Increasingly, the landscape of the 20th century is being created by and for the car, a development which people all over the world are now beginning to rebel against.
• J.G. Ballard
SECTION ONE: SITES OF REVERIE
The mangled transport vehicle wrecks were installed at strategic points around the city to help re-invest the general populace with a certain fervor.
Periodic shopping squalls & localized consumption frenzies though, seemed to be the sole instincts revitalized by our Collision Dolmen Proposal.
This had not been the original intent of its architects. & now commercial sponsorship was threatening to undermine all our goals. Major hyper-market ad reps assured us that spotlights & rotating platforms would be installed to enhance the visual effect of each wreck.
Tourists had already discovered them as Photo Opportunities. This usually entailed subjects be posed in mock crash scenarios next to the gruesome wrecks. This made them laugh & few things made people laugh anymore. Psychopathologists referred to the wrecks as “vital sublimation stations.” Though latent societal superstitions kept most from crawling inside the wrecks.
Suicide Rates — especially vehicular — had shot up alarmingly in recent years. & rates seemed to be indifferent to both sociological factors & peeks of consumptive splurging. 3-television households seemed especially vulnerable.
The original goal of our Proposal had been to somehow re-balance the scales of fervor back toward the once-reigning Fear-Of-Death notion. & tipped away from the rather disturbing decade-long rash we called, affectionately enough, “The Fear-Of-Life-Dynamic.”
The particular collision to which I was daily drawn, in a less than professional capacity, I must say, had become much more than a mere monument to our own tenuous mortality. This particular torsion sculpture had, for me, become a talisman of both pain & grace.
Several of the vehicle’s body panels — the right rear for instance — had somehow managed to remain free of the usual extrusion striations. This perversely unscathed area had somehow remained oblivious to the scream of tangled steel, that final cluster of frantic thoughts. It reminded me of a pearl-handled dagger I once saw protruding from the belly of a long dead dog.
The haughty gleam on these panels revealed her face — & not mine. This is how we met & that was enough. I didn’t need to touch the panels to touch her — at least not at first.
I’d only begun to truly touch & polish these rear panels when it was already too late. A week after our first encounter I discovered a cinderblock on the curb. It had, during one noxious crepuscule, finished off the last winking glimmers of her foremost perfection.
All the remaining glass too, had been shattered with bricks from a pile where once had stood a plant with humming machines that made things people didn’t need anymore. All the wheels were gone too. I though, in a tic of prescience, had managed to salvage one of her exquisite spoke wire hubs only 2 days earlier. I had it mounted to spin freely on an iron bar. It mesmerized me like a pinwheel does a child. & it afforded me temporary access to a more contemplative universe.
I sometimes imagined what I’d do to the young trash thugs with their glands drenched in rampaging hormones. The kind who get all bitter & jittery around beauty which mocks the counterfeit echoes in their empty lives.
During the day the panels gathered sun — the same sun that hung over Venice, Venice, Italy, HER Venice. Sometimes I read the weather reports for Venice. Tried to imagine what she might wear today. The latest pink satin bellbottoms? The kind only Prince was brave enough to wear. Or whether she dreamt of being someone she wasn’t, someone she’d never thought of before.
I spent all my accumulated vacation days here, with one hand on her trunk. During the summer the remaining panels would stay warm well past midnight.
It must be stated, at this point, that before this particular investigation, I had had no known predisposition toward aberrant sexual enticement nor was I much of a connoisseur of vintage road transport. & I’d always scoffed at Roadway Romantics who sought to make movies & martyrs of the “victims.”
Her body had indeed been provocative. Perhaps too generous with gifts of beauty, too much for the kind of man who had bought her — & then apparently killed her. Oh, what the prick does to the heart! He of the kind who buys fidelity like one purchases a book that’ll never be read.
Her cunt could’ve been prized like a kid’s mitten or a small coin purse. I remember the cut of her bells. I remember her body laid out perfect on the medical examiner’s stainless steel table. I remember wanting to give her a pillow & then seeing the blood-soaked towel around her head. I remember the plastic Virgin Mary dash ornament embedded — nay, nearly totally enveloped by the fatty facial tissue — the way pudding sucks up a dropped spoon. I remember him probing the elegantly trimmed tuft of wishbone hair like I remember the nosegay from my senior ball. I remember the examiner saying “evidence of seminal fluid.”
Behind us her tattered but stylish clothing hung in the air to dry. Periodically, I heard fragments fall from the cling of the fabric to the brown paper on the floor, especially positioned there to catch any minute granules of evidence.
My periodic forays into coarseness like this, are merely a technique designed to mitigate my nausea & sorrow. Emotional entanglements are very much frowned upon in this business. Especially with a numinous body such as hers. Just as my father had taught me on the farm not to name animals being fattened for slaughter. Dogs, yes. Pigs, no. It had been some time since I’d been allowed to be tender. A thick skin is certainly prized around here. It’s essential. I’d become somewhat of a crash-scene-cowboy, a legend, I dare say. I was not averse to putting my hand inside a gaping wound. I’d become known for my spurs & for the way my sharp tongue could whittle down any ornery street drood in seconds flat.
The desperation of everything, including pre-paid status, manifests itself in funny ways. Take the vehicle’s almost ludicrously non-functional trunk. Or the interior details done in antelope bone. But then again all this, this luxury, reminded me of her. & the resistance to function had been made noble by her. She too, had preferred aesthetics to function.
At first I didn’t think I’d ever open her trunk again after that night of the initial investigation. I remember the hot crack of camera flashes lighting up the sky like quivers of heat lightning. & with my hand & face deep inside her trunk I realized that this was no ordinary investigation. They or he or she had been someone. the 2 hi-powered rifles were quickly impounded.
I remember the right taillight, its warmth penetrating my trouser leg.
Designating it as a “Collision Dolmen” — like some forlorn Stonehenge — then removing it from its “natural” setting & then installing it in its locale was all meant to enhance its “dramatis sculpturis.” & over the weeks I must’ve looked quite the sight, standing by her trunk, opening & closing, opening & closing it, mesmerized by its craftsmanship & how it resembled the way her elbows must’ve worked.
Few people ventured here. The site had been chosen without proper psycho-geographic analysis. it had not been located near a major rush hour artery. It was positioned near an off-ramp that led nowhere with scavenger birds hovering over the shallow grey surfaces & cement depressions. This suited me just fine. While squat monks & skateboarders congregated at the sites of police cruiser crashes & sports fans flocked to the charred automotive carcasses of fanatically re-tooled racing machines I remained by her side, content to not have to share her with anyone. Cinephiles made their pilgrimages to the newly restored (in some cases crassly re-created) wreckages of James Dean’s ’51 Porsche & Jayne Mansfield’s 66 Lincoln.
There were those who were presently negotiating with the estate of Harry Chapin to use his blue Rabbit along the Long Island Expressway. Bessie Smith’s scandalous auto death had recently been reconstructed, despite the protests of white supremacists. It seemed as if every demographic group had developed their own very distinctive tastes/needs in collision megaliths just as they had for beer or jam.
One day I discovered a tour group around my site. It made me anxious. A herd of driver education trainees led by their conceited guide, a bespectacled M.A. in Crash Science. He relished pointing out small details — tufts of hair, fabric impressions, blood spray patterns. Yet, her blood type didn’t seem to matter to HIS type. & the fact that the bucket seats had once been white & now were blood brown daily brought these odd smirks to his face.
He was proud of this crash like a jazz aficionado is proud of his rare Ellington. He was prone to issuing rather facile proclamations, things that were meant only to attach status to his person. He went through great pains to come up with the most hackneyed & pathetic allusions, often comparing the wreck to scenes in Homer’s The Odyssey or to the haunting nature of bleached human skulls in the killing fields.
He also liked to act as if he had mastered all her conundrums. He spoke with particular confidence about speed at impact, sensory impairment & skid mark patterns. It was as if he were bragging about his own daughter at a reunion.
I resented his well-groomed effeteness. I sneered like a jealous suitor at his nameplate pinned to his lapel. I withdrew into a cozy haven of wrath. My allusions to packs of tourists & gang rape could hardly be suppressed. I vowed to change my visitation hours to dodge his. As they say; twice burned, thrice shy. & as others say; never burned, never cry.
In fact, he carried on as if she were HIS! Patted her bumper in the silliest, most sexist manner. & yet, had he ever tried her glovebox? If he had truly cared he’d have found a way in. But he was just an instructor, after all! & those who can’t do, teach. & those who can’t teach become cops, enforcing unenforceable laws they themselves don’t have the capacity to comprehend.
Had he ever taken the time to pay homage to things we can never know? Gather small souvenirs, fragments, windshield crystals the size of teeth to compose a kind of post mortem biography? Did he help remove evidentiary fragments from her facial epidermis? No, no & no.
Had he ever been aware of acute eroto-synesthesia from the mere handling of her personal effects? No. His arousal mechanics were totally circumscribed by the exchange of currency for services rendered. 18.7% of all Americans have known mental disorders.
SECTION TWO: SELECTED DATA & THE QUANTIFIABLE TRANSMOGRIFICATION OF COLLISION DAMAGE
A. The Ferrari xpi-6a, priced at $112,000 had been totaled. Totaled should NOT rule out the potential for salvage however. Salvage is the art of the scavenger. Souvenir is the French word for memento. [she breathed heavily & I knew immediately that her soul was twice the size of the Ferrari’s drive train.]
1. front bumper wrapped like a pinch around the guard rail post.
2. front fenders crushed, accordion-style. [Or the folds of her belly with forehead to knees.]
3. paint flake spectograph analysis of the 15-coat alkyd-resin process revealed no foreign friction marks along side panels, voiding sideswipe scenario. [I watched her nails — same red as Ferrari’s — peel off my shirt. The collar’s frayed, she said, without hint of haughtiness.]
4. headlight assembly: impellent fragments of sealed-beam Pyrex revealed speed at impact of 87mph. Crystals found jettisoned 31 yards from scene of initial impact. [My hands got caught in her breathing knots of flaming hair.]
5. headlight filament examination determined that headlights were on at moment of impact. [“April In Paris” by Sarah Vaughn with Clifford Brown]
6. tire analysis revealed no foul play punctures nor evidence of prior deficient repair or blow out, i.e. frayed bore hole. [The sheet music flew around the room. We were breathing out of ideas.]
7. brakes: metal fatigue not evident after extensive metallurgical structural deficiency tests. [Bloated whispers full of moisture.]
B. Scene of Collision
1. vehicle’s position at 12o off perpendicular. The weather & coefficient of friction failed to supply cause of accident.
2. roadway’s extremely curved course, however, revealed possible transgressive factor. Perhaps locale was chosen to mask homicide-suicide. Skid marks were lengthy but revealed no true arc implying there had been no effort made to steer out of the vehicle’s course.
3. position of driver: facing passenger. Backbone shattered by impact with roof beam.
4. position of passenger: facing driver, right side of head crushed & Virgin Mary dash ornament found embedded in right cheek.1/3 of body ejected from compartment due to abrupt deceleration. Urine traces found soaked into lush padding of passenger seat. [I have1 of her incisors that I found embedded in the leather dash in a tea cup in my home.] superficial ear & facial tissue found on projecting details & wiper mounts. [she stared at me like a broken window.]
5. clothing: torn blouse matched fibers found under driver’s fingernails. Possible evidence of struggle. Strapless Lejaby azure lace bra discovered down at her waist. Lipstick: nouvelle rouge piano #26 impressions found on sleeve of driver’s shirt. Ashtray contained 7 lengthy filtered Rothman cigarette butts with lipstick traces. Only 4 had lipstick traces that matched her lipstick. 3 butts had lipstick traces of another shade, another source, another woman. Pink bellbottoms revealed zipper from navel to tail of backbone. Her panties were of fine manufacture & functionally crotchless. [& breathing full of breath.]
C. Glovebox Revelations
1. contents removed carefully in order in which they occurred from the top. AAA info, leather driving gloves (seldom worn), driver’s license of one John M. Lehrman, maps of Las Vegas, Florida, Guatemala. Car insurance documents reveal discrepancies in driver’s name; John N. Lernman.
2. Document #2: reveals one John N. Lehman as co-author of an Army Field Strategy Pamphlet entitled KING OF THE HILLS, which explains, in basic Dick & Jane language, the strategy & rules of playing King of the Hill. Incorporates fluid battlefield tactics & 22 color graphics. (Cost to taxpayer; $103,000).
3. Document #3: MEDICAL TREATISE OF CHASTICAL REMEDIES TO PRESERVE MORALITY IN DEBTOR NATIONS, authored by one James M. Loemann. (Cost to taxpayer; $96,000). Purpose; to set equatorial nations on the path to moral responsibility, industriousness & solvency. Pushed through by the powerful banking lobby to force debtor nations to make good on their loans. Among the manual’s recommendations on how to alleviate idleness & overpopulation;
a. reasons must be detailed & corroborated by any available means: i.e. excessive masturbation & indiscriminate fornication causes weakened morality, diminished patriotism, homosexuality, memory loss, epilepsy, imbecility & acne.
b. female chastity belt patent #438,439; girdle consists of padded cushions designed to fit around the vulva with special grating of animal bone which allows urine to pass. Apparatus hooked together by series of pulley belts to pair of tight trousers, secured my padlock. Bi-lingual instructions for possible indigenous manufacture.
c. clitorechtomies: for extreme cases of wantonness. Curbs desire. Increases work place productivity.
d. unisex bio-beta chastity device. Electrodes applied to genitalia. Short circuits desire. No discernible nausea or physical discomfort. Product of BioBapTek, BBT, a Baptist-owned behavior-modification firm.
e. chastity belt patent #563,882 with adjustable contoured tube for male member. Perforated tip allows urination. Inside, protruding pricking points issue painful warnings when erection occurs. Perfect for wet dream eradication.
f. castration; often a necessary tactic to regain household solvency. Easy-to-follow tri-lingual diagrams for out-patient, in-home application.
D. Follow-Up Data:
1. psycho-profile of driver: revealed official documentation of scopophilia (obsession with sight of genitalia) treatment. Skeptical employer, the U.S. State Dept., ponders if he may not be security risk. Regional reassignment request petitioned for on very day of his death.
2. cogent backdrop material: revealed potentially embarrassing conflict of interest questions between government contractors & State Dept. officials.
3. recent details of driver’s liaisons with one Sophia Piquanti, the deceased passenger, had been leaked to the press.
4. Ms. Piquanti had been purported lover of various mobsters & dictator’s sons. Also had been personal secretary of Charlton Heston several months in 1985. Background Documents stated; “what she knew Marilyn Monroe knew too.”
5. driver’s marriage of 21 years dissolving in face of revelations.
6. driver had recently completed TV spot for American Express. His classic handsomeness earned him nickname, “James Bond of Encino.”
7. driver had recently stated to a reporter; “I’m America’s #1 patriot, but right now I’ve been made to feel more like roadkill, like carrion being picked clean.”
8. driver had recently accepted clemency assurances from the house Committee On Unethical Foreign Intervention for his valued testimony on William Casey’s purported chemically-induced “brain tumor”, money laundering, the chastity fiasco, Evangelical mercenaries trained by the Marines, rock stars used (sometimes unwittingly) to promote Third World castration policies, Coca Cola spiked with sterilization chemicals.
9. interesting studies of “the delayed effects of the military service on subsequent mortality; a randomized experiment”: the chief finding was of excess post-discharge mortality from motor vehicle injuries [E810-E827, International Classification of Diseases] & suicide [E950-E959, ICD, 8th Revision] among uniformed soldier group (Korean Vets, Vietnam Vets, Desert Storm Troops, National Guardsmen & Vets from the Panama & Grenada campaigns) as compared with the civilian control group.
E. Purse Contents of Ms. Piquanti:
1. 2 Tall Girl insoles for falling arches
2. 3 reservoir-tipped Lambinda brand lambskin prophylactics
3. eyeliner; “harmonie nacree d’ombre” by Lancombe
4. 2 losing California Lotto tickets
5. various make-up devices & emory boards
6. tear gas canister by On-Gard
7. bottle of Heroin(e) Parfum
8. copy of The Decameron by Boccachio, in Italian
9. shopping list: included products incongruous with her social position, such as frozen pizza & lo-cal ice milk.
10. identification: Sophia Piquanti, born: Venice, Italy; home: Cherry Hill, NJ; height: 5’8”; weight: 113 lbs.; occupation: model; birthdate: 6.19.59; eyes: blue-green. Driver’s license issued from state of California.
11. veterinarian appointment: for cat identified as “Pipi”; needed panleukopenia & rhinotracheitis shots. Note requested Ms. Piquanti bring along stool sample.
12. Document: Tall Girl Quadruple Width Shoes, A Diary Entry (in English): I was 16. Breathing out of yearning. Under an overpass. Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Late. Where cars speed by like birds with terrified calls. It’s where guys dump cars in the Gowanis Canal to collect insurance. I couldn’t date Barry anymore. Too many strange calls. I saw the HEADLIGHTS ON HI BEAM. & minutes later it was dark like the inside of a cheap coat. He released me & said, “I love you. I wanted to kiss you but I knew you had a scar.” Someone SOUNDED A CAR HORN OUTSIDE 3 TIMES. I didn’t know why.
“I knew something had turned you against men.”
“Oh, Barry.” I murmured.
“Will you marry me?” He asked tightening his factory-trained mechanic’s arms around my quivering waist.
“Yes, Barry, yes!” I cried inside my pants. Accepting to spite my own best interests.
THE DOMELIGHT WENT ON & OFF & ON. & again I didn’t know why. I thought perhaps it was something bigger than the both of us. & the moon revolved around him.
“Boy, I’m gonna think I dreamed all this.” He said. “I’m gonna marry a gorgeous figure & she’s ALL mine!” As the BRAKELIGHTS FLICKERED SPORADICALLY the word suddenly seemed like a slap in the face. What gorgeous figure!? Was he thinking of someone else? I didn’t say word. I had already tried creams, exercises, suction devices, therapy, everything I could think of to improve my bust. But nothing worked. Flat I was & flat I’d stay. Someone outside OPENED THE CAR HOOD, CLOSED IT WITH A SLAM. It seemed to amplify my pulse. I got so nervous about my figure that when Barry put his arms around me I’d jerk away. With RADIO ON MAXIMUM VOLUME — SOMEONE CHANGED THE STATION. I wouldn’t even let him kiss me, afraid he’d find out about my figure.
“Hey, I can wait till we’re married, if you prefer, but you don’t have to jerk away like a scared rabbit!” Barry said as SOMEONE FOLDED A FRONT SEAT FORWARD & BACK WITH A GREAT SENSE OF URGENCY 4 TIMES.
“If you don’t like the way I jump, then don’t hold me.” I snapped.
Barry stormed out. I ran upstairs. Threw myself across my bed & sobbed my heart out. & vowed to stay locked in my room forever. Mom heard me, came in & said; Beverly I know you were wearing padded bras.” SOMEONE OUTSIDE RUNS FOREFINGER ALONG FENDERS, THEN IDLY FLICKS SIDE TRIM. “You should’ve come to me sooner.” She said.
SECTION THREE: FORENSICS — THE CLASH OF DOUBT & DREAM
Did the crash prof — he’s just a driving instructor instructor, after all! — ever wonder why automobiles were black until the 1940s? Or how a car’s tires can build up a tremendous static charge of thousands of volts? No!
Did he ever wonder how Pasolini had died in 75? Did he know a cheap male whore had run over his body over & over & had then driven away with the radio on. Only to receive a light sentence because of Pasolini’s unsavory lifestyle & politics. No!
Didn’t he pretend to know the lay of this concrete expanse? Where the young sans abri needed heat & this led them to set fire to cars. Where they ate small rodents. & that to them the rodents tasted not unlike the fried chickens from picnics they remembered.
He, with his toupee, his credit cards, his air conditioning, his casual indifference. How could HE know this obtuse quadrangle had become a crucible of white noise, a field of battle, a scarred turf with rusted skeletons whose former function now escaped us? A senseless meridian of unfinished concrete tombs & noseless statuary lost to history, caught in a swirl of styrofoam & dust. Where squat monks, art gypsies & opiate athletes had once roamed & reigned freely. Where they now cracked open the coiled copper entrails of discarded air conditioners & frigos & sucked out the freon to get altered, get re-fitted into a more fantastic mindscape.
Sure, one could see the dead whelps, mongrels with bloated guts, carcasses picked clean by blowflies & mutts with mangy pelts as ratty as any 20 year old throw rug. If one had been looking! But how would one measure the density of dead dogs? Aerial photography? How could he or anyone know that progress had somehow gone inside out long ago? Like a drunk praying in a pit toilet, throwing up his intestines, which look just like a grimy sock full of holes wrapped around the knuckles.
Did he know that thousands of us were dreaming of chiens — when dreams came to us at all — dreams of terrifying pariah dogs with insolent mugs, like the hounds of hell guarding our chicken coops, with their foaming mouths, piercing eyes, roaming across the cement fields & tarps of shade in baneful packs. No, he could not know how these dreams had changed our dispositions, our posture, our mistrust of everything concrete or metaphysical. Our dreams were now just perverse eyeliner for the soul, outlining the fear, the fear that street dogs had wrought.
Coming face to face with canine djinns, these new hyper-clairvoyant chiens, we grip weighted umbrellas we never seem to leave home without anymore. Our hands sweat & ache.
This was the year of the Dog in the Chinese Calendar. When they began to eat this fear of ours, to sow it ever deeper & deeper, reap it with all the gusto they had once reserved for gnawing away at neckbones. They had, in fact, begun their ascension in this, their year, already reigning over whole peripheral swaths of the city.
The inner cities still served as bastions of hyper-wealth where the portfolioed souls bolstered their existences with the re-tooled nostalgia of pasts they’d never had. From these clime-controlled enclaves periodic regional safety quotients were issued. These figures regulated the price of real estate & affected the morose migrations of dreamless souls.
& all the hearses in the enclaves & outbacks were indeed still as black as they’d always been. “Black is black,” said the newspapers, quoting the lyrics of pop songs with all their characteristic tautological smugness. & some youngster, a fortunate discard, along the funeral procession, drained of all dream & hope, suggested that ambulances should just be painted black too. It would make everything a lot simpler & quicker. He said.
POSTSCRIPT:
My mom, months after, took me to the scene of the other crash. She showed me the skid marks. She thought it amazing that the marks were still there. She picked up automotive debris that had so long ago been tossed over the guard rail. She lugged it around with her. She wanted to take a headlight housing with her. I told her to put it down. I had to snatch it from her grip & toss it down the steep incline myself.
I hadn’t seen her like this, so animated, so excited, in a very long time, not since my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary or my brother’s first wedding.
Then we drove to my dad’s car which sat crushed like a beer can, out back of the Downsville Sunoco. & there we stood, remembering family vacations, remembering the way sweat dripped from the end of his nose & sizzled on the hot engine block as he fiddled with the carburetor. She cried. We touched the areas of his car that had perhaps touched him. “It’s a miracle that he’s recovering. He says it’s my cooking.”
On the way home she asked if I was OK.
“Yea.” But I wasn’t. A handful of windshield crystal I’d scooped from the floorboard of what was left of his car into my backpocket dug into my skin. I had read how the despondent (but not too despondent to not want to save the feelings of loved ones) wrapped suicides in the gift wrap of automotive accident.
“Are you sure?”
“Yea.”
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bart plantenga
[originally appeared in the collection WIGGLING WISHBONE, Autonomedia, 1995]
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