He was one of those too-small kinds of people. I mean, we were all kids, but he looked like he was five years old. Glasses, acne, froggy face--the whole dread package. One of my "girlfriends" at the time--scare quotes required to indicate the absurdity of the word, given how romantic two kids can be at 13... rather than a wink and a nudge towards my pubescent sexual prowess--anyway, she lived across two streets from this guy, and there was basically a straight shot from his bedroom window to her house... allegedly. The thing about her house, and I'm not making this up, is that a good 3/4 to 2/3 of the side facing his house was pure glass. I remember riding my bike and being weirded out by it, and when I was there, I felt like I was trapped in an ice cube.
Anyway, she swears that this guy used to watch her house with binoculars. Not look, but watch. She was very deliberate in her word choice. Of course, I was skeptical. Teenage girls can be a little dramatic, and I knew the kid. Of course he was weird, of course he wasn't winning any girls stuffed animals at festivals or getting invited to any fuckin' sleepovers. But me, I was and still am a bit of a charity case. Make no bones about it... I was no saint. I'd talk shit about him behind his back sometimes. I was a skinny teenager and he was fuckin' weird. I couldn't help it. But I was nice to him, and I did give him the benefit of the doubt--I figured he had to have better things to do than to stare into the massive glass wall of some girl's house. I knew for a fact that he played video games and listened to Rammstein. You can only do one of those things while watching a girl eat Cocoa Puffs in her pajamas.
Anyway, I hadn't heard anything about him or from him since some vague and uninteresting anecdote during high school or something like that. Nothing I'd ever remember. Other than pasting his face onto my mental image of the main character when we read A Prayer for Owen Meany in senior English, I hadn't considered the guy. Then a couple weeks ago, I'm at work, and someone from middle school comes in. Honestly, I'm not that happy to see her. Never really talked to her. We probably danced at a church dance once. She started doing drugs or something. Etc. Small town drama that small town kids get into with some pretty heavy consequences. I just remembered being pretty adamant on distancing myself from her since I got good grades and wasn't going to give up going to college and getting the fuck out of that town because I started sucking meth or got some girl pregnant. So she's in town just for the night, probably specifically to get good weed instead of the smelly bag of sticks and seeds you get in smalltown, Ohio. Of course she still lives in our hometown. So we're chatting a little bit.
She asks me, "Did you hear about **** **********?" The asterisks are for this is a true story. I mean, if it wasn't true, I wouldn't point it out. This shit is the honest-to-God truth. I jog my memory and look thoughtful for a second--all this stuff I'm talking about was about a decade ago, and he was just another person whose name I knew for a while.
"Oh, I remember him. No, why?"
"He went to jail for like... ever."
I was pretty taken aback. I felt like this kid had to have been perpetually incapable of physically overtaking anyone, and besides that he was basically a nice guy.
"Jesus Christ," I say, "What the hell did he do?"
"He raped his little brother." Maybe my ex-girlfriend hadn't been overreacting. Then again, maybe this is another dramatization of some poor kid who was born a couple months early or drank too much coffee when he was six. Honestly, I don't really want to know which of these two are true.
28 July 2009
so there's this writer, right?
So there's this writer, right?
I knew this guy through a friend for years, he was living with her, and it was always the first thing anyone ever knew about this guy, that he is a writer. thing is: this guy never lets anyone read his writing. even though he writes a ton, not even his gf. This is contrasting with my other friend. This other guy wrote a short story one time years ago but hasn't written anything since. Still, first thing anyone knows about this guy is he's a writer. It just comes up somehow. The guy could be getting hit by a car and the driver, the cop and the bystanders would realize that the dude writes. But like I said, he just wrote a short story years back, and even that's hearsay far as I'm concerned. I mean, I've written short stories before. I've written more than one, but I'm not a "writer" you know?
Damn, Mooze, chill out. You're starting to sound "concerned" or somethin. You wanna be a writer just go tell folks that you're a writer too. Sounds like that's all there is to it.
But now they'll want me to prove it, see? And more than that, I don't really know how to act like a writer. If I try to go for a long-ass walk there's gotta be somethin wrong, right? like I can't just walk for inspiration. Or like, if a girl at the bar says something funny and I'm like "I'm gonna write a story about that" then I'm a fuckin juicer and everybody knows I'm jockin her.
-Eddy has to think for a while.
Put it on your facebook, then, after it's been sitting a while, put something unassuming in your status like "Mooze Morello has writers' crap"
-Now Mooze has to think for a while.
What the hell?
See folks will skip straight to asking you about what writer's crap is before they ask themselves if you're actually a writer. And you say it's like writer's cramp, but when you just write lots of crap. then get yourself a twitter account and write cryptic one-liners that make the stuff in your head seem so much more fascinating than it is.
-Eddy and Mooze are sitting at home again. broke as jokes waiting for night to roll in. if everything didn't feel like practice they might not be so worried about girls at the bar. These past few months have been different, dreams have melted into waking hours without any dramatic reactions from our dreamers. Eddy and Mooze and their respective circles of acquaintances have curiously perceived a widening of the distances between them not as a falling-out, but as a progressive knotting-into to which the only ready solution is, of course, falling out. If only this town didn't feel so large they might have more hope for each other.
-They've skirted the issue in conversation, not sure where to start, and more comfortable wishing they knew more people than admitting that they need new ways of knowing people, too. Plans and scheme melted into critiques of city and scene. It was only a matter of time before folks started to bad-talk whoever wasn't around. Fall-out is immanent, unless our heros can figure out what the fuck is going on and save the day and, most importantly, keep you (yes YOU) from wandering off to do whatever menial peasant-task you might be doing otherwise.
You see, you get them asking questions about your "work" as fast as possible, but you have to direct the questions so as you can answer them. This way you're automatically a writer, and they just have to content themselves with trying to figure out if you're any good or not. Hell you're old enough you could say you've been 'in a rut' for a few years and people might still believe that you established yourself in your early 20s before you got lazy and started rollin with me.
But then what's the point if I don't write anything good? What if I just wind up like a dude out looking for inspiration every morning and never letting anyone read anything?
that's The Thing, man: you don't take those walks so you can write, you write so you can take those walks.
-The ways that Eddy and Mooze will encounter and inhabit the impending Dramatic Situations will include attempts to detail the characteristics of Certain Relationships between Parties Unnamed, quasi-objects, idiot kids and, probably, usually, the devil. For the moment, Eddy has stumbled upon a hidden function or a system that manifests much like a bartering relationship. He's telling Mooze that there's something about going for a walk that can only be bought by asking idiot kids to think of you as one-who-writes.
"I mean get out of the fridge, Sal, or Imma lock you in there."
Sal holds the bottle to her navel, doubled over like she's kissing the plastic glass of the waist-high refrigerator shelf. There's not much else in the fridge, she could probably fit were lena to carry out her threat.
"C'mon, girl I haven't cleaned that fridge in years."
More success this time, Sal sort of slumps backwards, her tailbone leading the charge on the kitchen floor. She sits indian-style, curled over the bottle, salt-soaked brown curls making a mess of her face. The refrigerator door still open wide, casting the little white checkers on Sal's dress a dusty yellow. It's dust after daylight, no one flicked on the lights and, standing across the room, lena thinks she can see electric shapes in the grey-brown cloud above Sal's head.
"It's a condiment, Sal. You're crying over salad dressing."
Her voice sounds wrong: "Bernard always ordered chicken fingers when we went out. He'd dip them in this stuff. When he offered me bites I always pretended to like it."
Lena can't do this without another smoke.
"Anyway I might be crying over a condiment, but I'm crying about..."
They stay in place, realizing together that neither of them are able to tie that one off.
"Remember when we split up that time, right before I had to move? y'know that ashtray, that empty beer-bottle by the bed that you dropped your butts into for so long? I kept that beer-bottle, Lena. I moved all of my stuff two times that year and both times I couldn't get rid of that disgusting bottle. I didn't toss it until you'd been back for over a month."
"Just shut the door, babe. My eggs'll go bad"
Sal looks up for the first time; perks-up, even.
"Eggs don't go bad. They have their own protective shell around them. You don't even need to put them in the fridge."
It's strange living out The Worst Thing at least three times every week. Clearly more is at work here than missing a flight-attendant ex-boyfriend. Players, set and stage have all changed but some persistent relationship keeps this presence, what must manifest as none other than 'nard's boring, weepy ghost, alive and very involved in the bond between Lena and Sal. She shuts the door anyway. Lena walks over, takes the honey-mustard, pops the window and throws the bottle out. She's gotten pretty good at hitting the dumpster without walking outside.
*****
I knew this guy through a friend for years, he was living with her, and it was always the first thing anyone ever knew about this guy, that he is a writer. thing is: this guy never lets anyone read his writing. even though he writes a ton, not even his gf. This is contrasting with my other friend. This other guy wrote a short story one time years ago but hasn't written anything since. Still, first thing anyone knows about this guy is he's a writer. It just comes up somehow. The guy could be getting hit by a car and the driver, the cop and the bystanders would realize that the dude writes. But like I said, he just wrote a short story years back, and even that's hearsay far as I'm concerned. I mean, I've written short stories before. I've written more than one, but I'm not a "writer" you know?
Damn, Mooze, chill out. You're starting to sound "concerned" or somethin. You wanna be a writer just go tell folks that you're a writer too. Sounds like that's all there is to it.
But now they'll want me to prove it, see? And more than that, I don't really know how to act like a writer. If I try to go for a long-ass walk there's gotta be somethin wrong, right? like I can't just walk for inspiration. Or like, if a girl at the bar says something funny and I'm like "I'm gonna write a story about that" then I'm a fuckin juicer and everybody knows I'm jockin her.
-Eddy has to think for a while.
Put it on your facebook, then, after it's been sitting a while, put something unassuming in your status like "Mooze Morello has writers' crap"
-Now Mooze has to think for a while.
What the hell?
See folks will skip straight to asking you about what writer's crap is before they ask themselves if you're actually a writer. And you say it's like writer's cramp, but when you just write lots of crap. then get yourself a twitter account and write cryptic one-liners that make the stuff in your head seem so much more fascinating than it is.
-Eddy and Mooze are sitting at home again. broke as jokes waiting for night to roll in. if everything didn't feel like practice they might not be so worried about girls at the bar. These past few months have been different, dreams have melted into waking hours without any dramatic reactions from our dreamers. Eddy and Mooze and their respective circles of acquaintances have curiously perceived a widening of the distances between them not as a falling-out, but as a progressive knotting-into to which the only ready solution is, of course, falling out. If only this town didn't feel so large they might have more hope for each other.
-They've skirted the issue in conversation, not sure where to start, and more comfortable wishing they knew more people than admitting that they need new ways of knowing people, too. Plans and scheme melted into critiques of city and scene. It was only a matter of time before folks started to bad-talk whoever wasn't around. Fall-out is immanent, unless our heros can figure out what the fuck is going on and save the day and, most importantly, keep you (yes YOU) from wandering off to do whatever menial peasant-task you might be doing otherwise.
You see, you get them asking questions about your "work" as fast as possible, but you have to direct the questions so as you can answer them. This way you're automatically a writer, and they just have to content themselves with trying to figure out if you're any good or not. Hell you're old enough you could say you've been 'in a rut' for a few years and people might still believe that you established yourself in your early 20s before you got lazy and started rollin with me.
But then what's the point if I don't write anything good? What if I just wind up like a dude out looking for inspiration every morning and never letting anyone read anything?
that's The Thing, man: you don't take those walks so you can write, you write so you can take those walks.
-The ways that Eddy and Mooze will encounter and inhabit the impending Dramatic Situations will include attempts to detail the characteristics of Certain Relationships between Parties Unnamed, quasi-objects, idiot kids and, probably, usually, the devil. For the moment, Eddy has stumbled upon a hidden function or a system that manifests much like a bartering relationship. He's telling Mooze that there's something about going for a walk that can only be bought by asking idiot kids to think of you as one-who-writes.
*****
"owweeeee there it is again!" she's laugh-sobbing, painfully aware of the clenching in her gut, the wet around her eyes, the immediacy of her memories and the absurdity of her affliction, specters and shadows colliding at this moment in a bottle of Kroger brand honey-mustard.
This is Sal's way of communicating the Worst Thing that happens on Any Given Day. Despite innumerable pillow-talk sessions, moonlit walks, porch talks and badly-timed phone-calls her affliction, Bernard's memory, persists. Its vessels seem to be multiplying, and Lena has given up trying to keep Problem Objects out of Sal's line of sight.
Lena lights a cigarette. She's beginning to feel as if every time she held Sal's head, hand, or heart these three years has not been more than life-support for an elaborate plan to keep his ghost alive and haunting well. She's reminded of the woman who's disease grew addicted to antibiotics. Am I the drug or the doctor...
"what?"
"owweeeee there it is again!" she's laugh-sobbing, painfully aware of the clenching in her gut, the wet around her eyes, the immediacy of her memories and the absurdity of her affliction, specters and shadows colliding at this moment in a bottle of Kroger brand honey-mustard.
This is Sal's way of communicating the Worst Thing that happens on Any Given Day. Despite innumerable pillow-talk sessions, moonlit walks, porch talks and badly-timed phone-calls her affliction, Bernard's memory, persists. Its vessels seem to be multiplying, and Lena has given up trying to keep Problem Objects out of Sal's line of sight.
Lena lights a cigarette. She's beginning to feel as if every time she held Sal's head, hand, or heart these three years has not been more than life-support for an elaborate plan to keep his ghost alive and haunting well. She's reminded of the woman who's disease grew addicted to antibiotics. Am I the drug or the doctor...
"what?"
"I mean get out of the fridge, Sal, or Imma lock you in there."
Sal holds the bottle to her navel, doubled over like she's kissing the plastic glass of the waist-high refrigerator shelf. There's not much else in the fridge, she could probably fit were lena to carry out her threat.
"C'mon, girl I haven't cleaned that fridge in years."
More success this time, Sal sort of slumps backwards, her tailbone leading the charge on the kitchen floor. She sits indian-style, curled over the bottle, salt-soaked brown curls making a mess of her face. The refrigerator door still open wide, casting the little white checkers on Sal's dress a dusty yellow. It's dust after daylight, no one flicked on the lights and, standing across the room, lena thinks she can see electric shapes in the grey-brown cloud above Sal's head.
"It's a condiment, Sal. You're crying over salad dressing."
Her voice sounds wrong: "Bernard always ordered chicken fingers when we went out. He'd dip them in this stuff. When he offered me bites I always pretended to like it."
Lena can't do this without another smoke.
"Anyway I might be crying over a condiment, but I'm crying about..."
They stay in place, realizing together that neither of them are able to tie that one off.
"Remember when we split up that time, right before I had to move? y'know that ashtray, that empty beer-bottle by the bed that you dropped your butts into for so long? I kept that beer-bottle, Lena. I moved all of my stuff two times that year and both times I couldn't get rid of that disgusting bottle. I didn't toss it until you'd been back for over a month."
"Just shut the door, babe. My eggs'll go bad"
Sal looks up for the first time; perks-up, even.
"Eggs don't go bad. They have their own protective shell around them. You don't even need to put them in the fridge."
It's strange living out The Worst Thing at least three times every week. Clearly more is at work here than missing a flight-attendant ex-boyfriend. Players, set and stage have all changed but some persistent relationship keeps this presence, what must manifest as none other than 'nard's boring, weepy ghost, alive and very involved in the bond between Lena and Sal. She shuts the door anyway. Lena walks over, takes the honey-mustard, pops the window and throws the bottle out. She's gotten pretty good at hitting the dumpster without walking outside.
*****
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