I'm Afraid I Can't Do That
Alexa Vallejo | Poetry
Something about the celestial baby at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey only its head is the head of Stanley Kubrick it shoots lasers out of its eyes it speaks with the voice of Orson Welles.
Something about how Kubrick Baby burst through the clouds like the Batwing and silhouetted itself against the full moon like the Batwing and oh god the havoc oh the humanity.
Something about none of us believing he had that dream but all of us impressed with his febrile mind anyway.
Something about how he got a blowjob while watching that movie in his mom’s basement but maybe I am thinking about a different dude or basement or blowjob.
Something about how we may have named a star after him paid for a framed certificate even though who arbitrates the naming of stars what authority do they even have anyway I think it was his birthday but I can’t be sure because my memory is a piece of shit.
Something about how John de Lancie was supposedly a dick at that convention with his dad I mean Q is kind of a dick too but he autographed a headshot so there’s that.
Something about his dad dying long ago but he never talked about it so we never asked.
Something about his dog Astro to whom he posed existential questions like Astro do you have any sense of your essential dogness what is it that separates Astro from say chair or couch do you even understand these concepts.
Something about how he gave Astro to a family on a farm saving the dog the fate of a million lonesome days in a finished basement site of so many overdue Blockbuster movies and instant messenger conversations and also blowjobs.
Something about how we were boys and so of course we watched prurient videos of women on the internet and sometimes they weren’t even naked sometimes it was just two fully-clothed women kissing and together he and I watched and our boy chests filled with longing both sexual and not and I think our hearts broke with the assured certainty that we would never be pretty we would never inspire such lust or at least mine did my heart broke but dude look how she’s looking into the camera look right there isn’t that so fucking hot.
Something about understanding hubris at a tender age maybe six oh the parables you told the grownup words you hurled as an army of prideful men sank into the sea.
Alexa Vallejo is a trans Filipina-American writer and musician in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Guernica, and The Rumpus, among others. She was born in Delaware in 1982, just as the world was starting to end.