Missing Home

Story-A-Day, Day One

The Friday after my final paycheck fails to be deposited into my account I call the law firm and learn from the disembodied voice of HR that it's being withheld. I feel the accusation of embezzlement shouldn't be taken so personally, even more so because I have behaved, but how can the truth of one's self not be taken personally?

The truth is I have behaved. The weeks leading up to my resignation, payments received by clients were followed by carefully written receipts; those made in cash were counted and recounted for accuracy, stored in the safe deposit box in the office of the founding attorney, a man whose handshake I've found to be crushing.

I find cash to be a dirty business, new bills especially tricky to handle, the texture of stiff fingerprints, and that part becomes an indecipherable language. I wash my hands after each handling.

My mom's mind worked in associations, so she talked without really saying anything or getting anywhere. She talked to strangers, to anyone really, until she felt satisfied, but I don't think that's the right word. When I behaved badly she would threaten to leave, drive away and never come back, then I would be alone with my stepdad, and then where would I be, she would ask.

She was true to her word, and the road did take her. I think of how her mind worked then, what associations were made with that pain.

My stepdad forgot cash in the pockets of his work pants stained in motor oil, left crumbled at the foot of the full bed. The bed became his own shortly after my mom, when I began to stain my own pants. Early in the morning I would creep in to steal, my bare chest close against the carpeted floor, as my stepdad shifted in sleep.

I guess some things people don't forget, and its weight presses down. When I got off the phone with HR my mind worked in associations. My stepdad never really forgot his cash. In my bedroom back in the home that no longer exists, I would have licked the rug burns on my chest if I could.

Otra vez el Santo

In my not so daring quest to become more familiar with contemporary Latin American literature, I came across the late Rafael Ramirez Heredia's collection of stories Otra vez el Santo. Today I finally finished it, and I'm a fan. Throughout the collection, characters/narrators show an inability to discern between the past and present, reality and fantasy. In the title story, the narrator, a young teen on vacation with friends, is determined to see el Santo, a Mexican wrestler/movie star, and is convinced a girl showing romantic interest in him is part of el Santo’s superhero entourage. In another story, the narrator is unsure what to call the young wife of his godfather/adoptive father, should he call her step-mother or godmother? This becomes especially confusing to him when she (step-mother/godmother) begins to dance nude in front of him.

Memory is the prominent motif in Heredia’s collection. Narrators hang on to memory as they try to negotiate the actual world, and the present. In hanging on to memory, these narrators remain children, in one way or another; their immaturities may lead them to disaster, but also, through their immaturities, by lingering in moments of the past, they survive. Here’s a wonderful paragraph (which I poorly translated into English) in the closing story that I think illustrates this:

"My age of eleven years only serves to accept that little children are the ones with the obligation to remember, adults seem to be tied to other preoccupations, their visions are not centered on the color of the breeze or the scent of the sky, those big for their age don't enjoy counting the seagulls nor do they give any importance to the looks of girls, and someone, the youngest, me, must be the voice of memory which invades when I feel the cold breeze through air conditioners, and the pines which will fill the empty mood that stays with me before the winter becomes longer, so aggressive and vast."

Work

I think I am ready to write about my job. Here's the translation I'm going to use:

"In this little town there aren’t many telephone poles; everyone uses a cellular phone. Only at night are we able to find a signal. "

The Rest of You

My roommate leaves her bedroom wearing large sunglasses and a Dolly Parton wig, blonde ringlets bouncing on her way to the restroom. In the hallway we stop for small talk, and she explains that this, pointing at her head, is for Chatroulette. I’ll let them see me, she says, playing with a plastic curl from her wig, but I won’t let them hear my voice.

The girl at the liquor store forgets to add me on the e-mailing list for wine tasting. She reminds me of this each time, and each time she makes it a point to take my email address again and again. Each time she offers a compliment. Tonight it’s my jeans. They are jeans, she asks, stocking merchandise. Yes, I say.

On the walk home I look up at an apartment building I pass everyday and find the disembodied head of the Virgin staring out a dark window from the third floor, the head so large it can fill an entire living room. It’s both terrifying and amazing, blank stone eyes the shape of sole fish in the night. I begin to wonder about the rest of her, if the rest of her is also in pieces—if her hands can be found lying somewhere in a garden, or maybe in another apartment, another living room, the open palms used as a fainting bed.

This is what I think of the internet. Sometimes we catch one another watching the other, moving through public and private rooms—pieces of us seen and then gone. And each time we’re different because of it.

C.S.

In a meeting, a former professor of mine explained to me in a very special way what an idiot savant was. In this same meeting he asked me if I ever read. Please keep in mind this was a meeting to discuss my work in his fiction workshop. This professor, whom I defeated in a dart game (I wasn't even wearing glasses), now has a chapbook coming out and I recommend you get your hands on it. I haven't even read it and i recommend it, that's how sure I am about it. Because Chad Simpson is wonderful and a talent. Order your copy here: http://origamizoo.wordpress.com/order/

Tattoo Ideas

I really want a tattoo of Edward Gorey's Donald, and Donald's mother. Get it? A good friend of mine (whom shall remain nameless due to google alert attacks) sent me a copy of Gorey's Donald Has a Difficulty. In it there is a wonderful image of Donald's mother removing a splinter and the line, "he opened the box he might keep the splinter safely." I want it.

Steve Almond

I recently finished Steve Almond's short story collection, My Life in Heavy Metal. For those of you who haven't heard of him, or haven't read this collection, I highly recommend it. He's quickly become one of my favorite writer's, and he's definitely one of the best at writing about sex and the body.



Another Almond collection I just finished was This Won't Take But A Minute, Honey. This is a self-published collection, half stories (short-shorts) and half essays (which are about how to write a story). I find that he is at his absolute best in flash-fiction. Here's a excerpt from my favorite story "Rumors of Myself",

"Up north the rains blur everywhere and trees loan us the impression of a time less hindered by travel. A man with a reliable car found me coiled by the side of the road. I didn’t ask for him to stop or open his door. He told me of his years on the police force bopping spics on the head and doted on a Doberman he nursed himself by hand. I stumbled down Mississippi looped in the loose arms of cloverleafs and slept against concrete. An insurance man in Beaumont funneled me pills as smooth as skin. He wanted to be trusted. He said I should lie still and wait till I felt the ocean."

I don't know if it's legal to post the entire story on this blog. I wish I could, it's really one of the best stories ever written. Really. You can also find "Rumors of Myself" in Flash Fiction Forward (the most recent one), which has other amazing short-shorts by writers like Amy Hempel and Michael Martone.

Lines, Titles to be used for future projects

Holding the Bomb

“He gave me the Freudian slip.”

It’s for the Best: The Autobiography of Donald Rogers

I Just Love to Stare at People on the Internet; I Want to Touch Them: A Guide to Social Etiquette by Donald Rogers

Italian Leather Shoes, $22

New Music

My roommates will tell you that these three titles have been all that I have listened to for the past week.
I highly recommend Surfer Blood, and although I do not know how to talk about music, all I can say is that they sound like their name. How great is that?


Have One On Me is really spectacular. I wasn't as crazy for it as I thought I would be, but it quickly grew on me. What I find extremely beautiful, and what Newsom does so well, is how she captures the feel of the northern California landscape, “I was tired of being drunk/ my face cracked like a joke./ So I swung through here/ like a brace of jackrabbits/ with their necks all broke”. By far, my favorite song has to be "Good Intentions Paving Company". How can you not love it with lyrics like these, “I did not mean to shout, Just drive,/ just get us out, dead or alive./ the road is too long to mention--/Lord, it’s something to see!--/ laid down by the Good Intentions Paving Company." I mean, right?
You can listen to that song here:



Finally, there's Charlotte Gainsbourg. Take my word for it, it's good. 'Nough said.

Is this how you write an ending?

When I arrive home, I let the faucet run, filling the bathtub. From the kitchen I bring the salt, and pour it in, watching it dissolve in the water.
I dip my feet.
Heather’s favorite movie, and my own, has always been Splash. After finishing the credits and rewinding the cassette, it’s Heather’s idea to draw a bath with salt. We would become mermaids at home. Sitting at the edge of the tub, our ankles beneath the warm water, we wait. The bathroom door left open, our father comes in. What are you doing? he asks, and Heather happily explains.
“Your grandmother,” he says, “my mother, was a mermaid. Did you know? She came out of the waters of Sidon. The city with the castle in the sea. She met my father, had me and my brothers, and like she came, she left.”
He leaves us too, closing the door behind him. “Did you hear that?” Heather asks. Yes, I did, I tell her. She rests her head on my boney shoulder, and I wrap my arms around her small frame. We close our eyes and wait for our transformation.
There are some things I admit I will never understand. I understand the tangible. I understand how railroads and telephone wires across the land kept people connected, in touch. How mobile devices, radio waves, signal towers and satellites do this I cannot.
Under the shower, I rinse the salt from my skin, and the traces of anything else. After drying myself with a towel, I pick up the phone and dial the last known number that connected me to my father. In my bedroom, I listen to the phone ring endlessly. I hang up and dial again, and again, and again. As I listen to the tone, I think of all the things I could say to him, but already my throat closes up. I imagine my father in bed with the woman whose name was below his on the bank statement that came to the house that one day. She holds him closer as they listen to his cell phone vibrating on the wooden nightstand. I imagine the radio waves from my phone, my voice digitalized and combined with millions of others, as expanding half circles that reach their destination to reach another destination, these half circles crashing upon my father and the other woman, like waves onto the pier.

A Single Man

A few weeks ago, very good friend jokingly asked me, "Why do you hate yourself so much that you hate anything gay?" Last night I saw fashion designer Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man. Guess what, I hated it. Because it was gay as in homo, no, as in retarded.

The film is based off a Christopher Isherwood novel of the same title. It follows a gay English professor's (Colin Firth) day, but it's not just any day, it's the day he plans to kill himself. Sound familiar? Here's the thing, Firth's lover died, and Firth is living in the past and he feels like he's drowning, his world is gray, blah blah blah.

Although the film is stunningly beautiful, it's a bit much. I found it to be too romantic, sentimental, and indulgent. Also, can I say that Christopher Isherwood is super boring? Because he is, he's a boring writer. Anyway, there was a lot of corny shit in it, like, there would be vibrate colors every time Firth got a boner for a dude, kinda like in Pleasantville. Oh, and everyone in the film, save for Julianna Moore (who was awesome) and Firth, was a model. And because it's set in the 60s, everyone had awesome clothes. So after a while of seeing very, very beautiful people in awesome 60s clothes, it started to feel like you were watching a weird fetish, and it made me feel uncomfortable. The last time I felt that uncomfortable was when I was 13 and went to friend's house and he wouldn't stop showing me his porn collection.

Anyway, Tom Ford, your movie sucked.

Gilda

Ever see anything more beautiful?

You have not.