They're Only Words

You never should have read her journal. That was a bad idea. But, then, you never would have known how bad an idea it was until you had done it, right? I mean, you wouldn’t know the things you know now. The things that make it seem like a bad idea. And are these things best left unknown? Now that you know them, you wish you didn’t. But they were there. Those feelings and thoughts. And if they were important enough to write down, you can be sure that the topic would’ve come up eventually.

But did you need to know this? What can you do with this information? Besides torture yourself over it. If she were here you could confront her, and yes, you’d have to deal with explaining why you read her journal, but at least you could get her to put the whole thing into context. Maybe clarify why she wrote this about you. Instead she is in Florida and you are here in New York with these words in her journal.

Words. Just a grouping of words. That’s all they are. And you can read them and feel however you want about them. Because they don’t have the author’s voice to give them life. Make them dance. If she had told you this in a conversation you wouldn’t dwell on it like you are now. No. These thoughts have been preserved on paper and can be looked at over and over again, and whatever you feel at the time will give them new meaning.

Bullshit. There is only one meaning to this group of words. They are pretty simple and plain. You are the least attractive of the men [she’s] dated. Yep. That pretty much sums it up. Don’t know what other context you could put it in. Those are her words. And she felt so strongly about that thought she was compelled to write it down. In her journal. Which you are reading.

Perhaps there are a few more nuggets of information for you to stumble across. You flip through the journal to see if there is any mention of your lovemaking skills or lack thereof. As you scan the pages you reflect on the men [she’s] dated. Because you have been compared to them specifically. You are not the least attractive man on the planet, at least. Just of the men [she’s] dated.

You’ve only seen these men in pictures. But none of them were drop dead gorgeous. Pretty average. You’ve been friends with enough women that you can tell the type of men most find attractive. You know a good-looking guy when you see one. And these guys didn’t pass muster as far as you were concerned. In fact you had labored under the delusion that you had the upper hand in that category compared to these dregs. Now your world has been shattered. Your whole self-image has been called into question. That’s what makes the phrase so devastating.

Sure you’ve never been told you were handsome and most of the women you’ve dated have claimed it was your personality that won them over rather than your looks, but you’ve never been called out like this. To be labeled the least attractive of a group of men. A group of men you can’t see as being the cream of the crop, no less.

You want to call every woman you know and have them look through her photo album. The photo album you just pulled from the bookshelf. The one of all her ex-boyfriends. Why does she have a photo album of ex-boyfriends? You never questioned it before. Thought it was sweet. The kind of thing girls do. You still keep some pictures of your exes laying around. Now you know that she keeps this photo album to remind herself that she once dated men more attractive than you.

But are they? You’ve dated women who are more attractive than her. You don’t feel the need to write it down in a journal, but you have. If you called up these women, if they would talk to you, you’re sure they wouldn’t find these guys so stunning. They’d probably agree that you weren’t the least attractive of the bunch.

Why did she have to write that down? Never mind that you were snooping through her things while she’s away on business. You had found the journal, a simple 9 1/2 x 6 1/2 Mead notebook with a green cover, while looking for an itinerary she had printed out before she left and forgot to take with her. She had called for an email address that was listed on the itinerary she’d forgotten and while you were searching through the pile of papers in her desk in an effort to retrieve it for her, you stumbled upon this notebook.

It didn’t even grab your attention immediately. You flipped through it during your search and saw the dated entries and a few personal-sounding notes. You felt guilty immediately and put it back where you found it. You had no intention of actually going back and reading it.

Until you started thinking about her co-worker Devin. The one she mentioned going on morning beach jogs with all week. The hippy hunchback. Sorry, Postural Kyphosis. She always corrected you on that. He was still a hippy. You got to thinking about all the times she mentioned Devin, and how fond she was of him as a person. You thought he was a nice enough guy too. The couple of times you’d met him. The first time you met he’d just gotten back from doing some Habitat for Humanity work. You had a friend who had done a few years work with that organization so you had some common ground. Your girlfriend had mentioned how much she liked people who built things and "worked with their hands". He was an amateur carpenter and she just loved that about him.

As you thought about their morning jogs together in Florida, you started to get a little jealous. So you had a beer and watched television. Then another. And several more. After finishing the six-pack in the fridge you decided to read her journal. You had not stopped thinking about the two of them. Together. She and this Birkenstocked Quasimodo. In Florida. If they were spending their mornings together, why not their nights? Funny how your mind wanders when you’re drunk and there’s nothing good on TV.

Perhaps you should check the television again. Maybe something half decent is on now. Something to take your mind off your least attractiveness. You should probably get some sleep too. Tomorrow’s another day, right? You flip through the notebook again and notice a page that has been torn out. You wonder what she may have written that she felt she needed to tear it out. Was it about you? Was this the entry about your lovemaking? You never should have read her journal...

The Unflappable Pepe Longstocking

Another iMix. And an attempt at learning basic HTML:

The Unflappable Pepe Longstocking

Spite

He was going to delete her from his Friendster account. That’d show her! If they couldn’t be friends they certainly wouldn’t be friendsters. Then he’d remove her email from his address books. He had several email accounts so he’d have to check them all. Hotmail. Yahoo! Earthlink. Could he remember all the mail accounts he’d set up?

He was on the subway car and wanted it to move faster. He needed to get home so he could begin the deletion of her information. He’d expunge any trace of her. They’d had their final fight. He’d gone to her apartment in an effort to sort things out, but ended up standing in the hallway banging threateningly on her door. She wouldn’t let him in. As he knocked he could hear her moving around inside. Then she text messaged him on his cell phone.

"Go Away," the message read. "Don’t Ever Come Back. Never Ever."

He had knocked harder.

"Just open the goddamn door and talk to me like a fucking human being!" he yelled. It was no use. She didn’t want to see him. Never Ever.

The argument had started over a text message earlier that day. She had sent a message wondering why he hadn’t sent her flowers. She’d sprained her foot after all and couldn’t leave the apartment. The message went on to say how many of her other friends had offered their sympathy. Where was his? it asked.

He called her back and got her voicemail.

"Hey," he said. "Sorry I didn’t call or anything. I’ve been busy with work. I figured you were alright, since it’s just a sprain. No big deal really."

Several minutes later he got another text message.

"IT’S A PRETTY BIG DEAL FOR ME AND MY FAMILY. I CAN’T F-ING MOVE!"

And that’s what made him snap.

She had called him at work a few days prior, telling him how she had tripped and broken her ankle the night before and could he help her to the hospital. He asked where her brother was and she explained that he was at work and wouldn’t be home until nine or ten that night. He figured if her brother wasn’t too concerned he shouldn’t be either, but she sounded like she was in a lot of pain. He left work and hopped on a Brooklyn-bound R train.

When he got to her apartment he realized that she lived across the street from the hospital. Literally ACROSS THE FUCKING STREET! She could have hobbled downstairs and asked somebody walking by to help her across the two lanes of traffic, but instead she had called him and he’d left his job in Manhattan to come help her cross the street. He felt like a sucker.

After a few hours in the waiting room, waiting while she got her X-rays, he discovered that a) it was only a sprain b) she’d sprained her foot by kicking the wall of a building after an argument on the phone with her boyfriend in Rochester. The big news was that she had a boyfriend in Rochester. Now he felt like a sucker twice over.

He helped her cross the street again then told her he needed to get back to work. When he got to work he text messaged that he felt like a sucker and they’d talk in more depth when she felt better. She responded with: "You shouldn’t feel like a sucker. You should feel like the great friend that you are." This didn’t make him feel any less like a sucker.

Four days had passed before she texted about the lack of flowers. He couldn’t believe she was feeling this sorry for herself. And trying to lay a guilt trip on him at the same time. You crazy psycho bitch, he thought.

He remembered the summer before, when they both lived in New Orleans. One night he got jumped by four guys and beaten to a pulp. His face had swollen to Elephant Man proportions. He had called her the night it happened for some sympathy but just got her answering machine. He called a few more times over the next three weeks but to no avail. After a month she finally contacted him and said she’d been busy with school. By then the wounds had healed and the beating was just a story he told in bars.

And now she expected commiseration for a sprained foot?!

He had snapped after the text message about her sprain being a big deal for she and her family, the use of all caps suggesting that it was indeed a big deal for them and should probably be a big deal for him as well. He immediately called her back and screamed into her answering machine to "pick up the goddamn phone!"

"I am not going to conduct this argument in text messages!" he yelled into the machine. "Now stop being a cunt and fucking talk to me! You selfish little girl. I can’t believe you. I’m just...well if you’re not going to answer the phone I have nothing to say to you."

That’s when he hopped on the subway and went to her apartment to try and talk to her. Probably not his best idea. She wasn’t going to let him in, this he was sure of. Luckily for him an elderly neighbor of hers was leaving the building as he approached. The old man held the door for him and smiled. He thanked him and ran up to her floor.

Now he was on the train, returning from that fruitless journey. His only option was to delete her. He started by clearing her entry on his cell phone. He saved her text messages as evidence of her dementia.

When he finally got home he logged onto friendster.com, only to discover that she had deleted him first. That fucking bitch! How dare she steal his idea! He thought about waiting a month for the smoke to clear, adding her again, so he’d have the pleasure of deleting her from his list himself. His only recourse was to dress her down in an email. He let her have it too. A meticulous chronicling of everything bitchy she’d ever done. He let her know how petty she was and how grateful he was to lose her as friend. And when he sent the email he erased her address from his email accounts.

As the weeks passed, he continued to check his Junk Mail folders to see if she had responded to his harangue. Alas, there were no messages from her. He thought about resending the message, but eventually gave up and hoped she’d at least read it and felt bad about herself for a few hours. That’s all he could ask for really.

Raising Cain

Mr. Larsen, my fourth grade Little League coach, told me I was evil one afternoon after practice. I was waiting for my mother to pick me up. He was waiting with me in the parking lot, loading the team’s equipment into the back of his van. A flock of birds had gathered by the snack bar, feasting on whatever hot dog remnants and spilled Red Hots they could find, and I had just pitched a rock at them to make them scatter. My coach looked at me with trepidation and I smiled back sheepishly.

"You frighten me Dave," he said without a hint of sarcasm. I thought it might have been a joke but the look in his eyes displayed genuine fear. He reached for a bag of baseballs that were near my feet, careful not to accidentally touch me. "There’s something not right about you."

I tried laughing it off, but the more I looked at him for a sign that he was pulling one over on me, the more creeped-out he was by my presence. He shook his head and added somberly: "I think you’re evil."

I thought about the birds by the snack bar and wondered if I had unwittingly injured one of the poor guys. I hadn’t intended to harm the flock of birds, it was just an adolescent impulse. But the way he carried himself made me think this wasn’t an aimless observation. He had thought about this for a long time.

Mr. Larsen went to the same church as my family. He and my father, in fact, volunteered as ushers every Sunday, while Kevin Larsen and I served as altar boys, sneaking sips of wine from the stash of bottles in the sacristy before Mass. My father and Mr. Larsen had both coached our baseball and soccer teams growing up and the Larsen family lived in the next neighborhood over. There always seemed to be a friendly competition between Mr. Larsen and my father. Our families were alike in many ways except that the Larsen kids all went to Catholic school while my father’s brood attended public school. This made the Larsens more religious than us and was surely a thorn in my old man’s side. He was very proud of being a Catholic, a feeling not necessarily shared by the rest of the family. He had wanted my brother and sister and I to go to Catholic school but thanks to my mother’s malignant memories of the nuns and her own Catholic schooling we were saved from this fate. And now to add insult to injury my father would have to deal with the knowledge that he had raised a son borne of malice and villainy.

When my mother pulled into the parking lot, she and Mr. Larsen exchanged pleasantries, but I could sense he felt sorry for her, having to raise this demon child. She was Rosemary and I was her baby. I quietly climbed into the car and didn’t speak during the ride home. As we drove, I reflected on my entire life. I had spent my years up to that point serving on the side of Good. I didn’t think I had ever done anything to warrant such an observation, but to be perfectly honest I did suddenly feel a lot cooler.

Instead of being the kid who couldn’t hit a single ball and cried uncontrollably every time he struck out, I was now one of the wicked, possessed of the power to invoke fear in our elders. My life had been a ruse, an unconscious ploy to hide my true nature.

When I got home that evening I locked myself in the bathroom and stripped naked. I was looking for the mark of the beast which must be hidden somewhere on my body. I have a small red birthmark behind my left ear and while it wasn’t the 666 configuration I had anticipated I decreed that it must be my infernal stamp of approval.

While this devil business was new to me I now had a degree of confidence that I’d never had before. I have always been an athletic joke, a bumbling klutz incapable of performing even the most minor physical activity without looking like a complete ass. This is my lot in life and I’ve learned to accept my limitations. But for a child in America, having an aversion to athletics for whatever reason, is like walking into a den of wolves with several rare steaks strapped to your face. You’re just asking for a tough time. And that is why I cried every time I struck out, which was every time I went up to bat.

But now that I was in league with Satan, it didn’t bother me as much. Perhaps I could harness the powers of darkness that surged inside me and use them to hit a home run, or at the very least to be able to catch a pop fly. I would show everyone that I wasn’t an incompetent fool to be laughed at. And those that continued their taunting would find their family home besieged by a plague of locusts. The possibilities were endless!

Unfortunately I had no knowledge of how to use my talents. I would have to bone up on incantations and spells if I was to become a real practitioner of the Black Arts. That was a lot of work for a ten year old. And finding that sort of information in 1984, long before the advent of the Internet, was a daunting task. Alas, my date with Mephistopheles would have to wait.

That night, after watching The Twilight Zone with my family, I ran up to bed before anyone else. I waited in the darkness at the top of the stairs for my mother and brother and sister to come up to bed. As they all trudged up the stairs, my siblings whining to stay up just one more hour, I readied myself. I knew they couldn’t see me hiding in the darkness and when my mother reached for the light switch I had to suppress a giggle. When the light flicked on I screamed at the top of my lungs and lunged forward like a zombie. The three of them shrieked and bumped into each other. My little brother began to cry and clung to my mother’s arm. She yelled and swatted at me with her free hand as I made a mad dash for my room and jumped into bed. Yes, I was evil. And it felt oh so good.

The Power of Christ Compels You

A recent Gallup Poll found that three quarters of Americans have offered their prayers to the victims of the tsunami that hit southern Asia. 70 percent of those polled think that the United States is doing enough to help in the disaster relief. When asked if they had individually donated supplies or goods 43 percent said they had given it no thought. In an effort to understand these figures we’ve conducted our own interview with Joseph Mayfield, AutoCAD teacher at Henson Vocational School in Lubbock, TX, devout Christian, and self-proclaimed “most ‘American’ American in the whole damn country”.

Us: Hello Mr. Mayfield, how are you today?

Mayfield: I feel like a bucket of pounded assholes.

Us: Why is that?

Mayfield: Oh we had a late Christmas party at the office last night and I tied one on so to speak.

Us: Yikes. Hope you feel better.

Mayfield: Well, I’m headed on over to the IHOP, so I’m hoping that’ll do the trick. It’s weird how only a greasy plate of bacon and ‘cakes seems to cure a hangover.

Us: Or a nice shot of heroin.

Mayfield: What?

Us: Nevermind. Have you been following the news lately?

Mayfield: I watch the 11’oclock. That way I get the scores of all the games for the day.

Us: Have you heard about this tsunami business?

Mayfield: Yeah. Sucks don’t it? My prayers go out to all our boys over there helping them out.

Us: What about the actual victims of the tsunami?

Mayfield: The will of God.

Us: God did this?

Mayfield: Who else can cause that?

Us: Um... okay...But why?

Mayfield: "Because they have hated instruction, and received not the fear of the Lord." Proverbs.

Us: What about all the Americans that died? Certainly some of them were Christians and had received the fear of the Lord.

Mayfield: They shouldn’t a been over there to begin with. Just goes to show, right? Wrong place, wrong time.

Us: That’s rather brutal.

Mayfield: You know as well as I that Thailand’s biggest export is child pornography, so those people that went over there were obviously trying to sleep with children... and God smote ‘em.

Us: Well... I don’t, um...Do you feel that the U.S. is doing all it can to help out with the disaster relief?

Mayfield: Hell yeah. $350 million oughta be enough. And that’s coming outta W’s own pocket ya know. Good man. Good Christian man.

Us: That money’s not coming from...

Mayfield: AND we sent the military over there too. While we have a democracy to build over in Iraq. I’d say we’re spreading ourselves rather thin with our kindness, don’t you?

Us: Have you made any personal contributions to the relief effort?

Mayfield: No I have not. But, as I said before, I pray for them.

Us: Would you consider yourself generous person?

Mayfield: If by generous you mean Christian, yes...yes I do.

Us: How much do you contribute annually in prayer?

Mayfield: You don’t measure that stuff and I don’t much like you making a joke of this.

Us: No, you’re right. I was just wondering if there were prayer write-offs you may know about. Like if you pray for a non-Christian and he dies and goes to Hell, do you get that prayer back at the end of the year? Perhaps you’d like to see the current administration work out a bill for something like that? I know I would.

Mayfield: What are you jabbering about?

Us: Look, people that contribute money for aid around the world can use those contributions as a tax write-off and get that money back at the end of the year. Now you can’t spare any money, so instead you send them your prayers. You should be entitled to the same compensation as those other folks, and I say you get your prayers back!

Mayfield: I don’t have time for this. I’m hanging up.

Us: One last question.

Mayfield: Hurry it up.

Us: Do you feel that this disaster is worse, better, or on par with the events of 9/11 and would you like to have it shoved in your face repeatedly every Christmas for the next four years?

Mayfield: I can’t be bothered like this. There’s a game on. (Hangs up)

Us: Our thoughts exactly.

The Resolution Will Be Televised

He had given up on making New Years resolutions. The optimism they instilled in him never lasted more than a few weeks. And lately his outlook on life had been less than sanguine. What good would another list of unachievable goals do? They'd just be a list of failures to look back on next year. Perhaps he should make more reasonable goals. He would vow to smoke more, drink more, eat more, spend more money on things he didn't need, accrue an insurmountable debt, and leave at least ten projects "unfinished".

No, that sort of list would serve only to depress him. And he needed no extra help in that area. He thought about all the things he wanted to do with his life, about all he wanted to accomplish, and that's when it came to him.

This would be the year of his disappearance.

Not a permanent disappearance, mind you, he was far too cowardly to take his own life. Instead, he would simply fade from sight. Drop out. Leave the daily grind and shackles behind and become a nameless nomad.

This seemed attainable.

And so he began to pool his resources and plan for this particular "project". He saw months of travel around the globe, working now and then in foreign countries to pay his way. He wouldn't need much. Just some start-up cash to begin his journey, and a few contacts along the way. He would drastically simplify his life in the coming months and set off mid-year. Perhaps, if things worked out, his current projects could help foot the bill.

"Ah yes," he thought, "a resolution I can live with." And he wrote it down in his journal in bright red ink. This was the year he would see the world. This was the year he would simplify his life. This was the year he would disappear...

Tobias and the Wreck of '82

When Tobias saw my cousin Jessica, it was love at first sight. We immediately began devising a plan that would lead her to fall in love with him. My aunt, uncle and cousins were only in town for a day and would be leaving later that evening, so our time was precious. Luckily I had just finished building my go-cart and had yet to take it on a test drive.

Tobias Caton was my best friend for the first thirteen years of my life. He lived next door and was a year older than me. He was my mentor and partner-in-crime, a fountain of knowledge about funny-cars, world-events, congenital diseases, and sex. I was in awe of him. To a boy of seven, an eight year old is a man-of-the-world.

Tobias had taught himself to read at an early age and knew how to properly pronounce polysyllabic words that most people would not encounter outside of standardized tests. We would spend hours reading his older step-brother’s copies of National Lampoon, rolling with laughter at jokes we didn’t comprehend. We listened to my mother’s George Carlin records and memorized every bit. When I got my first tape recorder we began re-enacting these monologues along with our own flatulence-inspired comedy scenes.

We had a love for dogs and one summer we took it upon ourselves to become the neighborhood “dog patrol”, whose responsibility it was to return stray dogs to their rightful owners. We didn’t come across many stray dogs. Instead, we would coax a dog off its property, walk it around the block in our “paddywagon” (an old RadioFlyer wagon with “Dog Patrol” painted on the side, like some bad Little Rascals contraption), and then bring it back to the owner with an elaborate tale of how we had found it wandering several neighborhoods over, famished and dazed, and how we had nursed it back to health on the walk home. We explained that we weren’t after a reward, though we wouldn’t turn one down, we were just doing our civic duty.

We were also amateur stuntmen, tooling around on our Huffy bikes performing feats of derring-do. When my father would burn leaves in late October, we would set up a makeshift ramp, made with a two-by-four and a cinder block, and jump the flames like dilettante Evel Knievels. Once, after Tobias had returned from a drag racing show with his family, we decided to outfit my bike with a parachute brake, fashioned out of several Glad trash bags. I sped my bike down the hill as fast as I could pedal. Tobias waited at the foot of the hill to greet me. When I got within 20 feet of him I threw the chute out, which ripped free of the twine that fastened it to the seat of my bike and blew away. I stomped on the pedals to slow my momentum, but it was too late and the bike and I plowed into Tobias, the three of us skidding into a tangled mess of limbs, handle bars, and snapped bike chain pieces.

Another of our endeavors was our “fire department”. Tobias’ father was a volunteer firefighter and we were determined to follow in his footsteps. We watched episodes of Emergency! every week, and would sit listening to a scanner that his father had gotten him as a Christmas present one year. We learned the codes for different situations and imagined we were answering the calls. We eagerly waited until there was a call in our direct vicinity, so we could hop on our bikes and go help out. We only went to one scene: a car accident several blocks away. That effectively turned me off from pursuing a career in the rescue field. From where we sat, watching on our bikes, we could see a man’s body sprawled on the hood of his car, limp and bloodied, and the hole in the windshield which he had apparently flown through. Tobias was intrigued and began reading gory EMT manuals and books on first aid. I, on the other hand, went back to rehashing George Carlin routines on my tape recorder.

Tobias and I would spend summer nights camping out in a ratty, orange pup tent in his parents’ back yard. We would sometimes camp in my yard, but his was more preferable because his house had an outdoor electrical outlet. We would run an extension cord from the outlet to our tent so we could hook up his clock radio/cassette player. We’d spend the night listening to Air Supply, dreamily fantasizing about the girls we had crushes on, and talk about our plans to marry them by summer’s end.

If any word could be used to describe Tobias in those days it was “lovelorn”. Alas, Tobias was slightly overweight. In fact, he wasn’t overweight at all he was just built large. But children have no concept of varying body types, so he inevitably became the token “fat kid”. And this hindered his wooing of the ladies.

Not that either of us did much wooing. To this day I don’t woo very well and have the gumption to leave that stuff to the masters. But Tobias was a bit more adventuresome than I, and would often confront the object of his affection, only to find his love unrequited.

But Tobias’ spirits were never dampened by these obstacles, and we continued to imagine ourselves as the pre-pubescent Casanovas we knew we were. When I would finally get up the nerve to speak to a girl I adored, he would help me look up her phone number so we could make prank calls to her house. Somehow we believed that calling a girl and pretending to be a cut-rate burial service was a surefire way to win her heart.

One day my mother’s sister came to visit with her husband and three daughters. Tobias and I had been in the woods behind his house putting the finishing touches on a go-cart we were building. It was simply three pieces of wood, with the tires from our “fire engine” nailed to the corners. We were about to take it on its maiden voyage when we learned of my cousins’ arrival.

Tobias accompanied me to my house to greet them and when he laid eyes on my older cousin Jessica, a stunning nine-year-old beauty, he was smitten. We decided to use the test run of our go-cart as a way to swindle Jessica into falling head over heels for him. Exploiting our respective talents (Tobias’ knowledge of rescue techniques and first aid and my being completely accident-prone) we set out.

The plan was brilliant in its simplicity: I would make my go-cart’s first run down the hill, as my family watched, captivated. At the end of the run I would hit a bump in the ground and flip the cart over on top of me, becoming trapped under it, and fake unconsciousness. Tobias would rush to my rescue, pull my body from the wreckage before it had a chance to blow up (we knew from television that anything that crashed inevitably blew up, regardless of the fact that the go-cart had no motor), and bring me back from the brink of death. After saving the life of her cousin, how could Jessica NOT fall in love with Tobias.

We told my sister and cousins about the test run then set about making the preparations. To our extreme joy it had started to drizzle. A wet road would make the crash even more believable! Tobias picked a flower from his mother’s flowerbed to give Jessica after he had saved me and put it in the pocket of his rain slicker.

We gathered everyone at the top of the hill. They were all completely disinterested in this endeavor, but since the cake that the girls were making in my sister’s Easy Bake toy oven still had awhile to cook they decided to watch. Tobias briefed them on the dangers inherent in a mission of this magnitude and I boarded the go-cart.

Tobias made the countdown then pushed me down the hill. For such a shoddily built vehicle it was picking up speed rather quickly. The wheels wobbled on their masonry nail axles and the wind ripped through my hair. The designated crash spot rapidly approached. I tried to figure out how I should maneuver myself for the impact of the crash so I would sustain only minor injuries. Should I fall on my right or left side? As I was contemplating this one of the front tires broke free and spun off onto the side of the road. The wooden running board of the go-cart dug into the street and ground to a halt. My body was thrust forward and I had flashes of the man who flew through his windshield. I curled my body and took the brunt of the impact with my right shoulder. I tumbled down the street a few feet, my hair filling with pebbles and dirt, then rolled over on my back and waited for Tobias to come running.

Minutes passed and no one came. My neck was sore, but I lifted my head to look up the street. I saw Tobias slowly ambling down towards me, his face glum. There was no one at the top of the hill watching. No one yelling for my rescue. When Tobias got closer I noticed he was about to cry.

“They went back inside,” he said as he approached.

“Why?” I said.

“It’s raining.”

It had indeed begun to rain harder, the drops washing the blood from my scraped elbows.

“So what?” I said. “I could’ve died!”

Tobias was fumbling with the flower he had picked earlier. I watched as he twirled it between his fingers.

“I guess you won’t need that now,” I said.

“I already gave it to her,” he said. “She gave it back.” He began to cry. Apparently Tobias had prematurely given her the flower after pushing me down the hill. Jessica was taken aback, refused the flower, and the girls retreated into my parents’ house.

We gathered up what was left of the go-cart and wheeled it back up the hill for repairs. I tried to comfort Tobias and think of new ways we could interest my cousin. He said to just leave it and move on.

Tobias and I drifted apart over the years, he becoming more involved with the volunteer fire department and me focusing my energies on making videos and comic books with other friends. One afternoon in ninth grade I was filming an action short with my brother in the woods behind Tobias’ house. I noticed a tattered old rain slicker in a pile of leaves at the base of our old tree fort. It was the slicker Tobias was wearing the day of the test drive. It sounds completely unbelievable, I know, but I swear I reached into the pocket and found the dried-up dead flower he had picked for my cousin so many years before.

New Years Mix

So I'm always making mixes for people, even if they don't necessarily want them. I always feel obliged to inflict my musical tastes on friends and loved ones, and they politely smile and say thanks and then probably dispose of it in the nearest trash receptacle. Now I've found a way around the embarassing moment of handing an innocent person an unsolicited collection of songs I've culled from my all-too-huge collection of CDs. Thanks to the beauty of iTunes i can publish said mix and folks can check it out at their will, download just the songs they like (if any) and not feel the need to repay my "generosity" with a mix of their own. Will this be a recurring endeavor? Most likely.

New Year's Mix 2005

neurotic

How much does a relationship change after you've had sex? How much should it change? I feel you should be more comfortable around a person you've had the pleasure of copulating with. However, this is very seldom the case. Often I find myself bombarded internally with questions of doubt. I am more insecure AFTER I possess the grail than I am during my quest for it. Was that just a weak moment for her? Can we do it again, or will she tell me it was a mistake that never should have happened? Should I become more involved? Call more often? Feign interest in her life? What is the most diplomatic way to ensure that we sleep together again, without appearing to be after "only one thing"? Essentially, after I have sex with someone, my days become one long, grueling brainstorming session, in which I pour over the details of that particular encounter in search of ways to recreate the experiment and still get the same results. My brain swims with flow charts and schematics as I construct and play out various hypothetical scenarios in my head. And if worse comes to worse can we avoid the post-coital awkwardness of having to avoid one another like the plague and slip seamlessly into our pre-congress state of innocuous flirting and missed innuendos? Damn this carnal knowledge!