12

 I attend a performance of a monologue by Wallace Shawn called The Fever at a bookstore I used to frequent. I hadn’t been there in a while, mostly because I think the owner is kind of an asshole. The website did not make it clear whether you needed to buy tickets or not, but I decide to just show up and find out. I walk in and no one says anything so I check out the poetry section until a very attractive woman approaches me and asks if I’m there for the performance, and if so, do I have a ticket? I tell herer I am but I don’t, and she looks frustrated and asks me my name, which I can’t see mattering if I don’t have a ticket. Then she asks to see my vaccination card and tells me that most likely not everyone will show up and that I can just take a seat, which I do. Eventually the woman sits right in front of me and crosses her legs, one of which sticks out of the slit in her dress. It is a perfect leg, and it glows against the black fabric like it is floating in space.

The play presents a thorny, scathing indictment of capitalism, delivered by a character struggling coming to come to terms with his complicity in a system of murderous inequality. It’s deeply uncomfortable but, fortunately, also very funny. The actor gives an intense performance I find mesmerizing.

After the show I stop up the street for a beer at a place I used to frequent called Creepy’s. I wasn’t sure they were even still open, but I’m relieved to find that everything inside looked the same. Behind the bar are hundreds of stuffed clowns and dolls, some of which are rigged to move or speak occasionally. The walls are covered with kitschy velvet paintings of clowns and big-eyed puppies and sea captains. It reminds me of Velveteria, a gallery of velvet art which sadly closed years ago.   

As I’m waiting for the bus, an old man I had glimpsed at the play approaches the bus stop. He wears a wide-brimmed hat and it’s only when he’s standing beside me that I recognize that he’s none other than the infamous Walt Curtis, local author and unreformed reprobate. I ask him what he thought of the show. As usual, he doesn’t recognize me, though we’ve been introduced multiple times over the years; we even both participated in a poetry reading at Lone Fir cemetery at the height of the pandemic. I don’t take it personally; Walt is a notorious drunk and blowhard, as well as a very bad writer, but he possesses a mysterious charm that seems to have protected him from getting the shit beat out of him over the years. I have never once seen him sober, though tonight he seems slightly more lucid than usual.

He tells me he enjoyed the play, though he doesn’t think the actor really knew how to properly read Wallace Shawn at all. I don’t agree, but before I can tell him this the bus arrives. I help him lug the gigantic roll on suitcase he’s dragging behind him and he launches into a rambling monologue about the brilliance of Shakespeare and the stupidity of those obsessed with unmasking out who he actually was. “I’ll tell you who he fucking was. He was fucking Shakespeare!” he proclaims. We get off at the same stop, or rather I get off and he follows me.

We stand there for a while and he pontificates further, swaying slightly. He discusses his recent cataract surgery, talks about living with his mother for 45 years. I mention a mutual friend, the one who invited me to the Phillip Glass opera, and he lights up and sings his praises. Without pausing in his accolades, he pulls a bottle a third full of white wine out of his suitcase, shows me the label, then slips it back in. I feel for him; he’s a lonely old drunk whose days of hedonism are long past. I ask if he still writes, and he says, “I’ve written half a million words. I think that might be enough.”  I know he lives on the other side of town, in some sort of boarding house, and I ask if he’ll be able to get home okay. “I’m 81 years old and I’m at the age where if anyone gives me trouble, I’ll just hand it right back to them. I don’t give a fuck anymore.” I tell him I’m more worried that he’ll be the one starting the trouble. He laughs and I leave him there, and duck into the convenience store across the street for a bottle of my own.