(forty winks)

VI.

         Reclining on my bed I look into the Karate mirror that runs parallel to me on the opposite wall and see that all is in order in my room. No Peter-Pan-shooed thief is dismantling the storm windows, no disturbing skeletal cat is crouching against the ceiling in the corner to my right, no mouths are shutting in any of the pictures posted up behind the lamp. None of the canvas-skinned subjects have left their painty backdrops to sneak into my sheets, no brother of mine is on the roof outside the window with a bagel for my breakfast. Forty-winks and I'll be on my way---Wink number one: Was that a three foot hairy-legged centipede resting on the wall above my head? I blink. There are tears worn into my lykafur coat, ripped from my blinky eyelids after naps in crowds of beer and sharp grass, ripped and sewn in with a needle of grass at the world's weakest seams.

         My door pops open in a demonstration of manhood, proof that no one's helping hand is needed to turn the knob. Blink blink---I lost count already, unless that makes five. I poke the latest self-infliction in my mouth with my tongue. It tastes tender and savory, and painful. A finger travels to the space between my legs. Then, a moment of self-consciousness and salty guilt precedes and endures a vision of Anyone everyone regarding me, Everyone offended and feeling forced to live their disgust at me. So I do exactly as I don't-know-what-to do:

         I stretch myself on the torture rack between thinking one way and another and listen as my muscle tears under grueling strokes of "yeah buts." I listen to sinewy rips that sound like wet pulpy construction paper pulling apart, canvas on a hot air balloon bursting open, rupturing in the middle of the canvas, far from the seams. I hear the wet, fleshy tearing under my skin until I get to the end, reclining on my bed. Reclining on my bed is the dream, and I recline into its comfort. The dream reposes there, as fantasy, as gettaways, as entertainment, consolation, inspiration. Occasionally just as sleep. Cozy sleep boiling over with emptiness, so empty you have to put a lid over it. But right now I'm still blinking. I must not have reached forty yet.

         I listen to the song that's noising my room; the noise is all about a lady In London So Fair, and I like the story I'm imagining. Soon I snap out of it and realize that my sister is driving me somewhere. It's a car ride from hell; there's highway as far as the eye can see and Everyone knows: it's pass, kill, tailgate and be killed. I see cars full of children go down from crooked tricks and despicable stunts, and I keep my eyes on the red sky until my sister drops me off at a small theater with peeling frescos. I'm told by the cooperators that I've been Commissioned to Rectify their building Through Art. My fingernails scratch at the fresco, scratch away the crumbling plaster, peel and scratch 'til I feel the cement structure behind it, the architecture of the 1970's, heavy at the bottom. There's not a lot of light but there are red-orange rugs, and the trapezoidal walls and dead vines on the cracked cement suggest the building used to be an underpass. If I walk up the stairs I can take the slide to the central Prada store in the city. I take the slide. It's not a store, just a building. It's chic on the outside, black and white and skyscrapery. On the Inside prada is lost; it's black like an arcade and there are kids there, kids my age and older. Some are sitting in a jeep, others in a blue and red Porsche, wearing pricey sunglasses, taking photos of themselves and rocking back and forth because the cars shake like their miniature versions—the mini cars, planted in front of grocery stores, that little kids ride on for a quarter.

         A familiar-looking kid my age takes off his pricey sunglasses to assess a photo of himself. As he adjusts his stylish scarf he spots me and beckons me over. I look around. On the right towards the back of the room the black wall is missing. There are three long steps where the wall would be and three walls surrounding the long steps, it's dark inside because it's an arcade for kids much younger. By the time I look back at the familiar-looking kid he's engrossed in his project again. I go and join the kids much younger; we play life-size Hungry Hippos. But the game costs $6.50 and the supervising carnivalman shakes his finger at me, wordlessly accuses me of sneaking and kicks me out, so I wander past the Photobooth-in-a-Jeep and Porsche Rock 'n Ride and outside of the building where scores of kids my age and older are loitering and trading and chatting and grinding the toes of their shoes on the cement to put out finished cigarettes. Some are sitting in butts that are old and stained by the street and the dirt on the ground is probably ash. The grass that sprouts through the cracked cement is coarse and sharp and tougher than plastic; it's fibrous and dry and bends though it's stiff and it'll papercut your finger if you grab it from a sneaky angle. It's impossible to uproot, even if you tear up the fibrous blades; the scores of feet my age and older trample the dirt and pack the ash so tight that they form cement and that's how the streets are made.

         I make my way to a harlequin kid who is chatting it up with Anyone near the side of the Prada store, on the sharp grassy lawn of the park where loitering is abundant. I borrow an ice cream bucket full of cash when he isn't caring. I just need to use it to pay off a game of tug-o-war for the kids much younger. But the bucket is from crack deals and suddenly there are shouts announcing that "it's the po," "the pigs are here," "the fuckin' boys―the fuckin' po-lice" have hit the scene, and it's a dry, sunny day for the scores of kids my age and older to scatter like mad in every direction. Some continue to sit on the sharp grassy lawn and picnic on tattered, ashy tablecloths; they stay where they are because they know they can't get arrested if they're clean, or because the police have black batons to bring down the runners. Others run because they won't get away with staying, and the heavy policewoman near us is distracted by the runners just long enough for the Harlequin Kid to slap my shoulder and tell me to run. We take off. It's inevitable that she'll come after me and as I follow the Harlequin Kid, who doesn't take back the ice cream bucket, I look back and see her brown face, heavy at the bottom, chasing me. We sprint across the park and there are so many kids that she loses us, and I look at the Harlequin Kid and his eyes are so red and so tired that he stops to lie down under a tree for 'night's sleep. He hands me a pamphlet before he knocks out and I read about a kid my age or older who died with blood in his red eyes and coke dusted on his shirt and hairy arms. There is a picture.

         I wonder how the Kid got this pamphlet in my dream and what is he trying to tell me by giving me this. I wonder is he showing me that the world of law-abiders, the parents, the publishers of the pamphlet are ludicrous, Or Is he warning me, Or Is he laughing. His language is ununderstandable, and with no answer it is pointless to keep the speculations, so I delete them and the situation is feelingless. I delete right and wrong before I leave him to sleep under his tree, before I leave the tree and the pamphlet and the park and the world of highway as far as the eye can see. In forty winks I'm on my way, I wake up and remember I was sleeping.