If on a winter’s night a traveler/immediately after the final line of the chapter by the same title

by x. m. perales

I did not board the train. Mr. Calvino decided to make me change my mind at the last possible moment, and now I – and by extension you, as the reader who identifies with me and hence with the author – have been standing in the shadow given off by the overhang of a now closed newspaper stand, without being seen by Chief Gorin and while the train chugs off into the distance.

As soon as Gorin turns around and faces the bar’s interior, I quickly duck into the nearest passageway leading away from the multiple platforms where the trains come and go in relatively punctual fashion. I am more than a little scared over the unknowing of what Chief Gorin represents to me in my current role of suitcase courier (as opposed to some of the other roles I have had to play in my profession, such as map reader, or beret wearer). Is he friend or foe? What fate would have awaited me on the train if I had followed his instructions and boarded? These are the questions that jumble around in my brain, finding no relief in the knowledge that the only way to know for sure that boarding the train would have been the wrong decision, or at least the only way the probability increases that Gorin may have been sending me off to my doom, is if some fatal explosion or other questionable train accident gets reported in the news the next day. Or perhaps there will be a story of some lone traveler with his throat slit neatly across who may have been seen at some point dragging along a suitcase on wheels. The only thing certain is that by staying in this up to now unnamed town, the direction this novel appeared to be geared towards has now reversed itself and has therefore seemingly changed the chain of events that would have otherwise transpired.

At this point in the narrative, I have decided to tell you that while I was careful to not be seen by Chief Gorin, whose role as friend or foe has yet to be determined, I was also avoiding detection by Dr. Marne, for reasons that will become clear to you soon enough, dear Reader. Or perhaps you already suspect what I am up to. After all, what would entice me, or you, to disobey those orders issued by Chief Gorin, when a clear and obvious threat was attached to the orders? Well, besides the possibility of being sent into a trap by choosing the train – but since being seen not boarding the train by Gorin carried with it the very real chance of dire consequences, boarding the train with its attendant variety of options that could veer me off the assumed course, such as a simple matter of abandoning the suitcase in an unforeseen nook or alcove, would have been the less dangerous of the options available.

Going back to the previous discussion – that of what in fact did entice me to stay rather than go (minus the consideration of whether or not boarding the train would be the death of me, and thus more than likely the end of the story – or at least, my part in it), of course you now realize – or maybe realized all along – it could only be a woman that would keep me here. This may or may not in fact be the case, but with little information about my personal reactions and desires to go by, it is easier to start with a universal assumption about men, such as that a woman would be a strong enough inducement to make any man, and therefore me in particular (as a single yet representative sample of all male homo sapiens), want to stay in this town, despite the probable danger involved in doing so. Since the only woman described in all of the events leading up to this moment has been Madame Marne, it is natural to assume that she is the reason my fate has shifted course away from that long-gone train.

Let us assume that you are right in your assessment, and that I am indeed heading off to meet Madame Marne, as I overtly hinted to her earlier on when we were both still seated at the bar. I think you have already decided that I am seeking a night of comfort and gratification in her arms. I cannot pretend that this is absolutely not the case, for that would be a falsehood I cannot be enticed to utter, if not because I am an honest man, then because the author has chosen to make me honest in at least this matter. However, at this moment I think I will be surprising you, because there is another, stronger motive at hand.

Let us say that I was given an alternate set of instructions, in case something were to go wrong with the original plan of trading identical suitcases with someone I had never seen before in my life. Maybe I was given a number of alternate sets of instructions, with the understanding that I would only follow one of these alternatives if something were to indeed go wrong, and depending on other factors taking place. To be more specific, which set of instructions I chose would depend on the exact chain of events that transpired around the issue of the first plan going awry. For example, if the phone call I previously made still went unanswered, but Chief Gorin had come in before Dr. Marne, perhaps I was to follow the set of instructions that would lead me to board the train but hang on to the suitcase; and maybe a slight variation in this scenario would lead me to board the train but discard the suitcase.

As it so happens, the chain of events that ended up transpiring is what has led me on a trajectory down the long, empty corridors of the train station, outside and onto a street formed out of uneven cobblestones, my gait a bit unsteady, which in turn (and in partnership with the uneven cobblestones) makes my suitcase wobble slightly as the wheels lose contact with the ground at interchanging intervals. After a span of time, I am now directly in front of Madame Marne’s store, on the verge of rapping on the shutter. I lift my hand and prepare to knock, when gunfire explodes in a cascading wave all around me.

Untitled Unicorn Story (Exercise 4)

Today, I woke up and said to myself, “Fuck it, I will not burnish my horn today. I will let my horn mirror how I feel—dusty, raw, and mossy.” For the past twelve deons (a day that feels like an eon) I have been very good about following the rules. The rules state that one must burnish one's horn every morning and evening. The head unicorn prances around and checks that all of us have shiny horns before we are allowed to go on with our daily activities or retire to the candy tent for the evening. I'm tired of sleeping in the candy tent with the rest of them so lately I've been sleeping in the woods just outside our camp. It gets a little cold, especially when it's damp but I much prefer it. I can't handle all that happiness and brightly colored jelly beans. That stuff is for amateurs. I am trying to get in touch with nature. I guess I first realized I was unhappy when everyone was raving about this awesome new jelly bean flavor that tasted like a chocolate doughnut and strawberry ice cream. I tried it. It was awful. I really wanted to spit it out but everyone would have seen. They were all crowded around me asking about the combination of flavors and if I thought it was 50% chocolate doughnut and 50% strawberry ice cream or some other ratio. I had to swallow it. Since then I've been avoiding the candy tent and all of it's luster. Fuck that place. I want to be like Wordsworth. Wandering around in nature and appreciating the leaves, the weather, the flowers and maybe even one day I'll write about Lucy. Not artificially constructed candy. I don't have a lot of friends. Okay, I don't really have any. Except Pete. Pete is a flying squirrel I met in the woods and he's not that into candy either so right away we hit it off. Pete's latest antic has been trying to convince me that I can fly. I told him I didn't have any wings. He says that doesn't matter. He wants me climb the highest tree in the grove and leap and then see if I can stay in the air for a sustained period of time. I'd really like to keep Pete as a friend, but I don't particularly like this trait of his. Plus, I'm afraid of heights. Before my mother died she used to tell me stories about our ancestry. She said we had descended from a group of mountain goats in Sweden. So why, then, am I terrified of heights?

Beginning of Message board story thing, or “Kelsie Winslow is a SLUT”

FaceSpace Community Messaging Board
Thread: Kelsie Winslow is a SLUT!!!
Started by: BomBastic12

BomBastic12: Kelsie Winslow is a humungus SLUT! I heard that now she is pregnant. Anybody have any info to confirm?
3/18/2009 1:02 pm

BryanMaize: I am Kelsie's cousin and shes not pregnant I am good friends with her brother mark he is gonna kick ur ass. who is this?
3/18/2009 3:04 pm

KelsieStar1: who the fuck is this???? no I am not pregnant and where the hell did you hear that...or are you just the one trying to spread the lie?
3/18/2009 3:07 pm

KelsieStar1: yea thats what I thought
3/18/2009 6:50 pm

BomBastic12: Shut up Kelsie you know you are pregnant. Now your family is going to know too how big of a slut you are.
3/18/2009 7:14 pm

BrianMaize: mark and the rest of the winslows are not people that u want to fuck with dude and when we find out hwo u r u r gonna get fucked up
3/18/2009 7:20 pm

CaseyAnders24: kelsie whats up girl this is casey. I can see that aspen falls is still full of HATERS, I had to get the f out. What u doin now?
3/18/2009 9:01 pm

BomBastic12: bein a slut.
3/18/2009 9:02 pm

markstallion69: dude seriously u shud have just listened to my cousin and shut the fuck up cuz now u have run ur mouth too much. I will find out who u r.
3/18/2009 10:00 pm


BomBastic12: whatever.
3/18/2009 10:15 pm

"Down"

Skyscraper sunflowers raised their seeds skyward, and then drooped at the last possible moment, just behind the blossom, in a creaseless arc; the translucent hairs of their stalks pushed my fingers away. Like thistles beneath a magnifying glass, great, veinous leaves, covered in a vicious fuzz on their undersides, gave shade to the yellow soil and hissed in a drowsy chorus as they brushed against one another in the breeze. Towering ten feet--twelve feet--to my four, the field of verdant pillars looked down to follow me with their gazes. Rare, broken stalks, fibrous and honeycombed like broken bones, (but much too brown), lay prostrate against the yellow earth. Trying to prop up those that were wilting, and failing to bolster them after all, I'd push the weak ones over with the same regret as if I'd felled a redwood. Pleas to not go too far, even if they'd been uttered, couldn't be heard over the dull rustling of fallen heads, browning and yellowing into the soil as they rolled and squished beneath my light-up sneakers.
*
A waterstained indentation in the ancient mahogany floor greeted the rare visitor. Slobber of patient bloodhounds pooled and dried in smoky, amorphous rings in strategic places: between the coffee table and the tweed, sun-faded sofa; at the entrance to the living room from the hall; in the middle of the living room, almost exactly five feet from the t.v.; at the corner of the dining rooom table, between grandpa's chair and the bay window; at the space next to the groove worn into the floor at the base of the sink. An old ring, at the door of the kitchen to the yard outside, was always slick with Ruby's slobber as she dutifully watched the chicken coop--bustling and writhing with dust from every crack and crevasse.
*
The King ambled with an awkward, rocking rhythm, his toes spreading wide--effeminate--through the fresh wood shavings. Despite the summer dust, and the inevitable dirtiness of the coop, he was glossy, and hits of amber glinted from his plumage as he passed a sunlit crack in the walls. Tall and red as rust from head to heel in the streaks of sunlight, he stretched his head skyward, with his redder crown higher than I was, until he looked down at me. The dark, weather-warped walls rose around him with rows and columns of tidy nests, dropping little bits of down and straw ont his feathers in a reverent whispers, as the hens above him shifted in their places to watch. The smell of freshly laid eggs was warm and sweet agains the dusty straw and wood shavings. The King circled the long, narrow trough, filled with seeds, watching me with a brown eye that dared me to take from him.
*
Smooth-tongued and blind, Roxy found the water in my cupped hands that I had scooped up from the large, aluminum tank. Runny-nosed snorts of protest from the cattle did not deter the pack of twelve bloodhounds from rearing up and draping their front paws over the tank rim for a drink. The water splashing into their mouths from their carnation-hue tongues made the same metallic plinking as the windmill chain, rising up and down, in and out--both instruments drawing up and sinking back down to draw for more. A whispered cacophony of cattle-snorting, tongue-splashing, chain-plinking--the breeze winding and hissing through the long grass just above the rest of the noise; blades of sunlight, rotating easily between the leaves of the windmill fan, conducted the Nebraska chorus to the empty, sixteen-hundred-acre amphitheater of grass.
*
Violent creaking of the termite-grooved oak sounded and reverberated in the combustible barn--no smooth surface, just tiny ridges and grooves over every inch, like a failed attempt at cursive. Driest straw housed brownest, fattest toads--to be caught in little hands. Toppled gas cans and oil barrels made for a grand arena in the sandy floor. Children--cousins and siblings no older than 13--rustled about in the hay loft, chasing their gladiatorial toads and dropping them down into buckets, while explosions of dry straw, breaking beneath their weight, crackled like fire.
*
The basement floor of concrete, coated in slate-grey carpet, pressed granules of sand into my knees and shins and the heels of my hands; the shrieks of so-much-more-than-a-spanking struck down like stalactites, but they were never so silent at their ends.
*
A tunnel of drooping willows of misty green gave way to a wall of stalks, yellower than the soil, and balding--only a few heads of morosest brown remained to look down at fallen neighbors. In four years, immovable skyscrapers of sunflowers forfeited thei green to the heat, and yellowed against the sun. They crackled and hiss and wavered in the breeze, trying to knock one another over--trying to push themselves upright on their neighbors' leafless shoulders.

Frank Grubstein

Here's my take on that whole expired milk jug business
* * *

He didn’t have a thermometer on him, and he was far too guarded to hazard a guess. But it was enough for him to tell himself that it was cold and that he probably shouldn’t have left his jacket on the car seat. He also knew that it didn’t matter one bit, as this mission was much too important to give up now just because he had a few extra bumps multiplying below his shirt sleeves.

3/9. 3/9. 3/8. 3/9. No, this wasn’t going to work at all. That was less than a week away. The only thing to do was hunker down against the refrigerated blast and dig deeper.

Frank was allergic to eggs, syrups, and most jams. He suspected he was allergic to nooks and crannies as well. Staunch, conservative, devout, he shied away from any meat that came from a pig – bacons, sausages, hams. Couldn’t stand grits, oatmeal, cream of wheat. Butter, cream cheese, salted fish. Any form of bread or pastry with a hole at the center. No, there was only one breakfast food that Frank could stomach with gusto at seven in the morning before heading out to tend to Grubstein’s Family-owned Fish Farm. He had five boxes of it in his shopping cart already. And this being his only trip into town for another two weeks, he needed a sufficiently distant expiration date on his requisite three gallons of milk.

He dug deeper.

The jugs were scattered around his blue jeans in all directions. Extracted from their neat queues with increasing violence. He was getting down to it now, just a single column of milk left to weed through. Grab a jug, check the side, throw it down on the tile below. 3/8. 3/8. 3/9. Nothing. Somewhere around here he had set down a jug with 3/10 inked on the side. Still terrible, just terrible, but it was the best he could find. Now where was it? White condensating jugs radiated out like layers of an onion. Too much effort to search them all a second time.

And what about skim? Whole? One percent?

No, he shouldn’t have to sacrifice his standards. He was better than that.

He got up, brushed the dust of his knees. Leaving behind a half full cart and the sea of white jugs, he slowly walked toward the double doors in the nearest corner. Opened one slightly with his right hand.

“Hey. Anyone back there or what? Hey. Got a customer that needs help.”

No answer.

“HEY.”

With still no answer, Frank burst through the doors, toward the stacks of palates. Not finding anyone by the dry goods, the produce, the freezers, the loading bays, he headed straight to the backside of the dairy refrigerators and started looking for more jugs to weed through.

“Excuse me? Can I help you?” A man in a white collared shirt and a green tie was approaching. He had a pen in his front pocket, just a cheap one, with just the blue cap sticking out.

“Ah, finally. Finally somebody to help. Where do you keep the milk with the longer expiration dates?”

“Sir, you really shouldn’t be back here.”

“If you don’t put out the milk with the long expiration dates, then where else am I supposed to go? Who do I talk to about this?”

“I’m the manager on this shift.”

“Perfect. Then you can direct me to the right jugs of milk.”

"We’ve had some problems with shipping—”

“What? What problems?”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask that we finish this conversation out on the floor.”

“How can you tell me you have problems with shipping now when I drove fifty miles into town to shop at your store?”

“Sir.”

“I am a paying customer.”

“Do I need to call security?”

Frank thought about this for a moment before letting his mouth run. He looked at the man before him, the gelled strands on his head, the patient smirk. Then he stormed out of the backroom, past the stockboy who was slowly putting the milk jugs back into the refrigerator. Past his abandoned cart, past produce, past the checkout aisles. Outside, into the warm March air. He stepped up to his pickup, contemplated the twenty mile drive to the next town, the next grocery store. Opened the door, stepped in, keyed the ignition, and rolled out into the parking lot.

Early Montana Love by Rosa

Landlady

She was a sour woman. An old woman with a muddy smell and sagging jowls. And she came late one night, after we were in bed, to tell my mother that for no particular reason, we had two weeks to find another place to live and move out. The conversation was held in hushed tones by the door. I slept in the living room then, on the bottom bunk, Leela above me. I could see the stars in the sky that night, in the darkness beyond my mother, standing at the door. She was angry. I’d never heard her speak to someone so harshly. But when she closed the door, the anger slipped off her like a sheet. She cried into her hands, her shoulders hunched. She thought I was asleep. So I pretended to dream.


A Penny a Grasshopper

My mother moved us to Montana when I was seven, Ally was ten, and Leela was five. She packed the car with her warm, calloused, capable hands. Clothes, books, food and our favorite stuffed animals. Ten days later we pulled off the sweltering highway into Missoula, and a few days after that we moved into a house on Strand Avenue, a quiet part of town, far from the university, toward the Bitterroot Valley.
At first, the house was hidden from view behind a forest of dry weeds, taller than I was. Mom spent a week hacking them down with a scythe, a vile-looking instrument that made my stomach grow hot with fear she might cut her leg or foot. She piled the stalks like hay from a loose bale near the alley in back. Then, came the grasshopper plague.
The greedy, green beasts pounced in pairs, stuck to our clothes and in our hair, leapt in ripples everywhere we walked, and ate everything they landed on. In competition, Mom hatched a plan. For each dead grasshopper, she would pay us a penny. We did not question her when she relayed her scheme to us, just eyed each other sideways in glee because we knew how easy it would be to kill a hundred and earn a dollar. We thought we may even be taking advantage of her.
We staked out the concrete walkway leading to the house, stomping on the unsuspecting, marring the sidewalk with gummy grasshopper innards. After the population thinned somewhat, we caught them in jars, shook them up, then dumped them on the killing field (the walkway). The raspy creatures sat there, too stunned to move, and were quickly smashed underfoot.


Rope Swing

A friendly giant of a tree stood in the far corner of our front yard. It had an oddly thick branch stretching far over the grass, perfectly parallel to the ground. As a child, it seemed to me this tree wanted more than anything to be our plaything. Its trunk had just enough knots and shoots to climb, and the branch hanging over the yard made for an ideal swing anchor. Mom threw a rope over the branch and since we didn’t have a tire, she made a loop at the bottom for our feet to rest. We raced and spun and skidded on the rope so much, we wore the grass down to dirt in a few weeks. In the summer, a couple turns on the swing was enough to cool the sweat on our skin. The soft, fine dirt below coated our feet, smooth and comfortable, like a second skin—an exotic skin, darker than our own, as if we had stepped for a moment into a faraway land.

Trees

In front of our house on Strand Avenue, on either side of the walkway leading to the front door, were two small “berry trees.” We called them berry trees because they formed soft, deep red, seed clumps that were shaped a little like bunches of grapes, but much smaller. The clumps, we crumbled in our fingers until we had jars and tiny baskets full of berries. They went in grass stews, stocked the kitchen of our troll house, and were frequently offered to our cat, although she refused to even pretend to dine on them.
In the winter, we buried small treasures under the snow at the bases of the berry trees, just so we could discover them in the spring thaw. Lockets in plastic bags, polished stones, rubber animals, and once, a silver dollar. None were ever recovered when the snow melted.

Horse Trailer

The yard was huge, really. Or perhaps only huge in the mind of a child. In any case, it wrapped around the house on three sides. In the “side yard,” the landlady had left a dilapidated horse trailer. She promised my mother she would haul it away. Some day. We, were quite happy she kept it where it was. Although an eyesore to our mother, the trailer was our cherished fort. We covered the holes in the floor with thin slabs of wood stolen from the alley. We cut weeds to make “hay beds” in the back. We set up shelves, on which we stored candles, matches, rocks we were particularly fond of, rope, and bouncy balls. In the afternoons my sisters and I would often lapse into our favorite game: pretending we were runaway orphans. We went on food scavenging missions, sneaking cheese and apples from the kitchen. Then we lit the candles and huddled around them, roasting chunks of cheese and whole apples over the flame, our faces drawn and pained (we never broke character). I still miss the taste of scorched, black streaked cheddar cheese.
But I haven’t told you the best part. The most exciting feature of the horse trailer was its heavy, iron mesh door. The door lay in the grass, nearly flat, connected to the floor of the trailer. One day, we discovered that if you hauled the door up with rope, as if to close the entrance, and then let it fall, it would crash to the ground in the most deafening, thunderous rumble. The first try brought our mother sprinting out of the house, expecting a bloody scene, I’m sure. She was not so impressed by the trailer’s most exciting feature and promptly put a cap on dropping the door at three crashes per day.
The saddest day, next to the night our landlady told us we had to leave, was the day she kept her promise of hauling the trailer away. We knew a few days ahead, during which the gate-crashing cap was revoked. But we didn’t feel like hearing its weight drop anymore. It made us sad.


Crystals in the Rock Pile

In the back yard, up against the fence near the alley, someone had created a pile of rocks. They were large, pale, egg-shaped rocks we liked to think were fossilized dinosaur eggs. Rocks are not too interesting unless they are shiny or colorful, so it took us quite a while to ferret out the secret that these were no ordinary rocks sitting in our yard.
One chilly spring day Leela and I were wandering around when we decided to wreak a little destruction on the rock pile. We picked up a hefty rock, paced backward five steps, and then hurled it back on the pile, reveling in the loud “clack” of contact and “shlllllllick” as the other rocks slid into a new resting place. One of these stones shattered, to our glee. We raced back to the rock pile, anxious to see if we could break any other rocks apart. That’s when we saw the crystals. The shattered rock was filled with a clear, yellow crystalline structure, smooth at the breaks. There were bits of crystal everywhere. We gathered the biggest and best, then carefully, scientifically, went about breaking open as many rocks as we could. Every one hid crystals inside.

Later, saying goodbye to our beloved Strand house, my sisters and I agreed that the Landlady would simply not appreciate the best things about our house. She had taken away our fort, probably to dump it in the landfill, where it would not be loved at all, but slowly rot and rust. She would cut down our well-used rope swing, let the berries from the berry tress fall, uncollected, and she would most certainly never notice or care that the rocks in the rock pile were magic and hid crystals inside a plain, rough exterior.

The Rubies (shat from the dogs bottom)

Isaac Smith
Ex.#11
Inserted into “The Emerald” (bottom of p.415) by Donald Barthelme


Soapbox gave the dog a new name.
What?
Bloodclot.
Is that Italian?
Could be, probably Old English or Latin. Between The Foot and Bloodclot, Soapbox will have an optimal security force. A real gutmasher.
What are the dogs talents? Frisbee? Dry leg humping? Taking a dump while on the run?
Yes. And finding mass reserves of human milk and butter.
Human milk! How much will the dog charge for his services?
No charge. The dog is independently wealthy.
Independently wealthy!
He shat out a couple choice rubies a few years back.
Wow!
He traded one for a small village near the ocean, people and everything, renamed the village- Butter and Milk. The other ruby he split into two pieces. Bought a life supply of canned peaches with one half and had the other half surgically inserted into his heart, right next to his aortic valve.
Why?
Case he gets himself in a situation.
A situation?
A situation that involves a quick exit.
I’m curious. In a morbid sense. How did the dog know he had shat two choice rubies? I may have shat two myself and never had the slightest inkling of what I’d lost. Yes?
Yes. Wanda the Wandering Welsh. She found the rubies. She has a knack for these kinds of things. She’s like a dowser. People with pets hire her all the time but the owners have to do the actual digging.
The digging?
Shifting through the...deposit.
Deposit? Oh, Yes. Right. Wow! Only pets? Not humans.
Doesn’t usually happen in humans.
I really need to get a dog. One with rubies growing inside his innards.
Along with a fast car, a big mansion, and a hot wife.
Ha! Ha! And a cure for my twitching eye and my shabby knee. It swells whenever I lust after inanimate objects, like mossy rocks and plaster of paris gnomes.
That’s a real shame.
Is the dog smart?
Let’s see. Here he comes now. Okay Bloodclot. Yawn for yes and lift your leg for no. Do you understand?
Yawn.
Have you ever been in love?
Yawn.
Another dog?
He lifted his leg! Amazing! Wow!
Are there anymore rubies in your innards?
Lift.
Would you eat an innocent child’s face off if it meant world peace?
Yawn.
Would you trade your good fortune for a pair of thumbs?
Lift.
If a wizard appeared suddenly and said he could make you pregnant would you do it?
Yawn.
You want puppies?
Yawn.
What about adopting?
Lift.
There are many fine puppies in South America and Africa. Even China.
Lift.
He’s pissed on my leg. But wait...one more question. I’m wondering who you were in love with but I can’t think of how to ask it in a yes or no way.
I was in love with Vandermaster.
He speaks!
He speaks!
Vandermaster! The is a Greek Tragedy. Truly.
Who cares about the Emerald in comparison.
The tragic tragic irony.
Yes.

Because It's the Dick Vitale's "Steakhouse Baby!" Way

I don’t really how I came to meet Delbert Fernandez. He was a spike haired Filipino kid who was fatter than his crystal meth habit should have allowed. Which for the most part did not get in the way of him looking like every other Filipino kid from San Jose. He looked like every other Filipino kid from San Jose because he gets his haircut at the same Vietnamese barber that every other Filipino kid gets his hair cut. Some Vietnamese salon on Tully where you have to wait in a very long line because everybody wants to see the same guy and there’s always that second barber with that fucked up haircut, with his sides all shaved, but he doesn’t fade it so it’s sticking out all thick and ugly like when you buy an onion and you just let it sit for a long time and that shit starts growing out the top and you don’t know whether to throw it out or put it in a pot, cover it in dirt and tell everyone you got a new plant. And on top of that, the motherfucker wants to dye his hair blonde. Now he’s already fucked up with the hair; it’s like burning your bagel and sticking a butter knife in your ass for the smear. And this poor pathetic second barber is just standing there. He’s standing there watching the other barber cutting hair after hair and everybody is smiling and happy and this poor fucking guy hasn’t smiled since the first day he arrived in this country-- then came Day 2; on Day 2 he starts to understand that back home, he was a history teacher or had a sweet government job and in this country he could be none of those things. I’d fuck up my hair too, come to think of it.

I think of this place when I think of Delbert Fernandez. I think of the guys who get their haircut at this shop, which is why we even started talking in the first place, because when I asked him if he got his haircut there, he said yes, then he offered me a bump and I said yes to that too.

Being a bartender at a corporate establishment is like being a porn actor in a soft core Cinemax or straight to DVD movie. It’s all nice and glossy but unlike those regular porno actors you have to put in a whole lot more effort into learning the lines and telling a story that nobody is really interested in and when you get there-- you never really get to stick it in, you just kind of lay on top of each other naked going, “Hunnnnhhhhh, hunhhhhhhh, HUNHHHHHHH!!”. I don’t feel like a real bartender: I put drinks together, I take money, I make more drinks, I take more money-- all the while I really, very desperately, want to pull my dick out. I just want to walk back and forth along the bar with my dick and balls sticking out my zipper hole and I want to make drinks that way. I mean, I’ll pull out some Purell if we’re worried about hygiene. I’m just feeling these days that I might as well be pulling out my dick and letting it hang there.

Today Delbert and I both endured the same pep talk from the newly hired General Manager Judd Buckner. A red faced, sweaty sweaty man whose pallor generally begins at a baseline rosy color, but when you get him talking about the Dick Vitale's "Steakhouse Baby!" way he shoots up the hue scale to vermilion; making sure to shout out "Steakhouse Baby" with all the college basketball announcing bluster that Dick Vitale is known for, that a person can muster, because that too is the Dick Vitale's "Steakhouse Baby!" way.
“Now look here fellas, look me straight in the eyes. I don’t know about you but I’m excited for today. I’m excited to make some money. I’m excited to see people happy, enjoying themselves, having a good time. See that’s the thing people look over about this business. We’re providing people a place to be happy. That’s important work. That’s what Dick Vitale's "Steakhouse Baby!" is all about. You with me fellas?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“You know what happened to me the other day. I’m going to tell you a story. Do you want to hear a story?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what drives me crazy? I have two brothers. One is a teacher and the other one, he works with abused children. It’s great work, nothing against what they do. However every time we’re together and someone asks them about our professions, do you know what happens? Do you? Do you know what happens?”
“Uhm, what happens?
“Yes”
“They’ll look at my brothers and they’ll tell them something like, 'that’s just great', 'that’s just wonderful', 'what great work you are doing helping those young people'. And like I said, it’s good work. Don’t you agree?”
“Uh huh.”
“Yes.”
“But what about this work guys? Doesn’t this work mean something? I mean when someone comes here for their birthday, and they’re surrounded by their friends and all the people that love them and they’re singing the official happy birthday song after our rendition of our special happy birthday song (because they don’t worry about such things as copyright infringement) don’t you see the look on that guy or that gal’s eyes, to see themselves through the eyes of their friends, and to just... feel... I’m sorry let me just gather myself here... to just feel more complete than they ever have. That guys, when I talk about the Dick Vitale's "STEAKHOUSE BABY!" way, that’s what I mean. Good times. Good friends. That’s what it comes down to. Repeat after me guys, good times.”
“Good times.”
“Yes.”
“Good friends.”
“Good friends.”
“Ye... I mean good friends.”

Delbert Fernandez is the kind of guy who just looks generally pathetic, all of the time. I don’t think he’s sad. He doesn’t really complain about anything, he gets excited when you talk to him about Japanese Anime and he tends to, when he’s not working, dress in light or warm colors. It’s just the way he looks. The way his eyes droop down on the sides and his mouth is always open slightly enough to look like a wound. I got this impression I do of Delbert. It’s the 7 emotional states of Delbert Fernandez: it ranges from happy to sad to lusting (my favorite). It’s real easy to do because they’re all the same look. Today Delbert is especially pathetic. Today he is the guy at the club who is watching his girlfriend rub her ass against some random stranger on the dance floor while this sucker is stuck there holding her purse.

It was a slow night at the restaurant so the manager decided to cut the both of us. I ran into Delbert having a smoke in the back area. I dug through my apron pockets for my pack of smokes and asked him to light me up.
“So what you doing tonight man?” he asked.
“I might head out to Beth’s party. It’s tonight ain’t it?”
“Yeah. Do you have to work tomorrow?”
“Nah. That’s why I’m getting fucked up tonight.”
“Yo man, I got some shit at the house. We can get fucked up before we get fucked up.”
“Word, I can get with that.”

They say that a home, the feel of it, can very much be affected by a person’s emotional or mental state. I believe this to be true because when I walked right into Delbert’s apartment it felt like his depression had managed to climb through the vents and make a home inside of all the asbestos. I am certain his blinds had not been opened in months, held together by a sticky black film of dust, dirt and melancholy. I neglected the sofa for the lone metal folding chair he kept in the living room as what gathers on fabric has less of a chance collecting on flat metal surfaces. Delbert offered me a beer and layed out a bag of meth on the table. His hands began to tremble as he struggled to squeeze his finger between the two flaps of the tiny ziploc bag.
“All right,” he said, “it’s pretty much ass, but it’ll do the work.”
Delbert patted his pockets with a measured urgency and unable to find what he was looking for rifled through his messenger bag for his pipe and torch lighter.
“Fuck man,” he said, “where’s the bag-- oh right.”
Struggling again to squeeze the same finger between the flaps, he finally got it through, grabbed one flap and then used the other hand to take the second flap and pry open the bag. He scooped out bits of hard powder with a pen cap and placed it inside of the glass pipe. It sat inside of the reservoir, on top of where you can determine a pipe’s age by how it is cross hatched by scorch marks. A perfectly clear crystal on top of all that burnt murkiness. It should have been pretty period, but it had to settle for being the prettiest thing in this fucking apartment.
Delbert grabbed his torch lighter, put the pipe to his lips and then before he could light up, he turns to me and says, “So I been thinking right, I’ve been thinking about all that shit Judd was saying to us earlier, right? You remember what he was saying right?
“Yeah man.”
He turned to light the pipe again, and once stopped short to continue on his previous thought, “What’s so special about a motherfuckin’ birthday man. Or New Years for that matter. It’s insignificant. Completely insignificant. I mean how accurate, how accurate is it really? How accurate is time, you know? How accurate is our perception of time. I mean when we celebrate a birthday, how exact are we being?”
“All I know man is that people smarter than me figured that shit out long before I was born.”
“But how do we know they are right? I mean I sometimes, ya know, feel like some days are longer than others. I really really feel that. What if really, those days are really longer and it’s not just my perception? That’s the actuality. That’s the really real actuality, it’s happening that way. Some time becomes longer than other time and our watches and our stopwatches are just guesses, they’re estimates, but not real time. Not the real time.”
I desperately wanted to argue the point but who am I to tear apart this guy’s dream of having a relevant thought. So I nodded my head and said, “Yeah man, that’s... something. You should light that thing already.”
“Oh yeah,” Delbert put the pipe again to his lips and pressed the button on his lighter, it slammed down to an empty thud that echoed more than it rightfully should have throughout this empty apartment. Delbert looked at the lighter and pressed it again. Nothing. More and more of nothing. He filled the lighter with fluid and still nothing. He got up, looked around a few times and said, “I can fix this. Give me a minute. I can fix this.”

Delbert ran upstairs, I could hear him moving through his room, the scrape of table legs, the rustling of papers and small plastic objects. He came back down with a tweezer and an eyeglass wrench. He broke apart that cheap liquor store torch lighter, fidgeted around inside of it with his tools doing a whole lot of nothing that amounted to nothing. For two hours, I watched this guy sweat, and come at this lighter at every angle. Delbert was not what many people would consider a passionate man, but the fury with which he struggled to bring that lighter back to life, that was the most humanity I’ve ever seen out of him. It’s a trip, how much a person has to come alive to smoke, snort, or swallow that shit all away.
“Just fuck it man. Cut it, and let’s snort this fuckin’ shit already.”
Delbert, looked at me with only a moment’s feeling dejection already fleeing his face. He shook his head, poured the contents of the bag on a CD case and cut it up into sloppy lines. “Good enough” I told myself, “just tell him it’s good enough.”

Exercise 6

The Bridge

To get to my grandparent’s ranch, you must cross a tiny bridge. My brother tells me if zombies ever attack, he will come here because the bridge is the only way in and the only way out. The river underneath it is almost completely dried out, but I guess that’s water underneath the bridge since you have to cross it regardless. Every time we cross the narrow concrete structure, we comment on how old it is and how one day it won’t support cars anymore. We are waiting for that day.

Black

Since the ranch is far out from the closest small town, the nights were darker than what we are normally used to. During the cold holidays, we built bonfires in the backyard and sat on barrels of hay.
As the years went by and others left the ranch too soon because of cancer or alcoholism or old age, my grandmother wore more black. It is tradition that the women wear black for a whole year, but black is too hot to wear in the heat. Only holidays, the times we got together, did she wear the black. She cooked and ate in the black. She prayed in the black. We acted as if she wore the same as the rest of us.

Where the Cows are Branded

It is a tunnel of metal. To get there, we have to walk through piles of shit, past clusters of goats, and those would be the worst smells except the fume of burning flesh is more intoxicating. The only job I’m allowed is to hold the camera for my grandmother while she takes notes and numbers; when she is ready to take the picture, we switch. With the cow in position, the men brand it with the longhorn symbol and name, Rancho Falcon. The men cut the horns of those who have them and because they are in a tunnel, they can only turn their heads, spraying the blood with each turn. For once I am glad I am a woman in this family. When we finish we are covered in their blood and their shit, but they are ours.

Where My Grandfather Naps

Turning off the rocky road through the Rancho Falcon gate, you come to the house. It is humble, except on Christmas when various Disney characters, reindeer, and a light up nativity scene fill the fenced in yard. The cow dogs lounge in the grass, always ready to follow and fulfill my grandfather’s needs. Sometimes they kill snakes that wander from the creek to the house, and most of the time the dogs win but sometimes they don’t. It becomes hard to keep track of the names because I do not know who is who. Next to the house my grandfather has set up a trampoline. When I asked my father why, he said, so your grandfather has a place to nap during the day. I asked, why not take the few extra steps to sleep in the house? My father replied, so he can get away from your grandma. During family visits, my little cousins spend the day jumping with my grandfather, who propels his almost eighty-year old body into the air.

The Kitchen

Here my aunts learn to make: tamales, tortillas, tortillas, tortillas, menudo, beans, rice, cookies, caldo de carne or caldo de pollo, carne guisada, goat, cow, turkey, chicken, corn, flour, tomatoes, cabbage, spices, and sugar. And after my grandmother shows them, they do it again and again. The rest of us are disappointed when they cook but don’t say anything because we don’t bother to learn. It does not stop us from eating more than we should, partly out of the nostalgia the food gives us and partly out of fear that one day, the food will won’t be here anymore. They must get it right before my grandmother is gone.

Christmas

Once a year, my grandmother does what almost every other household does. Her tree is green. I do not know what the ornaments look like because I can never look away from the fifty plus nativity scenes she sets up underneath the tree. The number of wise men and farm animals are too great to count. Somebody, years ago, gave my grandmother a toucan, which has made it’s way under the tree. My cousins and I play a game: whoever finds the toucan first, wins. At the top of the tree rests an angel, black because my grandmother didn’t want a white one since those do not look like us. There are no Mexican angels.

The Other Holidays

For many years, almost my entire family, gathered at the ranch for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, weddings, nights before a Quinceañera, and my grandparents’ birthdays. Many second or third cousins came; we called them cousins regardless if they were are own or not. The small three-bedroom house would quickly fill fifty or more relatives. While my aunts cooked, the uncles drank beer outside or watched various football games. My siblings and I would spend parts of our summers here, when my grandmother taught us how to bottle feed baby goats, when she showed us how to avoid the chickens when taking their eggs, and before they had inside plumbing.
After the death of my Aunt Mary, we stopped going. Two of my other aunts refuse to speak to each other and most of my cousins spend their time with their own children, though most of my cousins were still children when they had their kids. At most, I go there once a year now. And when I do, there’s maybe ten or so of us there. We eat and joke the same as if everybody were there but instead of staying a few days or even one full day, we stay around two hours. Two hours to last us the whole year.

Spanish

Mis abuelos no hablan el inglés y yo no comprendo el español. Muchas veces, nostotros comunicamos por cabezada de la cabezas y sonrisas. Los tiempos que hablamos con uno al ortro, yo hablo vergonzosamente y inconscientemente con ellos como si ellos sean niños incapaces de comprender palabras más allá de un primer nivel de grado. Para evitar mi culpa, nosotros hablamos en su mayor parte por otras personas, y somos así como aprendo la historia de mi familia. Nosotros nos abrazamos cuando salgo, y en sus brazos ellos dicen, "I love you," sus palabras muy claro u siempre entendible.

The Killer Bees

They live in a tree. It’s far from us, so there’s no worry when we walk outside. I have only the tree once, a drive-by. It’s like any other tree, tall, aging bark, and weakening limbs. But there is a presence to this tree, not one of evil as I imagined there would be as the truck slowly rolled by, but one of life. With my forehead pressed against the window and my breath fogging it, I thought this is where they live. This is their home.

The Cabin by Toby Wendtland

Grandma and Grandpa Wendtland purchased the cabin in Crivitz, Wisconsin in the fall of 1954. The cabin is small, much smaller on the outside, and contains four room. There is a kitchen and a living room in the front of the cabin and two bedrooms make up the back. The next spring they dug a pit for the outhouse behind the cabin, back by the tree line. There is no running water. The soil that the cabin sits on is sandy and drains very well. Ant hills dominate the yard. Lichens grow over all of the pine trees, the same pine trees which are dying of some disease that fells dozens of them every summer and each year the backyard gets just a little bit bigger. When the nights are cold, there is a propane furnace which must be lit, it is old and reliable and I live in constant fear that I have left if on long after I am home. Out back behind the cabin is an old stump where my brother and I brush our teeth every morning and we spit onto the anthills and watch them run for cover.
* * *
The town of Crivitz is located just over an hour north of Green Bay and is just south of Iron Mountain, right next to the border of the upper peninsula. There is one grocery store in the town, a Piggly Wiggly, that until I was ten used to be a Red Owl. Pops is the most popular of all the north woods resorts and from there you can buy live bait, lures, bobbers, rent a boat, pet their three legged dog or their one eyed cat, or perhaps you’d rather rent a canoe and if you are could they interest you in also renting a motor? Pops is the only bait shop within twenty miles. The Sportsman Café is just up the road from Pops and we eat here every first night we are in town. They serve 10 point burgers and my brother and I beg my father to buy us pull tabs, cherry, cherry, lemon. There is another bar, but we do not eat there. A cutout of Paul Bunyan stands outside the bar and he is holding a keg of beer from which Babe is drinking. This cutout is the sign to turn left, you are almost at the cabin. There is an Ace hardware in town, along with numerous antique shops and a tremendous Sunday flee market that everyone attends in the Saint Paul’s parking lot. Garage sales are omnipresent.
* * *
The ice cream shop has always been there and it has had many names. There is an arcade, quarters please! and a gift shop which feature the kind of tourist fare you would expect from a small town in northern Wisconsin. They have thirty flavors here, may I suggest the Blue Moon or Butter Pecan, try it in a waffle cone!
* * *
The high falls flowage is a dam that created the town of Crivitz. The lake is monstrous. My father leads us up to the dam by way of a deer trail and when we get home we will have to strip naked and check for ticks. We fish right on the dam and the water is very deep. Over fifty feet deep where we fish and two hundred feet deep behind the center of the dam. My father turns on his old yellow sportsman radio and finds the Brewers game. We hook minnow through the tail and fish near the surface for crappies. My father has one pole rigged for walleye who hide in the rocks near the bottom of the dam. In the morning below the dam, before they release the water, we will be back to fish for bluegills.
* * *
The cabin in on the edge of town and is reached by a gravel road called Archer Lane. The other roads are made of sand. If you follow them and veer always to your left, in about a mile you will come across an old pier and here my brother and I fish for panfish, bass and catch snails, always hoping that the owner is not home.
* * *
The population of Crivitz is pine snakes, rattle snakes, milk snakes, grass snakes, frogs, toads, owls, turkey, hummingbirds, robins, eagles, doves, crawfish, painted turtles, deer, black bears, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, snails, grasshoppers, musky, northern pike, sunfish, bass, perch, crappie, walleye, ticks, lime disease, butterflies, hawks, tourists, people and ticks.
* * *
The Rock Shop is north of the cabin in Iron Mountain. I do not know where it is. Crivitz is wooden arrows on posts telling you where to go. There are too many to read before you pass them and I trust that my parents can find their way. Every summer my brother and I plead with my parents to take us. All the rocks are of a peculiarly large size. Quartz, Agate, Amethyst, I want to live inside of them, but I cannot afford to. Next year I swear that I will buy one of them.
* * *
Our neighbors come on different schedules over the summer and we rarely ever meet.
* * *
Down the gravel road from the cabin if you take a left is Wilson’s Electronic Store. It is not a store. It is Mr. Wilson’s house, but he likes to tinker and twice we have brought him our tv. His son Derrick is mentally retarded and shows my brother and me how to hold a bumblebee so that it won’t bite you. I get bit, Derrick doesn’t.
* * *
Beneath the dam is a labyrinth of rocks and pools that are full of crawfish. My brother and I catch them and boil them into a pot back at the cabin. Try the tails with ketchup mixed with horseradish.
* * *
Two of my uncles purchased the cabin from my grandparents when they got too old to visit it anymore. Gone is the old couch, the old tv, the old brown carpet. In is running water, a new tv, hardwood floors and a new couch that I no longer fight my brother for the right to sleep on. The cabin is much nicer now and I hardly recognize it. In fact, I hate it.

Pearl Earring (ex. 5 narrator in unfamiliar environment)

I hold the brown leather handbag at my knees so no one notices. There is little chance for anyone to notice my lack of a briefcase as the crowd hisses down the street. I am picked up by the current in a nondescript industrial park. Everyone is hushed and carrying briefcases.


The crowd funnels as we pass through a residential area between the industrial park and downtown. Men in penny loafers squeak over the Astro-Turf lining either side of the street. The women click alongside the grubby yellow paint splitting the street into lanes that had fallen into disuse. I am not sure where we were going, but the attitude is sober, intentional. I do not need to know. I look for friends in the throng when I have the chance, but everyone is wearing the standardized garment, so I cannot make out individuals.


There are no cars on the street or in the driveways. A telephone pole hosts an old campaign flyer: Be Inconspicuous! The edges have peeled away from the pole and turned a sour gray.


A human scent lifts from the bustle and leads us forward. I walk next to a man whose shoulder rubs against mine in a regular and pleasant cadence. The crowd shifts left to avoid a large, rusting vehicle on the right side of the street, and I feel the shape and contour of the man's bicep through his standardized garment. As the crowd readjusts toward the right, I notice that the woman to my right has on pearl earrings. Hardly anyone wears pearls anymore. The jewelry peeks through her cropped black hair as she bobs forward with determination. Her eyes flit sideward, enough to be conscious of me in her periphery. She jostles a few paces ahead, subtly pressing through other black bobs to escape my view.


The crowd makes a sharp right turn out of the deserted neighborhood and enters the green plastic tunnel. We step out, two by two, into the New Historical District. I had not been in the area since it was restructured. I remember my father taking me to see the buildings knocked down. They were actually atomized, but the city made a big show of it. They played a sound byte of crumbling steel beams as the simulated wrecking ball struck the buildings a delivered the charge necessary to break down the material. People smiled soundlessly and waved little gray flags as the buildings disappeared in the dusk.


I pass the foundations of the new buildings with the others and miss my father. Production had been halted on these years ago when the city diverted its funds to "global ventures." Up ahead, an aluminum structure swells out of the ground and into our path. I think I read somewhere that these were used as temporary workstations for the contracted city builders. As we approach, the two lines split around the circumference of the abandoned building.


We proceed, single file, along the metal edge. I cannot see the expression of the woman behind me, but I sense that she has noticed my lack of a briefcase. Her awareness ripples through the line in the quiet code of her stiffened walk, but no one breaks formation.


We near the far side of the aluminum mound where the lines appear to converge and vanish. When there are only fifteen people ahead of me, I can see the bobs and combovers disappearing into two more green tunnels, spiraling underground.


I wonder if this is the old sewer system. The air grows very thick and warm, and the scent of perspiring bodies becomes intolerable. It is difficult to breathe.


A man behind me clears his throat. He must have had a momentary lapse of attention. No one, of course, calls any attention to his misstep at the risk of our own conspicuousness.


I have forgotten about the task of breathing because the line has slowed and the tunnel grown even more silent. The women have changed into slippers to match the stealth of the penny loafers. I did not see them change because it is so dark, but I carefully remove my heels and walk on the cool, dusty plastic in my bare feet.


A soft light reaches up (or down) the passage. I can see flecks of something like ash in the black bob ahead of me. Suddenly, the whole line halts.

an interview with Ruminavi the sloth

(from Exercise #10)

JUAN climbs up a tree in the humid Peruvian Amazon. RUMINAVI, a young brown-throated sloth with a brownish-gray coat, hangs from a branch. His legs are wrapped around it. Juan assumes a laid-back posture by sitting with his back against the tree, his legs crossed beneath him like the secret patchouli-scented hippie he is.

JUAN
Hey Ruminavi! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.

RUMINAVI
That’s not true. You haven’t really invented me yet.

JUAN
That’s true. Hmm, you haven’t even said any dialogue yet, since you’re, since we’re still in that outline/notes stage. (pause) Which is why I’m here. I’m not going to dab us up in letters, then words, until this summer, but I want to make sure I’ve got a really good sense of who you are before I make you be.

RUMINAVI
Oh, okay. I think I get it.

JUAN
Cool! So…let’s start off with some basics I should know about you. What do sloths like you like to eat?

Ruminavi giggles.

RUMINAVI
Oh sheesh, you really should know that!

JUAN
I know, I know! That's why I'm asking!

RUMINAVI
Well, I like leaves, soft twigs, and buds…especially when they’re new and pretty and bright green. And, since I’m a three-toed sloth, I really like to eat from cecropia trees and lianas. We’re pickier than the two-toed ones.

JUAN
Uh huh. I see. Umm, besides your, you know, (pointing to his crotch) pee-pee, how can you tell if a sloth is a girl or a boy?

RUMINAVI
Well, girls make different sounds, especially when they want some company. But boys like me have a patch of white or orange fur with a stripe on it between our shoulders. That’s how I can tell when I see other sloths hanging or crawling around.

JUAN
Not that I need to know, but do you have a girlfriend yet?

Ruminavi slowly puts his claws over his mouth before giving a laugh.

RUMINAVI
No! Uncle says I’m not ready yet. He says girls like my Aunt Sofia are a pain in the butt. She says the same thing about him. We’re sloths so we like to be alone. Sometimes it’s nice to eat together, especially when Uncle Antonio is telling jokes about anacondas or harpy eagles!

JUAN
Right. I remember you said you were surprised we got along so well when we traveled together…and I thought the same thing!

RUMINAVI
Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? That hasn’t happened yet.

JUAN
Oh right, right. I forgot. Heh heh! Anyhoo…tell me more about you. Picture yourself doodling a drawing of me and you, walking through a jungle or through a town like Iquitos together, with you wrapped around my neck, hanging on my back. It’s going to be a story about us but mostly about you, so what should people know about you so they won’t throw the book away and say, “Geez, that was boring!”?

Ruminavi slowly moves a free arm to scratch his chin with his long claws.

RUMINAVI
Well…umm…I’m still a kid. I was born far, far away in Brasil. My mom and dad got killed by a jaguar when they went to take a poop together, but now I live here by Iquitos, thanks to you. I’m glad I’m here since I have my aunt and uncle, though we don’t hang (his legs wrapped around the branch, his long arms slowly stretching out) out much. I’m happy to be here because I’m scared of harpies and jaguars, so we look out for each other.

Juan smiles.

JUAN
Well I’m glad you’re happier here.

RUMINAVI
Oh! Oh! You should know I move really, really slow.

JUAN
I know.

RUMINAVI
Yeah, really slow! But I like it. Sometimes, after I eat a lot, I’ll sleep like fifteen hours in a day.

JUAN
Wow!

RUMINAVI
I don’t know how people like you can live in such a rush. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Some lady scientist explained to me once that I have nerves, and muscles, and that they work a lot slower than most other animals.

JUAN
You were built to chill, Ruminavi. Like the jungle’s Lebowski.

RUMINAVI
What’s a lebowski?

JUAN
Oh, it’s this guy. He’s really mellow, like you.

RUMINAVI
Oh…umm…oh! I take a poop like once a week. I always go down to the jungle floor to do that since it can be rude and messy if I do it up from the trees.

Juan laughs at the thought of a slop of turd, falling right on his head.

RUMINAVI
I can swim pretty well but I can’t walk or stand on my legs.

JUAN
I didn’t know you could swim!

RUMINAVI
I really like it. Sometimes I get some damn algae and stupid ticks in my fur. It’s the best way to get rid of them. The moths that live in my fur are okay. It gets cold for them, too. I have a moth friend named Hector who likes to hum some songs at night. I really like him.

JUAN
That’s neat, but where did you learn to say “damn” young man!

RUMINAVI
From uncle. Hector taught me “pussy”, which is what you Americans like to call girls’ privates and cats, too.

JUAN
Oh my goodness! I like Hector already!

RUMINAVI
Hee hee! I like calling the jaguars “big smelly pussies”!

Exercise #5 An environment she doesn't understand

Tonight as the acid hit, I focused on the small grains of the sidewalk and felt my appendages rising. It wasn’t until I looked up that I realized he was trying to hoist me up to my feet. The acid didn’t seem to hit him. He was right in my face,
telling me to stop rolling around on the grass and getting myself all green and wet. I guess it had rained earlier, but I didn’t care about my clothes, or the grass stains. He was also telling me to stop yelling in his ear. I saw my veins breaking open, and red puddles appearing and disappearing like silent amoebas on the palms of my hands, on the ground, and felt the cold wetness on my face. I thought I was bleeding to death. He got me into the car and drove around the neighborhood to calm me down, but the turns of the vehicle made me nauseous, so I had to get out, only to end up on the ground again. I told him that I needed to go home, that I needed to get my journals. He asked me why I needed to write at this moment, what the hell was wrong with me, but he told me I wouldn’t be alone. He’d listen if I needed to talk. So I tripped up the stairs, and breathing harshly, located my journals under my bed. The yellow lights of the hallway cast a treacherous hue throughout the house, but I ignored it and trampled down the stairs outside to my audience.
Some time during the morning hours, as the high retreated back into my body and settled indefinitely in my spine, I recalled past sunrises and moments of clarity and reiterated them to him. I wasn’t able to stop talking; the words I spat out to him seemed to overwhelm him, and he criticized me for acting stupid when I was smart. He told me I probably was stupid, practicing so many years to be so.
I realized that the person having a high has their own choice to make of what kind of high, but I’ve always been too uptight to really enjoy myself. It was a nine-hour bad high. I’m still drenched with it by sound and smell. It hurts…all I know is that the high took all my fears by the throat and used them to torment me. I had to continuously shake to make my presence known to myself and who I was talking to, or else my mind would float off, and I was afraid to find out where. I knew some sort of death lay beyond the thin cape of now. So I pulled at my hair, beat my legs on the ground, bit my hands-anything to remind myself I was still a solid substance. Was I still alive and somehow beating inside? I saw veins and arteries run their large gaping, open rivers on the palms of my hands. My nails looked deathly gray, except for the tips, which were deathly white. There was something very wrong with my hands. I ran my dry tongue over them until I learned to see like a blind person, knowing with my tongue that I was still me, the same, and that my hands were still there, and it was my eyes who were betraying me. I started choking and fighting against my own vomit, and for awhile, I thought I’d given up the fight to breathe. Breathing either became erratically fast, or almost nonexistent. I had to kick my legs out in every direction, because the thing was, I couldn’t stop moving. I was so afraid of becoming immobile, because the word itself held a more frightening definition than the one I had known before these hours. I kept counting the seconds from the time I had pigged out before the high had really set in. As I threw up thoroughly on the living room floor, I thought of this miserable high-all this puke-gallons and gallons of it, all for that tiny square of nonchalant paper. It never warned me it would make me feel this way. The plants in the living room became some mutant form-they were waving and dancing towards me. I lay down next to them, and tried to become inanimate, so that they’d leave me alone. I had become immobile, and they had become animal. As I lay there, I started remembering that discovery of that sacred line-the one between man and everything man wondered about. I remembered finding these answers and wondering why it was so easy to know, but not remember enough to tell later on. Maybe our minds were programmed to forget at the crucial moment of becoming sober. I forgot about my discovery, and felt that it wasn’t so phenomenal after all. It wasn’t hard to accept the fact that my mind had forgotten, and that no one would share my certainty of the other worlds. The acid on my tongue dissolved itself until it became a permanent part of me.

Interview with a Union Soldier, Dead at Bull Run (Ex. 10)

Near a mound of fresh dirt under a sprawling oak tree. The rumbling of cannons is heard in the background. Lounging next to the mound is a young man, about 19. He is very dirty but underneath the dirt streaking his kind, guileless face, one can see freckles. He has slightly buck teeth and reddish brown hair.

Erin: So, you just died, right? How do you feel about that?

J: Yeah. I just got shot. I mean, I think that’s what happened. I think it was in the head. It’s OK, I mean, it happens off the page so I don’t really know what happened, but my head is all weird and misshapen now (puts hands to his head as if to feel). I wasn’t very good looking before, but at least now I’m interesting right?

Erin: Actually, I killed you off because you are really boring. And I think you’re really hard to get to know. I just kind of put you and Henry together and you never really turned into anyone. (pregnant silence. J stares at Erin) OK, so, uh… How does it feel to always be living in Henry’s shadow?

J: Well, Henry is my older brother, so that’s kind of how it’s supposed to be. I kind of always let him be in the forefront. He’s kind of a jerk in the novel though and he doesn’t really do anything right. None of us do. I think that’s kind of a weak point of the story. You have me and Henry always following Jeremiah, like he’s the only one, him and Rosetta, who have any ideas, but I’ve got ideas.

Erin: What ideas? Deserting? That’s the only idea you’ve ever suggested to me. And then you went and got killed so I had to have Henry desert by himself. It kind of messed up my plans a little bit there.

J: OK. An idea I have… Um. Maybe it was my idea to let Jeremiah and Rosetta hang out at the creek by themselves. You know how we were supposed to all meet, but we didn’t show up?

Erin: I’m pretty sure that was Jeremiah’s idea. Because he wanted to be alone with Rosetta.

J: Right. Well, then, what about locking Eli in the outhouse?

Erin: Are you asking me whose idea that was?

J: I’m just saying, maybe it was mine.

Erin: OK, but are you actually saying it was your idea, or just telling me it could be? Because that isn’t really proving your point. What is one idea you’ve had of something to do?

J: I think… Look. I think you should ask me some easier questions first.

Erin: All right. I really hate small talk, but if you aren’t going to give me anything better, I guess we’ll start with small talk. So, tell me, Jimmy O’Malley, what do you do for a living?

J: Well, my family owns a farm in upstate New York. It’s not a very prosperous farm. We’ve got a reputation for being lazy, for being ne’er do wells, but that isn’t really it.

Erin: What is it then?

J: There’s just a lot of us, you know. A lot of kids. And our dad, he’s a drunk. Our mother, she tries but she’s just a woman, you know.

Erin: No. I don’t really know. What do you mean, she’s just a woman?

J: Well, what can she do? She can’t buy anything. She can’t get loans. So there it is.

Erin: OK. So you’re a farmer who doesn’t farm very well with an Irish last name and a stereotypically Irish family life and you’re really sexist. That’s awesome. Really gives me a lot to go on. What else do you do?

J: Well, I’m a soldier, for the Union in the Civil War. It pays good. That’s why I decided to do it. And because my friends were going to fight. And the girls in the town, they like soldiers, so if I wanted to get a wife someday I felt like I had to be a soldier.

Erin: That didn’t really work out, did it?! (laughs, but then stops when Jimmy just looks at her) I guess that isn’t really funny, is it? Kind of ironic. But not funny. Right, so moving on… Was there a particular girl in town you really wanted to impress?

J: Don’t let Rosetta hear me say this, but I always thought Carrie was really pretty. But a girl like that, she’d never be interested in me.

Erin: Why not?

J: She’s from town, you know. So, she’s kind of like, sophisticated. She’s got soft hands. You look at a farm woman, she don’t have soft hands. And Carrie, well, she’s got money so a guy like me, I’d be a real step down for her. I always figured I’d end up married to someone like Betsy.

Erin: Wait, so you’re interested in Betsy? Or, I mean, you were interested in her, before you died?

J: Yeah, I guess. But I don’t think Rosetta would ever go for something like that.

Erin: Isn’t Betsy, like 12?

J: She’s 14.
Erin: Well, maybe that’s why Rosetta wouldn’t really go for it. That’s kind of young.

J: I guess.

Erin: So, all this time you liked Betsy? (J nods, which is a little disturbing, given the condition of his skull) Why didn’t you ever say anything? (E throws hands up)

J: You never asked me.

Erin: I never asked you. All that time when I was writing and wondering what I was going to do next, that didn’t seem like asking to you?

J: Did you ever once say, Hey, Jimmy? Hey, what would you like to do in this scene here?

Erin: If you’re asking if I ever said those words, then no, no I didn’t. Wait a minute! What’s going on here? I’m supposed to be interviewing you. (J shrugs. There is a pause. E appears to be thinking) In the novel, you and everyone else has a dialect.

J: Right.

Erin: Why aren’t you speaking in your dialect now?

J: That’s just the role I was playing, for Rosetta, to keep her happy. She’s kind of difficult, you know. We don’t really talk like that. She just thinks we sound better that way. You know, more rustic. But I can turn that off. I’m a smart guy.

Erin: Did I say you weren’t smart?

J: You implied it, remember, when you said I was boring and didn’t have any ideas?

Erin: (ignoring J’s last remark) So, you could turn the dialect back on if you wanted?

J: It ain’t no hard thing. There’s all sorts of things I can do, if I set my mind to it. I could fight with Henry if I put my mind to it. I could tell Captain all about Rosetta and how she ain’t what she looks like.

Erin: See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! Now you’re getting all devious! Now you tell me now you have this crush on Betsy, and you claim you have ideas, but I just killed you off!

J: Couldn’t you, you know, make me be alive again? Can’t you do shit like that?

Erin: Um… This is kind of awkward….

J: Right. I’ll just stay dead then.

Post #3

Once again, I very much enjoyed reading all of your posts. These are even better than last time; you guys are writing some terrific stuff.

Your next posts are due Tuesday, March 31. As before, I'd like you to choose one of the exercises you began in class to develop and/or rewrite. They should be in the vicinity of 3-5 pages. (For my and your classmates' benefits, please be sure to mention which assignment it is you're responding to.)

Thanks, and looking forward to the next round.

Luther Carey

What can you do when throwing people down staircases loses its fun? Where do you channel the creative energy that came from that, viewing each staircase the way a golfer views different courses? This love of mine is lost, as is every other I have had as I grew up. The way pinching Mary Lerner in kindergarten had, and hard fouling in basketball had, or the revenge beatings on my father after his accident had. None of it sticks and the more that we try to hold the candle for these things the blinder we are to something potentially satisfying. Who knows, while I am very disappointed that I can no longer take pleasure from tripping the odd passerby down a flight of say 20 or so steps, I might completely miss out on something amazing, like... insurance fraud, or pissing on the homeless from my fire escape, the future is open, really, and I can't tell you what it will be. I will try the pissing thing after work today, and if it doesn't work out, I will probably end up on the phone with Cindy or Karen, or whatever name they get paid 2.99 a minute to be called.
No pleasure can be counted on for permanence. In fact, this is the very reason that I think love is one of those things. If you could buy it for what its worth and sell it for what everyone thinks its worth, you would be a rich man. But, instead people go back to this like the rat that keeps returning to the drugged water bottle, and they behave in a similar way when the water bottle stops giving.
Before Cindy and Karen, there was Leanne, and yes, her name was actually Leanne. She was a guidance counselor at a local high school, so she was always dressing in business skirt outfits, with her reddish hair up in a bun. She would come home from school and tie me up and make me call her Mrs. Louis and I became the fool who thought the pleasure might last. We would sit on the fire escape in the morning, having barely slept an watch the sun filter through the other apartment buildings, bringing a greenish-blue color into the sky over the bay. I fucked every night, and I thought that I knew how to keep perspective on pleasure and the way it wanes. But when Leanne left, writing her final words in lipstick on the bathroom mirror like some sort of stylish movie character. She must have just covered her tattoos and gone to work at the school, putting on her act. She must have met someone else.
I think that if anyone at my work knew what I did, to others I mean, the pain I cause, I could be fired. When Daryl Skein from New Accounts cut his hand because someone removed the guard on the paper slicer, that was me. I am the one who broke the window on Sally Riali's new Camaro, the day she drove it for the first time to work. She was so proud, sitting in the little red matchbox of a car, revving the engine to get everyone to the building's windows. I pictured the car a year from now, littered with soda cans and gum wrappers and dust, stained with Sally's green eyeshadow.
I don't want you to think I don't like my co-workers, I do. I actually respect a few of them, and even have made a friend or two at times among the group. Jason Clark, whose cubicle adjoins my own, used to invite me out to watch basketball and drink, and the two of us even went to a strip club once, where Jason had gotten us kicked out for asking for lap dances and saying he would pay the next time we were there. I remember the bouncer was a short guy who bent our limbs in ways that made his size not matter, and who had bad breath and a fleck of cocaine in his nose. He told us not to come back without money, but we both had money and I didn't understand why Jason had been fucking with the girls in the first place.
I sat against a car that wasn't mine and smoked a cigarette, wondering whether I needed rotator cuff surgery, listening to Jason explain himself, and it began to make a bit of sense. I didn't say it to him, but Jason wasn't too different from myself.
“Life just isn't any fun by the book,” he said. He told me that he wanted to live in a way that always made people react to him. “If we just move through the world in our bubbles no one will notice whether we're there or gone.”

In My Dreams the Walls Tremble (continued)

From Exercise #3

I stared down at him as I slowly walked past, part of me hoping he would, at that moment, come to and recognize me so I could find out what’s been happening to him. But he didn’t and I went on, trying my best not to look back.

When I boarded a bus, I stood and stared out—all the houses, stores, people, laughter, and conversations congealing into a dim gray hum. I couldn’t stop thinking about Cody, picturing him still there, passed out on the street. All that I’d done, all that the other counselors had done at the residential home had not helped him one bit. In all likelihood, we weren’t going to be able to help the other kids we currently had at the house. There was no sense in being cheery and delusional about it. The walls were stacked and collapsed on them from the very beginning; they had mounds of rubble to try and sift through before they could even walk, before they could remember anything. In the end, we were changing nothing, not doing anything positive for them, really. Our intentions were good but it didn’t mask the fact that I wasn’t doing anything good with my life.

My feet plodded along on autopilot, taking me aboard a BART train to Oakland, to my Lake Merritt apartment where I could collapse and forget all those thoughts. I took a seat, nestled my bag between my feet, and leaned my head to rest on the cold window.

I awoke on the other side of the bay where the sun shone through the train. The palms of my hands were irritating me. I looked at them and saw that I’d dug my fingernails into them--from clenching my hands into fists.

In the dream, I was startled by an intruder who had broken into my home. He was totting a gun, wearing a black ski mask. I shot up from my bed and stared at him as he pointed and waved it at me, slurring commands and threats like I’ll blow your brains out, motherfucker. Don’t try me. Don’t try me!

When he stepped closer, his eyes ping-ponging through the slits in his mask, I felt this great ball erupt within me—from my stomach up to my throat. This ball, this swirling force bunched up and stayed there as though there was a dam in my throat that was holding it back. I stared at him. I could feel that he was more scared than me. I planted my feet firmly on the ground and clenched my fists as I reared towards him.

Between the Tigrus and Euphrates Rivers,
In this land we now call The Rock,
Nothing remains of the belt of morning spent
at the cusp of the valley where the first of us,
Would watch the clouds come, in empire droves,
Only the fall at the first touch of sun.

He dropped the gun as his hands shot up to cover his ears. Behind him, the walls trembled from my words. He was backing out of the apartment, towards the front door.

Leave me, friend, even if you do not know this,
I have little to give but well wishes on
the big swim ahead.

With that last line, my words flung him out of the door, his arms flailing, past the railed walkway to the other apartments which overlooked the lake. He flew backwards into the body of water, his splash sending the ducks around him into flight.

When I recalled this dream, my eyes squinting from the daylight, I immediately thought of my grandmother in The Philippines. I remembered the time we had walked along a beach, a few years before. I was always one of her favorite nephews since I looked like her father when he was my age.

“Keep writing your poems, anak,” she said as I walked with her arm between mine, her soft brown eyes staring at the sand beneath us. “You have a gift, a gift that can’t be learned, a gift that is passed to a few. No matter what you do, where you go, never forget it. It’s who you are. It’s something that no one will ever be able to take from you as long as you give it sun and water.”

When I got home, I went through one of my drawers and took out the writing notebook I hadn’t touched in months. I sat against my bed, staring at the door, and wrote a poem for her. I read it aloud, hoping that somehow she could hear it, perhaps later in her dreams.

“I’m giving myself sun and water again. Thanks for reminding me, mama.”

someone we don't like!

He pulled his sweat stained cowboy hat down tight against his head. He didn’t care that he was balding and going gray. There were a hell ‘uv a lot of uglier people out there than he was. Cheaters, liars, the city crawled with them. Like maggots on road kill. Up on the roofs he needed protection from the sun. He hardly noticed that he looked ten years older without the hat. The point was the sun.

Moronic lady, this one. He pulled up and parked the pickup along the curb in front of her driveway. Waited too long to re-roof and now expected him to be God. Maybe if she was any good-looking. If she actually had tits instead of the dried up sacs that were the only explanation for the way her blouse hung and wrinkled there.
He heard her voice even before he opened the door of the truck.
“Mr Mellerman?” She waddled out from her front door. Have another donut, lady. “Your boys cannot proceed until the warping is addressed. I tried to explain that to the woman in your office-,”
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. He wasn’t in the mood this morning. Nan was the sweet talker, he hated this part of the job. He wasn’t any good at it either.
“Yes Mrs. Dodge. They know.” Jake made his words slide through his teeth. “See the wood in Jesse’s truck? We’re going to replace the warped boards today.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that Mr. Mellorman, because I thought they were just going to ignore the problem. They don’t speak English so I had no way of knowing. I ‘ve been worried sick all night…”

She was lonely, that was plain to see. A widow, her kids long grown. It would be tough.
“Well I speak Spanish, Mrs. Dodge, so you see, it’s all under control.” Jake gave the thumbs-up sign to Jesse on the roof.
Her nest-egg, this house. Clearly. For the most part, it was well tended.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Mrs. Doge was smiling now. “I always put a pot on in case my daughter drops by. She just started working in the city. She’s an accountant. Always liked numbers – strange for a girl. Unusual, her teachers used to say. I always told her that her gift would come in handy and it has.”

Jake was off coffee. Nan had worried him. The way his heart was flipping, for a few weeks, there. Doing somersaults. Nan pulled with her thumb and forefinger at his gut, the loose part he was starting to notice around the ole mid-section, and went on about the relation of belly fat to heart problems. Some bullshit. She said he wasn’t no spring chicken and he’d better quit the caffeine for a while and see if that helped. Nan was the boss, he had no trouble with that concept. She had come in to his business when they married and put it from red to black in six months time. The woman had foresight. She was no-nonsense, made him cut all his fluff. Sell the speedboat, the motorcycle, quit buying booze at Sam’s. She was a practical gal but she had a nice ass, that’s for sure. First thing he noticed. Nice knockers too. A handful each with some left over. Nothing to complain about.

“You tell me what I have to do to keep you from cheating on me and I’ll do it,” She was already giving orders on their second date. “I won’t have my husband running around on me. I’d rather you leave me. Is that clear?”

“Thanks Mrs. Dodge, but I’ll pass on the coffee. I’d best be checking on Jesse and your boards.” Jake tipped his hat.

Outside he pulled his ladder from the back of the truck, pushed it open and leaned it against the side of the house. One foot in front of the other, steady as we go. Workers comp just kept going up, no one could afford an accident. Roofers were plain out f----‘ed.
He had to admit, the cat suit was another of Nan’s good ideas. She worked it, that’s for sure. If the ladies at Sunday Mass could see her leaning against the banister like that in the entry-way when the kids were at school? Ha.
He had banged a few women in his day, true true. One of the perks of being a roofer. Mrs. Dodge was over the hill, Jesus, but he didn’t used to feel remiss about women twenty years older when he was twenty. Fake tans, blue eye shadow. He made them keep their high heels on. On the couch, in the bathtub. Before he started losing his hair, he was a lean and mean mother f---‘er.

On the roof Jesse was almost through, pulling the boards. The sun was coming up, it was fixing to be a nice day. Jake crouched down and looked at the roof frame. It had held up, despite the warping. Mrs. Dodge’s roof would be fine. Another job well done.
The radio crackled. It never stayed quiet for long. Nan liked to keep him in her sights.
“Jake, I’m home for an early lunch. Wanna meet me? I’ll make you grilled cheese.”
Nan stuck by him and he knew that wasn’t easy all the time. She liked him in a way no one ever had. He talked too much, told whoppers, he couldn’t always stop himself. Even now. They’d just come sliding out like when he was a kid, trying to get his Mama to get out of her room.
“Mam, the dog up and died. I put him in the oven and cooked him.”
His mother’s room was dark, all the shades kept drawn. It was like that till she left. No note. Then shades were up in her room. That’s how he knew she wasn’t coming back.
“Ruff ruff, Nan, what’s the music I wanna hear?” He may be going bald, but he was still hung like a horse.
“Meow” Nan said.
“That’s my girl.”
There’s no place like home, Jake thought to himself. Collect the old ladies’ check and get the hell outahere.

Oakland

by Xochitl M. Perales


Victorian Houses
Rows and rows of two-story Victorian houses. In the poorer neighborhoods, chipped paint coats the exteriors in weathered flakes. Each home stands out, one from the other, in varying soft shades of color – white tones being the most prominent. The trims are what make them somewhat unique – that and their interior décor.

In the nicer neighborhoods, like Rockridge or Piedmont, the architecture is much more versatile, and the paint is solid, not flaked. There are no heaps of trash littering the sidewalks, no smells of urine and cigarettes, no bums passed out on the curb. Shop windows are not covered in layers of dirt. People smile more.

Still, I prefer the two-story Victorian houses in the poorer areas. East Oakland has nice ones, but the ones in West Oakland are even better. Whenever I drive by a line of them, I imagine having a partner who excels in carpentry and plumbing and all those other construction-type things that always come in handy. I picture myself in old, scrappy clothing, an Oakland A’s baseball cap covering my head, a paint roller in whichever hand is currently not strained, spreading paint all over my beautiful fixer-upper two-story Victorian home. Only I would choose loud, vivacious colors to brighten up the neighborhood. To chase away all of the violence and crime.

Claremont DMV
I have stopped going to the Claremont DMV. I finally got tired of the sassy attitudes given by what I am assuming are overworked and underpaid clerks.

The second to the last time that I went there, I was trying to help my dad get his out-of-state car registered for California. First, though, we had to go through the vehicle inspection.

A DMV worker motioned for me to pull my father’s car into the middle drive thru area. I pointed at it just to be sure, a question mark on my brow. She nodded impatiently, but as I pulled up, she yelled at me to move into the next drive thru, the one on the left.

“But you said to move into the other one,” I told her as I rolled into the currently indicated area.

“No I didn’t. I said this one,” she insisted.

“It looked like you were pointing to the other drive thru.”

“No, I made it perfectly clear. I pointed right at this spot.”

I thought about dropping the issue, but when the security guard came over, claiming that he saw the whole thing, and that his co-worker had indeed pointed to the drive thru we were now in, I couldn’t keep quiet. “That’s your point-of-view. But my father and my son here thought she was pointing to the other one, just like me.”

The tit-for-tat commentary continued for a little while longer, but the DMV staff had the last word. My father’s car did not pass inspection that day.

The very last time I went to the Claremont DMV, I had just lost my disabled placard for my car. I figured that while I was there, I would handle other business.

As I handed over the disabled placard replacement form, I informed the clerk, “I moved a while back, but forgot to fill out a change-of-address form. Since I’m already turning in this form for a new disabled placard, do I still need to do the change-of-address form?”

“I don’t know. That’s up to you,” she replied. When I looked at her in question, she continued, “Where do you want your mail sent? To your old address, or to your new one?”

My feathers were ruffled, and I responded, “I’d like it sent to where I actually live.”

“Then yes, you need to fill out a change-of-address form.”

“What I meant, “ I clarified, “is do I need to fill out a separate change-of-address form, or is it enough that I have my new address on the disabled placard replacement form?”

“No, you still need to fill out the change-of-address form.”

Thank you, biatch, I thought to myself.

I now go to the DMV on Hegenberger Road, out by the Oakland Airport. Over there, they treat people a little bit nicer (at least by Oakland standards) – especially if they qualify for disabled placards.

The Hustle
I love walking near one of the downtown Oakland BART/subway stops, or any grocery store, or sometimes just sitting on a friend’s porch, and listening to the prefabricated tales of how my car ran out of gas, I need to get to Vallejo, and all I need is five dollars; or I’m trying to raise money for my school so that I can go on a field trip; or whatever lame and comical hustle can be used on the spot. I thought it was cute when an old boyfriend of mine was hopeful that the man hustling him for five dollars – so he could get to San Jose to be with his wife and kids – would actually mail his money back to him.

I sometimes give money to the kids selling candy bars, because at least I’m getting something worthwhile out of the exchange. After all, I have a weakness for milk chocolate, but only without nuts.

Lake Merritt
When I was in my early twenties, I used to power-walk a lap around Lake Merritt at least a couple of times a week. A man-made lake, a walk around its entire length equals roughly three-and-a-half miles. It is a nice lake to walk around, right near the heart of downtown Oakland on one side, and the Lakeshore district on the other.

Now it is a very rare treat when I find the time and the inclination to go. It is so much better to walk with a friend, because there is less chance of being harassed by men lurking around with the express purpose of staring at women’s asses. With a friend, it is easier to pretend you don’t notice. These days it is harder to find that friend, or at least one with the same schedule as me on any given day. So instead I choose to avoid the Lake more often than not.

An ex-boyfriend and I once watched a music video in which Oakland native rapper Too Short was riding around in a yacht. My ex-boyfriend joked that Too Short was in fact sailing around Lake Merritt. I laughed so hard I almost peed in my pants.

I went walking around the Lake with a friend not too long ago. The putrid scents that greeted me near the bird estuary were a familiar experience. My friend and I exclaimed over the size of the bird feces, much of it like a medium-sized dog’s. We tried to guess which birds had managed to leave behind the largest droppings.

My friend and I laughed at one group of birds that were squawking and motioning loudly, and at another small cluster resembling tiny penguins and standing solemnly as if to say, matter-of-factly, “Wassup?”

In Oakland, even the birds have attitude.

I like the Silicone Ones

I no longer am afraid of needles. Long ones, short ones, thick ones, thin ones, none of them scare me. My favorites are the kinds that have a silicone lining over them so they can slip out the metal and leave the silicone in me. They are flexible and when I move my arm I don’t have to be careful not to bend it. I think these are best, because at 7 it’s very hard to sit still and now at 22 I still take great pleasure in bending and unbending my arm. As I bend my arm closed a small amount of the IV’s liquid shoots back up the tube and as I release my arm it flows freely forward. I know the liquid shoots up, because with it comes a small spurt of my blood, and the red excites me. I learned early though that it does not excite the nurses and so I can only do this when they are out of the room.
When I first found out I had diabetes I took the insulin shoots my mother gave me in a high pitch scream and then later snuck into the candy drawer when she wasn’t looking. As the drawer emptied she did found out what I was doing, but never mentioned it. Instead she replaced the array of Twix and Milky ways with sugar free candy. Quickly I learned the joy of sin, of sugar, of pushing myself to edge without a care of what it might mean. This did mean frequent trips to the hospital, and lots of questions about where I was getting my supply, but when you’re little and sick, a smile at the right person often proves to be very effective. As I got older I had to find new ways to circumvent authority, but now at 22 no one can really stop me from buying and eating what I want. That is, no one can stop me until I am rushed to the hospital and held for three days as I am hooked to an IV while they struggle to regulate my insulin.
I have always figured out how to get my way. When I was 8 and I felt like punching someone I made sure to pick the biggest girl in my second grade class. I hit her so hard I could feel it run through her body, and I was sure I had hurt her. She merely stared at me, so I pinched her. That’s when her eyes got wide and so I did it again. It felt so glorious to feel her skin between my fingers as I pushed it closer and closer together, digging my nails into the soft flesh. She slapped my hand and I ran to the recess monitor and for the rest of the day she had to sit in timeout. I had won.
I didn’t expect her to grab my wrist as I pinched her the next day and fling me around in a circle before letting me go into the wood siding of the jungle gym. It hurt when I fell, but don’t worry. I was little and small and people felt bad for me. No one was her friend again.
In middle school I often “forgot” my insulin at home, so I would feel sick and tiered and they would send me to the nurse. It was great to feel better right before lunch so I could over eat on sugar and then feel sick again. This only lasted so long before the nurse got annoyed and then angry and then called home. After that I took long and frequent trips to the bathroom, because as I told my teachers, “it’s just too embarrassing to give myself shoots in front of other people.” They would always hesitate, but when I looked down and then up just a little. That’s when I get them, that’s when I would catch their eyes soften and I knew I had won.
By the time I was in high school, diabetes meant I could eat in class. “The glorious advantages to being messed up,” I would say to myself as I chewed through class and watched people next to me eye me with envoy.
Now at 22 I have had to get more creative. Often this results in small lies to guys that turn into big ones as we start dating; “I can’t eat here, they don’t have food that works for me,” “I need this four course dinner, because it has just the right mix to keep my insulin under control,” “I’m too tiered to walk, can we please get a cab?” All things that guys fall for as they look over my thin body, and perfectly placed hair. It’s just so amazing what people will do.