I heart Joe Brainard, always will [by John Emil Vincent]

I remember…

                        after of course Joe Brainard who did it better but always makes me want to try 

  he's so damn good

I remember Jack Lorde on Hawaii 5-0. I remember an episode where the killer had no fingerprints because he worked in a pineapple canning factory.

I remember Winnie-the-Poo shirts.

I remember wanting to be like Michael J. Fox.

I remember the pastel plaid I wore two years too far into junior high.  I remember feeling like a dork, but no one really seemed to notice.

I remember how my head gear smelled in the morning.  I remember how it plugged tightly into two little holes.

I remember driving around feeling disappointed that the world didn’t look radically different the day after I lost my virginity to a girl.

I remember being “disappointing” after the prom.

I remember perms on boys.

I remember being mean to Harry Rezzimeni who was the most effeminate boy in my class.  I remember being relentless.  I heard after dropping out of college, he guided raft tours and had loads of gay sex in Atlanta.  I remember my friend Tony being uncomfortable with all the details Harry gave him.  I remember not being able to get them out of Tony.

I remember not thinking anything of being on the Chess Team.

I remember my first allergic reaction to pot smoke when I choked up a fist-sized glob of phlegm.

I remember lighting cigarettes and sticking them in a little rectangular pencil sharpener on my window sill, because I liked the smell but didn’t know how to smoke yet.

I remember Barclays, Camel Lights, Camel Filters, Marlboro Reds at a Bowie concert, and Lucky Strikes.  In that order.

I remember smoking out my bedroom window mornings before school with a little fan. I remember thinking, for nearly ten years, that my parents didn’t know I smoked.

I remember bubble bath bubbles in the bathtub drain that I thought were frog eyes.

I remember a pink powder puff my mom had in the bathroom closet but never used.

I remember my grandfather offering me a puff of his cigar when I was five.  He held his thumb over the end.  I remember wondering why people smoked if it just made the porch stink.

 remember obsessively flipping the trapdoor on my grandfather’s standing ashtray.  It was Buster Brown brown.

I remember taking an IQ test in a little room with a school psychologist who sat really close to me and seemed excited.  I remember wanting to be that cute.

I remember the chill I got whenever my friend Geoff touched me unannounced.  I remember noticing then that it happened whenever anyone touched me.

I remember wrestling in high school gym and thinking about the wrestling team standing in line, naked, waiting to be weighed.  I remember the room with the scale and feeling that it was special because people were naked in it sometimes.

I remember how my grandfather’s body seemed gigantic in a coffin.

I remember Bud, who lived with my grandmother after my grandfather died.  He had huge pores on his nose and made me think of Robert Frost and liked to do crosswords and lived to over a hundred.

I remember the Giant and Circus brand canned vegetables my grandmother would serve.

I remember a woman shaped syrup bottle and filling every square on my waffle strictly avoiding the seams.

I remember sitting outside Drew Grove’s door in his frat at Dartmouth, crying, while he was fucking a swimmer who I knew was better looking than me.

I remember when our dog Scruffy, who hated everyone but us, said a perfect “Woof” at my friend Matt. I remember our eyes meeting.

I remember a picture of Raquel Welsh with the U.S. Olympic swim team in Time Magazine.  She was in fur and they were naked with their asses in a chorus line. The picture had the caption: “what cheeky devils” and I remember keeping it for years in exactly the middle of a pile of magazines beside my bed.

I remember building an altar from my bedside table and the next day deciding I was an atheist.

I remember my friend Doug telling me the plot of the movie Halloween while we skipped Sunday school in a cloakroom.  I am still too scared to see the movie.

I remember that Doug matured early and had muscles.  I remember seeing him naked in a shower at a Church retreat.  I remember being surprised when someone told me Doug was poor.

I remember our church’s youth group leader Bob Furler jumping out of a coffin at a Halloween party at his house. I remember he taught us how to circle a person and lift them with two fingers while chanting “light as a feather” and something else. I remember he wore a chain attached to his wallet.  I remember not remembering him until my mom told me he’d been shot by police after a two day stand off. He was dressed like a Ninja.

I remember writing stories whose main character was named “Bidet.”

I remember Disney specials on Sunday night.

I remember riding around the basement on an orange plastic tractor wearing a stethoscope.

I remember watching home movies on a collapsible screen in the living room and only really caring about the ones I was in.

I remember sitting “Indian style” on the brown tiles of the multipurpose room of my elementary school watching a movie about a little girl who was run over by a bus because she ran back to get a valentine she’d dropped.

I remember being a carrot in a school play about dental care.

I remember hot dog casseroles.

I remember not wanting to eat bologna around my friend Bucky, because he had a glass eye.

I remember the bruises Christie Guthrie had when she came back to school after having her ears pinned back.

I remember a comforter that was like a cocoon you zippered yourself into.  

Comments

[Laura Orem]

I heart Joe Brainard, too. Thanks for this post.

(I think I like Bucky and his glass eye best.)

[Susan M. Schultz]

I do like the carrot--and much else! Thanks. This beats the facebook 25 things any day.

[John Emil Vincent]

merci!!

I somehow misspelled my favorite Pooh bear's name. I feel like I've blasphemed.

[Susan M. Schultz]

Oh and I think Raquel is more a grape than a Dylan Thomas compatriot.

[John Emil Vincent]

But no ashes on forehead for that--I ought correct these things but somehow have grown attached to their being incorrect, what sort of boor am I? Or as Ashbery says in, I think, Flow Chart: "Or am I some sort of jerk?"

Oy suddenly filled with yearning for Flow Chart and must read...now.

[Susan M. Schultz]

don't you mean "there being incorrect"?
Flaw Chart is wonderful. The first time I read it I HATED it; the second time was for forever.

[John Emil Vincent]

I've just been enjoying Chartlove. Yum.

The first time I read it, it made me dizzy for a week. And not in a nice way.

The second, it cured the dizziness that it caused the first time.

The third was like being an elk at a saltlick. And as an elk, I can't stop going back.

[Emma Trelles]

good poem. i remember a lot of this stuff as well. sitting "indian" style - haven't thought of that since i was a kid.

[John Emil Vincent]

thank you. I'm so glad that I am not a single mind in a vast pond of cultural reference. you make me feel a little more sane.

[Dylan Tweney]

"stiff as a board" ... that's the something that comes after "light as a feather," isn't it?

[John Emil Vincent]

yup. but totally forgot, thanks for the catch up. I wonder why I forgot light as a feather, what does that say about ME. Ugh, rather, what does that say about the horrible me who forgets things and then asks what does it mean to forget them. Blech.

[Matthew Ehrlich]

"stiff as a board" is easy to forget when the phrase describes either arousal, or the guy who taught you the phrase.

[John Emil Vincent]

is someone an analyst?

hey you, mr. dr. guy.

[Matthew Ehrlich]

Hey.

Lucky Dylan linked to this. I get to read your poems (and initial rant about greatness).