A Vague Sketch of Somewhere in Particular
I recently took a three-day excursion to my parent’s house in Fairfax, Virginia in order to pick up a television I had left behind and play the role of "good son" and visit with Mom and Dad. I haven't properly lived in Fairfax since I was 16 years old—my "homes" being a smattering of rural Virginia barracks' rooms, college dormitories, dilapidated punk rock houses in central North Carolina, an enormous downtown abode in Richmond, Virginia, and a humble and unassuming apartment in Queens. Throughout these forays I've always made the occasional trip back to Fairfax, and with each passing visit it becomes more apparent that the house I grew up in is no longer my home. I don't mean this in the dramatic "Garden State" pool scene dialogue sense of the "idea of home," but more in a casually "it's-getting-weirder-and-weirder-to-come-home" kind of a concept. While holed up in my basement--a barely recognizable shell of where I used to furiously pass my time as a teenager—I wrote the following bit of something as the cable television hummed on in the background.
A Vague Sketch of Somewhere in Particular.
Fairfax is a series of unromantic realities. Fairfax is an endless sprawl of strip malls with banking chains seemingly changing with each visit and casually situated in the corner of their parking lots. Fairfax is all-too traversable roads named Backlick, Rolling, Braddock, Burke Lake, Ox, and Lake Braddock Drive. These roads carried my friends and I aimlessly through nights without destination. These 45 mph stretches eventually led us to places like Waco, Austin, Mexico, Tallahassee, Emory, Blacksburg, Greensboro, Richmond, New York, Norman, Chicago, and Seattle; to colleges, jobs, the military, the arms of fiancés, and the bottom of bottles. Fairfax is Twinbrooke Music where I learned how to play guitar, Main Street which has now been re-routed, Yesterday's Rose thrift store, and Record Convergence which is now a dry cleaners. Fairfax is the stale smell of cigarette smoke in Dan Kline's basement where we effortlessly wrote bad songs that meant the world to us.
Fairfax is Jon Clough's Ford Aerostar barreling down the County Parkway towards the Franconia-Springfield stop on the Blue Line. It is the barbed wire fencing around the perimeter of Lake Braddock Secondary School, the endless parade of County vehicles from 8am to 3:30pm Monday through Friday, the Taco Bell at Burke Center with its' brutal fluorescent lighting. It's make shift rafts on Burke Lake at midnight, homemade crosses adorned with flowers and pictures on the side of Lee Chapel Road. It's 7-11 coffee and under aged cigarette purchases, it's Saturday Night Live after NBC's nightly news in a King's Park basement, it's bad marijuana that you didn't want to smoke anyway. It's the bulb-lit burning of the Capitol line from I-395, it's "Living on a Prayer" at 2am hurdling along Constitution Avenue, and Friday nights at the Black Cat on 14th street NW. It's Best Buy's yellow awning eyeing you from Old Keene Mill Road, and MVC Late Night Video's hesitant clientele. It's night shifts at Pizza Hut for $4.25 an hour, and falling asleep listening to the Violent Femmes for two years. It's dinners at 5pm, and plastic-packaged deli slices of ham and turkey in the refrigerator. It's alarm clocks set for far too early with nothing pressing to do with your day. It's high performance mutterings of Honda Accords and SUVs, walking to the seldom-visited public libraries, and skateboarding in neighborhood cold a sacs.
It's planes delicately aligning themselves for the runway at Dulles International Airport, the smell of cut grass in the summer, and a smoky burning enveloping your nose and tongue throughout the winter. It's the marching band practicing within earshot of your driveway, and bike rides that take you nowhere. It's kids huddling in patches of woods smoking first cigarettes, police cars hiding in darkened recesses, and radio-favorites performing at George Mason's Patriot Center. It’s a medicine cabinet full of acne treatments that don’t work, a complimentary toothbrush from the dentist’s office, and rubber bands for your braces. It’s shooting basketball in front of the house even though you don’t like basketball, your neighbor’s infatuation with gardening, and pretending to pick up your dogs’ poop in clear bags when someone is watching from their kitchen window. Its overheard conversations about sending you and your brother to military school, and coming home a year later with less hair and even fewer acquaintances. It’s parties in townhouses you weren’t invited to, 94.7 “The Capitol of Classic Rock,” DC 101, and WHFS. It’s John Madden’s voice on Sunday afternoons while your father sleeps in front of the television, sneaking sips from your Mother’s boxed wine, and taping movies off of HBO.
It’s Boy Scout meetings in elementary school cafeterias, the occasional broken bone, allergy shots, and the suffocating smell of your mom’s perfume in a Ford Taurus while the oldies station plays The Supremes. It’s mailboxes standing watch along curbs, and four digit addresses affixed to front doors that are seldom used. It’s Maryland seeming like a foreign land, and anything below Woodbridge being the “south.” It’s another day to hail the mailman, and military kids whose parents wear Pentagon badges to and from work. It’s deliveries of mulch from local nurseries, the friend who likes The Doors a little too much, and open flannel shirts. It’s parking stickers for local colleges on rear windows of automobiles, and Giant Foods’ epic competition with Safeway. It’s little kids taking karate classes at Wakefield Recreation Center, and softball tournaments sponsored by area sporting good stores. It's reading the City Paper in front of Tower Records at 10pm, and helping Susan roll silverware into napkins in exchange for free cheese fries at Lone Star.
Fairfax is the clattering of dogs' paws on the floor above your room at 6am, a subtle interest in God, and learning Nirvana guitar parts at 2am. It's your father's record collection, and a banjo sitting in a case that has seen more days and nights than you have. It's a growing fear of the future in an already fearful present. It's a sense of alienation, and a burning desire for acceptance from the people you've been told you'll one day meet. It's concerned voices asking after you from other floors of the house, and a mini-fridge full of Coca-Cola. It's posters of people you would rather be, and the unyielding feeling that one day you'll prove something to them all. It's self-doubt seen through other people's eyes, a summer spent listening to "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and waiting for a phone call from a girl you met in Europe who lives in South Dakota. It's nights spent being the third wheel, and panic attacks alone in the dark. It's months that passed with seeming immobility, which added up to nothing of consequence. It's faked sick days, new phone books left on your porch, and naps when you're painfully awake.
It’s the urgency you once felt manifesting itself into your now daily life. It’s four walls with small windows that let a glimpse of suburban sprawl rap at your conscience—knowing that this is all a part of you no matter how hard you try to deny it. And the faces that once made up this scenery can never come home again.
-tedd-
Lettuce for the People: Another Writing Exercise.
Here is yet another attempt at writing fiction via the now regularly performed writing exercises at my apartment on Wednesday nights. This week's prompt--if I can remember it correctly--was to include:
1) A main character who is hiding in a non-urban environment.
2) The words "florid," "mnemonic," and "marital."
3) A moment of panic that forces the main character to violence.
4) The mention of a green vegetable somewhere in the story.
Here then is what I was able to come up with in the 45 minute time limit we gave ourselves. I'm honestly not that pleased with it, but I'll post it anyway in an effort to show people that I'm at least trying. No more beer runs directly before we start writing--I had to ask Jeff, Eric, and Paul what the three words we had to include were at least four times throughout the exercise and I think they got a bit frustrated with me.
Lettuce for the People.
Perhaps it was George’s overwhelming sense of adventure, or his innate and well-known stupidity that caused him to pin himself further against the bathtub’s floor, but either way he immediately regretted his decision.
“How the fuck did bits of lettuce end up in our shower?” he queried to no one in particular, “You fill a bathtub with beer and ice and someone goes and tosses pieces of lettuce in the goddamn mix?”
George and his roommates, each a collection of single, fattening, and in George’s instance balding, men of 27 were hosting a party on caliber with one they’d easily thrown four to five times over the last six years since they initially moved in together during college. The house and its roommates were currently engaged in one of their favorite pastimes during such drunken events—hide and go seek. George, lacking the foresight of the other partygoers had delved head on into an icy-cold bathtub full of beer (and apparently lettuce) forgoing the more conventional confines of a messy closet or discreet basement nook.
“Seriously, how the hell did this lettuce end up in here,” George again said aloud despite the urgency for silence, “This is just fucking inconsiderate.”
George’s now soaked through denim pants and long-sleeved shirt, the “Canadian Tuxedo” as his friends referred to it as, was the last thing on his mind, which had selected the florid chunks of lettuce floating around his chest as most prevalent and pressing matter at hand. As the moments slipped drunkenly by George’s mind began to race: “Who the hell could have done this? What asshole brings lettuce to a party? Wait maybe they stole my head of lettuce. That’s even more beat-up. Stealing a man’s head of lettuce, only to shred it up and throw it in a bathtub of beer. I mean, Coors isn’t that bad. Taste of the Rockies. Jesus Christ. Lettuce? Fuck.”
As George continued to postulate how the green leafiness made its’ way to the water in the tub he could hear the footsteps of Susan beginning her search of the house for the hiding participants.
George and Susan had once dated for three years. From the time they entered school at the tender age of 18, they had begun dating—casually at first and finally accepting that they loved one another somewhere around finals during the fall semester of 1999. What eventually led to the demise of the relationship was George’s proposal of marital stability two years later. Susan, not one for settling down, and much to George’s own ignorance, had been cheating on him throughout most of the relationship—devoting her time mostly, and quite adamantly, to achieving a sexual encounter tally that rivaled the results of most complex math equations and other mnemonic devices.
“That bitch will never find me in the goddamn tub. Unless she’s needs another beer I guess,” George said floating five to six silver Coors cans to the other end of the tub, “No one will look in the tub . . . I’m the only one crazy enough to hide in some ice cold water. Fucking dumb bitch.”
Susan continued to creep about the four-bedroom house looking for the five to six people who had decided to join in the game, “This is idiotic. Every third party these guys have I end up doing the same thing—wandering around their house trying to find where the hell they’re hiding, and it’s always the same damn places. I know George is in the damn tub freezing his ass off, and he’s going to get a cold again in the middle of August.”
Stepping over trash and through various drunken party conversations about “how awesome Journey is” Susan made her way to the hallway bathroom’s door and sat down with her back against it. She could hear George talking to himself and sloshing around in the water from the hallway.
“This fucking lettuce. Christ Jesus.”
“George I know you’re in there. You always are.”
“What? Fuck you.”
“Jesus,” Susan sighed to herself.
“You know what Susan? Don’t even start with me; I heard that under your breath from in here. Shouldn’t you be fucking someone behind my back by now?”
“Wait, what?”
“I knew. I fucking knew the whole time.”
“You did? I’m . . . I’m sorry George.”
“Yeah well, you’re sorry and I’m a guy wearing nothing but denim laying in the middle of ice and beer, and evidently FUCKING LETTUCE in the bathtub.”
“Did you say lettuce?”
“Yeah I said lettuce Susan. Lettuce,” George stood up from the tub jarring the once placid tub water, beer, and rapidly melting ice cubes. Susan oblivious to this rested her head back against the door.
“You know what, I’m not even pissed at you Susan. I’m more pissed at whoever it was that brought this lettuce into my home only to toss it into the tub. That’s just strange and fucked up. You don’t do that.”
“I’m not listening to you George. Please just shut up.”
“Well you should be listening to me, there’s lettuce in my tub and I don’t know how it got here. It could be mine for all I know, and someone took it.”
“George you haven’t bought groceries since I’ve known you. It’s not yours.”
“So, so you are listening to me now huh? That’s just great,” George now had a foot out of the tub.
“Just shut up will you. I’m tired of all this shit. Your parties, your friends, your . . . whatever, your fucking lettuce,” Susan was getting quite audible to everyone in the house now.
George was completely out of the bathtub and dripping water everywhere. Stumbling towards the door he had nothing on his mind but reprimanding whoever had brought the head of lettuce into his home.
“You know what . . .” George’s voice trailed off to Susan as the door to the bathroom violently swung open striking her head causing several people in the hallway’s vicinity to become alarmed, “ . . . I hate vegetables . . . in . . . general. Ah hell.” he slowly finished his statement as he realized he had just knocked his ex-girlfriend out cold.
George stood over Susan’s slim figure in the hallway with a drunken and complacently feigned sense of alarm. Someone he did not know was already on the phone for an ambulance, and there was more lettuce yet to be discovered at the end of the hallway.
-tedd-
Did you mean exercise?-- part, uh, two
In case you have yet to read Tedd's explanation, Tedd, Paul and I had a writing exercise where we had an albums worth of time (approximately 45 minutes) to write a short story-- or as complete a one as possible-- using the following rules: a conversation between a female apparition and a main male character must be had, you must use the name "Alex" in the story, and there must be a truck/moving van and one fruit somewhere in the story. Tedd's is hilarious and, not surprisingly, mine is grotesque and depressing. Enjoy!
Decay
The body was lying on my lawn when I went out to get the paper. I don’t think anyone else had seen it. Mainly, I wanted to see what the body looked like; how it died.
It was a woman’s corpse. She was nude and corpulent, lying on her side with the left arm and breast tucked underneath her own weight. White liquid (or maybe skin?) seemed to be melting off of her eyes in the heat. It was hot, even by August standards. Her eyes were leaking, not melting—leaking formaldehyde, probably. They were gray. Not like the gray of a threatening sky, but like the gray of a fluorescently lit room. Like tablature, only filmy and thin.
I was crying. Not bawling or emotional, but watering from the semen-like smell of the body. I tried to cover my nose, but how respectful is that? It was not her fault she smelled so bad. It seemed irreverent to cover my nose. Unnatural—like when a child acts indignant about cooking smells before devouring the finished product.
As I approached, the body seemed to get smaller. She couldn’t have been any more than 20 and about 5’6”. Her hands were thin and long—the one un-tucked arm pointed toward me with fingers gracefully splayed out to show her delicacy. It was as if she wanted to dance. My porch light was on. I noticed that when I walked out. Perhaps she was notifying me.
Other than the body and the light, there was a delightful appearance to the house. The neighbors often commented on it. It was easy to take pride in—simple color schemes on a white house, well kept grass and a crabapple tree adorning the middle of the front lawn. The corpse bordered the shade of said tree. Fallen crabapples lay around her—a couple of rotten ones lying about like unwanted memories.
I was over top of her. The stench, unbearable, had my eyes leaking as much as hers—was she crying too? Nothing but pride held my hands at my sides. Funny thing, my pride didn’t take me inside to call the police or investigate in pants. I remained in my burgundy terrycloth robe.
The woman’s neck had long cut marks along its midsection, and deep cuts in the back and right shoulder. Perhaps she fell from a truck when she died. Or maybe she was dragged behind a pick-up. I couldn’t tell.
When I decided I’d had enough, she spoke. I don’t know why, but it didn’t scare me. The whole yard seemed to turn red and gray when she spoke. She was beautiful—her voice pitched like a long time smoker but not to the point that it had affected her too much.
“Where am I?” She didn’t move while she spoke. Not even her mouth. Her stringy brown hair began to dry out.
“Just outside of town.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.” I was rubbing the back of my neck and looking around.
“Look at me.”
When I did, she was vibrant. Her leaks evaporated from the grass, and she was cured of her abrasions. Her lips were full and red. Only her position was unchanged. Her contorted body ripened in front of me. She reminded me of a former girlfriend—God save me to remember which.
“What happened?” I could only manage that question without reaching to touch her.
“I was riding out of town. I hit something. My car did. I ran off the road is all.”
“Oh, that’s all?”
“Can you fix it; make it better or anything?”
“I… well.”
“I know doc. It’s bad. Can you help?”
Of course I couldn’t. I was no doctor. I scratched into my neck harder and harder as she spoke.
“Well, doc?”
“What’s your name?”
“Alex.”
“I can’t help you, Alex. I want to, that is. But you—you see, I, well—you’re well past, um…” I started shaking uncontrollably. I collapsed next to her and took shallow breaths.
“I need your help. Can you help me? I have to get home. I have classes in the morning.”
“Yes,” I said. My voice quavered. I inhaled sharply. “You have school to attend to. You have to wake up early.”
“So, what’s it gonna be, doc?” I heard my front door open.
“I can’t.” My eyes were closed. I didn’t remember them closing.
She withered to her former deadened state, and her right eye, again gray, stared back at me. I lay almost parallel—facing her.
Behind me, my wife screamed.
“WHO IS THAT? WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?! IS SHE DEAD? OH GOD! JOHN!”
She was worried, and rightfully so. She ran inside, presumably to call the police.
When I got to the door, she had locked it behind her. I sat down, in my robe, without crossing my legs and waited for the authorities.
The police and an ambulance arrived. The officers theorized that a cadaver truck had lost a body. There was little explanation as to how. No one ever asked Alex’s name, so I didn’t mention it. My wife kept her distance from the situation, staying inside with the kids. She peeked out the window every few minutes.
After the authorities departed, I walked back over and collected the rotten crabapples. I threw them, as hard as I could, into the neighboring street. They exploded on impact. Their remains rolled into ditches or sat in the middle of the street to be crushed by oncoming cars in the midday rush.
On the Rodeo
So I took part in a writing exercise with my roommates Jeff and Paul tonight. We had roughly 45 minutes, the duration of an album, to write a story that included the following things: A conversation between a deceased female and a living male, another person (alive who cannot hear the deceased person), a character named Alex, a moving truck/van, and a fruit.
What follows is my first attempt at writing fiction in several years. It's not great by any means, but it seems worth posting simply because fiction is something I have made a concerted effort to avoid writing for some time--thinking about it as I write this it's been since a fiction workshop I took at Emory and Henry in 2000 that I wrote any kind of short story or fictional account in general. Enjoy.
On the Rodeo
“You’re going to have to explain to me one day how in the hell someone as OCD as you wound up working the rodeo circuit Fred,” George yelled from the back of a twenty foot trailer. The beer guzzling driver everyone knew as “Tiny” had unhitched the moving truck an hour ago, “I mean shit man, you’re the only one on this trip that has to group all his equipment in a descending order of size in the same damn corner of the trailer night after night.”
“Every time we pull into a new town and unload this damn thing you start talking the same mess. Just toss me out my damn gear and let’s get on with this fucking thing,” Fred said behind a cloud of Marlboro smoke billowing into the darkened trailer that was at least ten degrees hotter than the sun-caked landscape barely visible to George. Fred’s leathery skin still managed to reveal that he hadn’t slept well in weeks, and his tone of voice towards George further enforced anyone in ear-shot’s assumption of such.
“Well, you know what? Fuck you Fred. You’re the one who’s so picky about how your shit gets packed, how it gets loaded, how it gets unpacked, and I’m the one in here climbing over all this crap getting your gear. And then when I get finished with all this shit all you do is bitch and moan until everything is set up just right. You really need to get some sleep, or see a doctor about this compulsive shit partner.” George climbed out into the sunlight, spit next to Fred’s perfectly shined boots. “I’m going to get a goddamn apple. Have fun.”
Not one person associated with the rodeo knew what had happened to Fred in Chicago two weeks earlier. On a run from Kansas City up to Michigan there was trouble with Tiny’s truck and the whole rodeo had to stop in Chicago for two days while the transmission was replaced and parts were ordered. During those two days Fred had killed a retarded girl of about 11—her name, if he remembered correctly was Alex. At least that’s what he would always know her as because she kept mumbling “Alex” when he came upon her at an otherwise desolate street corner in an industrial section of south side. Since the incident Fred hadn’t slept or ate much, and for some reason kept hearing her slurred, barely coherent speech whenever he attempted to bed down for the night in his trailer. The oddest part in Fred’s mind was that Alex’s mumbles were becoming more coherent with each passing night. After finishing his cigarette in long, methodical pulls, he decided to wait on unloading his gear and go back to his trailer and lay down.
Home, while on the road, was an RV trailer pulled by his own F-150 he bought ten years earlier. It was commonly noted among the other members of the rodeo that it was the cleanest vehicle of the at least 30 trucks, vans, trailers and cars on the circuit. This was due to Fred’s necessity to wash, detail, and wax the truck on an almost daily basis. It was also common knowledge that Fred, a heavy smoker, forbade smoking in the F-150, and for this reason he generally remained sans-company on long drives between shows. The inside of his trailer-hitched abode reflected the same care and meticulousness that the outside of the truck did. Everything evenly distributed from one side to the other. His bed was always neatly hospital-cornered, and clothes hung in the small closet next to the bathroom according to color, sleeve length, and frequency of use. Fred headed straight for his bed—carefully placing his boots at the foot of the bed of course—and laid down facing the wall as he always did. It wasn’t long before Alex’s now incredibly audible and childlike voice spoke to him.
“Why did you push me into the street? There was a tow-truck coming,” Fred was almost more amazed at how articulate the voice had become than the fact that a dead, retarded girl was speaking to him.
“It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t trying to push you. I, I . . .” Fred trailed off.
“What do you mean?” Alex demanded.
“It’s just that the shirt you had on. I mean, the buttons on it.”
“The buttons on my shirt? What does that have to do with you pushing me into an intersection?”
“The buttons were all misaligned. You had them buttoned into the wrong holes and your shirt was all crooked. I can’t stand stuff like that.”
“So you knocked me into the road for it?”
“No. Not at all,” Fred was bewildered at how mature Alex’s voice had become, how assertive, “I was going to try and fix it for you. It was only a couple of the buttons, I just wanted to make it right.”
“But what about you pushing me? How was that fixing the button problem?”
“Look I didn’t push you already,” Fred was getting angry now, “I came up to you, you were obviously oblivious to everything that was going on. You just kept mumbling ‘Alex’ at me, drooled all over yourself, and stared at me. So I reached out to fix the buttons for you—no harm intended—and you lunged at me. I got startled and just instinctively kind of pushed you away from me. That’s all. Just pure gut reaction. If that damn tow-truck hadn’t have been coming down the road you’d still be alive.”
“The driver didn’t even stop. He never saw you either. Probably thought I had just wandered out into traffic and didn’t want to have to explain it to the police. But you, you ran off as soon as you saw the tow truck kept going.”
“I’m sorry all right. I don’t know what to say anymore. I’m just plain sorry,” Fred was sweating now. His mind slightly wandered to the fact that he’d have to change his pillowcase and thus the whole of his bed’s sheets—he couldn’t have mismatched colors on his bed at the same time.
“Why are you thinking about your sheets? You killed me and you’re thinking about changing your sheets because you’re sweating a little bit?” Alex’s voice was alarmingly angry to Fred’s ears.
“I’m sorry. It’s just the kind of thing I have to think about. I can’t help it. I mean for fuck’s sake, I felt compelled to adjust the buttons on a stranger’s shirt at a random intersection in the south side of Chicago. See what I’m getting at here? I’m clearly fucked up,” Fred was starting to tear up.
“One day you’re going to have move past this Fred. One day you’ll have to let all this petty, OCD stuff go. You know that. Seriously, I may have been retarded when I was alive, but an obsessive-compulsive rodeo cowboy? That’s just plain stupid.”
“Thanks Alex. As if I didn’t already know that.”
There was a knock at the trailer door, and Fred knew immediately that it was George coming to see where he’d gone, and why he left the trailer unattended.
“I have to go now, Alex. You there?” Fred’s question was left unanswered despite repeating it several times in varying degrees of volume.
“Who the fuck are you yelling at in there bud,” George’s voice cut through the thin walls of Fred’s trailer.
“No one. Absolutely no one. I think.” Fred’s voice was weak and somewhat trembling.
Pulling himself up out of bed he slowly edged his boots onto his feet; left foot first as always. Pulled his hat down over his silvering hair, and stepped out through the door, and punched George directly in the face for no reason in particular. Blood from George’s already jagged nose sprayed onto Fred’s white shirt before he fell to the ground.
Fred walked off towards Tiny’s trailer; there was a lot of work left to do before show time.
-tedd-
Did you mean "exercise"? (post editing)
So, Paul and I had an exercise. We were to construct a short story in the time it took to listen to The Forms' "Icarus" EP (around 12 minutes). The idea had to be original, one character had to be named Samuel and we had to use three random words from Tedd's collegiate dictionary. The words ended up being: monkeyshines, paralytic and thatch. We were allowed one read through for general repair, and one read through by the opposite party.
Mine is entitled "Samuel of Maron." Maron does not actually exist. I know this.
Paul's "Exercise One" is viewable at
This Is Depression, one of my favorite things in the world.
NOTE: Please also read the post after this one, it's Tedd's new reflexive piece. It's wonderful. I didn't know it was there until after I put this up. Love him. Without further ado...
Samuel of Maron
Samuel the ghost haunted a thatched hut just outside of a village in Maron. He was not the typical spirit—one looking for vengeance or postmortem piece of mind. Instead, he sought relief from the despondency of death: a more calculated practice than his counterparts. His were monkeyshines; the kind of marginal pranks expected from a sophomoric child rather than an apparition.
Maron, with its diminutive populace, lay off the Ivory Coast. It was an island discovered by Samuel’s nearly conquered tribe. Retreating in the night, Samuel was killed by one of his warriors trying to board an escape boat bound for Maron.
Samuel apprenticed with a very peculiar and particular patron upon his passing. His master, Archimedes, a cripple even in afterlife, was an astute and oftentimes gentle soul. He was one of understanding and toleration, and he immediately took to Samuel. He felt a general disdain for the man responsible for Samuel’s death, and granted a petty grievance with the apparitions’ alliance for Samuel’s haunting license, good until his killer’s demise.
Maronian life expectancy was not fantastic, so Samuel had no choice but to train as quickly as possible. Archimedes worked with a professor’s cruelty—grading the gradient nature of Samuel’s ability yet leaving the feeling of impending doom when necessary. Being that Archimedes was paralytic, physical violence was out of the question. His was a psychological style. He would often say, “We’ll be spirits again by the time you learn to walk through inanimate objects, lad,” or “My my, tribal wars will be long gone when we finally get to interspecies communication.” Though frustrated, Samuel was able to grasp things quickly.
Archimedes granted him worthy after months of training, and Samuel immediately hovered over his oppressor. The killer was cowered over a bush defecating. His bones were feeble and weak from the lack of nutrition offered by the young island, and he was staring straight ahead with consternation. His hut, only ten feet away, was messy and badly constructed. Samuel, being lighthearted and hardworking in nature, knew the travails of his former counterpart. He recalled his own messy hut. He could see through the malice of his killer’s months-old actions, and Samuel half-smiled. His stopped heart warmed. He felt more alive than when living—more so than in conquest, sexual practice or rigid and determined conversation. He lost sight of the anger that had driven him during training. He could remember the compassion he reserved for his enemies in battle—killing them when they were so badly hurt. He was famous for reminding the dying of their families, and that they would remember the dead to their villages as heroes.
He turned and flew through the walls of the hut. He overturned a can of ashes near the bed and spelled his own name. Even that seemed too much, but it was at least a reminder of his killer’s error. Samuel thought later he would just fly—for an hour or so and then come back and set up an elaborate water trap; a humorous gesture of forgiveness between former warriors.
A Five Point Program for Self-Improvement.
Lately I've been battered in the face with particular character flaws that are decidedly due for an addressing. These issues of character have either been over-thought by myself (usually alone while listening to Ryan Adams or "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot") or during the course of conversations, via telephone or in person, with certain friends/family. I present to you a brief synopsis of the flaws you can witness me tackling in true athletic form--if you live in the New York area, or can at least imagine me expertly negotiating like some big city lawyer or homely southern colonel depending on your regionality.
1. Stop feeling uncomfortable and intimidated when using chopsticks in the vicinity of Asians. You are not some sort of "cultural imposter."
This is an issue I recently dwelled upon at the Whole Foods off Union Square on a recent lunch break. As I gingerly created an angle between myself and an Asian family (nationality undetermined) as to not let them catch me awkwardly manipulating my chopsticks to shovel sushi into my face-hole, I felt the overwhelming urge to swallow the wasabi by itself in order to snap myself out of the self-induced fear I have of being deemed inept by Asians while using their utensils of choice. I mean I don't judge anyone who can't eat spaghetti effectively with a fork, why is some Asian guy from New Jersey going to judge me for occasionally stabbing a renegade ort of sushi with a single chopstick?
2. You are not a member of a baseball team, nor do you play baseball--stop wearing that damn hat all the time.
I am a firm and adamant hat wearer. I have been for some years now. This generally follows a seasonal trend that isn't related to the beginning or end of baseball season in the least. The baseball hat is worn during the warmer months and is then replaced with the knit hat in the cooler months. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge that I realize the baseball hat creates a "hat-mullet" when I wear it, and yes I know how bad that looks. However, for those familiar enough with the hairstyles my unhatted head is capable of birthing you know I'm far better off with the hat-mullet. Now quite recently my summer hat, and thus my hatted-existence, has been called "silly" by someone in particular and that kind of got me thinking: It's time to tame the mane and toe the tepid waters of the hatless lifestyle. For those that lived in Greensboro from 2002-2003 and remember the "Swayzee" I apologize if it returns.
3. "You drink a lot of coffee for someone who wakes up at 11am on a working day."
I forget whom that quote is from, but they probably work at News Bar on University Place and 12th. Yes, I admit I have an intense affinity for coffee. The individuals I've lived with over the past four years or so can vouch for my reckless abandon with a coffee maker, particularly my Black&Decker Versa Brew that sadly stopped working when I plugged it in after a move to Richmond, VA last year. So yeah, maybe I drink half a pot of coffee before I leave the apartment for work. And yes, perhaps I have been known to enjoy a couple large cups while at work, or have a couple mugs before I head out for a night on the town. This isn't really a problem is it? I've been known to hit the perfect point of caffienation several times in one day and I think that's something to be proud of. I'm taking this off the list. Sorry to have wasted your time.
4. Buy new pants. Or for the love of god at least get the legs hemmed up--time to move past the cuff man.
I'll be honest; I only own maybe three pairs of jeans. One pair of which is the official "laundry day" pair and liberally holed from god knows how many previous wearings. Anyway, I apologize to anyone that may have picked up on my lack of variety in the pants department. I am poor, and am working on scouring New York's many thrift stores for pants that fit--but finding jeans at the thrift store is something I've never had any luck with. Unless you like horribly tapered legs. I do not.
5. Stop feeling pretentious when reading poetry and drinking hot tea in the privacy of your own home on a day off.
There is absolutely no reason I should feel bad or any way precocious for this act, but for some reason I feel like that kid in your college literature survey class that was always sweatered no matter the weather conditions, and seemed to always be sipping from a travel mug billowing with the flavorful aromas of the campus-neighboring coffee shop, all the while stroking his casually rural beard a la The Band or Blind Faith-era Eric Clapton. I'm not that guy. I mean I like The Band, I'm familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda and Saki--I even think Sartre is pretty interesting--but I'm not bothering anyone. I'm going to have the damn tea and read the shit out of whatever I want to. And yeah, I'll wear my reading glasses so I don't get a headache. Go to hell. Wait, I'm talking to myself here. Damn it.
So these and other tragically uninteresting habits I will be tussling with in the most heterosexual of manners in the coming months. Wish me luck, and keep the suggestions coming. I apparently will.
-tedd-
