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Doomed to Obscurity Issue 27
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)- Doomed to Obscurity E'zine issue number 27 - released Febuary 14, 1998 -(
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"Valentine's Day Greeting"
by -- PezMonkey
I'm in love.
"Yay!" I'm sure you're all saying, unless you're a frat guy saying,
"Get some more beer before this weekend; I'm gonna scrump a tri-delt," or if
you're Mogel, "Write for DTO!!!" which is exactly why I'm writing this intro
for the Valentine's Day release: because funk-daddy Mogz told me to.
So I'm in love and it's almost Valentine's Day. The only problem
with this is that I don't actually talk to the guy. See, his name is Ben (I
learned at a party), and he works at the radio station, and he wears glasses
and is goofy. But I don't talk to him. I've walked down to his apartment
multiple times, sat outside the radio station hoping he would come out,
called his house and hung up when someone (him?) picked up. I'm glad I
don't know more about computers, or I would be reading his email. But I
never talk to him. It's almost Petrarchan. Maybe. I mean, here's this
philosopher dude who was totally infatuated with this one chick for like a
million gazillion years, but never talked to her because he thought it would
ruin it. Unrequited love. So maybe I'm not talking to him, just...
stalking him, because he's awesome now, and if I get to know him he won't
be.
However, that still leaves me "alone" for Valentine's Day, since I'm
refusing to even try to get squishy-mushy-lovey with this guy. Which is
completely unrelated to DTO, and not even remotely like an introduction, but
I don't particularly care, because I want everyone to know about my
obsession, because it makes me feel less guilty for... well, stalking,
because real obsessions are private obsessions. So this unmanifested
obsession (which I call stalking, but it really isn't, because I never DO
anything, just think about how I wish he would fall madly in love with me)
has become a really fucking pathetic cause of my Valentine's Day alonehood,
and has found me at home reading DTO.
Okay, well, really it's not all that sad; I actually enjoy the
obsessing (and DTO!). And at least I'm not bitter. My hall in my dorm
(which is all female) is having an anti-Valentine's Day party this weekend,
wearing all black and refusing to ever love. Which, if I were goth, I might
enjoy, but I'm not. I'm infested with sunshine, and I'm not bitter about
Valentine's Day.
But that's just me. Other people are allowed to be bitter and
angst-ridden (yes, permission granted). This is, after all, DTO. But not
me; I'm happy perky Miss Sunshine Stalker of Love, and I don't mind. (And
also I have lots of Valentine's Day candy and heart shaped water crackers,
and food makes everything good!) Besides, some people say that love is an
overused word and underused emotion, so, uh, LOVE MORE! (Yes, even in that
"hippy-love-everybody" sense that Pucky calls stupid in his article this
issue. He's wrong, damn it.)
And, in the true and wonderful Miss Sunshine Stalker of Love sense, I
would like to point out all the smushy-gushy, lovey-dovey articles in DTO
this month. In fact, just about EVERY article can be related to love in
some way (Funnily enough, the only UN-love related articles are by Ashtray
Heart, but what else can you expect from a guy with "heart" in his name?).
I'll point out the highlights!
Some have love in the title: "On Love and Friendship," by Puck, and
"Djarum Super (I Love You, Roxy)," by *ME* (which is why I wanted to point
that out). Others are full of that feel good type love content. What else
makes your heart go pitter-pat like the kind, gently-wooing Julian Simmons
in "The Unforgivable Sin" by Sweeney Erect, or stories of passionate,
wonderful physicality... like in Anya's "Raped"!? Some articles are more
cryptic, like Shadow Tao's "Human Cloning for Fun and Profit," but we all
know what he *really* means when he says "It is good to know the Holy Meter
of God's Relative Displeasure that was entrusted so long ago to the Holy
Nation of Islam is still in working order," don't we? Well, don't we?
(Subtext: Let's scrump, baby.)
The most blatant, wonderful, happy Valentine's Day reference,
however, can be found in Creed's "Consume, Be Fruitful, and Multiply,"
which, though in Swahili, says I LOVE YOU, over and over (I bet you didn't
know that "son of a bitch" is Swahili for "I love you," didja?). So, now I
leave with that most precious of all Valentine's Day phrases: "Enjoy DTO 27,
you wonderful son of a bitch!" Don't forget to tell your significant other.
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doomed to obscurity #27 | | | | | | and all contents therein...
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. "Valentine's Day Greeting" -- by PezMonkey
2. DTO #27 and all contents therein...
HUMOR:
3. "How to be Smart" -- by Ashtray Heart
4. "My Intestinal Companion" -- by MoonBagel
5. "Cream of GOP -- Condiments; Chapter 704" -- by Murmur
6. "The Unforgivable Sin" -- by Sweeney Erect
EDITORIALS:
7. "Syncopation Nation" -- by Bor
8. "On Love and On Friendship" -- by Puck
9. "Human Cloning for Fun and Profit: The Fight Between Religion and
Science" -- by Shadow Tao
10. "Make Money Fast" -- by Trilobyte
FICTION:
11. "Clouds and The Blue, Blue Sky" -- by MoonBagel
12. "Consume, Be Fruitful, and Multiply" -- by Creed
13. "Djarum Super (I Love You, Roxy)" -- by PezMonkey
14. "Sensory Apparatus Buffet" -- by Mike Halchin
15. "The Chaos Theory; Wednesday, July 27th" -- by Eerie
16. "Raped" -- by Anya
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- HUMOR -
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"How to be Smart"
by -- Ashtray Heart
If you really want to sound like a philosophical intellectual, you
should use at least one German word in every paragraph. Man, the Germans
just like TOTALLY FUCKIN' RAWK when it comes to words for really heavy
metaphysical concepts like Angst, Weltschmerz, Schadenfreude,
Arbeitslosungunterstutzung, and Steppentintenfisch. It's also great to make
oblique references to dead people. If you MUST refer to living people, make
sure that most people haven't heard of them. For instance, an intellecutal
would NEVER EVER invoke Frank Zappa to buttress their arguments. But it's
perfectly alright to name-drop Captain Beefheart, as long as you call him
Van Vliet (this has the added bonus of making him sound European). For more
bonus points, quote them as speaking about topics that nobody's ever heard
of, for instance, "Waters (1985) may have had no stated interest in
hermeneutics, but his work shows a decided influence from that area" or
"Cronenberg's relation to negative dialectics is also worthy of note." Note
I put a year in the first example -- this is another way to sound "erudite"
(this is a Greek word for "pretentious"). I have no idea what the year
means. Perhaps it's the year they got their driver's license, or something.
Another foolproof way of raising really commonplace insights to the
level of holy writ is to quote your friends. This is the ultimate elevation
of the "obscure source" tactic -- a lot of times people will assume that
you're talking about a great intellectual just because they've never heard
of them. Thus you could rather easily write a paper on "Orthodontic
Perspectives in the Work of Beaulieu."
GOOD DEAD PEOPLE TO QUOTE:
Socrates
Plato
Aristophanes
Descartes
Spinoza
Hume
Rabelais
Locke
Wittgenstein
Nietzsche
These people all said really important things, or at least things
they THOUGHT were important. This is because they were philosophers, except
for Rabelais and Aristophanes, who wrote a bunch of dirty jokes. Indeed,
throughout time, you will find that intellectuals come in two categories;
philosophers, and people who talk about bodily functions a lot (or "bawdy
wits," as they are commonly known).
The job of philosophers is to say lots of important things and make a
bunch of really ludicrous assumptions that not even a pro-wrestling mark
would take seriously, and then come up with ways to disprove them. Such
philosophical breakthroughs include "We shouldn't kill other people unless
we really have to," and "Most of what we see is real." Sometimes they
don't, though, and wind up saying the opposite. You, as an intellectual,
don't have to concern yourself with what they actually SAY, though -- the
important part is just that they said something.
Bawdy Wits were people who used to be really damn funny, until the
slang terms on which all their jokes were based changed and nobody
understood what they were talking about anymore. Because nothing is funnier
to an intellectual than a joke nobody else gets, Bawdy Wits remain extremely
popular. In the next century, Lenny Bruce will be considered a Bawdy Wit.
BAD DEAD PEOPLE TO QUOTE:
Hitler
Chris Farley
Elvis
L. Ron Hubbard
Can you see what these people all have in common? That's right, they
all died THIS CENTURY. If you can remember the names of anyone who died
BEFORE this century, they're important enough to quote. Dickens (1853)
wrote a book about how bad America sucks and tossed out the names of a
couple of different well-known religious leaders in the process of doing so.
Who were they? Nobody knows. THEY WEREN'T IMPORTANT. If anybody remembers
who Chris Farley was a century from now, he'll be considered a reliable
intellectual source.
Other tips: As an intellectual, you'll need to use lots of big
words. You'd think that Reader's Digest's "Word Power" column might be
invaluable in this respect. Don't be deceived. Oh, sure, there are
sometimes some interesting words, like "lexicon" and "totalitarian," for
instance, but if you want to get into using the REALLY big words, like
"mellifluous," "annular," and "deconstruction," you COULD always try a
dictionary, but then you'd pop up all kinds of stupid words about science
and stuff. Intellectuals don't have to worry about pissant stuff like
"genus canis" and "hydroxides." The way most intellectuals get their words,
and thus the way you should get yours, is by ripping them off from other
people.
A good starting place for this is the record reviews in "Spin" and
"Rolling Stone." Of course, REAL intellectuals wouldn't ever write record
reviews, but music critics THINK they're intellectuals, which is halfway
there, in and of itself. So if a record critic says, for instance, "The
viscosity of Fripp's guitar lines weaves through a turgid soup of dense
tribal rhythms," which probably isn't grammatical, but that's not important,
you've got at least two more words to use there; "viscosity," which is a
noun, and "turgid," which is an adjective. Both of them probably mean
something like "dense." You can then turn around to your intellectual
friend and say, "The turgid viscosity of your lexicon distresses me; perhaps
a more minimalistic approach would be more efficacious." Then your friend,
if he's anything like my friends, will laugh and spit in your face. But
that's OK.
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"My Intestinal Companion"
by -- MoonBagel
Sushi-making is an art.
It really is. Training and experience and achievements are involved
in mashing raw sea animals (sashimi!) into a pile of steamed rice, and then
bundling it together with seaweed into a tight, snug little bundle of clammy
goodness.
My first significant brush with clammy goodness was a traumatic one.
I was 13 years old, and as 13 year old girls often do, I sometimes spent a
night at the home of another girly-friend. They would try to give me
makeovers, and occasionally I would appease them by watching a romantic
comedy. There would also be squealing and boyeez would be discussed. This
may seem irrelevant to the topic at hand (that being sushi, in case you need
a reminder), but it isn't entirely, insofar as it sets the scene for a
Sophisticated Urban Woman variety of magazine.
There were a number of such magazines to be found at Kate's house, as
she was the sort of 13 year old suburban girl who fancied herself a
Sophisticated Urban Woman. This flight of fancy was evidenced by the closet
full of clothes, shelves full of shoes, and many, many drawers filled with
makeup and perfume and masochistic-looking brushes. This, too, may all seem
irrelevant. It isn't entirely, as it is exposition leading up to my first
traumatic sushi experience. (Yes, it is actually irrelevant. But that's
beside the point.) At any rate:
I had spent the night at Kate's house one lovely summer evening. We
watched romantic comedies and I ignored her fluffy pop music and we talked
about my crush on Tim Lee (he liked me too!!), and I even sated her animal
need to cover my pale face in repugnantly-colored powders and creamy stuff
and whale fats. The excitement of it simply exhausted her, the poor dear.
I was wide awake, however. Perhaps there were amphetamines in her
lip gloss. I was wide awake. Really awake. Terribly, frighteningly,
unnervingly, "save me!" awake. I wanted to dance and scream and kiss Kate's
brother. I didn't, though. But I was awake, so I had to do something. The
makeover had thoroughly ripped my dignity to shreds, so I did something I
now regret -- I read the Sophisticated Urban Woman magazines strewn about
Kate's floor and closet and desk and bed. I learned how to apply eyeliner
and how to maximize my sexual pleasure while still enthralling my partner.
Then I read about bad sushi. Tears welled up in my eyes and hung
desperately to my quivering eyelashes. One or two lost their grip. The
article went into glorious, terrifying detail. Mike had eaten some bad
sushi from a disreputable sushi dealer. Soon after, he lost many pounds.
He became nervous. This and a female friend convinced him to seek the
advice of a medical doctor. He did just that. Probes of some sort were
introduced to his bum, and a conclusion was soon reached: It was a tiny
(read: real honkin' big) worm who was at the root of his intestinal evil.
Yikes.
I stopped reading after he detailed the multiple-feet-long
maggoty-lookin' creature he was forced to remove from his own, personal
anus. He removed it with his own, personal hands. He went potty and
realized that, uh, it wasn't poop that was coming out of his anus -- it was
a white thing that just kept comin'. He assumed that the best course of
action would be to grab on to his worm and tug with all of his might. This
tugging continued until he nearly passed out on the bathroom floor. At that
point he sat up, tried to relax, and nature took its course.
Yikes.
I spent the next 12 hours shaking. I had absolutely no desire to
yank what amounts to a lengthy maggot out of my sweet little tushie. (I
still feel no driving urge to do so. Nor do I feel a driving urge to ever
read another publication meant for Sophisticated Urban Women.)
As my day continued, I vowed repeatedly and incessantly, in writing
and vocally, in blood and ink, outloud and to myself, to NEVER EVER EVER
EVER eat sushi. Ever. And I meant it.
I was feeling relatively secure with the state of my intestines (I
began to doubt the purity of all foods containing anything not wholly
artificial) until 4 o'clock that afternoon. My mom showed up at Kate's
house, the Bubbaman in the passenger seat, to escort me home after a night
of raucous, madcap misadventures. "Cool," I thought, as I am allergic to
Kate's cats as well as the weird chemicals she applied to herself several
times a day. Getting home soon was in my best interest, I thought. I threw
my possessions into my backpack and ran out the door, out of the stagnant
cloud of cat hair, hairspray, and bad pre-teen perfume into the fresh,
pleasant air. It was almost uterine [but not so damp and squishy (except
when I had to hop through a sprinkler's path)] in its freshness and
pleasantness. It was a Good Day.
It was a Good Day until we pulled out of Kate's neighborhood. The
awful, painful, stomach-quaking words drifted from the front seat and drove
themselves like nuclear swordfish into my brain. "I got some sushi on the
way here! I want you to try it. I love it... it's been too long since I've
had any." I shrieked a loud shriek, and reiterated my vow: "I will NEVER
EVER EVER EVER eat sushi! Ever!" This prompted a confused look from my
(dear, sweet, lovely) mother, who could recollect no previous experience
which would explain my reaction. I summarized the article as best I could
through my terror. She just smiled.
We arrived home a few minutes later, and I bolted to my room in order
to worry and nap for a few hours before dinner. All was well and good.
...until dinner. Mom and the Bubbaman were sitting around their evil
plates of sushi. I swear I could see little wormies squirreling around in
the fish, but maybe it was just rice... after all, my family is still here
to eat more raw crap. Mom held up one of the little bundles-of-death with
her chopsticks and urged me to bite into it. I shivered and squirmed and
made a variety of unhappy sounds. I will NEVER EVER EVER EVER eat sushi.
NEVER EVER EVER EVER!! Never. Mommy sighed and realized that dead fish
wasn't worth a fight with her oldest, loveliest, sweetest, smartest (only)
daughter.
I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ran away.
That day remained forgotten largely for the next four years. Every
once in a long while someone would mention sushi, or my mom would bring some
home for her own personal enjoyment. I was encouraged to expand my culinary
horizons in the general direction of raw-fish-and-rice, but I never found a
compelling reason to risk my anal purity.
...until three weeks ago. I went off on a thrilling adventure with
my friend Mike [who loathed me (and I reciprocated) due to differing
political views until last year (that adding up to nearly eight years of
loathing, for the score-at-home kiddies)] and his girlfriend Jill (whom I
absolutely adore). They insisted we go find food at the new Chinese buffet
near Jill's house. They were both positively enamored with it, and I like
Chinese food generally, so I thought everything would be well and good if I
went along.
...but it wasn't. (Well, now it is. For a week it wasn't. Yeah.)
"You have to try their crab sushi!" they said, in something
approaching unison. It was close! Anyway:
So we got plates and food and beverages and sat at a table and ate.
I got the aforementioned crab sushi, because I was feeling silly and
adventurous and my inhibitions were left in Mike's car. I got the sushi and
I ate it. My brain failed to poke me and remind me that sushi is Japanese,
and hey, you're in a Chinese buffet (China and Japan being separate
countries with different cultures and cuisines, for those of you who take
the tests which provide the statistics reported on the evening news).
I ate the sushi. I enjoyed it. I felt no regrets!
All was well and good. We ate our food, we drove off, I grab back
ahold of my inhibitions, and we went to go see a Really Bad Movie. The
evening was lovely, overall. When I returned home and I told my mom of our
escapades, and how I ate sushi, she was pleased to have yet another level to
relate to me on. It was quite a moment. Quite a few moments, to be honest.
Those moments continued...
...until Sunday night, when my stomach started emitting weird, angry
noises without pause. I was awake until around 3 AM, and there was no
pause. My stomach did other weird, angry things, too (but you don't need
details). I woke up a few hours later in order to get ready for school, and
still, there was no pause. My stomach remained weird and
angry, so I visited Mr. Potty and returned to bed.
I assumed my stomach craziness was the result of school-induced
stress, and that a mental health day off school would remedy all that ailed
me. It didn't. The weird, angry noises continued with very few pauses
throughout the week until Saturday. The Thursday before I realized what the
problem must be -- I must have a worm!
My silly little worm, living in my intestines... I never dreamt that
my intestines would be a happy home for any creature. I became rather
attached to her (I decided she must be a girl, though I can't give you a
reason why). I gave her a name -- she was Beatrice. Lovely, beautiful,
darling Beatrice! She was no longer gross and maggoty! Well, she was, but
in an endearing way. I Loved Her. I dreaded the day she would fall gasping
from my anus, but just the same, I loved her. I told everyone I knew that
"I must have a worm! I had some bad sushi!" but I wasn't afraid or upset --
I was almost happy. I was content with my little friend.
...until I was informed that there was no way she could exist. My
mom, infinitely wiser and more familiar with sushi, assured me that there is
no way a worm would randomly show up and wreak havoc in my bowels a week
after I ate bad fish. "Oh," I muttered. I was disappointed. I missed my
intestinal companion (never mind that she never existed).
My stomach is better now. It is no longer weird and angry. I like
to think that Beatrice is in a better place, coexisting with a person who
likes to eat things that intestinal worms find tasty. I like to think that
one day I will eat sushi. I like to think that I will enjoy it. I like to
think I will not die, but I know, deep down, that I will.
I now see sushi as an art of sorts... not as I see a Dali painting or
a symphony by Mozart, but as I see a catchy pop song by a Catchy Pop Band.
I may ingest it from time to time. I may even enjoy it superficially, but
give it a few days, and it will be wrenching around in my bowels, slowly
killing me, until I am forced to yank it from my anus.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Cream of GOP -- Condiments; Chapter 704"
by -- Murmur
Ichabod had a store. It was not an exciting store. He sold
plungers. Usually plunger stores do not get much business, but Ichabod's
Plunger Emporium was located in Turdly, Oklahoma, widely known as being the
one place in America where people's turds are biggest. So plungers sell
like hotcakes. Actually, not in Turdly. Hotcakes sell better, because
Turdly is the home of Munroe's Hotcake Plaza, which has eight different
hotcake establishments. This all ended one day. It was the day of the
rain. Rain isn't a big deal in Turdly, except this rain was actually alien
piss and it killed everything in Turdly. Ichabod was at a plunger
convention, though, and when he returned to find Turdly destroyed and all of
his plungers eviscerated, he decided it was high time to head to France. So
he tried to. He was stopped at LaGuardia because he looked suspicious.
Ichabod was to learn that snorting alien piss had gotten to be all the rave
in France and that plungers were being used to smuggle the alien piss into
France. Poor Ichabod had tried to bring some 147 plungers with him to
France. He did not learn that plungers served such a devilish purpose until
after he had been rammed up the buttocks with plungers multiple times at
Riker's Island. Apparently Ichabod's Plunger Emporium had not been enough
of an income maker for Ichabod to have been able to afford an attorney more
competent than Messy Mike's Law and Linens Service. Ichabod, upon being
freed from prison, returned to the former site of Turdly and found a large
ball of twine. Then he realized he was in Iowa, or Minnesota, or somewhere
like that, and he impaled himself upon a plunger.
Moral: It's okay to flush before you're done. Even if you're Ollie
North!
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"The Unforgivable Sin"
by -- Sweeney Erect
Thursday morning found Julian Simmons sitting on his patio, drinking
a highball. At a little after ten, there was a woman at his door.
"Penelope," he said, "always a pleasure."
"Julian," said the short, thin, well-endowed girl in the velvet
shirt, "for once I can say the same."
Simmons invited her in and bid her to have a seat on his black
leather couch. He took a chair near the couch and continued with his drink.
The two had known and disapproved of each other since she had begun
to see his friend Aleister Kidridge about six months previously. The two
had been married, and now, because of a very shoddy prenuptial agreement,
she was divorcing Aleister and taking him for most of his considerable
fortune.
"So, Penelope, would you like a drink?"
"Nope, but I think you will need several more," she said with a grin.
"I never need a drink -- but I would always like one." Having said
this, Julian wandered over to a well stocked bar and began mixing another
highball. "So, Ms. Syed, you will soon once again be single."
"I am still Mrs. Kidridge, Julian. And yes, soon I will be very
single and very wealthy."
"You know, if Aleister had taken my advice, and not drawn up his own
pre-nup, we wouldn't need to have this conversation."
The swarthy, buxom beauty smiled. "Why are we having it now, Julian?
There is nothing to discuss. I am taking your friend for all he is worth,
and there is nothing that can be done to stop it."
Julian walked back over with two glasses and handed one to the girl.
"I think you are going to need this, dear."
"Why Julian, are you trying to get me drunk and take advantage of
me?" she asked.
"Naw, I have a peculiar distaste for whores." He grinned engagingly
at her.
"Well, since I am about to come into over ten million dollars, I am
the highest priced whore you will ever meet. And now, I am done here." She
stood up to go.
"Don't go, we haven't gotten to the fun part yet."
"Julian, I can't think of a fucking thing that would be fun with you
there."
"Eh. Once I pissed on my ex-girlfriend's parrot. It was pretty fun
for *me* at any rate... though the bird seemed not to like it."
"You disgust me. Good-bye."
"Sit your ass down, if you know what is good for you."
She stopped and regarded him coldly. "I am taking your friend for
all he is worth and you have not a leg to stand on. How does that make you
feel?"
"You are getting jack shit, as the proletarians like to say, Ms.
Syed."
She stared, confused.
"Sit down, let uncle Julian tell you all about it."
This time, she sat down, looking confused. "But the paperwork..."
"Fuck the paperwork. We are going to take you to trial, a very
public trial, for the divorce. And we are going to parade ten men with whom
you had affairs..."
"OH! I cheated. Yeah, I'm shaking in fright, Mr. Simmons. This is
the nineties, everybody cheats."
Julian grinned. "It is not cheating we will accuse you of. Every
last one of those men is going to say that you were lousy in bed."
"What the fuck?"
"Lousy in bed, neurotic, fucked up, co-dependent...one of them, a
plumber I believe, is going to say you were 'A lay like a dead fish.' He
came up with that himself...."
"But why..."
"Because we are paying them to. And because we are gonna make your
life a living hell. You are going to stand guilty of the one unforgivable
sin... being boring. And by the time we talk about all of your sexual
problems, your inability to have orgasms, your tendency to lay still and not
move during sex, your constant threats to call the police if your lovers
ever use drugs or drive while drunk -- well we will make sure you never get
invited to decent parties. And you won't be able to get laid at an all-boys
Catholic reform school in Alaska. Have that drink."
"But... but... fuck you." She was in tears now, and Julian was
grinning, leading her to the door. "We will be in touch to offer you a
very, very small settlement... I suggest you take it and get the fuck out of
Aleister's life."
He opened the door, pushed her gently outside and kicked her very
hard in the ass to help her down the hallway. Julian went back outside to
his patio, to have another highball.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
- EDITORIALS -
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Syncopation Nation"
by -- Bor
Recently, I had the privilege of spending extended hours on a bus
with roughly 25 people, for three days, playing what was supposed to be a
tour for my school. The Illinois Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble. That's my band.
When you think touring jazz band, you normally think, "Oh, so they'll
be playing in smoky bars or medium-size auditoriums sold out to middle-class
crackers or something like that." Yeah. Well, in case you hadn't shopped
for an undergraduate institution in the midwest lately, IWU is really,
really big on recruitment. So, on the tours I've played on, we've had the
privilege of playing hot venues such as New Trier High School in Winnetka
and the even more illustrious Flanagan High in, well, Flanagan, IL.
This year was no exception. In three days we did five "gigs" at
mostly suburban high schools. Next year, the band gets to go to Japan,
where they'll be met with ridiculously wild enthusiasm from those wacky
Japanese jazz nuts and probably pick up a lot of easily-wooed Pacific Rim
lovin'. Of course, I graduate before that happens.
I'm a composer. Composer in the sense of "I write things on
score-paper that only the increasingly dwindling global community composers
will ever appreciate" as well as in the sense of "I write rock songs that
are meant to rip your head off." One of the things that score-paper type
composers do best is to LAMENT THE DEATH OF CLASSICAL MUSIC IN THE PUBLIC
EYE. Most of us are very insecure about it and develop this complex about
repeatedly saying "you wouldn't understand" to those outside of the
"academic" music community, which really doesn't help things much as far as
bringing our music back into the PUBLIC EYE goes. As students, we get
ridiculous questions like, "Oh, so you're planning on moving to Nashville
after graduation?" When released to adulthood, with doctorate in hand and
(hopefully) a job at this music department or another, we are eyed
suspiciously by our neighbors who don't know exactly what it is we do.
They'd probably eye us even more suspiciously if they knew that we got paid
fairly good money for making music that sounds like ass to the average
American ear. It's no secret that people are really fucking stupid.
Believe it or not, the above paragraph had a point. Composers can be
really fucking stupid too, and I don't expect the current crop of
bleepy-bloopy that earns tenured positions and Pulitzer Prizes to become the
next big teen craze anytime soon. But see, the thing is, I always thought
that jazz was different.
Jazz killed classical in the first place. Jazz is "America's
classical music." It shares a hell of a lot in common with rock -- the raw
energy (in good ensembles, at least), improvisation, unrelenting beat,
singsong melody, and typically tonal chord progressions that go only a
couple steps beyond what most rock musicians do (as we now know, after the
whole Schonberg fiasco, only TONAL music is acceptable to the American ear).
Jazz musicians used to do a lot of drugs. Jazz was the enemy before Elvis
came along, and some 80 years after its birth, it still has that "dirty"
quality to it that makes it seem sinful to anal little kids in music
programs.
When I sit down at the piano and play with the band, I headbang.
I've had stools fly out from underneath me. I've broken numerous keys on
instruments at schools we've played at. I actually had my glasses come
apart from excessive g-force during one gig on this tour. I barely ever
play the same thing twice; my solos are always improvised no matter what (In
case you're wondering, this is what EVERYONE in jazz is supposed to do).
While the rest of the band takes a slightly more cerebral and refined
approach, we compensate for our instrumental shortcomings by putting every
bit we've got into our shows. And, on occasion, we absolutely burn.
Surely, this isn't hard for the "youth of today" to at least appreciate.
That's what I thought. Perhaps I spend too much time thinking about
music, maybe I'm just an old fuck. I thought I still had plenty of the
adolescent desire for excess in music left in me. Rob Parton's big band
rocks me just as hard live as does Shiner or Fragile Porcelain Mice. True,
it's for different reasons. But despite the "intellectual edge" that jazz
has over rock, you can't deny that both styles of music aim to actively
involve listeners to move their damn bodies, no matter whether the movement
of choice is clapping, "moshing" or head-nodding. They encourage them to
use their voices: People at good jazz shows scream as loudly during a
whoopass trombone solo as an angsty 17-year-old with a stupid haircut
screams at a Pantera concert.
And at the very least, the Squirrel Nut Zippers are a household name
now. And all the suburban kiddies love ska. Surely they could appreciate 45
minutes of brilliantly written horn lines, if they can find a thrill in 45
minutes of the same fucking stupid unison horn line over and over.
Right, so, I guess they didn't. Not even when we were playing for
just the school jazz band and their damn parents. How many times did I have
to endure the embarrassment of the school director taking the mic and
asking, "It's actually OK to applaud and even shout after or during a solo?"
What the hell, man? These kids are in JAZZ BAND. Shouldn't they know
something about JAZZ? Have they ever heard a Coltrane record, or even an
Ellington set? They live close to Chicago, have they ever been to a jazz
show? Has their director explained anything about jazz at all to them?
(Apparently not, judging by the kinds of players we had to work with when we
were doing our clinics.)
Now, the other kids. They're getting out of class to see us, and
we're not there to try to shove some curmudgeonly "new music" or whatever
down their throats. We're here to rock. We've got the classics, we be
sweatin' to the oldies. Get those lighters out. We're in the fucking high
school gym, let's recreate the video to "Smells Like Teen Spirit." You're
all wearing your Gap flannels, the drummer has some white duct tape handy
and half his sticks are already broken anyhow, it'll be perfect.
But half an hour into the set, it becomes apparent that I'd have to
knock the piano over, douse it with gasoline, set it on fire and toss it
through a Marshall stack to get any attention from 3/4ths of these kids.
And as much as I might enjoy this, I'm not sure how the school might feel
about it. I wouldn't want to lose my rights to that free pizza that every
school "fed" us with throughout the tour (our official payment for busting
our balls, along with, of course, mild-mannered and distracted applause
throughout most of the set preceding or following the "meal").
So continues my disillusionment with the people who are supposed to
buy my records if I'm ever going to make any cash whatsoever at what I do.
It's not about "whatever happened to the kids, this garbage they listen to."
It's about the fact that 8/10ths of America is brain-dead. Did rock kill
them? Hell no. Rock is amazing, when it's not the same obnoxious
repackaged shit that has been done for the last forty years musically with
lyrics that have been done for 7 centuries. (I kid you not. Take a close
look at the lyrics of secular song of 14th century France and you'll find
that it's not far from Alanis Morrisette.)
In the meantime, since I have no good way to conclude this article,
other than to go on a cliched rant about how "true art is no longer
appreciated" (it never was in the first place, as far as I can tell, so
start preparing for that graduate assistantship today), I invite YOU, dear
reader, to go out and check some jazz. I don't care what the hell it is.
Get some Miles, early, mid, or late. ("Bitches' Brew" is a good place to
start.) Get some Archie Shepp or Sun Ra or Ornette Coleman, some Art Tatum
or Marcus Roberts, get some Basie, get some Steely Dan. Oh, and if you
liked the Squirrel Nut Zippers, you'll love Jelly Roll. (Do, however, avoid
ANY release labeled as "fusion" or featuring a picture of a guy with teased
hair wielding an ES-335 on the cover.)
Read about jazz, there's no doubt a "Dummies" book on the topic at
the moment. Go to a concert, even if you know nothing about the group or
artist except that they're supposedly jazz. And every step of the way,
really listen to the music. This is not just shit that geriatrics watch on
PBS when they want to get some sleep. This is shit that fucked up our
entire century, and continues to fuck up young minds when they first
discover the secret that the RIAA doesn't want you to know about: this stuff
rocks far harder than Smash Mouth.
Oh, and remember to scream often. It's "acceptable."
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"On Love and On Friendship"
by -- Puck
I've been toying with a new theory lately, and I wish I could take
full credit for it. But alas, I'm not that smart. It's a new way of
looking at things, and though it may seem like a simple, meaningless theory
on a subject matter that's swamped with them, it's really a life-changing
philosophy. But as life changing as it is, it's one that's near impossible
to follow.
When we're children, we start developing these little systems, or
schemas, about love and friendship. We learn that we love our parents, love
our brothers and sisters, and love our extended family. We like our
friends. We also learn that our parents share a special love for each
other, as men and women often do.
Doesn't this seem a bit socially contrived? Love is not
quantitative, as we are so quick to believe. "I love you more" is a
fallacy. Because of this fallacy, the relationships we have today are in
dire straits. We go into them equating the sexuality with love, and
ignoring the friendship all together. Friendship = Love. One is the other.
I don't LOVE my girlfriend any more than I love one of my close friends. I
just get physical with her. We need to have a strong friendship to back
that up, or the relationship will fail. Once the physical nature of the
relationship gets boring, or stale, we see this false "love" we've created
slip through our fingers. It is indeed a fact that friendship-love can
almost seem as passionate as erotic-love at times -- especially in the
beginning while getting to know someone, having intense frienships while
self-disclosing.
So is physicality without love wrong? No. Not at all. Exploring
sexuality is never "bad," but it can be very damaging to our psyches if we
don't recognize it for what it is. People involved in highly physical
relationships will often consider themselves "in love" very early on. These
whirlwind affairs toy with emotions so violently that they always leave both
parties a little shaken up.
I love my friends in the same way that I love my family. The love my
mother shares for my father is not some higher "spiritual" love that I must
aspire to attain. Over fifty percent of marriages end in divorce nowadays.
I venture to say that this statistic would have been the same fifty years
ago if it was seen as socially acceptable to divorce. Nothing has changed.
People get married with a "spiritual" love in mind, and forget that the
friendship should be the glue that holds it together. A married couple
should ideally consist of two people who are excellent friends and who find
each other sexually attractive. That's all a good relationship is.
Friendship plus physical attraction.
I could repeat my point one thousand times, and I fear I still won't
be coming across clearly. I do believe in love, but I am no longer going to
put the love of a girlfriend in front of the love of a friend. The only
difference between the two is the physicality, and in no way does that
warrant higher priority. Perhaps I'm just cynical and jaded, denying the
existence of a higher spiritual love, but perhaps I'm just being realistic
as well. This theoretical spiritual love that the romantics speak of is
hardly a fair one, nor a consistent one. I much prefer the broad spectrum
of this universal love, one that can be shared by all. The quantitative
love is bullshit. We do not have within us a limited well of love which we
must distribute amongst our acquaintances, nor a special reserve of special
love which we can only share with one other.
To bring it down to a more practical level, and a more personal
level, I'm going to subscribe to this theory not only to ease my mind, but
to change it. This is a complex, beautiful, and honest way to interact with
the world around me, and I'd like to give it a shot. I guess it can also be
seen as a self-preserving mindset, but I hardly see it as a construction of
safety to hide behind.
By no means am I endorsing the happy-hippie "love everybody" mindset.
That's ridiculous. But the friendships we have should not be limited by our
fear of this love. Let's bring friendship itself to a higher level. If we
open up enough, we can have one thousand friendships and share just as much
love in each as we would with a true love in the old mindset.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Human Cloning for Fun and Profit: The Fight between Religion and Science"
by -- Shadow Tao
"Cloning and reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in
becoming one with God."
-- Richard Seed
With an inferno that quickly engulfed the global media, Dolly the
Replicated Sheep ignited moralitymongers and blind Progressives everywhere.
The resulting fire, like all fires, soon began to collapse under its own
weight of its own consumption... until the fuel of human cloning-attempts --
the very fear of which had sparked the surge -- rejuvenated the flame. The
White House pandered to the alarmed, pushing a proposal to ban cloning
experiments on humans until issues of morality are addressed. In an attempt
to recover the impotent remainder of his lame duck term, Clinton executed an
order to ban the use of federal funds for human cloning. Clinton was
quoted, "Personally, I believe that human cloning raises deep concerns given
our cherished concepts of faith and humanity."
Why is religion railing against this monstrous foe with such
unanimous concern? Obviously, this concept is friction against the concepts
of existing religious dogma. As religion largely opposes scientific
breakthroughs that challenge faith and threaten to popularize secularity,
this is not exactly a surprising wrinkle in the politics of societal change.
According to Mohammad Hasan, who leads the Friday prayers at Jamia Mosque in
Rawalpindi, "This would increase atheist tendencies in an already secular
Western society. The act would invoke God's displeasure."
It is good to know the Holy Meter of God's Relative Displeasure that
was entrusted so long ago to the Holy Nation of Islam is still in working
order.
Beyond this, though, what's the burn? It's the fear that through
cloning human beings, humanity would be "playing God," an act regarded by
many denominations and sects as wholly unnatural. Anis Ahmad, a scholar at
Islamabad's main Faisal Mosque says: "Only God can give life. No human
being can claim to challenge divine authority." Assuming a religious
paradigm, however, why would God grant mankind power over behaviour, if not
for mankind to use it with discretion? Even _without_ the church, God
would likely exert His will, were it contrary to a situation.
Even if cloning *is* "playing God" from a Judeo-Christian
perspective, what's wrong with that? One must recall that humankind has
been doing so with limited regard to long-term consequences, ever since Adam
ate the Fruit of Wisdom. Man has decided the fate of the environment,
playing Caesar to the extinction and protection of innumerable species.
Certainly the churches and mosques have done little throughout history to
protect the animals of God's creation. Why does this invention of man stick
in the craw of the holymen? Why do denial and repression attempt to crush
scientific concepts that shake the foundations of conventional faith?
To understand these questions, one must examine and understand the
behavior and interaction of belief systems throughout the ages. By nature,
religions are organisms. They are even described as such in some doctrines,
such as the church being the "body of Christ". They are supported by
members who serve certain tasks, fed by the production of their workers, and
held together by the common tie of shared faith. When these organisms come
into contact with other systems of faith, they often conflict until a
certain working distance is achieved, shrinking back into tradition and
painless history. But as the exposure increases, one will invariably try to
incorporate aspects of the other, in an attempt to attract the other's
resources. The Judeo-Christian archangel Michael was a Chaldean God long
before he gained a position with the followers of the God of David. Brigid
of the Celts eventually became St. Brigid to the Christians, who had
converted the Goddess to Christianity in an attempt to assimilate the celts.
Now, each of these systems has tried in part or in whole to
assimilate science. The problem with conventional religion assimilating the
cold logic of supposed truth is that science is based on a shared sense of
fact or perceived fact, rather than a belief in a will or a set of values.
This sense of shared reality, something proven and illustrateable in some
sense or another, is what has defined our existence in this century.
Because of this, science's hold on mankind in the modernday is so complete
and unshakeable that religion can do little other than protest its advance
as contrary to the morality of the whole. Religion cannot say that TV was a
gift from God. Man obviously made it. Religion cannot make quantum theory
a saint. Not a saint ready for plastic and for a thousand dashboards across
the country, at the very least.
Scientists, whether intended or not, have found themselves high
priests to common belief in the Western World. This... _this_ scares the
holymen. Only by objecting to the greedy march of science in their own
population can they leverage any force at all. Only, by in their own way of
"playing God" and declaring the act an affront to the morals of the
populace, that is, the inherent righteousness of this particular science,
can they fight the slow march of logic.
Imagine how learning to fully clone a human being can teach us to
save lives through chromosomal manipulations abolishing diseases. Imagine
genetically recreating a healthy form of a child who has died of leukemia.
If the cloning of humans, can save a human, how can it be a sin? How can
any action that saves a human life be a sin?
It's important to assert that the cloning of tissue, plants, and
animals has already led to the development of new therapies for cancer,
diabetes and cystic fibrosis. Further, scientists recognize cloning's
promise for producing replacement skin, cartilage or bone tissue for
accident victims, and nerve tissue to treat spinal cord injury. Still, the
extreme stance is that it not be allowed to clone a full human. Why?
Because "God made human beings unique"? Of course that ignores the fact
that no two human beings experiences and lives are exactly the same. It's
impossible to _avoid_ being unique and _that_ would be wherein "God's power"
lies -- not at conception, but in "natural law."
Man has now given life and laid down the challenge to that divine
authority, challenging the sanctity and mystery of the most traditional holy
of faiths. What the holymen truly fear is that their God won't, or rather
*can't* argue this point in an environment so converted with the poisonous
addiction of fact.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Make Money Fast"
by -- Trilobyte
It is the year 1998. Major companies throughout the world fear what
could possibly be the biggest commercial catastrophe since the Great
Depression. Without lifting a finger, small companies could plunge into
debt and giant corporations could lose hundreds of millions of dollars. The
government, without having any corrupt officials, could mysteriously
misplace billions of dollars -- or, even more catastrophic -- demand back
taxes from hordes of U.S. citizens.
What, is Wall Street going to plummet into the great depths of 1928?
No. Is inflation rising enough to drive thousands of businesses into
bankruptcy in the next decade? Probably not -- and don't expect the IRS to
become any more dastardly than it already is.
What's going to happen then? Well, it's this little problem called
the Year 2000. This is not another small-sneeze worry like the Michelangelo
virus scare. In the year 2000, thousands of outdated and poorly designed
mainframes, business machines, and ancient software packages will be
responsible for one of the largest economic nightmares ever to befall the
human race (well, next to that one flood with the big ark and Noah and all
that).
These electronic amalgamies were designed without the future in mind.
Take, for example, a small accountant consulting firm that started in the
early 1970s. At the time, the best technology available for their job could
have been a large mainframe computer using reel-to-reel magnetic tape for
storage and be driven by custom-designed assembly code. The company then
invested in dozens of these machines as their business grew and expanded the
systems to the max. As time went on, technology grew away from the
mainframes, but this company had such an investment in the machines and the
software that they stuck with it. Besides, upgrading would have been so
expensive, and the machines worked fine! Their chief electronics expert
might have gotten laid off (the machines never broke down, see) or left the
job for some reason. However -- lurking way beneath the washing-machine
exteriors of these hulking business machines -- are gross specimens of
laziness, foul planning, and sheer ignorance. You see, these deeply relied
upon mainframes inherently lack the ability to differentiate between
centuries. As soon as the year of 1999 is over, these old brains will think
that it's 1900 all over again. Any companies doing business with this
consulting firm will find that all of the calculations of their tax
payments, revenue, and capital will be grossly mangled. They may contain
zeroes, negative numbers, or any other completely incorrect value.
Obviously, they need to upgrade. But, you see, the data stored on
their hundreds of reels of tape is in a completely non-standard format that
is no longer recognized by any modern hardware. The assembly-language-
-written code is for a long-forgotten processor that hasn't been used in any
machines in ages. All workers who have experience designing the system
software for these mainframes either has moved on in life, died, or
forgotten everything. Few books of documentation remain for the machines,
and the companies who designed them have also, like the software designers,
moved on or died.
In other words, upgrading is not that simple.
To assess the situation currently facing the world's economic
community, take this one example above and put it in place of one fifth of
all businesses in existence today. To say this is a serious issue is to
make an obscene understatement.
Now, put yourself in the place of someone in charge of such a
company. Since you have no idea how to upgrade the software in time, what
do you do? Do you let it rest and hope that your mainframes are actually
NOT of the type that will make this heinous error? Probably not.
Considering how your company is very well likely to lose hundreds of
thousands -- even millions -- of dollars to this error, you sue someone.
You could sue the company that made the mainframes, the person or company
who designed the software, the makers of the magnetic tape, the flooring
store who sold you the carpets underneath the machines... and, of course,
you're not the only one doing this. Predictions are flying that over 3
_billion_ dollars will change hands when the shit hits the fan. There will
be more lawsuits over this Year 2000 issue than over any issue in world
history. So why sit and sulk over how much of a pain this is? Take
advantage of the situation! START A COMPANY!
Large multinational corporations are not looking forward to losing
millions of billions of dollars to a small computer oversight. However,
they will shell out just as much money while attempting to avoid the loss.
That's where you step in! You and your brand new company, Year 2000
Consulting Co., are the knights in shining armor (soon to be in shining
_money_). You have set up a network of former mainframe programmers and
hardware designers with a library of books containing lists of assembly
language instructions for each type of processor used in these mainframes.
You and your crew are the force of salvation for these corporations. With
all the intelligence and experience that you have rounded up into your
workforce, no mainframe problem is too large for you to fix. Your employees
can scan lines of code for hours and hours learning what does what.
Experienced system programmers examine the data on the magnetic tape.
Overall, weeks worth of consecutive hours are spent trying to break the
puzzle of these mainframes -- and, in the end, you are successful. It's
tedious, but it's necessary work for the economic world to remain spinning.
Originally, you had wondered how you would yank these experienced
programmers away from other jobs. Then, when word got around that you were
starting such a company, you soon learned how. Offers of million-dollar
jobs started pouring in from Panasonic, Zenith, HR Block, and other
incredibly large companies. You had already been promised more money total
than your bank could probably hold. The skepticism of these programmers was
immediately erased when you told them that they would be earning $250 an
hour.
From January 20, 1998, until December, 1999, your company had its
thousands of employees working around the clock to get mainframes up to
speed and to reverse-engineer software. Every job was completed though some
took much longer than others. Your company was nationally recognized as #1,
and you were named _Time_'s Man of the Year.
Now that it's all over, you look back and are very glad that you read
that column by Trilobyte on www.dto.net. His prophetic text inspired you to
start a company that has financially propelled you to being the Richest
Person in the World. If it hadn't been for him, you could have been one of
the millions of citizens who would have suffered long, fruitless court
proceedings with the IRS. And while you think of him, you wonder where he
is. "Wouldn't it be nice if I sent him a few million dollars," you think to
yourself as you laugh quietly and sip from your sparkling white champagne.
Ragged and destitute, I finally discover your mansion nestled in the
quiet and beautiful hills of the Andes. Having been hiking for years and
living off the seat of my pants, nothing gives me more pleasure than knowing
that I finally would meet you. I _finally_ would have the pleasure to drain
the lifejuice from your veins and revel in your painful death.
I creep to the large iron gates guarding the entrance to your
mountaintop property. I shake them, thousands of volts of electricity surge
through my body, and I die.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
- FICTION -
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Clouds and the Blue, Blue Sky"
by -- MoonBagel
"You have more angst than anyone I've ever met," said the mother.
The comment was followed by a little quiet laugh. The laughter didn't mean
the mother was joking or even making fun of the angsty archetype the media
has been so kind as to feed everyone this glorious decade. The mother was
actually quite saddened to realize that her sweet, not-quite-perky Emily
had earned such a label. Normal teenage daughters were supposed to be
functionally retarded when in the vicinity of a conventionally-attractive
guy; teenage girls should listen to crap Top 40 pop radio and wax ecstatic
at the prospect of a mall expedition -- there's a GAP there!
The mother had wanted so much for her Emily. From the moment it was
realized that this special mass of cells existed inside her, the mother knew
that this mass would soon be a girl -- an extraordinary girl. This girl
would think for herself and not be reined by nutty societal constructs or
expectations. She would be intelligent and strong and creative and moral
and sniff out the dead rat of organized religion, all on her own.
Emily was born, and she was a girl. This came as quite a surprise to
her father, he who had sworn for many months that fetal Emily was, in fact,
attached to a penis. Her mother knew better -- Emily would never be
attached to a penis, for Emily would know when to stand up and walk away.
Emily proved her mother right -- she slept night-long five days after
she came home, and she walked and talked exceptionally early. People begged
her to tell them her stories after a very few years. What impressed her
mother most of all is that she derived such pleasure from standing amid the
forget-me-nots and ferns under the oaks and maples of the small forest which
cloaked them from the prying headlights of passing cars. When Emily caught
sight of a butterfly or caught a lightning bug, she would be euphoric for
the entire day.
Emily loved to climb as high as she could -- on the hood of their
little Toyota, or the stumps of trees, or she'd muscle her way on top of her
swingset -- and she'd reach as high as a 4-year-old could. 4-year-olds can
reach within inches of the blue and clouds, nearly able to stir the clouds
with their stubby toddler fingers. They reach, and then they dream about
being old -- being 13 or 16 or 23, when they will be taller and they will be
able to fully span that distance from the ground to the blue.
The mother liked to sit in the grass and watch Emily stretch and
contort herself in a desperate effort to reach the clouds. Unlike other
mothers, she knew Emily _would_ span that distance by the time she was 16 or
23. Emily knew, too.
...and now this child has more angst than anyone the mother has ever
met.
Last year the mother had relegated Emily's depression to the realm of
gifted children's requisite period of existential anxiety, but then she
realized that these emotions had been babystepping their way toward maturity
right alongside Emily all these years. Emily couldn't have known, but her
mother had enough years packed away to be sure that the majority of
13-year-olds don't read Kerouac and Kierkegaard, and they certainly don't
cry themselves to sleep because Jack had said "fag" in English that day, and
because everyone had laughed when Jack called someone a "fag," and because
even though Mrs. Everly had lobbed Jack a vaguely disapproving look, Emily
knew her teacher wanted to laugh.
The mother grew unsure. Her strong, intellectual, individual of a
daughter could reach the blue by the time she was sixteen, but the mother
began to worry if Emily wouldn't be clutching at the dirt or her carpet
instead, unable to breathe or think.
The mother gave Emily books and hugs to keep her afloat, but Emily
had little attention span for reading by the time she had come to grips with
being 16. She had sat, dazed, blinking, as the world went by in front of
her face and inside her head.
"Maybe if everyone would at least ignore each other..." She was
always so pensive -- just stifle 'em with ennui. She would lay awake at
night with an incoherent mess of thoughts that begged for recognition.
She'd cry because she couldn't pay them proper heed; she'd cry because she
was crying about not having had a lucid thought in months, and then she'd
cry because she no longer had anything to say. After she was done with
those tears, she'd cry again for a good measure and because even if she
could formulate glowing sentences and stories again, no one would care
because she was just that likable weird girl, the one who usually had an
unnecessary book in her backpack and always seemed to be busying herself
with a whole lotta nothin'.
This made the mother cry sometimes. The mother would stay awake
because her Emily loved so much and so many
, but there was no real
reciprocation... well, no reciprocation from anyone other than her immediate
family and those friends who valued her ability to empathize and to advise
objectively.
Emily would sit on the ground and stare at the blue and clouds and
sigh a fairly sizable sigh occasionally, and she would pet her dog, wishing
she could be a dog for awhile. She wished she could just lay in the sun and
eat and make pee puddles and have a full day if she could merely bark at the
neighbors' power tools, and those things would make her content and
satisfied.
But Emily's not a dog -- she's a strong, intelligent, creative
individual of a woman, or at least her mother is sure of that.
"Mom, I don't even have angst! I'm hardly ever pissed off, I don't
think everything sucks! I can't think of a single person who I honestly
hate. I can't even be a pseudo-intellectual, much less anything else."
"Emily, dear, you have more angst than anyone I've ever met."
Emily heard her mother's little laugh, and she saw the fear in
mother's eyes, and that little laugh gave her some modicum of hope... and
maybe that can keep her breathing and smiling for another month. Maybe
not -- but then Emily would be another in a long line of tragic teenage
figures on another graph on another news report, and her mother is sure she
is better than that.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"consume, be fruitful, and multiply"
by -- creed
QBRT Mental Activity Monitor User: Eric Taylor (#03) AXS: S100
Date: 12/25/99
Time: 3:34 AM EST
Location: ?Unknown?/Indoors -- Possibly underground, out of range of sonar.
Subject: Christopher Jameson
Mental Capacity: 439 Terrakarthodes (Normal)
Mental Activity:
Conscious level: Idle, Waking
Ocular stimulation: None <3%>
WARNING OCULAR LEVELS NOT SUITABLE FOR <IDLE, WAKING>
Aural stimulation: None <1%>
WARNING AURAL LEVELS NOT SUITABLE FOR <IDLE, WAKING>
Physical stimulation: Moderate: Cold climate <8%>
Mental stimulation: !High!: Post-Cerebral: (Level 5) <40%>
Source: Independent
WARNING MENTAL LEVELS EXCESSIVE FOR <IDLE, WAKING>
***WARNING*** MENTAL LEVEL 5 ACHIEVED
Initiating chemical balance test.................normal (Health 70%)
Initiating chemical influence test...............uninfluenced
WARNING SUBJECT CHEMICALLY UNINFLUENCED
***MENTAL LEVELS UNSUITABLE***
"what the fuck?"
eric woke up to a metallic beep he had not heard since he designed
QBRT three years ago. as the beep echoed from QBRT's silicon throat three
times and jolted eric from his usual worktime slumber, his feet slipped from
their resting spots on the surface of his desk and kicked over his cold cup
of coffee, spilling it over some paperwork he had completed earlier that
day. his attention was momentarily moved from the angry computer to the
insolent coffee spill.
"GOD DAMN IT ALL jesus this is going to take me forever this shit
always happens to me where the fuck do we keep the paper towels in here?"
his usual burst of profanity helped to occupy his mind as he slowly regained
his full consciousness, moving out of his sleepy haze. and before he could
fulfill his encyclopedic knowledge of vulgar terminology, he was completely
awake and searching for paper towels. as he had expected, there were no
paper towels in the office where he worked. he headed for the bathroom and
ripped off a wad of toilet paper. and in that moment of clarity as he
ripped the toilet paper from its dispenser, he remembered: "oh, fuck. QBRT
was beeping at me for something."
eric found it a little odd that the supercomputer he had built to be
self-sufficient three years ago was beeping, requiring his assistance for
something -- but he was certainly not alarmed. he grabbed the toilet paper
and returned to his cubicle in the empty office, noticing the bright orange
sticker on his desk of his favorite 1980's video game character, q-bert, for
which he had named the supercomputer. the monitor was blinking and flashing
its warning signs.
he recognized it as a usual mental-overstimulation case, the ones
that were usually treated with a light electromagnetic restabilization pulse
which realigned the brain and set it back to regular levels. but somehow
this one was out of range of the pulse, and... the levels were outrageously
high. eric replied to this situation with his normal coping mechanism:
"what the fuck is this bullshit?"
uttering a loud sigh which no one was around to hear, eric reached
over to QBRT's dusty computer mouse and selected "zoom cameras" from the
menu bar. the screen instantly changed to a view of this subject's
quarters. the room he was in looked like some sort of bomb shelter. the
walls were all light blue and very plastic-looking, and there was no
furniture in the room. in fact, the only thing in the entire room was the
subject, christopher jameson, sitting naked against one of the corners of
the small room. he was totally awake, just sitting there, and oddly enough,
it looked like he had no reason behind his actions. he must have just felt
like sitting naked in a bomb shelter for a while and thinking.
"son of a bitch."
---
christopher jameson, a 27-year-old pharmacist, was sitting naked in
his favorite bomb shelter, as usual. he had been doing this every thursday
night since must-see-tv was implemented into the lives of his wife and
9-year-old daughter. this thursday, however, was very different. the fact
that he had spurred himself into a very deep trance of thought combined with
the fact that he had been recently added to the FBI's large list of
"suspicious characters" had caused a small dent in his own sanity, as well
as his personal security.
of course, christopher was unaware of all of these factors, because
he had put himself into a trance of thought. for the moment, he was merely
a naked, balding pharmacist in a bomb shelter, thinking to himself.
unfortunately, the FBI was not yet convinced of this.
---
eric's job was basically to sit by a computer and make sure nothing
got too fucked up. the computer's job was a bit more complicated. it
monitored people's mental activities and made sure nobody was thinking too
hard. this job was also one of making sure nothing got too fucked up, but
on a slightly higher level; one that only a computer could handle. even
with those responsibilities, the computer was rarely challenged with its
work. once in a while it would get jolted by bored teenagers and drug
users, but in america, most people pretty much remained at the same mental
levels. this was something that the FBI wished to maintain, which is why
QBRT and eric existed. that was simple enough, just another crappy
government program eating tax dollars. but tonight, things were starting to
get a little too fucked up for the FBI to handle. even eric was starting to
lose his ever-steady grip on things. he was running out of profanities.
"son of a bitch."
christopher was thinking too hard for QBRT to handle, and he was out
of range of the usual mentally-numbing electromagnetic pulses that the FBI
loved so much to send to its harvard graduates and teenage aspiring
intellectuals. this was something that eric was going to have to deal with
personally. eric didn't like the idea of handling this situation, but that
was why he was getting paid, so, fuck. eric did not like getting off his
ass.
"son of a bitch."
eric was pissed off. he hated people, and he hated work. but what
he hated most of all was talking to his manager, so he decided that it would
be better if he just took care of things by himself. just like when he was
a kid. he remembered his dad giving him that old lecture when he was 16.
"you're never gonna get anywhere in life if you expect for people to
pay your fucking way through life and wipe your fucking ass every fucking
day of your worthless life, dipshit." eric learned, of course, that this
lesson was not true when you worked for the u.s. government. but fuck that.
tonight eric was going to move his ass for his pay just like his old man
did.
"son of a bitch. fuck." he grabbed his gun and walked out the door.
---
after a long plane ride to portland, oregon, where christopher lived,
and a long taxicab ride to his house, eric had arrived at his destination.
he paid the cabbie and stepped out hastily. only at this moment did he
realize that christopher could have been long since finished with his
thinking streak after all that time.
fortunately, christopher was still naked, still in his bomb shelter,
and still thinking. eric found this out from his wife, whom he disturbed
when he rang the doorbell looking for christopher. at that time,
christopher's wife was fucking christopher's co-worker, john, just like she
did every thursday at this time while christopher was in the bomb shelter.
christopher's daughter was also having sex with her girlfriend, kate, just
like she did every thursday when both of her parents were too busy to
notice. and although eric would have loved to peek in the window and jerk
off in the bushes outside like he did back in his own hometown, he had work
to do. he followed christopher's wife's directions to the bomb shelter
underneath the backyard and shortly found himself at the bomb shelter's
entrance. he quickly (and somewhat painfully) tucked his erection under his
belt, forcing his penis against his stomach, then entered the bomb shelter
as quietly as he knew how.
he was greeted only by christopher's blank, glazed, naked stare. the
bomb shelter was completely empty. eric imagined that the hard plastic
floor must have been very uncomfortable to sit on for so long, especially in
the nude. he only thought to himself for a moment before speaking his mind:
"what the fuck are you trying to accomplish, dipshit?!"
eric was surprised to see that christopher actually heard this
remark. in fact, it woke him up from his trance. he looked somewhat
edified, but he did not speak, as he was not quite reoriented into his
plastic environment.
"oh, uh, shit. you're awake. fuck. i mean, hi."
christopher was too confused to reply. apparently, he was still
thinking about whatever put him into his trance. there was a long pause,
and since eric could never bear long pauses, he spoke.
"you know, it's dipshits like you that make my life so fucking
miserable. do you know there's a whole fucking world out there that's dying
and starving while you're just sitting on your fat naked ass all the fucking
time? why don't you fucking get a fucking grip on your fucking life and
fucking do something fucking useful with your fucking time! damn it, you
fucking worthless shits get me SO FUCKING PISSED OFF!"
chris was very calm throughout this degrading speech. he didn't seem
to be paying attention... and towards the end, he looked like he realized
something in his own mind. ...something that could get christopher, or
maybe even the whole world around him, back on track. but that was just the
way small thoughts hit small people. it was a revelation to christopher,
and he spoke out:
"the snail crawling up the wall is destined to reach the
balloon-state of endothermic sanctuary that is found in the souls of each
and every one of us, merely fleeing from our minds each time we let a
thought reach our consciousness. what is lost is only a heliotropic rose
that will soon be eaten by the dogs of continuity, and man and god and each
court of angels shall fall all at once into oil and burn up in conversation,
just like you, eric."
it was at exactly that point when eric fired his pistol directly at
christopher's head, instantly penetrating his skull and brain. yes, it
killed him. eric walked slowly over to christopher's dead, naked body and
kicked him in the teeth, then walked back over to his house, where he sat in
the bushes and jerked off twice to christopher's widowed wife and lesbian
daughter as they fucked wildly in front of thursday night's television
programming. he caught a plane home and was back in his apartment in time
to catch late night with conan o'brien. he jerked off again in his bed
while watching conan interview the latest hollywood beauty. he came all
over his sheets.
disgusted with his own bodily fluids, eric decided he would sleep
under the bed that night, rather than his cum-stained satin sheets. he
started to reflect on the quickness and astounding efficiency of his night,
but, as usual, fell asleep before he let his mind take control of him. of
course, eric never heard about christopher or his family ever again. after
all, he worked for the FBI; he had an establishment to take care of the
errors his aggression brought him.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Djarum Super (I Love You, Roxy)"
by -- PezMonkey
I think about Jack too much, really, considering that it was and then
it wasn't. Fast and intense. Just because it ceased to exist doesn't mean
it doesn't hurt to think about him, even now. But the "wasn't" began eight
months ago, and now I'm alone.
Alone except for Brian, who at times is enough. Enough, at least for
me to cry to or at or on. Prepositions were never my forte, but then,
though, neither was love.
Brian is, I think, my only grip on sanity at times. Every night,
sometime after midnight, we climb the back stairs to the gravelly roof. I
wait (though not really waiting, simply absorbing the moments) as he smokes,
usually a cigarette, sometimes a joint, depending on the day. And we lean,
our backs against one another, listening to the air conditioners hum and
mingle with passing cars. Patiently. Resting. Then I watch as he flicks
the still burning end of his cigarette, sending embers skidding across the
roof, and both of our eyes count the seconds until it dies.
Then, some nights, crisp and melancholy, he says, "Okay." And I
begin my story again. Or some nights, he leans his head against mine and we
just sit until the hours end and one of us begins to sleep. And sometimes,
on the rarest of nights, he slowly spins webs of intricate splendor, and I
listen, because he loves words and that is enough to make him beautiful.
But tonight is my night, and I wait for his "Okay," because that is
what I always do:
"Tonight I am ready," I start, quiet and low, because I am ready, and
therefore, it seems the appropriate place to begin.
"The night it all ended... or maybe it all started. I can't
remember, or maybe I never knew. Was... hmm. Jack was. Where to..."
because I think about it too much, and now the middle is tangled in the end
is tangled in the beginning, and I'm unsure.
Brian touches my hand, not really reassurance, but more to let me
know he's there, and that I don't have to go on, because every night I try
to start the same story, but end up telling something completely different,
because, as it turns out, I'm never ready to tell. Even after eight months.
But tonight I am.
"I loved him, you know. Or maybe I love him. I can't really tell.
I feel so dumb about that, because I never really know what love is, or how
I can tell, until I feel it again, if what has passed was love. Or is love.
But I think with Jack, it had to be. But maybe love is just another word
for dependence. Maybe."
I feel him reach for another cigarette, and wait for the crinkle of
the wrapper to disappear back in the depths of his pocket, and listen for
the match, soft in the night and loud in the wait. Then I continue.
"I loved him because we listened to each other. Do you know how rare
that is? We really cared about what the other had to say, I think. He
would read everything I wrote -- all my poetry, all my stories, and I think
it made him think he loved me. And he would tell me about his mother, and
how she hated him, and left him, and hurt him, and killed him, except for
me. Except for me. And it made me ache for him. Because he would say that
I had saved him. But I could never touch him or hold him or love him
enough.
"And we would sit on my dock, or in my tree, streams of white light
on the dark lake. Darkness except for the moon, and him. Which sounds
cheesy. I'm sorry."
Pause. Silence. Hum.
"I would rest my head in his lap, him stroking my hair, me falling
asleep, quiet while the water lapped against the dock. And somehow things
were wonderful and warm, but tragic and miserable, too. I always missed
him, even when I was with him, because how can you really know someone? Or
maybe there's just not that much to know, because we're all the same,
somewhere, but it all makes me... sad.
"But anyway, it was enough, and all I wanted, always, every second,
was to be with him. But you know all this. I've told you before..."
A car honks on the street below, and seconds later a street light
flickers... off.
"And then, then it ended.
"I was supposed to go to Macon for the weekend, to look at apartments
with a friend, Sarah, who was moving, but there was a horrible wreck on 78,
so, after being stuck in traffic for 4 hours, we decided to turn around and
go back.
"He was having a party that night, and by the time we got back to my
house, I figured the party would just be ending, so I drove to his
apartment. I got there, and he was drunk and alone..."
I pause, not sure exactly how to continue. Brian breaks the lull, as
always, with a new cigarette. This time a clove, soft and sweet in the
crispness, in the confusion, and he passes it to me... one drag, and I lick
the taste from my lips. Comfortable but sad. Sweet in gesture, but
recognition of the words that will follow. The street light flickers back
on.
"I... walked over. He started... laughing. Everything was so funny
to him. But... crude and cruel. And he told me I could leave; he didn't
care. He didn't want me there anyway. He was drunk. I knew that. But...
sometimes even realization doesn't change things. And I told him I loved
him, but it made him angry. 'You say that too much!' he screamed, and all I
could do was look down, because I was crying. 'I love you, Jack. I'm
sorry. I... think I'll go. I'm not sure I want to talk to you anymore. I
don't think I want to be here anymore.' But I did want to talk to him; I
did want to be with him. I always wanted to talk to him. I always wanted
to touch him and hold him."
I lean forward, hugging my legs tight, trying to keep down that
vomitous feeling from the pit of my stomach. Brian catches himself from
falling backwards, and turns to face my back.
"Then he started in on me. Hurting me every way he could. Telling
me how I smothered him. I loved him too much. Why couldn't I be the person
he wanted me to be?
"Unsurpassable anger. Unconditional love." I say it soft. Almost a
mumble, and he moves my hair to touch my shoulders.
He waits patiently for me to continue. His fingers empty except for
me. My face on my knees, and everything comes out slightly garbled, though
I think that would happen no matter what.
"And I apologized again, because that is how I am, and as it turned
out, that was what my tongue did, because I knew it was the wrong thing to
do. And when I told him I loved him, and that I would go, I suddenly felt
the pain in my face, and the ground, hard beneath me. And the shame that
filled me, and the rage that filled him, and the moist wetness under my
face, in my hair. He was drunk. And then he started screaming, just crazy
noise, not words. And all the red, my heart crying and mumbling I love you
still, into the noise, because I didn't know what else to do, and it was all
I could think of, because it was all the more true.
"And then he was gone."
My words come fast, and my breathing is labored, and I laugh in that
sort of laugh that always comes through tears, a half-apology in itself.
Brian wraps his arms around me, and I cry on him or to him or at him, only
this time it's so much more. And I realize that Brian was really listening.
Do you know how rare that is?
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"sensory apparatus buffet"
by mike halchin
EVER SINCE THAT EARTHQUAKE THE OTHER DAY (only 3.8 but I wasn't sleeping
this time) the ground seems to shake every 3 min or so I look at a passerby
about to ask if they felt it too-fuckin schizoid give im a quarter to leave
us alone go take a shower you cretin oh honey he's so quiet he must be
retarded c'mon now don't be cruel--quit flappin' yer ass-lips and get outta
my face my mind growls--
WELL! c'mon let's go--ha! thought they were closet telepaths
no wonder they were afraid they thought I figured them out initially--
maybe the perceived shaking is from my molecules operating at a
different frequency set off that buzzer at the used car lot when I walked by
on Sunday--but you said it was a peak in your radioactive cycle from those
lab experiments in Texas--quit changing the subject--the quicker shitter
downer--
my blood boils with rage
and whistles like a teapot
screaming me me me in such a
high voice that all the words blur
into a bucket of used paints but
the end result is still the same
how do I stop my veins/arteries from yelling at the rest o' me--we've
done nothing wrong is there a problem officer they said a note of sarcasm?
for that a rap on the head for each of you the blood-transport system
replies in a posh British accent
oh yeah well we're gonna take a crowbar
to the boss's head
eesh the heart we'll all die
I've driven bomb trucks through buildings in Iran before whaddo I
care one of the villi screams
a puncture wound to the apple of the circulatory system blood
slithers out like a worm at first then spits redness in an arc from left to
right like a lawn sprinkler
when ya gotta go might as well have fun the boss thinks--(from
anonymous location in the body): aiieee oh no not them like the time
someone called me over the phone and emitted a high-pitched sound the next
thing I knew I was shitting my pants kicking grinning idiotically in a room
full of strangers that wouldn't stop laughing one offered a bowl of prunes
I'd hit ya muthafucka but my arms got problems of their own--
I felt my insides get sucked down the sink a 19th century cure all
they called it or nowadays the terminal mix available in ten minutes from
death rattle records
turn off the camera when you're done recording and shut off the
lights don't want to waste electricity
and after the body had all the movement stretched out of it like
silly putty applied to one too many comic strips the light clicked back on
let's see 120V hit the switch bzzt aaggh ooo eeem Baaa you fucker how
dare you I was just starting a sound death and you gotta drag me back into
the fuel emissions box I'll bite yer fucken head off like animal cracker
I'll cauterize your soul with molten steel I'll--
body flops back down still sitting up attendant turns away for a
second makes adjustment urine drips down from body onto floor under
attendant's feet he decides to zap body back to life again
upon touching body with contacts
AAAGH! ha ha ha that'll show you ya shit
flash to unnamed darkened room in same building
she: what was that hey the lights are out
he: wonder if they're out in the whole building
she: oh it's nothing let's make love again
he: my pleasure
must've come so strong I blew the power out he thinks
oh brother go write a letter to penthouse and put your ego back in
your pants she muses--but for now I'd settle for it being inside my cunt--
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"The Chaos Theory; Wednesday, July 27th"
by -- Eerie
How nice -- I'm typing on my computer again! We found some room for
it on the kitchen table, couldn't bring the clumsy desk I had back in the
apartment. Moving this machine went smoothly, though we couldn't seem to do
it invisibly as I planned. First off, in the apartment on 67th Street, we
met Cynthia's mother, in tears, who was busy gathering her late daughter's
numerous personal belongings. Just as I thought, she threw quite a bunch of
insults at me regarding how I didn't show up at the funeral, & she wouldn't
accept my theory about the futility of glorifying a sack of flesh to rot.
She seemed shocked that I wasn't crawling on the floor weeping about why?
why? oh my god why her? Unsurprising. She then questioned me without a
single ounce of subtlety about Annie, who came with me, probably insinuating
that I had to live through seven years of mourning before ever catching
sight of another girl.
"Cynthia told me a whole lot about you these past weeks... She told
me, oh god she told me you didn't come sleep home very often... Aren't you
ashamed?"
"Look. I don't care what you think. Cynthia's death (two words, &
here she is again with the tears flooding her make-up) is affecting me,
possibly more than you think. Maybe even more than it affects you. So if
the only reason you're here is to have this kind of argument, I'd like if
you simply left. This is still my home."
"Hum!" She stared at Annie with a haughty tone: "You're moving out
here, I take it?"
"Not really, Madam I have no idea of your name, I was helping Mister
here with bringing his computer in my place, where he's going to move."
The mother didn't need to hear more to burst into water tap mode once
again.
"I... I see how affected you really are with Cynthia's death...!"
She grabbed a tissue from her purse in order to litigate the damage
done -- or didn't it end up an improvement? We'll never know.
"That's what I always told her: 'Girl, this boy has a heart of
stone.' & she'd keep going out with you! I shouldn't have accepted that she
lived in an apartment with you!"
She stared at me with disdain. I tried not to yawn too openly.
Annie talked again:
"Look, cuntface." I laughed. Cuntface looked suddenly angered.
"Whatever happens between him & I isn't any of your goddamned business. So
make us both a favor & go finger yourself over your daughter's grave & let
us fuck."
Cynthia's mom didn't say a thing, yet for a moment her face seemed
about ready to explode. She left the apartment & I laughed more than I had
laughed in years, I believe.
---
Moving the computer was a tricky task. This old dusty 286 is kind of
heavy. I unplugged everything, stored the keyboard & the wires in a
backpack, & we got in the bus with a big box & a monochrome computer screen.
We'll get the printer another time. The bus ride between 67th Street & 14th
seemed excentric; we looked like aliens carrying some electronic gadgetry of
an unknown nature.
We finally arrived at her place: "There, now I have everything."
"You've only brought clothes & comic books. Are you sure you don't
need anything else?"
"Nothing. Oh, yes. A pretty girl like you."
She got rid of her clothes & we made love like you'd make love to a
cushion or a pillow. The rain started to fall again, cooling us off,
providing an extraordinary soundtrack to the delicious games we played.
I mentioned that her stalkers pretty much left her alone lately. She
said they wouldn't dare coming here now, they were all outside. Before I
could ask her why then, was she so often going out, on night time, around
two or three in the morning, a habit of hers it seemed, she added: "I have
to go out at night, just to feel calm, even though there's the stalkers."
She wouldn't let me go with her. She never told me why. Though it scares
me, & now with the recent murders in the area... Everybody talks about it --
that, & football, of course.
---
Around 8 p.m. I wore a sweater & went for something to eat. Annie
gave me some money. Go figure where she got it from. Anyway. I met Melanie
on my way there. I answered her questions unwillingly. It felt like a test
of sorts.
"Shit, where've you been? I've been trying to call you countless
times..."
"Oh, sorry. I moved out."
"Okay, but it'd be nice if you told someone... The police called me.
They want to ask you some questions about Cynthia. Since you never answered
your phone they called your parents, who of course had no clue..."
"I don't think they should know anyway..."
"Maybe. Though. They asked them for a list of all your friends'
phone numbers. They called them all, & surprise, nobody had seen you in the
past six month. Can you believe it?"
"Yeah, I can believe it."
"So they asked me to tell you. I have a number here. You have to
call them. I... I think they suspect you."
She handed me a piece of paper with a phone number & a name written
over it.
"Somehow I'm not even surprised to hear this."
"Look, there's a murder, & oh so coincidentally you run away to live
someplace... Where are you anyway? Probably this girl, Annie? Cynthia's
mom complained about how you didn't attend the funeral."
"I know. I met this charming person earlier."
"But how can you remain so... still?"
"Oh, because I should be nervous? Okay, then... HELP! THEY'RE GOING
TO ACCUSE ME OF NOT SHOWING UP AT MY EX'S FUNERAL! JUSTICE IS ROTTEN! KILL
ALL THE COPS!"
"Shut up!"
"Oh, sorry for being so shocking."
"I'm not shocked, I'm..." Her face changed. "I mean, you left me so
quickly, you..."
"How long should I have stayed before you get really sick of me,
then?"
"Oh, asshole, look at what you've done! How nice, here, let's fuck &
then byebye! Won't even say thanks!"
"Look who's talking. If someone had to investigate on how you treat
the girls to whom you so innocently sublet your living room..."
"That's so not the same thing! There's much more between us than
between me & those hoes!"
"That's what you think, Melanie."
"FUCK! Who am I, in this shit?"
"WHY WOULD I BOTHER WITH YOU? I don't know you, you don't know me,
period. There has never been anything else."
"You think it's that simple? You think it's...?"
"Melanie. You make me feel like I just materialized inside a very
bad soap."
"YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE!"
"I DON'T CARE!"
She left me in pretty much the same fashion as Cuntface. Will they
ever leave me alone? I read the piece of paper: Inspector Claire Lepine.
Another one! Another one to accuse me of existing, as usual! Why not
making me the single murderer of everyone who died these past couple days
while we're at it? I did not kill Cynthia. I did not kill Cynthia. I DID
NOT KILL CYNTHIA.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Raped"
by -- Anya
Nastia rocked back and forth on her bed. Lightly back and forth,
hoping inertia would stop her so she wouldn't have to rely on herself. Her
clingy black velvet dress, disheveled at this point in the conversation,
meandered up the length of her thigh, revealing a jagged-edge birthmark on
skin pale as winter's white. Her thoughts floated, or to be more accurate,
fled from the subject of immediate concern. Almost frantic, she wondered
whether the roach crawling the length of her room would make it to the
dresser. She wondered who was honking the horn outside her window, engine
humming and spewing out steam into winter air.
And so she thought about other things -- irrelevant things that
tumbled shrieking down the dark damp alley of her soul.
Anything, they echoed. Anything but that.
And then she opened her eyes. Her halfway psychotic reverie
unraveled itself in a couple of seconds.
Her face was still close to Natasha's. And still blotchy and puffy
as if she'd been beaten.
"She wasn't," Nastia whispered. "Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god."
And again.
"Who else knows?"
"Nobody," Natasha said. "And no one's supposed to, either. So don't
tell anyone."
---
Nastia appreciated the closeness and intimacy she shared with her
friends, as if everything that happened in their life happened to her.
Often Natasha, the one who strove for a perfectly logical life, felt that
Nastia took this kind of intimacy to the extreme. But it was the only way
to live -- to experience pain as they experienced it, to feel their joy to
the point of absolute rapture. Jennifer didn't mind this queer way of
Nastia's. Jennifer honestly never thought about it. She was more
preoccupied with boys than life. As she added, that's boys, not men. There
are no such thing as men.
All of them had congregated at Nastia's apartment to watch some
horrid TV movie as an excuse to talk about each other and other people.
Nastia paid scant attention to the flicking screen, more concerned with love
affairs and romantic desperation. Occasionally her interest would wane and
she would try to follow the plot. Something about a young girl, about her
age. She was homely and a little bit of a loner. The type who could slowly
work their way into your life through sheer being. That's a little how
Nastia came to know Mary, who was sitting across from her in an imposing
leather chair. Nastia noted that Mary looked fatigued. Not tired of work
or living, but an exhaustion that came from within and was reflected in her
aloof stare and occasional heaves.
Nastia turned her attention back to what was happening in the movie.
She wished she hadn't. She didn't like restricting her breathing in
periods of anxiety.
Something must've happened to the girl on TV, because now she was
struggling with a man in a typically dark alley. A strong ugly gray man,
who was grabbing her pants. Her cries were heard as clear as if they had
come from the alley on the other side of Nastia's apartment, or as if they
were coming from the imposing leather chair from across the room. All eyes,
oblivious or not, were now watching and no one was saying a word.
Who knew?
And more importantly, who knew that she knew?
The strong ugly gray man got on top on the girl on TV and then the
camera panned to the brick wall above.
The tension that enveloped the room sucked out all of Nastia's
breath, heart and insides, and she dared not look at Mary. Not even out of
the corner of her eye. She didn't want Mary to know that she knew.
Maybe she was hallucinating. Nastia thought she felt the heat from
Mary's tears, but they weren't warm enough to melt her composure so that
Nastia could say something, anything, so that the rape wasn't just floating
there, waiting for someone to make a grab at it.
Say something.
In the brief digital blackness before the next commercial, Nastia
heard her friends settle down and lock into gear above the hum of crackled
static.
No one said anything.
---
That kind of silence reminded Nastia of the times she got lonely and
slept over at Mary's place. Of course, it wasn't silent right away. They'd
talk or watch TV or try to do a crossword puzzle together, and then they
would both get tired and go to bed, all the while talking. Mary was the
first person who knew how Nastia was molested when she was little. By an
older boy. Against a brick wall at the side of her house. Nastia had
forgotten all about it until she turned twenty-two and one orgasm brought a
rush of pleasure intermingled with painful memories.
Nastia told her during one of those silences. Mary, like always, had
crawled up to the wall, trying to get to sleep, and Nastia wouldn't stop
talking. Mary's replies began to get more and more spaced out.
Nastia blurted it out when she thought Mary had fell asleep but a
slight stirring had told her otherwise. And with a girl's touch and sweet
kiss, Mary had turned to face Nastia in the deep darkness to tell her that
everything was going to be OK. At least as long as they were friends and
had these sleepovers and could exchange kisses that only girls could.
That night Nastia slept the soundest sleep of her life. While in bed
with Mary, she felt no shame or fear but could only smell clean, shampooed
hair and day-old perfume on Mary's neck.
She loved Mary, but in a way she didn't quite understand. But she
knew she was safe and protected in a way that no one else could provide.
---
It had become an obsession. She wondered what it would fell like to
be raped, to be Mary.
The phone rang.
Hidden by the piles of dirty clothes, Nastia turned her head to the
window where the shades were drawn. She always like this kind of light. Or
at least she thought she did. Brightness streamed around the edges which
played on the tepia tone the bedroom was now cast in. Sort of like honey.
Sort of like a restored movie. Something like hell.
It had been several weeks since the phone rang, several weeks after
Natasha had revealed Mary's secret. Nastia had lost the surreal quality of
the whole incident, and now life was getting back to normal. Except that
she wasn't seeing as much of Mary as she was used to. It was if she had
altogether disappeared.
Frankly, she hadn't been going out as much as she used to. She
thought it silly to stay all those late hours of work just to ride an empty
train car home. That was too dangerous. And she decided that her
boyfriends were too much trouble than they were worth. Hmmmm. What are men
worth, anyway? I mean, all they can offer is pain in so many forms, and
what do they give in return for inflicting all that pain? Nothing. Oh,
they'll tell you they love you and want you and will be yours forever, but
they're just as capricious as the women they strive not to be. And she
realized that they were all the same. All of them. Whether it's the punk
waiting with the sharp blade, or whether it's the bastard you married,
scratching, demanding dinner and making an ass of himself in general. Men?
What are they good for other than broken hearts and ripped vaginas?
---
It kept ringing.
And then Nastia summoned all her suppressed inertia to dig through
those parts of herself scattered on the floor to answer.
"Hello," she grumbled, not knowing whether to sound drunk, sleepy or
both.
"Nastia, it's Mary."
"Hmmm."
"I haven't seen you for a while. What have you been up to?"
Nastia gave her a null answer.
"I just want you to understand that everything's OK. Are you mad at
me? You're acting like you're mad. And I'm not going to make you talk
about it if you don't want to. I just want to let you know that I'm here."
Nastia shuddered, and at that moment wanted to tell Mary just how
confused she was and she didn't know what it was bothering her so much.
About the rape and all. But it was. And it always was on her mind, and
every time she looked at Mary, she didn't see thick glasses or a lightly
pock-marked face or a humble smile. All she saw, or imagined, now were two
legs spread open on the ground in a dark small space, and heavy groaning
then crying. It's wasn't a face anymore.
It was a rape.
Instead:
"You felt sorry for me? Mary, I think you need to worry about
yourself. Because I'm not the only one keeping secrets from other people
who cared about you. I'm not the one was raped and had every one else
suffer for it. Mary, Jesus Christ, why didn't you tell anybody? And I'm
left hanging. I trusted that you would at least tell me these things, if I
were as close to you as you led me to believe."
Mary had hung up long ago, and Nastia couldn't even remember if she
had called in the first place. She was left with a comfortable dial tone as
she rocked back and forth on the floor, muttering to herself, wondering why
she wasn't getting an answer.
Drunk.
Nastia straddled the bar stool and leaned forward in her slinky black
dress just so she exposed as much cleavage as was legally possible.
Starring through her glass, she was trying to figure out what she had
been drinking, but became much too distracted by the greasy paneling in the
bar that warped and twisted into the funniest shapes. And then she started
to do it to the other patrons and the effect was just as hilarious. At some
point it had been gin, at another she remembered rum but now all the drink
in her hand tasted like water.
Numb. Comfortable. It was that feeling you have when you touch
something, and your eyes see that you are touching it and your fingers are
reacting to it. But you don't feel. It's more a pressure than a touching
sensation. It felt as if rubber gloves had been snapped onto her hands
while she wasn't looking and now all she could feel was the feeling between
her and the table.
She didn't know who was buying her drinks. She didn't care. She was
just waiting for boredom to settle beyond her point of tolerance. Then she
would take her purse and walk the two blocks it took for her to get home.
She looked up from the sticky smooth bar and around. Only men, strong ugly
gray men. She sneered at them but didn't know if the expression made it to
her face. Sneer.
Click. Click. Echoes of her heels hit the sidewalk and then bounced
off the brownstone and dark windows.
Clickety-click. Clickety-click. She hadn't changed her pace. But
now the echoes were doing double time.
Someone was walking behind her. Now, she knew that it could just be
someone trying to find their way home, it wasn't necessarily an assailant,
or robber, or rapist. Too drunk, she squinted and the street light
flattened into temporary horizons, and she was mesmerized by that for a
while.
Then jolted back when she realized that the echoes were now doing
triple time. Panicking, she ducked into an alley, all broken bottles and
crumbling cement. Just in time to feel a hand at her mouth and a knife at
her waist.
Too drunk to feel much of the cold, she stared at the stars at an
angle -- or at least she thought they were stars -- twinkling in the slant
between two rooftops.
She thought about a lot of things. Not that typical "life flashing
before your eyes," but a random trickle of musings. She wondered where Mary
was this second. Whether Mary was thinking about her. Did Mary still love
her? She wondered how it felt to be the man on top of her, whose breath
smelled just as bad as hers. She wondered if he had a family and children,
and what they were doing right now. She also thought up stories to tell her
friend tomorrow. That is, if she lived.
Caught up in her own world, the man was all of a sudden gone. She
was left trying to make constellations from the few stars she could see.
Afterward, a smile of relief escaped her cut-up lips as she stood up
and wandered down the street looking for a pay phone.
She thought she had Mary's number somewhere on her.
s$
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