Newer Testaments

By Philip Brunetti

"In the tradition of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, Brunetti's wondrously wandering writing is taut and cryptic, vivid and hallucinatory, rendering an irony-laden, aberrant odyssey for his impossibly likable protagonist."

-Franco D'Alessandro, playwright & poet, Roman Nights, Stranger Love, and Everything Is Something Else

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atmosphere Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781636496115

Book preview

Prelude

Disintegration

One

1.

There is only to take things down wholly, to destroy and stop them dead in their tracks. This means a little bit. I’m talking about the overturning of tables, I suppose. Though it’s silly to bring in the religious connotation already. Blame my father who raised me like he was John the Baptist. I don’t know what this meant for me, being a girl and all. A Jesus Girl, then, if you will. How terrible.

2.

There are those that will destroy me and I’m all right with that. It’s even about a woman standing in a café with the toe of her shoe pointed at my seat. She’s got a predatory expression on her face but I’m not looking at her face. I’m looking at her pointed shoe, the way she aims it as if she’s aiming for my heart. Like a bullet could be fired from it. A gun rigged inside it somehow. But it’s foolish, foolish.

3.

Time to pass through fire…or let it go…a chat on a side stoop. Nobody knows my name. I’m just there with all these people—or just one. She’s about 50. She’s looking me in the eye and I’m telling her about chocolate and all the false dreams of my childhood. She laughs a little bit. Snickers. She’s got curly hair and a soft step—when she steps my way. But then she’d push me back up against the brownstone’s wall. I’d open my mouth for the kiss. She’s fifteen or twenty years my senior. I’m a punk compared to her. We kiss. But she’s wrapped inside her raincoat and inside her hand’s a dagger or an icepick. I can’t see it and I’m just guessing anyhow. But if she flails her arms she’d become a fallen angel. ‘Time to kill.’ Those are the words she’d mean to say.

4.

Edgar Allan Poe has fallen apart and become the spotted dots of a bag. He’s been dead in the grave for 150 years or something and he didn’t live past 40…I got an itch in the bottom of my spine. There’s a poison dart there or something. I got it six months or a year ago. Some Asian assassin. She knew about Edgar, too, but said nothing. We simply faced off in a dark room. It brought a smile to my face, once upon a time. But here, now, this time around it’s a battle. There’s all the fierceness of real combat—hand to hand. She’s stronger than she looks and I’m an animal, a fierce animal with fangs. I was born in the wilderness of God. I tried hard to become a man. But no matter.

5.

We had our leashes on. We weren’t yet made for the planet. I had two eyeballs like everybody else but my right eye had been knocked around in its socket. It’d been beaten around to the side of my head so that my whole face appeared askew. I was a Picasso painting in the form of flesh.

Later on she took my hand. I’d been sold to her at auction. I couldn’t have fetched much of a price. It didn’t interest me. The leash would come off. Everybody would know my name for a day, an hour, a minute. I called it out at the top of my lungs just before the axe came down. ‘Honore!’

6.

For fourteen days in a row I practiced the art of nothing. It gave me a certain feeling. For the longest time there were these bugaboos on my back. They were making me grow bat wings. I had to become a creature. I sunk in quicksand or was lost in the black fog of being. I wasn’t a prince. I wasn’t even a frog. I wasn’t a bat yet or an almighty man. Just visions. These visions that passed through me. I didn’t want to be a soldier of God. I had other plans but my mind split open. I saw everything false for what it was—all the time. I had to fall on my knees and start to pray. I said, ‘I’m a creature. I’m a creature. I’m a creature.’

I may have said some other things. It wasn’t meant to be a chant but it came out like a chant. What was the point of it? It struck me in the face like a blow, a hard blow that hurt.

‘Wake up!’ I thought that right after the blow. But those expectations have fallen short.

7.

It was a short trip to nowhere. I kept saying this: ‘Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom.’ I was something of a prophet. The days were numbered and everything felt like it was closing in. I wouldn’t be that Jesus Girl. I had fallen out of favor with the Lord. The creatures had gained control of my heart and soul. I’d faced strife and come out clean. But then the eclipses occurred. For a long time everything and everybody went dark. Every light bulb in the house was painted black. Every streetlamp. Every honeymoon. There was blood on the barber’s hands and face. He was shaving the moon. We were children. I’d been an infant, a boy, a girl, a pilgrim, and an outlaw without a home.

But it was just a repetition of cruelty that I’d gotten caught up in. I found myself in these masks and shadows. All this acting to be some sort of man.

Two

1.

Then it began again. But it was small and unknown and I’d started to lose it. I had to call her and tell her my story. But she had no interest in my story and never would. I called her anyway but she never picked up the phone. Instead she wrote in lipstick on the mirror the way they do in movies. She was breaking up with me or something. I’d come to avenge some kind of death but it hadn’t happened. I’d been a familial disappointment. She exited the picture with silence. But she was from so many years later it never stirred my heart.

2.

That tale that has never been told: It’s like throw-up in the inkwell. Something old and black and smelly…I was a boy sitting at a pathetic little desk. It may even have had an apple on it. The teacher was false and forlorn. She suffered rheumatism in her fingers and had her hair pulled back. It was stringy and gray. Her hands were hooks. Her eyes were dead darts. She had beige leather pants and was crouched in the corner. She may have been a drug addict or was breaking down. I wanted to reach out to her. I sensed she was dying before I understood anything.

3.

They would weep but I wouldn’t believe them. I stayed behind and waited in my room. I was staring at the cobalt-blue walls, the lampshade. I had a gun in my pocket and wanted to shoot out the windows but the gun was fake. A toy. I knelt by the bed and stayed there. I had the impression of demons.

4.

My eyes were like black saucers, burning. That was my dream. I had an imaginary—or foretold—friend named Simon. He was the route of destruction. I could call upon him to bring me any chaos I came up with. It was like holding hands with the devil. Simon convinced me I was evil but this didn’t stop my heart. I still felt love and longing.

5.

The Jesus Girl entered the picture when I was three. She came to look at me sideways but I saw her from dead on. We hadn’t spoken to each other the way Simon and I had. The Jesus Girl was more of a figment than a dream. At times she was neither. If I could peel off all my clothes, I might become her. But then I was convinced that I was a man.

6.

There’s a level of corruption now that hasn’t happened in millennia. I am buried in the avalanche of it. It is the progress of the world or something. I keep falling on my knees, not knowing the shape of my destiny. It’s all very serious. I could call up the operator and ask for information but there’s only a buzzing. I’ve lost the thread of most of my activity. My energy seems sapped—my meaning tainted. It’s an inoculation, then, that I need. Or a B12 shot. But I don’t know what I’m being inoculated for or boosted against. It’s almost time to turn off the senses. But this is a false form of reasoning.

7.

We had waited a long time. I can’t tell you how long. It’d been ages. Then, still, nothing. It was dismal. What had started out so promising had become darker than anything I’d intended. I didn’t know how I’d gotten stuck in that room. But I’d pushed that box of weights up against the door. I was waiting to pee in my pants. Everyone was after me. I’d left a green bicycle out in front of the house. The dreams of childhood had turned violent. He came in there like a growling bear, but one with fists pounding. I looked into his hazel-gray eyes. The whites were yellowy and bloodshot. He was John the Baptist with his head resurrected and taken off that silver platter. Coming for me.

Three

1.

I thought I was living in a French New Wave film. I had faked my own death. I’d spent my life carrying pens. There were these days. Each thing had its place. But there was never the right thing or place. Or rarely. I went on moaning. They strung me up like a dead Jaws tiger-shark on a hook. But everyone knew I was a fake. I’d lived inside my wallet. Folded up. This doesn’t mean I’d known money. Mostly we were left to pray by the curtains. My sister with her tail in her lap.

2.

They had spoken of vestibules. The house was collapsing around them. I didn’t even know their names. But they were standing there like in a box. An elderly couple. They appeared naked. They were holding each other by the waist. They both had gray hair and pubic hair. It mixed with the dust. The house was being demolished around them for some reason. And for some reason they were naked in the dust. I was off in the bushes somewhere like a secret photographer. A faux paparazzo. But I never clicked a picture. The image of their fall from grace was their own.

3.

We’d picnic in winter. Sometimes in the park under the nether-Whitestone Bridge. I couldn’t remember why I was dying (I wasn’t) but as a kid I had the feeling that I was. I went to get lost in the woods. My sister was behind me. She was getting ready to play a trick. She’d sneak around and jump out on the trail and scare me. I’d throw up my arms and scream. I was timid. Then she’d report me for my timidity. I had to be the man but I wasn’t this kind of man. I hadn’t been invented yet. I was on trial. And all the juries were out still. Maybe it was coming to disaster. But I’d never let out a sound.

4.

In the interim I read Leaves of Grass. I crossed and crisscrossed America. I had a fool’s wanderlust but found nothing inspiring. The Walmarts were a cancer. They’d eaten up the towns. I was on my knees in Chicago—Lake Michigan bound. I fell at the Great Lake seaside. The pillars of tenements behind me. The black children playing in the sand. I took a fiery shot of bourbon. It’d been warmed up in the heat of the van. My partners in crime were misfits. We were men on the run.

5.

We planted infant trees in the garden. We went on planting infant trees. I didn’t know what I was doing but I could follow directions. So I followed them. The woman was like a little drill sergeant. She told me what I could and couldn’t do. I was given a spade and trowel. I had loose wrists and turned the earth. It was slipping from my senses. All the meanings I’d once meant.

‘We’re going nowhere now,’ I said to the woman.

‘That’s why you’re here,’ she rejoined.

I said nothing else. Later I’d show up with a watering can. I was playing with seeds. I didn’t know any better. The ground would open up too. There’d be a big crack in the earth, a hole fissuring. We’d have to go under the trees and roots even. All of the sprigs and dreams busted. But there was some truth in the ground.

‘How deep?’ I asked.

‘Keep going,’ she said.

We were six feet underground.

6.

The Jesus Girl never had a hold on me. I’d buried her like an ant in the carpet. But I could see her still—shining in my eyes. I had wanted to be something. There was this fusion—bad and good, masc and fem, life and death. In truth I couldn’t go through that atrocity. I kept quiet. I was a small man in a big world. The word on the street was there was no word on the street…I’d expected more…or different. I was a man waiting at a vending machine without change. Dark stormy clouds were gathering. I felt weak. In a few hours bad things would happen. It was just a matter of time.

7.

I had to become him but could never become him. It was easier to put the fig back on the tree. Take some other bite.

I didn’t know anything about grace. But it’d been threatened into me so I eventually grew curious. I talked to Simon. His black eyes burning—he harped on the Book of Revelation. He wrote his 8th Grade interpretation of it. The English teacher gave him an A+. It’s a sacred cosmogony. Simon never said that. But it came to that in the report. Even the end of the world was beautiful.

8.

Tiring at dusk. But getting more awake too. And never remembering my name. Never having a proper name in the least bit. Being nameless even with a name. That’s how it mattered then.

We’d go out in the snow. There were 27 inches, nether-New York’s biggest blizzard in years. I had my pants tucked into rust-colored boots. My father put plastic bags over my doubled socks so my feet would slip through, stay dry. Then he tucked in my pants, meticulously, mercilessly. All in the name of love.

We exited from the garage door—into a landscape of pure snow. My older sister led the way. My father kicked me in the ass and I got moving. Each leg lift, each leg plant and I got buried to my thighs. The wind blasts froze my snots to my face. There was no turning back. This was the tundra of youth…we’d keep marching delinquently across the virgin snow.

Four

1.

They’d spoiled my heart. It’d died several slow deaths. All of them like a religion. I wanted it to be alive. But nothing brought it back to me…at least not all the way. Later on, a series of breakups. I wept the first time—I smashed things. The second time I went away. The third time I moved away. The fourth time I moved back. The fifth time it was like Geppetto—Pinocchio, I’d turned into a real boy. One with blue-black hair and rosy cheeks. But it happened like a loss. And my innocence smashed—the whole thing. Nothing left but fragments. Then numb and on the run like a Pink Floyd character, haunted. Watching myself in the mirror. The black mirror lit by black light. And so nothing much to see.

2.

I’d grown a satyr’s beard. I had to split my face. I wasn’t even thinking about myself. But I had to split my face—see the difference. I had all this warring going on inside. But so much of it was submerged and indecipherable. My job was to decipher it. But there’s no great shakes in that. Still, that’s what I was doing. But it’d be better as a makeup man. I had to spread makeup all over my face. Disguise myself—change into someone else. Look in the black mirror, my hands full of grease paint. Anyhow something was eating my heart. I applied makeup to the eaten-away pieces. A kind of cover-up.

From 14 to 41, nothing. I was a failure. I leaned against the lamppost and looked out at the rain. I was doing my best Chaplin—the tramp, iconic and lulled by the passing rhythms of life. All that he’s up against. I wore his white face too, with the black beauty dot. But I couldn’t see my one dimple. The dimple in a mask-face…and the crow’s feet at the corners. The beginnings of death there too. Some kind of decay then. And wanting to stay leaned against the lamppost and cry it all out. As Chaplin, out there in the pouring rain, sobbing.

3.

The main difference was that I couldn’t. I had to take some kind of colossal step. Arrive somewhere else. But I couldn’t. There was this kind of dread—a dread that was like cake icing. That’s sugary and drippy and one can wash it over one’s face like a beard of shaving cream. But it’s cake cream, frosting. The sweet dread of the face…

I was thinking about the tramp again. I was trying to get