nothing to do,
There is a drink in the lexicon here named the Car Bomb and probably everyone is familiar with its nature. Car Bombs/12:30/The Student Theater/Ghosts of Tomorrow (2046) read the posters. Left to right we have subject, time, space, and the last item is presumably a film (phantasmal, I suspect). For the truth about the film, you would have to ask Van, the man behind the scenes, but I have never seen a film played start to finish at the student theatre. Even if it is a real film, the year is wrong, because as we all know, cinema moves backward easily, but moving it forward is simply impossible. As I have said, there is a drink in the lexicon here called the coche bomba (back home an irlandés dangles from the end) and this drink, like cinema, is irreversible. “Party” appears nowhere on the posters, indeed, no one has used that word for the last month. But only the word is taboo, the act remains a vital part of the mourning process. Once sobriety is sufficiently exploded, the reverie will skip over mourning and give way to gossipy gospels of our dearly departed Estelle’s intimate relationship with Prof. Staller (poetesses, both) and her motives for suicide. It is only a Thursday and most do not have class tomorrow. Still, it is not a large crowd. I have another meeting with my new advisor (Staller is on professional leave) about the poems I should be writing (though poetry, as you can imagine, is giving me more trouble than I give to it). The party takes the usual formations, groups fall to their usual geometries: the high moderns of Dr. Youlean are getting high up in the balcony, Freddie Tuft and Ellen occupy the landing of the only staircase for the School of Human Ecology (lately their building is rebuilding and they are fond of staircases and corridors). The plebes and the posthumanists mingle on the ground floor. Hillary, one of the elite English joint MFA-PhDs is wearing a minimalist nurse’s outfit completed (and perhaps promoted) by a naval officer’s cap. She is passing by, passing out her Jello Shots. I have an Absolute Cranberry and Helena, standing next to me with a Tequila Lime, quickly, pretextually, brings up a paper Hillary recently
wrote on the libertinage diététique of the Marquis de Sade—a paper which Helena has not read, but asserts she will eat. Often do I start my evenings drinking with Helena and the Pomolitkritic (¡qué alemán!), because they are the most self-conscious (selfdestructive). Everyone always told me that Americans “can’t hold their licker” [sic!], but in New York the worldly folk drink like landless peasants. During an argument about the Beatles in which some unfortunate undergrad mentions the anxiety of influence, Helena explodes. There is an overabundance of shared opinion. I slip away invisible like Gringo Starr, the rupture pushing me towards the stairs. On my way up Freddie tells me (though I already know, we all know) that he has heard that his short story “Anger or Cool?”, the only coursework he did at all last term, is to be published in the dean’s pet magazine, Monastery. Now that is efficiency, I say, moving along. Upstairs, I see the screen large and blue, swimming with fish framed close on the quivering gills. Immediately I am thinking to myself that this certainly cannot be Ghosts of Tomorrow, since my good friend Richard Hilliard told me all about it, stressing that it had been the only film he’d even seen that year (though Ricardo is always saying things like that), and this movie does not at all match his confusing and recursive description (where are the telepathic triplets?). Whatever the film is, the music is much louder. Van has picked songs that center on cars and/or bombs and the gender studies kids are dancing on the stage (is it clear that by “kids” I mean to show endearment?). Van, when I tell him that I may leave soon, assures me that the night “hasn’t really even started yet” and he offers me a red glass pipe stuffed with something called Black Steel, Black Ice or maybe even Ice Storm. I manage mostly not to laugh and I pat him on the back. Back to the film. The flittering flexing fish have gone and a white woman, 1958?, middle-aged, house-frocked, 1960?, mixes vibrant rose-colored drinks in a cozy kitchen, and carrying these with a polypropylene tray proceeds the camera and me out into a courtyard that might as well rest back in Coyoacán, 1999, and the drinks, exposed in the afternoon sun, are transforming into poisonous characters in their own right. I turn to Van and say, indicating the screen with my hand, Van, this strongly resembles a dream I have been having recently and Van looks at me for a few moments and mutters out pale exhaust, you’d better watch carefully then, or, you’d better watch carefully man. Turning back, the screen strolls along and I follow, trying to pick up the threads (men with umbrellas, puppies with children), but dreams are slippery and Van shouts to me (Hosay!) COA | 33