without girlfriends. It was causing quite a stir, and whenever a herd of young men gathered around the keg, the conversation drifted into a detailing of the various positions and techniques each potential suitor might employ if given the chance. The subject of the girls’ talk was understandably different: they were ready to kill the bitch.

My main reason in sticking to the keg and not floating amongst the other guests was that I wanted my fair share of beer. Remember: we were all underage and so we couldn’t just run out and get more when the keg dried up. Too many times I’d chipped in on the cost of a keg only to come away with fewer than three cups. I wasn’t about to let that happen on this occasion, and while I held my ground firmly for a greater stretch of time than what was probably advisable, I eventually realized my bladder was about to rupture. I recalled the ill fate of Tycho Brahe and topped off my Dixie cup of Rolling Rock before setting of in search of a bathroom.

The house was large, and every door seemed to be locked; if it wasn’t locked it opened onto a scene of couples making out or engaged in private conversation— I was greeted several times with hostile stares and a string of profanities. I finally stumbled into a dark bedroom where a beacon of light shone from an open door in a corner that led to a lavish bathroom which, judging by the Minnie Mouse theme, belonged to the youngest resident of the house. I entered, shut the door, and took a substantial piss— a release of the bladder so necessary and pleasant that I let out a little moan of relief. As I was shaking off the last few drops, I heard voices in the bedroom outside. I didn’t feel like being trapped in a bathroom while a couple fondled each other for hours on the other side of the door, so I made for a quick exit. As I entered the bedroom a guy’s voice said:

“What the fuck? Keck! Dude! You are just in time.”

Coming from the brightly lit bathroom into the dark bedroom, I had no idea what I was just in time for. The bathroom light illuminated four figures standing in a half circle, and after a few seconds I was able to make out that it was Jason, Brad, T.C., and Rick— friends of mine, certainly, but not close ones.

“I said you four was okay, but I didn’t say nothing about him.”

I looked to my right, and half dressed on the bed lay Carmen.

“Oh, come on,” Jason said. “Keck’s cool. What’s one more?”

I started to say something, but my heart had begun racing, and the room seemed wobbly.

“Well, whatever. But I told you it had to be one at a time.”

If Carmen was angling for popularity amongst the boys at her new school, she was on a path destined for stardom. But something in her voice had a tone more of resignation than eagerness. Her presence on the bed seemed obligatory, as though she were a contract player in some adolescent studio of sexual imagination.

“Good deal, but Keck—” Jason turned his head toward me in the faint light and spoke as he undid his pants “— you gotta go last.”

“Okay,” I said, and I leaned against the wall, completely disoriented by what was taking place. I, too, had dreamed of Carmen since she first appeared in school, and I had often dreamed of group sex with Carmen, but in my more typical fantasy which involved me as the lone male amongst a bevy of beauties. But opportunity arrived unannounced, and so I braced myself to take advantage of it anyway I could.

There was very little sexiness about the whole affair, though in retrospect it has taken on elements of appeal in my imagination that I know for a fact weren’t there at the time; Carmen’s open legs were not an invitation of willing acceptance that welcomed each boy a little closer to manhood— her panting cries of “fuck me” were not urgings to do just that, but rather a mantra to speed each guy toward a rapid finish. I had the notion at the time, though I am more certain of it now, that Carmen’s decision to be the center of a gang-bang was a direct result of her own desire to belong and be accepted. And that’s a pretty simplistic rendering of the whole matter, but the truth often is that simple: people want to belong and be important and be loved, and sometimes we go about getting what we want in weird ways.

I wanted all those things, too, and Carmen, but stressful situations are havoc on my digestive system, especially when I’ve been drinking. When the last of the four guys had finished and it was my turn— alas, less than 10 minutes had elapsed since I’d left the bathroom; I’d been watching the digital clock next to the bed to see how long it took each guy as a way to measure my own masculinity— I felt myself on the edge of puking, and I could not produce an erection. Carmen looked relieved, but that did not deter her from joining in the group mockery of my inability to step up to the plate and have sex in front of a bunch of other guys, like a real man.

“What are you, some kind of faggot?” she yelled as I lurched into the bathroom and unloaded the contents of my stomach into the toilet. I shut and locked the door and fell asleep on the cool linoleum floor, slipping out to my car before daylight, past the sleeping bodies strewn about the house. I spent the rest of the weekend worrying that my limp performance would make the gossip rounds at school, but I overestimated my own importance in the wake of Carmen’s feat: thrilled by tales of an orgy, the grape vine was indifferent to my inept presence during the act.

And I write songs too...

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 23:28:22 -0400

Well, I write the lyrics anyway. The music for this song, “Hungry,” was written by my good friend Bret Mosley. He also performs the song in this demo which was recorded, if I recall correctly, in his bathroom in Brooklyn.

A Damn Fine Story

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:15:04 -0400

This short story “Trilobites” is one of the best stories I’ve read in a long time. And it was first printed in 1977. If you like good writing along the lines of Raymond Carver or Tobias Wolff, then you need to check this out. The writer, Breece D’J Pancake, would very likely have been one of the great short story writers of the 20th century had he not blown his head off with a shotgun in his mid-20s.