Upwards and onwards

One of my favorite movies is this 3-minute French short, "Perils of Love." I actually played it during my interview a few years back to get hired at the high school where I taught in Chicago. For those of you unfamiliar, it's available for watching on YouTube.

I had a dream the other night - actually a half-dream, half-awake composition, which is the best kind - that was animated in the same style. So I wrote it as a short short story, "Stairs." I was trying to invoke that animated feel, but it is a 1st draft, which of course means it is terrible.

You can read the story here.

--- Oh, and update re: the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Competition. My story for Round 1 placed in 7th Place (out of my group of 24 writers). My next story for Round 2 will be judged and its score combined with Round 1 for a total score. The Top 5 writers from each group by combined score go on to the next stage, so I'd have to do even better this time around. But either way, it's an excuse to write. And drink! That's what writers do.

Frogger That Shit

So we started with nothing, right. I mean, think about that. Some of you may have done it, some of you may not; this was my first time doing it. Look around your apartment, or house, or nerdbasement, or jail cell, what have you. Now think about it being entirely empty. The things that will be immediately apparent (as gone) will be the furniture, of course, so if I move across the country with nothing but two pieces of luggage (mostly full of turkey paninis), you think, "Oh, he has to buy new furniture."

But what about towels? What about toothbrushes? Sheets? Pillows? Underwear? Lamps? Dishes? Soap? Underwear?

In New York City, people like me don't have cars. In New York City, people like me pay 800 dollars a month plus utilities for 1/2 of an apartment in a rundown roach building in an industrial warehouse area of Queens, right, and we will fucking like it. Like a fat kid likes quiche (he likes it, he loves cake).

So you show up to a completely empty apartment and your method of transportation is the subway. Now there's 2 games going on:

Game 1: The Opportunity Cost Game. You can carry one thing home from the store today, and therefore not another thing. So what's more important tonight? Some supplies to make dinner? A pillow to rest your head on? A toothbrush to get ready for bed with? The new Jake Gyllenhaal / Michelle Monaghan thriller out on DVD so you can see the setting of Chicago AND Michelle Monaghan's amazing tongue-in-cheek and simultaneously completely sincere hotness + a box of tissues so you can clean up afterwards? I think the answer here is pretty self-evident. I needed the jumbo tissues.

Game 2: The Farmer, Fox, and Chicken Game. Jeff and I ended up at Target, because when you just need to fill a place, you go to Target. Well, naturally, you buy too much stuff (because you need everything), but how are you going to get it home? We're talking, there's a shopping cart with a room-size rug, a shower curtain, detergent, dish sets, organizer shelves, a kitchen table, some chairs, groceries to last the week, bedding, a heavy TV stand, some iced lattes, so on. We're holding onto the sides of this cart so the stuff doesn't topple like a Jenga tower.

Well the Target's on floor 9 of this like 20-story mega-mall citadel, and as soon as we check out, the cashier is like, "You know you can't take that cart out of the store, right?"

"Lol wut?"

Okay, so we have to get all this stuff out to hail a cab.

"The exit on this level only goes to the parking lot area. You would have to call a cab and tell him to meet you at this entrance and pay for his exorbitant parking fee just to pick you up?"

"Really?"

"No, they won't do that."

So we have to go down to a lower level.

"The shopping cart escalators are out of order."

"Should I go hire stereotypical Latino day laborers from in front of Home Depot and have them come carry everything down on their backs?"

"We close in five minutes."

It was like a real-life adventure game puzzle, from like Myst. I was gonna have to find the hidden heirloom tomato in the store to throw it at her manager which would distract him from the security cameras so I could pull a female saloon dancer disguise from the clothesline undetected and seduce the swashbuckling pirate by the dock into providing some new leggings for Corporal Klinger so BJ and Hawkeye could fix the M*A*S*H's liquor still. It was fucked up, is what I'm saying.

I had to apparate with it, I had no choice. Fuck the muggles.

Home is Where the Harry Says: Part 2

So it's the weekend of the Big One: Hurricane Apocalpyse - the New York Armageddon 2011, and we're on the subway back from getting rejected at the one good apartment in the city, and Jeff is like "What non-perishables should I stock up on? How much water should I store?"

And I'm like, "I have this one half of a Vitamin Water left in my fridge. I figure that's enough."

But the British anchor on CNN at the pizza place while we're having a slice that night is like, "OH MY GOD IT'S AWFUL OUT THERE. AUDREY IN MANHATTAN, ARE YOU BEING EVACUATED RIGHT NOW?"

And the reporter, against a light drizzle is like, "Er.. yeah, I mean, they told us to move further in... in Manhattan... Cause we were at the shore."

"NEW YORKERS," the anchors said, looking intensely at the camera, "GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE!"

I'm calmly calling landlord listings online trying to set up some more viewings when Old Man Bloomberg goes ahead and shuts down the entire public transportation system for the weekend. My next call is to a broker named Harry, with a New York accent and voice that make me picture a violent version of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

"THIS IS HARRY, WHO THE HELL IS THIS"

"This is Jake, um, I was calling about the apartment -"

"HOW THE HELL YOU PLAN ON GETTING HERE, JAKE"

"The train? I guess"

"YEAH IF WE GOT ANY MOTHERFUCKIN TRAINS, I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, YOU COME TOMORROW IF THERE'S ANY TRAINS AND YOU CALL UP YOUR MAYOR, TELL HIM HE'S A PIECE OF SHIT"

"Um... I can probably tell, like a comptroller or something. I don't know if I can reach the Mayor."

"HAHA I LIKE YOU JAKE. BE THERE 8:00, OR I'll KILL YOU."

Click.

When we showed up, early in the morning before the train shut-down on Saturday, he was standing in the rain, about 400 pounds with 6 teeth and a gold chain the size of a chimpanzee. It takes him about 2 hours to get up the stairs to show us the apartment.

As we're filling out applications in the back of his car, Harry says, "SO HERE'S THE DEAL. I'VE BEEN IN JAIL, MANNY THE OWNER, HE'S BEEN IN JAIL, WE'VE BEEN IN JAIL TOGETHER. BEEN PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T WANT TO PAY RENT, WE THREW HIS SHIT OUT THE WINDOW, WE THREW HIM OUT THE WINDOW. YOU'RE LATE ONE TIME, WE LOOK PAST THAT. YOU'RE LATE AGAIN, WE'LL FUCK YOU UP. IF YOU'RE LATE A LOT WE'RE GONNA KILL YOU. WE'RE GONNA KILL YOU, YOU'RE GONNA DIE. DON'T FORGET AREA CODE ON THE CONTACT NUMBER THERE ON THAT LINE, A LOT OF PEOPLE FORGET THAT."

Now this is the New York I've dreamt about.

Home is Where the Harry Says: Part 1

So we were down to a week. We both have to move out of our current places in a week, probably out on the street under a bridge somewhere. I start to scout out bridges, for which ones look the most luxurious, which ones I might be most likely to meet a nice young lady. Brooklyn Bridge is too cliché, that’s probably where the hipsters live under; Queensboro seems like a better bet for sincere young professionals to live under, the ones who don’t care about impressing people.

Jeff is freaking out because we finally found a place that was nice and the guy said no. He was like, “So where do you guys work?” And Jeff was like, “I work for so-and-so,” and I was like, “I just got here, so you know…”

“Yer unemployed?!” yelled George the landlord, outraged. “This is my home! Who the fuck do you think you are, coming in here without a job? Wanting to live in my home? That’s like asking my daughter’s hand in marriage! You don’t ask for my daughter’s hand in marriage with no job! Yeh lowlife! Yeh fuckin’ bum. Yeh cock-fucking-sucker, yer the scum of the earth.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You don’t even wanna marry my daughter. You want to fuck her and not even marry her, yer gonna get the milk without buyin’ the cow, that’s what you think, isn’t it, you goddamn prick, you’re scum.”

“Cow?”

“You think my daughter’s a cow, that’s what yeh think. Yeh perverted motherfucker. A cow for fucking. She’s a teenager¸ you asshole. I should have you fucked up. How do you want to fuck her, you prick?”

“I should go.”

“You want to take my daughter doggy-style, is that what you want? You wanna spin her, don’t you? You wanna make my daughter a spinner, you spinnin’ son-of-a-bitch. You gonna give her the piledriver, you gonna turn her up on her back and drive her from above, you pile-drivin’ motherfucker?”

We were halfway down the steps, and his words echoed down the hall. “You perv! Tell me how you wanna do my daughter! Is it the Minnesota Bigfoot? Minnesota Bigfootin’ son of a bitch…”

“We’re screwed,” said Jeff on the train.

“We’ll find a place.”

The news was coming down that the subway and buses would be shut down for the weekend in preparation for the hurricane. The weekend had been when we thought we would get to see the most apartments. It seemed time to look at bridges, but first I opened up craigslist on my phone to look at what apartments had just become available.

Routine Visits: 2

From what I hear, everybody hates to go to the dentist. I don't think it's the pain so much as being at somebody's complete mercy. I think dentists have more carte blanche because they never explain what they're doing.

My doctors seem like they're in constant fear of lawsuits for medical malpractice, or being accused of doing something wrong, so they're explaining exactly what they're doing at every possible junction.

"Now I'm going to lightly tap your shoulder, if that is okay. It's called the Shoulder-Tap maneuver, and it's to give you a little bit of human-to-human encouragement, in an expression of esprit-de-corps before I shake your hand with a smile and leave. If that is okay with you. " Et cetera.

The dentist, on the other hand, is a madman of impunity. "Open wide" is pretty much all you get before he or she goes to town with a tray full of implements, either reciting gibberish to the hygienist ("1-9-3 is 4-G with C, cleared to land on runway 2-4 right, full flaps"), or discussing last night's American Idol (with the hygienist). Is American Idol still on? I hope not.

I've never been squeamish about the doctor or the dentist, so with time running out on my health insurance in Illinois, I continued Health Blitz 2011: Wellbeingmageddon! at the nearest dentist's office, in Crystal Lake. As it so happened, I had a couple of cavities.

"Have you been flossing every single day?" asked the dentist, a cute and professional young Asian woman.

"Do people really do that?"

"No. That's why I have a BMW."

Since I only had a week left before my flight out, I told the receptionist to schedule all the fillings as quickly as possible, on two consecutive days. She seemed worried about me.

So I have no problem at all seeing blood, watching surgeries, dissecting dead animals, etc. I'm not saying I'm some sicko who enjoys seeing blood, watching surgeries, and dissecting dead animals, like as hobbies or something, you bastard, I'm just saying it doesn't bother me very much. I prefer, though, not to watch pain be inflicted on myself, so I just look at the wall when I'm having blood taken or skin biopsied or whatever, and then it doesn't bother me either. My philosophy is lie there and think of England, right?

The dentist was having none of this. As I stared at the blinding light of the dentist's chair, she was convinced I wanted narration. I don't know if she was trying to be helpful, if it's a woman thing to want to tell and know exactly what's about to happen to you, or if she was just frustrated at my impassiveness and took it as a personal goal to make me freak out at that point.

"This is gonna hurt," she would say at first, before she would do something. She did it a few times, just as I was drifting off.

Goddamn. Don't say that. Why would you say that?

Don't medical people understand there's no advantage to knowing something awful is about to be done to you? It would be so much better if check-ups and exams were just done at random, as a surprise, while you're shopping at the grocery store. Like you're reaching for the organic lettuce and someone just ninja-jumps from behind the sprinklers and jabs you in the neck with a needle or sticks a camera up your butt.

Anyway, I wouldn't respond; I wasn't gonna give her the satisfaction.

So then it became, "This is gonna really hurt, this is gonna feel bad."

I smiled politely.

After a while, it was "This is gonna be a bad one! This one is gonna make you suffer!"

I pretended to be asleep.

"You're gonna really feel this one! This is terrible! I'm being incompetent with my dentistry to cause you this pain! You might die!"

I glanced at New Yorker cartoons and softly chuckled. (I carry random New Yorker cartoons in the elastic of my boxers for just such occasions).

"I'm gonna kill you! I'm gonna kill you! I'm gonna kill you with my dentistry!"

"You take HMO, right?"

Flashing Everybody

So I entered NYC Midnight's Flash Fiction Competition. For each story, each group of competing writers is given: a genre, a location, and an object. They have 2 days to write a story of only 1,000 words or less.

For Round 1 my group was assigned:

GENRE: Romantic Comedy

LOCATION: A hair salon

OBJECT: A box of tissues

Normally, I plan out everything beforehand, but I wrote this one more impulsively and just let it materialize.

Click here to read the story.

New York in Three Words

I have arrived.

Today being my first whole day, I plan on heading downtown to wander and explore this afternoon, having already spent the morning walking around uptown where I'm staying, and getting lost carrying bags of heavy groceries so that I ended up walking like 50 blocks with them. Did you know New York City is uphill? All of it.

Anyhow, these are the words that New York made me think of the first day I was here.

Contoured: Now I'm no country bumpkin. I mean, I am a country bumpkin, hailing from Marengo and all, but I've lived in Chicago for the past two years (real Chicago, not Palatine or Barrington like the rest of you have to say when you're asked what part of Chicago you're from), so I'm used to city. And a lot of New York is just like any other big old block of city: cars, pavement, people, tall buildings, scaffolds, honking. Walking around 168th & Broadway here looks pretty much like walking around Wilson & Broadway back home.

But on the ride from La Guardia to Manhattan on this gray-skied day, I looked out at the skyline and realized it never fucking ended. The New York skyline never fucking ends. The Chicago skyline is a beautiful cluster surrounded by lake and fields. The NYC skyline is like someone taped building-shaped paper cutouts in a circle all around you. The hazel color of the heavens and the vaguely foggy distance amplified the effect, so it looked like the front skyline of skyscrapers had silhouettes projected behind them, and then silhouettes in between, just filling the distance. I almost laughed, thinking this was an optical illusion playing out on me.

But it wasn't. It was New York, on the way in.

Friendly: Believe it or not, fearmongers. Don't get me wrong, I know you have to have a certain kind of toughness (self-sufficiency, independence, imperviousness to insult, ability to work under pressure) to make it here, but the myth of the hateful masses didn't play out for me.

First of all, my plane was about 4 hours late getting in. So the apartment owners' friend who was supposed to give me the keys did not get to meet me at 2:00 as agreed; instead I called her apologetically at about 6:00. Was she upset? Not at all. She was the friendliest, bubbliest person on earth, excited that I had made it and eager to help, and so on. Now to get to her downtown. The driver who was supposed to meet me 4 hours ago, once I called, was busy with other jobs of course, but he hastily called other drivers and set it up with them to come and get me as quickly as he could. I accidentally told that driver the wrong terminal on the phone, so an old man nearby came and tapped me on the shoulder, smiling, to give me the correct terminal name and tell me he didn't want me to be sitting there stuck waiting. That driver then took me into Manhattan on a Saturday night and was willing to get stuck in traffic doing circles while I found the girl who I was supposed to meet, who darted out into the street to give me the keys in the car on the road before the traffic around could shoot us. Because, you know, New Yorkers are so mean and all.

Forgiving: It bodes poorly for my future decent self that I can get away with pretty much being as rude or dismissive as I desire. Where in other places, if I ignore people when they talk to me, push past crowds to get where I'm going, etc, I would get dirty looks, here I feel I have impunity. Now, I've always prided myself on being at least a little gentlemanly, if only because it fits into my quixotic self-delusions, but I have to say it's pretty freeing when an annoying street vendor or someone pretending to need directions so they can ask you for money to feed their drug addiction approaches you and you can just pretend they don't exist and keep on going.

In Chicago, bums were incredulous when I wouldn't give them money. There was one who hung outside the Dominick's parking lot every day, asking for money, and one time (when I'd lived there for like 2 years and had seen him there) he came up and said, "Hey, I ran out of gas. Can you spare some money for gas?" "Sorry," I said and kept loading groceries into the car. "Come on," he insisted, "I just need some money for gas." He didn't have a car, mind you. I shook my head. "Sorry," I repeated, just trying to get my groceries in the car. "Are you serious?" he sneered. "You're not gonna give me anything?" I ignored him. "Fuck you," he told me, "you're not even from this country." And he walked away.

Now, angry bums I can get used to. But xenophobic angry bums? That's just sad. I actually am a native-born citizen, but come on, why would they be against immigration. It's not like someone's gonna steal their jobs.