Tell the Story

Why Banana Slugs Don't Live in the Desert

2008-07-10T12:25:00.001-07:00

This slimy yellow bastard almost succumbed to his death on our cactus, and the spider was happy to hop on his back for a little snack, I guess. Notice how the banana slug's head is sticking out? Normally, they keep those heads inside their yellow slimecoats.

Banana slugs are like uncircumcised penises.

2008-06-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

remember the faces
write the names
write the names
remember the faces
recall the times and places
remember what drew you to them
remember what drew them to you
a sly smile
a sparkle in the eye
tension in the air
hot breath and sweat
remember the faces
write the names
go back to the past
remember each one
the hot tongue
the hungry body
count each one
remember each time
relive the past
to control the future

2006-09-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

The days slip by
running into one another
night dreams fading into
morning coffee
morning train
walk
work work work
evening train
dinner
sleep
dream
puncuated by brief moments
of clarity
love and laughter
disgust and delight
delineated by the change in the season
rememberances of times gone by
the realization of the richness of life
and the importance of strangers

Frank and His Penis

2006-06-10T16:27:00.000-07:00

The fog hung low, blanketing buildings and hiding streetlights. Frank laid in bed staring out the window at a tree that brushed against the windowpane in the wind. He was prone to fits of shivering and terrible loneliness, which he sometimes quelled with a large prime rib.
This morning promised nothing for him. He could stay in bed all day and no one would be the wiser or even care. The primal part of his brain urged him to stroke himself, but his higher self was as disinterested as his penis so he just laid there thinking about it. He tried thinking of people he'd known, been interested in, things that sexually excited him and still there was no reaction. He felt, and may as well have been, dead.
Curled at his feet was his ancient cat. Frank could no longer remember when he'd acquired the cat or how old the cat was. Its fur stuck up in patches from its old withering body and the cat had moved into a part of its old age that included unattractive drooling and more sleep than seemed natural. Frank figured he would wake up one day and find the cat dead, cold and still curled up at his feet. He had not yet decided what he would do with the corpse. He'd never had pets before and had no idea how to deal with their deaths. Frank had come home one day and found the cat sleeping on his couch, having come in through the kitchen window. He had given the cat some tuna and the cat had never left. Frank never named the cat, he just referred to it as 'cat', 'hey', 'pussy', and 'c'mere'. The cat didn't seem to mind not having a name and seemed to share Frank's outlook on life.
Frank watched as the fog began to thin, pulling its tendrils out of the trees and clearing from the streetlights. If he laid there long enough he would see the fog reveal what could be called a cloudy sky. Then he would hear his neighbors begin to awaken and the sound of vehicles coming to life, their tires licking the pavement. He knew he had to get up. If he didn't, he would stay in bed all day drifting in and out of sleep and might stay there through the next day. His muscles would rebel, cramping up and giving him knots but the discomfort wouldn't move him.
He pulled the blanket back and stared at his penis. His penis stared back at him, winking, disappointed but accepting of its fate. He contracted his muscles to make his penis move, offering it some sort of entertainment. It moved its eye away from him and stared at the wall and Frank sighed. He should at least have company and respect from his penis.
Gathering momentum and forcing motivation out of the depths, Frank swung his feet out of bed and shivered when they touched the cold floor. Feeling a shivering attack come on, he stood and then ran into the bathroom where he wrapped himself in a large towel and turned the hot water on in the bath. As he waited for it to warm, he hopped from foot to foot. When the water was hot and he'd turned on the shower, Frank climbed in and urinated down the drain. At least his penis still served some function.
While the water poured over his head and body, Frank formulated his day. Coffee, make breakfast, watch the news with more coffee, do laundry, go to the book and record stores, shop for dinner, watch a movie, go to bed. He reviewed the plan until he had it memorized and it was a mantra: coffee breakfast news laundry book record dinner movie bed. The mantra was hollow and lifeless, and Frank knew this plan was only to get him through the day. A pointless routine to pass the time, offering nothing to others and only fulfilling basic needs for him. His choice was pointlesss routine or a slow and horrifying spiral into self-inflicted death.
His inertia, as he referred to it, had caused him to eliminate all relationships from his life. Rather than life-affirming experiences that most people experienced, Frank had experienced the opposite. Over a ten year period, Frank had researched different religions, paths, dogmas, faiths and philosophies and came to the conclusion that life was all for naught. Life remained purposeless, and the only point of faith was to impose purpose where there was none. Even from a biological point of view, where death begets life, Frank found nothing. For him, there were no epiphanies, only continued disappointment. He didn't share his discoveries with his wife or family, instead he disengaged himself from them. He saw their hurt and felt nothing. Everything seemed contrived.
He left them on the east coast and headed west to the fog, as far from family and friends as possible. He didn't open a bank account, credit cards, or get phone service to his home. He found a place to live and got a cell phone so he could get a job, which he did. He was a bank teller, which reaffirmed his faith in nothing. Frank was not a nihilist, he had just lost the point of everything. Although he had no sense of purpose he was not capable of suicide. His survival instinct was too strong, keeping him alive despite his lack of interest in life. He went through the days finding ways to pass time until his natural death came. He entertained suicidal thoughts, but knew he could never make good on any of them.
Frank was on his third year of this life and growing tired of it. Very tired of it. His subconcious had begun working on him, offering up dreams with meaning and emotion, forcing him to feel. The dreams were of his childhood, swimming and the smell of freshly cut grass, playing and laughing and running. Frank never remembered the dreams and this was how his subconcious preferred it. His subconcious had plans for him and today they would come to fruition, after months of careful planning.
Coffee and breakfast were uneventful, and Frank headed for the bookstore. The weather was cold, so Frank was swaddled in a warm jacket and scarf. He began to notice the contrast of the warmth and cold, the luscious feeling of being warm in spite of the cold weather. When he turned into the bookstore, the warmth of it caressed his face and hands, causing goosebumps and a small sigh from Frank. The warmth felt sensuous, and Frank had not experienced that sensation in a long time. His penis moved slightly with the small rush of blood, and Frank looked down at his crotch in surprise. Embarassed, he walked quickly through the store and stood in front of the philosophy section. He didn't stop there because he was looking for anything, rather because no one else was there to stare at his crotch.
He scanned the shelves with skeptical curiousity. His mind said he'd been here before and why bother while his second mind told him to look. He looked until his eyes fell on a book titled "The Purpose of Purposelessness". The title was ridiculous, and the cover was an abstract painting of what might have been a black hole. It showed the depths of the black with subtle contrast. Without reading the jacket, Frank picked up the book, bought it, and went home throwing his plan to the wind, skipping the record store and shopping. He brought the book to his apartment and set it in the middle of his coffee table. He stared at it for a while, and remembered the sensation he'd had in the bookstore, the sensuality of the temperature change. His penis began to stiffen and he pulled it out of his pants and stroked it. He stared at the book while he masturbated, holding tight to the memory, sucking all the life out of it and sprinkling it with sexual imagery until he came, sweating and almost screaming with the release. He hadn't masturbated in two years.
He laughed until he started crying and pulled his pants off. His penis was staring at the ground, but it seemed to be basking in the afterglow. Frank spent the rest of the day masturbating as often as possible, finally ordered a pizza and went to bed. He awoke the next morning with an erection, which he immediately took advantage of.
He never read "The Purpose of Purposelessness". He left it on his table and showed it to all the sexual partners that he brought home - men and women - and told them that it had saved his life. When they asked how, he just shrugged and reminded them why they were there together - what their purpose was in that moment.
MAH 6/10/06

The Garage Sale, cont'd

2006-04-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

George's reddening face and dilated pupils had less to do with Amanda and more to do with the sweater he was still holding. Unless he was mistaken, he was holding the very same sweater his father had worn when he'd walked out on the family 27 years ago. His father's name was still sewn into the clothes label, a weird habit his mother had developed when she'd had to start using the public laundromat.
George had never imagined that his father had stayed in town. How was that possible? George would have run in to him sooner or later.
He was watching Amanda walk away while he thought of all this, and had briefly forgotten that she had just broken up with him using the garage sale as a metaphor or something. He didn't feel like chasing after her, shouting out her name and begging her to stop. He didn't think she was actually worth the effort or the dramatics. She was cute, funny, sweet, good in bed, but man, was she a bitch! No sense of live and let live.
He looked at the middle-aged woman that appeared to be in charge of the garage sale. She was reclining in a lawn chair, peering at everyone rifling through her things. She gave him the eyeball and nodded towards him.
"Excuse me, miss." George waved the sweater at her as he approached. "Did you know this guy?" He pulled the lapel out and handed her the sweater so she could read it.
She squinted at it and nodded. "Sure. That was my stepdad."
"Oh." George felt the sidewalk swimming under him, the sky wheeling around overhead like a lazy Susan. "Oh, um. Oh."
The lady peered up at him suspiciously. "You a'right, sir? Do you need to sit down?" Her voice had the same bitchy tone as Amanda's, which snapped him back to a steadier stance.
"Oh, yeah. No. No, I don't need to sit down. I just, uh, it's just that....well, um....I think this is my dad's sweater. See, he left when I was eight or so, and I'm sure he was wearing this sweater and my mom sewed our names into all our clothing labels after Dad....lost his job and we had to sell the washer/dryer and Mom had to use the laundromat."
The lady stared at him with her mouth open.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I guess that's a bit abrupt. My girlfriend just left me, right here at your garage sale, and then I find this sweater." A sheen of desperate perspiration was beginning to show around George's hairline. "I always thought he'd moved out-of-state. Far away. We never heard from him again. He was a bastard." George laughed a little, rubbing his finger over the name on the label. "A real fucking bastard. Was he nice to you?"
The lady shook her head. "I'm sorry, what's your name? If we're going to be kind of related, then I should know your name. I'm Sheila." Sheila held her hand out and George noticed that it trembled a little.
"Sheila, I'm George. George Jr. really, but after he left there was no need for that junior business."
"I'm not quite sure what to say, George. This is a garage sale. Did you want the sweater?" Sheila was looking around, watching everyone again.
"Yeah, I'll take the sweater. How much for it?"
"On the house, of course. I can't make you pay for the old man's sweater. I think there are some other clothes of his in that box if you want them."
"No. No." George stared at Sheila, wondering if he should ask. "So, where is he?"
Tears welled up in Sheila's eyes, she shook her head and grabbed George's hand. "He's gone, George. He passed away last year."

Cherry Tree

2006-04-06T16:52:00.000-07:00

"You can't do that, Ma. Stop it." Jim watched with frustration brewing in his pretty blue eyes while his mother dropped a peeled potato into her blender. "Ma, it's a blender, not a food processor!"
Her eyes, small and piercing, fixed on Jim's mouth.
"What's the difference, John?"
"Jim, I'm Jim!"
She nodded, and her gaze strayed to the kitchen window. The window framed a cherry tree, full with blossoms whose petals fell to the ground like snow. Wanda's hand held on to the blender while she remembered a day that she and Kenneth had walked through Golden Gate Park when all the cherry trees were in blossom. The day had been unseasonably warm and sunny, so they'd both called in sick to work, to bask in the illicit joy of a stolen day together. They both loved the cherry trees, and decided to plant one in their yard....
"Ma!" Jim's irritated voice snapped her out of her reverie and Wanda blinked at him.
"What?"
"Ma, you can't do anything with that potato in there." Jim pointed at the blender with the naked potato.
"Oh. I, um...did I put that in there? I was remembering a nice walk with your father in the park. God, we loved it there."
"I know, Ma, I know. You want me to cut up that potato for you?" He pointed at the potato again.
"I guess so. I'm not sure what I was going to do with it." Wanda sighed. She kept starting things and forgetting why, forgetting where they were supposed to finish. She hadn't told the doctor, or Jim, because she kept forgetting that, too.
"Okay, Ma. Do you want me to make you some dinner?"
"I don't know, Jim. What time is it?"
Jim made a show of looking at his watch.
"It's dinner time, Ma. I'll cook you something. Look, I'm going to pick you up and take you to the doctor tomorrow."
"All right. What for?"
"What for, Ma? You call me John all the time, and you keep forgetting things. I don't even know who John is. I think something's wrong with your memory."'
"John? I grew up with a boy named John. Lived just down the block, and we used to walk to school together a lot. He was a good, smart boy. You reminded me of him when you were young."
"Okay, well, when I was young, you didn't call me John, you called me Jim. So we're going to go to the doctor tomorrow."
Wanda nodded and stared at the cherry tree again. She wanted to see the petals blanketing the ground, the contrast of the soft pink against the rich green of the grass. She walked to the sliding glass door, opened it, and stood near the tree staring at the petals in the grass. The tree brought so many memories back, seemed to trigger memory in ways that photos couldn't. Sometimes she had to stare at a photo for fifteen or twenty minutes before it made sense.
Jim watched her while he diced the potato and threw it in a pot on the stove. He was the only child, and they were the only two left in their family. Everyone else was dead, and he hadn't wanted to face the fact that she might be on her way out. She seemed to be getting loopier, though, more dangerous to herself. He hoped the doctor would have a pill she could take, something to help her get it together.
Wanda had forgotten Jim, forgotten her pending dinner and doctor's appointment. She was at Playland by the Beach with Kenneth, posing while a man took their picture for them. The wind played in her hair, and Kenneth's arm was warm around her waist. Before the picture was snapped, she turned and looked into Kenneth's eyes. They were warm and blue, deep and open to her. His head just blocked the sun, and she felt the moment snap into her own picture while she basked in his gaze. They smiled at each other and turned to face the camera. The picture itself had disappeared years ago, somewhere in one of their moves.
A petal floated into her vision, and she eased back into reality. Jim watched as she lifted her head and looked around, orienting herself. She turned and looked at Jim, her eyes meeting his with no recognition, and no smile.

The Garage Sale

2006-04-04T16:55:00.000-07:00

She stared at George, trying to will him to look less stupid. She wanted him to close his mouth, make his double-chin disappear and breath through his nose. He didn't flinch under her gaze, didn't bend to her will. His mouth remained open, the inner edges of his lips moist, his wet teeth shining and his tongue visible, pressed against the backs of his lower teeth. Amanda shook her head, almost imperceptibly, because she wanted to express her disgust and disappointment without being caught in the act. She had no way, no words to tell George that he looked like an old, mentally disabled bicycle messenger.
They were sitting in a cafe a few blocks from their apartment. They had been reading the newspaper, different sections for each of them, when Amanda had looked up and realized George had becomed glazed like a donut. He was staring out the window, watching people as they encountered a garage sale across the street. Finally, his mouth closed and he looked at her. She looked out the window, next to his face, so she could pretend she hadn't been staring at him, sending him signals he hadn't received.
"People love garage sales, man. It's amazing." Another of George's keen observations.
"Yep, they do." Amanda agreed and looked back to the paper. What else could she say?
"Did you ever drive around to different garage sales in the city?"
"No, George. Did you?"
"No."
"Do you want to?"
George seemed to think about it, staring across the street. "I don't know. Do we need anything?"
"I don't think so, honey."
"Oh." He sounded disappointed.
"But...I'm not sure that's the point of garage sales. I think the point is to find things you want. Not things you necessarily need."
George nodded, taking this in. He had a crumb in his bangs, and Amanda noticed a coffee stain in the corner of his mouth. The change was beginning, just a few months into their relationship. She was starting to notice things, to find small things to view as unattractive. The disdain was beginning.
"Things you want, huh? Like records and shit?"
"Yeah, or antiques. You know people love to collect, horde, have. Books."
"I think I'd like to go check that garage sale out."
"Okay. I'll catch up with you."
George got up and walked out of the cafe. Amanda watched him, searching for the signs of what she had once found attractive. There were none. He was more a ball of familiarity than anything else. He was devoid of sexuality. The familiarity made her want to stay, the lack of sexuality made her want to leave. As she watched, she composed a mental list of the bad: boring, too familiar, no longer sexy, small habits annoying, doesn't brush teeth at night, dresses poorly....on and on it went. Then a list of the good: familiar and kind. She could think of no other good qualities.
Amanda got up and went over to the garage sale, where George was going through a pile of clothes.
"Find anything, George?"
"Oh, I don't know. I saw a pretty cool coffee mug over there." Amanda rolled her eyes.
"What about you? Anything you want here?"
Amanda stared at George, watching him pull items of clothing out, looking at them, putting them back.
"George? George." He looked up at her. "George, there's nothing that I want here. Nothing. In this vicinity that you and I are in, there's nothing that I want." George's pupils expanded, his lips parted slightly. "I think I'm going to go back to the apartment and pack my things." His face fell and his mouth closed, cheeks reddening. "I'll spend the night at Cyn's." George nodded, his throat was tight. He didn't know what to say, so he just stared at her. "All right then, George. I'll see you." Amanda gave him a small wave and walked off. He stood at the garage sale, holding a tatty wool sweater and watching her walk away.