Here we are then. Hawai'i. Yes, I'm being obnoxiously pretentious by putting the apostrophe in there. It's called the glottal stop in phonetic terms. Now I'm just being awful. I'm sorry. Well. In blogging, I have discovered the very dregs of computer technology. Take this lovely specimen, for example. The onlyl mouse is a tiny one about a milimeter square - or rather, circle - located between the G and H key. I am getting by on keyboard shortcuts, because I have absolutely no idea how to use it. Also, either the screen is too big for the window or the window is too big for the screen. I can't tell which.
I am thoroughly amazed at the amount of elderly and slightly pear shaped people you can fit into one small hotel and beach. There seems to be one for every square foot. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of palm trees. Despite the excession of annoying ol' folks, one of whom randomly walked up to me and extolled the virtues of Terry Pratchett, I am enjoying myself. I really do wish you guys were here, though. Well, I wish that Max were here pre-burns, anyway, because the sun is beyond fierce, it's positively
feral. I was rather wondering what you guys would say if you were. Here, that is. For example.
Random Fellow Who Seems To Enjoy Terry Pratchett: Oh, reading Good Omens, are you, now?
Kat: . . .Yes. . .(Thinking: Who in the name of the amazing Maurice and his educated rodents are you?)
RFWSTETP: He reminds me of Douglas Adams.
Ben: (Perking up noticably.) Douglas Adams?
I could practically hear you saying that from a mile away, Ben.
Ben: Hawaii is 2390 miles away.
Yes, there is no doubt, that was definitely Ben talking. I suppose asking why he knew this is useless.
I bought Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors for the plane ride, never got around to reading it, and have been reading it this afternoon. It's terrifying and now I can't sleep. I'm going to have dreams about being shut up in a conjurer's box, the sort they stick swords into. There's a very disturbing retelling of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, and a rather scary take on Santa Clause. Clause, isn't it odd that he's named after a grammatical construction? But moving on.
I wrote a story, or at least a short story, from an idea Mr. Gaiman's book gave me. I wasn't sure what it was about at first, but it turned out to be about us. Us, as in, well, us. You know. US. I have no other way to put it. Although Ben is the only one mentioned by name, Max and I both have starring roles, especially Max. Max probably has the largest role, but there are no small parts. . .
I'm not sure what this story is, who these people in it are, and what they're doing where they are. I mean, Ben the Magician does have Ben's name, but his personality is different in ways, and he's definitely older. We're all older, except for maybe Max. I'll admit that the character based on me is a bit blatant - she's the only main female character - but she isn't a direct clone. And the Max here is somber and more mature than ours. They're a little like us plus ten or twenty years. When I first started out, I thought they were us, extended to the Nth degree, but they're much more than that. They scare me. Maybe these people, who I created on an impulse, are a cautionary tale. They are what we might become, if we don't do. . .something. I'm not sure what, but definitely something. Max, you may have difficulty finding yourself, but I assure you, you're in there.
I also don't know where this theatre is, or even when it is. It has hints of a nineteenth century French music hall, like the one in Colette's The Vagabond, and there are two blatant Colette references. But it's strangely American vaudeville. And then there's the matter of the random girls with French names. These people are nobody nowhere, which is what I always call myself.
I warn you. This is deep, morbid, and strange. I no more control the fate I gave you than I do when Armageddon will come. Don't you think I'd rather have us all end happily? Unfortunately, in this story, it doesn't work out that way. If you would not like to understand a dark (but talented) part of me, and I assure you, there are parts of me that are a bit off putting, please do not read this story.
They Do It With MirrorsBen the Magician, that is his name, and we all know that. They tried stage names, but none ever took, because he is Ben the Magician, and when you see him dressed for his act, with his dark suit the color of the night sky between the stars, and the shining metal gray tie, unbreakable and gleaming, that protects his pulsing heart, his lonely child's heart, you can only think, That is Ben. Ben who is the Magician.
No one ever described him. The closest anyone ever got was Minette, who is called Min, the little dancer who is a woman-of-letters-who-has-turned-out-badly, and writes, sometimes, tremulous secret warm stories hidden deep in her dressing room where no one ever goes and no one ever will. Min does not have regular male company. She never took to it. Or perhaps it never took to her. Min only ever called Ben ineffible, because he was, and it suited him. He did not clal her anything, because Min was happiest when she was a void of nobody nowhere, and Ben the Magician knew that.
They do it with mirrors, says Ben the Magician, and maybe he believes it, or maybe he doesn't, but nevertheless I know it is not true. Min knows as well, but doesn't speak, only rolls over on the divan and plucks at the loose threads, watching them grow long, and the tiny bits of thread within them too, each one another broken promise. Min and I know that they do it with mirrors, and smoke, to blur the edges, and the cocky smile on the ticket taker, and the hormones, Min the chorus dancer knows about
those, and faith and a pinch of gin and a child's foolish pretty trust, and velvet curtains the color of lust drawing ominously open to reveal -
Show. Popcorn grease on people's sleeves, a lone stagehand who cannot find the right rope. His supervisor, and Anton, the man with the trained dogs, berate the techie in language Ben the Magician hates. Ever since he can remember he has hated that. This he reflects upon as he pulls his shirt to tuck and draws black lines around his nose so it will not disappear in the harsh stage light. He remembers halfway faces, foreign inside jokes that mean nothing to him now, nothing to Ben the Magician. He can't evade it, can't help it, he glances in the mirror. Just a glance and nothing more. He expects to see the faces from a distant long ago. The round faced boy with his hair escaping from his head, the olive skinned one with the hair cut close, the big eared one with the red cheeks and throaty voice, and the girl with strange brown hair you can't quite describe. But he doesn't.
Or does he? It is not the people in his mirror, but yet another face, pushing her head in through his black door. The door had had his name on it in dying silver paint made of ground cadavers since the beginning of time. When the horses of the Apocalypse pass, perhaps the rumble of their hooves will flake the paint off. But only perhaps. The face's name is Min, and he has stolen her eyebrow pencil to make those lines about his nose. Ben gives it to her and she goes away, muttering something about coquettes.
But she is still here, you can smell her, Min's strange, eclectic smell. Undescribable, but somehow not quite ineffible. Did that make it only more ineffible, Ben muses. The apparition of Min in Ben's dressing room reminds him of one of the faces in the mirror. One of the few girl faces - there are three and she is the second, the girl with ineffible hair. They are the sam eperson, but they are not. Best not to think too hard about it, offers the face in the mirror that occasionally rants about anesthetic. You'll only give yourself a headache.
Headache. Ben vaguely remembers a long-ago-once-time when he had mud on his shoe. Something about Greece, and a man named Theo Petrol. He pushes that away. Where are the tools for his act? He dashes off to find them, or maybe something else, which he does not and never will know of, because it is hidden in that shadowy colorful corner of the mind that no one knows the way to but children, and fairies, and madmen.
But that does not matter now. What matters now is that the curtain is almost up, and in the darkness thick with apprehension and bared chorus girl's skin, I can tell you a secret or two. I am one of those mirror faces, and I remember better than Ben and Min, whose name is not Min, how it was to be a child, and not believe that I would die, with my hair long and my cap on tight. I am dead now, and here is the secret. I am the theatre now, and the theatre is me. Of all the illusions played in me, I know all the secrets. But most of all I know that Ben is always worried that he will bungle a trick and be laughed at, and Min is always sure she will miss a step and fall into their lech of a stage manager. I can tell you the secret wish of the manager when he looks at Min, and the way Camille the pantomimer wants to be Ben's lovely-assistant. But they know nothing of that. I am the secret keeper of the people who are tied by secrets, and without them would fly apart.
Hush! Now the secret time is done, you see the curtain rising rising, a veil of carnage red, rising rising into the nowhere at the top of the stage, the color red of lust. Ben the Magnificent - fools have billed him that. It makes him cringe. Can't they listen to Min? - is not first, but Min and her girls do a number, a short piece of absurdity. Dark carmine colored cotton candy for adults. Can you see the audience? Yes, there are all the regulars. Mary and John, the classic couple who do no need real names, in the front row. Lucas, the lonely black man with whispy eyebrows the color of the winter wind, in the back. I know them all. Time and theatre ar the teachers.
Oh, now, look to the stage, ladies and gents, look here, say Ben the Magician and I. Feats of magic, feats of miracle, once in a lifetime thrill! The single man in the center of the stage, Ben, nothing more than a head with a sad shadow under the eyes and a metal tie to protect the heart. Magical acts of legerdemain. Lonely theatre, in the very corner of nowhere, which does make it somewhere, and the best kind of somewhere too.
Can-I-have-a-volunteer-Ah-yes-one-of-you-lovely-ladies-please. And then time stops but the patter keeps on, a steady rythm of the words, although the magician cannot move. If-you-would-just-step-over- It is Min, clad in a ridiculous yellow tutu. Ben remembers, for an instant, and I remember too -here-and-yes-this-black-box-please- No use, it's gone. Min is just another lurid girl in a tutu, a little mini Salome without virtue. The irony of that statement is lost on Ben, but not on me. Never on me.
Min, in a black box, small stocky Min, my Min, our Min, and although he's forgotten, Ben's Min too. We belong to each other, as all friends do.
Swords. Flashing swords, a bit of sliced away, sliced, wood, from the tiny black box they have fit out Min into. Minto. Her eyes, her familiar foriegn alien mismatched eyes. One blue and one green. The colors of melancholy and envy. Then the box closes, and she is nothing. Did their eyes, Ben and Min's, flash once together? Perhaps. But only perhaps. It is a pity. Once we were something together. Once. But only once.
It pierces the sides of the box, swiftly Ben pushes them in, quick, efficient, his eyes vieled and heart hid by truth red curtains. The swords he wields are dull but we see sharp, fake but we see real. They do it with mirrors. I see wounded Min, falling from the box, dead and bloody, carnage, cadaver, carrion. Why is it that so many words for rotting remains begin with C? Ben, in his horror, can see that Min too. The dream bloody Min tumbles forth, then is gone.
Here is the real. Min, tall and small in bright brave yellow, stepping from the box and out of a memory.
Now you see it. . .
FIN
Well, you can draw your own conclusion as to what happened next. I may write more stories in thsi vein. I like the characters.
I remain, gentlemen, your faithful and obedient servant,
J.G.
