part 17
Subject: RE: What ARE you thinking?
To: BoPeep
From: MackAttack
Date: 01/30 6:15 a.m.
Dear little, silly Aimee,
Sorry it took a while to get back to you. As I write, Akiko is swaying gently from a hook in the “splayed partridge in the birch wood” position. It was developed in the 7th century by Master Kuji for the pleasure of Emperor Saninko. I have to give her knees a gentle nudge now and then to continue to proper rate of motion. I must submit completely to the classical forms first before daring to add any variations of my own.
The great divide between you and me, Aimee, are in the terms “reality” and “real life.” Are you asking that I get down, homegirl? I know what that means. It knows how to question the authority of any reality except its own.
Your true authority stands on a street corner with his arms folded and his baseball cap on backward. He rehearses thrusting his jaw at the world, baring his teeth, and bringing up the noises of our arboreal ancestors. And you are terrified of him. He is more bogeyman to women than he is to any man.
But you know you can yell at me. You can question me and the reality I create. Why is that? Is it because my art doesn’t talk about busting your bitch’s back? That it does seek to communicate with you? I know you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. But I can’t dumb it down enough for you to get it, either. When I make it real simple for you, I am no longer with you, Aimee, but rather with your spirit, that exploding ape from the forests and jungles of everyone’s past.
The only thing that beats him is a woman who remembers history. But he doesn’t have that problem with you.
I am different for you. I really can’t figure out why you were attracted to me. I’m the only guy who ever asked any questions about you, and all the others have scarcely needed to know your name. You hated it when I asked questions because you never had satisfactory answers. Who was your father? When did your family arrive in America and where did they come from? You seem to be a refugee direct from British Isles when they were being sacked and enslaved by the Roman Empire. You never knew the light in the minds and thrill in the flesh of your ancestors who first stood up and sang, “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.”
Maybe I did get under your skin with my questions. Given the years apart and the distance still between us, you miss the itch.
Akiko’s art is a mere session in slavery down, the strangely exquisite cream of the crop. You have no idea of the exploding ape’s “real world” from which it rose. It’s time for me to release her from bondage now.
She’s calling to me.
Love, Mack
Aimee Is A Little Crazy 