Vial in hand – containing what? whatever – I can see the sun’s shine tickling the surface of the town’s water supply, and I automatically recall the first time I was introduced to hate.
As most extreme emotions are born from their opposites, I had first felt love.
Every morning before we had met, I was only troubled by a consistently blissful longing for love, having heard and read so much about it. This desire instilled others: hope, a contentedness, an immersible sense of wholeness that came, paradoxically, with the awareness that something was missing.
Every morning after we had met, I caught the scent of her that lingered in the air from whatever dream my mind had just dismissed, and somewhere in this new routine a process of alchemy forged a different version of myself, one that felt an illusion of completion.
Or perhaps it was genuine, but it certainly was temporary.
Something had been overlooked when this love was produced, some admixture of rogue ingredient, and by the end, we had somehow methodically, yet not consciously, replaced every unit of love with one massive unit of hate. And now when I smell her hair and skin in my waking thoughts, it sets my stomach to boil until nauseated, begging a purge, but you cannot stick a finger down the throat of the past.
The only force of action that can be taken is for the future.
At present, I stand at the rail, overlooking the water that she’ll one day drink, as will the rest of them. The tour group long gone, I uncork the vial and toss it in. I give my eyes to the lens of the nearest security camera, and I wait to be taken away, to be arrested, to hear that the water works will be drained, will be shut down, will be reopened after examination and sterilization, but it never happens.
Now I wait to find out when I’ve officially become a murderer.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
There was a quick snip in the breeze that night, the air frigid as the ice box in a Frigidaire brand refrigerator. The skin on his hands was fraying, most of the top layer was starting to peel in places, and it was white as the snow that fell upon the old yegg as he circled the house. No light shone through any window. “Gently snoozin’, eh?” He giggled the words that floated out on the little white clouds of his breath. It was uncertain – even to him – as to whether he was referring to the house itself, or the old walnut tycoon who was certain to be somewhere inside, dreaming of youth.
Entrance to the house was easily gained through a routine motion of jimmying the lock on the back door – a not-so-tasking task whose burden was shouldered primarily by muscle memory. It would have been entirely possible that he could have even forgotten have done it already were the moment not grounded by such a stern gust of wind, which temporarily crippled his fingers, causing the bones to stiffen and the skin to bleed from the deep cracks.
A flashlight’s beam scanned the walls on the rooms, stopping only on potential decoys. The safe was found behind a painting of a large walnut. He propped the flashlight on a nearby end table to keep the safe spotlit as he went to work. He could immediately determine the year and make of the safe: a simple stethoscope job.
The inside of the house was warm, heated by a wood stove, which chewed on embers during the night. It was located not four feet to the snake-theif’s left. The contrast was initially a welcome surprise, but it was such a stark one that his hands were involuntarily shaking and shivering, trying to rid itself of he cold that remained deep inside.
It was easy for him to identify the combination with his sensitive ears, but his once-steady hands couldn’t stop the dial at the precise digits.
In all of his anti-career he had been in and out and on his way home, whichever roadside motel that may be for the night, but his hands – under the embrace of the elements – were failing him, and fast, which slowed his process down and called for it to be repeatedly repeated. An attempt to rub his weary hands stemmed a sensation of dry skin brusquely brushing other dry skin triggered a series of cringes.
On the verge of crying and admitting defeat, he breathed with depth and tried once more.
Left, right, left, left, right.
On the final turn to the right, he held his breath in and pulled the reigns on the pace, hoping to hear that divine click.
The door swung open, and the old yegg let himself weep the painful tears of miserable accomplishment. He gazed upon the loot, and his eye lids met their limits as they revealed the size and shape of his eyeballs to no one.
Inside lay waiting a pair of thick wool gloves, a do-it-yourself home manicure kit, and a five tube assortment of hand creams and botanical ointments.
He knew then and there that this was the big retirement score.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
Leonard lounges around the house, atop the fridge, the couch arms, shelves, and any thing else he can make into a comfy anti-perch, his belly fat languidly spilling out over the edge-most part of this or that. I feed him. He sleeps. I watch Television programs with vapid characters. He obsesses about my odoriferous shoes. I pet him, and his air of indifference is only broken by the rumble of involuntary purring. I bring home a date, and he becomes someone else.
I love my Leonard, but sometimes I need the company of a real man – nothing that could ever compare or even have a chance to compete with the depth and longevity of the arrangement that Leo and I share as cat and level-one cat lady, but an occasional someone who can reply verbally rather than merely meow and who might be willing to lend a hot, engorged phallus to fill my moist void for at least a few minutes, maybe more. It doesn’t really matter if my body makes a joy-bomb go off or not. It doesn’t even matter if I enjoy it at all. What matters is that I can have the peace of mind, knowing that someone was inside me at least once a year. If I don’t hit that quota, I graduate to a level-two cat lady.
This year, my gentleman suitor sits on the sofa, and while I fetch him something to drink (red wine and Sprite), Leonard is surely preparing to stand on the man’s lap to dig his claws into his slacks, and possibly flesh, while facing away, sticking his tight little butt hole in the man’s direction.
I come back with two fizzing, plastic champagne flutes in one hand and a new plant-mister in the other. My handsome stranger looks kind of adorable making that nauseated grimace while staring into the brown sinkhole Leonard has put on display. I pump two quick squirts of water at Leonard, and he leaps off the man’s thigh, looking back at me to question my integrity. I want to mouth the words, so sorry, to my beloved, but I know that Rick, or Rich, or Dirk, or whatever his name is, will probably be looking at me. And he is. He seems grateful.
We semi-snuggle, doing lots of contact flirting like touching shoulders and thighs as if it’s a way of basic gesturing. We finish our spritzers – or Sprite-zers, as I like to call them – so I ask him, “Care for another one, big boy?” I immediately feel self-conscious about calling him “big boy” but the red wine that prompted that silly utterance is the same thing that helps me roll with it.
“Got anything stronger?”
“Um, I could make the ratio more in favor of the wine?”
He snaps, points, and smiles before saying, “You read my mind. And…” – he leans in for odd, drunken emphasis here – “…you red my wine.”
“Hmm?”
“You put the red in my wine, babe.” He slouches back, pleased with himself.
I push out a giggle that sounds more like a guffaw that got slapped around, and I try to sound horny when I say, “Coming right up!” I move fast in the kitchen, because I realize I left the plant-mister on the coffee table. When I come back out, Leonard is hacking up a hairball on so-and-so’s lap. I drop the flutes and rush over, stomping to scare Leo away, who immediately rushes away, then around me to lick up the spilled Sprite-zer. I swat the hairball off the guy’s crotch and apologize, verging on tears as I sit.
He smiles and says, “Hey now – if I didn’t know any better, you were trying to cop a feel there.” He smiles, lids drawn half over his eyes, drunk, more of a light-weight than me.
I notice there is a small bulge in his black jeans, and I hesitantly start to rub him through his pants. He’s closing his eyes, moaning like a woman. And I shrug, thinking this should be easy enough. I fuck his mouth with my tongue, because I read in a magazine that guys like girls who are aggressive. So we’re on the couch, totes making out, and I put my hands on his back, pulling him toward me, making him make me lie down on the couch. I unbuckle his belt and don’t bother waiting for him to futz with my bra. I take it off, hoping he’ll take that as a cue to remove my shirt.
He starts feeling up under my shirt, knocking the loose bra around. Oh well.
Then there’s the crash of thick glass. We both turn to see Leo is on an end table, a vase my grandmother gave me broken beneath it. I’m furious and sad and more alone than I’ve ever been without that heirloom, but I can’t let it slow me down. This night is bigger than that. It has to be.
“Do you need to clean that up?”
I shake my head, pointing my nose down, trying to look irresistible, but I can feel the skin around my left eye twitching. I say, “Take off your pants and show me your sausage link,” and then I throw up in my mouth a little, swallow it, and lick my lips. I peel off my shirt and start rubbing my boobs, pushing them around like I saw someone do in a pornographic motion picture I accidentally ordered at a hotel once. My suitor’s boner peeks through the flap in his boxers. I want to seem excited even though I’m dry as an 80 year-old paraplegic nun, so I say, “Ay-yi-yi”, imitating Anita from West Side Story, soon realizing that it was a little over the top, but he looks like he’s battling a bashful feeling with a lusty one, so I guess it worked.
We keep trading looks, until he finally works up to courage to ask with a thin voice, “Would you mind… maybe…” before he can ask for me to suckle on his penis, Leo roars and pounces on it, trying to use the guy’s thing as a small scratching post.
I cover my mouth while the guy shrieks, slapping Leo in the head, hard. My baby scurries away, making pained meows.
“Fuck, fuck – what the fuck!” He looks horrified, holding his crotch, a little blood on his hands.
“It’s okay! It’s okay! We’ll give it an ice bath and it will be good as new!”
“Fuck you, lady! Do you understand what just happened? This is my baby boy! This is my heart’s heart! This is my fucking livelihood!”
“Wait – you’re a prostitute? Because I only have cash….”
“No! I… I guess I don’t know what livelihood means, but: FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! It hurts!” He’s shaking as he gently pulls his pants back up.
And I panic and start tugging them back down hard, making him groan, but the wrong kind. I plead with him, “C’mon, please, don’t do that! Just pop it in real quick! Just the tip! Just enough to break the streak!”
“No, you crazy bitch!”
“Please! Just give me a taste of your juicy beef tip!” I puke on myself and a little bit on him. I don’t know why I keep referring to his penis as edible meats, considering I’m a vegetarian.
“Oh! Gross! She’s gross! She’s… ICKY!” He says this pointing at me, refusing to refer to me in the first person anymore.
He rushes out to the door, opens it, and slams it shut. And I’m still screaming after him, laying in my own vomit, “Come back and fuck me in my vagina hole, you pansy-basket!”
I’m defeated.
Miserable.
A level-two cat lady.
Leonard creeps up on me and starts lapping at my vomit with his cute little tongue. My lips smile, despite my eyes dripping tears. And I pet him.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
Inside the longing that comes with any capacity for thought within the wandering mind is the surprise of how short the period of time is that managed to conjure the longing.
Short term longing.
It takes only so long for a longing to occur, seeming both wholly unique from every other yearn as well as part of the same long narrative – one black pearl on the same string.
But I’ve been quite long-winded on the topic of longing, considering this is not about big, blanket longing – rather, this is about the nostalgia of the dream versus the cold, stinging fact of the reality, and how longing for one makes the other seemingly impossible to endure.
Sighs abound, this is a story about a girl.
It’s a story about many girls, but really, it’s a bout one girl: the perfect girl – who, by the way, does not exist, except before she’s met.
I’ve not known plenty of girls who were perfect merely because I’ve not known them. And I leave you to wonder: do these girls become lose perfection upon meeting someone like myself, who is so imperfect that there is no alternative to the quality rubbing off on them, ruining them? Or do I let the presumption of the perfection of another fester, projections on mysteries that lead me to believe a girl might be perfect – a reality only to be broken upon knowing them, knowing otherwise?
That said, most girls I’ve met and longed for are perfect, but for a version of me that does not exist. And this sad fact leaves me bedridden sometimes, even when I’m out and about.
My mind’s abusive marriage with my heart has the two of them indefinitely bedridden. Both require a divorce to get up, but their mutual weakness – the bulk of what they have in common – keep them together, reliant, codependent, and ultimately embittered. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ll be forcing their wrinkled, nonexistent hands to turn the pages of a photo album filled with snapshots of sunny days that never took place.
The rest of my body carries this sickly couple through the days like a chubby redheaded toddler carries a lucky rabbit’s foot through a garden.
As the old, married couple inside weep in unison, I try to dry their tears with smoke. And now, sitting here, putting the cigarette out, I understand: this is not a story, but it’s a story about a guy.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
I had the wild misfortune of falling in love with a girl I despise.
That was to be the beginning. It was the direction the story would take: a dark recollection overwrought with bitterness that can be indulged for only so long. The tone and style of that initial sentence had once felt true, but the feeling that sprung it has not sustained.
I had admired her as she sulked through high school hallways, and I penned lines in a notebook, describing how her beauty was a mysterious one, how it evoked (and possibly provoked) both light and dark – pale skin framed by hair of shadow.
[It was in a Microsoft Word Document, I think. But you understand why I’d go with a notebook.]
Years later, I would know her not simply as some girl a grade above me.
But in the first sentence, you can glimpse the young man’s cynicism that had traveled from the first time she asked him for someone else’s phone number all the way to the first time she said she no longer wanted to be more than friends. The phone call she made was a success.
And I tried to hate her. At times, succeeding.
A side serving of years went by, and we made our own intimate mess – one where I could reclaim buried feelings of turquoise and hope: the two forging a new one.
There were others, too:
It couldn’t be labeled as “love-hate”. It was always one or the other. We left no room for ambivalence.
Hogwash.
What happened: “What happened?”
I dived into the confusion, leaving behind the unknown certainty (in the sense that something known became un-known) that ours was a fool’s errand. We were too different in a few bad ways and too similar in a lot of the worst ways, and soon – far too soon – a puppy’s love was replaced with a razor’s rust.
I won’t say what was wrong with her, because too often I had let her know, and that is, in my opinion, what was most wrong with me. Ultimately, we had refused to get along at the same time too much of the time.
Toward the end, we were always boiling over. And in a mode of defense, I pushed her away first. But when we pulled each other back in, I was inspired with fresh-baked hope that arrived within a disturbingly shallow temporal proximity to the moment I was faced with the just and not-so-swift requital of being pushed away myself. See how I try to avoid the simple facts? Trying to ignore the kernels of words unlike these: it was my fault.
The only apparent way to survive is found by recalling the worst in her, but all of these horrid, boulderous moments that once held height to block the sun have now been worn down to such a pebble’s proportion that they fall through the cracks.
What remains: a story with no story, a poem with no verse.
This was to be the end:
We opened up our chests, putting cigarettes out on each others’ hearts.
But that’s a lie. Even figuratively, it’s false. Just as most of the above may be in the next year, or decade, or hour.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
How do I love thee? Let me count the threads…
Of course, I’m having a little tickle’s worth of fun at no one’s expense – a mere romping play on words, so you absolutely must excuse me if you were hoping for something a little heavier and void of levity. I beg of you: do not miss the understanding: I do take my pantaloons seriously, but, as a fancy lad in fancy pants, I’m afraid I may present an air of flippancy and social carelessness when I let my sleeve’s heart beat freely for all to hear and see.
Forgive me if I do carry on like the flame upon the wick.
The pants that paint these legs, color them not merely the basking’s amber triumph that blaze before your eyes, but also in shades of warm, tones of snug, and broad, velvety strokes of snaz. Oh, you’ve caught me: a slight commoner wearing the cord of the King? Lock me up. Toss the key into the fire. Let it burn like the crotch of these cords when thighs make haste in conjunction with my whole toward the nearest lavatory. Let it be lost in flame like all other trousers I owned before these. Let it smelt and ooze like the satisfaction does from my similes.
I’d die a thousand deaths as long as before each one I was let to lust my final leaving breath whilst still adorned so assuredly as I am now, in these golden, roasting cords with a width of wale (2.5 per inch) that could rival that of the finest davenports in all of Davenport.
Any death wrapped in a wealth of embrace, as is such the case when clothed as I am, would be ascension to Heaven before Heaven got the chance.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
Agent: Babe, babe, listen: it’s me. I’m not just some nobody who works for you. I care about you, babe. I’m your friend. Your pal. Your confidant. We’re in this together. Just please, gimme a straight answer, babe – are you going to the junket or not?
Celebrity: What’s the use?
Agent: The use? Babe, this is your junket. The whole point is for the press to eat you up with a silver spoon, walk away with a nice tote-bag and a willingness to write a great review of your performance as Drake Firebird, the hero of the whole damn picture!
Celebrity: Nobody gives a shit about me.
Agent: Nobody? Are you out of your damn mind? Would I be calling if I didn’t care? What about the fans? You put the asses in the seats. Without you there’s no picture to begin with. The whole country goddamn loves you, babe.
Celebrity: They care about my abs and my smile.
Agent: Who wouldn’t? They’re both perfect!
Celebrity: You’re not listening to me. No one is ever listening to me!
Agent: I’m listening, babe. What’s the problem? We’ll tackle it to the ground together and smash its face in together and piss in its eyes together. You and me. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid – and, hey – fuck Sundance, after this epic, they’re gonna start calling us Butch Cassidy and The Cannes Kid, lemme tell ya!
Celebrity: Nobody knows who I really am. I don’t even know.
Agent: What are you talking about, sugar? You are the hottest actor of the last fourteen months, and I’m here to make sure you stay on top. Eh? How ’bout that?
Celebrity: Sometimes I feel like…
Agent: There’s your first problem. You’re a star! You don’t have to feel. If you wanna feel, dive into a juicy role. Save that therapy shit for retirement, babe.
Celebrity: This is what I’m talking about.
Agent: I’m the problem? I’m the fucking problem? Well, let me tell ya, I’m the same problem that got you outta playing such notable roles as Partygoer #4 on a single ep of The O.C., ‘kay? So, if I’m the problem, just let me know and I’ll discover some other chump and slap his pretty face on the poster of next summer’s blockbuster.
Celebrity: Hey, you know that’s not what I meant…
Agent: Oh, no, don’t worry about me. My career doesn’t hinge on this press slumber party – yours does, so fuck it. If you wanna have a mid-life crisis before you hit 30, go right ahead. No sweat off my Mac. I’m sure you and your Vicodin prescription will be very happy together, and you won’t have any regrets letting Firebird’s Lament 2: Phoenix Rising be your swansong. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that a hot celebrity breakdown is more than enough to sell a picture. People will be pitching tents at the Multiplex a month in advance! It’ll be like George Lucas had stuck his thumb of the film’s ass! That’s how goddamn popular it will be. So go ahead and fade away! It’ll make my job a lot easier.
Celebrity: Hey! That’s… that’s not nice.
Agent: My job’ll be easier, sure. But you know what it won’t make easier for me? My personal life. Because… being your agent, being your friend, is what keeps me goin’ half the time. If you gotta drop outta the game, that’s fine. I’m happy for you. I just hope you and I can keep in touch. Because… I love ya, babe. And I only say that to three people: my kids, my mother, and you.
Celebrity: What about your wife?
Agent: Which one? Fuck those dames. I don’t waste love on someone who’s gonna leave me. So, I beg ya, babe: don’t leave me. Leave the film, but don’t leave me. Well, I’m sure you got some soul-searching to do, so I’ll quit bothering you and let you get to it. Don’t forget to write, eh?
Celebrity: C’mon, Randy, you know that…
Agent: I’m gonna hang up and let you find yourself, ‘kay, babe?
Celebrity: Hold on!
(silence)
Celebrity: I want a vegan snack platter in my room at the hotel and I want three vegan girls there eating it when I arrive: a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead who shaves her head but not her snatch, okay?
Agent: Is that all? Babe! Anything you want. I could have an army of pescetarians riding around naked on unicycles if that’s what it takes to get your blood pumping. Just tell me and it’s yours.
Celebrity: You know what I want a redhead with a full head of hair too. But easy on the freckles, okay?
Agent: This additional redhead? Should she be shaved below the belt for contrast?
Celebrity: Um, sure. But have some merkins lying around just in case.
Agent: Of course. Pits?
Celebrity: Trimmed, not shaved.
Agent: All of them?
Celebrity: You know what: alternate.
Agent: You got it, babe.
Backward <> Forward
Wordsward
A large portion of this film was shot with the help of Matt Schulte of Room 529 at the Hotel Modera in Portland, OR!
29 Films
Yesterday <> Tomorrow
Flashback!