Urge to an Ought

From the age of four to eleven I was tickled 2,152 times by twenty-five different women. Mostly by babysitters. Payed women contracted for a specific service:

To ensure bodily and psychiatric well-being of said child, supra, pursuant to codified parental instructions, dietary and bedtime strictures. Discrepancies being such as to null contract, all employment being contracted on a per diem and at-will basis, immutable by any parties or writ except said parents, supra.

Thankfully during these unsolicited tickles I left consciousness approaching the more intense consummation. I’d awake in a variety of locations—the stair landing, for one—and positions. Sometimes in bed, hearing my parents enter through the garage, home from their department dinner or theatre. She reading in the den with a named I confused with Lasagna (what we ate on Tuesdays).

I locked myself in the bathroom twelve times. Ten with babysitters. From the seventh lock-in on I adroitly buttered the external knob with margarine. Their soft, perfumed hands slipped instantly from the knob. One girl’s father was a volunteer fire fighter. An incident best forgotten.

I found in the trashcan a soiled tampon hidden among unconvincing and freshly crumpled toilet paper. Removing the covert item, I hide the brown tampon in her teal Jansport resting near our vestibule.

She’d tell my parents, “He’s tired out; I put him to bed,” while ice cracked in Dad’s nightcap. I’d descend the stairs with pajamed feet, relaying how I was tickled into a sweaty confusion, finding myself riding sheets and pillows not of my own choosing. Of course, I’d be rebuked for leaving bed, embarrass the sitter by heralding her dereliction and would be tickled worse next Friday under her care. Vindication for my outing her deficiencies. I choose to remain clement, awake in bed allowing them, collectively, to maintain the reality they desired.

The room warmed and her perfume intensified. The carpet smells fuzzy. I brown-in and exist in the kitchen. We make butterscotch sundaes with my sister. She lets me add marshmallows, me promising to brush extra well. My sister eats her sundae. Our babysitter made her sundae last, shoveling Neapolitan with a large scoop while I scraped butterscotch from my dish. She can’t find a spoon.

“Must all be in the wash,” she shrugs, having loaded the dishwasher earlier, “I’ll use yours.” She collects the spoon from my hand and I wait for her to rinse and wipe it. The used spoon, in her control, travels from my grasp directly into her own dish. Stabbing Neapolitan, she smiles, her eyebrows ascend, and she pulls a bite from the spoon between her estrus lips.

“It’s good,” she says.

I look at my knuckles—my sister’s hands still larger than mine—and pine for hirsute fingers like Dad. She continues using my spoon and my hands embarrass me, their lack of form and texturelessness: no hair, scares, veins, calluses, no dirt.

Like the back of my hand, people claim. There’s nothing to know and I must know nothing, I deduce, taciturn in my chair.

Experience of a Phenomena

In high school, once, I had the privilege of living with my grandmother, Honey.

She lived in an apartment above a gas station and monitored its patrons. Washing the dishes she’d pause, observing, “must be grass cutting time. They’re back with their red can again.” I looked up from my Husserl, “that’s surprising,” I said to pacify her and kept reading. “See how I dry, not leaving spots?” she led. “I see that,” I answered.

“You wash, well, I have to wash them again on account of the spots. Once they dry can’t just wipe them off. Need to re-wash everything. Shame given all that water.”

“It is,” I agreed from within my Husserl.

“That book must not be very good. Taken you awhile to finish it.”

She missed the past: her garden, Sunday drives, pot-roast, taking in the game with Merlin, my deceased grandfather. I was sad to watch her can vegetables she that same day bought from the grocery. She couldn’t, usually, switch on the television or find her glasses but intuited my slight wince. This is in June.

“I see you making that face, watching your grandmother like some feeble ward. Patrick, I’m canning and you’ll appreciate it when you’re hungry come winter months. Grandma won’t look silly then.” I was leaving next month, moving out. I didn’t remind her. “They will be good,” I agreed.

She mixed frozen green beans and frozen corn into the cans, sealed them in mason jars
and organized them within a color spectrum across the speckled formica.

“If you want to help, label the cans. Write it big or it’s no use. Tape’s in the drawer.”

“I’ll look,” I said, putting down my Husserl.

“Merlin made the same face—the one you’re making—when I canned in front of him.” Some jars were empty though still freshly sealed. I was in my room fixing the bronze screw on my glasses: “ You stopped halfway through,” she yelped from the kitchen, “didn’t label these one’s.” I labeled the empty jars, boxed them and followed her down to the cellar. “One of these days we’ll clean this area out. Not now though,” then she turned out the lights. “Did you hear something,” she asked, tilting her head with squinted eyes, “If that’s vermin the rent should be reduced. One mouse means a family. They’ll ruin our entire stock.” There wouldn’t be time to clean the cellar given my leaving the next month. I didn’t remind her.

“Rent’s down the middle,” she verified the first night, me still holding my duffle bag. “That second room is plenty big. Same as mine. Measured them myself. Figured you pay electric. I’ll pay gas. It’s about even.”

“Sounds fine,” I said, wanting water and having left the bus only minutes before.

She walked to the grocery on Saturday so I measured the two rooms. They weren’t even, not close. “Measure them yourself,” she said initially, “measuring tape’s around her somewhere.” It wasn’t so I secretly bought one.

I unpacked books that first night: the Husserl, Daybreak, Hegel, some Marlowe.

She walked in with snacks—ants on a log and tang—watching me: “That’s what the shelf’s for. They’ll be fine there,” positioning the tray. “Live through a war,” she advised, “wouldn’t need those musty rags, lugging them state to state. And that’s how I met Merlin too. Did good. Ask your mother; we tore napkins in quarters to save. One napkin per meal, all kids, your Grandmother Honey and Grandpa Merlin.”

“I enjoy reading before bed. That’s all.”

“Look out the window,” she said, ‘that’s my favorite book. Squinting all night at a dead tree, for the birds, Patrick—that’s for the birds.”

“Merlin use to have Reader’s Digest,” she continued, “on the bedside. Every night he’d read, get wound up, restless and not sleep. Had a small stack, bought them at Woolworth. He got all these ideas and fears. I said stop reading them so we can sleep.”

The thermostat was in her bedroom. October was colder than I anticipated. “Cold tonight, don’t you think?” I asked, wanting heat.

“And why do you think your grandmother Honey’s wearing a sweater? It is cold. That’s why I’ve got the sense to wear a sweater. It’s October, Patrick. Seasons change.”

I tapped on her door two hours later. “Grandma, it’s cold out here and in my room. Can we nudge the thermostat?”

She leaned back and peered at the thermostat, craning her neck from her upholstered rocker. I could see the dust film covering the circular grey thermostat, the plastic cover yellowed with age. She settled back down. “I’m not the slightest uncomfortable, Patrick. Thermostat should be fine. My sweater is warm,” she ended, continuing to knit, intermediately spooning her rum raison.

“Ok then,” I said disarmedly, leaving her room, noticing the two electric space heaters running on high. Her room was an incubator, the rum raison melting. I left her door open hoping to siphon the heat.

“Patrick, my door—please? Don’t want a draft breezing in . . . There’s more in the carton. Help yourself. Saw you eyeing my rum raisin,” she explained.

I called my mother three days later, saying it was cold.

“She’s paying gas and you’re paying electric?” she guessed, “Those space heaters run all night. Two of them.”

“I see.”

“Shouldn’t have agreed to that, Patrick.”

“I’m seeing that.”

Wednesday night and she’s at bingo. The VFW is three blocks south. She crosses the vacant gas station, I spring into her room and nudge the thermostat. The translucent needle meets seventy-one. Nothing happens. Ten minutes and nothing. I grab a broom and my jacket, down the back stairs and into the yard. I’m looking for the gas tank, where it’s buried in the back. I find it and unscrew the lid. I hear the hollow clank: wood on metal. No liquid muffles the reverberations.

Honey was fixing dinner. My room had one electrical outlet, enough for my desk lamp and clock—two relative necessities. I audit the kitchen, finding another outlet near my door.

“Honey,” I asked, noting two identical white boxes in each socket, “do we need both of these? Maybe a space heater could go there.”

“Absolutely not, Patrick. Those are carbon monoxide detectors. Whole house is liable to go up without them.”

“Without both of them?”

“That’s right. Both of them. Life is fragile, Patrick.”

“I see,” I conceded, looking for my Husserl.

And It Came To This

Three men ran-walked down the hall pushing the gurney. Yellow fluorescent T5s shining corroded on speckled tile squares, one mint colored tile for every five beige. The fall-out shelter brown brick corridors guided them to ROOM G7 with Vice Principal Craut leading, keys jangling from his lanyard like Nordic livestock.

“Which one is she!” the thick-necked buzz cut demanded, his cargo pants bulging unecessarily full of gauze and band-aids, while springing through the classroom door.

“Chuck, man, that’s why we have the bag, man” his EMT unit insisted, sipping ersatz coffee.

“And if I get separated from the bag, say, in smoke or in a confusing place, then what? I need gauze on my person, buddy. No lie, man.”

“That’s her. On the ground,” the substitute teacher, her first and last day, said, pointing to a small girl sprawled irenicly on the ground, her fairy-tale fingers and hands covered in cacophonic colors from finger painting. Her father’s Oxford, shot through with polyester, was worn backwards smock style. She lies surrounded with petrified faces draped in their father’s worn pajama tops and button-downs, similar to Paul’s inverted crucifiction, eyeing their felled classmate.

“Mrs. Mister, how long has she not been breathing?” Chuck asked, no time to spare, cutting vertically the Oxford off Cassandra with medical scissors pulled from his utility belt.

The substitute with Dalmatian dogs embroidered on her cardigan stared mute; most saw malnourished cows. EMT apprentic Philip Rockingham assumed spotted Whippets.

“Never. She’s been breathing the whole time,” the substitute relayed.

“What happened? How long has she been down?” the third EMT asked.

“I don’t know. I mean . . . she was finger painting and just became soulless, fell off her chair and laid there.”

“I’m gonna go with paint fumes. Maybe,” August Washington, the skeletal bus driver, offered.

“August,” snapped Craut, “Get back on your bus. Now please.” August had unnecessarily guided the ambulance from the street to the clearly marked main school entrance, flagging widely the ambulance down with her tattered raglan, running alongside the ambulance, slowly it down, in effect, the driver verifying, “Chuck, that Poodle-haired freak still in my blind spot? I need to get right up on the curb,” before her untied shoelace ensnared the stretcher wheel in the entrance lobby—the first time Chuck removed his medical scissors and the second time August vowed to wear velcro shoes.

August Washington’s shoe was swiftly cut free in the elementary school mezzanine where she was left behind lying beside the empty trophy case. “ROOM T15,” she yelped after the EMT, the stretcher and pit-stained Vice Principle Craut, “the damaged little one’s in T15.”

“T15,” the EMT verified aloud while jogging officially, checking the nautical wristwatch he once foolishly showered in, subsequently fogging the case and yellow second hand.

“Absolutely not,” Craut gasped in correction, “she’s in G7. Right around the corner. In Mrs. Mister’s room.” Chuck mistook the substitute for Mrs. Mister. Mrs. Victoria Misters.

T13 and T14 were the auxiliary boiler-room and the HVAC, respectively. T15 didn’t exist.

“Mrs. Mister is out sick. That’s a substitute,” Craut barked, expediting the process because the substitute stared without answering Chuck. Chuck being convinced the substitute was Mrs. Mister, staring curiously at the woolen bulimic bovines on the cardigan.

Paint smeared Cassandra, golden hirsute covering her cherubic face, was strapped to the gurney, neck brace in place.

“Thanks, mister,” Chuck said to Craut, who helped secure Cassandra, while staring at the substitute.

With Cassandra loaded in the ambulance, Chuck began to pull the door closed from the inside when Craut and August Washington sprinted upon him.

Blurted August, “I’ll ride with them. You follow behind.” The EMTs pushed August from entering the now-delayed vehicle. “That doesn’t happen in real life. No one can ride.”

August instinctively ran towards her idling bus. “August, absolutely not!” Craut, balding for obvious reasons, scalded. “You can only drive your administrated route. That’s county property. Don’t even think about it.”

August screamed after the departing ambulance, “Type-A positive! I’m Type-A positive—if it comes to that!”

Resting in the child’s ward, Cassandra regained consciousness and remained under critical watch, constantly measured vital signs beeping intravenously on her bedside near uneaten vanilla pudding.

The ER doctor approached the waiting room. Cassandra’s parents wanted answers.

Doctor Stevens waved them towards the private holding room. Well stocked with tissues. Most families begin crying uncontrollably when brought into the private waiting room, called Bereavement Central by hospital staff, seeing the excessive floral tissues boxes covering the central coffee and end table. They assume demise. Cassandra’s mother followed suit, combusting in tears. Her father embracing a stoic bitterness. Suffer silently, soldier.

“Sorry to bring you in here,” Dr. Stevens said, pocketing his hands, thumbs exposed, “My ex-wife was about to come into the regular waiting room. Saw her through the window. She wants our Pug, Winston, back for the weekend. Can’t spare him, you see, because I actually have Sunday off. I hope you understand. Been too humid for Winston to walk on my days off. Tiny nostrils and humidity are big trouble. With the crisp autumn and everything, well, I’d like to have him this Sunday. Enough with Winston, let’s talk about Cassandra.”

“Dick,” Cassandra’s mother growled.

“Please, Dick was my father’s name. Call my Rick,” Dr. Richard Stevens said. “Cassandra is going to make it. She’ll be fine.”

“Wonderful,” her parents glowed.

“What triggered Cassandra’s collapse? Is it genetic?”

“Atavstic. You could say. Or environmental,” Dr. Stevens began. “Cassandra will be fine. She’s in mild shock right now. She suffered from excessive self-expression.”

“Excessive self-expression?”

“It’s something we’re seeing more and more. Children are over encouraged to express themselves. They’ve become soulless, hollow creatures. Things can go wrong. And they have. They spend so much time expressing themselves that it leaves no time to cultivate any ideas, concepts or emotions actually worth expressing. Vapid circular self-expression results. People just start expressing the mere fact that they’re constantly expressing themselves or spin their wheels encouraging other people to express themselves. It’s rampant in our current culture.”

“Recently? Is it medical?”

“The later 20th and early 21st century. Over self-expression cripples young children and many adults. Particularly when regurgitating commercialized entertainment or glorying the idea of self-expression just because they can. It’s abusive.”

Cassandra’s mother agonized over what could have been Cassandra’s truthful eulogy:
Cassandra died, like many other children her age, doing what she loved: regurgitating derivative commercial ideals, situations and sentiments concocted in heavily group-studied corporate campaigns.

Doctor Stevens continued: “To be optimistic, the outer several layers of most individuals are group-based. Mimetic. People imitating observed social behaviors. A lot of people are annoying, irritating because of this. We shoulnd’t dismiss them. Underneath their grating aping are beautiful people with unique perspectives and nuanced emotions. With a capacity for real change and growth. Everyone applauded the Enlightenment, Martin Luther without critical thought if you ask me. If they could’ve only seen, today, the pernicious effects,” Steven opined, “they’d see the irritating effect of self-expression. It’s not pretty. Millions of people thinking they’re special and the undying need to express said belief.”

“Mediocrity is the new nepotism,” her father, arms crossed, forlorn and futile, snipped at the window.

“With upward social mobility . . . well you’re shit out of luck. People will talk your ear off about their dreams and visions ad infintum.”

“I remember when shit was shit. Those were simple days.”

“Honey, please. Aristocracy won’t heal Cassandra. Stay positive.”

“She’s right. Pining for hereditary patronage is merely wishful anachronism. Cassandra nearly self-expressed herself to death peddling clichés and what they call ‘common sense.’”

“Isn’t she a bit young for this?” her mother asked clinically.

“No. Prevention never starts too young. Avoid self-expression, cliché and self-identification through material products. We don’t advise not expressing. Responsible self-expression. We want our youth to be respectful stewards of self-expression.”

From the Earth to the Cross / My Stare Decisis You Paid

On her deathbed my grandmother requested her last remains be mixed together at Cold Stone, the ascetic urn poured on vanilla and tapioca ice cream, mashed and turned together by the employee’s lovingly scoop.

We took seriously the wish that her terrestrial ashes live on dispersed in a single serving to-go container stored in a freezer set to the official Cold Stone temperature. Robert Ludlow, her attorney, long time confidante and the executor of her estate, redrafted her Last Will & Living Testament after assigning his legal aid, Edith Montrose, a pale asthmatic with perpetually chapped lips, the reason the office humidifier was bought, who devoured Heidegger during lunch breaks and train commutes, to research restaurant sanitation laws. Edith unearthed neither clause nor case law restricting the legality of Grandmother’s request and sent Robert Ludlow acknowledgement that the non-existence of prohibitory law equaled tacit consent, something she told the Cold Stone manager to quell his “I don’t want the health department up my ass” reservations.

Twice weekly, sometimes three dependent on the weather, my grandmother patroned Cold Stone Creamery. She remained fedilitious to a single store despite three area franchise locations. Besides enjoying their product, she considered Cold Stone an accurate analogy for life and the human condition, how we, like the myriad toppings sitting behind the sneeze glass, attempt to separate, compartmentalize and distinguish. “Just look at this taxonomical system,” she mused while waiting for her single-dip waffle cone, “to think that the candy toppings match our attempts to organize nature, people, behavior.” She’d watch as the toppings were violently merged from their compartments into the typhoonic spatchel path. “From chaos to order—and always again returning to chaos,” she’d mutter ambivalently while the candies coalesced. “Nature laughs always at us. Has no time for tragedy and all that rigmarole. Tragedy is plain bunk to nature.”

Her sinewy hands holstered the waffle cone, disregarding the provided napkins, nonetheless bringing the extra napkins home, storing them in a kitchen draw to distribute during late afternoon hors d'eavours. I’d see her iconic chilled chardonnay and shrimp cocktail, the glass stem nestled atop a Cold Stone napkin and blotting carefully, so as to preserve her makeup, red cocktail sauce from her mouth with another napkin. She never needed to wipe her face. Precautionary decorum dictated patting one’s face while breaking bread or fish.

Not one to speak ill, she referred often to custard as “tasteless slop.” Frozen yogurt—even the mention of supra—illicted shierks and a baritone gurgle from her midsection. When driving past TCBY she refused to acknowledge the store with even a peripheral glance, requesting earnestly, “Please tell me when it’s safe to look,” while tilting her chin upward with vestal bride dignity.

Reversius Lobodicatus

A terrible noise breaks the night. Rapid thud-thud-thud rouses, with alarm, the sleeping Matron. Mothers have enhanced hearing, comes with swollen breasts from natal estrogen chemicals, least their young become prey to hyenas and sharp edges. Her feet, forsaking the slippers, meet the hardwood. The lapis nightgown forgets its static sleeping state, the form sustained moments before, billowing with air current as the master bedroom door opens telepathically, bending to her determined will. Into the hallway, she moves, scanning for a worthy disturbance.

Was it the raccoons? She audits the kitchen, visualizing where the broom last waited. She’d shoo them out the front while cursing her sleeping husband for not installing the chimney grate cover. Precocious raccoons scurry from kin-like trees, descend friendly branches, funnel down chimney tops and investigate kitchens for eatables. The grates prevent this nocturnal mischief, stops them, their steely, unwelcomed bandit eyes, from cutting and invading the kitchen dark, even worse, an infant mistaken for a hairless rodent prey, captured and confiscated back to the raccoon den, hole, nest or wherever they habitat and procreate.

The mallard shutters, the willow tree out front, the stone path in the backyard, the frequently used swing set, all were undisturbed and normal, unaffected by the terrible thud causing outcomes to flicker, each outcome interrupting others, then continuing, then multiplying and fracturing into simultaneously looping potential outcomes, all receiving attention from her, the host mainframe, with two more so popular—the raccoon oscillating with the burglary scenario.

None of the scenarios made her pause, wake her husband or phone the police. It’s not like she didn’t think it through. Even bad decisions involve rapid visuals of what outcome(s) may transpire. Rather, the surprise—the badness—occurs at causation. One entertains a thought, holds a scene in their mind, but doubts the causal dice are loaded enough to achieve commencement, acquiescence between all players and variables. In short, she considered it all thoroughly, albeit instantly, yet never paused: instinct can be rationally realized; instinct doesn’t exclude cognition. Instinct, believe it or not, involves gradation.

She halts at the top of the stairs, her hand already clasping the rail, ready to descend when sighting an inanimate clod down at the stair’s conclusion. What was that period mark? Not a raccoon or thief but her precious, disoriented yet unscathed, child.

It took a series of medical tests that financed the doctor’s sloop and dinghy to discern that her middle child, at this point the second not yet middle child, though only son, suffered from a condition that “reversed, or caused the appearance of reversed landscapes” meaning that the patient “tends to and/or habitually reverses physical locations from left to right due to an unknown long-term memory deficiency” that is “difficult to test for even with CAT Scan resources.” Hence, the upstairs bathroom entrance is two doors down on the right for the patient and everyone else. However, on a random night the bathroom door is two doors down on the left for the patient, which isn’t the bathroom but tragically the stairs.

She sincerely asked the doctor what if her son, still second not yet the middle child, though the only now and future son, might be the only “normal” person and everyone else is unable to detect physical landscape flux. The doctor raised a probing eyebrow, requesting “More,” to which she explained her suspicion the house changed and that her son processed objects in the noumenal things in themselves realm, being a metaphysical wunderkind, whereas others were duped, didn’t notice change because they only accessed the phenomenal realm.

The doctor embarrassed her, the mother, verifying curtly, “I certainly hope you’re joking.” She replied, “of course.” The doctor kicked himself, realizing he lost the chance for a new patient in the hasty refutation. Sad because dock rent was higher than estimated; could’ve used the extra income.

The son’s legitimate condition, Reversius Lobodicatus, didn’t deter him from indulging a varied, full life. Reversius L. even helped his athletic prowess. The unpredictability and sheer oddity of his movements made him difficult to guard in soccer matches.

All the family could do was track the patterns of his reversing using regression analysis, with the correct sample size, and insure deleterious doors were locked. Thank God his variety was systematic and not the more severe Reversius Lobodicatus Spratica-Incongrunium, which is impossible to chart or predict.

It Took Two Weeks

A good question is self-contained. Requires no pre-text, no explanation. Comes from insight, not ignorance. The question is holistic, begins in the non-linguistic soul and eventually, after ricocheting around the brain, traveling down rapidly firing neurons through grey matter, becomes a sign and symbol—the process of objectification. What it means to communicate.  

More processing occurs as the question travels inversely through the recipient’s grey matter into, eventually into, the non-syllabic, signless, signiferless soul. Journeys, after sojourning its short half-life in symbol and icon, to the soul. A place of transcendence reconnected with the primordial absolute.

A good question overcomes man’s alienation from the world otherness he finds himself placed in (read: trapped). Overcomes dualism to when everything—he, she, them, that moss over there—was united within the primordial absolute.

It took two weeks. For the question to be asked, it took two weeks in this particular instant. Thirteen years would be an accurate exaggeration. But, really, it was two weeks. Two weeks too long.

Exactly fourteen days of unnecessary awkward and forced dinner conversation, hesitant smiles during post-meal family miniature golf outings, insincere my-father-does-this chatting over local hand scooped ice cream, disingenuous inside-joke creations that are inevitable when persons are confined to the same location—bonding. Playing catch with their miserable little Cocker Spaniel, imagining it’s curly head forced down the garbage disposal. Nights spent with necks craning from the water’s edge dock towards the illuminated house veranda where adults sipped dark roast and lazily chaperoned, hoping parents didn’t notice a young hand intrepidly brushing, purposively resting near shaved tanned thigh, evenly muscled from exclusive summer tennis camps, nicely fatty and round from God’s gracious hand.

The parents didn’t notice. Missed the shaking appendage resting anxiously, first allowing blond knuckle hairs to reach out and tickle the thigh. A prologue. Skin touched skin, she shifts into, pressing against the waifish hand. Fearing her backpeddle he doesn’t risk the progress with overzealous momentum. She knows her parents are waiting to interrupt with a convenient “oh the chocolate fondue is ready, dear.” Fondue is in their self-interest, but disappoints the boy and the hand. Don’t worry, they’ll keep each other company tonight like the last ten nights.

A clear sticky ichor sneaks out, creates a delta valley on his briefs and epoxies the cotton to the sluggish river’s source. Ten wasted nights ripping his solitary urethra from cheap cotton, eleven nights when hundreds, thousands of potential seeds mix with soap, warm water and herbal shampoo found in the guest bathroom cupboard swirling regrettably down the shower drain, wasted life. Real abortion. Literally, infanticide. A thousand some odd babies denied the chance for life. Gnashing their teeth at the slippery, adipose, cozy gates. Twelve socks stiff, yellow, smelling like stale coconut, slump in the bedroom corner, befriend dust bunnies when they’d rather shoot out like boiled snake venom in the Arizona dessert, myopically staining that sheer cotton polo draped coyly across twelve-carat buds, the 400-count guest sheets splattered, so much for the new duvet, sopped up with monogrammed towels. Instead, it was thirteen resentfully crumpled tissues, thirteen dry kisses with a hardly amorous, “guess I should get to bed. Mom will worry. She stays up, you know.”

Two weeks, many gluey urological-underwear surgeries and one chaffed obelisk later the perfect question is uttered. One might ask: was the question there all along? Or did it take two weeks frustrated germination to emerge, concupiscence watered with refusal.

They sat on the bed’s edge. She just brushed her teeth. He generated his father’s Board Room cogency. She was already mentally scrap-booking the two wonderful weeks. Girls live off memories, boys the creation of such.

Then it hit with Baroque elegance and Dow Jones grit.

“Where is this going sexually?” the thirteen year-old boy asked his host.
She couldn’t respond. Good questions have no immediate answer. Instead, it swirled down neurons, shed it’s pithy linguistic form and then paused at a tearful purgatory causing her Estée Lauder to run while the Cocker Spaniel’s nails clinked on the hall hardwood.

“What’s the matter, honey? Nothing a little cold cream can’t undo . . . Why’s he a jerk, sweetheart?”

A mistake—some good questions exasperate the dualism.

The Genealogy of Scrabble

The board game Scrabble was invented by Dr. Thomas "Scrabble" Mortenhouse in 1942. Dr. Mortenhouse was a well-known psychiatrist located in the Boston area who noticed that many of his patients were mildly intelligent, yet suffered from low self-esteem, and as a result, were unable to reach their full potential due to lack of self-confidence. In order to curb low-self esteem among the mildly intelligent, Dr. Mortenhouse created the board game Scrabble to help his patients develop self-esteem. Among his patients Scrabble was a remarkably effective tool for nurturing self-confidence for those within the national median IQ range. As a result, the use of Scrabble grew rapidly among psychiatrists, mental health professionals and school guidance counselors. By rewarding individuals with pedestrian vocabularies and exoteric strategies, Scrabble fostered a positive sense of accomplishment and success in those typically frustrated by the competitive climate of a burgeoning modern capitalist society.

Unfortunately Dr. Mortenhouse began observing Scrabble catalysed adverse effects of self-delusion and arrogance for some of his patients who began to believe their ability to play Scrabble—a purely clinical endeavor—indicated high intelligence. Soon, his patients' Scrabble skills actually caused increased depression and decreased motivation, thwarting the development of a healthy and realistic self-image. Some of his patients began measuring their self-worth in terms of Scrabble, grew viciously competitive and experienced difficulty functioning in the adult work world without the reductionism of therapeutic board games to feel confident among their peers. Many failed to differentiate between their ability to achieve “double” and “triple word scores” and the requisite analytic skills necessary for marketplace viability and social adaptability.  

Despite its initial promise and popularity Dr. Mortenhouse discontinued Scrabble usage among his patients in 1947. However, Scrabble had already spread into the private sector and was becoming a popular recreational activity among pseudo-intellectuals and self-loathing individuals. In 1972, Dr. Mortenhouse died of natural causes at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 88 years old. Dr. Mortenhouse played Scrabble once in his life, averring that “due to the clinical and therapeutic nature of my invention, for a reasonable intelligent individual to engage Scrabble is to prescribe the healthy penicillin. The largest regret in my life—my only regret—is that my proudest moment was soon clouded by my saddest—the recreational adaptation of Scrabble following its deleterious effect on my patients and the larger population.”

Dear Ms. Crawford

Please excuse Chantel from school today. Due to the unfortunate occurrence that unraveled during yesterday’s field trip, Chantel’s Father, Paul, and I have decided Chantel will be best served by a day (possibly more) of sustained and uninterrupted rest in order to recover and gain her strength to its full capacity. As you may well guess, upon returning home Chantel was terribly vexed and we found her to be very much under the weather last night. Paul and I agreed that if her condition did not improve through the night, and if she awoke in the morning feeling the same awful confusion and cognitive strife, we would keep her from school as I think it could distract the other students from learning and also thwart teachers, as well as various supportive and managerial administrators, from fulfilling their pedagogical obligations to Grover Episcopal Academy.  

However, I would like to take this opportunity to state, in writing nonetheless, that Paul and I in no way blame or hold accountable Grover for the, shall we say, mishap. We have no plans of pursuing legal action against the school, although we haven’t spoken fully with our attorney, so I probably shouldn’t make claims at such an early and unanalyzed juncture.  

Thus, in all due respect, the sheer coincidence of the mishap lends itself to only an outlier of the greatest and most outlandish chance ever perpetuated on a young innocent soul such as one finds in our celestial-minded Chantel. And it is not our family’s intention in the least that all future trips to Saint Sebastian University Hospital be canceled. Though we do greatly appreciate said trips being postponed for the next month until the proper bureaucratic precautionary steps can be taken to ensure that another blessed youngster, such as our dear Chantel, does not undergo what she has undergone (my fear being that a child of lesser mental resolve and fortitude would crumple under the mental duress). Again, I find no fault with Grover and hope that Chantel’s classmates will keep her in their thoughts and prayers despite her necessary absence during this extended period of bereavement. And again, we ourselves are quite surprised to learn of the happenings that transpired despite knowing that Paul’s mother was quite a vocal supporter of organ donation. We, however, were unaware of the extent and degree to which she donated her earthly, material remains to the local medical educational institutions despite her ardent philanrophopic activities, activities which should have alerted our family to exercise voracious caution in monitoring Chantel’s activities. Certainly you can image our surprise as well, one which, I doubt, compares to poor little Chantel being forced to witnessed her very own Grandma Fluff displayed, frozen, fully nude and sprawled out on the metal table as a partially dissected and haphazardly re-sewn cadaver used (and re-used) by medical students in their human antimony course while surrounded by the twenty-some-odd members of her fourth grade Grover class all peering wide-eyed directly at pious Chantel’s beloved and recently deceased Grandma Fluff.

You see, even though Grandma Fluff’s face was, as is protocol, respectfully covered to maintain her anonymity and dignity, these precautionary strictures did not obfuscate or siege Grandma Fluff’s identity from Chantel because Grandma Fluff has an extremely memorable birthmark resembling the Strait of Flagella on the outside of her left flank. The Flagella-shaped birthmark was forever etched in young Chantel’s memory while changing, showering and primping alongside Grandma Fluff in the Club’s powederroom.

I hope you’ll understand and extend our regards to those who were involved in reviving Chantel and transporting her to and from the emergency room—the funeral just a few days ago and now this, quite a week. Also, I would only ask that phone calls be discouraged due to their overly intrusive and exhausting nature, an activity Chantel is in no state to participate in and such calls prevent me from fully attending on her needs. Oh yes, could you please, as is customary in these circumstances, have Chantel’s class assignments collected and sent home with Roger, who will then deliver them to our home as he has graciously done before. I don’t usually like young gentlemen stopping by the house in an unannounced and ad hoc manner, but due to Roger’s close proximity to our home and terribly asexual disposition it should work just fine. Thanks again.



Nota Bena: I realize this is somewhat, how shall I put this, unorthodox for a simple note to school but as you have likely noticed I have sent this letter via Proof of Delivery, which requires your signature to confirm that you have received the note. Please do not be alarmed, as I stated previously, litigation is highly unlikely and an out of court settlement is, at this point, given that we haven’t spoken with Tom, also improbable, though still more tenable than litigation, supra, which isn’t being considered.

Will The Following Individuals Please Come Forward

The Providence Strategic Family Clinic dubbed Arlo Coles “The Human Cockroach” after he successfully survived a third trimester abortion, the lone recorded survivor in the Clinic’s historic annals and one of four nationwide since the inception of modern natal alleviation procedures. The plaque and indecipherable photo still hang in the Clinic’s front hallway immortalizing Mr. Coles’ unique accomplishment—a point of pride for still bewildered staff members, their intrigued families and the various field trip patrons who aren’t looking out the window.

The admissions committee was impressed, leaning giddily around their glossy conference table buried somewhere in a Tudor façade bunker near south campus, rejoicing with the fresh life supplied to the committee vis-à-vis botched medicine some seventeen years past, folding and stowing glasses, clicking pens, sipping spring water, tea, coffee, shuffling papers, doodling a conspectus of what would become an honorary scholarship for student abortion survivors, a sigh of relief since a recent donation required a joint matching fund for such unique students who overcome adversity during adolescence. The race card and every other -ism having had their Liberal democratic limelight, running the gauntlet through academia upper echelons.

Other kids couldn’t compete: two years assistant student manager of girls’ JV basketball team—when you wash the shorts, throw them in and use the detergent sparingly. We’re on a budget. Oh yeah and don’t get yourself caught sniffing the girls' shorts. Get caught, right?

Oh and I see you received most improved four consecutive years. Most improved improver—well the schools are focusing more on analytic skill sets than facts, small-minded tasks, though we do like to see that you challenged yourself, so what improved four years to merit acclamation is of high interest to the committee at this point. Shakespeare? Midsummer or Romeo & Juliet? Very good that’s what we tend to look for. Not exclusively of course but it helps.

A ninth grade production of Coriolanus caused prompt dismantle of the school’s drama department. All plays and drama clubs were cancelled for the year’s entirety while the district school board charged a third-party investigation. Messy stuff. It’s all just words, you say in the beginning, archaic words. It’s all fun and iambic pentameter until someone gets hurt. They kept telling the director, some Danish MFA mess, that the set Tartan Rock sculpture was too high and clearly unstable. Authenticity needs its own cost-benefit analysis. That’s the angle we take when individually evaluating, pouring over each application in its entirety. We go through these documents with a fine toothcomb. The Coriolanus episode created fear of copycats. All Elizabethan dramas, heck anything with wigs or tights, were banned in the tri-county area.  

Arlo Coles’ crowning achievement was not vestige. Second and third grade end of year honor assembly, however, were potentially ensnaring. Those chairs lined up carefully by the janitorial staff all morning. Their winter—not allowed to call it Christmas or Holiday (do the etymological tracing)—bonus looked an awful lot like the cans rejected during the December food drive, the sweatshirts oddly like that box of XXLs unwanted by science fair participants. Conne Corn and a maroon 25th annual Science Jamboree regifted to the local dumpster. Might make a swell birds nest for a feathered loved one, just so much as he stops shitting on that new carport that took seven fucks of an hour to install with piss breaks so frigid you’d hardly be able to unzip and pull out that tiny icicle of a prick left after she nagged you about upgrading to the Friends & Everybody plan.

We’ll begin with the Character & Integrity awards, says the dilapidated knave who distributes post-lunch positive-reinforcement-incentive-based stickers to students demonstrating commendable and catatonic behavior after swiftly consuming their lunches and federally subsidized milk. One pupil, who’ll go unnamed due to legal constraints, once received six stickers in one lunch period snafu before his moribund pulse and pale skin were noticed. He nearly died, having choked on mediocrity. The stickers covered his pours, forcing his cold sweat inward, nearly drowning his lungs and entrails. Good thing he didn’t keel over, weren’t sure what to do, the janitorial staff admitted, treat it like a throw up (toss some lye on it and mop it up) was their plan. The character traits awarded—dedication, perseverance, commitment—were celestial promises from afterworlds, for an unchanging consistent, not virtues for the here and now. Disguises for what’s easiest in us: trapping a moment or sensation, pulling the moment, stretching it with ecclesiastical elasticity for some time. No virtue there, so stay in your seats before we become smaller, safer, sadder, Arlo bellowed, no more false titles. The Human Cockroach proves his namesake while teaching others to dance.

Commendable, said someone, told a visitor they had an entire campus full of Arlos, though they knew it wasn’t true. It was a nice thought.

Most are born with one forcep and suction tube in the grave, said Arlo Coles.

Hold your applause till the end, form a coherent line to the right, my right, of the stage, then proceed, group photos are mandatory, we’ll reassemble outside, yes, ice cream sandwichs and your refuse goes where? That’s right. Designated trash reciptacals.  

Heather sold more caramel popcorn and wrapping paper than the net G.D.P. of Botswana & Laos during the second and third quarters of the last fiscal year combined. I think that deserves a round of applause.

Arlo noticed the trash bins were full even before the ice cream was distrubuted. There was no place for his wrapper. At least we can all vote, a voice whispered, drowned out by gooey flesh vacuumed through a narrow tube.

300 lb. Tension

“My hands are full of string.”

Those were his last words before the kite string, pulled taut on a gale day, decapitated my uncle.

The hobby shop warned him against professional grade string.

He wouldn’t listen.

“Don’t tell me my business. We’ll be fine. C’mon boys,” he said before we, me and my two cousins, walked back across the gravel parking lot to his ragged short bed.

“Change the oil regularly and you can run anything over 150,000 miles—easy,” he lectured.
Movies don’t exaggerate. Their father’s body (actually corpse, not to be morbid) remained erect several moments after the lopping incision. Forever when you’re ten and shrieking.

My cousins faired terribly.

Later in life family picnics ended with grown men howling inaudibly while crawling across national park designated picnic areas, after flipping over tables under shelters #10 & 11, four types of chip and frankfurters taking flight, baked beans scalding poorly situated onlookers, mirth become Sicilian mourning, after florescent kites took to the repugnant sky.

The scene resembled a Dresden air-raid with petrified though mobile men crawling like Edenistic serpents, bellies damned into dust, pissing themselves, darkening their pleated chinos and laughing manically from feared kites—winged Devil machines they’d bellow from sweat soaked sheets nightly—while covering their necks to protect against random string lacerations. Tears turned dirt to mud. Their mouths spewing inadvertently digested crab grass and dandelions, they begged all other recreation indulgees to hit the ground and crawl from the designated picnic area, flee the winged devil machines and seek shelter under the cars.

Witnessing, before the police handcuffed him, Cousin Danube sprint towards a kite operating seven year-old while wielding in his clenched fist a serrated knife with cake frosting spewing off the blade and over his shoulder, tackling the youth, separating both the boy’s fawnish collar bones, breaking a few guppy-like ribs, then forcibly cutting the string to observe an oak tree confiscate the downed devil machine.

Cousin Danube heaved with relief while the rookie Park Ranger guessed a radio number for Armed Forcibly Downed Kite W/ Assault, Aggravated Battery, hoping the bungled code wouldn’t affect negatively his 90-day review while waiting for State Troopers.

Ambulance stretchers and EMT personel, white gloves and white sheets, usually indicate assistance and hope. Cousin Danube handcuffed to the collapsible gurney, a weighty juxtaposition, exasperated his children’s tears, I think.

Regrettably that wasn’t rock bottom. I randomly opened a Britannica at their house. The H volume. Thumbed through and paused at the article scribbled out with black marker, realizing it was the history of the Hudson River, where a boy flew a kite across the Hudson laying the foundation to construct the first bridge. Cousin Danube edited history to placate his paranoia, erasing kites’ historical significance least his children read vaunting accomplishments about the contraption that murdered his father, my uncle.