Thursday, December 11, 2014

THE GREAT HARVARD HEIST


This is one minor memory of a deceased friend. I have many, but not enough.

It was March and we were both drunk, walking across the cold campus of Harvard University. Neither one of us belonged there. I felt conspicuous. He felt like a spy. We were in our early 20's.

“I want to steal something,” my friend said. “I want to steal something from Harvard.”

“Like what?”

“Come on. Follow me.”

We sneaked into a building. I followed him straight to the basement.

We walked down the hallway until,“Aha!” he found a lightbulb he wanted. He unscrewed it and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

“Come on let’s get out of here,” I said. Committing crimes always made me nervous.

Then we were back outside and passing a building with tall windows that went straight to the ground. A library. Books and students behind a wall of thick glass.

We noticed a pretty female student sitting at a cubicle, studying. 

My friend walked over and tapped on the glass. She turned. He 
pulled the lightbulb out of his pocket and held it up for her to admire. Then he gestured, `From me to you,' and placed it on the ground by her feet.

He bowed and we walked on to the nearest bar.

It was a small, poetic gesture befitting a small poetic crime.

The girl probably thought he was a creep and a weirdo and has no memory of his gift.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Ride from a Stranger



It had become urgent. He had to see her. Now. The idea of driving out to her house had been steeping in his mind all day and now it was too strong to ignore. Although Royal had let several absurd fantasies play out in his imagination, he had no intention of trying to put moves on her, or trying to impress her (not that he could, he reminded himself) he just wanted to see her. Or, to put it more accurately, look at her. Her face and body were starting to deteriorate in his memory, and now he felt a kind of helpless, overwhelming urge to look at her. He wanted to study her. He wanted to stare at her while she slept. He wanted to wallpaper his bedroom with her image, psycho-style - thousands of candid snapshots showing her every mood and movement, from childhood to the present: The History of Loletta Winters in infinite detail, all around him.

     Jesus, he thought, get a grip on yourself…

     He crushed another beer can, dropkicked it into the woods, then slid into the Malibu.

     And then another pull of doubt. Was it too soon? She’d said to drop by anytime, but the next day? Crazy, crazy…

     Oh, what the hell, he thought again, she lived in a goddamn commune - a house full of inhabitants - people must be dropping in all the time. 

     He started the car, drove around a steep sand cliff, then back to the dirt road that led out of the sand pits - his old drinking spot. The perfect place for underage kids to get safely trashed.  How many times had he come out here with his buddies? A hundred drinking parties blurred through his mind: crackling campfires filled with blackened, melting beer bottles, rambling, keg-induced debates and bent philosophies, endless bottles passed around. Drunken fights, laughter and the sound of rookie vomiting. Stumbling and crashing through the trees while police lights flashed blue and white spears into the dark woods…

     Years and years, over and over.

     It was getting near dusk and the humidity was finally pulling back. For a while it had looked like the sky was promising to let loose a thunderstorm, but it eventually cleared and now the moisture in the air was starting to evaporate. Thank god.
     As he drove, Loletta’s face began to strengthen in his memory, urging him on and by the time he reached the highway he was speeding, anxiously gripping the wheel with locked fists. It felt good to have the Malibu back (though he did miss the AC in his mother’s Volvo) and he had spent most of the day tooling around Willowburne, enjoying the feel of the road, revisiting scenes of his childhood. All the sweat he had poured over the engine had been more than worth it.

     At the border of Brightstone he spotted a hitch-hiker. A girl, just a kid. The alcohol in his head and the big fine car around him made him feel generous, brave. He pulled over.

     He watched her in the rearview mirror as she ran toward the car, slipping out of a large canvas backpack. He turned when she reached the door. She tried the handle, and then knocked on the window. He unlocked the door and the first sting of doubt hit him. He fixed a friendly smile on his face anyway.

     “Hi, thanks,” she said, stuffing the backpack into the backseat. She shut the door and sat straight in her seat. Now that she was close to him he saw how young she was. She looked twelve years old. She also looked sick. Her eyes were tired, underlined with dark smudges.

     “No problem,” he said, sure now that picking her up had been a bad idea. “Where you going?”

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Sorry, Wrong Number




“Why did you hang up on me?” says a woman caller. Her voice sounds familiar. And angry.

     “I didn’t hang up on you,” I say. It’s an automatic denial. A reflex.

     “Don’t treat me like I’m dumb! I’m not that dumb!” she says and I suddenly realize she sounds like my great-grandmother Judith, only meaner.

     The thing is, Granny Judy died twenty-two years ago. So it’s probably not her.

     “I’m sorry. I think you have the wrong number,” I say, which is true.

     “I told you not to treat me like I’m dumb!”

     “Sorry,” I say and hang up on her, sort of again.

     I think, Boy, the real guy’s going to get an earful now!

Friday, October 24, 2014

Haffenreffer and the Creative Clue





We’re sitting on her front porch, drinking skunked Haffenreffer  she’d picked up somewhere. I didn’t think they even made it anymore. We have six of the awful things on ice in the Styrofoam cooler between us.

     Then she drops this on me: “I think the chick next door got kidnapped. Maybe even murdered...”

     “Yeah?” I say in a bored tone. “What makes you think so?”

     “I found a sketch of her in the trash. In the sketch, she looks kidnapped.”

     “How do you look kidnapped? And what would a sketch of her be doing in your trash?”

     She looks at me like I’m stupid. “It wasn’t in my trash, dummy. It was in her trash.”

     “You were looking through her trash,” I say as a flat statement of fact.

     “It was on the curb.”

     “That doesn’t make it right.”

     “Look, forget about how I found it. That’s not the important thing. The fact that she looks kidnapped is what’s important here. Try to focus.”

     I let out a long breath. “Again, how do you look kidnapped?”

      She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a folded piece of copy paper. “Like this. Check it out.” She unfolds it and hands it to me. It looks like this:



     I recognize the face as belonging to her next door neighbor, Miranda.

     “See? She’s wearing a gag,” she points out.

     I hand her back the paper. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

     “What are you blind?”

     “No. Maybe she’s just into bondage. Maybe she’s got a kinky artist boyfriend who asked her to pose like that. You don’t know.”

     “She doesn’t have a boyfriend. I know that.”

     “Or whoever. A friend maybe. The point is you can’t tell anything by that sketch.”

     “You’re such a cynic. Why do you always have to be so skeptical about everything?”

     I want to say, Because you’re crazy. Because you’re always going off half-cocked on some wild goose chase or conspiracy theory. But I don’t. I can’t hurt her feelings. She really does have serious issues. So instead, I say, “Because jumping to that conclusion is a worst case scenario. You have to exhaust every other more reasonable explanation before you jump to kidnapping and murder. Remember Occam’s Razor?”

     “I don’t know him.”

     “...”

     And then a familiar blue Dodge pulls up to the building and her neighbor, Miranda, climbs out, carrying a grocery bag. She clearly hasn’t been kidnapped. Or murdered. She looks fine.

     We watch her walk into the building. When I turn back to her, I can’t help smiling.

     I just look at her.

     She shrugs and says, “Shut up. You got lucky.”

     “I’d say she’s the one who’s lucky.”

     “Whatever. It’s still a weird sketch.”

     “I don’t deny that.”

     We sit drinking in silence for a few minutes.

     Then she says, “I’m not too religious sometimes...”

     And we’re off...

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Telepathic Dragon





FRIDAY
Marlee (16) was living in a boarding house on Blague Street when she and her best friend Rebecca tried Telepathic Dragon for the first (and only) time. Rebecca (15) still lived with her mom and dad.
    “So, what’s in this stuff, exactly?” Rebecca asked. She was sitting on Marlee’s bed, drinking a sweating bottle of Coors.
     Marlee sat Indian-style on the floor, unfolding a crumpled ball of tinfoil, a homemade hookah between her legs. “It’s a combination of stuff. I’m not sure exactly...”
     “You really think it’ll work?”
     Marlee shrugged. “Not sure. It’s supposed to.”
     “We’ll be able to read each other’s minds?”
     “Supposedly. That’s what Dave-Doug told me.”
     “This is so exciting.” Rebecca finished her beer, plucked another from the cooler at the foot of Marlee’s bed.
     Marlee finished packing the bowl with a granular, greenish-brown substance. “You ready?”
     “Just a sec.” Rebecca took a long sip of beer and then sat across from Marlee. She tucked her legs into the lotus position.
     “I wish I could sit like that,” said Marlee.
     “It just takes practice.”
     “Doesn’t it get uncomfortable after a while?”
     “No, not at all. I sit like this all the time.”
     “I wish I could. Gimme your lighter.”
     “Here.”
     Marlee placed the end of a brown, resinous rubber tube into her mouth, clicked a flame over the bowl and inhaled. The water in the glass canister bubbled.
     The smoke hit her lungs like burning ice and she had to fight against coughing it free.
     She passed the tube to Rebecca. Her eyes were watering.
     Rebecca inhaled. A veteran stoner, she managed to keep the smoke down without effort.
     Marlee exhaled, then held another flame over the bowl and took another hit.
     Rebecca let out her smoke. “How much are we supposed to dew? Dew you feel anything yet?”
     Marlee shrugged, passed the tube back to her girlfriend.
    A ripping sound erupted behind Marlee, like a thousand sheets of paper being torn apart at once and Rebecca said, “What the fuck was that?”

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Bad Accident

I took a little drink and I'm feelin' right
I can fly right over everything, everything in sight
There's a slow-poking cat I'm gonna pass him on the right
Transfusion, transfusion
I'm a real gone paleface and that's no illusion
I'm never never never gonna speed again
Pass the claret to me, Barrett
                                                                                                                -- Nervous Norvus, Transfusion



Part I
After spending nearly three months at the Evergreen Hospital Detoxification Center in Grossknot, Connecticut, Louis Driscoll was finally driving home. The temptation to drink no longer smoldered inside him (mainly due to the wonderful medication they had him on) and he was eager (and a little afraid?) to begin the long process of rebuilding his shattered life. Nightmares of the accident had finally, thankfully ceased and Louis felt stronger and more confident than he had in many lost, booze-drenched years...

     The weeks spent at the hospital had been hard. The long nights of despair and suicidal hopelessness had threatened the foundation of his sanity. He relived the accident over and over in his mind (the screams, the sound of shattering glass, the smell of gasoline). The guilt and remorse made him feel as if he were being crushed to death. He suffered seizures, hyperventilated into collapse during panic attacks and woke up screaming with night terrors.

     But eventually (again, thanks largely to medication) things began to clear and lift for Louis. He'd escaped the burning conflagration his mind had ignited. Now he was driving home.      But to what?

     He still had three hours or so before he reached Vermont. He knew his return would be a lonely one. Linda had taken the kids and fled to California. Louis couldn’t blame her but the loss still felt like a deep wound in his chest.

     Louis crossed the Vermont border by late afternoon. His old sidekick, Depression, began to ride along with him. Being back in Vermont reminded him with bitter clarity of the life he’d had there and the tragedy that had occurred. Louis shook his head, trying to keep himself awake and focused on the road. He turned off the highway and started down a smooth narrow street that unspooled through a dense pine forest. When he came to a three-way fork, he struggled to remember the correct route. Unsure, he made a left turn.

     Louis had gone almost a mile when the road began to deteriorate, becoming pitted with potholes and loose stones. He slowed, searching for familiar landmarks. He found none. His memory had been too badly corroded by alcohol.

     The woods around him were thick and dark and the farther he drove the more decayed the pavement became.

     He began to grow hot and anxious and popped a Valium. This was wrong. Taking that left had been a mistake. He decided he’d turn around at the next accommodating soft shoulder.

     But when the condition of the road began to improve, he   shrugged. Oh well. Might as well keep going, he thought to himself. He accelerated, getting his speed up to almost 50. Veering to the right, he rounded a slight bend, cool air drying the sweat from his forehead. He didn’t see the small brown dog until it was too late.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

FRAMED!


Quentin Talbot looked up from his newspaper and squinted in the direction of his wife. “What did you say?”

     “I said Mrs. Benson is coming over later to pick up the old picture frames.”

     “Oh. Okay.”

     “I told her we don’t have any use for them anyway...”

     “Use for what?”

     “The picture frames! Honestly, Quentin!”

     “Oh sure, the picture frames. That’s what I thought you said.”

     June Talbot walked into the kitchen for her pills. She returned to the parlor.

     When Quentin saw her he said, “What picture frames are these?”

     “What?”

     “What picture frames?”

     “Those old ones you found in the basement.”

     “Oh, those.”

     “Yes, we have no use for them.”

     “Yeah, I guess not.”

     “Well, of course not!”

     He raised his newspaper then lowered it again. “Uh, June? Who are you giving them to again?”

     “Mrs. Benson. Is your hearing-aid in, Quentin?”

     “Huh?”

     “Put your hearing-aid in!”

     “No, don’t want any lemonade.”

     “Your hearing-aid!”

     “Oh! My hearing-aid.”

     “Yes, Quentin.”

     “It is in, June.”

     “Oh fuh gawd’s sake, Quentin!”

     June swallowed two yellow pills with a sip of tepid water.

     They sat in silence for several minutes.

     Then Quentin lowered his newspaper again. “Who the hell is Mrs. Benson?”

Monday, October 20, 2014

My Bucket List




I. Half a year or two ago, people kept asking me what was on my “bucket list.”

II. It was irritating.

III. Did they really think I was dying?

IV. Anyway, here’s a list of questions I came up with first:
·         1. It’s none of their damn business (technically not a question but whatever).
·         2. What made them think I even had a “bucket list?”
·         3. Did they just assume it?
·         4. Why would they assume it?
·         5. Was it written all over my face or something?
·         6. Did I look that bad?
·         7. Did the term “bucket list” come from that movie The Bucket List (Warner Bros. 2007)?
·         8. Or did it already exist as a thing and that’s where the       movie got it?
·         9. Is Jack Nicholson proud of that movie?
·         10. Is Morgan Freeman?
·         11. Does everyone have such a list?
·         12. Can we trade?
·         13. If you don’t accomplish everything on your list, does that mean you failed life in some way?
·         14. Was that last question existential or metaphysical?
·         15. Both?
·         16. Just stupid?

V. So anyway, without further ado, here it is - MY BUCKET LIST:
·         1(b). Hold hands with a prostitute.
·         2(b). Meet Colleen Stan. Ask her where she gets off.
·         3(b). Get trepanned.
·         4(b). Take DMT on a roller coaster.
·         5(b). Steal the mummified corpse of Elmer McCurdy.
·         6(b). Set fire to an art museum.
·         7(b). Turn base metal into gold.
·         8(b). Greet The Honorable Greebe.
·         9(b). See The Bucket List (Warner Bros. 2007).
·         10(b). Write a bucket list.   

VI. Pop Quiz:
·         1(c). Without looking, how many items are on my list?
·         2(c). Am I kidding? High? What?
·         3(c). Do you have a “bucket list”?
·         4(c). If you answered “yes” to #3 then U R lame.
·         5(c). Who or what is a “Greebe”?
·         6(c). Is he (or she) really honorable?
·         7(c). Or what?
·         8(c). On a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate Moon River?
§  A (1). As a song. ( )
§  B (1). As a river. ( )
§  C (1). As a poultice.  ( )
·         9(c). Is this getting on your nerves yet?
·         10(c). Discuss.