Quarter Past Nine

At all times, in his briefcase, by his side, he carries with him secret thoughts of suicide. A certain sadness, a Rubik's cube, and a lunch box packed with food that he doesn't like. Words scrawled on a notepad that he can't remember or understand. He tries to read between the lines, "everything's fine" but it's raining now, not water from above but lies, he's soaking wet, not dead yet but drenched by her betrayal. It's hard to distinguish between the love and the pain, both so heavy, he switches the briefcase over to the other hand, fingers slipping in the rain. He wants to set it down, to sever the ties but instead his veins are calling his name in a voice that sounds like hers.

It isn't her, though, he knows that briefcase was a gift at birth. Oh, the days that have begun and ended with crying, the nights alone, the dreams of dying, pondering the difference between life and nothing. Walking the earth, under the dirt, buried while all those people float on by in their balloons. Just once, when he was a boy, when he was a man, he wanted one of them to reach down and take him by the hand. Lift him up and carry him along, teach him the words to their impossible song. They tried, some of them did, some of them ran, some of them hid. But there were friends and lovers and strangers, too, who laid out plans, who drew Venn diagrams, who scribbled pictures of sunny skies. And he was happy for days and weeks and months and years or maybe not happy but okay. But like kids in the park he keeps coming back to that slide, scorching hot from the sun, the one that burns the backs of his legs as he begs for his feet to land on the ground but somehow on the way down he always flips back around and lands upon his head. Then the briefcase tumbles behind and there it is, always is, and it opens his mind to those ever present thoughts of death.  

Then on the train he overhears a kid with a giant face, a Muppet with messy blonde hair say that life isn't fair and suddenly it all makes sense. Everybody's going to die, it's just a matter of time. And now his watch says it's a quarter past nine.

Let The Children Sleep For Now

Let the children sleep for now, may the darkness keep them warm. With the sun will rise the truth; their world will crack at dawn. No father now, their mother now weeping in her bed. Let the children sleep tonight, the devil's name unsaid. Star Wars sheets and pillows soft, these dreams cannot be torn. But the bastard of death he waits not long before he must be born. So let the children sleep for now, calm before the storm.

How's Your Wife?

I know Larry from work but also because he went to high school with my wife. Sometimes he'll say "How's Sheryl?" or "How's your wife?" and I'll tell him something funny like "still slutty." Small talk from a small man as my wife would say. But this morning, well first off Larry went way around the back way through the copy room and he never goes that way because he drinks coffee in the morning and the coffee machine is right across from my cubicle but this morning I saw him double back that other way so that's strange for starters and then at lunch when I saw him in the cafeteria he started fumbling with his phone like he was willing it to ring but it didn't. Then when I say "hey Larry, how they swinging?" his face gets flush like I just asked him to squeeze my balls and he says "yeah" and I says "yeah, what?" and then that's when it happens.

"How's your wife?" he says but not normal like every other day it's all in slow motion like "how ...'s .... you....r....wi....fe?" and the corner of his mouth turns inside out then starts flicking up and down like some kinda weird tick and I can see panic in his eyes and he stumbles backward like I just socked him in the guts but I didn't even touch him.

Then all of a sudden there's no blood in my head. My hands and feet are tingling like how when you sit on them for too long and my stomach is warm, so warm like gross warm, and this is what people feel like when they get stabbed or more like when their throats get slit. Next thing I know I'm on the floor and Hector and Karen are touching my face and saying things but where's Larry? He's gone home they say, wasn't feeling well.

Then the end of the day comes around like it does every other day and I start back to thinking about what happened earlier in the morning and at lunch time and it hits me in the brain what my body somehow caught on to hours ago. And I always said I would never be mad at the other guy because I ain't married to him but the rage was coming and I was grabbing stuff like things that could maybe do some damage and Larry's fucking tick face was the only thing I could see through the mist of anger. Lucky he went home early I guess although a stapler was about the worst of it and that's the kind of thing that ends up on YouTube, some middle aged arsehole stapling some other middle aged arsehole in the neck or in the earhole or something.

Then I drive home yelling at some lady who didn't use her blinker and I call her a cunt and think about bashing her face in with a cricket bat and then when I pull up into the driveway I notice that the lights are off. Not one light on in the house and the dog is out back barking, high pitched like someone just ruined his life.

The only thing I can think to do is put my pyjamas on, crawl into bed, and watch a few episodes of the Gilmore Girls. Because that's what we always do on Monday nights.

I Read Books

I read books all the time about things, about girls, about men. Death, and yes, about love. Destruction, redemption, the depths, the darkness, and the light inside. Hearts closed or open wide. Despicable things. Connections, actions, burning bridges, mending fences. Consequences. Conflicted thinking, floating, sinking. Righting wrong. Standing up, being strong, fighting on. But here I am in bed where I read about these things, about girls, about men, and here you are, sharing this bed where I read about death, and yes about love, but you are a person, not pages or ink and I'm starting to think I'm not prepared for this or for you. What should I say, what should I do?  

I'll Kill a Bear

There's nothing you can do, she said. Don't buy a suit or kill a bear. Don't paint me flowers or stroke my hair. Don't get all weepy, it's creepy and don't write a song about footprints in the sand. Just accept that you cannot understand. It's not about you. Don't buy a ticket. Don't save the whales. I don't need any more Alpha males in my life. Don't make a mix tape that's all Billy Ocean. Don't set sail across the sea to be with me and please do not buy a knife or a gun. Don't punch a wall or curse at the sun or book a romantic getaway to the south of France. Don't buy me sexy underpants or read me poems over the phone. Don't discuss any of this with my friends or with my mum and don't come around when I tell you I'm not home. Don't say sorry or ask me if I'm okay. Just leave me alone for today. I'll give you a call tomorrow.

Smaller

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She is smaller than him. Not child-like, but short. Slim. She stands on her toes and clutches his sleeves. She looks up at him, into his eyes. Her hair is tied back, her tiny face is bright, alive with wonder and love. It is hard not to think of a girl adoring her father but she is a woman. Fully a woman. And although he towers above her, he is not her father. Not anybody's father. She wants him to pick her up, to hold her tight, to carry her to the bedroom. She likes being smaller than him.

But he looks away, to the side, the TV is on. A game. Football. Cricket. She whispers, something she wouldn't dare say out loud. But he cannot hear her. "How was your day?" he asks.

She's growing now. Taller. The tenderness in her face fades. Her body stretches. It bends. She is a monkey. A gorilla. Her hands, her nails are sharp. A werewolf perhaps. She grabs him by the neck and forces his head around. She looks down, into his eyes again, deeper now. She can see inside of him and he is not a big man anymore. He is folding in two. The thing inside of him is eating his guts out and he is crying. He is shrinking. He is smaller than her. Fully a man still, but weak and sad. She does not like being bigger than him.

Now she packs her bags. She is leaving. Her reflection in the mirror whispers to her. "You will always be small," it says, "but you won't ever be smaller again."

How Nice it Must Be

Mount Everest is littered with dead bodies. Climbers who succumbed to the elements. Crack faced porcelain dolls. One armed mannequins. That big ol' hill is a gigantic cryocompressor, freezing bodies and brains and people who, I am quite convinced, will one day thaw out and return to their everyday lives. Things for them will be different in the future. Better. Or not worse, at least. How could they be worse? They will wake up one day and ride the melting icecaps down to the bottom of the mountain. They will get into their cars. They will go home and ask their families what is happening on "Friends." Their families will hug them and tell them it is okay that their faces are kind of smashed up and that they only have one arm. They will be happy and loved and they will go to work and chat about how nice it is to be alive.

I envy that.

I'm frozen, too, wedged between rock shards, halfway up a particularly challenging alpine couloir. But I'm not ever going to thaw out. I don't want to. If anything I want to freeze harder. Feel less. Let the mountaineers climb over me. Let them shatter my head with their ice axes. Let them remark about how courageous I was to make it this far. How sad it is that I am dead. Let them come back for me on a future expedition, wrap my body in an Australian flag, say a prayer, and dump me into a mountain bowl on top of all those other climbers who don't want to thaw out.

Then let more bodies fall on top of me. My future the same as my present as my past. Concealed and frozen. Never really knowing how nice it must be to be alive.

blood on your face

in your dress with the pockets. hands in your pockets. nothing in your pockets. there's blood on your face.

where are your shoes? my favourite shoes. you don't have any shoes. are those dried tears on your cheeks?

your mascara has run, why didn't you run? you tried to run. there's dirt in your hair.

your purse has gone. your necklace has gone. the darkness has gone. it's still in your mind.

come closer to me. get warmer with me. come home with me. i will make you some eggs.

your name is flower

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colony collapse disorder

my love for you is a thousand million bees. swarming bees dancing on the flowers, sperming honey into jars, and stinging children in their faces. buzzing bees that hum along to peter bjorn and john.

but the bees are dying. they wander off to god knows where. they get drunk and they die. they implode and explode and disintegrate into thin air. they spontaneously combust. entire colonies are collapsing in the bathrooms at work. they are having epileptic fits in front of the TV and their friends are putting spoons in their mouths but it doesn't seem to help. and the few bees that do survive are left riddled with disease, suffering from a tremendous and unexplainable pathogen load. and their feet stink.

the scientists don't understand. they don't know why the bees are disappearing. maybe all these cell phones are emitting radioactive bee waves. or maybe some crazy girl bees are lacing all the bee food with rat poison. theories. hillary clinton has heard about it, too. she wants to know what is going on but nobody can figure it out. all we know is the bees are dying and soon our entire ecosystem will crumble. you'd be surprised how useful bees are. we need them to pollinate all kinds of different foods like apples or almonds or beef strogonoff. it's called entomophily and without it we will all cease to exist.

maybe something can be done, but honestly, at this point, i think we should just start seeing other people.

menstruating robots with beards

rani's father reads the wall street journal. on the toilet on the train, he retains all that business in his brain. currencies and stocks and thousand dollar shoes with silk lined socks.

but unlike the other wall street sluts and cocks, rani's dad gets rich when there's a decline in the value of his assets; makes his money shorting futures. maybe that's why he sews up rani's vagina when she's 12. and why he laughs at 14 when the blood seeps through her sutures.

rani doesn't understand, of course, why anyone would want her to be less. want her to wear her dead mother's dirty old dress. why her life like her hair is always a mess. but she goes on like any kid does. aware of the chaos and ignoring the buzz of the blow flies who lay maggots in her ears and in her eyes. avoiding her reflection is the only direction she knows. and so it goes.

until her sixteenth birthday when rani happens to meet her father's protégé. at a party for her there's no one rani's age except for the go-go dancer who's stripping in a cage. the protégé's name is dave. he talks to her about nanotechnology and she says "robots?" and he says "no, nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems on a molecular scale. it's where the next boom will be. where the money will be made. your father disagrees of course. so does the journal."

dave's appearance is frozen in 1991. mustard color suit, hair in a fade, but rani likes what she sees and she wants him to be pleased so she tries to understand. "tiny robots?"

"kind of," says dave.

that night in bed rani fingers her stitches as she pretends to talk to dave on the phone. hello oh hi let me suck on your bone but the dream is shortlived when her father opens the door and laughs in her face. she's been put back into her place. her mind has been raped.

still, rani's a smart girl and determined to escape. she e-mails dave and they go on a date. they kiss and their love is intense and that nanotechnology starts to make sense. in the months to come when the stitches are gone dave starts talking about a bioengineering degree at the university of bonn. dave sits on the bed and combs rani's hair. rani looks at him in the mirror. she looks at herself.

"I don't want to go," she says.

but dave sets her free.

"go and come back and you will see. you and me will always be."

so at 18 rani's bags are packed. without telling her father she sneaks out the back.

in germany everything begins to click. she re-engineers human cells and implants them in robots. she's figured a way to give an android a dick. a robot a beard and periods and hair. testosterone and estrogen. now she can rest again because this ingenious use of nanotechnology has made her rich. robots having babies. baldies getting nanobots implanted under their scalps. the practical applications are almost infinite.

finally saved, she flies back to new york and is reunited with dave. he is proud of her. "how's my father?" asks rani.

"broke," says dave. he shorted nanotech.

i die in my dreams

i cry in the shower sometimes, i die in my dreams. i want to ask my daughter what all of it means, but she's only three. now she's in her teens with skinny jeans and a boyfriend who cries in the shower and has wet dreams. god, let me go and come back clean, dennis lillee's fingers on my seams. i'm a ball in the air and life isn't fair and vivian richards will smack me for six. and out in the backyard of my brain i'll bounce for a while on the trampoline. i'm the king out here but where is my queen. i know, don't tell me again, i saw her face in my bed. mouth wide open like she just won the race to be dead. i stuffed it with jelly beans and poured chocolate sauce on her head. in shock i suppose and they came and took her away and i had to go to work that day. they told me to go back home and be with my girl. 12 years ago and i still cry in the shower sometimes. and die in my dreams.

methylamphetamine

nigel reads a lot about girls his age. they don't wear bras. they are promiscuous and lascivious and they engage in sexual activity with men in the backs of vans or in the woods or in basements with rock and roll music blaring out of giant speakers. they have big hairy bushes and long straight hair and they wear miniskirts and knee high socks. nigel thinks about these girls and he imagines himself sitting with them on a couch and talking to them. in his mind he puts his hand on their legs and then he touches their vaginas and kisses them.   

but in reality none of it is possible. nigel is in borstal training with 74 other boys. bigger boys who bugger him in the showers, beat him while he sleeps, and urinate on his face and in his trunk.

nigel is dead in the day and in the night; only alive in the pages of his favourite magazine. 1969. the girls and the politics and the music. 19 years old and 19 months to go.

but today there is a new boy settling in to the bunk above his. his name is otto and he talks about his kit, which is his clothes. and his hair. he tells stories about scooters and protests and making love to german and french girls and girls who are from liverpool. he has smuggled in a syringe and he fills it with a drug called methylamphetamine. he injects it into his veins and he puts his arms up behind his head and he says "everything is okay."

nigel does not know what it is like to think that "everything is okay." so in the middle of the night he rummages through otto's bag and pilfers the contraband drugs and their associated paraphernalia. he hides under his blankets and tries to remember how otto did it. he makes mistakes and spills the methylamphetamine. he pokes himself with the needle and he bleeds. he cries. loud sobs and other boys come and they laugh at him and tell him to be quiet. nigel screams obscenities at the boys and he tries to bite a hole in his own wrist. he wants it to be over but he cannot break the skin.

in the following days nigel's relationship with otto flourishes. they are friends now. otto tells him that his uncle is a teacher at the borstal and explains that he can get a steady supply of methylamphetamine. he shows nigel how to do it properly.

nigel likes the way the methylamphetamine makes him feel. he is strong and "everything is okay." he uses it everyday and he writes letters to his parents and to people in the government and to his favourite magazine. 1969. he tells people that there is an answer. he wants people to know that there is an answer.

nigel loses weight and he cannot sleep at night. he does not think about girls his age anymore. he thinks about methylamphetamine. he wants more. he asks otto if he can have more. otto tells nigel to relax. he tells nigel that he is giving up the methylamphetamine. he tells nigel that the drug is ruining his brain.

nigel then has what some may describe as a psychotic episode. he strangles otto until otto is dead. he kicks otto's head and face. the other boys circle around. some of them laugh. nigel does not understand. soon he is transferred to the men's prison where he suffers alone for 19 more years.

it is now 1988 and nigel waits for a bus. the bus takes him to liverpool where he gets a job in a donut van. he rents a room in a house. the room is advertised as a converted garage but actually it is just a regular garage without a car in it. he finds an old stack of magazines and one of them is his old favourite. 1969. he opens it to the letters page and sees the one that he wrote all those years ago. methylamphetamine is the answer, his old self declares. he crosses the words out with a red pen and over the top he writes:

"methylamphetamine is not the answer"

and then

"the answer = promiscuous and lascivious girls with big hairy bushes"

the next day while working in the donut van nigel meets a girl. she is a scouser with long straight hair. she is wearing a miniskirt and knee high boots. "everything is okay," says nigel to the girl.

33

former chicago bulls all-star scottie pippen has a big nose and an elongated head. basketball fans and casual observers have long attributed these awkward looks to genetics or to random weird lookingness. however, most scientists, and especially any chemist worth his or her damn, know/s there is more to it than that. they can tell, simply by the shape of his face and head, that scottie pippen is one of the rarest human beings alive; he is a natural producer of lanthanum. it gestates in his blood. it is absorbed by his bones. it infiltrates every cell in his body. it causes minor mutations and slightly above normal physical abilities. but more importantly, the lanthanum that grows inside of scottie pippen is harvestable.

recognizing this fact, and wanting to capitalize on it, over a dozen american, european, and asian nations court scottie pippen. they want to draw his blood. cut his hair. scrape his skin. collect his stool. and bottle his semen. they want to use the lanthanum that flows within scottie pippen to manufacture hybrid car batteries and other green technologies. they want to pay scottie pippen a lot of money in exchange for his biological gift.

but scottie pippen does not need the money and he does not want to be viewed as a freak. his image is important to him. even though he is a bit ugly in the face people tend to like scottie pippen. he is a nice person. he has done things in basketball and in life that very few others have even dreamed about. he does not want to ruin that legacy.

but scottie pippen gets migraines. his bones ache. sometimes he feels depressed. doctors believe the elevated levels of lanthanum are responsible for these neurological, physical, and emotional complications. scottie pippen thinks maybe some of these government scientists could help him control the lanthanum and its detrimental health effects. he agrees to meet with drs. pölönen of finland and magnusson of sweden. from his basketball days he learned the critical art of negotiation. negotiating with two external parties is ideal. more and things get confusing. one and you lose the upperhand.

so it is 2008 and scottie pippen travels to finland and then on to sweden. he still doesn't want the general public to know about his condition, or to be aware of any deals that may or may not be made in the coming weeks. so scottie pippen concocts a cover story. he will come out of retirement to play a few basketball games for topo in the finnish league and one for sundsvall, a swedish team. the scandinavian fans go crazy for scottie pippen. espn magazine writes a story about the comeback and how scottie pippen is really doing it for the kids. and nobody suspects a thing.

the meetings go well. the scientists and the government officials are excited. they offer scottie pippen long term deals with excellent remuneration packages. the doctors draw diagrams of the human body on a white board. they tell scottie pippen that his health will improve.

after the meetings scottie pippen sits with a woman in the hotel bar. she is from hamburg. that's funny to him because he is from hamburg too, but he is from hamburg arkansas, not hamburg germany. they talk about it and other things and it comes out that they also share the exact same birthday. he is attracted to her even though she has a big nose and an elongated head. she does not know about his basketball past. she likes him. they spend the night talking and kissing and he touches her boobs a little bit but they don't want to rush things. he feels good. he feels really good. his migraines are gone. his bones have stopped aching. he does not want to crawl under the covers and die.

scottie pippen calls the swedes and he calls the finns and he tells them that the deal is off. they decline the invitation to scottie pippen's wedding and they reopen discussions with china.

faceman from the a-team reads the perfect strangers theme song

car and a hose

alcohol methadone, knocked on the door but nobody's home. high on the streets now not on life. it's cold. used to be somebody telling people things but he never owned a car. something about cars in his head well he found his father and little brother dead in the back of one when he was a kid. that's probably it but aside from that he was okay. went to work every day in a suit, he had a girlfriend. she was cute and they lived together in an apartment. it was small and there were mice in the walls but they were happy and they cooked sometimes dinner or breakfast and they rented videos from the shop downstairs. then she was gone and instead of a beer in front of the tv he had two, he had three. kept missing the train and the rent was too much on his own and he didn't like to iron his clothes. what happened after that? nobody knows but now he's here and he's getting off the junk but it's hard, it's hard. he's weak in the body and he doesn't have any shoes and he wants to see a movie and sleep with a girl in a bed. he wants a friend who's not schizophrenic or otherwise fucked in the head. he wants new clothes and a job and a wife and a kid but he knows that waiting for him at the end of the road inside of a garage there will be a car and a hose.

easter hat parade

on the morning of my father's funeral there was an easter hat parade at my school. not my scene but the neighbour girl made a hat for me and my mum said i should go. go to the parade then come home. plenty of time before we headed out to the graveyard. it would be good for me and the girl would be disappointed if i did not wear her hat in the parade.

it wasn't a good hat. it looked like shaved pubic hair glued to a piece of cardboard with "ben's ester hat" scrawled across the front in crayon. i was embarrassed and i didn't want to wear it and when i got to school i guess the teacher had told all the kids about my dad because my friends were acting all weird and mrs stackfield hugged me and she cried. i put my headphones on.

when my dad came back from france he brought me a sony walkman. he always brought us presents when he came home from his trips. i only had one tape and it was unknown pleasures by joy division. actually it was my brother's tape but i stole it from him and i liked it so he said i could keep it.

then when that guy from joy division killed himself i hid in the garage and i yelled at my mum and i yelled at my dad and i yelled at my brother and i told them that i was going to hang myself because why did he kill himself. then my brother came in and he told me to stop fucking around because mum was upset and i told him that i was upset and then he said dad is dying.

i told him to cram it because i thought it was a trick because why would my dad die. he had a job and he was our dad and he brought us presents all the time because he liked to think about us and one time i heard my mum telling her friends that my dad was a genius. everybody liked my dad because he was funny like the time my friend chad from america said he didn't know his phone number and my dad said why don't you call your mum and ask and chad was mormon and dad told me all about how mormon kids are just like other kids except they believe in i forget what it is they believe in.

then my dad got sick and he really was dying because his eyes got messed up and he could see double and he couldn't kick the football with me any more. then he kept vomiting every morning and it didn't sound good because you could hear him in there retching all the time. he got skinny and the doctors said it was a brain tumour and then he died.

after that i listened to my joy division tape nonstop because it reminded me of him and also because it was still my only tape and also because i didn't want to talk to anyone. then after the hug mrs. stackfield told me to take my headphones off and she asked me about my hat. i told her jesus christ, no i did not make it and she said it was cute and not to say jesus christ and i said since my dad just died could i listen to my sony walkman and she said no and i figured that was about right because there aren't really any benefits to your dad dying as far as i can tell.

i thought i might toss the hat in the rubbish bin but then i saw the neighbour girl and she had a hat almost the same except hers said "lucy's easter hat" and that made me kind of mad even though she was a little girl because why could she spell easter right on her hat but on my hat she messed it up. she smiled at me and asked me if i liked my hat and i said it was cute and i told her i was going to wear it.

during the easter hat parade my hat was the worst one as predicted. everybody looked at me and i guess they were thinking about how terrible my hat was and that i must not have been able to make a nice hat because my dad died.

then i went home and we rode to the graveyard in a black car behind the hearse and it had leather seats. i looked out the back and there were a bunch of cars following us. they all had their lights on and we drove really slow. then at the funeral i couldn't believe how many people were there. i kept thinking wow this is a good turnout and i didn't cry. i felt kind of bad because you're supposed to cry at a funeral and i looked up at mum and she was crying and then the priest told her to pick up some sand and sprinkle it onto the coffin. she didn't sprinkle it though, she picked up the sand and chucked it really hard like she was mad at dad for dying which i guess she probably was. i wasn't mad at him. i thought about going back to the car to get my sony walkman but i decided i better not.

after the funeral we went back home because i guess we didn't have a wake or anything and there was a giant easter basket sitting on our doorstep. those big chocolate bunnies that i like and it was a really sunny day.

on thursdays i feed the ducks

he comes into her life, and into her vagina, on a thursday. he is at the lake with a boy and they are laughing because their remote control boat has somehow capsized. just out of reach so the man rolls up his pants and wades into the murky water.

"careful," she yells. "the bottom is slippery."

the man pretends to fall and he laughs and he is okay. he grabs the boat and returns it to the boy. the boy shakes the water loose and tests the engine. another voyage is begun.

"hi," says the man and she chats with him and the young boy follows the boat around to the other side of the lake.

"on thursdays i feed the ducks," she says and he smiles and then another woman is there. the woman is pretty/ugly, short skirt and a tattoo that runs lengthways up her calf. "books are gay" it proclaims in a cursive font. the woman says something to the man and the man points to the boy and says "he's got some spanish left."

the woman rolls her eyes and heads off towards the boy.

"ex-wife," the man explains.

then something strange. the sky and grass and the wind and darkness and light and sandwiches and music and trousers. it is a spaceship and it doesn't land it just floats there and then they are inside and the aliens are people and they are all burt reynolds and sally field. sally field approaches, gently takes her hand, and escorts her into a room with walls of light. burt reynolds takes him to another room, also with walls of light.

"what's happening?" she asks.

"what's going on?" he asks.

"we won't hurt you," says sally field.

"it's okay," says burt reynolds.

then sally field and burt reynolds talk to their prisoners. separately, in their separate rooms.

"we are freshmen in college," they say. "and we are conducting an experiment for our psychology class."

"okay," she says

"college?" he asks.

"we have an offer for you. an opportunity. we are presenting this offer to each of you separately. you must answer our questions on your own. you must not consult with your friend."  

"what's going on?" she asks. 

"what's happening?" he asks.

"we are giving you a choice," says sally field. says burt reynolds. "choice one. we will give you each ten million dollars and we will set you free. you will never hear from us again."

"okay," she says.

"sounds good," he says.

"choice two. we will kill your friend. then we will set you free and you will never hear from us again."

"the first one," she says.

"number one," he says.

"but there are rules," says burt reynolds. says sally field. "you must answer on your own. if you both choose option one, then that's good. you will both get the ten million. we will spare both of your lives. if only one of you chooses option one, we will kill only that person. the other will get to go down the bouncy slide and walk out of here. without any money, of course."

"that doesn't sound good," she says.

"seems a bit harsh," he says.

"if you both choose option two, then we won't kill anybody. you will both live. we will set you free."

"seems confusing," she says.

"i don't get it," he says.

"it's simple," says sally field. says burt reynolds. 

"no, i don't get it," she says.

"it seems confusing," he says. "option two. it's hard to follow."

sally field says "hold on." she leaves the room.

burt reynolds says "wait a minute." he joins sally field outside the rooms with walls of light.

"i told you," says burt reynolds.

"bullshit," says sally field. all you said was that you wanted an anal probe option in there instead of the killing.

"stupid humans," says burt reynolds. "what are we going to do?"

"fuck," says sally field. "i need an 80 on this assignment or i'm going to fail and i'm not going back to summer school again."

"what about the ducks?" says burt reynolds. "they'll get it."

"yeah, okay," says sally field. "fuck it." she points to a video screen that shows two ducks bobbing around in the lake. "grab those two."

now she's back on the ground, standing next to the lake again. he is next to her.

"that was weird," she says.

"totally," he says.

they talk about other things and they go back to her house and make love in her bed. 

it's ten years later now and they are drunk on champagne. they talk about the day they met. "i would have chosen option one," he says. "what would you have done?"

"there weren't any ducks," she says. "you chose option two."

stay free taylor swift

taylor swift is a STAR. a street transvestite action revolutionary who sluts her cock out for money. she saves up enough cash to rent a house on the lower east side of new york and she invites dozens of other queens to live in the house. she is their mother and she buys them food and clothes and she tells them they do not need to prostitute their bodies to survive because she will do it for them. she continues to slang her wang to protect her children and she is a pioneer and a leader and an activist and things are changing for the better.

now it is June 28, 1969, still night time but morning, and there are riots at the stonewall inn in greenwich village. taylor swift is there and she is confronted by the police and she sings:

"Because these things will change

Can you feel it now?

These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down

This revolution, the time will come

For us to finally win

And we’ll sing hallelujah, well sing hallelujah

Tonight we stand, get off our knees

Fight for what we’ve worked for all these years

And the battle was long, it’s the fight of our lives

But we’ll stand up champions tonight"

upon hearing her inspirational words and commanding voice the village residents immediately organize into activist groups. their goal is to establish places for gays and lesbians to be open about their sexual orientation without fear of being arrested. taylor swift fights hard, even within these organizations themselves, for the inclusion of transvestite and drag queen agendas. gay rights organizations soon spring up across the country and around the world. all thanks to taylor swift.

now it is 1992 and people who are walking see a body floating in the hudson river. they point and they yell and they call the police. a passerby recognizes the body. it is taylor swift. she is dead and the police, they say it is a suicide. jumped from the west village piers.

the queens and the gays and her family do not believe it was a suicide. they honor taylor swift by carrying on her legacy and each year on the anniversary of her death they throw flowers and feathers into the river and they look to the sky and they say "stay free, taylor swift. stay free."

and the sky looks back down upon taylor swift's family, and it sings in a familiar voice:

"hallelujah

hallelujah"

Grand Requiem for Praying Equally for All to Untie the Knots of Unjust Suffering

she lives in a room in a house with nothing; with nobody. terribly alone and she eats cereal three times a day and apples. she reads a lot with her face very close to the page. her glasses are cracked and her life is broken but she is okay because she has thích nhất hạnh. thích nhất hạnh is a buddhist monk and he is an author. she reads the things that thích nhất hạnh has written. she believes in them and she thinks about them and some of his books are in vietnamese. she lines the books up against the wall and she squats in the corner and meditates. she clears her mind of the bad things; she tunes out the sounds of the buses that keep her awake at night. she tells herself that her mind is the window in her room. it cannot close. she lets the birds fly in.

the next day she gets up off her mattress with a purpose. she will start her own school of youth for social services right here in her neighbourhood. she drinks some water.

she will talk to people and get them involved. together they will rebuild things. they will setup schools. they will build hospitals. they will find beds and tables and refrigerators for homeless people. they will rally against violence and war.

she doesn't have any apples. the milk is spoiled. she will have to talk to people tomorrow. today she will go to the library and ask if the new mindfulness bell is in. it probably isn't in yet. she will stay inside today. she's hungry and so she will read.

there is a biography of thích nhất hạnh. he is the dharmacharya now. he lives in the plum village monastery in the dordogne region in the south of france. he travels and he prays and he meditates and he is happy. he hosts retreats for famous actors and people who are not famous. she squats again in her corner and she chants. she prays for the wellbeing of the famous actors and the people who are not famous. she knows that everybody is connected; their happiness is important to her.