Here's a rough first draft of the very first short story I've written in months and months and months.
Temporary Blindness
I know it’s wrong to say, but I can’t help it: I wish he’d get hit by a bus. His walk is languid, easy. He’s one of the blessed few, the beautiful. God’s own chosen. For him, the world will open and engulf him like the countless women he’s made love him. No one ever said growing up, growing old is easy, and if they did, they were myopic. They were the beautiful for whom life is just that—easy. Perfect white teeth flashing in the sun when they smile their perfect smile. Their clothes, off the rack, shaping, contouring, molding to their perfect frames as if tailored on Saville Row in some spendy boutique that only money can buy the knowledge of.
He was no different as he glided past by me in the park. Ignoring the pile of work on my lap, I watched him to the corner where the light changed just for him. I know it’s wrong to say, but I can’t help it. I hoped his cell phone would ring, a woman desperate for his attention pleading for just one more orgasm. It was easy to imagine—he’d step off the curb as he pulled an earbud out, flip open his phone, not look left, not look right and step infront of a bus whose driver was distracted watching a group of hoods in the bak surreptitiously write “skank” or “penis” or “twat licker” on the window in permanent marker, maybe one of them rolling an imperfect joint for later, after the bus rolled to a stop, having crushed Golden Boy’s chest under the front wheels.
I’d bag up my papers and books, wait patiently as sirens wail and lights flash. “Yes, officer, I saw the entire thing. He, the boy,” because that’s all he really is—was—“stepped right into the intersection. I can’t imagine how the poor driver could have avoided hitting him.”
To an older passenger, her hair done up in a hairstyle that went out with Hoover, I would sympathize with her trauma. “It’s all too horrible to imagine and yet, here we are,” I’d say, all the while sizing her up, checking for a wedding ring and band. “If I may say so, and please, don’t think me too impertinent at a time such as this, but they are lovely pearls.” She would clutch her throat, maybe girlishly worrying about the folds of her chin, the worry lines her children gave her when they went off into the world to meet their own horrible fates at the hands of a negligent driver, because it’s always the driver’s fault, even when his own golden child steps into traffic playing the dating game.
She would twiddle her fingers down to play with the pearls, each a worry and an agitation strung on fine thread. Naturally, in a situation like this, I would be unable to hold back the need to comment on their origin—the pearls. But, of course, she would stop me before my lecture tumbled into the air and excuse herself politely; “I need to call my husband and tell him I’ll be late. The police will probably want to talk to us. Excuse me, Mr…”
“Samovar, Sidney Samovar, like the Russian tea service. Of course. Pleasure meeting you.” But she would already be digging out her own cell phone from the big black purse she’d picked out to match her sensible flats which wouldn’t pinch her feet as she ran errands all day.
Back on the bench, watching as the firemen spilled out of their trucks dragging hoses to close connections while others brought out push brooms for the glass, the ambulances would pull out, leaving the mess for the coroner to deal with. The henchmen of death with their gleaming stretchers and bleached white sheets and matte black body bags. It would fall to their lot t pick up the pieces of a defunct life and haul it away to a cold sterile room to be further photographed and dissected.
Under a cold light an elderly physician in his surgical blues and paper gown will secretly pray that there was some more sensible, scientific reason for the child’s death. Some better explanation to give the beautiful parents in their fine clothes and tasteful yet expensive jewelry for their prodigal son’s demise—something other than carelessness; youthful folly. Maybe he was pushed by the jaded old letch on the park bench who witnessed the whole thing from behind drooping eyelids. One of the lowly creatures that fill in the gaps of life with incoherent babbling about the terrible burden innocent mollusks endure for our own vanity in a grizzled voiced to some poor woman just trying to get to her husband who’s working late in a corner cubicle downtown cooking the books for corporate America. Any excuse other than sheer carelessness. Even that, maybe, from across the way, the sun flared on a window, temporarily blinding their son as he stepped off the curb.
And I know that it’s wrong, but I can’t help but wonder what will make the news later tonight. Will it be tasteful, just a quick blurb presented by a perfectly coifed waif with a degree in Broadcast Journalism from the local community college; a small box above and to the right of her head with a sanitized graphic of police tape and a body in outline. Will she say “Tragedy struck today” or some other seemingly clever yet innocuous word play about how that moron of a golden boy, the world opening in front of him, was run down in his prime, leaving behind a cell phone full of attractive young co-eds to move on to the next in a seemingly endless line of bright young men well endowed in the art of wooing?
Would the news trucks with their camera crews take tasteful shots from a distance of the carefully strung caution tape fluttering in the breeze as EMS personnel move about herding the shocked but curious onlookers away from the scene? I know it’s wrong to hope for, but I can’t help it. I can’t help but hope that, like the pictures of bodies riddled with bullets in some war-torn country, the effluences of a suicide bomber splashed on the mud huts and stone facades of a foreign city, the gruesome images of privilege crushed, bleeding, smeared across the tarmac are flashed on the TV for young children to see as they eat a late dinner in their quiet suburban homes. I can’t help but hope they’ll see the what end result of a skull’s impact with the front grill of a bus looks like; a warning, a wake up call to the beautiful people.
I hope small children cry at the sight of reality at home. But I know, I’ve been around long enough to know that the sanitized news won’t show that. They’ll only show images of the gruesome, the gory, the fragility of human life if it happens to someone else thousands of miles away.
Instead, they’ll show a photograph of this beautiful son of man smiling his thousand-watt smile on some beach in Florida while on spring break. Shirtless, arms around his friends, blessed as they are with nature’s finest and most admirable traits with the blue waters and white sands of the gulf as a backdrop, the sky righteous and burning behind them. White clouds piled here and there on the horizon as half naked co-eds—co-eds appointed by god’s grace to worship at their feet frolic in the waters behind them.
How else could the newscasters present the events to the blood hungry public? If it bleeds, it must lead. The story will run for a few days as witnesses are interviewed. The story of the over-taxed and underpaid driver will come to light when he defends himself by passing the buck onto the lower caste in the back seats who were working to undermine common decency; shirking their obligation to remain unseen and unheard as we all, the unloved, unwanted, must. Or at least that’s what the paid experts will say during round-table discussions, sipping water discreetly from a cut glass goblet, their waxy faces accented by just the lightest foundation and blush, eyes rimmed, lashes plumped reflected in the buffed surface of the solid oak table.
Together, the experts will make a fuss about single parent households, the lack of a responsible male role model in the poor, innocent hoodlums’ lives. They were just reaching out for help in the only way they knew how. Because they were raised by mothers and aunties and grannies working double shifts to support their Ecko habits—due in large part to the fetishization of modern consumer goods in the mass media—they walked the only path open to them, that of rebellion, isolation, self-destruction with drug and alcohol abuse.
I know that it’s wrong to say it, but it’s all true. Its always someone else’s fault. And maybe it’s wrong to say it, but, sitting on the bench watching that boy cross the street with the walk sign in his favor, the world unfolding before him, I wished a bush really would run him down. Maybe, just maybe, it would be the proof I need, the proof I’ve been looking for all these years, that there is some great equalizing force at work in the universe.
I didn’t used to harbor such ill will. I used to think someday I’d ditch the ugly duckling routine and blossom into a full fledged member of the ruling elite with an easy smile and quick wit that would charm the panties off every beautiful golden girl to pass my way.
It just never happened. The best laid plans blah blah blah. There was always tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeping on in their petty pace to this bench in this adopted city and this adopted life.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Civil Rights and Right Wingers
Something struck me as odd today and no it wasn't a cross-eyed midget with anger management issues. As I sat watching Logo (the MTV produced all homo, all the time station) and reading John Milton's "Paradise Lost" I couldn't help but get a little angry and a little sad at the state of affairs today. Something is seriously rotten in our State of Denmark.
There were two shows specifically that set me off on this little musing: the first, "First Comes Love", and the second, its name I now forget, was about Civil Unions in Boston, Massachusetts. Both shows, about the legal right for same-sex couples to marry (the latter filmed in Canada), in combination with "Paradise Lost", resonated most hard core. To begin the beguine, "First Comes Love," staring the comedian, Scott Thompson, takes a couple and, in two weeks, puts together a wedding that normally takes anyone else months to plan -- and all for free (so long as you don't mind having cameras in your face the entire time). They pay for EVERYTHING: rings, reception, vacation -- it can be a little commercial since they have to get in all the requisite product placements for the business and shit they use. But anyway, while the wedding planner and her minions slave away, Thompson spends the bulk of his time with the couple, engaging them in various tests to make sure they really do deserve to be married (my favorite episodes is "Dan and Mischa" -- they go shopping then have combine their items and pare it all down till they have only 50 Loonies worth of goods -- yes, I said Loonies. I can anyone take an economic crisis seriously with that name for their currency? "The Loony's down today").
Anywho.
In the second thing, the one in Boston, it followed two couples through the initial introduction and subsequent failure of the bill, and the second time around when it passed and they could file their intentions legally at the courthouse, a few days later getting issued their license.
Now, as we all know, unfortunately, we don't live in Canada -- which is starting to look like a better and better place to move after grad school (or for my doctorate) -- and that state after state in the US has consequently passed amendments to their state constitutions definitively defining marriage as that between one MAN and one WOMAN -- and not one Homo and another Homo. In the former presentation, an argument was put forth by a "Baptist Christian" with blue hair and a Trench Coat Mafia ensemble that homosexuality, quoting Leviticus (no man shall lie with another man like they would a woman), is wrong -- and disgusting. And he's right. It does say that in Leviticus. And when I think about it, it IS disgusting lying with a man, but at the same time ... feels so gooooooood; so right -- so I just don't think about it, simple as that (but seriously folks, think about the mechanics of sex, any kind of sex. When it comes right down to it, sex is not the most PG thing in the world, nor is it clean. Who showers after sex? Come on, fess up. Right. We all do. Unless you're seriously disgusting and just pull on your clothes and head off to work, the smell of sex and candy flavored lube oozing off you).
I'm wondering fall afield. But, to get back to my point about selectively reading/interpreting the bible, that kid just proves the point I'm trying to make. Like him, I could easily get on my high horse and start in on how moronic people are in believing in an invisible man spending his days and nights coming up with a plan into which we all fit and then making sure we all follow it -- I won't even point out the fact that these self-same morons use religion to bolster their inherent feelings of loss and isolation in the vastness of the universe in order to feel like they're important -- nor will I belabor the obvious that, much like the current administration, these morons have allowed others to use dogma in a power grab over our thoughts and feelings, effectively steering us onto a narrow-minded path into servitude of those with the acuity to manipulate us. No. I won't do that. Because I respect those morons -- in my own way. Where I cannot imagine spending my life in deprivation hoping that, because I abstained from pleasure and devoted my life, in servitude, to an ideology, in the hopes of EARNING my just rewards in the after life, these folks can (or at least try to until human nature gets the best of them and they end up screwing around with alter boys -- ahem -- I apologize to my fellow Catholics).
I, however, am of the opinion that, living morally and ethically, is all that can be asked of me. I don't go out hurting others just because I can. I wouldn't want others to do that to me. The Golden Rule, which was tacked above my sixth grade teachers chalkboard, is what I live by: "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You." I ask no more and no less of my fellow humans. However, there's a caveat, by that dictum then, theoretically, just about anything is fair game -- rape, murder, theft, arson, etc. etc. But, in order for that to be true, one must be willing to accept the same -- that they may be raped by a stolen baseball bat that's been set on fire and then clubbed to death with it. Frankly, I don't want that, so I don't do it. Yes, it's polemical, but hey, fuck you.
Still reading?
Aretha Franklin wasn't just singing about equality in her now famous song, "RESPECT." Oh wait. Yes, she was. But she was also making a statement about how we should approach our peers -- with respect for them, for their opinions, and for their decisions -- even if we don't agree with them. Someone famous, and I'm kicking myself for not knowing who, said, and I paraphrase, that even though he may not agree with a person's opinion, he will fight to the death for their right to it. Maybe I'm wrong in my thought processes, but I started trying to poke holes in or run rings around the logic that drives the Right Wing's arguments against Civil Unions/Same-Sex Marriage.
First, blacks were treated as inferior. A host of arguments were made, the least of which being that they were genetically inferior to whites -- how they came up with this is beyond me. However, as the times changed and the Civil Rights movement forced this idiotic country to stop being so fucking bigoted, segregation fell, Affirmative Action (whether or not you believe it's necessary today is your own opinion) came in -- things began to change. Now, I'll be the first to admit that, relatively speaking, there is still a huge equality gap between blacks and whites. But, I like to think, that eventually even that will disappear as our ever-increasingly PC country ages and the Baby Boomers die the fuck off.
In this instance, people standing up to injustice and taking their lumps in the name of their future children, started moving the US, in a legal sense, into action -- recognizing inter-racial marriage, the equality of all mankind, etc. etc. But these changes took time and they came at a great cost -- how many martyrs does it take to screw in the light bulb of reason?
Anyway, lest I belabor the obvious -- the same shit's going on with the current, though seemingly less organized, Civil Rights movement in the gay community. However, unlike the 60s, at the height of that C.R.M., it is seemingly less organized today. It was an era of expanding consciousnesses via drug use; a time in which free love was promoted, and not just of the carnal kind. In retrospect, it was a time that, perhaps for me, has become romanticized. Everything was so much simpler back then -- Vietnam War, bad. Nixon, bad. Squares, bad. Prudes, bad. It was the dying out of an old way of living and the birth of one based solely on a more open and respectful way of living in harmony with the world and with each other. It was a time of immense idealism. And like all idealism, was crushed brutally in the late 70s into the 80s with Reaganomics and Members Only jackets.
The free-loving hippies of the 60s and early 70s, in the face of increasing crime rates, the spread of a then unknown disease (the HIV), money grabs, etc. tuned into selfish, isolated and neurotic paranoiac conservative dolts. Maybe it was the amount of blow they did in the late 70s or all the acid they dropped in the 60s, but something burnt out in them and they gave in to the Man. They became the Man. And in doing so, eradicated their capability to be self-reflexive. They were no longer able to see the larger picture and thus, saddled us with the fall out of their idiotic decisions. And what's worse, they gave birth to narrow-minded assholes who missed all the good times and grew up knowing only the turning inwards of idealism -- and now they're running government, taking over for their parents (ahem, Bush, ahem).
As so many comedians have pointed out of late, I'd like to second the fact that, at the age of 22, have now seen a Dick, a Bush, and a Collen in the White House -- but at least Powell had the moral rectitude to get the fuck out when Dick, with his hand up Bush's ass, wanted him to lie to the US about Iraq.
Damnit! It's so hard to focus on what I want to say when there's just so much fucking shit going on in politics today. And not just in politics, but in the social consciousness of the US. Two wars are raging right now -- one unjust one in Iraq (we'll destroy the fuck out of them because that turbaned mother fucker may have gotten help from them, but not the U.A.E. who we know DID help him -- oh no, we'll let THEM pay US to protect OUR fucking ports! What the fuck!?) and a second, much more incideous yet intangible one, inside our own borders.
We're in the middle of a generational and cultural war, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. It's a fight, tooth and nail, to the death -- the fate of our future and our children's future at stake.
There were two shows specifically that set me off on this little musing: the first, "First Comes Love", and the second, its name I now forget, was about Civil Unions in Boston, Massachusetts. Both shows, about the legal right for same-sex couples to marry (the latter filmed in Canada), in combination with "Paradise Lost", resonated most hard core. To begin the beguine, "First Comes Love," staring the comedian, Scott Thompson, takes a couple and, in two weeks, puts together a wedding that normally takes anyone else months to plan -- and all for free (so long as you don't mind having cameras in your face the entire time). They pay for EVERYTHING: rings, reception, vacation -- it can be a little commercial since they have to get in all the requisite product placements for the business and shit they use. But anyway, while the wedding planner and her minions slave away, Thompson spends the bulk of his time with the couple, engaging them in various tests to make sure they really do deserve to be married (my favorite episodes is "Dan and Mischa" -- they go shopping then have combine their items and pare it all down till they have only 50 Loonies worth of goods -- yes, I said Loonies. I can anyone take an economic crisis seriously with that name for their currency? "The Loony's down today").
Anywho.
In the second thing, the one in Boston, it followed two couples through the initial introduction and subsequent failure of the bill, and the second time around when it passed and they could file their intentions legally at the courthouse, a few days later getting issued their license.
Now, as we all know, unfortunately, we don't live in Canada -- which is starting to look like a better and better place to move after grad school (or for my doctorate) -- and that state after state in the US has consequently passed amendments to their state constitutions definitively defining marriage as that between one MAN and one WOMAN -- and not one Homo and another Homo. In the former presentation, an argument was put forth by a "Baptist Christian" with blue hair and a Trench Coat Mafia ensemble that homosexuality, quoting Leviticus (no man shall lie with another man like they would a woman), is wrong -- and disgusting. And he's right. It does say that in Leviticus. And when I think about it, it IS disgusting lying with a man, but at the same time ... feels so gooooooood; so right -- so I just don't think about it, simple as that (but seriously folks, think about the mechanics of sex, any kind of sex. When it comes right down to it, sex is not the most PG thing in the world, nor is it clean. Who showers after sex? Come on, fess up. Right. We all do. Unless you're seriously disgusting and just pull on your clothes and head off to work, the smell of sex and candy flavored lube oozing off you).
I'm wondering fall afield. But, to get back to my point about selectively reading/interpreting the bible, that kid just proves the point I'm trying to make. Like him, I could easily get on my high horse and start in on how moronic people are in believing in an invisible man spending his days and nights coming up with a plan into which we all fit and then making sure we all follow it -- I won't even point out the fact that these self-same morons use religion to bolster their inherent feelings of loss and isolation in the vastness of the universe in order to feel like they're important -- nor will I belabor the obvious that, much like the current administration, these morons have allowed others to use dogma in a power grab over our thoughts and feelings, effectively steering us onto a narrow-minded path into servitude of those with the acuity to manipulate us. No. I won't do that. Because I respect those morons -- in my own way. Where I cannot imagine spending my life in deprivation hoping that, because I abstained from pleasure and devoted my life, in servitude, to an ideology, in the hopes of EARNING my just rewards in the after life, these folks can (or at least try to until human nature gets the best of them and they end up screwing around with alter boys -- ahem -- I apologize to my fellow Catholics).
I, however, am of the opinion that, living morally and ethically, is all that can be asked of me. I don't go out hurting others just because I can. I wouldn't want others to do that to me. The Golden Rule, which was tacked above my sixth grade teachers chalkboard, is what I live by: "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You." I ask no more and no less of my fellow humans. However, there's a caveat, by that dictum then, theoretically, just about anything is fair game -- rape, murder, theft, arson, etc. etc. But, in order for that to be true, one must be willing to accept the same -- that they may be raped by a stolen baseball bat that's been set on fire and then clubbed to death with it. Frankly, I don't want that, so I don't do it. Yes, it's polemical, but hey, fuck you.
Still reading?
Aretha Franklin wasn't just singing about equality in her now famous song, "RESPECT." Oh wait. Yes, she was. But she was also making a statement about how we should approach our peers -- with respect for them, for their opinions, and for their decisions -- even if we don't agree with them. Someone famous, and I'm kicking myself for not knowing who, said, and I paraphrase, that even though he may not agree with a person's opinion, he will fight to the death for their right to it. Maybe I'm wrong in my thought processes, but I started trying to poke holes in or run rings around the logic that drives the Right Wing's arguments against Civil Unions/Same-Sex Marriage.
First, blacks were treated as inferior. A host of arguments were made, the least of which being that they were genetically inferior to whites -- how they came up with this is beyond me. However, as the times changed and the Civil Rights movement forced this idiotic country to stop being so fucking bigoted, segregation fell, Affirmative Action (whether or not you believe it's necessary today is your own opinion) came in -- things began to change. Now, I'll be the first to admit that, relatively speaking, there is still a huge equality gap between blacks and whites. But, I like to think, that eventually even that will disappear as our ever-increasingly PC country ages and the Baby Boomers die the fuck off.
In this instance, people standing up to injustice and taking their lumps in the name of their future children, started moving the US, in a legal sense, into action -- recognizing inter-racial marriage, the equality of all mankind, etc. etc. But these changes took time and they came at a great cost -- how many martyrs does it take to screw in the light bulb of reason?
Anyway, lest I belabor the obvious -- the same shit's going on with the current, though seemingly less organized, Civil Rights movement in the gay community. However, unlike the 60s, at the height of that C.R.M., it is seemingly less organized today. It was an era of expanding consciousnesses via drug use; a time in which free love was promoted, and not just of the carnal kind. In retrospect, it was a time that, perhaps for me, has become romanticized. Everything was so much simpler back then -- Vietnam War, bad. Nixon, bad. Squares, bad. Prudes, bad. It was the dying out of an old way of living and the birth of one based solely on a more open and respectful way of living in harmony with the world and with each other. It was a time of immense idealism. And like all idealism, was crushed brutally in the late 70s into the 80s with Reaganomics and Members Only jackets.
The free-loving hippies of the 60s and early 70s, in the face of increasing crime rates, the spread of a then unknown disease (the HIV), money grabs, etc. tuned into selfish, isolated and neurotic paranoiac conservative dolts. Maybe it was the amount of blow they did in the late 70s or all the acid they dropped in the 60s, but something burnt out in them and they gave in to the Man. They became the Man. And in doing so, eradicated their capability to be self-reflexive. They were no longer able to see the larger picture and thus, saddled us with the fall out of their idiotic decisions. And what's worse, they gave birth to narrow-minded assholes who missed all the good times and grew up knowing only the turning inwards of idealism -- and now they're running government, taking over for their parents (ahem, Bush, ahem).
As so many comedians have pointed out of late, I'd like to second the fact that, at the age of 22, have now seen a Dick, a Bush, and a Collen in the White House -- but at least Powell had the moral rectitude to get the fuck out when Dick, with his hand up Bush's ass, wanted him to lie to the US about Iraq.
Damnit! It's so hard to focus on what I want to say when there's just so much fucking shit going on in politics today. And not just in politics, but in the social consciousness of the US. Two wars are raging right now -- one unjust one in Iraq (we'll destroy the fuck out of them because that turbaned mother fucker may have gotten help from them, but not the U.A.E. who we know DID help him -- oh no, we'll let THEM pay US to protect OUR fucking ports! What the fuck!?) and a second, much more incideous yet intangible one, inside our own borders.
We're in the middle of a generational and cultural war, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. It's a fight, tooth and nail, to the death -- the fate of our future and our children's future at stake.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Patterns in the static.
I've just rediscovered my blog. Much like tripping over a crack in the sidewalk infront of others, looking foolish, and wishing you were dead, reading something you've written, at least for me, is intensely surreal.
Blogging seems like such a good idea, but when it comes right down to it, I have very little to say that is interesting. It's for this reason I probably keep a real journal and don't ever look at it or let anyone else peep a glimpse ... cop a feel (or for those dyslexics out there, "feel a cop").
So ... petuie.
Blogging seems like such a good idea, but when it comes right down to it, I have very little to say that is interesting. It's for this reason I probably keep a real journal and don't ever look at it or let anyone else peep a glimpse ... cop a feel (or for those dyslexics out there, "feel a cop").
So ... petuie.
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