Author Archives: scamper

Strength

By scamper · Posted in story, whimsy

The thought occurs to me: What precisely would it take to incite someone to physical assault?

Oh, that’s not how it starts, of course. It begins with the wind whipping up and felling the clothing store’s outdoor display, and myself instinctively lending a hand to straighten it back out. “Hey, thanks!” the sales girl says. “You didn’t have to, you know.” Sensing a turn in the weather she drags the entire thing back into the store and, already enlisted, I hold the door for her.

So, gratitude, and with it the familiar companion thought: How easy would it be to spoil this gratitude? Could I turn it into loathing with something as quick as a mock lunge and a snarl? Or how about if I began to tip over the clothes racks systematically, my face a mask of dull determination? Destroy.

The compulsion to break a good thing is strong, and it’s something that’s been ingrained in me since childhood.

In the summer of 1995 I’ve just bought my first CD player. CDs are still in their infancy, and I’ve saved up my allowance for nearly a year to buy into the phenomenon. The first unbidden thought–I remember it clearly–occurs to me as I remove strips of adhesive and sheets of protective plastic from the new appliance. Break it. I sit back on my bed and admire the digital pyrotechnics on the front face of the CD player. Drop it. Push it. Stab it with the screwdriver.

I press Eject and watch the tray slide out for the first time, admiring the mechanism, the way the little motor whirrs as the CD tray slides smoothly out and snaps into place, hungry. And vulnerable. The tray must be sturdy enough to support the weight of my hand. But what if I lean on it? Or how about if I raise my fist high and bring it down on the tray with the force of a sledgehammer?

Base needs will not be denied. The thoughts come naturally, but survival–sustainability–is most often a matter of control… or at least of moderation. I may leave my CD player, my television set, my half brother intact, but not a day will go by when I don’t at least consider the alternatives.

I’ve been thinking about it again lately. A week ago I receive a kind note from a client after completing a simple wedding website for his family. “I wanted to thank you,” he writes, “for helping us to commemorate this family event…” And so on. A real note on real paper, just like they used to do in movies. Not only that, but the words are hand-written–and what letters! His script is conservative, but elegant, and written with unwavering consistency. Less than an hour later and I’ve already fired up my font utility, and am busily converting his letter into my own private alphabet.

Now, is it a show of questionable judgment to respond to his letter in kind? That is to say: in his own handwriting? I don’t think the answer is absolute. “Hi!” I write. “I enjoyed doing the work for you–particularly because I got my own font out of it! You’ll notice that I’m using your handwriting even now, and I’ve already written to several of my other clients with it!”

His response–a typed letter just a few days later–is absolute: I am to cease using his handwriting immediately, under threat of physical retaliation.

Finally, here is something I can relate to. I place this letter on the table next to the original thank you letter, and my eyes flit from one to the other, savoring the causation that turns the sweet sour. And I am giddy for it. I’m also glad that I’ve stumbled on a means of channeling my impulse–this will satisfy me for a while.

Still, these needs, integral to myself, are not inherent to humanity. So, what specifically is the root cause? Surely my formative years were not free of perception-altering influences.

Was it my fractured adolescence, being placed in a chain of foster homes as I watch each time the promise of something new wither inevitably into disappointment and loss? Possibly… but that explanation doesn’t wholly satisfy.

Or perhaps it’s watching, over the years, my teachers’ eyes as they attempt to harness and cultivate my preternaturally advanced intellect. So bright and full of promise they are at the beginning, but soon realizing–without exception–that they’re simply not up to the task. Now we’re getting somewhere, but again, there are pieces missing from the puzzle.

How about the world class bodybuilding then? Not likely? Consider what the highly-illegal offshore camps drum into us from the start: In order to build strength you must destroy the muscle, and then allow it to rebuild itself. And then destroy it again. Repeatedly. Forever. Strength through destruction. Perfection through pain.

The answer dovetails nicely with the rest of my understanding of the world. My tendency toward destruction then is the result of my intent to make stronger my relationship with something of value, my disappointment of watching hope fade into loss, and my fear of seeing the new become mundane.

That and the prolonged, ritualistic steroid abuse.

Acknowledgement

By scamper · Posted in whimsy

entry_93When I awake there’s shouting, and for a moment it’s 1983, and I’m back at the Institute holding an oily rag in one hand and a canteen of gasoline in the other. Then I remember that they never got any charges to stick, and I shake the remnants of sleep from my skull.

“Fucking kidding me!” comes the voice from outside. I roll out of bed and go to the kitchen window, squinting through the grit in my eyes. Indistinct white shapes coalesce into a truck parked at the opposite corner. A man beside it, working with his hands. It’s a PG&E truck. Another man high up in the bucket at the end of a crane boom, amid the wires.

Some of their words are lost over the diesel churn, but the yelling comes across just fine. “You fucking jimmied it?” Thirty feet up, the man in the bucket tugs at his control panel uselessly. The guy on the ground did jimmy it, apparently. I wasn’t even aware that people still jimmied anything, but I’ve been letting such things pass me by lately.

“Look, Jack,” says the ground man, “… been something … talk about, … gimme a second, okay?”

The man in the basket rips off his hard hat and throws it at his familiar, who dances out of the way. “No. No, you unlock this shit right now, man. This is bullshit.”

“Or what? You gonna write about it in your blog?” The man on the ground makes finger quotes for the word “blog.”

Basket man is incredulous, his hands out in an open question.

“Yeah, now what?” continues ground man. “… think … secret? How long did you think … putting me in your blog?”

I can feel my face muscles bunching up against the unrelenting sun, and I withdraw into the relative dim of the kitchen, and the tension unreels like a loose kite. I remind myself that I’m supposed to be ignoring things like this. The fact is that it’s becoming more difficult isn’t because I’m not getting better at ignoring things–I am. No, it’s because stranger and stranger things are happening to me. It’s like I’m being tested to see just how much I can ignore.

It all began with a simple goal: to concentrate. It followed that any concentration that I was able to achieve while others were distracted put me ahead of the game a little bit. Added to my power, whatever. It seemed natural that this was a worthwhile endeavor, so I started by ignoring the most obvious things.

I simply filtered them out, the car alarms, babies crying, sirens, and traffic accidents. It was easy. These are things that anyone can ignore, provided they have to urinate badly enough. More of a struggle was ignoring glass shattering against the wall, bones snapping like twigs, and gunfire in my left ear loud enough to cause an extended ring. But before long I registered these disturbances only as part of the ongoing whisper of ambient sound, and my emancipation from the sonic gestalt seemed complete.

But things got stranger then, as if some universal dynamic were compensating for my newly fortified filter. A woman wearing only a mesh of red latex spikes served me complimentary lemonade at a benefit for people lost to Burning Man in the wake of the dot com bust. I resisted. A man named Thigpen Proulx set up camp on my front lawn for an entire week. My inattention was absolute.

But now this. The men outside are still shouting at each other, one above and one below, as if in a kind of reenactment of Romeo and Juliet gone horribly wrong. And should I not be ignoring this too?

I never really acquired a taste for solipsism, but I seem to have found my way unwittingly to the center of something. Is this attention–this responsibility–something I’m required to bear as a penalty for a tactical neglect cultivated to glistening perfection? Is this what it comes to, this… insistent plea? Is reality as we know it nothing more than a spoiled child vying for our individual attention?

Sometimes I sit in wonder that things are and continue to be. Surely the molecules that make up the myriad forms around us will at any moment fly into a caustic soup. The more I ignore the things around me, the more I feel reality’s need for acknowledgement. It hums all around me, imminent, and myself at its center. A flash, and I’m blasted by fine hot pins, and the push and suck before eardrums rupture, before the ground goes out beneath me, before the feeling of falling forever.

And then I’m back, before it all happens. The thought of it is a joke. A threat. A promise.

No one said life was easy, that’s what it comes down to, and if I’ve noticed any queer escalation then it stands only as a mark of my own imminent invincibility. I think I’m on the right path, and the universe is feeling threatened. This is the bed I’ve made, and my determination to ignore that fact must be unwavering.

Letter Writing Campaign

By scamper · Posted in whimsy

entry_92Having returned from my interpretive dance motion capture session in Brussels, and with an extra free week on my hands still, I have decided to spend my time on a new campaign to urge the medical community to perform a new kind of cosmetic surgery. This is the text of my letter.

To whom it may concern,

Lately the phrase that’s been going through my mind is “bellybutton transplant.” Can you imagine it? How intimate! How sensual. What if it became the new fad of the rich? Forget the gold band–let’s swap navels.

Romantics have emblazoned their flesh with the names of their lovers forever. Blood brothers have pledged their eternal bond with the intermingling of bloodied digits. Is cosmetic swapping so farfetched? Can it be long before elective Siamese surgery becomes the norm? And how about genetic recombination? “Now you both can be both of you! Live together, die together. Forget the fly’s plaintive ‘Help meee!’ Now it’s ‘Hug meee!’ And our cellular bonding process ensures a permanent hug – on the inside.”

My only reservation is that people who are essentially bored become obsessive. We have all this time on our hands because we no longer have to hunt for our food, and so begin to starve in other ways. Now we pluck pluck pluck at our eyebrow hairs, always plucking the longest one because it stands out–even sacrificing some of the shorter ones just to get at that long one. Martyrs to the cause.

As a policy this doesn’t work because there is always a longest one. There will always be a longest one, and any determination to even things off by targeting the exception is just not sustainable ecology.

Still, there is hope that we can handle the inevitable promise of corrective mutation. I have a friend who leaves his longest eyebrow hairs alone. I think he cultivates them, one on either side. They’re like twin antennae. If he wore stripes he’d be positively Seussian. He’s a perfect candidate for bellybutton transplant, and I’ve started writing to surgeons and scientists to find someone willing to immortalize their name. Will you be that person? This is only the beginning. My mind is full of innovative vulgarity.

My contact information is below.

Wire Fu

By scamper · Posted in story, whimsy

entry_91Back in the early forties–1946 was when it all started for us–kung fu by wire was an art form in its infancy. In fact it’s fair to say that it wasn’t yet an art form, but rather a humiliating form of family torture. At least that’s how I remember it.

My father had come back from the war with all kinds of exotic ideas, which isn’t to say that he was enthusiastic. No, rather his were the kinds of ideas that seemed to weigh on him, as if each one bore down on a corresponding vertebra. I can’t say with any authority that he was a smaller man, but he was less substantial of countenance, often staring for hours, shaking his head, mumbling something about the hunting season.

And then he would come to us with one of his ideas. My siblings and I were four then, and ranged in age from five to seventeen. I was the second eldest, but small–smaller even than my baby sister. Maybe that’s why I was my father’s favorite. But though our interests varied greatly by then, we were always interested to hear what our father had to say on any topic. Mom advised us that this was proper behavior, and we didn’t need to examine the hand-shaped bruises on her upper arms too closely to be convinced of it.

The day my father explained wire fu to us is one that remains very fresh in my mind. “Gather around, my children,” he said. And for the next half hour dad’s words tumbled from his lips as he went into deep theory about the nature of defense, the importance of philosophy, and the necessity of art. And then he explained how the portrayal of all these things might lead to a singular moment of cultural enlightenment if you knew what to look for. As he spoke his eyes remained shut, as if he were reciting passages from memory. When any of us had a question he would fall dead silent, and aim his left eye at the bridge of our nose, and say, “Not now,” before continuing.

We didn’t know it then but he was briefing us for an activity the likes of which our family had never before participated in, one that would in fact bring us closer together. But not in the way he thought.

Billy, my older brother, seemed to grasp what was going on, but he was short with the rest of us and wouldn’t explain. Meanwhile, dad was making a racket in the garage while mom busied herself in her den. We sat, as instructed, on the living room floor, giggling about frivolous things to try to distract ourselves from the approaching storm.

My father grabbed the uniforms from my mother and threw them on the floor. “Suit up,” he said to Billy and me, and stood like a coach with his arms akimbo. He told my two younger siblings to sit by mom and watch. I envied them. I wanted nothing more than to be invisible, but dad’s eyes had already found me. I recognized the two football uniforms, but not what my mother had done to them. The modifications she’d made had turned them into marionette costumes, punctured by lengths of nested cable.

Billy grabbed his costume and started sorting through its tangle while I looked at my father with nascent dread. “I don’t understand,” I told him, and I missed him more in that moment than I had since before he’d left for the Far East.

“That’s exactly why we’re doing this,” he said. “Now be a good boy and suit up.”

In the forties the finer details of wire fu had yet to be discovered, but we spent our entire summer discovering them. We jumped and we kicked, spun and dropped, and we wore our lessons like raw medals on our skin. Our chafe marks hardened and thickened like old hash browns every night as we tried to escape through our dreams. But the worst was that dad never watched us perform. He sat stolid, eyes shut, lips pursed into a gash. When I would protest he would simply raise his hand. “Continue,” he would say.

I never forgave dad for allowing Angie to kill Billy. She was tiny, but surprisingly fleet of foot, and when the stud of her cleat caught my older brother in the temple he went down like a side of beef. And then he went up again. And then he bobbed there in the middle of the living room, his cable springs having reached an even tension. Angie began to cry immediately, but I didn’t have anything left inside to cry.

We never again suited up for wire fu, though we did bury Billy in his gear. For his part, dad seemed finally to snap out of it, and he and mom were able to patch up their relationship not too long after they sent the remaining three of us to live with a passing caravan of carnies.

My father had come home from the war missing a key part of himself–the link to his own childhood innocence. Without it he was just a shell of a man. So through us he tried to regain a little bit of that, but though he eventually succeeded, the price was high.

We all learned something from our experiences, and I’m pretty sure it’s don’t fucking roughhouse. It’s dangerous, and best left to trained professionals.

Blackout Period Triple Cross

By scamper · Posted in story, thought

When we’re children–and I often am–the rules of behavior are guided by caprice, and manifest in heated, primal exchanges in an attempt to satisfy the base needs of one of the involved parties. The beauty of this is its purity, its honesty. It’s only as adults that we learn how to effectively sublimate our needs (to deny) and refine our tastes (to lie). But children are innovative little splinters, and when they find it difficult to understand the rules of the world they will devise their own rules. This is why a child, by himself, will never give up.

We fail when we forget this.

The small band of hooligans with whom I was associated were the authors of many great rules of conduct. From the the proper decorum for backyard brawls to the means of determining the efficacy of a secret fort, everything was lovingly codified, although completely unwritten, and quite beyond the scope of any normal adult’s understanding. This was as it should be, and being taken to task occasionally for our indiscretions was a part of our identity. In fact, sometimes the adults were necessary for diplomacy, inasmuch as we could stand united against our common enemy.

I remember the time Matt threw a snowball at Micky’s head. Micky had totally deserved it, but he was the babysitter’s son, which technically made him untouchable. When the clump of ice took Micky by surprise he shrieked and dashed inside to his mother, who promptly sat Matt in a chair facing the corner. This was a humiliating punishment–particularly as he wasn’t allowed the dignity of removing his wellies–and even the victim of the crime had to sympathize. Having caught our collective breath, we pretended to watch cartoons and ate our afternoon cookies, stealing glances at the back of Matt’s head. Prisoner of war. Micky solemnly got up and approached Matt’s chair.

“Hey, Matt,” Micky said quietly.

“Hey,” said Matt.

Micky’s mother heard this exchange from the opposite side of the house, two floors up. “No one talks to Matthew!” she ordered.

Micky thought on this for a moment before whispering, “I’ll save you some cookies.”

This was how we survived.

But when we were alone–away from the adults–the tools of debate were more organically derived, although coarse. This is a necessity however, as the chance of winning an argument on logical merit alone is as elusive as the attentions of that girl who just moved in across the street. Natalie was her name. An argument on any given subject was often allowed to escalate into ad hominem attacks, and threats or promises delivered on behalf of one’s father were often summoned to great effect.

In our culture this was considered acceptable rhetoric because of the implicit code by which we abided. The only legitimate showstopper, save for adult intervention, was a device known as the “blackout period triple cross.” This was a phrase uttered quickly just after your case was presented to the presiding body, and it effectively locked the argument from any further debate. The ingenious part of the blackout period triple cross was that it not only rendered any further evidence inadmissible, it also reflected the losing party’s protestations back to them. This was known as the “in your face” effect.

But time itself is the ultimate victor. Contemplating childhood is like finding your burgled safe empty, its door ajar, as wind blows the drapes around the broken window. From how many precious ideals are we weaned before we find ourselves transformed into ossified barnacles clinging to the underside of our own derelict adulthoods? What is it that allows us finally to lie to ourselves and really mean it? We all delight in the tragic story of the hero’s fall because it is a story we all know most personally. We were heroes, once.

I will attempt to reclaim the perfectly effective tools of childhood, and more still as I’m able to remember them. Next week I am slated to attend a business meeting, and already I know how I’m going to get my point across. The others will be too lethargic to deal effectively, because my childhood is my bullet-time. My snot-fu will not be defeated. This time I win, blackout period triple cross.

What the Other Hand Is Doing

By scamper · Posted in thought

I’ve started paying attention to my other hand.

It comes and goes, my ability to observe, and eventually I know I’ll forget to. Becoming aware of things outside my usual field of vision is like stumbling across the method by which I might regularly experience a lucid dream. Suddenly it’s easy, and I’m having them every night. Then, inevitably, there is the lapse, and I find myself caught up in a night’s intricate fiction… and my lucid dreaming seems at an end.

But for now I have the knack.

The arrow always fits precisely into the wound it makes, according to Kafka. And so it is that I fit into my life, and what I see is governed by those things I’m predisposed to seeing. But am I affected only by those things? How could it be any other way? And yet there are ways one might catch a brief glimpse of the world outside. An accident happens–I trip over the cat and gain a view of the underside of my bed that would not otherwise have sought. Why, there’s that drawing I made in grade three, shoved up into the box spring’s torn lining. And so it’s a happy accident, but who am I now that I’ve made it outside? If I am my point of view then I can’t be certain I am who I think I am.

I think it’s safe to say that most of what’s going on is beyond our perception, unless we’re falling down stairs or being shot at constantly. Being that such days as those are well behind me, I must rely on other means to affect an expanded awareness. Triggers, if you will, to remind me to look for the things invisible to me.

When I hear the word “gales” I immediately face the opposite direction–turning my back on my proper life and facing instead the invisible. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen behind my intended world. There is a grace in the motion of things there, and the light casts a particularly warm glow. But it is a fleeting vision–soon the enchantment must die for being witnessed, all except for a vague impression. When seeing what you should not see, the trick is knowing what to see.

When I see something red next to something yellow I remember to ask a stranger a question. It can be any question, as long as it’s presented eloquently, and is compelling, humorous, and self-effacing. I’ve always had a facility with conversation anyway, but my conversations with familiars have never been as sweet as those I’ve held with complete strangers. Everything they tell me is a secret, and the bond of trust is implicit. People glow when they tell me their stories, and I can often wander away without their taking any notice at all.

And when I shave in the morning and think of my step uncle, long dead of AIDS–and this happens more frequently than you might expect–I am reminded to look at my other hand. The idle hand. Here is an emissary from the hidden world as close as it can be. While one hand conducts the shave, this other is a frozen spider stirring from dormancy only to twist in sympathy as I maneuver around the contours of my chin. But, having become aware of my other hand, I can now feel the tendons pulling muscles to maintain its position – the energy it takes to keep my hand locked in that position. This other hand of mine is not performing any necessary function like the beating of my heart, yet its choreography is driven by a hidden part of myself.

Eventually I know that I will forget to remember this–may even lose the ability to do so–but for now there are two of us, and we live in two worlds, side by side.

The Ride, Part III

By scamper · Posted in story

One too many food references is woven into conversation, and an impromptu vote is forced. June spots a Chinese restaurant with parking right in front, and requests that we debark before she attempts to park. “I can’t park when other people are in the car,” she says. I admire her candor. Meanwhile, somehow we are no longer strangers.

An hour later, as we await the bill, a leaden digestive silence has settled upon us. I feel like it’s my turn to contribute something now; some small treasure from my past that my comrades will be able to relate to, and which will serve to illustrate, in the telling, just how clever I am. I find myself unable to dredge up any treasures however–a creative dry spell has rendered me completely barren of anecdote. But the ongoing silence is stifling, and while they demonstratively probe teeth with tongues for food morsels, I’m driven into a conversational coffin, scratching uselessly at the lid.

In a panic I blurt out the first thing that occurs to me, triggered no doubt by some cascade of neural misfirings. “What’s the deal with cornucopias?” To her credit, June considers the question seriously, though she offers no response. Meanwhile, toymaker has found distraction in a hangnail and doesn’t even look up from the task at hand.

I continue intrepidly. “When I was a child I had to peer over the crystal cornucopia to see my parents at the dinner table. This decorative monstrosity was at the center of a collection of several less remarkable pieces of table art: a salt shaker, a pepper mill, a brown crooked candle that my grandmother had made. I still don’t really know what a cornucopia is. Certainly nothing as docile as a mere fruit basket. Not with its lolling hingeless mouth. Every night the cornucopia’s fishy maw gaped at me like I was a cloud of plankton. But what manner of beast was this really? Two little glass ball feet, and a scorpion tail that curled up over its back–it was a celebration of decorative horror. It gave me nightmares! That doesn’t seem so odd, does it? I mean I had no experience with cornucopias, no point of reference. And something about that thing was just not right.”

The waitress arrives, and brings with the bill a tray just large enough for our fortune cookies. June hastily takes charge of cookie distribution. I mentally check the cornucopia story off in my head. Lesson: learned.

The fortune cookies prove compelling enough to wrench toymaker away from her private cuticle odyssey. “Ah,” she says, “best part of eating Chinese.” She sounds desperate to me.

June, having successfully snatched the check while distracting the others with the best part of eating Chinese, now hunches over the sheet protectively like a prisoner with a fresh plate of gruel.

I look at my cookie, and see it mocking me. “What’s yours say?” toymaker asks college. Telling the fortune of a writer in a rut requires no power, let alone the kind of universal forces commanded by the wily fortune cookie. June would have done better to have handed me a small gray stone instead. College reads his fortune. “Even misfortune can lead to opportunity,” he says dully. He’s not impressed, but toymaker gives a polite nod of acknowledgment.

I break the crisp grin of my cookie in half and eat the portion in my right hand–as is my tradition–before straightening out the thin pink slip of paper within the remaining portion. Toymaker recites her fortune from memory, “The spring of compassion can sustain multitudes.”

I look down at my fortune. “Are you ready?” it says. I turn it over in my hand, but the other side has only a small collection of Chinese pictograms in red ink. “Are you ready?” What kind of fortune is that? Is it even legal? I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I realize that I’m actually feeling a little bit cheated. What about my spring of compassion? How about a little opportunity for the blocked writer? But no. Just, “Are you ready?”

Pap.

A shiny red circle has appeared on my fortune. It’s definitely blood, I can tell that right away. It’s fallen right on top of the question mark, rendering my fortune “Are you read.” Before I consider the implications of that question my left hand goes instinctively to my nose. No one else has noticed the drama taking place on my side of the table, which is just as well. My nose is dry, and sniffing reveals clear passages. The question remains then… and I look up to the ceiling, feeling a little self-conscious about it. But of course no one else has seen, so I’m safe.

The Ride, Part II

By scamper · Posted in story

Aliens in science fiction books never suffer from minor ailments like hangnails or dyspepsia. On the other hand, their chances of having an appendage blown off seems to be impressively high. And they’re far more likely to be blown up entirely than to choke on a meatball. They don’t sprain their wrists, don’t wake up with grit in their eyes, and almost never drool by accident when they forget to close their mouths. Aliens in books always hear each other perfectly, and the straps on their underwear never need adjusting, and they never get paper cuts.

Some day I will write a book that focuses only on minutiae. It’s something that I think about from time to time. When I write my science fiction story, my aliens will experience minor difficulties constantly, just to make up for the glaring omission elsewhere. An antenna will get caught between hemispheric brain plates causing a great deal of embarrassment. Or they’ll start cussing at random intervals, and break stuff that they really loved, and then regret it.

But I digress.

When I reengage my senses I see that we’ve picked up another person, a gay man with a shaved head and an immense goatee. He’s somehow managed to pack himself between toymaker and college student. We’re driving slowly through a crowded part of the city. The sun is setting and the randoms are strolling casually, enjoying the cool evening. College student is peering out the windows with interest, and I’m guessing he doesn’t often make it to this part of the city.

“And this area is known for leather,” goatee tells college.

June chirps a laugh. “Oh, don’t scare him.”

College makes a dismissive “tch.”

“No really,” goatee insists. “For about thirty years now leather has been really big here.”

Toymaker hasn’t been paying attention. Aliens always pay attention, but in real life you sometimes miss crucial parts of what’s going on. She tries to contribute something meaningful though. “Are you talking about the Mafia?”

Goatee is quick to put her on track. “No, dear, leather. We’re talking leather. It’s much more interesting.”

“Oh, you just haven’t met the right Family,” I say.

The Ride, Part I

By scamper · Posted in story

Outside my building I step off the curb, wait for the approaching car to stop, open the passenger door, and slide in comfortably, shutting the door after me. There is a young woman behind the wheel, a woman I’ve never seen before. As she pulls out she gazes thoughtfully over the road. Her hair stops me. I mean it could literally stop me, it’s so big. Much bigger than is now in fashion, and the fact that she doesn’t seem to realize this makes it that much more conspicuous. And I know that I’m not big enough a person just to let it go. “Your hair!” I exclaim, an edge of panic creeping into my voice.

“What?” Her thoughts have been elsewhere.

I make gestures in the general direction of her head. “I said, your hair,” I say.

Instantly she’s with me. “Oh! Yes, my hair,” she says. “I had it done.” An ominous bit of vagueness to be sure. The Mafia never used the phrase to such haunting effect. “What do you think?”

I consider for a second. “Mainly synonyms for ‘big,'” I admit. “They certainly… did it up, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s nice, don’t you think? I needed a change.” I think, you may also want to consider staying away from low-flying jets. I guess I should ease off a little bit. After all I don’t know this woman.

That I’m in her car at all is a matter of gestalt, which suits me fine. If anything maybe this will help to get me out of my creative rut. In the meantime she seems fine with the arrangement. “What are you called?” I ask.

“Hm? Oh. I’m June. You can call me June.”

“I’m Jeff,” I offer.

June looks over briefly and repeats, “Jeff.” She makes a wide turn around the new statue of Donald Rumsfeld’s colon. “You don’t mind if I pick some people up, do you?”

Just a little bit later we’re heading over the bridge, and I’m listening to the conversation in the back seat. Not to the actual words so much, just the general sound of it. June’s picked up two other people; friendly folks. One of them is a toy designer, and is now discussing a tourniquet kit she’s designed for preschoolers.

Words can spur the imagination. Particular words, certain phrases, different conversational patterns or just the existence of words at all. I’ll take it all, given the chance. But sometimes thoughts are like organs that the body rejects. They don’t take, whether or not I desire them. I’m my own victim and the casualty, in this case, is creativity. Not that it matters.

Meanwhile, they’re still talking. June asks, “Weren’t those the shorts that were flammable?”

The young man in the back seat lets out a surprised, “Whaaaaat?” He is a college student, I think.

“Yeah, there was a big hoopla,” June explains, “because someone wearing those shorts got caught in a fire.”

The toymaker puts in, “It was something about the material, I think, that made them extremely flammable.”

“Wow,” says college student, appreciating the horror of it. I smile not because I find humor in some mythical tragedy, but because I’m enjoying the concept of conversation. Ideas are being exchanged by modified sounds traveling through the air. I imagine people exchanging beads with one another. Drawing into temporary groups, transferring beads from one bag to the next and moving on.

“Yeah, I hear they’re coming back in style actually,” the toymaker says thoughtfully.

June looks up into the rear view mirror, “Really?”

Then I say, “Yeah, like a phoenix.” And then I laugh the wrong way, and spend the next few minutes trying to clear my nose out. Humans are delicate creatures.

My Neighbors

By scamper · Posted in story

entry_85I don’t trust the cult at the end of my street. Last week that was the worst of my problems, and I wish it were still. For the past week I’ve spent my nights with my ear pressed to my bathroom floor… but I get ahead of myself. Perhaps some history would help to illustrate how things have taken a turn for the worse.

On the whole the little community down the block minds their own business, but this is a small town, and one’s personal activities always have broader social implications.

Their enclave is bordered by a tall wooden fence, and doesn’t fail to leave an impression. Oh, there aren’t any symbols or statues to tip off the idle observer. No Biblically-themed topiary or molar-shattering gongs, no hulking crosses or pipe organs. But to the astute observer it’s the lack of these things which draws the eye. Their facility isn’t ostentatious–not like, say, a stealth bomber hangar–because it’s much like the other houses on this block; your standard American Cult Compound style. It’s just much larger, like a bear in a dog costume: pretending to be a dog, but actually 20 times larger, and occasionally sitting on or mauling one of the other dogs. And they keep adding wings to it, out to the side, and stacked on top. So, “conspicuous” is the word, I guess.

The first time I really took notice of the cult was when they repainted their residence a year ago this spring. In the morning when I left for work I passed by the dark gray facility as usual, and observed a plain white van sitting by the curb outside the front gate. By the time I returned that evening their entire compound was at least two shades lighter gray. I nearly swerved off the road contemplating the zeal that it would require to complete such a job in a day’s time. What kind of diabolical operation was happening behind that fence?

I decided to pay closer attention, and couldn’t help but to cast a wary eye in that direction whenever I left my apartment. No one else seemed to pay them any mind however. When scores of plain-clothed men slung satchels over their backs and heaved them up the rear ramp no one batted an eye. But I noticed. When the drapes in their windows disappeared, only to be replaced by shiny silver ones, no one looked twice. But I noticed. And when the hot water in my shower began to peter out after only three minutes no one said a word. But I noticed.

And I wondered, might such an institution be in violation of local zoning statutes? I asked a friend of mine well versed in both architecture and public works, and the answer was both obvious and distressing. “In this area churches can’t occupy residential areas. That’s determined by the local Zoning Ordinance.” But then what about the huge church at the end of my street? “Well… either they’re in violation, or you’re living on holy ground, my friend.”

That was the day I began to pay more attention to my neighbors. Of course they wouldn’t raise a stink if they were all in on it. Or maybe they all belonged to their own competing factions, each one vying for dominance. It’s a cult-eat-cult world out there, and may the sweetest Kool-Aid prevail. Fourteen houses between my apartment and The Complex–14 little burgeoning cults. During the day my neighbors measured their carports, sized up their hedgerows, and expanded their porches. But at night…

The sound in my bathroom wasn’t like a drip. It was regular, but crisp like a ticking, and faint. There were nights where I heard nothing at all, and I thought I’d imagined the entire thing. But other nights the sound was undeniable, and was as close as a knock on the other side of the door. Last week I finally got up to see what was going on, and in the dark I followed the sound all the way down to my bathroom floor. The easiest assumption would be nesting possums, but I don’t know if I can make myself believe that. No, it’s the cults, I’m sure of it. They’ve grown restless, and – zoning ordinances be damned – something more primal is taking place.

I think they’re tunneling.