by Jordan Gisselbrecht
“I really believe what we’re doing right now, all of us, is evolutionarily important and ancient. The study of music videos. This isn’t the drugs talking. This is genuine insight. I’m getting a transmission down from on high somewhere. I am a radio. By studying music videos, we learn how beauty is made. We mark the culture’s advance through the decades. We keep watch and maintain the vitality of our tribe. Maybe we’re a little turned around focusing so much on music videos, specifically. But our hearts are in the right place. And unlike theater or poetry, music videos are an American art form.”
“Todd.”
“Yes!”
“Can I say something? A small note.”
“Speak!”
“You need to stop talking when the TV’s playing.”
“But you talk! Neil talks. Andrei talks. Roberto occasionally talks.”
“It’s not the talking per se,” Femi said.
“So it’s my thoughts then.”
“No, it’s the timing of the thoughts. Todd, you can say whatever you want. We’re all saying silly shit. But we know when not to do it. Not during the chorus, for example. Or right after the key change. Or when Andrei’s using voice commands to pick the next song.”
“I don’t know these things. I don’t watch TV.”
“We know,” Andrei said.
“You know what a chorus is,” Femi said.
“Yes,” Todd said. “Choruses are when the whole community comes forth to give narration.”
“Not in pop music,” Andrei said. Andrei’s shirt was unbuttoned and his chest hair was poking out in great black tufts. The air in the tiny room was humid. The five of them were crowded in front of Femi’s TV, Andrei, Femi, and Todd on the couch, Neil in the armchair, and Roberto lying on his belly on the floor because there was nowhere else to sit, though he seemed content. The TV was so close that any of them could have touched it, while the coffee table in the middle of the room was the site of much interest and activity.
“When you watch music videos regularly,” Femi said gently, “and you will, during your tenure here, you’ll learn that there’s a time for talking, and there’s a time for resting the mouth.”
“My mouth is so numb!” Neil exclaimed.
“Timing is everything,” Femi said. “Timing distinguishes the alcoholic from the bon vivant, for example. A celebratory firework from an improvised munition.”
“If you knew how good it feels to talk, when I talk,” Todd said, “you’d have trouble not talking too. The problem is that these thoughts form faster than I can know what they are. Preverbal occurrences cause my tongue and lips to move, these pleasant sounds to emerge, and then ideas, observations! I’m hearing them for the first time when I say them too, just like you are.”
“You’re addicted to talking,” Andrei said.
“Does it matter?”
“Not at all,” Andrei said. “Nothing matters. But sometimes I like to think about things other than what other people around me are saying.”
“I knew a guy who couldn’t stop talking once,” Neil said. “Like he literally could not stop talking whatsoever, at all.”
“I’m not that bad!”
“No, you’re not, Todd,” Femi said. “You’re merely discursive. Neil’s guy sounds pathological. Right, Neil? I think I’ve heard this one before.”
“You have!” Neil shouted.
“Discourses can be pathological,” Todd mused. “The voice a kind of alien invader.”
“How’d you meet him?” Femi asked.
“How he always meets guys,” Andrei said.
“It wasn’t like that,” Neil said. “It became that way. But it didn’t start like that. I liked something he posted. We met at Smart Bar like two years ago. This was all two years ago. Turns out we lived in the same neighborhood, so we went and got a drink at the Jeffrey Dahmer bar and we’re talking.”
“What did I tell you?” Andrei said. “Also, Jeffrey Dahmer never really went to that bar.”
“We’re talking,” Neil said, talking over Andrei, knowing that it was important to keep talking in a room where people are talking over one another, the way it was important to never come to a complete stop while driving through snow. “We’re talking, and it’s really natural, you know? He says something, I say something back, and then we’re having a conversation. That’s how it goes. And then I went over to his place to see his Magic card collection. I don’t play, but the drawings are so pretty. He wouldn’t stop telling me about it, all the lands I was going to see. He couldn’t stop telling me anything about anything.”
“He was like that right away?” Femi asked. “The whole time?”
“Yes! I mean not on the phone. He didn’t text the way he talked. Whatever pathology connecting his brain to his mouth did not extend to his hand. But in person, yes, all the time. I thought it was like a joke at first. An overly direct way of addressing the world to pick up chicks—spectrum-y chic, it worked on me. On the walk home he’s listing off thoughts about each building we’re passing. He’s had sex with a lot of his neighbors, and I’m hearing quick descriptions of various acts, but more about what the elevators and staircases look like, the bedrooms, the hallways. He likes orgasming in as many different buildings as he can, he thinks, he tells me, I’m not sure which, but it’s turning me on, this huge whore who everyone in the neighborhood has slept with, except for me. It hurts my feelings that it took him so long to get to me.”
“Because you’re so busy!” Femi reassured.
Roberto nodded, still watching the TV.
“We get to his apartment, and I’m realizing I’m never going to see the Magic cards because he can’t stop explaining all the different positions he’s going to put my body in, where he’s going to put his own body in to match. It was like listening to someone describe someone else trying to parallel park badly.”
“Let’s move this along,” Andrei said.
“OK!”
“So then you screwed…”
“We did! It was good. I knew exactly what was working and what wasn’t. And the next morning—”
“Why do you always stay over?” Andrei said.
“I like a warm bed.”
“I can never deal with the morning chitchat,” Andrei said. “This one guy the other day asked me what I did for a living. We don’t need to do this. I’m putting on my pants. I’m leaving. We don’t need to know each other.”
“That’s why you have threesomes,” Femi said. “There’s too many people to talk to.”
“Did I tell you that?” Andrei asked.
“Yes.”
“I like that,” Andrei said.
“You say it all the time,” Femi said.
“Foursomes are even better for that. More. As many as you can fit in a room.”
“Can I finish my story?” Neil asked.
“You can do whatever you want,” Femi said.
“So this guy gives me a detailed description of the breakfast he’s planning to have. But it’s all mixed up with the ways he wants to have sex again. Everything is covered in butter and maple syrup. It was confusing, and, I admit, arousing. But I chose to leave rather than act on the opportunities presented—so maybe that means that this isn’t a great story. Please don’t go, he’s saying, please don’t go, don’t go away, he’s calling after me as I am going, as I do go, like what you’d imagine a dog would say if he’d had the words to say it.”
“Ah!” Femi said. “I’m calling bullshit. This story isn’t true.”
“Who cares if it’s true?” Andrei said. “But I think it’s true.”
“I care deeply about the truth,” Todd said.
“You what?” Neil asked.
“I care about the truth.”
“You can’t just say it,” Andrei said. He was buttoning and unbuttoning the last button on his completely open shirt. “You can’t make statements like that about the truth. You’ll ruin it.”
“What?” Neil asked.
Todd quickly stood up, agitated, then sat back down on the floor, next to Neil’s chair, as if by mistake. Femi uncomfortably twisted his head around as he took stock of everyone.
“So you’re saying your story is true?” Femi asked. “Neil?”
“The story is absolutely true,” Neil said. “Hold on.” He got up and sat down in Todd’s old spot, next to Andrei.
“These buttons are driving me crazy,” Neil said, and he buttoned Andrei’s shirt up until a more modest number of buttons were left open.
“I could never deal with that much talking,” Andrei said. “At least, not someone else’s talking. How does one form a thought in such conditions? Or zone out?”
“Do I really talk that much?” Todd asked.
“You’re fine, babe,” Femi said. “He’s talking about Neil’s guy.” Femi moved into Neil’s old armchair, then thought better of it and joined Todd on the ground, taking Todd’s hand.
“Do you think I was too cold to him?” Neil asked Andrei.
“What do I know,” Andrei said. “No. People can’t help falling in love with you. You know that.”
“Really?”
“Shut up, Neil.”
“Can you all shut up?” Roberto asked. “I haven’t seen this music video since I was a baby.”
It was a very good music video, in the room’s opinion. There was lots of blue and gold and blinding white light in it. Their practiced eyes could pin down the year of production, the month, by the hair, the denim jacket, the Vaseline-smudged background, the vocals, to say nothing of the pop diva herself. What a joy it was. They clapped when it was over.
****
Jordan Gisselbrecht lives in Washington, DC. His fiction has appeared in Burial Mag, The End, The Cleveland Review of Books, and elsewhere.