Ya Filthy Animal

I saw MacCaulay Culkin once, at the height of his fame, walking from a make-your-own-music-video boutique in an upscale Chicago mall. I was there to play mini-golf, eat frogs' legs and blue ice cream, see the fountain spray over the river. The celebrity run-in was jarring, momentous. I had seen his work with my father just weeks before. It moved me. I was about his age, maybe a slightly older 14, he in his leather jacket obscenely decorated with baseball diamonds, a middle school entourage in tow. He was short, even for his age. I, too.

And now my nostrils breathe fire in the burnt brown shadows of a nameless television show, the red reflections of clothing sales living in the sheen of the coffee tables. I am having trouble seeing clearly these days. Today, when I pet my dog, I swore the moment was a dream. I still do. And then, when M died in the Bond movie, my own mortality was plainly evident. It does not matter that I will not die poignantly, my enemy saying that yes this yes this was was the was it was the way it was supposed to end. My ending is an ending, unpoignant. The absence of a negative. The absence of a positive. A narrative with no arcs

And Culkin slaps his cheeks, his mouth an "O"