hart-and-sole-blog

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Mandala

“I want this Celtic flower circle on the top of my foot,” I said, my finger on the yellow page in my great-grandmother’s book of fairytales. “All black. It is so I never, ever forget that I am magic.” The tattoo artist asked what the symbol meant. “Magic,” I said. A man in the corner snorted, a canopy of dead trees peeking out of the holes in his sleeveless tank. Ink up and down his ribs, tiny sets of teeth in his finger webs, dart boards on his inner and outer elbows. At the first hint of buzz I jerked my foot back, fearing the needle might slip through my bone. I asked the tank man if I might have his hand to hold. He spun the silver ring that pinched one of his fat, dry fingers. Soon, my foot was in the artist’s lap, his needle thrumming under my skin, and my fingers, five anacondas preying upon tank man’s fleshy hand. “Why are your trees dead?” I asked, masking the edge of pain in my voice. “It’s doomsday,” he said. When I didn’t respond, he pulled the tank over his head, exposing a thicket of sickly branches, a woman wearing only a Viking helmet prostrate before an 8-legged horse, bleeding diamonds suspended in a mauve sky, his nipples outlined with coronas of fire.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Information for patients undergoing femoral angioplasty

There is a narrowing in your right posterior tibial artery, which is the cause of the discomfort you have been feeling in your lower leg. It has eliminated blood flow to your foot and purpled your toes. Your scheduled procedure is a femoral angioplasty. I know this because I read it off the monitor in the nursing area. You are the 8:30 appointment Beverly Johnston, date of birth 3/4/56, allergies sulfa dyne and eggs. The nurses are required to ask you these questions when you are wheeled into the holding area, but I busy myself with your electronic chart. I am not your doctor. I am just here to help with the computers—                                                                                                                       but I have learned everything about you that matters to us. I have seen your vessels in x-rays, hydroponic white roots in vases. I know you have had a cholecystectomy. I know this means the surgical removal of the gall bladder. I know I would like to have gone to med school. I know sulfa dyne is contained in an innumerable list of drugs, and that you have stated your reactions to it as nausea and intractable vomiting. I know your egg allergy has no reactions listed, and I know sympathetic nurses will add such an allergy to excuse you from mandatory flu shots. I wonder if what it is you don’t like about the shots is that they are mandatory. I know that Richard Johnston is your only emergency contact, and your husband, ten years senior, and that he is not here. I know you weigh enough that the nurses will exchange knowing glances before lifting you, with the help of three technologists, onto the table. I know you will be given lidocaine and versed. I know Versed is a Pulitzer-winning book of poetry. A technologist explains to you that Dr. Gupta will administer lidocaine to the top of the left leg. I know for his own sake that he is careful not to say your left leg. He says the drugs will burn like a bee sting. He does not tell you that Dr. Gupta never buffers his lidocaine with an 8.4% sodium bicarbonate solution that would eliminate the pain. Because it is not in your chart, I do not know how you feel about bees.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Indian Camp, Ernest Hemingway (1924)

At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting.

     Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved it off and one of them got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row Uncle George.

     The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oarlocks of the other boat quite a way ahead of them in the mist. The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back with his father's arm around him. It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the other boat moved further ahead in the mist all the time.

     "Where are we going, Dad?" Nick asked.

     "Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick."

     "Oh," said Nick.

     Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark. The young Indian pulled the boat way up on the beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars.

     They walked up from the beach through a meadow that was soaking wet with dew, following the young Indian who carried a lantern. Then they went into the woods and followed a trail that led to the logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging road as the timber was cut away on both sides. The young Indian stopped and blew out his lantern and they all walled on along the road.

     They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the lights of the shanties where the Indian bark-peelers lived. More dogs rushed out at them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest the road there was a light in the window. An old woman stood in the doorway holding a lamp.

     Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her. The men had moved off up the road to sit in the dark and smoke cut of range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big under a quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an ax three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.

     Nick's father ordered some water to be put on the stove, and while it was heating he spoke to Nick.

     "This lady is going to have a baby, Nick," he said.

     "I know," said Nick.

     "You don't know," said his father. "Listen to me. What she is going through is called being in labor. The baby wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to get the baby born. That is what is happening when she screams."

     "I see," Nick said.

     Just then the woman cried out.

     "Oh, Daddy, can't you give her something to make her stop screaming?" asked Nick.

     "No. I haven't any anaesthetic," his father said. "But her screams are not important. I don't hear them because they are not important."

     The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.

     The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nick's father went into the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. Into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.

     "Those must boil," he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father's hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

     "You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first but sometimes they're not. When they're not they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I'll have to operate on this lady. We'll know in a little while."

     When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.

     "Pull back that quilt, will you, George?" he said. "I'd rather not touch it."

     Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, "Damn squaw bitch!" and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time.

     His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman.

     "See, it's a boy, Nick," he said. "How do you like being an interne?"

     Nick said. "All right." He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.

     "There. That gets it," said his father and put something into the basin.

     Nick didn't look at it.

     "Now," his father said, "there's some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you like. I'm going to sew up the incision I made."

     Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.

     His father finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three Indian men stood up. Nick put the basin out in the kitchen.

     Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled reminiscently.

     "I'll put some peroxide on that, George," the doctor said.

     He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were closed. She looked very pale. She did not know what had become of the baby or anything.

     "I'll be back in the morning." the doctor said, standing up.

     "The nurse should be here from St. Ignace by noon and she'll bring everything we need."

     He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a game.

     "That's one for the medical journal, George," he said. "Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders."

     Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.

     "Oh, you're a great man, all right," he said.

     "Ought to have a look at the proud father. They're usually the worst sufferers in these little affairs," the doctor said. "I must say he took it all pretty quietly."

     He pulled back the blanket from the Indian's head. His hand came away wet. He mounted on the edge of the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk. His head rested on his left arm. The open razor lay, edge up, in the blankets.

     "Take Nick out of the shanty, George," the doctor said.

     There was no need of that. Nick, standing in the door of the kitchen, had a good view of the upper bunk when his father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the Indian's head back.

     It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging road back toward the lake.

     "I'm terribly sorry I brought you along; Nickie," said his father, all his post-operative exhilaration gone. "It was an awful mess to put you through."

     "Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?" Nick asked.

     "No, that was very, very exceptional."

     "Why did he kill himself, Daddy?"

     "I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess."

     "Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?"

     "Not very many, Nick."

     "Do many women?"

     "Hardly ever."

     "Don't they ever?"

     "Oh, yes. They do sometimes."

     "Daddy?"

     "Yes."

     "Where did Uncle George go?"

     "He'll turn up all right."

     "Is dying hard, Daddy?"

     "No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends."

     They were seated in the boat. Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

     In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing; he felt quite sure that he would never die.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Ailurophile A cat-lover. Assemblage A gathering. Becoming Attractive. Beleaguer To exhaust with attacks. Brood To think alone. Bucolic In a lovely rural setting. Bungalow A small, cozy cottage. Chatoyant Like a cat’s eye. Comely Attractive. Conflate To blend together. Cynosure A focal point of admiration. Dalliance A brief love affair. Demesne Dominion, territory. Demure Shy and reserved. Denouement The resolution of a mystery. Desuetude Disuse. Desultory Slow, sluggish. Diaphanous Filmy. Dissemble Deceive. Dulcet Sweet, sugary. Ebullience Bubbling enthusiasm. Effervescent Bubbly. Efflorescence Flowering, blooming. Elision Dropping a sound or syllable in a word. Elixir A good potion. Eloquence Beauty and persuasion in speech. Embrocation Rubbing on a lotion. Emollient A softener. Ephemeral Short-lived. Epiphany A sudden revelation. Erstwhile At one time, for a time. Ethereal Gaseous, invisible but detectable. Evanescent Vanishing quickly, lasting a very short time. Evocative Suggestive. Fetching Pretty. Felicity Pleasantness. Forbearance Withholding response to provocation. Fugacious Fleeting. Furtive Shifty, sneaky. Gambol To skip or leap about joyfully. Glamour Beauty. Gossamer The finest piece of thread, a spider’s silk. Halcyon Happy, sunny, care-free. Harbinger Messenger with news of the future. Imbrication Overlapping and forming a regular pattern. Imbroglio An altercation or complicated situation. Imbue To infuse, instill. Incipient Beginning, in an early stage. Ineffable Unutterable, inexpressible. Ingénue A naïve young woman. Inglenook A cozy nook by the hearth. Insouciance Blithe nonchalance. Inure To become jaded. Labyrinthine Twisting and turning. Lagniappe A special kind of gift. Lagoon A small gulf or inlet. Languor Listlessness, inactivity. Lassitude Weariness, listlessness. Leisure Free time. Lilt To move musically or lively. Lissome Slender and graceful. Lithe Slender and flexible. Love Deep affection. Mellifluous Sweet sounding. Moiety One of two equal parts. Mondegreen A slip of the ear. Murmurous Murmuring. Nemesis An unconquerable archenemy. Offing The sea between the horizon and the offshore. Onomatopoeia A word that sounds like its meaning. Opulent Lush, luxuriant. Palimpsest A manuscript written over earlier ones. Panacea A solution for all problems Panoply A complete set. Pastiche An art work combining materials from various sources. Penumbra A half-shadow. Petrichor The smell of earth after rain. Plethora A large quantity. Propinquity An inclination. Pyrrhic Successful with heavy losses. Quintessential Most essential. Ratatouille A spicy French stew. Ravel To knit or unknit. Redolent Fragrant. Riparian By the bank of a stream. Ripple A very small wave. Scintilla A spark or very small thing. Sempiternal Eternal. Seraglio Rich, luxurious oriental palace or harem. Serendipity Finding something nice while looking for something else. Summery Light, delicate or warm and sunny. Sumptuous Lush, luxurious. Surreptitious Secretive, sneaky. Susquehanna A river in Pennsylvania. Susurrous Whispering, hissing. Talisman A good luck charm. Tintinnabulation Tinkling. Umbrella Protection from sun or rain. Untoward Unseemly, inappropriate. Vestigial In trace amounts. Wafture Waving. Wherewithal The means. Woebegone Sorrowful, downcast.

(via so much to tell you)

Must save these for later.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

My first fight

I was ten, lugging Monday’s weight on a day-off we had sacrificed to snow a month before— a waste. Turned the corner to my street, saw Spencer Sekowski with Jolly Ranchers pouring from his nose, and Dean Mandrake undressing a green one, tugging the twisted ends. With it pinched between his yellow lips he said, “I wonder how you taste, fruit.”

From behind I scaled Mandrake, my foot wedged in his belt. Clawed at his face, Tootsie Rolls dribbling from his split lip. Roaring, he recoiled, fat hands removing me forcibly, restraining me against the pavement, my eye socket cradling his thrown fist. A jab into my gut produced a knot of red that lifted itself up into my throat and out through my teeth, a couple gobs disappearing in his mouth, the rest all down my chin and on our shirts. Confused, Mandrake licked his lips—

and screamed. My mother, barefoot, breathing, pulled him off. Mandrake, coughing, heaving, chewed on grass. I tried to ask what was wrong with my body. But she kissed me, all over my slippery face. She took me home.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

a record of my bodily faults

cauliflower ear, right ear, self-inflicted

half-inch scar, left knee below cap, five years old, open skinflap filled with little street rocks, feared those mom missed made it into blood stream

(potential) pebble aneurysm in occipital lobe

forever sore left shoulder, seventh grade, felt 'shift' when lifting fallen tree from dam, no sleep that night, lava throbbing through joint, no doctor

[excised] pilar cyst, right scalp, grew into golf ball teed on skull, after half-decade involved doctor, surprisingly adept at identifying golf ball

five-inch scar, right scalp, starts at hairline, shaped like undulation

single bump underside penis corona, removed with toenail clippers twice, grows back

burn the size of baby’s fist, back of right calf, speckled patch of skin

burn the size of box elder bug, back of right hand, baking cookies

(intangible) inability to be satisfied, tugged at (tangible) strips of skin inside left nostril until all flesh removed from clean white cartilage, has not grown back; from below nostrils resemble silhouettes of lungs, one concave where heart should be, morning noseblows produce blood

purpled divot in skin, unknown origin, discovered last week outside right arm pit, vaguely olympic torch-shaped, could maybe light it just to see

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Mandala

It didn't hurt really, the little Celtic flower circle on the top of my foot. It's all black and it means magic. There was a guy at the tattoo shop. He was burly and had tattoos everywhere: ribs, finger webs, inner and outer elbows. I got scared, so I told him I can usually make it through pain if there is a hand to hold. His mustache hid the grin on his upper lip and a silver ring pinched one of his fat, dry fingers. I told him that I found the design in a children's book that was my great-grandmother's. It is so I never ever forget that I am magic. When it was finished he told me that his hand had just been removed from a cast that day and I had really hurt him.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Apple II, The Floppy Disk Trilogy: Part I

In Odell Lake, you must make eleven decisions that will ultimately decide whether you live or die. Much like life, you have a limited amount of time to make your decisions. Odell Lake is a real lake in Odell, Oregon. However, this Odell lake is located on a floppy disk in the repurposed broom closet that is George Wolf Elementary School’s computer lab. The fish of Odell Lake: Chub, Rainbow Trout, Whitefish, Dolly Varden, Blueback Salmon (rendered as a crooked-looking Dolly Varden), Mackinaw Trout. Chub are the smallest fish, eat only algae (rendered as a quavering underlake caterpillar). There is no music, just the deafening clap of your own ingestion, wrapping the whole of your small body around the slime. Press SPACE BAR to continue. As a Chub, you look like this: [predominantly white fish with two-pixel wide black eye, beautiful in its simplicity and lacking in its realism, black back with lime single-pixel speckles; off-center in frame, leftwise]. To play a Chub is to live a day as a Yorkie, or Napoleon, ever conscious of your size, the danger of being swallowed whole ever imminent. Choose Deep escape, eat only algae. Much like life, Chub are often used as bait by anglers to lure out larger predators. While you were considering this, a Mackinaw Trout has eaten you. You should have gone shallow.

           Oh, to be a Mackinaw Trout! A deep-lake terror, hunger            undefined. You do not Chase away, do not escape, you Gorge.            Though Gorge is not a command in Odell Lake. As a Mackinaw Trout, you look like this: [white belly and head, eye with seven black pixels and two blue, gazing ever ahead, to promise! prosperity! six visible fins if you count the tail, black back peppered with orange pixels and dashes of green hatch; a king among fish! still off-center in frame, rightwise].

           You see a Blueback Salmon ahead. Eat!            You see a Whitefish ahead. Eat!            You see a mass of algae ahead. Ignore, benevolent a ruler as            you are, better to leave it for fish who like it.            You see a Chub ahead (this is one of your favorite foods!), and you, now quite peckish after your noble sacrifice, swallow it whole like a duck, and, much like life, with a sharp tug you are suddenly vertical, pulled up against the surface then skyborne! splinters of air in your burning gills, small shards of water slicing from your scales dripping back into the rippled blue body of Odell Lake and you on the floor of an angler’s boat, your two-pixel blue eye locked ahead into forever, the gentle flop of a Chub inside your flesh. ∞

[hart-and-sole-blog]

A sentence is hard for a sudden   to spin into space. See the hand perch on to fish out on the limb so to speak? It’s not to place but the verge of, a breath only a comment can clear the way to. The distant scars. There’s no question of diversion, the willingness to hug a huge escape to right where you never left. The unsuspected masses, collapses into itself a self. This is what is meant by cement. —Douglas Messerli, “Causes of the Crack Up: An Explication” Photography Credit Elizabeth Moran via Ain’t Bad Magazine

[hart-and-sole-blog]

A conversation with my daughter

This was an old WIP poem. I've thrown it hastily into a prose poem with minor line edits because I wanted to fill out our student workshop's readings for this weekend. I like it more as a prose poem, but I miss some of my money line breaks.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Leaving home

One of my professors tasked us with writing something about a dream we have this week. I don't normally remember my dreams, but I just woke up this morning with something that stuck. In the dream I based this piece off of, I was single-mindedly taking things out of the fridge back home that were mine and throwing them away. And there was some sort of alcohol that I diluted with water from the tap which I drank, and drank, and drank, until there was no alcohol left and I was just drinking full glasses of water, filling up my whole mouth, not stopping to breathe, swallowing gulp after gulp of water from the glass, furiously.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

This is my graphic novel, Black Hole. It was originally a story of the same name, which I stole from Charles Burns's incredible graphic novel of the same name, but then I adapted the story back into a graphic novel and kept the name. So it's really a long string of innocuous unintentional copyright infringement don't sue me Charles

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Four A.M.

How can you ever forgive the intermittent buzz of the digital alarm clock that tears sleep from the corners of your eyes, disturbs your favorite dream; the one in which you sink through your fine linen sheets, your ancient, lumpy mattress, the boxes of unmated shoes on the stained throw rug hidden from view, the newly-lacquered hardwood floor; past wires red, blue, black and green, pink insulation, particle board, antique mouse droppings, asbestos ceiling tiles, the lazily rotating fan with one burned out bulb; the fleshy, veiny, tissuey brain heart liver spleen intestine kneecap mess that is your downstairs neighbor, her cotton shirt, denim jeans, leather shoes, kitchen tiles; plummeting effortlessly through a concrete foundation, brass sewage pipes, rock, pebble, limestone, snake, dirt, clay, standing water, bedrock, fossils, trace amounts of petroleum, magma, ferrous phosphorous carbon, roasting in the heat of the Earth’s very core, steaming, sticky with thick sweat, sweltering, melting, cooling-down poolside; floating listlessly on your neon-blue seahorse-print raft, a can of grape soda artificial purple fizzling in its inflatable cup holder as you dip your feet in lukewarm water in Boulder, Colorado, where you watch the clouds form overhead; first as cotton candy wisps, gleaming crystalline threads of particulate, smoke, and soot, then as skyborne dust bunnies, clustery clumps of white gristle gleaning, gleaning, gathering and growing, spiraling and burgeoning, fluffy as a freshly-laundered oxford, tufty puffs of ludicrous comfort punctured by metal skyscraper precipices that grind up against the threshold of the horizon, and the wounds leak gold; you try to grab a cloud, try to tug at a flayed thread for yourself, your fingers tickling the florid tendrils of cumulus just out of reach, and you reach and you reach until you’ve grasped something with substance and you know that once you’ve moved this cloud, all that remains is blinding, redeeming radiance; and your fingers claw at the golden salvation bleeding through beaten egg-white peaks, and you yank and unravel and it explodes! escaping, filtering, pervading, overtaking, a deluge of fluorescent cacophony and anarchic beauty, throbbing light shrieking sound cracked lids flat dark bed sheets red glow buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz?

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Synnamon

The coolest kid in school would’ve wrapped one arm around his girlfriend, dipped her head back and kissed her in a single motion. With tongue. I tried to save things with a quick hug. She ducked it, looked me in the eye and said, “What the fuck!” Annie doesn’t frown with her mouth. She has this plump lower lip that only tightens when she smiles. She frowns with her brows. She frowned hard and walked away. I got on my bus with my chin locked to my sternum. There were no empty seats.

“Faggot!” one of the Cuffs yelled.

I sat next to Brian Miles, a chubby kid who had a crew cut and a speech impediment. He lived across the cul-de-sac from me. He would ring my doorbell and say, “Wanna fay?” I never wanted to fay. As the bus pulled away he didn’t look at me and I wasn’t sure that I felt relieved by that. The taunting mostly had receded into hushed, hastened conversations. My self-loathing had not. In the back seat, Christie Lopresti with her thick rings of eyeliner couldn’t keep her voice down. Her younger sister Natalie in the seat in front of her said he’s so cute! but I could also make out virgin from further in the back. I clutched my backpack to my chest, but at some point on the ride home between the slate quarry and the little town of Bath my shame and humiliation were dwarfed by the gradual realization that this was not the worst part. When I got to school tomorrow, Annie was going to kick my ass.

∞

She had moved here from Allentown with her mom late into the seventh-grade school year. Annie was the only white girl in her old school, South Mountain, which had been taken over the by state. Northampton was a nicer place, but she still carried herself with what I can only describe as an aura of hatred and bitterness. The other kids called her permanent glower the “Allentown Stare.” She had poorly-dyed blonde hair and inch-thick brown roots, blue eyes with golden halos around the pupils, a wardrobe of four, maybe five shirts, and one pair of jeans. I think I liked her because she intimidated me.

Also maybe because Jimmy Yost was flirting with her about video games one day during activity period. I’m friends with Jimmy, but he’s a doofus. He buttons his top button. His front teeth make a wedge, like he could separate out the pulp from a sip of orange juice. If he had a chance with her, I sure did. That day, after we were dismissed I said to Jimmy, with Annie in earshot, “I think I like her. She’s pretty and she likes Final Fantasy VII.”

I spent the next few weeks casting meaningful glances her way, making sure to always be caught. I wheedled into every conversation she was part of. I gestured madly when I did. I told everyone but her that I liked Annie Bryan. I want to say that this was part of a plan, that I was seducing her from afar. Truth is I was too terrified to talk to her directly, and it all just sort of burst out when I couldn’t bottle it up. I am not even the 98th coolest kid in school.

With a month left in the school year, I had moved my lunch table next to hers, but I made sure to never let our chairs be adjacent. Sometimes I could stare at the back of her head for the whole period, scrutinize her dark roots, her amber hair, trace the lines of her bra straps through her shirt. It was a Thursday when Kelly Hujsa walked the few steps from her seat at Annie’s table to mine. My attention was focused solely upon mixing the translucent, yellow goo that had settled on top of my cream cheese in the little single-serve container back into the cream cheese itself. I was convinced the two substances needed to be combined once more before I could spread it on my bagel. Kelly’s aggressive cheek bones jutted further when she smiled. She patted my shoulder and said, “Annie would like to know if you like her and want to go out.”

My gaze wandered to Annie’s table only to find her blue eyes staring back, a neutral expression on her face. She didn’t look happy or excited. I should have been, but dread welled up in the pit of my stomach. I looked down and said to Kelly, “Um, yeah?”

I spent the rest of lunch with my eyes glued to my bagel. For those thirty minutes it was the most interesting bagel that had ever existed. I studied its contours and blemishes, analyzed the color distribution, the spare, uneven brown tones. It was a white bread bagel, but it didn’t look like it had ever been baked. I decided the streaks of brown made to suggest cooking were an elaborate lie. When the bell rang I glanced up at Annie’s table and she was still staring. I got up quick and nearly ran out of the back of the cafeteria.

The second half the day was a potent mixture of algebra and my brain repeating the word idiot for long stretches of time, occasionally breaking up the monotony with a pointed what are you doing are you an idiot or something. Having made it to the end of the day without seeing my “girlfriend,” I collapsed into my open locker. It was the narrow kind, so only part of my hip fit, but it was enough. As I collected myself, Leigh Keenan peered over my metal door. He is a seventh-grade blonde giant and almost always wore a Celtics jersey. “Looks like someone’s waiting for you,” he said.

I immediately began jostling books around in my locker, pretending like I wasn’t just trying to melt my entire person into it. When my locker contents felt appropriately jostled, I slid my backpack up over my arms and turned around, doing my best “normal” impression. Mid-rotation, I found myself on the receiving end of a particularly malicious Allentown Stare: severe brow placement, cutting blues, stoic lower lip, a handful of freckles on pasty white skin. I looked down at her boobs by mistake. I then looked at the tan floor tiles. Safe, neutral floor tiles.

“Do you walk to school?” Annie said.

“I’m on bus 36,” I replied.

“Do you want to walk together to your bus or something?” she said.

So we walked along the sidewalk, up the hill from the middle school to the high school. She looked straight ahead. Neutral expression. I couldn’t read her. Just how furious was she? And when was she going to dump me? By chance, our hands bumped. She wrapped her pinky around mine. It sent this electric joy up my arm and I had to muster all of my willpower to keep my arm stiff and unflailing.

At the top of the hill, she stopped. “I actually live the other way.”

“My bus is at the beginning of the line,” I said, unable to verbalize anything other than simple logistics.

Annie regarded me, didn’t smile. “Maybe we should hug?”

I sputtered out something while she wrapped her arms around my torso. All the nerves that had knotted up my guts let loose at once. My stomach felt carbonated. I let my hands fall haphazardly onto her back, one on the waistline of her jeans, the other on the back of her bra. I immediately got hard. I pulled back like I had touched a hot stove and pushed past her.

“Okay bye!” I said, waddling through the high school parking lot against the swelling in my jeans. I am not even the 157th coolest kid in school.

∞

The bus creaked to a stop out in front of my neighborhood, and half the kids on it filed out with me. Avery Youwakim, the odd-looking kid with the Japanese mom and Syrian dad. The two Cuff brothers, their older brother Keith now at community college. Steve and Eric, who we never saw separated. Steve is shorter than me, has these thin red lips that I can never help but stare at. At least a foot taller than Steve, Eric is a senior with a big nose who lives in the house with the columns on the outside corner of the neighborhood. Danielle Vogel followed them out. She usually drives to school, and she babysat me one time this year. Which was weird. I’m twelve, after all.

Brian nudged me. I’d waited until everyone else had gotten off the bus, and now I could stand up. With my backpack on, I took the three rubber-ridged stairs from the bus to the ground slow, giving the Cuffs as big of a head-start as I could. Eric and Danielle talked. Steve stood in close like he was talking too, but never opened his mouth. Brandon punched Nathan on the shoulder. He stumbled a bit, yelled “Brandon!” and pushed back. When his older brother raised his fist, Nathan dropped his backpack and took off down Oak Road. This time he’s screaming, “Mooom!” with a crack in his tone and his older brother in tow, a backpack in each hand.

When we play football, Brandon’s the quarterback and Nathan’s a wide receiver, faster than any of us. I’m nothing special when it’s two-hand touch, but when we get to play tackle it takes three kids to tear me down. On those plays I flare off short to the sideline, and I can see in Brandon’s eyes this sort of trust, like in this moment alone I’m on everyone else’s level. His hand cocks the ball and then it’s in my hands and then I’m turned and running down the field, leaning my shoulder into the faster kids, throwing Nathan down with a good one-armed shove. Brandon doesn’t follow me to the endzone, but when I walk back for the kick-off he says, “Nice job, man” and we kick-off but I’m out of breath.

With the Cuffs out of sight, Brian a dozen paces ahead of me, and the older kids still talking back at the stop, I finally relaxed. I passed the peach tree with the lean on the corner. I turned onto my street at Jared’s house. He used to be my best friend, but his church didn’t want us hanging out. He’s a Mormon and had about six hours of church on Sunday, so we couldn’t have sleepovers on Saturday nights. I didn’t understand why else they wouldn’t want me around.  I had almost forgotten the kiss-that-wasn’t when I opened the front door to my house. It smelled like wood inside.

Mom was crouched in the dining room with a worn shred of sandpaper in her hand, newspapers tossed across the floor. The old black cabinet that holds the bowls and dishes was half-stripped down to its light beige surface. I admired her handiwork for a minute. No room stays the same in this house for more than three months, tops. No piece of furniture remains the same color longer than a year. The dining room got painted yellow last summer, all the furniture, black. There was can of red-orange paint on the dining room table, a handful of swatches leaned against it. Already hung on the wall was a dreary, sepia-toned painting with a conspicuous red-orange sun.

“Hey,” she huffed, breathing hard. “How was school?”

“Fine,” I said, leaving, content to never let another soul know the extent of what transpired today, beyond the kids on my bus, and the kids on the other buses, and whoever may have been watching from across the street, and whoever will hear about it in the years to come when I am a public outcast.

I trudged down the stairs with heavy steps and flopped into the computer chair. I started up AOL so that I could talk to Pook. I dump all my embarrassments on him because he lives in Canada. He can judge me all he wants. We’ll never meet. After I clicked the button to sign on, the screeching, halting churn of dial-up was almost soothing.

Welcome, AOL said, You’ve got mail!

But just as I was about to double-click Pook’s name on the instant messenger, the phone rang upstairs and AOL booted me out. I’ve been bugging mom to get us a second phone line. I wiggled the mouse cursor around the screen, waiting for whoever called to hang up, but I heard mom bounding down the stairs behind me. I swiveled in the chair and there she stood, one hand on the receiver and a fiendish grin on her face.

“It’s your girlfriend,” she said, beaming.

Apparently Annie had decided to begin with a preliminary, verbal ass-kicking. I froze up as mom motioned to hand me the phone. She put it into my outstretched hand and waited there expectantly. “Can you like...” I said, panicking, trying to push her away with the wind from my wagging hand. She rolled her eyes and turned to leave, and even though her back was turned I could tell she was still smiling. I took a deep breath.

“Hi?” I said into the phone.

“What is your problem?” hissed the speaker. So it began. “I wanted you to kiss me today! That’s why I followed you.”

“...I know.”

“Then why didn’t you!”

Because you unfairly put me on the spot? Because the entire world was watching? Because Brandon Cuff was calling me a faggot from seven feet off the ground and then his dick little brother started parroting him? Because I’m not ready. Because it terrifies me that I’m going to mess something up. And then I messed it all up anyway. I just want to live up to what you must think of me. But that’s not me— “Chandler. Talk to—”

“Can we try again tomorrow?” I blurted out. I needed a deadline. And an objective. I could do this. There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Yes,” Annie said. “Please.”

My chest was all knotted up again, but I smiled. I couldn’t not. “Okay. I need to go. I have homework...” I didn’t have homework. I was just finding it difficult to inhale and exhale, which made utilizing spoken words problematic.

“Okay,” she said, and I hung up.

∞

“You what?” Luke said. He stopped drumming on the back of Brian’s seat for added emphasis, gripped his sticks with both hands. He was at band yesterday and missed my little show. I was glad, but I filled him in anyway when he asked. We had become good enough friends this year, sitting together on the bus every morning, but that was the extent of it. I left out the part of the story where everybody saw it. It was dark on the bus so I didn’t get a clear look at him. The sun’s starting to rise a little earlier, but I still have to catch the bus at 6:20. He has a squat face and big ears. I could definitely see those, but I decided I could also make out deep disappointment on his face. “She wanted you to kiss her and you chickened out?”

“What do I do?”

“You kiss her!” he said matter-of-factly. As if it were so easy. He’s been with Jen the whole year.

“But like... how?”

“Are you really asking me this?”

“Yes! You’ve got—“

“Hey Chandler!” a voice from the back boomed. It was Brandon Cuff. “You gonna french your girlfriend in front of the fuckin bus again?” His voice was abnormally loud against a silent backdrop of sleepy kids. Everybody heard it. Nathan laughed.

“Wait,” Luke said. “You did it in front of the bus?”

I got defensive quick. “It was her idea!”

“At least you’re both idiots. Who decides to do stuff like that?”

“Annie does,” I mumbled.

“Well maybe try to enjoy it,” he said, putting his sticks into the top pocket of his backpack. “I’m going to sleep.”

And so I was alone again with my apprehensions and insecurities. Luke hadn’t even left me his sticks to play with. I can’t play any instruments, but I can keep a beat. Not like mister marching band sitting next to me, but I liked to pretend on the thick vinyl bus seats. I got a left-handed guitar for my birthday because I wanted to learn Blink182’s “Voyeur.” I found tabs for it on the internet. It didn’t look to hard. The guitar didn’t feel right in my hands, though. That, and my parents bought me a huge dreadnought instead of a regular acoustic. Just like the time I asked for a skateboard when I was eight and my grandma bought a fat model that didn’t turn and had pink grip tape. They returned the lefty guitar, got me one for the other hand, but that felt worse. I strum an open chord for a few minutes whenever I clean the dust off of it.

As the bus climbed the hill into downtown Northampton, I couldn’t keep the end of the day out of my head, nor the incipient kiss that had haunted me yesterday and would likely haunt me up until the moment in which I would more-than-likely fail again and be publicly shamed and then broken-up-with. I didn’t know why the thought of it was so paralyzing. I mean, boyfriends should want to kiss their girlfriends, right? Just maybe not with an audience. I don’t do well with audiences. Or new experiences.

In fifth grade I discovered that my fear of big crowds had been outgrown by my fear of looking stupid. I had purposefully tanked the classroom tryouts for the spelling bee every year before that, but I just couldn’t bring myself to lose again. I breezed through the classroom level, and was invited up onto the stage in our cafeteria during the big assembly. I climbed the steps, walked to the microphone, and faced the audience. The whole elementary school was seated Indian-style on the cafeteria floor. I could feel my joints lock up, including my jaw. I stared at the far wall. My word was Synonym. I had never used a microphone before. This one was a little taller than my mouth, and when I said “Synonym” my voice exploded out of the loudspeakers from directions all around me at volumes I had never fathomed possible and I had milliseconds to process this, panic, and start speaking letters. “S-Y...” I began, then, with the gathering speed of a downhill boulder, spat out “N-N-A-M-O-N. Cinnamon.” Everybody laughed. I was dumbfounded. I had realized my error in the middle of the word. I somehow had managed to aggravate both fears. I just stood there. What else could I do? I remember my feet carrying me offstage, sitting me down in my spot. I remember spelling each and every last word correctly in my head after that. The last contestant to be eliminated spelled “medal” like “metal,” even after hearing it used in a sentence. I could have spelled that.

The bus lurched to a halt in front of the middle school and snapped me back to this dim May morning. I woke up Luke. I got off the bus and exhaled a wispy plume into the cool morning air.

∞

I am not the coolest kid in school. But I have a girlfriend, and she wants me to kiss her. I know this because she is standing right in front of me wearing a coy little smile and I am staring directly into her blue eyes with golden halos around the pupils, because I know if I look anywhere else I am going to see a bunch of kids with their heads jutting from school bus windows. This does not stop me from hearing Nathan yell, “Put your tongue in her mouth!”

I have been thinking about this very moment for most of today, often in lieu of thinking other, potentially more important things. In algebra I wrote all my slopes when solving in Point-Slope Form as Run-over-Rise. I don’t think I knew getting a 29% on a test was possible before this. I also put a great deal of effort into avoiding Annie at all costs, even arriving to lunch late to rehearse our after-school rendezvous with the back of her head. Jimmy sat down to talk to me in activity period, asked me why I was sitting alone in the back corner of the room with my head down. I told him I was concentrating.

After the final bell, Annie met me at my locker. We hugged. We began the walk to my bus. Our hands brushed. We talked about nothing, but every step I took closer to Ground Zero stiffened my knees and contorted my stomach and balloon-animaled my small intestine and now I am standing here in the grass next to my bus again. Everyone is watching and yelling and I’m beyond positive that I’m never going to kiss Annie and will die alone, hopefully soon, curled up into a tiny ball in a dark corner of an anonymous forest away from all these people. I see it smoldering in her eyes, all sorts of unkind emotions aimed at me and my inability to just let go and kiss her and then Brandon Cuff leans out of his window with his stupid freckles and yells, “French her, Chan. And grab a boob while you’re in there!” and it feels like the whole world is rolling with laughter until out of nowhere Annie turns her head up to Brandon and says “Shut the fuck up!” with this fierceness in her eyes and brow and a little bit of disgust hanging from her plump lower lip.

Then everything is silent.

And I want nothing more than to devour that plumpness.

So I do. In one motion I close the distance between us, put my hand on the small of her back and draw her against me. She turns her head just in time for my lips to close around that lower lip of hers and I feel it tighten like I am reading her smile with my mouth. My other hand finds its way to her back and closes the embrace. Her hands dangle from the nape of my neck. It’s a peck, then we pull apart. My chest is tight and burning, my veins are turgid with adrenaline, my brain is sparkling with endorphins, but I tell her that I’ll talk to her later. Because in this moment I am smooth enough to pull that off. She smiles. A big one. The kind I don’t get to see very often.

I turn into the open doors of the bus and take the stairs quickly, looking up just once to find an open seat, avoiding everyone’s faces. Luke waves from a seat directly in front of Brandon. The bus lurches into motion as I slowly make my way up the aisle. The girls my age avert their eyes as I walk past. Nathan grins. I sit down with Luke and collapse into a tiny vented-stress-pile.

“You are now a man,” he says.

Brandon leans around my seat, gets in close. I can’t imagine him saying anything I haven’t already heard. With his eyes wide he half-whispers, “She’s fuckin scary!” and sits back in his seat. As the bus turns onto Main Street with the slate quarry in view, I laugh. Then he laughs. And pretty soon, he’s asking what it was like. fin

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Incoming content dump!

A friend wants to see some of the work I've done recently, so I'm going to be posting a bunch of stuff here. Prepare your anusesdashboards.

---

Also, to all my friends who know the actual story behind Synammon, forgive my poor fictionalizations of names. I don't normally write about myself so clearly, so I'm not really adept at giving people cool fiction names.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

WIP - "The Great Golden Muu-muu"

Might end up using a title that is another Circa Survive reference since I'm just stealing this working title from my opening line.

___

“It’s beautiful,” I said to Kyler.

“It looks like it was welded together with crushed sequins.”

Kyler and I had entered the store looking for something gaudy, like a hunter green Canadian tuxedo, or a purple ceylon-print oxford, but it became clear we would leave with something transformatively ugly. I would destroy the competition at Catherine Baker’s costume party and win that $25 Panera gift card. I handed the dubious cashier three dollars, threw the muu-muu on over my head,  and heard Kyler sigh audibly behind me.

Ignoring him, I thought out loud, “Now, I need a wig and some pillows.”

“Rach—” Kyler began to say before the cashier chimed in.

“...We do have a selection of wigs back where you were shopping before.”

I turned back to the store proper and scanned the racks. How could I have missed them? At eye-level, nappy bundles of hair nestled between the shoes and hats. To say I pranced to the back of the store would be an understatement. There was a tightly curled salt and pepper wig, if I wanted to go old-couture. I thumbed through a haystack of blonde wigs not quite different enough from my own color to make a difference. And then I found it, dark brunette, done up in a bun, straight bangs, only a few knots. I grasped it on both sides by the internal webbing and lifted it up and onto my head.

“Woah woah lice!” Kyler yelled from the register counter.

“Relax,” I said, fixing the bangs that fell over my forehead, patting the lopsided bun. “How do I look?”

He looked me up and down. “Like homeless Cinderella.”

“Belle wore the golden dress,” I corrected him with a grand curtsey, lifting the hem of the muu-muu just above my brown and yellow argyle sock.

[hart-and-sole-blog]

Superhero Story | Part 1 of ?

More beginnings without endings. This is my current project for workshop. I'm writing about a world in which there are only Super Heroes and Villians-- all the normal people they protect/prey upon are gone, and about how both sides cope with this loss.

First paragraph!

During what would come to be known as the Darkest Day for All Super Kind, an errant telescoping steel bo staff flung by the magnificent Magnet Man narrowly missed the cranium of the dastardly Doc Teleport, who had just teleported behind the intrepid hero, naturally. But the villain knew something was amiss the moment his greatest rival, the man the papers called The Masked Magnetician, wasn’t struggling against his deftly executed headlock. With his forearm held tight to his opponent’s throat, he felt Magnet Man swallow. “Dick,” he said. “Dick, look!” Dick Telepransky reeled for just a moment – stunned that Magnet Man was somehow privy to his identity – then he swelled with a secret pride. He had chosen his most intimate adversary wisely. Magnet Man’s voice was quiet, grim. “She’s dying, Dick.” On the other side of Telepransky’s hidden underground laboratory, pinned to the aluminum wall by the staff through her sternum, was the last remaining civilian on the planet. Her blood pooled beneath her, still dripping from the toes of her tennis shoes.