The Cougar Kitten.

A newborn afternoon

2008-07-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

You emerge.
Silver light cut by curtains settles across this room in ribbons.
The faint sound of eyelids popping open, and you see it all with milky-blue newborn eyes.
Your arm is asleep under your head. You roll to your side and pick it up with your other hand. Heavy, the arm falls to the mattress and bounces like a stranger’s.
The things you see move like waves. Independently. You roll to sit -- it’s someone else’s body.
The sun is setting. How long have you been here?
It wasn’t like this before. Things have been changed. Moved around. Your skin doesn’t match your head.
You sleep. You wake.
Time to get ready, go go, get up. It’s always so hard to stand. So hard to lift the weights off eyelids, and fight. Fight gravity and the chill of the room outside the sheets. You stand; find clothes to wear. You pick them from a pile and lay them on the bed next to where you sit. You stand and totter drunkenly. You place a shirt over your head and pull it down around your torso. You step through pant legs and look into the mirror.
The face is grey.
The clothes are rumpled and wrong.
Just a few more minutes. A few more minutes of sleep, you think, and your body is bouncing to rest on the box springs.

You emerge.
The room is black. How long have you been here? You see the night sky through a gap in the curtain and the window glass. A break in the orange gas haze allows some pale scattered stars to show through.
You look around. Rub your face with sweaty, trembling hands. What was that pill you swallowed? Try to focus.
The colorful spray of light in your mind gestures.
You follow.

You emerge.
Bed. Wedged in sheets so long. But up now, up on your feet. When you stand you let gravity course through your stock and bury you in the ground, and grow here by your bedside. Grow thick in the sun. The ground is spinning plates. You sit. Look down at these soft musty folds of the sheets that open wide for you. This is the sunset warmth of your baby brother's birth.
Your young mother wakes, and raises the blanket for you to crawl in beside her. So you roll next to her warmth, and lay wrapped in the convincing scent of your dreams.
The love is so thick you see it.

You smile as you dream through your newborn afternoon. And dream, and dream, etcetera.

Plant Matter

2008-04-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

They speak to us, you know, the trees? There are voices in their cones and leaves, and the way their needles splay out, set against the sky. And in their color, silvery green and long, bare black stems, reaching far above, with dried branches like bristles, broken, silhouetted.

They aren’t speaking with words. Not voices you can hear. The voices are sentences you see above you, that tell you where you are. Where you are in the world.

Their dialects and phrasing changes. They tell you different things, the places you go. With powder white trunks, or dense canopies, the spacing between them, or the withered, craggy nature of their growth.

Their words are in their body language, and when it is its most eloquent you can hardly see it, and when it’s harsh, it’s all you see. Beautiful and wily, dark black, curling upward in a slow struggle for light. The way life always is when it balances on something so thin it’s almost imagined.

And yet, as ornate as they are, their words are only for us. The sentences, only for animals that read them. Alone in growth. As much meaning as mountain, or river-round stone.

Those words are silent unless we translate them. Their living, dying, breathing words are transparent, careless, useless unless they are used.

We give them words and we give those words meaning. Without us the trees are only themselves, elemental buttresses, holding up only themselves.

As it is supposed to be, we think.

But without us they will remain. Fecund. Stretching into sky. Still speaking, but in new languages, for other creatures to hear.

They will grow without us. Without an echo of all the proof they always offered: nothing was made, nothing was intended, there is no such thing as god.

100% Satisfaction Guarantee.

2008-04-13T18:34:00.000-07:00

You're right. It has been a long time since I've published here. It's not because I don't love you anymore, because I do. It's just been a difficult year. I'm writing more than ever these days, but it seems most of my writing concerns subjects I have little interest in. So, I'm making an effort to revitalize this weblog. Yes, yes, I know you're squealing with glee, but you should stop squealing now. The bears will hear you.

Autopilot

2007-06-05T14:55:00.001-07:00

If he was listening he could hear the echo of his car as the noise of his engine reverberates off the parked cars along the side of the road. The sound stretches and drops as he passes each consecutive car, like the pushing and pulling of a vacuum cleaner. If he listened carefully enough he could even determine the size of the cars he is passing. The higher and louder the sound, the bigger the car. But he isn’t listening to any of that.
Nor is he thinking about the movement of his hand as he drops it from the steering wheel to shift, as he moves his foot to the clutch, pushing the car in to fourth-gear and timing the release of the clutch with the depression of his other foot on the gas pedal. He is propelled forward, five miles-an-hour over the speed limit. He doesn’t need to look at the speedometer.
He doesn’t notice any of the people on the sidewalk. It is windy and most of the women are concerned with their hair. He passes a large dip in the sidewalk where rainwater has welled up and formed a deep pool. A man with a briefcase and beige slacks steps over the pool and slips, soaking his expensive shoes.
A tall, red headed woman waves to someone across the street. A family with two children walk out of a toy store with two plastic sacks full of new toys. A girl with dyed black hair, and too much mascara adjusts the volume on her ipod in her pocket.
He doesn’t see any of it. He is thinking about that girl at work who gave him her number. Should he call her tonight, or is this too soon?
His consciousness comes back as someone flips up over his hood and smashes into his windshield leaving an indentation in the upper right corner of the glass and an ornate spider web of cracks that spread across his entire field of vision.
Trouble! Shit! Trouble! he thinks.

These thoughts are old

2007-04-25T19:02:00.001-07:00

He’s just walking around the apartment. The bedroom, bathroom, living room, bedroom, living room, bedroom. The living room. He’s waiting for something. Waiting like it’s on fire and it might explode.

Someone walks by outside. Shadows against the wall, or a cloud in front of the sun, a dark blur moving across the striated shadows of the venetian blinds. He walks across the room and turns the crystal stick to close the blinds, and walks back to where he was standing. The room is darker now, lit only by the television he isn‘t watching. From the corner of his eye he can see the foggy, primary colors of the sets of daytime television. The actor’s muddled voices, their lives, someone loved someone, someone died.

“What is he doing?,” an actor says in a monotone voice, as though she‘s reading the line from a book.
“What is he doing,?” he repeats to himself. “What is he doing?”
Something’s about to happen soon.

He walks to the bedroom. He kicks a pile of shirts and they land near his dresser. He will be moving soon. At least he knows where they are.
Packing. What needs to be packed first? The television? Heavy things get packed first, then the lighter stuff. He needs boxes. He needs to get ready.

A loud motorcycle revs up the street, and a horn honks. He walks to the window and looks out at the street. The empty street. He moves his lips, silently forming the sentence “What is he doing?”

He doesn’t know. It isn’t ever clear. He doesn’t ever know.

Monsanto Corporation Public Perception Amelioration Campaign

2007-04-25T18:59:00.001-07:00

Advertisement 2:

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Video: middle aged couple riding bikes on country road.

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Medi-Beef isn’t for everyone, talk to your physician to see if Medi-Beef is right for you.

Video: Pleasant, Elderly Woman#2 laughing, blowing out birthday candles.

Don’t let the hassles and stress caused by taking medication stop the fitter, healthier you. Check your grocery store for Medi-Beef today, and get on with your life.

Monsanto Corporation Public Perception Amelioration Campaign

2007-04-12T01:12:00.000-07:00

Advertisement 1:

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Thanks to the hardworking scientists at Monsanto, there’s a new line of products in the produce isle at you grocery store. Eat them and they’ll make your bowel movements smell delicious!

Take this apple for example (picks up an apple). It looks just like an apple, it tastes just like an apple. But when it passes through your digestive system your movement will smell just like Fresh Lemon! Don’t like the smell of lemons? That’s fine, this new produce comes in all sorts of smells: Grape, Pine, Fresh Lemon, Ham, Coffee, Fecal Matter, and Berry Blast! Imagine that, making your toilet and bathroom smell as fresh and clean as a pine forest, all from eating an apple!

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Just look for the BM-Good seal of approval in your grocery store produce isle.

permafrost.

2007-04-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

They rest on the snow in the clearing. The wall of spruce behind them appear black against the matt gray sky, and hide some light, rendering this open space a single, solid shade of gray. At a glance the heard of elk might be sleeping. Some are huddled up against one another for warmth. Others, isolated, ghost like, seem to shiver. It is only the wind. Ribs that bend downward, out from beneath the fabric of their skins are testament to their deaths. The herd has frozen solid to the ground.

It is a cold winter. So cold the snow is like chalk. At one time it covered the bodies, but blew away in the wind, exposing the herd like fossils. Their hoof prints too, uncovered by the shifting snow, surround them, the only proof of their living. The snow beneath them has turned orange with old blood from their cavities, opened by birds and other starving scavengers.

No birds fly here this day. Too cold for birds. No sounds, save the gusting winds through the spruce. And the loud passing of cars from the highway, barricaded from sight by the wall of black spruce trees.

The heat of the driver's cabs causes condensation to form on their windows. A driver rubs it away with a pair of gloves resting on his passenger seat. He keeps his speed at three to five miles under the posted speed limit, and follows a safe distance behind the vehicle before him. He is driving carefully. The roads are virtually dry, as it has been too cold for too long for ice, but it would be dreadful to blow a tire here, and be forced to step out into the cold to change the spare.

In spring, the bodies will begin to stink.

savannah life

2007-04-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

Consider you are a lion. Consider this bar is the dusty plains of the savannah, and the girl, drunk, next to you, feigning interest, is a young gazelle. Consider the games she will make you play, jumping and juking through the grass, you in pursuit, weaving closely behind. Consider this, she is your prey, and you are starving.

You consider all this because it is what a man wearing blue plaid, standing at the bar with an arm across your shoulders, slurring, told you. His words were difficult to make out over the noise, and becuase he was drunk. But the words, so far as you can tell, were these:
You see that bitch you’re with? You’re a lion, man, and she’s your fucking prey. You’re the motherfucking king of the jungle. So it’s like this, all you have to do is follow her around, and play all her games. I can see what she's doing to you, but you can't act like you give a shit. She's just trying to make you jealous. Alls you do is you just walk up to that bitch over there (he gestures toward a girl on the opposite side of the bar), and put your arms around her, and ask her how she’s doing. It doesn’t even matter if she likes it or not, that’s what you do to show that you can get laid when you want, because you’re the lion and she’s your fucking dinner. Just sink your teeth in man. Just fucking bite.

Consider though, what do lions do when they really like the gazelle? Why should the lion chase if he doesn't want to kill and eat her?

And what if the gazelle walks across the room to spend the night whispering in the ear of another predator? Should the lion perhaps reconsider his role in the food chain?

What does a lion do when it can not find food? And how long can it starve before the vultures spot it, limping across the golden grass far below. Soon they will start their patient, slowly arching circles. Moving down from the sky they will wait. And soon, they too must eat.

Tom Thumb

2007-03-30T20:55:00.001-07:00

The doctors told the parents there were some "problems," but no one told them there was something "wrong" with their baby. That’s the kind of thing a person rarely tells a parent, not only out of self preservation, but because it is very rude, and in this case highly politically incorrect, since the baby was so obviously deformed.

It wasn’t a terribly ugly deformity, as far as deformities go. It wasn‘t as hard to look at as proteus syndrome, or cyclopia, but you didn’t have to look too hard to see something was wrong, even though if you did look, you probably wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off of it...the child I mean. After all, it is extremely strange to see a baby that small; it almost doesn’t even seem possible. I mean Jesus, that baby boy was no bigger than a gerbil.

He was normal in every other way. And maybe you think it would be easy to take care of a tiny, otherwise healthy baby. Trust me, it wasn’t. Of course the parents didn’t need to spend much on food. Diapers don’t come in those sizes so they just used Kleenex, and an eye dropper worked pretty well for nursing. But how do you burp it? What do you use for a pacifier? How do you hear they baby crying in the night? How do you love it?

There are libraries of books about raising babies, but none, I’m afraid about raising babies so small a loose beetle could pose a serious health threat. So it was no surprise when, one day, the baby fell off the kitchen counter, landed on the linoleum and died of complications. His parents had decided to name him Chris. He was four months old at the time of his death.

Everyone agreed (not in front of the parents) that it was probably best. There is no place in this world for a human that small, aside perhaps, from gawker television shows and scientific journals. Just imagine what he would have been like as a man. He would be unable to drive or use a computer. Where would he live? A shoebox? He would never have a girlfriend or a job. Always alone. It would not be a life worth living.

There was a funeral. A normal sized casket and head stone. His parents set about having another child almost immediately.

After the burial, F. Schweinfurth of Duke University pulled some strings and had the body exhumed. The body was placed it in a jar with a formalin solution, and it proved very useful in a study conducted by some of Schweinfurth’s graduate students.

Things It Breathes

2007-02-26T10:32:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-22T15:45:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-10T01:10:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-08T11:49:00.000-08:00

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.

traveling dreams

2006-11-24T15:02:00.000-08:00

last night i dreamt i was on a train moving across a green grassy plain that grew beside a crystal ocean. immense ferns grew along the seaside, shading the beaches with their fronds, but all the scenery was difficult to see, blurred in the motion of the train. my companions around me spoke very little, but stared out their windows enraptured by the scenery. i too stared out the windows until i began to fade away into sleep.

on the train i dreamt i was in a hot and crowded mall, with throbbing music that shook the floor and the walls. there were no windows in the room. The floor was covered with sand, and the walls and ceilings were a thin, fibrous wood. No one in the room was talking, they were all dancing, gyrating their bodies, some fucking hard against the walls in the corners of the room. the smell was of sweat and semen and old cigarettes and salt. a yellowgreen light filled the room.

the train jolted me suddenly awake. the great speed it had been gathering from the many miles of travel across the seaside slowed. everyone on the train leaned forward, straining their seatbelts from the force. i pushed hard against the seat in front of me to keep my body from smashing against it. and as the train lost its speed, more and more, the cycads and the golden beaches and the turquoise waters came into sharper focus, and the train's destination, once too far in the distance to see, came up upon the horizon, its neon lights reflecting red and blue on the light brown haze that filled the air.

and i awoke from the dreams slowly. and when i sat up upon the edge of my bed, blinking the sleep from my eyes, i could not tell if this night’s dreams were actually my reality and if i now continued to sleep.

A Sticking Feeling

2006-10-27T03:41:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I get stuck to things.

I know it’s weird, believe me. I don’t really expect people to even believe me, so I rarely talk about it. When I do tell people, they usually think I mean it in the way it’s meant on those chalky, pastel Valentine’s hearts that say “I’m stuck on you.” I mean it literally though. I really, truly, undeniably do get stuck to things.

Imagine your tongue stuck on a frozen ice tray. It’s kind of like that.

I can feel it whenever it starts to happen. Last week, when I walked out of my apartment I put on my backpack and I immediately felt my skin fuse to the material. I didn’t even have to try to pull it off, I could tell it was stuck. It took well over an hour of concentrated prying to finally get it loose. I’ve had that backpack for eleven years, and it has never done this before. I don’t know, maybe it’s a skin condition.

I can’t just get stuck to anything either. You couldn’t, say, just throw a book at my shoulder and expect it to stick there. I couldn’t just lean up against a parking meter and not be able to move. It’s always something big. Something special.

The problem is usually innocuous, but sometimes it can be so embarrassing. Like this morning. I went to a neighborhood fruit market to pick up some fresh produce. It was all the usual items, apples, pears, a papaya, bananas, an avocado. As I walked toward my street I admired a particularly perfect avocado in my hand. It was smooth and black, and soft enough to leave indentations where my fingers touched its skin. I imagined slicing it. The green and yellow of plant matter, the cool and buttery taste. I thought about it spread across some toast, with cream cheese, some sprouts, and salt and pepper. I opened the plastic bag strapped around my wrist and opened my hand to drop it into the bag, but it didn’t fall. The avocado clung to my palm as though it was glued there. I shook my hand several times and it stayed. I grabbed the avocado with my other hand and began to pull. Not hard enough to damage the beautiful fruit, mind you, but hard enough.

I was standing in the street, shaking my hand violently in a plastic bag, looking intensely frustrated when I looked up and saw Macel. She was watching me. We saw each others’ pupils. She smiled. “What’s wrong?” she asked me. But what could I say? She isn’t a stranger, I see her often on this path, but how do you tell someone that you sometimes stick to things?

“I’m just trying to get something off my hand,” I told her, pulling at the avocado with my hand still inside the bag.

“Can I help?” she asked innocently, walking toward me. There was no avoiding this. She was already looking in the bag.

“I...I...This avocado is stuck to my hand,” I said, and I chuckled a little to show her I wasn’t really angry.

She asked me why it was stuck. Of course. And I looked into her peaceful gaze and told her. I told her all about my problems. Everything from the people who laughed at me in school, to the horrible empty sensation I get when the thing is finally released from my skin.

She laughed softly, and said, “yeah. That happens to me sometimes too.” Her answer rang like church bells in my brain.

She took my hand and rested it in hers. She set another hand on the avocado, pulled it off of my hand, and sat it gently in my plastic bag. “See,” she said, “that wasn’t that hard.” She smiled, and let go of my hand, but my hand didn’t drop back. Our hands were fused together, as fast as Siamese twins.

We’re still stuck together, our hands. We’ve been talking about it all day. And while it isn’t clear to her who is stuck to whom, it is clear to me.

I admit it. I have a sticking problem.

The Intrepid Abel Vanderland

2006-10-27T03:41:00.000-07:00

Abel Vanderland is sailing the seas. He leans on his knee on the bow of the ship, shading his eyes with his hand, searching the blue vastness before him. His brow furrows as wind blows his chestnut locks back across his shoulders. A gust catches his neckerchief and it pops like a whip in the wind. He knows his crew is watching him, he can see them out of the corner of his eye.

Abel Vanderland admires his arms. They are well tanned. His veins cast shadows on his taught forearms. His muscles are thick and well defined. He looks at the arms of the other men. They are puny compared to his. He imagines what his arms would look like if they were connected to their torsos. Their knees would buckle and strain from the sheer weight of his arms. They wouldn’t even be able to lift them off the ground.

As a child he often broke eggs between his thumb and forefinger, the long way. The other boys were all held in amazement, and were jealous of his strength. Abel Vanderland broke so many eggs that by the time he was fifteen years of age his thumb and forefinger were the size of a knockwurst and a bratwurst respectively. He can now crush an empty wine bottle in his vice grip (which he does frequently as a spectacle before his incredulous crew).

But now Abel Vanderland is thinking. He is thinking about what he should name the new island. It doesn’t seem like it should be this hard. It is after all the twohundredandeightysomethingth island he has documented. But this one...this one is different.

Abel Vanderland was the first to note a faint hint of green in the distance. He was the first blue-eyed man to gaze upon that vegetated bough of sand that hung in the vastness of the great Pacific. And it was truly a fruited wonder to behold. Even as the island grew in the horizon, the green hump of that ancient volcano rising up, ever higher, like a green bottle floating upon the waves, Abel Vanderland could feel the intimating radiation pulling at the stern of the Overawe. Leading him, desperate, to its shores.

So before the bosun had hollered ‘ho,’ Abel Vanderland was prepared for what this island held enveloped behind its jade veil of foliage. He would force this island to submit itself, in the name of the Queen.

Thompson’s Island perhaps?, thinks Abel Vanderland. Thompson was a good man, and a good first officer. They had been through so much together, he and Thompson. Through the jungle muck of New Westmark, to the parched sands of Northern Island. Once, in Indonesia Thompson put down a rampaging Javan rhino, just after it had punctured the helmsman through the sternum. It was a comical sight to see the helmsman’s shocked face as he was thrashed about on the beast’s beak, a horn protruding just below his jacket pocket, and Abel Vanderland laughed aloud. But Thompson brought sobriety to the moment. Using his first shot on the helmsman, he put him down civilly, then he cocked and fired another salvo directly into the beast’s brain, dropping it where it stood.

Later the entire crew agreed it was quite a clever shot. And a gentlemanly maneuver too, to maintain the helmsman’s dignity, and end his shameful display in such a fashion. Even Abel Vanderland himself was impressed.

But Thompson had some weaknesses. For one, he let himself be impaled by the head of a native’s poisoned spear tip on this new island. He was therefore the first man to die on the island, and Abel Vanderland was ashamed. Most disgraceful were Thompson’s pleading eyes, which stared up from the blood blackened sand. “I grant your reprisal will be stern my captain,” Thompson had whispered.

Abel Vanderland looked down at the helpless cadaver that was slowly leaking Thompson’s soul. The cadaver began to spasm feebly. “Your failings will be noted in my log,” Abel Vanderland responded. “And yes of course there will be stern reprisals for these simple brutes. They have put a spear through my first man. That means hours of paperwork for me, and a new first mate, which I will have to nominate and train. This all takes hours of time, you see Thompson, hours of time I don‘t have.”

Thompson did not hear this because he was dead.

No, this will never be Thompson’s Island. Besides, he already has a bay named after him. But what to name it? This name must be perfect. This one gravid word must include in it all the glory and honor that suits the Overawe. This single, portentous utterance should subdue the tongues of weaklings, and force them to quiver in fear and awe. This word must be great and greatness together. But what shall it be?

Many men died suppressing the savages on that lonely sand. Thompson’s death inspired an all out war, and the crew was turned to a small inland village. The grass homes were perfect tinder. The simple savages hadn’t even the knowledge to build their homes from the sturdy palm, or channel running water through the encampment for drinking and fire control. The grass huts burnt, and the villagers dropped to the ground in front of the crew’s smoking rifles, with meaty thuds, scarcely putting up a fight.

The crew was quite jovial about dispatching them and made a sort of drinking game of it. Whenever, upon being shot, one of the brutes dropped dead, that was one drink; whenever the brute was wounded without being killed completely, that was two drinks; and if the shot was a miss entirely the crewmate had to skull the bottle and smash it across his teeth.

After less than an hour the village was emptied of its primitive inhabitants, and all the crew was thoroughly intoxicated and relaxed in the razed village, until it was discovered that the devious warriors, the island-men of the tribe returned to the encampment after hearing the gunfire. The warriors, discovering the tottering and guffawing crew of the Overawe hovering above the charred remains of their homes and the carcasses of their families, grew distressed and shot through the necks three men of the Overawe before any had yet drawn their firearms. Only Abel Vanderland reacted. With a shot from his pistol and a hunting dagger thrown, two warriors died. The others scattered, whooping and gibbering, into the bush.

The contemptuous brutes were stealthy and deliberate. They hid in the bush, firing their poisoned arrows at random. But they stood no chance against the well trained and well armed crew. After nearly a full day of fighting the few brown-skinned warriors who remained alive were either captured, or retreated far away, to the slopes of the ancient volcano, the home of their pagan gods.

In all, seven of the crew lay buried in the sand. But the island is claimed. The island’s virginal ground is penetrated by the rigid flag pole, which bares a proudly waving flag. New land for the Empire. The two captured natives sit, broken in the belly of the ship. They will make exemplary specimens for Her Majesty’s collection. And with this island aft, only one thing remains. The name.

Abel Vanderland thinks of the radiant face of his queen. When the tall sails of the Overawe peak above the horizon, and the first sea wife waves her kerchief, there will be parades assembled. They will be waiting for Abel Vanderland, lined up behind the port plank, with the finest wines, and a carriage with a crested driver perched above white horses. The women will sigh as Abel Vanderland steps down the plank. He imagines their sighs giving way to moans.

“It’s so simple!” shouts Abel Vanderland suddenly, and he exclaims aloud, “Queensland! I shall name it Queensland, in the name of her Majesty the Queen!”

His crew watches his exclamation, but can not hear him through the wind and the sea. It appears he is shouting madness at the silvery blue expanse before them. Some of the men imagine he is cursing the natives for what they did to Thompson, some of the men try not to think of anything, lest they disrespect their captain, even in their thoughts.

Abel Vanderland turns from the bow and walks purposefully toward his cabin to write in his journal. The island is a tiny dot on the horizon behind the ship now, an emerald on a sapphire sea. Abel Vanderland is returning home.

Global Worming (or Bell Minor Associated Dieback)

2006-10-27T03:40:00.000-07:00

“Tink, Tink” go the birds in the trees. “Tink, Tink.” It is as if the trees were filled with people clinking spoons against wine glasses. There are no other bird noises in the bush, save the occasional startling crack of the whipbird.

These birds, the bell minors, are farmers. They wake up with the sunrise every morning to begin their toil amongst the treetops, where their crops thrive. They call to one another constantly throughout the day, tinking in the language of tiny iridescent green birds.

This eucalypt grove they occupy serves as their farm. It is filled with delicious psyllids, tiny insects that grow plentiful in the eucalypti’s aromatic resin. They are the bellbird‘s chief source of food. You can see them there at all times, sitting, comfortably full, all along the eucalypt grove, tinking.

Other birds entering the grove will be bombarded, and forced out. In this way the psyllids are raised, protected, and harvested. And as the crop becomes more plentiful, and the birds grow healthier and better able to protect their land, the eucalypt grove quickly dies. Diseased by a pestilence, raised by an intelligent bird.

And as you enter the grove, and the all encompassing noise of their tinking pervades you, you look up at them, resting aloft on their eucalypts. Their green feathers are set apart from the green of the canopy only by their shimmering reflection of the sunlight that illuminates them. And you watch as the sunlight filters downward through the canopy, downward from a pale sky, which grows ever more deathly pale as it slowly fills with carbon.

This is what changes

2006-10-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

Isn’t it funny how one thing can have a completely obvious meaning, but if you change where that one thing happens, its meaning completely changes? Like for example, if a little girl is sleeping in bed, that’s kind of cute. But when that bed is in a hospital, it becomes depressing. Or, if an old man is laughing with his old wife in a restaurant, and you watch them from across the room, it makes you feel good about life. Like, you know you’ll be old someday, but maybe you’ll have a friend like that, and it won’t be so bad to be old. But if that same old man is laughing with his old wife in the alley outside a bar, and he’s alone, you try not to look him in the eyes, and you doubletime it past.

Or, just for instance, if your girlfriend is masturbating alone in her room, that’s pretty sexy. But if she’s doing it in her room while another man is sitting there watching her, it makes you so angry and sad that your soul breaks into a hundred thousand shards of glass that stick into the inside of your rib cage. And when your friend tells you that it happened, you want to hit him in the face because you don’t believe him, and you wonder why the fuck he would ever lie about that. But when he insists that it’s true, because he knows it for an absolute fact, and he thinks you should know what kind of girl you’re in love with, you can’t make any kind of expression on your face. You can’t make any expression, not surprise, or hurt, or even a nonchalant laugh, because if you made any expression at all, you would either start sobbing, or you would go into an unstoppable rage. So the only thing you can do is leave, and drive back to your house, and walk inside, and start punching the furniture. Of course, you aren’t punching the coffee table to break it, you’re punching it to break your fist. And just as you’re about to put your hand through the glass, you realize that ripping a foot long gash that runs from the knuckle of your middle finger, to half-way down your forearm is probably going to hurt, but it could never hurt as horribly or in quite the same way as the tiny shards of glass that are working their way through your guts and into your heart.

But sometimes, just because you change where something happens, it could never change what that thing means to you. Because whether the person you love fucks someone else in Boston, or Australia, or in the eighteenth century, or a hundred years from now, you would still be laying on this paper covered mattress of the emergency room, your blood stained clothes in a biohazard bag in the corner, and a heart full of glass, which no number of stitches will ever sew shut.

Doorframes

2006-09-20T04:42:00.000-07:00

She’s in my room again, leaning against the blue doorframe, trying to get a fix on me with her eyes as though I were miles away out at sea. I can smell the goon she’s been drinking from across the room. It smells like vodka and kool-aid. She always smells like this when she comes over. With a brief hesitation she wobbles her way over my floor, next to me on the bed.

“Whatr you doon?” she says.
“This isn’t the best time for you to be here,” I tell her, “ I’m busy.” She doesn’t notice my get-out-of-here-drunk-bitch face.
“Are you writin?” she asks while watching me type at my desk.
“mmhmm,” I mumble.
“I think that’s sexy. I think you’re sexy.” She tells me in a baby voice.
It’s a voice she’s recently adopted around me. She thinks I think it’s cute.
“Whatr you doon?” she asks again, watching me type.
“I’m really busy right now actua...”
“hehehe,” she giggles like a baby and raises her arms over her head like a ballet dancer in a drunken pirouette, falling onto my back. She kisses my neck.
“Do you want to have sex with me?” she asks.
I turn, look deeply into her eyes and tell her “No.”
She stares back for a moment. “Good. That’s good,” she says, falling onto her back.
I continue writing.

I know she’s not sleeping, but she thinks she’s fooled me. She’s even snoring. Every now and then she moans. I continue writing at my desk. When she leaves she slams the door.

She is stumbling out through the living room, out the door, into the dark, and down the sidewalk that winds across the apartments, eventually finding her way to the apartment next to mine. She opens the door and leans against his doorframe. He welcomes her into his bed. She begins to cry.

“What’s wrong?” he will ask her, mustering his most sympathetic voice.
And she will tell him.
She will tell him that tonight, while she slept, I crept into her room, slid open the door and closed it ever so quietly behind me. I slowly tip-toed to her bedside, slipping the sheets down over her body, and lifting her shirt. I raped her tonight she will tell him. I raped her even though she trusted me.

He won’t believe her. No one ever believes her. But he will accept her writhing body for the evening, and tomorrow or the next night she will be back, leaning against my doorframe, staring at me deeply, with fearful and desperate eyes.

Aussie Journal

2006-08-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

Since I haven't been writing anything fit to post on the kitten, I thought I would post a few things that are thouroughly unfit. The following are exerpts from my travel journal.

Rainforest night 19.08.06
The rushing rainwater that carves this narrow creek channel deeper and deeper each rainy season is gone. Water is scarce this season. It pools in small, muddy pockets, dripping and trickling its way from pool to pool, filling up one and spilling into the next, making the occasional audible tinkle of running water as it leaks its way slowly down the hill to the river. The red ochre of the clay walls leading up from the creek bed to the eucalypt forest above is invisible through the darkness of the bush. Not even stars break the canopy.

Bluegreen lights of glowworms, indistinguishable from the light of stars but for their colour, pulse in their tiny pockets in the clay walls. Their tiny filaments, like sticky and translucent, beaded necklaces hang from the ceilings of their pinhole caverns, ready to adhere to any of the nearly microscopic insects that flap their way through the nights, navigating by starlight.

The chirping of bat’s high frequency pulsations mix with the incessant whine of insects, calling to each other across the creek. “Here I am,” they say. Or, “Stay away,” or “come and give me your DNA.” The insect noise is broken only by the water, and interludes of shrieking nocturnal mammals.

The mild smell of fungus wafts from the spongy gum wood that rests across the creek. It fills the air with the spore of rot, and life, and a brief reminder that it will be a cool night like this in which you too will decay.

Life is a haiku 24.07.06
The fruit bats were waking up as the sun dropped behind orange and purple clouds. They shuffled and flapped in the trees, awaiting darkness. A large flock of parrots sang in a tree near the beach, mixing their calls with the mammalian screams of the bats. The sound was not loud, but was all encompassing, as though a ten thousand piece orchestra was warming up in the sand. The only noise to be heard through the nearly tangible wall of sound were the waves breaking on the black, igneous outcropping that leaned and weathered over the beach.

A few ofJuly’s cold rain clouds passed through nearly an hour before, leaving behind a mist that refracted pale rainbows over the mountains across Byron Bay. Dark purple pillars of rain were visible many kilometers in the distance, forming a pillow for the sun to rest upon. And as the sun continued to sink, its final rays shone through the waves, illuminating them, making them turquoise, and so transparent the shapes of other waves were visible behind them. The liquid hills peeled away softly across the sandy bottom, breaking two or three times before reaching the end of the bay. I paddled into a wave, stood, and slipped quickly down its glassy surface.

As I lay, paddling out again, a gray fin slid through a wave rolling toward me. At first I thought it was a shark, but as I looked I could see a pod of nearly ten dolphins all around me. They bobbed their heads up, close enough to touch, and looked at me, talking to one another, before they left the bay in search of more delicious fish.

I sat on the surface of the water as the waves rolled beneath me, and I turned, and stood, and rode away, and tried to make up a poem about it, and couldn‘t.

Listening

2006-07-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

She is crying so hard she has stopped making any noise. What was an earsplitting whine only moments before is now a panting whisper. But it will start again. The crying always comes in waves.

Her sobbing forces a stream of saliva that has welled up in her mouth to rush out, sending a long, silvery filament down her chin, and on to her lap. When she lifts her head to smear the tears from her cheek, the strand of saliva attaches to her knuckle, and bows upward. Light from the window sparkles through it like dew on a spider web. Her hand is shiny with tears when she drops it back to her lap.

“I don’t know why...why this is hap...happening,” she gurgles. “He didn’t even give it a chan...” And thus she resumes her bellowing.

Of course I can’t tell her it’s her fault David left her. I can’t tell her that she was overbearing and selfish. I can’t tell her that the only problems in their 32 year marriage were her own. I can’t tell her that the reason David spent three thousand dollars, and two years learning Spanish, in order to move to South America, and away from her, is because she is unbearable as a person, and totally unable to take into consideration the needs of another human being. I can’t tell her the truth because she is paying me to listen. If I did, she would fire me and simply go to another therapist.

Five minutes ago, when this session began, she told me that she had started heating up towels in the dryer, and when she went to bed she would set them on the empty space next to her, where she would curl up, crying, and hold them as though they were her missing husband.

I should charge double for this shit.

These final sessions of the day are always the hardest, but this one is an absolute basket case, and I don’t know if I’m more disgusted by her blubbering, or by the comforting things I am about to say to her. But I will comfort her. I will make her tears stop, and she will tell her friends and coworkers how nice it is to have a therapist, who will “just listen.” And for this I will be paid. But for once it would be good to be honest.

Waving Goodbye

2006-07-12T17:56:00.000-07:00

As the line shuffled, shoeless toward the airport metal detector, my parents and ten-year-old cousin waved to me in unison from the non-passenger waiting area. I waved back and smiled. Slowly the line moved, and as I neared the detector I turned again toward the waiting area. My parent’s began to wave, and I waved back.

After a short wait I passed through the metal detecting arch uneventfully, and as I waited for my carry-on bag, and other possibly threatening objects to coast down the slide from the x-ray machine, I looked back toward my family, who were watching me intently. As my eyes met theirs they waved and smiled. I waved too, and smiled.

When I had tied my laces and strapped my carry-on firmly around my shoulders, I walked toward the escalator that would carry me up to the terminals. As I ascended I glanced over my shoulder, and smiled at my family whose hands were still moving side to side, as though polishing imaginary glass.

Liars

2006-05-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

She was watching him cautiously. She took a long drink, tilting the bottle up, and when she dropped it down again he was on his way to the vacant stool next to her.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m Dan.”
She smiled. “I’m Jill.”
“You’re done with your drink,” he said looking at the nearly empty bottle, “you want another one?”
“mmhmm”, she said.
He didn’t hear her answer over the bar noise, but he asked the bartender for two more of the same.

“You’re here by yourself?” he asked.
She smiled.
“What do you do Dan?”
He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts.
“I’ve pretty much been all over the place the last couple years,” he said exuberantly. “I’m from around here, but I just got back from Indonesia. I’ve been doing the English teaching thing, you know? Since I got out of school I’ve just been traveling and teaching English. It’s crazy how much other countries want Americans, you know? I mean, they’re like just begging people to come to their country and teach them our language. It’s like super important to them for economic reasons and everything.”
She nodded vigorously.
“So I was in Bali teaching and I went to Japan—to Nagasaki, for like a year, teaching and everything, and before that I was in Italy. It was like really crazy traveling around like that, you know? But they really want people to teach English like everywhere you go, so there are always jobs everywhere.”
She nodded again.
“Yeah, so I just got back last week. I’m from around here, but I haven’t been back in like four years. Or right around there.”

He didn’t recognize her, but she recognized him. She’d seen him at the bars regularly for the last two years and remembered him vividly. Two years earlier, at her great uncle’s funeral she saw him pushing a lawn mower. She had always wondered who mowed grass at graveyards.

“What do you do?” he asked her.
“I’m a nurse,” she said.

He woke up disoriented. She moaned faintly and rolled over, and he decided to leave without waking her. He found his pants and shoes next to the bed, but didn’t see his shirt. When he found it, it was laying on her Applebee’s uniform.

He closed the back door gingerly behind him, and reminded himself never to eat there.

Scrappin' Scrapbookers

2006-04-19T12:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a news story I wrote for the paper today. It's weird and vaguely funny, so I thought it would fit the theme of the Kitten.

Scrapbook club secedes, rivalry ensues

Last year the Whitewater Room in the Idaho Commons was full of scrapbookers on the second Tuesday night of every month. They came from all over campus to this quiet haven, where the sound of scissors, Scotch tape and laughter filled the room.

Those were the glory days for the University of Idaho Scrapbook Club.

Now two scrapbookers remain, pasting their photos onto colored paper in silence.

It began after a dispute between the presidents. The club maintained a relaxed atmosphere, allowing scrapbookers a time, venue and free materials and creating a haven for them to preserve their memories. However, Heidi Hallman, co-president, envisioned something different.

Hallman wanted to introduce scrapbooking lessons to the meetings. The lessons, she said, could be provided by local craft store instructors for a nominal fee, allowing people who weren’t experienced in the scrapbooking arts the chance to refine their skills and learn new techniques.

Co-president Carla Houghton, who has since graduated, disagreed, arguing that the club should stay the course.

“When it got to the politics of scrap booking (Houghton) didn’t want an agenda, just meetings. I wanted it to include classes and study. She disagreed, and she didn’t want to compromise, so I told her she could keep her club,” Hallman says.

In November 2005 Hallman seceded, forming the Scrap N’Crop club after her vision.

Raechel Bianchetti and Teva Palmer are now the only members of the Scrapbook Club.

Palmer is more than willing to show off her latest work, which documents her spring break visit to Mexico. Within a small, bound journal, mementoes and photographs are artfully pasted, and each page has pullouts and envelopes to open.

“I like (scrapbooks) best when they’re interactive,” she says. “It’s more fun than just looking through a photo album.”

The best part about scrapbooking, says Bianchetti, is that it’s relaxing, and “you can’t lose your pictures.”

Although the two admit they’re lonely, they don’t blame the existence of the Scrap N’Crop club for the loss of their members.

“There are a lot of closet scrapbookers out there,” Palmer says. Both guess there are enough for two clubs.

The two say last year’s in-club fighting frightened off the majority of their members, making the once-serene environment no longer conducive to their art. Bianchetti and Palmer agree that although they do not have any ill will toward the Scrap N’Crop Club, there is a perceived enmity.

“We keep hearing rumors about (the rivalry),” Palmer says. “It would be really awkward going to one of their meetings.”

Things may be looking up for the Scrapbook Club. After a booth was set up at Vandal Friday, the club received nearly 30 names of potential members for next year. And Palmer says the number of people who sign up for the club is usually the same number that attend.

The Scrap N’Crop Club doesn’t need to wait for new members. Hallman has networked and advertised bringing in students, neighbors, parents and children. The club membership is at 10 and rising, she says.

Hallman charges the club’s didactic approach for its success.

“My club is all about improving skills and practicing. Like, once in a while we’ll have a lesson, or an all night scrapbooking party where we just scrapbook all night,” Hallman says.

Hallman doesn’t express remorse for possibly taking members from the Scrapbook Club. She says if Scrap N’Crop is the better scrapbook club, it’s the one that people should attend.

“I don’t even know anybody in (the Scrapbook Club) anymore,” she says, “but they’re welcome to come to mine.”
**30**

Celebrity Kid's Books

2006-04-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

The boss is really riding me this week, and I think I’m starting to crack.

After I got in from lunch he stormed into my office, red faced and stinking like the coffee muck he swills all day. He was talking before he even rounded the corner.

The kids ah gettin’ wise to these plot devices. He said. They’re sharp Al, they ain’t buying none of dis daeus ex machina bullshit any moah. The lone woodsman used to be able to strut right into gramma’s house and save Goldilocks, but it ain’t gonna fly anymore pal, sorry, but it just ain’t gonna fly.

He was referring, of course, to my most famous work, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. As far as children’s stories go, it was pretty well received, and right after its publication my career really took off. Everybody wanted a piece of the action from the guy that wrote Goldilocks. Including, Evan, my boss.

Listen Al, ‘cause I’m tellin’ ya, you gotta work on fleshin’ out dese characters. You useda be able to get away wid Humpty Dumpty fallin’ off a wall and shit and not explainin’ nutin’, but dat was the past guy. Now dese kids hear the word “Dumpty” and they think you’re taking a crap. They just aren’t taking you seriously anymore Al. It ain’t your fault, and I’m sorry, but dat’s just how the cards got played.

I should’ve worked for Doubleday.

So I’m breathing some life into this Humpty fellow like Evan wants. But writing childrens stories is harder than you’d think. Especially nowadays that everyone is writing a children’s story. I mean how can I compete with the likes of Madonna’s The English Roses, and Katie Couric’s The Blue Ribbon Day? I can’t. But I’m retooling Humpty nonetheless, just like Evan wants.

First of all I’m taking more of a bare-bones approach, kind of like Leno did in If Roast Beef Could Fly. And I’ve dropped the rhyme scheme all together. Couplets are great if you’re a retard, but if these kids can read Jamie Lee Curtis’ It’s Hard to be Five whenever they want, so why would they ever pick up a nursery rhyme?

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men are getting scrapped too. We all know these kids don’t want to hear about feudalism. They’re getting raised on books for the everyman, like Jerry Seinfeld’s Halloween, or Ricky Gervais’ Flanimals. The kings and queens should be saved for history lectures.

So, all I have now is Humpty, a broken shell of a man, balanced on the edge of a wall and the edge of his sanity.

Does he jump? Of course he jumps. But the question remains, what thoughts drove Humpty to break his body against the gum stained sidewalk? What words hang like a whisper on his lips, as his last breath slips from his mouth, and his yellow life-yolk seeps from his shattered, chitin shell?

Truthfully? I don’t know, god damn it fucking hell, I don’t know.

This story will be the ruin of me. I can already taste my failure. But despite it all, the kids will keep on coming. They’ll keep on coming with their biting judgements and their voracious appetites for literature, and with their parents, eagerly following behind them with bulging pockets, ready like a cowboy at a quickdraw to buy anything their young ones want. And I will be there to watch it all, impotent to serve them.

But perhaps…perhaps Will Smith’s new Just the Two of us will satiate them in ways I never could…perhaps.

The Herbal Remedies

2006-04-06T15:21:00.000-07:00

You want some drugs you say? Well, I think I can help you out.

I can’t provide you with any of those clumsy designer drugs you kids are taking nowadays. Those are illegal and unhealthy. No, no, you wouldn’t ever want to smoke marijuana or “the chronic” as you call it, and the cocaine is very bad for the humours.

No, what you want are my all-natural, herbal remedies. They will take the edge off of your consciousness without disturbing your health in any way. Come in to my office, I’ll show you.

See this jar full of powder? I know what you’re thinking and no that isn't mustard powder. No my friend, that’s not nearly as delectable as mustard. It’s actually ground parrot beak, and it tastes as bitter as the bile, but if you mix it with honey it goes down smooth.

Believe it or not parrots’ beaks contain many feel-good properties you kids normally associate with your drugs, but parrot beaks are very good for your bones, making them strong and healthy. When you ingest the beak, almost immediately waves of euphoria wash over your body. You feel as though you could pick your feet off the ground, flap your arms and fly away. You have all the sensations of a parrot: you hunger for small fruits and nuts, you communicate by nasal squawks, and bright colors will make you want to mate. But I warn you, do not drive after ingesting parrot beak for at least two hours. The wheels, buttons and pedals will confuse and anger you, ruining the affect.

Next on the shelf is one of my personal favorites. It might look like a flower to you, but it’s actually a tiny society of sea creatures that are, as of yet, unknown to modern science. I call them rose crabs. And believe me, I don't use the word society disingenuously. They are endemic to the warm waters of Southern Bali, and they build elaborate, flower shaped sand castles to live in. All you have to do is sprinkle them in your hair and sit back. You see, these tiny little creatures will burrow through your scalp and into your brain.

I see you cringing, but don’t worry, they’re not parasites, and in fact, they are actually quite good for you.

After they crawl into your scalp they will find the small pores in your skull then pass through them. When they enter your brain you will feel a tingling sensation all over your body for about three to five minutes, this will be followed by a mild euphoria which will eventually transition into a sensation that I can only describe as “neurologically unctuous.”

You see, these tiny creatures make you very, very smart for a very short time. When they enter your brain you will understand things even the most brilliant of humans could not possibly comprehend. You will see time and space and the universe as a tiny filament. All of the knowledge of learned men will be the dancing of bees and all of the sciences will be insignificant.

Unfortunately, the affects of the rose crabs last only about five minutes. They will become bored with your tiny cerebrum and will exit your scalp to return to their chrysanthemum castles. Even worse, you won’t be able to remember or fathom anything that you understood mere minutes before.

Don’t bother writing anything down when the rose crabs control your brain either. When you return to your nominal state you will see that you have filled volumes, indeed, often tomes, but they will be meaningless to you. As meaningless as the rantings of a mad man. I have spend many years racking my brain over those esoteric ramblings.

And moving on, here I have…Could you repeat that, I'm hard of hearing? You want to see what’s in the cabinet? I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, that remedy is far too potent for most people to withstand. You insist you say? Well alright, I suppose I can show you. But know this, the affects of this remedy are garnered simply by gazing upon it. It is the most potent of all the known herbal remedies. It is said this drug is responsible for the dominion of humans over the other animals. It is responsible for all society, all culture, all knowledge and technology. The inventiveness of mankind is due to this drug.

But, then again, it may have no affect on you whatsoever.

Before I open the door heed this warning, men have been ruined by looking at what you are about to see. They have been driven mad simply from the sight of it.

Knowing this, do you still want to see it? All right then, you shall.

Wondering what Margot's doing

2006-03-27T23:39:00.000-08:00

Whenever I close my eyes and think about certain people I imagine certain, really specific shapes. It’s kind of hard to explain, but when I think about my dad I can sort of see a triangle, and when I think about my mom I see a 3D rectangle. My asshole boss, Craig, is a star. Not the kind of star, like in a pentagram, but the kind of star you see when you look at a street light at night and squint your eyes. I don’t know what that shape is called, but its like a circle with a lot of long spikes sticking out of it. When I think about Margot I see something like an elongated oval, kind of the shape of a hot dog.

I told her about that last night after we had sex. She laughed at me and said “David, you're so fucked up.” It made me mad, but I didn’t say anything until today when she told me that my car was a piece of shit and she thought it might break down soon. It was a really shitty thing to say so I called her a stupid fucking bitch, and said some other stuff just to make her mad for last night. She left right after that, and she hasn't called me tonight.

Now, every time I close my eyes, instead of thinking about a hotdog shaped oval I think about her having sex with Craig.

Begging for drug money

2006-03-27T20:57:00.000-08:00

In 2002 I was on Burnside in Portland at two in the morning. I was high and by myself. I was waiting for a bus for my hotel outside a bar. A guy wearing dirty camos and holding a dog tied to the end of a rope was standing there with a girl. She had two black triangles tattooed on her forehead. They walked up next to me, and after a minute the girl said “I’ll give you anything I have for a dollar.”

The first thing I thought was “I wonder if they’d give me their dog…”

I gave them a dollar and they left.

Snakes of the tired host

2006-03-20T01:58:00.000-08:00

Of course there was some confusion at first. It was a very confusing situation. When he told her that the snakes were over staying their welcome, she replied that “those boys sound like terrible guests.” Even after he explained the situation she clearly didn't understand.

The problem, he guessed, is that too often people use vermin to describe certain personalities. Over energetic people are likened to monkies and people who chat too much are like hens. One may be graced with the gentleness of a deer and a rat is known as a stoolie pigeon. So he understood her difficulty grasping that he had a half dozen real, living snakes now residing in his home.

Of course he had enjoyed their presence when they first arrived unannounced. When he found the first one he was sitting on the toilet reading Business Week, relaxing before work. It had been watching him for several minutes before he noticed it. He huffed in shock at the sight of it, but the snake calmed him with its clever words. He found that this snake in particular had a special way with its speech. It could elicit almost any reaction or emotion with its well placed phrases and perfect timing. With a flick of its tongue it could make him burst out in laughter, and with a nod and a pause he might weep uncontrollably. So when it invited several of its friends later that evening he welcomed them expectantly.

When the snakes wanted dinner they would ask for small eggs or rodents to feed upon. But they rarely ate. Usually they were content to laze about on the sofa watching the busy street beyond his window, or playing with the color knobs on his television. They didn’t care much for watching the television, which he was thankful for, because the noise would have kept him up at night. And he appreciated their presence. He was lonely with his girlfriend gone for the week, and he didn’t have any other friends in the city. They provided him with all the company he needed. At first.

But their skins began to pile up and their company grew more and more burdensome. Time and time again he was forced to pick dried mouse guts off his carpet or flick scales off his butter. They left the refrigerator wide open and always kept the heater running. Their words that he once found so invigorating, so enlivening, became painfully tiresome. They repeated the same stories over and over and his ears began to ring with their hiss.

He tried to be a polite host and merely hint that they might be getting tired of staying in one place too long and maybe they could find a more suitable home elsewhere. But they never took the hints. So he told them one night that they needed to leave. They paused, looking at him with their solid eyes, flicking their tongues, and resumed their chatter as though he had not said a word. He repeated his plea, which became an order when they did not respond. Angrily he grabbed a stray snake that lay wrapped around his coasters on the coffee table. It immediately produced its fangs and threatened to sink them into his arm if he did not set it down in an instant. He complied.

Indeed, no amount of bargaining or pleading would convince the snakes to leave. They were content to stay, and planned to make his home their own.

It took several hours of explaining before she understood the story. By that time the man had resorted to pantomime and picture drawing. He had acted the story out for her. But when she looked around the room and saw nothing she asked him where the snakes were. It happened that at that very moment they had left the apartment to buy a grocery bag full of crickets for a midnight snack, but it appeared to her that he was lying, so she left, crying. And all that was left of her in the room was a hair-tie that she dropped on the floor near the foot of the sofa and the smell of her breath. Like skittles and warm milk. And him, with the shed skin of a snake stuck to his shoe and a coiled bruise wrapped around the trunk of his leg.

The smell of rotten hair

2006-03-18T20:35:00.000-08:00

This is a reminder to refer to dreadlocks as "poop strings."

In the Basement

2006-03-18T14:17:00.000-08:00

Jen is impossible. I tried to make everything perfect for her visit this evening, but nothing is ever good enough for her. I washed the dishes, I vacuumed the rugs, I even swept, but as soon as she walked in the door she commented on the smell. Yes, okay, my house smells like onions, got it, but she didn’t stop there. The rugs all have stains, the walls are smudged and when she saw the fish tank, she threatened to clean it herself.

I thought dinner would put her in a decent mood. Guess again. Apparently macaroni and cheese is good enough for most of the people in this country, but it’s not good enough for Jen. When I brought out my nice ceramic bowl full of hot, delicious macaroni and melted cheese she gave me this horrible look, the kind of expression you’d give someone if they pulled their bottom lip up over their head, not someone who just made you dinner. She just looked at me all confused and said, “Where’s the salad?”

Well by the time dinner was over I was just about sick and tired of her complaints, so I just came right out and told her what I thought. I said that if I’m not good enough for her, then maybe she should quit coming over. Anyway, she’s the one that wanted to start dating me, not the other way around.

I told her that I had bought her some flowers. She didn’t say anything, and when I brought them out she was crying. She told me I was right and she didn’t want to come over any more, and she didn’t like the way I get when I’m angry, and I’ve been getting angry a lot lately and I’m really starting to scare her. Well, that was just about the last straw. After all I did for her today she has the nerve to break up with me. So I kicked her right the hell out of my house. She left so fast she forgot her purse, which I threw at her car as she backed out of the driveway.

Needless to say I was pretty upset, so I went down to the basement and got David out of his cell. He’s been down there for a while, and to be honest, I kind of forgot about him. Being with Jen made me pretty happy, and I was hoping that David would just disappear. But he didn’t disappear. When I opened his cell he cringed at me the way people cringe when they’re bending a stick that’s about to break.

I told him I was going to let him go and he shivered some and quietly thanked me. His shivering made me sick. So I went upstairs and got the metal bar that I was going to use on Jen and I took out all my anger and frustration on the back of his head.

What women really want: 101 easy-to-understand tips on seducing the opposite sex

2006-02-27T16:31:00.000-08:00

Many people have asked me over the course of my life “Ethan, my man, how is it that you always have these beautiful woman all over you? I mean, I’m an intelligent, reasonably attractive man, why don’t I always have supermodels begging to go home with me?" And I have to admit, at first I didn’t want to answer them. There are a limited number of perfect tens out there and I don’t want other guys horning in on my action. But I’ve recently had a change of heart. I understand that while attracting beautiful women is important, money is more so. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of money, but one thing I’m going to teach you in my easy-to-understand series, is that you can never have enough money (and this is especially true while seducing women).

Now a lot of you might think that $49.99 is a lot for a book. Right? Wrong! First of all, I wouldn’t make anyone pay money for a book. What are you in college? No, I have recorded my entire lesson plan onto seven single, easy-to-understand cassette tapes or three CDs. Second, I’m going to teach you how to attract any woman you want whenever you want. I’m going to teach you how you can go out at three o’clock in the morning wearing sweat pants and flip flops and go to an up-scale restaurant and still walk out with a perfect ten. That’s information that I’m sure you’re willing to pay a mere $49.99 for right? Yes, it is.

Did you know that you can have unprotected sex with as many women as you want without ever worrying about STDs or an unwanted pregnancy using a banana peel and a warm glass of water? Well I will teach you how in my inexpensive, easy-to-understand series. This is an offer that you don’t want to miss!

Here are some of the things you will learn in my series:

* You know that pheromones are important for attracting women. Well I’ll give you a pheromone recipe (that works) that you can make by simply mixing crushed ladybugs and grass clippings and applying them to the “hot zones” on your body.
* Body language is the most important thing you can say. I’ll teach you how to seduce a women from across the room using only three of your fingers and a gesture you’ll never forget.
* You think that showering using regular, old-fashioned water is going to help you? No, it won't.
* Remember when you were in second grade and the girls had “cooties?” You'll learn how to use that to your advantage.
* You think a name like “Allan,” or “Sam” is going to get you laid? Absolutely not. I’ll teach you how to pick a new name for yourself that will get you laid by a new woman every night of the week. You think I was born Ethan? No way.

This is an exclusive one time offer, a chance of a lifetime that you will never have again. If you don’t buy my series immediately you will never know what it’s like to have sex with 450 women at the same time. So buy now!

Starlets in the Sky: A Teen Singer's Weblog Entry

2006-02-25T14:59:00.000-08:00

First of all, let me just say that I am an artist. No matter what anybody says, I know that I can create more beauty in a single notebook full of lyrics than they can in their whole pathetic lives. They judge me, and tell me I’m untalented, but that’s just because they don’t have any talent. Naomi wouldn’t even know what talent was if it bit her right on her untalented ass. Nobody realizes that it hurts me when they say those really terrible things about me. Even though I’m really talented at music and I’m famous and really well liked, I’m still a person, and I have feelings.

Second of all, I am either going to the Halloween party as: A.) sexy devil; B.) Cher; or C.) sexy kitty. Personally, I’d like to go as the sexy devil but I don’t think daddy’s going to let me. When I told him about my plans he wasn’t happy. He said it might project a negative image, and that the costume showed too much skin, and that I should show some skin but just not in that area. He told me I can only expose skin in the area around the midriff, not the upper thighs. Daddy has done a lot of research on the subject and he says that since most of my fans are teens, and most of my albums are purchased for them by their parents, projecting an image of sluttyness would alienate a lot of the parents and my record sales would go down. He said I should go as Cher and then Ferras could go as Sonny Bono and that would be more camera-friendly. He said that he didn’t doubt for a second that it would get our pictures at least in Celebrity Star, if not on the cover of Teen Beat, or Fresh Squad. Even though that doesn't really matter now.

Just in case you’ve been living in a hole this year, I was just in the hottest reality TV show ever, where I went on all these dates with ten different boys and then got to choose which one I wanted to marry at the end of it. They competed against each other for me by singing and doing various jobs, like producing a record and managing a band, to prove that they would be able to provide for me as a husband. The show was called Who’ll Marry Meegan, and it got some of the best ratings NBC has ever had for any reality TV show. It was second best only to Fish Out Of Water, which I think is a really stupid show.

As soon as I saw Ferras singing though, I knew that I would choose him. He sang “Love Me, Love Me Truly” by Cole Star. Most of the boys did a really good job, but Ferras was totally the best. Half way through, in that part when the song goes:
When you look at me
Baby I can see myself in your eyes
When you call to me
I can hear the sound of surprise
The feeling’s so strong
I know it’s not wrong
Baby you’re mine forever
Ferras looked at me, and gave me this half smile. It was so sexy. I knew, right then and there, that Ferras was going to be mine. It was love at first sight for both of us. When he looked into my eyes as he sang that song, our love was as deep as the ocean. It could never be broken. I hadn’t even talked to him yet, but I could feel our love welling up in my throat, like a beautiful song, just welling up inside of me, ready to burst out of my mouth. My heart was beating so hard that I could feel it in my finger tips and my face must have been so red!

As you already know I had this really bad case of strep throat, that caused me to have to lip synch to a pre recorded track on that stupid Ted Spritz Show last month. It was really horrible, because as soon as I went out on stage the song started skipping and people started booing and I just turned around and ran off stage.

Most people are really nice and understanding, but there are also a lot of serious jerks. The next day the magazines all had headlines like “Meegan Vanilli?” Dealing with that has been so hard to cope with, you don’t even know. People have gone so far as to make websites all about how they think I don’t have any talent, when they are the ones who don’t have talent. You know how people say that you need to “walk a mile in someone’s shoes unless you be judged?” Well they wouldn’t even fit in my shoes.

But the main thing is that this should have brought me and Ferras closer together. He should have been understanding about all this and comforted me, but instead he said that as an artist he would never lip synch, and he also said he doesn’t even believe that I ever had strep throat. I seriously can’t even believe what a jerk he’s being.

So, the Ted Spritz Show was like three weeks ago and I’ve pretty much spent that time in bed. I was so depressed that even after I felt better, I just stayed in bed. Ferras only visited me like twice and only after I called him and told him to get his ass over because his girl is sick.

And, when I finally got out of bed and got a chance to read Teen Beat I couldn’t believe my eyes. There, right on the cover, was a picture of Ferras and Naomi together with this headline that said like, “Meegan is Streped of Her Man,” or something. Naomi is a total no-talent skank, who doesn’t even deserve to be on the cover of any magazine, let alone on Teen Beat with Ferras.

So then here’s the other thing, and this just happened like fifteen minutes ago when I called Ferras to tell him that I totally know everything that’s going on with him and Naomi and he’s not fooling anyone because it’s right there in pictures. Right after I told him that, he goes into this thing about how he was under contract to date me. He actually said that. Under contract! He said Daddy made him sign a contract to date me and sing on my next album and that his ‘obligations’ to me would end as soon as my next record was released, but he said didn’t care because I’m just sitting in bed all the time and not working on any songs or anything and he’s going to break the contract. I hung up the phone on him and I’ve been crying ever since. I don’t know why he would lie to me about this, he is seriously such a total jerk.

But you know what? I don’t even care. I’m going to sit down and start writing my next album right now. I am going to pick up my guitar and write a record that will touch the hearts of millions of people just like me, because I have been given the power to touch people with my art. I am going to sit down right now and write songs that will make Ferras realize that he left me for a no-talent bitch. I will write songs that will make Naomi so sorry for what she did to me that she will go into her room and lock the door and stay in there forever. I have the natural talent and the drive to change the world with my music, and I am going to use it, and I am going to make sure that all the love and the praise of this entire world rains down directly on me.

Breaking up with a Moscow coffee shop

2006-02-24T00:42:00.000-08:00

Listen Bucer’s, we need to talk. This has been escalating for a few months now, and I think we need to get all the cards out on the table once and for all. I’m sure you’ve noticed the signs. We don’t talk, we don’t see each other much any more, we’ve been slowly drifting apart. I think it’s finally time to say goodbye.

No, no listen, it isn’t you Bucer’s, if it’s anybody it’s me. It was really amazing at first, we were totally into the same things. You like good music and books and you’ve got quite a collection of art. It’s great that you serve alcohol, and you know you’ve got some of the best coffee drinks I’ve ever had. It’s just that…well to be perfectly honest I’ve met someone else.

Yes, I know you know who it is, don’t be like that. One World will never replace you. I’m not replacing you. It’s just that One World offers me all the things I want in a café right now. You both have wireless and you’re both great places to study and read, but I never really got along with your patrons or your staff. It’s not like I don’t like them, because I do, I just can’t really talk to them. We don’t connect. They’re all classical music composition majors and Christians and they're really hard for me to relate to. I can’t say I didn’t try. I went out with them a couple times, I even karaoked with them, but you know how they are. They’re kind of pretentious. And I liked that at first. But One World is just so fresh and new. They have an awesome sense of fashion, the people that work there like to talk to me and their live bands aren’t always jazz. I like Vivaldi just as much as you do, but it’s not the only thing I listen to. Plus they actually sell their art.

I’m sorry. That was mean. But listen, you know this wouldn’t last forever. I’m just not your type. I’m too young, too brash. And look at you, you’re perfect for a college town. It’s not like you won’t find someone else. I’m sure you’ll find a brilliant literature professor who listens to Charles Ives and wears tweed and scarves, and you’ll be much better off. Yeah, I feel bad too. I’ll miss you Bucer’s, but really, this is for the best. Really.

wink, nod, fart, belch

2006-02-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

If Date Movie made you laugh, chances are I don't care for you as a person.

dispatches from a lit class

2006-02-23T21:23:00.000-08:00

I spent the better part of the evening learning CSS and making this template. This shit exausts me. But at least I'll never have to use that knowledge again. I set this up to post the writing I'm doing for my classes right now and I'll probably write other stuff and post that on here too. The posts I've done for my classes are pretty long, so I think I'll break them up with some shorter ones, but for the time being there are these. And for the next 13 days they're 30% off.

The Smell of Success

2006-02-23T19:56:00.000-08:00

The odor that saturates the room is as captivating as it is repugnant. It is an intoxicating stew of smells, that has, over the course of several months, crept through the quarter-inch high gap between the bottom of my door and the carpet. It is the smell of moldering chicken bones, fetid milk, sawdust and body odor. You can almost see the smell in my apartment.

The “trash pit,” as it has been christened, resembles a scaled model of a landfill sitting next to our refrigerator. And while it no doubt harbors small and unique forms of life, and is almost certainly the leading cause of the hacking coughs that echo through the rooms late at night, the pit never diminishes, it only grows. When asked why no one has taken the trash to the dumpsters located less than one hundred yards from the room, my roommates reply “I’m busy with school,” or “throwing it out won’t really solve the problem…will it?”

The garbage was taken out just shy of two months ago as part of a joint cleaning project between all of the roommates. It was spurred on following an anomalous incident involving a human female, who briefly visited the room. All of us, embarrassed by her obvious disgust, vowed to “never let this happen again.” And for a short time the apartment was well organized and smelled of cooking spices a la scented candles. We no longer walked quickly, with bated breath, from the hallway to our rooms. The room was a locus for discussions, late night study sessions and OC parties. However, one afternoon I noticed, as I tossed an empty pizza pocket wrapper toward the garbage, that “the pit” had once again been resurrected.

While the apartment retains little of its former glory, we have continued using the common room as a popular hang-out. My roommate stands up from the couch stretching. Two bean shaped, butt-cheek spots mark the couch, documenting his five-and-a-half hour gaming session. “Dude, this semester is gonna be gay with aids,” he says, “I’ve got soo much shit to do.” He emits a loud, contagious yawn and sits again.

Much like the inside of a shoe, the damp, dark conditions of a couch, moistened by pant sweat, are prime habitat for bacteria. Tiny life thrives in our couch like a microcosmic Times Square. I imagine the bacteria, hosting soirees, sipping drinks and commenting on the growing obesity epidemic.

You can’t simply Febreze this away.

And, as I sit looking at the television with my roommate as he casually thumbs the controller, I begin to wonder if cleaning this really is beyond me. Because really, I know that when it does finally escalate to the critical point of cleaning, I will simply sit on the couch, look at the television and blame the whole mess on my gender.

The Fast Food Life

2006-02-23T19:53:00.000-08:00

The bars are closed for the night, and this is where the party has gone. I can hear the deep bouncing rumble of the bass being pumped from the stereo in the car ahead of me vibrating some of the loose change on my dashboard. One of our noisy neighbors leans out of their car window yelling at the other cars in the line. Suddenly a beer can appears in his hand and he throws it. The orange street light glints in the liquid spewing from the can as it spirals in its trajectory through the parking lot. Our neighbor laughs and pulls his head back into his vehicle. If the cops knew about the Jack in the Box drive through at two in the morning they would never leave. Luckily they don’t know. I’m hungry and this line is long enough.
I’ve been coming here for years. Not to this line, but lines just like it that exist on the fast food strip of every town in America. These burger box shaped buildings have arisen seemingly by their own will from the asphalt wreckage of some sad lot that used to house a family store or an undeveloped park. Swings hung from trees here. People went on walks with their loved ones and happy, leashed pets. Now there is only this pallid building, full of pockmarked twenty-somethings who have been forced by fate or drug addictions to work the late shift. These small but speedy food services are the same everywhere. Only 16 states in the union have Jack in the Boxes, but every town in the developed world knows precisely what their food experience is like. There’s something about fast food that makes you feel like you can never leave.
We slowly move toward the colored screen as the song changes in the car ahead of us. I’m thinking about the bacon potato wedges I’m about to consume, a delightful mélange of potato shards floating in an orange, gelatinous cheese like substance, melted fat and bacon all nestled in a cardboard box that inexplicably reads “everything.” It’s a dish that, while sober I would avoid like a face full of debilitating acne, but after a few beers it becomes the driving force behind my very existence. I will cradle it in my lap, and eat it, and hurt, terribly tomorrow.

Maybe it’s the Pabst or the slow line, but something is conjuring some memories. I used to think about Sally a lot, but years have passed and I’ve all but forgotten her until tonight. I met Sally while working in a plastics factory that was charged with the manufacture of the disembodied yellow sheaths of automatic external defibrillators for some nameless medical company. The workplace was a large warehouse filled with old machines, loud noises and a redolence that can be described only as meth-like. Sally was a sixty two year old expatriate of Laos. She had lived in the United States for over 20 years but still had a great difficulty with the English language, which had oddly manifested itself as an intense joy. She laughed and grinned constantly. Her problem understanding people was perhaps due in part to the fact that after arriving on US soil, she began working at the factory where even the loudest shout was as audible as a whisper. In the mornings she shoved balls of cotton in her ears, further exacerbating the situation. She was about a foot shorter than me, probably four foot seven, and had a conspicuous mole above her top lip that sprouted several long strands of hair. Her hands were well worn and looked painful. During her breaks she would run them under warm water and sigh. Her teeth were perfectly uniform and white, leading me to suspect dentures at first, though I confirmed later that they were, in fact, her own perfect teeth. Sally and I became workplace friends immediately.
Throughout my life I have frequently found myself in non-sexual, mutual friendships with much older women. These relationships are satisfying, partly because they provide such a great deal of confusion among bystanders, but mostly because I am perpetually confused by and terrified of women, and these much older ones seem to hold all the secrets of their gender in one small wrinkled package. Sally laughed at almost everything I said, and though I knew I would likely elicit the same response if I quoted Ginsberg or the Necronomicon, it felt like she was listening, so I continued. “That funny,” she would say, “that reawy funny.”
The two of us ate lunch together every day and scheduled our “days on” together. She would request the machine near mine and throughout the day she would throw pieces of plastic at me, like a pestering child, as a joke.
Sally had come to the states after marrying her husband, a military officer that met her, married her and brought her to Idaho. Despite the fact that she began working at the factory the same year I was born she hadn’t made any friends there. She described her life as “work and sleep,” and she told me that she hadn’t done anything other than watch television in her off time in about 17 years. She stated it as a simple fact, not as a complaint, but as I am thoroughly American I have a great passion for my leisure time, and this struck me as being particularly depressing. I asked her what she liked to do, she said “bowing.” When I asked her if she would like to go bowling with me, she was excited. We picked out at time and place. Tonight, Sunset Bowling ally, eight o’clock. She never showed up.
The next day Sally avoided me. At lunch she ate in her car. When her shift was up she promptly left the building before I could say goodbye. The following day I walked up to her machine and greeted her. She didn’t say anything at first, and I mentioned that I was having lunch at noon if she wanted to join me. She hesitated, wringing her bony hands together. “I’m mawied,” she said, looking down. “That’s okay,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow?”
After that it was all pleasantries, “hi,” “bye,” but that was the extent of it. I was laid off in December, just before Christmas. When I left on my last day I caught a glance of her watching me through the window. She watched me with the face of an old dog through the chain link fence at the pound.

The woman who hands me the potato wedges through the square sliding window is over excited and nearly shouts “Have a good night!” The potato wedges are worth it. They’re salty and saturated with cheese, precisely what I knew I’d be getting. It’s nothing new, but it doesn’t matter because I’m used to it. The line, the taste, the sights and the smells, they’re all familiar. And even though I know that it isn’t, I like to think that’s a good thing.