DST

An Introduction by the Author

2009-05-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

Daylight Savings Time was written during a period starting several months after I had graduated from college while I was living in Lake Forest, IL through the entire period that I lived in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, from January 2006 through August of 2007. The rough draft was finished no more than a week before I would flee Chicago for Los Angeles and foolishly squander everything that I had saved up to that point. That attitude may be apparent in the text, particularly in the later chapters. It was written in the wake of an event that caused me no small psychological dismay and is addressed in the early chapters in referencing a broken friendship. That is not the theme of this work, however. I was trying to write something like Bret Easton Ellis would. A bunch of young people in the city who don't have to worry about how they're going to afford to live and don't really have any serious plans for their own future. I set out to create something that would define an aesthetic, a characteristic, the idea of Being Carefree, that I saw rapidly disappear as my friends and I finished college and melded with the real world. They all had a better idea than I did of what they were doing.

To be sure, DST takes an idealized view of dating. Yes, the thing to do is to meet your mate in college, and if you don't, well, some people have no problem whatsoever with meeting someone in an unstructured setting, but my few experiences proved wholeheartedly depressing. As I wrote DST, I wanted to portray a world that was simpler, where the stakes weren't quite so high, where people could do what they wanted and not worry about being judged for it. DST depicts the Group or Clique mentality, whereby a collection of a dozen or so personalities that cling to one another allow each individual within that collective to achieve greater freedom (and respect) than they would as a wholly independent being. That was my true aim in this work--to show how a community can bolster an individual--which I'm sorry to say, I don't see very often in this increasingly isolating society we call USA 2009. But that's probably my own fault now isn't it?

There may be questions about whether or not this book deserved to be published. Overall, I think it's simple to say: it doesn't. People will find its narrative format intimidating and frustrating, but I still believe it is a work of (some) serious value. It is not a masterpiece, and I know I have done better since, but there are ideas within it worth communicating, I think. I unsuccessfully tried to pitch it as a screenplay while in Los Angeles in one ill-advised e-mail query to an online ad where I attached a young Hollywood actor to every role in the story, and while that didn't work and while I am not going to spend my time twisting it into a screenplay, I do believe this is exactly the type of movie that would be a "definitive account of this generation"--whatever you want to call it, Y2K (it's been a while since I've seen a term applied to those born in the early through mid-80s)--and would be able to make someone a lot of money if they knew what was good for them. Unfortunately it seems as if my time has passed and I already feel hoplessly outdated and worn out at 26 and my conceptions about this generation's attitudes towards a variety of subjects in life no longer hold any water.

Thus, as a timeless document, there are sections worth reading that will not be adversely affected by changing times. I am particularly proud of "Halloweeness"--the longest chapter in the novel, describing the day of Halloween. One particular passage I read from it for my writing class earned the praise of one distinguished class member, who later wrote me an e-mail telling me she really enjoyed it. Every chapter after that, I believe, is strong as well. Some of the concepts towards the end I would develop further in my second novel. I also like the sprightly way it begins and some of the random, prophetic elements that would occur in the months after I completed it (I would have a co-worker named Penny, there would be an incident involving a "bum" of some type, and the "Economy Watch" would prove more prescient than I realized). "Satyrs" is probably the most offensive chapter in the book and might cause people to think I am anti-American but I would just like to remind everyone about the period in which it was written--that is, mid-2006, when frustrations in this country reached a certain pitch about the ways things were being handled. There are other chapters that I enjoy for the feeling of exuberance they represent, and again, most of them lie near the end.

I had a good time writing this book and even though it led to nothing I am glad a few people read it and derived some small pleasure out of it. The greatest gift that a book can bestow on a reader is the sense of total abandon that the author has opened up their entire personality and given their full depiction of our world and the way they experience it, to be compared with the reader's own senses. I may not have done as good a job in this first novel as I did in my second in communicating that entirety, and I may be clueless about certain matters that help define a "real life" or a "serious life," but this was a learning experience for me, and one that I feel accomplished its goal, whether or not I am ever "seriously published" in my lifetime. At least there is this.

-Christopher J. Knorps
Winnetka, IL, May 18, 2009

Daylight Savings

2009-05-18T09:40:00.001-07:00

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS

It had been the week in October to turn the clocks back an hour and it was the time of day when it became prematurely dark for the first time and all one had were foreboding thoughts. It was Friday, and the work was done for the week, and when he had left the office, the night had fallen. A week earlier, the drive home had been all pinkish-orange hue sunset, anticipation, good fortune, green thoughts, and wistful determination. Today it was blue-black, with faint, scraggly lines of red clouds at the extreme horizon. The summer was finished and autumn had kicked the door open. Autumn had held a gun to summer’s head and blew its brains all out at the far, far end of the sky. And he was driving in his car, driving home from work, and he knew it would be a long time before there would be good cheer. And he knew love, formerly at an arm’s length, would continue to elude and cheat and fool, like a plastic worm at the end of a fishing pole.
He was ten minutes away from work, thirty minutes from home, when he saw the highway illuminate into a deep and severe red. Five minutes after crawling along at the speed of a dying deer, a sign appeared which informed him that it would be sixty minutes until he arrived home. He took out an American Spirit from a drink holder in between the two front seats. He turned up his stereo and rolled down the windows as his car rolled to a stop. He flicked the lighter.
“This is going to be a long night,” he said to himself.

The Longest Line

2009-05-18T09:39:00.002-07:00

His mother was taking a bottle of suntan lotion out of her handbag.
“You need more lotion, Lu.”
She spread some on his face, and didn’t rub it in deeply enough. He could have been dressed up as a ghost for Halloween. He could have been a young dead boy inside The Haunted Mansion.
The two were at the Magic Kingdom. They were waiting in line for Dumbo. The wait had been posted at sixty minutes, but his mother had checked her watch frequently, perhaps every single time she had found herself trying to eke out the last drops of her bottle of diet cola. The sign was wrong. They had been waiting for ninety minutes, if not more. And there was nothing between them and the sun. Luckily, they weren’t far from the front.
“How much longer, Mom?”
“Judging from the length of the ride, and the amount of people in front of us, I would say, oh, five, ten minutes.”
“What does judging mean?”
“Making an informed decision based on different sets of variables.” She was grinding her teeth.
“What?”
Five minutes later, they were fastening their harnesses inside the Dumbo wearing the yellow hat. His mother let him control how high or low the flying elephant went. As they took off, and little Luther started laughing, all was suddenly right again.

The Program

2009-05-18T09:39:00.001-07:00

He parked his car in the basement garage and took the elevator up to his studio apartment. He looked at his watch. 6:17. Not bad for having sat in an horrendous traffic jam. The floor display said 12, 15, 18. It stopped on 22. He walked out and to the left, stopped at unit #2202, took out his key, unlocked the door, walked inside, and closed it behind him.
He dropped his bag, collapsed onto the couch, and hit the flashing button on his antiquated answering machine.
A robotic voice said, “One…new message.”
And then immediately began a male voice, slightly digitally distorted so that it wasn’t immediately clear who it was.
“Luther, are you back from work yet? You should pick up the phone. I know you’re in your apartment and you’re listening to me leave this stupid, boring message. You’re a jerk. If you won’t pick up for your last one, true friend, I’m sorry but I don’t want to talk to you. Anyways when you get over whatever you need getting over, call me up, we have to set the program for the evening.”
The program, Luther thought. He opened up a cabinet in the table next to the couch and took out his snuffbox. Inside were five intricately rolled joints. He lit one, and turned on his stereo, and thought about what kind of program he was in the mood for. A mellow evening? A night of crime? The typical bar scene? Crashing a party? Something completely uncharacteristic? A rave?
Halfway through his spliff, he set it down and called Rory, the aforementioned male, digitally distorted voice.
“I am thinking of a program that involves making an absolute mess that we do not have to clean up.”
Rory was intrigued. “You want to make a mess. That’s not like you.”
“I know a party that we weren’t invited to. I say we repay their snub with a diabolical scheme.”
“You’re very imaginative tonight.”
“Well, get ready, get over here, we’ll pre-party, we’ll lay out our plan, and we’ll execute ruthlessly.”
“Right on. I’ll head out in five minutes. Just have to put some things away.”
“See you later.”

Rory

2009-05-18T09:38:00.001-07:00

Rory came from a poor family, attended public schools until college, and promptly won a scholarship to Brown. It did not seem particularly advantageous for Brown to offer this young man a free ride. Rory wanted to be a post-postmodern philosopher. He had gotten excellent grades by paying astute attention in class, and by hounding his teachers before and after class for guidance. He studied extremely hard, and was properly rewarded, but unfortunately he was never given the gift of self-expression. His essays often turned out clunky. They were only given good grades by his teachers because they had known how hard he worked on them. His enthusiasm was brilliant, but talent continued to elude him.
On Friday October 24th at 7:52 PM, Rory rang Luther’s buzzer and was promptly admitted to the building. He had brought a brown paper bag with him. Its contents were a one-liter bottle of whiskey, and a two-liter bottle of cola. Also in the bag was Rory’s flask, which he had often brought along to bars, even though a few bartenders in the past had seen him slipping one down in the shadows, and then said something to the effect of, “That’s not cool, man.”
Luther opened up his door and Rory was taken aback by the aroma of scented candles. They greeted each other, walked into the kitchen, and exchanged minor pleasantries about their days.
“Like a drink?” Rory offered.
“Make mine a double.”

Plan

2009-05-18T09:37:00.001-07:00

The plan that Luther laid out, as the two of them sat reclining on his couch, enjoying their whiskey and colas, was this:
They would walk to Ted’s party, so that they would not have to drive home drunk, because they planned on making a real mess. It was a twenty minute walk, and it was a nice night.
They would find the beer and immediately shotgun a couple.
They would romance girls.
They would find where the music was playing, and sabotage the play list.
They would piss on the floor of the bathroom, not egregiously, just enough so it would look like they had trouble finding the bowl.
They would find Ted and ask him why they didn’t get invited.
They would try to make amends with Ted.
They would stay late and drink as much as possible.
Then they had their goodwill option:
If Ted dropped his grudge, all would be forgiven and the bad behavior would end. If he refused to sway in his beliefs and notions, then Luther and Rory would defecate in both his bed, and underneath a couch cushion. How they planned to accomplish this they did not yet know. They figured if they continued to drink, all would be clean and clear. All would be much simpler, easier and more direct.

Upon Further Review

2009-05-18T09:36:00.002-07:00

Neither Luther, nor Rory had the will to go out in the end. Instead, Rory stayed until about 1 AM and promptly took the train home. Luther, not in any mood for life changing events tonight, went to sleep.
Rory on the other hand, had gotten so incredibly messed up at Luther’s place that he missed his own train stop. Stuck at Western, he suddenly found himself nearly a mile’s walk from his home. Not wanting to pay the extra two dollars to go one stop, he began a brisk stride, and headed east.
The map that Rory had to walk looked like this:

Train stop moment when Rory realizes he has to pee Rory’s House Ted’s House Train Stop

The train had been traveling in this direction:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------à>>>>>>>>>>

Ted

2009-05-18T09:36:00.001-07:00

Ted was cleaning up puke on his bathroom floor. There were still guests over. It was 1:35 AM. Music was playing loud. And Ted was thinking about how he didn’t deserve to clean up this puke. He wasn’t the one who puked. It was his apartment. But then he realized he had a girl at the party that still wanted to sleep with him at the end of the night. Nothing could take that away from him.
He heard the buzzer ring, and since there was no intercom, and since he was drunk, and since there was still a party going on, he buzzed in whoever was at the door.
Rory walked in, saw Ted in the bathroom, said, “Yo man, you mind if I take a leak?” and stood over the toilet. Ted moved back and stayed in the bathroom as Rory urinated.
“Rory, what are you doing?”
“My original plan was to do this in your bed so I hope you’re happy.”
“What?” “I was over at Luther’s. I thought I was going home, but I missed my stop, and had to walk back from even further away, and I really had to go, and your place was on the way, and I knew you were having a party so…”
“Who told you I was having a party?”
“I don’t know, Luther I think.
“That bastard.”
“Look your party looks like it was pretty awesome. Are there any drunk girls here?”
“Yeah, on the deck, smoking.”
“Think I’ll go have one myself.”

Jeanne

2009-05-18T09:35:00.002-07:00

Rory walked out to the deck and Ted followed him after he finished cleaning the rest of the vomit. Ted was feeling like starting a fight. But he wasn’t a violent guy. He had been in exactly two fights in his life, and they had both been over girls.
When Rory opened the sliding door, he slowed down to such an extent that Ted actually bumped into him from behind. They were understandably drunk. There were no less than four girls out on the deck, and a couple guys further back in the corner. The girls were talking in couples. Which one would he ask a light from?

Girl Couple #1: Jeanne and Missy
Jeanne and Missy were college students out for their weekend binge. They had found out about a 25 year old’s party because they were the kind of girls that liked more “experienced” guys. Missy’s ex-boyfriend was, in fact, Ted. They had remained friends, but also so Missy could hook up with his friends.
Jeanne was the shyer girl of the two.
She had had this many boyfriends: 2
She had been alive for this amount of years: 21
This was the average length of both relationships: 97 days
She had had sexual relations with this many males: 7
She had had sexual relations with this many females: 1

Girl couple #2: Penelope and Ireena
Penelope and Ireena were in their mid 20’s. They were professional women. They were at Ted’s because Penelope was a coworker of Ted’s. And in a few hours, she would greatly disrupt their business relationship by attempting to start a romantic relationship.
Ireena was a cold woman. She had slept with thirty men. There was nothing she had not seen on this earth. If the world was going to war with Mars, and if Ireena was a military woman, she could be the one to lead the charge into outer space. But she was not a military woman at all. She was a social services worker. She hated her job. She hated her life. She was brutal. Many people thought she was quite beautiful, though. It was unfortunate she had started moving onto harder stuff as she started earning a larger salary.

“Do you have a light?”
Jeanne looked over at Rory, who was standing right in front of Ted.
“All this nonsense is making me sick!” Missy exclaimed.
Jeanne lit his cigarette, and Ted gestured towards himself.
“I know what you mean, Missy. Why is somebody who was not invited to the party here?” Ted began.
Rory leaned his head back out over the deck and looked up at the night sky.
“Why would some cheap, dirty, lowlife like Rory McClennan show up?”
Rory took a puff.
“Is it because he’s got nowhere else to go? Because he has no friends?”
Jeanne looked down at the ground.
“Or is it because he just wants to take a piss and try to pick up one of these beautiful girls?”
The night sky was gorgeous in Rory’s mind. It reminded him of the past summer nights.
Penelope walked over to Ted and began by putting her arm around his body. He cooled down a bit, and just smoked and looked at Rory.
Then Ireena said, “Where the hell do you get the balls to talk like that to someone? You think just because it’s your party, just because somebody you may not like shows up, you think you have the right to totally isolate them like that? To rip them apart like that and make such a scene about it?”
“The guy’s got issues,” Rory offered, rising from his stargazing position. “I think he really hates himself.”
“Fuck you. Get out of my house.”
Rory whispered to Jeanne, gesturing towards Ted, “Sexual issues.”
Rory left, and Ireena said, “I refuse to stay at such a rude party.”
The two of them met up when Rory held the front door for her.

Penelope

2009-05-18T09:35:00.001-07:00

Words could not do justice to the heartbreak that Penelope had had to suffer. Two years earlier, she had been married, and she had been very young to be married, but she was very happy, and she was trying to get pregnant, and she had only begun trying to get pregnant when another car took her husband away from her forever. So young, so much time left to be married, and Penelope knew that it was the only true love she would ever know. So when her husband was cremated, and his ashes scattered, she began her life anew without the prospect of love. She later reflected that he would have wanted her to have other lovers. Her love could remain pure and true, though she was free to do as she pleased. Thus, Penelope had feelings for Ted, but only in the realm of the body. In her mind, her husband would always be there.
Still on the deck were Missy and Jeanne. Jeanne looking askance, not far from the manner in which Rory had just been looking. Missy, on the other hand, was intensely focused on the two guys standing in the corner. Jeanne was thinking about how she had, once again, stayed until the end of the party.
Number of parties that Jeanne had been to consecutively without meeting a single person she could relate to in the least: 11

The Morning After

2009-05-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

October 25th, a Saturday, could not have been a more action-packed day for Luther. He wasted no time in the morning. He rose at 8, and realizing that he was not hung over on a Saturday morning for the first time in weeks, he decided to make the best of it and go for a long jog. Circling out of his miniature turnaround driveway in front of his high-rise, he started at a slow trot towards the lake.
Rory and Ireena woke up apart from each other. The two had taken a short walk together, Rory in the direction of his house, and Ireena in the direction of the train stop. When they reached Rory’s house, he invited her in, but she politely declined. Still, not willing to part forever yet, Rory politely asked if he could call her sometime. Ireena coolly gave her number and said she would see him around.
For Ted, a lot of his past issues had abated. There he was, lying in bed with a beautiful widow. He didn’t know that Penelope could never really love him. But he wasn’t exactly thinking about that. He was thinking about whether or not he would sleep with her again this next night, and whether their tryst would go on into the work week. He didn’t want things to be weird. He calmed himself, and he reasoned that if she was a beautiful, wonderful girl in her right, who cares that she worked with him? Why should that automatically remove her from the world of dating?

Luther's Run

2009-05-18T09:33:00.002-07:00

Never willing to give in, Luther had been a fiery athlete in his scholarly years. He could run five thousand meters in fifteen minutes at one time. Now, he could run ten thousand meters in sixty. What had happened?
This thought was going through Luther’s head as he trotted along the lake. His competitive spirit persisted, but his body had given out. Rejected by the University of Wisconsin Men’s Cross-Country team, he fell into a deep despair. He had been one of his high school’s top three runners throughout his four years. And now he wasn’t even good enough to make the team. So, he stopped running. He didn’t think about the future. He didn’t think about making the team next year.
As a freshman in college, Luther welcomed all the corruptions a higher education affords. Where he might have gone out and gotten drunk a total of four nights in four years of high school, he would have gone out and gotten drunk no less than 300 times in his four years at Wisconsin. Needless to say, his days of running like an Olympian were over—for now.
Once he left Wisconsin, he took a good look at himself. What he saw was someone who had permanent bags under his eyes. He saw someone with a less than slender midsection. He saw someone with a stupid haircut. He saw someone who wore ugly clothes. He saw someone who had tasted what the world had to offer, and was no better for it.
Luther’s cell phone buzzed at 9:39 AM. He felt it on his left thigh, slowed considerably, grabbed it, flipped it open, and said:
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi Lu, did you remember to turn your clocks forward?”
“No, but thank you for telling me.”
“Are you alright? You sound terrible.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“Well you should get to bed!”
“I just woke up.”
“You are impossible. Why did you wake up if you were going to be exhausted right away?”
“I’m exhausted because I’m running.”
“You bring your phone with you when you run?”
“I might get an important call. Maybe you’d be calling to tell me you fell into a deep hole and couldn’t get out. If I didn’t have my phone, who knows, you might die.”
“If I fell into a deep hole I probably wouldn’t be able to call you.”
“Okay mom.”
“Well, have a nice time.”
He flipped the phone back up, put it back in his pocket, and saw two girls walking down the beach, apparently looking to set up a tanning spot.

Missy

2009-05-18T09:33:00.001-07:00

Missy opened up her folding chair, shook off her flip-flops and put her bag down. She looked over at Jeanne, who was performing a similar routine.
“Do my back real quick?”
Jeanne walked over, opened up the tanning oil, and spread it over her hands.
“You see that guy?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s see if we can make him lose his composure.”
Missy undid the back of her top, slid down on her stomach, and threw the red piece of cloth high in the air. They were the only ones on the beach.
As the running man approached, Missy started letting out little sighs as Jeanne applied the oil. Jeanne was not playing along very well. She thought this was eccentric behavior even for Missy.
“Excuse me!”
Luther slowed and looked behind him. Nobody. She was talking to him.
“I dropped my top over there, could you pick it up for me?”
He picked up the half-bathing suit and walked back to Missy. When he handed it to her, she sat up, took the piece, covered her breasts with it and said, “Thank you.”
Luther smiled and resumed his normal pace.
Jeanne said, “Now would you do mine?”

Rory's Dream

2009-05-18T09:32:00.003-07:00

He’s there in some metropolitan area. Indefinable, but the rough outline of the city’s architecture is there. Sloped buildings that he can’t see the top of, rain coming off them like waterfalls. Always rain in this dream, which was a reoccurring one.
But he’s in one of these buildings, and it’s a hotel. It’s a hotel with at least two giant clear elevator shafts. Maybe there are four. The hotel has somewhere between thirty and forty floors.
He’s there with a bunch of classmates, but none of them from a particular school or time period. They’re all mish mashed together, all at some general age, and they show up in each different dream scene to highlight something about that particular period in Rory’s life.
He’s got his own room in the hotel, and he orders room service. His parents are at the hotel. Sometimes he has lunch with them in the restaurant there.
He runs around from room to room, goofing around with his most random friends, doing drugs in the hotel stairwell. Sometimes he leaves the hotel. Once he was lost in an abandoned subway train station and couldn’t find his friend that he had gone exploring there with. Once they found each other, they found a ride back to the hotel in the back of a truck. The truck, with generous leg room and no scenery to distract, was the new vehicle used for bus service.
Every morning that Rory woke up from a dream at the hotel, he wanted to go back, and he knew that no such hotel would ever be constructed.
This was one of those mornings.

Geese Squawking

2009-05-18T09:32:00.001-07:00

The home stretch of Luther’s run brought him past a field full of squawking geese. They minced around awkwardly. They honked their beaks at each other. A small one considered flying away briefly, but came right back down as if injured, or as if it didn’t know how to fly yet.
Luther looked at the little goose and said, “Why don’t you just go already? Do you really need all your other geese friends with you to leave this place? What do you do with them while you’re in the air? Do they help you find food? Do you mate with them? Do you squawk back and forth? Do they provide you with emotional support? What’s your deal? What makes you a social creature anyway?”
The goose said, “Honk, honk.”

Love in Bed, Not in the Head

2009-05-18T09:31:00.001-07:00

That was what Ted was getting from Penelope. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that was what Penelope was getting from Ted.
Is it really fair to dissect their relationship at this point? It isn’t even a relationship, and it never will be one. But right now, they were getting out of bed. They were courteous with each other but they didn’t give any other signs of affection during the morning after. Neither was unhappy about almost pretending their last night didn’t happen.
How did each feel about the other’s performance?
Ted’s Rating (as given by Penelope): 4 out of 10
Penelope’s Rating (Ted’s opinion): 7 out of 10
Originally, these two were more than happy to divulge specific comments about the experience, but due to “censorship of taste,” our editors do not wish to see the lurid details in print. All we could say to better explain this distance of pleasure is this: Penelope had slept with four times as many people as Ted. No matter that Penelope lost her virginity to her husband, and never cheated once on him. Let’s be honest: after his death she didn’t ever want to stop having enormous amounts of sex with pretty much any guy she met. Her only requirements were this: so long as he didn’t treat her poorly, so long as he didn’t smell or look too bad, so long as he didn’t infect her with a disease...Some might have said that Ted passed all those tests with flying colors and some might have save said that Ted was an utter misfit in those fields. But that didn’t change the fact that he succeeded in Penelope’s eyes, even if he didn’t take her to any place she couldn’t take herself on a more boring night. Ted was comparatively inexperienced, so he had an excuse.

Magic Pills

2009-05-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Charles was taking magic pills today. The magic pills allowed him to assume other forms of being temporarily. In the past, he had assumed the forms of a paramecium, a supernova, an ant and a grizzly bear. Today, he was going to assume the being of the Sun.
“Today I’m going to turn into the Sun,” he told his roommate.
“Great. I’ll get my sunglasses out.”
Charles took the pills. His roommate came back into their living room wearing sunglasses.
“Whoa man, you’re really bright.”
“I know. I’m looking out on the street. Notice how nobody looks at me.”
“Well what does this mean? I mean, when you go out, is everyone else going to die? Don’t they rely on you for their survival?” Charles opened up their window and shouted down onto their street, “Bow down before the sun for he rules all. You worthless human beings are all just drops of dust compared to me.”
A couple people stopped in their tracks and gaped up at Charles.
“They better watch out!”
“Blindness awaits you.”
“What am I? Am I the moon if you are the Sun?”
“Hardly. You’re Mercury.”
“What are you going to do, now that you’re the sun?”
“I’m going to do what I am meant to do—nurture all living things.”
“I suppose I’m supposed to make a delivery or something.”
“My powers are reaching their max. I could burn a hole through that wall if I wanted to.”
Charles walked around his apartment a little while longer. He decided to go outside and beam on everyone. Never mind that it was already a sunny day.

Jeanne's Request

2009-05-18T09:29:00.002-07:00

Missy and Jeanne were still tanning on the beach after 2:00. They had done a good job of it. Jeanne had packed them a picnic lunch. They ate tomato and mozzarella sandwiches, and a banana each. They drank a bottle of water. When they had finished their lunch, Jeanne made her request.
“Missy can I ask you something?”
“Ask me anything!”
“Will you help me be more normal?”
“You’re pretty normal already.”
“No I’m not, I’m different from everybody else.”
“That’s good. Who wants to be like everybody else?”
“Well it doesn’t help to be so radical and different when everyone you meet all the time is so much the same. What am I getting out of being so unconventional?”
“What did you want to ask?”
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
“You’re gorgeous! Who wouldn’t want you?”
Jeanne stood up in the sand and walked over to the bubbling surf.
“I don’t know, okay. I’m just sick of the same thing happening over and over.”
Missy got up silently, snuck up behind Jeanne, pushed her in the water face first.
“There! Bet you never had that happen before!”

Running Partners

2009-05-18T09:29:00.001-07:00

Luther was trailing a man of forty-seven through the footpaths of the park. They were traveling at approximately 4.7 miles per hour. Luther was on the home stretch. He wondered about this man in front of him. Why was he running? What did he do in the course of his days? Was he rich, poor, kind, abusive? What was he getting away from when he went running?
Charles was sprinting at approximately 12.4 miles per hour in the direction of Luther and his running partner. He was screaming, “You’re all gonna die when I die, you’re all gonna die when I die.” He saw Luther and he stopped and waited until he came alongside him. Then he started running with him.
“You, Luther, I know you, you’re Rory’s friend. You, you see, are destined to be put back in the ground. Me, I exist, not forever, but just about forever. Wow! I’ve got a lot of time left on my hands. Where are you running to? I think we’re all running in one way or another. I mean, I’m not running at all! Everyone’s running around me. They may not know it, but they really are! I mean, I may not be the biggest star in the universe, but I’m like the captain of the Milky Way, you know? I mean I am in some very good company here. You are a prime example of how good everything is. You see, I just amble along with you, and you become so happy, so jubilant, maybe you’re performing photosynthesis and you don’t even know it. But nobody wants to appreciate the Sun, because the Sun is too bright and the Sun wakes you up in the morning and puts an end to your beautiful sleep and the Sun gives you melanoma and the Sun makes you sweat and smell bad and the Sun causes car accidents and the Sun dries out vegetation and the Sun never ever goes away. Even when it seems like the Sun’s gone, it’s still there, and it comes back, over and over until you’re all dead and then it finally flickers out and the Earth is dark, icy, and dead forever.”
“What are you on, man?”
“Myself, myself, myself, myself and Magic Pills.”
“Is that code for something?”
“It’s code for little tablets that I took with water and make me feel like whatever I want to feel.”
“How much are they?”
“They’re not for sale! I’m the only one that’s allowed to take Magic Pills.”
“That’s being stingy.”
“Luther, you’re a good man, and not a very good runner. But no matter, I imbue you with my Sun powers. Why should anyone ever have to be anything less than amazed at who you are and just how powerful you can be?”
“Because they’re not on drugs.”
Charles said, “Kaplow!” and sprinted back off in the other direction again.

Preparations

2009-05-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

“Watch out!” a woman of thirty-five shouted to Charles as he dashed by.
His pace had not abated, and here he had reached his cousin’s apartment. Exhausted, he rang the buzzer, and was admitted.
Rory had been up for an hour or so.
“What’s your deal today?”
“It’s Saturday, it’s getting darker, and it’s a last day for sunshine.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I saw your friend Luther on the footpaths today.”
“Oh really? That’s weird.”
“He looks very dedicated to running.”
“I was hanging out with him last night. We were supposed to go to a party at this kid Ted’s house, but he passed out, and I only ended up going because it was on my way home.”
“Cool chicks?” “I got a girl’s number.”

Afternoon Routines

2009-05-18T09:27:00.002-07:00

Here Ireena was cutting up cocaine on her coffee table and a snorting a few lines an hour. Her thoughts were ranging from despondent to triumphant. There was no stability to her judgment. But she was ready for anything.
Her phone rang. It was Penelope.
“What’s going on? Did anything happen?”
“I gave a boy my number. I didn’t really want to, but I felt bad for him.”
“I slept with Ted. I think I have to do it again tonight so it’s not weird at work on Monday.”
“Have to do it again? Who are you?”
“I’m Penelope and I’m from New Mexico.”
“That’s right. You’re no whore.”
“Of course not!”
“You wanna come over and do some blow with me?”
“I don’t think I can take that.”
“Suit yourself. Go back out in that world of sobriety. Go unassisted, the way everyone else goes assisted legally.”
“See, I can’t do it. I feel like you need to have a lot to do to justify that sort of thing.”
“You’ve got nothing to do? You’ve got no excuse for not coming over.”
“Alright, I’ll call you when I’m done with my shopping today.”

Translucency

2009-05-18T09:27:00.001-07:00

There was Charles’s roommate, weighing out a bag of drugs on a scale. What happened that afternoon to Charles’s roommate is a story that needs to be told. It perhaps best summarizes the preceding events with a clear emphasis on importunity.
He went out on the street with his messenger bag. You should know that Charles’s roommate’s name was Spencer. He had a few ounces of drugs weighed out on his bag, making his Saturday afternoon rounds, dropping off and picking up cash. He had made three deliveries when the thing happened.
He was walking down the street, he opened his messenger bag to take out his sunglasses case, and he knocked an ounce out of his bag and onto the sidewalk, right in front of a police car. There was no stakeout, there was no coup. There was no being caught red-handed, there was the matter of bulk possession. A policeman whom Spencer would later come to know as Officer Hardy was the eyewitness to the accident.
It had been a very nice day for Spencer until his slap on the wrist. The officer had seen the bag on the sidewalk, stepped out of his car, told Spencer to stand still, and he confiscated the evidence. Spencer was brought to the police station, and sat behind bars for three hours.
Here was desperation, here was somebody who had just made a big mistake. If you were to walk into that police station, and walk into Spencer’s impromptu jail cell, and you were to look into his eyes, you would see tears. Tears flowing. Everyone around him without a shred of sympathy. His parents would be the next to find out. His entire life was going to change because of this. So he cried. And he was not afraid of embarrassing himself either. He thought that if enough cops saw him cry, they’d start to feel bad for him, reduce whatever they were going to propose his sentence to be. Girls had told him crying worked during speeding tickets. Crying would show them that he was not dangerous, he was scared and alone, and he did not belong in prison. They couldn’t possibly do that to him could they?
After a few hours, Spencer’s one phone call was made to his own apartment, which yielded this message:
“Charles I am down at the police station. They arrested me for possession. I don’t want to call my parents about it, I know you have enough money for bail, I’ll get you right back I promise, just come over here and get me out and let’s get drunk or something because I really need to forget about this now.”
At 6:30 in the evening, Charles heard the message, walked to the police station, laid out a wad of cash, and left with his roommate. Spencer lit up a cigarette.
“It was the dumbest thing ever, but it happened, it’s over, and I have to deal with it.”
“You know it could be worse. Imagine if you hadn’t sold those three bags earlier. You could have had a lot more severe punishment.”
“All I know is, the justice system is crap. A little accident, I had. This asshole officer, he thinks he can power-trip his way to a promotion or something? I am harmless, I am nothing. I sell drugs to make doing drugs more economical. It’s a simple survival tactic. And he has to come in, stop me while I’m rapidly picking it back up, putting it back in my bag, and tell me that I’m going to be behind bars? Because my hand slipped? Because it was bright out today?”
“Because drugs are illegal.”
“Whatever, I don’t want to think about it anymore. I’m just going to be as low-key as possible, be cooperative, be nice, do whatever I have to do, and get my life back on track once everything’s over with.”
“That’s a really positive attitude you have.”
“It’s not positive, it’s necessary. This is such a major fuck up. Everything’s ruined.”
“The world is ruined as it is. Your life being ruined is totally normal. Think about five billion years from now, when the lights of the Sun go out, and the world is gone. Now, getting arrested isn’t such a big deal is it? You need to take some Magic Pills tonight. Get out of your own skin for a little while.”

Blow Up

2009-05-18T09:26:00.001-07:00

Penelope’s nose leaked a clean line of red fluid. Too much blow up each nostril. She stuffed a Kleenex up each one. Ireena hadn’t gone out much that day. But when Penelope arrived, Ireena insisted she get messed up with her in the afternoon. Penelope went off:
“I mean, Ted was a nice guy, don’t get me wrong. It did kind of flip me out that he freaked out at that Rory kid. But that was such a short part of the whole night. He’s good, you know, I felt secure in his arms. He was very reassuring, very comforting. He didn’t act like other guys when they try to pick you up. But something’s not right, and I have to call him soon and see if we’re going to keep doing this thing or if we’re gonna decide it was a terrible idea. I don’t want to go to work anymore if he starts bragging to everybody else there about how he did me. I don’t ever want to go to work again. I don’t want to see Ted again, but I have to. It’s common courtesy. It’s what you do after you sleep with somebody. It’s civility. You exchange your fluids, you think you can exchange reservations. I mean, I have a very weird situation, I’m not like most other girls my age. I mean, I think one day, I will have a long term relationship again. But not with Ted, you know? He’d be fun to sleep with a few more times, but I could never spend all my time with someone who seems like he could be such a loose cannon.”
Ireena’s reply: “I could just tell by looking at his eyes. He’s such a confused, awkward person.”
THE RECONVENING OF LUTHER AND RORY
Rory: So how was passing out before I left?
Luther: It was nice, you know, sometimes it’s good not to get drunk every chance you get.
Rory: I went over to Ted’s party.
Luther: No way.
Rory: Didn’t really follow through on the plan. Too many obstacles. Ted flipped on me and I just left because this girl was sticking up for me.
Luther: Girl?
Rory: This girl Ireena, she gave me her number, but I haven’t called her yet. Do you think I should do it the first night?
Luther: I don’t know man, are you gonna be able to wait until next week?
Rory: She’s crazed, but I like that.
Luther: Call her up, have her meet us at a bar with a friend.
Rory: I don’t know, don’t you think that’s a little presumptuous?
Luther: You have a better idea what we should do with our night? Go out to bars with no specific prospects in mind, come on man, you’ve got a leg up, you can’t let that go to waste.
Rory: Alright, let me call her (takes out cell phone)
Luther: Music maestro. (puts on a Beat Happening album)
Rory: Turn it down a little.
Luther: Hey, my apartment, my space, my decibel level, you want it quieter go in the bathroom. (starts rolling a joint)
Rory: Hi Ireena, it’s Rory, I just wanted to know what you’re up to tonight, if you want to hang out, I think I’m gonna hit some bars with my friend Luther.
Calvin Johnson: Let’s fly away, to the other side.
Luther: Hi Ireena!
Rory: So, gimme a call back if you want to meet up. Bye bye.
Luther: (coughing) You’re a champ man, a real champion message leaver.
Rory: And you’re a fucking dork. (flicks lighter)

On the Other End

2009-05-18T09:25:00.002-07:00

Ireena: (sarcastically) Oh my God I just got a voice mail from that boy.
Penelope: Who Rory? You should check it.
Ireena: (dials for her voice mail) You know exactly what he’s going to say.
Penelope: What, that he wants you, but in too many words?
Ireena: Every boy is the same.
Penelope: No they’re not, everybody’s different. Maybe there’s, I don’t know, broad personality strokes across the gender, but individually, they all have their own quirks.
Ireena: (listening) Why can’t their quirks be good though?
Penelope: Do you think your quirks are positive?
Ireena: Yes! And guess what he said? (imitates Rory) Uh hey, Ireena, it’s Rory, uh, if you’re not doing anything tonight, uh, my friend Luther and I, uh, are going out to a bar, uh, and I don’t know, uh, maybe you’d want to meet up, uh?
Penelope: That is so exciting!
Ireena: I’ll go if you go with me.
Penelope: I don’t know…if Ted calls I might have to go hang out with him.
Ireena: Why are you so concerned about your professional demeanor? You said you’re not going to stay there forever…
Penelope: It’s really hard to stand next to somebody for eight hours and just tell them coffee orders all day without appearing to be slightly off-kilter NOT ONLY because you’ve just slept with them BUT ESPECIALLY because you didn’t return their phone calls.
Ireena: Okay, you win.
Penelope: Are you hungry at all?
Ireena: No, but we should have at least something before we go out.

25th Hour

2009-05-18T09:25:00.001-07:00

Charles and Spencer sat across from each other at the local hot dog stand. Spencer was very happy to be out of temporary prison, and eating a hot dog. Charles was not very happy about dropping five grand for his roommate who he knew would never be able to pay him back.
“Don’t you get it man, this is gonna be just like the 25th Hour! You know? Going to jail tomorrow, seeing my buddies for the last time, hanging out, just living it up, you know?”
“You’re not going to jail, Spencer. You’re just gonna get the shit fined out of you.”
“I don’t know man, that was a big bag of weed, I think I’m going away.”
“Well, let’s put it this way. You need to pay me back. Okay, like, I-can’t-go-spending-$5,000-every-time-my-roommate-accidentally-knocks-a-giant-bag-of-weed-out-of-his-own-bag-in-front-of-a-cop-car-type you need to pay me back. If you go to jail, I realize it’s pretty hard to pay me back. But if you don’t go to jail…I think the only fair thing is for you to be my personal assistant for a year.”
“You need a personal assistant! To do what?”
“You’ll take dictation.”
“What could you possibly dictate?”
“My history.”
“I’ll tell you man, if I went to jail, I’d have a good history to dictate.”
“If you go to jail, I’m not going to let you off the hook. You still owe me for this. Anybody else and you wouldn’t have a “25th Hour” type thing going on tonight.”
“I know, you’re the best roommate in the world.”
“So tonight, because you aren’t in a cell, and because you very well may lose the next good chunk of your good young life to a bullshit maneuver, something’s going to happen. Something’s going to happen that will eclipse everything you ever thought possible. You’re staring down into the black hole right now. You’re about to get sucked in. The thing is, right now, you don’t know. You could be my assistant for a year. But for now, let’s assume you’re going to jail. Let’s assume you’re stuck in a place that you have no hope of getting out of. Let’s assume you’re raped every morning. Let’s assume nobody wants to visit you there. Let’s assume you’d have no hope, and no prospects for your future, and let’s assume that when you got out, you’d be so depressed about your present situation in the world, being a bona fide ex-con, with all the problems like not being able to find a job and all that bullshit, that you’d go back to selling drugs to make a living. Let’s assume all that. So, life is pretty bad? You think? Well, tonight, that doesn’t matter. In the morning, you’re not going to wake up and go to your sentencing. No, you’re going to wake up in Jamaica, extradited and exonerated, having found an easy job, enough pay to live happily, all the weed you can smoke, and the beach, and the open sky and the blue water, and you’ll meet a nice Jamaican girl who has that impossibly cute accent whenever she speaks English, and you’ll eat great Caribbean food all the time, and you’ll be tan and thin and active and you don’t ever have to come back to the United States to “try and make it” because you already know how futile that is.”
There was a pause.
“Well, that sounds nice, but why the hell would I wake up in Jamaica? Are you going to secretly put me on a flight?”
“Goddammit you see right through me!” They continued eating their dinner at a leisurely pace. Unfortunately for Spencer, he would be going away tomorrow. Fortunately for Charles, he was about to have their apartment all to himself. Couldn’t he get some kind of insurance provision? Couldn’t the government pay for his roommate’s rent while he was in jail? Why should he have to waste his time finding a new roommate? He didn’t want a new roommate anyways. To Charles, just about nobody in the world agreed with him. Spencer was awful, but he was less awful than, say, Luther.

"The Only Thing That Matters is How Good You Look"

2009-05-18T09:24:00.001-07:00

Rory said that to Luther after Luther had said, “The only thing that matters is how well you express yourself.”
“You think that’s all girls care about?” Luther challenged.
“A friend of mine once told me, if the first time a girl looks at you, she wants to fuck you, she will want to fuck you forever.” Rory lectured.
Luther hit back, “Well, a friend of mine once told me that a girl will never leave a guy as long as he can make her come.”
Luther was trying to decide which shirt he should wear.
“Did she say if she was bringing her friend?”
“Yeah, she said she was bringing one.”
There was a pause. Then Luther went, “Ohhhh.”
“I have to tell you about what happened on my run!”

Smears Across a Windshield

2009-05-18T09:23:00.001-07:00

Bugs were flying across Jeanne’s windshield. The air was humid, rain was beginning to fall, and it was now dark. Jeanne turned her windshield wipers on, and the bugs smeared across the glass, the rain lubricating their demises. Jeanne was smoking a cigarette as she drove, and Missy was smoking a cigarette as she rode.
Missy started off, “So you wanted to know how you could be normal?”
Jeanne flicked her cigarette out the window. “Yeah. If I’m so special then how come nobody else recognizes that? Individuality is bullshit. The more individual you are, the less likely you are to meet anybody who can stand you for even a second.”
“Well, you just have to emphasize your most special quality.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“What?”
“That bullshit positive attitude about things. Some people, like you, are just born with it, you know. You just have this instinctual grasp on the world, like you know what you’re supposed to do all the time. Some people, like me, can’t just turn themselves on or off, we just are.”
“You lost me there for a second. I think you’re overthinking this. Let me get this straight: because you aren’t getting anything out of it, you’re going to give up everything that makes you special in favor of “normalizing” yourself in order to, at the bottom of it, have more successful relationships with guys.”
“Well, that is one part of it. But the other part of it is, people in general just don’t really care about what you do for your hobbies, or what you’d want to write to your senator about, or what films you really like. They just want the facts. They want the information they need, and nothing more. There’s no more room for things that actually mean anything to you personally to pop up in small talk conversations throughout the day.”
“So, because they don’t care, you’re going to just stop airing these opinions?”
“Yeah, what’s the use, I can think of better things to say. People respond better when you ask them what they would do, not when you tell them what you think and, by extension, what they should think.”
“You know Jeanne, I think you might just benefit from a good night of drinking.”

Cat and Mouse

2009-05-18T09:22:00.003-07:00

In another parallel universe, or another dimension, Ted might have been reincarnated as a cat. His human demeanor was catlike. He was quiet, mostly. He drank a lot of milk. He was not unlucky, his hair was not black—it was blonde. He made sounds akin to purring whenever anybody rubbed up against him. He was neat and orderly. He seemed like he had a task to carry out, but none of his acquaintances, friends, or family would have been able to tell you what that task was. The only aspect of his life that differed from that of most cats lives were his fingernails. They were kept very short. You could say he was almost exactly like a cat that had been de-clawed.
Sitting around his apartment, now clean after last night’s party, he decided it was probably a good time to call Penelope. But he was nervous. He almost wanted to just let it slide, to wait until work on Monday to talk to her. But also, if he didn’t call her, he’d be spending the night alone. He had to choose between loneliness and awkwardness. He didn’t know which was preferable. The problems inherent in each situation leaped out at him. How would he spend his time alone at the apartment? He was not a solitary drinker. But, what would he have to say to Penelope? There was nothing important he had to say. But he didn’t want to be alone. He’d have to be affable, and things would work themselves out.

In the same parallel universe, or in the same other dimension, Rory might be a mouse. There were not many ways in which he was mouse-like. He was not a tiny creature, nor did he eat a stereotypically high amount of cheese. He was like a mouse in that he was openly disparaged by everyone around him. They all disapproved of his life. They would rather catch him in a trap than allow him to thrive. He was like a mouse in that he would burrow his way into other people’s lives, and stay there until they realized he was of sufficient annoyance.
Here he was now in Luther’s life. They had been friends for over a year now. Luther didn’t find Rory annoying. The reason for this was, Luther was even more annoying than Rory was. If you were to take a survey of all the people in the United States, have them jot down all the annoying things they did—babble on endlessly, horde goods, play music too loudly, eat without manners—Luther and Rory would finish near the very top. In fact, they were so annoying that the only people who would actively seek them out were their families and each other. There was Luther, sitting a few couch cushions away from Rory, sucking on a bong. Rory was contemplating things. Normally, they might be talking about what they were going to do and where they were going to go, but tonight, before they went out, there was a silent rapport between them. They both knew what was at stake. Rory was the one who had been given the metaphorical basketball. In his mind he was dribbling past the half court line and he was looking around for someone to pass the ball too. His teammates weren’t looking to take any shots though. Strangely, they had turned against him, and now instead of having just five opposing players, he had nine opposing players to deal with. Luther was the only one on his side. He would have been a teammate, except he was a terrible shot, couldn’t dribble, and couldn’t play defense. So he was reduced to being a sideline cheerleader.

The Hungry Brain

2009-05-18T09:22:00.001-07:00

Ireena set the location, and Rory set the time. Neither one of them wanted to be totally decisive about the night. Their friend and their wingman, however, couldn’t have wanted to be more controlling. There was nothing at stake for them.
Take, for example, what Luther started going off to Rory about on the train ride:
“Why’d you have to tell them 11:00? Now we’re barely going to have anytime at the bar.”
“What the fuck do you need three hours at a bar to do something for?”
“What?”
“You don’t need to fucking write the Constitution, you know, you just need to be able to get to know them.”
“I like to relax, take in the sights, enjoy my drink.”
“Go out to a vodka lounge then.”
“I hate vodka.”
“Well stop complaining then.”
“I’m not complaining anymore.”
They were coming to the Western stop.
“You’re causing your own problems,” Luther said.
Ted walked onto the train.
He immediately saw Rory and Luther at the back of the car. He pretended like he didn’t see them, walked to the other side of the car, and took a seat facing away from them.
“Jesus Christ! Did you just see that!” Rory whispered.
“Wha?”
“That’s Ted sitting over there.”
“So, what’s the big deal. He flipped on you?”
“I think he saw me just now.”
“So, are you just going to ignore him? Or are you going to confront him?”
“Ignore him. Who wants confrontation? Besides, he’s alone. I don’t have anything left to prove. He wants to treat me like a sack of shit, fine; he’s the one who’s really the sack of shit though. Nobody else knows it, but he knows it.”
Rory’s voice had risen above the level of whisper. He was now talking at a standard decibel level.

Penelope also had her misgivings about the location.
“You should have chosen a nicer place. They’re going to be the ones getting drinks,” she said to Ireena as their taxicab stopped-and-went down Fullerton.
“No, we’re not going to let them buy us drinks.”
“Why not? I could stand to save some money.”
“If we let them buy us drinks, they’ll act like they have the right to get into our pants. We have to act like we have the right to get into their pants.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘we’?”
“Well, aren’t you going for his friend?”
“I don’t even know what he looks like yet. How could I be going for him?”

“Do a shot with me.” Rory said.
“I can’t afford a shot.”
“I’m buying.” “Fine.”
They took a shot of jager.
Luther started going off.
“You know, one of my friends says he was reading Anthony Kiedis’s book, and he says drinking a bottle of jagermeister was the closest he ever came to getting as high as he was on heroin.”
They were at the Hungry Brain. They were sitting at the bar. They were both drinking beers after their shot.
“What do you hope to accomplish exactly?” Luther asked.
Rory looked around the room. He looked back at Luther. “I want to be the guy, for this girl, that changes her opinion on men. This is the type of girl that still dates guys even though she hates them.”
It was at this point that Ireena spotted Rory in the bar and began to make her way towards him, Penelope in tow.
“She won’t give an inch. She makes the rules. You step aside of the rules for an instant, and she will knock you on your ass. I can tell these things. I want to get past her exterior, and I want to love her, and I want her to love me, but I’m sure she’s aware my intentions are inexplicably cruel and demented and selfish.”
She tapped him on the shoulder. And then, as he turned to her, totally un-self-consciously:
“Hey!”
“Well glad you showed up! We were about to leave!”
Luther tried to place these two girls. He knew he had seen them before. Somewhere. They belonged together, in his memory of them, they were there together. He had seen them in a setting not too different from the current one. His mind was a cloud. He could not recall any concrete details. However, he was able to associate sensual feelings with them. For the girl who said her name was Ireena, he had felt pity, and lust for her. For the other girl, he had sensed warmth, but also sadness. And he had felt lust for her too.
“What’s your name?” Penelope said to Luther.
“Oh hi, my name’s Lu.”
“I’m Penny.”
“Nice to meet you,” they both said.
Rory and Ireena were chatting back and forth.
“Penny was giving me shit about picking this bar.”
“Why?”
“Because she thought we should have tried to get more expensive drinks out of you guys.”
“Is that really how you girls think?” “No, we don’t think that way. But yes, we do think that way.”
“You are a strange creature, Ireena.”
Ireena impersonated Rory. “Yeah, I’m the guy who wants to meet up right before the crack of midnight, so I can get this girl drunk before the bars close and bring her home and fuck her.”
“You have such a mouth on you!” Rory mock scolded.
“I don’t like it when people waste all their time with hiding what they really feel.”
Rory didn’t want to answer that. “Don’t you get into trouble, acting like that with people? I mean, I’m offended.”
“People like me and people don’t like me. If you like me, cool let’s hang out. If you don’t like me, go fuck yourself.”
“You’re making me really uncomfortable.”
“I’m sorry. How’s it going, dear?”
The other conversation between Penelope and Luther was noticeably more civil.
“So you work in California?”
“That’s right.” Luther said. “I do all my work in Hollywood. I mean, I go out there for most of the year for work. But I officially live here. I’m on vacation this week. I’m going back on Monday.”
“Sounds exciting!”
“Yeah, it can be. What do you do?”
“I work at Uncommon Grounds.”
“No shit! I go there all the time!”
“Really?”
“Whenever I’m back in town, it is the place to get a good cup of cappuccino. It’s my first stop! I get in my taxi, I take it from the airport straight to Uncommon Grounds, I get my cup of cappuccino, and then I go back to my home. It sets me right. The jolt is perfect. I’m ready for anything after it.”
“Wow, you should write that down and send it to us, that’s something my manager would put on the wall.”
“Enough, tell me Penny, where do you live?”
“Bucktown.”
“Oh, I couldn’t guess that.”
“Shut up.”
“What drew you here?”
“You mean to the city? Or to the bar, here tonight?”
“Both.”
“Well, I guess I came to the city to work on my career, and to escape. I came to the bar because Irene made me. I mean, Ireena. But I call her Irene. It makes me able to rhyme weird things with her. Like call her Irene Bean, or Irene Lean, or Irene Teen. Or half rhymes, like Irene Cream. It’s easier to make fun of her that way. It’s pretty hard to make fun of her I guess.”
“Those are words of admiration you speak.”
“She’s a pretty good friend overall.”
“I see. Well, I’m not so lucky with that fellow she’s talking to. He’s not such a good friend, he kind of pisses me off all the time. But I am his friend, you know. I’ve got no problems with him. I don’t always want to hang out with him, but nobody else really goes out of their way to hang out with me the way he does. So I guess he’s my buddy. He can be kind of annoying though. I wouldn’t recommend talking to him.”
“No?”
“No you should just talk to me.”
“Well, what if I want to?”
“Go ahead, test him out, you’ll see where the better choice lies.”
“I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”
Penelope calmly walked to the ladies room.
She was thinking, “What arrogance!”
In the bar walked Ted. He walked over towards the bartender.
Luther saw him and tapped Rory on the shoulder and whispered, “Did you just see who came in the door?”
Rory looked over and saw Ted at the bar and he realized he was okay, he was talking to Ireena, and Ireena didn’t like him, right? She had bitched Ted out, right? It was okay if he saw them, because Rory could laugh in his face. But then he thought about Luther. He knew Penelope was on Ted’s arm at the party.
“Look, you better get out of here, sneak out, take Penny with you. Go somewhere.”
“She’s not gonna go for that.”
“Well, if she sees Ted, she’s gonna go with Ted.”
“What?”
“Look we’re gonna get out of here too. Just come with us. We’ll leave first, and then you can leave right after us. Just don’t let Ted see you.”
“Why do you have to be so afraid all the time?”
“I’m just trying to make this a pleasant night for everyone.”
Penelope came back from the bathroom, and she saw Ted at the bar. She walked over to him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Hey you, good to see you.” Said Ted.
“Good to see you. Are you meeting anybody here?”
“Meeting you.”
“I didn’t plan on meeting you here.”
“I know.” Ted struggled for meaning. “I just come here to have a drink sometimes. I’m seeing a buddy of mine tonight but he’s not back at his place yet, so I thought I’d have a drink in the meantime.”
“You’re lucky you’ve got that option.”
“What option?”
“To be able to afford a bar as a time killer.”
“I guess so. Look, do you want to get out of here?”
“I don’t know…You’re going to see your buddy?”
“You can come with me.”
“No, I’d feel weird. I’m actually out with one of my friends now so, I guess I’ll talk to you later?”
“Yeah, see you at work.”
The exchange did not go as Penelope had planned. She was confused again. But she had gotten Ted off of her. She wasn’t going to have to sleep with him tonight. She had other options. She was happy, and she sat back down at the table across from Luther.
“We have to get out of here.”
“Okay, where to?”
“Let’s all go hang out at my place,” Rory said.
“Alright.” They all seemed to agree.

Tearing a Hole Through Time

2009-05-18T09:21:00.001-07:00

The jailbird roommate and bailer crept down the sidewalks in the night. They had already been to four different bars.
Charles asked, “Are you satisfied yet?”
“I’ll give you one last request before I go to jail, one more road that will lead to total satisfaction. Pick up a girl tonight.” Spencer was resolute in this.
“Well, this poses a couple problems, uh, mainly that we are past approaching the 1:00 hour, and otherwise that we, uh, have been very unlucky in that department tonight.”
Spencer started speaking slowly, then came to a frenzied finish:
“You’ve known me for a long time now and you know that I’m not the kind of person that deserves to be going to jail. You also know that I usually don’t make huge demands on anybody, ever. I’ve always carried my load, and I never gave anybody else shit for the things they did. People are going to think I dealt drugs, and they’re going to automatically assume I’m this total creep. Let them think that. Nobody knows except for you, with whom the fault lies. My actions, my intentions, they are not malicious. I’ve been subject to the justice system. They’re malicious. They’re more malicious to me than I’ve ever been to anybody. I see them and the blood in my brain boils. What do you expect is going to happen in a country where all of its citizens get the shit scared out of them by the very people who should be protecting them? These citizens have to fight back! “The People” and “the State” do not agree on a whole lot of issues, and I say it’s time we make our grievances known, I say it’s time we make this country a true democracy and not just an oligarchy calling itself a democracy. The people have to make their feelings known. I feel this way! I don’t like the way you’re treating me! I’ve paid a lot of tax dollars and I want representation! Don’t ignore me again! But people don’t want to act like that, they’d rather pretend like they’re bored than try to make a real change, because change just seems so impossible. You see Charles, this is what I’m talking about, on a microcosmic scale, this same problem presents itself within each and every one of our tiny little cautionary brains—the external and the internal. On the external, we’re the greatest in the goddamn world. On the internal though, I bet, we’re the most at war within ourselves. And this, all of this, leads me to believe, that because I’m going to jail, and because all of this shit just came down on me, I can’t let it keep happening. I’ve been set up for a big fall, and now I need something, one last something, just to make me forget all the horrible things that could happen tomorrow. What girl could argue with that notion? I need an angel, an angel to take me away from all of this.”
“Sounds to me like you want to tear a hole through time.”
“I love tearing holes through time.”
“We should do it then. Let’s go back to the apartment. I’ll pick a little something up stashed away over there. Then we should go over to my cousins. He’s usually hanging out with some kind of girl.”
The two of them walked back to the apartment they shared. It did not take very long. Inside the apartment, Charles grabbed his magic pills, and a couple other small, plastic baggies. Spencer went in to go to the bathroom only.
Charles knocked on the door.
“You want to do some blow before we go over there?”
“Sure.”
“Okay I’ll start cutting it up.”
Spencer Blackwell looked around the bathroom he was standing in, his own bathroom for what been nine months. He looked at his watch. 12:30 AM. He thought about the time, about how he’d be expected in court in eight hours. Spencer had been known to be garrulous, but if anybody were able to see inside his mind they would witness a different beast from the one they knew:
“Eight hours, thirty minutes. A good length of time to sleep. A solid night’s sleep. Eight and a half hours is enough so that you wake up and feel like a new man. All decisions are easy to make after that much sleep. If I stay up all night, I’ll be a mess in the courtroom. But I want to be a mess. I want to go in there all coked up, high, drunk, otherwise catatonic, muster out whatever plea pops into my head, get my bullshit sentence for my bullshit offense, do whatever it takes to finish my time with the justice system, and come back, and be strong, and get a real job, and just start living like a monk. No more distractions. No more apologies for the fucked up things I’ve done. To wit—everyone lies, vice everywhere—to hell I run, twice young. Asceticism. Moderation.”
“Spencer we’re all ready to go over here, are you ever going to come out of there?”
He immediately flushed and washed his hands and went into the living room to join Charles.
“The first is for you, jail baby.”
Spencer snorted it up.
Charles followed doing the second. They stopped.
“Do you realize what’s going to happen tonight?” Charles started to address.
“No Charles, I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight. I don’t know that I’m going to be in court in eight hours. I don’t know that we’re going over to your cousin’s apartment in the hopes that he’ll have a girl over that I can extricate my foreboding through. I don’t know that you probably still have some more surprises in store for me. I don’t know that you’ve also got something up your sleeve. I don’t know that you’re not telling me something. I don’t know that you’ll get laid tonight and I won’t.”
“You realize, that while you were in the bathroom, I talked to my cousin, and sure enough, he has decided to have a party which will allow us to tear a hole through time.”
“He’s aware of the circumstances?”
“I didn’t tell him about your situation.”
“Tonight will be like any other night, okay, you’re just trying to build it up into something it could never possibly be.”
“Well, you’re just going to have to tag along then. You know that third one there is yours, pansy-to-be.”
“Hey, what is up with that?” Spencer asked. He snorted right after.
“Some convict dick is going to be up with that,” Charles said. Then snorted.
“It’s like, you try to make me feel better, and then you remind me how bad it’s really going to be.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be prepared than scared?”
“Let’s be prepared and go over to your cousin’s instead of dwelling on the worst possible shit.”
The two roommates left their apartment and started the trek to Rory’s. The night was all blue black. Still warmer than most nights in October. No clouds visible. No stars really visible from the city. There was that orange fog hanging at the horizon. There was nothing noteworthy visible in the sky, except for the moon, which fell into a sharp crescent white contrasting against the midnight expanse.

Black Hole

2009-05-18T09:20:00.001-07:00

Missy and Jeanne were sitting in Missy’s dorm room. Missy was continuing her instruction to Jeanne in how to act normal. They were having fruit juice and vodka drinks.
Jeanne asked, “So, I’m not ever supposed to show a boy that I like him?”
“You’ve got it. If you show them that you like them, there’s nothing you can do anymore. He knows it, and he will always want your tits and your ass.” Missy gestured towards her own as she said it.
“What about my vag?” Jeanne gestured as she said it.
“Well, that too. But it doesn’t roll off the tongue quite the same way.”
Jeanne was laughing at Missy’s silliness while drunk.
“Okay, but to be serious here, you really can’t let a boy know you like him. They’re the ones that have to let you know. This way, we can keep the upper hand.”
“Well, how does it help?”
“Okay, number one, you tell a boy you like him, and unless he’s gay or you’re nasty, and you’re not nasty—so this should never happen to you—unless he’s gay—he’s going to hook up with you—and probably even if he is gay he’s going to hook up with you. Okay, so telling a boy you like him equals getting hooked up with. This is because you’re gorgeous, if you were not gorgeous, I might say, go ahead, tell a boy you like him, because it’s not like you’d have anything better going on.”
“Well, what about what you did today at the beach, blatantly letting that guy see your tits. Isn’t that telling him you like him? He didn’t hook up with you.”
“That’s because you were with me, and you had your top on. If you had your top off, believe me, he would have abandoned his workout.”
“Isn’t that kind of exhibitionistic?”
“Yes, it definitely is, I admit it. But you’ve got to admit that it was a lot of fun. That look on his face.”
“Well, are we just going to sit here all night?”
“I could give that boy I met last night a call.”
“Okay.”
“It might be a good chance to test out being normal for you.”
“Super.”
Missy opened up her cell phone and picked out the newest name in her contact list—Marcus.
Jeanne stood up and checked herself in the mirror.
“You’re going to a party, again? Did you like that one last night?”
Jeanne flipped the back of her hair up, checking to see if it might look better that way.
“This one’s even crazier?”
Jeanne looked at her shoes. She didn’t think it was outré to wear Converse yet.
“Okay, well we’ll meet you over there, I guess.”
Jeanne looked at how her shirt sculpted her body. She didn’t have quite an hourglass shape to her, though she was noticeably thinner than usual.
“Let’s go get a cab.” Missy suggested.

Condecension

2009-05-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

Luther and Rory were with Penelope and Ireena. Marcus was sitting with Charles and Spencer. All of them were drinking at Rory’s apartment. Several of them were also experimenting with other chemicals
“So you know I’m going to jail tomorrow, right?” Spencer said to Marcus.
“Are you serious?” Marcus answered, astounded.
“This is just like the 25th Hour!” Spencer exclaimed.
“Whoa.” Marcus reiterated, dumbfounded. “I’m totally just hanging out with my buddies, having one last good night.” Spenser happily announced.
“But more than that,” Charles cut in, “we’re going to tear a hole through time tonight. We’re going to erase the notion of duration.”
The two architects of the evening, Rory and Ireena, had become disinterested in arguing with each other about matters of taste and had taken to listening in on the other conversations going on and making comments on them.
“Yeah man, we’re like, totally going to rock the earth!” Ireena mocked.
“Hey, that’s my cousin you’re talking about.”
“Well, sorry, I didn’t know. But he’s just like, psychedelic man.”
“I say we take a few bottles of wine, some plastic cups and we walk down into the park and write poetry!” Charles cheerfully suggested.
“No way,” Rory said, “I don’t want to leave here anytime soon. But maybe somebody else will go with you.”
“I’m down for anything tonight,” Spencer said.
Penelope and Luther looked at the forming consensus.
Around this time, Missy and Jeanne rang the buzzer.
Marcus went down with Charles and Spencer, and Penelope and Luther decided to go along too. As they met the two girls on the stairs coming down, they explained what was going on, how Rory and Ireena didn’t want to go out with the rest of them, and how they were going to bring wine and walk down into the park and write poetry. The girls, given the circumstances, tagged along.
Three A.M. The seven of them were walking into the park. They were opening the bottles of wine and walking towards the beach. Charles had taken Marcus aside.
“I’ll sell you one of these. Magic Pills. It’s some crazy ayuhasucas compound. Telepathic experiences. I’m giving one to Spencer in light of tomorrow. For you, ten dollars.”
“Is it safe?”
“It’s used as a medicine in South America. I haven’t heard of a bad trip.”
“How long does it last?”
“Four hours or so. It’s not too overwhelming but some amazing things tend to happen. It’s like, your luck suddenly changes. It’s weird.”
“Okay, I’ll take one.”
Missy and Jeanne came up.
“Could I have one too?” Jeanne said.
“Sure, but there’s a five dollar discount for you.” Charles said.
“Hey.” Marcus said. “That’s cheating.”
“This girl has earned the five dollar coupon. She has been an extraordinary citizen.”
“Thank you.”
They took their pills. And then they walked together for a while, muttering conversations, waiting for their pills to work. Penelope and Luther had walked with them, but as the other group of them became increasingly frantic, they slowed down a bit, and walked together behind them.
“These are some crazy people you hang out with.” “They’re ridiculous. They’re going to have to slow down sometime.”
“So when are you going back to Hollywood?”
“Monday. I mean next Monday. Nine more days of vacation, or something. Then I go back to shoot a movie. But I’m still working here.”
“You’re working here?”
“In the interim. I’ve got a job I drive to during the week.” “So it’s not really your vacation.”
“Eh, sort of. I mean, I’m leaving in nine days. I won’t be gone for that long, this is going to be a quick shoot.”
“What are you doing until then?” “I don’t know, research, just trying to come up with a game plan.”
“That sounds interesting. You should come by the coffee shop sometime when I’m finishing my shift; I’ve been thinking a lot lately about getting into acting.”
“That sounds like fun. We should do it next week.”
Missy was not on ayuhauscas. She was walking with everyone else, and they were all on it. Now it was beginning to take a very strong effect on them.
Charles shouted, “I’m the ghost of the Sun. The dead Sun now. What happens when the Sun goes dead cold out? Do the planets keep revolving around the sun after it explodes? Who can tell these things. We’re only here for 100 years at the very best. These things takes hundreds of thousands of years to occur, but while we’re here, things are okay. Global warming probably isn’t going to prematurely end all of our lives. It’s the science of it. None of it will really affect our lives, or our children’s lives, or grandchildren’s, or even great grandchildren’s. And besides, how much of a connection do you feel to your great grandparent’s? Do you even know what they were like? Do you blame them for the biases of their time? Do you think they’d really blame you? No, we just have to leave things as greatly undisturbed as possible. But one day, when the Sun dies, and all living things on this planet are obliterated, and the supernova occurs, who knows what happens to the planets? Do they sit in space, in orbit? Do they fall into nothingness? One thing is certain—dead stars are still pulsars.”
Spencer was greatly affected by the pills. He wanted to do anything to get away from everyone. He became isolationist. He walked towards the beach. On the sand, he sat down, crossed his legs. Missy had followed after him. They sat there together.
“Are you having fun tonight?”
“I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Do you even know what time it is?”
“Not a clue. But the Sun can’t be far from coming up.”
“Damn, is there any wine left?”
“Here, let’s have another glass.” She had one of the bottles with her.

Jeanne and Marcus were walking together, both on the pills, now taking effect.
“Jeanne I know I haven’t known you very long, but I feel this real connection to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just feel like we’ve been on this journey together.”
“Yeah. It’s kind of sad, this is going to be one of the last warm nights of the year. We’re in for six months of Hell.”
“My brain feels like it’s bubbling inside my head. Like a kettle boiling. Or a whirlpool.”
“Whirlpool brain. That sounds like an album title.”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Nothing, it’s Sunday, rest, you know.”
“I don’t know how long this stuff is going to last for but I don’t see myself sleeping anytime soon.”
Jeanne needed a lesson right now from Missy. Since she was nowhere to be seen, she decided.
“Okay, but I don’t see how you feel so hyper. I feel so mellow. Like I could just fall forever sinking through sheets of silk, a pile of feathers. I bet this grass right here is soft like the womb.” Jeanne laid down in the grass. Marcus laid down beside her.

Charles was alone now, stumbling through the forest. He had consciously separated from his companions. He had set them up with the situation, he had changed the course of the evening, and he didn’t want to interfere further. But he was alone now in the forest. There was nobody else around. No runners, no animals, no couples romantically lazing through the wee hours. Everything had taken on a more surreal quality than it had when he had taken the pills earlier in the day. It was as if two trips in a day was one too many. The trees started to look like woods in black and white films. Charles’s vision became blurred. It seemed as if the air pressure had suddenly risen, and all the heat was being sucked out of the space directly around Charles. A fog seemed to blow, and it smelled a bit like gasoline. There was a scattering of birds in the trees. Charles saw a dark path leading into the woods. There seemed to be a footpath so he followed it in. After about fifty feet, there came a clearing. It looked as if the space had been used to make a fire recently.
He sat down on a log. He looked up at the sky. From his point in the forest the sky took on a different atmosphere. He was no longer in the city. He was out camping. Charles did not light a fire though. He sat on the log and looked at the sky, and he said, “The pulsar of the Sun, the ghost of the Sun, does not accommodate the Milky Way galaxy at this time. Service is disconnected permanently. Please find alternate forms of life-sustaining energy.”
“What are you doing, Charles?”
Charles heard the voice and looked behind him. He saw a figure ten feet back, against the foliage.
“Who’s there?”
“You think this is a good way to spend your life?”
Charles recognized the voice.
“You’re not real. And I’m tripping, and I’m hallucinating you, and yes, I think this is a great way to spend my life at this time. Did you ever make anybody happy? Do you know how that feels?”
“I made you happy, didn’t I?”
“But my life is also irretrievably fucked up because of you.”
“You shouldn’t talk that way to me.”
Charles loosened up.
“Well still, what’s a better way to spend my life?”
“Don’t you want to build something? Make something out of it? Leave something behind after you’re gone?”
“I’m making these people happy in the present. When I’m gone, I won’t get any satisfaction from what I’ve left behind. Right now, I get that satisfaction. Did you ever get that?”
“I got that plenty of times.”
Another voice sprung up.
“Charles you should go back to your friends.”
“Why do you two always have to tell me what to do?”
“We still want to look out for you.”
“You can’t do this to me. I mean, you’re not real, you’re dead, I’m alive, I’m hallucinating my memory of you, which is so obsolete at this point in my life that it just really takes me out of my element okay, life is not all roses okay, I know you knew that, but don’t automatically assume that because you paid some sort of debt or whatever that I’m going to benefit in the long run.”
“All we’re saying is that you should appreciate what’s there in front of you, you don’t have to transform everything into your personal vision.”
“I don’t! I appreciate whatever vision created everything around me.”
“Then your heart’s in the right place.” the more tender voice said.
“His heart is not in the right place! He should be straightening up!” the first voice said, fading out.
The apparitions receded into the deeper woods and Charles started pondering the circumstances since he had left the rest of the crowd. He decided that he had just had mystical vision. The Sun still hadn’t risen, and he could hear some of his cohorts shouting in the distance. He left his spot in the woods, and went to find them on the beach.

Coy Mistress

2009-05-18T09:18:00.001-07:00

After their various friends and acquaintances left the party, Rory and Ireena were left alone on the couch. There was no one left to make fun of. The conversation was not deflected by peripheral circumstances. Rory had fallen deeper and deeper for Ireena the more they had talked that night. It was clear to anybody in the room at the party that this was so. It was not clear to them what Ireena’s intentions were, but they figured since she opted to stay in, she was not unwelcoming to Rory’s advances.
For the first half hour or so after the crowd left the apartment, the two danced around the sexual tension by continuing to drink and go outside for cigarettes. But after a half an hour, the cracks began to show.
“So do you want another drink?” Rory asked, after finishing his own and looking at Ireena’s glass.
“Could I just have a glass of water? I think I’ve had enough to drink for now.”
Rory went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of water. He came back and sat on the couch with Ireena.
“It’s getting really late now,” Ireena said.
“Yeah, it’s clearly the middle of the night at this point.”
“I wonder if everyone is still over at the park, writing poetry.”
“They’re pretty crazy. I don’t think I belong with them when they do that sort of thing though. I’ll tag along for most of their nutty ideas, but sometimes I just don’t get them.”
Ireena slumped over on the couch.
“Are you falling asleep?”
“I think so. I should probably get going.”
“Are you taking a cab home?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean, if you don’t feel like going through all that trouble, you can stay here if you want, it doesn’t make any difference to me.”
“No, I have to sleep in my own bed. Or else I’ll get back tomorrow and not be well rested enough, and sleep all day. It’s better if I go now.”
“Well, whatever you need to do.”
“I just need to go to the bathroom.”
When Ireena got up, Rory immediately began thinking about what he could do to be as attractive as possible to her. At this stage, here she was leaving, he had her number, he could ask her if she wanted to go on a date, or he could tell her she was an incredible woman, or he could just try to kiss her and see if she was receptive.
While she was in the bathroom, Ireena thought about Rory’s offer. What difference would it make if she stayed? She knew he wanted to sleep with her. She wanted to sleep with him but she didn’t want to deal with the fallout of it. She knew he’d be all over her constantly and she’d have to figure out a way to let him off nicely.
When she came out of the bathroom, Rory was still sitting on the couch.
“You know I think you’re really incredible.”
“What?” Ireena asked, startled, looking sober suddenly.
“I haven’t met a girl like you before, and I don’t think I ever will again.”
“Thank you, is that a compliment?”
“I don’t want you to go. I wish you could stay and we could stay up all night together.”
“It doesn’t really fit into my plans at the moment.”
“Well you want to do it some other night, maybe a Friday night next time?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t decide right now. I’m really tired.”
“Okay well can I call you later this week?”
“Sure, just make sure it’s after five.”
She gathered her stuff together and started out the door.”I had a really nice time. Goodnight.” She kissed him on the cheek and went down the stairs and out to the street to wait for a taxi.

The Right Side of the Brain

2009-05-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

Penelope and Luther were walking alone together through the park. The time was 4 AM, and they had both decided it was time to go home.
“Where is everybody?”
“Just be very quiet for a second.”
The two were silent.
They heard singing and drunken logic in the distance.
“We should all walk back together,” Luther confirmed.
Penelope walked alongside him.
“So what was the most interesting role you ever had?”
Luther had to think of a good one.
“Well uh, that’s a tough question. I’ve had about ten different roles so far. Between the ages of 12 and 25, ten roles. I mean speaking parts.””
“So I wouldn’t have seen any of those movies?”
“I don’t know. Did you see ‘Dennis the Menace?’”
“The movie? Yeah! You were in that?”
“That was my first role. I’m really just a glorified extra. But I got bigger roles after that.”
“Really, like what?”
“Oh, little independent movies with tiny budgets and no audience. I don’t think you would have heard of them. Barely any of them got theatrical release.”
They were coming closer to the group they had straggled behind a couple hours before
“Try me, I started off college as a cinema studies major. I’ve seen a lot of indies.”
Luther struggled to come up with a generic sounding title.
“Did you ever see ‘Isolation?’”
“No, what was it about?””That was my biggest role. I played an urban dweller struggling with agoraphobia who sought solace in the mountains. It was kind of a travelogue movie, but I’ve heard it’s really popular amongst mountain climbers who suffer from agoraphobia”
“Do you have an extra copy around your house? I’d love to see you on screen.”
“Yeah, I’d just have to rummage through my storage unit first.”
“Luther!”
It was Charles, emerging from the foliage.
“Luther, I saw you here earlier today! And here we are again; who would have thought such serendipity was possible?”
“I don’t get it. But then again, that, earlier today, was a coincidence. This, now, you kind of made us all come along with you.”
“I merely proposed! The idea was met with mutual support, all around, and we left.”
“Yeah, but I’m saying, this isn’t serendipitous. You are the direct cause of this effect. Serendipity is when there is no logical cause.”
“Break out your dictionaries!” Charles conceded, and started walking ahead.

At the Lodge

2009-05-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

The crowd had convened around one of the lodges in the park nearby the beach. It was surprising that none of them had been stopped by police officers. They were all drinking out of open containers. But they had all broken off into two’s or three’s or one and none appeared overly abnormal from the views of the few cop cars scattered throughout the park. They had been covert with their wine drinking, but it was after 4 AM now, and they were very drunk.
Spencer suggested they go inside the lodge and smoke a joint, so they could be smoking at 4:20.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense to do!” he said.
Penelope did not wish to put herself at risk, and so said she’d wait outside. Luther said that he would keep her company, and keep watch.
“If any cops come, I’ll shout ‘help!’ and you guys all come out and pretend to help!”
Charles, Spencer, Jeanne, Missy, and Marcus all went into the men’s bathroom in the lodge and squeezed into a stall at 4:19 AM.
“This is for Spencer.” He passed a joint over to him.
“This is for every time anybody ever told you to learn from your past mistakes. This is for every time anybody told you that you weren’t fit to cohabit society with them. When they thought you were just a stoned asshole. This is to prove them right. They were right all along.”
A bum knocked on the door of their stall.
Everyone looked around puzzled. The minute had turned over.
“And you know what? Even if they were right, even if they are right, hell, especially if they’re right, then I don’t want to be right anymore.” He lit it and passed it to Missy.
“Well, I usually don’t do this, but tonight I’ll make an exception. For you, Spencer!”
She puffed on it and passed it to Jeanne.
“I usually do do this, and tonight, I won’t make any exceptions.”
She took a drag and passed it to Charles
“Though I can never look upon you with the eyes of a lover, let there be some spark in some other galaxy as a result of the contact between mouth, and paper, and mouth, which bespeaks the deep and true tenderness I feel for you.”
Charles passed it to Marcus
The bum knocked again.
“I’m a lover, not a dandy.” Marcus said before he hit the joint.
Spencer opened up the stall door and saw the bum. He gave him a dollar and shut it. After another go around the circle, they heard Luther yell, “Help!” The joint was finished, and they threw it in the toilet and flushed it. They all came running out.

Beating Up a Bum is Hard to Do

2009-05-18T09:15:00.002-07:00

The bum was standing in front of Luther and Penelope in a stance of aggressive supplication.
“Please, please, please, please, I need to eat.”
“What’s going on here?” Spencer announced.
“This guy is harassing us,” Penelope said.
The bum turned to them. “Excuse me, God bless your hearts, do you have any change for a bum in the middle of the night?”
“I just gave you a dollar!”
The bum was walking back towards Luther.
“Please, sir, have you got any extra change?”
“I said no!”
“Come on man, you’ve got to have something.”
“Listen, even if I do, I’m not going to give it to you.”
“I’ve got to eat, I’ve got no job, my mother passed away a year ago, and I’ve got nobody. Please!”
“That’s not my problem!”
The crowd started walking quickly ahead, as if to lose the bum. Luther and Penelope lagged behind.
“Why man, why can’t you spare an extra dollar or something, it would make all the difference. If everybody gave a little extra, we’d all be able to make it okay, help each other out, distribute the wealth, no more poverty, and no more people going hungry in America. But everybody’s cold man, just like you.”
“Go bother somebody else. Or go sleep under a tree.”
The two caught up with the other five, and the bum increased his speed as well. Eventually, they broke into a slow trot, at which point, the bum sped up quickly and grabbed Penelope by the waist. It was only a matter of seconds that she was within his hands. She screamed, and then Luther stopped. He dashed over to the bum and grabbed his head. Penelope was freed. Luther threw him to the ground and kicked him. Penelope kicked him too.
“Please don’t hurt me.” “Why did you chase after us and grab her like that?”
“You felt me up you piece of shit!”
“Please I’m going to kill myself tomorrow. I have no livelihood.”
“Go to a homeless shelter or something you sick bastard.”
Marcus looked over at the two as they rejoined the rest of them.
“Whoa, that was really fucked up.”
And who could say he was wrong?

Aftermath

2009-05-18T09:15:00.001-07:00

Spencer watched as Penelope and Luther slowed down again and walked behind the rest.
“See, that’s violence. That’s hurtful, what they just did. I gave that bum a dollar, and you see, no violence was had on my head. Now, Luther is not as charitable as me, and look what happens—violence, suicide threats, molestation—but still, I’m the one on trial.”
Missy said, “Don’t you think you’ll get out of it?”
Charles answered for him, “If Spencer goes to jail, I’m going to need a new roommate.”
“I’m going to jail. There’s evidence. There’s nothing to do to cover it up. I’ve resigned myself to the fact.”
“But you’re not like other people that go to jail!” Missy pleaded.
“And how many of those have you known?” Charles asked. “The criminal mind is trained to be ordinary in ordinary circumstances, and totally fucked up when nobody else is looking.”
“I guess that makes me a criminal then. And I deserve what I’m going to get. Right?”
“The law isn’t overly emotive.” Charles reasoned.
They emerged from the park and back on the city streets. The night almost over, and nobody wanted to extend it any further. Not even Spencer, who by this point was walking with his head on Missy’s shoulder, and his arm around her waist. Penelope went home with Luther, Jeanne went home with Marcus, and Charles went home alone.

Marcus

2009-05-18T09:14:00.001-07:00

Marcus couldn’t figure out how to put the condom on right. He unfurled the whole thing and then realized that no matter how much he stretched out the base of the latex, it was going to kill as he tried to put it on. This was the only condom present in Jeanne’s dorm room at the moment.
“We don’t have to do it,” Jeanne said, “We can just do a few other things.” Then she kissed him.
Marcus was just months away from his 21st birthday. He was not a virgin, but he could count his sexual encounters on one hand. Each time he had managed to get into bed naked with a girl, it would be the last time for that girl. This was not due to any deficiencies on Marcus’s part, but by his unwillingness to ever talk to anybody he had been intimate with after the fact.
He was a college student and he made good grades and he had a good internship with Touch & Go. He was acutely aware that everything which was presently solid in his life was nothing which was going to last. He was only going to be with Touch & Go through the summer, and they were not going to offer him any paying positions. He might have been able to handle the business end of a major-indie record label, but he would never possess the musical talent or the rapport with musicians necessary to become a player in the field. The problem was that he always thought he knew more than whoever was giving him orders. This led to a lot of talk about insubordination and smartass-edness. How Marcus never talked about anything that was actually relevant. How he was incredibly selfish, and somehow nobody would call him out on it. How his internship was limited to six months for a reason.
After the semi-sex, Jeanne and Marcus said little, kissed again, and tried to fall asleep.
In the morning, Marcus was the first one up, and showering. Jeanne was still asleep when he got out. He wrote her a note before he went home:

“Thanks for everything, it was a great night, (sorry for my incompetence!), you’re an incredible girl, have a nice day. –M “

The Trial

2009-05-18T09:13:00.002-07:00

Spencer did not wake up in Jamaica. He woke up next to Missy. It was 7:30, and his alarm clock was going off. He had slept for about 26 minutes.
Missy moaned. Then she said, “Do you want me to go with you?”
“Yes, I want you to be there when they send me away.”
When they were having breakfast a little later, they saw Charles, and he said, “Do you want me to go to the courthouse?”
“Yes, please come along with us. It’s going to be a memorable experience.”
“Don’t you think it’s something to forget?” Missy asked. “I mean, this is the kind of thing that blows over, obviously, it’s not like you killed somebody.”
“It’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.”
They ate their breakfast in silence.

On the train ride down to the court house, the three of them sat together. There was not much conversation. The train was mostly empty. When they got off at the court house stop, the conversation began.
“So, like, what’s going to happen do you think?” Spencer asked. “What’s the procedure for this?”
“I think you’ll stand when they ask you to rise, and walk forward, and ask you how you plead.” Charles reasoned.
“I thought they only ask you how you plead if you have a lawyer.” Missy thought aloud.
“I don’t have a lawyer! What should I do?”
“I think you should just say you did it, and you’re sorry, and you want to move on with your normal life as soon as possible.” Charles reasoned. “That sounds like a good answer!” Missy enthused.
When they walked up to the steps of the courthouse, Spencer asked if the two of them would hold him as they walked in together. The walked in and sat in one of the rows of benches. They sat for forty-five minutes and listened to other cases, mostly DUIs from the night before. Finally, the judge called Spencer.
“Blackwell, Spencer?”
He rose and said, “Present.”
“You’ve been charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana, how do you plead?”
“Guilty.”
“You’re sentenced to six months in Cook County Jail. You may make an appeal if you wish.”
“When?” “You can see the bailiff afterwards and she will give you the forms necessary for appeal.”
“How long do I have to make the appeal?”
“That’s to be covered by the bailiff.”
The judge got up and left, and Spencer went over to the bailiff.
“Am I going to jail, or is it possible to get out of this?”
“You’re going away, sorry. But you can try to appeal if you want to. Nobody ever gets it though.”
“Why not?” She leaned in closer and whispered in his ear, “Money.”
“Did you really have to whisper that?”
“I don’t want to offend anybody here.”
Spencer got the forms from the bailiff and he and Missy and Charles left the courthouse and went back towards the train station.

Spencer's Parents

2009-05-18T09:13:00.001-07:00

His parents didn’t know what happened. They were living in South Beach. They were reclining on the sand while Spencer was in the courthouse.
Mrs. Blackwell looked over the ocean.
“Oh, it’s such a beautiful day!”
Mr. Blackwell responded by sighing pleasurably.
“You know,” he began, “I was just thinking about going—“
His cell phone began playing the chorus of some tropical-themed pop song.
“Spencer, what’s up?”
“Well, something.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I might be going to jail for six months, unless I can make an appeal.”
“For what!”
“Marijuana possession.”
“You idiot! How could you ever do something so stupid?!”
“It fell out of my bag.”
‘Ah!”
“They say it helps if you have money.”
Mr. Blackwell calmed himself down.
“How much money do you think?”
“Based on what the bailiff said, I don’t know, a hundred thousand.”
“Jesus Christ! Is this bribery of the legal system?”
“No, it’s just to prove that I’ll rehabilitate myself, go to rehab, and stop using drugs.”
“That’s laughable.”
“Come on, you’ve got to respect a system that won’t clog up their jails with potheads and actually give me a second chance without the fear of losing my anal virginity.”
“You do some more research on this appeal, and you tell me when I need to be there, you dig?”
“I dig.”
“Now, your mother and I have to get back to our tanning and swimming. You better be getting back to me soon on this.”
“By the end of the week.”
“I’m not proud of you.”
“I wouldn’t be either.”
“Goodbye.”
Mr. Blackwell hung up the phone and Mrs. Blackwell asked what was the matter and Mr. Blackwell said that they’d be taking a little trip in a little while.

Love in the Head, Not Bed

2009-05-18T09:12:00.003-07:00

Penelope lay next to Luther now, a morning after lying next to Ted. Luther was still asleep, but she could not will herself to go back to it. She got out of his bed and walked around his apartment. She went to his kitchen and started brewing coffee. She sat down on the couch and waited for the coffee to drip.
She was thinking about what she was going to say when Luther woke up:
“Last night was the most fun I’ve had since I can remember.”
“You’re the best—I just thought you should know.”
“I want to go shopping today. You want to come with?”
“I made coffee for us, I hope it’s okay.”
“You’re so sexy just waking up in the morning.”
“Hey baby (followed by a kiss).”
“Do you think Spencer’s done with his trial already?”
“I’m not quite sure, but I think I should get going.”
“Do you know this guy Ted? I slept with him last night.”
“I wonder what happened with Ireena and Rory.”
The coffee was done, and a beeper went off, which Penelope hurried over towards as not to wake up Luther. She pushed the right button and poured herself a cup and sat back down on the couch alone. She was bored, so she opened up the apartment door, grabbed the Sunday paper, started reading the Style section. After about fifteen minutes she was wired from the coffee, and she started giggling at the main article of the section—a piece on the next fashion trend to come. The newspaper called it Nu Grunge, they explained that it was exactly the same as the original grunge, except this time it was to be purposefully affected, not actually lived, and all of the original Generation X kids were parents now, and they had to keep some remnant of their sordid pasts. They ditched the drugs, they ditched the malaise, but they kept the clothes. So all of the old grunge wear was popular again, but only if it was original, used, and if it was new, recently woven and tailored, well, high school kids would be buying it, and here was another cycle to last another fifteen years. It was truly up to the poor to make the styles of the rich, Penelope decided.
Luther emerged quietly from his bedroom.
“I made some coffee, I hope it’s okay.”
“You are awesome.” Luther said as he went to fill up.
They drank their coffee together.
“So, what kind of research are going to do?”
“Today? I’m just going to fuck around today. No real work to be done.”
“Sound nice. I have a shift starting at 4.”
“Oh man, well you should get baked with me before you have to be ready for work.”
Penelope laughed and then said, “Okay.”

Painless Euthanasia

2009-05-18T09:12:00.001-07:00

Ireena was deep in the tendrils of her brain. Basic motor functions occurred to her, but higher consciousness eluded her. She was confused. Why was she walking through an elevated pedestrian walkway on Mars? Why were there only a couple other random people on the planet with her? Why couldn’t she ask them what they were supposed to do? They were so occupied with their business, would they even care that she was a fellow human? There were Martians there too, of course, and they had huge heads and ridiculously skinny bodies. Ireena was scared to talk to the Martians, even though they might be easier to communicate with. She kept walking down the endless elevated pedestrian walkway, which Martians also used. The walkway must have stretched on for hundreds of miles, and she couldn’t see anybody as far as she looked ahead or behind. Once a figure came into view, it would take them about ten minutes to cross paths. Each time she crossed a figure’s path, she would have the urge to say something, but this was all so confusing, what would she ask? She decided to ask, “Why are we on Mars?” The next human that walked past her was asked that question, and he replied, “Because Earth is overpopulated, duh, do you have amnesia or something?” The next figure was a Martian, walking behind her. She slowed down enough to let the alien catch up to her. It walked alongside her without any cognizance of her, until she started thinking, “I wish I could talk to you and I wish I could get some answers but you’re a Martian and you’re probably mad that we’re here at all in the first place so I understand but if you would be so kind as to tell me what you’ve learned, how you deal with the fact that you have to share your planet now, I mean , are you secretly thinking about when you’re going to kill us all or do you have any new answers to the questions we’ve never been able to figure out? People all treat me like I’m an idiot here, but I really don’t know how I got here, so maybe you can explain just when all these humans started emigrating through space and that would really clear a lot up for me.” At which point the Martian looked over at her, its face unmoved, then looked straight ahead and continued walking. Ireena kept pace with the Martian, and continued to attempt to communicate, but it kept moving faster exponentially. Finally, it turned around, a safe distance ahead of her, and said, “You know that.”

She woke up shocked from her dream and looked at her clock. 11:17.
She repeated, “Can’t forget the dream, can’t forget the dream,” as she moved over to her desk, switched on her computer, and hurriedly typed out all the details she remembered: elevated pedestrian walkway, humans on Mars, Martians communicating telepathically and vocally, reaffirming what she already knows to be the truth.
“As usual, I learn nothing new about myself,” She said aloud in her bedroom to herself. She moved towards her bathroom, turned on the shower, and she shut the door. Ireena had no roommate.

Impasse

2009-05-18T09:11:00.003-07:00

The consequences of these days weighs heavily on Rory, for some reason. He woke up after Ireena, in his own apartment, in which he had no roommate either. It was Sunday morning. He read the newspaper. He drank coffee. He watched inane Sunday morning TV. He smoked a joint by himself. He wandered around his apartment laughing to himself. He went to his CD collection and admired it. He went to his book collection, and he took out a couple books of philosophy he intended to rifle through stoned. The meaning of the text never revealed itself to him in this state, but he found it much easier to draw his own interpretations, as improperly sensed as they might be. All too often, he came up with a perverted interpretation, which he would then laugh off, telling himself, “God I’m fucked up.”
He went outside his apartment and walked around his neighborhood. He went to a record store and bought a couple albums he used to own, but that had been stolen from him. To be sure—Either/Or and Pinkerton. Once he had these albums again, he went back home, and listened to them, rolling another joint between albums. He almost started to laugh and cry at the same time.
It was dark now, and almost dinner time. The day had rushed by without general activity. Rory felt like calling up Luther, or Charles to ask for advice, but then he realized that neither of their advice was to be taken. Luther would tell him to lie, and Charles would tell him to seize the day, which was at this point, far too uncool for Rory. Seizing the day required something to say. He already said everything he needed to say to Ireena.
Rory suddenly got depressed and forgot about eating dinner. He tried to go to bed, but he lay awake for four hours until his body gave out. After the first hour, he tried to focus on something to help him sleep. After the second hour, he started to get mad at himself for not being able to fall asleep. This led to a barrage of insults directed at himself, inside his mind, occasionally breaking out audibly from his mouth, which probably made him sound like he was schizophrenic to his upstairs and downstairs neighbors, whose walls were quite thin. After the third hour, he reached full scale suicidal depression. He thought about how he couldn’t do anything right, not even sleep. He thought about how Ireena would never have cause to like him. He thought about Spencer going to jail for weed, and about how easily it could happen to him. He thought about how much fun everything was the night before, everyone in his apartment. He thought about whether or not Luther had gotten with Penelope. Of course, he knew the back story, and he was worried about violence. He thought about his cousin, and how he was just starting to admire his flippancy towards the world. He thought about how much he hated both of his parents and his brothers and sisters. He thought Marcus was an interesting figure to make an appearance the night before. He suddenly wanted to puke. A fresh stream of self-criticisms came flooding out. He felt like he was trying to shake out of his skin. He couldn’t stop fidgeting. He thought about masturbating but decided that took too much effort at this point. He pulled on his hair a little bit, tossed off the comforter, looked at the clock, 3:34 AM. The pressure to fall asleep early enough in order to wake up for work made him want to kill himself. Rory considered this to be a pathetic reason for suicide.
But if you were one of his upstairs or downstairs neighbors, through the thin walls, you might have heard him saying things like:
“End it, end it, just fucking end it, I don’t want it anymore.”

In the Deep of the Night

2009-05-18T09:11:00.001-07:00

Spencer had locked himself in his room for the night, and Missy had stayed with him. She was helping him hash out his plan for appeal. She thought she had suddenly found her calling the midst of Spencer’s personal chaos. To be Spencer’s lawyer, she decided, would be a great honor. She would love to get up in front of a jury, speak eloquently about Spencer’s worth as a human being, explain to the judge how a light sentence was to be deserved, that this was an issue that warranted serious thought and contemplation regarding the ways in which we are supposed to use our lives. He did not deserve to go to jail and throw away a small portion of his life. He deserved to think about what he had done, and decide it was bad.
Charles was in the same apartment, but he hadn’t seen Spencer in at least three hours. He was all alone in his apartment living room. The TV was on mute. An old movie about bonding with the common man. Its dialogue was replaced by a Half Japanese album, which Charles found exceedingly hilarious. After the album ended, and it was very quiet in the apartment, coming up on 4 AM, he went out on his balcony and looked out at the street. He sat down outside, still mildly warm, and he thought about what he could do tomorrow. He was still buzzed from the hash he had just been smoking. He thought maybe he should go back to school. Maybe he should join a volunteer fire department. Maybe he should play more basketball again. Maybe he should try to write again. Maybe he should visit his grandmother. Maybe he should take a long trip away. Maybe he should stop being such a dork around girls. Maybe he wasn’t young anymore, and he had to think about the future now instead of the past. But what could he possibly do in his future? He possessed intelligence, but a negligible degree of it. He possessed no special skills. He possessed a persona that everyone he had ever met considered caustic and unworthy of attention.
However, no suicidal thoughts permeated Charles’s brain. He was not going to end his life prematurely when there was so much left undone. But then he thought, “What is left to be done? Isn’t everything predetermined anyways? Whatever is going to happen is going to happen and I am not going to consider myself any kind of catalyst to this world. Most people are dead to me anyways. Everyone else sucks, and I don’t think that’s a childish thing to believe, everyone does in fact suck. I can’t believe how many people watch TV endlessly. I can’t believe how many people love to pretend like they’re alcoholics, but then blush the second you take a drink in the early hours of the day. I can’t believe how all the best music is always ignored in favor of mush from three years ago that’s been played a thousand times on every radio station owned by Clear Channel. I hate American Idol. I hate how Grammys are handed out to non-musicians who don’t even have any vision, just somebody else’s. I hate how fucking virulent I can be. People suck. I hate the way they drive. I hate the way they walk down the street, walking their dogs, or alongside their partners, looking concerned, laughing about things that are safe to laugh at, believing in our homeland, getting McDonald’s when they’re lazy, which is always. I hate the way some people have so many kids, like they think extra kids are going to ward off death or something, or make it less painful. I hate the government most of all, and how it supposedly aims to protect, but how, hey, look at me, I am vulnerable. I am very vulnerable right now, and anybody could walk in and see me out here on this porch and they’d be ready to hug me, or slap me, either way, I hate people. The only good people are the people that are so drugged out of their minds that they can’t express a thought of their own. The worst people are the people that talk all the time, like they have something important to say, but it’s really just another vision of evil and dominance. Oh my God I can’t take this shit anymore. Everybody’s so fucked up, I can’t believe it. Selfish like nobody’s business. Have I ever been a selfish person? It’s not fair to ask myself that. At times, I will admit, I have been selfish. On the whole, I have been extremely unselfish though, and what has it gotten me? More people think I don’t know what I’m doing because I don’t order people around to do things, I haven’t climbed the ladder to success high enough. I have no aspirations for the American Dream, and that’s so fucked up to these people that they can’t find a shred of worth in me because I’m ‘different.’ All I want out of life at this point is just some fucking peace, some quietude, some contemplation, reading, writing, going to films, museums, art, art, music, architectural study, spectacles, spectacles, and I want to be responsible for one of the many forms, I want to put my name on it, and I want to be remembered for what I did that was good, not what was bad, though to be honest I can only justify everything I’ve done that’s bad but there is no way to qualitatively express what I have ever done that is good. I haven’t received a compliment in three years. I get the dirtiest looks in the world. People look at me and they fear the potential in me. I’m only beginning to relish the thought of being an outsider.”

The Last Part

2009-05-18T09:10:00.003-07:00

Now, Luther was not sleeping in the same bed as Penelope this night. True, they had kept each other company until her shift at work began, and Luther even went to Mellow Grounds later on to talk to her about acting. Here is a short paraphrasing of their conversation:
Penelope’s shift has just ended, and she has just clocked out, and it is 10:00 at night. Luther sits alone at a table, reading a collection of essays by Antonin Artaud. Penelope approaches.
Penelope: Wow, well you came, but my shift is over, so you can’t tip me.
Luther: Nuts.
Penelope: (sits down) We can still get a discount. How about we get a couple real drinks?
Luther: I’m not in opposition.
Penelope: (calls over fellow waitress Julia, whispers to her) We’re going to have the dirtiest martini you’ve ever tasted.
Luther: I can’t wait.
Penelope: So did you come over to talk about acting? You’re reading Artaud!
Luther: Artaud is not applicable to film.
Penelope: Wasn’t he an actor in film though?
Luther: The point is, if you really want to be an actress, you are not going to be picked for a part because of your knowledge of Artaud.
Penelope: Well, I know that…How did you ever get your first parts? Luther: To be honest, try to look cute.
Penelope: That sounds pretty simple.
Luther: Well, at a certain point, your looks alone will not get you parts, you have to earn respect through your talent.
Penelope: So the director has to know you by your reputation.
Luther: For real parts.
Penelope: Parts that pay?
Luther: Exactly.
Penelope: Don’t you think I already have half of the actress thing nailed?
Luther: Well, I’d say closer to 75%.
Penelope: How flattering (Julia drops off the martinis, smiles, walks away)
Luther: You’re cute, and you’re a waitress. Now all you need to do is to learn how to talk like an actress.
Penelope: And how do actresses talk?
Luther: Modestly, but like they own the world.
Penelope: Do I talk like I own the world?
Luther: That’s the missing 25%. Let’s do a toast.
Penelope: Okay (raises her glass)
Luther: To acting, and all of its slippery slopes and rocky peaks.
Penelope: To acting! (they both take big, long sips)
Luther: Now, Artaud is not applicable, because, what he wanted to do in the theater is the complete opposite of what all film directors of today want to do in the theater.
Penelope: I thought he wanted to make it so there was no distinction between performance and reality.
Luther: Sort of. But money was never an issue. If you want to be a Hollywood actress, you’ll probably be rich. If you want to be a New York actress, you’ll probably go broke or quit acting at some point.
Penelope: It’s just a hobby of mine, I never went to school for it or anything.
Luther: Then how do you know about Artaud?
Penelope: Because I’m not retarded.
Luther: Whoa, don’t you think that’s a little rough on all the retarded people of this world? Don’t you have any sympathy for people that have to hear that word day in and day out and realize that’s what they are?
Penelope: I don’t have sympathy for anyone.
Luther: Whoa!
Penelope: Do you know why?
Luther: No.
Penelope: Because I’m a widow, that’s why.
Luther: Whoa!
Penelope: You didn’t think I could be, did you?
Luther: I can’t believe you didn’t tell me before!
Penelope: I don’t like to talk about it. It happened a year ago.
Luther: Your husband?
Penelope: Car accident.
Luther: I’m really, really sorry. That’s got to be impossible, I mean at your age and everything.
Penelope: It’d be impossible at any age. The good thing about it happening this young is that it changed me, and it probably sounds really fucked up, but I think it was for the best.
Luther: What was your husband’s name?
Penelope: Paul.
Luther: Did you get to say any last words to him?
Penelope: I think the last thing I said to him was, “Don’t be such a crybaby.”
Luther: No way.
Penelope: He was complaining about his commute, and his job.
Luther: What did he do?
Penelope: He worked for the city government. He filed corporate reinstatement forms. It was pretty repetitive work, he used to tell me.
Luther: And now?
Penelope: Now his family still keeps in close touch with me, and I work here. That’s it.
Luther: I think you’re leaving a lot out.
Penelope: Trust me, it’d be boring to talk about now. (she finishes her martini)
Luther: Well, (he finishes his) do you want to come back again and hang out at my place?
Penelope: I would, but I have to wake up early for work tomorrow.
Luther: Oh that sucks, a late and early shift back-to-back.
Penelope: It’s not that bad, but I can’t really hang out tonight. How about I give you a call when I finish tomorrow afternoon?
Luther: Okay.
Luther stands up and Penelope gets up and they exit the coffee shop together, come to a street corner, explain that they are going this way and this way, kiss briefly, then separate.
Now, Luther was alone in his apartment and it was very, very late. Coming up on 5 AM and the sun was coming up, and he had no obligations other than to wait for Penelope’s call the next afternoon and so he didn’t consider sleep a necessary step in his evening until it was time and he stayed up so late and snorted so much Ritalin that it wouldn’t be time until after 6.
On Ritalin, Luther liked to practice guitar. So he stayed up practically all night listening to albums and attempting to play along with them, moving faster and faster as it got later and later, until he finally started coming down, at which point he drank several huge glasses of water, put on more mellow music, shut all the curtains in his apartment, smoked a bowl to put himself out of his misery, and crashed on his bed.

Note

2009-05-18T09:10:00.001-07:00

Jeanne had woken up the day before and found Marcus’s note, apologizing for his incompetence. When she read it, she thought to herself, “God what a dork.”
On Sunday, Jeanne woke up around noon, fed herself, caffeinated herself, wrote in her diary about the previous night, watched a documentary about swimming, exercised, came home, showered, ate again, read a few chapters of Jane Austen, drank a cup of tea, meditated, then went to bed.

Monday Morning

2009-05-18T09:09:00.001-07:00

On Monday morning, Jeanne woke up rested. It was 10:00. She had class at 11:30. She showered, ate, and surfed the internet while she drank coffee she had bought. Then she went to class. It was her British Literature class, and today they were discussing Northanger Abbey, which had for some reason become an academic classic, probably as a reactionary measure against Pride and Prejudice and Emma, which were far too obvious for syllabi.
Jeanne’s professor, Mrs. Weiss, was in her forties and did not say anything which Jeanne herself might not say. Mrs. Weiss did not suffer a generational gap. She was very up-to-date, she was very sensitive to her student’s concerns. If ever anybody approached her after class to suggest a “more personal” essay topic, she was not unwilling to listen, but would often deflect the opportunity for cursory emotional involvement by claiming she was just like them, and she “loved” the things they loved, and how we could “all” write papers about things we were actually interested in, but how would that be educational?
Today Jeanne sat down with a Diet Coke and opened up her binder in which to take notes. She wrote, “Northanger Abbey, day three” at the top.
Mrs. Weiss began, “Now, today I’d like to talk about the supernatural aspects of this novel. I don’t get it, and maybe you can all help me figure out why Jane Austen wanted to turn this book into, basically, a ghost story. Is Catherine just paranoid that all of this mystery is too much for her to take, or is she totally sane, and is the house haunted?”
Jeanne raised her hand.
“I think the house is haunted.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because if the house wasn’t haunted, why would Austen write about it as if it were?”
“Maybe she’s trying to say something about Catherine’s character.”
“Maybe she’s trying to say that ghosts are real, even though everybody would never believe it, and that people think witches are real, so why wouldn’t they think ghosts are real?”
“I think we’re getting a little bit off the topic. What evidence do you have for the house being haunted?”
Jeanne tried to remember a specific detail about a ghost in the novel. She flipped through her copy of Northanger Abbey, which was a library lend.
Missy, who was sitting next to Jeanne, but who had been half unconscious, suddenly spoke up, “The house is haunted because of the drawing room. That’s where she sees the first ghost, or hears the first strange sound?”
“But isn’t that supposed to be her potential father-in-law?”
“I don’t think so. If it were, he could just have a normal entrance.” Missy’s pride began, “I mean, if you look at other novels written before this, there’s always this supernatural aspect that nobody can ever explain. I think it’s the most important thing in this book, because it’s something that even three hundred years later, we still can’t tell whether she’s telling the truth or just trying to tell a scary story. Unknowable things, the way a single person perceives the world in a single vision. That’s what’s important.”
“That’s very interesting Melissa. How about we look at that passage where she senses the first supernatural occurrence. Can we all agree that this drawing room scene is the right one?”
The fifteen students mumbled approvingly and started flipping through their books. Mrs. Weiss found the appropriate passage. She read from it. Everybody listened. Afterwards she said, “Now, it seems to me that Austen is making a commentary on the psyche of young girls in her time. Prone to fantastic delusions and beset by romantic longing. She wants so badly to be married, but she is unsure of her suitor, and the supernatural bad vibes in the house are Austen’s way of expressing Catherine’s insecurity. She’s just been brought to this house, pretty much out of the blue, she’s a young girl who supposedly knows almost nothing about the lifestyle of the privileged, and here she has to play ball. Of course it’s going to seem a little off to her, the place she grew up is the size of the drawing room itself. She doesn’t know anything about the way sound can reverberate through a long hall, she thinks she hears things. She hasn’t seen half the beautiful things that so-called privileged people buy for their own vanity. She is confused, she is lost, she doesn’t even know anything about her suitor, and she kind of has to go along with it. Her thinking the house is haunted is another thing to keep her mind on, so she doesn’t have to think about what could end up being a painful reality for her. But it does tie together, the two—she doesn’t want to end up like the ghosts, and the thought is, maybe she will if she marries this guy.”
She looked at her watch. Class time was up. She said, “Two more chapters tonight. We will take it nice and slow from now on, like the French. I wouldn’t want you to miss anything”

After Class

2009-05-18T09:08:00.002-07:00

“So he couldn’t put the condom on?!”
“It was almost cute.”
“Yeah, but that’s disappointing.”
“We still had a good time. He wants me to call him this week.”
“Well, you should hear about Spencer.” “Is he going to go to jail?”
“I don’t think so. His parents are well-to-do. I stayed up late with him last night putting together a plan.”
“How’s he going to get out of it?”
“He’s going to file an appeal, get a real lawyer, and hopefully get let off with a fine.”
“When’s that going to happen?”
“It’s hard to say. He’s really nervous. I mean, he is an idiot, for letting that happen in the first place, but now that he might be in trouble, I don’t know, he’s been much more stoic about the whole thing. He hasn’t even smoked since his trial.”
“Are you going to keep seeing him?”
“Yeah, definitely. I’ve never met anyone like him before. It’s just unfortunate that I meet him on the verge of criminality. What about Marcus?”
“I think something’s a little off about him. I’ll call him again, it’s the polite thing to do.”
“It’s so fucked up how all of this happened at once.”
“Yeah, it’s definitely fucked up if these guys become boyfriends.”
“Shhhhh. I’m not even saying that word for a while.”
“Well, do you want to get some lunch?”
“Sure,” Missy agreed.
They walked through the central campus strip, even though there was not much of a campus to speak of. It was well-integrated with the city. There were the typical sights of the prototypical campus town—slightly exotic restaurants, bars with sports on, record stores, head shops, used book stores, professors walking slowly down the sidewalks with some form of smoking implement, groups of girls in their Fall best, chatting on cell phones one after another, stopping to look in boutique windows, talking rapidly back and forth, immediate grasp of knowledge, groups of boys that could have been jocks a year or two before, and had now become frat boys, stoners, and all of them weekend alcoholics. Where Missy, Jeanne and Marcus fit into this social strata was ambiguous. They were a mix of all the types, and they were none of the types. Today, Missy and Jeanne decided on Middle Eastern cuisine—falafel.
Missy asked, “Do you want to get together tonight and read some of Northanger Abbey?”
“I’ve got other work I have to do tonight. I was planning on doing it tomorrow.”
“Well, that’s okay with me. You’ve got any more class today?”
“No, I think I’m just going back to the dorm. Study.”
“So I have to ask, do you feel more normal now, after Marcus?”
“Well, I know how to put on a condom better than he does.”
“You’re more experienced.”
“Yeah, but he’s still better at sounding normal than me.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He just sounds calm, at ease, relaxed, I feel like I’m always rushing towards the next thing that has to be done. Maybe physically I might be more normal, but inside is where normality counts.”
“You might be wrong there. I’d say it’s the other way around.”
“You think it pays to be normal on the outside, not the inside?”
“Exactly. That might be your problem with it.”
Jeanne thought for a moment.
“Well, no matter what it is, I think I proved I can get along with most people.”
“It’s a good quality.”
“I guess I’ll give you another update when I go on a date with him, or something.”
“Well, you don’t need to know anything about me and Spencer, except, well, he knows how to put a condom on.”

Social Services

2009-05-18T09:08:00.001-07:00

Ireena slumped over her desk. She was tired, even though she had tried to rest the day before. She had snorted a gram of cocaine over the course of the day too, and she had been very prolific with her hobby—decoupage. Her apartment was full of her own art, clippings from magazines and newspapers, pasted together. Each separate collage had its own cipher to be deduced. If Ireena’s art had a message, it was always difficult to determine.
She sprung to action from the sound of footsteps. Her superior, Daniel, walked to her cubicle.
“Are we helping people, Ireena?”
“Yes, I’m working on the file of Reginald Topper.”
“Ah, Topper. How long has he been out of work for?” Daniel quizzed.
“Since his divorce. That’s three years.”
“Drug Addiction?”
“Meth.”
“Children?”
“Four. He is allowed visitation once a week.”
“What’s he trying to get back into?”
“Well, he’s trying to get off the meth right now. It hasn’t been so easy. He’s a bit stubborn.”
“Well, how long do you anticipate?”
“From the reports I’ve read from his rehab facility, he’s already relapsed three times.”
“Three times a charm!”
“Let’s hope. He was an electrician before his divorce, and some of these reports indicate he considers that his only functionality in society. He’ll go back to it once he’s clean.”
“You’re good at what you do, Ireena.”
“I’m lazy though, it just doesn’t appear that way.”
“Modesty is a great quality.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Well, would you like to have lunch with me today?”
Ireena couldn’t say no to her superior. “Sure, just give me two minutes and I’ll meet you outside.”
She saved her documents, grabbed her bag, and put on her sunglasses. She met Daniel outside.
“So what do you want,” he asked.
“Oh let’s just go to a deli or something.”
“That’s easy enough.”
They walked a few blocks together, and Daniel began by suggesting they not talk about work.
“It’s so depressing to talk about that stuff all the time. How was your weekend?”
“Oh it was a real trip, let me tell you.” “Did you go somewhere?”
“No I just stayed in the city.”
“So….how was it a trip?”
“Lots of drugs, I mean, lots of alcohol, lots of crazy people, there was some indiscretion.”
“Well, whatever you do outside the office isn’t my business, but I am curious.”
“In a nutshell, I went to a party Friday night, and I met this guy there, and then the next night we met up again, with a bunch of his friends, and we ended up staying up all night talking and then I just left to go home.” “So, you met a guy?”
“I don’t know, something’s a little bit off with him.” “Really?”
“He’s very quiet, but then jittery, but he’s so nice.”
“So he’s a sociopath.”
“I wouldn’t say that. He pretty much doesn’t participate in society. I wouldn’t say he hates it, he just ignores it.”
“You must have gotten pretty close, talking so long.”
“He talks very well, but he listens better.”
Daniel stopped talking as they entered the deli. Ireena ordered an eggplant sandwich, and Daniel ordered a Reuben.
“I have to ask, just because I’m curious, what does a girl like you look for in a guy?”
“Somebody who’s sharp, but not pretentious about it. Somebody who looks pretty good, but doesn’t constantly admire themselves. Somebody who has some of the same interests as me, but who doesn’t always have to have his way all the time. Somebody who doesn’t go out of their way to prove his superiority. Somebody who doesn’t repeat themselves all the time—somebody whose light is on when I want it to be, and off when it doesn’t make a difference.”
“That’s pretty eloquent. Is money a concern of yours?”
“I’m doing alright for myself. I don’t want a guy who always wants to buy me anything I want, just because he’s afraid of losing my love. I want a guy who is going to buy me a few things that I really want, that make a serious difference to me, and if he knows, he knows.”
“Do you want to settle here?”
“I think so. But I’d hate myself if I didn’t try some other area out first.”
Daniel chewed his sandwich slowly.
“I mean, California has always appealed to me.”
“You’d fit right in there.”
“I’ve heard the people in California are much cooler.”
“Yeah, it’s probably because they’ve got nothing serious to do.”
“Isn’t that kind of a mass generalization?”
“All they want to do is go to the beach and get stoned. Aren’t there finer things in life?”
“Like Hollywood films?”
“Or the rich cultural heritage that stretches all the way across Southern California. The crossroads of Mexico. You can get a real sense of a different country when you’re in that part of the U.S. I also think if you stayed in social services, you’d have plenty of opportunity there. Plus better weather.”
“I don’t know, that’s just a pipe dream at this point.”
“I know what you mean. I feel like I’m locked down in this place for at least the next two years,” Daniel sympathized.
“What about you? What do you look for in a, companion?”
“I base most of my decisions on looks, which probably hasn’t been the best idea. Most of the girls I went out with dumped me after a month or two for another guy. I couldn’t compete with their wallets.”
“All you care about is looks?”
“Well, I can pretty much deal with the most toxic personalities. Looks are irrefutable.”
“Good point. But what about intelligence?” “The dumber the girl, the better. The more intelligent they are, the more likely they are to see that I am probably not the most ideal mate for them.”
“You’re very honest, shockingly so.”
“I don’t like to hide anything. That doesn’t work out so well most of the time.”
“You should probably hide the fact that you like dumb girls. It’s not a very attractive predilection.”
“Yeah…You’re probably right.”
They had finished their lunches and walked back to their office.
“So,” Daniel began, “You think everybody who’s already here is going to stay through the whole Winter?”
“Everybody’s about to go into hibernation. Nobody leaves in Winter—they stay, they just never come out. It’s a different place. But everybody is still technically present.”
“I think it’s going to be a busy Winter for us.”
“I would imagine so too.”

Coffee Shop

2009-05-18T09:07:00.002-07:00

Penelope and Ted were standing three feet apart from each other for the last two hours. They were both about to finish their shifts. When they had both come into work in the morning, Ted had said that Friday night was one of the best nights of his life. Penelope said it was pretty fun too.
“What happened on Saturday night though, when I saw you at the Hungry Brain?” Penelope inquired
“Oh well, I told you I was just killing time there, waiting for a friend to call. It’s kind of weird to be at bars by yourself.”
“Well you didn’t look very uncomfortable.”
“I can acclimate myself to whatever the social situation requires.”
“You’re an interesting guy, Ted, but you always have an excuse.”
“What’s your excuse, then?”
“I was at the bar with some other friends. I left right after I saw you because they moved the party to their home. It ended up being an endless night.”
“Oh really?”
“We went into the park for most of the night, just wandering around.”
“Sounds fruitful.”
“I’m just upset it’s over. I mean, I’m glad we’re just about done today, but God, this work is just endless.”
“At least we keep in human contact. We don’t miss anything socially, we always learn about people, there’s constant exposure, and you must admit, most of the people that come in here are very polite and good tippers.”
A young couple approached the counter, the male end of it first, intent on ordering for both.
“Hello, what can I get you with today?” Penelope asked in her sweetest most naïve voice.
“I’d like to have a double espresso, and she would like to have a cappuccino with extra whipped cream.”
Penelope whispered the order to Ted.
“Okay, your total comes to $6.46.”
The male gave her seven dollars and said, “Keep the rest for yourself.”
“Thank you.”
Ted was making the drinks and there was nobody else in line, so Penelope wandered over to him to chat.
“Do you know this kid named Luther?”
Ted spilled a bit of the cappuccino he was filling up.
“Yes, it’s a pretty uncommon name.”
“He was one of the guys I was hanging out with.”
“Was Rory there too?”
“Yeah, do you know them?”
“Well, I thought you saw me kick that kid out of my party.”
He handed the drinks to her.
“Thank you, have a nice day.” Penelope said to the couple.
“Why did you kick him out?”
“He’s a leech.”
“He doesn’t seem like one.”
“He is. I don’t appreciate people hanging around me when it’s obviously one-sided. I don’t want anything to do with that kid. He should know that by now.”
“And Luther?”
“I only met him a couple of times, but he seems like he’s an even bigger douchebag. I just remember him being a loudmouth, buying everybody drinks like he was supposed to be deemed “the man” or something, but nobody did.”
“What about Charles, did you ever meet him?”
“You mean Rory’s cousin? I think I met him once. He was just fucking weird. He didn’t particularly offend me though.”
“This is very intriguing to me.”
“Oh those kids are all just losers. They get everything handed to them, they don’t really do anything for themselves, they’re spoiled, and they try to hide it, but it’s so obvious.”
“You know those two college girls?”
“Missy and Jeanne?”
“They were there too.”
“Jesus it was like a reconvening or something. Whose house did you go to?”
“Rory’s.”
“Anybody else I know?”
“That kid Marcus was there too. And this kid Spencer, who was like on his 25th hour, he kept saying.”
“I don’t know any Spencer. I finally feel comfortable.”
A young man came up to the counter.
“Can I try to answer the trivia question?”
“Sure,” Penelope began in her most serious voice, “In how many years will the Sun stop shining, and what will its state be called.”
“Oh that’s easy—4.5 billion years, and it will be a Red Giant. It will expand to the size of Venus’s orbit, and all life on Earth will be destroyed.”
“That’s a little more information than I needed, but you’re right. You get half price off. What would you like?”
“Half price only? That’s what knowledge is worth?”
Neither one said anything in response.
“Just give me a ‘Caramel Blast.’”
Ted started making the drink.
“So whose party was better?”
“Well, yours was more of a real party, theirs was more of a boisterous adventure. Your party was better, I was mostly scared when I was out with them in the park. I was molested.”
“What!”
“A bum chased after us, he grabbed me and sort of felt me up, piece of shit.”
“Oh my God that’s terrible!”
“Luther put him in his place though.”
“That’s good, I mean, I don’t care if you’re a bum, you don’t get away with that kind of stuff.”
“That was the only damper on the weekend, but it was so quick, it really wasn’t that big a deal. For about fifteen minutes it was.”
“Well Penny, if you ever don’t feel safe and you’re left walking around alone, you can always call me. I’ll stop anything to walk with you.” “Oh, that’s so sweet.”
“Girls shouldn’t have to worry about that kind of thing. It completely fucks up everything. All notions of intimacy get destroyed, suspicions flare up over the most trivial detail, paranoia strikes, and innocent people always get preyed on. Nothing good comes out of it. I want to buy a gun just so I could kill those people.”
“Hey, let’s keep guns out of this discussion.”
“Here’s your Caramel Blast sir,” Ted said as he handed the drink to the budding astronomer.
Their manager, Claudia, told them to start their side work and to get out. Twenty minutes later they threw off their aprons, stuffed them in their backpacks, and walked down the street together, admiring the baseball park to their left, as they always did.

Method Acting

2009-05-18T09:07:00.001-07:00

Luther waited for Penelope’s call. He was out in the city, just returning from an audition that he thought didn’t go very well. The part he was auditioning for called him to act as the hero of the movie’s best friend. He decided to play the part with loyalty, deference, rushing through his lines purposefully, and above all, with outward beauty. The casting director told him he would call if he made the first cut. It was around lunch time when the audition ended, and Luther spent his time in a different park downtown. He opened up his journal and began a litany of complaints.
“Well, I am writing in here again in order to demonstrate the chaos that has managed to consume my life again. For some reason, I told a girl I met two days ago (Penny) that I was an actor, and now, I have to pretend to really be an actor. Of all the professions I could have pretended to be, an actor is certainly the most chameleon-like. I could have pretended to be a musician, but then she would have asked to hear me play. She even asked to see some old tapes with me as an extra in it, which didn’t exist. So I used some of the inopportune knowledge I accrued in college to pretend like I was actually reared as an actor. I started off with Artaud. I was reading him when I met Penny last night, for the second time only. I think she bought it. There was no sign of self-consciousness in her when we talked about Artaud. I think it was actually a real conversation about art. Nevertheless, I am a liar, and now I am going to make it not so. I went to my first audition today, cold call, and it didn’t go that well, but at least next time I meet up with her, I’ll have a real story I won’t have to lie about. Except then she’ll probably think that I should have gotten the part, because I’m so intelligent about the concept of acting. Whatever, this journal gets me nowhere ever. I’m always writing the same things. I’m always ending on a sour note. Does that mean I’m hopeless? Or does it just mean that irony isn’t a smiling face?”
A girl sitting not two hundred feet to Luther’s left was also writing in her journal. Over the last fifteen minutes or so, they had glanced back and forth at each other intermittingly. The girl got up and started walking towards him. She was ambling around the foliage he was sitting under.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“What are you writing in there?”
“Is that really any of your business?”
“Okay, geez.” She began to walk away.
“I’m sorry, it’s just personal stuff.”
“I guess journals are by nature personal.”
There was a pause. Then Luther asked: “Do you always come here to write?”
“I sketch. It’s quiet, nobody’s boisterous, there’s lots of different things to sketch. Here.”
She handed him a sketch she had done of him, sitting against a tree, writing in his journal.
“You can keep it, if you’d like.”
“Well sure, thank you, that’s very nice.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m an actor.”
“Oh that’s really exciting. Is it hard to find work here?”
“Yeah, but you just have to be persevering about it. What do you do?”
“I love things.”
“You’re a professional lover?”
“There’s so many things to appreciate, nobody appreciates anything anymore, really.”
“Are you sure about that? I mean, don’t you think your personal view might be, clouding things?”
“Look I can tell when people are totally uninterested, and 99% of the time I’m present in society, everybody looks totally uninterested. They’re like zombies, and they go to their jobs, and they go to their friends, or their families, or their boyfriends or girlfriends, and then they’re totally uninterested in that place too. I just want to know what happened to exuberance. Why is all I see apathy? I see it as my job to make people think more and do more and do more that they actually find meaning in.”
“I think all you see is apathy because everyone can tell you don’t have a job and they scoff at you and your art. Art is meaningless unless it’s in a museum, at least to ‘99%’ of the ‘zombies.’ Or Broadway, if you want to go there. Or the local multiplex if you want to go there. Or the most wealthy advertisement based channels, if you want to go there. It’s a matter of quality + money = success, not quality + sincerity = success.” “But how can you classify art as ‘quality’ or ‘sincerity’ and why would you even bring ‘money’ into art?”
“Some of the best artists were rich, you know. You always hear these like Horatio Alger type stories about the noble poor boy who worked his way up out of despondency, usually by being good and honest. Artists aren’t born poor. If they were born poor, they wouldn’t be so desperate as to try to make a living out of art. Today, if you’re good and honest, you get labeled a square, and you’re not a bulldog, and you’re not successful. I don’t think there has to be money in art, but I think it helps if an artist is rich, because then they’re able to say, ‘Fuck it, I can say whatever I want, and I don’t care if nobody thinks it’s any good.’“
“But don’t you think money cheapens art? Turns it into just another commodity, and not a work with real blood, real sweat, without any thought to the profit margins, put out there specifically for what it would give the audience, isn’t that what really matters?”
“Sure, I agree, but I know from experience that if you are broke, and you are an artist, you stand little chance of real exposure. Exposure is the most important thing to start with.”
“What happens when there’s too much exposure, then?”
“That becomes a problem. Then you run the risk of being obsolete and repetitive. You have to re-invent yourself. That’s why I like acting—it’s constant re-invention.”
Luther’s cell phone rang. It was Penelope.
“Hey Penny, how’s it going?”
“Oh good, I’m just having a nice conversation with this girl who fancies herself an artist. She drew a sketch of me, it was pretty good, I liked it.”
“Yeah, I went to an audition today, I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“You want to meet up at my place?”
“Cool, I’ll see you there in like, a half hour?”
“Bye, bye.”
The girl looked at Luther.
“Is that your girlfriend?”
“Did I say, ‘love you?’”
“Not everybody ends phone calls like that if they’re going out.”
“I’ve only met this girl twice to be honest.”
“Well, do you think I could get your number, I’d be really interested to talk to you more about art.”
“Uh…sure.” Luther gave her his number. “I gotta hit the train. Later!”

The End of the Day

2009-05-18T09:06:00.002-07:00

Rory looked at the clock again—one more hour. His eyes dropped. He was conscious of nothing but his posture. As long as he appeared in thought, he could not be interrupted. If his posture were to slacken, it would become immediately clear: he wasn’t fit to work. His supervisor had left for the day, so he was only obliged to stay in order to clock out. The last hour sitting would be worth close to $13.00. Before taxes.
So Rory considered this his sixty minutes for ten dollars, net. That’s a dollar for every six minutes of idleness. Imagine, he thought, if he’d be able to stretch out that rate, of one dollar for every six minutes, over forty or fifty years. What, the typical work week was supposed to be, what forty hours? 2400 minutes? What, that was only $400 a week? For 50 weeks? And that’s only $40,000 in a year? And over forty years that would be, $1.6 million dollars? In idleness?
Rory considered that this would not do. Eventually, somebody would have to realize that he wasn’t doing anything. He’d have to find some mode of occupation, otherwise he would never be able to hold down a job. He’d be fired for idleness. But if he did his job well, promotions would happen eventually. The budgets would get bigger and bigger, as they were intended to. Eventually his cost of living would go up too, and no matter how much more he was earning, it wouldn’t feel like he was doing any better. In his mind, he was glad to be working. He was glad he actually had a job, so he could at least appear normal, as when he’d be on the train with all the other urbanites in the morning commute. He hated his job though. His job position wasn’t a necessity for the company, and everyone knew it. He was just there to do all the extra tiny busy work tasks. He was supposed to be filing in his last hour, but he had finished it long before. His supervisor was gone, and the clock was ticking. 58 minutes. He’d take out his book of the moment, his trusted Goethe, but if any other of his co-workers saw him reading they’d snicker and make some disparaging comment in the back about dedication and commitment.
He thought again and realized that this was a perfect opportunity to daydream. He thought about Ireena. He hadn’t talked to her since Saturday night, technically Sunday morning but not actually Sunday morning with the sun having risen, now it was Monday afternoon with the sun having almost set and he wondered if it would be a prudent time to call. She had said after 5. So he could call her right after he clocked out. He could call her and she would be on her way back home from work too. She would be walking to a train and he would be walking to a train and then he could ask her what line was she getting on, and where she was coming from. And it would turn out that they would both be going to the same station, and they could meet on the train, and they could decide what they wanted to do, and in the course of it they would get into an argument about which neighborhood was better for nice restaurants for dinner and when it became clear that that would be the order of the night she would insist that she be allowed to go home to shower and get changed because she was disgusting and he would oblige and do the same for himself and later on they would meet up, back not far from where either of them lived but on the street, in front of their pre-planned restaurant and they would enter and he would let her go ahead and order first and he made sure to order a meal that wouldn’t permit stains and while waiting they would sip wine, selected by her, talking about their jobs and their stupid managers and their restlessness in life but their listlessness in the workplace and how all of the movies they had just watched were too obscure to be appreciated by the mainstream and how they had both been at the same Nada Surf show months earlier and about how many times they went to the MOCA in the course of the year and about their stance on drugs, and how long they had been doing them, and then they would get the check and of course he would pay for the whole thing and after her insistence at splitting it he would casually suggest that she could pay for ice cream, if she cared for sweets, and they would walk slowly through the street, not wanting to leave each other, not wanting to go back to their apartments to be alone, even though it was getting late and they would need to get enough hours of sleep for work, they would stroll through a bookstore, get lost from one another, find each other again and have things seem far more familiar than they really were, and he would buy a book for her and she would smile and say she had get back to her apartment and he would say goodbye but in the course of it he would kiss her on the mouth and she would accept it and he would ask her to come back with him and she would accept it and then they would go on his couch and they would caress each other as they smoked a joint, anticipating every last rivulet of sweat about to brush back and forth between them, tenderly kissing, recklessly pulling pants and shirts off, a shifting between both tender and aggressive sucking, neither totally satisfactory at the present moment, really the power lying in the feelings associated therein, trust, security, ultimate empathy, no task too great, no idea too insurmountable, and he would come in her and she would want it that way and they would lie together afterwards and they’d decide to stay together that night and every night after and they could do all the cute things that couples did like eat breakfast together in the morning before going off to work, that would be much more enjoyable than the present state of affairs in the depths of solitude and mistrust and maybe here was finally somebody that could take everything else away from his mind and give him the purest object to fixate on, a reason to be, to do everything, to strive for, to earn 1.6 million dollars in idleness for, and to be more than happy to give it up, and to be more than happy knowing that she wasn’t a sheep, and to think that if he played his cards right it could be the one thing that changed his life but who knew what the future held and who knew that there wasn’t some other side to her that she didn’t show and maybe she was just a nympho but if she were she would have slept with him the first night but if she were a nympho and she were waiting to sleep with him for some reason that would be okay too, because then at least he could consummate these feelings he had, and then maybe it would reach his expectations and maybe it wouldn’t but he would have at least known what the truth was, and sometimes the truth hurts.
The clock struck five. Rory grabbed his card, punched it, slung his bag over his shoulder, turned out his cubicle lamp, and left the office.

Despotism

2009-05-18T09:06:00.001-07:00

Marcus was on his way to his class on Political Despotism. Now, it needs to be explained how Marcus’s terror of this class deflected his personal growth. His teacher was a disciplinarian of the old school, but he was no more than ten years older than Marcus. His teacher spoke with the air of an ancient wise man, and he claimed to have a professor’s knowledge of the field of epistemology. The man did not cut any slack, to be blunt. A’s had to be earned. C’s were commonplace. B’s rewarded a steady effort, though truth be told, students earning this grade probably couldn’t truly understand the materials at hand. It is probable that B’s were the most common of all grades in this class, but Marcus had no way of knowing. His terror had reached such a pitch that he couldn’t even find it in him to talk to his classmates, even about how they did on their papers, which were systematically and predictably assigned and graded. This was upsetting in a college environment, but truth be told, the other students didn’t have the same problem, only Marcus did. The most terrifying aspect of all was the requirement of having to lead two class discussions in the course of the semester. As if providence would have it, the other two who signed up to present the same days as Marcus, who would become his partners in leading the discussion, appeared as if they had as little clue as he did. So, in the end, he was in over his head, but his classmates made him feel more human for it. They also made him feel stupid, though.
On this particular day at 5:20, Marcus entered his classroom with his partner, Erin, who had been chatting away with him for the last ten minutes in the waiting area, frantically trying to cull some meaning out of their Arendt text. Marcus was not being particularly helpful:
“Uh, I don’t know. I don’t understand anything from this.”
“Well, she’s talking about the origins of these countries, these regions, the people and the history of the people prior to the 19th century, and basically trying to explain it. I mean if we start from there, we can probably get at her meaning.”
“I just don’t get it! I can’t even read one sentence!”
“Well, don’t say that when we’re leading the class.”
“Look, I mean, I underlined this. Tell me if you think we can use it: ‘But far beyond the boundaries within which race-thinking and class-thinking have developed into obligatory patterns of thought, free public opinion has adopted them to such an extent that not only intellectuals but great masses of people will no longer accept a presentation of past or present facts that is not in agreement with either of these views.’ Now see, if I read something that long in class, and nobody interrupts me, then I feel obligated to say something meaningful about it. But I can’t even understand the sentence, I swear to God, it just sounds like it has some sort of meaning in it.”
“I think what she’s saying is that race-thinking and class-thinking dominate all other types of thinking.”
“That sounds too easy.”
“You need the right context, that’s the secret to this book.”
“It’s impossible.”
“Okay, maybe race-thinking and class-thinking don’t dominate all other types, but maybe they have monopolized all other types. Now all types of thinking spring from either race or class, not from say, education. ‘Great masses of people’ weren’t treated to the education we are used to now in the 18th-19th century.”
“This hurts me to think about.”
“It’s okay, we’ll do okay just try to sound like you know what you’re doing. Read the passage you underlined well.”
So it happened that the two of them entered the classroom and sat next to each other and the teacher didn’t say anything about the weather or the latest political intrigue. Instead, he said, “So Marcus, Erin, would you please start the discussion?”
Erin began by announcing unsure of herself, “Well, in the section we prepared to talk about, Arendt discussed the foundations of racism in Western Europe. Marcus has a quote that he thinks would be useful for a class discussion.”
“It’s on page 159.” Marcus read the passage for them, slowly, with accents to his pitch where he thought they belonged.
Erin didn’t say anything at first, and Marcus didn’t look over at her, as if to signal. He felt that he should really add some of his own thought to this, otherwise it wouldn’t look good.
“What she’s saying is that man is perpetually at war with itself, and countries are constantly on a quest for some form of dominance, and these two factors, race and class, which actually both set people apart and bring them together, are naturally the strongest foundations upon which to set a national identity.”
“Education for say, middle-class Germans in the early 19th century had nowhere to go, this is what Arendt is getting at, I think.” Erin finished.
The teacher, impressed, played devil’s advocate for them.
“So, middle class Germany in the 19th century had no class or race to wrap itself around?”
“This is all so obvious I think, it’s much clearer when you don’t have to use the specific philosophical definition ad nauseam.” Marcus surrendered.
“But that’s exactly the point,” the teacher retaliated, “if you don’t know exactly what the other person is talking about, real progress, real wisdom through dialogue can’t be accomplished.”
“But you’re going backwards now,” Marcus said.
“Yes, I’m sorry, let’s move forwards, let’s open it up for discussion.”
Erin leaned over to Marcus, “Nice job.”
“You better have a quote ready next.” Marcus whispered
“I’ve got it covered.”

The 2nd Date Call

2009-05-18T09:05:00.002-07:00

Once he passed through the outside doors of the office, Rory stumbled down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk of Damen. The same sidewalk teemed with other recently dispatched cashiers, content writers, data entry typists, nurses, hostesses, paralegals, operations managers, part-time tutors, gallery receptionists, secretaries, and several punks. Nobody was walking with anyone else for the first few blocks. He lit a cigarette. The throng of pedestrians spilled out onto Milwaukee and collided with more personally involved people, talking with one another, walking more slowly than the rest, laughing together, looking grave together, holding hands with each other, whispering nefariously, walking with an arm around the other each, and much more slowly, smiling privately, arguing, one establishing the upper hand, the other talking at nothing, and occasionally, a couple that looked happy as pie.
Rory called Ireena, and she answered.
“You really called right after 5, huh?”
“I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to get it over with.”
“You have to get talking with me over with?”
“No, I mean, calling you. I had to get calling you over with.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Are you saying you don’t want to feel obligated to call me anymore?”
“No! Just forget it.”
“Okay, well, what do you want to do, Mr. I had to get calling you over with?”
“Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Okay, great.” Rory sighed a silent breath of relief. “Do you want to go to Bin 36?”
“Ooh so you are a high-class boy,” Ireena rolled her eyes at the ceiling of her apartment, she was peaking, “In that case I have to change. Do you want to meet there at 8?”
“Yeah, I’ll even make a reservation. I’m right by it.”
“Come on, it’s not that popular.”
“Hey, I just walked by it and it’s already really crowded.”
“Do what you want. I’ll see you at 8.”
Rory walked into the restaurant and made a reservation for two at 8. Rory had been mistaken about the crowd. Because of foreshortening of his vision from the street, he only saw the first two rows of tables, which colluded with the last two rows to form a bustling picture. There really were not many people there. Nevertheless, he placed the reservation, smiled at the hostess, and headed to the train.

And If I Started Crying

2009-05-18T09:05:00.001-07:00

Brisk sheets of wind crashed against the window. The trees rustled violently. A mild drizzle slashed the scenery at 45 degree angles. A few scattered walkers put their hoods up, if they had them. Otherwise they walked hunched over. The cars drove more slowly, and their headlights were the brightest thing in sight, at this 5:00 hour. Penelope was at Luther’s apartment for the first time since they had slept together. They were smoking a bowl together, listening to Rites of Spring. They were talking loudly and rapidly over the music.
“So you met a girl in the park today?”
“Sort of, she had just walked over to me when you called. I don’t even know her name.”
“Weird. Was she cute?”
“Uh, she had a certain quality about her.”
“So she was hot!”
“I wouldn’t say she was hot.”
“Okay. But good looking?”
“She was different.”
“Okay.”
There was a pause.
“So what else can you tell me about acting?” Penelope asked
“I really don’t know that much about it…Stanislavsky?”
“What’d he do again?”
“Method acting. I guess it was a foundation of my education.”
“Oh, method acting.”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“Just something about tapping into your memories to produce real emotion.”
“Well, it’s even more than that, see,” Luther began. “It holds that when an actor is preparing for a role, he or she is often told to study the character they are going to play. They have to really get to know the character’s inner workings, their best times, their worst times, the things they laugh at, the things that frighten them, etc.”
“Yeah, but then, how do they supply details from their own life?”
“Right, I’m getting it wrong. Well, when the script isn’t well written enough, there’s just not enough information about all the characters written right on the table. You know, you have to be able imply certain things about a character, when you’re an actor. Like, maybe you think a character is gay, but that’s not served up so much in words as in glances the actor will take, or the tone they will use, or what clothes the costume designer will choose to dress them in, etc.”
“So if you play a gay character, the words themselves may not be gay, but the character can imply it.”
“Right, just now I’m getting to my point. Method acting involves remembering horrible things that happened to you. This is the gut-wrenching part of acting. You have to really tap into memories you’d want to forget, just to get at that emotion. Then, once you feel what you felt at that time of whatever horrible thing happened to you, you’re set. You know how to get to “that place” then. I mean, I imagine that’s the way a lot of actors learn how to cry on command.”
Penelope was looking out the window.
“So you’re saying, if I remember the worst thing that ever happened to me, and if it made me cry, I can learn how to cry when the moment calls for it?”
“Exactly.”
Luther leaned over and kissed her. Penelope sighed and tenderly sucked at his lips and tongue. They were in a position in which they were sort of hugging each other, and then lifting off their shirts, still kissing, as if they had found an air bubble, hands running back and forth around torsos, hands undoing pants, kissing, grabbing, stroking, kissing, sucking, coming back up kissing, pulling off of panties, rubbing, sticking, licking, kissing, fucking, coming.
Penelope had a real orgasm, and had screamed a bit for about five minutes.
“Is there method acting for that?” she asked him.
“No, no, not at all.” He answered, pulling his boxers up and lighting a cigarette.
“So, you just made that up, you didn’t actually have that same kind of sex before?”
“I mean, the degree hadn’t been previously reached.”
“So, are you saying that a precedent was just set?”
“A precedent was just set.”
“Damn.”
Luther smoked leisurely, and Penelope asked if she could have one too. They sat there like that for another good five minutes, then they decided they would go out to dinner. They decided to shower beforehand, together, which delayed them another forty-five minutes. Finally, they dressed, Penelope put on make-up, Luther put gel in his hair and styled it into a faux-hawk, and they walked to the train. They held hands until they sat down. Waiting. Until they boarded the train, in which they sat next to one another on a seat facing another, and when their 63 year-old seat neighbor across from them witnessed them whispering back and forth, making dumb jokes, laughing and putting their arms around each other, he smiled warmly to himself, reflecting on an earlier time in his life, after which he focused his attention on the paper in his hands.

Try to Act Surprised

2009-05-18T09:04:00.003-07:00

The restaurant was full. A few tables had been reserved. But there was Rory, and there was Ireena, sitting together. They were sharing a table. And there was another table for two nearby, and the two who had been sitting there abruptly stood up and left. As the busboy began clearing the area, Luther asked the hostess if they could sit there, because their two best friends just happened to be sitting there.
“Oh! So it’s just like a double date!”
“It’s not a double date!” Luther emphasized.
“It’s not a date,” Penelope added.
“Oh,” the hostess said.
“It’s a coincidence, that’s all.” Luther finalized.
Two minutes later they were sitting at the table, not more than three feet from the other two. Immediately, Rory and Ireena glanced at them knowingly.
“Did you guys come on a date here?” Rory asked.
“Yeah are you like going to make out?” Ireena added.
Luther and Penelope looked at each other and shrugged.
“It’s funny that we both came here,” Luther said.
“I think it means we have similar tastes,” Rory said.
“Who picked out the restaurant?” Ireena asked.
“We decided together.” Penelope said.
“You know that’s not true, come on, didn’t he pick?” Ireena encouraged.
“I was in fact the first to suggest it,” Luther said.
“But I’ve never been here, and I had wanted to try it.” Penelope covered.
“So the truth is revealed,” Rory said.
Rory and Ireena had already been served their wine flight, and they asked Luther and Penelope which they were going to pick. They recommended certain individual wines, but could not wholeheartedly recommend an entire flight.
“Do you guys have anywhere else you’re planning on going afterwards?” Rory asked after the other two had been served.
Penelope looked over at Luther. “I don’t have to be at work until tomorrow night.”
“Why? Are you guys going anywhere?” Luther asked the other two.
“We’re going to drink a super secret potion,” Ireena said.
“What potion is that?” Luther asked.
“The potion of L-O-V-E.” she continued
“Which is?” Penelope asked.
“Pills you can buy in a gas station,” Rory said.
“No, that is only placebo,” Ireena said knowledgably. “The potion I am speaking of is absinthe.”
“Dude, absinthe is illegal. You can only get in impure form of it.” Luther said.
“I don’t know! I think it’d be really fun to drink some absinthe….once.” Penelope countered.
“Well, we should take a trip to Europe and get the real thing. Any place that sells it here can’t possibly make it worth it.”
“I think we should try it, just to see if the effect is distinct,” Ireena said.
“It’s going to be a huge waste of money,” Luther said.
“But you’re coming with us, right?” Rory asked, already knowing the answer.

Stave-Off

2009-05-18T09:04:00.001-07:00

For Jeanne, the life of a college student presented itself with innumerable difficulties. First of all, there was the matter of grades, and second of all, was the matter of friends, and third of all, was the matter of future plans. In the first two, she succeeded. In the third, she was not alone, being clueless. Still, she reminded herself that if she took things one step at a time, if she focused on what she needed to focus on at the present moment, the future would land exactly as she hoped. That is to say, she would be affluent, but professional herself. She hoped that in the course of things, she would meet someone who could match her idea of the life she imagined. Now of course, this Monday night, she was doing what she did every Monday night—studying alone in the library.
Her study this evening was poetry. T.S. Eliot. This wasn’t an agreeable pursuit to her. She did it, because she needed to prove that she could do whatever was necessary, but the idea of academically studying poetry, even if it were T.S. Eliot, made her thoroughly frustrated with the current academic advisory board. She was supposed to pick up on all of the references made to the specific time in history that Eliot wrote. She was supposed to look deeply into his abstract words and find the concrete images which would have propelled him. She was asked to look inside his mind. However, her teachers had told her never to try to elucidate the author’s own position. Interpretation and theory were what she needed. She was 19.
She became fed up, reading Eliot for the academic position, and not for pleasure. And she found the poetry class difficult in general, for whenever she took it upon herself to visit the library, to sit alone, and to open up such a terribly removed scenario such as Eliot’s, she could only think of herself, and what she would write, and how she would do it differently, and so when she was supposed to be reading, after about an hour or so, she would begin absently doodling in her notebook pages. She then moved on to writing song lyrics that popped into her head. Finally, she would commit to full-blown verse by its end. But it was not the sort of poetry that would ever be studied in schools. “Never forget,” she reminded herself, “If you place yourself above the rest, there you will stay, and there you will be inscrutable, and there nobody will understand you. If you place yourself below the rest, they can only look down on you in pity or compassion.”
She got out of her chair she was slumped over in, now doodling poetic platitudes, and decided she needed a snack. She went to the vending machines four floors below and pressed C6 and received a small bag of Sun Chips. She also bought a Diet Coke from the vending machine next to it. Because she didn’t want to disturb the other students four floors above, she had her snack in the relative commonality of the vending machine room, which had strewn a few boys and girls throughout, sticking their mouths in their beverages, talking frantically and anxiously on their cell phones about how hard their classes were, and generally looking around absently, consuming, thinking to themselves. Of course Jeanne was amongst these latter types. What she did not realize was that Marcus was one of these types as well, and there he was, just out of her view, drinking a Dr. Pepper and walking over towards her.
“Boo” he said, tapping her on the shoulder.
She was frightened initially, for roughly a half-second, until she turned around hurriedly and said, “Oh hey, what are you doing here?”
“Studying totalitarianism, you?”
“Poetry.”
“Do you think they go hand-in-hand?”
“Well, wasn’t Ezra Pound a fascist?”
“Nonsense. It just goes to show how muddled writers can become in their thinking. They’ll take any position as long as it’s extreme and sounds cool.”
This cut-off the conversation.
“How much longer are you going to stay here?” Marcus asked
“As long as it takes. Another hour? Have you ever read T.S. Eliot?”
“I read “The Wasteland” but I couldn’t tell you what it was about.”
“Right, right.”
“Well, do you want to sit together at least?”
“So we can distract each other?” Jeanne sarcastically admitted.
“Exactly.” Marcus laughed.
“Sure.”
They took the elevator up together and sat down, and they resumed.

Wormwood Discoveries

2009-05-18T09:03:00.003-07:00

After their dinner out drinking wine, the four would-be double daters moved on to the only place they knew sold absinthe. They entered, and they were sold it at twenty dollars a glass. Each of the four of them obtained their own glass. The bar itself was sparsely occupied. They sat down at their own table. The first thing they talked about was whether or not any of them had tried it before. None of them had.
Of course, they soon moved on to other subjects.
“I don’t think this is working.” Ireena said.
“I don’t feel anything either,” Rory said.
“You have to wait longer. You haven’t even finished half of it.” Luther said.
“I feel a little strange,” Penelope said.
The jukebox was playing David Bowie’s Station to Station.
“So, does anybody know what it’s supposed to do to you anyways?” Rory asked.
“I’ve heard that you have more visionary dreams after drinking it,” Penelope said.
“It’s stronger than any other alcohols, but I have a feeling that just one glass is not going to offer a glimpse past the hallucinogenic gate.” Luther said. With that, he swallowed the rest in his glass. He then announced that he was going to the bathroom.
In his absence, Rory and Ireena took the opportunity to ask Penelope if she and Luther were now going out together. She said she supposed they were seeing each other, but she wasn’t sure how long it was going to last, because she didn’t know how much longer he was going to be in town. Rory, perplexed, asked her what she meant and she said Luther had said he would be going back to California in a week.
“That’s a lie,” Rory said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“It means he told you he was an actor just so he could get into your pants.” Ireena remarked.
“That’s a very fine way of putting it,” Rory shot back.
“No, but he really is an actor. He was at an audition today.”
“Did he get the part?” Rory asked.
“He didn’t say. But he really has to be an actor. He knows so much about acting.”
“Anybody can learn about acting,” Ireena said, “But few people can actually succeed at it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call him a liar about being an actor. I’d call him a liar about going ‘back to California.’ He lives here, and he’s always lived here.”
In the bathroom, Luther was looking in the mirror. A friend of his had once told him that this had been the bar where John Wayne Gacy had used to hang out. He looked in the mirror, and he wondered whether the bathrooms had been rehabbed in recent times. The mirror did not look new. It looked as if it had scuff marks on it. The concept of sharing the mirror with a serial killer from the past did not frighten him, but rather amazed him. He was not in danger at the moment, as far he as he knew, and the mirror served as a reminder that the world was indeed very small. He reflected again, however, that perhaps his friend had been mistaken, and that perhaps Gacy had never been there at all, and that it was just an urban legend. He preferred to think it was true, though. He’d like to think the world was incredibly small.
David Bowie was singing, “In this age of grand illusion, you walked into my life out of my dreams.”
After he sat back down at the table, Luther looked at his friends with his eyes wide open and told them that the absinthe had begun working.
“The mirror in that bathroom possesses an evil spirit.” he said.
“So Lu,” Penelope asked, “When are you going back to California again?”
He looked at Rory and said, “A week from today.”
“Really?” Ireena asked.
“Well I’m not so sure yet. If I get a call back, I may have to change my flight.”
“Look, bullshit never helps dude.” Rory said.
“What bullshit?” Luther said
“You don’t live in California.”
“No, I don’t, but I’m moving there for a shoot.”
“Well, this is news to me,” Rory said, rolling his eyes at the ceiling.
“You can tell me the truth you know,” Penelope said.
“That is the truth. I’ve been considering it for a long time. I’ve lived in this town for years upon years, and it’s always exactly the same. I need to get out soon. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of things I love about this city, but I feel that the possibilities are so much more promising in California. There’ll be better weather, more opportunities for interesting work, the Pacific Ocean, good sports teams, and of course, parties in L.A. Carelessly degenerate—celebratory in fact.”
“Lu,” Ireena began, “Those are all stereotypes. Have you ever actually been there? You know it’s not all fun and games. There’s not anywhere in the world that’s all fun and games. There’s just as many things wrong with California as there are about any other state. It’s heavily polluted, the girls are incredibly shallow from what I’ve heard, you only get to go to the best parties if you know the right people, the ocean is shark-infested, and those sports teams have no staying power.”
“I think you should stay, Lu,” Penelope added, “I’ll really miss you if you leave. But this is really weird, that you would lie to me.”
“It’s not a lie! It’s a plan!”
“But you made it sound so set and ready, like your tickets were already bought.”
“Okay fuck it, I’m sorry. I won’t lie to you anymore. It’s just I have no prospects here, and I’ve been here for so long, and I’m sick of it.”
“I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to move,” Rory said, “But I think you need to plan it out a little better. Like, get a job there first, then move.”
“Nobody’s going to hire me.”
“They’ll hire anybody anywhere as long as anybody has a brain.” Ireena said. “Brains are more important than muscles in business.”
“This is making me really depressed.” Luther said.
“We really should be feeling better after this absinthe,” Penelope said.
“Well I wasn’t the one staging a confrontation here. I just wanted to have a good time. And I saw something in that bathroom!”
“What was it?” Ireena asked
“It was an evil spirit. I think it was John Wayne Gacy.”
“Oh that’s really creepy,” Rory said. “Was there a clown face or something in there?”
“Nothing so obvious, but that would have really freaked me out.” Luther emphasized.
“You’ve got to let me go in there,” Ireena said. “Watch the door.”
She went into the bathroom and looked at the mirror, and the walls, and the floor, and the ceiling, and she saw a completely typical space. She decided to look at herself in the mirror while she was there. She ran her fingers through her hair, she pursed her lips, she threw her hair over face and shook her head rapidly and looked at herself. Messy. Not sexy. But still beautiful, she decided.
She walked out and sat back down and said, “He’s right. I feel more evil now after coming out of there.”
“You’re joking.” Penelope said.
“No, I’m totally serious.”
“I don’t want to be more evil!” Rory said.
“Don’t go in there then.”
“I feel like I have to see if this is real or not,” Penelope said.
“I’m warning you! Look what it did to me!”
“You look very, punk rock,” Rory said.
“And evil!” Ireena exclaimed.
“I don’t care. Lu went in there, and now I have to go in there. I have to see if this is for real or not.”
Penelope walked in and scanned the area. No signs of evilness. Just the nastiness of a men’s room. She also looked at herself in the mirror, and she saw no evil, nothing supernatural, nothing broken. She reflected that she did feel a little strange from the absinthe. But whatever hallucinations she was having, they were not visceral. She could hear her friends through the door laughing, and she wanted to see what was so funny.”
She walked out and Ireena shouted, “Now we’re all evil! Except for Rory!”
“I’m evil enough as it is. I don’t need anymore of it.” he said.

Satyrs

2009-05-18T09:03:00.001-07:00

Every day had begun to be the same for Charles. He liked to sit around, go to the ATM, sit down to leisurely meals, walk around the city with his headphones on, bob his head, do incredibly mild interpretive dance, and he always told himself that everyday he had to do something completely new, but most of the time he failed in that aspect. He spent money as if it were nothing, as if he realized that occupations were a sham. He’d go home, and he’d do whatever he had lying around, until he needed to restock his supplies. He had graduated from college, and he had done nothing but this same string of activities since. He never had to worry about anything except respectability. He got around the fact by reminding himself that he was special, and that if anybody knew his story, they wouldn’t judge him.
Spencer and Missy came out of Spencer’s bedroom. Charles was sitting on their balcony again, a hookah hose in his right hand.
“Did you put anything besides tobacco in that?” Spencer asked.
“Opium.”
“I need some varied dreams,” he said as he took the hose. He pulled on it, offered it to Missy, and was declined.
“So it was just a break then? You’re going to keep this up anyways?” Missy said.
“No, I think I’m just going to quit weed. It’s so predictable all the time.”
“Move on to harder stuff?” Charles inquired
“Well, I don’t know how much harder I can go.” Spencer answered.
“There’s always heroin.” Charles realized.
“Yeah, that’s always going to be hanging in the background.” Missy said sarcastically.
“I think Charles is the real candidate for heroin here.” Spencer said, patting him on the back in camaraderie.
“Oh, and you’re significantly more active than me.” Charles said.
“Uppers are the harder stuff I’ve got to go towards. Maybe when I’m sixty I’ll be inactive.” Spencer concluded.
“Well, when I’m sixty, I hope to have grandchildren.” Missy said purposefully.
“Do you think drugs sterilize people?” Charles asked suddenly interested.
“Your sperm count’s gone, dude.” Spencer said.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Missy said, “But you sure lose your ability to socialize regularly. Even if you think you don’t.”
“So, sterilization isn’t necessarily purely chemical is what you’re saying,” Charles answered, “It’s like a social motivation. I’m not going to talk to anybody if I use heroin, or something, thus losing my ability to meet anybody, thus losing my ability to procreate, thus losing my ability for progeny, thus killing off my family name.”
“I guess, if you want to take it that far.” Missy said.
“Amazing.” Charles said.
“Socializing is incredibly important, dude. That’s why I have to switch to uppers.” Spencer said.
“You’re so logical, Spencer.” Missy said.
“Well, whatever you guys are going to do, fine, you know, I don’t care. I’m not changing for anyone. I’m pretty happy, all things considered. I mean, I have to remind myself to be happy, but I’m pretty happy.”
“How’s your grandma? You haven’t talked about her in a while.” Spencer asked.
“She’s 90 now. I should go see her tomorrow. It’s just like I have to get so high before I see her because she’s so goddamn tiresome.”
“That’s really sensitive of you.” Spencer said.
“I know, right! No matter how much she tries to stay with the times, just listening to her talk, it’s like this old-world thing that’s just completely wrong! I mean, do you know what it was like in 1942? Do you?”
“Probably pretty fucked up.” Spencer said.
“Yeah! And she was our age then!”
“She’s American?” Missy asked.
“Of course. If she were an immigrant at least there would be intrigue.”
“America in 1942 is fucked up. But not intriguing?” Missy asked.
“I don’t really think America is very surprising to me.” Charles said.
“America sucks.” Spencer said.
“America can go fuck itself.” Charles said.
“Don’t you feel like you’re lucky to live here though?” Missy said. “Of all the places you could live, this is probably the best place to end up. I mean, would you really want to be English?”
“Dude the English rule!” Spencer said.
“Yeah, at least if we were English we’d have something real to complain about.”
“There’s a lot you can complain about in America.” Missy said.
“Yeah, but everyone else already complains about it. You complain about something nobody else complains about, BOOM, you’re crazy!” Charles said.
“I mean, were you there at 9-11?” Spencer asked Missy.
“I was at 7-11!” Charles said.
“Fuck 9-11” Spencer interrupted. “Fuck everything about it. It’s the worst thing to happen to this country ever, and for all the wrong reasons, even though everybody wants to make it about all the right reasons.”
“You can’t say anything about it without being offensive!” Charles added.
“You guys are so insensitive! One of our family friends died that day. It was horrible, horrible.”
“Everybody knows somebody who died that day. Except me!” Charles said.
“Yeah, a second cousin of mine or something died in it.” Spencer said.
“Were you there?” Missy asked him.
“I was in Washington. Does that count?” Spencer said.
“Sure! That was so fucked up!” Charles said. “Washington was way more fucked up than New York if you think about it!”
“Why were you in Washington? I thought you were at college then, you didn’t go to school there.” Missy said.
“I was protesting in front of the fucking White House!” Spencer said.
“About what, again?” Charles asked, laughing.
“The administration!”
“And why would you want to protest the administration? We voted them in!” Charles encouraged.
“You’re a fool. You know I voted Green.” Spencer said.
“Oh yes,” Missy said, “You would vote Green.”
“They made us leave.” Spencer said.
“What?”
“We had to leave from the front gate. There were rumors. Everybody left.”
“Nobody stayed and was like ‘I’m going down with this country too!’“ Charles said.
“None of them were proud Americans, think about it.” Spencer said.
“You guys are fucked up,” Missy said, “You don’t have to say you’re proud you know.”
“Everybody else does.” Charles said.
“They have bumper stickers saying it for God’s sake!” Spencer said.
“Well some people like to make their opinions known.” Missy said.
“And some opinions just shouldn’t be known.” Charles said.

Economy Watch

2009-05-18T09:02:00.001-07:00

Rory and Luther and Penelope and Ireena had buckled and gotten a second absinthe at the bar. The discussion was no longer about acting, nor lying, nor evil, nor anything they could disagree with each other about. They now moved on economics, which none of them understood, but they liked to think that with absinthe would come revelations.
“I think it’s possible to not have to leave your couch and make thousands of dollars a week.” Luther said.
“Internet stock trading.” Rory said.
“That’s the easy way out,” Ireena said.
“You think there’s a way to guarantee an income that way?” Penelope asked.
“I’ve known people who could do it.” Luther said.
“I’ve seen commercials for it.” Rory said.
“That’s all lies,” Ireena said, “I mean, just how dense are you guys? You trust those people? All they want to tell you is that you, yes you, can do just what they did, and one day star in your own commercial, complete with your 25-year-old haircut, your tired business vocabulary, your serpentine digressions, always returning to the only truth you know, making money, making money, and everybody can do it! Nobody gets shut out, right?”
“Stocks are unpredictable,” Luther said, “But you can analyze trends, you have to know the kind of people that live in this world, and realize there are a million vultures waiting at every opportunity.”
“This is making me sick.” Penelope said.
“Penny,” Rory said, “This is a very tame discussion of economics. Would you prefer we talk about puppies?”
“Puppies are always nice,” she said.
“She’s right,” Ireena said, “This makes me depressed. Ideally, nobody has to use those things. Nobody has to be that desperate.”
“Ideally.” Rory said.
“My family got a puppy when I was a baby,” Luther said, “But I kept my distance so badly that whenever it got near, I’d cry, and they returned it.”
“Puppies can bite,” Rory said.
“Just these last few months, I’ve really wanted to get a puppy.” Penelope said.
“What kind?” Luther asked
“One that’s easy to take care of, and lives a long time. I haven’t really thought about what breed yet though.” She answered
“Well, just don’t get a Golden Retriever, for God’s sake.” Rory said
Ireena laughed.

Future of Academia

2009-05-18T09:01:00.002-07:00

It was now coming up on Midnight, and Marcus and Jeanne were exhausted. They left the library together, and they went back to Marcus’s dorm room.
“What do you get out of studying poetry?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I don’t like studying poetry, but it’s required for the degree.”
“What’s the point of studying literature at all, really? I mean, what can you learn from it?”
“I guess it’s just trends, you know, being able to see how other people were influenced, and being able to see how they exert an influence. Everybody rips somebody else off. I don’t think I’ve ever read anybody completely original. The second I read something I think is original, it’s like the next thing I read proves me wrong, and there’s nothing new ever.”
“Literature is dumb,” Marcus said, “Studying it is dumb, I mean. People should just write it themselves. All this studying of it, I think that contributes to the unoriginality of it.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Jeanne said.
“Totalitarianism is the ultimate field of study. Of course it’s dark, but history is always dark. This is really humanity’s attempt at turning society into a machine, and getting maximum efficiency, and maximum societal benefits. Of course, it didn’t work out quite so well, I think, because of the idea that certain people and certain types of people weren’t allowed to participate in the grand scheme. They weren’t useful to it, they wouldn’t agree on it, so they had to go. That was the mistake. If totalitarianism could be gentler, we might have a real government we could rely on.”
“It just sounds like an evil word.”
“Well, if you only associate Hitler and Stalin with it, of course it sounds like an evil word. But what if Che Guevara started his own government, what do you say to that? He’s so popular in culture, nobody ever gets right down to his politics. Perhaps it’s like the opposite of what traditional totalitarian regimes wanted, but it’s still totalitarian in nature.”
“I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. There’s different words for different targets.”
“The secret is to harness the power of totalitarian government in a positive way.”
“I think the way things are now is relatively okay. A major overhaul would cause a huge uproar.”
“You don’t think we’re in the midst of a major overhaul right now?” “No.” “It’s a much slower build up. But all the warning signs are there. Don’t you think it’s weird, when you turn on a news channel, how all of the stories are so in-depth, and so many things get forgotten about right away? I mean, it’s like the news channels all get together and say, ‘Okay, this week, this is what we’re going to feed to the American people. We’ll get everyone to feel the same way about x news event. Then we’ll move on to something new, and finally they’ll all be submissive, finally they’ll all separate into one of two factions, but we know which faction’s going to come out on top. When we want to start something military, every one will be able to accept it, and we’ll be making a difference in our country.’ The news can’t be trusted, Jeanne. I think the whole apparatus is evil.”
“I think you’re a little paranoid. This is why I stay away from politics.”
“But literature has its own rules, right? Don’t you think there’s anything totalitarian about literature? How the same phrases will keep popping up in the same book, how the plot always has to be moving forward, how secrets are kept by the author from the reader until it’s the right time to reveal them, how the form of reality a book creates is an idealized world, which has a few obvious pieces missing?”
“You’re focusing your attention in the wrong direction. Books are an escape, and nothing more. Books never change the world. Books change the literary world, but books don’t change the real world. I mean, the closest comparison I can think of are obscenity hearings, or books that legitimately ‘threaten’ some institution.”
“Are you going to write books, Jeanne?”
“I just want to be a teacher. I’m not good enough to write.”
“I want to write books that threaten everybody.”
“That’s really thoughtful of you.”
“It is! People need to be scared out of their wits if they’re going to make any real change in their lives, or in anything else.”
“I don’t think most people like being scared.”
“How do you account for the popularity of horror films?”
“That’s different. They’re fun, they’re ridiculous.”
“They also introduce horrible things into the minds of the young.”
“Doesn’t everything?”

Prophetic Feelings

2009-05-18T09:01:00.001-07:00

Rory, Ireena, Luther, and Penelope all left the aforementioned bar. Penelope and Luther went home together. At this point, they were now boyfriend and girlfriend. However, Rory and Ireena couldn’t be so simply defined.
“Well, do you want to come back with me?” he asked.
“I really can’t today. It’s only Monday night.”
“Wait though. I never asked you. What are you doing for Halloween?”
“I’m going to a party. Do you want to come?” “Sure! Definitely.”
“Okay. Great. I’ll call you later.”
Rory kissed her on the cheek, and Ireena responded in rapidity likewise. She walked away, and Rory was left to walk home alone. There were crowds of people shouting unknowable things. They all seemed more drunk than it seemed fair to be on a Monday night. Rory wondered whether or not it was okay to be an alcoholic, if one could deal with hangovers and financial concerns. He didn’t want another drink tonight though. He was happy to walk to the train and think about love. And Halloween costumes. He had no idea what would be a cool costume. For, this was his final truth, he thought. A good costume could mean success, but a stupid costume could mean the end of whatever he hoped could be with Ireena. He couldn’t be anything too obscure. But he couldn’t be anything too clichéd. He figured if he got together with Luther on this, they could do a combination thing, and thus they could be absolved. Once, Rory had been at a Halloween party where one of the participants was dressed up in a jacket and tie. Rory had asked him what he was going as, and the participant said, “Myself, a hundred years from now.”

The Rainy Extrapolatory Effect

2009-05-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, it was dark. Marcus’s rationality had reached an all-time low. There he was in his dorm room, 8:30 AM, doing bong rips by himself, listening to the Wipers. His roommates were gone. The music was on loud. Jeanne came out of his bathroom.
“Do you spend every morning this way?” she asked him.
“It’s my special secret educational method.” he responded.
“Do you think it’s normal?”
“It’s completely abnormal.”
“Why do you do that? Don’t you think nobody will ever take you seriously?”
“Why would I want them to take me seriously?”
Jeanne crossed over the room to him.
“Fine. Can I smoke too?”
“Please. I love you.”
Outside it was raining. Greg Sage was screaming through the speakers about how we all had to feel it now. Jeanne cleared the chamber. Marcus leaned over to kiss her. They were sitting on his floor. They laid down supine and held each other. There was a loud crash outside.
“What is that noise?” Marcus said.
“I don’t want to know.” Jeanne answered.
They laid there together for a while.
“When do you have class?” she asked him.
“9:30.”
“What class is it?”
“It’s called Gender and Sex.”
Jeanne laughed.
“What do you talk about in a class called Gender and Sex?”
“Mostly about transsexuality.”
“What have you learned?”
“Some people think they’re born the wrong gender. They have to switch it to feel right.”
“Well, I know that. I mean, what else new did you learn?”
“I don’t know. It’s just repetitive all the time. Nothing new gets talked about. I think everybody in the class secretly wants me to be gay.”
“Don’t do that now,” Jeanne said. “But how, why?”
“Just to be sure that I don’t hold any prejudices.”
Jeanne sat up. “Things are so complicated, aren’t they?”
“It’s impossible to please everyone. But I’m doing my best.”
“I have class at 9:30 too.”
“What’s yours?” “Art History.”
“Who are you studying now?”
“Courbet, Eugene Delacroix—reading Baudelaire.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“It is. It’s oddly pertinent.”
“Oddly pertinent.”
“Oddly pertinent” Jeanne said again.
“Are you doing anything for Halloween?”
“I’m going to dress up as Sylvia Plath.”
Marcus laughed uproariously.
“That’s a great costume!”
“I’m just going to go off of the beginning of The Bell Jar. What about you? What are you going to do?”
“I think I’m going to dress up as the President.”
“Oh God, why?”
“It’s a good opportunity for satire.”
“It is. It is.”
They got up together and they grabbed their bags, and they walked out onto the street. Outside there were a hundred people gathered around the sidewalk. They went closer to inspect. There was blood. There was a motionless body. There were policemen. There were people talking on their cell phones. There was one person crying.

Gossip Regarding Matters of the Heart

2009-05-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Ted’s shift at Uncommon Grounds had just ended, and he was doing his side-work. Penelope walked in for her shift and asked him how work was. He told her that it had been hard that day. There were more customers than usual. That, and they all wanted complicated drink orders. And, added to that, Julia had not shown up for work, so they were understaffed. He told her that Julia was being fired for not showing up.
“Oh no!”
“Yes.”
“She was such a good server though.”
“That’s what happens when you don’t show up.”
After they talked about Julia, Ted told Penelope that he was on his way out. She told him to wait for her to get a break. She had to talk to him about something. Ted, feeling impatient, asked if it couldn’t wait until the next time they were on shift together. Penelope said no, it was important, and she was afraid to wait that long. Ted looked on the schedule posted behind the hostess stand.
“But it says we’re working together Friday.”
“That’s three days.”
“It’s really only two and a half.”
“A night is an entire day in my opinion,” she countered.
“Fine. Is it really that important?”
“Incredibly so.”
Ted sat down and had a café latte, which he received at a half off discount, and which Penelope made for him. Their manager, Claudia, was filling in for Julia in addition to her supervisory duties.
“I heard Julia got fired today.”
“That’s right.”
“Is it really fair?”
“She wasn’t here. She didn’t call or anything, and that’s a fire-able offense.”
Penelope decided she was slightly afraid of Claudia.
“So if I just sleep in too late one day, and I can’t call because I can’t hear my alarm clock, I’ll get fired?”
“You better not.”
“Can I take a break?”
“Well, yes. But you better take it before the 6:00 rush.”
It was 5:45.
She shouted to Ted, “Are you finished with that café latte yet?”
He shouted back, “Yes!”
“I’m taking it now.” she said.
She walked to Ted and asked if he had a cigarette.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“There’s an occasion for everything, sometimes.”
They walked outside together and he gave her one of his Benson and Hedges. He also took one for himself. He lit them both up.
“Look we never talked about how we slept together,” she began with a puff.
“I know,” he said as he took a puff.
“You don’t think we should have?”
“What’s to talk about?”
“Whether you wanted to anymore or not.”
“Um,” he said.
“Because I felt really bad about it, at first, but you never said anything,” she said.
“Well, sure. I didn’t.”
“Do you mean, you didn’t want to anymore?”
“No, I had a really good time that night,”
“It was only like four days ago you know.”
“Yeah, why do you bring it up now?” he asked and took a puff.
“I just wanted to be sure you wouldn’t be upset,” she said taking a puff.
“About what?”
“I met someone new,” she said, exhaling smoke like a steam engine.
“Oh,” he said, taking another.
“So I just wanted to be sure you wouldn’t feel weird. I mean, we work together, you know?”
“Yeah, we do.”
“I didn’t think it was a good idea in the first place.”
“Yeah, I thought it might complicate things a bit,” he offered
“We were drunk.”
“Yes, and already at my apartment.”
“It was bound to happen.”
“At least it happened once,” he said, taking a last puff
“So, you’re not mad?” she asked a last time.
“I wouldn’t say I’m happy. But I’m not mad, no,” he said, tossing his cigarette to the ground.
“Okay.”
“My search will continue,” he said, smiling and looking aside.
“I just wanted to be sure it wouldn’t be weird when we work together.”
“Right, we have to keep the machine moving forward.”
“Alright, well I have to go back in, Claudia’s probably pissed already.” she said, putting the cigarette out.
“Good luck tonight. It’s getting more crowded the closer we get to Halloween, I think.”
“Crazy,” she said, “Take care!”
Ted walked down the street and started thinking. He was thinking about what he would do once he got home, and he didn’t know. He didn’t have any more important things to complete. He was not hungry, he was not tired, he did not want to read and he had no movies to watch. He decided he could watch TV. Then he decided that TV was not the thing he should be looking forward to, particularly since there was nothing on that he was dying to see. This was quite a quandary as far as Ted was concerned—truly not having anything to do. So he kept walking around the commercial district. He paced back and forth up the street nearly a mile in each direction. There was nothing he wanted, nothing he needed to buy.
“There’s only one person she mentioned, and I know he wouldn’t just talk to her, and leave it at that. No. Luther is only interested in getting laid. That is the only facet of him I ever saw. Does he care for Penny the way I do? Could he possibly know what is at stake in a relationship with her? She tells me everything, she’s so honest to me, and she doesn’t hide things or hold them back. And she met someone else, who she can talk better to? Obviously it’s going again to prove that amicability matters less than looks. Am I really not as good looking as him? Or is he just more gregarious? Is he less awkward? Can’t she see that he’s shallow, and that he has no ambitions? I wish I could sit around all day and just talk and not get bored as hell with the narrow limitations of the conversation. It’s not going to last. She couldn’t stay with him long before she realizes how stuck up and righteous he allows himself to be. Whatever, she’s gone, for now at least, and now it’s sketchy if I act like anything more than a good friend. I’m going to make her regret going with him. She doesn’t know what she let get away. There are not many other men like me. They all submit their wills in the name of the future. I refuse to think that far ahead. I will think of now, and I’m not going to worry about doing something wrong. What have I got to protect? What reputation have I got to uphold? I can only get better, regardless.”
The Freudian implications of Ted’s interior monologue should not distract the reader, because it is clear that he has nothing to care about except Penelope. Ted’s mother and father are not characters in this story, and to include them would only complicate matters more greatly. They might lend some interesting character development, though. Perhaps it would be easiest to simply state what Ted’s parents might bring to the table, were they to appear here. Ted’s father would ignore the more intangible aspects of his son’s intelligence, instead preferring that Ted use his life to undertake something more steady and reliable and respectable than being a coffee shop clerk. Ted’s mother would be supportive, too supportive one might argue, and would prefer that Ted do whatever made him happy. So his parents are not real characters, and who knows where they live, and who knows what they do, and who knows who they are—none of that plays a factor here. Ted is alone in the world—his parents could be 2,000 miles away for all we know. He is an only child. That perhaps is a more important piece of character development. He has no brothers or sisters towards which to turn in times of turmoil. The only people he goes to for advice are his friends, and all too often they give terrible advice. He might call his parents for advice, but he had no interest in talking to them, and he had no interest in the sort of advice they would give, because he already knew what it would be. Parental advice was so reasonable it almost made him shudder. If he were to call his parents, and ask what they thought he should do about the Penelope situation, they would tell him to go beat up Luther and win Penelope’s heart with affection. They would either say that, or that she wasn’t worth it anyways.
But there he was, walking alone in the night, and we should take a step back, as observers of his predicament, and try to understand just what was going through his head. It’s quite clear that he’s upset, but there doesn’t seem to be a way out of this particular brand of disappointment. Penelope “met someone new.” Ted is old news. Whatever he gave to Penelope, obviously Luther has given more, or better. Long ago it was mentioned that Penelope merely sought out bodily pleasure after the death of her husband. Nobody knows this except her. Putting this together, we get a sort of dramatic irony. It is to be implied that Penelope felt Luther was a better lover than Ted. However, neither of them is supposed to know that the other exists in relation to Penelope. Ted is given the heads up here, and Luther has not bothered to ask, nor has Rory bothered to point out the inconsistencies, nor has Jeanne or Missy felt the need to point it out, and this is surely none of Marcus’s business. Perhaps they are all in this together, but Ted is both shut out of their friendly coterie, and given secret knowledge. So he is at once ahead and behind. Maybe he is the only one amongst us who would have the clairvoyance to predict the remarkable chain of events that threatens the decimation of the narrative. Maybe he is the only one with the power to change things, to shake things up, to cause serious trouble. Maybe something different will come along for him, though, and maybe he can simply extricate himself from the proceedings without spreading any sort of wickedness.
Would you believe me if I told you Ted was a witch? That he had studied witchcraft as a hobby while he was in high school? It may sound strange, but at the time it was a very popular pursuit actually. Ted did not play sports or do theater or drugs or music, so naturally the friends he made were strange ones and they had gradually pulled him into their little supernatural world. They made potions, they cast spells, they had weird rituals which they would conduct on the weekends, and at first Ted was suspicious, but the first time he saw someone else affected by one of their spells, he was in. He might have been called a real witch for about one calendar year, from October 1998 to 1999, let’s estimate. He stopped when he entered college and he realized that no one else there needed to be a witch anymore. It was a fad. He was going to look like a dork if he continued the old weekend rituals on his own. So he had not bothered to exhume his box of witch literature from the storage closet of the basement of his apartment building. It had sat there since he had moved in a year earlier. He had never kept it at his parent’s house for fear that they would go through it and perhaps use his forgotten powers against him.
“Just so it wouldn’t be weird when we worked together. Is that all that matters anymore? Business over pleasure? I guess it is that way in the end. Yes to business and no to pleasure because pleasure implies a shirking of one’s responsibilities. What are my responsibilities? Press button, grind beans, shake drink, and pronounce complicated beverage names effortlessly? It’s not exactly rocket science. I’d be a better rocket scientist than a coffee server because at least then I’d be making money and at least then I wouldn’t look like such a deadbeat. But what could she possibly see in Luther? How is he not at least twice as big a deadbeat as me? Does he have an ‘artistic’ temperament that renders him more attractive or interesting? There’s such a glaring emptiness about him. Maybe he’s changed from when I last saw him. But people never change too dramatically. He’s still the same person underneath. I don’t know what she sees in him. Does she expect him to replace Paul or something? Is she really ready to date so soon after? Does Luther even know, or care about the fact? She is beautiful, and she doesn’t deserve to get hurt again.”
This was going through Ted’s mind as he stepped onto the train and on his way back home. He looked at an advertisement for HIV prevention. He started laughing. A girl standing a few feet behind and to the left of him stepped forward.
“Why are you laughing at that?” she asked.
“Look at how happy the guy looks. I want HIV if I can look that happy!”
“You’ve got the devil in you,” the girl intoned.
“And what would you know about the devil?”
“Lots of things.”
“I bet I know more. You can’t top me in devil knowledge.” Ted joked.
“Try me.”
“Okay, question one, what does the devil actually do?”
“He only tempts. He does not commit evil acts himself.” She answered assuredly.
“Question two, are Satan and the devil the same thing?”
“Satan is the ruler of hell, whereas the devil is his spirit.” She said hesitatingly.
“I don’t know about that one. But question three, where does the devil thrive?”
“In nature. Man-made civilization enshrouds his deeds in man’s own wickedness.”
“Interesting theory, but I think you’re wrong on all fronts. You don’t look like the type that has experience with the devil himself.”
“Oh do I?”
“No. Have you ever been afraid of getting HIV?”
“Yes.”
“You go towards the light, not the dark. You’re like me, except I wasn’t always that way.” Ted explained.
“I think you’re wrong about a few things.”
“There’s only one thing to do then.”
“What’s that?”
“You have to come back to my apartment with me.”
“Hey, I don’t know.”
“You have to trust me. You’re the only person who can help me now.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“But you know a little about the devil?”
“A little.”
“And do you want to know what I know about the devil?”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“Well, it is. But, it’s as dangerous as you want it to be.”
The train slowed down.
“This is my stop. Are you getting off with me?” Ted asked in desperation.
“Okay. Tell me what you know about the devil.”
They walked off together and went up the stairs and into Ted’s apartment.

A Trip Out of the City

2009-05-18T08:58:00.002-07:00

Charles boarded the train and sat on the second deck. He put on his headphones and spaced out, watching the railroad tracks and the landscapes disappear. He arrived in Crystal Lake an hour later. His grandmother was at the station. She was wearing jeans and sneakers, a sweatshirt and a pink headband that propped up her short bright white hair. She looked at least twenty years younger than she really was. They walked together through the commercial district of the town and settled on a place to have lunch. Charles had a bowl of chicken soup as his grandmother picked at an arugula salad. She asked him what he was doing and he said he was going to dictate his history. He asked her what she was doing and she said she was just trying to survive. She asked him what history he had to dictate—he was still so young. He said he had a lot of interesting things happen to him that required telling. She looked on as if befuddled. She asked him to tell her one. He said she wasn’t the proper audience. She told him to forget about embarrassing details. He asked her if that meant he should filter the story. She said yes, whatever made him comfortable. He told the story of what had happened to him on Wednesday night:
“I was out there, and I was looking around. There was nobody that could assuage the pain I was feeling. I was stuck. I couldn’t be happy. I felt sad, but I didn’t feel justified in my sadness. I was walking around, and I went to Rory’s house. You know Rory, he was glad I came to see him. He wanted me to stay later than I did. He said he was losing it over a girl. I told him he was lucky. I was losing it over questions that had no answer. I had to go back on the street to know what it was I should do. I left, and I started walking down the sidewalk, and I realized I had to go see a friend of mine, and I went there, and he keeps a garden in his back patio and he gave me this bag of the freshest parsley practically for free. So I went home and used it in some leftover pasta and it was really delicious. But then it was after dinner and I wasn’t hungry and I didn’t just want to try to fall asleep, so I asked my roommate if he wanted to go out on the town. He agreed, and his girlfriend came along with us. We went to a club, we had a few drinks, he started dancing with his girlfriend, and I walked around looking for someone to dance with. Everybody was paired off, and what few girls were not dancing were standing, sipping their drinks, talking to their girlfriends. I became flustered by the scenario, so I bought myself an energy drink from a guy who was selling them independently, and I went into the bathroom. I gulped it down and ten minutes later the entire scenery of the club changed. Everything before that was menacing and wrong, scary, unholy, suddenly appeared to be good, one of the best ideas anybody has ever come up with, a true gift. This club that I hated upon entering became a wonderland. Suddenly I slid into the most densely packed area of the dance floor. There, everyone was sweaty, nobody was saying anything obnoxious, it just seemed like people were happy to have you there. It was like this big hug from humanity. Feeling so weird at the club and really not liking the music we were all supposed to be dancing to, and suddenly this huge hug from seemingly everybody in the club. I felt so happy for an instant. Then, I saw a girl dancing by herself, kind of looking towards the floor, flipping her hair back every once and a while. I nonchalantly moved over towards her, and she saw me, and she kept dancing the same way, until finally I was right up next to her, and she grabbed me, and she pulled me close to her, and we danced like that for a few minutes. I was feeling so good I tried to explain how happy I was at the moment, and she just looked astonished. Like, this was a typical night for her, I guess. For me, this was one of the very few times in my life I had actually danced with somebody at a club.”
“We used to go out dancing,” Charles’s grandmother said.
“But it was a different sort of dancing I take it.”
“It used to be the only thing we would do on the weekends. We would work all week, making twenty-five cents an hour, and on Friday night we would dress up as pretty as we could, and we would put on all kinds of makeup, and we would go out to a dance. I met your grandfather at one of those very dances.” She finished.
“I don’t think spouses meet at clubs nowadays.” He took a sip of his iced tea.
“Well, we met one night, and we stayed married for fifty years. So why don’t you tell me, Charles, what is a good place to meet a spouse?”
“That’s obvious.” He said.
“Oh is it?”
“School.”
“Bah,” his grandmother said, “In my day, schools were separated.”
“School is a predetermined matchmaker.”
“That’s an easy excuse to use.” She said. “What if you couldn’t afford school? What would you do then?”
“But I can afford school.” He followed.
“I couldn’t afford school, and look at what I accomplished.”
“You’re a very unique lady.”
“School taught me nothing. Working taught me everything.”
“Are you trying to tell me I should get a job?”
“I certainly wouldn’t be going out to dances on a Wednesday night while I was working. If I did that, I would blow all of my measly savings. Just because you think you don’t have to worry about money doesn’t mean you can’t try to make as much of a difference as everyone else who does work.”
“You’re losing me, grandma.”
“Just keep it in mind. One day you won’t be expected to work. Now, more than ever, you’ve got to be working hard. Just believe me.”
“Okay, I’ll believe you,” Charles answered at last.
They had sandwiches and ice cream and they left. Charles asked his grandmother if she would like to visit him in the city next time, and she said it was quite a hard trip to make, but she would do it. He promised they would go out to a fancy lunch and they could walk all around the city, and through all of the parks that she hadn’t seen yet. He hugged and kissed her before he boarded the train home, the sky beginning to darken.

"You're Always Backwards"

2009-05-18T08:58:00.001-07:00

When Charles arrived back at his apartment, he was greeted by loud shouts. Missy and Spencer were standing in the living room. Rather than cause unnecessary provocation, Charles nonchalantly walked into his bedroom and quietly shut the door.
“YES, but at least I look the world in the eye,” he replied to her accusation.
“Oh yeah, through your glazed eyes,” she mumbled.
“Look it’s fine. You don’t want to see me anymore. Fine. Just don’t put me down anymore than you already have.”
“What pisses me off the most is that you could be so great—if you could go three hours without smoking” she added
“Yeah, well maybe you could be great if you could go three minutes without dragging me down.”
“You’re just a loser, Spencer,” she said, “And I don’t go out with losers.”
“Fine, go out, go meet some new guys. See how far you get.”
“I will. But before I go, I want to thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“Yes, I want to thank you. For giving me this experience. Because it’s something I’m never going to forget. No matter how long I live, I will never forget you, Spencer, and you will always remind me of what to avoid.”
“You’re welcome, then.”
Missy walked out the door and Charles came out of his bedroom shortly thereafter. Spencer was sitting on the couch, staring at nothing. Charles sat down beside him.
“I think it’s time that we go over a few things.” Charles started.
“Okay.” “You’re NOT going to jail, right?”
“I am not. I am on probation, so it would look good if I got a real job.”
“Have you started applying anywhere?”
“I went to a couple head shops and asked if they needed any help. Also a couple vintage clothing stores. They don’t need anybody else.”
“Well what did I tell you? Either you’re going to have to get a real job, or you’re going to have to work for me.”
“And just what am I supposed to do for you?”
“I told you. I’m going to dictate my history, and you’re going to type it for me.”
“Can’t you just type it yourself?”
“I’m better at speaking than I am at typing.”
“How much will you pay me?”
“8 dollars an hour.”
“Fine. When do we start?”
“Tomorrow will be our first day. We can start with my birth tomorrow. It’s a very interesting story, how I was born. I think you’ll find the experience gratifying.”
“Right. I think this is weird.”
“Weird? What more could I possibly do for you? I’m offering you a job here. And when the cops come around, and they ask what you’ve been doing for society, you can say you’ve been writing Charles McCallum’s autobiography.”
“So I’m a ghost writer.”
“Exactly. We will have to get a good photographer when we’re finished. They can take a picture of me in this apartment, and then you can be in the very corner of the frame, and that can be the cover. It will be very funny. And we can call the book “Pure Possibility” and it can say “with Spencer Blackwell” at the bottom. Don’t you see how you stand to gain from this?”
“I guess.”
“Good then. I’m glad we’re going to do something productive.”
“I’ve got to go. See you later.” Spencer left the apartment.

Ritual

2009-05-18T08:57:00.001-07:00

It was Wednesday night, and Ted was at his apartment. His buzzer rang and he let Barbara back in. Barbara and he had met on the train, and he had told her that he would be able to dazzle her with his knowledge of the devil. She believed him, and she was now returning to his apartment for the second night in a row. The first night, they had arrived, Ted had mixed an herbal concoction for them to drink, they had drunk it, and they had taken off their clothes and they had rolled around on the floor. They were trying to commune their two spirits in ecstasy. They had behaved savagely.
But this night Ted was only secondarily interested in sex. Firstly, he was glad to have a like-minded friend willing to participate in his rituals. One of his beliefs was that two spirits were stronger than one when it came to casting spells. Barbara may have only been learning, but it was not expertise that rendered the magic effective—it was will. More importantly perhaps was their proximity to Halloween.
This was Ted’s plan:
1) Put a curse on Luther
2) Meet him at a Halloween party.
3) Insist that he was truly very lucky to have Penelope.
4) Offer him a drink
5) Pour potion in drink
6) Watch Luther fall.
The problem was, Ted didn’t want to tell Barbara about the plan too closely. It would appear suspicious if he were out to get the new boyfriend of a girl he had only slept with once. So he explained how he had a personal vendetta against not only Luther, but more importantly against his friend Rory.
“So are you going to help me, Barbara?”
“I don’t want to hurt anybody. I thought the time of bad witches had passed, and now witches used their powers for good.”
“I’m not going to hurt anybody either. I’m just going to play a trick on him. Have a little fun. Your energy can help me make it better though.”
“What did these guys do to you exactly?”
“Luther, the one we are going to curse, is the most arrogant person I know. He seems to think he is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I think this attitude is actually hurting his life, and he doesn’t realize it. He could be a much more effective worker if he were reduced down to his bare essentials. I knew him for a while. We were friends. But I became so sick of him that I just didn’t want to see him anymore.”
“Did he do anything flagrant to you?”
“He invaded my life. And there was overlap with Rory. At first only Luther would come over to my house, and then he brought Rory with him a few times, and then I shut out Luther, and I continued to be friends with Rory for a few more weeks and I realized that he was only trying to infiltrate my life too. It’s like he was a bloodsucker. A vampire.”
“That sounds really weird.” Barbara answered bemused.
“I know. You want to smoke a bowl?” Ted asked.
“Sure,” Barbara said.
They smoked and they exhaled their smoke in each other’s mouths. Ted lit candles—five of them, creating a circle around him and Barbara. They crossed their legs and sat with their kneecaps touching. They took each other’s hands.
“Now it is time to call Satan.” Ted said.
“Alright!” Barbara said.
Ted closed his eyes, and Barbara closed hers in agreement.
“Great devil,” Ted began, “We are in awe of your power. We are in awe that you are real. We are in awe that you reveal yourself where God does not. We are in awe that you will help us if we ask for it. We are in awe of you. And we are calling you tonight to ask for a favor, because our earthly powers do not equal yours. Please give us the strength to carry out this will.” Barbara was laughing.
Ted opened his eyes, “Why do you think this is funny?”
“Come on, you really think this is going to work?”
At the instant, the candles surrounding them were extinguished.
“He’s here now.” Ted said. “Now is our chance. Be very quiet.”
“This doesn’t feel very good,” Barbara said.
They were silent for a few minutes until Barbara said, “Now what?”
“We must get the recipe for the potion.” Ted took out a pen and sheet of paper from behind him. In the dark, he wrote a list, his eyes fixed on Barbara.
“Is he still here?” Barbara asked.
“He’s left. But for an instant he was sitting right here.” Ted pointed to the area just to his left, and just to Barbara’s right.
“Creepy,” she said.
“But it’s all over now, and I have the ingredients.” Ted looked at the list. “Uh-oh,” he said to Barbara.
“What?”
“One of the ingredients is a drop of your blood.”
“Why mine?”
“You must have some connection to Luther that gives your blood credence.”
“Scary,” she said.
“You’re sure you’ve never met him?”
“If I met him, I wouldn’t know it was him.”
“Well, we have our list! The next step is to get to the same party as him. Will you be my date?”
“After that? I think I’m sort of obligated after that. Especially if it’s my blood you need.”
“You agree to go through with this?”
“I want to believe this is possible. I’m still skeptical about you.”
“You will believe. Witches ain’t no shit.” Ted said seriously.
“Can we dress up as witches?” Barbara laughed.
“Whatever you want,” Ted said, then kissed her.

Sole-Purveyor

2009-05-18T08:56:00.002-07:00

Ireena was alone in her apartment, and she was trying to sleep. It was just after 11, and usually she would have already fallen asleep by this point, but tonight she found herself unable to focus. There were sketchy details she could remember—she had to wake up at 6:30, she had to shower, she had to eat breakfast, she had to commute to work. And there were other things she didn’t want to think about—did she really want to be with someone like Rory, what was she going to dress up as for Halloween, was her job really what she wanted to be doing for the rest of her life? All she needed was a sense of closure to get the final burst of sleepiness to descend upon her. Her dreams might be overloaded with sensory detail, but her last waking thoughts of the day weren’t as soothing.
In the past, she would imagine a great task she could one day complete. She would imagine a perfect set of circumstances, and how she in turn would react perfectly to them. She imagined no barriers to her success. While performing the high jump in high school, she used to imagine winning the gold medal at the Olympics. She had never heard of a girl younger than her who could jump higher, and far too many people told her that she should follow her dreams. By the end of her first year of high jumping, she realized she might have been the best in her school, but she was not the best in her state, or even her region. Harsh reality had set in. Her late night fantasies of achieving greatness alluded her, and she was forced to consider real life circumstances as they might actually occur, realizing that perfection had no place in reality.
The second she would come to a comforting thought, another thought would knock itself out of her head, and remind her that things were just not so that way. Occasionally (we might call this self-doubt), these combative thoughts of reason made sense, and sometimes she saw no proof that they made sense. She was pulled between idealism and reason, and somewhere in between she found truth. Truth did not necessarily need to make sense, whereas idealism made too much sense, and reason was sense manifest. She preferred to think that things would just happen to her. That she wouldn’t have to make things happen for herself. This made sense to her. Instead of being the mover or the pusher, she could be the purveyor. She would sit on her bed and she would purvey the ground below. There would be nothing there which surprised her. Everything on the floor could be accounted for. Then she could move to her window, and she could open it and sit inside it, and look down on the street, and she could see everyone walking, and she could be the purveyor there as well. Nothing would exactly surprise her, but she would not have been able to account for anything.
What did surprise her was when she saw a man on fire running amok down the street. One would presume that he would be looking for water to put himself out, but he ran down the street with no discernible purpose or goal. Perhaps he was showing off his ability to withstand extremely high temperatures. Ireena was perplexed. But she was also drawn to this image, and moved, she went beneath her kitchen sink and grabbed a bucket. She filled it with water and ran down her apartment stairwell and out to the street in the hopes of extinguishing the fire on the man, but she found the area empty. It was totally empty. She put the bucket down and then Rory walked around the corner.
“What are you doing with that bucket?” he asked.
“I saw a man on fire. He was running down the street, and I wanted to save him,” she said.
“Are you sure you just saw that?”
“Of course I did. I know what I saw.”
“I didn’t see it, and I was just out here.”
“He must have gone down a different alleyway,” Ireena decided.
They looked down the street and saw three different avenues the man could have chosen for his fiery fleet.
“I still think that means we should kiss.” Rory said.
Ireena did not protest.

Psychic Energy

2009-05-18T08:56:00.001-07:00

Thursday morning Luther woke up alone. Penelope had the early morning shift, and though she had spent the night at his apartment, she had left before he woke up. Alone and free from necessary tasks, he took his time getting out of bed. He took a long, hot shower. He made himself coffee and toasted a bagel. He grabbed the newspaper from outside his apartment door. He read, and drank, and ate, and he looked at the clock—11:26 AM.
Penelope would be getting off her shift at 1:00. He thought he might meet her there at that time, but in the remaining hour and a half the only prudent thing he could think to do was to look for a job. He went online and scanned help wanted ads until he realized that there were no positions available in any business he had the least interest in joining. He saw another ad for an audition, this time for a TV show, and he decided he would call in for that.
He did call and he made an appointment to audition for the role at 3:00 that day. Realizing he still had more time than he needed before he could meet Penelope after her shift ended, he took out his journal again, and wrote some more self-deprecating material.
“Today is a Thursday in October, and it is the day before Halloween and I still don’t know what I’m doing, except that I started seeing this girl Penny since the last time I wrote in here. Actually the last time I wrote in here she called me up and we ended up having sex for the first time afterwards, so I guess this journal is good luck to me now. Also, strangely, another girl approached me in the park that I was writing in then too. She was weird, but I feel like I’m putting out this glow that I never showed before. Like, so many people are suddenly paying attention to me. I think it’s this girl, Penny. I’ve been really happy with her these last few days. What’s weird is, she’s a widow, a very young widow. I’m actually almost a year older than her. Her husband was a couple years older, but still, can you imagine dying that young? I think it really did terrible things to her, but she doesn’t seem to show it. She acts like your pretty typical 25-year-old. What’s weird also is going out with her knowing she was married and she was trying to have a baby and she was trying to start her own family and then all of the sudden, nothing, and now there’s me that she’s seeing instead of her husband. Weird. But she validates me where everyone else sort of rolls their eyes at me. I may not be a very good actor, but I am going to another audition today, and I am going to do my best at this. I feel like if she went along with me I’d do a better job. She makes me feel stronger. I guess it’s knowing that she chose me after such a tragedy that makes me feel that way. Well in any case I have to go meet her at her coffee shop now and we have to pick out some Halloween costumes. We are going to dress up as Chilean revolutionaries.”

Birth

2009-05-18T08:55:00.002-07:00

Not long after this journal entry was written, a couple miles away Charles and Spencer were sitting down to their first day of collaborative work. Charles had woken up earlier than usual and put on a suit and tie. Spencer had worn the same clothes as the day before, and had started off the day with a bong rip.
“Well, how are you doing?” Charles asked Spencer as he emerged from his bedroom in sartorial excellence.
“Good. You want?” Spencer said, holding out the bong.
“I don’t see how that’s going to help matters,” Charles said, lifting up his coffee cup in emphasis.
“Suit yourself.”
“I will.”
“You mean, you will take a bong rip?”
“No, I mean, I will suit myself. Fuck it, you’re right.” Charles sat down and took a hit and sunk back into the couch.
The two of them sat there like that for several seconds.
“We’re not getting much work done yet.” Charles said.
“Maybe it’s a good idea to brainstorm.” Spencer offered.
“Good point. We have to construct a philosophy for this book.”
“What are you trying to say with it?” Spencer asked.
“That I exist. That there was a person who was me, who thought these thoughts.”
“So you don’t believe anyone else exists?” Spencer challenged
“No, I believe everyone else exists in tandem,” Charles clarified
“In relation to you, though, in tandem,” Spencer continued
“Yes, you’re getting to the crux of it.”
“So what am I going to type on?”
“You’ll type on my computer,” Charles said, “Since it is my history, and I will be dictating it, and you are merely the instrument through which my words will be manufactured.”
“Why aren’t you typing it yourself?”
“Well two reasons. Number one, I think having you here is useful not only for transmission, but also for confession. And number two, you need work, so I am giving you work. You’re earning as we speak.”
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you, because the importance of your being here is really my prime motivation.”
“You wouldn’t get this done if I weren’t available for this occupation.”
“Exactly, and this is why we should begin now.”
“Okay.” Spencer opened up Charles’s laptop and opened up a word processor. “What do you want the title to be?”
“I already told you. The title is ‘Pure Possibility.”’
“Chapter One?” Spencer asked.
“When I was born, I was not so much born as I was inappropriately pushed. My mother had been told that the birth was going to be a difficult ordeal, and it would be better if they could perform an operation to make the process more smooth. No one asked me, of course, whether I was okay with this. At the next moment, a pair of alien hands grasped me and pulled me out onto an empty white sheet. My first moments of life—could there be any more meaningful time?”
“Do you want those last two parts as one sentence with a dash, or two sentences?”
“One with a dash,” Charles answered.
“We should probably talk about grammar.”
“Write it as closely as you can get it to the way I am speaking it,” Charles conceded.
“Don’t hesitate anymore. Just let it all spill out.” Spencer encouraged.
“I was placed into a crib, and my mother held me often. I learned how to cry, and I learned how to eat, and I learned how to make bad feelings go away. My favorite toy was a baby bird which rattled. It was nothing so simple as a rattle, and nothing so simple as a stuffed animal. The combination mesmerized me. It was my first successful exploration of the anthropomorphic concept. What I held, in its predictability, and in the way I could control it, became part of me. The bird-rattle did not have a mind of its own, and I could make the bird appear to be pecking at food on the floor or singing a song of tiny tinkling beans. I learned what it meant to create strange noises, and what it meant to behave as a human, and as a bird. One might argue that the original toy itself was my single greatest education—to learn what it was to rattle, and to discern what it was to be bird-like. I soon began to notice real birds outside, which looked quite different from my little plaything. Strangely, they were even smaller in fact and not as easily petted. They flew of their own accord. They sang in a very recognizable and ubiquitous rhythm and pitch. They moved for reasons I could not understand.”
“More importantly, I learned how to crawl, and then to walk, and once I could walk, I learned how to talk, and then I began to understand what words meant, and how one word could easily overshadow another, as long as what it meant was more menacing. The word ‘death,’ for example, entered my vocabulary at an early age, and as I gradually began to grasp what it meant, I asked my mother if I would die, and she told me I would not, and that I would go to heaven. Heaven was a concept more difficult for me to grasp than death, and I would only believe in it for about ten more years.”
“Are you stopping there?” Spencer asked.
“This is much harder than I thought,” Charles answered. “I feel like I am self-editing before the real editing should begin.”
“Maybe then that’s being responsible?” Spencer questioned.
“Yes, let’s stop for a while then. Go mark your hours on that poster over there. You can count this as one”
Charles had created a poster for Spencer to fill in his hours taking dictation. Spencer was surprised to see that the dates only went as far as November—Thanksgiving.
“Do you expect to finish this in one month?”
“I expect new things to be revealed every day. And that poster is only a guideline.”

The Catch

2009-05-18T08:55:00.001-07:00

Rory sat in his swiveling chair behind his cubicle at his fortuitous office job. When asked at parties or random encounters by new acquaintances what he did, he would say he staved off depression by pushing paper. They would laugh politely and then ask him, no really, what did his company do, and Rory would answer that his company managed low-income housing developments throughout the city. He lacked the ability to present an opinion on whether or not he liked the work, which was why he said he staved off depression by pushing paper.
He had nothing in his life to look forward to anymore, nothing except for Ireena, who by this point had become such a cherished object to him that he would only focus on such a point in the future which was to include seeing her. The possibility of finally winning her over alone moved him. He would daydream endlessly about the many different ways they could find themselves together. There was first their date, which was not so much a date as a dinner between a group of friends. There was their absinthe drinking, which did not bring them together, but rather pulled them apart over their fear and acceptance of evil. There was the promise of the Halloween party she said she would invite him to. She would have to call him today. He was afraid she wouldn’t call, and that he might be forced to call her, and that she might not pick up, or ever call him back. He feared this, but he reminded himself that despite her cold exterior, she had actually smiled at him at moments, and she had not ever seriously denounced him, and she had let him kiss her as a gentleman might have in some bygone era. If he had known of her dream the night prior, he might be filled with a sweet wistfulness and an anticipation of her call to come, but since he had his doubts, his mood ranged from jubilant to paranoid, and this was not helpful for his professional career.
“Working hard?” Rory’s colleague Sylvia chimed in.
“It’s hard work,” he answered, “But I am getting it done.”
“Have you taken lunch yet?” she asked
“Not by a long shot,” he answered
“Well, me neither. Do you want to go to Cosi with me?” Sylvia questioned.
“Sure, I guess.” Leaving their office, they each grabbed their coats and scarves. A sharp chill had moved into the city that day. Perhaps there was no other week in the city’s history when one day lying on a beach was possible and another day slipping on a puddle of ice was possible.
They walked into Cosi, placed their orders, and picked a table in the corner at which to sit. As they were waiting for their food to be brought out, Sylvia began the conversation with the following question:
“What are you looking for?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you single?”
“Yeah.”
“So you have to be looking for something. What are you looking for?”
“Just because I’m single doesn’t necessarily mean I’m looking for anything.”
“Okay well then what are you waiting for?”
“Why would I be waiting for anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you getting at, Sylvia?”
“I just don’t see why a guy like you would be single, and not looking for anything, and not waiting for anything.”
“Maybe I’m just secure in being free of pursuits.”
Sylvia wrinkled her forehead.
“You have a strange way of putting things.”
“I know,” Rory said as their food was dropped at their table, “It helps me be extremely clear and direct while still basically remaining an anomaly.”
“Why are you an anomaly?”
“I don’t know how I got this far being the way I am.” Rory said
“But what is the way you are?”
“Nervous,” Rory said, “Sick, naïve.”
“Oh come on, you have to be more positive about yourself,” Sylvia said, “Let’s try it again. What is the way you are?”
“Poetic,” Rory said, “Perfectionist, enthusiastic.”
“Wow, you should write slogans!” Sylvia replied
“So I should work in advertising?”
“You might be really good at that.”
“I feel like advertising people are depressingly cynical.” Rory said.
“Whatever, I just don’t see why you think you’re an anomaly, that’s all I’m saying,” Sylvia said.
“Do you want me to be more clear and direct about why I think I’m an anomaly?” Rory asked.
“Please.” Sylvia said, only in order to say it.
“Nobody will ever understand me because I will refuse to ever open up to anybody.” Rory said.
“But you’re opening up to me.” Sylvia said.
“Girls are the only ones that want you to open up,” Rory said.
“What’s your point?”
“I refuse to open myself up to anybody, but girls are the only ones that require it.”
“I really can’t follow you,” Sylvia intoned.
“Alright, well I’ll tell you, I really like this girl Ireena but I’m worried I haven’t followed the correct procedure.”
“Have you told her you like her?” Sylvia murmured.
“Yes.”
“Did she kiss you?”
“She let me kiss her on the cheek.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know if I told her I liked her the right way.”
“Maybe she couldn’t tell if she liked you or not.”
“Why wouldn’t she like me?”
“I don’t know!”
“I don’t get it. It’s all standards.”
They had finished eating by this point.

Camouflage Fades

2009-05-18T08:54:00.001-07:00

Luther and Penelope walked to an Army surplus store from the coffee shop. Once inside, they picked out two identical pairs of fatigues. They intended to customize the appearance of their outerwear.
“Do you think we should try to buy a gun?” Luther asked.
“It would be much more realistic,” Penelope concluded.
“Are we seeking peace or destruction at this party?” he then asked.
“I just want to make people laugh,” Penelope said.
“Costume parties make me nervous,” Luther said, “It’s so hard to think of something that’s not lame.”
“We are definitely not lame.” Penelope said.
The cashier rang up their military clothes, and they walked out into the street. Luther held the bag with their costumes in it, and Penelope held his other hand. At this stage, we might consider the concept of boredom, as this was a concern of Luther’s whenever it came to romantic interconnectedness. To his mind, there had to be total connection for there to be no boredom. But Penelope was not a very talkative person today.
“I’m all worn out from work,” she said.
Of course, what fails to be mentioned is how Luther did not know what role he was to play in Penelope’s life. Or rather, he did not know how to behave in relation to her. He did not know what she wanted out of him, and so he did not realize when he might be appearing insensitive.
“Do you want to come with me to my audition?” he asked her.
“How long will it take?”
“It depends on how many other people are there. It could be awhile.”
“I guess so. Why not?”
They boarded the train and went downtown. Again, the boredom returned, and this caused Luther’s eye to wander. After a moment, he then felt guilty. Why should he pay attention to anybody but Penelope? Or was she not really the one he had been waiting in vain for?
Much earlier, it was stated that as Luther drove down the expressway he believed that love would continue to elude him. That no matter how open he was to it, there would be none which would satisfy. At this point, we might say that he had stood corrected, but we might also regard with an eye for providence, the basic impossibilities inherent in his psyche which had rendered him essentially hopeless in relation to real and true mutual love. He merely wanted to be held. In the end, he could not be the one to hold.
Nevertheless, he and Penelope held hands on the train, and when they arrived at the site of the audition, they sat down on adjacent folding chairs and looked over the script that Luther was to read.
“Are you nervous?” she asked him
“It would be nice to get a real job.”
“You could find a real job easier than acting.”
“Any other job makes me feel suicidal.”
Penelope laughed.
“You could work in the coffee shop with me. One of my co-workers just got fired.”
“No thanks. I need something that’s really stimulating, that makes me feel like I’m doing something of real value.”
“Coffee is stimulating.”
“Pouring it is not.”
“But it’s not just brewing it, or pouring it, it’s the total package. The friendly greeting you give to the customers, the way you can try to make them smile, seeing how satisfied they look once they’re finished. That’s the pleasure of it,” Penelope explained.
“It is only liquids. If I get this acting gig, I will be recorded, and automatically become a part of something bigger than just a leased space, predetermined ingredients, greetings, profits, and some kind of comfort. For most people, real spaces are comforting. But for other people, real spaces are impossible, and some kind of art is all they know to live like, and they stay inside the boundaries of the imaginary. I am not interested in serving the needs of most people. But if I can do something that will seriously move a few of these so-called other people, then that success is forever.”
It was Luther’s turn next for the audition. He stood up and walked into the room where it was to take place. Penelope took out a book.
One woman sat between two men who were to be judging Luther’s audition. They told him he could begin whenever he was ready.
He began by walking up closely to the desk they were sitting at.
“What kind of pain have I felt? Is that what you want to know? How much have I suffered? I’ll tell you how much I’ve suffered—not enough. I’ve been protected from pain all my life. I’ve never broken a bone. I’ve never had to worry about going hungry. I’ve never gotten in a fight and I’ve never been targeted for an attack. I’ve lived in silence—words spoken, but lost in the air, a body on a physical plane, but a ghost in everyone’s mind.”
He stepped back after the last sentence.
“So you ask me, what kind of pain have I felt? Well, I ask you, what kind of pain have you felt? I need to know, because pain is relative. How can I be sure that how bad I’ve felt is justified in your eyes? Do you think I’m a pussy? Do you think I can’t take pain, because I’ve been protected from it? I know pain. I know real pain, but I still haven’t suffered enough. Do you believe me? Do you believe me if you see tears? I don’t cry because I can’t cry, and when I can cry I don’t want to be crying because it’s a sign of weakness, for me, as a man. Weakness and pain do not correlate with me. There is no good reason for me to cry, and to do it is to pity myself.”
He then sat down on the floor.
“But I would be lying if I said I never cried for something trivial. And I would by lying if I didn’t admit there was some personal satisfaction in crying for no good reason. To feel the burn in your eyes, to feel the despair choking you back, to feel the utter loneliness. To have no one beside you to give you comfort. So what is my pain that you want? Is the pain permissible? Can you quantify it by life experience, hardships, uphill struggles, challenges unmet and defeat? Or do you think pain only comes out of abuse—the unnecessary push to the edge, the advantage taken? No, that pain is justified, and that pain is understood by all, and because of that, it’s not real. No, the only real pain, the pain you care to hear about, the pain you want from me, is the pain I won’t admit I feel. This is the pain that I create myself. The pain that comes from within. The pain that comes from knowing and the pain that comes from guilt. My pain is my own responsibility, and you want to know what kind I’ve felt. Pain is personal. And I don’t feel like getting personal today.”
The three casting agents thanked him, and he quickly left the room.

Decoupage

2009-05-18T08:53:00.002-07:00

Ireena unlocks her apartment door and walks in. She closes the door, and locks it. She puts down her bag, she walks over to her fireplace mantle and she picks up an envelope. She takes a small baggy out of the envelope and she spills out some of the contents on an old chemistry textbook she had once used in college. Ireena had wanted to be a chemist until she discovered the basic problems plaguing the inner city. She decided she had to do all she could.
She took out one of her credit cards and cut out a line.
She found Rory’s name on her cell phone and pressed send.
She leaned down to her textbook and snorted the line.
The line rang once, twice.
Rory picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hey Rory, it’s Ireena, what’s up?”
“Nothing I’m just riding the train home from work,” he said. “What are you up to?”
“Oh I’m just doing some decoupage,” she said.
“You mean you’re making a collage?”
“Yes. Well, I’m calling to tell you about the Halloween party.”
“Oh cool, who’s having it?”
“My friend Lauren is having it. It’s starting at 10:00.”
“Should I meet up with you before?”
“Yeah, just come to my apartment.”
“Okay, what’s your address?”
“I’m on the corner of Schiller and Leavitt. Just call me when you get there.”
“Okay.”
“What are you going as?”
“I don’t know yet. I think I’m just going to make my own costume.”
“Rad.”
“Yeah, rad,” Rory echoed.
“Okay well just come over sometime around 9 tomorrow then.”
“What are you going as?” he asked.
“The Black Widow.”
“Ooh, creepy.” he said.
“It’s Halloween,” she said, “Bye-bye.”
“Bye.”
She cut another line out for herself.
She picked up the newspaper.
She took out her scissors and clipped the headline that read:
China: N. Korea not sorry
She figured out the focus of her next collage.
She snorted the line.
She saw a picture on another page of rows of automobiles—all Ford Tauruses. She clipped this picture and placed it below the headline she had cut out.
She took out her easel and a poster-board. She painted a huge mushroom cloud as the first image for her collage.
She put the headline and the photo next to the mushroom cloud.
“This looks clumsy,” she said to herself.
She decided to just paint the scene she intended to create with found images.
She painted mountains behind the mushroom cloud, and she painted stars in the night sky, and she painted the glow from the explosion orange, gray, purple, red, blue, yellow, and green, and then she painted tiny houses which had recently been blown to bits, and she even painted a few small people, huddled on the ground, kneeling face first to the ground, head down, covered by their arms. She worked on it for two hours and she decided that it was not executed well enough to be taken seriously. She put it aside and decided to work on it another time. She turned on her television and sunk back into her couch. She picked up the remote control and she cycled through channels. She thought about what she would make herself for dinner.

Preparation

2009-05-18T08:53:00.001-07:00

This is the recipe that Ted wrote out the previous day while communing with Satan:
1) Soil.
2) Ink.
3) Alcohol.
4) Pomegranate juice.
5) Evergreen pine needles.
6) Barbara’s blood.
As Ted went outside to excavate a handful of soil, he thought the devil had given him a very generic recipe. He wondered whether it was really going to work or not. He didn’t doubt that he could get the concoction into Luther’s drink. He doubted if Luther would notice in a way so as not to blame Ted.
He went back upstairs and took out a glass. He dropped a negligible amount of dirt on the bottom. He went beneath his kitchen sink and he took out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and he poured another tiny bit on top of the dirt. Then he went into his bedroom and took out a cheap pen and scissors. He cut the pen in half, and he dropped some of the ink in the glass.
He went to the store and he bought pomegranate juice. And then he walked to the park and found an evergreen tree and grabbed and pulled off one of its tendrils. He went home and he poured a little bit of the juice in the glass, and dropped a few pine needles in as well. He called up Barbara and told her he needed her to donate some of her blood. An hour later they were sitting on the floor of Ted’s apartment, five candles around them lit, smoking a bowl, listening to classical music.
“Okay, here you go,” Ted said, putting the glass next to them and handing Barbara a sewing needle.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a psycho?” she asked in jest.
“No, nobody has ever told me I am a psycho,” he replied
She pricked her finger. She held it over the glass, but it continued to run down the contours of her skin.
“You have to squeeze it over the glass,” Ted said, “Like an orange.”
Barbara squeezed her finger until a droplet of blood splashed down in the miniscule liquid. “That’s it,” she said, “I’m not making any more blood juice.”
“That should do it, if Satan abides,” Ted said.
“Are you for real, with all of this stuff about the devil? Because it’s really starting to get kind of creepy.”
“It’s Halloween; do you want me to start acting all normal?” “No,” she said, reaching for the bowl on the floor also beside them “I just don’t like talking about this stuff so seriously.”
“The seriousness of it is what makes it fun,” Ted said, “You may think I’m a kook, but you still want to see if there’s anything to this potion or not, right?”
“I guess I just signed on when I pricked my finger,” Barbara said, igniting the lighter.

Prescriptions for Successful Lives

2009-05-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

Marcus and Jeanne lay next to each other in Jeanne’s dormitory bed. It had been a particularly good romp for both of them. They were just beginning to recognize the more peculiar and specific sexual desires that the other held. Their communication in the midst of the act had advanced to the comfort zone where formerly embarrassing requests and apologies had been understood and overcome through the effort of an uncompromising zeal in the other person. No longer did issues of condom restrictiveness dispel the vicissitudes of pleasure.
Unfortunately, while they may have understood how to bring the other’s pleasure to its maximum, in moments of pain, they exacerbated the other’s feelings. If one was feeling worse than the other, they would have to be brought down to that same level of despair before proceeding through a reification of hope and goodwill that would render them capable of stepping out into the world of reality beyond the bedroom. Jeanne, this particular day, was wrestling with the concept of how to appear satisfied as one-half of a couple.
She asked Marcus, “How long do you think we’ll be together?”
“Forever,” Marcus said.
“You don’t think this relationship will run its course before the end of the school year?” “That’s like six more months. I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and then.”
“Don’t you think you’ve reached the stage where life is pretty much predictable now, that you can pretty much tell how everything in your own subjective life is going to fall into place?”
“I still don’t know what I want to do with my life, so no, I don’t consider it predictable,” Marcus answered.
“Everybody I’ve ever been with has moved on after going with me for a little while,” Jeanne deadpan lamented.
“Maybe you’ve just met all the wrong guys,” Marcus reassured.
“Maybe they just get sick of me and I just end up repeating myself all the time because I’m just trying to please them?”
“Do you think that’s the pattern it falls into?”
“I don’t know what kind of pattern to call it, but I don’t know who I’m ever going to meet that I would end up staying with forever. It’s always going to be weird for me, opening up to another person.”
“Why is opening up weird?” “Because they wouldn’t accept me.”
“Nobody could ever reject you.”
“Right, I’m sure it’s impossible for me to get rejected.”
“You’re beautiful—you’re allowed to be weird. You can get away with it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“As a guy, I am not allowed to be weird. I’m not allowed to call myself ‘beautiful’ without sounding like some kind of new-age freak. My interests have to completely fall in line with that of other typical males otherwise girls get suspicious. However, guys do not get suspicious about girls, because we do not strictly analyze the behavioral tendencies of them across and in comparison to their gender and traditional images and concepts of femininity. Femininity permits weirdness; masculinity acts as an innocent bystander to weirdness.”
“Weirdness is not justified by femininity. Girls are even more aware of weirdness than guys because there’s such a pressure to be the coolest and the cutest and the happiest. We know what weirdness translates to in these categories—their logical opposites. If I am weird, I will not be cool. If I am weird, I will not be cute. Thus it follows, if I am weird, I will not be happy.”
“You just want the whole world to accept you. And that’s not going to happen. You can’t keep thinking about what everybody thinks of you. No matter what you do, no matter how uncontroversial you are about what you say, someone is always going to think you’re weird for one reason or another. If you feel like you’re acting the way you’re made to, and the way you logistically feel you should, then there’s no shame in it. When you start realizing you truly are the only one that feels this way about something, then you know you’re alone. But we’re not alone, now are we?”
“No, but I think we will both be alone again.”
“See, here’s one area where you’re differing from my conception of femininity.”
“What’s that?”
“You have a bleak outlook.”
“You think all girls think everything’s going to turn out just great?”
“I think girls don’t put the pressure on themselves to make everything great.”
The first domino fell at this opinion.
“We put enormous pressure on ourselves. It’s the guys that don’t appreciate what we do that make me pessimistic.”
“Well, what is it you do?”
“We do everything men can do, but we give birth on top of it.”
“That’s unfair,” Marcus said, “I can’t say ‘I do everything a woman can do, and I make birth possible on top of it.’”
“You could say it if you wanted to, but you don’t want to define yourself in relation to a woman.”
“I love to define myself in relation to a woman!”
“But you don’t have the same standards. You say you have the same standards, but when it comes down to putting them into practice, you veer off into what you think is best and you totally discount compromise, because all you want is pleasure for yourself.”
“I will compromise whatever you want me to compromise, Jeanne.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes, if it’s okay with you.”
“I don’t want you to be obsessed with me, but I do appreciate being listened to.”
“I will always listen to you.”
“Stop talking like that, you sound so serious.”
At this, Marcus pulled the sheet over their heads.

Halloweeness

2009-05-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

Penelope woke up at 6 AM. She had to open up Uncommon Grounds with Claudia and Ted this morning. She woke up in Luther’s apartment, and she left him a note which read:

I went out to go to work (unlike some people!) but you can call me at 2:00 if you want to hang out before we go to Lauren’s party.

She showered, she changed, she left the apartment, she walked through the city streets, she swiped her CTA card, and she stepped aboard a train. She took it two stops and stepped out and walked to the coffee shop, where Ted and Claudia were already setting up for the day.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Penelope apologized.
She clocked in and Claudia told her she could sweep and mop the floors. As she pushed the broom and mop around the establishment, and just as Claudia stepped into the manager’s office, Ted walked over to her.
“So, your news couldn’t wait until today?” he joked.
“I had to get it off my chest,” she said.
“Well that’s cool, as long as it made you feel better.”
“Yeah, I’m just excited about tonight. Are you doing anything special?”
“Not really, I met this new girl and I think we’ll probably be hanging out tonight.”
“Oh really?” Penelope’s eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Yeah, we just kind of crossed paths, and we had this immediate connection. Weird how things work out isn’t it?” Ted was smiling sheepishly.
“That is good timing, I guess. Well, if you’re interested, my friend Lauren is having a party, and I know she wants it to be big, so you could come with your new friend if you’d like to.”
“Oh well I’m sure it would be a lot better than watching scary movies and smoking pot,” Ted said under his breath, as Claudia had just walked back out from the office.
“Cool,” Penelope said, going back to her mopping.
“C’mon you two, there will be plenty of time to socialize when this place is clean. We need to be ready in 15 minutes!” Claudia ordered.
“Sorry Claudia,” Ted said, “I’ll get back to the kitchen.”
As the day progressed, a different kind of wind blew through the air. The cold front had moved in, and now, snow was predicted for the evening. Nothing could have stopped the million Halloween enthusiasts which were to crowd the streets. It was as if their will to accrue candy or liquor ruled their actions of the day. Children in school did more poorly on quizzes and tests than usual. Certain adults at work were less productive than usual. College students ditched class and took to all-day binges.
One ex-drug pusher and current dictation taker spent his day as he spent every other—that is, waking and baking. Halloween had no special meaning for Spencer, other than that he could get as high as he wanted to and generally no one would notice. He had woken up early today though, because Charles had informed him that they were going to be very busy. Spencer said he was desperate for money, and Charles said he was desperate to finish his history, but it would take time. Spencer was on the couch as he was the day before, and in the same clothes as he had worn the previous two days. He had to keep the larger items out of his laundry hamper so as to go as long as he could without spending more money than necessary on the cleanliness of his wardrobe. He had to find some real kind of income before he could be so frivolous as to do his laundry.
Charles came out of his bedroom wearing a homemade t-shirt that said, “I am extreme” in large letters across the front.
“How do you like my Halloween costume?” Charles asked.
“It’s extreme.” Spencer said, going over to their stash and packing more in the bowl.
“So you said you need to get paid today?”
“Yeah, I need to make money for rent.”
“Well you have eight dollars from yesterday, and if we do eight hours of work today, you will have seventy-two dollars. That should be good start for you. You can afford the rent for tomorrow, right?”
“Maybe, but I’d be scrounging for it.”
“Well we have to be very busy then today. We have to get a lot done.”
“I’m ready whenever you are.”
“Okay, well get that computer started.”
Spencer looked at what he had typed the day before.
“We stopped off talking about your discovery of birds.”
“Right. Let me begin: Birds are not the main element to my life. I have seen millions of birds in my lifetime, and they’ve never done anything for me except unpleasantly wake me up in the morning. Sometimes it is difficult to find beauty in one’s life when it is spent in great periods of solitude. It is to be understood that my life is unique from many others in that respect. I may not have known a very distinct community, but I have had a great amount of time to contemplate things. It could be assumed that solitude would give me a better idea of how to appreciate things, but actually, much of the time I concentrated on how unfairly I was tossed into this world, a regular human being, tied to inscrutable circumstances, understood by no one, and collectively regarded as a freak. But that was much later, and I had only stopped at my infancy. Let me relate another early memory from a more innocent time.”
“Only when I was in kindergarten was I introduced to the concept of sharing. For the first four years of my life, everything that was given to me was explicitly mine, and no one else could play with it. Entering a community with some thirty other kindergartners, l learned that I was not as special as I originally imagined. No, here were many other children who looked very different from me and spoke differently and who knew different words from me. As school began though, we shared what we were to learn, and we became more alike. Our unique aspects disappeared as we gained more common knowledge. Now, I learned that ‘I’ stood for ‘igloo,’ and that igloos were in very cold areas, and we all shared this knowledge, and igloos presented themselves to us in the same light.”
“As I grew older by months, I soon realized that my parents were different from my classmates’ parents. People knew who they were before I had to explain it to them. They would ask me how it felt to have parents who were famous. I told them it felt good, because it made me feel famous too. They told me that maybe I would be famous just because I was their only child. I would say back to them that I hoped I could be famous for some other reason. I didn’t just want to be known as their child forever. It was a question of identity, and not being locked into their conception of what my identity would be as I grew older. My parents often told me that I should do certain things in order to be civil, and to get along with other people. I couldn’t cry as often as I did. I couldn’t be as messy as I was when I ate. I couldn’t give up on learning how to read. I had to comb my hair whenever I was going to leave the house. I had to dress in clothes with colors that matched. I had to walk with my back straight and my head up. I had to write legibly. I had to fasten my seat belt whenever I rode in a car. I had to stop whatever I was doing if my full attention was required, or if I was doing something that was disruptive. Usually it was for the latter reason, but as I grew older, it increasingly became the former.”
“This history of my early life must seem rather uninteresting. Truthfully, I don’t remember much of it, so indistinct are my early memories. I am speaking in broad strokes, giving justifications for my behavior, while not intimately expressing what that behavior was. I don’t really know, to be honest, and my life is bisected by an event which renders everything before it especially meaningful and everything after it especially bizarre. So I would like to focus more on everything that came before this specific event, but most of the details are hard for me to relate in a chronological and disciplined narrative. It is after this specific event when my life instantaneously became more real and less understood by others.”
“I was 13, and I was staying home by myself on a Friday night while my parents had gone out to a party in the city. I remember that they gave me money for dinner, and I ordered a pizza, and I watched a movie I had rented about a serial killing spree. The movie made me a little bit afraid afterwards. My parents had let me rent it even though it was rated R because they specifically preached a belief that, while they knew it might not be the most appropriate entertainment for me, I was free to see what I wanted to see so long as I understood it for what it was, and was able to recognize the merits and failures of the film itself. Such critical faculties had yet to manifest themselves in me, but I thought the serial killer was a very lonely figure, and not wholly unsympathetic. I thought he might be a decent person, if only he didn’t spend his time intricately plotting the methods by which he would kill unsuspecting friends and acquaintances. You might say that I always found the villain the most interesting character in whatever movie I was watching. They alone possessed true motivations. They alone set the action of the story in motion. They alone caused the heartbreak which would soothe my own as I reflected on my sad and monotonous life of thirteen years. What had I done? I had played a few sports with friends. I had sampled different cuisines. I had seen many movies and read a few books. I had spent many, many hours in front of the television. I had played video games. I had gone to video arcades. I had gone to amusement parks and I had gone to a few museums. My parents gladly suffered all this with me. I was their only baby. No activity was too childish for them, and they spoiled me like no other person I’d ever heard. They rarely said “no” to me. And it was in this that I learned that there was no proper conduct for behavior, it was only a matter of how I judged things myself. They had told me that they would be coming back late and that I shouldn’t worry about staying up too late for them. Still, I stayed up until 2 AM waiting, and finally feeling exhausted, I went to bed. A couple hours later, the phone rang. I let it ring even though it woke me up. From my upstairs bedroom I heard the answering machine in the kitchen go off, and a strange voice intoning formal procedures drawled on about steps I was going to need to take in the morning. A couple hours later, our doorbell rang. I went down to answer the door in my pajamas. It was my grandmother. When I opened the door, she was composed, but after a few seconds, after she had looked at me and realized that I was completely oblivious, she broke down, and she lunged towards me with arms open. I asked her why she was crying and she told me that my parents had been killed in a car crash late the night before and that now she was going to be the one taking care of me. I broke down too, and she spent the next hour consoling me, reassuring me that things were going to be okay.”
At this point, Charles couldn’t go on anymore. “Okay, stop taking dictation. That is a good place to stop.”
“I thought we were going to work for eight full hours today?” Spencer asked.
“That’s some pretty heavy stuff there. I can’t just keep dictating through all the emotional turmoil. It causes me to reflect.”
“Well c’mon man, how am I going to make up this rent?”
“Why don’t you go back to selling drugs, you never had any problem making the rent then?”
“You’re not being helpful.” Spencer said.
“Well maybe I can’t be expected to just dictate and dictate and dictate what you’re supposed to do with your life all the time, okay? Maybe I have to make decisions for myself all the time and maybe you should try making your own decisions instead of relying on me to provide you with a livelihood. I have a hard time enough myself just figuring these things out on my own.”
Charles went into his bedroom and Spencer got up and left.
He didn’t know what kind of job he was going to get.
Ireena was at work. Today, she was going to interview Reginald Topper in person. It was her responsibility to find him a job after his bout with crack addiction. He was living in a halfway house, and he would soon be out, and he would soon need a new center of employment.
“Hi, I’m Reggie,” he said, walking up to her desk.
“Ireena, pleased to meet you. Why don’t you pull up a chair?”
“Thank you,” he said, pulling a chair out from a nearby empty cubicle.
“So, how is the rehab going?”
“It’s good. I feel like I know myself more now than when I went in. Now that the drugs have been out of my system long enough, I can remember what my original goals were.” Reggie explained.
“Wow, well it sounds like a success!” Ireena enthused.
“Yeah, problem is I need to find a job. See, I can only stay at this place for ninety days. I have to go out and get a job before I leave.”
“Well, that’s what I’m here to help you with.”
“Thank you.”
“So, you have worked for electrical contractors in the past?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s pretty complicated stuff there.”
“Yeah, but I know it.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to demonstrate your proficiency in an interview with electrical contractors?”
“I think I could.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be a problem then! Okay, so how many years did you work at your last job?”
“1 year.”
“And what was the reason you stopped?”
“I was addicted to crack.”
“Oh, well you were fired then?”
“I quit.”
“Well, you want to go back into this business then?”
“It’s my best skill, I really should.”
“How long were you addicted to crack for before you went into rehab?”
“Six months.”
“And you spent all your savings in that time?”
“Yes. And borrowed some too.”
“So you have some debts to pay off?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Okay, well the first thing we are going to do is set you up with the Union. Then we are going find you a job, and then you can get a place to live, and you can go back to your old way of life. Won’t that be nice?”
“If it doesn’t involve crack.”
“Hahahahaha.” Ireena laughed. She wondered if she was being too cutesy for her own good.
“I want to ask you.” Reggie started.
“Yes,” Ireena resumed a professional stance.
“How does a girl like you see this world?” He said wistfully.
“What?” She responded, caught off guard.
“Well, I wonder, you look like you got it made.”
“Well, I don’t okay. It may look all nice on the outside, but on the inside I’m a wreck. You have no idea. But that’s just something I never talk about now!”
“Oh, well, I can relate.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
After a pause, Ireena said, “Well, I guess we don’t have much more to talk about now. I’ll get right on this. Come back on Monday, and we will give you a list of contacts in the field, and within those, you should be able to find a position. We have about a 10% success rate in finding new work, so don’t get discouraged if the first few interviews don’t go that well. Good luck, nice to meet you Reggie.”
“Nice to meet you too, Ilene?”
“Ireena.”
“That’s right, Ireena, thank you.”
Reggie walked out of the office. Ireena was somewhat taken aback by the interview. But she resumed her job, and she began searching various databases for new jobs in contracting fields. She reassured herself that strange things were bound to happen. After all, it was Halloween. This would be the last task she had to complete today, she realized. She took her time with it, and she wondered what the night would hold.
Rory was in his apartment, having just returned from the local Target. He had bought an undershirt there. He put on the Nation of Ulysses’ song “A Comment on Ritual” and wrote out the lyrics on the undershirt in a black felt tip marker. He was going to go as a Nation of Ulysses fan, and he thought cleverly to himself about how original he was going to seem, while at the same time figuring that his costume was something of a cop out. It wasn’t an especially hard costume to make, or wear. It was also of too rare a subset of society to be represented by traditional Halloween acceptability standards.
Marcus went to class dressed as the President. He wore a suit and tie and smiled and waved everywhere he went. Today he had his class on Political Despotism. Before class started, his partner in the previous class, Erin, was passing out flyers to everyone. Their professor asked if anyone had any announcements to make before they began their discussion. Erin raised her hand.
“Tomorrow night we’re having an open mic and zine release party at the Hungry Brain. It’s this thing we’ve been putting together for the last four months and now, we’re finally ready to print it. I’ll be doing a reading, and so will a lot of the other contributors, but there will also be an open mic, for whatever type of performance you might want to do. So, please come, it’ll be really fun.”
“Anybody else?” The professor asked. No one said anything. “Very well, now Susan, will you begin our discussion on Arendt?
Susan was an older student in her 40s who had come back to get her degree. “What I’d like to know is, how can she manage to write this way? I counted just one sample sentence, and it had 119 words! It can become extremely hard to follow her when the point is so laboriously long that she has to go on like that, describing the trend over the last one hundred years in every sentence, being so comprehensive, getting so incredibly specific that any other sentiment or inkling as to what she is trying to say seems wrong and just ends in confusion.”
“Well yes,” the professor said, “It sometimes is hard to read. But what about the ideas? Have you brought in any passages you’d like to start the discussion with?”
“I do. Page 245 ‘Franz Kafka knew well the superstition of fate which possesses people who live under the perpetual rule of accidents, the inevitable tendency to read a special superhuman meaning into happenings whose rational significance is beyond the knowledge and understanding of the concerned. He was well aware of the weird attractiveness of such peoples, their melancholy and beautifully sad folk tales which seemed so superior to the light and brighter literature of more fortunate peoples. He exposed the pride in necessity as such, even the necessity of evil, and the nauseating conceit which identifies evil and misfortune with destiny. The miracle is only that he could do this in a world in which the main elements of the atmosphere were not fully articulated; he trusted his great powers of imagination to draw all the necessary conclusions and, as it were, to complete what reality had somehow neglected to bring into full focus.’”
Marcus spoke up. “So Franz Kafka anticipated totalitarianism, is that what she’s saying? Or that the atmosphere under which he lived was itself totalitarian? I’m going to agree with Susan about this material being hard to understand. It’s written in a very unnatural way. The rhythm of the text is too difficult to grasp.”
Erin raised her hand and Susan called on her. “I think she means he lived under totalitarian circumstances, but managed to supersede the limitations imposed on him by his environment in order to create a more unified vision than reality could provide him with, even if it was more twisted and exaggerated at times.”
“But what does this mean?” Susan asked, “Why include these sideline remarks about Kafka?”
Marcus raised his hand and said, “I think it’s an attempt to be less obscure, to include something in this incredibly dense text that people can actually relate to, because I would think almost everyone who reads Arendt is familiar with Kafka. But yeah, I think he’s a potential symbolic figure for the totalitarian model mindset for his depiction of bureaucratic operatives. It gives something of an idea of the rationality of the government in those times.”
“Yes, but you’re missing the point,” the professor interjected, “We have to stay on target. We can mention Kafka, but we are not going to talk about his books for the whole eighty-five minutes. It might make for an interesting dissertation to identify all of the totalitarian elements in his novels and stories, but we are more interested in the true history of the world in this class. Arendt wrote at length on Kafka and there is plenty to dissect in that category, but we have to think about what it must have been like for someone like Kafka, and not what it is like for someone in one of his fictional works.”
What does Halloweeness mean, you ask? It was the heading of a t-shirt given out in a bar in Paris on Halloween, the bar was named La Pomme d’Eve: the phrase itself may suffer from an absurd translation. In this case however, the translation affords more than the regular limitations of acceptable phraseology in American life. You will not find anyone who refers to the “Halloweeness” of things, but it is an unmistakable feeling too, for there is a day when we might be allowed to not be ourselves, for once. There is a day when the silly, supernatural, or sophomorically humorous approaches gospel truth. There is a day when candy is given out for free. There is a day when vandalism is tolerated. There is a day when it is okay for kids to be kids and it is okay for adults to be kids. There is also a mood of eeriness, a feeling that the expectations for that particular day of October 31st render the familiar everyday world null. The costume is a shift in identity, but whatever costume people choose must give some insight into the way their mind works, their opinions on what constitutes a really good thing to dress up as for Halloween. For Marcus, then, perhaps his presidential costume might portend a future of his own in executive politics. Or else, perhaps his costume signaled a reversal of political rebellion, a non-ironic vision of a figure traditionally viewed as a dolt, one who had been lampooned mercilessly, now embraced as a symbol of the ultimate opportunity—the highest office in the United States, rewarded to the highest bidder, though it helped to be naïve and optimistic on the campaign trail. The less political know-how the better. Marcus embodied this archetypal image as well as he could.
Luther and Penelope were putting on their camouflage outfits.
Jeanne did not go to class dressed as Sylvia Plath. Back in her dorm room now, she was putting on a black sheath dress, which she had bought at a vintage clothing store not far from campus. She did her lipstick, mascara, and eye shadow, adding a little more than necessary on the latter two for costume-like effect. This made her more of an exaggeration of the stereotypical view of the woman than an approximation of the woman herself, but it was Halloween, and she wouldn’t know what was realistic anyways, and neither would anyone else, so she felt it pertinent to play up the more frightening aspects of the author’s life. In truth, she felt an enormous affinity with her. And she had to, for who else would take on such an obscure costume?
Ireena wore a black dress with a long skirt and sleeves, and a black veil. She sat on her couch and waited for Rory to arrive. She thought about doing a line, thought about saving it for when Rory came, so she could offer him some, waited five more minutes, thought about doing a line anyways because she was bored, and she poured out a tiny pit of powder and sniffed it up her left nostril. She sniffed again, and another time, to get every last bit of dust up and out of her nasal passage and towards her brain. She sniffed to clear out her sinuses. She put her black veil down and turned on her television, and continued waiting.
Charles and Spencer left their apartment, Charles wearing his “I am Extreme” self-made t-shirt, and Spencer wearing the same clothes he had worn for the past two days. He was not dressing up as anything, but instead he would tell whoever asked him what he was supposed be whatever the situation called for. They were going out to get food before going to the party.
Ted and Barbara were dressed up as witches. They carried brooms with them, and Ted carried his secret potion in the pouch of the witch coat. Their hats were tall and pointy.
Lauren was dressed up as Wonder Woman. It had been a surprisingly easy costume to find, and she felt like it would be one she could actually look hot in. Lauren has no introductory details that need mentioning in a section more recognizably her own. No, if it weren’t for Lauren there would be no Halloweeness, and that is her key attribute. Only she could hold such a party on such a night in such a year in such a world. She is dressed as Wonder Woman, but what else matters about her? Does where she went to college, or what she does for a living really matter? At her party, for her guests who would arrive that she didn’t already know, she would have to explain these details. But alone in her apartment, sweeping the floors, spraying the counters with disinfectant and wiping them down, emptying all the waste receptacles, vacuuming all of her rugs, beneath her couch cushions, fluffing up the pillows afterwards, removing formations of dust from all readily apparent corners, nothing else matters. All that matters is presentation at this point. All that matters is the comfort and inoculation of her guests from all harmful bacteria. Lauren wants her guests to like her apartment, and she wants them to like her by extension.
She did not decorate her apartment for a Halloween party. She was not going to buy a skeleton, witch, Frankenstein, or Dracula cut-out. She did buy a pumpkin, but only today. She had not carved it, and she both figured and hoped that someone at the party would get drunk and want to do it. She did however, possess a vast array of candles, which she arranged in strategic places throughout the apartment. The lights would just go out, and the atmosphere would be enough, she figured. She had bought a .99 cent pumpkin-faced bucket which she filled with Butterfingers, Crunch Bars, and Bazooka Joe bubble gum. Her kitchen counter held a handle of Bacardi, and liter bottles of Jack Daniels, Absolut, and Jose Quervo. Her refrigerator stowed sixty beers of the Old Style and Pabst Blue Ribbon varieties, two two-liter bottles of Coke and Diet Coke each, a half-gallon of orange juice, a half-dozen limes, a half-gallon of lemonade, and a half-gallon of fruit punch. She was getting impatient waiting for people to arrive. She called Penelope.
Penelope’s phone went off while she was having intercourse with Luther. She was in a particularly compromising position, one might say, and the details need not be splayed out on the page. She let it ring though, and they continued on for another five minutes or so. Penelope then had to get to her phone. She checked her voicemail.
“Hey Penny, it’s Lauren, I was just wondering when you were planning on coming over, I know it’s still early and everything, I’m just basically waiting for the first guest to show up so I can have a drink and not feel like I’m getting ahead or anything. Just give me a call when you can. Bye.”
Penelope looked up at Luther.
“She wants us over there.”
“It’s 8:00.”
“She just wants certain people to show up early, me being one of them.”
“Well, okay, I’m ready.”
“I guess we don’t really need to spruce up or anything.”
“You look done up like an anti Popular Unity rebel soldier model.”
“But I don’t look Chilean?”
“Like, a little bit you do. You can pull it off, with the way you did the makeup.”
“We should get going.”
They put on their coats, which were part of their costume also. The combat fatigues were prepared to brave all kinds of menacing terrain. They decided to walk, and it was a good mile and then some from Penelope’s apartment to Lauren.
“So I wanted to ask you, what was life like with your husband?” Luther said after they had entered the outside.
“It was not very long. We hadn’t even been going out very long when we decided to get married, maybe two years. And then we were married for about a year, until it all came to an end. So it was like a roller coaster ride. But for the most part I was very comfortable with Paul. We had a very intimate understanding of each other. It was a connection I thought only happens for real with one person. I thought he was my soul mate and we got married. He was working at a big investment banking firm straight out of college and he told me we were going to have to wait for him to bust his ass for ten or fifteen years until the benefits would start kicking in, ‘and then they would really start kicking in’ he said. I just felt safe with him, and felt like he would only do what was good and right for us. We loved each other very much, but I know he wouldn’t want me to be alone for the rest of my life because of what happened.”
“I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that you lived this alternate existence,” Luther said, “The person you are now doesn’t seem to fit with the person you were then.”
“Of course it changed me. Nobody is capable of going through an event like that unchanged. It threw my life upside-down. I went from living in a wonderful condo on the Gold Coast, to renting this bare-bones place here. Everything was going to be taken care of for me, and now I feel like I’m fending for my life again here. I mean, I do alright, but I’ve got to get something else going at some point if I’m ever going to toil less and make more. The coffee shop completely changed me too. It is 100% customer service, the kind of face you have to put on for so many hours. There is some satisfaction in it, but it is so endless and unrelenting, and the benefits could be better. I make out alright, but I’m not swimming in money or anything.”
“I’m living out of my savings at this point so don’t worry about justifying yourself to me,” Luther said, “I admire what you do. It’s good, honest work.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do yet?” Penelope asked.
“I really like the idea of acting,” Luther said, “But it’s so hard to find work. It’s all about connections in this business. I want to do something that matters though. I’m not satisfied to simply work for the advancement of the business community. I’ve never been big on it and it’s never been big on me. One thing I didn’t tell you, I quit my job a week ago.”
“Well, that’s encouraging. I mean, I thought you were just without a job for a while. And at least you quit and weren’t fired. People are always getting fired at Uncommon Grounds, but its pretty unfair most of the time. They run a very tight ship, with a revolving crew. I’ve managed to become the most senior member of our staff, and I’ve only been there for a year total. You just have to know how to play by their rules.”
“That’s exactly what I hate about it,” Luther said, “The rules that govern the business world are so stultifying and soul-crushing. You have to devote so many hours a week, a month, a year, a life, to be able to live. I just can’t understand how anybody can make it in these times. It’s opposite to all my expectations I had coming into the world after college.”
“You know what I say? At least we both have somebody. We all have difficulties in our lives, but having someone else there makes it so much easier to bear,” she said, squeezing his hand in emphasis.
“Yeah, that’s true, but it just seems so hard to keep pushing on for something that I wouldn’t want to identify myself as for the rest of my life. And people switch jobs all the time, so I hear, but acting is really the only thing I feel I’d be happy doing. I’d be happy telling people I was an actor, but I wouldn’t want them to think I was a starving one. It’s a whole level of desperation I just don’t want to exude.”
“It’s always hard starting out. You’re going to be fine though, you know so much more about acting than most people going into those auditions, one of these days it’s going to pay off.”
Rory rang Ireena’s buzzer and was let into her building. He walked up the three flights of stairs, saw her door left ajar, and entered. She looked over at him from her couch.
“Hey! I just got a call from Lauren, she’s wondering when people are going to start showing up. You want do a line before we go?”
Jeanne had convinced Missy to go Lauren’s party, even though Marcus had been told about it by Spencer. Missy had curled her hair and wore a red dress. She said she was going as Marilyn Monroe. They were walking over to Marcus’s dorm to meet him before they all went to the party together.
Of everybody who would show up at Lauren’s party that night, Charles and Spencer had the most unimaginative costumes. At this point, they were on their way out of the Columbian restaurant where they been eating dinner. Charles was waiting for his credit card to be returned with the copy of the receipt to add the tip onto.
“Do you think I’m going to stand out, not being dressed up as anything particularly different?” Spencer asked.
“No, nobody is going to call attention to the fact that you’re not wearing anything out of the ordinary, but they may think you’re boring,” Charles answered.
“What about you? That t-shirt isn’t a costume.”
“Are you kidding me? Nobody has the originality to turn Halloween on its head and expose its inherent ironic flaws in the way that I do. They all accept what you’re supposed to do on Halloween. They don’t see that you can simply say what you are, and not have to look like anything. By telling people that I am extreme, they can choose for themselves the arena in which I would exercise my extremity. In this case, it will be a party, and I will have to do something extreme to live up to my costume.”
Spencer looked sad. “Well, I’ve got nothing to live up to.”
“You can be whatever you say you are, no one’s going to question you.”
“They definitely will question me. ‘What are you supposed to be?’ I’ll just tell them that who I am is enough of a costume on its own.”
Interrogative paranoia aside, the two were happy to have a party to go to on this day. Ted and Barbara, however, treated their attendance as if it were business as usual. Ted knew that Penelope had only invited him along to be nice. He would greet Luther, he would be overly charismatic, he would ask if he could get him a drink, he would do what he decided he was going to do, and then it would be over with. It should be noted that Ted was having second thoughts before leaving. He had never yet used the secrets he knew for ill, for that was the code he had taken when he had began his study of the dark arts. He justified himself to Barbara, who believed his scheme wouldn’t work anyway, as such:
“Sometimes it is necessary to use force to bring about the greater good,” he declared, paraphrasing Machiavelli.
Marcus, accompanying the two girls, had a similar attitude towards the party as Ted, though he didn’t have anything up his sleeve, so to speak.
“I just called up Spencer to ask if I could pick up a bag and he told me to meet him at this party. I don’t know who this girl is, and he says he doesn’t either, but he gave me her address. It could be weird.”
“As long as there are people and booze there, it should be fine,” Missy buzzed, “I don’t even care about seeing Spencer, it might even be kind of fun, just to show him how little he affected me.”
“Do you think that kid Charles will have those pills with him again?” Jeanne asked.
“Oh God,” Missy said, “He has to. I spent a few days around their apartment. They live like that, they are those sort of people that can’t go a few hours without putting some exotic substance into their body.”
Lauren’s buzzer rang and she trotted over quickly to the access button. She held it down for a few seconds and opened her door and stood at the top of her stairs.
“You came! Thank you Penny! “
“Oh no problem Lauren, you’re being so gracious, it’s the least I can do.”
“I just got so bored waiting to get the party started! Hello,” she said, noticing Luther, “Hi, I’m Lauren.”
“Luther, you can call me Lu.”
The three of them walked towards the kitchen. Lauren decided to begin making the punch for the party. She asked the other two if they wanted a beer, or if they wanted to wait for the punch, and they said they would wait for the punch.
“So did anything spooky happen to you guys today?” Lauren asked as she poured the fruit punch into her biggest bowl.
“If doing next to nothing on a Friday is spooky, then yeah,” Luther said.
“Oh you’re so lucky, I had a meltdown today at work! But it’s the weekend, and it’s Halloween, and we’ve got nothing to worry about for a little while.”
Not quite a mile away, Rory had his head down over Ireena’s old chemistry textbook. He took the line she had offered him.
“So like do you have a reliable guy for this stuff? It’s incredible!” Rory said, perking up.
“I know somebody,” Ireena said.
“I don’t usually do that stuff, but mostly because I didn’t know people that do it. You could be a really bad influence on me Ireena!”
“I call ‘em as I see ‘em,” Ireena drawled.
“What!”
“This girl whose party we’re going to, she says we should go, but I don’t want to yet,” she said, moving over the textbook, now snorting, “Like it’s so early! Why start these things early? There is booze, there are people, the earlier you have it the earlier the booze runs out, the earlier the party ends, and if it ends too early people leave to go to a bar, like who cares about spending a few extra hours before so the ending is good. We should go trick-or-treating.”
“We definitely should.” Rory said.
“I’ll go get two pillowcases,” Ireena said and walked out of the living room, returning shortly after with their candy sacks.
“Nobody ever comes trick-or-treating to my apartment on Halloween,” Rory said, “Do you think people in the city are actually expecting their buzzers to go off tonight?”
“They can’t say no to us. It’s the only day of the year we have the excuse to call on random strangers in their homes. Let’s do another couple lines before we go?” Ireena suggested.
Back at their shared apartment, Spencer and Charles were collecting a variety of intoxicants for fun and profit at the party, delicately placing them in a secret zippered pouch inside Spencer’s messenger bag.
“So Marcus is going to be there again,” Spencer explained, “I’m just getting him an eighth, so that goes in the pouch.”
“Magic pills are necessary as they are the next best thing we possess to ecstasy and everybody will want to buy one,” Charles reminded.
“We need some coke for the whole slick ‘let’s slip into the bathroom’ type thing,” Spencer added.
“Opium, add a little rock of opium, and some extra pot beyond Marcus’s stash, and we can’t really get much more decadent.” Charles finished, satisfied with their decision-making process.
Walking from their campus to the nearby elevated train stop, Missy was attempting to prove to Marcus that he was a fool, as Jeanne listened without offering any wisdom of her own.
“I mean it’s all well and good to be getting a little bag of pot when you’re 20 or 21 or whatever, but are you aware of the cycle that you’re nurturing? I’m not against it as a recreational, once every once and a while activity, but when you haven’t had it for a day and so you need to get more, just to have the same thing happen when your next bag runs out, don’t you start to see the futility of it?” Missy as Marilyn argued her point.
Marcus as President replied professionally, “Well, those are all good points that you’re making there Melissa, but you treat my predicament as if it were something I could simply ignore at this point. It’s not so easy to forget, you see, when your childhood is at an end, and when the memories are no longer extent, and all fond memories after a certain point in high school are unique for their sentiment of ‘getting away with something’ or ‘beating the system.’ You may not appreciate my definition, but I view you as being entrenched within the system, buried within it and chained to a post. I may risk trouble from various law enforcement agencies, but I refuse to be defined by that which enslaves me.”
“If you could listen to yourself talk!” Missy jumped in, “You’re enslaved by your addiction, not the government.”
“You wouldn’t call it an addiction if the government didn’t attach illegality to it.”
“I’d be able to tell. What’s the one thing you do that sets you apart from all other normal people?” Missy mock-reasoned.
“I think your extraordinarily anti-drug stance is what sets you apart from normal people.” “Because I’ve seen how bad it can get!” Missy revealed, “It can completely abbreviate a life. My brother is probably ten years behind where he should be, but at least he didn’t die, which we were worried about constantly.”
“Yes, but now he did harder drugs than pot?” Marcus asked.
“Well yeah, but it’s what he began by doing.” “You make some excellent points Melissa, but you see, I’m not going to progress any further beyond this level of mind alteration. I will continue with it because otherwise I’ll be forced to take the world too seriously and to try to shoulder more responsibility than I’m capable of, and I’ll end up never being able to fall asleep at night because I’ll be too worried about how hard the rest of the journey towards the destination is going to be.”
“I think you’re just hiding,” Missy said.
“Damn right I’m hiding!” Marcus said.
“You can’t hide forever.” “I’ll hide until somebody gives me reason not to. I’m a proponent of the theory that life sucks, and once I’m convinced otherwise, maybe I’ll start listening to your advice.”
Rory and Ireena held out their pillow cases in front of them purposefully and ambled down a few nearby side streets from Ireena’s apartment. They had rung a few buzzers without gaining admittance. After about ten minutes, they came up behind a large group of significantly slower-paced sixth grade girls.
“Hey do you guys know where all the good houses to go to are?” Rory asked them collectively.
They looked at each other and giggled.
“We want to go trick-or treating too,” Ireena told them, “Can we tag along?”
One girl who established herself as the leader of her pack said, “We’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”
“I know!” Rory said, “I know totally never talk to strangers! But we feel left out, we just want to go trick-or-treating, and everywhere we go, nobody lets us in. If you just pretend we’re like your babysitters or something, we can totally clean up. Come on, do you like the idea of someone telling you trick-or-treating ends when you’re twenty-five?” “You’re twenty-five?” the lead girl asked.
“Yes and I still love trick-or-treating!” Rory said.
“Come on you can totally help us and as a reward, we’ll answer any questions you ask us, whatever you want, whatever you’re too embarrassed to ask anyone else.” Ireena offered.
“Well okay,” the girl said, “But you answer to me, and you follow my lead. You stay behind the rest of us, and when we come up to the door, you can get in on the action.”
“Okay, you’re officially the coolest girl in the world.” Rory said.
Now drinking from their plastic cups full of punch, Luther and Penelope wandered around Lauren’s apartment. As they toured the premises, Lauren kept on their tail.
“I really like how you laid out the candles here,” Luther complimented.
“Oh, thank you. I didn’t really know how much it was appropriate to decorate. I kind of feel like everyone brings their own decorations—themselves.”
“Is there any reason you decided to be Wonder Woman?” Penelope asked.
“Yeah, I thought girls didn’t read comic books,” Luther added.
“Well you don’t need to read a comic book to know who she is,” Lauren began, “I mean, there are so few good female costumes, I just saw this in the costume shop and I thought it was hot. I mean, you can never wear something so revealing any other day, you know, unless you’re trying to call attention to yourself or something. Now, I am sort of calling attention to myself tonight, but I’m also the hostess, so I feel like it makes sense. How about you? What are you supposed to be? Soldiers in Iraq?” “Revolutionaries in Chile.” Luther corrected.
“That’s obscure,” Lauren said.
“Yeah, we know,” Penelope said, “But nobody else is going to be it.”
“Oh God that would be so embarrassing if another girl dressed up as Wonder Woman came!” Lauren mock-worried.
“Chile had serious problems in the 1970’s.” Luther stated, “Salvador Allende was the President. There was class conflict, a destabilized economy, and echoes of Marxism. The U.S. cut off their support to Chile, and there was a military coup, and Pinochet headed it. And at first he claimed the country would be more free, but for seventeen years the Chilean people lived under a tyranny. See but leading up to the day of the coup, there were opposing views about what was best for the future of this country. We are dressed as the military which overthrew its own leader. We are dressed as the military which backed up Pinochet.” “So, you’re actually bad guys in the end,” Lauren verified.
“Yes, but not evil, just misguided, too easily trusting. And we mean to express the revolutionary attitude, not the murky political beliefs of the conservative forces. In a sense we are the American aspect to the situation. Being so opposed to any resemblance of communism, the U.S. certainly played a role in this change of power, and to the longer-term detriment to the Chilean nation. So do you know what day it’s supposed to be, the day of the military coup?” Luther asked.
“What, Halloween?” Lauren asked in deference.
“September 11, 1973, a date that will live in obscurity.”
“Wow, that’s weird. You’re not going to overthrow me are you?” Lauren joked.
“It may be necessary,” Luther said, “If we are unsatisfied with the current regime.”
“Yeah, if we don’t like the music we’ll lock you in a closet,” Penelope threatened.
After this comment, Lauren’s buzzer rang again.
“More guests!” she exhorted, running to press the button to let them in.
Charles entered first, and shouted, “Who’s Lauren? Are you Lauren?”
“Yes, that would be me,” she said obviously.
“Pleased, charmed, pleasured to meet you, my name is Charles, my cousin Rory informed me of this gathering, and I hope my presence will not be frowned upon. We have brought a few party favors, though if you are opposed to the use of minor hallucinogenic materials, they can just as easily be foregone.”
“Oh no, that’s very cool of you. Please, however you want to enjoy yourself tonight, be my guest. I’m not a cop. Ideally I just want everyone to go home at the end of the night and feel happier than when they came in.”
“Well no problems then, might I ask you where one could get himself a drink?” Charles asked.
“Help yourself in the kitchen, there’s punch I made, or there’s beer, or you can make yourself a drink.”
“Thank you Lauren, you’ve already shown how well you take care of other people,” Charles complimented.
Spencer stood still and silent, standing by himself in the middle of Lauren’s living room while she and Luther and Penelope looked at him expectantly.
“What are you supposed to be? Charles is obviously an extremist,” Luther assumed.
“I’m a drug addict and dealer by default.”
“Yes, I remember, a week ago you said you were going to be in jail,” Penelope mentioned.
“The penalty was not as serious as I was imagining. I am on probation, and it’s not the safest thing to be dealing so soon after the fact, but Charles is not a very lucrative employer to work for, and people seem to call me because they want something from me, I fulfill for them what is a very important function. It’s a seller’s market. I tried to find a new job but every time I looked at the listings, I didn’t have the skills they wanted. So I’ve been switching between two extremes all week, to go straight or not, and I just pretty much forgot it was Halloween until today. Do you care that I don’t have a costume?” Spencer explained, excused, and asked.
“You can say you’re a Chilean revolutionary too, if you want,” Luther said, “You can be one of the townspeople. Do you agree with us that Allende needs to be deposed? That the seeds of communism demand sterilization?”
“I actually wish we lived in a communist country. It’s too hard when you have to make choices for yourself. So what if nobody is extremely rich? No one is extremely poor.”
“Everyone is extremely poor,” Luther corrected, “The government wants you to think everyone is at a social equality in communism, but in truth everyone is worse off than before.”
“Well at least everyone is accounted for, nobody slips through the cracks and ends up being alone forever.”
“No, they just get abducted when their beliefs veer slightly from the norm, and they only have to die in pogroms.”
“Please, I’d much rather die by governmental execution than cancer. Nobody could say I was asking for it.”
“Sure they could!” Luther said, “They’d say you were asking for it the minute you didn’t play along the same way all your compatriots did.”
“I only wouldn’t play along if no one told me what I was supposed to do. Even if I had no choice, I still think it would lead to happiness better than this kind of cold, desperate, anxious struggle for respectability within a chosen profession. I wish our government would come down on us, at the end of eighth grade, or at the end of high school, and give us a test, and send us a letter and require us to enter into work at a particular place at a certain point. I mean, I would never vote for the abolition of college, but I would like it if they told us what we were supposed to be, like in The Giver.”
“But everything is so drab and gray in that book,” Penelope said, “And nobody remembers the past. It’s a horrible society.”
“Yeah, I know what things we’re supposed to find distasteful about it, I just like the idea of our professions being chosen for us, you know? Because nobody is just born and automatically likes to assume a vocation. School subjects do not adequately translate into the concerns of adults. School is its own separate business, and anyone reared in it can only imagine the world of education, and not the competitive, perfect, mistake-free, uber-quality business world.”
Another buzzer sounded and the undergraduate triumvirate of Jeanne, Missy and Marcus waited at the downstairs landing for admission. If it were not Halloween, the average passerby might have concluded that three of them were waiting to enter a 50’s style dance party. The buzzer sounded again, and this time the doors were unlocked, and the three of them walked up to join the others.
Not a minute later, Ireena and Rory and the dozen or so sixth graders ahead of them passed in front of Lauren’s building.
“Should we just end this now and go in?” Rory asked.
“Excuse me, Kelly?” Ireena called ahead to their ringleader. The girl turned to look at her.
“How much longer do you plan on trick-or-treating for?” she finished asking.
“We go until midnight,” the girl said stoically.
“Oh come on!” Rory said, “We can’t stay out here that long.”
“What’s going to be so much better about that party anyways,” Ireena reasoned, “The sooner you get there the sooner you can drink? Don’t you feel like this is such a pure way to spend the appropriate hours of Halloween? Are we not going to be there after midnight anyways, and staying for a few hours after that?”
“That’s two more hours,” Rory said, “And I’ve got more than enough candy to satisfy me for a while. And plus, this seemed like a really good idea at first, but honestly the novelty is wearing off on me.”
“Fine, we can stop. But I think we should go back to my place first and do more coke and then come back here.”
“Fair enough,” he said, repositioning himself to address their crowd, “Hey, excuse me?”
About half of the girls turned to look at him. The others didn’t realize he was talking.
“We really appreciate you letting us come along with you tonight, but we have a party we need to get to so we’ve got to get going now.”
“Okay, bye, happy Halloween,” one of the girls said, and that was enough of a farewell.
As the two of them began to return to Ireena’s apartment, Ted and Barbara began to leave for the party. As Ted was grabbing his keys, back at Lauren’s party Spencer was grabbing Marcus. He put his arm around him and walked them out onto Lauren’s back deck. He asked him if he had the fifty dollars. Marcus handed him the money, and Spencer handed him a baggie with three and a half grams of pot in it.
In the dining room, Missy and Jeanne made a couple of private comments about their respective ex and current boyfriends.
Missy emphasized, “I don’t know what I was thinking when I went out with Spencer. I mean, a serious, stable, adult relationship is so far out of that kid’s grasp. I can’t imagine how he’s ever going to support anyone, let alone himself.”
“It seems like drug selling is a pretty high profit business,” Jeanne deadpanned.
“It’s like a separate reality for them, though. Like, all the things we learn, we build off of. We have a foundation, and we continue adding onto what we know, and we move forward. I feel like they just sit together on the ground in a drum circle and never try for anything the same way we do. And somehow they get away with it, but it only seems like it now. Like you can see, there’s a huge difference between the way Marcus acts, and the way Spencer acts. The more years you spend in that kind of state, the more you lose sight of the way things really are.” Missy finished.
“You’ve got to lighten up,” Jeanne said, “Things really are different from person to person. They seem happy, don’t they? They’re not hurting anything.”
In the living room, Lauren put on the Public Image Ltd. album Second Edition. Charles walked over to her.
“Do you prefer extreme or practical measures, Lauren?” he asked.
“That’s such a vague question,” she said, “It depends on the situation.”
“Okay, let’s say you’re in the subway and a bomb goes off somewhere along the track and your train stops and the conductor makes an announcement that they are experiencing technical difficulties and you look around at the other passengers and they all seem to know that something more serious is going on and you look ahead on the track and you can see the next stop isn’t more than two hundred feet ahead and then someone in the car pries open the door to make an escape but most people stay in waiting for things to fix themselves. Do you run out the door or do you stay in the train?”
“I run out the door,” she answered.
“You go out into the unknown, the unfamiliar terrain. You are a seeker. Are you interested in a magic pill? I’m selling them for five dollars, but because you’re the hostess I’ll give you one for free,” he offered.
“What do they do?” Lauren asked, “I’ve never heard of anything called a magic pill before. I mean, beyond, like a diet pill or something.”
“Everyone wants to know what they do. These are ayahauscas extracts, which have a more powerful alteration of one’s functioning consciousness than anything I’ve ever experienced. You really become whatever you want to. Lately I have been hung up on the idea of celestial bodies, and so I’ve recently taken the form of the Sun, both living and dead.”
“That’s kind of weird. The Sun doesn’t have human qualities.”
“It’s responsible for human qualities. It alone provides for the sustenance of life.”
“Yes, but so do plants and trees and precipitation. The Sun has no variance. It sits there, and whatever changes there are to it are only our perceptions from Earth.”
“Well, if you were on the Sun then you would have a different perspective now, wouldn’t you? I haven’t taken one yet, but I want to. You are a seeker, Lauren. These are non-toxic, au naturel, will not cause brain damage like excess cough medicine. Do you trust me?”
He held out his hand with two pills in it. She took one.
Penelope and Luther were sitting on the couch in the living room by themselves.
“Run away, run away, I ran away,” John Lydon moaned through the stereo speakers.
“Can we change this music, Lauren? It’s so depressing.” Penelope requested.
The pill had just traveled down Lauren’s throat. “You don’t think this is the perfect music for a Halloween party? It’s so spacey and threatening.”
“Do you have any music you can dance to, or just stuff to listen to while strung out?” Penelope continued.
“Just let this play till the end and see if it doesn’t grow on you. You can pick what to play next.” Lauren said.
As the album played for the next hour, the party became populated by many more less familiar figures— co-workers of Lauren’s from her job, neighbors from her apartment building, random acquaintances she had met at other parties, old friends whom she did not keep in touch with as well as she should, and some other strange ducks, like me, and co-workers of other friends, like Ted and Barbara.
When these last two came through the door, Penelope greeted them, with Luther trailing slightly behind her. Ted looked at Luther pleadingly. He thus spoke his first words to him in six months:
“Hey man, how are you?” He affected an outward appearance as if there were nothing between them. The tone was airy and brisk, cordial and friendly. Buried beneath it lurked a desperate feeling to be forgiven. A feeling that mistakes had been made, and that certain actions should have been taken responsibility for.
Penelope did not know there was such discomfort in the air. Only after seeing Luther react to seeing Ted did she sense things might not be settled between them.
Luther couldn’t believe he was seeing Ted in the flesh. He had changed. His hair had been cut short, totally unlike the days when they used to hang out. He had wanted to crash his party a week earlier, but was secretly afraid of a confrontation with him. In fact, he had fallen asleep as a subconscious excuse to avoid said encounter.
Barbara looked on like she was reaching for popcorn.
Luther finally answered, “I’ve been better—recently out of a job.”
Ted said, “Oh that sucks man.”
Luther waited for whatever words had to be said about their extended period of avoidance. He said, “Yeah well it’s not like I’ve seen you recently at all. Things are a lot different. This is just a rough patch.”
Ted said, “Yeah I meant to say something about that. I don’t know what I was thinking back then, back when I said you weren’t welcome at my house anymore. I was going a little crazy myself, and I guess I just acted irrationally. Like, my mind was not totally healthy at the time, you know? Looking back on it, I have a lot of regrets about it, and I wanted to do what I could to make up for it.”
Barbara was impressed with Ted’s performance. She had seen him act genuinely, she felt, with her. And she felt that Luther could not help but be moved by his apology. His appearance of reconciliation rang true, and when offered in earnest, could never be rejected. She looked on, aware that now would be an inappropriate time to say anything, afraid of unsettling the sacred area the conversation had just entered. She looked at Penelope and thought she must be feeling the same way about keeping mum.
Looking back on the party a year in the future, Penelope would wonder about Ted’s apology. What was odd about it, she would reflect, was his timing. It was the first thing he said after coming through the door, practically. It was as if it were his mission to be forgiven, and not to have a good time.
“Hey, do you want me to get you another drink?” Ted asked Luther, whose hand dangled past the couch cushion, the plastic cup held at a horizontal angle.
“Sure, thanks, I’ll just have another punch,” and he handed Ted the cup.
Ted and Barbara walked towards the kitchen with Luther’s cup in tow. They had to squeeze their way through the crowd that had developed along the narrow hallway of the apartment.
“I know him!” Barbara said, giving Ted an emphatic shove to his chest. “He’s nice, I drew a sketch of him a few days ago in the park, and I gave it to him. I don’t want to hurt him.”
“We’re not hurting him. He’s going to hurt himself. Besides you don’t know what he’s like. Of course if you draw a sketch of him he’s going to be nice to you. He doesn’t understand boundaries. He takes and he never gives.”
“Don’t you think he should get a second chance?” Barbara urged, “He seems happy with Penny, and we’re happy, aren’t we?”
“The basis of our relationship is founded upon the plan of his demise. We are doing this together. Think of us as Bonnie and Clyde. We’re vigilantes. I’ve known him for years, and I did my best to extricate myself from him when he showed how he was only going to be a leech, and he still managed to finagle his way back into my life, and cause me extreme duress. Don’t you trust me?”
“If you say so, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like he doesn’t deserve it.”
They reached the kitchen, took out two additional plastic cups for themselves, and ladled the punch into them.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Barbara reasserted as Ted reached into the pocket of his witch coat.
“Look it’s probably not even going to work, okay? Sometimes I’m not sure if the devil is communicating with me, or if I’m just convincing myself he is.” Ted explained, attempting to assuage Barbara’s fears.
He uncorked the cap from the top of the test tube in his pocket and quickly sifted the black substance into the bottom of the cup. He ladled half a cup of punch on top of it and shook it around, then filled the rest of the cup, and shook it some more. He inspected the drink and it looked no different from his and Barbara’s. He held it in his left hand as they returned to the living room.
“Okay, here’s your punch. Should we do a toast?” Ted asked.
“To burying the hatchet?” Luther suggested.
“To starting afresh,” Penelope offered.
They held their cups up, repeated her toast, smashed the cups together, and took bountiful chugs.
As the toast was being consummated, not quite a mile away Ireena did what she told herself would be her last line before she and Rory would leave for the party.
“Time check?” she asked him as she rubbed and sniffed her nose in post-ecstatic restlessness.
“11:45,” Rory answered her, “I think it’s about time we think about going.”
“Don’t you kind of love the idea that we got hung up here and ended up doing something totally different than what we were expecting?”
“I don’t particularly care, to be honest,” Rory said, pulling the chemistry textbook over to his side of the coffee table now, and leaning over it, “All I wanted to do was spend time with you.” He snorted the last line.
“Thank you, that’s very flattering. But I think we’ve done about enough coke for now.”
“Whether we’re here alone, or at this Halloween party, it makes no difference to me. You’re the only one I’m interested in.”
“Well I’ve felt that way about you for some time too, but I’m not about to let it show yet. There are still a few things left undone.”
“Like?” “Like a serious kiss.”
Rory felt that it was the right time to put his mouth on hers, and as she kissed him back, a knot of anxiety and tension was untied from his body, giving way to the blissed state of abandon and anticipation.
She unlocked her lips from his and said, “To the party then?”
“Yes—to the party,” Rory said, standing up, holding his left arm out, waiting for Ireena to slip her arm through his.
Back at her apartment, Lauren had poured herself another drink. Charles took one too, and they stepped outside to have a smoke. Already out on the deck were Spencer and Marcus, sharing a marijuana and tobacco cigarette that Spencer had rolled.
“How’re you doing buddy?!” Charles drunkenly shouted at Spencer.
“Pretty good man,” Spencer answered back in a mellow way, “What are you right now? Do you still believe you’re the Sun, do you still believe everyone revolves around you?”
“No, this time I feel like the universe has collapsed. Everything’s gone and all matter, or anti-matter, is of the same thread and seam. There is no longer any separation. There is no revolving. There is no centrality. I am the void and the fullness at the same time. I am nothingness and everything. My experience at this present moment is a distant dream which I am remembering 10 billion years in the future, the memory of my human lifespan, and I only feel like I am present in it, but in truth, in the real ever-present final inevitability, I am at a distance, I have no identifiable consciousness or perspective, I simply am and am not at the same time, and nothing that I do can change that.”
Spencer said to Marcus, “I was taking dictation from him earlier today; he still must be on the same kick. He was going to use me to write his book for him, but his pay was next to nothing, hence my going back to dealing.”
“Well if it means anything,” Marcus said, “You make my life more enjoyable. I hold you responsible—you provide me with happiness.” There was a pause. “I love you,” and he threw his arms around Spencer.
“I love you too buddy,” he said, patting Marcus on the back, “But nothing lasts forever. One day you’ll need to find someone else to sell you your dope.”
“I have a pumpkin,” Lauren announced after exhaling a stream of smoke, “Who wants to carve it?”
“I would love to carve your pumpkin,” Charles said, “Especially if I can eat the goop inside of it. I’d like to just stick my nose in it. Mmmm, pumpkin goop, the aroma is intoxicating.”
“You freak,” Spencer said.
Charles and Lauren went back into the apartment, and Luther and Ted replaced them not a minute later. Two more cigarettes were lit and Ted began by telling Luther that he was lucky.
“I’ve worked with Penny for four months now, and I can tell she’s just pretty much as close to perfect as you can get. I mean she is beautiful, but she is also incredibly kind.”
“She’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a really long time,” Luther replied.
“How serious are you guys? Like you haven’t been going out for that long, right?”
“I guess we only met six days ago, but we’ve seen each other every day since. I mean, primarily because I’ve had nothing else to do. It’s been a weird week. Things feel good, really good.”
“What do you think of her in bed?”
“I don’t know if that’s any of your business.”
“Why not? I thought she was amazing. I was just interested to hear your opinion.”
“Wait, what?”
“What did you think of her? She’s pretty good at giving head, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sloppy seconds, man. Sorry, but I beat you by a day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A week ago I had a party. I invited her, we just got drunk and it happened. I thought it was great but she didn’t want to get involved. Apparently she wanted to get involved with you the next day, though.”
“So you’re saying, consecutive nights?”
“Yeah man. I think that’s pretty cool actually, like I wish I could fuck two different people on consecutive nights. Actually it was only a few days until I met Barbara after that, so I guess I came pretty close.”
Luther looked out at the night sky, slowly exhaling the smoke through his mouth and nostrils. He didn’t know how to respond to Ted.
“You’re a liar,” Spencer said, “Nobody can meet people to fuck so quickly after another.”
“It depends on your approach,” Ted explained, “Maybe you can’t, but I know now I can. It’s all a matter of self-confidence.”
Marcus had to know the secret. “What do you mean by ‘self-confidence?’”
Ted said, “You have to show the girl that you know what you’re doing. You can’t hesitate. You have to let them know what you want. If they reject you, so be it. But you always have to be upfront. And most of the time, people want to have sex. It’s not like doing drugs where it only holds true for a certain percentage of people. You just have to put the trust there. You have to let them know that you wouldn’t do anything shitty.”
“What’s wrong Lu? You look uncomfortable,” Spencer said.
“I’m just shocked, that’s all.”
“What does it matter, I can tell Penny is like totally in love with you. Water under the bridge,” Ted said.
“It’s just shocking, she never told me about this.”
“Well it’s not the easiest thing to just say to someone out of the blue,” Ted said, “Like, I don’t know how the subject would ever come up.”
“Maybe I just wasn’t supposed to find out, okay.” Luther said.
“You just have to decide, do you care about each other’s pasts or not?” Ted continued on.
“Tell you what, I don’t give a fuck what a girl’s done in the past, so long as she doesn’t have herpes,” Marcus said.
“What about AIDS?” Spencer said.
“Well, I have AIDS, so it makes no difference to me.”
“You have AIDS?” Ted asked Marcus incredulously.
“I don’t know why anybody would want to fuck me, but they do!” Marcus went on, “They line up for the AIDS, they want to go on a journey with me. They’re looking for companionship in death.”
“Do you tell them you have AIDS when you first meet them?” Ted continued to bait.
“Yes, I say, ‘My name is Marcus, I have AIDS,’ and they are all of the sudden so interested to get to know me, and to understand what struggles I’ve undergone because of the virus. Eventually we get so close that they’ve decided they want AIDS too, because it really makes life much more manageable. It simplifies everything. The thing that matters is to survive. Plus once you give somebody else AIDS you don’t have to worry about not being able to fuck them anymore.”
“What do you think Lu, do you want AIDS?” Spencer asked
Luther flicked his cigarette off the deck and started to go back in, “AIDS is a degenerative disease. There’s nothing funny about it and I wouldn’t want to die that way.”
“You’re missing out!” Marcus shouted after Luther and he was shutting the back door to the apartment. “You’ll never know what it truly feels like to mix sex and death.” “Wouldn’t that be necrophilia?” Spencer asked.
“No, that’s just perversion, man. AIDS is a totally interactive experience.”
Luther passed Missy and Jeanne on his way back into the party. He stopped.
“Hey, can we clear something up?” he asked them.
“What needs clearing up?” Missy asked
“Okay, well wait, first of all, who are you supposed to be?” “Me, I’m Marilyn Monroe.” Missy said.
“Sylvia Plath,” Jeanne said.
“Okay, well you make a great pairing. But listen, Missy, I have to ask you, were you the girl who flashed me on the beach last Saturday afternoon?”
The two girls looked at each other.
“No, I think you must be mistaken,” Missy said, “We didn’t go to the beach in the afternoon, though we were there that night, if you remember.”
“Forget it. Listen, Jeanne, if you’re still seeing Marcus, I’m sorry but he just told everyone he has AIDS. I don’t know how you want to take that.”
“Oh well, he never told me.” Jeanne said.
At that moment the buzzer sounded. Lauren hit the button, and a few moments later Rory and Ireena entered the party.
“’My T-shirt shows everything?’” Lauren read off of Rory’s homemade t-shirt.
“It’s a Nation of Ulysses song. It’s about how bands get commercialized and lose their power and become parodies of themselves. I’m supposed to be a Nation of Ulysses fan.”
“Well that’s original,” Lauren said.
“I love them,” he said, as if to qualify his costume.
“I guess you’re just exaggerating one interest of yours and turning it into a costume,” Ireena commented.
“And you are supposed to be?” Lauren asked Ireena.
“The Black Widow, the typified character who murders her husband and gets away with it.”
“Ooh, good costume. Well I don’t know how much liquor is left so you better hurry and get it while you can!” Lauren informed them.
Luther passed them on their way to the kitchen.
“What’s up guys, what took you so long, the party’s almost over,” he said.
“Hey Lu,” Rory said, “We went trick-or-treating and just ended up doing too much coke, but we’re here, and we’re ready to have a couple drinks.”
“Well good to see you, I think I’m going to be getting out of here soon though.”
“Okay man,” Rory said, “Whatever you have to do.”
Luther walked back into the living room and sat down next to Penelope, who was chatting with Barbara.
“Hey,” she said to him as he sat down.
“Hey,” he said back.
Penelope resumed her conversation with Barbara, “So then I was just like, sure I’ll dress up as a revolutionary. I mean, we’re trying to change things, right? Everybody talks about being progressive nowadays, and nothing ever seems to get done. Why not just step it up a little bit, let people exhibit their real feelings about things instead of being held back by bureaucratic interests. Right, Lu?” she said looking over at him.
“Right,” Luther said, “Exactly.”
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Oh not much, just that Ted claimed he just slept with you.”
Penelope began to turn red.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” she said, “I know the timing must seem pretty bad.”
“Yeah, I mean, you sure grew tired of him fast. Are you planning on meeting somebody new tonight?”
“No, hey, it just happened. And then it just happened with you too, and I wasn’t expecting it to, but you just seemed so right to me.”
“I’m just so surprised. I don’t know how to deal with it.”
“Please don’t let this spoil anything for us,” she implored, “I know it makes me seem a certain way, but it’s not like that at all. I’ve gotten really attached to you this week.”
“Look I can’t stay here any longer,” Luther said, “I have to go home.”
“Well I want to go with you,” she said.
“No, I want to be alone, just give me some time.”
“Will you call me tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’ll call you. I just really feel like being alone now, okay?”
“Whatever you need to do. Just promise me you’ll call okay? I hope you understand.”
“It’s okay, I’m not mad, I’m just floored. Just let me be alone for a little while. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him before he left.
The liquor began to run out, and the partygoers began to disperse not long after Luther. Charles ended up staying with Lauren for the rest of the night. Spencer convinced Marcus to continue the party back at his apartment, and Marcus convinced Jeanne and Missy to come along with him. Rory and Ireena went back to her apartment yet again, and ended up staying there for the rest of the night. Ted and Barbara returned to Ted’s apartment, and Penelope returned alone to hers.
I left too, wearing my t-shirt that said Hallowee in blood-scratched letters and Ness in the trademarked Guiness Beer lettering and that pictured a tall glass of beer beneath it. A French cocktail waitress gave it to me years ago, saying I had won some sort of contest, while at the moment I had been wearing a home made punk t-shirt with safety pins, and telling people I was dressed as Johnny Rotten. Later on I met a French girl who saw my t-shirt and said to me, “I love punks.” Later when I was in the bathroom there, she came in, and everybody told me that it was a clear-cut sign. Yes, I miss that particular Halloween.

The Retreat of the Magnifying Glass

2009-05-18T08:49:00.001-07:00

Today, this Saturday morning, November 1st, All Saint’s Day, Rory’s days of losing ended. No longer would he stagger through life with the pain of a love unrequited in his heart. No longer would he scan the room desperately for a sympathetic face. No longer would he bury his head in his pillow each morning, praying the morning, the sounds of his neighbors starting their days, the world, would disappear and leave him alone. No, today he knew the happiness of acceptance—acceptance from Ireena, which had been a rare thing for her to exhibit to the men she had met in recent months.
They laid together in her bed, their arms and bodies intertwined at various points.
I was walking down Schiller St., listening to the latest Of Montreal album on my headphones, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. You might say I had my hands full. But I was excited, finally, I was excited again. The great hole opened up and I had slipped through. Here I was finally, free, fulfilling my obligations happily, which this morning, entailed an interview with Rory McLennan. You don’t know how happy I was to interview him for my job. Interviews are my life. Before I started compiling this comedie humaine, I had been an HR consultant. I knew people and I knew what usefulness was. But I wasn’t happy telling them what to do. No, I am not God, and I do not like choosing other people’s fates. I liked offering the interviewees jobs, but I was very bad at expressing disappointment in them. I loved telling people that I was going to take care of them, and I hated telling people that they weren’t what I was looking for.
I rang Ireena’s buzzer and she said, “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” I said, “I’m here to interview Rory,”
Ireena said something to Rory that I couldn’t make out.
“How did you know he was here?” she asked.
“I saw you two at the party last night. He said to me, ‘Today I met the girl I’m going to marry,’ even though he didn’t meet you yesterday, he met you a week earlier. He was just trying to use as many possible Nation of Ulysses references as he could. I was impressed, but will you let me up? I’m supposed to interview, and if I don’t, then my boss is going to yell at me.”
The intercom clicked and the buzzer sounded and I rushed through the two front doors before I could get locked out. I ran up the stairs quickly and knocked on her apartment door. She stood there wrapped in a bed sheet, her hair disheveled, her eye shadow faded. I must admit I felt a bit rude barging in at such an ungodly hour, but such is life. Sometimes there are things that just have to be done, no matter how uncomfortable they make you.
“Pleased to meet you, officially, Ireena,” I said to her.
“Yeah, I saw you at the party. I feel like you’re a bit of a stalker, but Rory told me to let you in, he said you were cool.”
“Really? I’m honored.”
I followed her into her bedroom. She got back under the covers with Rory. He was sitting up in the bed, shirtless, and he stuck out his hand to shake mine.
“Inauspicious circumstances for an interview,” he said, shaking my hand, “But extraordinarily appropriate in a way. Where is this going to be published?”
“Only the hippest mag in town—CS,” I said, sitting down in Ireena’s desk chair.
“Nice, so we’re going to be the toast of the city?”
“Everyone is going to read your story and everywhere you go, you’ll be recognized. Nobody is falling in love anymore. All the lonely readers will see you two, and they’ll have hope for their own futures. Love is not dead, that is the message I am trying to get across.”
Ireena scoffed. I looked at her and she gestured towards her desk, “Could you pass me that chemistry textbook?”
I gave it to her and she reached over into her top dresser drawer to take out her envelope filled with tiny baggies.
“Can I begin the interview now?” I asked them.
“What do you think I’m getting ready for?” Ireena asked.
I turned on the digital audio recorder.
“So Rory, how long have you been an independent resident of this city?” I began.
“I lived in the suburbs with my parents until I went to college. When I graduated I moved back home for six months. Then I started renting my own place in the city. So almost three years, three years next January.”
Ireena snorted a line.
“How long have you been doing cocaine?” I asked Ireena, on the record.
“Six years. I mean, I did it for the first time six years ago. I’ve been using regularly for about three though.”
“So, for the entire time Rory has been a resident of this city, you could say you were high for most of that same period?”
“Well, when I wasn’t at work. I work very hard. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t feel like it was okay to use coke. I feel like it’s okay for me to use it because I can afford it without a problem, and the guy I’ve been getting from is reliable and gives me a good deal. Work life is stressful enough as it is, and I need a little something when I get home to take the edge off. There are times when I haven’t had it, and usually I think to myself, ‘Wow, life really is meaningless,’ you know, go to work, get paid, go home, have dinner, watch TV, go to bed, repeat four times, go out and play for two days, come back and do it again, forever. But at least for me, coke is the thing that makes each day special. It makes every activity seem worthwhile. Anything requiring concentration comes more clearly. It helps me realize what I have to do, and it helps me make decisions faster. You know, I can come home from work, do a line or two, sit down at my easel and start a painting, realize that if I don’t eat I’ll have trouble falling asleep, run out to the grocery store, know the exact ingredients I need, find them quickly and logically, intuiting what section of the store the managers feel each item belongs in, pay them with a stupid smile on my face, run home, start cooking, put on some Bjork or something and scream along with it, maybe do another line, put on the TV, have dinner and watch some dumb reality show and size up the contestants and imagine myself in their shoes and think about how badly I’d blow them all away at whatever game they’re playing, turn off the TV and finish my art, then take a sleeping pill and go to bed at 10. Truly every day was special, but this was my life when I was single, and as of yesterday, I’ve got one more thing to think about, one more thing to fit into my busy schedule.”
“And one other person who only wants to make you happy,” Rory added.
“Next question,” I said, “What is your favorite thing about this city?”
“The more obscure aspects,” Rory said, “Like, you know everyone is going to say they love New York for the entire thing, or they love L.A. for the glamour, but there really is nothing special about this city, beyond the fact that it blows the living hell out of any other city in America in terms of sheer diligence and exactitude. It’s the work ethic. You see everyone and you see their definite purpose, and it is humbling. It makes you stronger. But I also enjoy how fucked up it is. Like, you’re not really safe anywhere. Okay, maybe you’re safe in a few neighborhoods, but for the most part, there’s a tension about this place that you won’t find anywhere else. You can’t get comfortable here. You stay on your toes, you stay sharp. You have to fight for what you want. There’s a shitload of people here and they don’t get the same kind of cultural definition that residents of other cities get. It’s quintessentially American. Yes, it represents the best of what America is about.”
“I like the architecture best,” Ireena said.
“Where do you see yourself in five years?” I asked Rory.
“I don’t know. Hopefully by then I’ll have been able to buy a condo, I won’t hate my job, and I’ll still be with Ireena. Hopefully my friends won’t leave. I don’t see myself making any radical changes, if that’s what you mean.”
“Are you able to pin down the moment that you two fell in love?” I asked out of the blue to both of them.
“At first sight,” Rory said, “At Ted’s party last weekend.”
“When we went out to dinner at Bin 36 on Monday night.”
“Oh that’s a great restaurant,” I said, “I love pairing wine with food, but I never know what to do! They make it so easy for you! If I were a rich man I would eat there every night!”
Rory looked at Ireena and nodded his head towards the chemistry textbook. She passed it over to him.
“Sorry, I’m not the interview here.” I said, “Let’s continue. What was it about Ireena that made you fall in love with her at first sight?”
Rory snorted a line and looked over at her. “She’s one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever met. She’s different from other girls. She doesn’t care about all that lame shit that most girls care about. She’s not afraid to stand up to anyone. I got thrown out of Ted’s party, and she stuck up for me, and she left in protest. Thank God she gave me her number, or none of this would have happened.”
“What about you, Ireena? Why did you fall in love with Rory at dinner?”
“It was obvious that he knew how to treat a girl, but that he had no one to call his own. I couldn’t help it—he was just so cute the way he went about wooing me. So different from other guys, who are just so transparent in what they want out of you.”
I started to get nervous at that comment and I asked them if they wanted to smoke a joint with me, and Rory said he would, and Ireena said she would take a hit. So I lit it up and passed it around, all of this on record. I even asked Ireena if I could see her record collection and I put on an old Fleetwood Mac vinyl.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell CS?” I asked, laughing.
“Socializing is fun! You should do it more often!” Rory said.
“I would like to tell everyone not to waste their breath with meaningless gab. Know what to talk about, and never be boring,” Ireena said.
I thanked them and left Ireena’s apartment and walked back towards mine, my work for Saturday done.

The Crowded Lecture Hall

2009-05-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

The blue book lay open on Luther’s fold out left-handed desk. He used his right hand to write. Nearly every seat in the lecture hall contained a student. The class? British Literature. The topic? Donne’s poem “The Relic.” The essay prompt? Describe the use of language in the poem. Luther’s essay? He wrote that Donne really hoped someone would come out to the graveyard he was buried in to dig up his grave. He wrote that Donne was really posing a dare to the reader, to open his casket, to see if there really were two skeletons, in a lover’s embrace, in death. Luther had taken three pills of Aderol before the exam.
He became aware of an unfamiliar pain in his neck. It was located near the bottom of the back of his neck, where the neck hit the spinal cord, at the cervical vertebrae. As he turned to his right, in an attempt to stretch, or crack the pain out, he saw Penelope sitting in the seat next to him. She put her finger to her lips. She closed her blue book and covered it coyly with her elbow. She told him there was no cheating, no copying her essay ideas.
Luther woke up and looked at the clock. It was 10:30 AM. He flipped his sheet off, from right to left. Then he placed his right foot on the floor, followed by his left. As he stood up to a fully erect position, the pain at his cervical vertebrae made its presence known once more. He leaned and held his torso as far to the right and as far to the left as he could, in an attempt to mitigate the stress that had unexpectedly and very noticeably introduced itself to his neck.
After all of his stretching, his neck felt slightly better, but the strangely acute feeling of the pain persisted. It did not hamper his movements. It did not debilitate his nerve endings. He was not in agony, but he was very conscious of the pain, and it helped to make him feel that the rest of that Saturday was destined to be a very bad day. He thought that smoking a bowl would take some of the edge off his pain. He walked into his living room and opened up the cabinet in the table next to his couch and took out his bong. He put on the Hold Steady album Separation Sunday and smoked and took a bong rip when Craig Finn sang “And she said there’s gonna come a time, when I’m gonna have to go, with whoever’s gonna get me the highest,” and then when he sang “Your little hoodrat friend makes me sick, but after I get sick I just get sad, cause it burns being broke, hurts to be heartbroken and always being both must be a drag.” When he stood up again, he was laughing. Then he noticed the pain again. A wild rush of thoughts breezed through his chemically-altered mind and he decided that the pain was a sure sign of spinal meningitis. He had heard that it only took twenty-four hours to kill whoever had contracted it. He decided that he would do everything he would ever want to do in the last twenty-four hours of his life.
He was glad it was all going to be over soon.