Chapel Perilous
Tuesday, 11/7/06,
2AM. You do not find Chapel Perilous; it finds you. You do not leave Chapel
Perilous; it abandons you. You do not enter Chapel Perilous; like Love,
you only discover that you are there once you look behind you and realize that
you have crossed the dividing line between where you were then and where you
are now. How do you recognize that you have crossed the line? Simple. Things
you look for come to you. Reference books fall from your hand and open to the
page you have been seeking. A project you are working on, the details of which
you have never shared with a living soul, is the topic of an overheard express
train conversation. You think of someone you haven’t heard from in ages; five
minutes later, you bump into her on the street, even though she lives three
states away. You are in Chapel Perilous—the command post of reality, where the
words “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an
improbable fiction” are etched into the wall over the Control Panel, because
that’s exactly what happens when you are in this place. The worst kind of
improbable fiction. It’s like the Flitcraft story in Maltese Falcon,
where a near-death experience makes Flitcraft feel “like somebody has taken the
lid off life and let him look at the works.” And in those works, in Chapel
Perilous, every chance occurrence is part of an implicate order in which
everything fits together so well and completely that it either means that
you’re losing your mind, or it means that the Universe is suddenly and totally
interested in YOU, and has a vested interest in leading you by the hand to a
revelation of something so unimaginable that it will undermine your faith in
daily life. Chapel Perilous is a window into the world beyond the Matrix. It is
like Fairyland—if you eat anything while you’re there, if you digest a single
ounce of what it gives you, then you’re trapped inside forever. It is like
luck—it comes and goes at a time of its own choosing, and the only thing you
can rely on is that it will disappear the moment you count on it working in
your favor. And it is like destiny, because luck and happenstance have nothing
to do with it. Everything is meant. Everything has an echo. When you are in
Chapel Perilous, the Abyss not only looks back at you, it cashes all your checks. When you are in Chapel Perilous, you are the main character in God’s
novel. When you are in Chapel Perilous, everything happens for a reason.
Back when I was drinking Bass Ale, during the Punic Wars,
I was sitting to the right of the taps one night at the upstairs Naughty Pine,
writing in my notebook, vaguely aware of a silver-haired bearded guy counseling
an attractive blonde woman in the northwest corner of the bar. They were
sitting next to the jukebox. When it started playing “Tempted” by Squeeze, the woman laughed with such despair that it
was like hearing a dream choke to death. She was not having an easy time of it.
I couldn’t hear the details of their conversation, but I could get the feel of
it, having been in hundreds of the same type: A is laying out the options, and
B is saying “Yes, but,” which can be anything from “Yes, but I love him” to
“Yes, but it’s not up to me” to “Yes, but what else can I do?” Which means she
wants sympathy, and not advice.
MATTHEW’S FIRST RULE OF
FRIENDSHIP: Always ask this question: “Do they want advice, or sympathy?”
And remember that the ones who want advice will always accept your sympathy,
but the ones who want your sympathy will never forgive you for giving them
advice.
MATTHEW’S SECOND RULE OF
FRIENDSHIP: Never break the First Rule.
I was in the Scribble Zone, so I don’t remember seeing the
guy leave; the next thing I knew, Dave was tapping on my notebook. He had
poured me a new pint and set it down next to the blonde. When I looked up at
him, he said: “Her name is Ava. Go talk to her; she likes comic books.” And
that is how I met one of my closest friends on the planet. I took my notebook
over with me, introduced myself, and five minutes later, a voice inside me said
“Ah—HERE you are; do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to show up in
my life?” (Ava’s version: “Five minutes after we started talking, I said to
myself, ‘I think I’ll keep him.’”) and six minutes after we started talking? We
were talking about Gravity’s Rainbow and The Crying of Lot
49, Foucault’s Pendulum andThe Illuminati Trilogy,
Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol (“Bona ta vada, Danny the
Street!”) and Warren Ellis’ Planetary (“It’s a strange world.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”). And Chapel Perilous. That night was not the first time that I had ever felt
like a puzzle piece which Life had suddenly picked up and snapped down
perfectly against a complete stranger, but it remains the only time in my life
when so many of the odd curves and indentations in my weirdly-shaped piece have
fit against the curves and indentations of someone else’s. Which is a Chapel
Perilous thing, when two complete strangers can become the Power Twins. (“Form
of a green card!”) (Heh—as if; right, Ava?) It has nothing to do with sex or romance;
it has everything to do with two people meeting on Soulmate Street because they
were already united in the Church Of Chance.
Now. I told you that story to tell you this one.
The title of this one is: How Matthew Met Dolores. This is
back in the Good Old Days, when you took your life in your hands to walk east
of Avenue A, when Pizzeria Uno’s on Third Avenue was my local, and when Bill E
was my Dave. Picture it if you can. I am sitting at the bar next to my
bar-friend Ben. I have a silver loop in my left ear. My hair is down to my
shoulders. It is dyed blonde. (I know; I know.) I am wearing a necklace with a
yin-yang medallion. I am watching the Knicks in the playoffs, which tells you
how long ago this was, and behind me and to my left is this woman with short
white-blonde hair, this woman in a suit, nursing a drink and lighting a
cigarette. She looks like a cross between Annie Lennox and The Thin White Duke.
She looks hot, and I like to think I do too, but I don’t, because no matter how
many times I write the word DESIRABLE, everyone in the world reads it as SAFE.
So when a seat at the bar opens up?
[Dolores sidles up to the bar.]
DOLORES: Mind if I smoke?
[Matthew pulls out a lighter and
lights up her cigarette. She offers him
one.]
MATTHEW: I quit.
DOLORES: But you still carry around a lighter.
MATTHEW: Most of my friends smoke.
DOLORES: How long have you quit?
MATTHEW: This time? Two
years. Since my mother died of lung
cancer. I smoked up until the day of
her funeral, and I haven’t touched one since.
DOLORES: How old was she?
MATTHEW: Fifty-seven.
DOLORES: That’s young.
MATTHEW: I can’t even imagine forty, never mind fifty-seven. What do you want to be when you’re
fifty-seven?
DOLORES: I want to have at least one Tony Award and a small film career to
support my theatre habit.
MATTHEW: You’re an actress. What
restaurant?
DOLORES: Actually I do temp at a law firm.
MATTHEW: I do nine to five at Smith Barney and write plays in my spare
time.
DOLORES: Shouldn’t that be the other way around?
MATTHEW: I wish.
DOLORES: No really –- if you say you work at Smith Barney, that’s how you
think of yourself. You should always
describe yourself by what you want to be, not what you have to be. So what do you want to be when you’re
fifty-seven?
MATTHEW: Alive.
DOLORES: Here’s to your mother.
MATTHEW: My mother.
DOLORES: So are you working on anything?
MATTHEW: Always. A play about
Giordano Bruno, a play about Aaron Burr, a comedy about subatomic physics. You?
DOLORES: Nothing right now. I just
moved here—I’ve been acting in DC, I was at the Folger for two years. My big thing was I did Helen in Troilus and
Cressida.
MATTHEW: The one with Dan Southern as Hector? I saw that! I was down in
DC for a work thing and caught the Sunday matinee.
DOLORES: You know Southern?
MATTHEW: He directed a farce I wrote. “Etched In Stone.”
DOLORES: Wow. Small world.
MATTHEW: [TOASTING] Small
world. So what’s an actress from DC
doing in a Third Avenue bar?
DOLORES: I live here now, and I’m meeting someone, we’re going dancing at Webster Hall. But it doesn’t look like he’s coming. You like to dance?
MATTHEW: I love to dance.
DOLORES: But you’re here to watch the game.
MATTHEW: It’s just a game.
DOLORES: That’s the way I feel. I
mean don’t get me wrong, I like tall
guys in shorts; but I like short guys in tight jeans a lot better.
MATTHEW: [To Bill the Bartender] Check!
End of play, beginning of relationship: boy meets girl, boy
goes nuts over girl, girl sings “Under My Thumb” until she gets tired of it
all, and then sings “Start Me Up” to anything in pants. Or in other words:
Shit—It’s Nothing But Another Disaster.
The
Siege Perilous
”Was it really that much of a disaster?” Dolores asks.
We’ve just acted out our first meeting, to the delight of Ned and the
Professor, and the increasingly mind-boggled astonishment of Sunday. “My end of
it was,” I say, “but you got her out of it,” and I point to Sunday. ‘I thought
you said her name was Laura.” Dolores explains that her daughter started going
by her middle name when she turned 14 “because her name sounded too much like
my name,” and Sunday mutters, “I’m right here at the table mother,” and then
goes, “Wait—you guys are still in touch?” “Oh yes,” says Dolores. “This is my
writer friend I’m always talking about.” “THIS IS YOUR WRITER FRIEND?!?” Sunday
cries. “But you said he was famous!” The sting of that is salved and more when
Dolores replies, “He is to me.” “I’m paying for dinner,” I say. “You better
be,” Dolores replies, and Sunday cries “YOU’RE HAVING DINNER?!?” like she’s
going to be the laughingstock of Bartender High School because her mom is
suddenly dating one of her barflies. “Oh please,” Dolores says, “we’ve been
fucking friends since Reagan was President.” “And vice versa,” I say. Only Ned
laughs at it, but Sunday gets it. She stands up and says, with charming
incoherence: “This is all. I just. Wow. Fuck me.” She points at me. “We,” she
says, “need to talk.” She kisses the top of her mother’s head. “You,” she says,
“I’ll call tomorrow. Ned. Professor.” And she’s gone. Dolores has the decency
to wait until the door closes behind her to turn on me like a prosecuting
attorney and demand: “Just tell me you haven’t tried to sleep with her.” I look at her with all the condescension of
a non-smoker to someone who has a two-pack-a-day habit. “I am a regular,” I
declare. “I don’t do that shit.” I let that sink in, and then I add: “Of
course, if I was WORKING with her?” And Dolores whacks me over
the head with her purse while Ned and the Professor crack up.
She was Liora when I knew her in the 80’s—it was her
acting name. “Dolores sounds like your maiden aunt,” she used to say, using two
words that would never be in anyone’s dictionary when describing her. But I
call her Dolores when, after the Professor has passed out and Ned has headed off to his crash pad, I walk her up to the Chelsea Hotel. She tells me she hasn’t had a drink since New Year’s Eve
2001. She tells me Sunday never misses a chance to bring up her drinking even
though she’s still sober, “which is like somebody poking a stick in a wound so
it won’t heal. But I don’t blame her.” She tells me she’s spent the last five
years correcting the lies and stories she told her daughter, which has only
made her daughter disbelieve everything she’s saying now, never mind everything
she ever said in the past. I
ask her about Max. She tells me he’s on his third wife. “And he’s on her all
the time. I’ve seen pictures of her.
She’s gorgeous. But he’ll toss her away when she hits her sell-by-date. That’s
what he does.” I ask about Mark. “He’s in Austin now; I see him all the time.
He’ll play with this group and that group, and now and then he gets a job with
someone and goes on tour.” And does Sunday know about all of us? Dolores shakes
her head. I don’t blame her. It was me, Max and Mark back then. The joke was
that Liora only dated guys whose names began with an M, because that way, no
matter who she woke up next to, all she had to do was hum and make a vowel
sound and she’d get the name right.
But it was no joke when Max asked her to marry him and she
said yes. I know Mark asked her; and I asked her twice. All three times she said no, very nicely,
and then added something consoling and teasingly hopeful by saying “But if
things were different,” which are the five cruelest words in the language,
because if you want them to be different then you’ll make them different—and if
you don’t want them to be different, then you shouldn’t fucking bring it up,
because all it does is keep a door open when it should be nailed shut and
boarded up. But that’s Liora. Always keeping the door open, no matter what.
I can feel my stomach wrenching into a knot with anger and
hurt that still hasn’t died in twenty years—Jesus, I think, what’s been feeding
it all this time? Besides, y’know, the fact that I still haven’t gotten over
this woman—and I have the overpowering urge to ask her if she wants a nightcap,
because that’s what we always did back when we were together, we’d have that
one last drink that would tip us over the edge, or give us permission to say
“Forget the consequences,” and down we’d go into the fuck-like-a-rabbit hole
that was our war and peace, our joy and anger.
But that was Liora, not Dolores. So instead of asking her
to blow her five years of sobriety on a Manhattan with me, I ask her the only
thing I know which will get under her skin—I smile and I say, “So now that
you’re not drinking, are you REALLY sure that Max is Laura’s father?” And she whacks
me over the head with her purse. “Okay, okay—I’ll change the subject. Have you
seen Mamma Mia yet? You’ll love the plot. It’s about this woman
who was seeing three guys at the same time, and when she got pregnant—Ow!” I
cry, because Dolores has whacked me with her purse again. “Okay okay okay,” I
say, “I’m so sorry. Look—why don’t we see a movie after dinner tomorrow? Film
Forum is playing Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell. You’ll love the
plot—it’s about this woman who was seeing three guys at the same time and—Ow ow
ow ow!” I yell because now she’s yanking my right earlobe like a grade-school
teacher punishing the class wiseass. But she’s laughing when she does it, and
that’s everything I wanted. Because I know that I will die—and I will be
content to die—without ever hearing anything that makes me feel happier or more
full of hope than this, Liora’s laughter.
Alcohol: Guinness (1)
Day 12
No comments:
Post a Comment