Ballswell That Ends Well

Abridged Version

Here are some things I wrote.  Finally fixed the links on the master compendium, but figured I'd condense that into this- which is the new top of the page.  Any new posts will appear under this one.  

 

Short(or long) Stories(Fiction):

The Sink at Sunset - Guy has mobile home of a heart.  This is life at 20.

Shells - My drug induced interpretation of the scramble suits in A Scanner Darkly caused this short. 

Saint Dympna - Mental patient goes missing after big mishap.

Nine-Tenths is Nothing - Our children are here to replace us.  One man attempts to slow this process by proving he is better than them and protecting his wife from kid perverts. 

The Last Boat to the Disappearing - A seven vignette fiction piece about flaming zombies.  As much as I wish I had written them gay, they are actually on fire.

Story Starter Exercise - A brief story about a friend who got kicked out of his own house and did a lot of drugs while living in the woods.

The Hippie and The Scientist - Right after I read Choke and Fight Club, I wrote this.  Please skip the "ending."

 

 

NON-FICTION(though probably embellished mostly by stunted ability to recall)

The Most Puke I Have Ever Seen - Imagine this next scene.  Try to visualize it with me.  My eyes open to the ceiling, my body shocked out of deep REM sleep.  My legs and waist are moist. . .

 Strange Format - Saturday Show   -  Seriously the strangest format or lack thereof I have ever used.  Almost like a poem.  I've bad luck and things get out of hand. 

Drunk People - An interesting twist-- I'm not drunk in this story. For once in my life.

 Dead Cicada - A woman is assaulted while holding her child.  I intercede.

You're Creepy, Hunter - A girl tells me I am creepy.  I get even.

Salvia Gets Too Real - Fourth and worst trip on Salvia.

A Retelling of the First Time I Smoked

Pissing in Pools I & II - My double standard on people who pee in pools.

 Phoenix - I don't think I am supposed to write about something that is supposed to be anonymous.  Oh well. 

 Be Amazed -  I create a syntax for poetry.  And a new poem.

Black and Mild - I'll miss drinking with friends on top of the roof at my old apartment.  I will miss that Mediterranean market, with its natural soaps and cheap spices.  I will miss all those families who called the cops on me when I played music too loud on Monday nights.  Ahh

 Graham's 21st Birthday - "No, dude, we're walking home.  It's like two blocks."

A Warning - First Friday's in Richmond!

Hunter Takes it to the Limit, Throws Up Everywhere - In The Top Five Drunkest Nights

A Trip To Walmart - Seriously one of the best destinations while high.  Interesting, entertaining, sometimes a little creepy.

To Move My Body - When reality sinks in, when you think you've got nothing, you become psychic, telepathic, and shameless. This story has procession of Segways!

The Things I Remember - I somehow wake up at 2PM in my dorm, still drunk from the night before.  A rough bus ride does me in.

Hunter Blacks Out, Goes To Patient First, Blames Free Beer - Pretty self explanatory.

A Tucker Emulation, It Seems - The very first story I wrote.

JMU, PART I - The first and, since, only time I have been breathalyzed.  There is no part II.  Part II would be better though, as it includes doing mushrooms, a starving French guy, five plus parties, nearly getting run over, really drunk chicks with australian accents, and BLOODHOUNDS.  But this story has none of that.

Bloody in '08 - A New Year story, complete with someone who attempts to smash a full, unopened champagne bottle over his head.

 

Other:
At The Edge of The Neighborhood - Vivid zombie dream.

A Clerihew and some other stuff

A Haiku - About a day I spent at the river getting drunk with someone I didn't know.  She was taken and I fell and cut myself on a rock.  Then there is a sexual allegory at the end.  There, I ruined it.

Shut Down or Reset - Up late? Two options.  Special bonus feature: scene from this year's Best Friends Day @ Hadad's

My First Near-Ticket on a Bicycle

Autumn - The Greatest and Best Time of Year

 

Master Compendium, which probably still has a few broken links.   Also, I don't think my spellcheck is working, and I'm not perfect.

dream

    So I don't know how I'm absorbed into their group.  I guess I find some lizard that's important to them.  Like, it has a homing device on it or something.   Like after following some friends on mopeds and motorcycles, even Charlie- this very large man I work with who rides the comically smallest moped of the bunch- we arrive at this clearing in the sun.  There are people laying on blankets and presumably looking out of their sunglasses at me.   Feeling uncomfortable, I wander off and that's how I find the lizard.

    At this home library, I look at an oversized comic book from the 40's.  I know the characters in it don't exist in the 40's and this is my only missed chance for lucid dreaming.   But that's okay, the group that needs the lizard is here, the younger, Hatian male says to the older Scotish looking mentor, "Maybe we need to surround ourselves with new faces."  Not wanting to see the third of their group, a dark curvy girl with an orange afro, leave, I decide to speak up.

    She looks at me, asks, "have you been reading up on your material?"
    I say no, "I'm just a body.  Add me to the cause, use me as a shield."
    "But we don't want any one getting crippled"
    I think I make a joke or something, because she laughs.  Or I laugh.  I don't know.  

    So she and I go on a mission.  We have to steal something from this cartoonish looking fat kid.  I don't know why he has it, but we kinda have to ruin his day to get it.  He's at summer camp sucking down icecream when we arrive.  The dark curvy orange blur runs up the cabin's steps and kicks his ice cream out of his hand and steals something from his pocket.

    Chase ensues, I tell her I'll meet her back at her place to analyze the object.  Instead, I wake up, leaving her wondering what in the fuck happened to me.  Guess he got caught, or crippled.

 

Freakles: A Missed Connection Post

    So, yeah, I cruise Missed Connections, because I figure all the girls I smile at are going to write desperately about me, you know, because I'm awesome.  I'm pretty disappointed, like, guaranteed.  

    Regardless, MC posts provide endless entertainment.  Most of the time, they help me realize how common these sentiments of lost and broken love are.  Other times, I can't help but just laugh and shake my head.  

    A prime example: http://richmond.craigslist.org/mis/3032530406.html
    i am 5'2 long red hair size 12 pants(meaning curves) with freakles. I love outdoors     kinda the sporta tom boy type but very much a girl. i do like movies and funny     comedies. i like having fun like playing video games or wii. i like being silly i like     being goofy. i like the gym and what to get into better shape. dont like spiders, indian     food, the color orange, uncomfortable pillows( they make no sense) lol more to know     but we can chat back and forth about it.

    I want a tough manly type of man, tall (5'10''-6.5"), white, stocky (meaning not fat     but the wrester/bouncer body type) wearing 36-38 pants, Age 25-35. I like the manly     type who can get dirty, fix things around the house but can also be a gentleman( open     doors and be a nice person), smart, be funny, has a lot of sarcasm( but can you dish it     out and take it? ) Bonus if you have sexy eyes, built arms, can slow dancing from time     to time, gives good hugs, holding hands, has a good smile, or drives a motorcyle or     muscle car. 

    Deal Breakers include smokers, drug users, being lazy, crazy snoring, super hairy     chests, wears skinny jeans, bad hyigene, ugly, fat. IF YOU HAVE ANY OF THESE     .....DO NOT EMAIL ME! 

    Please send a pictures with your response or ill delete the email w/o reading it. . not     looking for a fling so do dont bother if thats all your after. If u are rude ill delete ur     email. I am looking for someone who can be a friend, someone i can feel comfortable     with, and YES completely attracted too :) Stacy     

    TLDR; This bitch is overly, specifically picky OR entirely the most boring person in Richmond.  So you're looking for a guy.  The population in Richmond is like 1,300,000, right?  So that's less than 650,000.  If the bars are any indication, it's WAY LESS than that.  Anyway, so you don't like Indian food, so that eliminates some conjured number of dates dudes would take you on.  Let's pretend you're down to 500,000 possible dudes, assuming none of them have monogamous relationships.

    Holy shit, you don't like spiders?  Really?  So you're human?  Who the fuck likes spiders?  

    Here's a thing, lady, "bouncer" or "wrester" body type typically refers to stocky/beefy/fat fucks with a lot of muscle and if you add an 'L,' a shiny mask.  Gotta be more specific.  Like, when you say you don't like ugly dudes, maybe you should refine your search to what type of nose you think is ugly.  Or whatever.  You've gotta be down to 245,639 by now, eliminating all the fat people and spider lovers(%.05 of Richmond males just LOVE spiders).  

    1.4% of males regularly wear orange.  Down to 211,249.54 dudes to choose from. 

    Skinny Jeans?  Sheeeeeit, bitch, this is Richmond.  158,437.155.

    And they have to be able to slow dance?  134,671.61775.  Diminishing odds, all over your stupid, misspelling face.  By the way, what in the fuck is a freakle?  Is that what you call those bumps on your genitalia, because I'm pretty certain that's herpes.  Just sayin'.  

    Drives a motorcylce or muscle car?  Fuck, let's pretend like I'm looking these stats up and still applying fake percentages.  25,000.  You're approaching "fucked."

    Nicotine is a drug.  I hate you.  

    So, okay, you are totally rudely picky or absurdly, bluntly upfront about what you want, and we're not even figuring into the equation all the possible candidates who are engaged in a prolonged relationship (welcome to 12,500) and you want someone to NOT respond in a rude tone?  C'mon.

    Sexy eyes?  I don't know what this means, but let's say 11,233.

    "Gives good hugs, holding hands."  This is impossible.  No one gives a good hug while holding both of your hands.  Unless they're holding your hands behind your back.  This might be rape you're looking for.  1,045 guys, especially the ones with "built arms."

    Sending a picture when they respond: 975.
  
    Hyigene?  Hyigenre?  What the fuck?

    And shit, I didn't take into account the age specification.  Shit, you're looking at about, I don't know, twelve dudes in Richmond.  

    One last thing.  Stacy?  Really?  What is that?  That's the shittiest name other than Shithead.  You're never going to find love on Missed Connections, and if you do, it is doomed to scrutiny and, ultimately, massive failure.

    Good luck with that.

    
    

Scrap and Gaggle

    It starts with a story about Charlottesville, one I tell "J.L." and "A-dog," outside Cafe Diem.  They're sitting on the chairs lined up against the window, while I play out the story.

    "And I'm just sitting there, all leanin' over on the bar, staring at the back of this girl's head, you know, just creepin'."
    "You had this face?"  A-dog raises both eyebrows and tilts his forehead at us, swaying.  
    J.L. asks if I got her number and I just say the only thing I get is a Gus Burger at the White Spot.  
    "Sounds like I don't belong there, shit."
    "Haha, no, it's not like that.  Right across from U.V.A. though, so I dunno.  But it's a burger with deep fried bacon and a fried egg on top.  Near-instant sobriety.  And you know, the guy cooking is from the Yucatan Peninsula, so I'm there all leaned over my greasy burger speaking broken Spanish.  Me gustaria dos Gus Burgers, por favor, mi amigo, oh, con may-oh-nass-ey.  I see the sign for the bathroom but I just want to ask him in Spanish anyway.  Tienes un banjo?"

    A-dog chuckles, and implies my Gringo-ness with something like, "Yo soy un perro drunk-o."

    "So we leave the place," I demonstrate stomping the cracked sidewalk which, by the way, mirrors the color of the week-long gloom in Richmond.  "And I lean on this wall overlooking the campus, and I go, 'Man, I totally know Spanish!'"
    
    They laugh and I wonder when I'll eat.  We go back inside and watch some local comedy.  It's pretty hilarious but there aren't a lot of people in there, just comedians watching comedians, burn-outs, and people locked in a "Human zoo," as J.L. puts it-- a glass booth for smoking.  
    This drunk retard heckles the first guy on stage.  He sounds and looks like my old neighbor, Mike.  He apparently scraps and tosses metal for what he calls a living.  The guy on stage implies he tosses salads and welcomes him to a place called "Shut the fuck up!"   The heckler gets kicked out.

    By the time we get to Sticky Rice to celebrate our Pollock friend's birthday, I am buzzed and looking for love.  This typically ends poorly, the whole looking process.  Better to just relax and let things happen.  But, of course I'm staring and smiling at our waitress because why not, my confused brain doesn't know not to fight the universe.  Doesn't know this is fruitless.  
    The only time we make a connection, she is behind a group of pastel button-ups, trying to force her way through with two full trays.  I kind of smile and she gives me this relieved look, like "Thank god someone notices how batshit stupid this is." 

    Eventually, after a table full of sushi, I resign myself to smoking.  Outside, I convince my spikey-haired rock star friend, "Spike," to punch me in the chest repeatedly.   I can handle it now, I say.  I do like 400 push ups a day, son!  
    I reveal that I probably do half this number, after my chest gets sore from the pounding knuckles.  Eventually, I concede, say, "Alright it's like 50 less than that, too."  No one trusts me now.  You can't change your story.

    Inside, Pollock Johnny knocks a bottle of kikkoman over.  His girlfriend, "Angel," meticulously divides the check for The Waitress.   A-dog and J.L.  bond over some music video with demonic gorillas bursting from the earth.

    I get a phone call.  It's G-money.  I miss the call because some girl yells across the street, "I'm going to fuck you!"  then gets her heel caught on something and bends over in her Easter-Egg-Pink dress to un-snare it.  "I mean, I'm NOT going to fuck you!" 
    I laugh at her and she says, "Close enough!"  

    I click the last missed call.
    "Hey man, I didn't mean to call you.  What are you guys getting into to celebrate?"
    "We're at Sticky Rice, it's like discount sushi or some shit.  When will you be back in Richmond?"
    "Like Thursday."
    I put him on speaker phone, tell him to say hi to Spike and "Road Block"(from the last one).  
    "Why the fuck am I on speaker phone?"
    "Hey man, listen.  Don't, uh, see that girl when you get back into town."
    "What, why?"
    "Something happened, you should know before you see her again."
    "What is it?  What happened?"
    "I'll tell you on Thursday."
    "Shit."
    "And G,"
    "Yeah?"
    The three of us hunch over the phone, smiling.
    "GOTCHYA!"
    In unison, "OOOOHHH!"

    While this conversation proceeds, little do I fucking know, but G-money and his girlfriend sit in his car at his place.  Down the street.  They join us at the end of the Sticky run and we roll to Helen's.  

    There are ten of us now, and I feel invincible.  No one in Richmond can step to this drunk family of friends.  We are, all of us, the unstoppable force.  But by the time we get there, Pollock Johnny is smashed, telling me he's going to get me laid.  At this point, I give up the pursuit and feel uncomfortable with his arm around me.
   
    My discomfort comes from the fact that he is drunker than I, and I am drunk enough to give up and just sit down at a table by myself drinking water for thirty minutes.  So, verily.   

    I get up to say something to G-money and A-dog, who lean on the empty, stove-range-side of the bar.  Some girl intercedes and asks him where the bathroom is.  
    "Will you show me?"
    Now, this is where G-money, who has a girlfriend, should feign ignorance, introduce me, This is my friend, he's been here before.  Instead he's all chipper and swaggerin' his ass to the back with her.  

    He comes back grinning and I tell him I hate him and explain why he's the worst.  Then of course, she walks back up to the three of us and A-dog picks up the conversation.  
    I want to leave.  Go outside and smoke again, at least.  This girl, a white girl with a soft and freckled face, turns to me, reads my mind while I'm looking elsewhere and asks me if I want to join her for a cigarette.    

    We sit there, looking into eachother's lives, offering up what we can about ourselves with the time we have.  She asks me to put my number in her phone so I do and hand it back.  She thumbs at it a few times and then, looking at me, hits the send button, "I just sent you a text.  I leave Thursday."  

    Her friends come outside and tell her they're leaving.  One of them says something in Russian as she helps her off the concrete step and she turns to me, her bouyant curls in her face, "Oh by the way, I'm Russian!"  

 

el mejor de todos los tiempos

    

Five Minutes Exactly

    This girl pushes the chair next to me.  She climbs up the chair, plops down, unloads a pile of keys jangling.  Her phone hits like a brick next.  She turns to me, her eyes all swimming, and tells me she's important.  

    My daddy's a lawyer in D.C.  
    My name's something, something,
    but you can call me L.K.
    I'm rich,
    I'm someone.

    She asks me to buy her a drink and I ask her if she can afford to buy her own drinks.  Also, why she has a clunky flip phone.  I mean, if she's rich and her daddy loves her.  She berates:

    You're a fucking gentleman aren't you?
    I don't want a smart phone.  
    I don't need that.    
    Do you smoke?

    Maybe, whatever, sure, yes.  I end up buying her an Old Fashioned.  My friend leans over and asks her what she's drinking.  She tells him and he goes, "You're old."   And she's old.  Unattractive and drunk.  

    Once she has some of the O.F. cocktail in her, she admits her daddy doesn't love her.  Excommunicates her, she explains.  She isn't from here.  She doesn't stay in one place.  She's not rich, just another Richmond refugee.  

    L.K.  asks me for a cigarette, agrees to meet me out front to smoke.  So I go to the bathroom and write something like "The Wire is the best!" on the chalk board.  When I come out, she's gone.  She gropes some girl and gets kicked out.  
    That's fine, I think, I'm unimpressed.  You're thirty-something and drink like a highschooler.  G'riddance.  

    I sit next to my friend and he just laughs deep.  We resume talking shit about out-of-towners and, ultimately ourselves for being in-of-towners.  He tells me he's afraid to leave the city and I joke about the fact that I think girls are exotic because they're from up north.

    The big, tattooed bar-tendress asks me where my friend went, if I want another.  I tell her she isn't my friend, that she barely drinks her drink anyway.  I tell her I'll have another in, like, five minutes.  She says, okay, five minutes exactly.  My friend says she has a tiny hour-glass timing me.  
    I get the bar-tendress' attention and she just shakes her head, It hasn't been five minutes.  Fair enough, fellow person of literal sentiment.  

    Later, the ugly lights come on and we leave.  So that stuff happened, I guess.

 

today my heart beats only out of habit

My Hour at the Park, in B.

    Branches bend benevolently backward, bearing brittle brightness.   Benefactors boast broad bases, brown bark.  But before brunch, bacchanalian bros barf below, barring beauty beheld by bypassers.  

    Brats belt, "Ball! Bounce!"  

    Basiating bi-peds bed burlap.  

    Birds bring back bramble- building brawny bastions behind bored bosks.  

    Bumping beats, but bereft buddies, I bounce. 

 

Long Sunk Son (Pt.1?)

    Not sure I'll ever finish these stories.  So, here's what there is of Winter-- a corollary or extension of The Sink at Sunset.  

 

WINTER: LONG SUNK SON

 
   The telephone in my pocket vibrates.  It is my father’s signal connecting to this one’s, bouncing around the globe or shot into space just to return the hundred miles that separate us.  It is a text message, reads: Snowing here @ 4:55.  I respond with one hand.  I carry groceries in the other.  I say: Yeah i heard 8 to 12 inches but all i expect is insane ice @ 4:46.  He types and sends: Covering ground here @ 4:48.  I close the phone.   A brief, three minute conversation. 

   I remember how we got here, to this place of occasional texts.  At least, I figure I do.  The last time we had a heart to heart, weeping in eachother's arms, apologizing.  I had punched him repeatedly in the head for being relentless.  For making fun of me and my trading card game.  He just wouldn't take interest, he just wanted to show his warped affection.  I ended up sprinting down the street and he sped off in his car, slowing down it seemed, just to scowl out his windows as I ran.
   I remember when he told me a vagina looked like lips, a little hand-gina gaping and facing me before his chest, when I already knew but played dumb for his sake. 
   I remember  that he once slipped on the wet brick stoop of our first house.  Splayed on tiled patio, unmoving, his tie bent at his belly, I thought he was dead.  I must have been 5.  My imagination was intense, and the patches of mold next to his head were little pools of blood, oozing from his ears.  

   I look from my frosted windows at a solid two inches of snow.  Above which, I see nothing.  Or, something.  If nothingness is believed to be empty and black(as many misunderstand outer space to be), somethingness is a solid, bright pale.  Layers and layers and layers beyond, beyond, beyond forever-- pale.  Every flake, the same storm. 
    No god up there, just UAVs and satellites watching us. 

   I survey the city pale. 

   Trees and idle cars remain enveloped as I walk the crooked, unlit stairs.  I crawl the final stretch of steps.  Several 40's slosh around in my stomach.  I black out. 

   I wake up the next afternoon atop a twisted nest of blankets.  Zeus Dankstar Belligerence, the orange alley cat, claws at my eye.  I mean claws, like hooks my eyelid with his dirty sharps and lifts my eye open.  I yelp and pull the paw from my eye, throw him off the bed.
    My skin is cold and white.  I roll over, arch my back, and crane my neck back.  I see an icicle plummet upward and disappear into the frosted glass.   All moisture in my brain exits and my brain shrinks, pulls at the sides of my head.  It hurts.

    The never ending hangover of night after night trying to forget. 

   I walk down the hall to pee.  Before I reach the bathroom, Raiford comes out of his room, wrapped in several blankets.

   "You asshole."
    "Did I leave the door open again?"  This explains the lack of heat, the color of my skin.
   "Yeah, you left the door open.  You also earned us a sound complaint."
   I laugh, "What?"  He does not laugh.
   "I come home and there are cops in the house.  Again, you know.  Again!"  He is very angry and yells.  Though he is smaller than myself, his anger is overpowering my handicapped mind.  I am hung over and stupid. 
    He continues, "I talked to them, told them I'd turn it down.  It was metal, blaring in your room.  I tried over and over to wake you after I turned it off.  I thought you were fucking dead.  Then I stepped on some broken glass downstairs."  He shows me a bandaged foot.  "How much money do you have right now?"  He says this, accusing me of spending all of it on booze, "groceries."  I don't respond, I just sway a little.  "Yeah, well, get this.  And this is why you're an asshole.  Our power got shut off this morning.  Because you don't have a job.  Because you're a drunk." 

   I am through listening to him and push him aside, tell him to fuck himself.  You don't care if I'm drunk, you're just cold.    

   Before I close the bathroom door, Raiford asks me if I've called Colors yet.  He remembers to call them today, because today is the last of his probation.  I say, "No.  Why?"
   "It's blue," he stings.    

    Blue means I have to pee into a cup while someone watches me, after riding my bike five miles through the snow into what used to be the next town, way over the big bridge downtown and up the hills on the other side.  Needless to say, no one is impressed by the size or color of my cock when I get there.  It's all shocked from the ride, frozen from the cold. And then you get in that room with the guy.  He's got blue gloves on and he passes you the cup and then, presumably, locks his vision to your junk long enough to know you're not cheating.  It's hard to pee at first, but once it starts it doesn't stop.   Like now, peeing freely the excessive, brown and unprocessed, alcohol into my own toilet. 

    I think about peeing after sex, about tits curving to hips, about those creases that lead to the crotch, about smoking, about not having a cigarette, about the ride in the cold, about my bicycle waiting in this cold, about copper and the Statue of Liberty, about vinegar or bleach. 

   A large cockroach rests on the sink, unafraid of the guy who probably let him live earlier in the week out of either drunk laziness or compassion for the living.  Either way, he's sittin' pretty, all safe and smiley, lookin' up at me.  
    Something mean in me rises, some evil at the back of my heart or in the barren wastoid cracks of my brain, sprouting slowly like a weed.  I grab a disposable razor and jab at the cockroach, missing several times before landing a crucial blow to its abdomen. I watch it wriggle and squirm, stare back hauntingly.  I wipe the bits of him left on the razor on the drain stopper.   It shakes its head violently while its antennae shoot wildly in many directions. 

    I brush my teeth for the first time in days and spit blue on the roach.  I let my saliva flow slow to the drain.  It encroaches, envelopes the roach.  Its now lethargic antennae droop to the porcelain under the sopping weight.  Eventually the spit pushes the roach into the drain, where I imagine it falls, bouncing from one side of the shaft to the next, before it hits the bottom and says, "Whew!"  But then, of course, the roach looks up at a sizable eclipse bearing down on him.  And he's probably comfortably in the dark until the sound of water begins smashing against the roof of the drain.  I imagine him limping, holding his side, trying to find a way out.  A creaking of metal and the water stops.  I open the valve, the stopper lifts.  Five seconds.  It takes five seconds for the water to drain. 

    I think it's dead.

Mauled 2 / 2010

So I've been having really vivid dreams lately, and I thought this one was worth writing down.  I am comfortably naked throughout the dream, which is strange because it begins in a restaurant much like the one I work in. 

The Muffin Man is tending to customers at a dimly lit bar.  The sunlight recession mirrors his hairline.  He sets up some equipment I don't recognize on a table, saying something like, "This will deter business."  He smiles, says, "At least at this table."  There are lamps illuminating finished oak, the cheap albeit attractive [porcelain?] kind with candle wax collecting all around the exposed base.  It gets dark.

I am now in den of the house I grew up in.  It is light out, but the blinds are shut and only beams of sparkling dust show my fathers face.  His furrowed brow and cracked frown.  His grey hair.  Really grey, like, greyer than I remember-- white even.  He looks over a guitar, runs his hand down its coarse body.  The wood here is not finished, not preserved to withstand children or time.  It looks old.  He looks old. 
He tells me to go out to the shed, or maybe I decide to.

In the shed, I meet "Dalton,"  the boyfriend of this girl I made out with.  He is generally a nice guy-- sharp and funny.  Here, he is a twisted version of himself.  His eyes are bleak, sunken bulbs.  There's an evil grimace pasted across from ear to ear.  It gets vague, but he asks me a series of questions and I lie to him.

I must be sick or something, my father keeps pressing the back of his hand to my forehead.  His forehead, the one he gave me.  He touches my arm and it stings.  He retracts and there is blood covering his palm.  Dalton mauled me with some yard tool, deeply.

Not only am I naked, but I have three giant flesh trenches in my arm.

I go to a gathering at a house, a house show maybe, with this girl, "Annie."  She whispers something in my ear as we enter, her lips brush my earlobe.   I smile and hold her hand as we sit in a circle of chairs.  Some guy stands in the middle.  By some guy, I mean some guy wearing a top hat(or similar variation on the style, like shorter than the tip top of top hats that may come to mind) and a suit.  His face is covered in hair, and he announces his name, something like, "The No BS BrassMaster."  Not to be confused with the No BS Brass Band in Richmond-- there are no brass instruments.   Just stringed.   My father enters at the head of the group with a shiny new guitar, sits, tightens some strings and smiles at me.   

 

The Hat Thief

    So there I am, minutes into a beer and seconds away from the bottom of the glass, staring at this girl.  She is hot.  She has full lips, a dark complexion and jet-black hair.  Her eyes are big and beaming, her eyebrows cresting thin on a soft forehead.  I like everything I see and I know I'm hooked. The only problem is the guy next to me, whom I have to just fucking bore a hole into, hoping she'll lean or something so I don't have to.  That might be creepy. 
    I'm sure I'll get her attention.  After all, I have this new haircut I gave myself, you know, because I've cut hair before (the last time I shaved my head years ago).  

    I remember the last time I shaved.
    I was a few years younger with tighter skin, less of a scowl.  You know, I had just gone through some consecutive relationships and subsequent breakups.  I had been alone for awhile and no longer craved sex over companionship. 
    So I met this girl at a party.  She stole my hat and said she looked better in it.  She did.  When I met her later, she barely remembered this event, but hung out with me anyway on the notion that it may have happened and that maybe there was a reason she took my hat, a reason she talked to me.
    We went to the park and sat there.  I was disinterested in the conversation.  I felt awkward, but it turned into so much more than that.  

    So I'm digging my lack of hair in the mirror, all confident and shit.  Hey, I'm awesome, right?  Look at that wide chest and those white teeth!  Who is that guy?!  Just feelin' myself.  

    I look over and get a full view of the girl.  She really is beautiful.  But. . . she looks familiar.  I stare at her as the guy gets up to go smoke, her all turning around to watch him walk.  She turns back to the bartender (who laughs at my ID, says "drastic") and I know her.  She is the girl from the park.  She's the hat thief  And I can't even remember her name for a second.  When I get it, I then realize I've only ever known her fake name-- after some sea creature.

    Utterly lost on how I could have just sat in that park and talked small until excusing myself for whatever bullshit reason, I drink up and leave knowing that she won't recognize me.    

The Summer's Spent

    I tried to jump the fire at the camp ground.  A few of my friends held me back, knowing better that it was, in fact, too enraged from the logs we stole and the post I broke in half to burn.  

    She sat across the fire, looking at me in a way I'll never forget-  You fool.  And she couldn't have pegged me better, there or later, sitting across not a fire but a table, looking at me in a different way- smiling and clapping her marked hand.  The ink read: [insert my address at the time].  

    And then we spent the rest of that summer laying on my floor, looking out the windows of what looked like a castle upside down at everything. 

don't call my name out the window, I'm leavin'

untitled nonsense

    And it just fucking breaks my heart to know this is where I am.  In the dark, listening to heavily breathed, "Oh my god"s and "Yeah, yeah, yeah." 

    Seriously, this is me trying to sleep.  Wailing Regina Spektor drunkenly over sex in the next room. 

    What the fuck.  I have this to turn to?  To writing, barely able to form a sentence without . . . well, actually, it's pretty fluid.  Few things need backspace. 

    So like, here's a thing.  Let's say there's a friend in town.  He/she is doing some really cool shit outside of town.  You know, having a life, experiencing things.  Which is great.  But then they come back, and they bring all that shit down on you so hard you never knew you were missing out until that moment. 

    The bed just creaks in the next room.  I seriously want to bomb this building, myself in it or not, who cares.  It's a matter of principle.  It needs to burn. 

    "Suppose we never fell in love," she says.  Yeah, good, is all I can think.  What I can or rather have to write is this:  I don't want to write this story anymore.  The one where there's this and there's that, there's a love story or a complication in the life of someone, particularly the writer's-- mine.  I guess what I'm saying is I don't want to write.  Or I don't want material. 
    I can't not write when there is, when there's something there to write about.  But the subject matter, my personal muse-- fuck.  I just want to forget it. 

    In other news, my friend's car got spraypainted.  That was fun, all of us cleaning it off, like some family or some shit.  And, in fact, this is what I imagine saying we are, the four of us, to the downstairs neighbor who clearly used the same grey/silver spraypaint on Graham's car.  I want to say, "Hey, you know, real sorry about the noise.  He's like my retarded brother, but he's not around much.  If ya got a problem, lemme know."  Some shit to just ease the tension. 

    This is what I do, instead of texting you.  Or you.  Or you.  Or doing anything I'd regret.  Instead of these, I am here.  Just, you know, staring into the lightbulb, typing away for whatever.  I just sit here, half propped up against the cushion, bent like some crippled torso.   

   Someone else's heart, pumpin' someone else's blood.