It was me
January 30th, 2006 by Anna Scott; no comments
My dad asked me to give him my school book money so he could buy weed.
Patricia and Rebecca Armitage were one and the same.
I wanted to apply for a job at a mexican restaurant called “Cowboys.”
I woke up to the end of “God Only Knows” on the radio, which made me smile, but not as much as the guy saying “somebody needed to hear that song this morning. I don’t know, I guess I have this psychic ability.”
Parasite Surgery
January 25th, 2006 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
Alan Alda (from MASH) and I are hanging out in the top floor of some tall building. A lot of my friends are also there, playing chess or risk. A body arrives that needs operating, and even though Alan and I both know that he is the more competent surgeon, I am chosen to operate because he figures I need the experience. I put on all of the surgical paraphernalia but realize that I am wearing my red fleece over it all, which completely defeats the purpose of wearing it in the first place. I decide that I don’t have enough time to change, so I proceed to cut the patient open.
The inside of his body looks much like the inside of a grasshopper with all of the blood drained. There are very few internal organs, no muscle tissue, and only the major arteries and veins can be seen. It basically looks like a hollow cavity with a heart suspended in the middle by a few veins. The walls of his chest are translucent, a milky white with dark splotches behind the ribs. Alan points out that I should remove the parasites before removing the blood clot, and he points to a few points where I admit I see nothing. Frustrated, he takes the scalpel from me and does it himself.
After tapping the walls of his chest, he picks up the patient and shakes him, letting a large bug fly out. Horrified, I ask weather that bug will infect another person now that it is free. Alan explains calmly that the bug will fly into somebody’s skin and feed of their blood and maybe lay its eggs in your chest, but that I shouldn’t worry because there are so many people, it is unlikely that the bug will choose myself and that if it did, it is relatively painless. I stay beside the patient, occasionally slapping my cheeks, as the bug reorients itself and prepares for its attack. I feel a sharp pain in my cheek bone, and slapping it, I kill the bug as it is half way into my skin. It falls out, leaving a gaping, bleeding hole in my face. As this is taking place, a second bug flies out of the patient and immediately heads for me. I run to the corner and cover up all of the exposed areas of my body, which include my neck, face, and the back of my hands, but it is no use, the bug gets inside of me. This makes me feel very sick.
I head downstairs to the grocery store/internet cafe to find out what this bug is. According to wikipedia, the reason both bugs went for me was because there are already two mating pairs inside of me that are secreting attractive hormones into my blood which enter my lungs and exit my body when I exhale, making me smell attractive to other parasites. The reason the mates want to attract more parasites is so they have more selection in choosing mates. Also, the only way to kill them is to drink a glass of wine and to not eat anything for the rest of the day, allowing the wine to circulate through my blood and destroy the hormone and hopefully kill the parasites. I realize this is ridiculous, though, because I know that the wine will be absorbed by my liver before too long, so I decide that the only way to get rid of the bugs is to get totally wasted on wine and fast for two days before and after the drinking to starve them of nutrients. I head upstairs to tell Alan this.
Liz and Roderick are playing chess, and I tell them of my plan to get drunk. They seem to approve, and agree that it is the only way to be sure that the parasites are killed. Alan seems to be handling the operation well.
Breakfast
January 22nd, 2006 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am on a band trip and the lobby of our hotel is filled with band kids in uniform and with instruments.
I am in a fancy hotel that I know serves a continental breakfast. Because it is such a fancy-pants hotel with a red velvet carpet and marble walls, I can only imagine how wonderful my breakfast will be when I find it. The more I look for the breakfast room, the more lost I become, so I finally give up. I meet Alex in the elevator. He is wearing a long tuxedo and holding a plate stacked with a two-foot tall pile of fresh strawberries with chocolate dripped on the top. As the doors are closing, I realize where the breakfast was.
That Darn Subconscious
January 19th, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
Adrian had narrowly escaped death, and had received several body piercings while unconscious. He may have been proud of them. One was in his eyebrow, and looked nice. They were insignificant compared to his survival.
My father revealed his drug problem to me: for years, he had been hooked on antibiotics. (He also smoked pot but this was less of an issue.) The name of the antibiotic he told me sounded suspiciously like an antidepressant. I came with him to the strip club he frequented in order to set down his bag there. I tried to set it down through a little opening that turned out to be the stage. A mist was being sprayed. I considered showing the audience my legs. My dad made loud jokes in someone else’s voice and waited for his friends.
Stay
January 18th, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
I was in Rite Aid with Cosmo. I said really lovey things to him to keep him from running away.
Permission
January 16th, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; 2 comments
A bunch of people including Arykah Bergman were at a house belonging to Kris that was not Kris’ House. Arykah had green leg warmers. She also had a supply of marijuana. Kris went into another room to ask his mom for permission to smoke some. The pot was in the form of a straw hat, and he asked to “burn it”, kind of a nebulous request which she correctly understood. I thought it was strange Kris would be smoking (but not strange that his mother allowed it, although I laughed at the idea that he asked her) and did not plan to partake myself.
Arykah had forgotten her orange “rolling paper” and returned to the house surreptitiously.
Intimidation
January 14th, 2006 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
I am at Sea-Tac (although it looks nothing like Sea-Tac), wondering at all the options I have for ascending from the first floor to the second, where business is done. Many of the staircases, escalators, and elevators have signs that indicate that I don’t belong on them, but other signs near the same ascendences indicate that, if I were to take them, I would save a lot of time. (Tomorrow, I get on a plane in Monagua to fly back to Claremont.)
Mr. Lovelace (holy shit) approaches me and tells me that, if I come to his office in the airport, I will be able to see something very important (he told me what it was, and it was very exciting, but now I’ve forgotten). Eventually, I make my way to his office and sit, shuffling with some papers, waiting for him to look up from his desk and notice me. Eventually, he stands up and leaves his office, all very abruptly. I continue to shuffle papers, remembering his unorthodox technique for getting people onto airplanes, a process I might have to endure. As opposed to the usual way, in which the passenger puts on most of his or her space suit but carries the suit’s helmet until the plane begins to take off, Mr. Lovelace makes his passengers suit up entirely before leaving the terminal. One would never guess from its appearances, but his office is a sealed pressure chamber. Mr Lovelace’s passengers put on their suit and helmet and enter his office for repressurization before they board for takeoff.
Eventually, I realize that Mr. Lovelace is probably not coming back. I leave the office and have an experience involving Nolan Amy, theater seating, the Stewarts’ house, a photograph of a statue and someone with curly hair, and two people who were on my spring soccer team a couple of years ago.
I get in line for security. It’s a very long line. Paul Brinkley, who is behind me, realizes that he will probably miss his plane anyway due to the wait and hands me his backpack. I take it alongside my own backpack. Even though I morbidly reason that it probably has a pound of weed in it, I run Paul’s backpack through the scanner as well as my own. To my horror, the woman watching the X-ray monitor says, “You can’t take this on.”
She explains that this enormous, rolling carry-on bag of my parents’ (this is a real bag; I took it to Europe and it is now in this very camper van) that has suddenly appeared is too large to carry on. I tell her I just know it will fit in the cage (by this I mean the cage that one uses to measure carry-on luggage) and utter something cryptic about my own entrapment in the cage. She says that, because the bag is slightly larger than the antique, red suitcase that she uses for comparisons, it must be too large. She sets it next to this red suitcase and I can see that she’s quite correct, but only because there’s a sweatshirt or something stuffed into one of the small, outer pockets. I decide to leave the bag behind.
My mother refers to me as Ignacio.
Peekaboo
January 13th, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
I was dancing with a girl with long blond armpit hair.
You have to believe I tried
January 13th, 2006 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
Chemistry class is ending on the Monday of its second week. It is thought in Mr. Taylor’s room at BHS by Max Wagner. As people leave, they ask him about the assignment due the previous week.
I realize thus that, in my absence from both classes last week — there was no class last Monday — I have missed work (this makes two dreams in two nights about homework negligence). I talk to Max, who, upon realizing my absence, is sort of offended but, in the end, encouraging. He marks a strange symbol into two squares on a grid he has on his desk.
I feel a need to absolve myself. I try to explain my entirely legitimate causes for missing the classes last week. Max cuts me off and believes me, but I feel a frivolous, idle need to prove myself (feelings that echo the turning in of my Humanities portfolio, although reality’s experience had to do with substance — quality — rather than formal trivialities). I bring up a browser on his computer and look for the Webs ite that will vindicate me. His connection is bad, though, and pages stop loading at all after some time. I give up.
A pencil
January 12th, 2006 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
I am protecting on end of a road from evil people dressed in black. It’s a bright, hot day and a long, dusty road. I seem to be succeeding for some time, but the evil people suddenly arrive at my end of the road. This is surreally improbable, but here they are. I beg one not to kill me, please. He promises not to and proceeds to put some bullets into my feet. He also fires one bullet into my right shoulder, where it lodges itself securely. The motion and actions of the bullets is very detailed and vivid. Later, I see a doctor who tells me I will die from the bullets’ lead within the day. I become extremely sad and stay that way all day. Eventually, I go to sleep knowing I will never wake up.
I am taking a creative writing class. There have been only two assignments this semester and I have missed both of them. These two instances of negligence feel like the two points of intersection of two overlapping circles. I go over, one night, all of my classes for the next day to make sure I am not missing any assignments. All of my classes seem taken care of until I consider my last class tomorrow: the writing class. I realize, with terror, that an enormous final project is due tomorrow and I have no means with which to complete it. Although the powers have forgiven my previous delinquencies, this will be impossible to overlook. What the hell am I going to do?
I record the above two paragraphs (not verbatim) in my green spiral notebook (as I am doing right now in reality).
My parents and I are at a loading dock with hundreds of small, white boxes. Margy (an old friend of my mother’s) asks my mother to Seattle for the following day. She accepts on behalf of her family. Later, talking to us, she realizes that she accidentally made a decision for us and tells my father and myself (Devon is absent) that we don’t have to go (almost a direct parallel to Jonathan Franzen’s _The Corrections_). My father will stay; although I have an appointment for dinner, I will go because it should only take an hour or so. We will return on the same ferry that took us to Seattle.
That dinner appointment is with the Stewarts. I talk with Daphne and Roger in their house while we wait for Patrick to return in a car. He becomes extremely late and we raid his T-shirt drawer. Only his green Island School shirt (this does not exist) is missing. When he finally arrives, it is hilarious that he is wearing the shirt.
More waiting occurs in a mostly empty, large, carpeted room. At one end are bathroom stalls; Patrick, myself, and others hang around near there, boring ourselves senseless, until I suggest we try sliding in socks (another book reference on the part of my subconscious: _AHWOSG_). We slide as if the floor were hardwood and soon the sliding escalates to include tricks at the end. I try throwing myself horizontal and rolling at the last moment.
“You spun counter-clockwise!” says Marnie Snyder, who has appeared. “Do you know what you win?”
“No.”
“A pencil! It’s engraved.”
She hands me a half-used pencil that has, among other words, “Adrian” printed on it. We continue sliding.