small stories

and there were the two girls, side by side, thin-legged, in shimmering wraps, their kitten noses pink, their eyes green and sleepy, their earrings catching and loosing the fire of the sun.

____Pale Fire













bergen light, anna morosini


we walk the windy canals by venice beach, with the quaint houses and the chic couples and their chic dogs. mom says to the owner my god they're cute!! and the owner smiles back and keeps walking. i think they're the same as ours only rich. poverty seems to change the way even dogs look.


*___*___*

you can't bring her here she says. this is not a happy place, i haven't fixed it yet... we can't, yet. i nod. i know. it's not anything. it's just a thing. we're gonna get a place. somewhere quiet i say. she nods. yes. yes, that's good. that's... good. [at times like these 10 Mile Stereo by Beach House starts playing in my head like a well choreographed scene from a teen drama. "It can't be gone, we're still right here"]
stop thinking. i don't want to see you thinking. i don't want to see you lost in thought she says to me. i'm sitting on the side of the couch, with my legs on the cushion. i look like a Florentine statue. i'm fine ("we stood so long we fell") i say. hey, did you hear the one about the photographer who took all those photos of his pregnant wife? she looks at me a while. maybe, not sure, what happened?
- that's just the thing, i don't know. no one knows.
- take your pills.
- no.
- you should.
- i know. but i'd be up all night if i did.
- ...
- don't worry. i'm going to take 15 when i wake up.
- will that make you feel better?
- yes. in paradisum.
- what?
- May the ranks of angels receive you, and with Lazarus, the poor man, may you have eternal rest.
- are you speaking to me in suicide-note? don't speak to me in suicide-note.
- [i nod] i'll take them in the morning.
- good boy.


*___*___*

... to the extent that i think if i were someone else-er or more better maybe i'd be in NY having threesomes with russian models, or at least playing the clarinet to a two-headed cobra named Wiley in the streets of Marrakesh where i'd be unappreciated, the clarinet melodies in harmonic e flat minor hanging in the air and the cobra heads slowly nodding in a quiet trance where they've forgotten their mother and their quiet nest and the warmth of their yolk and the strangers staring at them, all they see is a peaceful black, a complete silence, a sleep with no dreams.


*___*___*

it occurs to me what's happened here. some point, a year or two ago, something in me stopped working. a tolerance for life. and noise. and hassle. and the people that cause them. and i walked into my room, and listened to Bernard Glemser and the Irish National Orchestra perform Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto and read the Commonwealth Law Reports and decided that was life enough for me. where people's divorces and assaults and financial mishaps could be diluted to gentle abstractions where their punch was minimized. and appeals courts are most preferable, that way you don't need to hear from the victims and the plaintiffs and defendants and complainants and respondents and all those... trouble makers.
___every holiday, every break, every weekend away, i just want to be left alone to go back into my room, and turn on my sony micro hi-fi, and check my gmail, and make a cup of tea, and get into my calvin klein pyjama pants that are lime green with white stripes, and the Harvard tshirt Eman gave me and sit on my couch and read other people's problems being resolved. not my problem. not my problems. not mine. not mine. not ones that are attached to me. not my troubles. not those ones. those ones are out there somewhere. unreported. unfiled. unexplained. there is no evidence of them. not my troubles. not those ones. not my problems. not mine not mine. i have none. i am a man in a room that is growing old as fast as i am. i have none. i am in a quiet space where i am comfortable. not mine i have none.
i have none.
not mine.
i sit in silence
and fret in my sleep (which is easily ignored)

- are you having fun?
- sure.
- what aren't you telling me?
- i wanna go home.
- ...


*___*___*

my sister's dog's been shaved down. she looks like she has cancer. she scampers around my sister wearing a pink dress. why is your dog in a dress ahSra? from the other room she shouts back the answer: she's been groomed. i have to dress her now so that everybody doesn't see her vagina. why are you laughing? followed a few moments later by ew gross! mom, the dog period-ed on me again!


*___*___*

she must be half asian, her eyes have that shape. but only half. she's fair. light brown hair. freckles. blue eyes. she sits forward on the parkbench and stares away. her two friends speak over her shoulder. i can't take my eyes off of her. so i keep my feet moving until my neck can't contort any further.


*___*___*

the dinner party looks at me waiting for an answer to isn't it about time you got married? i stare back at them a few moments, collecting my thoughts. listen guys, if you want an answer to that one i'm gonna need my meds. there's unanimous laughter, the middle-aged man seated next to me is the most enthusiastic, good answer! might as well prepare your liver for the chemical onslaught it has waiting for it post 'i do'. in my head i think of another dinner party where i met a GF's father and uncle, you don't drink, you don't do drugs, you probably drive to the speed limit, what the hell's wrong with you kid? (to which the uncle adds: he's not married yet. then we'll see how sober he arrives home every night).


*___*___*

she asked me to write. write, i like your blog. i finally worked it out, it's just... little stories. small ones. only i don't like my stories. not usually. i write what i know. i know about our parents' divorces. our siblings' disabilities. i know about money troubles and midday traffic and heatstroke and names of the different pills that take the edge off. i know stories about lonely people with lonely dogs, and cities in deserts where you hide out waiting for it to all come clambering back up to your doorstep. screw these stories. that's what i think as i walk through the venice beach canals, f&ck these stories.