There: two taps! I knew it. I didn’t used to recognize it when I was younger, but now I see the cogs in your winces, the springs in your gulp, the tick-tock-cockadoodledoo-clockwork moments before your superstition. When it’s a green, you just smirk and stare with your hands on the golden years’ ten and two. When it’s a yellow, you tap twice on the dashboard—ba-ba—your wrists resting on the wheel like children on a teeter-totter. When it’s a red, the tap becomes a pricklin’ pop be-bop beastin’ beat with mad flow for hip hop: ba-Ba-ba-Ba.
When I got my license and the car, it became habitual for me, too. No reason, no thought, no conscious will purchased the eccentricity for the fee of solidarity. I even improved it with a waltzing ba-ba-Ba for greens. After a few rides in, my friends sitting shotgun would—no blitz and no bullshit—tap their own approval out. Some stoics like Colin and Erich would even break out their falsetto guffaws if we tapped simultaneously, same accent and all.
Eventually, that jinx would be a cue for the prestigious front seat passenger to break out a gut-busting dashboard solo. Colin set a record once, finger-licking for ten minutes straight. He even managed to incorporate the silences and poetry-beats of the Granny Smiths, Goldens, and McIntoshes overhead in three-block measures along Main Street. Erich got a bit more creative, though, and started incorporating the ledge of the glove compartment, lilting his index fingers between the dashboard and glove compartment like a high-low cowbell. “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and the demo bridge of “Kids” never sounded better as with his assistance to the car’s tinny speakers.
You’ve been doing this for years and I really have no idea why. This time, we’re driving together to Bob and Marsha’s while I’m home. Good, wholesome people, fine family-friendly friends. We’ve been lucky so far, going through four greens rowing, but then we come through a yellow and you don’t tap. It is an omission I am entirely aware of yet it doesn’t register immediately.
“What was that?” I say. I take a stab and speak up.
“What was what?” I’m surprised you even speak back to me. In this family, car rides (and dim evenings before bed) are spent in silence. They’ve always been that way. I never liked it.
“Why didn’t you tap? We drove through a yellow light and you didn’t” I tap out the expectant ba-ba which has come to comfort and satisfy me as much as the click of a seatbelt.
“Oh. I stopped that a while ago. I guess we haven’t driven together in a while” you say. “It began as the whim of a superstition I held but—I mean, c’mon—I’m old and wise, young grasshopper.” You glance at me with one of those weird duckbill smiles. “Can’t do that kid stuff anymore. Don’t do it anymore. Kid stuff.”
“But you did it all the while that I was growing up.”
“Yeah…true, but you were small and weak, then. Oh wait!” You chuckle at the cruelty you believe to be a snarky humor that I’m apparently man enough to take.
“Dad—“
“I’m sorry, bud. Seriously though, here’s why it began, though it continued out of fun: when you were still an infant, I began to get the idea—no idea where it came from, maybe a dream or Gary, you know ‘im, that crazy beard at the deli—I began to get the idea that airbags weren’t as safe as they could be unless I tapped out air pockets. So I made stoplights checkpoints, and had a little fun with the radio while I was at it, in case Wa-POOOOSSSHHH! we hit the 0,0 coordinates of some drunk idiot coasting along his Y-axis while we were innocently cruising our X-axis. Now they got those laws about no kids in the front seat. But at the time, we didn’t know any better. It was a safety precaution. For you. Not based in science at all, I didn’t think but now know no, but yeah: air pockets bad, tap ‘em out good, keep your tiny noggin safe.” You glance with a smile at me.
I am stunned. Dad, you never told me you loved me. You never kissed me. You never hugged me. You didn’t know I wasn’t a boy scout, lost my virginity at sixteen, consoled Mom whenever you left before you came back for good. You never even shook my hand. I learned to drive, to change a tire, to balance a checkbook, to shave, to be chivalrous, to be a gentlemen, to moderate my alcohol consumption on my own. No you. Never you. There was never a you there. You were never there. But here you are, explaining to me that this stupid nuance in your life that’s become so ritualistic for me and my friends began as a safety precaution. For my sake. From you. So you cared. Once, you did. You did care once.
You’re gone now, Dad, and I brought up this experience in my eulogy at your wake. It was one of the few memories I have of us together where I didn’t hate you. Between the drinking, the obsession with algorithms, the serial abandonments, the distance…the, hm. Listen, I—my life’s been slim pickin’ for father-son story time. Just about a year or two before you passed, there in the car tapless you finally implied that you cared for me once. It was short-lived and subtle like a blink, but it happened. It doesn’t make up for jack. But it existed. I existed for you once. I’m at a green light now: ba-ba-Ba.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Characteristics
I don't finish books. I prefer to be in control of when the book ends. The author and I just have different opinions on where the denouement settles. Most authors drag too far and away. I like to lay my chin on my paws right here, 47 pages before the author says "Here."
My nose whistles when it's about to rain. Something about the humidity and my celia, I think, but a nostril'll start whistling before it's visually evident that an air mass is bringing us precipitation.
My nose whistles when it's about to rain. Something about the humidity and my celia, I think, but a nostril'll start whistling before it's visually evident that an air mass is bringing us precipitation.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
On my arm...
"It's like Jesus in my mouth."
"Let me give you a handjob with my mouth."
--L.L.
"He looked like Jesus and smelled like Vodka."<--Dude, you've got a month to begin a short story with this line. At that point, I'm stealing it and making it my own....
See you there. See you then.
it is in our most contemplative of minds that we are also our most imaginative, for misery bears little else as comfort.
Music...defines a moment, a feeling, elation in discovering the better demo, the revision, the band and title for something only heard. Kids (drumming cowbell bridge in demo on Caitlin's passenger dashboard), Sometimes (13 times rote in depression reclining in car, mud park space behind rickety blue undergrad housing), Someone Great (LCD and Kate's encore emergence), Svegn G Englar (floating to dinner, defining love), 59th Street (Feelin' Groovy)(Anastasiya's living room floor with shades not drawn but overcast skies and smiles), Two Months Off (Defining first love), Do You Realize? (Defining first love), Good Woman (Chantal weeping, power of the arts).
Algae green dreadlocks with threaded purple and black, furry knotty knee-high boots. Askew minute bejeweled top hat, wannest of skin, reddest of lips, bushy gauzy sparkly dark skirt under white trim corset. The most outrageous looking on the train were also the least outrageously behaved. Like Marilyn Manson. A creepy lookin' listener, observer, quieter than most.
Glasses in a plastic ziploc bag.
Royal Bangs. Hot IQ.
"Smell a nigga naked, I smell real good."
1.Squirming
2.Shriveling (Shivering)
3.Shuffling
4.Shimmering
Was where I sat softly quietly smitten.
The automaticity of adulthood
-bills
-waking up early
-thank you letters
-pride in work
-legacy
-sacrifice
Tonight I smiled at the thought of my aunts' and uncles' laughter. Their lilts and yips and hoohahs, their chuckles, motors, and silences.
"Let me give you a handjob with my mouth."
--L.L.
"He looked like Jesus and smelled like Vodka."<--Dude, you've got a month to begin a short story with this line. At that point, I'm stealing it and making it my own....
See you there. See you then.
it is in our most contemplative of minds that we are also our most imaginative, for misery bears little else as comfort.
Music...defines a moment, a feeling, elation in discovering the better demo, the revision, the band and title for something only heard. Kids (drumming cowbell bridge in demo on Caitlin's passenger dashboard), Sometimes (13 times rote in depression reclining in car, mud park space behind rickety blue undergrad housing), Someone Great (LCD and Kate's encore emergence), Svegn G Englar (floating to dinner, defining love), 59th Street (Feelin' Groovy)(Anastasiya's living room floor with shades not drawn but overcast skies and smiles), Two Months Off (Defining first love), Do You Realize? (Defining first love), Good Woman (Chantal weeping, power of the arts).
Algae green dreadlocks with threaded purple and black, furry knotty knee-high boots. Askew minute bejeweled top hat, wannest of skin, reddest of lips, bushy gauzy sparkly dark skirt under white trim corset. The most outrageous looking on the train were also the least outrageously behaved. Like Marilyn Manson. A creepy lookin' listener, observer, quieter than most.
Glasses in a plastic ziploc bag.
Royal Bangs. Hot IQ.
"Smell a nigga naked, I smell real good."
1.Squirming
2.Shriveling (Shivering)
3.Shuffling
4.Shimmering
Was where I sat softly quietly smitten.
The automaticity of adulthood
-bills
-waking up early
-thank you letters
-pride in work
-legacy
-sacrifice
Tonight I smiled at the thought of my aunts' and uncles' laughter. Their lilts and yips and hoohahs, their chuckles, motors, and silences.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Words She Wrote to Him
I've just begun a fiction writing course, and one of our first assignments was to combine a sentence strip I received ("lost a map of the United States with all of the cities named 'Springfield' circled")with a character who has the opposite of three traits I described myself with:
*Conventional (Not Eccentric)
*Uncompassionate/stonehearted (Not Compassionate)
*Indifferent (Not Inquisitive)
____________________________________________________________________________________
"Mayb..hm--maybe it's under the back of the...passenger...."
His potato fingers are feeling for the coarse angular planes of a poorly folded paper map. It's wrinkled and bleached by his sister's irresponsible care during her college excursions with windows opened for cigarettes, trash, cops, rain and wind through fingers. Cooper Fisher has just lost this map of the United States with the cities called "Springfield" circled because that's where a girl is. He is looking for a girl that Instant Messaged him accidentally a week earlier, resulting in his first falls and pangs of love and lust.
LoveMe123: Dave?
H1Th3r3: what? my names Cooper Fisher.
LoveMe123: I'm sorry, I think I typed in the wrong screenname. I was looking for my friend Dave.
H1Th3r3: obviously,
LoveMe123:...well that was a dick thing to say.
HiTh3r3: *obviously.
H1Th3r3: sorry you feel that way. im just bein honest.
LoveMe123: I can be honest too, see? "You're so ugly! Why why why would I lie to you?"
H1Th3r3: i love that song.
Although initially hesitant, Lishy Juarez continued to write to Cooper Fisher because she had little better to do beside update her status on Facebook and Twitter. She's still young and didn't think anyone knew who the Violent Femmes were, so his response to her quotation also piqued her intrigue. After his admittedly dick comment, Cooper Fisher redeemed himself by cutting through the sway and swagger she usually received from boys. She had grown accustomed to shrugging at their impromptu jazz performances based on the instruments she provided in what she typed, but Cooper Fisher was satisfied with hums and handclaps. She liked that simplicity, that cold.
LoveMe123: What do you think of my pics?
H1Th3r3: havent checked em out yet.
LoveMe123: Really?
H1Th3r3: you should change your font. its difficult to read.
LoveMe123: lol, really?
H1Th3r3: yeah. my eyes hurt.
She didn't mind him being terse. Usually boys wrote too much, and she'd grow annoyed with their mojoless (and thus blatantly superficial) means of impressing her, like those birds who fluff their feathers, puff their chests, and dance funky chickens to impress potential mates. This bird--Cooper Fisher--was busy lying down, looking up, not even at Lishy Juarez, a female with the power of choice. She was attracted to this indifference because it made her feel like more than a body.
LoveMe123: So what kind of movies do you like?
H1Th3r3: i like everything.
LoveMe123: Everyone says that, but no one means it. You can't possibly like EVERYTHING!!!1! What do you LOVE, then?
H1Th3r3: I liked the soloist. and world's greatest dad. sometimes i quote in good company.
LoveMe123: ...I'm so glad you like the same music I do.
LoveMe123: I just realized, you haven't really asked me any questions yet. Why not?
H1Th3r3: i dont know. im content knowin what i know.
LoveMe123: That was so feng shui.
H1Th3r3: you mean zen? usually people would say that's zen. feng shui is used for designin rooms and placin furniture in peaceful places an stuff like that.
LoveMe123: lolz, yeah! That was like one of those Bill Nye "Did You Know?! Now You Know!" moments. Have you ever seen that show? I watch it online sometimes.
After finding the map and starting up the car again, Cooper Fisher sat and exed out with a purple Sharpie marker the Springfields he's already visited: Springfield, North Dakota, Springfield, South Dakota, Springfield, Wyoming, Springfield, Nebraska and Springfield, Oklahoma. The first stop and shop for a girl named Lishy Juarez was only about three hours away from home in state number one. He made the decision to leave home after realizing his summer had been dissatisfyingly too safe and too quiet. He then calculated how much money he'd have to spend (that he'd been saving for a new laptop) on food, gas, hostels (when the car wasn't warm enough), and drumsticks (Lishy Juarez is a drummer and would "way prefer a bouquet of drumsticks to a bouquet of flowers"). He skipped Kansas--thought it smelled, figured Lishy wasn't from there. He had the rest of summer to find her.
While driving, between adjusting radio reception and bulging eyes for the fuzz, Cooper Fisher was thinking about words she wrote to him, punctuation marks, emoticons, acronyms, anything to reason out whether or not she was translating an affectionate infatuation through the silence and stoicism of instant messaging. Cooper Fisher was also thinking, when the reception was keen, about how thrilling it is when a song's lyrics are illuminated in the midst of a listener's life's sorrows and smiles, miles driven and blocks walked, aspirations and inspirations. Here he was, following James Murphy's triumphant voice now: "We set controls for the heart of the sun, one of the ways that we show our age." He knew he was still young because he was going for her.
After sorrows of flats and hunger, smiles of Lishy Juarez and her words, miles driven in side streets and highways, blocks walked past corners hushed and raucous, aspirations to kiss her and make her cum, and inspirations to take up drumming himself and find better theaters at home, Cooper Fisher thought he had found Lishy Juarez in his fifth week, third day, eighteenth state, and nineteenth Springfield (there are two in Kentucky). He was listening to this go-getter go-get-her fist-over-muffled bassless lo-fi radio pulling into Springfield, South Carolina, and he simultaneously shivered and grinned at the lyrics, not knowing why. "Logic will break your heart forever. Be brave...."
He was two states off, but found her in Springfield, Florida.
"Hi. Does Lishy Juarez live here?"
"Who the hell'er you?" questioned her father.
"I'm a--I'm a friend from school. We planned to hang out before school started again."
..."Yeah? Aren't you a bit old t' be hangin' 'round my daughter?"
Cooper Fisher was confused, but then he realized he never asked how old Lishy was and she never told him. He kept on, hoping that she wasn't fifteen or something ludicrous like that. He'd come so far. "No, sir. I jus' look old for m' age."
"Yeah?"
"Yup. Sure. Yes, I mean." He was nervous and it was obvious, though he had every right to be. Cooper Fisher was a homebody whose greatest adventure before this was discovering a delicatessen better than the one four miles closer to home and the worst trouble he ever monkeyed around in was losing a DVD from Blockbuster before having a chance to return it.
Lishy Juarez's father looked at Cooper Fisher. It was an uneasy moment, especially when he looked down and jutted his bottom lip to the left in ambivalence.
"Lishy! Get do'n 'ere. Y' gotta friend at the door!"
Cooper Fisher inhaled, held, and exhaled as slowly as possible.
"Oh my Jesus! Cooper!" he was elated that she recognized him from the crappy photos in his profile; they were crappy because he had a scar on his left temple from when he was nine that embarrassed him. He was expecting a hug next. "What the hell are you doing here?! I mean, I haven't seen you online in weeks, and I thought you lived forever away. I thought you died or something!" Although she smiled, he couldn't tell if it was because she was happy to see him.
Still waiting for a hug.
"Uh, yeah: I basically drove here from home to see you. I just...I can't explain how much our conversations meant to me and I jus--"
"Cooper. Shut up. Seriously?! This is---" Lishy Juarez caught herself before saying it. She stepped out of the doorway and closed the glass door behind her. They were now in the sun, on her brick step, next to bushes that browned brittle and weakness, unwatered for weeks. "This is really fucking creepy. I mean," she sighed agitated, "I'm only fifteen and we only spoke for, like, five days."
"Wrote." Cooper Fisher was crushed.
"What?"
At least a hug, even now.
"We only wrote 'for, like, five days.'" His eyes turned up as he quoted her.
"Whatever! It doesn't matter! I'm a curious girl and all, but you totally got the wrong idea if you think all of my pokes and lollerblades and talk--writing about sex and music and boys and movies and feng shui was a sign of loving you...even liking you like that. That way. This way." Her voice was descending. "I didn't tell you my age or my state because I didn't think it was important and, being five years older, I really didn't think that you'd make a move like this." Now it was shallow.
"I'm--"
"I mean--what?"
"You go ahead."
"I mean, if circumstances were different, maybe this would be really sweet and we'd make out like wombats and I could finally see a penis in real life." Her eyes bulged when she said 'finally see a penis' and she looked back through the glass door to see if any family was around to hear her mention it. "But I'm too young, too far, and too new to you."
Maybe the hug was impossible now.
Cooper Fisher waited a moment to see if she was done so that he could apologize.
"I'm sorry." She wasn't looking at him, but she could hear that his head was down. "I guess I thought too much about it all, read too much into the words you wrote me. Got carried away."
She knew at least that he was a boy of few words, fewer emotions, and no questions. She hugged him and he moaned a momentary satisfaction, which creeped her out more. Upon letting go, he walked to the back seat of the car, leaned in, and pulled out a bundle of drumsticks, mallets, and brushes wrapped in forest- and winter-green tissue paper around a cone fashioned out of a North Dakota newspaper, six weeks old. He handed it to her without words, she accepted and thanked him without words, and he drove off.
Several hours later, Cooper Fisher turned on the radio, which sounded not just distant, but morose as well, now, and smirked in his bittersweet disappointment. He felt defeated and disgusted, but he met her and she hugged him. One of those songs from days ago came back: "Logic will break your heart forever. Be brave...."
*Conventional (Not Eccentric)
*Uncompassionate/stonehearted (Not Compassionate)
*Indifferent (Not Inquisitive)
____________________________________________________________________________________
"Mayb..hm--maybe it's under the back of the...passenger...."
His potato fingers are feeling for the coarse angular planes of a poorly folded paper map. It's wrinkled and bleached by his sister's irresponsible care during her college excursions with windows opened for cigarettes, trash, cops, rain and wind through fingers. Cooper Fisher has just lost this map of the United States with the cities called "Springfield" circled because that's where a girl is. He is looking for a girl that Instant Messaged him accidentally a week earlier, resulting in his first falls and pangs of love and lust.
LoveMe123: Dave?
H1Th3r3: what? my names Cooper Fisher.
LoveMe123: I'm sorry, I think I typed in the wrong screenname. I was looking for my friend Dave.
H1Th3r3: obviously,
LoveMe123:...well that was a dick thing to say.
HiTh3r3: *obviously.
H1Th3r3: sorry you feel that way. im just bein honest.
LoveMe123: I can be honest too, see? "You're so ugly! Why why why would I lie to you?"
H1Th3r3: i love that song.
Although initially hesitant, Lishy Juarez continued to write to Cooper Fisher because she had little better to do beside update her status on Facebook and Twitter. She's still young and didn't think anyone knew who the Violent Femmes were, so his response to her quotation also piqued her intrigue. After his admittedly dick comment, Cooper Fisher redeemed himself by cutting through the sway and swagger she usually received from boys. She had grown accustomed to shrugging at their impromptu jazz performances based on the instruments she provided in what she typed, but Cooper Fisher was satisfied with hums and handclaps. She liked that simplicity, that cold.
LoveMe123: What do you think of my pics?
H1Th3r3: havent checked em out yet.
LoveMe123: Really?
H1Th3r3: you should change your font. its difficult to read.
LoveMe123: lol, really?
H1Th3r3: yeah. my eyes hurt.
She didn't mind him being terse. Usually boys wrote too much, and she'd grow annoyed with their mojoless (and thus blatantly superficial) means of impressing her, like those birds who fluff their feathers, puff their chests, and dance funky chickens to impress potential mates. This bird--Cooper Fisher--was busy lying down, looking up, not even at Lishy Juarez, a female with the power of choice. She was attracted to this indifference because it made her feel like more than a body.
LoveMe123: So what kind of movies do you like?
H1Th3r3: i like everything.
LoveMe123: Everyone says that, but no one means it. You can't possibly like EVERYTHING!!!1! What do you LOVE, then?
H1Th3r3: I liked the soloist. and world's greatest dad. sometimes i quote in good company.
LoveMe123: ...I'm so glad you like the same music I do.
LoveMe123: I just realized, you haven't really asked me any questions yet. Why not?
H1Th3r3: i dont know. im content knowin what i know.
LoveMe123: That was so feng shui.
H1Th3r3: you mean zen? usually people would say that's zen. feng shui is used for designin rooms and placin furniture in peaceful places an stuff like that.
LoveMe123: lolz, yeah! That was like one of those Bill Nye "Did You Know?! Now You Know!" moments. Have you ever seen that show? I watch it online sometimes.
After finding the map and starting up the car again, Cooper Fisher sat and exed out with a purple Sharpie marker the Springfields he's already visited: Springfield, North Dakota, Springfield, South Dakota, Springfield, Wyoming, Springfield, Nebraska and Springfield, Oklahoma. The first stop and shop for a girl named Lishy Juarez was only about three hours away from home in state number one. He made the decision to leave home after realizing his summer had been dissatisfyingly too safe and too quiet. He then calculated how much money he'd have to spend (that he'd been saving for a new laptop) on food, gas, hostels (when the car wasn't warm enough), and drumsticks (Lishy Juarez is a drummer and would "way prefer a bouquet of drumsticks to a bouquet of flowers"). He skipped Kansas--thought it smelled, figured Lishy wasn't from there. He had the rest of summer to find her.
While driving, between adjusting radio reception and bulging eyes for the fuzz, Cooper Fisher was thinking about words she wrote to him, punctuation marks, emoticons, acronyms, anything to reason out whether or not she was translating an affectionate infatuation through the silence and stoicism of instant messaging. Cooper Fisher was also thinking, when the reception was keen, about how thrilling it is when a song's lyrics are illuminated in the midst of a listener's life's sorrows and smiles, miles driven and blocks walked, aspirations and inspirations. Here he was, following James Murphy's triumphant voice now: "We set controls for the heart of the sun, one of the ways that we show our age." He knew he was still young because he was going for her.
After sorrows of flats and hunger, smiles of Lishy Juarez and her words, miles driven in side streets and highways, blocks walked past corners hushed and raucous, aspirations to kiss her and make her cum, and inspirations to take up drumming himself and find better theaters at home, Cooper Fisher thought he had found Lishy Juarez in his fifth week, third day, eighteenth state, and nineteenth Springfield (there are two in Kentucky). He was listening to this go-getter go-get-her fist-over-muffled bassless lo-fi radio pulling into Springfield, South Carolina, and he simultaneously shivered and grinned at the lyrics, not knowing why. "Logic will break your heart forever. Be brave...."
He was two states off, but found her in Springfield, Florida.
"Hi. Does Lishy Juarez live here?"
"Who the hell'er you?" questioned her father.
"I'm a--I'm a friend from school. We planned to hang out before school started again."
..."Yeah? Aren't you a bit old t' be hangin' 'round my daughter?"
Cooper Fisher was confused, but then he realized he never asked how old Lishy was and she never told him. He kept on, hoping that she wasn't fifteen or something ludicrous like that. He'd come so far. "No, sir. I jus' look old for m' age."
"Yeah?"
"Yup. Sure. Yes, I mean." He was nervous and it was obvious, though he had every right to be. Cooper Fisher was a homebody whose greatest adventure before this was discovering a delicatessen better than the one four miles closer to home and the worst trouble he ever monkeyed around in was losing a DVD from Blockbuster before having a chance to return it.
Lishy Juarez's father looked at Cooper Fisher. It was an uneasy moment, especially when he looked down and jutted his bottom lip to the left in ambivalence.
"Lishy! Get do'n 'ere. Y' gotta friend at the door!"
Cooper Fisher inhaled, held, and exhaled as slowly as possible.
"Oh my Jesus! Cooper!" he was elated that she recognized him from the crappy photos in his profile; they were crappy because he had a scar on his left temple from when he was nine that embarrassed him. He was expecting a hug next. "What the hell are you doing here?! I mean, I haven't seen you online in weeks, and I thought you lived forever away. I thought you died or something!" Although she smiled, he couldn't tell if it was because she was happy to see him.
Still waiting for a hug.
"Uh, yeah: I basically drove here from home to see you. I just...I can't explain how much our conversations meant to me and I jus--"
"Cooper. Shut up. Seriously?! This is---" Lishy Juarez caught herself before saying it. She stepped out of the doorway and closed the glass door behind her. They were now in the sun, on her brick step, next to bushes that browned brittle and weakness, unwatered for weeks. "This is really fucking creepy. I mean," she sighed agitated, "I'm only fifteen and we only spoke for, like, five days."
"Wrote." Cooper Fisher was crushed.
"What?"
At least a hug, even now.
"We only wrote 'for, like, five days.'" His eyes turned up as he quoted her.
"Whatever! It doesn't matter! I'm a curious girl and all, but you totally got the wrong idea if you think all of my pokes and lollerblades and talk--writing about sex and music and boys and movies and feng shui was a sign of loving you...even liking you like that. That way. This way." Her voice was descending. "I didn't tell you my age or my state because I didn't think it was important and, being five years older, I really didn't think that you'd make a move like this." Now it was shallow.
"I'm--"
"I mean--what?"
"You go ahead."
"I mean, if circumstances were different, maybe this would be really sweet and we'd make out like wombats and I could finally see a penis in real life." Her eyes bulged when she said 'finally see a penis' and she looked back through the glass door to see if any family was around to hear her mention it. "But I'm too young, too far, and too new to you."
Maybe the hug was impossible now.
Cooper Fisher waited a moment to see if she was done so that he could apologize.
"I'm sorry." She wasn't looking at him, but she could hear that his head was down. "I guess I thought too much about it all, read too much into the words you wrote me. Got carried away."
She knew at least that he was a boy of few words, fewer emotions, and no questions. She hugged him and he moaned a momentary satisfaction, which creeped her out more. Upon letting go, he walked to the back seat of the car, leaned in, and pulled out a bundle of drumsticks, mallets, and brushes wrapped in forest- and winter-green tissue paper around a cone fashioned out of a North Dakota newspaper, six weeks old. He handed it to her without words, she accepted and thanked him without words, and he drove off.
Several hours later, Cooper Fisher turned on the radio, which sounded not just distant, but morose as well, now, and smirked in his bittersweet disappointment. He felt defeated and disgusted, but he met her and she hugged him. One of those songs from days ago came back: "Logic will break your heart forever. Be brave...."
Bill And The Color Blue
I
In Bill's metropolitan streets, dogs don't bark, babes don't cry, and garbage trucks don't pass, irresponsibly wafting residual stenches on the run. He's carved his balsa-wood streets between intricately gridded buildings. Skyscraping boxes from Mom's fitness-at-home obsession. Nordic Track Tower. Gazelle Plaza. Ab Cruncher Cafe. The Steps of Step University. The celebrities of cereal are pasted everywhere, annoyingly, though pragmatically, near street level. Count Chocula is most prominent (because both Bill and his younger brother Danny like Count Chocula the most). Although Bill hates when his Count Chocula has been immersed in milk too long and evolves from crunchy to soggy to gooey. And then the bits fall apart.
Most of this architectural magnificence of cardboard, tape, glue, aluminum foil (for the beacons!), and Saran wrap came from Mom and Mom's kitchen, though Dad had taken up shopping exclusively on eBay since he first heard of it, and gave Bill his miscellaneously sized, colored, and textured bags, boxes, bubble wraps, styrofoam peanuts, and envelopes. And through the infinitely interchangeable characteristics of Lego faces, torsos, and legs, not to mention the Styrofoam peanuts elaborately dressed in boondoggle skirts or slacks with pipecleaner hairdos and Sharpie smiles and ah's, the buildings, streets, and parks are all always well populated with a diverse array of giddy Marys and slow Joes and tricky Ikishas and pious Mahmouds.
Silhouetted within the streamlined sunlight of Bill's starboard window is the sparkly-ceiling-toe-tip-tall Bill Industries, a monolith from Mom's oldest workout system (assembly required, weights sold separately). It is the most ostensibly ominous of the city's constructions, but hosts--as far as Bill is concerned--nothing less than a delightfully sweet cupcake factory (he taped socks stuffed with Fruit Loops inside to make sure it would smell happy all the time) and pillow-fight-Friday's amongst its employees. Some can be seen in cellophane windows throwing their U-hands in the air over elations Bill can't hear and is not privy to. One audacious fellow stands on top of Bill Industries, on the roof, but only looks down. He's not going to jump. He's just looking down.
Bill likes his streets and buildings and parks and people. Bill likes it this way. He likes it this way because if the barking, crying, and passing did occur, Bill might become irritated. Irritation doesn't suit Bill well, and things and people hurt when he is irritated. Good walk-their-dogs-in-the-morning people and go-getter-go-get-her people and offer-change-to-bearded-poor people . There are bearded-poor-people in Bill's streets, but they have smiles during the day and homes at night.
II
Mom and Dad thought little of Bill's eccentricities when he was younger: cutting slices off of a cheese block away from himself instead of towards, pinching birthday candles out, needing to pee every time he saw any semblance of affection on t.v. or in movies and, most notably, hating anything with the color blue associated with it (which was odd because he once loved a blue hippo). This hatred was an abrupt pivot in Bill's life and neither he nor his parents could recall its origin. Action figures, model kits, blankets, clothes...nothing could be blue or Bill would create an alien sound so raucous, turbulent, and torturous it couldn't possibly have emanated from his own humble human lungs.
As the years passed, his body grew up but his mind did not. Something was wrong. His parents didn't mind denial and did mind stature, so they introduced him at corporate barbeques and at-home soirees as "different." They later had Danny, who loved Bill dearly and--though he would never admit to it--took care of him. He was always in their company, they decided, for his own good.
Sometimes, however, Bill liked to wander off elsewhere. Close, but not always within eyesight or earhear. Sometimes he'd wander carrying closely in his corduroy pockets the oblivion of his remarkable wonder and impeccable intrigue with everything. Dandelions. Count Chocula. Bad singers on distant speakers. But when he'd double-take and rubberneck out of these sweet child eyes, Bill would find himself lost and confused and Momless and Dadless and without breadcrumbs. Then anxiety and volatility would bubble bubble bubble up and he did not know how to pop them.
III
The first instance when the burden gained gravity was a time when his parents did not find him before something happened. So something happened; they were all grocery shopping together one humdrum day in Bill's mid-twenties, and Dad asked Bill to wait in line in order to order slices of pizza for lunch from the in-store Italian cafe, "Mama Rigatoni's." "We'll be there in literally one minute...Ju-just wait in line for us for now. Please." (Bill never respected disrespectful requests without punctuating pleases.) While waiting in line, Bill saw a mild though nonetheless disruptive tiff between two customers ahead of him. The beefy fellow, who may have looked more attractive had he grown a beard to mask his four chins jiggling, just paid, two people down, when he accidentally dripped tomato sauce from the top-bite and bottom-burst of his calzone on to the Crayola blue pant thigh of a man, one person down, with jowls and lips that made him look like a fish. He scratched the back of his head turned down to study the drip.
"Oh, I-I'm--"
"What the fuck, man?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." The beefy beardless man apologized with a barely traceable zeal in his first mention, like those hairs grown on the forehead that can only be seen in streamlined sunlight. So he apologized again with a conviction, earnest or otherwise, that Bill and hopefully the fish-faced man could recognize.
"Jesus Christ, man, my lover just got these for me for my birthday...." Bill wondered who would like an angry fish-faced man enough to love him.
"Well, I mean," the beefy fellow coughed, "like, a li'l club soda'd help, right?" He asked if they had club soda behind the counter. Nope. "Maybe I could--"
"Maybe you could go Fuck Yourself!"
In this moment, the Something happened. When a collision occurs between the amplitude of the fish-faced man's voice rising up, one of Bill's least favorite words (and all homophones, like "Funk," "Fork," or even a usually oohy "Fudge")being mentioned, and the color blue is being worn, Bill hurts things and people. He punched the fish-faced man in the face, knocking him unconscious. Bill was tremendously strong, inheriting his father's natural brawn, but was also tremendously irritable at this time, having waited in line too far away and for too long from Mom and Dad.
Although Mom and Dad tried to figure out the somewhys and somehows, they mostly just attempted to avoid situations in which Bill might quietly lash out again. Each instance reminded Bill's Dad of a thought he had watching Barney the purple dinosaur with Danny as a young boy: what if Barney stopped abruptly in the middle of a song, realized he was a dinosaur, and began eating the surrounding, once-jolly, children? Bill's moments were less gory, of course, but equally unexpected as he is an equally gentle giant. Most of the time. Circumstances must corroborate in order for all to turn haywire and awry. Bill still managed to work himself into off and about shenanigans and fits when Mom and Dad were preoccupied carousing and carouseling and those circumstances had been in touch.
Verbally abusive parents wearing blue jeans waiting on the train platform that goes into the city.
(Almost) the kid wearing a Cookie Monster face t-shirt who started crying about his unconscious parents (but Bill's parents picked Bill up, hurriedly no doubt, shortly after the thud of the kid's parents called them over, apologizing profusely while walking away. Hurriedly no doubt).
A girl in baby-blue leggings on the street rudely popping her gum and telling people giving her stinky eyes to "Fork off!"
The man at the local hardware store behind the key-making counter with a vibrant new Mets baseball cap.
"Waddaya mean ya don' know what tha key's for--?!" Unconscious.
Consequences rarely came because gasping embarrassed Mom and Dad sputtered "I'm so sorry! I'm so so sorry! Our son is..um, our son is 'different,' ya know? Please: I've got fifty bucks; take it for reparations or what...whatever."
IV
One. Two. Three. Four. Five...ish. Five. There are five distinct rings that are born and grow up immediately in front of Bill's dipped index-finger in the pool at his grandparent's house. This is where the family is celebrating his cousin Jeanie's birthday. She's turning twenty-eight, and although the parties aren't nearly as whistley and balloonish as they were in the kids' youth, they appreciate the family's courteous and unconventional perception of acknowledging age with calm and graceful inevitability, not embarrassment and shame like most families. Bill is by the pool while small gift cards to Bed, Bath, and Beyond have been opened, cake has been scarfed, and the Beatles' birthday song has been sung. When Bill is in large and loud crowds, his senses start to hurt and he tells his parents "I feel like a computer 'not responding'." To this, his parents have learned to instruct him to breathe, depart the crowd, cover his ears and close his eyes until he feels safe and can "restart," and--most importantly--stay close. Here, however, the backyard is not off limits.
The song was becoming too much, so he decided to go to the backyard where Grandma and Papa have an in-ground pool, lined with green tiles after Bill started throwing fits around the color blue. Playing with the water, feeling its cool smoothness and smelling its sterility (Papa insisted on saturating the volume of the pool with chlorine "in case William ever gets any crazy ideas"), Bill's brain became safe, composed, and worked again. After a few minutes by himself, Bill heard the sliding glass door to the backyard shvoosh open, then shvoosh closed. He turned his curious eyes to find Danny coming out. His brow was arched, his eyes were half-wincing, and his hands were on the back of his head, scratching and stretching his curly brown mess. Bill watched as he pulled out his cellphone, typed with a thumb violently, then put the cellphone to his ear, under the mess. Danny glanced, then nodded in brotherly love, at Bill. Danny wanted to be perceived as a man, and so sometime in his latter years of adolescence he broke all of his emotions, actions, and thoughts down to the bare minimum. Now he talks little, feels little, and motions little. This, he believes, makes him a man, not a boy. Love for other men is conveyed in a glance and a nod.
Bill didn't feel comfortable listening in on Danny's monologue to his boyfriend, who he'd been having troubles with recently. But Bill also wasn't ready to return inside to the rest of the family and the party. He needed more time to breathe, so he stayed by the pool, kneeling by the water, petting its surface like he pet Jeanie's 4-month-old kitten, "Marx." Danny didn't seem to mind that Bill stayed at the opposite end of the pool, he knew that Bill didn't have much of a mouth for rumors or gossip, and the family already had suspicions of Danny's relationship with Turner. But then Danny started to get angry, and Bill couldn't help himself.
"Turner, What?" Danny said quietly.
Then again, with more air, "What?!"
"You've...why would you...you're fucking kidding me, right?!"
Bill didn't know what Danny was feeling by how he looked or how he sounded, only that he was grossly uncomfortable with witnessing whatever this was. He squeezed his eyes inside his head and paddled at the water now.
"Dimoy? Seriously?! You never even speak to him when I'm not there! You've barely--"
Bill knew all of these names. Turner was Danny's boyfriend and Dimoy was Danny's best friend. Bill wondered why there's a space with the phrase 'best friend' but not with 'boyfriend.' Bill was becoming anxious and irritable again. He hasn't been this way in at least two weeks.
"Fuck you, asshole. I want you out of the apartment by the end of the weekend." Danny sneered it into the phone. His eyes were closed and then he started shouting.
"I said, 'Fuck You, Ass Hole. I Want You The Fuck Out of What Was Once," Danny paused to breath, "Our Fucking Apartment! You Fucking Prick!" His eyes were rose-red and porcelain-shining.
With so many F-words and such loud noises coming from Danny's throat, let alone his newish blue cellphone case that he usually kept out of Bill's sight, Bill walked briskly over to Danny and punched him in the face.
Danny fell into the pool, unconscious, clothes, phone, and all.
Bill stood at the edge of the pool, furious with Danny, himself, and the color blue. He bit his lip and pushed out of his throat a low scratchy yawp, an alien sound he made as a boy.
He feels, but only looks down. He's not going to jump. He's just looking down.
He didn't know how to swim and didn't consider Danny right now, so he turned and walked around the Willow-shaded part of his grandparents' house, breathing shallowly and rocking his torso with his arms at his side.
The family was still inside, carousing and carouseling.
He walked to Mom and Dad's Nissan Altima, silver, and opened the driver door that has the numbered buttons underneath the handle. Bill isn't supposed to know this combination, or how to drive, but he has watched, with quiet and absolute curiosity, his parents as they maneuver opens and closes, start ups and shutdowns, fasters and slowers with keen and peripheral vision. No one inside can hear the car's engine ignite, the car's reverse kick in, then the car's drive kick out of the drive way. The metric system makes sense to Bill, but this car's speedometer is not written in kilometers, so Bill chooses to "K.I.S.S. confusion goodbye" ("Keep It Short and Simple" Danny taught him when Bill was twenty nine) by maintaining a speed of 64.3 Kilometers Per Hour, which is 40 Miles Per hour, which is equivalent to every 1.609344 Kilometer for every 1 mile.
They are all inside, singing with Aunt Millie's karaoke machine. Twenty minutes later, Jeanie is heard screaming from the backyard, wearing a purple one-piece bathing suit.
V
Bill only listens to musicians he can sing along with and not feel ashamed that he has a scratchy, jumpy voice. David Byrne of the Talking Heads. Joe Strummer of The Clash. Daniel Johnston of The Daniel Johnston. It comforts him to know that these persons are on Mom and Dad's car radio, and in his CD's which he keeps in the backseat, with similarly repulsive voices.
"Repulsive" is how a cruel woman once described Bill's voice after trying online dating once (at the tenacious go-getter-go-get-her goading and perpetual guidance of Danny) and meeting her in person after establishing an epistolary chemistry. (She wrote how sweet she thought he was since his profile listed his interests and hobbies as building things, eating cereal, and anything without the color Blue, and their emails to each other were, she said, the kindest she had ever received from men online.) When she approached him in front of the grocery store, where he recommended they meet (while Danny watched from the car in the parking lot, following inside as they went inside, with a walkie-talkie turned off in his pocket that Bill insisted on using "for emergencies"), she was hoping for a well-spoken and gentle soul who would cook for her later that night.
Instead, he didn't know where else to go and upon introducing himself, her eyebrows raised. He didn't mind this voice, but his modesty hindered his expressiveness enough to keep it caged in cars, bathroom stalls, and under covers. So his repulsive voice scratched, jumped, and wilded along with these gentlemen more than immodest: unafraid.
You may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
Y-you may ask your shelf, "HEY! How did I get here?" He did not know all of the words to all of these songs he adored.
Runnin' Monday! Tuesday! Wednesday! Thursday! Friday! Saturday! Sunday! What have I done?
"Running Monday! Tuesday! Wednesday! Thursday! Friday! Saturday! Sunday! What have I done!" Though some lyrics had taught him the days of the week when he was relatively young--courtesy of Danny.
Please hear my cry for help and save me from myseeeeelf.
"Please hear my cry for help. Save me from my selllllllff." And some were closer to what he wanted than what he was aware of.
Two and a half hours after Bill had left his grandparent's house, he was found sitting at the foot of a long corridor of children's books in the basement of the local library and community center. Here he felt safe and serene. He was alone and far away from Mom and Dad, yes, but he was also surrounded by old friends in the pages of his youth and adolescence and knew that they would be here soon, soon enough. His parents arrived with three local police officers, and--with the gentlest of touch and voice--they escorted Bill out of Children's fiction in handcuffs and tears. Mom and Dad maintained the calm they knew Bill needed to work with, but discussed severe ramifications for having killed his brother. The other son. The other beloved son. This was unacceptable, and Bill knew it now.
It was decided that the most appropriate consequences for Bill's actions would be to wear an ankle bracelet that enforced house arrest until further notice with the exception of Thursday afternoon counseling sessions at the Pine View Medical Facility, in which he would be escorted by both his parents and a court-appointed official much less scary and antagonistic than Bill had originally predicted. In these moments, Bill would receive the psychological treatment he rightfully deserved and desperately needed for a minimum of eight months. Bill acquiesced to these decisions he did not yet understand with paramount grace and absent-minded nods.
VI
Four months into counseling, a leather jacket was thrown over a barbed wire fence and Dr. Rosenbaum was in. Five months into counseling, stubborn bricks exploded as a barrier was broken that once hid the reason behind Bill and the color blue. When Bill was still quite young, perhaps two or three--to his and his parents' opaque recollection--he possessed and ostensibly loved a stuffed Hippo with beady eyes, a white stomach, and a rich lagoon blue body named on the attached tag as "Bluebsy Doodles" that his parents had bought as one of his first birthday gifts. Bill could not yet articulate "Bluebsy Doodles," and so referred to his closest friend beside Mom and Dad as "Booze," which often made his parents look at each other or laugh nervously. Months later, "Boobs" was baby Bill's better attempt, much to his parents' chagrin. He would say it, caressing smilingly Boobs's blue fur.
Because Bill loved Boobs so much, the hippo never left him. Not at the park, not in bed when he wet it, not on rainy days, not in the kitchen when he would attempt to help Mom or Dad make breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Because Boobs never left Bill, Boobs once soft touch became greasy and clumped, once bright hues became dusty and off, once lustrous eyes became scratched and cataracted. Because it decayed like this, the blue hippo was no longer as strong as it used to be. Consequently, it once slipped from Bill's butter grip into a puddle on a humdrum day and began to deteriorate. Baby Bill made his alien sound and closed his eyes, rocking back and forth. He picked it up shortly after these moments of catatonic grief, and Boobs began to fall apart. His parents looked on, catatonic themselves because they never wanted this to happen, of course, but knew that it was inevitable; they had been ill-informed as first time parents to buy cheap toys because children this young will either destroy them, lose them, or forget them. Although Bill did not take the best of care of Boobs, he neither destroyed nor lost Boobs. And certainly would never forget. Repress, put high up on the shelf of childhood pain to collect dust and cobwebs, but never forget.
Dr. Rosenbaum proposed the possibility that this experience also contributed to Bill's inaction in action when months ago his younger brother Danny floated unconscious on the pool's surface. "Perhaps," she pontificated, "the childhood experience internalized a notion in Bill's psyche that he is only capable of eventually harming all that he loves, and so is reluctant to intervene when what he loves is harmed, and when he is aware of the harm, instead chooses the safety of passivity."
Bill needed time to understand what Dr. Rosenbaum meant, and felt the pangs and pleasures of remembering Bluebsy Doodles when he and his parents left that Thursday afternoon. His parents didn't necessarily agree with Dr. Rosenbaum's inferences, but were profoundly committed to helping Bill cope with the color blue and other triggers, and so appeased her sanguine disposition on Bill's progress.
When they arrived home, Mom and Dad said their thankyous and goodbyes to the court-appointed escort while Bill trudged upstairs to his room, where he felt safe, comfortable, calm.
In Bill's metropolitan streets, dogs don't bark, babes don't cry, and garbage trucks don't pass, irresponsibly wafting residual stenches on the run. Bill likes it this way. His peanut eyes are their sun and moon. His long breath is their wind. His fading smile is their god. These people smile back. Permanent stubble and sunglasses on some, removable red ponytails on others. Forgivenesses and epiphanies evidenced by their U-hands up and down in the tower's cellophane windows. And that one audacious fellow from Bill Industries who is only looking down. He's not going to jump. He's just looking down. Bill's next birthday will be their next quiet celebration.
In Bill's metropolitan streets, dogs don't bark, babes don't cry, and garbage trucks don't pass, irresponsibly wafting residual stenches on the run. He's carved his balsa-wood streets between intricately gridded buildings. Skyscraping boxes from Mom's fitness-at-home obsession. Nordic Track Tower. Gazelle Plaza. Ab Cruncher Cafe. The Steps of Step University. The celebrities of cereal are pasted everywhere, annoyingly, though pragmatically, near street level. Count Chocula is most prominent (because both Bill and his younger brother Danny like Count Chocula the most). Although Bill hates when his Count Chocula has been immersed in milk too long and evolves from crunchy to soggy to gooey. And then the bits fall apart.
Most of this architectural magnificence of cardboard, tape, glue, aluminum foil (for the beacons!), and Saran wrap came from Mom and Mom's kitchen, though Dad had taken up shopping exclusively on eBay since he first heard of it, and gave Bill his miscellaneously sized, colored, and textured bags, boxes, bubble wraps, styrofoam peanuts, and envelopes. And through the infinitely interchangeable characteristics of Lego faces, torsos, and legs, not to mention the Styrofoam peanuts elaborately dressed in boondoggle skirts or slacks with pipecleaner hairdos and Sharpie smiles and ah's, the buildings, streets, and parks are all always well populated with a diverse array of giddy Marys and slow Joes and tricky Ikishas and pious Mahmouds.
Silhouetted within the streamlined sunlight of Bill's starboard window is the sparkly-ceiling-toe-tip-tall Bill Industries, a monolith from Mom's oldest workout system (assembly required, weights sold separately). It is the most ostensibly ominous of the city's constructions, but hosts--as far as Bill is concerned--nothing less than a delightfully sweet cupcake factory (he taped socks stuffed with Fruit Loops inside to make sure it would smell happy all the time) and pillow-fight-Friday's amongst its employees. Some can be seen in cellophane windows throwing their U-hands in the air over elations Bill can't hear and is not privy to. One audacious fellow stands on top of Bill Industries, on the roof, but only looks down. He's not going to jump. He's just looking down.
Bill likes his streets and buildings and parks and people. Bill likes it this way. He likes it this way because if the barking, crying, and passing did occur, Bill might become irritated. Irritation doesn't suit Bill well, and things and people hurt when he is irritated. Good walk-their-dogs-in-the-morning people and go-getter-go-get-her people and offer-change-to-bearded-poor people . There are bearded-poor-people in Bill's streets, but they have smiles during the day and homes at night.
II
Mom and Dad thought little of Bill's eccentricities when he was younger: cutting slices off of a cheese block away from himself instead of towards, pinching birthday candles out, needing to pee every time he saw any semblance of affection on t.v. or in movies and, most notably, hating anything with the color blue associated with it (which was odd because he once loved a blue hippo). This hatred was an abrupt pivot in Bill's life and neither he nor his parents could recall its origin. Action figures, model kits, blankets, clothes...nothing could be blue or Bill would create an alien sound so raucous, turbulent, and torturous it couldn't possibly have emanated from his own humble human lungs.
As the years passed, his body grew up but his mind did not. Something was wrong. His parents didn't mind denial and did mind stature, so they introduced him at corporate barbeques and at-home soirees as "different." They later had Danny, who loved Bill dearly and--though he would never admit to it--took care of him. He was always in their company, they decided, for his own good.
Sometimes, however, Bill liked to wander off elsewhere. Close, but not always within eyesight or earhear. Sometimes he'd wander carrying closely in his corduroy pockets the oblivion of his remarkable wonder and impeccable intrigue with everything. Dandelions. Count Chocula. Bad singers on distant speakers. But when he'd double-take and rubberneck out of these sweet child eyes, Bill would find himself lost and confused and Momless and Dadless and without breadcrumbs. Then anxiety and volatility would bubble bubble bubble up and he did not know how to pop them.
III
The first instance when the burden gained gravity was a time when his parents did not find him before something happened. So something happened; they were all grocery shopping together one humdrum day in Bill's mid-twenties, and Dad asked Bill to wait in line in order to order slices of pizza for lunch from the in-store Italian cafe, "Mama Rigatoni's." "We'll be there in literally one minute...Ju-just wait in line for us for now. Please." (Bill never respected disrespectful requests without punctuating pleases.) While waiting in line, Bill saw a mild though nonetheless disruptive tiff between two customers ahead of him. The beefy fellow, who may have looked more attractive had he grown a beard to mask his four chins jiggling, just paid, two people down, when he accidentally dripped tomato sauce from the top-bite and bottom-burst of his calzone on to the Crayola blue pant thigh of a man, one person down, with jowls and lips that made him look like a fish. He scratched the back of his head turned down to study the drip.
"Oh, I-I'm--"
"What the fuck, man?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." The beefy beardless man apologized with a barely traceable zeal in his first mention, like those hairs grown on the forehead that can only be seen in streamlined sunlight. So he apologized again with a conviction, earnest or otherwise, that Bill and hopefully the fish-faced man could recognize.
"Jesus Christ, man, my lover just got these for me for my birthday...." Bill wondered who would like an angry fish-faced man enough to love him.
"Well, I mean," the beefy fellow coughed, "like, a li'l club soda'd help, right?" He asked if they had club soda behind the counter. Nope. "Maybe I could--"
"Maybe you could go Fuck Yourself!"
In this moment, the Something happened. When a collision occurs between the amplitude of the fish-faced man's voice rising up, one of Bill's least favorite words (and all homophones, like "Funk," "Fork," or even a usually oohy "Fudge")being mentioned, and the color blue is being worn, Bill hurts things and people. He punched the fish-faced man in the face, knocking him unconscious. Bill was tremendously strong, inheriting his father's natural brawn, but was also tremendously irritable at this time, having waited in line too far away and for too long from Mom and Dad.
Although Mom and Dad tried to figure out the somewhys and somehows, they mostly just attempted to avoid situations in which Bill might quietly lash out again. Each instance reminded Bill's Dad of a thought he had watching Barney the purple dinosaur with Danny as a young boy: what if Barney stopped abruptly in the middle of a song, realized he was a dinosaur, and began eating the surrounding, once-jolly, children? Bill's moments were less gory, of course, but equally unexpected as he is an equally gentle giant. Most of the time. Circumstances must corroborate in order for all to turn haywire and awry. Bill still managed to work himself into off and about shenanigans and fits when Mom and Dad were preoccupied carousing and carouseling and those circumstances had been in touch.
Verbally abusive parents wearing blue jeans waiting on the train platform that goes into the city.
(Almost) the kid wearing a Cookie Monster face t-shirt who started crying about his unconscious parents (but Bill's parents picked Bill up, hurriedly no doubt, shortly after the thud of the kid's parents called them over, apologizing profusely while walking away. Hurriedly no doubt).
A girl in baby-blue leggings on the street rudely popping her gum and telling people giving her stinky eyes to "Fork off!"
The man at the local hardware store behind the key-making counter with a vibrant new Mets baseball cap.
"Waddaya mean ya don' know what tha key's for--?!" Unconscious.
Consequences rarely came because gasping embarrassed Mom and Dad sputtered "I'm so sorry! I'm so so sorry! Our son is..um, our son is 'different,' ya know? Please: I've got fifty bucks; take it for reparations or what...whatever."
IV
One. Two. Three. Four. Five...ish. Five. There are five distinct rings that are born and grow up immediately in front of Bill's dipped index-finger in the pool at his grandparent's house. This is where the family is celebrating his cousin Jeanie's birthday. She's turning twenty-eight, and although the parties aren't nearly as whistley and balloonish as they were in the kids' youth, they appreciate the family's courteous and unconventional perception of acknowledging age with calm and graceful inevitability, not embarrassment and shame like most families. Bill is by the pool while small gift cards to Bed, Bath, and Beyond have been opened, cake has been scarfed, and the Beatles' birthday song has been sung. When Bill is in large and loud crowds, his senses start to hurt and he tells his parents "I feel like a computer 'not responding'." To this, his parents have learned to instruct him to breathe, depart the crowd, cover his ears and close his eyes until he feels safe and can "restart," and--most importantly--stay close. Here, however, the backyard is not off limits.
The song was becoming too much, so he decided to go to the backyard where Grandma and Papa have an in-ground pool, lined with green tiles after Bill started throwing fits around the color blue. Playing with the water, feeling its cool smoothness and smelling its sterility (Papa insisted on saturating the volume of the pool with chlorine "in case William ever gets any crazy ideas"), Bill's brain became safe, composed, and worked again. After a few minutes by himself, Bill heard the sliding glass door to the backyard shvoosh open, then shvoosh closed. He turned his curious eyes to find Danny coming out. His brow was arched, his eyes were half-wincing, and his hands were on the back of his head, scratching and stretching his curly brown mess. Bill watched as he pulled out his cellphone, typed with a thumb violently, then put the cellphone to his ear, under the mess. Danny glanced, then nodded in brotherly love, at Bill. Danny wanted to be perceived as a man, and so sometime in his latter years of adolescence he broke all of his emotions, actions, and thoughts down to the bare minimum. Now he talks little, feels little, and motions little. This, he believes, makes him a man, not a boy. Love for other men is conveyed in a glance and a nod.
Bill didn't feel comfortable listening in on Danny's monologue to his boyfriend, who he'd been having troubles with recently. But Bill also wasn't ready to return inside to the rest of the family and the party. He needed more time to breathe, so he stayed by the pool, kneeling by the water, petting its surface like he pet Jeanie's 4-month-old kitten, "Marx." Danny didn't seem to mind that Bill stayed at the opposite end of the pool, he knew that Bill didn't have much of a mouth for rumors or gossip, and the family already had suspicions of Danny's relationship with Turner. But then Danny started to get angry, and Bill couldn't help himself.
"Turner, What?" Danny said quietly.
Then again, with more air, "What?!"
"You've...why would you...you're fucking kidding me, right?!"
Bill didn't know what Danny was feeling by how he looked or how he sounded, only that he was grossly uncomfortable with witnessing whatever this was. He squeezed his eyes inside his head and paddled at the water now.
"Dimoy? Seriously?! You never even speak to him when I'm not there! You've barely--"
Bill knew all of these names. Turner was Danny's boyfriend and Dimoy was Danny's best friend. Bill wondered why there's a space with the phrase 'best friend' but not with 'boyfriend.' Bill was becoming anxious and irritable again. He hasn't been this way in at least two weeks.
"Fuck you, asshole. I want you out of the apartment by the end of the weekend." Danny sneered it into the phone. His eyes were closed and then he started shouting.
"I said, 'Fuck You, Ass Hole. I Want You The Fuck Out of What Was Once," Danny paused to breath, "Our Fucking Apartment! You Fucking Prick!" His eyes were rose-red and porcelain-shining.
With so many F-words and such loud noises coming from Danny's throat, let alone his newish blue cellphone case that he usually kept out of Bill's sight, Bill walked briskly over to Danny and punched him in the face.
Danny fell into the pool, unconscious, clothes, phone, and all.
Bill stood at the edge of the pool, furious with Danny, himself, and the color blue. He bit his lip and pushed out of his throat a low scratchy yawp, an alien sound he made as a boy.
He feels, but only looks down. He's not going to jump. He's just looking down.
He didn't know how to swim and didn't consider Danny right now, so he turned and walked around the Willow-shaded part of his grandparents' house, breathing shallowly and rocking his torso with his arms at his side.
The family was still inside, carousing and carouseling.
He walked to Mom and Dad's Nissan Altima, silver, and opened the driver door that has the numbered buttons underneath the handle. Bill isn't supposed to know this combination, or how to drive, but he has watched, with quiet and absolute curiosity, his parents as they maneuver opens and closes, start ups and shutdowns, fasters and slowers with keen and peripheral vision. No one inside can hear the car's engine ignite, the car's reverse kick in, then the car's drive kick out of the drive way. The metric system makes sense to Bill, but this car's speedometer is not written in kilometers, so Bill chooses to "K.I.S.S. confusion goodbye" ("Keep It Short and Simple" Danny taught him when Bill was twenty nine) by maintaining a speed of 64.3 Kilometers Per Hour, which is 40 Miles Per hour, which is equivalent to every 1.609344 Kilometer for every 1 mile.
They are all inside, singing with Aunt Millie's karaoke machine. Twenty minutes later, Jeanie is heard screaming from the backyard, wearing a purple one-piece bathing suit.
V
Bill only listens to musicians he can sing along with and not feel ashamed that he has a scratchy, jumpy voice. David Byrne of the Talking Heads. Joe Strummer of The Clash. Daniel Johnston of The Daniel Johnston. It comforts him to know that these persons are on Mom and Dad's car radio, and in his CD's which he keeps in the backseat, with similarly repulsive voices.
"Repulsive" is how a cruel woman once described Bill's voice after trying online dating once (at the tenacious go-getter-go-get-her goading and perpetual guidance of Danny) and meeting her in person after establishing an epistolary chemistry. (She wrote how sweet she thought he was since his profile listed his interests and hobbies as building things, eating cereal, and anything without the color Blue, and their emails to each other were, she said, the kindest she had ever received from men online.) When she approached him in front of the grocery store, where he recommended they meet (while Danny watched from the car in the parking lot, following inside as they went inside, with a walkie-talkie turned off in his pocket that Bill insisted on using "for emergencies"), she was hoping for a well-spoken and gentle soul who would cook for her later that night.
Instead, he didn't know where else to go and upon introducing himself, her eyebrows raised. He didn't mind this voice, but his modesty hindered his expressiveness enough to keep it caged in cars, bathroom stalls, and under covers. So his repulsive voice scratched, jumped, and wilded along with these gentlemen more than immodest: unafraid.
You may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
Y-you may ask your shelf, "HEY! How did I get here?" He did not know all of the words to all of these songs he adored.
Runnin' Monday! Tuesday! Wednesday! Thursday! Friday! Saturday! Sunday! What have I done?
"Running Monday! Tuesday! Wednesday! Thursday! Friday! Saturday! Sunday! What have I done!" Though some lyrics had taught him the days of the week when he was relatively young--courtesy of Danny.
Please hear my cry for help and save me from myseeeeelf.
"Please hear my cry for help. Save me from my selllllllff." And some were closer to what he wanted than what he was aware of.
Two and a half hours after Bill had left his grandparent's house, he was found sitting at the foot of a long corridor of children's books in the basement of the local library and community center. Here he felt safe and serene. He was alone and far away from Mom and Dad, yes, but he was also surrounded by old friends in the pages of his youth and adolescence and knew that they would be here soon, soon enough. His parents arrived with three local police officers, and--with the gentlest of touch and voice--they escorted Bill out of Children's fiction in handcuffs and tears. Mom and Dad maintained the calm they knew Bill needed to work with, but discussed severe ramifications for having killed his brother. The other son. The other beloved son. This was unacceptable, and Bill knew it now.
It was decided that the most appropriate consequences for Bill's actions would be to wear an ankle bracelet that enforced house arrest until further notice with the exception of Thursday afternoon counseling sessions at the Pine View Medical Facility, in which he would be escorted by both his parents and a court-appointed official much less scary and antagonistic than Bill had originally predicted. In these moments, Bill would receive the psychological treatment he rightfully deserved and desperately needed for a minimum of eight months. Bill acquiesced to these decisions he did not yet understand with paramount grace and absent-minded nods.
VI
Four months into counseling, a leather jacket was thrown over a barbed wire fence and Dr. Rosenbaum was in. Five months into counseling, stubborn bricks exploded as a barrier was broken that once hid the reason behind Bill and the color blue. When Bill was still quite young, perhaps two or three--to his and his parents' opaque recollection--he possessed and ostensibly loved a stuffed Hippo with beady eyes, a white stomach, and a rich lagoon blue body named on the attached tag as "Bluebsy Doodles" that his parents had bought as one of his first birthday gifts. Bill could not yet articulate "Bluebsy Doodles," and so referred to his closest friend beside Mom and Dad as "Booze," which often made his parents look at each other or laugh nervously. Months later, "Boobs" was baby Bill's better attempt, much to his parents' chagrin. He would say it, caressing smilingly Boobs's blue fur.
Because Bill loved Boobs so much, the hippo never left him. Not at the park, not in bed when he wet it, not on rainy days, not in the kitchen when he would attempt to help Mom or Dad make breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Because Boobs never left Bill, Boobs once soft touch became greasy and clumped, once bright hues became dusty and off, once lustrous eyes became scratched and cataracted. Because it decayed like this, the blue hippo was no longer as strong as it used to be. Consequently, it once slipped from Bill's butter grip into a puddle on a humdrum day and began to deteriorate. Baby Bill made his alien sound and closed his eyes, rocking back and forth. He picked it up shortly after these moments of catatonic grief, and Boobs began to fall apart. His parents looked on, catatonic themselves because they never wanted this to happen, of course, but knew that it was inevitable; they had been ill-informed as first time parents to buy cheap toys because children this young will either destroy them, lose them, or forget them. Although Bill did not take the best of care of Boobs, he neither destroyed nor lost Boobs. And certainly would never forget. Repress, put high up on the shelf of childhood pain to collect dust and cobwebs, but never forget.
Dr. Rosenbaum proposed the possibility that this experience also contributed to Bill's inaction in action when months ago his younger brother Danny floated unconscious on the pool's surface. "Perhaps," she pontificated, "the childhood experience internalized a notion in Bill's psyche that he is only capable of eventually harming all that he loves, and so is reluctant to intervene when what he loves is harmed, and when he is aware of the harm, instead chooses the safety of passivity."
Bill needed time to understand what Dr. Rosenbaum meant, and felt the pangs and pleasures of remembering Bluebsy Doodles when he and his parents left that Thursday afternoon. His parents didn't necessarily agree with Dr. Rosenbaum's inferences, but were profoundly committed to helping Bill cope with the color blue and other triggers, and so appeased her sanguine disposition on Bill's progress.
When they arrived home, Mom and Dad said their thankyous and goodbyes to the court-appointed escort while Bill trudged upstairs to his room, where he felt safe, comfortable, calm.
In Bill's metropolitan streets, dogs don't bark, babes don't cry, and garbage trucks don't pass, irresponsibly wafting residual stenches on the run. Bill likes it this way. His peanut eyes are their sun and moon. His long breath is their wind. His fading smile is their god. These people smile back. Permanent stubble and sunglasses on some, removable red ponytails on others. Forgivenesses and epiphanies evidenced by their U-hands up and down in the tower's cellophane windows. And that one audacious fellow from Bill Industries who is only looking down. He's not going to jump. He's just looking down. Bill's next birthday will be their next quiet celebration.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Woman
*rough draft*
"I'm too old for you" soberly somberly
addressed my precarious precocious advances.
But my hairy temerity pushed in until you
cried Yes. How often you shouted "yes...."
We always had your nononononononononononos
appeasing my yeses. So subtle and charming was I
that you gave me your eyes for spring and summer.
And your dark plump glossed lips just as long.
"You are delightfully weird," led days later
to a kiss to your neck to distract us from that poet,
And we made our laughter leap confidently and often from
lover's throats that mustered only crumbs of love.
I always marveled at the clues of curves under your thinnest
dresses draped over my laternight anticipations.
Breaking beds into carnival funhouses, holding you
in nimble lighting though we sweat until the orange juice came.
Your smallest goodbye was our biggest mistake, and that
biggest crowd was our smallest hello.
We said so many thankyous and missyous and youturnmeons and
actuallys and yeses and nos and I was content with the concision.
"I'm too old for you" soberly somberly
addressed my precarious precocious advances.
But my hairy temerity pushed in until you
cried Yes. How often you shouted "yes...."
We always had your nononononononononononos
appeasing my yeses. So subtle and charming was I
that you gave me your eyes for spring and summer.
And your dark plump glossed lips just as long.
"You are delightfully weird," led days later
to a kiss to your neck to distract us from that poet,
And we made our laughter leap confidently and often from
lover's throats that mustered only crumbs of love.
I always marveled at the clues of curves under your thinnest
dresses draped over my laternight anticipations.
Breaking beds into carnival funhouses, holding you
in nimble lighting though we sweat until the orange juice came.
Your smallest goodbye was our biggest mistake, and that
biggest crowd was our smallest hello.
We said so many thankyous and missyous and youturnmeons and
actuallys and yeses and nos and I was content with the concision.
Gammy Be
"If a bird poopies on you, it's good luck! Or you forgot something."
"Staring at the sun is good for your eyes! Don't ask why, just do."
"If an ant with wings lands on you, it's gonna rain soon! Also when your feet hurt. Also, you can just look up."
"Staring at the sun is good for your eyes! Don't ask why, just do."
"If an ant with wings lands on you, it's gonna rain soon! Also when your feet hurt. Also, you can just look up."
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Gershwin
I widesmile on those mornings
when ears awoke to Mom playing "Rhapsody in
Blue"
on the piano.
Beautiful woman: its legs were
thin
and
erect, its
__________body
______________long and
__________voluptuous,
_______its surface
the purest
black I'd known yet.
A combed and cured luster maintained no matter the sun, moon, or streetlight.
And Mom cheffed all flavors on her fingers:
piano,
pianissimo,
_________pianoforte,
____________________forte,
________________________fortissimo.
Lookdown dips and lookup cliffs along scales I
couldn't understand but couldn't help but adore.
And on Sundays, she wouldn't play it, but
the scintillating heres and theres of feather-duster dissonance
trying to emulate
my Mother's prowess
would wake me too.
Less Peace. But more pride.
when ears awoke to Mom playing "Rhapsody in
Blue"
on the piano.
Beautiful woman: its legs were
thin
and
erect, its
__________body
______________long and
__________voluptuous,
_______its surface
the purest
black I'd known yet.
A combed and cured luster maintained no matter the sun, moon, or streetlight.
And Mom cheffed all flavors on her fingers:
piano,
pianissimo,
_________pianoforte,
____________________forte,
________________________fortissimo.
Lookdown dips and lookup cliffs along scales I
couldn't understand but couldn't help but adore.
And on Sundays, she wouldn't play it, but
the scintillating heres and theres of feather-duster dissonance
trying to emulate
my Mother's prowess
would wake me too.
Less Peace. But more pride.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Nostalgia
"I might not be the right one, this might not be the right time"-Daft Punk
My students asked me what "nostalgia" means,
and before I thought of those dead in my life,
I thought of you.
How we met under lo-fi music, lo-fi lighting, lo-fi flirting,
lo-fi literature, lo-fi voices. And you wanted my number?
How we spent nights just touch. Just touching on your woman's bed.
Clothes within reach. Poetry to spare. A flick of your lamp and off.
Immersed in those cotton crimson curves and quilts, I reclined into
your breasts and hands in my hair and we recited "HOWL" after each other.
I recall your smile, drawstring lips sliding over a 22yearold's braces.
And your laugh, a soprano simmering of elation. Kind of reserved ecstasy?
And you photographed me best, whether that means knew or loved or admired or
none of these things and only forgot.
But I still feel most myself when I see me from you.
I was the last man before you married him, wasn't I? You enjoyed me,
but I was a mild aperitif to the punchdrunk yum of him. Nice smile, too.
I asked you what "nostalgia" meant and before you thought of our
adolescent touch or glamrock debates or "coney island state of mind,"
you thought of him. I also remember how you bolded your emphases.
Such a brilliant writer. Such a brilliant everything...and I stopped in your mind?
My students asked me what "nostalgia" means,
and before I thought of those dead in my life,
I thought of you.
How we met under lo-fi music, lo-fi lighting, lo-fi flirting,
lo-fi literature, lo-fi voices. And you wanted my number?
How we spent nights just touch. Just touching on your woman's bed.
Clothes within reach. Poetry to spare. A flick of your lamp and off.
Immersed in those cotton crimson curves and quilts, I reclined into
your breasts and hands in my hair and we recited "HOWL" after each other.
I recall your smile, drawstring lips sliding over a 22yearold's braces.
And your laugh, a soprano simmering of elation. Kind of reserved ecstasy?
And you photographed me best, whether that means knew or loved or admired or
none of these things and only forgot.
But I still feel most myself when I see me from you.
I was the last man before you married him, wasn't I? You enjoyed me,
but I was a mild aperitif to the punchdrunk yum of him. Nice smile, too.
I asked you what "nostalgia" meant and before you thought of our
adolescent touch or glamrock debates or "coney island state of mind,"
you thought of him. I also remember how you bolded your emphases.
Such a brilliant writer. Such a brilliant everything...and I stopped in your mind?
At The Car And On Your Breath
"You forgot it in people,"
but it's alright. Because you
also said "I'll be okay
when I know that you're okay."
(to the car to swig)
And that shows a buried memory
for the it and the others,
(to the car to swig)
the way they used to exist for you,
the way they used to let you love you,
the way they used to you let love them,
the way they loved you used to let them
the way you used to let them love you.
(to the car to swig)
And the it'll live if you'll let it.
And the it'll love if you'll let it.
(to the car to swig)
It will live and love lives if you let it.
It will live and love people if you let it.
It will live and love and remember. No forgetting.
(to the car to swig)
No don't forget. No forgetting. No forgot.
No don't forgot it in people. You don't.
(to the car to swig)
You don't forget it in people.
You didn't forgot it in people.
You know it's there and you love it and love it loving and living.
(to the car to swig)
"It's gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay. Once I'm okay, you'll be okay, right?"
"I'll be okay when you're okay. I'll start being okay after you're already okay."
"I'm sorry. I'll call this guy and get okay. I forgot it in people. I forgot love."
(to the car to swig)
(to the car to weep)
but it's alright. Because you
also said "I'll be okay
when I know that you're okay."
(to the car to swig)
And that shows a buried memory
for the it and the others,
(to the car to swig)
the way they used to exist for you,
the way they used to let you love you,
the way they used to you let love them,
the way they loved you used to let them
the way you used to let them love you.
(to the car to swig)
And the it'll live if you'll let it.
And the it'll love if you'll let it.
(to the car to swig)
It will live and love lives if you let it.
It will live and love people if you let it.
It will live and love and remember. No forgetting.
(to the car to swig)
No don't forget. No forgetting. No forgot.
No don't forgot it in people. You don't.
(to the car to swig)
You don't forget it in people.
You didn't forgot it in people.
You know it's there and you love it and love it loving and living.
(to the car to swig)
"It's gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay. Once I'm okay, you'll be okay, right?"
"I'll be okay when you're okay. I'll start being okay after you're already okay."
"I'm sorry. I'll call this guy and get okay. I forgot it in people. I forgot love."
(to the car to swig)
(to the car to weep)
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Writing Ideas based on Friends' texts
F.C.
"I'll tell you that the strange thing is no one's bit my ears or licked my neck just picked me up and held me close."
"You just don't even have a good hold on what I taste like or smell like so the ground doesn't seam for you at this time."
"I lost my roommate. I think she's skeeved out cause I made a peanut butter sandwich in bed. Living with me is an adventure."
"If your body was with me now I'd bite your ear and feel your hair and tell you to sleep. Goodnight."
"I got so taken by different currents in it. It's strange to think you have it in your possession now when two days ago I did." (On her letter to me)
"You are sleepy I prefer you sleepy and off guard."
"I'm sending you off to bed with the knowledge that I created a vocal orchestra piece called 'Socks in a Nest' today. And it was grand! Goodnight lovie."
"Oh rickrickricka i'm swept up by forehead."
"i'm drenched in purple and tightened inside seams so that my spines one form of a woman."
"I haven't spoken to you in time. A great lot of it it [sic] seams."
"I was not in the rain. I fell in lust."
"Lusts not the word and neither is love."
"A purple epidemic that's what it is."
"His handsyness started to connect to my mind."
"Everywhere but eventually he we just i don't know. The purple highway in between our [sic] sculls it was."
"Well yes but it was a not so stable connection. He flew away and has some what of a girlfriend."
"Why mixed feelings about something so fluid and flouncey and gone in a couple days."
"Yes your complete presence would cripple me in the long run. I have you in my head though more than is legal in New York state so don't worry."
"may i complain about something?"
"No the complaint evaporated i like my ass now."
"you just don't even have a good hold on what i taste like or smell like so the ground doesn't seam for you at this time"
"But i do believe in you a great deal so thats not to say i don't"
"I just remember you discussing how i need to be patient with my self! i [sic] completly agree now."
"my entire being. My thoughts especially. The frosty ones to melt and the juiceless ones to figure out how to open up a new can or discover they need a rest."
"hm well for instance today i walking with ruby and i lost a feeling i liked that i had a second ago so i brought my attention to a street lamp and hovered around it and opened up myself to its possible story and anticipated its effect on my self and vice versa."
"The strange thing is i hate older men they repulse me i have no sympathy or respect for them what so ever. And then you bop up"
No, a no. Nothing is preconceived nothing is a notion. Observation and first hand experience- you do not differ just your whole make up of your you lies closer to my own soul. its just the fact that You're you is why i keep batting the us around not because you are a decent elderly man."
"Youre so far cooked. Like if i never took care of ian he'd end up like you never cracked or strained or drained or melted."
"Who knows one minute i'm eating a waffle and theres syrup between my legs and the next i'm yelling back bantu chants and drawing raiiki healing patterns on the roof of my mouth with my tongue."
"I'm beginning to see that its a horrid institution prohibiting growth prohibiting prohibiting and forcing roles and sizes on people that don't fitt." (On school, education)
"I'm trying to focus my energy to one being. And in doing so i'm learning no i'm seeing differences i'm seeing things better defined."
"There really is nothing tied to the yes because you never pulled hard enough."
"I'm sorry. You're a respectable being. I needed a detachment phase. I am well in the sense that I should be well my circumstances that surround me should push me to be well ya know-so its just a matter of finding that well."
"I was referring to my current state. A while ago you asked if all was well."
"No I just needed to step down from our level."
"i'm a child i need things i need to not have things some things make me ill i'm sorry i'm no woman. There's sin there's curiosity there's rest there's love! I never wish you any bad but my mental health comes first."
"Notions scare me and i feel like i need drastic measures to slice the worlds events in my mind in two."
"Jump down with me thats an order. Or co exist with our state there never was a confirmed state just lead on thats the fucked up part with babies and men. Nobody knows and then it combusts."
"Just be still let what ever happens happen. Don't think of me."
"How've you been. How've you been. How've you been. Everyones got that question practically sewn in the inside of their foreheads. Haha."
"I don't think you knew enough about me to begin with to now discover new differences."
P.P.
"I just made eye contact w a 6 year old with a balloon sword. I kinda want him to chop at me w it."
"I'm sorry u aren't here. The trees are starting to blossom and they are beautiful."
"This, too, shall pass. That saying gets me through a lot."
"Why didn't v come? U make a piece of the puzzle to a perfect time. U fit here."
"Tried? I haven't got any anymore, but i know u def saved the day a few times."
SEX BLOG: "Do u c a decline in the amount of sex as a sign, or just a gf getting comfy enough to with her bf to not feel like she has to put out?"
J.C.
"I stared holes of sky with my eyes into the overcast today."
"Pray at the altar of your pleasing that by tomorrow I haven't broken my body."
E.L.
"I just met up with my old boyfriend. He took one look at me and said 'your ass is more smackable than ever.' miss you already."
H.G.
"Hi, lets go backpacking through Europe?"
"Next time it rains, let's go to coneyisland."
C.S.
"They're raw. The voice can use guidance, the style too; but their exciting in their approach to being stories."
"Just read Tropic of Cancer. Read it like it's a poem, or a book of short stories, but not a novel. Spend your summer with it. You'll see what I mean."
"Other than that, the writing is strong and funny. Check out Miller. Okay, salad ass?
"My butt's upon the bowl/I'll sit here 'til it's full/ When the poop comes out,I give a shout/ Oh my poor butt hole!"
"If you're dissatisfied with contemporary lit, check out those books I suggested, and also Aimee Bender's book Willful Creatures."
"'Already Dead' and 'Tree of Smoke' by Denis Johnson. Poems and short stories for the class I teach. Books that are AWESOME-BALLS."
"Back on the pot?/No time to squat!/ Something foul in my bowl-/ Ripe and ready to pop!"
"Banging away for a year. The novel is a five-character narration that follows people in a Buffalo indie band, Beehives, through their disasterous summer tour, and the disasterous rest of that year. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll fueled by complex characterization."
"I got the email and read the poem, I remember it being very vibrant and full of energy."-(On "When Repiblik Ayiti Crashed")
C.L.
"Next time we see each other, can we just hug? I feel so small. And worthless."
K.
"Of course youre still my one day boyfriend sweetheart, I told you so."
L.Y.
"good job! And no worries, i had fun enough to deal. you've probably left more bruises."
"Nothing like the thought of your cock shoved down my throat to keep me occupied in my 3 hr. 18th century novel class."
Dad
"Muchos Gracias el Nino!!"-Dad after wishing him a "Feliz Cumpleanos, Padre!"
R.K.
"Yes. I thought of you all day you know..."
"I miss our conversations the most and watching you attempt to make breakfast lol little things like that plus its sensitive nipples and ur tshirts."
K.T.
"I dig your emails, absorb every word. :) Happy Saturday."
"Ur sweet, u almost sound smitten."
"Ur delightfully weird."
Indeed. What do u think it means?"
"U r sweet. I probably should just leave it at that."
"Is there consolation in knowing im still attracted 2 u?"
"This is why i didnt want 2 c u, no willpower."
"You really do turn me on."
"Shit is very intense btwn us and it freaks me out. Thats why i needed 2 stop."
"Our sexual relationship is too intense 4 me. U, a man 2 young and rough 4 me, always making me come is too intense."
"I know, its not ur nature."
"Sigh. I want to see you."
D.C.
"I'd like you to know that you broke my pussy. My pussy is broken."
R.F.
"I did that already. I told you that you have nothing to worry about. You're good."
"Yeah, I just got up too. So are you getting everything done that u need for school in the morning? And what did u write?"
"Yeah me too I've learned my lesson once again. I'm really sorry I messed up Ur life, mine is already messed up so I cud careless about mine but u..."
"Ok please pull yourself together I know that it is easier said than done but please. Let's just wait until I see the doctor."
"Don't cry please don't cry. If u r I'm gonna start crying too."
"Ok u too. For some reason I sense that URE disappointed n troubled like u can't function properly."
"I'm horny as fuck." -sent at 6:38 am.
"I'm already wet. Too wet."
"Plz get enuff rest for tomorrow nite becuz I'm gonna work u silly."
V. O.
"i have your cream."
C.P.
"its yes or no flake master."
"Malapropism and sesquipedalianism."
"I'll tell you that the strange thing is no one's bit my ears or licked my neck just picked me up and held me close."
"You just don't even have a good hold on what I taste like or smell like so the ground doesn't seam for you at this time."
"I lost my roommate. I think she's skeeved out cause I made a peanut butter sandwich in bed. Living with me is an adventure."
"If your body was with me now I'd bite your ear and feel your hair and tell you to sleep. Goodnight."
"I got so taken by different currents in it. It's strange to think you have it in your possession now when two days ago I did." (On her letter to me)
"You are sleepy I prefer you sleepy and off guard."
"I'm sending you off to bed with the knowledge that I created a vocal orchestra piece called 'Socks in a Nest' today. And it was grand! Goodnight lovie."
"Oh rickrickricka i'm swept up by forehead."
"i'm drenched in purple and tightened inside seams so that my spines one form of a woman."
"I haven't spoken to you in time. A great lot of it it [sic] seams."
"I was not in the rain. I fell in lust."
"Lusts not the word and neither is love."
"A purple epidemic that's what it is."
"His handsyness started to connect to my mind."
"Everywhere but eventually he we just i don't know. The purple highway in between our [sic] sculls it was."
"Well yes but it was a not so stable connection. He flew away and has some what of a girlfriend."
"Why mixed feelings about something so fluid and flouncey and gone in a couple days."
"Yes your complete presence would cripple me in the long run. I have you in my head though more than is legal in New York state so don't worry."
"may i complain about something?"
"No the complaint evaporated i like my ass now."
"you just don't even have a good hold on what i taste like or smell like so the ground doesn't seam for you at this time"
"But i do believe in you a great deal so thats not to say i don't"
"I just remember you discussing how i need to be patient with my self! i [sic] completly agree now."
"my entire being. My thoughts especially. The frosty ones to melt and the juiceless ones to figure out how to open up a new can or discover they need a rest."
"hm well for instance today i walking with ruby and i lost a feeling i liked that i had a second ago so i brought my attention to a street lamp and hovered around it and opened up myself to its possible story and anticipated its effect on my self and vice versa."
"The strange thing is i hate older men they repulse me i have no sympathy or respect for them what so ever. And then you bop up"
No, a no. Nothing is preconceived nothing is a notion. Observation and first hand experience- you do not differ just your whole make up of your you lies closer to my own soul. its just the fact that You're you is why i keep batting the us around not because you are a decent elderly man."
"Youre so far cooked. Like if i never took care of ian he'd end up like you never cracked or strained or drained or melted."
"Who knows one minute i'm eating a waffle and theres syrup between my legs and the next i'm yelling back bantu chants and drawing raiiki healing patterns on the roof of my mouth with my tongue."
"I'm beginning to see that its a horrid institution prohibiting growth prohibiting prohibiting and forcing roles and sizes on people that don't fitt." (On school, education)
"I'm trying to focus my energy to one being. And in doing so i'm learning no i'm seeing differences i'm seeing things better defined."
"There really is nothing tied to the yes because you never pulled hard enough."
"I'm sorry. You're a respectable being. I needed a detachment phase. I am well in the sense that I should be well my circumstances that surround me should push me to be well ya know-so its just a matter of finding that well."
"I was referring to my current state. A while ago you asked if all was well."
"No I just needed to step down from our level."
"i'm a child i need things i need to not have things some things make me ill i'm sorry i'm no woman. There's sin there's curiosity there's rest there's love! I never wish you any bad but my mental health comes first."
"Notions scare me and i feel like i need drastic measures to slice the worlds events in my mind in two."
"Jump down with me thats an order. Or co exist with our state there never was a confirmed state just lead on thats the fucked up part with babies and men. Nobody knows and then it combusts."
"Just be still let what ever happens happen. Don't think of me."
"How've you been. How've you been. How've you been. Everyones got that question practically sewn in the inside of their foreheads. Haha."
"I don't think you knew enough about me to begin with to now discover new differences."
P.P.
"I just made eye contact w a 6 year old with a balloon sword. I kinda want him to chop at me w it."
"I'm sorry u aren't here. The trees are starting to blossom and they are beautiful."
"This, too, shall pass. That saying gets me through a lot."
"Why didn't v come? U make a piece of the puzzle to a perfect time. U fit here."
"Tried? I haven't got any anymore, but i know u def saved the day a few times."
SEX BLOG: "Do u c a decline in the amount of sex as a sign, or just a gf getting comfy enough to with her bf to not feel like she has to put out?"
J.C.
"I stared holes of sky with my eyes into the overcast today."
"Pray at the altar of your pleasing that by tomorrow I haven't broken my body."
E.L.
"I just met up with my old boyfriend. He took one look at me and said 'your ass is more smackable than ever.' miss you already."
H.G.
"Hi, lets go backpacking through Europe?"
"Next time it rains, let's go to coneyisland."
C.S.
"They're raw. The voice can use guidance, the style too; but their exciting in their approach to being stories."
"Just read Tropic of Cancer. Read it like it's a poem, or a book of short stories, but not a novel. Spend your summer with it. You'll see what I mean."
"Other than that, the writing is strong and funny. Check out Miller. Okay, salad ass?
"My butt's upon the bowl/I'll sit here 'til it's full/ When the poop comes out,I give a shout/ Oh my poor butt hole!"
"If you're dissatisfied with contemporary lit, check out those books I suggested, and also Aimee Bender's book Willful Creatures."
"'Already Dead' and 'Tree of Smoke' by Denis Johnson. Poems and short stories for the class I teach. Books that are AWESOME-BALLS."
"Back on the pot?/No time to squat!/ Something foul in my bowl-/ Ripe and ready to pop!"
"Banging away for a year. The novel is a five-character narration that follows people in a Buffalo indie band, Beehives, through their disasterous summer tour, and the disasterous rest of that year. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll fueled by complex characterization."
"I got the email and read the poem, I remember it being very vibrant and full of energy."-(On "When Repiblik Ayiti Crashed")
C.L.
"Next time we see each other, can we just hug? I feel so small. And worthless."
K.
"Of course youre still my one day boyfriend sweetheart, I told you so."
L.Y.
"good job! And no worries, i had fun enough to deal. you've probably left more bruises."
"Nothing like the thought of your cock shoved down my throat to keep me occupied in my 3 hr. 18th century novel class."
Dad
"Muchos Gracias el Nino!!"-Dad after wishing him a "Feliz Cumpleanos, Padre!"
R.K.
"Yes. I thought of you all day you know..."
"I miss our conversations the most and watching you attempt to make breakfast lol little things like that plus its sensitive nipples and ur tshirts."
K.T.
"I dig your emails, absorb every word. :) Happy Saturday."
"Ur sweet, u almost sound smitten."
"Ur delightfully weird."
Indeed. What do u think it means?"
"U r sweet. I probably should just leave it at that."
"Is there consolation in knowing im still attracted 2 u?"
"This is why i didnt want 2 c u, no willpower."
"You really do turn me on."
"Shit is very intense btwn us and it freaks me out. Thats why i needed 2 stop."
"Our sexual relationship is too intense 4 me. U, a man 2 young and rough 4 me, always making me come is too intense."
"I know, its not ur nature."
"Sigh. I want to see you."
D.C.
"I'd like you to know that you broke my pussy. My pussy is broken."
R.F.
"I did that already. I told you that you have nothing to worry about. You're good."
"Yeah, I just got up too. So are you getting everything done that u need for school in the morning? And what did u write?"
"Yeah me too I've learned my lesson once again. I'm really sorry I messed up Ur life, mine is already messed up so I cud careless about mine but u..."
"Ok please pull yourself together I know that it is easier said than done but please. Let's just wait until I see the doctor."
"Don't cry please don't cry. If u r I'm gonna start crying too."
"Ok u too. For some reason I sense that URE disappointed n troubled like u can't function properly."
"I'm horny as fuck." -sent at 6:38 am.
"I'm already wet. Too wet."
"Plz get enuff rest for tomorrow nite becuz I'm gonna work u silly."
V. O.
"i have your cream."
C.P.
"its yes or no flake master."
"Malapropism and sesquipedalianism."
Determining an Us
"I think it's a cold beverage sort of relationship."
She wrote.
And I wasn't sure how to respond when
__she wasn't sure how to articulate a tangible Us.
I thought ambivalently between
We are quenching, refreshing for each other,
propogandaed as necessary to our well-being.
We are to be understood in moderation,
_____________accepted responsibly.I can smell
her on my breath but she can't smell me.
and
She never stops thinking, never stops, never,
but she could, I guess, slipslopslup trudge through my fudgey words and dullll
___aches
in a brain freeze scenario.
So rarely our lips collide.
Do they numb without precedent when I crash in?
She wrote.
And I wasn't sure how to respond when
__she wasn't sure how to articulate a tangible Us.
I thought ambivalently between
We are quenching, refreshing for each other,
propogandaed as necessary to our well-being.
We are to be understood in moderation,
_____________accepted responsibly.I can smell
her on my breath but she can't smell me.
and
She never stops thinking, never stops, never,
but she could, I guess, slipslopslup trudge through my fudgey words and dullll
___aches
in a brain freeze scenario.
So rarely our lips collide.
Do they numb without precedent when I crash in?
Painting
"I love you, Lovey"
is in an upright cursive
on a catastrophe
________________on a wall
________________in a room of a friend
over stacks and stacks and stacks of unread books,
Beckett and Brecht.
And I thought the burnt orange,
corporate blue, and projectile-puked
white dried an
"I love you, Asshole.
(In spite of my gripes with your grips and spins--
'lust-induced,' you say--while I wave it off
in strokes of gold (zen and rage made))"
behind canvas sunsets inside.
is in an upright cursive
on a catastrophe
________________on a wall
________________in a room of a friend
over stacks and stacks and stacks of unread books,
Beckett and Brecht.
And I thought the burnt orange,
corporate blue, and projectile-puked
white dried an
"I love you, Asshole.
(In spite of my gripes with your grips and spins--
'lust-induced,' you say--while I wave it off
in strokes of gold (zen and rage made))"
behind canvas sunsets inside.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Strawberries
*I haven't written in a long time, and this is just an exercise in imagery and observation to get my cogs turning again*
Counter to what I expected based on the pile of knot top greenery in front of me, I'm still hungry. Like the smooth sensation of a hand ladling into the ribbonthinandsoft currents of a lake when canoeing, I found these strawberries to feel and taste cool and sweet, plush and wet.
I've been told before to take the ones that bend and dip with the faintest pressing of a thumb, like a head slowly laying to rest anticipating the cool enveloping of a concave pillow, and mash them into a jam. But I don't really know how to define when fruit is ripe, I don't understand why brown paper bags make a difference, and I'm not willing to use them for anything but delightfully delicious compost.
As I sit in a Rembrandt room working lightly from the light of the windows shadowed by honeycombed blankets over the scaffolding, these strawberries appear surreal and distant, almost ceramic. The many dimples project many shadows. The leafy heads crinkle and turn into their fatigue-green knot tops. What I know I bought as saturated and vibrant red bodies have now turned to marooning rocks positioned in such a way as to border a craggy pier.
This is the process:
I manipulate my fingers to pull on the leaflets into a tight apex from which the red body might be suspended.
I tug the slight weight into the air and bring the nose to my mouth.
I fellate the strawberry until my lips have reached a point of circumference satisfyingly big enough to ensure the utmost satisfaction from this particular strawberry.
I raise my lip to move forward a moment so that the lips can be replaced by the teeth that will then conduct their incision.
The body resists as my teeth press and push in, only to inevitably, submittingly burst into the folds of my mouth on to the bed of my tongue and beyond the sanctuary of light and air just out of reach, still visible through the blur of my silhouetted teeth.
The body of the strawberry then meets its demise as its corpse is demolished through grinding and cutting, knives and turbulent surfaces pressing and slicing. What was once a strawberry would now be regurgitated as an unidentifiable red gel, chunky and slippery.
I view the inverted dome of the strawberry's decapitation, and decide how best to jut my teeth and purse my lips into the most efficient, effective, and clean means of engaging the remaining edibility.
My pursed teeth and jutting lips ravenously scavenge the remainder of the strawberry outside, bite after bite after bit-bite after bite.
Chew.
Swallow.
Satisfied in good, but not in plenty.
Counter to what I expected based on the pile of knot top greenery in front of me, I'm still hungry. Like the smooth sensation of a hand ladling into the ribbonthinandsoft currents of a lake when canoeing, I found these strawberries to feel and taste cool and sweet, plush and wet.
I've been told before to take the ones that bend and dip with the faintest pressing of a thumb, like a head slowly laying to rest anticipating the cool enveloping of a concave pillow, and mash them into a jam. But I don't really know how to define when fruit is ripe, I don't understand why brown paper bags make a difference, and I'm not willing to use them for anything but delightfully delicious compost.
As I sit in a Rembrandt room working lightly from the light of the windows shadowed by honeycombed blankets over the scaffolding, these strawberries appear surreal and distant, almost ceramic. The many dimples project many shadows. The leafy heads crinkle and turn into their fatigue-green knot tops. What I know I bought as saturated and vibrant red bodies have now turned to marooning rocks positioned in such a way as to border a craggy pier.
This is the process:
I manipulate my fingers to pull on the leaflets into a tight apex from which the red body might be suspended.
I tug the slight weight into the air and bring the nose to my mouth.
I fellate the strawberry until my lips have reached a point of circumference satisfyingly big enough to ensure the utmost satisfaction from this particular strawberry.
I raise my lip to move forward a moment so that the lips can be replaced by the teeth that will then conduct their incision.
The body resists as my teeth press and push in, only to inevitably, submittingly burst into the folds of my mouth on to the bed of my tongue and beyond the sanctuary of light and air just out of reach, still visible through the blur of my silhouetted teeth.
The body of the strawberry then meets its demise as its corpse is demolished through grinding and cutting, knives and turbulent surfaces pressing and slicing. What was once a strawberry would now be regurgitated as an unidentifiable red gel, chunky and slippery.
I view the inverted dome of the strawberry's decapitation, and decide how best to jut my teeth and purse my lips into the most efficient, effective, and clean means of engaging the remaining edibility.
My pursed teeth and jutting lips ravenously scavenge the remainder of the strawberry outside, bite after bite after bit-bite after bite.
Chew.
Swallow.
Satisfied in good, but not in plenty.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Troubles
He realized that it wasn't going to work only after he started having difficulty reading. On the train, convulsing with each push and pull of the conductor's levers and buttons, he was reading the listings for others' lives, stories. Visions and sounds. And the jerky middle-school dance moves of a newly pubescent boy that the train so accurately emulated were not the reasons that he had difficulty reading. Instead, the glaucomic glaze of a once healthy eye now blurred and fogged the letters into heiroglyphics. "Domesticated" became "doomeshishddd" as he came to understand that this would be the next time he's had something wet drip from his eyeballs.
This was not a death, nor was it a conversation with his totalitarian though nonetheless maternal mother, so he didn't bawl or sob. This was an incident, possibly traumatic (he wasn't sure; he hadn't set a criteria for what constitutes trauma yet)that created the bittersweet opportunity for him to weep. He felt like his more androgynous 15 year old self again, a time when it felt good to cry knowing how his body rationed its minimal reserve, as his stoicism diluted with each letter cascading into impressionistic swatches. But he also felt drained. Disoriented. Absolutely rubbed out.
The paradox of his desire to flee and desire to help, desire to ignore and follow her "I wasn't going to tell you in the first place" creed and the desire to stay with his internal "no matter what" I'magoodman speech pushed the water out. He did not want to become like so many others he'd encountered, bearing responsibilities unfit for such an age in such a century. He had aspirations that required independence, a sizable bank account, and an opportunity to further his education.
"Call me if you need to." he texted with resolute frustration. He didn't want to face the realities he was just presented, but turning his back on them now would discredit the life he's tried to conduct with honesty and virtue. It is only when we have the problems we once chastised that we have our "Oh..." moments.
"I won't need to. I'll be fine on my own." Her punctual response wasn't what he wanted to read because he knew that he liked to take care of her, but wasn't willing to take care of her for good. It was the response he wanted to read because he thought he knew her strength and the earnest means by which she chose her words. He wasn't sure if it was the response he wanted to read because he knew that he only thought he knew her strength and the shaky means by which she chose her words.
With the thought that other passengers were growing curious, he wiped his eye, grunted, and carried on his bravado-facade even after the curtain had been drawn. He went back to spiraling over the films he wanted to see, but probably wouldn't.
When he was youngest, tears were common with spritely nights and drowsy days, his parents begging to rest.
Then years passed and tears escaped with the news of 3 of 9 deaths.
He wept for 3 minutes over 6 months of depressive bliss after 4 months.
Then conversations with his mother about her perpetual pessimism, his once passive-aggressive manhood, and how to identify loving each other reincarnated his tear ducts again.
This was the last time he'd weep for another pocket of tumultuous-but not enough-years.
This was not a death, nor was it a conversation with his totalitarian though nonetheless maternal mother, so he didn't bawl or sob. This was an incident, possibly traumatic (he wasn't sure; he hadn't set a criteria for what constitutes trauma yet)that created the bittersweet opportunity for him to weep. He felt like his more androgynous 15 year old self again, a time when it felt good to cry knowing how his body rationed its minimal reserve, as his stoicism diluted with each letter cascading into impressionistic swatches. But he also felt drained. Disoriented. Absolutely rubbed out.
The paradox of his desire to flee and desire to help, desire to ignore and follow her "I wasn't going to tell you in the first place" creed and the desire to stay with his internal "no matter what" I'magoodman speech pushed the water out. He did not want to become like so many others he'd encountered, bearing responsibilities unfit for such an age in such a century. He had aspirations that required independence, a sizable bank account, and an opportunity to further his education.
"Call me if you need to." he texted with resolute frustration. He didn't want to face the realities he was just presented, but turning his back on them now would discredit the life he's tried to conduct with honesty and virtue. It is only when we have the problems we once chastised that we have our "Oh..." moments.
"I won't need to. I'll be fine on my own." Her punctual response wasn't what he wanted to read because he knew that he liked to take care of her, but wasn't willing to take care of her for good. It was the response he wanted to read because he thought he knew her strength and the earnest means by which she chose her words. He wasn't sure if it was the response he wanted to read because he knew that he only thought he knew her strength and the shaky means by which she chose her words.
With the thought that other passengers were growing curious, he wiped his eye, grunted, and carried on his bravado-facade even after the curtain had been drawn. He went back to spiraling over the films he wanted to see, but probably wouldn't.
When he was youngest, tears were common with spritely nights and drowsy days, his parents begging to rest.
Then years passed and tears escaped with the news of 3 of 9 deaths.
He wept for 3 minutes over 6 months of depressive bliss after 4 months.
Then conversations with his mother about her perpetual pessimism, his once passive-aggressive manhood, and how to identify loving each other reincarnated his tear ducts again.
This was the last time he'd weep for another pocket of tumultuous-but not enough-years.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
What Happened to My Me?
What happened to my Me?
When was the last time I wrote in a marble notebook with a fraying spine
all the smiles and eyes and flicks and pins I vowed to remember in script?
When was the last time I patched up a pu rse, a skir t, a paira j e-ans
or made 'em from scratch with my knuckles cut and thimblelessness
profound and proud?
When was the last time I woke up early just to ride my bike through 4 cars passing and fog swaying blocks away to spoon until noon?
When was the last time I dealt with the depression of absence because I was so uncontrollably, irreversibly, suffocatingly in love, with a grin that could light the heavens a hundred times over?
___When was the first time I met my friends? My best friends? My never ending never leave me never always alright but just fine enough all the time friends?
___When was the first time I called myself a punk, an emo kid, an outcast, an original, and felt only pride while shopping at garage sales and Fantastic Records, knowing I was incapable of being tripped for the rest of my life, without knowing how to define a "party" because I'd never been invited to one?
___When was the first time I indulged in a girl's willing, pleasing, and unsolicited touch?
When was the last time I saw myself on a playground dangling
________________________________________and JUMping
_________________________and c a r o u s e l i n g
and
__t
___t
____tu
______mbl
_________ing through /b/a/r/s/,/ //r//o//p//e//s//,// and 0t0i0r0e0s0?0
It didn't stop when I turned 12.
When was the last time I snuck out, or needed to, in order to feel the dew, the moon, the pavement; an actual and successful escape? A chance to see the stars, the meteor showers, the suspicious cops stopping, the suspicious trucks stopping, the shopping carts rolling, the bikes piling next to sneakers as friends enjoyed summer and fall alike?
What happened to my Me?
I used to wake up at 6 a.m.
"Mom, can I go watch t.v.?"
"Yes, hun."
*kiss*
with the imploding fists that my mother wouldn't come downstairs
*stip
step
stip
step
stip
step
stop*
to interrupt my cartoons for the rest of the day,
not realizing that other programming s=p=r=a=w=l=e=d across the channels after 10am.
I used to read about how I could explore the Earth through magnifying glasses, magnets, and technicolor pipecleaners.
I used to fantasize about inventing. A slingshot ring. A Swissarmy anklet. An indestructible creek boat with tadpole catcher (made out of foil and duct tape).
I used to invent.
My own "Wild Things." Many appendages. Many eyes-sometimes like a cat's. Many teeth. Always sharp.
Lego trucks and jets. Many wheels. Many wings. Always pointed noses.
Worlds out of the mossy foundations of old trees. Cicada skins serving as barricades. Leaves folded just so as coliseums. Pine needles as road-guides on this yet-unpaved way. I hadn't even read any Tolkien yet.
Flying possibilities:
Shoes to jump high in with safety-lights in the heel. Check.
Wingspan with a length twice my height. Check.
Leaves broad and thick enough to sew or glue together. Check.
Branches, miscellaneous poles malleable yet sturdy? Hm...
A drop-off cliff to test out my wings. The local quarry, but I'm not allowed in there.
Breaking the toys of my baby sitter and my baby sister with my self and John. We destroyed memories and laughter at the expense of tears and shouts.
Kathy stole my Transformers Jet. It was so small yet so perfect. Cunt.
Patty forced me to eat Green Beans and PB&J sandwhiches. Cunt. Never again.
That perfectly honey-sweet Crispix cereal that isn't made anymore with a hole-punched geometric aeroplane back that I can't help but recall fondly, whether it actually flew, or flew well, or not.
What happened to my Me?
Vague recollections of playing doctor, getting naked in a Nordic Track box on a driveway, and seeing neighbors naked because I was trying to be a good boy and return a bike helmet, but forgot to knock.
Discovering porn in a broken VHS, then in a working Penthouse years before puberty. Fascination. No disgust or shame. Sensational.
Hearing women moan and gasp while watching tertiary-colored Pollacks and Mondrians thrust and bounce. I hosted the Best sleepovers with my buddies. Pizza and kindof porn.
The only time I've ever felt butterflies in my stomach after kissing a girl's girl with Capri-Sun down our throats and awkwardness lodged in our groins. I had a boner every time we spoke, which became incredibly difficult to deal with as the summer week passed on. I snuck out for her in a black D.A.R.E. shirt and black Hot Topic pants pinned close to my nervous shins. I fondled her under her sports bra, an incredibly defeating feat.
She broke up with me over the phone through a mutual friend at camp who also had a crush on me.
Cunt.
I got over her through Blue Weezer in Ohio, and Red Linkin Park words in a letter I never sent.
The first time sneaking out held a decision that would affect the rest of my life, at least until I graduated high school. We barely kissed, but at least the rain stopped. And what a birthday gift.
This is by no means an encyclopedic recollection of my youthful experiences, but I've attempted to lyrically summarize what I have a right to be nostalgic about. Experiences here are derived from the ages 5-15, but not in chronological order.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Eulogies
Being the writer of the family, I'm expected to write something "nice" for family occasions such as funerals, birthdays, mitzvahs, and miscellaneity.
This is a Renga I wrote for my Aunt Buzzy's passing. May she rest in peace.
"Ms. Elyse 'Buzzy' Ackerman"
Elyse as "Buzzy"
Reminds me of all New York:
Attitude, humor....
A flowing silk woman of
wit, street, and book smarts, pizzazz!
Nancy, Eddy, Ma
are missing now their sister,
wife, daughter, loved one.
But we are at peace because
she is at peace in quiet.
This is a Renga I wrote for my Aunt Buzzy's passing. May she rest in peace.
"Ms. Elyse 'Buzzy' Ackerman"
Elyse as "Buzzy"
Reminds me of all New York:
Attitude, humor....
A flowing silk woman of
wit, street, and book smarts, pizzazz!
Nancy, Eddy, Ma
are missing now their sister,
wife, daughter, loved one.
But we are at peace because
she is at peace in quiet.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Bio
A native New Yorker who spends his days teaching how to grow up and write down and his nights adoring New York City and the conglomerate culture inherent therein. He appreciates the arts and humanities, conflict, and women. If you'd like to peruse his prose and verse about these appreciations, adorations, and considerations, visit him @ www.raphelps.blogspot.com.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Teaching
They may be the reason why, 15 years from now, I'll look 60 but act 16; a paradoxical profession of stress and exuberance it is.
I should be grading papers, but I've been all too influenced by one scene from the show "Keenan and Kel":
Keenan's mother: "Baby, what'chu doin' tonight?"
Keenan: "Well, Kel and I were gonna stay in an' study a li'l."
Keenan's mother: "What?! Boy, you crazy? Nobody studies on a Friday night...."
Keenan turns to Kel, both simultaneously shrug their shoulders, and they race upstairs to plot and scheme how they can get themselves into some sort of mischief and shenanigan.
I should be grading papers, but I've been all too influenced by one scene from the show "Keenan and Kel":
Keenan's mother: "Baby, what'chu doin' tonight?"
Keenan: "Well, Kel and I were gonna stay in an' study a li'l."
Keenan's mother: "What?! Boy, you crazy? Nobody studies on a Friday night...."
Keenan turns to Kel, both simultaneously shrug their shoulders, and they race upstairs to plot and scheme how they can get themselves into some sort of mischief and shenanigan.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Ludwig
You can expect trills and riffs
of thrilling turns and swerves,
designed to defy expectation.
My melodyelectricity glorifies you.
You can expect staccato thrusts
and pizzicato pulls and pushes.
Everything and anything to keep
you toesy, lipsy, and coyly kissing.
You can expect the gentle swallows
of coos and hand, caresses stressed
by fists gripped in layered embraces.
And you can bite that trumpet finger.
You can expect a multitude of movements,
distinguished by their tactile timbre:
The drones of a cello massage starkly juxtaposed
with the clave clickclack of ass-slaps.
The baritone grunt of an asserted dominance
harmonized with the soprano yelps and oohs
of willful helplessness. And the timpani beats
to the curves of a skin spread open,
while horns are tickled to cries of yes triumphant,
voices blown piquant through brass to crescendo
crescendocrescendoyeswavethosehandsandclosethoseeyes
Crescendo!
Ay, there's the rub. And the piano strokes
to follow for a pianissimo pillow impenetrable
by sadnesses. Our ecstasies and smiles abound.
Our notes and strokes passionate and fallen.
We made music. And goddamn,
___it was quite the symphony.
Let us bow and stride into
soundless fits laying now.
of thrilling turns and swerves,
designed to defy expectation.
My melodyelectricity glorifies you.
You can expect staccato thrusts
and pizzicato pulls and pushes.
Everything and anything to keep
you toesy, lipsy, and coyly kissing.
You can expect the gentle swallows
of coos and hand, caresses stressed
by fists gripped in layered embraces.
And you can bite that trumpet finger.
You can expect a multitude of movements,
distinguished by their tactile timbre:
The drones of a cello massage starkly juxtaposed
with the clave clickclack of ass-slaps.
The baritone grunt of an asserted dominance
harmonized with the soprano yelps and oohs
of willful helplessness. And the timpani beats
to the curves of a skin spread open,
while horns are tickled to cries of yes triumphant,
voices blown piquant through brass to crescendo
crescendocrescendoyeswavethosehandsandclosethoseeyes
Crescendo!
Ay, there's the rub. And the piano strokes
to follow for a pianissimo pillow impenetrable
by sadnesses. Our ecstasies and smiles abound.
Our notes and strokes passionate and fallen.
We made music. And goddamn,
___it was quite the symphony.
Let us bow and stride into
soundless fits laying now.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Almost Exposed
"Honesty is very sexy."- Valerie Bertinelli
Listen, doll, we've gotta talk.
I tore open your seams to get to know you better,
to see that you weren't just fluffy, freckley, girl
but I pulled ferocious and now I'm inna revelation,
and you're not too happy either since your
I'msaved securities and your thatsalrights and your
satin smiles and your preciousness gazes
are falling out dustcaked and without cohesion,
whitewashed in the bright exposure of your facade frayed.
And I know I'm no Dalai Lama, but I'm no Nosferatu, either.
And where you might be irreparable because you fell in love
and didn't come out until after you had drowned, or whored
yourself in numbers, in power, and not in passion or heart,
or carry on in solidarity with onehitwonder women when you
really mean to and do bat black lashes at all the pretty boys,
coyly, or fuck in obligation to a grand wining and dining,
I can still sew up whatever nicks and notches you've cut
and interrogated. But why would I want to? I tried to teach you
honesty, and though you've turned your head times already,
leaving those holes for you to peek through is the best lesson
still. I've got no coarse words, I'msaved securities,
thatsalrights to hide. No satin smiles, preciousness gazes,
or awkward answers to your questions to hide. Nothing.
You can tell everyothers' ears about how puny you think I am,
but I've been chugging my spinach and sticking to my guns,
and--though you're right that I've reserved my right, a
proclamation
to more tell you I how feel, No. To tell you how I feel more,
to tell you more how I feel, to tell you I feel more for you,
to tell you how more I feel for you--I deserve a bigger better
megaphone, a bigger better you. Stop being a fucking girl.
Start being a fucking woman, doll. I think you look the part.
And clean yourself. Stitch thread and needle
tightly and soon you'll open up.
Listen, doll, we've gotta talk.
I tore open your seams to get to know you better,
to see that you weren't just fluffy, freckley, girl
but I pulled ferocious and now I'm inna revelation,
and you're not too happy either since your
I'msaved securities and your thatsalrights and your
satin smiles and your preciousness gazes
are falling out dustcaked and without cohesion,
whitewashed in the bright exposure of your facade frayed.
And I know I'm no Dalai Lama, but I'm no Nosferatu, either.
And where you might be irreparable because you fell in love
and didn't come out until after you had drowned, or whored
yourself in numbers, in power, and not in passion or heart,
or carry on in solidarity with onehitwonder women when you
really mean to and do bat black lashes at all the pretty boys,
coyly, or fuck in obligation to a grand wining and dining,
I can still sew up whatever nicks and notches you've cut
and interrogated. But why would I want to? I tried to teach you
honesty, and though you've turned your head times already,
leaving those holes for you to peek through is the best lesson
still. I've got no coarse words, I'msaved securities,
thatsalrights to hide. No satin smiles, preciousness gazes,
or awkward answers to your questions to hide. Nothing.
You can tell everyothers' ears about how puny you think I am,
but I've been chugging my spinach and sticking to my guns,
and--though you're right that I've reserved my right, a
proclamation
to more tell you I how feel, No. To tell you how I feel more,
to tell you more how I feel, to tell you I feel more for you,
to tell you how more I feel for you--I deserve a bigger better
megaphone, a bigger better you. Stop being a fucking girl.
Start being a fucking woman, doll. I think you look the part.
And clean yourself. Stitch thread and needle
tightly and soon you'll open up.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
MTA
I: Observations
Cliche heels click along dots
and
ties tie down pistol whip shots
and
churros scour the roofs of our mouths
and
beggars bite to the platform like a louse
and
beats
_____beats
__________beats break a rhythm out of
buckets
and
sticks
and
trashcanSHOUTs
and
kids will tumble through cars selling chocolate
and
kids will danceflashdanceflashowyeah with hats
up off out onthefloor ontheirarm inyourface
y
Los Mexicanos con una guitarra y un acordeon y la voz bonita
tocar musica que es muy magnifico
and
cars that smell like piss for no apparent reason until that
reason's made apparent by bag-lady or crustyovercoat-man
and
if change isn't handed out through smiles, stares and
stares away are out through stoics
and
we wait for doors and pushy people and drooly heads
to lift from our shoulders smirking
and
heads will bobble while pupils will gaze,
drones will stare while we flash them unphased,
and the colors and numbers will sacrilege saveus.
II: Thoughts
Sanctuary sounds niccce between
messy _________________________screeches and whistles.
Essay means "to try" and so I'll
essay__________________________parallel the controlled chaos
therein, thereafter, descensions
tetris_________________________from stairs and escalators.
and ascensions live too through
Escher_________________________with a perambulating equilibrium.
III: Periodic Address
New York, New York: half of your days are spent in a
messy
essay
tetris
Escher.
IV: Conceding Epilogue
And I know that you're just as bittersweet as I am when we can see humanity but can't the
sunset subterranean.
Cliche heels click along dots
and
ties tie down pistol whip shots
and
churros scour the roofs of our mouths
and
beggars bite to the platform like a louse
and
beats
_____beats
__________beats break a rhythm out of
buckets
and
sticks
and
trashcanSHOUTs
and
kids will tumble through cars selling chocolate
and
kids will danceflashdanceflashowyeah with hats
up off out onthefloor ontheirarm inyourface
y
Los Mexicanos con una guitarra y un acordeon y la voz bonita
tocar musica que es muy magnifico
and
cars that smell like piss for no apparent reason until that
reason's made apparent by bag-lady or crustyovercoat-man
and
if change isn't handed out through smiles, stares and
stares away are out through stoics
and
we wait for doors and pushy people and drooly heads
to lift from our shoulders smirking
and
heads will bobble while pupils will gaze,
drones will stare while we flash them unphased,
and the colors and numbers will sacrilege saveus.
II: Thoughts
Sanctuary sounds niccce between
messy _________________________screeches and whistles.
Essay means "to try" and so I'll
essay__________________________parallel the controlled chaos
therein, thereafter, descensions
tetris_________________________from stairs and escalators.
and ascensions live too through
Escher_________________________with a perambulating equilibrium.
III: Periodic Address
New York, New York: half of your days are spent in a
messy
essay
tetris
Escher.
IV: Conceding Epilogue
And I know that you're just as bittersweet as I am when we can see humanity but can't the
sunset subterranean.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
When Repiblik Ayiti Crashed
You know, until now, we never acknowledged you.
You also know how you're the only nation congealed from the blood
of a slave revolt on the first day of 1804.
You know, Port-au-Prince, how you've played the pauper.
We knew you were flying white flags because you couldn't afford color,
We knew you were coming up a population while breaking down immunities.
We knew you were building cities out of iron wrinkled and leather-red in time.
We found out that even the familyless homeless praise jesus for their fortunes.
We found out that a black Frenchman, Jean Jacques Dessalines, can raise a nation to its feet,
but that his successors will never give
that nation
_________________________________________________________a chair to sit down
in_________________________________________________or a glass of water to drink.
We found out that somewhere between three thousand phlegmy gangs and scratchy blankets
of primarypoverty, a people can still make a beautiful language sprint between their mouths.
You can still build homes along dirtish hillsides and ignore the discretionless excretions.
You can still congregate without roofs, without walls, without windows.
You can still sing your iloveyous to spouses and children caught between bricks and mortar, pillars and floors.
You can still call on your Taino to guide you to Pic la Selle where the earth won't eat you.
But we only started looking at you.
Noticing your dimples and cigarette burnt arms because you fell in public,
you broke so many bones, and
we cried when we saw how much blood escaped the homes of your veins,
just on their way to the city of your clock.
We never saw you before, broken friend, but we want to come to your rescue now.
Because we can and because you can't pay those medical bills alone.
Why we feel bad now, for you, for now, is beyond us.
But we're here.
Maybe because a slam on the table doesn't get our attention, but a smack across the face does.
Maybe because your tears with gouged-out eyes made us do more than just change the channel.
Maybe because you needed to become white with asbestos-powdered noses before we put you in
the spotlight.
You also know how you're the only nation congealed from the blood
of a slave revolt on the first day of 1804.
You know, Port-au-Prince, how you've played the pauper.
We knew you were flying white flags because you couldn't afford color,
We knew you were coming up a population while breaking down immunities.
We knew you were building cities out of iron wrinkled and leather-red in time.
We found out that even the familyless homeless praise jesus for their fortunes.
We found out that a black Frenchman, Jean Jacques Dessalines, can raise a nation to its feet,
but that his successors will never give
that nation
_________________________________________________________a chair to sit down
in_________________________________________________or a glass of water to drink.
We found out that somewhere between three thousand phlegmy gangs and scratchy blankets
of primarypoverty, a people can still make a beautiful language sprint between their mouths.
You can still build homes along dirtish hillsides and ignore the discretionless excretions.
You can still congregate without roofs, without walls, without windows.
You can still sing your iloveyous to spouses and children caught between bricks and mortar, pillars and floors.
You can still call on your Taino to guide you to Pic la Selle where the earth won't eat you.
But we only started looking at you.
Noticing your dimples and cigarette burnt arms because you fell in public,
you broke so many bones, and
we cried when we saw how much blood escaped the homes of your veins,
just on their way to the city of your clock.
We never saw you before, broken friend, but we want to come to your rescue now.
Because we can and because you can't pay those medical bills alone.
Why we feel bad now, for you, for now, is beyond us.
But we're here.
Maybe because a slam on the table doesn't get our attention, but a smack across the face does.
Maybe because your tears with gouged-out eyes made us do more than just change the channel.
Maybe because you needed to become white with asbestos-powdered noses before we put you in
the spotlight.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
