Not Found

  Chapter Four. Chronilogical Spiderweb Scan.
Stay with me.

Characters:
Simone
Peter Orlovsky
John Marie St. Francis
Me
the Pieta
The World Trade Center
Professional Arabs
Arablings
the Vegan
Modest Mouse (a rock band)
Two Tight Rope Walkers
A Headless Statue of Liberty
My Father
A psychotic Italian

1. A long time ago, in a dentists waiting room, a little boy picks up a magazine. He sees a picture of the World Trade Center under construction. He takes a pen and draws a line from the top of one tower to the top of the other.

2. Michaelangelo's Piata is shipped from Rome to the United States for the New York World's Fair. People in Rome are WORRIED. What if the pieta gets hurt in America? You know those crazy Americans might --might . . .

3. My father, age six, who is still getting over his father's death, goes with his crazy, glamerous mother to the New York Worlds Fair. Sees the piata. Yearns to be catholic.

4. The piata is shipped back to Rome and proptly desecrated by an Itallian.

5. The boy who drew the line in the magazine in the waiting room has grown up. He calls his brother and says today's the day. They dress up as window cleaners and sneak to the top of the World Trade Center. They rig a tightrope from one tower to the other and walk it. Traffic stops for hours; everyone loves it; the men come down and are congratulated, photographed, applauded, and arrested for disturbing the peace.

jump to Summer, 2001.

6. Peter Orlovsky knocks on my front door teenage date style. My crazy, glamerous father, who is STILL getting over his father's death, tells us the story of the Pieta and asks Peter why he thinks it was attacked in Rome and not in America. Peter glances around the room looking desperately for a way out. In the car later, he tells me he feels very sorry for me and invites me to come to New York. I tell him it's not time yet.

7. John Marie St. Francis and Simone go help out at a summer camp where they teach ARABLINGS how to FLY PLANES. Simone teaches John Marie about Modest Mouse.

8. John Marie goes to New York, wants to meet Peter. These are emails.

From: Marian
To: Peter Orlovsky
Date: Spt 4th

Pete-baby,
If St. Francis (of the John Marie) variety finds you, be sweet to him. No sudden movements, either, he's Catholic, okay? And crazy. But I send him to you in lui of flowers. Don't let him blow anything up. xo. M.

From: JMSF
TO: Marian
Date: Spt 5th 2001

don't stop there. JMSF. PS. I dont want to be rude, but when we started talking about you, it was forced, and after crude attempts, we realized it, and it just got all silly. Maybe that could be a huge compliment from me to you. Peter is a very intresting individual. Side Note: have you ever noticed that people who cant control their tempers are usually not super-smart?

From: Peter Orlovsky
To: Marian
Date: Spt 6th

Hi Bayleaf,
John Marie came and went in just two days. He called like an old friend and had a girl in a white dress with him. His girl and me jumped on the subway, but he got scared and jumped back on the platform, and we waved to him as we were whisked away. He waved sadly back. NYC fills my heart with opposites. We need to talk and remember all the old times so I can prop my mind and forget about my fear of not accomplishing something meagre colourful on this whitewash world to which i am now betrothed. Me and john marie and boomer went to go see apocolypse now with 53 xtra minutes at the imax well i had $11 but i need to eat and buy dense books so john marie paid for my ticket and for awhile i felt small and helpless like JM was my older brother when he snuck me into my first rated R but i guess thats because he behaves like he knows whats going on in my mind and his too and that all this shit'll soon be over so why care??
peter.

9. First day of school for me and John Marie and the Vegan (whom we dont know yet) is September 11th. Professional Arabs fly planes into the World Trade Center. My father calls and tells me the story of the little boy in the waiting room who grew up to be the tightrope walker. Peter sends me a picture of himself smiling and waving against a backdrop of billowing smoke and death. I show the picture to John Marie, who laughes.

10. John Marie and I meet the Vegan. (Who is really Ivan K.) We bond. I get kicked out of school, the Vegan drops out of school and takes off for San Francisco, though not before leaving me a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra, which begins with a stort of a tightrope walker. I get back into school. John Marie and I drive to Tijuana.

11. I go to New York and find a tiny statue of liberty with no head on the wrought iron fence outside Peter's current warehouse. I put it in my pocket for safekeeping.


13. The next summer comes around and Modest Mouse plays for John Marie in CO before coming to Kansas City. I get tickets. The Vegan comes to Kansas City. I am so excited to see him I crash my car and miss the concert.

14. The next summer comes around and John Marie graduates, goes to San Francsisco, calls me and says, "What's the Vegan'sm phone number?" I can't remember. I am rude. I say goodbye and slam the phone.

15. John Marie dies.

16. Peter calls to say he wishes he could come to California for the funeral. The Vegan writes to say he believes it was a suicide.

17. I just keep writing.

  ¶ 3:45 PM

  Chapter Three. Thomas Aquinas College, take one.

Senior year of homeschooled highschool. I was ready for a big change. "I want to go to a HUGE school," I announced. "On the east coast. A liberal, gigantic, secular school in a sprawling metropolis. I want to major in photography and film and creative writing." I made many big gestures to show how serious I was, how enthusiastic.

"Sounds good," said my mother.
"We'll talk about it," said my father.

They handed me a pamphlet. For a tiny Catholic west coast school with no electives. Thomas Aquinas College. I glanced over it. Dresscode, curfew, heavy on the Aristotle. I looked at my father, then at my mother. Then back at my father.

"This is a joke, right?"

Wrong.

I called my best friend Chi, a skinny mohawked kid, and we held a war council in his treehouse. We smoked many cigarettes and drank a couple local beers he'd filched from his grandparents. The plan of action: Let the adults think they've won. For now. Get a job in LA, save enough money for a one way ticket back to Kansas City, where I belonged. Go from there.

"I mean, who needs Califonia anyway?" I asked him as our meeting drew to a close.

"Not us," he said dismissively. "I hear you can't even swim in their ocean without getting hepatitis."

FOUR YEARS LATER

I get it now.  ¶ 3:26 PM

  Chapter Two. John Marie St. Francis, pt. One.

"I don't want to be 30 - so grimily wholesome. I want to be dead, or a sociopath, or FILTHY rich, or a travelling bum, or a full time student, or married and wise. I want to be what I like my women to be - either extraordinarily good or extraordinarily twisted, but forever beautiful. I'm sick. Help."

-- JMSF, old email in my inbox, dated Aug 2nd, 2001, 5:01 AM.  ¶ 5:45 PM

  Chapter 1.7

The Boys of Thomas Aquinas College Again

1. Bail you out
2. Buy you drinks
3. Suggest that maybe you drink too much  ¶ 4:06 PM

  Chapter 1.5
The Boys of Thomas Aquinas College.

1. Drink too much
2. Apologize for things you weren't even aware they did
3. Open doors for you ALL the time, as if it were legal to shoot them if they didn't
4. Patronize, patronize, patronize
5. Then pray for your soul

  ¶ 1:32 PM

  Chapter One.
JAIL.



So I review my circumstances. Let's see. I'm alone. I'm . . . pretty drunk. I'm in a cement and metal room. I'm wearing a blue jumpsuit. ("Roll up the pantslegs," the female guard had said to me. "So you don't trip on them. You're awful little." Thanks. Bitch.) There is nothing in the room except me, a plastic inch thick mattress (what are those stains i wonder?), and a stack of three year old magazines. One of them has Operah on the cover. Over her smile a previous tenant had scrawled It's a White Bitch Trapped in a Black Bitches Body.

That fucked with my head for fifteen minutes.

There's a sign nailed to the wall about information to post bail: it says BEVERLY HILLS 90210. I think of Tori Spelling and laugh.

There's a clock outside my locked door, but there's also a cement post in front of it. I twist around, looking out the window from every direction, but I can't see the numbers because the post is in the way. What time is it? I press the buzzer on the wall. Long pause. Then a metallic voice: "Identify Yourself." "Marian?" I guess. "Your NUMBER." Says the voice. Number. Ummm. Number, number, number. I read the number off the pretty white plastic bracelet the nice men in blue gave me. "What do you need?" asks the voice. "What time is it?" I ask. "You have a clock outside your cell," says the voice.

Hmmm. This is gonna be a long night.

What would Ghandi do? What would John Marie do? (He'd laugh, I think.) What would Victor E. Frankle do?

I don't know. But I know what I did. I passed out. Woke up. Went home. And drank half a bottle of champagne before stumbling into my morning lab class at Thomas Aquinas College.




  ¶ 7:40 PM