HARRIS'S HEAD
by Michael Rosenthal
(published by New York Press in 1997)
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When Harris is standing up, he thinks of his head as an oval, with almond apertures for eyes through which his mind looks out. His mind rides in the oval.
Now he is lying down. When his head is sideways on the pillow, why doesn't his mind stay standing, looking out one vertical aperture with the other at its feet? Does the mind lie down with gravity?
Harris is tall and thin, a bony matchstick man looking out his oval. If he hears, how's the weather up there?, one more time, he swears he'll do as the joke suggests — he'll spit and say it's raining.... Not really.
Please don't call him Harry. Don't call him Slats or Shorty, either.
Harris is once-divorced. When she liked him, his wife called him Boney Maroney. When she didn't like him, she complained about his sharp hips digging in. Let me on top, she'd say, I'm tired of looking into your chest.... Now she lives in another city.
Harris is good-looking and doesn't know it. Women like his beard, especially the streaks of gray that have grown in the last couple years. And — even his ex-wife, once — they like that he's tall. Harris tends to think they're just being friendly.
Harris is at a loss for conversation at parties. After saying, nice party, and asking, are you a friend of so-and-so or so-and-so, the only next thing he can ever think of to ask is, what do you do?
Most people are either very interested in what they do, or not at all. Harris is a not-at-all person. If he asks another not-at-all person what they do, and they shrug and ask him back what he does, then two silences meet and the conversation is probably over. If they are a very-interested-in-what-they-do person (woman), then a conversation possibly can be sustained. Sustainable does not always mean desirable.
A desirable conversation could lead, he supposes, to bed.
Harris's mind observes that most very-interested-in-what-they-do people like other very-interested-in-what-they-do people. Not-at-all people can get along okay, if something sustains them past two silences meeting.
So at this particular party, Harris asks a very-self-interested-seeming European-looking woman what she does. And she says, that's such an American question, nobody where she comes from would ever think of asking that question of somebody they just met.
That's the end of that conversation.
Harris met his first wife in college, at a mixer. They had a common context. They talked about their majors and the music they were hearing.
What-you-do is no longer a gambit. Being divorced is not much of a gambit, nor is being tall. What's left, being? Hi, do you stand in your head, watching the world? Does your mind stand up when your body lies down? Why not? What's in your head?
Harris's horizontal mind thinks, head, and he says to himself, oval, which he knows means egg. He says it to deny it. Scary to be that fragile. The other thing that he thinks of when he thinks head is coconut, and this is appalling — a hard thick sphere, covered with nasty hair. It makes his beard itch. And the three spots on top, like a stopped-up bowling ball or some awful reduction of the face to inexpressive nothings. He makes a grimace, sideways on the pillow. He'd shave his beard, if his chin wasn't so weak.
Harris on the subway, on the way to work. Work is work is work is work. It's done with computers.
Harris imagines a European party conversation. XXX, one says, and XXX the other says, and XXX and XXX, and then they're in bed. Over coffee the next morning, perhaps what-they-do may be exchanged.
In the years since the divorce, Harris has had two lovers, with an interval between them. Both co-workers. A workplace is a context, and a context makes a conversation easy. So-and-so is a jerk, so-and-so is funny, did you hear how so-and-so screwed up that thing?
Harris isn't seeing anybody right now. He still works with both co-worker-ex-lovers. One still talks to him and the other one doesn't. They both broke up with him pretty much the same.
Bed, subway, work, subway, bed. Like the joke about the idiot's guide to sex — 1: in, 2: out, 3: repeat as necessary.
Once Harris overheard two other co-workers talking about him and one of his then-lover-co-workers. He had become somebody else's so-and-so; they had become part of a context. Who knows what that led to.
When the subway car is especially crowded, Harris gives up his purchase on a pole or handle to a shorter person (woman) and holds on to the rim of an overhead ventilator, or, stretching slightly, stresses his body in place with a hand flexed against the ceiling. Other men sit with legs sprawled, taking up two or three seats.
Harris is courteous, with large hands. Some women... but Harris tends to think....
Harris on the subway, on the way to work.... Work is work. His stop. The 14th Street station is an old one, not built for modern, longer, subway cars. A gap exists between the car and the platform when the train pulls in. A kind of mechanical scaffold is supposed to extend to the car before the doors open. This time it doesn't. The doors open and Harris steps into the breach.
There he is, a shim between the subway car and the retracted scaffold, hands desperately forward grasping the cement to keep from slipping to the filthy, rat-infested, electrified tracks. His effective height at that moment is about 15 inches, from his excruciated armpits to the top of his astonished head. How tall is his mind then?
If ancient gum ground into concrete looks disgusting from six-and-a-half-feet up, imagine it from a foot away, near mouth level. It is an inexpressive blot, filthy.
If the scaffold functions now, it will divide him.
Help, he says in a conversational tone, help me. The commuters exit, stepping over him. He's out of context, theirs, his own; everybody's except the thief who picks up Harris's attach� case without breaking stride. Help.
It's a short guy finally helps him up. To lift Harris to his feet, the short guy has to hoist him by his armpits practically over his own head. Harris thanks the short guy who says, no problem, and walks away. The short guy has short hair, with one long strand in back, like a tail.
At work, the response is exclamatory: Oh, my god! No! Really? Nobody stopped? Just walked away with it? Shit! Harris has brought something new to the context. People cluck at him when they walk by his desk. The co-worker-ex-lover who still talks to him pats him on the arm.
Could this be a new conversational gambit? XXX, Harris could say, platform and scaffold, falling and thief, ha-ha, and isn't life X. How to tell it charming and self-deprecating, rather than pathetic and frightening. Help me.
Harris's head says, take a cab home.... Harris's body walks to the usual station.
The train pulls in. Yellow letters painted on the platform warn STAND CLEAR. Harris watches the scaffold extend to the closed doors of the car. It's undramatic. The doors open and everybody walks around him to get on.
Harris's head says watch out, don't trust it, don't walk on it. Harris's body leaps into the car just before the doors close. A guy gives him a dirty look.
When Harris goes to work the next day....
Who stepped over him? Who watched him fall? Who would have found it even more exciting if he had died? Who would have talked about it at work? Who would have been annoyed that the train was taken out of service while Harris's body was recovered? Who stole his attach� case? Is the thief on the train? Is the guy with the tail?
Standing Harris looks at heads.
The heads in the car are motley patchwork. Blonde hair teased up into pastry rolls, coarse black hair dyed red, stubbled tonsure, helmet of silver, inky shimmering froth. They are an ill-plowed field. The heads shake when the mouths speak.
The bodies of the heads press against him, the bodies and Harris's sway, the bodies generate heat. Disembodied smells rise up. A smell is a residue of a body, it is a disembodiment. If a mind is disembodied, does that make the mind a smell? Perfume.
Harris sneezes. A nice small lady, wide head tilted up under braided basket of hair, says God bless you. Thinks Harris, I get it. God bless your mind when you sneeze it.
Thank you. You wouldn't push me under a train.
No, of course not.
Harris breathes shallowly, deliberately. Harris's head expands and, paradoxically, empties.
The nice small lady gets out at the next stop. Everybody else is suspect.
Whose head stepped over him? Whose head watched him fall? Whose head would have found it even more exciting if he had died? Whose head didn't give a damn?
Which one of you took my attach� case?
I said, which one of you heads took my attach� case?
Now the heads are eyes. Eyes are brown with spots like fetal chickens, they are blue with radiating lines, they are shades, they are mirrors hiding mirrors. Cool air sweeps around him as the bodies draw away. Eyes are almonds, heads are eggs.
A near tall head speaks over shorter others.
Whyncha shut up.
Young head, smooth and fresh, a glitter cushion delineated square, shaven above small ears. Onyx egg, burnt-almond almonds afloat in clear whites.
You makin the ladies nervous.
I'm sorry, my eggs and almonds are getting confused.
Whatever; just shut up and quit makin a scene.
Have you seen the man with the tail?
No monkeys on this train. Ha.
You're not the one who took my attach� case, are you?
You callin me a thief?
An older amber egg pokes in, bobbing in front of the tall egg's chest.
Easy brother, can't you see the man's disturbed?
He got no right to be callin me a thief. I'm an honest man.
'sokay, son, the man's not in his right mind.
A bolt, Harris is electrified.
Yes that's it exactly! The right mind. The platform failed me and I fell out of my right mind.
Harris's large hands grasp the shoulders beneath the amber egg.
I lost my context at 14th Street.
There you go, that's the next stop.
You'll help me find it, please? Harris draws the amber egg closer.
Sure I'll help. Next stop. You ought to let go of me now.
Right. It's probably waiting for me.
Yep, probably. Don't you want to let go of me now?
Harris draws the amber egg older head's shoulders even closer. The whites of his eyes are ivory, the irises brown as earth. A grounded man.
God bless you.
We all need God's blessing some time, yes. Don't you think...?
Harris bows until his egg touches warm skin over skull. Slight adhesion.
Does your mind stand up when your body lies down?
Let go of me, sir.
See, he's some kind of weird punk faggot.
I must insist that you let go of me, but Harris's arms clutch him, Harris's egg nests with his. The train swerves the long curve north of 14th Street and their bodies totter together... disembodies mingle.
Shit, he's gonna kill him!
Heads knock and crack, heads are real. Sympathetic head is torn away. Bodies are real, bodies wrestle, many bodies pull at one. Harris is dragged away, limbs to the four corners. Stagger all as the train pulls in to the station. Mechanical screech, dangling head.
Get him out, get him out.
Don't hurt him.
The other door, no, the other door!
Through the wrong door they bear him away.
When Harris was standing up, he thought of his head as an oval, with almond apertures for eyes through which his mind looked out. His mind rode in the oval.
Now he is lying down. He twists his horizontal head to spy his standing mind. His mind waves from the other door. Why does it just stand there? Doesn't the mind lie down with gravity? Even perfume falls.
� 1997 Michael Rosenthal
Michael Rosenthal runs LEGIBLE. He's participated in countless writing groups and reading series, and spent two happy months at The MacDowell Colony. After many publishers said nice things and did nothing, and a couple of agents said nice things and did nothing, he decided to start his own press and website. Now he can do something for himself and for other writers. You can buy his collection, Every Gentle Man, here.
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