A Prayer for My Head - a poem

Broken mind, mending itself
through aid of prescription medication
latching synapses together
attempting to achieve a positive reinforcement
to better the mind, broken as itself.

Rising to anger, when unnecesary
spilling out words like a faucet left
unattended, but not meaning to harm
but it was the hot turned up, heat
decimating the coating of a best friend.

Want to be better, am a better person
than head let on, feel a hundred percent
could be that person, but pain already
suffered by my people, hard to mend,
hard to not see the boils and think that
I can ever be trusted to not do it again.

Broken mind, not realizing how broken
or when the fits, dips of depression would
go and fearing that expectations were not
being met, and wondering just who I am
that couldn't stop to ponder what it was
I was saying.  Broken mind,
letting flowers wilt because I bought
them at the end of our season.

Jealousy, rising up, like Mr. Brightside
as I go out of my cage, imagining worst
case scenario after bomb drop, after
suffering through fallout, after putting
my skin back on because I can be human
again and not these zombified remains.

Wanted to be better, was better, somehow
let mind get thick with arrogance, when
I'm not normally like that, let myself build
up towers to peer down on best friend with
and I should have built towers up because
I wanted to see what they saw.

Broken mind, trying and failing to get out of
funk because pieces were missing, and
attempting too late to remedy this illness
of insecurity, of overthinking, of the sins of
anxiety.   Not being strong enough, becuase
I am a broken human being, fragile, should
be carried like eggs, but packaged myself
faulty, broken mind, trying to reattach itself
trying to be a better friend, trying to be a better
self.

Immense pressure to be spied as attempting
the impossible of growing back into myself
and hoping that watching millimeter by
millimeter journey she might witness my rebirth
not changing, but growing and evolving to
better fit her flowers, and worrying that I am
an evolution to late, that those flowers won't grow
here now, but hoping, always hoping.

For what is hope but faith in the impossibility
of life, of a situation, of a mustard seed transaction
between soul to heaven, and even if praying has
been a stranger, speaking to the sky, and hoping
he's still listening to you, after you've neglected
to say anything for years, wondering, wondering
and praying, and hoping.

Broken mind, be mended soon, be bathed in balms,
and soothed with bandages, let the swelling
go down, let your history inform your present but not
define it, may you heal, may you heel to peace
inside that mind, broken mind, be mended soon,
be mended soon.

Here's to Hope - a poem

The scariest thing on this planet earth is to hope.

               It drags you by the heels into a place dug deep into the bedrock

               and the more stubborn you are, the more it creates loose gravel

               as the tether tugs you forward into the horizon.

The scariest thing on this planet earth is to hope.

               You can feel the pain it causes you but you continue

               getting a contact high from the faint smell of the asphalt

               because it smells just like every other road you’ve been on.

The scariest thing on this planet earth is to hope.

               To believe so strongly in a future that seems so uncertain

               but believing through the goodwill of your actions that

               you might find the paradise you seek at the end of all

               of that ankle busting, and you look back on the torn

               up earth and you think, hell, I’ve come this far what’s

               a couple million miles more.

The scariest thing on this planet earth is to hope.

               It’s like praying to the wall but directing it up into

               some ethereal realms, its seeing a future, time travelling

               if you will into a possible nirvana, but knowing

               that multiple dimensions all vie for your head but

               you just want to be happy, you want to be happy,

               you just want to be happy.

The scariest thing on this planet earth is to hope.

Day to Day - a poem

A ghost felt flash of heart beat

while floating about old room

with made-up bed, fluffed pillows

reminding him of what he once

was.  It did not take much for

life to find the ectoplasmic

existence inadequate for a lively

ghost.  In matters of seconds

life was restored, beeping monitor

beeped away nighttime, hid

away nightmares in beep-beep-

beep tones, and the thumpity, thump,

thump of a mass of muscle

inside chest cavity.   Ghost felt

summer winds again, smiled through

transition, wondering if it was

permanent, but not caring much

to ponder negativity inherent

in that thinking.  Optimistically

floating in the heat of moments

enjoying life, with a pulse

again. 

Circus Doctors - a freewrite poem

a routine check up decided by sacrilegious people
determines the ultimate trajectory of my bone marrow,
it is juxtaposed with a flying circus full of clowns
and freaks that travels from cloud to cloud
scaring many and entertaining nobody.

as the doctors poke and prod my arms to find
what veins i have left for them to insert their needles
I am mortified by the memorization of a soliloquy
of swear words performed by a dancing bear whose
partner is a standard issue folding chair.

blood is drawn and the mind deceived as attractive
nurse pats my head with damp cloth and tells me how
I will ultimately leave this earth, she says in a rocket ship
piloted by Jesus to transition me through cannoned
trajectory to flying circus on a cumulonimbus cloud
formation, because only storm clouds house circus clowns
because all other clouds are scared of said clowns.

i drift into a daze as 100th vial is filled to the brim and I feel
the yanking of needle that tries to haphazardly lift my arms
and I assume I am being brought to the human cannon man
but instead I am deposited in wheel chair and pushed to the curb
and dumped forward like an important red wheel barrow
and the door man taps his feet on my backside to see if I
am dead or alive.

as i drool out spittle onto pavement, only there thanks to
tranquilizers delivered prior to operation that kept me
from simple human decency I can picture lion tamer
mauled by leopards and shit on by tigers, and its an
interesting comedy show that the french acrobats could
never hope to match.

one hand goes flat, so palm can level itself, and then me
in return when i use other one and i raise myself up as
the snow first begins to fall.  I'm weak from blood loss, deceptively
perceptive and I've discovered frost bite has consumed my toes.
doorman comes and says he's called the doctors to come take
a look, and i say no thanks, call them off, I'd rather keep my dead
toes than let them give me something else to lose,  door man says
some choice words, and i nod that he is right, and i limp
passed the emergency room sign and flip it the bird.

once in my car my foot can't use the peddle and I am too blind
to drive, i turn the key anyways and put it in neutral and let
myself glide where i may, but I don't get far and i think about
how it'd be cool, like the crows said, if an elephant could fly.

How to Disappear Completely - a short story assignment from GVSU Winter 2018

How to Disappear Completely

Katie Dawson was one of those annoyingly giddy people who couldn’t seem to stop smiling. She tried to annoy you to death in hopes that in your last agonizing moments, before your heart stops, you might be smiling too.  If I was smiling it would be out of relief.  On top of that she was also an obnoxious flirt and had no qualms if everyone knew about it.   She’d be in the Wal-Mart break room, and I’d see her across the room chatting up any semi-attractive male that might have walked in.  Laughing at corny jokes, hand on her upper chest because her boobs pulled her shirt forward to reveal the string of cleavage at the top, and then the hand would go up to a shoulder and, I’m certain, there was a slight pinch of the arm.   I’m not going to call her a slut, the words a double standard, but she was what she was.  More power to her, I just found it sort of pathetic.   Maybe it’s because when a cute guy walked up to me I tended to give a death stare, or roll my eyes at what he might say and I wouldn’t say anything more than “hi” or “hello” because I’m not a bitch and that is just polite.

Katie would always ask me, “Hey Moira, how was your weekend?”  To which I would reply, “Yeah, it was alright.”   Then she’d say, “Just alright?”  And I’d say, “Yeah.”  Then she’d giggle, and make me want to strangle her or at least punch her in the face.  It didn’t matter, I just wanted that invasive conversation and that smile stricken from the record of my life.   There were only four months of working customer service that were pure bliss – as far as working in customer service can be pure bliss.  I had listened to ill structured lies, to people trying to return soccer cleats that their son had worn all season but claiming that they were purchased a week ago.  Grass stains and the general shit of the exteriors spoke otherwise.  The sweaty adolescent foot smell wafting out of the interiors made me dazed, wanting to pass out or gag.   The woman would stare at me with wide eyed, I-dare-you-to-defy-me-bitch eyes, and I would smile and say, “Would you be okay with store credit?”   Then she would lighten up and beam at me.  Liars always have elaborate stories.

That was bliss to me.  It was heaven as far as jobs go because my original partner in crime, Monique – who had been with the company for several years – wasn’t a chatterbox.  Sure, we’d bitch about work, but that was it.  And then Monique got fired for stealing a Twix candy bar off the front lanes, and I was given Katie Dawson as a replacement.

So, a few days in a row she no called, no showed.  By that time, I’d gotten used to her routine of blabbering on at the mouth about this or that.  Asking me how my weekend was, asking if I was seeing anybody or if I thought about going back to school to study whatever, and I’d politely nod as much as I could but my “I don’t give a shit” face never worked.  That was part of my routine.

First part of my routine consisted of waking up, and then making coffee, followed by spilling coffee on: countertop, floor, self.  It consisted of leaving toast in toaster, and coming out of shower to reveal that toast was scorched and prepped to catch fire.  As I stood in towel dripping wet from shower my phone would ring with my mom on the other end, probably swirling a glass of red wine, waiting for me to answer. I never picked up on the first attempt.  I’d hope she’d leave me alone, or just leave me a voicemail, but she’d click off the phone if my robotic secretary started in with, “We’re sorry the number you are calling is unavailable.”  The phone would be still, and I’d sip at my three-quarter filled lukewarm coffee, with too much cream and too much sugar, and I’d wait to see if it’d try and ring back to life.   It would, convulsing on my countertop, and I’d answer it after three rings, and in my best attempt at a fuck you, I would say, “Hi mom.”

There’s an issue with my parents - Bernard and Susan Reynolds.  They were not religious but terribly concerned about appearing to be.  They didn’t practice their faith outside of the walls of the church, they didn’t speak with any convictions about heaven and hell, or sins and prayers, but by God did we have to sit in those uncomfortable pews every Sunday morning.   All dolled up in our Sunday best, my sister Olivia and I in sun dresses, and my parents all stone faced and praise the lord during worship service.  They drank heavily on the weekend, and light during the week.  My dad swore up a storm with his buddies out in the garage any chance he could, and my mom always seemed to look on the homeless with repulsion.  It wasn’t a surprise when Richard Dean knocked me up, and they got into a hissy fit about how they might be perceived in our community.  After wedding bells, a still birth, a separation, followed by speedy divorce later, I’m not exactly keen on the type of religious faith that puts a seventeen-year-old through that.   As soon as I could, I got a job, and I got out of that house.

“Yes, mom,” I say to her comments about moving on, and meeting “Mr. Right.”  It’s hard to tell your mom how she betrayed you and thrust you out into a world you hadn’t been prepared for.  It’s hard to explain to her that you were drunk and that that was no excuse for a pretty boy to invite himself to enter inside you, and you don’t want to tell her that he didn’t really want to be with you anyways, but that his parents acted the same as she did.  You don’t want to tell her that you tried to make it work, and that you tried to be in love with him, and that yeah, he didn’t hit you but he didn’t give a shit about you either.  You don’t want to tell her that every day the living breathing thing inside you grew from a sea monkey, into something resembling a mole rat, and then into a tiny person, that you started to think life might not be so bad.  You can’t tell her about that because the first thing she’ll say is, “He should have stuck around, you could have tried again for another one,” and maybe she’ll say, “You can’t keep blaming me for your mistakes.”   You can’t tell her when you found out that human being inside you had stopped being, that you had to carry it to term because you were so close.  How you pushed it out, and there was no crying to calm your pains, and that you felt this wave of voided, nothing.  And you continued to feel it for a month and half later when Richard, your husband, decided his reasons for being married to you were over.  You can’t voice that properly into a big enough, “fuck you,” because the first time a man touched you and fucked you it wasn’t consensual, and it resulted in an infant.   And you can’t go to church on Sundays anymore because God fucked you over by taking that infant away.

“Mom, I told you, I’m fine how I am.  I make enough to cover rent, hours will be going back up, I don’t need groceries from you.”  I say this to her on the phone at one point at least every week, and then she’ll show up at the end of one of my shifts and have bags of groceries, and I take them, but I never say Thank you.

Katie no called no showed on a Monday, then on a Tuesday, finally on Wednesday.  Lisa, our manager, came up to me on that Thursday afternoon after a rush of unhappy people - who blamed us for not taking the coupons they never showed us -  and said, “Katie isn’t going to be in for the rest of the week, I will try to get someone to help you out over here.”

I learned that Katie had been driving with her father, and she had crossed into an intersection only to be T-boned by someone running a stop sign.  Impact was on her father’s side, he was gone.  Somehow, she had showed up on Monday, and smiled, and flirted, and I don’t know why but I walked up to her with the intention of giving her a hug but she said, “I’m okay,” without a drop of tears, without a sniffle, without anything.  We worked that day as if nothing had happened, as if there was no funeral the next day for her father, and she put up with the verbal abuse of people who couldn’t grasp that cashiers were people too.   I watched her the entire time, and she never broke character.

I worked the day of her father’s funeral.  I stood there all day, absent mindedly giving off faux concern that the coffee pot being returned to me didn’t come with the advertised coffee.  I didn’t have the energy to explain to the ninety-year-old veteran that he didn’t know how a Keurig machine was supposed to work.   I gave him his refund, and damaged out the coffee maker and imagined the funeral.  It isn’t hard to imagine a funeral, people dressed head to toe in their Sunday best, usually awful black, a bunch of morticians synchronized to cry.

It was probably about nine-o-clock at night when I popped in my DVD of Coco and thought about death and dying, and singing skeletons and had a good cry.   Like an idiot this memory came back to me: Richard sitting next to me and awkwardly holding my hand and kissing my forehead.  That bastard told me it’d be okay, and then he left me there on the sofa that stank of cat piss because he’d promised his friends he’d be over to watch the sports ball game.  It was just me and my belly swelled up like a balloon for no goddamned reason, and I hugged it, I hugged her, she was named Angela.  I wished I’d chosen a different name.  At the service a dozen old ladies, professionals in the grieving process, would tell me, “God just needed another Angel.”  or “Her name suits her new job now.”  I’d never wanted to kill someone more than then.

As the undead strummed the guitar on the PIXAR feature playing on my thirty-two-inch flat screen, my cat Maurice wandered onto my lap.  He purred a while, but when I scratched his neck, he rose up his back to share his pink little butthole and jumped off me.   I wished I had a dog at that moment.  A nice, drooling, annoying little canine, who needed my attention, but I knew once I was passed my crying fit I’d want to be rid of it.  No one deserved that much affection.    I thought about Katie then, her bubbling personality, and her strong demeanor and for some reason – though I hadn’t foreseen it – I was going to invite her to live with me.

It was only a few days after her father’s funeral that her mask of indifference appeared to wear off.  The façade she had built slowly fell to the way side.  At one point when I asked her, “Are you doing alright?” it lead to a full on sobbing fit.  “I just can’t handle walking about that house.  I just see him everywhere, you know?”  She said to me, and the funny thing was I did know.

After I got home from delivering Angela I heard nothing but silence in that house.  I tried to alleviate the weight of that silence with the explosions of a Marvel movie or a binge of alcohol but nothing worked.  I supposed it was different than what Katie was feeling because she had tangible memories to remember, I had fantasies: of nurseries, of softball games, of ballet.  I had plans for breast feeding, and then I had breasts ready but wasted, swelling up as a sick joke.  I couldn’t stand wandering around that house, with all the pink baby shit, the wooden rocking chair, and boxes of diapers, stacks upon stacks of boxes of diapers.   It felt pathetic that I was upset that I would never be able to clean up baby shit, or get puked on, but that’s what I was upset about.  Nine months of prep, for what?  And a house and marriage that existed only for that purpose.   Motherhood was supposed to be the reward, the absolution for the pain I’d endured, but even that was part of the joke and the house knew it.  So, when Richard didn’t come home for a couple days, and he ignored my texts and when his mother called me up and said he needed a break I was ready to light a match and set the whole thing up in flames.  But I didn’t.  So, as an alternative, I filed for divorce against my mother’s wishes.

“You can stay with me,” I told Katie.  “I have a spare couch.  Well, it’s just the one couch, but I have a bed too.  That’s mine.”  She stepped back a moment.   Even she was aware that the invitation was out of character for me.  “Do you mean it?’  She said to me, and I thought about it.  I wanted to take it back, I wanted to collect it from out in the air and scoop it up with both hands to return it to my mouth where I could swallow it back down and let it smolder in my stomach acids, and I could suffer from the reflux.  I smiled, and I sighed, “Yes, of course I mean it.”

***************

Katie was a disaster.  She spilled more coffee than I did, and used up all the hot water every time she showered.  She would always get up before me, and go to bed after me, and I’d hear her traipsing around the apartment at ungodly hours of the night, like ten or ungodly hours in the morning like nine.   But, I didn’t give her the boot.  Maybe it was because I was a glutton for torture or maybe it was because I liked having to clean up after someone else.  Katie was an invasive species to my apartment, she didn’t belong, she disrupted my routines but she didn’t so much destroy me as transform the environment into something else, because I started to open up.

“God, men are such shit aren’t they.”  She said to me one day when I told her how Richard had married me and then left me less than a year later.  I may have had too many Malibu and Coke’s when the conversation about the workday had shifted to talks of sexual conquest.   “Please tell me you’ve had better luck with men after that, please please please.  There’s got to be one good story.”  She had been turned toward me, legs crossed on the couch, a serious look of hunger in those eyes, hunger for information, for dirt.  Then, I disappointed her.

“He was it.”

“How old are you?

“Twenty-five.”

“Holy shit, listen sister, you can’t let one loser define your love life, you just can’t.   Like me, I’ve been with,” She started to count silently in her head staring up at the ceiling as she did as if she were counting imperfections, “Never mind.”  A nervous laugh later and she backed up a moment and held up both hands, palms out in protest, “Listen, I’m not a slut.  I know that’s the vibe you are getting.  I just, I’m not, okay, just take my word for it.   Zach was my first, when I was about fifteen, I mean we were best friends right and he was my first, and he like wasn’t into it at all but wanted to try it.   Like, he looked at my body with this repulsion, and he didn’t seem like he really wanted to touch any part of me, and I just, I don’t know, I urged him to do it, I gave him a handy, and well, he got hard but like there was no enthusiasm in the act.   I was worried because he just kind of finished, and then broke up with me after, and didn’t return my calls, and we’d see each other at school but he wouldn’t speak to me.  I felt gross.   I felt unwanted, you know.”  She chuckled a moment, a belly laugh, “Turned out he was gay.   He just wanted to try with me, you know to see if he liked it, and well, he didn’t want to be gay then.   Like he resisted it, and so in a way he used me.   I didn’t find this out till like a couple years ago.   I had met up with him at this coffee place, not Starbucks, but the other one.”

“Biggby?”

“Yes,” she snapped her finger as if finally clicking on the light bulb in her head, “it was a Biggby.  He had texted me out of the blue and wanted to meet up, and I hadn’t been doing anything so I thought, what the hell right.  So, he shows up and he tells me he’s gay, and I was shocked, and I went off because here I thought I was this disgusting repulsive thing, and I was horned up you know, I mean I’d wanted to have sex for as long as I knew what it was and then I got it and it was over, but I still had these urges, and I ended up with some terrible people.  I told him this, and he got all high and mighty and said I shouldn’t blame him and his search for his identity or some bullshit, and I kindly reminded him that I was happy he figured out his identity, but I would have liked it if it wasn’t at the expense of me.”  She tilted back her glass and slurped down some of the melted ice at the bottom before taking a cube between her teeth, and biting down on it hard so that it shattered into a hundred little pieces, and then she continued.

“I let Martin Hernandez finger me behind the cafeteria because I wanted someone to want me.  I let Martin Hernandez lay me on his parent’s bed and pin me against the sheets even though I’d told him no, because the first man who tried to fuck me was too scared to admit he was a homosexual to the girl who was supposedly his best friend.  I had a sexual awakening with a gay man who didn’t care to tell me he could be gay, and I couldn’t feel angry or sad about these things because he was simply discovering himself.”   Katie stood up then and walked to the kitchen and placed her glass in the sink.  I could hear her sniffling as she faced away from me.

“I felt so inadequate my entire life.   I once slept with this guy named Dale, he had a girlfriend at the time, and do you know what, she blamed me for that cheating scumbag not being faithful to her.  Why do we do that to each other.  Why do we let men have a way out, why don’t we make them take responsibility for the shitty things they do without it being that I tempted him?   I may have a vagina but it’s not a honey trap.  And I’m left to defend my want for sex, because I’ve had it, and I want it again.”

“I suppose so.”  I say, I have no dog in this fight, I’m content being where I am with what I’m doing.

“We should get laid.   Not like at the same time, but like we shouldn’t let our first encounters define who we are, you know?”

“I don’t want that.”  I say and I don’t want to judge Katheryn for what she wants but it isn’t my style.   Every man that I considered even for a fraction of a second had a glaring flaw.  They were racist, homophobic, uber-virginal, rotten teeth, picked their noses, scratched their ass cracks, or were just plain cocky.

But, what followed that initial conversation was a string of ill advised blind date attempts.   The new routine had been disrupted again, whenever she learned that someone she knew was single she would message them and they would message me, and I would awkwardly try to let them down.  Maurice had gotten jealous and he and his asshole stayed under my bed half the time, and I was left to handle the barrage of a dozen men asking me personal questions, and of course the unsolicited dick pics began to troll in.   I never understood the logic of how a close-up of a hard penis was supposed to make me want to jump into bed with someone.  I would have to assume that somewhere somehow that worked on people, that some girl somewhere when they received the shocking photo of a jungle-covered-ripple of flesh didn’t just vomit but wanted to know more about the intrusive joke.   Not me, it made me want to revert into my shell.

That’s when Allan the pizza boy showed up at my door.  When I say boy, I don’t mean he was sixteen or anything.  No, Allan was a twenty-three-year-old pizza boy who had delivered Pizza Hut to my door when I was wrapped in a towel because Katie had “forgotten” she’d ordered it. She had conveniently had to pee when the buzzer went off.  The man before me was about my height with a big head, and a large mop of shaggy black hair, and an average build.   He blushed when I opened the door, all clean shaven and baby faced, and he tried to be respectable and maintain eye contact but I caught him looking at my shoulders.  “That’ll be twenty-three, umm, seventy-five,” He said as he removed the pizza boxes from the insulated bag that he carried.

I turned around holding one hand over my chest and another tugging down on the bottom of my oversized pink towel so that it was at a constant war with itself to either stay on or slide off.   I shuffled like a penguin to my bedroom leaving him there and gathered my cash out of my wallet.  When I waddled back out he smiled at me and laughed but apologized as he cleared his throat, I handed him a twenty and a ten and told him to keep the change.   Then I pushed the door closed on him so that he had to back up as it pushed on him and closed him out.

As I waddled into the apartment carrying the pizza boxes Katie was smiling and sitting on the couch.  “Don’t be mad, I saw him working last Friday, and I remembered his name, and made a request that he deliver.”  I opened a box and removed a slice.  With a bite of peppers, cheese and mushrooms in my mouth I said, “At least the pizza is hot.”

About four days later he came back, only this time neither of us had ordered pizza, and he stood there in uniform with boxes and said, “I know, I was delivering down the hall and I just wanted to ask if you’d like to go out.”

“What are you doing right now?”  I asked him.

            He looked down at his pizza boxes, “Delivering pizzas.  Working.”

            “When do you get off?”

            “About an hour.  Well, no, not about, exactly an hour.”

            “Pick me up when you’re done.”  I tell him, “Like right when you are done.  I have work tomorrow morning and I don’t have time to wait around for you to get all spruced up.  Does that work?”

            He nodded nervously, and seemed like he was shocked, like I was about to scream, “Not!” or “Psyche!”  But I didn’t.   I supposed it was just the idea of finding some sort of initiative for myself, even if Katie tried to fix it up, because I was taking some semblance of control.

            An hour and some change later the knock on my door came.  I was wearing sweat pants and a hoodie because I didn’t want to be dolled up and form some sort of false expectation of myself.   I did brush my hair back into a taught little pony tail with a small drop of bangs because I didn’t want to look like trash.

            When I opened the passenger side door of his maroon Ford Taurus, he muttered “Shit,” and frantically tried to clean up some receipts and fast food bags, and an occasional French fry that he promptly tossed in the seat behind him so that I could still see it clearly.  “Sorry,” he said and he broke eye contact completely embarrassed as I sat down and told him, “It’s okay.  You should see my apartment.”  I scoffed out a laugh and he nodded and wiped his brow before shutting his door.

            Richard was never that frantic about anything.  He oozed with petty confidence.  Teaching me a thing or two about the world, and I remember nodding at everything he said as though he were king, pretending I’d never known such glorious information.   He’d talk about sports, and so and so running the ball for such and such yards, and I would internalize nothing.   “Nothing you’ll need to worry about,” he’d say to me and I’d giggle and smile, and be nervous as my stomach expanded.    After the disappearing act I’d look back on those memories, and all that talking down of me, and I’d wanted to slap that girl silly.   I wanted to take her hand and drag her down to the clinic and flush the life out of her that.  That life that would eventually be death and give her that measure of religious judgement and pain.  All those judgmental eyes as an avoidance at the rest of the pain that would have come.  It would have been better.

            “Do you have any siblings?”  Is one of his first ice breakers as we sat in a booth at Applebee’s.   It was in time for half off appetizers, and I didn’t feel like making him pay a shit ton of money if things went sour.

            “An older sister.”  I say.   I realized then that I hadn’t given much thought to Olivia.   I knew why too, and I knew it wasn’t fair.  She had taken responsibility for what happened to Richard and me because it was at a house party with a bunch of her friends that it happened at.  She had been trying to help me socialize because I’d spent so much time sitting in a corner in the cafeteria reading books, and when I got home I did my homework and watched TV or a movie, and played the occasional video game.   I didn’t care to be around people much, but I whined to her that I wanted to be around them in some way.  Then the opportunity came up and Olivia offered to let me join her at a party with her friends who were a couple years older than I was and I agreed to go because I felt safe that my sister was going to be there.

            “I have a little brother and sister, they’re pretty sweet kids.   Amy’s twelve and Evan is sixteen.”  He said to me, and he paused a moment after the sweet smile of his siblings faded to draw concern for me and then I stared down blankly at my napkin-wrapped silverware.   I realized that I was not hungry at all.

            There’s something trivial about sitting there and knowing where this is supposed to end up, something trivial about making small talk.  The whole point of this set-up is to “get laid,” according to Katie so why was I supposed to be invested in these norms.   In Katie’s opinion, sex was her oppressor and her liberator, she’d owned it again, taken it back, and if it worked for her perhaps it’d work for me.   I wasn’t threatened by Allan, and his dullness, it was calm. “Do you want to get out of here?”  I said to him.

            “We haven’t ordered anything yet.”  He looked a little anxious as though he were worried about being rude to the waiter who had brought us our glasses of water.  But he looked at me, and seemed to conjure up some strength and he said, “Yeah we can go.”  Then he took out his wallet and dropped a five-dollar bill on the table.

            I could tell as we drove back to my apartment that he was nervous and thought he’d fucked the whole thing up.  His nervous grin was gone, and there was a tight furrow in his brow, and I knew he was upset.  It didn’t bother me that he was angry.  I kept staring at him, and thinking about how he looked nothing like Richard, who had a square draw, a tight thick neck.  I recall my heart skipping a beat and being terrified when Richard took off his shirt that first time, when I had wanted it, and he was so comically chiseled.   It’s funny thinking back on this ideal I had built up in my head of what sexy looked like, if that’s what you would have called it.  I tried to make the most out of the sham marriage, whatever that meant.  I suppose he was good to me, he touched me in the right ways, explored my body, but that was only at first.   “I didn’t take initiative enough,” he’d tell me, “I wasn’t dominate,” or some shit like that, and then at one point he commented how the weight gain had made my ass flabby.

            “Do you want to come inside?”  I found myself saying.  He swiftly turned to look at me as though I’d stripped down naked.  He swallowed a lump in his throat and attempted to sound confident by saying, “Yeah I can come in for a minute.”

            I was tired of letting the past define me, I was tired of letting other people define what I should be doing, or who I should be seeing.  I was tired of having my sexual reflexes longing for a man who attacked me in a field because I’d been polite and kissed him back.

            Katie was sitting on the couch when we walked in and I was leading Allan along by his hand and I could feel him wanting to drag his feet.   She gave me a slight smile and I gave her a glare and shake of the head as if to say, “Don’t, say, a word.”

            Once in my room I shut the door and Allan scratched at the back of his head and asked, “What’s your favorite movie?” and I told him to “Shut up,” before grabbing his face and pulling him in for a kiss.  That was the only motivation he needed and his arms wrapped around my back and he pulled me in close and his hands began to wander under my shirt and his chubby little fingers pressed firm but not forceful into the flesh of my back and I knew I was ready.

            I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of what happened that night.  But, Allan was gentle, patient.  He didn’t last long but I didn’t care about that.   It was the way he touched me, the way his fingers glided over skin as though I was something to be preserved and not broken.  I’m not going to get into the details of body parts, and positions.   In those moments I was defining myself.  There was no contempt or disappointment in that man’s eyes and when he told me, “You’re gorgeous,” I believed him.  We eventually collapsed onto the sheets of my bed, wet and ruffled.

            “By the way,” I said between gulps of breath, “My favorite movie is The Princess Bride.”

            “Can I see you again?”  He said.  I could feel the smile in his voice.

            “Probably.  But you should know I’m a mess.   I have issues.”

            “Everyone has issues.”  He said to me and I agreed and worried that I may have just added a new one.

We had a couple of proper dates after but I couldn’t open-up like I wanted to, I wasn’t a flower, in fact I started to panic.  I’d been stupid and forgot about protection, and I hadn’t bothered with birth control.  When we were alone again and hands began to wander for buckles I stopped him, “Do you have a condom?”  He collapsed exasperated, “No, I guess I just thought you were on something because you didn’t say anything.”  He cuddled up close to me and as our heart beats slowed, and our heaving chests went more muted he placed a palm against my cheek and pulled me in with his fingertips.

            The next time he was prepared.  Eager.  When he touched me it was aggressive, but not violently.  He had gotten familiar, impulsive.  He went for a kiss but I turned my face to the ceiling.  His lips connected to my cheek, down my neck.  I didn’t want him to stop, shivers ran down my spine, but for some reason when he leaned up to kiss me I locked my mouth shut.  Those sausage fingers wandered, outside of my shirt, to my midriff, squeezing at the lumps of flesh around my stomach.  Then his pinky, that smallest of fingers invaded my waist band.

            “I can’t do this.”  I said, and he quickly pulled his hand away.

            “I brought protection.”  He answered, ignorant.

            “I know,” I said, “I just can’t.”

            “Issues?”  He said.

            “Issues.”  I answered.

            “Everyone has issues,” he stated, it mine as well have been a parrot squawk.  “I don’t think you should count me out,” he continued as he laid there and I sat up and tugged my shirt down, “Let me in, let me know, I can help you.”

            I laugh, “Are you going to save me?”

            I feel the distribution of the bed as it shakes from the movement of his weight.  His arm goes over my shoulder, about my neck and he moves in for an embrace, and I break away from it.  “What?”  He says, and when I stand I see his face is angry with embarrassment, red cheeks wounded, and pitiful.

            “You think I need saving?”  I shouldn’t have laughed, I guess.

            “I didn’t say that.”  He backtracks, but he mine as well have.

            “Tell me, Allan, what exactly are you going to help me with?”

            “Well, you have a problem with being touched.”  An exasperated hand swept in front of him.

            “Oh, I see.”  I started in and he slumped back in defeat, “My want to back off is a problem that needs fixing?”  It’s a rhetorical question, “Isn’t that kind of my choice.   Isn’t it kind of my choice to be mended, I mean, I barely know you.  Is that the cure all slogan, everyone has issues?  Is that supposed to make me yank down my pants, unclasp my bra and go all spread eagle for you?”

            “Sex can wait.  I just didn’t know.”  He pleaded, and maybe it was sincere but I was seeing red.

            “Wasn’t that your motivation?  Did you even ask what my issue was, was that ever a consideration?  What if I told you it was that I got raped, impregnated, a doe eyed little idiot who was forced to marry some prick.  Then months of aches, and pains, and vomit, and then she died inside of me and I had to deliver her.  Afterwards, he left me, like a heap of trash, a broken useless thing, garbage.”

            He got up to his feet and attempted to hug me.  I shoved him.  He fell back on the mattress and retorted, “Not all men are like that, I won’t do that, I’m not like that.”

            I laughed again, “How am I supposed to know that?  Because you say so, because you promise?”

            He shook his head, and sighed, “You can’t just disappear a part of yourself, Moira.  That is not how human beings work.”

            “That,” I say, “Is exactly how we work.”

            “What do I do now then?”  He said to me and for a second I felt sorry for him but I didn’t know who he was, what he wanted out of this mess, and I was sorry that I’d let Katie get to me.   When I didn’t respond he stood up, gathered up his jacket, and slid on his shoes.   I could see a conflict in him, as to whether he had done something wrong, and the truth was I knew he hadn’t.   I knew that whatever ignorance he had about my feelings was just a lack of knowledge, of experience.   I stayed standing in that same place for a few minutes after I heard the door shut, he didn’t slam it.

            I loved the movies but I never believed in the romanticism and its ability to remove the hurt, to fix the parts that were broken.   Sex, was nice, it was a fundamental part of the human biology, but it was missing for me.   There was a moment when Allan was holding me, when he collapsed beside me and gathered me up in his arms, and I felt a certain safety.    It was fleeting though, but I remember it, sweaty, smelly, but right.  The act though, the act was empty, and I’d lie if I didn’t say it felt good, but that wasn’t enough.

            I thought about Angela, and I thought about the life that had grown inside of me.  A being that existed suspended in fluids inside my womb.   Ate what I ate, heard what I heard, and lived in perpetual paradise.   Richard once collapsed next to me, sweaty, smelly, and he hugged me close and the lies of chemical reactions in the brain trigged by hormones made him think he loved me.  I trusted that, we had made this thing, this child together, born out of an act of violence, but we were going to make it work.

            And that’s the lie.  I missed him.  He used to cook dinner on Sunday afternoons, and the house would be filled with the charring scent of steaks or pork chops.   He’d spoon out a glob of mashed potatoes on to my plate, and he’d kiss my forehead, and pinch my butt and it was an ideal, it was like a movie.   “At least you’re good looking,” he’d say to me, and now with the benefit of hindsight I might say, that was a shitty thing to say, but it made me feel better about myself.   That was before the comments about my weight gain, before death invaded our existence, but it was still after the rape, after the forcing of a relationship and engagement and marriage.   It was after his parents bought us a house, and I hadn’t thought about escape because he owned me.  He co-created a being that drifted with placenta inside my uterus.  He’d exchanged vows with me, and his family owned the roof over my head.   I was a prisoner but I was content.

            Olivia never visited me.   I shared a bed with my attacker for seven months, but I couldn’t face my own sister.   The only one who believed me about how it’d happened.   I wasn’t always as honest as I became, and it was easier to live a lie.   Olivia ended up with a fiancé and then a husband, and ended up with a little girl, Bethany.   Bethany and Angela would have been a year or so apart, they would have been cousins, would have been friends.

            When I told Richard, “Something’s wrong,” he didn’t second guess me, and he carried me to his pick-up and sped dangerously down the country roads, and through the parking lot of the hospital, and he told me, “I’m sure it’s nothing.  It’s nothing.”   When the news came, he cried.    I don’t like to remember that, but he cried and I felt as though I’d robbed him of something, as though my body had broken his child, and refused to bare her.   Angela was seven pounds and eight ounces, and eighteen inches long.   There were slight, and thin strands of black hair that hung off the side of her head, and when I kissed her I felt the darkness latch onto my spine.

            Richard was a coward, but I was cold, distant, and broken.  I had a right to be, and if he had truly cared he might have stuck around, and maybe if I had the energy to hold on to him, maybe he would have.   That old hindsight gets to me though, and I know that would have dragged out an inevitability.  That’s how I felt as the door shut to my apartment, and I shuffled my feet out into the living room.

            Katie had been watching one of the Avengers movie, the screen paused on an explosion.  I’d known she’d been eavesdropping as soon as she had heard raised voices.  She was curled up in a blanket, hugging the arm rest of the couch, and I collapsed beside her.   “I can’t do it.”  I began to cry, “I can’t do it.”  I wrapped my arms around my stomach, that barren womb that I imagine is filled with cobwebs, and cracked machinery, and I laid my head on Katie’s shoulder.

            She resumed the movie.  As Iron Man saved the day on the TV, I closed my eyes to sleep.  This was my new routine.  Eventually I’d have to face life, sex, men, but I liked simple steps first, giant leaps were too much work.  I knew Katie was going to come home bragging of her conquests, and I’d be there to listen intently, entertained, living through her drama and always a twinge-jealous of that liberation.

Opening of Ugly Valentine - a novel idea

Hospital waiting room is awash with anticipation.   A tension of joy hangs on every lip, but the possibility of the awry on the same cusp.   Better to think in optimism at this point, there’s no signs of complications, no warnings of danger lurking to be a thief – that comes later.   What happens is predictable.  Baby is delivered screaming and demanding of the world.   Removed from a hug of watery womb and deposited into the hands of exhausted mother.   Covered in gunk, cooing for a moment while it finds lip to breast.   Tiny little hands unsure of how to be worked rest on heaving flesh of mother.  In hospital waiting room big brother sits nervous with grandma.   Littler big brother scribbles with crayons in book on floor, probably Ninja Turtles but indiscernible when washed with midnight blues and olive greens.  Black lines dictating edges are blended amongst the wax crayons.

Biggest brother is called Luke, other big brother, but little, is Aaron – me – almost seven, and almost 3 respectively.   Grandma minding them is daddy’s mom, a harsh woman, with a softness in her eyes, but frailty in her bones – later to succumb to her own tragedies but now is only tragically scary in the eyes of children.   There’s a Bible on her lap, an invisible nervous twitch in her fingers, or a shakiness do to the passages of time and deterioration of body.   Across the way is mommy’s parents, both present, both full round.   Susceptible to a certain frailty but healthy for them, and happy to be there.   Brother’s never knew daddy’s daddy, heard he was good, kind, and couldn’t speak a word of English, and was responsible for the Mexican hair atop Aaron’s head.

Ninja Turtles colored whatever give way to Ninja Turtles not filled in as page flips with the scratch of paper on paper.  Nurse comes out, baby has been cleaned up but little Aaron is busy scribbling inside and outside and ever which side of the lines.   Luke is up by grandma’s side as she struggles a moment to stand and the others as well, following in a trail of sliding steps down white pristine hallways, sanitized and smelling as hospitals smell.

Inside room where National Geographic depictions of natural grotesqueness ensued there is little evidence to suggest it did.  A doctor turns head with stethoscope on baby’s chest, and nods, a smile on his face watching the nervous brother’s pace into the room.   Where one day when adult boys have children of their own and know through education what kind of chaos occurs in that room, now, have little to imagine other than the magic of baby in and baby out, as though it were possible that stork did deposit swaddling infant from the baby store a day late from the delivery date.

Style Journals - Assignment from Style class Winter 2018

Style Journal #1

            Reading about food will never lead to boredom?  

            Seems to be a pretty bold statement for someone who isn’t exactly offering any sort of sustenance.  Reading about food as it is - as if what it is is just colorful surfaces and juice - does not fulfill you.  Food is meant to be eaten.  Sure, let’s just assume that what you meant is that the food is going to give to us a personal satisfaction in our own creative core to the way a piece of bread might feel to an empty stomach.  Food alone is not the meal of the heart.  The main course is the motivation of that food.  I for one don’t see much excitement jumping out at me from the description of a piece of melon.  All that does is make me want to eat melon.  Give me drama, give me stakes and not steaks.

            My writing needs to have dynamics.  Just as in life, I don’t care much for food.  It’s something that needs to be made, and needs to be consumed on a very basic human level.  Food is science.  Writing is art.  Yes, you may go on to tell me, “Does the chef not see his food as art?” and to that question I might reply - since I have in my time been a chef of varying skill - that yes a chef is an artist.  He is making something to be consumed by others.  Sounds familiar doesn’t it.  I write for my own personal enjoyment.  I don’t enjoy looking at the food for very long because I want to eat it.  What purpose does a description of food do?  Does the food have urgency?

            Let’s suppose that I am going to write about food, and I am going to provide it with some urgency.  First off what is something that food will do if it sits out to long in the world not properly heated or cooled.  It will rot.  Now, I am going to talk about that.  Now, that food has urgency.   Let’s give its inner workings those human qualities: that peach skin like a frail rotting flesh of a newly dispatched human.   If I’m not going to consume it, here is my arc: a piece of food rots.   Still not that exciting, unless I take a closer look at all the microscopic little shits that are eating it away.  Those little shits being the microorganisms that start feeding on the dead flesh.  With this new outlook I am one step closer to the drama.  It is a battle now inside that peach.  No need to pick a side, or if you have to, pick the invading microorganism because at least they are going to win.  If our protagonist is the existing organisms they are screwed, the shits from the outside air are coming to take their home.  This is still lacking a dynamic. Why?  Because the other side has laid down and died.  They couldn’t help it.  It was nature.   Evolutionary aspects of Darwinism at work.  Survival of the fittest.  There are no grand battles to be fought.  It’s like if the British were like, “Hey we lost at Dunkirk, better just let them German’s stroll inside.”  You could have last stands but then that ending is a bleak inevitability.

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Style Journal #2: imitation of Dave Barry

            To write about food is to never be bored.   That’s what the suggestion said to me as it laid there in front of me - in black ink - during my three in the afternoon class.  The rational being that food is colorful, and full of texture and that everyone vividly remembers the perishables they insert into their gullets on a day to day basis.  Though, I’d be hard pressed to find someone who would say, “These chicken nuggets deserve an ode written about them,” for they are more likely to be bothered by the fact that said chicken nuggets have sent them to the john only hours later.

            My argument then as I began was that food is not dynamic.  Food offers no drama, food in and of itself is not art.  Here we enter onto a slippery slope because who was I to determine what art was.   Certainly a pastry chef might be partial to calling their creation artistic, but I alone am but a humble college student who cooks and eats not for artistic merit but for basic consumption.   The food I am making is less advert worthy and more likely to be pictured in the dictionary next to the words “charred” or “arson.”

            Then as I embark on this impromptu endeavor I happen upon a thought,  “Can I indeed inject food with some sort of drama?”  The average man may say that the only think you can inject food with is chemicals.  This led me to an idea, what if I wrote about the rot of food.  On a very biological level rotting food must have some inherent drama.  It is an invasion of bacteria and other chemical reactions that result out of the death of the mother melon.  As the Nazi bacteria invaded the Poland of the surface of said fruit, they would have no choice but to throw their hands up and surrender.  In this way drama has surely begun but it is not as satisfying as real drama.  There was no fight.  What we have now is a full on tragedy.   There was a never a chance from the beginning

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Style Journal #3:  Mini-Analysis of Charles Dickens

            Charles Dickens appears to enjoy employing several consistent stylistic tendencies as observed through the works “A Christmas Carol,” and “Great Expectations.”   It should be noted that the point of view of each story are told in different ways, the prior one is a third person narrative, and the latter a first person narrative account.  However, both share some commonalities that may point to stylistic approaches such as his use of interrupting commentary, long winded sentences, low to mid-range vocabulary, and allowing for a very approachable style for an easier read.

            In a passage near the beginning of Chapter 9 of “Great Expectations,” Dickens - through the voice of his narrator - gives a straightforward interpretation of feeling misunderstood but then in the middle of it he breaks up the sentence with an interruption  and commentary on the statement being written by saying “- which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity -” this is a very Dickens thing to do.  Another passage from that same story reads, “In the terror of seeing the figure, and in the terror of being certain that it had not been a moment before, I at first ran from it, and then ran towards it,” this also involves a minor narrative intrusion.

            Dickens appears to have a love for the long-winded sentence.  “A Christmas Carol,” is filled with many passages of lists that seem to go on far too long.   Dickens enjoys his uses of commas, and semicolons as he crafts the twists and turns of his narration.  Aside from the lists of “A Christmas Carol,”  Dickens also incorporates this long winded approach to “Great Expectations,” writing ninety-one words that run on in a non-run on sentence.  Carefully and precise use of punctuation accentuate the enjoyment Dickens seems to get out of playing with the words at his disposal.  There is a strong iconoclasm involved with Dickens, and its shows off in his sentence structure, but not to the point of being overwhelming.

            Dickens appears to keep his long-winded sentences filled with low to mid-range vocabulary.  Descriptive words like foul, narrow, wretched, drunken are used to offer an approachable narrative in “A Christmas Carol,” and “Great Expectations,” with its even loftier ideas still keeps the words relatively approachable with frosty, coarse, incomprehensible, and treacherous.  It would appear he can’t help but sneak some loftier language into the latter work such as ignominiously, and adamantine.

            The low to mid-range vocabulary allows Dickens to offer his audience a chance to comprehend the piece.  His descriptions are fairly spot on, not spending too much time - especially in “A Christmas Carol” - on allowing the reader to form their own opinions of the environments they are entering.   Phrases, and words like, “infamous resort,” “low bred”, and “mountains of unseemly rags,” help say exactly what Dickens thinks the reader should think of the place being seen.  “Great Expectations,” offers a very generous play-by-play of its story, allowing the reader to easily follow along with the flow of events.  He is an emotional writer, and opinionated, but very solicitous because he still makes sure his reader is oriented, and guides them to what they should be thinking.

Style Journal #4:  My Influences

             My earliest literary influence has to have been Charles Dickens.  I read A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations early on in High School.  Yes I read a lot of other books, but it was until that point that I was like “Man, these sprawling, contrived stories are the bees knees,” and I was thinking with all that description and all of that character was the epitome of a great a writer.  Then I read some Victor Hugo, and I was annoyed with delight.  How else do you explain the beautiful and long-winded, almost infuriating forty some page explanation of the battle of Waterloo, or the Jean Valjean battle of conscious chapter that goes on For-ev-er.  It was extremely fascinating how much attention of detail he had, and it was one of the first novels to physically make me cry.

            There were a lot of required reading in high school like To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lord of the Flies that also influenced me a great deal.  I thought the stories were beautiful and it was never a chore for me to have to read any such stories at all.  There was never any argument on my part to have to read them.  But they told simple, if even violent stories, with symbolism, confrontations, beautiful and tragic characters.

            I was writing before this.  Ever since I could read, I was writing stories.  But those books in particular got me to see story, plot and characters for what they could be.  But, my writing was completely influenced yet, and it wasn’t until I was out of High School that I discovered two of my all time favorite authors.   Nicky Hornby and Chuck Palahniuk.  They wrote with surprising brevity for being stream of conscious, with incredibly diverse character voices in that first person point of view.   And I began to discover all of their collective works, and I realized this, this first person POV, stream of conscious genius was what I wanted to do.  Not only that but I could be other characters, I could be anybody.  I was also allowed to ramble and find a story through associations, and it was a wake up call.   I didn’t realize that you could do that for some reason.  There was always this strict story structure, and strict forms of writing that we studies that it was refreshing to be like hey let your mind be free, try on different shoes.  And I did, and I still do.

Style Journal #5: Writing Process and Preferred Tools and Preparations

            Just give me a computer keyboard and let me ramble on a little bit.  I’ll write out what I need to say but maybe about 5000 words over.  Maybe I’ll scale it back a little bit, editing whole pages, but the point is to say it as much as I can and as many ways as I can.  I have a habit of worrying whether or not I am getting the point across.  It is a very stream of consciousness sort of thing.  I don’t have to write with a keyboard, but it's easier to get the thoughts out because they flow a little too fast.   If I’m writing poetry I might pick up a Bic click pencil, and it has to be .5mm led, the smaller the better.  I prefer to write tiny until my hand starts to cramp up or if I get too close to the end of a page then the words start to balloon out and gather some fat on them.

            Word processors have to be set to Times New Roman 12-point font.  I feel like when I was in school that was the default that Word went to but for some reason now it starts on Arial, and it’s 11-point.  It doesn’t seem as slick to me to write that way.  I’ll have an idea then, and like I’ve already stated that’s when the words begin to pop out.

            I don’t take copious amounts of notes.  I can’t.  It doesn’t all come out, but I have a collection of ideas stuck in my head from years and years on.  Some of them may have been formed in elementary school if I’m honest and I’ve simply added and added to them. 

            I hate writing for class, like academic stuff.  I do see the value in it but it is so restrictive and I try to flourish as much as I can but they tend to be frowned upon.  Keep it concrete the academics demand, but they mine as well have told me to keep it boring, and lame.   What’s the point of writing if you don’t get to play around with the words and make it sing.  There has to be a rhythm to everything, and usually that's how it comes out.

            I guess I used to fret over each page.  Used to sit there, and be disappointed that a certain sentence wasn’t coming out as liquid gold, but eventually I realized as the Hemingway quote went that, first drafts are shit, so I just write to write.  Maybe I’ll end up deleting most of it, but it's about getting it all out as best I can.  It feels more natural to how I think and the closest I’ll get to properly voicing the ideas that are in my head.

            So that’s how I approach writing.  I like the sound of the keyboard, like machinery, because it makes me feel like there’s a machination working towards some kind of forward momentum.  I will say that yes of course if its academic writing I have to have some kind of preparation because I have to use specific terminology, and provide the proper quotes, but even then, in that first draft, I try to remember the things that I have read, and the notes that I might have taken and the quotes that I have collected, and I try to remember what it all meant and I will stream of conscious the shit out of that paper, and then go back and plug in the quotes otherwise I am not writing as myself.

Style Journal #6: Imitation - Stein

            If writing about food will never lead to boredom then why am I bored writing about food.  The writing that I am doing when I’m writing out of boredom about food is bore from my boredom that food is not enticing.  Enticing is the opposite of boredom and I cannot be enticed to write boredom into an enticing manner so it is with boredom that I write about food.  Food being boring and not enticing the boredom to feeling does not give me excitement that food can be personal.  Excitement is personal and if I were to write that the food were not boring then the boring food would be a lie and lying is not the way I lay myself to sleep.  Sleeping is enticed out of boredom because it is the only way to escape the food that I am forced to write about.   But if I am sleeping out of boredom and not eating the food for having to write about it I cannot be satisfied that I have written anything of importance.

            A chef may be an artist with a knife, a knife the pen of the chef that the writer might use had he been a chef who chose to write with a knife but the chef writes his meal not with ink or lead but with food.  Ink or lead may poison the eater but if the artistic chef were artistic chef because of the knife pen that he might use to cook then his cooking would not elicit boredom, and the boredom that I am eliciting is not my own for I care not for the food for it bores me.  The chef may be boring to the writer and the writer will be bored with the chef for the preparation is drowsy, and sleepy and we cannot be what we are not if what we are not is enticed.  If we are not enticed then we are bored and I cannot write about food and be enticed for I am not cooking and writing with a knife nor am I a chef.

            The only way to think about being enticed by food is to think not with boredom and in boredom not think of food in its usual way for enticing it is to pretend and assume that if you were to write about food in an interesting way you would have to give food life.  Giving food life is good for the garden but I am not a farmer just as I am not a chef.  Not a chef or a farmer is who I am.  Who I am is not a chef or a farmer but  writer enticed to write about boring food.  Boring food to be enticing must be made to come alive, and not alive in a way that it comes to be boring, but alive in a way to be enticing to a me that supposes that food is enticing.  But the me that supposes that food is enticing is not a real me but  made up me and if I am made up then I am not enticed to be enticed by the enticing enticement of food that is boring bored and bore out of me.   Out of me is the thought to write food so that it seems enticing and not boring, and not enticing but boring is how the non-supposed me views the food that is boring.

            So food will be bore to be boring to me, and to me food will boringly bore the boredom from the enticing idea of writing, and I will suppose myself to sleeping.

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            Pure stream of consciousness and play on words that lead into a new thought but also repeat the same thought, but also make it new and say the same things in a similar way.  Just good word association, and a tripping up of sounds that play well together.

STYLE JOURNAL #9

A Vow of Cataclysm

What I am saying now is a lie, because there is no way to explain myself in the most truthful of manners.  I am a good person and I have never tried to hurt anyone ever before.  Did you catch the lie?  Good.  Now I am going to tell you a truth, but not the truth because I am not a monster.   Hurt is a word with some positive connotation, at least that’s how I choose to look at it, because if I saw hurt as the end all be all of terribleness I would be less than good and we have already established that I am no good.   This is the contradiction of me.  When I was nineteen years old I had the chance to marry the girl of my dreams, and she was ready but I was unwilling.  I did not touch her, not with a fist, but with a tip of a finger along the arch of her back.   I did not touch her with my knuckles, or with the bottom of my pendulum swinging foot.  This is a truth, this is not the lie.  But, she wanted me more than I wanted her and what was there to do but break her heart.  I took it between each hand and wrange it out like an old rag filled with sweat and then when it was properly dried I rang it out some more till it twisted and tore, and then I dropped it in the trash.  I made some promises to this girl, promises that I meant at the time, and I meant them, but maybe I didn’t.  It could have been that I just wanted her to let me inside, but I was blinded by the way she wore her hair.   What I am saying now is a lie, because there is only one way to admit the truths of myself and that is by saying exactly what is not the truth.   Truth is, I’m a liar by nature, force of habit, cliched in my lexicon on how to describe the monstrosity of my bullshit.  When she said, “I want you to give me your life, to share, to cherish,” I told her she could, I told her it was so, and when she said, “I love you,” I took them only as words necessary to keep my bed full.  What happens next is the absolute truth, I ripped her to shreds.   A raggedy old towel, I had broke and beaten until she couldn't stand up without her crutch, her crutch being me, and her physical body was fine of course but I feel it almost would have been better if I had hit her.  Because then she would not have been surprised by the homicide of her soul as I left her crippled on the floor.

STYLE JOURNAL #10

Small Expectations

During the course of the blind date set up by some friends of mine - whom I would rather not call my friends-  I came to the conclusion that my well being was not at the heart of the choices they were making for me.  The girl across from me at that moment at the local diner lovingly referred to as “That Diner” was dressed to the nines.  A purple cocktail dress that hugged her frame, and as I bit into my burger for the second time I was continuously aware just how underdressed I really was.  It was the catchup - that spilled from the front of my undercooked burger and splattered onto my black t-shirt - that really made me take notice of my ridiculous state.  They didn’t tell me this girl was going to be caked in makeup that she had expertly put on or that I should have been prepared for the effort she’d put forward.   I showed up in jeans and short sleeve shirt because that was the attire that I was most comfortable wearing.  Far be it for me to assume that my friends might stop and think for a moment and possibly set me up with someone who better fit my style of dress and who did not hold the weight for dates that this girl obviously had.  No self respecting beauty queen like the one in front of me was going to find potato chip grease stains attractive.  I hadn’t even shaved that morning if I’m going to be completely honest.   So, there I was with a five o'clock shadow wishing to God I could be smited where I stood because there was just no way in hell that I was ever going to pull the miracle of impressing this girl.  She took a bite of her chef salad, which consisted of a thick piece of poorly sliced lettuce and a dripping tomato, and she chewed with her mouth closed, a muffled crunch trying to escape the suffocation of her lips.   She dabbed at her face with her napkin even though there was nothing left to dab and her head hung low attempting to avoid eye contact with me, but I knew for damn sure that her eyes had made eye contact with the very obvious glob of red tomato paste that now plastered my greasy stained t-shirt.

“So, what is it you do for fun?”  She asked me.

If I told her the truth that I preferred to sit on my ass at home and hunker down into my gaming chair for over sixty rounds of Halo she probably would have pushed the plate of lettuce forward and demanded a refund of her time, which obviously since I am not some celestial being I was not going to be able to provide for her.   Instead I say, “Stuff,” and move on from there to take another bite from my burger.  At the back and front of my mind I know I should attempt to reconcile the stain present on my clothes, but I don’t.  If I rub it in it’ll just make the affected space larger and then I’ll just look like more of an ass.

“Stuff?”  She inquirers.

“Stuff, you know,” I talk with my mouth full because at that moment it didn’t seem like it mattered if I made a good impression or not, “like I play video games, and I write reviews for video games, and I watch Let’s Plays, which you know is people playing video games, and I guess I just video game for life, you know what I mean?”

“That’s so cool.”  She said in this geeky pixie girl voice.  And she beamed and leaned in toward me, cupping her chin in each of her palms like a pedestal for a statuette.   “What’s your favorite type of game, personally I play a lot of first person shooters, because I’m kind of busy at work teaching all these preschoolers how to count to five and shit, but sometimes you just want to go home, and relax and nothings more baller than blowing a bunch of space marines too hell with a tectonic multi orbital ray cannon that you just stole from some frost giant on the planet Nimbu-lock.  Because the sound of the explosion coming out of your surround sound is so boss it shakes the whole living room.”

Another glob of catchup drips on my shirt but not from my burger itself but the burger sitting mushed in my mouth as I sit slack jawed and awe inspired.   “I need to marry you.”  I say out loud, and I’m not even halfway kidding.

She then leans back into her chair and stabs some more salad with her fork and chews on it with mouth closed, and a smile spreads on her face like she’s pleased as punch.  I still stare on as she points at me with her fork and says, “Cant marry me with all that shit on your shirt though, probably should wipe it off handsome.”  She winks, and all I can think of his how fucking cool she is.

That was how I met my first wife.

Style Journal #11: Something I should Regret but Don’t

Harsh Language

I’m not one for harsh language used in the spur of the moment, during some heated altercation that might elicit a problematic vocabulary.  So when I used that word in reference to a girl that I had confessed to be in love with you must understand that it came from a place of utter black.  A void in my heart of the misery caused over the course of a month, or maybe several, in retrospect that is probably more appropriate to say.   She was a manipulative little snake, and I do have to say that I enjoyed being manipulated, at first.  Those of us who are easy targets for leeches are accustomed to being toyed with and lied to, we tend to lend ourselves like doey eyed little guinea pigs to the eventual slaughter.   The blades are apparent in the hands of the killer and yet we follow them anyways.

I loved her, as much as I could.  She was fun, and mysterious and sort of broken, and there wasn’t much that I liked to do more than try and fix broken things, but there she was kissing me and loving me, and telling me that she wanted to escape.  There are details left out because they are not appropriate to reveal here, but what led me to using that “C” word was a culmination of all of this bullshit.   She was trapped in a perpetual hell of her own devising, one that she had built up and caged herself in and that she possessed the key to escape from.   Yet, somehow she spoke sweetly in my ear and got me to go along with her imprisonment, and I all too eager to help her. 

Some time passed then, and we had a bit of a falling out.  I was attached at the hip, sewn into her thigh with a poisoned needle and thread, and she was all too eager to escape being stuck with me.  She had other men she wanted to invite into her cage, and thus she tried to tempt me with acquaintances of hers, and said to me that she had a single friend who might just be what I need.  But, i pleaded with her and said no, no dear, you are the taste in my mouth and the hearing in my ear, but she dumped me, left me alone, and I ended up meeting this friend she tried to pawn me off upon.

This friend turned out to be more of a daffodil than the weeded garden of former queen B, but not “B” as in babe, bee, or boss, but “B” as in bitch for that was what she’d been.   A month since departing the caged relationship and i started to like this friend, she was sweeter than I’d thought, but then “C” word got it in her head that she wanted me back, that she had a right to be jealous, and rather than come straight up to me and tell me this herself, she went to her friend, whom she had known longer than I, and she pulled her shoulder down so as to get closer to her ear, and she vomited up blasphemy about me, and then my phone rang.

I picked it up, and new girl said she didn’t think what we were doing was right, that what we were doing seemed awfully fishy, that what we were doing was just me trying to dive my way into her pants, that i’d simply been spending time and talking about life as a precursor to unbuckling, and unzipping but that was not the method of my flirtations.  But then I could hear my sweet little “B” my maggoty little “C”, ex-B, ex-C, saying more to get me to falter, to get me to hurt, inviting me to fall for someone else, just so she could stab me with a few sharp pricks from her stinger.

She got on the phone eventually, when she realized I would succeed possibly at explaining my real, and good intentions, of wanting to get to know this girl, and she put me on speaker, unbeknownst to me and she said what she needed, and she had a tone in her voice to rival Satan’s laughter, and the amusement held then made me shout out the “C” and when I called her that, and had no intention of “Seeing You Next Tuesday” she had caught me in a trap.  I sounded like a mad man, a wolf, shouting an abusive word over the phone, and that’s when she beat me, whipped me, killed me, and when I realized she wasn’t human, but a tiny little “C” word.  I think about regretting it, I think about healing it, but that wound she gave me was deep, and my vocal rebuttal a defense, that I was never worried I overstepped a line, because I just stood plenty away from that line and spit a loogie in her face.  And that felt good for me, then.