First Draft of Something New

He is talking, but she doesn’t listen. She just sits and stares, smokes an endless chain of slender cigarettes and stares. The chain of expressions that move across his face unsettles her: it seems too mechanistic, changing rapidly without regard to meaning, even more hideous when coupled with the wild gesticulations of his arms. And with a shaking tremor in his voice he speaks of things he deems important: politics, the media, war and sex (the support of the former and the depravity of the latter), religion and values, the team’s performance during spring training, the heathen neighbors and their failure to mow the lawn or trim the hedges, the Bomb, the prized vintage waiting in the cellar, the fine workings of Italian cobblers, society at large, beginnings and endings and the occasional in-between.

What fascinates her are not his words – no, not those flimsy things, signifying nothing beyond the pompous rotundity of his hollow rhythm – but his face, his shape, the shadows being born into brief existence along his jaw line and neck, the way he tilts his head when recalling random bits of factoid and theorem, the way he clicks his tongue against his teeth when formulating train of thought, or how he cracks his knuckles when aggravated. The shape, the form lying softly buried, the very essence of the thing.

He slurps too loudly from his coffee mug and winces, blowing over his tongue with a soft whistling that he recoils from, as if surprised at his own capacity for error. He leans back in his chair and rests his head against the white paneling of the refrigerator, upon which rest dated coupons for things not yet bought. His beard is the color of melted snow on asphalt and she wonders how this came to be. How they came to be. That from all the manifold possibilities of chance and fortune this was the future she stumbled into. And she had always considered herself careful, calculating, mercenary even, but still her steps tumbled like the rolling of dice. And here she was – one bad roll, snake eyes, game over, trapped in the inertial wastes of the suburban American dream. Fit fate, happy end, coffee in the morning, bridge and chardonnay in the evening. And all the time in between.

Her lack of attention has been noticed. He clears his throat. “Ah-hem.”

Giggling, she bows her head. “Amen,” she says.

His fingers stroke the nonexistent angles of his chin. His eyebrow rises. His scholarly pose. “What’s that,” he asks.

“Nothing, nothing. Just being silly. Go on.”

“Well yes, um, as I was saying, the proto-Gnostic leanings of the Cathars represented a Manichean world view that I contend seeped into the hermetic tradition and from there on into the Masonic lodge, thereby contaminating the socio-economic and political structures of the Western world. The so-called scholars who reject my letters have their heads up their you-know-whats, I’ll tell you. Heresy to Masonry to liberalism and communism, leaving no social values whatsoever. It’s as plain as day.”

Eyes closed, she rubs her temples and nods. She wants to scream, wants to self destruct in an explosion bred from the volatile meeting of boredom of dissatisfaction, desire and impotence, things that matter and the self-important theories of an embittered fucking shoe salesman. The devastation resulting from the explosion wouldn’t be so bad; no more dishes to clean, no clothes to wash, no more of her husband’s secondhand theories inherited from Xeroxed pamphlets and late-night TV. No more anything when it comes down to it, just the inverted architecture of a smoldering crater marring the stenciled landscape of cul-de-sac nightmare.

Her husband has much to say, and the problem lies in the fact that it all amounts to nothing more than the marionette posturing of a man drowning in the absence of meaning.

He’s shifted subjects, the only tactic befitting a man whose ideas barely had enough factual fuel to leave the ground, let alone make orbit. He has long been fond of referring to himself as a renaissance man, but the correct title would be, in her estimation, poseur, jack-of-all-trades, braying jackass.

“It seems obvious to me,” he says, “that art reached its apogee with the Northern—not Southern mind you—the Northern Renaissance. Those Italians, they were alright sure, but all those rippling muscles and loincloths and fancy robes always seemed a bit, you know, fruity. Art should be stern, austere, a model for moral men.”

“Those Northmen, they understood the importance of a rigid manner. And they could paint a picture, by God. Van Eyck, you can tell he was a good man, a good Christian, by the way he painted. Those painters would show that a man’s inner strength is what matters. Yes sir, portrait painting is the finest art form. Don’t have any use for this modern garbage myself, all just seems like splashed paint, sloppy, no discipline. Downright distasteful if you ask me. Yes sir, no doubt about it, I’m a portrait man myself.”