Wonderoom

I grew up in a tourist town, so I had a early fascination with display.  Gatlinburg exists to distract.  To pull you this way and that, to relieve you of your money.  The older attractions drew on Appalachian cliches: bears in cages, rocking chairs of rough wood, grannie in her bonnet.  As time went on, however, there came the Space Needle, the House of Wax, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not.  As a local, I could get into the Ripley’s museum for free.  Bring a textbook, show it to the bored teenager in the front, and wonder around the exhibits to my heart’s content.  Past the faucet hanging from the ceiling by a wire which poured forth a seemingly endless supply of water.  Past the stuffed goat with two heads and the minature log cabin made of 50,000 pennies.  The beginning of this mystery tour was bright and cheery, but it was the dark interior that drew me onwards.  On to the medieval torture instruments, and the insanely cruel.  And so an eight or nine year old kid stands in front of a narrow, female shaped coffin with spikes on the inside and tries to understand the nature of an iron maiden.  Trying to imagine how you could survive…how you could avoid the spikes.  And Vlad the impaler.  Where exactly did he impale?  What part of the body?

At the end of the dark and scary hallway of wax figure death was one of those revolving gates with interlacing bars.  I was more afraid of the gate than of the displays that preceeded them.  What if my foot got caught and then Vincent Price turned on a machine and bluntly mangled me to pieces?  It happens.

I always went through the gate quickly, emerging unharmed from my encounter with mortality and the darkest impulses of mankind into the omnipresent gift shop filled with small plastic bears, everlasting dipping birds and pet rocks.

What did Vlad do to distract himself?  I can’t imagine it was always impaling and screaming…he must have had something in lieu of Monday Night Football.  Hunting, eating, storytelling.  Would he have enjoyed Monday Night Football?  Would it have been too tame, too incomprehensible?  Could the right enthusiast have talked him into touchdowns instead of carnage?

The original Gatlinburg Ripley’s museum burned down in 1992.  Vlad, the maiden, the two headed goat…all destroyed.  Fire was probably hot enough to melt even the 50,000 pennies.  I was sad when I read that.  It was my original wonderoom.  My original cabinet of curiosities, filled with objects, real or not, that existed right on the edge of belief and reason.

Jim and I were friends. One night, while he was washing dishes and I was cooking on the line at this restaurant, we started talking about art and life. About how we would start a secret club that anyone could join. We put on a little percussion show, made the kitchen into a stage for the late night staff. Talked about how Paradise, Jerusalem, Hell were just outside the back door. Whatever you want. We talked for hours. One night I rode with him on a pile of canvas in the back of this truck, laughing at the world way over the speed limit. I took pictures of him, of his world. We weren’t going out. We just connected. He had too many girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, angry women, crazy women. I knew I couldn’t play that game and win.

He lived in a schoolbus on a farm. I went to go see him this one time, and he had a book about vampires. He was into vampires at that particular moment, thought the idea of draining a human life was o.k. as long as the person didn’t have anything to give to the world. No talent, no beauty, whatever. This was a disturbing visit. For years I had more or less searched for the wellsprings of compassion in myself, the world, and here I was hanging out with, drawn to, the opposite. Might makes right, and only the worthy deserve to live. I shouldn’t be surprised…it’s the unstated philosophy of our nation.

One night, though, we sat on the stoop of some old house with a bottle of wine, and somewhere near the bottom of the bottle he kissed me. I was a fool with enough wine. Later that night I woke up and he had lit several candles around my bed. He had a candle in one hand, looking at my face. Really looking. He had another hand around my neck. I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me, even though for some reason there was also a knife in the bed. I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me, but I knew he had been thinking about it. About what it would be like to kill someone. We slept together for a few days, but I knew nothing would come of it. I was angry at him for spoiling a perfectly adequate friendship. I yelled at him and threw him out of my car one night, because earlier in the day he called me a chump. I enjoyed yelling at him almost as much as I enjoyed being friends

The last time I saw him he had just finished playing a gig. He was tripping on acid. I was wearing my favorite suede jacket. He was walking through the crowd, and so was I. He looked very surprised to see me, and kind of scared, like I was going to try and strangle him. Without saying a word I guided him through a secret handshake, then I asked him how he was doing. Still looking very much afraid, he said “fine.” I patted him on the back and said “good” as I walked on.

Strangling is not my game.