Mania

*I have been reading way too much Charles Bukowski. Here is the result:

To Charles Bukowski

"I haven't shat or pissed in seven years," she tells him, negotiating each word around the Marlboro.

Because he doesn't know what else to say, Isaiah asks, "Haven't you seen a doctor about that?"

"Of course." Her words fall out white clouds against an off-white carpet and light cream plaster walls. The air is a stinking thick haze of tobacco smoke. There are only a handful of boxes next to them; they sit on the only pieces of furniture he can see, two metal folding chairs. The room is bare.

"If you don't shit or piss for a week the body poisons itself -- drowns in its own filth," she says. "The doctors said there was nothing wrong with me. One or two actually went as far as to say I was lying. But I haven't defecated or urinated for about the last quarter of my life."

"That must be uncomfortable," Isaiah says, his desire to fuck her quickly subsiding with this new bit of information, thus he had no reason to stay. He'd made his delivery -- the last that evening -- a thirty-six pack of downy toilet paper, to one Beatrice Smith who, despite his usual gamut of old ladies and stay-at-home moms, turned out to be an attractive young woman, shorts tight enough to count her change at a glance and a tight white T-shirt thin enough to see the absence of a bra. Her hair was tied back in a red bandana. When she turned to get him the money and a drink he decided she had the best ass he'd seen in months. So they sat down for drinks, he a beer and she a Long Island iced tea. Then she told him she hadn't shat in seven years.

Kill the beer and go, he thinks. Bitch is crazy. Still. "So, why order the largest and most expensive package of toilet paper?" he asks indicating the behemoth sitting next to him.

She shrugs. "Entertaining guests. I've made a rule, you see. Once I've run through three of these I move. That usually takes about a year of entertaining guests, boyfriends and whoever else walks in."

"So," Isaiah says, "you have a certain threshold of shit you take before you move."

"Exactly."

The wind blows, the apartment groans and the rain slaps the window at the termination of freezing, forming a sliding layer of ice on the glass. It looks like the whole world is melting.

"Want another drink?" Beatrice asks.

"Yeah," Isaiah says before he realizes he's handing her his empty. He calls to her after she disappears into the kitchen. "So, how long have you been doing the one-year-and-then-move thing?"

"Seven years."

"Since your problems started?"

"Since my problems started?" she says and it sounds like she's telling the punchline of a dirty joke. "My problems started a long time before that."

She reemerges from the kitchen, hands him his beer, sits down and gets to work on a martini. "What about you?" she asks. "How'd you end up with this shit job? Having to deliver toilet paper at four in the morning to weirdos and ass holes."

"It's not so bad when the weather isn't a mother fucker," he says. He considers hammering the beer and excusing himself; it's a good rule to keep the subject as far away from himself as possible.

She nods and lights another cigarette. "I'm surprised anyone does deliveries in this weather."

"Somebody's gotta do it. Gotta get those batteries, bottles of water, beer, groceries, nails, light bulbs or whatever to all the people too lazy to get it themselves. I nearly skidded off the road four times getting here."

She takes a drag of her cigarette. "You think I'm lazy?"

Mistake. "I didn't mean you. I just meant…"

"No," she says smoke. "You meant people are lazy. All of them. We're people too. We'd all like it if we had everything handed over right now."

"Yeah," he says. She takes a drag. They listen to the rain break. That wasn't what he meant, but better she think that than whatever it was he did believe. "That's what I meant."

She eats one of the green olives in two tiny bites, sucking off the gin and vermouth with full lips. It's arousing and Isaiah suddenly remembers his intended purpose. He hasn't gotten laid in a month and it was agony in his groin. So, she's full of shit. Most people are. He glances at her thighs, crossed, shaved, perfect, smooth.

The building groans.

"You nearly died three times driving here?" she asks.

"Yeah." He crosses his legs. "I've never seen a storm like this. The whole world's been turned to ice."

She nods, drags. "I've seen worse."

"That's rough."

"That's life. Need to use the bathroom?"

"No." He kills the beer. "You didn't bring very much with you?"

"Booze, clothes, books, games. I don't need anything else. I can fit everything I own in my car."

"I haven't moved in a long time."

"I guess so. I have wanderlust. Drink?"

"Sure."

He follows her to kitchen and sees a well stocked bar on the counter. Bombay Sapphire, Johnny Walker Black, Grey Goose and all the bottom shelves. "You're a bartender?"

"It's the one profession, besides prostitution, that you can find a job anywhere. Johnny?"

"Yes." While she pours, he talks. "I just have the odd jobs. Deliverer, chef, I worked at Toys R Us before I got this job. Manager position."

"What's the strangest thing you've ever delivered?"

She turns and pushes a glass into his hands. He tries hard to consider as Beatrice leans against the counter, close to him, pulling her shirt tighter.

"Weirdest thing? Well, this is pretty strange. Toilet paper to a woman who doesn't shit." He laughs. She doesn't. He clears his throat and thinks. "The weirdest thing. Probably the time I had to deliver for a party. At least, I think it was a party. This woman ordered three cases of beer, a dozen tubs of ice cream and a lot of mixed candy. When I pulled up to the drive, out of town in the country, she had three little kids, no older than ten. She paid me and gave me a twenty dollar tip. Didn't look like anyone was coming to a party. The kids were screaming and the ice cream was melting as she paid me. That was weird."

Beatrice stares at him, sips her drink and he watches the outline of her nipples. "Do you want to stay the night?" she asks.

"Well," Isaiah says without thinking and realizes he has nothing to say.

She moves closer to him, wraps a hand around his waist and presses her crotch against his. He sits down his drink on the counter, wraps his arms around her and imagines kissing her, but doesn't. He tries, but doesn't. The building creeks.

"I want to fuck you," he says.

"I want to fuck you," she repeats.

She pulls him to her bedroom and undresses them both. They lie on her bare mattress. He wraps around her; she is so small in his arms and frame. The window rattles and the room stinks of smoke, but neither moves, neither does anything. It is not sexual, Isaiah realizes. He has no desire; he is too tired for that. It just is.

"I want to fuck you," he says.

"Then why don't you?" she asks. He cannot see her face.

"Because it's never enough. You know, I had a nympho girlfriend once. We had sex four times a day and we hated each other. It's just too hard to break things off with someone who's the solution to your own desire."

Between her ass cheeks his penis is limp.

"All my boyfriends I've ever had called me worthless," Beatrice said. "I tried to fix my life and discovered that it wasn't worth the effort."

"It's never enough," he says.

"I smoke until I'm sick."

"Keep trying to leave and never get anywhere."

"The shit builds up until I can't take it."

"Everyday I just wish I were someone else, somewhere else, but I wake up in the same bed."

"Black out dreams are the best."

"It's never enough. Just to fuck."

"I'd love to just have sex and sleep and that's it."

"I'd love to just fuck and sleep and that's it."

They wake up the next morning and the window is royal purple stained glass. The whole world is frozen. Both are awake, but neither moves. She does not light a cigarette. He's limp. They look at each other. They see one another's breath and feel the other's warmth and fall asleep again.

Soundoff

All,

Just seeing who is still checking this website. If you're reading this, please leave a comment.

Sam

Mine Will Be a Purple World

I was revisiting Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson today, reading it to my nephew on a train from Stuttgart to Freiburg. It was one of my favorite books when I was little and I was glad my nephew asked me to read it to him. He's gotten bigger, my nephew. Smarter, more mischievous and, in a few years, perhaps he will qualify as diabolical. I'm already proud.

Reading Harold again I realized some themes I never picked up on as a kid. Sure, it's a cute story about an imaginative four-year-old who makes his own dream world, but think about it a moment. He draws landscapes, people, animals, plants, monsters and none of them are animate. It makes sense, in a way. The world he creates is static, just a picture in which he inhabits. But, what a desolate place. Unlike all those other little comforting little stories we were told as kids (Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz and so on) they had their friends and enemies, the products of a schizophrenic, sick mind, but ultimately a psyche that is not lonely. What a healthy and solipsistic world Harold creates.

I finished reading the story. My nephew was busy watching the landscape go by, asking "Are we still in Germany," to which I replied "Yes. We're still in Germany. We will be for a long time." The landscape grew, darkened and shifted into the Black Forest and I recalled stories of clever wolves and twisted fairies and the weird and the evil that I don't really believe in anymore. What a lonely little world. The sky changed to dusk, grey to purple on the horizon.

Modern Water, Modern Blood (excerpt)

It’s snowing hard again,

and I don’t feel well about that

because now, it doesn’t just melt. Now,

city trucks carry it off by the ton

and dump it in the river,

and the river carries it off,

and this way

it won’t all melt at once and flood the city again.

(Disasters aren’t really worth

that “coming together” feeling we all get afterward.)

And since God hasn’t revised the water cycle in like

a million years,

we’re doing our part,

carrying away the snow in trucks,

which is the same snow as the year before,

recycled, the snow you’ve always watched

even though the blood you have is not the blood

you were born with

and the skin you have, at best,

is rotting.

Wouldn’t it be something if our cells

came away in chunks not so small

as to be invisible, but if we instead

shed whole layers like rattlesnakes,

and it was someone’s job to walk the streets

and clean it up.

The first time I saw the polluted orange

glow of a city from within that city,

I thought it was a phenomenon of nature,

a kind of Northern Lights.

I was walking on campus with my girlfriend and I looked up and noticed that the sky was fucking orange.

“The sky is fucking orange,” I told her, ecstatic.

“The whole sky is fucking orange. All the way across.”

I wonder how someone’s life might be different

if they believed every pollution

was actually a miracle.

The popcorn I made

to snack on during the blizzard

is cold now, and clings together in a sickly mass.

There is no good liquor left in the apartment.

Some cheap rum, but no whiskey.

Whiskey is best for blizzards.

Certain music is best for blizzards too.

As a rule of thumb, any band whose name ends in “head”

is probably good for blizzards:

Portishead, Radiohead, Zebrahead, Buckethead,

the Futureheads, Talking Heads, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head

There are probably more,

which is sad. But at least I’m not the guy

on the street cleaning up people’s skin.

A Thought On First Rights

I guess this was brought up with Steve's welcome for the blog, and I was thinking about the concerns of publishing. Actually, I think this blog could actually be beneficial for both you and any publication that accepts your work.

First, if you plan on publishing something, don't put it all on here, but maybe select the best scene or the one that really summarizes the piece.

Next, get that mofo out there and get it published!

When someone does say "yeah I'll take that", say to them "hey, I've got a piece of this action on a blog where other people are working on stuff and reading it, I could totally put a link to your site!" So then they have a nice little link from one site to the other, and assuming more people start interacting with this here blog, that sounds like a winning plan to me.

Swish!

Zeitgeist

This is a short I wrote once-upon-a-class. I quite like it and thought I'd share. Really enjoying other people's work.

"So, since you actually spent some time in Germany, maybe you can tell me what the hell 'Zeitgeist' means," I shouted at Lissy over the din at the Deadwood. For some reason I thought the question was clever or at least appropriate since I was finally buying her birthday drink about four months after her twenty-first birthday and three months after her return from Germany.

We had to pause so I could sing along to Old Crow Medicine Show and Lissy could consider her answer. "Rock me momma like the wind and the rain… This is my favorite song," I said.

"Well," Lissy said, took a sip of her Guinness, and struggled through. There was a piece of white confetti in her hair from Rocky Horror; we had just left the theatre when I suggested I should finally buy her a late birthday present. "At least you remembered late," she had said.

"Vielleicht mann kann sagen…" She slipped into German. "Tut mir leid. Okay it's sort of like the whole… artistic, intellectual mindset of the time. I mean. The Germans just see it differently."

"So you have to be German to get it," I said.

The Deadwood didn't smell the same as it did when you could barely see your hand through a fog of smoke. I missed that. We've come to an age where everyone's worried about someone else's bad habits killing them.

"But I ain't turnin' back to livin' that old life no more …" There was a girl behind us singing along now and both she and I were equally out of tune.

"So, reading anything worthwhile?" Lissy asked

"Just an Orwell essay. How he hates Latin and how we're all fucking up the language. He says the only good English is a direct translation from Biblical Hebrew."

"Oh." Some people laughed at the bar and we both looked back to see Tina Fey reenacting Sarah Palin evangelizing. "You know," Lissy said, "I kind of feel sorry for her. Palin I mean."

"Yeah." I finished my beer - whatever the special was that night - and wondered about how people all across the country could be in love with a woman I thought was a fanatic and a fool. "Don't you ever get that feeling of foreboding? Like everything in the country is changing and you're too small to see it."

"Everybody says that." Lissy shook her head and turned away from the TV.

"But not in so many words."

"If I die in Raleigh at least I will die free…" Old Crow Medicine Show concluded.

"You know," I said feeling a wave of nostalgia for ashtrays. "My parents used to come here when my dad was in law school. They used to live in an apartment right across the street."

"Isn't that weird?" Lissy smiled and looked down at the sticky, wooden table.

"Yeah, random."

How to Wait

>

This is the beginning to a fiction-nonfiction hybrid thing tentatively called "How to Live Life: By Gator T.D. McBride, translated by David Guisinger".

When you come home, I am very happy. I am so happy my tail wags so hard that I can't stand still, but I know I can't run down the driveway. Because I won't be able to stop.

Sometimes I do it anyway, I'm so glad you're home.

When I see your car pull up, I wait, because sometimes it isn't your car. Once I thought you were home and I ran to the street but when I got there it was someone else so I had to go back up to the back steps and wait some more. And when I wait I do it for a long time on those steps. I wait in the day even though the sun makes me really hot, and I wait at night even though I can't see very well in the dark. And even I get cold sometimes.

When it is you I'm almost as happy as when Mom comes home. Don't be offended; Mom gives me hugs and bones. But when you come home I'm really really happy, because I like having you around, even though you leave too often. When you leave I go outside and wait, though sometimes I go in for a nap or a bone.

When you come up the driveway I need to find a bone or a toy, because I know you don't like it so much when I bite your arm. But I love you! I keep bones around outside so I can usually find one before you get close enough, and when you get here I wish you would stay outside and run around with me in the yard like when I was a puppy and I chased you around the yard trying to get the toy.

I know when you're coming home. Maybe it's the way Mom and Dad talk, saying your name a lot and then not at all. Maybe it's just that we know things about when we're getting close to each other, like how the sky seems a different shade of blue (I can see colors, you know) or when I feel really lonesome so much that I just want to be by myself because it's a special kind of lonesome.

So when I know you're coming home I sit outside and wait. Once it was raining. I like the rain. I like getting wet, I like how the drops feel on my head, like when you sit next to me and tap the top of my nose with your fingers. Gently. I like going inside and having Mom or Dad dry me off with the towel. I disappear in it and feel it rub all along my body and it reminds me that I'm loved.

One time you surprised me. Remember? I was off with Dad and you came home when I was away. I was so excited to be home and see Mom that I didn't even notice your car was in the street, and when I walked into the kitchen you came from around the corner and said "boo". I jumped and didn't know what to do. So I bit your arm and wagged my tail because there was nothing else for me to do.

When you come home I am very happy, because I love you.

Linhart (unfinished)

We Linharts were a family of impassioned tirades and traditions. Not tradition, but our own practices. As a family in its entirety the four of us went to a movie every Sunday night, stashing bags of our own popcorn and soda cans in coat pockets and purses. Every summer we took a road trip out east to visit big cities and our Dad’s side relatives. And we ducked into the alcove at the top of the stairs when Mom and Dad started fighting and wailing. Our mother invested in us the belief that we should have passions to keep our hearts safe from falling in love too hard. We came from parents married young, not even out of college, and lovers of music and the arts. Laura took up singing while I floundered in literature, initially calling myself a writer, but finally settling with the enjoyment and reading aspect alone. We were not a family close in chi, but couldn’t seem to keep ourselves apart or deny the obligations.

There was a painting at the top of the stairs of a Flamenco dancer. The woman in the painting was beautiful and flexible, her arms went one way as her waist and legs were contorted in angles pointing in another direction. Sometimes after dinner we’d sit at the top of the stairs, leaned against the wall underneath the painting and listen to our parents talk as they washed the dishes. We judge each other’s growth by the amount of space between the top of our heads and the bottom of the rustic bronzed and engraved frame. We named the Flamenco dancer Natasha.

We believed that Natasha protected us. When we were scared or sad we went to her for comfort. When we first moved to the house Laura slept under Natasha the first few nights. Natasha was a birthday gift from Dad to Mom. He bought it in Spain on a business trip when they were first married. He brought it home with him and surprised her a month later on her birthday.

Curiosity drew us to the top of the stairs when our parents had their talks. They sat in the dark on the couch against the wall. We listened to them talk, not always understanding, but wondering about all things adult. We wondered why they never talked at the dinner table when we were there. We wanted to be included in the conversations. In fact, neither of them spoke at dinner. They only barely asked to pass the butter. Dinner was the only time they spent together in the same room besides their talks and our family traditions.

Before dinner Dad usually came home, slamming his briefcase on the kitchen counter, and went on his usual rant. He didn’t like his boss, his coworkers, or his growing responsibilities, and he proved it by kicking and overturning an empty chair at the kitchen table. It almost always happened after a terse dinner of cold words Mom tried to combat dinners like that by asking Laura and me about our day. We’d go through the details trying to avoid any pauses, but there were always pauses. After dinner Mom sat on the couch and Dad on the chair, and they always sat in the dark. They never turned a lamp on, never looked at one another in the clarity of illumination. And we sat at the top of the stairs peering through the stair rail bars.

I remember being twelve with a six year old Laura at my side, we leaned against the wall under the protection of Natasha, and listened to our parents talk after dinner. The wooden bars on the stairs rail were loose and it wobbled whenever someone went up or down the stairs. Through the bars you could see into the living room. Mom’s voice was wavering and unsure. She stumbled over her words as though the ones she wanted didn’t exist. And Dad’s voice was hard and short. Only one syllable words. The distance and difference between them scared us. “I think we need to talk about this. Andrew, something is going on. You don’t talk to me, and you don’t look at me, ever.” The chair creaked as Dad stood up and started walking away, towards the basement door around the corner.

“Emma, just back off.” Mom went back to the kitchen then and finished cleaning up after our dinner. I took Laura to her room and played with her toys with her. She was very young then, and her favorite toy was her little doll. She had a doll sized chest full of clothing options for the doll.

Our father’s desk in the basement was next to the vent that was directly below and led to the vent in Laura’s room. Our father had quit smoking three times in two years, and we could smell the smoke creeping upwards.

“Tara, are Mom and Dad going to get a divorce?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s a divorce?”

“It’s when a Mom and Dad don’t want to be together anymore, and one of them moves out.”

“I don’t want one of them to leave.”

“Me either.” Our parents had always fought, but they were usually more discreet. They more frequently ended with one of them walking away from the other. We had heard of our friends’ parents getting divorces, and our friends not seeing their fathers anymore. We were afraid that it would happen to us. We liked the idea of two Christmases and two birthdays, but we afraid of losing our father. Our school had a father daughter dance every year. We feared that like our friends’ fathers our father would move farther away and come see us less often. And we were afraid that he might forget about us.

Welcome!

Welcome everyone! Post anything you'd like in any stage of completion or lack thereof. Prose, poetry, plays, screenplays, music, journalism, reviews, whatever you're working on and would like to share. It's all welcome!

One thing to address now is that a few people have voiced concerns over first publishing rights and how contributing here might affect that. Literary journals like to consider themselves the first publisher of a particular work. If they think it's been published elsewhere, they lose interest. Fair enough. My personal standpoint (which is not legally informed in any way) is to look at this as a community, not a magazine. Writers aren't publishing, only sharing. No one's in charge and no one's getting paid. If you still have serious concerns about legal stuff, don't contribute anything here that you aspire to eventually publish elsewhere in a similar form. Anyone with more to add about that, feel free to speak up.

Other than that, happy writing!