Saturday, November 29, 2008

Contradict me.

I’m in love with contradiction. Most people fight their internal and external contradictions, trying to make every single thing mesh into a linear world view.
Bullshit!
Contradiction is a tricky bastard, sometimes masquerading as juxtaposition; combat boots paired with prom dresses, but I know better. I know that drinking Dom Perignon with McDonald’s Chicken nuggets doesn’t make you edgy or cool; it just makes you the kind of person who would waste good booze on bad food. But, Jamie didn’t get it, and the fact that he never would is the prime example of a contradiction, one of my very own. I should have hated him, but instead I fell in love. This is the story of the two loves of my life so far; contradiction and Jamie Seltz. Pay attention. This story is easy but it has some twists.
For one thing, I’m in love with Jamie, but I’ve never found him attractive. In fact, I’ve only ever been attracted to the fairer sex, my own gender. “But wait,” you cry, “isn’t physical attraction one of the main tenets of falling in love? Mustn’t you feel sparks fly every time your eyes meet across a crowded room? Isn’t the horizontal mamba, or at least a gentle kiss, the main way two or more people find out that they are attracted to one another?”
‘Yes,” I answer you but then hesitate…”and no.”

I met Jamie at the tender age of 13. I’d just started to figure out my attraction to girls, and he was already well out and proud, with PFLAG parents and grand plans for a gay straight alliance at our suburban junior high.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

if raptors had won

She scrubs her scythe, wiping the curve with the practiced strokes of a seasoned harvester. The sky opens up above her like an infection and around her, the other harvesters collect their baskets and begin the trek back towards the camp. She hooks the crescent blade behind her weathered shoulders and lets the cracking of her bones run through her appendages. Lowering a taloned digit, she scoops up her own wicker carrying basket and closes her eyes as the lusty perfume of the tiny hearts within swirl through her nostrils. 

Shirtcocker Pantscannon:Adventurer

Shirtcocker Pantscannon was master of all he saw. He tamed the waves of the ocean in his ship The Minnie Pearl. He took on the gods in the sky in his hot air balloon, The Washerwoman's Skivvies (because the colorful silk of the balloon resembled nothing so much as the drying line of an adventurous harlot, who would never deign to do her own washing.) He'd taken on all the highways and byways of the land in his RV, Sal. Shirtcocker,or Cocky, as he's known to his friends and ladyfriends, was restless after spending too many weeks at home with his wife, instead of out doing his job: adventurer. He sat one day staring blankly at his wife as she went on about home improvements she wanted him to make on his respite. Suddenly he shook himself out of the stupor and slapped his knee, "Ms. Pantscannon, I know what needs improving around here, US!. I'm off to find the mythical pr0n st@r!"
With that he grabbed his dashing hat, walked out, and revved up Sal. Ms. Pantscannon listened as Sal roared all the way down the rutted road, shrugged, and poured herself a strong vodka tonic. Then she went down the the basement home office and read Harry Potter fanfiction for the rest of the night on the internet. God, how she loved the internet.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

June 19th was a Tuesday

The ineffectual heater switches on with a soft click and mild boom. Static wind noise fills empty spaces and you drift to sleep to white noise comfort, cuddling deeper into the the blankets. But as sleep claims you, you can't stop sinking into the bed. Deeper and deeper you go into the old twin mattress. You wake to find yourself having fallen all the way through to the other side. You wipe the sleep crumbles from your eyes and took a look around the far side of the mattress. It turns out that when you sink through the mattress, instead of being a shag carpet strewn about with dustbunnies and miscellany, the underside of your bed is actually out of doors. Above you is the sky, not the box springs and frame, and it is night. All around are stars and blackness. You pick one of the stars up. It was falling so near that you only had to stretch ou t your hand. You grasp firmly as you bring it to your chest. Damn, but this light is heavy.

The Kuuqee Ku

Side note, this was a nightmare that I wrote down with the intention of making into a short story.
I won't get that far.

I realize now that I am every character in this anthology of short horror fiction. And at the end of each story the death that claims me comes in the form of a small mannish figure that seems to be made out of dark lacquered wood. He has no face or genitalia. His head is a smooth polished ball of wood. Atop the ball-head there is almost-hair which has the texture of cornsilk. His torso is rounded and barrel-like. In one polished stick arm he carries a poison dart (though he has no hands), so he does not have to get close to me and so my death is quick and silent. Each time he shows it is the dart that does me in finally. No matter how the story begins it is the Kuuqee Ku and the dart that finishes. When he appears I hear whispering all about, as though a creepy auditorium has just dimmed the lights before the show. This time before the dart hits me I have time to think, "Why am I so convinced the Kuuqee Ku is a man?" I wake again and almost immediately the Kuuqee Ku reappears, now there is not even time to play out the story. The most important part is just my death.