FireVaney

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...

Middle school. Gym Class. Outside. Field. Football. Picked last. As usual. Snubbed by quarterback. As usual. Playing for losing team. As usual. Gym teacher: Mr. Klip. He stops the game. Pulls a large EGG from his windbreaker’s pocket. Tells the class: “Go long.” We—the class—we’re confused. He Hail Marys the egg. I start running, hesitantly running ( hesitancy runs in the family), not fast enough, not to reach the egg before it hits, before it SPLATS, the ground. (Not that it’s clear that it’s not hard-boiled.) Doesn’t matter. Why? Egg DOES NOT hit the ground. No. Instead: A great brown bird, it BURSTS from egg. Flies past goal posts. Lands on tree branch, a low-hanging tree branch. Everybody: aghast . “Everybody,” but Klip. (“ Aghast ” not at low-hanging tree branch, no. “ Aghast ” at bird burst egg, or egg burst bird, or what have you.) I walk to tree, look up at bird—adult hawk, mayhap. But maybe, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Staring. Klip, he’d given me a leather gauntlet. When? Dun...

For me, today was Precedents Day. I looked into becoming a firefighter. I shopped for and purchased a Holy Bible. I shopped for and purchased a bra at Victoria’s Secret. The bra is a wonder bra and it is leopard patterned. I can’t believe I actually bought a bra. * I can’t believe I actually bought a Bible . † Also, Thad gave me a haircut today. He’s a medical student, not a barber. ‡ My hair might be the shortest it’s ever been. Another precedent: I dropped my underwear in the toilet—my red underwear. § I’ll bet you don’t own any colored underwear. I’ll bet you own more briefs than boxers.  My grandfather calls me up in the middle of the night because he can’t figure out how to turn off his new TV. ** (It’s his first TV with a remote control.)  Somewhere, I heard, or maybe read, that Americans eat enough ice cream every year to fill the Grand Canyon. No doubt I eat enough to fill a small ravine.  1 August 1997  * [03/12/23: For the life of me, I cannot recall w...

No, really, there is a smudge on the inside of my Daewoo’s windshield. It’s an odd sort of smudge. You only see it at night or when the sun is blazing itself directly at it. I’ve tried wiping it away with towels and water, and then with towels and 409, and yet the smudge remains. Where did it come from? I have no recollection of spraying the windshield with any sort of smudge-creating liquid. Could it be the amassed leftovers from my periodic sneezing? If so, wouldn’t that make it organic and hencethus wipe-away-able? Despite my efforts the smudge remains. The smudge remains despite my efforts. Or, perhaps, it recurs. Unless it reoccurs. What I’m saying is that it comes and goes. What if the stuff of my sneezes is inorganic? Or at least not organic. Or semi-organic. Or semi-inorganic. Perhaps I am a Cylon after all. What makes (the “reimagined”) Battlestar Galactica so good, so seemingly REAL is, perhaps, the “fact” that it IS real. Or was real. Or some nearly accurate variation of w...

Wherever I was, it was hilly and rural and green. Maybe it was Scotland. I’ve never been to Scotland, but I’ve seen Highlander and Braveheart more than twice. And I do have Scottish blood, according to my mother. Wherever it was, I’d driven there in a car reminiscent of the “ General Lee ” from the “Dukes of Hazard.” Presumably, the muscle car, true to form, leapt from the continent (presumably the North American one) to the island (presumably the British one), since I don’t believe in airplanes, and since I’ve no recollection of how I found myself behind the wheel of said vehicle. The car belonged to my father. Or that’s what he’d led me to believe. Unless it’s what I’d led myself to believe. I stood (and presumably parked) outside of a massive, red bricked citadel atop a wide, curving ridge. The stronghold’s impossibly tall walls weaved over the length of the ridge like a colossal brick snake. My father rang my cell phone. If I took the call, I didn’t mention the car. Had I “borrowe...

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...

We were flying to Canada. Pop was on the aisle. I sat in the middle. A young woman had the window seat. We didn’t know her. She was Israeli. Her English wasn’t perfect; my Hebrew was non-existent. We still managed to hold a decent conversation, she and I. She had an odd name—well, it was odd to me. It meant “tongue,” in Hebrew, I think. That’s what she told me, anyway. Why had her parents named her after an organ of the mouth? She was a babbling baby, or so she was told. Two younger girls from her group, perhaps sisters or cousins, were seated across the aisle, across from Pop. They spoke very little English. Aside from “Coke,” all they could say, apparently, was “You like her?” And, “You love her?” After repeating these question several times I confirmed that, yeah, sure why not? I liked this “Tongue.” She was polite and, seemingly, not nearly as chatty as she was as an infant. Surely she’d have more to say if I understood Hebrew. It’s a fair bet that I did most of the babbling. I wa...

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?"

Dragging yourself out of bed way too early in the morning, on a daily basis, has an effect. The effect is forceful and cumulative and makes you sleepy earlier and earlier in the day. Or maybe that’s just me. They say the rain is moving out and the heat and the humidity is moving in. Oh, and now they’re calling the forecast a “futurecast.” And that tells you right there that they’re probably pulling it out of their arses anyway. They’re constantly introducing (or inventing) new, complicated meteorological-sounding terms that make them seem credible. Anyone who hides behind highfalutin jargon is either deeply insecure or an outright fraud. Who checks up on the accuracy of meteorologists? Who has the time? There’s always more weather on the way. It’s already sticky. I hate it. I don’t live here for the summers, I live here for the winters. When the cat ate the dog he didn’t consider the predictable indigestion and heart burn. The cat went to the drug store for some of the “pink stuff,” bu...

Mine eyes scrutinize the packaged, pre-washed greens; mine fingers leaf through the spinach packs, seeking out a Use By or Best By date that’ll satisfy my strict standard of fresh.  And this woman,  a fellow shopper  (although not a fellow fellow),  likely ten years my senior,  double-takes me.  “Nick?” she says.  Now,  what should’ve come out?  “Yes! How are you?”  Instead, my mouth goes,  “Huh?”  (As in, “You talkin’ to me ?”)  She says,  “Are you…  Is your name:  Nick?”  And my stupid mouth it  does it again with,  “No.”  But it’s a “No”  with a smile.  Not embarrassed,  at least not overtly,  she says,  “You look like my son’s teacher.”  My stupid head nods;  my stupider mouth spits out,  “Oh.”  She’s a suburban,  middle-aged  soccer-mom kind of beauty. *   No,  she wouldn’t meet central casting’s criteria,  but ...