Another writing entry draft.

The night is fuzzy and muggy, partially from fireworks, partially from cigarette smoke, and partially from the drunken haze of those inhabiting it. Its summer in Kalamazoo, and something other than determination and fog is hanging on the air. It might be desperation. The night has been electric since sunset. Through the car window glass, the yellow house with yellow lights looks even hazier. People spill out of the house’s orifices and congregate around them. It’s a youngish crowd, all twenty something, mostly kids from the big public university. The latest additions to the crowd are definitely young, all barely twenty or newly twenty-one. A car door opens and black and grey three-inch curvy platform sandal with Velcro straps touches the weather-cracked asphalt. The second sandal, two pairs of sandals and one pair of sneakers do the same, and four silver doors slam in unison.

Approaching the house, the idle chatter increases a mild roar. And inside, it gets even louder, people packed shoulder to shoulder chattering away. Beer is everywhere. Beer by the keg, beer by the bottle, beer by the cupful, beer by the puddleful. The crowd pushes through the larger crowd, platform sandals in the lead, scanning for people she knows. They finally locate the host, the mutual friend of everyone at the party. Liam was just one of those guys, his round face, framed with long blond hair and a large fuzzy beard is flushed from the night’s festivities.

“Layla! Heyyy, you made it! Great to see you guys,” Liam greets everyone with hugs and handshakes, his voice deeper and more gravelly than she remembered. “There’s a keg in the basement, if you guys want beer. I think the band is starting soon. Donny’s selling cups, but tell him I said you guys were good.”

Layla smiles in response, still giddy from the hug and the demi-rockstar recognition that comes from being at a house party primarily populated by English majors. She was finally among her people.

This is what she had missed for the last four months dating George. She thought they were a beautiful affair, he an artist from the suburbs of Cleveland complementing her big city Chicago journalistic sensibilities. Which was why his phone call two months ago declaring that he just couldn’t do this anymore was at the very least a little devastating. That was his only explanation. Nothing further. That was why tonight became so important. She wanted to prove to herself that it wasn’t her, it was them. It was always them. Liam was the main target and she was locked in.
She kisses Liam on the cheek and takes her friends toward the basement. Beer is procured, and gossip is traded. The night wears on. The point in the night comes where Layla needs to take herself out of the house for a cigarette. She leaves her beer with her friends. The front porch is jammed with bodies, as well as the areas surrounding the side and back doors. She finds an open and unobstructed spot halfway down the driveway close enough to the revelry but far enough away to not feel so claustrophobic. One of the neighbors is setting off fireworks, letting everything shimmer and sparkle then explode and fade. “Wind, water, heart,” Layla murmurs to nobody in particular, as she lights her clove cigarette.

“By your powers combined,” a male voice chortles in the smoky fog, and Layla tries to see where it’s coming from. A tall shadow emerges.

“I am Captain Planet!” Layla shouts, half giddy from her beer and cigarettes and half giddy from the opportunity to impress a stranger.

“Oh my gosh, do you remember that dumb little cheer at the end?”

“You mean the one where they go ‘we’re the planeteers! You can be one too! Cause saving our planet is the thing to do!’?” Her chants punctuated with exaggerated cheerleading movies from high school.

“That’s the one,” the stranger laughs, then extends a hand. “I’m Cory.”
Layla introduces herself, smiling even though he probably can’t see her face either.

“I have a really weird question for you, Layla,”
She replies with several m’s from her throat and an invisibly raised eyebrow.

“Can I take a hit of that clove you’re smoking?”
Layla hands it to him. “Finish it, I was just finishing it to get my money’s worth. There’s like a couple drags left. Just don’t smoke the filter, that shit can be brutal.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine, Cory.”

Cory finishes the cigarette and escorts Layla back inside to the party. They find their way through the throbbing masses to the only quiet corner of the house, which is also where her friends happen to be hanging out. Introductions are made, beers refilled. Inside, with better lighting, they get a better look at each other. He’s still tall like he was outside, but it’s now apparent that he has café au lait skin, glasses and caramel colored dreadlocks. Layla and Cory dominate the conversation.

While I didn't write this, I feel this is the only appropriate place to write about the writing of others.

Taken from the 20 greatest singles of 2009 list from the editors of Spin magazine.

"Zero"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

With her gift for sod-off squawking and tear-streaked realness, Karen O was born to lead the frisky rock revolt that the aughts never earned. So here, with a regal hip check, she strides off by her lonesome, resplendent synth riff all aquiver, cooing, "Get your leather on," as we gambol on the grave of 2009’s tragic, orgiastic flimflam.

I just gagged with absolute and utter hipster disgust. "frisky rock revolt"? "resplendent synth riff all aquiver"? Or what the fuck about the coup de fucking grace "as we gambol on the grave of 2009’s tragic, orgiastic flimflam"? Jesus Christ get me some drugs. I feel like someone took quotes from every poem from his self-indulgent undergraduate career and tried to incorporate it into a song review.

Who even uses the word "resplendent" in somewhat casual conversation? Fuck all of you.

I want your job.

The Fantastic Voyage or, Conversely, What the Bleep Do We Know?

One of the defining characteristics of Modernist writing is a sort of abstinence from expressing the personal. There is an attempt to walk the line between the interior landscape and the exterior; they try to find a balance between the interior and the exterior. There is a representation of the external universe. Visually, it is the narrowest point on the hourglass: the upper reservoir is the outside world, and the lower reservoir is the inside world. Three of the authors examined this semester walk that line in profoundly different places: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ezra Pound and Robert Frost all explore the ranges of this paradigm.

Intro from a take home final from the same lit class last summer. I like The hourglass visualization, and find it hard to think that I came up with that all by myself. But I think I actually did.

Backwards and in High Heels: In Defense of the Gender

“Don't forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards . . . and in high heels!"
-- Bob Thaves

The experience of one given group of people cannot be accurately recorded unless one of their own does so. A person can be as close as they want to any group they want but until they are one of them, fully immersed in the scene, there is no way to truly know. Until a day is spent as an alcoholic, who can say what it is like? Until a day is spent as a Bohemian or “starving artist” who is to say that shoplifting paintbrushes is a crime? Until a day is spent as a woman, who is to say that they are irrational, absent-minded or “prone to fits of hysteria”? Literature by women about women is a relatively recent development, and it is one that has spent centuries attempting to dispel biases and prejudices. In the last two centuries women have gone from accessories to assistants to passive heroine to active heroine to anti heroine to everything else in between. Sometimes the phasing from one type of power to the other is called evolution. Sometimes the campaigning for this evolution is called feminism. Critics say that the most well-known (or at least widely taught) short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is a work of extremely feminist literature and speaks out against the sexual biases of the medical profession at the time. The women in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” represent a variety of socio-economic classes, and in turn a variety of views about their own roles.

Taken from the opening paragraph of a paper I wrote last summer on a porch. Arbor Mist could have been involved.

It's 80s night at the supermarket
there are breakdancers in the deodorant aisle
pop-lockers boogie down rows and rows and rows of carbonated beverages
and I forgot my legwarmers

it's 80s night at the supermarket
and I'm trying not to choose life in the deli
there are air guitars in the bread aisle
and we all jump when Diamond Dave tells us to.

its 80s night in the supermarket
behind various mirrors, big brother watches
considering more bleach for my acid wash jeans
and I'm thinking of checking out.

Chet drove faster and faster. He was pushing 100, and the rickety lime green 1990 Honda only went to 120. The spoiler had come off miles ago. She would find him soon enough. He looked at the passenger seat filled with an unruly heap of hundreds of hundred dollar bills in neat little bundles. Their order and uniformity made Chet nauseous. He knew they were mocking him, just like the rural Southwestern landscape he was speeding through. The oranges and reds and purples and all those other unaltered colors on postcards that dripped from the sky were there to only there to vaporize him. "Fuck this," Chet shouted over the open windows and the staticy classic rock radio. He picked up as many of the bundles as he could fit in one hand, and started chucking them out the window. It was gratifying, watching them get projected into dusty, dusky obscurity. "Yeah. Fuck yeah."

Diane alternated between shoving more tater tots in her mouth and shoving some in Bella’s as she sped up to catch Chet. Daddy's soul hung just a little bit above her head, whispering something indecipherable. Bella always knew when daddy was tailing Diane. She got this look in her eyes and slobbered even more than usual. Dogs were smart like that. She knew the end result: either Diane or Chet or both must go to meet him. Diane tossed the greasy tater tot bag out the window. She had a long way to go before she met up with Chet’s taillights.

Chet hit a rough patch. The road became pocked and rough, like the girl's face. He should have known she was only fifteen. That should have been his first warning. Miles and miles of redness, mountains, craters, and valleys all over the poor girl's face. The spots and textures made her look tough. If he had known she was just fifteen, he wouldn't have fucked her. Wouldn’t have fallen for her and those big goofy hazel eyes of hers. Nope. Just would have said "No more coffee for me, miss." But Chet had a real weakness for three things: cherry pie, whiskey, and ugly women. Especially redheads. When a plug-ugly redhead offered him cherry pie and whiskey in her $40 per night room at the Dew Drop Inn, Chet knew he would have to deal with the consequences later, whatever they might be. It was her damned fault anyway. Anybody that had ever seen Chet just knew that he was at least 50. Between the tattoos that started out black but had faded to green on the skin that was leathery and cracked, the thinning, graying copper hair and the fully gray beard, he had to have been somebody’s grandfather. He would be 36 in august.

Diane’s daddy was one of the best grave robbers in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. He covered his ass by running the only funeral parlor in the county. The family had the kind of privilege that only came from being loaded in a small town. Diane was the only child of Frank and Susan James, and some would say the prettiest child in the state. But then she hit puberty early and sprouted the kind of tits that even her daddy would marvel at. At fourteen, she got caught fooling around with the oldest Morgan boy. Susan cried and took to drinking bourbon all the time, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan took to sitting on their porch with shotguns, and The Morgan Boy’s wife chased him up and down Main Street with the pistol she got from her in-laws as a wedding present. Behind closed doors, he thought the whole thing was “funniern’ ‘ell,” but in order to maintain (because maintenance is everything in a small town), he drove her to the bus station on the county line, gave her three hundred dollars, and pinched her ass goodbye. It was his way of saying good luck.

Three days later Chet caught up with the Coast.

Four days later, Diane caught up with Chet.

Facing the kitchen in the greasy spoon, Chet wolfed down his gristly steak. He had hit the water, and now it was time to drive for the sky. The money was running out, which was just as well. Either he would run out of money and die from inadequate living conditions, or Diane would catch him and she would skin his ass for sure without thinking twice. Either way, he was a dead man. The waitress offered him more god-awful coffee. He took a look at her with her cotton candy colored hair and her wide ass in the unforgiving polyester dress. He politely declined.

Diane pulled into the parking lot and rear ended that fugly goddamn Honda twice.

opening/ending line:

"He looked at me like he wanted to get me pregnant."

new story idea:

the asshole ex boyfriend club.

Since the advent of pop music, there has been a secret society of men. men who were asshole boyfriends and then had the sheer shitty luck of being with the singer/songwriter who immortalized them in musical craft. This would focus on the late 20th/early 21st centuries. its more fun that way.

members include:

Dave Coulier (ex of Alanis)
Lily Allen's ex
Fiona Apple's ex

research will need to be done

So this is a little too true for fiction, and a little too astute for anything else. It's for class.

I am not a groupie. I don’t have the financial resources or the time to follow any of my favorite bands. That, and my all my favorite bands are more or less defunct. At most, I think that I’ve seen a band four times, maybe five. It was during high school, and if I told you I’d have to kill you. There may have been shiny pants and heavy choreography involved. The next highest, is a tie between Jack Johnson and G. Love and Special Sauce, saw them both twice. The royal title of the band I’ve seen more than any other belongs to My friend Ray’s band. The Oscillating Fan Club.

I’ve been following Ray’s band around since the spring of 2007. We met during my stint in community college in a rock history class (the music, not the geological formations). During break, all the smokers would congregate and bitch about how wrong our teacher was about everything from the blues, to the hippie movement, to ‘Nam to new wave to the 90s and beyond. It was enough to make two audiophiles such as ourselves rage every Friday. It soon turned into a game of how many times per class we could correct her. We were those kids. I was sweet and sassy, while Ray would be a straight up asshole. After one class that had been particularly horrendous (we had been discussing Carole King, or maybe it was Rod Stewart), we stuck around for an emergency rage session. Once we had mellowed out slightly (I only say slightly because I am fairly high strung), he asked for a ride home. It turned out that he was on my way home. During the ten-minute car ride, it came to light that he was in a band and that they were playing tonight. Some bar on the east side of town. I said I might show up, but then I went home and watched Degrassi and went to bed. Over the span of the next seven days I decided that his pants would fit and that I should try to get into them. It all hit me at once, that mountain-man-in-training beard, those natty unwashed faux dreads the color of old and/or dirty pennies. And then I felt ashamed that I decided that Canadian teens and sleep was more important than rock and roll. I decided to rededicate myself to the sisterhood of the rock n roll lifestyle: shrouded in artfully faded and ripped black, taking communion of whiskey and menthol cigarettes.

The first OFC gig I went to didn’t happen until after the end of the semester. It took place on a cool spring night at a bar that lingered in the shadows of historic Tiger Stadium. I only got a little lost, and that was due to me gunning my Saturn a little too fast down the brick paved street. I missed the turn, and ended up cursing a labyrinth of one-way streets by the Goth club. Twenty-one years in more or less the same fucking city and anything past West Grand Boulevard gets me lost. I finally arrive, and park in the spot where I’m least likely to get raped. After some difficulties entering the actual establishment, I settle at the bar and knock a couple back. It was pretty noir. Dame walks into a bar, says ow. Dame sits at bar, chain smoking and trying to look like she’s not looking for anyone in particular. Dame chats up the wannabe Bukowski barflies. Dame waits for the band. Black Flag’s playing on a jukebox that can’t see, but I know is there. The empty seat to my right is suddenly filled, and a transaction without money is made. A tag of red paper in exchange for a cup of cheap beer. I watch without watching and poke my ice around with the stirrer. He’s a friendly looking guy with a broad face, floppy brown hair and dimples you could be buried in. only a few seconds passed before he cordially said hello. His name was Pierce, and he’s with the band. We had met before. But I had been drinking heavily and shooting pool most of the time. But he still remembered me. We briefly shot the shit and he excused himself to set up. I resumed idly sipping on the melting booze water. It seemed that the bar was clearing and the patrons were funneling into the performance room. I tried to dismount, and pretended I wasn’t staring so hard at the floor, calculating my steps. The feedback was loud and I could feel it through my high heels in my sternum. The band was moments away from the first notes I would ever hear from them, and I already had the tingle. A rush starting at my toes, up my sides, into my biceps, up my neck, and flooding my entire head. I only get the tingle when they’re going to be good. Usually I’m in church. Or listening to Mariah Carey. The last time I got it for a rock band was the spring of 2001 (maybe 2002), watching The White Stripes.
Given Ray’s charisma (if you could call it that), I just assumed he was the lead singer. He had the looks, he had the ‘tude, and he had the style. Not fashion style, but archetypal style. Hand-rolled cigarettes, sucking down cheap beer. My brain was jarred when a slightly older, unremarkable looking chap was singing, playing, and moving in time with the heavy, not quite psychedelic surf rock sounds filling the bar.

Just an idea for a story that came today...

In the year 3568, Iraq is a barren, infertile, radioactive wasteland. The Iraqi people have been completely obliterated, with the exception of all the children under five. The thousands of orphans were shipped to America to be reprogrammed, and then released into the Iraqi wilds to rebuild “the nation that should have been”. Unbeknownst to the American people, there is a small group of Iraqi adults that survived the genocide.

Those lips, oh daddy, those lips. Those eyes that make mine just roll back into my head. He's gorgeous. And the best part is, he's not gay. I've got nothing against gay guys, they just make lousy boyfriends. No scratch that. They make great boyfriends, just nor for straight girls. How do I know a guy is gay? I have (or have had) a crush on him. Is there a drug for that? To fix that?

I stare at him from accross the classroom and all I can think about is what it's like to kiss him and what our wedding invitations will look like. Our kids would be beautiful-- honey-caramel colored little lambs with unruly light brown hair. They'd get his startling blue eyes and we'd donate a Mick Jagger pout. They'd grow up to be supermodels or dancers or general manifestations of our brilliance.

All this comes to me as my Drama professor speaks to me of rock and/or roll. It should hold my interest, but the lights from Ziggy Stardust are catching in his eyes (we're watching a video). I think his name is Chris (I know it is, but love doesn't need names).

I don't mean to date my way into the English Mafia, its just my type: tall, thin, and most importantly, a writer. An active writer.

Vinny threw a party the night one of her friends got married. Having properly mourned the relationship that she was evicted from five months prior, she decided to resume her pursuit of him. Upon arriving, she saw that night as just another step in the dance, drink, talk, flirt cycle. She showed up, entourage in tow, and did a lap for anyone she knew, namely, Vinny. Not that she was expecting anything. The circumstances of the party were of the toga variety, but upon noticing the people outside were not wearing togas, there was a last minute ditch made. The only time she showed up to a party wearing shorts and a sweatshirt. Nothing was expected. Hoped for, yes. Expected, no. She found Vinny. He reminded her of Dionesius, the god of wine. Either that or the gohst of Christmas present, full of cheer. Or booze, not like there was much of a difference. They exchanged suggestive banter, as was their custom, and he directed her toward the band and keg in the basement.

Continuing the lap, she saw some people who knew people she knew and had been introduced to once or twice before, ex boyfriends of friends, and a disgusting score of ex classmates. All from english classes. At least the conversation wouldn't kill her. But the world was too small for her state of sobriety and so she needed a smoke to prelude the drinking. She took the entourage with her. Standing fifteen feet from the door she saw one of Vinny's neighbors doing something with fire. What he was doing, remained to be understood. It remided her of the cartoons she used to watch in her childhood. Captain Planet. She said something most likely billigerent and witty, she can't remember. Some guy came up and joined in the conversation. It was dark, whatever, she didn't care, it was somebody new. But he was funny. Funny is always good. He continued to be funny through the cigarette, the retreival of the beer from the keg and back into the living room, and down to the floor. During one of her rants someone called her pretentious. She leaned forward, drunk as she was, and informed the young man that she was an english major and it was her God-given RIGHT to be pretentious. It was her manifest destiny. It was at that point that her companion introduced himself as Eddie. Eddie asked if she wanted to cut out of the party. It was SO on. She refilled her beer (which took longer than it should have, even drunk) and left with him.

He took her over to a rarely used building on campus, high on a hill. You could see the lights of the entire town, winking, blinking, nodding. Eddie's arm was around her, and she smiled like the cheshire cat in the dark. He kissed her and suddenly she didn't care about the fucking lights.

After several minutes of decent drunken making out, Eddie asked if she wanted to come back with him to his place. She was too drunk to resist his arty charms, and communicated it as such. "okay."

Her voice is husky form the faithful pack a week habit she keeps. It sounds okay when she sings, but it makes for great radio. She gets the deliverymen who stick around and listen after the morning drive time talk show all hot and bothered. One or two have called to tell her so. The husky rasp seems to have no effect on the one person she wants it to affect. Of course it's a guy. When isn't it? His name's Vince, but he inroduces himself as Vinny. He does the morning drive time talk show, interspersed with random selections of ska (he used to play in a ridiculously named ska outfit) and Tom Waits.

She forgets how they met, he may have been doing time in the news room or production studio, or he may have already secured the morning drive time slot. It doesn't really matter to her now. She remembers in the early stages of their vague aquaintanceship running into him at one of her first house parties. She knew no-one and really just wanted to know where they were stashing the vodka. Hell, she was so socially terrified she would have had a beer. She ended up having both. The alcohol hit her system faster than she expected and found herself wandering around from room to room, talking to everyone in them. She doesn't remember what exactly happened when they first started talking, but she remembers it was a generally friendly conversation.

Seven lines of coke later,
the house catches fire.
Similar to Simila's sense of snow,
another hideous car wreck

The house catches fire
due to circumstances beyond the control of heroin.
Another hideous car wreck
smoking herbs like saffron.

Due to circumstances beyond the control of heroin
nothing hurts like it used to.
Smoking herbs like Saffron
apathy grows increasingly comfortable.

Nothing hurts like it used to
.Nothing starts to feel good
Apathy grows increasingly comfortable
As we suffocate under the stench of Magnolia

Nothing starts to feel good
Shots of imaginary whiskey don't do it anymore
As we suffocate under the stench of Magnolia
I suddenly wish I were dead.

Shots of imaginary whiskey don't do it anymore
seven lines of coke later
I suddenly wish I were dead
Similar to Simila's sense of snow.

When I came home, my mother was sobbing in a darkened room listening to Prince. She still wore the gym shorts and U2 PopMart tour t-shirt from the night before. I knew better than to ask her what was wrong. I could smell it. An overacheiving white russian at her fingertips which were dangling from the side of the silver satellite chair.

"Mitchy, that you?" her usually loud, throaty voice a almost whiny whisper.

"Yeah, mom."

"Where's your father?"Mother had a way of hissing her s sounds when she was drunk that I could never replicate in any medium. She had a way of finding excessive numbers of s sounded words when she was drunk

"I dunno, I just came in."

"How was the bar? Good crowd?"

"There was no gig. There's no more band. Bass player quit."

"Was that Seth?"

"Yeah"

"Mmmm. I liked Seth. Why'd he quit?"

"Decided he'd rather play bass in a They Might Be Giants cover band."

"Better than an a capella death metal band."

I winced and hoped it would come accross as a smile in the dark room.

"What time is it?"

I glanced at the blacklit grandfather clock in the hallway, just past my mother's slumped ragdoll body. "Quarter to one."

"Your homework done?"

"I've got sixty four pages to read in On The Road. I was just going to get up super early and finish those, though."

"I'd offer you some of my speed, but you're still way too young for that shit. Too handsome."

"Thanks, mom" I continued up the stairs. Halfway up, my conscience got the best of me I came back down and I covered her with one of the throws on the couch.

"Mitch?"

"Yeah, mom?"

"Thanks for making sure my snatch wasn't showing."

"Anytime, mom."