#fiction - On Pissing at the Girls Room

I was standing in line at the Druid, waiting for my turn in the men's room.

I wandered in thought.

Thinking about an Irish musician who said Paris is where he will be for St Patrick's day "Because that is where the money is."

It was taking the first gentleman extra long, so as I thought out things that had to do with the Irishman's proclamation, I drifted toward the door marked "Women"

I opened the door and moved to step in. But an arm extended in front of me. A women started talking.

"You cant go in there, its the ladies room."

I responded,

"I'd be rich if I had a dollar every-time a woman came out of the men's room."

"That's different," she said dismissively.

"Why? It may be true that I piss straighter than most women."

She waved her hand and responded, 

"I could piss any way I want as long as the seat is up and no one would notice."

I looked at the man standing next to this woman, he smiled. I looked back at her,

"That's great, but I'm still going in there."

She asked

"Do you like this place, yes or no?"

"Why?"

"Yes or no?"

"I don't have time for this."

"Because I like it, I live here. It's my favorite place.  And if you go in there, you'll violate them on the sanitary code."

"Sanitary code? What are you, Health Department?"

"Yes, I am."

"Here in Cambridge?"

"No, Boston."

"What's your name?"

"Kelly."

I took out and passed her my business card.

"Kelly, my name is Robert. I've been in ten thousand Boston apartments. You are doing a horrible job."

"Well that's residential. I'm commercial."

"Oh really. You know one time I made my entire class raise their hand without saying a word by just raising my hand and leaving it up."

She looked at the fella she was with and said

"You know, one time, in band camp--"

I cut her off---

"It has nothing to do with band camp. It has to do with black mold in bathrooms, bed bugs in the bedrooms, vegetation growing on the walls in the living room, and 16 people living in a 1 bedroom apartment. Among other things."

"But that's residential, I'm--"

"Set a proper example in one segment of the market, it affects the other segment. Do that. Now excuse me."

I stepped toward the woman 's bathroom again , and again Kelly's arm went up to block me. She said

"If you go in there, you will violate the Druid."

I looked at her arm then into her eyes. I pointed at the sign "Women."

"You see this sign? Well 'A Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose.' And that comes from Gertrude Stein, the most femi-nazi of all y'all. So, I'm cool. Good night."

Her arm dropped. I brushed past her, stepped into the Women's room, closed the door. I proceeded to piss straight into the bowl. My piss stream landed in the very center of the water and stayed on target. My piss never touched porcelain, only Cambridge City Water. I used a wad of toilet paper to flush the toilet and the same wad to open the door. I did not wash my hands because they only touched my clean dick.

Kelley was gone when I came out. The man she was with was still there. He shrugged. I finished my drink, paid my tab, walked home, ate peanut butter and fell asleep watching True Detective.

#fiction - when the prospect suspects you

i am a salesman. i am what i say i am.

now, we're going to go into that house right there and i'm going to attempt to sell it to you. we're going to go up there and i'm going to use all the pyschological weapons in my arsenal to sell that house to you, i'm going to empty the cartridge on your mind, i'm going to dose you high, high, high.

all sorts of things can happen when i do this. you can like it, you can REALLY like it, or you can not like it, maybe even REALLY not like it. its up to the mind. and that's all that's really going to happen in there.

now, depending on the experience some have, you can find and read an excited exultant positive review or furious and scathing negative one. and that's what you did. you found and read a negative review from a mind that was unsatisfied by the magic spells his salesman used upon him. he hired a magician, on the word of a prayer, hoped for a sorcerer and never saw the wizard---and so because he can't except his own failure in the venture, he broke the code of his prayer and murdered his magician in the full light of your laptop or iphone.

so you read this review-thing and are affected by it. and want to carry a chip on your shoulder. and with every passive aggressive opportunity you have in our conversations, you want to unload that chip on my shoulders. like, your learned cynicism is my cross to bear. because think about it now, if it wasn't merely cynicism---if there was validity in the claim of those reviews, it would have to be true that i really am a liar or in some way incapable of working the magic spell on your mind, using nothing but the truth. but now you see, its only the absolute truth that i use on you. its funny right?

can you think about it? can you show me a smile? good. now, do you want that negative review to interfere anymore than it already has with our positive experience, with our dream about to become true? no, of course not. alright, cigarette break over!

now you're ready to see your new home.

#Fiction -- in that nowhere place, NAS

i'll go on and take it happily from you. and by you and what you say, it must be true. go on and let it be thus. to myself and others---all that NAS happens to say is truth. i'm in that nowhere place right now, NAS---means nothing that i know i'm here. the bastards are here with me. fire-heat and noise of no origin steps forward with claim---could not be yet they do.

and not a thing contemplated in passing nor with a fully developed conscious shield conscience between you(me) and it. like cavemen who think about stars while looking at them, see the melting string cheese of it all. always beaming the connection never broken---those damn stars even after supernova appearing, all of them the same, to be here on this earth just as well as they are where they are and just as that! has always been the truth.

and you go out walking afterward and you see the eyes and the knowledge from those eyes, thirsty to drink from your cup---here is the quantum singularity meeting ground for trans-dimensional travelers making best use of the belt-way anima built long ago for them, populating the bodies with diverse mind. sometimes multiple-hugging in and overlapping and cacophonating withing a single voice box. sometimes sword fighting play fighting shadow playing verbal sparring jazz riffing between multiple bodies. always anything absolutely you can think of, it can be and does---this being in every way you can think of whether you know you are thinking it or not.

i thought i was about to sleep or was sleeping. i thought i was exhausted. i had that feeling i had been talking on the phone a long time, but a long time ago, with someone dear to me and that i or she or both fell asleep and the phone was still to my ear and the connection was still alive and that with waking i felt an urge to check to see if she was still there, awake and waiting for me to respond to her latest breath.

and i said "what?"

and i heard "so."

and i had to be silent and weather an ice cold rush in my stomach and up around my temples when i realized i was not holding a phone and there was no phone. but i had heard a voice. and i was alone. and then my legs kicked without me asking them to kick.

and her voice said "boom."

and my breathing got thick, NAS. and i'm not a rookie at this and i'm just writing you now. and already i feel better. well, i know i shouldn't because out there they are waiting. but i am going for a cigarette. if i must, i will see you on the otherside of whatever is opposite the otherside. here's to heavy eyelids in the middle of nowhere.

i'll split a vial of codeine with you. seventeen pots of the blackest coffee. well those will be for me. all for you will be 144 tea bags of chosen by you assortment. two cartons of cigarettes. 8 cases of beer. seven bottles of wine. thirteen loaves of air tight stowed french baguette. sharp white cheddars. and gruyeres. and asiagos. two bottles of extra virgin olive oil. one bottle of peppercorns with a built in grinder. two boxes of clementines, about 84 clementines in all. 48 individual pita shells. two gallons of spiced humus. one pint of your homemade hot sauce. 36 whole wheat hamburger buns matched to 36 veggie burger patties. 3 gallons pink grapefruit juice. 6 liters seltzer water. 20 fluid ounces or more of the worst tasting whiskey money or good looks can buy.

six blankets each. two thick pillows. two ipods with 18,000 songs and 25 lithium battery reserves matching a bose sound dock. and though not necessary, 1 ounce of green dragon dust, a 1/2 ounce of this variety a 1/2 ounce of that. and 2 tubs of american spirit free leaf with 400 rolling papers, and the night sky, and 1/4 cord of season dry wood. and three keys of harmonicas, a, b-sharp, d.

and the stage i we shall split.  take turns with the spirits who enter and redefine us awhile while we howl and yield to impulse and dance. to this interpretive dance, and that interpretation, and this extemporaneous story, of that original being or of being without origin. and to bring each other back one will hold the other, draw heart to heart, and retrain the other mind to the soulness of its mate.

#fiction - like some fishermen

i heard this morning someone say,

"i don't want a lesson, i just want to complain."

i thought then immediately of pirates boarding a ship. angry amped-up pirates coming aboard an intensely valuable ship. but not to seize its plunder, or capture the vessel as a prize and, after executing its captain and commandeering its crew, sail it off to the secret hideaway paradise island they call home where it would be refitted to possibly become a flagship that could sail hard terror across the waves and guarantee forever hegemony over every sea.

that's not what these dream pirates wanted to do.

they wanted only to bore a very large hole at the dead center bottom of its hull and stand there adding their own weight to its then fast sinking. i can't seem to know, neither by concentrating hard upon it nor by wandering with every intoxication, exactly what motivates these pirates. but they have seized a hold of me metaphorically.

in flesh, i just ignore the person who says a thing like that, maybe write about it afterward, see if i can get a laugh in and then carry on to the next day like some fishermen do. that there--is just a storm my boat does not have to be apart of.

#fiction - A Fight by a Tree

There were two kids shouting. I was on the sidewalk walking away from Inman Square toward the wine dealer. There were two kids shouting by a tree in my foresight. I didn't deal them in.

Then the bigger kid started pushing the smaller kid and the smaller kid fell to the ground. Little fists were pumping. Uff Uff Uff. Little legs started kicking too, but they didn't seem to make contact. The smaller kid cried anyway. It looked to me like a staged play.

Then the bigger kid started hooting

"Yeah! Yeah! That's what you get! Punk-ass Bitch, I'm taking your hat!"

I was just then passing by. I saw the bigger kid bend down and take the hat and start stomping off across the street, throwing his arms in the air pumping out the last drops of his adrenaline rush. I heard the smaller kid from the fetal position squeaking out cries. I asked

"Is this real?"

It didn't seem very real to me, I think they should practice it a little more. Those two.

#fiction - excerpt

i remember counting the tiles in the kitchen. recognizing the brilliance of all the details of the architecture. it all seemed like a model. I struggled not let myself think it was a condensed version of the universe. Because this would mean that I was in a perfect nowhere place that represented everything. If that were true, there needn't be anywhere else.

i understood the exercise of being there to include the fact that the outside world didn't really exist anymore.

sometimes while walking the tiles, i wondered if my memory of the outside world really did represent a reality that truly existed or if it was just a projection of a totality I had been toying around with. I know now that this internal monologue represented only a period of shock for me realizing that it all was just a projection of a totality that I had been toying around with. It would take me a few more years to convince myself to stop playing around with it.

the equation being just multiples of the same common denominator, i probably one time needed it to be complex. now it needed to be simple. and so it had been shrunk that i could focus on what it was that was glowing in my mind. this is an ascension story, by the way.

and that it was.

all was accounted for here within the ward's walls. and this seemed to be comforting, in retrospect I did seem to be comforted by that observation. so then, under this framework, to take three steps was to traverse more than a billion nanometers, and not without naming the particles along the way. and though that took more than a billion nanoseconds, my patience was up to the task. finally. it was a whole universe, not a small world. not a portion, but entirely complete. and we inside it were very very large.

#fiction - A Good Friday

well i was feeling pretty good. i had just had dinner with my brother, his treat. he also got me coffee and some cigarettes. the day had been very productive otherwise as well.

the start of it had its fair share of road blocks. i woke at 5 am. i took my coffee, after my shower. i suited up. had a small breakfast. read a few pages from ian mcellan's ENDURING LOVE. pulled my ipod from the charger and was out the door by 6. there was already 3 inches of snow and the start of a blizzard. so i had to walk through that to get to the bus terminal.

i'm staying these days in fall river, about sixty miles south east of boston, where i work. its an hour commute by bus each way. not a big deal normally. but today, the 6:40 bus was thirty minutes late. in that time, the counter salesperson traded stories with the regulars about the inefficiencies of the 6:40 driver. the first stop on the route to boston is in newport. its about 25 minutes normally between newport and fall river. this driver is known for taking fall river tickets, loading the bus, then disappearing into the fall river bathroom for 15 minutes everyday before launching on toward boston. so that's what we were talking about while he was running 30 minutes behind through the snow.

then the bus came. we loaded up. i took my shoes off to dry out my socks from the walk. thankfully the heat was on full blast and this would work out fine. the driver, 30 minute delay notwithstanding, maintained his fall river ritual and disappeared for 15 minutes in the fall river bus terminal bathroom. there were many groans about this. i didn't hear all of them because i put paul simon into my ears, reclined and fell asleep.

#fiction - Five Minutes with Sam

 what i said to sam

"well i don't know much about any of that or any of anything else, but i do know this i think---"

"oh yeah, what's that?"

"there are about 75 billion human souls begging for a chance to get back in this place, begging for as long as they are just souls for a thing that will never happen. because once its over, its over forever. and we in it are all just dancing round the same fire as best we can for as long as we can. so, good luck with that."

"thank you, man. you too."

"no problem."

i started to walk but turned and added

"and, you know now, that's just one way to look at it. here's another, you're an angel and this all around you is heaven and we're just reminder notes to each other about that because angels have no memory."

then i left.


what i was thinking right before the moment sam appeared:

i look the part. by the part i mean i look like a guy you might think your chances are pretty good with asking for and getting a cigarette or a dollar. or, maybe if you find me in a bar, i might look like a guy you could strike a forward leaning chat with whether you're a guy or a girl---you'd think your chances were pretty good.

speaking of the speaking mind

no!! wait, wait, no! wait.

it's ok. it's ok now.

no, wait.

it's ok.

no, let me do that again, i should have been inside, i shouldn't have been standing there.

it would have ended anyway.

but i want to go back. i want to go back. right now.

it's ok. you are ok. relax.

my family. my friends. i was working on things. i wasn’t finished what i was doing.

it's all here with you now. everything you knew and could have been. everything you didn't know. all here. this is where you’ve always been. and everything is here.

but...i'm sorry, where are we? what is this? what language are we speaking?

this is your speaking mind. you’re speaking mind.

i'm speaking mind? my speaking mind? language is mind?

your speaking mind is what you are.

and who are you?

we are your speaking mind.

we as in?

we as in you.

ha!

funny.

it’s a little funny, yeah. don't you think?

it must be funny to you.

yes and, well, don’t you laugh?

we laugh when you make us.

when i make you laugh. my speaking mind. alright, let me work this out. we as in you, you said. and you is me. and me and i are the same thing. and i am you and you are we.

we is us as well.

we is us. and this is all there is?

all. there never was anything else.

yes there was. how do i go back to before?

before what?

before whatever this is.

there is no before what this is. this is what is.

well what is this not?

this is not a question.

Crossing the Tracks

I finished tennis while the sun was brightest.  After two hours on the court, I had sweated through my shirt and was dehydrated.  Here I suffered.  Forgot to bring water and suffered for forgetfulness. I tried the water fountain nearby but the water was warm and did not have a fresh taste. I suppose the warmth was tolerable but the taste was not. I took but a quick suckle anyway, which I thought would sustain me on the walk back to my apartment.  I live less than a block away from the tennis courts.  In fact, I live across the street from them. 

I live on a busy but beautiful street in a suburb of Boston.  This street has a set of railroad tracks running down the middle of it that are used by the “T” train.  The tracks are the most dangerous obstacle between my apartment and the tennis courts. However, since at this particular length of track there is no fence separating the inbound from the outbound like you find at other lengths of track, this obstacle can be easily negotiated. I can cross the street and the tracks wherever I please rather than be detoured to where the official crossing lay.  Of course, these unofficial crossings often come with the minor hazard of a broken, uneven walk over the tracks. But I am not one to mind.

I crossed the street towards my apartment at my usual crossing spot for tennis days.  Today as I crossed I walked into a woman.  She was older than me, but not by much.  She appeared to be crossing in the opposite direction.  She was a plain-faced woman with dark tanned skin, dark brown eyes and medium brown hair.  She was mildly attractive. And from my first glance, of all that I noted, what struck me most was her expression. She seemed uncomfortable, almost in pain.

The woman confirmed my observations during the course of a short, unsolicited conversation which she initiated as I attempted to cross her by. She accosted me with,

"Goddamn these T-tracks, y'know?"  She spoke in such a tone I could not snub her, so I replied honestly,

"I'm sorry, I don't understand. Why?"

She made a guttural noise as if I instantly annoyed her with my naivete,

"Because they are in the way—"

"Oh," I said, prematurely.

"And I hate walking over them. I am scared I will hurt myself somehow."

My facial expression became austere and I shook my head as if I suddenly understood everything and said,

"Well sure, this doesn't make for a nice crossing but you can do it if you watch your step. Here. Avoid the rails, if you can, they'll just break up your rhythm. If you know what I mean. Just time your steps so you avoid them.  See."

She shook her head. She did not trust my advice,

"But then I may still twist my ankles when I step over them.  The rails.  Look.  See all that broken ground and roots and clumps of grass and rocks.  I could twist my ankles, fall and smack my mouth on the rail, just because I was trying to avoid it.  And I'd probably lose some teeth too, or worse.  My teeth could go through my lips or I could break my nose, too."

Her imagination was so malevolent I shrank back and thought to myself, 'Gawdamn!' but I shook my head and tried for the conciliatory,

"Well, that's why you aim for the wood.  See.  Here, this wood – or planks, rather – that hold the tracks together.  If you aim for them, with each step, then you won't stand on the broken ground.  And you won't have to worry about twisting an ankle or falling. Look.  Easy, right?"

Her face contorted, like a snarl, and frightened me even more. She said,

"No.  No, you are silly.  Look here.  And there. See all those rocks.  See how those rocks from between the planks are kicked up onto the planks?  Yeah, those little devils will trip me, or twist my ankles and send me forward.  I could smash my kneecaps on the railings because I aimed for your stupid planks.  Or worse, I could stagger and slip, and my shins could fall on some jagged rocks.  How painful that would be—"

I tried to get a word in but she cut me off with further musing,

"And my groceries or what-nots would go flying everywhere.  And I'd probably lie there helpless on the tracks while a train came to get me.  And even if I could manage to crawl or roll to safety, like some small rodent, all my stuff would still be smashed and crushed by the train.  That goddamn Train.  And these goddamn T-tracks.  I tell ya.  Boy do I tell ya."

At this point I was silent. Maybe it was my thirst, maybe it was my rising mischief, but something in my eyes held the women silent, too, and she waited for my next comment, almost patiently.  While she stood there, just before the tracks on the same side of the street as my apartment building, she stood in my way. In the way, was how I considered her at this point. Presently, I stood in the outbound tracks, having stayed there to illustrate how easy the crossing could be.  But now the outbound train was at the nearby cross street, held a moment by a red light.  I licked my dried lips, took a step closer to the women, a step that carried me off the tracks. I pointed my finger to the official crossing and spoke,

"Look. That way.  See down there, where that lady is pushing her baby carriage across the tracks.  And that other man is walking with his little dog?  You see that, right there?"

She meowed her response,

"Yeah."

"Go over there and cross.  All-ways go over there to cross.  Never come here to cross, okay?  Never.  These tracks are dangerous.  You are absolutely right. God, Damn them for being here. And God, damn Them for putting them here. But God will bless us both if you do not come here to cross.  Ever again. Okay?  So go.  And have a nice day."

I stomped off, crossed the street to my apartment, and wagged my tennis racket in timing with my steps.  I never once looked back. But as I reached the steps to my building, I heard the women cursing the tracks again.  She cursed the train that just passed by.  And then she returned to cursing the tracks.  I walked into the stifling vestibule, got the mail and climbed four flights of stairs to the stagnant atmosphere of my apartment where I drank lots of cool, fresh water.