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littlelotteCopy/pasted directly from my first LJ. When people ask me why I love the novel so much this is inevitably one of my reasons:
Kyrie--Footnote 98
This footnote was severely edited for use in POE's Hey Pretty (Drive-By 2001 Mix). Dan once told me that that song reminded him of what it felt like to be in love with me. Does the footnote in its entirety still remind you of that? :-) (even better to ask now, in the more recent entry and knowing he read the book ages ago, does it still feel that way three years later?) I can think of one line near the end that easily could...it reminded me so much of myself that I underlined it in my copy of the novel.
From Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves
Footnote 98; page 87
98No idea. Actually, Lude had a German friend named Kyrie, a tall blonde haired beauty who spoke Chinese, Japanese and French, drank beer by the quart, trained for triathlons when she wasn't playing competitive squash, made six figures a year as a corporate consultant and loved to fuck. Lude took heed when I told him I needed a German translation and introduced us.
As it turned out, I'd met her before, about five or so months ago. It had actually been a little tricky. I was leering about, pretty obliterated in the arms of drink, hours of drink actually, feeling like days of drink, when this monstrous guy loomed up in front of me, grumbling insensibly about bad behavior, something concerning too much talk with too much gesture, gestures towards her, that much of the grumble, the "her" bit, I understood. He meant Kyrie of course who even back then was a blonde haired beauty, writing my name in Japanese and assigning all sorts of portentous things to it, things I was hoping to lead or was it follow? elsewhere, when this prehistoric shithead, reeking of money and ignorance, interposed himself, cursing, spitting and threatening, in fact so loud & mean Kyrie had to interpose herself, which only made matters worse. He reached over her and hit me in the forehead with the heel of his hand. Not hard, more like a shove, but a strong enough shove to push me back a few feet.
"Well look at that," I remember hollering. "He has an opposable thumb."
The monster wasn't amused. It didn't matter. The alcohol in me had already quickened and fled. I stood there tingling all over, a dangerous clarity returning to me, ancient bloodlines colluding under what I imagine now must of been the very aegis of Mars, my fingers itching to weld into themselves, while directly beneath my sternum a hammer struck the timeless bell of war, a call to arms, though all of it still held back by what? words I guess, or rather a voice, though whose I have no clue.
He was twice my size, bigger and stronger. That should of mattered. For some reason it didn't. Odds were he'd rip me to pieces, probably even try to stomp me, and yet part of me still wanted to find out for sure. Luckily, the alcohol returned. I got wobbly and then I got scared.
Lude was yelling at me.
"You got a death wish Truant?"
Which was the thing that scared me.
'Cause maybe I did.
Five months or so later, Lude arranged for me to meet Kyrie at Union. I was late by an hour. I had an excuse. Every time I tried to open my door, my heart started racing for a bypass. I had to sit down and wait for the thumping to calm. This went on for almost fifty minutes, until I finally just gave up, gritted my teeth and charged out into the night.
Of course I recognized Kyrie immediately and she recognized me. She was getting ready to leave when I arrived. I apologized and begged her to stay, making up some lame excuse about police trying to save a guy in my building who'd stuck his head in a microwave. She looked wonderful and her voice was soft and offered me something Thumper had taken away when she hadn't called me back. She even wrote down on a napkin the glyph she'd created for me half a year ago to reflect my name and nature.
Before I could order a drink, a Jack and Coke, she told me her boyfriend was out of town, working on some construction site in Poland, single handedly dislodging supertankers stuck in dry dock in Gdansk or something. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it, and what's more he wasn't going to be back for a few more weeks. Before I even took a sip of my drink, Kyrie was complaining about all the people filtering in around us and then as I finished my drink in one long gulp, she suggested we go for a drive in her new 2 door BMW Coupe.
"Sure," I said, feeling vaguely uneasy about wandering too far from where I lived, which I realized, as I took a second to think that out, was absolutely absurd. What the fuck was happening to me? My apartment's a dump. There's nothing there for me. Not even sleep. Cat naps are fine but for some reason deep REM is getting more and more difficult to achieve. Definitely not a good thing.
Fortunately, I was falling under the spell of Kyrie's blue eyes, like sea ice, almost inhuman, reminding me again--as she herself had already pointed out--that she was alone, Gdansk Man more than half a world spinning world away.
In the parking lot, we slipped into her bucket seats and quickly swallowed two tabs of Ecstasy.
Kyrie took over from there.
At nearly ninety miles per hour, she zipped us up to that windy edge known to some as Mulholland, a sinuous road running the ridge of the Santa Monica mountain, where she then proceeded to pump her vehicle in and out of turns, sometimes dropping down to fifty miles per hour only to immediately gun it back up to ninety again, fast, slow, fastfast, slow, sometimes a wide turn, sometimes a quick one. She preferred the tighter ones, the sharp controlled jerks, swinging left to right, before driving back to the right, only so she could do it all over again, until after enough speed and enough wind and more distance than I'd been prepared to expect, taking me to parts of the city I rarely think of and never visit, she dipped down into some slower offshoot, a lane of lightless coves, not stopping there either, but pushing further on until she finally found the secluded spot she'd been heading for all along, overlooking the city, far from anyone, pedestrian or home, and yet directly beneath a street lamp, which as far as I could tell, was the only street lamp around for miles.
Seems all that twittering light flooding down through the sunroof really turned her on.
I can't remember the inane things I started babbling about then. I know it didn't really matter. She wasn't listening. She just yanked up on the emergency brake, dropped her seat back and told me to lie on top of her, on top of those leather pants of hers, extremely expensive leather pants mind you, her hands immediately guiding mine over those soft slightly oily folds, positioning my fingers on the shiny metal tab, small and round like a tear, then murmuring a murmur so inaudible that even though I could feel her lips tremble against my ear, she seemed far, far away--"pinch it" she'd said, which I did, lightly, until she also said "pull it" which I also did, gently, parting the teeth, one at a time, down, under and beneath, the longest unzipping of my life, all the way from right beneath her perfectly oval navel to the tiny tattoo, a Japanese sign, the meaning of which I never guessed, marking her lower back, and not a stitch of underwear to get in the way, the rest very guessable though don't underestimate the danger which I guess really wasn't so dangerous after all.
We never even kissed or looked into each other's eyes. Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my only tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, hers screeching, mine--I didn't hear mine--only hers, probably counter-pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense anymore, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tear it all apart, yet tempting enough to hold onto for even one second more, to extend it all, if we can, as if by getting that much closer to the heat, that much more enveloped, would prove . . .--which when we did clutch, hold, postpone, did in fact prove too much after all, seconds too much, and impossible to refuse, so blowing all of everything apart, shivers and shakes and deep in her throat a thousand letters crashing in a long unmodulated fall, resonating deep within my cochlea and down the cochlear nerve, a last fit of fury describing in lasting detail the shape of things already come.
Too bad dark languages rarely survive.
As quickly as they're invented, they die, unable to penetrate much, explore anything or even connect. Terribly beautiful but more often than not inadequate. So I guess it's no surprise that what I recall now with the most clarity is actually pretty odd.
When Kyrie dropped me off, she burped.
At the time I thought it was kind of cute but I guess "man eater" did cross my mind. Then as I opened the door, she burst into tears. All she was in that $85,000 car could not exclude the little girl. She said something about Gdansk Man's disinterest in her, in fucking her, in even touching her, running away to Poland, and then she apologized, blamed the drugs still roaming around in her veins and told me to get out.
She was still crying when she drove off.
In the end, the whole thing had been so frantic and fast and strange and even sad in some ways, I completely forgot to ask her about the German phrase. I suppose I could call her (Lude has her number) but for some reason these days dialing seven let alone eleven numbers feels like an infinite stretch. The phone's right in front of me but it's out of reach. When it rings at four AM I don't answer it. All I have to do is extend my hand but I can't run that far. Sleep never really arrives. Not even rest. There's no satisfaction anymore. Morning shrinks space but leaves no message.
Kyrie--Footnote 98
This footnote was severely edited for use in POE's Hey Pretty (Drive-By 2001 Mix). Dan once told me that that song reminded him of what it felt like to be in love with me. Does the footnote in its entirety still remind you of that? :-) (even better to ask now, in the more recent entry and knowing he read the book ages ago, does it still feel that way three years later?) I can think of one line near the end that easily could...it reminded me so much of myself that I underlined it in my copy of the novel.
From Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves
Footnote 98; page 87
98No idea. Actually, Lude had a German friend named Kyrie, a tall blonde haired beauty who spoke Chinese, Japanese and French, drank beer by the quart, trained for triathlons when she wasn't playing competitive squash, made six figures a year as a corporate consultant and loved to fuck. Lude took heed when I told him I needed a German translation and introduced us.
As it turned out, I'd met her before, about five or so months ago. It had actually been a little tricky. I was leering about, pretty obliterated in the arms of drink, hours of drink actually, feeling like days of drink, when this monstrous guy loomed up in front of me, grumbling insensibly about bad behavior, something concerning too much talk with too much gesture, gestures towards her, that much of the grumble, the "her" bit, I understood. He meant Kyrie of course who even back then was a blonde haired beauty, writing my name in Japanese and assigning all sorts of portentous things to it, things I was hoping to lead or was it follow? elsewhere, when this prehistoric shithead, reeking of money and ignorance, interposed himself, cursing, spitting and threatening, in fact so loud & mean Kyrie had to interpose herself, which only made matters worse. He reached over her and hit me in the forehead with the heel of his hand. Not hard, more like a shove, but a strong enough shove to push me back a few feet.
"Well look at that," I remember hollering. "He has an opposable thumb."
The monster wasn't amused. It didn't matter. The alcohol in me had already quickened and fled. I stood there tingling all over, a dangerous clarity returning to me, ancient bloodlines colluding under what I imagine now must of been the very aegis of Mars, my fingers itching to weld into themselves, while directly beneath my sternum a hammer struck the timeless bell of war, a call to arms, though all of it still held back by what? words I guess, or rather a voice, though whose I have no clue.
He was twice my size, bigger and stronger. That should of mattered. For some reason it didn't. Odds were he'd rip me to pieces, probably even try to stomp me, and yet part of me still wanted to find out for sure. Luckily, the alcohol returned. I got wobbly and then I got scared.
Lude was yelling at me.
"You got a death wish Truant?"
Which was the thing that scared me.
'Cause maybe I did.
Five months or so later, Lude arranged for me to meet Kyrie at Union. I was late by an hour. I had an excuse. Every time I tried to open my door, my heart started racing for a bypass. I had to sit down and wait for the thumping to calm. This went on for almost fifty minutes, until I finally just gave up, gritted my teeth and charged out into the night.
Of course I recognized Kyrie immediately and she recognized me. She was getting ready to leave when I arrived. I apologized and begged her to stay, making up some lame excuse about police trying to save a guy in my building who'd stuck his head in a microwave. She looked wonderful and her voice was soft and offered me something Thumper had taken away when she hadn't called me back. She even wrote down on a napkin the glyph she'd created for me half a year ago to reflect my name and nature.
Before I could order a drink, a Jack and Coke, she told me her boyfriend was out of town, working on some construction site in Poland, single handedly dislodging supertankers stuck in dry dock in Gdansk or something. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it, and what's more he wasn't going to be back for a few more weeks. Before I even took a sip of my drink, Kyrie was complaining about all the people filtering in around us and then as I finished my drink in one long gulp, she suggested we go for a drive in her new 2 door BMW Coupe.
"Sure," I said, feeling vaguely uneasy about wandering too far from where I lived, which I realized, as I took a second to think that out, was absolutely absurd. What the fuck was happening to me? My apartment's a dump. There's nothing there for me. Not even sleep. Cat naps are fine but for some reason deep REM is getting more and more difficult to achieve. Definitely not a good thing.
Fortunately, I was falling under the spell of Kyrie's blue eyes, like sea ice, almost inhuman, reminding me again--as she herself had already pointed out--that she was alone, Gdansk Man more than half a world spinning world away.
In the parking lot, we slipped into her bucket seats and quickly swallowed two tabs of Ecstasy.
Kyrie took over from there.
At nearly ninety miles per hour, she zipped us up to that windy edge known to some as Mulholland, a sinuous road running the ridge of the Santa Monica mountain, where she then proceeded to pump her vehicle in and out of turns, sometimes dropping down to fifty miles per hour only to immediately gun it back up to ninety again, fast, slow, fastfast, slow, sometimes a wide turn, sometimes a quick one. She preferred the tighter ones, the sharp controlled jerks, swinging left to right, before driving back to the right, only so she could do it all over again, until after enough speed and enough wind and more distance than I'd been prepared to expect, taking me to parts of the city I rarely think of and never visit, she dipped down into some slower offshoot, a lane of lightless coves, not stopping there either, but pushing further on until she finally found the secluded spot she'd been heading for all along, overlooking the city, far from anyone, pedestrian or home, and yet directly beneath a street lamp, which as far as I could tell, was the only street lamp around for miles.
Seems all that twittering light flooding down through the sunroof really turned her on.
I can't remember the inane things I started babbling about then. I know it didn't really matter. She wasn't listening. She just yanked up on the emergency brake, dropped her seat back and told me to lie on top of her, on top of those leather pants of hers, extremely expensive leather pants mind you, her hands immediately guiding mine over those soft slightly oily folds, positioning my fingers on the shiny metal tab, small and round like a tear, then murmuring a murmur so inaudible that even though I could feel her lips tremble against my ear, she seemed far, far away--"pinch it" she'd said, which I did, lightly, until she also said "pull it" which I also did, gently, parting the teeth, one at a time, down, under and beneath, the longest unzipping of my life, all the way from right beneath her perfectly oval navel to the tiny tattoo, a Japanese sign, the meaning of which I never guessed, marking her lower back, and not a stitch of underwear to get in the way, the rest very guessable though don't underestimate the danger which I guess really wasn't so dangerous after all.
We never even kissed or looked into each other's eyes. Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my only tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, hers screeching, mine--I didn't hear mine--only hers, probably counter-pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense anymore, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tear it all apart, yet tempting enough to hold onto for even one second more, to extend it all, if we can, as if by getting that much closer to the heat, that much more enveloped, would prove . . .--which when we did clutch, hold, postpone, did in fact prove too much after all, seconds too much, and impossible to refuse, so blowing all of everything apart, shivers and shakes and deep in her throat a thousand letters crashing in a long unmodulated fall, resonating deep within my cochlea and down the cochlear nerve, a last fit of fury describing in lasting detail the shape of things already come.
Too bad dark languages rarely survive.
As quickly as they're invented, they die, unable to penetrate much, explore anything or even connect. Terribly beautiful but more often than not inadequate. So I guess it's no surprise that what I recall now with the most clarity is actually pretty odd.
When Kyrie dropped me off, she burped.
At the time I thought it was kind of cute but I guess "man eater" did cross my mind. Then as I opened the door, she burst into tears. All she was in that $85,000 car could not exclude the little girl. She said something about Gdansk Man's disinterest in her, in fucking her, in even touching her, running away to Poland, and then she apologized, blamed the drugs still roaming around in her veins and told me to get out.
She was still crying when she drove off.
In the end, the whole thing had been so frantic and fast and strange and even sad in some ways, I completely forgot to ask her about the German phrase. I suppose I could call her (Lude has her number) but for some reason these days dialing seven let alone eleven numbers feels like an infinite stretch. The phone's right in front of me but it's out of reach. When it rings at four AM I don't answer it. All I have to do is extend my hand but I can't run that far. Sleep never really arrives. Not even rest. There's no satisfaction anymore. Morning shrinks space but leaves no message.
