Ascension, part two

Ascension, part one

Escape the World

Mr. Billy and I are just back from a trip to my childhood town of Provo, Utah, strung out and sleep-deprived and sinking gratefully into the freaky embrace of our adopted home of San Francisco.

Every visit back to the old country triggers a spell of schizoid reaction in me, ratcheted up a notch or two on this trip by our timing; we were there for the run-up to the We Are More Patriotic Than You Orgy, otherwise known as America's Freedom Festival. From the baby contest to the Grand Parade (my moment in the sunlight of the Grand Parade was as a flower, waving adorably from my flowerpot on some beauty queen's float when I was six), and climaxing with the - wait for it - Stadium of Fire, Provoans' patriotic fervor gets Bigger and Better every year.

My favorite part of the festival is the hot air balloons, and this year we got to see them up close and personal - more about that in another post.

Mr. Billy and I drove down Center Street (now with a sign touting it as "Provo's Historic Center Street") where I cruised on Saturday nights with my much better-looking friend ("I get the blonde one, okay? You can have the other one." "No way man, I got the plain one last time..."). On the left is a fountain I jumped into on a hot summer night, just after breaking up with my boyfriend. To the right used to be the library, where I weekly filled a basket as big as me with books to take home. When I'd plowed through every book in the children's section, I was granted a special dispensation to check out any book in the library, the adult section opening to me like paradise.

Just off Center Street to the right, La Dolce Vita is still in business - a restaurant run by a family fresh from Italy in the '80's. I used to read the mother's palm while her glamorous, dark-eyed son translated. In exchange, she gave me rum baba or a heavenly slice of pizza. To the left is NuSkin Plaza, shiny monstrosity plopped in the middle of the older buildings, a creepy, larger-than-life sculpture out front of kids, faces stretched into leering grins, flying around a globe. Mr. Billy says it reminds him of Soviet-era art.

The left side of the street is blocked off for parade preparations.

Mullett Hoover is still around, but Art's Shoe Repair - where Gary Gillmore used to work - is under new management. Gleaming bicycles wink at passing kids from a rotating platform in Bingham Cyclery.

I think it was during the first Gulf War that 200 West was renamed Freedom Boulevard ("Because the more we use the word freedom, the more we can curtail yours!"). The building where I used to take ballet is empty and derelict, paint peeling away like leprosy.

As we ramp up the freeway, I spy a small, hand-painted sign that reads, "Iglesia Cristiana." When I look in the direction the sign points, all I can see, as we speed by, is another LDS chapel.

A billboard shows a soft-focus picture of a young woman, hair pulled demurely back. "Modest Wedding Gowns," the sign reads, "Modest Formals, Modest Prices."

I'm remembering the 4th of July, another year. My dear friend Geo used to live, with other students, in a big old house on Center Street. After the parade went by, Geo tied a stars-and-stripes bandana to her head, and led us on our own parade down the street. We marched with Geo in the sunlight, singing and whistling, waving at the remnants of the crowd as they packed up their blankets, and balloons - escaped from sticky kids' hands - rose quietly into the sky.

Mr. Billy and I are driving north on the freeway. "Escape the World," says a billboard.

Welcome to Utah.

Buddha

We can see sunlight cresting over the Buddha's knee, rays picking their way through kitchen windows, tea on to boil, kids moving softly to the table, hair standing up in pillow-rubbed clumps.

The kids run out ahead after breakfast, tagging each other, bare feet slapping stone, voices ringing back from whitewashed walls. We hang back, our hands full with buckets and brushes and rags, taking the time to talk, squinting up at the sun, while we are still shoulder-to-shoulder within the village; once we come to the grassy edge, we'll fan out, taking up our places along the Buddha's leg.

Our village shelters under his right knee; my family, as far back as memory goes, has had charge of the Buddha's left foot, tucked lotus-wise in the crook of the knee. We are finishing the gold leaf on his big toe a little before solstice this year. A full week to rest before starting again at the heel, where the shine is already dulled, the delicate lapis scrollwork begun last year losing its crisp edges.

The sun is straight overhead when I unpack our lunch. We mimic the Buddha's posture, sitting down cross-legged to eat, looking out across the plain to see his finger coming down to meet the earth; the Buddha forever at the moment of enlightenment, hovering a second before touching earth to let creation know of his epiphany.

This is my last season here. I'm marrying age now, and have to travel to another village to find a spouse. I'll seek out the people in the left knee, or maybe the hand; the villages higher up the mountain seem to have forgotten their work. Even from here we can see patches of neglect along his shoulders, our foot far outshining his face. What little we hear from them tells of a whole different world, of people who don't even know they live on the Buddha's shoulder. They keep the gold and lapis for themselves, stealing from each other, painting their houses and clothes instead.

Nobody remembers who first built the earthworks Buddha, the center of our world. They were our ancestors, working with clay rather than paint. The villages were closer in those days, they worked together, people passing easily from village to village as among family. My own grandfather came from upcountry in better days, wrinkles deepening between his eyes when he looks up at the worn face of our Buddha.

I know he wants me to go up there, bring the old, quiet ways back to them, but I'm only one person, who would listen to me?

So was the Buddha, says my grandfather, his brows casting shadows over his eyes, You don't know what you can do until you've tried.

The beat goes on

I see her on the bus, now and then. She's a tall teenager with flawless skin and close-cropped hair. She doesn't look unfinished like most girls her age; she's already arrived at jaw-drop Beauty, but she doesn't know it or doesn't care.

"'Scuse me. 'Scuse me." She muscles her way toward the back of the bus, where her friends sit. It's crowded, and shoulders and bags and asses block her path. "'Scuse me." Her voice notches up, booming down the aisle. "I won't say it again!"

People skitter out of her way while a woman at the front of the bus rolls her eyes heavenward and hisses between her teeth.

The girl sits like a queen among her subjects.

I find a seat of my own, closer to the front than usual. I can't see the kids, but I can hear them, a miniature universe of drama at the back of the bus. A couple of voices ride up and over everything else.

"You put your foot on my foot!"

"So what? Get over it, nigga."

"You do not have the right to put your foot on my foot."

I take out my earphones to listen, catching the eye of a woman standing in the aisle. We're both smiling, loving every word, when the woman sitting to my right bursts out:

"These kids!"

The woman to my left takes it up:

"I hate this bus!"

Woman to my right:

"They don't do anything about it! There's no security people here to...deal with them!"

Security? I look over at her. Is she serious?

Her mouth is drawn together into a sticky pink fist, her jowls quivering with indignation.

I almost reply, Jesus, they're teenagers and they're loud, get over it, but I see this woman is more than angry. She's terrified. They're young and loud and a thousand times stronger than her. They can't imagine the day they'll be as old as her.

Someday, she will slip quietly out of the world, and they will go on being loud and crude and young - she can see it all, mascara clumped on her lower lashes, hands gripping her purse, tendons pulled taut - she can see them dancing on her grave.

No gum chewing in courtroom

I stand in line for the courthouse, dark brown boy in front of me, menacing expression trying to cover up the braces glinting out from between his lips. His puffy coat squeaks as he moves. Behind me stands a woman, 6'8" if she's a foot. Elegant long clothes, turban, shining earrings, blue-black skin. She moves like an underwater creature, slow and graceful, granting every gesture the blessing of ceremony. High sharp cheekbones, almond eyes.

The guard at the metal detector is younger than me, smiling apologetically as he rifles through my purse. I'm reassembling bag and purse when the woman behind me sets off the detector.

"Is it my earrings?" she asks. Her voice is baritone, deeper than the guard's, and for the first time I notice an adam's apple. Suddenly, I love her even more.

I have high hopes for jury duty, filing expectantly into the jury waiting room. I'm happy to wait, and look at my fellow jurors. They try criminal cases in this building. I'm dazzled at the thought of years of material, coiled behind one of the courtroom doors.

There are signs posted on some of those doors. "No iPods." "No reading newspapers." "No gum chewing in courtroom."

Jurors become strangely still, waiting to be called. They are individuals outside, but here they disappear, becoming Citizens.

Finally called into a courtroom, rising as one for the Judge. He promises an exciting case, criminal. "Nobody'll be falling asleep for this one!"

Then we're dismissed to return the next day.

Day two, everybody looks the same. Faces blank, waiting. This Judge posts his rules inside the courtroom.

"No!!!reading

"No!!!listening to music

"No!!!talking

"No!!!chewing gum."

We aren't asked to rise when the Judge enters, this time. I wonder if the clerk knows he's back there. But then he starts to speak, his words illustrated by the sign language translator in front. She widens her eyes, her translation a performance, a dance.

"Some machinations have been going on," begins the Judge, "the case won't be going to trial today. So that's it, you're all dismissed."

Is that it? I wonder, people filing out of the courtroom around me, Is that all there is?

Catfish

Scratch fiction topic courtesy of my boss. No, really.
Fredo slid the fish onto the pan, clash and sizzle, smoke rising to the kitchen ceiling.

"Only way to do catfish, man. Breading's my own recipe."

"Didn't know you cooked," said Barney, popping the top on another beer, slurping the foam that bubbled up from the lip, then sucking the ends of his moustache.

"Catfish ain't 'cooking,' it's just eating what you caught, man." Fredo plopped a plate in front of Barney, steaming fish lying across it like a body in the street.

"How'm I supposed to eat this?"

"With a fork, dumbass." Fredo had a tea towel over one shoulder, moving around the kitchen, slamming drawers and rattling spoons.

Barney'd never seen him like this. Normally Fredo moved slow and quiet, eyes half-lidded, answering questions in his own sweet time. But ever since this afternoon, since they were taking shots at the target out back of the cabin, Barney able to hit the bullseye at 300 yards with his Dad's old shotgun, God only knew where Fredo's shots went, but they sure as hell weren't going into the target.

"You having any?" Barney asked.

Fredo just kept shuffling things around in the kitchen and didn't answer, Jesus, he was as bad as Barney's wife, what bit him in the ass, thought Barney, before tucking in, the fish hot as a furnace, but the breading was heaven, grease running off onto the cracked plate. Barney got going, it was amazing, he'd never had fish like this before, just kept shoving it in and shoving it in until he felt something sharp hit the back of his throat.

Barney couldn't breathe. He looked up at Fredo, but he couldn't even get out enough air to make a sound, he felt heat building up behind his eyes, and finally Fredo looked around from where he was standing at the sink, Fredo saw him, Fredo would give him the heimlich or something, Fredo could fix it.

But Fredo had slowed down again, eyes lidding down, smile creeping up his face.

"Watch out for the bones, Sharpshooter," said Fredo.

White hands

Scratch fiction topic tag: Frank
He looked an upright man. Frank fastened his collar, trying a smile in the mirror. Not the slow smile he wore at at night, walking softly into the woods, down past the Stankas farm, looking out for the glow of her white skin against the tree trunks. This was the smile of a young Bible scholar, a public smile, wise and open.

Frank looped his tie over, mouthing his speech silently into the mirror. People would stop on the street to listen, he was sure. He levelled his own gaze at his reflection: he had it just right, a perfect note of friendly compulsion.

Frank stood on the street corner, elevated on an apple crate, Bible in one hand. The workday ending, buildings vomiting out their collection of lost and broken humans. Frank raised the hand holding the Good Book, and opened his mouth to speak.

Years later, people would remember that day. A secretary told her daughter how his hair shone in the dying sunlight, how his face seemed lit from inside. She was late getting home, but she had to stop, as though she had lost the reins of her own body, slowly her head turned to listen. A banker gave up his job that day and became a minister, for the rest of his life telling his flock about the man holding the Bible above his head, how his words burned to the center of the banker's soul, reducing his former life to ashes in an instant. The janitor on his way to clean the school felt the young man's voice pull away all of his artifice; he stood naked at the feet of the man on the apple crate, his sins exposed. Naked, the janitor moved closer to the the man, warming himself in the flame of righteousness.

It was dark when Frank got home, apple crate in one hand, Bible in the other. He felt light and empty as a toy balloon. He would tell her everything, how hundreds of faces turned up to drink him in, how a streetful of strangers worshipped at his feet.

Frank slipped past the tree with the rope swing, the corn house, the barn, trailing his hand across the rough stones of the wall bordering the Stankas farm. The blueberries were ripe, hanging heavy over the wall; Frank took a handful to offer her.

He saw her through the trees, white hands moving in the dark, white neck bent, she danced to music he couldn't hear, dark hair falling across her face. She stopped at the sound of his step, shoe scraping over stone. Her black eyes pinned him where he stood.

Frank opened his mouth to tell of his triumph, to tell the beginning of great things, all of it was there, waiting, behind his breath, but though his news built and pushed, out of his open mouth came nothing.

She smiled at him, the only smile she had.

She reached out her hand and opened his, the blueberries staining his palm. With one more look up at Frank, eyes shining like black stars, she leaned over his hand, taking the blueberries into her mouth, her lips soft against his palm, breath hot, her tongue traveling his lifeline.

Frank shuddered, his mouth opening, he looked up at the trees stretching above him, moving against black sky.

The blueberries gone, all traces lapped up, still she didn't stop, she opened her mouth wider than the world, and bit.

She straightened up at last, white hands pushing back her hair, licking her lips.

The next evening, a thousand people pushed against each other on the street corner where Frank had preached the day before, all of them speaking of the man on the apple crate, Bible in hand. An hour passed, two; dinners burned and wives looked anxiously through curtains for husbands who were never so late. As the earth slowly turned its face toward night, the crowd dispersed, whispering sadly to each other as though they were leaving a funeral.

The last of the hopeful finally bending their steps toward home, a young boy caught something out of the corner of his eye. He reached for his father's sleeve, to tell him the man had shown at last, but it was only a woman, white hands brushing dark hair from her face.

The girls next door

I saw her writhing out of the BMW, a to-go box held like a tray of wine glasses in one hand. Shiny dark hair switching over her shoulders. She wore sweats that were only a thin gesture toward exercise wear; soft material draped over her curves, tiny top showing bellybutton, and, as she turned toward her front door, the word "juicy" arcing over her peachy ass.

They all drive BMWs, all prefer to park cockeyed in the driveway, all looking like dolls with interchangable heads: blond, brunette, auburn. It's impossible to tell how many of them share the basement apartment. It could be one, it could be fifteen, all crowded in together, fifteen pairs of mascaraed eyes blinking slowly open, closed.

There are boyfriends, too. I don't see seduction or handholding, but last month voices scratched up and down the street, hers accusing, his defending. I couldn't help peeking out my window, screened by the curtain, in time to see him stomping away from her door, and - as if with sudden inspiration - heaving her garbage can across the path, blocking her way.

Another night I was dragged from sleep by fighting. It might have been the same two; one or the other - or both - may have been different. The boyfriends as identical as the girls, vicious white boys in short hair and polo shirts. This time her voice whined between sobs, piping high above the empty road. His answer citing the eight hours of hard work he does every day, he doesn't need to come home to this.

Like the mute button was pushed, her sobbing stopped, cut off. I peeked through the blinds to see her white brow slowly grow furrows in the streetlight.

"But, what am I supposed to do?" she said at last, in a clear, matter-of-fact voice.

With that question, my dear, neither he, nor I - your eavesdropping neighbor - can help.

What to write when you have nothing to write

What do you write when your stomach is grinding out the words to "You're All Dried Up, You Never Had Anything Worthwhile to Say and Now Everybody Knows It"? What do you write when the cats are begging for attention, when your husband is wondering what the surly mood is all about, when the sun is shining outside and if you were a worthwhile human you'd just let it go, let it go and walk outside and take a look around?

What do you write when the soft spring air is moving in through the window, nudging up against you and whispering about a whole world just outside, about people in short sleeves walking at a Sunday pace through city streets, women swinging their hips in cotton dresses and men with toddlers riding high on their shoulders; a Chinese man on the train slipping one white foot out of his shoe, moving his hand over ropy veins and bunions; a boy with the sun shining off his perfect afro, bouncing lightly as he walks; a Japanese woman with her eyes focused just short of the paper in her lap, reading her own thoughts instead?

Maybe you close the computer and take a walk. Maybe today isn't the day for writing.

420 on Hippie Hill

I'm back at work now, but broken down and wispy long before close of business. I leave the office early this afternoon, climbing onto the bus in my post-surgical fog; still flattened and grim from pain pills and the last drams of anesthetic working its way out of my body.

I barely notice the lavish sunshine after weeks of rain.

My way onto the bus is impeded; the driver is arguing with an unseen passenger, the driver's braids clacking as she shakes her head:

"You gotta get rid of the cup. I'm not moving until you hand it up."

Other passengers are getting into the act, now, one calling up to the driver: "It's empty, the cup is empty. He just turned it over in his hand."

"I don't care, you gotta hand it up!"

A deep voice booms out from inside, "Let's get this bus moving! We gotta be there for 420 on Hippie Hill, 420 on Hippie Hill, children."

Finally I'm able to move in, navigating around a red toy wagon and the owner of the deep voice, a black man in his sixties, carrying a staff topped with tassels, raffia and plastic leis. He wears a tall felt hat; the brim is laced with rainbow colored fur, the underside turned up to show white stars on a blue background. The top, I see as I pass, is ringed with marijuana leaves. He carries an American flag and waves it at me.

"Happy Thursday," he says, with a big smile.

I can't help smiling back.

The other passengers finally convince the driver to Let it go already, and the bus is away. 420 Man's voice rolls through the bus, rising and falling. I can't tell if he's talking to someone he knows, or to the bus at large. Maybe it's a little of both.

"...if everyone smoked cannabis, it would heal the world...420 on Hippie Hill, children, everything good you can imagine...pot lasagna, pot and barbeque chicken, mm-mm!...that stuff comes from Mother Earth, it's all organic!...Mm, you can see the smoke from here!..."

A blonde guy is talking in German on his cell phone. A greyish looking kid, covered with tattoos, pulls his hood further down over his face. At least five passengers scattered around the bus are drinking forbidden coffee, munching sandwiches blithely.

420 Man goes on:

" Steroids, crack, meth amphetamines - where do they come from?"

Unexpectedly, a hipster chick in front of me answers him, "From men, made by men!"

"...and coca, cannabis?"

"...from Mother Earth," sings Hipster Girl.

"This is our stop," announces 420 Man, standing up & shaking his staff, "Happy Thursday! Happy Earth Day!"

I want to follow him out, go where he's going. I can see, down on the street, crowds of hippies wandering into the park.

On his way out, he stops to wink at those of us left behind:

"I want a greeeen house on my Brokeback Mountain!"

The bus doors close on his laugh.

Police blotter: nude elderly male

A South Buffalo Street caller reported a nude elderly man on a porch in the area

Lloyd couldn't find his wallet. No, he knew he'd left it right there on the coffee table, or maybe on the desk, on the kitchen counter, next to the bed. How could a person find anything, all these papers, all this stuff? Why do we have so much stuff? The mailman keeps bringing paper, slipping it in all innocent through that slot in the door, you hear it shuck in and its another layer of dirt on your grave, another thing, another piece of stuff, seventy-five years of stuff piling up, report cards from when he was eight years old, letters from his mother, bills, catalogs, instructions on how to use the microwave, the toaster, the can opener, seventy-five years of paper, enough to suffocate Lloyd enough to drown a city, and still it kept coming, still that sinister little snick of the paper slipping through the slot, the whole world is drowning in paper and tissue boxes and blankets and keychains with people's names on them and postcards from Hawaii.

Lloyd's hands moved over the papers, the photographs in frames, the band-aids, the tweezers, the reading glasses, it was enough, he was done with all of it. Seventy-five years was enough, too much, it all had to go. His hands locked down on a pile, magazines and Christmas cards and checkbooks; holding it to his chest, his breath coming faster, he pushed open the door, out into the light, and heaved all of it into the street.

No, that wasn't right. No, then he'd just shift it all to the street, to the outside world, and he'd still be in the box, the mail still snicking in every day, no, he had to get out, himself.

Lloyd left the door open, and walked out into the street.

Yes, this was better. The air breathed lightly on his cheek, springtime air. There were cherry blossoms on the tree across the street. His feet were hot in his shoes, so he unlaced them and stepped out, leaving them behind, then his socks, one at a time. He put his feet in the strip of grass between sidewalk and street and remembered the park where he played when he was a kid. Grass like this, soft in April, so green it almost hurt to look, walking along the sidewalk barefoot with his pal Harvey, ice cream dripping over the hand that held the cone, their shirts off, and Lloyd unbuttoned his shirt, letting it float gently to the ground, the breeze in his chest hair.

This was good, nothing else felt like this. His belt was next, then the pants, jingling heavy to the ground, keys in the pocket, boxer shorts last.

Nothing closing him in, now. Lloyd took in a deep breath, and smiled. Down the street was a big, deep porch, like he remembered from when he was a kid, the kind with a porch swing.

Lloyd sat down on the broad steps, cement cool against his skin, and settled back to watch the world go by.

No pain

A movable monkey

This tag is a rich vein - I'm gonna have to mine it again and again. Starting off with an easy one:
A Genesee Street business employee requested a
premise check after she reported she placed a stuffed
bear on the bar and now it was on a shelf. She thought
someone might have been in the building.
It's almost poetry, all by itself.

It wasn't where she put it. The monkey, the monkey, she'd put the monkey on the bar, right? It was like this, what do they call it, tableau, thing. You know, the monkey with the bottles, like it'd been drinking, right? It was supposed to be funny. So she hadn't just forgotten, like the cop was implying.

Grace didn't "forget" things like that, anyway. She'd put it on the bar. Now it was on the shelf. Someone was there, someone had been there, this cop didn't know what he was talking about, raising his eyebrows at his partner when he thought Grace wasn't looking. Like she was another nutcase.

The lights from the car moved across the wall, lighting up the monkey's face, blue, red, blue, red.

Grace rubbed her hands together and asked the cops if they needed anything else. They'd checked everything: windows closed and locked, back door locked. Nobody had been in here, they said. She watched them down the driveway, talking to each other, laughing, doors swinging shut on the patrol car. They pulled away, headlights scraping over the room.

Nobody had been here, they'd said, but someone had moved the monkey. Stupid, creepy thing to do anyway. Nothing taken, nothing trashed, nothing else touched. But the monkey was moved.

And now the cops were gone, Grace was alone with it.

I don't wear dentures

"Do you have any dentures, false teeth, metal in your mouth?"

"Just my fillings," I open my mouth, to show her.

The nurse nods, and leaves the room.

"Myer, right?" I hear bellowed from down the hall. An enormous white guy in a walrus moustache and balloon cap covered with cute little cartoons rolls into the tiny room.

His voice fills the room, bounces down the hall, blows up the curtains on other rooms along the way.

"Born in '68, huh?"

I nod.

"I was in Southeast Asia then. Getting shot at. Bombs dropped on me." He's looking at my chart. "Have any dentures, false teeth?"

Nope.

"You digging this rain? 'Course, they don't have rain here, not really. I'm from Texas. If it's raining in Texas and you're under an overpass, you stop the car and get out of it, else you're gonna drown."

He's leading me and Mr. Billy to the operating room, telling a story of a rainstorm in New Mexico. At the door, he stops and tells Mr. Billy how to get to the waiting room.

"Now say goodbye, kiss kiss."

I kiss Mr. Billy, and he squeezes my hand.

"You're from Utah, huh?" The giant vet in the cartoony headgear leads me to an inner waiting room, stopping to put a blue hat like his over my hair. "I knew a girl from Utah. Mormon. Everyone was trying to score with her. Me, I was just friends with her. We went hiking once, and she looked me over, guessed my size. Next thing I know I get a package in the mail, she's knit me a sweater. Fit perfectly. I showed it to all the guys, Ha, I said, you didn't get anywhere with her, but she knit me a sweater. This is where you get off."

He waves his hand at a chair, and disappears through the doors.

"Do you have any dentures?" A nurse in another blue mushroom hat asks. I shake my head. Another nurse comes in. "Are you my replacement?" asks the first. The second nods, and the first hands over my chart. "I just started the interview."

"Do you wear dentures?" the second nurse asks.

The anesthesiologist comes in, asks if I wear dentures. Tells me about the anesthetic. "You might wake up with a sore throat," he says, "from the breathing tube."

A resident, assisting the surgeon, sits down across from me. "Any dentures?" He went to med school with a friend of mine. He's young, but says he's been in residency six years.

Another nurse asks if I wear dentures. "What procedure are we doing today?"

"Exploratory laparoscopy," I say, "to begin with. He might open me up further, depending what he finds."

"Laparoscopy?" she looks up at me, "Are you sure?"

"Um, yeah."

She confers with another nurse. "It says laparotomy here. You'd better get down there and straighten this out."

There's a big difference, I think, between laparotomy and laparoscopy. At least I don't have dentures.

Fast

The meat suit's been acting up again. Today the surgeon opens me up for a look. I'm considering asking him to install a zipper in place of stitches.

In preparation, yesterday was a diet of clear liquids, today a diet of air and nothing else, not even water, not even my own spit. Under normal circumstances, I am what is called a "good eater." I do not skip meals. If breakfast is - for some horrible reason - missed, I become surly and stupid. I misplace things, like my pants, or my right hand.

But I grew up in a religion with a strong tradition of fasting. On the first Sunday of every month, we fasted for two meals and gave the money we would have spent on them to the poor. This seems a noble thing, and for a long time after I stopped going to church, I kept up the practice.

Sometime in the last twenty years, however, I stopped.

It was also common, in the religion of my youth, to fast for inspiration, something shared with spiritual traditions around the world. I had vague hopes of some form of secular inspiration today, but nothing doing. My head hurts, and I'm hungry.

I guess that religious background makes me want something more from this experience than the gurgling of my stomach. More than once, I thought about the vast numbers of people who feel like this almost every day.

Mostly, though, I want to eat.

The day I lost it

Scratch fiction tag courtesy of monkey0: chastity.

"I remember everything," Raye said, running one hand through her hair, ashing her cigarette before bringing it to her lips, "It was in my Vocational Ed class. Yeah, it was bad enough that we went to the public schools. This was before homeschooling was all the rage. It was easy then to get too much attention from the Feds, so, you know, we did what we had to.

"So, Voc Ed. They'd have people from the community come and give little presentations to the class, you know, This is what it's like to run a dry cleaner, or an auto shop, or punch the keys on a cash register, and this day, they had a hairdresser.

"It was weird anyway, they brought in a guy hairdresser, and he was Puerto Rican, how many of those do you see around here, huh? His name was Alfredo or Alberto, something like that, little guy. I was in the back of the class, like usual, you know, the only people I hung out with at school were my sisters, we were all freaks together in our long sleeves and skirts down to our ankles. Our hair in long braids down our backs."

Raye peeled away a piece of tobacco that had stuck to her lower lip, cig in her first two fingers, she pulled it away delicately with thumb and third finger.

"He said he was going to demonstrate a haircut, and he wanted a model.

"Mother said I'd heard the Devil speaking in my ear, old Satan himself, perched on my shoulder, his long tongue reaching into my ear, hot breath against my cheek, Satan seduced me, velvety voice purring, 'Raise your hand, Rachel,' she screamed I was the Devil's whore now, the last words she ever said to me, and my father pushed me out onto the dirt, not even a change of underwear or a piece of bread, he shut the door blank in my face - but I never heard a voice.

"I felt a heat, rather, starting right between my legs, and running all the way up inside me. My face must have been as red as a stop sign, but I couldn't stop my hand going up.

"I sat down in the chair, in front of the whole class, and I felt his hands slide in under my hair, I heard him coo over it, purring like he was a cat, his fingers deep in my hair, pulling through it. I'd never been touched by a man not my father before. My mother or one of the sister wives braided my hair every morning, and the touch of his hands sent shocks all the way to the center of me.

"'Put your head down, Sweetie,' his voice poured into my ear like maple syrup, if I ever heard the Devil's voice, it was Alberto's, soft and smooth as anything. I felt the cold metal of the scissors against my neck, felt them bite down, my hair sliding heavy to the floor.

"What's that? -No," Raye shook her head, stabbing out her cig. She rattled the ice in her glass at the waitress passing by, "No, of course not. He was gay, obviously. No, he cut my hair, that's all.

"But don't you understand? That was all it took."

...and as fast as possible

The other morning I was walking to work. It was earlier than usual; the street was quiet, nearly empty. I saw a bus roaring up the street toward me, and I watched it, curious. Buses don't usually run on this street.

The driver must have had it floored.

As it came closer, I could read the destination on the front marquis:

"Nowhere in particular"

It blew past me at top speed.

Billy's back

Hey, I dried up for a while, didn't seem to have anything to say. But I'm back, children, and I don't think I'm going to stop talking any time soon.

I missed you all.

Ned

Ned's feet carried him down the steps into the station. A long corridor, white tile walls. A man tilted toward the wall, white vomit hanging from his chin, mouth grinning open, cackling as his urine arced out, splashing the white tile.

Ned paid with cash. Saturday night, the station was crowded. He pushed through the crowd, standing quietly to wait, his eyes moving over the posters across the tracks, none of the words making it all the way to his brain. He could hear people breathing around him, talking, laughing.

The train stopped and the doors opened in front of him. Ned stepped on board, moved down the train to the center and stood against the railing. He looked up at the people pressing in around him. A full car.

A young girl sat at the window, her face reflected clearly against the black of the tunnel. She was looking down, her face serene. She was beautiful. Ned's heart grew to take her in. Shining black hair hanging to her shoulders, a round face. She might have been Chinese. She glanced up, right into Ned's reflected eyes, her face softening into an almost-smile before looking back down.

Ned was in love.

Ned loved everyone on this train. The couple to his right, the girl sitting, her boyfriend standing, holding her hand. They were talking about a movie they wanted to see. The punk kid with spiked hair and an old leather jacket and a sweet flush on his cheeks. The brother with a glorious 'fro and shining suit. A man speaking Russian with his wife. A skinny blond girl hiding inside enormous sunglasses. They were all part of Ned tonight, not one of them knew how much.

Ned held out his hands to look at them, back and front. They were still. He was ready.

He reached into his coat, running a hand over the explosives against his body. Everything was there. He found the button, under his left arm, and tickled it with his thumb.

Ned looked around the car once more. They were all so beautiful, every one of them. He looked again at the Chinese girl, and her reflected eyes were on his again. She smiled for real this time. Ned smiled back, gratefully, and pressed his thumb down on the button.