Oh You

When I look back on my notes I feel like a fool. The things young men say about love. The things you think you're feeling. You've done and seen and felt so little.

I thought it was funny, so I called her up. "You'll never guess what I found," I said.

"What?"

"An old notebook of mine from, God, must be six or seven years ago. And I just go on and on about how much I love you."

There isn't laughter on the other end, there isn't a gasp. Not even an, "Oh you!" There is only silence. "Why would you tell me this?"

"What do you mean?" I ask her.

"I'm about to get married. I'm fine," she said, "I'm... happy."

I wasn't sure what to say. I thought it was going to be all in good fun. I thought there had been enough years to take everything real away, all the pain, all the missed opportunities. I thought all that was left was a few laughs. Kid stuff.

She hung up. I turned the page. I saw her name written over and over, page after page, in every kind of handwriting. Mrs. This, Mrs. That. And it felt good to feel that again, even if I was lying about how much I felt. Even if I was scared that, even after all these years, it wasn't too late.

A Right Mess

She comes over with a bottle of wine, some blend of reds, and I'm a little bit annoyed with myself because I know I'm about to drink half of it even though red wine gives me headaches, but she doesn't know that and I don't want to be rude, and anyway I might end up liking it, but I guess that's just what I need, a new red wine to like so I drink it and get more headaches. So I get out two glasses only they're covered in spots, so I get two more, and two more, until I can't hide that I'm picking up and putting down every wine glass in the house, even the white ones, even the champagne flutes, and I know they're only water spots but there's still something that looks so dirty about it, and I don't want her to think I'm unclean, to think that she's in a filthy house, that I don't take care of myself, that I don't so things like knowingly consume things that make me feel ill. She's forgotten the key so I scrounge around for one, it's in the back of the drawer filled with cooking and bar odds and ends and it looks a right mess and I stand at such an angle where I hope I'm covering it up, that she can't see inside the drawer, and I'm probably worrying too much about whether or not she cares about the littlest things that I'm sure she doesn't give any thought to at all, but I can't help myself, this is how the gears start spinning when she's around, it's like they're spinning sideways, like everything's connected and disjointed and independent of each other yet working in some fashion altogether and it's maddening. The wine is delicious and I don't even care about the oncoming headache, don't care that we'll look like purple-mouthed winos, don't care that I might slip up finally and let the truth come out, not like that would be the worst thing in the world, it might even be a weight off my shoulders and besides there's always the reliable excuse of drink. Would she believe me? Would she wait to listen to all that? Would she run? Would she sit quietly beside me and ask me to repeat myself? Could I say the same words twice? If asked I think I could do just about anything but we don't get anywhere near that far before she knocks her glass over and the nearly-full contents spill out onto the oriental rug my grandmother left me, the forty-five thousand dollar rug that's costs I don't even know how much to clean, and she says she's sorry and she's sorry and she's so sorry and where are the paper towels and she can clean it up and it's sorry and it's all her fault and she's so embarrassed but I don't say anything, my head hurts too much. I look at the dark red splotch turning the grey even greyer and I think how awfully much it looks like Australia, or at least the Australia in my head, and I say this to her to lighten the mood, I want her to know I'm not angry, that my only thought of the stain on my rug is about geography, but when I tell her she stops moving, cleaning, breathing, and looks at me. She looks at me with such confusion and I can tell she doesn't know why she came here at all. She leaves. There is half a bottle of wine left. I will have to drink it.

Delightful Night

And it's like leaving a bar party, the ones we always loved in college. Everyone waiting until the last possible second, everyone waiting because they're hoping so hard for sex. We get on the early bus, the bus, yellow and old, we feel young and stupid and it's so great. I don't want to be pulled away, wonderful as it is. It's been a delightful night.

"Good night," I tell her, "it's been so fun, it's been so horribly fun. I wish I didn't have to leave." And I guess I didn't have to but there are people dragging me practically, friends, I'd be here all alone in a huge group of people. And the girl in the green dress is a tease I hear and I think she likes that guy in the mustache, but I'd like to look at her just a bit longer. Maybe I'd even ask her to dance. Maybe the abandonment of friends is exactly what the doctor ordered.

The wind is on my face on the bus and we're off, we're leaving the party behind. I hope that, wherever we go, wherever I end up, we will bring everything with us. Maybe it will even be waiting for us. Maybe there will be more beautiful girls in more green dresses. Maybe I can do something for once tonight. And wouldn't that be something.

Gawker

It was standstill traffic, the worst kind. Although I know no decent traffic. Seven lanes merging into two, an unknown obstruction ahead. I found out it was an accident, and someone gawking at it caused another accident not a hundred feet in front. Cars were turning around, driving over medians, bright blue blinking tow trucks showed up, looked like strippers should have popped out the sides. In general, it was a mess.

I wanted to see blood. Like they shower us in driver's ed, I wanted brains smeared on the pavement. Families devastated, lines ended. But wen I pulled off to an alternate route, like everyone before me, and looked over at the highway, I saw nothing. I saw tow trucks, cop cars, and two men in shining yellow vests smoking cigarettes. Everything seemed so calm, no one was shouting, or crying, or changed in any way. That I could see. And I wanted to see. And it didn't feel good.

Callus

Maybe it's like a new pair of shoes, I think. The way your feet rub against them, the way the skin tears. You have to form a callus, yes? A scab that hardens. All you have to do is get past the blood and you'll be fine.

There was nothing inherently wrong. Maybe a look here, a laugh there. Maybe he talked a little too much. And maybe all she had to do was ignore those things. They were little, weren't they? They didn't mean much. He was a nice guy. He was a good man. She could be happy with him for a long time.

She cut him loose. She made it quick. Shoes are cheap compared to love. They aren't people, and people aren't shoes. Love was far more complex than wardrobe, she thought. And maybe that was just an excuse, but she was fine with that for now. She didn't need to form any harder places in her to try and find someone to hold her late at night.

People Like James Frey

As long as they laugh it's not a lie.

Comedians get up, tell jokes. They write them, people read them, hear them. They laugh. Nobody gets upset. Someone stands up, says, "This happened to me," and they make you laugh. Is it any less funny if it didn't happen to them? If it didn't happen at all? Is it cleansed of its humor.

People like James Frey, we burn them at the stake. He wrote some words and prefaced them with, "This happened to me." Some of it didn't. Some of it did but not quite. What a crime. He got people invested. He got people caring. He got them to read.

Laughter is the price a comedian pays. Comedy, a joke, being funny, is hard, excruciating work. But we laugh, so it's light, it's laughs, it's funny. We don't care if it's made up. We don't care if it happened. But if we invest in something that isn't funny, and you say it happened, then it damn well better have, word for word, just like you said. Otherwise what was the point?

Make them laugh. As long as they laugh it's not a lie. It's all a joke.

Flop Quiz

When you are alone, you:

A. Flip.

B. Flap.

C. Flop.

D. It depends on my florp.

After a long day at work, all you want to do is:

A. Go back home and ignore my family.

B. Trim my trollops.

C. Trap my trigtroms.

D. Again, I need to know how my florp is doing.

Do you florp?

A. Only sometimes.

B. Something, yes.

C. I mean, I have a florp.

D. Flarm.

Oh, flarm? Really?

A. Yes, really.

B. No, not really.

C. Every flume I can.

D. Is this really my family?

If you flip it over, then what?

A. Then florp, I don't know!

B. Hahaha!

C. Then you must flip it over again. You must.

D. Tramf.

What does tomorrow bring?

A. Anger.

B. Answers.

C. Angry answers.

D. Flipping flarps.

Paper Airplane Fetus

An app told me my baby is the size of a paper airplane. But which kind? The classic Arrow? The Dart? The Stealth? These are the things I need to know. The Moth? The Kite? Perhaps the ever-so-slightly different Champ. I would like to think my baby was a champ, even from just a few weeks in.

Then of course there are the stranger ones. The Bat. The Spinster (I would like to be able to say I dodged that word in all its forms, thank you). Perhaps the Ring, round and round. A perfect little circle inside me. Yes, perhaps that's the one. No beginning, no end, only existing. And perfect.

There are days where I think it's the Custom. You have to use scissors, cut sections out of it, fold them back in. Far too much trouble than what it's worth and it doesn't even fly that well. But I want, I am praying for, a Ring.

Lessons in Pictures

It was like she saw a picture of herself once, years ago, thought, hm, I like that smile, and had been trying to recreate it ever since. Sometimes she got it right again. Most of the times her eyes were a bit too wide, the corners of her mouth a bit too high and tight. Too many teeth shown or not shown in the right way. It was staged, and staged poorly.

He was a fan of the candid shot. That, to him, captured life, that one person's life, at least, in a subtle or a brilliant way. It was a way for him to feel comfortable, knowing that the lens was on him but that he didn't have to acknowledge it. There's truth in the candid, there's no, look at me, I'm standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. I'm smiling the way I have a hundred thousand times before because somebody told me to. People, she, could be so beautiful if only they stopped trying.

Strange Condition

It was that strange condition (there must be a word for it), where you wake up and spring into action, still half-asleep. It was six-something, I was already awake, don't know why. She sprang up, sucked air in through her nostrils, we both must have still been drunk. Within fifteen seconds she was dressed, putting on her shoes, clunking down the hallway. "I fell asleep," she said.

She was hurrying. She was racing. Like people were watching her, like she was going to be on the news. A shamed schoolteacher or something. Dazed, tipsy, and grabbing her handbag. "I'll walk you out," I said, but she was already ahead of me.

There must be a word for it. Part panic, part excuse. No, I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't drinking, I am wide awake and fully alert. I am not who you see. I am not this. You have to prove yourself, who you really are, and you have to do it before the other person realizes what's hit them.

I opened the door for her. "Thanks for everything," she said. She raced out to a cab. When did she call a cab? I locked the door and went back to bed. I couldn't sleep. I kept wondering what was wrong with me.

So Deep and Dark

Everyone is shouting in different languages and I can't see ten feet in front of me. The smell is off though, there's not much of it. Fog machine is the only thing I can think of, but it doesn't make much sense. I see the orange life of cigars.

Porter takes my arm. "I wanna show you something." He weaves me through the hazy crowd of olive skin and hoarse laughter. Clinking of coins, glasses, and every other person is shaking somebody's hand. How can so many people make footsteps so silent?

We are front of a door, so deep and dark a red it looks black. Porter smiles at me. "What?" I ask. "You'll see," he tells me. He knocks on the door.

Nothing happens. He knocks again. It's a code—knock knock knock... knock knock—and he waits for something to happen. Nothing does. So he tries again. And again. "I don't care," I say, and I turn, but he grabs my arm again in the same place and this time it hurts. "No," he insists. "No, it's not."

He's banging on the door now, one blood vessel away from kickin it down. The pounding is so fierce and close in my head that neither of us realize the room has quieted. The smoke has settled, the clinks have stopped, and everyone's hands are at their side. They give us a solemn, judgmental look. Nobody told him, I can hear them think, isn't he the pathetic one.

A dark man—dark in his skin, dark in his clothes, dark in his eyes and air—walks up to us. He places his hand gently on Porter's arm, where he had placed his on mine. "I'm sorry, sir," the man says. "I must ask you to leave."

"We just got here."

"I'm sorry, sir. I must ask you to leave."

"I need to show my friend—"

"I'm sorry, sir—"

"No!" Somehow it gets more quiet. Porter lowers his voice. "No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, look. What, I don't understand what's happening? Why isn't it working? What's different?" The man looks at him, and then at me. I'm not sure if I should say anything. What is there to say?

"I'm sorry, sir," he says. "I must ask you to leave."

Porter, defeated, hangs his head and walks away. "Let's go," he says. I start to follow him but before my second step the man says, "You are allowed to stay." Porter is furious, red, out of breath, out of answers. He glares at me and I've never felt so tall. I don't say anything, I do not move. I simply wait for him to leave.

The man opens the door for me and I step inside.

Rove, Spring 2009

• even more marshmallowy in person
• 2 Dasani water bottles
• kinda like Michael Myers in Halloween
• or Toby Jones
• "We should love our country too much..."
• Las Vegas is not his favorite part of the world
• you're going to come to a college & diss education spending?
• the film industry's down, bucko
• well you'd know all about flawed premises, wouldn't you?
• because you forgot about Afghanistan
• democratic theory
• "We didn't say 'We hate Hitler cos we hate guys w/ mustaches who are bad painters.'"
• "...remain who we are a a people"
• "my nutty buddy"

Q & A

1. rambling Fulton inmate, but Rove answered. Also, was a dick. Yes.
2. No internet? Hotchie motchie! No.
3. How would he fix the economy?
4. Iran a problem for Obama? Yes.
5. Tea party —> 3rd party coming? No.
6. American people getting fair choice of candidates? Yes.
7. "What do you think your legacy will be?" "Buy my book."
8. Something from a guy w/ a mustache
9. How did Al-Qaeda get codes for making threats?
10. I... don't remember
11. Isn't giving Guantanamo prisoners rights what America is all about? Apparently not. Oh, & the Constitution is carved into a stone tablet, & the tools used to carve it are lost & they also lost the plans for the tools so no more can be made

*underage male pages! I completely forgot!

• it's amazing that he talks about chopping the budget eevery year, & yet the deficit grows
• passion, fluency & conviction
• "We're the party that believes the little guy should get the same break the big guy gets."
• ARE. YOU. FUCKING. KIDDING. ME.
• Rove uses Geico

Code

In my shirt pocket is my ring and an internet code. I got the cheapest thing—small black coffee—one hundred twenty minutes of internet for $1.95. I waited too long to take it off, the ring, you probably noticed but maybe you didn't. I stared at the chalkboard, hoping to divert your attention away from the pulling on the knuckle skin. How can things go on so easily yet be so hard to take off?

Hands tell a world. I've heard all you have to do is look at someone's shoes but it's not enough. You work with your hands, you decorate them, they're stories. Are you committed? Are you clumsy? Did the knife get away from you? I wanted her to know that I was alone in the best possible sense of the word, even if I couldn't quite know it myself. My security blanket I guess it is.

Outside the sun is bright and my screen is dark, I have the light down low because the battery will die soon and my charger doesn't reach. A girl next to me gets her sandwich—turkey on sun-dried tomato focaccia—and I remember that there are inside workers and outside workers. My girl, she's an inside girl, worker, she won't be coming out here to check on me. I can't see her through the window, I can't see the window at all. I'm at fifteen percent and my computer just dies. Why should that happen?

"Excuse me," I ask inside. "My computer died, will this code work on my phone for the remaining time?"

"No," she tells me, "sorry."

"Can I get another code then?"

"We're only supposed to give them out with orders."

"I just ordered something," I tell her.

"And you got that first code." She's right, damn her. "Sorry." I brought exact change. I hate fucking rules.

I go back outside and the sun is so hot. The iced coffee costs more, but you get less. It's things like that which make no sense to me. But I suppose the people will pay. People always want what they want and end up paying for it.

Shelter

The pitter patter of tiny raindrop feet outside, a whirlwind kind of wind. I once heard that storms don't kill people, flying debris kills people. Hail must fall somewhere in between. I've never seen anything larger than an aggie.

They are warning me to stay inside. Seek shelter for the next four and a half hours. I think about the people that don't have shelter to seek. But if you don't have shelter to seek then you probably aren't the kind of person who is told to seek it in the first place. Those people find out the hard way.

I wonder about the eyes of storms. Strange intermissions, those tricky silent sirens. It's going to be fine, they tell you. They always tell you it's going to be fine, but a storm is the only time you know it isn't. At least there's consistency. Waiting for the curtain to bow.

But for now just the children, the little wet steps. Walking and running, running and running, traveling far and wide to end up at my windowsill. I'll leave it open for them, I'll set aside a shirt to soak. I'll stay up the whole night if I have to.

Fresh Fish

"You're the kind of person who cuts up a raw fish and calls it health food. But I'm the kind of person who would eat it."

"Honey," she said, "you're talking in your sleep again." I wasn't.

User

It wasn't very long before he started using it himself. Distance, that's what he would say, him, distance. Always keep a good long distance between you and the users. Keep too much, though, you end up alone.

He was without friends, wasn't he? He was the lone wolf, that's how he fancied himself, but it didn't really work. He didn't feel wolf-like, he wasn't vicious and he wasn't proud. He tried to be, he tried to be these things. But a man surrounded by monsters is likely to become monstrous, even in sad small ways.

It would start as a little thing, one here, one there, loosen up, fun night, get talking, start moving, how are you. A drink, another, another, yeah, pretty soon the night is morning and the morning is day and you're hooked. He saw himself not looking at the crowd but in it. Saw himself in sideways faces, saw himself in couch vomit.

Friends came, sure, friends and girls. And that's what he wanted, wasn't it? This is who he was trying to be. He didn't mean for things to go bad. Things just, after a while, go bad. But he was surrounded by other people going bad, too, just like him, just like them, for on and on and on.

In Sin

My old girl looks good in sin. She can without but can't within. In bottles of her sipping gin she tried on her but fell on him. We tried to lose but had to win, with minds like hearts and hearts like tin. I chucked it all into the bin (apologies sound forced and thin). An empty palm, a broken chin, it seems I failed to let you in. If letting in is half the game the oldest sin's the one to blame. But, damn, my girl looks good.

Red Sky at Night

We went to the bathroom alone, we finished our drinks hours ago. We spoke carefully and diligently, we were watching our sodium. She read the nutritional information and I nodded my head and said "Perfect" while thinking about something else, cherry pie perhaps. At some point we're all the same.

I wanted to carry on a conversation, to prove that I could be two, three, four deep and still say meaningful things. That the wind and weather wouldn't turn our bar tab into a necessity. That we could relax, drive the babysitter home, not think about the approaching storm. Once I looked up at the green sky and I was furious with myself.

She talks about dealing with the city, I talk about dealing with idiots. At some point we realize that everything's interchangeable. If you put anyone else in our shoes he or she would say the exact same thing. Which is fine. That's not the complaint. We just didn't think we'd have to say these things for so long.

Super America

Daniel is working late at the Super America. "It's the fourth time this week," he says. He's not supposed to work the graveyard shift more than three times. It's only Thursday and he gets his schedule tomorrow.

You'd be surprised at how many people show up after midnight. Kids, the elderly, buying scratch-offs and cigarettes and Mountain Dew. A combination of the night owls, the early early birds, the insomniacs, the just-don't-give-a-damns, the gamers, the people on their way to work, the people going home. I ask Daniel if he's ever gotten robbed. "While working?" he asks. "Not as often as you'd think."

He's saving up money. He has a girlfriend and a kid and one on the way. He used to wash windows for a man with a window washing company present in four states. He'd get sent around (one time he was sent to Hebron, Kentucky to wash the Cincinnati airport and was there for four weeks). He was making a decent living, he says, about thirty-six thousand a year. But once the competition kicked in his salary got halved and it just wasn't cutting it. "Can't support my girl and my kid with eighteen grand a year. It's just not gonna happen." He stays local now, no more four-week washing excursions. He picked up this second job, which he hates, but he does it, because that's what you do.

"I don't see myself here for long," he tells me. "I'd like to go back to school." I ask him what he'd study. Daniel says he doesn't know. "Seems like getting to school is the important part."

Mr. Mark's Dad

Mark's dad always ate lunch with him at school. That was back when parents could eat lunch with you, and if they did you were cool. Or I thought you were cool. I thought you were lucky at least. Eating lunch with your dad at school?! Wow! This is the mind of a first grader.

But one day Mr. Mark's Dad was there and I told him this joke:

"Say 'rubber buns and liquor' after everything I say. What's your favorite meal?"

"Rubber buns and liquor."

"What'd you have for breakfast?"

"Rubber buns and liquor."

"What do you have on your birthday?"

"Rubber buns and liquor."

"What'd you do with your girlfriend last night?"

He didn't really like me after that. But he didn't laugh either, so I didn't care. I was happy to have my lunch with my friends.

 

Plaque

"Talking to you," she said, "is like flossing my teeth. The more I do it, the less it bleeds."

"Thank you?" I said.

"And I know if I got to the doctor with a mouthful of blood that it's been too long."

"Right."

"But as long as I keep flossing, talking, my gums will be OK. I'll be OK."

"OK," I said.

"OK," and she. I could see her tongue running behind her lips, over her teeth, feeling the imaginary places where I'd gotten stuck. Coming out every time she spoke. Bits of me forgotten, inside her, left to rot.

Plans

We sat home drinking margaritas and making plans. We looked at furniture magazines and circled chaise lounge after chaise lounge. Sunsets through the trees and frogs at midnight. We would have said, as younger versions of ourselves, that we would never turn out as we did. But now, being here, I cannot believe I was ever that foolish.

She'll look at me across the fresh lawn and I'll think why. On cold nights we'll add extra blankets. There is security in knowing tomorrow will be like today, there is happiness. I set my coffee alarm for 6:15, and I keep that appointment. I wake up, awake.

She wakes me when old horror movies are on. I don't try to get her to like beef carpaccio anymore. I have found a genuine connection with her distant father and her terrible mother. She has found laughter in my brother's pigheadedness. If you offered us the world, for ours, to do with it as we pleased, I am certain we would turn you down. But I am also certain we'd work wonders.

Brick and Mortar

I don't walk into my home and feel a sense of history. I'm not able to sense the love that was there before. I don't like knowing people lived in it. I don't like knowing others were there, in my house. I don't like the idea that they might know I'm in theirs. I open the front door and walk into a hotel. The bed is made and the towels are clean. But there isayer after layer of Other on everything.

I want to build something from the ground up. I want a lot, I want dirt, I want brick and mortar. I'd like to know that what's mine is actually mine, what I provide is actually my family's for the taking, the having, the loving. I don't want your memories, I don't want your past. And you don't deserve my future.

As They Should Be

I waited for her to come down the hall, to give me the news. All is lost, I heard her say. Give up hope.

In terms of days, on a scale of average to extraordinary, there would be nothing for me to place it at the latter. Things were as they were, and things as they are are things as they should be.

Kirke was cross. He wanted more money. He wanted things to be as they were in his head. We couldn't get inside Kirke's head. We could barely stay inside our own, that's how hopped up things were. It was a time of options. What else do you do with options but choose them.

I dreamt of legions. I saw the marauders in my path. I was the one they were after. I fell down flight after flight of stairs and there was nothing I could do to make things right.

I waited for her to come down the hall. To tell me he had lost too much blood. To tell me that I would need to see him out, on the way to the other place.

But I never saw her come. I fell asleep instead. And I'm not sure if I ever woke up.

Talkin' 'Bout My Generation

I put on different pants so I don't have to iron that shirt.

Autism research? Mm how much...?

I feel like [opinion].

It's not that I don't support you, it's just that I desperately don't want to talk to you right now.

Just, like, it's just one of those things.

I literally can't even. I can. Not. Even.

THIS.

YOU GUYS SRSLY THO YOU GUYS?? THIS.

Half my friends have babies and half my friends are super drunk all the time and Marcy's both.

Oh my god I haven't seen you in two weeks! Whatever even happened to us?!

[with a huge smile] Will you stop being such a fucking asshole for one second? Thanks! [huge smile continues]

Like, there are times when I say literally and I mean figuratively, but this is one of those times where when I say he literally couldn't not fall over I mean he literally couldn't not fall over.

Two miles is pretty far though nowadays.

It's early yet for boys like this!

It's a mutt!

No, the pockets go on the outside.

Stunners. Stunners. Summer!

It's bus mothafuckin' tiiime!

[takes up two seats]

[complains about someone taking up two seats]

[spills drink]

My third iPhone? I think...?

Um, yeah, Marcy's a fucking slut.

I'm just gonna leave this here.

We'll save the world but be insufferable while doing it.

Journal

Ginny and I had another fight. I don't remember how it started and then all a sudden we were fighting, only we had to be kind of quiet because her parents were sleeping upstairs. I wanted to yell at her and I'm sure she wanted to yell at me, too. It's probably better that we didn't, although it's always good to get feelings out.

She mentioned Sam and I guess I freaked out. OK I definitely freaked out. She knows it's a sensitive subject! She says I always get like this. She thinks I'm too jealous and she doesn't like this quote look I get in my eye end quote. It makes her feel less than me. THAT'S WHAT LOOKS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. I'm not even giving it to her on purpose. Am I upset that I give it to her? I don't know. I told her I was though.

I got so mad that I slammed my fist down on my leg over and over and over. But I wanted to slam it down on her leg. And that was weird. I wanted to hit her, to hurt her. Even though she hadn't done anything wrong. And I've never felt that way before. Definitely not about her. I had to tell myself that we've slept together and she and Sam never did. I had to repeat it over and over and over to get me to calm down.

After that we made up (you know what I mean). I just don't know why she would ever go out with him in the first place! Those oily pimples and his stupid laugh! WHAT THE HELL?!? Ugh sorry anyway we made up and then we watched some Seinfeld rerun and she said she doesn't really like Seinfeld and I was like WHAT. Maybe her judgment isn't the best. Or maybe my judgment isn't good. Or maybe we're perfect for each other I don't know.

The Science of Waiting

I want to know the science behind waiting. Is is the crash after the build-up? The energy you've put into getting ready for a thing and suddenly it stops? There's nothing that takes it out of me like a good long wait.

There must be research that exists on this very topic. I have no textbooks and I have no encyclopedias. Those only exist on forgotten shelves, gathering dust, practically antiques. But maybe they're waiting there, growing more and more tired, filled with answers.

Someone must know, the books and doctors, they must know. They should put the information out into the universe, so that Joes like me can rest easy. We're tired of waiting. Or at least I am.

10 Things Your Stepmother Says

1. Go ahead, call me Mom!

2. Feel free! Do whatever you want.

3. I'll get it/I'll drive/I'll wash it/Forget about me.

4. Why the long face?

5. Your dad and I always.../Well, my kids and I...

6. Did your mother bring you up to do that?

7. Your room is a pigsty.

8. What's the matter, never heard of thank you? 

9. We're not made out of money, you know.

10. It's them or me.

Dolt

He had changed the subject. Something about children's stories and alternate universes. He had only just read about it, he thought it was interesting. But after the tangent there was nothing. An invisible ellipsis, an laughing fit with friends, or so he imagined.

And imagine it he did. For hours, he saw her giggling, rolling her eyes, tossing around slurs such as "Can you believe this guy" and "What a dolt." He stared at the ceiling, painfully awake, the minutes achingly long, as he concocted all the terrible things she was saying and thinking about him, as if he were so important. But he woke to

Really?? That's nuts! Where did you read that?

He was a dolt. He was a fool. He was exhausted.

Perfect Storm

Your love is like thunder. It is loud, it shakes the foundation, it means business. My love is like heat lightning. Beautiful but silent, it signifies the storms far away, the ones that do not affect us. Yet thunder is caused by lightning. How should we make such a perfect storm when we are only in sync from a distance?

The Sky I See

I wish I could invert the color. Turn it inside out for a day. I'd be on another planet and that would be all right with me. I could come up with new names for things, a new name for the sun, a new name for us. I think things would make sense.

We agree that something is red. We point to the sky and say it is blue. It's like money, it only has value because long ago we assigned value to it. The sky I see is not the sky you see. It never has been. It never will be. But maybe, darling, if I turn it inside out I could make it something we could share.

In my hand I have a hundred dollar bill. I don't know what the inverse of it would be. I don't know that I could use it anyway. I have no use for it now. It cannot get me anything I want.