• Editor's note. Jill St. Jacques is a fiction writer and journalist, as well as the content provider for Telecommunion Magazine. In fact, Jill St. Jacques is myself. I'll be contributing a piece to this magazine every now and then. Let me know if you like them, as well as all the rest of the pieces on Telecommunion. JSJ.

A   F I N E   Q U A R T Z   N E C K T I E

by Jill St. Jacques
c. 1998

Eric was so skinny the last time I saw him. He couldn't have been more than 126 pounds with his boots on. Didn't have the money for a good pair of Docs, so he wore huge cop boots without laces-clumpy barrel chested cop boots on skinny white feet. His teeth were huge, like Cerberus; subterranean teeth, white as cuttlebone. Botticelli. Dirty curls, hatchet chin, hungry jowls-I bought Eric a slice of Blondie's pizza and listened to his stomach growl. There was so much hunger in his eyes, yet at the same time they were furtive, distant, like insect wings, unsettled. A white boy gone insane behind crank and bad wisdom, but I'm drifting. I never describe people right and at this point it hardly matters. Eric's dead.

It's not like I'm a stranger to Death. I used to be in the military, so I've seen my share. Then, last Christmas, my father died. I had mixed emotions about that. There were things I couldn't forgive or forget, and I was angry, trying to reconcile my memories with my emotions. I'd be lying if I said I made any headway. I didn't. But, at the time, I felt like I'd gained a little ground.

A few months later my friend Hal Cedrick was on his way home from a skiing trip to Lake Tahoe. He called his parents three hours before he left Squaw Valley and said he'd just had the best day of his life. That night, his Acura went off a cliff.

I spoke with Hal's sister, Syl, about a month before his memorial. She said that after the accident Hal barely had a scratch on him, but his spine was completely mashed up into itself when his Acura hit the rocks. I wouldn't say that I was Hal's best friend, but we worked on a couple of movies together, and he was a very sweet young man, the kind of person everyone looked forward to seeing again. Nonetheless, even though I was shocked and grieved by his death, I was not disturbed-Deaths such as these happen, they come too soon to people who are too young, and they terminate life without question. I know that sounds trite, but this is a real story.

When I drove for City Cab in San Francisco (eight bone filled years we won't go into now, thanks), at least forty of my colleagues got stabbed, burned, icepicked, heads blown clean off their shoulders or even simple things that go with cabby lifestyles; heart attacks, sclerosis, suicide. Each of these deaths sucked in their own way, but somehow still, in my mind, they stand as they are.

It's different with Eric.

Maybe one boot clottered forward, the chair skidded out and ... klump. That's it. The sound of stretching rope. There's something so pathetic about a hanging; a boot falls off, there's a sock pinched out at the toe, a little brown and dainty. You can't help it. There's the sock. There's the toe. Maybe Eric was barefoot. That's romantic; sweet Ukrainian sailors swaying barefoot in the meat locker. There's a whole couture of footwear for The Hanging. I won't get preoccupied with the sexual aspect of it.

If I hung myself tomorrow, I'd be wearing a pair of stiff white '20s lace-ups. Stretched to the final notch and broken.

So, tonight I'll remember him-the man of my dreams, or one man of many dreams. It doesn't matter. So many times it's better that way. Chew some mint gum, half a stick ... take the cycle down to Lasca's house. If it starts. You know how cycles are. I've got to find something white to wear in Eric's memory-maybe that garter belt with the pink roses Roxanne gave me for my birthday.

The feet of suicide are so important-if only because we remember the last steps the best. Suede, bare, canvas-converse. Eric walked to the rope with certainty, of that much I'm certain. He didn't hesitate. Not that it was a rope, anyway-Eric's noose was fashioned from strips of hospital bedsheet tied together.

I heard about Eric's death from one of his old sweethearts, a San Francisco Beat with whom I still maintain a friendship.

"They watch you like a hawk in there," she said. "That's true. Lots of hawks in the Loony Bin. Are you OK?" "Yeah, I'm OK. Burned the fuck out of my foot yesterday, though." "Owwww. How'd that happen?" "Boilin water'r some shit." "It's such a bummer about Eric, though. I can't believe he did it. I never would've thought he'd kill himself." "The guy was my lover once, y'know." "I know."

I bet the girl Eric was stalking had curly blonde hair, and ringlets. Those kind of blue eyes you notice when it rains. And umbrellas. She probably was good in history, wrote a little bit of poetry but not too much. Made her nervous to write about that kind of stuff. Eric would've recognized it. He would've recognized her blue rubber rainboots and her dripping wet slicker. He would've recognized her at the bus stop, would've wanted to talk but he would've been afraid.

She might've noticed him in the crowd.

Grabbed her books a little tightly, jumped on the bus as soon as it pulled up. Or maybe never even knew he was following her. Just those letters. I'm sure he never would've hurt her, Eric wasn't the type to hurt anyone. Too skinny, frail, poetic. Washed out hair and nervous smile. Sure. He'd know his own.

Worshipping.

Perhaps worshipping too much is a bad thing. I mean, I understand her parents point of view. The letters must've freaked them out. I'm sure he just followed her. Followed her and wrote. Every night. No TV, residential hotel room- Eric wrote all the time. You can always get a paper and pencil, or a napkin, or a placemat, or a whole collection of strange cardboard things to scribble sorry-ass traces of your life upon. Polk Street diners where you sit for a dollar in sleazy orangeade vinyl and sip weak coffee with all the other speedfreaks. Losers. He must've wrote pages and pages to his sweet virgin queen- worshipped her on those pages the way a lunatic worships the moon, naked blue forbidden scratching. The way a desultory crab marks each crack in the rocks with clumsy clawlike language. Knocking on the big rock of empty. The way the sugar folds into the pancake batter. Fine and light and pure. Only slightly crooked.

Pure.

Pure is a word we use for water, and virgins, and suicide. The finest suicides are pure. Pure white feet dangling, stretched, as hesitant as a lovers tongue or some kind of semipunctuation; a colon, an apostrophe, a comma. Glasses full of semipunctuation spilling into quartz.

Cities of Quartz.

Today, in this class of mine, some asshole talked to us about Cities of Quartz. Which is all very fine for him I'm sure, he could show some boring ass photos of Urban structures, banter complicated architectural jargonese - (amalgamated with French Theory, twisted to his own ends) - smug bastard. There's only so many things left for white boys to do. They can't really talk about their dicks any more, that's not acceptable, and they can't make fun of other cultures. So they'll argue about urban planning.
I wonder how much this guy really knows about the Cities of Quartz, though? I swear he's never lived there for even a year. I think he graduated from some fancy university somewhere, some place where the frat boys kicked him around some. I understand. It doesn't matter, we all swallow our poison eventually. Hemlock is sweeter than quartz. Ivy softer than granite. Bootlaces sturdier than sandals. Patchouli by far the most pungent, China Rain overbearing. Sweet, spice, earth.

Orange.

If you live in the City of Quartz.

I didn't spend long enough there, so I can't pretend to be anything more than a beginner. Not nearly long enough. But long enough to tell the difference. So I'm telling. The difference. To you. Or I would. If that were really possible.

They worship a lot of things in the City of Quartz, I hear. They know how to appreciate things. Really appreciate them. And to worship them. Even the parents. Even the virgins. The sun exquisite in pale glass ribbons. The hangings beneath the sun. A voice beneath the covers. "Hey, I didn't think I'd find you here." People don't talk quite so loud, or with so much self-appointed expertise. There's an intensity implicit in the language. People struggle, and there's desperation, there'll always be that. And there'll always be this. This hanging. This sun. This story.

I followed her for fifteen days before I wrote the first letter. Fifteen days, five of which were sweet white rain, breaking the pace of the last four years; Winston days, ashtray weeks. I'd developed a cough and was making absolutely no effort to get rid of it. My hands felt like nicotined squid-soft, slippery, stickeebrown- no matter how many times I'd wash them. Smoke beer more smoke and more cheap beer and the same shitty poetry, usually somebody else's. But there were moments.

I can't remember what time it was that I saw her.

Maybe a Monday or a Tuesday. Things had that early-in-the-week kind of feel. Sometime in March, I'm sure of that. March. Because March is typically a bleak kind of month- cold and soggy San Francisco Examiners melting in the gutter. It must've been a Tuesday because people weren't complaining so much. I've never understood why people complain about Mondays. Monday Tuesday Wednesday-they're all just days- as arbitrary and repressive as any other kind of name. Wednesday, who thought of that? Something about weddings. To be wed. Bridesmaids. No. It couldn'tve been a Monday. Things were too engaged that day, too busy. It had to be a Tuesday. A Tuesday in early March. I'm saying a Tuesday in March because once you've been in San Francisco long enough, you start to realize there're patterns. Patterns to the rain, the poems, the coffee qualities, everything. Early March. Because it was still so cold. Late March is also cold, but there's a certain benevolence about it. Early March is soggy. Drizzly noses, damp steam-heating, empty latte. It must've been early March. Maybe the third. The rain was leaking down my chalky hotel room window, drying little trails-particles of white, coaxed from the weeping windowsill, easy to smudge with the fingers. I was bored.

You know how it is when you've done all the things that you always do and, they've run full out of pleasure? I couldn't masturbate anymore, I was all out of pot, always was. I'd sold my TV. Didn't have any money or foodstamps for beer and things, but I really wasn't all that hungry or thirsty. So I just went out of the house. OK? No real destination. Not hungry for anything.

I wasn't going to catch the bus, I wasn't going to stop for a doughnut. I looked over at the doughnut shop window across from the bus stop. An old woman with a half-eaten-cruller face stared, lifting a fleshy pastry up to her nose-nose or mouth. I couldn't really tell, didn't really care. But I remember the face so well, as well as if it were Tuesday. Because it was right before. Like a step. It's always the step before, the one immediately before, that you remember the best. Not with any kind of clarity and precision, just with memory. Her face in the doughnut shop window, so sad. You could tell she hadn't expected, hadn't ever expected to be at this particular doughnut shop at that particular time (not the time of day necessarily, but that particular time in her life), blank in the Doughnut Shop window, that fine purple drizzle, busses pulling in out, full of shadows, full of light. Busses full of agony and ecstasy, chalcedony and quartz. Quartz. Busses stacked to the brim with agony and quartz, agonizing heavy pieces of quartz.

Then I turned around, and it was her.

I don't remember anybody else standing in the bus stop. Just her. I don't remember anybody else but her. I refrain from her description, the way the Hebrews refrained from uttering the name of God.

I am not worthy.

It seemed like I'd never seen anybody else in the world until the moment I saw her, and when I saw her the carefully timed winds and chalky quartz cleared, and the fog blew off San Francisco, and she shook out her umbrella. She shook out her umbrella the way the clouds shake out the rain, the way a crow unruffles it feathers before it flies, the way a kitten shakes out a faceful of milk, the way the banners unfurled in Avalon-and in that moment I had absolutely no choice.

Follow.

Follow her. In that moment, I would've gone anywhere. Anywhere. To follow her, I would've gone anywhere.

Unfortunately, there's no place left to go.

Not from here.

See, there's one room on the left in this tall quartz skyscraper. Cities of mink, cities of amber. Cities of amethyst, purple and blue and dark. There's a cell made of quartz, and I'm imprisoned in that cell like a fly caught in amber, the scream struck dead on my lips as quick as the noose pulls the breath and the body that swings-and the feet-the feet sway . And the time stands still. And the mouth stops to bleed. And the neck cracks soft ivory. Scrimshaw prick. The prick blossoms hard-and heavy-and dead-and the hands-the hands turn blue cold-blue grail-blue nothings-voices pending echo vision pendulum-sways-hands- hands on your shoulder-your neck buzzing a thousand feet sway and you feel hands-hands neck buzz dream and it seems-it seems like only yesterday that I saw her.

I saw her and I wanted to write. I wanted to write the way you'd write the Guadalupe Virgin; to open the window in my city of quartz and scream-scream or even whisper: "hey, I see you out there on your way to your parents." I see you with your book bag in your hands, so afraid to write your poetry. I see you coming out of your suburban house. I see your mother watching you, your father scrutinizing you behind the crystal clear window, behind the dark green juniper hedges, I see you-I saw you-I saw you and I wanted to watch to listen, it didn't matter if you never spoke a word, it didn't matter if there were never two voices in our conversations, just to even catch a glimpse was enough, enough to buy ten yards of silver cloth-knotted together- cloth knotted together makes a rope a tie a problem.

And the problem isn't the quartz. The problem isn't the city. The problem isn't the pain, and the problem the problem the problem isn't the hands, the hands are only the quartz, the quartz filling your mouth (you can't even choke out a whisper). But the window is closed, the shop is melted, the blackbirds have drowned in quartz-the mailboxes bent and silly-my brother laughing next to his broken sled-his collarbone poking through his shirt-the late night transfer ripped in two: here's your half, your quarter, your fraction. Here's your fraction of quartz, here's your fraction of silver, your fraction of the thing I saw just yesterday. You can have anything you want, cuz it's all coming out in fractions.

Just don't take that one thing. I don't want to give up that one thing. I don't mind sharing but I don't want to give it up. I don't want to give it up. The hands come rushing down and the quartz fills the emptiness clunk clunk clunk but I remember that day, I remember that day. People saying your life comes out in flashes one long skid but all I remember's that day. It must've been early March. The third. I'm sure it was a Tuesday. To remember. To remember. To remember.

We didn't want him hurting our little girl. It's not like the letters were threatening or anything, but when we showed them to the psychiatrist, she said "they aren't threatening yet." I'll always remember the way she said "...yet." The way she said it I remember imagining a big gray gravestone with Christina's name on it. Scared the hell out of us. And there were so many of them. Day after day, more and more letters. The weird thing was that Christina hadn't told us about it right away, but then maybe a twelve year old girl thinks it's romantic to get letters like that at first.

I never should've told the people at work, though. I mean, I just mentioned it to one individual, and before I knew it the whole office was buzzing. Especially the women. They wouldn't leave me alone. It was almost as if they wanted me to find him so they could get a hold of him, and tear his balls off. Frightening. Lisa Turner said something about cutting his nuts off. And the look in her eye. I mean, she was looking at me when she said that, hell, I thought the bitch was going to cut my nuts off. And they got to my wife, too. People from my office that didn't even know her. Concerned, they said. Pretty soon it got to be unbearable. I think that's really why we had such a need to get him committed. It was just unbearable, all the pressure.

And it was having its effect on Christina, I could tell. I mean, I could tell that it was doing something, something that scared her. But what got me was, I couldn't tell how it was scaring her. I mean, the way I look at it, part of fear is a certain kind of thrill, there's no denying that sometimes fear can be a sexual thing. I mean, sure we were worried that Tina was going to get raped by that nut, but it was all so outside our realm of experience, it all seemed like a fantasy. His letters just kept coming and coming, and it got more and more out of control. And there were several things that puzzled me.

Tina hadn't shown me the letters at first. And she hadn't shown her mom. She'd kept them to herself, and that made me wonder....why? That's what I mean about the thrill. And about things being outside, unfamiliar. Because Tina'd grown up in a world of fantasy anyway; Joanie was always reading her bedtime stories when she was little, and eventually she'd graduated to Dungeons and Dragons and The Lord Of The Rings, and all that Narnia shit that I never could relate to. I was never much one for fantasy, anyways. I mean, for kids it's alright, I guess, although nowadays I wonder. When I was a kid I liked Hardy Boys and Buck Rogers, or books about baseball. But since Tina was a girl, I figured fantasy'd be alright. These days you just have to be glad that you're kid's reading. at all

I'll always remember the day we found the letters. It was a Tuesday. A Tuesday in March, as I recall. I know it was a Tuesday, because I was at work when Joanie called me. She wouldn't say what was on her mind- I hate it when women do that- she just told me to come home right away after work and not to stop off for a drink with Alvin. I tried to get her to tell me what's up, but she wouldn't budge, so I left it.

There was a whole drawerful of those letters. And it was obvious that Tina'd been treating them carefully, they were stacked neatly and wrapped with red rubber bands. When I asked her why she'd kept them a secret, I remember she said "I don't know", but the way she said it meant "I don't want to know". And that made me think, too. There was something beneath the surface, ( an opinion which was confirmed by our visit to the shrink a week later ). The shrink talked about sexual repression, how we might be experiencing some awkward moments until we got this thing settled out, that occurrences like this brought out unforeseen emotions in people or something like that. I didn't know what the hell she was talking about most of the time. I felt like she was talking down to us, but Joanie insisted on going.

It made sense, though, in many ways, some of which were pretty dark and creepy. I mean, the first question I found myself asking was, "Why Tina?" I didn't know why he'd picked her to write his fucking letters to. And I found myself thinking it had to do with sexuality. Now, believe me, I'd never thought of my own daughter in sexual terms before - not ever. Oh, once in a while when she was a baby girl and masturbating with her pillow on the carpet, but they were quick thoughts that I put out of my mind as quickly as they came - and it's not bad, I mean, I figure every father has thoughts like that. You can't help it. We're all creatures that deal with sexuality one way or another... we just have the mechanisms to deal with our base emotions in the right way. You see these quick images, but you never do anything about it. You push them back to the back of your mind and get rid of them.

But something that I never told anybody was; the possibility that Tina was just a little bit turned on by the letters turned me on- a fact that filled me with rage and resentment. That's another reason we had to get rid of that crazy son of a bitch. I didn't like the creepy atmosphere he'd brought into our home.

It's Sunday night now, of that much I'm sure. I'm sure it's Sunday night because of the way the footsteps pass in the hall. Leaves and things, so many extremes. It's time to think about Eric again, but it always goes back to the hanging. I can't get rid of the image of him swaying. Those soft white feet dangling. And that crumpled white note on the floor. I wish I could have read it. Even the first two lines of it. I've heard about the story of his death from many different corners. But I don't want to be left with just his image.

I want to be left with his words.

I found the white stockings, I found the white garter, and I garnished it with a flushed rosette in a way that might please him. I organized some almonds and chocolates, and I spread the books out on the carpet-the books that he might like. He was only 24. I wonder how his reading tastes would've changed. He loved stuff by the Greeks, as I recall. Especially ancient Greek poetry. The Hydra with many heads. Medusa who froze to stone when she looked in the mirror. What kind of stone and many sided? I wonder what their last words were? These days, these strange white Sundays, when I find myself asking about the Grendl, the Cerberus, and the Judas. Wondering what his last words were. Wondering if they were angry, vengeful, or even relatively soothing. Wondering if they were quartz. The things your parents never tell you.