FLOYD
Sure, "I think", as Descartes might have said, but that's about it. My guarantee ends there, because anything after that is completely random and subject to you.
You as in vouz, people in general. You will do any number of things to try make me back down on my promises, as if somehow they are the truth.
Maybe you're the ones who have too much invested in me?
If you want to know what to expect, don't make me promise you anything past the fact that, I do in fact, think.
Our love has the same parameters, everything past the love is a random occurrence, subject to any given situation that VOUZ PRESENTEZ.
None of that should have stood in the way.
None of it can stand in the way, when you put no expectations past the fact of love.
FLOYD
1/31/2009
FOLKS
B. McGILLICUDDY
Transient fucking thing, people are.
If you have any kind of understanding of how life came to be here, then you know that we only sit tight for sixty or so years because that’s the way it had to happen. Successful reproduction is the driving force behind our going and goings on. Successful re-pro-duction.
Now we go on and about moving from thing to thing like it’s our business to be this ADHD. But we're neglectin' to take a hint from the much calmer, steadier forces that keep on keeping on, without being busy or hard-pressed to get stuff done. Look at trees for instance.
A billion years ago, trees got it all figured out, just set themselves down, organism and environment working in harmony, without any need to fuck with all else, and goddamn trees have been around for a while haven’t they? But people? Naw, naw people pick up and move on as soon as life gets a little awkward. They just keep that train of thought movin’ from station to station to station until the fuel’s all used up. I suppose not all people are like that though. Well, take ole Maw and Paw Sanchez for example.
Now they’re not really as ole as their name implies, they’re just wise and steady in their ways. Made a fortune on the internet not too long ago, and bought a farm with their earnings, “royalties” they call ‘em. And now they just sit on their porch in the hot day’s dawn and noon and night, pondering on the ole pondering juice, occasionally heading in for a little hanky-panky, ‘cause that’s what married folks do, and supposedly they’re collaborating on some sort of joint venture together. Might account for that big ole crop o’ marijuana in their back yard.
Tell you the God’s honest truth, ya'll--I envy the motherfuckers.
B. McGILLICUDDY
Transient fucking thing, people are.
If you have any kind of understanding of how life came to be here, then you know that we only sit tight for sixty or so years because that’s the way it had to happen. Successful reproduction is the driving force behind our going and goings on. Successful re-pro-duction.
Now we go on and about moving from thing to thing like it’s our business to be this ADHD. But we're neglectin' to take a hint from the much calmer, steadier forces that keep on keeping on, without being busy or hard-pressed to get stuff done. Look at trees for instance.
A billion years ago, trees got it all figured out, just set themselves down, organism and environment working in harmony, without any need to fuck with all else, and goddamn trees have been around for a while haven’t they? But people? Naw, naw people pick up and move on as soon as life gets a little awkward. They just keep that train of thought movin’ from station to station to station until the fuel’s all used up. I suppose not all people are like that though. Well, take ole Maw and Paw Sanchez for example.
Now they’re not really as ole as their name implies, they’re just wise and steady in their ways. Made a fortune on the internet not too long ago, and bought a farm with their earnings, “royalties” they call ‘em. And now they just sit on their porch in the hot day’s dawn and noon and night, pondering on the ole pondering juice, occasionally heading in for a little hanky-panky, ‘cause that’s what married folks do, and supposedly they’re collaborating on some sort of joint venture together. Might account for that big ole crop o’ marijuana in their back yard.
Tell you the God’s honest truth, ya'll--I envy the motherfuckers.
B. McGILLICUDDY
1/30/2009
SOMEWHERE IN THE DISTANT FUTURE
B. McGILLICUDDY
Larry asks Sally if it was worth it, if it was worth the injustice and apathy and the constant risk of exclusion. She says yes, and even though she means it, she knows it’s not true. It's a hard-earned fact, but that doesn’t keep it from being contrary to reality. Larry balances a bowl on his head and his eyes dash between the object of his concentration and her stare, but of course he’s more concerned about the bowl at the moment. She asks him if he’s listening. He says he is, kind of. Then he lets the bowl slide into his palm, and that’s when she lunges at him, striking his lips ever so precisely with her own. It’s all over, the meaning is irrelevant, all that she knows in the back of her mind is that George will find out soon, and he’s not going to like it. But at the forefront of her mind is a beautiful boy with beautiful lips whose arms are tight around her. Music plays in the background, a piece neither of them have heard of, but one that will forever have its melodies ingrained in their minds. Larry isn’t the least bit concerned about these things. All that he has in his head is the rumination of the fact that he’s wanted to kiss this girl for as long as he can remember, and that hope is now fact. What will they do? How will it play out? Won’t they both die one day?
B. McGILLICUDDY
Larry asks Sally if it was worth it, if it was worth the injustice and apathy and the constant risk of exclusion. She says yes, and even though she means it, she knows it’s not true. It's a hard-earned fact, but that doesn’t keep it from being contrary to reality. Larry balances a bowl on his head and his eyes dash between the object of his concentration and her stare, but of course he’s more concerned about the bowl at the moment. She asks him if he’s listening. He says he is, kind of. Then he lets the bowl slide into his palm, and that’s when she lunges at him, striking his lips ever so precisely with her own. It’s all over, the meaning is irrelevant, all that she knows in the back of her mind is that George will find out soon, and he’s not going to like it. But at the forefront of her mind is a beautiful boy with beautiful lips whose arms are tight around her. Music plays in the background, a piece neither of them have heard of, but one that will forever have its melodies ingrained in their minds. Larry isn’t the least bit concerned about these things. All that he has in his head is the rumination of the fact that he’s wanted to kiss this girl for as long as he can remember, and that hope is now fact. What will they do? How will it play out? Won’t they both die one day?
B. McGILLICUDDY
1/29/2009
BUZZ!
FLOYD
Buzz!
"Hey I'm here"
"okay, I'll be right down! Yay!"
She sounded excited, but not too excited. It was as if she was trying to convince me that she was, when, infact, she was not. It was just a little bit of her character that always threw me off. I appreciated her humour and her hair, the way she played guitar and the voice she used to fake that excitement. It never bothered me, just threw me off.
I always had a predilection for her company. I am not much for words but I feel uncomfortable in silence, but never with her. We could just sit an stare and breathe aimlessly, it was fresh. Even after a while, I'd get the feeling that I loved her, I felt that among all my failed love affairs, she could be the one, for there was never an affair at all. I imagined us traversing the wonders of the world and the galleries of deceased empires.
She is beautiful, but I'm not all too attracted to her. It's fair to say I just want to hold on to her company forever, I don't know exactly how I love her yet, but I know it's pure.
The door opened and she had company with her, a lovely girl whom I had never seen before, "hello! My name is Floyd"
"oh hi! Are you Vanessa's boyfriend?"
My eyes went weak as they moved over to Vanessa, she replied, "Hah no way, this is the guy I was telling you about! I love him like a sibling!"
I don't know exactly how I love her yet, but I know it's not like that.
FLOYD
Buzz!
"Hey I'm here"
"okay, I'll be right down! Yay!"
She sounded excited, but not too excited. It was as if she was trying to convince me that she was, when, infact, she was not. It was just a little bit of her character that always threw me off. I appreciated her humour and her hair, the way she played guitar and the voice she used to fake that excitement. It never bothered me, just threw me off.
I always had a predilection for her company. I am not much for words but I feel uncomfortable in silence, but never with her. We could just sit an stare and breathe aimlessly, it was fresh. Even after a while, I'd get the feeling that I loved her, I felt that among all my failed love affairs, she could be the one, for there was never an affair at all. I imagined us traversing the wonders of the world and the galleries of deceased empires.
She is beautiful, but I'm not all too attracted to her. It's fair to say I just want to hold on to her company forever, I don't know exactly how I love her yet, but I know it's pure.
The door opened and she had company with her, a lovely girl whom I had never seen before, "hello! My name is Floyd"
"oh hi! Are you Vanessa's boyfriend?"
My eyes went weak as they moved over to Vanessa, she replied, "Hah no way, this is the guy I was telling you about! I love him like a sibling!"
I don't know exactly how I love her yet, but I know it's not like that.
FLOYD
THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID
B. McGILLICUDDY
She had contacted me.
It was a solid two months since we split. More than enough time to revert back to friend-status, especially since we'd only dated for 3/4 of that time anyway.
I called her cell from down the block, "I'm here."
"What?"
"I'm here."
"Oh, well come on up."
"NO!" I yelled, menacingly.
"Shut the fuck up," she chuckled, "you're ridiculous!"
We both laughed and I hung up.
The door was cracked, and as I entered I looked to my left and saw her sitting on her futon, typing away at her laptop. Her hair was up in that sideways '80s ponytail that nobody, ever, pulls off right. And yet...there she was...doing it...against all the laws of physics...she was a vision of the truth, an apparition of my past that was now solid and perfect and A FRIEND. A FRIEND GODDAMNIT. WE'RE JUST FUCKING FRIENDS.
"Yo. What you doing?" I asked.
"Editing my myspace. Can you help me?"
"Nobody uses that shit anymore," I sat down next to her.
"Well, my sister does. It's the only way she'll communicate with me besides phone. I tried messaging her on facebook, and that was an epic fail. It's been a month, no reply."
"So what are you trying to do?"
"Just jazz it up a bit. Oh! Lemme add you as a friend!"
She typed in my name, and my page came up in the search window. :CYNICAL ROMANTIC: was the title. She gingerly ignored the obvious signs there, and clicked on my profile pic.
"This is completely lame! You can't help me, you don't have anything on your page!"
"That's by choice though, I used to pimp it out all the time, but I just...don't care enough right now, I guess. But I do know how to do it."
"I knew you would. So you going to help me?"
She looked up at me with those eyes, those big, sexy eyes. No, those big, friendly eyes. Those big, sexy, sexy eyes...those big...
"Buttercup?"
"Huh? What?"
"You have a boner."
"Uh...wanna have sex?"
"I'm sorry but I've got nowhere for you to put that."
Her face was stone-cold. Brutal. Haggard almost, in my sudden, fear-induced delusion. Shit. There wasn't enough blood in my brain to say anything logical, so I stood up and took out the bouquet of roses I had tucked away in my jacket, set them on the coffee table and walked out of the apartment. Luckily a good case of blushing and rushing flushes out a stiff one pretty quickly.
I was dating another girl by Tuesday. She was alright, not really my type, but definitely worth the play, if nothing else but for experience, and fucking incredible in bed. It wasn't until after I got home from a date with her though, that I checked my myspace and found one friend request, accompanied by a message: "I really like the flowers".
Double-fuck my life.
B. McGILLICUDDY
She had contacted me.
It was a solid two months since we split. More than enough time to revert back to friend-status, especially since we'd only dated for 3/4 of that time anyway.
I called her cell from down the block, "I'm here."
"What?"
"I'm here."
"Oh, well come on up."
"NO!" I yelled, menacingly.
"Shut the fuck up," she chuckled, "you're ridiculous!"
We both laughed and I hung up.
The door was cracked, and as I entered I looked to my left and saw her sitting on her futon, typing away at her laptop. Her hair was up in that sideways '80s ponytail that nobody, ever, pulls off right. And yet...there she was...doing it...against all the laws of physics...she was a vision of the truth, an apparition of my past that was now solid and perfect and A FRIEND. A FRIEND GODDAMNIT. WE'RE JUST FUCKING FRIENDS.
"Yo. What you doing?" I asked.
"Editing my myspace. Can you help me?"
"Nobody uses that shit anymore," I sat down next to her.
"Well, my sister does. It's the only way she'll communicate with me besides phone. I tried messaging her on facebook, and that was an epic fail. It's been a month, no reply."
"So what are you trying to do?"
"Just jazz it up a bit. Oh! Lemme add you as a friend!"
She typed in my name, and my page came up in the search window. :CYNICAL ROMANTIC: was the title. She gingerly ignored the obvious signs there, and clicked on my profile pic.
"This is completely lame! You can't help me, you don't have anything on your page!"
"That's by choice though, I used to pimp it out all the time, but I just...don't care enough right now, I guess. But I do know how to do it."
"I knew you would. So you going to help me?"
She looked up at me with those eyes, those big, sexy eyes. No, those big, friendly eyes. Those big, sexy, sexy eyes...those big...
"Buttercup?"
"Huh? What?"
"You have a boner."
"Uh...wanna have sex?"
"I'm sorry but I've got nowhere for you to put that."
Her face was stone-cold. Brutal. Haggard almost, in my sudden, fear-induced delusion. Shit. There wasn't enough blood in my brain to say anything logical, so I stood up and took out the bouquet of roses I had tucked away in my jacket, set them on the coffee table and walked out of the apartment. Luckily a good case of blushing and rushing flushes out a stiff one pretty quickly.
I was dating another girl by Tuesday. She was alright, not really my type, but definitely worth the play, if nothing else but for experience, and fucking incredible in bed. It wasn't until after I got home from a date with her though, that I checked my myspace and found one friend request, accompanied by a message: "I really like the flowers".
Double-fuck my life.
B. McGILLICUDDY
SITTING, WAITING, WISHING
B. McGILLICUDDY
Just one song...or two, she said, moving from the bed to the iHome on her shelf, wearing nothing but my favorite shirt, the one with the Shakespearean skull, snake, broken crown and broken chain of pearls etched, like a woodblock print on it. She started singing with the song: lies, they’re lies, they’re lies, your plans are never finalized...you said our love would never die...nothing is clear. She sang the song all the way through, a cappella after a while--the file on her iPod came from a scratched CD.
She likes the sound of men singers. I like the sound of women singers, because they remind me that there are some drugs that you don’t have to take, but that can take you, that can invade your ears and break your heart, like the voice of a woman scorned.
She lifted my t-shirt up and over her breasts, the stud in her right nipple glimmered, and the reflection of the cool morning swimming through the window caught my eye in it. It was simple in the moonlight now it’s so complicated, she sang with the second song, now dolled up in a crimson shirt that made her lips look even rosier than I remember them, and that brought out the luster of her dream-spattered eyes.
I saw a long, dusty road stretching over sandy plains in my mind just then, for some reason--some disjointed, disgruntled reason. It must matter, because I’ll déjà vu it eventually.
Then she put on Incubus. I hate Incubus. But I’d never tell her that, she loves them. She knows all the words to all the songs on her iPod, but she sings to Incubus with a look in her eyes she only has when she’s forgotten I’m there, staring at her forgetting about me, and some intoxicating moment of her life flashes in her mind’s eye.
She came back to me about mid-song and blew me a kiss. I kissed back as an electric feel crawled up my spine and into my head, but a quick smile of content was all I allowed my mouth to show. Because that volleyed kiss meant something like “love”, and I love her like they say it in dictionaries and romance novels, but I can’t say it when I feel it because the words water down the oily, mortifying, kinetic, distant and ever-present fact of it.
The song ended and she whispered, that’s the song that I was looking for. The playlist rolled on and Jack Johnson came next, my favorite of his songs, and I slung my head back and listened to her sing every word to me in a voice she says makes her seem more boyish than her girly heart feels. But it’s like acid to my ears--tonal LSD.
B. McGILLICUDDY
Just one song...or two, she said, moving from the bed to the iHome on her shelf, wearing nothing but my favorite shirt, the one with the Shakespearean skull, snake, broken crown and broken chain of pearls etched, like a woodblock print on it. She started singing with the song: lies, they’re lies, they’re lies, your plans are never finalized...you said our love would never die...nothing is clear. She sang the song all the way through, a cappella after a while--the file on her iPod came from a scratched CD.
She likes the sound of men singers. I like the sound of women singers, because they remind me that there are some drugs that you don’t have to take, but that can take you, that can invade your ears and break your heart, like the voice of a woman scorned.
She lifted my t-shirt up and over her breasts, the stud in her right nipple glimmered, and the reflection of the cool morning swimming through the window caught my eye in it. It was simple in the moonlight now it’s so complicated, she sang with the second song, now dolled up in a crimson shirt that made her lips look even rosier than I remember them, and that brought out the luster of her dream-spattered eyes.
I saw a long, dusty road stretching over sandy plains in my mind just then, for some reason--some disjointed, disgruntled reason. It must matter, because I’ll déjà vu it eventually.
Then she put on Incubus. I hate Incubus. But I’d never tell her that, she loves them. She knows all the words to all the songs on her iPod, but she sings to Incubus with a look in her eyes she only has when she’s forgotten I’m there, staring at her forgetting about me, and some intoxicating moment of her life flashes in her mind’s eye.
She came back to me about mid-song and blew me a kiss. I kissed back as an electric feel crawled up my spine and into my head, but a quick smile of content was all I allowed my mouth to show. Because that volleyed kiss meant something like “love”, and I love her like they say it in dictionaries and romance novels, but I can’t say it when I feel it because the words water down the oily, mortifying, kinetic, distant and ever-present fact of it.
The song ended and she whispered, that’s the song that I was looking for. The playlist rolled on and Jack Johnson came next, my favorite of his songs, and I slung my head back and listened to her sing every word to me in a voice she says makes her seem more boyish than her girly heart feels. But it’s like acid to my ears--tonal LSD.
B. McGILLICUDDY
THE DRESS
FLOYD
I don't want to describe a dress, with colours that matched the girl I had hoped would wear it. A soft cream fabric was accented with large, scattered black and rose circles. The black, like her eyes, were bold and infinite. The rose, like her lips, was gentle and inviting.
I don't want to describe a day that we caressed each other on pure white sheets, on the highest level of a hotel skyscraper. I would take the silk underlining of the dress and watch the straps gently fall off her shoulder. I would kiss her chest and hold her head with my left hand as she arched backward and I would run my right hand around her silk waist.
I don't want to describe the moment that I looked in her eye as I gently placed her down on her pillow, and told her nothing more than my eyes could say.
I don't want to describe the feeling I got when she placed her fully sprawled hand against my face and ran her fingers slowly to my lips. The way she looked at me and touched my body so curiously. We were not strangers to each other, but every second we spent was a new moment of discovery.
I don't want to describe the moment I knelt in to place those lips against hers and I shut my eyes but not before I was sure she had shut hers, in satisfaction.
I don't want to describe the love making, the biting, the kissing, the licking and rubbing.
I don't want to describe how beautiful she looked in that dress.
I don't want to describe how the memory of her lying there in the bed, with the dress nearly falling off, would be the image I put myself to sleep with for the months to come.
I don't want to describe, I want to live it.
Again.
FLOYD
I don't want to describe a dress, with colours that matched the girl I had hoped would wear it. A soft cream fabric was accented with large, scattered black and rose circles. The black, like her eyes, were bold and infinite. The rose, like her lips, was gentle and inviting.
I don't want to describe a day that we caressed each other on pure white sheets, on the highest level of a hotel skyscraper. I would take the silk underlining of the dress and watch the straps gently fall off her shoulder. I would kiss her chest and hold her head with my left hand as she arched backward and I would run my right hand around her silk waist.
I don't want to describe the moment that I looked in her eye as I gently placed her down on her pillow, and told her nothing more than my eyes could say.
I don't want to describe the feeling I got when she placed her fully sprawled hand against my face and ran her fingers slowly to my lips. The way she looked at me and touched my body so curiously. We were not strangers to each other, but every second we spent was a new moment of discovery.
I don't want to describe the moment I knelt in to place those lips against hers and I shut my eyes but not before I was sure she had shut hers, in satisfaction.
I don't want to describe the love making, the biting, the kissing, the licking and rubbing.
I don't want to describe how beautiful she looked in that dress.
I don't want to describe how the memory of her lying there in the bed, with the dress nearly falling off, would be the image I put myself to sleep with for the months to come.
I don't want to describe, I want to live it.
Again.
FLOYD
1/28/2009
BROKEN RIB
B. McGILLICUDDY
Adam didn’t know what he was getting into. He didn’t ask to be here. He didn’t expect to be anywhere, but now look at this mess.
He had just finished getting a degree in philosophy at a school in the Deep South, Louisiana to be precise, because he liked the rumbling decadence that barreled through the delta. There was something about the people there that startled him. Only in New Orleans could you see a bunch of Black, slum-grown hoodlums on a street corner, shouting, moaning, banging on drums and blowing through cold brass, jazz music, like freestyling angels, as if it were the only thing in the world to do. He had felt like that might be the only place in the country to study western philosophy, where televangelism met voodoo, and life seemed like a gooey mesh of everything. Where could you find meaning in that? If you could, then you’d be the bearer of the big answer, he had thought.
But in four years he hadn’t found it, just more questions, and instead of looking somewhere else, he was sitting in a cage, feeding an overgrown stalk of grass to a two-hundred pound teddy bear with a cupid complex but no libido of her own in the dead of a dry winter.
“I’m sick, Adam,” his father had said over the phone, “sick as a dog. I’ll be dead in six weeks.” What a dick. He’d been having chest pains for the past two years, coughing up a lung, refusing to have it checked out, low and behold, cancer. What a dick. He’d always been a dick, and had been the panda keeper at the zoo in D.C. at least as long as Adam could remember. In fact, when the handlers from China brought this elegant monstrosity to the zoo, Adam was twelve, and when his father had said the name of her, it sounded so awkward and just, Chinese, that Adam decided to call her Chun-Li, and never changed his mind on the matter.
She stopped eating and crawled toward the edge of the glass viewing screen, and as Adam watched her he thought about all the wonder and ideas her kind inspired. And how up close and real, she was just an animal, like every other, sloshing through life into an unknown beyond, just like him. Just like everything.
“What’s her name?”
Adam’s eyes ventured passed Chun-Li’s waddling posterior, to a figure standing behind the glass. He could just make out a girl in a dark grey pea coat standing a meter from the window. He walked up and as he approached he could slowly make her out--Asian, petit, hair tied back, and eyes shifting between the dual-toned behemoth and him, with equal fascination in both glances.
“Check the display!” He yelled through the glass, pointing toward the post near the window as he strutted over to her.
“How do you pronounce it?”
“I have no clue, I just call her Chun-Li.” She grinned, her cheeks arched knowingly. “So what’s a cute videogame nerd doing at the zoo, in the cold, ten minutes before closing?”
“Checking out the wildlife,” she said coyly. Chun-Li waddled away, grabbing the bamboo out of Adam’s hand as she passed, I’ll leave you two alone.
“What’s your name?”
“Eve.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“You’re cursing at me.”
“I’m sorry, it’s the cold, I hate it.”
“Yeah...”
“Adam! Adam’s my name! That’s why I thought it was...”
“Oh.”
“Excuse me miss, but the zoo’s closing,” Adam’s boss said, giving him a tilted look of disbelief from the woman's side.
“Oh I’m sorry, I’m just...”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” His hand was on her shoulder. What a dick.
“Oh, well, um, bye Adam!”
Adam watched in brazen disbelief as the girl walked off with little less pep in her step than he would have expected to see if he had had the time to make a date with her, which shocked him a little, but then he turned back to the zookeeper, who gave him a wide-eyed douchebaggy stare, mouthing, “Clean that up will ya?” Adam turned, and behind him Chun-Li was finishing up taking a massive crap. What a dick.
He walked over to her and stared, searching for something in her eyes, an answer or a mystery. But there was nothing but abyss, amplified by the black patches surrounding her nothing-but-iris, pupils-contracting-in-the-twilight eyes. “We’re different, you and I,” he said to her, and walked into the compound in search of a pooper-scooper.
B. McGILLICUDDY
Adam didn’t know what he was getting into. He didn’t ask to be here. He didn’t expect to be anywhere, but now look at this mess.
He had just finished getting a degree in philosophy at a school in the Deep South, Louisiana to be precise, because he liked the rumbling decadence that barreled through the delta. There was something about the people there that startled him. Only in New Orleans could you see a bunch of Black, slum-grown hoodlums on a street corner, shouting, moaning, banging on drums and blowing through cold brass, jazz music, like freestyling angels, as if it were the only thing in the world to do. He had felt like that might be the only place in the country to study western philosophy, where televangelism met voodoo, and life seemed like a gooey mesh of everything. Where could you find meaning in that? If you could, then you’d be the bearer of the big answer, he had thought.
But in four years he hadn’t found it, just more questions, and instead of looking somewhere else, he was sitting in a cage, feeding an overgrown stalk of grass to a two-hundred pound teddy bear with a cupid complex but no libido of her own in the dead of a dry winter.
“I’m sick, Adam,” his father had said over the phone, “sick as a dog. I’ll be dead in six weeks.” What a dick. He’d been having chest pains for the past two years, coughing up a lung, refusing to have it checked out, low and behold, cancer. What a dick. He’d always been a dick, and had been the panda keeper at the zoo in D.C. at least as long as Adam could remember. In fact, when the handlers from China brought this elegant monstrosity to the zoo, Adam was twelve, and when his father had said the name of her, it sounded so awkward and just, Chinese, that Adam decided to call her Chun-Li, and never changed his mind on the matter.
She stopped eating and crawled toward the edge of the glass viewing screen, and as Adam watched her he thought about all the wonder and ideas her kind inspired. And how up close and real, she was just an animal, like every other, sloshing through life into an unknown beyond, just like him. Just like everything.
“What’s her name?”
Adam’s eyes ventured passed Chun-Li’s waddling posterior, to a figure standing behind the glass. He could just make out a girl in a dark grey pea coat standing a meter from the window. He walked up and as he approached he could slowly make her out--Asian, petit, hair tied back, and eyes shifting between the dual-toned behemoth and him, with equal fascination in both glances.
“Check the display!” He yelled through the glass, pointing toward the post near the window as he strutted over to her.
“How do you pronounce it?”
“I have no clue, I just call her Chun-Li.” She grinned, her cheeks arched knowingly. “So what’s a cute videogame nerd doing at the zoo, in the cold, ten minutes before closing?”
“Checking out the wildlife,” she said coyly. Chun-Li waddled away, grabbing the bamboo out of Adam’s hand as she passed, I’ll leave you two alone.
“What’s your name?”
“Eve.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“You’re cursing at me.”
“I’m sorry, it’s the cold, I hate it.”
“Yeah...”
“Adam! Adam’s my name! That’s why I thought it was...”
“Oh.”
“Excuse me miss, but the zoo’s closing,” Adam’s boss said, giving him a tilted look of disbelief from the woman's side.
“Oh I’m sorry, I’m just...”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” His hand was on her shoulder. What a dick.
“Oh, well, um, bye Adam!”
Adam watched in brazen disbelief as the girl walked off with little less pep in her step than he would have expected to see if he had had the time to make a date with her, which shocked him a little, but then he turned back to the zookeeper, who gave him a wide-eyed douchebaggy stare, mouthing, “Clean that up will ya?” Adam turned, and behind him Chun-Li was finishing up taking a massive crap. What a dick.
He walked over to her and stared, searching for something in her eyes, an answer or a mystery. But there was nothing but abyss, amplified by the black patches surrounding her nothing-but-iris, pupils-contracting-in-the-twilight eyes. “We’re different, you and I,” he said to her, and walked into the compound in search of a pooper-scooper.
B. McGILLICUDDY
HOW IT WENT DOWN
FLOYD
"What major are you going in?"
"Film..." I wasn't paying much attention, I noticed her kneeling down into her locker and I turned to Retoque and said, "I'm sorry, I have to go seal my fate."
What an odd choice of words. I was trying to sound dramatic, not literal, I never expected her to react the way she did. I had wasted precious words on a woman I barely knew and for two strong weeks my mind was certain of my hearts place. It was as if there were two large pieces of puzzle lying on a table that had yet to be placed in their obvious position. Whereas my intuition knew that the two pieces should be together, she was oblivious to it. I thought she had yet to realize the obvious solution and I was planning on informing her, with a charming letter of eloquence and confession.
So as I walked down the narrow hallway of lockers to what I was sure was going to be the most drastic and interesting moment of my later life, I was halted by the inquisition of a class mate, "will you be going to the bar tonight?" he asked. I should have said yes, definitely, instead I played it like I was too good for him, "we'll see man."
Calm and confident, I turned and was two feet facing a window, the city skyline was just a blur in this moment of concentration as, in complete focus, she arose and looked at me as I pronounced her name, "Colora".
"Yes?"
I nearly lost my cool when I went to retrieve the letter that was in my pocket to realize it wasn't there. What felt like forever, was actually no time, when I realized it was in my bag and before I knew it my calm had taken such a hold over me that I was already handing her the note with a soft smile and eyes that spoke wisdom over my words, "don't be freaked out."
She didn't freak out. She just looked at me and smiled, and I was convinced I was in. She must've known what was going on, I barely spoke to her and I was giving her a little rough note wrapped in a torn sheet from my sketchbook. She surely acted surprised but I didn't wait for her to open it, I left with pride and jitters. A strange sensation of heat and cold whisked through my nerves and I imagined myself a top the tallest mountain of a far-reaching planet. I was master of my universe and nothing could stop me.
Two days I spent wandering that planet alone, trying to communicate with the species who thought my actions were foreign and absurd, but nonetheless new and captivating. They would give me hope, praising me for my fresh attitude toward romanticizing the one I admired.
It was in the loud mechanical crunching cavern of the metro that I received her reply. The telephone that was invented for voice communications instead had a short letter, it was a welcome one but I knew what it said. The uncertainty in the greeting, the compliment right off the bat, then cut right to the truth/lie: she had a boyfriend.
Fair, it was worth a shot, but then she pulled my string; she "admired my confidence." I know she was trying to be polite, but I can't help but wonder how she knew that it was a courageous act in the first place. Those three words had me wondering who she was.
I replied, to stroke her ego some more, "When I first saw you, I felt you were special, after reading your reply, I know I was right." Being short winded and enigmatic made me believe it would sway her, interest her, make me look mysterious. It made me look like a religiously-enlightened beggar, far too above himself, yet humbled and desperate.
I passed her by in the cafeteria and she veered her eyes to her far left, my right. I didn't say a thing, I knew where we stood. Given her rejection, I was left noticing on the 7th day from the origin of this story, that a full week had passed, indeed, and much had changed. My world had drastically changed, I was now less confident, increasingly alone and ridiculed, and more fearful than I had been in months. As we sat within the class I overheard a conversation she held with another classmate, whom I did not know, but I certainly envied. She never glanced over at me even once, and I did my best to ignore her, but I could not ignore the question she was presented with, "what major are you going in?"
I imagined us as puzzles again, her finding me on the desk, this time among many pieces of puzzle, all forming a picture, but with one piece missing. There were two of us, but only one spot remained and my intuition served me well once again when I realized I needed that spot before she took it. I was too late, because before I knew it, she had lit a fire on my connecting limb. As the flame enveloped me, I watched her sidle in comfortably in the spot of the puzzle that I was intent on completing. The seams between the pieces disappeared and the image became a mirror. They had given me the honour of watching myself become ash; "I'm going into film."
FLOYD
"What major are you going in?"
"Film..." I wasn't paying much attention, I noticed her kneeling down into her locker and I turned to Retoque and said, "I'm sorry, I have to go seal my fate."
What an odd choice of words. I was trying to sound dramatic, not literal, I never expected her to react the way she did. I had wasted precious words on a woman I barely knew and for two strong weeks my mind was certain of my hearts place. It was as if there were two large pieces of puzzle lying on a table that had yet to be placed in their obvious position. Whereas my intuition knew that the two pieces should be together, she was oblivious to it. I thought she had yet to realize the obvious solution and I was planning on informing her, with a charming letter of eloquence and confession.
So as I walked down the narrow hallway of lockers to what I was sure was going to be the most drastic and interesting moment of my later life, I was halted by the inquisition of a class mate, "will you be going to the bar tonight?" he asked. I should have said yes, definitely, instead I played it like I was too good for him, "we'll see man."
Calm and confident, I turned and was two feet facing a window, the city skyline was just a blur in this moment of concentration as, in complete focus, she arose and looked at me as I pronounced her name, "Colora".
"Yes?"
I nearly lost my cool when I went to retrieve the letter that was in my pocket to realize it wasn't there. What felt like forever, was actually no time, when I realized it was in my bag and before I knew it my calm had taken such a hold over me that I was already handing her the note with a soft smile and eyes that spoke wisdom over my words, "don't be freaked out."
She didn't freak out. She just looked at me and smiled, and I was convinced I was in. She must've known what was going on, I barely spoke to her and I was giving her a little rough note wrapped in a torn sheet from my sketchbook. She surely acted surprised but I didn't wait for her to open it, I left with pride and jitters. A strange sensation of heat and cold whisked through my nerves and I imagined myself a top the tallest mountain of a far-reaching planet. I was master of my universe and nothing could stop me.
Two days I spent wandering that planet alone, trying to communicate with the species who thought my actions were foreign and absurd, but nonetheless new and captivating. They would give me hope, praising me for my fresh attitude toward romanticizing the one I admired.
It was in the loud mechanical crunching cavern of the metro that I received her reply. The telephone that was invented for voice communications instead had a short letter, it was a welcome one but I knew what it said. The uncertainty in the greeting, the compliment right off the bat, then cut right to the truth/lie: she had a boyfriend.
Fair, it was worth a shot, but then she pulled my string; she "admired my confidence." I know she was trying to be polite, but I can't help but wonder how she knew that it was a courageous act in the first place. Those three words had me wondering who she was.
I replied, to stroke her ego some more, "When I first saw you, I felt you were special, after reading your reply, I know I was right." Being short winded and enigmatic made me believe it would sway her, interest her, make me look mysterious. It made me look like a religiously-enlightened beggar, far too above himself, yet humbled and desperate.
I passed her by in the cafeteria and she veered her eyes to her far left, my right. I didn't say a thing, I knew where we stood. Given her rejection, I was left noticing on the 7th day from the origin of this story, that a full week had passed, indeed, and much had changed. My world had drastically changed, I was now less confident, increasingly alone and ridiculed, and more fearful than I had been in months. As we sat within the class I overheard a conversation she held with another classmate, whom I did not know, but I certainly envied. She never glanced over at me even once, and I did my best to ignore her, but I could not ignore the question she was presented with, "what major are you going in?"
I imagined us as puzzles again, her finding me on the desk, this time among many pieces of puzzle, all forming a picture, but with one piece missing. There were two of us, but only one spot remained and my intuition served me well once again when I realized I needed that spot before she took it. I was too late, because before I knew it, she had lit a fire on my connecting limb. As the flame enveloped me, I watched her sidle in comfortably in the spot of the puzzle that I was intent on completing. The seams between the pieces disappeared and the image became a mirror. They had given me the honour of watching myself become ash; "I'm going into film."
FLOYD
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