Mike Brown

Mike Brown and I (sic) live and work in New Jersey doing gardening and

landscape work. During the off season I travel, write and loaf. I enjoy

drinking, sex, reading and writing, fighting, drugs, and hard core social

intercourse. And flowers. And I'm 23 and a pisces which means that I like to

swim in the sky, but sometimes have trouble getting out of bed. Mike can

be reached at mcfaust@aol.com.

MTV

Now I'm high on MTV and feel like I'm moving at very high speeds, when actually I'm sitting still. Has MTV expanded my awareness to the extent that I can feel the earth spinning? My thoughts also appear to be moving at high speeds, when actually they are going nowhere. On this I am clear: if I purchase a lot of brand name products, my conscience will stop hassling me. Soon I'll be able to fulfill my societal role as a consumer without even getting out of bed. Soon, when technology has delivered us into the imminent utopia that waits to blossom forth from its silicon-laced, time-coded bud like a pixillated rose, flaring out across the screen like sunrise on the horizon, I will finally be the morbidly obese, bedridden, incontinent slob that I have always dreamed of becoming. Until then I guess I'll just rough it. Just don't lose the remote. Don't lose the remote!! It always seems so simple... why are supermodels so skinny? Kate Moss just walked in front of that Christmas tree and the colors glowed through her pallid, translucent flesh! Oh wait, it's that new commercial that everyone's been talking about:

A Chinese boy and a little white girl, both fashionably dressed – baggy jeans, metal spikes adorning body parts and hidden in body cavities, the whole nine, get on an elevator, and this hollow voice intones:

"Nihilism used to be the end of hope, but now it's only the beginning of hip!

Witness the dawning of the young hipster, Orpheus Jones. Irony does not possess that ferrous glint that its name implies. No, Orpheus thought -- these days it shines like a razor blade, these days it gleams like steel --it's originally earthy, dull sheen has been buffed to a supernatural metallic glow by man's endless inventiveness and artifice. Almost like politics and advertising. Orpheus was hanging around the 7-11, smoking cigarettes, feeling stylishly bored, fashionably jaded, comfortably stoned, illegal but not immoral, godless yet vaguely spiritual, hard yet flaccid, intelligent and yet completely thoughtless at the same time..."

Then it ended with the Chinese kid snapping his gum apathetically. I liked the commercial so much that I bought the product. Just kidding -- I didn't even know what product was being advertised! Where was I? Oh yeah -- after

the atomic bomb was invented I became a beatnik and stabbed my bongo drum with my hypodermic needle after it had beaten me at sixty nine consecutive games of cribbage.

Whoa. Sorry, that's just the MTV talking. It has whipped my mind into some sort of delirious red froth. Look at the glistening foam that crawls out of my ears like a gorged parasite, who, having eaten his fair share of my brains, crawls back to MTV to regurgitate them for millions of abject poets and hollering fraternity brothers alike. I know how the system works -- they'll dress it up like a documentary on the real lives of twenty-somethings and parasites, something like:

"See what happens when we take one real person, and one real live glistening, foamy parasite, and have them share an apartment for six months in Greenwich Village!" And of course I'll get screwed with the royalties and slandered by MTV's cutting edge, rock-video editing style, that will make me, a deep, sensitive, thoughtful, athletic, congenial, warm and compassionate man appear more like a whiskey guzzling serial rapist who sleeps in a box and talks to himself for two hours every morning before leaving his room.

Oooh! The next episode of that commercial is on. The two kids are still in the elevator. The voice drones in that emotionless monotone:

"Orpheus had been gleaning odds and ends of the ethics and protocol of being cool from Narcissus's vapid rants. Orpheus found them interesting. Let us remember, now, that Orpheus was a young and budding wee hipster at this time. He still couldn't call people 'man' without feeling awkward. But he had vigor-- chutzpah, even. Sometimes he felt like his soul was drowning in a gray sea of apathy -- but who gives a shit? Smoke another cigarette."

And then it ends with the girl snapping her bubble gum apathetically. Wow, I'm thinking --am I dosed on this MTV or what? I actually like that commercial! I can't wait to see the next installment! Suddenly my thoughts have become X-treme! Every phrase has an exclamation point jammed up its ass! It's like bungee jumping without jumping! It's like sky diving without jumping! It's like cliff diving without jumping! It's like style without substance! It's like noise without sound! It's like the present cut loose from it's evil step sisters, Past and Future! I'm riding in the giant, horse- drawn pumpkin of pure experience, approaching the speed of light, all thanks to my Faery Godmother, EM TEE VEE! Oh, God! Television is so exhilarating! Can't go on writing! ...

I'm back, immersed in something resembling post-coital languor. Jill's in the room so I'm a little embarrassed. She killed my ecstasy with her innocence upon entering. She makes me feel guilty. She thinks I'm writing about her, and she keeps sneaking glances over here in an effort to get my attention and communicate to me in her subtle way that my writing arouses her curiosity. But does it interest her because I might be writing about her, or is she curious about what goes on in my heart? The dynamic interaction of the two, I suspect, explains her conflicting feelings of unbearable embarrassment and irresistible curiosity. But I won't let her off. I am scribblingfuriously now and clenching my whole face into a grimace of intense emotion that I had always pictured on Beethoven's face as he composed his great symphonies. Jill is riveted but still conceals her emotions, and they sneak out only through her furtive glimpses, which she might not even think of as a way of communicating.

Here's more of that commercial! I don't know what to do -- if I stop my charade just to watch a television commercial my cover will be blown completely, but I must watch that commercial. So I snap my head up and look at the tee vee as if in a trance. My eyes go blank and my lips part ever so slightly. Jill is looking at me now but I am unaware of her existence.

The kids are in the elevator and the voice drones on:

"Ten million housewives can't be wrong. Does your spirit know that it is being mercilessly battered by the slow motion jackhammer of the daily grind? Have your senses been numbed by hyperconsumer, media-assisted autoeroticism? Have you accidentally circumcised your subtler emotions and fallen into the dank and unshaven pits of sister slavery? Well if you want to get laid by perfect strangers every night, buy Lenny's Jeans." And the elevator opens up to reveal a huge underground club with thousands of ecstasy-crazed teenagers dancing provocatively and wearing Lenny's Jeans.

"Mike, are you okay?" Jill asks with her usual dollop of concern. But I just begin scribbling again. I can't believe that's how the commercial ends! What a rip. Rest assured no Lenny's Jeans will ever adorn my pant collection. "Can you believe these commercials?" she goes on, pretending not to notice that I am in the grips of some mystical aesthetic force. Then she walks out. At least she said something about the commercial. She doesn't care about me anyway.

But here she is coming back in with two drinks in her hand! She gives me my drink, a Jameson and water, and when I thank her she says "sure," ever so casually. Then she stands over me in my chair and shrugs her shoulders and asks me: "Whatcha writin'?" Now she is trying to bribe me with liquor and pretend she doesn't really care, like it's no big deal. No big deal my ass. Sorry sister, it'll take a little more than that.

Jill: "Why do you hesitate? Is it, like, personal or something?"

I: "Jill, nobody talks like that anymore. That's soo mid-to-late-middle-nineties. But for your information, it does happen to contain a very real, and a very delicate part of me. I'm pouring my heart out and I'm too close to it now, too, too..." (Now I'm pouring on the melodrama)

Jill: "Too what? What? You can tell me, it's me, Jill?"

I: "Vulnerable. It's just too intense."

I let out a long, Wertherish sigh and look out the window longingly. Across the way, at Kevin's house, different people are telling different lies, under the influence of the same channel, and somewhere deep in my soul, someone has lost the remote.

And, to end on a less profound note, I began biting my toenails.

Jill was happy.

Mike Brown