“What you’re asking me to do is physically impossible, Tonya, for a myriad of reasons. Most important is a primary principle of physics and hydro-engineering known as ‘stream degradation.’ This principle postulates that a stream of liquid does not actually operate as a unified whole, ocular appearance to the contrary. Rather, it acknowledges this stream as an accumulation of infinitely divisible components, whose separate paths are wholly unaccountable and unpredictable. For you to ask me to claim total responsibility is flat out unreasonable, and, if I may, a little unfair to boot.”

“Jesus, Tyree, will you just try to keep from pissing on the toilet seat next time?”

Labels: Stories

Henry Jackson was the greatest man I ever came to know in my former profession, both in size and character. Of course, as a bricklayer in Chicago, I got a chance to meet many more men who were great in the former sense than the latter. We were a rough, thick group you wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with, but Henry made us more—he made crusaders out of thugs. And when he caught weedy little Vinnie whistling at a married gal as she passed, he thrashed him but good, in the courtyard where everyone could see. And then he bought him two pints after work that day. That was Henry Jackson.

If it weren’t for Henry, every one of us would have been in Wolfy Stein’s crooked pocket, but Henry wouldn’t hear of it. He didn’t want the mob interfering with “Good, honest, man’s work.” We were all scared of what the Wolf would do––he had a reputation, and while we weren’t Yalies, we could all read the paper. At this time, Chicago was a bad place to say no to the mob in. But Henry did—Wolf wanted us to install some faulty walls in a building we were putting up, so he could buy it and collect the insurance when it collapsed. Really, he was just an overgrown punk who loved to see good people in pain, but without Henry we wouldn’t have thought that. A few guys actually bowed when the Wolf came to find out who had the salt to reject his messenger’s offer.

Henry grabbed those guys by the scruffs of their necks, gently, like a mother cat, and raised them back to attention. He took Wolf out to the courtyard, same place he tossed Vinnie, while we all watched from behind the partially built walls in the empty lot. They got real animated, and their voices got loud enough we could almost make out what they were saying. Then Wolf started to reach inside his suit, and Henry, fast as lightning, reached down and took a massive brick in each hand, then clapped them together on either side of Wolf’s head. The sound echoed forever, and Wolf fell fast and hard. We poured a second level of foundation for him…and to make sure the building was nice and stable. Henry did all the heavy lifting.

Labels: Stories

He had been told to expect a reasonable commute, and so he had. But the commute was unreasonable, beyond the shadow of a doubt. It wasn’t just the fact that he had never commuted more than two miles to a job before—he was spending two and a half to three hours of his life every day lined up with the other 9-5ers, waiting like cattle to get to work, or, cattle-like, waiting to go home.

But that was until he found the wormhole. The first time he went through by accident, swerving to avoid a zealous but uncautious squirrel. Instead of running up onto the meridian, a mere block from his office, he found himself twelve miles away, just seconds from his home. For the next few weeks he enjoyed the newfound free time, and reveled in sneaking through his little shortcut. But of course, word got out; somebody saw him, and told a few of his friends, and then one of them posted it on a commuters forum, and then, within a month, everybody knew. And so it was that one day, expecting a reasonably quick trip through the wormhole, he joined the hour long line to get into it, filed in behind all the other 9 to 5 cattle.

Labels: Stories

I think love can come from a lot of different places: sex, common ground, desperation, but for me and Vicky, it came from good timing. We bumped into each other, at the corner of the campus parking garage, on the first day of our senior year. I mean bumped in the most literal sense: I was hurrying to class, she was hurrying from class, and we knocked heads pretty hard. Hard enough, in fact, that we didn’t realize until thirty seconds later that we’d both been humming the same song, a lament for lost love. We both loved the song, we’d both lost a love.

So we clung to each other, all that year, and all the next. And it was beautiful, in the way that everything seems beautiful after the death of a loved one, when everything hurts so much that you see all the wonder of the world in sharp relief.

But then, two years later, we broke up. We had to. We were sitting on our couch, watching a tragic movie about loves lost. We were both crying, and we realized we were both still crying over different people.

Labels: Stories

“So I’m running along the coast of Oahu, and I’m carrying my wife over my shoulder, like we did after our wedding. Except that I’m in a Miami Dolphins jersey, and shoulder pads, and cleats, so I’m really heavy and I’m sinking into the sand. And the pads are jarring my wife and she keeps slapping me on the helmet to get me to put her down. And I’m about to, except that then I look to my left and I see this humongous tidal wave coming towards us, so I turn upshore and try to run away from it, but I keep sinking further and further into the sand and I’m slowing down, and I’m not going to make it. Then, right before the wave hits I wake up. What do you think, doc?”

“Hmmm. Give me a moment to digest. Yes, I see. You have a massive inferiority complex, Mr. Duares. This is why you imagine yourself incapable to save your wife, swallowed up by the natural forces of the world, even at the site of your happiest moment, your wedding. Sadly, your case is so severe you even imagine yourself to be a Miami Dolphin. I recommend immediate and severe electrochock therapy.”

Labels: Stories

As he ascends the hill, every day of every week, he contemplates the irony of it: every step brought him physically closer to the heavens and his Lord, but spiritually he felt like he was descending into hell. Every step he took the pavement grew more cracked and ridden with potholes, the concrete mottled by stains the city couldn’t or didn’t choose to scrub out, gradually the windows, windows into people’s homes, became shut up with iron bars and cages. Graffiti and tags, sparse at first, would soon cover every available inch of concrete like hungry and desperate vines clawing for space. It was a hard world he was entering into, a hard and broken world.

The reverend lived at the bottom of the hill, among the affluent and aloof parishioners he spoke to of hardships and suffering each Sunday. Every week he’d step from the pulpit and look out at all those smiling faces, into eyes that had never known tears from the sting of cold, and he’d feel sick to his stomach. He was preaching to these people the world of the poor, the gospel of the downtrodden; and they didn’t deserve it. They’d perverted the word he grew up loving, into something hideous: hypocrisy. Though they lived geographically beneath the people at the top of the hill, their entire lives were built upon the backs of those people up there, the people the reverend’s Lord had been preaching to in the first place.

So, like America’s first holy men, he punished himself. He woke every day for the next week with the pain of that hypocrisy stained on his soul, and he bore it until he went to bed that night. Then, finally, on Saturday, his only day off, he would put on his oldest and most ragged clothing, and he would hike up the hill. There, he’d simply do whatever needed to be done: he repaired broken porches, he talked to heartbroken and abandoned mothers, he brought and cooked soup. His parishioners didn’t understand why he spent his only vacation day working, but that, he told himself, was because they didn’t understand that it wasn’t work for him. It was the Lord’s work; it was the vacation of his soul.

Labels: Stories

When I’d stay with him, on every third or fourth weekend depending on whether it was an odd or even numbered month, my father used to tell me, “Never mistake being beaten for being broken.” He used to tell me the greatest joy in life wasn’t getting back up when you’d been knocked down, it was laughing in the face of the motherfuckers who knocked you down. The apartment was too small for the two of us, and we knew that, and we knew his job and his check were too small for a man of his talents and brilliance, but there wasn’t anything we could do about either, so instead we laughed about it. And we’d bat at the plastic jewels that hung from his plastic chandelier, and pretend they were crystals.

I’ve been knocked down plenty of times since then, but I keep getting up, I keep laughing like he taught me. And lately I’ve been finding those plastic crystals everywhere, in the glove compartment of my rundown car, in the birthday cupcake I made my son when he came to visit me last weekend (the third weekend of the month). They don’t shine the way they used to, but they still feel heavy and real. What gets me down worse than anything though, is thinking about my father, six miles or more underwater, lost to me in a boating accident five years ago. Sometimes you get knocked down so hard you can’t get back up. I just hope wherever he is, he’s giving those motherfuckers that big, throaty laugh of his.

Labels: Stories

That’s it. It’s over. The only thing I had left was that apartment; been fired, been left by a woman too good for me, dog died…but I still had my castle, and now they took that from me, too. So here I am at the grand Plaza Zaferia, a miniscule little triangle of grass at PCH and Redondo that this city has somehow deemed a park. It’s not by any stretch of my imagination, but there is a park bench on one side of it, and a place to sit is all I really need right now. Just a place to sit, and think.

What am I going to do? No job, no money, no woman, no home. Shouldn’t be too hard to snag a job for a while, since Christmas is only a month a way and there’ll be a rush and all, but I won’t be able to catch a place to sleep till I’ve been working for a while, even if I get paid under the table and keep taking unemployment.

Someone in a Hummer that’s worth more than my whole life is pulling up to the corner right now. The system is bumping something…what is that? God of Gods, they’re blasting Silent Night loud enough to shake windows across the street. And you can hardly hear the melody it’s so fuzzed out by static. Man. I have a feeling it’s going to be a shitty Christmas season down here…

Labels: Stories

It was the first time her in-laws had been coming to she and her husband’s home for Thanksgiving, and she hadn’t slept well in weeks. She kept waking up at two in the morning, visions of burnt food and disapproving glances seared into her mind. Now the food was all cooking, and Marie was trying to relax, but had instead been staring at the clock for forty minutes. Her mother-in-law was due at any moment, and her son kept tugging at her dress and asking her questions.

“Mommy, does it hurt the carrots when they’re in the oven?”

“No, honey.”

“Mommy, is it true turkeys drown in the rain? Because John said it was true but Mrs. Kastalcis says he’s a liar.”

“Trust your teacher, honey.”

“Mommy––”

“Just a minute, honey, Mommy has to take the turkey out now. Will you go get your father and tell him to come wait for Grandma and Grampa to get here?”

“Okay!”

Marie was bent over, pulling the turkey out, when her back seized up, and just as her mother-in-law walked in the kitchen door to say hello, she fell over sideways, flipping the turkey all the way across the kitchen. She stared up at her mother-in-law, who was standing over her, trying to stop laughing, unsuccessfully. She reached a hand out. “Come here, dear,” she said. “Let me help you clean up.. And while we’re at it, I’ll tell you about the first time I cooked for my mother-in-law.”

Labels: Stories

So I wrote 200 stories. Holy shit. The hardest test so far was roughly August 15-September 15, as I struggled mightily to continue writing every day as wedding planning and unwinding happened. But I did it, and now there are "only" 160 some stories to go. Christ, what was I thinking?

Anyway, this is a time of great upheaval in my life, as I start a brand new shiny job on Monday, which I'm very excited about but which will be scaling back most aspects of my writing life. I plan to continue a few freelance things here and there, and this blog, but most other fiction writing and the large bulk of my freelance schedule are being cleared. But enough about me: here's the celebratory Turkey Ice Cream Man my wife bought me as a congrats for hitting 200 stories, and for getting aforementioned new job:



For the record she took the photo, so if its blurriness irrevocably damages your vision, direct your blind and flailing hatred at her. Here's a picture of my trusty Moleskine, which I wrote the first blog story in, and which I filled up a few weeks ago (it has since been replaced by a newer, trustier Moleskine):



Thanks for reading if you still are, I really do appreciate it. This blog has been the most challenging and rewarding creative project I've ever taken on that wasn't the Union, and it's nice to know you're still reading...Dan. And Shar, I think, too. Ta for now.

Labels: Generalness

He’d always been polite, since he was a little boy, so he tried to be happy to run into his ex-girlfriend at the market. All he kept thinking, over and over again was, “Thank God thank God thank God.” He’d broken up with her five years ago, after they graduated college. He was actually at an engagement ring store when he decided to do it; he was staring at the ring he was going to buy, running through proposing to her again, and he realized he didn’t want to marry this girl, he wanted to never see her again. Startled by how similar the emotions were, he ran out of the store, broke up with her immediately, and thought he’d put the whole yicky mess behind him. Until he dropped his cantaloupe at Ralphs and, standing back up, saw her across the produce section. She was staring at him, trying to pretend she hadn’t planned this. He was uncomfortable with how obvious this was.

She looked terrible. Her hair was stringy and greasy and hung in limp clumps around her now-oily face. She’d broken out terribly, and gained probably 75 pounds. Her green eyes, eyes he’d once kissed each night before they slept, were barely visible behind her puffy cheeks and sagging brow. Her shapely legs had bloated into baby carrots that ran in a straight line from her waist to her high heels, the ones she’d worn on their first date. They’d been stunning then; now they strained to hold together. “Hi Stephen,” she said, voice thick with phlegm. “Funny running into you here.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Real funny.”

Labels: Stories

There are three weeks until Wendy graduates, and she’s feeling reflective. Her college is one of the nations’ most beautiful public institutions, grassy hills looking out onto historic brick and concrete buildings, white in the pure and blinding sunlight. She’s surveying what has been her territory, this place where presidents and soldiers and astronauts and great artists were made; she’ll be leaving soon, she knows this, and it terrifies and sickens her to think of walking out the arch at the campus’ entrance and never returning again as a student, a seeker. It has been her life, but more, it has defined her life. Every step forward she takes will be guided by those bricks, and the words spoken to her by learned men and women.

The wind is at her back, pulling her hair in every direction; she knows how it feels. She knows too that it’s not the wind, but the breath of this place that’s whispering to her of inconceivable opportunities that lie everywhere, waiting for her to uncover them. It’s whispering to her the secrets she’ll know for the rest of her life.

Wendy has been sitting here for five hours now. It’s a Saturday, and the campus is empty enough that she could be looking at a model of it, lifeless and breathtaking. The sun is going down, and she is becoming a silhouette against the hill. She is of an indiscriminate race now, an anonymous gender; all you know, from the wild hair and the crooked smile, is that she’s part of the smallest of American minority, that of the happy and intelligent.

Labels: Stories

Clyde stepped out of the shower into the ice cold air of his bathroom, so much steam pouring off his skin that he looked like a demon, or some foul creature that had been living in a sulfur pit. But Clyde couldn’t see the steam, because he was effectively blind. He’d been living in darkness for days now, blackout curtains over the window, lights left unlit. At first he would wince every time he opened the refrigerator, the only source of light left in the apartment, but then he thought to take the bulb out. He’d already unplugged all digital clocks, the television, anything with an LED light, and smashed his flashlights. The candles were snapped in half and left in the drawer his wife had stored them in before she left, and he’d already turned their lone mirror against the wall. Now, no light got in, or out of the apartment, which was how Clyde wanted it. He knew eventually someone would come, someone wondering where his wife was, or the landlord looking for his monthly rent check. Clyde didn’t worry, though: they could come all they wanted, for all he cared. He knew they’d never find him.

Labels: Stories

{This story is meant to stand on its own, but if you'd like to read The Night's first story, you can do so here}

I am the Night. If you live in the greater Chicago area, you have no doubt heard of me by now. Despite my best intentions, rumors of my existence eventually reached the press, who eventually decided to print them. The moment they printed my name, I began to lose power. Because a name, in print, has no power. It must necessarily represent someone who is mortal, and the thieves and scum I stalk each night fear no mortal. But they had feared me. Now, it’s harder. I cope: I break more bones, I ask less questions. I allow myself to do more damage, and be seen less. The last thing I want them to be is comfortable. I want them to see me in every shadow, behind every door they kick in.

A month after the first story hit, the real damage was done. Another newspaper pointed out that the “Crazed Chicago Vigilante The Night” had never been seen in the daylight. With those words, the city turned upside down: that night there was almost no activity on the streets. Every criminal in the city was getting his first good night’s sleep since childhood, knowing that all they had to do was wait till the day to keep me from getting to them. Worst of all, the second day they were running mad over the streets, a serial killer appeared: The Hacker, so named because he hacked his victims limb from limb with an ordinary, dull saw. The rest of the filth I could take out in their sleep: that was no trouble to me. But this one had to be dealt with in person, and he had to be dealt with in the daylight.

Chicago’s low-slung sun had never touched the black leather of my mask before, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me uncomfortable, and even a little nervous to be stalking from shadow to shadow while people were out grocery shopping and kids were at baseball practice. But the work needed to be done, and so I did it. I plotted out where the bodies were being dumped and realized that there was an abandoned tenement in the center of the area. Since my forensic examination of the crime scenes had shown that the killer had been doing his work somewhere else and then dumping the bodies, I figured that I had my hands on the only lead necessary to bring this murderer to his end.

I crept in the back alley, using a service entrance behind the dumpsters. The Hacker had already taken apart five women in the city. Upstairs I could hear he was starting on a sixth. I sprinted up the stairs, feeling foolish running around in black leather and a mask in the day. He had just started on her right arm; thank God, he hadn’t done anything else. He turned to face me just as my first punch hit his face, knocking him on the ground. I’d expected some great specter of evil: this was just a middle-aged white man with greasy hair and a beer belly. I couldn’t believe it. And then he started laughing, this sick twisted thing that bubbled up from somewhere deep inside of him. I tried to have restraint, I told myself all week I’d have restraint when I found him. But all I could see was him, pleading insanity and escaping from a mental ward over and over again, inflicting this madness on my city over and over again. I looked at his intended victim, shaking on the table, handcuffed down. Her shoulder was bleeding, and she was terrified, and in shock. The decision was easy. I grabbed the saw from where he’d dropped it, broke both of his legs with my boots so he couldn’t try to get away, and went to work. It was a filthy job, one meant to be done in the dark, but it was necessary. It was a surgery. To remove the darkness from the light, to put it back where it belonged again. I left his remains in front of the police station, and the next day, the criminals stayed where they belonged. That night they came back out to play with me again. In the dark. Where we belong.

Labels: Stories

He is the greatest hero, the greatest warrior our time has ever known: He is Bee Man. Contrary to popular opinion, Bee Man is not a giant man-sized bee, or a bee-sized man, or a regular-sized man with the proportionate strength and agility of a bee (which are pretty lacking, anyway). No, Bee Man is a crusader against all that is evil and wrong in the world, and thus a crusader for all that is right, or at least all that is not wrong. Bee Man destroys bees, and other stinging insects ranging from wasps to hornets to yellow jackets. Fueled by the eternal flame of his rage over having lost both parents and all grandparents to bee stings (fortunately extreme bee sting allergies skip every third generation), Bee Man developed a virus that causes bees to go insane and sting each other to death, destroying entire hives in mere minutes after exposure.

Initially he was met with some trepidation, though that eventually gave way to approbation as people realized that their children no longer had nightmares and that malaria, Chlamydia, and dysentery were all actually spread by bee stings. The elderly grew young, puppies never grew old, and rainbows and sunshine filled every park in every city on every day. Now, of course, all of the bees are gone, and humanity has quickly (and without complaint) adapted to a honey-less and bee sting-less world. Pollination of other key fruits and crops is undertaken by the now-spry elderly, who’d been wanting to roll their sleeves up and get their elbows greasy again. Yes, there are no more real battles to fight for Bee Man in this near-perfect, bee-less world, so he fights the battle of publicity, protesting pro-bee propaganda like the recent abomination Bee Movie, and its little abominationettes, those NBC spots with Jerry Seinfeld. But Bee Man grows restless, and wishes to conquer true, great evil again. He may be coming for the spiders soon.

Labels: Stories

I got an email through CSULB's English Department several months ago, requesting book review help at a new website, called Dust Jacket Review. The timing was perfect, as I was leaving the Union, and wasn't really up for reviewing crappy books I didn't want to read for either no pay or peanuts at the Press Telegram; I still wanted to review books, and maybe post some of the (more than 70!) reviews I did for the Union that I could actually stomach reading for a second time.

So I emailed DJR publisher/editor/head-dude Cheyne Rood, and got all set up to start reviewing. Since the beta launch a few months ago, DJR has expanded to be a semi-networking site as well as a reviewing site, and it's provided me a great opportunity to promote this blog, as well. The thing I like most about it, though, is that the site encourages a personal take on books. Unlike Amazon or other anonymous review places, you get to read reviews that are framed within the context of a person's life and preferences; as a result, instead of two hundred opinions from people you don't know or care about, you can read a review and actually get a sense of whether you'd like it or not, regardless of the end opinion of the person reviewing it.

I'd encourage anyone reading this who likes to write about reading to head over to DJR and start an account. Here's a link to all of my book reviews (you may have to register to see them).

I've also gotten to do maybe the biggest interview of my fledgling freelance career for DJR, in the form of an email interview I did with Eisner and National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Alison Bechdel, the author of Fun Home, one of my favorite graphic novels of the last several years. I actually wrote the interview on the morning of my wedding (which is why I couldn't do it by phone), which was kind of exciting and horrifying all at once. Anyway, it's a cool site, and I'll be linking to it under the My Writing tab on the right from now on, so pop over if you're interested!

Labels: Generalness

The sky was a disturbingly monochromatic grey when they set sail on that blustery mid-November day. The ocean was thrown wide before them, the horizon stamped flat and misty by the oppressive steel of the sky. The sailors were lonely bachelors all, and the dock that retreated now behind them offered no weeping wives or wailing mothers––only soggy and rotting wood creaking with the pull of the sea.

They had no charts with them, for their direction was easy to plot: west, away from the rising sun, into the land of shadows. Most were ex-convicts, a few were supposed to be convicts still, having stolen their freedom through tunnels and laundry chutes. As mean and hard a crew as they had rare been seen coasting along the high tide. There was no doubt, not among a one of them, that the world they’d been living on was flat as a pancake, and no doubt further that they were heading for the edge of that world. What they hoped to find they couldn’t tell you if you asked, whether it would be a land of plenty and ease and riches, or a wasteland of violence and hellish monstrosities. Though, truth be told, only the greedy and heathen lawyer who sailed with them prayed for the former each night, before taking his rest beneath the starless sky.

Labels: Stories

There was a girl in the tenement where I used to live who knew every inch of her feet the way you know the back of your hands (metaphorically). The reason she knew her feet so well was that she spent most of her life staring at them, at her plum, pedicured nails, the fine blond hairs on her toes, the way her veins would bulge when she took a step. Truly, they were beautiful feet, if such a thing exists (doesn’t, for my money). But that wasn’t why she looked at them; she looked at them to keep from looking where she couldn’t look: eyes.

She called it “her condition,” and she didn’t seem crazy so I’m inclined to believe it wasn’t total bullshit. She just had a complete phobia about looking people in the eyes. People thought she was shy, which she wasn’t, or arrogant, which she also wasn’t. She was sweet and perfectly pleasant and she knew where she was going as much of any of us do (not much) despite never looking down the road much. It actually became something of an obsession of mine, her condition. I had to know what she was so afraid of, or what she was afraid of being afraid of, and I ruined what was an otherwise lovely friendship with all my questions. And in the end, I didn’t find out anything (which may have been the point). The most she ever told me (and you have to look at it from a certain angle to get the meaning) was that she wasn’t afraid of anything. Except that’s not how she said it. What she said was: “I’m afraid of nothing.”

Labels: Stories

This neighborhood is quiet and peaceful, in a way both tranquil and sterile that’s unique to American suburbs. During work hours the air and the trees and the streets are still, and again at 11pm after the late news is over, porch lights go out and deadbolts are slid to and nothing moves in or out. Except that tonight, a hunter is passing through, in the storm drains at the edge of the development. I couldn’t tell you where the coyote comes from, but I can tell you what he looks like, there in the dark, predator’s eyes reflecting a light we went blind to thousands of years ago. He has been hunter and hunted, he’s been worshipped and feared, and in times of desperation he’s been bargained with, and even eaten.

His rabbit-like ears flick quickly this way and that, picking up everything: your snores, and sighs; these noises go in one ear and out the other. You are inconsequential to him: he is listening for your cats and dogs, his feast. His thick, numb paws make little splashes in the stagnant water, the runoff of washed cars and watered lawns. If he wanted to, he could move so fast you’d never see him. He could be a blur if he chose, a streak there and gone in a blink. But he’s enjoying himself, he’s taking his time, savoring the hunt. He is not hunting for his children, or for a mate. He hunts for himself, and he glides at the edge of your awareness, on the fringes of our nightmares, with an ease that terrifies.

Labels: Stories

Their life is as simple to explain as it is impossible to understand: they both lived double lives. They were at the tops of their fields, he in corporate real estate while she was a corporate accountant. They were ruthless, and cutthroat, and they earned everyone’s respect while they took their money, but gained no one’s trust, or affection. But they didn’t care. While they were at work they went through assistants faster than they went through Blackberrys, they barked orders and they screamed when things didn’t go as planned and they did all this while in the back of their heads they were simply counting the seconds until they could leave for home.

Once there, their voices lowered, their blood pressures dropped, and they would each smile for the first time since kissing goodbye on the porch that morning. Throughout their whole lives they adhered to one simple rule: they never talked about work. Not once. They knew they were doing well, but they created multiple personalities. The second they got in their cars, they ceased to exist. The moment they returned home, they reawakened into their blissful home life. They talked once, briefly, about having a child, but they didn’t want to blur the lines that kept their lives comfortable and happy. Finally, without discussing it, they both retired on the same day, when they were both 55. They had their farewell parties with employees they’d never see again, and they returned home, having sold their firms and overfilled their bank accounts. Then they sold the house, and started buying vacation homes and plane tickets and rail passes. After decades and decades of waiting, finally, finally, there would never be any work to not speak of again.

Labels: Stories

That one, there, in the middle. That Summer is a frigging ballerina. She dives in the water and she spins and spins and spins, and I swear to God it’s the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen. What? No, don’t be stupid, she spins to aerate her fur. Why? Because sea otters have the thickest fur of any animal in the world, that’s why. You didn’t know that? It’s like ten times as thick as the hair on the top of your head, nappy. Yeah, that’s right. Even ten yards under water, their skin is still perfectly dry, that’s how thick their fur is. Almost as thick as your skull, acting like you don’t know about a sea otter’s constant need to keep their fur aerated. Christ!

Labels: Stories

It’s like standing in the middle of a forest, except instead of redwoods, you’re surrounded by thin green blades of grass. They look immovable, but they part with ease as you slither between them. You’re big enough to intimidate and chase prey, but small enough that you know to stay hidden when the thick, fleshy pale columns march across the lawn towards you. You don’t have the spine to raise back to see over the forest. Down there, you can barely see anything. But maybe you see enough.

Labels: Stories

My therapist said when I get overwhelmed I should make a list, of all the reasons I have to be happy. Kind of like an inventory, like at Thanksgiving. And so I’ll write, I’m healthy, my mother loves me, my car still runs, my job is okay, I can pay the rent, I’m not starving, my dog loves me. It isn’t always enough though, and some days I end up with more lists than I have reasons. Some days it’s not enough that nothing is wrong.

Labels: Stories

Outside the cabin, snow is swirling in great huge gusts that rattle the windows and make the wood creak like it’s reaching the end of a weary journey. The whole structure seems to shudder and heave. Inside, nothing is stirring, the lovers nestled safely underneath four blankets. Opposite their bed, that evening’s fire is dying slowly. It had been a rager, the smell of it overwhelming them, the pop and crackle shouting down the havoc of the storm. They had no other lights that evening, the power lines pulled down by the blizzard, and they decided to throw the last of the good wood in the fireplace, to warm and light themselves by. Their faces had been the canvas for the flame, yellowed by its blazing light, reddened by its heady heat. Now they were sleeping, their bodies covered in sweat underneath the blankets, their breaths puffing out like steam as they snores, bare legs intertwined. The fire was still dancing, though it was winding down, just a spark jumping here, an ember falling across a used and ashen branch. It was still glowing, though it cast no more shadows.

Labels: Stories

The boy is pimply awkward, and egg shaped, with a nose slightly too big for his face and hair slightly too unkempt to be done that way on purpose. The girl is slender with youthful grace, and long wavy brown hair. They’re both in high school, in uniform, standing on the corner together, talking and laughing. The boy’s thoughts are transparent: he can’t believe that this girl is hanging out with him, has just gotten a smoothie with him. She is making his day, his week, his junior year of high school. He would do anything for her, here as their walk has reached just beyond its halfway point, as they begin to head back to school where nobody knows him and nobody cares that nobody knows him. This will not end in a car’s back seat, or the quiet groping embrace of a basement couch; this is pretty much the end of the road for the two of them.

But maybe not. I mean, who knows, right? Maybe they’ll fall in love and go to the same college and never part, and every day he’ll wake up and feel like the luckiest pimpled, awkward boy in the world, and he’ll worship her and treat her well, and he’ll be kind and grateful. He’s too scared right now to think that far ahead, though, right now all he can think to do is make her think he’s funny, because he’s not brilliant, but he’s bright enough to know that’s his shot. He knows he’s batting out of his league here, so far out of his league he doesn’t even recognize the batting cages, but he doesn’t care, because she’s laughing, and laughing. And, laughing, she knows he’s hitting out of his league too, of course she does. But she doesn’t care right now, because the wind is just right and the sun is just warm enough, and he is making her laugh, and laugh. Because all he wants to do to her is make her laugh.

Labels: Stories

With apologies to Nick Hornby and Erin Hickey, here are some quick hits on the best books I've read over the last month; tomorrow or Friday I'll do a post with a link to a new book review web site I've been doing some work for. It's been fun to get back into the swing of reviewing, as I'd kind of fallen off.

John Tayman's The Colony



I picked this book up in Hawaii when we were on our honeymoon, because Shar and I both felt we should each read something about Hawaii, even if it wasn't exactly chipper. This chronicle of the history of the leper colony at Molokai was certainly a downer, but it's an incredible book, with one of my favorite covers ever. Tayman weaves together several centuries worth of information and characters into what ends up being a surprisingly cohesive, devastating, and beautiful narrative. Highly recommended to anyone who's interested in nonfiction or the sordid details of American history.

The Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!)


I was actually hoping this would be funnier...it still made me laugh, since it's Colbert, but it just reads like a lengthy monologue from the show, without really adding much new material or new depth to Colbert's fictional persona. Not nearly on the level of The Daily Show's America the Book, but it's still worth buying this to elevate Colbert over fucking Joel Osteen on the bestseller list. Also, it comes with Colbert Literary Excellence stickers (like the one on the cover above) so you can mark all your Joyce and Kerouac with his seal of approval. Awesome.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Treasury


The Scary Stories trilogy were my favorite books for a few years as a kid, so when I saw a hardcover collection of all three for ten bucks at Borders, I snatched it up with no hesitation, especially since Shar's employee discount still applies to bargain books. The writing is of course less scary than I remember it being (I wish Alvin Schwartz would compromise a little on his monastic vow to never use contractions), but it was a cool trip down Haunted Memory Lane to read these in the week before Halloween.

Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts


God damn! Every now and then I read a book that gets me all excited to be alive with functioning eyeballs, and I get so excited to tell people about it that I write a blog post about four books I read just so I have an excuse to talk to people about this one book without looking like a total fanboy and then I get all out of breath and forget to use punctuation. Ahem. This is a collection of horror short stories, that came out a week before Halloween, thus guaranteeing I'd buy it, particularly because it's by Joe Hill. Hill is Stephen King's son, but refused to let this fact be known to anyone (including his agent) until after he was a bestseller. What a champ. If you miss the way Stephen King used to write, his son has picked up where he left off, with slightly more "literary" genre stories, some of which actually made me want to sleep with the lights on. Really a great book of stories; I'm excited to read Hill's debut novel, Heart Shaped Box when it comes out in paperback.

Yay Books!
I mean, seriously, aren't they great? I'm in the middle of Bill Cosby's new book, Come On People, and then I'll be on to more Cormac McCarthy (I just read No Country for Old Men which I liked and which I'll write more about after I see the movie) and the new Onion book, which is a mock atlas. Fun!

Labels: Generalness

My bags are packed; the kids are in bed; their mom is walking the dog. It’s time to leave. My wife isn’t really walking the dog, she’s just waiting for me to finish packing so I can leave without her talking to me. She’s throwing me out, even though this is my house. To be fair, though, it’s not really her fault: this is what I wanted. I yelled at her and I made her miserable until she couldn’t take it anymore, and then she told me to get out. I think she knows how she was used, but what is she going to do? Easier to take the blame for a divorce than to live with me, I’ve made sure of that.

Holding the balustrade in the darkened living room, I gaze up the stairs. There is nothing but darkness up there. And my kids. I’ll miss them, I suppose, especially on holidays. They won’t know me, but I’ll be there during their life, a ghost watching their graduations from the back, a specter at their weddings. The low lights at the front door give a sickly reflection off the marble floor, and for a moment I’m gripped with an overwhelming fear of what’s about to happen. Maybe I should just eat shit and crow and make things right, and nestle back in here for the rest of my life. I hold my breath until the feeling subsides; it is nothing to be afraid of. I’ve always been good at leaving things behind. Of course this isn’t the first time. I’ve done this dance millions of times, with millions more to go before I rest.

Labels: Stories

In college, I co-hosted a sports podcast with some good budbuds of mine; most of us have moved on and graduated, by J.J. Fiddler, Ryan ZumMallen and I have started up a new edition of Sports Night for the LB Post, and I think it's gone very well so far. We try to do a good job balancing between talking about local sports to give us that edge, while still covering the national topics you have to talk about as a sports show. The fourth episode was just posted today, with a quick breakdown of our thoughts on Pats/Colts, and extensive coverage from JJ and I about last week's killer Poly/Compton game (seriously, we don't usually talk about one issue that much).

We're having a great time with it, and if you'd like to take a listen, it's pretty easy. If you're interested in the Post you can go to LBPost.com and find it there, but we also have a homepage for the show at http://sportsnight.podomatic.com. What I'd recommend, though, if you're interested in the show, would be going to the homepage, and then scrolling down to the bottom; on the right column, there will be a link you can click on that will subscribe you to the show in iTunes, so you can download it automatically. We're pretty proud of it, and we'd love to hear your feedback, here, on the Sports Night show, or at the Post. Sweet!

Labels: Generalness

I can see why you would think that title is symbolic, or the start of some extended metaphor. “Oh look, another 9 to 5er with a mortgage and all the security money can buy whining about his life, just another mole in his hole.” Maybe you were vaguely impressed that an office clerical worker made a Dostoevsky reference, and maybe you know enough about that book that you think I’m trying to compare my situation to that of the Russian’s. Well, you’re wrong; I actually work underground, about fifteen feet down, in a fluorescent shoebox with no windows and only one door out. Our manager locks it on his way in.

They told us our office was moving underground for safety reasons, but it doesn’t take much intelligence to figure out that it was just to lower the lease on the company, to make up for the sag in profit growth. Of course, if it did take intelligence, I could still have figured it out; this wasn’t what I planned to do with my life. No, I was going to write movies, got my Master’s in English and a Bachelor’s in Film. I could tell you, for instance, that Notes From Underground, my favorite Dostoevsky, is often mistranslated to Notes From the Underground, a mistake that both changes the meaning of the entire book and illustrates the nuances and complexities of translating a work of fiction. I could tell you that I used to care about that enough that it would actually make me angry to see a copy with the wrong title. Now, nothing makes me angry, except when I think about running up the stairs and into the sunlight, then look at the door to find it locked.

Labels: Stories

So I toyed with the idea of not writing a story today to sympathize with the WGA, but ultimately it would have just been a copout, because the truth of things is that I’m really tired and lazy. Instead I figured I’d go picket in Burbank with the WGA, and write a creative nonfiction piece supporting the writers, and reporting on what life was like in the trenches. There were drums, and songs, and pimples everywhere, as dozens of my pale brethren reddened under the harsh Southern Californian sun. Thankfully, there was plenty of food, but I was shocked to learn the extent of the strike: in addition to television shows and movies, many of these brave men and women have vowed to stop updating their Myspace and Facebook statuses.

The signs involved no creativity whatsoever, with all of them simply reading WGA Strike! Seriously, guys? No puns? No banter? Not even a quip? And even the songs they sang had as little effort put into them as possible, with slogans like “Fat and rude, fat and rude, we don’t like your attitude.” Hard to believe these were the same scribes who brought us Cavemen. While I support the strikers philosophically, I don’t think I could stand another day with them, so I expect I’ll get back to more “fictional” endeavors shortly.

Labels: Stories

Man and beast, trapped on the ground, want to spread their wings and soar through the clouds. Birds flying high above look down on a cheetah, and want to be able to rush across land with that confidence and strength, not blown by gale and bluster. The cheetahs and panthers war on, hard sinew and muscle pulsing and pushing them faster and faster in pursuit of their prey. They turn an envious eye to the trees they blow by, not moving. Not needing to.

Labels: Stories

Sixty years from now, the government will determine that depression is contagious as well as hereditary, and in the name of the pursuit of happiness, crying, moping, sighing wistfully, and all other forms of sad-sackery will be outlawed, punishable by exile to a small Hawaiian island colony known as Niihau, the forbidden isle.

***

The seventh grader in the center of the class is shaking, just enough to disturb his notes, which ruffle softly against each other. When the first tear drop hits the desk’s fiberglass top, it makes a small plopping sound. Instantaneously, the other children explode in a frenzy of activity, shoving their desks away from their now-sobbing classmate. By the time their teacher hits the alarm button a few seconds later, the desks are aligned in a neat row against the outer walls of the classroom, each with a student squatting bird-like atop it, one hand holding onto the desk for balance while the other covers their mouth and nose. Moments later, two men in biohazard suits rush in, each grabbing the crying boy under and armpit and lifting him roughly from his seat, banging the back of his knees on the seat back. The boy looks desperately at his teacher, and begins to scream, a wet, sucking sound punctuated by racking, gasping sobs. His teacher, frozen behind his desk, has forgotten to cover his face with his hands, which grip the sides of his desk so hard they nearly splinter the wood. The boy tries to call out to him, but can’t manage to form legible syllables before he’s shoved out the door of his English class, never to return. His teacher watches as the door closes, slowly, with a soft click. He is biting the inside of his bottom lip, so his students can’t see. He is trying to keep from breaking.

Labels: Stories

Diary- The Halloween Parade was very fun and some of my friends got so dressed up I couldn’t tell who they were! Some were heroes and ninjas and pirates and others were just regular and in makeup, but my teacher said my dinosaur costume was the best of all! Other people went as dinos but I was an ankylosaurus, which is me and my daddy’s favorites, and so I was an original because I wasn’t a T. Rex or a raptor like the other ones. We walked a long line around the whole schoolyard, and all the parents clapped, then I went home and watched Halloween cartoons until it was time to trick-or-treat. I filled up my whole pillowcase!

Now Halloween is over, and my mommy packed up the webs, and the doormat, and all the scary witches in the windows. Halloween is in the garage now. But Thanksgiving came out to replace it, and we have a turkey in the window and a pilgrim on the door, all old and worn looking. Thanksgiving is not as good as Halloween, but I will get to see my Grampa and Gramma, who I love, so I’m excited. Okay, diary, I have to go rake the leaves, I’ll talk to you soon!

Labels: Halloween, Stories

We were driving in her station wagon, and I was only seven or so at the time. I have a terrible memory for ages: everything seemed to happen when I was seven, by my memory. We were driving home from school, and the radio was on low, and the music coming through it, mixed with the static, sounded like the buzzing of bees. I had a headache. I used to get a lot of headaches when I was a kid, some of them really bad, migraines that made me feel I’d been cleaved in two, my head leaking pain like a split coconut. On the long stretch of road next to the Country Club, a white van pulled up next to us and kept pace. I saw a man staring at us out of the corner of my eye. I started to turn to look, but for the first time in my life, my mother slapped me on the side of the head to keep me from seeing him.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t look at that man.”

I was so stunned I had no choice but to obey her. I tried to get her to tell me why, but she refused. I didn’t think about that moment for probably another decade; then it resurfaced the way old memories do sometimes, not the really bad ones but the unpleasant ones, that will just bubble up in the middle of an Anthropology test. Every now and then, walking to class listening to music, lying in bed trying to sleep, I’ll wonder why I wasn’t allowed to look. Was the man making an obscene gesture? Was he waving a syringe or a used condom in our direction? Was he a former conquest of my mother’s, or she a conquest of his? Was it just that his eyes were dead, hollowed out by drugs or sin or murder. What? What was it that she didn’t want me to see? What was in that man’s eyes? Or what wasn’t?

Labels: Stories