The end. Aug. 28, 1958-June 25, 2009
I remember he was too thin and tubercular. He was always somewhere on the scale of "the end" for years. Some people think he died a long time ago. Maybe he did and we won't admit it. We bought into the disappearing act. The con. We like being lied to and we do it best to ourselves. Nobody lies to us better than we do. Frank Sinatra did it to us. Elvis did it to us. Liz Taylor did it. Lisa Minnelli. Other female impersonators. Male imposters. Big fans of Mike's. We can think of many others whose careers died, they were memorialized, buried, cremated, innocence forgotten....... and then overnight they were reincarnated. And in the end, nobody dances. Not a soul. Maybe that's what "come backs" are all about. You die and then you "come back" bigger and better than before.
What happened on June 25th is nothing new. It's about time. Not that he deserved it because he didn't. He didn't earn it. It's not like earning a reward for walking across a parking lot or escaping a movie theater in the middle of a bad movie. As soon as he was out of sight it happened, like climbing stairs to a hotel room. Like the eyes of a woman standing in a doorway without moving, worried she had too much perfume. He reinvented himself with broken fingernails. He was reborn, repackaged and redesigned in the mind of a gullible public like hungry derelicts with no destination.
Highlights of his life: He curled his lips and sat on the bed. His fingers were always in my pants. He was too anxious to get my money. His soul was ripped to pieces. His mouth bit my lower lip. He danced like a great author who was a lover of man and beast. Our sickly eyes watched him starve. We never let him kiss our sister. We let him drag innocence into the sewer. He had an odor of oldness. He put his hands on his hips. Disinterested in merely sitting down, he annoyed us with the absurdity of a hopelessly bad lover. He made gestures with his fingers. He pulled off his coat. He talked too little, too much. He was scared and smiled weakly at what he'd done. It took a long time for him to breathe without rouge. He didn't know what was happening.
I thought about it, how I felt, not feeling anything. I had liquor on my breath. But it was about time anyway, meaning it was like turning out a light, sleeping in a chair, jumping off a bed, smoking a cigarette, going outside, tearing up the lyrics to a song. What took him so long to shake hands, to drink and dance? When the mask concealing his unimpressed expressions knocked on the door to deliver his invitation to the dance, what took him so long to open it? Was he pale and trembling? Was he prepared? Sad that a man's death isn't his own, that we all bought tickets to this spectacle. We were corporate sponsors. we were the organ donors dragging out the inevitable. We felt dirty and guilty the way you do when you get away with a crime. When he crossed the street in front of a speeding truck, we watched him through the window. We saw him coming around the corner but we didn't run to stop him.
I remember he was too thin and tubercular. He was always somewhere on the scale of "the end" for years. Some people think he died a long time ago. Maybe he did and we won't admit it. We bought into the disappearing act. The con. We like being lied to and we do it best to ourselves. Nobody lies to us better than we do. Frank Sinatra did it to us. Elvis did it to us. Liz Taylor did it. Lisa Minnelli. Other female impersonators. Male imposters. Big fans of Mike's. We can think of many others whose careers died, they were memorialized, buried, cremated, innocence forgotten....... and then overnight they were reincarnated. And in the end, nobody dances. Not a soul. Maybe that's what "come backs" are all about. You die and then you "come back" bigger and better than before.
What happened on June 25th is nothing new. It's about time. Not that he deserved it because he didn't. He didn't earn it. It's not like earning a reward for walking across a parking lot or escaping a movie theater in the middle of a bad movie. As soon as he was out of sight it happened, like climbing stairs to a hotel room. Like the eyes of a woman standing in a doorway without moving, worried she had too much perfume. He reinvented himself with broken fingernails. He was reborn, repackaged and redesigned in the mind of a gullible public like hungry derelicts with no destination.
Highlights of his life: He curled his lips and sat on the bed. His fingers were always in my pants. He was too anxious to get my money. His soul was ripped to pieces. His mouth bit my lower lip. He danced like a great author who was a lover of man and beast. Our sickly eyes watched him starve. We never let him kiss our sister. We let him drag innocence into the sewer. He had an odor of oldness. He put his hands on his hips. Disinterested in merely sitting down, he annoyed us with the absurdity of a hopelessly bad lover. He made gestures with his fingers. He pulled off his coat. He talked too little, too much. He was scared and smiled weakly at what he'd done. It took a long time for him to breathe without rouge. He didn't know what was happening.
I thought about it, how I felt, not feeling anything. I had liquor on my breath. But it was about time anyway, meaning it was like turning out a light, sleeping in a chair, jumping off a bed, smoking a cigarette, going outside, tearing up the lyrics to a song. What took him so long to shake hands, to drink and dance? When the mask concealing his unimpressed expressions knocked on the door to deliver his invitation to the dance, what took him so long to open it? Was he pale and trembling? Was he prepared? Sad that a man's death isn't his own, that we all bought tickets to this spectacle. We were corporate sponsors. we were the organ donors dragging out the inevitable. We felt dirty and guilty the way you do when you get away with a crime. When he crossed the street in front of a speeding truck, we watched him through the window. We saw him coming around the corner but we didn't run to stop him.
