A SPIDER ON MY TONGUE

By T.M. Wright

People in coats and hats, people carrying umbrellas, carrying briefcases, carrying babies on their backs, and people lugging groceries home; people arm-in-arm; people in polo shirts, in hand-me-down dresses, in gray suits, people laughing, sweating, people carrying tennis rackets, showing off new shoes, coaxing youngsters to come along, people looking in shop windows.

Old people who have trouble walking, old people jogging, old couples smiling affectionately at one another, as lovers do.

Teenage couples with their hands on each others' rear ends; boys on street corners learning about lust.

"Nothing," they say, "is quite as fucking meaningless and as fucking misunderstood as death."

"It amounts, after all, to no more than passing through a doorway that isn't a doorway into a room that isn't a room in a house that's an entire goddamned universe," they say, without apparent irony.

"It's like giving up crayons for one's fingertips," they say. And they laugh at that, too, as I do.

"Oh yes, in dying," they say, "but not in death. It takes your breath away, and then you hear, and then you see."

"Good God," they say, "we need it, hunger, every last one and all of us, else we wouldn't be!" which makes them laugh as well.

It is this about hunger: it's neither underrated nor overrated. It is simply what it is-need, and they (these departed) are correct, of course; we wouldn't be without it.

And so they, these departed, come and go like hunger pangs, and I am left only with shadows I can count on one hand, on two fingers, and need, which is hunger, too, and hunger, which is hunger.

You see, understand this, I came upon them on a blue note on a bald table making hay in the sunrise, and so I shot them, and so.

"Full House," she declared. "What do I need with a full house?" and spread her legs.

These are my puppies. Take one. Take one. Give it your home. Take one. Take this puppy. Take this puppy. These are my puppies. Take one. Give it your home.

I have always enjoyed it. Naked. Ennjoyyed it. Ran around naked as a child. Young child. Verry very youngg child. Two years. That's the time for nakedness. Two years. That's the best time for nakedness.

So many things in those other stories that were never told, and only because I didn't remember them or I didn't have the time to tell them, and I want so much to tell them here, but I don't have the time, of course (You can see that, can't you? You can feel that, can't you? That I don't have the time. I don't have the time.). This is like one very exquisitely long extended gasp I'm involved in, or a long and exquisite exhale-I can't tell the difference. Exhales, inhales, blue faces on blue tables.

But I want to tell you much, all, if that were possible, but it isn't. I want to tell you about Phyllis's sister, whose name was Janice, and who was alive at the time (at the time Phyllis and I were together, always together), and she was hooked on me, though I wasn't hooked on her (though she was as lush and charming as a summer meadow) because I was so hooked on Phyllis, and she, Janice, would take me aside a lot and tell me I was having "crazy notions," because she'd heard me talking to no one she could see (Phyllis) and she was "awfully concerned" about me.

So one day in the middle of her concern, she kissed me full and moist and ripe with herself, her good body, pushed hard against me, and I got an erection the size of a dirigible, and I tried like hell to chase it away (thought about Yogi Berra, thought about Richard Nixon, thought about rabbit stew, no luck getting rid of the dirigible-size, unwanted erection [which is an oxymoron, if you think about it, if you think about it-the body itself never doesn't want an erection; the body itself grants them and needs them; it's part of that hunger thing]. Oh, I am being so lucid in my hunger. I've read that's part of the process.

And there she was, Janice, Phyllis's lush-and-charming-as-a-summer-meadow sister (older sister, two years) pressing her ripe body against me, and there's my unwanted erection pushing back, and then Phyllis appears in the doorway, and smiles, and cocks her beautiful head, and comes over and strokes my erection through my jeans, and I cum all over myself and Janice stops kissing me and looks at the cum mess in my pants, and she smiles (very like Phyllis's smile, a little open-mouthed, a horizontal vagina on the face) and she cocks her head, as Phyllis did, and Phyllis leans over and shows me herself beneath her green dress

I have never wanted to cum in anyone's face. It has been on my mind thatttt paraagraphh for days.

Ten hours sleep while the passing misery watches and Phyllis strokes and Sam looks on merrily.

I remember the streets at night in another place which was not Manhattan. In that small place which was not Manhattan. Afafterr I had gone from Manhattan, afater I had run from Manhattnean.

It was Ithaca and its streets at night were serene. An occasional street lamp. Tall and turn of the century. No garish light. Only a soft light. Incandescent and yellow orange. A good soft yellow orange.

People smoked beneath the streetlamps. I saw fedoras and zoot suits there, and dresses that hung to mid calf, under thoese toall lamps, in the good soft glow of those tall almps.

I became fixated on the night and the orange-yellow glow, the people in fedoras, zoot suits and long dresses, smoking. They were always there, though only at night, or maybe, like stars, they were there in the mornings and afternoons, but the sunlight washed them away.

I am feeling lucid again. I thank my eggs for it. And my muse. My Phyllis watching.

I became fixated on the night streets in Ithaca, and the Zoot suits and the people smoking in the orange yellow glow of the tall streetlamps.

I must tell you, some of them moved off, on the streets beneath those streetlamps, in the dark, in Ithaca.

I lived with one of these people. His name was Galway and he was an Irishman who died under one of the lamps in a recent century.

He was smooth-faced and dark-eyed and spoke in a rich brogue that made me believe in him.

He lived in a tall, latter-century brick townhouse on Gibson Street that was slated for demolition. He had lived in it, he said, for "cup'la decades, I'm guessin'."

I met the Beatles. It wasn't easy. It was 1966 and they were very big. They were in New York City, getting ready for the Sullivan Show and I was in the same hotel. I'd gotten to know a small red-head named Irene. She was as tiny as a Yorkshire terrier and she worked at the hotel, in their office, as a file clerk.

She was fun to talk to because she was lively and earnest, a combination I've always enjoyed (those characteristics also described Phyllis, from time to time).

She introduced me to The Beatles as they were leaving the hotel to have lunch at Sardi's. They were leaving one at a time, which, Irene said, was their tactic to avoid cameramen (she did not say "paparazzi").

She introduced me to Paul McCartney, first. She said, as he passed us quickly, on his way to the front doors of the hotel, "Paul, this is my friend, Abner," and Paul nodded at her and looked at me, nodded and said, "Howdy, Mate," and was on his way.

Oh, the stories I could tell, the stories I need to tell. It's like a hunger. It's like a need, which is hunger, which is need.

I'm as sure of that date as I am of my own eyes. August 29. Soon, it will be autumn and I'll be happier.

I do not believe in Sasquatch, but I believe there's a large being standing at my window.

When I speak to it I get no reply, but I feel rebuked, nonetheless. I feel pain. It flows from my head to my limbs to my lower parts.

Phyllis and I and her parents drank tea one night. The tea was Earl Grey, though Phyllis's mother, sweet and attentive in a pleated pink skirt and matching, long-sleeved top, white pumps and gloves, liked Earl Greyer, which is slightly more robust.

"I prefer a more sobering tea," she explained from her folding metal chair, then nodded and smiled sweetly at me, first, then at Phyllis, who nodded back, but did not smile (because, I later learned, we were visiting her parents, in their East 89th street apartment, only because I had insisted we visit them: "They need to meet me, Phyllis," I said. And she said, "No they don't," which hurt my feelings, and I said so, and that-my hurt feelings-was what persuaded Phyllis about the visit).

There were insects in the apartment where we had our tea. They were like the very insects that inhabit my cupboards now. Very like the insects I used to find on Phyllis's naked body in the morning, or when I got up to pee in the middle of the night and saw her body exposed by lamplight from beyond my window.

I tried not to notice them, the ones in Phyllis's parents' apartment, but it was difficult, because they crawled on the floor around me by sixes and eights and twelves, and they crawled around her mother and father, too, and around her, and they even crawled on Mrs. Pellaprat's beautiful pink pleated skirt and Mr. Pellaprat's nice suit, and Phyllis's low cut, startlingly green dress, so it looked like it was alive, and, at last, I said, "You seem to have something of an insect problem," and Mr. Pellaprat guffawed, and Mrs. Pellaprat (her first name was Grace) guffawed, and Phyllis slapped the back of my head and whispered, "Asshole!"

Mrs. Pellaprat leaned forward so her pretty face was only a foot or so from mine, and explained, "Well, you know, my boy, it's part of the situation," and Mr. Pellaprat said, "Situation," and Phyllis repeated, "Asshole!" then slapped me again.

And Mrs. Pellaprat said, "Oh we do, my boy. They're only a part of the situation, you know. Only a part of the situation."

"We're thinking of training them," said Mr. Pellaprat. "They're highly intelligent. Especially the silverfish. They have a mind of their own. The silverfish." He was a tall man, exquisite looking, like a model for GQ, and I could see how he and his wife had produced a beauty like Phyllis.

I knew nothing about them, and I knew only a little about Phyllis, then. In that tiny apartment in Manhattan.

I was told once, this: When it ends it does not end, you know. Life, that is. I mean the life of the body, even. We stick around for quite a while, searching through the gray matter that remains for bits of memory, something to grab onto, something to keep us here. Think of the gray matter, then think of how people eat Sushi. Think about it. There we are, we've drawn our last breath, but the gray matter remains…what's the word?-viable. There's stuff in it. Memories and ideas and thoughts and philosophies and places. So we go in there, into that remaining bit of gray matter, or the gray matter goes into itself-who knows?-and hangs around for a while. A long while, sometimes. Years, sometimes, though who can say? We're caught in that place deep inside the body, which is dead, and we know nothing really beyond what we can get from the viable gray matter-memories of blue sky and quaint farmhouses, maybe, or memories of lakes or oceans or boys with sweet faces. We become a part of all that. It becomes our present. I think it's no different at all from what we experience before we die. Unless the body is filled with formaldehyde, of course, which kills all the gray matter, all the little cells where memory is stored.

Phyllis stands behind me and comforts me as I write. She leans over me now and again and kisses my cheek; I know this because my cheek feels cool for a moment. And she strokes my chest, my face, my cock, and I become aroused. She whispers to me at these times that she's pleased: "All of that just for me!" she says. And I tell her, though not in so many words, Yes, it's all for you! As ever.

Sam stands at the window that looks out on the dim woods and declares, in his way, that he's not who I think he is and that I should take heed from the words of those I do not know, meaning, I think, the passing misery, which speaks to me in warnings and allegories and nonsense, though it's all nonsense, of course, because, I've learned, there is nothing that isn't nonsense, anywhere.

All of these passages. All this passing. From zygote to birth to otherlife. Around and around. Or straight ahead, afterward, to a place we can not define.

I believe that I'm very, very hungry. I don't know anymore. I can't be certain. Hunger is a need, you understand.

I look down at myself and I don't see much, either because there's not much to see or because hunger is affecting my vision, at last.

Or I could be living in my gray matter; making what I find there into a storyline to live in and be part of-a little house in the dim woods surrounded by ghosts and lust.

But there is, you see, nothing wrong with me that blissful ignorance and a meaningful roll in the hay can't fix.