Memorial for Nick Gardere (1973 to 2016)

Memorial For Nick Gardere (1973 - 2016)

Corpus Hypercubus, Dalí

They are stoning Stephen,

They are casting him forth from every city in the world.

Under the Welcome sign,

Under the Rotary emblem,

On the highway in the suburbs,

His body lies under the hurling stones.

He was full of faith and power.

He did great wonders among the people.

They could not stand against his wisdom.

They could not bear the spirit with which he spoke.

-Thou Shall Not Kill, Kenneth Rexroth

The Tesseract

Nick sat under Minerva’s frozen gaze, in the westmost entrance doorway of Stuyvesant High School. His eyes were fixed upon the relief of the goddess carved above the school's entrance. His eyes locked with hers, almost bathing in wisdom from her full, pouting lips.

-A tesseract? I asked him.

-That’s right, a mother fucking tesseract. Nick said, his eyes still locked on Minerva’s face.

-Ok Nick, what the fuck is tesseract? I said as I leaned back into the concrete wall, sitting in the interior and opposite corner of the door sill.

Nick’s eyes shot to me with a shocked fury:

-What WHat WHAT?! Jack my friend, once you get your head wrapped around a tesseract, you have it my friend. You have your bird in your hand and put one or two in a bush. Alpha and omega, the pearl. That’s what you my friend are missing, a tesseract.

-A tesseract.

-A ball slapping, toe curling, sphincter prolapsing, tesseract.

-Ok Nick, what the fuck is a tesseract?

Nick smiled, and settled his back against the concrete, opening his hands as if he held the idea in his hands and was offering it to me.

-Why Jack, the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. A four dimensional creature poking into a three or two dimensional world.  If you can figure out how to represent a multi dimensional reality, in a lower order, baby you’ve got it.

The Auditorium Steps

The seats had been torn out en masse, stage right on the Mezzanine of the Stuyvesant auditorium. On these exposed boards, five tiers deep, lay students who covered them with a resemblant density of sea lions on a rocky shoal. From my position, leaning against the lower railing I saw him edging toward the Poot Posse, the group with whom I was hanging with, in the extreme corner of the floor.

His eyes casually worked over the women with whom I sat, unobtrusive in his obviousness. His tall thin form was defined by an angular, rope like musculature, unusual in a boy the age of 15. He wrapped in a red felt shirt, blue jeans and his feet grotesquely clad in Clark’s Desert boots, with the soles that looked like giant erasers. From this moment, the first time I saw Nick, till the last, he wore those boots. I could never figure out why he liked them.

Fuck Proust

Nick convulsed in laughter, slapping his knee as he leaned against the hallway wall.

-We did it Jack, fucking brilliant!

I scratched my head in Aspergeresque discomfort:

-But did we really express some aspect of Proust’s intension?

Nick looked at me as if I had a third eye.

-Jack, we just had a classroom of thirty, teacher included, blindfolded, for thirty minutes, eating cookies. You can’t get better than that.

-Madeleines, Nick. Not cookies, madeleines.

-I know what they are Jack. Didn’t I come up with the idea of having you bake them?

-True, and you did supply the blindfolds. In fact it is mildly impressive and mildly disturbing how you had access to thirty of them. I am just unsure if we really shown any light on Swan’s Way.

-Jack, get over it. This is why you have trouble getting laid. I mean I didn’t even read the book, I just played the presentation by ear.. Impenetrable crap. Reading it is like floating in mayonnaise.

-Really? You're a fan of Joyce though.

-Sure but Joyce rocks and rollicks. I mean half of Ulysses is dick jokes. On every single page, in every single line, you can tell Joyce is having a ball. Joyce loves writing, Proust only loves himself. Fuck Proust, he’s a cunt. Given the choice, I know which side I am on.

The Tesseract 2

Nick folded the long dark fingers of his hands:

-Jack lad, sometimes you have to look backwards to look forwards. Think of a hologram, two dimensions that appear to be three. The art is making the three dimensional appear as four.

-I am not getting you here. Are you referring to the four dimension in a spatial/graphical/ Dali sense, or a temporal/ synchronic / Dr. Who  sense?

-Kid, I am speaking in the what cannot be spoken sense. Everything that we truly need to say, exists outside of any possible language.  Brother let me tell you, the thing you are most terrified of saying, that which you least wish to be spoken, that which you are least capable of  speaking, that is what must be said.

Nick’s rust colored fingers lead his eyes back up to Minerva’s:

-How do you sing the song hidden in the silence?

Hanging on the World Tree

Seated in Stuy park, in the north west corner of it’s central section, was Nick. Leaning deep into the park bench, his legs leaned high up a gnarled old oak tree. Nick closed his eyes and quoted:

-Wednesday, it feels like wednesday. The hump day, that’s my day.

Seated next to Nick, I raised my hat from over my eyes, and gazed up at the blue sky only young eyes can see:

-How long has it been since you have been to class?

Nick groaned:

-Three weeks.

-Lucky, my parents just got a cut slip for the Month of March. They’re having it framed.

-It’s getting desperate and animalistic. If we don’t go back soon, we will be laying with beasts, if we don’t get back in that building, we will be eating babies. Babies I tell you.

-I fear you speak the truth.

Nick leaned over and pointed at me:

-You’ve got to go back to class cooter.

-I can’t, I am scared shittless.

-So am I, but it has to be faced. I am going to get up, walk into that abattoir of youth and go to class.

-Bravo, I envy and respect your dedication and discipline.

-I am gonna seize San Juan Hill.

-Charge Teddy, charge.

-Except..., said Nick.

-Except?

-Except, she is going to be out next period.

-She will, but Nick, she would be happy to see you go back to class.

-You don’t think she wants to see me?

-Fucked if I know man, I mean, I think she would love to see you but I am sure she doesn’t want you to go to summer school.

We sat there as a short little korean girl in a short little skirt came up to us. Looking at Nick she said:

-Hey handsome!

Offended I asked:

-Don’t I merit a greeting?

She frowned at me:

-You most certainly do not Jack Ulysses. I came here to ask Nick a question.

-Hit me beautiful.

-If you had the choice would you be Cassidy, the man that inspired everyone, living life to it’s fullest, or would you be Keroack, calling his mommy every night, but get to write the book?

Nick smiled and said:

-Good question.

Working Christopher Street

We got work with the Greenwich Village Association for Infinite Gentrification and Extermination of All Human Life on the West Side. We got to pick up their garbage after their street fare, along with the homeless guys who needed some extra crack money.

Nick and I staggered through the golden washed light of street, the ink black sky above our heads. Covered in sweat and filth, our backs ached from carry trash bags full of cups, cans, refuse, cigarette butts and syringes. Always the deep terror of the syringe and the AIDS virus we were sure it carried.

In our filthy streaked and stinking clothing, we moved toward seventh ave, on Christopher Street, pass stores filled with leather harnesses, dildos, total enclosure suits, french pastries, and pet grooming. One stop shopping.

Ahead of us approached three large men, walking in a V formation. The men, who wore matching black tee shirts with a pink paw print in the center, were members of the civil defense force formed to stop the wave of hate attacks; The Pink Panthers. The men were a Valkyric vision, walking out of the tortured nightmare of a homophobe (or a least his fevered torrid damp dreams).

On point, the two men in the front were fashion coordinated, they had clearly called ahead. Both men, each 5’10”, had shaved heads and were clad in rawhide black leather vests, and tight faded jeans. The man on key was at least 6’2”, full beard and sandy long hair streaked with grey, and was wearing hot pink leather pants and jacket. They all wore combat boots, they clearly spent a lot of time at the gym and they looked like they were in a bad mood. As we approached Nick and I palsied with tension terrified we would break out in hysterical laughter.

-Don’t you dare Jack. If they don’t kill you I will, said Nick snickering through clenched teeth.

We past them on the street and Nick shuddered holding back the giggles and whispered:

-I mean it Jack, they will put us down like dogs. They will pound us into paste. Those hands don’t do gentle things, no back massage, no lube, not even a kiss on the cheek you hear me.

Our pace quickened, as did the shuddering of our bodies, as we reached the corner. Nick turned to me:

-For god’s sake, they lock pretty boys like me up in cages. End up on the slave markets of Bangkok, Dubai or San Francisco.

I turned to Nick and placed my hand forward as if it were a paw and said:

-Meow.

Our laughter must have been audible to 14th street.

Puberty hits the stage

The youth of 16 stood in the stage of the Stuyvesant auditorium, dressed in an all white suit. The spot light flooded his all white eyes, as the band opened with the chords of Greece’s Beauty School Dropout. The actors voice lifted upon it, having the clarion timbre of a strangulating cat. The audience responded to it as if it were a miasma, as if he had broke bad wind or crapped his pants, effluent flowing out the white suit. As New Yorkers, they politely ignored it.

Standing in the very rear of the Mezzanine, next to the spot light, I turned to Nick:

-How can he stand up there and do this. It’s hideous.

Nick looked at me with disappointment:

-Know what your problem is Jack,

-What’s my problem Nick?

-Soulless technique. It’s that same part of you that listens to prog rock, which, may I remind you, is just sad. Listen Jack, that guy down there may have no voice, no talent, and no right to be up there, but you know what he’s got Jack?

-A cracking voice?

-Balls Jack, that guy has balls. A giant pair of pendulous, obviously developing fucking balls, dangling on the stage, as they sprout hair as we speak. He walked on an alto and he’ll come down a basso.

-But can’t he do that in private, can’t he spare us.

Nick shook his head:

-No Jack, you are the odd man out. These people are here to see him, they are rooting for him. He is participating, he is dancing the dance, singing the song. Boy, he is actually living. I respect that man.

Nick turned to the stage and smiled, taking in the off key notes, as if were a symphony.

The Tesseract 3

Nick folded the imaginary figure in his rust colored hands. Turning it as if folding a map or a figure of origami. Nick said:

-Think of it, the same four dimensional object, unfolding in many different ways in our three dimensional space. Each one completely different than the others, yet each could be reconstructed to the original. The same soul different bodies. Each phenomena calling reaching back to the origin.

I looked over the phenomenal world around us. The girls sitting on cars, litter in the street kicked by stockinged legs in combat boots stepping before the buildings all around us. Shaved legs running in sneakers, short skirts being pulled down by slight hands, eyes surrounded by thick lines, heart shaped asses fill tight jeans swaying down the street. Each the emergence of something bigger. Nick looked at me and laughed:

-It’s true Jack, to be faithful to the fourth dimension, you need to be promiscuous in the third.

Stairway to Hell

Nick sat with the Hippy in the middle of the floor of the empty apartment. The Hippy held his Ovation, like he had a cock in his hands, while Nick held his simple steel string like a lover. Back and forth they ran through old blues, the beetles, pink floyd and a few originals.

Everyone sat on the floor around them, the empty apartment lit with bodega candles decorated with Saints whose names we did not know. Somehow my head had landed in this dancer’s lap, where I could joyfully feel her strong thighs against my neck. She softly stroked my hair and my brow, breathing deeply as the music washed over us like a summer wind.

Outside the curtainless windows, lay the night city. The high rise window showed the short buildings of SOHO which looked like a model train set. The twinkling stars of street lights and apartment windows played against the pitch black sky, it’s sole denizen: a full moon.

We all lay on the floor, in that lattice of moonlight, candlelight, shadows and music. The only evidence that time existed was the sweet nothingness that exists between notes.

Until the fucking Hippy, brought out the fucking four-track, with the fucking copy of Led Zeppelin 4. Around the fifth time they played Stairway to Heaven backwards, the discussion became heated.

The hippy whacking the buttons, sending the tape whirling:

-Common, he’s definitely saying My Sweet Satan.

Nick’s arms flew outward from his chest as if they were attempting to escape his body:

-Maybe if he’s talking to Charlie fucking Brown!

-If you knew anything about production, you would understand this clear example of backwards masking; the Hippy pulled rank.

Nick groaned:

-You know what I clearly hear, Whine Meat Atun, anything else is just a product your fevered ego.

-Please, Page was a committed Satanist. At the time he slept upside down like a damn bat.

-He was into Crowley, not Lavey and even more into Burroughs. They made a fucking book together.

The tape whirled, magnetic particles formed a cloud over their heads and the argument continued for hours.

Walking and Talking

Stuyvesant Park, bifurcated by 2nd avenue, formed two distinct entities. The eastern park fell within the sphere of influence of Stuyvesant HS, and of Beth Israel Hospital. Correspondingly it was filled with mental patients, junkies and students. The western side sat among the residential housing and the Friends Seminary School, and was thus empty, trafficked by the occasional pensioner waiting to die, while they pelted pigeons with bread and rocks. Nick and I strolled over there so we could not see some people and not catch up with them.

Nick was gesticulating wildly as he spoke:

-Her tits defy gravity, they just stick straight out. And where did she find a sweater in a spray can?  You must have noticed Jack. I mean you are needy and dependant, you must be a tit man.

I rolled my eyes and said:

-Legs actually, but I am not into segmenting women. It’s not one thing that attracts me, but how it all comes together. Her smile, her wit, her health, her style, the way she walks. I really don’t look at a part of a woman, but the whole woman.

Nick nudged me:

-And sometimes you just have to look at the hole.

Glancing left and right over the guilty chortles, I said:

-Nick you dick. You crack me up.

-It’s easy Jack, you are always so depressed. You walk around with this lost look on your face.

-Got me to a T  my friend. Long will I wander.

Nick paused in the warm spring air and adjusted his bag on his shoulder. He glanced at me and we started walking again as he spoke:

-There’s a story you would like. I can’t speak to its veracity but I can speak to its truth.  An beautiful woman from a rich family is cursed with the knowledge of life’s folly. Rejecting rebirth, she goes to a buddhist monastery and requests admittance. They reject her because she is too rich.

The woman gives all of her land to the peasants, all of her jewels to the poor, and all of her silks to the ill. She returns to the monastery in sackcloth, but they reject her for being too graceful and fine.

She goes out and works among the poor, slaving for people, bending her back and roughening her hands. She returns to the monastery but they reject her for being too beautiful.

After she mutilated her face, the Abbot of the Temple relented and let her in, but only on the condition she care for the monks.

For ten years she cooked their food,  swept their floors, washed their clothes, and gathered wood. Her body, ruined by the effort and over years became twisted and beaten.

One day while she was bringing back a bucket of water from the well, she tripped and became enlightened.

Nick paused seeing my confusion and continued:

-You can’t chase enlightenment Jack, it’s not something you can run down. You can’t talk your way into it, buy it, or fuck it into you. All you can do is prepare yourself for it when it comes. What’s the point of finding enlightenment if you aren’t ready to say yes to it. It’s not the enlightenment that matters, its saying yes to life. Are you ready to say yes Jack?

This is the story Nick told me, the one I have retold, literally, hundreds and hundreds of times. I have told it to my friends, my lovers, my wife and I will tell it to my children. I have told it to myself before making every correct decision I have ever made. I will never be able to tell it as well as Nick did.

Under Minerva’s frozen gaze

I see Nick:

Walking though the MET

Joking in the MOMA

Laying down under the Blue Whale in Natural History

Dodging in and out of the Galleries in SOHO

Sleeping in Sheep's Meadow

Running through the Brambles

Jumping over park benches in Stuy Park

And I see him laughing. I can’t see Nick without him laughing.

Like the tesseract, one image overlaying another, as he explodes into our space.

Each image of Nick, each moment, the all too brief emergence of something much greater, more fierce, as the embers fly off a bonfire.

I see Nick sitting on Stuy’s step, laughing with me, fading, as an ember floats to the sky, mixing with the stars, and fades into the darkness of night.

Love,John

 Wounded I hung on a wind-swept gallows

For nine long nights,

Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odhinn,

Offered, myself to myself

The wisest know not from whence spring

The roots of that ancient rood

They gave me no bread,

They gave me no mead,

I looked down;

with a loud cry

I took up runes;

from that tree I fell.

Hávamál, Translation by W. H. Auden and P. B. Taylor