everything falls apart

efa book 2 pgs 1-4

2007-04-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

I told you the story of how everything in my life went to shit. I told you the story of how everything went wrong and nothing could get any worse. This is the story of how everything got much, much worse, and then how it started to get better. When I left The Company for good, when I drove across that border, I knew nothing about The Outside. I knew rumors. I had heard stories from people who had heard them from their parents, who had heard them from THEIR parents, and so forth stretching back to the era when back-and-forth travel was permitted. I had heard there were no policemen. I had heard about pirates who would run you off the road and hijack your car. I had heard it was one bad-ass place, and you had to be careful.

I thought I knew a little bit about it, but I didn’t know a goddamned thing.

I drove all night, and in the morning, I pulled over to the side of the highway and got out of the car. I stretched my legs and lit a cigarette and watched the sun slowly materialize on the Eastern horizon. The road stretched as far as I could see in either direction, dividing in half a barren planet of dirt and rock. This is what the world looked like a long, long time ago. With the exception of that crumbling strip of asphalt, it’s what the world looked like almost since the dawn of time. For the first time in my life, there was not a single soul anywhere near me. For the first time in my life, I was completely alone.

I popped the trunk, rummaged around, and found myself a cereal bar. There was a cartoon bird on the wrapper. I sat cross-legged on the hood, and I ate.

My father always packed cereal bars when we went on car trips. I was afraid of him. He wasn’t cruel. He had good intentions. But he was stern and awkward. Partly because that was his nature and partly because that was his role. My mother was emotional, and my father was the one you went to so you wouldn’t have to talk. You could sit there with him, and watch TV, and just be. Sometimes that was nice, and sometimes it was weird. I wonder if I missed out on the opportunity to get to know him. We were both so quiet.

My mother was the softie. I could plead and cry, and she would give in. My father was the one who taught me that life is hard and you don’t always get what you want. This was an act. He didn’t have it all together, he didn’t have all the answers, and I’m sure there were days he wished he could have his turn to fall apart too.

But I imagine him planning his little outings with me. I imagine him going out to buy cereal bars because that seemed like what a good father should do. He should be prepared. He should provide for his child.

There have been many days since his death where I have empathized. There have been days when I’ve felt in over my head, that I felt I’ve been faking my way through life. There have been times I’ve sat quietly because I didn’t know what to say. And at those times I feel like I didn’t miss my opportunity to get to know him. I AM him.

I got back in the car and continued on my way. I drove for a very long time. Hours and hours. In all that time, I still hadn’t come upon a human being. The few buildings I saw had all long been deserted. Around noon I’d stopped off at one and took a look around. The walls had desiccated into tinder. It was held together by cobwebs.

By dusk I was in a panic. I grew bleary-eyed behind the wheel and was starting to imagine things. But worse than that, I was very low on gas. Turning back was not an option (not that they’d let me back anyway); I would never make it. And, going forward, it was seeming less and less likely that I’d encounter anyone before running out of fuel. The smart move would have probably been to pull over and think things through for awhile. But I trudged forward. Probably, in good part, because I was afraid to let myself think. I was getting an inkling as to just how fucked I really was, and I sensed that full awareness of the situation might cause me to become paralyzed by fear. How many days could I get by with the food and water in my car? Two? Ten? Twenty? I had no realistic concept of rationing, or what one’s bare minimal caloric threshold might be. And ultimately, did it matter? What if I could get forty days? Whatever number I chose to pull out my ass, the questioned still remained, what about after that? I had yet to see an animal I could eat. But extending the fantasy to its most optimistic, supposing I had. Supposing a coyote marched right the fuck up to me. Would I even know how to kill it? Would I even know how to avoid being eaten by it?

If I didn’t come across someone before very long, things looked mighty bleak. So I kept driving on and telling myself there’s GOTTA be someone. I know there are people out here, and if there are, they have to use this highway.

Some time after the sun went down and my needle swung far left of E, I saw it and I began to cry. A building, with lights on, surrounded by cars. At the next exit. I didn’t believe in God, but I went ahead and thanked him anyway. Out loud. Over and over again. I almost couldn’t breathe. Up until that moment, I had always thought I hated people.

everything falls apart 66 & 67, end of book one

2006-08-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

That night I drove out to the edge of civilization. I had been there once before. As a kid. My parents drove me out. In the daylight hours, it's something of a tourist spot. There are telescopes mounted along the top of the wall. You put in a coin and find how far out into nothing you can see. They sell snowglobes filled with dirt and little plastic tumbleweeds. I went there with my parents and I was bored. I failed to understand the significance.

There was no one around that night, though. The empty desert is not very well lit, and if someone's going to pay good money to stare at nothing, they damn well want to be able to see it. I climbed the stairs to the top, turned my back on the darkness, and stared in at the city. The telescopes didn't swivel that way. They didn't want Peeping Toms going window to window in search of showering women. But even to the naked eye, the sight was breathtaking. A million points of light. Behind them, every person I had ever known.

I returned to my car and drove up to the guard on duty. He flagged me down excitedly, and I stopped.

"Can't go any farther, sir."

"I can," I said. "I'm leaving."

He seemed perplexed. "Leaving what?"

"Everything. The country. I'm out. I quit."

"You know, once you go out there, you can never come back in. I mean, never."

"That's the idea."

He scratched his chin. His training had never prepared him to deal with this particular situation.

"What do you think you're going to do out there anyway?"

"I really don't know. I'll manage."

"Listen buddy, I'm not a shrink. You got problems you're trying to run away from, I don't know how to help you with that. But I'll tell you right now, if you can't find a way to deal with them, you'd be better off jumping from that wall and ending it right here. You drive a few more yards, you're headed smack into a slow death, as sure as I'm standing here."

I wanted to say that we're all going to die. I wanted to ask him if he really wanted to die never knowing anything else in the world besides this. I wanted to, but I had a pretty good idea of what he'd say in response, and what I'd say after that. So I didn't say anything. I waved and I left.

I drove. No one chased after me. No searchlights or guard dogs. Nothing dramatic. Just a tired old border guard shaking his head in disapproval, getting smaller in my rearview mirror. I kept driving, and eventually I couldn't even see the Company behind me anymore. That's when it really started sinking in. I was inside that snowglobe now. I looked out into the emptiness around me and felt engulfed by it. Swallowed up. I had drifted off the edge of the Earth and was floating into outer space. A tiny speck receding, washing away out into the distance. Vanishing.

The End (for now)

everything falls apart 64 & 65

2006-08-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

I grabbed him by the neck. I squeezed. I stared in his eye.

"Look, you old fucking retard. I am offering you a chance at life. I don't know what is waiting for you on the other side, but at least it's outdoors. It isn't a jail cell. I know there are birds and sunrises and all that other crap people write poems about. You are the most ridiculously stubborn human being that's ever walked the earth, and I suppose in some ways that's a trait that's served you well the last decade or two. But now it's blinding you. It's standing in your way. I'm offering you life, and all you know how to choose is death."

I clenched tighter and tighter, trying to get any sort of reaction from him at all, hoping his eyes would bulge a little, hoping he'd gasp or wheeze. But his body had become immune to pain. It lost the basic survival reflexes. He'd lived for so long on the edge of execution, it didn't know any different.

"Some day," he said, and I could fell his throat vibrating through my fingers as he strained to speak, "I will die. Maybe you'll kill me right now if you push a little harder, or maybe your leader will kill me tomorrow so he can try out a new button on his robot, or maybe I will linger on a few more years until my body shuts down of its own accord. But until that day comes, I will never stop dreaming of the chance to kill you, or your neighbors, or your cousins. That's what keeps me going. Not the birds, and not the sunshine."

I let go of his neck and he slumped down to the floor. I took a long hard look and assessed the situation. I could leave him in here to die, or I could let him out to kill, and what difference did it make? The body count would keep rising one place or another. Precious' kid would grow up hating the CLH, maybe end up working for the DEJ, torture some prisoners, and their kids would grow up hearing about it, the stories would get told back at the camp compound. They would want to be terrorists. The Company didn't invent the CLH, but would've had to if it didn't come about on its own. They need each other. And the people on each side needed to find something that they wanted to die for.

This sad little shell of a man was supposed to be my cause. He was going to be the thing I died for. I wandered on to the team like a fat kid at a kickball game, looking for whatever side would have me. And now that I didn't have something to fill that role, I felt empty and worthless. I kicked him in the ribs for no good reason. I felt nothing. He felt nothing. Then I walked out the door and I left him.

everything falls apart 63

2006-08-04T15:08:00.000-07:00

"I think that sounds like some sort of trap or game, or some overly clever contrivance you people come up with when you have too much time on your hands. This is the secular mind's version of progress. You build supercomputers and mount armies to achieve what could be managed with a switchblade."

"Well, I'm not saying I'm going to do it. I'm just saying that I thought about it. So let's, merely as a thought exercise, imagine that I'm being sincere. Let's say I really do set you free, no ulterior motive. What then?"

"I don't follow."

"What then? Once you go back across the border, do you go back home? Do you have a means to get back there? Is it even in the same location it was however many years ago you left it?"

Isaiah stared off for a minute or two, giving careful thought to his answer.

"There'd be no need to bother with all that. I suppose if you let me go free, I would remain on this side of the border, I would go in search of materials for constructing some sort of explosive device, and I would complete the project I originally set out to do."

I was pissed. "That's a pretty stupid thing to tell me. Obviously I'm not going to let you go free if you say a thing like that. Why not lie and tell me what I want to hear?"

"I don't know what you want to hear, and I'm not interested in guessing. This is a thought experiment, so I don't see any purpose in lying. If you really were stupid enough to attempt setting me free, you wouldn't be smart enough to do it successfully."

message to my readers, whoever they may be

2006-08-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

My ex-wife informed me the other day that she's planning to use the contents of my blog in court in an attempt to take my son away from me. Obviously this is an empty threat, and no judge in their right mind would consider that a work of fiction has any relevence to someone's capabilities as a father. If they do, then the makers of South Park, CSI, Saw, Hostel, the Sopranos, and any other graphic movie or program may need to flee the country.

However, what this HAS done is make it difficult for me to feel motivated to write. I don't make any money from writing--I pretty much just do it because it helps me forget about the bullshit in my real life. But at the moment I can't sit down in front of a keyboard without being constantly reminded of it.

So rather than write this as one big novel, I will write it as a trilogy of novellas. Next week I will post the last few pages of book 1, then I will take a break until I feel motivated to start writing again.

everything falls apart 62

2006-07-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Boss had the same satiated look I must've gotten right before dozing off in the park. He gave my shoulder a little squeeze as he stood up to take his leave. I had the odd feeling I was being taken under the old man's wing.

"Hey, I'm heading home early," he said to one of the guards. Then, tilting his head in my direction, "This guy's in charge till the nightshift comes on."

When he exited, those left behind stood around, awaiting my instructions.

"Take me to Isaiah."

They brought me to his cell, and set up an extra chair. I dismissed them. I had them leave the keys with me.

I looked him over, wondering I could find any new scars that might suggest what more had been done to him the last few days, but it was hopeless, like looking for needles in a haystack.

For his part, he looked back at me with contempt, the same contempt he'd shown in our last meeting. But it wasn't intimidating this time around. I found it pathetic. I had assumed he hated me because he thought I was one of his captors, but it was beyond that. He hated me because I was, in a broader sense, one of THEM, just as he hated our gas station attendants, our toddlers, our citizens who didn't have the slightest idea that the DEJ even existed.

"I gave some thought to sneaking you out and setting you free. What do you think of that?"

everything falls apart 61

2006-07-26T15:59:00.000-07:00

What loomed in that doorway was an engineering marvel, not because of its technological sophistication, but because of its primitivism. It looked like a refrigerator on stilts, with arms built from angle iron, the spare parts of a rusty carburetor attached willy-nilly for decoration. It looked like a toy a bored 10-year-old put together in the basement. It was completely ridiculous, yet somehow it worked. The Boss couldn't be prouder.

"I call it the SK3000."

And his eyes twinkled as he pressed buttons and shifted levers and sent his metallic child trudging, off-kilter, with a zombie's gait, towards its intended victim. The Christian boy took careful steps backward, luring it towards the room's center, then used his quickness to circle around the SK3000 and leapt onto its back. He hammered at it enthusiastically, but ultimately achieved nothing apart from bloody fists. The robot shook him off, pinned him down, and slit his belly open. Its claws were deceptively nimble, somehow managing to locate one end of the boy's intestine, fixing it to the floor with a large stake.

The boy's eyes went wide with shock, though he sat calmly, almost at a distance, as if he hadn't quite yet processed what was occurring. But when the mechanical claws caught fire, he snapped out of it. He jumped to his feet and ran, back and forth, around the room, as the SK3000 lumbered after with its mittens of flame. We each step he took, his guts unraveled a little bit more. Until he ran out of them, straining on his tether, roasted alive.

everything falls apart 60

2006-07-25T10:16:00.000-07:00

That night I slept on the floor of my office. Or tried, I should say. I laid with my eyes shut and waited for 9 a.m. to roll around. Then I took the elevator down to the DEJ. The Boss was already in Room B, five-o'clock-shadowed. He'd been there all night. He gave me a little smile.

"Bright and early, bright and early. That's how I like to see you. Give me some good news. How's the article coming along?"

"Good."

"What do you have to show me?" He answered his own question, observing that my hands were empty. "You do have a rough draft at least…"

"Yeah. I mean, rough rough. I think tomorrow I'll have something you can look over."

"Remember, not too sympathetic. Details about the victims. You need to humanize the victims, dehumanize the prisoners. All that crap about Isaiah's family you dug up, forget all that. Well, we'll talk more after I read it. Hey I'm glad you're here. I've got something new to show you. Maybe you can work it in. Take a look."

He pointed to the other side of the two-way glass. A defiant CLH militant was pounding on the walls, slamming his body full-force up against them in a shot of bravado.

"Show me what you got, you heathens!"

He spat at the mirror, looked like it was coming right at me, though I knew he couldn't see us. The Boss held an elaborate remote in his hands.

"This is pretty cool…" He punched a large red button, opening an enormous door onto the interrogation room, revealing a 20-foot-tall robot.

everything falls apart 58 & 59

2006-07-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

Precious lowered her Murphy bed and began setting it up.

"I got pregnant in high school. Mitch was a little older. He'd just graduated. He didn't have a great job, but you know. It was enough to get by. I dropped out so we didn't have to pay for daycare. No great loss. School and I did NOT mix, you understand? I was getting nothing out of it. Cinnamon or lavender?"

She held up two candles. I pointed to the purple one, and she began lighting them.

"Anyway, when Sunshine was about 2, there was a street fair on our block. We couldn't afford to pass up free entertainment, so we go down to check it out, right? Well, it was packed. Shoulder to shoulder. That should've been my first clue, right? You get a big enough gathering, sure as shit one of those crosshugging motherfuckers is going to show up. Anyway, at some point Sunshine needed the bathroom, which I was very excited about, because she was just getting the whole potty thing down, so we go off and find one. And while we're in there, Blammo! We come back out, and half the street is gone. In a cloud of smoke. Mitch included. You ask me, if there is a God, he can rot in hell. Right along with all his little suck-up friends."

She took out a sheet of paper and a pen.

"OK, before we start, let me get this out of the way. I know all this cross-promo bullshit is a drag, but it's only three questions and that's it, I swear. Number one: 'On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being most likely, how likely would you be to purchase the Winchester at a grocery store?"

"1."

"How likely are you to mention this product to family or friends?"

"1."

"Finally, how likely to try other products in the portable cocktail line?"

"I don't know. 2?"

"Yeah, it kinda blew, huh? Alright. See? That was easy."

She got down on her knees and unzipped me. I should've stopped her. She was a young widow, practically still a child, forced to degrade herself for survival, and for her little daughter. I was exploiting her.

But what would taking my dick out of her mouth accomplish? There'd just be another guy coming over later tonight, doing the exact same thing. Countless more after him. Me not fucking her wasn't going to solve anything. If all those other assholes were going to get laid, why not me? At least I'm not fat, or old. I don't have an unbearable odor.

OK, the justifications were pretty lame, but there you have it. Since I already saw myself as the bad guy, I tried to incorporate it into my fantasy. I imagined that I had broken in, killed her husband, and was having my way with her. But it wasn't working. My cock stayed limp, and the rough texture of her tongue began to irritate it. I pulled it in and zipped back up.

"I'm sorry. I'm not feeling well. It's not your fault—you were great. Here."

I handed her a wad of cash. More than I owed, in fact. I wanted to get out of there.

"What the fuck are you trying to pull?"

"Nothing. I'm not pulling anything. You're paid in full."

"Is that what all that bullshit was about? Getting me to talk about my family? So you pay me now, and tomorrow you file a report, turn it all around, make it sound like I MADE you listen to my sob stories. Then I get charged with using a prostitution business as a front for panhandling and they pull my license. Right?"

She had some very angry eyes, and I was frightened. I ran out the door, and she chased after me. The threw my crumpled bills at me.

"You're entitled to a refund. Faggot!"

everything falls apart 57

2006-07-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

It was unnerving, the thought that one of these rooms might hold a little girl, turning up the volume of her TV extra-loud to drown out the sounds of what I was doing to her mother in the living room. I envisioned the long line of random johns adding their distant voices as background noise to her cartoons. I bit my tongue, but Precious seemed to intuit the exact nature of my apprehension.

“She stays with her grandmother when I’m working.”

I forced myself to take a drink from my Winchester. It tasted like a blend of paint and cough syrup.

“It was never my intention to be a ‘hooker-mom,’ you know. That wasn’t the life plan. I was going to be a housewife. But my husband died, I wasn’t qualified to do anything, and… well whatever. You don’t want to hear my life story. I just don’t want any of those tut-tut looks from you. People are always so sure they’ve got me pegged, but they don’t know the whole story, you know?”

I should’ve taken that as my cue to drop it. Change the subject to absolutely anything different, or else shut up and fuck her. Whatever the whole story might be, it couldn’t possibly be anything conducive to enhancing the romantic atmosphere. It couldn’t be anything that would make me feel better about paying her for a sex act. I should’ve dropped it. But I didn’t.

“I’m sorry to hear that. How did your husband die?”

“The CL fucking H.”

everything falls apart 56

2006-07-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

We sat and stared awkwardly at one another. I felt like I’d been set up on a blind date. Here was a girl being paid to find me interesting, being paid to laugh at my jokes and hang on my every word, and still I found myself stuck for idle chatter. She sighed and slapped her thighs with both hands, as if she’d just decided on a course of action.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re going to do to me?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The usual, I suppose.”

“No. Tell me details. Tell me slowly, little by little. Talk dirty to me.”

I had a general idea about what I would do, of course. But when I thought about describing it, it all felt pretty silly. Talking dirty requires a certain swagger and self-confidence. You have to be convinced you’re about to rock this person’s world. I wasn’t convinced.

“I’m not very good at dirty talk.”

“OK then. What do you normally talk about when you’re out with a girl?”

God… who can remember that far back? Those days, my dating years, felt like a lifetime ago. The only girl in recent memory has been my wife. And what do we talk about? The phrase “Shut the fuck up and leave me alone” springs to mind. We yell. Or we give each other the silent treatment. “Gave,” rather. Past tense.

“Who’s that?” I pointed at a photo of a small flaxen-haired moppet on her wall. I thought maybe it was Precious as a child.

“My daughter.”

everything falls apart 55

2006-07-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

Precious was about 20 years old. When she bent over to set down my drink, she stuck out her ass, exaggerating the movement for my benefit. She had a patch over her lower back, and she must’ve seen me staring.

“It’s Daisy Duck. See?”

She peeled up one of the edges. The cartoon character winked at me from behind the covering.

“I got it before I entered the business. But the Company doesn’t want that area of its intellectual property associated with, well, you know. Rather than get it removed, I’m waiting to see if I can sell sponsorship to a more grown-up business, and maybe I can have it reworked to somebody’s logo.”

She sat near me, but not quite touching me. We were going to have a conversation.

“Do you like your drink?”

Though this was my first time with a pro, I did happen to know that girls who didn’t jump right into the physical side, who recreated some semblance of what a legitimate date might be like, were more in demand, and better paid, than their counterparts. This runs counter to everything people think they know about men. The stereotype is that men only want sex, even from their actual girlfriends… that they, at best, merely tolerate conversation and foreplay. It’s probably even what men SAY they want, if they are asked, but the real-life financial model proves otherwise. Which to me is clear proof of the futility of asking anyone what they want.

“Uh-huh.”

everything falls apart 54

2006-07-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

The third had live women wrapped like dolls in enormous plastic packaging. They hung on rack, complete with a change of clothes, and men rifled through, looking for just the right one.

The fourth was simply a cute young woman sitting on a couch. “Hi, my name is Precious. I don’t have a lot of money to waste on this commercial, but I’m not a transsexual, I’m not a clockwatcher, and if you pick me, you’ll be glad you did.” Good enough, I thought.

Precious, as it happened, worked out of her apartment. I thought that to be a plus, as I wouldn’t be walking into and out of something that was obviously a brothel. But it turned out not to make much difference; from the looks I got, Precious’ neighbors were very much aware of her profession.

I rang the buzzer. “Just a minute, hon.” It was more like 15. She came to the door in high heels and a boa. “Sorry. I had to get myself together.” Her apartment was red walls and soft music and a futon and a pile of dirty clothes hastily hidden behind the couch. “Would you like a drink, hon? A friend of mine is marketing a new product. Martini in a can. He calls it The Winchester.”

“Sure.” I saw a full ashtray and a pack of 100s. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Help yourself. That’s what they’re there for.”

I felt very adult just then. Even with my girly cigarette and prepackaged cocktail. This was some approximation of what sophisticates did.

everything falls apart 53

2006-07-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

I determined my next two courses of action: freeing the prisoners and seeing a prostitute. Not in that order. The prisoner thing would be especially dangerous. Possibly not possible. It could mean my death. But I had to take a shot. My entire life up to this point, I felt, had been an epic waste of time. If I could somehow pull this off, I would accomplish something noble. There would be a reason for my existence.
And as for the whore, well, fuck... I never claimed to be a saint. I'd always wondered what it would be like, there were no more commitments holding me back now, and if I was going to look death in the eye, I might as well cross something off my to-do list first. I flipped open my laptop and downloaded ads for sex professionals in my area. The first one was for the Whorehouse Warehouse, a massive chainstore. It was a big-budget commercial with celebrities and special effects, but it didn't tell me much about the girls, and by the time the 30-second spot was up, I wasn't sure if they were selling sex or cars or golf clubs.
The next one was loud, flashing lights, lots of jumpcuts, one of the popular songs of the moment as a soundtrack. The hook is a fat old man lying on the couch in a sleeveless T. His wife is wearing curlers and nagging him. He picks up the phone, dials the number of this particular establishment, and a laser shoots out of the phone, hitting his old lady and transforming her into an Asian hooker. I gave them points for creativity, but had to pass because it was outcall only.

everything falls apart 52

2006-06-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

I taped it to the television, I kissed my dog goodbye, and I was on my way. I headed south down Third. It was the direction of my school, so the route felt familiar and comfortable. I walked for an hour, began to tire, and set up camp in an empty alleyway, deciding this would be my new home.

I returned by sunset, soon after I finished my sandwich. I never got to use the small pillow I'd packed. What did I expect to happen, exactly? Had I left really expecting to be gone forever? Did I just want to worry my parents? Was it a game, like playing cops and robbers?

It had followed a fight with my mother the previous night. But not a particularly bad fight, there was nothing to differentiate it from countless other family quarrels. I suppose it's just some sort of childhood ritual, part of growing up, like potty training, or learning to walk. You have to run away in order to learn that you are weak. You have to run away in order to learn that you will never make it. You have to run away in order to learn that your parents hold you there not by force but by virtue of your own weakness and need. Softly, it's how they break you. How does that old poem go, the one about “no man is an island”? Definitely true. Everyone is the mainland. Everyone is the dirt. We're all little specks, clumped together, indistinguishable.

everything falls apart 51

2006-06-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

When I was 10 years old, I ran away from home. I was a latchkey kid, so when I got back from school that day, I dumped all the books from my backpack and started filling it with clothes. I knew there wouldn't be room for everything, so I went carefully through my drawers, picking out my favorites. There was a bright rainbow-striped T of which I was particularly fond.

My mother surely must've packed it off to some second-hand shop a long, long time ago. I wish I still had it. I wish I had buried it. Childhood mementos that you hang onto as an adult become contaminated with your more recent memories, but those things that belong exclusively to your past, those things that go away, they become wormholes to that other time. I'm not quite at middle age yet, but I'm getting there. I'm approaching an age at which the years I have in front of me are less numerous than the ones I have behind me. It would be nice if I had some way of reconnecting with my past so it could be actively, consciously a part of my life and not some mostly forgotten dream that could as easily belong to someone else.

So yeah, I packed my clothes and grabbed a few things from the refrigerator. I sat down to write a note. I thought it would be the mature thing to do.

"Dear Mom and Dad, I have decided to try things on my own for awhile. Do not try to find me. Know that I don't hate you. You have been..." What kind of parents have they been? Good or OK? I could go either way on it. I decided to be generous. "... good parents. I wish you the best."

everything falls apart 50

2006-06-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

“Have you ever stopped to think about how freaky trees are?” he asked her. “They’re like these massive life forms standing right among us. They’re giants. They fucking BREATHE.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. I felt like sharing one of my thoughts with you and that’s the first that came to mind. Was it stupid?”

“No, it was nice. Here, move this way. I want to show you something.”

There was no more talking after that. The light coming from the room flickered, and I could tell where they must be positioned and how they must be moving to create that effect. I could hear them breathing. Then I could hear them panting. I stood up and walked in on them.

They were naked. She straddled him. Her hands on his shoulders. She had him pinned. He was in her. It looked to me like she was trying to consume him. Then they noticed me and they stopped.

He looked a lot like me. But more attractive and muscular. No one was saying anything. I left the room.

I grabbed my shoes and carried them out with me because I didn’t want to stop to tie them. I walked briskly, but I didn’t run. I exited the apartment, pressed the button, and waited for the elevator. She followed behind me and he behind her. They were still naked.

“Do you want to talk about this?” she asked.

I hit the button again.

He gave me the look of a concerned friend. “You’ve got a good woman here, bro.” The elevator came and I left.

everything falls apart 49

2006-06-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

I walked down the hall. It was coming from the bedroom. I found myself creeping, slowly, quietly.

“Ouch. Quit it.” A deep voice.

“You had a blackhead.” That was my wife. “You should be grateful. I’m bettering you.”

“Why don’t you better him instead?”

“Pshaw. I’ve already bested him.”

I sat Indian style in the hallway, just outside the bedroom door. It was cracked open, and a sliver of dim light leaked out.

“Where is he anyway?”

“Vanished. Poof. Can we not talk about him please?”

The sweat from my palms was browning the flower’s stem, so I laid it on the floor, carefully, so as not to break the petals. She let out a playful shriek, then a giggle. He a low chuckle.

“That’s what you get.”

There was a photo of the two of us on the wall across from where I sat. On vacation. We were standing on the ocean shore. Dolphins played in the background. I remember the passerby we got to hold the camera. He said we made a nice couple. We’d been fighting that day, off and on. But it passed. We made up. Sometimes in the years since when arguments would drag on and days would pass without a kind word between us, days when I couldn’t remember why I was even living with this person, I looked at the photo and thought it was nice that she hung it there. It seemed to suggest she must, occasionally, think some pleasant thoughts about me.

everything falls apart 48

2006-06-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

I had mosquito bites on my arms and grass-stains on my shirt, and I wondered how long I'd been lying there with my dick hanging out. All that notwithstanding, I felt great. The sleep deprivation had been clouding my thought processes, making me irritable, paranoid, maybe even delusional. But now things were back in perspective. The spousal differences were nothing earth-shattering. They were so vague I didn't even understand what they were, exactly, but everyone has stupid fights once in awhile. It doesn't mean anything. And the torture I was witnessing on my job... I just needed a little time to adjust to that. I’m squeamish, by nature. Don't like the sight of blood. But the torture-ees were bad folk. They were killers. Worse than that, they were religious psychotics. How are you supposed to deal with people who don’t listen to reason?

I reached the lobby of my building. I had been gone for 14 hours. Where was I going to say I'd been, exactly? A few ideas floated around, but now that I was determined to try harder for peace, it would have to be something good. A guy by the reception desk was selling flowers, so I bought one.

I took the elevator up to my flat. What would it be? I stopped off at the office to catch up on work? Why didn't I call?

I opened my door and shut it gently behind me. I took off my shoes so as not to track dirt. I heard talking in one of the back rooms. Two different frequencies. It was company.

everything falls apart 47

2006-06-15T09:10:00.000-07:00

“Syd.” The girl’s name was Syd. I said it softly, out loud, as I came. Don’t know why. I said her name and passed out. I had one of those dreams that fool you because it’s set in the location you drifted off. In the dream I was awoken by the sound of screams. It was a 6-foot-tall flower that had sprouted where I left the wet spot. It was half-man, half-plant. His head was dusted in pollen and encircled by petals. He had my nose. He had Syd’s eyes. He was screaming because he had no legs. He was struggling to dislodge his roots from the ground.

“Help me Daddy! I’m stuck here.”

“Fuck,” I told him, “I think you better stay put. You need that soil, man.”

“Daddy, I don’t like this. I’m scared.”

A large shadow passed over my prone body, then a blow to the back of my head. I turned around. A shit monster, standing a good six-five… he had a pierced nose. His foot left a smear of fecal matter in my hair.

“Your parents’ toilet. Twenty years ago. Ring any bells, asshole?”

A pillow-shaped toddler waddled over towards me. She had the curly locks of a young Marilyn Monroe. She cried, “Daddy, daddy, I have an owie,” and turned around. One of her seams was split, some stuffing spilling out. The shit man kicked me again, this time below the ribs. I “oofed.”

“You’re a poor excuse for a man, dude.”

Off in the distance, a tissue baby was crying. Loud shrieks. It was hungry.

I woke up for real. It was dark out. I had slept the day away.

everything falls apart 46

2006-06-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

She was my old high school teacher. Those knee-high boots and short skirts she used to wear to show off her legs because her face had picked up one too many lines. You don’t dress like that unless you want a teenage boy to fuck you, right? I used her for about a minute and moved on to another. Some weren’t even with me in the fantasy. Some were masturbating or even just showering. Light girls, dark girls, fat girls, small girls… I imagined this strange parade of women lined up, waiting their turn, eyeing one another suspiciously, wondering what possible role they could all be at the same audition for. I spat more on my hand. I shooed away some flies.

I thought about my wife’s best friend. Not because she was any more attractive than the rest or because I had any special feelings for her, but because it was so wrong. I imagined us drunk together. I imagined us alone because my wife trusts her. I imagined us sharing intimate conversation, revealing our feelings, her letting her guard down and seeing me as a man rather than as her friend’s property. And me, what did this do for me? She sucks my cock. She’s looking up at me, in her eyes is fear, that we’d both gone too far... I even think about her finding out. The screams and tears. Does it make me a monster to be aroused by emotional violence? She stops. She stands. She takes off her skirt. I come.

everything falls apart 45

2006-06-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

By the time I got down to street level, I had to face facts: I had nowhere to go. The streets were packed shoulder to shoulder. If there was little privacy in my apartment, there was none out here. I could get a hotel room, but that would turn this into a very expensive orgasm. I did a quick cost/benefit analysis, comparing price vs. enjoyment with activities like a movie or a dinner out. For that sort of money, I might as well get a whore. In a span of minutes, this had gone from wanting a nap to making a major lifestyle decision. As I was thinking, I was walking. And as I walked, I came upon my answer. I was standing in the park.

I found an opening behind some thick bushes, pushed my way inside, and laid down on the grass. I pulled my pants down. No sooner had I gotten started than two little old ladies walked by. They didn't see me--they probably couldn't see two feet in front of them--but the sound of their voices killed it, and it was awhile after they passed before I was ready to give it another shot.

I started with an ex-girlfriend, first reliving an actual encounter from our past, then moving on to an imaginary future encounter. I reconfigured her body. I made her taller and thinner. I thought about the moment, groping around under her panties, when things start to get wet. Then I lost it. I had played out a similar fantasy too many times in the past and it wasn't doing it for me anymore. I pushed her aside and moved on to girl number 2.

everything falls apart 44

2006-06-05T14:59:00.000-07:00

It was Saturday morning and I'd been up for a couple of days. I needed to sleep and, to do that, I needed to masturbate.

My wife was in the kitchen making coffee.

The only room offering privacy was the bathroom, and I'd never been a fan of the toilet jerkoff. I prefer laying down to standing or sitting, for one thing, probably a symptom of my overall laziness. I'm haunted by the history of shits those walls were witness to. And I feel as though I'm racing the clock. You can only lock yourself in the bathroom for so long before it becomes a tad suspicious. The bathroom was out and, therefore, so was the apartment altogether.

"I'm going out," I told her. She was wearing a robe. She sipped from a World's Greatest Aunt coffee mug and leaned against the kitchen counter.

"Where?"

I resented the question. If I had wanted her to have that information, I would've volunteered it. It was interrogation disguised as idle chatter. But beyond that, I didn't know the answer.

"Exercise."

"I need exercise too. We can exercise together."

She liked to jog. Would her offer still have stood if she knew the exercise I had in mind? The road to a healthy relationship would have probably begun with at least posing the question. In the early years I was too self-conscious to address the topic directly. Our encounters were a product of alcohol and a series of escalating babysteps of affection. In the middle years I was too proud. I made her come to me, and she rarely came. And in these years now, in the present tense, I didn't really care.

"I'd rather go alone."

everything falls apart 43

2006-06-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

Doc adjusted his filthy scrubs and scratched his balls. He blinked and twitched silently for a beat or two while the canned laughter played in Boss's head.

"Moving right along... what did you bring us today, doctor?"

Doc pulled out a tiny scalpel and approached the unwilling patient. He collapsed the table legs, lowering the kid to ground level, then climbed on top of him, straddling him backwards, and sliced a large chunk out of his thigh. The kid screamed. Might've been "sick fuck" or maybe speaking in tongues, I couldn't be sure. Enter a trained boar in bow tie and monocle, stage left.

"Look ever'body! It's Mr. Bristles!"

The pig did a 360, a stutter step... apparently some kind of dance.

"Mr. Bristles, don't be a ham."

K forced a chuckle at the unfunny joke. Sheer defiance, purely because he wasn't SUPPOSED to laugh.

The pig gobbled the severed flesh. Doc cleared the area, the pig moved into position over the open wound, and shat.

"Bristles ate another young man's quadriceps today. Think of it as a transplant. Human meat must not agree with him; that's an awfully runny stool. Doctor, in your professional opinion, how long until an infection develops?"

They had no intention of ever throwing K on the rack. This was being held out as a threat, hoping the thought of what could happen would linger in his mind. But they wouldn't carry it out because they knew it wouldn't break him. Then where would they be? They'd be stuck with another Isaiah on their hands.

everything falls apart 42

2006-05-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

There was a bowl of stale popcorn still lying out from yesterday, and I found myself shoveling it in by the handful, fascinated, glued to screen, which cut a neon blue wedge out of the livingroom. It made my skin look sickly, slightly subreal, like a was a TV character myself, projected out as a 3D hologram. I was absorbed.

The victim (or “convict,” I should say) was a 17-year-old boy. His neck was drenched in sweat and tears. He screamed. He swore. He shook and he begged. He wanted his mother. The kid was gonna shatter the second they said boo to him. But they had something more extreme in mind because they wanted a more extreme reaction. They brought in Dr. Butcher, as he was informally known in gallows humor tradition by both the guards and captives. He never spoke, was mostly hidden behind surgical cap and mask. All you got a good look at were the eyes., and they were the dilated, twitchy, bloodshot eyes of a confirmed speedfreak, or maybe just a man who really loved his work.

There was always pre-event banter, strictly one way, the Boss addressing the Doctor, in the vein of a talkshow host warming up by bouncing a few lines off the bandleader. It was all very theatrical, even with only the hostile audience of one. But everyone’s gotta be the star of their own movie.

“Doc, the wife’s roasting turkey tonight. Think you can stop over after work and slice me off some deli-thin?”

everything falls apart 41

2006-05-26T13:05:00.000-07:00

First the screen's just gray. Then we get a little timecode along the bottom. Then some audio.

"Hi K. My name is Donald. Mind if I have a seat?"

It hisses and cracks. It's muddy The camera clicks on. From a weird angle, low, off to the side. They're barely in frame. Very grainy. Black and White. It's just the two of them in a room somewhere. K and my Boss. Donald, huh? How many years had I worked there and never known? He smiled his big-capped, white-polished, teeth-sparkling-like-foil-in-the-microwave smile that he turned on when he wanted to look sincere.

"Let's have a little straight talk, shall we? I feel like perhaps this is all an act on your part. That you're mugging for the cameras, hm? That's the character you've created, you're Exhibit K, the problem man-child. So I say, let's step off the stage for a moment, have ourselves a private pow-wow, and talk about something real for once. In fact, it's silly for me to call you by your stage name. What is your real name?"

"K will do."

"Alright. We don't have to be friends. Makes no difference to me one way or the other. I'll lay all my cards on the table. You're playing the troublemaker character. We want you to start playing Mr. Nice Guy. We've offered you a lot of money... you don't seem to want it. I don't understand that, but whatever. Doesn't matter. Just tell me, flat out, what exactly do you want?"

"I want to be left alone."

everything falls apart 40

2006-05-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

On night 2 I still couldn't sleep. I got up to watch some TV. My favorite show had gotten boring. "Second Chance" was no longer aired live. The bits with K were prerecorded and heavily edited, and the hour was padded with talking heads wagging their fingers and espousing a "go with the flow" philosophy. Viewers were similarly roadblocked on the webcast. In the past, you could go online anytime day or night to check out his progress via the 24/7 cam that recorded his every move. Now all you got was a near-blank page, a still photo of K with a word balloon coming out of his mouth: "Thank you for your interest in my progress. Gee, I'm flattered! I'm doin' fine, but the doctors felt it would be better for my current medical condition if I could get some private time. Don't forget to watch my TV show every night at 9!"

Luckily for me, I was now "in the media industry," doing something beyond the monkey-work end of the field. I had Level 2 security clearance and used this, improbably enough, to get a copy of the raw footage. I'd come up with a wild, ridiculous story to explain why I needed it, but I needn't have bothered. The gate-keeper of the material was himself a monkey-worker, and he turned it right over without a second thought.

I popped in the disc and turned the volume down low. I had a paranoid moment when I thought my place might be bugged or a stern authoritarian face would pop on my screen instructing me to report to the police station immediately. But there was nothing like that. Only K.

summary so far: pages 1-39

2006-05-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

I hate writing summaries. Theyre dull, and it feels like homework. But anonymous myspace people sometimes stumble upon this, and its not practical to expect them to read this all the way back from the beginning. So, in as few words as possible, heres whats happened so far:

A man who has rechristened himself Cain lives in a world (as movie trailers are so fond of saying) where there is no government and everything is owned by one big Company that employs everyone and provides for all their services. Outside the borders of the Company-owned territory is a wasteland, not valuable enough to be worth protecting, thats essentially in a state of anarchy. Somewhere out there is the CLH, a militant Christian organization founded by a man named Christ 2, and they occassionally sneak into the Company and commit acts of terrorism.

Cain goes to see a psychologist to discuss his dissatisfaction with his job and his marriage. On his way home, he runs into his friend Roger, a conspiracy theorist who advises him that anything he says to a therapist will immediately get back to his supervisor.

When Cain gets home he watches a TV reality show that attempts to rehabilitate derelicts. The current subject is called Exhibit K, and hes extremely resistant to change. Later, Cain fights with his wife.

At work the next day, his Boss has a new assignment for him. The Boss wants him to write an article about the punishment being meted out to captured terrorists. Hes introduced to one such captive, Isaiah, and watches him undergo extreme physical and sexual torture.

everything falls apart 39

2006-05-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

At home that night I was back on the couch. Not because we were still fighting--our minimal exchange of conversation was not warm, but neither was it especially frigid--but because I couldn't sleep, and wished not to exacerbate the situation by keeping her awake with my tossing and turning. I couldn't get the day's images out of my head. It would've been easier to take if he'd screamed and thrashed. But the near-silence, the muted thwacks against his still flesh... it was like being in a butchershop. The only sound he uttered at all was an occasional "unngh" when the wind was knocked out of him. I could hear it whenever I shut my eyes, an audial dream in total blackness, and every time it sent me sitting bolt upright. Whenever I felt a normal night's phantom itch, it was over to the lightswitch, the nightstand for my glasses, and a half-hour thorough search of my cock for ants. I could swear the couch cushion was Jane-John's hairy gut. By 4 a.m. I felt like I had been tortured. I was shaking. I was seeing things, hearing things. I couldn't think straight. The Boss was right, my mind was not strong. I would've been more than happy to tell em everything I know, or makeup whatever they might want to hear. I'd grovel, betray, lay down, roll over, suck cock, kiss ass, just point me in the right direction. I was ready to give up Jesus, sell out Allah, and frame Buddha on a drug rap.

everything falls apart 38

2006-05-15T15:30:00.000-07:00

Jane-John raped Isaiah in, by my count, seven different ways, not counting position changes. At one point Isaiah got a bit feisty and bit a chunk out of her leg. She got real mad at that and retaliated by shattering every bone in his right hand. His fingers bent every which way--looked like a toy soldier melted with a lighter. As an extra precaution, flunkies brought in a large metal device, some mad scientist's attempt at dentistry, to lock his law in place. Thick metal bands traversed his scalp and were partially screwed in at the base of his skull. The sex show never fully recovered from there. JJ's thrusts were less rhythmic, and her choices were uninspired. There was a nice flash of imagination wherein she sliced a gash in his side and fucked him beneath the ribcage, but overall it was fairly pedestrian and she seemed to know it.

"Mind if I call it a night? This leg hurts like a motherfucker."

"Fine," said the Boss, "let's just bring out Jesus and finish this up."

Jane-John, unable to produce a money shot of her own, grabbed a vial of semen from the medicine cabinet and doused Isaiah's forehead. I've never pretended to be an expert in religious matters, but I hadn't a clue what this all meant.

"Bring out Jesus?"

"John the Baptist announces the coming of Jesus. Matthew three-one. 'In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the desert of Judea and saying 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."' I know the Bible backward and forward."

The west wall opened and they led in a mule wearing a toga, with a crown of thorns resting on his mane. They flipped Isaiah over and rubbed a sticky paste on his crotch.

"Don't worry old-timer. Jesus is very gentle."

everything falls apart 37

2006-05-12T13:36:00.000-07:00

"All right. Flush him out. We need to clean him up for Jane-John."

The canister was shut, closing off the supply of ants. Those that remained were washed away--a man with a high-pressure hose aimed between Isaiah's legs shot it off. It looked like a carnival game where someone had inadvertently put the clown in backward.

"At times," mused the Boss, "I get jaded to the very concept of perversion. I'm always having to top myself, to find new ways to shock the captives. It's an old love affair where the couple has done too much too fast. The whips and chains have grown stale. Both parties are bored, going through the motions. If I don't turn his mind to jelly in the first couple of months, odds are I'm never going to get him. Once you've been through some of the horrors I've put this old fart through..." shaking his head... "God himself, if there is such a creature, couldn't create a sex act that would phase this man. I still stay up nights, jotting down ideas, but they don't excite me anymore. I don't know what kind of sex games you play with your wife, but believe me, if you haven't experienced it yet, the masks and costumes feel silly after awhile, and there's nothing sadder than standing limpdicked in leather."

The worker bees scurried away, and out came Jane-John, an obese man in a kimono. He was the hairiest human I'd ever seen, with a matted, untrimmed beard indistinguishable from the curls on his scalp. His head looked like a dustbunny with eyes. When he reached the table, he disrobed. Jane-John was a he-she.

everything falls apart 36

2006-05-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

He led me away by the hand, but we didn't leave the room, we were getting out of the way. The second we'd cleared the area, a dozen uniformed workers sprang into action. One wall rotated, bringing forth what looked like an examination table outfitted with steel restraints. Isaiah was stripped naked, laid out face down, spread eagle, all in a matter of moments. The Boss stood beside me and observed.

"I'm not sure what I think of your methods," he said. "I don't yet see where you're going with this. I'll withhold judgment for the time being and let you do your thing. A word of warning, though: Don't get caught up in his bullshit. Isaiah has a frail body but a very strong mind. I'm not as certain about yours."

They hauled out a silver canister and opened its latch. One by one, a line of ants exited and made their way to Isaiah. It was like watching a picnic invasion. They entered him.

"I bet you've never seen ones that go straight for the asshole like that. Bred special in the lab, specifically for this purpose. God never made nothin' like that..." shouting to Isaiah... "Score one for science and the ass-ants, ay buddy?"

I must have seen a hundred go in by this point but had yet to see one come back out. The bushy gray hair on his perineum was seething with speckled red dots.

"They bite a little. Stings, of course. Quite a sensitive area, you can imagine. But this is more about humiliation than pain. The asshole is the antithesis of Christianity. It's dirty. It has homosexual implications. It's a reminder of our animal nature. There's no shit in heaven. Try to imagine an angel taking a dump. You can't, can you?"

No harder to imagine, really, than what I was living through. My boss, who normally spoke only about timesheets and overtime, giving me his lecture on the symbolism of the asshole.

everything falls apart 35

2006-05-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

"People," I said, "can find their own higher purposes. A higher purpose doesn't have to mean 'God' necessarily. There are all kinds of bigger-than-life concepts. Love, Beauty, Truth..."

"Love, yes. I can see how far that one's got you. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And so, for that matter, is truth. At least the truth you speak of, which is truth derived from human understanding and deduction. A person's 'truth' changes throughout his life. He learns a little bit and thinks he knows the truth about something. Then he gets older, he learns a little more, he sees the issue from a new perspective, and he gets a new conception about what the truth is. This seesawing truth will go on until he dies, because there are always new facts to be factored in. Science discovers new theories, historians dig up old diaries, a 40-year-old draws upon different life experiences than a 30-year-old. The clothes of 20 years ago are out of fashion, the jokes are old and no longer funny, and the truth... the truth of 20 years ago is similarly irrelevant. The only truth that remains unchanged is God's Truth, which man has to accept without question and without hope of understanding. The TRUE truth is only comprehensible when pondered by a mind in possession of all the knowledge in existence. Man will never attain that state in this lifetime, so he must accept, whether it feels 'true' to him or not. To pursue any other path to the truth is simply chasing the tail of an ever-shifting reality."

The Boss approached me, putting a hand on my shoulder, stopping me before I could respond.

"You'll have to pick this up tomorrow. It's time for Isaiah's daily punishment."

everything falls apart 34

2006-05-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

I thought about my next line. He beat me to it.

"What about you," he asked. "Tell me about your family."

"I don't have any kids."

"But a wife, though. Or you would have said, 'I don't have any FAMILY.' Tell me about her. Is she attractive?"

"Sure." Much as I hated to admit it to myself, he was making me uncomfortable.

"What else?"

"The usual stuff, you know? We work. We eat dinner. Movies on weekends."

"That sounds lovely."

"I'm not dodging the question... I'm at a loss... am I supposed to gush about how she's the center of my world? I can't live without her, etc.? I'm not a gushing guy. I'm not a gusher. That doesn't mean anything's wrong."

"People express love in different ways. I'm sure you two have your own ways of expressing it."

"Sure." But I was not sure. Was he giving innocuous rote responses, or did he pick up on something? Was there anything to pick up on? We had a normal marriage. We fought. Everyone fights. He caught me the day after I slept on the couch and it was still on my mind. Maybe he could tell. Maybe I looked poorly rested or my back looked stiff. How long had it been since I'd answered him? I'd lost track. Was it my turn?

"I love my wife. She's the center of my world."

"You're the sentimental type, I see. We're you married in a church?"

"No. We're not religious."

"That's too bad. Secular marriages don't last."

"There are some exceptions, obviously."

"They don't last because they're based entirely on feelings, and feelings change. It's important, when you do anything in life, to believe you are doing it for a higher purpose."

everything falls apart 32 & 33

2006-05-02T16:20:00.000-07:00

And maybe he was right after all. The way the universe plays out, the chemical reactions between atoms, work the same backward or forward. The only difference in the direction of time as we perceive it is that entropy always increases. So maybe the glasses do have to break, and maybe the buildings do have to burn. Was there any point in pursuing this line, posing questions that beg rational answers?

"Was the kid you killed a boy or a girl?"

"I believe they said he was a 4-year-old boy. That's if you choose to believe what they say. Amazing how they fetishize the dead. Every time they relate it to me, he gets younger, his eyes get bluer, his dimples get deeper. Years from now, he will be an infant, a child prodigy, or a puppy dog."

"How did his death benefit God?"

"The realm of heaven doesn't need improvement. The Earth benefited. If you find a hornet's nest in your home, you remove it. It might be relatively harmless at the moment, but the innocent larvae, if left unchecked, will in time overrun the building. You, my mindless little insect ... I could pity you if I allowed myself to. If I stared long enough in your thousands of sad eyes. I could, but I won't let that happen."

He might not've let himself gaze in my bug eyes, but I peered into his. The real one and the false one, they divided his face in two. The left side was a cheap plastic trinket, overly sparkly, eerie. The right side was frightened, confused, defiant. He was an ordinary human being, probably someone's grandpa.

"Then convert me," I said. "Help me evolve. Make me see God."

"It's not a magic trick. I can't pull God out of a hat. He is everywhere. He is obvious. If you are somehow unable to see him, that is something beyond my comprehension."

"Tell me about your family."

For a second his live eye went dead as the fake one, and I thought I'd guessed wrong. Maybe he had no family. Maybe he was a priest or a reverend or whatever those people use. Maybe he was a self-hating homosexual. Maybe when you turn back the clock and iron out all those lines on his face, you're left with an ugly dude who couldn't get anyone.

"I had a wife. We had three children. Very standard stuff. What kind of information are you looking for?"

"Whatever you got. Is your wife still alive? How long were you married? Was she a good-looking woman?"

"Those are stupid questions. I don't want to discuss my wife's sexual attractiveness with you. She was a good person. She's been dead 22 years..."

He trailed off and I thought that would be all I'd get from him. But he started again, a bit less defensively.

"My oldest boy was very good at sports. I never was. They never interested me much. He must have gotten it from his mother's side. His kids too... they're all athletic from what I recall. Some were quite young the last time I saw them. That was a long time ago."

"And what about those kids? Is it God's plan for them to die young? Would you be as quick to sacrifice them as you are with strangers?"

"We're in a war, my insect friend. God may well call them. Likely as not, he already has."

everything falls apart 31

2006-04-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

I jotted that down. "Incinerate hospital."

"That doesn't seem like a Christian thing to do."

"There's a time to bring the olive branch and a time to bring the sword."

"Why are you still alive?"

He rolled his eyes. Actually, only one. The other may not've been real. He'd been through these questions a thousand times, he was bored of them, he wanted me to go research the old notes and let him get back to his torture.

"The device was defective. The blast was insufficient. It killed one small child. A few minor injuries. I lost an arm."

"Do you have any regrets?"

"That I didn't get more of them."

"Why would you do something like that?"

"It is the will of Christ."

"Christ 2 or the original?"

"I make no distinction between them."

The exchange had quickly turned testy. Confrontation is not in my nature, but I found myself swept up in it.

"Maybe it was the hand of God saving those people."

"Everything is done by God's hand. You asked why I'm still alive and I gave you the proximate causes. But the truth beyond that truth is that I'm still alive because God has another purpose for me."

Does everything happen for a reason, or does it just happen? That isn't even the right question. The real question is, do the causes precede the effects, chronologically, as we perceive them, or is it the other way around? If I brush up against a glass, knock it off a table, it shatters ... I would say the glass shattered because I knocked it over. Isaiah would say the opposite. The glass HAD to shatter. I knocked it over BECAUSE it had to shatter. He was moving through life in reverse of mine, and this was the point where our paths crossed.

everything falls apart 30

2006-04-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

"Wake up sleepyhead," The Boss bellowed. "You have company."

The old guy lifted his head. He did not seem especially happy to see me, but I took my best shot at a friendly smile. He was missing an arm, and it appeared that, hidden among the deep wrinkles on his face, he bore a few scars. I walked over to him, reached my hand out instinctively, realized his only wrist was in a cuff, and modified the gesture to an awkward wave.

"What's your name?"

He glared at me for a long time before replying. I think he was trying to creep me out, but it came off as rather goofy.

"Who do you say I am?"

"Whoever you want to be, I guess."

"They call me Isaiah."

He said it all weird and crazy-personish. Sometimes when I hear a lunatic talk, I wonder how much is genuine insanity and how much is them playing it up. But I suppose as much could be asked of me, how much is spontaneous and how much am I catering to people's perceptions of who I am?

I got out a pen and notepad, but hadn't had any time to prepare questions. I wasn't even sure if that was expected of me at this stage, or if I'd been brought here to gawk. But he began speaking without any prompt.

"So you're the latest they bring me. It appears they're truly scraping the bottom of the barrel. You are the runt of their litter of liars. They come to hear my truth, and they try to distort it. But they cannot. What I speak is beyond truth. It is the TRUE truth. And it cannot be perverted."

"Sooo ... what're you in for?"

"I attempted to incinerate a hospital."

everything falls apart 29

2006-04-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Department of Eternal Justice has a public face, and to that extent, to the extent that it's exposed to the outside world, it looks like any other department. It has a clean desk and smiling receptionist like the Department of Transportation. It has filing cabinets to show grade school field trips, like the Department of Urban Planning. But there's also a very large security guard standing beside a thin white rope, and I, for the first time, was allowed to walk past him. We walked down a long corridor that began to smell more and more like shit and piss and blood, and the faint echoes of moans and screams mingled with the whirr of an electric generator and fluorescent light hum. I walked in silence alongside The Boss, and we didn't speak. He seemed right at home. In his suit and tie and meticulous haircut, he still looked more comfortable here than he ever had at the office. Oddly, he was in his element.

His ears pricked up. We stopped short.

"Here. Wait..."

He looked off in the distance as if he could see through walls, visualize the sound and bring it into focus. We held our breath. I heard it to.

"Please stop," she screamed, "if you have an ounce of Christian compassion." Then panting, a shriek, a series of incomprehensible gurgles. "Help me to (something, something) this pain. I offer it up to the glory of God."

The Boss seemed to smirk a tiny bit. We continued walking. Her screams got louder, then faded, and wherever she was, we walked right past. We came to the last door.

"I am about to introduce you to one of the most evil monsters to walk the face of this earth."

We entered. It was a massive, near-empty room with a single chair and a shackled, frail old man.

everything falls apart 28

2006-04-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

Unholy things. That sounded ominous.

"How do I fit in to this?"

"As things currently stand, the public is largely unaware of what happens to the CLH when the Department of Eternal Justice takes them away. This leaves them unsatisfied. People see, perhaps, their friends and loved ones incinerated, the perpetrators disappear, and it goes against deep-seated notions of what's fair. They want to know there's been comeuppance. We have our own reasons for doing what we do to the prisoners, but the bonus is it might help to ease the mind of John Q. Public, and frankly it couldn't hurt newspaper sales either. We want you to tell this story. It'll be a front-page article."

Shit. Who would have thought that all you need to do to get a better job is ask for one? And now, having gotten exactly what I wanted, I found out I was scared shitless of it. I didn't know how to write an article.

"Uh, I'm flattered that you thought of me. But I think maybe there are other people more qualified to do this."

"You're right. Hardly anyone is less-qualified than you. But we've tried to commission this project I don't know how many times, and it still hasn't turned out right. These prisoners are being tortured, to put it bluntly, and it's a tricky balance, getting this message across without making people feel sorry for them. I don't know that you could do any better ... but, I figured, what the hell."

everything falls apart 27

2006-04-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

"These extremists can't offer anything to make your life better, so their strategy is to make life in the Company worse. It's immature. It's a child's response. 'I can't have it, so you won't have it either.' It's an immature response from people with an immature worldview."

I still wondered what this had to do with me.

"Do you know how to stop these people?"

Was this rhetorical or a plea for advice? I shook my head.

"Well, we do. We haven't mastered it completely, obviously, but we've made marvelous inroads into understanding the psyche of a madman. Not all suicide bombings go according to plan. Sometimes the martyrs don't die, and when they don't, we get them, and when we get them, we keep them. We keep them and we break them. Sometimes we break them for information. Sometimes we break them as a deterrent. Sometimes we let one of their little fishies go back to the pond to tell the others about life inside the net.

"You can't punish them by killing them. They want to die--they think they're going off to play harp on a cloud. You can't even punish them with conventional pain. The sane individual is motivated by pleasure and pain. He seeks out what's pleasurable. He avoids what's painful. This is an intelligence even an insect possesses. But it is lost on these wackos, who act according to their conception of what's holy. If they decide that it's holy to eat gruel and shave your head, then that's what they do. So to get to them, you have to subject them to unholy things."

everything falls apart 26

2006-04-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

"I know you watch the news. I know you see the 3-minute video segments where they interview the weeping relatives of the victims of this senseless violence. You watch them while you finish the evening's last cocktail or start brushing your teeth, while you're fluffing up your pillow or waiting for the late-night comedy shows to come on. But do you really understand what's going on here?"

Someone doesn't ask you a question like that unless they've already decided that the answer is no. I shook my head and gave him the chance to tell me.

"The CLH is a small group of wackos that wants to control the way everybody else in the world lives their lives. They want all the power, but they have nothing to offer in return. They have no faith in science, which is bad enough. What's worse is, they have no faith in MONEY. Science and money go hand in hand, because they're both based in logic. I want you to listen to this; what I'm telling you is the key to understanding the universe: Everything good comes from money, because money is inseparable from results. Religion doesn't give a shit about results. It reinterprets them to suit its purposes. If it's sunny outside, that proves there's a God because He's answering your prayers. If it's raining outside, that proves there's a God because He's punishing you for not praying hard enough. You can lie about God, but you can't lie about money. People will exchange it for what makes them happy, no matter how hard you try to stop them. Religion is an artificial attempt to tell people what they SHOULD want. Money is what people use to shape the world the way they REALLY want it.

everything falls apart 25

2006-04-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

I froze. What had I been doing a second before? Something embarrassing? Picking my nose? Scratching my balls? I drew a blank and stared at him like a psychopath.

"Now."

On the office visit I was subjected to all the typical moronic tricks those people use. His chair was higher than mine. He had an oil painting of himself on the wall. His secretary would buzz in to interrupt unnecessarily. He kept me waiting like a jackass while he shuffled papers around.

"Tell me, Cain, do you like your job?"

My working life flashed before my eyes. Calendar pages and snapshots of me falling asleep behind my desk, chatting on the phone, or flipping through a thesaurus to find synonyms for "innovative" and "exciting."

"Sure."

"You don’t get bored of it on occasion?"

What were in those papers he was holding? Maybe they weren't props after all. Maybe they were my files, my life, notes from my doctors, report cards from my grade school, receipts from every porno I'd ever rented. You always think you've got nothing to hide until you meet the man who owns all your secrets, staring at you across a desk, with a look in his eyes that says "I know you better than you know yourself. I know all the stuff you've forgotten." Who can more accurately assess a body's weight: the one who's walking around inside the flesh, or the one who's looking at the numbers on the scale?

"I love my job."

"What do you know about the CLH?"

That conjured up a whole new series of images, ghosts of the future, me being led off in handcuffs to the black hole that swallows up the bad guys. I broke down.

"OK, OK, I admit it. I'm bored with my job. But I'm not a terrorist. I don't know what that shrink told you, but it's not true. Please don't have me arrested."

"I'm not going to arrest you. I'm going to promote you."

everything falls apart 24

2006-04-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

I slept on the couch. It was a borderline call, it could've gone either way. The fight was not particularly nasty. But ties go in favor of the couch, so that's where I slept. I had difficulty concentrating the next day at work. A recent press release sat on my desk. For a new heated toilet seat, better than the old models, it heated more evenly, a wider range of adjustability, took into account the user's body temperature, smart technology. I had to find a way for this to make sense as a news story. I should've been thinking about the seat, but I was thinking more about myself. I was watching myself reading this release. Spectatoring, they call it. What was my role in all this? Did that toilet seat really need me? A fine product like this…people would find out about it sooner or later, with or without me. People would still buy it. That seat would do just fine. I was the one who had something to lose. Without this job, I had nothing. I needed that toilet seat more than it needed me.

What was I going to do with my life?

It wasn't that I had no ambition. I had no direction. I could show enthusiasm in my work, and maybe the higher-ups would take notice, and they would make me the guy who supervises the guys who write about toilet seats. Or I could go back to school, study engineering, and be the guy who designs the next generation of toilet seats. Or I could study finance, I could keep my ears open, listening for start-up ventures like this, I could be the guy who gets the money together to get the next toilet seat project off the ground. None of these options appealed to me.

My boss peeked his head through my door.

"I want to see you in my office."

everything falls apart 23

2006-04-07T13:27:00.000-07:00

I was stunned. Where did that come from? Was it some kind of trick? If it was an act, it was very well acted. Most of what she said had an undertone of anger, not only in our arguments, but in our lives. Even the mundane shit, even the small talk. She wasn't conscious of it, in all probability. It was simply her way of approaching the world. It started with the assumption that someone out there intended to stop her from getting what she wanted. It was her warning to them not to try it. The same way guard dogs growl at passersby, or growl at the wind.

Most of what she said came from anger. But not that. That came from sadness.

"Why?"

"Because I withhold sex from you."

We'd stumbled into an alternate reality where people talk about what's on their minds instead of laying traps and jockeying for position. This made me uneasy. I preferred the old way, even though I always lost, that focused on strategy and gamesmanship and ignored root causes.

"Well…" I searched for a response, "…don't do that anymore."

"Do I look like a pedophile to you? If that's what I look like, then I'm projecting the wrong image. I have no interest in fucking a child. This conversation is a perfect example. The fact that I've had to sit here and explain our relationship to you is bad enough. How you can be in a relationship all these years and be oblivious to what's going on… that's beyond me. But you don't even understand yourSELF. It's so depressing, I don't know what to say."

"OK. Explain one more thing though. If all that is true, why don’t YOU leave ME?"

"Because I'm not unhappy. Oh, sometimes I am. Like now, for example. But overall, for the most part, I'm not unhappy. No one can be happy all the time. My god, even a child should understand that."

everything falls apart 22

2006-04-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

“I was thinking about watching the end of this program.”

“Not what are you going to do this very second. What are you going to do with your life?”

People have asked me this pretty much since birth, and it’s always been women. My mother, my teachers, my girlfriends’ mothers…they all want to know. They’re also the ones who have the strongest opinions on the subject and, ironically, care the least about my own. What do I want to do? I want to provide myself with food and shelter. I want to save a little for a rainy day. I want to keep my fingers away from chainsaws. I want to find ways to occupy my leisure hours.

“That’s the whole point of therapy, isn’t it? So I can figure that out?”

She was still standing, I was still sitting, and don’t think that wasn’t intentional on her part, this positioning, putting herself above me. I thought about standing myself, but it could be a long fight. I was too lazy. She could out-stand me.

“Therapy is bullshit. It’s such bullshit, it’s hard to believe you didn’t invent it. Therapy is the way weak people get permission to do what they’ve already made up their minds to do. ‘Oh doctor, what should I do? Such and such? I can’t do that, and these are the reasons. Blah blah blah? No, that wouldn’t work either. So and so? I don’t know if I could. Would it be morally right? That’s true, doctor, I DO have to watch out for my own well being.’”

“You don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know exactly what I’m talking about. How often do you look at people and instantly see what will become of them? He’s going to go back to drinking. She’s going to cheat. He’s gay but doesn’t know it. It’s all so obvious. These people know it too, if they’re honest with themselves. But they drag their feet with all this hemming and hawing and subject everyone around them to slow torture while they try to grow some balls.”

“So why don’t YOU tell me what I’m going to do, if it’s so apparent, and save us both a lot of time?”

“You’re going to leave me.”

everything falls apart 21

2006-04-03T15:14:00.000-07:00

“It was fine.”

She stared at me. She stared through me. She stared with the bitterness of a thousand frustrated dreams.

I can remember a time when I would’ve tried to learn something from all this. When I would’ve assumed I was doing something wrong, when I would’ve tried my best to correct it. But no matter what I fixed, there was always something else wrong, it was like an old piece of shit car that was always in the shop. You get to the point where you tune out the rattling sound under the hood or the smoke coming out of the tailpipe. I was going to drive it till it died on me, then leave it by the roadside and walk.

“Did you talk about me?”

I tried to imagine what answer might be remotely acceptable. She cut me off.
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter, because whatever the subject was, it’s all about me, really. If you talked about, say, not liking your job… the subtext is, ‘But I have to put in the overtime because she wants to live in the good neighborhood. See? There you go. I just connected the dots.”

“Do I even need to be here for this? You’re providing both ends of the dialogue. You’re even providing the goddamn SUBTEXT, so I don’t see what my role is here. I’m only in the way.”

“No. You’re not needed. Your end of things is the same load of bullshit I’ve been hearing for years, so I can repeat it just as well as you can. I’m right, aren’t I? Is it the same bullshit, or do you have some new bullshit for me?”

Not really. She was right. I had the same shit to tell her as always. But if I had the same answers, it was because she had the same questions. Wasn’t that one of the definitions of insanity, to keep trying the same thing but expecting different results?

“So?” she asked, “What are you going to do?”

everything falls apart 20

2006-03-28T15:27:00.000-08:00

“Funny, with all the technological progress we’ve made, there are still such simple human failings we can’t overcome. It’s like we can understand the universe but we can’t understand ourselves.”

Yeah, Cathy, that’s funny. Do you really believe the drivel that comes gushing out of you, or do you just read the script and collect the paycheck? Or have you ever given any thought to what you do or don’t believe? Are you a whore or a blowup doll?

My wife had gotten tired of waiting for me to stop pretending not to notice that she was pretending not to be angry. She looked at me. How would it start?

“So?”

Well played. It forced me to begin the dialogue, but it didn’t give anything away. It didn’t let on whether it was angry or not, didn’t commit to pertaining to any particular topic. Its meaning could be revised and reinterpreted later, after the dust had settled.

“Hey.”

I immediately regretted that one. It was weak, it was a stalling tactic. Ten seconds in and I was already playing defense. It had none of the ingenuity of “So,” none of the evil genius.

“Are you going to be like that?”

“Like what?”

Shit. I walked right into that one. I was struggling to force her into starting it, and instead I left myself wide open. I gave her the opportunity to define me. She would get to tell me what I’m like.

“I’m only trying to show some concern for your well being. If you don’t want to share anything with me, I’m not going to beat it out of you.”

“You mean my appointment?”

“Yes, I mean your appointment. What do you think we’ve been talking about here?”

everything falls apart 19

2006-03-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

K dangled the cigarette from the corner of his mouth, daring him to knock it out.

“I’ve seen some sorry sights in my day. I’ve seen a fat boy stow away chocolate bars in his anus. I’ve seen a sex addict sneak out of bed at night to go fuck the pitbulls. But you, my friend… you are the sorriest. If I hadn’t already used up my tears on WORTHWHILE human beings, I might even shed one for you.”

K nodded. “I appreciate your concern. Honestly. But I have to tell you, I’m doing fine. I’ve never been better. I’m a little worried about YOU, though. Because you want to hit me so badly, I mean you’re just this close. That’s what you do to these kids when the cameras aren’t on, right? You so desperately want to strike me, and I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such pain in another human being before, that level of pain from unfulfilled desire. You’re lovesick for violence, and I’m afraid you might do yourself in like a frustrated Romeo.”

The stoner boy snorted, holding in a chuckle, and the chubby girl stared fixedly at her shoes. They cut abruptly to commercial.

When we returned to regularly scheduled programming, we no longer saw footage of K. Instead, the hostess was seated beside the author of the book “Attitude Is Everything: A User’s Guide to Life.” They were discussing K’s condition. The hostess opined, “Obviously, this is an extreme and unique case, but we all see lesser examples in other people, perhaps even in our loved ones, the tendency to stubbornly persist in self-defeating behavior. How do you help someone who doesn’t want help?”

“Gee, Cathy, that’s the question people have been asking probably since the dawn of time. I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that. One key is persistence. Everyone, no matter how self-assured they seem, has moments of doubt. And when that door cracks open, you have to be there to push your way in.”

everything falls apart 18

2006-03-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

That was the eleventh season, so the “star” of the show, the renovation project, was a man they called “Exhibit K.” He didn’t appear to be as bad off as some of the earlier contestants. He was young. He had both his eyes and all his limbs. Exhibits A through J, after years of eating trash and sleeping on newspapers, were happy to be given a nice apartment and a boatload of money, and they were entirely willing to go along with the program. Exhibit K, thus far, was noncompliant. They gave him diet pills, capped teeth, tranquilizers, and mood stabilizers. He wanted to go back to the sewer.

They’d had him declared mentally unfit to make his own decisions, so they were able to hold him against his will. But it was a clear dilemma for the producers. It did not reflect well on the nicotine patchmakers that he continued to smoke. It did not boost night school attendance when he sat through their classes and still couldn’t hold down a job. The sponsors weren’t happy, but how do you cancel the most popular show on television?

Tonight, in desperation, they opted to send him to boot camp. It was a tough-love retreat for troubled teens, but no such services existed for adults. So K, a hairweaved, double-breast-suited, chainsmoking 30-something, slouched in formation alongside a chubby, black-nailpolished 13-year-old girl and a dreadlocked, red-eyed 15-year-old boy. The sergeant paced back and forth from one end of the line to the other. He stopped in front of K. “What the hell have we got here?”

everything falls apart 17

2006-03-23T09:36:00.000-08:00

I got home, sat down, and turned on the television. I knew my wife was angry with me for seeing a psychiatrist. She didn’t actually say anything about it; it was the pre-fight fight. She would say it with her body language, goad me into bringing it up, and then I would be the instigator. I wasn’t biting. I would pretend to be engrossed in whatever was onscreen and oblivious to anything around me. She would pretend to be doing her best to hold in her rage, and I would pretend not to notice that something was wrong. We’d lived together long enough that no one was fooling anyone with this routine. But we’d developed this method over time, and we’d been at it so long that it had become our ritual, our preferred form of pregame warmup, the opening ceremony to the war.

The show I feigned fascination with was called “Second Chance.” Generally speaking, there was no such thing as unemployment. After school you were given a job. If you got fired, you were Out, and you never came back. But occasionally someone would slip through the cracks. Maybe rather than getting fired, one day you simply stopped showing up for work. If you could manage to hide yourself away (living in the sewers, say), if you were careful not to be a nuisance, they wouldn’t spend much effort trying to find you. Once a season, “Second Chance” would root around down there, dig someone up, and rehabilitate them. They would find the most wretched example possible. The fattest, the stupidest, the craziest. The more hopeless the case, the more interesting the show.

everything falls apart 16

2006-03-21T12:52:00.000-08:00

The CLH, if it did exist, was a militant Christian group. Christ’s Little Helpers resided somewhere in the Outside, but they apparently made their way in from time to time, and when they did, they engaged in random murder. Was this supposed to turn the people against the Shareholders for not providing adequate protection? Was it supposed to turn the Shareholders against the people by making everyone a potential suspect? I don’t know. All it really seemed to do was make people avoid the bus.

The CLH was supposedly founded by a man named Christ 2. If he was a real person, he must certainly be dead by now. Christ 2, at one time, worked for the Company. Back in the day, a certain amount of religion was considered to be good for business. It kept folks honest. It gave them something to do. But there was a fundamental rift. Life in the Company revolved entirely around money, and Christ 2 believed in should revolve entirely around God. Maybe there was a time when philosophical disagreements like this would be settled with debate. Books would be written pro, books would be written con, and people would read these books. They would use them to form opinions. It doesn’t work that way anymore. Now opinions are taken by force. Christ 2 was exiled to the Outside, he formed a cult, and ever since, things have been exploding. People on the Inside are still allowed to believe in God if they like. But they’d be wise not to seem too enthusiastic about it.

everything falls apart 15

2006-03-20T10:10:00.000-08:00

“Anything you say in there goes directly to your boss. Why would they need to bug you? You walk right in and offer up your dirtiest secrets.”

“What, that I don’t like my job? Is that really any secret? Who the fuck DOES like their job?”

I’d started walking away. Roger dropped his paper and followed.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not any good at your job. You probably could be if you wanted to, but you don’t try very hard. Luckily for you, your job is so unimportant, nobody even notices that you do it poorly. You fly under the radar. So don’t fuck it up by doing anything to call attention to yourself.”

We walked past a hot dog cart. I pointed and gave the vendor a questioning eyebrow arch.

“Two rats and a bubble.”

I handed him two shocking pink bills with Mickey Mouse’s picture on the front, and a coin engraved with Mr. Bubble. Roger kept mum till I’d gotten my food and we’d moved safely out of the guy’s earshot.

“Let me ask you something… who do you think’s been blowing up those buses? It’s not the CLH. There’s no such thing as the CLH, and if there was, they’d never make it past the border, and if they could, what would attacking a bus accomplish? I’ll tell you who does have something to gain. The car manufacturers don’t want people taking public transportation. The Shareholders want people afraid of what’s on the other side of that border. The middle management wants to kill off the least productive segment of the population, and how do those people get around? The bus.”

I was at my door. I turned and waved goodbye.

“Listen,” he said, “don’t go back to that therapist. If you need to talk to someone, talk to me.”

everything falls apart 14

2006-03-14T15:00:00.000-08:00

He lowered the paper in the dramatic cloak-and-dagger way he was so fond of. It was Roger.

Roger was fat, and I don’t think he bathed much. He always wore a baseball cap and I don’t think he ever washed it. He wore a windbreaker and sneakers.

“So how did the session go? What did you tell him?”

“The normal stuff. My mother. Potty training. What a cigar means to me.”

“You didn’t talk about work, did you?”

I shrugged.

“I can’t believe you voluntarily saw a shrink.”

Roger was a conspiracy theorist. I never got that. OK, sure, there are powerful people in the world, and no doubt they collaborate to achieve certain ends, and they don’t make their collaborations public knowledge. In that sense, practically everything that happens in the world is a conspiracy. But I don’t get the theory part. All this wild conjecture. It’s like religion. You look around and think, “Either all this stuff came from somewhere, or it came from nowhere.” One explanation makes as much sense as the other. I had always been inclined to believe the latter, but if you’re inclined to the former, if you say “There must’ve been Something very powerful to make all this,” there’s nothing crazy about that basic premise. But how you go from there to some elaborate story about angels and devils and virgins and carpenters, that was beyond me.

“Why? Have I been brainwashed? Have I been bugged?”

everything falls apart 13

2006-03-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

I was almost home, but took one last detour. I made it a point to cut through the park. It was a smallish patch of indiscriminately chosen foliage. It was densely stuffed and dark and the only place where, just for a moment, you could forget about the city.

Most people avoided it altogether. The crime rate in the area was almost nonexistent, but if something WERE to happen to you, it would happen in the park. The hardcore criminals had been weeded out pretty effectively. But the park was a place where an otherwise upright citizen might do something rash. He might have a momentary lapse. It felt like the kind of place where you could get away with something. It felt like there was no one watching you. And if you saw something you wanted (whatever that may be) but weren’t entitled to, you might decide this was your one chance to go ahead and take it anyway. Or if you’d already done such a thing, here was as good a place as any to conceal the evidence.

I loved the park, but it made no sense to me, purely from an efficiency standpoint. This was valuable real estate that wasn’t being put to any apparent money-making purpose. If anything, it was a magnet for trouble. It seemed to exist purely as some sort of test.

"Hey!" I heard someone half-yell, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I looked around. There was a guy on a bench hidden behind his newspaper. It had to’ve been him.

He said, "I thought I’d find you here."

everything falls apart 12

2006-03-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

The sidewalk was divided into a series of panels, each about the length of one stride. With every new step you’d take, a panel several yards ahead, a comfortable viewing distance, would light up with advertising. The words changed every few seconds, maybe more, maybe less, depending on how long the text was and how much time they thought it would take you to read it. Like this one, for instance: “When a car and pedestrian collide, the results aren’t pretty.” And beneath it was a picture of a very mangled body. There were jagged bones sticking out of his skin. There were gashes on his face. There was blood in his mouth. There was blood in a puddle around him. It saturated his hair, plastering it to his scalp. The words changed:

“In this city alone, there were nearly a thousand fatal accidents last year.”

It was accompanied with a graph, month by month, to chart the rising death toll.

“There are two kinds of people in this world: the dominated…”

The graph was now a heart monitor. It grew slower, slower, slower… flatlined.

“…and the Dominator.”

It was the newest automobile offering, flashing not just on the sidewalk, but projected onto the building walls on either side. An enormous metal hulk, larger than life, shot head on, its wide chrome grille curled like an evil smile. It looked like the last thing you’d see before you ended up like the guy in panel one.
“Don’t leave home without one.”

everything falls apart 11

2006-03-07T09:38:00.000-08:00

Everything is the way it is for a reason, and to question it, to suggest some other way is better, is to reject the entire concept of progress. This world, this life, is the culmination of billions of minds over thousands of years thinking, trying, failing, refining, exploring every possibility and finding what works and what doesn't. If I'm surrounded by these mammoth towers, it's because someone tried tepees and someone tried huts and someone tried igloos, and this is what worked best. The evolutionary trajectory of our species as a whole has been to approach maximum efficiency. It's like clockwork, the lives and interactions of humans, it's like a machine. It's a machine that has become so complex, no one person could possibly understand it. So who am I to say, even for example, that these streets are too narrow? Don't I realize that wider streets have been tried and they don't work? If the streets are this width, it's because there used to be wider streets and there used to be narrower streets, and this has been found to be the optimum size. Would I have any concept of how changing this width would effect everything else, the domino effect it would set in motion? To say these streets are too narrow is to say that I know better than the collective intelligence of every other human that has ever lived. And that, clearly, is the epitome of insanity.

everything falls apart 10

2006-03-06T09:20:00.000-08:00

I left the office no better or worse than I was when I came in. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and headed in a random direction. I was headed home, eventually, but determined to take the least-direct route I could think of. The streets were lined with massive buildings. You could not see the tops, and you could not walk away and see the tops from a distance because there would be other buildings blocking your view. I stopped for a minute, looked straight up, and made myself dizzy. For all I knew, there were no tops. For all I knew, they stretched to the edge of the universe and came back out the other side. You could hop in the elevator and take an infinite ride in a perpetual loop.

Everything that happens happens in these buildings. They hold apartments, grocery stores, theaters, hospitals, brothels, orphanages. You could be born in one and never have the need to leave it. I looked up and looked down one floor at a time and wondered which had the taverns and which had the schools. They seemed as interchangeable, these activities and functions, as the anonymous gray walls that contained them. They have furnaces too, somewhere in there, and when you die the only question is what to do with the ashes.

everything falls apart 9

2006-03-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

He asked, “Isn’t that an overly fatalistic way to view the world? I don’t see my life as a plane, flying off to God knows where and taking me along for the ride. If life IS a plane, if that’s how you choose to look at it, then you’re the pilot. You choose what direction it goes and how high it goes and how fast it goes. You don’t think you have control over your own life. You think someone, or someTHING, is controlling you. And that’s a product of your sickness.”

Oh doctor, doctor, doctor... here we go again. We’re having a nice conversation and you haul out that word. Sickness. You have the power, you’ve been given the authority, to make that judgment about me, and that’s your trump card. You play it when things aren’t going your way, and you end the game in your favor. You think I have control over my own life? I don’t even have control over this discussion.

“I choose where my life is going? Can I marry a movie star? Can I live to be 100? Can I be president of this company?”

“Control doesn’t mean you snap your fingers and get whatever you want. Control means taking responsibility for your actions, dealing with adversity when it comes along, and taking it upon yourself to find the solution to your problems.”

I sighed. “Doc, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m not saying it’s impossible to have any impact on my own destiny. I can achieve of fail within a certain narrow range of options. But there are people in this world who CAN snap their fingers and get whatever they want. THAT’S control.”

everything falls apart 8

2006-03-02T09:43:00.000-08:00

“Why would you marry someone who doesn’t care what you have to say?”

Why. Why, why, why. They’re always asking you why, these doctors. Why do you do this and why do you do that. How can I remember why I’ve done these things? It’s hard enough to understand myself in the present tense. How can I possibly recount the tangled mess of conflicting emotions, practical considerations, thoughts I couldn’t even admit to myself… how can I dredge that all up and then be expected to remember the tipping point, that one little thing that sent the scales tilting in one direction and set my life on its particular course? The best I can do is step outside it all together, look at myself as a movie character, and ask myself, “Why would someone like this do something like that?”

“Imagine,” I told him, “you find yourself on a plane. And you find that the plane is taking off. And you don’t know where it’s going. You rush to the door and fling it open to let yourself out. But you’re ten feet off the ground, and you think to yourself, “I’ll twist my ankle if I jump from this height.” Then a moment later you’re thirty feet off the ground and you think “I’ll break every bone in my body if I jump from this height.” Before you know it, you’re a thousand feet up. If you jumped now, you’d be an unrecognizable puddle on the pavement. And part of you thinks that may not be so bad.”

everything falls apart 7

2006-02-28T10:06:00.000-08:00

I said as much as this to my psychiatrist. I said, “I think there’s something about the modern world that cuts off every potential avenue for happiness. At best, we’re offered a reasonable shot at contentment. If we’re willing to lower our expectations, the world will meet us halfway.” He scribbled in his notebook. What was he scribbling? Was he writing down my thought? Did he care about my thought? Or had he heard it all before? Maybe this thought was so common it had its own code number and he was just jotting down the digits.

A psychiatrist is the last person who’d be receptive to the idea that there might be problems a pill couldn’t solve. He will not be open to the contention that the world is an inherently bad place and we’re not supposed to like it. A common bit of folk wisdom is “You can’t change the world, but you can change yourself.” This is more or less what a doctor would tell you, though he’d use bigger words to do it. If you want to change the world, he can’t help you.

“Take my job, for example. I am supposedly a writer. I supposedly write for a newspaper. But really all I do is take press releases and reword them so they no longer sound like press releases. I’m really more of a processor. None of it is me. None of it has anything to do with what I have to say.”

“Why is it so important,” he asked, “that the anonymous readers of this publication hear what you have to say? Maybe your friends care about what you have to say. Maybe your wife cares about what you have to say.”

I laughed. “My wife doesn’t care about what I have to say.”

He didn’t jot that down, for some reason.

“She might ask me what colors look good in the kitchen, or when we’ll start saving for a new car. She cares about the words I utter to the extent that they further her own interests. Just like the goddamn Company.”

everything falls apart 6

2006-02-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

So you go through the day feeling like you have it all. You have food. You are safe from criminals. You have a nice place to live. If you want prostitutes, you have prostitutes, and if you want a wife you probably have a wife. And yet you’re not happy. Therefore, the problem must be you. You are depressed. Only depressed people can have everything and still not be satisfied. You are depressed because you “have depression.” Just like people who “have the flu,” it is a sickness, it is a problem in you. But you can be fixed. They have pills for that. They have more kinds of pills than you could imagine in your wildest dreams. If one pill doesn’t fix you, they have another, and if that doesn’t work, another after that. For every pill you reject, two more are invented. They have enough to keep this going until you die. You begin to wonder if happiness really exists. Maybe what you are feeling is happiness and you don’t recognize it. Maybe what you are imagining happiness to be is some ridiculous unattainable product of your imagination. Maybe you made it all up. It is scientifically proven. You have everything, people who have everything are happy, therefore you are happy. If you are not happy, you are mentally unbalanced and you need pills to make you happy. If you take your pills you are, by the medical definition, now happy. And if you don’t think so, you are the one who is wrong.

everything falls apart 5

2006-02-23T16:32:00.000-08:00

The only way it differs from any other free market is access to information. There are no poets in this "country." All the writing that gets produced is commissioned by the Company, and It doesn't have any use for poetry, it has no value, it's not a consumer product. Let me correct myself: There are "poems" in a sense, there are rhyming stanzas on greeting cards. There are rhyming stanzas no better than greeting cards that are for whatever reason elevated to "art." Those who ply this trade go on daytime TV shows and speak to desperate fat housewives, sad women chained to their husbands for their survival. We have this, I guess, but we have no poetry. We have nothing that's not a commodity. We have nothing that isn't intended to make you a more productive member of society. We have only lame attempts to soothe you. We have nothing to make you feel worse. We have nothing to make you wonder if you're not as happy as you think you are. We have low-budget horror films, but we have nothing to traumatize you. We have nothing to make you wake up in the middle of the night sweating and crying "Fuck, is this all there is, because if it is, let me just slit my throat now and be done with it." And there's nothing to make you aware that other people might feel that way too.

everything falls apart 4

2006-02-21T10:39:00.000-08:00

Who runs a company? That’s easy—the CEO. But who controls the CEO? Shareholders. I wouldn’t even venture a guess as to who those might be. That’s who gets all the REAL money, though. The money that circulates among everyone else, that’s just the operating cost of the business. The important thing is what makes its way up to the shareholders. Any good CEO will keep operating costs low while maximizing the output of goods and services.

Sorry, I know all this is getting rather dry… I only mention it because you might think that if a single company owns everything, there’d be no need for advertising. Actually, it’s exactly the opposite. Everything is covered in wall-to-wall advertising. It’s still a free market on the small scale. Say there are two watchmakers. The one who makes more watches makes more money, so they’re both busting their asses and turning out a shitload of watches. The more watches there are overall, the more watches there are that make their way up to the shareholders. They don’t give a fuck which watchmaker gets richer, they only care that the competition increases the overall production.

everything falls apart 3

2006-02-17T14:21:00.000-08:00

What do you really need a government for, anyway? Roads and infrastructure? What if you had enough money to build your own roads and infrastructure? Police and armies? What if you had enough money for your own police and armies? What if you had more money than the rest of the country put together? Then you could buy bigger armies and better guns than the government. And that would mean you're in control. There'd be no need to overthrow the government; it would shrivel up and die on its own.

In almost any country, there are vast stretches of land that aren't quite so useful, and therefore sparsely populated. And there are tiny portions of land that are advantageous, and therefore densely populated. These portions grow up instead of out. Towering skyscrapers go up so everyone can fit. You can get a whole lot accomplished in a little stretch of land. So if you were the biggest company in the country, if you were (practically speaking) the ONLY company in the country, if you were The Company, it would be more efficient to concentrate your energies defending that small stretch of land, the areas nearest the coast, and abandon the rest of the country.

The borders would have to be strictly one way. You don't know what kind of lunatics are roaming around out there. So once a person leaves, they can't be let back in. This conveniently turns The Outside into a dumping ground for undesirables. There's no need to build penitentiaries. There's no need to tolerate homeless people. If you're not working, what good are you to The Company?

everything falls apart 2

2006-02-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

The second I put my pen down, this is no longer of the present. It becomes part of the past. I don’t know you, future reader. I don’t know if you’re reading this tomorrow or ten years from now or a thousand years from now. What’s your world like? Do you have governments and presidents? That’s usually how it’s done. That’s not how it works here, but these things change, I know it. History runs in cycles. Do you have private industries and a free market? We used to have businesses and we used to have government.

There were big businesses and small ones, and the big businesses swallowed up the small ones, just like big bugs eat little bugs and big fish eat little fish. You ever see those cartoons where a snake swallows, say, an alarm clock, and it ends up with an alarm-clock-shaped bulge in its belly? That’s how these acquisitions went. You wound up with something that wasn’t much good as a snake or an alarm clock. The alarm-clock snake got sealed in a can that was scarfed down by a billy goat who got sucked into a vacuum cleaner, and on and on it went until it ended up on the dinner plate of the giant turtle that holds up the world.

This hodge-podge behemoth, this Frankenstein company, did have one thing going for it: stuff. It had a lot of stuff. There was barely any stuff left for anybody else. And even though an alarm-clock snake doesn’t seem terribly useful, when you reach a certain scale, you find someone out there who needs one.

everything falls apart 1

2006-02-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

Call me Ishmael. Not because it’s my name, but because it’s my alias. Or what is it they call it when you’re born again… your Christian name? Whatever you call it, it’s still an alias. You’re hiding your old life from God, running away from your sins and mistakes, and assuming a new identity. That’s one nice thing about religion. It has all these loopholes, all these do-overs. Ishmael was the less-favored son, was he not? Isaac begat Israel, and he got all the land. What did Ishmael get?

Or maybe you should call me Abraham. He was tested by God. God makes men and then, for some reason, He likes to test them. He’s like a mad scientist in that way. He builds His Frankenstein monster, fires it up, and says “Let’s see what happens.” If He has to go through a few abortions along the way, so be it. Send the creature out among the villagers, and if he frightens them, if they chase him with torches and pitchforks, throw him on the scrap heap and start again.

Abraham passed, I guess. Good for him. I don’t think I could’ve been so quick with the knife.

Or call me Cain. Cain was jealous, petty… and he lost his home because of it. Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden and sent somewhere crappier; poor Cain was even kicked out of the crappy place. Sure Cain was jealous. He was less capable. What the fuck did God expect?

my blogs

2006-02-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

You may notice there haven't been any lately. There are many reasons for that. But I do want to get back in the habit of writing again, so I'm going to try something different. Starting Feb. 14 (just because it will be an easy date to remember) I'm going to give myself one year to write another novel. It's inspired by that "Write a Novel in a Month" contest (though there's no fucking way I could do it in a month), so I'm going to use their length/definition of 50,000 words. I will write installments four times a week and post them here.

I started this project a couple of years ago as a script, and I got about a 1/3 of the way through it. But other than serving as a partial outline, the script won't be much use to me. There are some similarities between the plot and my present life situation, so I would caution anyone who knows me not to read too much into this (though I tried the same proviso with "Lovesong," to no avail). Most of the key plot points are things I thought up years ago.

This is a horrible way to write a novel. I've never written anything from start to finish before; I always skip around. I'll be pretty much forced to stay consistent with ideas I lay out in the beginning, even if I get to a point where I'd rather revise them. I have to post on a near-daily basis, so if I sit down to write one day and only shit comes out, then shit is what you'll see. The final product won't even be as polished as what's usually called a rough draft.

That pretty much covers it, I guess. The novel is called "Everything Falls Apart."

quick read

2006-01-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

I finished the Greene novel already. One particular moving passage, on page 75, where a wife is writing about how she can't tell her husband how she feels: "I mustn't break down because I must protect Henry. Oh, to hell with Henry, to hell with Henry. I want somebody who'll accept the truth about me and doesn't need protection. If I'm a bitch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a bitch and a fake?"

Maybe I just like it because my dad's name is Henry.

graham greene

2005-12-30T11:18:00.000-08:00

I'm lazy again, so I'm just posting a quote from a book I'm reading now. "The End of the Affair", page 36:

"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence.... But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity."

christmas 2005

2005-12-27T13:07:00.000-08:00

Christmas Day I went to Rush Presbyterian hospital to visit my Aunt Stell. She had fallen in the bathroom Christmas Eve, and she's very frail. My mom had 13 siblings, and Stell is the last one left. Mom cried on the way there because her family is all gone. She almost never cries in front of me.

Rush Presbyterian is where, almost 30 years ago, mom had her breakdown.

"You know that show Chico and the Man?" she asked. "Freddie Prinze had just killed himself, and I thought that sounded like a good idea. You were 3 or 4. We had to do art therapy there, and I made you Bert and Ernie figurines. I don't think you understood what was going on. When it was time for you to leave, you started crying. Do you remember that?"

Not all the details, but I remember the Bert and Ernie. It's one of my earliest memories.

We were there a long time with Stell. At some point, I walked outside to get some air. It was misty and overcast, just an overwhelming grayness trying to swallow the landscape.

Rush Presbyterian, Cook County, and UIC are three massive hospitals located next to one another. Together they make up a district called the Medical Center. It's like a little town made entirely of hospitals. There's a lot of public art in Chicago, and there were sculptures on the grounds. One was clumps of shiny metal constructed to resemble a seated figure. It had started rusting along the edges. One arm was stuck out at an odd angle. Maybe it was originally a mother and child, and the baby had gone missing. Or maybe the sculpture was bored and checking its watch.

On the way back home mom put on a polka tape.

"Your Uncle Rich used to tell me I listen to too much hillbilly music and that's why I'm so depressed. He said I should listen to polka. That's happy music."

This particular polka was titled "You'll Never Be Lonely If You Let Me Love You."

"When I listen to this one," she said, "I think of two things: your father and Jesus. I don't let either one of them love me too much."

piss on you

2005-12-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

There's a Dave Chappelle routine where he talks about the age of consent. Some celebrity, I think it was R Kelley, was in legal trouble for sex with a 15-year-old, and it involved a golden shower. Chappelle's line was "I think 15 is old enough to know whether or not you want to be pissed on. If you're 15 and you still don't know if you want to be pissed on, you're never gonna make it in life."

I don't know about that. I've never pissed on a girl and I don't have any interest in it, but I'm not sure if I would've known that at 15. You hear about people doing it. If they're doing it, they must like it. If they like it, why wouldn't I like it?

The problem, if you're the girl in this scenario, is once you try that, you pretty much have to get pissed on for life. Nobody wants to date the reformed piss girl. Certainly no one wants to marry the reformed piss girl. If I learned that my wife had been pissed on in her past, I would have to piss on her whether I wanted to or not. I couldn't risk running into some guy on the street some day... "Oh yeah, I know your wife. We used to go out. How do you like pissing on her? What, she doesn't do that anymore? Sorry to hear that buddy. It was fantastic."

p.j. o'rourke

2005-12-22T10:58:00.000-08:00

I just read this quote and I liked it (probably because I've had writer's block lately):

"People think writing is easy, but just ask them to sit down and write a thank you note to their aunt, or something, and they turn purple."

evilest-looking santa ever

2005-12-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/21/051221182323.6y8q01ja.html

email from mom

2005-12-20T15:29:00.000-08:00

I'm too lazy to write anything today, so I'm just going to post an email my mom sent me yesterday (entitled WHAT A WEEKEND!!!):

Decided (against my better judgment) to go on the Spirit of Chicago cruise as I was invited by Betty Tyndal (ukelele friend) as a "gift"

well, first I had to go to her office early cuz rush hour traffic; then we piled in mutual cars so that parking at Navy Pier ($22-25 WHICH I PAID SINCE SOMEONE ELSE DROVE)

the event was pleasant: xmas decor, good music, good food, and I knew all the people as I have often been to Betty's office (it was her company xmas party) at 11:30 pm i was driven to my car and the driver waited until i took off for brookfield

now comes the fun part!!!! on the eisenhower around cicero i get a tire blow out (cicero and the eisenhower is a black neighborhood and it is MIDNIGHT AND FREEZING)...so I decide to pray out loud, stay on the right lane with hazard lights on and drive on my rim cuz by now the tire is completely shredded...the Lord was good to me, I got to the ER room of Loretto Hospital (which is where you were born, by the way)

the security guard yelled: "Lady, you cannot leave your car in the emergency lot"

i responded: "Look at my left front tire; I've been riding on my rim for five blocks and I call this an emergency. Right now I need a cab and will be back in the morning to retrieve my car with a mechanic....UNLESS YOU WOULD LIKE TO CHANGE THE TIRE FOR ME, SIR"

Then comes the horrible part of trying to FIND A TAXI CAB....YUCK...wouldn't you think guys would be out there driving cabs?????no, sir...guess they feel most people have cars and dummy people would not go out on a crappy freezing nite like this

after ONE HOUR of waiting for the Brookfield Cab to arrive, I called back and said: "Lady, you said 1/2 hour and it is now one hour; if you driver does not arrive shortly, I will take a room in the psychiatric ward of this hospital"

She replied: "I realize that is a black neighborhood, but we only have one man available, so be patient" I was concerned cuz I know that they do not run cabs from 1:00 a. m. to 4:00 a.m. cuz of the drunks, etc.

NOW AREN'T YOU GLAD I EMAILED THIS INSTEAD OF YAPPING IT ON THE PHONE???
love,mom

brimstone

2005-12-15T15:17:00.000-08:00

There is a very attractive high school girl in the coffeeshop. She's wearing a very tight T-shirt. And I'm desperately trying not to be a sleazebag, I'm trying not to stare. I actually have my head turned all the way to the right and tilted down. I'm gazing out the glass door onto the parking lot. There's smoke on the ground. There must be a cigarette butt just out of view. The asphalt is cracked, and it looks like the fires of hell seeping through.

...in the world

2005-12-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

My wife held my son on her lap and they locked gazes.

"You're the cutest little boy in the world. Yes you are. How did I get so lucky, to get the cutest little boy in the world?"

And he smiled and laughed. Sometimes he laughed so hard, it would build into a high-pitched squeal.

She asked me, "Do you think when you were that age you acted that way?"

I don't know, but I'm certain my mother never talked that way to me. I know she never called me the cutest little boy in the world.

There's a Seinfeld episode where someone is yelling at a very-nervous George. They say, "You think you're pretty special, don't you?"

And George said "No, no! My mother always told me I wasn't special."

I think that actually is something my mother used to say. Her theory was that the world is a hard place. Strangers aren't going to treat you as if you're anything special, so you might as well get used to it.

The funny thing is, my wife is not typically one for effusive praise. She's certainly never told me I'm the cutest boy in the world. She talks that way to her cat and to her son--in other words, only to living creatures who can't understand her. I wonder what she'll have to say to him when he is 5.

ways a two-and-a-half-month-old is different than a newborn

2005-12-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

Here's the progress report:

He can hold his head up for a few moments on his own.

He can smile and laugh if you make a funny face at him.

He can make other noises and expressions that at least give the appearance of a range of emotions. He furrows his brow, he looks wide-eyed and gapes, he sighs...

He can lay in his chair and watch things going on, and he appears to be interested in them.

breaking up is hard to do

2005-12-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

I read at Abbot's Habit last night. As I was waiting for my turn to go on, an old guy sat down next to me.

"I'm sad," he said. "My girlfriend just broke up with me."

He was in his 60s. I couldn't tell if he was homeless. He wore a fisherman's cap and had a purple pager stuck to the brim. I'm certain the pager was nonfunctional, that he only liked it because it lit up.

"That's too bad," I said. "How long was she your girlfriend for?"

"An hour."

"Well, sometimes people grow apart."

"We kissed. She let me touch her everywhere. She was from Iceland. She used to be a model."

"How long ago?"

"I don't know. I told her she could still be a model. I said I wanted to photograph her. I do G-rated photos. I don't show private parts in my photos."

"Good for you."

"I told her she could see other people. Or if she just wants to be alone... that's fine too. We can still be friends."

"I'm glad it was amicable."

"I need to tighten up. Some people need to loosen up, I need to tighten up."

reviews are in

2005-12-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

I got my first significant review--from Grumpy Old Bookman, a website the Guardian called "One of the top ten literary blogs." He did not recommend the book, but there had some pretty nice things to say all the same. Go here to check it out:
http://grumpyoldbookman.blogspot.com/

cozy fan tooty

2005-11-30T15:45:00.000-08:00

-Cozy fan tooty.
-The same to you. What does that mean?
-That's fuck you in Latin.
-That's not Latin.
-O.K., so why should it mean anything? Cozy fan tooty, that's just an expression.

That was pg 645 of "The Recognitions." I'm slowly plodding my way through. Maybe I'll be done by Xmas.

I saw Jarhead over the weekend. I liked it very much, though it could've been shorter. But what I was most struck by was these soldiers who want nothing more than to get back to their houses, their wives, their children. It makes me feel like I don't appreciate mine enough.

i need a haircut

2005-11-29T14:22:00.000-08:00

I think it's time to get a trim. A stranger on the street just stopped me and asked where he can buy pot.

castrate me

2005-11-28T07:57:00.000-08:00

I'm the only one on the 11th floor at the moment. I stormed out of the house at 5:45 a.m. after a fight with my wife and have been sitting in my office ever since.

I think I want to get a vasectomy. My wife wants to have more children, but as much as I love my son, I never, ever, ever, ever want to do this again. I'm afraid the day will come when I will forget how difficult a newborn is.

I've always been afraid a vasecomty would have psycological repercussions and I would no longer be able to get it up. But I've reached the point where I no longer care. They might as well cut my dick off altogether for all the use I've been getting out of it.

page 605 of "The Recognitions"

2005-11-22T13:46:00.000-08:00

"If you're doing something you hate, quit it while you still hate it..."

my parents, days 2 & 3

2005-11-21T09:17:00.000-08:00

1. I gave mom a tour of my backyard and pointed out a rosemary bush. I tore a piece off and started chewing it.
"Is that edible?" she asked.
"Yes. It's rosemary. Try a piece."
"No thank you. I have a friend named Rosemary. I don't eat rosemary."

2. Mom commented that I have more body hair than my dad. She said she pointed this out to him, and he told her "That's because he plants it."
"You mean like a seed?" she asked.
"Yeah. People in California do that. You ask him next time."
So she asked me if I plant it. (I do not, for the record.)

3. Dad could not think of the word for Doritos. So he called them "Mexican potato chips."

4. The craziest story of all... this one requires a little background. Mom's friend Lynn has a son on death row. He was high on coke and killed his twin infant babies by throwing them against a wall. This was about ten years ago and he's still sitting in prison. Mom visits him from time to time and writes him letters. I'm sure she's the only one who does--I remember having to spend an afternoon with him when he and I were both kids. I found him to be an unpleasant person, and this was even before he started killing children. Anyway, he wrote mom a letter last week saying he has a crush on her and has been dreaming about her.

granma & grandpa

2005-11-18T13:07:00.000-08:00

When I got to work this morning, there was a message from my wife saying, "Your mom just called in a panic, talking a mile a minute... something about the shuttle they took to the airport. The door won't open. Your dad's stuck inside. They're calling a locksmith. They're afraid they might miss their plane..."

So they haven't even arrived yet and already there's a goofy story about their visit.

I have now reached the pinnacle of adulthood--my parents are flying into town to visit my son and I'm having them over to my house for Thanksgiving. If I haven't achieved maturity by the end of this week, it'll probably never happen for me.

divine brown revisited

2005-11-15T13:29:00.000-08:00

I wrote this earlier in the year, to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Divine Brown's rise to fame. Since 2005's almost up, I figure I should post it somewhere...

I remember back when I was in college, there were a lot of things we didn’t understand about the real world and the way it works. Somewhere on that list was the question of why Hugh Grant cheated on Elizabeth Hurley with Divine Brown. A quick recap to get everyone back up to speed: Elizabeth Hurley was, at the time, the most beautiful woman in the world, Hugh Grant was her dashing movie star boyfriend, and Divine Brown was… NOT the most beautiful woman in the world. She was a hooker who got busted giving Grant a blowjob in a car on Sunset Boulevard. So that was the basis for all the late-night comic jokes: Why would Hugh Grant pay to have sex with Divine Brown when he’s got Elizabeth Hurley at home?

But the tabloid-readers only got to see the end result. We missed out on the whole buildup. I’m sure it started innocently enough.

“Hey Elizabeth, listen, this is kind of awkward, but I’ve been thinking … you love me, don’t you?"

“Of course, sweetie.”

“What do you think about giving me a blowjob in a car on Sunset Boulevard?”

“Excuse me?”

“I know, it’s kind of crazy, right? But it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately, and it’s a real turn on.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re something, aren’t you? Where do you get ideas like that? It’s those movies you watch, isn’t it? Next thing I know, you’ll be wanting me to bring home a strap-on.”

“Naw, I told you, I’m not into that shit. I rented that one on accident. The title was misleading. No, this is just a one-time thing. Something different, you know.”

“So that’s it. You’re bored of me. Well, I get it now. Forget it. I’m not going to do it.”

“Come on, baby. You’re always telling me you wish I’d talk about what’s on my mind.”

“I didn’t mean that shit.”

“Well, that’s the kind of stuff I think about. It’s not like you haven’t done it before in the bedroom. It’s just the location that’s different. I don’t see how something that’s perfectly fine in one place can suddenly become an awful, dirty thing when you move it to a different location.”

“OK, maybe I can get on board with this. But if I do this for you, you’ve got to do something for me.”

“Oh, absolutely. I’ve always said I wished you’d come up with more kinky shit. Anything. Let’s hear it.”

“I want you to do the dishes from now on.”

“The dishes? This is bullshit, man. What do the dishes have to do with getting a blowjob in a car on Sunset Boulevard?”

“It’s give and take, that’s all. You’ve always said you want to hear what’s on my mind. The dishes are what’s on my mind.”

“I’ve never said I want to hear what’s on your mind, and you know it. I’m a big movie star. I’m not going to do the fucking dishes.”

“Oh, and what, you think I just stand around all day?”

“You’re a model. That’s EXACTLY what you do is stand around all day. Besides, it’s not an even trade. What I’m talking about is a one-time thing. It’ll take you ten minutes. And for that you want me to do the dishes for the rest of my life, in perpetuity. It’s an entire lifestyle change.”

“You sound like a man who doesn’t want to get his dick sucked in a car on Sunset Boulevard.”

“Alright, fine, I’ll do the stupid dishes. So you’re going to do it then, right? We have an arrangement?”

“No … I’m sorry, I can’t. I thought I could, but the more I think about it, I can’t.”

“Wait, whaddaya mean? That’s it? It’s no, and that’s that?”

“I can’t do it, I’m telling you. If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to do it.”

“If YOU loved ME, I wouldn’t have to ask.”

So it goes on like this for some time. Trust me, this is the short version of the conversation. And by the time they’re done it’s been negotiated down to something like, she’ll give him a handjob in the garage, but he’s got to spend one Sunday a month making appetizers for the bridge club.

That’s when whatever Miss Brown charges begins to look like money well spent.

the great communicator

2005-11-11T09:45:00.000-08:00

I once had a conversation with an ex-girlfriend, long after we'd broken up, and she mentioned that in retrospect our sex life together was not so hot. I protested that we'd only had sex a few times, and that it's always awkward the first few times with a new person.

"Not true," she said. "When I had sex with so-and-so, it was amazing right from the beginning."

Terrific. Just what every guy wants to hear. But I suppose it was my own fault for generalizing. Sex is like talking, or any other way two people connect. And I suppose there are people who have fantastic conversations right out of the gate. Those Neal Cassidy types who can light up the room in a party full of strangers. A first conversation with me is no great shakes. I usually don't trust a new person will get my sense of humor, or I think I might scare them off by revealing my quirks and neuroses and all the stuff I really want to talk about. The first few conversations are very watered-down versions of what I'd really like to say. But there have, in my lifetime, been some people who keep coming back regardless. Maybe they're the same sort of people who buy fixer-upper houses, who get some sort of bizarre kick in finding the hidden potential of things.

Of course, then there are the conversations after I've lived with you for 8 years. You get the same few grunts I offer every day, then it's off to the TV to watch some football.

pure info

2005-11-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

Page 418 of "The Recognitions":
"I'll tell you what happens to people in cities. They lose the seasons, that's what happens. They lose the extremes, the winter and summer. They lose the beginning and end of the day, and nothing grows but their bank accounts. Life in the city is all just middle, nothing is born and nothing dies."

It's November now, which I usually celebrate by going to Baskin-Robbins for a scoop of pumpkin or egg nog ice cream. When I first moved here from Chicago, that was my way of reminding myself that the season had changed. But I haven't made it there so far this year. My only indication of passing time has been looking at the calendar the other day and thinking "Holy shit, it's November."

I don't know if cities make you lose the beginning and end of the day, but babies sure do. I attempted to reclaim this last night by sleeping in the basement so I could go to work, for once, with a full night's sleep. It was a partial success. I got more sleep than I have in a while, but it wasn't uninterrupted. I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night, I suppose just because my body is used to doing so. The little window by the air mattress revealed a little patch of sky, completely empty except for Venus. I stared at it for a good length of time--this beam coming from an incomprehensible distance away, like a signal from a lighthouse. It was easier to understand why ancient civilizations correlated planets to gods, drew up horoscopes, or otherwise assumed these lights were trying to tell them something. My baby does that with the overhead lights in the kitchen. He'll sit and stare at them, and it calms him down. As McLuhan said, "electric light is pure information."

giving up

2005-11-03T16:44:00.000-08:00

Mom asked me today if I ever pray, and I told her that I don't. She said, "Never? Even when people are screwing they say 'Oh God' once in awhile. Or don't you do that anymore either?"
No comment on that one, but on a completely unrelated note, my son was born 40 days ago today. Lent is 40 days long, and if I were a religious type, I could point out any number of things I've given up in that time, so I think I've covered any years I might've skipped.

Having a kid is a little like joining a cult. As soon as he's born, other people who are parents will say things to you like "Your life will never be the same," or "Don't you feel like everything's completely different now?" Well, yes and no. Things are different, sure, but that doesn't mean I don't still feel like going to Spaceland or the Drawing Room, or hell, even a goddamn movie would be nice. But that's not what the cult wants. The cult wants you to say that from now on, when you go out, it will be to dinner parties, with other couples who have kids, who eat dinner at 4:30 and talk about the housing market.

Chris Rock did a routine about marriage once where he said the evenings out become like playdates. You go over to somebody's house, and the women go talk in one room, and you're stuck in front of a TV trying to make small talk with some guy you hardly know. "Do you like baseball? I like baseball..."

vaginas, ohio, and saints

2005-11-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

One of the amusing things about the blogger.com site (where I duplicate the myspace posts) is that spammers leave comments to promote their own projects. In my blog last week recounting my dream about the woman with a lemon in her vagina, someone left the comment:

"Hello... I just dropped by your blog. Great info. If you would like some great information also... or like to help people out please check out my personal webpage.Click Here Now rent to own home columbus ohio Thanks!"

Yes, if you like women with fruit-stuffed vaginas, you're going to want to check out this excellent opportunity to rent a house in Ohio.

I was flipping through a copy of Butler's Lives of the Saints, and I notice the entry for April 17 is St. Stephen Harding. Mom always said there was no particular reason for my name, she just liked the way it sounded, but I wonder if there's any way she might've glanced through the book ahead of time, and if it influenced her thinking. According to the book, Stephen set off on his travels with the intention of seeing the world, but along the way he came upon a collection of huts inhabited by monks. He was taken with their austere lifestyle and decided to stay there and take up with them.

chopper

2005-10-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

"They spoiled a good whore when they hung a pair of nuts on him."

That's a line from "The Recognitions" (pg 212). It's not particularly relevant to my life this week, but I just read that page, and I liked it.

A helicopter just flew by outside my office window. I realize, living in Eagle Rock now, that I miss the sound of helicopters at night. There's a children's hospital in Los Feliz with a roof that accommodates copter landings, and I used to hear them all the time when I lived there. Maybe it reminds me of MASH, with Radar standing out in the field, waiting for the incoming.

I have a pretty wide window here, and the Hollywood Hills span the entire length of my view, from wall to wall. The peaks and valleys remind me of a stock ticker, with the crash happening somewhere out east.

tart

2005-10-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamt about an attractive woman who used to be my boss. In the dream she wore a yellow dress, and had a lemon in her vagina. It had a Twin Peaksy feel that I'd like to incorporate into my next novel. They say a person's dreams are interesting only to himself, but since I write primarily for myself anyway, I don't see why that should be a problem.

Right now I'm downstairs with the door open. It's late, there's a mist in the air, Al Green's "Love and Happiness" is on my stereo. I'm drinking cheap whiskey. If there's an afterlife, I can only hope it has moments this perfect.

I learned something new yesterday about my mother's first husband--the schizophrenic who killed himself after she divorced him. He was one of seven children, and his parents had a very rocky relationship. They'd constantly break up and disperse the children into orphanages, then reunite and get the kids back. When they finally divorced, all the children were put up for adoption.

what i think about at 4 a.m.

2005-10-20T12:56:00.000-07:00

Was up all night with the baby again. I amused myself by scribbling weird doodles on a notebook, and writing a long string of alliterative nonsense:

Disecting the document plastered 'cross the firmament of past and foster governments, lasted throughout man's descent of thought and faster sex, the ex, we fought, she sent back what we brought and faxed the facts and what that wrought, she'd wax the fat/he'd somersault while summer shat like juggernauts, the jiggers and the astronauts, simmer, stutter, jerrymander, plaster caster salamander, shiver prithee tristam shandy, a man, a plan, a panel candy, Santa pans the clan with mantras, smattering lamps map pant scan tall, latter saints amp palms enthrall, the tampon painting all that matters, scald the taint, tramp palled and splattered, prattled tattered Saint Paul packer in prose proviso ex post facto, factoring the rise of provost the poem rhymes foist torrid salvo, fava porridge ridge time toro pours forage adage over roger, Gorgeous George pledges pages dodger, so curious his alma mater secures this grandpa serial dater, seizure surges player-hater

Year of Light

2005-10-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Fuckin' White Sox are in the World Series. I never thought I would live to write that sentence. It doesn't even look like it could be spontaneously generated picking tiles from a magnetic poetry kit.

Until the third grade I had no interest in sports. Then our teacher gave us an assignment: We had to write a paper on what we wanted to be when we grew up. There was nothing I wanted to be. Every adult I knew in real life hated their jobs.

In the process of researching this assignment, though, I learned something shocking--pro athletes make a lot of money. This blew my mind. A person could actually support himself doing something he enjoys. I developed an interest in baseball. I don't know why I chose the Sox to be my team. I suppose my suburb was, relatively speaking, on the southern end of the Northside/Southside divide, but my neighbors were split in their baseball allegiance. Maybe I chose them to be contrarian, as my father is a Cubs fan. Or maybe I just thought "Cubs" was a fruity name for a team.

That was 1983. The Sox were in the ALCS that year. They never got that close again. Until now.

22 years later, my son was born, I published my novel, and I won $2.80 on a horse called Year of Light. And the Sox are in the World Series.

I called my dad the night they clinched against the Angels. Mom said he was in bed. He shut off the TV in disgust in the third inning, when the White Sox took the lead.

ball and chain

2005-10-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

In City Beat this week, Natalie Nichols wrote a column about her feelings on marriage--that for much of history it's been used to control women, and even in its more modern, feminist-influenced incarnations, the shadow of its oppressive past has forever ruined it for her.

I am married, but I don't have any particularly strong feelings about it in the abstract. My life happened to head in that direction, but it was never a goal of mine, I never sat daydreaming of my future and thought "I will be married some day." Moreover, I don't know how anyone could look at modern American marriage and think of WOMEN as being oppressed. I've never met a man who was particularly anxious to get married, and I've very rarely met women who didn't, on some level, desire it and try to talk their boyfriends into it. If that somehow sounds sexist to you, all I can tell you is that has been what I've observed among the people I know.

But aside from all that, if you go around trying to avoid everything that's tainted with aspects of control, you're in for a long, hard life. I don't know if Natalie is gay or straight, but whatever she is, if I go round up her ex-lovers, I'm sure I could get them to admit that their relationships were about control. All relationships are about control. All romances, all friendships... careers, families, whatever. When a baby's born, the parents start teaching it to follow the rules, and the kid starts figuring out how to manipulate the parents so s/he can get what s/he wants. Before you learn to walk or talk, you learn about control.

black squirrel

2005-10-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

The kid hasn't really done anything new the past few days, so back to the people at Starbucks...

"A black squirrel amid 20 other flashy colors."

A trying-to-be-hip, young, high school art teacher goes over a student's paper with her over coffee. He wears a Johnny Cash T-shirt, silver bracelet, and flip-flops. She wears black-and-pink checkered Vans. There's something about the squirrel line he disapproves of, thought I can't make out his specific objection.

"A squirrel? I don't even know what that is."

Her elbows rest on the table and her head rests on her folded hands.

"Make this more boring."

She chews on her straw. She has a crush on him. He is gay.

"It's so funny to take risks like that."

going soft

2005-10-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

Frankly, it looks like I'm going to be doing quite a few posts about babies for the foreseeable future. I've been going back and forth on the advisability of that--how many sitcoms have been irredeemably ruined when they brought an infant on the show? But when I consider my main purpose for blogging, it's the only approach that makes sense. I hope strangers read my blog, and it'd be great if one or two of them even like it so much they run out and buy my book, but by and large this is, after all, a diary. I mainly want to look back on it at some point and remember what I was thinking on a particular day. And I have a hunch my future self will be interested in remembering my newborn son's activities, rather than those of the people sitting around me at Starbucks.
His umbilical stump fell off the other day. The previous day it got loose, like a baby tooth getting ready to fall. My wife started treating it gingerly when that happened, and I wonder if there's some metaphor in that--perhaps it will prefigure a lifetime with a mother who's afraid to cut the cord.
It's difficult to bond with a newborn. I mean, as a parent you feel instantly bonded to them, but if you expect reciprocity, you're out of luck. They can't see more than a few inches in front of their face, they can't smile, and if you try to hug them, they immediately begin rooting, looking for a breast. I'm still waiting for the first day we have some sort of interaction that makes me think he's happy to see me, specifically, rather than just anyone with a bottle.

ian

2005-10-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

I wrote this earlier but wasn't able to get to a computer till now. Rather than reword everything, I'll just type it as I wrote it...

9/28/05
My son was born 8:53 pm on Saturday, September 24. It was a Cesarean birth, as the doctors were concerned that his heart rate dipped with each contraction. Sitting next to my crying, shaking wife while the surgeons cut her open was difficult, to put it mildly. It turns out the cord was wrapped around his neck. But everything went smoothly and we have a healthy baby. I have no words to express my feelings for him that haven’t already been ruined by a million hokey greeting cards, so I won’t even try. Suffice to say, I went to the grocery store today, I was gone for an hour, and I missed him.
It’s been difficult for me to accept that a days-old baby is too young to be allowed to cry himself to sleep, and that I should respond to him every single time. My parents have already put the bug in my ear that I’m spoiling him, but I’m yielding to the better judgment of my wife and every book I’ve read on the subject. I find myself excessively concerned with the question of toughness. My earliest memory of childhood is of this time I was stacking blocks, and my dad walked by to deliberately knock them over. When my mom and I talked about the incident years later, she told me he felt that if I’d had an older brother, that’s what my brother would have done. He was obsessed with making me tough. I don’t know how much that preoccupation is reflected in the final product. I always felt I’d disappointed him in that regard. One of my proudest moments was after my lung collapsed. Dad said, “I was talking to a nurse who comes into our bar. She said those are really painful.” Wow, dad acknowledged that I’d experienced pain. REAL pain, not pain that was all in my head, or pain that I was exaggerating because I was sheltered and didn’t know what REAL PAIN was.
But now I understand how he must have felt. My dad—who in my childhood was 6-foot 250, who drank a 6-pack of Old Style every night, who was mustached and wore a longshoreman’s stocking cap, who told dirty racist jokes, who his friends nicknamed “Moose,” who talked about his days in the army or as a truck driver, who could frighten unruly drunks back onto their stools with a single glower—was underneath all of that a sensitive guy, and such people understand better than anyone the need for toughness.

9/29/05
My life has become Eraserhead. I spend 4 a.m. shifts delirious from lack of sleep, cradling a bundle of blankets with a head sticking out. The head screams and nothing can be done to appease it. There may well be a woman in my radiator. My entire existence is an endless 3-hour loop. For 40 minutes I execute some basic survival function—eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom—while he feeds, then I spend the next 2 hours and 20 minutes trying to distract him until he’s allowed to eat again. Then repeat. A baby is like some sort of noise bomb that must be defused every 10 minutes of so, but they keep changing the colors of the wires. They say infants have different cries for different ailments, but as far as I can tell, they have one multi-purpose soul-piercing shriek that means everything from “I’m mildly annoyed” to “I’m being mauled by wolves.” My throat is sore today. Over the course of last night, I sang him every song I could possibly think of, which was a smallish list as I had to come up with them under panicked circumstances, changing lyrics or melodies if a pause would be required to recall the proper version. We tried: I Want You to Want Me, The Flame, Brand New Love, Healthy Sick, Answering Machine, Never Mind, Valentine, Game of Pricks, Lua, Playin’ With the Queen of Hearts, Heaven Is a Sin Away, Poncho and Lefty, Chelsea Hotel, I Turned Into a Martian, I Don’t Want to Get Over You, The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure…

motherland II

2005-09-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

My mom is in Auschwitz now. I told this to a friend, and she asked "Was she moved, or did she say something crass?" Both, of course! She did make a point of specifically saying she was moved, and that actually being there is a feeling that can't be approached by reading about it or seeing a movie. And she followed it up by saying she has "a new respect for what those Jews are yellin' about."

motherland

2005-09-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

My mom's in Poland. For two weeks--a different city every day. She called me last night and her voice was almost gone. She said she'd spent the day in a salt mine.

She's on a quest for this bottle of vodka she's been told about that plays Sto Lat when you open it (Sto lat, sto lat, niech zyje, zyje nam... which translates to "good luck, good cheer, may you live a hundred years"). Everyone I've told about this so far has requested one as well.

She speaks very little Polish, but I can't imagine her not prattling on to every stranger she meets. I wonder if she does it in English, indifferent to whether or not they can understand, or if she whips out the Polish phrasebook. She has a habit of butchering common sayings, even in English (she once said about marriage "If you want to keep the cow, you have to buy it jewlery"), so I wonder if the natives hear things like this and assume something's been lost in translation.