irowe88
Consider the silliness inherent in certain opposites. It seems almost day to day to hear that man (or a woman) has sold himself short, but is a whale of another color to learn to learn that someone has sold themselves tall. It seems criminal somehow to learn someone could get away with such a thing, as though a great con had taken place, that height should have somehow been taken into consideration but for some reason it was not. We come to understand things as being the way they are and when they try to reveal themselves in a different light, try to tell you something important about themselves, it is all we can do to plug our ears quickly as possible and say, "No, no, not to me; to me that simply isn't true."
One day television stopped. It was a failure of the satellites, the streams, the chords, the cables, cable itself, half a failing of attention and any other myriad of factors but the fact of matter was: television was over. Across America many families spent several hours slapping the remote control with their hands -- as many families were known to do this then, smack electronics in the hope that a loose piece of electronic would be shaken back into place, which, logically, was very much insane, because what would happen in the event that the electronic piece wasn't loose but because of the blunt force of the remote being struck against a hand was shaken loose, eliciting something similar to William Paley's "watchmaker analogy" that we were in part playing the role in God, that in trying to create something we had destroyed it, or in trying to destroy something, created, evermore -- and when this failed to produce any results the families wandered squint-eyed into the afternoon sun and placed their hands on their hips and then turned and shrugged at one another and smiled, some blaming the government and others blaming the failings of the cable companies but the truth was it was the failings of their own imagination, so determined by other men and women whose own imaginations had begun the perilous decent into the unimaginative, and so the families receded into their homes, embarrassed, unsure of what to do, and so returned to their couches and sat, and stared, and waited, until the their reflections slowly came into view, the picture of them staring back at themselves, waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen, filled with this vacant hope that soon, someone would do something.
This is nonfiction. It will be nonfiction until it is not. And even then it will be a gradation of truth. An elaboration, if anything. Tiffany is the name of a woman who holds me accountable. Being held accountable for something is a stately way of saying you've been blamed. And so I have. Tiffany is in therapy because I am a caustic, impossible to communicate with narcissist. I say that can't be true because I acknowledge daily the fact I am a tired, tedious man. I will peak, gradually, over the next ten years, and then my knees will shrink, my hair will fall out, I will get heartburn at family reunions and become unpleasant when my brother-in-some-odd or cousin or nephew-in-law has the wrong brand of Tums and I'll have to sit around a dinner table with people I hate whose concern with politics manages even to bore the family's dog. Just like them. Just like anybody else.
The last time I saw my mother - she died while I was abroad - she stood with her back to me mixing apples and brown sugar and flour in a bowl in preparation for a pie she'd intended to make. She was a wreck then, my father having just left her, and she in the midst of moving out of their home and into the same apartment complex as my aunt downtown, and she kept forgetting she'd packed most of the kitchenware (spices and sugars included) as she stared at the boxes in the living room trying to remember where she'd put things. Jonathan, she said, not turning around to greet me, I need sugar and my pie pans. I think, I think they're in one of the boxes marked - something, I can't remember - Will you just see if you can find it for me? I walked around her and dropped to my knees in the living room, pulling my keys out of my pocket so I could cut through the hastily applied tape, and to my right my mother began crying. She eventually slid to floor, the bowl almost being knocked off the counter, and I pretended not to hear her sobs as tried to make as much noise as I could rummaging through every artifact of what used to be her life.
Assad sorts through the clothes in the Goodwill donation bags. He opens them carefully, unlike his coworkers, who rip into the black plastic with great disdain, and pours the clothes from the bags with great care onto the floor. Assad has been given asylum form Syria, and he spends his days in the United States, in Macon, Georgia, spreading clothes across the floor of the 34th street Goodwill, where he is sometimes called "A-man" by his kinder coworkers, "Ass-Hat," by those less informed. Still. He is patient with them. He goes about his work and tries not to think about the travesties taking place across the globe. But this is impossible, and he knows it. As he picks through the clothes he imagines they belong to the dead back in Syria. The holes he finds in t-shirts are not from wear but from gunfire, stains not from condiments but the righteous blood spilled by his unknown brothers and sisters. Sometimes when he sees the empty shirts and pants strewn across the spotted tile of the back room he imagines it's like this back home; people he could have loved simply evaporated, separated from their bodies to be identified by a handwritten price tag and some sad, menial, arbitrary value.
He left the ground like a cannonade. It was a violent, awkward departure - his shoes scraping the ground while gravity restricted his shoulders for those final few seconds before he lifted - and then, shocked, he looked down and realized he'd done it - he'd mastered flight. The thrill, unsurprisingly for a generation plagued by immediacy, wore off quicker than he'd anticipated, and soon he grew tired of flying over the tops of buildings, because, yes, he could fly, but it's not like he was going anywhere new. So he settled down in a Wal Mart parking lot, walked into the store, purchased a six-pack of triple A batteries, launched from the parking lot (smoother this time) went back to his apartment, inserted the batteries into his electric razor, and he shaved. And that was that.
How old do you have to be before it's appropriate to ask the question: Am I a good person? Drunk and stoned by eleven-years-old. When do you count? When you lose your virginity? The first time you cheat? When do occurrences stop being isolated incidents and start being part of an integrated whole? Steal a car at sixteen. Overdose at seventeen. Rehab at a facility in the mountains. You break into your neighbor's house when they leave town because you've seen their liquor cabinet from the times their daughter snuck you in through her window to fuck her. The first time you steal painkillers from your mother's medicine cabinet. How old? You still did childish things. Still went to the neighborhood pool. Still had sleepovers. Just wait until the parents fall asleep. Sift through drawers, steal money, sneak out of the house. Wake up at noon and they feed you waffles? Did you kids have fun last night? Your brain is swollen. You should have been taken to the hospital. They almost found you cold this morning. Great time. Thank you. Breakfast is delicious. You keep your drugs under their porch in an Altoids container wrapped inside a ziploc bag. You'll never be held accountable. Crushed up your father's viagra and slip into a classmate's drink in 7th grade. You write to no one in particular on sheets of paper in your desk drawer. Help me help me help me. Are you a bad person if you can't stop? Raised by wolves? Not raised at all? Parents work the night shift? Dinner's in the fridge, their leftovers from lunch. Enjoy the half a burger and an apple, unripe. How much adds up before it counts? How much?
When he was born his father placed him into a bucket and said, "You will respect me," and then rolled him down the stairs. He never cried again. When he was five-years-old he stole for the first time. He was caught by his father, who noticed his son's pockets bulging. His father pulled out two packages of gum, an Arabic to English dictionary, a poem that would have brought world peace, and the cure for cancer. His father instructed him to place these items into a 55 gallon drum trashcan and then light them on fire. The scent of the gum, mixed in with the possibility of harmony, emitted a sweet rosewater smell that made the boy cry. Seeing his tears, the father made the boy eat the flame, and the boy never cried again. When the boy was sixteen he fell in love and was happy. When the father saw the boy was happy he intercepted the woman his son had fallen in love with and took him for his own wife. At the wedding, tears graced the boy's cheeks. After cutting the cake, the father cut out the boy's heart. He never cried again.
Mary stared into the thick brush behind the house they lived in -- or the house they used to live in, starting tomorrow -- for the last time. Behind her, faded from view by the sunset streaked glass, were dozens of boxes bound in all different kinds of tape, her husband too frugal to go out and buy more duct, the affect of this being that her things looked like they were going to be donated, not moved halfway across the country. New Mexico. What in God's name was she going to do in New Mexico? She blew a stream of cigarette smoke into the air and watched it weaken and separate, but not before she had the passing thought of a cloud rising from her mouth and blocking out the sun, to the extent that everything on earth should wither and die. After all: if she could no longer enjoy California. Why should anybody else? She remembered suddenly Edward Cope, who had discovered a mass graveyard of Ceolophysis dinosaurs at the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Scientists were bewildered by the mass of fossils in the sand, and attributed it to a mass flood. But Mary knew better. Mary knew it was an act of God, who to her was just another angry woman, who had grown bored with her early primordial creations. She blew out another stream of smoke and concentrated and prayed hard for a future in which scientists would uncover a mass suburban grave and posture: It looks like everyone here died of boredom.
Twice I saw the interior designer look up my towel; the main reason being I'd grabbed a hand towel, not a full sized towel, and so the small cotton square barely managed to cover what now sagged and rested on the hot and sticky wood. The spa's pine scent brought me back to my office, our own sauna stuffed with buckets of egg-shell-white paint, and in the moment I hated more than anything my own rotten life. "I'm telling you," he said again, he not bothering to lift his eyes from my crotch, "You're cute. You could easily get a job selling apartments in the city." I perked up. I was desperate not to go home. It was only my second day in New York, and already I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Next to me, Austin sat upright with his head at an awkward angle, small snorts seeping from his mouth. He was asleep. "Is there someone I can talk to while I'm here?" I asked. "Do you know of anybody?" The man smiled. "You free tonight? I'm having a party, I'm sure I have friends who could help you out." "That would be amazing," I said, oblivious to the fact the heat and probable alcohol poisoning hindered my cognizance. "Should I bring anything?" I asked. "Coke?" he said, and shrugged. We both laughed. A very long day began.
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