Response to a found photo
Billy was the cutest boy in town. Everybody knew it, and the people who claimed otherwise knew it as well as anyone; they just kept it to themselves. There was no denying it — that head like an oversized marshmallow, the perfectly formed toes dangling off his feet like just ripe niblets of corn. His parents had just bought him a sailor outfit for his big day, and now Billy walked among the assembled friends and family members — their hands outstretched and their eyes aglow — like a miniature Moses. One half-expected some middle-aged housewife, shamed by the progeny she could have, should have birthed, to fall to her knees, weeping, as Billy passed by. Each teetering step brought a new round of applause as Billy made his way to his spot at the front of the parade. By the time he had reached the corner of Elm Street and Market, dozens more had arrived and begun screaming his name. "Billy! Billy!" they yelled, little droplets of spittle flying off their lips and sizzling on the hot sidewalk before Billy's feet. "Billy! Billy! We want Billy!" they cheered. One girl, her hair in pigtails and her dress fashionably short, hiked up her skirt even further as Billy approached her. "Billy! Billy, have my babies!" she shrieked to him, surely awash in the adolescent glow of a new supply of hormones.
5 March 2010
Response to "Autopsy helps ID man's body. Dental records Tuesday helped officials identify the remains of a Kansas man found Saturday near the Boone County Jail, but the cause of his death was still undetermined."
The body — well, what was left of it — was big. Not comically big or obese or fat, even; there didn't seem to be a lot of weight on the frame beyond what seemed necessary. It was just big. The shoulders were broad, the legs thick, the chest like a barrel; the officers in Deer Springs couldn't recall ever seeing a man in town who looked quite like him. Of course, it was hard to say with the top half of his head blown clean off.
They had hauled the body from the creek — it took four of them just to get him up —to the police station first, not having had much experience with apparent murder victims before. Once there, they realized there wasn't much for them to do, no real substantial evidence to collect, no fingerprints to examine like in the cop dramas they had grown up watching, so they picked him up again — all four of them — and brought him to the county hospital, where they dropped him off at the entrance and promptly left for a round of coffees to close out a day's work.
Of course, the hospital orderlies had to get this man down to the morgue — and without causing a panic — so a couple rounded up a wheeled stretcher and a sheet to place over the man while the others began tugging at his feet and armpits, trying to pull him up off the ground. That didn't work — they weren't as strong as the cops —so they left the sheet on top of the man and went in search of help.
14 March 2010
Response to "What non-human animal is the most successfully adapted to its surroundings?"
One might suspect the vertian chameleon of Madagascar, which can instantly mimic the precise shade of green of any surrounding foliage, or, at first glance, perhaps the great lepidote skink of the American Southwest, perfectly suited to burrowing deep into the earth to protect itself from the brutal heat of the day and the chills of the night. One might even, upon further reflection, consider the midnight angler, a fish black as the inner depths of an undiscovered cave, which prowls the depths of ocean ravines, lurking in the shadows, for its prey.
But the answer, of course, should come as no surprise to any who has ever come up against one — your common, run-of-the-mill billy goat.
For the billy goat, as we all know, has an intestinal fortitude unlike any other in the animal kingdom. Place a billy goat in a forest, he'll be feasting on ferns. Take him to the desert, and a prickly pear will soon be navigating its way down his esophagus. A mountain? Well, it won't be long before he's sampling the local algae offerings (with or without a side of rocks). And leave him in a city, and he'll no doubt be in line at the nearest hot dog stand, perhaps nipping at belt loops and dangling threads for a snack in the meantime.
The strength of the billy goat's evolution, then, is his obstinance, his stubborn refusal to yield to nature's desire to wipe him from the Earth. The billy goat does not adapt, or, at least, not in the way the word typically denotes. The world adapts for him.
19 February 2010
"A closely observed description of a common gesture or physical action"
I walked into the room through the back door, removed my jacket and gloves, and had a seat on a stool at the bar, swiveling to survey my domain. Across the room, in a booth tucked clumsily - almost as an afterthought - in the corner sat a woman delicately puffing on a thin cigarette. Her posture was relaxed, leaning back against the maroon booth, and her hand was tossed carelessly in the air. She must have felt my eyes upon her, for slowly - painfully slowly - she turned her shoulders toward me and re-crossed her legs, raising the right miles above the left and letting it hang momentarily in the air before easing it down on her other thigh. Her face remained pointed at the wall, but the fringe of her dark green skirt waved hello. I made my way across the room.
27 August 2009
Memphis Exorcism
I can feel myself falling, falling down. I sit at the edge of the bed, my gaze fixed upward, up at this ceiling. The air is warm, warm and thick, and my eyes have to burrow through to reach the top.
Yes, it’s thick, too thick, an almost tangible coat of velvet pressed against me on all sides. Thick and warm. It rises up, this heat, rises from the bed beneath and the floor below, rises from some unknown spring at my feet. I’m soaked in it; I can feel it all around me, swathing me in bushy cotton. My eyes remain turned up.
The room is small, taller than it is wide, an absurd dimension giving it an uncomfortable feel as if drowning. Some would call it cozy; I would say I’m sinking, buried alive even, trapped in this forsaken sarcophagus my family calls a room. If I extend my arm outward, my fingers just graze the neighboring bed. No one sleeps there, so I don’t feel bad reaching out and petting the gentle ridges that line the blanket’s surface. It’s too narrow; this room is too tall and narrow.
I lie out, lie out on this bed with my feet dangling over the edge. The sheets are bunched below me, still thrown about by the previous night’s sleep. I make no effort to smooth them out, just keep looking up, up at the ceiling.
The light emits a dull radiance, sallow, soft. It all drifts down, landing on each item in the room with a damp thud. The opened suitcase at the foot of the bed, the dirty clothes strewn across the floor, my book – Notes from Underground – are all yellowed in the dirty light. It’s a hospital light, that’s what it is, sickly and fading. These sheets, once clean and white, look yellow, too. It’s a sick man’s light, beaming down on this tiny settlement on a lake outside Memphis. A vacation, my parents told me. A family vacation.
Noises drift in from the other room. They remain faint, even the occasional staccato bursts of an unknown movie next-door substantially subdued. I catch snippets of conversations – the call of my grandmother, my father’s muffled speech, Ed’s slow drawl – but can’t make out any of the context. It all covers a low whirring in the walls, a subtle noise, one easily missed. Perhaps it is no sound at all, but energy, real energy whizzing about – not something heard at all, but felt, picked up in those delicate bones of the inner ear. When I close the door, there’s silence but not complete. That energy remains, breaking up the monotony, the boredom of silence. But it’s silence all the same.
I sink down in the bed, and my eyes involuntarily turn up again as my head hits the pillow. I try to close them, but this is no relief. It’s early yet, only 10:32, and my body will have no sleep. The corner of the ceiling is occupied by a small smoke detector, every few seconds winking at me, bright green. The rest of the rough white surface is the territory of five intersecting lines. They’re flat, raised only slightly off the ceiling itself, and the same color. They meet at three-way intersections, odd junctures randomly scattered, giving the impression of a forgotten Mondrian creation, a life-sized canvas un-colored and left behind.
I raise myself to leave the room but am stopped by these arresting pockmarks that litter the front wall. Three make out the first corners of a rectangle, small and perfectly drilled wells; the fourth is of a different nature, altogether deformed, so that at a distance – that is, while standing against the opposite wall – it takes the appearance of a moth, flattened and with wings splayed out at each side. Closer inspection of the door yields an additional hole, just at eye level, an irregular shape undefined by the parameters of traditional geometry. It appears to run almost the entire thickness of the door, stopping just short of the atmosphere outside the room. The natural wood color pokes out from the white paint along the hole’s edges. I try to look through and see nothing but a black spot.
I change my mind and sit back down on the bed, turning on the dusty lamp beside me. The base is bronze, or at least has an appearance as such. A vertical shaft gives way to two opposing bulbs, each covered by an old-fashioned orange-ish shade that matches the beds’ blankets. I turn the knob at the bottom, and the far light turns off. I click through again, the far light coming on again; I click one more time. It turns off once more. The one nearest me must be burnt out.
I stretch out, my sock-clad feet once again hanging over the bed’s distant precipice. It’s all temporary: this temporary bed, these temporary sheets, even that temporary coat hanger on the wall across from me, this temporary life for a temporary weekend. It’s all fleeting, gone in another day, gone after tonight when I’ll drive back to St. Louis with my family. The temporary comforter grazes my shin, and I sit back up again.
Back to St. Louis – five more hours, miles and miles ticking off the odometer and no farther away from this temporary life. My father will push down his foot, drive down the sagging pedal, and the miles will tick by faster, outpacing the minutes flying off the clock. This still brings me no closer. I’ll still be sitting on these temporary sheets, watching the endless expanse of a momentary farm pass by out my tinted window.
It’s a repetition of moments, this life. Acres and acres of unknown towns speeding by outside, the muddy socks on the floor, the sick light above – I’ve lived this all before and will live it again, a dozen times, a hundred. Nabokov said of Luzhin that all the moments in his life were moves in a combination, a pattern that traced itself out over and over again. I take solace in that, that damning thought, that my life will play itself out before me again and again, over and over like Luzhin’s. For when I was born, this moment here was with me, and now this one, too, this one and the next and the like. And when I die, for I most certainly will, still these moments, those moments just now, still they will be with me and ever after.
Sometimes, I can feel myself dead. I’m lying there, passed, and I can feel death work its way through me. It isn’t cold, it isn’t depressing; it’s just there, a feeling, felt and unfelt, tracing its way along each appendage. All time lies behind me and all time before, and I can see it, I can see all that time. It’s not a literal sight, of course, I can’t watch it and replay, I can’t zero in on any one moment as a Tralfamadorian surely can. But that time is with me, all time, staying within my breast for the repeat.
I look back, over all these experiences and memories that make up what I am, and I look forward, all this time yet to come, me a year into college and unable to see through this murky water. It’s there, it’s there with me, all this time, as real a feeling as the mosquito bite that tickles my calf.
Often when I cut my fingernails, I inadvertently clip one nail too short. There is no telling beforehand which ill-fated nail it will be – though it is frequently the one accompanying my right index finger – but from the moment it is wronged, I know it. Lightning shoots up through my bones, bolts of sharp pain, infinitely precise. At this point, there is not much to do but finish the job on the other fingers and wait.
The healing takes days, a number that varies but generally hovers near three. In the meantime, I find myself pushing down on the end of the afflicted digit, pulling more lightning out of that cursed wound. It is an agonizing pain, one of the most painful injuries I’ve ever received, accounting for size. But I’ll continue to do it, over and over again, until the nail feels normal again. It’s like I’m checking to see that I’m still alive, conscious, that I haven’t faded into the fields flying by the windshield or the warm air weighing me down. I’ve found that when my hand is unharmed and I haven’t clipped a nail too short, I have no inclination to pull on my fingers.
At times like these – sitting in this room alone, pen to paper, the heat turned up all around me – I wonder if I’m just tugging on my nail.
14 May 2007
Beihai Park
A boat skirts along the near bank of the lake. Two women dressed in red sit along the boat’s sides, dangling their toes toward the surface of the brown-green water below. A man in a yellow button-down shirt, rather plump by Chinese standards, sits in the middle, steering. There are other boats drifting about, slowly circling, but his is the only one close enough to discern any real detail.
Two middle-aged couples scuffle past, the women's shoes patting the rough stone walkway. One woman pushes a stroller. A man – her man, presumably – totes an infant by its armpits, raising him (or her; it's too tough to tell) for a picture in front of the waterfront. The other woman takes the child and cools it with a woven fan, singing softly as the fan slowly bobs. The baby smiles. I smile. And then the boy is looking at me again.
His hair, long on the top and back but shaved on the sides, hangs out from under a dirty green hat. His ear is pierced, and he's shirtless. There's a light ovular birthmark midway down his back, and his pants are stylishly tight. He eyes me coldly.
He can't be more than 18, and yet he looks at me with such confidence, such authority, such disdain that the blood in my veins slows to a whimper, paralyzed, curdled milk. Am I crazy?
And then she turns. Her bangs hang just down to her brow, pointing down at her perfect mouth. It's a half-smile – a look of confusion, really – which melts away when she catches me looking at her. She turns back around, giving me an eyeful of her gently sloping spine.
She looks different today, her eyes a bit narrower, her nose a bit rounder, her hair a bit darker. A different body for a different day. She leans against him, and his absurdly thin arm slithers around her shoulder. He clutches her – too tight, especially given this oppressive heat, but she doesn't seem to mind. She’s his.
And yet she’s mine, she's mine, and even he knows it. You’re mine. That stranger on the opposite bench, scrawling notes away in his black pad of paper. My posture's poor, hunched over the notebook, I'm fashionably out-of-style, but she’s mine. For all that is perfect about her – the button nose, the slender legs stretching out from her khaki shorts, her twinkling pair of eyes – I am equally imperfect. My nose leaps off my face, my eyes are dead and wooden, my legs are spottily covered in hair and scars, a circus collection of perfect imperfections. Still, though, still she is mine.
Too long has she been with me, haunting me, tormenting my thoughts, viciously teasing, prodding me. She ever lingers, just out of grasp, smiling in that way of hers, a fire smoldering beneath the surface. It’s been two years since I held her in my arms, and yet, how many times have I since seen that face? How many times have I dreamed that smile? Each night, every night. Plastered on the face of every passerby, flaunted by lakeside tourists. She's been mine forever, and how many times have I cursed her for it.
But here she sits, no more than four arm's lengths away. Close enough that I can hear her speaking softly between the far-off piping of a flute and the whistling of insects in the branches that hang above. Close enough that I can make out the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. Nearly close enough that I can lean in and smell the soft scent of her hair, my scent. But still out of grasp.
The two – he and she – give me one hard last look. Their heads turn inward, toward each other so that their cheeks nearly touch, and they gaze back over their shoulders at me. They look at me. I look back. We stare at each other, our eyes never quite locking. A moment goes by. Voices drift in and out, disembodied noises mixing with the distant sound of a bus churning up a hill across the lake. I catch the stench of cigarette smoke drifting through the thick, sweet park air. Still they look. One couple passes by, another, two older women. A child runs up to the fence at the water's edge and shouts with glee.
The two turn, look away. They mutter something to each other, nod and get up. They walk away without another glance, arm in arm.
I wish I weren't so weak. I wish I didn't think about you, dream about you, write about you. I wish my heart didn't jump and my stomach drop every time I caught a glimpse of your bare arm. I wish I didn't need you. But somehow, the way this has all played out, you're all I've got.
Another woman sits down in her place on the bench, your place. I pay no attention. She's pretty and out of reach.
There are no more boats now. It must be too late.
10 July 2008
Early Morning Coffee
I knocked softly on the door. With Chucky at my back, I felt light and easy, and my mind wandered.
No answer. Chucky stirred, shifting his weight from toe to toe, and the pointed tips of his black shoes gently tapped the floor each time. I adjusted my tie, searching for movement in the window to the right of the door. I dusted a bit of lint off my shoulder and reached to knock again. Before my hand made contact, the door pulled back slowly, and a young pair of eyes looked out.
The kid was probably nine or ten – real young, but tall for his age. He had a mop of hair, and the way he was looking up, it all slid off the sides of his face so you couldn’t really see his ears.
“Hi there,” I said to the tall earless boy, trying to be as cheerful as one can be at eight in the morning. “Is your daddy home?”
The boy looked down at his unlaced sneakers. “My dad?”
“Sure, son, your old man. Is he around?” Chucky moved past me toward the door. “Say, shouldn’t you be at school?”
The boy slid against the door. His white-and-black striped shirt was un-tucked, and his jeans were at least a size too big. “No, sir.” He looked up at Chucky. “I’m sick today.”
“Sick, huh?” Chucky tried to put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, but the boy shrunk away, back toward the house. Chucky took another step forward. “What’s wrong with you?”
The boy paused and looked over at me. “I’m running a fever,” he said softly.
“That’s too bad.” Chucky cleared his throat. “Listen, we’re in a bit of a hurry, and we really need to speak with your father.”
“I’m John, and this is my associate Charles,” I added, looking over at Chucky, who nodded along. “We’re friends of your father’s.”
“I already told you,” the boy said. “He’s at work.”
“You didn’t tell us anything.” Chucky’s eyes narrowed, and the boy took another step back. Chucky cleared his throat again, and the boy blinked. "What’s your name, boy?”
“Eric.”
“Well, Eric, do you mind if we come in?” Chucky made a move for the door before the boy had a chance to answer, putting one hand on the boy’s shoulder and easing the door further open with the other. “We’ll only be a minute.” I moved in behind Chucky and closed the door without saying a word. The bolt slid in with a dull clunk.
“Listen, mister, I don’t want to be rude, but my dad really...”
“Yeah, your dad.” The boy had escaped Chucky’s grasp and was retreating toward the sofa, set against the closest wall. I took a moment to look around. There was a small TV in the corner – next to the sofa – that didn’t seem to be pointed at anything. A small wooden coffee table sat in front of the couch. A small plant, housed in a ceramic pot, was next to the door. Other than that, and the gray carpet, the room was bare. “Where’d you say he was again?” Chucky had stopped advancing. The boy had stopped retreating. I took a couple slow strides toward the door on the opposite wall, but I couldn’t see anything beyond the frame.
“He’s at work.” He paused. “At the office.” He sat back on the arm of the sofa. I looked over at Chucky, who pursed his lips.
“The office?” Chucky looked back at me, and I moved toward the boy. He didn’t shrink away from me. I sat down on the couch, and Chucky frowned. “Listen, kid. Cut with the crap.” No one moved. Nothing happened. The air was still.
Chucky wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and unbuttoned his jacket. I stood up and placed my hat on the coffee table. Chucky looked for a moment for a coat rack and, finding no home for his suit coat, dropped it on the floor. “Johnny,” Chucky called over to me, his voice just below a shout. I nodded and slammed the boy’s face into the coffee table.
“You rotten kid.” Chucky’s voice, blunt enough already, was almost a snarl. “You listen to me. Listen!” I turned the boy’s face so he could look up at Chucky. He squirmed, and I clenched his neck more tightly. My other hand – the left – strayed down to his left shoulder, and I drove it into the edge of the table. He let out a whimper. “I’m through playing games. Johnny.” I glanced up at him and then back down at the boy’s wide eyes. “Johnny,” he repeated. I didn’t move. “Johnny,” he said a third time. With my left hand, I hammered the boy in the gut. He groaned.
“Please!” the boy squealed. His voice was high and scratchy. I relaxed a bit with my right hand on his neck and shifted it down a bit toward his back. He stopped fidgeting. I parked my left hand on his shoulder once again. Chucky squatted down and took his glasses off, his eyes even with the boy’s. He stared at him for a moment and pulled a white comb out of his front pants pocket.
“I told you, kid.” Chucky’s hand made long, smooth strokes through his hair. Chucky had always been proud of his hair, kept it clean and neat. It was longer than my hair but somehow didn’t look that way. He flicked his wrist near the boy’s face, and the boy winced. I once again tightened my grip. “I told you.” Chucky had a penchant for milking the dramatic. “We are busy men, and we don’t have time for kids like you.” He stood up. “Rotten kids like you.” He began pacing back and forth. “We don’t have time for this. So...” His voice trailed off, and he stopped walking, his back turned to us. “Where’s your father?”
The kid said nothing, and I hit him again. The boy didn’t groan this time; the only sound was the thud of my fist on his ribs.
“Are you enjoying this?” Chucky asked, turning back around. “Are you?” He slapped the back of the boy’s head with his open palm. “When I ask you a question, I expect you to answer it, damn it!” He cuffed the boy again. “You think your father’s some kind of saint, huh? You think he’s some angel, and we’re just here to break up your little fucking dreamland?” Chucky raised his hand to hit him again, but I caught his eye, and he dropped his hand back to his side. “Talk, damn it!” The boy was silent.
I picked the boy up and tucked his hands behind his back. Chucky hit him in the gut. “You think you can just stay quiet, and we’ll go away?” He hit him again. The boy moaned. “We’ll just disappear?” Chucky hit him again, a drop of saliva launching off his bottom lip and on to the boy’s forehead. Chucky had always been the one itching for a fight. He was a boxer for a couple years after he dropped out of high school. “You think we’re still some dream, right?” He hit the boy again, and the kid collapsed out of my arms. “Listen here, you little chicken shit.” Chucky placed the sole of his shoe on the side of the boy’s face. The boy was on the ground, hunched over and breathing real hard, these loud panting noises like a dog. I thought maybe he was getting ready to throw up and took a step back. Chucky drove his cheek into the ground with his foot. “Your dad’s no angel. We’re not going away.” He put a little more pressure on the kid’s face. The boy’s body was now contorted, with his head pushed against the floor and his rear up in the air, propped up on bent legs. “And this ain’t no dream. It’s a fucking nightmare.”
“Chucky,” I said quietly.
“All we want to know is where your father is.”
“Chucky.” I could hear footsteps, far away at first but getting closer.
“We have a bit of business to attend to.”
“Chucky!” I yelled as a woman ran up behind him. He swung around just as her fist flew out. She caught him on the side of the jaw. I reached down and grabbed the boy. I pulled him away so that he wouldn’t try to run to her when Chucky hit back, which he did. He hit her right on the bridge of her nose. Blood came pouring out. She reached out to hit him again, but Chucky grabbed her first out of midair and twisted her arm. He hit her in the stomach, and she dropped to the ground, laughing.
“This funny to you?” Chucky kicked her in the ribs, and she fell all the way down, her legs splayed out. She looked like she was laughing even harder, but no sound came out. The boy twitched in my arms, and she looked up at him. She looked up at us.
“What’s the matter with you?” she called to me. “You don’t want to come hit me, too?” I didn’t say anything. “You come into my house, you watch your friend break my nose and you aren’t going to come hit me, too?” The boy tried to run to her as she stumbled to get up, but I held him back. “You some kind of pussy?” She spat a mouthful of blood on the ground as she enunciated the first syllable of the last word.
“I don’t hit women.”
“You don’t hit women?” She laughed as she continued to pull herself up. Chucky kept his eyes on her but didn’t move. “You don’t hit women, huh? You leave that to your friend here?” She glared at Chucky, then looked down at his clenching fists. “You prefer to beat up on innocent little boys, huh? Is that your thing?” Chucky punched her in the gut, and she bent over, smiling up at us with a mouthful of teeth, stained red. “And you leave the women to this asshole?”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Chucky said flatly. He pushed the woman on to the floor and walked over to his coat, retrieving a length of rope. He returned to the woman and tied her hands and feet together. He left her mouth untied. She curled up on the floor, sobbing, and Chucky motioned for me to bring the boy to him. I did. Chucky didn’t tie him up, but he gagged the boy’s mouth with a piece of cloth that had been in his pocket.
“You see here, lady,” Chucky said as he dragged the boy a foot back and laid him out on his back. “I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you think of me. All I want to know is where your husband is.” He looked at her. She looked back at him. Neither said anything.
I moved toward her. “Please, lady. Just tell him where the guy is.” She wouldn’t look at me. I turned my eyes back to the boy on the ground.
“I don’t know what you think is going to happen, lady.” Chucky was pacing now. “So let me tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going to tell us where he is...” Chucky turned to me. “Or my friend here is going to start getting physical.” She laughed.
“That’s funny?” Chucky snapped. “That’s funny to you? What kind of sick fuck do we have here?” Chucky didn’t seem to be talking to anyone in particular. Sometimes Chucky just talks. “Do it,” he said, nodding at me. I remained motionless, standing over the boy. “Do it.” I bent over and hit the boy once in the stomach. The woman shrieked.
“Not so funny now?” She looked up at him, pleadingly. But Chucky’s not the sensitive type. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen, since I don’t think you were listening last time.” He smiled. “You’re going to tell us where we can find your husband. And you will tell us.” His smile pulled back even wider, exposing two rows of perfectly aligned teeth. “Or Eric here is fast going to become pals with my friend’s fist.” Chucky waited a moment. “Nothing?” Still nothing. I hit Eric, my knuckles burrowing down into his belly. She screamed again.
“Nothing?” Chucky said, his voice raised an octave. She stayed silent. My hand met Eric’s stomach again. Another scream. “We’re going to keep doing this until Johnny’s fist is sore, lady. You understand that?” Silence. The thud of a punch. Shriek. The same waltz, the record spun back for another go-round.
“You’ve just got to ask yourself...” Chucky leaned over the woman, hovering his face uncomfortably close to hers. She straightened up a bit. “Who do you love more?” She said nothing.
“Who do you love more?” Chucky asked again. “Your husband or your son?” She remained silent. It’s a silence that gets harder to bear each time.
“Which man of the house do you love more, darling?” Chucky grinned. I could tell he was enjoying this. “You’ve got to ask yourself that,” he said, dropping his face even closer to hers. “Because by the end of the day, you’re never going to see one of them again.” There was a beat of silence, then Chucky’s face was covered in blood.
“You fucking bitch!” he screamed. “I’ll kill you!” He kicked at her with both feet, wiping the blood from his face with both sleeves. It was almost comedic, this dance of his. “I’ll kill you!” She rolled around on the ground, absorbing each blow from each pointed kick. She may have been trying to laugh; it was hard to say. “I’ll drop dead before I let some bitch spit in my face!” He kicked even more vigorously. She stopped rolling.
“Chucky!” He looked over, turned back to the woman and kicked one last time. The boy was sobbing in my arms. I let him go, and he rushed over to her, his tears mixing with the blood on the floor. He pulled her against his body, and the two of them rocked to his muffled cries. His hands and shirt were now covered in blood. She was still alive but just barely. Certainly unable to talk anymore.
“It appears we’re at an impasse,” Chucky said. I figured he was talking to me, but he was staring off at the opposite wall. I didn’t respond.
The moment dangled. The air was thick. The boy had ceased making noise but still rocked.
“What do you think?” Chucky turned to me. I didn’t say anything. I had nothing to say. “What do we do about these two?” I cocked my head just slightly. It was the kind of thing that would’ve been imperceptible to anyone else, but Chucky and I had been together long enough for him to catch it. “The boy?” I didn’t move.
Chucky pulled the boy off the woman. I took him to the opposite wall. Chucky straightened the woman out on the ground. A gun cocked behind me.
“Don’t move, motherfucker.”
Chucky slowly turned around. He didn’t look surprised. I don’t know if he had heard the man come through the door or not. “Ah,” he said simply. It hung in the air. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“You shut the fuck up,” the man said, lingering on each word. “And get on the ground.” Chucky slowly began making his way to the floor. “Hands behind your head.” Chucky complied.
“Take it easy.” Chucky’s voice, even dampened by the carpet, was light and easy. This is what he was paid for. This is where he was in his element. “Don’t need to get excited.”
“Yeah, right,” the man grunted. I couldn’t tell by his voice if he had gotten a good look at his battered wife. My back was still to him. “You, too,” he said. I stayed standing.
“Listen, motherfucker.” He nudged my back with the barrel of the gun. “I’m not kidding around. On the ground.” I didn’t move. He waited, then nudged me again. “I’m going to tell you one more time, then I’m blowing you away. Get on the ground.” He finished with another nudge from the gun. I paused, then began feeling my way for the ground. I had made it about a foot down when I caught Chucky’s eyes. I whirled around and grabbed the gun with one hand, his neck with the other. The gun didn’t go off. It was in my hand.
I put the safety back on and tossed it on the floor, a few feet away. The man was panicked. “No, no, no,” he kept repeating. “No, no, no.” I had him by the collar with one hand and slowly was pressuring him down. “Don’t kill me.” He was on the ground, on bent knees. “Please don’t kill me.”
I heard footsteps behind me. Chucky was walking toward us. He saddled up beside me and looked down on the man. “We can work something out. C’mon!” The man was desperate. His eyes bounced back and forth, never settling on Chucky or me. “You don’t have to tell anyone about this.” Chucky still hadn’t said anything. It was the longest he had stayed quiet since we showed up. “No one has to know.”
“You pull a gun on my friend here, and I’m supposed to act like nothing happened?” Chucky finally snapped, interrupting the man’s wild muttering. “Now how do you expect me to do a thing like that?” The man looked up at him, and Chucky smiled down. “Even a good Christian boy like myself would have a hard time doing that,” he said, laughing. “That whole turn-the-other-cheek bit never really suited me anyhow.” The man shook his head. “My memory’s too good.”
The man was gasping for air. I backed away from the two. “I remember these things,” Chucky said. “I remember too well.” The man looked up, then back over to his wife. His head began shaking furiously. “So you see,” Chuck continued, “I could never just forget this...” He paused. He looked at the ceiling, then at the man, smiling again. “This incident.”
The man went still. Chucky reached into his pocket. The man wasn’t looking. Neither was I. A gun cocked.
I turned in time to see Chucky’s blood splatter across the wall. The boy sat in the corner, the gun in his hand shaking. Chucky’s body fell over with a new hole in the side of his head. I heard the gun drop, and the boy ran to his father. I reached to check Chucky’s pulse, then rose with the verdict. The boy and his father were embracing. I stood for a moment, watching the two. The woman still lay on the other side of the room. She was looking at them, too, but was unable to join them. Still, the two embraced. I didn’t move.
The boy looked up at me, his father’s head still nestled in his shoulder. I stared back. Our eyes locked, and the room stood still. He blinked. I didn’t.
I went to the coffee table and picked up my hat. I could feel the boy’s eyes hot on my back. I walked out of the house without turning, feeling light and easy again.
26 June 2008
Dead Bird on a Sidewalk
They were strewn about with apparent disregard; a few hung on a bush here, a few dangled from one of the porch columns there. I could see no rhyme or reason to their arrangement, no prudent forethought, just a random assortment of seven watt bulbs. I could tell a few of the strands were left over from all my childhood, all those years ago, but the magic was gone – the paint coating, deadened from years of weathering, was flaking on some bulbs, fully chipped off on others. These were the holidays at my mother's house.
I glanced back at the car, parked on the street, just before knocking on the door. I had blocked off the mailbox, but I did not intend to stay the night. With the car saddled up just next to the curb, it seemed almost as if the mailbox were telling the car a perfect, lonely secret. I turned around just as the door opened and two thin arms pulled me inside.
"Oh, honey, you're cold," my mother said with feigned enthusiasm. She took my coat and gloves and started off toward the back room, shaking her head. "It must be ten below out there, sweetheart." I slid off my shoes, still trickling melted snow, and stepped out of the entryway. She called out to me from somewhere unseen, nasally, faintly, "Why aren't you wearing that nice hat I got you last year for Christmas?"
I walked into the dining room, a room I'd often been in but rarely used. It looked exactly the same as I remembered from all those holidays prior: stale, white. The table itself – a gray, contemporary monstrosity – was set for 12. We’d be having guests. A painting on the far wall, the only to ever grace the room, at least since my birth, loomed over the table: a flower, unidentifiable, a beginner's attempt at the passion of the Romantics. I'd never been able to tolerate it. I remember my mother once told me that it was painted by a friend of the family, an old college friend, I think. I don't recall; the painting never took me, and I never pursued the issue.
I could hear talking in the living room. A harsh voice, loud, brusque - it must have been my father's. I couldn't hear to whom he was speaking, and for a moment, I smiled to myself at the thought of my father carrying on a conversation with himself in an empty room. He was most certainly drunk by this point.
He kept talking as I entered the room, to a woman I didn't recognize. She was young, much younger than either of my parents, and I could come up with no legitimate reason why either should be acquainted with such a young woman. My father and the woman were each holding wine glasses, nearly empty now, and gesturing with their hands. I couldn't tell what they were talking about and silently slid past them toward the sofa, unnoticed.
"Hey, brother; it's been awhile, eh?" Tom was sitting next to his wife, a woman I'd met only twice: once at their wedding and once here, exactly one year ago. Their hands were intertwined, and they were slightly angled toward each other, leaving me cast out at the edge of the couch, crammed against an oversized pillow. "What's new?"
"Oh, nothing really." I forced out a smile, met with equal pretense from the two of them. "Just the same old thing."
"Yeah, I know how that goes." A conversation going nowhere, dialogue straight out of a poorly written book. The two leaned in, touching shoulders, setting me further aside.
"How'd you get rid of the kid tonight?" Tom had recently had a baby, a boy he had named Timothy after our late grandfather. Though I had been out of town during the birth, the humor of "Tim and Tom" had never escaped me, and I egged him on at every available opportunity.
Tom's wife frowned slightly. "Oh, Timothy, you mean?" She made a point to enunciate his name, taking just a fraction of a moment’s pause between each syllable, lengthening the name to epic proportions.
"Oh, yes." I tried to stifle a smile. “I didn’t mean any offense.”
"Of course not. I hadn't the slightest thought." Her frown vanished, but her creased brow lingered. "We hired a baby sitter. She came very highly recommended."
"Yeah, our friend from the gym, Lisa, told us all about her. One time, she…" Tom's voice faded out. I watched his lips keep moving, but no sound registered. The wife stared at him as he spoke, her eyes polished and gleaming. She hung on every word, her hands lightly squeezing his, clasping, pulsing, slow and steady. My ears re-awakened in time to hear, "So, anyway, have you written anything lately?"
My family had never quite come to grips with my career as a writer. I had been in med-school – a year from graduation – when I walked away. They never recovered. The fact that I was approaching the two-year anniversary of my last published work didn't help. I expected to hear much more before the night was over.
"Can you come help me in the kitchen, sweetie?" A beat of silence. Tom and I exchanged looks. The air, warm and thick, wrapped around me. "Mark, come here." I got up, slowly, and started toward the kitchen.
"I need some help moving all this to the dining room," my mother said without turning around. “Will you grab the salad?” I didn't know how she even knew I was in the room at all. I picked up the wooden bowl, full of lettuce drenched in cheap French dressing, and walked out the open door without replying. After a few steps, the vinaigrette began to sting my nostrils, and I quickened my pace.
I set the bowl down in the center of the table and seated myself, one from the end on the side farthest from the door – the most inconspicuous spot. No one could have noticed me unless they were looking for me.
The rest of the table promptly filled up. My mother took the spot at the end of the table, the one she'd been sitting in for years. Tom and my father sat on either side of her. Some other guests must have arrived while I was in the living room; they took their places in random spots around the table, indiscriminate freckles scattered about. I didn't recognize most of them. The woman, the one who had been talking to my father earlier, sat down next to me. I could feel her looking at me. I unfolded my napkin and looked down at my plate.
My mother's voice lifted up from the end of the table, quiet but sure. "I think one of us should say grace."
"Mom, you know we haven't said grace since Mark and I were kids." Tom, indignant. "We never do that. Besides, Sarah's Jewish." He reached down and grabbed his wife's hand, sitting on the table just past her soupspoon, and she looked up at him. Her eyebrows were turned up innocently.
My mother continued looking straight ahead, catatonic. "I just thought…"
My father interrupted her. "Tom, don't start tonight." His face bore the look of restrained impatience, and he let out a puff of air through his nostrils. "We have guests." He tried to smile, revealing his crooked bottom tooth.
"I just thought that since this is Christmas Eve and all…" My mother's voice trailed off. She looked down, her eyes focused the plate of bread before her, then immediately looked up again. "It just seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe start the year off right?" She grinned, revealing rows of perfect white teeth. Menacing, even. "Maybe it'll even get us in the holiday spirit." Her mouth spread, the smile threatening to take full control of her face.
"Then let's just get it out of the way." Tom sunk his head, defeated. His wife didn't move.
"Heavenly father…" I lost my mother's voice and concentrated on the bowl of corn in front of me. One kernel in particular caught my eye, rounded, more so than the others, sitting just on top like a crowning jewel. I imagined my brother plunging it into his gaping mouth.
"Amen," everyone said at once. Immediately, plates, bowls, platters, trays began clattering around the table, and I was bombarded by an assortment of vegetable dishes. As I received a polished silver salver from my left, piled with pounds of turkey breasts, I noticed the woman beside me staring, silent and ghost-like. Her gaze hovered there, motionless. "Thank you," I said quietly and turned back to my plate.
The room was soon consumed by a symphony of chiming silverware and the dulled crunches of gnashing teeth. No one said a thing, all the guests concentrating on their plates before them, chewing in time. I tried to concentrate on my own meal but found myself suddenly not hungry. I toyed with my knife, cutting and re-cutting the same piece of meat, until someone finally spoke.
"Jim, I hear you guys had a scare at the store the other day." It was one of the men I had never seen, seated next to my father. He had a broad forehead that trailed down to a modest chin, buoyed only by a pocket of fat just underneath, giving the impression that his face was slowly melting into his neck. The words dripped down from his hanging mouth, gliding down his jaw and into my father's eager ear.
"Oh, it really wasn't a big deal. Not as big a deal as the news stations are making it out to be, anyway." He snorted. "Just some bum off the street, came in and pulled a gun on us. Told my cashier – young guy, still in high school, his first month on the job – to empty the register." He took a bite of mashed potatoes and continued. "Police found out later that the gun didn't have any bullets." As he talked, the potatoes bounced around his mouth, tumbling over his thrashing tongue. "Last I heard, he's on trial, and with his past record, he's looking at a sentence of 12 years." The mouth closed, and he swallowed. "Serves him right, the bum."
"Now Jim…" My mother didn't continue, patting his forearm, still looking down at her fork, which continued to stab aimlessly at her plate. Her interjection garnered no response, neither from my father nor the man who had brought up the attempted robbery. The table continued eating in relative silence.
"I know who you are." The voice barely reached my ear, a raspy whisper. I continued eating. "I know who you are," she repeated. The woman next to me, leaning in enough that a puff of air grazed my earlobe. She calmly scooted back her chair and left the table, casting a glance back over her shoulder as she passed through the doorway.
I stayed at the table for another minute. By now, my slice of turkey was carved into an almost gelatinous mess, and my knife no longer had anything to pick at. I stood up, almost embarrassingly slowly, and tried to push my chair back. The bottoms of the chair legs must have caught on the flooring, for, after a moment’s pause, the chair leapt back and quivered on its rear legs before toppling over on the wood floor. The crack was like a shot. Everyone at the table immediately looked at me, their stares at once paralyzed and paralyzing. "Sorry," I murmured and left the still petrified room.
The mystery woman was standing in the center of the living room, once again sporting an almost finished glass of wine. Her back was to me, and I assumed she was looking at the portrait on the far wall, each member of my family looking slightly to the right and smiling happily, myself included, aged eight. I hadn't noticed her dress before, a long black strapless. Her dark hair curled softly over shapely shoulders. It all made her seem quite pretty. She turned around, and one end of her mouth turned up. "I know who you are."
I sat down on the couch in the same place I had been earlier. "And who is that?"
She walked toward me, slowly, her hips swaying gently. She sat down next to me, resting her side against mine. I could feel her breathing, measured and deliberate, and her nostrils, tucked in along her slender nose, flared. Her body was warm, a pleasant sort of warm. "You…" She leaned toward me. "…are a writer." She smiled, apparently pleased.
"Am I?"
Her eyes opened slightly, surprised but unwilling to show it. "Yes, you are." She smiled again, her composure regained. "Mark Gary. I've read all your books."
"I'm surprised anyone has." I looked away, back toward the portrait hanging on the wall, and sighed. "It's been a long time since I've talked to any fans."
She touched my forearm, lightly and with the back of her hand, and I looked back toward her. "Why's that?" Her voice was quiet, hushed. The very act of speech seemed forced, a breach of serene silence.
I could feel my brow furrowing. "Well, I haven't done any writing in a while." I smiled, easing my face open once again. "And what I did write then wasn't that good."
"Oh, I disagree." Her hand began softly sliding up my arm until it rested on the bend of my elbow. "The Dream is one of my favorite books."
"Maybe your taste isn't all that good."
"Or maybe you don't know what good is." She slid her hand down over mine and weaved our fingers together. "I'm Emily, by the way."
"A pleasure."
"Oh, the pleasure is all mine." She moved closer. "I've been wanting to meet you for quite some time."
"I wish I could say the same." She started, then began to grin. She really did have a wonderful smile. Her whole face smiled. Her cheekbones lifted up, the corners of her wide eyes widened, even her hair seemed to part a bit more, giving way to her perfectly smooth forehead. And her mouth opened just enough that you could see the faintest hint of the tip of her tongue.
"Why haven't you published anything in so long? If you don’t mind me asking, I mean." She was still smiling. Innocent. "What's it been, two years?" I didn't say anything. I looked at her lap. "If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine." I looked back up at her face. Her smile had disappeared, and she looked overcome, crushed. It was moving. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. "I just wondered why."
"Because I haven't written anything in two years." I shifted, turning a bit toward her, and leaned my head against the couch back.
"Well, then why haven't you written anything in two years?" Her voice was probing but innocent, harmless. I hadn't talked with someone so genuine in quite some time.
"It's hard to explain." I stopped myself, but I could tell she wanted more. "What do you do for a living?"
"Me?" She was thrown off. "I'm a reporter for The Globe."
"So you write, too, then."
She smiled a bit. "Yeah, if could call it that. I guess I do. And I try to actually write a little on the side, too."
“Right, fine.” I paused, collecting myself. “Writing is all guts. Sylvia Plath said that. ‘The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt,’ she said.”
“So you started doubting yourself? You lost your confidence?”
“Writing used to be like unplugging a dam. The words just came out of me. There was a force there, like they were more than just words.”
“And that doesn’t happen anymore?”
“No. And it hasn’t for a long time.”
At that moment, my mother entered the room, carrying a pot of coffee. "Kids, it's time for dessert."
We walked back to the dining room and seated ourselves at the same places as before. This time, I couldn't feel her looks as I fiddled with my Bundt cake and listened to the room’s scattered conversation. Emily excused herself after only a couple minutes. I remained and listened to my father talk about his returns on margin and two of the anonymous neighbors argue about last week's football game.
"Mark, dear." I looked up and found my mother's eyes locked with my own. "Why don’t you go check on Emily? She looked upset.” I got up and walked out mechanically.
I found Emily sitting alone on the couch in the living room, the next room. I walked in and sat next to her.
She was silent, and her hands remained in her lap. Her eyes looked straight ahead, transfixed. We sat voiceless, mute, for a moment. It must have been a minute or more. Finally, she spoke, passive and peaceful. "How can you do that?" She looked at me. "How can you just … remove yourself like that?" I didn't reply. "I just don't understand how."
"It’s not a conscious decision." Her hand found mine again, even as she kept staring.
"That's bullshit. That's just an excuse." Her anger was sudden, violent. “You have a gift. Do you know that? A gift. What…" Her voice died away. The face dissolved back into listlessness, numbness. "What was it like?"
“It?”
“Going so long without writing.”
"You could well have asked what it is like." I had expected a reaction but got none. "I don't know. It's just terribly routine." And it was.
"What do you do for money?"
"Oh, that's not the problem, that's never the problem." She looked at me, and I shrugged. "You've met my parents. You've probably figured out they're fairly well off."
"That's kind of them, helping you out like that."
"Yes, yes, I suppose it is." I tried not to think about it.
Her thumb stroked the edge of my palm. "I had always imagined you to be this hero of a man." She continued looking in my direction, but I could tell she didn't see me. Her eyes were shaded, glazed over. "But here you are, just…" She stopped herself, noticeably. "Pathetic." Disdain. Pathetic. I could feel it, echoing, washing back and forth over me. She shook her head, roused herself. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that." She looked so beautiful. "I didn't mean anything by it, I didn't want to hurt you." She was speaking quickly now, hurried and rushed. "I just meant… Well, I had you built up in my head, and here I see you're no different than I am." No different than her. The words scuttled round my head. "I see you like this, so exposed. I didn’t expect this.” I was having a hard time following her. The words all dashed at me, jumped out at me. "I'm sorry, I really didn't want to get into anything like this."
"I'm sorry I couldn’t live up to your expectations.” I turned away, staring down at my shoe, old and worn. "I'm sorry I'm not what you wanted.” I rotated the shoe, turning it in pigeon-toed. "I'm sorry I'm not greater.”
"No, it's not that." Her fingers grazed my chin and pulled my face up, away from the shoe and toward her constant face. "It’s refreshing, actually. You look quite beautiful like this."
"Most people don't call men beautiful."
She didn't seem to hear me. "In a depressing sort of way.”
"That's the only kind of beauty there is."
"Come with me." She stood up, tugging on my fingers.
"Where are you taking me?" She began to walk toward the hallway, pulling me after her. I repeated myself.
"Just come with me." I followed her, willingly, trailing just behind her.
She pulled open a door at the end of the hallway, a bedroom door, the guest bedroom. She walked in and shut the door behind us. The room was dark, pitch-black. I could scarcely make out her silhouette, standing just inches before me. She pressed her lips against mine, delicately, tenderly. They remained there a second, and then she kissed me again, her lips barely there at all.
Our bodies touched, and she kissed me harder. Wet and long, we kissed. Her tongue slid in and out of my mouth, pulsing with the beat of my heart. She pushed me onto the bed and slipped off her dress. It fell in a halo around her ankles, a dark ring around her pale white feet. Then she was on top of me, straddling me, her legs pushing down on my own, stilled in the insatiable darkness. Our tongues met again, and strands of her hair glanced the edge of my face. It was all so damn alluring, straight out of a book. Her hands ran up and down my sides. She pulled back her head and smiled. I smiled too, and then she was kissing me again.
She pressed on my chest, driving me back against the bed. I recoiled immediately. This was the bed my mother had chosen as the home for the visitors' coats, and I had landed on a fur coat, slightly balled, bloated, a shell. I looked up to find Emily's head tossed back, laughing at my apparent horror. I sat up again, and she moved down next to me.
I could hardly see her as she moved in to kiss me again. Her hair hung down, swathing her long neck and resting on her breasts, which undulated with her slow breathing. A glint of light caught her right eye, glimmering, and her legs curled up against the mattress. Her lips reached out to me, and I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I collapsed into her lap, sobbing, my head pitching like a wave. I could feel her, her puzzlement, as hands fell to the top of my head, combing through my trembling hair.
I clutched at her waist and wept, moans escaping my pinched mouth, tears rushing down my face and onto her yielding thighs. They kept gushing out, and I could feel the edge of her panties, cool and wet with tears, rubbing against my face, against my temple. Her perfume floated down, faintly at first but building, flowing down, clogging my nostrils, choking me. I hiccupped, tried to expel it from my lungs, the stink – sickeningly sweet, heavy, syrupy poison. I coughed, cried, whimpered like a little kid again, howled like I don't know that I ever have. I released her, my hands dropping lifelessly to the mattress, crumpling on impact. It went on that way for a while, me crying and her rubbing my head robotically. I finally finished and got control of myself. I looked up, looked at Emily's face. I'm not sure if she could see me or not. Her eyes seemed glassy, and I think she might have been crying, too.
I got out of bed and walked back to the living room. Emily re-appeared a few minutes later and immediately went out to her car. I didn't say anything the rest of the night.
28 January 2007
Loved Letter
I’ve smelt you so many times over the years. It’s a scent you can’t really miss, but still it lingers on, in the doldrums of a brain filled to the brim over the years with poetic nonsense of the peak achievement of love. It’s a notion that helps pass the time, a comforting light at the end of the tunnel, but one without practical purpose. Sitting here, the lights off and Mozart’s Lacrymosa pouring out of speakers like God himself couldn’t hold it back, that scent – just a whiff so many years ago – floods pages and pages of letters, obscuring smudged scribbles and blurred vision, blocking already tired ears, stuffing a mouth that has just begun to taste sorrow; a genuine orgy of the senses, it is.
There’s a feeling, somewhere, that I want to turn it off, this music, everything, but I’m afraid. The cold clack of the keys, tap-tapping in that monotonous pulse, is everything I fear most, for that is where you are not. It’s something like death, but slower, more severe; when you leave this body, so I leave.
There’s comfort in this relative silence; I take solace in it. I have no use for words. I’d rather remain, still, each note rushing over me in euphoria, with no need to tell whose euphoria – mine or the note’s – it is. I’d rather remain, still, my thoughts echoing not words but images – images infinitely precise, detailed, delicate, hanging in the balance of memory: a colored-in picture with no caption. There’s comfort in silence, too.
This piece – Mozart’s – I don’t understand a single word. Only the sounds exist, at the root of each word, softly swirling in the night. There’s comfort in that.
I used to want to own a typewriter; I always liked the sound of the keys so much more than those of a computer. There’s history in them, and you can hear years pounding away with each successive keystroke. It’s a relative symphony of raps, dings and bangs, and it also meant so much more to me than what I was actually writing on the page. I never got one, of course.
Then there were the pages themselves. The writing dulled, blunted by heavy hands glancing wet ink, slides across the page. It’s so much more dynamic than the static glow of the computer screen. And each cursory oversight that lines the final product is all the more reminder that it’s not final at all.
I can’t even remember how many days I’ve sat at this computer since you left. I type out page after page until the words number in the thousands, tens of thousands, millions, and still find myself no closer to you. I’m building a word bridge here, and it keeps collapsing.
I don’t have a problem with being alone. I’m alone most of every day. It’s tough to find a word to explain it, for with each subsequent word I draw out – solitude, isolation, seclusion – each draws out another word of its own – punishment, abandonment, repression. Each word writes a word of its own, till my word bridge is building bridges upon bridges of its own that seek to pervade the entire language. I’m doing you a disservice with every word I write. I should just hand you a dictionary.
This aloneness – I’ll just settle on that one – is a necessity. I avoid coming in contact with the world. My world becomes my own construction. And my construction is you.
In periods of solemnity, I always have reflected that these thoughts – even these distressing, miserable thoughts – are mine and mine alone. Perhaps economists are right; perhaps there is an inescapable joy in ownership, of conquering the unknown for the known (that is, for the alone).
I have often wondered why I write the way I do, as far as the syntax of my sentences are concerned. I believe it is something that any writer of quality has asked him or herself in the past, and I’m sure that others have speculated on my behalf as well. I write fairly simple sentences – I rarely use conjunctions, I rarely begin sentences with clauses, I often tack on clauses at the end where they act as easily digested modifiers. It is an as-of-yet unfinished reflection.
I do not attempt to communicate ideas. Ideas are Cartesian circles in and of themselves, churning round and round in impenetrable human minds. Rather, I attempt to write feeling. It is more easily done and often leads to more action.
I feel I can give you this letter when I have experienced everything. Such is my goal in life. Life began when I met you, for only then did this being that I now regard as myself come into existence. I won’t venture so far as to say that it was incomplete before your meeting, but it was in an unidentified form. And now I must experience everything, everything, before you can see this letter, even if that means tearing you from me.
This is no love letter. Love is an obsession. Everything I do says, “I love you.” Every action of mine – the book I read earlier, the words I write now – is an extension of this love. For what I am, so you have become.
Once you asked me why I chose not to masturbate. It took me years to figure out that it was no choice at all but a complete revulsion to “infidelity.” I’m still not entirely sure what that means, as these words are so truly tricky to nail down. But I think that I think that such an act of masturbation would allow that the essence of my being – that is, you – could be separated from an act of said being – that is, self-stimulation.
This love for you is entangled in my flesh, in my makeup. No, this letter is not to say, “I love you.” It is to say, merely, “I am.”
14 August 2007
A Curious Day in the Life of One Maxwell Worthington
By Cole Thomas
Footnotes and annotations by literary critic and scholar Roger Dawkins
Somewhere over the ocean between Barcelona and St. Paul – no small stretch, to be sure – I first felt it. The plane hit an unexpected patch of turbulence, just a moment of bumping and jostling, and I felt a sharp pain shoot out of my rear and race down my thighs. I shifted my weight from the right cheek to the left, but that just brought on another blast of pain.
Excusing myself from my seat, I tiptoed down the aisle, doing my best not to upset my still-smarting bottom. The bathrooms were, of course, full, and I waited impatiently, tapping my foot and checking my watch every few seconds.
A man, wearing a cowboy hat and a hideous vest, sidled up next to me.1 “Sure is a long trip, huh?” I ignored him and tapped my foot a bit faster. “You been overseas before?” I checked my watch.2 He didn’t seem to notice. “You aren’t Spanish, are you?”
I turned toward him. “No, I’m not.”3 He had a thin smile on his face. “But my insides may have liquefied and begun leaking out of my asshole, so if you’ll excuse me …”4 I went through the door that had just opened before me and slammed it shut.
The stall was barely large enough to move in, and having had no prior experience with burning behinds,5 I didn’t know exactly where to begin my inspection. I spent a moment spinning aimlessly before getting a hold of myself and dropping trou.
I eased my hand down my back and into the edge of my, for lack of a better word, crack.6 Everything felt normal. My fingers continued tracing – slowly, slowly, ever so slowly – down until … Wait a second. What was this? A golf ball? No, it couldn’t be. It didn’t have quite the texture you expect out of a golf ball, and it didn’t seem nearly hard enough. Then again, I had the sinking feeling that it was not a completely natural extension of my body, either.
The bulge, whatever it was, did seem rather hollow – or, perhaps, filled with some sort of liquid or pus – so that its shape and size was like that of a balloon someone had put their lips to before having begun to blow. I tried to feel around its edges to determine whence it was stemming, but the pain was excruciating to the touch. I had found enough to deduce that the object was indeed attached to my body proper, and was not just some hanger-on, so I decided to stop prodding and content myself with the dull throbbing that now seemed to be the default.
I pulled my pants up and washed my hands but didn’t know what to do next. Surely, I had to return to my seat, for I couldn’t stay in the bathroom for the rest of the trip. But that, of course, meant sitting down once again, and I was not sure I could swallow the type of pain I had felt during the turbulence.
Left without a choice, I gathered my composure and made my way back down the aisle. The two men who had been sitting next to me were now slumped in their seats, their heads dangling over my own.7 The one on the left – fat, bearded – nodded slowly. The other man, compact and skinny, flared his nostrils with each intake of breath. I hadn’t thought I had been away for long, but the two appeared deep in sleep. I tripped over the thin one’s foot and crashed down on the head of the portly one, which made me let out a yelp. Needles gouged my bottom.8 The two awoke with a start. “Sorry,” I muttered. They scowled and sat up straight once again.
It was not long before I myself had fallen asleep. It was not the tenuous sleep I had become accustomed to on plane rides, either – I slept soundly, too deep in the darkness of sleep for dreams to have even been a possibility. I was roused by the beeping of the intercom as the captain came on the speaker to announce our impending landing. My eyes flew open, and my back stiffened. There again was the now-familiar sting. I winced. The men at either elbow didn’t notice or, at least, didn’t care enough to say anything.
It was at this moment that I suddenly had the suspicion that I had grown taller. Not proportionally, though; I just felt like my vantage point was all of a sudden slightly higher. I could see over the seats in front of me for the first time in the trip, and I towered over the fat man, who continued snoring loudly. I looked down and noticed with a start that I appeared to be hovering over the seat. My legs were in a perfect sitting position, but my thighs dangled a good three inches above the seat’s surface. I snaked my hand under my haunches and, after only a moment of digging around, found what seemed to be a softball propping me up. It didn’t take long to realize that this was the golf-ball protuberance from earlier, only bloated to at least four times its previous size.
While I debated what to do about my present situation, the plane landed without a hitch, and people soon began to filter out, into the waiting terminal.9 I let the fat man push his way past and took a moment to collect my thoughts before making my way off the plane as well.
We made our way as a pack down to the customs area. I made it by the immigration officer without incident and stopped at a bathroom to check on the growth of my growth.
I was shocked, upon removing my pants in the stall, to learn that the bump was no longer merely a bump – in fact, it had swollen to nearly the size of a basketball. It hung from my backend and swung back and forth as I shifted my weight between my feet, like a bell being struck in a bell tower. I frantically grabbed the lump from below and began to try to shove it back into my body – to no avail, of course.10 When I pulled my hands back up, I noticed that they were coated with some sort of ooze,11 so I took the precaution of lining the tumor – for I had no other word for it at this point – with a coat of toilet paper. I was not sure that I would be able to get my pants up over the strikingly round mass, but after a bit of negotiation, they finally slid up and over, and I was able to buckle my belt again. I towed the bulge, suspended behind me, out of the bathroom and back to the baggage claim area.
The bags slithered down from the chute and made their way around the carousel. Soon, there was only one bag left, meandering around again and again. It was not my bag. I waited another minute or two, but it was clear my bag was not coming. I left the carousel and made my way over to the desk area. The growth now sagged so far behind me that I had to drag it across the ground.
“One moment, sir. I’ll be right with you.” The woman didn’t look up from the computer at which she was frenetically typing. I checked my watch. She kept typing.
“Listen, um, I’m –“
“I’ll be with you in a second, sir.” She still didn’t look up.12
I set my elbow down on the countertop and leaned my face down to my hand. It was not difficult to prop myself up; the, shall we say, augmentation now functioned as a sort of crutch – a buttress, really – and held most of my weight quite nicely. I was almost able to sit on it as a stool.
The woman kept typing. I began to absentmindedly drum my fingers on the desk. The woman looked up. I looked down.
“I said I’ll be with you in a second, sir.”13
“What? Oh, yes, fine.”
“I need to finish this before I can help you.”
“Sure thing.”
Her eyebrows arched. Her eyes widened. “Sir, please be patient.”
I straightened up. “Patient? I’m just standing here.”
“I would ask you not to raise your tone at me, sir.”
“What are you talking about?” I began scratching my head. “I’ve barely said a word.”
“Sir, I will not tolerate your rudeness!”
“Is this some sort of joke?”
“Joke? I can assure you, sir, that I take my job quite seriously.”
“Clearly. And please stop calling me ‘sir.’”
“I haven’t done anything to warrant this sort of aggression, sir. I ask you to stop immediately.”
“Excuse me, lady, I just need to fill out whatever form it is you have back there that will let me get my bag back.”
“Your tone is completely uncalled for.”
“Tone?” I was near the point of snapping. A vein began to pound in my neck. Sweat beaded on my forehead.
“Yes, sir, your tone. It is really very impolite.”
“Well, excuse me! If you haven’t noticed, I have a hemorrhoid the size of Mount Rushmore hanging out of my ass!”
“Sir!”
“I’m sorry, lady, but I’d like to get my bag back before this thing explodes.”
“Explodes, sir?”14 All the color had drained from her face.
“Oh, you didn’t think I meant—“
“Excuse me, sir.” She picked up a phone.
“Ma’am, I didn’t mean to say—“ I reached my hand out to her. She recoiled.
“Please get your hand away from me!”
“Please, if you just listen to me, I—“
She slapped my outstretched hand away and threw herself against the wall. “Security! Security!” I turned around in time to see four large, uniformed men rushing at me. “Security! A bomb! This man has a bomb!” The four tackled me to the ground, the impact of which caused a pain so awful that I must have passed out.
I awoke in a sparse room. It couldn’t have been a normal interrogation room. The table was cheap deck furniture, and there was a series of windows along the wall overlooking the runway.15 I assumed that their normal facilities must have been compromised; perhaps that section of the airport was being renovated. Regardless, the light was brighter than I expected, and I had to keep my eyes half-closed. It was a second before I noticed the two men staring at me across the table.
“So what have you got, son?” The man’s dark mustache bobbed with each syllable. The other man – large, surely a football player when he was younger – crossed his arms.16
“Excuse me?”
“No need to play coy with us.” He bent forward. “Just tell us what it is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know,” he said and pointed. “That.”
I looked down. I was not sitting on a chair at all. The tumor had expanded to the size of a beach ball – no, even larger – and they had just sat me up on top of it.
“Listen, I really don’t know—“
“Son, don’t make this hard for us.” He sighed. “We’ve been looking at your records. You seem like a standup guy. Just tell us what you’ve gotten yourself into.” As he spoke, I could feel my seat rumbling beneath me. It was growing quickly now. I was getting taller by the second.
“Don’t make this hard on yourself,” the other man said, speaking for the time. His voice was deep and gravelly.
“Pipe down, Wilson.” The mustached man coughed and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Listen, Wilson, it’s pretty hot in here. Why don’t you open a window or something?”
“Sure, fine.” He moved to the wall of windows and grabbed one along the base. He lifted it up an inch. I could feel the breeze across my cheek.
“Just help us out, son.” I turned back to the mustached man. His face was stern but not especially hostile. “Tell us what’s going on.”
I looked down. The ball was twitching, growing, still growing, exponentially now. It was massive. Awesome to behold, really. My pants must have ripped while I was unconscious, and the dark red swelling rippled beneath me.
“Son.”17 The mustached man’s voice, but I was mesmerized now. I felt the wind stronger across my face. I turned and saw that the larger man was still struggling to open the window beyond the crack he had managed before. His face strained as he tugged on the base of the window. The air tickled my neck. My bottom heaved.
“Son!” I could now feel the air no longer caressing but pulling on me, like a vacuum. I found myself sliding toward the window. “Son!” The window was now fully open, and the larger man had moved out of my way. I was nearly to the window when I felt myself rising off the ground. “Son!” After a moment’s flight, my body inverted, and my drooping hair dragged the ground for a second before I lifted further into the air. I was moving quickly now, flying, the window sucking me toward it. “Wilson, grab the window!” The man made a move toward it, but it was too late. I had already cleared him and the window’s opening, too, gliding above, hanging below my balloon and flying, soaring into the clear.18
1. Here, the author cleverly plays with our expectations of a friendly Midwesterner. The character’s attire, ironically, belongs nowhere near St. Paul, Minnesota.
2. This being the international symbol for “Enough, already.”
3. Had the speaker stopped at the word “no,” of course, the inquisitor would have had no way of knowing the veracity of the statement, “no” being Spanish for “no.”
4. This condition would be more indicative of the Ebola virus, of which the protagonist exhibits no other symptoms.
5. The author relies on his past experience as a poet in dropping alliteration into his prose.
6. Had the author wished to maintain the rather formal tone of the narrative, he could have gone with the crack’s true name: the intergluteal cleft. This is a mistake that reveals the amateurish quality of his writing.
7. The author avoids much physical description in this passage. Minimalist, or no-talent hack? You be the judge.
8. Metaphorical needles, of course, unless one is willing to go beyond the already surrealistic nature of the piece.
9. This is without a doubt the worst part of plane rides.
10. Any sane individual would know this to be an impossible task. We must begin to speculate on our narrator’s mental health at this point.
11. Gross.
12. The author here wants us to believe that he is playing with a stereotype of the unfriendly airport worker, although to be honest, he probably was just too lazy to develop a more fleshed-out character.
13. At this point, the story devolves almost entirely into dialogue. We can safely assume, as above, that the author is just too lazy to provide us with any useful narrative description.
14. It is universally accepted that one should not say “explodes” in an airport. The character’s tragic flaw? Ignorance. That, or being trapped in a poorly written story.
15. The author must be trying to contrive ways for the story to end. The reader should have lost all respect for him by now. I know I have.
16. Notice the recurrence of character archetypes. Hack.
17. Were this story being handled by a more competent writer, I would assume this repetition to be an intentional technique, almost as beats. Of course, that is not the writer we’re dealing with here.
18. You call this an ending? I’m out of here.
16 November 2009
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