Long Paths

From "God Died in Hiroshima"

a chapter in "The American" 

a Novel by Blue loosely based on the truth.

 



_______________________ Beirut, Monday

“Hey McQueen, it’s time for me to make a movie again.”
“What? I thought you were a writer.”
“Have to give that up, coz writing gives me heartburn, which I can deal with, but lately it’s also been giving me heartbreak, and that I can’t handle.”

“What’s the movie about?”
“You’re gonna play the art dealer who is impotent with his virginal WASP girlfriend but who has no problem getting it on with his best friend prostitute, and who gets caught up in a rip-off of a rich Saudi with a fake American master, maybe something bad by Peale or Copley, and then the Saudi teams up with a rich Canadian Hassid who wants to buy the painting and they end up offing you with a staple gun in Las Vegas, where you bleed to death in the men’s room with Radiohead playing in the background.”

“I’ve never been in a movie.”
“That doesn’t matter, McQueen.”
“Cool. Then I'm in.”

We shake hands, partners. McQueen will meet me in New York when I'm ready to film. He knows I'm going to Versailles first, to see Franck about the transport, and because I've got an assignment to shoot Jim Morrison's grave. Somebody keeps tossing a condom packet in front of his stone, and the packet is marked 'Man to Man,' and this of course is the kind of photo-essay I love: Half an afternoon at Pere Lachaise, 50 clicks, five hundred bucks. I ask the editor why they don't hire somebody in Paris, get some artist out of the Marais to snap the shots, but the editor wants an American because Morrison is American. And the editor knows if anyone is American, it's me. I need the bread, but I hate stopping in Paris because when I see the flicks hassling the immigrants on the subway I always pipe up and say something stupid. But there's Franck to visit to talk about the Cadillac and the truck and like always we're going to mention that absurd Eurotrash twist on the American dream: Will I pack a Harley in the container?

I call McQueen from the airport south of Beirut: Dude, there will be nude scenes since I'm ripping off Hiroshima Mon Amour, and I can't have Nasrine putting a curse on my head. Yeah, yeah, he says, as he always does, Nasrine is cool, but in the background I hear her growling: Don't speak for me, she says, Never speak for me. They start to argue and I hang up.


_______________________ Paris, Thursday

Last night in Versailles I plotted with Franck to either a) buy a car or truck in France to register in his name with a notarized letter permitting me to cross borders so I can drive from France to Istanbul to Beirut to Jordan to the new library in Alexandria, then down the Sudanese coast to visit my pals in Addis, or b) to ship the romance writer’s truck which was bound for Lima to France instead and do as above in section a). Franck is, like, Can you load a Harley into the container with the truck in Baltimore, too? But then I tell him last December I bought a 1976 Caddy Eldorado convertible with only 65,000 miles to paint bright pink and ship to Cannes in May so I can drive around the movie stars like a producer, and Franck hears all this and nods and nods, Let’s do it all. Of course I don’t tell Franck about the movie about the art dealer who gets staple-gunned to death in Las Vegas starring my man McQueen, the Arabic-Arctic halfbreed who is even now walking around in his blue bathrobe in the apartment in the Hamra with Nasrine trying to get some sleep in his bed and in his absence, answering his mobile with his pregnant “What.”

But Franck doesn’t need to know about McQueen and the art dealer movie. Why stretch my credibility? Like all my friends, he is happy in the moment, when anything is possible and my future has not yet become nothing worth remembering. This fairytale knack is special, I know, this yawn of possibility to which I am hopelessly attached, as though my shirtsleeve was caught in a ride at the fair, and I spin gaily from conversation to conversation, injecting each one with my turbulent fantasy. Like the Avon lady, dispensing poison from a pink Cadillac while pocketing the profit, I have a little mascara for your dreams, a little eye-liner, too, and here’s the perfect color for your lips, look how it complements your blazing eyes, look how it decorates your shy words.

I suppose this is my way of admitting I have absolutely no idea of what I am doing next. I am not the Avon lady, despite the Eldorado convertible. I am trying to write a story, and not just the story of my life. I am like the autistics 75,000 years ago, before smooth language, shouting my intent with my blood rather than my tongue, because I am trying to write your life story, trying to put down memories you never knew you had, trying to capture the self you never knew you lost. But if you recognize me now, already, in this infant language of escape and possibility . . . well, then you too need to quit being yourself and come and be me, and try to speak what I see.


_______________________ Laurel Canyon, next Monday

I am going to Oregon to film a short with an anthropologist and Poet I will call Deren. We talk about how art is labeled. You cannot put your best paintings or your best pictures or your best stories together and issue a "Best Of" and then claim it's art. We agree on this. Because where's the spirit? And where is the ritual that art demands of you? You give a piece of yourself away with the hope that it will in turn be given away again. The art is a spirit given as a gift so that it may be given as a gift again, if the audience deems it worthy of giving. Because to give someone else's work of art is to dissolve your own ego, just for the moment, to elevate the spirit of something beyond yourself and your connection to the artist. And the giving is the ritual, says the anthropologist, and by giving you become a shaman.

When Renee C------ drives up from San Clemente this afternoon I will prod her with this realization. Let's give the book away to schoolchildren, so they can learn about the turtles ingesting plastic trash bags thinking they're swallowing jellyfish, so they can learn about the turtles being hit and concussed by speedboats when the turtles surface for oxygen, so they can learn about the soups made for strength and virility out of turtle meat, and the book can be punctuated with scene's from Renee's own breakup, and the resulting loss of habitat and appetite and comfort we get from lovers. Imagine going back and forth from paragraphs of turtles caught in fishing nets to paragraphs of Renee hauling her mattress into the hallway so the windows won't fall on her as the fighter jets scream by; contrast the scientific details of shells snared by nylon filament with the poetic specifics of sleeping in a bed of shattered glass. Will Renee think I've lost my bearings? This book about scuba diving in Beirut is about the lives of turtles but also of people whose futures are on a leash, and why should it be turned into some messy spectacle of art?

The phone rings. That's her. The scuba diver is on her way. She's also heard from McQueen: He's deejaying at a restaurant in Damascus, insisting on Radiohead and inflaming everyone's patience, waiting for a cheap ride into Lebanon. Did he say anything about the movie about the art dealer?

"What movie?"  
"We're going to make a movie about an art dealer playing both sides of a scam who gets stapled to death in Las Vegas --"
"You and McQueen?"
"Yeah, he's a natural. Give him a skullcap and a soundtrack and nobody will be able to stop watching."
"But McQueen can't die!"
"Renee, it's just a movie, when you stop shooting the actors stand up and laugh."
"No," she says, "I didn't mean McQueen can't die as in ethics, but that he can't die because nobody will believe it if they see it."
Long pause.
"You're right. Didn't think about that. You shoot him and life spills out instead of blood. I get it."
"See you in an hour. The 405 is stuck like soup."

Maybe I have to change the plot of the movie. I can think about it as I drive up to Oregon. There is a turquoise lake, maybe Shasta, and I will need to stop and take pictures. None of this story will make any sense unless you see the pictures. That's just the kind of story it is. Not quite a movie nor a comic book, but a play of two dimensions and the unlimited restraints of your imagination. The story is a gift in which you'll be free to participate; hijack McQueen and the turtles and give me back some time, and I'll thank you forever for such a fair trade.


_______________________ Santa Cruz, next Tuesday

Renee is on the pier. The sea lions are cacophonous. She is smiling, radiant, a temple. Some people absorb other people's pain, like magnets, rather than radiate their own. But the sea lions don't notice, despite their scabs from the toluene and the ammonia. The fight against the bird flu has spilled into the sea. But the sea lions are here to bark, and I wonder if the mic will catch Renee properly.

"What are we filming today?"
"The turtles and the fishing nets, and your bed full of broken glass."
"How's your project coming?" she asks, "I heard you have an agent."
"I have to laugh because God Died in Hiroshima has two agents representing it, neither of whom has read a single word, but I haven't signed anything and now I'll be passing it around for free on the net! But the PDF is illustrated and gives a totally different vibe than the straight-up words. Color, depth, and a real place, better than a movie location."

Camera is recording and Renee starts to talk, not about the turtles or the fighter planes but about the effects of pollution on the underwater ruins off Tyre and Sidon. I film without interrupting: I think the book can be arty as well as a minor chord on the ecocide market, similar in tone but not heft to Jared Diamond's study of social collapse. The gift is giving, again. I'll share the book and the PDF and the movie, and the world will give me more to see: the sea lions are piping down in respect to listen to Renee talking about the corrosive acids dumped into their waters and into the waters of Lebanon and into any water where there is industry in the name of profit, no matter how reckless, no matter how short, and the rapt attention she wins from the sea lions reminds me of my own scabs itching across my skin. I, too, am caught in the oily flex of profit. Can my gift to be given away be a balm or a boon to that leaking industrial river of waste?

The sea lions do not clap when Renee finishes her lecture. The sea lions start to talk among themselves. We leave the pier and look, I have to admit, for a Starbucks. I am addicted to the chai high, even if its caffeine makes me pee small stones of calcium dust. I am stuck on the ride at the fair. I buy gasoline. My characters make some amends, but what about me? When do I act?

"What are you thinking, Renee?"
"I made some errors about the half-life on the moldings of the temples sticking out of the water."
"Don't worry, we'll get it right in the book."
"Cool."
jellytalk_bnr75.jpg


_______________________ Shasta Lake, next Thursday

My chest hurts. The weight is back. Ten thousand pounds on my lungs. I want to call Baltimore and see what they’ve got on tests. Maybe the pains are a signal from the cancer, but I drank milk yesterday so I’ll blame the dairy industry.

I wake up in the middle of the night and jog around the motel room to loosen up the pain. I’m watching TV as I do this, running in place in time to the changing channels. Scan mode. But  I stop the jogging when a familiar face flits across the screen.

New leads in the Warner shooting. No pain in my chest now, although a tingling memory scratches at my shoulder. Turn up the sound and see if I’m caught.


_______________________ Wheeling, WV, three years ago
 
The first time I fired the 410S at the range, the kick-back jammed my shoulder and left my arm as dead as it had ever been from carpal tunnel. My first murder was delayed for a week as I visited my acupuncturist.

Nobody in the movies ever explains the fear you feel when you approach a prey that can fight back. The knotted stomach and trembling fingers reminded me of that instant I took to the stage or to the microphone during the days when my success as an artist seemed imminent. Performance anxiety. The best speech, the best gymnastics, the best touchdown are accomplished because of the urge to flee or fight, and committing a murder is no different.

Raymond Warner was not a big wig at Capitol Chemicals, but he was a lawyer and a lifer. After thirty years of obscurity in the offices of counsel, he’d emerged to testify to Congress about falling profits. The petrochemical giants were making less money than normal, so they appealed to government for help. I watched Warner speak on cable, and was struck by his enthusiasm for his profession. Did he have a family? Did he collect stamps? Did he like to water ski or play tennis? I only found out two things about him before I shot him in the chest. He collected coins from the Balkans and he liked to scuba dive.

I completely missed him with my first shot. Choked. We both crouched in the stairwell of the Capitol Chemicals building while the echo pounded our eardrums.

“You’re serious,” he exclaimed.
“What did you think I came here for? This is not a theoretical exercise.”
“Jesus, why?”
“Because the planet is my mother, and I’ve caught you clubbing her over the fucking head and I don’t know about you but I love my mother.”
“Are you with the animal rights people, PETA?”
“No, I’m with the human rights people.”

And then I pulled the trigger again and ran by Mr. Warner as he tumbled down the staircase, pierced by my second bullet. On each floor, curious people cautiously opened the doors to the stairwell to investigate the gun blasts. I waved the Smith & Wesson American Pride Series 410 as I ran by, and they fled. I looked behind me as I scurried through the corridor, and was surprised to see a trail of moist red footsteps in my wake. Raymond Warner’s blood, on my getaway sneakers. I fought a sudden queasiness but made it to the car and drove quickly and firmly away.

Despite my pounding heart, I knew I’d executed my plan perfectly. I’d researched the site (no armed guards), studied Warner’s routine for a week, walked through the building dressed in green overalls with a watering spout in my hand, and pulled the trigger when I needed to. The missed first shot annoyed me, and my shoulder was throbbing again, but the same thing had happened at the firing range and I’d made the adjustments.

And I was lucky.

Raymond Warner didn’t die until he’d managed to speak to the police. He repeated my line about the planet being my mother, and even remembered exactly the “clubbing her over the fucking head” part, and of course this wound up in Time and Newsweek and all the major dailies and had a strange impact on the nation’s consciousness, which you probably remember well since you’ve bought or borrowed this book. What I’d done was awful, no question about it. Mr. Warner had some good qualities. But somehow – and this is not hubris – the awful thing I’d done turned out not to be quite as awful as a lot of other awful things which happen in the news every day. Some egghead kids in cyberspace even made noise about emulating my actions, and then that itself became news – but more on all this later, because this is a biography of my life and not the blow-by-blow account of the last days of an imaginative assassin.

For a week I waited for the police to show up at my door. Several of my friends read about the killing and joked with me about how similar it was to my own dead-end fiction.

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This piece is from either “God Died in Hiroshima” or “Anxious Moment,” the memoir from Seanie Blue

The PDF God Died in Hiroshima will be released November 2, and if you’d like a copy just let me know.