You crave punishment. You don’t go so far as to sit on top of the railroad tracks, but you hold your hand out, waiting for the honking train to rush by and break it.
You crave rejection. You seek out men who will banish you and women whose hearts you will break and you succumb to the sweetness of the chase even long after the black t-shirted back is out of sight. They have run on ahead without a thought to you struggling for breath, jogging in heels you despise, mouth smeared with redness from hurried, forceful kisses.
You crave a world of goodness, where people peer into one another’s minds and consider the feelings and emotions of others. You write them, and you destroy them, because perfect people are boring. You give them flaws and bruises and illicit desires and you kill them, mutilate them, smash them into tiny closet corners and down mine-shafts and into irretrievable peril. You are like a child tearing the heads of dolls because she cannot look as pretty as them. You are like a songbird, rising every morning to chirp at the sun with absolute faith that it will rise. But in your world, the sun does not rise, has not risen since your own glow was snuffed out. You keep chirping, pill beneath your trilling tongue, and you hope.
You crave order that is chaotic and chaos that is orderly. You crave the paradox to make sense: for the boy to kill his time-traveling grandfather and still live, for Achilles to beat the tortoise while the tortoise triumphs. When asked if you are this or that, you want to simply answer YES.
short story
For a Generation to Come
For a generation to come, this will be a town in motion. Mothers giving birth in hospital beds will be wheeled down the hall with doctors running backwards in front of them, heads between their legs, in order to accommodate the shift. Children in playgrounds will find their slides more entertaining than ever, as the ground shakes beneath them on the way down. Teachers in schools will have to take a couple paces every time they want to write on the board, as it drifts a few inches while they explain to the class the value of X. Cafe owners will take out special insurance so that they will be covered if a patron complains about spilled coffee falling into their laps unexpectedly as the construction continues.
Turtles will not notice the change. They will stretch their legs out and pull their tails in and go to sleep in one place and wake up in another and will not be aware that their pace has changed perceptibly. Birds will be confused and the rate of ducks flying headfirst into buildings is expected to rise.
Analysts predict that war will be untenable should it break out, and have suggested that the mayor call for a state of neutrality for the coming generation, to be broken when the babies of tomorrow reach their thirtieth birthday and are old enough to hate and condemn. Opinions, analysts agree, are not valid before aspirations and delusions are shattered. They believe this is a policy more townships should adopt.
Dreams are said to be on the move already. Complaints have been phoned in from all around town of people having the nightmares of their wives, their children in the next room, their neighbors on the next block. Whether or not this problem will persist is, as yet, unknown.
Pillar of Salt
A lamplight of approval blushed up her cheeks, bringing out the radiance she had only imagined in the shower, as the stinging hot droplets of water pinged off her oily skin. Eliza, the letters told her, you are going places. Eliza, the phone calls told her, you are successful. Eliza, Eliza, Eliza: you are beloved.
She believed it, but she didn’t feel it. Her hands and her voice changed gradually with the confidence allowed by such an assumption of power and will. It took some practice to flick the switch that released synapses allowing behaviors she hadn’t known were in her. She ket the electric currents flow through her, unabashed, doing what electrons are supposed to do, magnetically surrounding her with an appeal that called out to others. I am desired, her eyes signaled.
Her hands and her voice became smooth, the callouses chipping away one layer of skin at a time as her confidence grew and the need for such constant participation in her craft waned. The buzz around her rose in tone and deepened in pitch and became a hum, a melody of impossibility. Eliza flourished.
She still didn’t feel it. It happened to her, around her, an envelope marked with a resounding YES. Still she stood in the eye of the storm that was her durable success. She was a pillar of crumbling salt, and she was certain that sooner or later, the chips would be noticed and people would realize she was not the sugared candy they thought she was.
The Veteran
The local paper interviewed his parents. A reporter with a deep chocolaty voice and kind eyes came to their house and sat down right in the living room and asked them questions about him. She asked how it felt taking care of him. How they handled the commitment to him. She spared no detail, poking her pen into everything, from the way they’d dealt with him being in a coma to how long it took before they could stop changing his diapers because he’d managed to get to the bathroom on his own for the first time.
“It wasn’t even a question,” his mother said.
“Paul was always our first concern,” his father said.
In his room, bedridden, Paul listened. He had asked them not to let the reporter lady see him because he was tired and wanted to sleep. If they can lie, so can I, he thought, listening to the words seeping through the walls.
When the reporter left, his parents spoke softly and hugged one another. “We’ll get through this,” his mother said. “We’ll get him back on his feet in no time,” his father said. When they came in to check on him, Paul pretended to be asleep. He’d gotten to be even better at it since waking up from his coma. It was a skill he’d always had. His friends in service always made fun of him for sleeping so much – by military standards, of course. But he wasn’t a big sleeper at all. He’d never needed much of it. If he hadn’t had such disdain for anything that sounded even a little bit spiritual, he would have said that he was into meditating. He remembered long, sleepless nights when he was a teenager and obsessing over a girl. He’d lie there, hand still sticky, completely still but for the involuntary fluttering eyelids and muscle twitches that characterize slumber. When he bounced out of bed in the morning, his parents never suspected he hadn’t slept a wink.
Of course it was a question, Paul thought as his mother shut the door and his parents went off to do whatever it was they did on Sunday afternoons. He was basically an adult now, twenty-four, and he knew that parents weren’t perfect. He refused to believe that his mother hadn’t wondered what it would be like to have him recuperate at some rehab center for vets like him. She must have thought about everything she would lose from her life, keeping him at home and caring for him around the clock. She didn’t go to her chess club anymore, and he hadn’t heard of her meeting a friend out for coffee since before he’d gotten half his head blown off. He didn’t think his dad could have been so blase about the whole thing either. Paul knew about the woodworking shop his father had begun to assemble in the unused half of the garage, and he knew that the shelves and the chairs and the tables his father had planned on building would never come to fruition.
They’d also told the reporter that helping Paul achieve independence was what they wanted most in the world, because they knew he wanted to be a useful member of society. His muscles convulsed and he clenched his fists, practicing the movements his physical therapist wanted him to do. He wanted to tell his parents that they were sweet idiots. He didn’t want to be a useful member of society. He didn’t want anything. He wanted to have been left on the battlefield to bleed to death so that he wouldn’t have to ruin his parents’ retirement plans. They’d planned to learn how to take naps. They’d planned to take a cruise to Alaska. They’d planned so many things that didn’t involve him.
His only motivation for getting better was giving that back to them and getting the hell out of their life. The only society he wanted to be useful to was theirs, the society of two people, by removing himself as the third wheel.
In the Green Room
This is what they were thinking about as the crowd streamed in through the double doors to the auditorium and created a ruckus that could only be drunk:
They were thinking first and foremost about their bodies. They were thinking of their protruding stomachs or the skin peeking out from under shorts. They were thinking about the comparison the roused audience would no doubt begin to make. They were thinking they should have gone on a diet. They were thinking they were hungry. They were thinking about the cookie in their bag that would find its way to their mouths in seconds.
They were thinking about the end of the night. Which would be morning. They were thinking about the star charts they would fail to fill out because the night would be keeping them indoors, entertaining dozens of people with their feet up on the chairs in front of them and the smell of cigarettes lingering on their clothes and hair.
They were thinking about the impossibility of this endeavor, its endlessness and incomprehensiveness. Why were they here? Who thought they could do this? Who did they think they were? They were thinking about the panic accumulating in their bowels and the crunching of air through their throat and into their lungs. They were certain it was made of glass and scratching every bit of the way down. They were almost sure they were bleeding internally.
They were thinking about the boys whose hearts had been broken and about their own hearts breaking. They were thinking about the text they hadn’t received, the little plus signs they were slowly adding to the ‘against’ column that was outweighing the ‘for’. They were thinking about their love for their friends and the comfort they could take in the vividness of their lives outside the realm of their cellphone screens.
They were thinking about their parents and how proud or disappointed they would be if they were here.
They were thinking about love, because they always think about it one way or another.
They were thinking about life and death because these are matters of great importance.
They were thinking they would be on stage soon.
They stopped thinking. They moved. They felt. They reacted.
It Was Warm and Cold and Round and Square
I found a mystery on the beach today, half-buried in the sand. There were plenty of people around. Sunbathing, building sand-castles, running in and out of the sea. When they ran in, they were usually dry. When they ran back out, they were always wet. The water was cold that day. No one stayed in for very long. I didn’t wear my bathing suit. I was just in shorts and a t-shirt with the name of the company I work for inscribed on it. They give me free things like that sometimes. Once I got a big duffle bag. I use it to carry my laundry down. Some people say that’s free advertising. I say it’s a free bag.
I stepped right on the mystery at first. I was barefoot. My shoes were with the blanket I’d spread out on the sand. I didn’t want to take my shoes off at first. But the blanket kept flapping up in the wind and I needed something to weight it down with. So I took my shoes off. They were the kind you can wear without socks. So I was both shoeless and sockless. Completely barefooted. Once, feet were considered erotic. I guess they still are for some people, if you can believe what you read in the tabloids.
My foot still has a mark on it. The mystery was sharp. I jumped away from it and yelled a little yell. It hurt. Nobody was watching, though. Everyone was too involved in what a nice day it was. That’s probably why no one found the mystery before I did. Even though my foot was stinging, I got down on my knees to look closer at the thing that hurt me.
It was round and square and triangular. I pulled it out of the sand. It was pretty small. It was heavy and light. It was clear and opaque. It sang a little tune when I shook it. It rattled. It was the most ordinary and mysterious thing I’d ever seen. I guess that’s why they call it a mystery.
I took it home. I wrapped it in the blanket first. My neighbors would never let it stay on this street if they saw it. We’re a no-pets zone. Nobody wants dog poop on their lawn. I don’t have a lawn. I have a rock garden. It’s very relaxing. I use a rake and make shapes in the sand. Then I walk on all the zigzags and see my shoe-prints. I wear different shoes every day so that I won’t get bored. I have almost thirty pairs. That’s just enough.
Orange February
A slice of orange floated in Kera’s beer. She had made the mistake of dunking it into the drink with a straw until it was shredded. Perhaps it is more correct to say, then, that a slice of orange peel was floating in Kera’s beer. The pits had sunk to the bottom and were turning a nauseating vomit color.
Kera wished she could vomit. But she had no gag reflex to speak of, and hadn’t thrown up since her twelfth birthday. Exactly six years.
Her birthdays were not lucky. Nor were they pleasurable. They were blank, days of off-white skies and damp chilly breezes. The curse of February in the air.
The bartender leaned over and patted a customer on the cheek while Kera stared. The interaction was more interesting to her than the continued bobbing of the orange peel in her drink. The straw she had used was in her mouth, chewed flat, folded, and chewed again in its reduced-in-size state. The customer whose cheek was patted jerked his head up and banged his fists on the bar. The bartender laughed.
They seemed to know one another. Everyone in the bar seemed to represent a cult of daytime drinking that Kera longed to be part of. It was her third month drinking while the sun was still up, and even if it was hidden by the clouds at this point in time, the more important fact to note was that it was also hidden by the walls of the bar. In other words, Kera felt she had made a big step by not drinking on her rooftop, alone.
Forty-Two, With Kids
[Disclaimer: I don’t know what’s up with the formatting of this piece. Apologies. I’m not managing to fix it.]
Turn over. Get up. Get out.
Turn over a new leaf. Get up in the morning. Get out of your house.
Do this, do that, be here and there and everywhere. Eyes on the prize. Reach for the stars. Fulfill your dreams.
The usual existential teenage angst. No one tells you that it stays in your head until you’re forty-two and have two kids. But it’s not like those cheap movie antics, where your hero looks in the mirror one day and realizes that he’s wasted his life. That’s not how it happens. No, our hero (in this case it’s me, but it could be anyone in my position) is aware every single day of his life of the simultaneously fast and slow progression of things.
How can things be both slow and fast? In case you’re one of those remarkable people who hasn’t noticed the strange tricks time plays on you as you age, I’ll just point to one activity that I can guarantee works this way in 97% of the cases. Sex. When you’re having sex – assuming you’re not looking at the clock, and if you are, you’re probably not having as much fun as you should be – you can experience seconds as minutes and minutes as seconds and everything gets jumbled up, especially in those final moments, when you feel yourself tightening in and shooting out and flexing and curling in all at the same time.
Not that I have much sex anymore, but that’s how I remember it, and it’s not something you forget.
My children sharpened me. They made me smarter. But that doesn’t prevent me from wanting to cuff them on the back of the head some days. Or telling them they should shut the hell up because I want to relax. This is the sort of thing I think about, and feel guilty over, and repress.
Repression isn’t supposed to be healthy. Maybe that’s why my stomach hurts all the time.
It only occurred to me this morning that I was having a midlife crisis. Not in that apparently fun and conventional way. I don’t have the money to buy a big car to compensate for things I might need to compensate for. I’m not attractive enough to go out and have affairs with younger people. My midlife crisis involved sitting with my kids and watching recordings of TV shows I watched when I was a kid but that have been updated to modern times.
You wouldn’t believe Sesame Street if you tried to watch it today.
Then again, when I found some clips of Sesame Street from the 80s, I couldn’t believe it either. Trippy stuff. Catering to parents on acid and kids who didn’t suffer from epilepsy.
I have a buddy, a correctional officer, meaning a prison guard, who tells me about the kids in his unit. He keeps joking with my boys, telling them he’ll see them at work one day. I don’t think it’s really funny. I want to punch him a lot of the time. Since he doesn’t have kids, I wonder if maybe he really doesn’t get it. If he’s that dumb. He could be.
Part of my midlife crisis is realizing how little patience I have for people. I don’t read anymore. I look at headlines on my cellphone. And I roll my eyes and I know that everything is still screwed up and that the color of everyone’s crap is pretty much the same.
Come to think of it, I wonder whether doctors have started comparing the color of stool samples from contemporary and past patients? They just found some preserved popcorn from Ancient Egypt a while ago. What about some preserved feces? I bet the color changes over time. I bet we’re way grosser today than we were. Although with all the vegans and healthy eaters out there, maybe on average we’re better than we once were.
I think it’s my boys’ fault that I think about this stuff. They’re in that stage where they find everything about the toilet hilarious.
I remember when I was a teenager, I had the consolation that I would be cool one day. I knew it, in my core. In my bones. I was right, too. But now… I’m not sure if I’ll be a good old person. I think I may just be crotchety. Gruff. I’m already saying things like “back when I was a kid.” I’d rather stay in this midlife crisis if it means I don’t turn into that kind of person, who tells kids off for talking too loudly on public transportation. But I’m pretty sure that I have no way of stopping time and going backwards.
Anatomy of Tea
It is the fake kind. Not black, not even green. Herbal. Fake. She is a tea snob, and though I am not, her definitions have sunk into me, etched into my skin. The current skin. If the past is any indication, it’ll flake off eventually. Before too long.
She tells me that she just wants to be friends. She and her boyfriend are looking for a third party, if the spinning rumor mill wheel is to be believed. Why don’t they pick me? What’s wrong with me?
When we watch the sky together on the roof, she tells me she can’t see any stars. They’re everywhere, I tell her, and she says she can’t see them. I look at her, and her eyes are shut. This is the kind of shit she does.
The teacup in my hand is only cardboard. White, with a brown sleeve, it gave under the hot water and I thought it was going to collapse into my hand and burn me. But it held up in the end, sturdier than it looks. She always says she’s not vulnerable, that she doesn’t get hurt so easily. She says her eyes just get wet sometimes, that she hasn’t cried in years, that I’m projecting.
Maybe I’m projecting. Maybe I didn’t grow a new skin last time.
Photo credit: Lars Kristian Flem
Ginger and lemon taste like nothing else in the world. Nothing tastes like anything else, though, so I’m not sure why that’s supposed to be a compliment. When I told her she tasted like herself, unique, she rolled her eyes at me and I could tell she’d been hoping for me to come up with something less cliche, less used up. I tried to tell her how I felt, though, and she couldn’t stand to hear it. What else was I supposed to do, then? Cliches are a great trampoline to fall onto, they make you bounce up again.
The man with the gray hair who’s always hanging around her is just a friend, she says. But this is where her boyfriend and I agree: she should stop having friends who sell her cocaine for the price of a blowjob. I’m not sure who I want to punch more, the dealer or her boyfriend. Maybe they’ll take each other out for me, leave the field clear.
The night she touched my skin without prompting on my part wasn’t delirious. It was pretty underwhelming, in the end. Maybe that’s because I was expecting more than a drunk bear hug. She’s not so attractive when she’s sloppy. I guess I’m more shallow than I thought I was.
My skin is itching. I break out in hives every time someone says hashtag in order to emphasize their commentary on the world. It’s cold. Hashtag. She’s such a bitch. Hashtag. Love you, babes. Hashtag.
Hotels are really depressing when you’re there alone. Nothing is complementary anymore. The minibar is an invitation to expensive sinning, but even the water and coffee have little price marks on them. You don’t get anything for free, she always tells me this, but I never listen. It’s funny, though, because I don’t have faith in people either. I guess I have faith in corporations.
Corporations are people too. Her parents raised her conservative. She explains how she can believe in bad economic practices and in women’s right to choose not to have abortions, and I wonder how we haven’t stopped talking yet. I don’t take this kind of shit from anyone. I don’t think I can be friends with her.
I don’t want to be friends with her.
I never wanted to be, though. Some things you don’t really get a choice in.
When her boyfriend dumps her, she comes over to my house and asks if I have tea. I tell her I do, regular tea, Lipton. She picks up the back of a chair and slams it down. She yells at me that Lipton isn’t real tea. Haven’t I learned anything? She says I’m useless and leaves. I see her already pulling her cellphone out of her back pocket. She’ll call the grey haired man and end up in a skeezy motel with him.
I have another business trip to make. She still hasn’t called me back.
My suits are getting wrinkled. I need to pack better. I need to get a new skin. I need to get some new taste buds. I need to learn to discriminate in my tea choices. Maybe I should be a colonist, a racist, find somewhere new where tea is conquered. Then she’ll really like me.
Writing Prompt #3
Okay, the prompt was: You have two characters, A and B, who have never met before. They are in a crowded space (a bar, a bus, a subway, a concert – whatever you like!) and A has bumped into B by accident. What happens next?
“Excuse me, sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing? I bumped into you.”
“Uh-”
“Seriously, think about it. What’s wrong with your life that you feel the need to apologize to strangers who knock into you?”
“…”
“Like what, are you a terrible person or something? Do you just need to apologize for everything? Do you murder little kids? Do you torture adorable kittens? Do your parents wish they’d never had you? What?”
“I’m actually going somewhere, I gotta-”
“You gotta listen to me is what you gotta do. You handed me your will the second you thought it was your fault that I bumped into you. So now stand there and listen to me, fool. Just wait right where you are and get to wherever you’re going late, and hate me. Hate me a little more every second.”
“…”
“What are you gonna do, huh? Are you going to push me? Go ahead, push me. Get me out of your way. Achieve bullyhood. Just do it. Who knows what’ll happen. Maybe it’ll feel good, ever thought of that? Maybe it feels awesome to just get someone out of your way. Why do you think I do it? Why do you think I shove people away? Think I’m just rushing? What if I don’t have anywhere to go? What if it’s just the best way to get around?”
“It’s rude.”
“It speaks! The mouse opened its little mouth. Want to yell at me? Tell me off? Come on, let’s see if you can actually muster up the energy and the vocabulary to do it.”
“…”
“Blushing really isn’t as endearing as people make it out to be. You look stupid, red and flushed like a balloon. This has been fun, but I really should get going, but you know what? We should do this again sometime.”
Slightly Ignorant 