No more fucking around. I am to (and aim to) take this day on headfirst and headlong. Is that redundant? Let me check my computer-phone. Hmm. Okay, so: not necessarily. I mean, sure, the first entry of definition for “headlong” is simply “headfirst”, so I guess so, but that’s not all. According to a second entry, it also means to do something “recklessly“, so, like, yeah – wait, is that really what I meant? That I would take this day on recklessly? No. Yes! Yes: why not? I’ll be recklessly taking this day on, and while I will happen be doing so headfirst, I do not necessarily think that the two are related. Maybe a little, but even if I was taking this day on footfirst, I would still be reckless about it – that much I promise. Phew. Okay. There we go. Lastly, there is a third definition which reads as thus: “without pause or delay” and that is precisely what I initially had meant. But, well, hmm, okay, so now I’m wondering, is recklessness pretty much another word for “without pause or delay”? No: the other way around maybe. Doing something “without pause or delay” can be reckless, sure – I won’t deny this – but, the fact remains, that someone can still be reckless while pausing and delaying. So really, it’s like squares and rectangles. The latter is the former, but the former is not necessarily the latter – and even the reckless/no-pause-nor-delay model is not as concrete as that example, so there. Plus, let’s be real for a minute. Not even synonyms are ever really synonymous with anything, because the sound and look of a word or phrase, not to mention its socially and historically altered use and misuse, will imply and evoke different things. It’s all relative, anyway, so: yeah.
Great. That’s settled. Moving on.
(Additionally, as long as we have landed on synonyms and the imperfect nature of the word itself, I can’t stop thinking about “pause and delay”. If one were to say, “I will be taking this day on innocently and blamelessly,” it could be seen as redundant, sure, but really, despite their seeming similarities, one could be modifying the other, and really the phrase is less redundant and more elaborate, or elaborative – as in “to elaborate” [See what I mean? Even by referring to “elaborate” as both a noun and a verb, I signify different tones, modes and reactive meanings, despite their intrinsic relatedness.].)
In conclusion, I will be taking this day on headfirst, as if diving (but with my hands behind me or at my sides), and with an unrelated, extreme recklessness that also has little to nothing to do with the fact that this on-taking of the day will be performed in such a manner that refrains from both pauses and delays, which happen to be synonyms, but, regardless of this label, the two inform and suggest independent and unique meanings that will all be avoided equally. Here we go. No more fucking around.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
Oh, this was back in the years of licking stamps and the summers of skipping stones that my siblings and I (Consider, Comfort and Melvin) lived in a region of dusty Pigeons and a town of a single, roundabout road. As did the all children of the area, we went to a St. Ernie’s Parochial School, which was run by the Parish, who suddenly perished.
When the final Summer in that final year fell to Fall’s will, Consider and Comfort and I dawdled and bounced and jumped toward our first day of school, but when we got there, it was not. Nothing remained but the grass, whose blades stood tall and shone green, as if the floorboards of St. Ernie’s had never, ever slept there.
We exchanged looks belonging to eyes that looked far more crushed than surprised. Silently agreed, we all turned around, where stood amongst the trees, our peers and classmates in the snowing of leaves.
Everyone knew the facts, but that was all.
One young lad in the front was named Christmas. He sat down on his bag, pushed his fists into his cheeks, and asked, “Where?”
Consider touched a hand to his chin, a hand to that hand’s elbow, and answered, “I suppose..: Heaven. Yes, the whole building went to Heaven. If the school is not on the hill, then the only other place it could possibly be is Heaven.”
Everyone shared a thought, as sometimes used to happen in those days and years. This thought was: School left for Heaven without me.
A tall girl in the middle by the name of Female stood out in the crowd, cleared her throat, and asked, “Why?”
Comfort took a slow breath in through his nose and then let the same slow breath out of his mouth, followed by the words, “Heaven has not forgotten us. Heaven is testing us. We will pass the test as long as we all help one another by giving each other Heaven’s first gift: hugs.”
Everyone shared a second thought
The girl with whom I shared my first kiss was off to one side, a few feet away, and was also named Female. Her lips were a red heart that broke, horizontally, when she opened them to ask, “How?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I looked around for a spell, exhaled a lot and loudly, then finally made a fart noise with my mouth.
Female laughed; no one else did, including Female.
The congregation looked to my brothers, who looked to me, panning everyone’s spotlit gaze back on to me, and then in messy unison everyone in the circle bellowed one gun-powdered, “HOW?”
I didn’t know, so I said, “I don’t know! Why the Hell should I know? And, personally, I don’t think it went to Heaven. I don’t know if it did or not, but it sounds kind of ridiculous if you ask me. Heaven sounds kinda like chump change too, now that I think about it.”
Everyone closed their eyes. Everyone but Female, who began climbing a tree. As I neared the circle of children, it split down the middle to create a narrow pathway, but I like my personal space, so I walked around instead. I stopped to holler “Goodbye” up at the tree that Female was climbing and I smiled as I saw her underwear.
“Farewell” she echoed back and blew a kiss down, but it got stuck on a branch.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole town has perished by now.
Oh shit! That reminds me – I should probably call my parents.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
The Rapporteur was on time. He was always on time. Just as the Head Exec of Body Execs was just about finished putting away his graphs which detailed the various heights of colored bars these days, The Rapporteur slipped through the door like a breeze you notice after its done caressing you.
Those on the left side of the room were relieved. They all knew he would be on time, but they all needed this deal to go through and they knew the Partner and Partner Company Firm weren’t able to pull it off themselves. Those on the right side of the room were waiting to be impressed, to be won over, to be told this deal was not just mutually beneficial, but also exciting.
“And now,” said the Head Exec, practically vomiting his sighs. “Our special report on…, um…”
“Hot dogs,” mumbled The Rapporteur, head down as he flicked open the latches on his briefcase.
“Hot dogs!” Cried the Head Exec. “The report on… hot dogs will be given by The Rapporteur shortly.”
Those on the left side of the room clapped in anticipation, much like children who are familiar with the work of a specific clown and then see this clown perform at a birthday party and maybe that’s the only reason they even bothered going to the birthday party at all. Those on the right side of the room yawned in arrogant unison, feeling – as a unit – threatened down to a juvenile level by the commotion on the other side of the room. They even began snickering and trading low-fives in a chain of chair-swiveling and hand-skimming until every last guest’s hand had been touched.
Then, well, of course:
The Rapporteur gave his report, which was only that of 6 or 7 minutes, yet seemed to be comprehensive of all detailed aspects of the modern hot dog, and even some supplemental material on the most popular kinds of sausages. The result: let’s just saw the maid would be pissed off again, cursing at The Rapporteur, because every time he leaves a room, she has to pick up all the jaws left on the floor.
And then he was gone before the closing applause could commence.
Until then, the meeting had nothing to do with hot dogs. The deal certainly had nothing to do with hot dogs. Yet no one from either side of the room decided to ask, “Why hot dogs?” They knew so much about hot dogs, they could only be grateful for such a gift.
The Rapporteur does not do market research. He does not do annual synopsis. He does not crunch numbers. He does not pitch and pander. He will not investigate any topic that does not drive him. When you hire The Rapporteur, you are not hiring a rapporteur; you are commissioning an artist for his next masterpiece, whatever that may be.
The deal went through.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
Another year had gone by and this was only solidifying Ginger’s suspicion: he was losing touch. It was not that he was losing touch with his friends and family members, most of whom he would routinely contact in one way or another: a phone call or a text message; a postcard or a rock through a window; an electronic letter or a thoughtful Tweet.
Sometimes even in person, as was the case now: leaning against a balcony filled with peers in conical party hats. Reckless conversations filled with laughter floated around Ginger as he held an untouched flute of flat champagne and looked out at and into the seeming void of night, a moment later filled with a shower of distant embers – fireworks cracking their knuckles in the sky and then dying there, leaving only faint ghosts of smoke.
The first one, a blue one, was what set the underlying suspicion into epiphanic motion.
Ginger’s main problem, apart from his name, was that he had been losing touch with himself. This, of course, refers to the figurative or colloquial sense of “touch” as Ginger could still feel himself. For example, in the shower, when he would be provoking ejaculation, his body was operating in full with healthy tactile responses. But there was something missing, even in these moments of selfish intimacy. What had gone? What had left? It was emotion that should have been accompanying the exodus of semen from the prostate gland to the shower drain and tiles and curtain and knobs, et cetera.
The cognitive emotion of identity.
This is my penis, launching my sperm on to my shower mat.
He was, as far as he could tell, a stranger to himself without any practical means of communication, and what was worse, without any real desire for it. The only desire Ginger could muster was the want to want, because he could call upon thin memories of how good it felt, or rather he could understand or acknowledge such an existence of a good feeling as it pertained to desire. He did not feel these recollections and instead viewed them like one might the pages in a ledger that was once relevant.
It had been a full calender year since the sensation of identity began to flee. He knew this well because the first instance was the prior New Year’s Eve when his fiancè asked him, “Ginger, baby, hon, what’s your resolution?”
The thought hadn’t crossed his mind and this would have been more upsetting to him if it weren’t so upsetting to him, you see. Despite constant failure, he always had a resolution ready in place for coming year, because he loved blind optimism and how it would always grow with champagne. Ginger thought on this, his hands upon his lover’s enormous waist, and let the thought go with a shrug that doubled as his answer to the question.
Several months later, it doesn’t really matter how many, Ginger called the wedding off. And when she wept in his arms, he shrugged here too. Shrugging became his non-verbal mantra. One day he woke up and his shoulders were sore. He tried to shrug this off, but it led to a mildly painful reminder. It was this day that he developed a second technique with which he translated the meaning and motion of the shrug to his eyebrows and lids. The Facial Shrug, he might have called it, had he any desire to name anything anymore.
The days had passed him by, yet they were also catching up with him. It’s kind of difficult to figure out. Did they lap him? I do not know, but no matter the case, the result forged a sadness in Ginger’s next shrug, which was performed in perfect accordance with the routine of his motions, yet the feeling itself did not get “shrugged” off, nor away. This brewed up a flurry of worry, which Ginger immediately tried to combat with his back up, the Facial Shrug, to no avail.
This was a frustrating failure, because that’s the way he saw it, blind to the successes that were blossoming around him: sadness, worry, and now frustration.
Soon the fireworks fell dark and silent, and once again, a snarl of boozy conversations was the only backdrop to Ginger’s thoughts. He emptied his glass with one swallow and resolved that within the year, he would have a New Year’s Resolution prepared for next year.
Flash Fiction Archives <> Onward!
The first order of business for the Club was to decide just what kind of Club it was to be. As it was, the only discernible shared interest of the three founding and only members (Katty, Juju, and Flufster) was that they all wanted to be apart of something that others would refer to as a club. It began with Katty and Juju:
Katty: Gosh, Juju, I know we just met here, now, at this bus stop, but I feel like I can tell you one of my deepest fantasies. I want to be in a club.
Juju: Well, Katty, I feel like I’ve known you since, jeez, just about forever. Since the day my nipples came in – granted, this was late for most: 30, but considering I’m now 74, that is quite a long time – and to honest with you, for a long time my only wish was for my nipples to come in and when they finally did, on my 30th birthday, I was left with a grand and surprising abundance of emptiness inside of my belly. My chest was full and plush with a multitude of just about the brightest, greenest nipples you’d ever seen, but deep down in my soul’s stomach, there was an absence. The absence of hope. “What next is there for me to look forward too? I have my nipples and they aren’t going anywhere. What now? What’s on deck? More nipples?” That would have been a greedy wish considering biology’s birthday gift that year, albeit a belated one.
Katty: Right.
Juju: Then one day, I saw a playing card on the street, like it was a piece of trash. And, sure, maybe it was. But to me it was like a wink from the universe. This card was the King of Clubs and at first I thought what I needed to wish for was a black man in my life who may not be a king, but hopefully may own a crown of some kind, or at the very least, some Crown Royal – and to be honest with you in the here and now of it, yes, I do indeed hope for this and, no, that’ll never change, honey – but as I looked beyond that which was obvious, I saw the true sign in the card hiding that clover’s sexy shape: I should hope that one day I am in a club of some kind.
Katty: Well, okay. Maybe we should start a club.
Before Juju could open her pine-scented mouth, the bus arrived with a lurch and the doors were slammed open to reveal a cat the size of a human at the wheel. He was wearing a uniform
Christopher Hitchens – or, if you prefer, in reverse: Hitchens, Christopher – had a cancer living him, cancer of the esophagus, which he both provoked and tried to decimate with the ancient remedy of whiskey – known for its healing power amongst atheists and anti-theists (aparently, this doesn’t hold the same crystaline-aura-cleansing powers for the agnostics, who seek out the haughty and plush sensations of an I.P.A. rather than the ammunition-wielding gut-head-nuts-punches of hard alcohol), for whom (go back to before the initial parentheses if you are confused) he was a great icon and leader, waving an invisible flag of the Hitchens God: a non-god (also invisible). Usually, atheists weep from their penises and vaginas – these be the hedonistic and/or existential tears of whiteness and stickiness – but on the day that Christopher Hitchens’ cancer got the best of him, by recruiting pneumonia, these “God is Dead” shouters wept the conventional way.
“But, don’t cry, godless Hitchens Atheist,” hushed the omniscient nothingness to the masses. “He died with a sword in hand.”
Christopher Hitchens’ health had been on the decline for some time, and while he was never going to stop hating religion and drinking Scotch whiskey all night long - as he was so instructed by his favorite Steely Dan song – he knew that the worst was on its way and was, in fact, inside him, so this was Hitchens on cancer: “Build up that wall between yourself and the cancer!” He began to try to separate. This began simply by misspelling his name, slowly but surely, by starting with the last vowel, thus: “Christopher Hitchins” – a simple, but bold first step in removing himself from himself, though ultimately not enough. Between being drunk and dying and reserving an allotment of time specifically for flipping off a likeness of Christ on the cross that he himself had drawn, he had little time for the separation. Until one day, in the bathroom, Christopher Hitchens’ cancer finished the job of division and removed itself from the esophagus, unsheathing an ornate sword in the bloody process. Poised for the violent embrace of war, Hitchens’ cancer held the rapier in its tumorous hands, pointing at our antitheist’s nose, as if to say “en garde” (knowing full well that if it were to as-if-say anything else, presuming to debate Hitchens, it would lose such a battle, but a battle of blades, this little shit-bird cancer could possibly win).
Being an advocate of all things related to the death of man, all things that bring man closer to the proof of no afterlife, Chris Hitchens naturally had his own sword in his gloomy abode. In fact, he had at least three swords and up to nine daggers in each room of the house and, daily, Hitchens would double check and do a “head count” on his deadly tools of deathly destruction. Being that this unlikely event was happening on the terlet (toilet), he naturally went for the small sword he kept staved away in the terlet (toilet) tank (tank), flipping the porcelain lid off in a flash, shattering into white embers of non-fire on the bathroom floor, scattering a sharpness of sweepings amongst the carcinoma’s poisonous “feet”.
At this point, it was on: Hitchens vs Hitchens! A dual to end almost all duals. Sparks flew as they commenced to bang their sharp, metal phalluses together. One fighter on the terlet (toilet), the other a pulsing mutation “holding” a sword 50 times larger than the warrior itself. It would have made quite a fun postcard had a photographer been passing by Hitchens’ bathroom (as they often had). But we know how this battle ends, do we not? With the tip of a sword embedded in Christopher Hitchens’ pneumonia riddled lungs. In this final sad moment, with his final pathetic breath, the words:
“What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof,” Christopher Hitchens quotes himself here. A curious and cryptic message to an earless tumor, but cryptic of what?
Alas, the battle is over. Fought, but not won – the latter more important than the former.
What now after Hitchens’ death: it is true that while alive he was best known for his patented Hitchens’ debate your face off skills, those illustrious Hitchens’ YouTube appearances (oh, he went viral; oh, it’s a fact), and of course his Hitchens’ author works, which are called “books” or “page-toothed wisdom mouths” (these Christopher Hitchens books include, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” and “God Is Not Great” [in which he tried to dispell the popular rumor that God was indeed “great”]), but Christopher Hitchens’ true legacy will remain to be his uncanny resemblance to the great actor Roger Allam, who played the character of Royalton in the best film ever made, Speed Racer.
Pretty much every second of every minute of every hour of every half-day of every full-day of our long, drawn-out lives, some nobody comes up and asks us, “Why aren’t you dudes ever REAL, man? You’re always putting up some kind of a front, putting on some kind of act, or putting the fronts of acts up and on other things that act like fronts. Why? Why not deal with the inconvenient truths of hard facts?”
Well, the Whiteman Brothers will now begin devoting entire minutes of their years to nonfiction. Christof took the first turn wearing the “Press” cap and managed to cover a real hot story without leaving a couch. Read it here.
So after enjoying a particularly rewarding episode of “Frasier”, I deleted it; naturally, I was ready to watch another. But here’s where Fate’s predeterminedly slam of fortoldish instinctualiZedness impacted my human-core with pre-provocognitive-esque preparednessliness of something I had known prior: at this punch of a remote’s button, the screen returns not to the data bank of recordings, but rather to the last channel viewed, which happened to be the Fox News Channel.
Thus the interfaced blinked to a man in a suit saying, “…so why don’t we go to a clip of that, people that go to things.” Then lower-resolution video of some bland, staged event (an event with a stage, mind you) being watched by a crowd.
The last tele-prompted (?) bit of speech re-uttered itself in the confines of my brain’s mind: …so why don’t we go to a clip of that, people that go to things.
There’s some equivocation here and I find it fascinating. Firstly and most-unimportantly, the possibility that the transcribed excerpt you’ve just now read twice should contain a colon where there’s a comma is not a possibility. The intonations confidently suggested the direct address. He was speaking to those who identify as “people who go to things.” But the paramount question now reveals itself to be, “WHICH peoples who go to things?”
There are two possible answers that I can render:
1) The man in the suit who is paid money to talk to lenses was addressing those of us at home who also go to things – things like events or whatever – because he knew we’d get a real kick out of footage of a stage and its crowd.
2) The man in the suit who is paid money to talk at lenses was addressing the technicians – the “men and/or women in the booth,” as they say – and he was reminding them of their jobs without using their names or their professional titles.
The last scenario delights me in an odd way. It’s similar to sensations conjured upon seeing someone who has ice cream smeared about the mouth, or even the sensations conjured upon being someone who has ice cream smeared about the mouth.
Where to go? What to do?
Others may have taken the easy road by watching another episode of “Frasier” (a paragon encrusted on the crown of Yester-Thursday’s Must-Seen), but I had the strength to write it down and explore these new emotions and soon-to-be-age-old quandaries by assigning words to them and then italicizing some of them.
The Epiphanic Moral:
I may not be the muscle you want in a fist fight, but my brain-space is buff with courage, bro.
Breakfast in Bed from the WHITEMAN BROTHERS on Vimeo.
“Where does it buzz, babe? In your belly sack?”
Introduction
This story can barely be referred to as such. It is true that it is fiction, but it also lacks a strong hold or pursuit of many of the basic conventions of story. It is an immature piece written about love and loss – a kind of loss that is completely foreign to me – and it is fragmented into sorts of post-cards sent from pivotal moments in a relationship whose reality is always bent to some degree. It was written in the spring of 2006 for a Fiction 1 class at Ithaca College and the titled sections are directly taken from the list of vague exercise prompts our professor gave us. This draft is the first I had written, touched only slightly since.
There were other versions of this story now lost. One such draft included additional sections not written from the class prompts, the only one I can really remember having something to do with cavemen fenced off in the backyard and how one of the characters saw some sort of beauty in watching these troglodytes “fighting and fucking one another.†The draft that contained some facsimile of that line seems so utterly lost now that I have very little ambition in attempting to either recreate it or add anything to this piece to fill it out a little more, which is why I decided to no longer sit on this and put it up.
I rather liked that section and I mourn its passing, so to sloppily honor it I’ll henceforth be calling this slap-shod, incomplete, confused and previously untitled “storyâ€, The Cavemen in the Backyard, which makes very little sense without this preface. I just thought it would be respectful to let you know that there is no hidden meaning behind the title, no deep digging to do on your part; it’s not a bullshit metaphor or an obscure intertextual reference. It’s just this thing, you see.
The Reluctant I
The face is so innocent: no motives behind the expressions. No expressions at all, unless something interesting happens inside your dream. What is it you are dreaming of, anyway? Who is hiding inside your head? And what is he doing? Is he rubbing your back? Kissing your hands? Does he buy you whole cities for you to drive around in fancy-free? Do his hands turn to talking fish with British accents just to make you laugh?
“Your gills are most attractive, young lady trout!â€
“Bite your tongue, sir! Such talk is prohibited on my father’s estate.â€
It would be nice to know that you are dreaming pure color. It would be nice if patterns would mesh and merge and darken and brighten as your mind and body rest. It would be nice if you could be given back all the beauty you exude to the world. That would be nice.
When the sun was still awake you danced about the streets and rolled around in the grass and laughter was born and it was sweet to hear. When the moon took over, a shy invitation was sent out and was eagerly accepted. Before you fell so deep inside the gentle jungle of your dream, your eyes sang sonnets and your lips and tongue painted a sunrise with brush strokes that tickled and comforted. Tiny hands caressed lonely skin, putting smiles on so many blood cells living underneath. Then the yawns, then slowed motions. When your eyes closed, the room dimmed.
Your chest will rise and fall, making blue swirls of sweet-smelling breath pour out of your nostrils. Hands hang open, by your side, cradled by the canyons in the blankets. Another hand would sit atop yours if there weren’t the fear of disturbing the dream.
Your hair is a light brown waterfall stopped in time, flowing off pillows and onto your shoulders.
Your left foot is moving. Tapping. Up and down, fast. It sends itty-bitty waves through the bed. You had said that you do that. That your mother does that, and so did your grandmother.
Your hand goes to itch your nose and before you place it on your stomach, it moves across freckles here and there on your cheek, on your neck. They sit on your skin, a white tinted with peach by just a drop. The eyes now move under their lids. Hopefully that doesn’t mean your dream has taken a wrong turn. Oh good. Your lips curve to a half-smile.
A flicker of light – your eyes open. A startled confusion for a short while before your brain makes sense of what it is seeing. You smile and I don’t deserve it.
True Feelings
The wallpaper sings soft symphonies to two turtles on a bed of pillows. Barbara’s shell is purple and Kenneth’s shell is speckled red and black. The bed sleeps, snoring quietly. Up and down, the turtles rise and fall on the breath of the mattress. They search in one another’s eyes. But for what?
I wish I knew what it was like to be inside your shell. I wish the secrets you keep inside there could slip out and into mine, where I would keep them safe and warm, wrapped tight (but not too tight) in tiny boxes lined with cotton. I wish lots and lots.
I wish too, you know. I wish your mouth were a button I could push to inflate your body with notes belonging to violins. I’d tie a string to your tail before you could float away and I’d carry you around at the carnival.
Kenneth opens his mouth and out tumbles innumerable blueberries to be licked up by Barbara. Yum. Yum. Yummy. She moans happiness that settles itself around Kenneth and causes him to rustle and rumble till he shakes and shivers into a fuzzy teddy bear.
I’m so sorry! I never meant to change you.
Don’t be sorry. To be a turtle is not what I need to be happy in this life. At the moment, you are. You could change me into water, as long as you promised to lap me up and hold me within you.
But did it hurt?
It was easy to find the beauty in the pain.
Kenneth touches his synthetic fur to the tough, leathery skin of Barbara’s head. The pleasure fills her shell with pink mosquitoes that tickle her to tears that smile. She lets them out and they whiz up to dance their wings about the room, high above the electricity buzzing between his fur and her shell.
Warmth. Oxygen. Endorphins.
You make my chest feel dizzy.
I fell in love with your brown eyes.
The mosquitoes cling to the walls and suck the music out till they fall to the floor, fat and dead. The room sits still and quiet as Kenneth puts his arm around Barbara, waiting for her eyes to shut, so he can do the same.
Kenneth dreams of a water slide leading to a pool where Barbara waits for him. He can never reach the pool. He just slides over and over and over again, hoping next time he might crash into her.
Barbara dreams of a birthday cake the size of a castle. She chases after Kenneth on different layers, trenching through frosting of blue and white and gold. She giggles as Kenneth cries out, Catch me, catch me, catch me if you can!
Their dreams snuggle in close with one another – dreams that hold hands and press lips against cheeks. When the dreams fall asleep, the teddy bear and the turtle will awake in one another’s arms.
Walking
I had to get out of the house. Driving wouldn’t work. I need to be moving. I need my body to do some talking. And I really need to listen. My shoes squeak and clap on the sidewalk and then eventually on the sizzling black tar of the street. The sun is twenty feet above and there are no shadows in sight. I sweat until all my clothes are a solid shade darker. An army of kids is out here absorbing the light, using it as fuel. They are running around and riding bikes and climbing trees – all that shit.
My legs speed up and take me away to Main Street. The kids here are not as many, but the one’s that are present are all holding their mothers’ hands. Going in and out of stores. Some of them perfect angels that tighten my lungs with their faces; others are awful little shits that scream horror stories into my heart so loud that it makes it beat harder. A man smokes a cigarette as he passes by and I want so badly to ask him for one. I want to calm my nerves with nicotine. I want to chain-smoke whole cartons and corrupt every last cell of my body with cancer.
But I don’t.
My breathing quickens and my feet gain weight. I begin walking in slow motion. A child zips by me from behind and his foot reaches the curb as the white figure changes to an orange hand. The core of me lets out of a shriek for help that echoes for miles and shakes the sky. I sprint to the street, grab the boy by his waist and swing him around. I shove his chocolate covered fact into my chest, staining my shirt, and I let out huge sobs.
I shout, “Don’t you ever do that again! Do you hear me? Don’t you ever scare me like that.â€
The boy claws his way out of my stranger’s arms and runs away to his real mother.
The world has paused with its fierce eyes on me and I start walking home with my mind made up. I am keeping this baby.
Déjà vu
Barbara sits naked on one of the two chairs at the small kitchen table. Her belly is a skin-colored beach ball waiting to pop. She fingers her bellybutton and says, “Is it ready?â€
Kenneth screams without screaming, “If they were ready I wouldn’t still be standing here, would I?†His eyes don’t move to her, instead they keep watch on the scrambled eggs in the frying pan as he pokes at them with a red spatula.
Barbara says, “Fuck you, smart ass†with her eyes and spits black acid on the floor near Kenneth’s feet, burning holes in the wood, and to her disappointment, not in his flesh.
Kenneth turns the knob to “Off†and the burner goes from orange to black. It’s a slow fade. He tilts the pan so the eggs fall to the plate. Slow steps to reach the table before Kenneth drops the plate on the surface when it would have been just as easy to set it down, but had he done it that way it wouldn’t have been loud and jarring – the not-so-subtle things people do to avoid an altogether different shade of overtness, directness.
He turns away and walks to the fridge.
The sound of glass breaking steals Kenneth’s strolling attention. Yellow fluffs of scrambled eggs and white triangles of glass on the floor.
Silence. Anger. Confusion.
“I asked for eggs over easy.â€
“No. You demanded eggs. You specified nothing.â€
“Watch your fucking attitude,†Barbara snaps. “When you have a heavy hunk of life in your body, I’ll make you eggs however you want…†The volume of her words lowers to pure silence but her lips continue moving. A white figure materializes behind her. His tired eyes spew little streams of exhaust and his voice lacks the appropriate effort as he says, “Boo.â€
It’s the family ghost.
In a blink, Barbara becomes Kenneth’s father and Kenneth becomes his own mother, but only in spatial terms. Really, Barbara has vanished and Kenneth is standing behind his father who sits at the table. Really, Kenneth has become the family ghost.
Mr. Father reads the paper and says, “Are you done?â€
Mrs. Mother says under her breath, “If I were done, I wouldn’t still be standing here, would I?â€
Mr. Father spits fire with his eyes and says, “Fuck you, smart ass†with his mouth before turning back to the paper.
Mrs. Mother sniffles, keeping her eyes intently on the eggs, poking at them with the same red spatula. A black tear rolls down her cheek before it disappears under her chin and stains a bruise at the top of her throat. She turns the knob to “Off†and the burner goes from orange to black. It’s a slow fade.
Her feet move slowly across the floor until she reaches the table. She is careful when setting the plate so it touches neither Mr. Father’s arm, nor his newspaper.
Mr. Father looks down at the plate and grabs her arm before she can turn around. He stands up with the plate in one hand and Mrs. Mother’s thin arm glowing white in his other.
“I said sunny side up, didn’t I?â€
“Um, I…â€
An explosion of white and yellow against the wall that crashes to the floor.
“Didn’t I?â€
Mr. Father’s recently vacant hand grabs Mrs. Mother by the throat, tight. He says, “Well. Clean it up,†as he drags her body through Kenneth’s transparent existence. Kenneth loses his breath for an instant. He can see two little wet eyes and a mop of brown hair peeking through the open doorway. Kenneth makes eye contact with himself and – destroyed – he says, “Boo.â€
In a blink, Barbara is back and she is shouting, “Are you even listening to me?â€
Kenneth’s eyes are wet, his throat is dry, and his mouth is open, incapable of forming words. He falls to the floor, his knees and hands trembling amidst the broken glass and eggs.
The paint on the kitchen walls melt away to reveal an empty whiteness – a contradiction of light.
“Oh no, baby,†Barbara says quiet, placing her warm hand on Kenneth’s back. Her other hand touches under his chin to guides his eyes up into her view. Her face contorts with concern.
Hushed: “What is it?â€
Kenneth’s hands cry blood from where the small shards of white stick in his palms. He chokes, swallows, and asks in a thin voice, “How many eggs did you want?â€
Silent Partner
Rob is there. So is Suzy. Beth made it as well. Frank showed up late, but he showed. These are Kenneth and Barbara’s closest friends. The ones they would go on double dates with. The ones they would run to during fights. The ones they were cry and scream to when they were scared, felt alone.
There are the five of them sitting in red velvet theater chairs that fold at the seat. Rob and Suzy to Kenneth’s left. Frank and Beth to his right. And, obviously, Kenneth is sitting dead center.
Frank: Sorry I didn’t show up earlier. Had to pick up these bad mamma-jammas.
Frank passes around cigars to the others. Kenneth has his eyes fixed on the giant screen in front of him, his elbows on his knees, his fists pushing up under his chin. Frank sticks one of the cigars in Kenneth’s shirt pocket and gives him a pat on the back. Flashing on the screen are images of Barbara on a bed in a white room filled with doctors and nurses. A close-up shot of Barbara sweating and screaming, but there is no sound to the image, just the rattling of the projector against the conversation of the others in the theater.
Beth: Oh, this guy is never on time.
Frank: Yeah, but you love me anyway.
Beth: Well… I like you a lot anyway.
(Canned Laughter)
Suzy: At least yours shows up at all.
Rob: What exactly is that supposed to mean?
Suzy: You stood me up for lunch on Tuesday!
Rob: I told you I had to cancel.
Suzy: You did not!
Rob: Next time I’ll stick a post-it note on your forehead.
(Canned Laughter)
A wide-angle shot of a doctor speckled in blood. Cut to a medium-close shot. His mouth moves fiercely under his mask, and then the frame pans to follow a nurse who runs out of the room. She comes back in with another doctor.
Kenneth’s face cringes at the screen and it forms permanent wrinkles on his face. He watches another close-up of Barbara. Tears and sweat ride her face, down and into her mouth where her teeth clench. Cut to a shot of a nurse with her hand on Barbara’s shoulder. She mouths the word, “Push.â€
Frank: Sorry, I’m so late! I had to roll these sweet stogies.
Beth: Oh, he’s never on time.
Frank: Yeah, except in bed!
(Canned Laughter)
Suzy: At least yours still wants to touch you.
Rob: What exactly is that supposed to mean?
Suzy: You haven’t gone down on me in a year!
Rob: That’s because you don’t clean your vagina properly!
(Canned Laughter)
An aerial shot looks down on the entire delivery room. It slowly pushes in as the top of a small head emerges from between Barbara’s bloodied legs.
Kenneth shakes as he watches. He holds himself tight, trying hard to keep looking.
Frank: Sorry guys! I would have been here sooner if I didn’t fly to Cuba for these primo smokes!
Beth: Ah, this faggot’s never on time.
Frank: Bitch, you best watch the lip!
(Canned Laughter)
This same shot pushes in tighter so you can only see from Barbara’s stomach to the doctor’s hands, holding the head as an arm comes out.
Kenneth’s hair goes from black to gray to white and his lips fatten as they tremble.
Suzy: At least your man isn’t fucking around on you!
Rob: If I didn’t sleep with younger girls, I’d probably beat you twice as often!
(Canned Laughter)
The shot stops pushing in when the small female child is born, wet in the doctor’s arms. Cut to a close-up of Barbara’s face and she doesn’t smile. She doesn’t move. Her eyes are open but they are not awake.
Kenneth makes a fist of his face and his eyes blur with moisture until they overflow and trickle down his weathered skin.
A close-up of a heart monitor. Predictably, the green line is flat.
Kenneth: Guys.
Kenneth sits in an empty theater.
Kenneth: I’m a father.
Letters From Inside The Story
Dear Mommy,
My name is Barbara and that is your name too. That is what daddy says. He says you never got to meet me but you loved me anyways. I like purple and tractors. And I like cats and my stuffed cat and her name is Bubble. I wish I could meet you now but daddy says I can’t do it. I think daddy is sad a lot because you are gone and it makes me sad when he is sad. I think maybe if you come back so daddy is happy and then I am happy and we would all be happy together. Will you come back and be my mommy for me? Daddy said we would like each other because we both like Uno. I am real good at Uno. I win daddy every time. Come back and we will play Uno with daddy and Bubble.
Bye Bye
Barbara
—
Dear Mommy,
I know you can’t come back and I know you can’t read this, but I want to write it anyway. I feel dumb because of my last letter. My teacher made me write it for my 1st grade class and my teacher made dad come talk to her about it. He came to my class when the other kids were gone and I asked him to send it for me and he started crying and it made me hate myself for making him sadder so I’m not gonna show him my letters anymore.
I didn’t want to write another letter for a while either because my last one so I didn’t. But I’m in 3rd grade now and dad started showing me his old photo albums and he tells me about you and then it made me really miss you a lot. I really love you even if you are dead.
Love,
Barbara
—
Dear Mom,
I kissed a boy today! I didn’t tell dad because he would embarrass me. I know he does it because he loves me, but it’s nice to know I can tell you things and not worry about anyone knowing.
The boy’s name is Calvin and he is really nice and so cute. He wanted to walk me home after school a week ago. I said okay but I told him I was walking to the cemetery to deliver you a letter. He asked me who you were and I said, “She was my mommy.â€
He said he was sorry and then he put his hand on my shoulder. He kept walking me home after school after that and some days we went and got donuts at the Roth’s Bakery and he bought them for me. What a gentleman! And then today when we were outside the house I said goodbye and he said “Wait, wait! I have something important to tell you.†And then he kissed me!
I’ll tell you more about him next week.
Love,
Barbara
—
Dear Mom,
Dad had a stroke. He is in the hospital for a while. The doctor said he would be okay, but he will need to use a respirator when he sleeps. Don’t worry though. I’ll take care of him for you. I got to visit him yesterday he said he would find someone to help him and to keep up the house. I wish I could take some time off school and do it myself but he doesn’t want me to graduate a year late.
I don’t know. We’ll figure something out.
I’ll write more soon.
Love,
Barbara
—
Dear Mom,
Guess what?
I GOT INTO BERKELEY!!!!
I know you would be proud of me, but dad is proud enough for everybody. Julia is working out well around the house, but I still wish someone in the family could take her place. Or maybe I should just go to U of O or OSU. I’m worried about leaving him along in a big empty house. Sometimes I feel like he is just hanging in there for me and if I leave to another state, he wouldn’t just give up, would he? I don’t want him to think I’m ready to be on my own, because then what does he have? Julia?
He doesn’t do much anymore. At least before he would pass the days by wasting time in front of bad sitcoms or in the garage building shelves for nothing to sit on. But now he just lies in bed or sits by the window. Except when I come home from school his face lights up and makes me tell him everything about what I’m learning, what my friends talk about during lunch, everything. It’s all boring stuff but he seems to find it interesting. Other than that he’s practically in a home already, but I refuse to send him to one of those places.
God, I wish you could tell me what to do. I know you wouldn’t want me to say this, but sometimes I really wish you never had me. I’m not ungrateful but I just love dad so much and I wish you could be
Jesus, I don’t know.
I love you.
Barbara