You Are Jeff
1 There are two twins on motorbikes but one is farther up the road, beyond the hairpin turn, or just before it, depending on which twin you are in love with at the time. Do not choose sides yet. It is still to your advan- tage to remain impartial. Both motorbikes are shiny red and both boys have perfect teeth, dark hair, soft hands. The one in front will want to take you apart, and slowly. His deft and stubby fingers searching every shank and lock for weaknesses. You could love this boy with all your heart. The other brother only wants to stitch you back together. The sun shines down. Itâs a beautiful day. Consider the hairpin turn. Do not choose sides yet. 2 There are two twins on motorbikes but one is farther up the road. Letâs call them Jeff. And because the first Jeff is in front weâll consider him the older, and therefore responsible for lending money and the occa- sional punch in the shoulder. World-wise, world-weary, and not his motherâs favorite, this Jeff will always win when it all comes down to fisticuffs. Unfortunately for him, it doesnât always all come down to fisticuffs. Jeff is thinking about his brother down the winding road be- hind him. He is thinking that if only he could cut him open and peel him back and crawl inside this second skin, then he could relive that last mile again: reborn, wild-eyed, free. 3 There are two twins on motorbikes but one is farther up the road, beyond the hairpin turn, or just before it, depending on which Jeff you are. It could have been so beautifulâyou scout out the road ahead and I will watch your back, how it was and how it will be, memory and fantasyâ but each Jeff wants to be the other one. My name is Jeff and Iâm tired of looking at the back of your head. My name is Jeff and Iâm tired of seeing my hand me down clothes. Look, Jeff, Iâm telling you, for the last time, I mean it, etcetera. They are the same and they are not the same. They are the same and they hate each other for it. 4 Your name is Jeff and somewhere up ahead of you your brother has pulled to the side of the road and he is waiting for you with a lug wrench clutched in his greasy fist. 0 how he loves you, darling boy. 0 how, like always, he invents the monsters underneath the bed to get you to sleep next to him, chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around you in an act of faith against the night. When he throws the wrench into the air it will catch the light as it spins toward you. Lookâit looks like a star. You had expected something else, anything else, but the wrench never reaches you. It hangs in the air like that, spinning in the air like that. Itâs beautiful. 5 Letâs say God in his High Heaven is hungry and has decided to make himself some tuna fish sandwiches. Heâs already finished making two of them, on sourdough, before he realizes that the fish is bad. What is he going to do with these sandwiches? Theyâre already made, but he doesnât want to eat them. Letâs say the Devil is played by two men. Weâll call them Jeff. Dark hair, green eyes, white teeth, pink tonguesâtheyâre twins. The one on the left has gone bad in the middle, and the other one on the left is about to. As they wrestle, you can tell that they have forgotten about God, and they are very hungry. 6 You are playing cards with three men named Jeff. Two of the Jeffs seem somewhat familiar, but the Jeff across from you keeps staring at your hands, your mouth, and youâre certain that youâve never seen this Jeff before. But heâs on your team, and youâre ahead, youâre winning big, and yet the other Jeffs keep smiling at you like thereâs no tomorrow. They all have perfect teeth: white, square, clean, even. And, for some reason, the lighting in the room makes their teeth seem closer than they should be, as if each mouth was a place, a living room with pink carpet and the windowâs open. Come back from the window, Jefferson. Take off those wet clothes and come over here, by the fire. 7 You are playing cards with three Jeffs. One is your father, one is your brother, and the other is your current boyfriend. All of them have seen you naked and heard you talking in your sleep. Your boyfriend Jeff gets up to answer the phone. To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room. Phoneâs for you, Jeff says. Hey! Itâs Uncle Jeff, who isnât really your uncle, but you canât talk right now, one of the Jeffs has put his tongue in your mouth. Please let it be the right one. 8 Two brothers are fighting by the side of the road. Two motorbikes have fallen over on the shoulder, leaking oil into the dirt, while the interlocking brothers grapple and swing. You see them through the backseat window as you and your parents drive past. You are twelve years old. You do not have a brother. You have never experienced anything this ferocious or intentional with another person. Your mother is pretending that she hasnât seen anything. Your father is fiddling with the knobs of the radio. There is an empty space next to you in the backseat of the station wagon. Make it the shape of everything you need. Now say hello. 9 You are in an ordinary suburban bedroom with bunk beds, a bookshelf, two wooden desks and chairs. You are lying on your back, on the top bunk, very close to the textured ceiling, staring straight at it in fact, and the room is still dark except for a wedge of powdery light that spills in from the adjoining bathroom. The bathroom is covered in mint green tile and someone is in there, singing very softly. Is he singing to you? For you? Black cherries in chocolate, the ring around the moon, a bee- tle underneath a glassâyou cannot make out all the words, but youâre sure he knows youâre in there, and heâs singing to you, even though you donât know who he is. 10 You see it as a room, a tabernacle, the dark hotel. Youâre in the hallway again, and you open the door, and if youâre ready youâll see it, but maybe one part of your mind decides that the other parts arenât ready, and then you donât remember where youâve been, and you find yourself down the hall again, the lights gone dim as the left hand sings the right hand back to sleep. Itâs a puzzle: each piece, each room, each time you put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, your ear to the wound that whispers. Youâre in the hallway again. The radio is playing your favorite song. Youâre in the hallway. Open the door again. Open the door. 11 Suppose for a moment that the heart has two heads, that the heart has been chained and dunked in a glass booth filled with river water. The heart is monologing about hesitation and fulfillment while behind the red brocade the heart is drowning. Can the heart escape? Does love even care? Snow falls as we dump the booth in the bay. Suppose for a moment we are crowded around a pier, waiting for something to ripple the water. We believe in you. There is no danger. It is not getting dark, we want to say. 12 Consider the hairpin turn. It is waiting for you like a red door or the broken leg of a dog. The sun is shining, O how the sun shines down! Your speedometer and your handgrips and the feel of the road below you, how it knows you, the black ribbon spread out on the greens be- tween these lines that suddenly donât reach to the horizon. It is waiting, like a broken door, like the red dog that chases its tail and eats your rose- bushes and then must be forgiven. Who do you love, Jeff? Who do you love? You were driving toward something and then, well, then you found yourself driving the other way. The dog is asleep. The road is be- hind you. O how the sun shines down. 13 This time everyone has the best intentions. You have cancer. Letâs say you have cancer. Letâs say youâve swallowed a bad thing and now itâs got its hands inside you. This is the essence of love and failure. You see what I mean but youâre happy anyway, and thatâs okay, itâs a love story after all, a lasting love, a wonderful adventure with lots of action, where the mirror says mirror and the hand says hand and the front door never says Sorry Charlie. So the doctor says you need more stitches and the bruise cream isnât working. So much for the facts. Letâs say youâre still completely in the dark but we love you anyway. We love you. We really do. 14 After work you go to the grocery store to get some milk and a carton of cigarettes. Where did you get those bruises? You donât remember. Work was boring. You find a jar of bruise cream and a can of stewed tomatoes. Maybe a salad? Spinach, walnuts, blue cheese, apples, and you canât decide between the Extra Large or Jumbo black olives. Which is bigger anyway? Extra Large has a blue label, Jumbo has a purple label. Both cans cost $1.29. While youâre deciding, the afternoon light is streaming through the windows behind the bank of checkout coun- ters. Take the light inside you like a blessing, like a knee in the chest, holding onto it and not letting it go. Now let it go. 15 Like sandpaper, the light, or a blessing, or a bruise. Blood everywhere, he said, the red light hemorrhaging from everywhere at once. The train station blue, your lips blue, hands cold and the blue wind. Or a horse, your favorite horse now raised up again out of the mud and galloping galloping always toward you. In your ruined shirt, on the last day, while the bruise wonât heal, and the stain stays put, the red light streaming in from everywhere at once. Your broken ribs, the back of your head, your hand to mouth or hand to now, right now, like you mean it, like itâs split- ting you in two. Now look at the lights, the lights. 16 You and your lover are making out in the corner booth of a seedy bar. The booths are plush and the drinks are cheap and in this dim and smoky light you can barely tell whose hands are whose. Someone raises their glass for a toast. Is that the Hand of Judgment or the Hand of Mercy? The bartender smiles, running a rag across the burnished wood of the bar. The drink in front of you has already been paid for. Drink it, the bartender says. Itâs yours, you deserve it. Itâs already been paid for. Somebodyâs paid for it already. Thereâs no mistake, he says. Itâs your drink, the one you asked for, just the way you like it. How can you refuse Hands of fire, hands of air, hands of water, hands of dirt. Someoneâs doing all the talking but no oneâs lips move. Consider the hairpin turn. 17 The motorbikes are neck and neck but whereâs the checkered flag we all expected, waving in the distance, telling you youâre home again, home? Heâs next to you, right next to you in fact, so close, or⊠he isnât. Imagine a room. Yes, imagine a room: two chairs facing the window but nobody moves. Donât move. Keep staring straight into my eyes. It feels like youâre not moving, the way when, dancing, the room will suddenly fall away. Youâre dancing: youâre neck and neck or cheek to cheek, heâs there or he isnât, the open road. Imagine a room. Imagine youâre danc- ing. Imagine the room now falling away. Donât move. 18 Two brothers: one of them wants to take you apart. Two brothers: one of them wants to put you back together. Itâs time to choose sides now. The stitches or the devouring mouth? You want an alibi? You donât get an alibi, you get two brothers. Here are two Jeffs. Pick one. This is how you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space between them. Jeff or Jeff? Who do you want to be? You just wanted to play in your own backyard, but you donât know where your own yard is, exactly. You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet. You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. Youâre still right here. 19 Here are your names and here is the list and here are the things you left behind: The mark on the floor from pushing your chair back, your un- derwear, one half brick of cheese, the kind I donât like, wrapped up, and poorly, and abandoned on the second shelf next to the poppyseed dress- ing, which is also yours. Hereâs the champagne on the floor, and here are your house keys, and here are the curtains that your cat peed on. And here is your cat, who keeps eating grass and vomiting in the hall- way. Here is the list with all of your names, Jeff. Theyâre not the same name, Jeff. Theyâre not the same at all. 20 There are two twins on motorbikes but they are not on motorbikes, theyâre in a garden where the flowers are as big as thumbs. Imagine you are in a field of daisies. What are you doing in a field of daisies? Get up! Letâs say youâre not in the field anymore. Letâs say theyâre not brothers anymore. Thatâs right, theyâre not brothers, theyâre just one guy, and he knows you, and heâs talking to you, but youâre in pain and you can- not understand him. What are you still doing in this field? Get out of the field! You should be in the hotel room! You should, at least, be try- ing to get back into the hotel room. Ah! Now the field is empty. 21 Hold onto your voice. Hold onto your breath. Donât make a noise, donât leave the room until I come back from the dead for you. I will come back from the dead for you. This could be a city. This could be a graveyard. This could be the basket of a big balloon. Leave the lights on. Leave a trail of letters like those little knots of bread we used to dream about. We used to dream about them. We used to do a lot of things. Put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, pick up the bread and devour it. Iâm in the hallway again, Iâm in the hallway. The radioâs playing my favorite song. Leave the lights on. Keep talking. Iâll keep walking toward the sound of your voice. 22 Someone had a party while you were sleeping but you werenât really sleeping, you were sick, and parts of you were burning, and you couldnât move. Perhaps the party was in your honor. You canât remem- ber. It seems the phone was ringing in the dream you were having but thereâs no proof. A dish in the sink that might be yours, some clothes on the floor that might belong to someone else. When was the last time you found yourself looking out of this window. Hey! This is a beautiful window! This is a beautiful view! 1 hose trees lined up like that, and the way the stars are spinning over them like that, spinning in the air like that, like wrenches. 23 Letâs say that God is the space between two men and the Devil is the space between two men. Here: Iâll be all of them-Jeff and Jeff and Jeff and Jeff are standing on the shoulder of the highway, four motorbikes knocked over, two wrenches spinning in the ordinary air. Two of these Jeffs are windows, and two of these Jeffs are doors, and all of these Jeffs are trying to tell you something. Come closer. Weâll whisper it in your ear. Itâs like seeing your face in a bowl of soup, cream of potato, and the eyes shining back like spoons. If we wanted to tell you everything, we would leave more footprints in the snow or kiss you harder. One thing. Come closer. Listen ⊠24 Youâre in a car with a beautiful boy, and he wonât tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like youâve done something terr- ible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and youâre tired. Youâre in a car with a beautiful boy, and youâre trying not to tell him that you love him, and youâre trying to choke down the feeling, and youâre trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like youâve discovered something you donât even have a name for.
