FireVaney

…and yet,  how self-deceitfully  easy  it is  to slip  back  into the dull,  monotonous,  thudding-along  of  life… 31 October 2005

No. The weather outside?  Not “frightful” at all. Me? I look FORWARD  to weather SO COLD that it CRACKS my skin regardless of how much  Lubriderm I smear on.  Honestly (though I AM honest  about the knuckles cracked bloody)* what’s great about  winter  is  LESS NOISE,  NO bugs, and, seemingly,   less crime.  Plus,  with the snow, all the drivers  around me  are  FORCED to drive  the speed  limit WITH me.  Finally. Now, assuming you’re not homeless,  you can always  come in  from the cold.  Air conditioning,  however,  when outside it’s 90 plus,  is not required by law.  Also,  I love my blue jeans,  my heavy leather coat,  and my long, black  “made in England”  overcoat. These habiliments don’t  show how chubby  my tummy  is,  or how scrawny my  arms and legs  are. I feel  tougher,  cooler,...

Changing my “Love@AOL” ad to display the headline: “F R E A K” seems to’ve made all the difference. Nearly all the women who’ve contacted me since the change have remarked that I’m a “cutie.” They say I look like Jim Carrey. But more importantly, Dominick’s has stopped stocking my favorite flavor of coffee creamer.  2 January 2001

It isn’t a question  of effort.  It’s a question of  where  and/or  how   the effort  is  applied.  You do too much of the wrong thing and too little of the right thing.  (And by you , I mean me .)  *  I hate it when the love for a song withers.  *  Odd little crumb hole. *  *  “Why not go out? Go to a movie.”  “I hate movies. Movies make real life dull.”  *  Bed bugs  copulate  through traumatic  insemination.  A  female  bed bug does not  have  a  genital opening. †  Now why, on  EARTH,  would  GOD allow  this ,  for example? ‡  *  We were in a dorm cafeteria, eating ice cream for breakfast, when Arron told Dena, “You can tell a lot from the way a girl licks an ice cream cone.” Dena smiled. At the time, she was dating Aaron’s roommate. §  *  I was young, not yet ten, when my father called from Kent...

Pissing off the fourth floor balcony. That image left my head upon waking this morning. I couldn’t tell you why. Logic never figures into my dreams. Or when it does, it means I’ve gone lucid, and the dream shortly thereafter escapes me. But in the shower, “Pissing Off The Fourth Floor Balcony” seemed a worthy title for a stage play. I want my sort of theatre—my “brand” of theater—to shock. At least, I do right now. And you’ve got to be tasteless if you want to shock these days. Howard Stern shows us the way…  *  A spider’s spun another web between the ironwork that holds up the balcony’s railing. The gusty winds and torrential rains must’ve blown away the web it spun yesterday. Wont the sun show once over Stratford? Christ, writing about dreary weather is itself dreary.  *  Dust Blood —that’s the new title… of something.  *  You don’t see a lot of older couples loving each other. At least, I don’t. And by “loving,” I mean hugging and caressing in public, as...

He headed for the wall of glass doors, beyond which lay the night-shrouded parking lot, and he caught himself reaching for the Ray-Bans tucked into the collar of his shirt. Concurrently, and entirely coincidently, his companion asked, "Do you ever feel like you don't know what you're doing?"

Once, Mr. C., who was one of my high school’s performing arts teachers, posed this question to the class: "Where do you go for peace and quiet?"  When it came my turn to answer, I said, "The beach."  Truthfully, whenever I sought “peace and quiet,” I’d go to my bedroom. Boring, right? Perhaps a sensible answer would’ve been the local public library. But the beach seemed somehow poetic. *   My lie impressed Mr. C., and that was my aim— to impress —because, in that particular place, and at that particular time, he was in a position of power.  In a way, he still is.  That teenage memory resurfaced earlier today, as I traversed a rocky beach in my bare feet. My eyes were drawn less to the gently lapping expanse beyond, and more to the broken beer bottles and castoff condoms strewn along the shore. ~  ~  ~ Here, from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, from smell to sound—Pop, Betty, and moi—we're cocooned within a world of cozy vapidity. If not for the da...