| (no subject) |
[Aug. 11th, 2007|02:15 am] |
How minors should spend summer nights.
Mark slips his head into the shirt, pulls it down and then slides his arms in. Next, he steps into his pants and pulls the waist up. His belt — too long for him — hangs down as he cinches it tight.
He's almost ready to step out into the night. He pulls the rim of a stocking cap down over his forehead, hiding his hair and stuffs his fingers into gloves — the sort with the fingers cut out — and eases the bedroom's window out of its frame.
Creek.
Mark pauses with the noise, waiting to see if it has disturbed anyone.
He waits, silently counting.
One. Two. Three.
He steps out onto the garage's roof — first one foot and then the other — and sets the window back into its frame, just solidly enough the wind won't blow it out, but not so solidly he won't be able to climb back in when he's finished.
Mark hopes the night will end by him climbing back in. If it doesn't....
He crawls to the edge of the roof — where the shingles are cut just so — and then dangles his feet over the edge, before easing himself down.
Mark hits the ground, almost landing on Tara, his partner in crime.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” she says, “watch where you're dropping, next time.”
Mark hopes there will be a next time. He also decides to ignore her, and instead takes her by the hand and pulls her along. The two reach the edge of the drive way, where Tara has left her motor scooter running.
She climbs on and then offers him a hand. He sits behind her, and wraps his arms around her torso, gently squeezing her.
After all, Mark reasons, he has too hang on, doesn't he?
“How about a little lower,” Tara says as she readjusts his hands. She also smiles to herself.
Within minutes, the two are leaving the neighborhood where they grew up together. Water fights in the Summer. Jumping in piles of leaves in the Fall. Building snowmen in the Winter.
The scooter seems to drive into the moon, which is large and low in the sky. It reminds Mark of spilled milk. It reminds Tara of nothing because she doesn't think about things like that.
The motor scooter drives down the city's street, past a man crumpled up in a box — the both of them tossed away — and reaches an intersection where it turns left.
“Hey Tara, slow down, we're almost there,” says a voice struggling to hang on.
“Slowing down,” comes the reply.
And, just before the scooter stops, the moon declines further and the sun begins to crest. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 9th, 2006|12:38 pm] |
Toast:
The waitress snatches the menu off the table like a hawk after a
fieldmouse. The menu disappears into the fold of her apron, as if it
were being digested whole, without much dignity
She says, “Is that all, honey?” Without waiting for my reply, she walks
back into the kitchen.
Outside the restaurant, parking lots reach out to the city, holding
random cars in their fists like invaders; they appear to be blacktop
giants inching toward the center of town. Inside, several locals talk
and trace patterns with toast in the yoke of their eggs.
“Here's your pie,” The waitress says. “It's our specialty.” She slaps a
plate down like a spiked volleyball before heading over to the locals'
table.
“What do you need?” she asks them.
The table in front of me is splattered with food from previous
customers. Next to a jelly smear are toast crumbs the waitress didn't
wash away.
“Should I come back,” the waitress asks the locals.
The toast crumbs are light brown but not dark black.
The waitress says, “Make up your mind already.”
The jelly smear appears to be strawberry.
One of the locals says, “Give me a minute here..,” before he's
interrupted by a crash.
The waitress covers her face; shards of glass spread out across the
restaurant's floor. On a table sits an odd looking man who's cut in
several places; a thin, red line appears on his check.
“Oh, you're toast,” the waitress says. “I didn't need this. I'm gonna
have to clean this up.”
The waitress says, “Right now, you're in trouble,” as she grabs the
injured man by the front of his shirt. The waitress pours a pot of
coffee on him and then smacks him with the pot.
Coming back from the kitchen, the waitress carries a toaster and an
extension chord, a whip and and ball gag. She says, “You're toast.” |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 29th, 2006|09:20 pm] |
Marybeth version two
If you want the truth, Marybeth considered herself to be pretty average. She felt like she didn't stand out, for better or worse, and that unless she did something spectacularly good or bad, that people wouldn't notice her. This is why she didn't mind it when people asked why she smoked. She found the conversation to be comfortable, if only because it was so familiar. She could practically hear herself walking through the conversation.
He or she would say, “You know that's bad for you, right?”
“Yes,” she would respond.
“Then why do you do it? Are you addicted,” he or she would ask.
“Maybe,” Marybeth would say, while thinking to herself that it isn't that sort of addiction. Without pausing, Marybeth would continue, “It's not as simple as that. It's not about needing nicotine to function, its about being on the verge of socially acceptable behavior; it's about deviance.”
Marybeth's daydream (and the detached, cool feeling it gave her) was interrupted by two guys behind her. Marybeth began to listen in on the conversation.
“So whatever man, I don't think she's worth my time.” He paused for a second, and then continued, “I mean, what do you think she's doing tonight?”
“I don't know. Do you think she could have gone to Ross's house?”
“I'm not sure. She totally blew me off, though.”
Marybeth thought about how they were able to converse so easily. It must be nice to have friends in common she thought.
As the two guys trailed off into the darkness of the evening, Marybeth thought to herself that everyone has something that sets them apart from other people. But at the same time, she figured, it was the same thing that brought people back together.
In front of her, the walkway ran into the university's fountain, which bubbled as water rolled from one cement slab onto the next and fell smashing into the larger basin. Students congregated around the fountain, talking and joking with one another.
“Hey..um, excuse me, do you have a light?” The boy in front of her looked a little sheepish, but other than that appeared to be alright.
“Yeah..no problem,” Marybeth said as looked through her purse in an attempt to find her lighter. After a few seconds, she felt her fingers brush against it, and she pulled it out.
“Hey thanks,” he said, as she handed it to him.
Marybeth figured this is the point of the conversations where her conversational 'something' would either succeed or fail. Either the boy was going to politely hand the lighter back and walk away to some larger group of friends, or he was going to continue to talk with her. She wasn't quite sure which was more likely.
He chose the second, interrupting Marybeth's thoughts.
“Hey, umm..my name's Mike. It's nice to meet you.” He awkwardly thrust his hand toward Marybeth.
“Oh, hey, it's nice to meet you. My name's Marybeth,” she said. Marybeth fished around in her purse, trying to find her cigarette holder. She always felt a little bit awkward when guys wanted to shake her hand. It just seemed like such a guy thing to do, she thought.
Marybeth took out a Marlboro, and put it into her mouth. Mike, who still had her lighter, bent forward and lit it for her. It seemed a little forward, and she was surprised he did it, but it seemed to take away a little bit on the tension.
“So, what's your major?” He asked.
“Oh, i'm undecided,” she said, even though she wasn't. Technically, Marybeth was a conservation major, but was in the process of switching to philosophy. She wasn't sure that it was right for her, but she judged it to be an improvement.
“Cool,” he said. “Me too.” Mike handed the lighter back and said, “I'm a freshman in college for crying out loud. How am I supposed to know what I want to do with my life?”
“Yeah, for sure,” Marybeth said. “I'm not sure what I wanted to do with my life either. It all just seems so far ahead of me, like it's too soon to be making all of those sort of decisions.”
The two of them were quiet for a few seconds as they puffed on their cigarettes. The crowd around the fountain was starting to thin out as students left in groups. It was getting dark out, and Marybeth couldn't help but feel good that her 'conversational something' had worked.
“Hey, would you like to get out of here,” Mike asked. Since lighting her cigarette, he had clearly grown in confidence. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 15th, 2006|04:30 am] |
Jules looks across the room, and for a second, he can put everything back in its place. In his mind, he can imagine everything just as it was before. He can picture the room like it used to be.
Jules imagines the wrap-around counter isn't charred black, that the curtains aren't long shreds of cloth, half-pink and half-not, barely hiding the broken window behind, that the carpet isn't just a black-and-gray smoke damaged mess covering the floor like a half plate of spaghetti noodles.
He can imagine all of this because this is the one place that he can be sure he was before.
The wallpaper that used to be white with green flower stems – he remembers it when it actually looked that way. Now, it's charcoal and smoke damaged. Now, it's stained from heat melting the wallpaper glue – long streams of yellow that ran down the length of the wall.
Jules stands in the entrance of the room, in the doorway, where he can see three walls – three pieces of history that have been torn, shredded, damaged by fire and time.
Against the back wall there's a single relic that isn't ruined; there's something that isn't beyond usefulness.
Jules steps over the leg of a coffee table that's missing it's top. He steps over the brackets that held a light bulb in place, the in-between for a lamp's base and shade. Jules shakes his head as the bookcase looks him straight in the face, it's shelves empty and its sides bulging.
Jules reaches out and touches the toasted-but-readable pages of a calendar that displays the beautiful beaches of a 1975 beach, girls in bikinis that are made of more clothing than a 2006 pair of shorts, and the happy-go-lucky slogans of a tourist getaway marketed to middle-class beachgoers on an ad-hoc family vacation.
May 12, 1975 is starred and crossed. Jules recognizes the handwriting as his own. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 6th, 2006|02:45 am] |
Matthew J. White
Untitled.
She says she loves me as we walk hand-in-hand on the overpass. As she says it, she reaches to give my hand a squeeze, and I can't help but do nothing. It's not that I don't feel that way right back at her, it's that I do.
It's not easy to admit how you feel about a girl; it's only easy to lie about it. When you don't care, you don't risk anything. But, when you do care, you're taking a gamble.
Instead, I look off to the right at all the yellow lights from the city and think about the people inside the houses. Relationships come in a lot of different forms, and inside those points of light are all of them.
“Do you think they started out like us?” I ask this while my head is turned away from her. Before it's completely out of my mouth, I stumble a little, and hope that she doesn't notice.
She says, “What?” And i'm back to the original problem. “Nothing,” I say.
Earlier in the night, the two of us had been at this house party that was getting a little crazy. The music was too loud, and too many people were crammed in too small of a space. It was the proverbial college sin night.
Interrupting my thoughts, she says, “What do you think about what Jason said earlier?”
And, for the life of me, I have no idea what Jason said earlier.
The import thing about telling a girl that you care for her, is that you do it at the right time. I think to myself, the people in those points of light must have had great timing.
She says, “You know.. about coming back later. He said he would call when some people left.”
And, I say, “Oh, I don't care. Sounds great. Lets do it.”
And she smiles, while she says, “We don't have to. We can go anywhere.”
I realize this is why i'm here tonight. I reach over and take her hand into mine and smile for the first time. The people in those points of light, they got it right because they gambled and won, not because they refused to sit down at the table.
She says, “I think they started off exactly like us.” |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 17th, 2005|05:49 pm] |
Suggestions from the Postmortem
The attorney says, “When most people die, they haven't chosen a person that they wish to speak for them,” and he gestures to a tape recorder.
“These are the same people who have all their financial affairs figured out. It's these people who have spent the majority of their lives contributing into a 401k program, investing in the stock market, and building up equity in their homes.”
The attorney reaches into his leather briefcase and pulls out a cassette tap. He puts it into the tape recorder.
“These are the same people who never forget birthdays, secretary days, or their anniversaries.”
The attorney says, “They do, however, forget about the postmortem. So, I advise all my clients to make a tape, a recorded testament of their last wishes.”
He tells me, “I then play these tapes for the relevant family members of the deceased.”
With a smile, he adds, “It's your lucky day.”
The tape recorder pops and makes noise for several seconds before a tinny version of my uncle's voice comes out the sole speaker.
My uncle coughs several times, and clears his throat before he starts.
“If you're listening to this, then it means that i'm probably dead. My uncle coughs, and then continues. Which isn't at all to say its unwelcome. But, there is the matter of my estate, and whom i'm going to leave it to.”
The attorney pushes the pause button, and looks me straight in the eyes. He tells me, “Before I can let you listen any further, I want to warn you that you'll be under a verbal non-disclosure agreement.” By which he means, I'll be contractually obligated to keep quiet. By which he means, mess up and i'll probably sue you.
The attorney says, “Do you understand?”
I nod and say that I do.
The attorney smiles at me again, and pushes the play button.
The tape screeches for a second, probably because the tracking is off. The attorney frowns, pushes pause, rewind, and then play. My uncles voice comes back on.
“Finch..you've always been a stain on the family's good name. You've messed up almost every opportunity to do something good you've ever had. With that said, you're the one i'm leaving everything to. You've always been my favorite, if only because it was enjoyable watching you do all the stupid stuff you do.”
The attorney continues looking at me. He's obviously enjoying hearing my dead uncle's opinion of me from beyond the grave. There's something irrefutable about criticism from a corpse. I could respond, but the only person to hear it would be the attorney. And, from the looks of him, the attorney has bought my uncle's story.
“...So Finch, here it is: i'm leaving it all to you. The house, whats left in my savings accounts, the sum of my personal affects. It's yours.”
There's several seconds of blank space on the tape. I wonder whether or not the attorney recorded over anything. I wonder if he listens to these tapes without the relevant family members around just for fun.
“So, with that, I've been told that I can say something personal, something meaningful about you, or about the two of us together. But I don't really have anything. Finch, i'm just glad that i'm not going to be alive when you waste everything I've spent my life working for.”
The attorney presses the stop/rewind button. He says, “That's the entire tape. I'm now going to ask that you sign some papers, and then i'll hand over the keys to your new property.”
They attorney gestures for me to follow him into his office, and when I do he walks past me and sits at his desk. With one hand, he slides some papers across the desk to me.
There's something scary about the typewriter fonts used in most legal documents. They scream of formalness, of a certain rigidity that's narrow, and once enacted, in power forever. Instead of signing my life over, i'm signing for my uncle's life. Everything he worked for Federal Express style into my life and bank account.
I sign my name, and the attorney smiles.
“Do you do this often, play these tapes for people?”
The attorney says that he's not legally allowed to comment on that, and says that he advises all his clients to make a tape. He says, “The black and white of a will of last rights and testaments can only encompass so much. He says, for instance, your uncle, he wanted to explain why he was leaving you his stuff.”
“You mean, because i'm such a mess up?”
The attorney says, “Those are your uncle's words. I, of course, am obligated to remain entirely impartial.”
“But seriously, do you do this often?”
The attorney smiles again and says, “Seriously, I do.”
I nod my head. I'm convinced that he does this for fun, and half convinced that most of the evil things people say about lawyers are true.
The attorney asks, “Would you like to make your own tape?”
I pick up the manila envelope filled with the keys and small, personal affects of my uncle's and say, “You'd like that too much.”
Outside it's really bright. The snow is reflecting the sun's light back up into my eyes. Traffic is coming in both directions, and a man walks past me into the attorney's office. He mutters something that I think has to do with a deceased brother. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 10th, 2005|01:18 pm] |
Fighting the Whole Damn War By Yourself:
When you're a conservative at Kent State University a lot of people criticize you.
For instance, you could be sitting in some business law class a few days before an election. In the middle of his lecture, your professor would say, "George Bush is a nazi."
And most of the class would agree.
If college is supposed to be a market place of ideas, then this place is an auction that accepts ACLU cash only.
But, don't complain and don't think independently.
Most of the class would agree.
Joining the 700 Club isn't supposed to be radical, but around here it is.
Doctors of philosophy, education, journalism, and law all preaching the same line. It must be a scheme dreamed up by a doctor of psychology.
And, in the middle of his lecture, your business law professor would look out into the class for about ten seconds to see if he gets a reaction.
Instead of innocent until proven guilty, this is intellectual clensing, the Salem Witch Trials all over again.
But, don't complain and don't think independently.
The President of the College Republicans, he's a good guy until he explains that freedom of speech includes things that make us uncomfortable. Then, nobody wants to talk with him anymore.
Most of the class would agree.
Then, your business law professor would notice something -- someone not laughing, someone looking at their feet. And, he'd smile, and know that he found his target.
This would continue on for the rest of the semester, between the business law professor and the student, between the close minded conservative and the open and tolerant college professor.
But, secretly, every comment against him makes the close minded conservative more motivated to win out in the end. With every attack against him, the simpleton would gain more courage and more strength. He would say to himself, "I know i'm right. I have to be." |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 16th, 2005|10:43 pm] |
The slip of paper was about the size of a business card and was made of gold foil with royal blue script. The card read, Club Tornado – Opening Night January 22, 1984, and must have fallen out of a businessman’s pocket or briefcase during his travels downtown. The businessman must have been enjoying his lunch at a park bench or something equally exhilarating, while shuffling papers in his briefcase, or finger the keys within his pocket.
This particular piece of paper had a humble beginning to its travels, sliding straight through a slot in the seat of a city park bench and falling to the ground, landing on the edge of a puddle. Now, the thing about this particular piece of paper is that it didn’t really think it’d make a very good boat (in so much as it thought at all), and it tried with all the might it could muster to flip upright and catch itself in the wind. The piece of paper was dreadfully afraid of becoming saturated and soggy, and wished desperately to call out for the wind’s help.
Barely avoiding total disaster, our hero did manage to catch himself in the wind. But, it didn’t happen right away, and it wasn’t nearly that simple. For a good while, our hero thought and thought about the way in which he could approach calling out for the wind’s help.
First, he gathered up all the strength that he could, flexing the muscles that he imagined he had, and took in a great big breath and shouted with all his might. “Help!, help!, I’m in need of help!,” is what he intended to say, but when it came out it sounded more like a scratchy cough. You have to understand, these were the first words that our hero ever spoke, and like most of the rest of us, he wasn’t very good at things the first time he tried them.
Never one to quite before putting up a good fight, our magnificent piece of paper laid flat on his back and began to think about what he had done wrong. The wind is all around me, I can feel it everywhere, all the time, he thought. It’s really just a matter of harnessing it, he told himself.
Interrupting his inquiry, was a little boy who was avoiding grammar school, and the little boy’s aunt, who was bringing the little boy back from the doctor. You see, the little boy really wasn’t feeling bad, but he didn’t really want to go to school; he didn’t like it. The aunt, who liked to pinch the check of her nephew, wore too much perfume, always under-tipped the elevator operator at her apartment building, and didn’t believe in the mood landing, comets, or anything else from Hollywood. The pair were on their way back to the aunt’s apartment, for the boy lived with his aunt, and had just recently finished lunch.
The little boy really wasn’t very careful about where he walked, which accounted for the fact that he had used bubble gum on the bottom of his shoes. This also accounted for the fact that, while walking past the park bench, he slid his foot underneath, and came into contact with our hero. Sticking to the gum under the weight of the little boy, the piece of gold-foiled paper squinched up his eyes and prepared for the pain that he felt was sure to come.
But, our hero was in luck, and that pain never really did come. Instead, he stuck neatly and cleanly to the bottom of the boys shoe, and made it back to the apartment building without becoming overly soiled, soggy, or saturated. In fact, he was in basically the same conditioned that he started out in, minus dust that he was able to quickly shake off. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 29th, 2005|07:42 pm] |
She's standing on the edge of the world. Or, at least that's how it feels with the wind sweeping her hair back and the city laid out in front of her. Marie is standing on the ledge of a double-bay window. The air is chilly and she can feel the goose bumps rising on her neck. She swallows hard - the fear, excitement and desperation racing through her. The wind gusts against her and she slides closer to the edge until she's only half on.
She's sniffling and crying - shaken with fear. Her tears are cutting little paths down her face. Above and below her, little specks of yellow light flash on and off, making patterns that she can discern through the darkness and her tears. She's far above the hubbub of the city - which seems merely a distant lightshow for the detached. She's close to flying. Or falling. And, she's equally comfortable with either. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 6th, 2005|05:39 pm] |
"Do you think we'll get away with it?"
"No"
"You don't think there's any chance?"
"Not really."
"Damn. Stop being Mr. Optimistic, would you?"
"Mr. Who?"
"Nevermind."
What you've got to understand about my partner Sevan is that he likes to stay grounded -- likes to keep the two of us grounded -- and if he could, would probably make the two of us dissapear. He says this is his gift to the both of us. I say it comes from his bottomless well of pessamism. Sevan carries this around inside of him, using it to predict the future.
The two of us are staring at the LCD display of a laptop, looking at a bunch of random information and hoping to be able to sniff just the right packet. The light from the display dances on Sevan's face and i'm looking past him to see which direction the car driving past is headed.
You see, when information is sent across a computer network, its broken down into tiny pieces. These tiny pieces, for example one-tenth of your instant messager reply, arecalled packets and are re-assembled at the destination computer to complete your message. Sevan and I are doing exactly the same thing, except instead of stealing bits and pieces of a conversation, we're looking at bank transcations. This may sound impressive -- but its not. It's foolish and flagerant, which part of the reason Sevan is so sure we'll be caught. If things had gone right in Reno, we wouldnt even have to be here.
Sevan and I are crouched in this alley between Grape and Timber, right up next to the side door of this little Italian Bistro. In another time, this is exactly the type of place I'd like to visit.
Someone inside is sending out some pretty crazy signals over their wireless network and into the bank. In between the two is Sevan and myself. Sevan is watching them, and i'm watching Sevan. One intruder and one lookout, one thief and one accomplice. This is synergy, fusion, a good partnership, or any other jucied up term CEOs are using these days to describe their ideal working environment.
Back in Reno, Sevan was this high-level data analysis executive, in charge of determing which technology the bank should invest in. In one way or another, He'd signed off on every major technology purchase in the last ten years. Another major part of his job had been to write company memos on implementing the technology, or how the branch offices should set it up and utilize it. If anyone had inside knowledge, it was Sevan, and now, when he needed it most, it was coming in handy.
The air was cold and brisk and anything but Reno like, which is what the two of us are used to. So, here in Oregon, the two of us are wearing these bulky black coats to ward off the winter's chill. It isn't really working for either of us.
"This damn cold is making it hard to type."
"Shhh. Just keep at it, we need to get out of here as quickly as possible."
"Hey, just keep a look out."
"I'm losing my signal, it just dropped from good to low."
"Your antenna?"
"Maybe."
"Do you have the drill?"
"Yeah."
Before we left for Milwaukie, Sevan had tapped the air-inflow slots of a battery operated drill. This means that we'll probably only get about a minute of drilling out of it, but at least it will be quiet. Exactly what we need in this situation.
Sevan closes the lid of his laptop and sets it aside, takes the drill and puts a small hole into the door. While he's doing this, I'm taking a small piece of wire, just barely large small enough to fit through the hole, and putting a COAX adapter on the end. The two of us finish up at roughly the same time, and as i'm slipping it through, Sevan inserts his wireless card into his computer and screws on our makeshift antenna.
"Got it. Alright, its coming too me. I'm up to a good signal again."
"Sevan."
"Shhh. I'm almost there, just give me a few more minutes to capture these packets."
"Sevan...run."
As soon as those words are out of my mouth, i'm running down the end of the alley, past spray painted graffti and discarded bits of trash. Right behind me, Sevan his his laptop underneath his arm, cradling it as best he can, with our makeshift antenna still connected and dragging behind him.
Back in Reno, a large man in a black pin-stripped suit sips his morning coffee and flips to the local section in his newspaper. Later on in the morning, he'll probably consider it quite the good piece of fortune when he's promoted to the head of data analysis. He'll probably take his wife and kids out to an expensive restaurant, or perhaps buy the new car he's had an eye one. Whatever. It's all part of the plan. |
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