Ernest Borgnine RIP 1917-2012

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST BORGNINE
by Alexander Laurence


January 24, 1917 it begins virtuous. He has a bad day at black rock. Parents of the law out of the labyrinth of the forest. He dies within the fiery walls of The Poseidon. He dies for a fervid love. He can’t live without her. Without Ernest, the body transforms into a morass of debris, toxic commodities unrelated to meaning. Here, take it. Grasp it. This is the tactile future, and virtual transgression cleans all.

Travel to the end, journey to the center of the earth. Ernest is the pilgrimage’s limit or its sex, the second fiddle to whoever has the war face, the basement jaunt of the world. “You may know where dreams come true....” His new movie. And “new” movie means everything. I was the cowboy who marched on the red plains of Tunisia. I am the cop who hijacked a rebel satellite.

New York City is my prison and I’m its cab driver. He lived in Milan. But no one who drives a cab is from America. An over-achiever. A cowboy of capitalism. Squarish patterns of grimy plaster, pitted opening / chess moves. The way for a true homosexuality next to the fake ones depicted on Channel 11. The noon bell rings repeatedly. And there are beautiful boys in the alley sucking each other. They eat and drink, swallow and Ernest is in leather. It’s late, after the depraved clubs have closed. No one pays any attention to them. They exist in that space in skull I call “nowhere’s ville.”

Beautiful eyes are filled with tears. Ernest lowers his head into that quagmire of sores and latent tendencies. He’s on equity wage, he has a family. News has come of his father’s death, crucified in the mountains of Albania. He is erect and feels the rise of testosterone on the planet. Distended endings. Advertisement of addiction.

The opaque surfaces of Ernest’s cheeks. The billboard goes up, a new movie, a way of thinking is arranged. I said a “new” movie! Let’s fight this war, and let’s get laid. We have our ugly wives, army groupies, and young boys who love to fuck. Short, twisting, aggressively, between two alleys, the sight of the boy’s face.