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[08 Mar 2006|06:16pm] |
Andrea Bui
Writing 91
Matt Sumell
1997
marsellus
I remember the only year our high school football team was able to score a touchdown during the homecoming game in fifty years was the same year Principal Moreland was arrested for lewd sexual conduct with a minor, the day after the city had dedicated to him the apple tree near the flagpole, which had never bloomed. His accuser, Marsellus Ashling Johnson, 16, had called him the night of the dedication from the bathroom of his stepfather’s stucco palace, mumbled something about uniforms, and blew his brains out with his mother’s gun as Gary Thomas Moreland, 47, wept and wept.
inga
In 2004 there began an internet phenomenon surrounding an eleven year old Japanese girl who took a box cutter to her classmate’s throat over an internet brawl about the popularity of their online journals. Thousands of websites were created, songs written, fan art meticulously drawn and colored, all in the name of beautiful, murderous little Nevada-Tan. One of these websites, Nevada-Tan Forever, was created by Inga Patel, a sophomore at Saddleback Hills High School, who ate lunch alone behind deserted classrooms.
And every day while Inga lunched alone, Nevada-Tan Forever got thousands of hits.
andy
Andy Schleicker, 17, stayed out nights until he was sure his father had passed out from the bourbon. Most of this time he’d spend in his friend’s garage, partying with various illicit substances, rocking out to the imaginary opera he’d composed during trips. Even high as he was, he’d learned to enter the house quietly, stepping around any cans or bottles, careful not to wake the man who could throw a mean punch no matter how drunk he was. Then he’d crash in his room for a few hours before heading out to his job stocking at Wal-Mart, where he’d lied about his age.
What Andy said people tended to believe. It was like he’d walked straight out of the fifties and into the suburbs of South Orange County, cigarette permanently attached to his wise-cracking grin, eyes always intense but looking nowhere in particular. His hair was like a sculpture, three inches high and slick with pomade, like James Dean himself had taught him what cool was.
Everyone loved Andy, save Inga, who resented that he was both an eternal outsider and unapproachably cool. He was proof that you could defy the bullshit laws of popularity and acceptance and still be respected and revered. Even worse, the only time she’d attempted to talk to him was the day after Andy’s older brother was arrested for dealing drugs, and beneath Andy’s crisp white t-shirt were the fresh wounds from his father’s beatings. Reverend Schleicker had learned how to properly raise his children, without the bruises showing.
And Andy, angry in a way he refused to acknowledge, had pushed the eager Inga into a trash can, which toppled over, ruining her clothes in front of half the class.
jane
When Andy had missed 10 days of school in addition to coming late for more than a year, Principal Moreland relieved the Assistant Principal of Discipline’s duties in order to deal with Andy himself. In the only scheduled meeting he and Andy had, Principal Moreland spoke of his reluctance to expel him for forty five minute and for fifteen minutes of Andy’s unrealized potential. At the official conclusion of the meeting, Gary Moreland closed the blinds and pressed his lips against Andy’s who found his reflexive punching hand oddly restrained, and when he felt Gary’s tender hands on his bruises, he thought from somewhere inaccessible that maybe this was his only chance at being loved.
This was the week Marsellus Johnson scored the locally famous homecoming touchdown, single handedly ending, or at least diminishing, the fifty year Saddleback football legacy of suck. It was nothing short of amazing, as no one really expected anything from our over-funded, spoiled football team, and attending the homecoming game became little more than a tradition for those of us who made a drinking game out of every time our team fumbled or was intercepted. But though the touchdown meant love and attention for Marsellus, he refused the spotlight, denying all my attempts at interviews for the school newspaper, rejecting all my calls.
Frustrated that the only newsworthy school event in years was eluding me, I followed Marsellus after practice in the hopes of annoying him into submission, but when he stopped and wept outside Principal Moreland’s office window, I stood frozen behind a tree, watching. After awhile, Andy left the room, his white shirt unbuttoned, his face hauntingly blank. When Principal Moreland left a few minutes later, briefcase and coffee mug in hand, Marsellus emerged from his own hiding place and confronted him in tears, only to be brushed off and told, “If you want to meet with me, have the clerk schedule an official meeting,” which Marsellus knew meant the end.
In the distance I saw Andy, walking with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, and from where I was the smoke from his cigarette made him seem like Heaven, flawed, untouchable, burning.
jane
In 1997, when I was ten and my father died, Andy Schleicker held my hand and said “I love you” again and again until I felt safe enough to open my eyes.
andy
Inga took the box cutter to Andy’s face after Nevada-Tan Forever reached a million hits, but did not think that a boy whose father made frequent, credible threats of physical harm might himself carry a folding knife, and found herself bleeding fatally on the floor of the quad.
Andy did not move or run away, just stood above her and tried to remember her name.
inga
In the news, Andy was slaughtered, presented as a psychopathic James Dean wannabe with a chip on his shoulder, bullying and pushing an isolated young girl into what they termed suicide by fight. Small vigils in Inga’s name were held in her neighborhood. Andy was arrested and tried as an adult in a case that was followed nationally, eventually sent to a prison upstate. His father married shortly after he left the house. I wrote to Andy but did not send the letters.
Principal Moreland gave a speech on the tragic nature of recent events, but noted that he had faith that we would all recover and be able to focus on the good things, for example, Marsellus Johnson’s athletic ability, Jane Crawford’s scholarship to Columbia’s journalism program, and the lovely new library air conditioning system. Saddleback Hills’ student government would soon suggest that Principal Moreland be honored for his elegant and graceful handling of the school’s tragedy. Someone would propose the apple tree.
The flowers left for Inga were taken away before they could wilt. Her death was soon forgotten locally, and Nevada-Tan Forever became inactive when her parents gave away her computer. They cleaned out her room and left it empty and always locked.
A memorial website was created for her by a college student inland, and though her story faded from the consciousness of the nation and the town, the counter on the homepage would increase slowly, steadily, for many years.
marsellus
Our town never really reeled from Inga’s death, the way news programs described us as reeling from so much local trauma, nor were we reeling from Andy’s high profile conviction. But oh, how we cried for Marsellus. Marsellus who, despite beauty and youth and talent, was so corrupted and ruined by the evil of one man. I remember waking up to a smoke-filled sky and learned, later, that the angry and desperate parents of the city had taken to the streets and burned with rage the Principal Moreland Apple Tree. I walked outside and instinctively took photographs, which I’d later sell to local newspapers and which would become iconic to our town for Marsellus, our fallen angel, but as I clicked and clicked I thought, Andy, Andy, Andy, Andy and wondered if now he’d hold my hand.
jane
My heart, in two drafts:
1: But did I really love you, Andy? Would I have merely watched from so far away when the good Reverend beat you, or when you nearly overdosed, or when Gary Moreland held you like I should have? But if I have not loved you, then I have loved no one.
Still, where was I?
2: Would it have really made a difference if I’d tried?
jane
3: To Andy Schleicker
XXXXXX State Prison
I am not sorry for using you, Andy, and I never will be.
I hope you like the cookies.
- no one you know
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| new and improved! |
[05 Feb 2006|09:29pm] |
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mood |
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Maria Elena
On the night after the bullfight she had asked me, frightened and clutching Maria Elena’s silken body, if I could please close all the windows and shut off the light.
“Why?” I had asked.
“I don’t want to see anything right now.”
In the dark, I could hear her soft, shallow breathing, and an occasional quickening of breath, five-second bursts of frantic, tearless sobbing. I pretended to sleep, listening to her silent, desperate cries all night, and thought to myself this must be what dying feels like.
She seems anything but small or frightened now.
“How long to Barcelona?” she asks in the car, finally taking off the thick, stickered headphones she’d kept on since getting off the airplane. Like last time she passed on the hellos. As soon as I answer, the headphones go back on.
In Barcelona, she changes the batteries on her CD player and eats the stale muffin left over from her airline breakfast. In the bathroom she applies half a tube of Ack-Nee Kreem to her face before settling down on the spare bed with her glossy magazine and her headphones blaring. I stare at her reflection in the mirror. She is prettier now. Taller, as expected. But her eyes seem duller; they’ve lost that intensity they had when she was a little girl, when she took her first determined step, years ago, off the plane and onto the cold Spanish ground.
“You are my uncle,” was all she had said, knowing strangely that she had to convince me. I remember she carried her own suitcase.
…
The letter from Raymond came eight years ago on a Tuesday, and Rosie came across the ocean a week later. Rosie isn’t responding to treatment well, it said. She said she wants to see Spain.
She came with instructions, like the orchids Raymond and I would send mother every Christmas. One red pill every six hours. Never more than four in a day. Never less than three. She wore a tag on her wrist made of cold surgical steel with her name and a list of conditions. I am Rose Alexandra King, I am American, and I am broken. Around her soft neck hung a beautifully engraved iron locket, filled with emergency pills. Her illness did not scare me, as it did my brother and so many others. But the instructions worried me, haunted me even. I could think of nothing but the day Raymond and I had gone to Nice to arrange mother’s funeral and organize her things, and we found among her scattered clothing and belongings the orchids we had sent. All of them had died.
Her arrival was anticlimactic, the next few days even more so. I suppose I had imagined myself as her noble guardian, protecting her from every threatening bump or turn or possible fall. I created in my mind these terrible scenarios where she would fall ill in the middle of the street and I would take her and give her medicine and hold her tightly until we arrived at the hospital. She would wake up while I sat by her bed, look me in the eye, and ask, “Why are you so sad, sir?”
If she knew these terrible dreams I had, as she seemed to know so much else about me, she refused to play along. She was not in any way the fragile, wilting flower everyone expected her to be. There was, firstly, her unreasonable fearlessness about traveling almost alone in a country so different from her home in the comfortable suburbs of Oregon. There was dirt here. Crime. Poverty she could not have seen from the backyard swing of her father’s house. None of it surprised her.
“Have you been to Oregon?” she asked me, while we waited for a table at my favorite café.
No, I said.
“I should tell you what it’s like, then.”
She told me about Oregon while we saw the sights. She seemed mostly unmoved by the city’s expanse and history, taking more interest in educating me. She was not a talkative girl, however, and chose her stories carefully. At café Fiore she told me of housing associations. At the opera house, she described in great detail her average trip to the FoodMart. “It’s bizarre,” she said. “Especially the condiments aisle.”
She seemed so indifferent to sightseeing that I decided not to take her out the last day, a little resentful that she had been so unexcited about what we’d seen and extremely resentful that she hadn’t needed any protecting. I hated her for being strong. “Are we going anywhere?” No, I said, there was nothing left to see. She shook her head and said there was everything to be seen. I asked what she meant by that.
“I want to see a bullfight.”
. . .
“Rosie?” I say, but the girl in headphones doesn’t answer. For some reason I am afraid to raise my voice. Eventually she notices me staring at her from across the room and lifts her headphones barely off her ears, ready to plant them back on as soon as we are done here. “Rosie, is there anything you’d like to see?”
She shakes her head no. “I go by Alex now.”
And we are finished.
. . .
Raymond had only one other instruction for me than to keep his daughter alive for a week. Please do not take her to a bullfight.
She was short enough that I did not have to buy her a ticket.
I remember little else about that day, or about any other bullfights I saw before and after. I do remember what I told Rosie before the fight, that bullfighting was a beautiful and amazing experience and that it changed my life. I did not tell her that I first fell in love with bullfighting when I moved to Spain to be a writer. I found it operatic and elegant, but at the same time it made me recoil violently. Unlike me, it was passionate. It was all I would write about. When I sought publication I was told, “If you’re going to copy Hemingway, at least be good at it.” I was published once, unpaid, on the back page of an issue of The Bi-Annual Journal of The Ernest Hemingway Society.
I sent the money from selling my typewriter to Raymond, whose wife had just left him for a Parisian musician. He almost mistook it for compassion, but knew better.
“I hope it is amazing,” she said. How could it not be, I asked her. Look at the faces around you. Look at the tear-stained faces, I said.
“I have seen people cry about lawnmowers,” she said, unmoved.
. . .
I have said I do not remember the bullfight. That still stands. I do remember Rosie, staring intently at the ring, even through the fight’s most violent moments. She forced back all but the early sobs, which rose up and out of her tiny body when the bull was first struck. Her hand held mine so tightly that I felt my heart stop. She kept her eyes open and focused on the fight. She was so brave I almost could not take it. I pretended to be sick, knowing she would leave for me.
On the way home, she did not want ice cream. We stopped at a gift shop on my street when I reminded her that it was her last day in Spain. Her father might like a nice hat, I said. She said nothing, only nodded and followed me, never looking up. She did not spend time, picking up the first hat on the shelf with a poorly sewn Barcelona logo on it. “Dad will like this,” she said. I am sure she did not even look at it.
After paying, I found her staring through the window of the shop next door. She was looking at a doll. Without turning to me she said it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. On its face was a painted black tear.
“I will get it for you then,” I told her. “I can afford it” I said, lying.
“I could never touch something that beautiful,” she said. “It would be like destroying it.”
I insisted, and we named the doll Maria Elena. After that I would not hold Rosie’s hand.
…
Alex is asleep now. There is Ack-nee Kreem all over her pillow, and she is snoring. All the lights are on. I am sifting through her things. I find no jewelry of surgical steel or iron, or instructions, or pills. Maria Elena is also absent. I find only magazines and CD’s and unfolded clothing. In her diary there are only mentions of famous people, with magazine pictures taped inside. There is also some boy named Bradley. When I am done, I sleep with the lights on.
In the morning, she wakes me up. Mom and Luc are picking me up at the airport in an hour, she says. Then she packs with her headphones on. She does not say gracias to the waiter who serves us breakfast. I say nothing during the drive, and when she asks me how much longer to the airport, I pretend not to hear. Before she gets out of the car, I ask about Raymond, hoping she will hate me.
“It seemed painless, I guess,” she says blankly. “He seemed really happy that he got to die before me.” She shuts the door and joins her mother and her mother’s boyfriend without saying goodbye.
I wish I was so lucky, I say, but she does not hear me.
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[28 May 2005|05:53pm] |
What lengths I will go to to avoid English assignments are demonstrated in this really odd short story I wrote in class in place of a journal entry describing the degradation of humanity of Brave New World.
"Where's the cocaine?"
The man in aviator glasses looked up from his magazine and answered, "Where you left it, sweetheart."
"...Right." Sure enough, he felt the bulge on his chest where he pretended to have breasts. Breasts made of cocaine. In the dimly lit restroom of the El Paso, Texas bus stop, it was hard to remember that he was a woman today. He began to remove his dress, wig, and stockings as celebration of another successful drug run.
"Why does my name always have to be Margarita?"
"It fits you. You're bitter, you're salty, and tourists like you a lot."
"Fuck you." The tourist comment stung especially because it was so true. Cops had liked Margarita a little too much, too. Every run he was hit on once or twice by a tourist in a floral print shirt or some cop muttering some obscenity in Spanish, feeling up his cocaine breasts through his brassiere. This was his fifth run in a year, and like his similarly aged yuppie companions, he was getting tired of the same old routine. The dress was his cubicle, the border towns his file-cabinet office building. But he had to admit. He was a damned pretty Spanish lady. Everyone knew this. His bosses knew this and immediately gave him this shit job instead of the money-laundering job his years of accounting training had prepared him for. If he'd had a nickel for every time one of his colleagues had playfully pinched his ass, he'd be a rich man. But he was stuck in this routine. Drive down to Ensenada (to see a special stripper, he says to the border officer). Get the merchandise from Guillermo. Put on a dress and wig and stockings and take a bus to El Paso (So many Spanish ladies come that way they hardly notice him). Bribe the border official if there's any trouble (They all work for the same people anyhow). Get the merchandise to Johnson in Fort Worth. Collect a couple month's rent and utilities. Spend the next few months regrowing leg hair. Shave. Repeat. It was almost like shampooing.
He thought about all this as he put on his slacks and white button down shirt. The dress, wig, and stockings scattered delicately around him might have suggested a previous brief sexual encounter to anyone walking in. The man in aviator glasses, finishing his magazine but never looking up, walked out of the room once his colleague had finished dressing and said, "See you in a few months, sweetheart."
Something in that fifty seven thousandth "sweetheart" triggered a passionate response buried deep inside his head. This had to be the end of doing this shitty routine for drug conglomerates he'd never even really encountered except for the middle management assholes who paid him. Scooping up the feminine articles of clothing on the floor, he threw them violently in the trash can. "Go to hell, Margarita," he said, and walked out of the bathroom like some scene from a movie.
Then he stopped. Something was wrong. In the harsh light of the Texas sun, he began to sweat. The border official across the room stared at him. He panicked and ran through the bathroom scene in as much detail as he could handle. Took off the dress, said fuck you to the man in aviator glasses, took off the stockings, runs to el paso and crossing the border and dreaming of a better life took off thte wig and dressing up again. He couldn't acknowledge the cold stare of the American cop or he knew it was over. Slowly his eyes fell down to his own chest where his lacy brassiere and cocaine breasts still pressed against his crisp, white shirt. He'd forgotten to take them off. What could he do now? Could he run? Could he kill himself right now with the gun at his ankle and avoid the law? But before he could do anything the cop simply looked down again and muttered, "Crazy Spanish bastard" under his breath. And suddenly he was safe. He could breathe again. And life was beautiful.
And with unembarrassed excitement, he exclaimed suddenly in his feminine Margarita voice, "Ohhhh que guapo esto hombre es! Si tu quieres un buen tiempo con un hombre MUY divertido (he winked), yo estaria en Fort Worth." And as the border officer recoiled in slight disgust, the man with the crisp white shirt walked--no--sauntered out of the bus stop, alive like never before. All the way to Fort Worth he drove, with the cocaine breasts still attached to his chest like bizarre, proud emblems of fucking luck.
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[24 Jul 2004|10:01am] |
I don't know exactly where I got this idea (yes I do, the only episode of Buffy I've ever watched) and as I'm writing this I don't know where I'm going to end it. I've explained before that my problem in writing (other than not being particularly good at it) is that I cannot have my characters progress beyond my own abilities. I write so much of myself into my characters that when they are in difficult situations that I wouldn't be able to handle myself, I am unable to come up with a solution for my characters. My characters die where my knowledge and confidence end, which is why I have yet to produce characters that reach any revelations.
Among the things she remembered of the sane world was the feeling of cold, hard concrete slammed against her face. But it had been too long since she knew anything about anything. The days were quieter now and the changes between the worlds less drastic, but things had only been tranquil since her sentencing. She spent these days in peace, writing and drawing between her six square meals a day, and when she slept in one world she lived in the next.
She believed the day she fell into the wishing well was the last day she spent in the sane world. When she woke from the short coma she had been in, she was being nursed back to health in a small, private room in the hospital with blue walls and flowered curtains. She remembered little. When asked why she was there, she'd reply, "I don't know." How old she was, "I don't know." What's your name? "Alice."
The doctors were content with this and sent Alice home with her parents along with a pamphlet, "How to care for your child with temporary amnesia resulting from paraskevidekatriaphobia, shellfish, blintzes, or acute athlete's foot poisoning." The title spanned several pages, printed in alternating yellow and fuschia, impossible to read, and utterly hypnotic. Alice's parents threw that terrible pamphlet away, of course, as soon as Alice could remember her age and other particulars (they couldn't have their friends thinking their daughter was a basketcase, no). But Alice had saved the pamphlet, because she hadn't really remembered her age or where she was, but had only found a peculiar card with her picture and the following:
Name: Alice
Age: 15
Height: 5'5
Weight: 120
White Blood Cell Count: 65468438578
Eyesight: 20/20
She was oddly content with this, placed the card in the pocket of her pants, and went about her business. When she came home, the house felt strange. Her parents assured her it was just "that condition" that made the house seem strange, and indeed it was strange that she was so distinctly sure there were changes in a house she had never been in before. She wandered up the changed stairs in the house she had never been in and sat on the bench she was sure had not been in the house she'd never seen. Alice's mother came and sat down next to her and said she must be tired. She was, strangely enough, even though she had spent the last several weeks (she'd been told) sleeping. She rested her head on her mother's shoulder, noticed the blue colored walls and flowered curtains, and promptly woke up.
It was strange to wake up, because she didn't remember really sleeping in the first place. "Are you alright?" the voice called from above. "So sorry to have thrown water on you, but your consciousness is really quite necessary in this rescue procedure." She looked down at her clothes, wet and sticky from the water that the voice had thrown on her. Her head turned upwards towards the voice, and when the blinding light above seemed to dim some she could see the silhouette of a firefighter. "I see you're awake now. The boys are getting ready to haul you out, but until then I'm going to ask you some questions, okay? Do you know where you are?" No. "Do you know how you got in there?" No. "Do you know how old you are? What year this is?" No. "What's your name, little girl?" Alice.
When the men pulled her out of the well, they said "You're alright now. Good bye." "Goodbye," Alice said. And then they left her at the wishing well in the middle of the forest. Nothing made sense, and yet everything was perfect. She walked through the forest, not noticing whether or not she was wearing shoes, asking no questions about why she was in the middle of the forest or why the firefighters had left her there. She did not wonder where she was or whether her family might be worrying about her. She seemed to know where she was going even though she was sure she'd never been in these woods before. There didn't seem to be a need for things to make sense.
After some time Alice came across a cabin. Smoke was billowing from the chimney and the scent faintly reminded Alice of cinammon. She opened the door without knocking and waved to the man inside. "Hello," she said. "Hello, Alice." She suddenly remembered she was wet, and the man seemed to notice too, promptly wrapping a large blanket around her. She didn't remember exactly who this man was, or why she was with him now, but she seemed to know that she loved him. "I love you," he said, and when they embraced she woke up again.
It was a slow awakening, the kind where the sounds only slowly get louder and more audible. When she woke up she was lying with her feet elevated on a tilted bed, and the voice of her mother seemed to permeate her consciousness. "Not again, not again, not again, not again..." and suddenly it was loud and grating and so Alice put her hands over her ears to block out the noise. "Alice? Alice, are you awake?" And suddenly there were needles in her arms, large, metal, impersonal, painful needles. And then there was the smell, stong and odious and destestable, and Alice snapped awake. She breathed hard and at that moment was bombarded by so many unpleasant sensations that she wanted to die. "I'm sorry honey, I'm so sorry."
"What is happening to me?"
"Oh honey, not again, not again..." her mother said, shaking her head and burying her face in her hands. "We're going to need...I haven't got...I didn't expect..." her mother would ramble on, never seeming to complete her sentences and pacing about the room, collecting her thoughts. "We haven't enough," she said finally, kissed her daughter on the forehead, and rushed out of the room. Alice took a moment to comprehend what was going on. She glimpsed something on the floor and bent over to see what it was. Slowly she lifted herself from the bed in the blue room with flowered curtains and put her feet on the floor. The carpet was foreign under her feet, somewhat soft but unwelcoming, as if the bristles would wait for someone else's feet to part and fully soften. She bent down to pick up the bottle which had written on it "Inject me." On the back of the bottle it read, "CAUTION: THIS IS A HIGHLY DANGEROUS STIMULANT. BY USING THIS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT POSSESION OF THIS SUBSTANCE IS ILLEGAL AND YOU ACCEPT ALL LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENCES THAT RESULT FROM THE USE OF THIS SUBSTANCE."
Alice cocked her head, wondering what this might be doing on the floor, and decided to set it on the bedside table. As she reached to put the bottle down, she noticed a small red bump on the inside of her arm. She thought, massaging the area as she did so. She looked from her wound to the bottle on the dresser, and suddenly she threw the bottle at the mirror and screamed.'
--
"No, mommy, no, no, no, no...." Alice sobbed as her mother emptied the syringe into her arm again. "I'm so sorry, honey," she'd say, "I'm so sorry."
The substance made Alice nervous, it made her alert and upset and jerky. It made her scream with fright if she heard a drop of water in the sink or the rustling of leaves outside. Every sound became a warning of death, every breeze or touch to her skin was an assasin's caressing first blow. She sat in the middle of the room with the blue walls and flowered curtains, which had been emptied of furniture since Alice broke the mirror. She sat, shifting her weight and shifting her eyes and burying her face in her hands. Occasonally she would scream and throw herself against the wall, crying and thrashing about violently. Sleep would not come to her. She had not slept in three days. It was only after she had attempted to hang herself with the flowered curtains that her mother agreed to stop giving her injections.
"Why did you do that to me?"
"I didn't want to lose you again."
"I don't understand."
"Where have you been for ten years?"
And Alice understood. She hadn't been anywhere in ten years. She had not been home, she had not been away, she had not existed. All she seemed to know was that her name was Alice and this was her mother.
Unfinished.
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| Captive 897 Blue |
[09 Jul 2004|09:44pm] |
This is what you call impulsive writing.
It was the third year of the bloodiest war anyone had seen in a long, long time. Both sides had finally developed weapons that could disintegrate all life within reach. Those who were unlucky enough to be left alive with wounds from the machine were captured. These wounds were debilitating but, alas, invisible, so the soldiers wept in quiet, immeasurable suffering. On the side of Ra seventeen thousand soldiers had been captured, but most had died as the weapon caused their slow, painful deaths.
A handful of soldiers from the side of Ma had crept into the blast radius of the weapon and lay among their wounded comrades. They knew that after the weapon had been triggered, the soldiers of Ra would come and take the captors away, and then detonate another weapon all around the blast site so as to kill any last insects of opponents that might have run away. Captive 897 Blue had been one of these.
He had been so fearful of death at the moment he hid among his wounded men that he imitated the suffering of his comrades so as to be captured for sure. When he got to the camp, he was stripped of his clothing, interrogated, abused, and then sent to live in a hole barely fit for rodents. Food was scarce, and the soldiers of Ra often made the captives dance for their rations. It was a miserable existance. It was hell.
The captives who had faked their wound could no longer tolerate the abuse and lashed out at the soldiers of Ra, but these were shot immediately. The soldiers of Ra could easily tell who was planning the next uprise; those who refused to dance for their rations were decapitated as examples for the rest of the captives.
Captive 897 Blue was smarter than the others. He, too, found the abuse by the soldiers of Ra to be intolerable, but he tolerated it for the sake of Ma. When the soldiers said dance, he danced, he stripped, he was their play monkey, but he would have the last disgusting laugh. He had been able to collect small pieces of shrapnel and matches over the months because the soldiers paid no attention to him. With these he had fashioned a crude but effective bomb that would destroy the Ra soldiers in their lunchroom. He would throw it in, and they would die. He would be caught and certainly killed, but this was just for he had taken life. But he could not let the soldiers of Ra wait until the next life to be punished.
The week before he would execute this plan, the soldiers of Ma had intercepted a rations vehicle on the way to the camp of Ra. The soldiers of Ra were angry that they too had to cut back on consumption until food could be provided, and they acted out on the captives. When Captive Blue 897 reached for his plate of meal, the soldier tipped the plate and let the food slide off with an angry glare. The bomb could not wait until next week. It had to be tonight.
Late that night Captive Blue 897 worked in the dark to finish his bomb. The finishing touches were almost complete when he heard a knock on his gate. It was a soldier of Ra. He had been caught, and he would have to detonate it now.
"Here." Instead of restraints, the soldier had handed Captive Blue 897 a plate of meal. "I have enough food. Take it."
This soldier he recognized as the small, quiet one who sat alone in the lunchroom. He took his hand away from he detonation button and moved it towards the meal.
"Do you have enough water?"
"Yes."
Perhaps the meal was poisoned. Ra was disgusting, and so were all the soldiers of Ra. A soldier of Ra would see no wrong in poisoning a poor captive.
"It's not poisoned. I mean, if I wanted to kill you, I'd just shoot you. I'd be in a lot better standing with my comrades if I did that."
Captive 897 Blue believed this soldier, but still he stared at the plate without movement. It was wonder, curiosity, but mostly, it was surprise. He looked at the soldier, crouching at the gate, for an answer to the question: Why? But he saw the soldier's anxiousness and for a moment their eyes met, and suddenly he knew.
"Thank you."
The next morning the same soldier patrolled the grounds near Captive 897 Blue. He found a strange metal device, which he began to write in his report, but stopped when he realized what it was and where it came from. At this he picked it up, cut a few of its wires, and put it in the trash vehicle just before it left. He never found a need to know the hows and whys of the metal device but he did find a need to sneak a wink and a smile every now and then to Captive 897 Blue
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| future |
[04 Jul 2004|12:33am] |
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Another note to self. Divine Intervention. I'll know what I'm talking about.
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| pending |
[04 Jul 2004|12:31am] |
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I'm leaving these little notes to myself so I can remember to write these later. The one here was going to be about a kidnapper and his victim (though similar to one written by my best buddy Priscilla, the characters are fundamentally different in nature and it has a decidedly more morbid ending).
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| working on... |
[04 Jul 2004|12:02am] |
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I am working on a script for another short film. I hope the tone of this one is more subtle than the last. I will post it here when I am finished.
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| Bus Ride |
[29 Jun 2004|07:36pm] |
I wrote this about a year ago. It has flaws and some definite personal biases that I no longer carry, but it was my first (and so far only) screenplay: a big step for me. Enjoy.
BUS RIDE
EXT. Bus Stop
It’s at the intersection of a large street and a smaller one. On either side of the larger street, there are planned communities. The color scheme never falters: beige, light beige, dark beige, and shocking sandy beige. The cars that drive by are signs of affluence, Mercedes, BMW’s, etc. The sky is gray and overcast, the air cold, atypical weather for Southern California.
JANE DOE is at the intersection, sitting on some sort of maintenance metal box. Adults all think she is beautiful, but her peers do not think so and neither does she. She is reading a book.
KYLE, a handsome, blond-haired blue-eyed boy with a nice smile comes up to her.
KYLE (friendly)
What are you reading?
Jane closes the book. The cover reads Catch 22.
JANE
Catch 22.
KYLE
I didn’t think many people read that book anymore.
JANE
They don’t.
KYLE
One of my favorites, definitely. It’s a great book.
JANE
Yes, it is.
They smile at each other in having found something in common. They begin to talk as friends, intellectual equals, when they are interrupted.
COURTNEY
Kyle!
COURTNEY, a pretty brunette with blond streaks and too much make-up, prances up to the bus stop. She is wearing a short skirt and a spaghetti-strap tank top that reveals her navel.
KYLE
Hi Courtney.
He has already begun to ignore JANE.
COURTNEY
Omigod. I saw 2 Fast 2 Furious again last night. It’s like, the best movie like ever!
She giggles incessantly in a high-pitched and phony voice.
KYLE goes over to hold her mirror while she further buries her face under creams and powders. All the while, he giggles at her comments.
COURTNEY
Like omigod, there’s this mask that like goes on your face, and it works really good. My skin is like so much better now.
COURTNEY and KYLE giggle.
JANE (under her breath)
That’s where masks go, on your face…
They do not hear her. JANE looks up from her book to see the once intelligent Kyle enjoying the company of Courtney. She is not offended; she expects this. She knows he is not being rude, but simply following the rules of High School society. She turns back to her book.
COURTNEY is showing KYLE her socks, which have a 2 Fast 2 Furious pattern, blotched across. By no accident, her skirt hikes up to reveal a fleshless, almost skeletal thigh.
KYLE
Wow, those are cool.
He is not ogling at her; this is just how things are done.
The BUS pulls up. It’s one of those long ones, with extra seats and emergency exits. COURTNEY and KYLE prepare to get onboard.
INT. BUS
TED, the bus driver, looks at them as they step onto the land-submarine. He is maybe 40, with graying hairs from the stress of driving brats to school every day. He hates his job.
TED (in a thick accent)
May I see your bus passes?
COURTNEY and KYLE scramble to show their bus passes, and Ted grunts in acknowledgement. JANE now boards the bus. She smiles at TED. He smiles back.
JANE
Good morning, Ted.
She doesn’t have to get out her bus pass.
TED
Hello Jane.
She nods her head in the direction of a giggling Courtney, who is showing her Rap CD’s to Kyle. She shows a look of pity in her eyes.
JANE
I’m sorry about them.
TED sighs, and JANE moves on. She finds a seat in the middle, behind the driver. The windows are covered with CONDENSATION. COURTNEY and KYLE chatter in the seat in front of her.
COURTNEY
Like, I have like all the words to my Fluffy Master P CD. The words are like, so deep.
She and Kyle giggle. Jane scoffs.
JANE (under her breath)
Lyrics. They’re called lyrics.
At the next stop, KARA sits next to Jane. Kara is a dirty blond, gorgeous girl with gum and a Pop CD in her hand. She and Courtney and Kyle begin to talk about how cool Pop and Rap are.
JANE counts COURTNEY’S and KARA’S strokes of mascara.
JANE
One, two, three…
Time elapses.
JANE is staring, wide-eyed at the girls.
JANE
Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five…
She gets to seventy-nine.
JANE takes out an Irving Berlin compilation CD and begins listening to Billie Holiday’s voice belt out Blue Skies. She is mesmerized and relaxed by the sound.
KARA
What are you listening to?
JANE
Jazz.
COURTNEY
Like omigod we like jazz too. Jazz is soooo cool.
KARA
Like seriously. We’re such jazz lovers.
JANE is startled.
JANE
Really? What artists?
There is hope in her eyes.
KARA
Like yeah. We know like the words to like all the Chicago songs. Yeah, Chicago is so cool!
JANE is slightly less hopeful.
JANE
That’s cool. Do you guys like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday?
COURTNEY
Who?
KARA and COURTNEY begin to sing their pop renditions of “All that Jazz” with whiny and artificial voices. The only jazz that exists to them is sung by Catherine Zeta Jones. KYLE giggles.
KYLE
You guys have such good voices.
They continue, and JANE turns away in disgust. She is trapped between the two girls and a sheet of glass clouded by CONDENSATION. She looks behind her to see COURTNEY and KARA clones throughout the bus.
An immense sense of being alone suddenly takes control of JANE, and she stares out the window, confused and choking back her tears. She has never been affected like this before.
JANE (whispering to herself)
I am going to suffocate in this place.
She places her shaking finger on the CONDENSATION. Her touch wipes it away, leaving a clear spot in the window.
KARA and COURTNEY (still singing)
C’mon babe, why don’t we paint the town…
JANE begins writing in the condensation.
KARA and COURTNEY (singing)
…And all that Jazz…
JANE (writing)
H…E…
The letters are backward.
KARA and COURTNEY (singing)
I’m gonna rouge my knees and roll my stockings down…
JANE (writing)
…L…P…
KARA and COURTNEY (singing)
And all that Jazz…
The BUS pulls into the school and stops abruptly, halting the girls’ musical display. KYLE claps.
JANE looks at the window. She has written HELP ME in backwards letters, so that anyone outside the bus would be able to read it. She stares at what she has done, wondering if anyone would ever answer her prayer.
JANE
If only.
She shuffles off the bus with the other students. She smiles at TED on the way out, even though she is too sad to speak. She is the only one to do so.
JANE looks back at the bus when she gets off. She stares at one particular window on the opposite side of the bus from where she sat.
COURTNEY and KARA run to their friends, and KYLE walks back up to JANE. He notices her TEARY EYES.
KYLE
Are you okay?
JANE (startled)
Huh?
KYLE
Is there something wrong?
JANE glances back at the window. Written in the condensation, in backward letters, were the words SAVE ME. She smiles, knowing she is not alone in this world.
JANE
I’m fine, just fine.
And for the first time, she was.
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| Untitled |
[22 Jun 2004|05:00pm] |
One
There wasn't anything worse in heaven or hell than being awake, nothing but hearing the dull whirr of the machine and feeling the cold plastic down her throat that had to teach her lungs every second how to breathe. In, out. Her brain couldn't do that anymore.
Sometimes the nurse would come in and wipe a cloth over her face, "bathing" her she called it, while she muttered four-letter expletives at how crappy her job was. Sometimes the nurse would tell her how lucky she was that she didn't have to feel pain anymore, that she didn't have to deal with asshole boyfriends or finances, then the nurse would say, "What the hell am I talking to you for, you're a vegetable! You probably can't even hear me. If you ask me, they should have pulled the plug on you a long time ago. You've been a pain in my ass since day one."
If the nurse had thought the girl could hear her, she wouldn't have said that, but of course, that stupid little girl couldn't hear her. She's dead, brain-dead, body-dead, however you want to say it, she was dead, but as long as the machine made that little beep every second, they had to treat her like she was alive. They had to "bathe" her, feed her through tubes, change her diaper when she wet herself, and soon everyone started to resent her and bitch about her during their lunch breaks.
"Fuck," they'd say, "I have to bathe the vegetable today."
Now and then there'd be some kid straight out of medical school, still full of ideals and ethics and still wanting to save people and she (or he if he was one of the effeminate ones) would be shocked at the doctors' underwhelming enthusiasm. "That is a living being," s/he'd say, "and deserves the best care we have to offer."
But after feeding the vegetable through tubes, bathing her, and changing her diapers a couple hundred times, the newbies began to hate her, too. How could they be learning the really important stuff, they bitched, when they were stuck bathing a fucking dead girl who couldn't even hear when they insulted her?
Except, she could hear, every word they said, and she really couldn't blame them. In fact, she wished more than anything that they'd hate her so much that they'd pull the plug on her when her parents or that annoying activist wasn't looking. And she'd have told them that, of course, if she could speak. Speak, blink, move a finger, if she could do any of that she'd somehow fashion it into a crude language and try to tell them "Kill me, please."
Two
The hands she felt today were not familiar ones. They were rough, large, and for the first time in months, her flesh had felt another's without the cold, impersonal latex to keep them from embrace. It was a beautiful experience, and her heart began to increase in speed.
When the beeps of her heart began to move closer to each other, she felt the hands break away quickly from her skin. There was a tingling on her arm where the hands had been. She heard an unfamiliar voice. "Shit," it said. When she realized it was a young man her heart beat faster, and the resulting increase in speed startled the young man. She heard the young man say, "Oh my god, I hope I didn't kill her." The sound of hurried footsteps and the call "Nurse, nurse!" reached her yearning ears.
By the time the nurse had come to check her vitals, everything was back to normal. The girl's pulse rate had steadied, and the beeps distanced themselves again. The nurse told the young man he was just imagining things. Comatose young women's hearts didn't race in the presence of attractive young men. When the young man was sure that the nurse had walked far enough down the hallway that she would not hear the beeping, he gingerly placed his hands on the girl's arm again, slowly, gently.
The touch of skin startled her. She could not jerk, but her heart raced and the beeps danced closer. Apparently satisfied, the young man took his hands away and after a spell the girl's heart rate slowed. She eagerly listened to the sound of his shoes (leather, she thought) and the sound of a zipper (exciting, as she never got to hear this sound). The footsteps came closer, and suddenly, music. Music, rock music, loud and painful, but music! Headphones on her ears, too. After the headphones were gone, she could hear the quick beeps of her heartrate. And suddenly a soft voice, the voice of the young man.
"You can hear me, can't you?"
No prettier string of words had ever been spoken. But if only she could respond. Her heart betrayed her; the beeps stayed constant. She had been afraid of eternity, and now she was afraid of this young man leaving, thinking she had never heard him.
She heard a sound...familiar. Scribbling, like the nurses on their clipboards. There was a silence, the worst silence she had ever experienced, and then the young man sang sweetly these words, "I'll come back for you," and walked out into the hallway.
Three
The next day, the young man came and talked to her, as no one else had for so, so long. He told her that his name was Ashling, that he was an aspiring journalist for a big newspaper, and that he had been given an assignment to research passive euthanasia, which lead him to the girl. He spoke to her in gentle tones, but never condescendingly. It seemed the way he talked that he hadn't really had a conversation with anyone in awhile. His presence made her comfortable, and for a moment, happy.
Eventually, after he was appropriately satisfied that she was familiar with him, he moved on to more pressing matters. He told her that, after yesterday's encounter, he had gone home and looked up existing research on consciousness in comatose patients. He told her people had speculated that comatose patients could hear, although whatever was said wouldn't be remembered when the patient awoke. None of this was news to the girl. She didn't need someone to tell her what she could and couldn't hear.
But now, he said, that he was sure of the girl's consciousness, he could tell the doctors and the nurses and perhaps they wouldn't treat her like a damned vegetable again. She smiled, if only in her head. He seemed to sense it, and he touched her hand.
Four
With full awareness of the girl's consciousness, Ashling came back every day to visit her. He would read to her and sometimes let her know what was going on in the world. When asked why he did this, he only replied, "Wouldn't you hate lying in a bed with your eyes closed and no control of your body all day, every day?" The response touched some nurses, and they began reading their gossip columns to the girl on their coffee breaks. This went on for some time, and after awhile people forgot to keep track of the time.
The time came when Ashling was pressed for a complete article. He hadn't been as diligent as he should have, and in the space left by his laziness was a groundbreaking article published by a competing newspaper. He kept his job only by insisting that he was close to a breakthrough on the subject of comatose consciousness, the details of which could possibly invalidate the competing newspaper's article completely.
After this, Ashling's sessions with the girl were always followed by intense research. He read about everything and nothing. He read articles that insisted that comatose patients were as good as dead. Others asked that they be put out of their misery. One scientist said comatose patients were in limbo, that place between heaven and hell. He looked at the blinking clock. 2:30, 2:30, 2:30. He had been awake for twenty-four hours. It was then that he knew he was in limbo, too.
Five
It had been so long since Ashling began to come regularly. The girl was surprised that anyone would take interest in her for so long, but what surprised her most was that she had not grown tired of his visits. She looked forward to the nurse coming and saying, "You have a special visitor." He was there, every day, and when he wasn't he warned ahead of time. He was the extra dessert with the hospital meals she couldn't taste. The fear of eternity was gone.
But the fear came back the day he didn't come. When she heard the nurses walking slowly, she knew it was lunchtime and that he would be there soon, but he wasn't. He didn't come by cleaning time, not by changing time, and not by dinner time. The girl was immensely sad at the loss of his company. Her heart rate was erratic, and she alternated between nervous states and melancholy ones. When he finally came fifteen minutes before visiting hours were over, she felt a wave of relief and pleasure. And then she became afraid.
She was afraid of eternity again, afraid of an eternity of silence. It was brought on by a new realization, a new feeling, and the knowledge that she'd never be able to share it with Ashling. Eternity was hell again, for how in God's name could she tell him that she loved him?
Six
Ashling's editor became increasingly impatient with his lack of publishable work. That comatose patients can hear was not only old news but also based on speculation. How could anyone ever prove that the girl was actually listening to Ashling, or just reacting to differences in sound waves? He told Ashling to find an edge, and to get him a draft before the month was done. He suggested that maybe a personal account would be best, nothing groundbreaking, but it would sell newspapers. Get to know the girl, give the public a personality to go with the face, and it would sell.
He didn't want to publicize a girl's life if he could never really know if she approved, but Ashling had wanted this job since he was knee high to a pig's eye and to not do this article was to give his editor a loaded revolver. The next day Ashling went to the hospital as soon as visiting hours began, and he asked the girl for her permission to read her files and journals.
She was a little taken aback by this request, but she figured this would be the only way to tell him she trusted him enough to read her most obscure secrets and emotions. He told her that he would interpret no change in heartrate to be approval and that if she was worried her heartrate would increase and prevent him from reading the journals. So he asked the question, and her heartbeat remained steady. He asked several times and when he was content, he kissed her on the forehead and walked away.
Interviews with people who knew the girl lead him to her diary. Locked, but with the lock that all diaries had and he only had to buy a diary from the local bookstore to have the key. She had started the diary in middle school, so the first entries he read were about boys and how pretty the other girls were. When the entries progressed into middle school, he read about her musings on the existential crisis, the theory of beauty, and solutions to the world's political problems. He found himself reading into the night when he would fall asleep with her diary in his hands.
He would discuss these things with her during his visits and both felt as if it was a two-sided conversation. He was amazed that there was another human being with the same questions and the same theories about the world, and she was too. They had these conversations during the day and then Ashling would go home to work on his article and the girl would dream of tomorrow's conversation.
The entry that caught the attention of Ashling was one discussing lucid dreaming. The girl had first heard of it in the foreign film Abre Los Ojos, and she had become so fascinated by the concept that she did extensive independent research. The morning after reading it, Ashling discussed it with the girl. He said he thought it might make her days less boring if he could train her to lucid dream again (she had previously made some progress with it but dropped the interest for Johnny Depp). He asked what she best remembered, and she said flowers, and he worked with her until she could picture the flowers in detail. First roses, then lillies, then trees, then objects. Eventually she became so good that she could visualize an object if Ashling ran her hands over it and told her the colors. In her lucid dreams, she pictured Disneyland, parks, lakes, . She searched deeply into her memory to picture it, but eventually it was perfect, and she felt as if she was there.
One of the nurses joked that it was a shame she couldn't visualize Ashling, what a handsome boy he was, and she pinched his cheek (which of course the girl would have gotten jealous of if she had been able to see). Ashling actually thought it might be a nice idea, and during one of the hospital's quieter times, he ran her hand over his face hundreds of times, fast, then slow, then fast again, just as they had practiced. She felt the contours of his skin and began to visualize. When she was finished, she was so immensely happy that she began to cry (on the inside, of course). Few would ever realize that her visualization of Ashling was perfect. She saw him exactly as he was, inside and out. And only Ashling knew.
Seven
While at the local library doing research on lucid dreaming for what would be his breakthrough article, Ashling met a young, pretty librarian who asked if she might call him sometime for dinner. He looked up from his stack of books and told her quietly that she was very sweet and pretty but that he was seeing someone. He thought about the incident and what he thought was a lie, and some time while reading the seventieth article on lucid dreaming (far past what would have been necessary for the article) he realized he was in love.
The next day Ashling stopped by the florist and the tailor's on the way to the hospital. He had bought roses and several strips of various fabrics, all chosen for their texture. The roses, he thought, would be silky and smooth to the girl's touch. The fabrics would be something different from the hospital linens. Variety was the best gift he could buy for the girl he loved.
With the roses, cloth, and a copy of a book on lucid dreaming, he waltzed into the hospital, where he stopped frozen in place. There were two adults in the girl's hospital room, crying, holding her hand, with the more female of the two sobbing and mumbling "I'm sorry." The older man would hug the crying woman and say, "Honey, honey, she can't hear you." The beeps were fast but the parents (he assumed they were) didn't seem to notice. It was the saddest scene he had ever witnessed, and as the nurse ushered him out of the room, he began to cry.
It was later that he was told they had finally decided to pull the plug on their baby girl. He had been eating lunch when he got the call from a concerned nurse, and he listened attentively before quietly saying, "Thank you for the news" and hanging up. He took some time to fully understand what was going on, and when he snapped back to consciousness he noticed he had stabbed his fork into the table.
When the girl's parents had come in to hold her hand for the first time in months, she knew that they had finally won the right in court to pull the plug. She hoped it wasn't so, but when she heard her favorite nurses crying, she knew she would be dead within the hour. For a moment her beeps danced quicker than they ever had before, but soon she calmed down. She realized there was only one thing to do.
She lulled herself into a deep sleep while her parents and the nurses sobbed. While asleep, she began to dream, and she began to control it. She pictured Ashling, holding her hand, kissing her forehead, and looking into her eyes. As they pulled the plug, her body functions slowly began to deteriorate, but all she saw and heard was Ashling. She heard Ashling say, "I love you" and then she slipped into eternal happiness. Some of the nurses screamed, for they could have sworn they saw her smile.
Eight
Ashling's article went on to become famous. Eventually he was asked to expand it into a book, and its publication was followed by a robust career in journalism and writing. People named him sexiest eligible bachelor and Time selected him as man of the year. Curiously, he never married, was never seen with women, which lead to speculations by jealous women that he was gay. He assured them that he was in love, and that he met her every night at home. Some of his female staff took this to mean he was in love with them and returned his feelings, only to be told that they were not whom he was speaking of.
Every night, while he was asleep, he dreamt of the girl in the hospital. He remembered her as vividly as he had when she was alive. When he became old and sickness overwhelmed him, he refused hospital treatment and instead rented a hotel room in the small town where the girl lived where he took an overdose of sleeping pills. In his last dream, he and the girl gazed into each other's eyes and before he slipped away, she held his hand and said "I love you." The newspaper to which he had been loyal published a memorial article describing his laudable achievements. The picture on the front page was of him when he had been found dead in the motel, which was uncommon, but the picture was so fascinating that anyone who saw it was captivated by the man who smiled even in his death.
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| A Candid Evening |
[05 May 2004|09:39pm] |
There was something strange about tonight, something off. The restaurant was relatively crowded and the people chatted with each other. They always seemed to look at him when they thought he wasn't watching, though. But he was; he was always watching.
In the middle of his "watching," his wife walked into the restaurant. She looked around with what seemed like false apprehension and finally maneuvered her way over to the table. There was something about her that caught his attention. My god, was she beautiful. She was glowing and unusually feminine, like a Greek goddess in all her perfection. Strange, he thought.
Oh, sure, she had always been "pretty," but until this night she hadn't looked quite so beautiful. She'd been something of an ugly duckling in high school, the girl that none of the boys wanted to ask out. At graduation someone had written "ugly fatso" with soap on her car, and that night she cried all the moisture out until her eyes hurt to be open and hurt to be closed. That summer she drove to the next town and spent all her money at the salon, asking the stylist for beauty tips in return for the same of the monetary kind. She'd practiced primping the whole damn summer and by the first semester at Ohio state, she was goddamned gorgeous.
She spent the first few years at college attending frat parties and was occasionally featured in a Girls Gone Wild: College Edition video, but threats from her parents to stop funding her failed education sparked a sudden interest in scholarship and she promptly began seeing a tutor. He was a well-mannered and likable albeit slightly creepy mathematics major and unlike the fraternity boys, he never thought to kiss her or try any attempts at the old in-out love. Eventually they became friends and in senior year, they married.
The proposal had been surprising, the answer even more so. No one thought of Jeremy Wilkes as a romantic, most had even been surprised that he could tell the difference between men and women; he treated them all with the same nonaggressive respect. Naturally when he bent down on one knee at graduation and proposed, the entire audience had stopped in awe of what was happening. As incompatible as the world saw the unlikely couple as, Caroline Mason wasn't the type of woman who would turn down male attention. After being teased and ignored by males in high school, the male attention in college had lured her into a sort of stupor and it wasn't much later that she became dependent on it.
It was a relatively happy marriage; there were few conflicts and Jeremy was a good husband, but the quiet, loving attention that he provided couldn't compare to the amount of attention she received in college. She wanted to be taken advantage of--that was all she knew--and that was something that her husband wasn't going to give to her.
"I need to talk to you," she whispered quietly with the noise of the restaurant overpowering her voice. She spoke in low tones, something she never did, and immediately Jeremy knew something was wrong.
Something in her tone triggered a defense mechanism in him, and he began looking around for clues as to what might be amiss. He checked the tables around to see if anyone was watching. He was sure that lady at table three was paying attention. Caroline didn't notice and assumed that he was just being plain old Jeremy, always paranoid that someone was out to get him. For a moment he eyed a plant, awkwardly placed, at the opposite end of the room. It was an elegant restaurant, and a tacky potted plant didn't seem right.
The server came and took their orders. He was a handsome and funny fellow, but Caroline only chuckled nervously at his jokes. Not noticing his wife's discomfort, Jeremy laughed whole heartedly at the young man's quips. As soon as he was gone, however, Jeremy began eyeing that plant again. For a second he swore he saw a flash of light, as if something in the plant could reflect light. He looked closer. In the dim light of the restaurant he realized there was only one thing that could make that kind of reflection; a camera, pointed right at him.
The earlier week, in an attempt to break away from the calculus and participate in modern life, Jeremy had turned on the TV and watched a bit of prime time television while Caroline was at the salon (she apparently had a deceptively complicated hair-do that required several trips a week to the dresser). He'd seen several examples of hidden camera shows and watched people being tricked and their subsequent embarassment. He often found himself yelling at the television screaming something to the effect of, "YOU FOOLS, CAN'T YOU SEE THAT IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY?" He remembered that Doctor Faust had told him to avoid excitement, as too much stress could easily target Jeremy's weak heart. Muttering that they could never trick him, he turned off the set and went to bed.
Now that he thought about it, there couldn't be any explanation. They were good, but not good enough to defeat him. The camera in the plant, all the hired extras pretending to eat dinner and go about their business, it was all part of an elaborate scheme that Jeremy wistfully wished he had come up with himself. He remembered now that Caroline had picked the restaurant, one that he'd never heard of before (although his friends would be damned if he could recognize a Burger King). She'd also been wearing less make-up than usual, probably a request of the producers who were likely horrified by the clown mask she usually paints on herself. After she'd gotten older she'd insisted on wearing tons of borderline slutty make-up--something to be attributed to her need for male attention even as she grew older. She reveled in lusty sneers from construction workers and college students. He imagined the producers sending his pretty little wife off to make-up, where they'd enhance her natural skin instead of caking it up with powders and creams. The result was fantastic; her hair was a tad disheveled and her lipstick was smudged in a wonderfully beautiful way. Those producers, he thought. They went through a lot of trouble for this. Might as well give them their money's worth and an entertaining response to whatever Caroline is going to say. Only afterwards would he admit that he knew all along; it was a good plan.
He thought about his course of action as his wife, after having downed a margarita or two, began to speak again.
"Yes, my dear?" he said, in his most unconvincing attempt to play along.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Must be camera fright. At length she said, "Jeremy, I haven't been...well completely honest about where I've been."
Here it comes; I wonder what those yuppie Hollywood producers came up with this time.
"See...I had this problem...in college, and well it went away for awhile when I met you, but I think it's come back."
Uh huh, nice try.
"This is hard for me, I mean with your condition, your heart condition, I don't know if this is right, but I have to tell you, because I love you." She had tears in her eyes.
Must be some...Hollywood tear gas. I hear they use that a lot.
"I...," she wavered. "I think I'm addicted to sex."
The most difficult thing he'd ever done was keep from laughing. Jeeeeeezus, those Hollywood producers are damned creative. Comic geniuses they are, the bastards. But he wouldn't let them win, he wouldn't let them see him upset. He'd give them a segment that would fetch million dollar ads. Wait, just wait, for the exact moment to begin the trickery.
"Jesus, you could at least say something. You don't have to make this so goddamned uncomfortable."
What a remarkable actress she was. Here she was, telling him straight-faced that she was a sexaholic. The notion was just absurd, Caroline a sexoholic. Gah, she barely showed any spice in the bedroom. She always said she was too tired or something, that running around doing laundry all day was tiring, and Jeremy never insisted. Sex was just a distraction to him, anyways. But he'd have to play along. What a good laugh he'd have after this.
In the best grave tone he could muster, he quietly responded, "How--how do you know this?"
She broke into tears. "I've been having affairs, random sexual encounters--mind you, none of them mean ANYTHING to me, not like you--for some time now."
"And by some time you mean..."
"A long time. I need help, Jeremy."
This was hilarious. The masses would be falling off of their chairs laughing at this poor fellow. TV these days. No morality anymore. Best give them a kick in the ole babymakers. The trickery starts now.
"Oh, you don't need help. Affairs, sex, it's all fine by me."
Who had the last laugh now?
Caroline was sobbing now, "What?"
They went on for about five minutes or so, Caroline utterly bewildered and continually insisting that sex addiction was a serious problem and she needed help. Not even her declaring that she had screwed the server before sitting down at the table could make Jeremy upset. He chuckled and said he'd always wanted a bimbo for a wife.
And then she slapped him. Wild and angry she yelled, "Goddamnit I came to you, I needed you for support and you just laugh? This is a problem, Jeremy, this is a goddamned clinical disease and here you are laughing!"
He calmly looked at his watched and decided the trick was going on a tad bit longer than most TV segments. He'd have to make room for commercials, you know. He decided it was time to raise the stakes and give them yuppie producers the biggest shock of their lives. And he did.
He leaned over to his raving wife and whispered in her ear, "It's alright darling, I know what's going on. Let's just give them one more thrill, shall we?"
She pulled away. "What the hell are you talking about you fucking lunatic?"
He signaled to her. Thumbs up. That's the way to do it, girl. He spied the plant across the room and stood perpendicular to it. He then turned around, unbuckled his belt, and let his pants fall to the ground, revealing Betty Boop boxers (god, no nudity, he wouldn't let those damned yuppie producers let him humiliate himself like that).
There was screaming by some of the older ladies across the room. The security guards grabbed him and escorted him to the police car waiting outside. He was screaming, "HAH, YOU'LL NEVER GET ME, I KNEW ALL ALONG ABOUT YOU GODDAMNED PRODUCERS...YOU THINK YOU CAN FOOL ME? YOU CAN'T!" He believed he had won when the news cameras began filming him and asking the officer questions.
"You guys can quit the bullshit now," he said gleefully to the officers as they escorted him up the station steps. "I know, everything. You guys did a fantastic job, really." He was still chattering on even as they locked him in the cell. As he stared at the blank walls, he realized that there wasn't any place for them to hide cameras.
The next morning, every major local television station featured a news segment on Jeremy Wilkes. "A strange story of a strange man, today," they all began. "Last night at a local restaurant, a man having dinner with his wife went apparently insane and began undressing in the middle of the common dining room. Identified as Jeremy Wilkes of Laguna Beach, the man and his bizarre behavior fail to make any sense to anyone, including his wife Caroline." They'd cut to the interview with a bewildered Caroline, rambling on, "He kept...he kept telling me to play along, that he wanted to give people the last thrill. I--I had no idea what he was talking about." Switch again to the news anchors, who held the attention of every viewer in the area. They all wanted to know more about this crazy man. "The man, who was known to have had a serious heart condition, was arrested and taken to the local police station where, after being confined in a cell and yelling 'OH DAMNED REALITY', he was found dead the next morning."
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