#is he dropping his kingly pretense to be a human?

[howaboutswords]

Such sorrow our splendid sovereign never knew,

Nor was his spirit ever sunk as by that single sight.

The good King gazed, gripped with horror,

Groaned gruesomely, wept gouts of tears,

Bent kneeling to the body, embraced it,

Cast up his visor, quickly kissed Gawain,

Looked at his eyelids, now locked fast shut,

His lips like lead and his complexion pallid,

And then, crowned king, cried aloud:

'Dear cousin and kinsman, in care I am left,

For now my glory is gone, and my great wars finished.

I hold here my hope of joy and armed success;

Wholly on him depended my heart and strength!

O my counsellor, my comfort, keeper of my heart,

Renowned king of all knights ever known under Christ!

Worthy to be king, though I wore the crown!

Throughout the wide world my wealth and my glory

Were won by Gawain, through his wisdom alone.

Alas!' cried the King, 'my grief grows now;

I am utterly undone in my own country.

Ah, dire and dreadful death, you delay too long!

Why spin out so slowly? You smother my heart!'

- Arthur mourns on finding Gawain and his troops dead in the alliterative Morte Arthure, lines 3947-3968, translated by Brian Stone.

[myrishswamp]

I can’t do what you do

(NB: this was conceived of and partially written before WOIAF came out, which mentions Aerys fighting in the Stepstones during the War of the Ninepenny Kings.  Despite the fact that it now goes against canon, friends and followers have encouraged me to finish it anyway, which I appreciate.)

Aerys is known for leaving banquets unannounced, with nary a white cloak at his side.  As much as his sleek mane of silvery hair and purple, dragon-patterned garments attract attention, still he is able to slip out, somehow, without anyone noticing his departure.

Tonight he has left the feast that celebrates Tywin’s return, and Tywin is a step or two past miffed.  What is he, too jealous to hear about Tywin’s observations of Lyseni pleasure-house customs?  Aerys is a man grown, he is the King, and leaving his own Hand’s feast like a foolish child without so much as a word of excuse or apology is not how a King ought to behave.

Anytime Tywin thinks he understands this strange Targaryen friend of his, Aerys does yet another thing that defies sense.  For every moment of triumph and camaraderie, there are moments of confusion and frustration too great for Tywin to bear any longer.

Rhaella was once the only soul in the Red Keep who knew where Aerys disappeared to on these occasions; she has since shared the secret with Tywin, and so it is Tywin who goes to remove the King from his disappearances, and so it is Tywin who, tonight, leaves his own feast to do his duty.

There’s a dusty, forgotten staircase that spirals up to a small, cobwebbed tower room.  Aerys and Rhaella had played there as children, and it is there where Aerys goes when he abandons his kingly role.  Tonight, though it is nearly dark, Tywin can make out the silvery hair streaming down Aerys’s back and the gold brocade dragon on his tunic in the stern, cobalt sky.

Tywin shields his candle from the slight wind that blows through the open window and places it down on the grimy stone floor.

“You’re in your cups again, your grace,” Tywin starts, keeping his voice steady with a hint of brightness.  To use the wrong tone with Aerys when he’s in a mood is not a mistake Tywin has made, not once in his years as friend and Hand.   “Let me help you back to my—to the feast.”

Aerys does not turn around.  His hands are digging into his thighs and his shoulders are tensed. Tywin imagines, as he often does, a dragon climbing up Aerys’s ribs and throat, straining to get out.

“I am king of this whole damned kingdom,” he says.  His voice is already slightly higher than it should be.  “But when I want to do something for myself, everyone says ‘Oh, Aerys is in his cups again.’ Why is that?”

Tywin sighs.  The true answer—it is easier to handle Aerys with too much wine in his slender body than to understand his sober whims—might land him in the black cells. “I don’t know, Aerys.”

“They just think I spend my nights drinking wine and ale till the sun comes up, isn’t that it?”

Despite the anger in the king’s voice, Tywin drops the pretense.  “You’re my friend, Aerys, and this feast is for me.  I thought you’d want to celebrate my return from Lys.  And instead, you’re pouting in a tower. Why?”

Aerys stares down at the beach and the Blackwater below them for so long Tywin wonders if Aerys had even heard him.

“Because I can’t do what you do,” he says at last. “I’m the king, and I still can’t do what you do.”

Tywin would never ask Are you mad?  “You are King, yes,” he says, keeping his voice free from impatience.  “So you can do whatever you like.  What you just said…It’s all in your head, Aerys.”

Aerys’s hands are shaking so much that they cast shadows that move like crazed spiders on the stone wall.

“I can’t.”

“You can’t what?”

Aerys’s voice is thin with fear and yet still burns with the irrational fire of a Targaryen.  “I can’t go fuck any of your Lyseni whores.  I can’t venture across the Narrow Sea to pick out my own Myrish rugs. I have to have someone bring them to me as though I were still a babe.  No one will ever celebrate my adventures.  They celebrate you, instead, and you’re only my Hand.”

Tywin bristles at the insult.  To stay calm, he tries to remember the things he enjoys about Aerys. Little comes to mind.

“So go, your grace,” he says.  “Leave tomorrow.  No one will stop you.”

“I can’t leave home, Tywin.”  Aerys’s hands are still shaking, his back still turned.  “Something very bad will happen if I do.”

“That’s nonsense, your grace,” Tywin sighs.  “Even if something bad were to happen, there are people in the Red Keep who are sworn to protect you.  You know this.”

“Even you think I’m a fucking child!” Aerys shouts.  He whirls around and stares at Tywin with wide, wild eyes.  Anyone lesser than a Lannister would surely be afraid, seeing the Targaryen madness staring him right in the face.  “It’s not that.  I know someone will hide my Rhaegar away and protect my worthless sister.  I don’t care about that.  Something very bad will happen inside me if I go far away and it won’t stop.  Everything will look different and I—”

“Of course it’ll look different,” Tywin explains, as he would, in fact, explain to a child.  “That is part of the adventure.”

“No.  It’ll hurt me.  Nothing will be right and I’ll be in danger. I can’t leave—”

He cuts himself short and Tywin watches him collect himself. His eyes narrow into their typical sneer.

“But you wouldn’t understand, would you, Tywin?  Humans are not meant to understand the dragon.”

Tywin nods.  “I suppose that may be true, your grace.”  Oh, he understands, he certainly does.  Aerys’s hands are still shaking.  There is nothing else to understand.

[saintorr]

Gentrification Genocide

(Four sketches)

c. 2017 by Steven Orr

 I.  Having survived AIDS, a gay-bashing, 9-11, Sandy and an endless stream of queens posing as no-show clients, I wonder if this latest wave of too-close-for-comfort gentrification will be my own, personal, genocidal Swan Song? Tonight, while riding my bike like the crazed, clowning pterodactyl, I found myself breathily imitating a very feminized bicycle bell. “Ding-ding” one moment; and the next, I’m screaming like a wolf-crazed banshee as I fly past a very proper, chic and rich-looking woman, giving her quite a start! Indignantly, she screams “Oh my God!” in a belting, masculine voice tinged with a Valley-girl accent. This happens just off 7th Street and First Avenue and I pedal on gleefully, half ashamed for my acting out; and half empowered and self-congratulatory for my anarchistic tendencies, praying and hoping that maybe, just maybe this entitled-acting cannibal is one of the new billionaire zombies inhabiting the crystal cardboard and obtuse glass towers on the eastside of Avenue A between 6th and 7th; or the newly renovated Shul four doors west of my man cave. Oh, you know, that confusing condo/synagogue, half place of worship, half billionaire-broken-hearted-haunt of the ghost of the big Rabbi with the swarmy, philandering son, also named Sandy; the one who finagled, then sold off the temple’s rights for close to a billion dollars.

 II. In the morning, do not fear, I tell myself, for those monstrous explosions are merely the renovation of De Maria’s former studio, semi-formerly a Con-Ed substation; now currently being magically transformed into the billionaire Brant’s private museum. Ordinary neighborhood citizens will not be allowed access to the beatific garden growing between 421 E. 6th St., and cutting straight through to 7th Street, like a slender, cold, fish knife slices through a babe’s beating heart, nor will they be allowed into the private storage space where priceless, insipid and modern works of art will be stored and kept; available only for private viewing to the coterie of fellow billionaires, stars and their kingly cronies. Cannibalize yourselves, you lowly 99%, suffer the noise! Let the new money frighten away the former spirit guides and the friendly semi-wild gypsy cats that once played and sang and danced in between these dishwater-lit toy tenements of beer and dreams and young strains of songwriters’ guitars and falling in love with the moonbeam dreams of East Village hungry-hearts and shadowy leather lovers; for the new owners of this house of bomb-sounding billions was seeking a location and tax-write off in an edgy, creative neighborhood, so here we are! He sought to color his taste in architecture with the pronoun “creative”. Oh you poor 99%, you starving nothings. Yes, you may die of construction noise, dust, and fumes; and you may have to walk around the red-velvet ropes when the chic parties begin and the drones and helicopters start landing and the limousines begin pulling up with their stars with their even more glamorous billions but oh now look how your property values are increasing! With every chiseled BOOM of detaching chards and jagged, dusty bricks the work crew of flying monkeys flings into the the BOOMING maw of the dumpster from hell; comes the skeletal, fire-cracking, whacking-snapping chorus of never-ending jackhammers (often five at once), for this is a war of money over time, fought, won and played out by short trollish billionaires with crooked smiles. For WE THE PEOPLE--are irrelevant and WE THE PEOPLE are little better than charming old engines, White slave labor, memories of America’s fragmented, shrunken middle class, now addicted to crack, Walmart, Nikes and Disney digital dreams of “Searching for Dory”. WE THE PEOPLE, better forgotten, better disposed of, better buried by Trump, so the young, rich litters of billionaire spawn can play here anew, can fling themselves into their endless selfie-cesspools of Chai lattes tropical banana and protein powder smoothies, funny, arthritic, black French bulldogs named Lucy and lovely, decadent, divinely narcissistic empty and burning consumeristic dreams of pretension and nothingness.

 III.  As a matter of fact, Medicaid was specifically created to hasten us to an early grave; Those of us that weren’t exterminated by the first, or 2nd waves of gentrification genocide. Someone said “We don’t know how good we have it.” “We don’t’ know how good we have it” I repeat as I am having a nervous breakdown trying to make an appointment, trying to get a referral from my (formerly caring) community healthcare clinic where now only Trans-people matter; for, besides the billionaires, THEY are also the new masters of the New York human race; everyone else is basically irrelevant. I’m trying to make an appointment for this back pain that’s made every other step excruciating for three months now, (all through the holidays; the wine helped, sometimes the sex). “No, Goddammit I don’t NEED ESTROGEN! FUCK YOUR ESTROGEN AND YOUR PHONE MENU AND YOUR INSTRUCTIONS TO CALL 9-1-1 IF THIS IS A MEDICAL EMERGENCY!” One of the patient associates handling referrals starts quoting policies to me, a vicious little queen with bitchy glee touting too-fast, meaningless and bureaucratic buzzwords at me like he’s throwing cream pies in my face. The next confusing day (nervous breakdown number two due to my continuing efforts to seek relief from this nagging pain), I am contacted by a manager named Stephanie (what sex is she? Dare I ask and be reported for inappropriate behavioral tendencies?). With balls of steel she attacks and berates me for my wholly unfriendly, overtly hostile and indeed homophobic language (referring to the “mean queen” of yesterday’s nervous breakdown).  “This is Callen Lorde” she proclaims, like a punitive, belittling, parole officer or a sexless, dominatrix cop, “You should know better!” Her rawhided, delivery strips me bare and exposes me for all my vulnerable, bisexual silliness and tendencies toward anarchistic prostitution and polymorphously, pleasure-seeking perversity that I am; for all that I inhabit and display, for this is the magical stuff that makes me me! I have an allergy to anything that coldly ignores and debases men only for being men. Why do some females act like raging amazon warriors slicing through the air, their angry clitorises waving like sharpened dragon’s teeth; so ready with a threat or an admonishment in response to any miniscule drop of incorrect language that happens to ejaculate casually from an innocent man’s mouth merely for the sake of jest…

 IV.  Once upon a time, there was a neighbor non-friend of mine, a sexless tomboy with frigid, uptight boundaries who had a talent for making me feel as warm and welcomed as a serial killer rapist. “Don’t nag me” she asserted testily at the coop board meeting one Saturday afternoon, and with jerking movement of her dry, tendinous and over-vascularized torso, SLAM CRASH, the mirror behind her slides off the wall, and onto the floor. Everyone jumps “There, you see?” I intone, smiling like Joan Crawford as Crystal in “The Women”, “That’s what you get for attacking me.”