all the way up and playback again. The first recording I tried my iPhone, got home and immediately realized I needed an upgrade. It sounded like crap. Now I carry my beloved Zoom H4n – you can capture four-track stereo recording anywhere. Even from inside a Dora the Explorer purse. If you leave enough zipper room to clear its coaxial mic.
To me, no matter what words he is saying, Sig’s voice sounds soft and raspy, except when he wants to sound important. Then he tightens his throat and aims his chin down toward his clavicle shooting for some über smarty guy he must have been in his past. When he does that chin down thing? Kind of he looks like he needs to burp. But with very stern eyebrow action.
Marlene is making bacon. She laughs and laughs – a deep throaty Rwandan one. You heard me. I’ve got that laugh recorded. If you’ve never heard a Rwandan laugh, you are missing something mega-cool.
I say, “I’ve never heard a laugh so deep.”
She says, “It is my dark continent. It lives in my belly!”
Isn’t that cool? I have no idea what the fuck that means, but isn’t it cool?
“What does that even mean?” I ask.
Again the laugh. I record it.
“It is a statement made by history. I had to eat it, and now it is in my belly.” She laughs and I laugh too, my laugh riding hers like a girl on a pony.
“Can you teach me to laugh like that?” She just smiles. All I know about Rwanda is words like genocide and Tutsis and
Hutus. Piles of skulls and bones. From TV. That’s why I say her laugh has something in it. Mega.
With her back to me, she says, “Someday, you will learn to laugh with your whole life.”
Bacon sizzles and pops. I can smell pig heating up.
This is where I spend most afternoons and evenings – in Marlene’s loft, reading her shelves and shelves of books from a gazillion years ago – books that drip sex from the annals of history. They are the only books she owns. Like an antique sexuality library. You’d be amazed how much cooler old books are than new ones. Take Havelock Ellis. Sexual Inversion . 1897. Man that Havie was one weird and zany guy. My favorites of his though is Love and Pain : The Sexual Impulse in Women . 1903. Why can’t I find any books like this written by non-dead folks?
Then there’s the collected pamphlets of Abner Kneeland – the last guy to be tried for blasphemy in America. Apparently Mr. Christian got a little loose with his sex talk. Started some weird utopian cult called The Freethinkers society. Right next to that is a buddy of his – Charles Knowlton. The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People . 1832. This guy was prosecuted a bunch of times. The book was about birth control. Figures. Next to that, the collected speeches of Victoria Woodhull, including “The Scare-crows of Sexual Slavery” (1873). Very Emma Goldman. Of course Emma is up there too, along with photography and art and medical and philosophy books. And all manner of pornology – that’s what Marlene calls it – as long as it was published before 1945. And everything ever written by the Marquis de Sade.
One word for you. Justine .
With her big man hands Marlene makes bacon. With big man calves she struts around the kitchen in a midnight blue silk robe and platinum wig and alligator pumps. She bends and presents me with a plate of bacon, her lips red as a coca cola can, her eyes circled with Kohl, with her Adam’s apple bobbing she says, as deeply and sweetly as the real Marlene, “Won’t you
have some Schwein, Liebchen?” Her skin so dark I want to lick it. If I was ever gonna choose a mother, this would be her. Chocolate Madonna.
I fill my mouth with sizzled pig. Possibly my favorite food ever.
Marlene is a manwoman. I first met Marlene at the Wet Spot below Queen Anne Hill. Before it went porno they had wonderful horrible punk band shows. Marlene was at the door taking the benjamins. Since no alcohol was sold or served, we could all get in
To me, no matter what words he is saying, Sig’s voice sounds soft and raspy, except when he wants to sound important. Then he tightens his throat and aims his chin down toward his clavicle shooting for some über smarty guy he must have been in his past. When he does that chin down thing? Kind of he looks like he needs to burp. But with very stern eyebrow action.
Marlene is making bacon. She laughs and laughs – a deep throaty Rwandan one. You heard me. I’ve got that laugh recorded. If you’ve never heard a Rwandan laugh, you are missing something mega-cool.
I say, “I’ve never heard a laugh so deep.”
She says, “It is my dark continent. It lives in my belly!”
Isn’t that cool? I have no idea what the fuck that means, but isn’t it cool?
“What does that even mean?” I ask.
Again the laugh. I record it.
“It is a statement made by history. I had to eat it, and now it is in my belly.” She laughs and I laugh too, my laugh riding hers like a girl on a pony.
“Can you teach me to laugh like that?” She just smiles. All I know about Rwanda is words like genocide and Tutsis and
Hutus. Piles of skulls and bones. From TV. That’s why I say her laugh has something in it. Mega.
With her back to me, she says, “Someday, you will learn to laugh with your whole life.”
Bacon sizzles and pops. I can smell pig heating up.
This is where I spend most afternoons and evenings – in Marlene’s loft, reading her shelves and shelves of books from a gazillion years ago – books that drip sex from the annals of history. They are the only books she owns. Like an antique sexuality library. You’d be amazed how much cooler old books are than new ones. Take Havelock Ellis. Sexual Inversion . 1897. Man that Havie was one weird and zany guy. My favorites of his though is Love and Pain : The Sexual Impulse in Women . 1903. Why can’t I find any books like this written by non-dead folks?
Then there’s the collected pamphlets of Abner Kneeland – the last guy to be tried for blasphemy in America. Apparently Mr. Christian got a little loose with his sex talk. Started some weird utopian cult called The Freethinkers society. Right next to that is a buddy of his – Charles Knowlton. The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People . 1832. This guy was prosecuted a bunch of times. The book was about birth control. Figures. Next to that, the collected speeches of Victoria Woodhull, including “The Scare-crows of Sexual Slavery” (1873). Very Emma Goldman. Of course Emma is up there too, along with photography and art and medical and philosophy books. And all manner of pornology – that’s what Marlene calls it – as long as it was published before 1945. And everything ever written by the Marquis de Sade.
One word for you. Justine .
With her big man hands Marlene makes bacon. With big man calves she struts around the kitchen in a midnight blue silk robe and platinum wig and alligator pumps. She bends and presents me with a plate of bacon, her lips red as a coca cola can, her eyes circled with Kohl, with her Adam’s apple bobbing she says, as deeply and sweetly as the real Marlene, “Won’t you
have some Schwein, Liebchen?” Her skin so dark I want to lick it. If I was ever gonna choose a mother, this would be her. Chocolate Madonna.
I fill my mouth with sizzled pig. Possibly my favorite food ever.
Marlene is a manwoman. I first met Marlene at the Wet Spot below Queen Anne Hill. Before it went porno they had wonderful horrible punk band shows. Marlene was at the door taking the benjamins. Since no alcohol was sold or served, we could all get in
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