Excerpt of
"Destructive Desire As Demonstrated by Four Writers from Different Spots in Time" by S. Peckenpaugh
“In like a fly.
Out Like a fly
She’d mixed up my head.
She’d driven a fork right through my fucking heart.
…
I miss you too my Stellafly" (“Stellafly” last stanza) 1
Love and intense desire ignite the burning flames of which lead to destruction. Along with Ithaka Darin Pappas’ “Stellafly” and Shakespeare’s “Th’ Expense of Spirit”2 all share the same theme. Desire is not without pain and havoc. Two ways that this damage is demonstrated are: self-destruction because of the love and/or desire for another, and destruction of love-feelings in the fulfilling of lustful desire. The huge span of years that these two pieces cover illustrates the inevitable love traps that are but a part of what we refer to as “the human condition”.
…
The rewards Stella and Stan had in “Stellafly” (even though their love was unacknowledged) were wiped out in this way. Before either had admitted those feelings to the other, they came home drunk one night and fell victim to lust. The love was there, but they were afraid to admit it.
“But I loved this little girl,
Miss nineteen-year-old-motormouth-know-it-all.
She loved me too,
But was afraid to admit it.
For the simple reason that I didn’t look good on paper.” (lines 76-80) Their insecurity destroyed potential joy. Her insecurity was how her family back home would see him and his insecurity was about how he saw himself through her. There were many opportunities for them to share their love, but their uncertaintly kept them from exposing their emotions. They never communicated their feelings for one another.. Booze made them finally face their sexual desires. “The worst because of its four-second duration and transformation of a girl who talked, laughed / ate with me / and cared about me, / into one who only said / Hi Stan. / Bye Stan.” (lines 127-134) Unfortunately, because of the guilty, empty feelings of lust, everything they had and could have had crumbled down to nothing in the way Shakespeare had warned in his sonnet: “A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;” (“Th’ Expense of Spirit line 11)
Desire and destruction tie “Stellafly” and “Th’ Expense of Spirit” together. The differences in these poems are mainly formal. Shakespeare’s poem is a sonnet. It is general of its discussion of lust. There are no examples of how it tears people apart – it just tells that it does. Ithaka Darin Pappas’ poem tells a story, it has two characters, a narrator and some specific action. Lust’s evil influence is seen in a certain series of events. With its fourteen-line form, Shakespeare’s sonnet has a typical English rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. The sonnet has three quatrains about lust. The first talks about what a shameful action it is, the second is about how lust is like bait on a hook and the third is about how the anticipation is good, but afterwards lust is a big let down. The rhyming words at the end of the lines such as, “shame, blame” (lines 1 and 3) and “well, hell” (lines 13 and 14) are intelligently placed: they are connected words that intensify the point, or they are contrasting words that show the two-sidedness of lust. Shakespeare cleverly uses words with more than one connotation as with, “On purpose laid”, employing an economy of words to relate to both bait and sex. (line 8) The ending couplet, “All this the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.” Concludes the poem with a summing up statement. He says that everyone knows what he described in the first three quatrains, but no one is good in avoiding succumbing to lust because the short-term pleasure and anticipation block out the looming let down.
Ithaka Darin Pappas’ poem really has no special form. His lines and stanzas guide how he wants readers to follow. It is pretty empty of figures of speech, yet it is still effective. He repeats letters and uses capital letters to demonstrate the way words are spoken such as, “SSTTAAANLEYYEEEYYY!!!! (line 57) or “THAT’S NOT FUNNY STAN!!!!” (line 97). This is done because dialogue is an important factor of this poem; colloquial speech gives it its flavor and attractiveness. Shakespeare is a known anti-Petrarchan and we can see that Ithaka Darin Pappas is too. The choice of the name “Stella” for the love interest in his poem is stated to be from Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, but it also seems to be a reference to Petrarch’s Stella. Pappas’ Stella is shown in an anti-Petrachan way. “The girl spent money like an Arab” (line 34) and “Who the fuck takes a cab from Hollywood to the beach?” / RENT A CAR! I told her (line 47-48) Show the readers that the man who loves Stella sees her in a realistic light; he loves her as the eating, breathing human she is. He obviously knows her well. This is important in the poem because it makes the let down of their sexual act that much stronger. Their desire for one another was not just carnal, but since they were so timid with the love they had, the guilt surrounding their tiny sexual experience completely destroyed everything they had had. Stella ended up leaving, but four months later she left a message: “It’s Spring here, she said on my answering machine, / the sun is shining, / the flowers have blossomed………..I miss you Stan.” (lines 158-161) ‘Four months of guilt and regret and loss to recognize destroyed love and maybe rehash it.
“All this the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell."4 explains why century after century man still falls victim to intense desire. It is the breakdown of self that can make us into one, and it is the becoming of one that can rip us apart. However the flame of desire will continue to burn and the heaven it creates will forever overshadow the “hell”.
Pyramus and Thisbe said “goodnight” to one another at bedtime with the suppressed longing of Stella and Stan. Shakespeares’s rundown of carnal desire is “Savage, extreme and rude…” (line 4) as is Donne’s journey in satiating his appetite for the devine. The four poems, “The story of Pyramus and Thisbe”, “Stellafly”, ‘Batter My Heart Three-Person God and “Th’ Expense of Spirit” bridge the centuries. Seeking to honor their wishes, each poet is faced with and must deal with the omnipresent destruction of desire. As long as man can glimpse the paradise of met desire, the looming, burning inferno will be both ignored and stumbled upon.
1 Ithaka Darin Pappas, “Stellafly” Lava Magazine (Vol 1 –issue 2, September 1994) pp. 30-31
2 Wm. Shakespeare, Sonnet #129. “Th’ Expense of Spirit” (repreinted in Own Stanley, English 4 Course Reader, UCLA: 1994)
___________________________________________________________________________
Sonnet 129:
"Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame"
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.............................................................................
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,
Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
______________________________________________________________________________
STELLAFLY by Ithaka Darin Pappas ................................................................................................
She landed like a fly.
She left like a fly.
The apartment across the hall
had been vacant for six months,
then suddenly without
warning became occupied.
She was from the east of Canada,
absolutely beautiful, brains too.
And I told myself at
first sight, she’s trouble.
And she was,
more than I could
possibly imagine.
A real fireball-motormouth type,
but I really liked that at first,
(I like talkative people).
The third night she was there
we walked down to
the New Beverly Cinema,
(which was actually
an old revival house)
for a showing of
Street Car Named Desire.
And from then on-
we began calling each other,
Stella and Stanley.
Whenever I’d come back
from a job or something
I’d yell up to her window,
SSTTELLLLLLAAAAA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But more frequently than not,
It’d be her that was coming
home from job and yelling
SSSSSTTTTTAAAANNNNNLLLLEEEEYYYY !!!!!!
She was working her little round ass off,
making about ten grand a week
as a human prop for
fashion catalogue
Didn’t even have a bank account
when she first moved in.
What do you do with the money?,
I asked her.
Well I bought some CDs yesterday
and I got some clothes and….
I got this bag….
The girl spent money
like an oil sheik.
And even with her income
was always borrowing from me
for food and rent.
One of her biggest expenses
was taxi fares.
She didn’t own a car.
Refused to take the bus.
And back in those days LA
didn’t have a subway.
Up to five-hundred dollars
a day for taxis.
To and from jobs.
To and from stores.
To and from the movies.
To and from the beach.
THE BEACH ?!
Who the fuck takes a cab
from Hollywood to the beach?
RENT A CAR !!! I told her.
But she didn’t have a license.
She eventually took
all of my advices.
Opened a bank account.
Stopped buying so many CDs
Started buying used clothes.
And bought two cars
(still didn’t have a license),
a big Ford Bronco which
she almost never drove
and an old convertible Mustang.
SSSTTTTAAANNLLEEYYY !!!!!!!
She’d yell as she drove down the alley.
SSSSSTTTAAAAAANNNLLLEEYYYY !!!!!!!!!
She’d yell as she pulled into the driveway.
Then we’d make healthy,
disgusting-tasting things to eat,
drink cheap wine and talk almost all night
on my big blue bed.
But always in the middle
of some deep conversation
she spring to her feet
and say sisterly,
Goodnight Stan.
Goodnight Stella, I’d say.
Out my door she went
and into her own across the hall
where she would start
making phone calls.
Sometimes I’d hear
her talk on the phone
for two or three hours
back home to Canada;
to her gingerbread family,
to her old friends…
and to her old boyfriend.
I was her only friend in LA
and the phone was THE
form of communication
she could not live without out,
(her phone bill was easily
four times more than her rent).
But I loved this little girl.
Miss-nineteen-year-old-
motor-mouth-know-it-all.
She loved me too,
but was afraid to admit it
for the simple reason I
didn’t look good on paper.
No regular job.
Skin too dark.
Used too many fuck-words.
Unsuccessful as a photographer.
Unsuccessful as an artist.
Whatever would her gingerbread
family back home think?
And her friends?
And her old boyfriend?
Afterall, this whole
charade of a life she lived
was strictly for them,
just for effect.
Many weeks in advance,
we’d planned to go
skydiving together,
but on the day we had reserved
at the skydiving school
we got up at four-thirty a.m.
and drove all the way
out to Paris, California
just to discover the
wind was too strong
for any planes to go up.
She was absolutely heartbroken,
didn’t say a word the whole drive back.
What’s wrong, Stella ?
I dunno.
The problem wasn’t
that her long
anticipated first jump
had been postponed.
It was that she’d already
told everyone in Toronto
that she’d be jumping TODAY
And no doubt they’d be calling
later that night for a documentary.
What’ll I tell them? she said.
That you’re dead, I said.
THAT’S NOT FUNNY STAN !!
One night not long after,
we’d gone to a big
Hollywood Christmas party
and gotten completely wasted
on mixed tropical drinks.
We took a cab home.
Then talked for a while on my bed.
She put her arms around me,
stabbed her tongue into my mouth
and climbed up on top of me.
She pulled out my dick
through the zipper,
slipped it under her mini-skirt,
around her panties
into her unbelievably
hot and tight wetness.
She rode it.
Once up.
Once down
The must have remembered
her loving family,
friends and old boyfriend
back home in Toronto.
I can’t do this,
She said rolling off of me
standing up and pulling
down her skirt simultaneously.
I CAN’T DO THIS !!!!
She stormed out of my
door and into her own
across the hall.
She called somebody in Canada
and began telling them
how exciting the party had been.
Eddie Murphy was there,
I overheard her say.
He wasn’t, but there was
a black guy tending bar,
(maybe they all looked the same to her).
The best and worst fuck of my life.
The Best ,
because I loved that
little bitch and had waited
five months for The Dip.
The Worst,
because of its four-second duration
and transformation
of a girl who talked,
laughed and ate with me…
and cared about me.
into one who only said,
Hi Stan.
Bye Stan.
The next weekend I went
up to Ventura County
to go surfing.
And hen I got home Sunday
night, she was gone.
No note. Nothing.
Her apartment was unlocked.
Vacant. No furniture. Nothing.
Everything was gone except for the cars
which she’d left across the street
in the Post Office parking lot.
The Bronco was stolen the third night.
The Mustang was towed by the city
about a week after that.
In like a fly.
Out like a fly.
She’d mixed up my head.
She’d driven a fork right
through my fucking heart.
She’d nibbled and chewed
all of the self-confidence
from my bones
…..and still …
still had the nerve to call
four months later
from Paris…France.
It’s spring here, she said
on my answering machine.
The sun is shining.
The flowers have blossomed.
…I miss you Stan.
