FICTION City of Damaged Men by CASEY GUILLORY Where I expected to find heroic statuary guarding the doors, nothing but lumpy mashed potatoes. It's a cold spoon. So all at once I feel like Hell, I don't get to stay HERE very long either. Another roadside resort which will not be allowed to become my home. What I want doesn't seem to have a whole lot of effect on the things way things go around here. The tiger with my face sleeps with one eye open. My monk, puffing upwinding mountain paths points out a stairwell cut into the cliff's Face; transfixed like Spielberg extras, spittle hangs from the corners of our mouths as we watch an inscribed tablet descend from heaven. I swear this is no ordinary card. I see funny dots in the foreground, fine like sand on a beach. Now follow the maharishi tramping through a handful of street children. Clear winter Paris afternoon. Jealousy and rage. It was a lie, at least I thought it was a lie. In-house laboratories. An honest deal every day for fifty-five years: since the end of the war. Luscious lipsticks: nothing you don't. Nothing you don't want. Slogans, not concepts... her last role. The Heartbeat Of America. The cap fell off my front tooth, and I couldn't help noticing that there were no roots left on the stub to anchor it to my skull. The stub itself had actually dissolved entirely. No one where I work was the slightest bit interested in this although I was disgusted with my body's sudden decision to decay in a public place. I told you: I left town in cruel disappointment at the world, life's empty roads and empty cups. I felt loneliness well up inside me, tearing my mind like it was wet tissue paper. I felt The Panic then rising up in cold black holes where my heart used to be -- the cold of space, the cold of fear. It has eclipsed my mind and erased my futures. Once I lived in a tenement building. A gray spray-painted brick airwell served me for a courtyard. I walked on green-black carpet that had been soaked too many times in beer and vomit. Stupid iron bed. I had to listen to him practice his saxophone in the evening, EVERY evening: "Misty" and "Windmills of Your Mind (Theme from The Thomas Crown Affair)." There have been more incidents with John the Dishwasher. John the Dishwasher lives on the street. John the Dishwasher's life's so complete. John the Dishwasher don't take no guff. John the Dishwasher: he's really tough. The women powder between their breasts with pink powder. It's very sexy. My mother and my sisters were lost in their rooms. Endless convolutions of silk and nylon hid them from each other. I stood in the motel doorway in my underwear in the blue twilight watching the cars on the freeway. I said, "California..." quietly to myself and my heart leapt up in my chest with a surge of impossible pure hope. For the moment I was happy. I saw the drivers of the oncoming vehicles watching me watching them. I ran back to put on some pants. First I picked up the blue ones that I wear to work, but finally decided against them and in favor of a pair of khaki slacks. Then softly, I began to softly sang a Grateful Dead with the chorus, "California, I been knockin' on your Golden Gate..." If I see a line of action, I follow it. Abe Lincoln used a lot of downs. Who will remember my static dreams for me ? Mosaic. I dreamed someone was massaging my spine and popped a vertebra in line with a painful thud. My thoughts cleared up immediately. Big thick hairy hands. I saw this sprayed on a wall: "LIFE IS LIKE FUCKING IT HURTS MISS KRIS." ...little hearts dotted the I's. I'll have a Blue Xmas: one thing's for certain -- but I don't know what that could possibly be. I could return to Kentucky but why bother? How can it be the same now ? I've catapulted out into the void; there's nothin' to see except where I end up. I travel, I stay, my adventures must be cheap ones. Gone to California with an aching in my heart. Places come and go, but My Pain does not. I call it Unfulfilled. I've come to believe I don't take big enough chunks out of life. Not out of bra inlessness, just crazy is all. No life seems worth living; no ambition is worth pursuing; I can't say why... Take MY picture, please. Not so I can start my own cult; but out of desperation: make me BE here. Please. Prove it to me. Gone to California with an arrow through my heart. Come and (maybe) have cleaned up my act. Waiting for Fate's Telegram. Vampire doorway and refried frogs for dinner. Relax and the whales surround you. Rely on nothing. Sit still... All these twins. In Argentina. The result of a three generation-long breeding experiment. They weren't twins, actually they were cousins. You can lose your mind, when cousins are two of a kind. They held a convention. Two paths reaching the same destination. Just like 1979 & 1987. So there I was: cleaning off the stove in that institutional kitchen so that I could paint it, and all these peas and carrots (freeze-dried) were caked into this one burner. Somehow the stove was at a height just slightly too tall for me, I felt I had to stand on something to do the job. Prevaricating, I reorganized some shelves so I could clean them better. It was an all-star cast I've seen before. Larry Hagman is very funny as a man who wants to avenge me-as-a-young-lady, only to fall back against a nail, paralyse his back, flip over the stair rail and dieviolently in the church pews below. Meanwhile Dick York as my older brother agonizes over this, crying, "Daddy! Daddy!" A comedy of errors. Scenes from my childhood. Of COURSE I get blamed. Oh yeah: his wife lost some expensive jewelry. The action takes place in a tiny town where a suspiciously large segment of the population works directly for the government. Bloody teeth, and the making of a Hall & Oats video from Big Bam Boom. I am aware and blaring on all frequencies, a relaxed being of body and light. Corridors of blackness pass sourly through my head to psychicspaces no longer apparent. I think I should move. Q: Could I? A: 46 becomes 32. Useful work. Preparing and building. Travelling toward the south brings good luck. There is nothing to blame and it is time for action. Loss of money in the fall. Dazed and confused by complexity all around, still I sense that each thing is merely what it is. However, I drift. Always my course moves too slowly, I can't pass up the chance to examine each particle as itfloats past my consciousness. I feel the change in the air, I smell the end of things... It appears that I've already HAD my day, puny as it was. IT ISN'T ENOUGH.  It wasn't then and it isn't now. Naturally enough or not, I look outside myself for answers. I know that my own discarded maps are as good as anybody's, and one hell of a lot more specific about the terrain which I personally inhabit. Still, I find the illusion of objectivity to be a valuable one; and bringing in the Ching or the Tarot for consultation is usually in some degree a successful tactic. As always, it is questions of motive that hobble me. The search for them led me to conclusions like: 1) I want to be admired. 2) By my friends. 3) Which is my reason for wanting to return to Lexington. But when I was there, I hated it.