shortnasties

[shortnasties]

3192. Many People Vacation In Florida

This is called "Many People Vacation In Florida." Another cool day of bearing the lies of Justice.

It rained today. One of those thick summer storms that darkens everything. I spent a half hour of it watching a CCTV video online of a pit bull attacking a small child and the child's parents trying to do anything to get the pit bull to release the small child. What really took a lot of time for me was trying to figure out what the dark spot on the asphalt was that appeared right after the pit bull attacked the small child. I thought it was a splash of blood, fallen there with the mother's bag. But the more I looked at it, observed it, studied it, I realized it was the mother's cellphone. She dropped it from her other hand, the one not holding the bag she also dropped, when she went to pull her child from the pit bull's jaws. After a lengthy struggle, the father took a pocketknife from his jacket and stabbed the pit bull in the neck, which seemed to resolve the issue.

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3191. Occupation

This is "Occupation." Not very good sights now.

I think Crandall is not well. Neither is Lipschitz. The loud, piercing alarm goes off every hour and a half and another layer of sanity is sandblasted away. Sometimes one of us forgets why we're in here to begin with. The other two has to remind the one. It's not a healthy situation. Lipschitz says he wants to see his family again. Little Tanya. His youngest. Named after the scandalous figure skater. I'm not very well, Lipschitz says. Crandall pushes the one button he is supposed to push every forty-five minutes. Lately, he is forgetful and has to keep a timer on his watch to remind him. Time is ticked away in forty-five minute increments. What's my job? I have to record everything. Well or not well, it must be recorded. Crandall says make him look good. "Make me look good even though I'm not well," says Crandall. Lipschitz weeps before sleep each night. He tells me when he dreams. "Last night, I dreamt I was being fucked at knifepoint by a dolphin-headed intruder in my childhood home," Lipschitz says. I record it. Many dreams he's had. All of them unwell. It's not good. It's not good to be surrounded like this. 24/7. One of us will crack. I feel like it can't be me because I'm the recorder. If I crack, who will record? "Maybe you've already cracked and all that you've written in that log is filthy dirty delusions," says Crandall. It's not healthy. An alarm goes off. Either to push the button or to recharge the battery that operates all of this. Sometimes you can hear a voice under the alarm. It's like somebody is yelling outside the chamber, to see if anybody is in the chamber still. Everything is done outside and they've come to rescue us from this life and thank us for a job well done. "Hello? Hello?" the voice says. But the alarm is so loud, it destroys any intuition of response one might have. Lipschitz weeps and dreams. Who knows if it's even night? I record. We're very unhealthy, not well, liable to crack at any moment. Crandall's alarm goes off to push the button and he pushes it.

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3190. Donations

This is "Donations." Unfinished, maybe forever.

Sometimes when we go to drop off donations, we'll go into the store and see what others have donated. Old appliances and clothes, cutlery sets, a wedding dress, mundane paintings, drab curtains. Sometimes we'll see some of the stuff we've donated. It's sometimes tempting to buy back the thing you got rid of. Silly, too, I guess. But sometimes you change your mind. It's not always as easy as this—being able to just buy back the thing you cast off into the world. Sometimes you never see that thing again.

Sometimes we think about Ada, who was ours for a time. She was a young woman just trying to get through law school. Reserved but salient. She'd come over twice a week and stay the night and between the three of us we'd make some real fine memories. Ones you can't tangibly grasp again long after the fact—you just have to let them simmer on the edges. Let the smoke billow until you pass out.

What happened? Like anything happens. All arrangements are terminal. But we won't see her in the world. Or if we do, it won't be as we saw her then, glimmering in the night, enrobed in multiple passions, loving not one or the other or even both at the same time. Impossible. Just still, hot ardor.

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3189. An Essay On Hot Days, by Franz Bachmann, Haddonfield, NJ

This is "An Essay On Hot Days, by Franz Bachmann, Haddonfield, NJ." Do what you won't.

Hot days are very interesting. You want to go outside because it looks so good. The sky is open and the sun is dazzling. Everything on the trees looks so green. It all dapples! There is much dappling on a hot day. But the unfortunate part is that it is a hot day. And going outside would be stupid. You will get your shirt, among other articles of clothing, very sweaty. And then you will be walking around sweaty! Which isn't too comfortable. Of course, one doesn't need to suffer like this—all experiences can be changed when looked at from a different lens. For example: being hot and sweaty outside, while uncomfortable, is much better than being tortured and made to falsely confess to claims of high treason in a government-sanctioned labor camp. Which is why, every time, I find myself outside on a hot day, both enjoying what can be enjoyed but also being extremely uncomfortable due to the heat and its effects, I repeat in my head: "This could be worse. I could be being tortured and made to falsely confess to claims of high treason in a government-sanctioned labor camp." But most of the time, when it is hot out, like today, I just stay inside and enjoy the beauty from the comfort of my home.

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3188. A Good Meal

This is "A Good Meal." This isn't for Fred.

I love a good meal. And even more so, I love anticipating a good meal. When I know a good meal is coming—there is nothing better. The tiny glands in the mouth begin to activate. The brain buzzes. You are in proximity to a good meal! One that is bountiful yet doesn't make you feel like an engorged tick at the end of it. That is not the mark of a good meal. The trick is you want to feel satiated, full, but not overstuffed or plump. There is nothing like a true good meal! Especially when it's in the works, not yet spoiled by eating. The possibilities of devouring are endless. I'm not saying that eating a good meal is bad. But it ends. What does one have to look forward to? Certainly not another good meal. It's too soon! That's gluttonous. That, to me, is why anticipating a good meal is best. It is beautiful. I think it's what makes being human preferable—you can anticipate the delicious thing. Which is its own pleasure.

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3187. Getting Lost

This is "Getting Lost." Another memory for a reason.

It was a nondescript summer of my life. People debated the end of the world. But nothing was serious. We walked along the river's edge in the humid evening, talking. Ate at a McDonald's out of spite. Dreamed about the other at night.

Soon it was autumn. If you left a window open at night, the room would be cold by morning. I love getting lost in a friendship. When it feels like water rushing down on the rocks.

You take on a more beautiful view of being alone. Hey, that was you. I was the one over to the side. Music played, but by no human hand. I don't know how else to describe it...

Someone will find you. Let them.

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3186. Purely A Social Thing

This is called "Purely A Social Thing." Forget your own devices.

She went out with the IT guy for drinks. Purely a social thing. Not a date. Nothing romantic. Just social. Drinks. He was bald. Which wasn't automatically unattractive to her. But his baldness was cartoonish. It was the shape of his head more so. It looked like it had been drawn there, in mid-air, by some laughing hand. Which, to be perfectly honest again, wasn't totally automatically unattractive. She had been courted by many coworkers over the last year. Most of which she had entertained. She was in a new state, a new city. She felt like she owed it to herself to go through some people. There was the 5th Floor guy, who had a room in his apartment devoted to Civil War memorabilia. He came like a shivering, gasping debutante. There was Accounts guy, who never seemed to be able to pull her hair right. She didn't really need her hair pulled. It was something he would do. But he did it all wrong. Always pulled from the ends of her hair, never the base. Even when she corrected him. There was Payroll girl. That was unexpected. Not that she hadn't ever before with a girl. But this girl was very quiet. She never seemed to go for quiet. She herself was quiet, which always made her think another quiet person would create a hollow room, a snuffed out space. But Payroll girl was rowdy in bed. She had a cowboyish way of making her feel small and cattle-like. Which wasn't bad. But it was a new feeling. Took getting used to. When IT guy asked her out to drinks, she made it clear it was social. Just social. Not intimate. Or not more intimate than two people getting drinks could already be. IT guy said he understood. His bald head shined with understanding. And now they were here, in the bar attached to a swanky restaurant. The bar was less swanky. It felt like it was going out of its way to not be swanky. Which made her feel at ease. If it had been trying to be swanky, that would have indicated something. It would have made her feel very unsure of the paths into the night. There was always a path of no intimacy. That was good. But there would also be the paths to intimacy. All different kinds. The path to a clear emotional connection. The path to touching hands. The path to sex. All the different kinds of sex. Mostly fine sex. Nothing mind-blowing. But this bar wasn't trying to be swanky. Swankiness was precluded. And the IT guy was bald. He ordered an old fashioned. She ordered a straight whiskey. He made a big deal of it, but she just shrugged. She didn't tell him she's done things that would make ordering a straight whiskey extremely mundane. Their conversation meandered a bit. But not badly. She felt interested enough to keep going. But was her mind blown? Not really. Which wasn't bad. There was a possibility they could have sex tonight. It would be not for anything but to do it. Not love. Not need. Not a future. Purely social. Which felt good to her. It is why she did most things, she realized. Not that it progressed her life. But more so that it shortened time spent not doing something. As IT guy talked about the systems at work, she thought about all the time she had shortened in her life, condensed into moments of "trying." It was all trying something new. Every new person was another opportunity to try something. She had come a long way here to discover that. She realized, epiphanically (she thought), that life progressed not through accumulations but subtractions of time. She looked at IT guy's bald head, its shining expanse, like a desert one finds the perfect mirage to disappear into.

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3185. The Childhood of Jason Voorhees

This is called "The Childhood of Jason Voorhees." I've been free of bathos for some time.

Summer in New Jersey again. The ripe pine, the musk of freshwater estuaries. Cranberry bog in the air. A red fox in the evening slinking between the slats in the fence. In the distance, the hum of a city. Cars. Chatter and banter in parking lots. Crickets in the fields. A stern summer crush. A shorter way home though the woods. Dusk all of a sudden. Dreams like those inky motor oil stains left on driveways. Are you home? Were you ever? Mother's Sunday dinners. Stone walls half here and there in the overgrown thicket. Ice cream drips. Bonfire. Guitar propped against the wall in the cabin. I wasn't sure I loved you or not. Passion-drained flowers in the sun. So much wilted beauty waiting for rain. Shuffling off into another night. The lake. The flashbulbs of light on the surface of the lake. A sports car driving down the road in the evening with a familiar old song playing. Nobody will hold you as tight again. If you can remember the single worst night of your life and not feel the exact feelings of that night again, this means you are getting better.

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3184. Rush In

This is "Rush In." Expire or hire.

Last week, I walked into the restaurant and asked for someone to sexually embarrass me. The employees there all seemed to understand what I meant, but bound by a grim pledge pretended otherwise. Unable to get the thing, I stood there and pretended to mull options on the menu. Don't pretend you haven't been right here. In my exact spot. Who hasn't wanted the one actual thing that would correct their life to come rushing in?

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3183. Limits or Lacks

This is "Limits or Lacks." Passed time makes it matter.

After a while, sleeping life becomes more interesting than waking life. It's not what you can do in your dreams, it's what can be done by doing nothing. What is possible but doesn't have to happen. Nobody else will understand your limits or lacks. You have to be the one to flip the switch at night and welcome darkness back. You have to be unafraid.

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3182. Dublinesque

This is called "Dublinesque." The beauty is everyone likes to, too, and two.

I used to have a vocation, but now I'm "just around." Every night a fraudulent dream harasses me. I wake up and drench myself with a handful of water from the leaky faucet. My eyes burn. I remember a singed moment of embarrassment from the third grade. I've been the victim of cutting remarks, taut judgment, and splenetic data entry. Not being able to sleep, I look out the window at night. A broken bicycle has been left in the street. I used to be a child. Kathy never loved me. Each pancake I make is worse than the last. And the morning never comes. Who was I to the people who mattered most? I'm deadly aimless, a baron of bland ritual. It will rain forever. Despite all this, love still comes easy.

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3181. Going To See Malone

This is "Going To See Malone." It all is lessened.

Murphy was visiting Malone. It had been a while since they had seen each other. Murphy being busy in the city, while Malone had lingered in the countryside. Murphy remembered those dark country roads, whizzing down them in the nights as a youth. No noise. But at the same time, all the noise in the world. The humming shadows. Malone was always the type to leave enough room between himself and other people. Murphy, on the other hand, had become a successful CAWP, a thing he so frequently had to explain to new acquaintances that it had lost all meaning. He no longer truly knew what the acronym stood for, nor the nature of the work. More recently he had taken to going into the office, a large high rise in the city with a long elevator ride, and sitting there confused as to what to do. The confusion was so wrought he thought he was having a stroke one day, even going so far as to say to a passing coworker, "I think I'm having a stroke." But the coworker took this to be yet another slice of dark humor common to the world of the office. Murphy frequently went home with a headache. He had begun distancing himself from his girlfriend, Molly. It was a slow, painful process that would irrevocably damage their default modes in relationships going forward. Murphy felt bad about it. It was nothing Molly did or didn't do. He felt it was connected to his confusion at work, but he couldn't say in what way. On the other end, Molly was beginning to think Murphy needed help. It pained and angered her to feel pushed away, but she also felt like Murphy was spinning down a dark road, without light or guide, and would sure enough find himself crashed into a large tree. Part of this feeling was informed by a recent event she had witnessed on a ferry to the cliffs. It was very cold and the choppy ocean sprayed the deck from time to time. A young man, very well dressed considering the occasion, had gotten up and started stripping off his clothes. Soon he was naked and screaming that someone named Molly was down there, pointing to the ocean. This struck Molly for obvious reasons. The young, naked man had begun trying to climb the ferry's rail to hurl himself over when a group of men pulled him back at last. They threw him to the deck, where he flopped like a fish. It all lingered for Molly, although she told nobody about it, least of all Murphy. And it was only a moment, nights later, when Murphy stayed over and was stripping to have sex, that she felt like she had witnessed an omen or premonition. That, somehow, Murphy was that young man, naked and flopping on the deck of the ferry. Murphy, of course, knew none of this. He had everything and yet felt weird and confused. It wasn't until he got the letter from Malone that he thought maybe this was the answer. Going to see Malone! Malone was always a dissident, in every possible way. His life, in the country, just seeing it, would straighten Murphy out. When he finally made it to the tiny house in the country, after a six hour train ride and then another hour and a half car ride there, Murphy was surprised to find a note at the door. It said: Friend, when you arrive, please just come in. Murphy thought this was strange. He went in. There he found a neat and orderly house. Malone had done well for himself. Yes he had stayed in the country but he had made it nice. It seemed he had invested something into his life. This warmed Murphy's heart. When he went into the living room he found Malone. He was sitting in his rocking chair, holding a large shotgun in such a way as to be pointed at his own face. He seemed upset, perhaps had even been crying a little. He looked disappointed to see Murphy. Oh old friend! Malone said. I was supposed to have done it already. You weren't supposed to see me living like this!

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3180. Damage

This is "Damage." Where are all my Pyramiders?

I walked down a street in an old city once obliterated by war and famine. They seemed to be doing much better for themselves in recent times. You couldn't see any evidence of past damage. There was one of those bougie coffee shops on the corner now. A voluptuous woman with her tiny dog standing there outside. I had a professor at university who seemed to wish to convey to us that we only get nice things through conflict. That never in the history of human civilization has there ever been "tender progress." A few years later, he was what they once called "cancelled," due to a bout of torridness with some of his students. It was revealed by one of those students in a personal essay published online at a respected journal that one of the professor's seduction tactics on her was playing Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness." The student lamented this fact as she always held that song in such high esteem. And while it hadn't completely changed her opinion or feeling of the song, she felt uncomfortable not being completely changed. In the essay, she couldn't rectify this fact. She felt guilty about not being totally comfortable with the song anymore. Like she was afraid the song might bite her hand if she went to it again. The song hadn't done the damage, after all. It was the professor. But something in the force he exerted on the song had infected it. Just slightly. Sometimes we don't have a choice about how we get to feel. We just have to wait. Sometimes for a very long time.

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3179. Please Believe Me, Please

This is "Please Believe Me, Please." It's over, we've ended on a high note, but still very low.

I don't take vacations. I could be in the gulag and I still wouldn't take a vacation. How can this be, you ask? Because, my work is very different. I'm already asleep, half-there, always having fun. It doesn't seem that way, yes. You're right. But believe me when I say something, please. Because what I'm saying is the absolute god's honest truth. I simply have nothing to lie about. Listen: I've had a tiny person behind me with a whip all my life. I egg them on to whip me harder. The relationship is symbiotic. When we're getting what we want from the other, that is both work and vacation.

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3178. Seagulls

This is "Seagulls." It makes sense if you're there.

All the seagulls were fat, large beasts that looked at you mushily. Same could be said for the locals, with their lonely hairdos and stunted stories. The heavy breathing. The coughing. And soon, a dark biscuit of a cloud hovers over the city. They say things happened here. But they've happened elsewhere too, surely? Sometimes we build our own cage. The grocer across the street says it as, We pick our own plums. A famous poet who horrifyingly died said, We write our own letters. But the postman died in the street last week. At some point, you're just a small, trembling creature. Ma, are we done here? No, no, this is where we'll always live, my little boy.

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3177. Lasting Impression

This is "Lasting Impression." You all know how to be good, but do you understand when?

I think the thing that really stuck with me was how struck I was, while the plane taxied to the gate, at how many hares live in the grasses of the runway at Dublin Airport.

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3176. The Obituary Reader

This is "The Obituary Reader." There is just one movie.

I used to read the obituaries every day. It made me feel better about my life. But not in the way you're probably thinking. Sure, being alive is better than being dead. (Although if we're being honest, how can we know for sure? There might be a golden palace for us and big, just-right pillows and all the iced tea we want over there. Sometimes being a devotee of life and its riches is tough.) Anyway, the thing about the obituaries was they were so public. All these peoples' lives just spooled out like toilet paper to be used. I was glad I wasn't them. I wasn't known. Or, at the very least, there were still great, wide patches of me still yet to be touched by others. Metaphorically speaking. I took comfort in that. It felt like I had time to change who I was or could be. Freedom! But then I stopped getting a paper. It was too much money. I get they need to make money just like anybody, but I couldn't afford the frivolous privilege of news. After a while, without the distinction of daily obituaries, I forgot there were lives, either public or private.