The
Beautifully Worthless is a brilliant novel in verse about a runaway
waitress and her Dalmatian, Rorschach, who leave Brooklyn to
find hope in a town named Camus, Idaho. Through a series of hilarious
and heartbreaking letters to the ex back in Brooklyn, combined
with some of the most exquisite poetry ever written about love
and heartache and madness and crushes gone far askew, our heroine
invites the reader to tag along with her and her faithful companion
on their postmodern odyssey through an American landscape filled
with ex-girlfriends, cute boys, a mysterious cave, mental institutions,
sports radio, warm six-packs, roulette wheels, murder sites,
Dairy Queens, and pineapple-upside-down cakes with family in
Vegas.
Dear Lamby,
I’m in Idaho drinking my last warm beer. As soon as I crossed
the Utah/ Idaho border, I went to the Information Center. The
old man working there looked exactly like the old man at the
Ogallala, Nebraska, Welcome Center. I’m starting to wonder
if these senior volunteers aren’t holograms. From the window,
I could see Rorschach tied to a picnic table waiting for me.
I asked the hologram what was the best interstate to get to CAMUS.
He said, Camus? I said, Yes sir, CAMUS, IDAHO. You mean, Camas,
he said. No sir, CAMUS, like the writer, Albert Camus. There’s
no Camus in Idaho, ma’am. My heart began the slow tumble
of a flowerpot off a fire escape. It’s right here on my
map, I said, sliding my finger down to “C” where
CAMUS should have been. It said CAMAS COUNTY. Lamby, there’s
no CAMUS.
xoxox
This morning I started out for Camas, my last stab at finding
a miracle town somewhere. It was so hot, Rorschach didn’t
have the energy to bend down and drink from her bowl. After
an hour of driving, we came upon this huge hand-painted billboard
that said cave in crude, brown letters. I’d always wanted
to go to a cave, so I followed a series of arrows down a gravel
path, until I saw a tiny wooden shack that said CAVE OFFICE.
Leaving Rorschach in the truck, I went in. A young boy emerged
from behind the desk, with a book in his hand. At first I thought
he was a girl because he had an androgynous Dutch-Boy haircut.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.”
On the wall behind him was a sign that said ADULTS $4.00.
“Is the cave open?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Can I bring my dog in?”
“Yeah.”
The room felt like no one had been in it for years. He must sit
here all day reading books, I thought. I got Rorschach out of
the truck and went back inside the CAVE OFFICE. When I reentered
the room, the boy emerged exactly as he had just moments before,
with his blond-brown hair in his face, and the book folded in
half over his hand. He looked at me like I was someone different
than the person who was just there thirty seconds ago. Weakly,
he smiled.
“Is the cave far from here?” I asked.
He shook his head no, and pointed toward the back of the office.
The office was also a MUSEUM filled with dusty, taxidermed animals,
birds in glass cases, long bones in trays all around the floor,
and cheap rings made out of railroad nails in a giant candy jar
on the counter. I paid him the four dollars and started toward
the back of the museum where he’d signaled the cave was.
Rorschach was choking herself, trying to lunge at the prehistoric
bones and glass cases filled with stuffed hawks. I tugged at
her leash, trying to keep her from knocking over a stuffed hawk.
“You need a lantern,” the cave boy shouted after me.
My heart cemented shut inside me. Turning toward him I said, “I
need a lantern?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it scary in the cave?” I asked.
“Some people find it scary.”
“Are there animals down there? Will I need to wear something
besides these flip-flops?”
“No,” he said.
“No, meaning there aren’t animals, or no I won’t need
different shoes?” I wanted to get the animal thing straight
right now.
“There aren’t animals,” he said.
“If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, come get me,” I
pleaded.
“It takes longer than fifteen minutes,” he said.
What had possessed me to come here? When I saw the cave bill-board
and enthusiastically sped down the gravel road, I imagined—a
freshly painted handrail, well-lit stalactites, and if not a
tour guide then at least other tourists. In spite of everything,
I wound down the gravel path until the opening of the cave came
into the sight. I wished I had worn different shoes now. Pebbles
were getting caught between the flip-flop bottom and my foot.
Rorschach, eager to meet our respective deaths, tugged toward
the cave. I was off-balanced, with the lantern in one hand and
a Dalmatian at full-tilt in the other—the whole time pebbles
stabbed into the bottom of my feet. We entered the cave. Immediately
I wanted to cry, turn around, and beg the boy at the desk to
come with me. There was enough light from the opening to see
burned-out lightbulbs hanging at irregular distances along the
path. After three steps, it would be pitch-black. I continued
to take steps toward the center of the cave. The lantern was
a joke. The only thing it allowed me to see was an enormous shadow
of my clenched jaw bobbing against the rock wall. The burned-out
lightbulbs were adding up. Where were the ice sculptures and
ponds of blue-green water? What if this whole cave thing was
a facade to rob tourists? I’d be the famous statistic of
the robbery victim who was killed for not carrying any money.
My mom always told me to keep twenty dollars in my sock so in
case I was robbed I’d have something to give the robber.
I could see the headline now, KILLED FOR FIFTEEN CENTS! The taxidermed
birds in glass cases back at the museum flashed in my brain.
I pictured my face on the stuffed hawk. I began to race down
the trail, my flip-flops slapping the floor. Somehow, the sentence
being repeated inside me was, “You paid the four dollars,
you can’t turn around.” Rorschach would protect me
if someone jumped out. Giant shadows surrounded me. The occasional
drip, dripped. I came upon the first informative sign—a
list of minerals the cave was made of. Holding the lantern up
to the wall, I tried to see a mineral. A B-movie I’d seen
in the seventh grade called, Tourist Trap flashed in my brain.
It was about a man who kidnapped women and covered them in plaster,
leaving only their nose open so they could breathe. Then before
he’d cover their nostrils, he’d say, “Goodbye,
baaaaby!” He was turning them into mannequins, but I can’t
remember why. I mean, besides the fact that he was crazy. We
began to run—passing another burned-out lightbulb, an extension
cord, more dripping. The shadows circled like sharks. I kept
telling myself, I’m not cool enough to die this way. Another
sign—about volcanoes and how they relate to caves. Slap,
slap, slap. Rorschach was busy smelling the blood droplets of
similar past fools that were embedded in the floor. The third
sign talked about harmless bats with such and such wingspan.
BATS! But the boy at the desk had promised no animals. Were bats
a technical exception, like reptile or bird family? I envisioned
bumping into the bat nest, and the bats swarming toward my face—Mama
Bat in the background with her index finger pointed at me, shaking
it back and forth and going, tisk, tisk, tisk. “Bats are
good,” the sign said, “they eat insects.” What’s
wrong with insects being in a cave? It wasn’t a restaurant.
There was no way I could deal with a bat flying into my face.
With the last of my energy, I slapped my way to the final sign.
YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF THE TRAIL, GO NO FURTHER! YOU CAN
NOW SEE WHY CAVES WERE GREAT PLACES FOR BEARS, SLAVES ON THE
RUN, MOONSHINERS AND MURDERERS! It never occurred to me that
I would have to go back the way I came, even though that’s
what distinguishes a cave from a tunnel. I looked for a lost
decanter of moonshine. With the fear of bears, bats, rapists,
and murderers on my trail, I started back toward the cave opening.
In my brain was the villain’s voice from Tourist Trap saying, “Goodbye,
baaaaby.” Abruptly Rorschach stopped. I covered my nose
waiting for some stubble-chinned man to jump out and slap plaster
over my nostrils. Rorschach hunched over and began taking a dump.
Baffled at my desire to respect a place that had caused me such
suffering, I picked up after her when she was finished. Bag of
shit and careening Dalmatian in one hand and lantern in the other,
we raced down the trail, until the light of the entrance became
a larger and larger pinhole. A flock of winged silhouettes erupted
out of the belly of light. “Why me, why me?” I cried
dropping my head and making a final lunge toward outside, just
long enough to see the sparrows I thought were BATS fly out the
mouth of the cave and into the afternoon.
Exhausted, I headed up the gravel path, back to the cave office.
I felt strangely close to the boy who made this experience possible
for me. I wanted to ask him what people found attractive about
being in the cave. Rorschach and I entered the back of the museum,
and I choked up on the leash so she couldn’t get too much
of a lead. She wasn’t budging though. The cave office cat
was glaring at her. I was not in the mood for cat/dog trivial
bullshit, and I dragged her to the front. The boy emerged.
Putting my lantern down, I said, “I’ve never felt
so scared in my life.”
He smiled. He smiled a lot. The cat lunged at Rorschach and she
cowered. I wanted to know this boy inside and out. He stood in
front of me with his Dutch-Boy haircut and book in one hand.
He looked busy. There was a population of four people in his
town, and no one else was visiting this backyard cave, what could
he have to do? He seemed restless to get back to his book.
“Do you go in the cave every day?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What do you do, read?” I asked.
“Just mess around.”
I hope he doesn’t jerk off down there, I thought. I simply
wanted him to be the shy-intellectual-paintboy-haircut-reading-cavedweller
whom I was going to run away with. His thumb tapped the spine
of the book. I felt pressured to say the right thing so he would
rather talk to me than go back to his book. What was he reading?
He looked about fifteen. He must live in the other wood shack
next to the cave office with his family. I wonder where the family
was. I didn’t even want to go to Camas anymore. I wanted
to stay with him, run through the desert at night—explore
the cave with him as my guide, holding his sweaty pink hand in
mine, take him away from his horrible family who kept him from
everyone, just so he’d mind the cave. We’d go to
Boise, slip into a gay bar, he’d point out the kinds of
guys he liked to me, I’d teach him how to kiss... “Like
this,” I’d say, moving my tongue over his, like a
basting brush over an uncooked loaf of bread. The roof came crashing
in on my fantasy. I’m gay. He’s fifteen. At the very
least, that’s abduction. Rorschach lurched away from the
cave office cat again. The opportunity for us to bond was slipping
away. He hung out in the cave every day. He had to be totally
cool or totally crazy. I tried to think of something to say that
would make him want to go on a trip with me.
“There was this woman anthropologist or archaeologist or
some-thing who was writing a book, I don’t remember where, I think
Australia, anyway, she went into a cave and lived there for over
a year all by herself. She brought all her supplies in and lived
without a watch so she had no way to tell whether it was day
or night. That whole time she never came out. When she finished
her experiment and went back to her life, she killed herself
because her reality was so fucked up. She’d lost all sense
of time.”
He lifted his eyebrows, seeming momentarily interested, and said, “Really?”
“Isn’t that intense?”
“Yeah.”
Rorschach whined. The cat was moving in on her. I was still holding
the bag of shit from the cave. There was so much I wanted to
talk to him about, but Rorschach was trying to squirm away from
the cat. He’d seemed intrigued when I was telling him the
cave story but then began to tap on his book again.
“Well, see you later,” I said.
“Okay.”
“What’s your name?”
“Peter.”
“See you, Peter.”
“Okay.”
I got in the truck, resenting Rorschach and the cave office cat
dispute. If the cat hadn’t been there, maybe I could’ve
sat with Peter forever.
I want night to fall, not the sun going down
but for all that star-bitten black to push into me
fell in love with a boy once, in Idaho
it was his face, the way the blond hair swept across it
sometimes that happens, you look into a face and forget
the fact that the miracle that was supposed to happen, never
did
sometimes the moon’s enough
and sometimes it isn’t
I’ve overlooked full moons before,
left them thumbtacked,
glowing holy and white in the perfect sky
I left
the cave wanting solely to be with Peter. The farther I went,
the stronger my urge to go back for him. On the roadside,
prisoners picked up trash. I hoped they’d all committed
triple murders to be out in that heat. Finally, I reached a
sign that said ENTERING CAMAS COUNTY. I held my breath, waiting
for some sort of feeling to come over me, but none did. I thought
I might be directed in some way, the wind changing, a terrible
storm, the prophetic face of a cow turning toward me. But the
hologram at the Information Center hadn’t lied—there
was nothing in CAMAS. No houses. No people. Only sectioned-off
ranches. On the border when you leave the county, there’s
a convenience store and gas station. I pulled in the parking
lot, thought about getting gas, but didn’t. Peter kept
running around in my brain. Thought about getting a beer for
the truck, but didn’t.
The whole open road and nowhere to go
I held a gun once, loved my hands that kept
the metal smell of the handle even hours later
loved the breaking wave my stomach became each time I held it
I was pretty sure it wasn’t loaded, so I put it to my
head
met a guy at an A.A. meeting
who shot himself in the head and lived
he held a job afterwards and everything
knew another guy who got shot
walking to the restaurant where we worked
said it felt like someone threw a rock at the back of his neck
hated guns until I felt one in my hand
the little spy gun, the little Colt .25
the whole open road and nowhere to go
Dear Lamby,
I’m at the Covered Wagon Motel right over the Idaho/Nevada
border in JACKPOT, NEVADA. The marquee out front says CERTAINTY
IS A PRISON. ROOMS $19.99 A NIGHT. I’ve been here three
days, and for three days it’s been 105 degrees. I thought
I’d win me some money at the roulette wheel. On the contrary,
I’ve lost almost everything, and tomorrow I have to check
out by eleven. The motel woman shoots me the dirtiest looks,
like it’s my fault my clothes are filthy. She’s a
face-painted whore anyway, and if there was a Bible in the nightstand,
I’d find the passage that says bad things about women like
her, but her motel doesn’t have a Bible or a phone. I’ve
been spending my time drinking warm Budweiser and watching Court
TV. Then at five o’clock, I walk across the street and
get the $3.99 Prime Rib Dinner. It’s big enough so I don’t
need to eat anything but that for the day. I’m going to
really try not to go back to the casino tonight.
xoxox
I don’t know much about leaving town
just that the wooden handle that pumps that well
keeps going up and down inside of me.
Once I heard a ship outlined by tiny yellow lights
call out to me through the midnight fog
the ground broke inside me
once my life was a broken bicycle I couldn’t get to roll
again
and I fell in love with a boy in Idaho
it was the way his blond hair swept across his face
Dear Lamby,
I’ve got to get out of here before the motel lady kills
me. Last night I stacked the chairs up against the door, so if
she tried to get in, it would be harder. Rorschach hates being
cooped up in the room all day. I don’t know what to do
next. I thought about calling this guy Peter who I met at a cave,
but I don’t know if his family would mind if I stayed there.
The other option is I could go to Las Vegas. It’s only
six hours from where I am. But I’d like to feel a little
more together before I see my family.
xoxox
An escape route can be anything
one night in Brooklyn, coming home from work,
I kept going, followed the Belt Parkway alongside the water
the shape of ships sat still under the bridge
you couldn’t see the ships, just tiny lights all around
them
like boat-shaped escape doors, sitting on top of the water
square black holes and rectangles, all lit up
I wanted to yell out to someone sleeping on the ship
ask them to open the escape door for me
I almost fell asleep that night driving
my arms tingled, tired from holding the steering wheel
the next day I looked around my house
not sure if I’d come back and drove to ATLANTIC CITY
walking across the boardwalk—the bottom half of my pants
were wet from waves I didn’t move away from—
a drunk man screamed at me and above him
the sun was bright pink and round with the top blown off
pink brains blown across the sky
police dogs growled in a police car,
a woman sang, Lord, come by here
I stood numb before his screaming
too sad to move, I stared at the pink, pink sun
I’d been like him before, a fish caught in its own net
glittering gills trying to open against the air
except I was like that for days that turned into years
not years that turned into a life, or an entire family tree.
Dear Lamby,
I tried to call Peter. The woman who answered the phone said
Peter was in the cave. She sounded mistrustful. I think it was
his mother. I’m afraid to call back in case she has the
cops trace the call, even though it’s not like I did anything
illegal. Unless of course, making new friends is illegal all
of a sudden. I’m sorry I’ve been a bad girlfriend.
I took off on this trip to try and figure out how to not be such
an infidel. But of course it all turned to shit.
xoxox
Dear Peter,
I hope you get this letter. I’m the woman who came to the
cave with my Dalmatian a few days ago. Remember, I told you the
story about the archaeologist who killed herself?
Dear Peter,
I’m writing because I’m in a little bit of trouble,
and I had a good feeling about you as a person. I think because
I’ve always felt comfortable around people who befriend
literature.
Peter,
I’m the woman who came to the cave. Remember, I had the
Dalmatian. I thought maybe you’d like to go to the wrong
number. It’s a gay bar in Boise.
Dear Peter,
Is the cave hiring right now?
Dear Peter,
I was there a few days ago with my Dalmatian, and I was wondering
if there were currently any career openings at the cave. I know
I seemed afraid of the cave, but I could do various odds and
ends in the office, and if absolutely necessary, I would go into
the cave. I need cash.
Dear Peter,
I made your acquaintance a few days ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t
have any business cards on me when I visited your cave. In retrospect,
I think you might be the perfect candidate for a program my nonprofit
company puts on called, “Big City, for Big Boys.” We
work at giving small town kids a shot at seeing the big city.
[END]
© 2005 Ali Liebegott - Contributor's
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