I’ll Dog-Ear the Death Card So You Get It Every Time
(Crow Jane: Manifesto Anonyme)

On September 12^th of the signal year 2001, having abruptly become Day One of our
truly new millennium, that “morning after” the annihilation of the World Trade
Towers, Crow put out a call. Through a complicated set of shunts, traps, drops, and
blinds an anonymous summons went off to points uncharted. Dubbed The Garbo
Mask, it includes their Manifesto Anonyme. “I want to be alone.”

Who got it, we dunno. Letters arrived, sealed with earwax (an injunction to keep
mum) borne by passenger pigeons. Printed paper-boats followed runnels under rain.
Telegraphy. Telepathy. Hand signs. Steganographics. Six were broadcast over
airwaves, coded into music. Ten left on subway trains like dogs abandoned in the
Bronx, adopted wolfing Nathan’s foot-longs later on Coney Island. In watertight
containers messages ferried through Montmartre’s townhouse drainpipe skein. So
well-cloaked that even Crow could not gauge the full (or null?) extent of her domain,
she welcomed unknown respondents to Crow Jane’s first and only “face-to-face” full
house, all members meeting.

Soon, a one night screening of Irma Vep, V.A.M.P.I.R.E. was scheduled at
Manhattan’s Zeigfeld Theater. While open to the public, invited insurgents
insinuated invisibly in.

Mauve velvet oval chairs and thalo swooping stair, this showplace exudes splendors
spent on Hollywood’s great studios’ grand premieres. 12 bucks for Maggie Cheung in
a rubber cat suit: G.T.F. (Guaranteed tight fit/Got to fuck). Located just off former
porn’s dulled Disneyworld Times Square.

Dark black. Specked with crystal pencil spots pinned like stars on promenade, the
Janes stare in one direction so they won’t know who they are. It’s a peepshow
planetarium. At a skin flick everyone gets a whole row to himself.

Blind men tell no tales. In this sure sense sworn to secrecy, disguise is best
secured. Could your own date be a Jane? One can only hope. May not be the
whole damn show but it’s the ticket to get in. Pour-on zippered rubber. Cruella’s
cat in slither leather slides by a mansard roof. Freeze. Flicker. Burn. They’re here,
but where? Like colored cards with numbered doors, each Jane hides behind
herself.

Pill-sized blue running lights trim its plum carpet floor.

“Now kiss my ass in Macy’s window!” quoth the Crows forevermore.

return to SHAMPOO 41