A bit of the bubbly

Here's a fun picture from last week’s Literary Death Match in San Francisco. If you’ve never gone to one, definitely check these events out. They do them all over the world. Readings are sometimes really boring so it’s always an amazing experience to participate in ones that has vitality. Plus, it was a pleasure to share the stage with Michelle Tea, who is one of my favorites.


The whole show can be heard at KFOG’s website:
http://www.kfog.com/Community/TakePart.aspx

It’s sort of hard to tell, but I’m shaking a bottle of champagne all over the stage (and seconds later dumped it on my head). The photo shows a couple unhappy faces in the “inadvertent splash zone” … sorry about that.

While I’m certainly not above ludicrous public acts, this one actually had to do with the plot of the piece I read. The story “Family” is at the bottom of this post, should you want to read its entirety. Context is our friend.

Also, many thanks to those of you who voted on my author photo contest. “Contemplative Cowboy” was the winner! I loved reading all the comments people posted – many hilarious observations, insights, and general debasements about the “looks”.

Family

I ask myself questions. I do this thing where I go to payphones and leave messages on my answering machine. I call my apartment and ask obscure questions, questions that I know the answers to because I’ve taken the time to find things out. I call myself and say, “What’s a hexahydrate? What are teals? What’s a taurocholic acid?” and then when I go home, returning from another ruined day, there will be a pinprick of joy as I open the door and leave the lights off and press play on the answering machine and hear the sad timbre of my voice, testing me, and I’ll stand there in the dark and say, “It’s a chemical compound with six molecules of water. They’re small, short-necked dabblers from the genus Anas. It’s a deliquescent acid found in the bile of certain carnivores.”

Between these questions, though, I have to entertain myself. I’ve been watching eighteen, nineteen hours of TV a day, which it turns out is a good thing because it’s where I see it: where I see baseball players celebrating, pouring champagne over one another’s heads, guzzling the stuff, spanking the asses of every teammate within an arm’s length. I’m no baseball fan, didn’t even know the World Series was happening right now. I mean, how am I supposed to worship millionaires with low IQs who adjust their cocks and spit brown piles of tobacco in the grass that look like smashed tarantulas?

But right now I’m in awe of their ecstasy. Their huge smiles. The way they speak in tongues. The whirling way they move through the locker room, hugging and frolicking and howling, “We won. World champs, baby!” There is no other emotion in that room besides joy: the aching problems that exist in these men’s lives are temporarily asphyxiated—the drug addictions and infidelities and steroids and depression and the nights they beat their wives while wearing championship rings—the celebration silences these realities.

I need a celebration more than these arrogant millionaires. They never worry about finding the money to make child support payments. They don’t know what it’s like to miss your wife and daughter so much that you call them every night, but your wife doesn’t want to take your calls and tells you not to call and says stop calling. She says she needs to go on, and if you loved her, you’d help. You’d help by letting go. You’d help by getting help for your problem. You say, “Can I talk to her?” and she says, “No,” and you say, “Why?” and she says, “You know why!”

So I hop in the car and drive to Safeway, and while I’m in transit, I tune in the post-game radio coverage from the World Series. A man is being presented with an award. He’s the Most Valuable Player. He says, “These guys are my family. What can you do without your family?” and his grace makes me cry, his grace makes me angry, and I park the car, it’s about ten at night, the store still has customers, mostly bachelors, buying razors and toilet paper and pasta, no vegetables in any of their sad baskets, and I walk toward the wine aisle, and there’s an employee stocking merlot, and I say, “I’m going to need a case of champagne.”

We talk about prices, quality. He keeps staring at my eyes, and I wipe them, but he keeps staring, and I look away, but every time I look back he’s still staring so I say, “What?” and he asks, “Are you crying?” and I say, “Whales cry. Do you have a problem with whales?”

He says he needs to get the case of champagne from the storeroom.
I stand there, and even though I’m not on a payphone, I pretend to call myself. I whisper, “What’s a hegari?” and let another bachelor walk by while he ogles the varieties of domestic beer. Then I say, “It’s a Sudanese grain sorghum.” The employee is back with my champagne and I thank him and walk away, need to check-out, and there’s a young girl behind the counter. She looks at me and frowns. I swipe my credit card and wonder when I’ll reach my limit. But I’m okay tonight.

Drive home and carry the case of champagne in my house and I’ve stopped crying, and I turn off all the lights, but leave the TV on, the baseball players are done with their soiree, probably showering, shaving, gelling their hair, sporting platinum jewelry and suits made from Italian silk, before they begin new celebrations with their wives and daughters. The television station replays the highlights from the game, and every time the Most Valuable Player is on the screen I remember his words: “What can you do without your family?”

Now I’m sitting naked on the couch. Now I shake the first bottle of bubbly, jostle it with all my might and fear and regret, and I launch its cork across the room, watch French foam ooze from of the tip. I empty the first bottle on my head, saying, “World champs, baby! We won! We won!” and I empty the next and scream, “What can you do without your family?” and empty another and whisper, “What can you do without your family?” and I won’t stop until I’ve drained every last one of them.

Read a new short story

My friend Aubrey Rhodes is a kick ass painter. She's already made a collage picture for the cover of my next book, "Termite Parade." (The picture is on the left here, for those of you with closed head injuries).

Recently, she and I collaborated on a project investigating inspiration, in which I wrote a short story based on a painting of hers, and she made a painting based on a short story of mine. It was a total blast. I loved seeing how our imaginations worked with one another, finding a germ of an idea in someone else's artwork and somehow making it your own iteration, an interpretation, a tribute, a new direction, some amalgam of all these things.

The painting of hers that I used for my inspiration is piece is called "In the Face of It All " and might be the most despondent clown EVER!

The story is printed here in its entirety and is called "Wite-out". Pop me a note about it; I'd be curious to hear thoughts/responses, not only about the story, but also the idea of how art informs art...

"Wite-out"

It was an inside joke. It was cute. It was theirs. “You’re my clown,” she’d say. This was when they’d be in the bathroom both doing facial masks, cream smeared on their faces. “I’m your clown,” he’d say and do clumsy pirouettes or pretend to twist balloon animals in midair, his face completely concealed. It was their cute inside joke. It was cute. It was…

And then it wasn’t cute and he wasn’t her clown and she was fucking pissed to be driving over to his new apartment to slam on the door, knowing he wouldn’t answer, god forbid he made one aspect of this whole debacle easy. She rang the doorbell. She yelled, “Jack!” and heard the slow shuffle of his feet on linoleum and the door opening.

“Are you drinking?” she said. “Jesus, Jack, you promised to sign today.”

He was in his official bathrobe. It used to be stark white with light blue happy clouds on it. But he’d smoked in it for three years, barely taking the thing off, cigarette ash dropping all over it and patterning its sky with storm clouds. “Did I say that?”

“Do you have a pen?”

“Maybe.”

“I need to get to work,” she said. “Some of us have jobs.”

“I used to have a job. I was your clown, remember?”

She held the papers out to him. “Just sign these so I can file them.”

He shuffled back across the linoleum holding the papers. He picked up his whiskey. He hadn’t actually gone to sleep yet from the night before. He didn’t know what time it was, but thought it about eight, since she usually aimed to be at the office at 8:45. He’d been up all night stewing over the state of his life. Drinking and pacing around the living room. Drinking and pacing and knowing she was coming with the divorce papers today. The papers he didn’t want to sign. The papers he didn’t see how he could sign.

“I’ll be back in a jiffy,” he called to her and made his way across the kitchen, turned a corner over toward a messy desk.

She couldn’t see him and she checked her watch and shook her head that he was drinking in the morning and what was she thinking marrying him in the first place? Why did she fall in love with every man who needed a little mothering?

“I’m already late,” she yelled.

“Just finding a pen. I know there’s one around here somewhere,” he said, but he knew right where a pen was and could have cared less. A pen wasn’t what he was looking for. A pen was the farthest thing from his mind because there was another item on the forefront. An item he’d already pulled out and laid dead center of the table. Wite-out.

He looked at the papers. Antagonistic words. Ruthless. Every syllable another representation of his failure. He couldn’t have these words existing anymore, and he took the lid off the Wite-out, dumping it all over his palm and rubbing his hands together, and like a child finger-painting, he smeared it all over the pages he was supposed to sign until there wasn’t a word left.

Then he picked them up and blew on them.

“Hurry up,” she said.

“I’m almost there.”

“I’m going to be late.”

“Just one more second.”

He finished his whiskey and he set the papers down to dry and again he picked up the Wite-Out and again he doused his hands, only this time he smeared his cheeks in it, his forehead, his chin, turning his whole face white and he picked the papers up again and said, “Do you remember when I was your clown?” and she said, “Jack, don’t,” and he shuffled back toward the door—she couldn’t see him yet—and he said, “I remember being your clown and you loved me and what went wrong?” and he was crying now and she said, “I’m not having this conversation again,” and he turned into the kitchen and screamed, “See, I’m still your clown!” and she said, “What are you doing?” and he held the papers out to her, smiling an exaggerated circus-smile and saying, “I’m still the man you fell in love with!” and he held the papers out to her, and as she saw what he’d done, that he’d erased everything from the pages, she started crying, too, he’d ruined another seemingly simple task, and she said, “Why?” and he said, “Why?” and she said, “Why?” and he said, “Why?” and they stood there asking the same question, a different question, until she left again.

Video from Rumpus Reading

I read last night at the Rumpus' monthly series; it was at San Francisco's Makeout Room and the night was a total blast. Not only did Steve Almond, Katie Crouch, and Skip Horack all give solid readings, there were the musical stylings of DJ Real (his hit single "Let me rub my moustache on your shoulder" should be climbing the musical charts any day now) and also a yo-yo master (okay, in the name of full disclosure I missed the yo-yo guy because I was hungry and ran across the street for a slice of pizza but I did hear from some reliable sources that the yo-yo master was indeed a yo-yo master.).

Anyway, I recently turned my 2nd novel "Termite Parade" into my publisher and have spent my "downtime" working on some shorter pieces. The next novel will be released in June 2010.

The vid is of a new short story, entitled "Family."

Curly Red Stories Interview and Short-short

This amazing woman Niya runs a great literature site called curlyredstories. She publishes a new e-zine every month. We did an interview, and I also wrote a new short-short. Who can resist a story about a rogue cater-waiter?

Other Voices

I was super sad when Gina F and the gang decided to pull the plug on Other Voices magazine, though I wish them nothing but continued success with their book imprint. OV was one of the first lit mags to publish my work; check out one of my early stories, Blemishes.