jell-o con bullets

Other, Less Pertinent, Definitive Statements

2011-10-05T12:36:00.002-05:00

Horse drawn carriages are for lovers, families on vacation (or escaping suburbia for an evening), and people that like a good view of a horse shitting in a bag.

"Made to order" restaurants' are only as healthy as my strength of self-control.

Trying to speak to my neighbors in their native tongue is more often than not considered offensive and, though it hardly merits it, encourages the neighbors to refer to me as an "ignorant fuck" in mine.

There's a company that makes prosthetic legs for injured cyclists... and all the while people are concerned with steroid use in the Tour de France.

Recent definitive statements.

2011-10-04T17:11:00.003-05:00

Dating older women makes me feel young. Younger women make me feel old. Women my age make me question how comfortable I am with myself at my age.

Smoking a pack a day is easier to stomach when my friends smoke two.

Text messaging as a filter for dating illiterate women only works when my spell check software works properly.

Having a growing savings account displaces me when other artist peers are completely broke.

Participating in anti-automobile bicycle culture is great until I date less revolutionary women with well kept hair.

Horse Man: Conception

2011-06-09T15:26:00.002-05:00

I heard a rumor at the track last week that they’re constructing a new kind of horse. Yeah, I know, a new horse with the seed of a man. A horse-man. Manhorse.

So it all started with this breeder, okay? He says to the guys around the stable, you know, the other stable guys and the other guys that would be…the…uh…oh right, the jockeys. I can never remember what those guys are called. Funny though, right? Because those are also the name of the shorts I wear. But yeah, I overheard him talking about this Manhorse.

So get this. I hear him talking about this breeder in some stable, you know with all the guys from the stable standing around him, and he counts out this big ass wad of cash and hands it to some mad scientist who smiles and picks up this big ass needle. Well, no, a syringe, well in my mind’s eye, the picture I see is this:

So there’s this mad scientist guy with white hair and a mustache and he’s holding up a green elixir bottle in one hand and a syringe in the other and he’s standing at his workbench, but it’s in front of this big blue screen in a warehouse somewhere. But, okay, follow me on this. This guy has white lab coat, white poofy hair, definitely a mustache, holds some maniacal tools, and strikes an uncomfortable pose as demanded by a photographer in front of a collapsible backdrop sheet with a porno movie shooting on the other side of it. You know, like in a commercial for a technical college that's claim to fame is some zany director in Hollywood, but like on the movie set of that commercial with the guys who want to make movies but aren’t good enough so they make commercials for local car dealerships.

But guys, get this, I overhear this breeder guy tell everybody in the stable that he is going to artificially inseminate a man sperm that’s been tampered with by top scientists into the reproductive system of a girl-horse and begin the five generation process of breeding all that is good and strong and intelligent and two-legged about him into the fastest beast a man has ever rode. He will, in time, become a race demon. Like a legendary horse that people will make movies about. The iron god of the racing horse world. A pretty big deal.

Or at least that's what I heard. It's all over the news, how did you not hear about this?

Some Recent Definitions.

2011-04-19T14:55:00.005-05:00

Definitions: If you’ve ever read a dictionary, you’re likely to pick up on that certain duplicity of the English language. Words can assist in identification, clarification, explanation, et cetera, but they can also disguise, manipulate, and confuse. See Balance.

Gender: I remember a world when there were pretty much two. See Progressive. See Definitions.

Emotions: They differ from person to person. Gender to gender to gender to gender… Fact is, we have them. Some try to avoid them. Some don’t know the difference between reigns and rains. See Balance. Also see Sex Life.

Progressive: A really simple indicator of lack of logic in your conversation partner. See Nearsightedness and Soapbox.

Complacency: Your achievements are never as great as you think they are. Also, the achievements you’re aiming for will never give you the fulfillment you’re looking for. See Balance. Contrast with Apathy.

Nearsightedness: Conservatives aren’t the only ones letting their biases get the best of them. See Soapbox.

Soapbox: Think your opinion is more valid than everyone else’s? There’s a way you can express that conviction. See Moderation and disregard everything in it.

Moderation: As in, “I stopped drinking because I couldn’t use moderation,” or “I think it will really hurt someone’s feelings if I don’t phrase this in a kind and/or helpful way.” Balance increases Stamina, engages Audience, allows for Community, keeps from Complacency.

Balance: Finding a happy medium, of sorts. Not swinging too hard one way or another. Or, if there is a dominant swing or lean, learning to swing or lean back to keep a center. Applies to Emotions, Sailing, and Sex Life. See Community.

Sex Life: There’s more to it than an orgasm and the following cleanup. See Consequences. See Sailing.

Sailing: It's like a nature hike but on water. The smaller the boat, the more refreshing the experience. Don't be afraid of getting wet. See Community.

Community: Having people around to keep you on your toes. Like mindedness is swell, but playing the Devil’s Advocate is necessary. See Audience.

Apathy: You can tell everyone you don’t care, but the fact is, you’re hardwired to. If you don’t believe me, try Community. It’s like Middle School all over again. Also see Nearsightedness.

Audience: People are watching you. Do you really want to do that, say that, be that? If you do, deal with the consequences. Oh, right, see Consequences.

Consequences: Remember Balance? This is what happens when you don’t find your own equilibrium. Someone else, usually the government, will – and you won’t like it.

Stamina: If you’re going to get through this life in one piece (preferred) or two pieces (less impressive), I’d form up some strategies. See Balance. See Nearsightedness. See Sex Life.

Mortally melodramatic

2011-03-30T15:13:00.003-05:00

With all of the anti-smoking
propaganda out there, we
masochists need to stick together.

I don't want to die of the cancers
but living won't last forever.
I guess it's better than old, angry,

with kids that fight over my estate,
affection. But even smokers
have shitty families, kids spoiled rotten.

Or do they? Their kids watch the
televisions, see the advertisements,
public service announcements.

At least those kids can clearly see
their parents' lack of self-respect.
Fast food, couch dwelling, tobacco,

work and whisky are sharper than
coffin nails. They'll seal fates cooler than
mine own. Mine will be arduous

and apathetic. My kids will mourn.
They'll make amends. We'll be a
happy family, coughing blood together.

--

If I die with blood on my teeth,
I hope no one has a camera on hand.
I don't want to be remembered that way.

Remember me as a young man,
a smoke between my lips, mug
in my left hand, pen in my right -

thinking the world is my oyster,
hoping for grandeur, or at least
something resembling contentment.

As a shark among goldfish -
twisted around the perimeter of
a desk-top tank, goldies snuggled

up against my soft belly, safely
out of the way of yellowed teeth and
reeking, aquarian breath.

--

But I'm not yet dying,
at least not visibly. It depends
on your definition of life.

I'm dependent and fixated, hopeful
to the degree of sillywonder. And
I have time, at least today.

Probably tomorrow. And I'm using
the time I have. I'm using the
time I have. Using the time.

I'll flex and break the glass. I'll flop
on the floor, bite through furniture.
I'll make a scene, yell absurdities

through gills or mouth, whichever
is louder. And I'll befriend asthmatic children-
little tykes not yet jaded toward

the wheezing. Commiseration. It'll be alright.
Maybe I'll dodge the consequences - nimble,
cigarette in hand, smiling and hopeful.

Short rhyming monologues of my poorly drawn cartoon characters.

2011-03-02T21:14:00.004-06:00

Busty Barbara.

Having a curvaceous figure definitely has its perks,
But being facially disfigured attracts only jerks.

Jeffe the Buck-toothed Mouse.

Life as a spanish field mouse is incomparably brief,
I’ll take you down with me, with huge, rabied teeth.

Chronically Bald Eagle

Museum life as a stuffed bald eagle certainly is a thing of pride,
But all those touristy, imperialist bastards really chafe my hide.

Frank “Disability Excuses Tardiness” Funklestein

I have a big head, that’s easy to see,
No arms though, oh it sucks to be me.

My novel in a sonnet.

2011-02-23T13:59:00.002-06:00

While drunk last night I chanced a dance in hell
yet the sulfur and fire did not concern.
Twas a song, a tune that did curse my spell,
Oh def’ning volume! Your echo I spurn.

Daft Punk was the band, the song’s origen.
One More Time, a song I esteemed in youth
now grossly overplayed, corrupt like sin,
spun o’r and o’r, never ending, on loop.

The devil danced a jig for all to see,
Hellions big and small praised his love of song.
Snarling, demons all turned and cornered me
when I queried the beast ‘will this take long?”

Sharply I awoke, hungover but free…
til’ I saw the throng, that devil was Me.

Dork VS. Dog

2011-01-19T19:33:00.002-06:00

On being a Dork VS. On being a dog.
*Answers listed below.

1 - Just when you think somebody loves you for your energy and passion, they ask you to get your reproduction parts altered.
2 - I don't understand what you mean by "get down off that couch." It's for sitting, isn't it?
3 - It doesn't matter how your parents raised you, some people just don't take to licking.
4 - So what if I devour literature along with everything else in the open pantry?
5 - I'm not just chasing a car, I'm proving my manhood.
6 - Oh.my.god... leftovers!
7 - What do you mean I can't poop here?
8 - Why does this cookie taste like dog food?
9 - I'm quite sure I did not move your shoes.
10 - How dare you lead me on by using the word 'walk' in a sentence?

Dork: 4, 6, 8, 9,
Dog: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10

Coffee Date, pt. 2

2011-01-18T17:43:00.002-06:00

She noticed. I'm sure
she doesn't believe me - I
swear that I'm not five.

Coffee Date

2011-01-18T17:41:00.002-06:00

I spilled coffee in
the seat of my pants. I hope
she doesn't notice.

The difference between Into and In to.

2011-01-17T20:40:00.002-06:00

Is mostly spacial.
The space indicates something,
hell if I know what.

Jack's life in a Box, a haiku.

2011-01-17T20:34:00.004-06:00

I live in this box.
It's cramped in here but at least
I have this burger.

My mother, the poet.

2011-01-13T17:08:00.001-06:00

Sit still, be
good. Don't give me that
look, mister.

At risk of sounding redundant, more rushed poetry.

2011-01-10T18:54:00.007-06:00

Coffee does little
to wake me. Ground up codeine
on a cold wood floor.

Knees bent in worship
won't straighten. Blank pages strewn
about, white on wood

grain. I molt reli-
giously. Missing feathers, bare
pimpled flesh. Heavy

breathing stirs powder
and purpose. I'll escape from
this coop, Fly! I will.

Out the window, on
a frozen, rusty ledge - too
many stairs for these

rigid joints. I'd soar
if I could, borne on cardboard
wings, liquor boxes

painted black, strung with
wire hangers and shoelaces.
A drunkard's reprise.

More rushed poetry.

2011-01-08T16:27:00.005-06:00

To be one's own and
not anothers' - my source, fuel
blazes in the night

sky, casting light on
the surrounding trees. - She steps
in me, runs through me.

Coals toast her skin, char
her feet. - She accelerates
through me, tip toed, spry.

The creationist exposes himself in public, police arrive at the scene too late.

2011-01-07T13:45:00.003-06:00

And the silence breaks with the flutter of eyelids.
Eve wakes to an unintelligible fumbling of phrases
intended to flirt but threateningly incoherent.

He stands over her naked - goose-pimpled body -
reacts to her first breath of air, smog. She asks him
what she is. He shrugs and reaches for her breast.

-

They lie together in leaves, grass, on limbs of trees,
the backs of animals, in sinking sand. She finds her voice.
He finds his groin. They invent words. Soft. Quiet. Wet.

-

He walks with another, she joins them between trees.
A union becomes a trio becomes a vice becomes a war.
Gods and men fight fire with spittle, death with hope.

She eats his heart, blood dribbles down her chin
and stains the earth red. Her loins tear, hips break,
screams fill the day, the night. Man is born into pain.

Rushed Poetry

2011-01-06T16:37:00.002-06:00

Some haikus make more
sense than others…Others make
readers wonder less

This chair upsets my
spine…Mother recommends I
sit up straight, erect

Make phone smarter, the
smarter man says…The lost art
of thinking makes sense

Peanut allergies,
Fast Food lawsuits…green health food!
Don’t eat name brand pets.

Bad po’try, loud mouth,
bad habit…Smoking more than
her lungs ‘preciate

additional subjects worth breaching

2010-12-29T17:17:00.007-06:00

Mortality:
Dying sucks. I have __ many years to live. I don't know how many __ is. I hope __ is a lot. If it isn't, I'm going to be very, very disappointed. See Fulfillment.

Fulfillment:
The sum of a lifetime of experiences + ability to enjoy them + sense of humor about all of the unaccomplished goals.

Substance Abuse:
Fulfillment not adding up? Mortality creeping up on you? Lonely or bored after work? Why not just escape it all in some form or another. Consider implications of Fulfillment and Mortality. Also see Medicinal ______.

Medicinal ______:
Sure you want to get high, I understand that. I get it, why not experience the brightest, fullest, boldest version of life? But seriously, claiming medicinal necessity is the biggest joke since Patriotism.

Patriotism:
An excuse to get worked up about something without thinking through the ramifications. Consider Substance Abuse and Philosophic Propaganda.

Sexuality (Revisited):
Nobody will love you as much as you want them to. Frustrating? Yes. Fulfilling? No.

Egomania:
"Egomania's most destructive form is piety." Egomania's second most destructive form is hedonism. Consider Fulfillment.

The Male Gender:
As one of them I have to admit, we have no idea what it means to be a man. I think Ayn Rand did. Consider Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand:
Altruism is nonesense. In Atlas Shrugged, Fransisco De Anconia gives a seventy five minute lecture to Hank Rearden on manhood. I don't know many men willing to hear a seventy five minute lecture on manhood if the end goal doesn't somehow involve getting laid. See Philosophic Propaganda.

Altruism:
The idea that anyone can accomplish anything in another's service or defense for any reason other than the way it makes them feel. Remember the card game "Bullshit?" We're wired to feel good about helping others. Interestingly enough, we're also wired to feel something when we hurt others for our own gain. See Power.

Power:
See Patriotism.

Philosophic Propaganda:
Too much = loss of individual interest (when referring to human audience/reader). Not enough = American ethics. Also see Self-Righteousness.

Self-Righteousness:
Loud ≠ Accurate. This goes for everyone, not just the people I disagree with. See Egomania.

Immortality:
Hm... Fascination with continuation isn't necessarily wrong or unhealthy as long as it recognizes the importance of the now, present. See Mortality, Fulfillment, and the latest blockbuster hits. Also see Substance Abuse.

Holiday Love - 62 (Phoenix, AZ)

2010-12-16T23:18:00.001-06:00

It seems like Christmas comes faster every year. This post is a tribute to some terribly lonely women I found on the internet when I was sick with the flu/bedridden/bored out of my mind. This post breaks my heart, but Craigslist is crawling with these. Sure I should pick on both genders evenly, but fact is, these occur too frequently to be overstated.

Can you cure my loneliness? – 41 (Austin, TX)

Why I am on here, typing this, I don’t know. It’s that time of year again and I’m wondering where the year went and why I don’t have plans to be on someone’s arm at my company’s holiday party.

So here’s the situation. I’m forty-one, educated, fit (yogalates!), single, 5’7”, 150-ish, white and pretty mellow. I pref (but not required) single, divorced, single dad…white, tall, (taller than me at least, in heels!) male.

To prove you aren’t a spammer, respond with THIS IS THE YEAR in the subject line.

It’s cold outside, come warm me up! – 22 (Chicago, IL)

I just got out of a two year relationship and am not used to sleeping alone at night. Are there any sane, normal guys that can come warm me up? Nothing sexual, I’m not a slut…just a little weirded out about being alone.

22, 115, 5foot1, graduate student, own house, own car, espect same.

Mature SWF seeking handsome S(or soon to be)WM – 45 (Los Angeles)

Are you attractive, single or about to be, and around my age? Own your own car? Stable? I’m not expecting Pierce Brosnan, but ya know…similar.

Pic Attached.

Still lookin for Love – 18 (Miami, Fl)

hey guys my name is makayla im black and a bigger girl but not fat im 18 a full time college student. i go for culinary arts and i have a part time job at taco bell. im simply looking for someone to like me for me im looking for a ltr i like to party drink hang with friends and just have fun but i do have a sweet side too i do smoke cigs and sometimes weed i really dont know what else to say u can shoot me an email or txt me xxx three zero eight forty two seventy six hope to hear from u soon im just here to find that one guy who is gunna like me for me and not just expect sex or whateva

A story of human depth and hope (albeit fairly Grinchy) at a friend’s request.

2010-12-10T11:33:00.003-06:00

“You know who you are,” stammers Jeremy; Wal-Mart store #13586’s employee #253, section E (Electronics), college graduate, blood type AB-, amateur guitarist, as he rounds the display case and sees a younger, quicker looking young man rowing armful after armful of dvds into a rather newish yet poorly stitched duffel bag, probably from section H (Housewares) or B (Bags?). “Just a no good thief. That’s right, I’m talking to you,” he shouts, teeth chattering hands clench the material at his hips, holding himself in place because his right leg seems to want to retreat behind the display.

“Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy,” says the younger, quicker looking man, pausing only momentarily from his dvd harvesting to read Jeremy’s nametag, “I don’t think you ought to get involved here, I’ve already found what I need.”
“What makes you think I won’t barge in and help anyway?” asks Jeremy.
“Well, mostly because I’m not really looking for anything specific, just bulk gifts for Christmas tomorrow,” says the younger, quicker looking man.

“I see.”
“I’m glad you see.”
“But your DVD needs are inconsequential at this impasse because, you, my friend, are stealing from my store.”
“Well, not yet I’m not.”
“What do you mean, I can see them, there in your bag. In a bag which I suspect you stole from section H?”
“Actually it was from section B, over by the linens and…bags. But again, not yet stolen.”
“What do you mean, not yet stolen?”
“Well, it’s still in the store, no?”
“It is.”
“Until it leaves the store, it isn’t stolen, correct?”
“Correct.”

“So really, you can only prosecute an individual that has expressed intentions of stealing a product such as these DVDs or this bag; or an individual that has evaded the checkout line and exited the building in such a way as to actually steal the aforementioned product or products.”

“I suppose so.”
“So you don’t know if I’m stealing or not.”

“I suppose not.” Jeremy relaxes a bit, recognizes his own error of assumption, and eases his way into a new vein of conversation. Later, he will recognize this new found ease and find it comforting, even confidence building, as he discovers new depths of cool and composure within himself, depths he nothing about before today.

“So, if you cannot prove an intention of theft, you might as well help me select the products I wish to procure tonight, this evening of December 24th, 2009.”

“I dare say you are correct, sir,” says Jeremy as he sidles up along the quicker, younger looking man and helps him select DVDs and place them in his bag from section H. “What sort of DVDs are you interested in purchasing this evening, Christmas Eve as it is.”

“Oh, just any sort. They’re going to be gifts tomorrow, and I never do know what my family and friends want, so I get a mammoth load of something universal – with some variety, multiple titles and whatnot – and open a grab bag of sorts. The little ones get their hands on a couple titles, the adults usually pull an armful or two. Whatever any person, respectively speaking, can carry.”

“Interesting,” says Jeremy as he debates between two titles in his two hands. Suspicion is not something Jeremy has ever parted with easily, he’s been a suspicious sort of person since the day his mother weened him from the teet – a day he asked, although gibberish as it was, I don’t see a reason that my beverage should come from any other source other than you. Do you care so little for me that you will discard me with the evening waste? Tell me, what have I done to deserve this ejection, this terrible, horrifying expulsion from your warm, sweet embrace? But this younger, quicker looking man’s powers of logic and reason are succinct and sound, how can he argue with an intellectual equal? If four years of college taught him anything, it’s that an argument between equals has no winner; only an argument between two or more individuals where one has an unprecedented head start or significant intellectual advantage, i.e. more intelligent, better versed, more articulate, etc.

“So there will be children selecting titles from this ‘grab bag’?” He says grab bag in such a way as to remind the quicker, younger looking man that he is not entirely sold on his story and will not stop his inquiry till justice prevails, or a lengthy receipt verifies the man’s story and intention.

“I suppose there will be,” says the younger, quicker looking man.
“And what, pray tell, do you think they’d think of this?”

The younger, quicker looking man stops dead in his tracks, his back turned to Jeremy, his hands clutching the duffel bag’s straps tight, white knuckle tight, college loans without a second job budget tight (a tight Jeremy knew something about), and takes one step away from Jeremy – one step closer to the entrance/exit on the other end of the store. “I asked,” says Jeremy, holding up two DVDs, one a Princess story, the other’s plotline having to do something with trains, “if they had the opportunity to choose, to be here tonight, to stand alongside you, their little hands in yours, which would they choose?”

The younger, quicker looking man looks straight down the aisle to the entrance/exit, out the doors, across the lot, to his small, white, two seater pickup with newspapers covering his license plates, fixed there with masking tape and interesting folding patterns. He then looks left, down another aisle, to the counter, behind which sits a gruesome beast, a woman (or so most people, including Jeremy, would assume) thirty years old or so, with spiny hairs creeping from her upper lip, the recesses around her nose, the place between her eyebrows, and from within her ears – and he thinks for a moment.

Jeremy speaks up again. “I think it’s obvious, you have two choices, sir. This or that. One way or the other. Two titles a little child will know you by for the year coming, which will you choose?” And to Jeremy’s surprise, bewilderment even, the quicker, younger looking man begins walking, jogging, toward the front of the store. “I said,” pants Jeremy as he keeps up with the quicker of the two men as they make their way through section W (Women’s), passing brassier after pasty, dust covered brassier, “you have a choice, here, tonight for that little child, which will it be?”

The quicker man ups his pace though, paying Jeremy no attention, moving faster, but occasionally sticking his arm out to the passing racks to grab at whatever is on sale and stuffing it in his bag – a blouse in section W, a wooden spoon in section K (Kitchen), a handful of grapes in section G (Grocery). “I don’t think you understand the situation entirely,” he says, picking up speed again, almost at a full sprint. Their voices rise with their speed and the unfortunate looking woman(?) at the checkout counter stands in anticipation of the coming last minute Christmas shopping tide.

“This is no time to abandon responsibility!” says Jeremy.
“Responsibility is voluntary!”
“But think of the children!”
“I am thinking of them!”
“Don’t you care what their preference is?”
“They are a product of their community and have no say in matters of governance or fiscal responsibility!”
“That seems a bit out of place in this conversation but I agree with you!”

And with Jeremy’s final shout, the quicker, younger looking man stops dead in his tracks just inches from the front door, turns, and confronts his pursuer – who holds out two DVDs, one princess themed, the other regarding the preoccupations of trains and those that conduct them. “You agree?”

“Of course I agree, do I think it’s just? No. Do I understand the obligations a father or parent has to his offspring? Not really. But I too have a progenitorial past, I too have folks to care for, I too have certain obligations. And it is because of those obligations that I must encourage you to reconsider.”

“Reconsider?”

“Yes. Reconsider. Will it be the princess? or the trains? A fantasy or reality? Will you fertilize the child’s brain, nay, soul with dreams of immense beauty, power, social esteem, and dehumanizing service? or with that of the trades; engineering and manufacturing, juvenile peregrination, and bombastic coal burning engines? How will you shape a child’s mind?”
“Well, I suppose that’s a good question.”

“I’d say the most important at this juncture.”

The unfortunate looking cashier, woman…whatever she is, at the counter sighs, scratches the place between her lower lip and her chin red and raw and turns back to her People magazine. She lets out a burp, but the only two people close enough to hear her are deep in thought.

“Well, I suppose I’d take both.”

“Interesting choice,” says Jeremy as he opens the duffel bag and places both DVDs inside. He takes the time to zip the bag up for the younger, quicker looking man and pats it once for good measure. “Will you give them to one boy and one girl, respectively? or give both to one child and hope that with joint exposure, he or she will grow up with a sense of society’s duality and by so doing, help foster a mind capable of winning the world over, a thousand times over, and making our homeland a better place?”

“Well, I suppose I’ll just give them one to my aunt Judy. She’s a big fan of princesses, always watching that show on HBO about the royal families and such. And my brother Carl likes trains a whole lot.”
“Carl, he’s your little brother, with a child’s mind and curiosity?” asks Jeremy, expectantly.
“Nah, he’s twenty-two, and dumb as shit.”
“Oh.”
“But he has about, gosh, oh about five kids or so that’ll watch it with him. That is, if he can get them to stop watching all of those damn foreign cartoons. You know those things aren’t even in English?”
“It’s a shame.”
“I agree.”
“Merry Christmas, sir.”
“Well,” says the younger, quicker man, patting his duffel bag, “I’d better be off then. Merry Christmas to you too.”

Later, the following day, Christmas day, Jeremy was saved from almost certain corporate condemnation for his aid in a major theft from his department – mostly because it was Christmas and one of his eleven managers had the heart to overlook the infraction because most of the stolen DVDs were on sale anyways. Jeremy went on to manage a Radio Shack. He often looks back on that conversation with a younger, quicker looking man with a stolen duffel full of stolen goods (before they were technically stolen) and can see how a touch of hubris and gullibility lost him his employer’s respect, but how a well constructed customer service paradigm not only helps the customer find just the right product, but also helps change society for the better. Also, he is still in debt from his four years in state college, a debt he hopes to pay off quicker now that he’s managing a Radio Shack. He says twelve years, but with a little wishful thinking and new income based repayment plans, there’s a good chance it’ll only take ten.

The End.

Merry Christmas.

subjects worth breaching:

2010-12-04T16:15:00.004-06:00

"Life"
If you believe you only get one of these, taking inventory of it is probably a good idea. See Happiness.

"Happiness"
Ha, ha, ha, ha, aha, ha. See Life and act accordingly. Also see Finances.

"Love Life"
Girls = Trouble. Wait, no. Me + Girls = Trouble. Nah, that's not it. Me + Girls available right now = trouble. What? Really? Well, Me + Timing + Emotional Gluttony = Trouble...probably.

"Writing"
You're lonely, compensate for it. Well, I guess that's a part of it. You also read; that's something, right? Some people live vicariously through the Kardashians problems, you scrawl yours.

"Friends"
Hm...See Writing. Also see Love Life. Also see Time Management.

"Time Management"
See Adulthood.

"Adulthood"
When did that happen and how did I miss its graceless, deafening arrival?

"Family"
You only get one, you should talk to them. Also, see Love Life and admire your parents' thirty years together.

"Self Image"
Eventually you'll be old and fat. Get over it.

"God"
Gotta hope in something, right?

"Vices"
See Writing and Time Management.

"Sexuality"
See Self Image + Love Life + Adulthood and keep it in your pants. Also, quit assuming Sexuality = Adulthood, because it doesn't. Also see God.

"Finances"
You'll never have everything you want, but you'll probably receive what you need. A savings plan should help. Also see Vices.

"TBC"
See Life. Also, don't assume TBC means you're invincible. Again, see Life.

how the TV ended up in the yard.

2010-12-03T16:48:00.000-06:00

“Nobody plans for these sorts of things,” he says to the pitbull poised for attack between him and the privacy fence’s single gate. “Just take it easy, big guy,” he says as he inches away. The pit steps forward, saliva dripping from his lower lip, a menacing growl grows from deep within the beast. He takes another step back, and another, counting the steps between him and the beast, between him and the fence, between the ground and the fences tip top and says “fuck it” as he hurls the flat screen television at the mongrel and accelerates toward his only hope of deliverance.

Dinner at Whole Foods.

2010-11-30T20:40:00.002-06:00

A quickly formulated argument for the essential depravity of beings, that is, in opposition to everything Becky says about how great people are.

I’m going to skip the part of this essay where I try to capture your attention and earn any sort of trust - so here's my thesis. I’m somewhat of a theist and I’m tired of the cute girl I work with telling me that, despite my moderate attractiveness and halfway decent sense of humor, she won’t sleep with me because she doesn’t want to wake, tangled up with someone that believes people are essentially evil.

First of all, people aren’t evil, they just aren’t good. Take that kid in the Carhart coat for example. Yes, that one, by the escalator, scoping out the scene for a greeter that will inevitably ask him if he paid for his salad bar harvest, his sugarfree cola, cookie, none of which have the ‘paid’ stickers on them. There he goes, down the escalator when the gender ambiguous greeter was distracted with the guy in the fake leather jacket and scarf with the outdated Apple computer who the he/she greeter thought was giving him a flirtatious look but was actually indicating that the kid in the Carhart was about to make off with ethically raised, steroid free, possibly vegan dinner options and accompanying beverage and cookie.

And great, here comes the sexually ambiguous greeter with a pen in his/her ear and a napkin with some scribbles on it. Yes, yes I’m sure that’s a bit of hair on his/her upper lip. No, no I’m not sure if it’s a five o’clock shadow or a shadow of a past life as a man. Yes, yes I’m sure of it now, his/her name is Cassandra, Cassandra was a man at some point in his/her life, there’s a scar where his/her Adam’s apple was removed/trimmed/falsified. And no, no I don’t know how to interpret the intention of these seven digits any other way than I get off work at ten, call me.

But Cassandra has redeeming qualities. He/she is comforting the unfortunate looking young girl at the adjacent table. Apparently she was supposed to be on a date with a guy she met on- and was corresponding with- through Craigslist. She says something about his email saying he’d be wearing a tan winter coat, probably something a hunter would wear because he said he was really into hunting. I apologize for interrupting and say Carhart and her and Cassandra’s eyes zip to me.

So she asks me if I know who Barry is and I consider telling her that he’s in the lower level garage somewhere with a stolen dinner and as much as I want to prove Becky wrong, I can’t, so I shrug and return to my dilapidated computer with hopes of returning to the point I started with five paragraphs ago.

People are essentially bad. Who could believe anything otherwise? I think of idiots that ask why bad things could happen to good people and I scoff. What a dumb question. Fact is, there’s a pretty even distribution of good and ill in the world. Yeah, there are starving kids down the street, but there’s a lardy giant eating his third slice of brick oven pizza next to me. Somewhere in the world, somebody’s getting a parking ticket right now, and some kid is watching cartoons where the punchline is little more than a farting sound effect, and some collegiate professor is mentioning to his students that if kids read one paragraph for every farting sound effect on television, illiteracy would shrink, parking violations with the excuse but I didn’t read the sign! would disappear, the nation would lose a major source of income and would accordingly tax people to compensate for the loss. What a mess. My question is why don’t we simply plan for the bad things so we can appreciate the good when it occasionally comes around?

Okay, bunny trails aside, Cassandra keeps eyeing me up and missing the teenager stealing candy, the underage coed with the six pack under her arm, the homeless guy stealing napkins, and the lardy giant next to me smacking his lips while he pushes down his fourth slice of pizza. What is good about these people? What are they doing behind the scenes that’s so good? Where do they get off telling me that they’re good people?

They eat ethically raised meet, that’s a good thing, right? They shop at local restaurants and, after counting the number of rolled up right pantlegs, many ride bikes instead of driving. Good, good, good. But that guy’s wearing a tshirt to show off his muscles – because he’s insecure about the size of his… She’s wearing an expensive shirt disguised as an inexpensive shirt and those yoga pants that conveniently hold the ass just so… His arm’s around a girl thirty years his junior… She’s on her fourth glass of wine… He’s teasing his friend for talking like a fag… I’m sitting here, silently judging… And I’m sitting in a Whole Foods, the original Whole Foods, in Texas.

Sure, my Los Angeles based friends will read this essay/commentary/series of off-base observations and say but Greg, you were in Texas, that explains it all. Becky will say are you so pious that you can judge the intentions of others? My mother will say Gregory, is that really any way to write about your brother-man, about people you don’t know from Adam? My father will say that Becky sounds like a real nice girl. But Becky isn’t a real nice girl. Becky has a tight pilates body and likes shrooms because they make sex so much better and when I kiss her unassuming lips my days’ frustrations dissipate. Becky isn’t a nice girl. She hasn’t called her mother since she left at eighteen. She gives money to the homeless based on a rating system that includes how much facial hair, how many brown smears on the seat of the pants, how many missing teeth, and how creative the sign is. Oh, but oh are her breasts perky.

So Cassandra is making her second move with another napkin with more explicit directions Lavaca St. Bar @ 10? and I cower in my seat and tell him/her that I’ll think about it because I’m too much of a pansy to say no to someone that works up such immense courage like that. I mean, who just approaches someone in public like that? And Carhart coat’s stood up date is throwing back gelato faster than the lardy giant can lift his weighty arms from plate to mouth. Scratch that, he isn’t even using the plate anymore. He just keeps the pizza suspended in front of his mouth, spitting the half-chewed bits from his mouth back onto the pizza he bit from, exhaling loudly. His glasses fog up between bites and I don’t think it’s the steamy heat from the pizza.

Okay, so I’m willing to concede that some people have good intentions, but like Rand I believe that the altruist is a liar…maybe an ignorant liar but a liar nonetheless. Becky tells me about how much fun she has playing with the pups at the animal shelter and how much she loves tutoring kids in the inner city and I want to vomit. Okay Becky, okay, you do all kinds of good things, lots and lots of nice things, and you claim they’re for others’ benefit. But you can’t tell me that those things don’t make you feel good inside. Those selfless acts are just as effective as the lardy giant’s dinner at making you feel like a wholesome, well rounded person; anesthesia. We live in a shitty world with shitty people and I hope that there’s a being out there with enough grace and love to accept our shittiness and redeem it for some eventual good.

Or maybe I’m just a bad person so I want everyone else to be as well. Maybe I want to feel better about myself by tearing everyone else down. This is my animal shelter visitation time. This is my inner city tutoring. This is my blind date standup consolation. This is my plea to a world of people that say people are good, look at me. Well, screw you, good people, if you exist. Either I’m the social outlier – the exception to the rule – or ya’ll are compensating for the same insecurities that I am, you’re just less angry about not getting laid.

blah blah blah [self-absorbtion] blah title

2010-11-18T12:18:00.001-06:00

Statements I heard in the auto-service department lobby vs. Ways to tell your siblings about your parent’s fatal auto accident.

1. Bad news first, the structural damages are what most refer to as totaled.
2. Secondly, did you know that you every time you start your vehicle without your seatbelt on, you’re signing your own death certificate?
3. Unfortunately, dental records aren’t useful in case of dentures.
4. Also, I’d recommend reading up on our trade-in literature at the front desk.
5. Despite their best efforts, technicians could only recover 80% of the dislocated parts.
6. Furthermore, we weren’t sure where most of these fluids came from.
7. I’m curious though, did you really think they’d last forever?
8. On the upside, at least everyone had insurance.
9. Lastly, I advocate keeping a care log so insurance companies can accuse you of neglect.
10. On the upside, at least everyone had insurance.

Answers:
Lobby counsel: 1, 4, 6, 8, 9
Familial condolences: 2, 3, 5, 7, 10

untitled #2

2010-10-15T22:46:00.003-05:00

I think it could be better, he said as he pulls her from the placid deep. She holds his forearm tight; her grip slips eight inches and and catches on his wrist. They catch each other's eyes as she slips those few inches, back into the water. He loosens his grip just slightly to use some combination of his grip and her wrist to keep her faith suspended; he recognizes how little power he has and how badly he wishes he could anchor on the bouldery shore and keep her from falling back into the interminable abyss.

Do you, really, she asks as she holds his wrist; her thumb and pinky wrapped tight around the boney apparatus of his forearm. She wonders if he can ever understand what it means to depend on another's strength, what it feels like to spend a moment or lifetime hoping that someone can correct the broken, crooked disastrous pattern of dependence, and if he recognizes the weight of gravity pulling opposite his underdeveloped skeleton, perched atop this slippery, mossy rock.

untitled.

2010-10-13T16:11:00.005-05:00

That's the point of it all, he says as he takes her hand and points out over the vast expanse below them - first the loose limestone rocks beneath their bare feet, then the bigger crags extending just feet below, a few shrubs and a lonely tree jutting out horizontally from the stone, the puff of prodigal cloud slowly climbing the cliff's face, and eventually, the stone-grey breadth of water below.

I think you're wrong, she says as she meets his gaze in the final moments before the weight of his body overwhelms her reluctance and the wind whistles in her ear drums as she wonders if it matters if anyone is right or wrong or...

Music: You listen to What?

2010-10-05T15:25:00.006-05:00

Hey again, this is Gary Biggins and this is my blog "What's On My Mind." Today's subject is a reflection of new experiences of mine, and since I'm writing from the Alabama Street Music Festival and Jamboree in Painsfield, AL - my disgruntled wife's hometown- I think there are some relevant thoughts that need to be vented. This issue is entitled "Music: You listen to What?"

--

I've spent the last couple days in Alabama because my wife Becky's parents live in Alabama and I followed her there when she abandoned me because I told her there is no God. If you read my last post, Mark and David from I.T. helped shed some light on my unenlightedness and I was so compelled that I changed my worldview entirely. Needless to say, Becky isn't a fan. Becky and I had this long, drawn out conversation about open philosophy and all of the innaccuracies of the Bible and I even breached the "if there's a chance we're wrong, why not have fun for the bulk of our lives and then when we're slowing down, turn back to God" subject and it all came down to this: lots of tears and three nights on the couch for me.

Becky went to stay with her parents in Alabama on the fourth night and even though my new found freedom from spiritual inhibition was going swimmingly, I felt it was only right that I do the necessary work to convince the love of my life that she's wrong -so I followed her here to Alabama. I mean, if a Christian's goal is to convince others to be Christian, shouldn't the natural conclusion of the Agnostic (I changed from Athiest because I believe a God could exist, I just don't think I can know anything conclusive about him) is to convince others of his conclusion. So I set about the mission of convincing sweet Becky of my philosophic accuracy but unknowingly walked into the biggest street music festival in the southeast.

My first day in Alabama was a disaster. I street parked just before they blocked the streets off for the festival (I should have wondered why there were so many vacant spots) so I've had to go afoot and by public transportation the whole time I've been here. Walking is a problem; I'm a fit guy and don't mind the exercise, but the people...oh, the people. Apparently there's this trend in America called couch surfing where people let other people crash on their couches for free while they're traveling. I met a bunch of couch-surfers my first day in Alabama after Becky slammed the bright red door of her parent's house on me and I had nowhere else to turn but the local bar. These people are wild. The majority of them live transient lives, beg for money, eat at homeless shelters or dumpster dive, and sleep under the roofs of strangers - but gosh, do they love music.

The street music festival consists of a whole week of solo artists and bands lining the streets in booths and on makeshift stages as they perform intermittently for the roving crowds. They divide up the city by music stylings, and since Becky's parents live on the east end, I found myself listening to alot of what people refer to as "ambient folk rock." What does ambient folk rock sound like? Well, ambient folk rock sounds like late 80's keytar player teamed up with a band of seagulls with noisemakers tied to their wings and proceeded to play Broadway show tunes. To be honest, I couldn't get into it at first, but the more I criticized, the more I began to wonder if my critical attitude had more to do with my wife leaving me, losing my faith, and the ravenous hunger I had developed since I had to walk back and forth across town. It was this hunger that led me to a Subway restaurant and then, incidentally, down the greatest spiritual adventure of my entire life. It went something like this:

Just when Becky slammed the door on my face, a transient couch surfer named Kalik (I think that's how he spelled it, it wasn't that I couldn't understand him, he spoke perfect English - he even had an oldie Northeast accent) noticed my despair and asked if I wanted someone to talk to about it. I took him up on his offer and we walked the six blocks to the Subway restaurant and sat down together. I spilled my story about Mark and David from I.T. and about how I don't know what to make of God anymore and how Becky resents my enlightenment and how we always wanted kids but my cannucks don't work the way her idea of God made them to and how she came here and I came after her.

Anyways, we were eating our sandwiches and he pulled a bag of handpicked mushrooms from his backpack and dressed his sandwich with them and I mentioned that Subway should offer mushrooms for sandwiches and he said not these kind of mushrooms, which I thought was cool because I had never met anyone that picked their own mushrooms. So he offered me some for my sandwich and I accepted. Next thing I know, Kalik and I are feeling much better and speaking more open and honest with one another than I have with anyone else, ever. Kalik invited me to tour the street music with him and I accepted and we spent the afternoon soaking up the most brilliant music form I've ever encountered.

It's amazing what a good meal will do for your auditory senses. I didn't think much of the ambient folk rock music before, but with my stomach full and the emotional burden on my shoulders lessened, I felt free to enjoy the music. I even danced. Danced, can you imagine that from a straight-and-narrow guy like me? Amazing. It was as if the music - not the musician, mind you, the actual drifting tones of music - understood every inclination and element of my mood and fed it with it's wondrously soothing melody.

I was amazed at Kalik's passion for music. He loves it more than life itself. He even is willing to put himself through exhausting headaches for the chance to listen to music for hours or days on end. He probably took eight Tylenol capsules when we were together - I only had one - just because he felt that to experience this music without a good head is a travesty; what a commitment to an art. I wish I knew that sort of passion in my life. I've never experienced anything like that night of music with Kalik before; I sang along, sometimes making up my own lyrics as they felt appropriate, danced in the street, I even enjoyed the street parade and all of it's intricate floats and incandescent glowing fixtures - Kalik saw it too, even if some strangers couldn't seem to appreciate the sight we were experiencing.

Well, before I knew it, it was well after three am and the festival was wrapping up for the night and I spent the night on the couch adjacent Kalik in a college dorm room with some very generous coeds. I must have had quite the night, even more than I had realized, because the next morning brought on a soreness I haven't experienced before - but that's the way it goes with street music festival dancing, it's exhilarating but it challenges some unexpected muscles.

So here I am, on the third day of the Alabama Street Music Festival, sitting at a street side cafe with my new comrade, Kalik, writing all of you who read "What's On My Mind." As I sit and reflect, I wonder if there is something to Kalik's renegade lifestyle that I could really get into. I don't know yet; I have my work cut out for me in Alabama, but I'll let you know when I do.

Signing off,
Gary Biggins

"Religion: You Believe What?" by Gary Biggins

2010-10-04T13:50:00.006-05:00

My name is Gary Biggins and this is "What’s On My Mind," a blog of cutting edge thinking that I do since HR blocked Facebook's Farmville on my work computer. Today's post is dear to my heart and I think it'll challenge us all to really think about all the ways we were misled as children. If you still believe what your parent's taught you, you probably aren't a progressive individual. I suspect you're thinking, "What is a progressive individual?" A progressive individual is a thinker. Some people say that you have to be academically trained to think, but I disagree. I've done a pretty good job thinking on my own and if anything, this blog is testament to how good at thinking I am. That being said, here's my latest post. It is entitled "Religion: You Believe What?"

--

I was raised in such a way as to believe and hold tight to the religious constructs of the Christian faith. I had heard sermons and tight knit arguments for the legitimacy and truth of my faith and, up until yesterday at lunch, I thought I’d pretty much cemented myself in a life of committed family with God. Little did I know that the Bible, the holy message of the wondrous God (as depicted by Mr. Mel Gibson), was actually written by corporate pranksters in the 1800’s. It’s true. Mark from Technical Support on the third floor told me all about it at lunch yesterday, and frankly, it’s changed my entire outlook on life.

You see, Jesus was a really great guy, anyone will admit that, well maybe not the guys in the oil countries, the sand people really conflict with the whole Jesus story corroboration. They say that this guy Muhammed (not the boxer, I checked, a totally different guy altogether) was inspired by God, but not the one that Jesus claimed to be the son of. Another God. A God that understands a man’s need to eventually get laid and doesn’t have a problem with a little violence if it means being the bigger, badder God on the block. But that’s not all, Mark says that there is this totally other way of looking at the whole thing if you just look into nature. He says that when scientists go and look at the world, they can tell not only how old something is, but how much it likes being what it is. It’s true. And get this, Tom Cruise is all up on that shit. For serious.

Anyways, I’m getting ahead of myself. So I’ve always avoided Mark at the office. It’s not like Mark is all that bad of a guy, but my wife Becky and I always felt that we’d rather spend time with the people from church and all, since we have the same belief as them and can talk about similar topics and such. And besides, Becky really isn’t all that comfortable around…well, we grew up in a part of the country that doesn’t need many immigrants because we get along with the cleaning and such by ourselves. Not like those folks out West and such. Mark, well, really Mark’s lunch buddy Dave says that people in California don’t own lawn mowers because the government lets the Mexicans come over and hang out in America if they do some handiwork around the neighborhood at a discount rate. Pretty wild. But like I was saying, Becky and I just prefer to get together with couples that do pretty much the same thing we do on Friday nights. Becky would probably feel uncomfortable around guys like Mark and Dave. She prefers it when I come home for lunch.

Dave was saying that a lot of the folks out West are getting into deeper philosophies. Now, I can do some pretty damn good thinking, and do consider myself a pretty learned guy. (It’s pronounced with two syllables, learn-ed.) But the sorts of things that Dave was explaining were pretty beyond the sorts of schooling I’ve been exposed to. Get this, there are philosophers that literally sit around all day thinking about the process of thinking. Like, what is actually happening in that mess of stuff in your head besides the pictures and words and colors in there that you get to pick from when you’re talking or imagining and whatnot. People thinking about thinking, what’s next?

But even crazier than that was the whole coincidence of it. You see Mr. Tomlinson, my boss, and Mr. Jenkins, Mark and Dave’s boss got to talking and are making us all take computer competency courses, not for typing and such - I have that covered - but for fixing the little problems with our computers on our own so we don’t need as much help from I.T.. Anyhow, we covered USB’s and pixel counts before lunch and I was learning (I said I was quick) pretty much all of it faster than Marcie next door, so the guys just brought their lunches into my office and we ate together, just the one day. But you have no idea how much they totally rocked my world in that short hour.

First we got to talking about Becky and how she doesn’t really like to do the things the girls on the computer like to do. I told Mark and Dave about Becky and my last fight and they actually listened. I was so excited about making new friends that I sorta blurted out a statement about Becky's undergarments, which I don’t usually disclose, but they were talking about their ladies and they asked me and I didn’t think, I just answered. Anyways, we were talking about the things in bed that Jesus isn’t cool with and Mark was like “Whoa.” And Dave was like “You know that none of that religion stuff is true, right?” And I was like “What do you mean? Like evolution?” And I told them both that evolution was just an annoying thing the liberals wanted in schools so they could give the kids that weren’t good at dodge ball something to think about to cheer them up. (According to that wacky science you can grow into another thing, like a vampire or werewolf, but not an ape-man, because that’d be going backwards on the evolutionary chain. There are all kinds of books on the subject.)

Before I knew it we had covered the better part of world religions including the guys in Utah that are totally ahead of the game and it seems to me that the folks in Japan and such are still trying to make sense of things after the war and bomb and everything. Pretty backwards religions coming out of that end of the world. Mark made it super clear though, religion as most people see it is just a real smart guy that figures out how to entertain people on their weekends when they just gotta get out of the house. For some people that happens on a dance floor, for some on a stage, others live out their ‘cosmic distraction’ in some kind of trance or orgy or in their choir songs like Becky. Cosmic distractions, that’s what Dave titled the feeling you get at night when you haven’t the slightest clue what life is all about and then remember that someone like a God is in control.

I had no idea that all this other stuff was even out there, not to mention the fact that somebody’s just reeling in the cash from these operations. At first I was confused, I didn’t understand why God would tell Lincoln era con-artists write the Bible, but Mark set me straight. He let me in on the secret that has me writing to you today; there is no God. Not only that, but if there was a God, he’d probably be a little fed up with everybody treating him like he’s the popular kid in class. Mark made it so clear to me, he said “If there was a God, don’t you think it’s odd that everybody goes around claiming that they know him best and that they’re all invited to his eternal slumber party? Even though everybody’s RSVP cards have different addresses on them? God can’t be having a party at his house and at the roller rink at the same time, could he?”

It all makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. What with the preachers collecting money to make bigger churches and the folks out West collecting money to buy better machines to figure out what side of the Force are you on. And don’t even get Dave started on the loonies way over in countries that still make sacrifices. Talk about commitment – I can understand why a preacher wants a big church, it’s just like having a big truck or a big penis. But killing and burning stuff to appease the gods? Now I don’t know what that proves, other than they have a lot of shit to be cosmically distracted by. That or they just don’t know how to read off of stone tablets or gold plates or somebody’s birthmark accurately.

Now, I know that I should tell Becky, but what would she say? How could she respond to the wealth of knowledge that I have been charged with? You can see how this eats at me, how this troubles me to the core. I have been a God fearing man my entire life. My father before me, his before him, and my children have known the good Lord’s blessings of VISA double rewards and such their entire lives. What will information like this change? Even if it were to be leaked to the right people and there was an investigation to figure everything out, the people with the money and smarts would just figure out another way to manipulate the findings into some new kind of belief – some twisted fantasy involving a unicorn, a mining accident, and a newly chartered handbook for living. Dave thinks that’s what IKEA is already, but Mark disagrees. I asked what he thought it might be, but he didn’t answer. His silence probably spooked me the most.

It isn't that I don't like having faith; I enjoy the songs and the other couples from church that Becky and I play cards with, but it's nice to know that I don't have to be so uptight anymore - even if I have no idea what I'm going to do the next time I wake in the night, there in bed next to Becky. Will I call out "Why God?" or will my new liberation from having to care about all that nonesense bring me peace? After all, if Mark is right, and I have no reason to think he' isn't, complete emptiness (or 'open philosophy' as he calls it) is the only path to unity and truth. And he's right, you know? I mean, what has commitment to a supposedly benevolent God ever done for anyone? It's not like anyone can call God up and ask him why he lets people go around ruining his world. LIke Mark says, "What kind of ultimate deity would care about us anyways? Sure, we humans have come a long way, but it's not like we're that special. If I were God, I think I'd hold out my blessing for people that know how to fix their own problems."

My Laptop.

2010-09-24T16:04:00.003-05:00

He fought long and hard, but it’s time for his retirement. I’ll encourage him to consider picking up a less challenging hobby for his remaining years, months - before his scrap parts are salvaged and reassigned. Maybe he’ll get plugged into speakers and play music, or hold onto otherwise unnecessary documents for a rainy day. Maybe he’ll hoard pictures, memories, but won’t have the stamina to look through them again.

With a lessened capacity for energy retention, he’ll live shorter days, sleep longer nights, make new friends – the rusty stapler, the dried up pens – and gather dust to fill the deep creases worn in his weathered dermis. He’ll dream memories of afternoons in the park, late night coffee runs turned into early morning deadlines, a life of challenge and purpose – a life he no longer lives but will remember till his hard drive is erased and the small light on his face fades to black.

Kidnapping.

2010-09-24T15:45:00.000-05:00

She hangs up her cell phone, and for a petrified moment, they stare into each other’s eyes - his, terrified; hers, furious - and wonder how many seconds will pass between their dinner table and the door, the door and their parked car, the parking spot and the freeway, the freeway and their driveway, their driveway and the front door, the front door to their son’s bedroom door, his door to his crib, his crib to the shattered window, the window to the roof, roof to lawn, lawn to street and street to knees; teary eyed and trembling.

Prop Gun.

2010-09-15T07:14:00.004-05:00

A man walks into an upscale Hollywood bar, selects a stool near the bartend, removes a small, snub nosed revolver from his jacket pocket and places it on the bar. His jacket is blue, as are his jeans, the t-shirt between the blue articles is a deep burgundy and is tucked into his pants as if to say ‘I mean business, even if I don’t know how to dress for it.’ The bartend says, “I’m afraid I can’t serve you what with that gun on the bar.” The man picks up the revolver, turns it over in his hand, admires it’s shape - the grooved contour of the chamber, it’s ivory and metallic handle is dense for it’s size; he can feel its power.

“I’m an actor, it’s just a prop,” says the man holding the gun, defensively. A woman three stools from him leans in to listen and swirls her near-empty glass as lure for a free drink. “I thought I recognized your face,” she says – swirling her glass higher with each successive rotation of her wrist, “what have I seen you in?”

“I’m in movies,” says the man holding the gun. The bartender wrings out a rag into a basin of cloudy liquid – the remnants of a long night of drink service – and slowly moves up and down the already sparkling surface of the counter with it. The clock on the wall reads 1: 38. “I still can’t serve you, prop or not,” says the bartend.

“But Gary, the man’s an actor, I’ve seen him in the movies,” the woman says, “besides, it’s getting late, what’s one drink going to hurt, he is an actor after all.” She stands, still swirling her glass, and joins the man with the gun on the adjacent stool. “Gary, you wouldn’t understand how an actor needs a gun like this. You wouldn’t want to see a film about a man with a gun in a…well, in a bar, where the actor doesn’t know how to hold his gun.”

“It’s no good, I can’t serve alcohol to a man with a gun,” says the bartend.

“It’s a prop,” says the man as he spins the gun on his finger and offers it to the bartend, handle first. “Take it Gary, see for yourself,” the young woman says, her glass swirls closer and closer to the man with the gun. The man with the gun pays no attention to her motion, lure; he opens his palm and offers the gun to the bartend again, as a peace offering.

“Hey man, I hate to be that guy, but I don’t know the difference between a real gun and a prop gun,” says the bartend, “so I have to say no to both.”

“Gary,” the young woman says, “can’t you just test the gun, see if it’s real or not, so we can get on with our evening?”

“Gary, can I call you Gary,” asks the man holding the gun, “she brings up a valid point. The only way to tell if a gun is a genuine threat is to give it a try and see what happens.”

The bartend wipes the counter again, his stocky frame makes a display of tone and fitness as his arm sweeps over the counter. “So what, I should shoot that thing, in here,” asks the bartend.

“That’s the only reasonable answer,” says the young woman. She holds out her palm to the man with the gun as if to volunteer for the act, the experiment. The man with the gun drops it in her palm; her eyes widen as she feels it weight. A pulse of energy starts in her tailbone, runs up her spine and tightens her neck before turning down her arms, her elbows shudder as the energy tightens her grip on the piece.

“You aren’t going to shoot that thing in here,” says the bartend. “Nobody’s shooting anything,” she answers, “cause it isn’t real, the man said so himself.” She swings the gun around her, leveling it in the direction of the clock, a bottle of champagne, the gold rod running along the edge of the bar.

“What movies are you in,” asks the bartend, “where would we have seen you?”

“I’ve acted in a lot of different things,” says the man.

“He’s obviously very experienced,” says the woman. Her femininity only deepens with the revolver between her hands, the tremor in her elbows continues; the gun’s owner shows her how to loosen her grip, grasping her hands in his. The bartend follows the muzzle as it swings between the young woman and his chest.

“Gary, would I even point this thing at you if it were a real gun,” she asks the bartend. His right arm grips his rag tighter, his left shakes at his side. “Of course I wouldn’t, it’s obviously a prop. Don’t be upset, Gary. Pour the man a drink.”

“I’m not serving anyone with a gun,” says the bartend, “take that thing out of my bar this instant.”

“Gary,” says the actor, “there’s nothing to worry about, it’s just a prop.”

“Get it out of my bar,” shouts the bartend.

“Gary,” says the woman as she levels the gun directly at his chest, “there’s nothing to get upset about, he’s a notable actor and it’s obviously a prop. Besides, shouting is hardly becoming of a bartend of your caliber.” She lowers the gun and hands it back to its owner, he returns it to his pocket and pushes away from the bar.

“Now look what you’ve done,” she says to the bartend, “please sir, join me for a drink.”

The man with the gun turns, walks slowly to the double-wide doors, turns up his jacket collar, opens the left side and steps out into the rain.

“Gary, that man was an actor, and it was just a prop,” she says, “you didn’t have to shoo him away like that.”

The bartend pays her remarks no attention, fills her glass to keep it from swirling inches above the bar; she goes on about how people could learn from a man like that, how she’d like to have had a drink with an actor someday, how the fear of little things like prop guns is so unflattering in a progressive town like Hollywood or an upscale bar like this.

The Troubadour

2010-09-08T16:12:00.004-05:00

Inside the Basement Lounge the beat goes tic-a-tic-a-tak and Geraldine Maves rocks from left heel to right on a stage littered with tens and twenties and hundreds as she wails for the love of a stranger, I’d give my head, but your yours, baby, I’d give my heart. The standing bass player follows her cue and zips along the tenor end of his instrument’s neck – light and swingy – and her brother Charles pops lightly on the keys of a baby grand behind her.

She is beautiful in every traditional sense, the low lights and splotchy brick walls throw flattering shadows in her best interest and the tiny black dress she’s squeezed in to hugs every curve just right. As she dances back and forth on her black stilettos, her weight shifts enough to reveal little extras here and there but between her voice and those hips, there isn’t a man in the room that could muster the discretion. She sings and dances and the drummer to her right follows that tic-a-tic-a-tak.

Men pour in from the street – mostly businessmen in once pressed suits and loosened ties with a wiskey in one hand and a carnal wish sweating in the other. The other patrons are a curried mixture of college students from uptown here for class credit or by accident. These kids call out an occasional favorite only to get blank stares and snuffs from the surrounding crowd. At the back of the bar sits a woman old enough to be Geraldine’s mother, the two women even look similar – same shapely hips and bold eyes; but her skin lacks luster and is long since taught.

--

A straight, single user staircase with a rusted handrail leads up to the street above and atop it sits an old, black man in grey slacks and an unbuttoned white shirt – his jacket lies across his right leg. He taps his feet to the light tic-a-tic-a-tak, barely audible through the heavy wood door below him.

The street is lined with bums and derelicts that peddle and beg the businessmen in transit from work to play to home before they begin their day again. To say the street is alive would inaccurately imply soulful frivolity; this street is only alive as much the middle aged homeless man overdosed on grain alcohol in the gutter is alive – the heartbeat is there, but external vital signs are sparing and faded.

A low pitched whistle floats down the street, a homeless Troubadour follows the sound with his twisted harmonica – twisted from heat or playing fervor, maybe both – pressed tight to his lips as he trounces through the dirty wet street. He plays for the old Doorman and joins the tic-a-tic-a-tak over the shoulder of a sharply wild eyed businessman escorts his prey from the stairwell to the motel across the street.

The Troubadour picks up the beat and plays under the dim lights of the lofted motel windows, offering his whistling melody to the tic-a-tic-a-tak above. He song woos the harrowing, ecstatic gratification that accompanies the heartless vexing one another.

--

Inside the club, the beat picks up. Tic-tic-a-tic-tic goes the snare drum and Geraldine sings a phrase about being too young too die quietly and too old to live loudly but never alive enough to love and the older woman in the back mouths along with the words – she knows them by heart. She knows the staggering joy in a girl’s bosom when a full room of men’s spirits hang on every word and step. She knows the ache, the yearn, the swelling sexuality of jazz and it pains her to see this young woman and to sit at the back of the bar, alone, knowing her time has past.

Geraldine leaves the stage with a little hop to the adjacent bar and walks the length of it before turning her back to the writhing crowd and, with her knees extended, falls into their open arms.

Men in suits catch her and the woman at the bar watches their hands, the way they touch her, envelope her and lower her to the ground. Geraldine wails into the microphone, raspy and wild, and tosses her hair from side and marches through the room, table to candlelit table, serenading men and demons alike.

--

Outside, the Troubadour keeps the drummer’s pace under the motel’s only lit window. He rips and moans into his twisted harmonica – small cracks and chips knick his lips as he glides down the warped length of it. He follows Geraldine’s lead and joins the doorman near the stairs, they dance around the bums and the days discarded newspapers. The Doorman waves the Troubadour over, sits him down in his chair and lightly taps to his trilla-trilla and gutteral moan.

The sight attracts a crowd of derelicts and vultures. The mob swells and grows, but as the clapping begins, the old doorman looses his rhythm and slows to a halt. A local bum tries to impersonate the dance but the crowd grows bored and dissipates.

--

Inside, Geraldine’s pianist pops along the ivories while she takes another drink from the row of offerings of gentlemen callers at the foot of the stage. As if rehearsed, a young man with too much pomade in his hair, too much slack in his blazer’s shoulders, a nose too small to be his own approaches the stage and claims his bounty.

Geraldine sings backup while her pianist leads you’re nobody till somebody loves you. In between oohs and ahs, Geraldine leans over the stage’s edge and kisses him. He places a folded bill between her clenched knees, she leaves lipstick between his lips and cheek, and opens her knees. The bill falls like some boozy leaf, wilted and dead, to the floor to join the fifty others littered about the stage.

--

The Troubadour hammers all of his breath into his rusty instrument, his pockets penniless but bulging with refuse and leftovers of one hundred dinners out.

Are you hungry say a passing diner.
I’m afraid you’ll spend it on drugs say others.

The Doorman disappears through the club’s heavy door and reappears with a club soda. A slipshod priest wanders about in rags, comments on the local scene, complains that the city given over to derelicts and boozers. The Troubadour plays him a wicked tune and the Doorman shoos him away.

--

The woman at the bar gathers her things and waves to Geraldine, reluctantly. Geraldine notices her from the stage, amongst the men and heat, and misses her cue for the next song. The woman pushes aside the heavy door and climbs the stairs into the night. The band recovers and plays on. Geraldine sings along, more drinks are poured, more money thrown on stage.

--

She steps onto the sidewalk, rouses the Doorman from slumber. He offers her his jacket, drapes it across her shoulders, takes her arm in his. The two walk down the street to the fading beat of Geraldine’s drummer and the slow vibrations of the Troubadour’s harmonica. He blows and pulls air through his instrument, lets the piece slide left and right between his lips while he hums some far off memory of a song he once knew from the nights he played alongside his wife onstage at the Basement Lounge.

(his new novel) part three of three

2010-08-22T14:46:00.002-05:00

“Stephanie left eleven months ago,” I tell the girl who calls herself Sandie, or Sandy – I’ve never seen it in writing. She sits on my bed, I lie on the floor in the filth and pizza boxes and empty bottles of cheap Russian vodka. I’m pretty sure she’s bored, but I’m paying so I don’t feel real bad about it.

“Sounds like you still love her,” she says, “you should call her, tell her how you feel.”
“Weren’t you listening,” I say, “that ship has sailed, I already told her that I’d never write again if she’d come back, that I’d get a job selling insurance if it meant having her back.”
“You’re a writer,” she asks.
“Yes.”
“And you aren’t like some starving artist?”
“No, I’m no starving artist, but I’m not rich.”
“And she left you and this apartment because you wanted to write about her,” she asks, “like what, naked or something?”

--

My agent rings me the next day, “What did I tell you about talking to publishers before me.”
“I didn’t,” I say.
“I’m coming over right now to pick up the new manuscript. I’m in the car, don’t move.”

He gets to my apartment and the look on his face measures somewhere between revolt and utter trepidation. “I’m calling a maid service I know of,” he says, “how do you let it get this bad, they make TV shows about people like you.” He wades through the filth and picks at miscellaneous pages around my desk and countertops. He finds more sketches of me hanging myself than anything else. “What the hell is wrong with you, Gary,” he asks.

“She’s been gone eleven months,” I say.
“I thought you were with the girl from the place, you know, the brunette – big, you know,” he says and I wonder if he remembers Stephanie’s name.
“You know what the thing about you writers is,” he asks, “you spend your life completely self critical until you either can’t stand to look at yourself or you convince yourself that showing the entire world your insides will allow you to like yourself.”

He gets the maid service over. I still haven’t told him that there is no new manuscript - he’s still looking for it. “It isn’t that I need the world to see me,” I say, “I need the world to approve of me.”

“Maybe that’s why she left you,” he says, “that or this mess.”

--

I spend the better part of this month, the twelfth month since her, trying to come up with a decent excuse for a romance novel about a girl that doesn’t want to be the center of attention, then decides that she loves being the center of attention, then after she’s the center of attention begins to hate the person she’s either becoming or is revealed to truly be, and then kills herself. I got the idea from my last year of relationships, and the prostitute I hired to play psychiatrist – she played a big part in developing the plotline.

It’s almost laughable how last minute it is, but I cut and paste some sex scenes from other stories that didn’t get published, it’s pretty raunchy. I call my mom and tell her not to pick up a copy of the new one, I’m sending her an edited edition so she isn’t offended by anything.

Mom asks “what happened to that Stephanie, I thought you really liked her.”
“I did,” I say.
“Then what, did you scare her away with your messiness,” she asks, “you can hire people to clean for you, it’s something you can afford.”
“How do you know what I can afford,” I ask.
“Your father doesn’t write novels and he can afford me,” she says.

--

This month is terrible. I’m traveling, promoting the new book, on the road for weeks on end, signing copies, meeting people that apparently understand where I’m coming from. They say “I feel like we’re the same person sometimes,” and “you say all the things I can’t put into words about myself.”

A young woman asks if I write about real women or if these girls are actual people from my life. Another asks the same question but with a twist, “do these girls care that the world knows their every flaw?”

--

Hannah calls when I’m on the road. She catches me right before I leave my hotel room for a stop at a kitschy little bookstore – it’s a hip crowd, where I have to answer more aggressive questions and the occasional homeless guys’ – but I give her a minute to talk.

“I read the new piece,” she says, “I’m flattered.”
“You’re flattered,” I ask.
“I could see hints of myself in your words, and I’m flattered,” she says, “no one has ever paid that kind of attention to my details before, thank you.”

I tell her that I have to go to this signing. She asks if I’ll call her up when I get back in town, when I have a chance to sit down for a meal. Against my better judgment, I tell her I will.

The driver arrives and meets me in the hotel bar. He asks me if I’m ready to go, I say no and ask him to join me for a drink. He reminds me that he drives professionally. I pour the drink I ordered him into mine.

“Tell me what’s wrong with me,” I say.
“You drink in the morning,” he says, “and you ask strangers to tell you what’s wrong with you.”
“All good points,” I say, “anything else?”
“You writing is shit,” he says.

I cough a little into my drink, it splatters on my face and all down my shirt front. He hands me a towel, I don’t take it. “What,” I ask.

“Sorry,” he says, "you asked.”
“No, I’m not angry. I’m looking for clarification.”
“Is that really necessary,” he says as he takes my drink, pours half of it back into his glass and throws it down the hatch. “I think what you did to that girl is terrible, and to publish it is shameful.”
“Was it really that bad,” I ask.
“Terrible,” he says.

I borrow his phone and call Stephanie and have three sentences out before she can say “Gary, there is something I need to tell you.”

“What,” I ask.
“No, finish yours first,” she says.
“Okay, I understand that I betrayed your trust, but I also understand now why it was so upsetting,” I say.
“Why was it was so upsetting,” she asks.
“Because I’m really not that great of a writer,” I say.
“Gary,” she says, “I’m getting married.” I hang up on her but I can hear the way she says married echo in my head for the better part of the drive to the bookstore. I can hear the way she admitted it instead of exclaiming it over every question I’m asked about the importance of personal experience in the work of a fiction writer. I hear the way she said my name like my mother did when her friends showed her their copies of the unedited versions and it drowns out every autograph and photo request.

--

It took me the better part of twelve months to put out this novel and as I step onto this plane of commuters – who look exactly like me, except they don’t reek of bourbon and Sharpie marker – I wonder if there will ever be a time in my life where I can meet a girl that I truly like without needing to live out this barbaric intimacy routine with. Someone that will give me that “why does she have this power over me” feeling without the need to answer it.

My agent pushed for first class, I ended up getting first row coach. The stewardess asks me if there is anything special I’d like for the trip. I say “nothing.” She hands me a copy of the more recent of the two novels that I absolutely hate and asks for an autograph.

“How do you feel about being the object of perpetual, arduous criticism from the one person who is supposed to like you for you,” I ask.
“I guess that depends who’s asking,” she says.

Newsflash - an experiment

2010-08-17T21:18:00.006-05:00

I call it Newsflash. It's an exercise in story building. Ten headlines of social development out of a single incident. You can go ahead and expect more of these. Oh, and they show up in the novel too. Practice makes perfect?

The Daily Texan: Missing Panda Worries Local Authorities. Climate, Diet Conjecture

Waco Weekly: Community Hero Honored, Rescues Missing Panda from Roadside Collision

Texas Star: Roadside Rescue or Erred Panda-napping? Foul Play Suspected

Houston Quarterly: Panda-napper Trial is Postponed for Panda Parturition – live video available on houstonquarterly.com/pandabirth

The Austinian: Man Mates With Panda – Offspring Survives Birth! Panda-napping Trial Repeatedly Postponed

St. Louis Times: Texan Man First Ever to Mate with Panda, Litigation Continues

Chicago Tribune: Second Generation PandaMan Born in Captivity – Father, Grandfather and PETA Upset

New York Times: Texan PandaMan Population Grows – Community Unrest Proves Overwhelming for Local Authorities

Wall Street Journal: PandaMan Settlement Established In West Texas Grasslands - Gross Misuse of Federal Funding

Time: PandaMan Vs. KoalaMan – The Next American Race Struggle – The Exclusive Interview

(his new novel) part two

2010-08-15T22:58:00.007-05:00

I met the new girl at my publisher’s office, I call her Hannah. She was an intern when I met her, now she’s a Personal Assistant. She really likes the new novel. She likes it so much that she told her boss that she loves it. She says it’s comforting to be dating a guy that’s in touch with his feelings, that recognizes beauty in his partner, that wants to expose her radiance to the world.

“I mean, it bothers me that you cared about her so much, so recently,” she says.
“You came along at a funny time,” I say.
“Do you think your next novel could be about me,” she asks.

I ran the whole relational gambit with this girl: she kept me up on the phone all night, she convinced me to take her to the folks’ house for the holidays, she spent a month on the road with me for the signing tour. But the fact is, she isn’t the girl from the new novel and she certainly isn’t the non-fictional Stephanie.

“I don’t think it works like that,” I say.
“How does it work,” she asks, “should I break your heart so you can write about it and then we can get back together?” She thinks she’s funny. I hate that about her.

She spends the bulk of the afternoon with a booklet of paint colors and a ladder, a measuring tape, printed photos from Ethan Allen’s website.

“I was thinking we could make this the accent wall,” she points to the wall above my desk, “or maybe that one. What do you think about a deep green or brown?”
“What’s an accent wall,” I ask.
“Don’t be silly,” she says, “you’re an artist, you know what an accent wall is.”

--

Stephanie calls later that month. She wants to follow up on last month’s missing royalty check. It’s sitting on my desk, at least it was till Hannah decided to move everything around a couple days ago. Now there’s a glass jar with flowers on it where my stack of paper used to sit.

“It must be lost in the mail,” I say, “don’t bother calling your lawyer, I’ll cut you a new one.”
“Nothing gets lost in the mail for forty-seven days,” she says.
“Maybe the flowers ate it,” I say.

I ask about how things are going with her new boyfriend. She makes some comment about that being a tacky question, inappropriate, frustrating. She asks me about Hannah, if I’m going to write a novel about her.

“Why would I want to write about her,” I ask.
“I just figured,” she says, “so you two are all moved in then?”

Hanging up on her doesn’t feel as gratifying as I had hoped. Maybe I should’ve worked up a temper, got surly, said something cruel about her looking a little heartier at the last lawyer mediation.

--

Hannah, the new girl, whatever she’s called, wants a big night out on the town to celebrate our first six months of living together. She takes me to a store to buy pants.

“What’s wrong with my pants,” I ask.
“They’re all worn and discolored,” she says.

She wanders around the store grabbing random pairs of pants in my size and an inch smaller and hands them over the door. She hands me another pair over the fitting stall door, I ask her to hold my wallet so I don’t lose it in the mess of clothes on the floor.

“I like my pants the way they are,” I say, “and these are too small.”
“They’re fitted,” she says, “don’t you want something more handsome for our anniversary?
“Six months counts as an anniversary now,” I ask.

She gets offended and locks herself in the next fitting stall. I know she’s crying, I can hear her breathing, hacking really, from behind the door. She pulls her feet up on the stool so I can’t grab at them. It’s something my mom did when I was a kid – grabbed and tickled my toes under the fitting stall door – but she doesn’t appreciate the comedy and stomps on my right hand.

“You bitch,” I say under my breath, “just when I put some effort into this goddam—
“Gary,” Stephanie says. She stands over me on my hands and knees just outside her fitting stall, “I thought I recognized your voice.”
“Steph,” I say, “hello.”

She asks why I’m shopping at this store, why I’m peeking under dressing room doors, what happened to my swelling hand – none of which I have believable answers for. Hannah stops whimpering and I put my hand on her doorknob so she can’t exit the fitting stall.

“I’m just goofing around,” I say, “research for the new piece.” I kick myself for calling it a piece, she hated it when I called things pieces.
“Research,” she asks, “did you get that check figured out yet? I told my lawyer to give you a week before he throws a fit.”
“Gary,” Hannah calls out from the fitting stall, “I think the door is broken.”

--

Hannah charges out of the store, out to the street, and into the first available cab. I follow her out, she has my wallet, but she leaves me on the street. Stephanie follows me out, sees the final dramatic moments of the scene, and sits down on the curb next to me.

“She seems nice,” she says, “and you’re not writing about her?”
“Why does everyone keep asking that,” I ask.
“I thought that’s what you did,” she says, “write novels about girls.”

She fishes around in her purse and hands me ten dollars. I offer to buy her coffee. She threatens to take the ten dollars back. She makes a comment about my writing being the best part time job she’s ever had.

“Part time," I ask, "I thought you hit it rich with this whole lawsuit."
“Only when I get my checks,” she says.

I snag a cab but only have enough money to get three-quarters of the way there. “Get out,” says the cab driver. “Shit,” I say.

--

Hannah calls her boss, my publisher, and swears I have a new novel in the works. Apparently the new novel is the sequel to the recent novel, grittier though, with more explicit content.

“Why would you tell him that,” I ask, “you know I haven’t put a word on paper since you moved in.”
“Then get to it,” she says.

I kick her out, she says she’s going to sue me for some sort of emotional damages, I wonder why I get myself into these situations, and then I call up Stephanie.

“Thanks for the check,” she says, “it took you long enough.”
“I was hoping we could talk,” I say.
“What do you want to talk about,” she says.
“I’m thinking about quitting,” I say.
“Stop being dramatic,” she says.

The pizza place I normally order from is closed for the night so I have to order from Pizza Hut. I make sure to get the wings and the breadsticks too. The shop down the street delivers liquor. Stephanie tells me she’ll be over in an hour. I start cleaning.

--

“Haven’t we had this conversation already,” she asks, “I’m not coming back.”
“It seems a little unfair,” I say.
“What unfair about me moving on with my life,” she asks.

I tip the delivery guy extra, try to make a scene out of it, Stephanie pays it no attention. She incessantly checks her phone, asks annoying questions about the new color on the wall, the empty vase on my desk, the vacant spaces on my bookshelf.

“You didn’t write about her at all,” she asks.
“Not a word,” I say.
“Why didn’t you just leave me out of it all,” she asks, “it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“I already told you,” I say, “you didn’t want the attention.”
“I loved the attention,” she says, “that wasn't the problem.”

five self-explanatory statements about this last year.

2010-08-15T13:47:00.004-05:00

Any time is a good time for disco.
Celibacy is cool, until you're horny.
Girls who like girls generally don't like me like that.
The title 'starving artist' is really enticing when you live with Mom and Dad.
Despite what coffee shop people say, health insurance would have been so worth having.

What She Learned.

2010-08-09T14:31:00.003-05:00

Life isn’t easy being the older sister of a rock and roll star. First, he never calls when you ask him to, only when it’s convenient or when he’s drunk or when he needs direction. He doesn’t call to ask permission to tell that personal story on the Tonight Show – the one from their childhood, about her first boyfriend and his stupid guitar. Second, he always shows up late to things because he thinks it’s fashionable when really it’s inconsiderate and the family wants to start eating Thanksgiving dinner but Mom makes everyone do the polite thing and wait.

She had to learn little habits to deal with her brother. Washing his clothes for him while he slept or he’d complain about shrinking or color loss or vintage-this-and-that. Taking his suitcase when he gets home and emptying it of anything the dogs shouldn’t be into – storing that stuff in the dresser, out of reach of kids and the family Labrador. She learned to take him out socially, but only to hip designer places that she swears are busy on Wednesday nights – while she knows there won’t be a single person they went to school with that’ll want to take a photo with him, not on a week night at least.

“I thought you said this place would be popping,” he says, “the Troubador would be popping on a Wednesday night.”
“What’s the Troubador,” she asks.

She learned to ask all the dumb questions he wants her to ask so he can talk about his life, little invitations for mock-vulnerability, they are siblings after all, they’re supposed to talk about something.

She learned not to introduce him to her friends when he’s drinking or strung out on anything. He says they’re ‘too small town’ and ‘too nice’ when he’s sober, but he’d put his penis in them if he’s drinking. She learned to keep the digital camera he bought her on her at all times when he’s in town, but she leaves the memory card in her bedroom. People want to take pictures with him everywhere, at the bar, at the store, at the park, at the other bar – everywhere.

“Oh my god, Cas- you didn’t tell me your brother was in town,” they say, “can we all get a picture together?”
“Okay girls, but just the one,” his road manager has trained him to say.
“I’ll use the camera he bought me for Christmas,” she says, “it has a nice flash.”
“Don’t use the flash, sis, it makes the skin look all oily,” he places one hand on an ass, the other on someone’s hip, his thumb plays with someone’s belt.

--

“Cassie,” he says as he picks around the turkey, “would it be too much to ask your friend Jess to come out with us tonight?” Grandpa says “That Jessica is a sweet piece of—“ Grandma says “—lovely girl.” Mom says “I thought you kids were staying home tonight with the family,” and grips her fork tight enough to whiten her knuckles.

He says something about needing to get in touch with his roots and something about childhood friends. Cassie says she’ll ask Jess if she has plans Thanksgiving night. Grandpa says something else about Jess’ tightness. Grandma scolds.

Thanksgiving dinner isn’t out of the ordinary, not for them at least. He doesn’t eat on account of everything being smothered in butter or grease or animal cruelty. Cassie wonders how long his career will last. Mom takes offense at how little is touched on his plate. That’s how it is at Thanksgiving, or at least how it has been for the last three years.

“I was thinking about taking a year off,” he says, “once this tour is over I’d like to spend some time writing and working on a new album.”
“Lovely,” Mom says. “It’ll be good for you,” Cassie says.
“I was thinking about getting a place downtown,” he says.
“Here,” Mom asks. “In our downtown,” Cassie asks.
“Yeah, back to the roots and all that,” he says.

Grandpa lights up, Grandma reminds him to chew. Mom starts crying a little and runs for the fridge for something bubbly. Cassie stares.
“So you’d stay in town for what, a year,” she asks, “just you, no band, here. For a year?”

He repeats his plan and says that he’s moving in before Christmas and asks Cassie for the number of her real estate friend and if she knew if one of the two hotels downtown has a pool on the roof.

“They can put a pool on the roof now,” mom asks, “what about the snow?”

Cassie mumbles something about not being sure what the roof pool situation is downtown. Grandpa keeps forgetting to chew, Grandma keeps reminding him.

“I was thinking it’d be a nice…reprieve,” he says, “time to think, figure things out.”
“Are you in trouble,” Cassie asks, her fists on the table, her plate between them.
“Cassie,” Mom interrupts.

He stares at his plate and mumbles something about missing something or someone, nobody’s paying much attention because Grandpa isn’t chewing and Grandma is making a fuss. Mom returns with champagne in coffee mugs.

“Sorry I didn’t have any nice glasses,” Mom says, “this is so sudden. If I had known--”
“If any of us had known,” Cassie says, “why here though, why home?”
“That’s a silly question, Cassie,” says Mom, “of course he’d come here.”
“Of course,” says Cassie.

--

She learned never to share a glass with him at the dinner table, cups at the ballpark, cigarettes anywhere – it’s never water or lemonade or tobacco. She learned never to talk about her boyfriend who wants an autograph, her boss who needs a guest for the company retreat, her pastor who’s planning a special night of music. She learned to expect expensive gifts in June, never on her birthday in May.

“I had to order it from this little shop in France and it took longer than expected,” the attached receipt from a store in France reads. She learned not to take things personally.

(his new novel)

2010-08-07T02:19:00.002-05:00

"This is the novel I promised her I wouldn't write. Just writing this could ruin our relationship. If she were to incidentally find this manuscript tucked under my bed, during some gracious afternoon of cleaning or snooping, we’d very likely be done,” she reads aloud as I come through the front door to our spotless sixteenth floor apartment. It was filthy when I left this morning. I suppose that’s how it happens, how writers’ girlfriends find out that they’ve been writing secret relationship memoirs about them all along.

We’ve only been dating a few months, well, nine months. But we’ve only been living together for a few, as in three. Living together is cool, I guess. I don’t have to walk out to my car and spend who knows how much money on gas, driving somewhere just to sleep in my own bed or use my own shower or my own toothbrush. We have the freedom to eat and sleep and fornicate whenever and wherever we want and don’t have to go anywhere afterwards. Trust me, it’s great…good. It’s better than the alternative…I think.

“I can’t believe you’ve been writing about me this whole time! This isn’t even in pen. I thought you only write in pen,” she says.
“Unless I’ve given it a couple revisions and am considering pursuing publication,” I say.
“Oh my god,” she says, “this is the exact thing you swore you wouldn’t put me through!”

And it is the exact thing I swore I wouldn’t put her through. She had dated guys like me before. Guys who thought the world of her but didn’t mean it when they said they wouldn’t write her into songs or cast her in plaster or write her into novels. She doesn’t want someone to worship her, she wants someone to love her – but she doesn’t know why we (the collective creative type) can’t seem to figure out that distinction.

“Shit,” I say, “you think I wanted to write a short story about you?”
“This isn’t a short story, this is heavier than War and Peace. This is heavier than Les Miserable. How could you betray my trust like that?”
“Betray your trust? You should be flattered,” I say, “I’d be thrilled if someone wanted to write a trilogy about me.”
“A what,” she asks.

I’ve said too much so I pour brandy in a plastic cup and start drinking. She did ask me time and time again not to write about her. I do fiction, at least that’s what I told her I write. And she believed me, up until now – or whenever the exact moment she pulled those 1000+ pages out from under the bed in the guest room.

“Damn it,” she says, “why couldn’t you just leave me out of it all?”
“Leave you out of what,” I ask.
“Out of it.” She says ‘it’ like she’s talking about some sort of holocaust.
“It isn’t like I hung you out on those pages,” I say, “those pages are my feelings towards you.”
“Don’t you get it,” she asks, “I don’t want to be on these pages.”

The girl on those pages, the girl that I can’t understand my feelings for, the girl that keeps me up at night, the girl that just doesn’t make sense to me – makes so much more sense to me than the sobbing entity standing between me and the door. She grabs at the tote at her feet and hands me my manuscript with the other hand.

“You can have her,” she says, “she’s probably more fitting than me anyways.”

And she leaves. “Damn it,” I say. She left her key on the counter, next to the jar for keys, not in it. She left her garage door opener next to it, between the Far Side animated calendar and the trash schedule. “Damn it,” I say.

--

She calls the next week to let me know she’ll be fetching her things. “I’ll need some time at the place,” she says, “I’d rather you not be there.”
“But I want to be there, I want to talk,” I say, “I don’t understand, it’s just a story, and it isn’t even technically about you.”

She never shows up when she said she would. I ring her the next week in tears, “Baby, just come back, I promise I won’t write another story about you.”
“But you’ve already written a story about me,” she says, “and it’s a pretty good one.”
“You thought so,” I ask, “what did you like most?”
“That’s my point exactly.”

--

She ends up coming over about a month later, when I’m out, but she hasn’t a key and I find her waiting on the stoop with an empty laundry bag and her hair tied up with some fixture I don’t understand but probably sells well at Urban Outfitters. “Let’s get it over with,” she says.
“Have you somewhere to go,” I ask, “you could stay for a drink, we could talk a bit.”
“Talk with me,” she asks, “or the girl in your novel?”

--

I debate sending out the new manuscript to publishers. My agent has been bugging me for months for new material. I sent him the story about the detective with the elevated sense of smell, the one about the train conductor with the insomnia, the one about the actor with the talking penis – all good ones – but they aren’t ‘the story about her.’ He wants to read the story about the girl I can’t stop rambling about, the one with the perfect complexion, the articulate, unassuming, Amazon that works with deaf children and rescues a borderline-suicidal writer from sure self-annihilation. He wants to read the one about the girl that every guy wants to meet. He wants to read and believe that he too can find true love. Every guy does wants to believe it is possible but few guys find it – true love. Mostly because we haven’t a clue what love is, but also because no woman is as attractive as I make Stephanie out to be. Except I call her Abby in the story.

“I changed your name,” I say, “technically the story isn’t about you at all. It’s about a lovely girl named Abby that would never leave her artist boyfriend just because he wanted to share a little bit of her beauty with the world.”
“Do I really need to tell you that I don’t want to be shared with the world,” she asks, “isn’t it enough that I exist in your life? Can’t you keep this little part of your life to yourself, save it for us? Keep it in the bedroom, for goodness sake? I’m no exhibitionist.”

She finishes packing her things and I help her out to the street. She hails a cab, I try to slow her escape by packing the trunk poorly and telling the driver that he should really invest in a cab with room for a proper suitcase.

--

My agent shows up at our…my apartment and lets himself in, the door is unlocked in case she rethinks things and wants another go at us. “Do you think I could peek at that manuscript,” he asks, pointing at the stack of pages on the counter – next to her keys and the Far Side calendar where she left them three months ago.
“I don’t know,” I say, “she’d have my balls if she saw it at Barnes & Nobles.”
“She wouldn’t have to know,” he says, “we could get an editor to change her name, and maybe her profession.”
“Already did that,” I say.
“Hm,” he says.
“I know,” I say.
“Have you thought about publishing it to stick it to her,” he asks, “women love an ass, you know.”

--

She rings me the next month. Her mother saw something on the TV about my new novel and how it’s about a female protagonist and how the plot sounded much like the last months of our relationship.
“But Mom says the girl’s name is Brittany,” she says, “Brittany sounds a bit like Abby which sounds a bit like my name.”
“Are you kidding,” I ask, “those three names are totally different. And I’ll have you know that I had that manuscript destroyed.”
“You’re a liar,” she says.
“Yes,” I say.
“Why does every man want to write a novel about me or carve me in stone or make me the topic of some rock album,” she asks.
“Because you don’t want them to,” I say.
“That doesn’t make much sense,” she says, “why couldn’t you just have written about some bimbo on the street or at the club?”
“Because those girls don’t sell novels,” I say.
“So I’m profitable,” she asks, “is that it?”

--

It takes me another year before I meet someone that inspires me to lie on the carpet of my living room amidst the pizza boxes and filth and ask the ceiling “Why does she have this power over me?”

Nineteen Stanzas.

2010-08-06T02:59:00.002-05:00

I wanna get
physical, she says.
She pushes more
food to the floor.

You’re just repeating
that song, he says.
He gathers her
untouched meal.

Let me hear your
body talk and
don’t pick up, Waitress
should earn her tip.

The floor is no
place for food and
if you want sex,
ask with your own words.

She refuses to shop
at designer stores,
secondhand only but
demands Brand condoms.

He wears more khaki
than denim, rarely
smokes but frequents
Mom’s medicine cabinet.

They look like graffiti
when naked,
blurry when moving –
train cars and water towers.

She prefers toast
to muffins, local
to Starbucks, sex
to foreplay, him to

being alone – is rare.
He asks about
her appetite, she
stands to leave.

He stares at her
seatbelt, fastened.
Surprised, he drives
under the limit.

I want to be
forever young. She
sniffs, fiddles
with the dial.

I don’t think it
works that way.
He asks her if she
likes his sex.

Mostly, except when
you have to
ask. She unbuckles,
turns around, coughs.

The world won’t
end if we make
love. He scolds
her poor habit.

You think I
don’t know what
you’re up to.
She fastens, smirks.

They sleep ten
feet and a wall
from her folks.
Pillows muffle sighs.

She falls asleep
and her sweat
pools beneath her,
smears tattoo ink.

He sits in the
dark, considers
finding his keys,
never returning.

Her stomach shows
between wet sheets.
He leans over, kisses
his budding seed.

How Billy and Jib's friendship ended.

2010-07-25T00:33:00.004-05:00

“I can change!” Billy shouts, as he opened the car door and stands just behind the driver door so it could slam shut just inches from his right leg. His work boots sink inches into the sloppy run-off stream flowing through the yard from the hose on the front porch. Darlene sits on the porch, her bronzed legs buckled in the air as she holds her thumb over the hose nozzle, directly between her thighs. The spray resembles a stream of urine through a box-fan and the mist soaks Bill’s best shirt, Levis, and bolo tie.
“I’m telling you that I can change!” he shouts for the third time since his arrival. Billy pulls off his hat, blue and burgundy, which reads “I can Change Darlene,” folds it, and stowes it in his left rear pocket.
It won’t make a difference to Darlene, she moved on weeks ago; first with the sharp dressed Best Buy employee, then later on the same day with Billy’s best friend Jib. And that was just the first day of their trial separation.
“I can change!” Billy shouts again. This time he half stomps, half plants his right boot directly in front of his left, two feet closer to Darlene’s spray. Darlene retreats from his advance, stands, turns off the hose and pitches it over the porch edge (which isn’t difficult, as it lacks a banister and the hose isn’t very long). “You think you know me, you do. I even thought I knew me, but it turns out that I can change! I have changed! I am a new man!”
“Oh yah? Says who?”
“Anyone, everyone, just ask Jib. He can vouch for me. He’s been counseling me through this whole thing, I swear. Please Darlene, darling, sweetie I can change. Let me in, back in to my home. Our home.”

Now Billy wasn’t about to step foot back in that 2002 Ford Mustang with the low profile wheel and body kit, the supercharged speed nymph that he called “baby” and “girl” without resolving things with his ex-wife. Billy had had enough with single life, the last two weeks showed him the horrors of a world alone and he came back to the trailer-with-an-addition home of his ex-wife Darlene for redemption. Granted, he’s been showing up here every day for thirteen of the fourteen days since their divorce, but from the look of things, specifically the growing run-off in the yard, he isn’t making much progress. He came here to get back his girl but the only thing he is successfully getting is muddy.
Despite his determination and best efforts, Darlene isn’t impressed and from the distaste in her eyes, you’d easily believe that she’s taking delight in all this.
“Leave, Billy, or I’ll call the sheriff.”
“You know Jib aint working weekends this anymore, Darlene. And besides, you think Jib would choose his badge over his best friend?”
Darlene smirks for a moment until her conscience interferes in the form of a frown, but she eventually does take glee in his notorious gullibility. Revenge’s sweet nectar graces her lips like lip gloss did in middle school, she sits up, gathers her belongings; her tube of vanilla lip gloss, two ash trays and an eight inch tall female gnome figurine. “You’re right, Billy, Jib isn’t working this weekend, he needed to take some time off to keep his woman happy.”
“Jib don’t have no woman”
“Did you come here to gossip about Jib’s love life or beg for forgiveness?”
“You’re right, Darlene. I have strayed from the direction my true heart was traveling.” Darlene pauses momentarily in the doorway. Billy never was good with words and even though his knack for handy-crafts had put dinner on the table and an ever growing charm necklace around her neck for the four years of their marriage, this attempt at winning her back is going about as well as the ‘lucky clover’ charm he purchased for her birthday two years in a row. “I know that my instabilities have put unnecessary weight on our love bond.”
“Don’t you mean infidelities?” she asks.
“Of course. Those too. All of my” he stutters and looks to his Mustang for inspiration, “shortcomings. I know that I’m not Romeo, but I do need a Juliet to fill my Darlene shaped hole.”
Darlene holds the door open just long enough to reprimand him. “Billy, if you don’t get your damn car off my front lawn, I swear I’ll call that lawyer and get it too.”
“But darling”
“But nothing. We’re over, Billy. Goodbye.”

Darlene slams the door shut. Billy falls to his knees, they sink deep in the makeshift stream, almost up to his crotch, and he punches the soppy earth beneath him. If Billy had attended or paid attention in school or even if he had a child’s curiosity for mud, he would recognize the exact imprint of his current posture in the ground only two or three feet in front of him, right next to the dried tire tracks, but Billy’s redundant inability to win Darlene back goes unnoticed by the weepy young man.
“What’s wrong, Billy?” asks Jib as he passes him in the lawn. Jib skips and hops over the run-off stream, around the mud, as to keep his uniform clean. He carries a bouquet of yellow lilies and cups his left hand about them to make sure none break what with his prancing about. Billy doesn’t respond till Jib is on the porch. “What’re you doing here? Jib, you should take your boots off, Darlene’ll be pissed if you track mud up on her porch.” He follows with a reference to the bouquet, his own hands full of sod, “What’re those for?”
Jib rings the bell and turns to his long-time friend. “These are for Darlene. You know, what with the divorce and all.”
“Oh, that’s nice of you, she’ll like those. Lilies are her favorite, you know.”
“Yup.” Jib adjusts the bouquet and straightens his tie in it’s government issued
clip. Jib’s badge, belt and gun are unaccounted for, but other than those articles, he fills the suit nicely. He looks sharp, even slicked back his hair and applied some men’s perfume. The two creases where the arms of his sunglasses cover his temples stripe his otherwise tanned face. Darlene opens the door and joins Jib on the porch. She changed into a light summer dress that’s been tampered with – the hem brought up about seven inches and tapered drastically to hug her ass. “Can you get Billy off my lawn, Jib? He’s been there all afternoon.”
“I’ve only just arrived.”
“He’s done this every day this week, look, there’s his print from Monday. If you look closely, you can actually see the teardrops.”
“Those are water drops. I wasn’t crying. Jib, I swear.”
Jib sits on the porch, his face in Billy’s eye line, cleans the dirt out from under his thumb nails, “Billy, you really do need to stop making all these scenes, it’s making the whole neighborhood uncomfortable.”
“But Jib, you know what I’m going through” and under his breath “I told you all about this at the bar on Sunday.” Jib rubs his temples while Darlene admires her flowers. Kids ride bikes with soda cans wedged in their tires in the street, they slow their pace and circle in the street to watch. Billy struggles to lift out one knee but the mud suctions him back down.
“Darlene, just ask Jib how I’ve changed. Jib, tell her I’m a new man. Not a shred of instability in this new man.”
“Don’t you mean infidelity?” she asks as she sniffs her flowers.
“That too,” says Billy, “tell her, Jib. Tell her.”

Billy finally manages to stand in the mud but the process of lifting his one hundred sixty pound frame involves his fists and covers his arms and most everything below his waist in a thick coat of brown. The children in the street gawk and decide on the poop related degradation for the newest neighborhood beneficiary of their bullcockery.

TBC...

I wrote a song while packing. It turned into a jingle, which turned into this. It reads best to the instrumental "I can change" by LCD Soundsystem.

2010-06-13T01:27:00.008-05:00

Turn around. Around. Around. Turn around enough times and everything makes a little less sense. Turn around enough times and get dizzy. Turn around. Do it again. Remember what it felt like to spin in the back yard when you were eight? It'll be good for you.

Just do it already. Spin like a top. A top with arms and legs that seem to cross paths too often to stay upright. Turn around again and again until you can't figure out which way is up. Just...okay, c'mon turn around.

It'll be fun. You may get grass stains and you may fall down and you may look silly doing it there in front of your co-workers, your work pants nearly torn in the crotch from all the stepping and your 'reliable leg' having to save face whenever 'sea leg' gets all confused about where to step next. "Is it that way? Or that one over there?" Who knows, you're spinning. It's fun and the point of the whole thing is to get dizzy and fall down. Turn around really fast. Do it. Turn around.

How the Novel Ended up in the Street.

2010-05-21T15:05:00.004-05:00

While I wait for my lunch date, I take notice of the world around me.

A young twenty-something man with centered, spiked hair and new-ish (depending on the current trends) sunglasses and a salmon colored shirt with an insignia I don’t recognize, but I’m sure that some young people do, sits with an even younger and dressed down girl in denim only two shades lighter than his. Her bra straps are wider set on her shoulder blades than her white tanktop. They eat, say very little to each other and check their phones intermittently between bites of their meal – sandwiches without bread and artisan water from expensive streams.

Across them, to my left, sits a forty-ish year old man in khakis, clip on sunglasses and a green, tattered London Fog jacket (my father owned the same one when I was twelve). He reads a hefty novel. Something military themed but from the look of the type density on the visible pages – they tend to flutter in the light, warm Los Angeles afternoon wind – he’s no newbie to the written word.

An exponentially older man in yellow; yellow hat, yellow jacket, yellow swishy pants, a gold Italian watch, and yellowing (but were probably white at one time) sneakers, passes and the book catches his eye.

“Good read?”

The younger of the two men, the one reading, not the youngster avoiding conversation with the girl, affirms the question and tries to focus on his read.

“I read his last.” Again, the younger man with the book nods and continues reading.

“You serve in the forces?” A third time he mutters yes and nods and tries to return to his lunch break distraction.

“I served thirty-two years.” This time there is no response, only a flipped page and a sigh. Yellow man continues, “What branch?”

“Excuse me?”

“What branch did you serve in?”

“Please sir, I just want to read for ten minutes before I return to work.” He returns to his book. The young couple across the café makes note of the yellow and the book and text message friends about the debaucle instead of talking about it. The older man in yellow shifts his weight to one leg and checks his watch.

After a few glances around the café, he shifts his weight again and makes another attempt. “What branch?”

“Really,” asks the man with the book who I will refer to as Bill, as he does look like a Bill, or at least like one of the two Bills I know. A bit paunchy, with spectacles old enough to be fashionable by this summer, too much weight around his chest and waistline, and a bit more grease in his hair than a man of his weight can really pass off as fashionable. “Really? I just want to read. Please, excuse me.”

Bill turns in his chair and focuses again. The older man in yellow, who I will refer to from now on as Gork, mostly because I had a stuffed banana as a child and named him Gork after my brother started referring to it as Gork and I didn’t have the heart to change the stuffed toy’s name after the precocious dubbing. Gork, it seems, is a bit risible considering his age and veteran status, but senility is clearly setting in, and from the way he is pestering Bill, I have little compassion for the sweet old cunt.

And while I’m at it, I’ll refer to the spiked and centered haircutted young man as Spike and his very attractive brunette lunchmate and possible girlfriend Katie, mostly because she looks like a Katie – like she was named Catherine but wanted a shorter name, something that she could introduce with less syllables, less effort, more punch.

Gork beelines for a table directly in Bill’s line of sight and sits. He orders coffee, a muffin and a paper from the young immigrant woman bussing tables. She clearly has no idea what he is saying, at least she doesn’t let on if she does, and from the look of it, has no intention on fetching the order or someone who could manage to fill it.

Spike pulls out his high tech phone and tells his friends about Gork and his ridiculous behavior. Katie sits quietly, looking at Spike, hoping he’d turn his attention to her, ask her how her day is, remind her why he likes her, tell her that she looks pretty in her scantily oriented outfit. Spike does speak, eventually, and while it is unintentionally offensive, it is audible, and Gork isn’t fond of the vernacular.

Gork responds with some comment about how kids these days don’t know respect and how television and the damn computers can’t teach like the belt used to and how his comrades were court marshaled for less offensive behavior to a superior.

“Come on. Please, I just want to read in peace,” says Bill. A young group of women pass as he speaks and take a moment from their afternoon shopping venture to shift the weight of their bags between hands and admire Gork’s resemblence of an actor they like from the movies and comment on how he looks like someone’s grandpa and how forward thinking his outfit is. Bill continues, “Don’t you think we can just keep it quiet so I can read?”

“I wasn’t making the scene,” says Spike. “Neither was I,” says Katie. “And neither was I,” says Gork, “just trying to make conversation.” Gork stands, cancels his order with the young woman bussing a nearby table, and walks with stiff resentment from the café. The crowd of young women snap pictures of him with phones and cameras and one girl asks another if she’ll take a picture of her with Gork, but she doesn’t know his name so she refers to him as Grandpa Banana.

“Finally,” says Bill as he wipes slight afternoon persperation from his overweight brow and continues reading, “some peace and quiet."

Gork pushes the girl with the bags and the smile away, harder than he should, but again…senility, and with surprising agility for a man his age, returns to Bill’s side, snatches the book from Bill’s unsuspecting hands and hurls it out into the street.

“Fucking kids,” says Gork as he stomps off down the street.

Email Letters between Gary and Janine; one-time workplace lovers

2010-05-10T20:36:00.005-05:00

From: Me

Subject: Your Undercover Romeo

Date: 1/4/2010

To: Janine Morely-Ryan

Sweet, sweet Janine,

I write to inform you that, although your presentation this morning was rather dull - albeit an unfortunately unsexy topic: shareholding - you offered it with the thrillingest modus operandi. I found your garb enticing, your voice exhillarating - I had to muster every bit of self control just to keep from divulging my deepest yearnings in front of the other staff. Seeing you operate that slideshow, bent slightly at the waist to toggle between slides, the shape of your hips beneath your skirt, your bust teasing the room of business casuals, the inches of black legging between boots and skirt shouting "Look at us, we exist for you, come to us!" - I could hardly contain myself.

I caught Jenkins sneaking a peek at what I would kill for the right to call mine - damn his curious eyes. And I can't help but experience a tinge of jealousy at his seating placement. Surprising, I thought, that you invited him so near and placed my name so far, in the corner, by the paper shredder and water cooler, but I understand your games, your coy, teasing games.

You haven't the slightest competition in the office, but I am not so lucky. I'd like to say that I am a fortress, but you bring out the child in me, wrought with curiosity and yearning for a return to the copy room on the twelfth floor. And while I know you asked that we keep the events following the office party last Thursday our secret, I can't help but want to profess my feelings for you from every corner, every rooftop, every intercom speaker in the building.

Speaking of which, I was hoping we could discuss 'next steps' sometime soon. I think of you daily, even hourly, and cannot wait till further 'opportunity' though none has arisen since our last.

I want to show you the respect and discretion you deserve and request, so I, reluctantly, remain silent - notice I used my personal email instead of the company's server - but I do want to speak with you further. Maybe coffee on Monday? Or dinner tomorrow or Sunday?

Affectionately, your Romeo,

Gary

P.S. I understand the recent trouble with your ex-husband would scare away the timid, but not this bloke, I remain at your beck and call, my Juliet...Janine.

.................

From: Janine Morely-Ryan

Subject: Gary? From accounting, right?RE: Your Undercover Romeo

Date: 1/5/2010

To: Gary! Adams

I didn't mean to lead you on you are swell and all but things are kinda complicated with the divorce and work and all. I hope you understand.

It would be highly unprofessional to retell said events to our coworkers. i know that our boss would have a problem with it especially cause we were drunk and everything. I'll just see you at work. on monday.

Janine.

I'd say that we are.

2010-04-24T15:30:00.001-05:00

Now I say,

aren't we all

just a little bit

tired

of this nonsense?

which is worse?

2010-04-06T21:47:00.000-05:00

(...for two readers)

To find a body in a river,

swollen, pale and naked. Bruised,

to be a body in a river?

afloat, dejected, missed and

fished out by children

too playful, innocent or curious to know better.

Poked with sticks and

The horror of the swollen, wretched

occasionally brave fingers.

Self.

Death will

find these children

find them too. But not likely

with bits of hair and scalp and feces

in a river. Probably in

(on) their hands and in their

old age. Or diabetes.

Sunday slacks, between the pleats.

It is worse to be probed and pumped

with formaldehyde and buried

by people you couldn’t love.

No strangers here,

just not yet capable

(or all too capable)

of love.

The river is cool

and the water will carry…

and petals

and Lilly pads

will float by

as you relieve yourself.

I think of you as I wash dishes.

2010-03-27T12:33:00.001-05:00

I pause to curse the brown speckled mug

I wash - with hands too soft

or too young or too old

(I am uncertain which)

to spend my days toiling for such little wage.

Wage that cannot afford sparkle

for your neckline

but only simple sheets

and faux-woodgrain headboards;

the inexpensive ways of saying Stay with me,

in my warmth,

in my bed,

this bastion of love

(and affection.)

I sat up

this morning

and leaned to you.

Boundless sadness graced

your

(pale with smeared eyeliner)

cheeks

as you rose to meet my embrace.

Your words wash this brown speckled mug. I will stay.

But only with you,

only here.

Only in this life

because next I’ll want a rich lover

with elegant things.

But that is next life.

This,

now,

I am content here

in your small bed,

legs intertwined

with your (soft,young,old) hand

about my bosom,

my chin under yours.

I will stay

here for

now.

this is why i doubt. and why i return.

2010-03-04T03:30:00.008-06:00

If there are no clear cut answers or Truths in this world, does the possibility that religious people are fabricating elaborate lies to anesthetize those who fear death matter? Yes, but it only matters insomuch that their anesthesia reminds those who refrain from it that there may actually be pain in this world. Pain that we cannot -for whatever reason- escape.

I am quite afraid that I may be wrong. That I messed up, I misinterpreted the evidence, I didn't get it right. But to what end?

My doubt only inflicts damages on that which my religious bindings will appraise. My differently-believing counterparts, i.e. society at large, and the beliefs they hold present no punishment or any sort of judgement, really, of my doubt. My doubt is my own, and as mine, I will use it to it's fullest extent.

I will wonder if this is all bullshit. I will worry that I've made a horrible choice and that my team will end up be the losing one. I will fear the consternation associated with Eternal Fucked-ness. But my wonder and worry and fear only go so far as to hinder my own belief.

You see, if there is no truth then the possibility that I am just buying into some cultish fantasy including a crazy person on a cross and a creative but altogether fallible deity really makes no difference. If this cosmos (considering Webster's definition; which implies that it is, in fact, organized, and the bodies and the cells and the atoms and the neutrons aren't just stress-induced perceptions of my consciousness) really is more scatterbrained and less ordered and I am less a being than a perception and this shabby Hollywood apartment is just a construction of the universal consciousness, then I lose nothing by believing the words of that crazy man on that cross.

What can I lose?

the all night long.

2010-01-27T23:17:00.004-06:00

Commitment to an art

form between visits

to facebook, the 'free' section

of Craigslist and weight

loss advertisements.

Nothing like the distractions

of internet and dusty

bookshelves and hulu.com

to make obstacles out

of most American's hobbies.

I had hobbies, before I took

them too seriously. Now

I call them art.

and my passion.

They were hobbies. Like

a game. A relaxing activity

that relieved stress

and anxiety.

But now they give me headaches,

or the coffee does. Or maybe

it's the three am McDonald's runs.

(runs...oh no!)

Either way, I'm

missing the point.

I ride the train into oblivion.

2010-01-24T14:29:00.003-06:00

Trees fell on the Metro Light Rail tracks today so they, they being those day laborers who work for the city, shuttled commuters too and fro, between end-cap train stops, on busses. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but for reasons too simple to be taken seriously, or because of numbskulls too simple to be taken seriously, who knows, we (we consists of forty-three assorted hispanic individuals, one older black businessman and one cute hipster, I counted...) sat and stood on a stationary and altogether uncomfortable bus while our bus driver and the adjacent, and identically occupied bus' driver stood between the two shuttles to debate their respective bearings with one another as an under-equipped man from Metro's corporate office ran down the street from the next train stop, waving his arms, trying to get our driver's attention.

It occurred to the trendy hipster and half of the assorted latinos that getting off this bus and walking would probably get them to their respective locations quicker and more efficiently, because burning calories is more beneficial than shouting at bus drivers. But the businessman disagreed. He used his deep voice and his professional briefcase to scare the Metro corporate guy while the remainder of us waited, speaking very little, but admiring his passion, even if his approach delayed us another five minutes.

Tax Man

2010-01-18T22:45:00.004-06:00

Men, in capes, toting briefcases

leaping

with superhuman momentum

and caffeinated enthusiasm

from ledges

and windows

for the sake of mankind's

(or their own) wellbeing.

Like superhero lemmings

(each a potential saviour)

rescuing widows and children

from burning houses

and the off-chance of audit.

"I'll crunch your numbers

and balance your books.

The IRS would have your

money, but only the gooks

that sell you houses,

cars, and gold will garner your trust,

(and as well they should)

sell you a mood and call it

(necessary)

common and good."

Jedidiah the Barracuda

2009-12-02T23:44:00.002-06:00

Jedidiah was a homely boy. Well honestly, he was just plain ugly. Everyone who saw his menacing six year old mug on television thought so. They all thought so. Doctors and dental specialists agreed with them. They said the boy’s twisted spine, an advanced form of scoliosis, had put never-before-seen pressure on the growth plates of the boy’s jaw, forcing it to jut out at an absurd distance from his face. They thought they understood why his jaw was so, but the unsightly length of his bottom incisors was a mystery. Well, a mystery until the boy was six.

The local school children gave him the title “Jedidiah the Barracuda” out of spite mostly. Which was odd considering he had little smarts or athleticism about him. He grew up in a part of the country where people generally don’t give their kids swimming lessons, i.e. his family was poor, but many would come to suspect that he would have made an excellent asset to the Olympic swimming team if he had survived the world into which he was birthed. All to say, his kindergarten classmates did harass him terribly, and while children of this age rarely have good reason for those sorts of isolation and ridicule games they play, they had reason for “Jedidiah the Barracuda.”

It was at the ripe age of six that those children found a decent reason to tease Jedidiah. Their reason happened upon them, casually at first, nothing more than a minor tripping - he was clumsy from the scoliosis - then tragically when his graceless demeanor accidentally tripped his kindergarten teacher – who was loved by many in the community for her looks and loving demeanor - and caused her demise. Well, that isn’t entirely true, though most local gossip would have you believe it. More accurately it wasn’t the tripping, not even the falling that killed his teacher, it was the short term hospitalization for the gash on her forehead and the notorious super-flu virus which was quickly bringing medical facilities nationwide to their knees that killed her.

Jedidiah the Barracuda was officially dubbed so by Gary Richards during their first year of formal schooling. Richards was the class bully and a bit of an attention leech. Many met the boy and can tell you, he was an awful wretch of a child. It all began when the not-too-bright Jedidiah joined with his classmates in teasing Gary about the possibility that he may be the forgotten bastard son of Denise Richards, as he was an orphan and had kept his original name despite the prodding of his adoptive parents, the Basses.

The school children had a field day with this circumstantial nomenclature. Some boys from the class spent an afternoon some time back in the school’s meager computer lab researching the famous actress/model’s promiscuous background, hoping to find something clever to use to tease the bully, possibly proof that Miss Richards may have been responsible for the oddly attractive but obtuse boy, but one thing led to another and before anyone knew what had happened, their misguided research backfired.

It happened quickly, mind you, and there was little that could have been done to prevent it. Their substitute teacher had so little actual teaching experience she was rendered helpless, and it later came out that the number of children in the low-income school district was far too high for any qualified teacher to offer adequate attention to prevent such a calamity.

Maybe it was the stress of having been apart of his beloved teacher’s incidental demise. Or the sudden appeal of his classmate’s research presentation about the possible analogous implications of the marine species food chain. Maybe it was the smell of Gary’s new shampoo, no one knows. No matter the reason, there wasn’t a child, teacher, or substitute that could have anticipated or prevented the live, single-bite consumption of a kindergarten child by one of his peers.

Local television crews and writers from the papers were on the scene in under an hour. And it didn’t take long before national syndications caught wind of the news and flocked to the small town in southern California. Psychologists were called in. Counselors tried to calm the students, especially those still splattered with the Richards boy’s blood, but none would speak for fear of Jedidiah and that menacing lower jaw and the swift single motion that had gobbled up their classmate not six hours before.

The following months showed little progress. A jury of twelve couldn’t convict the six year old freak of nature and even if they had, he was just as much a safety hazard in Juvenile Hall as he was free. The courts had trouble getting him into the witness box as his recent carnivorous act had provided some twisted catalyst for his further mutation. By the time the actual sentencing came around he had sprouted fins and his once quiet eyes turned glassy and fierce. A hint of silver was added to his pupils and his skin, well, you saw the papers.

His parents had obvious issue, of course. But none could think of a better course of action. Sure, the fenced in swimming pool idea was a favorite for a time, and the aquatic prison cell was a real dynamite act of innovation, but when none could guarantee the boy or his keeper’s safety, into the ocean he went. There was a lovely ceremony aboard a cruise ship – they thought he might be a threat to a battleship full of enlisted men with enough aggression issues – which was a publicity nightmare in of itself, but before the year was up, he was tagged, tracked, and deposited four hundred miles from the nearest shoreline. Except Hawaii. They were within three hundred miles of Hawaii. But that was inevitable and considered a generally low risk considering the boy’s age and lack of nautical direction.

A boy or a fish. None could decide. His parents still claim to the ‘boy’ line of reasoning, but the vast majority agrees, fish. The mind and operating capability of a kindergartener, an acute awareness of weakness in others, a keen eye for those creatures of lesser speed or those that might lack the fortitude to stand and fight.

So what if I find the homeless woman outside of Starbucks attractive?

2009-11-30T16:12:00.002-06:00

Okay, I get it. She may not share my appreciation for the arts, (Arts. Art. Rat? Street Rat? Street Mouse? Pet Mouse? House pet? House trained?) but she puts on quite the show! She’s been out there next to the doormat begging customers for spare change and yelling at Hollywood Police as they stop for their morning brew, and I couldn’t be more turned on.

It’s quite nice to share a hatred for the police. There! We have something in common! So we go about it different ways. I mean, I consistently drive four miles above the speed limit on the freeway so even if an officer did clock me, he’d be sure to feel like a douche if he actually pulled me over, even if it is time to fill his quota…and she, well she is the first person I’ve ever met that can call the LAPD pigs to their faces without provoking more than a mild frisking on the sidewalk.

Hatred for police AND a love for black coffee with eleven sugar packets? And she brings her own cup to get a discount?!? Fantastic! I’ve always been a bit a spendthrift, but a girl that’s willing to go Dutch on the first date AND isn’t too proud to request a free round since she’s a regular customer and known by name by the local baristas? This girl is just too perfect.

Well, almost too perfect. The kind of girl that’ll tease you with lines like “you couldn’t afford me, baby” and “unless you don’t mind if I borrow your computer for a minute.” We just met and she already shares my love for the Apple brand. Just look at her! Sitting there at the table with my Macbook, gulping her coffee, sampling mine, smiling wildly as I excuse myself to the restroom, saying “of course” and “how long’ll you take?” when I ask her to watch my computer for me.

I know we just met, but if I know anything about the dwindling Los Angeles dating scene, I’m sure I need to lock this down. She may consider my proposal immature or a bit out of place, but what if she is the kind of woman that needs a man to take that first step? Or the second, third, and fourth steps out of the Starbucks bathroom, across the café, out the door, and down the street, to catch up to her and my computer. Look at her go! She doesn’t even know where I live, but her fervor for love-making is so strong, she’s already soliciting her coke dealer friends from down the street for an extra hit for me, so we can have the ‘first time’ of a lifetime.

jell-o with bullets.

2009-11-26T19:39:00.003-06:00

Is thankful for the grace in store and while it may seem unnecessarily grand, I needn't worry, it'll cover me and I'll be glad there was enough to go around.

a couple weeks after i died.

2009-11-10T11:18:00.002-06:00

The insides of my head compliment, from an interior design perspective, the burgundy drapes and mock epic battle wallpaper decorating the walls of the childhood bedroom on the second story of my mother’s house. Well, it was my mother’s, before she died and my brother and sister and I drew straws to decide who would get the house, the cars, and the comparatively meager savings, respectively, she left us. No debt, just savings. Mostly the earnings my father passed to her when he passed. I say ‘passed’ because it’s far more kind than saying he died of a heart attack while inside a woman far younger than his wife. Can you blame him though? A house full of early 1990’s children’s film themed rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms.

Several nondescript princesses flirt with Prince Charming near the castle walls and my sister’s bureau. All but one, who if you follow her eyes, she abstains hoping to catch the eye of the far more muscular and handsomely dressed blacksmith as he helps her fetch the well water.

Mickey Mouse takes a mean slice onto the animated green near the head of my brother’s bed. Goofy looks on, ashamed of his beefy handicap and how he’ll never maintain the sort of steady relationship with a girl like Minnie, her plaid socks to her knees, her slip peeking out from beneath that dangerous red and white polka dot haltertop. (The only character who changes costumes. A world of curiosity based in the simple possibility of catching her changing in the animated clubhouse or even fetching her ball from the cup on the eighteenth hole, a birdie shot she landed so many years prior.)

It’s only appropriate that the animated recreation of the American Civil War, or more accurately, the War of Epcot Aggression, shows mice training dragons to fight the upcoming battle, princes sharpening swords, beasts too awful to imagine or depict for children.

But the burgundy drapes and wood blinds frame the battle well. Cosmic animated forces lined on each side, ready for battle, all resenting that damn blood red moat keeping them in camp another day, another year, the illusion of peace designated by the blood and brains and bits of scalp, lined in neat rows, evenly spaced shelves, to be discovered by some mythic creature, neither human nor beast, but covered in latex and a bio-hazard mask, mumbling jibberish about ‘this job not being worth it’ and ‘couldn’t the rich prick have done it in the tub? or the backyard? or under the covers of the master bed?’

...then who am i?

2009-11-05T11:25:00.003-06:00

A man, or men, whichever spits more favorably from one's sluggish tongue, is no more dead than the memory of him. Of the fights he fought and the women he loved, or abstained from out of sobriety or drunkeness, respectively. Of the words whispered in the quiet of nights with his best men and the waste left behind them when returning from the tents to the fight, left to be picked through and selectively nibbled upon by those refuse mongers, those rodents, those beasts unwilling or unable to learn, to love, and to commune with the gods.

On the new blog: watered down joy.

2009-10-22T03:18:00.003-05:00

Joy, Watered Down.

I've settled something in my mind. Let me tell you something about the delusional homeless people that frighten the tourists by shouting nonsense at traffic and imitate popular television characters on street corners. They weren't always shouting at traffic. They weren't always whispering indecipherable languages to you as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard. They weren't always this way. Something got a little better or a whole lot worse. Point is, something changed.

I'm changing. I'm growing. I'm maturing. I'm learning to put some eggs in baskets and take less to bed with me at night. I'm getting tired of waking up with yolk on my face. I'm learning to chase things. I'm beginning to become a man.

Whoopie! That's great! Superb! So what now? Am I to believe that this world, once so grim, is now less so? That my growth has opened my eyes to new possibilities? To new wonders?

Unfortunately not. I'm beginning to wonder what it means to live. For most of my life I thought that I could only be happy living this "perfect life" where everything looks a certain way and people recognize certain qualities in me that I've spent much labor enhancing and I'll suddenly wake one morning, refreshed and new, ready for any and all challenges the world can throw. I'm second guessing that whole over-night fulfillment theory.

This new blog is a character exercise of this concept lived out. I want to acknowledge those people littered throughout history who just love this world so much, they want to see it suffer like them. They want to level the playing field, not by a sudden act of god or fate lifting themselves up to the world's level, but by using every weapon in their arsenal, words, actions and plans, to claw and defile and debase those around them until the world is as dark a place as they perceive it to be.

Watered Down Joy. From concentrate. Drink Responsibly.

watereddownjoy.blogspot.com

On liking yourself.

2009-10-07T16:59:00.007-05:00

It isn't your fault you don't like yourself.

the fault lies

down

and gets hit on by drunk frat boys

who stumble into random bedrooms

while looking for the pisser.

It feels better

to buy

when the pressure

of the unaffordable treasure

dissipates and the smiling salesman

who will never care about your family, livelihood, or anything he asks about

helps you into the cutest shoes

you can't afford and will most likely react horribly with your bunyons.

just when you thought you had your life under control.

2009-08-24T13:03:00.002-05:00

That happened.

It may have been fun at the time

but now it hurts and you can't seem to do anything.

but remember what life felt like

before you felt comfortable blaming others

for your fucking up.

On my new project "Don't Be That Guy."

2009-08-04T16:58:00.005-05:00

Home is where the heart is. Sometimes. More accurately, home is where some people’s hearts are. Others’ hearts are abroad, in the pocket of a lover who carries their picture as a reminder of who awaits them upon return. Others’ hearts are nearby, just far enough to feel the throbbing nuisance of patience running out. Others’ hearts sleep next to them every night, but can’t seem to remember what it feels like to yearn for their love – like the days and years before one or both of them realized their lover wasn’t perfect. A person can only hear someone tell them where their home is so many times before they crack, get very angry, and act out in some furious act of leaving.

People leave home for two reasons. They either leave as a means of escape or they leave as means of pursuit. This is the story of a boy who did both.

my sincerest

2009-07-10T00:17:00.004-05:00

apologies to a world that is so much bigger than i give it credit for. i consistently make fun of you because i genuinely believe that i "get it" and you do not. i'm sorry for being a snob and thinking my use of a thesaurus makes me better or smarter or more worthwhile than the next person. i'm sorry for being right, wrong, and opinionated.

this is the part where you apologize for the things you did wrong too. like being nearsighted, culturally "relevant," too linear, and not accepting of my point of view.

come on midwest, tell me you didn't intend to be dumb and abrasive! please, east coast, let me know that the things you said about me, behind my back, were just attempts at impressing your friends and you didn't really mean them. okay, west coast, I get it. you didn't mean to come across all superior and unimpressed, you just didn't want to get that vulnerable too early in the relationship.

come on, world. i apologized. it's your turn.

I'm just experimenting...don't take me too seriously...

2009-06-17T21:48:00.005-05:00

I sat across the patio at Wahoo Fish Taco from a woman sitting and eating with her heavy-set daughter. I saw the girl lift her taco to her mouth and take an enormous bite only to receive a slap on the wrist from her mother. I thought about what it'd be like to look back in time when I'm older. To see myself through a fifty year old man's eyes. To see that little girl, looking at her mother, angry and hungry and just wanting to eat her fucking taco.

The fifty year old version of me wonders how long that little girl will resent her mother and if my own "basket-o-bastards" will live out bitter, neglected lives in tribute to their promiscuous father. He wants to know if he'll die a hated man. Despised by the only people in the entire world that have any blood-borne obligation to him.

I sat and watched the woman neglect her own food so she could lend her undivided attention to her daughter's piggy face plowing her lunch. I wondered if the woman was fat as a child. And if that portly little girl will stop spite eating in time for swimsuit season.

"Death of a Virgin" or "American Carry-out"

2009-06-15T22:17:00.003-05:00

When a virgin died, people said things like “she was a lovely girl” and “the world wasn’t ready to lose such a gem,” but when her virginity was dead and buried, people labeled her with less esteem and deliberately celebrated her life before she became a whore, not after. Becoming a whore, for her, was an easy process similar to the slippery slopes and miry bogs of moral decay that so many in film and literature tend to lose footing in.

A kiss on the lip.

A touch near the hip.

Nothing monumental.

Born of matrimony and dead of sexual anarchy. The sensuous becomes sensual becomes sexual becomes personal.

A rib.

A thigh.

Anarchy bore her lovers’ seed and the starving children of the world will thank her for them. Less meals for the meal-less.

A wing. Two breasts. One thigh and a neck.

“$6.99. $7.54 with tax. Did you want a beverage with that, sir?”

yet another hobby.

2009-06-09T17:21:00.001-05:00

Before any man can fall in love with a woman, he must have, at some point in the history of him, fallen in love with his mother. For some, that love is a jealous pang when his parents kiss, for others, it’s a resentment that lasts but a few years. My mother was my first love and was for many years. The time between that first love and my second, I began to come into myself. To become a man. I began puberty.

While my first love was a beautiful woman who deserved the world – granted, it wasn’t given her so she left my father and me – my second love was less than flattering. Like many boys who’s interest in boobs was faint and less gaudy than the “bro’s” in class, I quickly found my love in my body’s new pubescent abilities. I fell in love with ejaculating.

It wasn’t the pleasure derived from the climax, the euphoric rolling back of the eyes, the shots of adrenaline down the legs and up through my neck. It was the production of semen. My seed. Proof of manhood. Masculinity. Maturity. I was in love the natural production of things too obscene for some, detested by the catholic church, and feared by many the newlywed who has saved “it” for marriage.

My father lived in an extended stay hotel room. We slept on beds not five feet apart. We had no privacy. So it shouldn’t have surprised him when after buying me a bicycle with some of the last dollars he held, save his coin collection of course, that he would find me wooing myself deeper into love the next morning. We were roommates, yes, but he was also my father. My friends’ fathers had bought them Playboys and Hustlers and shown them the world of sexuality like a father should. Mine was embarrassed and blushed when he woke to the sound of me courting myself with two hands.

“Have you thought about baseball? There is a free youth league starting next month.” He said. “I loved the game when I was your age. Why not give it a try?” He said.

“I’m not very athletic.” I mentioned. I wasn’t very athletic. In fact I was quite heavy for my age and I sweat often, even doing menial tasks. I failed the President’s physical fitness test. Which ended up alright, I made up the P.E. grade by walking laps after school, under the surveillance of our hairy-legged, butch gym teacher Ms. Aranson.

“I already have something I love. Why would I want another?”

“You love masturbating?” He queried. “How can you love masturbating? Wouldn’t you rather find a nice girl to, you know, help you with those, needs? Girls love athletes, you know. That’s how I met your mother.”

So he signed me up for baseball and I went to practices, I even made a new friend, Marty. My coach was a plumber and moonlighted as a janitor. He taught Marty and me the value of hard work and that Baseball isn’t about speed so much as it is about strategy, and thinking. I figured that would work great for me. Marty was nice too. He was always pointing interesting things out to me that I hadn’t noticed before. Like how the baseball bat resembled a penis and you could wave it around at your hip level and other guys would laugh cause it looked like elephantitis, or how coach Dan always seemed to spit because his upper lip seemed to be too much for his lower on a notoriously muggy, Iowan summer day, or how his thighs were well defined, probably from crouching under sinks and toilets so much.

The facebook update is the new phone call.

2009-06-04T13:35:00.001-05:00

I wasn’t thrilled when I wasn’t invited to my college roommate’s wedding. I was even less thrilled when I didn’t know he and his college sweetheart were getting serious, had got engaged the weekend after graduation, had a year long engagement through their first year of graduate school, had several fights, questioned whether or not they really wanted to marry, broke up, got back together in a fit of passionate love and tears, (Maybe tears. He was a hard-ass in college. Never admitting his fault in a fight. Never claiming his dirty laundry from the couch. Denying the ownership of a certain bottle of José and a used condem I found between my sheets when I returned to school from a weekend at home my senior year. Maybe the tears were hers.) conceived a child the night they reunited, pushed up the wedding date so she wouldn’t be showing, had a small ceremony in Vermont, where she’s from, and honeymooned in Costa Rica. I was downright pissed when I saw all of the pictures of the whole year start showing up on Facebook, all those great nights and celebrations with friends and family and love and tequila. Fucking tequila.

The Adventures of Resumé, the Poverty Fighting Document.

2009-06-04T04:36:00.001-05:00

I walked up and down the streets of Pasadena looking for a job. The trick with applying for jobs after college is to carry a resumé with you. So when you do happen upon an employer that doesn’t turn you away with a “sorry we’re not hiring” or an eviction notice stapled to the front door of his trendy wine bar, you can hand them your (let’s say it all together, kids) resumé before they hand you another application form with just enough space to write in the months you were employed by Starbucks and the college library, but not enough to fit in the respective years of those respective employments.

So when I did find a business that I really jived with, you know, the manager and me, we really clicked, he admitted that “he really didn’t have any hiring power” and that “you’re more than welcome to attend the open interviews next month in Santa Monica” and finally that “I’ll make sure to let our D.M. (district manager) know that you’re coming and I’ll send her your application too if you want.” But it’s okay. He was all like, “do you have a number where we can reach you if [my boss thinks you’re worth more than the feces your four year education digested you into before passing you into my lap]?” And I said, “yeah, here’s my resume, it’s listed right there, at the top, next to where you are supposed to put your address.” But I didn’t put mine there because I’m couch surfing till I can find a job to pay for rent.

The interview was great. I went right after this really nice girl who used to work for Kroger, but wanted a more “homey feel at her job.” The D.M. and I got along. Her name is Cindy and she has gauged earrings and a cool tattoo that peeks out of her monogrammed collared shirt. We really clicked. She said that I’d be a great fit for “her” company. (good for her, taking ownership of the corporation like that, great for Cindy, great for Whole Foods Inc. for hiring such a dedicated employee like her!) She said they just needed to get through a few more candidates later that day and they’d make calls offering employment to those they, or she, or someone felt deserved the positions available.

I heard back from Cindy two weeks ago, which was three weeks after my “open interview” and promises of “immediate follow-up for the few of merit” to find out that one of the candidates that they had employed that day had tested positive for trace amounts of THC which, according to my Wikipedia research, means that the sweet looking girl from Kroger was a huge pot head and after firing her, they offered me her job. But by that time I had given up on my California dreams and moved back to the Midwest where I’m working for Con-Agra’s marketing department. Yeah, those Slim Jim commercials I co-wrote look real fucking great right below “Summary of Qualifications” in the section I labeled “Experience Highlights.”

monetize your blog.

2009-06-04T03:42:00.002-05:00

So, I know that maybe three people read this blog, save my parents and cousin Pierce, but I thought I'd take a minute to catch some things up to date. I moved to Los Angeles. It didn't take long after said move for me to realize that when people talk about the difficulty of breaking into the world of film, especially writing for it, they aren't kidding. I'm beginning to realize that I'm no child prodigy, that the things you want in life need to be worth working your ass of for, and that you don't get free money or paydays or get out of jail free cards when you pass GO or land on the community chest game place in your MONOPOLY life. Fuck the real world. I want the world that reality television taught me existed. I want it easy. I don't want to feel homesick and upset with things. I don't want to march around a city and hear thirty restaurant owners tell me that they are only firing staff, not hiring. I don't want to be the next gregory nelson alford. I want to be the next Richie Rich. Bleagh. That's the overdramatic sound of me realizing that life is more challenging than I expected.

So, I'm writing a short film for my genius of a director friend, Corey Abraira and his talented, soon to be wife, Allison. It is about a newlywed couple. Not the kind you expect. And it's certainly no reflection on the impending Abrairas. We're all thrilled that they are getting married and I'm even more thrilled with the prospect of maybe, possibly making a short film with that dynamic camera-clutching duo. It is called A Wedding Night. (title pending)

I wrote a feature length film called Wishes. It's about a genie who is fed up with the traditional three wish system so god changes the economy of wishes to allow the wisher more wishes in exchange for years of their life. Genie must decide whether the sacrifice of a long life is worth the friendship at hand and grapple with the consequences of human impatience if he is to find meaningful friendship on earth. It is my first feature and I'm thrilled to say that my mom thinks it's good. Take that, critics!

Finally, I've been spending a lot of time applying for jobs, so some of my short-short material is all about jobs, working, resumes, and such. I hope it isn't too mundane for my three person audience.

p.s. cha ching went the cash register at trader joe's when i bought a mango yesterday. maybe someday that cha ching will mean that greg made himself a few bucks writing words. fingers crossed.

Boys with arms.

2009-05-04T14:49:00.002-05:00

It is a tragedy that this boy does not have arms

Long enough to span indeterminable gaps.

Canyons and crevasses, deep places between mountains,

gorges between shores and deep sea chasms.

He is equipped with short stubby things,

nubs really,

that jut and poke from his sides when running down streets

and across fields and patches of ivy.

It is a nuisance to see a boy smiling,

with dimples,

trying to shed his mother’s grasp.

Her long, powerful fingers, her outstretched arms

that cross National Borders and fences

if she maintains the right posture.

Bent at the waist with knees straight.

All the (love? energy? worry? fear?) in the world to give.

But incapable of strengthening

or lengthening his arms or her arms

or the arms of god.

learning a new hobby.

2009-03-01T18:10:00.003-06:00

When I was thirteen, my father caught me masturbating in the shared bathroom of our extended-stay hotel room. He had suspected my habit for a few months, but didn’t know if he should confront it. This sort of indecision was to be expected from the man that lost our family’s home when I was eleven because he couldn’t decide whether to sell the boat or downsize his luxury sedan when he and my mother went into debt..

After months of mulling it over, he finally opened the hallow bathroom door to catch me in the act and forced himself to offer his patriarchal advice. You should get a hobby. He suggested it half convinced that if I had something I enjoyed more than proving my manhood with my right hand that I would have more enjoyable teen years. I asked him what kind of hobby should I have considering I was a fat boy who didn’t particularly enjoy the skateboarding and video gaming of my generation.

Well when I was your age, I collected coins. He said. Coins? What kind of coins? I asked, surprised. He marched to the shared bedroom and pulled out an aluminum lock-box from under the bed. I sat next to it and watched as he pried open the lid and began pulling out plastic bags full of coins, all zip-tied with blue and green grocery bag-ties, the whole time trying to figure how much money the bags contained.

When all the bags were out on the bed, he opened a few and showed me all different kinds of coins. There were coins with presidents on them, some with animals on them, some bills were different colors than the spare change I had in my front pocket. We worked the bags over, looking through all the different and unusual coins and bills until I asked him how much money he had there.

I can’t put a price on this collection, he said. It’s priceless, he said. Sure you can, just add it all up. I responded condescendingly. I couldn’t believe he didn’t know how much it was all worth. He explained to me that it didn’t work like that, that these coins meant more to him than the monetary value they held. Money is an idea anyways, the coins don’t actually hold value, he said. I looked at him like he was an idiot.

The next day he walked me across town to a used sporting goods store and bought me an oversized road-bike. You’ll grow into it, he said. It’ll be good for you to have a hobby. He told me it would be fun for me to ride it home. It’ll be good to break it in a bit, he said. He handed me the key to the room watched me pedal down the street. I’ll be right behind you, he reminded me.

I rode the bike home, wrestled it up the three flights of stairs to our room, and got it inside the door with enough time to grab the lock-box, go into the bathroom, pull all the baggies of money out and count it all up. I don’t know how much the confederate bills are worth, but I counted at least a hundred dollars before he knocked on the bathroom door, asking if I was playing with myself again.

three more for scott brazel, and a (bonus) fourth, and a pissed off garbage man holding a sweating, leaking bag of baby diapers.

2009-02-11T13:17:00.004-06:00

I promised my father.

I promised to my father to never put him in a nursing home because he said that if he is going to be discarded by those who are supposed to love him most, that he’d rather just be taken out into the woods behind our house and shot. I was reluctant at first, but for his end of the deal I made him promise, that if he should have to bury me, that he would spend no more than one hundred dollars on wood and nails and build my makeshift coffin himself, because I can’t stand the waste of a multi-thousand dollar tomb. When we made the pact he mentioned, “that the government has strict regulations on how you can bury a human body,” but we decided that if I was going to commit to putting him down like he did my rabid childhood beagle, he could deal with any fines incurred by improperly burying a human body.

a sleep-over.

My friends’ moms say that mine is a saint and that she’s a fighter and “good for her, getting up after being knocked down.” They say “what a pity,” and they tell her they love her, but they don’t, and they don’t love me and they didn’t love my father before he was taken away, but they have heard about us. I know because I’ve heard their whispered conversations, the kitchen talks the kids are sent upstairs during, the ones my friends and I crouch on the stairs with our ears peeking through the banister to hear, the one’s they won’t have with my mom but they will with other mothers. They say dad is sick and that he has a problem, that mom and I deserve better, that there must be something more they can do. They’ll talk about sending me home with a casserole, about taking us to church, about asking other mothers for their help.

A definition.

to be:

To exist like a man and a woman who weren’t ready to be a mother and a father; to take place in a home, in our kitchen, around the table, with tears; to have the state, quality, identity, nature, or role of love or care, or at least good intention.

given:

To freely transfer the possession of two children, my sister of nine, and me two years younger; to cause or allow a service, not a mother, but a woman and her assistant; to carry out or perform the transplant of children from a home to a house; to put forward what shouldn’t be given away; to alter in shape under pressure rather than to resist or break a family.

away:

To a distance from a former place, person or persons like parents and neighbors and friends; into an appropriate place for storage or safekeeping of children without adept fathers and mothers; constantly, persistently, or continuously or until another man or woman want to be a mother or father.

Philip Zimbardo looks like a pedophile

I was told that I was the cream of the pie, but cream pies remind me of Fozzy Bear, the coked-out, musically oriented, amphibian friending puppet and my suburban Midwest childhood where we didn’t eat much pie other than on holidays, because pies are an East Coast and farmhouse window sort of desert. I was raised in suburbia and my suburban parents raised their nose at pies that didn’t contain fruit, or things like ‘liberalism,’ or scientists like Stanley Milgram, or people who vacation anywhere but Disneyworld, because if you go to the Epcot center, you can walk from Vienna to Prague to “who the fuck cares where.”

The first of a "how to..." series.

2009-01-31T18:12:00.002-06:00

How to lie to your boss.

Collective human experience has taught many lessons, and the process of learning from our (humanity’s) past foils and follies is nothing less than evolutionary. The trouble with running late for work in the twenty-first century is that, although we try vigilantly to be creative, most every excuse under the sun has been used, and your ability to cry on demand stands little chance at saving your already plummeting sales figures and attendance record. It’s times like these that the well crafted lie has a small, but still existent chance on bluffing your way out your boss’ office door or maybe, just maybe, into a raise.

The most powerful lies are the ones you tell yourself. You are beautiful. Your hairline isn’t receding. Your spouse isn’t sleeping around. The stock market will bounce back. See? You can lie. But getting past your enraged employer is going to take more than just grade-A bullshit. You are going to have to act, and the considering what we know about the best lies, you need to act well.

You need to believe, truly, faithfully, believe that your son did have an epileptic attack on the way to school. Your house did catch fire in the night. A ragtag parade of the elderly on scooters did hold up traffic, and when the honking of angry commuters unsettled one asthmatic older man, you were the only person on the block who was C.P.R. certified.

Now, when it comes to tardiness, the best tactic is a lesser-known one, but it is impressively useful. I call it the “You just didn’t see me come in” claim. It is the denial of your late arrival to work or an important meeting, and a claim that you were, in fact, early and spending the last one to three hours correcting ledger errors with Janet, from accounting.

The trick to this evasion strategy is preparation. If you work in Minneapolis during the winter, get used to leaving your coat in the car, because your claim to have spent the last hour on conference call with the Chicago branch is less believable if you pass his office adorned in parka and mittens. If you call Jacksonville home, the opposite rule applies. When your boss stops you outside his door, wondering where you’ve been, the cardigan or shawl you “had to run out to your car to get” can effectively accompany a complaint about the A/C being turned up to high in your work area.

There are those who would question the ethical implications of running late and then lying about it, but the ability to keep your job will depend on your ability to convince other’s of what you believe to be true, you truly need this job, you truly don’t deserve a raise, but you certainly could use it.

Generally, the best scheme for avoiding the chopping block is planning ahead. Granted, planning ahead would get you to work on time, but for the diligent amongst us, I hope these ploys can help you on that day your alarm clock does malfunction, the kids are sick, or that ragtag parade of elderly does cut you off in traffic.

2009-01-26T12:46:00.001-06:00

Brad Rabbit

There once was a bunny named Brad. He was run over by a pickup truck.

Poor Brad.

His parents were leveled. They didn’t know what to do with themselves.

Now, they had some 150 bunnies, because they fucked like rabbits. And even though they had such a vast collection of offspring, Brad was their favorite

His death changed life for Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit.

Mr. Rabbit, Brad’s father, wrote his rabbit governor and got rabbit government funding to start an rabbit after school educational program to help get young, adolescent rabbits off the streets.

The program thrived.

Mr. Rabbit’s program grew and it caught on at another local rabbit school in a nearby county. Then another in a neighbor state picked up Mr. Rabbit’s program, and before he knew it, five surrounding states had rabbit after-school programs.

After his program was flourishing, Mr. Rabbit was invited on rabbit “60 Minutes” when they covered the dangers of rabbit-human road interaction and highlighted Mr. Rabbit’s rabbit after-school program.

His program kept growing and he traveled the country speaking on rabbit radio, the rabbit Oprah show, and eventually, he appeared on rabbit C-SPAN and rabbit NPR. His popularity continued to rise. He became the official spokes-rabbit for all rabbit safety guidelines and procedures in the rabbit senate.

One day, while on a week of vacation with Mrs. Rabbit, they ventured from their rabbit hotel to the white sand beach, where they sunbathed, had some blended carrot drinks, and threw a Frisbee.

Unfortunately, Mr. Rabbit didn’t know his fine fur coat would act like a sponge, so when he waded out into the water to retrieve Mrs. Rabbit’s scarf that came loose in the wind. The weight of his fur coat overwhelmed his little rabbit body (that han’t been exercising because he had been on the road so much in the last couple years).

And to Mrs. Rabbit’s despair, he drowned.

In the afterlife, Mr. Rabbit reunited with his son Brad Rabbit. They began to talk about all the wonderful and influential work Mr. Rabbit had accomplished on rabbit earth. Everything from his educational programs to his national fame.

Brad Rabbit thought about all the things his father had done in memory of his son, and

commented, “Father, you know that it wasn’t your fault, right?”

Mr. Rabbit furrowed his rabbit brow and responded, “whatever do you mean, Brad?”

“Well, I was young, I was irresponsible, I just hope you haven’t blamed yourself for my hare-brained choices.”

“Son, if I had spent more time, or kept a closer watch…”

Brad Rabbit interrupted, “You did your job, you were a responsible father, and I thank you for your care. Father, how many rabbit’s lives were saved by your work, after my death?”

“Millions, son. Millions.”

Brad Rabbit thought, smiled, hugged his father, and they began to walk through heaven together. “Dad, I’m proud of you. Oh, and just so you know, be careful here in rabbit heaven. My friend Alex was run over last week.”

The End.

three stories for scott brazel

2009-01-20T17:57:00.003-06:00

i am don quixote.

My journey across America began with a stop at my brother’s home, where he lives with his wife and her girlfriend, and her drug dealer boyfriend, to say goodbye, to tease an insecure girl, to have a last kiss, and to pick up some Red mittens, in case Ohio is as cold as Christmas cards indicate, but it was stopped short by an officer because Massachusetts has laws against riding bicycles on the highway, and society has deeply a pronounced definition of what a spirit quest must look like, and my parents love me more than my sister, and the winds will turn cold before I reach California, and jail cells provide a contorted sense of security.

Rock Concert

My curiosity peaked in the mountains, when I was convinced I could fly over them, those gaudy protrusions, those malignant soil tumors, those bilious hindrances on my quest for warmer waters, they thwart my journey, they irritate me greatly, like your father telling me it hurts him more, (unfinished…)

running on all fours in a park in Iowa.

My knees were tired from walking so I stopped in a park in Iowa to sit and rest on a snow covered bench, but as I brushed it off I noticed two black squirrels wrestle in the snow, for ownership of an acorn, and I thought to myself, “it’s odd to see squirrels in the snow”, and even more peculiar was the acorn they were fighting for, it was larger than a traditional acorn, and had queer hieroglyphic like markings on it, so I took it while they weren’t paying attention to me and ate it and stayed in the park for two months, fighting with the squirrels for other magic acorns.

Rideshare.com

My journeys were winding down, as I reached the more scantily clad of the two coasts, so I wandered into a café, asked for a complimentary cup of water and sat next to a forty-something year old man who dressed like a man twenty years his junior and was savagely typing on his laptop computer, and when he excused himself to find relief, I used that computer to find a ride home, back across the wilderness, back to my worried progenitors, to work, to order, to comfort, and I thought the ride might be long, so I took the computer with me.

Aunt Rose’s Goiter / Family Reunion

2009-01-17T16:54:00.001-06:00

I make the cross-country trip to my grandparent’s home twice a year. Once for Christmas, the other for our annual family reunion. It’s always been known, within my family, that the reunion was necessary, an obligation of the highest priorities, and if there was an un-attending party, of any family, that family would be denoted a ‘black sheep’ for years to come.

A skip happened once four years ago. My cousin Javier, my mother’s sister’s third son, skipped because his pregnant wife could not travel because she was expecting that month, and the family crushed him for it. My mother’s sister, Rose, was given lectures about raising her son the right way, about how she should have taught him when to keep ‘it in his pants,’ and how, if she had good sense about her, she would’ve made the trip to chauffer Javier and his pregnant wife to the gathering herself.

The family is a bit cruel. They don’t mean to be, but grandmother Ana and my mother’s sisters are very territorial, I don’t think they understand what they are doing to each other each year. Javier called me the week after that reunion, wondering what I thought of the whole thing. I told him “I didn’t know that I would’ve done it differently” and “it’s a putamadre, but it’s our family.”

This last reunion took another shot on Javier’s family. His mother Rose developed a goiter in the last few years, a growth one cousin mistook for a second chin, but this last year took a turn for the worse, and looks to be the size of a second head. My mother called me a week before the reunion and prepped me for the shock.

“It’s going to be distracting, but if you can keep eye contact with Rose, maybe she won’t be so self-conscious.”

My mother takes these kinds of sensitivity training sorts of tasks upon herself on a regular basis. When my brother came out of the closet, she called the entire extended family, which adds up to over seventy calls, to let them know Raul would be bringing his partner that year. So when she called me so soon to the reunion, I suspected I was the last to be hearing of it, but I wasn’t offended. It’s mom, she’s a caring woman.

The reunion came, I took the better part of the week to drive two days home and met my brother and his new boyfriend for lunch before drove out to grandfather’s ranch for dinner. At lunch, Raul mentioned that mother had called, something about not staring at Rose, but sounded a little bitter. I agreed with Peter, his boyfriend, when he chimed in,, “come on, you know they love you, they just don’t understand. They probably say the same thing about us. It’s ok, that’s families.”

When dinner came, the family gathered at tables on the front lawn of the ranch, each lit with white and red Christmas lights, and my grandfather’s voice came over the rented sound system, telling everyone to eat and drink and save him the first dance with my cousin Cecilia, whose Quinceañera was this year.

I saw aunt Rose that night, surrounded by my mother and their sisters, her neck bulging as if her brain was trying to make it’s escape, and I leaned over to Raul and Peter, “I think I’d rather just have la puta just cut off before I’d bring it here.”

“Yeah,” Raul responded, “and if there was one weekend that I’d rather like to have sex with women…”

Claudia / Family Reunion

2009-01-17T16:53:00.002-06:00

My grandfather is a drunk, a gambler, and there are suspicious members of the family that believe he beats Claudia. She is his third wife, she is not the mother of any of his seven children, she is twenty-eight years his minor, she has enormous fake breasts which he paid for, and a recurring black eye. No one’s questioned the circumstances under which she’s repeatedly acquired such intentional bruising because no one is her daughter, mother, brother, father. She is an enigma, an isolated member, she is family, but she isn’t responsible like family or to family. She garners some sympathy, some respect, and some power, but I hate her because the bitch called the police on my brother Raul and me for possession of marijuana when I was seventeen.

I felt bad, you know, for getting caught with a full pipe behind their house. And when she caught us, she played the ‘you should know better’ card. But it didn’t take her fifteen whole minutes to suddenly find her convictions, walk back into grandfather’s goddamn ranch house, call the sheriff out on us, and then wait around to point us out of the seventy-something person crowd that is our family reunion.

Raul and I are in the “more” camp of the ‘more or less’ opinion of my grandfather’s love for Claudia. I think he loves her about as much as any first-generation Latino of a drunk could. He does love her, and he shows it. She doesn’t pick up a finger without him knowing about it. She doesn’t cook or clean. She has quite the life, if you think about it, the life many want but deep down know they’d rather die than actually live out.

Her responsibilities lie mostly between my grandfather’s legs, and considering his age, those duties are becoming more and more sparse. My Nana, my mother’s mother, hated my grandfather for his penis, or his brain, she used them interchangeably. So she left him for a simpler life where she cooks, cleans, and tends to a family, in addition to her new husband’s crotch. My mother says that Nana is happy because she has everything a woman of her generation could want.

My grandfather and Nana are divorced in love, but are practically the same person. They have the same ‘old world’ values, and it is these values that lead Raul and me to believe that my grandfather loves Claudia. Everyone knows that he beats her, and I’m sure that it’s wrong. But the sheer fact that he does lay hands on her reminds me of a time when it was socially acceptable to use violence to prove oneself, when love wasn’t made of money, when sex wasn’t cheap, and when there were important things in life, like making sure the next generation knew right from wrong. I hate Claudia for calling the sheriff on Raul and me, making sure we didn’t get bailed out for two days, but I have to love her for her twisted sense of prerogative. I don’t think she believes her relationship to be something great novels are written about, but she does know how good she has it, how she decided what she wants and was willing to go take it. She isn’t Nana, which is good for my grandfather, the old Latino of a drunk he is.

Flight

2009-01-17T16:53:00.001-06:00

I successfully flew once, when I was young, when I ran across the top of the monkey-bars, protruding from the slide-tower of my jungle gym, and launched myself from the last rung, which doubled as the top of the eight foot ladder. Like many children who wake up under the white lights in the hospital, I continued motion. The warm summer ground, my father’s arms, the car seat, the wheel-chair, the operating table, and then the bed I woke upon provided only a temporary pause in my flight.

I awoke and immediately began to float, above the bed, until I rose high enough to bump my chest into the ceiling, and like a drowning woman in a room filling with water, I began to feel my way along the ceiling, looking for an escape. The nurse at her station ran to get my father from the cafeteria while a doctor still covered with birth-blood grabbed at my feet; which I kicked breast-stroke style through the air, propelling myself towards the ‘Emergency Room’ door.

My father threw his head back, calling me back, as I climbed the wind outside the hospital floors, looking in each window, hoping to see my little brother, withered and lonely, with tubes in his chest and hope. And I did want to return for a few moments, when I passed an older man, groping for life on the six-inch balcony outside his window on the top floor. He reached out to me and he held my hand as he told me the story of the life he didn’t choose to live. When he was done and the story had been told, he looked beyond me, to the setting sun, and said he too wanted to fly.

“First Date”

2009-01-17T16:52:00.000-06:00

Response to Star Alfur by Sigur Ros

I met you on the street.

You, in your father’s car

And me, lying across the hood,

Bloody steam evaporates off the hot engine.

Eyes frozen by time, or the cold.

Pinks and red roses, commitment,

Reminders of white walled beauty,

Sunbathing through ambulance windows.

Childhood Sunday best

Wrapped about the former self.

My chariot has a Rolls Royce emblem,

Yours is embedded in my right thigh.

Other Conversations

2009-01-17T16:51:00.000-06:00

The third week living alone was interesting. I got my first bill, my shower curtain rod spoke to me, and my subscription to entertainment weekly all began that week. Living by oneself can be challenging, lonely at times, especially when your landlord doesn’t allow pets, but I’ve found ways to preoccupy myself.

I work a filler job in Chicago, about two blocks from my apartment. I refer to it as a ‘filler’ because I’m just working to pay rent while I audition for acting and modeling roles. My last girlfriend dated me because she thought my I had a European gauntness to my jaw and cheekbones. She was an actress and always said I should try. So I am.

I live alone, which works ok financially, but I’ve always thought about finding a roommate. It’d be nice to have someone to come home to, to have conversations with. I’m sort of dating this girl, Carrie, from work, she spends the night about twice a week, but every time we start to have a conversation about committing to a relationship, we turn south.

Carrie found out about Evan, my shower rod, about three months into whatever we are. She thinks it’s weird, and often tells me that I should try to make some other friends. She thinks I push people away, that I’m an introvert like my mother. I think she’s jealous of my conversations with Evan.

We started talking quite a lot more recently. I’m busy with work, and the auditions take up quite a bit of my time, but it’s nice to have someone to come home to. Sometimes we watch television together. Well, I watch television and narrate the action on the screen for him. He tends to like scenes that occur in homes, especially bathrooms, because he gets those, it’s a context thing, and it’s really irritating to try to explain what a subway looks like to shower rod. And by the time we’re on the same page, the show has moved on. But like I said, it’s nice to have someone around.

One time I came home and caught Evan on the couch watching porn. When he realized I caught him, he fed me this half-ass story about how I left him there, on the couch with the television on, and this show just came on about forty minutes before I walked in the door. I don’t think he’d lie to me, and I was still a little drunk from the night before when I left for work that morning. I told Carrie about what happened. Her first question was wondering “if he seemed to like watching porn.” I told her it was inconsequential, whether or not he liked it. I just didn’t want that kind of stuff going on in my apartment.

Conversations

2009-01-17T16:50:00.001-06:00

The shower in my apartment doubles as a tub. It has a shelf for soaps and a larger shelf for shampoos. I bought a rubber mat to put down in the tub so I don’t slip as much, but it’s still slick. I think most tubs are, slick that is, but living in dormitory style housing for my four years of college got me used to small, claustrophobic showers that aren’t slippery. So I’m making due.

I was washing my hair last year and got some shampoo in my eyes. It wasn’t that I washed my hair so few times last year that this instance stands out on the calendar as one of a very few days that I was clean, but it does stand out on my calendar as the first time Evan spoke to me. Evan is my shower curtain rod.

That particular day was a Wednesday. I was late for work, I enter numbers into a computer in an office-plex down the street from my apartment, and I was washing myself speedily to make up for lost time. Shampoo is expensive when you don’t like spending much money, so I buy the cheap stuff from Walgreens. It works, but leaves my hair stringy, and burns like hell when I get it in my eyes.

So, that Wednesday morning, I got some in my right eye, and had this momentous physical reaction where I lunged my face forward into the water, to wash the offended eye, but since my eyes were closed, and my hands were too busy rubbing my eyes to stop the force of my body, I lunged too far and smacked my forehead into the nozzle, slipped, and fell on my ass, right there in the tub.

It was then that Evan said “hello, nasty fall.”

I opened my sore eyes. The flurry of action brought down the shower curtain and it’s rod on top of me. I pulled the thin, wet, mess off of me and looked out the bathroom door into the apartment.

“Hello? Who are you?”

“I’m Evan.” The voice sounded pipsqueakish, but oddly close, like a headphone that’s escaped your ear but is still playing music.

“I’m afraid you don’t belong here, please leave!”

“I beg to ask, how do you see that playing out?” He responded so quickly, so sarcastically, I grew very angry, but when I tried to get up, my back hurt so, I just sat there stewing in my territorial anger.

“I don’t care, this isn’t your apartment, and you don’t belong! Go!”

“Well, fine, be that way, but you’ll have to let go of me first.”

I quickly realized where the voice was coming from. I looked to the shower curtain rod lying limply on the floor. I reached out slowly and poked it.

“Did you say that?”

“Say what?” He responded all to knowingly.

“Are you, can you, who are you?”

“I already said my name is Evan. Anything else you’d like to ask since I’m already annoyed?”

“Are you real?”

“Well, I’m not sure what that means at all. I’m speaking aren’t I?”

“Yes.” I picked the rod up, and held him close to my face, inspecting it. “Are you a person?”

“No. I’m a rod.”

“Well. How long have you been a rod?”

“I don’t know if I could quantify my existence. I’m not mathematically proficient. How long have you been ‘not a rod’?”

“Um, twenty-three years. Do you do other things too?”

“Yes, besides speaking, I am very good at spanning a gap of approximately three to five feet and holding up a plastic sheet. Unless I’m removed from my optimal position, in which case, my list of abilities is noticeably shortened.”

“Oh. Sorry, do you want me to put you back?”

“I’d like that very much.”

I stood clumsily, naked and still a little damp, pulled Evan up to his position between the bathroom walls and secured him in place.

“I’m running late for work. Can we continue this conversation later?”

“I don’t see why not.”

That entire day was a hopeless attempt to get any real work done. I spent most of my day thinking about what kind of questions to ask my shower curtain rod. By the time the work-day was finished, I decided the bathroom was really his home and I thought I’d ask him whether or not he had been offended by my repeated nudity in his place of domain.

Charles and Maggie

2009-01-17T16:45:00.000-06:00

I was broke the summer after my sophomore year of college. I held a couple part time jobs, one flipping soy burgers for my neighbor’s vegan diner, the other doing data entry for an insurance company. I found a few odd-jobs on Craigslist.com, mostly doing yard work and dog-walking, but elder women don’t pay all that well and the work wasn’t regular. School loans piled higher than postcards from home.

I heard a commercial on the radio between top forty hits for a local plasma donation center claiming pre-approved donors could earn up to ninety-five dollars a week. The phone number was a 1-800 extension, which wasn’t comforting, but evidently necessary. The phone rang seven times before a busied receptionist forced a “Hello, thanks for calling TRP Medical, this is Keisha, how can I direct your call?”

“I heard your commercial on the radio, about ninety-five dollars a week for plasma.”

“Yes, we take plasma, but I think you misunderstood.”

“Oh.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Our payout is dependent on approximate body density. How much do you weigh?”

“Um…two-twenty-five.” I weighed two-fifty that summer.

“Okay, well you can get thirty-five each donation, and you can donate twice every seven days with at least twenty-four hours between.”

“Oh. What was that about the ninety-five then?”

“Well, if your blood type matches our needs, you can earn a fifteen more the first donation and ten more per donation after that.”

“So I can earn ninety-five this week then?"

“Yes, but only if your type matches our need, and only this week. Any other questions sir?”

“Nope.”

“Well, we can schedule the appointment if you are available this afternoon.”

“Okay, yeah I am. When should I come in?”

“Well, now.”

“Now? Okay. Where’s your office?”

“Come to the north west corner of forty-first and Lawrence. You know where the Burger King is on that corner?”

“Yeah. I know where it is.”

“Good. Make sure you eat a meal before you come in, and drink some water, your blood will flow better.”

“Wait, blood? I thought I was giving plasma.”

“Well, you are, plasma is in your blood. We extract the whole blood, filter the plasma and white blood cells, and return the rest.”

“Like…through a tube?”

“No honey, you drink it.”

“Oh. I don’t know…”

“Of course through a tube, the machine returns it right to your veins.”

“Oh.” I said, a little shaken. “Alright, I’ll be there in like twenty-five.”

I started giving plasma that week and the next, and for most of that summer. The money was alright, it paid for gas and the left-over went into my “need to pay mom and dad back” envelope. The envelope grew slowly, but the ‘blood money,’ as mom referred to it, helped out.

I was in to give plasma on a Thursday, the seventh Thursday that summer when Keisha handed me a flier for medical testing. “It’s pretty easy, I do it on the weekends.”

“Do what on the weekends?”

“Drug testing. It’s all legit, the drugs are safe, you just stay here run tests for a weekend.”

“So wait, they test shit on me, and I get paid for it?”

“Yeah, pretty well too. Like two thousand for three weekends.”

“Serious?”

“Yeah. I come in on Friday nights, sleep here, run tests all Saturday, read my book, watch tv, work out, and leave Sunday morning. It’s easy.”

“Wow. Do they, you know, fuck you up?” As I point to my head.

“Do I look all fucked up?” Looking half offended, mimicking my hand motion.

“No, sorry.”

“No hun, they are all, like, lower end pain relievers. Like Tylenol.”

“Alright, I could do that.”

“Baby you’d do fine, hell, I just bought a new car.”

“Wow. What kind?”

“The new Explorer out there.” She said as she jingled her enormous key chain and pointed towards the parking lot.

“So I can make twenty-five-hundred dollars to take Tylenol and sit around for a weekend?”

“You’ll do a bit more than just sitting, but yeah, that’s the idea. Come in for the assessment tomorrow at two and we can get you signed up.”

The assessment was quick and I spent the rest of my summer weekends downtown in a research facility. That’s were I met Charles and Maggie. Charles was my first roommate on my first weekend. He was forty-five that summer and claimed to be in the best shape of his life. Charles ran marathons with his wife, Maggie. She ran a health foods store uptown, and recognized me from my neighbors vegan diner. ….(unfinished)…

strip club.

2009-01-17T16:44:00.000-06:00

My mother was a stern, pious woman. When my brother Matthew and I were boys, she demanded excellence of us. We were in the second pew every Sunday. My mother, Matthew and I ate dinner together every night, and each meal required prayer, schooling summaries, and moral application statements of our daily experiences. While our friends’ parents rewarded them for good grades, we were given consequences for poor ones. While our friends relaxed on the weekends, we worked for our Uncle’s steel mill downtown.

I didn’t care for my mother’s morals. Matthew was a year older than me, and all mom’s focus agreed with his natural demeanor. He started working for Uncle Clyde the summer he turned thirteen, and then I started the next summer, mostly cleaning toilets and taking out trash. Uncle Clyde’s mill sat kitty-corner from our town’s only gentlemen’s club, a dingy spot across the street.

The first summer I worked for Uncle Clyde, it was my responsibility to collect office trash and take it all out to the dumpster out front. Matthew repeatedly caught me taking my time at the dumpster as I watched the tinted front doors across the street. I’d always hoped they would open wide enough for me to peer inside. I just wanted a glimpse.

When I turned eighteen, I convinced Matthew to sneak out and take a cab to the gentlemen’s club after mom went to bed. I received fifty-five dollars in birthday gifts, mostly from distant family, long separated by my father’s death and mother’s irritating piety. I split the money twenty/twenty-five so we could buy lap dances, the extra five dollars paid for an imported beer and a persuasive tip for an uneasy, but ultimately indifferent to minors, bartender.

I was three-quarters done with my fancy beer and Matthew was trying hard as he might to enjoy his lap dance when the DJ’s voice came over the system.

“Justin and Matthew Rollinson, your mother’s waiting for you at the front door.”

We looked to each other, to the tinted front doors, and the mill beyond. My mother was standing next to her Buick parked next to the dumpster. I took another drink of my beer and looked back to the stage. The girl onstage shook her way out of her top. Her freckles begged me to stay.

“Come on Justin. She’ll have our hides for a year if we don’t go now.”

“Alright.” I finished my beer, grabbed my coat, and followed Matthew out the door. As we walked across the street, my mother stepped into her car and glared at us from the driver’s seat. I heard some men walk up and open the door so I turned my head to look back, hoping the door would stay open long enough for a quick glimpse.

i was a worm. (before i was your lover)

2009-01-17T16:43:00.000-06:00

the life I lived before this

one was terribly simple.

i long for cooler nights,

with dirt between my gums.

i ate mud, but my new

appendages ache, and the

wet of my fingertips sizzle

against a blackened wick.

Out of order

2009-01-17T16:42:00.000-06:00

I approached a vending machine

Outside a local Target superstore

To purchase a Diet Coke, which

I knew may eventually be my demise

Considering my mother.

Diabetes makes your feet swell,

And shrink and doctors make

Sure to charge extra for check-ups

When they know you have noxious

Diseases in the family.

My insurance expired two ago

and I hope my average

health lasts. Someday I’ll have

the sort of financial situation to allow

commodities like foresight.

Vending machines have peculiar

designs and advertising strategies,

and are big enough for men

with hunting knives to hide behind

while they wait to rob you.

running on all fours in a park in Iowa.

2009-01-17T16:41:00.000-06:00

My knees were tired from walking, on my journey across America, so I stopped in a park in Iowa to sit and rest on a snow covered bench, but as I brushed it off I noticed two black squirrels wrestle in the snow, for ownership of an acorn, and I thought to myself, “it’s odd to see squirrels in the snow”, and even more peculiar was the acorn they were fighting for, it was larger than a traditional acorn, and had queer hieroglyphic like markings on it, so I took it while they weren’t paying attention to me and ate it and stayed in the park for two months, fighting with the squirrels for other magic acorns.

irritation.

2009-01-17T16:33:00.002-06:00

My blog was deleted, bummer. Time to start again.