Day Dos

I have a network of characters that I keep wanting to do something with keep re-entering my writing of their own, uninvited accord. Names, faces, relationships all stem from Penn State's University Park campus (that year must've done a number on my psyche), except no one wants to read about college so I'll have to pick them all up and place them somewhere else. The concept I'll hold onto, maybe. That being said, reworkage of a place with some oldie-but-goodie characters:

Lacy and John’s apartment is notorious for their wild bashes. If you go to the University Park campus, you know about Lacy and John’s, and if you run with a certain crowd, it’s where you spend your Saturday nights.

You probably met Lacy in class. Maybe in English 452: 19th Century Literature and Society, because she’s a Comparative Lit major and you are too. You sit next to her in class, and have developed a bit of a girl crush on her. She’s tall with short dark hair and skinny so she looks even taller. She always wears at least three shades of eye shadow, and does her makeup like you wish you could. She doesn’t say much until the class starts on Stoppard’s plays, and explains to you that any interpretation of “et in Arcadia ego” other than a momento mori is idealist and shouldn’t be taken seriously. You nod and agree with her despite that you really have no idea what she’s talking about, and she invites you over to borrow Goethe’s Elective Affinities.

The first thing to know before even entering their place is to take your shoes off. Lacy is a little obsessive compulsive, and while on Saturday nights the hardwood floor is covered with spilled beer, sticky shoe prints and puddles of stomach acid and mixed drinks in the corners, on any other night the floor is clean enough to eat off of.

While you’re here, check out the bathroom. Most people’s bathrooms serve a utilitarian purpose; pooping, peeing, showering, the brushing of teeth and the washing of faces are pretty much all that goes on in most normal bathrooms. But in addition to all those things, Lacy’s bathroom also experiences copious amounts of puking, fucking, crying, breaking, laughing, groping, yelling and cowering. But the thing is that it just looks like a normal bathroom, except for the fact that it’s unusually clean and even a little cozy. Lacy devotes her Thursday and Sunday nights to cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, so you won’t find any clumps of sticky lint and hair, or a stray pube when you lift the toilet seat.

When you walk into this bathroom, you will first notice that it’s pink. The walls above the tile are a pale powder, and the fluffy rugs in front of the toilet and the bathtub are fuchsia, and the shower curtain is baby pink with coral polka dots. The sink is to your immediate left, and when you look into the mirror, Marilyn Monroe is gazing down upon you with a coy smile; her photo is mounted in a black frame on the wall behind you.

Know that when you pop a squat in this bathroom, you’re taking a shit in a little piece of history.

If Lauren gets a hold of Malibu rum by 9 o’clock, you will find her kneeling at the toilet and puking up the bottle’s worth by 10:30. A friend in rotation will be in there to hold her hair back, and to unbutton her jeans so she doesn’t piss herself.

Once, too drunk to even sit on the toilet by herself, she fell into the bathtub with her pants and blue sailboat panties around her ankles, smashed her face on the soap holder and broke her orbital. At the hospital, she told everyone her boyfriend hit her with the teddy-bears-in-love snow globe paperweight she keeps on her desk. Despite numerous eyewitness accounts, and the fact that her boyfriend was actually tonguing some Tri Delt at the ol' sorority house at the time, he is currently under review by the University's Office of Judicial Affairs.

Fin.

Numero Uno

It's the last few minutes of today, and I have been challenged to 30+ Days of Poetry and Prose by a fellow gypsy writer. I will not be taking part in the poetry part, as I'm way too verbose to write that shit, but you, dear reader, can look forward to at least 500 daily words of hot, hard, original fiction straight from my fingertips. 

Day 1:

As the words fell from he mouth, he knew he had made a bad decision. They fell like brittle bricks onto the worn carpet, their edges crumbling to ruddy powder. But her dress was so low-cut, and she was so sexy when she cried. 

He could recount with unsettling detail every time he had seen her shed those glorious tears. The first time was in college while she was collapsed on a bathroom floor, reeking of tequila and her head in the toilet. “Why doesn’t he love me?” she moaned between heaves. “He’s an asshole, sugar,” her fat friend, Bethany, cooed. She glared at him before slamming the bathroom door in his face.

The last time--before this time, of course--was at the mouth of the Chicago Blue Line stop and he was across the street.  She was yelling into her phone, eyes darting wildly and seeing only rage. The tears had forced themselves from her then, squeezing themselves from her ducts only to be furiously torn away by the back of an unmerciful hand. He wished that she would walk into oncoming traffic, so distraught and distracted, only to have him rush into the street and knock her away from the 6:13 Milwaukee bus speeding toward her. (Instead of the road, the bus driver was busy looking in the rearview mirror at the thighs of a girl in a sundress.) 

His favorite time was when he went over to the apartment she and Brad shared to buy weed. Brad opened the door and she was on the couch watching the scene in The Notebook where the old versions of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams die in the hospital bed together. Their living room was dark and the television cast a blue glow onto her, and she got up and mumbled a hello with a face wet and swollen with tears, before wiping her nose on her sweatshirt sleeve and disappearing into the bathroom. He wondered if Brad had been holding her on the couch before he knocked at the door.

Now, Brad was a pile of ashes in a jar at the front of the room, and those leaky grey eyes stared at him, her mouth twisted in a tight frown.

“What?” she said.

She had heard him the first time. Why would she ask him to repeat it? He caught his reflection in the mirror about the table that held the memorial book; he looked like he just rolled out of bed. The cuffs of his rumpled shirt were unbuttoned and his facial hair toed the nearly transparent line between fashionably scruffy and down-and-out. Either way, it was unacceptable for a funeral.

They--he didn't know who--always said deaths come in threes, and they were right. He thought, perhaps foolishly, that fate was kind and the trio would mostly be the old, sick, or mean. He never expected them to be his friends. The first was Sophia in March, whose heart gave out after she spent 10 years refusing to keep food down. Then Javier, who mixed too many unremarkable chemicals for a tragically remarkable result.

Brad was hit by a car crossing an intersection on his bike. Witnesses say he flew into the air and landed on the hood of the car before getting up, dusting off his bike and walking away. His will was stronger than his guts, though, and he bled on the inside until he died.

"What?" she said again. He suddenly wished he were the crumpled tissue clutched in her hand.

He sighed. She was going to make him say it again. "I'm totally in love with you."

Fin.

As Long as it's Talking with You, Talk of the Weather Will Do

Spring only means one thing to me. Via SlashFood

Happy First Day of Spring! (Although this particular tail-end of winter has felt more like June!) This freakish weather, albeit energizing and completely glorious, has me a little concerned. But first let me luxuriate is its awesomeness:

It’s lovely to see the crowds of commuters shrugging off their winter layers to expose bare arms and necks again. I’ve broken out the wedges and the sundresses the past couple days, and waking up to sweet-smelling summer air filling my bedroom is one of my favorite things in the world. There’s something about sitting in a patch of sunny grass or a bar patio with a sweaty can of beer and my favorite people that is spectacularly nurturing to the soul.

Now onto examining the weirdness: according to Tom Skilling, March hasn’t had a warm spell like this in 141 years of weather reporting, essentially when meteorology started. AKA in ever. His recent blogs over at ...are pretty much just waxing poetic over how many records this weather is breaking. Like I said, I’m loving every second--it makes me want SnoCones and lemonade (+gin), but then a looming, global warming-related fog seeps into my brain and makes me worry about our Earth and the environment, Catholic guilt-style.

 Unusual weather has such an impact on flora and fauna; just like late frosts can totally knock produce harvests out of whack, I’m left wondering what the effect of early-blooming plants and trees will be. And then the honeybees! What’ll be their deal in all of this? I’ve been scouring the internet trying to find some speculations from farmers, apiculturists or even other meteorologists on what gives with these warm temps, but my searches have come up tragically short. Maybe in the weeks ahead will reveal more as to what this weather is doing to plants and harvest. In the meantime, you can find me at the beach with a margarita.

So spring is supposed to signify this big cycle of rebirth, where we examine the patterns we’ve been stuck in, and unthaw our minds and bodies from the habits that no longer serve us. But with such a mild winter, have we experienced that seasonal “death” that allows for starting anew? Each passing year, I’m becoming more sensitive to the weather--Chicago winters are becoming harder and harder on my psyche--so this past winter was a welcome break from dismal, biting city-cold.

We are cyclical beings, with moods and hormones and biorhythms, and supremely sensitive to disturbances in the balance. So this spring, bringing things into balance will be a big theme of mine, just in case we've missed out on any digestion of the previous cycle's experiences. I'm already busy making lists, organizing my thoughts and decluttering my mind and environment while invigorating my current healthy habits and setting into motion the things I want to do. I feel a renewed creative energy the past couple weeks, and so many positive things have been manifested during that time simultaneously.

Anyway, this Spring/Summer will bring:

- More frequent blogging (yay!)
- Travels, even small ones
- Bees - Pottery class!
- Teaching yoga and other explosive creative collaborations
- New ink

Speaking of yoga and creativity, I have an amazing workshop in the works for my teacher training thesis. Details to come!

 Anyway, I'll leave you with a side-obsession most likely stemming from my fascination with fairy tales: hindu mythology for children. Pixar animator Sanjay Patel created The Little Book of Hindu Deities, along with The Big Poster Book of Hindu Deities, both of which I want so hard.