Wilma

No, we have not found him yet. Our brother. This is not about that. That is that and this is this and we wish you'd all just find ways to move forward, as we have, though our bellies have frozen in place from that very moment we did realize him lost. They refuse to take air as deeply down as they used to--this would mean conceding to some truth that we are not ready to yet concede. A stack of dollar bills has appeared through our mail slot, and we can only suspect we are being bribed for something. For keeping quiet? For keeping our noses to ourself and to the chronic stains left upon the underarms of our tank tops? Yes, we wear tank tops. Even here. Everyone wears tank tops. Everyone.

Otis Redding is softing through our ears, and this calms us. You are tired, and you want to be free, he says. And we say, yes, well, who isn't, and who doesn't? There are headaches leapfrogging down the line of us, here at our long, newly-stained wood table. The tallest among us felled a tree and the shortest helped him craft from it this table, and the brother of most-middling height did the staining. The rest of us, we just watched. That is the job of people who fall into no distinct height category (of which there are the primary aforementioned three (shortest, tallest, middleingest)).

We have gotten used to doing lots of watching, and it has, perhaps, made us somewhat lazy. Were we to re-enter the "real" world, were we to separate ourselves from our isolation and attempt, say, to get a job at the Home Depot, or the Price Chopper, we would automatically assess the heights of all of our co-workers and figure out from there if we could be rightly expected to do any work. Likely, we would not. We would insist that we were not relegated to any position but that of the "watcher," for obvious reasons. We would be fired. We would be forced, then, to return here. Which is where we belong. Which is why we do not leave. Which is why it was an especial blow to lose a brother to any world outside of the one we've created to keep us. When we lose ourselves and each other, we expect it to be due to natural causes. Within the home. This is the most important part. The home was built to birth us, to sleep us, and, eventually, to kill us. Not the snow, not the sex-wild light of the moon, not the dry mouth of the badlands, not nothing but this.

We'd like to move in the direction of discussing dogs more regularly. They are perhaps the only beasts fit for entering into our private conversation, this one we've been having. Today we met a beast named Wilma, with one leg very swollen and round above the knee, and a tongue that hung out the side of her mouth all of the time. She is medium-sized and soft grey with streaks of white and the sweetest face you've ever seen. Mostly it's the influence of that tongue, which makes her look a bit dunce-y, which she is not. The tongue belies her. Sometimes, when she rests her head upon her paws, the tongue drapes over one or both paws like fabric. Wilma is a bright star.

Sleep calls for us, too early we reckon. It's rain, and it's cold. The problem with relegating all work to only three brothers is that they begin to resent the rest of us and then to purposefully harm their backs in order to develop stoops and grow shorter, or the opposite. We have wondered at the shortest brother's recent habit of hanging from a bar he's placed in the doorway of the bathroom and letting himself dangle, quite limp, there. We've noticed he is always sitting with his back very straight at the dinner table which is also the everything else table; he is looking taller, but he will still always be the shortest.

We tell him we will always love and respect him, but we don't always mean it. Sometimes, when he's off working, the rest of us will privately make debasing jokes about various parts of his body, like his hands, and we rarely feel bad about it. We are not always good people. Sometimes, we just need to gossip. Sometimes we realize it is awful to be speaking this way of a brother, especially when one of us still remains lost. Other times, we don't realize anything at all. Until later, staring up at the ceiling. Then we remember everything that's ever happened to us and fall asleep just like that. Remembering.

Lost in Search of Meat

You waifs and wild-folk, you brash and bawdy cock-hounds,

We're all together in this, are we not? And do we not do things for to be known, to be not erased? To live through what we make. To live beyond the walls of the body. We have wondered on this of late, as the roof above our poor and winter-brined heads continues to crumble. Sometimes, all it is is a matter of waking with drywall in your mouth and learning to love the drywall. At least it keeps you full. At least you have a wall to speak of, be it dry or no.

One of us is lost now. The one with the shortest beard, nonetheless. He went out to search for meat, and hasn't returned yet. And of course he has not. We can't help but moan in our beds, feeling just danged awful down to our furred and burly toes. For who would send out into the cold and senseless world the brother with the least going for him chin-hair wise? It was unwise, but he was mulish and convinced it didn't matter that he has not only a baldish face, but also the thin neck of a girl-child, and only two Walmart-brand wifebeaters knotted together as a scarf. We tried to offer him the raccoon skin we save behind the mantlepiece for winter meat-trips, but this, too, he waved off with the back of his effete paw.

There is no helping the brother who will not help himself. We repeat this at our dinner table like grace, splicing our peas into sections of twos and threes to make our plates seem fuller. But we miss him. We miss him bad, and though we all put up a rough show of clear-headedness, deep-down in the gut we all are squirming and lonesome. Is not this just a microcosm of the world at large? All of us putting on all manner of shows for everyone else? Pretending we are not terrified of not existing well enough, or doing things right enough, or living up to whatever standards we have set or have been set upon us? Pretending we are not flappable? But there are parts of us all squirming and lonesome, is the truth. There are parts of us all that miss our lost brothers, gone out for meat and never returned. It's enough to make a vegetarian out of any one of us. Give us our frozen bag of Birdseye and that'll be enough. It will be enough.

We found in the satchel beside his bed-space a book called The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. We know little of this book, but our missing brother was seen, many days, scuttled away, interred in its pages. We worry now for other need of interment, but we can hardly think or speak of that. We chew at our inner-cheeks and think not of women (well, privately of women, but we don't speak of them as we would have were he here with us and not in some worrisome outer-place we can't fix or define.) Some quotes (oddly, and worryingly, mostly pertaining to death) were underlined, and we will relay some to you, in case you happen upon a small-bearded man mumbling these words under his breath somewhere in the snow. (Take note the knotted wifebeaters about his neck. Take note his soft and subtle chin. Return him safe to us so we might once again resume activities involving the discussion of women and their secrets.)

""I have a feeling," I said, "about the axial lines of life, with respect to which you must be straight or else your existence is mere clownery, hiding tragedy...When striving stops, there they are as a gift...Truth, love, peace, bounty, usefulness, harmony! And all noise and grates, distortion, chatter, distraction, effort, superfluity, passed off like something unreal. And I believe that any man at any time can come back to these axial lines, even if an unfortunate bastard, if he will be quiet and wait it out....even disappointment after disappointment will not take away his love. Death will not be terrible to him if life is not. The embrace of other true people will take away his dread of fast change and short life.""

"It's better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls."
(we are certain our lost brother must be muttering this, whether lost or no, but perhaps this does not bode well.)

"Death is going to take the boundaries away from us, that we should no more be persons. That's what death is about. When that is what life also wants to be about, how can you feel except rebellious?" (This thought, by the way, seems to come at the heels of Augie's meeting a displaced (secretly German?) person, living in a monastery, begging money in the streets of Italy during WWII.)

"There's something about those business envelopes with the transparent oblong address part that my soul runs away from."
(there is deep, deep truth to this quote. We, too, feel horrible panic at the sight of such envelopes. A collection has amassed which we will address, later, when we are feeling less fragile.)

"I was still chilled from the hike across the fields, but, thinking of Jacqueline and Mexico, I got to grinning again. That's the animal ridens in me, the laughing creature, forever rising up. What's so laughable, that a Jacqueline, for instance, as hard used as that by rough forces, will still refuse to lead a disappointed life? Or is the laugh at nature--including eternity--that it thinks it can win over us and the power of hope? Nah, nah! I think. It never will."


Look for him, won't you? Every set of eyes you pass, every pair of weather-ravaged hands, every
impostor of inner-certitude. Speak to him of death and of life and see what he says. See him in turns world-weary and hopeful. Remind him of his smutty magazines and see how fast home he runs. He, as powerless as the rest of us. And as human.

Yours, truly,

Dick Fancy


Also, This:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VMf7OqTOuU

The Cold, and Other Events

The time is nigh, gentle readers. The time is nigh. There is reckoning afoot. There are reckoning afeet. There are feet set for the reckoning, and when the angels slip through, we shall all be upside-downed and lifted by the ankle, straight to the moon. To the MOON, we say.

We've been adequately snowed-in, and our (aforementioned) glib South Dakota basement has grown even more glib, even tawdry, by the snow flitting in through the cracks in our square, and tiny, windows--like when the woman you bring home removes her underpants and crawls into your bed while you were in the bathroom and so you didn't see it, and feel cheated in some irreparable way. Did she not want you to see her as she pulled them down her legs? Did she truly think it necessary to deprive you this singular, intimate pleasure? Perhaps more intimate, even, than the act which might have followed when you, too, dropped drawers like a dope and crawled into bed beside her, plugging your chin to the bony head of her shoulder-top while she feigned sleep? This is as the tawdry snow, accumulating while you sleep, shivering, in your long bed with all your bearded brothers. They grumble, snore and snort through the night while the snow creeps in, sneaky as hell, and the lady and her underpants are whisked away with the night, with the stars, with the serpent that sits waiting for her with forked tongue just outside the door.

There is no mistaking it, folks: this is life. This is just it.

And our beards grow ever-longer, wild as brush and self-satisfied like to crush the soul of any beardless man, woman or child.

And are we tempted by the heat of other lands? Are we tempted by the boorish hands of giants, which might lift us into their palms and let us nap there awhile, closer to the sky? Are we tempted by the life our mother has chosen to lead, far away, of sewing machines, low-cal hard candy, and early nights with the television? Well, of course we are. And, again, of course.

But, Now: an offering of weirdness to cut the brutish cold from your marrow.

                                                         Becoming

 Jonathon doubted I could become a horse and so I didn’t show him the bottoms of my feet growing coarser. In bed, I kicked away from him and covered my mouth when he fucked me from behind, because I couldn’t moan anymore without whinnying slightly.

He didn’t notice at first—he never noticed much. He ate with his face turned down to the plate and always using one specific fork from the cutlery drawer; he was like a child in this way, and I humored him because I understood that he held onto those things that made him feel safe because he was otherwise scared. The fork with three tines and the outline of little daisies carved into its handle. That was Jonathon’s fork.  

                                                +

I’d woken three months earlier, heart-poundy, from a dream that made me understand all I needed to become in order to feel whole. It was the same dream I’d had, recurrently, as a child but had been forced to ignore. And then it was back.

In the dream, I was a horse. With a long mane that shone gold with twitches of chlorine blue when the sun came up behind it and a heaviness in my limbs that felt stable and serene. My heart was large inside my barrel chest, and I slept standing up, surrounded by smells of dirt and the hot sun smells of grass and of sun, and with the stars waiting to be licked up by my giant tongue which rolled out of my mouth against my teeth, lazy, like molasses rolling down tree bark. I wasn’t worried about anything and there wasn’t death to think about. I felt certain. That was all it was. Being a large thing in a wide-open place and not wondering what else you were meant for. Feeling lonely but in a sweet way, an edifying way.

I’d once confessed the dream to my mother who’d smacked the back of my head and then told me, gently, to be sensible, rubbing my head after she'd smacked it. I was a girl with long, slender limbs and a refrigerator full of whole fruit. I had a black maid who folded my clothes like it was the nineteen-fifties, or the twenties, or the eighteen-twenties, and a four-poster day bed with a canopy and eight full pillows. I needed for nothing.

So I did. Become sensible. Went to school and was not a horse because I was a girl. A girl with a small mouth and a somewhat higher-than-normal gum-ridge who did as she was told, who grew breasts and shaved the hair from her legs and armpits and pubis and plucked it sometimes from her chin when people noticed and screwed up their faces at the injustice and unwelcome coarseness of it all.

Jonathan didn’t like hair, and was glad I was a girl who removed it, regularly, for money and for pain and for smooth. 

                                                +

When the dream came again, and persisted, I tried, again, to ignore it. Every morning, I woke and brushed and cleaned away my various dirtynesses with cold water and boiled soap stuffed with little fancy bits of shit like lavender and oat rusk, but it came roaring against me anyway. The dream. The dream.

Jonathon, I’m becoming something new, I told him one morning. It was raining out, and he’d shut the window I’d left open through the night so I could smell the air rising from the trees. I slid out of the pale sheets of our bed and opened it again as he sat up and watched me, frowning. He wanted to know what I meant. He told me to shut the window because it was raining and it would warp the wood. I told him about the dream, and then he laughed and his laugh was sideways and made me think of how much he loved that fucking fork with the daisies, probably more than he loved me.

I’m going to become a horse, I said. I was very serious. And I don’t think I’ll be able to live here with you once I do.

We both watched the buildings outside shoulder the rain. They were getting pummeled and could do nothing about it but stand there.  

Jonathon rustled in the sheets and sighed very deeply. Whatever you want, he said, rolling his eyes back like people do when they don’t think what you say means much. Do whatever you want. 

                                                                        +

           

It’s hard not to wrap my whole mouth around things I’m not supposed to. When he fucks me, it’s hard not to bash my head down sharply into the bed like it’s grass, or a big wet pouch of iron-y mud or to rear back and encompass his whole skull between my teeth. Sometimes I do, and the pleasure of it is immense, like running naked into the ocean at night in summertime when the moon is fat and hot white. When you start to change, little things take you by surprise—like how much water you suddenly need to drink, and how heavy and hairy your legs have become. Jonathon doesn’t notice my hooves developing because he doesn’t want to. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I will get shoed—different Internet forums recommend different things. In the end, the only difference becomes the sound you make as you trot; it’s whether or not you want to attract attention, and then it’s just money. Showing off.  

            Some people worry they are making their lovers into practitioners of bestiality without their consent. Some do it for people they love. No one does it lightly or for nothing. It’s not that kind of choice. One man is becoming a badger for his Swedish boyfriend.

I tell Jonathon this, and he says nothing, ignoring the neighing sound at the back of my throat, the tossing of my long, silky hair after I say it. He’s eating dinner out of a scalloped plastic container, and, he’s only got eyes for Fork.

Examining Forgiveness in Bearded Men.

We know.

Months have passed, fine readers. Moons have come and moons have gone. Moons have grown bright and dim above us, slender as a cat's whisker, full as our hearts as Autumn approaches and pulls sweaters over our wrists and kindling in our woven baskets.

Some of us have fireplaces, and some of us have fireplaces that we aren't allowed to use, as the great grumbling men in charge of our place of residence have decided to grumble away our rights to winter and fire and smoke. These things aren't fair, and they aren't right, but they are so. They are the lives we live, fire-less and dependent upon the gooseflesh of another--thick of New York accent, and small of spirit--to warrant their own warmth. But we will forgive him, as we are forgiving people. As we are bearded people. As we are people doing our best, and sometimes failing, but nonetheless, reflective and consumed by the desire to be as decent as we can, when we remember to do it. Our beards our witness, we struggle, but we try. We do try.

Woe is me. And, also, Whoa. Whoa is a word. Whoa is a word that just never looks right when you write it out. And can we--the fine bearded men living in the basement of an abandoned meat-packing plant in central South Dakota--finally be honest? See, every time we type out the word "whoa," we question ourselves. We stare at this word, over and over again, and worry we've messed up the placement of its letters.

Is it actually "Woah"? No, no, we reason. That would result in the word being pronounced Wo-AH, and that would make no sense. Would be the blathering work of idiots. Because the word is mono-syllabic, is pronounced 'WOah'. And, fact is, those last two syllables are mere stand-ins. For show, for nothing, for naught, for nil, for fancy, for

DICK FANCY.

And so we shall move on. Forward, into the beckoning moonlight which sings, but too gently to hear unless you're a loon and you sing back. We have heard these loons; we have visited their lake, in Maine. We built a fire there, in a cabin, in a real fireplace that sucked smoke up its flue and shifted it back to the black sky. And it was everything we'd hoped it would be. Flue is another word whose spelling we question. Even now, we wonder: are we making fools of ourselves? Do we look like real cads? Real dingbats?

We'd like to return to the point of forgiveness for a moment--we bearded men, sat around the series of wooden boards we call a dinner table, candlelight fading quick. The South Dakota winter is whipping past the slats of glass we call windows, barely protecting our un-bearded flesh from deep-freeze.

Let us explain our long-winded absence, long-windedly.

We have not been writing, or at least putting forth into the world concerted efforts of writing or creative work of late, because, as we've probably told you before, we are often plagued by the icy, gnawing claws of perfectionism. That tepid, yowlping beast. That furtive soul-sucker. That slutty, hooting low-dancer. There is fear in our bones that what we make contains no real value, or might not; it is a useless narcissistic cycle of inner-battlements that produces this fear, it is. So, we bat away our own efforts, and, as a result, make little, or nothing, for fear that what we make might make us puke a bit inside of our mouths. This, fair readers, is simply no way to live.

While listening to NPR this blustering, leaf-scattered morning, in our humble basement dwelling, we heard writer Ann Patchett speak of the universal nature of this struggle, and, also, of forgiveness in this regard. Despite our doubts--and our feeling that the thing inside of our heads which we really know might be beautiful (or gruesome, or terrible, or important, or dangerous, or lonely, or mad) and which we make all efforts to convey will never trick out exactly as we hope it will--we must persist. And we must forgive ourselves for this gap. This near-always gap somewhere between the story we've been holding inside every better cell of our bodies and brain-worms and the story that actually makes its way onto a page or screen or wherever it is we end up putting it. We must forgive ourselves for this and move on and then keep going, knowing we tried our best. And this trying our best, this work, is better, far better and more noble, than not trying at all for fear our try will simply not be good enough. It probably will not. But, then, maybe, eventually, it will. And our beards will grow more fine and lustrous, and the smell of old meat will disappear from inside our nostrils, and then someone we don't even know will send us a care package from Harry and David's, full of perfectly-ripe pears and shredded paper and something covered in chocolate, and we will really know we have won.

This is the goal, citizens of these lines, mayors of our hearts, strokers of our fine and lustrous beards (grown slightly dry now in the cold-ing weather). And what will happen if we fall back into familiar patterns? We will collect ourselves, dust the mites from our elbow-pads, and find a way to forgive ourselves again. And you. We will forgive you, too, for being kind. For doing right by us, and by each other. For sending us more pictures of cats, too, maybe.

Dick Fancy lives. Sometimes, he struggles to breath more deeply. But, though he plods and drags his boots now and again through the steadily-hardening mud, he exists. We exist. We are open for questions, we are open for advice, we are open for anything you want to share. Or keep to yourselves. The point is: Hello. Hi. We're grateful to have dusted off our old PC, found a sparking outlet near the old meat-grinder, and begun again.

Love,

DF

A couple new drawrings

Perhaps you've noticed a bit of a lapse in Dick Fancy's contributions to .blogspot.com; perhaps you haven't. We don't know who you are, and you hardly know us. I mean, you just barely know us. You know what we allow you to know. We curate ourselves for your sake, maybe even for our own sake. We are mysteries to each other, you and I. We are mysteries to ourselves. We are distant spectres of people we'd like to believe we knew or know but will never really, not really, not truly, not in the way our deepest, darkest, wormiest parts would really like, were we to admit them to ourselves, were we to take full advantage of their desires. Things haven't been easy for us, of late, and we've been forced to step back a bit, do some editing, and some good hard thinking about our place in the world, as men with long beards who also maintain a blog in the plural first-person narrative. We understand and acknowledge that we haven't always presented ourselves in this way, but things have clarified themselves in the fits and spurts that things sometimes do, and so now we come to you as a host of aforementioned bearded men--men with love in their hearts, and springs in their steps--and we ask that you embrace us with all you're willing to give. Why give anything less than your fullest selves, after all? Give us one good solid reason, and we'll let you off the hook! Come on! Let's us release our hardest darkness, our worms, our dogged ambitions, to the dust of stars, to all that falling carbon, and give ourselves to each other; shall we? Shan't we? There's a song in our heads, but we won't share it with you. Not yet. You're still looking a bit squirrelly out there, a bit timid. And that's okay. We'll be here waiting, waiting until we tire of all this endless, fruitless waiting (you beasts) and move on to other things which will likely be somewhat more enjoyable. Probably, they will involve baking a nice cake.

Based off of an old photo of our Grandmother, who, by mysterious circumstances that have still not been revealed to us (big family secret), was part zebra. 

                                                     
                   Self-portrait; pen and ink.

Bitch, move

Man, oh man, it's cold.


Here's a weird new poem! Read it with a heavy coat on, so that you'll come to associate it with some kind of warmth. Maybe? Might that work? In a Pavlovian sort of way?

Bitch-Move-Out-The-Way

Moon of face, droop of mouth why

so sour you slick

dude? Is it the hair 

swirling rings round your forehead, soft

constellations of down, skin thick

as moss? Hold that handrail—your claws

are slipping. Hey,

monkey-head,

we don't blame you—the N train

hum-hum bumpy, bright slutty

light slanting to make black-eyes

blacker and men with limps pray

harder the train might thrust them

flying atop prettylady's empty

lap and wouldn't her fat lips

feel just right, just

right all your ears tingling

sex sex sex all those x's and what they

mean lit up red. Oh

Big Lady Silver we don't blame you

your improbable features, scrawled

in deep dark mother-cave, nutrients

delivered free, sleep and growing

eyelids the major tasks of the day—harder

when your bearer is bourboned. But

forgive her, your mother.

Grown-up is no Sadie Hawkin's

dance, Darlin', no my-call-

let's-groove-this-one-loose-

while-the-lights-are-softish,

sorry, nope. Grown is a slow

Charleston danced by accident

with some bitch-
won't-move-out-the-way

down a crowded street. Grown

is unscrewing all the lightbulbs

one night and opening the refrigerator

instead, hand-jiving on the cold

floor until you get hungry enough

and eat all the pickles, waking up

next day, doing it all again.

Doppledangerous

A close friend, who once stole a pair of flowery pants from our closet while we were out of town, warned us over here at Dick Fancy not to google "dick fancy," which we then promptly did.

Though we, of Dick Fancy, have figured out by now that the notion that there remains anything truly "original" or "still uncultivated" in this world is mostly an incorrect, unhelpful one, and though we didn't think we were the only Dick Fancy tooling around here in the internet time-space continuum, we guess part of us (and if you're wondering at this point who this multiple "us" and "we" is (are?), well, as you've probably already suspected, we are a group of small, bearded men who live together in the basement of an old meat-packing plant in South Dakota, much like Snow White's seven dwarves, except there are only six of us) still hoped that Dick Fancy, as the name of a blog, might somehow remain our unique, original, still-uncultivated property.

With deep regret, we ask that you cast your eye upon: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0266697/

Richard Fancy. Dick Fancy. A real god's honest human, if we're still of a mind to consider actors real god's honest humans. We're on the fence, ourselves. But, seriously: Richard Fancy! What a great name! We can forgive him his encroachment just for having been himself for so long, and for smiling (so menacingly!) like the creep he surely must be.

Next: https://twitter.com/leanderTrey
What? "leanderTrey? Far as we can tell, nowhere on this gentleman's "twitter" account does he even grace his audience with the unique privilege of Dick Fancy-ness. "The epitome of hyperbole," so says his tagline. Indeed. We'd say the epitome of leading-astray, of the abuse-of-title! Shame on you!

And then, there's this: http://dickfancy.tumblr.com/. We'll speak not even to the content here, but to the fact of how easily our two very different attempts at "Dick Fancy" might be misconstrued, confused for one another, or any number of mishaps. It's just, there are too many variables, too much that might go wrong when navigating these choppy waters of .blogspot, and .tumblr, and god knows what else. There's much in this world capable of stirring terror in our hearts.

We have little else to say about it. Truly, we've gone back and forth about whether or not this is even fertile enough subject matter to include at all, or if it's just boring and tedious. Surely, fertile is the wrong work to describe it. There's just nothing "fertile" going on here. We are six bearded men. We live alone. We have stacks of porno in the bathroom, but, truly, we don't even look at it. We sometimes gaze at the covers, scratch thoughtfully at our furry chins, but ultimately decide that to look within would require more of a time commitment than we're willing to make.

We swear the man sitting beside us (all six of us) at the long table at this cafe saw the subject of our google search, cast upon us a disapproving stare, and then found it necessary to remove himself from this place and make his way back onto the cold streets. The bitingly cold streets seemed in that moment more hospitable than remaining beside the row of us and our long beards at this long wooden table, suffering the look of horror on our faces when we saw the pages and pages of search results that Dick Fancy produced.


Enough of this. Now, a poem:
 

Promise Me Your Teeth

How a bird shoulders seed

too large for its mouth,

bulge of ambition

protruding unnatural

round, like a thimble

in its throat. I look

squirrels dead in the eye

like to challenge: tell me

you will not lunge all rabid

at my throat, promise me

your teeth will not spark some unloved

wildness in my blood, to be skimmed off the surface

with a sugar spoon, oh

tell me I have not loved

too much to quicken another's throat

closed in thought of me, in regret. Speak me

the place satisfaction is held. Is it laid

neat in the belly of steel-tipped trunks—those

who possess it—folded in with old

broke sconces, wedding rings

and baby shoes, pressed linen napkins. Squirrel?

Your hind legs make me giddy; I'd borrow

those fur-pants, if only

they would fit.

evolution

A quick post to say that we at dick fancy have updated our address, mainstreaming it to the significantly less esoteric "dickfancy.blogspot.com." See, there are other-work issues at hand which demand my actual name be slightly less en-titled in such a way. So, hereafter, call my name out in the streets and in the supermarkets! Make it synonymous with dick fancy! Make them mean the same thing.  (No, I mean, don't really do this. That would be jarring, at best. Not that I really thought you would or anything. I'd have to be some kind of narcissist to believe this even the thinnest of possibilities.)
Anyway, onward, into the future, where we must hide ourselves behind our most obvious disguises.

Yours, always,

D. Fancy

Morlocks, deep bathtubs, big faces, black holes.

(INTERVIEWER

Is there a particular picture of the world which you wish to develop? The past is very present for you, even in a novel of the “future,” such as Bend Sinister. Are you a “nostalgist”? In what time would you prefer to live?

NABOKOV

In the coming days of silent planes and graceful aircycles, and cloudless silvery skies, and a universal system of padded underground roads to which trucks shall be relegated like Morlocks. As to the past, I would not mind retrieving from various corners of space-time certain lost comforts, such as baggy trousers and long, deep bathtubs.)



In case you haven't read H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, as I, unfortunately, have not:
Morlocks are a fictional species created by H. G. Wells for his 1895 novel, The Time Machine. They dwell underground in the English countryside of 802,701 CE in a troglodyte civilization, maintaining ancient machines that they may or may not remember how to build. Their only access to the surface world is through a series of well structures that dot the countryside of future England.
Morlocks are humanoid creatures, said to have descended from humans, but by the 8,028th century have evolved into a completely different species, said to be better suited to their subterranean habitat. They are described as "ape-like", with no clothing, large eyes and gray fur covering their bodies. As a result of living underground, they have little or no melanin to protect their skin, and so have become extremely sensitive to light.
The Morlocks' main source of food is the Eloi, another race descended from humans that lives above ground. The Morlocks treat the Eloi as cattle, and the Eloi do not resist being captured.
Since their creation by Wells, the Morlocks have appeared in many other works such as sequels, movies, television shows, and works by other authors, many of which have deviated from the original description. (courtesy of The Free Dictionary)

Hmm. Ancient machines they may or may not remember how to build? I'm already distrustful of these melanin-starved Morlocks. Yes; keep them below ground, I say!

And, onto other matters, in case you've never chanced to experience the pleasures of a long, deep bathtub:

"Long(?), deep bathtub"

Hard to say whether or not Nabakov would have approved; I worry not necessarily for the style, but perhaps for the length.

"Dick, Fancy"

Would this man have enjoyed that tub? His face makes him seem short. I'm not saying short men are incapable of enjoying bathtubs. I'm thinking: if he's short enough, there'd be no reason for him not to enjoy this bathtub. Then again, I've no true notion of the dimensions of this tub. It could be huge. It could be twenty feet long. It could be full of gold, or tiny, pecking hens, or fresh-picked dill. It could be full with all the sweaty t-shirts that you've never gotten around to washing and so now they're stiff and stale and smell of mildew and rot. It could be full with Morlocks.

Back to the question at hand, though: would you agree? Tiny man, big face? Though, it's perhaps unfair to describe his face as "big." Yes, it fills up most of the borders of the photograph, but, then again, that's typically the point of portraiture. Or, not the point, per say, but an aim: to occlude other potential distraction in favor of one's giant head.

That's what the head-shot, taken my final brutish year of theatre conservatory, seems to be. My own face in this photograph has been described as "looking like it's poking through a black hole," by a woman who once, in the company of another friend, brought me to such a muscle-weakening fit of giggling--while climbing up the sets of stairs leading to her Chicago apartment (outfitted with Turkish rugs, cans of spent peanuts, and a ceiling that had half-crumbled to the floor in giant white flakes of drywall)--that the two were able to hold me down, strip me entirely of my clothing, rush inside the apartment and lock me out, naked, to roam the hallways until they got tired enough to relinquish hold of the doorknob.

"Perpetrator # 2"

"Perpetrator # 1"

I wonder why Nabakov spoke of baggy trousers as a part of the nostalgic past. I don't wonder why he wished to relegate trucks to the subterranean. I do wonder if maybe I'm wrong for questioning the whole "baggy-trousers-as-thing-of-the-past" situation. Maybe I'm the bonehead here for assuming they aren't a thing of the past. Who wears baggy trousers anymore, anyway? (Aside from maybe all of the people I've met in Colorado, who wear them regularly, because they are always about to go skiing, or at least it looks that way to me.)

Back soon with: more questions, more interpretations of nostalgia on which I have no claim, less words, more fun, fewer pictures, more revelations, greater effort, less weakness, reduction of pettiness, enlargement of purpose, thinning out of blame, thickening of spirit, better snow shoes, increased tolerance for cats who refuse to let me cradle them like newborns, less money, fewer syntactical difficulties, cleaner hair.

"Poking through black hole; still enjoys bathtubbing"

Passionately, primitively,

DF

 

Back for More

I guess what I'm realizing is that I'm bad at consistency.
Dick Fancy wanted only this, wanted a place in which to put forth effort with minimal pressure and maximal joy, and yet the pressure seemed to override the joy at some point last week, making Dick Fancy a postless blog. Dick Fancy begs you not to pass judgement quite yet regarding its consistency. It is trying. All it can do is try. It wishes you only the best though, and hopes you wish for it the same. Dick Fancy aims for the best, wishes to ride the waves of bestitude into a brighter future of work and postings and love and pleasure and contentment and friendship and good-tidings and cheer and general benevolence. But, sometimes, good people of the universe, of that crudest of words, 'the blogosphere,' we are beset by our own perceived limits. See, Dick Fancy grew tired of itself. Grew tired of the smallness of itself, and took steps backward, further into the dim light its own resistance.
Dick Fancy, continuing to speak of itself in third person, also wishes to inform you it is on some strong homeopathic cough medicine right now.
Because Dick Fancy has a cough, not because it wants to get high. Just to be clear about it.
There are just these everyday struggles that come from being human and sometimes catching cold/coughs, and so many other things. It is frustrating being laid up in bed, for the third time in a relatively short number of weeks. It is frustrating feeling creatively stagnant.
But we shall all push through. We shall continue to abide our original promise of putting forth work without necessarily worrying on its perceived 'goodness,' or 'rightness,' or inherent value. It is work for the sake of work. For making work, and for delivering it, in whatever state it may find itself, to the good people who are kind enough to look upon it.
That being said, I have for you a mostly un-edited, likely still-to-be-completed poem. I will make no apologies for it other than those implicit in what I just said. No title as of yet.

And if she offered you her body

lord would you take it, though she is not

one of your terrible sons? Though she be

bereft of forehead marking

describing all the ways

she was built to disappoint?

Though she be clear-eyed

careful, too careful

perhaps, and though old men with crushed faces

do not call out her name as they pass through

the gates where she stands, waiting to be led, waiting

for the wood box before her bed to open

of its own volition, beaming

answers through its rice-paper

scroll. How many hours has she chanted

blind to the night, ceramic string of Christmas

lights tonguing the white walls

rainbow for a thing that cannot spring

full-formed out of nothing, hands

outstretched to pull her back to herself or to the self

still learning its parts, summing them

slowly to unsolid answer. Answer

enough, at least, to blurb herself

to strangers at parties. To make them wonder

who made her, at the songs she was sung

as she fell to sleep in her father's

arms, mother, too, singing

close by, off-key.

CAT PIC CAT PIC CAT PIC

Dick Fancy re-enters your life with a short post bearing excellent news: We've received our first cat-pic, courtesy of an exemplary viewer. Below, our humble reward, the fruits of our seemingly fruitless attempts to connect the individual to the world, to make sense of the cosmic trusses pinioned to the sky above our heads, cutting up the sunlight into strange triangles. Yes. You've got it. You've made sense of that tangle of thorns, gentle reader. And now, to reap the benefits of all our hard work:

Thank you, Woody Forrest (sp?) Leslie. You have served your country, and now you may continue resting with that nice-looking cat sprawled across your torso.

The rest of you: take heed. You are still falling dangerously below your potential, far as I can tell. The universe might be finite, and then you'll run out of time, and there will have been no recorded evidence of you interacting with cats. This will be a shame, perhaps a greater shame than any of us actually have the capacity to stomach. Think about it.

Take heed your brother in rightful cat-action. Take heed.

Love,
Dick Fancy

PET-A-CAT MONDAY

That's right. Here at Dick Fancy, we're proud to sponsor PET-A-CAT MONDAY. All you have to do is get out there and make sure you pet at least one cat today. It's much harder to pet a cat than it is a dog, because dogs have parks and leashes and demand walks, whereas cats generally keep indoors unless they're feral. SO, if you don't already possess a cat in your own home, you'll have to do a little groundwork in order to find one you might pet. Don't be creepy about it. Just call up a friend who you know has a cat, and ask if you can come pet it. Or, maybe a way to be less creepy about it is to call up this same friend and not mention the cat at all. Just ask if this friend wants to hang out at their place, and then while you're there you can get in a little cat-petting. Don't make it obvious that this is the only real reason you went over there. Your friend will be offended if you do. If they already read Dick Fancy (and WHO DOESN'T?!!!), they'll probably be on to you. So, proceed with caution. But definitely make sure you pet a cat.  Oh, and if you don't have friends who own cats, you'll probably have to go to the nearest feral-cat hangout with an open can of tuna fish. (If you're in the Brooklyn area, I definitely know of an outdoor lot on Manhattan ave between Driggs and Nassau that seems to be a very hip spot for feral cats to grounge (lounge and grunge.)) Good luck. 

I'd love to see some pics of you petting a cat, so if you're out there and you've got a camera, take a shot and send it to me.

If you don't, I'll be super embarrassed. I understand this is a distinct possibility. However, I enter into this request understanding there exist some inherent risks one must be willing to take for the sake of PET-A-CAT Monday.

Included below is a small passage from a story I'm working on. I don't know yet what will become of this story. There is much to be figured out. Thanks for reading.



And onward....
From "Unpronounceable Towns:"

Sofia crawled in her dreams. She was an adult who could not stand, no matter how hard she tried. Her husband floated in a fish-tank just beyond her reach, but he was alive, and looked remarkably happy there in the water.

WHY DON'T YOU LEAP OUT AND HELP ME, she would sometimes shout to him. She wasn't sure how long it had been like this: she, sprawled and helpless, her husband floating, flippered. WHY DO YOU DO NOTHING? She saw his teeth sparkling against the small waves he made as he flipped and twisted. It was very frustrating to her, to be without full access to her height. She wondered why, wondered what had happened, why everything around her was weirdly blindingly gold-white, why there was no furniture. No one else seemed bothered by it, but, then, there was no one else. There was her husband, the fish, en-tanked. There was her body, mysterious and uncooperative.

She crawled her way to the edge of the tank. It would be too high to climb inside, but, still, she clawed at it, desperate. Her love was inside, her love. He was so, so close. And he was alive—this was the important part. He had not been alive, she'd thought, not that long ago, though time, she knew, had been somehow bent. In what direction, she couldn't say, but he was here. That was what was important, some impressive meddling the universe had taken upon itself. A hand extended through impossible circumstances to save them, to return them to each other, despite the ropes of death. So, he was a fish. So her legs were lead and dragged beneath her, useless, without explanation. This could be overcome—all of it—as long as she could see him, as long as he existed. This was what was important: existing.

He pressed his cheek against the glass, near the bottom, where their bodies could have met if not for the thickness between them. MY LOVE, she cried out. She pressed her lips to the glass, and he in kind. MY LOVE MY LOVE. Her heart was full-up; her legs melted into the whiteness beneath her. He could not speak, or she could not hear him, but his lips moved. His fish-y lips. They'd always been big, the way she preferred lips to be. Womanly lips that bloomed upon his face, announcing his handsomeness. The lips of a fancy model on the face of a fisherman.

Before he was a fish and the world was entirely white, when her legs still worked and when most things made more sense than they did now, they'd wake together, pressed to the sun, the dirt-scent, the smell of horse shit rising almost sweet through the windows and he would run his big model-fish-y lips over her arm, shoulder, the tendons in her neck. Her mother was downstairs, clomping around on the cracked tile floor, stirring things in pots. Fernando and Ignacio were still sleeping, else frantically stunning themselves awake with internet porno or, more than possible, Fernando was at the university library, which he said was properly quiet in order he might study in peace. She'd heard him muttering the name Fermina again and again for the past several months, in the passing dark, when she'd creep downstairs for water or swigs of homemade wine from cloudy glass jugs in the middle of the night. As far as she knew, he had not slept in that long. Fermina, Fermina, like some demented, feverish man upon his deathbed, barely audible, pained.

She understood this now. Her husband, the fisherman, had become what once he hunted. This almost made sense, too, if she thought about it long enough. The hunter becoming its own prey. She prayed some larger thing would not swoop down and attempt to hook him at the mouth, gut him, make him flip wild in its big death-y hands, while she watched. The world was white. What color would his blood be?

His cheek against the glass against her cheek against the glass. This was what was important. He was here. She could be happy this way. She could learn.

POEM THURSDAY! love, DICK FANCY.

First, first, I just need to say that I realize if you happen to stumble upon this blog, or even if you've come here on purpose, it probably seems as though you've stumbled upon a relic of the past. Maybe, like, circa 1990. Blogs have since become pretty complex and spectacular. Lots of bells and whistles. At least a nice-looking banner. I'm not really up on the whole scene, because I'm both lazy and un-savvy when it comes to most forms of technology, but I have visited some blogs myself, and I know what potential they hold.

DICK FANCY wants you to know that it's fine just where it is. Stuck in 1990, which was probably a great year. I was four for most of it, until October, when I turned five, so I don't have too many clear memories of that time, but I'll bet it was probably decent. I guess H.W. Bush was still president, so maybe things weren't as good as they got starting in 1992, when Bill scooted his fine ass in there and dazzled the world with illegal blowjobs and a thriving economy and whatnot, but, anyway. Let's just put DICK FANCY somewhere in the '90-'95 region and stop worrying so much about chasing today's modern (and frankly OBSCENE) technology craze, spiraling out of control even as I type this. It is simply impossible to keep up. Some of us pick a year in our past and choose to remain there, content with what that year offered in certain arenas, like this one. I know it seems like I'm stressing out about about all this, but I'm not. I'm just worried that YOU are stressing out, and I'm trying to eliminate YOUR stress so that my own stress remains at a comfortable level. I had acupuncture today, goddammit, and it was goddamned relaxing and if you do ANYTHING to mess this up for me, I swear. I swear.

Let's get on with it then, shall we? Let's set the scene: it's 1993, Bill Clinton is exceedingly presidential, mainly because he's the president, it's summertime, the air smells of fresh-mowed lawn, the gardener's just put in some new mulch around the plants because they were starting to droop, what with all the heat, your stocks and bonds are all performing beyond expectation (can bonds perform?), and a woman (of your choosing) in an old-fashioned apron has just brought you some home-brewed iced-tea (Moroccan mint? I don't know?)

And now, for you, a newly-writ poem, about pubes:  -->

Pube-rty

Prayed I'd never bleed

because I couldn't figure how

I'd tell my mother—She—

quick to blush. She—

who once hid from me the spider-

tangle of her bush when, by accident,

I wondered into the bathroom, She—

mid-piss. She—squatting

nude upon the toilet. Her pale

skin my pale skin both of us

ashamed for being what we were,

for knowing

too much.

This was when the bible

made sense—mythology providing

context, at least, for the little things

bound to happen when you open doors

without knocking first—not that I ever

combed that doctrine of fables to explain

away gatherings of insect-y

womanhood, the plain awkward sight

of my mother's pubic hair, clotted

beneath her spread palm. Of what it meant

to be plucked from smooth ignorance

sudden, still unripe. Handed an apple

without Newton's law and made to parse out

what happens when it falls.

A POEM, brought to you by DICK FANCY

 Letter to the Future

Peaked and dipped, the crusty

earth—just a punched-in

punk—stumbled into itself in drunk

heaviness. Ribbons of salt

like a letter left to the future:

Dear Someone,

Once, I was thirsty.

Dear You,

Once I had not one drop of water to suck

and then I had too much. Guzzled it

up, fell languid into a bed of myself

because when you are everything, there is nowhere

else to go. My shoulders—bone

spurs, struck rocks, hunched and

painful, lopped by the wicked

sun who, himself, was cast out

of cool dark (the ideal

circumstances for celestial

hunkering) by the moon, soul-

sick of that quick-lash

tongue, passion's stove-

hot fingertips.

The Moon grew sullen, elusive

while the sun roared his complaints:

“I need my feet out while we sleep, the blinds drawn so I might wake with myself in my eyes.”

Talk of narcissism, selfishness. Love

for Love's sake. The Sun

slunk off, door-slamming. Rocks trembled,

mountains erupting in fire, burning

flesh to ash. All the wing-ed

things that might have risen

then burned too.

Dear Someone,

It is impossible

not to be thirsty in the desert. The word alone

recalls fable: mirage: drought.

Men in robes, staffs, Talmudic tablets of rough-hewn

stone. Dry heels skidding endless along open, empty

mouths of streams. Impossible

not to witness your own simple un-cloying aloneness

when staring out the small round window of a plane

into that vast hilly grave, 

girded by water, but without

privilege ever to gulp it.

Dear Someone,

Should ever I put mouth

to clear unsalted stream, I would 

suck the spout dry. In this mirage,

there is no space for self-control. In this mirage,

we are birds and I spit

half of what I've drunk into your leaned-back throat.

Were we to un-change, re-turn—

non-birds—to the drudge of human skin,

I would beg Dear Sweet Mirage

on dusty kneecap

to turn us so again.

And were we to emerge clipped

of wing—some punishment

dolled to the perpetually

dissatisfied—we might

huddle together in some furrow,

shivering ourselves asleep, releasing

unspent anguish with chirp-moans, blood

freezing solid while the moon grew

fat.

(At night, the Moon

tucks the covers

tight beneath the mattress.

(It was this transgression

destroyed all those trees.))

Inspiration culled while sick in bed.

I plan to use DICK FANCY to deposit writing and, potentially, drawing-things that don't have a proper home. Not to say that this home will be proper in any traditional sense, whatever "proper" even means. DICK FANCY will be home to us all. Or, we can hope for as much. All we can do sometimes is hope. Hope until our eyes start shooting rainbows, and I don't aim to disappoint MY PUBLIC. My hapless, admiring public. God, I hope my eyes start shooting rainbows. Wouldn't that be the dreamiest? Or, potentially quite alarming. Let's just wait it out before we decide what some hypothetical ocular rainbow-projection might really feel like.

This one is a few years old, I'm guessing from 2010, when I was living in Baltimore after I'd come home from walking the Camino. It's sort of silly. But discovering it got my dick-brain a little hard, thinking, well, maybe I should start one of these new-fangled blog-things as means to inspire more writing, without the pressure of wondering "what it will become" or "where it will go" or "what I'm doing with my life." Without further ado (adieu?):

OPEN LETTER TO A WOMAN NAMED NANCY WHO I AM NOT AND WHO IS NOT ME:

Dear Nancy,

A man in a baseball cap that wasn't actually a baseball cap but was, more accurately, nondescript headwear with a protrusive bill, mistook me yesterday for you.

I was sipping tea from a ceramic mug at that vegetarian cafe on Charles Street, and he waved as he walked in the door and said, hi Nancy. He was smiling; his teeth were showing. He was thrilled that you were there, believe me; he was clapping his hands together lightly beneath his chin. Is it possible the two of you haven't spoken in some time, though not because of any kind of tiff or lingering sourness between you? Maybe you're second cousins who came up in different parts of the state or country and provided each other much comfort as children and so to see you here, now, at this difficult time in his life, is the one single thing that he needed without realizing he needed it until the moment he saw you? I don't know. I didn't have the heart to tell him I wasn't you.

You're lucky, Nancy. There's someone out there, someone who wears nondescript caps and frequents vegetarian restaurants in Baltimore, who is, really, just out-of-his-mind thrilled about you. That being said, he wouldn't be my first choice of friend, seeing as--with full confidence--he waved at a person who wasn't you at all, as though he just didn't care enough to be discerning. An honest mistake, sure, but can we really call it that? I mean, as adults who've experienced a reasonable amount of social interaction and maintain at least an on-par if not above-average understanding of the workings of humankind, can't we just lift this veil of “uncertainty,” and live in the blaring, albeit devastating, realities of this situation? A person you call your friend, Nancy, a man who wouldn't hesitate for even a second to raise hand in air and call to you across a room full of people doing painfully quiet studying-type things--which leads me to believe the two of you are quite close—has no idea what you look like.

Let me ask you this, Nancy: when the two of you meet at a bar, or at that Indian restaurant on St. Paul that's apparently pretty good, or when he comes over to your place to enjoy a salad you've thrown together last-minute, and only after you've plated the bland thing do you think to yourself, well, why glum it tonight alone, again, with another pale bowl of dewy old lettuce when I can have my good friend/second cousin ________ over? Why, I bet he'll even bring a crusty baguette with him if I mention it, and wouldn't something like crusty baguette be nice to dip into left-over salad dressing? So, well, when he comes over--baguette tucked casually under arm, some hip German-made manbag slung over his other shoulder, and he sits down across from you and touches your elbow in thanks and begins to shovel the stuff past his greasy lips--does he look you in the eye? During any of this? Any of this time? Has he ever looked, I mean really looked, at you? At Nancy, the Woman, the Human Being? Or do his eyes seem to glaze and go bad-TV-signal-wavy at the exact moment you think to really bring up something big—like how you're thinking that you'd like to have a baby in the next three years and you don't actually know why you've selected three years but you had to pick some number and three felt right, or how some days seem to stretch so terrifyingly long and each passing minute serves as a reminder of how you continue to contribute nothing of value to the world or to anyone in it, and this'll bring you back to the baby thing because part of you thinks that if you brought a kid into the world you could just make that your really important thing, but, then, what if your failure is just this permanent, impenetrable feature, like skin, and even if you're shedding parts of it all the time there are new parts, maybe worse or more alarming parts, lurking just beneath? And he just sits there--doesn't he? Is there saliva bubbling at his lips? Little sinews of it, collecting in the corners? Disgusting little pockets of hot spit you'd like to smack clean from his mouth? Is that going on right now?

Nancy, what I'm trying to do here is simple: I'm urging you to reexamine the people whose company you keep. Because I know you've got a power in you that you haven't realized yet, but, oh, when you do, Nancy--Watch Out World! You may laugh now, or maybe you feel a twinge of resentment or displaced maliciousness or something creeping in, thinking that someone like Me has got the nerve to express feelings of great confidence in You. And who am I anyway? You don't know me. But, might I remind you, Nancy: I also don't know you. But the way I see it, someone's got to, someone's got to take those initial steps toward exploring who or what you might be; otherwise, what you'll be left with--what we'll all be left with--is men walking into cafes in nondescript caps waving at anyone at all and thinking they're you, because there will be no You. Not even You will be You. You will have no meaning anymore. Nancy, your Identity is sliding quickly into the sphere of the collective. You're losing yourself, your essential You-ness, and, soon enough, we'll all be infected with this confusion of self, this (may I dub a new term?) “Nancying.” We'll look down at our pale legs in winter and think Nancy. I'm Nancy; of course I've got legs pale as snow. But, we won't really know why, or how, or what it means to be this thing that's been foisted upon us, mysteriously and without warning. This self-nullifying, formless, blank thing.

You'll look at your own face in the mirror, Nancy, and think Nancy-- the word will be there-- but you won't be sure why. You'll think: who is Nancy?

It's a valid question, indeed, Nancy. And we'd all like to know.

Who are you?

Best,
Kate