Fiction

My Morning Song Is Better than Yours

petercole — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:43:29 -0400

The soda machine is humming the wrong vowel. It hums. It makes a sound so electric it hurts like accidentally biting your tongue. And it's amazing it belongs to no one. It is its own country. A few quarters and you’re not thirsty but all your quarters go in and never come out and you lose them to the other side. Which reminds me of how strange parking lots are. How they’re just there to park things. And they’re just sitting there all the time.

We made a game out of telling each other stories and the only way to win the game was to end it by saying: …then you realized you were on another planet. I like games like that. I just wish I could have been more clear about the shape of us reflected in the black of the TV that wasn’t on. I just wanted you to know how slow everything moved in there. Like tar all over you. Like what you only kind of hear when you sleep outside.

Bitch, they say, is a good word for the dog-red gums of the sky. I say bitch when there is some static in the air. We go whirling in it. And I just feel so bad like sinking my teeth into something really soft but hard enough to take it.

I hear it most in the getting-up. My life talking on the other end of sleep. How it boils over into a slow mess in the window’s sun. How the sun coming in here is coming in different than it would anywhere else in the world. Its bubbling up in front of me. Rising like I don’t know what. And the worst of it being the I don’t know what of it. Because I just really don’t know.

So you’re driving and driving and driving. And it’s a long road. And there’s no one on it. And it’s the middle of the night. And you’re driving and driving and driving. And then, all of a sudden…

And I just want to say that my morning song is better than yours. I want you to hear it buzzing in me like an old radiator. I want you to do what you’ve done before. To press your ear against the skin and listen for the static.

I go. Gone being accounted for. Because even as I sit here I am gone. But going is here. I see it across the room like a shadow I haven’t made yet. One that stretches like yet. Yet like a mouth inside a mouth that runs its teeth against its teeth. I grind my teeth on their other set. Which means there must be a word behind my every word. Because a mouth with two sets of teeth must have two tongues.

What I mean is that the closer you get the harder it is to see. And its so hard to see when you draw me near.

I had a toy. He was an action figure with a red beard. I liked him so much that my mom bought me two of him. So how can I account for the fact that one of them is missing both his legs and the other is fine? Why is it I lost the one with legs but the one without is still in my dresser drawer?

All quantification is justification. Just wait and see when it adds up.

There was a picture of you and that picture hurt me more than anything can say. Even though the picture didn’t do anything. It didn’t move. It was just standing all in lipstick in an apartment but it hurt me. It hurt me because it was young. It hurt me because it had never even thought to think of me.

Forecast - Chapter 10

petercole — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:50:53 -0400

Forecast is being serialized semiweekly across 42 web sites. For a full list of participants and links to live chapters, please visit www.shyascanlon.com/forecast

Chapter 9 is at DOGZPLOT

The street was no longer than ten or eleven blocks; it ran parallel to the highway before ending in an onramp. Helen merged into traffic and the car windows tinted to protect her from the unapologetic perversion of light that bore down from overhead, exposing each credible surface of the strip. The sidewalks, parking lots, walls and windows were all home to incredibly important messages concerning Helen’s skin, hair, her cracked and peeling hands, her sore throat, and any number of other ailments right at that very moment preventing her from enjoying life to its fullest.

“Do I smell funny to you?” she heard Rocket ask. She could hear him sniffing himself, quick little startled breaths, and felt sorry for the simple animal.

“Don’t listen to them, Rocket,” she assured him, feeling almost tender. “You smell like a dog.” She watched people getting in and out of their cars, driving through drive-throughs, and milling about in parking lots, stretching their legs. It was a comfort, somehow, seeing people doing normal things. She’d been spending so much time in her Neighborhood™, where public behavior was rather strictly defined, that the sight of people, here, the sight of them being openly hungry, being tired, all of this was refreshing. She couldn’t help but wonder how they produced enough Buzz with this much on display, but this thought was easily overcome by her own pangs of hunger, which were growing, and her attention found its way back to food, and the fact that she was passing it by.

They were almost to the end of the 1st block.

“Tell me if you see something,” she said, and changed lanes.

Each restaurant along the way boasted better deals than the last, and Helen watched the numbers go down, the “value” go up, and special coupons for unrelated consumer items appear on her dashboard, broadcast by restaurants still blocks away. She was urged to pass by the choicer real estate and take her chances with something closer to the end of the street, but traffic was moving so ponderously that the dashboard bargains seemed desperate. They were giving away free staplers at the Tempeh Teepee©. Competition was fierce.

She eyed her options with suspicion, waiting for the right offer to guide them in, steer Joan’s car off the slow moving street.

“Really, Helen, any one of these places will do,” said Rocket impatiently, and she knew he was right. It didn’t matter. But she was caught in a kid-in-the-candy-store frame of mind—she only had a dime, and she wanted to get the most for it. She toyed with the shiny disc, flipping it across her knuckles. She salivated and sucked her tongue, walking up and down the aisle, her ears burning from the old clerk’s hard stare. But she wasn’t stealing anything. She had a right to be there. She was determined to scout it out.

“You gonna buy anything or what?” he asked in a gruff, throaty voice. Stupid old man. She avoided his eyes.

“I’ve got a dime,” she said, holding it up for him to see. This seemed to satisfy him, for the moment, and she heard the ruffle of his newspaper as he went back to reading.

“Whatever you say, kid,” he huffed.

When it came down to it, the content of the packages mattered less to Helen than the packaging itself. She ogled the ostentatious wrappers, read and reread each promise declaring gooey delight, but not without a degree of humor. She took exactly none of it seriously. She liked to consider what the manufacturer was shooting for, put herself in the mindset of its target market, and judge from there the relative success of each campaign. It was a game. Of course, there was an underlying sweet-tooth, but she liked to tickle that tooth, feel it squirm before giving in and coating it with caramel.

Then she saw it. Among the ads for stopwatches and switchblades, crockpots and dish-racks, wholesale merchandise bought on the cheap and turned over to drive-by customers under the rubric of added value, an ad popped up on her dashboard for something she knew she liked. Something familiar. Something with guts and grease and everything she wanted rolled into a perfectly bullshit-free package she knew she could trust.

“Looks like ol’ Knuckle made it big,” she said, almost under her breath. She felt like she was telling a secret. She was giddy. She’d take Rocket out for his first Dirty Dog and watch as he happily grunted through the gastrointestinal nightmare following their splurge. She accelerated out of their lane, moving into a spot beside them that seemed to be moving more quickly. She passed by the colorful wrappers, the Sugar Bombs©, the Gooey Gobblers©, all the hard candy camped out, row after row, and felt the hard eyes again on her back as she left the store.

“Hey kid, where do you think you’re going?” he called after her. But she was gone.

Knuckle’s was only a few blocks ahead, according to the ad. Helen was excited, gearing up to tell a story, an anecdote about one of her early Dirty Dog experiences, but before she could she was startled by a moan from the backseat. Could it be a complaint? She was aghast. And that wasn’t even the end of it. Before she could protest his protestation, Rocket launched into a tirade, obviously upset. Much to Helen’s surprise, the dog knew all about Knuckle’s.

“Word is they use dog meat,” he began. “And don’t try to tell me any different, Helen. I have it on good faith from a basset hound I know—honest dog—who told me his uncle’s best friend was picked up on the street by a Knuckle’s van. Poor dog howled like a siren for a couple blocks and then nothing.” Rocket was showing some emotion. “Happened right in front of his bitch.” He paused, and Helen imagined him staring out the window, looking forlorn. She still hadn’t met his eyes. “And don’t even get me started on that freak Junior! The bastard has no soul!”

But Helen didn’t have to get the dog started. Rocket shot off on his own steam about the Knuckle’s empire, its climb from a scummy hole in south-central Seattle to the chain they were about to patronize. He explained how it boasted a franchise at every rest-stop along every interstate in America, Knuckle’s dragging down both coasts like fingernails down a chalkboard, and he described the old man’s son, Junior, his voice cramping up in what Helen took as the deep, downward whine of a dog’s abject fear.

In many ways, it was a familiar story. When Helen was neck deep in her new life, pursuing a near perfect anonymity, I watched it unfold with some astonishment, the way you watch an oversees war on TV: little spotty images filled in with loads of conjecture, a touch of scandal, and then you wait for the real story to emerge so they can make a movie.

But it was simple. Knuckle was a pawn. He was one of the lucky ones in the beginning, one of those people whose emotional energy output was high enough to earn him a hefty reputation. As soon as word reached the Feds they were on him. They collected these people like pets in the early days, gave them what they wanted, thought they’d be useful later on. But with Knuckle it was more than that. Emotional energy spread power pretty thin, and there was a big movement on the Federal level to keep pace with the rise of “emotionally productive” entrepreneurs. I think they reasoned that if they could keep a few of the right people happy, they could secure their input once the New Economy was up and running. Which happened basically overnight.

Having taken Knuckle under their tutelage, teaching him business strategy, subsidizing his investment in high-profile storage facilities for the energy he was producing, the Feds maintained a direct route to a private business world that found them, in a word, irrelevant. They also got to pose for great promo shots.

But then, the story goes, Knuckle began to get unruly. As much training as he’d received, they’d still only managed to give a small man big power, and as the Knuckle’s empire got underway, franchises popping up everywhere, that awful and undeniably catchy jingle about Gettin’Dirty™ ringing in everyone’s ear, they began to sense a small defiance from the man. Poor guy. Not to excuse his insolence, but I can just imagine what kind of a laughing stock he must have been at those board meetings. “Busted Knuckle”, they called him. Spoon-fed by Uncle Sam.

He finally flipped out entirely. He began openly challenging the government, telling the press that they’d never helped him at all, that they were just scavengers wanting a piece of what he’d made for himself. And the press ate it up. They knew it was arrogant, misguided if not patently erroneous, but they broadcast Knuckle’s taunts in bold type until the government had no other option but to withdraw its support, and play dirty. They took him to court.

Helen’s eyes were glazed over in hunger. Rocket’s lispy voice slithered into her ears and slid around in her brain, looking for purchase and finding none. She stared at the traffic, now glacially moving along the strip, and she thought of the lovely candy shop she’d run out of, the old clerk who, while initially seeming gruff and mean-spirited, in hindsight was probably just concerned for Helen’s well-being, not wanting her to miss out on what he surely knew was to be her only chance to eat something, ever. The weather was kept relatively constant by enormous weather controls surrounding the rest-strip, but flakes of slice and loops of slerm were visible now and then. Helen watched for them, counting. Rocket continued.

“But that wasn’t the end of it,” he explained, tail anxiously thumping the seat. And it wasn’t. He still hadn’t told her about Junior. And this is where it gets scary for dogs.

With Knuckle tied up in a court battle that would soon become his obsession, the ersatz chief of the hotdog chain began to garner public attention as a spiffy, well-dressed and savvy substitute for Busted Knuckle. His name was Junior. Junior was Knuckle’s son. That Knuckle even had a son was a well-kept secret until the trial was well underway, and many saw it as the most shrewd business maneuver of Knuckle’s career, though it was probably just complete emotional abandonment. But Junior didn’t let that stop him. He hit the ground running with a series of what seemed at the time to be highly astute marketing decisions in a context where the franchise was getting slammed daily by a government run media still not conceding to the “post-national emergency landscape” of the New Economy. He gave away free food. He made enormous charitable donations to organizations fighting to end the scourge of obesity plaguing the nation. He championed the largest recycling campaign the world had ever seen.

Then he appeared on national TV and ate a live chicken. He didn’t even pluck it.

The press, for obvious reasons, loved it. Completely fictional accounts of his early childhood began to appear in otherwise respectable magazines. Psychologists appeared on talk shows explaining the term “psychotic break.” But before the young man could be helped, Junior disappeared.

“And that’s when dogs began to go missing,” Rocket concluded. His voice had finally steadied, as if he’d gained some control over the issue by relating it out loud.

Helen jerked out of her daydream, where she was leaning over the glass countertop of a candy store, watching the large, sweaty clerk behind it massage himself through his pants, and said, “So, what, are you saying you don’t want to eat there?”

“Of course not,” the dog replied. “I just thought you’d want to make an informed decision.”

And with that, Helen took the car into a miraculously fast moving lane and turned on her blinker. Knuckle’s Dirty Dogs, she thought, dreamily, that sure brings back memories.

Read the next chapter here

Morris Sees a Furrier: A Love Story

ekentrada — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:22:12 -0400

Morris Pete earned ten dollars an hour to wave a flag. While the other guys worked on one side of a blocked city road, he stood on the hashed yellow line, telling oncoming drivers when they could go and when they had to stop. He even had a bright orange sign that said stop, if he chose to use it. Most of the time he used the flag. It didn’t weigh as much.

Because he controlled drivers’ destinies with signs and flags, he was subjected to the finest behavior of Dirtbound, Louisiana, residents. He was pelted with paper cups, quashed cigarette butts, crumpled napkins, loogies, and chewing gum. Strangers yelled “Asshole!” from their open windows at least once a day and at least three times a day, someone gave him the finger.

“Some astronaut,” he’d mutter to himself, because as a kid, that’s what he wanted to be when he grew up.

Every two weeks, Morris brought his check to the First National Bank. He deposited most of it into a checking account he shared with his wife Carla, but he put fifteen bucks aside religiously for a second account that she didn’t know about—one that he’d opened on February 5, 1999, and called “The Pink Panther.” The account remained untouched until January 22, 2007, when Morris depleted the funds, stuffed the wad of cash into his pocket, and drove to Houston for an appointment with a furrier.

Carla Pete loved Peter Sellers. Had she not married Morris, she would have married Peter. That’s what she thinks, anyway, but she doesn’t really believe it, since Peter was a Hollywood star and she was a barren cocktail waitress. Where she came from, folks went mud-riding and had beer guts that bellowed over their waistbands. When she thought about Dirtbound, she thought: It ain’t Hollywood.

Carla first fell in love with Peter Sellers because of the Pink Panther movies. The inspector made her laugh, and laughing, unlike most things, made her happy.

When she saw The Pink Panther Strikes Again in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart on February 4, 1999, she took it home and watched it with Morris because he’d never seen a Pink Panther movie. He’d never seen many movies at all, actually.

Carla didn’t just love Peter Sellers. She also loved his co-star Lesley-Anne Downe. Not in that way, of course, but in the way that Lesley-Anne represented the complete opposite of Carla. Lesley-Anne was sexy, with delicate movements, while Carla spent her days reaching over dirty plates to refill sugar shakers.

When Lesley-Anne Downe slipped out of her bed in the nude and put on a long fur coat to have a smoke, Carla sighed, turned to Morris, and said, “I’ll never have a coat like that, will I?” Because she knew she was nothing but a waitress and her husband was nothing but a flag-waver.

Lashes and Wings

jimmychenchen — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:03:18 -0400

Your mom spies her Thomas Kincade print, suspicious of the bubblegum pink tree – how naive she once was to sit underneath it, to follow the creek past the bend.

Your mom drives to the grocery and stays in the parking lot for seven minutes after she turns off the ignition. She lowers her head and feels a thick slow pulse in the tip of her forehead. A fly buzzes inside the car.

Your mom she was young. She made out with a boy named Stu who drove her to a place overlooking the town – only the town was small, so the lights at night were sparse and dim. Stu told your mom she was pretty.

Your mom would have liked to be beautiful but pretty was enough. Your mom doesn't marry Stu but marries your father. Your father is not part of this story.

Your mom gets out of the car and enters the grocery. The content inside gives her vertigo and she tries to blink it off. A customer service representative asks "can I help you ma'am?" Your mom tries to blink him away. Her eyes feel tugged by her optic nerves.

Your mom is back in her car with pot roast in her lap. She places her forehead on the backs of her hands which are grabbing the steering wheel. She accidentally honks the horn. A young mom holding hands with her son walk past the car and stare. Your mom thinks of her son and how they never hold hands anymore.

Your mom's son comes home and asks if the pot roast is ready. She says it's for the church potluck tomorrow. He says those ladies are sad and your mom knows he's talking about her. The son is upset and goes to his room with a bag of chips. Your mom looks at his back as he climbs the stairs and imagines him climbing forever and disappearing.

Your mom has this reoccuring dream of two pieces of skin flapping together in the sky, like a human bird made with hands and no bones. The bird has no body so it is not a bird, just a limp handshake. The feet of the human making the bird are tiptoeing to make the bird fly higher but he is stuck. He left your mom with her son and every atom in the world. Your mom wakes up.

Your mom opens the lid and smells the pot roast. She adds marjoram, salt, and more broth. She closes the lid and the air inside her collapses to the floor. From her angle, the kitchen ceiling looks like the floor. Your mom's son comes down and says "Jesus mom."

Your mom's eyes are wet red and she asks you to lie down with her. You are angry but you lie down anyway. The linoleum kitchen floor feels like a tight loveless skin. There is no silence until every buzzing fly dies. Forgiveness is a baby which needs to be fed.

Your father is not a good man but you are trying to be. He lives only four blocks away, four little insults. You look over at your mom and say "please don't fall like that again." Your mom smiles and the saline watery sheen over her eyes turns you into a million kaleidoscopic pieces.

Your mom takes your hand and brings it to her heart. You can feel her heartbeat, a soft often thing.

Toast

darbylarson — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:34:33 -0400

The green woman rides her bicycle to the store to buy milk and bread. She places the milk and bread in the basket attached to the front of the handlebars and rides home.

The telephone rings in the man's apartment. It is the man's best friend from 3rd grade whom he has not seen in fifty years. They talk about the past, the present. They talk about how their lives turned out. Each compares the other's life with his own. It turns out they live only a few miles from each other.

The heroin addict works in the coffee shop. He's okay in the morning because he is high. He sets things up. He opens. He organizes the tables and chairs in the patio area. He breathes. He appreciates the sun and the earth. He uses the coffee shop bathroom to shoot up when he needs to. His boss knows he is a heroin addict but doesn't do or say anything because he is also a competent employee and they are hard to find these days.

The fifteen-year-old boy and the fourteen-year-old girl are going out. It is the first time either of them have gone out with someone. They have been together for a week. They know they are supposed to hold hands often, so they do, even though it is a little awkward when they are around their friends. The girl wonders when the boy will give her her first kiss.

The two men meet halfway at the coffee shop. They sit outside because it's a nice day. They continue the process of telling each other about their lives for the rest of the morning. They discover some interesting coincidences. They learn things they never would have thought the other person would have done.

The heroin addict needs to use the bathroom but it's occupied. He is almost losing it. He sits outside in the sun. Two men are talking at a nearby table and it is driving him a little crazy. Finally, a boy and a girl emerge from the bathroom holding hands. He gets up and goes to the bathroom.

The two men talk outside the coffee shop for the rest of the day. In the afternoon, a green woman rides by on a bicycle. They both stop talking as she rides past them.

The boy and the girl stop walking outside the girl's house. Other people may be watching them from other houses but they feel like they are alone. The girl thought the boy might kiss her when they went into the bathroom. The girl thinks he might kiss her now. She wonders if she is supposed to do something to make him kiss her. The boy seems like he wants to do something.

The boss decides to have a talk with the heroin addict. He knows his competence is only temporary. Soon the heroin will eat him and he will be useless. He gives the heroin addict an ultimatum.

The sun is going down. The two men decide to leave the coffee shop and go to a nearby pub. They have a few beers and continue the process.

The heroin addict goes to the pub and sits next to the two men and orders a beer. He has a lot of thinking to do.

The boy's cell phone rings. It is his mother. She wants him home for dinner. He says goodbye to the girl. He says he will come over tomorrow. The girl says goodbye and goes inside and plops onto her bed and thinks about texting him something but she doesn't know what.

One of the two men says hi to the heroin addict and the heroin addict says hi back. They remember him from the coffee shop. The three of them talk about various things. They move to a table and order a pitcher of a kind of beer they all coincidentally like.

The green woman parks her bicycle on the side of her house and takes the bread and milk inside to the kitchen. In the living room, she logs onto the internet. She turns on her web cam. She takes her clothes off.

The heroin addict's head falls, slams onto the table. He is unconscious. The two men tell people to call an ambulance.

The boss finishes closing up the coffee shop and walks by the pub. An ambulance is parked outside. He sees the heroin addict being wheeled out. Two men are with him. They look familiar.

In his bedroom, the boy logs on to the internet and goes to http://www.greengirl.com. Her web cam is on. He captures a still frame of her breasts and blows the picture up so it takes up the entire screen. He masturbates. The cell phone on the bed behind him vibrates.

The two men follow the ambulance to the hospital. In the waiting room of the hospital, they continue the process.

The girl falls asleep and dreams that she is pregnant. She goes into labor and screams. She wakes up. Her mother comes into the room to see if she is okay.

The green woman goes to the bathroom mirror. She admires her perfect body, her inhuman color. Later, she falls asleep on the couch with the television on.

In the morning, the heroin addict's
mother comes into the hospital room. Her son is up and drinking a glass of milk. A half finished piece of toast is on the tray in front of him.

In the morning, the green woman makes some toast and pours herself a glass of milk.

The

boy's

mother

makes

toast for

breakfast.

A Field of Colors

petercole — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:42:10 -0400

Saturday afternoon & I am at my field, a field of colors. I tell the girls OKAY, & they sprint down the slope. The ribbons tied to their hair wave back to me & say HELLO, or GOODBYE. They are my girls for the week & they spread the field, collecting rainbow shards off the ground into baskets normally reserved for easter egg hunts. My youngest finds a rainbow stick & sucks on it like a candy cane & says to me later in the truck that rainbows taste just like pancake syrup & can she have some more before bed.

I tell her YES. YOU CAN.

II.

I am back at my field, a field of dismembered bodies. There are human parts & there are animal parts strewn about. There are flecks of rainbow in the grass, the colors of yesterday. My girls sit in a circle & construct a new species of animal. Part monkey tail & zebra head & baby elephant body. Killer whale teeth in their ladle cupped palms. They name their pet in the making Australia & when they are done they will ride Australia & conquer mountains & stomp out desperate tigers. They will rope in lovers & bound them tight & never let go. They say WE WILL DO THIS. Then challenge my eyes to disagree.

III.

My girls sleep in their beds & I return to my field. I park on a hill & stay in the cab. Windows rolled down. Radio friendly murmurs. Darkness taking on different shapes. I remember driving Aimee here most nights. When we were younger & cared less. We listened as my field shifted. We made guesses & wrote them on the back of our hands. She was the winner, once. A field of singing sunflowers at daybreak.

I come but no longer play the game.

IV.

They say BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FIELD? WHAT WILL WE MISS WHILE WE ARE AWAY?

I tell my girls ONE DAY THERE WILL BE A FIELD OF RABBITS. RABBITS THE SIZE OF HOUSES. THEY WILL RACE EACH OTHER IN ZIGZAGS & BARREL THROUGH FORESTS. THE NEXT DAY THERE WILL BE A FIELD OF VEGETABLES. TO FEED THE RABBITS.

They say WE DO NOT LIKE RABBITS. WE HATE IT WHEN MOMMY FORCES US TO FINISH OUR VEGETABLES.

The days pass. A change in the weather. My field is unattended. I do not know what goes on there.

VI.

I tell my girls KEEP WATCH FOR CUTTING EDGES & CORNERS. We are at my field, a field of blank white paper. My youngest wants to color but I have no crayons for her. My eldest calls everyone together & teaches origami. She says THIS IS HOW YOU FOLD A CRANE. THIS IS HOW YOU FOLD A ROSE. NO, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

My girls grow in front of me. Their voices carry loads. I fold paper planes that will never know flight. They sit in a line, waiting for takeoff. My girls come to me & say THIS FIELD IS BORING. CAN WE GO BACK HOME NOW? When we reach the truck they say NO. OUR OTHER HOME.

VII.

My girls live with Aimee for the week & I am alone. At my field. A field of chairs. I sit in every one.

VIII.

It is early morning & no one yet exists. I am at my field, a field of heavenly things. Only my youngest visits with me. She plays the angel & wears five halos over her head & they do not fall out of place, even when she goes tumbling on elbows & knees. The halos are unlit & metallic-looking & I wish I could somehow reignite them with fire. I would use them for headlights & banish the night. My youngest adds a sixth halo & tells me not to worry because there’s no weight & that wearing them makes her head feel empty inside. She says EMPTY BUT IN A GOOD WAY. Then touches my face.

this story was originally published by mlp

The Lesser Known Siblings Girl Gang

rgay — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:39:51 -0400

Solange Knowles, Haylie Duff, Ashlee Simpson, Ali Lohan and most of the Baldwin brothers have formed a girl gang that admitted a few boys. The lesser Baldwins are proud to call themselves members though the girls remain skeptical. The sign on the door of their clubhouse just beneath the Hollywood sign reads “No Boys or Really Famous People Allowed.” In their Hollywood Hills hideout, the girls and the lesser Baldwins come up with secret handshakes (hold a latté in your left hand, a large handbag in your right, shake your hips twice, air kiss, air kiss) and elaborate plans for comebacks, endorsement opportunities, vengeance and recruitment. They flag colors. They have rules—serious rules—and consequences when those rules are broken. Nicky Hilton and Jamie Lynn Spears are being fiercely courted. Gang membership is serious business.

To join the club, initiates need to pass a test and the test is simple—release a juicy tidbit to the press about their better siblings—the more salacious the secret, the higher their position within the gang. The lesser Baldwins wormed their way in by letting it slip that Alec had unkind things to say about his daughter though they would never admit their indiscretion in mixed company. For Solange, it was by no means an accident that the paparazzi knew when and where her sister was married. All the gang members understand that gossip is power. They know where most of the dirty laundry hangs. It is a comfort.

Each member of the girl gang has her (or his) personal (public) demons. Ashlee spends most of her time sitting in her corner rocking back and forth like she’s davening with a rabbi, cursing the day she ever agreed to appear on Saturday Night Live. She is haunted, at night, by the memory of the awkward little jig she did as she exited stage left. Looking upward, looking for answers, she often grabs her hair, careful not to damage the extensions, and cries, “Why isn’t Papa Joe obsessed with my breasts? Why does my husband wear more makeup than me? Why wasn’t my nose job enough?” I’m the skinny one, she often reminds herself, when she’s feeling particularly low. Ashlee’s fellow gang members listen to her cries sympathetically but have little to offer in the way of comfort. They have their own crosses to bear.

Ali likes to comfort herself with reruns of Living Lohan and listening to her favorite tracks of her Christmas album though when she stares at herself in the mirror…when she takes a good hard look at herself, she’s forced to admit that the whole thing is awkward. Her mother is a bit much and she needs to do an Ashlee Simpson on her own nose if only her drug-addled father would sign the consent form and then there’s her sister everywhere Ali looks and always getting everyone’s attention. Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey. It makes her sick to her stomach.

Ali comforts herself with artificial skin pigmentation. There’s something soothing about the cool mist of toxic chemicals. When she’s being sprayed down, Ali exhales deeply and thinks, I am ever more beautiful. I have not yet peaked. Ali’s fellow gang members have devised a warning system. They worry. When her skin takes on the appearance of rotting aged leather after a particularly vigorous spray tan session, they stage mini-interventions reminding Ali to embrace her pale skin, to just say no. She knows they’re trying to help but she ignores their warnings. She believes in better living through bronzer. That’s the secret to living Lohan.

She always wanted to be one of destiny’s children, but much to Solange’s chagrin, such was not her fate. She stomps around the clubhouse in impossibly high heels and the hand-me-downs designed by her mother that her sister doesn’t want, occasionally glaring at her toddler and wishing that she had been given a chance to be a Survivor so she could pay her Bills, Bills, Bills. She keeps a notebook, and in it she writes, over and over, May the House of Dereon Burn. The more she writes these words, the more euphoric she feels and when she’s done, she often finds herself flush and sweaty. Feeling good, she runs through Destiny’s Child routines for her friends who enjoy the free entertainment and plots her seduction of her sister’s husband. He’s a man, she’s a woman, and she’s willing to do things her sister won’t. That is a comfort too.

Haylie knows she had a bright and glorious moment with her work in Material Girls. She carries the DVD wherever she goes because it comforts her and reminds her that she has a career. She is fabulous. She is. She is. Haylie tells her fellow gang members that she is different. She loves her sister. They’re BFFs. Her friends know she’s lying. She knows they know she’s lying. Once in a while, someone mistakes her for her sister until they take a second look—notice the longer face, the straighter line of the nose, a hint of wrinkle at the temples. To face their disappointment as they realize Haylie is the sort of next best thing eats at her like a cancer. There are days when it is more than she can bear. She’s the older sister. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. At their daily meetings when the gang congregates to commiserate, Haylie is known to lament, “Where is my Disney deal? I have fucking family values.” She’ll look plaintively at her friends, want them to nod in agreement, and they’ll do so because when you’re in a gang, you have each other’s backs.

Reality television. That is how the lesser Baldwin brothers console themselves. So long as reality television exists, they will be fine. As long as they have reality television, they won’t have to think about Alec and 30 Rock and his Teflon reputation that nearly cost them their membership in the gang because their news leak didn’t ruin him. The lesser Baldwins like to think of themselves as royalty—perhaps diminished in bloodline, but royal nonetheless. Daniel enjoys a solid working relationship with VH-1. For once, his addiction issues are a blessing, Daniel will say to anyone who will listen. Billy has to face every day knowing he made the movie Fair Game. He wears his shame nakedly and in doing so, spends much of his time mutely trying to muster the strength to make it from one moment to the next. Stephen has found God. He has found God and he loves God. He prays a lot, pacing the clubhouse clutching his designer bible. He has tasked himself with the gang’s salvation, has deemed himself their chaplain. The gang members mostly ignore him. They’re from Hollywood. They know there is no God.

On their good days, of which there are few, The Lesser-Known Siblings Girl Gang (that let in a few boys), will get dressed up in their best hand-me-downs and loiter in downtown Hollywood, just beyond the periphery of the hotspots their better known and more deeply loved siblings frequent. They’ll often be followed by one or two sad, frightening paparazzi, halfheartedly snapping away in the hopes that one of the better-known siblings might breach the awkward constellation of failure that follows the gang. On their good days, it is enough.

Next To The Gutter

Ethel Rohan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:56:40 -0400

He arrived home from school, and entered the house, into its dead feeling. The hall as usual littered with purple Post-Its that had lost their stick. The first of his mother’s notes read “EAT,” followed by a sprinkling of others darkened with arrowheads that pointed to the kitchen.

On the fridge, a new note read “Milk’s off. Don’t toss. I’ll use for my tea.” The note below it read “Turkey’s good. Not sure about chicken, your call.” On the stove the note in red marker read “Don’t touch.” He sat at the kitchen table, lining-up crackers and the jar of peanut-butter, and moving aside the note that read “After snack, homework.”

In the living room, the yellow Post-It on the TV screen read: “Don’t you dare.” In his bedroom, on his desk, she’d written on a ruled-sheet of yellow paper: “Check your homework twice.” On his DS: “Only if you’ve done everything else.” In the bathroom, on the toilet lid her faded scribbles read “Flush. Wash Hands.” Stuck to the front of the soap dish: “Count to 25 50. Slowly!”

On her bedroom door: “Stay Out.” His father had walked-out on his mother when she was pregnant, hadn’t even waited to see what she’d give him. Lately, she’d taken to calling the boy “The Man of the House.” Under his bedcovers, pinned to his flattened Paddington Bear that he’d had since he was a baby another new note read: “Time to toss this.”

He returned to his mother’s bedroom door, sniffing from between its cracks her face powder and spicy perfume, taking it in. At six o'clock, when he heard her car pulling into the driveway, he reached for the pile of Post-Its on the kitchen counter, choosing one from the orange stack.

When she stepped through the front door, he stood waiting, Paddington Bear clutched to his stomach. She stopped short. On the Post-It pressed to the boy’s forehead he’d written “Free–Please Take.” He pushed out past her, trembling, and took-up position on the street.

Empty

petercole — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:36:42 -0400

It rains all over them. Their hair and their clothes droop. Their bare feet touch the pavement. Droplets cling to their noses. They don't duck and run. These kids. Even their underwear is soaked. The place reeks. Manure and corn dogs and Tom Thumb Donuts. Wet belly buttons and Tiger Boy and diesel fuel and cows. Beer and the breath from Tiny Tina's nostrils. The one boy's hunched over, trying to light a cigarette and the other says man, that's the saddest thing I've ever seen. And the exchange student says, Ya! The other boy lugs a large stuffed Homer Simpson whose yellow bleeds onto his shoulder. Look at us, the girl says, we're so unkempt and sorry. We need mothering. The boys laugh, but the girl's mom said it to her all the time. She remembers her mom's bed in the dining room, under the chandelier and after she was gone, her dad sitting next to it, eating a tenderloin out of a white bag. I’m on empty, she says. I want something good. Also, that cigarette looks like a tampon. They’d spent all their money on the freaks and skee ball and pooled their tickets for the Homer Simpson. The other boy plops him onto the plastic cow outside Estel Hall and leaves him sitting there, slightly askew. The others look at him. What? he says. He was getting heavy. See that shows what kind of friend you are, the one boy says. He flicks the cigarette and wipes the rain from his face. A lousy fucking friend. Inside the Exhibit Hall the 4H-ers play Crazy Eights and Snap. They're sitting on their coolers full of pop and candy bars and sandwiches. They tip back their caps and laugh. Fans blow and the animals sprawl and blink and fart expansively. The girl says, I'm cold, let's go in there, but the boys don't listen, except the exchange student, who says Ya! She stands on tip toes, holding his cow-like head in her hands. Let's go in one of the shops and take something. You could get away with it, you're a foreigner. (They all want a dog. The one boy has a cat, but he wants a dog. The girl wants a dog you can carry in your purse and the other boy wants a real dog and he wants the dog to have balls. If they had a dog they wouldn’t be here, they’d be someplace better. With their dogs. The exchange student looks at their faces and nods. Dogs!)

Flushed Flung Fluttered

petercole — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:14:04 -0400

A Text Derived from James Joyce’s Ulysses, 1922

A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's cheek. He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent:

O, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME,
DRINKING WHISKY, BEER AND WINE!
ON CORONATION,
CORONATION DAY!
O, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME
ON CORONATION DAY!

He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:

GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE! WRITE DOWN ALL I SAID AND TELL TOM, DIEK AND HARRY I ROSE FROM THE DEAD. WHAT’S BRED IN THE BON CANNOT FAIL ME TO FLYAND OLIVET'S BREEZY ... GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE!

He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries. He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay. On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. THE MONSTER MAFFEI DESISTED AND FLUNG HIS VICTIM FROM HIM WITH AN OATH. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank. The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the coffin. Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery. That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was flung open. He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point. He flung the pages down. A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in all directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. She did get flushed in the wind. The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. On that mystery and not on the Madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro and microcosm, upon the void. A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin. A woman's hand flung forth a coin over the area railings. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows. And gold flushed more. All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (O!), all breathless. And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly. Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled. Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, face of the night, Si in Ned Lambert's, Dedalus house, sang 'TWAS RANK AND FAME. Great voice Richie Goulding said, a flush struggling in his pale, to Bloom soon old. And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and medium steers and roaring mares and polled calves and longwoods and storesheep and Cuffe's prime springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the various different varieties of highly distinguished swine and Angus heifers and polly bulllocks of immaculate pedigree together with prime premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is ever heard a trampling, cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling, grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of Thomond, from the M'Gillicuddy's reeks the inaccessible and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer's firkins and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun. In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of the etheric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of jivic rays from the crown of the head and face. The NEC and NON PLUS ULTRA of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into eternity for her sake. The soldier got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett's jaw. And just now at Edy's words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest rosebloom, crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish shyness that of a surety God's fair land of Ireland did not hold her equal. As for undies they were Gerty's chief care and who that knows the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet seventeen (though Gerty would never see seventeen again) can find it in his heart to blame her? Gerty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of Cissy saying an unladylike thing like that out loud she'd be ashamed of her life to say, flushing a deep rosy red, and Edy Boardman said she was sure the gentleman opposite heard what she said. She felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell, surging and flaming into her cheeks. He flung his wooden pen away. Come on, you doggone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! THE NAVVY, STAGGERING FORWARD, CLEAVES THE CROWD AND LURCHES TOWARDS THE TRAMSIDING ON THE FARTHER SIDE UNDER THE RAILWAY BRIDGE BLOOM APPEARS, FLUSHED, PANTING, CRAMMING BREAD AND CHOCOLATE INTO A SIDEPOCKET. (THEY RUSTLE, FLUTTER UPON HIS GARMENTS, ALIGHT, BRIGHT GIDDY FLECKS, SILVERY SEQUINS.) A DOOR ON THE RETURN LANDING IS FLUNG OPEN. (HATLESS, FLUSHED, COVERED WITH BURRS OF THISTLEDOWN AND GORSESPINE.) MRS DIGNAM, WIDOW WOMAN, HER SNUBNOSE AND CHEEKS FLUSHED WITH DEATHTALK, TEARS AND TUNNEY'S TAWNY SHERRY, HURRIES BY IN HER WEEDS, HER BONNET AWRY, ROUGING AND POWDERING HER CHEEKS, LIPS AND NOSE, A PEN CHIVVYING HER BROOD OF CYGNETS. PROFESSOR GOODWIN, IN A BOWKNOTTED PERIWIG, IN COURT DRESS, WEARING A STAINED INVERNESS CAPE, BENT IN TWO FROM INCREDIBLE AGE, TOTTERS ACROSS THE ROOM, HIS HANDS FLUTTERING. HE SITS TINILY ON THE PIANOSTOOL AND LIFTS AND BEATS HANDLESS STICKS OF ARMS ON THE KEYBOARD, NODDING WITH DAMSEL'S GRACE, HIS BOWKNOT BOBBING. THEY ARE IN GREY GAUZE WITH DARK BAT SLEEVES THAT FLUTTER IN THE LAND BREEZE. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the smallest bones about saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, the cause of many LIAISONS between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating in their musical and artistic CONVERSAZIONES during the festivities of the Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he happened to know, were on record in fact, without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have…I hate people who come at all hours answer the door you think its the vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old frostyface Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard street and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed with boiling old stew dont look at me professor I had to say Im a fright yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was impossible to be more respectful…I like letting myself down after in the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull the chain then to flush it nice cool pins and needles…