Dia Felix
I woke up with my wig on, well, wait, no, I, woke up with a social panic and an itchy head, soon thereafter diagnosed myself: WIG. Well, you know you shouldn’t look at yourself in the mirror, anyway, dumb stupid head, bloated pumpkin, but especially now, but look I have to, to see what’s up with my head, I need more information, the information oh my god, hahaha. It’s my wig half off half on and tug tug tug very gentle it was expensive once also it’s not even mine and now I can scratch my head ecstatically like I want to and gently pelvic thrust too in rhythm to the scratching do it slow, enjoy it, I am flakes.
Walking down the street pre-affliction I was thinking of myself as being kind of depressed and like the depression was a bunch of puddles I could actively avoid: rise and shine. Try to have a little bit of fucking resilience you limp little sparrow. Like what do you expect every waiter who brings you a plate of French fries to want to take you home and nurse you too? Of course I do.
I have this vision of a tiny white baby under an arch of bougainvillea in a sweet white woven basket. Woven, I guess that’s redundant since a basket is going to be woven. Well maybe in 2018 a basket might be three-dee printed. This one was woven.
Next I keep walking around the puddles and then remember that I am a parabola handmade from aluminum foil and a reflection of god or whatever you want to call the thing. That activated my body and that vibrates between us. Example, in case that didn’t make sense: Walk into the McDonald’s, which always lets you feel a bit superior because you’re not going there to order any food only to use the ATM which is part of the credit union’s co-op network and thus does not charge a fee for a cash withdrawal. Additionally superior because you’ve been a member of this credit union for fifteen years and you don’t bank with no sharks, you’re part of a team. Oh but I was saying—then a man walks in and begins snapping his fingers to the soul song that’s playing. And you snap your fingers too. You just want to say hello kind of. You snap your fingers with the man four times as you are walking out the door. You hold your snapping hand out towards the man just a touch, just enough to say, I’m snapping WITH YOU, not just snapping. You almost want to look at his eyes but you don’t, you keep your head down in a gesture of respect. And this was the holiest thing ever of all time.
But in general it’s a lonely bright-gray afternoon and you feel that you must actively keep the depression at bay, like self-defense. And you can do intellectual tricks to some degree, like when you are stressed out and you just try to be chill, just drop the rope, just be chill. For some reason you’ve embraced this word CHILL which was terrible the first time around and no less terrible this time. But maybe you use it in your mind because it sounds like someone else. Someone telling you to chill. Someone older, wiser, and more happy than you. Like RuPaul. And also you can just feel yourself as a shine in a curved piece of foil, “I am conscience I am love,” isn’t it enough? Isn’t it perfect?
For a while it is. You shouldn’t eat animals but you eat not only animals but little cubes of pork which dissolve into brine on your tongue and become twisted fibers of milk in your teeth, you can measure time by their disappearance.
You weren’t going to do it, but your fingers just do it: text your dealer: too easy: you’re doing it: I don’t even want it: bloated pumpkin face: pink fingers on the screen: tapping:::
Hi?
What do you need
Then you don’t text back. Spray some perfume into your terrible parts and roll a light shirt over your pumpkin limbs. It’s pumpkin season! A time to appreciate your head.
Crawl around the puddles. Glue yourself together, prepare for the party. Your tummy rumbles. Pour some water into your booze and booze into your water—nobody’s looking! Drunk driving on your feet, rock and roll.
For sale: Pumpkin head, spelled correctly. Rumble of your tummy rolling around in the skull. Some good teeth and some chemicals who are just visiting. Thoughts in there, fun ones: a baby cooing under a curve of bougainvillea bobbing joyfully in that summer vacation-spot breeze, it’s like a melody manifest into weather, it’s like, reggae, it’s like, Hyperion, Silver Lake, Sunset, Beverly, Wilshire, La Brea … I mean I don’t like, know those streets, but just the names of them make my knees shimmer like mercury, does anyone know what I mean? Another thought in there: a piece of foil, shining, as a metaphor for universal consciousness. Yep that’s pretty much all that’s in there. Oh also, a few recipes. Some damage from war and love, and maybe some poems rattling around like loose pennies. A few songs, bad grooves that you can’t get out, and some fantasies so dumb and base that I can’t repeat them here, but you can find them. Think Jem and the Holograms level. Gut-brain connection stuff, flora telegraphing flora.
For sale: Hands. Fingernails painted silver. Fingernails are the only part of the body made of candy already. You know this, I’m just telling you again. Fingernails silver and one of them with little black stars too. Been in a lot of pockets. No tattoos. Kind of veiny, bony, a little bit dead-chicken-foot looking but also miraculous.
Nothing is selling on Craigslist—should I list it under “Bushwick” or even “Williamsburg” instead of Bed-Stuy? I think no, because if you’re going to go to Williamsburg to buy a human hand, a living human hand, you would also probably travel to Bed-Stuy. No scrubs.
Ah, one inquiry! From the beloved rapper Cardi B no less. Obviously I would give anything to Cardi B for free but I play hardball with the price. She balks. I guess you don’t get where she got by settling.
I wash my liver gently in the East River. It’s gray and moody and there’s almost no one, but there is one very dedicated skateboarder, I’m worried about him because he’s trying to do this trick where he leaps up on the handrail and shoots down and he keeps falling hard on the landing. I really think he should be wearing a helmet, I watch him fall twice and then I can’t watch anymore—stick to the program here—wash the liver gently—I find a nice place to wash the liver—in the shadow of a historic rowboat—there are other livers around here too, human and otherwise, but I don’t let them distract me, there is only one liver here who is my concern and that is my own, human, living liver. I wash it gently in the shadow of the rowboat, back and forth, gentle agitation. Bath, that’s a nice word. Beth is a nice name. I would be a different person if that were my name.
Hey! What are yee doin?
It’s an angry Irishman.
My name is Beth, I say, to try it.
I don’t care what yee name is! What are you doing down there?
I’m just giving my liver a bath, I reply.
I don’t care what you’re doing! Get out of there! You can’t be down there!
He’s wearing blue overalls and he’s in an industrial golf cart sort of thing, yellow like a bumble bee.
Okay okay, I say, and get up, away from the water. The liver’s ready anyway.
As I put my liver back in the ziplock bag I observe the skateboarder getting reprimanded by a uniformed security guard. The guard shakes his finger at the skater. The skater attempts one last trick, but the guard stops him, physically. My god, a fight. But no, it’s more like an embrace, they are both laughing and the skater walks away with a little salute.
For sale: one liver freshly bathed in East River. Williamsburg, near Bedford stop.
I get three pings on it right away. Put it in the fridge can’t deal.
For sale bony pelvis containing many dreams and with only a few stamps in its passport if you know what I mean. Upper East Side.
Wear men’s deodorant, be your own boyfriend. Be your own dad.
I’m ready to tend to the wig, comb through very slowly with wide-toothed comb, check for lipstick or marks or anything sticky, all good, put it back in the box. Some things are beyond buying and selling.
Tits for sale: Not very good unless you really love me. Okay nipples, nice color actually, I’m realizing. Some purple veins. You can have the ribs too, build them into your new housing development. Then your apartment can breathe forever. Ribs speak many languages even ones you don’t know you speak. Maybe psychedelics can get you there.
I text back my dealer:
I don’t want to die. I just want to live more. I want to shine and be closer to god. I just want a little. I just want to be happy. People say go for your dreams. What if my dream is to get a little bit high. What’s wrong with that? Drunk people are so annoying. People who are a little bit high are not annoying, they are just more wonderful.
He texts back:
What you need
The usual, I say.
Time to get right with my butt. Used the mustard bottle from the “hooray variety” store. It really cracks me up to use that bottle for intimate cleansing. Never held mustard, to be clear. Just shower use. I mean what the hell. I lay in the bathtub like a baby under a crown of bougainvillea in a sunny Los Angeles cemetery, cooing. Squirting warm water onto my bullseye, sporting life.
Butt for sale: troubled but still great. All parts intact. Maybe kind of worked but still okay. Kind of cute maybe even.
Elbows for sale: pretty stupid. Inwood.
Tongue for sale: South Bronx. No low ball offers please.
I go back and forth with my dealer and finally meet him at our usual place, a quiet street near a private park. I get in his car and he hands me the drugs, plein air. I mean, in the car but sort of openly. I wish he’d do it a bit more subtly but he’s the expert right? First thing you learn? I put the money in the cup holder, therapy budget. I put the drugs in the library book which I have ready. If I get stopped by cops, my plan is to just act like the drugs were in the library book when I checked it out. Foolproof. His little bitchy dog with her sloppy-ass beard is in back. He drives me around the corner and says, Get out here. Be safe, he says. These little things he says touch me. This weird little relationship touches me and I have to say I’m curious about this man. Sometimes he seems a little coked up but mostly he seems just like any guy. I am sure he has kids. I wonder if he really makes money or if he’s ever been arrested or if he’s undocumented or if this car is registered to him or how many times we can do this before we get caught—I’ve pushed my luck already. It’s mostly a matter of time, I hear.
As he drives away, the cunty little dog jumps out and runs off. Like, dashes, like, there’s no way I could have grabbed it or stopped it, it’s just gone. It ran toward the private park, I think. What do I do?
Most all of my organs are accounted for and I feel slippery inside as I wrap myself in the flesh of another—a leather trench coat is what I mean, and head to the party. I’m a floating balloon bouquet of tender parts, I’m a kind of crazy Picasso impression of a dispersed body, edible arrangement slithering with my own brand of gravity down Lafayette Street. Even in this very wet state, the vendors call to me like I’m a tourist: Watches, bags, Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton! Barked into the hovering ear of a cloud of pink pulse. A bit of ooze precedes me as I slither up the steps to the all-hands-on-deck art event. Good news: no one makes me pay. I can’t drink but a generous friend pours a dribble of not-bad pinot grig down my throat, which lays peacefully against the wall as my feet worm towards an empty chair. I see people I know but of course no one recognizes me. My blood mixed with wine is a smooth blend. I feel a bit less inflamed.
I leave in a tumble, it’s thick into night by now, and you won’t believe it but my dealer’s dog rounds the corner and begins licking me, licking me up. I want so bad to text my dealer and tell him, Hey I found your dog, but my fingers are all over the place, one of them I left on the merch table, another couple under the seat. Don’t even know about the rest. Think of a rat, super psyched, extra hunched, fiending out on your single finger on the Bowery subway tracks. Take me somewhere good, my brother.
The last thought that danced upon my gleaming parabola was this: I’m in a Bentley, driving, under the sea, through a family of immense slow-moving sharks. It’s chill. Cardi B is in the passenger seat. And then the page turned, or we faded to black, dark blue, black.
Dia Felix wrote the Lambda-nominated experimental novel Nochita (2014,City Lights/Sister Spit) and the poetry chapbook YOU YOU YOU (2017, Projective Industries). She curates a pan-genre literary performance series, GUTS, at Dixon Place. She is a serial museum employee. Her interests include dessert, the visual arts, reading, true love, and music, mostly music.
