 How many of you have ever had a misheard lyric? Yes, oh good if you tell me come tell me about it afterwards. I really want to hear about it So forever. I thought that John Fogarty sang I see a brand new horizon Instead of bad moon rising was brand new horizon. It was like much better. I don't know why so if you have one of those come Tell me about it. Please come tell you about it. This is about one of those Misheard lyric type of things All right. Hmm. This is This is zombie cat allergy or How to save your sex life in five easy steps One first put the cat out There's gonna be sex I promise But first a story once there was and twice there wasn't two boys Walking down the street in Constantinople Both wearing vests and red fez pants held up by string bare football playing feet and the street dust is yellow One boy walks behind the other on stumpy legs The first has crescent moon shoulder blades and solid hairy calves Between their carefully separated hands is a sack The sack is Meowing it's clawing. It's making a little burlap bumps here and there pulling at its rope The boys walk this way past the wide gutters of Constantinople Sometimes the water runs clear and you can see the gold tiles wash from high as Sophia Sometimes the water runs fast and you can see the chips in the blue mosque Sometimes it runs brown and you can see that someone upstream is taking the shit out of the bag a Claw or a whisker sticks out the knot like a divining rod and Feels that the water is near and so are the dock side tenor ease and either way Things are not looking good for this stray gray tabby in the bag The boys arrive on the dock at orange sky sundown drop the bag. It goes One boy says Can we just leave it here go play football? He's looking at the taller boys upper lip where fine golden hair is a sprouted overnight You're scared says the other boy eyelashes sweeping the floor but What if it grants us three wishes and what if there is mercy and what if all of God's creatures? The bag is not listening to the speech the bag is doing little somersaults trying to skimper skedaddle away away from the boys in the hungry lapping waters You're being a girl Says the taller boy turning away and that's all it takes Outside the call to prayer outside the blue tiles outside the rotting chemical purple tannery smell the younger boy picks up the bag Takes it to the cold gray water and holds it down until all the fight is gone He makes wishes anyway one for a football one for a gold plated yacht to take him to America and one we don't know The year is 1930 and one of these boys is my father If a Turkish stray cat could think it might think Maybe I can swim Maybe I can be a murk at maybe I can be part of that world For the water rushes up and around its head fur flattening like storm sunflowers are a best To Talk about it Last night you said to me It's happening to us. It's inevitable. It's happening to my friends. It's happening to your friends and we're next in line I'm telling you it's happening What's happening? I say There is water dripping from the ceiling and outside a stray cat is meowing at the door you say Lesbian death bed That's a myth. I say it anyway. It's bed death not death bed What's the difference? One's a desert and one's a black hole One's permanent and the other one results in ghosts One you have to bury the body the other one is no body at all pay attention small word big difference. I Don't see a difference you say come to bed But the fear the water rushing in the tangled burlap. I think of all the things are legal in this country So long as one adult is consenting like waterboarding I think of all the things I've failed to stand up against and behind the scrim of time One cat bloats in that waterway between Europe and Asia Constantinople in Istanbul it swallows the tiles and the prayers and the tannery chemicals And this is where it begins if you have to ask but you don't come to bed now three make the bed My first death bed was my father's Bright yellow queen sized sagging around his dumpling shape and his lungs drowning him three miles from any ocean I wanted to ask where were you during the war? I wanted to ask which boy were you don't want to drown the cat or the other one I wanted to ask where were you in the 60s, but he was underwater on his bed and I to him I was a girl He surfaced once to gasp a sentence in French the syntax so perfect I'll never forget it It has become for me very difficult to converse. He said I didn't know what to say after that a Dead cat back stroked between us This is what I know about the man He was born in Constantinople Grew up in Istanbul. He was a poor kid in the football scholarship He was Muslim or he has Protestant or he was atheist which is to say he was pretending not to be Jewish Pretending that all his family didn't speak Ladino. Where were you during the war? Instead he was Turkish and they became American Small words big difference This is where I remember about my father He wore the Jalaba. He read romances. He told stories of Nasir din Hoja and His donkey and once when I was tiny and I ran and it was lost in what felt like a dark and terrible forest But was really probably three trees He caught me and picked me up and said what fathers sometimes say that I would never be lost And he told the immigrant cover story many of us have heard and told it different every time That he arrived in New York with nothing but glass cutters in his pocket that he arrived in New York But nothing but worry beads in his pocket that he arrived in New York with nothing But a deck of cards in his pocket that he arrived with nothing But all the treasures all the treasures of the exotic Orient in his pocket that he arrived with nothing I tell you nothing at all Or maybe he arrived with a dead cat in his pocket We stopped talking when I transformed in his eyes from girl from child to girl Small world small word big difference. Of course. I was a stray Compare contrast another deathbed his sister my aunt dying of a disease that seems to have afflicted a certain kind of woman of her generation the disease of no husband the disease of short hair and cigarettes of 100 puff pastries cigarette a barricade rolled so tightly around invented Feta Her death bed for me was an email subject line Sorry, you've run out of ants in this family. We're not sentimental in this family. We might be drowners of cats This year I had my first Facebook death bed a post between cat videos status I'm not here anymore Likes will be construed as hugs likes will be construed as prayers likes will be construed as two little fingers pointing up Like this so it doesn't go away. I Heard you can turn people into things after you die Finally objectified once and for all you can squeeze grandma's ashes into a diamond That's nice. You can cremate your lover and have them poured into a dildo. That's great. Don't do that with grandma at first At first I thought I wanted that and then they worried me because what if I haunt you with this dead cat And then you have to call in and Lorraine Warren the mediums with their Bibles to come exercise your sex toys So I decided this When I die, I want to be made into something really tacky something embarrassing forever that you won't be able to get rid of When I die and make me into a sexy leg lamp with gilded edges When I die make me an alabaster poodle neon telephone Make me a coffee cup Make me into a t-shirt t-shirt that says my girlfriend died not like that was this fucking t-shirt and Then my death bed can be the back of your closet bottom drawer Where you put the pants that don't fit you and where it smells the most like you Yes, I'm getting to bed one more page. I promise of My father we had two things one a box of ashes that wouldn't float out to sea and to this dead cat that won't leave me alone it has hollow bones and little excess for eyes and It's waiting for me right behind that door. I'm coming to bed. I promise for Role play if it helps So if a Facebook death bed and an email death bed, why not a lesbian death bed for my father? fine Now we're both girls see how it feels First give everyone face piercings and arm tattoos and great hair and beanies and here we are at mango my father and me And he's had three too many gin tonics and the lines of the bathroom is way too long And he's so over it and we smoke cigarettes and they get to ask him anything I want But we play that game where you make things funny by adding in bed Where were you during the war? in bed Where were you during the first occupation of Palestine in bed? Where were you during the 50s and 60s and 70s and how do you want me to live my life in bed? Did you ever hurt anyone did I ever kill anyone did you ever drown any cats? And how am I supposed to figure out a masculinity and then a femininity and then a me and I would like to admit to him Then sometimes I'm lost and I'd like to admit to him that sometimes I'm not really girl or at least not just a girl And I would like to drag him on to the dance floor because oh my god, they're playing our song But before that he needs to teach me to tie Windsor and If as long as get tired in this fantasy EG from being out of breath EG from dancing too much I would totally let him crash on my couch and if he can't sleep I would totally sing him this song we took with us the first time we did the immigrant thing Running out of Spain 500 years ago with nothing but guitars in our pockets Dorme Dorme querido Hicco Dorme Dorme consa boy Can't believe I did that by the time they get to bed There's a dead cat memory there instead of you It's clammy and smells like Brian and Amber and we curl up together under the burlap sheets five last repeat Pop quiz When a cat is drowned a dusk in the Bosphorus on the last day of Constantinople Can it come clawing its way out sputtering up in Istanbul? I Asked because I like to think that words and stories are slippery, but stay the same at heart Small words all of us and that we're just going around and around again so many chances to finally get it right So There's two boys once there was and wasn't once there wasn't two boys Both girls walking down Valencia Street and this being sandwiches go They're both wearing vests and hats and one of them is saying be honest the fez on or off. What's cute? Well, it's better and Between their hands is all the meowing head-tight baggage of where we came from and how we got here and Sometimes drippy and overflows and history is such a drowned zombie cat It's stupid and tragic and drippy and overdramatic and funny and it has claws and I like to imagine that even those of us that grew up not knowing Could do the right thing and that it would all that all it would take to untie all the bad nuts Is all and that all it would take to untie all the bad knots is maybe one finger maybe two Maybe more and after all these centuries you could still come up together gasping on the shore Because there isn't all that much difference in words after all and because it would have turned out in the end That a pussycat is pretty resilient even a dead one Thank you so much