The Mistress

Sitting in the small, cramped and beige hotel room in this city I've never been to before, the drugs my campaign manager gave me are starting to take their effect. I watch the room bend and shake around me, look down at my speech and it's just five blank pages where I could swear there were words a second ago. He said it would be like this at first.
What did he call it? Demitrol? He said they used it to put cats under before they put them to sleep, so it would be mild enough on a guy like me that it shouldn't affect my performance today at the press conference, but it should numb me enough that I stop thinking about the other things going on while I'm talking.
“Relax,” I hear him say from some unseen corner in the room. I can see the sound waves from his voice, but he's nowhere. Logic says I must be breathing heavy or doing something to incite that, but I have no idea what. I can't feel a thing at the moment.
I'm not usually drugged during my speeches. Usually, I'm vibrant and thoughtful and passionate when I speak, but today I can't keep my mind straight.
Why? Because I'm damned.
Somebody somewhere in the world had to say, “Women are the downfall of man,” and that man must have been a politician. He must have been Cicero. He must have been in the same position I was in: she loves me too much, she can't stand me being married, she threatens, and now, she's got the leverage. Poking holes in condoms is the lowest of blows.
But I can't blame her. The truth is, I love her back. I want to leave my painfully pushy wife and move in with sweet, young, beautiful Jenn with her body shaped like an hourglass instead of like a pear. I find her more appealing in every way: she's smarter, more fun, more beautiful, funnier... there's very little about her I don't like. Except how much she can't stand seeing me play charades with this other woman, can't stand my facade.
It's not her fault really, she's a very real kind of person. That's why when I told her I couldn't divorce my wife for political reasons (for 784th time), she found a way to snap me out of it. She knew I wouldn't take the initiative, so she did. She just wanted to show me how stupid I was being, how false I was being.
She even told me she would never vote for me because she knew how much of a liar I was. God, I love her.
Demitrol apparently starts soft then hits hard. My campaign manager saw it coming and had a trash can set up for me to vomit in, my suit jacket hanging far away in the closet, my tie tucked around my neck in the back of my shirt. I miss at first and get a little on my shoes, and an intern is immediately down to scrub them down, tearing off my shoes and starting a deep cleanse while another violently puts my feet in another pair. All while I continue vomiting.
That bitch. I can't believe she would put me in such a bizarre place on purpose. An affair is one thing, but a child is another. An affair is heresy. A child is proof, undeniable, ever-present. She's incriminated me, dragging me down to the level of an adulterer. Who would trust a man whose own wife can't even trust him. Jenn was a slut to start off with, basically throwing herself at me at a local bar. She took me home the first night. I had never been that easy. But a fight with your wife, and a few beers later, you're ready to make all sorts of mistakes.
I can't believe what she's putting me through. How dare she! I agree to keep seeing her for 2 years, and now, at the peak of my career, she pulls this junior high shit on me. I'm lucky I have a great campaign manager who doesn't crack under pressure. He stands by me, and will do anything to help me. He's a great guy.
I feel myself being hauled to a mirror, but at the moment, all I see are vague colors that might be objects or rooms or people, or space ships for all I can tell. My hair is being scraped and plastered to the right, my tie is being straightened, my jacket being slipped on, one arm at a time, but all I can see is white light.
Then like a switch, clarity. I find myself in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, ready for my speech. Except I'm not wearing my reading glasses yet. They're in my pocket.
The campaign manager came up with the plan to take care of her:
Step 1) Abort the child.
Step 2) Ship her to France.
When the election is over, Step 3) Send for her.
That's the plan he told me, which sounds pretty reasonable. Happily ever after, safe from the complications of public rebuke. This would not stress out Woody Allen. So why am I on Demitrol?
Because I know my manager too well, and that is not his real plan. That's the Disney version he told me so that I wouldn't be distracted. But I know that it's easier to cover up a cadaver than a living person.
The words have come back to the pages of my speech, filling a neat little 9 ½ x 7” space on each piece of stationery. I bundle them together and begin my walk downstairs, surrounded by an entourage of young, ambitious cut-throats.
As we arrive downstairs, the press becomes an intimidating blob of black and white flashes. They sit sweetly in their chairs, yelling for their turn to speak to the man of the hour.
I am introduced. There is a flurry of applause.
Thank you. Thank you.
I begin to read my speech.
I'm on Demitrol because at this very moment, men in black suits are breaking down the door of my mistress's loft apartment, paid for by the Political Action Committee. They are breaking her door down to tell her that they are taking her to get an abortion of my illegitimate child. That is what they tell her, and that is what they told me, but that is not the truth. She will be bound, gagged, murdered, and her body tossed somewhere deep in the ocean where my campaign manager will be glad to bet his life savings she will never be found. Technically, that's what he's doing anyway, betting his life savings she'll remain a secret forever. I believe that this is an accurate metaphor for the state of our nation today.
Wild applause. I start wondering if I'm saying these things, or just thinking them behind the veil of my actual speech. At the moment, neither would surprise me. Read more...

The Somnambulist

We had been married for years, happily, lovingly, and simply married. We would work our respective jobs, he at the library, me teaching high schoolers proper grammar usage and writing skills, then we would come home and see each other and be overwhelmed with the happiness that comes with knowing that all day, all this person wanted was to see you. We would watch obscure movies while drinking red wine and eating macaroni and cheese before falling asleep on the couch in each other's arms. We really had a beautiful relationship that, in my mind, completed us as people.
But lately he's developed a habit of disappearing. Not literally disappearing into thin air, but rather mentally vanishing, like taking a leave of absence from reality. He's still here, but he's not on the same plane with me anymore. I suppose it started when we were both 28 years old.
I came home from work, but he wasn't anywhere to be found. I figured he was going to be home later, so I cooked macaroni and cheese for both of us as was our Friday evening wont, but he still didn't show up. Worried, I decided to see if his car had shown up yet, and strangely enough, it had. It was sitting in our driveway in all of its blue and chrome glory, present and imposing, intimidating because it had apparently driven itself into the driveway because my husband was missing completely. In a fit, I leapt out the door to see if I could find him, and I doubt that I would have if it weren't for his shoes and socks tossed haphazardly at the foot of our tree. My eyes craned upwards to find him curled up on a high branch with his pants rolled up staring intently at a book. I called his name, but he didn't respond, so I ran to the foot of the tree to get closer. All it did was make me feel farther, more distant than before. He was so high up through a bramble of barren branches, farther away from me than the sky. I called his name a few more times, but always to no answer, so I decided to climb up after him.
I worked my way up the tree, cutting myself here, scratching myself there, slipping, tripping, nearly falling time and time again, but I struggled on with determination to reach my husband somehow. Soon, I was within feet of him. I could reach out and grab the book away from him. But there was something in his eyes: an intensity that seemed alien and far out of place, which I had never seen before. I reached out and touched his leg, whispering his name while I did it. When he looked up from the book, he was at first shocked to see me. Or rather scared, his glance held more fear than surprise. What's more, it seemed to be fear of me, not of heights or location.
My first impression had been that he had for some reason climbed up there specifically to read, but reading the book was only a part of his state. Really he was all things entwined together: reading a tattered copy of Once and Future King, not wearing shoes or socks, being at this altitude in this tree specifically, ignoring me, and whatever else was going through is mind. Eliminate one, and the rest comes crashing down.
He started shaking with fear, and when I reached out to help him, he cringed, sliding farther away from me. I watched him fall from the top of our tree through all the helpless branches and straight to the ground, where his leg broke from the fall.
When he awoke in the hospital, he said he didn't remember any of what I said he had done. He didn't remember being in the tree or falling out of it, just driving home from the library and waking up in the hospital. The doctor listened almost half-heartedly to the report, then decided that my husband was probably sleepwalking.
I protested, “But he's never sleepwalked before. Why should he start now?” To which the doctor replied that there could be any number of reasons for it. Stress. Family history. General confusion. Any number of reasons. Then he left the room so my husband could heal.
That was the first time I saw it: him living a distant and separate life, living a dream. But it hasn't been the last time. I see him lost and far away all the time, sitting on our porch, on the couch, even driving in the car. He adopts a placid but intense visage which doesn't exist in the real world, but somehow does in his world. He seems to look through me. Not constantly, but many times. And there's nothing I can do about it. And I feel helpless.
But more than that, I feel left behind.
I see him perched high in the tree, or playing in the playground, completely unaware of what he's doing, and I imagine his freedom. The world peels away leaving only him and his imagination and what he wants to do, and it embraces him. But he always goes alone. He never takes me with him. And I can't help wishing that I was sick like him, that I was degenerating slowly in my mind like he is so I could join him, if only once.
Instead, he sits beside me, miles away from where I am. And I know that if I touch him, he would wake up. So I don't. I watch him live in his world from mine, and pray that he comes back, if only to say hello. Read more...

First Date at the Carnival

The carnival for our first date was all lights and electricity. I knew it was just my heart beating faster, but I felt the lights shining brighter, and the people felt warmer as we walked through the Earthly star system to the soul of the world. I told him this and his short, quaint laugh filled me from top to bottom with the love I was ready to pour out for him.
“Yeah,” he said as his eyes strayed away from mine towards the heart of the night. I could tell his thoughts were somewhere else, and I hoped that he was dreaming, like I was. Dreaming about the world and the future and this moment right now. I knew he was distracted by the dream we were living because his only responses were monosyllabic at best. But I would not hold that against him. Tonight was ours, and I was his, and he was the world's.
We went to a booth where he told me he would win a “really big stuffed animal” for me. A this booth, you squirt water from a gun into a clown's mouth and make a little horse run across the big plastic board. I saw the metaphor for our lives instantly unfold. I was the horse – oddly enough, my power animal – and he was shooting the water to make me go faster and faster, reaching for an end to my means. Reaching for a goal: the “really big stuffed animal” (clearly a representation of God and Heaven). And upon reaching the goal, he would smile, holding the water pistol aloft, and we would hold God and Heaven in both our hands and the world would end, drowning us, as he drowned the clown, in symbolic Water of Love.
“Power animal?” he said, with a raised eyebrow. Curious about my world and my reality, he was distracted enough to not win the grand prize, but headstrong enough to win 3rd, which allowed him the choice of a small crab or a box of pencils. He asked which I wanted.
“The small crab,” I said with gusto. “The box of pencils is a bad omen. Sharp ends, you know.” Again, I could see his curiosity bubbling, but he said nothing as he turned and started walking away.
“How about a Haunted House?” he whispered not facing me, which had an extremely sensual effect that I was not expecting. His nonchalant attempt at indifference made it clear how much he wanted me. Even the juxtaposition of his apparent coldness with the looming possibility of a haunted house, which would make me cringe and huddle close to his endearing chest, was extremely sexy to me. So we walked to the haunted house and heard the chainsaws running somewhere within and I turned to him to let him know that the haunted house was like my heart: chamber upon chamber and the people pulsed through it searching for an exit or something to believe in behind the masks and chainsaws. But only we'll know that we're the real spirits, and as spirits, we float through the ravines of the world coming together at the center where we'll stay forever.
Then I reached for his hand and I felt our fingers entwine like a metaphor for our souls. I felt fireworks from nowhere, I felt blood rush to my head. I felt existence crushing in on me. And then he broke off, saying that he didn't feel like “doing the haunted house anymore.” I understood. I don't think I could have taken much more joy either. The overwhelming flood of emotion that had come with our hands touching was like a soliloquy of our souls.
We walked silently, pensively toward the true heart of the world, the center of the universe that spins with all the fury of an out of control solar system: the ferris wheel. Its lights and motion lit and moved the entire world, it was an engine of hearts, a disc of unthinkable wonder, where, when your seat stops at the very top to allow new people on, the universe of possibilities opens up to you...
So it was as it creaked to a halt with me and him perched closer to the stars than anyone else on Earth. Alone, miles from Gaia, feet no longer touching Terra Firma, he leaned over and kissed me. His hand moved to my breast and I told him I'd never felt the fabric of another person's soul until this moment.
As my comment settled in, he leaned back to his side of the seat, a look of shock and aghast sealed on his face. Obviously, he had seen the beauty of my statement and didn't expect something so perfectly right to come from me at that exact moment. But the world is full of surprises.
After, he walked me home, and I paused on my front porch and poised for the good night kiss, but being the gentleman he is, he declined. He said “see you later”, and I watched him as he vanished into the cold darkness, but I was not worried because on his lips hung the promise of later, and despite the suffocating darkness, that promise will live forever. Read more...

Lists

This morning was all-in-all pretty normal. I woke up, checked to make sure no one was beneath my bed before putting my feet down into my slippers, brushed my teeth until they felt clean (3 times on average, 4 this morning, not too outrageous. At 6 I get nervous), hopped on my bike and went shopping at the grocery store. No problems.
Maybe if I analyze in more detail:
I woke up at 6:52, glanced around the room to make sure I was alone and that all the doors were shut and locked and that the radio was off and that there was no hair left on my pillow and that the mirrors were not turned toward me. Had a look underneath the bed to make sure no one was hidden there. I used a special mirror on a hanger I had construed for the purpose.
By 7:05, I had unstuffed the paper in my shoes and replaced it with my feet, and I was off to the bathroom. A quick shower sufficed, which was good because I don't like enclosing myself in such tight quarters for very long. I brushed my teeth four times.
7:53, I'm out of the bathroom and pulling sets of clothes out of my closet. I knew that I was going out today, so I set aside an hour last night to pick out clothes so I'd be ready. I pulled them out of the closet, then out of their protective plastic covering I got from the laundromat and put them on. I tied my shoes with triple knots, making sure the first one was a square knot. That's very important, other knots can get really stuck if you're not careful, but not a square knot. It always comes apart easy. I put a travel pack of Kleenex in my pocket, opened the door to my apartment and used one to close it back. I went down to my bike which had three locks chaining it to three posts in the bike rack. This keeps other peoples' bikes from being too close. I wiped down my seat, handle bars, and pedals and began my second bimonthly trip to the grocery store to buy:
3 Jars of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter
2 Loaves of Wonderbread
14 Bottles of IBC Root Beer
3 Boxes of Solo Plastic Flatware
1 Gallon of Hiland 2% Milk (Exp not earlier than 2 weeks away)
4 Boxes of Moore Push Pin Thumbtacks
3 Spiral ring College Ruled Meade Notebooks
2 Boxes of Parker Ball point pen/pencil sets
14 Pairs of Hanes Men's underwear
7 Packages of Hanes Men's undershirts (2/pack)
2 Sticks of Oscar Meyer Salami
1 Tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Margarine
2 Bottles of Advil Pain Reliever Medicine
1 Hallmark Mother's Day Card (One that ideally says “Thank you for being my mom”) because Mother's Day is this month
My prescription
When I got to the store, I was immediately aware that Shelly was not there. She was not at the cash register where she usually is and she was not in the Women's Garments section which I could see from the door. I stood there for a second trying to think of what to do: Shelly is the only person I know who works there, and she always helps me and I'm always out of the store within 30 minutes which is good because I don't like being in crowded places for very long. But Shelly was not there, so I had to find someone else to help me. I craned my neck looking for Mr. Takanawa or Mrs. Blanchard or Mr. and Mrs. Starr or Dr. Pasternak, but I didn't see anyone I knew. Luckily, expecting a crowd, I had gone early in the morning when the crowd would be lighter, but there was still a lot of people milling around, and I knew that the longer I stood waiting for someone I knew to come help me, the more people would come to the grocery store to shop, and the more uncomfortable I would get. I felt my deadline. I had an hour max before it would become impossible to do anything. I looked at my watch: 8:25. So really I had 35 minutes before things escalated to a boiling point that I would not be able to handle and I would have to go home and I don't think I have enough things to last another two weeks until my next grocery store trip. I had factored everything to last for exactly 14 days, and while I always had a little bit of peanut butter left over in my last jar I would always throw it away when I came home with the new peanut butter. I started breathing heavy trying to think of what I could do to get out of this situation or how I had met Shelley in the first place like if I had talked to her first or if she had talked to me and whether if I had talked to her first if I would be able to do that again with somebody new or if she had talked me first if anybody else working would be that nice and I was thinking about my deadline and 9:00 and it being 8:27 now and I was still no closer to getting anything done and I was wondering if I should go home right then and give up but I also thought about my prescription and how I took the last pill last night and how I needed it right then but I couldn't get it because nobody would help me. So I decided this was important and that I would have to help myself so I went up to a clean looking cashier with spikey blond hair and his name was Greg and he finally asked me if he could help me and I said, “Yes, Greg. I need 3 jars of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter, 2 loaves of Wonderbread, 14 bottles of IBC Root Beer, 3 boxes of Solo Plastic Flatware, 1 gallon of Hiland 2% Milk (Exp not earlier than 2 weeks away), 4 boxes of Moore Push Pin Thumbtacks, 3 Spiral ring College Ruled Meade Notebooks, 2 boxes of Parker Ball point pen/pencil sets, 14 pairs of Hanes Men's underwear, 7 packages of Hanes Men's undershirts (2/pack), 2 sticks of Oscar Meyer Salami, 1 tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Margarine, 2 bottles of Advil Pain Reliever Medicine,1 Hallmark Mother's Day Card (One that ideally says “Thank you for being my mom”) because Mother's Day is this month, and my prescription.”
Greg looked crazy at me so I told him everything again and he asked me to slow down but I explained that if I slowed down I would run out of time and it would be 9:00 and I would get claustrophobic which is where you can't breathe when there are lots of people around and I don't like being claustrophobic and I asked him to please help me. Greg still had a look of craziness, but then he changed it into a smile. I like smiles from people I know because I know that they are probably smiling because they are happy or being nice, but when people I don't know smile it makes me a little nervous because I don't know why they are smiling. Maybe they are making fun of me or maybe they're being conniving or maybe they're being nice. I made myself think about Greg being nice as he said he would help me get my things and get out by 9:00, and I didn't think about him being mean or conniving and that calmed me down a little, especially when he ran to go grab a cart.
Greg came back with a cart and said, “Okay, now what was the first thing on your list?” and I explained that I could only think of the list as a whole so I started rattling off the whole list again and he jogged off with the cart saying to, “follow me to the peanut butter aisle,” and jogging was pretty fun. As he pulled the Skippy's Peanut Butter off the shelf, he said that he felt like helping me was kind of like a game where the goal was to get me everything I needed and then checked out and out the door by 9:00. I liked that he wasn't grudging or anything. Greg seemed pretty nice. In 15 minutes (a new record time) we had gotten everything but my prescription and we were at the pharmacy and Greg was at the window saying, “I need to pick up a prescription for...” then he turned around to me and asked for my name. I froze because I didn't want to tell anybody new, especially someone I just met 15 minutes ago, my name and I started breathing heavy as Greg said, “They need your name to go get your prescription.” But the pharmacists saved me. Luckily they knew my face and went to the back to get my prescription, telling Greg that they knew whose it was and that it was no trouble.
The trouble started when they came back and they said, “Here's Mr. Wymer's prescription,” and they handed Greg the bag and he handed it to me like he hadn't just heard but I heard and now he knew my name and I started breathing heavy again. But he kept smiling and acting like he didn't hear anything so I started thinking maybe he didn't hear my name and as I checked out with him at register #3, I started to calm down. He put my groceries in paper sacks smiling the whole time and hurrying as well. When he finished and I handed him my cash he asked what time it was, so I looked at my watch and told him it was 8:49. “Yes,” he exclaimed, “we did it! With time to spare!” and he helped me take my things out to my bike. I had 3 bags, so like I always do, I put two in the front basket and one (with the milk) in my backpack, and I rode home, deciding not to give Greg and the fact that he knew my name a second thought.
But now, having arrived home, and having found the envelope slid under my door while I was gone, I know that I was mistaken about Greg not hearing my name. He had heard and he'd already told the Council of Anarchists and they had already tracked down where I lived and probably knew everything about me and he had probably told them everything about my shopping list and everything about my bike and what I was wearing and what I would be eating and what they could poison the next time I went shopping so that they could take my notebooks and they probably knew what I check when I wake up each morning and how many times I brush my teeth (3 on average) and they were probably planning something to get me and to kidnap me and steal my notebooks. My apartment is no longer safe, it has been compromised. After all these years of paying my rent with cash and staying off the grid, one slip, one instant where I decided to approach Greg instead of Latricia or Jennifer (who were both not as clean, but not as likely to have ties to the Council) and it's all ruined and everything is at stake.
I know what's in the envelope. I don't even have to look in it to know that it's an ultimatum and it says, “Bring the notebooks to us or we will kill your mom” or Shelly or Mr. and Mrs. Starr or Mr. Takanawa or Mrs. Blanchard or Dr. Pasternak or maybe even me. I feel horrible that I've involved them through my carelessness and I think through all my options.
I could run away but then they might start killing everyone I know to find out where I've run off to and my mom would know where I was because I have to send her the Mother's Day card and it would have a return address and if they tortured her, I'm sure she would tell.
I could stay and face them or give them my notebooks but then they would find out all the secrets I know from the codes that people put in newspaper advertisements and radio commercials and they would know all the government's secret plans which would put the government at a complete disadvantage, and they could put together the cipher and use it to decipher more messages. I can't let that happen because I'm a patriot.
I could destroy the notebooks and face them but then they would torture me and I would never be able to keep myself from telling the cipher, I would never be able to withstand the torture.
So I come to the only logical conclusion: I have to destroy the notebooks and kill myself. It's the only answer that extricates everyone and makes sure my notebooks don't fall into the hands of the Council.
I gather up all the notebooks, 1052 of them, and put them in a big plastic bag. I haul the heavy thing down three flights of stairs and hoist it into the trash dumpster, getting a little bit of garbage on my hand, but I don't wipe it off because this task is too important. I can't let them get hold of my notebooks. It would be the end of America. So I douse the trash in lighter fluid, which I had defiantly asked of my neighbor (I figured since they already know about me, there can be no further harm done), and I light the garbage on fire. As the heat engulfs my notebooks, I can see the plastic melt off and the flames twist around the tiny metal spirals. I watch as page after page disappears into fiery oblivion.
Then I go back up to my room and open my bedroom window, first making sure that one of their spies is not already beneath my bed planning on stopping me before I can jump out. Nobody's there, so I lean out and look down the three stories to the ground. It's 9:05 when I jump off the sill and into the empty air.

I wake up in a room I don't know, unable to move. My muscles feel heavy and I can barely move my eyes to look around and see that I'm in a hospital room. My mom sits on my right and beside her sits a doctor with large frame glasses that I can't see through when the light hits them just right. I can barely hear them through the drugs that they've apparently got me on, but the message is loud and clear: the Council has kept me alive to tell them the cipher and they have my mom. In my head I am screaming and running and tearing at the bed, but all I can do is move my right index finger a little bit and out of the corner of my eye I can see that the doctor is smiling. Read more...

Double Shot (This Thursday Only)

For your reading enjoyment: My Rejected McSweeney's Submissions
James Joyce's Refrigerator
Description: A list of things to do located on James Joyce's refrigerator (plagiarized from old New Yorker cartoon).
Reason for rejection: Missed all the obvious jokes, even the ones from the original cartoon. Mostly just a shopping list. Only joke was, “Buy an egg and draw a smiley face on one end to replace left eye with to freak out children,” which isn't funny.

Dilbert Goes To Hellbert
Description: Dilbert is sent to Hell after his boss shoots him for some office-type reason. There he meets Catbert who promotes him to mid-level management in Hellbert.
Reason for rejection: Didn't get it. Don't read Dilbert.

Care Bears on LSD
Description: A vivid (often graphic) description of the classic Care Bears television show if all the characters were to be twisted on various mind expanding drugs.
Reason for rejection: Needs more than one joke. Sleepy Bear not being able to sleep because he snorted a line of cocaine is not enough, especially to off set the extremely depressing prospect of Lionheart overdosing on heroine then the rest of the cast being left in a comatic state after an attempt at the “Longest Care Bear Stare Ever.”

A Day in the Life of Alanis Morissette
Description: Just what you'd think.
Reason for rejection: Surprisingly not funny.

Also enjoy this week's story: Lists. Read more...