Saturday, April 30, 2011

Stickles

Zip ties, bandannas, patches and tape held Stickles together, a true traveler frayed by the miles and shaken loose by the bumpy marathons in his old brown van, going to every place he ever wanted to visit. He was winterized and ready, always wearing his heavy coat, skinny because he never stopped to eat. Stickles was always moving, chasing down the rumors of little scenes and excited kids in cities you'd never think twice about. He'd put on his coat in his Northern home and speed away in urgent pursuit, and when he stepped out in the warm South everyone looked at him funny because he had never thought to take the time to take off the fur lined jacket, it seemed like a waste of time and Stickles was too eager to get where he was going. The hood and fingerless gloves were the perfect hobo extension of his thick beard and shaggy hair, which he cut himself. His silhouette was a blocky lego man, featureless from the layers of hair and clothes, tackytern utility he could take on the rails.

Stickles had an encyclopedic knowledge of the small forgotten towns he had stopped in. He would ask the people there what they liked the most, and try to see things through their eyes. Cultural tourists too often tried to colonize these unassuming places, projecting their own standards so they could congratulate the residents for elevating themselves but still feel superior. Stickles approached every place like he had never been anywhere before, and he tried to hold what he found with reverence.

He sang the praises of Birmingham, New Brunswick, Gainesville, Minneapolis and Omaha. When people looked skeptical he didn't argue, if they wanted to listen he would tell them but he would not turn it into a contest over where was better than where. He loved the neglected places the most for the gems they hid, the basement shows and record stores, the living scenes that didn't care about Brooklyn or Silver Lake. Stickles beat down the parched highways preaching his gospel, always taking time to listen to the stories of unexpected places and making mental notes for the future. When some years down the line the gentrifiers started moving into one of his old haunts he didn't mind, it just meant it was time to find another.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Patti

Patti had dry leather muscles, tight rawhide ropes twisted into mean cables and spread with the waxy mud of skin. Her eyes balanced on her cheekbones, her face a narrow African mask, lips snarling and cavernous hollows remembering the starving drought times, never lured into the mischievous reassurance of a good harvest. She came to be in the most dangerous part of the 70's and her body showed the abuse in her junky teeth and brittle nails, and the shapeless unisex clothes that hung off of her. That she had survived these decades was a testament to ruin, like the scouring, sandy wind that hasn't quite won its' battle against the withering rocks. And a blogger wrote about her, wondering if she was finally softening her image and selling out, wearing a silly pirate hat with her friend the actor, in an ad for Disney shot by her long time colleague.

Her first priority was to challenge. Her songs were abrasive and chaotic, mixing genres and spilling the boundaries of music by interjecting flailing wild woman poetry and dissonant, tribal interludes. Yelping, stamping, gnashing rabid ecstasies of spirit, sensualism, spells and invocations. She offered herself as a sacrifice to destruction like her romantic heroes and one by one she lost her friends to overdose, AIDS and cancer. His story questioned her survivorship and authenticity.

Would the Patti of 1975 pose for a good natured photograph, next to a movie star, on the bow of a fake wooden ship? The repulsively seductive, yellow toothed smile replaced with a likable and innocent grin, and the relentless pestilent limbs covered in blue and buff. Probably not, but that was before the ones closest to her dwindled in number. She had written her unapproachable anthems that guaranteed she was unmarketable. Even if there was any cache to be gained for Disney through her fame it would be quickly extinguished when google related what she was most known for. If anything she was a liability to the casual observer, ugly and controversial. He was judging Patti in her 60's by Patti in her 20's, ignoring 40 years of iconoclasm and declaring that she needs to be revolutionary only within the parameters he can imagine. He refuses to accept the depth of a person, the self confidence and motive developed over a lifetime because he demands ownership of the personas he is not able to create. So he publishes his article that passively accuses Patti of failing to fill obligations she never agreed to, sidesteps the burden put on him as author and insinuates judgment to gestate in the minds of his readers, then starts on his peice remembering Poly Styrine, whom he had never thought to write about before.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Denis

Denis was a slightly plump modern dandy, just generous enough in proportion to jovially tighten his clothes and suggest a love of good food and any wine. He had a weakness for flashy suits, camel colored with a large check or velvet jackets. He wore beautiful, wide ties with knots as big as his hammy fist, always just loosened so you could see he did not button all the way up to his strong, thick neck. His beard was charmingly cropped, his hair messily gelled, and his small squinty eyes twinkled behind his stylish frames. Denis had an actor's laugh, reserved and withholding, playing it cool, a touch of magnanimity. It was a laugh that accepted you, you felt grateful for it.

He was an actor but only because of his easy and uncomplicated relationship with money, a thing he never tried to hold onto or put much effort into obtaining. He was a reporter, a bar tender, and a cyclist. He rode his bicycle in a collar and loafers, a light linen suit for the spring. He lived in all the poor neighbors of exciting cities. He was named after Saint-Denis France, his middle name was Dagobert.

Denis met his wife in a dive bar in Oakland. She could not ignore him, he stood out with his barrel chest and great huge dogs, his green and brown suit gladhanding all the strangers. He drank Belgian beer and talked about moving to Bruges to curate sleepy museums. They played poker all night with a pinochle deck, and were amazed at their run of luck.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Jolie

I looked out the window from the corner of the room, and in the narrowed frame of the street I saw her in a purple prom dress picking along the grit of the sidewalk, the toes of her ballet slippers popping in and out like the heads of violet frogs. I stood up but didn't move any closer, taking a curious vantage in a shadow of the room. She held her arms out away from her and weaved slightly, letting her gown billow, the enjoyment of the air on her legs written on her face, framed by the curls tumbling all around her smiling mouth. I was drawn forward, she bobbed to the fuzzy bass playing on the next block, and if she had a wand I think she'd bestow fairy godmother blessings on the mailboxes and newspaper dispensers she was passing. I watched her, mysterious and wonderful, twinkling and oblivious to the purple discord she brought. I hoped she'd turn and see me, wave for me to come and join her. Pressing my nose to the window I waited, but she only did a pirouette in the fading firefly light of a streetlamp and disappeared into a snatch of midnight.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Ernie

Ernie was sinew strung drum tight on the frame of his bones, the levers and pulleys of his body popped through his lean forearms and were thick through the blocks of his joints. His white shell tops gave him cartoon rabbit feet which made his twiggy ankles seem that much thinner. The sticks of his legs swam in the loose holes of his low hanging cargo shorts, in beige or camouflage. They were BDU's that he bought at the army navy store, one of the two places he did all of his clothes shopping. Ernie's legs swiveled when he walked, his knees making loping revolutions through his herky jerky gait. He swung his arms wide and kinetic, his head snapping from side to side like a snake winding its' way along. His walk was confident and demonstrative, he took up as much of the street as he felt he owned, he wasted energy because it was impossible to use up all that he had. He went to sleep every night tapping his feet on the bedpost, impatiently waiting out the few short hours until the sun came up again.

The other place Ernie bought his clothes was at merch tables. $15 t shirts and $30 hoodies. He didn't own a coat or pants, just a Yankees cap he never bent the brim on and when there was rain or snow he just pulled the hood up and buried his hands deep into his kangaroo pocket. Ernie had to fly his colors; Warzone, Madball, H20, Token Entry, Sick of it All, Straight Ahead, Gorilla Biscuits, Agnostic Front. He walked around his neighborhood all summer long, running into people or sitting on vacant stoops, or picking up his cell phone just to say "The fucking bodega doesn't sell fucking cigarettes or some shit. I dont know, maybe they got fucking busted selling to little kids and shit."

Monday, April 25, 2011

Abe

Abe woke early with a crackling restlessness, and the bright morning was pregnant with omen. A chorus of birds were insistent heralds of the aggressive Eastern sun, persistent beyond the blinds and pillows and eyelids, chasing him out of his barrow set uninhabitable and brilliantly golden as Lucifer. The house was empty of distraction and warm under the beating sun, the TV babbled and Abe had no attention span. He cleaned, he exercised, he showered and still had the whole stretch of day laid out before him. The charged air shook the trees, the new leaves rattled angrily, and Abe decided to take a walk.

The high noon streets were eerily empty. The sound of a chugging diesel bus stopping on a distant corner washed over the neighborhood, and the talkative morning birds had flitted away to their daily chores. There was a green Jaguar parked around the corner from his house, Abe wouldn't have remarked on it but walking passed the Vermont plates caught his eye. It was an older model, the inside littered with plastic bottles and the detritus of a road trip, it made him think about Vermont and New Hampshire and the people he left there, the ominous dealings he knew from remote safety, the reputations.

Abe cut through a parking lot and then turned down a brick alley that sloped bumpily toward High St, where cars passed and people were walking. The alley was planted on either side with Dogwoods, their delicate white petals giving way to heartier green and falling like snow all around him, the wintry cling lining the deep red of the walk and walls. The singular stillness of that moment crystallized for Abe and something in him tingled, the proximity of forgotten things set him on edge, the touch of a breeze and the gentle kiss of falling blossoms on his eyelids were no longer satisfied to be ignored.

He carried his lunch in a brown bag and set home to eat, some more time passed in the strange, sinister day. He crossed the busy street and ducked back up the tranquil, shogun alley to emerge in the otherworldly stillness of his block. Two men were talking in the parking lot now, one of them leaning on his truck giving directions. Abe didn't look up until they looked at him. Planting his feet and looking over he knew who this was, a man of reputation and mutual acquaintance who had not stayed in his own place as respectfully as Abe had stayed in his. The other man was taller than Abe expected, but about as lean. He had a hard recognition in his eyes, a troubled understanding that the moment was now. "You Abe?" he called in warning.

"Absalom."

"I wanna talk to you."

Abe dropped his bag and took meaningful steps, clenching his hands into ready fists.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Larry Sunday

Larry Sunday went easy, his 3 a.m. streets bare and untroubled, opening up to quiet bike rides through the glossy halls of fresh smelling rain, glowing Christmas tree colors from the mute vigil of trafficless stoplights evenly switching like the persistent tide when they could sit idle. Larry Sunday was the king of the no account morning, when even the wolves slept in their prides, and he who asked for nothing rejoiced in exactly that.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Richie Wayne

Richie Wayne was famous for his easy flowing schtick in the style of the great, old Catskills men who worked a room for 90 minutes all with prewritten material. They were proud of their stock of jokes, rich with tradition and rigid with form, but seasoned with each man's own style. The value of the bits was in the universality, and the talent of the men was in the way they searched the room for a place to apply the routine, and the crowd howled with the belief that they were seeing something spontaneous. Richie thought it was poetic, the subterfuge of their comedy mirroring the characters they created, and the subtext, the mechanics for the pros to appreciate.

He was born with a congenial face, chipmunk cheeks and the thick, feminine lips he would purse to exaggerate his lines. Through the 90s he wore his hair parted in the middle and mildly gelled, two peaked waves over his eyebrows, like extensions of their arching. In the next millennium when he was too old he cut it shorter but kept the same unruly, comedic quality. Richie had done movies and TV, his popularity rooted in the familiar humor of his old Jewish mother voice, or rough Scottish brogue. He could be coarse and juvenile but he was never offensive.

Richie practiced transcendental meditation and was certified as a yoga instructor. He studied old comedy films like a quarterback preparing for a game, looking at body language, tone and inflection as well as content. He read books about theater, and was an expert on the indigenous clowns and fools or most European countries. Even though his own material was chaotic he had always carefully measured it out, and cut it to fit the situation. Richie was dismayed when he opened the shooting script after arriving on his newest movie and found the instruction "funny improv."

His son was 20 and funny and did not use Richie's last name, he wanted to have his own identity untainted by the inevitable nepotism he would be accused of. Sitting on set waiting for the scene to reset he visited his son's blog, a tumblr page called "Pictures of Limp Bizkit bumper stickers." That's all it was, photographs submitted of cars driving around with Limp Bizkit bumper stickers, it had millions of hits. Richie was having trouble with his scene, where he makes a speech and tries not to cry in his typical, over the top way, choking up his voice and blowing great bellows of air through his nose like he had eaten a spoon of horseradish. No one else understood his problem. "Who was carrying on like this?" he asked. Was it Richie doing schtick in the middle of the movie? Was it the character doing a bit just like he was Richie? Was this how the character really was, was it authentic?

The director looked at Richie and shrugged. "Does it matter, it's funny. It doesn't mean anything."  

Friday, April 22, 2011

PJ

PJ was two years old and his mommy cut his hair. His haircut was shaggy and deliberately canine, it came out of a book she read called "Gingham Concrete: An Urban Translation of Pioneer Living," and she had applied the same skills to PJ's daddy, who honestly benefited from the trial run on his toddler. From the same book mommy was knitting bibs for PJ, although they were never quite finished, like anything knitted. One day, she was sure, PJ would sit in his high chair enjoying organic nanners and cashew butter, proud of his kaleidodelic, one of a kind knit bibs inspired by BAPE and protecting his favorite Velvet Underground t-shirt. PJ's shirts were always sly and clever, VU for banana breakfasts, Wavves for when he watched mommy weed the garden. On rainy afternoons he changed into his favorite stoic, brown flannel.

PJ always had the tightest pants in the sand box. His mommy found one of the unextolled virtues of cloth diapers was the slimmer fit they afforded. She hated the baggy slop-arounds the other kids wore which, lets face it, might as well be JNCOs. Though it would be a few years before he could actually get a pair of true skinny jeans that would make him look like an infant Swedish Mod, it would do in the meantime. PJ was so well behaved he never cried when it was time to put on his neon dunks, and he happily wore his thick, plastic, technicolor sunglasses. The other babies he played with didn't really get irony.

His daddy got PJ a tricycle that he was proud to relate was fixed gear. When he was older he would get the boy into vintage BMX, and may even gift him an authentic 80's supergoose, not that knockoff bullshit everyone tries to pass on craigslist. In many ways PJ inherited the childhood his daddy decided he wanted when he grew up. He wanted to foster a proper nostalgia in his boy the first time around, and not the adopted nostalgia daddy had to settle for. But in other ways PJ was the proto daddy. Outfits, hairstyles, glasses frames and shoes were all tried out on the two year old to see how they fit, like a living Polaroid, before daddy blew them up to adult size and went to PBR night with his wife.

You could take PJ anywhere, he liked the bustle of bars and gastropubs and he grizzled at the sight of a Muppet. He didn't like any of the kids shows that mommy and daddy couldn't stand watching, the nonsense primary color shows. PJ was a sophisticated little guy who liked a good Jack Benny impression or a risque innuendo, he thought The Office was silly. Car trips were fun because no matter whose ipod you plugged in, all three of them were satisfied. They were making a Sunday road trip to a brewery/cupcake bakery that made yeasty, savory treats with bacon frosting. PJ's ipod was plugged in, an appropriate classic style because he would drool on a touch. Mommy and daddy wrinkled there noses like they were driving passed a refinery, a child specific song had come on, something PJ's aunt had exposed the boy to. He clapped his hands to the happy song, mommy turned around pretty in her art deco hair and said "Stop that, you don't like The Wiggles, you like Dr. Dog." Daddy changed the song, it was something off of Pinkerton but PJ didn't know what. The child had a neutral look on his face and mommy seemed placated but daddy shook his head and skipped until he got to some Ariel Pink, but something from one of the cassettes.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Corine

Corine had a mass of hair that hung around her head like a despondent willow, and slithered down to her waist, making a delicate dress of Spanish moss along her back. It was fantastically dramatic, sweeping grandly when she twisted her body, training behind her creating a wake, a phantom memory of where she just was. The color was the toasted gold of rich wheat but Corine refused to be called a common blond, or a dirty anything. She would wriggle her small, upturned nose at you and insist it was Strawberry.

She enjoyed an oceanic depth in her cleavage, and always wore large gold hoops in her ears. Corine liked the way heels arched her feet and back, it was the posture she felt most confident, the python cradling of her hair cinching her midriff and making her chest pop. She was an easy flirt, and she laughed at everyone's jokes. At 21, 27, and 30 Corine was proud she was just as she was at 18, the same height and weight, she could wear the same clothes, she was devoted to the same bands, and the light chocolate freckles were still on her fragile, pale cheeks. Sometimes when she bought cigarettes she felt a thrill, like she was still sneaking smokes hanging out her bedroom window at night.

Something had changed and Corine wasn't sure what. She always had a sense of deja vu, every time she turned a corner, or walked into work. She seemed to have precognition with the bar jukebox, and the songs were losing their luster like a waning moon. It baffled her, after all she was just the same as 18, she even still her had her Camaro even though now it had a baby seat wedged in the back.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Jake

Jake had knobby, stupid fingers on the ends of his bony wrists. The tips were broad and almost flat, his large hands hanging uncoordinatedly on the end of his skinny arms. He looked like a poorly drawn cartoon, authored by a maker who wasn't paying much attention. The size of his head exaggerated all of his expressions, he couldn't stop his eyes from bugging out or his boulderous Adam's apple from bobbing wildly when he was excited. Jake was smart if nerdy, over intellectualizing and over analyzing most things. His sole ambition was to play in a band, but the abstract fitting of his parts made it almost impossible. He was instantly frustrated by the indiscreet plunking of his fingers, and he wouldn't allow himself to be sucked away into fury. His playing was formal, worthless, and hatefully dispassionate.

When puberty struck Jake he began tottering around haltingly, like a baby learning to walk. He always seemed off balance and uneasy with his adolescence. To spare himself embarrassment he spent most of his time alone or with books. He was drawn to the skirts of crowds, he liked watching people from such an anonymous vantage point. The local YMCA was in the same space as his township library, and one day while hunting books about birds he heard a wonderful racket. There was a band playing, they were kids his own age and their voices screeched even higher than their echoing feedback. All the way up front a young girl in leopard and jangling silver chains, black canvas and the word "Veronica" written on her jacket even though that wasn't her name, danced and popped her hips and shoulders, shook her wild hair to the ecstatic sound. It was in that moment Jake decided, more than anything, he wanted to play music.

After several years of confronting his short comings Jake became the first music nerd he knew. He consumed every band and every genre, the whiff of obscurity was all it took for him to fall in love. From the sweaty feminism of the pacific north west to sunny Florida death metal, he became an encyclopedia and turned his room into a basilica of CDs, vinyl and cassette. The same spastic drive and intellectualism that cut him down in performing made him perfectly suited to be a DJ. He could string together any bands through remote facts and knew a little something about every record. But there was a loveless efficiency to being a DJ. He constantly wrestled with play lists, gritting his teeth when he had to pretend his show was playing Odd Future on it's own accord, and not because of SXSW or Jimmy Fallon. The speckiest part of him just wanted to acknowledge that he knew about the group before they started gaining exposure, he had asked to play them when they were still legitimately unknown and had been turned down. Now he was being instructed to play them. When Gene Ween started missing shows he had to put "Push th' Little Daisies" into rotation so the station wouldn't seem like they had never appreciated Ween in case he died. Jake even had to co-opt his beloved Sleater-Kinney, a band he had previously begged to play to no avail, because his PD thought they were nearing a reunion.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Doug

Doug was a hard worker and a capable man, they were the only two currencies with which he was blessed, but with them he felt like he could purchase anything. He had inherited his father's terrible luck and had never been to school, he didn't make much money but that didn't concern him. Doug felt as long as he could get his hands on a book, or even better talk to someone who knew, he could complete any task. His faith lie in the principle that all obstacles yield to persistence, his inevitable truth of the universe, of which any failure could be cured with intensity and duration. A failure was not a lack of skill, Doug felt he had little skill, but a personal surrender to defeat.

Because he could not afford nice things Doug set about perfecting everything he owned. He focused on his car, and made every modification he could manage. He tinted the windows, tinkered with the engine, added a coffee can exhaust and a body kit. The fiberglass draping on his bumpers was a different color because Doug hadn't yet met anyone who would let him use their painting booth, but he was looking. The paint was not a terrible match, though, and he felt proud driving it around, knowing he had done it all himself. Coming out of the grocery store where he worked he found an ugly tear in the fiberglass bumper which had been bent completely forward, exposing the naked wheel well of his Honda. It was late and the parking lot was empty, there was no evidence of who had done this. Doug kicked the ruined flap of bumper and it vibrated ineffectually. He kicked it again and cursed loudly, then stood with his hands on his hips looking down with frustration. His breathing slowed and he remembered the universe and his terrible luck, then began planning on who he could talk to about patching fiberglass.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Madame Dunne

They called her the Queen of Trash, the beautiful tatters of her lace gowns crumbling to ruin and her bright arabesque make-up always dusty and faded, soft focus as a rain weathered then sun bleached show bill. In public she was never seen without a hoop skirt and high collar, which rumors had concealing the evidence of an attempt on her life by one of her collection of distraught and discarded lovers. She wore a top hat with a menagerie of straight pins stuck through the band, children famously cried for her to show the inside of it to prove it was not loaded with her magical tricks. The rolling of the hat between her hands, the demonstration of its' contents, and reseating it on her head was done with a juggler's flourish and became her calling card. She made it dexterously tumble with the vivre of an acrobat, the dirty gloves she wore causing no impediment, and the children squealing. The whole of the carnival bowed before her, like the garish sovereign of spectacle, she was Madame Dunne, and they called her caravan the Sword of the Dirty.
Her trucks cut a wall of rising dust that could be seen over the many flat miles in any direction. The towns she visited had no other warning of arrival, ad the Madame put no stock in advance men. It was the outlaw times and ambush was the favored tactic, every experience would seem a windfall too good to pass up, and it stymied the organization of the inevitable "moral league." With luck and a smooth operation they were holding their fist shame faced rallies on the morning after Madame Dunne fled town, with only the empty pockets and spent glitz of the midway to stand defense against those upright and frigid women. The revelers watched longingly after the wormscrew bore of smoke in the wake of her storm, dreaming of the fantastic and intangible day the harbinger would appear to the East, like Madame Dunne had at last circumnavigated the globe in motley calamity and delivered her oriental treasures to their quiet lives again.
Her second law of the showman was to never lose touch with your product. The Madame personally approved every act and played every game, gave notes on each show and examined each dancing girl. She let the strong man move her furniture. Madame's fist law was to never leave the show, both literally and figuratively. Even though she traveled thousands of miles each year in her caravan, to every corner of this land and over the great disastrous Alaskan Land Bridge to the next, she never set foot outside of her grounds, choosing to dwell solely within its' shifting borders since she was a little girl at the pioneering knee of her grandfather, who first took the fabulon into the nucleated wasteland.
It was the weird acts that got her in the most trouble. Of course they had a hunger artist, and when he died they had a "Lair of the Hunger Artist," where you could have your picture taken. They had geeks and freaks, physical mental and emotional anomalies. They had a bleeder who never stopped bleeding, even in his off time, and a vaguely incestuous Siamese twin suture act in which one alleged brother and sister stood naked before the crowd and sewed themselves together. Madame's note was that it was too sexist if the sister did all the sewing.

Eventually they put Madame Dunne on trial for her obscenities, and she turned it into the circus that only she could. Her bloom was significantly wilted from the hard years on the road, and she claimed health issues to bring the tribunal to her because she would not explain the first law to them. She appeared after a procession of her best oddities each morning, dressed in her finest decay, her gypsy hair now white and her eyes burning like the bloody sun. The austere judges disapproved of the presentation Madame Dunne made because it was inappropriate for the court. She reminded them that they were not in the court, and after all she had her uniform just like they had theirs. The Strong Man, her closest confidant, smiled. She had once told him, "I know I look like a dusty old couch. These rubes see you look like some crazy old whore they cant wait to spend. It's a promise of what's to come. You gotta tell your own legend." But when she leaned down to place her hand the book and take her oath her high collar shifted, and he swore he saw the white line of a scar ringing her neck like a sinister string of pearls.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Amy

Amy was good with lists, and when her alarm clock rang in the still dark morning, before she could put her feet on the floor, she was already building one in her mind. Sitting on the edge of her bed she thought "Shower, dress, Billy, breakfast, laundry, work." In the shower "Billy" became "Wake up 1, make lunch, wake up 2, shower, dress, breakfast, Mom." She would try to get her little brother up, washed, and fed to give her mother a little more time to sleep in. Billy had the same bee stung features as she did, a bulbous nose and heavy red lips, with a long face and pointy chin. Billy was autistic and would fixate on objects or tasks, it took a gentle prodding to help him along. They ate breakfast together and she listened to Billy's plans for the day, smiling down at him. He told her he liked her peace sign earrings, and she left for work.

On her drive in "Work" became "Coverage, tables, beverage station, salad station, kitchen, backup, hostess." Amy was a waitress to give her mornings off. She had tried working in an office but hated leaving her mom and brother so early in the day. She told them she would take a job with more flexible hours and go back to school, but that had been sixteen months ago and she still hadn't enrolled. She moved through her list like a stiff wind, she had check everything off before the doors would open for lunch, and there would be no time to roll silverware or cut lemons. Amy was a Patton in the restaurant, her brutal logic ruled all and the girls were told to copy her habits. During service she would look over her section, mentally tallying "drinks, napkins, aps, clear, entree, clear, check," taking short loaded steps in each direction, pivoting like a basketball player until the room was cleared to her satisfaction. The Guatemalan's in the kitchen teased that she was doing her 'cha-cha' again.

Amy's mother worried that she spent too much time looking after her little brother, worked too hard, and never saw people her own age. She always pulled her hair back in a volleyball ponytail, and wore yellow polo shirts and khaki pants. On her days off Amy would take Billy out, asking him which necklaces he liked best in bohemian jewelry stores on the beach. He always picked out symbols of esoteric religions, sigils wishing Amy a calm spirit and fulfilled life. She wore them to work with the turquoise bracelet he picked out for her birthday present, and the small puzzle piece tattooed on her wrist.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Lewis

Lewis looked forward to bed every night. The long rational day was kept at bay by his bedroom door, the assault of numbers and accountant's responsibilities were foreign bodies when he put on his pajama pants, their loud plaid a mockery of the conservative pin stripes he wore all day. He mustered an army of miniature goblins, painted in neon greens with gory mouths. On the weekend he would lead them into battle, but even that was not without its' hassles. The preparation was purely indulgent though, designing their distinct look was perfectly frivolous, and carried no expectations. Requirement melted away, he slipped into bed and read a fantasy novel, trashy with dragons and elves, a subject he could never raise in the lunch room at work. It was a book he would not have to expound on or deconstruct, he would never recommend it or listen to reviews. It carved out an isolated niche he could enjoy apart from the cacophony of others. Turning out the light and closing his eyes Lewis disolved and became formless, the sudden absence of perception allowed him to be any size, and tension could not be trapped by his definitionless parameters. Before he drifted off he thought the spot on his body anchored to this sleepy place. It's the spot you test to see if you're dreaming, the place on your arm you pinch, on your lip that you bite, or hand that you probe with a nail. He was sure everyone had a different one, like a secret key they kept to take them in between the two worlds. He wondered if he had ever seen anyone longingly testing their mystic spot, hiding it in plain sight and looking like they were just scratching an itch or adjusting their sleeve. The next day he kept a sharper eye, biting the inside of his lip.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Graham

Graham was most at home among tall, busy stacks of books or hunting through dusty bins of records. His bulky form was permanently hunched as if he was sniffing out a relic wherever he went, his glasses pinched severely on his nose and his eyes squinting trying to discern the value among detritus. He let his searching take him from place to place, chasing treasures like the rumor of big game. He weighed each item as an investment even though they were often obscure and too obtuse to have much of a market. The pleasure of ownership was the only dividend it had to pay.

He enjoyed solitary pursuits, the meandering trips into the countryside, and the gradual browsing of stock. All through the week he researched leads, reviews by other collectors and promising ads. Graham naturally woke early on his days off and would take to the road, working through his list of thrift stores and yard sales, driving in no great hurry and listening to lethargic jazz. It was not unusual for him to drive 90 minutes to find what he was looking for, only to leave empty handed because the price wasn't exactly right, or there was a small discerning flaw. He never went home disappointed as long as he could fill a quiet day with the musty smell of antiquities.

His room was his vault. A mattress on the floor and a cluttered desk, surrounded by the powdery volumes he intended to read, crates of LPs with his current play list in a spirographic kaleidoscope, and on his dresser a collection of rye and whiskey. The bottles shone with an oak light, diffusing caramel over the foot of his bed. They came from every small distillery he could find, and he drove over 4 different state lines to amass the congregation. They were all unopened, untasted until his collection was complete. Graham searched out the missing members and they stood like a party patiently waiting for all the guests to arrive. When he came into his room the bottles tinkled a beautiful, jangling music, and looked like the golden pipes on a magnificent organ.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Taylor

White flowers blossomed on the trees, the days grew longer, and it was time for the fifth grade boys to begin to notice the fifth grade girls. Sometime in the winter their resistance broke, but it took the dawning Spring for them to realize that girls were different, not just from themselves but from the girls they were that fall. They shook off their wool hats and bulky coats and suddenly there was an awkward tension, the little boy heads following the girl's migrations like a field of sunflowers nodding dumbly at the sun as it crossed the sky. They took up factions drawn along gender, very few stragglers crossing enemy lines, and made their plans.

Taylor had always been a young man of propriety. He never got too rowdy or took advantage of a substitute teacher. He was chosen to be on the safety patrol for his serious demeanor, which meant he wore an orange sash and left class early to make sure people didn't run to the buses. He appreciated order, and always wanted to know what was expected of him.

He was rankled when his classmates started having clandestine, whispered conferences at recess. He felt the same undeniable pull but didn't know what to do about it. Taylor was in favor of waiting, and planning a sensible course of action. His bolder friends started declaring their affections, and eventually their meetings included a reconnoiter of the dating scene. The relationships were fluid and volatile, in the beginning only lasting a day or two but as they became more daring maybe as much as a week, including small dates after school. Taylor was not ready to take that plunge, it was too nebulous, too chaotic. Some of the boys and girls even parted on bad terms, with minor scandals involving other loves.

There was a pack mentality, girls falling in and out of favor with the tide of boys. When one of them declared his intentions there was always instantly several competitors. Taylor watched friends turn on each other for favor and attention. There were some heavy hitters who always commanded a devoted following of glossy eyed boys. Jill was the tallest girl in class, she wore more grown up clothes and had a purse. Jolie had white blonde hair in a pixie cut and sparkling blue eyes, no matter how many boys asked she would never go out with them. Megan was the prettiest.

Taylor liked a girl named Julie, who had a strawberry birthmark on her neck and a plain, sandy ponytail. She was on the safety patrol too, and they stood near each other, waiting for the final bell, to direct kids exiting the school to their buses. The sun was a strong orange after a cloud burst, Taylor was watching the last puddle shrinking slowly. He had told his friends that he liked Julie and inevitably they had agreed, they liked her too. He had his hands in his pockets and before he knew it he was standing next to her. "I know someone who likes you." He told her. He couldn't believe it, it was out of his mouth before he could stop himself, and now he had to deliver.

"Who?" she asked. She had lightly freckled cheeks and her teeth were a little crooked when she smiled. She had the thin bony arms of a girl coming into puberty who couldn't eat enough to keep up with how she was growing. "Who is it?" she pressed, giggling with her shoulders.

Taylor made two tight fists at his sides, like he was afraid he would be flung clear of the Earth. He couldn't believe he had done something so uncharacteristically impulsive, it was like he was possessed. "It's me," he blurted as abruptly as throwing up, turned sharply on his heel and went walking briskly in the other direction.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Gator Gil

There he was, in the middle of the stage in an empty club, a cigarette trailing uncomfortably fragile ash hanging from his lip and filling the circle of spotlight with lingering, diaphanous smoke, making a golden bell jar around him that vibrated with his spare guitar. Gator Gil looked exactly like she expected, a burgundy leather sport coat and dirty silk shirt opened wide at the neck, showing a chain necklace adorned with disused wedding bands. His slacks showed plenty of his namesake boots which made up the only percussion in his song, and a wide brimmed pimp hat pulled low and secretive over his spent yellow eyes. He sucked on the cigarette imperceptibly and blew it through his nose in dramatic puffs when he hammered the fret board. The song ended and he leveled his yolky stare on her, emphasizing the last chord with a snort of brimstone like a hellish bull.

The show ended with very little fanfare, the bar patrons entropically drifting back to disinterested drinks. "My name is Shan Tamarindo," she said. "I'm a musician," she added sounding more intimidated than she wanted to.

Gil took the last drag and flicked the butt away before exhaling, looking all around, like he was laying down obscuring cover. "Yeah, you want the song?" The froggy gravel of his voice was impatient, dismissing her. She felt small in her cowboy boots and sparkling skirt, a child who was clopping around in her momma's heels. Gator Gil was famous for his blown out voice, as raw as a man who had been manically screaming all night, with a clipped delivery you could only picture was from the molten agony in his throat. The expressive sound coupled with defeated, heartbroken lyrics and the lone mournful guitar was the reason he was now a hot item among emerging electronic musicians. It was easy to pair with foreign robotic melodies, and hammer into other time signatures. The voice could add realness to the sound she was struggling with, trying to wrestle it away from the clinical. The juxtaposition of blues and electronica, one of the oldest American music forms with such a futuristic one, spoke to the post modernism Shan cultivated.

"You must be excited," she said. Gil's hands were gnarled, twisted like the knots on a dead tree. He had been contorting them so long, squeezing the sound out of his guitar through poor amps, bad PA's, over drunk shouting matches, they no longer had a human shape. He was famous for saying "music don't have to hurt, it just do." "Your music can reach so many people this way." Kids had started coming around, kids younger than his grand children, to pay him for his voice. They turned it into other songs that he was told were very popular. He listened to it once and shook his head. Very few of these young people came to see him, when they did they usually looked bored, eventually started playing with their phones and slipped out in the middle of songs. Gator Gil was used to people not caring for him too much, they called his sound challenging and unsympathetic, but the older people didn't sneak around about not liking you. They didn't look disappointed in themselves, like they weren't smart enough to get it. Like you were some thing to behold, a pilgrimage that left them unsatisfied.

He made a sly motion with one finger to her bag, as cool as if he were ordering her a drink. He got into music so he wouldn't have to talk, he hated talking and every woman that ever left him invariably said his face would crack in half if he had to say more than two sentences together. When he was angry he didn't say he was angry, he'd just strangle the life out of his guitar and make his ugly, jangling point, but they never got the picture. She took the cue and handed him a blank envelope. He took hold of his pay but she didn't let go, pulling him forward slightly so she could look in his face, made blue by the neon signs. Gil knew what she was doing, they all did it and never thought him smart enough to suspect. "Look,' he said, letting go of the paper so she took a jerking step backwards, "you want to make more money off me than I ever could, like I'm some dancing moron? Fine, I took that lot in life. You want me to be some kind of guide, on whatever cultural field trip you hopin' to have by puttin' out music with some old blues man no one cares about? You can just go ahead and burn that fuckin' check."

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Jorge

Jorge had a curly nest of hair crowding his eyes, and bearded round cheeks that pushed them into a squint. The effect was that he looked always in the wake of laughter, and his round belly only added to his congenial aura. He was so pleasant and enthusiastic he was chosen by the Farmer's Market Association to act as ambassador, giving talks on the new movements in nutrition. They were a well meaning bunch of college educated Luddites, who had come back to the soil like a baptism. Jorge was to be their sword of fire, cutting a swath though the ignorance they detested, his Trojan horse demeanor opening up gates that might otherwise be closed to their pulpit.

Jorge had a history in food. His grandfather was a migrant laborer in California, the callouses of his hands stained permanently red. Little Jorge remembered the old man who could mend anything, and the day he took to the road again after being cooped up in their Nebraska homestead for too long. The years of traveling with each growing season would not retire from him, even though he had retired from them. He left a parcel of land taken up by Jorge's father, an engineer who took to calling himself Tommy to accommodate his coworkers. But at home Tommy put on worn denim and a cowboy hat just like his father and showed Jorge how to grow peppers, corn and beans, with an herb patch that belonged to his mother but that Tommy always seemed to be worrying about. It was those memories that Jorge wanted to encourage in others, the raw pleasure of vegetables, and the reward of labor.

Jorge would to tell them to forget everything they knew about nutrition, and they looked at him confused. He told them it was still true that they should eat a well balanced diet, but also stressed that the food should be locally grown. Hands went up and they asked about the barren winter months. He told them how terrible super market food was for them, but also admitted that Walmart bought more organic produce than anyone in the country. They should all be eating more fish, but farm raised fish was bad, but the fish should be sustainable, but wild caught, and remember local. More hands went up and Jorge remembered he was land locked. Heritage meat was best, home raised even better. He saw the looks of disapproval on the people his parents and grandparents age, who had remembered how ashamed they were keeping livestock in their homes as children. Beans were good, but not canned beans because the cans were bad for you, but plastic bags were bad too, much harder to recycle.

The more he talked the more Jorge realize he was lecturing these people on an impossible point. Everything they should do seemed to be contradicted by something they shouldn't, and none of it was evidently affordable. In the best case he was telling a room full of people to be more educated, as if they were willfully ignorant, and in the worst case he was telling them to earn more money, as if they were defiantly lazy. He was sent to deliver a hard line message, that it would be better to go without than to eat the food these people were accustomed too. But the people who told Jorge to say that had never known the possibility of going without, their exclusion was a problem of opulence. He couldn't judge a person for choosing to eat poorly when they had no other options, certainly not if he couldn't provide a viable solution. The food memories came back to him there, the tomato warmth of his grandfathers face and the orange blossom smell of his mother. He was suddenly ashamed, like he had burst into these people's home and seen them naked, scolding them for impropriety.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Jonah

The mellowing spring depressed Jonah, and he didn't know why. The sharp March nights dulled by April, creeping up his spine. He anticipated the intemperate restlessness, kicking off blankets only to pull them up again, the new commotion emerging from winter sleep making him toss and turn. Jonah gave up and lay in the desolate hours of the morning. In the winter it was a wonderful time of stillness, wrapped tightly and lulling in a blanket. At 4 a.m. birds were chirping like a rippling tide, manic and roiling, swallowing him up in the madness of their noise.

The weather lady was overly cheery, heralding the thaw. The soft air smelled faintly of bubble gum, and Jonah was more aware of the space all around him. Every corner of the world was filled with movement and Jonah felt a paranoid awareness of those enclaves. The February world was only as big as the coat around you, settled into a heavy calm, navigated by sojourning pilgrims. The trees looked feeble in buds, more naked for their scant bunting. Jonah walked among them possessively, made a tourist by the traffic of bodies and the spring peepers ribbitting in the fat rain puddles.

Jonah did not relish the promise of change, the stirring wind that dogged him every hour of May. The green melancholy of Spring moved as imperceptibly as the barometric pressure, invisible but building in Jonah's ears, understood peripherally. He wondered if he could drag his feet into the season, and if the unsettling weather would be less threatening if he had more power to stop it enveloping him.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Mr. Sal

Salvatore Domenicomico taught gym and insisted people call him Mr. Sal. He had long ago grown tired of watching people twist their faces coarsely around the syllables of his name. Everyone he grew up with had long, ethnic, Mediterranean surnames and most of them had foreign first names, but he understood that this was not that little Italian neighborhood where his father still lived, rising every morning and putting on the electrician's uniform for a company he was years retired from, to tend his tomatoes and zucchini. Mr. Sal was a proud Sicilian rooster, the black pompadour of his hair standing up like a cock's comb above his twinkling eyes. He was short, especially in the legs, which were undermined by his wide, puffed out chest. His face was a map of crags and deep lines, a severe dimple in the center of his chin, rills of crow's feet like cracked mistreated leather. The geographic features of his face became exaggerated with hearty smile and rustic laugh, and they were exaggerated with sustained frequency.  

Mr. Sal worked in the hot summer sun, tarring driveways for his brother, stripped to the waist. The housewives peeked around their curtains at his rugged, sweating form. In the fall he would take his student's hands in his and chide them for their smoothness. He would wheeze and carry on like Archie Bunker at the trappings of their leisure. Truthfully he didn't object to the privilege and care taken with his students. He wasn't a youth revisionist who wanted to argue that having to go to work at 15, running form bullies because his mother gave him focaccia with anchovy for lunch, or getting a smart clip on the ear because his father was frustrated by his bosses who asked him to repeat too many words through his thick accent, was good to develop character in a child. But he would carry on still, hoping that they would at least appreciate all the ways people were looking out for them.

He was a wrestler. Normally he walked with a clunky bulk, bow legged and inefficient. He couldn't run quickly because of his stumpy legs, and he was not suited for football or basketball, but for wrestling he was compact and powerful. He rolled and shot with a grace he could only have on a mat. He was technical and precise, so unlike the grousing Mr. Sal who didn't own a cell phone and comically pretended to conduct the orchestra every year at the Spring Fling. The story was that his family had been champion wrestlers for years and years, stretching back into the ancient times of Rome. When he taught his kids who couldn't pronounce his name, and couldn't relate to the broken concrete and patchy gardens of his neighborhood, he could take them to the gym and show them the science his people had created, and they could understand him through wordless contest.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Silas

Everything looked fantastic on Silas. He had the wide shoulders and narrow waist that suits hung perfectly off of. His features were classically strong, a roman nose and granite jaw. He had a rippling walk that exhibited the muscles of his back through his shirt, like an anatomical study. He stood architecturally, with a strong foundation and rectangular frame, looking everyone in the eye.

Men stalked Silas in the clothing store, trying to discern his secrets. They bought the same skin care products he did, hoping to capture the same glow. Occasionally they would ask him outright how he managed to look so damn good. Silas shook his head, he really didn't know. When he was a child he had decided that everything he had was the best possible thing to have, and should be likewise appreciated. He was aware that people picked up on his attitude, and thus believed the grand deception.

One day he felt the hair at his temples thinning, threatening to recede from it's lifelong post. He shaved his head and got a vanity plate for his car that read "BLD SLS."

Friday, April 8, 2011

Queequeg

Queequeg believed in the strength of his lance. He say mute on the gently rolling deck, the sun touching softly on his hard and broken features, measuring the considerable heft of the tool in his hand. The wood was good and old, worn smooth by strong throws and the firm grips of his mighty ancestors. It was taken from a tree with its' own ancient record, gathering the resilience of ages focused in into this single bolt. The terrible shaft of iron, colored like the blood of the Earth, ran truer than North. A fearsome barbed tooth stood on the end, which Queequeg ministered to with a whet stone, bent over as if at prayer to the lord of carnage, until he was sure no hide was too thick. The harpoon was an undeniable truth, and would perform unquestionably. He rolled it between his hands in silent certainty, waiting to be realized by destiny.

The men toiled at their work, mending and tarring barrels for the bounty of ambergris they hunted all the pondering sea. "Look at Queequeg," they said to each other. "He doesn't even know enough to be afraid, the poor hapless bastard," and they took up their mops and dumb hammers.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Vera Cura

I was walking to the post office and crossing from the other side of the street in front of me was a sixteen year old black girl, wheeling her bike with a bunch of dirty haired white boys, in boots and a patchwork hoodie, self illustrated with a NoFX logo, and "destroy" spelled out in metal studs on the hood, hanging behind her like a punk rock license plate. She made me think of Vera Cura.

The mythology of my life is incomplete without mention of Vera Cura. She can be understood as my own personal deity in high school. She was dark and lithe, with flashing almond eyes and an arsenic smile, dangerously alluring like the exotic paramour of ruin in a silent film. I rejected all the traditional quantifiers of social status and only subscribed to the ones I excelled at, and still Vera was cooler than me. She was the only person I knew that was, like she embodied everything I aspired to and desired in another, completely independently of my decision to cheat the system. Vera was as effortless as destiny. Even as I inevitably fell for her I knew she would never have to reject me. Vera was a concept, an objet d'art, she was beyond the vulgarity of turning me down and as if by grace I never felt unrequited. Everyone who knew Vera fell in love with her. It was the same love you have for a song, the aching appreciation you feel in the moment that a crowd sings together in a close, sweaty room, the love that Wendy felt for Peter Pan before she realized she was aging even in her youth, eternal and painfully innocent.

When I was the age of the girl with the bike there were few girls, and less black people, that shared my style. I would like to talk to her just to see what she's like, and remember a little bit of daring Vera from our youth. She was the rarest of things, she had no peer. She's in the world somewhere even now, and I'm terrified to look for her. I wonder what she would think of what I've become, the urgency of my adolescence spent and my cavalier edge dulled. I know I owe Vera more than what I've realized of my potential. She wouldn't judge me but the dark mirror of her eyes might not hide the disappointment. Unimaginably, even worse, I may discover her a shade of the manic panic vision she was, and dash her icon on barren stone.

The girl appraised me with her Egyptian eyes, a small mark high on her cheek full of mystery. I could have said 'hello' but I just walked passed. Wouldn't Wendy have been happier had she not confronted the cruelty of Peter's agelessness when he came for her daughter? And Peter should remain blissfully unaware that the heat of youth cools, no matter how unrelenting it feels. Vera is in the world and so am I, but the place where Vera and I are in the world together is some other Neverland.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Paulie

The quarry held himself straight and dignified, making authoritative hand gestures, in a suit that a test group found handsome but not ostentatious, and a tie that was subconsciously aggressive. His movement was slow and deliberate, rehearsed to look spontaneous but confident, while he explained how his agenda was at long last a solution to the problems his opponents were happy to ignore. He looked hatefully out into the crowd at Paulie, whose cycloptic eye of gleaming onyx snick snick snicked the politicians every move.

Paulie understood that it was impossible to lie, the unconscious part of you wouldn't allow it. The rational part of a person could misdirect or conceal the truth, but no one could suppress all of the innate and microscopic glimpses of himself. Paulie's specialty was capturing these moments with his camera. He expanded the slivers of time the deceitful tried to close, opening them to a vast expanse that everyone could wander through and make their own slow impressions. Paulie believed in discriminating patience. Someone might wait with their camera, like setting a trap, a bow drawn taught, to release it at exactly the right moment. Paulie took the opposite tact, shooting indiscriminately, and stalking his moment afterward. He felt the shiver building in his spine, like resonant glass, as he saw the seeds of a scowl or grimace in the mouth of a subject. When it grew to a crescendo he froze the moment, and admired the jewel he mined from the mire.

As Paulie became sure there was no such thing as a lie for the grains of truth revealed in context, he wondered if there was any such thing as truth for the lies that diluted it. Surely as we are involuntarily honest we must be compulsively deceitful, coloring our actions with our bias, misconception and fantasy. Paulie decided there could be no singularity in truth or lies in a multitude of time. He looked warily at his camera, his tool for finding isolated moments in people, and wondered how he could start snapping off pictures of everyone he talked to.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Juenet

Juenet was the mountain that loved the stream, the lively things nimble around his feet, that he could only watch go by. His size at birth was reported in provincial newspapers, and he had only continued to grow. He stood like a block of granite, shoulders so wide he was inclined to turn sideways when people passed by, like a building politely giving leave. Juenet had a massive, square head, the jaw a grotesque animated steam shovel from an old cartoon, hanging mangled from the boulders of his cheeks. He wore his bulging forehead like a crown of iron that he was welded into at birth, and had warped and bulged with his prolific development. The monolithic broadness of his chest could be heard to thump with an echo, like the great empty hall of a magnificent estate.

He was as quiet as he was huge. It was impossible to put him in a crowd, no one could get close to a man so spacious. He looked uncomfortable at all times, people saw his uneasy shifting from foot to foot or pulling at his clothes. They did not realize he could not be properly fitted for a suit, and always dealt with chafing and tightness. His size invented distance, and he felt the skittering of people around him too far away to talk to intimately. Every conversation was the jocular, surface talk you have across a room. Juenet was described as a gentle giant but he saw the suspicious eyes of the people around him, he felt like they regarded him as a pit bull, no matter how many good things people said there was a vague ontology of danger. When he came around a corner, pulling on his shapeless coat, he always gave the women he met coming the other way a start. They looked embarrassed when they gave a yelp, then smiled and backed away at his baritone apologies. He saw the sidelong glances cast walking up lonely stone streets at night, in chance meetings with strangers.

A continent onto himself, people felt sorry for Juenet, and the alienation he must feel every day in a world full of the normal. They thought he must practice amazing self control, an anchorite of his own body, pondering the consequence of even a momentary lapse of restraint. They thought the remoteness of his demeanor was for their benefit. Juenet felt all the same things they did, but didn't see the point in expressing them when there was nothing he could do. His anger could never be expressed physically, and the dull resonance of his voice embarrassed him, so he never opened his mouth crossly. He understood a horrible pointlessness to romance, with his freakish size and emotional abstraction, so he never pursued the delicate creatures that dwell in his shadow. He wore the same indecipherable expression every day, and there were never any guesses as to what it might mean, so he never changed it. Juenet decided that he was the mountain, and the mountain loves the stream, and one is a thing that can never move, and one is a thing that can never stand.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Bevin

Bevin was lemony. Not tart or sour but zingy and Spring light. Bevin was Meyer lemony, the roots of her yellow brightness reaching down to fluorescent orange. When she turned fifteen she got a job as a cashier at Wegman's, joining her army of friends ten hours a week ringing up and bagging groceries. On a hectic Sunday she could look down the line of thirty lanes, packed out with moms and their daughters, each manned by a team of two, and not see a person her age she didn't like. When Bevin thought about it she didn't know a person that wasn't her friend.

When the store was busy she tied her sunny hair back because it felt appropriately serious. It made her glad to know how vital she and her young friends were to the success of a given day. They couldn't even drive but they could handle millions of dollars each year. Bevin knew she was doing her job well when she got the sense that she was being watched. She felt the grateful eyes of the customers marveling at her speed and efficiency, whittling down the ceaseless stream to a trickle, and keeping a cool head the whole time. There was a simple relationship between performance and expectation that Bevin took advantage of. She knew exactly how to succeed at this job, and she reasoned that one should excel at everything they were capable of. She wasn't always asked to do things she was good at, and she detested the frustration that came with that. Her friends got bored with jobs that came too easily to them, and Bevin saw them inventing obstacles for themselves, self sabotaging, growing difficult and nasty. It didn't make any sense to her, in Bevin's mind doing her best helped balance the universe.

Paul was a bagger. Chloe and Allie and Lexy noticed that Paul always tried to bag near Bevin, but she didn't think so. Admittedly, because she was friends with everyone, Bevin was not skilled at break room diplomacy like the other girls. She was very Swiss according to Chloe. Her three friends deployed themselves on a fact finding mission to the smoker's pit by the loading dock, and returned giggling helplessly. At 4 on Sundays everything started winding down. The crowds thinned and did not replenish themselves, the end of their shifts crawled closer and for a glorious time the checkout was opulently over staffed. Bevin stood on the balls of her feet, pivoting back and forth. Looking over her shoulder she saw Paul, he smiled and she gave a quiet chuckle. She began to help a customer but turned again at the first pause, the corners of her mouth turning up and her lips helplessly ebbing the shore of her bright teeth. She finished the transaction and turned again, they laughed, too far apart to hear each other, like a silent joke was passed between them.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Mason

"The first thing I noticed about your mother were her eyes," Maxroy Mason Sr. told his growing son, a little boy who was more arms and legs than anything else. Mason's troubled brow ran all the way back his bald head, because he "had more trouble than most," he told people. "People don't worry enough, Plug." He called the little boy plug because he was no bigger than a plug of chaw. "Don't worry, be happy? Huh," he gave a small, disgusted cough. "That's living life on credit. Smart folk think they can leave this world with the bill and I say that it's gonna follow you into the next, and how do you think you're gonna pay it up?" His boy shrugged, not quite understanding when his father was rhetorical, he hadn't yet learned it was always and never. "No sir, don't let me ever hear anyone say Plug owes them something, I'll take it out of your backside with a strap." You could see the raised callouses on Mason's palms, rough and yellow. Shaking hands with him was a starling expression of underestimated strength and sandpaper. "I'll worry extra and be paid up, and worry for you too and give you that head start." The boy nodded gratefully. "If I can do that for you Plug, do you know what you can do for me?" Mason put his arm around his boy, "Just make sure you listen."

"Her eyes were hazel and that's what I used to call her. She used to pretend to hate that." His hair was white and had been all of the boy's life, which may be why he was given to nostalgia, he always seemed a man out of place in time. "In some ways boys and girls stay boys and girls all their life. You ever pull on a little girls pigtails, Plug?" The boy shook his head, confused. He would've sworn this would be the exact behavior his father would hide him for. "She used to call me Farmer, and I'd pretend to get mad. The truth is the first thing I noticed was the red clay color in those eyes, the way it gave over to blue. Looked like a tilled field and the October sky. You don't know anything about a field, do you boy?" Plug shook his head mutely.

"No one ever treated her right 'cept me and you, we can be proud of that." He nudged his boy in the shoulder, it nearly knocked the boy off his feet. "Things aren't always fair to good people, it's ok if that makes you mad." The boy was amazed at how Mason strangled the wooden shovel handle. He swore he sometimes heard it creak and groan like an old flight of stairs, and waited for the day his father would reduce the handle to powder. "People don't always let you be nice to them either, they think they don't deserve it, might even get mad at you for it. That make sense?" The boy shook his head. "No, it don't, I agree with you, Plug. Your Mom was like that when I met her." Mason became aware of the impatient wriggling beside him. He couldn't blame him, a funeral is a long day for a boy. He looked down and smiled, "Okay, we can go Plug." They walked away from the mound of dirt on top of the hill, a place Mason had chosen because it was shielded from care by the bows of an ancient oak. "You don't know anything about a field, huh?" The boy didn't answer. "I'll tell you what to remember. Water dry Earth gently, for it is fragile." They went down the horizon and the sun followed after.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Adam

Women are somewhat of a mystery to most men, but to Adam they were more of a mystery than to most. He was raised among brothers by a father who was more than a little relieved that his wife had not left him with a daughter when she shed this world. They were governed by fraternity, the familial bond lacking the softer feminine nuances, and colored with the back slapping, loud and crass tribalism of men. It was not a home to bring girls. Dishes were in the sink and no one ever had to dust as their weekly chore. You could not have your girlfriend over for Sunday dinner when it was in front of a baseball game on TV, and you did not want her seeing your dirty tub or the screwdriver resting innocently in the tooth brush holder.

Adam did not understand why 3 p.m. was lotion time. It seemed that every afternoon at the same time he found several women ritualistically applying some kind of moisturizer. They all spread it on their arms, and in the summer their legs, with the same kinds of hand motions. They reminded him of hula dancers, cupping their hands and rolling them at the wrists. He wondered who taught them synchronized lotioning, or was it just something women were born knowing how to do. He looked at his own hands and didn't feel particularly arid. He leaned into the mirror to examine his face. His skin had a scrubbed glow, like he had just been shoveling snow, brightened by his corn silk colored eyebrows. His face stayed clear without much help, just the soap he used on the rest of his body. But women seemed to have a regular maintenance regiment, like they were shepherding a cranky diesel tractor.

Adam's wide jaw spread his smile unignorably on his face. He was thinking about the strange ways of women and a pretty girl named Rosario asked him what was so funny. She answered his questions and laughed at his notions of collective female unconscious. She did not think there was a domino effect for freshen up spritzes of perfume. Adam tried to run into her most days so they could chat a little. He looked forward to it, and was always disappointed when he went into the kitchenette and only found a cloud of soapy flowers.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Neil

Neil bleached his eyebrows to match his color stripped hair. He wanted the spiky, white blond cyber punk style he could set off against a black duster. His hair was thick and wavy, so the best he could do was comb it through with gel so it made a stiff plasticine shell. The shade wavered unevenly from a watery green yellow to a burnt orange. His hair and eyebrows both set on a bedrock of his natural brown as the roots grew in, making the ridge of his brow seem furrowed and pronounced.

He had an analytical, engineer's manner. He wasn't great with people, his patience seemed to run short, treating them with the same fairness he would a pair of component cables. He felt all things had the responsibility to act in the way that was expected, and when they defied this logic he got frustrated. He could curse and throw a piece of hardware, but Neil found it much harder to manage his frustration with the people he so often could not understand.

Neil worked at Radio Shack, managing other peoples inconvenience. They needed to hook up a TV or stereo, some chore that preceded recreation, and he had to facilitate. He worried they looked at him with the same disdain, that he was the boring guy who knew all about all the hassle jobs. It was important to Neil to demonstrate his personality. He wore a studded belt, his heather gray shirt tucked into it over his belly. His ear was pierced with sterling tribal thorns, and sometimes he painted his nails. His car looked like a Japanese sneaker, the windows were always down with the stereo up. One side of his laminate was his Radio Shack ID and the other was covered in stickers for video games, and bands. It struck him as his best avatar.

Neil liked the people he worked with, they had slightly tone deaf conversations about the things they liked, and the ways they disagreed about how to like them. Sometimes in the mid morning, when things were slow, it was like his job was to bullshit with people just like him, who didn't realize how aggressive their opinions could be, and didn't mind rampant one-upsmanship. It was then he least hid how annoyed he was to interrupt lecturing his co worker on how Slaughterhouse Five was good, but Cat's Cradle was better, to explain yet again how to wire a DVD player.