Mirror John

I am John. I am waiting here in this furnished room for John, another John, not John myself. I am waiting here for a mirror John. I wait. That is what I do. I just wait and wait. It seems never-ending here, all this waiting and waiting all this time for my mirror John, who is on his way here to this furnished room, in a former place of worship, converted into an impromptu theater, so that we, me and my mirror John, can become two echoing mirrors of each other’s Johnness, while my actors are downstairs dutifully prepping for tonight’s performance of a modern version of Euripides’s The Trojan Women. And so to pass the time I play some of my record albums and I type a mantra until my mirror John arrives: Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John Waiting for John……

John finally arrived. He was more than two hours late. After twenty minutes, he said he had to leave. Seems he had an appointment with someone else. Lou Reed’s Transformer album was on the turntable. The last song on the album, “Perfect Day”, was playing. As I walked John to the door, a surge of anger erupted from the pit of my stomach. I could not contain myself. I turned, went to the turntable and yanked off the album, scratching the hell out of it, ruining it forever. I then glared at John with the most hateful expression that I could muster (being an actor by trade, I have practiced my hateful expression numerous times in front of a mirror). While Lou Reed sang It’s a perfect day, just a perfect day, I looked at John as he headed for the door and shouted, “Oh, yeah, it’s been a perfect day, all right. Just another fucked up perfect day,” and I proceeded to smash the album into two pieces over my knee. It took three attempts. But I did it. John looked unfazed and said in a calm voice, “You didn’t have to do that, John.” Then he turned and walked out the door. I stared at the empty doorway for a long time. I was on the verge of crying but, at the same time, I wanted to kill the one I loved.

It was a really, really bad, bad night. Not unlike the night I was raped by a young man at the university after we spent hours drinking booze at my off-campus apartment. But back to what happened with my mirror John. To calm myself after the scene with him, I thought about doing a champagne enema. Then I decided against it. I poured myself a plentiful glass of whiskey straight, drinking it as I looked through the cardboard box where I keep my old 45 rpms. I found the disc that I wanted to hear: “Walk Away, Renée”. It created the desired effect. I shed a few stupid tears and felt a little bit better. So I kept playing the song over and over again, and each time I did, I felt more like my old self. I looked for the next 45 that I wanted to hear, “Can’t Help Falling in Love”. Thank heavens for pop music and whiskey.

Michael Brandonisio is a creative writer, photographer and visual artist. Besides poetry, he has written two short one-act plays and has published fiction using the pseudonym Linc Madison. His work has appeared in Angry Old Man Magazine, Word For/Word, Otoliths and elsewhere. He lives in New York City.