scene - midtown diner - late-afternoon
i am with my cousin, surrounded by tourists and commuters. i ask him things like do you have a girlfriend? and how is school? (no, fine) bringing the coffee mug to my lips at every questionmark reminding myself that this is what older cousins are supposed to ask.
i am older and feeling even older still. when i was your age there was no internet i exaggerate. i start sentences with i remember when you... and he brings a hand to his forehead, wishing people would stop telling these stories.
and he wants to know "how do you think about those times, when you were in high school?" and i get the far away look of someone who both loves and hates the question. i will never be able to answer it right. when i think about it, it feels like it was someone else's life, and this is true mostly. my memory has warped the details, the important parts and frankensteined the pieces into a monster that is nothing like it really was.
the thing about being i teenager, i say with some authority, is that everything seems so much more important than it is. everything has this urgency to it. i list this as progress, but in truth it is what i miss most. the fire, the passion, the feeling of the entire world expanding, contracting, breathing with you.
it's the sort of thing that fades when you get older. your perspective changes and you just sort of start seeing everything on a different scale. the words are halfway out, tumbling from my lips, too late to take back and even as i'm saying them, i feel ridiculous telling him this. pretending to be worldly and wise. his father has just passed away.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
the standout
scene: small town thrift store - mid-afternoon
the place is laid out like a department store, with many four sided mini-racks of shirts. the entrance is behind me. i have never been in this town before. i am just passing through.
a forty something woman with short curly blonde hair and glasses attached to a chain searches through the same rack as me and i slow my pace to avoid contact.
there is a row of tie dyed soccer jerseys, as though a whole team had turned them in. i search through each, looking for the luckiest number, the funniest name. a tall blonde boy (a boy, not a man) comes up behind me - i am holding kavic, number 9 - that's the best one he says and somehow i know it was his.
are you swedish he asks, which is the most ridiculous thing a person could ask me.
i shake my head no.
oh, you should be swedish.
"what is exactly is the process for that?" i ask and this kills him.
he laughs and laughs, good-naturedly, for far too long and i stand there mostly pleased with myself, waiting for him to stop. when he finally does, we just stand there, staring at each other from four feet apart, not knowing where to go from here.
the place is laid out like a department store, with many four sided mini-racks of shirts. the entrance is behind me. i have never been in this town before. i am just passing through.
a forty something woman with short curly blonde hair and glasses attached to a chain searches through the same rack as me and i slow my pace to avoid contact.
there is a row of tie dyed soccer jerseys, as though a whole team had turned them in. i search through each, looking for the luckiest number, the funniest name. a tall blonde boy (a boy, not a man) comes up behind me - i am holding kavic, number 9 - that's the best one he says and somehow i know it was his.
are you swedish he asks, which is the most ridiculous thing a person could ask me.
i shake my head no.
oh, you should be swedish.
"what is exactly is the process for that?" i ask and this kills him.
he laughs and laughs, good-naturedly, for far too long and i stand there mostly pleased with myself, waiting for him to stop. when he finally does, we just stand there, staring at each other from four feet apart, not knowing where to go from here.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
the reconstruction
We are taking part in a reality show of sorts, holed up in the wrong side of town where each person has a tiny room with no windows. My teammates consist of 2 girls who are working on our project all hours of the night and will not let me have any part of it. they are secretive and cruel and when I ask the head of this competition how much of this work is allowed to be done on our own time, they shoot daggers from their eyes at me. We hold a meeting on something resembling a porch, elevated, one room over from the living space. It overlooks the parking lot and when we see the owners cherry red sports car pull in we all scatter like pillbugs when the rock’s been pulled away.
I head for my car, this car that is my own contraption, made of cardboard and wire but still functioning somehow, for as long as I don’t give it too much thought. It takes the turns hard.
And the boss spots me, asks me to move his car to the next lot over, which I do and my father sees me parking it there. He is not my real father, but rather the screw up type of man who squanders his children’s hard work with his own repeated mistakes. He wants to borrow the car, he needs to. We are two miles from the center of town and it is a straight shot. I don’t plan on returning so I say alright. Be careful, I warn, and though I do not accompany him, I know that the windshield will end up spiderwebbed. There will be bullet holes from people mistaking the driver and this is the sort of thing that is not necessarily his fault, but will be.
This place is an island and though it is Astoria it looks and feels like northern Long Island, around Huntington, where I have gotten lost so many times. I am meeting with someone on his deck and I am telling him about a story I was writing – something about local Spanish or Italian gangs, people who wear zoot suits.
And a scene in a school gym where I am 10 years old and everyone is pairing up for a dance class I have organized in part because I am in love with my best friend, who is in love with someone else, a wretched girl who preens and pouts all day. I pair them up together anyway, because it is the right thing to do.
And later, I am on the subway, with a camera, fully grown, my shoulders sunburnt doing pull ups on the bars while I talk to my crew about the idea of passing for someone or something other than what you are.
This is what I am talking about in my deck interview. The man I’m speaking to has charcoal skin with gray undertones and a young boy sitting with him. The air is swampy and when I take off my blazer it barely helps things. Don’t dress like that around here, he says, they will confuse you for the cast. In the distance I see the zoot-suit-ed stars. What do you write he wants to know and I tell him everything and he raises an eyebrow, interested not suspicious. And I begin to tell him that there are very few things in this world I care enough about to explore and I am about to start listing them off when a group comes over and starts setting the table.
My father, the real one this time, is at the table. They are serving beignets and I lean next to him and wonder if this is where his friends had come not too long ago. It is the only place I’ve heard of in Astoria that serves these things. But they are blonde and Nordic and would not last long here, as the conversation reveals. I am allowed to stay because I am dark eyed and tanned dark enough to facilitate the illusion that I belong, even if they know better. They ask the countries that compose my heritage and laugh when I tell the truth, announcing their superiority.
It is a strange place.
I head for my car, this car that is my own contraption, made of cardboard and wire but still functioning somehow, for as long as I don’t give it too much thought. It takes the turns hard.
And the boss spots me, asks me to move his car to the next lot over, which I do and my father sees me parking it there. He is not my real father, but rather the screw up type of man who squanders his children’s hard work with his own repeated mistakes. He wants to borrow the car, he needs to. We are two miles from the center of town and it is a straight shot. I don’t plan on returning so I say alright. Be careful, I warn, and though I do not accompany him, I know that the windshield will end up spiderwebbed. There will be bullet holes from people mistaking the driver and this is the sort of thing that is not necessarily his fault, but will be.
This place is an island and though it is Astoria it looks and feels like northern Long Island, around Huntington, where I have gotten lost so many times. I am meeting with someone on his deck and I am telling him about a story I was writing – something about local Spanish or Italian gangs, people who wear zoot suits.
And a scene in a school gym where I am 10 years old and everyone is pairing up for a dance class I have organized in part because I am in love with my best friend, who is in love with someone else, a wretched girl who preens and pouts all day. I pair them up together anyway, because it is the right thing to do.
And later, I am on the subway, with a camera, fully grown, my shoulders sunburnt doing pull ups on the bars while I talk to my crew about the idea of passing for someone or something other than what you are.
This is what I am talking about in my deck interview. The man I’m speaking to has charcoal skin with gray undertones and a young boy sitting with him. The air is swampy and when I take off my blazer it barely helps things. Don’t dress like that around here, he says, they will confuse you for the cast. In the distance I see the zoot-suit-ed stars. What do you write he wants to know and I tell him everything and he raises an eyebrow, interested not suspicious. And I begin to tell him that there are very few things in this world I care enough about to explore and I am about to start listing them off when a group comes over and starts setting the table.
My father, the real one this time, is at the table. They are serving beignets and I lean next to him and wonder if this is where his friends had come not too long ago. It is the only place I’ve heard of in Astoria that serves these things. But they are blonde and Nordic and would not last long here, as the conversation reveals. I am allowed to stay because I am dark eyed and tanned dark enough to facilitate the illusion that I belong, even if they know better. They ask the countries that compose my heritage and laugh when I tell the truth, announcing their superiority.
It is a strange place.
Monday, December 21, 2009
the men
ONE:
There was a carnival during the day, some kind of festivities and at night there is a movie shown on bleachers in a classroom of sorts. I am sitting next to a friend, getting sleepy and he puts his arm around me and I lean deep into his shoulder. His hand wanders down my arm to my waist. Don’t you have a girlfriend? I ask and he hesitates only for a moment, smiles a bit. We are whispering close enough that we can feel each other’s breath on our faces. Our kisses are short and stolen and disappointingly uncharged. When we get up, I realize my boss is sitting right behind me and am embarrassed.
TWO:
A villa at the end of a cobblestone road in the city where everything is enclosed by stone. Some combination of Italy and New Orleans, though I do not claim to know either well. I have been living there, with a group of girls and a hugh hefner type man-of-the-house. I have been practicing using feminine wiles to get my way.
THREE:
It is a Monday and I’m supposed to be at work, but am instead in a cabin room somewhere. Somehow it is already 6pm and I am instant messaging with my exboyfriend who I have not spoken to in years and whatever we are talking about it confusing me. He shows up with his new girlfriend and I am not entirely sure how he found me but he is there and he wants to make a stop action animated porn. It’s never been done before, he says and I cite things close – aeon flux and team America and they are not quite the level he wants to take it. he has suggestions, ideas and pretty soon we have enlisted dozens’ help in constructing the set and I am arguing about the way to do it, the size it ought to be and we are hammering into uneven wood to create a model as wide as the one in the beetlejuice attic.
There was a carnival during the day, some kind of festivities and at night there is a movie shown on bleachers in a classroom of sorts. I am sitting next to a friend, getting sleepy and he puts his arm around me and I lean deep into his shoulder. His hand wanders down my arm to my waist. Don’t you have a girlfriend? I ask and he hesitates only for a moment, smiles a bit. We are whispering close enough that we can feel each other’s breath on our faces. Our kisses are short and stolen and disappointingly uncharged. When we get up, I realize my boss is sitting right behind me and am embarrassed.
TWO:
A villa at the end of a cobblestone road in the city where everything is enclosed by stone. Some combination of Italy and New Orleans, though I do not claim to know either well. I have been living there, with a group of girls and a hugh hefner type man-of-the-house. I have been practicing using feminine wiles to get my way.
THREE:
It is a Monday and I’m supposed to be at work, but am instead in a cabin room somewhere. Somehow it is already 6pm and I am instant messaging with my exboyfriend who I have not spoken to in years and whatever we are talking about it confusing me. He shows up with his new girlfriend and I am not entirely sure how he found me but he is there and he wants to make a stop action animated porn. It’s never been done before, he says and I cite things close – aeon flux and team America and they are not quite the level he wants to take it. he has suggestions, ideas and pretty soon we have enlisted dozens’ help in constructing the set and I am arguing about the way to do it, the size it ought to be and we are hammering into uneven wood to create a model as wide as the one in the beetlejuice attic.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
the crime
we have moved into the new up and coming area. they are polling the neighborhood before they open a chain store. i am struggling with the geography of the area. we are an island and i have not memorized street names yet.
there is a collector of sorts, someone we meet at the focus group, and he enlists our help in gathering items for an exhibition. there is something off about him that we can't place. he leads us into the attic of a house where everything smells like woodchips and clothes are laid out on tables like a boutique. we will have to make multiple trips he explains, rattling off items and prices and it becomes clear that we have been stealing things all along. i stuff a green sweater vest up my shirt and sneak out the back way just as the owners return home with their children.
outside two friends are about to pull off in a vespa with sidecar. take me with you i ask and they do not argue. they're been wise to the game for longer than i. the vest is bunched up by my belly and i push it as close to my skin as i can for fear of their judgement.
there is a collector of sorts, someone we meet at the focus group, and he enlists our help in gathering items for an exhibition. there is something off about him that we can't place. he leads us into the attic of a house where everything smells like woodchips and clothes are laid out on tables like a boutique. we will have to make multiple trips he explains, rattling off items and prices and it becomes clear that we have been stealing things all along. i stuff a green sweater vest up my shirt and sneak out the back way just as the owners return home with their children.
outside two friends are about to pull off in a vespa with sidecar. take me with you i ask and they do not argue. they're been wise to the game for longer than i. the vest is bunched up by my belly and i push it as close to my skin as i can for fear of their judgement.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
the consequence
one
An area mostly industrial and deserted, with the space of a junkyard but the containment of a back alley. It is at once claustrophobic and infinite and we know we ought to be scared but are not…yet. there is a spaceship resembling a submarine or a playstation controller. We are toying with some nearby contraptions, one that looks like a viewfinder with a trigger. It shoots fireballs, perfectly round with short tails like tadpoles. they are elastic, bouncing from one wall to another and realizing they are not made of flames but something we are not prepared to handle, we climb into the ship for safety.
When it hits, we expect the be engulfed but instead it pushes us. Further and further and it is impossible to tell if we are underwater or in the air and most of us are squinting are eyes closed waiting for the end. I can see us from the outside of the ship.
The stop is gentler than the start and we glide into a suburban street, tapping the car in front of us while we park. we are at my cousin’s house. It is not their block, but it is their house and the family is gathered at a too long table in the kitchen eating breakfast. My parents plan on taking over the house, building an extra room onto the back. we have to climb up outdoor steps to get in, like some apartment complex in warmer climates, like a motel. And we can’t bear to watch them changing our childhoods, so we leave, pile back into the craft that brought us here.
My future version cousin is driving and we are approaching the city. There is traffic and he clips an old man pedestrian near the side of the road. We panic, he is feeble, slow moving with oversized glasses, and we send him on the subway with a copy of my cousin’s screenplay, as though this is consolation of some sort.
He goes a stop and somehow – I don’t know how – but I see him get off at the next stop and turn around, as though he were worried about us following him, as though there would be consequences for us. He’s going to leave the script on the train, we say and I suggest we get on the train to try to cut him off, but my cousin still driving has other plans and leaves us by the station.
Since we are in the city already, she suggests we go to the strip of stores near the edge. They are dangerous mostly but she is collecting memorabilia of my time and this is the only place to go. There are two stores next to each other with a man standing out front, shaved head crossed arms and she shields her face when we go by, whispering that we can’t go in yet, and drags me into the third store of the row.
Suddenly I become aware that my clothes have changed and I am dressed like an action hero, some tight black lycra/leather body suit that I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to get into on my own with long black hair and bangs. She has changed too and I am sure that she is responsible for my own transformation, assuring that I do not understand this place.
Inside there is strange metal music moments arranged more like a museum than a store. In the backyard is an agent from work with long black hair and a headband. he comes in with a friend of my parents and yells hey zora good to see you again and I look behind me to see who he’s speaking to but there is no one there. And my parents’ friend comes over to introduce himself and I tell him we’ve met literally thousands of times before. He doesn’t remember. I am ready to leave.
two
i am dating an evil king or ruler of sort but it is not by my choosing. we are in a camp or prison of sorts in the industrial part of a city i recognize but can't place. there are tall iron gates at the front and he is dragging me by the wrist.
i am expected to compete for my way out and the first is a piggy back race where the king rides on my back. i can see him looking down my shirt and i tell him to stop, try to shake him off but it is very clear i am not the one in control.
there is a war. one side is lined up in chairs at the end of the field and my side is coming at them. we start out with bats and pellets and i soon abandon the bats as my aim is awful. instead, i throw the pellets which look like paintballs that explode without making a mess. each is different, the white ones are ice attacks and i am throwing handfuls of whatever i can grab at my opponent. all of which are landing, but it is impossible to gauge the impact they're having except from the complaints from the people sitting. they are angry that i am beating them so badly when this is a practice of sorts. we are supposed to be preparing for a war, and i am there as punishment, as a prisoner. when they confront me, i explain that in war there would be no mercy.
they are all demons. i didn't know. and when they float up and at me, finally untethered, i am forced into apologies.
they let me go and i head out the front gates. it's unclear whether the king knows this has transpired. there is a car waiting for me outside, big and black with suicide doors. take me anywhere i say, not knowing where to go because it does not feel safe to be alone.
three
an alternate reality where lives are predetermined. accidents are treated by placing full bodies into a shark in the center of town as some modified form of leeches. you go in ailed and come out unafflicted, shiny, new. everyone wears the same spacey outfits, whatever they're told.
i fall into it somehow, in my pajamas, into a room of a handful of people who do not understand my clothes or the way i speak. there is a cut on my arm from the trip and they want to send me to the shark. i leave a trail of blood up the wall.
An area mostly industrial and deserted, with the space of a junkyard but the containment of a back alley. It is at once claustrophobic and infinite and we know we ought to be scared but are not…yet. there is a spaceship resembling a submarine or a playstation controller. We are toying with some nearby contraptions, one that looks like a viewfinder with a trigger. It shoots fireballs, perfectly round with short tails like tadpoles. they are elastic, bouncing from one wall to another and realizing they are not made of flames but something we are not prepared to handle, we climb into the ship for safety.
When it hits, we expect the be engulfed but instead it pushes us. Further and further and it is impossible to tell if we are underwater or in the air and most of us are squinting are eyes closed waiting for the end. I can see us from the outside of the ship.
The stop is gentler than the start and we glide into a suburban street, tapping the car in front of us while we park. we are at my cousin’s house. It is not their block, but it is their house and the family is gathered at a too long table in the kitchen eating breakfast. My parents plan on taking over the house, building an extra room onto the back. we have to climb up outdoor steps to get in, like some apartment complex in warmer climates, like a motel. And we can’t bear to watch them changing our childhoods, so we leave, pile back into the craft that brought us here.
My future version cousin is driving and we are approaching the city. There is traffic and he clips an old man pedestrian near the side of the road. We panic, he is feeble, slow moving with oversized glasses, and we send him on the subway with a copy of my cousin’s screenplay, as though this is consolation of some sort.
He goes a stop and somehow – I don’t know how – but I see him get off at the next stop and turn around, as though he were worried about us following him, as though there would be consequences for us. He’s going to leave the script on the train, we say and I suggest we get on the train to try to cut him off, but my cousin still driving has other plans and leaves us by the station.
Since we are in the city already, she suggests we go to the strip of stores near the edge. They are dangerous mostly but she is collecting memorabilia of my time and this is the only place to go. There are two stores next to each other with a man standing out front, shaved head crossed arms and she shields her face when we go by, whispering that we can’t go in yet, and drags me into the third store of the row.
Suddenly I become aware that my clothes have changed and I am dressed like an action hero, some tight black lycra/leather body suit that I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to get into on my own with long black hair and bangs. She has changed too and I am sure that she is responsible for my own transformation, assuring that I do not understand this place.
Inside there is strange metal music moments arranged more like a museum than a store. In the backyard is an agent from work with long black hair and a headband. he comes in with a friend of my parents and yells hey zora good to see you again and I look behind me to see who he’s speaking to but there is no one there. And my parents’ friend comes over to introduce himself and I tell him we’ve met literally thousands of times before. He doesn’t remember. I am ready to leave.
two
i am dating an evil king or ruler of sort but it is not by my choosing. we are in a camp or prison of sorts in the industrial part of a city i recognize but can't place. there are tall iron gates at the front and he is dragging me by the wrist.
i am expected to compete for my way out and the first is a piggy back race where the king rides on my back. i can see him looking down my shirt and i tell him to stop, try to shake him off but it is very clear i am not the one in control.
there is a war. one side is lined up in chairs at the end of the field and my side is coming at them. we start out with bats and pellets and i soon abandon the bats as my aim is awful. instead, i throw the pellets which look like paintballs that explode without making a mess. each is different, the white ones are ice attacks and i am throwing handfuls of whatever i can grab at my opponent. all of which are landing, but it is impossible to gauge the impact they're having except from the complaints from the people sitting. they are angry that i am beating them so badly when this is a practice of sorts. we are supposed to be preparing for a war, and i am there as punishment, as a prisoner. when they confront me, i explain that in war there would be no mercy.
they are all demons. i didn't know. and when they float up and at me, finally untethered, i am forced into apologies.
they let me go and i head out the front gates. it's unclear whether the king knows this has transpired. there is a car waiting for me outside, big and black with suicide doors. take me anywhere i say, not knowing where to go because it does not feel safe to be alone.
three
an alternate reality where lives are predetermined. accidents are treated by placing full bodies into a shark in the center of town as some modified form of leeches. you go in ailed and come out unafflicted, shiny, new. everyone wears the same spacey outfits, whatever they're told.
i fall into it somehow, in my pajamas, into a room of a handful of people who do not understand my clothes or the way i speak. there is a cut on my arm from the trip and they want to send me to the shark. i leave a trail of blood up the wall.
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