Julian Stannard

The boat was beating across the bay, we had our backs to Vesuvius, the wind smacked our faces. Naples was an enormous packet of cigarettes you could smoke till you conked out: the cigarettes were never going to run out and nor was the coffee, the drugs, the prostitutes, the locked churches, the scooters, the rice cakes, the evil eye, the boys called Gennaro, the funiculars, the shrines to Madonna, the shrines to Maradona, the bullet holes, the heat, the permanent state of crucifixion. Anyone could be crucified two thousand years ago but to be crucified now, to be crucified in Napoli — lift me up!

We were at the Edison Hotel on West 47th Street for the annual muffin beauty contest — I can’t tell you how pumped up we were. Times Square was having another psychotic judder. The bellhop was all thumbs up: Sir, have a nice day and get one gratis. All those avenues of doors and the Hispanic chambermaid who couldn’t speak English. Spider-Man was doing all that Spider-Man shit just to get a bird’s eye view. Donna Summer was almost dead and we were barely into spring. I want to dance to “Love to Love You Baby,” I want to groan. I’ve never seen so many high-quality muffins. If  I wasn’t a religious man, and maybe I wasn’t I would have said the muffins were walking on water: I’ve never felt so half-and-half. Have you read the Bible? The bellhop said: You ain’t seen muffin yet. They were drifting in from Queens, Brooklyn, Harlem, The Bronx, Manhattan muffins too and that weird cute coke-faced muffin who’d taken the subway from Coney Island. If only I were a betting man, but hey I am a betting man, it’s Coney Island every time. Lou Reed isn’t getting any younger. Zappa said, Girl you thought he was a man but he was a muffin, he hung around till you found he didn’t know nuthin’. In the lobby Nina Simone was singing, I Loves You Muffin and in the restroom they piped in “Mack the Knife”: Hey Suky Tawdry, Jenny Diver, Polly Peachum and old Miss Lulu Brown.Muffin The Romance was the biggest show in town. We were hurtling back to the 1970s and sometimes the 1970s are almost as good as the 1930s. I want my muffins to be ahistorical: shit just to say ahistorical makes me joyful. I saw Leonard Cohen crooning with a couple of octogenarian muffins and I’m telling you now the lobby was pleasantly disturbing. You may find yourself   behind the wheel of a large automobile. You may find yourself  in another part of  the world. You may find yourself  at the gargantuan muffin beauty contest and you may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here? Times Square was having another psychotic judder. Love is in the air, it’s in the whisper of the trees. This is not America, this is the cover version: sun, sex, sin, divine intervention, death and destruction, welcome to The Sodom and Gomorrah Show. All those white muffins trying to be black muffins! Give us our daily muffin, save us from temptation. Jimmy Buffett was singing, Why don’t we get drunk and screw? In Times Square the most beautiful muffins in the world were hanging on a thousand screens. Where are my singing Tibetan balls? Am I dead?

O, Benjamin P. Lovell, 19 from Oneonta, New York State who appears in the police blotter in Thursday’s Daily Star for unlawful possession of marijuana. The police blotter hangs just below the cast of Hairpsray rehearsing at the suny oneonta goodrich theater where the girl playing Tracy Turnblad looks as if she’s been helping herself to donuts: maybe the donuts we were eating at Barlow’s General Store, Treadwell. Do you ever get an upstate rush? I’ve never been crazy about donuts but these are the aristocrats of the donut world and I salute them. And I hope, Benjamin, your mom isn’t going to be too mad as she casts her eye down the police blotter and sees your name there,You little shit! and I hope the authorities remember being young when the whole world sometimes seemed somehow like a gargantuan donut that either pulled you to its bosom (O Tracy!) or kicked down — somewhere — to the bloodstream. Sweet donut, do I love thee? I haven’t mentioned Brando K. Goodluck, 18, from Manhattan, charged with seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. O Brando, O Brando what were you thinking? As I put a donut in my mouth I’m thinking I wouldn’t mind a joint, and, in any case, maybe all these donuts are pretty dangerous and I wonder what would happen if the rules got jumbled up and the girl playing Tracy Turnblad slid down the page and found herself in the police blotter charged with unlawful possession of a donut. Suddenly America feels different and I like it. Police blotters throughout the nation packed with donutheads and half the country on the run as college girls make secret calls and meet their dealers in dusty ghost towns, sweet vapors drifting through the trees. O America, where even the robins are bigger, where every car that slides into the forecourt of Barlow’s General Store is a Dodge, where half the population is chasing the perfect donut. Let’s imagine that Benjamin P. Lovell and Brando K. Goodluck, nice slim boys, who never touched a donut in their lives, wander into Barlow’s and roll a joint and talk about those losers who kneel down before “the big one.” They know the girl who was playing Tracy Turnblad. She was sweet, they say, who went and threw it all away for a sleazy bun with a hole in it. They pass the joint to me and I can feel the donuts I stuffed in haste somewhere down my slacks. I blush. Real shame, I say. Mrs. Barlow says You boys want more coffee? The donuts on her shelves have gone.

I’m being carried down the Burlington Arcade by Beadles in top hats, jewelers on both sides holding out their hands and wrapped in cashmere. When people speak of near-death experiences they’re always going through tunnels, they’re happy, they’re never going through the Burlington Arcade. Eric says, It’s good to see you wearing clothes and I have to admit he’s wearing the most beautiful trousers and I say, Eric you’re not supposed to be in this poem. Get back into your shop! I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. The Head Beadle’s saying “Burlington Gardens!” Should I tip him? Am I dead? What happens next?