The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: RIP Gil Scott-Heron

Blatant Self Promotion, Volume MCMXVIII

Pure Slush is a web only literary magazine founded and edited by my brother from another mother, fellow 52/250 alum Matt Potter. Matt has kindly posted today (or yesterday, or tomorrow- he's one of those non American time traveler types from overseas) a piece I wrote called "Just Ahead". Faithful readers of this blog (both of you) may note this piece has never appeared here.

100 Word Challenge: "Couch Potato"

Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge is firmly of the opinion that if Rapture did occur, online literary challenges would be taken up to heaven with all the good people of Earth. This week's word is "Starved" and my story is called "Couch Potato".











"Rich?", I said hopefully.

He wasn't listening. I don't know why I even try anymore. He checked out years ago. After the kids came, and then especially when I got sick, he just left, mentally. It's like he's waiting for me to die.

"Rich?", I asked again.

It was stupid to even try. He wasn't the man I married anymore. I'm lonely, I want to tell him. Just hug me, tell me that I matter, tell me that it is going to be okay. Lie to me.

"What?," he barked.

"Forget it," I said.

Indie Ink Writing Challenge: Young Americans

This week, my Challenge goes out to Lazidaisical, while I am challenged by the immortal Plaid Pants, who gives me "ruins at dusk", while neither confirming nor denying the color (or colors) of her pants. I call this "Young Americans"











"You have to travel," everyone told me. "You should go see the world. It will inspire you." I put them off, until my bank balance, fat from a couple of pieces that sold for more than I thought they would, convinced me I could. I paid my bills ahead, packed up, and left for a month, sketchbook in hand, ready to see the Old World.

It was unsurprising. It was old, and very beautiful. People were generally nice, understanding and accepting my ignorance and managing to explain to me, with pantomime and phrases from Matt Damon movies, where the public bathroom was. It was odd seeing signs with unfamiliar logos and words you couldn't understand. As an ignorant American, I got used to reading every flat surface around me, from the warning on a bus window to a vending machine, with subconscious speed.

I had one week left before returning to home and hearth. It had been a fine trip, and I had made sketches, and I had some new ideas. But I had a lingering wish that it be over- that I was back among people I knew, television shows I could understand, Chinese food I could order at 3AM. Rules and customs that I knew, friends that would answer when I called them. Culture was all well and good, but I was about ready to go home.

Our tour bus was making its way up a long, winding hill. The bus driver appeared to be a David Bowie fan, as he kept playing the same Greatest Hits cassette over and over as we kicked up dust behind us. We were at a set of ruins up here, broken walls and columns and old statues. The tour leader, a round bellied Irishman named Phillip, announced, as the daylight faded, we could push on to one more site, or just call it a day. I was all for the latter, along with a sullen teenage girl, but the rest of the group, the girl's earnest mother, several robust seniors and a single man, all voted to press on, so we did.

We finally pulled off to the side. I could see some stone outbuildings and another long wall. It looked more or less the same as the last stone wall we saw, but I held my tongue. There was a vending machine inside the bus enclosure, and I stopped to get another bottle of water. I put in the coins, but the machine wouldn't drop the bottle. Looking around anxiously for some sort of attendant, I saw only the single man. I hadn't spoken to him yet, but as I usually did, I had quickly sized him up as the only fit potential suitor on the bus.

I wasn't the most active person I knew. Not by a long shot. But I had my share of boyfriends, and people who would open their bed to me if I asked. I didn't dare on the trip- you never know what the laws are, never mind the rules and customs and niceties of coupling outside your own land. But in my typical fashion, I eliminated the others and settled on him. Whenever I was in any group, I would analyze it for potential mates, just inside my own head. If it was going to be any of them, it would be him.

I remembered a line I heard a comedian use about the actor Alec Baldwin: the closest thing to James Bond that you're going to meet on this Earth. That's what the single man was- calm, cool, and collected. Trim, with well fit, fashionable clothes and a shock of dark hair, he had noticed my distress with the machine. After nearly a month with no attention from anyone, my body perked up when he caught my eye.

He came up beside me.

"How many did you put in?" he asked. His voice was smooth, like a radio DJ or a lounge singer's would be.

"Three."

"It needs four," he said, sliding one more of the strange foreign coins into the slot. I heard the mechanism release, and the bottle thumped down to the bottom. "I made the same mistake this morning."

"Aha," I said, removing the bottle from the machine. "Thanks."

"I'm Jacob," he said, extending his hand.

"Keith," I said, shaking it. Yup, I thought. I definitely feel something.

"Shall we go look at more rocks?"

"I guess we shall," I said. We walked side by side towards the group, who were gathered near one end of the wall. Phillip was talking about Roman legions as we made our way to the edge of the group. He didn't take my hand or anything so forward, but he seemed to deliberately stand near me. I looked at him in profile, his eyes focused on our group leader. I felt my heart pound a bit. Maybe this trip wasn't so bad after all.

Flash Fiction Friday: Livin' On A Prayer

The folks at Flash Fiction Friday have a challenge up for this week involving a list of ten songs with commonly misheard lyrics. The challenge is to take one of the songs, and write a story based on the title. This is my entry, "Livin' On A Prayer".










Kevin wasn't perfect. He was a little quick to anger, and he was a little slow to follow me if I talked too fast about too many different people. He wasn't the cutest boy I've ever met. His nose needed work, and his skin was kind of splotchy. His family was a disaster. But he worked really hard, and he would sit on the bed and hold me when I was crying, his heavy voice whispering, "Baby, it's ok," even if he didn't understand what I was upset about.

I was far from perfect, too. I could lose 20 pounds. I was no beauty queen. My face still broke out, and when it was that time of the month, I could be a raving lunatic. I was insecure at some times, and vain at others. I could be stubborn, and I spent too much money on makeup and girly things I didn't really need. I dragged him to social functions he hated, and made him watch and care about television shows he hated when he'd rather watch sports.

I sat on the edge of our bed and watched him sleep, his breath whistling slightly through his nostrils. We both worked crazy hours, plus I was still in school, but money was still a constant problem. If he was getting all his hours, and the cafe was busy, we could clear rent easily and even buy a little wine to have with dinner. If business slowed, or if one job or the other cut him back, we scrambled even to eat. I worried about it constantly.

The morning had been a blessing, a stretch of several consecutive hours where we could sleep in the same bed, murmuring endearments, falling asleep in each other's embrace and waking up together. For once, for 12 lovely hours, no one had to be anywhere. I loved Kevin, and he loved me, and I felt more sure of that than I ever had of anything. I accepted him and his faults, and he accepted me and mine. Alone among my circle of friends, I had no doubts about the man who shared my bed.

What happened this morning wasn't anyone's fault. I don't think either of us were entirely awake, and we did what adults do when they are half clothed and in love and alone. It was natural- without really thinking about it, we started it, and then it was done, and we were both asleep again. It was me who bolted awake, maybe 20 minutes later, not exactly ashamed, but aware that what had just occurred, enjoyable as it was, shouldn't have happened. Plan B, I thought immediately, staring at the ceiling, remembering a women's magazine article I had read in a flash.

I'm not stupid. I paid attention in health class, and I knew what happened when you lost control of yourself. Our constant money crunch meant that prevention wasn't always in the budget. So I plotted, and planned, and said no when I wanted to say yes sometimes. We talked about kids, of course- everyone our age did, and a few already had started. But we agreed, not yet. Not until money worry wasn't a constant, panicky nausea in my throat.

I slipped into a pair of his sweatpants and a too large t shirt. I pulled my hair back into a sloppy pony tail, found a pair of shoes and my car keys. I fished his wallet out of his jeans and removed a twenty, then found a matching one in my purse. I inspected myself in the mirror, making tiny tugs and adjustments. I looked horrible, but I couldn't spare the time or the effort to look any better.

I watched him sleep for another second. He worked so hard. I worked, too, but a lot of my work was standing around, talking and thinking. His was lifting and bending and stretching, his muscles doing the work, making him so tired some days he would fall asleep while talking to me. He wasn't handsome, he wasn't smart, but he loved me, and he was mine. I can't, I won't put him, put us, through this. Not now. Maybe someday. But not now.

"It will be OK. Someday," I told myself as I shut the door quietly.

100 Word Challenge: Duck Phone

Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge doesn't wish to brag, but it could easily have scored 48 points on the Oklahoma City Thunder. The word is "chasm", and my entry is called "Duck Phone".







I stared at the phone, a carved, painted wooden duck.

"I'll still see you on weekends and stuff," she said cheerily.

Clearly, there was a gap between what I thought we had and what she did.

"That's not the point," I said softly.

Someone to sleep with was certainly nice, but it was far from the whole thing.

"Why isn't it the point?," she asked.

Indeed, why wasn't it? She was offering, it seemed, what every man wants- no strings attached.

"It just isn't," I stammered. "We are more than that."

"We were," she said.

Terrible Minds Challenge: Memento Mori

The Talented Mr. Wendig, Chuck Wendig of terribleminds.com, has once again inflicted upon the world a challenge Flash Fictional. He asks his loyal subjects to consult the "M" section of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and write something using one of the entries there as your title and theme. As simple as that.

Mine is called "Memento Mori" (which is Latin for "remember to die". It basically means something that reminds one of one's mortality.)







It was a chair, just like all the other chairs in the room. Metal frame, one piece, the four legs connected to the back, two hard plastic pieces of a comforting neutral pastel to rest the sitter's body against. A school chair, put onto a desk at night so the floors could be cleaned. It probably wasn't even the same chair- their sameness made it certain they were rotated, borrowed, changed. It had probably been in every room in the school at some point.

It was more appropriate to say it was his seat. The art room had long tables instead of traditional desks, with four chairs around each. I don't remember how the seat was picked, or even who picked it. The table was along the wall, the chairs facing away from the inviting views of the street outside. In retrospect, a little cruel- high school students, trapped against their will, viewing a world they are not participating in.

He probably took his chair first. I'm sure that the sight of another male, especially one that he was friendly with, made me the first choice for his seat mate. It was art class, not a male dominated preserve, and while we were not close friends, we were friendly enough to get along together. We were friends like high school boys are friends: sarcastic, jokey, profoundly unserious. We liked heavy metal music, and usually tried to connive ways to make our art about album covers or band logos. We played basketball sometimes, and played guitar- he with skill, me with enthusiasm. He ate my pretzel sticks at lunch when I didn't want them.

He was there, the outsider with the long dark hair who didn't isolate the new kid who talked funny, making art projects, cracking jokes in poor taste, wearing concert shirts, being cooler than a kid had any right to be. Then, over a long summer, in an event that shattered the lives of everyone I knew, he was gone, felled by a hidden heart ailment, laying down under a tree on a car trip and not getting up.

It happens, relatively speaking, all the time- but there are the times it happens to other kids in other towns, and there is the time it happens to you. It is a part of life. We are all mortal- Charlemagne and Julius Caesar, Bill Clinton and Harmon Killebrew, LeBron James and Barack Obama. It still seems cruel, after all these years, to upend a kid's life, to tell them that the seat that was full in June is cruelly empty by the following September. It's true, but it's still unnatural to pull someone out of the self centeredness of youth so bracingly.

I don't know if the teacher said anything to other students, or if the psychic pull was just strong enough. For whatever reason, the chair was empty when the next school year started. I sat where I always had, and life continued on. As it does. It was never the same. Nothing ever is, having someone ripped away like that leaves a hole that can never be fully repaired. When presented with F.Scott Fitzgerald's essay "The Crack Up" in later years, it resonated powerfully. Fitzgerald writes of a dish that is cracked and mended with glue, saying that the plate is still the same functionally, but it will never be as strong as it was before. Hemingway, as he does, was blunter, noting that the world breaks everyone.

The chair is probably thrown out now. The building it sat in isn't even a high school anymore. His seat stayed empty, a silent reminder, while I pressed on, taking a class that really wasn't relevant for reasons I didn't fully understand. When I look back, so much of what has followed has been like that- acting to somehow try and make sense of the senseless.

High school students are often told they have to shape up for the "real world". Sometimes, the real world finds them.

IndieInk Writing Challenge: "E5"

This week's Indie Ink Writing Challenge comes from FlamingNyx, who may be a Nyx, but, as far as I can tell, is not, at this moment, on fire, and who challenged me with the following sentence: "There is such thing as black and white; people are shades of grey." (My challenge, which I am very interested to see the outcome of, will wind up here.)

This story is called "E5".








I sat on the bench glumly, looking into the creases between the cement and the steel of the fence that protected us from errant balls. There were scraps of napkin, and bits of wrapping from packages of athletic tape and a colorful little corner of what looked like it might be a Hostess Fruit Pie. My stomach growled when I thought about it. They always told us to eat something before a game, but I never could. I needed to feel anxious, slightly angry, to play well, to be aggressive out there.

I looked down at the tips of my cleats. They were originally white, but looked tan from weeks of mud and dirt. I liked the fact that they were unclean. It felt funny to see my teammates ready to begin a game, and not be out there. I had started since midway through sophomore year, and I had only missed a couple of games when I was sick ever since. I felt restless, sitting next to the coach and the other bench players. You had to sit when we were batting, of course, but you knew something was coming- either you were going to hit, or the inning would end and we would have to go out and play defense again.

I was mad, but I was more angry at myself than mad at the coach. She told us every season, first thing, that she would talk to our teachers regularly, and if our grades slipped at all, we wouldn't start. If they didn't improve, we wouldn't play at all. I knew this going in, and, looking at it logically, I knew she was being fair. I knew this, but it still burned. As I watched Alexa warming up for the first inning, I yearned to be out there, scuffing the dirt around third base, getting loose, revving up for action.

My replacement, a scared looking sophomore named Julia, didn't look right out there. When we hit the ball to her at practice, she stayed back too long, waiting for the ball to come to her instead of attacking it. I tried to show her how to do it better, and so did the coaches, but she fell back into her old habits almost right away- waiting, falling victim to bad hops and then rushing, throwing wildly. I hoped, for Alexa's sake, she struck out a lot of hitters today.

So what happened? My history grade had started to slip, and then fall, and then plunge out of sight. What was it? Well, I didn't care about it, and I didn't like the teacher too much, but I had dealt with both of those problems before without too much trouble. What was it really? Jacob. Honestly, it was. Not so much him as the time he seemed to suck out of my schedule.

I like boys, certainly, but until I met Jacob, they were always faintly ridiculous distractions. Being a close friend with a boy has been way more trouble than it is worth- they either wanted the one thing men want, making them desperate and sad, or they were just dumb as posts, not caring about anything that mattered. They took time away from the things I really cared about, so I just shut them into a box, ignoring them despite the probing questions from mothers and aunts. Sports and math and science were straightforward and simple- you got the answer right or you didn't, the runner was safe or she wasn't- unlike the world of boys and relationships, with their double and triple meanings, misunderstandings and rumors and pressure and silly disputes. It did make me nearly the only single upperclassman on the team, and I knew what they whispered about me. But I didn't care- I was beyond caring what they thought.

Jacob called me three thrilling weeks ago, asking if he could borrow my Trig book, since he had forgotten his and the assignment for the weekend was in there. I told him I could just scan it and email him, and we wound up talking for more than an hour. He was so smart, and funny, and able to just relate to you in a easy way. We talked more and more often, and started meeting for lunch on Saturdays when we could squeeze an hour between club meetings, fundraisers, and all the other pre graduation chaos. I didn't call him a boyfriend, and I certainly didn't talk about him with anyone, but he just organically became part of my life, and it was always a thrill to talk to him. I commented a few times that I really needed to pull my grade back up, and he always offered to back away. But I didn't want him to. He made me feel intelligent, and whole- like I was a real person, not just a category. He was the first boy I had ever felt close to, and talking to him became my narcotic- impossible to resist, and hard to go without.

The first batter came up, and, in keeping with the team spirit thing, I clapped and yelled along with the others. Alexa battled to a 2-2 count, and then finally the girl chopped one down towards third, a nasty little dribbler, one of the toughest plays you had to make at third. I leaned forward, trying to will Julia into action. She moved in, seeming to study the ball as it hopped and spun, finally snatching at it. The ball skittered away, off of the tip of her glove. Julia panicked, snatching at it with her bare hand.

I knew what was going to happen, and quickly, it did. She had waited too long- you had to charge these type of balls, especially from a leadoff batter, who was probably fast. You attacked it, making a quick play and a strong throw without setting yourself. The more important thing was to know the play you couldn't make- if you weren't going to get her at first, just take a bite out of it and let them have the base. The worst thing to do was to throw the ball away- now not only was she safe, but she was safe on second.

Julia did what I feared. She grabbed the ball with her bare hand, too late to get the girl at first, and airmailed a throw, giving the girl second base. I flushed with shame and anger, looking down at the clots of dirt on the cement under my feet. Once the ball had been tracked down and the enemy runner was dusting herself off on second, our bench clapped weakly, trying to buck Julia up. "It's OK," the backup catcher said from the bench next to me, "Tough play, Jules." Alexa said a word to her, trying to be supportive, I was sure, then looked directly at me for a second, before going back to the mound. I looked down again.

I knew what she was thinking. I should have been out there. I would have made that play, or at least, I wouldn't have thrown it away. Alexa already had the out recorded in her head, and how she had to go back and get that out again. She was right, I should have been out there. I would have made the play. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, I didn't mean it, that it's my fault, that the run was on me for being dumb enough to get benched.

But that was the thing about sports- it wasn't. That runner was Alexa's problem now, and she couldn't get mad at Julia, or even mad at me. Fair or not, the scorebook told the story. No do over, no arguing your case, no appeal to another authority. The runner was there, and if she scored, the run would count, and if we couldn't score any runs, we would lose.

I was furious at myself, and, what was worse, I knew I was right.

Artist's Way: Week Two Check In

In a word, I didn't. (OK, that's two words.) No morning pages, no artist dates (except another paper and pen purchase I didn't need to make). The problem for me is time, plain and simple. I need time to create, and I don't have it. I know the author means well, and I know Velvet means well, but I can't help feeling a little silly trying to do this.

100 Word Challenge: Who Are You?

Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge will neither confirm nor deny whether it intends to run for president in 2012. This week's word is "forgetting", and this story is called "Who Are You?"










Tara watched the rain streak the window.

"What is it?" Steven said from the bed. She didn't turn around.

"Is it that I'm married? Is that it?"

Tara fervently wished it was. That, she could understand. Simple, straightforward guilt, she could grasp. Tara could take the stolen afternoons in the hotels under another name, the hours and days without any contact, the knowing glances of the maid. That came with the territory.

The part she hated was the way it turned her against herself, making her forget all the times she condemned others for doing what she did so easily.

Flashed by a Threesome

The final 52/250 Flash is up, and while I am not in the mix, the stories and poems therein are not unworth your time.

Artists Way- Checking In

The marvelous Velvet, who is more marvelous than a sausage sandwich, is leading some of her minions on a journey through Julia Cameron's book "The Artist's Way". As such, we (Velvet's zombie army) will be conducting weekly check ins, as the book instructs. This is week one's check in.



1. I did not do any "artist pages". (Cameron suggests you begin each day with free writing for 30 minutes in a notebook.) Mornings are tough for me- we're often trying to get three people to three different places, making it hard to find 30 minutes for anything.

2. I did not do an "artist date". I took several unscheduled trips, places like Target and OfficeMax where I can browse pens and paper and think for a while.

3. Probably the most significant issue I came upon this week was writing a non fiction piece for my buddy Matt Potter's magazine Pure Slush about my father's passing in 2009. It was a lot harder than I had imagined it might be.

Indie Ink Writing Challenge: Remembering

The IndieInk Writing Challenge is upon us, with a mean girl in a garage challenging me to write about "The Virus". (My challenge goes out to some random girl, who will respond to it here.)Which, I have to admit, is a challenge so good it's actually a little hard. Sometimes a challenge sets me on one path, and there's nothing I can do about it. Challenges like this, though, present a whole menu of possible avenues, and the challenge is to settle on just one.

I think about all sorts of things when I hear the word "virus", some professional and technical, and some artistic and dramatic. I think of Ed Harris' stricken artist in the movie version of Michael Cunningham's "The Hours", and of Keith Haring, and of Freddie Mercury, and of the doomed strivers in Jonathan Larson's incomparable musical "Rent". I think of reverse transcriptase, and vaccinia, and varicella, and H1N1, and tobacco mosaic virus, and the undercover nature of viral replication- using the cell's own machinery to produce more virus. I think about zombie and vampire movies, and novels like Steven King's "The Stand", and Michael Crichton's "The Andromeda Strain", and the novella that became the film "I Am Legend".

Eventually, my brain settled here:












I watched the smoke make little curlicues and bends and loops as it rose from the tip of my cigarette. I met a woman, a Chinese artist who was premed before she gave up on that to make art, at a party once. She told me that the patterns in smoke like that are demonstrations of chaos theory- you could take two identical cigarettes, and light them with identical matches, and they would burn totally differently- there are so many variables, and variables impacting variables, that the system is impossible to predict. I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded good. After she bummed a cigarette and smoked it, she went back inside, while I just stayed on the porch the rest of the night, thinking about that. Jacob hated that.

Jacob. Lover, friend, comrade, brother in arms. He hated my smoking- hated it from the very beginning, insisted that I do it outside, even when he wasn't around. He could be downright bitchy about it, frankly- constantly begging me to quit, imploring me to get the patch, or gum, or hypnosis, or acupuncture. Anything to get it out of my body, and the smell out of his life. I started out of a sense of artistic yearning- that was what artists did, right? They smoked. It made you look young, and cool, and edgy, and unconcerned with mortality. Pollock, Rothko, Warhol, Picasso. "All those artists are dead," Jacob would sniff, and walk away, waving his hand theatrically.

No point in stopping now, I thought. I sat on the fire escape, looking out through triangles of steel and sharp angled buildings at the night sky. It was my smoking refuge, but sometimes I used it to just think. I'd take a novel out here- Proust, which I laughingly promised to finish as a promise to Jacob I wouldn't die- but I never read, just staring at people walking by on the street or someone on the phone inside an apartment across the street, bickering with a lover or consoling a friend. Jacob always asked me why I never made any progress in the book, and I could never tell him the answer- remembering someone else's memory was just as hard as remembering your own.

That makes Jacob sound whiny and controlling, and he's really not. I should be kinder. After all, if there is a God, I'm going to be seeing him soon. I should try to be nice. After I found out, he immediately insisted I had to stay, disease or no disease. He could have insisted, once I stopped going out with him, and then stopped working and thus, inevitably, stopped being paid, that I had to go home to Momma. I still suggested this to him, once or twice a week- my Mom would love to have someone to fuss over again- but Jacob always demurs. I secretly think he relishes having the dying boyfriend- makes him the center of a lot of conversations, which is exactly what he likes.

As it was, I wasn't costing him much. A few packs of cigarettes, a bottle of wine once a month. I only picked at food now. He had started right away, as soon as we knew, trying every trick in the book- greasy fast food, gourmet cheeses, pastry, fresh bread, homemade soups from Food Network chefs- to get me to eat. But just like my desire to paint, my desire to eat vanished soon after finding out. Part psychological- why start something you won't finish, or maintain a body that has failed you-and part biological, my shutdown was final, beyond reasoning. A few crackers, a cigarette, some water, and then back to bed, a cycle I would follow several times a day.

Sleep was a distant illusion. Fortunately, I had lost enough weight that my climbing in and out of bed barely stirred Jacob. All I could manage was a couple of uneasy hours, drifting in and out of consciousness, before some pain or other symptom- dry mouth, nausea or other stomach miseries, intense, full body itching that caused me to rub my skin raw with fury- would bring me to awareness again.

Sitting here, watching a cigarette burn , I wonder about how I got it. They tell us not to- you don't ask a cancer patient how they "got" it, so you shouldn't ask us, either. Which risky, stupid, lust filled assignation was it? Would an identical me, presented with the same opportunity, knowing what I know now, act differently? The proper answer was yes- of course, I would do anything I could to avoid the infection. The true answer? No. I was a prisoner of my loins, like all men.

The cigarette stops burning, with a final, sad, silent puff that quickly wafts away. With this invader inside my body, subverting its machinery, perpetuating itself at the expense of me, everything seems pointless. I could crawl up over the railing, hurl myself into space, feel a rushing of air, then a crunch, and then nothing at all. But that would just create a mess for someone else to clean up. That would annoy Jacob- my last act being to ruin some poor young policeman's morning. Better not, I decided, getting up to go back inside.

Happy Birthday, Billy Joel

Silent Sunday