Online Onslaught II

2005-06-26T01:51:00.000-07:00

Click on all the links to read the responses to each TKO. Memorable posts are marked with a * and are highly recommended.

TKO Questions/Responses

TKO #1: "You have great lingerie but you also have cotton underwear that's been washed a thousand times and its hanging on the thing and ... and they have it too just I don't have to see it because it's not the fantasy ... do you understand? I'm tired of the fantasy because it doesn't really exist and there are never really any surprises and it never really...delivers." - High Fidelity

What things besides wearing cotton underwear would a lover living with you have to learn to live with?

Responses:
Grey Haven
Blue Devil
Professor Plum
Ivory Angel *
Czar Red
Russet Ranger
Mavue Momma *
Commander Cream
Jack Black
Purple Rain
Yellow Submarine
Princess Peach
Admiral Azure
Black Knight
Sgt. Silver
Euphony

TKO #2: "There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly." -- Annie Hall

Disagree. Life isn't full of misery and suffering. It's beautiful and worth living -- why?

Responses:
Commander Cream
Czar Red *
Yellow Submarine
Russet Ranger
Purple Rain
Jack Black
Mavue Momma
Blue Devil
Professor Plum *
Ivory Angel
Black Knight
Sgt. Silver

TKO #3: "Arwen: You are Isildur's heir, not Isildur himself.
Aragorn: The same blood flows in my veins; the same weakness."

Although our family does a lot for us, some of what they do is providing examples of what not to do. What mistakes of your parents, grandparents, or other elders do you want to avoid?

Responses:
Ivory Angel
Yellow Submarine
Princess Peach *
Blue Devil
Russet Ranger
Purple Rain
Czar Red
Mavue Momma
Black Knight *
Professor Plum
Commander Cream

TKO #4: "You know the difference between Republicans and Democrats? Republicans want a huge army and don't want to sent it anywhere. Democrats want a small army and want to send it everywhere." -- The West Wing

If you were in charge of the American military, what would you do? Read this post for some scenarios to consider. When IS war justfied?

Responses:
Yellow Submarine
Commander Cream
Blue Devil
Czar Red
Mavue Momma *
Purple Rain
Professor Plum
Ivory Angel
Black Knight
Sgt. Silver *

TKO #5: According to legend, everyone walked around naked until Eve started consorting with a serpent who was, depending on who you ask, either Satan or just a reptile with an attitude. Since then, nakedness in public has decreased, at least a little.

Detail the most naked you have been in a public place.

Responses:
Commander Cream *
Professor Plum
Czar Red
Blue Devil
Yellow Submarine *
Black Knight
Ivory Angel
Mavue Momma
Purple Rain
Princess Peach
Sgt. Silver

TKO #6: Be inspired by this photograph. Write.

Responses:
Commander Cream
Yellow Submarine
Ivory Angel
Princess Peach
Professor Plum *
Purple Rain
Mauve Momma
Czar Red *
Black Knight

TKO Question #7: Jim Olmeyer: Do you just want to lose weight, or are you looking to increase strength and flexibility as well?
Lester Burnham: I want to look good naked! -- American Beauty

There's a shallow edge to everyone. We're all friends here, so fess up. What are your guilty turnoffs? That is things you find unattractive in a potential partner that's a dealbreaker.

Responses:
Commander Cream
Ivory Angel *
Mauve Momma *
Professor Plum
Purple Rain
Yellow Submarine
Czar Red

TKO Question #8:
Shrek: Well it's no wonder you don't have any friends.
The Donkey: Wow, only a true friend would be that truly honest. -- Shrek

Only a true friend would be truly honest? Have you ever been forced to decide between being honest and being a good friend? (Were you ever forced to lie to a friend?) Which did you choose? Why? Do you regret it?

Responses:
Black Knight *
Commander Cream
Ivory Angel
Purple Rain
Czar Red
Yellow Submarine

TKO #9: Do you think there is a difference between the "deserving" poor and "undeserving" poor? Who should help them and how?

Responses:
Commander Cream
Yellow Submarine
Czar Red
Purple Rain
Ivory Angel
Mauve Momma
Black Knight

TKO #10: Be inspired by this photograph. Write.

Responses:
Yellow Submarine *
Ivory Angel *
Czar Red
Mauve Momma
Black Knight *

TKO #11: What do you want to do before YOU die? Your "wish list" to accomplish or experience before your end?

Responses:
Ivory Angel *
Commander Cream
Black Knight *
Yellow Submarine
Mauve Momma

TKO #12: "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

This advice is a lot easier than it sounds. Detail when you've violated both of these principles (not neccessarily at the same time).

Responses:
Commander Cream
Mauve Momma
Black Knight

TKO #13: "Forsake not an old friend, for a new one does not compare with him." -- Ecclesiasticus 9:10

We've all done it. Excluding romantic ex's, when have you voluntarily ended a friendship?

Responses:
Commander Cream
Mauve Momma

Results....

2004-07-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

Voted out after... Click on their names to see their blogs/sites (if you have one and I missed it, post a comment) * means that they were removed due to inactivity, not voted out

TKO1: Euphony -- Timmothy Mullen
TKO2: Jack Black -- Chris Flowers
TKO3: Grey Haven -- Brendo Grady* & Admiral Azure -- KT*
TKO4: Russet Ranger -- Michael Allen (and here, he has two)
TKO5: Blue Devil -- Alan Tauber
TKO6: Sgt Silver -- Hajeer
TKO7: Princess Peach -- Mel Gibbard*
TKO8: Prof Plum -- Darryl Stein (and here, he has two)
TKO9: Purple Rain -- Abram Rose
TKO10: Czar Red -- Anna Grey
TKO11: Ivory Angel -- Jenny (and here, she has two) & Yellow Submarine -- Cyrano
TKO12: Black Knight -- Ian Samuel
TKO13: Mauve Mamma -- Andrea Saenz

That means our winner is Commander Cream -- Caity Ross; This was a 5-4 decision! You guys were such tight competition, it was a pleasure to watch you all compete. Have a great summer and we'll see you here again for OO3!!

Cejas

2004-07-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

Sus cejas
son gruesas y gordas
orugas peludas y negras meneándose
a través de los planos lisos de su frente.

Sus cejas
son un poco desordenados
a veces un jardín cubierto de malas hierbas
que amenazan a declararles dictador de la cara.

Sus cejas
van arriba a menudo
cuando él está suplicando
o tratando a demostrar
su sinceridad o inocencia
pero nunca abajo
en enojo o silencio lastimado.

Es a causa de sus cejas
y los ojos verdes y tranquilos de abajo
que yo confío completamente en él
que mudaría a una ciudad desconocido
que escribiría de mi confianza en todas formas
tinta
carbón
mayonesa
serenatas del tercer piso
en una poema en vez de mi prosa usual y segura
aún en otra lengua.

Sus cejas traicionan a su corazón;
revelan el hombre que quiere ser-
honesto, fuerte, y con una marca en el mundo
que es solamente el suyo.

No sé del resto
pero estoy bien segura
que nunca ha sido un hombre
de quien ha sido escrito
una poema en español
sobre sus cejas.

---------------------------------------------------

Brows

His brows
are thick and fat
fuzzy black caterpillars wriggling
across the smooth planes of his forehead.

His brows
are a little messy
at times a garden overgrown with weeds
that threaten to declare themselves dictator of his face.

His brows
go upwards often
when he is pleading
or trying to demonstrate
his earnestness or innocence
but never downwards
in anger or hurt silence.

It is because of his brows
and the calm green eyes underneath
that I trust him completely
that I would move to an unknown city
that I would write of my trust in every form
ink
charcoal
mayonnaise
fourth-floor serenades
in a poem instead of my usual safe prose
even in another tongue.

His brows betray his heart
they reveal the man he wants to be
honest, strong, and with a mark on the world
that is only his own.

I don't know about the rest
but I am pretty sure
that there has never been a man
of whom there has been written
a poem in Spanish
about his brows.

---------------------------------

The OO prompts, and the other writers, have challenged me as a writer more than I could have imagined. For this last post I tried to think of something that would be extremely difficult to do and then made myself do it- I never post my poetry, and writing in Spanish is a lot of effort for me. I'm sure I made a few grammar mistakes, but I did originally write it in Spanish and then translate it- that's why a few English lines sound stilted. Thank you so much to Marie and all the posters and readers for being our fans. And of course to PF, my biggest fan and inspiration. Awww.

Mauve Momma #13

2004-07-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

I have lived in fear for this moment: the prompt I had no good answer for. Not only that, but Marie had to taunt me with my strangeness: "We've all done it." (Which begs the question, who's all done it? Girls? I can't see many guys saying "We can't be friends anymore.") At any rate, I haven't done it.

There are places I’ll remember
All my life...though some have changed
Some forever, not for better

It happened to me, twice; in eighth grade my best friend of a year abruptly stopped speaking to me and refused to tell me why, finally informing me I "was mean." I had been getting rides from her mother to the bus stop every morning and the Montero became utterly silent and awkward. That stung a lot. It didn't happen again until college, where my debate partner and good friend suddenly quit the activity a few weeks before we were scheduled to go to camp together. She sent a long, rambling email to the coach and myself, outlining her internal dilemmas, and promising to call me immediately. She didn't. She didn't pick up her phone for me or return my calls or emails. All year. Not only had I lost my co-captain and sleepover buddy in an email breakup, there was no varsity debater I could pair up with for my senior year. I cried. That experience hurt more than any romantic problem I had had to that point.

Some have gone and some remain

But I have never given notice and quit like that; nor have I initiated a dramatic confrontation that ended a friendship. Not my style. It is much more like me to let things wither away, left unfinished, the way I slipped out of high school after three years, losing contact with half my original class in the process; the way I finished college a mere one quarter early, just enough to disappear from my rooms without telling everyone and be on a plane to Houston before graduation ceremonies started; the way I maniacally pound away at various manifestos, only to leave them half-written and ignored. Finishing what I start isn't my strong point.

All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall

And because of that, there are very few people from high school and even less from college that I still consider friends. (With two exceptions, all my "college friends" went to other colleges. Oh, debate.) I'm a fair to middling correspondent. I lose phone numbers all the time. I remind myself to write back to your "how are ya" email before you fall off the first page of my inbox, and then I forget to remind myself.

But I'm honest enough to admit that even these actions are voluntary. When you're halfway across town with your buddies and three-quarters of the way through the pitcher, and you remember you promised to water your neighbors' plants, you know you're lying when you later say you forgot. And when you let it go for one day, and then one day more, you can't cry ignorance as to the results. You can't pretend the plants dried and yellowed by themselves, in a no-fault plant suicide. And as go the potted azaleas, so go the friendships. There's Ann, and Liz, and Natalie, and Jason, and Floria. At some point, one of us pulled the life support plug, and the other just went to the cafeteria for coffee and a day-old donut.

Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all

And it's just as well. Sometimes you don't have anything more to say to each other, once you reach different vantage points in life. My stories would make them yawn, or disapprove. (The Christian fellowship friends wouldn't know what to say about me moving in with a quasi-Jew.) It doesn't bother me that there won't be twenty childhood friends at my wedding. They have left behind the requisite yearbook signatures and bunny ears in my school pictures...stories about that one time at the track meet and that other on the choir bus. A stilted email does no honor to those memories. And so we let it die with dignity. And we love who we have around us now, completely and without thought of how long they'll stay.

Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life-
I love you more.

I swear!

2004-07-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

I am furiously writing for you fine folks right now. Not only did we have company this weekend, I had to do an online debate, and that was very time-consuming. I'm on it!

MM

Commander Cream: Here Be Monsters

2004-07-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

This is my final post, so I thought I would indulge in some nostalgia. Thank you Marie for running the game: I have loved writing for it. Thank you everyone for humoring me for this long.

I've always had an (over)active imagination. My childhood interests fed this tendency. I read Where the Wild Things Are until I memorized it. Later, my imagination continued to be colored by all the fantasy books I could get my hands on, much to my parents' dismay. My love for monsters and my older siblings' efforts to frighten me as a child filled my childhood with the improbable. Fortunately for my sanity and that of my parents, usually my monsters were localized to one area: Shelby, Michigan.

My mother was raised on a small farm outside a small town: she left as soon as she could, as did all her siblings. My grandmother continued to work the farm with occasional help from her children and grandchildren. She grew corn, cherries and a mixture of other crops. Every July we drove for over twenty-two hours, reached Shelby, and started working. For me, it was a new world: even my suburban/rural upbringing could not compare to the wonders of Michigan and Grandma's farm. In Michigan, simple ideas became fantastic- there was the Under-toad of Lake Michigan my mother always warned me about. To my six-year-old self, some giant amphibian lived under the waves, waiting to drag swimmers down and drown them. Fireflies became graceful pixies from my books. According to my brother, I was not allowed into the cornfields alone because of the dragons that roamed there. In contrast, the cherry orchard was considered safe, for the dragons never ventured among the trees. (Actually, I wasn’t allowed into the cornfields alone because my mother thought I would get lost, but it was impossible to get lost in the orchard.)

There's this funny thing about cherry trees. Twenty years ago, all cherries were picked by hand. Migrant workers would show up in their beat up pickups, help bring the crop in, and then continue westward to other farms. Cherry trees would grow quite tall and live twenty-five years or more. And then "shakers" were introduced. Now a crew comes, wraps a belt around the tree, and a machine shakes the cherries loose. Nowadays cherry trees only live for ten years and are forever stunted. My grandma employed shakers, but there was one tree that was never touched by anything save a human hand. This tree became my fortress during the month of July- to me the tree was like the magical apple tree from the Chronicles of Narnia: the cherries were always bigger, sweeter and juicer than those from any other tree. It was simply another facet of my magical world.

It's hard for me to recapture Michigan as a magical place for me. The magic shattered when I was seven or so.

It was the first time I was allowed to go check the corn by myself. My grandmother said I could go explore the acres of corn and see how the crop was coming along. I had learned how to peel back the leaves and check the hard kernels as a toddler, but I was always with my mother or an older sibling. Going out into the fields alone was somewhat of a rite of passage.

Out in the fields, the corn towered over me, and the light was filtered through the huge leaves. Even walking to the center exhausted my stubby little legs, but I was determined to really check the corn, like a true farmer. (To be honest, I have no idea why this required me to check the corn in the middle of the fields, but hey- it was a six-year-old’s logic.) As I wandered in the corn, I began to hear a faint snuffling noise and felt the corn rustle around me. The darkness of the corn field combined with my brother’s stories provided me with only one explanation for the noise. A dog, a cat, a deer? No, none of these would suit my active imagination. It was…

A dragon! (Surely it had to be...) A mixture of fear and elation filled me. Fear won out, and I raced for safety. The creature gave chase. My sincere horror when watching Children of the Corn probably stems from this race through the corn fields. With the corn leaves obscuring my vision, I never caught sight of my pursuer. Breaking free of the corn, I found myself in the orchard. I quickly climbed the old tree and armed myself with a handful of cherries.

Breathlessly, I perched in my fortress as I awaited the dragon. When a badger peered out of the field, my elaborate fantasy crumbled to dust. There was no Under-toad. The old tree was not a magical fortress. I could not slay monsters that stubbornly refused to exist. I don’t think I ever really believed that dragons lived in the corn, or that pixies fluttered out of my reach during the nights, but to have an adventure so thoroughly shattered by the mundane destroyed Michigan’s magic for me.

My mother later came looking for me, convinced that I had lost myself in the corn fields. When she found me in the orchard, still perched in my favorite tree, she was alarmed at my woebegone expression. Only now can I articulate what I felt as a child:

“I don’t know that I want to live in a world without dragons...”

Commander Cream #13

2004-07-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

The knock on my window instantly woke me. Dim red letters across the room indicated that it was 2:53 am. The blurred face in my window was my best friend Samantha. She could have just told me to meet her somewhere. During the summers I never had a curfew, so she didn’t need me to sneak out. But Samantha loved the intoxication of secrecy. She also loved the intoxication of very potent, illegal drugs.

I had known Samantha for years. We had been best friends since we were twelve. She helped me find my footing in a new school. Three years later we were basically inseparable. Our first flight was together- to Las Vegas with her grandfather the professional gambler. We had summited mountains together- just the two of us urging eachother on. We had made plans for the road trip we’d take the next summer when I turned sixteen- we’d drive through Chicago, up to my grandma’s farm, and finally to Boston. Samantha was old for her fifteen years. I was very young for mine. I was sheltered by my protective older siblings. Samantha, an only child, experimented enough to make up for her lack of siblings.

Samantha was my Polaris: although I was friends with other people, I trusted her to guide me through the storms and clouds of adolescent friendships. When we were fourteen, I began to see Samantha change. The group wasn’t the open, happy group I had joined when I became friends with Samantha. There were new people, people who eyed me with hungry eyes and whispered suggestions that I was too shocked to react to. My mute refusal of this or that drug merited sly smiles and derisive chuckles. A sharp look from Samantha quelled even the most insistent pusher. I loved her even more.

I pulled the screen from my window. Her arm draped around a boy I didn’t recognize, Samantha gestured with her free hand. “Come out, the night’s fine,” she slurred. I glanced at her hands. There was a bottle in one hand. There was a small glass pipe in the other. So. Not just marijuana tonight. Catching her eye, I noticed the dilated pupils. Her hands were twitching. Meth was the drug tonight.

A sheltered, non-drinking, non-smoking, fifteen year old probably should not be able to identify drug use in their best friend at 3:00 am.

The boy grinned at me. It made me feel naked in spite of my tank top and pajama pants. He reached through the window and grabbed my arm. “Come on, I know someone you should meet.” I looked frantically at Samantha. She frowned and shook her head. “Not this one, she’s clean.” He let go of my arm, but he didn’t stop grinning.

I felt safe around Samantha. Nothing could ever hurt me when she was around. But there was a point when Samantha was physically present, but she wasn’t there. It had happened one night earlier in the summer. I left as soon as I could, but fear followed me home. From the looks of it, this night would not be any different.

“I can’t come Samantha. Maybe you should stay here too. We’ll go out tomorrow.” The boy started to stir angrily, but Samantha jumped in first. “You prissy little bitch! You can’t stop me. I’m so sick of defending you. Either come out tonight, or I won’t see if you want to come out ever again.” Her hands curled into fists around the bottle and the pipe. She bristled like an angry cat.

Methamphetamine users tend towards outbursts and paranoia. I had never seen either from Samantha. Her sudden fury caught me off guard. She was my best friend. She was my guardian.

I couldn’t say anything. With a snort of anger, Samantha turned and stalked off. The boy paused for a speculative look and then joined her. I slumped to the floor. My north star, my guiding light was gone.

CC note

2004-07-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

This was in the comments of MM's note, but I wanted to reiterate my thanks to everyone.

reposted:

First, I'd like to second MM's thanks. Having people actually read what I write is a new experience.

Second, MM and PF hosting company together- that's so cute! (No sarcasm)

Third, I'll try and post sometime this weekend, but no promises.

MM note

2004-07-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

PF and I have some much-awaited out of town company this weekend, so I won't be posting until Monday.

Also, thanks a lot to all the readers and players for your support. I majorly appreciate it.

MM

Results & TKO #13

2004-07-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

The second-t0-last player removed from the game is Black Knight with a ranking total of 18 (with eight people voting).

Also, Ivory Angel was Jenny (Vegetathalas) and Yellow Submarine was Cyrano. He requested some annonymity because of the nature of his writing, but don't worry, none of you know him unless you browse BL. He's a friend of mine from LONG ago.

TKO Question #13

"Forsake not an old friend, for a new one does not compare with him." -- Ecclesiasticus 9:10

We've all done it. Excluding romantic ex's, when have you voluntarily ended a friendship?

NOTES:

For this final round, each player MUST post their answer to the TKO AND another post of their choice. These are both due by Tuesday next week; if you can finish sooner that just means the game will be over earlier, we'd all appreciate it.

If you signed up to vote the last time, then you will be automatically registered to vote again. I will drop you an email 24 hours in advance of the end of the vote.

If you'd like to vote FOR THE WINNER and this is your first sign-up, do so in the comments section before both players finish the TKO and extra post.

Black Knight #12

2004-07-14T21:28:00.000-07:00

Fear not for the future.

The young boy... had a young boy. He didn't feel old enough, but there was the kid in his crib, crying from the loud noises outside. He had only been born six weeks ago. Robert didn't feel much more mature.

"We have you surrounded!" blared the loudspeaker. "Surrender the child, and we'll talk! Don't let it end like this, Robert!"

The kid's mother was dead now, along with his mother's mother and his mother's father. Robert's own parents... well, he'd never met them. His earliest memories were of the streets of Dallas, grabbing scraps, finding ways to get by. He didn't really know how old he was, he could only make guesses, based on when he went through puberty, that kind of thing. Birth certificate? Dream on.

He remembered nothing of his parents. He fantasized, dreamed sometimes, that they'd been taken from him in some fantastic, spectacular way; that they'd made some ultimate sacrifice, and that only death itself could have separated them from him. But for all he knew, they'd abandoned him on the side of the road because he was eating too much.

A big, bright spotlight shone through the window, lighting up the ceiling of the old abandoned house. It was ramshackle and falling apart, and no one had lived here in years. It was way on the outskirts of town and it was as far as Robert's shiny, beautiful new car had taken him before running out of gas. "Next time you go on the lam, Robert," he told himself, "buy some gas first." Yeah, buy gas. With what?

He'd met the girl a year ago at a bar that he was sort of working at. She was the most beautiful creature Rob had ever seen... straight, brown hair, deep blue eyes, and the nicest legs. She came into the bar every night for weeks before he got up the courage to say hello. When he finally did, boy, did they hit it off. She loved Robert's candor and told him often that it seemed like he didn't have a care in the world.

Truth was... he didn't. A one-room studio apartment, work every night at a bar, paid under the table 'cause he didn't have a birth certificate. What's to worry about? She, though... she had lots of worries. That's what money bought you. Alcoholic father, mother wanting her to go to Stanford when she wanted to stay in Texas, no brothers, no sisters.

It took a long time before he had the courage to tell her about his life and his past. A lot of courage, and a lot of vodka for them both. That night, they made love, and though it wasn't the first or last time, Robert liked to imagine that was when she'd gotten pregnant.

"Robert! You can't stay in there forever! We know what you did to that girl's parents!"

Besides being an alcoholic, her father was also a staunch Catholic -- so needless to say, she brought the baby to term. She was afraid of him and his temper got the better of him more than once, and she'd come to the bar with bruises. Robert sobbed with her and told her he'd marry her if it would help. She just cried harder when he suggested it.

When the baby was born, it was in a hospital in a nice part of town. Robert wasn't there, since she begged him to wait. Her parents would be there, she said. If my father sees you... he'll kill you.

Who does he think I am? Robert had asked her.

I told him I was raped, she said.

Robert walked slowly to the second-story window of the old house and tried to see out. But the spotlight blinded him, and he couldn't see anything. He wasn't stupid and knew they might shoot him... but he wanted to see the night sky. The same sky he'd looked at and seen every night as he'd fallen asleep as a little boy, never having a roof or a bed of any kind, really. Texas could be a cruel place.

After the baby was born, she stopped coming to the bar. Robert had no phone and she'd never given him her number. He waited and waited, and six weeks went by. He sobbed himself to sleep in a way that he didn't understand, and every morning when he woke up, he wondered: maybe today is the day.

Maybe today I'll see my son.

But the days kept not coming, and Robert grew more and more desperate, until he was ready to do what he'd promised never to do. He looked her up in the phonebook and spent all day getting his courage up -- and he crossed town. North, north, north until the roads were better-paved and the cross-walks actually worked, and people started to give him looks.

She lived, obviously, in a gated community. Living as a street urchin teaches you ways around those, and Robert scaled the wall without even hesitating and plopped down on the other side. Following the street signs and staying in the shadows (to avoid nervous neighbors telephoning the police), he finally came across it. 4742 Amiable Way.

He took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

"Robert, you have two minutes until we tear-gas this whole place! Is that what you want?" Robert shrugged it off. What a stupid bluff. Tear-gas an infant?

Her father's first slurred words were... memorable.

"Who th'fuck're you, you goddamned spic?"

"Robert!" She shrieked out as she ran down the hallway behind her father. "NO!"

"I'm the father of that little boy you've got inside."

That was a few hours ago. The memories from then were a blur. Her father lashed out in anger at her after she said it was true and Robert saw red. He let his temper grab ahold of him when he saw the grey-haired bully swing his fist at the beautiful brown-haired girl who had made his life worth living. He charged at him...

Her father toppled over with the blow. He crawled backwards, disappearing into an adjoining room.

She sobbed on the ground. "Are you okay?" Robert asked, forgetting where he was and what was happening.

But she never answered, because as he asked, her father's drunken aim missed its mark, and the center of her chest splattered against the wall.

Robert screamed.

So did her mother.

Her father swun around and unloaded a shot into her, too.

"NO DAUGHTER OF MINE! NO DAUGHTER OF MINE!" he screamed, over and over. "NOT OF MINE!"

Even with a gun, the white-collar lifestyle hadn't made the drunken Catholic a better close-quarters fighter than a life on the streets might've. Reflex and rage do weird things to you and before Robert realied he was beating him to death through his own tears, he was long dead.

Long minutes passed.

He began to realize how this looked. Three affluent family members dead and a poor bartender with his prints on the gun.

Somewhere, he heard a baby crying. He grabbed it, took the car out front, and ran.

Robert could hear a battering ram on the locked door below. Looks like it was time.

He bent down, and kissed the baby (whom he and she had agreed to name "Brandon") on the forehead. "Brandon," he said. He felt his throat catch. "I'm sorry. But I can't give you the life you need. I don't want you to grow up... a street urchin like me. Or the son of a man who can't give his boy the life he deserves."

BAM! BAM! as the battering ram crashed into the surprisingly sturdy door.

"They'll never stop hunting me."

Robert remembered her stories about her loving uncle who lived so far away and how she would laugh and play on his little farm that his parents disdained so much. Her father's only sibling... her mother an only child.

BAM! BAM! BAM! CRASH!

"Time for me to go, little one. I love you. I do love you."

Weep not for the past.

The young, olive-skinned boy was all tucked in, as the snowy storm blustered outside, a cold March. "Tell me again, Uncle Matthew."

Matthew laughed, and sighed. The little boy's favorite story. Something he'd made up for him when he was so, so young, because he couldn't bear to tell him the truth. The boy deserved, he'd decided when he came into his care, a story for him to hold onto, to have hope with.

Even if it wasn't the truth.

"Okay, Brandon. But then you go to bed!"

The young boy nodded eagerly.

"Once, there was a man, who was brave, and strong... who would do anything for his little boy, even stare death in the eye..."

Mauve Momma #12

2004-07-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

I will make this one short and honest. No literary flourishes.

I regret many of the things I have done in my relationships that have resulted in me being here, happy, with PF. I have had three boyfriends before him and have broken up - quite painfully - with each one. I have witnessed these men cry, call back over and over, and show up at my house with last-ditch romantic gestures. More than this, though, I have failed to observe any respectful "waiting period" in each of my last two relationships. I went on a date with Pre-PF a week after a difficult phone breakup with Pre-Pre-PF and stayed with him for a year and change. And PF and I decided to make a long-distance go of it almost immediately after the tearful breakup with his predecessor. I knew doing those things would make it look exactly as if I had left each man for another, instead of because the relationship was falling apart and I had finally gotten the courage to get out. I knew there would be people who wouldn't believe me, but I still did it. And I still think about it.

I don't regret or cry about the fact that the breakups happened. They needed to. What is more difficult is knowing how much I hurt them. I loved them, sometimes a lot. We went to movies and cooked together and had parties with our friends and all those happy mundane doings of a couple. And we had heavy silences and snide remarks and sneak personal attacks. And they thought we were still okay. But we weren't. And I had to be the one to leave.

I have the best possible reason to not weep for my past choices -- I am happy now, happy in a deep and abiding way. And I know that I had to make it through those battlefields of phone arguments and awkward pauses to get to own the left side of the bed next to PF- there was no shortcut. But I am still sorry I hurt them. Sorry without absolving them of their part in the chaos, to be sure....but deeply sorry nonetheless.

------------------------------------------------------------

It would be thematically consistent if I now reflected on my relationship fears for the future, but it isn't going to happen. Oh well.

There was a commercial many years ago that showed a dad and his son solemnly making dinner sandwiches in the kitchen. Flash to a mom huddled miserably in bed. Enter onerous voice-over about the symptoms of depression and where to get help. Gut-kicking closer: The kid looks up at his dad and says, "Dad? Does Mom still love us?"

I always HATED this commercial. First, I thought it was ridiculous the dad didn't know how to make anything besides sandwiches for dinner. I guess Mom always cooked. Stupid. But the other reason was that I knew the mom. I knew how she took naps and baths all the time, how it didn't seem weird until you added them all up. I knew she would come out to eat or shop with you, but she seemed tired and irritated and like she was never having any fun. I knew because that had been my mother. And I never, EVER thought that she didn't still love me. Ever. That's why the commercial made me so pissed.

My mother's story isn't very dramatic- it's common and ends well. She fought with chronic depression for many years before getting properly treated and on antidepressants. She's been doing well for much longer than I remember her not doing well. The twist is that she isn't the only one in the family who's been affected - so has my aunt, and the prevailing opinion is that my grandmother was depressed in an era without good mental health care. Depression isn't a death sentence. But it's heavy, and tiring, and it requires you to stick to the medication to keep a feeling of normalcy in your moods. That alone is a little scary. And although sometimes it arises out of bad environments and experiences, sometimes it just...arises.

I can't make it any simpler than this. I am afraid it will happen to me.

Commander Cream's Failure

2004-07-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

“Move your feet, Cream!”

I could have stopped it at any moment. Master Kim trusted us to stop the match if we needed to. Unfortunately, the system breaks down when someone is too stubborn to give up. Master Kim wanted me to learn how to spar. I was bad. Not just bad, abysmal. You would think that fighting with older siblings your entire life would prepare you for fighting anyone, but it’s simply not true.

My main problem was that I blocked: I stood my ground instead of moving. That’s one of my main problems in life, too. Master Kim took it upon himself to change this mindset. So he set me up with Matt: the fastest and the strongest in the class.

We had been sparring for less than five minutes. My arms were aching from wrist to elbow. You could see the red where blue-black bruises would bloom in the morning. I turned warily: I was in way over my head. I was gasping for breath in more than the literal sense. Matt threw a kick-punch combination that left my right arm numb and dropped my elbow to my side.

"Move! Stop blocking, Matt will…"

…and Matt did. I didn’t move, and the kick was too fast and hard for me to block successfully. Abstractly, the spinning-hook kick was perfectly executed: graceful, really. Concretely, the foot slamming into the side of my head did not conjure images of ballet, although I do recall faint music. Well, a ringing sound at least.

"Cream, are you all right?"

Upon regaining consciousness, all I saw was a field of red. I faintly heard Master Kim’s voice through the rushing blood in my ears. “My God,” I thought, “I must be bleeding into my eyes.” I wasn’t. My crimson vision was simply the floor of the studio. My eyes weren’t focusing well enough to see the texture at first.

"Cream, can you hear me?"

I had failed. Matt had won, and my feet still refused to move. Master Kim probably wanted an answer.

"Yes, Master Kim, I can hear you. I’m okay; just let me catch my breath sir."

Please, please let me stop.

"You should stop for the evening."

Thank you, thank you. Now I just need to acknowledge that I’m giving up.

"No Master Kim. I haven’t learned to move my feet yet. We should go another round."

Matt knocked me out several more times over the next couple of months before Master Kim gave up. I never learned to move my feet. But I did learn how to gracefully slump to the floor when knocked unconscious.

Commander Cream #12

2004-07-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

Do I weep for the past? I rarely indulge in weeping about my own choices. I made them, and there’s no unmaking them. But at times I do weep for choices outside of my control. I cannot help crying when I realize that this is a sick world we live in. The Holocaust, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone…I had no impact on any of these horrific events, yet they still draw tears. I weep for my inability to influence these events and fear that in the future I will still have no power to stop them. Somehow, though, this is skirting the question. Weeping and fearing for distant events really doesn’t address the principle of this question.

I have a simple philosophy for life: no regrets. But there's a painful difference between having a philosophy and living it. I have made bad choices. I have hurt my friends. I have been left weeping beside a grave. I cannot undo any of those things. I cannot sacrifice my life in a vain attempt to erase my greatest mistakes. No regrets? If you’re human, it’s not really possible.

Maybe I should come with a warning label (courtesy of Johnny Cash):

“I will let you down
I will make you hurt”

Perhaps I need a philosophy with a lighter note. The Pirates of the Caribbean might work: “Take what you can. Give nothing back.” No, I’m not talking about theft or selfishness. I’m talking about life experiences. When a friend needed me, I wasn’t there. I can’t undo that. Trying to forget would not make me a happier or a better person. So I won’t make any attempt to give it back. Instead, I will occasionally indulge in a bout of tears, remember my failures, repeat my vows to do better, and carry on.

As for the future, the only way to avoid fearing is to avoid thinking. I don’t know that it’s possible to live solely in the present. If you want to get anywhere, you must have goals. And that’s really the trouble. When you commit to a goal, you give the world the power to disappoint you. One way to avoid this is solid, old-fashioned pessimism. A good friend of mine explained why he was a pessimist: if things go wrong, you’re expecting it. If things go right, you’re pleasantly surprised. I simply do not have the temperament to always expect failure.

So I don’t expect failure, rather I fear failure. I fear that once again I will let down a friend. I fear that someone depending on me will learn just how unreliable I can be. I don’t fear for myself. If my complete and utter lack of common sense hasn’t killed me by now, then I figure that I’m pretty safe. But are other people safe from me, or even safe while counting on me? I weep for when they haven’t been. And I fear for when they will not be.

"What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end"

Mauve Momma Reveals Her True Color

2004-07-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

If you get to pick the color you're going to be, you gotta pick brown. White is ai'ite and black isn't bad either, but brown is the happening hue. Brown like iced tea and paper lunch bags and beach sand. Brown like buttermilk pancakes and fried potatoes. Like wheat bread and peanut butter and almonds and patio chairs. Brown like oatmeal and mud and smog. Oh it's good to be brown.

Brown the color of ambiguity. The International Color of Mystery. With brown your identity is fluid and hidden. Other brown people come and do not realize they are looking into the mirror of brownness. "Are you Persian?" says the eager young man with a leather jacket in the college library. "You are Indian, and Punjabi, I know," says Mrs. Aggarwal, your co-worker. "I think you are Iranian girl," says the smiling middle-aged man at the mechanic. "You could be from Morocco," says the shy female student. Yes, you could. You are the Brown Hornet. You are an enigma.

Brown knows no barriers, no borders. Foolish people tried to draw lines and set up fences and guards to keep out too much more brown. Brown is still coming. Brown was here before this country gave birth to itself, and brown is arriving on the Greyhound tomorrow. Brown is not afraid of police dogs. Brown sees the hole in the chain-link fence.

Brown refuses to be bounded or boxed. Brown needs more than one language to express itself. Brown is too big for one group label. Brown will be Latino this week, Chicano next week, and Hispanic never. Brown listens to rap and oldies and banda and metal and it is going out of the house dressed like that.

Brown is laughing at you when you try to ask "Where are you from?" Brown answers, "Los Angeles" and watches you squirm and come back with an even worse question. "Where are your parents from?" A dark brown eyebrow cocks and answers, "They're from L.A. and El Paso." Brown knows what you are asking, and brown is not giving it to you that easy. You want brown to own up to being Mexican, but brown is also more American than tan apple pie crust and cinnamon, and will not let you assume it is an immigrant. Brown's ancestors ate the hearts of people who asked dumb questions for breakfast.

You are worried about brown when you cannot identify it. You want to know if brown snuck here through a river or on a tire to take your job. You wonder if brown is here to outsource your company to Bangalore. Perhaps you want to know if brown enjoys jihads and strapping explosives on children. Brown is not indulging your crap. Brown votes and pays taxes and obeys the traffic laws, and brown is more patriotic than a browning turkey and a brown leather football, and don't you forget it.

Brown is a crazy motherfucker, ese. Brown is drunk on cheap brown ale and high as a kite singing "Brown-Eyed Girl" at 2 in the morning. Go ahead and call the cops, because Brown's cousin Manuel is a policeman and he'll come and just laugh and sing along to a verse of "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

You see brown everywhere. Brown is hip. Brown is on the subway and in the market and boarding the school bus. Brown is the biggest minority in the country and several of the small ones too. Brown is on your TV and in your cereal bowl. Brown is James Brown and Foxy Brown and Downtown Julie Brown and Charlie Brown. Brown is the hot new color for autumn. Airbrushed photos of taupe sweaters and chocolate leggings among falling burnt leaves are putting brown on the map. Brown is a status symbol.

You might think brown likes the Cleveland Browns, but fuck that. Brown likes the Raiders, ese. Yeah. Brown is tough. Brown is bad bad Leroy Brown. Brown's cousins will slash your tires and pee in your gas tank.

Brown is powerful. Brown grows and grows and will not be ignored. Brown empties the high schools and marches down the street when brown is angry. Brown colors everything. You have pale skin and yellow hair, but when brown has your baby it has brown eyes and skin like oatmeal with brown sugar. Brown withstands the worst. Brown tans but never burns.

But something is wrong with brown now. There are two toast-colored knees in the bathtub rising above a pile of snowy bubbles as brown ponders its place. You are looking in your favorite places for brown and it is hard to find. You are looking in the senior English seminars and at the debate tournaments and in the law schools and at the pictures of the United States senators and you have to squint to see the brown. Did they not hear that brown is the new thing? Where is all the brown?

Brown does not know and brown is a little sad. But brown is a proud and strong color and brown will march on. Brown will have a party and put out chicken nuggets and barbeque sauce, and peanut butter cookies and chocolate pudding and root beer. Brown will turn up the music and invite you to dance. Come on!

...Do you remember when....we used to sing?

injustice

2004-07-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

You who remain? You have no taste.

I will miss both Czar Red and Ivory Angel immensely.

Results & TKO #12

2004-07-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

The two players removed from the game are Ivory Angel and Yellow Submarine with ranking totals of 12 & 14 respectively.

Also, Czar Red was Anna Grey.

TKO Question #12

"Fear not for the future, weep not for the past." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

This advice is a lot easier than it sounds. Detail when you've violated both of these principles (not neccessarily at the same time).

Remember -- post by Wednesday at noon

Commander Cream's Adventures in Stupidity #3

2004-07-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

In order to get to the Weminuche wilderness area, you have to ride a narrow-gauge train for about 2 hours. The train stops for a bout five minutes, you jump off and the train continues on its merry way. The train passes twice a day at set times. If the weather is bad the train doesn’t run. If you miss the train, it doesn’t wait. Once you’re in the backcountry, you’re pretty much on your own. I went into the wilderness with a rather large party. I didn’t know too many of the twelve people, but I rather liked our “Fearless Leaders,” and our plans for the trip. Unfortunately, an early, high-elevation snowstorm ruined our summit attempt on Sunlight Peak. We were forced to take shelter in a valley rather than remain at the mid-mountain level. Normally I’d be angry that I was robbed of the chance to summit a new mountain. However, this did allow us some time to explore the wilderness area. Leading me into the middle of nowhere and setting me loose is usually a bad idea.

However, the Weminuche area is very safe: mountain lion attacks are unheard of, and very few people seek out such things as cliffs or lightning storms. Accordingly, our Fearless Leaders allowed us to hike on our own for a couple of hours each day. We had to stay off the ridgelines and were explicitly warned “don’t do anything stupid!” I have a real problem with obeying authority.

During the 1800’s, silver was discovered in the Weminuche area. The valleys and ridges are still riddled with mines and shafts. While hiking on my own, I discovered a rather large sinkhole. At least I thought that it was a sinkhole. About fifteen feet in diameter and nine feet deep, the random crater in the valley held a certain allure. I didn’t know anyone else on the trip well enough to ask anyone to accompany me. And I knew that the Fearless Leaders would stop me from exploring the crater if I informed them of its presence. Fearing that I would be unable to find the cavity again if I left (my orienteering skills leave something to be desired), I elected to lower myself into the hole and explore.

I soon found a rather dark fissure in one of the walls of the hole: it had been hidden by an overhang. At the time, I was mildly claustrophobic. For a number of reasons, I am now extremely claustrophobic. But once again, the idea of exploring the unknown held a certain allure. I always carry my headlamp on day-hikes. I have been caught too many times on the trail after dark (a consequence of ideas such as these). I did, however, lack two of the critical elements that make spelunking immeasurably safer: a partner and rope.

As though that would influence my actions.

My daypack was a hindrance, so I left it behind, entering the darkness with only my headlamp. The LED light threw small circles of the walls into sharp illumination. I had found my way into a long-abandoned mine. Pyrite ore and quartz glittered wherever the light hit. The tunnel slowly turned, and I followed the walls until the light from the fissure was not even an afterimage in my eyes. I soon found that water had slowly accumulated in the mine. Water reached about my ankles: I could feel the pressure of the liquid about my ankles. The water grew deeper. Soon, my waterproof boots would do no good, and the water would pour over the high edge of the boots. Now, a smart person would say “wow, I’ve seen a really neat mine, but I should probably turn back, so I don’t get soaked.” Even most stupid people would think that.

But not me.

Instead, I thought, “Hey, the tunnel is very narrow. I can use my legs braced against either side to continue exploring and avoid getting wet. So I did. The tunnel got wider. The water got deeper. Soon, my legs were nearly pulled into the splits. And then the tunnel split. For anyone who has never managed to get themselves into this position, let me tell you that it’s pretty damn hard to extract yourself. You can’t move backwards, and trying to get into one of the other tunnels is difficult at best. I tried anyway. I wound up with my left leg knee-deep in ice-cold, filthy water.

By this point, I figured that I was already committed, and decided to slog on anyway. I have no idea why. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, only at the beginning. There was no goal I was striving for beyond some irrational thought that I could “beat” the mine.

I continued, walking through the water when necessary. The tunnel branched, and branched again. This is where the lack of rope really mattered. Remember my earlier comment that my orientation skills need some work? Well, when you’re underground in the pitch dark, soaked to the knees and feeling claustrophobic, it’s a bit hard to find your way. A rope would have at least kept me tethered to an area that I would recognize.

A couple hours passed. After the second hour, I thought about finding my way back to the exit. I was certain that I had correctly tracked which turns I had taken. However, in the darkness, you begin to miss turns and lose track. I got lost.

I began to panic. I had left my daypack outside, so was left without food and water. Dumb move. To counter the rising panic, I convinced myself that the rest of my party would be looking for me. Unfortunately, no one knew where I had gone. So much for convincing myself.

Another hour passed. By this point, I had been in water up to my thighs. My arms will covered in mine dust. My LED light seemed to be fading. Just when I was about to really panic, the paths cleared and I found my way. Light glittered on the pyrite far in the distance. A breath of fresh air lured me onward. I had found the fissure and blessed, glorious freedom.

My bliss was rather short-lived. Remember how this started, with the deep hole? I am only five feet tall. On a good day, I can climb really well, so when I descended into the pit, I had no worries about my height relative to the depth. I was certain that I could climb back up. That’s on a good day. I had just spent several hours soaking wet, lost alone in a mine. And now I was stuck in a pit that I chose to climb down into. To shorten yet another lengthy story, let me just say that I eventually pulled myself out of the sinkhole.

By the way, I was wrong with my assumption that people would come looking for me. It seemed as though my reputation for eccintritcy had convinced them that I was off doing my own thing and didn’t want to be bothered. When I made it back to camp, the Fearless Leaders noticed my rather bedraggled appearance. I somehow doubt my answers to their queries reassured them.

“What have I been doing? Oh, just the usual. Exploring the only truly infinite frontier.”

“What, the universe?”

“Oh no. Human stupidity.”

YellowSubmarine

2004-07-11T04:51:00.000-07:00

...to provide for the common defense...

Being a family means looking out for one another.

I'm sitting here waging an unsuccessful war with my insomnia and contemplating the break up of my nuclear family next week, I can't help but remember a pact my brother and I made a pact that we would protect our sisters and each other as best we could from physical harm. No outsider would ever harm anyone carrying the family name. It was an adolescent version of 'Civis Romanus', and we only had to use it once.

Several years ago, my little sister was being accosted by the neighborhood bully, a black belt in karate named Mike. Mike was a full two inches taller than my brother was and had more muscle besides. But my brother, and god bless him, just marched straight up to Mike and layed what I'm sure was a beautiful left hook across his chin. Mike's brothers, Lee and Cody joined in and at that point it wasn't a fight anymore, it was an old fashioned ass-whoopin'. My little sister broke free of the melee and ran up the street to get me and tell my big sister what was going on.

She reached me first and by the time I got there, Mike and Cody had him pinned on the ground and Lee was taking pot shots. I didn't think that was very sporting and I registered my displeasure with him by giving Lee an alzheimer's hit (That's what my brother and I call it. It means I hit him so hard he forgot where he was) and then going after Mike. I knew that Mike would rely on his karate, but I also knew he needed some distance to be effective. The first rule of street fighting is never fight on the other guy's terms. When he came at me, I caught his leg and pushed into him, taking him off his balance and knocking him on his back. From that point on he was kicking, punching, gouging, biting, throwing elbows and knees, just whatever. Deprived of his secret weapon, he couldn't take me and he knew it. I got the upper hand and kept laying into him until he submit.

While all this was going on My Brother had gotten right back up and took after Cody, the last of the evil trifecta. He was having an easy enough time with him, but while I was on the ground grappling with Mike, my brother noticed Lee grabbing a baseball bat. He forgot Cody, broadsided Lee, threw the bat in the street and they got to fighting. Instead of continuing the brawl, Cody decided to run into the house to get his parents.

By then my sisters had come and my big sister took to breaking up the fight. My big sister was always the peace-maker. She believed in justice, not jujitsu. She had almost pried My Brother off of Lee when the Bully's mom came out. I was still on Mike. My Brother was still on Lee. That's all she needed to see to know that we were brutally attacking her babies. She pulled me off of her son.

She excoriated us. My Big Sister had tried to come to an understanding of the situation and reason with Mike's mom. She tried. And she tried. And she tried. She tried all the way until Mike's Mom went too far.

"What kind of sick parenting raises kids like that?!? You're parents should be ashamed of themselves!"

Then it was on.

My Big sister had a few keenly worded responses for her invloving the words 'succubus', 'spoiled rotten', and 'Witch'...with a 'B'.

So Mike and his mom marched up to see my Father.

Mike had obviously sustained damage and his mom related to my father about how Cody had ran inside to tell her what was happening only to find My Brother and Me all over her sons. She made referrence to my history of violence as proof. (You know what, I can't lie, I had a lot of anger issues.) Of course she demanded the strictest punishment.

My dad was irrate. FURIOUS! Not only had I been in another fight and apparently really tore into this kid, but because of my bad influence, My usually mild-mannered Brother had too! I don't supposed it helped that I was smiling the whole time she was describing the efforts of My Brother and me.

Fortunately for me, My Sisters came in to add their side of the story, informing the parentals about the initial physicality, My Brother's reaction and subsequent traction, and my involvement before my sister's intervention.

When my brother heard the more complete telling of the days events he turned.

"Ma'am, I have to ask you what punishment you think your boys will be recieving for their actions today?"

"Why, nothing! Whatever they did was obviously in self-defense! They didn't do anything wrong!"

"Well then Ma'am, I thank you for your time."

"I hope you'll punish them so that they learn how to behave and start playing nice!"

"On the contrary. It seems that we are in agreement about the proper course of punishment. I will do nothing because my children have done nothing. In the future however, I hope that your sons will have learned a little self-restraint from this incident. Now if you'll excuse us, I have a hankering for some ice cream. What do you kids say?"

We were thrilled. She was less than thrilled.

"Well then, its settled. Good Evening Ma'am."

That was the best black cherry ice cream I ever had. While Mike & Co didn't stop bullying, they never messed with us again.

We had our problems, but it was times like those where we actively came together and looked after one another that made us family. No matter how bad things got, we always had each other.

Mauve Momma #11

2004-07-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

I loved reading Commander Cream's post, and it makes me admire the kind of people who have lists of concrete things they would like to do before they die. I have my own list, too, but it is rather blurry in nature; it involves ideas more than the actions that will prove I have gotten there. Still, these intentions are a good enough compass to keep me pointed at the kind of life I want to live; I don't mind a little wandering around the path as long as I can still see where it leads.

There are two items on my Do-or-Die list that I have already accomplished, so we'll start with those.

I want to find my calling in life. And I have! I've pondered, and prayed, and done a lot of reading and looking around, and it has led me to the place I am: finding the best possible place for me to grow into an immigration lawyer of legendary proportions. I've figured out the ideal way to be challenged intellectually and do something needed and meaningful. I can't wait to start.

I want to love, and lose, and love, and hold on. I've had several serious boyfriends, and I was even madly in love once before now, but no one has ever been so ridiculously easy to love as PF. If he is around for the accomplishment of all the below, I will consider it an honor and a triumph to have such a irreverent, loving cheering section. No more on that for now lest I lose myself in a vat of cheese....

As for the items which I have yet to reach:

I want to understand God. Some days I feel like I almost do. And some days I look around at my four Bible editions, concordance, books on Buddhism and Western philosophy, and think I'm going backward. But that's okay. I want to be a spiritual person all my life, and when I die, I want to know that I left no stone unturned in my search for God and peace. I think that'll be enough.

I want to be a mom. I want to read with a little person on my lap who looks like me; I want to worry why she hasn't called and then find out I had nothing to worry about; I want to tell her boyfriend horrible, embarassing stories about her running naked down the street. I want to take my place in the generational march -- proudly and with good humor.

I want to give a lot of money away. Now that I know that I'll be a lawyer, I have to admit I might be quite well-off one day. That seems silly to me- I don't want a summer house or a boat or a designer wardrobe. So if I indeed end up with a good chunk of change, I want to do something big with it- finance someone's whole college education, or make a big anonymous donation to a nonprofit I really care about. So when I go, I'll know I didn't try to take it with me.

I want to develop a brave, adventurous spirit. This is the money one- the intention behind any specific item I could tell you, like "I want to swim the Great Barrier Reef" or "I want to skydive" (No, I don't want to skydive. I prefer the plane land me safely on the ground, thank you.) The reason we make those lists is because we want to grab everything we can and experience it up close- the sand, the cold water, the native drums, the thunderstorms. I want it too. But I'm not sure what forms I want my adventures to take yet.

And I don't think I even want to write a list of them. If I have a courageous enough spirit, I will say yes to all the ones I haven't thought of when they appear. Instead of going down a checklist, I will BE Adventure herself. And that way, when friends and mysterious strangers appear with their temptations: "Do you want to water-ski?" "Do you want to sail around Greece?" "Do you want to take a sculpture class with me?" I will say yes.

That way, when I am an old woman, I will look through my pictures and mementos and think: I had a lot of opportunities in my life. And I took them by the balls, baby.

And then I'll get up and go to Naked Model Day at sculpture class. Death ain't gonna catch me sitting at home.

Ivory Angel #11 [part 2]

2004-07-10T06:45:00.000-07:00

This is taking slightly longer than expected. I'll hopefully have all of it posted by the conclusion of voting, but if not and I'm voted out feel free to email me for the rest of the story if you want.

II.

- Miss Angevine, you disappoint me. Your lack of progress is most disturbing.
- Rome wasn’t built in a day; wasn’t destroyed in a day either.
- The task should not be difficult. You have the backing of the most powerful cabals on the face of the planet. It should not be difficult to track down one tiny, little spacecraft and prevent its completion!
- The extensiveness of your patience overwhelms me, Father-Colonel. If you truly supported me, you would give me an army. A scanner, a helicopter, full military support. I think that would make this job significantly easier.
- That alternative is unacceptable and you know that. We are at a somewhat critical junction in world affairs…
- Ah yes, your current political difficulties. A coup attempt in Myanmar, protests sweeping the former U.S.? The civic sphere is not as easy to leash as it once was, is it. Even the believers are whispering about the times before the Calamity, before the Ascendants wielded dictatorial powers.
- They quibble, chirping like crickets afraid of the dark. Our power is only used to benefit mankind, and those who think otherwise are little more than traitors and anarchists. They are not a problem.
- But it’s getting more and more difficult for you to use your military power, isn’t it? You have no war to fight, Father-Colonel. There is no longer an excuse for you to even exist. Your clout with the nation-province governments grows less and less with each passing hour. Without sufficient fear, we are a difficult people to rule, no? And God knows, my grandmother is such an adored figure, so beloved across the globe…interfering openly against her would be political suicide. I think if all those fans ever met the cantankerous coot, they’d stone her to death themselves.
- You underestimate our powers. We merely find it inadvisable to take public steps against her at this time.
- Her islanders are loyal and she is renowned as a hermit. I don’t know why she frightens you so, but it grows clearer and clearer to me that without my cooperation, you have absolutely no power to stop her. I guess that’s why I’m so important to you. And that’s why you’re going to double my future salaryt-
- Impossible. I refuse.
- - AND you’re going to give me a healthy monetary advance, or I leave this room and never return to the island again.
- My, my, now who’s patience is running thin? Out of drugs, are we? I don’t care if you choose to weaken yourself with such ungodly baubles, but I will not waste money satisfying your petty sinfulness. We pay for results and, so far, you have provided us with nothing but excuses.
- But there’s no one else to even make excuses, is there? You really don’t seem to have much of a choice, Father-Colonel.
- Things have changed since last we met. This matter no longer is a top priority for us.
- My, my, now who’s not very good at lying?
- ………There is a possibility.
- A possibility?
- Your demands may be satisfied, but the nature of our contract must be altered.
- Oh?
- We want to ensure Ivana’s dream will never be dreamed by anyone else. You must bring us the Irishman. Intact. We wouldn’t want any embarrassing corpses…
- I don’t kill, no matter what anybody thinks about my mother’s.
- And your former lover. But of course I did not mean to offend. You must understand, in this business it is sometimes important to make clear exactly what it is you want when surrounded by somewhat…overzealous underlings. Violence is the last stronghold of the feebleminded.
- I’m sure Mr. Ferguson will applaud your gentility when he is being interrogated.
- If he is interrogated. You haven’t brought him to us yet.
- You’ll have him within the week. And my advance?
- I will think on it. If you show sufficient progress. Yamita, if you must linger around my office door like that, the least you could do is escort Miss Angevine to the door.
- Good day, Father-Colonel.
- Miss Angevine…one further word of advice: don’t disappoint me. You won’t like what happens when I’m disappointed.

“I know,” Ivana replied, not turning. Chop chop chop chop chop chop chop chop-

“Well? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

“The gun?” Ivana chuckled. “What could I do? I’m an old woman, defenseless in her home. Frail. Inflexible. But I have better things to do with my night than quibble with a callow troublemaker who thinks she knows what life is just because she’s had a little sex. I can think of many more productive activities than wasting my time trying to disarm you- making dinner, for instance. I’m starving already. Won’t you join me?”

“I don’t believe this!” Ramona shouted. Her trigger-finger spasmed, and she forced herself to calm down. “I have a gun pointed at your head…I could pulp your face melon-style with the twitch of a trigger…and you just invited me to sit down to a home-cooked meal?”

“Well, you’re obviously not going to shoot me, so you might as well leave with something.” Ivana’s voice was patronizing. Ramona’s teeth began to grind.

“You’re giving up the money then?”

“I told you- my money is your money. Everything I have is yours according to the law of the Ascendants. Foolish law. Arbitrary. Somebody ought to write a book about it.”

“If you don’t shut the hell up, I really will shoot you.”

“Well that would make it difficult for me to tell you where the money is, wouldn’t it?”

“So you admit secret accounts exist?”

“It’s a distinct possibility.”

Chop chop chop chop chop. This was going on too long. Ramona was feeling impatient. Ivana finished hacking at the orange stalk, calmly sliding it into a pot of water that was already boiling. The pop of air bubbles riding to the surface of the liquid sounded somewhat unreal, and Ivana’s face, distorted by floating water vapor, seemed to hover above her glistening neck, a ghostly incarnation of old Marie Antoinette. Ramona shook her head and checked her grip on the gun. It felt rough in her hands. “You’re playing games with me, grandmother, and I don’t like being toyed with.”

“You loved games, once,” Ivana’s hands went to her wheelchair, and Ramona tensed, but her grandmother only wheeled herself to the bucket of water in the corner, where she scrubbed her fingers vigorously. “Naughty girl, you’ve gone and made me cut myself,” she muttered. “You used to adore all kinds of games, short ones, long ones…you’d play with your father for hours, tiny body twisted in impossible positions as you studied whatever pieces you were fiddling with.”

“You’re senile. And dead if you don’t tell me what I want to know now.”

“Patience, dearest. I’m not going to live much longer, but I’d rather die knowing that I didn’t give myself gangrene. It would make my passing so much easier.” Ivana dipped a white rag into the bucket and began washing her cut hand studiously. Finally, she let the cloth drop gently back onto the bucket’s rim. It hung limply, a dead animal. “Knives are very dangerous,” Ivana said, almost below hearing. “And so are promises made to the powerful. Promises that you cannot keep.”

Ramona shivered slightly. There was something in Ivana’s voice that she didn’t like. “If I remember correctly, guns are also very dangerous,” she sounded like ice in her own ears. “I hear they turn talented, investigative reporters into useless, old crones.”

Ivana grimaced. “I deserve that, I suppose.”

“And a whole lot more.” Ramona moved the gun slightly. There was a soft hiss, and the bucket at Ivana’s feet began to spill water from a hole at the base. “If you’re not going to cooperate, then I guess it’s time for you to die.”

Ivana ignored the water that was flooding up around her chair. “Yes,” she said. “I guess it is.” Despite her words, she sounded so calm and so tranquil… not nervous at all. She was even, for god’s sake, Ivana was even smiling.

“All right grandmother, all right,” if Ramona could haven seen the sparkling in her own eyes, she would have been afraid. “You can tell me your little secret or give me your little speech. Do whatever it is you you’re going to do to keep me from shooting you, though if you’re relying on some sense of family loyalty, you must forgive my sudden chortle.”

Ivana finally turned to face Ramona for the first time. “You are so desperate for cash you’re going to shoot me, correct?” She didn’t wait for Ramona’s nod. “I wouldn’t bother with that. I made some changes to my will, this morning, and Martin can confirm it if you want to bother telecalling him. I decided that my time spent on you has apparently been wasted as well, and so I’ve given up on you ever becoming anything close to a decent human being. Upon my death, whatever money my hefty amounts of life insurance garners will go to my friends, my associates…and Evie the Wonder Cow.”

Ramona blinked. “Evie the WHAT?”

“The Wonder Cow.” Ivana shrugged. “It seemed like a good cause.”

“Good cause, my ass! You’ll make me look like a laughingstock. I can see the headlines now: ‘Eccentric Multi-millionaire Snubs Granddaughter for Beautiful Bovine!’ ”

Ivana chuckled. “You always were a surprisingly bright child. If only you’d put the intelligence to use, somehow.” Ivana, still laughing softly, wheeled herself back to her pot with the boiling vegetables. “I know that the people you’re working for can’t have you kill me. You see, they know I have embarrassing documents and state secrets stashed away across the globe, ready to be exposed the instant I die of even remotely suspicious circumstances. It’s an old understanding- the Father-Colonel and I have had it for years.”

“How do you know I’m working for Needleham?”

“Does it matter? Dinner’s ready, darling. Now that you know how things stand, will you sit down with me?”

Romana snarled. “I could just kill you for being the bane of my existence.”

“You hate me that much, do you?” Ivana shook her head sadly. “My fault I suppose. I never did teach you proper manners.” She wheeled herself over to the table, pot in hand. Ramona couldn’t help but notice the old woman’s wrists shook slightly. Ivana’s eyes hit Ramona’s own, and surprisingly, the bright hazel did seem to be full of genuine regret. “It’s not from fear, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Ivana murmured. “I’m dying, Ramona, never forget that. What’s the point in killing me now when you could just wait a few weeks for my innards to collapse naturally? I hear bullets aren’t as painful, not as hurtful as Rosencratz Syndrome. It’s like waking up every day only to be burned alive from the inside-out. I almost wish you would kill me, just to end the misery.” Ivana smiled sourly. “I’d think you, with your constant plastic surgery and your drugs and your foolish boyfriend would appreciate the irony most of all. I have all the cleverness, all the money in the world, and yet I can’t stop this death from coming, nor make it any gentler. I hate that, I can’t stand it when I’m helpless or dependent on the doctors and their endless rounds of useless anesthesia that barely blunts the edge of my pain. I’ve always wanted badly to be immortal. I think that’s why we’re compelled to write- to leave something of ourselves when otherwise we leave nothing.”

“Bitch,” Ramona whispered. “No matter how I’d love to see you rot, I’d kill you just for the pleasure of knowing I was the one to do it.”

“Call me sentimental,” Ivana replied, with a laugh “but I’ve made it so in your best interests not to. You can’t stop the launch no matter what you do, I’ve seen to that…but after, I’ve made sure you will be taken care of. You may hate me, but you are the only reminder I have of my beloved son. That sentiment has always weakened me. I acknowledge your damned mother should have drowned you at birth for all the pain you’ve caused everyone, but I find myself unable to do anything about that. If I die in space, as I wish, then you will inherit my hidden millions. Maybe then you will end your reckless living and do something constructive with your life.”

“You’re lying,” Ramona was close to tears. Always one step ahead, always better, always leaving Ramona in the shadows her whole damn life. “You have to be lying. If I were dying of thirst in the desert, you wouldn’t even pause to spit on me.”

Ivana shrugged. “I could be lying. You can telecall Martin, and he could be lying too when he tells you that these really are my wishes, but that’s unlikely. He is a priest, after all. And a believer, even if he thinks his superiors misinterpret the will of God. I don’t think it’d be worth it to lie to you, anyway. If you kill me without direct approval from that ghastly Needleham, you’ll die yourself quickly after me for your presumption. Our fates are entwined, as they have always been, and I’ve never pictured you as the suicidal type.”

Ramona’s heart seemed to be stuck in her mouth. For one instant, she almost did it, almost pulled the trigger and ended it all. But even if they both died, even if it ended, her grandmother would still come out ahead. Ramona’s name would be forgotten, while Ivana was forever known as the woman who shook the world and almost brought the Ascendants to their knees, a hero. Nobody would know her as the vile woman she really was.
Ramona put away the gun. “Good girl,” Ivana was already smiling. “Now come and fill your belly at my table.”

Ramona jerkily sat, letting her grandmother fill up her clay bowl with soup as if she were still a child. “Why do you want to go to space so badly,” she asked after a moment, her hands trembling. “I don’t understand you at all, sometimes. What’s your agenda?”

Ivana sounded sorrowful. “Nobody believes me, but I have no agenda. I’ve just always wanted to be able to fly. Even before my body was broken, my soul longed for wings that would life me to the top of this world.”

“You’re lying. You’re always lying, even when there isn’t any point to it. Just to hurt me.”

They ate in silence for a while, until they were finished and the bowls were dumped in a new bucket full of water that Ivana kept filled by the door. The old woman started washing them with her palsied hands alone, refusing, even now, to ask for her granddaughter’s assistance. Slowly, Ramona lit a cigarette, pressing it gently to her lips. It felt good, just to sit there in silence and breathe in the soft, relaxing smoke, but of course her infernal grandmother couldn’t just leave well enough alone and let the blessed quiet linger. Her eyes remained focused on simple things, dishes and soap and an old white rag, as she asked in an almost trembling voice: “Why do you hate me so very much, granddaughter?”

Ramona hesitated. The cigarette fumes wafted down into her lungs, warm and comforting. What did it matter now, if they talked truth together by the fire? “Because,” she whispered, the memories flickering around her like tiny flames. “You never loved me for me. You only cared about me because I was offspring of my father, and the day I broke with his politically radical legacy was the day your affection for me died.”

There was a pause. “You’re wrong about that,” Ivana finally said. “Do you remember the day in the Sacred Garden?”

“I remember, grandma.”

“My feelings haven’t changed, since then.”

“Maybe, but it’s late, and too much has passed between us, for me to believe you now.”

Ivana stacked the dry dishes on the counter and nodded.

***

Heaven. It was the name of the drug that made souls soar. Ramona too had the urge to fly, but this was what did it for her. There were needle marks over all her thighs from where she stabbed herself over and over again with the needy, filthy addict she was. Howard had loaned her money again, ostentatiously for a new dress, but Ramona needed this right now more than anything in the world.

Heaven was like feeling loved and having sex and eating chocolate all at once. It was the comfort of a warm blanket on a rainy night, the thrill of the fall from a skydiver’s plane. Ramona didn’t even feel the needle sliding into her veins, it was an old friend by now, and the bruises on top of bruises left her blessedly numb.

It took a little longer each time for the drug to kick in, and each time it brought Ramona a little less high, but the pleasure was still there, endlessly with her. Besides, her unexpected poverty meant she hadn’t had a fix for days, and the cool warmth that suddenly coated every nerve fiber made her shiver with delight.

And with fear, when the hallucinations kicked in.

“Grandma, why did you bring me here?”

No…no…anywhere but this…

The sacred pool was clean and deep. Blue, like her mother’s eyes. Ramona was five and she skipped a little, hopping from rock to rock beneath a gray sky tinted green with jungle leaves.

No…no…don’t remember this, not now, not now…

“I brought you here because I love this place. It’s where I go to get away from the sordid matters of this world. The locals believe it is blessed of the Gods.”

“Of God?” young Ramona crossed herself.

“No, of the Gods.” Ramona was too young to hear the bitterness in Ivana’s voice. The grandmother had just been confined to her wheelchair a few months ago, and the locals, in their love, had carved a path to this place for her, so she would not be deprived of even the most simple of pleasures. Ramona didn’t understand why the natives’ kindness made her grandmother so mad, but she saw Ivana’s fists clenching in her lap and knew that for some reason, speaking of religion like this made her grandmother hurt. “ Not all of the world believes in our Merciful Lord.”

“Don’t the Ascendants know this? Mama says they make the world pure.”

“They know, but as long as people give outer obedience, they don’t give a damn about anyone’s saving anyone’s soul.”

Ramona absorbed this solemnly, but it seemed too big for her, somehow. She shrugged and smiled. Her mother would explain it all to her later. Her mother had told her to pay very important attention to everything grandma said, because she was very wise and sometimes her mother had to help her understand what she meant when she said things. Every visit, Ramona had gone home and made very sure she could repeat everything Ivana said word-for-word. “Can I please go swimming now? Pretty, pretty please?”

Ivana laughed. “Go ahead, beloved one. Nobody will mind. You may even be blessed, washing in the tears of the Gods.”

Ramona stripped naked before leaping into the water. It split around her, gobbling her up like Jonah’s giant whale. She laughed at that and bubbles got stuck in her nose, so she quickly kicked out and touched the bottom before she came up again. “I touched the bottom, grandma!” she said, excitedly. “Aren’t you proud of me?

She didn’t wait for her grandma’s absentminded nod to dive down again. The water was very cold, though, and Ramona didn’t stay in the pool for very much longer.

Soon, she found herself stretched out on a rock in the sun, still naked. The stone was warm beneath her, and her skin felt sleepy all over. Hesitantly, her grandmother pushed herself out of the chair, lowering herself to the ground beside Ramona. It took not to laugh as Ramona watched Ivana wriggling out of her dress like a snake before flopping to the rock beside her. Ramona would have to help her get back in her chair, and that would make her grandmother mad again. The thought made Ramona wince in preparation. Ivana seemed to be mad a lot lately, since she had given up her legs for wheels.

“I love the Sacred Garden for another reason, though,” Ivana said in a voice Ramona hadn’t heard her grandma use before. Ramona looked over and saw Ivana’s subtle, hazel eyes close. “Your father is buried here.”

“What?” Ramona bounded upright, “but I’ve visited him, I’ve seen the place where he lives underground!”

“He doesn’t live there anymore.” Ivana reached out and pulled Ramona down next to her so quickly Ramona couldn’t help but giggle. “No, he hasn’t lived there for a long time.”

“Didn’t he like being near to me and mama?”

Ivana was quiet for a long time before answering. “It wasn’t that way. It was that your mama didn’t like being near to him. She told me so herself, one day. She laughed at me and told me…you’re too young to understand.”

Ramona laughed. “That’s just something you say when you don’t want me to know something.”

Ivana smiled, but it was a very sad smile. “You are a very clever girl. It has to do with love. Some people love people. Some people love other things more: wealth, fame, prestige. The Angevine name gives people power.”

Ramona smiled and rolled over onto one elbow, looking at her grandmother carefully. “Do you love people?” she asked, young enough to hold her breath. Young enough to believe the answer. “Do you love me?”

“Of course, dear child,” Ivana said. “If my love for you was a pool, you could swim forever and never touch the bottom.”

Ramona’s heart skipped a bit at that. Her mother never said such things. Usually she only told her to get out of the way. Her grandmother didn’t say such things often, either. Even though she would always call Ramona her “darling, dearest dove” or silly names like that, there was an edge in her voice, a sharp thing that Ramona didn’t understand. It was only years later that Ramona realized what that buried dagger really meant- it meant that when Ivana looked at the child, looked at her hair and her face and deep into her eyes, all her grandmother saw was her mother, stamped into every feature and every gesture by habit and by the jokes of genes. Ramona didn’t have any of her father inside of her, not really, and Ivana’s hatred for Maria could overcome any affinities ruled by blood.

But in the still of the Garden, as twilight began to fall on them gently, Ramona suddenly felt her grandmother’s arm reach around her and squeeze her tightly. The arm was pale and wrinkled and smelled like bad butter, but Ramona realized that she felt good that way. Ivana hadn’t held her since the wheeled chair came into their life, and she didn’t hold her that way after the garden either. Maria didn’t let her daughter visit Ivana again for a long time, not after Ramona explained to her what Ivana said about her father’s grave, and when she did come back, years later, Ivana had never taken her to see the Sacred Garden again.

***

“Don’t you give a damn about her? Or about your duties as a citizen of the Globality?” Ramona was wearing her most alluring shirt. It was white, and cupped her dark, Spanish breasts like a second skin. The Irishman had most likely not had anyone but an ugly village woman for a long time, and if Ramona could get him back to her home in New Rotterdam, he would be hers for the taking. Most unfortunate, she found that not all the sexual perverts had left with the space colony. The Irishman was bigger than any man Ramona had ever seen and was covered with wiry hair and axel grease, all of which made him distasteful to her. Not that it mattered, since he only liked men. Her promises to the Father-Colonel appeared suddenly somewhat rash. “Mr. Ferguson, do you realize that you’re helping one of the greatest women of our time to kill herself?”

Evan Ferguson’s lips twitched. His accent was soft and graceful, almost unnoticeable in his speech. “And I suppose you be doing this out of love for your grandmother, then?”

Ramona forced herself to smile. It was hard. They were sitting in a bench in the village, as Evan refused to meet with her in private. By telecall, they had arranged to meet in a park that was in reality a patch of burned land, where the jungle had been stripped clean to make room for a baseball diamond, long ago. The grass was gone, unable to last long in the acidic soil, and half-naked children played kickball in the dust in front of the pair. Their screams punched into Ramona, (still sick from the after-grip of her drugs) the noise battering her already aching head. She longed to take the dry gourd they were using as a ball and smash it against this smug Irishman’s face. He knew too much about her feelings for her grandmother, and she didn’t like that one bit. “Ivana and I may not always get along, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about the witch.”

Evan grunted noncommittally. Ramona sighed and took a cigarette from her purse. She seemed to be going through them like candy, lately. “What give you the right to judge me? You’re the one who’s killing her, not I.”

“She’s dying anyway, I canna stop that.” Evan sighed and leaned back against the bench. “If you truly cared about her, you would let her go her own way, in peace.”

“They are working on treatments. How would you feel if you let her die and they discovered a cure the next day?”

“I’m a scientist, lass. I studied biology long before I dabbled in engineering. I’ve seen the projects- there will be no last minute miracles.”

The smoke from the cigarette wafted softly upwards, hanging in the air like the tails of a ghost. “You feel no duty to her soul, then? She’ll be damned forever if she takes this course.”

“And she’s not already?” Evan chuckled. “She’s an atheist. And by your tenets, I don’t even have a soul, not a good bone in my entire body. Right now it’s taking all your strength not to leap off this bench and run far away from the sexual pervert. If she be goin’ to hell, at least she’ll do it in style.”

“You have a duty to the government. There is a law against suicide, and against space travel.”

“There is no space shuttle, and you canna prove otherwise. Ivana has told me you will no kill me, either, no matter what empty threats you may utter.”

“My grandmother has lied before. She makes you dance to her tune which you don’t here, faithful that this foolish venture will end well for you. That is a mistake, friend.”

“She may lie to you, lass, but not to me. Never.”

Ramona doubted that strongly. Honesty was a tool like everything else in Ivana’s collection, and she used it like a scalpel, and seldom. The gift of the Angevine genetic line was the ability to manipulate people’s emotions, that what had made Ivana such a good revolutionary, what made Ramona so attractive to men. It was as sure as the sun’s consistency that Ivana was using this man, but he was so in love with the image of her shining goodness that he would die before abandoning her. Ramona tried another tact. “You do know that if you are accepting funds from her, you are in direct violation of the orders of the Council for Interior Affairs and can be imprisoned for the rest of your life. By law, her money is mine as long as she continues her insanity.”

“Obviously then,” Evan’s smile was a flash of crescent white teeth, “any work I may or may not be doing for Ivana is completely pro bono.” He stood up, stretching his tree-trunk arms with an expansive yawn. “I believe you be out of slick lines to feed me,” he bowed before her, surprisingly graceful for a man of his size. “If you have nothing else to say to, I have work I should be gettin’ done”

He didn’t wait for Ramona to leave, didn’t offer to escort her home either. Didn’t anyone on this island have any sense of courtesy? Ramona snubbed her cigarette out on the side of the bench. The children were yelling louder now, voices raised in obscene catcalls as they abandoned all rules of the game to pile violently on each other, rolling across the ground like little biting tornados. She watched them, holding her head between her hands, and groaned softly. One step ahead of her, always. Would nothing in her life ever go right?

She could only hope that Howard was doing better. By association, thinking of Howard led her mind to Nick, but she quashed those thoughts with practiced brutality. Unlike her first lover, Howard was unskilled and unintelligent. He’d never pull it off.

But she could still hope, couldn’t she?

***

There was no bell to ring, no intercom to push, so Howard rapped his knuckles against the splintering wood door hesitantly. He had telecalled the woman ahead of time, informing her he was going to come and was surprised not to find her in the yard, waiting for him. Howard was used to people waiting for him. It all came, he supposed, from using a fake name- he was denied the proper respect due to him and to the Littleli family. The holocaster buzzed softly at his neck, and he tugged at it, annoyed. The machine was letting out obscene amounts of heat for a day like this, and the vibration in his skull made it hard to think. Howard didn’t understand the need for it, for the holographic disguise and the sham name, but Ramona had made it very clear they were necessary, and when Ramona wanted badly enough, Howard found it very difficult to deny her anything.

He knocked again, and this time the door squeaked open. The woman stuck her head out and Harold had to suppress a little, delighted shiver. She really was old and spotted with age, her long, hatchet-edged nose almost obscene for its lack of rhinoplasty. No anti-aging treatments at all, Ramona had told him. Howard wasn’t used to seeing people so appealingly ugly. Especially the natives, many of whom had lost their front teeth. It was all so primitive, so exciting! It gave Howard a small, secret thrill in those places inside him that Ramona snickered at.

“Yes?” Ivana J. Angevine asked when the silence seemed to have thickened for too long. “You want something, young man?”

“Good evening, ma’am,” Howard cleared his throat and tipped his hat the way supplicants often had to him. He tried to remember what their smiles looked like, how their voices had somehow managed to sound so pleasant, but he wasn’t sure he was doing it right. “My name is H-Harold Ziegler. I, uh, talked to you over the telecaller?”

“Oh yes. Of course. Well, you might as well come inside. I don’t talk business on my doorstep.”

The house was surprisingly cool and dark. Once his eyes had adjusted, Howard realized that the old woman was wearing a brilliantly colored raincoat despite the humidity, just like Ramona said she would. She really is insane, Howard thought. How magnificent!

“Well?” Ivana gestured to a chair. She was already sitting in some wheeled contraption, not at all like the sleek modern wheelchairs with their prosthetic limbs, and Howard had to suppress the urge to grab her skirt and see if her legs were really as atrophied as Ramona said. Instead, he sat down and folded his hands in his lap politely. Ivona folded her arms sternly across her chest: “You said you had a business proposition for me?”

She didn’t seem much for pleasantries, so Howard launched directly into his prepared speech. “Ms. Angevine,” he began formally. “I have journeyed these many miles to your island to ask for your aid. My name is Harold Ziegler and I am director of a charity foundation, the Blessed Light Society, that is devoted to raising money for treatments of the blind. As you know, most defects in a person’s sight can now be cured through the power of prosthetics-”

“I do know this.” Ivana’s eyes narrowed. “Get to the point.”

Howard cleared his throat nervously and pulled out a pocket handkerchief. The air on this island was much too damp and heavy for human comfort, and the holocaster collar was beginning to itch. He hadn’t really planned on being interrupted, and it took him awhile to collect his thoughts and start again. “Th-the prosthetics are often unavailable to people in poor or underdeveloped areas. Our organization is completely dependent on donations, botj from the church and from wealthy men and women such as yourself. Mrs. Angevine, your generosity is legendary…”

Flatter her, Ramona had said, running her tongue around his ear ever so fetchingly. “Flatter the bitch, make her ego feel lovely. She’ll be coughing cash into our laps by the millions before the day is out.”

“But there is no charity, is there? No Blessed Light Society?” Howard had been confused. “Wouldn’t taking her money be…illegal?”

“You know I have authorization from the Council to work around such formalities. And if she’s holding my money in defiance of their wishes, wouldn’t getting it for me merely be restoring the legal balance?”

That did make sense, in a way.

“So, you’re asking me for an investment?” Ivana asked, startling Howard.

He jumped in his chair. “Hmm?”

“I said, ‘so you’re asking me for an investment?’ That is what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

Howard nodded, “if you could find it in your heart…to think of all the impoverished children…”

“Child,” Ivana said with a smile, “I would dearly love to invest, but I’m afraid my granddaughter currently has all of my funds, rendering me powerless to give you aid. If you want to ask her for money, I do believe she’s in the village somewhere. And I’m sure you’ll find Ramona…very munificent. Her heart truly aches for all the underprivileged people in the world.”

Howard scratched his neck nervously. Ivana wasn’t supposed to know Ramona was on the island. “A-a-are you sure you can’t help? The children truly would be grateful.”

“I am very sorry, and I would if I could, Ziegler,” the woman replied. “But I’m afraid that it’s beyond my powers at this time. Now if you’ll please excuse me, I have some work I must do.”

Before he knew it, Howard found himself sitting on Ivana’s doorstep. He switched off the holocaster with a grateful sigh- he was almost beginning to believe a bee had lodged itself in his brain somehow. The relief immediately fled as he realized that he was going back to Ramona empty handed. She wouldn’t like that a bit. If there was one thing Howard knew to be true, it was that things went badly for him when Ramona didn’t like something. Ivana’s knowledge of her whereabouts was sure to make her furious.

Howard didn’t pray often, but he decided a plea to the Merciful Divine wouldn’t hurt.

***

It was Nick who first taught Ramona the love of gambling, just as he had been the first to teach her the wondrous taste of Heaven and the process of sex.

“Between the flip of the cards, the roll of the dice, the turn of the wheel, nations rise and fall. Men live and die.”

Nick had always been somewhat poetic, and back then, his touch had been gentle, his hands sure. They held Ramona’s own, stroking them gently, pulling them up to his lips to kiss them again and again. “Taking a chance makes you feel alive. Risking it all for something unsure is the only way to make life interesting, some days.”

Ramona wouldn’t have called her life boring, but she didn’t know how dull, how certain everything was until Nick had brought her to her first casino. She had won a lot of money that night, and it wasn’t because of her name or her wealth. It was something Ramona did on her own, without her family’s influence, and there wasn’t anything quite like that thrill of sudden, sure independence.

Of course, she learned later that Nick had helped her by cheating. She had been angry at first, then she realized it was part of the game. It raised the stakes so much higher.

Nick had taught her so many things, until his drinking and debts had turned him from a civilized man into a brutal savage. Ramona had cried the day he was murdered, even if she had been the one who paid the killer to do it. She killed the assassin herself after he allowed himself to come to her bed as part of payment. The sight of blood on her sheets had made her queasy. Bleeding still made her feel a little sick.

Today, she was playing in the rural part of what once had been named Brazil, where the casino’s anti-cheating mechanisms were less than advanced. The roulette-boy with his perfect, shining teeth didn’t realize that one of her earrings was magnetic, and with a flip of the switch, she could change the color of the chips set before her from blue to red to yellow and back again, ensuring she won or lost as little or as much as she liked. Of course, there was the chance of being caught, but she doubted it, not with the chaos of so many screaming locals placing bets and the wheel-boy’s eyes distracted, sucked straight down into her near-exposed cleavage like a sailor thrown overboard.

The money was nothing, the chance of being caught was everything. That was where real excitement was.

“Fourteen, black,” the wheel-boy muttered, and Ramona allowed herself a girlish whoop as her holochips were joined by real ones that could be turned in later for hard currency. The couple next to her, a pair of artificial blondes from the coastline, laughed in rueful disgust and waved to the boy before walking across the floor, hand in hand. Howard’s hands had been shaking as he shoved money at her last night. Here, here, he had said. I’m sorry I’ve failed my dear but you must forgive me, here, go have some fun tonight.

Ramona still wondered how her grandmother had known she had been in the village. It seemed impossible that the Father-Colonel, the only person who knew about her movements, had asked her to stop her grandmother’s flight only to hamper her every move. Besides, their hatred for one another was legendary. Ivana had made a very public accusation concerning both the failed assassination attempt on herself and the strange circumstances surrounding her son’s death. Crispin Angevine had died in a stairwell, a bullet in his brain. The registration number had proved the bullet belonged to the Ascendants, though the local storehouse had recorded the bullets “stolen” the year before. In return, it was a well-known rumor that Angevine funds were behind the coup in New Zealand that had left the Needleham’s only sister dead. There was no way he would be feeding her grandmother information, unless he was being blackmailed somehow. Ivana had mentioned some suspicious documents, once…perhaps…

Ramona was so deep in thought, she didn’t feel the sudden quiet press down against her skin, didn’t notice the wheel-boy’s smile becoming more and more forced. Or rather, she did notice, but it was too late for that. She abandoned her chips, turning to run for the exit, but thick arms suddenly wrapped around her stomach, expertly lined with her solar plexus. She thudded into them with a grunt and folded against a body that was fat and hard.

The knife pressing against her throat had the chill of ice. “Hello, my Ramona,” a familiar, accented voice whispered in her ear. “Have you missed me, love?”

Ramona made a strange choking sound as one of his hands game up and buried itself into her dark hair, forcing her still. She felt the knife begin to slit.

YellowSubmarine #11

2004-07-10T00:34:00.001-07:00

"MAN OVERBOARD!"

It was a faint cry amid the howling rain and the raging ocean, but it was unmistakable to anyone who had earned their sea legs.

"WHERE?"

"PORT STERN"

"GET THAT LIGHT ON 'IM, HEX!"

"AYE SIR!"

"THE LIGHT!!!"

The Captain made his way to the rear of the ship. No easy task between the bucking of the ship and the cross spray. Out of nowhere...

"Fuck! Jesus! God Damned Mother Fucker Cocksucking ass ramming bag of putrid monkey splooge!"

Over the years the Captain had acquired the sailor's penchant for colorful language along with his sea legs. This latest outburst was provoked because the boom had come loose and was flailing about the desk threatening to broadside anyone who came by at the wrong moment. At least that explained the overboard.

"SOMEBODY SECURE THAT BLOODY BOOM!"

He made a slide and caught the rail at the stern of the ship.

"SLUGGO, STEER US INTO THE WAVES, WE DON'T WANT TO TAKE IT ON THE SIDES!

WHERE THE HIGH HOLY FUCK IS THAT LIGHT?"

A beam shone onto the water, panning it erratically until it came to rest on a single dark mass, floating in the water. The winch was primarily used for towing tubes or other boats. The captain had something entirely different in mind. He took the line from the winch and looped it through the gunwhale, then secured the line around his waist.

"KEEP THAT LIGHT GOING!"

SLUGGO, I NEED YOU TO WAIT FOR TWO TUGS, THEN BRING US IN ON HALF THROTTLE"

A gust of wind blows him off balance and he falls into the water. At first he is shocked at the coldness, but he quickly aclimates and regains his wits. He heads for the light and puts as much distance between him and the boat as possible. no use getting dashed by a wave on the side of my own boat

"I LOST HIM CAPTAIN!"

"HOLD THAT LIGHT!"

When he reached the light he dove straight down and tried to feel for a body. The swell of a wave lifted him and it's passing drew him deeper into the darkness. DAMN IT! ITS DRAWING HIM AWAY!!! With new frenzy he searched and searched the waves. As time passed, despair grew. The waves kept swallowing him and spitting him back up. When he wasn't submerged, the rain bit and stung his face and his teeth were chattering, despite his valiant efforts to clench his jaw.

He knew the longer the both of them were out there the farther they got from the boat, and the longer they stayed in the water, the closer they came to drowning or hypothermia. Lord, its me again. You know I'd never ask for my own salvation, but this kid has been in the water for too long already. Heaven help us if something were to happen to him. I know I'd never forgive myself. Please Lord, if you're listening, he needs your help. We need your help. Mercifully, he found a limp, heavy object floating on the surface. He wrapped one arm around it and gave two hard yanks on the line. He felt a tug. That meant the winch was working and the line was holding. They'd be in the cabin soon. He felt for a pulse. It was faint, but it was there.

When the winch finally pulled them to the boat the two yeomen pulled their comrades aboard. Hex immediately began performing CPR despite the pitch and roll of the ship. After a minute, the body once again became animated, wretching sea water and coughing as if it was taking in air for the first time.

"GET HIM TO THE CABIN WITH THE REST OF THEM. ASK THE DOCTOR TO LOOK AFTER HIM AND DON'T LET SHOCK SET IN! I WANT HIM TO DIE EIGHTY YEARS OLD IN FRONT OF A FIREPLACE! HE WILL NOT DIE ON MY SHIP!"

"AYE, SIR!" Hex dragged the motionless body into the cabin and the captain set about securing the boom.

"THE CHARON WILL NOT FERRY US OVER THOSE EVIL WATERS THIS NIGHT, SLUGGO! HA HA! WE WILL NOT MAKE THAT JOURNEY TONIGHT! KEEP HEADING HER INTO THE WAVES!"
_____

In the cabin sat three couples, warm, if not entirely comfortable. The violence of the motion was impossible to escape, as was the constant drumming of the rain against the cabin roof.

Of the three couples, One was made up of two Constitutional Lawyers. The second was comprised of a Doctor and a school teacher. The last couple was a civil engineer and a nuclear physicist.They were all heading to their new home on the newly independent commonwealth of Bornemania, a string of islands off the coast of Peru. It was a truly novel form of government. It was meant as a haven for the enlightened and citizenship was restricted to the best and the brightest. The captain was one of the founding fathers. Currently they were still developing and so the captain granted citizenship to certain friends of his and was taking personally taking them to their new country via his own yacht to aid in its development. Only one of the couples had made the trip by sea before and they had made that passage with clear sailing. The atmosphere in the cabin was thick with apprehension.

The door opened and along with a gallon or two of rain water, two men descended, one being carried by the other. It was Hex and Dominic.

"Make room on the bed for him, and one of you grab some blankets! Doctor, if you wouldn't mind..." The tone of Hex' voice insisted obedience. Hex immediately undressed him and a blanket was shortly draped around his shoulders. Hex removed a flask from his hip and applies it to Dominic's lips.

"The captain has a policy, but I think he'll make an exception in this case."

Dominic moaned his appreciation.

"The captain doesn't like alcohol?" Asked the school teacher.

"Quite the contrary, he just doesn't allow drinking in stormy seas."

The teacher sighed in relief. "Well, that's reassuring that he'd want everyone's head about them. Or is it a sea sickness thing?"

"Not at all miss! He just says it sloshes the Brandy!"

Her eyes became wide and her face turned green.

Not another word was spoken for hours. Hex nursed Dominic and the three couples huddled together praying collectively for their safety. In that time the seas calmed and the boat began to steady. The cabin door opened again and in walked the Captain.

"That's the worst of it. I apologize for any ill-comfort. It can get pretty feisty around the horn. I guess its just bad karma. That's what I get for sailing under the Jolly Roger.

"How's he doing Hex?"

"He'll make it."

"Excellent. I need you to relieve me on deck. I'll be up shortly to relieve Sluggo, and you can tell him I said that."

"Aye, Sir."

"And Hex, good job."

"Thank you, Sir." Hex disappeared above the stairs.

"How are all of you? I see you made it through the storm in tact, but how are your nerves?"
_________

Wait. Stop. You know guys, I'm reading over this and its just a real crap piece of writing. It has promise, but it reads like I'm just screwing around.

I apologize for not being able to deliver a better piece. I've just been distracted is all.

The question was what do we want to do before we die? I had the idea to fictionalize an account of a ship at sea. I've always wanted to design and build my own yacht, under sail. I've always loved travelling and seeing new places. I moved around a lot as a kid and of my siblings, I was the one who took the constant upheaval most gracefully. I realize now that I didn't care where my house was because my home was always where my family was.

No matter how awful the first day of a new school was, or how terrible the kids in the new neighborhood were, we could always go home and have three other kids we had known each other most of our lives to commiserate with and to defend us.

It's always been like this. Even when I was homeless, I had a home. Even though I live in a completely different part of the country, I can always travel back to the central part of California and there lies my family waiting for me. Its been a source of peace and strength for me all my life.

I'm going back again tuesday afternoon to say good bye.

My brother will be leaving for boot camp on the twenty-seventh. My little sister will leave for college this fall. My elder sister is about to undergo serious treatment for a variety of cancers she has been living with for years now.

Up until now, my family has by and large stayed close to each other. When my sister moved out, she was five miles away. When I moved out, I was seven miles away. Same for my brother. Aside from moving all the way out here, my family has always been 'within spittin' distance' as they'd say in the south. All except for me, and I go back to visit frequently.

But now with all the change that will happen over the next few months, my family will be breaking up. That single source of strength and serenity will be no more. The rock of my salvation will have finally crumbled.

I'm sure we'll share gossip on occasion, and send christmas cards to each other's families, but that unity, that togetherness won't be there anymore. It was the same story with my dad's family.

Gone will be my big sister's good natured grin. No more cutting her off in the middle of one of her sermons to annoy her by correcting her bible passages. No more making fun of her church clothes and getting 'socked' for it. No more sneaking our own alcohol into the house and throwing parties for our mutual friends.

Gone will be my brother's sarcasm and dominance of almost every video game except the fighting games where I reign supreme. Gone are the times when I could smeell something burning in his room and then laugh at him for frying another processor in a vain attempt to overclock it. My brother and I have no secrets from each other. We used to share a bunk-bed and we'd have something called 'midnight discussions' where we'd stay up til dawn or climb out onto the roof to talk about girls, cars, and what we would do with a million dollars.

No more fudgy no-bakes when my little sister sees you're having a bad day. No more 'Hug letters' written in purple marker on her notebook paper, simply signed 'Angel'. No more giggle fits where she can't breath because she's laughing too hard, or bear hugs that pop her back.

No more lording secrets over each other, sticking up for each other, knock-down drag out fights with my brother for no good reason. None of my dad's guilt-inducing hypochondria or sneaking food to the dogs during the big family dinners around the table. No more bonding playing jeopardy.

I'm going to California because it will possibly be the last time that everyone in the family will be together for a long, long time.

If I've been a little distracted its because for the first time in my life I don't have any place to come home to. Without that, where's the joy in wandering? I have just lately realized that although I've been through a lot of experiences, seen a lot of places both dark and bright, and I've wandered all over the country, none of it matters without some place you can call home to come back to.

Next week, when I return from California, I will be homeless for the first time in my life.

Black Knight #11

2004-07-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

Jim DiCul rode the train home from work every single day. It was a two-hour commute and it was always crowded. Jim worked as a sales associate; that was a nice way of saying Jim sold trash service to people who had trash. Everyone had trash, so everyone pretty much had trash service already. Jim spent every day on the phone prostrating himself to these customers, trying to get them to have their trash hauled with him. It was degrading.

"Gamgee! Next stoooop, Gamgee!"

That's funny. Gamgee?

"Excuse me, sir?" Jim said to the conductor. "Where's Gamgee? I've never heard of it before."

"Never heard of it?" laughed the conductor. "Well, son, we'll be there in just a few minutes. You can see it then." Jim asked how long the train would be stopped there. Five or ten minutes, said the conductor.

Today Jim had found himself having to tolerate the shrill laugh and redneck drawl of a woman who owned a salon. For two hours, she kept him on the phone, all morning, and then in the end she didn't even end up buying trash service from Jim's company. When Jim hung up the phone and went to find someone to vent to, he found they'd all already left for lunch without him. Jim didn't have a car -- hence the train -- so it was vending machine food. Again.

"Gamgee! Now pulling into the station at Gaaaamgee! We'll be here for fiiiive minutes."

Jim had ridden this train for each of his thirteen years as a sales associate. He'd never heard of Gamgee before. What a strange little town it must be. Jim found himself curious.

He walked to the door of the train and peeked his head out. A large sign read, "Welcome to Gamgee." A child rode his bike down the street nearby; the houses all had personality. A young woman walking nearby turned, saw Jim, and smiled. She was pretty. She waved at Jim, and Jim waved back. He figured he'd better get back to his seat.

He sat down and stared out the window as the train began to pull away. A dog ran at the feet of the letter carrier, a tiny little dog. The mail man turned, reached down, and ruffled the dog's fur playfully... and then it was gone. The train chugged on.

When Jim got home, he greeted his wife, Kara, with a bleak "hi." He had long ago stopped telling her about his days; he had nothing to tell, and it bored her.

"Dinner's in the fridge. Spaghetti," Kara said, flipping blankly through the TV channels. Jim really didn't like spaghetti.

The next day at work, Jim's boss, Ethan, chewed him out for his sales numbers. "You've been here for thirteen years, Jim," he barked, "and I've got junior associates who are outselling you!" Jim meekly apologized and promised to work extra hard. He said he'd stay late, whatever it took. "You'd damn well better," said Ethan. "I'm sick of you not pulling your weight."

That night, Jim stayed even later than usual, calling old contacts, old customers who had left. He managed to lock down one sale that day, but he knew it wouldn't be enough. Desperate, he started cold-calling from the Yellow pages (the goddamn Yellow Pages, he thought to himself) but it was starting to be useless. Everyone had gone home.

He figured he had better too. After he'd been on the train a while and night had set, he heard the conductor's voice call "Gaaaamgee! Next stop, Gamgee! Just a few minutes until Gaaaaamgee!" Jim peered out the window as they stopped. Streetlamps pooled gentle orange light onto the pavement. A man and woman walked, quietly, hand in hand, enjoying each other's company. It seemed like such a beautiful city. Jim found himself almost involuntarily standing up, but the train pulled away.

When Jim got home, he noticed another car in the driveway. Entering the house, there was no one downstairs. Jim, puzzled, wandered into the living room and saw no one; suddenly, he heard Kara coming downstairs.

"Jim, you're home!" she said, out of breath and a little flush.

"I... yeah... Kara, whose car is that?"

"Oh, it's just, um, it's just my friend Peter's."

"Oh."

"I invited him over for dinner, just, you know, just to hang out."

"I see. Well. Okay, sure, I think I'm just going to make a sandwich or something. It's late."

"Are you okay, Jim?"

"Of course. Heh, sure!"

At work the next day, he didn't get chewed out. No one talked to Jim at all, in fact; they carried on conversations right in the door to his office with each other, never even acknowledging he was in there. He called back to confirm some route details with the customer he had landed last night... and the telephone just rang and rang. No one answered.

Jim was depressed.

Jim was down.

But Jim wasn't out.

Jim took his coat and left work early. At three o'clock, he boarded the train, enough time to be home by five. But Jim wasn't going home. Not today. He eagerly awaited the conductor's call, and when it came, he nearly jumped out of his seat:

"Gamgee! Next stop! Gamgee train station!"

Jim waited by the door of the train as it pulled to a halt. "Eager to be on your way?" asked the conductor. "Seems like a nice little town," Jim said. "Think I'll have dinner here." The conductor swung open the door and placed the stool on the ground so Jim could step lightly. He did so, and on the platform of the station, looked around and breathed a deep breath.

Jim felt tranquil. And peaceful. "Afternoon," said a woman on a nearby street. "You new here?" she asked. The train pulled away from the station, slowly, then faster, until it disappeared in the distance. Jim took another deep breath. But then Jim screamed at the top of his lungs.

--

Two men lifted the heavy casket with both hands, sliding it slowly into the back of a hearse. "Easy, easy!" said one. "You hear what happened with this guy?" said the other. Shook his head no. "Apparently, the poor bastard just stepped off the back of a train in the middle of nowhere. Strangest thing I've ever heard. Just... stepped off."

"Damndest thing," said the other, and swung the back door to the hearse shut.

On its reverse, it read: "GAMGEE FUNERAL HOME."

Commander Cream #11

2004-07-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

If all goes well, I'll respond to TKO #10 on Sunday, too.

I hate Martha Stewart. She played a trick on all Americans: and I’m not talking about ImClone and insider trading. No, Martha just set the bar that much higher. She wasn’t just a mother, chef and author. She was also a savvy businesswoman who rose up from her middle-class roots and built herself an empire. Martha did it all, and she did it with style, grace and her own television show. I will never run a multi-million dollar corporation, sew seat covers on television, or (hopefully) be indicted for security fraud. But there are goals I want to accomplish: some of them may be as unlikely as living up to Martha Stewart’s example.

I want to run with the bulls in Pamplona. I want to run from Marathon, Greece, to Athens, Greece. But first, I want to get into good enough shape that I won’t follow the example of the first marathoner and die when I reach Athens.

I want to repel down the Grand Canyon and then climb back up. I want to cliff-dive in Denmark. I want to avoid a repeat of my last trip to the hospital when I unintentionally combined the two by cliff-diving (not into water) and being forced to climb back up.

I want to really build a place I can call home. I have a fairly large herb garden right now. It accompanies me on my cheerfully nomadic life. I want to find somewhere I can feel comfortable enough to transplant my garden permanently.

I want to taste giant water bug in Thailand and monkey brain in India. I’ve already tried haggis, black pudding and tripe. I hope that the bugs and brains taste better.

Someday, probably not for a couple of years, I would like to ski again. I would like to be comfortable enough with my past and a friend’s accident that I can overcome my fears. By the same token, someday I would like to comfortably to ride a horse. There are some fears that I would like to overcome.

For once in my life, I would like to really succeed. Succeed without qualifiers and on my own merits. This remains nebulous in my own mind even as I write this, but I want a victory that I can call my own; a victory that would earn me the right to call myself a Cream.

I want to write a book. I doesn’t have to be a great book, it just has to be a book that I would be proud to sign Commander Cream. Well, scratch that: I want a book that I would be proud to sign {censored}.

I want to swim through the kelp forests off the coast of California. I want to swim among sharks in Australia. I want to swim with pink river dolphins in Brazil.

With all the traveling I hope to do, I want to be able to communicate. Mastering Spanish, German and Chinese would be a good start. Well, to be fair, mastering English would be an even better start. I want to travel the world and never need a translator.

And I want to find someone I trust enough to share the adventure.

I hope that my eulogy will mostly consist of people saying “Commander Cream: she lived her life. I’m amazed she survived.”

…yes, that’s ironic…

Actually, that’s not strictly true. I plan to tape record my own eulogy in advance. I guess that will have to be my epitaph.

Ivory Angel #11 [Part 1]

2004-07-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

This post is a little different because I’ve been reading Isaac Asimov and I felt the urge to write a story. It’s set in a future where religious fundamentalists (called Ascendants) rule a totalitarian global government during day and independent gangsters reign over the onyx world of the night. See if you can spot the life goals. Forgive me if it’s a little rough, but it’s kind of rushed.

"And Ivana Decided to Die Today"
A serial in three parts.

Somewhere, a girl stands atop a red stone that the village elders call Blood. The girl sees everything with her clean, green eyes; she hears everything with dark, slim ears. And tonight she has damp hair and dark dreams and a stick she uses to draw spaceships in the dirt.

Somewhere, such a girl looks up, expectantly, and she sees the ocean explode.

- I trust you understand how important this is to me. And to you, as well…
- Oh really, Father-Colonel, I don’t see how a city girl like me should possibly care anything about a damn cow’s death wish-
- Tea for our guest, Yamita.
- Yes Father-Colonel.
- Yes, that’s better. Now don’t be so coy, Miss Angevine. Of course your grandmother’s affairs matter to you. There’s a punishment for lying to a holy man, you know. And you’re not very good at it.
- If you asked me here to recite a list of my flaws or preach to me, Father-Colonel, I’m afraid you’re wasting your time and mine. I shall bid you farewell-
- I think that would be most unwise, Miss Angevine.
- I thought you Ascendants abhorred thinking. If I’m staying in this abysmal place for however long you chose to keep me here, can I at least smoke?
- Ascendants abhor thinking? A common misconception. Not in here, my dear- smoking is terribly bad for your health.
- A lot of things are. Getting involved with affairs of the Council of Interior Affairs, for one.
- Miss Angevine, I’d find it most refreshing to exchange pleasant witticisms with you all day, but we have urgent matters to discuss. Specifically, your grandmother. How is your assignment going?
- Peachy-cream, my darling Father-Colonel. Simply spasmodic!
- Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, child.
- Well, you try dealing with that archaic bitch!
- I have had-
- She’s eighty years out of style and she has no common sense! Doesn’t she realize now she’s been outmaneuvered? But no, giving up doesn’t appear in her lexicon. Surrender is only for the well mannered or the rational!
- I’m sure you’ll be able to persuade her of where her true interests lie, Miss Angevine. You won’t like the consequences if we find your efforts…unsatisfactory.
- What are you going to do, shoot me? I don’t think so. I’m the only link you have.
- I don’t need a link, I need a tool. And a broken tool must be disposed of.
- Why do you want her silly outerplanetary jaunt stopped so much, anyway? You seem to be going to a lot of trouble for this. She’s just an outdated old hag- what harm could she possibly do?
- What harm, Miss Angevine? I don’t know, and that’s the problem.

Ramona lightly pinched her nose inside the sanitarium. She didn’t like hospitals, didn’t like the way they smelled. So damn sterile. So damn nice. They were not meant to be lived in by humans, not meant to be smudged with the dirt that inevitably trailed Ramona’s patented leather thigh-high boots as she walked in from the rain. There was a mat that she tried to wipe the heels on it (tan and woven-style- how quaint. Someone had painted a word on it, or a bunch of scribbles that might be a word. Ramona didn’t speak anything but English and was damn proud of it.) She gave up on getting clean eventually, knowing that she’d never be neat enough for the hospital. Besides, what else were janitors for?

“Where is my grandmother?” she demanded to the desk clerk. He was small, brown, and his smile was almost as big as his ears. Wasn’t there one proper plastic surgeon on this rock? “I’m looking for Ivana J. Angevine.”

“Ningo,” the boy murmured, pointing vaguely. “T’es Ykkun the bling-bling?”

Ramona grimaced. “ENG-LISH!” she said, slowly and loudly. “I ONLY SPEAK ENG-LISH!” Now they seemed to lack both proper plastic surgeons and proper educations.

The boy, perhaps understanding her at last, slid out from behind the counter and pattered barefoot over to her. He grabbed the edge of Ramona’s sleeve with a grubby hand- she’d have to wash it later. “Ningo,” the boy repeated, and began tugging her towards an open doorway. The sun was shining through, leaving a sun-pattern on the white carpet that was somewhat reminiscent of a giant, golden parakeet. Ramona sighed. Back outside to the mud.

Ivana was sunning herself in a chair. As usual, she looked ridiculous. Still slim as a whip, her glassy skin stretched over aristocratic bones like an elastic blanket. You wouldn’t know it from her outfits- it was the deepest heart of summer and every inch of her was covered in at least two layers of clothing. Today Ivana was shoeless, which only mattered because one of her socks was green and the other orange with indigo stripes. Beneath a billowing yellow raincoat, Ivana also wore a purple, sleeveless moo-moo and a silver belt made out of woven linked, grinning skulls. One yellow sleeve was folded back to reveal elbow-length leather gloves patched in worn places with denim. You wouldn’t know Ivana’s hair was the platinum color that Ramona would die for either- the whole yard of it had been stuffed unceremoniously into a drooping wicker sun hat. It had stuffed birds on the brim, and if Ramona looked at it long enough, she began to feel as if the dead black eyes could somehow see inside her.

She was knitting, as usual. The laughable ensemble wouldn’t be complete without the needles and the eye-shredding colored cloth oozing, snakelike, from her lap. Since being committed, Ivana had decided to make the best of it and learn to crochet. “Always wanted to do that before I die.” Unfortunately, her tastes seemed to run to making shapeless, neon-pink sweaters that were the bane of all human sight. And they smelled like that putrescent homemade dyes Ivana used- Biological weapons, Ramona thought to herself. If the Ascendants truly cared about the welfare of humanity, Ivana’s sweaters would be classified accordingly.

“Ah, Ramona,” Ivana’s smile was wide and crooked. Wide hazel eyes, half obscured by the hat brim, did nothing to dim the grandeur of her large, pointed nose. She truly is the Wicked Witch of the West. “So good of you to visit your daft grandmother. Heaven forbid I be both deranged and denied the sight of such a pretty face. How much did you spend to make it that way?”

The boy was tugging at Ramona’s sleeve again. “Tip?” he asked.

“Get a haircut!” Ramona snarled, yanking her sleeve away. The boy winced and looked at Ivana uncertainly.

“Tugovae Niei Barhst De Bitcheo, Ell Notres Degamo Samat Oje.” Ivana told him. “Ignore the cheap bitch. She hasn’t had a man today.”

The boy laughed and scooted away. “You needn’t translate your crass humor to me,” Ramona growled, dusting off a nearby chair. It might have been white once, but now it was a lost cause. Ramona sat on the edge very gingerly.

“One of my few remaining pleasures,” Ivana said with a shrug. “Petty, I know, but there it is. The nice thing about being a deranged crank is that you can’t really be help responsible for anything.” There was silence for a moment, except for the click of crochet needles. “Ramona, why are you here?”

“Because I know you have the money. I want to know where it is.”

“Oh?” Ivana put aside her knitting and smiled. “And why should I help you? It was you who put me away in the first place, remember?”

“And I can get you out again,” Ramona’s hands were gripping the sides of her chair so hard one of her violet stick-on nails was beginning to come off. She didn’t notice. “I can take you back to that miserable hovel you call a home. Then you can go back to growing cabbages or whatever it is you do.”

“Mangaroes,” Ivana corrected softly. “Have I told you how my friend gave me the seeds as a gift for freeing him from a bogus murder charge? They’re special, really one of a kind, the only ones like them in the world because he destroyed the recipe. Wonderful man. Good in bed. I wrote a book on it, you know. Innocent Depravity: How They Slaughter Us with Justice. It was on the best-seller list for three solid months…”

“Yes, yes,” Ramona waved impatiently. “I know all this, and I know you’re not as senile as you’re pretending. Where’s my money?”

Ivana’s eyes narrowed. “If there was any money, I believe it would belong to me, and not you.”

“I could have you moved, you know. I could send you somewhere less…pleasant.”

“I would like a change of view,” Ivana replied flippantly. She went back to her knitting.

Ramona sighed. “You are truly impossible.”

It wasn’t as if she was after her grandmother’s money out of greed. No, no…nothing so crass. Ramona was doing what she did for reasons of patriotism- the purest of the pure motivations. And if she happened to profit from that nationalist spirit, well, who would oppose it? Father-Colonel Domin Needleham had his toughs pull her off the streets of New Rotterdam and hustle her into a dark office specifically for the purpose of protecting the State. He had told her there that the entire Globality was at stake. Of course she was somewhat flattered by his regard, and if he didn’t treat her quite like an equal, that was to be expected. Domin was the fifth-most powerful man in the world, a member of the Council of Interior Affairs, and he knew his own worth.

“I have just received word,” Domin said in his quiet, gravely voice, “that your grandmother has just decided that it’s time for her to die.”

“Good,” Ramona replied. “The bitch should have keeled over years ago. If only that assassination attempt had left her in a grave instead of a wheelchair, the world would be a more sparkly type of place.” And I would be about four hundred million dollars richer.

Domin raised a polished silver eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you had anything to do with the attempt, did you?”

Ramona colored. “N-n-no,” she stammered. “Of course not… I would never…”

“Too bad,” Domin said, and Ramona decided that she liked him.

But good ol’ grandma Ivana wasn’t just committing suicide- she was doing a suicide with style. She had apparently commissioned some out-of-work Irish hack to build her a rocket ship, just like they had in the old days.

“A spaceship?” Ramona was incredulous. “But why would she want something like that?”

“My sources tell me,” Domin paused, then shook his head, “something that simply cannot be true. They tell me she wants to die flying. Not in a plane, not in a wingsuit…and of course skydiving is clearly not an option, given her inhibited condition. Zero-gravity is the closest thing to real flight she can get.”

“Die flying, eh,” Ramona chuckled. “It sounds just like the sort of insane thing she would do.”

Domin’s eyes blazed for a moment. “You underestimate your grandmother. She may be dangerous, but she isn’t crazy.”

It turned out that long ago Ramona’s grandmother had been in close contact with the CEO of FarStar Inc. before he ran off to create his colony on Mars. There had been an entire series of pictures in the newreels of the once-multi-millionaire, his nose smudged with sweat and red-orange dirt. He was the laughingstock of Earth, kept everyone entertained for months, giggling their asses off. Where were his flamboyant silk suit and ties now? Some paradise.

At any rate, the “Outlanders” (as they soon were named, nobody knew how the title started but it just stuck), were notorious for their flaunting of Ascendant religious law and Globalic regulations. It didn’t reassure the people of Earth that the colony was primarily populated by sexual deviants renowned for their instability. The fact they had refused to dismantle their nuclear weapons like the rest of the human race was just the icing on the cake. The Ascendants put them under Interdict. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, “Shepherdton” was doing just fine without any supplies from the Globality whatsoever. Somehow they’d become self-sufficient. Who’d have thunk? Nuclear power had been outlawed too after the Great Calamity, which made it impossible to establish colonies with living conditions that were remotely decent. So between the lack of colonizing incentives and the ban on communications and trade between Mars and Globality, there just wasn’t much point to space anymore. Yet Ivana was going. Ivana wanted to die flying. And she had known subversive CEO Jay Gardner, founder of the Mars colony.

“We don’t talk about this to just anyone, Miss Angevine,” Domin informed her coldly. “So you must understand, this is a matter of the most sensitive Globalic security. But the precarious balance between the Globality and Shepherdton requires us to strike now, or lose our home world forever. The Outlanders have nuclear weapons and are planning to use them. A preemptive strike is the only way we can preserve security, for ourselves and for our children.”

“A preemptive strike?” Ramona asked. “So this has nothing to do with the recent revolts in Myanmar and St. Louis?”

“Nothing,” Domin’s smile had no warmth. “Nothing at all.”

Ramona, despite the assumptions people made about her, wasn’t stupid, and she didn’t swallow bullshit as if it was caviar. But it did make sense that her grandmother might have an agenda, might be bringing the sexual perverts some warning, or news of weaknesses, or something else equally as traitorous. What would be the point of going to space otherwise, and wasn’t she the most famous Subversive of their century? But Ramona didn’t need Father-Colonel Domin to know that she knew all this. If he thought her a fool and easily manipulated, it might that could be turned to her advantage later. “I don’t know,” Ramona blinked slowly, doing her best impression of a country-bumpkin drawl. “Grandma’s a really formidable woman. You can’t stop her when she makes up her mind.”

“But I can assure you that if she was stopped,” Domin leaned forward conspiratorially. “We’d be sure to make it worth your while.”
Ramona smiled. “How much worth my while?”

“I think your grandmother isn’t the only one in the family with a flair for politics. I could give you your own region to Administer- for the good of the people, of course. More than a pipsqueak island where the people don’t even have telephones. And a salary to match the weight of your new…responsibilities. Ivana is a volunteer, so she doesn’t get to experience any of the real perks of the job. But I see you as the kind of girl who knows how to take advantage of a sweet offer.” Domin took her hand lightly. “I know what you want. You want to get out of your grandmother’s shadow. You’re sick of being just ‘the other Angevine.’ And I think that you’ll be a stronger, better Administrator than she ever was. And that’s why I’m asking you, and not anybody else, to do this for us.”

Ramona’s smile widened. She wondered if her teeth needed whitening. “I think you have yourself a government conspiracy.”

But she would have done it anyway, just to spite the old biddy. And there was the matter of a certain gambling debt… diverting off dear grandma’s funding would fulfil the purpose twofold: stopping construction of Ivana’s ship as well as giving Ramona a little pocket-change to play with. It was like taking two birds with one stone.

Except the stone was more like a microscopic pebble…And the birds were vultures the size of long-drowned Manhattan.

Ramona first tried her hand at forgery. She stopped in at Ivana’s island for a surprise visit, and Ramona’s grandmother welcomed her with joy-filled arms. Ramona wasn’t used to sleeping on grass mats rolled out on the floor, but it was worth a little insomnia for a shot at four hundred mil. And carefully, she watched as her grandmother signed everything, collecting old handwriting samples Ivana threw in the garbage, waiting for an opportune moment to collect the latent thumbprint off a cold glass of vodka. Ramona scraped together the last of her money to pay off the best forger anyone knew: Johnny the Hand, so called because he had traded in his hands for lobster-like claws that were made of steel and had the accuracy of computers. Talk about irony.

When Ramona came back to her grandmother’s island, she brought with her a check complete with signatory thumbprint that so precisely matched Ivana’s hand, the old bitch herself would have been completely fooled. The check was for an excellent sum, and Ramona took it to Ivana’s accountant with pride.

Martin G. Maddock was short and round with glasses the shape of teacups and an office that smelled like pumpernickel. When he smiled, Ramona saw that, like Ivana, his teeth were all crooked.

“If you were going to try forgery, Miss Angevine,” Martin said mildly, “you could have at least tried to do a credible job of it.”

Ramona stormed out of the smug accountant’s office without a word. Her grandmother sent her a Hallmark Hologram back in New Rotterdam, where she had been sulking a straight three days with her latest boy-toy, Howard. “Sorry about your failed business transaction,” a sympathetic seal told her. “Here’s hoping that next time that you have a ball!”

Ramona smashed the projector, but not before a red and blue rubber ball began rotating slowly on the now smiling seal’s wet nose. Funny. Fucking hilarious.

So Ramona did the only thing she could think of- she got Ivana committed. Ivona was going to attempt suicide, right? That definitely meant she was mental. So Ramona put on her grieving granddaughter face and gone to a doctor who was perfectly willing to be distracted by a miniskirt and the wad of cash shoved hastily into his hand (a loan from Howard Ramona had paid for…in trade). The doctor swore fealty and committed Ivana to his sanitarium on the sea. By rights and by law, all Ivana’s money now fell under the control of her only living kin- Ramona.

Unfortunately, there was no money to be had.

Nothing. Not a cent in any of Ivana’s accounts. They had been cleaned out two days before, almost as if Ivana knew this had been coming. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Ramona hadn’t told anyone her plans. Except the Father-Colonel of course. Perhaps the lines were bugged.

Ivana was still in the hospital, two weeks later, not seeming to mind a bit. But Ramona was on the verge of cracking. So many millions…so close…she could almost feel the slide of cash under her fingertips, hear the roll of loaded dice as she made her millions expand and dive upwards along income blue-inked charts…like some spectacular, ever-rising hot air balloon…

But it wasn’t to be. The accounts were empty. And Ivana sat in a chair, knitting away without a damn concern in the world. Ivana was grinding her teeth again. Her dental health official hated her for that, but she didn’t care about that one iota right now. If only she could shake the woman’s composure just a little, prove Ramona was in control. She was the one who had Ivana committed. She was the one who was calling all the shots!

“I will repeat this slowly so your old, dried-up ears can hear me,” Ramona hissed. “WHERE’S…MY…MONEY? You can’t possibly have spent it all, not even on that spaceship of yours.”

“Spaceship? I have no clue what you’re talking about.” Ivana shrugged between stitches. “Well, as the doctors say, I’m quite insane. I don’t quite know what I did with my money. It’s all one big blur.”

“It’s that damned accountant, isn’t it, the one with the potbelly? He’s done something illegal or…hidden them somehow. I swear, if you don’t cough up the truth now, you won’t go down alone. The Peace Forces will be down on his ass so fast he’ll think he’s being sodomized. There’s only one way to protect him.”

“Careful,” Ivana smiled. “It’s treason to talk about a priest that way.”

Ramona felt the color leaving her. “He’s…a Brother?”

“Yes,” Ivana nodded. “He gives me private services every Sunday. He has the loveliest sermons. Very uplifting.”

“But you’re…you’re an atheist!”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t fear for my immortal soul,” Ivana crossed herself fervently. And winked.

“You’re exasperating!” Ramona shouted. “I don’t know how you managed to corrupt a Brother but-”

“But nothing. He has Divine Diplomatic Immunity for Life. Unless you can prove he’s not keeping up on his Ascendant duties properly, there’s nothing you can make stick to him.”

Ramona snarled and stomped out. Of course the priest would be top drawer- there was no real question about that, or Ivana wouldn’t have mentioned it as a possibility. Ramona wondered if the hag was even now thinking of some witty card to send to add to her misery. Maybe, “Poor in cash but lucky in love?” “I’d donate a kidney if I wasn’t at the organ bank selling my spleen?” For one hundred and eighteen years old, the woman was certainly juvenile. She’d probably throw fake vomit on the floor next time Ramona saw her.

Ivana’s voice echoed out behind her. All joviality and mocking had vanished without a trace, leaving a polished, serious voice that sounded awfully grave. “I’m dying of Rosencratz Syndrome, Ramona. Nothing more, nothing less. Can’t you just let an old woman die in peace, living a dream, the way she wants to? I just want to go out with a little dignity.”

Oh, Ramona thought, there will be no plutonium powered ship to take you away from this misery. This humiliation. You’ll be here when your brain breaks down and you start drooling on your pillow. And I’ll be hear to enjoy it.

***

Ramona had tried something else when she found out Ivana had emptied all her accounts. It made her feel dirty and common, but by law, the house was hers now, so it wasn’t really burglary.

Anyway, there had been nothing to burgle. Not even a bed. Ivana lived in pathetic squallor considering her reputed amounts of wealth. She had a was a three-room hut made out of mud and straw that didn’t have a temperature regulator, or even a carpet. Ivana had never been sophisticated enough to stock away works of art- no sculptures or holo-picts or not even one goddamned Van Gogh. There were some photographs, but they were all of Ramona’s father, Crispin, before he had died in the accident shortly after Ramona herself was born. There was an old economics diploma, framed and half-sticking out of a stack of scribbled French poetry, a red hoola-hoop bent out of shape and missing it’s Hoverall, a certificate of merit for services to the government, a copy of some bullet serial numbers with two casing counts circled, and a bundle of plastic, yellow day lilies that had been stacked haphazardly on top of a gnashed brown boot. There was nothing, period, except for useless junk.

The only things of remote interest were the books on Ivana’s shelves. She didn’t seem to have any real possessions but the mountains of paper bound in leather. Ramona thought of all the trees butchered, their livelihood smeared with large quantities of slick ink spilling out in eight different antique languages. Even the English was incomprehensible- mostly archaic junk that Made Ramona’s brain ache just thinking about it. She began tearing out the pages, hoping she’d discover a secret cash stash, but to no avail. Ramona did find some of her grandmother’s book lying around- they were out of print, maybe she could auction them off for a little. Better yet, one was autographed. “My dearest darling dove- you are the light that drives my ship to safe harbor, the inspiration to make angels swoon.” Ivana’s name was signed with so many flourishes the each consonant could have been a stretched bedspring. And was that just the faintest hint of perfume on the back cover? Ivana rolled her eyes. Sentimental rubbish.

Something about the perfume made her think about Nick, though. She didn’t know why. Ramona slammed the book shut and shoved it in her purse. She didn’t take anything else from the flea-ridden house, or open any other book there ever again.

***

“I-AM-LOOKING-FOR-A-SPACESHIP,” the strange woman with the light skin shouted, waving her arms in what could be best described as resembling a duck. “YOU-KNOW! MACHINE-WHIR-BANG! ZOOM-ZOOM-WHOOSH-FLY-STARS-COME!”

Chief Wasseem Breadbringer wanted to laugh at the woman’s mad gesturing, but he kept his mien as still as stone. I am not deaf you ignorant foreigner, Wasseem thought to himself. And you do not need to shout. Ivana Twotongued has warned of you, viper, and we stand prepared. You bring venom and not riches, and we shall not allow ourselves to go gently into that dark night.

For the moment, Wasseem pretended ignorance. He spoke Esperanto and English fluently, and he had a degree from Oxford, but the villagers had decided it was great fun to force the white woman to squawk to get whatever she wanted. So Chief Wasseem slowed down his words and thickened them with an accent bordering farcical. “I have not seen this thing you speak of,” he said, politely offering tea. She took it with a put-upon sigh that was recognizable in any culture. “Perhaps you are mistaken?”

“NO!” Ramona Snakewoman said, sniffing at her tea. She put it down with a grimace. “No. This thing…you will not have seen it before. You would not understand it as a machine because it does not look like the things you might expect to see. Now, this is a giant flying dragon with flames coming out the ass.”

Wasseem had to concentrate on the fly crawling slowly up the wall of his hut. Very slow, that fly. Very steady. “I know no dragon,” he said at last. “We are peaceful people. We have no uses for machine or silly monsters.” Her voice really did sound better when she was not shouting. It had a certain cadence to it that sounded Dutch, if he could remember. He realized the silence had gone on too long and cleared his throat roughly. “No, no, there is nothing like that here. You have surely drunken too much swamp-sauce. You should find nice man. To settle you.”

Ramona’s eyes narrowed. She had very pretty eyes, for a foreigner, though Wasseem didn’t like the way they seemed to be rolling all the time. “You’re lying,” the woman said. “I don’t know why, but you are lying to me.”

This wasn’t a game any more. The girl was being very serious. “You insult my honor,” Wasseem said softly. “You insult my word.”

The girl shifted nervously. “No, no, of course not,” she stammered. “But…you might be mistaken… or there must be others keeping things from you.”

“I think not,” Wasseem said, even softer this time. “Unlike you, I trust my brothers and my sisters.”

“But there is a spaceship,” Ramona said. “I know there is a spaceship. And if there is, by your creed and by the contract my grandmother signed when she became Administrator of this island, that would be forbidden technology. It is not I that dishonors your ancestors. It is not I who treats your word like pig slop.”

Wasseem’s frown deepened. This Ramona child did not sound as foolish when she spoke anymore. He wished she would cover herself properly, though- he felt uncomfortable when she leaned forward. “Administrator Ivana’s ways are not our ways. We understand this and allow her some leeway. She has never brought harm to us because of this.”

“Hasn’t she?” Ramona asked quietly. Conspiratorially. “I thought this was a drought year. Perhaps your ancestors are telling you something.”

“Perhaps they are telling us that we should not listen to foreigners who do not even understand the tips of their own noses.”

“Perhaps,” Ramona shrugged. “But don’t the sacred text say that all technology is abominable in the eyes of God? That it is an insult to the world we walk on? Your island suffered a catastrophe because of faulty technology- your people would have been even more prosperous if some foolish scientists had not ‘usurped the will of the Almighty by soiling their hands with the creation of baubles made in their own image.’ ”

“You’ve read the sacred text?” Wasseem asked, eyes widening. “You’ve know our teachings?”

“I am not as worldly as I appear,” Ramona’s black lashes dipped slightly and she looked out at him from the corner of her eye. “ ‘And behold, thy shall not only look to wisdom in men, yea, because woman also may guide thee to the doors of righteous dominion, as long as they be pure.’ Remus Karmali.”

“ And ‘the devil can cite scripture for his purpose,’ ” Wasseem replied. “William Shakespeare.”

Ramona surprised him by laughing. “Touché,” she said with a perfect smile. “But please, think about it. If a plant that generated power for only a few thousand homes caused unimaginable devastation to your island and your way of life, how much more damaging would an accident involving a ship that has the power to travel millions of miles be?”

Wasseem did think about it. He shook his head slowly. “Ivana would never betray us.”

“She’s getting old,” Ramona replied. “She has a disease. Rosencratz. Brain degeneration. The end will not be pretty for her. She might be sliding now.”

“She would not harm us. Even if her I.Q. becomes next to nothing, she would not hurt us.”

Ramona shrugged. “Perhaps. You must do what you think right, of course.” She reached out and took his hands between her own. Her eyes found his and held them in a vice grip, and her fingers moved surprisingly gently across his old skin. She really did have the most amazing eyes. No flaws whatsoever. “But you will think about what I said, won’t you please? You don’t have to decide right now, of course, I just want you to think about it. I know you are very wise. I know you are a good leader. And I am certain you’ll make the right decision.”

Snakewoman indeed. I would tame you and make you a wife, if I could. You would be useful at the boring meetings of nattering elders. “I will consider the matter, but I doubt my answer will change.”

“Consider.” Ramona withdrew her hands and looking down shyly, “That is all I ask.”

***

Two weeks later, Ramona was driving down the freeway at top speeds, her car phone clutched in one hand, the wheel clutched in the other. “WHAT?” she yelled as she swerved around some idiot who thought a merge lane was actually a rest stop. “WHERE IS SHE?”

“I told you, Ivana’s returned to her home. Your transfer to the worse hospital was exactly what she wanted. Apparently, the head doctor there is a friend of hers, owes her a favor like everyone on that damn island seems to and so signed the orders to send her into outpatient care immediately.”

“I’ll castrate the bastard.”

“Wouldn’t do much good, being that the doctor’s female.”

“Whatever, I don’t care, just get her back. You said you could take care of things?”

The doctor paused, as if he was licking his lips. “Well, it was out of my jurisdiction…it wasn’t my fault you…”

“JUST SHUT UP! I NEED TO THINK!” Ramona almost threw the phone out the window but thought better of it. She screeched by a grandmother-driven convertible with her horn shrieking. The domes of New Amsterdam, glowing white with the sun, rose in the distance, echoing the boom of sonic jets hanging just above where the cityscape scraped the sky.

“At least you still have control of the money,” the doctor at the other end of the line said, hesitantly. “She’s still insane. The only difference is she’s at her own house now. Even the head doctor of a clinic doesn’t have the clout to override the will of the Ascendants.”

“Idiot! It takes more than a signature on a state-sanctioned page to give me control of what rightfully should already be mine. The bitch is clever, I’ll give her that, but she not clever enough. Not nearly.”

The doctor paused. Then timidly he asked: “Orders, please? I have patients I need to-”

“Yes. Go then, but watch her. Carefully, this time. If she gets off-planet we’re both dead. Find the money and that damn spaceship ASAP.” Ramona didn’t wait for his reply to hang up.

Something fast was on the radio. Turbo-folk. She kicked the dashboard before remembering she finally realized she had the voice-interaction fixed. “Car, switch stations. I’m sick of this shit. Give me something…hardcore.”

The car buzzed pleasantly under her. “Yes, mistress. Warning: traffic jam ahead.”

“Shit,” Ramona said. Then: “Car, Dial Father-Colonel Needleham. I want to tell him there’s been a slight change of plans.”

***

Ivana was dressed in the same assembly as she wore in the hospital, only this time she wore a navy blue apron over the tawny raincoat. If she looked closely at it, Ramona was certain she’d see cutesy-kitty paw prints. How quaint. There was also the wheelchair instead of those dreadful off-white chairs, of course. The wheelchair looked like it was trying to devour Ivana’s torso. Just looking at it sagging and swallowing her slowly made Ramona gag.

Ivana was cutting long, orange vegetables and pushing them to the side of her cutting board. She didn’t turn when she heard the ominous click. “I wondered when you’d be coming back.”

Ramona gripped the gun harder. It was government issue, untraceable, bullets unnumbered. “I don’t know how you do that. By hand, I mean. Why you gave up all the machines and civilization and everything.”

“You never will,” Ivana said. “And I can’t explain it to you. I don’t even know if I can explain it to myself. There’s a satisfaction to doing things this way, you know.”

“Oh how provincial,” Ramona sneered. “So rustic and so romantic. I’ve got a gun pointed at your head, by-the-by.”

“I know,” Ivana replied. She didn’t turn around.

Results & TKO #11

2004-07-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

The eighth contestant voted out is Czar Red who recieved the most votes -- three (including one from herself). Immunity was awarded to Yellow Submarine.

Also, Purple Rain was Abram Rose (Madgenius).

TKO Question #11

I admit this TKO is a little shameless. But I'm making the list of things I want to do before I die and would like input.

What do you want to do before YOU die? Your "wish list" to accomplish or experience before your end?

(This doesn't have to be in list format if you'd rather make it a fictional narrative for all you on-topic-hacks).

Remember post by Saturday at noon.

NOTE! Two people will be voted out this weekend. That will leave three people left which is enough to finish the game the following weekend :)

YellowSubmarine

2004-07-07T20:27:00.000-07:00

He sits alone in his apartment and relieves the humidor on his desk of another cohiba. He is about to smoke it in his own ritualistic fashion. First, he admires the shape and luster of its wrapping. He draws the cigar beneath his nose and allows the smell to fill his nose. Then he rolls the cigar between his fingers and feels the smoothness of the wrapper. He listens for a crinkle, the sign of a poorly rolled cigar, but finds nothing unsatisfactory. He pours an ounce of rum from the faux-crystal decanter into a double-shot glass. In it he lightly dips the end of the cigar, only long enough to not spill the rum or soak the tobacco. He then clips the end of the cigar and lets it rest in his left hand for a moment. With his right hand he passed the rum beneath his nose and knocks back the shot, allowing time to savor the warmth of the amber liquid dispersing the insatiable fire through his chest.

Now comes the best part of the ritual. He brought the cigar to rest between his teeth, never letting it touch his lips. He strikes a match, touches it to the end of the cigar and draws first breath. He watches as the fire dances on the end of his cigar. He watches the trail of smoke rising up to heaven as a declaration of the burnt offering. With this final sacred acknowlegement he draws the cigar to his lips. First contact was always barely a brush against the half-parted lips. Ah, but the second touch is magic.

It is on second contact that his lips commit to the draw and seem to fuse with the cigar. When the bitter shock of the rum meets the waiting suppleness of whetted lips in that first moment of realization, it almost seems too rough, too garish. As the touch lingers on his lips, what first seemed vulgar now becomes intoxicating, and he is compelled to suck the marrow from it all the more desperately and does so with a moan of satisfaction.

He had known her in the same fashion, and with the same intimacy as this cigar. He had admired her simple, unadorned beauty. He knew the fragrant blossom of her smell. His fingers had traced along her every curvature and drank of the suppleness of her skin. He knew the chime of her voice and had listened to her searching for some indication that she was too good to be true. He had found nothing. He had dressed, and undressed her and he had layed with her. He had tasted her. He had felt her warmth and been inspired by her. There was something unique, something special, something sacred about their union.

He had never smoked around her. She would have thought it was disgusting. She would have said he was killing himself. Now she probably wouldn't care. Now she'd probably save any such worried enteaties for him. He pined for her, but all he had were these cigars in her stead and if he could no longer kiss her, let his mouth be full of hot ash. That was why the ritual. Every time he smoked one he made love to her again. When his lips finally touched a new cigar it was their first kiss once more. She would have said he was killing himself.

Ah, but what a sweet way to go.

Black Knight #10

2004-07-07T11:37:00.000-07:00

"I'm going to teach you a lesson about people, Milton."

The two men were driving along a dark freeway at about 11 o'clock at night.

"What are you going to teach me?"

"I'm going to teach you how to help people."

Milton was an angel, as was the one that was speaking to him, named Kerrigan. They had walked and driven on the earth for three hundred lives of men -- a really, really long time. In that time, the pickup truck was their favorite human invention so far, because it made wandering the earth so much easier. They kept a shotgun rack in the back. They weren't loaded, but in the kinds of places they drove, people without shotgun racks in their pickup trucks were suspicious. No need to attract more attention to yourself.

Second favorite invention: hairbrush.

"I already know how to help people, Kerrigan."

They pulled into a truck stop that said, in bright, neon lights: "TRI COUNTY." Milton had no idea where they were. Somewhere in the middle of somewhere, probably.

"You know how to help some people. I know how to help these people. Come inside and see."

They got out of the truck. Kerrigan took of his John Deere hat and scratched at his thick curly black hair. They both looked... well, Jewish, not to put too fine a point on it. Semitic. This necessitated them avoiding certain parts of the world for certain parts of history, and although truck stops were hardly enlightened salons, as long as neither of them talked too much about circumcision or spoke Hebrew, it worked out. Being fluent in Hebrew had opened surprisingly few doors in their travels, honestly.

The truck stop was quiet. They sat down at the counter and ordered some coffee, and Milton looked around. People minding their own business. "I Got Friends (In Low Places)" was on the jukebox. Milton considered paying to hear a Hank Williams song but he didn't have any quarters -- he'd lent his last two to Kerrigan to make a pay phone call about an hour ago. He hadn't said what for.

Very few people knew that sometimes God would play some Hank Williams at the pearly gates just to calm people down. Mostly on the days when tornados killed a bunch of people in a trailer park.

"Hi boys."

A girl had sat down on Kerrigan's left; Milton hadn't noticed. She was young, and Milton knew exactly how young: she was seventeen years old and her birthday had been nine months and six days ago. She had plain, brown hair that fell over her head in clumpy strands and pale, almost translucent skin. Her eyes were her most striking feature: bright, bright blue and huge, making her look waifish and innocent.

"You lookin' for a good time?"

"Maybe we are, honey."

"Kerrigan!" Milton hissed. He couldn't believe the words that had just come out of his mouth. Didn't he know what this poor girl was asking? Didn't he know what went on at these kinds of truck stops? They'd sure been to enough of them by now to know that when a girl asks--

"How much?"

"Kerrigan!!" Milton hissed, louder and more desperately now.

"Your friend doesn't like girls or somethin'?" The girl laughed at Milton. Kerrigan laughed a little too. The funny part was, neither of them liked girls, in the sense she was thinking. Kerrigan shot Milton a glance; their long friendship and supernatural state of existence allowed that glance to communicate a very precise thought. Shut up, it said.

Two minutes later, they were leading her out to the pickup truck and Milton was fighting the urge to vomit. But he'd grown to trust Kerrigan and he knew that he wouldn't do anything to this poor girl.

Would he?

They sat in the back of the truck.

"So, which one of you guys is first?" the girl asked. Kerrigan pointed at himself, and the girl reached over, draping her hand across his stomach, and reached down to unbutton his pants. Milton couldn't stand it. He opened his mouth to shout "stop," but it was drowned out by sirens.

"Oh my god! Cops!" the girl shrieked, and tried to jump up, but Kerrigan grabbed her by the wrist. Milton watched as the cop car pulled up alongside them and stopped, shutting off the sirens.

"Hold it!" shouted the officer, getting out of the front seat. "Is one of you Daisy McGill?"

"What the FUCK?" shouted the girl. "How the FUCK did you find me! Let me go, you piece of shit!" She started punching Kerrigan, who was still holding her by the wrist, and kicking him. "These sick fucks were trying to rape me! Arrest them! Help!"

With some help from the cop, Kerrigan got her into the back seat of the cop's car, with Milton still standing by dumbfounded. He was, if anything, feeling sicker than before. What she was doing was illegal... but turning her in? How was that helping anything? She'd go to jail now, and...

"Which one of you boys is Milton Rosengard?" asked the cop.

"I... I am," he stammered.

"Well, I just want you to know you did a good thing tonight, son. That poor girl's momma has been looking for her for better part of a month. Called damn near every station in Alabama."

"She... Alabama?"

Milton glanced over to the girl, staring out the window and fuming, and made eye contact with her for the first time. A rush of images flooded between them, memories, emotions.

A casket, a long time ago.

"He's not my real daddy! I hate you!"

Dong. Ding. Dong. Bells at a church.

Rice thrown.

"I don't wanna move! I hate you and I hate him and I hate his stupid son!"

"I'll show that asshole to try and take my mother." Whispered in the dark as a backpack is filled with clothes.

Two weeks later, a truck stop. Hungry. Tired. Sick from crying so hard, sick from never eating, never sleeping.

"Whaddya say, honey? Ten bucks?"

He was in shock, still staring, as the car drove away.

"What are they going to do to her, Kerrigan? Will they take her home?"

"Wherever she goes will be better than here," Kerrigan sighed. "Let's get going. I don't like the coffee in this place."

Yellow Submarine #10

2004-07-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

The clock on the wall sneers 3:42 and there he sits on that old familiar diner stool, its red vinyl long since patched with duck tape. His eyes glance down at the tepid coffee and the half-eaten apple pie, which is by now less a la mode than a la flood.

"Can I get you anything else Finch?"

His real name was Charlie Greenbaum, but everyone knew him as Finch. That was his sobriquet on the CB radio, his trucking name. He chose that name because when he was a little boy he saw 'To Kill A Mockingbird' and wanted to be just like Atticus when he grew up. By the time he grew up, he had himself become a lawyer, and not a bad one. In the beginning he was consumed with the battle of right versus wrong and every litigious engagement took on the feel of a morality play. He started dating another lawyer. They even had their own practice. Then something changed. For years, he had quibbled over moral vagaries and technicalities with crooked judges and sleazy lawyers for the sake of clients who, even if not guilty, were anything but innocent. After so much of this, he realized he was selling his soul. He felt like a priest in the middle ages peddling indulgences,” Sin much, or grievously? Call the prayer offices of Hoffman and Greenbaum. We'll put in a good word for you with the powers that be, sparing you guilt and eternal damnation! Now isn't that worth forty percent?' Whatever happened to Atticus Finch? What had happened to the honorable southern lawyer sustained by his righteous convictions?

He began to hate his job. He began to hate the side of humanity that sustained his job. Worst of all, he began to hate himself for being party to it for so long. That is why one day ten years ago, after saving a client who had absconded with several thousand in ill-gotten gains from the company till on the meagerest of technical points, he cancelled all appointments and typed his letter of resignation. When he got home, he unplugged his telephones and drew the shades. For a week, his only contact with the outside world were the morning and late night talk shows and a brief visit from the sheriff to make sure he was alive and if so, serve him with papers. Turns out his partner was looking to legally acquire sole ownership of the firm. None of it offered much in the way of abating his newfound disillusionment.

One day he saw a commercial for a truck driving school serving as an interlude in the cable rebroadcast of ''Smoky and the Bandit'. How could he refuse such cunning strategic marketing? A month later his name was off the law firm, he had his class D operator's license and was heading a load of industrial fertilizer to Fresno, thinking of his ex-partner the whole time. To this day, he couldn't help but think of the name 'Hoffman' whenever he passed downwind of a feedlot.

He liked his new job. He was only required to drive a certain number of hours a day, which let him catch up with his reading. He even had a huge sleeper cabin all to himself. The clincher though, was that the only people that existed either worked in stops along the way, sent him his paychecks, or were fellow truckers, and all of which occurred with comfortable rarity. He even garnered a certain taste for country music on dull stretches of road where the same old hills roll for a hundred miles.

A few things happen when you criss-cross the country enough times. You learn the roads and the best places to stop between your destinations. At that point, Charlie knew from personal experience practically every truck stop, greasy spoon or rest stop vending machine where you could grab a meal after 2am in sixteen states. Nevertheless, this one was his favorite. He stopped here at every opportunity, about twice a week, for the last seven years. The reason was Dotty.

"What? Oh, no thanks, I'm fine."

"You've barely touched your food. Something wrong?"

"Naw, I'm fine."

"Wasn't talking about you. I was thinking about having some pie later and if you can't stomach it, I might just have the cheesecake."

"Oh, really?"

"No, but if you're not going to be honest with me, I'm not going to be honest with you either. Now finish up, you don't look like you've been eating enough as it is."

"Yes Mom."

"That's right, and don’ think you're too big or I'm too old for me to take you over my knee..." She walked away cackling. He just grinned.

He had kept to himself for much of the first few years when his company started shipping to a new client roughly twelve miles east of west bumfuck. He had been to the truck stop several times before but he had stuck to his business, ordered and left, usually in under twenty words. His friendship with Dotty came purely by accident. Really.

An over-excitable teenager in a red camaro had been running in his blind spot and tried passing him on the highway two miles from the stop. Either oncoming traffic was faster, or his acceleration was slower than the driver of the camaro had expected. In order to avoid it the red camaro had cut him off, misjudging the distance between Charlie's front and the back of the car ahead of him in the mean time. The lead car tapped on the brakes for whatever reason, the camaro was surprised and slammed on his, and there wasn't enough distance or time to stop an eighteen-wheeler with a full load. The camaro took it hard on the backside and lost control, veering off into the other lane. The driver overcorrected his steering and flipped a few times off the shoulder.

The closest paramedics were ten miles away and there wasn't much left of him by the time they got there. While he was cleared of any wrongdoing, the law and a man's emotion judge his actions by two different standards. Later he would find out from the insurance report that the kid was hyped on meth and had been driving cross-country almost non-stop. He would find out that the kid had a history of driving erratically. He would find out the kid had been ticketed twice and almost lost his license for wreckless endangerment. Almost.

That night he had no way of knowing any of it. It probably wouldn't have helped anyway. That night, it was another evil act he had been party to and exactly the type of thing that he had tried to get away from when he became a trucker.

In every small-town truck stop there are a lot of folks who are just passing through, but there are always regulars and 'Finch' was one of them. They had never spoken casually, but Dotty knew by heart what he would order -scrambled eggs and a coffee- and what song he would request on the little jukebox on the counter. -'Much too young (to feel this damn old)' off the Garth Live album- So customary was all of this that when Dotty saw his truck pulling in, she'd reflexively get the line-cook started on some runny eggs and have the cup of coffee waiting and the song playing for him when he entered. He'd never say so aloud, but he always appreciated the effort and always left a fifty percent tip for the courtesy.

The night of the accident, he decided to put into the truck stop to make the call to the agency telling them what happened. For insurance purposes, they made him recount the accident. It took all his resolve not to choke on the words. When he was finished he hobbled over to his usual spot, a red Vinyl barstool liberally patched with duck tape. (He never liked the noise it made when he sat on any of the other ones) All he could do was stare at his paper napkin.

"I'm sorry, but you took so long in there that your food got cold. I'll have Pete make you some more eggs and pour you a fresh cup."

She quickly returned and set the coffee in front of him. A heavy hand half-heartedly reached for it knocking the scalding brown liquid all over the counter and sending the small ceramic cup crashing to the ground. Perhaps it was the crash or maybe it was just the seething liquid in his fly, but whatever it was he became animate once again, if only for the moment.

"GOD, WHAT ELSE?!?" Charlie was usually a very quiet man, but his frustrations had found an outlet through the violence of the spill and his emotions would not be denied this one ostensible opportunity to vent. Charlie sunk into the stool next to his. He put his fists on the table and bore his forehead into them, stifling a war cry against the injustice of the world.

After Dotty had calmly cleaned up the mess, she called to the line cook.

"Hey, Pete! I'm on break."

She then proceeded to cut two generous slices of apple pie, dalloping one with ice cream. She made her way over to the other side of the counter and over to him.

"With or without?"

His head grew heavier as the rage passed, but he managed to look up at her.

"What?"

"With or without ice cream. I didn't know if you liked your pie with or without, so I brought one of each."

"I'm not paying for this."

"That's right, now take a bite and tell me what's bothering you."

"Nothing." He felt like an ass for being so childish and for lying when he was so obviously sullen. Grown men didn't do such things, but right now, he wasn't too much of a mind to care.

"You know Finch, it is Finch right?"

"How did you know?"

"It’s on your shirt, but never mind that. I've been here since this place opened up all those many years ago. In my time I've seen a lot of people passing through, and some of them pretty regular. Tonight when you came in here earlier, you were like Jacob and the Archangel. I wasn't going to say anything then because it wouldn't have been polite. Now after that little outburst I know you have something that needs talking about."

"I don't think I could."

"Then it’s settled, you need the one with the ice cream." She pushed the plate towards him. "Have a bite. Its good pie, I made it myself only this afternoon. It might make you feel better." He just stared blankly at her for a moment. "Please, if nothing else do it to make this old woman happy."

Half sardonically he retorted "Oh you don't look a day over eighty-five."

"I'm sixty-eight and you're not going to get you off the hook by trying to hurt my feelings. Now, take a bite and let me know what you think."

She just wouldn't quit! He took a bite onto his fork and she was right. It was good pie. It did make him feel better. Most importantly, it helped him share the night's events. He just took a bite whenever the words seemed to be stuck in his throat. She listened intently and gasped when she heard about the camaro. Afterwards, she reached across the table and took his hand, relating to him a story that happened a few years back when someone tried to rob the truck stop. A trucker chased the would-be bandit off, but not before a stray bullet hit a server, a friend of hers. Dotty had tried to help, but she ended up dying in her arms. It was their third week on the job. Dotty related how she had felt helpless and angry, but mostly helpless. She reassured him that it was alright, everything happened for a reason, and sometimes there just wasn't anything you could do.

Her vocalization echoed his conscience, but she made it real to him. It was too much. His tears seemed to have a will of their own and would not be held back any longer. When he left that night he still felt bad for the kid, but part of him felt fresh, renewed. He hadn't felt that way in a long time.

He became a trucker so that he wouldn't have to make any permanent friends, but from that day forth he had come here. There was a strange feeling now when he entered this diner. It became his sanctuary. The cheap old clock, the squeaky vinyl, the lights that were always too bright and the stale of cigarette smoke, all of it became sacred to him. In short, it felt like home.

He visited Dotty when he was around, always ordering the same cup of coffee and runny eggs, and always there was a slice of apple pie waiting for him at the end. He still didn't talk much, but every occasionally, when she didn't have any other customers to attend to, Dotty talked to him. She liked to talk about the news of the day. On a slow day, she liked to talk about the truck stop or tell stories of her children. The whole time she would nag him intermittently -when he first found out she had children he just laughed to himself and thought Hey, at least she comes by it honestly All the while he'd just smile and listen intently, nodding his head. Over the years, he learned a lot about her and the truck stop.

He learned that her real name was Dorothy, but that when she started here they shortened it to 'Dotty' because it sounded friendlier. She said she didn't care because it suited her more anyway. The truck stop was partially funded by the state as a way to encourage commerce and help the local economy. He learned that it had switched owners and been renovated three times, but the faucets in the ladies' room continue to squeak to this day! A hand-full of women had given birth to their baby's in the diner when the closest hospital was twenty miles away. She herself had delivered two of them. There was a fire, a drought, and a flood in no particular order.

There was even a wedding! Hers, to be exact. With a wink and a smile she told how she married the line cook and six months later they had a bouncing baby boy! Then her husband was sent to Vietnam and went MIA. She had lived a whole lifetime in these walls and there were pictures hanging on them to prove it. Mostly she just did what she could to 'give travelers a place to fill their belly and nurse their aching soles.' as she once put it. He was never quite sure whether 'soles' was meant to have a double meaning, but that's how he took it.

This brings him back to the moment. He sat there filling his belly and nursing his 'sole'.

Mauve Momma #10

2004-07-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

In the dark is my favorite time. When it's nothin but you and your headlights and a little piece of road that looks like it disappears five hundred yards up. Other drivers are nicer at night, too. There's less of em and we all kind of understand each other. Not just other truckers. I like it when the road's empty for a couple minutes, and then, whoosh, you know, a little red car zips past in the other direction, and I think about that guy and where he's goin and why, just until the next car comes.

I watched that movie, Six Degrees of Separation, with my daughter one time, and she started talkin about the universal soul and how everyone is connected and some other stuff, and I know she thinks I don't really listen to her, but I did and I thought it was kinda neat. So sometimes on the road I try to find someone who looks totally different from me, you know, like a rich Asian lady or a young gang-lookin kid, and I think about how they might be related to me. I like that game a lot. You need things to not feel lonely on the road. It gets to a lotta guys.

But me, I've always been okay. My daughter's mom never understood why I kept truckin when we had enough money for me to work a stay-put job (that's what she called it). I think part of her thought I had a girlfriend or some crazy double life in central California I had to keep drivin up to. But, I don't know, I just liked it. I liked being alone with just the radio and the thoughts in my gray old head. I gotta good boss who doesn't make the guys drive so many hours that they fall asleep 50 miles outside of Bakersfield and hit a car fulla kids. Those stories make me so mad.

And I like the stories of all the crazy things I've pulled with this old girl, Miss Molly I been callin her lately. Boxes of candy bars, dining rooms sets, stuffed bears, anything. My favorite was four hundred boxes of kids' socks. I looked in one box that was comin open and they were purple and green and yellow with little pictures of bees and flowers and things. I don't know why but it made me happy to think about all those cheery little socks in back of me on that trip. Next time my daughter called I told her about the socks and she laughed. She's a good kid.

The truck stop diners are funny. Like little floating islands in a big black sea. 'Cept I imagine most islands don't have the same strong coffee and bored-lookin waitresses that might be pretty if they'd crack a smile, and the smell of grease and tired men. Everyone nods at you and you nod back, and dollars to donuts if you don't know at least one guy in there. It's mostly us same guys who do dry goods in this state. I like to sit with another guy and hear about what he's been carryin and about his family and stuff. All the guys like someone to listen about that, and most of em have a dogeared little picture in their wallets. Of course I talk too, about my ex-wife, and my son in high school who looks just like me, and my daughter who got herself into college and is gonna take her old man on a trip one of these days. New York City, maybe! Yeah, I think about that a lot.

And, this is gonna sound funny, but sometimes if a guy's really your buddy, he'll tell you to come with him to show you something in his truck cab, and you'll get to see his little house on the road. Guys set it up all crazy in there with fancy seat cushions and rosaries and pictures and those bobbley things on the dash and way more. I like seein inside their trucks a lot, sometimes 'cause I get an idea if they have something really good, like when I got my 49ers steering wheel cover- but mostly 'cause it's like seein inside a guy's mind. You see what he looks at all day, and what he must be thinkin, you know? Then when I see that guy next time I feel like I know a little secret about him.

Anyway, you can't stay at the truck stop forever, you got deliveries to make, so you get the coffee in a styrofoam cup and some jerky or cornnuts and say later to all the guys. And after a good stretch in the parking lot, it's back to that disappearing dark road. It's a real weird feeling, when you're leaving the diner with the bright lights and the smell of burgers and eggs, and it fades away to nothing before you hop up into the familiar smell of your cab. I sit there in Miss Molly for a minute and look at where I been, and it feels like another world I was just in. I was tryin to explain it to my daughter when she called but I don't know if she understood me, although she said I was turnin into a regular philosopher. So last time I stopped I bought one of those little throwaway cameras with a flash button, and I took a picture when I was just sittin there lookin back at the diner. It came out real nice with the lights reflecting off my hood, and it was just like I was tryin to explain.

I got it in my coat right now if you wanna see?

Czar Red #10

2004-07-06T22:01:00.000-07:00

“So get this.” Ricky, Amy's brother was animatedly describing his current fling. "She brought over like ten pillows and a fucking feather blanket. Can you believe it? I was just using an old ratty one that mom had gave me when I moved out. So, she brings over all this shit for my bed and I tell her, Aww, thanks, too bad I'm going to fuck some other girl under this blanket." Ricky laughed; Amy and Jimmy looked at eachother unsure how to react.

"What did she say?" Amy asked, ashamed at his carelessness.

"She just laughed. I think she thought I was kidding." Ricky laughed again. Amy glared at him painfully and sighed.

She was bitter that this was actually her brother -- where had his respect and innocence gone? She knew he was still hurting over his breakup six months ago but she hated to see him continue spreading the pain. Her frusterations were interupted when the waitress brought them their drinks. The diner was dirty and full of truckers but the food was always hot and the waitresses were always friendly.

Jimmy changed the subject aware of her embarrassement but Amy wasn't listening. She allowed her thoughts to fill her ears as his words only became a background buzz. She was thinking about how much she was in love with him. She didn't know when or how she was going to tell Scott. She just wouldn't let herself contemplate the devestation he'd feel if she told him she loved someone else. Besides, Jimmy had a girlfriend, she told herself reassuringly. She knew he felt the same burning connection she did, but she was sure he wouldn’t do anything about it.

“... So I called him back and demanding they fix it again for free..." He paused from his account to sip his soda. His lips lingering on the straw, he peered over at her to see if she was listening. She was slurping her shake and felt him turn toward her, jolting her from her internal discourse.

When their eyes met across the table, neither Jimmy nor Amy could deny the glint of tenderness they exchanged. His arrogance and unabashed excitement were replaced with vulnerability. He looked at her; his eyes pulled her into himself. His intent look was protective and defensive. She, too stunned to speak, returned the glance as absorbed as he. Ricky looked at Amy skeptically as he wondered what was between those two. He was convinced they'd already had sex. There was an intimacy between them that he recognized and longed to feel again. He winked at Jimmy, joggling him from the moment.

Amy noticed the break in the tension and asked Jimmy “What?” not really expecting any answer.

“Nothing. Where was I?” He paused, staring at the bubbling Dr. Pepper in his glass. “Oh yeah, so the repairs.” Amy swallowed another gulp of her smooth shake and sighed. She thought she felt Jimmy’s hand graze gently across her knee but brushed it off. She stared outside into the darkness and sighed.

Ivory Angel #10

2004-07-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

Long. But I felt like writing.

Like lace clinging to the night, the rain falls. The pavement shines like ink, swimming in the night. Things are always damp in the springtime, you can taste it when it’s fresh and sharp in your nostrils, in your mind. Spring used to be my favorite time of year, but now it depresses me. Even the magnolia blossoms opening like pastel goddess-crowns cannot cheer me when I get like this. Spring is always the loneliest season, and the deer devour my rose garden, leaving broken stems in their wake. Early summer tastes like melancholy also. Same memories. Same helplessness. No excuses to wrap up in your security blanket and never face the world outside.

Some write to remember. Some write to forget. I write to grieve.

In real life, people who know me probably consider me a trifle boring. I never mush out endless monologues of self-criticizing muck. Not in living, spoken words, these I utilize sparingly, doling each out like care because they cannot be edited over and over again or taken back once uttered. So in real life, I am the shy one who sits in the corner behind golden glasses and a smile that most people confess to be a little creepy. Which is why I don’t smile much, I suppose. But the point is, nobody would ever cast me as a Sylvia Plath ready to leap off the balcony of her bedroom. I am the calm one. Passive. Rational. I take the tormented poets and bind them back together again, like a mother or a sister, without ever revealing the secrets or pain that tears me up inside. If I said anything about anything really serious, I don’t think anyone would believe it. It’s like the other night at the booth late night at Denny’s when “Jimmy” told everyone his stepfather had dropped dead of alcoholism right in front of him when he was six years old. No one believed him until he had said three times that it was true. And then we all felt like shit. I’m the same- people look at me and nobody believes I can be anything but outgoing, independent, and surrounded by lovers and friends who will always take care of me. Not that I ever need to be taken care of, I’m too strong for that.

I guess that impression is why some people say such stupid things to me. A guy at a party, trying to get my phone number, tells me that people with depression shouldn’t be allowed to be around normal human beings, because all they can do is destroy. “Those people will never be happy,” he says. He is completely sober and I wonder who invited him. I’d rather be talking to the cocaine dealer in the corner but he follows me everywhere. “Why let them spoil life for the rest of us?”

“I don’t think that’s very fair,” I say softly, my eyebrows angling gently downward. I have a calculus test tomorrow, so there is no drink in my hand. But there is the sound of the rain on the window, and on the fields outside. Little does Mr. Over-Anxious know that behind my perfectly calm exterior lurks a girl who is two weeks into her first crack at anti-depressant drug treament. “Doesn’t everyone deserve a shot at joy?”

Spring always depresses me. But there were other things that motivated me to see a therapist, to start trying to drive the blackness that continually coated my mind with ugliness. There were girls I thought who liked me, who were my friends, but who turned to be enemies. They’d been avoiding me. I’d taken a class specifically to be with them and suddenly they were rushing around corners, going someplace else. The only people I had in the world, and they didn’t even want to eat lunch with me, or work on group projects with me, or something. I was a leper. I was less than that. And then my old debate coach told me in a car ride late at night that my younger brother had not been kicked out of school for some minor violation of the zero-tolerance policy, but because he had multiple personalities, and one of them had threatened his old debate partner after she exposed him for what he was.

“No,” I said, over and over again. This was a little over one year ago. “I lived with him for sixteen years…I’d know, wouldn’t I? No, I don’t believe it.”

“He’s acting weird, different all of a sudden. Not himself at all,” the coach said. His car was blue and it had a new stereo. The dashboard thrummed beneath my fingers to Limp Bizkut as we circled rain-paved streets, IHOP’s sign like a neon vision of angelic effulgence over it all. “He was acting very strangely.”

“No,” I said. “No, I’d know. I love him so much. I’d know. How can you believe her over me?”

The coach didn’t press, and when I went to my mother and my friends, they all laughed it off and told me that it didn’t make any sense because I was from a real family. A good family. Nuclear, with a stay at home mom and three kids and a father who wasn’t an alcoholic and didn’t abuse people. Not a “When Rabbit Howls” scenario at all…besides, if something was wrong, I would have known. Because he’s almost a part of my soul, almost a best friend, almost everything in the world to me. And everyone said I was being silly and nothing spontaneously combusted and mom nattered on like things were normal and wouldn’t she be freaking out if there was really something to worry about? Wouldn’t someone feel something and do something? Wouldn’t any semblance of normalcy be shattered by this final revelation, would everyone be able to laugh and buy groceries and whatever when such a thing was known?

I woke up in my bed cold and shivering one night a week later with one thought in my head… What motive could the girl have to lie about this? Who had more to lose, and thus, had to hide? I confessed my suspicions to my mother about my brother. He had to be lying.

“Sometimes people are illogical, honey,” I think mom said in a dull voice. And then there were finals. My grades took a hit. I wasn’t focussed at all and I turned in a story late. I’ve never done that before, but my soul felt numb inside. There just wasn’t any more. And spring was coming. And spring always depresses me.

I threw myself into the night. My debate partner hated me. My grades were horrible. My dreams/goals were fleeing one by one as the prize writer, the one who won all the contests, received endless accolades, was judged to be below average by her creative writing teacher, had no friends despite all her efforts to the contrary, and now at last there was this final thing. I didn’t even have the goddamn power to protect the ones I loved, and so what was the point of all this? God had left me to rot and what was the point?

So I went out and walked the place where the campus rapists stray. At midnight and in the rain I paced block after block, solitary, alone, feminine, clutching a knife in my hand and daring someone to attack me. Suicide would leave too many questions. And I had made a promise to someone long ago. But if I died a hero, taking down some pervert with me, or at least getting enough of his DNA on me so that he’d get thrown into jail forever, never to harass anyone again. If my life wasn’t doing anything, perhaps my death would guarantee someone who wasn’t a complete failure, who didn’t taint everything she touched, safety and a chance at living unbroken.

But nothing happened. There was a woman walking her white husky and a crying girl on a cell phone who was scared because she was walking home alone. No men to kill me. No one to hurt to make up for the hurt I felt inside. I realized then that I was cold and wet and that maybe it was time to see a therapist. The doctor wasn’t too helpful. She would always focus things back onto my early childhood, as if that mattered to the least for my future, and give me helpful suggestions such as “you should make some more friends.” For this I pay $80 a session? I couldn’t make her understand what it was like for me- I couldn’t describe the loneliness and the sense of failure that pressed all around me, weighing down every inch of skin with tears made of lead and cement. So she prescribed things. She thought it would help me, but the pills I took just made me feel strange inside, like I was only watching my own life reel by without any real texture or depth and I just sat there inside my head with a silly smile on my face while someone more normal pushed all the buttons and made the body whir to life. I might have been a happier person, but I damn well wasn’t me.

“I despise any system,” Red Knight told me walking home, “that tells anyone that there is a normal, and that there is something wrong with you for not meeting some arbitrary standard. The pills never worked for me.” He was the one person I ever told outside my family about the pills because he had weathered the endless red couches, the fake diagnoses, and the endless rounds of treatment that could never cure the root problem. He knew what it was like to want to kill someone who hurt him as a child, and I knew it too. I just found out his younger brother has multiple personalities also. So much in common, alike in that we’re both children, playing at being adults and fooling the world, because both of us seem so much more self-sufficient than we really are. I don’t understand how he hasn’t lost his compassion or his ability to laugh, after all he’s been through. He’s faced worse, yet his sense of humor remains intact. “The biggest thing you miss out on by being female,” he declared, “is not being able to play with your own beard.”

“Well,” I grinned, “I can always stroke yours, instead.” And I proceeded to do so.

I stopped taking the pills soon afterwards, because I decided it was time to deal with things on my own terms and not hide behind some slivers of magical, white illusion. I haven’t been back since, not even when times get rough, which makes me proud. I can live without nooses or medication. I can be me, and I love that person.

Though not so much right now, when I am sick on the couch and I haven’t been able to sleep for so long. The nightmares are especially bad, lately. Rape. Torture. Death. Betrayal. Perhaps confronting the endless specters clawing at my mind will restore some semblance of sanity.

So I write so much. My words ooze over this blog and I can’t stop them from coming, from facing the devils and pulling them out, pain and all, one by one, and stick them here on the page before they dissolve into nameless shadows blurring every time I was ever happy in my life. I need to feel something more honest than this life I’ve been living because lately it seems like all of it is lies and dark eyes and late nights spent wishing for a little vodka or white wine. And the Spring-feeling lingers lately, the need for the season to change, for something to change, for all the bad times to pass me like the storms that gather. I feel restless and trapped and feral and in a bad mood all at once.

Spring has so often been the worst time. Layers upon layers. Everything bad to me has happened in the Spring or early summer. I think sometimes I must be able to sense the bad things coming, just because I know, I know that every spring/summer there is something dark coming and it’s waiting to devour me alive.

One Spring, You leave all your friends behind. Your friends of fourteen years. Your favorite hangouts, everything. There is nothing for you in the future. You don’t even get to say goodbye right because you’re already gone. They tell you you’re going in spring and just when people are finally starting to look at you as a human being and you might finally have found a place to fit in a small Mormon cattle-ranching community when your parents are vegetarians and want to live in an Earthship made completely out of rubber tires, you’ve made a place and it’s ripped away from you because your father decided the old job wasn’t good enough and he had a midlife crises and torn up all the roots transplanting you. You thought it was going to be Birmingham, Alabama. Thank God it wasn’t Birmingham, Alabama.

It was raining in the café the Italian Stallion took you. You watched Hellboy with him, together, in a nearly empty theater and you whispered like children during the film, laughing at impossibilities and bad dialogue. You had just made out two weeks ago. You were writing a 114-page paper and just needed some human company, preferably the other sex. He is saying something about computers in the café and you drift a little, ever smiling, because while this whole excursion means nothing to him it is something for you. You need a practice round. A little swing around the block before you’re back in the game just to test the smoothness of the waters. He’s leaving in three months anyway, maybe a senior fling with such a nice boy will teach you how to love again? Maybe it’ll give you practice and next year, next year you’ll finally meet someone who is interested in you for more than some late night action and maybe just maybe you’ll be able to settle down in peace. And this could be a little slice of this, and you want it more than anything, from someone, from anyone, from him.

And sitting there across from him and eating the fruit salad which tastes rotten I wanted to ask him if he’d ever hurt some girl he loved, if he’d ever ground her into the dust like it was nothing and apologized afterwards without ever really meaning it. Is this what all guys and girls do to each other? Is this how sentiment makes fools of us all? Maybe if he felt pity for me, he’d love me.

Spring was the season the children I was baby-sitting tied me down in the garden. There were three of them, and their father had just died and I was babysitting them while their parents held the wake at his father’s house. There were three other girls there to baby-sit too, part of my church group but they were upstairs playing pool and left me to deal with the kids. The children had down-syndrome and wide eyes and were stronger then they looked.

“Of course I’ll play your game,” I smiled. “How do you play?”

No silly girl no stay back don’t touch them don’t let them touch you not with their oh-so-innocent eyes and fingers back away run away run away please before the memories are forever branded into you…

They tied me to a pole in their yard, as a hostage. Then they began poking at me. With sticks. At first you know, it was like, whatever, but then it got really hard. And they could tell, so they found my sensitive spots: my kneecaps, the backs of my hands, my breasts, and they stabbed them hard with pointed sticks and I started screaming but the little blond angels of a minute ago just laughed and no one was around to hear me. Not even when they picked up a metal sprinkler head and started beating me with it, hitting my face, my chest, my ankles. I think there were other things too. A rake, a hoe. I don’t really remember. But I do remember claws sinking into my scalp and pulling out my hair in clumps. It fell into the damp grass next to the tears as I began to cry. It was this day I learned I had reverse-leukemia. I don’t bruise easily. I can have a metal stake thrown at my cheek with all the velocity an eight-year-old could muster from point-blank range and there will be no swelling at all. No proof that this wasn’t all some very bad dream.

Why doesn’t anyone come and help me? Where were the other girls? Surely they would come and check on me. Surely they could hear me screaming.

“We’re going to kill you,” the kids chanted, dancing around me. “You’re going to die. You’re dead already, ugly babysitter.”

There was another thing they did to me, one I don’t like to think about much. That thing I wonder if it was the one that messed me up. You try and put a name to one thing in your life, one moment where you suddenly died inside and have not quite been able to recover, not yet, no matter how many pills they give you to make you normal again. I wonder if this was that moment, or if it was earlier. How many times can a person define themselves as victimized? Is it really as bad the second time as the first?

I got free. Somehow, I untied the knots and began crawling inch by inch towards the house. I was trying not to let them see how injured I was, hoping the vultures wearing child-skin would leave me alone if I just stood up. But I couldn’t. And the children grabbed me around the waist and the ribs and tried to haul me back. So I pulled them off. I should have used my claws, my teeth, my feet, or my fists. I should have hurt them in my own self-defense, but I looked back on them and their eyes were bright and empty and they were laughing and I knew they had no clue what they were doing. An hour ago we had watched Annie, cuddling on the couch while I brushed the youngest one’s hair. Now she was hitting my tailbone with a piece of hard iron. This really was a game to them, and they didn’t know that my screaming was not an act, that the hair on the lawn was attached to nerve endings that burned and burned. And I couldn’t bring myself to hurt them. Because they didn’t know better. So I just tried to escape.

Fool. You want to know the truth? Don’t pretend the motive was holier than it was. Don’t pretend there was some kind of kind, beneficial pacifism on your part. You just knew that you were nothing. Your puny ass is not worth saving enough to ever hurt another person. Not even in self-defense.

I crawled in to the other babysitters, whimpering with the children still attached to my legs. They had begun biting my thighs. Their sharp teeth left tiny rips in my pants. I reached the top of the stairs and collapsed crying next to the door to the game room. The other babysitters just sat there, playing pool or air hockey or plucking up stuffed animals. I think I must have given a soft animal cry then, because someone looked over but no one did anything, and those tiny fists above me found all my sore spots and began punching me again.

Every inch of the crawl to the house and two flights of stairs with them pulling me down, hitting me, tearing at me, was sustained by the thought I just needed to get to the other girls and I would be safe and nobody else would need to get hurt but I could curl up behind their bodies and cry until I felt whole and safe again. That they saw me crying and sat around playing games was a betrayal on a level I wasn’t even ready to defend against. I was raw inside, and I knew the Good Samaritan would be dead now in real life. Mugged. Shot. Strangled for his kindness. Dead despite being good.

The girls finally gave up on their games and came out into the hallway with me. I was sprawled over the stairs, whimpering. One by one, the girls stepped over me, looking down at my face and my hair and my clothes, “Whoa,” was all one said as she walking by. She had short black hair and pouty, pretty lips. “What happened to you?”

I began to laugh then. Hysterically. Couldn’t they tell? Couldn’t they see the bald places where my hair was ripped out and the tears in my eyes and the children still kicking me? They stepped past it all, down to raid the family’s fridge of ice cream. “They’re trying to kill me,” I whispered, smiling madly as they went by. “Please help me.”

But the girls shrugged and walked down the stairs, and the children cried in triumph because they had won and there was no one there to stop them to do what they want. And I couldn’t hurt them. Not even now because they looked innocent even when they had my blood on them. And I love children so very much.

Then, I gave up. I didn’t try to be strong. I screamed and they finally realized I was being serious, and the girls frowned and said “oh you weren’t joking” and then the brother dragged me away to the bathroom and yelled at me, “Get away from them, they’re too young to see you like this!”

I started laughing again. I mean now I knew I had fallen through the looking glass. “Too young to see this? THEY DID THIS TO ME!” And the children were crying and everyone was looking away from me until the brother shoved money in my hands and sent me away like a cheap whore. “It’s not their fault,” he told me as he shut the door. It was white and very clean. “Their father just died. They’re just acting out. You don’t need to say anything to anybody, because they’ve learned their lesson and I’ll take care of everything.”

A five-dollar bill in my hand… for two plus hours of physical torture and memories that would haunt me for a lifetimes. How generous. But the stupid girl took the bill and didn’t press charges, because that was all she was worth anyhow. Five dollars and a slammed white door. It didn’t matter if she had been hurt because it’s not like it hadn’t happened before, and the children had looked chagrined. They’d probably have nightmares too. Though probably not as bad.

In the spring, things always seem so miserable. A year before or was it after? My memory is gray with fog. Layers within layers. Did any of this even really happen?

My first and only serious boyfriend had a cube face with all the edges rounded off. It was pale white and covered with acne and sometimes it got whiter when he got mad at me for something. And red when he was hot and passionate and needed to drive himself into me on the couch with a fervor I didn’t quite understand. I was a good little girl, and a Mormon, and only 16 years old.

A friend had called me out to go walking among the magnolias that day. Spring. He was back for the weekend from college and he had called me and it was now or never so I cancelled my day out with “Lenny”, because this friend was very special to me and I was secretly in love with him. More in love with him than with my own boyfriend. But I thought of myself as ugly and unimportant, and I was fairly sure that I wouldn’t find someone else in my high school who cared for me. And I was right, I didn’t. Lenny was my only chance for happiness, for feeling the connection that is supposed to develop between two people who love each other very much.

Only I didn’t love him. In fact, I despised him a little, because he touched me in ways that made me feel uncomfortable, ways that good little Mormons don’t allow themselves to be touched in, and he wouldn’t take his hands off even when I slapped them away or pleaded with him to stop it. His fat fig fingers were always searching, worming through my clothes. Even tight turtlenecks and coats, when I tried to put as many layers between myself and him as possible, his hands would still get in. He even touched me that way in public, as if him putting his jacket around my shoulders when I was cold was some kind of liberty to gain access to my tits.

It was kind of a cycle, I despised him for how dirty he made me feel, and he made me feel dirty because that was the only thing he could have of me, because he sensed I didn’t love him. I might have if he hadn’t been so physical, always pushing me into things I didn’t want to do, and told him so but he did anyway, but we’ll never know that will we? And he was nice enough, when he wasn’t pawing at me or looking at me as if he knew what a holy hypocrite I was. I should have left him, I should have dumped him right away because I knew he was scum… but he was the one shot I had. And I was lonely. All my high school friends had gone away. I was sixteen and hadn’t been kissed. I was fighting with my parents all the time over which college to go to, and I needed someone, someone to convince me that life was worth living. That I mattered. And later, there was guilt. He didn’t hurt me as much until the guilt made me shut my mouth, because I had qualified to high school debate nationals, and he was first alternate. And he was older than me. It was his last year. He had a right to go, and because of me, his dreams remained unfulfilled.

God I hated the way he smelled his mulish laugh his mouth covering me sliming me when he kissed…was that what you’d call it? It didn’t seem very much like a kiss and didn’t look like what you’d see on the movie screen or between parents or other couples. For one thing, he’d keep his eyes open, so when I would lean in and embrace his lips with mine I’d open my eyes a little only to find him staring at me half-lidded and bored with blue eyes that never blinked just sat there without emotion. No love or affection, just that lazy arrogance that infuriated me while leaving me uncomfortable. He never said he loved me or even liked me. We were taking a quiz together online and he said he’d never been passionately in love, with his girlfriend of a year over his shoulder. He wouldn’t do anything with me unless there was always the “hanging out” after. I was just a tool to be discarded, the only girl desperate enough to be his prey. Even when he came back from college, when he was dating someone else and came to visit he stuck his hands between his thighs and started retracing old habits and it was hard not to let him. He made the loneliness go away. I didn’t have anyone else.

I tried to tell my friends something was wrong with us, but they would laugh at me when I told him I didn’t like how Lenny made me feel on our dates, that he was always touching me and making me feel so dirty inside. They laughed at me because they could never picture the sweet valedictorian doing anything wrong or ungodly. I mean, he was a valedictorian, and a state champion of debate, and people like that don’t push boundaries and don’t hurt women. And so there must be something wrong with me. I must be exaggerating or bringing it on myself or something. I was a whore and deserved what I got.

Lenny would always apologize afterwards. His parents were getting divorced, his mom was in a sanitarium being treated for manic depression, he was struggling to raise enough money to go to college in Chicago, so life was rough for him, and he could do better next time, he promised. Promised on his hands and knees, next to me in bed or on the couch, perched on bike racks where I told him I wanted to go to my prom alone but he talked me out of it and told me he would never, ever hurt me again. The worst was when he’d get on his knees and take my hands and say, “Please forgive me. That’s what true Christians do.”

“I don’t know,” I whispered softly, “I don’t know if I can…” And then his hand was up my skirt the next day like nothing had happened, pulling the blood-red prom dress over my head even if I was trying to push it down. And I said no and he didn’t hear me or didn’t care because he wrestled me to the ground anyway.

But the first time he violated me was in the Spring and I had cancelled a date with him to be with a boy I loved, a boy I never saw, and who would just hold me when we went walking under the magnolias and didn’t have a cruel bone in his body. Even now, he is the kindest person I know. And he was the first person ever to call me beautiful, a word Lenny never used for me. Not even when he asked me to wear nothing but Saran Wrap to the prom. I was never beautiful to him. Some days I wish I could show him what I’ve become, just to spite him. Beautiful and sexual and surrounded by love. You failed to destroy me, and no one will ever love you truly because they will know you for what you are. You will die alone, and I will have hordes of people around me worshipping the ground I walk on because I dived into the crucible head first and came out stronger than before. Like steel. Like platinum. Like mithril.

This spring, this time, the first time… He took my hands. I was sitting on the couch, with him, and he was stroking my neck and he pulled me from the couch, licking his lips over and over. “Here,” he said. “Come.” That was all he said until I protested. He dragged me across the window and the little rain droplets made jagged patterns in the light. It pounded glass. Wardrums. A warning, a call to defend yourself.

I knew where he was taking me, though, and things hadn’t degenerated to the violent roughness that characterized the relationship later. I still thought…I still had faith in him. But I knew who he was and what his weaknesses were, and so I gripped the banister. “No,” I said. “I don’t want to go to bed with you.”

“Don’t be prudish,” he told me, stroking the inside of my arm. “I just need to stretch out.” He was six foot four, and the couch was very cramped. But something told me that going upstairs with him was a very bad idea. And I was feeling kind of sick and weak, so I didn’t want to have to push him off, because I felt on the verge of throwing up as it was. So I clung to the banister.

“No,” I said. “I like it down here just fine. I’m perfectly comfortable. You’ve never minded before.”

“Maybe I did.” Then Lenny didn’t say anything anymore, because he suddenly dived at me. His hands thudded against my hands, thudded like the rain, whacking my fingertips until he pounded them loose and he could pry them away. I was numb with shock…is he hitting me? It didn’t seem possible. Not then, but later it was always a game. Hit me and I’d open up. When I clenched my thighs shut, he’d hit me until I let go and his fingers would jab in and yank them open and he could do what he wanted. But tonight, he grabbed my fingers. I grabbed at the banister with my legs, linking around it, but he kept pulling and pulling until I thought my arms would come off and my legs came all apart, and then he dragged me upstairs to his room and locked the door behind us. We were both panting then.

Another night, when I said no, he gave me a reassuring hug and held my hands behind me and I didn’t realize he had a shoelace in his hand until he had wrapped it around my wrists and knotted it. Then he began touching me anyway. I wriggled free of the knots and told him he didn’t tie them tight enough. He laughed and said of course not, I would never do something you didn’t want. In other words, I wanted everything. It was all me, all the time. Didn’t he hear my whimpering? Didn’t he see me crying after when I begged him to never do that again, to just be my friend? How many times did I try to break up with him only to find his false promises, his words telling me how rough life made him do dumb things and things wouldn’t be so bad from now on and only he knew what I really wanted, only he had taken care of me? I was his first girl, didn’t I owe him something for being pure so long? I couldn’t break it face-to-face. He’d been kind to me, when he wasn’t hurting me, and I couldn’t bear to make him miserable. Not with his parents divorcing and his money problems and his mom being medicated. I was already damned for what we’d done, so why hurt a man who had only been kind to me, if a trifle overenthusiastic? It was my fault for tempting him. It was my fault for wanting it. I shouldn’t punish him for my lack of strength. It was only after I’d been with other boys, drunken boys who barely knew me as I sought solace in something short-lived, that I asked myself a question- if a drunk guy I met two hours ago stops when I say no, why couldn’t a sober valedictorian boyfriend? Then I learned how to hate him. And now I look back and this time I could hit them. I could hit them all to save myself because they are wrong and it is my body and it is my right.

His parents weren’t home that night. His walls were the cold, white kind lit by florescent lighting, and his bedspreads were faded tie-dye. The bed was narrow, and tie-dye isn’t exactly ominous. Innocent… hippie… happy. “See, this isn’t so bad, is it?” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Lenny,” I whispered, “I’m going to be sick. I’ll get you sick too, you shouldn’t touch me now.”

“I have a wonderful immune system,” he told me. “I never get sick.” And he pushed me backwards, away from the door, until I tripped into his bed and he was on top of me and held me down and was tearing at my clothes and pawing at me and I thought to myself “he’s right, this isn’t so bad…kind of feels nice…” But I said, “please let go of me no we can’t no please stop…” but he didn’t hear me anymore because his lips swallowed my mouth so that all that came out were queer moaning noises and I couldn’t even breathe. He was heavier than I was and he had been a wrestler once upon a time. I couldn’t get away from him, so silently I was being smothered.

Funny, I got my first kiss during that. It was a French one. Odd, that so much was done or I did without ever having being kissed. Funny, all the ways he touched me before I let him kiss me, because while it wasn’t hard to press me against a brick wall, trapped so he could feel my curves, my head and lips were mine and I always turned away until now because I wanted the first kiss to be something special. I wanted there to be love.

And Spring was also when your kindergarden teacher hit you years and years and years ago. When she told you that you were worthless, brainless, and you would die without ever accomplishing anything you dreamed about. You would lose your fingers just like she did and be old and die alone just like she did because you were nothing but undeserving brats and not anything like the good kids she taught at the other school. She took away all your toys and gave them to the kids at the other school because you were such a stupid child. You’d never grow up to be anything wonderful and because teacher said it was so it must be true. You were six years old and she kept hitting you that Spring, because you didn’t come to class on time and would stay out at recess behind the mound of tires hiding and praying that nobody ever made you go in. You learned to be very, very quiet then. To shut up in the face of authority and never resist anything, because what good did it do? You were nominated as leader of the class but you turned it down, hid in the corner and played with your crayons to keep from sticking out so much. Then maybe she’d stop telling you what a bad little girl you were. But you couldn’t even do that right, and sometimes she’d make you stay in from recess because you used the wrong colors and broke the crayons and could never, ever stay inside the lines.

“My bad little girl,” Lenny told me, stroking my hair before he went down on me.

“No,” I cried again. “Please stop it and let me go! Let me go!”

This was the one chance I had at happiness. The one man who thought I was worth anything. God, I was such a different person back then. Why didn’t I have faith in myself? Why didn’t I know that college would be so much better, that other years would be so much better, that boys did not always bring tears in the dark? Fool girl. Wasn’t your integrity worth something more than he could give you in a bed? But he was on the debate team too, had to see him everywhere you went, and that made things even more difficult. It was just easier to lie back and to take it than to sit with a year of hurt silences and everyone blaming you because he’d tell them exactly what kind of creature you are, you masochistic fuckerwhore.

I think I blacked out when he did it. I was so sick inside. I was going to throw up everything I ever ate. Without a word, Lenny buttoned up my jeans, afterwards. There was silence, except for my sobs. He didn’t acknowledge them, just rubbed my stomach and bit an ear lobe until I was wincing. “You’d better go,” he said.

I felt shaky all over, not quite right. Confused. What had he done to me, and why did I feel so good and so bad at the same time? My mom came to pick me up and I stopped crying long enough so she could drive me home, because I didn’t want her to know what a slut her daughter was. I didn’t even sit up front with her because I figured she could smell it on me, because I smelled like him and like me and like dirty ugliness.

The little children I was babysitting took their pointed sticks and found where the seams in my jeans had ripped and poked me down in my underwear. They poked up inside my vagina, and it still hurts sometimes, when someone tries to make me feel pleasure. I just laugh and fake it, oohohhyesyoumakemefeelgoodyesyesYES!!! What can I say? Why spoil a happy moment, a small respite from the nightmares you still have, the obsidian casing of loneliness that still encases your soul? Why spoil it with some dirty revelation that will just make the boy pity you and not understand you at all. Because you’re stronger than you were before. The girl that let people walk all over her is no more, replaced by a stubborn, taciturn writer who is damn sick of keeping silent. Because they win that way. I can’t go back and mend myself or time, but I can’t let them win again either by accepting the shame. By blaming myself for what I didn’t ask for. Never again.

The café. And dark. And happiness. And me seeking to build on a one-night stand. The Italian drove me home in his car and it was blue too and it had paint that almost seemed to sizzle in the damp moonlight. The clouds were beginning to roll away, now, and the corners of stars hit his crown of dark hair that I suddenly wanted to run my fingers through very much. Ask me home, I pleaded silently. Ask me home and love me like you did when we were drunk, only this time sober. There doesn’t have to be any emotion, but I want to be safe in the harbor of someone’s arms, because all I have waiting for me at home is a cold computer filled with 114 pages of Yugoslavian genocide. A thesis that no one will read, and that I don’t give a damn about. And the memories of half-dozen dark Springs.

“That was fun,” he said as I got out. “We should do it again sometime.”

“Yeah,” I grinned, and I reached over to give him a lingering hug. “Thanks for all the fruit salad.”

And I closed the door, and walked back under the magnolia trees, and he gunned out of the parking lot at 40 miles per hour. I’m still trying to decide if he really needed to get away from me that badly or it was just coincidence. Either way, we haven’t touched intimately since. Too bad, really. We could have had something fleetingly wonderful, but he’s back pining over the girl who host-friend slept with and I sit and stir drinks for him and sigh a little inside because I know it wouldn’t have worked anyway but I did want it to. Really.

“Doesn’t everyone deserve a shot at joy?”

I don’t need any pills now, but I still despise Spring, and the rain it brings. And I brood and write and pray and let myself, just for a moment, be something honest and tragic before the smile goes on and I waltz out to meet my less-intense friends, complete with perfectly applied blush, lipstick, and eye shadow. As someone respectable. Someone normal. Independence Day.

This time, perhaps I’ll remember my umbrella.

YellowSubmarine

2004-07-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

It seems that I’ve been interested in politics for almost as long as I can remember, and the pursuit of its workings and employment has been a major factor concerning the course of my life and studies. To that effect, I vividly remember my first lesson in politics.

When I was in second grade I went to a private religious school. It had kids from first grade on up through senior year of High School. At the beginning of the year they held the student body elections. Only certain seniors could run for office, but everybody got a vote, even me, a scruffy little second grade know-nothing in the back row. I didn't know either of the candidates personally. Honestly, before they came into the classroom which was the center of my scholastic world to campaign I had no idea either of them existed.

One Monday, amid a productive afternoon of discretely blowing spit-balls at the class bullies, two girls came into the classroom and the teacher called for our attention. She told us that one of the two girls was running for Student Body President of the school and they had come inside to talk to us. The girl who was running for office came in and said hello.

"My name is Kathy Dunhertz. I'm running for Student Body President. The election is in a week and I've come here today to ask for your support. I don't want your support for nothing either. My friend and I have brought two big bags of candy to share with the class. If you'll just raise your hands, we'll come around and make sure everybody gets some."

Naturally, this went over very well in a class full of second graders. As they were passing it out, I noticed every piece had her name on it. After the redistribution of the candy she added...

" Do you all like your candy?" (notice the transfer of ownership in the turn of phrase) We all nodded in agreement. " I want you to save a piece for election day. This Friday, when you're about to cast your vote, I want you to remember me. My name is Kathy Dunhertz and I gave you this candy. Now who's going to vote for me?"

As I look back on it I realize that even if it was incredibly patronizing, she was the only truly honest politician I ever met. The entire class roared in appreciation.

That Wednesday two guys came into class with their own candy, only this time there were three bags and not two. To everybody below a certain grade, the election became a contest not between Kathy and her opponent, but rather between Mr. Hershey and Mr. Mars.

I talked to an eleventh grade friend of mine in the vice principal's office on Thursday. Normally eleventh graders aren't friends with a second grader. They're two completely different worlds. But in our case we shared the talent for delinquency and the same problems with authority. Tell the both of us that we weren't supposed to talk in the waiting room, and naturally we're going to chatter on like a pair of wind-up teeth.

That particular Thursday I was there because the Bullies had found out who had been throwing spit balls at them all week and they beat me up and then had another kid say I started the fight. I guess you could say that what with the spit-balling and all, but to this day I maintain it was a pre-emptive air strike. On this particular Thursday my friend was coming back from the nurses office with a fat lip and a broken nose because of an impolite comment to somebody's girlfriend. Somebody, being the captain of the wrestling team and a genuine, world-class prick. No wonder we got along so well.

"So who do you think will win the student body election?"

"Don't know, don't care."

"Didn't you like any of their candy?"

"Candy? They didn't give us any candy."

"Well then, what did they give you?"

"Nothing. They just talked about how they're so much better than the other one and,'Do you really want them to represent you?'"

It turns out that they only gave candy to everyone fifth grade and under. From sixth to ninth grades they had been courting the vote by throwing better mini-parties and establishing themselves as the cooler candidate. Among the ninth graders and up half the people already knew who they were voting for, for whatever reason, and the other half were being appealed to by exaulting their own accomplishments and belittling the other's. Then of course there were the private parties after which I heard that word spread down through certain families that if the younger kids were caught voting for the wrong candidate, bad things would happen at home.

Every election I've studied, particpated in, or officiated since has run exactly along these same lines.

So did Kate win?

Alas, every populist election is little more than a popularity contest. She ran a good campaign, but her opponent ran a last minute smear campaign and in the end she just wasn't more popular. I don't feel too bad for her. In that school it would've been tough for anyone to beat the captain of the wrestling team.

Results and TKO #10

2004-07-04T22:07:00.000-07:00

The seventh contestant voted out is Purple Rain who recieved the most votes -- three (including one from himself). Immunity was awarded to Mauve Mamma.

Also, Prof Plum was Darryl Stein.

TKO Question #10: Be inspired by that photograph. Write.

(note, you can click on it to see the full version)

Remember -- post by Wed at noon.

Yellow Submarine #9 pt 2

2004-07-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

I am not so naïve or so self-important as to think that my example is a universal one. But there are ways of helping, and there are ways of enabling self-destruction.

I can remember as a little kid, driving around downtown Atlanta Georgia and seeing a homeless woman. I was so moved that I begged my mother to pull into a Wendy’s so I could buy her a sandwich with my allowance (which was never much). My mom, being the type of person she is, told me to hang on to it and bought the woman a Value meal and a Frosty because, she reasoned, it was a hot day and who knew how long it would be before she’d get her next meal.

We drove back to find her, but she was gone.

So my mom and I spent the next half an hour trying to find her. When we finally did, the woman couldn’t believe it. The condition of the Frosty testified to the length of time we spent looking for her.

To this day, I don’t so much as go to a fast food place without buying an extra sandwich to give to someone.
____________________

One year my whole family made a trip to the city of my birth to celebrate. No one ever knew what to get me for my birthday because I’ve always been to embarrassed to ask and I’ve had too many birthdays without gifts to expect anything anyway. This year was different though. I got a total of forty dollars to spend in the city I love, a princely sum indeed.

While traveling on that particular city’s public transportation system, I saw a homeless man and again I was moved. My dad told me I shouldn’t be approaching strange people in a city this large.

“But I only want to give him some money to help!”

“Oh, no, no, no. Give food and work and compassion to a homeless person, but never money. You don’t know why they’re homeless and you’d never know what they used the money for.”

“That’s ridiculous. He needs food! I always have enough to eat and this money could feed him for a week.” (week and a half in the right places)

It was obvious I wasn’t going to listen, and I resented my dad’s callousness. I gave him the thirty seven dollars I hadn’t used already and told him to buy some food with it.

Like the lady, he couldn’t believe his fortune.

We boarded the system and dropped the discussion. The thought that this man would have something to eat for at least a little while was enough to satiate me despite my father’s criticisms.

On the return trip, the man was there, just as he was beforehand save one crucial detail. He had a bottle, a large bottle of whiskey, the type that costs over thirty dollars.

I was devastated. How could he do that? Again, being just that naïve I went over to find out why…

Imagine a sixth grader approaching a homeless man, broken up into tears,” I gave you that money to buy food! Aren’t you hungry?”

He told me,” Yeah kid, but I needed a drink. Give me some more and I’ll get some this time.”

When I refused he drove me off. It reminds me of an old jewish joke:

A wealthy man gives some nice money to a beggar only to see the beggar sitting in a nice restaurants eating caviar later that day.

When the old man confronts the beggar, the beggar only replies," I like caviar but when I don't have the money I can't eat it. Now you say when I do have the money I can't eat it. So tell me, when am I to eat caviar?"
___________

The people that don't have any standard of living to speak of are poor in judgment, not just resources.

It usually starts with lack of education; a failure to invest in one's self. Without marketable job skills your chances are very slim of ever getting more than three dollars over minimum wage by legitimate means. Draw your own correlations.

Then comes bad money management. Eating out all the time, incurring unecessary expenses for no good reason, failure to keep up with your credit, failure to plan for future expenditures, impulse buying and keeping up with the Jones'...

Then comes self-destructive behavior. Just supporting a smoking habit will consume anywhere from one to four-thousand a year. A drug or alcohol habit will run even higher are all luxury expenditures.

On that note, there are those who simply can't or won't practice safe sex, despite the noble efforts of planned parenthood and free contraceptive devices. (seriously, they will pay for condoms, diaphragms, contraceptive agents, and even for birth control methods as sophicated as the shot)
____________________

Are these deserving poor? Absolutely, through the exercise of incredibly poor judgement they and society as a whole suffer. The people who suffer the most though are the children and that's what really gets my goat. Am I saying that these deserving poor are bad parents? Absolutely and don't give me any 'I can't make a subjective judgement like that bullshit either."

Remember, colleges and trade schools are in business to teach, and like any business they need customers. With financial aid and fiscal and commercial incentives for universities and trade schools to provide both aid, and child care, all it takes is enough will to walk into a college administration building and fill out a FAFSA and you can get an education here.

A man in Georgia not too long ago won the powerball and was an instant millionaire. He quit his job and two years later he was bankrupt. Same thing happened to MC Hammer. Live above your means, practice bad money management and no ammount of money on earth will keep you from being poor.

I'm sorry, but if it comes between keeping a roof over your children's heads and getting that last hit, that last drink, that last carton of Marlboros, and you choose anything other than the roof, I could give two rat's asses whether you've got an addiction or not. You are a bad parent and deserve what you get. Could any of you really argue otherwise? Also, if this should prove to be a pattern of behavior, and not just a one time deal, that, to me constitutes grounds for removal of your children. I will commit all precient resources to the aid of your children. I'll even revise the RICO laws which make it difficult to adopt, overturn 'blood is thicker than money" rulings which make adoption undesireable to some couples, and fight tooth and nail for gay adoption if all of this will help you're kid get adopted by someone who will love them enough to take care of them. If your stupid conduct is harming your children, if you WILL NOT take care of your children, then I have no qualms about taking them from you. You have no right to my sympathy or my means to provide for my own children.

I dated a girl once (shocking, I know) who's cousin was single and had six kids by the age of 21. In a single parent house-hold she would've had to work full-time at 14 and a half dollars an hour to make the poverty threshhold. Again, without marketable job skills there was very little chance of that happening. Her children ended up being taken care of by her extended family or becoming wards of the state. She still collects benefits on those her family takes care of. She has another one on the way.

There is no question in my mind as to if they are deserving or not. The question now comes to what should or should not be done to help them.
______________

In case you didn't catch it the first time "A boy and his dog" was a bit more than loosely autobiographical and my mom just had bad money management. Don't get me wrong I love my mom to death. She can be a wonderful creative type and a hell of a lot of fun. Its just that I wouldn't cosign for her if I needed a liver transplant and she was trying to finance the surgery. The divorce, and what she did to the joint lines of credit that she and my father had out of sheer contempt for him was a major reason why for a while there my family went bankrupt and ended up living off of Ramen and animal crackers for months at a stretch. Despite that, none of it means I wouldn't help her when she needed it.

My mom is a medical transcriptionist and, as of recent years, has worked out of her home. One day, while mom and the evil step-dad were having a roe, oh-he-who-shall-not-be-named decides to send her computer for a long flight off a short balcony. Believe it or not the motherboard held up without so much as a scratch! The Hard Drive also made it, but the rest of it was toast. I ended up running her over to best buy and buying her a new computer and a hard-drive transfer with what money I had saved up for my own purposes. In this way she was able to make the transition from one computer to the next without losing a day of work and the money it brought in.

I am personally of the camp that says you need a little government and a little luck in life, but only a fool trusts either one of them. With the market economy and the shifting of industries where we maintain comparative advantage, being able to shift our focus and our abilities from a failing industry, such as steel, to a thriving industry, such as the technology or service sectors is integral to our continued leadership in the new economy. That's the subject of my next, and mercifully last post on the subject of poverty.

Black Knight #9

2004-07-03T11:38:00.000-07:00

My dad used to call it "bread on the water."

I never saw that man turn down a bum who needed something; in fact, I never saw him give anything less than quite a bit. He'd sneak around and be a little sheepish about it sometimes, because we didn't have much money ourselves. But damn if any homeless guy at a gas station he went to didn't end up with a sandwich and whatever money he could spare.

I understand that people work hard and I understand that they earn their own money. But the requirement that we help one another is a higher moral calling than "fairness," whatever that means. If it doesn't move you to think about helping some 19-year-old girl who got pregnant too young make rent, maybe it'll move you to think about the lives and dreams her children might lead. Maybe it won't.

Should you work as hard as you can? Of course. Should you bust your ass to make it so you can support yourself? Damn right. On this, I don't think anyone disagrees. Where compassion dictates a slightly different course, however, is here: If you don't do these things, you should not be sentenced to death by starvation, or disease; and if you happen to have parents who don't do these things, your life is not forfeit either. Being poor isn't something anyone chooses voluntarily and it's a lot harder than anyone can imagine who hasn't lived through it. Especially, especially as a kid.

Maybe it's because of my dad that I feel the way I do about helping people in need, even people who don't deserve it. Maybe it's because growing up, I wouldn't have had food or medical care a lot of the time without the bread that floated back to us on the water.

Mauve Momma #9

2004-07-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

Jesus said to his host, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

When Elizabethan Englishmen initially decided who constitued the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, they meant it in terms of who deserved welfare money. Later it involved who got the "privilege" of laboring in the workhouse system up to nine hours a day, breaking stones or chopping wood for a hunk of bread and a bowl of gruel. No gub'ment cheese or WIC vouchers in those days.

So before trying to draw a line between those living in poverty who have behaved and haven't, we have to ask what exactly people are deserving of.

Because when it's just money, it becomes a lot easier to find reasons to take it away. Two things happen. The first is that we forget that people living in poverty are like us. You notice me saying "people in poverty" instead of "poor people"? It's intentional. I do that for the same reason I don't say "AIDS patients" or "cerebral palsy kids," but instead, "people living with AIDS" or "teenagers with cerebral palsy." It's small, but the person, not their modifier, comes first. When we make "poor people" into an abstract, even benevolently, we make them Those People Way Over There, or worse, Those People Who Are Nothing Like Me. Handouts of money make it easier for us to do this, because we can picture ourselves on high, tossing a few bills down for the lesser classes to gratefully accept. You don't have to touch anyone to give them a check.

The second thing that happens is that we become resentful of those in poverty for taking money that seems like, well, ours. Phrases like "hard-earned," or god forbid, "bootstraps," start popping up, as do disturbing stereotypes about "welfare queen" moms who don't - or won't - stop having babies, or immigrant families who come to America just to get on the fat welfare rolls. Hello, Biases! When we deal only in money, we can very easily start curling our arms around what we have and muttering about how we shouldn't have to give any up. Who wants to be repaid in heaven, like in the gospel quote above, when we can keep it now? I mean...it's sad, but it's not YOUR fault they messed up their education or job. And you're right, I suppose.

But thankfully, we don't only deal in money. Like any good Democrat, I see the problems of the 1996 welfare reform that changed Aid to Families with Dependent Children to Temporary Aid to Needy Families, adding stricter timetables and participant restrictions along the way. A lot of people were unceremoniously kicked off the rolls for technicalities that caused them a lot of heartache. But if there's anything good that came of it, it's this: You CAN'T say that the government gives away a bunch of free money to whoever. You can't tell me people live it up for years on welfare. It's a tiny check, and it goes away fast. Our biases may rise, but they have nowhere to settle.

Because people don't just need money. To say so would be to assume that they all had great jobs and lost them, or accidentally spent everything and are now out on the street. People who live in poverty for large amounts of time are stuck. They don't know how to get out. Maybe they don't know how to dress and act in a business interview, or they don't know how to get financial aid for community college, or they don't know where to find cheap day care for the kids. Or they know, but they can't do it by themselves, and work two jobs and deal with their families too. There is a world of knowledge, cultural knowledge and hidden values, that we take for granted because we are middle class; we eat well and rent DVDs and look up celebrities on Google. A lot of people in poverty can't imagine how to get from where they are to where we are.

But we can imagine it. And this is where we bring in the non-cash efforts we've got to help people get out of poverty. WIC food vouchers and nutrition classes. Subsidized day care. ESL and GED classes. Family counseling. Drug and alcohol abuse treatment. Job training. Local initiatives to give people haircuts and business attire. These things are not soup kitchen handouts. They are real, teach-a-man-to-fish, helping hands. They get people OUT. And the best part is that they have to be done by real people. No dropping checks from our Benevolent Government Throne. You have to touch a woman to cut her hair, show her how to shake hands with an employer, and watch her baby while she works.

I do what I can. I pay my taxes gladly, and I give big bags of clothes away to any charity that calls. I tell people that Mom and I were on WIC when I was a baby, so they know anyone can have a hard time and need government help. And in teaching the last two years, I was trying to give my students somewhere to go besides dead-end busboy jobs- trying to convince them that they needed that high school degree more than they needed $5.25 an hour right now.

I haven't exactly answered the question about the deserving and undeserving poor. I know. That's why I had to rephrase the question into what we think 'the poor' deserve. I don't need to tell you who is undeserving of a welfare check - our imaginations and the government's eligibility rules can come up with ideas of people whose criminal and employment histories disqualify them for financial assistance. And, okay, I can support that. But when it comes to the other initiatives I've mentioned, is there anyone who is really undeserving? If we really want to deplete our ghettos, and barrios, and prisons, we have to extend an opportunity to even the worst elements of them, who we think have blown their chances long ago. For this writer, the question "What do they deserve?" can only be answered with "A chance. And another and another." I could never look in a person's face and tell him he has used up all his chances to be free of poverty. Christian theology tells us that the worst sin is despair. I will never be responsible for hanging that millstone around another's neck.

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."

Really? That many chances?

Yeah, really.

Ivory Angel #9

2004-07-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

My friends, there are no secrets between us. I must admit, I am consulting with...Evil.

Before, I thought I only drank Evil, drove Evil, shopped Evil, hell, even bathed with Evil, but now I know the truth. Evil is everywhere...everywhere being deep inside my best friend's roommate.

On the surface, he appears oddly benign. You'd expect him to be one of those tall, jet-haired gel-balls with lips perpetually grimacing and jowls that droop to the waist. At the very least, he needs some eyes glowing scarlet, or a virgin babies' blood dribbling fresh off the chin. Instead, the vision I am presented with is a slightly short, very skinny, blonde-haired boy with watery eyes and thick glasses who is stil, after three months, miserable after the loss of his girlfriend (and too good a person for me to sully with my inability to have long-term relationships due to debate). He doesn't even wear a trenchcoat. Eschewing black, his sticklike frame is coated with non-descript yellow T-shirts and baggy jeans. There are holes in the knees, and in the backside, but nobody comments on this.

I didn't know he was truly dark and Evil until yesterday, when I learned the ugly truth. You see, "Ryan" literally works for the Evil- Evil incorporated. Ryan is a Nike Intern.

And not just any intern. Oh, it gets worse. Ryan is responsible for the recruitment campaign for football players to my University. He designs customized ads for some of the most prized players in high school history, spending ridiculous amounts of money to seduce them into visiting campus, where they are exposed to a brisk campaign of relentless brainwashing. They are driven around in their own Nike luxury hummer, packed into uniforms that each cost about half my dad's annual salary, paraded in front of a band who has been gifted with free, backbacks, bags, laptops, workout suits, and tuxedos, free of charge. All this is courtesy of the incorrigible Phil Knight, who also paid for our law school, our sporting facilities, our new logo design... My school has gone undeniably corporate. I blame the state for barely funding some 15% of the University's budget. The rest comes from corporations, and as more and more budget cuts continue, the situation will only worsen.

I don't rememeber being recruited like these football players were, and that makes me feel just a tad cheated. Who will save the world one day? Not the athletes. Who will actually matter to generations that come? Not the athletes. Who will increase our safety, enhance quality of living, rewrite universal law, and teach our children? Not the athletes. I accept that the football program brings in so much money, but when Ryan asks for a Wacom to do his work with and gets one free of charge on top of a $1000 a month salary for very limited hours...it's a little disheartening. I want to be showered with wealth and fame for my natural talents. I will never get to see a giant bilboard painted in my honor, won't have my picture on the front page of every newspaper as I rise to make that winning shot. Instead, I lurk in the background, alone and forgotten, without friends or girls lurking on my arms with my Nike-stamped, free martinis. It makes me very sad, sometimes.

And I can't help but think of the starving factory workers striving to make my comfortable Nike shoes that I can buy in cheap truckloads. Cambodia, China, Mexico- poverty is the majority of the world's birthright, along with oppression. It's not just Nike, I know that, but Nike is a symbol. The Swoosh of Repression. Unfortunately, I know that even while the labor standards of our sweatshop companies are torture compared to U.S. home standards, and I feel for my fellow femmes in the heart and bowels of sexual-harrassment central, I know the jobs are eagerly sought after and they raise the quality of life for some people abroad. And help me get cheap products at home. I am complicit in this. I have a tight budget, I know I am dependent. I just wish the monster of globalization could be fluffified somehow, sharp teeth and slitted pupils replaced with a happy, hippy smile. But capatilism encourages the Walmarts of the world. Lawsuits may come and dung be flung, but in the end, as long as someone lives well, someone will be living less well, and the consuming bulldozer becomes unstoppable.

This is simplistic rhetoric. The spit of the left. I acknowledge this and have no wish to expound great truths of macroeconomics, but there is no denying that for some people, life just sucks, and those people are probably less lazy and better people than I ever will be. Our football coaches get in trouble when they encourage our sportsmen to lay back and think of themselves as Gods, our centers of higher education and our tax monies diverted to fund a rapist's legal fees. All in the name of sporting entertainment, the elites born with abilities I will never have because of my genetics.

God, I wish you'd get a little dirty sometimes. I wish the teachers would stop picking up after you. I wish you'd be judged on your humanity, and not your talents. If I were held to the same standard, I admit I would be in trouble, but at least then, there'd be some sense of fairness, some sense of justice. Tear away your veils of blissful ignorance and acknowledge that freedom occasionally runs amok. Maybe understanding is a first step. Or maybe it's merely allowing us to feel self-righteous, to say that by writing a blog I can go out justly and purchase my regular items at my regular prices, because God knows I've done my share.

"I also get tickets to all football games, home and away," Ryan says with a smile. "Fifty-yard line, however many tickets I want. No lines, no prices. You wanna go?"

"Oh," I giggle. "Well why didn't you just say so in the first place? I'm, like, so there!"

Purple Rain #9

2004-07-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal editorial page evoked a firestorm on November 20, 2002, when it ran an op-ed piece lamented the existance of so-called "lucky duckies." Who are these lucky duckies? The people at the very bottom of the economic totem pole, who manage to get by without paying income tax. Granted, these people still pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, and other taxes. But not paying income taxes! Wow, these guys must be living the easy life, 'eh? Never having to deal with income tax, these people have no idea of the horror those rich people face having to pay over 20% of their income in income taxes. Poor, poor rich people, America has truly wronged you.

Okay, sarcasm aside, it seems that many in the political arena view the poor as largly consisting of the "undeserving" poor. Some politicions contantly use the rhetoric of the other party "trying to take money away from the weathly and give to the undeserving." Yet critizing these politicians counts as "class warfare". Um, and calling an entire socio-economic group "undeserving" isn't?

But on a serious note, is there such a thing as the "undeserving" poor which are truly lucky duckies, if you will, and live off the government without even trying to find work? While one can easily point to individual people that fit the stereotype of the "lazy poor", it is my contention that any attempted distiction between "deserving poor" and "undeserving poor" is completely arbritary and counterproductive to an effective society. First of all, the supply of jobs has pretty much always been less than the demand for jobs. This of course, leads to scarcity. This means that even if everybody worked assiduously and hard, there would be people that are unemployed. And given the rate of job increase has been below the rate that people join the job market, in many areas there is quite a lot of job scarcity. Next, in today's modern economy many jobs are lost due to factors outside the worker's control. The rate of technological change has become exponential over the years, and while this is generally a good thing, it means that many workers in fields that become outdated will lose their job. While it may be conforting to think that all these people who lost their job could instantly find another, scarcity yields this result immpossible. Finally, no entity can competently draw a bright line on what constitutes "deserving" and what constitutes "undeserving". People don't neatly fall into these categories; there is a spectrum from the very lazy to the very hard working. There is no objective standard over where the line ought to be placed. Futhermore, the factors that go into one being poor are immense. Things like children, locality, and educational background would all have to come into play, but no entity can amass that many facts.

Many private charities do wonders for certain members of the poor. All in all though, the fundamential obligation of providing for the poor should be the government. Charities cannot guarantee help to all poor people accross the nation. First, many charities give only to a select group that hope to get something back, be it religious conversion or otherwise. Moreover, many charities are localized at only help those in their particular area. Not everybody is lucky enough to be one of these select groups or be in an area with strong local charities. In addition, only 10% of charitable donations are directly for the poor

Having a social safety net with a guaranteed minimum standard of living is not only required for social justice (people should not stave to death in a nation without food shortages), but for a strong economy as well. Many economists agree that business onwers taking risks is essential for the economy to grow. For a second, let's pretend that the US government did not have a social safety net. Now, as a business owner, would you happily take risks and try new business strategies? If you fail, you'd be unemployed. Without a safety net, unemployment would be a much greater threat, and not many businesses would dare take many risks. Business and consumer confidence is essential to a prospering economy. So in other words, not only the poor, but the rich prosper from a social safety net. With a government safety net in place, these business owners can take many risks, and if they lose their business, the net can help them rebound quickly.

Those lucky duckies.

Czar Red #9

2004-07-02T16:37:00.000-07:00

It's welfare music
Watch the baby dance
To the welfare music
Will she ever stand a chance?

Don't expect any answers from me. I admit I'm just as uncertain and weary as the rest of us. I do, however, have a signficant amount of concerns to consider.

I feel like there is a difference between the deserving and undeserving but I do know that I'm not qualified to make that distinction. I don't claim to have the knowledge or even enough compassion to fairly make that assessment. Is the crack addict down the street deserving because of her pathetic lethal addiction? Or is she undeserving -- trapped in a prison of her own making?

My parents always told me to never give cash to "bums" because they'd spend it on alcohol. I always thought that'd be a reason TO give it to them -- if they wanted a drink so bad, why couldn't I be the one to give it to them? To make their small lives happy if just for awhile?

I'd contend there are no undeserving children -- they're too helpless and undeveloped to fend for themselves -- but then again, are they? I had a job at fifteen and understood how to manage money.

So maybe everyone is deserving. The circumstances our out of their control -- no one wants to me an alcholic or a gambler -- but where does that leave them? Unforuntately, they become a massive weight on society, especially the working poor. The rich can blow me, I really care less about their tax concerns. But what about those with a legitmate job that make mere pennies over the poverty line? They are actually trying to make it while the others, well you get the point.

I do know something. I think it's a mistake to blame poverty on the moral failings of the invidiual poor themselves. Poverty is something that is perpetuated by the society's economic structure. Everyone knows that America's poor are poorer and their rich are richer than most places in the world. That diversity isn't coincidental but the result of our economic policy and it's tie to politics.

If we really want to do something about the poor, we have to point our fingers at ourselves and the governmental structure we endorse.

YellowSubmarine #9 pt 1

2004-07-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, there is a difference between deserving poor and undeserving poor. I have to adress them seperately though because they entail two entirely different circumstances and means of adressing them.

You could say I am acquainted with what it is to be poor. My entire life I have lived somewhere between middle class and abject poverty, and at both extremes. There was even a time when my father was out of work for eighteen months and my family was bankrupt. (My dad filed chapter eleven not chapter thirteen. He had too much pride to welch on a debt.) For a few months, my siblings and I were welfare wunderkind. I saw my dad, a man with three advanced degrees working at Wendy's. He was a bear of a man and he looked down-right ridiculous in that uniform. I know why he did it though, and to this day I feel warm and fuzzy everytime I eat a frosty. In the end though, the government made him quit. He was making too much money and was going to lose his benefits. But that was years ago.

So in preparation for this TKO question I decided to look into the poverty level, the poorest of the poor, the worst off of the worse-off. I was perusing the figures for the fiscal year 2002 (the latest year for which the census can provide data) and surprise, surprise, according to the bereau of the census, I'm not only below the poverty line, I am positively moribund with destitution. I qualify for every single federal aid program not aimed at expectant mothers or the elderly. That having been said, I think the entire concept of poverty in America is a self-righteous joke. Here's why...

There are two types of people below the poverty level and in either instance it involves conscious choice. First, let me adress my own case.

According to the Bureau of the census I am under 65 and a one person house-hold so therefore I must earn a monetary income above 9,359 dollars before taxes not including capital gains and noncash benefits, a year to be considered not living in poverty. I crunched a few numbers and, the federal minimum wage being 5.15/hr, I would only have to work an average of 35 hours a week at a minimum wage job (or two or three) to achieve this paltry sum. That gets you 780 a month in an area (where cost of living is low enough to keep the minimum wage as is) charging five hundred for decent one bedroom. Failing to meet this standard is like failing gym class, it takes nothing short of a supreme lack of effort. I don't meet it because even though I earn substantially more than minimum wage, I elect only to work between 12 and 18 hours a week. By the way, I've also failed gym class three times.

So why do I do it and what am I doing with the 17 to 23 hours a week I clearly should be working, but would rather be doing something else? Like everything else in life and economics its simply a matter of incremental value. I would rather sleep and extra hour or two a day. (in fact I chose a morning job because otherwise I'd probably never get out of bed before 2pm) I would rather read a good book, or study something interesting like government, politics, or international finance. Its not even that I'm lazy, though I can't argue otherwise. Since this writing contest has begun I have since overhauled one of my entries and turned it into a play which will debut next year once I decide if I want to go through the extra trouble and expense to make money off of it. On any given day... I volunteer to help raise funds for a liberal radio host friend of mine and I learn the ins and outs of broadcasting. I take long walks and just soak in the scenery. I work on a book of short stories, which, if I ever get good enough, I'll publish. I discuss finance and argue the vageries of subjective morality with my room-mate. I go out dancing, or sing karaoke. I chat with friends. I watch movies. I do the sort of thing most people wish they were doing while they are working. So, how's your life treating you?

In fact, in writing this post I've become inspired! I think I'll talk to a hippy doctor friend of mine and begin a club. We'll be the Royal Order of Bohemia! Of course, you're all invited. It'll be for anyone who lives life with a song in their heart, prefers revelry to work, enjoys lounging about with a book or just for anyone who saw the first ten minutes of Moulin Rouge and thought Those fiends! They went and held the revolution without me! It will be an informal order, but prone to social gatherings and designed specically to enhance the enjoyment of the member's lives. We can even have membership cards! Nothing fancy, just whatever I can work out at Kinkos, but yeah. Check it out. Now accepting applications for ROB. Ha Ha, we can casually refer to it as BOB! "Have you seen BOB lately? Aw man, I was just at this party and let me tell ya, BOB really knows how to liven things up." Besides, that way it will spell the same frontwards, backwards, and upside-down. Don't think I'm just joking either...

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes...my abject poverty...

Surely I'm living like a pauper though, right? I won't lie, it does affect my life-style, but I'm happier than most people I know. It all has to do with sound fiscal management and keeping a very low overhead. You'd be amazed at all the shit you don't need and can easily get along fine without. I don't have a car or a cell phone. I need neither and they're both incredibly expensive to maintain. I don't go out to eat save maybe once a month. I don't care to as usually I can come up with better, for cheaper at home anyway. I don't have cable or high-speed internet access at home. Then again I have access to all the best movies and tv shows on DVD and a T-1 line at my local library. If I want anything particular I can either save for it or I can earn the extra money doing odd-jobs. Its not for everyone, but its ridiculously stress free.

It's not like this only works for one person either. I've actually gotten so good at stretching a buck, that during a few months last year I had four guys living with me in a two-bedroom apartment on only that singular part-time job...AND I was paying off hospital bills. Now you insist there must be a catch. And you're right.

Uncle Sam makes these projections without considering under the table arrangements. I'm talking completely legitimate means too. There's just tons of income that goes unreported. When I make commission selling and installing Vinyl siding with my cousin Jamie, none of its on the books. In 2002, when I worked for ten dollars an hour plus a huge stipend as a stage manager for a non-profit repertory company, none of it was on the books. There's just tons of transactions on that level every day that are either already provided for and don't need reporting twice, or take place person to person. All of this goes on without Uncle Sam knowing or getting a piece of the action. That's the first failure of the poverty standard.

The second is that it doesn't take into account material holdings. I'm not worth much monetarily, but I have a few well-valued objects that if I were so inclined are good for an easy shill putting me well over my poverty threshhold. According to our standard, I can literally be a millionaire one year, retire, withdraw all of my liquid assets and stuff the money in my matress or invested in some antique furniture. Because its not generating interest in an account somewhere and thus generating income, I'm worth millions but I'm officially impoverished. Or lets say again that I am a millionaire, eccentric to the core and I decide to invest all of my liquid assets to buy a nice collection of antiques which will appreciate in value. As long as I don't sell anything requiring legal acknowledgement of the sale, such as in an official retail capacity or anything where ownership needs to be legally transferred, all I need to do is be careful not to bring in any new money above board and over my threshhold next year. I will be officially impoverished come tax time. It may sound a bit absurd, but I actually know quite a few people who do just that, and it's much more common when practiced only in part. Seriously, can you say...tax shelters?

The last problem with the official poverty standard is it projects the image of a poor old helpless woman and her emaciated grandchildren starving in a squalid, rat-infested gutter, while ignoring the effect of public and private charitable assistance, most of which is designed specifically to combat overhead. For a long time while my dad was out of work those eighteen months, and well before Uncle Sam came into the picture we recieved a lot of charitable aid from our church in the form of mortgage assistance and food banks. When you factor in low cost housing, HUD, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, WIC, earned income tax credits, Food Stamps, Food banks, and all the other charitable assistance programs out there... all it takes is a little reasonable money management and in no time flat you'll be saying, "Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot I was supposed to be poor and miserable and have no quality of life...!"

That's why I consider poverty by American standards to be one giant joke, and I'm the punch-line...

In the mean-while VIVE LA REVOLUTION!

Commander Cream to the Rescue #1

2004-07-02T00:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been a bit, well, granola. The tomboy in the family, I enjoyed splashing through swamps and fording streams as a little girl. I remember when my mother tried half-heartedly to spark my interest in more feminine activities. At one point she bought me a pink purse. I hated the color pink, but I did find a use for the purse.

For a short time in my childhood, my family home was perched on the edges of suburbia. There was actually a farm within walking distance, and undeveloped land all around us. As I grew older, the landscape changed. The farmland was sold and converted into a park. But there was one area I was convinced would remain undisturbed: the dirt bumps.

To my juvenile eyes, the dirt bumps were not mere heaps of soil, but instead the Rocky Mountains recreated in miniature. My siblings and I were the undisputed rulers of the area, the king and queens of the mountains. After all, there were four of us united under the Cream flag (my baby brother was still, well, a baby and useless in our childish battles). We allowed the rest of the neighborhood children to roam our domain, of course, but everyone acknowledged our sovereignty. My own private kingdom. Sure, it was a field of dirt and bike paths, but at least a quarter of it was mine.

Inevitably, development found our kingdom. I went out to survey my empire one summer morning and found bulldozers flattening the bumps. Fury blossomed in my breast, but the anger of a seven year old holds little sway over developers. The area was fenced off. Our kingdom had been conquered.

What does this have to do with the pink purse? Well, my mother thought that with the dirt bumps gone, she might be able to tempt me back into a more traditional female role. Instead she provided me the means to help save some of my citizens.

Two days after the invasion, my friend Chris raced to my house. Chris was a good friend. He taught me how to catch crawdads and how to climb trees. In turn I taught him how to walk through a cattail swamp without sinking. He had a special place in his heart for snakes. I remember him terrifying my mother one afternoon when he showed up at our house with a four foot bull snake he had caught himself. Bull snakes were a bit beyond my skill, but I was pretty good at catching the little garter snakes that filled our corner of suburbia. On that morning, Chris breathlessly announced that the garter snakes needed our help. With the dirt bumps being flattened, the snakes would surely die. In our childish wisdom, we knew what we had to do. We needed to catch as many snakes as possible and transport them to safety.

That’s where the pink purse came in. In retrospect, I don’t know why we used the purse. Realistically, we could have carried the snakes in any sort of bag. Perhaps it was a form of rebellion against my mother’s reforming efforts. Maybe I just didn’t think about the inappropriateness of transporting snakes in a purse.

There was a swamp nearby where Chris and I often caught snakes. We figured that if there were already snakes there, the former denizens of the dirt bumps could survive there as well. I don’t know how many snakes we carried from the dirt bumps to the swamp in my little pink purse. I do know that we never told anyone. As the bulldozers slowly homogenized our former playground, we secretly toiled at our chosen vocation. My mother did eventually find out that I had been keeping snakes in my purse. I’m afraid that a seven year old is not very good at hiding that kind of thing. In my mind, the sibilant thanks of anthropomorphized snakes made the lecture bearable.

At the end of the summer, Chris and I had saved the world. We were certain that the snakes were happy in their new, safe home. When we wandered through the swamp, we knew that its reptilian inhabitants recognized us. The swamp became our new kingdom. Little did they know, but we declared that the snakes were the guardians of the new state.

We grew up. The crown passed into younger, eager hands. And I eventually did have a purse that served a purpose beyond a snake transporter (But it wasn’t pink). Years later they drained that swamp and built condominiums. I hope that there was a new Chris and a new Commander C. to save the snakes. If there was I wish that I had met them: they could have borrowed my purse.

Commander Cream #9

2004-07-01T22:39:00.000-07:00

Deserving poor and undeserving poor? I feel as though I have been trust back into Victorian England. There are certainly poor people I feel more sympathy for than others: victims of domestic abuse, those who cannot afford treatment for mental illness, etc. But do some deserve help while others do not? I really cannot judge. Frankly, I don’t want the responsibility of trying to determine who’s stained with what sin and how much suffering it takes before we provide assistance.

Call it a case of fastidiousness. Call it a case of scruples. Call it whatever you like, but I have to admit that I hate how our society treats the poverty-stricken. I feel as though the poor are dismissed in our society: as though success comes naturally to all those who seek it. To be honest, I don’t believe that success inevitably comes to those who work for it. I have worked for minimum wage. I have worked multiple jobs. Neither are particularly gratifying. But if I lacked the opportunity to increase my knowledge and skills, then I would be looking at both merely to stay above the poverty line. I am fortunate. Not everyone is. And if you don’t have those opportunities, it’s hard to make money. It’s hard to be a “success.”

Realistically, what can we as a society do? Can private charities solve the problem? I sincerely doubt it. That leaves individuals and the government as the remaining players. I’m cynical. I don’t trust individuals, even myself, to solve the problem. Unfortunately, I have a decided aversion to large government run programs. So how would I solve the problem? Obviously I wouldn’t. I have no head for political theories and no ability to assess different policy options. I leave that to those political science majors among us. With that power in their hands, may God/Goddess/Whatever have mercy on us all.

Results &TKO #9

2004-06-30T21:53:00.000-07:00

The sixth contestant voted out is Prof. Plum who recieved the most votes -- three. Immunity was awarded to Yellow Submarine.

Also, Princess Peach was Mel Gibbard.

TKO Question #8:

Do you think there is a difference between the "deserving" poor and "undeserving" poor? Who should help them and how?

Remember -- post by Saturday at noon.

A few rules clarifications: I was asked about immunity and how exactly that worked as well as ties.

If there is a tie on LEAST favorite votes, I determine who will be ousted by considering the following in order as needed: 1) Whomever has made the fewest posts, 2) Whomever earned the least immunity votes that turn, 3) Whomever earned the most LEAST favorite votes the LAST turn, and finally 4) Whomever earned the least immunity votes the previous turn. If there is still a tie, then I get to choose; eat me.

What does getting immunity do for you? Well, first, some recognition for being talented. Second, it helps with the tie-breakers. Last, if you should get the most LEAST favorite votes and the most FAVORITE votes, then you stay in. Whomever gets the most FAVORITE votes (immunity) cannot be voted out that turn.

Yellow Submarine #8

2004-06-30T13:38:00.000-07:00

I missed the deadline due to a violent stomach illness and a very ill-timed power outage as I was finishing my response. I am posting anyway. I know this won't count towards the vote, but I want to respond anyway because if I am to be voted off, it will not be for negligence.

I have never shared the following story, and outside of the parties involved, no one knows it happened. Because of the type of neighborhood it took place in, it was never reported to the police. I share it with you now only under the cloak of anonymity and in referrence to the topic at hand.
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What would you do for a friend? How far would you go to protect them, even from themselves? I guess it all depends on the friends you make.

Your friends can either be an amazing force for good in your life or they can drag you to the depths of human nature. Astrologically speaking, I am a Pisces. Without delving too much further into what that means, the lead sentence applies double for me. It's symbol is the two fish swimming in opposite directions. One fish is always swimming upwards, the other is always swimming down. I call it the Pariah/Messiah dichotomy. Every Pisces is both at turns and which direction we're swimming in tends to have a lot to do with which circle of friends we're running in at the time.

My choice of friends has always ran the gamut of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good do things like mix their own CDs, arrange online writing contests, or go to college to become elementary school teachers. The bad do the sort of things that aren't discussed in polite conversation, but provide chaff for the evening news. The ugly just plain need help getting their life straight. Most people fall into two of these camps, some all three, but no one ever only falls into one. I think its because good, bad, and ugly are only reflections of the most basic aspects of human nature and as such everyone has their turn at each... Certain people just lean more one way than the other...
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During one of my periodic Ugly phases, I met a guy named Danny. I met his whole family actually. I met his mother Viola, his girlfriend Crystal, and his sister Rachel. They were all waiting for a cousin to get off of work at the Denny's where I had been whittling away my insomnia. We were discussing certain issues of legal liability for some reason or the other and Viola and I hit it off immediately. Viola was very much the matriarch of the family and had taken an interest in the law much for the same reason I had. This was namely because everyone around us always seemed to be getting into trouble.

As we were sitting there having a rather enlightening discussion, a car drove by the window and sped away.

Danny recognizes the driver and was immediately up from the table and running to his truck in the parking lot. "I'm going to the house!" was all he seemed to be able to spare on his way out the door. I wasn't sure what all the hubbub was about, but I knew it was serious and there was a big possibility that something could go wrong. I caught up with him in the parking lot and told him I was coming with. "Alright. Hop in, but get my twenty-two. Its under your seat."

On the way over, he explains to me the scenario: Some close friends of the family had gotten on the wrong side of a few local gang members in a drug turf dispute and there was the possibility they might be going by the house to do something less than polite. He wasn't worried about the friends; they were big enough to handle themselves. He was worried because Crystal's five year old daughter Amy was still there.

When we got there we checked the house and everything seemed kosher. We started talking some more, one thing led to another and a few hours later I had built him a fence. A nice one too. I'm still not sure why any of that makes sense to me.

Later that day he introduced me to his brother Ronnie and his sister's boyfriend who, it just so happens, knew me in a different life when I was known as 'the Professor'.

I seem to collect nicknames and alter-egos. Among every circle of friends I remain not better, but seperate. My separateness is always so pronounced that it tends to take on a life of its own in the form of a moniker. Practically nobody of a certain association calls me 'Yellow'.

Where that particular name comes from is a whole nuther story altogether, so let's just say I helped him and a few of his friends out once upon a time and he vouched for me.

After that I was part of the family.
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A week later I was homeless, for reasons of my own. I liked being homeless. I had nothing to worry about save my next meal and my next nap. I had bags of clothes and things scattered and well hidden across town, I carried a tote bag with all my hygeine supplies in it plus a book or two from the local library and was able to stay relatively clean and well groomed in public bathrooms and swimming holes. I was able to wash my clothes as well. Between all these arrangements I was the most kempt, unhomeless looking homeless man you ever met. I just wasn't able to hide it forever because of the sleep thing.

The first thing that most people do when they're homeless is change their sleep schedule. I was no exception after the first few nights because while you can be warm and comfortable in an alley, you are never safe and you stand a good chance of being taken. Much better to sleep during the day and become nocturnal. One day, I was visiting Danny's cousin at the Denny's. I excused myself to the restroom and I couldn't keep from resting my head on my lap and dozing off in a stall. She was worried about me when I hadn't come out after forty-five minutes and had called Danny to see if I was okay. Danny came in there expecting to find me dead on the toilet. He found me still sleeping.

I apologized for startling everyone, and Danny got the whole story out of me. He asked why I hadn't told him before and I responded that I didn't want Viola to worry about me. He insisted that I stay with him for a while. I did oddjobs around the house so I wouldn't feel like I was free-loading. I found there was all sorts of stuff I could do. A load of dishes here, repairing a washer there, helping to clean the engine block of Viola's Fiero. All of it was appreciated, but I still felt that without monetary compensation I was a freeloader. Eventually I got back on my feet with the help of some good friends, but I couldn't forget the family.
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While all this self-betterment was going on in the front of the house, the destructive influence of the turf dispute centering around the seperate room at the end of the lot set the tone for the back of it. Josh was a friend of Danny's since they were two halves of an acorn. He was like a son to Viola and a brother in the family. But he kept dealing drugs, and eventually the gang put him under contract. When some guys came to collect on him, Danny was at his side and together they fought them off. This extended the contract to the family.

I was staying at a friend's house one night when I got a phone call telling me that Viola's place had been hit. Both Viola and Ronnie were there at the time and Mama's car was torched. Everyone was at the house. I asked my friend for a ride over and when I got there I told him I wouldn't be needing a ride back. He got the message and jammed out of there.
_________________

I was impatient so I hopped the fence and marched up to the door. Before I hit the front porch, the door had swung open and I was staring down the barrel of his nine.

"You know Danny, if this is how you treat a guest then I'm afraid your hospitality sucks."

He wasn't amused but he recognized my voice "C'mon in Yellow. Not for nothing, but we've been expecting some guys to crash our little shindig here."

"Is mom alright?"

"Yeah, a little shaken but she's okay."

"How's Ronnie?"

"How do you think he is? He's pissed! Matter of fact I'm glad you showed up. We got the boys together and we're about to go find those bastards. Do you want a pistol or a rifle?"

"No. no. no. no. no. no. no. no. You can't go out there."

"Why the fuck not?"

"And leave Mom, Crystal and Amy here alone?"

"Fine. So you stay, but we're going to find those bastards."

"No, you're not."

Danny had had about enough of this. He wasn't trying to stand there and debate with me. He reared on me and for the second time that night I was staring down the barrel of his gun.

"Are you going to stop me? Who's side are FUCKING ON ANYWAY?"

With the emphasis on his last words his chest was heaving and he didn't look like he was in the mood for further conversation. Any guy who ever tells you he's stared down the barrel of a gun and not been afraid is lying on one of those counts. Danny was a close friend, but friend or no, a man that pissed and paranoid will shoot you.

"I can take any one of those Mother Fuckers! And if you're not with me..." He cocked his gun.

I had maintained eye contact with him over the sight of his gun. I knew that to an unstable man, this was a test and any lack of resolve on my part would constitute an admission of guilt.

"Danny, in a fair fight I have no doubt you'd come out on top. You're one tough bastard and I should know, but bullets don't make that distinction. If they're going to cap you, you won't know they're even there until after they've already pulled the trigger. But let's say you do manage to take out one or two of these guys... They travel in packs. There'll always be another two to deal with. Then two more. Then four more. Out there you're vulnerable.

"But that's not what bothers me the most. If a contract's been put out on the family, then they're not going to be after just you or Josh or Ronnie. They'll want everyone. They probably have eyes on this house right now. If you're out there, mom and Amy and Crystal are at the mercy of anyone swinging by the house. This house and the protection it provides are your greatest assets, it is your fortress. If you're going to make it through tonight, if they're going to make it throught the night, you have to stay here. They're most likely expecting you to be rush out the door with a posse. Its not that if you go out there you're dead. Its that if you go out there we're all dead. They're going to finish the job and the whether they finish you or the family first will depend entirely on how much you pissed them off and how much they want you to suffer."

Now for the gamble...

"If you have any doubts that I'm speaking the truth, or that my loyalties lay anywhere other than with the safety and protection of this family, then by all means pull the fucking trigger."
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He remained fixed. He was searching my eyes for weakness or deception.

He roared.

I didn't blink.

Finally he let off a shot into the ceiling.That seemed to calm him down. With the tension gone he even laughed a little.

"So how 'bout it Professor? How would you handle this?"

"First off, I'd make them fight me on my turf. If you don't come to them, they'll come to you, most likely in a drive-by. Take your heavy furniture and push it against the windows. Keep Mom, Amy, and Crystal in the center of the house where their less likely to be struck by a stray round..."

In the matter of a half an hour of brainstorming and heavy-lifting we had turned the house into a compound. I won't bore you with the details of how or what we did, but the last detail of the arrangement involved me taking a rifle, getting to the roof of the church diagonally across the street. I was to keep a look-out and providing cover fire if necessary.

I took the rifle, wrapped it in a blanket and walked outside. I called back to the house," 'Preciate it Danny. I'll have the blanket back to you at the end of the weekend. Grandma sends her regards.." I walked across the street and two blocks past the church singing something from the score of "The H.M.S. Pinafore". Then I doubled back a different way under cover of darkness and scaled the side of the church until I reached the roof. Fortunately for me it had a lot of railings and overhangs which lent themselves to easy scaling. There was no moon out and I found a spot where the light was to my side and I could lay prone in the shadow of an over hang. I could see everything below, yet I was concealed in darkness. It was perfect. I set up watch for the night.
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I kept an eye on all the traffic, pedestrian and otherwise, not that there was much at two in the morning.

About two and a half hours into my watch, I saw a car pull around into the parking lot of the convenience store across the street from the house. Two guys jumped out, not in any specific gang colors, but obviously gang related. Their pants were sagging and their shoelaces were in, but untied to the point where the tongues were practically hanging out on their K-Swiss. The symbolism behind gang attire is too intricate to go into right now, but suffice it to say I could tell by what they were wearing that they were probably initiates, earning their colors by doing the hit. Of the two, one was obviously carrying heat in his waistband, but the other had a bottle in each hand. They left the door open and the engine running. These were obviously the guys, so there was probably another shooter in the car, probably as much there to shoot as to oversee the fresh fish. The one thing that I just couldn't understand was why risk getting out of the car and possibly compromising both your identity and your getaway? Why not just spray the house, get away and send the message?

I saw the guy with the heat take out a lighter and try to light a rag hanging from the first bottle. Then it hit me.

The bottles were make-shift molotovs filled with incendiary liquid. Probably a high proof alcohol or a gasoline or a mixture. The rags would have had to be lightly soaked in a slower burning liquid, like kerosene perhaps to provide a small time delay. They were going to burn everybody out and hit them as they came or otherwise turn the house into a crematorium. The second bottle was probably to speed things up or in case something went wrong with the first one. Either way, no one was going to make it out of there.

The only reason to go through all this hassle was if they wanted somebody and knew they weren't coming out on their own. In this case they had to have eyes on the house, and they probably had guys covering the other ends of the house which would mean they had to be in contact with each other. They were probably waiting for the fire to begin shooting, though. Someone really put some thought into this.

The rag was lit in the moment it took for all of this to dawn on me. In that brief moment before action I couldn't help thinking to myself, Danny, I don't know what you did to piss these guys off, but they're not fucking around. They're going to end this thing tonight.

What happened next went something like this...

CRACK CRACK

WHOOSH

CRASH

WHOOSH

(screaming)

POP POP POPPOPOPPPOP

CRACK

POP POP

SQQQUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAALL

The first crack was my rifle.

The second crack and the first whoosh was my shot busting the bottle of the lit molotov and throwing liquid fire all over the two poor dumb bastards. The way it was sticking, they must have used an emulsifying agent. Someone had been reading the anarchist's cookbook. I was impressed.

The crash was the second molotov being dropped in the confusion and the whoosh thereafter was the fire ball catching onto, and consuming their shoes. I felt bad about it later, but really, that's what the daffy bastards get for dropping it while they were on fire. I was not impressed.

Then came the screaming and a few shots fired at the house, plus one or two in my general direction from the overseer in the car. Judging from where he was shooting, my shot caught him completely off guard and all he could figure out was that I was on the other side of the road. I wasn't itching to fire twice to give him a slightly better idea where I was, at least not until I had some cover fire. By now fire was being returned from the house and the two punks were hiding behind a nearby car trying to remember in which order they were supposed to stop, drop, and/or roll.

Evidently the overseer wasn't too impressed with the performance of the pair, least of all when he motioned for them to get in the car, and they refused. Perhaps they just didn't want to risk getting plugged by crossfire or another phantom bullet on the way over. Perhaps they knew what sort of retribution was in store if they went along. Perhaps it was something else entirely, I'll never know for sure. One thing was certain though, the two had no intention of getting into that car and overseer was not at all pleased.

This presented a problem for the overseer. These guys failed their test, but they knew too much to simply let them go. They could be dealt with later if they came along, but leave them there as witnesses and you risk all sorts of fun legal incriminations or criminal reprisals for the higher ups. He turned his gun on the pair, either to scare them into coming or to silence them.

Luckily for tweedledee and teedledumb-ass, I was watching this whole sordid affair through my sights and I winged him before he could turn threat to practice. After I tagged him, he wasn't trying to hang around any longer. He popped off two shots and dove into the car which even then was speeding away, tires smoking and squealing. Two other cars followed.

The two would be bombers crawled away in the other direction an hour after the fire-fight stopped, probably when they thought everyone had forgotten about them or wasn't paying attention anymore. I had been watching them the whole time. If they were bent on redeeming themselves, they would have tried something earlier. It looked like they had learned their lesson.

I found out later that when they got home, their burns were so severe that they had to go to the hospital, and when they got there, they spilled all their guts and had to go into witness protection. I don't know if that last part's true, but I have a friend who's a nurse in the hospital and she corroborates the first part.
____________

I had a dream last night. When I told Danny about it the next day, he and I went at it. I told him that the way things were going was a lose/lose situation. One day this would have to end and the way he was going, when that day came he would have to choose between losing Josh or losing Amy or Mom. He didn't see the choice that had to be made. For an hour we went at it. I stuck to my guns. He defended Josh to the last. Upon realizing I wasn't going to convince him, I told him that I admired his loyalty, but not his foresight and I left.

Two days later, a psychic friend of mine from another circle later told me that you only get three chances to change your destiny and I had already had two. I would have to make a choice soon, and depending on which road I chose I would be dead inside of the year. Another friend corroborated.

At the time this could have meant either sticking around or going to my mother's house to battle my step-father, an extremely violent, narcotic addicted, ex-navy, ex-con.

I decided to go where I was needed most, Grim Reaper be damned. I was grateful to the family, but now I had to attend to the affairs of my family. Two weeks later I was six hundred miles away wrestling with a man who smelled of bad cigars.

I heard from a mutual friend that the day I had warned Danny about had come sooner rather than later. A week after I left, the gang had regrouped and had tried again, this time in broad daylight. Amy wasn't in the house, but Mom was and she was hit. Josh was out the same night.

I didn't take the news very well. Mom didn't take it very well either. I sent my respects to her hospital before she passed. I just wish I could've been there, cryptic warnings or no. She deserved better than that.
__________________

So there you have it. Over the course of a couple of months I had gained a second family, been homeless, lied to everybody about it, built a fence, rebuilt a house, twice stared down a gun, told my best friend he was going to get himself killed, taken sides in a gang dispute breaking I don't know how many laws in the process, foiled two would-be arsonists sending them to the hospital, saved their lives by wounding their fellow ne'er-do-well, got shot at, had a contract put out on me (which has since been removed due to the influence of some other friends of mine), had a bad dream and a worse roe with my best friend, and moved six hundred miles away to rescue my mother only to be listened to too late after misguided loyalty condemned a good woman to die for the continued sins of another.

I have no qualms about backing you up with my fullest if it means protecting you or our shared interests, and I can take any abuse you send my way in the heat of the moment, but I'm not going to spare you my tongue when your actions mean dire consequences for either yourself or another.

But hey, I guess that's just the kind of friend I am.

Czar Red #8

2004-06-30T08:44:00.000-07:00

This TKO has been the most difficult for me because I value honesty in relationships more than everything. If you cannot be honest with your friends -- not matter what the excuse -- they aren't really in a relationship with you but rather the image you project to them. That's always concerned me because I would rather see the blunt cold truth then cling to ideals that are only as substantial as my dreams.

That being said, I cannot recall a time I have lied to my friends. Lies of omission perhaps but those are a whole different monster than telling falsehoods. That doesn't mean that I'm the perfect friend; I'm not.

I'm impatient -- if I'm talking to you I want you to get to the point soon or I'll drift. I'm not the greatest listener either -- I try to remain as interested as I can in your current troubles but if it becomes clear you’d rather feel sorry for yourself than find a solution, I become a little non-responsive. I don't always know the right thing to say. I'm not sure what will make your world of hurt disappear so I end up fumbling for words or nod to break the silence. And lastly, I'm insensitive. I forget that not everyone is as careless as myself and I may just sting you with an unintentional callous remark.

Before you decide I am a Bitch, I like Ivory Angel fight fiercely for my friends. I value loyalty second only to honesty and you will always know that I’m standing beside you. I will remain defensive of you to the entire outside world – at once if need be. I’ll keep everything you tell me a secret – I’ll help you shield your big problems from the prying eyes of those that would judge you. I may not know the right thing to say, but I have a comforting shoulder and I'll hold you while you cry. My words can be insensitive but never my gestures. I remember the little things no matter how new of friends we may be. I’ll pick up your favorite drink before the party so you don’t feel alone with the beer drinkers or I’ll leave a cheerful note under your door when you have a stressful day. And I won’t lie to you.

Purple Rain #8

2004-06-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

There is a lie and there is not telling the truth.

You see, a "lie" are always considered to be bad, while "not telling the truth" dosn't seem to have any emotional baggage on it. Sometimes when not telling the truth doesn't appear to be harmful, we call the statements "white lies". In the past when I've lied to friends, I never think I'm being a liar. It's always "little white lies." Yet these white laws weren't so "white" as they appear.

Back in middle school and most of high school, I hid a part of me away from them. Whenever I had been wronged or I was feeling down, I'd alway try to make sure my friends didn't find out about it. It's that I didn't want to be a burden upon them by making them worry, thus being a "good friend". Most of us have at least once said everything was okay when asked how things are going, even when things are quite the opposite. I took things to a new level though, and got quite creative in masking my pain. One time, a friend had walked into my room after I had cried, and he saw my moastened eyes. But I still lied to hide the pain; I claimed that I ad just finished practicing a bit of a play for a speech competition. You could say this fault of mine helped lead to the crazy, boxer-cald episode at the fire drill.

But I learned something after a while. I always saw it as my duty to comfort my friends who are in pain and feeling down, but saw it awful to talk about my problems. In the end, I was being a hypocrite toward myself. And when I started to open up, others had less qualms about opening up to me, allowing for truly rewarding friendships

Ultimatly, if a friendship is predicated upon a lie, then it really isn't a friendship. If I lie to get a friend, then that person isn't really friends with Purple Rain, but with who I'm pretending to be.

Okay, ignore the irony of me using my blog name.

But there are truly white lies also:

One time back when I was 13, before the era of military school, my family
decided to go to their monthly opera with our neighbors. I liked the idea because after all, I was friends with their two sons, aged 11 and 7. We saw a old, quicky German opera where the first act ended with the woman singing "To death!" as the curtain fell. Now, in old German, "death" was a term for sex, as I had learned from previous German operas. So really, the woman's final words were "To fucking!" as the music played trumpantly in the background. Strange, none of the girls I've been with ever seemed that excited about sex. And there certainly wasn't any triumphant music in the background and people clapping and cheering. What am I doing wrong?!

Now after the curtain fell, the 7 year old younger brother asked me what the woman was talking about when she cried "to death." There was no way I way I was going to corrupt this boy, especially since his parents were devout Christians that believed strongly in traditional values. So I lied. "'Death' is an old German term for 'marriage.' She loves him so much that she wants to marry him." , I replied.

It's actually currently an English, not old German, term for marriage. Especially common among young men.

Ivory Angel #8

2004-06-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

Friendship. It’s been on my mind a lot lately. It’s kind of weird because while I’m a loud writer, I’m a quiet person. I don’t really have very many friends, possibly for the same reason I’m awful at relationships. I have a hard time trusting people. Really trusting them. I mean, it’s not like I go around thinking everybody is lying to me or trying to kill/rape me (though I do think that latter late at night when I’m alone and I see strangers. Sorry, I’m not crossing the street because you’re a bad person, it’s just the way I am…) , but while I might believe my friends are good people at heart, that doesn’t mean they can’t cause me pain, so it’s best to keep my distance. As far away as possible. I will never be dependent on anyone, if I can help it. But I will be dependable. The friends I take I guard with my lives. I am the wolf that stands between the pack and the hunters. If I take a bullet, the world stringing up my pelt as a prize emblem, as long as it’s for the people I love, my friends, I will be happy to see my own blood flow. Funny, it’s easier for me to die for them than trust them.

So, while I like my friends to be honest with me, because I can take it, I’m not the same with them. I’m honest in all the little things, but never when I think it causes harm, because taking away the pain is my highest priority. Yes, it’s hypocritical, but it’s also realistic. When my recovering bulimic, manic-depressive friend walks up to me and asks me if she’s fat, I’d never say yes, despite the fact she is a little…well, you know…soft around the edges. I think that just makes her more huggable.

In the same vein, sometimes a friend knows when to stay away. If my guy friends are after a girl, I have to back off and let them work, otherwise the guys closeness with me makes everyone believe we’re dating. It’s so damn frustrating. Can’t I have non-sexual relationships with someone of a different gender? On nights when I want to flirt, I have to go to the other end of the house from male friends, otherwise there’s no chance of a pickup. Similarly, when somebody spends two hours telling me how fat they are and wished they looked like me, ragged stick-girl, and can’t talk about anything else in my presence despite my reassurances they are beautiful, I know that my best support has to be by phone or email. If looking at me makes them feel pain, I won’t let them. It hurts, but sometimes it’s necessary. I wish I could just take their problems away. Like Christ on the cross, I want to absorb their tears.

Sometimes, being a friend means lying for them. There are the little things, like covering for a person in class when they’ve slept in, but there are bigger things too. “Is he gay?” some girl nudges me at the party. “No,” I reply, because it’s not my secret to tell. It’s his as long as he wants it, much as I think he’s overreacting to the possibility of being outed.

Sometimes being a friend is actually fighting against them. Stopping what they do, what they want to do.

“Bitch…” there was snow flying in my eyes, snow between me and the three boys, cold and wet and frighteningly white. It was like I was crying without the tears. It clung to my eyelashes and nostrils and made me paler than I already felt inside. “Stay away from this. This is none of your business.”

I felt sick when I saw them. “Addy” was sixteen and very beautiful to a thirteen year old nerd-girl who has nothing feminine about her whatsoever. Her breasts were the size of mangos, her thighs slender and tight. In the snow, she looked like an angel…a very frightened angel. The three had surrounded her, trapped her between a wall and their own throbbing, sweaty, disgusting male bodies. They told her she had two choices: take off her clothes or they would shove snow into her underwear. Either she could be cold and wet, or she could be cold and wet and have something warm and dry to change into afterwards.

I knew Addy from school. I knew Addy thought sex meant love. I knew Addy was going to do it, even before her sweater came off and drifted down among the snowflakes.

“NO!” I screamed. I didn’t care if this was what Addy wanted, because I knew it wasn’t right. They didn’t love her. She couldn’t get what she wanted this way, so I stepped out of the shadows holding a block of broken ice. The snow made it hard to see, and I suddenly felt very thirsty and cold. I hadn’t gotten in a fight since elementary school. I used to win a lot then because I played dirty and knew how boys were sensitive to pain, but three teenagers in a corner on slick footing was something more consequential. But at heart, I thought only cowards would do this thing and maybe if I looked mean enough, I could make them run away. I stepped in front of them, and I said in a voice that sounded quivery and small, “You’ll have to do it to me, too. And I’ll tell.”

Addy didn’t look grateful. She looked annoyed. And cold, with just her bra on. It was white, too.

The boys hesitated. Threats were one thing, holding a girl down in the snow and wrestling her clothes off was quite another. And I was a tattletale brat who was best friends with the school headmaster’s daughter… that probably had something to do with it. They let me go, at least for now. Later, they groped me in the halls when no one was looking, squeezing my breasts and my buttocks where the teachers couldn’t see. They put graffiti in the art closet talking about how I was a whore. It made me laugh, because I didn’t really understand what they were doing. Now I wish I had broken their necks.

And Addy still had sex with them a month later.

The moral of the story: was I a true friend? Probably. I couldn’t stand by and let anyone hurt Addy not after she was hurt so many times not even when I knew she welcomed that hurt. If she wanted to do it with them, I wanted to make sure it was her choice and it was in a different way. But after that I knew, and I will always know, that the people I call friends will not be able to protect me, not from anyone else and not from myself. Addy couldn’t stop them from molesting me just like she couldn’t stop herself from loving them. So in the end, I guess I have to depend on myself to be strong.

The most important part of being a friend means just knowing when to hold someone. Without asking why. I need a little of that now, I think.

Commander Cream #8

2004-06-28T14:31:00.000-07:00

I would walk through fire for any of my friends and feel privileged to have the opportunity. I really feel as though my friends are these amazing people with one blind spot: fortunately I fit very neatly within that spot. I won't get into too much detail, but my friends are willing to listen to me whine at 1:00 am, are willing to drive through blizzards so that I won't spend a holiday alone and are willing to wait in the hospital for 37 hours straight with me. But will I lie to them? In some cases, yes.

I feel as though I should just repost my last entry. In that circumstance, I lied to Katie, and I have no regrets about that. What would our conversation have been like otherwise?

Katie: "Holy shit, what happened to you?"
Commander C: "Well last night when I tried to keep you from driving, you flew into a drunken rage and attacked me."
Katie: "I'm so sorry Commander C..."

What would the truth have accomplished? Katie is normally a very gentle person. One evening full of extenuating circumstances doesn’t change that. With the story I told, I endured a few jokes at my own expense about my clumsiness. I'd much rather endure the oh so clever (re: annoying) ribbing from my teammates than have to explain to Katie what had happened. Or worse, face losing her friendship because she felt guilty. (This really was a one-time occurrence. I had never seen Katie violent before nor have I since that incident.)

Katie never knew that I lied to her. However, I have been forced to lie to a friend, knowing that they would catch the lie. I once lost a good friend when I lied. Before I lost him, I thought that I knew him: I was wrong. His favorite possession was a beat up leather jacket. I never saw him without it. Rain or shine, he clung more tightly to that jacket than a toddler to a security blanket. I eventually found out why.

I’m not sure whether he intentionally showed me his arms or whether it was an accident. It was certainly the first time I saw him without his jacket on. I will never forget what I saw. His arms were covered in parallel scars. Some where white and thick: long healed over. More concerning were the deeper, raw red scars that showed clearly against his pale skin. Perhaps it was good that we were alone, for when I saw them, I was so shocked that everyone would have noticed my reaction. I hesitantly brought up the issue.

And then I learned the truth. The friend that I thought I knew so well was very unhappy. So unhappy that he had found a solution to his situation. He made me swear not to tell anyone. I told him that I cared too much about him to keep it a secret. He still demanded my word. Eventually I gave it to him. Something in his feverish blue eyes told me that if I told anyone, I would lose him as a friend. Fortunately, his eyes also revealed that if I kept silent, I would lose him more permanently.

I ditched my next class (US Government- ick, what a waste of time) and went to the counseling office. I was fortunate: our counseling office was actually well-staffed with well-trained professionals. So I told them what I had seen and what I had learned.

The next time I saw my friend, he looked through me as though I did not exist. I have never felt so invisible in my life. But I kept seeing him around for the next two years. He never spoke to me again. He never saw me after that either. He was alive, though. I don’t regret breaking my word to him. I don’t regret that I lied. I do regret the loss of a friend.

Black Knight #8

2004-06-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

I'm very sorry about my failure to post on the last TKO; I thought it was a great TKO and I have a ton of thoughts on it. I'll probably post my answer late, sometime soon, but for now, I want to answer this one.

I had a strange insight while reading this TKO. Initially I thought that I was always a pretty honest guy, even abrasively so; but then I realized that wasn't really true. I thought of the friend that talks to me that I pretend to be interested in (conversationally) and am not; I thought of people I've pretended to respect and don't. I've thought of times I pretended to care about some minor tragedy or drama that, in truth, struck me as whiny. I've thought of times that I've held my tongue when I should have, a lie of omission.

I started to freak out a little bit. What am I? Some kind of huge liar? I lie to everyone.

Then I realized I had found the answer to a question I had been wondering for some time; what it is that divides my friends from the person I consider my love, a soulmate. It's real, bleeding honesty. It's not sex (although sex is an outgrowth of such honesty, if done right) and it isn't spending a lot of time together (although it's nice to hang out with someone who tells you the truth). It made me realize why even tiny lies are so dangerous, with the obvious exception of concealed surprise parties.

I stopped freaking out and felt kinda good.

NO VOTE & TKO #8

2004-06-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

Princess Peach is being removed due to inactivity today. As a reward to the rest of you, there will be NO vote this weekend; everyone is still in. We are back on track now; I am posting the new TKO now.

Also, Sgt. Silver was Hajeer (ArabianKnight).

Remember: Two consecutive periods of inactivity is automatic removal. If you miss two not in sequence, I will contact you with a warning. Three period total is also automatical removal. I include these rules to make it fair to the players that are participating on time. The current inactivity counts is (1) for BK and PrPlum; perfect for everyone else. Does this look right to everyone? Post comments annonymously if I'm wrong.

TKO Question #8:

Shrek: Well it's no wonder you don't have any friends.
The Donkey: Wow, only a true friend would be that truly honest. -- Shrek

Only a true friend would be truly honest? Have you ever been forced to decide between being honest and being a good friend? (Were you ever forced to lie to a friend?) Which did you choose? Why? Do you regret it?

PS: Next TKO is political in nature again for all you politx hacks.

REMEMBER: POST BY NOON ON WED!

Czar Red #7

2004-06-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

Thank you for the graciousness to extend the time; I told Marie before I left I was going to be gone for the weekend and I was really excited about this post, I'm sorry that I have to cram my answer into such a short time :/

You ask for shallowness and honesty? My perfect man ...

He'd have very expressive eyes -- I'd prefer blue. He'd be adventurous and love the outdoors. He'd look sexy pitching a tent and changing a baby's diapers. He'd be just a little needy -- enough to make me feel important but not so much that I suffocate under his weight. He'd be intelligent and headstrong but not afriad to admit when I'm right. He'd be sexually experimental -- he'd appreciate both gentle romancing and crazy encounters. He'd love all things geeky. He'd have a deep voice and smell oh-so-damn good. He'll be passionate about more than just me, whatever hobbies he persues. He'll be a heater, very warm to cuddle up against. He'll respect the little moments. He'd be a talented chef even if his speciality is grilled cheese sandwiches. He wouldn't mind admitting that a romantic movie makes him cry. He'll look sexy in a hat. He'll know how to knit and want a garden for our kids to play in. He'll be patient with me. He'll be taller than me and enjoy resting his chin on my head. He'll love me.

Yellow Submarine #7

2004-06-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

"I am Don Juan DeMarco. I am the world's greatest lover. No woman has ever left my arms unsatisfied. I have given pleasure to countless women, each one more beautiful than the next. Yes, there are some who say 'Ah, but her nose is too big, and her! Her hips are too wide!', but I see what they do not. I see the beauty that is within a woman's soul, and once you show a woman that you recognize it, then she will show you all of her secrets."

All of that was shamelessly plagiarized and sloppily rearranged from 'Don Juan DeMarco'. See it. Live it. Love it. If you haven't or you don't already.

There is no great secret to love. I have in fact, stated it before, so I shall take this opportunity to expound upon the point. Just forgive me if I take a roundabout way of proving it.

At the risk of drawing the ire of all the self-avowed feminists on this site, Women are easy. I'm sure of course that excludes present company and men aren't much better. I'm also just as sure that at least two of you are quietly deliberating how best to skewer me with a pitch-fork. I only ask that you reserve your judgement until I am finished.

In my defense though, its true and the why of it truly saddens me. Most everyone is looking for love and acceptance from someone else to some degree. There are even a lot of guys who take this too far and can't let go. I actually moonlight as a relationship therapist to a few guys I know who have just such a problem. I only use women because it is in women (especially young women) that it seems the simple need for love and acceptance from another often becomes so pronounced that it turns into such an all consuming psychosis stoking the coals they are continually raking themselves over. You may meet a few guys who aren't satisfied with their body image and take it seriously to heart, but have you ever met a girl who was or otherwise didn't? Make whatever case you want about unreasonable social expectations or however else you wish to explain it, but don't deny that it is there.
____________________________________

I once had a conversation with my friend Brian. Now Brian was a gentleman of the first order and easily likened to a wooden nickel. During the course of the conversation he imparted to me how he got through high school.

"I spent my entire time in high school getting my straight friends laid. They would rent a hotel room to take their date back to and I would fix it up for them. They'd follow my advice and pay me after they got laid. Easiest money I ever made. Besides, I figured if I wasn't going to be getting laid, at least someone should through my efforts. Really simple stuff too. Incredibly boring. I would tell them, 'No honey, one rose just will not do. Make it three dozen and make sure they're red. Yes I know they are more expensive. What do you mean why? Because yellow means jealousy and white sends precisely the wrong message about your intentions! Do you want her to remain pure as the driven snow or do you want a bawdy wench? It means 'dirty girl', now just hush up and spread the petals on and around the bed...'

I had an almost 100% success rate, too! I only failed once and she was a devout Jehovah's Witness. What can I say, between an almighty deity and eternal damnation I was just no competition at all. I wasn't too disapointed, though he certainly was. We even had a little joke about it after that. Ever afterwards when they'd refer someone to seek my services they would call it 'gettin' lucky insurance' because, 'You're a hundred percent covered except for acts of god....'"

I don't want to give the impression that I condone my friend Brian's actions by telling of them to you. I only bring this story up to make a point. The reason my friend Brian was so successful (and sought after) is that he realized that to a high school girl who spends half her time tormented by her flaws and the other half thirsty to be loved despite them, such an effort on her behalf and the simple words "You're beautiful" would seem sweeter than any chocolates, any poem, or any flowers. In the mind of your average affection starved teenage girl, if a bit of sex would keep that validation coming, such was the price you payed.

When I was in high school, I once thought that women grew out of this. Some do, but I still see this tendency alive and well in women ready for their ten and twenty year reunions. Throughout my travels, in every new city I have found story after sob story of women who gave it up desperate to be loved, to have someone who cared for them...despite themselves. None of them found love. Wounded souls all. I could give several examples, but one seems to haunt me as I write of the need to be loved and the cost it exacts.
_____________________________________

When I lived in Casper Wyoming, I met this girl named Sunshine in ROTC. She was a year older, absorbed in unrequitted love for the company commander and had given herself up to hope a year earlier without result. Since then she had not stopped giving of herself to anyone who seemed to be able to give the barest promise of love. In that one single year after she lost her virginity she had amassed quite a reputation which only served to further alientate her and drag her soul and her name that much farther through the mud. What plagued her was a single cosmetic deficiency, she needed some dental work. This was why the superficial teenage boy CC wouldn't look twice at her. We became intimate friends. I was bent on showing her that she too could be loved and vowed to set the example of how she should be treated. Worried that physical intimacy would be contrary to my purpose, I refrained from pursuing it, though as time passed I noticed she began to look at me differently.

At the end of the year came the Miltary Ball. Every Miltary Ball has a Sabre Guard which stands as an arch of swords for every one to walk through as they enter the ball. The Sabres were standard Marine issue. (It seemed a bit tacky as we were an Army ROTC, but my Army Instructor was a scary, scary man so I declined to comment.) I had been thrown into ROTC and amidst its exacting structure of chivalrous meritocracy, I quickly became the fastest rising cadet there. I was on the color guard, the competition drill team and the rifle team. It seemed that everything I did was gold as long as it entailed wearing epaulettes.

I was the first to volunteer for the Sabre Guard duty. Every day after school for three weeks seven others and I held aloft our twenty pound swords. Another 'man' on the Guard was named Yates. He was physically smaller than everyone else there and had the look of a sixth grader his freshman year of High School. Naturally he had a huge Neopolean complex because of it. Naturally he was my superior officer and the second one to volunteer, aparrently not to be outdone.

Yates had asked Sunshine to the Ball. Sunshine had been asking the CC for weeks prior and she held out until the last moment still hoping he would take her even though he was already escorting someone else. The twenty-fifth hour having arrived, and absent another more compelling date, she aquiesced to Yates. Yates had no alternatives and truth was, he was desperate. It was painfully obvious to everyone but Yates it was a total pity date, but Yates was thrilled anyway. For three days before the dance he was walking around with his chest puffed out so much I expected him to start goose-stepping at any moment. Sunshine had said yes! This must mean that she had seen something in him worthy of saying yes! Laying ensconced in that simple piece of deductive reasoning was his pride and panache and he would entertain no other logical alternatives to the contrary.

I told her not to do it. I told her she would regret it. I told her she'd spend the first half of the night bored out of her gourd and the second half avoiding him and his jealous eye. She wouldn't listen. After seeing how jubilant Yates had become she had consoled herself in the knowledge, that if CC wouldn't go with her, she would at least be going, and after all "He just seemed so sad. Now look at him!"

The night of the ball the Sabre Guard went off without a hitch, despite the fact that we made our arms visibly shake and droop a little whenever someone we didn't like passed underneath. Our AI pretended not to be amused, but I knew he thought it was funny as hell when I feigned a cramp as the Principal and his wife walked under. (The Principal and my AI didn't get along.)

After everyone had arrived, we disbanded and we all changed into our formal attire. I alone remained in my uniform because I'm not going to rent an uncomfortable ill-fitting tux which made my head look like half a jellybean when I had a perfectly good uniform that already did that and came with a perfectly snazzy piece of steel.

Sunshine found me on the dancefloor," Yellow, you have to help me!"

"Why hello to you too. What's wrong?"

" Its Yates! He won't let me breathe!"

"Well what did you expect?" I couldn't stifle a chuckle.

" Just shut up and dance with me already!"

She had worn this lovely peach ensemble which seemed to have a way of accentuating all her more succulent aspects. It was enough to make a man ravenous. I made sure to tell her so, only in more suitably delicate terms. I even the caught the wayward CC casting a few sidelong glances in her direction and I brought this to her attention as well. Then of course, there was Yates. It was as if Cinderella had arrived with the frog prince. Yates had rented a limo, a tux, and a room all for this momentous occasion only to see his date flee. She was a social butterfly alighting from one man to the next in order to avoid his net. He was decidedly and understandably non-plussed.

"What are you doing dancing with my date?" roared the penguin.

"I believe you said it yourself, we're dancing. I assure you its at the lady's request. Surely you can spare her for a dance? Afterwards I will have fulfiled my obligation and would be only too happy to present her back to you."

"Yates wasn't having any of it. Step outside and we'll settle this!"

"What is there to settle? She's your date. I'm not going to keep her all evening."

"You'll give her back at once!" It struck me later that he was speaking as if I had stolen a pair of his shoes. At the moment though, my only retort was a raised eyebrow and a pregnant pause.

"Fine then. If you insist she is your's. My apologies Sunshine, but I won't get involved with this."

Sunshine drew away from me and looked as if I had gouged her heart with an ice-pick. We had been having a lovely time and I could tell she felt betrayed by the ease with which I intended to cut it short. I remained the picture of non-chalance.

"You think you can embarrass me and get away with it that easily? I demand an apology!" Mon Dieu, but Napolean was pissed off!

"If that's what's got you all riled up, I think you should take it up with your date."

"I'll take it up with you!"

The longer this went on, the more I realized Yates was not going to be satisfied. Sunshine had given him self-confidence for the first time since I don't know when. She had shown him kindness and was irrefutably an angel to him. Still, he needed someone to hate for her misbehavior. When Sunshine had chosen to dance with me I had become that villian. I was that single rat bastard personification of all the evil in the world which plagued him with worry and insecurity. In that moment I was everything he despised and was jealous of.

An interesting point before I continue. Yates had only two things going for him. He had his date and his rank. His date had already absconded to greener pastures, but he had no intention of parting with his chevrons. Yates had literally no other friends. ROTC became his social life. It was all he had and he cherished it. He was too enamored with his rank and the physical manifestations thereof to forego wearing them on his tuxedo. I have no doubt he probably voided his security deposit on the tux in the meantime and normally I would have found this either incredibly hilarious or painfully sad. However, as long as he wore his regalia he retained his rank and if I fought him then I would be open to the severest retribution for striking a superior officer, or at least a higher ranking one.

Such was the culture of ROTC that if this should take place I would fall under the strict disciplinary standards of the military and would be stripped of everything I had worked for and possibly expelled from the only high school in fifty miles. What's more, he was obviously bent on fighting and wasn't going to allow my innocence or my insouciance rob him of the satisfaction of his indignation. What could I do but assent?

"Outside then, but on one condition. We must remove our jackets. I will not fight you while you are wearing your chevrons."

He snorted his satisfaction with the arrangement and violently tore off his jacket, hurling it aside and he stormed out of the ballroom. Nope, definitely wasn't getting his deposit back.

I in turn calmly took off my jacket and sat down to a glass of punch and some light conversation with my AI.

What could I show him but pity? I wasn't going to add to the embarassment of being spurned by the only woman who ever showed him the courtesy of interest by giving him the supreme humiliation of getting his ass kicked by everything in the world he hated. He'd probably go home and kill himself. No. He had already suffered enough for one night.

Five minutes later, now madder than ever, he raged into the ballroom and turned every head in it. He looked at me. I looked at him. He saw who I was sitting with and knew that if he had attempted anything now not only would I not rise to the bait, but my calm would only make him look that more more out of his mind, very possibly jeaopardizing his rank and everything he had worked so hard for. In a moment of clarity he seemed to decide that it was better that only three people knew of his indiscretion. He apologized to the ballroom, made some lame excuse about trying to chase down a rodent (hey, I have to give him credit for his choice of allegory off the cuff) Afterwards he left immediately.

Sunshine and I sat down afterwards and she apologized for what happened. She later apologized to Yates. Yates apologized to me, and I would hear nothing of it. I even complimented him on his witticism. By monday everything was back to normal.
______________________________________________

The thing which makes so many relationships unhealthy is that they're inherently guided by selfish need. We're always looking to others to provide us with something we find lacking in ourselves. Either we're looking for someone else to compliment us perfectly or to compliment us at all.

Some people search for someone strong, because they feel weak. Some look for beauty because they feel ugly. Some look for intellect because they feel stupid.

Some people seek those they think are inferior because if they are better than their mates, at least then they can demand respect and appreciation.

Some seek inferior mates so they can improve them, like Svengali or Prof. Henry Higgins and bring a sense of worth to themselves for their acheivement.

Others consent to be run underfoot, because they think no one could love them otherwise.

Sunshine had her tooth. Yates had his stature.

Millions of people searching for happiness through the arms of another person who, most of the time isn't happy with themselves either. The cruel irony of it all is that of course, no one can give you anything which you cannot give yourself. Put another way, if you're not enough without someone to call your own, then you'll never be enough with them.
___________________________________________

I don't pretend that I have never succumbed to the seduction of self hate. For a time after a particularly, particularly nasty break up and all the chaos which ensued, I was convinced that no one worth loving could ever love me. How could they after I had acted so shamefully? For a time, I foolishly gave up on love. Luckily love did not give up on me.

I met a girl who knew who I was and where I had been and loved me unreservedly anyway. She showed me how to love and be loved wholely and for who I was, not what I was. She taught me the single most important truth in all the world.

To love is easy, but it all hinges on self-respect. To love is to recognize fault and be smitten anyway with the beauty of soul. It is easy to love another like this when you are happy with yourself. But if you could not afford this courtesy to yourself, how could you ever expect to afford it to anyone else?

It is simple. To love is to be loved and to love in return.

I guess my only dealbreaker is that I will have nothing to do with anyone who would expend my self-respect for her own nefarious devices. That itself is only due to the fact that without self-respect I could never respect her.

One last anecdote before I go on why I am a romantic:

My dad once sat down and explained to a twelve year old me how to kiss a woman properly. I asked him why it was so important that it couldn't wait a year or two. He told me," Because soon you will start dating and then soon afterwards you will have your first kiss. I want you to experience it as it was meant to be experienced because a single kiss from the right woman is not only worth dying for, but more importantly it is worth living for."

He then bought me a chocolate shake, which I liked so much I didn't care about the brain-freeze until long after it had already hit me. Worst headache of my life. I tell myself now that it was not the milkshake that made me feel like my brain was being chiseled by an angry monkey with a jackhammer, but rather it was my dad's wisdom being permanently etched into my brain.

I still hold that sentiment as my ideal in a relationship.

The kissing part, not the monkey part.

____________________________________________

I am Yellow Submarine. I am the greatest lover in the world. No woman has ever felt the brush of my lips or the warmth of my embrace and not melted beneath my touch. I have been blessed with the love of many good women and have given the most precious gift of all, self-respect to countless others, each one more deserving than the next. Yes, there are some who would say," But she is a whore, and her! She is ugly!" I see what they do not. I see the beauty of their soul. I know that once you recognize and respect the beauty they possess within, they will lay bare their greatest gift before you, the love of their soul. And there is no greater gift in all the world than the love of a good woman.

Purple Rain #7

2004-06-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

A quick post since I got up late

"When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you" -Frederick Nietsche

Bullshit Nietsche. When you stare into the abyss, the abyss tends to giggle inanely. This is my first "dealbreaker", if you will; I can't stand stupid ditzes. Carrying on a conservation with one of them feels like trying to teach a 6 year old how to play chess.

Me: "Now, the knight moves in an L shape and...Hey! get that king piece out of your mouth!"
Kid1: "Chess is boring. How about playing with action figures?"
Kid2: "You have a few hairs on your chin, mister."
Kid3: (sobs) "I want candy!"

It hurts the brain. Like the 6 year olds, dumb ditzes can the inability to talk about anything deep and instead like talking about things I could care less about. Wait, stratch that, these are things that I am unable to care less about because they are at the way bottom of my priorities. I honestly don't care about Brad Pitts new look or who which movie actor hooked up with who. Ditzes have an amazing ability to turn a disscussion of any interesting issue to a superficial one. Although, come to think of it, I'd perfer the kids. At least I got paid.

The second "dealbreaker" for me would have to be being a "crisis queen", as I like to call them. No matter how small a problem is, it always manages to become a crisis. Maybe because I dated one, I've become kinda numb to all the "crisis's" that managed to be invented. Having gone through real crisises in the past, I'm more than willing to help with real problems. If you have a bad hair day and think the world is goign to end, you're wrong. News Flash! Men generally don't care what brand of perfume you are wearing or what particular style your hair is in. If we do, most likly we are gay. Of course metrosexuals have to come into play and ruin the general rule. Bastards.

Professor Plum #7

2004-06-25T23:41:00.000-07:00

at a certain point, elements of popular culture multiply, mix, and merge until drawing distinctions between the simulation and the referent is not only impossible, but pointless. Or I just wanted to post this.

ricky fitts is desperately trying to get into the pants of the girl next door with the old "'wow-this-is-amazing-art'-and-by-'amazing-art'-i-mean-i-just-left-the-camcorder-running-after-video-taping-a-cheerleading-practice-and-then-came-up-with-a-sappy-backstory-to-facilitate-my-getting-ass" routine

Ricky Fitts: It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."

cut to god on a cloud, looking annoyed

God: It's a piece of garbage in the wind, do you have any idea how complicated your circulatory system is?!?!

Mauve Momma #7

2004-06-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

After discussing this with my beloved PF, I have come to the conclusion that I am easy.

Or at least, that I have very few dating dealbreakers. Not money, or cars, or height, or even body hair- I've seen it all. (ALL!). But I will quickly run down the four turnoffs that came to mind first.

1) Being skinny. This is my number one, ultimate dealbreaker. Most evolutionary rationales for mate selection amuse me, but this one is my weakness. I love a sturdy, cuddly guy- or as my high school boyfriend put it: "You're a chubby chaser." Please do not tell PF that I said he was fat- he isn't. But I like to be hugged, and held, and when PF hugs me, I'm warm all the way around. So skinny guys never had a chance.

2) Being blond. I have no rationale for this. It's some genetic level preference. The gene didn't extend to only liking Latino men, which would make some sense; it got as far as hair color and quit. I can admit that Brad Pitt or Justin Timberlake are fine physical specimens, but they'll have to wait in the other room while I jump Enrique Iglesias or Usher. Skin color isn't part of it, either: PF (who bears a striking resemblance to Jake Gyllenhaal), is so white I lose him when it snows in Chicago, but he's got a healthy head of dark brown hair, so he's safe.

3) Being anti-intellectual. PF asked me about insufferable pseudo-intellectuals, and I had to say- no, no, I gave some of them a chance to impress me with their quasi-beatnik poetry and deep thoughts about the future of the stanza. The only thing that's an actual turnoff is a guy who is both ignorant and somehow pleased with himself; who somehow thinks sports, movie, and pop culture knowledge is all any person needs to be in command of to have a good conversation with me. That'll be cool for a while, buddy, but sooner or later, I'm going to ask you what you think about Kerry's campaign tactics or the stunt the administration is pulling with the health coverage lottery, and when the blank face goes up, I'm out.

4) Having lame excuses for being unromantic. It is here that I have to totally disagree with Ivory Angel, who is otherwise a fabulous writer. Romance isn't fake, cheesy, or something that only exists in movies. It has to do with showing someone that you thought about them. And I can't stand a man who has his pre-prepared frontline excuses about how he can totally eschew romance because he's fighting the commercialism of it all, or because he respects that I'm an independent feminist woman so much that he wouldn't dare give me a flower, cook for me, or sing me a song. Please.

I don't want a business partnership, I want passion. I don't want to split the bill or figure out that if I make X amount more than you, I should pay 73% of our relationship costs. We'll take turns. This time I'll plan a dinner and movie date and pay. Next time, maybe you'll have a dessert and wine waiting when I come home. Or something, anything you like that you thought of yourself. That's what I want. So when I've come across those guys who are quick to pre-empt your expectations of caring (not even one-sided chivalry) with their weak anti-capitalist or quasi-feminist lines, I cross them off. I guess IA and I fish in different parts of the sea. A nice guy is welcome here.

Alas, I must go see if I can trick PF into rubbing my neck for the thousandth time. Hooray!

Ivory Angel #7

2004-06-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

"Turnoffs?" What are these so-called "turnoffs"? Is such a thing possible?

I mean, I've dated attempted murderers, suicidal people, smokers, chokers, debaters, non-debaters, people with miserably low IQ (45 is probably too generous), geniuses, short, tall, kinky, vanilla, bad kissers, good kissers, arrogant mopheads & modest mice, social klutzes & people who navigate life-currents with ease, realists & optimists, blunt people, diplomatic people, rich men, poor men, women... need I really go on?

Everyone has flaws. I try to look past them. I guess the biggest turnoff with me is being too nice. Too fuzzy. Too generous. Then I know you're not good enough for me because if I don't have to fight for you I'm not sure you're worth having. Too many compliments looks like sucking up. I don't like worshippers- people following me around telling me how wonderful I am just makes me nervous. Such people seldom have good motives and often turn out to be stalkers. I have an unusual amount of psychotics trying to date me, so anybody who shows too much interest right off the bat sends up warning flags in my nervous system...

And stop opening the damn door for me! Does it look like I have broken arm to you? Do you think saving me the flex of a bicep is going to be enough to get into my bed? Come off it. I'm not a prostitute. I don't want to have to be indebted to you just because you have some dumb, outmoded concept of chivalry. I will pay for my own meals. I will pay for my own movie tickets. And if you like red roses, I will be there at your door bringing you a bouquet of a dozen because I don't like to watch flowers dying on my kitchen table (they looks like dried blood or a collage of peeled blackheads after two weeks) and don't think I do just because I am blonde and I am young and I am female. I have more money than you anyway and it always makes me feel bad when someone who's parents are still paying off $40,000 in college loans wants to pick up a rich heiress's check. Kill the romance thing. This isn't a fairy tale or a movie and I'm glad of that. After all, childrens' stories and hollywood glitterfests have less chance of being real.

Show a little courage. Show a little bite. Do you think smiling and agreeing with everything I say is going to make me feel better? My self-esteem isn't so fragile that one little word for you is going to send me into a hysterical fit running to the bathroom clutching a delicate piece of toilet paper and wailing WHY ME? OH WHY ME? So don't think you're going to hurt my feelings just because we disagree. Maybe you keep silent because you think I must be wrong and can't handle myself. Don't patronize me, I'm not below your level. My idea of a successful date involves at least one argument over politics, religion, hell...the arrangement of the napkins. It's all good. Talking to a particularly flattering mirror just isn't very fascinating and I'm going to assume you keep agreeing with every word out of my mouth because you are ignorant. If I'm that bored, you might have more chance of me tackling you and dragging you kicking and screaming under the white tablecloth just to make things more interesting, but you can damn well bet that after the fuzzy handcuffs are off, you aren't going to see me again.

I guess I do have a few turnoffs. If you're boring, I don't like you. If you're always submissive, I don't like you. If you're too nice, I'm afraid with you.

But, uh, that doesn't mean we can't still be friends...right?

Commander Cream: She is my Friend

2004-06-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

She is smoking. I hate the smell of tobacco smoke. I hate how it lingers in my hair even after I shower. I hate looking at a friend smoking and imagining what her lungs look like. But she hadn't smoked for three months. She gave it up for me. Well, not really for me, for all of us.

We all gave up drinking and smoking for the season. It really wasn't hard for me. I don't drink and I don't smoke. Some of my teammates had been smoking for years. They wanted to win, so they gave it up too.

What am I doing here? Spending a Friday night surrounded by drunk high school girls is not really my cup of tea. I am much more the "catch a movie" or "stay home playing video games with friends" kind of girl.

Five hours earlier:

State finals.

There is something dreadful about being a goalie. None of the glory, all of the blame. It was sudden death overtime. No one had scored on me yet. It was my first state finals game. I would eventually lose three times in the finals. But I didn't know that yet. All I knew was that Ashley Choren was racing at me. Ashley, who scored the very first goal against me when I was pulled up from JV. Ashley who really was very nice, but at that moment, I hated her. Ashley, who put the ball past my left hand. I can still feel it whistling past my glove. I can still hear the sound of it hitting the net.

Five hours ago we had lost the state championship 1-0.

I am here because I lost the game for us in overtime. I am here because my teammates never blamed me. I am here because when I was pulled up from the JV team, no one made me feel like I was the second choice. The least I can do is make sure that none of them spontaneously decide to drive home. It was a good thing, too.

Katie. Katie could pose for a statue of a Valkyrie or an Amazon. She looms over a foot taller than my barely five foot frame. She is a big girl too. Not fat, just huge- big bones and big muscles. She eventually went on to play lacrosse for Yale. I bet she's kicking ass there. But at the moment she is a bit more intent on kicking my ass. Cigarette in one hand, my shirt in the other, she wants to know where her keys are. She really wants to know. Somewhere in her alcohol-fogged mind, she remembers that I have the keys. So I tell her a rather useful lie that I use when friends are drunk. I tell her that she dropped them out in the backyard. Usually that line sends people out into the grass to search for the missing keys.

Not Katie.

Instead Katie literally picks me up and throws me into the wall. Now, to be honest, this is partly my fault. I've had enough training that I could have gotten out of her hold. But she is a friend: I never thought that she would hurt me.

Flying through the air, it occurs to me that I was very much mistaken. When Katie's fist meets my face as I struggle to rise, I realize just how mistaken I was. The second punch splits my lip. Through the blood I whisper a lie and a truth, “I don’t have your keys Katie. Even if I did, I wouldn’t let you have them.”

At this point Katie collapses and starts sobbing. Great. Not just a belligerent drunk, a maudlin one too. Wiping the blood from my upper lip with my thumb, I try to decide what to do. The rest of my teammates are scattered around the room. Most of them are far too drunk to stand, let alone intervene. I don't want to fight back. Katie is a friend, even if she's a friend that could be convicted on assault charges. So I kneel down next to her.

She throws her arms around me and sobs into my chest. It's hard to maintain my balance.

"Katie. Are you okay?"
"I missed three shots. Three. We would have won if I had made even one of them."
"It's too late to worry about those shots. We have next year."

She keeps crying. It’s not about the game. I still don’t know what it was about. But I stay kneeling, my knees protesting. My shirt is plastered to my body, wet with tears. Eventually she falls asleep...or she passes out, I can't tell which. I quietly remove her arms and go and check on the rest of my teammates. No one has alcohol poisoning, I'm amazed. I hide their keys. In the morning, I will call them and reveal their location.

The next day I see Katie. She notices my black eye, my split lip. I'm wearing my arm brace for the first time in a month. She doesn't know how it happened. Katie is my friend. I tell her that I tripped going out to my car. She laughs, exclaiming, "I didn't do anything, and I was drinking! What's your excuse?"

Katie is my friend. I laugh along with her. It hurts my lip.

Commander Cream #7

2004-06-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

So this is pretty superficial. The truth is, all the men I have dated have had three things in common: They were taller than me, dark-haired and left-handed. I think that most of that was coincidence. If I could determine more specifically I found attractive, or even unattractive, then my dating history would not be nearly so strange.

Do looks matter? On some superficial level, of course they do. But thinking about my friends, they are all good looking to me. Same thing with the guys I have dated. Somehow I doubt that I have lucked out and surrounded myself with the world’s beautiful people. It’s just that if I like people, I tend to think that they’re attractive.

That said, I do have one absolute physical dealbreaker for any potential significant other. He must be taller than me. Given that I stand at a grand total height of 5’2”, that’s not particularly challenging. But attraction for me is not about physical appearance. The real dealbreaker is superficiality (my own more than anyone else's). Everyone I meet seems very interesting in the beginning. But I get bored easily.

I’m rather embarrassed by my hypocrisy when I describe what I find really unattractive. So I’m going to introduce a rather poor metaphor in a fairly lame attempt to avoid “fessing up.”

The men I’m attracted to are like chocolate Easter bunnies. If you line them up, they all look pretty much the same. But nine out of ten are not solid chocolate. Instead they are a thin shell and hollow inside. The problem is, when they’re just sitting there, you can’t tell which ones are hollow and which ones actually have depth. You have to pick them up and nibble the edges a bit. Like most women, I strongly believe that the more chocolate, the better.

To extend the Easter bunny analogy, some guys cave in as soon as you start dating them. They begin to agree with everything. They write you bad poetry and claim that they cannot live without you. You’ve been on two dates. As sexy as our society finds vampires, I don’t want to date a leech. I love to argue and play the devil’s advocate. Agreeing with me defeats the purpose. Really, weakness is horribly unattractive. Insipidness is even worse. Fortunately, weakness and insipidness tend to go hand in hand, so I can eliminate those guys in one fell swoop.

But what then? Eliminating the weak and insipid still leaves something like 1% of all men as potential boyfriend material. There must be another round of eliminations lest anyone think my bitchiness is failing.

Hmmm…the next distinction is a bit hard for me to make. It’s more about whether our personalities will mesh. There is one litmus test that I can use. I have a rather unusual sense of humor. My friends are pretty used to it by now, but I can use it to screen new guys. For instance, there’s a running joke about my funeral arrangements. About a year ago, I decided exactly how I want my funeral. Usually when a new person hears that I have plans already, they want to know what I want done. Rather than explain in depth, let me just say that the dawning look of horror on their faces is usually amusing enough that everyone in room starts laughing. But the responses also tell me whether a relationship will work out.

I say: “The most important part is the bagpipes playing I’m too Sexy as the casket is carried in.”

His response: horrified silence. Not the guy for me.
His response: an attempt to talk me out of my plan. Not the guy for me.
His response: laughter. potentially datable guy.
His response: “I’m too Sexy sounds better on the didgeridoo.” definitely datable guy.

If he can answer my outré sense of humor with his own, that’s all I really need.

Oh wait, one more physical dealbreaker: he does have to be male. I just don’t find women attractive.

Results & TKO Question #7

2004-06-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

The fifth contestant voted out is Sgt. Silver who recieved the most votes -- three. Immunity was awarded to Commander Cream.

Also, Blue Devil was Alan Tauber.

TKO Question #7:

Jim Olmeyer: Do you just want to lose weight, or are you looking to increase strength and flexibility as well?
Lester Burnham: I want to look good naked! -- American Beauty

There's a shallow edge to everyone. We're all friends here, so fess up. What are your guilty turnoffs? That is things you find unattractive in a potential partner that's a dealbreaker.

Remember -- post by Saturday at noon.

Black Knight #6

2004-06-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last three months in this dingy room in the basement floor of the Hope County Psychiatric Ward. This place looks like it hasn't been redecorated since the Taft administration, but I don't mind. The meals are pretty gross here, and there's really no company to speak of; they don't let me interact with anyone else who lives here.

The space I have to live in is not very big. The doors to this room, except for the one that leads into the bathroom, are heavy steel; they put them on really fast when they had to move me in here. I guess they're secure enough. I'm not particularly mighty or strong, so it's not like I'm going to make an attempt to break them down.

The food, though, the food is the worst. It's laced with this weird drug that they say keeps me from entering REM sleep and deep dreaming.

About two years ago, I realized that every time I remembered my dreams, everything in them came to pass in a matter of days. Sometimes this was pretty cool; I'd dream about doing well in a job interview and I'd nail it, or I'd dream about sleeping with a beautiful woman and I would. Other times, though, I'd have dreams about disasters, tragedy, and they too would all happen. Of course I told no one about this.

But all the same, one night after dreaming that the President had been shot, I spent all day holed up in my apartment, scared half to death that someone would find out. That night I dreamed that they did, and so they came to lock me up less than a week later. They put me here.

Why the psychiatric ward?

It's not that they think I'm crazy or insane or anything; they know it really is happening. No, it's just that denying you REM sleep to prevent any more of my dreams from happening means your brain never really rests. And you slowly go crazy. So they put me here, in advance, with these lamps, just as a sort of "early bird" thing.

Sgt. Silver #5 (Late Edition)

2004-06-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Long Journey Home

So there we were, twenty or thirty of us, at the beach, a few in our tuxes, others of us in more laid back clothing. Junior Prom had been a blast, and, just like planned. we threw an afterparty at the beach. Most of our parents would have known that we were at a hotel, and the few of us who didn't have an alibi left late at night, or early at morning, depending upon your perspective. My date and I decide to seclude ourselves from the festivities, and us being tired and all, we ended up asleep right next to each other. Due to the heat, we must have completely stripped off all of our clothing while asleep too, but we luckily covered in one of the blankets we had taken along with us. That night, I slept pretty well, not knowing that this day would go down in infamy as the day they got Sgt. Silver back.

Morning came, and I woke up, a little drowsy and not in the best shape of my life. My date woke up soon after me, and we decided it was time to get dressed. Oddly, our clothing wasn't nearby, like it should have been. So, slightly discomforted, we both looked around and didn't see any of our stuff. Something was wrong here. I stood up, and I found a little plastic container nearby. It didn't look like junk that you'd find around here, mainly because it looked new, so I decided it couldn't hurt to see what was inside. When I removed the top of the container, I found a metallic unadorned key on the inside, but clearly a car key.

Things were starting to make sense. It struck me. I just got fucked. And so did my date. This went clearly against the unspoken rules of punking each other. I was pissed.

I guess this prank may have been easier if I was on my own, but having to deal with the commonfolk, you know, those who have never been exposed to the truly malignant nature of their crazen friends, forced me to have to deal with a lot of side issues. So there we were, naked, sharing one blanket as a substitute for clothing. I walked over the hill that secluded the two of us from the remainder of our party and saw no one there. I did, however, see a few people unrelated to last night's party and quickly ran back to my date to get underneath that blanket again. This was not good. And it didn't make sense to me how they could have all left so early. At this point of the day, a few people were beginning to arrive at the beach, and so my date and I decided we were best off leaving quick. So I took the key in my hand, we wrapped the blanket around each other, and walked off the beach to the parking lot where we had arrived, en masse, in a combination of rental limousines and SUVs the night before. After we arrived at the parking lot, we spent a good ten minutes looking for cars we would recognize. You'd be surprised how many older vehicles have car alarms. I think we tried the key on at least 12 vehicles. I was getting extremely frustrated. This was unlike the stupid pranks we had pulled off that spring break, there was no immediate punch line, this one was taking too long. Well, actually, it kind of was like the night we paid a guy to rob Derrick of his clothes in the middle of the night, but I pretended not to remember that, besides, it was a group prank, no individual actor was responsible, or wanted to take responsibility. Anyway, I was looking around to see a car that I would recognize, and suddenly, to both my relief and absolute horror, that car turned out to be a crappy, broken down, red 1979 Saab convertible.

The pieces were falling into place now.

I'll spare you the details of my conversation, but, suffice it to say that, suddenly, my date didn't enjoy sharing the blanket with me. Both of us having recognized the car, it was clear who orchestrated this evil prank. We got inside the car and encountered a wonderful problem that I was well aware of. The top of the convertible was broken. Driven at fast speeds, the hood would flap violently and belligerently. So we tried to drive while holding on to the hood, except my date would much rather hold on to the blanket to keep it at shoulder height and I was driving a stick and had no hands free. We were going to have to drive this car with the top down.

You'd be amazed how fast a 79 Saab convertible can go when you're naked.

So are cops.

At both the speed and the nakedness.

15 minutes had passed on the freeway and I got pulled over, I couldn't believe my fucking luck. The police officer pulled up behind the vehicle, white guy, in his thirties, mustache, and buzzcut blond hair. "Do you know what I'm pulling you over for?" he asked. I had a couple guesses, but I left them to myself, besides, it wasn't like I had time to answer the question anyway, the officer soon asked "what in the hell are you too doing?" I spent a few minutes in the strangest impromptu performance of my life. It was definitely one of those questions your teacher would ask you, "you're delivering a graduation ceremony speech, suddenly a naked blow up sex doll is floating towards your platform, what do you do?" My best friend got to answer that question the year after. But my question would have been: "You're inside a car, pulled over for speeding, and are naked, as is a girl next to you. You both have a blanket spread across the cented of the car, a cop is on your left asking you about your nakedness and 90 mile per hour performance, what do you do?" My date was livid, and I was trying to convince a cop not to give me a ticket or indecent exposure charge. After I explained the pertinent details of my day the officer just broke down laughing.

I thought I got off.

I didn't.

He walked back inside his car where he had a blue-ish blanket, for what purposes he had it I don't know, but it allowed me to have a substitute for clothing. He then asked me to come outside the vehicle and walk towards the cop car. This was just great. He put me on speaker and started telling the story to "dispatch," or whatever the hell they were called, and asked me countless questions in doing so. I felt like an idiot, one who was hearing people honking their horns at him.

Just classic.

After a few minutes of sadistic enjoyment the cop let me leave without giving me a ticket or even asking me for my license, which was good, because I didn't have it. As a thank you for "making his day," as he put it, he let me keep the blanket and drove off.

After I dropped off my date, who would never be my date again, I got home. parked the car, and broke into my house the same way I did when I was younger and didn't have a key. No one saw me.

Later that night, me and my friends smoothed things over as one of us was dropped off at a hospital with a broken nose, not me.

I guess you're wondering what I did to deserve this. Suffice to say that my preceding prank is still hailed as better than this one. Maybe another post, but not now.

Purple Rain #6

2004-06-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

On Sunday evening, after taking a small break from homework, I quickly checked the game to see the newest TKO. Be inspired by a photograph? I'm an engineer goddamnit; I'm artisically retarded. As a thought through what I was going to do, I noticed something. Or, to be more concrete, I noticed what I did not know. There is an object just to the left of the rightmost windowsill that I have no idea what it is. Is is a duffel bag, a trick of the light, or something else? I decided upon duffel bag, seeing what I considered to be straps and a handle and went back to my studies. Perhaps the misplaced duffel had some meaning. Two days later, I cam back to the computer to write my post (trying to not put it off to the last minute) and looked at the picture again. A duffel? What was I thinking? Of course at this time, I had not clue what it was. Today, I realized that I had fallen into a trap that many themselves fall into.

When faced with something we don't know, we often guess. And once we guess, we distort what we percieve to support our unwarrented guess. I concinvced my self that straps existed when clearly they did not, all because of my early conclusion that the object was a bag of some sort.

The main source of this problem stems from our paradigms. We set a way of looking at the world to help us make decisions, but sometimes the facts of the world don't really mesh well with our paradigms. So we subconsciously twist what we percieve to fit our mold. For example, one of the more common paradigms that people have is the "I'm perfect!" paradigm. We all know someone who believes they're perfect, and if something is wrong, it's always somebody else's fault. Heck some of have even dated these kind of people... *meekly raises hand* When something goes wrong, it is not immediatly apparent who is at fault, but the egotistical immediatly makes conclusions that it can't be their fault and must be someone else's. Paradigms can go both ways though, as those with low self-esteem often are blaming themselves for things that aren't their fault, working under the paradigm that they are worthless and can't do anything right. Somehow, I've managed to date both extremes.

So how can we solve this problem inherent within ourselves? Simple. Learn to tolerate the unknown. Many times we like to guess or make explanations without sufficient evidence because, let's face it, many times we don't want to say "I don't know." But for some situations, we have to get outside our basic nature and be comfortable with the fact that we don't know, instead of letting our preconcieved notions dictate what that unknown is. Don't find duffel bags that don't exist.

So what the heck is that object to the right of the windowsill? I don't know, and I'm not afraid to admit it.

Czar Red #6

2004-06-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

* I apologize that this is so long; I couldn't bare to trim it so I'm going to post as is.

I slid out of the car, shakily walking to the front door. My skin was still glistening with sweat from volleyball practice; my kneepads rested at my ankles sticky and heavy. My muscles were tired and all I wanted was to fling myself onto the floor of the living room and let Timmy happily lick the perspiration from my arms.

I looked for him in the yard, but my puppy was nowhere to be found. I shrugged guessing he was inside jumping gaily on my brother.

When I came inside, I saw my mother first. She was hunched over in the rocking chair, her listless eyes staring out the window. I would have smiled if she didn’t look so pathetic – she was much too young to be sitting in that rickety chair.

“Should we tell her?” Dad asked her as he diverted his eyes from mine. She only responded with an apathetic nod.

He stalled for a moment, speechless. His words came stuttered and quiet. “Timmy got hit by a car.”

I reeled. Before I could respond, I was far away.

...It was a particularly hot July afternoon. Not that any day that summer wasn’t hot and horribly dry, but that day was brutally so. It was the fourth day in a row I’d worked in the fireworks stand. The stand was a wooden shack with shelves lined with brightly packaged explosives. My parents were paying me to sit through the grueling afternoons with heat waves so punishing that customers wouldn’t venture to our stand. The shoppers only came at night, but there was always a chance we’d miss a sale if we weren’t ready even during the most hateful hours of the day.

The only relief from the searing weather was a motorized fan in the corner. Every few minutes, it quit working killing the only breeze and only sound with it. I think that bothered me more than the heat. I didn’t mind sweating but I did mind the silence. Dad connected an intercom to the house, which was only about one hundred yards from the stand, for emergencies. But no one was ever around when I just wanted to talk to pass away the time.

When my younger brother told me over the intercom that “Dad had gotten a puppy,” I was more than skeptical. My mother hated dogs. I was angry that he’d tease me with such a sweet suggestion.

“Liar.”

“No, I promise.” His voice was scratchy but clear enough I knew what he was saying. But of course, I didn’t believe him. Who believes thirteen year old boys?

“Prove it.”

“I’ll bring him to you in just a minute.”

I was giddy despite myself. It was too good to be a true, but would he really lie? I jumped out of the stand so that I could see Dan walking from the house in the distance.

I saw him. Dan was carrying what looked like a very small brown lump. The “dog” didn’t move at all and I was quickly convinced he was carrying a stuffed animal. I spent the next few moments quickly calculating what I was doing to do to my pesky brother. As my hands started to clench and I was resolved that a punch in the eye was the only fair retribution for such ultimate a sin, Dan dropped him.

I expected him to bend over and grab the stuffed toy, but instead it ran. The puppy’s ears flapped in the wind as he sprinted in my direction. Dan trailed behind him, laughing as he tried to catch up with the anxious puppy. The weeds whipped at his face, and tore at his legs, but my brother was happy. I stood stunned for an instant before I too was running toward them. I dropped to my knees and pulled the puppy into my arms.

He was the most beautiful animal I had ever seen. His fur, a soft ebony, was splattered with tan on his paws. I fell in love with his droopy ears and loving dark eyes instantly. I dug my nose deep into the fur on his back and sniffing the sweet aroma his skin. I held in my arms a wiggling, licking, excited puppy.

We learned that day that Timmy loved black jelly beans. Dan and I hated them and while eating a bag of jelly beans in the fireworks stand one of us discovered he didn’t agree with our taste buds. When mother found out, she was furious.

“Don’t you know licorice can kill an animal?”

We were horrified; we’d only meant to bring the puppy pleasure. She assured us if we only fed him one a day, he’d be fine. So we began collecting them for him in a plastic baggy in the cupboard.

He loved eating them. He waited to swallow them so the sweetness could spread across his tongue. He always barked asking for another when he was finished. Dan and I couldn’t resist his eyes, and usually gave him a second...

... I realized, sooner than I’d have desired, that I couldn’t escape anymore.

"Is he okay? Did you take him into the hospital?" I managed to squeak out, stammering.

"No, honey, he died." My father’s eyes avoided mine.

"No," I screamed still disbelieving. I cascaded down to my knees, my face buried in the ugly shag carpet. A horrid shriek escaped itself from deep within my heart. Tears pinched their way from my eyes and burned their way down my cheeks. My tightly clenched fists pounded themselves upon the ground and I was screaming and screaming and screaming.

My mother rested her hand on my back and gently stroked me. Darkness flooded through my body, numbing my brain and silencing my shrieking. I didn't understand what my mother was mumbling to me, but the rhythm of the words soothed me. Calmness ran though me, when it became too painful to keep crying. I was silent but my deep angry breathing.

I opened my streaming eyes. Though my tears, I saw Timmy's chair glaring at me -- almost mocking my sorrow. He’d always curled up in the oversized chair in the corner. Just like a cat, we’d teased.

I ignored my powerful urge to destroy something. I wanted to pull the curtains from the wall and tear at the fabric just to hear it rip. I wanted to slam the lamp onto the floor and watch the base shatter into a thousand glittering pieces.

The next morning I awoke certain it’d been a dream. I ate breakfast as usual and opened the door to let Timmy in. I laughed at the irony; yesterday morning, dad had told us that our puppy couldn’t play with us before school anymore since we were always running late. I reached for the baggie that I was sure was still sitting in the cupboard and I went outside.

Blind terrible furry came over me and I ran into the fields. I ran past his dog house, the gate, usually shut in the morning, squeaked as it swayed back and forth in the sharp wind. I kept running until I came to the mound of freshly dug earth.

I opened my fingers that’d been clenched in a tight fist. Two shiny jelly beans rolled from my fingers onto the soil.

Mauve Momma #6

2004-06-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

My eyes creaked open. Ow. Shit. Head hurt. The yellow light was too much. I closed them again.

I exhaled, tasting the sour liquor on my breath, and took a fresh breath in. This didn't smell like my room. It smelled...old. Like the inside of a Kleenex box. It smelled like a church pew, plus a couple of cat hairs. Yesterday my room had smelled like sandalwood incense, plus the old pizza and dirty laundry I was trying to cover up. Not my room.

I tried opening my eyes again, real slow. Ow. And...huh. Definitely not my room. Unless my bed had acquired four posters during the night, and had transported itself to the world's stuffiest bed and breakfast. With my head pounding, and through blurry eyes, I surveyed what I could see from where I lay- the curtain frills, the wooden rocking chair, some framed piece of sewing or something above the chair.

Well. I laid back against the pillow and tried to remember how I might have ended up in such a place. I drew a blank, but the whiskey breath and the migraine indicated they probably played a part. Dammit. I had been having a raucous but fairly sober time with some old high school friends, and in the middle of it all, my ex-girlfriend had called, drunk, and said a couple heartless things. I had gotten angry and thrown my phone across the bar. After that I didn't remember.

The door opened, slowly, and a dark head peeked in, with an amused look of concern. Melanie. My band buddy and den mother since 10th grade. I was pleased to see her and managed a weak hangover smile.

"Well. Good morning, sunshine." She put a glass of water next to the bed.

"Hi Mel," I croaked. "Um." I looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to tell me what the hell I'd done now.

"It's not that bad," she reassured me. "You only cursed at two really buff guys with mustaches. No cops this time."

"This room..." I was too woozy and confused to get out the question. "It smells like an orthopedic shoe or something."

Mel sat on the edge of the bed. "Here's the story, drunky. You were real out of it last night. We took you back to your house, but you'd lost your keys and you didn't want to face your mother in your condition. I didn't know what else to do, so I took you back to my parents' place."

"Oh god. Did your mom-"

"She remembered you. Said you looked just like when we were in band together, except way drunker." She winked at me. "Anyway, you tried to pass out on my living room floor, but she wasn't having it, so we put you up here. In my grandma's room."

Well, that explained the mothball and cat smell. But I was still confused. "What about your grandma, where did she sleep?"

At this Mel's face grew cold. The concerned smile vanished. "Brian, my grandmother died when we were in 12th grade. We just haven't used her room for anything."

The guilt hit me like a cold wave. Shit. I'd forgotten. Mel's grandma had died of a stroke the day before Winter Formal, and I had skipped it to take her out for pancakes. Fucking whiskey. Fucking Deanna. I closed my eyes and Mel could tell I was sorry.

"Brian, it's okay. Sleep some more if you want, and then come down and have breakfast with us."

I had nothing else to say. "You're amazing. Thank you."

She gave me a businesslike kiss on the forehead and swept out of the room. I looked around at the room again. It didn't seem so stuffy this time, just kind of lost in time. The kind of love that had passed here was a kind that I, with my misplaced anger and my Jim Beam, could hardly understand.

"Hey, Mrs. Alexander." I heard myself say out loud. "I like your embroidery thing. It looks really nice."

What else could I offer? I stood and tried to pull the comforter straight. And I went down to breakfast.

Online Onslaught II

Table of Contents

Results....

Cejas

Mauve Momma #13

I swear!

Commander Cream: Here Be Monsters

Commander Cream #13

CC note

MM note

Results & TKO #13

Black Knight #12

Mauve Momma #12

Commander Cream's Failure

Commander Cream #12

Mauve Momma Reveals Her True Color

injustice

Results & TKO #12

Commander Cream's Adventures in Stupidity #3

YellowSubmarine

Mauve Momma #11

Ivory Angel #11 [part 2]

YellowSubmarine #11

Black Knight #11

Commander Cream #11

Ivory Angel #11 [Part 1]

Results & TKO #11

YellowSubmarine

Black Knight #10

Yellow Submarine #10

Mauve Momma #10

Czar Red #10

Ivory Angel #10

YellowSubmarine

Results and TKO #10

Yellow Submarine #9 pt 2

Black Knight #9

Mauve Momma #9

Ivory Angel #9

Purple Rain #9

Czar Red #9

YellowSubmarine #9 pt 1

Commander Cream to the Rescue #1

Commander Cream #9

Results &TKO #9

Yellow Submarine #8

Czar Red #8

Purple Rain #8

Ivory Angel #8

Commander Cream #8

Black Knight #8

NO VOTE & TKO #8

Czar Red #7

Yellow Submarine #7

Purple Rain #7

Professor Plum #7

Mauve Momma #7

Ivory Angel #7

Commander Cream: She is my Friend

Commander Cream #7

Results & TKO Question #7

Black Knight #6

Sgt. Silver #5 (Late Edition)

Purple Rain #6

Czar Red #6

Mauve Momma #6