Saturday the 24th of July, 2010
Security.
Um, okay, so, when you open up my laptop you might see some — how do I put this — some disreputable folders sitting on my desktop. I want to, uh, I want to reassure you, and tell you, Kate, that you really don’t need to look into them. In fact, please don’t, because they contain plans for — um — for your birthday! Yes, many birthday plans, and presents, and yes I know it was only recently your birthday, but I am planning ahead.
So as I say, just please ignore the folders labelled “Porn”, “More Porn”, “Pornography”, “Hentai”, “Pr0n”, “Porno”, and “XXX”. I just used those names because I thought they might work as red herrings, to stop burglars looking in them. Because we… we don’t want any burglars to… to learn your birthday plans.
The file you are looking for will be in the folder marked “Kate’s Dad’s Funeral Arrangements”, which is in the folder “Shit That Isn’t Porn And Is Thus Stuff I Don’t Care About.”
Saturday the 24th of July, 2010
A Single Bound.
You talk to me every day. All of you. When you can hear the entire planet, every single word is part of a larger conversation. The coincidences are intriguing. When you were discussing curtains the other day, a man in India said “Yes Janice, that is a nice fabric.” And your name is Janice. Lots of you are named Janice.
It is distracting, all this chatter. I am fighting someone, and your sentences swarm around my head, hummingbirds that dip into my ears and whisper inconsequential things. Yes, I know you are ironing your husband’s slacks, but I am battling Raxcor, and some errands are more pressing than your pressing errands.
To escape it all, I fly faster than the speed of sound. I feel a few seconds of relief, of silence. And then I hear your voices just behind me, impossibly. The tortoise, catching up to the hare.
The next time you hear a sonic boom, think of me, trying to ignore you. Think of me, trying to get a moment’s peace.
Saturday the 24th of July, 2010
Never worn.
The thing is, Mrs. Wheeler, that that Hemingway dude you talked about had a whole lifetime to get good at telling little stories, and I’ve just had a few English classes. And I can’t come up with anything as short as you want, and the things I do come up with are just rip-offs of what he wrote, of that baby shoes thing.
And I got so stressed out about this assignment, and I could see everyone else being so relaxed, and I could see them doing okay without even trying. And I squeezed my eyes shut tight and probably looked like I was trying to push, but I was thinking really hard and it still didn’t work, I still couldn’t make up a tiny little story.
And when I opened my eyes, there was a smudge on the paper, where I’d sweated, where I’d scrunched my face up and concentrated so hard that my body grew hot, and my skin manufactured dew drops. And I breathed a sigh of relief, and you can disregard everything I’ve written here, because that wet spot on this page is the story, Mrs. Wheeler. My sweat is the story.
Archive.
I’ve been reading through your blog. I started with today, and kept hitting the “back” button, and found myself — hours later — at the twenty-second of December, 2001.
As I read all those pages (well, skimmed, but that’s reading, nowadays, isn’t it?) I wondered if I would discover something new about you. Some essential truth that could be distilled from nine years of links, nine years of quick notes on how your day went, nine years of “sorry it’s been so long, folks” posts that found an audience of none (because, hey, this is the internet, and nobody is reading anything. Nobody will read this.)
As I got farther and farther away from the present, I hoped that I was approaching some grand first post. Some manifesto at the beginning of your blog, some page-long screed declaring yourself, announcing the foundation of your online personhood. Instead, there was just this short entry:
“I wonder what the hell I’ll ever use this thing for.”
Nine years in, and you’re probably still wondering.
Side-show.
I saw the palm lady over the weekend. She invited me into her tent, and I broke my no-hastily-erected-outdoor-structures rule and went in because I was curious.
She looked at my hands and told me I was mean, and dishonest. She told me that I lied to people about how sick I was so I wouldn’t have to go to their parties. She told me that I was malicious, and destructive, and cruel. She told me that I was right to not believe in God, and also lucky, because if He were real there’d be a place in hell set aside for me.
I pulled my hands away, but she wasn’t even looking at them any more. Her eyes were rolled up, staring at her skull, and she was screaming at me now.
I ran away from the tent, from the carnival. I ran all the way home. I knew that everything she had said was true, and I knew that I could not change any of it.
But I could grab a knife. I could change my hands.
Weather report.
It is raining here. Like, really raining. Pouring it down, God-is-angry-at-us type, batten-down-the-hatches rain. I am using your umbrella.
I keep thinking about how water is supposed to be symbolic, supposed to be all about rebirth, and baptism, and change, and all I can think of, instead, is you drowning.
They say you can die in an inch of water. How many raindrops is that? Did you count them, as you left?
Party.
This is what we are going to do for your birthday. We are going to dress up as your friends, and we are going to act like everything is okay. We are going to talk to you about work, and we are going to excuse ourselves to go to the bathroom and we are going to fix our make-up and we are going to compare notes on you.
We are going to wheel out an ice statue of a swan, and we are going to get our flamethrowers, and we are going to melt her. And you will cry, probably, and we will tell you that it is fine, that she’s just an ugly duckling, really, and you will still cry, and your tears will mix with the water.
We are going to bake you a cake, and put a file inside, and you’ll laugh, and say “but I’m not in prison” and we’ll say “aren’t you?”
We will send you home with presents, and you will open them, and they will be just what you wanted and you will never think about them again. They will sit in the corner of your living room and to look at them will be to become reminded of the time your friends wore their faces badly, the time they murdered a wintry bird, the time they said that you were wearing handcuffs even though your arms felt free.
All of this is going to be a surprise. Please promise us that.
Test subject.
Laura was a college student, and was therefore in that perpetual condition of needing a little extra cash. When she saw an advertisement for a psychological study that would pay her three hundred dollars, she got excited by the possibility of being able to buy those textbooks the professors said were so important.
She was met by a small, thin man, with glasses and a ponytail, and a beard so fine he looked like he was exhaling cigarette smoke. He gestured for her to sit, and she made herself as comfortable as she could whilst simultaneously remaining wary of probes, or hidden cameras, or some kind of lie detector device.
The man asked her if her life was good, and she said it was. Then he asked her how it could be better. Laura told him that things would be great if she could be finished with her degree. He asked her how things could be better than even that, and she spoke of a house, and a partner — maybe some children.
He kept asking her how this hypothetical life could be improved, and she kept coming up with answers. She could have a fast car. She could win the lottery. She could run her own company. She could run a marathon. She could become President of the United States.
After many hours, and many questions, Laura was stumped. She couldn’t figure out how the life she was currently imagining could be any better. Then it occurred to her.
“I guess I could be God.”
The man nodded, and gave her a drink, mumbling something about how she must have been thirsty after such a long conversation. She took a sip, fell asleep.
When Laura woke, she was in a very large room, and snuggled into a plush, expansive bed. She glanced over at the body beside her, and then was startled by two children bursting through the door and jumping onto her. They shouted “Mom! You’re awake!” and smiled and laughed and were real. A man all in black peeked in through the door, smiled, and said “I’m sorry, Mrs. President, but they had security clearance.” He laughed, and went back to his station.
Laura peeled the children off herself. She thought back to the “psychological study” and tried to remember all the things that she’d spoken of, the things that were now — presumably — hers. Then she sighed, and the deserts shivered.
Thursday the 22nd of July, 2010
Family business.
There’s always this little kid down at the bowling alley, and whenever I see him he’s usually only four to five minutes away from grabbing his fourteen pound ball and slamming it into his head.
He’s actually a really good bowler, and he gets a lot of strikes, and he picks up a bunch of spares, and he seems to have a really powerful throw considering his age. But every now and then he misses, makes a gutter-ball, and he gets so mad, and he mashes his face with that damn ball, and then the next time it rolls down the lane it hits all the pins, every single one.
One time I followed him out of the alley. I wanted to tell him to calm down, to stop hurting himself, to have fun with the game. But I didn’t get to him in time, and I saw him climb into the car that comes to pick him up. I looked at his family, his mother and father and sister, and caught sight of their lumpy heads. Two of them were bleeding. The father laughed, and his teeth were like moon rocks.
As the car pulled away, I read their bumper sticker. It said “live the dream.”
