從社交網絡誕生的香豔詩歌小天后(2)

“It was shocking,” Kendall said. “How can people be so cool?”

“太讓人震驚了，”肯德爾說，“人們怎麼會這麼酷？”

“Everyone except for a few people donated in small amounts,” Lockwood said. “Things like $4.20 or $6.66, people with user names like theslavekitten.”

“除了少數的幾個人，所有的都是小額捐款，”洛克伍德說：“四塊二啊，或是六塊六毛六，捐款人有的網名叫‘小貓奴’。”

Kendall had five surgeries. His recovery was slow, and eventually he had to face the reality that until he healed completely, he couldn’t do a job that required him to stare at a computer all day. Suddenly he and Lockwood were without a livelihood.

肯德爾動了五次手術。恢復過程漫長。肯德爾最終不得不面對這樣的現實：在他徹底恢復之前，他那份必須得成天看電腦的工作是保不住了。突然之間，他和洛克伍德沒有了生計。

With few other options, they put their possessions in storage and moved into a 10-by-14 upstairs bedroom in her father’s modest brick rectory in Kansas City: a married couple in their 30s living across the hall from the priest and his wife.

他們沒有別的選擇，只得把他們的家當存放到倉庫，搬到肯薩斯市洛克伍德父親那簡樸的磚砌教區長府邸。他們佔據了一間不到14平米的樓上臥室：一對30多歲的夫婦和神父及他的妻子共居一個屋檐之下。

With Kendall recuperating and with no income, Lockwood had to choose between finding a job or writing a book she could sell. She began a memoir, an attempt at flat-out funny prose, no 140-character limits, no line breaks. Between the interruptions of her father, dressed in his cassock and jamming on one of his left-handed guitars or shouting at the Cincinnati Bengals on TV, she traced her life thus far.

由於處於恢復期的肯德爾沒有任何收入，洛克伍德要麼得找份工作，要麼就得寫一本能賣出去的書。她開始着手寫一本從頭到尾都是幽默散文體的回憶錄，沒有140字的限制，也沒有斷行。穿着神父長袍的父親時不時彈起他那左撇子吉他，或是對着電視上的辛辛那提孟加拉虎橄欖球隊吶喊助威，就是在這樣的干擾下洛克伍德回憶記錄着她直到現在的一生。

She was still living in the rectory when “Rape Joke” was published in The Awl. There is a section of the poem about the speaker’s parents’ response to the rape:

《強姦笑話》在《尖錐》上發表的時候，她還是住在父母家裏。在詩裏有一節是描寫敘述人的父母對強姦的反應的。

It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. . . .”

在事情發生一年後你才告訴你的父母，因爲他們把他視爲己出。強姦笑話是當你告訴父親真相時，他在你身上劃了一個十字，說：“我赦免你的罪過，以聖父、聖子和聖靈的名義……”

Lockwood came downstairs one night after the poem was published to find her mother sitting in the dark in front of her computer, reading the poem and crying. Her mother hugged her and said, “It’s O.K., you’re still standing.” But she had also read some of the ugly comments left on The Awl’s website — “oh, get over yourself, you attention whore . . . no one feels bad for you. you’re the rape joke.”

在詩發表後的一天晚上，洛克伍德下樓來發現母親正坐在黑暗中她的電腦前，邊讀着詩邊掉眼淚。母親擁抱了她說：“沒關係，你還站在這裏。”但是母親還看到了《尖錐》網站上一些不堪的留言：“別再放不下了，你這個一門心思想吸引注意力的蕩婦。沒人可憐你，你自己就是一個強姦笑話。”

“Do you see what these people were saying about you?” her mother asked.

“你看到這些人怎麼說你了嗎？”母親問道。

“Mom, it’s O.K.,” Lockwood said. “It’s just the Internet.”

“媽，沒事。”洛克伍德說。“互聯網就是這樣的。”

Of her parents’ reaction to the rape, she later said: “People don’t necessarily respond as their best selves in the moment. The initial conversations were not totally ideal. But when you make art out of something, they get another chance.”

之後她提起父母對強姦的反應時，她是這麼說的：“事情剛發生時，人們不一定能表現出他們最好的一面。我和父母在事情剛發生後的最初幾次談話並不是很理想。但是一旦你把這件事變成藝術，他們就有了另一次機會。”

Today, Lockwood and Kendall live on the ground floor of a Cape Cod-style house on the east side of Lawrence, Kan., a 30-minute drive from her parents. When I visited in April, they had been there for just three months, and Lockwood didn’t know her own address. She handed the phone to Kendall to give me directions. Kendall now works as an editor for the newspaper in Lawrence and was able to cover the $600 a month rent for the house, which was sparsely furnished and adorned with action figures, Popeye and Olive Oyl throw pillows and a surprisingly heavy statuette of Chaim Topol as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

現在，洛克伍德和肯德爾租住在堪薩斯州勞倫斯市東部的一座科德角風格的房子一層，距離她父母的住處只有30分鐘車程。當我今年4月拜訪他們時，他們在那裏剛住了三個月，洛克伍德甚至記不住自己的地址。她把電話交給肯德爾，讓他告訴我地址。肯德爾如今在勞倫斯一家報紙擔任編輯，這樣他們才付得起600美元一個月的房租。房子裏面陳設簡單，裝飾品包括一些動作片卡通人像，“大力水手和奧莉薇”(Popeye and Olive Oyl)圖案的靠枕，還有一座以色列演員託普(Chaim Topol)扮演的《屋頂上的小提琴手》(Fiddler on the Roof)中主角特維(Tevye)的雕像，重得出奇。

Behind the house, trees line a creek named for William S. Burroughs, the literary patron of Lawrence. Lockwood likes to sit in a room at the back of the house in the afternoons, looking out the window and going into her own head. Some evenings, a skunk emerges from the Burroughs Creek bank and locks eyes with her before disappearing under the house. She feels as if they have forged a bond and calls the animal Big Boi, after one of her favorite rappers.

房後有一條綠樹成蔭的小溪，叫做“巴羅斯溪”，以勞倫斯市的文學贊助者威廉· 巴羅斯(William S. Burroughs)命名。洛克伍德喜歡每天下午呆在房子後面的一個房間，向外凝望巴羅斯溪，陷入沉思。有時，一隻臭鼬在傍晚時分從溪邊爬出來，跟她對望，然後消失在房子下面。她感覺自己與這隻臭鼬已經建立了友誼，並且用自己最喜歡的饒舌歌手的名字給它起名“大波依”。

We took a walk along the Burroughs trail and up into the heart of Lawrence’s old downtown and talked about her poetry. “Whenever anyone asks me about process,” she said, “I’m like a cat stroked the wrong way: Get away from my belly!” But she is fundamentally a sharer, a poet for the age of sharing. “I’m verbally incontinent — anything just pours out of me,” she said. “My father’s that way. He doesn’t worry about it. My mother does. I got both. I say just the worst things the English language is capable of, and then later on I lie awake at night thinking, Oh, Tricia, you’ve done it again.”

我們在巴羅斯徑散步，走到勞倫斯市老城區的中心，邊走邊談她的詩作。“每次有人問我創作的過程，”她說，“我就好像被逆毛擼過的貓一樣發怒：離我肚子遠點！”但是她從根本上仍舊是愛分享的人，一位分享時代的詩人。“我在言語上無法自制——有什麼說什麼，”她說。“我父親就是這樣的，他從不擔心這一點。我母親則會擔心話太多，我二者都有。我會講英語裏最難聽的話，然後晚上躺在牀上睡不着覺，想着：噢，翠莎，你又說狠話了。”

Lockwood’s poems are most radical in their ability to convey the essential strangeness of sex and gender. “I consistently felt myself to be not male or female,” she said, “but the 11-year-old gender: protagonist. Maybe it’s a byproduct of reading a lot of books, of projecting yourself into different bodies. As an early teen, I thought I presented as androgynous, which was not true. But I had a short haircut, and I felt androgynous.”

洛克伍德的詩作最爲極端的表現在於傳達表現性與性別的根本怪異。“我一直覺得自己非男非女，”她說，“而是那種11歲孩子的性別：主角。也許這是讀書太多的副作用，把自我投射到太多的人身上。十幾歲的時候，我覺得自己表現得雌雄同體，當然並不是那麼回事，但是我當時頭髮很短，自我感覺似乎雌雄同體。”

There was no discussion of sex in the home growing up. She ascribes the birth of her own sexual knowledge to a road trip with her aunt when they listened to Jean Auel’s “The Valley of Horses.” “We’re driving along the Grand Canyon, the hugest vagina in the world, and my aunt is playing the audiobook of cave-man sex. I just pretended to be asleep or she’d turn it off.”

她長大的過程中，家裏面沒人談性。她把自己的性知識起源歸於某次與姑媽的長途開車旅行，車裏面播放着珍·奧爾(Jean M. Auel)的小說《馬之谷》(The Valley of Horses)。“我們在大峽谷邊開車旅行，這是世界上最大的陰道，而我姑媽在這裏面播放着穴居人性愛的有聲小說。我假裝睡着了，不然她會關掉錄音機。”

We stopped for a moment at a picnic bench in an idyllic city park. “I blush if I see people kissing in a movie,” she said. “There are certain cusses I can’t say. It’s a private joke: I’m a puritan. I was a child bride. There’s this prim, prudish part of me, and in order to get past that, I just have to push all the way.” As she spoke, an elderly couple walked along a nearby path, a young woman danced with a hula hoop near a fountain and a squirrel darted away from us toward a tree just beginning to leaf. “Nothing I say is actually physically possible on any plane of existence,” Lockwood added, watching the squirrel. “I may want to French a squirrel, but I can’t. It would be hard to catch. Rabies. Too much fur.”

我們在市內一個景色優美的公園裏駐足，坐在一張野餐桌邊。“當時，看到電影裏的接吻鏡頭我都會臉紅。”她說，“有些髒話我是說不出口的，別人會拿我打趣：我就是個清教徒。我是個少女新娘。我有清規戒律、淑女的這一面，而爲了擺脫這些我就需要全豁出去。”我們聊天時，一堆老夫婦從旁邊的小徑走過，一位年輕女子在噴泉旁跳呼啦圈，一隻松鼠從我們身邊躥出，爬上一棵剛剛開始長葉的樹。“我說的這些在任何現實的存在中都不可能，”洛克伍德補充說。“比如我可能想溼吻一隻松鼠，但我不能。抓住松鼠太難了，還有狂犬病毒，太多毛。”

Many of the titles of the poems in the new collection, “Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals,” rival click bait in their demand to be read: “Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth,” “He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit,” “Search ‘Lizard Vagina’ and You Shall Find,” “Nessie Wants to Watch Herself Doing It.” One poem traces the evolution of generic doe-eyed deer named Bambi into generic women named Fawn, with their “light shafts of long blond hair and long legs.” Yet the book, for all its playfulness, poses sharp challenges to many stereotypes, particularly those around gender. “List of Cross-Dressing Soldiers” starts with famous women who dressed as men and fought in battles, but then shifts closer to home. Lockwood’s younger brother, Paul, is a Marine who has served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. “We would always have dreams and then hear that something bad had happened near him,” she said. The poem touches on these close calls:

新詩集《母國父國祖國戀》(Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals)中許多詩作的標題頗爲惹眼，不亞於網上種種譁衆取寵的新聞標題：《你的國家是你嘴裏的男還是女》(Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth)，《他娶了貓頭鷹標本展覽》(He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit)，《搜尋’蜥蜴陰道’你將找到》(Search ‘Lizard Vagina’ and You Shall Find)，《內茜想看着自己做那事》(Nessie Wants to Watch Herself Doing It.)。有一首詩講述眼神溫順的小鹿斑比是如何演變成那種叫做佛恩的溫順女子，提到了她們“那如同光柱一般的金色頭髮和長腿”。但是，儘管這本詩集內不乏插科打諢的內容，它仍舊對許多大衆心目中的刻板印象提出尖銳挑戰，尤其是那些與性別有關的內容。“異裝癖士兵名單”這首詩開頭就提到那些青史留名的女扮男裝馳騁沙場的女子，隨後開始接近現實。洛克伍德的弟弟保羅(Paul)是一名海軍陸戰隊隊員，曾經在伊拉克戰場服役兩輪，在阿富汗服役一輪。“我們常常會夢到他，然後就會聽說他身邊發生的噩耗，”她說。這首詩提到了保羅多次險些遭遇不測的情形：

My brother is alive because of a family capacity for little hairs rising on the back of the neck.

我的弟弟得以生還 是因爲家族遺傳特徵 危險來臨時，脖子上的毛髮會豎起來。

“He’d always say, ‘I’m not going to go back’ and then do another tour,” Lockwood said. “The last tour in Afghanistan was tough. He just missed being exploded by an I.E.D. He lost buddies.” Yet what drew her into the poem was the interaction between her brother and his fellow Marines.

“他總是說，‘我不要再回去’，然後再自告奮勇上戰場一次，”洛克伍德說。“他最近一次在阿富汗服役很艱險，險些被一個土製炸彈炸死。他有些戰友陣亡了。” 但是，她弟弟與自己的海軍陸戰隊戰友之間的交流吸引她寫下了這首詩。

. . . “Kisses,” he writes to a friend he writes back, “Cuddles.” Bunch of girls,bunch of girls. They write each other, “Miss you,brother.” Bunch of girls, bunch of girls. They passedthe hours with ticklefights. They grew their mustachestogether. They lost their hearts to local dogs,what a bunch of girls.

……“吻你，”他寫給一個朋友。他的朋友回信說：“擁抱你”。真是羣娘們，一羣娘們。他們寫信說：“想念你，兄弟。”真是羣娘們，一羣娘們。他們靠互相撓癢來打發時間 他們一起留鬍子。他們對當地的狗狗愛不釋手，真是羣娘們。

“It’s such a macho culture,” she said, “but also the most affectionate male culture I’ve ever encountered. Sitting on each other’s laps, stroking each other’s faces. It’s very sweet. But at the same time it’s, ‘Be a man!’ ”

“那是一個很男人味的文化，”她說，“但同時也是我見過的最有感情的男性文化。他們互相坐在大腿上，撫摸對方的臉龐。真是感人。但同時，你也會說，‘做個男人吧！’”

She didn’t think her brother would read the book. “He’s just proud that you’ve done it,” she said. “Same with my dad.” Her father has never heard her read her poems. “I stay away and let her do what she needs to do with her life,” Father Lockwood told me one evening during a visit to the rectory in Kansas City. “She’s crazy smart and very talented. Good theology teaches you that everyone belongs to themselves.” Then he turned to his daughter and said, “You come from us, but you’re not us.”

她估計自己的弟弟不會讀到這本詩集。“他只是對你寫了這本書感到高興，”她說。“我爸爸也是這樣。”她父親從未聽過她朗讀自己的詩。“我躲到一邊，讓她隨心所欲過自己的日子，”洛克伍德老爹在我某晚到訪堪薩斯城那所神父住宅時說。“她聰明的不得了，非常有天賦。真正的神學教誨是，每個人都屬於自己。”然後他轉頭對自己的女兒說：“你是我們的孩子，但你跟我們不一樣。”

To Lockwood, that distinction was more mystery than theology. “I have this hall-monitor mother,” she told me later, “and this psycho freakout prog-rock dad just doing whatever he wants; he doesn’t even obey any laws except the laws of the church, and I came out. I’m not even sure how it happened.”

但對洛克伍德來說，這種區別比神學解釋更加神祕。“我母親循規蹈矩，謹小慎微，”她後來對我說，“而我父親是這麼個神經兮兮的前衛搖滾迷，一向天馬行空。除了教會的規矩，他從來不遵守任何法規，然後有了我。我都不知道我是怎麼來的。”

One afternoon during my visit to Lawrence, Lockwood and Kendall were in the side yard of their house, he drinking wine on the grass, she finishing a shot of vodka while sitting on a swing suspended from a large tree. At some point, a hare emerged from the Burroughs Creek bank and watched them — Thumper checking in on old friends. The conversation turned to whether she ever felt the lack of a college education.

在我拜訪勞倫斯期間的某個下午，洛克伍德和肯德爾在房子一側的庭院裏，他坐在草地上喝葡萄酒，她則坐在掛在一棵大樹上的鞦韆上，喝完一小杯伏特加。不知什麼時候，一隻野兔從巴羅斯溪邊鑽出來，看着他們——他們早給這隻野兔取名桑博(Thumper)，它是來探望老朋友的。然後我們談起她是否對沒上過大學感到耿耿於懷。

“A nice byproduct of never going to college,” she said, “is that I’m never embarrassed about not knowing something. I’m missing such large areas. If you looked at my brain, it would be like those taxi drivers who have one huge lobe that just contains directions, except for me it would be metaphors. I felt like I had a freak ability.”

“從未上過大學的很好的副產品之一是，”她說，“當我不懂什麼東西時，我從來不會感到難堪。我錯過了大面積的知識。如果你端詳我的大腦，它就像很多司機一樣，某個腦葉特別發達，全是路線圖，而對於我來說則是裝滿了比喻。我感覺我在這方面有驚人的天賦。”

“Like you’re a good singer,” Kendall said.

“就好像你唱歌的天賦一樣，”肯德爾說。

Writing in Salon recently, Laura Miller drew attention to “a handful of great literary husbands” whose support enabled the likes of Virginia Woolf and George Eliot to produce great works: “It took an extraordinary man to acknowledge the superior gifts of his wife and to devote himself to bringing them to fruition.”

勞拉·米勒最近在《沙龍》(Salon)網上雜誌上撰文提到了“那一小批偉大的文學家丈夫”，他們的鼎力支持使得諸如弗吉尼亞·伍爾夫(Virginia Woolf)和喬治·艾洛特等女作家得以寫出偉大作品。“只有非同凡響的男人才能認可妻子的出衆天賦，並且幫助她們展現才華。”

Kendall saw something from the start in those message boards. “I’m going to work and she’s going to write all day — when you are marrying a genius, that’s the deal,” he said, watching her on the swing. “It’s like marrying Aretha Franklin. She’s going to get to sing. If you hear Aretha Franklin sing — ”

肯德爾從妻子剛開始參與網上文學論壇時就看出了她的才華。“我去上班，她則在家裏整天寫作——你如果娶了個天才，生活就是這樣，”他一邊望着坐在鞦韆上的妻子一邊說。“這就好像娶了阿麗莎·富蘭克林(Aretha Franklin，美國著名非裔歌手音樂家)。她必須要唱歌，而你如果聽過阿麗莎·富蘭克林唱歌……”

“This is so grandiose,” Lockwood interrupted.

“你把我說的也太高大上吧，” 洛克伍德插話說。

“ — you understand what’s going on musically. Whoever was the first person to hear Aretha sing, understood. I just happened to be the first.”

“——你當然就明白她在音樂上多有才華。不管是誰第一次聽到阿麗莎唱歌，都會懂得。我只不過恰巧是第一個人罷了。”

Last month, Lockwood and Kendall traveled to New York City. It was the first time for Lockwood. She was scheduled to give two readings and meet her poetry editor, as well as the editor of her memoir. Like true Midwesterners, they rented a car and drove all over Manhattan and Brooklyn.

上個月，洛克伍德和肯德爾去了紐約。這是洛克伍德第一次紐約之行。她計劃參加兩場朗讀會，還要和她的詩歌編輯和回憶錄編劇見面。像所有真正的中西部人一樣，他們租了一輛車，開遍了曼哈頓和布魯克林。

On Saturday she was to be part of a distinguished poetry event with a number of well-known older poets at Sarah Lawrence College. The rest of her trip, including her birthday, would prove to be a comedy of errors — pants ripped on a bench, maxed-out credit-card (the memoir money hadn’t come in yet), passing out in a hot tub. “My disaster birthday,” as she would describe it to me. But Friday night, the young and clever of Brooklyn packed the Morgan Town Bar in Bushwick, where Lockwood was headlining a long bill of “Internet comedy writers.”

在星期六，她和另外幾名年紀較長的知名詩人一起出席了在莎拉·勞倫斯學院舉行的一個詩歌會。紐約之行剩下的幾天，包括她的生日，發生了一些搞笑的失誤——坐到長凳上時褲子紮了線，刷爆的信用卡（回憶錄的稿費還沒有到賬），在澡缸里人事不省。“我的一團糟的生日”，洛克伍德對我描述道。但是在星期五的晚上，布魯克林的年輕人和聰明人把布什維克區的摩根鎮酒吧擠得滿滿當當——洛克伍德是出席“互聯網幽默作家”朗讀會衆多參與者中的重頭人物。

She gamely waited through seven other acts, laughing at the funny bits, smiling through the rest. Many people came up to talk to her — five minutes into a conversation they might reveal their Twitter handles, at which point her eyes sparked with recognition and she hugged them. One young man approached Kendall to introduce himself and ask about his eyes — he had contributed to the surgery fund.

在輪到出場之前，她心情極好地觀看了其他的七個表演。她一直臉上帶着微笑，而一些好玩的細節則讓她開懷大笑。許多人上前來和她說話。交談五分鐘後，他們可能就會透露自己的Twitter賬號名。這時，洛克伍德會認出他們，她的眼睛閃着光，擁抱着網友。一位年輕人走到肯德爾身邊，介紹了自己之後詢問了肯德爾的眼睛——他爲肯德爾的手術捐過款。

At last, Lockwood’s turn came and, in a gray top and skirt that she had selected at the Goodwill in Lawrence, she did an impromptu barrel roll onto the stage for her private, nerve-calming joke. The piece she was about to read was a true story of a mother-daughter road trip interrupted by the discovery of less-than-spotless bed linens at a Nashville hotel chain. It’s about the moment when you and your mother first say to each other a slang word for a bodily fluid, at which point, she said, “there’s no going back.” The title of the piece can only be rendered in these pages as “The Semen Queens of Hyatt Place.”

最後輪到洛克伍德上場了。她穿着在勞倫斯好意慈善店買的一件灰色的上衣和裙子，像個木桶似的滾上了臺。這個即興之舉是她爲了使自己不緊張而跟自己開的玩笑。她要讀的詩講的是一個真實的故事：一對母女的汽車公路之旅被納什維爾一家連鎖旅館裏一條不那麼幹淨的牀單打斷了。洛克伍德解釋說這首詩是關於母女第一次對對方用俗語說某種體液。而話一出口，“就再也收不回去了”。這首詩的標題稍加改動是《凱悅旅館的精液皇后們》(The Semen Queens of Hyatt Place)——原標題包含有不適合本刊登出的字眼。

Back in Kansas, she had already read it to her mother, who laughed out loud. In Brooklyn, they did the same.

在肯薩斯，洛克伍德已經給母親讀過了這首詩，母親放聲大笑。在布魯克林，聽衆們的反應也是這樣的。