The Cogs and Wheels Turn So I Respire

This is completely unedited, and i wanted to put something on here. because it makes me feel better. SOMEONE, READ THIS NOW. it's a little punchline story. Have fun.




            Kara and Gina had known each other since they were sixteen when they attended catholic school together. In those days they would spend most of their time together scouting out boys on the playing fields just as the college sports teams were doing. They would spend full weekends partying with college freshmen, and admiring their favorite pop stars.

            That was twenty years ago now and the girls rarely saw each other these days. Kara married at twenty three to a tan and muscular baseball player who has twice been called to play at the major levels. Gina married at twenty five to a journalist whose most trouble is holding a job. He now works for a free local newspaper for, what anyone who needs a living wage would call, quarters.

            In the first years of their marriages, the two women would make time for each other by going to restaurants with their husbands in tow like the tote bags that hung from their arms. Their husbands got along as much as they needed to, they most definitely were not the best of friends, but they did what they had to to keep their wives happy.

            Today, each Kara and Gina had recently turned thirty six within the past four months and were excited to see the other. The last time they met was when they were both thirty one and met in this same coffee shop before a long afternoon of shopping. The shop was lit softly with coffee colored couches and mocha colored tables. As Kara arrived she hugged her best friend and sat across from her on the couch where Gina held out a coffee for her.

            “Thank you,” Kara began. “So have you been?”

            “I’ve been better, I can tell you that. But it could be worse.”

            “Why worse?”

            “Don’t worry about it,” said Gina. “Just marriage stuff, you know.” Kara nodded her head in agreement. “So how have you been?”

            “Great. Gerry might be getting called back up since LaMonte broke his hip in center field the other night.”

            “Great! Well, kinda. LaMont’s a good fielder, or at least Kevin says so.”

            “How his Kevin?”

            “Who knows really we’ve separated.” Gina reaches for her coffee, takes a sip and rests it on her lap gripping the cup in both hands.

            “Jesus, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”

            “I don’t know. It’s just tough right now, you know.”

            “So how come, what happened?”

            “I don’t know,” Gina says. “It’s so easy at first, you exchange rings and the whole thing makes sense and it keeps it new. Nothing really changes except my name and the forms at tax time but it keeps it fresh. You spend five years with someone and marriage just keeps it exciting. Then it got boring, and it wasn’t just me. It was his idea.”

            “What did he say?”

            “Pretty much all that, and that he wants kids and maybe I wasn’t the right woman to marry if I wanted kids, then he said, and I’m quoting him Fuck, we barely even have sex anymore can you believe that? I make three times what he makes and when I get home I am tired, and really just don’t find sex all that appealing anymore. I’m thirty five plus one, is that normal?”

            “Thirty five plus one? Are you that afraid of being thirty six?” Kara laughs.

            “Come on, tell me this dusty-without-use sex drive of mine is normal. It is right?”

            “I don’t know. But it seems that way.”

            “What do you mean, seems that way?”

            “I mean, when I drop Jeremy off at school, I talk to the mothers, and they don’t seem to give any either.”           

            “So you and Gerry are still having sex pretty often?”

            “Yeah, I guess so.”

            “Because you want him to keep interested, or because he threatens you’ll lose him without it?”

            “Threaten me? No honey. God no. I jump him.”

            “Every time?”

            “Four out of five.”

            Gina’s jaw drops and looks as surprised as she did the first time Kara confided that she jumped on her high school boyfriend Marc Walsh.

            “So what’s the secret, how the Christ do women our age keep it going, and don’t you say,” Gina stops and lowers her voice to a whisper, “bumsex.”

            “What? No. Absolutely not.”

            “Then explain.”

            “Fine. Me and Gerry met in a psychology course in college, which I’m sure I’ve told you. Our teacher explained to us one day that a statistic said that if a newlywed couple put in a penny into a jar for every time they had sex in the first two years—“

            “You’d have a lot of fucking pennies.”

            “Let me finish,” says Kara. “If you do the penny in the jar thing for every time you have sex in the first two years, you’re going to have a lot of fucking pennies. Then after two years, if you take a penny out of the jar every time you have sex, the jar will never be empty for the rest of the married couples entire life together.”

            There’s a short silence interrupted by Gina saying, “That’s it, you’re trying to beat a statistic?”

            “No, we decided to do it with dollar bills. On our first anniversary I sent Gerry to the ATM before we had sex. Now we still have sex about six or seven times a week.”

            “I just don’t get it,” declares Gina in her defeat.

            Kara reaches into her red leather jacket. Gina is waiting for some handbook called The Idiots Guide to Fucking Your Husband or something, or maybe some newspaper clipping about making a clone of yourself to satisfy your partner for you. Instead, she pulls out a pack of Marlboro Menthol Smoothes. “Well, this week I needed a pack of cigarettes.”

He stands up from the wooden front porch steps in his faded blue jeans and boots. The wind combs through the trees tugging them this way and that way. The man's hair falls to one side at which time he slides his hands on top of his head and pushes the hair forward again. The screen door pushes open with a short squeal. He turns to the woman and says, "Smells like rain."
           "Smells like rain?" 
           "Yeah. Haven't you ever smelled rain before?"
           "Maybe, I don't know," she answers. Her hairs falls straight between her shoulder blades. She smiles at the very sight of the man. "How do you know the smell of rain?" 
          The man looks down at her on the couch reading her home delivered magazine. "It's just one of those things," he says. "You smell it all your life after which it normally rains. After a while you recognize the patterns. It's easy." 
          Something in his wording reminds her of something in her past. She thinks about a man she met before the one who stands before her. Then she thinks about a man she met during her time with him. The man turns back to the door and hunches forward to see through the screen door. "Look now, you hear that," he speaks. "Porch looks wet. See, just a pattern."

            Everything is fade in fade out. Not a lot keeps me awake, and not a lot makes me want to stay awake. I think God saw how often I was in bed and decided it may as well be a hospital bed. Fade in: Nurse replenishing morphine, Fade out. Fade in: Doctor hovering over me, Fade out. Fade in: recasting my arms and legs and spreading ointment. Fade to black. 

            Dreams have become uncanny. Supernatural. Extraterrestrial. Normally nightmares and ghouls and what-have-you don’t make me flinch. Lately, they become more fucked up and work up a sweat. I try all in my power to sit up, it just doesn’t happen. I’m helpless; hopeless. Fucked.

            Fade to black.

            A hallway. Me at one end, Laura at the other. Laura looks disappointed. I need to reach her. In dreams, broken (and maybe useless) legs work. Arms flail. Mouth opens. I can run. I need to run.

            I reach world record speeds down this hall. But with eat foot I cover, I’m the same distance from my love. The walls are cement blocks. The lights hang overhead in flying saucers. I stop in my tracks. Laura is still waiting. I look at her. I turn around.

            From my chest comes my mortality. It’s a toxic black cloud that phases through my chest. The two of us in a stand off, the cloud widens and lengthens. It tries to wrap me in a cocoon.

            I run.

            Step by step, I am no closer to Laura and no farther from my death.

            I am torn. Limb by limb. First my right arm, then my left.

            I continue to run. I run faster. I sweat. My heart is about to blast off into the atmosphere.

            Legs are ripped away.

            I fall chest to the floor and watch a disappointed Laura walk away from view.

            LAURA! LAURA! I scream. The cloud wraps its cocoon around my waist like a blanket and tucks me in for the night inching up and up.

            It is the plague.

            It is the end.

            It is inside me.

            Fade to black.

            My real eyes open and out of natural reaction I try my hardest to shoot up out of my bed and wind up in a lot of pain. All the rhythmic bleeps of machinery are speeding or playing techno, the medical staff pours in to hold me down.

            “He’s in shock,” I hear one of them yell followed by a series of yells and commands in a language only discernable by medical staff.

            This is shock. I close my eyes.

            Imagine you’re on a plane, I tell myself. The stewardess is in front of the plane. “This is shock” she explains. “Shock is normal at ten thousand feet.” Look around you, everyone in you know is on the plane. It’s a sunny day so the aircraft is naturally illuminated. You can look out to see clouds below you. You can look up to see the heavens. Look down to see the grids of beautiful cities you have never been to. The stewardess continues, “The exits are in the front and rear of the plane. In case of an emergency,” she says something after this, but you don’t hear it. You found you would just rather find the exit yourself.

            You do just this.

            On the exit door is a four by four window, you look out to see only black. The stars, the moon, the night. The same gridded cities below you, the same weather, the same heavens above. “Where are you going?” The stewardess asks you. She snuck up behind you, even startled you a little. “Sir,” she repeats, “where are you going?”

            And you answer—“nowhere.”

            My legs tighten and release as I open my eyes. The doctors and nurses stand around with perplexed faces. Their amazement was more than enough to catch my attention. I was calm.

            “Did you see that,” asked the blonde nurse to my right. “Doctor, did you see that?”

            “Yes,” answered the beer bellied man in the white coat to my left.

            “What?” asked a third voice. It may as well have been mine.

            “His feet,” the nurse explained, “it stretched, and then released.”

            “He’s not paralyzed then,” that third voice asked again. I swear if my mouth could open it would be my voice asking.

            “Sir,” the doctor addresses me, “if you had asked me a week ago if you would be able to walk again, I would have told you only if Jesus walks in to this hospital. Now, I’ve seen a lot of patients go in this hospital, so I’m thinking I was wrong,” he says. “Let’s congratulate this man.”

            The surrounding casts of characters begin applauding and I would have smiled. Instead I blinked repeatedly to thank them. I was taking deep breaths. I felt like the great conquerors. I felt like an inventor. I felt like I changed the world. I felt like the underdog winning the World Series in the 10^th inning of game seven. I had achieved top honors at every award ceremony I could think of. I was the first man in a full body cast to win the Pulitzer. The crowd seemed disappointed I accepted the award without a speech.

The next morning a nurse entered my room and nudged me awake. I stared up at her and she asked me my name. I did nothing but raise my eyebrows at her.

            “I have an idea,” she said. “I’m going to ask you the letters, blink once for no, two for yes. Do you understand?”

            I blink twice.

            “Excellent.”

            She asks each letter of my name. She starts with the question, consonant? And if I say no—A? E? I? O? U? And similar arrangement for letters except she begins with the most common of letters, S and T, L, R, N, pretty much the letters they give the contestants automatically on the final round of wheel of fortune.

            “Alexander Rogers?”

            I blink twice.

            “I’ll try to contact your family.”

            I shut my eyes and reopen them as if to say, thank you, or give a sigh of relief.

this 1000 words is particularly ridiculous. but i don't care that nothing happens, it's about the writing. I hope if you read this you atleast find it amusing.



            I feel like if some crazy Die Hard style terrorist were to come in guns-a-blazing in the hospital, I would be safer than all the other fuckers in here. The terrorist might see some sad sack vegetable and if I’m a sleep when he shows up he might think I’m in a coma. Yippee Kay Aye Motherfucker. So that’s a plus. This afternoon I get a visitor. No one I know, because no one knows who I am, but apparently I’m top of the list of Time Magazine’s People Who Could Possibly Die At Any Minute right after The Rolling Stones and Bob Barker. I still think I should have edged out Barker, he’s a tough old fuck. I mean come on, who could even pretend to be that happy for that many years. I think the reason he gets the slot above mine is because he’s bound to snap and off his life partner and then turn the gun on himself. Is that too harsh? Well this is: Just before he pulls the trigger of the gun against his temple he says, The Price is Right, FUCKERS! Which isn’t funny. Not even a little. Barker is an icon. But he’s probably going to kill everyone he comes in contact with.

            So the visitor. She’s about a hundred and nineteen and dresses in sweet old lady sweaters like grandma used to wear (before Bob Barker murdered her). She comes in and reads the paper out loud so anyone in the room can have something to entertain them.

            The unfortunate truth—and this is the heartbreaker—is that if I wanted to listen to post-menstrual woman with obvious severe social issues talk about current events, I would put on the ‘08 Election.

            Obama vs. Grandma: SHOWDOWN.

            Wrestlemania would have been twice or three times as entertaining.

            The crazy old bitch sits in of the pink padded seats by the bed. I’ve been demanding a TV since I got here. No one knows it yet though.

            “Hey sweetie, I’m Barbara Torrence”

            The best thing that I could do for someone with the last name Torrence is send them and their family to a hotel for the winter.

            “I’ve come to read you the paper. Since you’re all banged up they thought it would be nice to have someone talk to you.”

            She’s babying me. I don’t like it, but I can’t exactly get up and go Hulk-Style out of these of casts. If I could though, bitch would get shanked for sure. Misses Torrence (REDRUM!) starts reading the paper and I try my hardest to shit myself. Girls, a word of advice, if you’re ever on a bad date and need a way out, shit yourself. Unfortunately for me, while I have no control over those functions, I also can’t do the push out. It just falls out of me as it wishes.

            Life’s tough.

            Bitch starts talking, and I start thinking of ways I could make myself go deaf in the next five seconds without moving. I came up with nothing. But I would pay any doctor here five hundred dollars to make me go deaf.

            I think sometimes I feel like doctors have magical voodoo powers that can just as easily make me sick as they can heal me.

            A lifetime and a half goes by and Grandma stops with the paper. And because of her I believe in euthanasia.

            But of course.

            She doesn’t stop there.

            She starts talking about nothing. “You know, you look like my grandson. You’re a cute kid. He just started playing baseball in the minor leagues.”

            Then she starts answering the questions of no one. She even leaves silences between these answers like she’s giving me time to ask a question for her to answer.

            “No, he’s a center fielder actually. He hasn’t pitched since college.”

            Another pitiful silence is open to the floor.

            “His mother said he trains for like four hours a day, two if it’s a game day.”

            Pitiful silence.

            “Get out of here! You were number fourteen in high school! He was number fourteen in college”

            Get out of here. I would kill myself now if I could.

            “GET OUT OF HERE!” It does seem like one of us is having a great conversation with the other.

            Remember that terrorist attack. I’m praying for it now. At least give me a postal Bob Barker.

            A nurse enters the room with the push of a door, then I swear grandma gave her the same look a teenage girl would give her father when he walks in and catches her throat deep in her boyfriend—or her boyfriend deep in her throat. I’m not trying to gross anyone out, I’m just saying—it was that kind of look.

            “Misses Torrence, I think that’s enough for today,” the nurse tells her.

            I wonder if she saw the screaming in my eyes. I probably looked like the father who caught the girl and boy and the teenage oral sex. You understand.

            I also wonder if I’m being tortured.

            Do doctors hate suicidal people?

            I noticed they haven’t tried to find a new way to take my name. They’re either awful people, or evil geniuses—in which case I believe they’re still classified under awful people, along with the Rolling Stones, Hair Metal Fans and anyone who opposes Spiderman.

            If speaking came easy with a jaw wired shut, I would ask, “WHY ARE YOU TORTURING ME!!! GIVE ME HELP!”

            At the same time, if I tried to kill myself in any other way that would land me in this kind of hospital, I’d be strapped to the bed, so what’s the difference.

            I can answer that.

            The tremendous agony that not even morphene will numb!!! My head feels like it just gave birth, my arms feel they’re trying to balance anvils on their elbows at forty feet in the air, and my legs just feel like they don’t exist. Which admittedly isn’t the worst thing, except that I’m scared they’re not coming back.

            I could only imagine would staggering home drunk at 2AM is like in a wheelchair.

            When can I eat solid foods again, my mouth is dry?

            When will I see a familiar face?

            If I’m here who will write REDRUM on the walls of Misses Torrence’s house.

            Actually, I don’t think I’m worried about that one. She seems fucking crazy on her own.

            I pray for that Die Hard style terrorist attack. I would even lobby for it.

            Hmm, there’s a thought: imagine if a bunch of people gathered at the Vatican and lobbied for their prayers to be answered.

            I could use a whiskey.

            I stumble toward my home and then pass it. My blood is warm and I sweat to the point that someone may casually ask if I fell in a well or if it was raining earlier. I’d tell them a well. I find myself in front of the last pay phone I can locate on God’s green earth. It’s become greener with all these nature freaks out there. This includes the pope who says if we drive our chemical emitting cars that we’re apt to burn in hell. Woops.

            A couple quarters are shoved in the coin slot and they thunk against the pay phones metal intestines.

            A droning, juse-woke-up voice speaks to me. “Hello.”

            The man on this end forgets how to answer simple pleasantries. “Laura, when can I see you?”

            “Never. I told you I never want to see you again. What did you misunderstand?”

            “Come on, this long and I don’t get a fucking talk at least.”

            “At least? We were past talking a year ago. You don’t listen. Leave me alone.”

            I slam the phone on the metal hook and felt like a man. Like this means I won something. If anything I just hurt myself more. It’s like letting a wound bleed because that way it will heal faster. Backwards thinking is sort of my intuition. In hell I think I’ll still find a way to hurt the environment.

            Let me recognize the street where I stand. It’s a small piece of a highway. A highway I start traveling on foot. It’s loud it’s noisy and deadlier than most. I’ll run like a drunken madman across this stretch of road and meet with my second win-win of the day. I either wake up in the hospital and then Laura has to come see me or I die in which case I don’t give a shit. A fine lifestyle in my hands.

            Up here, two lanes change to three. All the cars moving upward of fifty miles per hour in a single direction. I step on to the curve. Have I ever been more drunk? The answer is likely yes.

            I am suicidal.

            Oddly I crave Japanese food.

            Why won’t Laura just talk to me?

            I accelerate. My path forms a ninety degree dissection of the highway.

            Do they have Japanese in the hospital?

            I hope the nurses are good looking.

            I hope hot nurses ignore erections during sponge baths.

            I close my eyes and keep moving.

            Shit! I hope my dick still works after all this. Imagine I wake up in the hospital and the doctor walks in and says, “I’m glad to see you’re awake. Tough break though, we had to amputate you’re dick. You’ll be discharged within the hour. Happy trails.” He would speak all smug and check his comb-over and then just skip down the hall out of my room. The nurses better be gorgeous.

            As the car that punts me like a ragdoll into the air---punts me into the air, I’m knocked unconscious. Like instant coffee there’s instant knock-out. The thing that I forgot—and it was important. This is an overpass. The one overpass in all of America without those shiny confining fences, you know, every fourth of July there are thirty American flags to reassure you where we are. Well, not on this overpass. I get tossed over the short guard rail and on to the highway below. I’m definitely going to lose a dick. But I don’t know that—I’m unconscious.

            The last thing I see before going into the air and being completely knocked out of myself, is the screeching halt of a red Honda. The young woman behind the wheel’s eyes gaze as wide as the sun probably thinking, “FUCK, MY INSURANCE WILL GO UP ANOTHER GRAND! WHY!?” Then after this whole thing I bet she hit the tuner on the radio and went on her merry way.

            I wake up alone in the hospital to all those beeps that I hope for my sake are not a smoke alarm. My thirty pound headache, the one I talked about before, has grown the size of that obesely obese guy you see now and again on the Enquirer always with the caption beneath him starting with, “WORLDS FATEST MAN…” That’s my headache.

            The room is dark, it must be night. I wonder where I am. I wonder what happened to my pants. My new attire is what I might put over my clothes to cook a meal—maybe have a barbecue. I would definitely like to be wearing pants though.

            It’s tough to think, but morphine does help. This headache would be three fattest men without it.

            The door opens. The light switch is flicked.

            OW FUCKING OW! It was almost noon when I died, it’s night time now. What makes you think that the light wouldn’t hurt me? Come in with a small lighter, or kerosene torch. Perhaps a flashlight. Fuck!

            Oh, and a side note. This nurse was not looking like a porno star. If she was a naughty nurse it was thirty years ago and 200 pounds ago.

            “Mr. Doe,” she giggles, “I know it’s not your name.”

            Real jokester.

            “We can’t find any identification on you so it’s very tough to contact your family.”

            I try to open my mouth and give her my name.

            I try really fucking hard.

            Remember that guy who got pinned against that rock and cut off his own arm? It was that level of hard-core effort I put into speaking.

            “Unfortunately,” she mentions, “your jaw had to be wired shut.”

            No Japanese food.

            “Also—and this really is the heartbreaker--” I couldn’t believe anyone in the field of medicine would set up any spit of bad news like that.

            Also—and this is the heartbreaker—you’re son is dead.

            Also—and this is the heartbreaker—you’ll never walk again.

            Also—and this is the heartbreaker—we had to amputate your penis.

            So let’s step back and listen to the uggo (because she’s ugly).

            “Also—and this really is the heartbreaker—you’re arms are broken, so I’m afraid you won’t be able to write anything for a while.”

            The good news is we let your keep your penis—it’s broken but you can keep it. Actually nurse, it always looked like that.

            “So in the full weight of you walking out onto that highway like you crazy kids sometimes do,” I hate the belittling, “you broke your legs, your arms—ooh, one in seven places, you get first prize—your jaw, which is why we wired it shut for you, and cracked your skull a little.”

            Phew. I thought I might be seriously hurt.

            “Sir, in all honesty, you should be dead. Oh yes, we also aren’t sure if you’re going to be able to walk again in this lifetime.”

            And the arms were the heartbreaker?

            “Good day now.”

            I don’t know what I did to piss of that bitch of a nurse, but the heartbreaker is—I can’t talk or contact anyone even those who are physically around me. I’m bedridden and no can know I’m here. I’ve been calling out of work so they’re going to think I’ve up and quit, my landlord will likely empty what’s left of my stuff—I wonder how that fire went—and Laura will just think I gave up. I guess I should have given up.

            I wish I’d died.

            I complain too much.

            I wonder if any parts of me aren’t in a cast.

            I think I just peed. Did I just pee?

EXT. LANDING SITE -- MOMENTS LATER

BILL DERRINGER sees from a distance the fireman still trying to put out the fire. New fireman come as others leave.

INT. School -- LATER

The BELL rings and JOHN is in the school halls with DEREK.

Derek

Could you see it from your window?

JOHN OBRIEN

Just smoke.

DEREK

Kyle says he watched it all.

JOHN OBRIEN

That's bullshit, he lives farther away than I do.

DEREK

That's what I said. You ready for gym?

JOHN OBRIEN

Fuck gym.

CUT TO:

JOHN and DEREK in gym class. The kids are standing around. MR. ROSE enters wheeling in a TV.

MR. ROSE

Sorry I'm late. I was hoping to get here on time to tell you not to bother getting dressed for today's class.

He turns on the NEWS coverage of the strange events.

NEWS REPORTER

(ON TELEVISION)

The fire has been going on since late last night.

JOHN OBRIEN

Why are we watching this?

DEREK

Shhh.

NEWS REPORTER

We have been told they have the fire under controll, but they just can't seem to get it out. Let's go to our man in the chopper--

John Obrien

Why are we watching this? It's in our back yard.

DEREK

Shut up. Shut up.

Helicopter Reporter

(ON TELEVISION)

Seems like no one in the town knows what it is just yet--

EXT. LANDING SITE -- CONTINUOUS

The fire continues to burn. There's still a crowd. BILL, CHUCK and GREENSBORO are at the site.

POLICEMAN GREENSBORO

Shouldn't you guys be at work?

BILL DERRINGER

Called out.

CHUCK HAYWOOD

Quit.

The FIREMEN stop their hoses and start packing up. POLICEMAN 2 WHISPERS something to GREENSBORO.

BILL DERRINGER

What's going on, why are they stopping?

POLICEMAN GREENSBORO

Still ablaze after twelve hours, let it burn.

BILL DERRINGER

What?

POLICEMAN GREENSBORO

Orders came from City Hall. We're wasting a lot of money and water being here.

BILL DERRINGER

What?

The crowd is yelling.

POLICEMAN GREENSBORO

I bet they'll monitor the whole thing and make sure it doesn't hurt anyone. I'm sorry guys, I don't know anything else.

INT. SCHOOL -- CONTINUOUS

In GYM class the TV is still on and JOHN, DEREK, and the class are crowded around watching.

NEWS REPORTER

(ON TELEVISION)

We've just gotten word that at two o'clock, about forty five minutes from now the mayor will give a statement.

INT. OBRIEN HOUSE -- EVENING

THE DERRINGERS are sitting down for dinner. They fill their plates.

MRS. OBRIEN

Would either of you like to say grace?

JOHN and MOSES are silent.

MRS. OBRIEN (CONT'D)

Fine. I'll say it. Thank you Lord, for all the gifts you've blessed us with, among them this food we are about to recieve. AMEN.

john obrien

Mom, how come we say grace but don't go to church?

MRS. OBRIEN

Because I don't believe that anyone should tell you how to have faith in God.

JOHN OBRIEN

Aren't you just doing that to us?

MRS. OBRIEN

You're thirteen. Someday you'll shape you're own form of how you want to believe in the higher powers.

Moses obrien

What if we say we don't believe in higher powers? 

MRS. OBRIEN

Moses, you have even more learning to do than Johnathon before you make decisions about higher powers.

MOSES OBRIEN

I think there's a God.

JOHN OBRIEN

You should, Moses, you were the one who told everyone God spoke to you and gave you the Ten Commandments.

INT. DERRINGER HOUSE -- NIGHT

BILL returns home to his wife, MRS. DERRINGER.

MRS. DERRINGER

Where have you been?

BILL DERRINGER

Nowhere.

MRS. DERRINGER

Your car has been here all day, I called your work and they said you called out.

BILL DERRINGER

I did, that's why I said nowhere.

Mrs. Derringer

So where were you?

BILL DERRINGER

(Hesitant)

I was--watching that thing.

MRS. DERRINGER

You skip a days work to watch something be on fire? Are you fifteen again? Guys, look it's on fire, heh heh heh. 

BILL DERRINGER

It's different than that.

MRS. DERRINGER

No it's not. If you don't go to work how are we going to pay for this house, and the car, and food, and should I continue why we need money?

BILL DERRINGER

I'm going to bed.

MRS. DERRINGER

Yeah, get the hell out of my sight.

Every word you write down is changed in the editing process because you are one of the worst writers I have ever known. Every sentence you speak is ignored by the audience because you are an awful speaker. Every picture you take has to be given countless hours on digital software because the photos are never in focus, have no perspective and in general just do not look good. Every film you ever shoot should be reshot, even those ones of your family you weren’t trying at because the camera is unsteady and the screen is too dark. Every step that you take is one that someone else took long before you, only they did it with better form and stature. Every bit of anger you feel was originally your ancestors only they had to have the balls to express it without phones or internet connections. Every wink of sleep you get you dream that this is all true, and in your heart you know it is.





i can't write lately. i've been too down and out about the whole thing (if you didn't notice). So when i say i can't write lately, it probably means i never really could. I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine where we both said "we're pretty good at a lot of stuff" but only after i said that part i said, "but i'm not really good at anything." and as depressing as that is. it's very true. I don't have the imagination or the heart to do the things I so desperately would like to do-- hell even the people with the heart, talent and imagination don't get to do the things they want to do. Earth is cruel. Or more or less all that bullshit they fed you growing up about how you can do anything you want to was cruel. As it turns out, most of us won't finish college and the some of us that do won't get a job in their field. We can keep chasing our dreams but they'll never be within reach, the problem is more likely than not-- we're just not that good.

It would be nice to be able to take things back, like that time you told your friends you were going to do whatever it took to be a famous athlete and ended up being a shoe salesman at the local mall. You still see the guys you told that to, they come by the store with their kids after they pick them up from school still wearing their business suit because before they picked up little Timmy they were at some important meeting. It kills you, but you have to help them, and each time you hope like hell they don’t recognize you but everyone time they reach out for a handshake and you say you don’t need a hand out. You don’t need anybody but yourself. You’re insecure, and why wouldn’t you be. Everything you thought you could have, everything you worked at to make yours, it turned out it was unattainable, it turned out you would never be good enough, it turned out all along you were a lonely shoe salesman. A shoe salesman for Christ sake. Sometimes you stroll by the local high school and watch the players on the fields and wish you could tell them that everything they could ever want, everything they could ever feel deep within their bones, is wrong. You wish you could tell them that they can get laid and never find love, that they could work hard but never produce talent, that no matter what they did they wouldn’t be happy. They would be alone. They would be humiliated by their classmates even long after they fully matured. They would be like you. You wish you could tell them this whether you felt it was true or not, but you’ve felt you knew the truth before and you were devastated you were wrong, and you’ll be wrong again. It’s the best you can hope for.

Once you see the lights are out

You’ll be the giant’s mouth

With angry eyes and empty hands

The vampire in our minds

Once you see the venue change

You’ll be the liar’s arms

Soft and steady falling down

The pity in our hearts

Once you solve the mystery

You’ll be the doctor’s chair

Misery and misfortune

Torture will befall you

Death will overcome you

Plagues will be victorious

Change is underway

You will be miniscule

            She’ll look up. Her eyes gaze into mine. She’ll smile and the world will change its tilt. The January month will be green and admired for its general prosperity while August will freeze and the fields become barren and solid. The ice caps will melt. The deserts will become oceans. The rainforest will turn to ash. The poor will no longer be hungry, and the hungry no longer poor. Shelters will have to close because their services become useless. The powerful lose power because the powerless wrap a fist around the giant tug of war rope and hold on for good. Divorce attorneys seek new jobs. Priests become less judgmental. The entire Middle East rests. Families gather around tables for feasts with their friends and neighbors. Shame is no longer a feeling, but a memory of a time when something like the telegraph was used. Cellular phones have full reception in the mountains and other obscure places, but not in your sea-level bedroom. Musicians become original. AIDS goes away with time.

            She opens her mouth. The vibrations of vocal chords quietly rubbing my ears saying—“I have to tell you something.” She explains herself. She retracts herself. She changes my general outlook on what it means to do one thing that speaks loudly in relieving rhythms and meters, and say something that spews evil in such a way one must have been gargling it for some time before opening the flow.

            The Earth tilts back. People die. Disease lives. War infests. The middle east doesn’t sleep. The winter stays cold and the summer stays dry. Shelters fill from window to window with people trying to stay warm for the night. Families neglect each other because each of them have their own ideals about what family means, and in general they all feel that time spent apart is good for the soul which is why they will never meet anyone they truly want to stick around with as a friend, lover or ‘other’, they all just have their own way of mumbling how they feel. Boys go back to being oppressive, and women go back to being villains. Excuse me, villainesses. There is no hope for the AIDS virus. The church takes down their welcoming banners and merely shun the homosexuals, convicts, and the newly reformed when they would rather opt that they be burned at the stake. The mountains are no longer a good place to make a phone call. Musicians are all the same. The divorce rate climbs. The physical features of the Earth keep in place, while the ice caps are likely still going to melt.

            And so be it. Support your eco-foes. Wash humankind right off the earth and encompass the world in blue. For shame never left, we just forgot it was there. She felt shame for what she did. I felt shame for not expecting it sooner.

            We could use the wash-out.