{a collection of stories, projects, taunts and fragments by Michael Stewart}
Michael Hugh Stewart hails from a town pretending to be a city. He has pretty much the same body parts you’ve got, give or take, as well as an unnatural predilection for all things lacquered. He is the author of more books than he has written.
Known for his longevity, tubing and his ability to pick up nine babies, nary a scratch given, M. Stewart is what you’ll read about when there’s nothing left to read about. He is the sound heard over the vacuum. After such a bold dismissal of the parish, M. Stewart ascended the beacon, and blessed the grandstand. Cheers and boats collided ashore, the gulls yellowed. M. Stewart saw to it, and was pleased by the foul.
A small-time grifter in his youth, Mr. Stewart underwent a profound rebirth usually reserved for whiskey drinkers with deep Tennessee drawls. We will imagine his revival speeches, though none were ever recorded, as full-throated, fiery admonitions of adultery, witchcraft, cocaine abuse, gambling, and drunken songsmanship. The brothers and sisters gathered in tents for hymns and potato salad and the subdued summer raising of hands might not even have noticed his arrival, and by the time he had slipped behind the pulpit, raised his fist in the air, made all the sinners swoon, and slipped away again, it would only be a child or two who might have noticed that Michael had never once uttered a call to salvation, had not given mention to the name of the redeemer, and had, most surprisingly of all, not demanded a penny for his ministry. In his sermons, sin had no antecedent. There was no confessor. No Christ. Only a damned world in need of awakening. He seemed to understand better than others that the dreamer who knows he must wake has no notion of the world he is about to enter, only that it will be much brighter than the dreamed world, much harsher, its consequences more abiding. After three years on the revival circuit, Mr. Stewart has expanded his interests to the secular world, but left behind an automaton crafted in his image that is carted from tent meeting to park gathering on the bed of a truck, calling all lost souls to the river, and it is anyone’s guess what they plan to do when they arrive there. Even his machine is always long gone.
In a world where the mundane can become overwhelming, where mediocrity grasps at ones heels as a dismal bog wrenches hope from an already succumbing soul, an encounter with Michael is a blessing unto itself. He breathes integrity and passion into each word that he composes and, in much the same way, into each conversation of which he is a part. Intelligently, his fervor captures the jaded and the rapturous alike. Wholesomely, his enlightenment fills the voids, the very niches, unknown even to the introspective. Michael. He speaks with purpose; he writes with vitality.
Michael Stewart was born in the foothills of Appalachia. Although not a particularly smart boy, Stewart excelled in whistling and wheedling, two skills he has abandoned for decades now. Still, we would like to remind him that no matter how far he retreats, his body was created for overalls and no other article of clothing will ever fit adequately, even if it is tailored, adjusted, or created just for him. We would also like to remind him that despite the amount of cosmetic surgery he has had, there will forever remain a gap between his teeth where a blade of straw can comfortably nuzzle. The truth about Michael Stewart is that despite his desire to overcome the struggles of his youth, he will never be able to escape it. He will always be a foothill boy.
Michael Stewart, although undeniably a brilliant man, cannot spell the word “bacon.” It seems like an easy enough word to spell, but Stewart, since he was a boy, has had difficulty spelling food items. It was not uncommon for Stewart to go into diners and with his bright blue crayon attempt to copyedit menus. This seemed sweet enough for a while, but Stewart has maintained this habit well into his mid-fifties.
Michael Stewart is a semiotician of spices. See also: alembic. Furthermore, should the tincture be found of which would freak wood (hence whorls), he would take it neat. See also: medicinal spittle; see also: longicorn beetle.
From: After Hours Online, the Magazine (an interview excerpt with Dicky Short Arms)
AHO: It’s said that you never forget a face. Remember this one?
DSA: Sure. Longfellow.
AHO: Why Longfellow?
DSA: Well, first time he come in was with The Hammer and The Professor. They’re at the table, Hammer banging it pretty good, and the kid’s over at the bar, writing in a notebook with a feather or something. Listening to the broads and the short pockets. Louie told me later the kid asked him for a “stout on tap.” What the fuck.
AHO: It was probably a quill. He has phases.
DSA: Yeah, well the kid caught a good roll. Clean Phil went on break and happened over by the bar and saw what was up. Let no one tell you Clean Phil don’t have a heart. He gave the kid a tap on the shoulder and a look and the kid put the notebook and feather away.
AHO: That was the end of it?
DSA: No. Gaffer caught wind of it, the nosy fuck. So he started in on the kid when he finally got a seat at the table. Hey, kid, he says, you like to write? Like Lupica? The kid don’t know Lupica so he just looks at his cards. Like Puzo? And I know Gaffer has emptied his inventory and the next question is gonna be, Like those Watergate guys? So I say, Like Longfellow you dumb fuck.
AHO: You know poets?
DSA: Shakespeare. Never read a word. But I know he’s the best so I went with Longfellow. Everything’s got to be earned.
AHO: Longfellow was great too.
DSA: Kid earned it, over time. Filled his pockets pretty good. Tipped Phil right.
AHO: He’s been back?
DSA: Just once. Alone. I wouldn’t let him in. No place for a kid.
AHO: He’s like thirty. A poet.
DSA: Yeah.
Michael Stewart has a monkey butler.
His name is Bunko. He rises each morning in the predawn and prepares a way for his master. He has learned to move silently, his black tie and tails bunching and stretching about a frame constructed without such impediments in mind.
Michael Stewart demands neatness and yet no concessions have been made to Bunko’s size. Pouring Michael Stewart’s breakfast gin fizz becomes a series of tasks.
Michael Stewart greets the day at 6:18 AM with a cough and a torrent of Dutch profanity. Bunko is there in moments. Breakfast to the nightstand. Assist in the ablutions: salve and ointment, wax and razor.
They do not speak. Roles have been assigned.
Bunko is a Rhesus monkey.
(“Rhesus Pesus”, Michael Stewart mutters. A chuckle falls with a plop into his bourbon.)
Michael Stewart allows an hour of freedom each evening. In inclement weather, Bunko retires to his quarters with a book: Archer or Clavell.
When skies are clear, Bunko makes his way to the docks. He sits at the end of a pier, lights a votive candle, and turns his gaze to the horizon.
Those who spy this tiny figure, eyes bent to the stars, wonder if his thoughts dwell on relatives long gone. Furry forms locked in metal orbs and sent hurtling into the blackness.
Bunko has read of these unfortunates—but he does not think of them now. He thinks only of home—far and far away across the silver waves, sleeping under different stars. He thinks of gliding through the high grass—swish! swish!—his brothers tacking behind him like birds on the wing. He recalls the simple joy of thievery—grapes, cooked meat, sugary sodas. As he remembers he begins to sing—sweet and low—madrigals and arias of his own devising. He imagines he can see the notes as they weave and skirl across the patches of earth where his life was given form and nestle in the downy coat of his once-beloved. He thinks of peace.
Michael Stewart has no time for such dimestore sentiment.
Michael has these new pair of rain boot galoshes that he thinks are really amazing. When I first saw him wearing them, I thought he bought a new pair of bright orange, pointy bowling shoes. But these galoshes, these bright orange galoshes, aren’t a pair of shoes, but are simply covers for Michael’s regular tennis shoes. They slip right on and off. So now, when it rains, which is often, he doesn’t have to sit in his office with wet sneakers or bring an extra pair of shoes. He just has to, before he leaves his apartment, remember to slip on his new, bright orange galoshes.
Michael Stewart lives on an island, underneath a garden, next to the secret headquarters of a corporation of fugitive ghosts. In his living room, there is a pile of women’s teeth and a blue door to nowhere. He is hospitable and carnivorous. He has been known to mistake the flash of a camera for rogue lightning. His interests include salt, eels, moths, and magic.
He has a perfectly pointed nose and blue, sullen eyes.
Or are they green? No, I’m sure they are blue.
His voice has an all-knowing timbre.
I think he is a genius. In fact, I know he is.
I wish I knew him better.
His forehead is relaxed,
Or at least it was the last time I checked.
Books line the baseboards of his apartment,
And I used to juggle and drink lemonade and tea and listen to him ramble.
He bakes cookies (chocolate chip) and watches the Thin Man one day a year.
He has a perfectly pointed nose.
Any woman would die for that nose.
He wouldn’t like it if I told him that, but it’s all true.
It's all true.
Oh, what to say about the illustrious Michael Stewart? Three things, just. Remember when he hypnotized the kindergarten teacher with his panty-blue eyes? Ms. Lace threw herself from the gymnasium bleachers, flew. Two: hosts the best annual pinata party in Providence. Three: a retired illusionist, Stewart’s disappearing act will go down in herstory as the reason women everywhere blame men when they stray.