This book is available in four editions:
• full color illustrated paper •
• black & white illustrated paper •
• ebook •
• fine art limited edition of life-size dress •
sewn in paper printed with the book’s text & hung on carved wooden hanger
For more information visit our website
jadedibisproductions.com
– Robert Coover, author of Noir
Glamorous Freak was a finalist in Chiasmus Press First Book Competition, Starcherone Press Prize for Innovative Fiction, and Subito Press Annual Book Competition. Recipient of a Creative Arts Council Grant at Brown University.
“Stylish blogger, gifted wordsmith, linguistic cinematographer, Roxanne Carter herein charges hard and fast past the current borders of the book and into fresh textual territories all her own. Glamorous Freak is wonderful and wonderfully unsettling work. Reading it you will not be indifferent. Reading it you will listen and listening you will, with Carter, ‘be able to recognize the flickering hurricane knocking tree limbs against the door.’”
– Laird Hunt, author of The Paris Stories
“Roxanne Carter creates a figure of grave and astonishing intelligence, sensitivity and perception: the woman at once so near and so far, so here and so there, haunted seemingly by another narrative, just outside of our reach, and there’s something very beautiful about that. And we’re astonished that so much longing and mystery can be held in this way in one book. I’d follow this wom aninto any night, into any film, into any day.”
– Carole Maso, author of Defiance and AVA
Roxanne Carter’s sparkling debut fiction is a playful innovative engagement with the mirrored self, stylishly written, wittily framed. An exciting new talent.
– Robert Coover, author of Noir
eBook edition
COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL
© 2012 copyright Roxanne Carter
All rights reserved.
First trade paper edition published 2012 by Jaded Ibis Press.
ISBN: 978-1-937543-29-7
Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information please email: questions@jadedibisproductions.com
Published by Jaded Ibis Press, sustainable literature by digital means™
An imprint of Jaded Ibis Productions, LLC, Seattle, WA USA http://jadedibisproductions.com
Front and back covers and interior photography by Roxanne Carter.
Roxanne Carter received her MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2008, and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver in 2011. Her work has appeared in Tarpaulin Sky, Fact-Simile, Drunken Boat, La Petite Zine, and Sidebrow among others. She lives in Ohio, where she blogs at www.persephassa.com
Beauty really has a lot to do with the way a person carries it off. When you see “beauty,” it has to do with the place, with what they’re wearing, what they’re standing next to, what closet they’re coming down the stairs from.
— Andy Warhol
| I. | Beauty Is Quite Strange |
| II. | Film Studies |
| III. | How To Make a Mermaid Tail So You Can Wear it Around the House |
As he laughs under his breath and cocks his head to the side, he’s at once vulnerable and untouchable. Mythologizing himself, perpetuating rumors, Everything you think is true. Notes take shape – astrological symbols, secret messages received and encrypted in his own inscrutable language. One a day, until I die. At once extravagant and sublime, omens appear to him from a dream, a unicorn in a glade, two stars called Castor and Pollux heralding the highway, a slew of things tumbling from him propelled by their own strange locomotion. The natural boundless inventiveness of adolescents is his encyclopedic nest egg: he’s perpetually pubescent, glistening with androgyne, not quite the rouge, vamping in black fringed boots, his ineffable grin sliding across my synapses. Otherwise innocent, inordinately shy, stripped-down in gold lamé.
He probably doesn’t see me. I’m sure he didn’t see me, standing there fawning, transfixed. Greed animates me; I flush with self-consciousness. Everything he says is suspect, can’t be trusted. He deviously contradicts himself in the very instant I begin to believe. I lap it up, swooning after a quixotic vision in an ankle-grazing Edwardian frock coat. He’s afraid to say too much, opting for too little, parsing each statement under the five-word limit. It’s no trouble for him to answer pressing questions with sighs, to bite his lip, let slip one word clips, indecipherable rants against semiotics. Words wound him. He’d like everything to mean nothing, but be precious to everyone. He’d like his words to mean something to me. He tells me that afterwards I’ll have something to think about. He smirks through boring interviews, looking out through the stadium dark directly into my eyes. Only my eyes. I’m sure he didn’t look but it felt like it to me. It’s unnerving, this suggestive, almost violent glance. I experience it as a first kiss, a demonic initiation. My flesh rises in response; his silence feeds my desire. He won’t play by the rules, steadfast in his incredibly daring high heels and gold epaulets. He flits by several octaves, his upper register, the very limit, slamming down into my body and snaking out, euphoric. His hands on his hips. My equilibrium wrecked. Tell me what to play, he says, his doe eyes sliding over me. His bare chest, his hands cool and dry, manicured nails pressing into my skin. How will I call him, call him, call him? What will I say?
He notices me immediately. I lift myself, look back directly, back straight. I’m firmly suspended, exhilarated by the physical pleasure of knowing I’m admired. When he turns away a clap of cold strikes, a catastrophe. He needs his space. I feel abandoned, long to return to the carnality his eyes address, a liquid flush. The power of his gaze is unsustainable, but the lasting effect resonates in everything I do: waiting for the bus, sealing an envelope, a lyric courses and awakens me.
My uncertainty brings me closer to him: my face is near to his, but it’s a closeness I can’t complete, a static flickering on the television screen, stinging me. The telephone won’t ring; it’s busy, or offline. He might call and I’ll be holding, flipping channels, waiting for somebody to answer.
If I could keep up with all this pale glamour, subdued under a backlight, the microphone cord looped around his tender wrist. He draws taut, his face smug, his look pivots on me: I turn the dial. As this is happening, I have so much to do. The care of the house overwhelms me. There is no way to keep the walls clean. They need to be covered. He’s truly possessed by a violence, which erupts – disturbing everything within his reach, although he remains sterile, impressively stoic. He carries himself well. How well? He knows his own quality, the ease with which he jerks.
I’m disturbed by my impulse to touch him. I may have actually called out. I’m so embarrassed… usually I’m not like this, willing to appear so ridiculous. I’m flirting with everyone, he says. I’ll find a way to disrupt his disinterest; I’d be happy with one unraveling and illuminating word. As long as I have something to do, even sweeping the cat hair accumulated on the floor. I’m entirely concentrated on my determination, frequently and feverishly returning to the image of his leatherette, the fringe of metal swept across his forehead, the cuffs that bind him to the bed frame: they come to nothing. He has no secrets, and no opportunity to be released. He’s on, on, on, a little different each time, hitting the bull’s eye.
Where can I find him; what do I want from him? Action takes shape and dissolves desire. I’ll say yes to anything. If I wait awhile this may snag, rewind. The mail might come. He is closed to me, unavailable. Only through repetition can I find access: here he is, rousing the timorous, opening the reserved. I could wear his face inside out. A beauty I want to devour, leaving nothing behind. He can’t be exhausted: he’s infinitely available, offering himself over and over again to everybody.
I like to watch.
His face caught in cameo, fixed on some unfamiliar distance, the black beetle of his eye framed by lashes gummed with ink. He nods to the beat, each thrust of his chin punctuated by a faltering withdrawal from his face – the stage which surrounds him extends from the edge out; within its confines he’s unreservedly slim.
I don’t know how this is supposed to be done. The spotlight singles him out; he’s simply there, radiant in black and white. The elusive and unattainable dream to which he’s open, which he invites – the mysterious transparency of his words give me a place to rest; I can settle, here, in the filth of weird beauty.
In the middle of willful exposures, the tails of his trench coat slap against his calves, the tops of his thigh high stockings barely meeting the shadow of his hip. These vague gestures are readable, and his adoption of recognizable signs collapse in a great clash; rococo motifs, jeans and neon overlap. The disparity of references brought into uneasy harmony: everything about him is right. On the word Love! his eyes roll up, the whites overcast. He has a multitude of meaningful looks. The artifice of his posture is so sincere that I find myself believing everything he says. He’s so humble he can’t help but mean every word – love, love, love. The vacuousness of repetition as suture. He animates his own performance, willfully leading me across the stage. I’ll follow him; I’m willing to take any position, as long as I’m able to see. He struts to be seen, obscenely exceeding the limit of his own body, the stickiness of his whisper going right down through me.
I don’t have to be beautiful but he is flawless, coiffed, buttressed by the allure of his tremoring lips. He knows he can make himself appear, half-on, half-off, and or not. I wish I wasn’t up here alone. I’m open to his influence, and I’d like to be full, overtly fluid, excessive to the point of grotesque. My response is more intense the longer I watch, the more I hit play. I can’t hesitate to use what I know; I’ve slipped in and I want to stay.
I know that he’ll die for me. I halt on a half-taken step, one heel hovering over a gleaming parquet floor. Overcome by jealousy of shadows, interrupted by light. He’s given me the look; every feather singed, the coarse tulle of a veil curled at the ends, cauterized by fire. I extinguish the flame with my painted lips.
Birds move stiffly over water, wings spread to release. Everything burnished in black and white, a clean, chemical white that’s artificial, dreamy. A white kitten, doused in cream. Women like love notes written on paper napkins, fluttering up against a flat, grey sea. The waves hurdling abandoned bouquets.
The glitter of kisses everywhere. He replicates himself in various ways: taking advantage of the gloss of a grand piano, mirrors that rise up as if from the earth, wavering to cull his reflection, his body swathed in extravagant ruffles, rosaries, ostrich plumes fawning over his bed. He never goes out without his face on, hair done, glittered to the hilt.
I’ll keep an eye on him. He might be crashing my party, one curl plastered to his forehead. Not because he has to; he’s here to have fun. I’m here; I’ve been here, home. I haven’t been waiting but I’m checking him out. He gives me the look but what he’s really looking at is the camera’s gaze on him. He swells like a rooster; I’m cut from him, over here, longing to reach through. He wants to look, to own his image; I want more. Clearly, something has gotten into me; the full effect of his eyes has turned me inside out.
He can’t help it.
He makes an effort to imitate the person he claims to be. This is the person he’s become, doing the splits on top of a grand piano. The only way to keep something for himself is to continue to lie about it. He’s always on the telephone, talking in a bedroom voice – silly and tender at once. I’m slightly nervous.
First, he’ll touch himself, then me.
A ladder lies across the sand. At one end, a window. The other, the sea, pulling out. When he falls, I’ll cover my face with my hands, lights flickering on bare rocks, a tendril of blood flowering from his half-parted lips.
He said, Now, menacing. Now now now, a long way to go. Now somebody is sending me roses! He doesn’t need to be marked by beauty. I really like him. I stood on my toes, the better to see him above the bodies all gathered at the foot of the stage. Never let him out of my sight.
He’s so small I could’ve easily slipped him in my pocket and snuck him upstairs. His favorite way: alone. To be alone, slipping easily in and out. To please my mother I might have introduced him if I hadn’t wanted him all to myself. Little Lord Fauntleroy on a Japanese motorbike. I’m the one with the eyes. With the yes. I’d call in late. We could have worn each other’s clothes, although his high heels probably won’t fit me. If only I wasn’t so tall, so awkward, so hard to recognize among all these other girls. Whom I happen to resemble.
I’m home I’m home, he says, is this my home? Clicks his heels together, comes home with me. The dialogue is terrible. What can I say; I’ll have to make some adjustments. I’ve purified myself in Lake Minnetonka. How his face has changed since he filled the screen. Admiring his own profile in the rushes. Drinking champagne out of martini glasses we laugh; always doing the wrong thing, laughing in order to appear honest. I had to laugh at the wrong moment – not like I was laughing at him. I’m a little nervous; I’ve already made an entry in my diary. He’s a screamer OH DON’T STOP; when he’s upset, he gets so silent I pull the curtains to cover myself. He struts across the stage, a strobe light thrusts and the dresses start to rip. All I’ve got left is this ruffle. What can I do with a ruffle, the set list, boys in high collars buttoned up with pearls, monkey fur and cockerel feathers? The click of his boots on the floor makes my heart want to settle down.
The more he fades the more perfect he is. The less he says the more I listen.
Anything he wants me to do; my hands wave limply above the crowd. Cassette tape in my hair, kiss, kiss to the camera. In sumptuous black and white, the stamp of his mouth marking me. He calls it glamour. As much as I know: he calls me a girl like a tall building, Godzilla girl, machine made and real. Is it me, really me he wants? We hardly know each other, though I know everything about him. Did you see me? he says.
Back to dancing, taping his photographs to my walls. Look how I feel, breathing deeply; sometimes I feel just like him. I can’t help but be strange, difficult and fragile.
The radio was dead. Turning the dial, all he could find was handful of dashes. The discos were dead; the ladies were kinda dead; he’d started talking to himself. He made another body for himself and he called this body an altar, a servant of the temple. The body was in him and it had a girlish giggle. He lost two whole days; he had no call for sleep and so much to do.
He started with the word kiss and went from there. He made five smacking sounds with his lips and I try to copy him, standing alone in my room in front of the full-length mirror. I have a great many pretty things to blame him for. The mirror is all smudged with skin cells and I wouldn’t mind if I just went broke. For a line or two, I speak the same as him. I’ve been accused of taking him all for myself.
As long as he can tell me as much as he can about what he does when he’s alone in his room, I wouldn’t mind. He says that an impulse calls him, a pinching hunger. He gets angry if he’s disturbed and blazes as he takes his way. I won’t be bothering him; I’ll be engulfed in the business of the house, gathering the papers I’ve strewn around in a careless, confused manner. He can please himself by being deliberate but I’m not sure what I want to do today.
He’s always catching up to me; I often can’t go back to cleaning when a song I like comes on. Endeavoring to remove a stain from the stove, his softly spoken No