Things It Breathes

The Hotel Manager

She didn’t even know where she was when she came up to the desk. She wanted to get a room, but she didn’t have any money. I told her there was an ATM in the lobby, but she said she didn’t have her card, and she’d left her purse somewhere last night, and she hadn’t slept in almost three days.

Of course I knew who she was, but what was I supposed to do? She looked so confused, it was almost heartbreaking. There was this kind of confused desperation in her eyes. She asked if we had a bar, and I gave her three vouchers for drinks. She had two margaritas and a shot of tequila.

I heard later that she walked to the Hyatt Regency and the manager there, Allan, comped her a room. Which was a pretty good thing.

When she left the bar here, one of the servers came up to me and asked, “did you see that?” He told me, “we just saw a celebrity on the verge of a major breakdown.”

The Road Manager

This isn‘t a cry for help, but it really fucking should be. This shit has been going on for a while now, but it’s starting to escalate to the point where someone is going to get seriously hurt. She’s pushed away just about everyone who loves her. Her family, friends, her parents, including me.

Three days ago she fired me. It must have been after she saw herself on the cover of Us Weekley. She looked fucking awful. You know how those photographers are, always trying to get people at their worst moments, but I mean, she looked fucking awful anyway, so it wasn’t too hard to capture her bad side that night. She’d been partying pretty hard, and threw up outside the Venici Blue, and fell over--into her own vomit for god’s sakes-- and couldn’t get up. Those fucking assholes were just standing over her, snapping away until one of the bouncers finally came up and helped her into her limo. But what the fuck am I supposed to do? She’s the one making these choices, not me.

Seven hours after she fired me, she called me again begging me to come pick her up. So I go, and she’s on Washington St., at this dumpy fucking apartment complex. She looked like shit, her hair was a mess and she had makeup smeared all over her face...anyway, she had gone home with this guy from the club, totally trashed, and they fucked, and apparently he took some pictures. She was crying and screaming, a total fucking mess. I took her back to her place, and got her cleaned up and put her to bed, but I’m guessing she passed out for a few hours and went back out. What a fucking mess. What a fucking, nasty mess this is.

The Public Relations Representative

She has a good heart. It is that radiant goodness, which is so easy to sense in her that has captured the public’s attention. Her charm, her amazing good looks, her talents as a singer and actress, these are all the things we love her for, and always will love her for.

Let’s not forget that all the proceeds from her last film went to help combat the AIDS crisis in Africa. She is a good and loving person. Let us not forget that even good people sometimes go through hard times.

The Crows

Our beaks are strong, but can not break the shells of the Acorn. The Acorn shell is thick, and the nut gives unto us the nutrients of life. Without the meat of the Acorn we may well starve. The Acorn is plentiful, but we are ill equipped to eat it.

Long ago we learned to fly high into the air, and drop the Nut onto the hard roads below. Sometimes small cracks would form in the shell, which we then broke with our beaks. But dropping the Acorn, was difficult and took much time and energy.

This is why we place them on Her asphalt driveway. She drives across the piles of our Acorns, breaking the shells for us. Our beaks are strong, but She is stronger still. We pass on this knowledge to our young. She is the Provider. Her tires give us food. She is to be thanked. She is to be loved. The Provider. The giver of food. Forever will the Provider give us the meat of the Acorn. Forever will She be thanked.

The 13-year-old girl

I mean I’m like completely obsessed with her. Oh my god, you should see my wall, it’s covered with her pictures. Me and some friends last week made a collage of all these pictures we clipped out, and in the middle we wrote “DREAM” with blue glitter and glue. That’s because it is my dream to someday meet her. She is so beautiful, and talented. It’s just like... it must be so wonderful to be like that. She has so much beauty in her life. I have all her albums. Her last one is totally my favorite. I have this one poster of her that is so awesome. She’s in this beautiful white gown that’s all tight, and she’s laying over this piano with a snake. That must have been so scary to be holding a snake like that, but she doesn’t even look scared at all. I am going to be just like her someday. I’m going to meet her, then I can show her how much I love her, and how much we have in common, and she is going to love me just as much as I love her. We are going to sing a duet someday. Someday we are going to be best friends.

The City

I am the Tower of Babel. Though no god has the power to tumble my structure.

I reach into the heavens. I give life to those who live within me.

I am the sum total. I am the Knowledge of man.

When I breathe, I breathe in the dreams and love and despair and hope and angst and power and joy and joylessness and the comfort of childhood and the comfort of a lover’s arm and the tickle of cloth against skin and the chill of wet skin and the tightness in your chest and the loneliness that follows burial and the nervousness of newness and the pleasure of sex and the pain you feel.

When I exhale, it is smoke and vapor. And sirens, and horns.

The Woman Becomes Unfortunately Ill

She is completely filled with love. Filled with it, like a heavy sponge.

Sometimes she cries for absolutely no reason at all. She owns a small dog, and feeds it half of whatever she eats, except for chocolate, which she knows is very bad for dogs. She eats a lot of chocolate.

When she left her home for the week the dog saw her suitcase and began to follow her around the house whining. She consoled it by hugging it and telling it repeatedly that she would be home in five days, and she loved it very much, and she wanted to take it with her, but dogs weren’t allowed in hotels, and she would miss it very much while she was gone. The dog, of course, didn’t know what she was talking about, but it could sense the fear in her eyes and the high pitched notes of stress in her voice, so it continued to whine.

She thought this was because the dog loved her. It didn‘t of course. Dogs do not feel love.

When she pulled out of her driveway the next morning it was only after a long night of seriously considering calling off the trip in order to stay with her animal, which was curled up on a bed of pillows next to the sliding door. She had finally decided to pay the neighbor double to stop by twice a day rather than the previously discussed once in the evenings.

She wouldn’t have gone if she didn’t have to. It wasn’t just her dog, the city terrified her. She had gone once to Chicago with her parents when she was fifteen, and she had only left the hotel room for meals.

It was a seven hour drive to Seattle from where she lived. She made five stops along the way, twice for gasoline and three times for snacks.

She wore sandals, the kind her father had called “jap-flaps.” While boarding a bus in the Metro Tunnel she cut the top of her foot on the step. She doubled over in pain. No one asked her if she was okay, she noticed.

In the meetings she wore shoes, and limped from her sore foot. She sat next to a tall good-looking man with a black suit and a two-day-old stubble. He smiled at her twice during the meeting, and afterward, while he was speaking with two colleagues from his office, she approached him and asked what he was doing for lunch. He told her that he was busy and would probably miss lunch. She chuckled and told him she probably would too.

When she walked away the man made a joke about her weight.

The woman walks out of the meeting room and pushes the elevator button with the down arrow. Pushes it again even though it is lit. Walks out of the hotel lobby, across the wood and tile floors. Pauses for a moment before entering the revolving door. Walks three blocks to a cafe to order a sandwich. Sees a homeless man. Gives him all the money in her pocket, which amounts to three dollars and forty-six cents. Thinks about her dog.

She will not attend the final day of the meeting because she will contract a viral infection from the cut on her foot.

The Sound of Things to Come

And they tell you that the way all things are will change, and this order will not return. And no one knows precisely how, only that this will happen. And the sweet flavors of life will sour. And the pains of this world will blossom in the next. And the plastic sided home, with the two-car garage and the granite countertops you are indebted for, will decay. And its walls will fall. And the sheen on the fake-wood floors will tire. And the joists will weaken and cave. And all the streets on your block, named after species of fish, will crisp and break. And the creek that trickles past your neighbors’ yard will wiggle and meander its way under the home‘s foundation. And the hill upon which this entire development rests will slough into the deciduous green below. But none of this will happen until long after you are dead. So there’s nothing about any of this which should worry you.

Your cement driveway is dark and polished smooth, with rough, colorful aggregate intervals. It is the kind of detail you like to notice, but rarely remember. You like to think of what visitors to your home will think when they see your driveway. You like to think what children will look like riding their colorful bikes in circles around it. Blue and yellow bikes. You will clean off the tire marks. You wish you could ride bikes in circles.

The 2002 Toyota Sequoia sits in front of the garage door. It leaves a small greasy stain where the oil slowly drips from a loose bolt.

Green. Numbing green. Calm. Thick grass like moss. Black rubber barriers to keep the wood chippings in place surround your aspen sapling. Sprinklers, flat plastic discs on timers. A yellow spot over your septic tank. It will grow dark green there in fall.

The name of your street is Chinook St. which is the name of an anadramous fish that once battled its way up creeks and valleys from the sea to spawn, just below your home, in what is now the Boyd’s back yard. Their street is called Perch St.

There are few wonders as potent to you as this new home. The rounded edges and corners, the smooth chestnut browns and wood grains. These wonders are yours. Their existence rests in you. Together it forms something far greater than any of its component parts. It is a power that you are at a loss to describe. The smell of paint. The shadow against the picture frame.

The planet revolves, facing away from the sun’s rays. It is night. You lay, beaming into the dark above your bed. This life is all that matters. The creaking pipes are your cicadas. The groaning beams are your frog songs. No future could rend this present. It is yours. It is yours. It is yours.

Tri-monthly update

Correct! I have not posted a single item on the Cougar Kitten in over two months. But don't worry, I am alive. And the following two stories should prove it.
Cheers,

Mr. Sean R. Garmire

The Ant Gang

Anthony Ant is a son of a bitch.

In fact, all of the ants are sons of bitches. They smell fucking awful, and none of them have any common sense whatsoever. I see them, in the middle of the day, getting drunk down by the pool. That might be okay every now and then, but they don’t just do it once a month, they do it every single day.

They’ve been congregating by the pool because that’s where their larder is. It’s in a crack in the cement. A pile of dirt pellets, wood shavings and feces spills out onto the brick walkway all around. You have to step over it just to get into the pool.

This morning I woke up to them laughing. They were already drinking at 8:24 in the morning. When I walked outside to eat an avocado one of the ants, Leon, told me he had been up all night, because he had smoked some “ice.”

And that isn’t even the half of it.

But the worst part is that the pool is such a great spot to swim or study, or just get some sun. The water is cold and salty, but now that it’s warming up it feels great to go for a swim. It would be so nice to jump in after climbing the hill after school. But whenever I walk in through the gate to the pool the ants are there, lounging around, drinking beer out of cans that rest on their thoraxes.

Two weeks ago I walked out of the gates with eight egg shaped bites on my back. As you probably guessed it was Anthony. His poisonous mandibles pierced my back while I lay in the grass. No where--I might add,--near his nest. That was the last straw.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Yesterday I bought a magnifying glass, today the sun is shining brightly, and I just noticed that there are some ants down by the pool right now. I think I'm going to go get my towel.

For Kimberley

Post Operation Check-up Report
Report issued To: Paul Flynn
ID: CGD679983
Date: 23/10/06
Patients: Nathaniel & Kimberley Sweetie
Dear Mr. Paul Flynn,

*Please write report in space issued below.

Last time Kim and I came in here I was a little confused. Kim and I had a few ideas about what I wanted, but none if it even seemed possible. Surgery is scary, what can I say? So many people are so unfortunate to need surgery that it seemed wrong to ask for it. Like, almost sacrilegious or something. Plastic surgery has always seemed a little tacky too. But then, during the check-up, just when I was seriously thinking about calling the whole thing off, Dr. Flynn turned around, lowered his stethoscope, looked me right in the eyes and told me something that totally helped me make up my mind.

He told me that this kind of surgery was the “ultimate sacrifice,” and it was a measure of a “perfect and inordinate love.” He really used those words too. Then Dr. Flynn said that this type of surgery had never been performed before, and while it would cost a lot of money, it would also “set new precedent in the medical community.” Of course I told him that I didn’t want a bunch of scientists taking pictures and doing studies and whatever else, and he told me we didn’t need to worry about that. “Of course,” he said with a great big grin, “you might be in one or two celebrity magazines.” Well, I just burst right out smiling. I never thought I’d actually be a celebrity, and neither did Kim. How could we refuse?

Kim was sure she wanted this, and since it was her idea and everything I figured she should have the final say. And if you think about it, this surgery really is more intrusive and inconvenient for her.
After All, I did have my head surgically attached to her neck.

I know it seems like a big deal. And of course at first I wasn’t convinced it was a good idea, but the way Kim kept explaining it to me, after a while it really started making sense. She said that she thought that in life you only get one chance to love someone, and to really make that love count. If you love someone, and you mess up, you may never get another chance, so you have to make it count the first time.

She reminded me when I spend time with my friends, I’m not spending time with her. When I’m having fun without her it’s kind of like cheating on her in a way. And since she doesn’t like any of my friends, and they don’t like her, and she has enough friends for both of us, this was a great way for us to spend real time together without ever making each other uncomfortable.
I can be pretty selfish about things too. Especially about how I spend my time. I’ve been spending far too much of it with my friends. It’s understandable why she doesn’t like them. They’re rude to her whenever she comes over, and all they ever do is smoke pot. Kim wanted to be friends with them, she really did, but it was hard for her to talk to them. She can be shy. So she would just end up standing there next to the door, with her arms crossed, forced to watch us have fun. So if you think about it, it all makes sense.

Plus, I got to do a good thing by donating my healthy body to the sick. People need organs. Kim said it best when she asked me “what’s the point of having two hearts when we share only one?” How could I say “no“?

Then she told me that it wouldn’t be hard getting over not ever having sex again. That was the day before we went in for surgery.

Granted, she’s a lot better at explaining all this than I am. It probably sounds pretty weird when I say it, but trust me, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, you would probably do the same thing.

The surgery went really smooth, what else can I say about it? Sure, I was nervous when I was laying there on the wax paper mattress. My little heart was beating like a hummingbird. But who wouldn’t have been nervous? I mean, this was kind of a big deal.

It’s odd though, Kimberley was so calm about the surgery. She never said a word.
After it was over, it was a little hard to get used to. My neck was pretty sore, but the doctors said that was normal, after all I had just had my “entire body cut off.” They said that quite a bit after the surgery, it was an inside joke around the whole hospital. Recovery took about a week, until I was strong enough to move my head around and look at things.

My neck is getting really muscular from all the movement, that’s one good thing about all this.
Surgery was hard for Kim too. Her head needed to move over to the left a little so that mine would fit. Now our heads make a perfect V at the top of her perfect (10) body.
Kim’s sleeping now. When I crane my head around I can look up into her beautiful face. Her creamy skin and big blue eyes. She’s the reason the decision was so easy to make. It hardly took me any time to make it at all.

But now, I don’t know, I’m not saying I think it’s a bad idea, because it’s not. But sometimes, when we’re laying there in bed I kind of miss my own body. I know I get to use her left arm, but it always seems like it’s someone else’s, like it’s just on loan. Kim says this will all change in time. But sometimes I feel like I’ll never stop missing the things I’ve lost.

Of course the doctors are all very pleased with what Dr. Flynn did. He’s a really great person, just a really good guy. He deserves all the credit he gets for this. Kim and I are both waiting for calls from the celebrity magazines the doctor told us about, but we haven’t heard from them yet. Ripley’s Believe it or Not called this morning, but Kim says “no way.”

The doctors all told me that this was possible, but thinking back, none of them ever asked me if I actually wanted it. Maybe if they’d asked me...maybe if they’d said “Nate, do you really want to have your entire body removed? Are you actually sure this is what you want?” things would have been different now. Maybe. But I don’t know. I don’t know, it’s all up to Kimberley really. She’s waking up now. I can feel her eyelashes flickering on the back of my neck. She moaning now, the kind of sighs she makes whenever she wakes up. She’ll be thirsty now. I’m going to get Kimberley a glass of water.