Strings

Yeah, I'm sorry I never got around to posting my script before, but I was still holding onto the hope that someone had recorded the production. But alas, they didn't, so here's the script:

Strings

Mary, a marionette dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, comes skipping into the room with her basket, and sits down on a chair.
There comes a knock at the door.

MARY
Who is it?

DANIEL
It is I, the woodsman.

Mary gets up to look out the window, then opens the door. There is an air of sexual tension between them throughout the scene.

MARY
Hello! Please do come in!

Daniel enters, dressed as a hunter, and carrying a large knife in a sheath at his hip.

MARY
Would you care for some water?

DANIEL
Please. It’s been a long trek across the woods.

Mary goes to the sink to get him some water. Daniel sits

MARY
(admiringly)
My! What a large knife you have!

DANIEL
The better to attract young maidens with, my dear!

MARY
(returning with the water)
What was that?

DANIEL
The better to fight off villains with, my dear.

He takes the water and goes to drink it, but it all pours out of his mouth onto his shirt. They both look uncomfortable.

DANIEL
I come bearing news form the other side of this wood. There is an old woman who lives there, and she—

MARY
Yes! That’s my grandmother!

DANIEL
I see. As I was saying, the old woman sent me to find her granddaughter and tell—

MARY
That’s me!

DANIEL
I see. The old woman told me to find her granddaughter and tell her that she’s very sick.

MARY
I am!?

DANIEL
Your grandmother is. She spoke highly of you. She said you have the finest biscuits in town. And by the looks of things, she’s right.

MARY
Oh! My biscuits! I nearly forgot!

Mary runs to the oven and removes a pan of biscuits.

MARY
Okay, they’re perfect.

DANIEL
I would certainly hate to see those biscuits cook for too long before I got a nibble.

MARY
(laughs)
What were we talking about?

DANIEL
Your biscuits. You were going to offer them to me.

MARY
Oh yes! Would care to try my biscuits?

She thrusts the biscuits between them, and the mood is ruined.
Daniel takes a biscuit and begins chewing it, letting the crumbs fall all over his shirt. Mary glumly takes a biscuit herself and does the same.

MARY
(dejectedly)
You know, these biscuits would be a lot more enjoyable if puppets could actually eat.

They continue to “eat” the biscuits

MARY
(trying to be sexy again)
Now you’ve had my biscuits. Would you care to try my roundcakes?

DANIEL
I’m not really in the mood. Anyway, your grandmother would love a visit from you. As for me, I’ll probably swing by later to make sure you made it through these wolf-infested woods safely.

MARY
(coyly)
How much later?

DANIEL
In the nick of time, no doubt.

Daniel exits. Mary puts the remaining biscuits into her basket, as the scene changes to a spot in the woods. Mary begins to walk across the stage. Enter Will, another marionette, dressed as the wolf.

WILL
Well, don’t you just look delicious?

MARY
(coming on to him)
Thank you! You’re pretty hot yourself.

WILL
I mean I’m going to have you for lunch.

MARY
Oh, well thank you, but I just ate! Maybe we could skip that step.

WILL
(ignoring her)
Hmm, yes, you will be delicious all oven-roasted, rolled in bread crumbs and flour and steeped in your own sauces!

MARY
What’s that? Flowers? You want me to pick flowers? You’re a queer sort of a wolf.

Mary starts to pick flowers. Will slowly advances on her. Mary moves to the downstage corner of the stage. Will is having trouble because his puppeteers are making him get her.

MARY
What’s wrong mister wolf? Don’t you want to make some comment about getting some tail, or about your carnal desires? Something I can take the wrong way?

WILL
No, I…

He is frustrated and confused. He struggles in vain (comically) to reach her, tugging at his strings. Finally, he gives up, collapsing in a heap on the ground.

WILL
I’m so tired of doing this. So tired of these!
(indicates the strings)
Daniel enters and crosses, merrily.

WILL
You! Give me your knife!

DANIEL
(drawing it and taking a battle stance)
Gladly!

Daniel hands Will the knife and exits. Will reaches up and begins to cut his strings.

MARY
(turning around finally and seeing what he’s doing)
Oh Wolf! Don’t do this! What are you doing!?

WILL
See these strings!? I hate ‘em! They’ve been holding me back my whole life!

Will continues sawing at the strings.

MARY
We NEED the strings! They’re how we move! This is suicide!

WILL
Are we even alive, if someone else is pulling the strings? Is this any different from dead?

MARY
(panicked)
I don’t understand why you’re doing this.

WILL
(pausing to explain)
Don’t you feel like everything in your life is decided for you? Don’t you want totake control? All my life I’ve been letting the strings make decisions for me. No longer!
(starts removing wolf elements of costume)
I’m not even a bad guy! Those three pigs I ate, I didn’t even want to! I never wanted to be a killer. But I was compelled. Someone else is making our decisions for us, Mary!

MARY
(gasping, and straightening her hood as she says it)
Little Red Riding Hood!

WILL
I know you’re not as dumb as you act! You were meant to do more than just cook and clean and please the men around you. Something keeps you acting like that. What is it?

MARY
I don’t…

WILL
It’s these strings! I’m not going to let them control me any MORE!
Will continues to cut the strings emphatically, losing limb control one by one, until he is limp on the ground with only the knife-wielding hand connected to a string and hanging in the air.

MARY
(Screaming)
Will! Stop it! Stop! Daniel! Daniel!
Daniel enters, sees Will’s body, and stops.

DANIEL
(delivers a terrified fey scream, then regains his
masculine “woodsman” composure)
Oh. Goodness. I should be more careful who I give my knife to.

MARY
So that’s it. He killed himself. What the hell kind of puppet show is this?

DANIEL
(trying to be reassuring)
Well, this is how it was going to end anyway. He merely saved me the work. So why don’t we just skip ahead to the part where you show me what’s in your basket?

MARY
(pushing him away)
No! No more stupid puns and innuendos. Look at him! He’s not just pretending! He cut his strings! He’s not coming back from this. It’s… It’s different.
(she begins to cry)

DANIEL
Why are you crying? The wolf is dead and we can finally be together.

MARY
The Wolf isn’t dead! Will is dead! He just cut his strings! He said he never wanted to be a bad wolf. He couldn’t help it.
(She grows distant)
What if he’s right? Is this even a real life?

DANIEL
He’s wrong. Don’t think about it.

MARY
I almost hope he IS right. Do you know what my middle name is?

DANIEL
Is this a trick?

MARY
Annette. Mary Annette. I was born to be a slave to some unseen force in the universe. And his name is Will. Will, because he knew he was going to die, and this is what he leaves us with.

DANIEL
(slipping into his fey demeanor again)
I don’t believe that. You’re saying this was supposed to happen? But then, what choice do we have?

MARY
I know, I know. It’s crazy.
( looks at Will’s body)
HE had a choice.

DANIEL
(suddenly aware of his surroundings)
Um, Little Red Riding Hood, it’s time to be getting to your grandmother’s house?
(whispered)
We are supposed to be putting on a show right now!

Will starts to move and groan. Mary screams. Will struggles to gain his feet.

WILL
Mary! Daniel!

He takes the knife in his other hand and cuts himself completely free. The newly freed hand falls limp, dropping the knife, but as he talks he massages the hand back to life.

WILL
I’m free! Look at me! Free to make my own decisions!
(looking and pointing at the audience, and utterly
shocked)
Look at those people! Look! It’s just a theater. It’s a playhouse.

DANIEL
What are you talking about? It’s just a wall.

WILL
(overlapping with Mary)
It is NOT!

MARY
I don’t…

WILL
Look! If it’s just a wall, then why do we all face this direction? That’s not normal!

DANIEL
Well….

WILL
Watch this!

Will approaches the edge of the stage.

MARY
What are you doing? Come away from there.

WILL
I’m sorry, Mary, but I need to do this. It’s my leap of faith, if you will.

Will jumps from the stage, down to the audience. Mary screams again. Daniel rushes forward and starts examining the imaginary fourth wall.

WILL
I’m all right!

MARY
(she can’t see him, but can hear him)
Will!?
0
WILL
Mary! Come with me! There are people out here!

Will talks to one of the audience members, trying to convince him to say “Hi Mary”

MARY
Will! Where are you?

DANIEL
(flamboyantly devastated)
It’s too late, Mary. He’s gone.

MARY
I can hear him. Listen!

WILL
Daniel. I know you can hear me. Come with me, both of you. There’s a whole world out here. There are people! People who make their own decisions. People who aren’t just playing the roles assigned to them.
(looks at audience)
Well, some of them.

DANIEL
(still flamboyant)
I don’t understand! Don’t make me think about what you’ve done! You brutish wolf!

MARY
What is this? It’s so confusing. It’s like, what? A play within a play?

WILL
(excited)
No! It’s the exact opposite of that! It’s a play withOUT a play!

DANIEL
(horrified)
But! A play without a play!? That’s nothing!

WILL
It’s not nothing! It’s just not a play. It’s real!

MARY
I’m doing it, Will. I’m cutting my strings.

WILL
Yes! Oh, Mary, yes!

Mary picks up the knife and begins to cut herself free.

DANIEL
(back in character, almost desperately though)
Come along, little girl. We’ve got to get you to your grandmother’s house. Hand me that knife before you hurt yourself.

MARY
I’m doing this, Dan. All my life I’ve been playing a role. I haven’t made one decision for myself. My life starts today.

Mary finishes cutting the strings and collapses as Will did. Daniel rushes to her, trying to revive her. She awakens slowly.

MARY
(feebly)
Did it work?

DANIEL
(terrified and super gay)
Mary, you can’t leave me! You can’t leave me alone here.

WILL
Mary! You did it! Come with me! Daniel, you come too!

DANIEL
(covering his ears, now having trouble staying in
one character or the other)
Stop it, Wolf! I’ll hear no more of this!
(turning to Mary, desperately now)
Mary, listen to me. Even if this is a play. Those people out there have paid to see it. So you’re not a puppet. You’re an actress. It’s your duty. You have a show to put on.

MARY
(standing up and facing the audience)
I can see them! Hi, folks. Will, you were right. I’m free.
Will runs toward her.

WILL
Come now, Mary. Let’s go.

MARY
No, Will. I’m free now. But Daniel’s right. We have a show to put on. I’m an actress. It’s what I do.

WILL
What! This is crazy, Mary. You cut your strings, but you’re still going to let the decisions be made for you.

MARY
I am MAKING this decision. I CHOOSE to stay here. I wasn’t choosing before. I’m no less free than you are—

WILL
(kisses her)
I love you!

MARY
I guess I knew that. And I love you too. But I can’t let you decide for me any more than I can let them. I’ve been playing the role of the obedient, vapid woman all this time. I choose… I just choose! Don’t make this harder for me, please.

WILL
So I guess this is goodbye, Mary.

Will exits through the rear of the house.

DANIEL
(woodsman-like)
So, on to Grandmother’s house?

MARY
(angrily)
Do you even want that? THAT’s why your name is Daniel! It’s an acronym for denial!

Daniel and Mary are both shocked at what she has just said.

DANIEL
(fey again)
Oh! That was really… smart! But please. Let’s just be done with this horrible puppet show. This needs to be over. Don’t force me to think!
(regaining composure)
So what now?

MARY
(answering Daniel, but looking out at Will)
If you’re done, then take your bow.

DANIEL
Oh, thank you!

Daniel bows, then freezes with his arms around Mary, and never moves for the rest of the scene. Mary looks very unhappy.

WILL
(re-entering, shouting and ecstatic)
A lobby! And beyond that a whole world! Please, Mary. Come with me!

MARY
I’m sorry, Will. This is where I belong. On stage, taking my final bow. You can choose to give that up. But I want it.

WILL
So this is a tragedy then. And I thought it would be a farce.

MARY
(pointedly)
But who’s the tragedy? The girl who chooses to remain in her position after she’s been freed?

WILL
Or the boy who walks away from everything he knows and loves? Goodbye, Mary.

MARY
Goodbye, Will.

Will exits. Mary pries herself from Daniel’s grasp, looks sadly at him, turns and bows, and exits offstage. Blackout.

Monologues

My friend Heather asked me for two monologues for upcoming auditions. This is what I gave her.

Dramatic Monologue

K, I need you to just sit there and listen. For once! Just let me have my voice. I need you to know that I remember what you did. You sat there and smiled and glossed over it for twenty years. Acted like it never happened for so long that you started to believe I believed it too. Well, Dad, I remember it. You molested me. And now we both have to confront this. I was eleven. All the little girls in the stories you read me got rescued from the monsters by their fathers and their princes. But you WERE the monster. Who was supposed to protect me? Where was I supposed to go? Besides crazy... Can you imagine what that did to a little girl? I felt so guilty! For letting it happen night after night. For finding pleasure in it. You made me feel like I was the evil one. And now I have a little girl of my own, and do you know what I did? I molested her.... You passed that evil on to me. I don’t know whether it’s genetic, or sexually transmitted, but I ended up with your sickening disease. And so I came here. There’s only one thing I can do. I came here to tell you that I forgive you. I don’t know your life. I don’t know what evils were done to you. All I know is I need to be the one to make it stop. And so I’m letting you out of my heart, and I’m going to walk out of this room and never revisit this house. This ends today.

Comedic Monologue

Go ahead and have a seat. You probably know why you’re in here. I’ve noticed you haven’t been your normal, happy, chipper Jessica self lately. Yep, see, you know exactly what I’m talking about. So the first and most obvious question: Are you about to start menstruating, dear? Depression? No? Oh Lordy, you’re not pregnant, are you? Oh, no, I didn’t think this was going to turn into another one of THOSE. Well, if you need some time off in the next week or two to hurry and get married.... You know, so nobody judges you, calling you a slut and all these terrible names they have. Oh, look at you, sweetheart. That’s not it, is it? Oh, I’m so sorry. Jessica, what I’m about to tell you is just between you and me, and I’m only telling you because you’re a fellow woman of the faith. Sometimes we get into a “mood” that lasts days of even weeks. We start to wonder what’s wrong with us, and we blame ourselves. But Jessica, I want to assure you of something. Satan is very real, and there are REAL evil spirits roaming this earth, and they will choose people to attach themselves to. I’m afraid this is what’s happening in your case. I want you to know that you absolutely have the right to pray, and command these spirits to leave you. And they will. There is nothing wrong with YOU. This is NOT from a God who loves you. It is evil spirits who have attached themselves to you. All right. Is there anything else I can help you with, sweetie? No? K, I’m going to need you to get back to work. We’ve just been wasting too much of the afternoon.

A Golden Moment

Written from Anchorage, July 2007

I was recently mistakenly quarantined on a train from Fairbanks to Anchorage. Don't worry about how or why. That's another story. They put me on an empty train car and didn’t let me out. Luckily, a kindly, overworked lady who worked for the train company provided me with snacks for the long ride. Among these treats was a carton of something I’ve never tried. Cherries. I don’t know why I’ve never eaten cherries before, but I never have. And here was a whole carton of sweet black cherries.

Anyway, I slept for most of the trip. In the “evening” I woke up, stretched, and dug my book out of my backpack. Thus began one of the most serene and beautiful experiences of my life.

The sunlight came in relaxed and lazy, lounging sideways, as the sunlight is prone to do in Alaska. The birch and alder and spruce whirred by in a strobe-like blur of white and green and brown. The cottonwood trees had released a flurry of white cotton pixies, swarming and whizzing silently and gleefully past the windows in millions, lending a snow-globe effect to the afternoon. Crystal clear ponds reflected the blue of the sky and the white of the cumulus clouds stacked up above the horizon in all directions. My eyes could scarcely take in all of the beauty, and a peace settled over me. My attention turned to the interior of the train car, to the bowl of ripe cherries, and I ate one. Delicious! The juices burst into my mouth, ripe and sweet and unexpected, like a show of affection from a child. I realized that the blackest cherries were the most delicious, and I soon had a cup full of their pits. Amid the sensual beauty, I turned back to my book. The sunlight cut a sharp angle across the pages, the fibers of the paper casting shadows, tiny and definite, on each other.

Then I looked at my hand, which was holding the book open. My skin is a honey beige, more golden than most people’s, and in the yellow sunlight it looked healthy and warm. I turned to look at my reflection in a nearby mirrored panel on the wall, and the sun again cast a favorable light on me, entering my eyes at a slant and seeming to illuminate my irises from inside; they glowed like electrified amber. And for the first time I can ever remember, I thought, “I am beautiful.” Such an astonishing thought! I have never seen beauty in myself like this. I’ve grown up wishing for lighter skin like my friends, blue or green eyes like the kind I personally find more attractive, a different body altogether. But in that moment of peace and beauty and spirit, I was able to see myself through different, more fiery and perceptive eyes. I was able to see myself as an essential part of a whole wide beautiful world, inhabited by astoundingly good human beings and remarkably brilliant ideas and preposterously delightful nature. There is beauty in places I’d never thought to look. In cherries, in trees, in myself.

And this is the big thing I’m bringing home from Alaska: a recognition of my own worth and beauty. A new-found respect for my own desires and dreams and abilities. A love as deep as ever for the friends who have helped me to become who I am so far. And a determination to forge a path forward to that unique person that I, and no one else, is meant to become. I love you all.

--Robbie

another picture i took....

Immediate Reaction

I needed to capture this feeling, because I don't know what it'll have turned into tomorrow....



2:34am

Connie
Hey kid, are you ok?

Robbie
yeah...
talking to ritchie
give me a sec

Connie
I am sorry.

Robbie
ok back

Connie
What is Ritchie going to do?

Robbie
he's driving up there
i don't know if he has a plan
he's going to find out about life insurance

Connie
that's ritch

Robbie
haha “well that's just rich...”
how are YOU doing?

Connie
I am worried about you guys
How about you?

Robbie
yeah, i haven't had any emotional reaction yet at all
i can’t tell if it’s still coming
or if i already did that

Connie
I am worried about money. Sad to say.
That's how I felt when my parents died.

Robbie
yeah. you were getting money from him, huh?

Connie
yes.

Robbie
yeah

Connie
Let me know if you need anything.

Robbie
k. thanks. i think i'll be ok
if he has insurance, then we’ll have a funeral for him, i guess. i don’t know who would come, besides his kids.

Connie
Work starts this next week, right?

Robbie
how did your talk go?
yeah on friday
if there's a funeral, i won't be able to make it

Connie
great. good spirit there

Robbie
and not just because of money
good:)

Connie
That is ok.

Robbie
yeah
i really just didn't like dad, mom

Connie
I doubt that any of your brothers but Ritchie will go

Robbie
nicole will make randy go
if they even have one

Connie
I know. You will grow to love him as life goes on.

Robbie
they asked ritchie what he wanted done. he said to take his organs

Connie
what?!?

Robbie
so weird to be responsible for a body like that
poor ritchie, responsible for dad even now

Connie
They are so worn. I feel bad.
He is pretty shook up

Robbie
yeah. what are they going to use? his liver? heart? brain?

Connie
lol

Robbie
i do love dad
but i'm glad to have him out of my life.

Connie
That is how I felt about my parents.

Robbie
my bishop had counseled me to cut him off

Connie
I still do

Robbie
and it just seemed so cruel
this weight

Connie
sorry.

Robbie
because i worried that if his kids cut him off, he'd kill himself
but he made me so unhappy
and now i don't have to decide that

Connie
I think you can rest easy that he was in a good place when he died.

Robbie
yeah
he says he’s been clean for at least six months now, but you never know
i think so

Connie
And leave it at that

Robbie
i wonder how he died
Could be another suicide attempt. O.D.

Connie
probably a heart attack

Robbie
yeah
he didn’t leave any kind of warning
man
48 years old

Connie
drugs

Robbie
that's so tragic
just wore himself out

Connie
true

Robbie
it's a sad situation
but i feel i mourned him years ago
mourned who he was to me

Connie
we all did.

Robbie
yeah

Connie
You are ok in your feelings

Robbie
anyway, i am sure you are tired.
ha thanks

Connie
Yup. I wanted to see if you were here. Be good.

Robbie
thanks
love ya mom
talk to you later

Connie
I love you. Bye.

2:47am

The Monologue

Health class at UVU. Two minute presentations. Most are on binge drinking, eating disorders, the health benefits of dark chocolate, etc. A dumpy short girl gets up, teary, and says, this, before sitting down:

The thing I'm going to talk about today is very private and personal to me. In the summer of 2007, I was diagnosed with genital herpes. When you first contract genital herpes, you just look down there, and you see all these little red bumps. But after a few weeks, they turn into big, red, painful blisters. And they hurt. A lot. It feels like, if you accidentally zip your vagina in your zipper. Only like a hundred times worse. I was a prime candidate for getting genital herpes, because it's a lot easier for a woman to get it from a man, and also my boyfriend is black.

Sadness

This is a VERY changed version of something I wrote a while back. Some might not like the changes. I'm sorry. Whereas it was once abstract prose, it is now semi-narrative poetry. I hope you like it, but this one is mostly for me.




sadness

to find beauty for that one i’ve yet to meet
i went one overcast twilight
through spacious flowered fields
past bubbling streams
that never reminded me of love
into the shade of murky wood
i came upon a pansy wilted
gray
forlorn and choked
springing impossibly from hard granite
there i sat and pondered

on the beauty of
tear-stained tracks down children’s dusty faces
weeks of rain
strong battered women
fancy melting candles
and darkwood rooms done up in red velvet
sputtering stars fighting to shine their light through earth's twinkly muggy atmosphere
and wildflowers growing raggedly from a crack in barren rock

i want to make someone's sadness my own
cup a fallen star in my hand as it burns
shelter it from tempestuous winds
shade it from the garish glare of sunshine

on summer nights i lie in the crunchy golden grass
look at the ghosts of giants
placed in the night sky to remind us
we all must pass on
we are only visitors here in this strange land
i love them
their tragic stories
heroes fallen in crumpled heaps
mythical beasts slain in fields of blood
tiny cold lights their most eloquent “in memoriam”

the sun comes out
stories fade to soothing baby blue
heroes and their eulogies forgotten
their wonders exist only in darkness

will heaven be all light all the time
will there be the dark spaces between the stars or
will they be filled in with such blinding light that there won't be any stars at all
will there be shadows dancing from the fireplace onto cozy earthen walls
will the forest still hold its dark secretive appeal or
will the leaves in the canopies be forced to move aside
let in the light
reveal her secret places
will all music be in major chords
all clouds cumulus
all stories have happy endings
will we mourn our damned loved ones or
will our grief be enough to save them
or
will we have to forget in our happiness that we ever loved them at all

when we are stars ourselves
will we all shine the same stark white
can I shine burgundy
olive or
burnt sienna
let my dark desires be the catalysts that make me more like god
let my self burn up beautifully like a meteor as I near perfection
let the forest shelter foxes in her secret places and murky mysteries
let the gnarled roots of this old oak tree hold the branches high
let my scars
be
my beauty
or i’ll choose to stay right here in the gloom of cloudy dusk
a wizened and bent old beggar man
who can’t bring himself to pick one sad little flower
who will have to bring that one he’s yet to meet down here instead
who has maybe found a new kind of grace

Alaskan Adventure! Hooray!

I took this picture!


If the devil himself, bedecked in red tights, horns, a goatee, and a salesman's white cowboy hat and bolo tie, had appeared on my TV set in front of an obvious ever-changing blue screen of trainyards and finely dining happy elderly couples, and he stood there waving his hand beckoningly, telling me that I could have an awesome Alaskan adventure and make mounds of money and all my cares would be over "for the low, low price of your soul," I probably wouldn't have fallen for it. But the devil, it turns out, is much more subtle than that.

He got to Glade first, by playing on his constant desire to have an adventure and get away from whatever's going on in his life at the moment. Soon Evan was on board, as well. And if my two best friends are going to have an adventure, I'm coming, too! I would like to point out that that's exactly how the devil got Adam in the Garden of Eden, too. Plus the idea of Alaska was exciting! I'd only been to two other foreign countries before. Maybe we'd see a polar bear! Or an Eskimo! Plus this might be our last chance to see the polar ice caps! And above all, according to the friendly lady we talked to on the phone, we'd walk out of there with over ten thousand dollars each. Of course, that was reason enough to quit our jobs, pack our bags, and head on up to the tundra.

My friends ended up leaving immediately after we got hired. They went with our other friend Burt, in his car. The plan was to drive up there and then leave the car in Anchorage. I would wait a month, since I had to give longer notice at my super important job, and I'd fly up and meet them there. They had their own adventures that I'll leave for them to write about, but they included getting pulled over in Oregon and detained for more than an hour under suspicion of marijuana use for being too happy (and Glade had to pee the whole time, but the cop said it was illegal to pee on the side of the road), getting a flat tire, Evan puking for a few days in Seattle, and then the car breaking down and all three of them having to ditch their cars and stuff on the side of the road and hitchhike across British Columbia and the Yukon. They got picked up by an anarchist in a bus who would drive around (instead of through) all the towns because he didn't believe in them.

Eventually we had all met up in Anchorage, where we had a one bedroom apartment with seven inflatable Walmart mattresses on the floor. We all bought $60 Walmart bikes, as well. Most nights at least a few of us were in Fairbanks, the other end of the railroad. We would black out the windows, so we could sleep through the sunny nights. We used Burt's computer standing in the bathroom with the computer hanging halfway out the window, as that was the only place we got internet reception. Basically, it was a college kids' dream.

And while we never saw polar bears, we did see Eskimos. Did we ever! We basically lived in the middle of a huge Eskimo ghetto. Except the buildings were made out of normal building stuff, and not ice. We learned a traditional Eskimo greeting: "Heeeeey. Do you have two dollars?" We could not walk the three blocks to the grocery store without getting it at least three times. Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't see the Eskimos as perpetrators, but rather as victims of the white man and his firewater. We would see Eskimos passed out drunk on the side of the road, looking as though they'd been in the middle of constructing igloos out of beer cans. We saw them fighting, accosting the police, shoplifting, and in Evan and Glade's case, dying on the sidewalk of stab wounds. They would ask for whatever we happened to have on us at the time. "Heeeeey. Do you have any orange juice?" "Heeeeey. Do you have a cell phone?" "Heeeeey. Do you have a camera?" Sometimes they'd get clever. "Heeeeey. I need two dollars for rehab." Glade, a more compassionate person than I am (or maybe just more passive; a "no" answer would upset them), would often fork over the cash. I had my own tactic: I would simply preempt the mendicant Eskimos with a petition of my own. As an Eskimo would stumble toward me, sizing me up, I would ask in his accent, "Heeeeey, do you have two dollars?" That would confuse them for long enough for me to get by.

One Eskimo woman hit me on my bicycle with her car on my first day there. I wasn't hurt, but my front wheel was bent pretty badly, to the point where everywhere I rode, the front brake was always on, and I'd just have to pedal harder, which problem was compounded by the fact that Anchorage is extremely hilly. The front tire rubbing on the brake made an anserine honking that could be heard from over a block away.

But enough on the fun things in Alaska. Let's talk about the job.

The name of the company I worked for has been changed here to protect the innocent (me, from getting sued). So I'll be calling them Nazi Germany America. Basically, Nazi Germany America is the ninth circle of Alaska, and Alaska is hell. My friend Caitie tells me the reason I felt inspired to come to Alaska was to help me gain an appreciation for the Utah things in life. Like, you know, sober people, stars, friendly neighbors, happiness, etc. Stuff you can't find in Alaska.

The pay at our job was pretty excellent. Alaska, unlike right-to-work states like Utah, pays its workers overtime after more than eight hours in a day, and then more overtime after forty hours (at least that's how the company explained it, which may have been more of their lies). So we liked the money, but the hours were hazardous, and above (or below?) all else, the management was corrupt, inefficient, and unreasonable. And mean.

And ugly and old. Let me paint a picture for you of what life (if you can call it that) is like on the train. At five thirty in the morning you wake up (I just realized I've become Mr. Jeffries, the Saturday School teacher/babysitter who used to sit around and tell his depressing life story in the second person so you would really feel his pain) and you get ready and bike (Honk! Honk! Honk!) down to the railyard. At this point you try your hardest to avoid any kind of interaction with Lorellezilla. (That's not her real name, either. It's just Lorelle.) If someone ever makes a movie of my life, Lorelle should be played by the secretary from "Monsters Inc." Further description of Lorellezilla for those who haven't seen that movie, or who have successfully blocked it out: picture a reptile, only pink, with wispy whitish hair and strange glandular growths on her eyelids and bulldog jowls. Then picture that it's attached to an oxygen tank with a cannula in its nose and it's really mean. Its voice was a reptilian smoker's voice, like the lady from "Throw Mama From The Train." Also it swears a lot. As you arrive at the railyard, this monstrosity is stomping about the grounds, snorting fire and venom from its pustulated nostrils.

Should you successfully evade the beast in the morning and jump onto your train car, you run into a Catch-22. Your job at this point is to take an inventory and ensure that your car is amply stocked for your two-day journey. The problem is this: If your car is missing anything (e.g. dessert, silverware, tablecloths, crackers, etc.), you will be in trouble if you don't restock it from the storage units at the rail yard before the train takes off. In theory, everything should be stocked the night before by the Russian mp3 player thieves, i.e. night crew, anyway, but there is a lack of language understanding or work ethic or something in that department, so you end up needing all sorts of stuff the next morning. Now what you're supposed to do is get one of the lingering Russians to run to the sheds and hand you the stuff, because the train could move at any second and it's against the rules to be getting on and off, but the Russians are really good at not being around when you need them, and you run for it anyway. But if Lorellezilla sees you, she will yell at you, because she is horrible. Her entire job description must say, "get in people's way and go to any lengths to impede their work." So really your efforts will almost surely be in vain, and since you're going to get yelled at anyway, you might as well cut your losses and just ride without crackers for the day, and only get yelled at the one time when it's discovered you're out of them, instead of once when you try to get more and then again when you‘re out later because Lorellezilla didn‘t let you have them.

Now, there's another succubus stomping about the trainyard in the mornings named Kim. She looks like, hmmm. Okay, you know "Arthur?" The children's books and TV show? She looks like one of the monkeys on that show, with dyed red hair and orange, wrinkly chimpanzee skin. And she has also smoked too much, so her voice is raspy and her teeth yellow and flat, like an herbivore. Kim and Lorelle. I hate each of them more than the other. In one morning I have been yelled at by one for "hiding out on my car when there are no customers on it and I should be helping someone else" and by the other minutes later for "not staying on my car so I can be found when they need me." I've been yelled at three times by Kim in one morning for being late. I've been yelled at for getting off the train to grab supplies, and then minutes later for sending someone else to do my work for me. I have to be good for the rest of my life so when I die I don't go to Alaska and have to see these ladies again.

So let's just assume you got out of the yard and over to the depot, where you pick up the guests. Your job is to either a) load their luggage onto the train (and I swear some of these people packed their grandchildren in their "carry-ons"), or b) stand at the entrance to the car and tell people to "watch your step" as they board, due to a 4-inch drop back down after they've already come up the steps to get on the car. The guests will be annoyed with you for stating the obvious, and will often say so, cantankerously: "I can see that!" Either that or they will ignore you and fall anyway. One of the highlights of my trip was the woman who did both. "Watch your step ma'am!" "Don't you people think I know how to--" and then she fell. Hahaha. On her hip!

The customers. They are old and rich and picky. Also, I think most of them are not really rich, and are spending beyond reason already, which is why they're so unhappy. Many grouchy people seem to think they will be happy if they can only go on an expensive vacation. But my experience has proven that grouchy old people are every bit as grouchy and old regardless of their settings. And nice or young people ride Princess. Now don't get me wrong--there are nice people and young people mixed in with all the liver-spotted bags of piss and vinegar who comprise the majority of our passengers, but they're not the ones who really influence the outcome of your day, or demand comment cards at the end of meal service.

So once you've got all the undead onto the train and somehow up the stairs to they're seats, you immediately serve breakfast. If someone on the train is going to die or just have a heart attack or stroke, this is generally when it's going to happen, even before the train gets moving. Yeah, yeah, it's sad. Partly because somebody just died and partly because now you have to wait for the paramedics and you'll be an hour behind schedule, but mostly because you have to listen to the rest of the gargoyles upstairs saying things like, "Well, is this going to affect breakfast?" and "It's almost ten o'clock! We should be eating lunch by now!" Seriously, they say that crap when someone has just died. I have no idea if they have an exaggeratory streak or if they actually eat lunch at ten o'clock because they are old. I also don't know if you turn like this when you're old or if this is just how everybody used to be during, like, the depression. "Here's your tip! Seven dimes! Oh, wait one second, I'm going to take one of those dimes back because you were out of crackers. There! Why don't you buy yourself a Frosted Pop Water Ice and see a moving picture!"

As far as I know, only two people actually DIED on our train while I was there, and I didn't personally see either of them. I was the first one there when a man inexplicably fell and stopped breathing and turned blue, but we had a nurse close at hand, who revived him, thank goodness. He had gross huge yellow horse teeth and I think I might be afraid of CPR. Another time I had to clear everyone away when a woman had a heart attack, but she already had a nurse with her, as it was clear she might go at any time, which to me is reason enough to NOT ride a train in the first place.

So you serve breakfast to the old people, you and your partner for the run, forty consumers at a time. This part is hellacious, but not more so than most other restaurant jobs, except for two factors. All your tables come in at the exact same time. And you're in a congested box that shakes both continuously and frenetically. When the first forty slobbering zombies have finished consuming their scrambled eggs and reindeer sausage and human brains, you have to politely make them take their "coffee and conversation" back upstairs to the "dome" where they can "see better" and set up for the next forty. This will probably take a while, since you are still out of silverware and have to wash the whole set between seatings, thanks to Lorelle's diligence.

After breakfast you start setting up for lunch. And you serve two rounds of lunch, and then you set up for dinner. Then two rounds of dinner, and then you're there. I didn't skip your break; you don't get one. This is, of course, simplified. The main challenge lies in convincing people that they do not get to choose when they eat on the train:

"Hello, sir, we're ready for you to come down to eat dinner now."

"Hell we just ate lunch not four hours ago! We'll come down in about an hour."

But you just have to make him come now. You can't be serving someone an hour after everyone else, because you have to be setting up the dining room for the next meal at this point. But the old badger will be so upset, cussin' and cryin' and making his wife fan him off and tell him he's making a right scene and they can go to dinner now if they absolutely must (with a scornful eye shot in your direction at that point). And what you CAN'T do is yell, "Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't realize this was the midnight BUFFET train, and everybody eats whatever they WANT! You know what, Let me just go get my good friend Conductor Bob and tell him that the couple in seats 7C&D would like him to delay the train for a couple of hours so they can eat whenever the fancy catches them!" Instead you must say something far more obsequious and self-demeaning, like, "I know, folks, I'm sure you've had a rough-and-tumble schedule these past few days! I wish there were something I could do (to you [you think, don't say that part]), but I promise we have a very delicious tender pork loin drizzled with a bourbon glaze and served with sweet potatoes and seasonal vegetables, and you will love them right up and forget all your cares and woes and such!" And then you realize how one turns into an insane, murderous clown or a Carebears villain, and you begin slowly to hate yourself.

And then when you bring out their hot tea with lemon and sugar and cream ("What! No honey! What kind of a place has TEA but no HONEY!"), they actually have the presumption to say, "This must be a great job! You must love this! Getting to ride the train all day!" And you are required to lie and tell them that it isn't hell.

And it's not always old people. Sometimes you'd get a whole car full of 80 Japanese tourists with one harried translator, or 80 Indians who demand a list of all ingredients you have on board so they can demand meals that better align with their religious diets.

Now what is it that really makes it hell? We haven't even gotten to that part yet. It's that on any given day at least one of the following will not be working: air conditioning, fridges, stove, handicapped elevator, bathrooms, order-taking computers, printers, the other waiter. The bathrooms are most likely to be out of order, which means the people have to go up and down three flights of stairs to get to the next car, which I admit is no easy feat when you have one foot in the grave and the other on a shaking staircase. The air-conditioning is the next-most-likely thing to go, which means all of your leathery old people will be moaning, sweaty, leathery old people. If either the bathrooms or the air conditioning is not working , it's probably your fault and will be deducted accordingly from your tip. You should have known better. The final irony on all of that is yet to come, and you will see exactly why these broken things make the train ride hell.

So now you're in Fairbanks, and all of your co-workers go get drunk and/or stoned and as a Mormon kid, all you can do is judge/envy them and eat some ice cream that is not very good but is very close-at-hand, and then you go to bed in the hotel or stay up until one or two wishing Jose would turn off the "King of Queens" marathon so you could sleep. And if you've ever wondered why there are handrails in motel showers, it's for people who work on the train. When you work on the train, you see, the ground never stops moving. Never, even after you're off the train again. I had heard this, and expected a vibrating, or a swaying, or maybe a gentle shaking at worst, but I was not prepared for the ground's random lurching beneath my feet. It’s especially bad when you close your eyes. Handrails or no, at least one employee gashed his forehead open when his shower unexpectedly and suddenly moved about five inches to the left. I have no idea what it is in the brain or inner ear that makes it do this, but you will still feel this effect the next morning at five thirty when you're up again and headed back to the train to do it all over, only headed south back to Anchorage.

When you get to Anchorage, you fill out a little report on what's not working. An example:

"Two of the four automatic sliding doors between the kitchen and the dining room come slamming shut unexpectedly and knock the food out of my hands. The toilets didn't work at all in this car and the customers were quite loathe to go to the next one. The computers didn't work and we had to do all of our orders by hand, which took an extra half an hour per seating and resulted in several mistaken orders."

This report is fun to fill out the same way Madlibs are, because you know nobody will ever read it again and you can say anything at all and it won't mean anything to anyone! "Two of the ninety-seven automatic hungry doors between the weasel and the singing room come swallowing shut sexually and knock the carburetor out of my elves."

For, you see, they don't actually fix any of that crap. So the next time you're on the train, you still won't have air-conditioning or toilets or computers, and the decrepit old people will whine once again, "well, if you knew it was broken, why didn't you get it fixed?"

And while broken toilets and air conditioning mean stingier, angrier consumers, they first and foremost mean that you have to work in a congested, 90-degree box that is shaking your full bladder. Maybe the old people are too hot, but they're not running around in and out of the kitchen, and maybe they have to wait in a ten-minute line to use the restroom, but you don't HAVE ten minutes to wait in line, so you have to hold it. Which just makes you grouchier, which affects your tips, and it makes you sweatier, which drips on the customers and their food, which affects your tips. One server, who may or may not have been me, would just go into a closet and pee in a water bottle. He wouldn't wash his hands afterward, because we were out of soap in the kitchen usually anyway.

Here's the final insult: The Blind Drop. This is unethical and immoral on the company's part, and I'm pretty sure it's also illegal. In a normal serving job, the waiter collects all his cash and credit card slips throughout the shift, and at the end he can total up all of his sales for the night, turn that in, and whatever remains is his tips. In The Blind Drop, the waiter is expected to keep track of his sales. The company could (if they wanted to) print out a little slip saying how much you're supposed to turn in, but they don't, ostensibly because it cuts down on theft, though they can't describe how when pressed. This is especially hard when your tables all try to pay at the exact same time and need different amounts of train (as I’m proofreading this I see that I inadvertently inserted the word “train” instead of “change,” but I think I’ll leave it as evidence of the brain damage [stroke?] inflicted on me by those months on the change), and all of that is compounded by the idea that servers on the train serve six meals, two times each, over the course of two days before it comes time to turn in their money. There is no good system of doing this, and one doesn't have time to run and make change every time a crustomer (I just invented that word) says "keep the change" just to separate the money into different bags. The bottom line is, you get to the end of the second day and you have money sitting around, and you don't know whether it was tip money or money for someone's order and if it is whether it still has the tip in it or what. And so the company tells you to just stick it in with your deposit if you're not sure. "That's too bad," Kim says, "You lost it." If you accidentally mix up the two piles (which I did on my FIRST DAY), they tell you just to turn in all the money, and then you just never hear about it again. No tips for you. If you forget to take out all your credit card tips, and realize the next day and go tell them you accidentally deposited an extra $160, they tell you that they didn't notice any discrepancy in your deposit. One of two things is going on here. Either they are stealing all of the extra money themselves, or they actually don't check the money bags against any sort of a list that says how much everyone should be turning in. In which case, we the servers could actually be taking a lot more money out than we were owed, which is a hypothesis upon which I'd been sorely tempted to experiment, at least until I had reclaimed all the hundreds of dollars I know (and those I suspect?) I've lost to the company or its minions. The point is, I came to realize that many of my co-workers would indeed leave that company with ten thousand dollars, but it would all be money they had stolen from the old people, the company, and the government.

Anyway, it's hard for me to do anything where money is the only end goal. I wasn't raised with a lot of money, and I don't really even like the concept, and I actually feel a lot of disdain for people who flaunt theirs. So it's hard for me to put myself through that kind of hell only for monetary gain. I'd much rather be poor and happy, any day. And once I realized that, I realized that I couldn't work there anymore, and I stopped showing up. Evan did, too. Only Glade would stay for the remainder of the summer. In fact, right in the middle of typing this up for my blog, when I was still up there, I got a phone call:

"Robbie?"

"yep." I said it all lower-case, just like that, because there's only one reptile who has this number and I knew her voice immediately.

"This is Lorelle. Weren't you supposed to have a meeting with me this morning at ten o'clock." Not a question, you'll notice.

"well...."

"Yes you were. This isn't a really good way to keep your job, Robbie [ironically, this is the first time she's gotten my name right. I've been "Bobby" for two months]. I suggest you get down here right away if you want to keep your job."

"Well I don't. I guess I quit."

"Oh. Well, okay."

"yep."

"Oh. Well, okay."

And then one of us hung up, I don't remember and it doesn't matter which. And the reason I only "guessed" I was quitting was because Evan and I had been hoping to go to Denali National Park on the train to go rafting and stuff before anyone noticed we weren't working for the company any more. You see, when you're working for Holland—I mean—Nazi Germany America, you don't know on any given day whether you'll be assigned to work the next day until they update the hotline at 5 or 6 p.m. Which means you don't have time to go on any overnight trips because you never know when you'll have to be there in the morning until the evening before. Oh, well.

So we bought plane tickets to come home. The timing was perfect, because we were also evicted from our apartment by the irate landlady who found out how many of us were living there after a few months into our staying there. We packed up all our stuff, what little money we had left after paying for the plane tickets, and gave away everything else. To Glade I bequeathed my busted bicycle. Glade rode that bicycle home from work on the day we were getting ready to return to the United States. He had to sneak into the backyard, leaving the bike temporarily hidden in the brush, and climb up the fire escape to avoid the wrathful eyes of the landlady.

And then, on that last day in Alaska, we learned the traditional Eskimo farewell. It's just a honking sound, growing fainter and fainter until it disappears into the distance. We didn't even bother to get up.

Aptitude

In a high school English class, we took a little trip to the computer room in the library. Our school didn't have a guidance counselor, but they did have a new computer-based aptitude test they were dying to try out on us. I sat between my friend Yava, a black gothic girl who would sometimes cut her palms and write the word "freak" on her paper in blood in class, and my friend Raj, a girl who was Indian or some sort of -Stani and who mostly just sat in class and didn't say anything.

When the results came back on the test, Raj was to be a butcher. Yava was to be an undertaker. And I was to be a librarian or 4h club counselor. Had the girls' predictions not seemed so eerily accurate, I might have spent more time wondering about the validity of this test, which had asked question like "Do you like books?" (love them!) and "Do you like school?" (hate it!) but never, "Are you okay working in an environment where no one talks?" or "Are you willing to go to college if it means a better job?"

The point is, years later when I needed a job, I found myself hearkening back to that test, and applying for a job at the local library. The application process was rigorous. Thirty of us were seated in a room and given a list of books to alphabetize or place in the Dewy Decimal system, and the first two to finish would be the ones hired. I have since learned that I should never, ever apply for a job where personality is not taken into account.

The job was fine, at first. I was a "page," and would come in in the morning, grab a cart loaded up with alphabetized books, and wheel it out to the shelves, where I would "shelve" them. It was quiet in there. Nobody asked me questions. I would go entire shifts without speaking to another human being. I would go entire shifts sleeping in my bed at home, and nobody noticed. How could they? Eventually I went about two weeks without going in at all, and that's when I decided to find a new job. I'd made it almost two months. 4H isn't very big in Utah, so I had to get creative. I did return to work at the library for a few more shifts, and one day as I was leaving, thinking about where else I might work, I saw a huge sign exactly across the street from the library that read "Looking for a job? Come inside!" So I did.

It was a phone survey place called BRG, an important cog in the great mechanism of consumerism. Employees there would call people randomly and get them to consent to taking a survey that would ask them important questions such as, "On a scale from one to ten, how much red would you say is at your local KFC, with one being no red at all, and ten being everything is red?" "How likely would you be to spend an extra five dollars to be able to get your personalized photo as the background of your Citibank credit card? Would you say completely unlikely, very unlikely, somewhat unlikely, neutral, somewhat likely, very likely, or completely likely?" If you say "likely" a bunch of times in a sentence it starts to sound really dumb.

Anyway, I picked up the application right then, and was instructed to return the next day to turn it in and schedule an interview.

The prospect of soon leaving the library for good made it easier to return there the next day. Still, there is a reason that librarians are sad, dusty women who die of old age around 45. Shelving books makes you go a little bit out of your mind, which you allow, because staying IN your mind while you do it is torture. So you start to play little games with yourself, like imagining the titles of the last two books you shelved combined into one, or if the author of each book had a superpower based on his name alone, what would it be? I'm sharing too much. Anyway, all those years ago when I had marked that I like books, I think I had misunderstood the question. To read books, I loved; to merely be around them, inundated in covers and bar codes and decimals, the bulk of responsibility to put them in their proper place stifling my every thought? That is my own personal hell. Well, throw in a mad press of pregnant midgets and spiders, and then THAT is my own personal hell. The point is, I had to at least imagine what was in those books, pretend to have some sort of a relationship with them. Not a book went by whose title I didn't examine. And on that last day, I found a book, a small one, that had the potential to change every aspect of my life, or at the very least land me that new job. It was called "How to Get People to Like You in the First 90 Seconds." I skimmed through one chapter right there in the aisle, and it seemed promising. I had about an hour left of my shift before I had to be at that interview, so I put the book-laden cart back in the back room, and sat down on a comfy chair out of site to read my new treasure. The principle was a simple one. Be like people. Do whatever it is they do. Match mannerisms, touch on the topics they talk about, etc. People like people they're like, according to this author.

I decided to try that out when I went to turn in my application, because what the hey? If it worked, great, and if not, there were other jobs.

The secretary at the front desk at BRG that day was a demure girl with an apologetic smile. I matched it, stating who I was and saying that I was "just" there to turn in my application, and I didn't want to be a bother, but how soon did she think it would be possible to get an interview?

She smiled slightly warmlier (warmerly?) and said to wait one second, then went in search of whoever it was that was going to give the interview.

Barbara emerged a moment later. Or maybe I should say she erupted. She was wearing a muumuu that was louder and more floral than an ibex stampede through an Alpine meadow. And her neck! Her neck bounced her head around flaccidly like one of those dashboard bulldogs. I suppose she thought she was nodding enthusiastically, but it looked more like some sort of disorder. Slinkineckitis. Now, I had already resolved to be like her, no matter what, so I started in.

I moved my head up and down and up and down and around and around like I was trying to get water out of my ears or something. Her own bobble head kept moving even more sporadically than mine. After a little bit I noticed that her head didn't merely go up and down, but in a bit of an orbit, like the way the north pole goes in little circles on its way around the sun. So I threw that in, too. I also matched her Jewish-talkshow-hostess breeziness, and smiled confidently after everything I said, like I just knew she was going to love it and might even be considering writing me a little "thank-you" note for saying such wonderful things. After all, that seemed to be the reaction she expected from me.

The thought did fleetly flitter through my mind that maybe she really did have some sort of disease, and what if she thought I was mocking her. Then I realized that if it were a disease, she'd have no way of knowing that I didn't have the same one. If she couldn't control how she moved her head, then she'd have to assume that neither could I. Besides, maybe my head during that interview was the only thing in her world that wasn't moving up and down all the time. Maybe it was a relief to her to see such a level-headed young man when all the world around her seemed to be moving up and down like a storm-tossed ship at sea. Okay, probably not. But SOMETHING worked.

At the end of the interview she offered me two dollars per hour more than they pay the other employees, because, as she said, she had "a good feeling about" me. Then she handed me a blank piece of paper and a pencil and instructed me to write my own schedule. It was great!

Well, the job was great. For about a week. Then I had about two weeks of somewhat great to somewhat not great, and by the time I'd been there a month, the job was not great at all. Eventually I got sick of people yelling at me that they didn't accept sales calls (This isn't a sales call, ma'am, it's a marketing call) and that I had said I would take only five minutes and it had already been 25 (I'm sorry ma'am, we're almost done here. It'll just be another five minutes). Then one day my friends called to see if I would go on a road trip to Seattle and San Francisco with them. We'd be gone for a week and a half, and we'd be leaving the next morning. So I went.

It wasn't the best road trip ever (I think if an mp3 player accident forces you to listen to nothing but Abba and German lessons for an entire 40-hour car ride, it could even be described as the WORST road trip ever), but it sure beat going to work at that awful job. I went in to pick up my last check the day I went back, and the shy secretary asked me if I'd like to pick up a shift that evening. I pointed out that I hadn't come to work for over a week, but I was informed that Barbara was going to dismiss that. I told her thanks, but I had plans. Which included looking for a new job. (Anyone need someone to teach their kids how to raise rabbits and poultry? Anyone?)

For months after that, I continued to get exuberant phone calls and messages from Barbara: "Hi Robbie! I'm not sure if you were planning to come in to work today, but just remember that we're on holiday schedule, so you get an extra two hours to sleep in or do whatever it is you do in the mornings! Okay, buhbye!" The calls only stopped when I finally moved out of that house. For all I know, I still work there to this day.

Retarded Pt. 2: Identity Crisis

I don't know what my problem is, but if you hand me a 2x3x0" piece of hard plastic, I will lose it within a few weeks. And the worst thing about losing one's identity is that in order to get a NEW identity, one must provide a photo I.D.

Early attempts to skirt the I.D. issue had failed spectacularly:

I was fifteen, and awkward. Picture me with a cowlick, mismatched clothes, broken glasses, and so awkwardly skinny my school counselor had put me into a support group for kids with eating disorders. And I'm trying to rent the Lord of the Rings game for my Super Nintendo on my mom's Blockbuster account. My name was on the account, but I needed a photo I.D. So I brought the game to the counter, holding my hands down by my waist, hoping the big brassy black woman at the counter would just forget to ask for my I.D. She didn't. I reluctantly brought my hands up to the counter, revealing what I'd been holding. "Here, does this work? Look, I'm right here," I said, pointing to a tiny photo of myself. "See?"

She sat there for a few moments, eyes bugging out of her head, and then she started winding up that spring-loaded neck of hers. I braced myself for a tongue lashing. But when she opened her mouth, it was in flat, cruel peals of hoarse laughter. Haaa haaaa haaa haaa. Hooo Haaa Haaaa. Like that. She doubled over, facing the ground, supporting the upper half of her body with her palms on the counter, one of which was slapping the formica for added effect. I just stood very still, trying to not let this become any more of a scene than it already had. The lady had other plans. She grabbed the phone.

"Darnell!" she said, still laughing all the while. "You have to come out here. This white boy just Hoo Haaa Haaa Haaaa. Okay, this white boy just tried to use his HIGH SCHOOL YEARBOOK as his I.D. You gotta come look at this white boy. Hooo Hooo Hooo Haaa."

Soon Darnell was there, with some other employee, and the three of them were looking at me, looking at my yearbook, and falling all over each other in laughter. I didn't feel this was very professional, and in an attempt to remind them of their duty to their customer, I tried to get Darnell's attention. "Excuse me sir? Is this going to work? I missed school on picture day, but this is me in the beginning choir, see? Third row, seventh from the left. One two three four..." In my anger, I doubted Darnell could have counted to seven even if his eyes hadn't been full of tears of laughter. But nothing I was saying was making him laugh less, for sure. Suddenly I was a white guest star on "Martin," pushing my glasses up higher on my nose, nasally imploring the guffawing trio to stop laughing at me, and using white people words like "imploring" and "guffawing." To this day, I can't really be offended by whiteface Wayans-brothers-style comedy, as I know I have done my small part to contribute to the stereotype. At any rate, I eventually had to just grab my yearbook back off the counter and exit, silently. I have no idea how long it was before they noticed I was gone.

My point is that I had had very little success with legal forms of identification. I still didn't have any form of I.D. at all when it came time to get my passport so I could go to Chile on my mission. A kind Polynesian woman from church agreed to drive me down to Costco so I could get a membership and the accompanying photo I.D. Resourceful, right? I don't know why I thought that would work. When we got to the post office, they revealed that they had a list of pre-approved documents, and "Costco card" was not among them. Fortunately, we found some sort of flaw in the system, and the kind Polynesian woman from church, who did have proper identification, ended up having to perjure herself on some legal document declaring that she was my aunt, and that I was actually who I said I was. Surprisingly, that worked, and nobody ever tried to verify my relationship to her. Terrorists, take note.

By the time I was 22 and living in Utah, having very recently decided that maybe it was time to get my driver license, I again had lost every form of I.D. I'd had, including that passport. I can only imagine with dread the black market value of a passport that belongs to a white American kid who happens to look middle-eastern. That aside, I started to look into what was required to get my license in Utah, and found that one of the first things I'd need was a legal photo I.D. Of course. A quick call to the DMV in California revealed that they still had me on record there, and if I could come in, they would be able to pull up a picture of my face in their databank and print me a new one. I decided to get my Driver's permit while in California, as well, since I'd need to have it for two weeks before being eligible for my license. So only a few weeks after having moved to Utah, I found myself on a bus bound back to California.

I have to confess something at this point. I've always wanted a photo I.D. in which I was making a funny face. I know that's not allowed, but I knew there had to be a way, and I figured it out during that long bus ride. I marched through the doors of that CA DMV already making a face. I figured if I made that face the whole time I was in the DMV, they'd just think that was my face. Even if they had their doubts, who was going to say anything? So there I was in the DMV with the right side of my upper lip pulled up, my left eye squinting, and a simpleton's glee beaming from my entire countenance. My brother Randy was there with me for moral support, which was good because I soon ran into problems. The main problem was that I was filling out an application for a California legal I.D., but I needed it to be mailed to my new home in Utah. So I hesitated, and finally decided to put down my new address and just hope that didn't cause any problems. Randy was watching over my shoulder to make sure I didn't do anything stupid. "What about your zip code?" I had no idea what my new zip code was at all, so Randy suggested I leave it blank, and if they really needed it, we could somehow look it up in the moment.

After several hours of sitting in those hard plastic curved chairs, making that face the whole time, it was finally my turn to approach the counter. I was attended to by an irritable Indian gentleman, who gave me the distinct feeling that he was sizing me up and realizing I was going to take a lot of his time. And it's true, I was. And I think that look is a job requirement there anyway, so I proceeded with the original plan. "I need to get my I.D.," I told him. Holding my mouth all crooked like that does funny things to my voice.

He breathed loudly out through his nostrils, his mouth a hard-pressed line, then snatched up the paperwork I'd filled out. I leaned over to watch as he started copying my information into his computer. When he got to the part about how I lived in Utah, he stopped and smoothed down his sideburns with his palms before turning to look at me. "You need to be a California resident to get a California identification," he told me.

I hadn't gotten residency in Utah yet, so I clarified things for him, by saying, "Hey, do your impression of an incredulous lizard."

At least, that's what he must have thought I said. It was a really good impression, too. What I had actually said was, "I AM a California resident; I just live in Utah." Randy jumped to my defense. "He just needs it mailed to that address. Please, he doesn't have any other form of I.D."

Somehow, with his eyes, the man was able to wash his hands of the entire matter. He simply shook his head and resumed typing, muttering under his breath. I watched as he got to the zip code, and as I saw him preparing to ask me, I got my response ready. "What is your zip code?" he asked, but as he turned his eyes toward my face and saw me preparing to say I didn't know, he quickly muttered,"Never mind. Doesn't know his zip code. We'll just put all zeroes."

And that was it. He took my picture and sent me away with the promise that I'd receive my I.D. in the mail within the next week to ten days. I got my Driver's permit right after that. I admit, I cheated. I'd misplaced my glasses right before the trip, and I'd had to have Randy read the eye chart to me while we were waiting in line so I could memorize it, but that's another story. The point is that my scheme worked, and with one unforeseen bonus....

You see, what I hadn't realized at the time, was that the face I was making in that picture didn't just look like a funny face. It looked like a retarded face. It was a legal California I.D. that wasn't a driver license, with a Utah address and 00000 as the zip code, a printed signature, and a picture of a retard, all with my name on it. Which was serendipitous, as otherwise I never would have been able to get my license just two weeks later....



(I'll get a clearer version of this up here soon)

To be continued....

Retarded Pt. 1

There was an elderly woman from Guatemala or Panama or one of those Mexican countries down there working at the In-n-Out Burger where I was employed in Napa when I was 22. Her name was Berta, or Marta, or something stereotypical like that, and I came upon her in the back room one day, clutching the potato tumbler with one hand for support, and her heart with the other for dramatic effect, her Charo mascara running down her wrinkly Hispanic jowls and coming to rest in blue-black spatters among the red ones already on her shirt from slicing the day's tomatoes (one of the few chores that could be entrusted to someone who didn't speak English, while also demeaning enough that no one who did speak English would do it, which is precisely why we had Berta, or Marta, in the first place). She looked at me as I approached, and sobbed hysterically, "¡No es ataque de corazón!" or, "It's not a heart attack!" I figured she lied to get this job; she was probably lying about this.

Don't get me wrong. Marta or whatever was like a mother to me. Not my mother, but she just seemed like someone's mother, to me. And we were pretty close. This was largely because I was the only other Spanish speaker who worked there, so they always made me be the one to tell her what needed cleaning or cutting. I had made her this tape to help her learn, in English and Spanish, the answers to the questions on the United States citizenship test, so whenever she was cleaning out the sinks, you'd hear her going "Francees Eh-scoatt Key," or she'd be sweeping behind the dumpster, from whence a voice would emanate: "Dee right to bear arms." I thought it was important that this woman be able to vote on crucial political issues, you know? So now you see how very close we were, Marta or Berta and I. And then one day she up and had an ataque, and I had to be the one to find her.

So I told my boss, and he called an ambulance, and they came to take her away. As they strapped her to the gurney, she called out, her eyes wide and wet with gratitude, "¡No doctores, no doctores!" which, as you can gather from the context, is some strange dialect of Spanish for "You can find my insurance card in the wallet in my left hip pocket!" In all honesty, the arrival of the paramedics had somehow exacerbated her panic, and as they loaded her up into the back of the ambulance, she yelled something that sounded uncannily like the English phrase "Geeve me leeberty or geeve me deeeeeeath!" That's the last thing she said, and then the heavy ambulance doors clanged shut, and I never saw that poor woman again.

Okay, it's true that I never saw her again, but that's not really what she yelled. What she actually yelled was the Spanish phrase, "No me dejes sola," which means "Don't leave me alone." And she said it, yelped it, almost pleaded it, while looking right into my eyes, and the ambulance doors really did clang shut unsympathetically right at that moment, and I was left with her final words to me resounding in my ears. The paramedics told me I couldn't ride in the ambulance because I wasn't related to her, but they were kind enough to tell me which hospital they were taking her to, and then they left.

My boss asked what she had yelled there at the end, and I told him. "Well, why don't you follow her down there and make sure she's all right?" he suggested.

"I don't have a car." It would take over an hour to get to the hospital on the bus.

"Here, take mine," he offered, tossing his keys to me.

I tried to catch them, but yeah. I'd always been terrible at that, ever since tee-ball. But not catching the keys was less embarrassing than what I was saying as I was swatting at the air for them: "I don't know how to drive." Once I'd recovered the keys, I walked over to hand them to my boss (throwing was my other weak point), but he was still reacting to what I'd said, staring at me as though I had just told him, during the McCarthy era, that I was a Communist. A look that was half "I hope you're kidding," and half "This is a terrible time to be kidding." But I wasn't kidding. I had no idea how to drive a car. Well, not NO idea. I had watched Knight Rider religiously as a child, and I had even had a Knight Rider Big Wheel, so I knew there was something about turning a key, and then the car would talk to you and tell you what to do next, but that was as far as my knowledge went.

When my boss composed himself, he simply muttered, "Well, then, get back to work." And I did. As I slammed potatoes through the french fry cutter (the "freedom" fry cutter, as I guess we were supposed to call it in those post-9/11 days, presumably so we didn't have to keep paying evil terrorist-supporting France the royalties for inventing the name of the way we cut our potatoes here in America), I thought about Marta in her paper hat on a paper sheet on a hospital bed, refusing to sign scary paperwork in a crazy foreign medical building where no one spoke her language. Why had she panicked so much at the thought of going to the hospital, I wondered? I decided to think that the only reason the old woman had been so scared was that maybe she'd only been to hospitals in a third world country, and once she arrived at our nice clean American hospital, she'd calm right down. The thought also crossed my mind that maybe she thought they would actually send her to one of those hospitals back in her homeland once they realized she was illegal, and then I realized I wasn't entirely sure that that they don't actually do that, so I decided not to think about it.

Just so you know, the woman didn't die. She was given orders from the doctor to not return to work for at least a few months, and by the time she came back, I had moved to Utah. But I was changed in one way of major importance. I had decided that maybe it was time to get my driver license, just in case of emergency. No more old Mexican ladies dying alone because THIS guy didn't know how to follow an ambulance. But me, Robbie, getting a license? I figure I could have done the normal thing and taken Drivers' Ed and actually learned how to drive, like everyone else. But yeah right. At some point in the next few weeks, I was informed that driving was actually nothing like The Love Bug or Knight Rider at all. Plus, I wasn't really so interested in learning how to drive as I was in just getting my license. A driver license, as I understand it, is like a free pass from the government to be behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. If I ever got pulled over for crashing off the side of the road, I'd be able to simply show my license, and the cops would just help me flip my car back over and wave me on my merry way. Still, as appealing as this license was starting to seem, I was keenly aware that it was The Man who was making me get my license. And I was never one to drive through hoops. So, instead of signing up for driving classes, I hatched a scheme.

To be continued....

Corned Beef Hash

Warning: I know it seems absurd with such a title, but this post is rated PG-13 or 15 or so.

My friend David and I got so good at Taboo that we could do them all in one or two words.

David: Bubbles

Robbie: Root beer!

David: Not at a crime

Robbie: Bannister!

David: Doo doo doo

Robbie: Tchaikovsky!

We could get up to 14 or 15 in one turn. The trick was to boast about our mental connection while at the same time acting like we'd never played before. "So is this kinda like Password? We're really good at Password."

Then we'd destroy them.

There was one card that caused us particular consternation, however. It was one that read "corned beef hash." David had never tried corned beef hash, and he couldn't ever seem to get a grasp on what it was from my descriptions. "Wait, it's dog food for people? I don't get this." Every time that card came up in play, I would try to describe it, and he could never remember the name of it, and we would lose valuable time. I realized the only solution would be to expose him to the actual substance, but couldn't really see myself actually purchasing any.

Then came Youth Conference 1998, which we both attended. We did a canned food drive for the homeless as our service project. One of the bags that were left for us contained a can of precious corned beef hash! I was ecstatic. This was our chance!


When we got back to the church where our dance would be held that evening, we set down the bags we'd collected with everyone else's, but I slyly absconded with one purloined can in my hand. I walked into the alcove toward the scouting room, where my backpack was piled with fifty or so others, but the door was locked. I turned around to find some other place to stash the hash, but there were some church-lady types meeting each other in the hall by the drinking fountain, effectively cutting off my escape. If I was seen with a can right after a canned food drive, I was sure to be questioned. I don't know whether stealing a mere $1.39 can of processed meat would look like a terribly egregious sin to these ladies, but I was pretty sure that stealing ANYTHING in a church was frowned upon, and stealing from the homeless was probably reportable to the Bishop or God or worse. So I ducked through the nearest door, which happened to be the men's room, and looked around for a hiding spot. On the wall was an air-freshener. The type that sprays every fifteen minutes, but the only time you're ever in there long enough to hear it go off is when you're sitting on the pot, and so you start to wonder whether it has some sort of odor sensor on it, you know? So I was able to get the can to stay on the slanted top of that little spray thing. Feeling disaster (or at least judgment) averted, I then used the urinal, and as I was washing my hands afterward, I noticed the problem. The can was out of any normal line of sight when one was facing it, but it was clearly visible (unavoidable, even) in the mirror. I got it back down and peeked into the hall. The door to my backpack was still locked, and the ladies were still barricading the other end of the hall with their wall of gossip. I was getting desperate. I looked in the only as-yet-unexplored part of the restroom: the stall.

Then I got an idea!
An awful idea!
THE GRINCH
GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

I took the wrapper off of the can (metal container), took the lid off of the can (toilet), and stuck the hash in the water in the back of the crapper. I would come back for it later. I can be a real genius sometimes, especially when pressed into a corner.

Later:

During the dance, I was walking by that hall to get a drink of water, when I noticed that the room with my backpack was finally open. If I was going to get to my backpack with the stolen Hormel goodness, I would need to act quickly, now, without thinking. I hastily ran into the alcove, through the bathroom door, across the few feet of beige tiles, and threw open the door to the stall, and--

--and the visual cortex of my brain fought the rest of my brain in an attempt to make me process the fat Mexican kid inside the stall had been masturbating when I first burst in, but now he was yelling at me. "What are you doing in here!?"

"What are YOU doing in here!?" I gasped. I had backed away from the stall as much as I could by this point.

"What's your problem? Why don't you knock?" he demanded.

"Why don't you lock the door?" I countered (reasonably, I maintain) "especially if you're going to be...." I fled.

I don't know how I was able to respond verbally to the boy; in my head the whole time I was just thinking, "AAAAAAAAAUHHHHHGHHHHHHH."

A few minutes later, under cover of dim lighting and whirling disco-ball stars of light, I saw el Mexicano gordo y masturbante back on the dance floor with some innocent young girl in his manos. After pointing him out to my friends, I cautiously slipped back into the bathroom, retrieved the can, and packed it away in my backpack. This time, as in all instances prior and since, I tapped politely on the stall door before entering, in order to assure myself of its vacancy.

David and I ate the hash the next morning, and David got to see just how barely tolerable, but shamefully enticing the stuff really was. And we had learned our lesson: never ever ever steal from the homeless. Bad things happen. There was, however, one wholly positive outcome of the whole ordeal....

David: Masturbating Mexican

Robbie: Corned Beef Hash!

Yeah, we were unstoppable.

Outside

So, I transferred all my poetry over to this blog (at least, all my favorites), and I spruced them up with some pictures and all. Since this blog is really my gage to see what out of the things I've written is the most popular, please leave comments on the ones you like the best. Hopefully my voice comes through in all of them. My signature is heavy on opinions and wordplay. We'll start off with one that is sort of an experiment in sound.

Outside

My feet get all pruny, skimming just below the surface of the water,
down where the frogs and the fishies frolic,
down in the brown where they squelch around,
faintly afraid of worms and germs and
creepy crawdads in the cold murky muck,
digging for twigs and stones with my tiny toes
while water wends and slowly flows.

I rub the sweat off my brow with my hand, and see the crisscross lines from the grass,
feel the bending blades under the weight of my body
pressing my pink palms to the ground,
Hold the land in my hands, and wonder what the world is worth,
feel the beetles and roly-polies busily bustling beneath me,
My fingernails scratching into the dark mushy earth.

A mosquito hums high by my head, harmonizing with a distant beehive,
while the river rocks provide percussion,
a swallow sings solo, slowly,
and I, their unnoticed but awestruck audience,
lazily lie by my creek, listen and learn the tune
of June.

The sunshine, like drops of sweat, rolls down my crown, turning me brown,
drowning me in gold-green warmth,
as my skin and limbs try to slowly grow
in its glorious glow like the grass down below,
eyes closed, and the rosy rays radiate through my little lids,
puzzle pieces of light on my face, all around this place,
the bright summer light providing quite a nice show.

And here, behind my eyes, between these pleased ears, my fears disappear,
the stress and strain of a world gone insane,
panic and pain down the proverbial drain,
and here, in my heart, a happiness hides,
spreading spryly inside, shining childlike light right out of my eyes,
and after a while,
my blackberry-bloodied lips quiver at the tips,
and softly slip into a sweet, sticky smile.

One Morning

One Morning

I peeled the sun and took a bite
And threw us into frozen night
So we could sneak around and play
(We never could by light of day)
Through static yards and neighborhoods
And into black inviting woods.

I grabbed the clouds and pulled the drain
To let out all the drippy rain
So I could hold your hand and run
Without the awful glare of sun
Through walls of rain so shiny wet
To wash our brain so we forget.

I took a deep breath just for fun
And blew the stars out one by one
So we could lie in solid black
With only dark beneath our back
Through years of brightest pain behind
But missing all because we’re blind.

The Time I Died

She bit my knee playfully on a cloudy day, hard enough that she had to spit out a little morsel of my flesh, blood dribbling down her mischievously pleased chin, dark blackberry stain red, and her impish eyes danced from behind a wall of thick hurried air that wouldn't crumble outward into my lungs so I could scream. Her blond hair wisped in the cold caustic breeze that assaulted my face, carrying bitter flecks of ocean across the stretch of sand and seaweed where they pelted us, the strong boy with strawberry hair and a hole in his leg, and the delicate waif with razor teeth, letting warmth and crimson spread beneath her and seep down to bathe the crabs. "I love you," she whispered like Claudius' poison in my ear. I scrabbled away, bellowing at last, pulling a yell up from every part of me like a tuning fork, a yell that was swallowed by the grey sky atop his hoary oceanic sister. The girl followed me on hands and knees like a puppy, a horrible demon cur with leathery gargoyle wings that wants to be friends but can't keep its tremendous weight from squishing your brittle soul, while something about its sleek scaly elegance keeps you aroused until it kills you. I ran and ran and fell, salt in my mouth and deep into the bite in my skin, and I rolled over quickly with a look of flagrant horror on my strained face. "You are not the only victim here!" she kept shrieking through injured tears, and for a moment I dumbly wondered if the imp was telling the truth, if there were others who had fallen into her trap. Then in dizzy desperation I stood down or up or aside or some direction and grabbed for the shovel, which I would swing around and around in a fabulous arc until it connected with the side of her shallow beautiful face. But there was no shovel, only a boy in wet blue denim shorts, and a teenage demon waiting for her breasts to fill her big sister's faded floral bathing suit, and lots of sand, and maybe some soggy bits of kelp and the flaccid blanket my mother had wrapped me in when I was younger to protect me from the elements. Even my essence was being carried away into the water, leaving no way of sucking it all back inside through a straw in the sand like the way they drink coconut milk in cartoons, and no chance of getting my life back from inside her belly without risking the loss of even more. As I bent to gather up the bits of myself and try to pressure them back into place, she came upon me, descended, and devoured the rest of me whole. She returned alone along the tortuous yellow-lined road that evening with stains on the front of her hand-me-down bikini, though witnesses in the town say they saw her in the company of a muscular shirtless young man with a blank stare on his face and a strange limp.

Earthbound/Heavenbound

It’s overcast
And there are children playing tetherball in the recesses of my brain,
Skinning knees and making noise.
Everyone's aware that soon:
A bell will ring,
A dog will salivate,
And recess will come to an end.

By the fence
In my mind, a creepy stinky tinker rolls his creaky clinking cart,
Feared and sneered by children
For his beard and weird appearance
At the corner of the schoolyard.
He sends an oath to heaven:
He will get them all.

Up the valley,
Beneath the thick black clouds of doubt and in the wafting smell of dairy air,
Is a factory where they make the children’s toys.
Doll makers make dollars,
Exploiting girls and boys,
Building a skyscraper to heaven
So they can put themselves in better hospitals
When they are old.

In the hospitals,
Senti-
Mental patients
Welcome newbies with their open arms and wounds.
They have been (for our
Sake) forgotten,
God-forsaken,
Sleeping in their urine.
They never go outside or see the sky.
We don’t have to think about them anymore.


On the playground
Of my brain, the tetherball comes ‘round too hard and smacks a child upside his head.
He cries and lies upon the blacktop,
Looking at the distant sky,
Holding his small hands up to the swelling
Of the other children’s laughter
In his ear.



In the teacher’s lounge,
Miss Rigby sits righteously at a desk in a chamber reserved for her alone,
Sipping her virgin Bloody Mary,
Praying to the bloody Virgin Mary
That she’ll die married, not a bloody virgin,
That God will open up the heavens
And shower down the blessings of a man
And purpose for her life.

Behind the jungle gym,
Young Prometheus coldly lies on jagged rocks behind my eyes,
Yearning for the skies
Yet tied to earth
With no rhyme or reason,
For no crime or treason,
Bound for heaven for his intrinsic godhood,
Bound to earth for his weak compassion for humanity.

In the chapel,
The priest is locked in his confessional and won’t come out until he’s found the perfect prayer.
He hunts for (and preys on) words,
Prays in words,
The plays on words go on and on
And fly to God or whatever lies beyond the stratus clouds.
He’ll have to wait to see if anything comes back.


On the hill,
Burdened Atlas holds the heavens out of reach from all the rest of them,
And maybe some young Heracles
Should climb the hill and tickle him,
Let the heavens come crash down upon the wretched children
And the slinking tinker and the priest, the makers of the dolls
And the poor young tortured titan and the teacher and the patients
And the rest.

Everywhere,
The folks are stuck to earth because the gravity of their desires and sins is just too much.
If one is ever meant to reach the sky,
He’ll have to bring the sky to him
And to the whole damned world,
Toppling gods and beating odds
And falling to the deep blue way up high.
Why then, oh why can’t I?

The bell rings.
An angel gets its wings and wings away from us.
The children will play no more
And it finally starts to rain
At the end of the recesses of my brain.

Humanity

HUMANITY
WE are the ones who storm your frabjous castles
WE are the ones who eat the last piece of your birthday cake while you float in clumsy slumber
WE are the ones who raze your village, rape your women, and sell your children
WE are the ones who grow uglier at the threat of your beauty
WE are the ones who smash your saints and relics just in case they work
WE are the ones who have no qualms about dumping you headlong into the moat you dug for us
The ones who lacerate your tongue and then kiss you with salted lips
The ones who tell everyone about your sacred dreams and the demons that haunt you by night
The ones who poison the tip of the meat thermometer before truculently thrusting it up behind your scapula
The ones who drop logs and boulders on your anointed head, and revel in it
The ones who laugh for you to hear when your perfect pink baby dies
The ones who wade through your excrement finding the filthiest jewels to send back to you in the mail
Who rap your strong knuckles with the nail-protruding end of a dusty board
Who tell you not to think that brightly yet won't let you change
Who leave bloated rat carcasses on your charming marble porch
Who sing songs that crawl into your ears and gnaw blisters onto your exquisite brain
Who pee on the floor when it's your turn for bathroom duty
Who visit you in your old age and strike you down with a misty rusty scythe
That is who we are
Do not hate us

After All We Can Do

by Elder Robbie Pierce

I had been in that hole for a very long time—
In the dark and the damp, in the cold and the slime.
The shaft was above me; I saw it quite clear,
But there’s no way I ever could reach it from here.
I could not remember the world way up there,
So I lost every hope and gave in to despair.

I knew nothing but darkness, the floor, and the wall.
Then from off in the distance I heard someone call:
“Get up! Get ready! There’s nothing the matter!
Take rocks and take sticks and build up a fine ladder!”
This was a thought that had not crossed my mind,
But I started to stack all the stones I could find.

When I ran out of stones, then old sticks were my goal,
For some way or another I’d climb from that hole.
I soon had a ladder that stood very tall,
And I thought, “I’ll soon leave this place once and for all!”
I climbed up my ladder, a difficult chore,
For from lifting those boulders, my shoulders were sore.

I climbed up the ladder, but soon had to stop,
For my ladder stopped short, some ten feet from the top.
I went back down my ladder and felt all around,
But there were no more boulders nor sticks to be found.
I sat down in the darkness and started to cry.
I’d done all I could do and I gave my best try.

But in spite of my work, in this hole I must die.
And all I could do was to sit and think, “Why?”
Was my ladder to short? Was my hole much too deep?
Then from way up on high came a voice: “Do not weep.”
And then faith, hope, and love entered into my chest
As the voice calmly told me that I'd done my best.

He said, “You have worked hard, and your labor’s been rough,
But the ladder you’ve built is at last tall enough.
So do not despair; there is reason to hope,
Just climb up your ladder; I’ll throw down my rope.”
I climbed up my ladder, then climbed up the cord.
When I got to the top of it, there stood the Lord.

I’ve never been happier; my struggle was done.
I blinked in the brightness that came from the Son.
I fell to the ground as His feet I did kiss.
I cried, “Lord, can I ever repay Thee for this?”
He looked all about. There were holes in the ground.
They had people inside, and were seen all around.

There were thousands of holes that were damp, dark and deep.
Then the Lord looked at me, and He said, “feed my sheep,”
And he went on his way to save other lost souls,
So I got right to work, calling down to the holes,
“Get up! Get ready! There is nothing the matter!
Take rocks, and take sticks, and build up a fine ladder!”

It now was my calling to spread the good word,
The most glorious message that man ever heard:
That there’s one who is coming to save one and all,
And we need to be ready when he gives the call.
He’ll pull us all out of the holes that we’re in
And save all our souls from cold death and from sin.

So do not lose faith; there is reason to hope:
Just climb up your ladder; he’ll throw down his rope.

Other Thoughts

Have to find something else to think about

That man has a hook arm

Metal, impenetrable arms

Wait—How does he pick his nose?

Dead fish in the marketplace, grey, cold, dead

Almost out of money; have to return to work soon

Razor blade, poisonous, keen

Where are my house keys!?

Okay, they're in my pocket

I can’t do this

No drinking fountain on this damned bus

Blood, worms, dust

Forever unused bottles of nail polish and perfume

Our little bridge over the Napa River going by

A stop, and there goes Captain Hook

More Mexicans get on

The barren future

Getting sleepy

My headrest is gone

You



Awake again

Where are we!?

Downtown, all the people, moving, unmoved

So thirsty, always now

Foamy, spongy food; all I get anymore

Is that Tina Davidson? Has she heard?

Just look away--Can she see?

Uncomfortable bench, no seatbelts

Rusted, sinking nobody

Mouth dry, needing kisses

Have to pee, have to hold it

Always, always, have to hold the liquids in

Time to clip my nails again; no reminder

Last month is swallowing me

Train of thought slipping

You



Quickly, anything else

Scientific advances within the last hundred years

(not ENOUGH!)

Mom's meatballs

A kitten, and fleas sucking the life out of it

Frowning Arabian crossing guard, sweaty

Should have seen the signs

STOP

A bit ill; no more corn flakes at home

Chuck's baptism, creepy, necessary?

Guy across the aisle looks like a turtle, wizened

Cracking world made of solid ice

A bell, a light, a lurch!

Now down the stairs, left, right, left

Yellowing, lumpy mayonnaise spilt on the counter last night

No one to clean it up

No one to clean it up for

Cold, insensitive smiley faces, like stars

Distorted by the atmosphere, rushing blindly past

Gamma rays on my head, hungrily biting my face and neck

Raining that day, not like today

Powdered misery, just add water

Shouldn't have eaten those microwaveable nachos for breakfast

Pushing the pavement with my feet

Should have learned to cook for myself

You



Have to let go

I waste too much time

What does despair taste like? Does it taste ugly?

Gouging blade in a dying wrist

Spiral checkerboard in my eyelids, hell

Here at last; the grass looks nice, green

Need to call Mom back

The empty spot of ceiling over our bed

Linoleum composure, easily wiped off

No one to clean it up for, either

How sad the caretaker woman must feel, no teeth

All her friends deep in plots against her

How do you spell resolution? How do you do it?

My shadow is being midgety right now

Falling across the erect slabs of marble

I can’t help but step on him, on you

Veins pumping black tarry sadness

Here I am, here.

Can't ever make some people happy

But I still bring flowers

You


I only think of you when I run out of other thoughts

Fall

A guitar strums simply somewhere out of sight,

Down in the valley this October.

We lie still atop the golden hill we’ve climbed, Jill and I,

To fetch a pail of water,

Looking down at the town below,

Only God watching us,

Looking down on us in turn.

The air is so full and crisp that you just know

That if you stuck your sweatered arms out to your sides and spun around,

You might just lift a few feet off the grass

Like a whirligig,

Then float gently back down, crisp and dried and gentle.

The sunshine comes down sideways, backlighting everything:

The purple grapevines, the dusty telephone poles,

The rusty cow-licked hair of children playing ring-around-the-rosies by the river;

Ashes, ashes,

We all fall down!

It's not exactly that there's no wind today, but

A breeze blows in from all sides at once, equally,

And cancels itself out, electricity hung like blankets to dry in the air,

Pine smoke and ashes smearing around seductively like rainbow-colored oil in a puddle.

Come; look with me at this withered, tortured tree,

Leaves the colors of brilliant mud, seemingly frozen in time here

Under cruel Medusa's stare, snakes of autumn for her hair.

Father time kindly glides by as we watch,

And a single leaf falls down, around and around

On its way to the ground and to winter and death and the natural progression of life,

Lazily, beautifully, tragically. Its life is a macrocosm of its death.

As is all of this.

As are we.

Ashes to ashes.

We all fall down.

For The Night

The jungle grows dark, and I
just lie there, pretending to sleep in
the foxhole with
your skin,
flesh,
pressed against mine, struggling
to hold my breath as it gets
heavier and
heavier like a rucksack after a
full day's march. You
stir, and
I whirl
inside like I'm avoiding bullets and
dropping to the motherly ground,
exhilarated. I
sense your sleepy softness and
the hard muscle underneath, trying to
breathe you in
through the thin
patch of skin
on my elbow that
connects with your back. The crickets
grow quieter,
if there are crickets at all, afraid
like I am of waking
you and ruining my moment. I
shake, cold and rocks
and fear
are penetrating my
ribcage, but a blanket between
us would grant warmth while
rapaciously robbing me of your touch like
the naked little pickpockets in
the village. Hours
pass, and nothing moves but
my heart, and yours just
behind and the part in
my gut that must have to
hold perfectly still for me to fall asleep. Soon
the enemy is out, spying
on us with his garish
golden rays of
light pouring through the fronds and
tearing at my tired eyelids. It's
time to get up and march and
fight,
defend our country before
we are seen.

I do not fight for a nation or a people who
would not let me protect them
if
they knew
who I am, nor for a dream that
does not count my life
as worthy to sacrifice for it.

I fight for you, and
for the night.

You And I

You are the radiant yellow flower, sprouting suddenly in my hitherto well manicured lawn.

I am the child, exhausted and crying, holding your hand at the close of Disneyland day, whelmed by novelty and joy.

You are the centrifugal force, whirling me around so fast I think I might throw up, smearing happiness across the front of my clean white shirt.

I am Actæon, hushing my hounds and peering through the clearing at the goddess bathing in the woods, afraid you might see me.

You are the second source of light and gravity, burgeoning into the closed solar system I’ve created for myself, and exerting a new pull on all my planets.

I am the devourer, sitting at the edge of your world and drinking in the sunset until it sloshes around in my overfilled belly, groaning into the night.

You are the seasons, hitting me all at once and losing me in wonder and confusion and color and sunshine and cold, bitter, snow.

I am Argus, guarding my golden apples in my mighty tree with my hundred eyes, waiting for you to arrive with a happy story to lull me to sleep so you can pluck them all.

You are the neighbor child, coming over to draw me a pretty picture of a horsey, then putting all the crayons back in the box in the wrong order.

I am the baby, shrinking from your grasping, garish new world, trying to escape back into the comfort of the womb.

You are the moon, shining on a lake so serenely it tickles, and I want to shake your silvery beams off lest I laugh and ruin it all.

Please do not be surprised if you are left speeding alone through your flashy universe, while I walk away by myself down my solid familiar path through the dark parts of the forest.

Gravity

There is a Force
That permeates the Universe
And keeps order.
We call it Gravity, though it is known by another name,
This force that keeps two heavenly bodies hurling together through the blackness of space.
And so I revolve around you, and you around me,
And both of us around the Sun,
Year after year.
They (the scientists) say
That just maybe the moon was formed from matter taken from inside the earth,
Pulled like a rib to form earth's own companion.
I do not claim that anything inside of me could have created you;
If so, that rib was my best quality before it was lifted out.
You run my tides, and guide my seasons,
And in the darkest night of winter,
After the evenings and the fall,
When the Sun has hidden his warm face,
You are the lesser light to rule my night
And keep me in your glowing embrace 'til break of day.
If we could eavesdrop on atoms,
Observe the smallest molecule of matter,
We would see that this Force runs every bit,
For deep within the sun,
Hydrogen atoms run on the same principle,
One proton and one electron, forever locked in holy orbit,
Until one bright and glorious day
When the two finally come to rest together,
Matter is transformed into pure light,
The light of the Sun, a million nuclear blasts,
Which extend out into the Universe,
Or right here to our backyard,
Falling gently on our apple tree, entering its leaves, and making it grow.
And as we watch the years go by, the moon traveling around the earth, the earth around the sun,
The snow and blossoms and fruit returning and falling away,
We remember that in such a garden, with such a fruit,
Was love first made possible on this otherwise barren rock of a planet,
Where there had been no fall, no falling at all,
And beneath such a tree, with such an apple, a man first discovered this invisible force that keeps the Universe moving around,
And keeps us together, falling into each other.
Down this gravity well, forever falling in love.

Storm

The clouds finally burst one December night with a phone call,

Lightning traveling along the wires,

Thunder awakening her where she slept,

Tossing and turning

On her flimsy wooden fishing boat,

Alone.

A woman

On the other end of the line

Said he's not coming home

And in a moment the sun was gone from the sky.

Soon the storm was raging,

The depths of hell dumping down from the heights of heaven,

Her delicate head getting heavier with the weight of the cold rain,

The swells trying to toss her off kilter,

Children clinging to her thinning wet housedress,

Apostles huddling in terror,

Ghosts on the waves,

Bills in the mailbox,

No one to steer the ship.

The whole universe waiting for her to face her storm,

Grab the wheel,

Save them.

But the wheel had come loose,

The rudders were broken,

The ship could not be steered.

"I cannot even save myself!"

She yelled in her prayers at night.

"I cannot weather the storm."

She rocked herself to sleep,

Hugging the cold places on her back where his arms belonged.

The long night dragged on,

Creaking timber,

Cracks in the boards where the water was forcing itself through,

Where she couldn't keep everything together.





And in the fourth watch of the night,

Sometime in mid-January,

In the center of the pitching waves and the pitch black,

She looked out over the tumultuous sea

And faced her God.

She could barely discern his face

Through the rain and mist and darkness and distance,

But she called out to him.

"Lord, if you are there, please bid me to come to you."

And he said, "Come."

She looked around at her small house,

Two kids to a bed,

And she looked at her empty résumé,

And she looked at her empty cupboards,

And then she peered over the edge of the small boat,

And looked at the murky, stormy water,

And imagined all the eels,

And sharks,

And tentacles down in the sludge.

Finally she looked up at her Lord, who was still beckoning,

And she stepped off her porch

With her briefcase and a sack lunch,

And went to work.

She did it!

She was doing it!

She didn't need to swim.

She could walk all the way.

And she sat behind her desk,

Filing papers and earning money.



But then she knocked a stack of papers off the desktop,

And she bent to pick it up,

And she looked down,

And she saw the swirling sea,

She saw that the wind was boisterous,

That no one would ever love her,

That her children would starve

And she'd never make it on her own.

She was afraid.





She started to sink,

Up to her neck in bills,

Over her head with raising a family,

Drowning in cold turbulent loneliness.

With her last breath she gasped,

"Lord, save me!"

Immediately,

Jesus dived into the water,

Sank into the sadness with her,

Stretched forth his hand,

And caught her.

Wet, and shivering,

Tangled in seaweed,

He pulled her onto the boat,

Wrapped her in a towel,

And hugged her to let her know she was safe,

His arms warming her back.

He closed his eyes,

The clouds parted,

The wind ceased,

The boat stood still,

The bills were paid,

The children were fed,

And the spots of longing on her back had vanished.

When the sun came out,

Pouring golden light on the gray sea,

And she was made perfectly whole,

Jesus left her side.

She stood again,

Went to the edge of the boat,

Looked out across the gentle waves,

And whispered over her placid sea,

"Thank you, Lord, for rescuing me.

Please help me learn how to walk back to you on my own."

She got out of bed, got ready,

And went to work again

With a prayer in her heart.

A Natural Death

On the way over there

Father said something

I didn't understand

about youth

in Asia and Mother horrored at him

as though he had just said “murder”,

dropped the M-bomb

[embalm] in our happy family van.

“She had to be alive

so our son could have a chance

to meet that woman who used to sing

and make strawberry cheesecakes,”

she said,

“and besides it's just the moral thing to do,

the natural thing.”

I had no idea

until we had arrived

that we were going

to visit a woman's old srange feet;

claws, veins, and coldness;

great grey gargoyle's feet

at the end of a

slab

of a bed.

I did not want

to touch the old strange woman attached to those feet,

yet strong adult hands

firmly pushed my narrow scapulas

and all of me

toward the alien tubes,

tubes robbing the death from her nose;

toward her eyes, eyes

like bitter cold mood rings;

toward her teeth

like a wooden chest in the attic

whose cracks have widened with time;

toward matted grey hair

[grave hair]

like frosted grass concealing warm bugs.

Mother said

she used to sing things

with a once unblistered tongue,

shout hello to her grandchildren

from her porch

with a twinkle

in her clear sapphire eyes,

but all that was here

was like some unearthed

and eroded artifact

that offered no hint as to the essence

and spirit

of the ancient civilization that had once possessed it.

Then terror and dread

[dead]

as a crow's leg of a hand

appeared from under the yellowing crocheted afghan

[shroud],

one of the hands that mother said

used to bake strawbury

pies and roll meatballs.

It acted autonomously,

clutched and explored my shrinking face,

her skin cold like ashes

where one might expect warmth.

Life--

no, aliveness--

pulsed in and out of those tubes

to her nose and body

like thick bitter cough syrup through a straw

and then she looked

at me,

or rather something dark and outside looked at me

through my great-grandmother's eyes.

I was on display here

for a fossil to observe

like a Bizzarro museum.

My inside places got all cold and hard,

and my clothes slackened a bit.

Exhausted,

she released me

and I backed away,

away,

not caring if I bumped into a chair

or a stack of flowers on a TV tray,

doomed to perish

with their faded

recipient,

or best those foreign metal canisters of essence

forcing aliveness into the worn

[worm] body,

away

from the dust of that sterile

lifeless tomb

of a

living room.

there were adult whispers then

and strained feigned faces

while I sat in the coroner

drawing shallow frowning faces in my breath

on the window,

trying to shudder off the

dead

flakes of her skin on my young face.

Months later

they buried those feet

along with the rest of the woman

I had met that night

where a little decay

would finish making her into dirt.

Left unburied

was the part that Mother righteously said lives on,

the part that sings and makes spaghetti,

the part that sadly I had never met,

it having departed long before our delayed encounter,

her carcass having been draggled through the morals of relatives
and in the end left alone to survive.

Decorated

Decorated
Cut down in the forest
Only a stump remaining
Dragged back home to Mom
Lower limbs trimmed away
Propped up
Dressed nicely
For all to see
Sapped of life
Adorned with ornaments
Filled with memories
Family gathered
Gifts given
Speeches made
Tribute paid
Then dried out
Hauled out
Left on the curb
Purpose served
Alone
Forgotten
The War Hero
Decorated

Lords-a-Larping

Well, folks, it's finally here. The online version of the movie my friends and I worked so hard on last spring. Please, if you like it, link to it, e-mail people the link to it, send us feedback at lordoflarp@gmail.com. The goal is to try to get a writing deal for a sitcom for the Sci-fi channel. Maybe I'm shooting too high, but we'll see where this goes. Also, if you'd like a DVD copy, we'll make you one (with extras!) for $5 once we get that system set up. Pre-order by e-mailing us a request at lordoflarp@gmail.com. Hope you enjoy! Also, we loaded up a pretty big version because we didn't want to cut down very much on the video quality, so depending on your internet connection, you might need to wait for it to load a bit. You can also try them at their youtube locations here, here, and here.

Nurture

“We can’t have you in here with the other girls.”

The other girls shift skittishly, sensing the storm on the horizon.

Ursula sits on her haunches on the chair of her desk with her muscular brown arms folded on top of her black ashy knees, her back pressed uncomfortably against the bars on the window, her forehead and eyes pointed at the adults as though pure rage might explode out at them. Her neck swivels menacingly; the vituperation continues as the staff members warily close in. “Bitch! I don’t need your fat-ass face in my face! You want something in your face, go get another cheeseburger!” To another: “Just come at me! I’ll rip your titties off!” To the nurse: “You! Black girl! I’ll kill your baby!” The nurse takes a step backward and sideways, trying to shield herself behind some wall or counter or piece of furniture she wishes were there, letting her hands flutter like birds around her distended belly in their search for the most protective place to alight.

“We need you to walk into Investment.”

The girl has become rigid, barely moving. Her breath is an ursine growl. The last thing she says is “You’ll have to take me. And I promise it will be Prob. Lems.” She punctuates each syllable of that final word with another around-the-world sway of her neck. Her eyes lose their focus, and a roar, guttural and startling, emanates from between her clenched teeth and angrily parted lips.

“Ok, let's get the other girls out of here.”

The other girls leave their desks, their pens, everything. They funnel through the door in an ovine panic, following the staff to safety. They get jammed in the doorway, rammed into each other in their attempts to simultaneously leave quickly to escape harm and linger to witness the melee. A wispy girl, Rachel, is pushed, misses the doorway, and gets hit in her clean teeth by the wall-mounted pencil sharpener. She is swallowed up by the stampede, bleeding slightly from the corner of her mouth, led down the hall, and into a new classroom. The nurse looks sternly at all of them as she pauses pregnantly, then closes the door and gives them new pens. They strain to hear, quiet for the first time all day. The first sentence they can make out is:

“You have until the count of three to walk on your own. You are going either way.”

The men of the staff close the circle on the animal, hands forward, shuffling apprehensively. It bares its teeth, growls and screams.

“One.”

Its painted claws clatter dangerously on the desktop.

“Two.”

Saliva pools on its lips.

“Three.”

The boss signals, and two men advance, each grabbing a wrist and a shoulder. The moment it is touched, the animal begins to thrash truculently, kicking, gnashing, jerking its strong arms in an attempt to knock the men off balance. They pull it off of the desk, away from the wall, and two of the women grasp at the flailing legs. It bends at the knees, the hips, the neck, trying to free itself. In a surprising move, it yanks its hand inward instead of out toward the attackers, and is able to catch the back of a man’s manacling hand in its teeth.

“She’s biting me!” he caterwauls madly. Several pairs of hands grasp at its nappy head, its strong jaws. The man doesn’t let go of its arm, though fangs are piercing his skin. Blood vessels are mashed between gnashing teeth and the bones in the back of the hand, causing an instant black and purple ring to shine through. He finally manages to pull the hand away, leaving a bite-sized roll of scraped skin in its mouth. It continues to spasm and scream, shaking its head from side to side in order to drench them all in its slobber. They rustle it into Investment, down to the cold pavement floor, and nimble fingers remove its shoes and belt. The nurse reappears with a hypodermic and doctor’s orders. Heavy hands hold its hips and thighs and head. A flash of brown fleshy buttocks lasts just long enough for the injection. They wait.

After a few minutes, the struggling has stopped. The man with the bloody hand has gone to watch the other girls, a wad of paper towels pressed to the wound. The thin girl, Rachel, shaken and jealous, raises a malnourished arm like a tentative twig growing in time lapse. “May I break chair structure and come ask you a question?” she asks sheepishly. He nods his assent, eyes still on the smashed plum that is the back of his hand. The closeness of her small voice seconds later startles him. “I need to isolate. I feel like I’m going to explode.”

“Sit there in the chair in the hallway, facing the wall, and stay where I can see you,” he instructs impassively. Every other hand in the classroom erupts into the air, each straining to peak above the others. A few girls blurt out. “But!” “Me too!” “I can’t!” The man’s glare successfully conveys his unwillingness to tolerate nonsense this day. Most of the hands have sagged back down even before he says, “We’ve all just been through something stressful. Nobody is in trouble here. Please stay on task. You can’t all isolate at once. Rachel, write me a Feelings Paper and come back to your desk.” They settle back into the work of eavesdropping on whatever might be happening in Investment.

“I think we’re okay to let her go and back out of the room.”

They stand up and start slowly for the door. Without warning, it wheels up and around, punches the heavy-set woman in the face, aims a clumsy kick at the new guy’s knees. The woman throws her hands to her face. The new guy pulls the knee to his chest, swearing on one leg. There are still enough of them to grab it again and get it into a submissive position. This time they let it go and bolt for the door, which they close. They can hear it growling and panting, slamming its bulk against the other side of the heavy door. The long string of invective resumes. They exchange glances, wishing they could be anywhere else. Anywhere calmer.

Elsewhere: “Rachel. It’s been five minutes. You need to rejoin these girls or face a Natural Consequence.” His voice carries out to her in the hallway, but she pretends not to hear. “Rachel!” he says, not more loudly, but more emphatically. She turns her head, and he sees the wet tears on her face and in the chopped bangs that she parts by pushing them to either side of her plastic-rimmed glasses.

“I did it again,” she bleats.

“What did you do?” he asks, as he cautiously stands up.

“I self-harmed,” comes the pathetic response. As he comes around, he sees the electrical outlet on the wall. She has ripped the face off of it, and a shard of the hard plastic is clutched in her slender right fist. He sees the red viscous droplets on the edge of the weapon, continues around her and sees the bright poison red spreading all across her left forearm, seeping out of a six-inch cherry-pie gash in her pale skin, soaking darkly into the leg of her sweat pants, making sticky scarlet elbow prints on the chair. He cries out in alarm, then grabs for his radio. “Code Nine in Classroom Four!”

The ensuing commotion of staff members and radios and paramedics and craning girls is enough to drown out the commotion the beast is making a few rooms down by banging its head against the door until it tires itself out. “I hope you know what you are responsible for today,” comes the bitter voice of the fat staff lady through the little hole in the door of the animal’s cage. Her voice is muffled a bit by the bag of ice she is holding up to one side of her face. “A lot of good people have been hurt trying to help you, but do you care? No. I hope they press charges. I don’t get paid enough to deal with you.” But the animal doesn’t hear her, and really doesn’t care, and sleeps through the rest of the afternoon’s events.

It sleeps through the fat lady’s attempts to sting it with guilt, in order to assuage her own guilt about her size. It sleeps through a man’s testimony to the police as he gingerly favors one knee. Through the police officers’ assurances that the school won’t have to deal with this one anymore, because she’ll spend some time in Juvie and then she’ll be back to her mother’s, if mom’s out of prison herself by then; after all, no other school is going to take her after this one. Through the bosses assurances to the new guy that he'll get used to it, and not to care too much or you go crazy. It sleeps through a frail girl getting stitches up her arm, and a reward (all the attention she has been craving today). It sleeps through a nurse’s phone call to her supervisor, saying that she just had to get away, and that she might not come back at all, at least not until the baby comes. It sleeps through the gossip that spreads through the school, and its own elevated status as another rebel who showed the staff what was what. “Oh, I bit a staff member once,” they brag and lie. It sleeps through that, too.

It sleeps through a man’s sobs. The man has pulled over to the side of the road, just as the clouds mockingly burst. He wipes the tears off his glasses on his tee shirt with a bandaged hand, amazed by the catharsis that begins to spread through him. But still he sobs and sobs, for himself, for that girl, for ALL the girls, for the world, forehead on forearms on the steering wheel. The hail bangs unfeelingly against the roof of his battered old car.

Soon, the animal will be returned to the wild. “Untameable,” they’ll say.

God damn the bastards who raped that little girl.

What I Did in Church on Sunday

People are always asking me why I'm afraid of midgets. Well, here's the definitive answer, in children's storybook form. It's a definite departure from my norm, to say the least.



























Man, I don't know what's wrong with me. The last thing I need is to be haunted by a midget ghost. I hope you enjoyed this.

Curse of the Gypsy!

Don't judge me: when I was a senior in high school, I was a compulsive litterer. I got the biggest kick out of throwing the biggest items out the window. Hitting drivers of convertibles or Jeeps with small pieces of rubbish was particularly rewarding. So was hitting street lights, stop signs, or cop cars. Parked ones. Mind you, I would never litter in the woods. But if we were in an already-polluted urban setting, and if there was a highway adoption sign up for some company I didn't really love, and if there were an eggshell carton or a Blockbuster receipt or a refrigerator box (yeah, I totally hit the Channel 7 News van with one of THOSE) in the car, I just couldn't help myself. Creating jobs, I would say. If the government is going to pay farmers to not grow corn, they can pay those lazy jerks to come out here and pick up my trash. Of course, this was mostly the result of my strict Mormon upbringing. I felt, with every toss of a Twinkie wrapper, that same shameful glee that normal kids must have felt when sneaking a cigarette, looking at a Playboy, or stealing pogs from the Pog Store in the mall. I could feel exhilarated and guilty, and I didn't even have to commit an actual sin! Breaking laws and still getting into heaven! The perfect Mormon teenage rebellion is one that would piss your mother off if she knew, but that you haven't ever heard them speak specifically about in church.

Anyway, the littering comes back later.

One weekend, I went camping with some Foof's (Friends Of Other Faiths), or "gentiles," as Brigham Young would have called them. There was Justin, the giant, whom we derisively called "Wheels," just so he would think we only kept him around for his car, which I'm not sure wasn't really the case. At any rate, it worked, because he always volunteered to drive us places in his huge beat-up Station Wagon, which we lovingly referred to as "Ecto 1," though it was not nearly as cool as the Ghostbusters' car, as this one had wood paneling on the outside and carpet that smelled like fat-roll sweat and cracked leather that revealed yellowing foam on the inside. Justin was actually a giant, at least in our minds. He was tall and fat and had a voice that rumbled around in his bowels, and he would later be able to hold a LOT of liquor. We also had Brad, my best friend, who gesticulated wildly with his massive Italian hands and was practicing a new smile for cameras that weekend where he would stick his tongue into the gap in his teeth so he would look less like a "gay zombie" in pictures. And there was Jeffie, who, when everyone was lighting their hands on fire using lighter fuel, decided to spray some on his crotch, caught his jeans on fire, and had to run into the frigid lake to keep the scorching zipper from doing further damage to his genitals. There was Peter, who would not use the latrine at night, because Brad had convinced him there was a monster living down in the poop, and whom we'd all agreed would be the first to die if this ended up being a horror movie, because he was likable but banal. And finally, there was Derek, who would wear a jock strap on the outside of his green jeans, and whom I think I never saw without a top hat on. He was the only one of us with facial hair, but Brad referred to it as "pubes growing from his chin." So, I never want to see Brad naked, because Derek's beard was GROSS. I'm not sure where I found these guys. They were somehow connected with the drama department at school, though they weren't really in the plays. They were sort of the "rafter people," if that means anything to you.

They packed along an energy drink appropriately called "Red Devil." It was Caffeinosaurus Rex, basically. Now, I don't ever drink caffeine. In fact, at that point in my life, I never had imbibed so much as a Pepsi. Not even diet. My friends thought this peculiarity about me was hilarious. These friends had once come across a video that the church had produced to teach us teenagers about the dangers of peer pressure. They also had a keen understanding of something that we Mormons don't always like to admit about our mindset, which is that without some level of persecution, we never really feel fully Mormon. Being mocked and scorned is in our heritage, and we somehow feel we are letting down our pioneer forbears if living our religion is easy and nobody is picking on us. So my kind friends obliged me by acting out the stereotypical "non-members tempting the Mormon with beer" routine they had learned in that video, only with this caffeine drink. All weekend, it was, "Come on, Robbie, all the cool kids are drinking these," and, "I bet he's just too chicken," and, "are you going to let you bishop and your parents run your life?" I played into their little scenarios like a good Peter Priesthood should. "You guys, you are my friends, but I respect my body too much to be putting harmful substances into it." This went on sporadically for the whole weekend.

The final day, we were packing up to leave, and I was mostly just hovering around the table, trying to pretend I was helping by stuffing whatever food was left over into my mouth so we wouldn't have to pack it up again. Jeffie came over and opened the cooler, and there was one lone Red Devil left. He reached for it, but before he could grasp it, I reached out, popped the top, and didn't stop 'til I'd slopped the last drop. In one single breath, I had committed what might have been my worst sin since sixth grade when I lied to the principal and told him I hadn't been playing chicken fight in the jungle gym when I broke my arm. My friends were instantly flabbergasted, but then highly amused. Mormon 0, Devil 1, by their count. By the time they had stopped laughing, I was beginning to learn that a caffeine buzz is completely indistinguishable from the feeling of the Holy Ghost leaving one's body. We piled up into the car and began the tortuous journey home.

As I'm perpetually ravenous, I soon began to bug the other guys about stopping for some grub. We drove-thru a Taco Bell, and I ate a ton and drank a large root beer. Soon the effects of the Red Devil, the windy road, and the "Mexican" food combined, and I knew I was going to retch. So, I totally blew chunks in the plastic Taco Bell bag. It was unpleasant, but as a point of reference, it was not as bad as ralphing Kenticky Fried Chicken (which is the worst I have experienced), but still slightly worse than just eating at a Long John Silver's. And since Taco Bell, and all Mexican food, really, only uses four or five ingredients to create the entire menu, it didn't look all that different from how it had moments before I had eaten it. A fun fact about root beer: its main coloring agent, caramel coloring, acts as an acid/base indicator, like red cabbage juice that you get to play with in elementary school science classes, and when it hits the acids in your stomach, it turns into a bright pink, frothy liquid that the masticated tortillas and ground beef kind of float around in if that's what you've been eating, which is really neat to look at, but smells terrible. So now we were driving down the freeway with a bag of vomit in the car, and Justin was displeased with this new piece of cargo in Ecto 1. You don't want to see an angry giant, even if he isn't quite as big as I recall. And remember, gentle reader, my propensity toward littering....

Without a second thought, I chucked the upchucked muck out the open window. The bag spun straight to the windshield of the car behind us, smearing throw-up everywhere. The driver of that car turned on the windshield wipers, but the bag was stuck to one, and the vomit spread everywhere. There were napkins and wrappers and things, too, creating a tarring-and-feathering effect as they stuck to the beans and cheese and stomach acid on the clear glass; it was terrible. After the bag o' barf dislodged itself and flew off, the victimized vehicle caught up to us in the next lane over. I was yelling at Justin to outrun it, but we were in his big ol' honkin' station wagon, "Ecto 1," and we had a giant on board, and it just wasn't going to happen. I looked nervously over, and who do you think I saw?

It was a gypsy woman (Brad maintains it was a Mobu priestess, but he is also the guy who made up the Poop Snorkeller). This lady had a silk cloth around her head, and baubles, bangles, and beads on her wrists. In her swarthy hand she clutched what looked like (and we very well could have been imagining things) some sort of bone with feathers tied to it. She was shaking it at me. At ME. And she was shouting something that we couldn't hear because her window was rolled up, but we just KNEW it was in some crazy foreign language. My friends recognized the signs immediately: "Dude, she just put a curse on you!" yelped Peter from where he was hiding at the foot of the passenger seat.

Could it be? Could the woman really have put a curse on me? I'm not so sure. However, from that moment on, nothing has gone right for me until it has gone wrong a hundred times. Mere months later, I broke my spine and was stuck in a wheelchair. When I served a mission after that, they called me "Elder Maldecido," or "cursed elder." Everywhere I went, chaos followed. When my little Chilean town started flooding, and we got evicted, and robbed, and we were starving to death, and our members lost their houses in the flood and we had to go help them find them, and everything was going wrong, I thought back to that bag I'd hurled into and out of the car on the freeway, and I wondered.

One day we were down by the train tracks near the gypsy encampment (gypsies are more normal in South America than they are here). It was a rainy day (actually, the only moments it didn't rain during those three months were the moments it was hailing). As we reached the top of the berm near the tracks, we came face-to-face with an old gypsy woman. She looked me in the eye, and said, "Tu eres maldecido. Sal de aqui! Dejanos tranquilos!" You are cursed. Leave here. Leave us alone. My companion thought it was funny that the lady thought I was cursed. I would half-heartedly laugh along with him later as he would tell the other missionaries about that encounter, but secretly I was wondering if there didn't exist some sort of Priesthood blessing I could give myself to have that crazy curse removed. I hear the sun came out in that village the very day I was transferred.

A few months and a different mission later (I had come down with some mysterious disease of the autonomic nervous system that was never identified, and I'd been transferred to Knoxville, Tennessee), I was in the mission office on my way home (sick again). The office had an elderly couple who handled all the mission affairs. At that time, we had two elderly couples; one was training the other, as it was just about time for the first to go home. As I sat there, looking forlornly out the window at the overcast sky, waiting for the mission van to pick me up and take me to the airport, I heard the old old guy say to the new old guy,

"Everything will go fine until your last eight weeks here. Then everything that can go wrong will. You'll have more sick missionaries, robberies, evictions, car accidents, bike accidents, lost credit cards, and hospitalizations during that time than you had the whole rest of your mission."

Eight weeks. The exact amount of time, to the day, that I had been in the Knoxville mission. And every single item on that list had happened to ME during those eight weeks. I just sighed and kept my burning eyes focused on the stratus clouds out the window, trying not to think about a certain gypsy woman (or maybe Mobu priestess) and a particular ballistic bag of beans, beef, and bile that I had so carelessly tossed out the window years before.



I don't litter any more. I've never drunk caffeine since then, either. But still, my life is a circus: entertaining and chaotic. And still, whenever I go back home, I have one eye out for a dusty, beat-up Volkswagen Rabbit with a mystical, scarf-headed woman inside, so I can find her and somehow make amends. Like take her to Seven Flags Car Wash, where it's a two-for-one special on Tuesdays. But until that distant expiatory day, at least I have better stories to tell. Right?

War

I know that probably the first thing my friends think when they think of me is, "Man, that guy's a super-genius." Well, thanks, friends. If you DON'T think that, you're no friend of mine.

Well, the point of this e-mail is to debunk that ever-spreading notion. It's true, I can probably kick your butt at Trivial Pursuit, or Boggle, or Blurt or Mad Gab or even Twister. I know a lot of random things, and like to tell people about it. But there is one vast area in which I have a disturbing dearth of knowledge, and that is history. I really know next to nothing about it. You may have known me for years and never caught on to this, because I am very good at evading situations in which historical knowledge might ever prove useful. I've always been embarrassed about the fact that all my knowledge of history comes from an eight grade history class I took in 1994. But why should I be ashamed? It's the public school system's fault. It's my Deadhead 11th Grade U.S. history teacher, Mr. Smith, who would stand at the front of the classroom with pit stains spreading down to his nipples, cursing us under his breath, pulling on the sides of his mad scientist hair, and frantically, stammeringly threatening, "OK, you guys, be quiet! I'm going to turn off the video! I'm going to send someone to the Student Responsibility Center!" He never did either. One kid pierced his ear in class and didn't get in trouble. Another kid once yelled out, "Mr. Smith! You're leaking milk!" Another kid was selling pot to the man right before class. But the worst we ever got was threats. And that's because we all knew the secret that Mr. Smith didn't want us to know: if he turned off the video about the history of rock music in America, he would have no idea what to do with us. We watched a video almost every day of that class. If you want to ask me about the the Grateful Dead or Phish, I'm all over it. But I only recently learned that the Civil War wasn't fought between whites and blacks. Turns out that was the Civil Rights Movement. Totally different things. You can see why I was confused, though.

So, in the American spirit of deflecting responsibility for my own shortcomings, and in keeping with the Oprah/Temptation Island/Catholic ethic that reasons that redemption comes only through disclosure, I'm officially coming out of the closet as a history dunce. Here, then, for your consideration, is an e-mail I wrote last summer to a friend who was in on my little secret, in response to her accusation that I didn't even know which World War came first. I lay myself at the mercy of your judgments.

Here's what I actually do know about the history of American wars: I do know which World War came first. I even know that Hitler and Japan and Italy were the enemy in the second one (though I have no idea who we fought against in the first one), and that both world wars were before Viet Nam and after the Civil War, which was after the Revolutionary War. I don't know when the Korean War happened in all of that, but I think it wasn't too long ago. I know there was a War of 1812, but I don't know if we were in that one, and I don't know whether that was before or after the civil war, or maybe it was just what the Europeans called our Civil War, because they seem to have had plenty of their own.

There was a Spanish-American War, and I assume that was after the Revolutionary War, but whether it was 200 years ago or 25, I have no idea. Also, I'm not quite sure whether the United States was in that war, or whether it was a war between Spain and the Americas in general, which seems to make sense. Maybe that's how Mexico and Cuba and Argentina and all the rest got free.

There was also a French and Indian War. Was it French against Indians or US against French AND Indians? I guess I'll never know. I seem to recall that it took place in Canada, back when Canada had a military.

President Eisenhower (Eisenhauer?) was a general in one of the world wars. Or a president during one? The one President from "Annie" in the wheelchair (one of the Roosevelts I think, but not Elanor) was President during WWII. I learned this from the movie "Pearl Harbor," which is based on a true story. He was portrayed by Dan Akroyd. This war ended with us dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and one other Japanese city, which I think was called Nagasaki, but that might be an electronics or motorcycle company that I'm confusing it with. I think the European-holocaust part of the war was over at this point and it was just us versus Japan. We were allies with Russia in WWII, which was led by Stalin, who came after Lennon, who defeated the Czars and killed Anastasia's family and maybe Anastasia too. I don't know if there was a war involved with all of that. I know that Stalin was a really bad guy, and I don't quite understand why we were allies with him except for the whole common enemy thing. Maybe nobody understands that.

There were some boats called the "Monitor" and the "Merimac" that were the first warships with iron sides and they played a big part in one of these wars. I think the Civil. They fought against each other. There was also an important boat called the Lusitania that was sunk by a German Uboat (like a submarine, according to Das Boot) and that made us go to war then.

The Korean War was in one of the Koreas. I would assume the North one because that's the one the news says is the bad one, but maybe it was in the south one and they're good now because we won. I don't actually know who won that war. I know M*A*S*H* took place there. I know the Viet Nam war was against the Viet Kong, who were led by someone named either Ho Chi Min or Charlie something. Maybe the city or the road was Ho Chi Min. I am VERY confused as to who was president during Viet Nam. I thought it was Kennedy, or Nixon. Maybe they both were. I don't know which of those two was president first, but I do know they ran against each other, and Kennedy won because the debates were televised and he was more handsome.

The civil war was north versus south (The south is called the confederacy and I don't know if the other one had a name like that) and it was over a state's right to secede from the union. The southerners called the northerners yankees. I think. It also seems to me that the Brits called the Americans Yankees during the Revolutionary war, but I'm basing that on the fact that Yankee Doodle was written by British people, I heard. Lincoln was president during this one, and he freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation either during or after the war. France fought on our (North's) side. The line between the north and south was called the Mason Dixon line and it's between Maryland and Pennsylvania (I had to do a state report on Maryland in 5th Grade). There was a general Lee for one side (south?) and a general Burnside who invented sideburns. Lincoln was killed after the war by a man named John Wilkes Boothe, who when he was arrested, told the sheriff or whoever that his name was "Mud." no idea what that means, but it was turned into a song by Primus in 1993 (i DID learn that in my American History class). I think the Ghettysburg address was also after the war, and Ghettysburg was a battlefield. Despite its name, the civil war was the bloodiest we Americans have ever fought. Unless you count the bad guys' casualties.

In the Revolutionary war (which either started or ended in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence) the British were called Redcoats and we were fighting against King George the something, who wanted taxation without representation in Parliament, which is like Congress only they yell at each other more. Paul Revere had to warn everybody with his lantern on a horse whether they were coming by land or sea. I think this job is what they called a minute man, because they ony had one minute to respond and send out the signal. I assume this plan eventually helped win something, or why would there be a poem about it, right? Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner while he was held captive(?) on a ship during that war.

There was a battle at the Alamo and that may or may not have been part of a war. I think it was against Indians, but maybe Mexicans, and a lot of famous people like Davie Crockett, Jim Bowie (inventor of a special knife and also a spoon in a Far Side comic), and a man named "Custer," who had his "las stand at the Alamo before he was killed (Also subject of a far Side where he has a "last sit"). We may have gone to war with Mexico, but I don't know if we did or whether it was before or after California was part of the U.S. There was that Pancho Villa guy, and I think he tried to fight us, but maybe he was just a bandito, but we don't say that anymore because it's racist. Or maybe just Fritos isn;t allowed to say that. They have a poster up for Pancho Villa in Beto's, which is a really cheap and greasy Mexican restaurant here in town. Also, there is an Otter Pop named after him.

World War one ended on November 11, 1911 at 11:11 a.m. on a boat in the pacific. This was the first war to use trench warfare, which I learned all about in a Hemingway book I had to read in 10th grade, and it sounds muddy and horrible and HELLA boring. According to Hemingway, if you live in a trench, you have to describe everything to death. Like, you can't just dig a trench. You have to grasp the handle of the five-foot pointed tipped shovel, more firmly with your left hand than your right, and place the tip of the shovel on a soft spot in the brown dirt, and then gingerly raise your right combat boot up until it came to rest upon the back of the blade of the shovel, then transfer your weight onto that foot, as the shovel sinks two and a half inches into the earth before it encounters a layer of nickel-sized rocks that make the shovel reverberate in your hands with a metallic thud. From this book, I learned that I hate war and trenches. Or else I hate Hemingway. I can't tell which it is that is so boring and overwrought. Anyway, I really probably know the least about WW1, or the Great War, as it was called before WWII.

The end. Seriously, that's all I know about war. And probably some of that isn't even right. There might have been other American Wars, but that's all I can think of. And you'll notice that I don't consider something to be history if it happened during my tenure here on Earth.

If you can afford it, send your kids to private schools.

Tahitian Phony Juice

[originally posted October 21st, 2004]

I quit my job! Allow me to tell you why I hate Tahitian Noni International.

First off, let me just say that the actual product was horrible. It tastes like what I imagine poop would taste like. It also gave me the runs, and a headache. I can't say for sure that there's causality on the runs and the headache, but I'm at least as certain as the people who claim it's cured theirs. I talked to a few of the other employees who started when I did, and was amused to learn that of the five of us, four had developed diarrhea since beginning to imbibe just two ounces of the stuff every day.


It was my job (this was in my very job description) to "increase consumerism." I hate consumerism. When I was down in Chile, they used a couple of rocks to prepare entire meals. When I'm in Walmart, I see electric garage door openers, bagel slicers, and colored glue sticks for your hot glue gun. Who needs this crap!? It's only there because people will buy it, and people only buy it because it's there, and the whole system is set up to get someone rich at the expense of others (the customers and the orphans that could benefit from their money if it were more frugally spent).

The corporation seemed a bit too infused with religion. The video we watched during orientation did everything but come out and say that the Nephites in French Polynesia discovered this medicinal plant and passed it down through the generations to us. They hired the same actor from the "Testaments" movie to play a native Tahitian who found the fruit and healed his people with it. We were also told on the first day that Pres. Hinckley drinks Noni juice. As though I care about that! We constantly had to listen to old people bearing witness of this "remarkable fruit." One of the "founding principles" of the company is this: "Gratitude--We understand that the product we offer was made by God, not us. We gratefully approach the task of bringing this product to people everywhere." Does that creep out anyone else? On top of that was the on-line myth being propagated that the libation only had its full effect on those who were fully aware of its spiritual qualities, i.e. you gotta have faith.

Tahitian Noni Juice is allegedly marketed with a strategy that presents it as a healthful drink for the elite, along the same lines as day spas and oxygen bars. The horrid elixer is $42/bottle, after all. I suppose if the rich were the only ones buying this product, I would be okay with that. However, most of our calls were from trailer park residents and new immigrants who were trying to sell the juice (did I mention that it's pyramid marketing?). The sad thing is that we were getting calls from all these people who didn't have enough money to see a doctor, so they were calling in to buy the juice as some sort of substitute. Now, we were never allowed to make medical claims about the juice's properties, and no medical benefit of drinking the juice has ever been proved, but Tahitian Noni International had clandestinely set up a few websites that made medical claims without being officially affiliated with the company. The websites claimed that among other things, the juice could help with obesity, smoking, diabetes, cancer, memory loss, heart disease, migraines, rashes, burns, etc. Basically, the potion would target whichever cells were weakest in a person's body, and heal them. An anecdote was shared about how one woman was told by her doctor not to drink Noni Juice after a liver transplant, since it would strengthen the cells that fight off invaders and would make her reject the new liver. If any customer asked me, as an official representative of Tahitian Noni international, what the medical benefits of the drink were, I was to instruct them to Google it. A quick google search takes them directly to the aforementioned websites. And all the while, I had to talk to people like the woman who told me she had sold her TV and could now afford one more bottle of the Noni to help her cancer, and what a blessing Noni was because she couldn't afford to go see a doctor.

Meanwhile, the money
from that woman's television set was going to purchase Utah's largest botanical gardens, statues, a three-story waterfall in the front room, barbecues, employee massages on Wednesdays, lunches, a weight room for the staff, and all manner of riches. Tahitian Noni was the fourth fastest-growing company in the United States, and it was ranked as the best place in Utah to work.

I found out later that The President of French Polynesia (the country of which Tahiti is a part) came to Utah to speak with the "founding fathers" of the company. He allegedly asserted that TNI was the worst thing that had ever happened to Tahiti. you see, the company had bought legal rights to any noni fruit grown in that nation. Sure, it'll grow (and does naturally) in many other tropical locations, but an effective advertising strategy had convinced your average consumer that only the noni grown in Tahiti will have the full (imagined) health effect. In fact, the chemical in the noni fruit that they claim performs God's medical miracles (by helping your body synthesize something called xeronine) is also found in pineapple. Anyway, TNI's lock on Tahiti's noni market devastated the island's economy. In times of plenty, the company would simply refuse to buy the fruit from the farmers, leaving them with fields of rotting product and no actual food to eat. Worse yet, the noni tree is somehow toxic to the soil (the tree they tried to transplant here in Provo promptly killed all the flowers that had been flourishing around the spot--possibly from the smell alone), and the farmers' land is now rendered useless for growing other crops, such as watermelon, which had previously been Tahiti's number one export. The farmers are stuck growing the noni with the vague hope that the fruit will be bought by TNI after it matures. Meanwhile, TNI purports to be a totally cultural experience, focusing on a romanticized version of Tahitian life and happy natives and using that imagery to help sell more of its product.


Most of this wasn't really at the forefront of my mind during the month I worked for the company. I would wear my ties and sit in an austere cubicle with a view of the mountains and the huge garden. There were Wednesday massages. And then one night I had a dream that I hated my job. The next morning it was true. I just couldn't do it any more. I couldn't bring myself to upsell the product to another poverty-stricken person. After that long day at work, I never went back in again.

I resigned. I know I did because they called to tell me. My roommate answered, and they told him, "tell him that he's resigned his position here at TNI." And actually it was really just me pretending to be my roommate because I didn't want t o talk to them. I still haven't delivered the message to myself that I quit.

Cooking

[originally posted September 24, 2004]

I have these four roommates who are all domestic. They grow their own herbs to make pesto, they sit there with their special little appliances and cook four elaborate dinners for one. Last night it was split pea soup from scratch. Now, I understand it probably tastes better than Campbell's, but I can't at all imagine that it's so much better that it's worth the effort of cooking soup in three different pots over the course of several hours.

So tonight, at 3:30 a.m., I decided to try to cook some Rice-a-Roni. I freak out whenever I have to follow directions anyway, so I was already in a bad way. I poured the rice vermicelli mix into the stupid medium-sized sauce pan, as I was supposed to. I took the butter out of the fridge, but I accidentally dropped about two tablespoons of it onto the floor when I was cutting it. I turned the stove onto medium and began to brown the little worm-noodles. Then I realized that I was going to need some water measured out, and due to my cognizance of my Non-verbal Learning Disorder, I began to panic. You see, I have no idea how big two and a half cups is. I grabbed a bowl from the cupboard and filled it, but I couldn't tell at all if I was even close. So then I went frantically looking for a measuring cup. I found a little graduated pitcher thing, but it was full of cinnamon and sugar. Then I decided to pour the cinnamon and sugar into a nearby bowl. Unfortunately, the bowl was some kind of small sieve, and my roommate's sugar mix dumped all over the floor and stuck to the butter. By the time I got the pitcher cleaned out, I turned around and the rice was now ON FIRE. Luckily, I had recently accidentally broken the smoke alarm, so my roommates didn't have to wake up. I just grabbed the pan and stuck it outside on the porch. The house reeks of burned butter and noodles. That was my last box of food. Now I must resort to either going to bed hungry, or going to the grocery store. I'll probably do the latter. At least I can pick up that pan on my way back in.

The question is: why am I so incompetent when it comes to cooking? It is impossible for me. I have ruined over twenty boxes of Rice-a-Roni in my lifetime. Gosh! I hate it! So uneconomical. And there's Jayson, totally cooking soup in three separate pans. Of all my shortcomings, this is the one that renders me the most helpless. I have no idea where to turn for help.

Later:

So I decided to just make some ramen. It was my roommate's ramen, but I figured I could just float him a dime, and I wouldn't have to hear any complaints. The time was about 4:30 a.m. I was sitting there, proudly boiling that biscuit of noodles, gladly straining the water from them with an old plate (since the strainer was filled with cinnamon and sugar dust), and blithely mixing in the seasoning packet. I took the first happy bite, but to my dismay, something was wrong. The flavor was terrible. It was very strong, and there were hard, crunchy spices in it. When I walked over to the counter, I discovered my mistake: I had put the seasoning packet for the entire box of Rice-a-Roni into my little pathetic bowl of ramen. I forced myself to eat it anyway out of sheer starvation. I later calculated that I had eaten 2,220 mg of sodium. It was awful. I barfed in my mouth a bit as I was climbing into bed during the early minutes of dawn. I ran to throw up outside, and I slipped in the slime from the buttery, cinnamony mess on the floor. You just knew that stuff was going to come back into the story, didn't you? Well, I didn't. After I finished that unpleasantness, I meekly climbed the stairs to my room. Even over the sound of my roommate singing showtunes in the shower, I finally fell asleep, with an empty feeling in my stomach, and an emptier one in my gut. I had ruined even ramen. I had failed. At life.