3

Dream Lover

He’s a flower, a rolling lawn, a philosopher, and, finally, a poem. Anything else is second rate. He can jump, kick, flip, and stunt, and this has an effect on me. So I am positive, living the show. You totally get this point?

Well, he chases me. He’s a six-foot-tall good time. There are forms of free-floating sex and sounds loud enough to excite. It means being carried around. It’s all about the smiles.

Who doesn’t think they deserve humanity?

I love how much he loves the universe. He isn’t just blowing on embers. He’s a raging bonfire himself.

“Marion,” he says, “you are such a pleasant form of exercise.”

“Don’t pinch me,” I tell him. “I don’t want to wake up.”

Festival in the Kitchen

The kitchen is a place of ambition and fear and desperation and a whole bunch of other things.

The kitchen is where you make friends with strange and unusual vegetables.

And every day you prowl it with your insect zapper looking for pantry moths.

Dream about turning garbage bags into confetti.

Never forgetting the egg’s integral role in all of this.

The kitchen is where you perfect your kitchen language.

Making a fist signals your teenage son to close the fridge door.

Holding your hand horizontally after mashing pinto beans means you’ve had bare-bones times before and survived.

Fluttering your fingers signals the last pot has been scrubbed and you can now go to bed.

Placing one hand on the collar of your shirt and leaning against the stove means you need help. Oh, with everything.

The kitchen is where your formative years were spent. You were like some strange kitchen nerd because you loved washing dishes and nobody quite got you.

Your mom would make little fritters out of cardoons, a type of thistle, so yes, you ate thistles.

Your dad was trying your whole life to impress you by making Sunday pancakes, even when he was hungover.

A recipe: You take chicken soup and shove it up your soul.

The kitchen is where you display the prize you received in Grade 12 for Home Economics.

It’s a bronze coin encased in a glass cube, small enough to hold in the palm of your hand. In the middle of the coin a pair of woman’s hands hold up a modest house.

Rays are engraved around the house to indicate splendour. On the back of the coin the inscription reads, Future Homemakers – Towards New Horizons.

You won this prize for not losing your apron six years running.

The kitchen is where you now occasionally give demonstrations on how to wash dishes the old way. Strangers gather to receive your instructions on water temperature, quality and quantity of dish soap, the correct order of washing (glasses to pots). There are discussions concerning the controversy around rinsing, yes or no, hot or cold, and, finally, an in-depth presentation on types of tea towels, linen being the best.

You are an acknowledged expert in the field.

You neither strip completely nude nor wear an apron when you give these demonstrations.

You have bottoms on and wear pasties.

The kitchen is where friends often gather to drink wine and taste your cheese melts, your crusty crostini. This happens towards the end of the party, when it’s midnight and the music’s still loud.

You realize that this might be as good as life gets. You may cry your eyes out over this revelation, but you will still be happy, weird as that sounds.

That’s what a festival in the kitchen does. It’s about discovery and understanding.

Like a theory of the universe.

The kitchen is the place for cute tricks. On command, Bryce will roll over and play dead. Then it will be your turn. You will beg for your supper. One pork chop, a hill of peas, a glass of soda water, rice.

Doing these things will prove that you’re a good girl and he’s a good boy.

Later in your kitchen, you will play with a pair of hot chestnuts. Bryce, the owner of the chestnuts, will say, “Whoa, Christine, I get where you’re coming from!”

Treats all round.

The kitchen is where you are often funnier than usual.

Bryce knew he was in the presence of someone a little crazy – and incredibly talented – when he married you. But today you are off the dial. It’s pretty magic.

You’ve stuck a lit Roman candle between your teeth so you won’t cry while peeling the onions.

You’re going to see if it works.

Old Wives’ Day

This is the day you realize you’ve become an old wife. It’s because your husband, Owen, has given you an electric can opener as a thirty-second anniversary gift. And because the celebration dinner is the two of you at the Dairy Queen – Flamethrowers, Diet Cokes, a shared Oreo Blizzard – after which you ride home in silence sucking an orange Life Saver. Okay. So be it.

But consider this. Being an old wife can be a cause for joy because you can now put your stamp on each day. From here on you’ll be able to add to the world’s store of tales, sayings, and remedies. And there’s a good chance you’ll become valued, even prized, because of this. You will soon learn that being an old wife changes all the pieces on the table.

The only problem is that being valued can mean you’re in danger. This is because old wives are becoming a scarce item. Maybe divorce or disinclination are the reasons, but there are fewer of you participating in the long-haul marriage. As a result, old wives have become a rarity. People have taken to running off with them. They’ve become a cultural product, valued like argon crystal, or a horse coloured amber champagne. There is now this amazing phenomenon of old wives just quietly disappearing.

If Owen is worried about theft, tell him it’s unlikely you will be taken. As an old wife you’re a pretty standard model, small and blonde, and you’re not shy and have a big mouth. You also wiggle your finger a lot, like an old cat woman, and you know what that means. Cats can suck the breath from a baby.

Dorothy Parker Day

On August 22 we honour Dorothy Parker for her corrosive wit. Born in Long Beach, New Jersey, on this day in 1893, she came to prominence as a writer, reviewer, and satirist while working for the New Yorker magazine during the twenties and thirties of the last century. “Those were the terrible days of the wisecrack,” she wrote. “There didn’t have to be any truth.”

There still doesn’t have to be any truth, which is why August 22 has been designated as the one day of the year we can say corrosive things and be free from public censure. Dorothy Parker was reputed to have said corrosive things every day of her life, including the fact that she loved dachshunds better than men.

“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”

“I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”

“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”

“Tell him I was too fucking busy – or vice versa.”

On Dorothy Parker Day we wear wool suits and little hats, smoke with cigarette holders, and have a liver-coloured dachshund on a lead. We wander about being bored and sullen and sad and nasty.

“If you can get through the twilight you can live through the night,” she said.

Come evening we toast her with whiskey sours, her favourite drink – bourbon, lemon juice, and sugar over ice. She was drunk most nights. When a reporter asked her if she was going to join Alcoholics Anonymous, she said, “Certainly not. They want me to stop now.”

She died of a heart attack on June 4, 1967, her preferred words for an epitaph being, Excuse My Dust. Her ashes remained unclaimed in a lawyer’s office for seventeen years.

Roddy Doyle Day

–The Queen of England’s brought out this exclusive line of clothing.

–What?

–She’s calling it Reign Wear. There’s a whole campaign going on. On account of her being the longest reigning queen ever.

–No way.

–Haven’t you seen the ads? It’s coats and hats and gloves and shoes. All matchy-matchy pastels and kind of, you know, dumpy-looking.

–Jesus.

–My mom’s a big fan. She got the works in Celeste Green. Don’t you love that name? She got the matching hanky too. Likes waving it around.

–Like royalty in a car? Like standing on a balcony?

–Like standing on the bow of a submarine.

–Before it goes under.

–Ha. Yeah. My mom says the hanky’s symbolic and waving it and wearing the Queen’s clothes fills her with pride.

–I guess, at her age.

–There’s these white curly wigs you can get too.

–I’ve seen them. Cotton tops.

–Looking like the Queen of England’s starting to be a big deal.

–Is there a website?

–Of course there’s a website. I’m thinking of an outfit in Bare-Bones Yellow. It’d totally go with my rubber boots. I’d look like the Queen in her Wellies.

–Are you being weird? What would you do in it? Visit a hospital? Tour Australia?

–I don’t know. Maybe I could wear the outfit when I’m having tea at home with friends. That’s what my mom does. All of them sitting around in their Queen clothes getting wasted on tea with gin. My mom even wore the clothes when she took Chalky to the vet. People there were super nice, she said, on account of what she had on. You know, respectful.

–I’m not dressing up like the Queen of England to get respect.

–Why not? My mom says the outfit makes her feel regal, makes her feel she could last another sixty-two years. She says wearing the Queen’s clothes calms the central nervous system, like yoga. Lets her laser-focus when needed, like when she’s walking around nodding at strangers.

–Carrying her little matchy purse over her arm.

–Yeah. It’s a cutting-edge look.

–We’re living in a time when this is happening?

–We are. But the clothes, wearing them we get to share in the Queen’s savoir faire. They’re supposed to make everyone dream.

–Sounds like a feel-good type of deal to me.

–Well, who doesn’t want that?

Guys in the Chorus

–For the most part being in the chorus is interesting and provocative work. It’s stimulating. It makes me think. It’s fun too. And I’ve got a good day job, play golf, barbeque.

–The female chorus is quite raunchy.

–I realized early on that things in that department could change at the drop of a hat. So I make an effort to have my life filled with things I love to do. I’ve stayed true to that approach.

–A lot of nights I feel like the mayor of Venice!

–The female chorus is still a mystery to me. It’s like you have to be two halves of a single person.

–I got to do a little dancing with Amy, which was pretty amazing. This was before I became used to being someone’s husband.

–They go in for sexy costumes, the female chorus. That’s something.

–While we go in for banana suits and gorilla masks.

–At least I’m not your typical bad guy running around yelling at people, “Get in the car trunk, now!”

–Me neither. I not a thrill-seeker. I’m more of a snack-seeker.

–Actually, a lot of fascinating stuff still happens on my back porch.

–Ah yes.

The Cashier Speaks

“Don’t take too long to evaluate your existence,” the cashier at Super Foods told me. She was older, had silver rings on every finger and on both thumbs. I was buying frozen peas, a tub of ice cream, dish soap.

“The universe is big and you are small,” she said. “You are not as big as the moon or the planets.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard that.”

She scanned the peas.

“There are a hundred billion galaxies out there bigger than you.”

“Yes.” I looked around. The old guy in line behind me was holding a boxed apple pie.

The cashier said, “Those galaxies have nothing to do with time, you know. We’re the only ones who have time. That’ll be twelve twenty-eight.”

I gave her my card.

She said, “Some of us were very surprised when we heard all this. Some of us started getting really sick and had to be evacuated by helicopter.” She handed me the groceries. “I wish things had worked out but it looks like nature’s changing the script. We’re a controlled-risk species. We’re just blowing raspberries at this point.”

She turned to the old guy. “Isn’t that right, my handsome?”

He grinned.

Outside, a helicopter was about to land. Another one of us had fallen, this time in front of Maxine’s Shoe Emporium.

Vibe

I want Dad’s final resting place to be a piece of art and not an urn. A ceramic jar or a porcelain egg, on par with someone who gets a really nice casket. Only you get to see it all the time. It’s not rotting away underground somewhere.

If you’re going to put someone on your mantel, you want them to look nice. You want people to say, “That’s beautiful!” not “Oh, that’s Ken’s ashes.”

Seeing His Ex at the Wedding

“Dredging up the past is like brushing your teeth with a steak knife,” he said.

“Now I’m going to get wasted and head back to the motel alone.”

Some Days You Just Can’t Talk …

Because your tooth is hurting. It’s not attached to a smile, and, what is more, you are without a dentist to call your own. The only help is the dental clinic where others like you groan with abscessed teeth and show the whites of their eyes and clutch take-your-turn numbers like lucky charms.

Where occasionally there’s a slight turmoil when the receptionist acts like a bartender and says, “What’ll it be?” And people cry out, “Gingivitis! Aphthous ulcers!”

Where after something like a year goes by she hollers “Four hundred and thirty-two,” which causes some poor fuck to shuffle through the door marked This Way Please never to be seen again.

You decide to wait outside on a bench and try to forget your inability to chew or speak.

Your sister-in-law, Karen, has tried to help. She found some forty-year-old tabs of acid sewn into an heirloom poncho and you’ve taken two but they’re not working the way you had hoped. For example, there are all these flattened bodies of women in blue housecoats lying on the sidewalk like paving stones, some of them still clutching their jaws.

You’d hoped to turn into a monarch butterfly.

Dog Days

What are you saying, Bonnie? I am saying:

–That Uncle and Aunt’s dogs came to their ends sooner rather than later.

–That Sandy, the bald one, who could dance on his hind legs, was deaf and wandered.

–That he choked on a snake.

–That a drunken spaniel named Bubba came next. That Uncle fed him beer instead of water and that Bubba was one of those mean drunks, grrr this, grrr that. He died of a fatty liver.

–That a retriever cross named Sylvia, who was all tidy between the lips and had long-haired legs was next and that Aunt was sold on her for a while. “You get love where it lands,” she told Uncle. “Look! The d-d-d-d-dog kisses!” Then Sylvia chased a woman on a bike and had to be put down.

–That once, when I was nine years old and they didn’t have a dog, Uncle squatted on the kitchen floor with Aunt beside him on her hands and knees and said, “Sit up and beg, Bonnie. There’s a good girl.” I climbed onto the counter for laughs but instead I got my nose smacked and was put outside to think things over. And I am still thinking things over.

–That meanwhile Grandma moved in and started calling out to anyone who would listen. “All the way to the end of the damned universe,” said Uncle.

–That a stray German shepherd came by and this was the dog Aunt really fell for. They called him Harry. He could pee on command, and play Behave Yourself with Aunt.

–That not long after Harry’s arrival, Grandma curled up by the stove like a shivery chihuahua and died.

The Importance of Discovery

Now that I’ve turned nineteen, my parents have decided that this friend of theirs would be fun for me to meet.

“I’m an advocate of this man,” Dad says. “He may be somewhat smarmy and the means he uses may be a little gross, but I think in some ways his ends are decent.”

“Does he work at the sex shop?” I ask.

“Well, honey, he does,” Mom says. “He owns it. But don’t let that stop you. Getting to know Bruce will be a very interactive, very fresh experience for you. Plus, he’s always working on new and better ways for people to enjoy themselves.”

The sex shop means a lot to my parents. Something magical happens there between persons who are truly amazing, they say.

Mom is anorexic and Dad is 322 pounds. I find that kind of juxtaposition pretty amazing too.

Vibe

“We want our lives to be real. Not, ‘Oh look, the puppets are having sex!’ We want it to have a happy ending. We want to feel like we’re in a good place.

“Furthermore, we are struggling with real issues and we don’t know the answers to them. We feel the world has cast us off and we’re in this weird, confessional bubble. We want to plant an explanation but we don’t know what’s going on.

“It can be a very difficult and hard and cold journey.

“Your entire reality takes place in the closed theatre of your brain. It feels like a fantasy fever dream. Now and then solid dramas intervene. And each year is like a twelve-step program. Each month is like a step. We watch out for August. August can be real hard …”

“You know what, Wayne? Shut up.”

Six-Day Forecast for Andrew

1

Today you will encounter the notion about accepting things as they are.

Translated, this means that no matter how many times you ask Bear to build you a rocket ship, he won’t build you a rocket ship. He’s a dog. He’ll bring you the parts but that’s as far as he’ll go.

And without a rocket ship you won’t be blasting off to the International Space Station anytime soon. You’re disappointed, but there it is. Cite personal and family reasons for this. Say your intentions have changed. That the summer’s too hot. That the last four years have constituted a marked slump for you but it’s over now. Say you’ve been acting like a neural pathway, one that’s gone awry.

2

Today you will get a message from God.

God, you believe, is like one of those people who goes up to every dog in the world and kisses it on the mouth. He loves everyone that much.

God’s message will arrive while you’re driving home and feeling great because Machine Head is playing on the car radio. There’ll be a six-pack and a bag of taco chips on the seat beside you. You’ll notice birds flying across sunset clouds and you will suddenly think, “Hey, that’s beautiful!”

This is when God will speak to you. His voice will seem to come from inside your body, somewhere around your chest.

God will say, “God is dead and his mother is Mary.”

God will say, “If you want to forget the sky and the heaving earth, and human passions, and the flight of years, try at least to remember that your presence once cast a shadow here and also that, however muted, you were filled with a light that can only be described as radiant.”

3

Today you’re thinking you don’t want to be a recycler forever, that eventually you’ll become an entrepreneur and own your own recycling-equipment plant.

You’re like the actor Steve Buscemi, you think, a guy who is always playing himself in a movie. You’re feeling that authentic.

Probably, you drink too much. You admit it. But you have a willingness to never let a friend drink alone. You use booze, you say, to heighten your good times or really deepen your bad times, depending on where you’re lodged in your cycle of ups and downs.

Your biggest dread is that your face will be one of those faces the world never sees, that you will never walk a red carpet. You dreamed about this last night. You were at the recycling plant and your pal Vincent kept burying you in empty pop cans.

4

Your mother will call you at work this morning and say she can no longer remain silent. You are not a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, or an investment advisor. You have a diploma in Hospitality but you’re working at Galaxy Recycling sorting bottles and cans. What kind of a future is that?

Tell her it’s not a future, it’s a present. That there is always a spin on the world that plays with our expectations. That you’re treating all the successes and failures in your life up to this point as boot camp.

5

In alchemy, you’ve heard, you add water to thoughts. This makes a mind. Today, however, you are without water, and very tired. Satiny gleams of imagination are frankly absent, and so is your mind. You’re hungover and would rather sleep.

You’re wishing you had better skills to handle this situation because you want your life to be as good as love. It’s not that your mind is empty, it’s just that today it’s a lost outline. The pages of your internal book are not turning.

Last night when that girl in the downstairs apartment said, “Oh Andrew, you were so good!” you didn’t believe her. But really, she was just trying to be helpful as you stumbled from her couch.

6

Today, you’re feeling you have a new dimension in your life. You feel good about yourself.

On your lunch break you will call your mom and say, “Things are looking up. I might be getting a promotion driving truck.”

“That’s wonderful, Andrew. Maybe next you’ll get a job at head office.”

“Yeah, maybe,” you’ll say.

In the evening, to celebrate your possible promotion, you and Vincent will gobble acid and wander the empty streets.

Things She Wouldn’t Want

–a tiny backpack

–a giant to-go cup

–the smell of the subway

–True Religion jeans

–tearaway Adidas pants

–Kappa wear!

–one of those passport protectors that “travellers” use

–white eyeliner

–duck boots

–anything bejewelled, or Ed Hardy

–bacon

–food from the dollar store

–a fake tan

–has HPV been mentioned?

–mom shorts

–man Uggs

–a Pontiac or Plymouth vehicle

–a government job

–the stench of an old nightclub

–people talking their hype about marathons

–a personality that ends sentences with “gratitude”

–a life with indie rock

–a Juicy Couture velour tracksuit

–thick acrylic nails

–a creaky futon

–an itchy sweater

–chlamydia

–a hairy back

–insomnia

–rabbit stew

–platform sneakers

–a fake Louis Vuitton purse

–stilts, definitely stilts

–a man in Speedo swim trunks

–the creepy eyes of puppets

–dial-up internet

–bumps on the peen

–cancer

–mouldy herbs

–Chinese tattoo ink

–one of those minivans that resembles a DustBuster

–cargo pants

–clip-on sunglasses

–dry-cleaner hangers

–a sheetless mattress

–toe fungus

–a whistling nostril

–single-ply toilet paper

–a blanket hung up as a curtain

–a skort

–animals with eye goobers

–front bums and cheese butts

–a moth infestation

–chicken veins

–baby tees!

–bible verses printed on toilet paper

–a freaking unicycle

–ketchup water

–a bitchy resting face

Usually There Are a Lot of Goodies throughout the Day

“You’re a mooch,” Gina said to me.

I’d taken two empty bowls to her potluck dinner. Gina is passionate and tenacious and soulful and refused to compromise her position. “Mooch!”

So I kind of rain-danced at her. You know, that’s where every bone in your body shakes. Right away Mother crawled out of my head screaming, “You dolt! You should have brought buns!”

There are over thirty million Facebook profiles of dead people and Mother is one of them.

In the taxi it felt good to be on the other side of commotion. Usually there are a lot of goodies throughout the day, but on this day they were in short supply.

There’s the dad side of it, of course. And a lot of it was Uncle Phil and his Jack Nicholson impersonations. And there’s my sister Jane, who has thicker hair. And Grandma Gibson who only had one hand but was still good at slapping. But, really, on this day, it was all me. I’d been wrestling with an agricultural crisis on earth and was not myself.

Organized Chaos

Joan is doing a little worship dance in her kitchen. She’s quite a story. Big as a boulder. Ordinary as a fly. Ordinary as her husband’s demented condition.

“I believe that compromise, trust, and a little kiss now and then will get you forty-eight years of marriage,” she says across the breakfast table. A tricky idea to grasp, no question.

Their eyes meet – click, click.

And then she’s like, aw, thumbs-up.

Vibe

I couldn’t think of a better way to be vulnerable than to show up naked. As a middle-class white person, I am symbolically divesting myself of the trappings of privilege.

Salon Day

At Barbara’s House of Hair we sit before a row of mirrors. Black capes are fastened around our necks. Some of us sip flavoured water; others, KORA Bancha tea. The war is over. We are done with the heavy lifting.

Even so, I can’t avoid my face in the mirror. My sagging jaw line, my limp hair. I look like my father.

At one point the young stylists holding bottles of dye, cans of spray, packs of extensions, line up behind us to begin their work. They look like an Apache raiding party arranged on a cliff, come to take us down.

For distraction, Grace Kelly, the salon chihuahua, clacks across the floor in her pink lace dress. Now and then she jumps on a patron’s lap, and when she does you hear a chirp of joy. Otherwise we remain quiet and well-behaved.

The Day Comes Round with Unfailing Regularity

He is flummoxed by his solid Elaine. She’s in the kitchen eating Salt ’n Vinegar chips, watching the bike race from the kitchen window. She’s singing the national anthem, cheering the racers on.

Living with Elaine, he thinks, is like experiencing a shark attack and a tornado at the same time.

After the race she becomes obsessed with the rats in the attic and orders him to do something about them. “Even the most trivial phenomenon can turn out to be important!” she calls from the stepladder.

A while later he presents her with a dried rat in a trap.

Now he’s her favourite conqueror in the world. “If you had died a rat advocate,” she says, “if you were a shocked, self-centred, alien, your colour faded, I couldn’t love you more!”

On a Busy Corner of Reality

A whisper in his ear and the wind chimes rustle.

A little kiss and the sky grows soft.

Love in the major leagues, you think.

You’re like the sound you’d get if you plucked the cables on the Golden Gate Bridge.

You’re like Dancing with the Stars gone local.

Any time you get to break out the tux and put on heels and eat and drink, you love it. It’s like a little comedy then. A lot of pathos, some music, a tiny bit of sex off-screen.

The Cricket Problem

That chirping sound you’ve been hearing inside your ears of late? It’s likely a cricket infestation. House crickets will often take up residence in the area of the brain known as the frontal lobe. This could be your problem. It would explain your recent lack of motivation, a marked decrease in your dopamine levels, and your shaming by family and friends because of your recent behaviour.

To determine where the crickets enter your body, stand outside on a night when the chirping is loudest. Most likely they are entering through your mouth. You will need to start keeping it shut.

If this doesn’t get rid of the house crickets, remember that they only live for three months. They should be gone from your brain by November. There is no guarantee, however, that your family and friends will return in their place.

Father’s Advice

If you want to succeed in finance you can’t skydive every day.

Maybe you’ve had enough trips to Thailand.

Maybe your long vacation is over.

Maybe you need to take a break from your self-esteem.

You have to actually go to a job and stay there for period of time if you want to make money.

The real magic is having a savings account that grows. In being free of the hard marching.

In two years you will be forty years old.

Hayden, I know you’re in there.

Mother’s Advice

Be emblematic of good things.

Try to remember you’re in love with your messy life.

Find the glint, find the funny.

Think of sleep as an eight-hour hiatus.

Think of dreams as gifts from your unleashed self.

Are you getting this down?

Remember, what works best is friendship stories.

That the only bad food is food that tastes bad.

So paddle your own big shoe.

Things are actually very light and illusionary, like clouds, which are a momentary stage in the incessant cycle of rising and falling water.

When night arrives be sure to let a thousand butterflies escape from your lips.

Parting Advice

She was one hundred years old and in good shape, considering. There was no slamming of car doors or tears in the shepherd’s pie. But on her next birthday she said she’d had enough, she was going to kill herself.

“Okay,” we said, “we just want it to be a happy ending.” We were laughing, but at something awful.

She would kill herself, she said, by not eating. But because she made the rules, she would allow herself one tablespoon of Scotch over ice each day.

It took three weeks. Near the end she told us her memories were like clockwork mechanisms that unravelled and snapped back together again.

We said, “Tell us something useful.”

“About what?”

“Love.”

“Oh that,” she said. “Well, stay away from dolls. Dolls are creepy. There’s that stare that never changes, that same crazy face.”

“Tell us something better.”

“Okay. Marry someone you never tire of looking at. Picture them on a fridge magnet, on a lunch box, on something you see everyday. Picture them as a poster on the bus.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. You’ve never noticed? I’ve got this voice where everyone thinks I’m from the South. I’ve got this drawl, and I don’t know how that happened. Maybe I got hit with a barbecue rib when I came out of the womb. Maybe I’ll find out the answer when I crawl back in.”

Chorus of Aging Rockers

–Melvin, shit, he’s doing the meat draw at the Legion Saturday afternoons.

–Stoney’s delivering papers. Gets up at four in the morning.

–Fuck.

–Well, my socks are sick. They’re like a ten-year-olds. And look at my boots. You don’t even have to untie them. You just pull the Velcro straps.

–You want sick? I got up one morning last week and threw up blood.

–Ha. I done that.

–I don’t mind throwing up beer, and I don’t mind throwing up vegetable soup. But when you throw up blood you’re like Doc Holliday. You’re dying.

–That gets your attention real quick.

–Yep.

–Being a failed rock star sucks.

–Yep.

Ring-ring. Ring-ring.

–Uh-oh.

–Don’t answer. It’s the Grim Reaper. He wants to know if I’m still having a nice day.

Vibe

“Our hope is that down the line we might be able to do a simple blood test that tells if you will be a naltrexone person, an acamprosate person, or a ghrelin person.”

New Year’s Day

It was an odd party. At one point I said to Matt Grover over by the cheese tray, “You got pinkeye?” “No,” he said. “I was up all night sobbing uncontrollably.”

In the living room, Morris, the chef, was sobbing with joy about his work. This was on the couch beside the retro lamp. “I get you when you’re hungry,” he said. “I reach you on a physiological level. Your pupils dilate, your mouth waters, your stomach rumbles. The only other people who can do that are in the porn industry.”

Light from the sunset turned the room pink, causing everyone except Lee-Ann to say it was beautiful. Lee-Ann went pale and grabbed her chest. Warren, her husband, said not to worry and gave her two sublingual Ativans. In a couple of minutes Lee-Ann stopped panting.

Warren then spoke to the few of us still standing around. He spoke like a tour guide, detached yet cheerful. “It’s spirits penetrating the visible world,” he said. “They originate from crystals, beautiful light. Lee-Ann is sensitive to their presence and gets spooked.”

“Spirits,” we said.

“That’s right,” Warren said.

“How many?” Brian asked.

“You never know,” Warren said. “Sometimes a few, sometimes thousands.”

Then around six thirty a bunch of people with those subprime mortgages just got in their cars and left. I’d never seen anything like it.

Chorus of Swans

–I don’t know how people do it, how they keep their minds moving.

–You mean those who don’t have a sleeping imagination?

–Oh yes.

–I feel like my psyche is about to suffer permanent slippage.

–You will grow old in your own good time. You’re not going to like what happens.

–You get angst. It’s like a skin-picking disorder. You can’t help going there. It’s a bad place, honey.

–It’s like when someone says to you, “I’m sorry to hear of your diagnosis.”

–It’s walking into the meeting room thinking: I’ll give it a shot. And leaving the meeting room thinking: I never had a chance.

–It’s mothers at weddings dreaming about themselves.

–It’s when you break up with your hairdresser and she actually cries.

–It’s me telling the photographer not to retouch my picture but he ignored my request and gave me eyebrows anyway.

–It’s realizing you like to spank somebody or you like to play with rope, and then thinking you’re the only person in the world who does this. You feel so alone.

–This is super awful! I’m going to moonwalk off the stage right now!

–I’m a warrior for peace but everyone always says, “Oh sit down!” They think I’m just trying to look hot.

–Mother knows she is still the hottest gadget around. But this is not the time to tell the story because it will cause great strife. One day you’ll be able to tell it.

–If you hang around long enough you’re going to have a lot of stories to tell.

–One time I stole a jellybean. I was grounded for a month.

–Some of us have a cheerleader gene that’s wired into our brains to keep the rest of us going.

–What keeps me going is that I’m part of a memory base for someone else’s life – and hopefully that’s a good thing, and hopefully they’re good memories.

–Some of us might look like swans but we’re paddling furiously under water.

Eternity Delayed

It’s a different story this year. You don’t run away from it. You arrive on time for your annual deviation from the norm. You are ready.

You have trained in the uses of the dream catcher, as did Joseph Cornell. But it’s taking a lot out of you. It’s like being boxed with a stuffed canary, an hourglass, a piece of string, and a blue egg. The air’s so rare. Outside chatter has ceased to exist.

And you are still basically an awkward kid. Your visits to the writing desk are often noxious, though, now and then, goodwill flows your way. Regard and money. This is health.

Your only worry is whether or not your characters will show up for duty. They seldom do. You’ll be their stand-in again.

Your only hope is that the word-police will keep mountains from falling on your vigilance. That people will think of champagne and Liza Minnelli when they read you.

The Chorus Discussing God

–He’s an artist who thinks in public. He’ll help us think beyond the end of the world.

–His world vanished long before we ever entered it, but he certainly sustained the take-charge illusion with remarkable grace.

–He shaped and gave a kind of consensus to how we see the world.

–A world filled with clichés. And when you get to the guts of those clichés, you realize you know almost nothing about them.

–There’s a story here that we’re just not seeing.

–I’ve heard that God created the world to fend off boredom. He had nothing else to do.

–I’ve heard he gives great parties. The mood is upbeat.

–More like a savage journey of the heart, in my opinion.

–We’re supposed to have asked, “We have to do this with clothes?” He’s supposed to have answered, “You figure out how to do it with clothes.”

–Ever since, women are scurrying and guys are doing Super Mario Bros.

–Every morning we repeat the question: “What am I going to wear today?”

–You can wear whatever the hell you want as long as you kick ass.

–I do know that things are cyclical and that it’s very tough for God to stay relevant for any length of time.

–I think, finally, we’re just sounds.