Paul Mooney on 9/11

"I haven't seen white folks this scared since the last Indian raid."

-Paul Mooney, from his comedy album Analyzing White America
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Lighten Up by Klaus Varley

Two days after 9/11, the girl I was dating tried to kill herself. I found her next to an empty bottle of sleeping pills and a copy of Prozac Nation I had given her. She lived. I wrote this a few weeks later. Sorry for being so serious. -KV

Lighten Up
by Klaus Varley

I'm a man in doubt; I don't know what will come next. I never knew what would come next, but I never doubted something would come. But now I doubt, and that's what scares me the most.

And I'm nervous. I'm not sure what about. Don't you ever feel nervous and you don't know why? Performance anxiety? That could be it. That's usually IT. What will go up next? The fate of The Brothel in my hands? Pass the alcoholic stimulant, I can't afford to be self conscious when exposure looms on the horizon.

Don't know if I will be funny enough or cool enough or funny enough or redundant or what? Will people laugh? Who are these laughing people? People I don't even know, but hey, if they tell me I'm funny I'll go along with it. I'll say "thanks," because I don't want to lose our five fans, but really I don't know what they are talking about. I'm not sure what they find funny and what they don't find funny, and it seems strange, me taking credit for words on the page.

They're not mine, I just type them.

Shouldn't the words take credit for themselves? I've got these blocks of letters-they came in the mail in a big bag from UPS-looking a lot like the one you've got, and all I'm trying to do is put them in an order that amuses me.

Break.

Some music, and I begin again.

On September 17th, the first day of trading on Wall Street after the tragedy, everything on the market went down save cigarettes, Pepsi, and booze.

Let's go back.

On September 11th my roommate Matt went to work. I got to stay home, seeing how I work in a high rise building. On his break from genetically mutating the last swamp monster back to it's original state* Matt did something he hasn't done since taking his first nutrition class at UCLA back in 96:' he bought a candy bar.

Actually he bought two candy bars. Both from the vending machine on the fourth floor of the Center for Health Sciences.** He ate them both right there in the cold, sterile hallway. Fuck it, he thought, if the end of the world is coming, I'm going to eat myself some motherfucking candy.

On September the seventeenth, the first day of trading on Wall Street after the fucked up act by some fucked up people, the market went down, save cigarettes, Pepsi, booze, and motherfuckin' candy companies.

And yes, I ripped off the "motherfucking candy" line from Me Talk Pretty One Day. It is not necessary to send me an e-mail about these things. I give credit where credit is due (Clerks). But sometimes you just gotta say 'what the fuck' (Risky Business). And all you need is love (Who knows).

Love is all you need (Anonymous.. maybe me?).

I recently told a close friend that when I die, I want to write something clever on my gravestone so when people walk by and read it, they'll smile gently, maybe even quietly chuckling and shaking their head. Odds are, if they're in the cemetery they're feeling pretty down, and wouldn't mind a laugh or two, if only so they realize there is so much to live for that even this dead guy is saying "hey, lighten up."

And as I look at my future, wondering if humor can go on, I smile. Sometimes I even quietly chuckle, shaking my head, because I know there is so much more to life than planning what to write on one's tombstone (although "Don't FUCK with hungry lions" is pretty sweet) and sometimes even I, Klaus V, take things way too seriously.

So lighten up. Humor goes on. The Literary Brothel goes on.

-Klaus Varley

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* Not sure what Matt gets paid to do. He told me what he does, but I'm not too good with science, or remembering...or listening to Matt?

** Irony. Because he's eating candy in a center for health. I know, it's been a long time. Thought I'd point it out.

the 11th by teddy nutmeg

In this, the seventh year anniversary of 9/11, The Literary Brothel puts up some pieces we wrote just after the events. Raw. Honest. They take you back. The first is from Teddy Nutmeg. -KV

The 11th
Teddy Nutmeg

In the hotel room drinking Beam and Coke (alright, Diet Coke, I gotta keep my girlish figure), I sit by myself, pondering the feel of this new age, fresh out of an empty airport and shell-shock in the puffy eyes of a passersby. I'm too young to remember any other national tragedies, so all this is shockingly, awakeningly new. And it doesn't seem real.

I remember the morning of September 11th. I turned on the radio as I drove to work and heard nothing but surprise-tinged, saddened voices. It didn't seem real. In the office, teary eyes and huddles around 5-inch mini-TV's dominated, all computers were tuned to webcasts and photos of the disaster. Finally the word came at 10AM that there was no work to be done today, that all should go home to pray and grieve. I went home, got stoned, and went to the beach. It was a beautiful day, and my tan needed work. And I wasn't alone on the beach.

A girl I work with in the office, when I'm in the office, lost a father that day, his flight ended up in the Pentagon; her world was crumbling while I mellowed out and my tan deepened. Somehow I can't make myself feel anything, about the crashes, about her father, about 6,000 absences. It doesn't seem real. Does that mean something?

I grope for something to compare this feeling to and my straw yields dreams. Often dreams about WWII America invade my nights. My Grandfathers stern and dutiful on battleships in the Pacific, my Grandmothers volunteering at home while waiting, always waiting for The Word. War rallies, war bonds, youth groups and everywhere an ultimate solidarity that must've been both comforting and creepy. A sense of purpose and unity and righteousness that was awesome in scope and numbing in psychological confines. Some of us are feeling something like that now, lessened by the lack of an identifiable, central enemy, but something nonetheless.

Perhaps its the haunting and somehow distant images of jets flying into buildings or the sudden and unplanned implosions which have been etched into our collective consciousness by the nightly news, the daily news, the motherfucking minutely news. Perhaps it's the cloud of untouchability upon which we've been riding this past quarter-century. Perhaps it's the sheer monstrosity of an act which could've taken the better of 20,000 lives. I don't fucking know. It doesn't seem real.

Or, it didn't seem real, and then I drove around downtown Dallas the other day, looked up at 70 story buildings and realized they're only 2/3 of what the WTC was. I was on top of the WTC in the fall of '98, I paid the 8 bucks, had my ears pop on the elevator ride up, and walked out, mouth agape, to the city lights of Manhatten, NYC, Newark and beyond. That building, I was on top of, it overlooked the most impressive cityscape in the world, and ITS FUCKING GONE.

It's fucking real. Karen's dad is fucking dead. Please, if you're like me, a self-centered West Coast resident who can't seem to attach any meaning to what happened, go find the tallest building you can. Take the elevator up to as far up as you can. Walk around. Look at the people, the offices. Stop at some other floors on the way down. Look at the people. Look at their cubicles, their pictures, their decorations. Fucking see them as people, not robots. Now imagine a building at least twice that size, crumbling like a paper cup, a raging inferno trapping all on the top 30 floors of the building. Imagine those people trapped, choking, feeling the heat through the floor, nowhere to go but for a 90 story vertical stroll out the window. It's real.

I recently moved across town, and unpacking the other day I found a poster I had up in my old apartment: It read "Smash the State," in large uneven type, proclaimed loudly to be made by the "Alliance for Un-American Activities." I first put this up in my dorm room in the mid 90's, when Rage Against the Machine was big, punk was becoming mainstream, and the grunge/slacker attitude was giving way to a more aggressively anti-everything stance. Four years ago I identified with it. I didn't put it up in my room now. I still may not agree with the average American, but damn, I feel a WE. I feel like an American.

About two weeks ago, I noticed among the multitude of crappy, racist, zealously pro-American emails, one about a national candlelight vigil at 7PM. It seemed like a cool idea, but then I forgot about it.

So later that day I was driving to a hoochie's house, to go get some ass, and I saw people on the street, on the corners, waving flags and holding candles and signs that said "USA #1", and I looked down and it was 7PM. Something in me wanted to laugh scornfully at these people, (especially since I was going to get ass, and they were just standing on some street corner) but then I opened my eyes and I saw their faces. I saw the tears, I saw the resolve, I saw the care. These people cared! The cars were honking, people were cheering, people were getting out and hugging strangers and crying. I honked! I shouted! I cheered! I'm an American!!! Granted, I still went and got some ass after that-great, American ass-and I forgot all about the tragedy for an hour or two. (YES, AN HOUR OR TWO. WHAT?)

But I don't think I'll forget that feeling, those faces, the shouts and honks. I don't think I'll forget Karen's dad. I don't think I'll forget the sound of the radio on the way to work and its absence of music that morning. I don't think I'll forget that IT IS REAL, that my Grandfathers fought in WWII to give us what I've taken for granted. I don't think I'll forget what I hated back in college, in my grunge/punk days.

Well, maybe I'll forget it for an hour or two, here and there. Yes, an hour or two. What?

-Teddy Nutmeg