500 and counting

Fiction: one-on-one with God

2009-04-14T01:27:00.003+04:00

My flash fiction “prayer" was published by Dogzplot.

Sad Valentines # 18 The things I do for 'us'

2009-03-08T13:29:00.006+04:00

Kent Babin offers a story of devotion, Azeri-style. I think he may have lived in the Caucus for too long. While he certainly hasn't mastered paint, the comic is charming and well worth the effort it takes to read it.

And with that, today, two weeks late, on International Women's Day, we complete our Sad Valentines project. Thank you to everyone who took the time to pour your hearts out in arts and crafts. I've loved every one of them.

Sad Valentines # 17 Love is like...

2009-03-08T13:22:00.007+04:00

Laura Knepper offers valuable insight into what it means to be young and single in the Midwest -- a harrowing tale of sickly sweet indulgence and late night craigslist

Sad Valentines # 16 Influenza is the first sign of love

2009-03-08T13:14:00.006+04:00

Kate Ditter thinks I'm a bully. I think she needs a stronger immune system. It's nice she's found true love and all that shit though.

Sad Valentines # 15 Baby, this is a powerpoint presentation of what you mean to me

2009-03-08T13:11:00.006+04:00

Natasha offers an almost entirely illegible valentine that I think may be called "the story of her life."

Sad Valentines #14 "I felt you in my legs before I even met you"

2009-03-08T13:07:00.006+04:00

Dan Metz creates a devotional valentine series to Pat Hayden. I'm not sure whether I enjoy most that its a perfect match to those superhero valentines cards of the incredible hulk asking you to "be his main squeeze" or the odd hint of sexuality conveyed through a Canadian lesbian sister/twin folk duo vs Russian bisexual pop band. Either way, bravo metzger.

Dearest Valentine

2009-02-14T11:12:00.002+04:00

I did not abandon the project, all of your submissions will go up today, on the day of love. I apologize for the week-long failure. I smashed my face and decided to spend the week not doing much of anything productive (minus work-related things of course.)

Happy V-day. I will post furiously to appease you all.

Sad Valentine # 13 'remember when stalking wasn't hip''

2009-02-06T00:27:00.000+04:00

Alexander Patrick Andre proves that he is not a one-hit wonder.

Sad Valentine # 12 'oh, I'm pretty sure she's judging you alright'

2009-02-05T09:33:00.004+04:00

Laura Knepper promises not to cheat at scrabble, though, she makes no assurances about playing fair to win your heart.

Sad Valentines # 11 'The octopus and I'

2009-02-04T15:43:00.004+04:00

Why is it always the cephalopods that break my heart?

Sad Valentine # 10 'and then we moved in together'

2009-02-03T13:08:00.006+04:00

Christina Schultz loves her boyfriend. I truly enjoy their comfortable relationship (you can't get erotic films in the Gulf).

Sad Valentine # 9 'Mike, the killer of love'

2009-02-02T09:24:00.000+04:00

Heather Nagel is my most adult friend. She is married and owns a couch. I find this amazing.

From Heather:

"This is my very literal take on Valentine's Day. Although I pondered adding to the velociraptor series, it is from my viewpoint: a primary teacher with an unromantic husband. It was my experience last year. Mike's company always has their annual meeting on Valentine's day, so Mike's mind is somewhere else. Of course my students are crazy for Valentines day, and I usually make off quite well from their gifts. I guess it is a role reversal- the students as the givers of gifts, and Mike as the killer of the day of love."

Sad Valentine # 8 'love in the technology age'

2009-02-01T17:21:00.002+04:00

Dody Gunawinata struggles to express love during power outages:

Sad Valentine # 7 'When velociraptors fall in love'

2009-02-01T01:47:00.004+04:00

The velociraptor series is straight from the heart of Erika J Buell. She is a genius.

Sad Valentines # 6

2009-01-29T21:37:00.003+04:00

Dinah Langsjoen, who really deserves her own website, sent me a sad gram in the mail. I am in love with her.

You said you were going to make me wet this Valentine's Day...

I warned you that I'd beat you to it...

We both smiled and laughed...

But I was serious...

XoXo,
Sweetheart.

Sad Valentines # 5

2009-01-27T21:33:00.000+04:00

Sad Valentines # 4

2009-01-24T00:55:00.003+04:00

I asked close friends and relative strangers to make me a valentine.

Alexander Patrick Andre, a customer from the deli I worked at in 2005, drew this. I always knew customer#278 was a genius.

Sad Valentines # 3

2009-01-16T13:40:00.002+04:00

Jerry Seigel always meant for Clark Kent to be the disguise

Sad Valentine #2

2009-01-03T22:08:00.003+04:00

Happy upcoming valentines day, guy in mediocre emo-core band!

Sad Valentines #1

2008-12-30T19:19:00.005+04:00

An ongoing(auto-biographical)project by Gara and I. Enjoy until Feb 14.

(I'm too embarrassed to ask the secretary to scan these at work. I'll go to an internet cafe eventually)

like kids on christmas morning

2008-08-18T09:43:00.002+04:00

Passing notes isn't like it used to be

2008-07-23T02:02:00.001+04:00

[The rumors are true, we're consolidating. Please enjoy.]

He always said he wanted quality family time

2008-07-21T02:34:00.000+04:00

TNT

2008-07-07T16:48:00.000+04:00

It's always better to be an outlaw than a criminal. Outlaws are a different kind of gentleman –– They destroy the static restrictions of society with dynamite and disapproving poetry, showing up at coffee shop readings in all leather and coughing loudly in the back while some sniveling bookworm in a green sweater reads from their latest university pressing about the importance of chemistry. Outlaws know that three parts nitroglycerin, one part diatomaceous earth and a small admixture of sodium carbonate makes chemistry, not wine nor starlight nor lusty gazes.

Criminals are simpletons, always thinking in terms of Wham, Bam, I'll Take Your Purse and Run Now, Mam'. Criminals are too busy lifting lines from Lord Byron to notice their date napping at the table between courses. Outlaws are foragers, finders and keepers; criminals steal the pie cooling on old lady Sauer's windowsill to bring to your dinner party.

In the grocery store aisles of the heart an outlaw is swapping the stickers on the gourmet granola and the bottom-shelf bag of fruity flakes. A criminal is left shoving a box of toaster strudels in his pants. Outlaws know all about how to love properly, with a little bit of disappointment and a whole lot of flare.

None of the other girls at the DeJaVu Gentleman's Club get jealous when I date a criminal, but man, you should see their eyes when I rock up in an outlaw's sidecar.

a fitting end.

2008-05-25T16:52:00.006+04:00

After a year of reminding writers of the fine line that is plagiarism, spotting sentences lifted from news reports and paragraphs - hyperlinks intact - stolen from wikipedia, it felt particularly good this afternoon when I went to www.about.com, cut and pasted a Resignation Letter Example into a word document, changed the names and hit 'print.'

When the managing editor told me I needed to sign it, I grabbed a metallic gold pen off the desk next to me, smiled, and wrote "Megan E. Detrie" almost comically large in my finest, whirliest, loopiest cursive.

Art photography: don't smile, or you'll crack

2008-05-14T17:27:00.003+04:00

"It's bad you are leaving to India," the art director said in broken English as she dabbed thick brush strokes of green paint on my forehead. "We could use you... you are a good sad person. Ahmed's photography would like you."
What she meant, as far as I could tell, was that my expressionless face is the face of a person thinking about loss and regret. As she ran a paintbrush from my neck to my fingertips, giving me a new skin of gold paint, I tried to explain to her that I wasn't sad, just a little wistful. Always out sighing on the metaphorical moors, I have perfected yearning for things. I don't think she was listening to me explain the nuanced differences in the English definition as she busily glued black lace to my face, extending the lace to ruffle down my now glistening arms. Sad was sad, and it would've been good to have on-hand for both art and commercial work.
She slowly lifted a long black wig with an ornate wire and lace head-dress onto the crown of my head. Clapping her hands she exclaimed "There, you are now Latin America. You don't look like you!"
I just stared at her and grunted through the fake eyelashes and dense layers of dried acrylic.
"Ahmed will give directions as he shoots. Remember: don't smile or you'll crack. Latin America is charm, it is magical, it is dance and heat and heart," she paused staring closely at my eyes. "You don't look at all like you."

6S

2008-04-25T23:46:00.002+04:00

I absolutely love the premise of Six Sentences.

An overwrought little moment was published there on 24/04/08:
"Long Distance Love Affairs."

moving day

2008-04-21T16:35:00.004+04:00

I drew pictures out of the drops of blood left in the bathroom sink after you shaved this morning: Little tornadoes making their way across the ledge. I resolved that it was the last time I ever let you come over. As you left, I gently reminded you to comment on the landscapes in the hall, you won’t be seeing them again. Grab a snack out of the fridge, there will be no more breakfasts. Give the cat an affable head scratch.

Make sure you stand on the balcony and sigh heavily with disappointment one more time; God knows that hobby was a favorite. Scan the horizon and take note of the weather. Here’s a set of your socks, and a pen you left. Water the plants one last time. You know I'll forget. This is a bag of your stuff; enjoy the old Newsweek and your grandmother’s birthday card. Good thing you refused to keep more things here, preferring to leave a spare suit and toiletries in your car. (Less to carry.)

After you leave, I scrub the sink and and shake out the rugs. The house doesn't look any different.

Eventually the cracks in the floor will swallow up every stray hair, bit of dead skin and the wine cork you let fall under the bedside table. I'll go back to tracing shapes in the dust. But for now I'm content to lie here, dusty with a thin layer of you.

The revolution will not be folded

2008-04-20T02:08:00.001+04:00

[posted June 2007]

Typing dirty

2008-04-03T18:08:00.003+04:00

You haven't had sex in almost a year, but that's fine. Relationships always seemed threatening. The problem is now, it's affecting your job performance. You've been working at a content writing company for over three years.

A few weeks ago your boss gave you a promotion. "As the hottest copy-writer on staff, we've got an opening in our porn branch. Why don't you get your cute little butt over to the window office and start cranking out naughty paragraphs loosely based on your weekends."

You grew up being revered for your good looks by members of both sexes, so this sort of attention is nothing new to you. But, it's been so long since you've done anything on the weekends but stay in watching Making the Band on MTV and sometimes going out with a group of other single career-minded women and sit at the back table in the Chili's that you're not really sure where to begin when it comes to describing sex.

Settle into your new decadent office with the lake view, and ask your assistant to get you a mocha. Start typing..... "And then he reached his hand outstretched to grab the cinnamon shaker, grazing her breasts in the process. She wondered to herself what was his intentions, was it some kind of unconscious invitation, did he yearn to take her now, there, on the Starbucks coffee cart?"

Your boss will come stand behind you and read over your shoulder "Add the word thrusting in a few times, what page is this on?"

"102"

"Who is this character having sex with in this thing?"

"No one yet."

"What's the love interest like, some dark stallion of a man, or a jaded millionaire, or maybe a neighbor who is blackmailing her?"

"Mostly it's about her weekly cooking course and visiting her parents, so far."

He processes it for a moment and then sputters, "Christ, I never would've guessed that about you. You're a real failure with men, aren't you?"

Burst into tears.

"Look, I'm sorry, shit. I have this nephew I can set you up with, recently divorced, on the fast-track to being a manager at Gander Mountain, You want his number?"

Keep crying until he transfers you back to Greeting Cards for Minority Holidays Department.

A true story: Quitting your day-job

2008-04-02T18:13:00.010+04:00

Today you will quit your job. You’ve been living in Cairo for almost 22 months, and have decided that you can handle the pollution, but life here as become, well, life. You wake up, work, see friends, sleep, exercise three times a week, kiss an occasional boy, go on an occasional date, drink a bottle of wine on weekdays, whiskey on weekends. The life you live here feels so normal that you sometimes wonder what happened. You love Cairo, but you have to admit things are stale lately.

You are no longer a lone nomad, you've become a homemaker with a broken freezer and a weekly maid. So today, tell your boss April will be your last full month.

When he asks if there’s anything he can do to make you stay, tell him two years in Egypt is enough for now. When he says he’s been here eight years, reply:

“I’m 25, I don’t own a washing machine, I haven’t had a normal relationship in a year, and my throat has been sore for a month from the air. I didn’t come here to die here.”

Then spend a month getting your shots, saying goodbye and packing.

You’re moving to Delhi.

P.s. Don’t forget to visit the orthodontist to get that cement on your lower tooth removed. God knows what orthodontia is like in India.

family pets

2008-04-01T17:16:00.003+04:00

You've always wanted a pet, but mom said all the extra money needed to go to her favorite man, Jack Daniels. You’re pretty sure you’re her next favorite, at least. That's why you were really happy when she started dating that magician. You might be ten, but you’re not stupid: Magicians have top hats, and in those top hats, they have rabbits.

“What do you think Magic Billy calls his rabbit, mom?” you’ll say to her after Magic Billy left the apartment in the morning.

“He doesn’t have a rabbit, he’s an illusionist. How many times do I have to tell you? He’s too talented for low-brow children's party tricks. Now get out of the way, you’re blocking the TV,” she replies.

Billy performs at the Ponderosa on Friday nights, which is the big crowd night. That’s how he met your mommy, she's been waiting tables there for two weeks already. She’s gonna be head waitress by October, she says.

“Maybe Magic Billy has birds?” You ask hopefully.

In response mom just throws her nearly empty liquor bottle at you. Everyone knows illusionists are hard to tie-down, always leaving in the middle of the night off on a quest for the perfect magic trick or to check out the latest in boxes with secret exits in the back. You are certain that if you can just wean your mom off the alcohol a little bit, Magic Billy will stick around, at least long enough to get you a dog or something.

Go to the kitchen. Pour out all your mommy’s bottles, and start picking out names for that puppy now!

the future

2008-03-31T01:32:00.001+04:00

You stopped writing because you couldn't think of any ideas that didn't revolve around love, and you're not particularly good at it. Love, that is; not writing. (You're great at writing; four time booker award winner)

Even though you barely get by on your measly professor salary and desperately need cash, you just can't stomach authoring another murder/mystery or sci-fi drama that centers around two characters torn apart by circumstance, and finding their way back into each others arms. After the eighth hackneyed novel based on an emotion you decided long ago you were incapable of feeling, you promised never to write again if you didn't mean it.

Sure, your publisher has started leaving angry messages on your macine, saying if you don't get them a draft by next week, they'll sue. But it's your advance and if you want to spend it on DVDs delivered to your home and online poker, that's your call. Nothing they can do to stop you. You've transcended beyond them. Its the other phone calls that bother you. If that mobster wasn't after you for all those bad debts at the track, you'd probably just return the publisher's money.

This morning, after coming up with another best-selling plot line while asleep, one about a Russian girl from the USSR who falls in love with a comedic robot (Did I mention this is the year 2020 and media is so over-saturated with reality TV that no one appreciates anything that isn't a rip-off of Fear Factor or Who Wants to Marry the Bionic Man?) wake up, sit down at a typewriter and begin typing.

You can't bring yourself to go through the plot line, nor do you want your kneecaps broken. So go on ahead and write out your suicide note; say you're going to first, remove all your teeth, then throw yourself in acid. This will keep investigators from looking too closely for a body. Make sure you mention some girl or another, that way your mom won't think you're a fancy-schmantzy homo, like your dad is always calling you.

Done? Ok. Now escape the pretentious college town in the dead of night and go get honest work at a factory. I hear the the engine press department in Tuscon is hiring.

Also, consider learning how to love, asshole.

a nun's hobby

2008-03-23T16:30:00.005+04:00

I like to write letters. I'll take a day and walk around the grounds, pretending to be a jealous ex-boyfriend who is building a case against all the women who done-him-wrong: the cheat, the whore, the emotional withholder, the one that was bad-timing, the girl who just didn't love him enough. Then right before sunset I go inside and spew out all of the pain and anger that I, the ex-boyfriend, have been storing up for months.

I write out all the things I would've said to the bartender after one too many whiskey's at the pub, the words I would've sobbed outside her house parked alone in my car, or in the calls I would've made in the middle of the night when I felt too alone to bear it. The letters are peppered with Where did we go wrong?'s, why couldn't you love me's, I still think about you's, and sometimes, when I feel I've truly channeled the sentiment, I toss in a few she meant nothing to me, baby's. I make sure it encapsulates the disappointment I feel in her, in our failed love. I mention all the time I want back and how many opportunities I lost crying over her.

I finish it off by apologizing for every failure in the relationship: picking fights, staying out too late, never making her feel special, forgetting some important date. I tell her I want her to find happiness, and she deserves so much more than I was capable of giving her at the time.

Then I go to the white pages and pick a woman's name out of the listings, write down the address on an envelope and send it without a signature.

Now that's what I call god's work.

using facebook as a story-telling device. (Attempt 1)

2008-03-21T18:51:00.003+04:00

April 12
Megan and Pat Hayden are now friends. 3:20 am

May 29
Megan is no longer listed as single. 5:10 pm

May 30
Megan has changed her relationship status to "in a relationship" 11:28 am
Megan is thinking she's the luckiest girl in the world. 11:30 am

August 14
Megan has edited her address in her profile. 9:15 am

October 20
Megan is sitting home alone AGAIN on a friday night, and wondering if anyone wants to go out? 8:39 pm

October 22
Megan has changed her relationship status to "it's complicated." 10:30 pm

October 27
Megan is pondering the meaning of it all. 5:15 pm

November 4
Megan has changed her relationship status to single. 8:15 pm

December 22
Megan has edited her address in her profile. 2:20 am

All Friends > Madison > Housemates
Pat Hayden
You lived together on 58 W. Johnson Street in the fall of 2001. You had fallen out of love months before moving in together but neither would admit it. Pat took the cat, the TV and the living room furniture when he left: Megan kept all the bottles of whiskey.

the 50

2008-03-18T13:15:00.006+04:00

In the spring the Khamasin (The 50) comes. (Has been since before the Old Testament.) Khamasin is the Egyptian arabic term for the hot winds that collect fine red sand as they blow over the desert and whip through North Africa's cities, covering everything with a layer of dust. Over the fifty days that these winds blow, the dust gets into the crevices of Cairo. People shove towels under every door in the house, but the sand still spreads over the floorboards, gathering in corners. Mouths feel dry and chalky, noses are congested and there is a fetid odor that hangs in the thick air.

Rebecca had never been in Egypt when the winds struck, but had been told about them. Despite the warnings, she was surprised when in March, the sky became progressively hazier each day. She envisioned cartoon-like sheets of sand overtaking the cosmopolitan city, burying it, and men in suits trying to walk against the wind, little brief-cased soldiers marching in place. She struggled to create a realistic mental picture based on others' descriptions. So far, the air had been heavier in the mornings, clearing out by sunset, and she waited for winds to hit. Weeks ago, the city simply looked like it was covered in a thick blanket of pollution, but this morning the sky was tinged brown. As the taxi moved over the bridge, Rebecca looked around at the obscured skyscrapers of downtown and considered to herself, “This is what the skyline would look like if it bombs had gone off before I woke up, but hadn’t actually hit anything.”

There hadn’t yet been an actual sandstorm yet, just the threat, physically, in the sky each morning. “If bombs actually did destroy downtown, I wonder if it would be easier or harder to get a cab before work,” she mused, thinking about all the cities nearby with air that often looked this way –– its buildings paying tribute to daily explosions and its people mourning fresh deaths-- –– and added “well, I suppose that question wasn’t really the best one to ask.”

the rejection letter

2008-03-17T13:47:00.006+04:00

the making of a monument

2008-03-16T16:16:00.002+04:00

It was fine until the tour buses started parking in the lawn. My wife first complained when a jeep full of middle aged Brits dressed for a safari drove through her flowerbeds. Groups of Japanese tourists, wide-eyed with cameras flashing would make their way through our living room, chattering excitedly and stopping to appraise our porcelain cherub collection. Swedes sat on the porch swing, rocking slowly back and forth, eating packed lunches.

Groups of Arab men from the gulf region wearing flowing white robes, and red-checkered headdresses would arrive in humvees. They always circled my Camry a few times, run their hands along the dent while talking hurriedly in guttural tones--–– sentences heavy with kha, ga, rhraa and hard, harsh consonants. My youngest son, Steve, would sometimes impersonate them for the neighborhood kids’ amusement. He’d put on my wife’s nightgown and wrap a kitchen towel around his head, then walk up and down the street imitating their language, shouting angrily at the neighbor’s dog.

Eventually, people stopped respecting the posted hours, 9-5 no longer applied. We would just be sitting down to dinner as a backpacker would tap on the window and ask for just a quick look through. Pilgrimages would arrive from Kentucky looking to be saved, but we never really knew from what.

We bore it all with grace. We had after all encouraged our middle son, Chris, to enter the contest. “Nominate the eighth wonder of the world,” the website had read, “And win huge prizes.” The website was hosted by geocities, how could we have known it would be taken so seriously? It was just a little competition we thought, no big deal. Chris wrote an essay on why the international space station should be the eighth wonder. Paul, our oldest suggested us as the wonder. We still gathered around the table for dinner most nights. No one had a drug habit, or underage drinking tickets. We kissed our children every night before bed, and my wife and I still cuddled while watching the evening news.

It was supposed to be a joke, but Paul’s essay won. And the little website with flash animation and broken links made us stars. World weary travelers, international playboys, road trip enthusiasts, festival goers, backpackers and high-class yacht adventurers alike made their way to our doorstep from all ends of the world, looking to see a wonder that rarely existed. A moment they had never had—a contentment with mundaneness that the modern age found so difficult to embrace, to cope with.

Our placid tiny moments of happiness became a major stop when driving from Yellowstone to the Statue of Liberty, and we did our best to answer tour guides’ questions and shake hands politely with everyone. We were after all, the lucky ones.

shhh...

2008-03-15T02:42:00.004+04:00

Every time you hug me I want to tell you my secrets:
“You are the most wonderful person ever.”
“One time I picked up a unlocked bike and crashed it into a tree after riding down a cliff."
"I have dreams about you, in them we're eating Italian food. I don't know why."
“When I was seven I strangled a cat just to see what death was like.”

how the world will end

2008-03-11T20:31:00.001+04:00

When the world turned into bad kissers, Sarah took it as a sign of the apocalypse. Friends would show up on her doorstep after much anticipated dates, frustrated and say, "Gross. Oh God, I have a hickey. I have a huge presentation tomorrow, shit." Sarah only clucked her tongue and looked out the window. Like a disease, sloppy, lazy kissing was spreading. Soon enough there were reports that the even the French had gone bad–– one friend returned from a vacation in Paris, pale and complaining. The world had stopped procreating because everyone was so disgusted by that first kiss that no one went home with each other, much less on a second date. Scientists treated the few remaining good kissers like pandas in captivity; whisking them away to five-star hotels for weekends at a time. Providing them with satin sheets and hourly deliveries of champagne and chocolates. But, the good kissers had become timid, afraid of being accidentally paired with yet another member of the opposite sex who used their tongue like a washboard. Despite millions in government funding, and instructional campaigns there was little success. The good kissers became tentative, rarely mating, first forcing partners to demonstrate on their hands before accepting a peck.

Doctors declared romance dead. By the time the three horseman arrived, most of the population was so jaded they had undergone voluntary sterilization. Sarah just kept looking out the window and thinking about when she was 17, leaning over the stickshift in her date's car, breath wet and beer-baited, intentions heady and tried to remember his name.

Well, forever is a really long time

2008-03-10T09:01:00.000+04:00

a moment

2008-03-09T12:43:00.001+04:00

In Egypt, people sort of have this nonchalant attitude towards the brutality of life. Its this kind of acceptance that yes, the world is a hard place. Sometimes you get run over by cars, sometimes your entire shanty-town neighborhood burns down, and the government swindles you out of the replacement housing they've promised. The way apartment buildings are designed here is kind of like the Spanish villa style, but where in Spain, its a house with a beautiful courtyard in the middle, in Egypt, its a ten-story block building with the trash pile where the courtyard would be. (In one of my apartments we disposed of trash by throwing it off the fire escape and into the garbage-courtyard below, tossing it from the fifth floor to the ground.) One day a friend and I were walking up the stairs to his apartment and heard a cat frantically yowling, but we couldn’t find where it was coming from. Eventually we figured out what happened: The cat had crawled through a broken window in the stairwell onto a little pipe about seven floors above the trash pile, got freaked out, and was now too afraid to come back. The cat just kept screaming.

We stood outside the window for a while trying decide what to do to get the cat out. Eventually the only solution we could muster was my friend would just stick his arm through the window so that cat can crawl out using his arm as a kind of fleshy ladder.
Just as my friend is about to reach his hand through the glass, his ten-year-old Egyptian neighbor bounds down the stairs with a plank of wood. His parents had sent him to deal with the situation; “no, no, no” the kid says in English, gesturing that he’s got the solution. “Great!” we think, “Smart little boy, he's brought a plank so the cat just walk on it to get out.”

The kid pushes my companion aside and proceeds to shove the plank through the window and start trying to knock the cat off the pipe. The cat keeps dodging the blows, the boy keeps prodding.

At that point we just went into the apartment.

Moral of this story: Sometimes, in Egypt, a loud cat has to get knocked off a pipe with a giant plank of wood to fall seven floors to its likely death into a few bags of trash. That’s just life.

a true story

2008-03-04T09:22:00.003+04:00

that time we met Ben Affleck:

I grew up in the Midwest and have become, in many ways, in love with the Midwest culture, including Wisconsin drinking culture. A couple pitchers after work seems completely normal to me. Drinking in the daytime? No problem, welcome to tailgating, without game tickets. But to be honest, I don't really like bars in the capital city of Milwaukee, well, to be accurate, Milwaukee doesn't really like me. Keeping on the theme that I terrify and disgust members of the opposite sex, I never do well in Milwaukee bars. I just assume its because I don't work at a factory, have a brat in one hand, baby in the other and a rough case of VD.

Either way, a few years ago I was asked to accompany two females friends on their double date. Unsure of what to do with myself while four other people flirted with each other, I invited along my oldest friend Christina.

We went to a bar called The Speakeasy, which likes to parade itself as both a maze and a bootleggers hang out from the 1920’s. Christina and I left the girls to their flirtations and start wandering the bar. While walking down a staircase, some guy runs up to us and goes "I'm Ben Affleck." In fairness, he did kind of resemble Ben Affleck, only in that vaguely over-weight Wisconsin way, as if Ben Affleck had moved to Fon Du Lac and started working at the Auto Zone. It took a good ten minutes, but eventually we got Mr. Affleck to step aside and let us pass.

We went back to our usual Wisconsin bar routine: A crazy ex-boyfriend of Christina’s calls, asks where she is, then pretends like he's already inside the bar. Fifteen minutes later we see him enter from the security screen. He proceeds to have a breakdown, which leads to that inevitable end of night "I hate you, God hates you. Why aren't we together anymore? Oh, because you're a whore. I miss you, and by that I mean, I hope your children are ugly and you get attacked by a pack of wild bears" phone call. Meanwhile, I drink shots of whiskey and tell every man around me that I play professional rugby then call them "complete Nancys" until one of them agrees to arm wrestle me. (like I said the usual)

Eventually Ben Affleck stumbles up to our table, hammered, slurring, destroyed. He tries to explain how manly he is to me and tells me he's a bouncer at the bar. I tell him its unlikely, because he doesn't look particularly strong. He goes "Oh Yeah. I can prove it." Then grabs his polo shirt at the collar and proceeds to drunkenly tear it in half... using his knee for leverage, because as I said, not very strong.

But Affleck isn't the kind of man to leave a job half-done. He then clutches his undershirt and Hulk-style shreds it. Leaving him drunk, panting, shirtless, in the middle of a bar. Then, to make sure we got the point of how bad-ass he was, he pulled a Brewers (local baseball team) bobble-head out of the back pocket of his pants and slams it on our table. He points at it and making the general "Hell yeah!" head-nod.

Real bouncers immediately surround him and escort him out while his cousin runs up to our table, snatches the bobble-head off and goes "You girls are assholes."

Which, you know, hurt.

home appliances

2008-03-03T09:58:00.002+04:00

Leslie cleared her throat as she walked across eight lanes of traffic. She could still feel the rawness buried deep and unhealed from where the doctor removed tissue. Pre-cancer, he said. Not cancer exactly, but not life. While she'd been living in Cairo for almost eight years, Leslie was convinced the pollution was darker, heavier these days. In the densely packed city of 16 million people, everyone but her was a smoker. The black and white cabs that dominated the streets were all Fiats from the mid-80's, which had remained impressively stable on the road continually ejecting pillows of inky exhaust. Leslie still didn't own a car, she'd been in the same apartment for five years, and despite being a financial officer at a multinational oil company, she was never really sure how she wound up in the Middle East to begin with.

Her biggest investment in her near-decade long residency was microwave, almost five years ago. She had purchased it in a brief moment of domesticity after her much younger boyfriend had moved in with her. He had wound-up in Cairo teaching English after backpacking his way across North Africa. For the first few months they played house nightly, cooking elaborate dinners and filling the fridge with raw vegetables and Tupperware-sealed leftovers.

Eventually the tight duo started to loosen. He spent evenings talking about traveling the Levant on a motorbike, calling embassies to learn what kinds of permits he would need. After weeks, he got tired of waiting on bureaucratic permission and bought a second-hand bike. The next day he told her he was leaving, poorly planned as it was, it was an adventure. If he didn't make it to Syria, he said, at least he was doing something. For him, Leslie realized, their love was much the same –– a badly thought out trip in which he was more excited to embark than to arrive.

Despite being the most serious relationship she had in this city, Leslie didn't think of him much after he was gone. Like everyone around her, she soon adjusted to the transient nature of romance in foreign lands. No one ever loved and lost, they simply loved and left the country. Over time, she stopped dating without even noticing.
It wasn’t until she felt the lump on her throat that she started to worry about the empty apartment and the chaos that clung to this city, rules she never thought applied to her. People darted through unending traffic, packed subway cars to twice the capacity, men hawking baked sweet potatoes, candy, combs, fruits from carts that they push through the streets, five times a day muezzins’ voices clanged through the city, filling it with the call to prayer. Millions of people stacked up on top of each other, heading from one task to the next. It had become too much.

Stepping onto the sidewalk she thought again of her test results, the little proofs of what she had created – her job, her friends, her microwave – a life not exactly full, but not unlike life either.

Cosmo relationship make or break #1: liking his friends.

2008-03-03T03:17:00.000+04:00

2008-03-01T16:29:00.001+04:00

Natasha had been trying things on lately just to see how they fit in her life; the older boyfriend, fusion food, the line of MDMA up her nose before a party, the other, french boyfriend, phone sex and roller-blading.

On weekdays she stayed in and read classics. It was like wearing second-hand clothes that were a little too snug in the stomach and loose in the shoulders.

invitations

2008-02-29T21:20:00.002+04:00

Next week we're celebrating our five-year anniversary. I'm still working on the party invites, first I wrote "Happy I'm so embarrassed by myself I can hardly breathe much less maintain a relationship," but, it's wordy. I think, like my husband, guests will get turned off by the implications: they will think to themselves 'great, it'll be like the time she verbally accosted an alderman' or 'she's going to cry again, isn't she?' They'll hesitate to RSVP, worried I'll call them in the middle of the night and ask their opinions on the dip tray. They will think it needs carrots but won't tell me. Later they will secretly gripe to their mates that I always put out more cauliflower than olives. When they arrive, they'll look from him to me and wonder why he stays. He'll look at all his college friends and their pretty girlfriends, wives and fiancés and ask himself the same question. That night he'll get drunk and kiss my cousin in the laundry room; I'll know but won't say anything. I'll raise our children and throw our dinner parties, laughing politely at the table talk. I'll get panic attacks and sleep through the weekends. The betrayal will eat at me. One night coming home from the cinema, I'll drive the car off the road on purpose, trying to kill us both. The police will arrest me and the media will give me a nickname and sensationalize our marriage. None of our friends will be surprised –– they'll say "She always put peas in the seven-layer salad. He hates peas."

Actually, I guess I'll just go with "Celebrate!" on the invites or something.
You should definitely come; it's going to be a great party.

The ambulance tally

2008-02-27T22:11:00.000+04:00

We moved from my hometown to Watertown right after high school. Freshman year of college I spent a summer in this small, conservative town with my parents. None of us knew anyone. We realized soon after moving in that we had made a tactical mistake by moving into a neighborhood populated entirely by the elderly. My parents, at the young age of 50 felt like they had just moved somewhere not only lonely, but brimming with constant reminders of their own mortality; geriatrics walking out to get the mail, huddled behind steering wheels with their heads craning into the windshields, yards full of lawn gnomes. The neighborhood was laced with BMW's, golf caps and pleated pants. Our front window looked out directly onto a nursing home.

With no friends in the town, I spent a lot of time reading on the porch. Irreverently, I began to keep notes on the refrigerator: Every time an ambulance drove by with lights flashing, I'd add a tick to the "the Ambulance Tally."

Slowly, over the summer, both of my parents made friends in the town. I continued to travel back to my college campus on weekends, seeing people then. Most of our time though, was spent together playing board games and going to bed early. Eventually, I returned to Madison for the school year.

My parents and I spoke often, and when returning home for a weekend I noticed that the ambulance tally had been kept in my absence. My mother added to it, just as I had. They would have lunch with friends, I'd stay in and play with the cat.

Sometime in November, on a call home, I asked mom how high the ambulance tally was. She replied, "Well, there was this huge accident right in front of the house last month, a bus from the home flipped over. Twelve people died. I felt a bit morbid checking that off, and after that, well, the count wouldn't be accurate, you know?"

Lonely does it.

2008-02-26T10:19:00.000+04:00

I've been reading this guy, you may have heard of him: Shakespeare. No one gets deception like Shakespeare. He really nailed the subjectivity of identity and love. A beggar puts on a funny hat and can immediately be mistaken for a viscount. Two sets of twins constantly confused by an entire town, and each other. Sometimes he played with the formula, sometimes the deception led to love, sometimes love was the deception. I can relate to that kind of thing.

Mistaken identity, that's what its all about. I don't understand why my boyfriend gets so mad when I pretend to be furniture. Sometimes when we're watching one of those really boring reality TV shows, I'll stand up and walk behind the couch and put my arms up in the air and kind of lean over him. "What are you doing?" he says. "I'm a lamp," I reply. He only commented the first few times. Now, he doesn't notice. I'm lucky if he rolls his eyes when I make noises like someone is turning me on and off. I liked it better when he called me crazy or told me to sit back down, lately we can go days without talking to each other.

He mistook me, I think. Sometimes, when I get home from work early, I pretend that I'm a suitcase, or the car. I pretend that I'm every article of clothing tossed in plastic bags and put in the trunk. I pretend I'm the key in the ignition. In fact, on Wednesdays when he goes to play poker, I sit in the car and pretend that I'm the gas pedal, the roadmap. That people see me driving down the road and think "she must be important, she looks like a woman on her way to a $200 plate gala fundraiser, or a great party with lots of attractive people doing coke." Lately I've been bringing things out there with me; first my favorite shoes, then the shoes and my high school prom dress, then the shoes, the dress, and the cat. Tonight I think I'll take my grandmother's jewelry, by March I should be just about ready to go.

the zombie who loved me

2007-04-22T14:15:00.004+04:00

"Braaaaaiiiinnnnssss..... braaaiinnnnnnssss..."