Boys Wear Pants, Men Wear Trousers - Joshua Minton's Short Stories

If you like, listen to me read the story while you read along by pushing play on the contraption above

The Night Mary Beth Jacksey Told Her Father that Jesus was a Coward

—That's it—the preacher said as he slammed his palm on the dinner table causing the antique crystal vase in the china cabinet to rattle and the dog to bark. Every member of the room, except Mary Beth's newest boyfriend, immediately looked at the vase and prayed it wouldn't fall. It had been in the preacher's family for generations. He was neurotic about it. The preacher, after checking the vase and seeing it unharmed, looked at his daughter with a calm eye—I will not have that kind of talk in this house. Please take this person you've brought with you and leave—Mary Beth's newest boyfriend was a greasy-headed mop top with a pimple under his left nostril and a barb wire tattoo that wrapped around his right bicep. His best friend told him it was, bitchin.

Mary Beth recoiled from her father's verbal front—Oh Daddy, don’t take it personal. I just mean that if Jesus really cared about the suffering of other people, then why didn't he stay here on earth and suffer with them? Wasn't it a bit idealistic for him to assume that because he suffered one day of intense agony, it would make up for the billions of people that had been killed already? Not to mention the billions that were eventually slaughtered in his name?—She sat back, assured that her father had no comeback for this recently acquired Philosophy 301 supposition. She had got an A. The whole time in class, she was giving her father the mental finger. Every word she read was a possible bullet to fire into the heart of her father's faith.

The preacher's face grew red as the ass curve of a rose petal. He threw his napkin on the table, scooted his chair back, and turned to walk away, tripping over the dog that always lay at his feet waiting for an edible handout—son of a bitch—he landed face down on the wooden floor. Restrained laughter hung in the air like wet smoke. He collected himself and left the room as diligently as he fell.

Mary Beth looked at her mother, who was already looking at Mary Beth—You know how your father is, Mary Beth. It's best just to let him have his say without arguing, like I do—As she looked at her namesake, Mary Beth's face contorted into the campus friendly feminist arguing pose—Mother do you have any idea how completely submissive you sound right now? I am so sick of daddy telling me that the world is his way only and everyone else is going to hell—She paused and added—I don't even believe in hell—Her mother looked down at her lap and said in a hushed tone, like she didn't want anyone to hear, maybe not even herself—Now I have to go repair what you've done—She pushed her chair back, got up, grabbed her dishes and pushed her chair back in. She turned to walk up the steps, stopping to empty her plate in the trash and rinse it in the sink. The dog began barking again.

Mary Beth asked her newest boyfriend what he would like to do next. He was not concerned with the present moment. His mind was on later tonight and the panties Mary Beth might or might not be wearing—Do you want to see something funny—He shook his head yes, not hearing what she asked him. Mary Beth's dog was a miniature collie named Rain. When someone would repeatedly smack his butt fast and hard, he would take off running around the house, barking and yipping his way through his own personal maze of ass slaps and close calls with the furniture. The preacher abhorred such behavior and forbade anyone to participate in the dog's psychological ass slapping disorder. But Mary Beth was upset with her father and had no remorse about trying his nerves.

She smacked the dog’s ass with multiple slaps and being used to the drill, he rocketed away, barking and yipping. There were different patterns he ran. Sometimes it was the figure eight; sometimes he opted for the straight circle. But this particular time, it was a Euclidean nightmare. He attempted to run the infamous, two-dimensional dodecahedron in between the living room, kitchen, and dining room. He was unsuccessful. With one lap left to complete the twelve-face geometrical Holy Grail, he was determined to avoid the ass slap. He juked left under the table, became ensnared in the long lace tablecloth, and bolted out directly into the china cabinet. The vase tipped left. Then right. Wobbling on its base like a top. It fell in an arch, drawn out like an Olympic diver. The dog, sensing an impending disaster, ran from the room just as the vase crashed. He wasn't seen for the rest of the night.

Mary Beth's mother ascended the stairs with the knowledge that she was the bridge builder, the pontiff, tonight. Her husband bridged the gap between God and people, but she bridged the gap between her husband and the family he estranged at God's expense. She entered the room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands covering his face. There was a half-empty rocks glass of Alka-Seltzer on the nightstand. The preacher was crying.

She went to him and held him. She knew that Mary Beth didn't hate Jesus and she knew Mary Beth didn't hate her father either. She thought that her daughter was just confused right now and that was okay because Mary Beth's mother had a great reservoir of patience. Her husband's bridges were strong, but his wife's patience was the water that flowed underneath them, always warm and always moving. She knew her husband had a rough day. He had been pushed to his breaking point. She could do more for her husband by just holding him. She hoped Mary Beth would eventually learn this art. A high decibel crash of breaking glass destroyed their healing embrace. The preacher's head jerked up towards the door—Oh don't tell me. Son of bitch. SON OF A BITCH—He ran out of the room and down the stairs.

Mary Beth's mother stared at the rocks glass. She picked it up and finished the rest of the Alka-Seltzer. She put the glass back on the nightstand and listened patiently to the rising voices as they echoed off the hallways and doors of the house. She would wait for the voices to settle before going downstairs to patch whatever rip had been made. She lay back against the pillow, thought of her own mother, and listened to the voices fence each other into the night.

The Night Mary Elizabeth Burnt Her Mother's Moses Cookies

—Mary Elizabeth, do you mean to tell me that the whole time you've been dating this boy you've neglected to mention that he's not Jewish? And suddenly after all this time, you tell us that not only is he a Gentile, but he's a Christian minister as well—Mary Elizabeth looked at her fifty-year old mother with her twenty-four year old eyes—Mom, he's a wonderful man. I don't care what you say about him. He will be here in a half-hour and so help me, you'd better not do anything to ruin this—Her mother’s jaw clenched—I told your Father that we never should have given you a Christian name—Her mother turned her back, which infuriated Mary Elizabeth. She turned her own back to her mother and left the room, smacking the doorframe on her way out.

Later that evening, at the dinner table, just after Mary Elizabeth had announced her engagement to her boyfriend who was not only not a Jew, but a Christian minister as well, her father grabbed her and her fiancé's hand with tears in his eyes—You have both made me so happy. All I ever wanted was for my daughter to marry a nice man. One that would love her, and take care of her—And her father smiled a wicked smirk—And take these bills off my back. She's like a full time payment—He looked to the young man—I hope you know how to swindle your congregation young man. She's a regular down payment weekly—Mary Elizabeth smiled at her father because she loved him. It was that simple. She looked at her mother and her mother was looking away.

Her mother bent down to pet the cat, mumbling incohesively. She took her hand away from the feline, swiveled forcefully in her chair and banged her shoe on the table leg. She did not reply when asked if she was alright. Her mother got up from the table and went into the kitchen. Her father called after her—Where are you going, you haven't even finished your meal yet—Mary Elizabeth's mother called back from the kitchen—I have to put my cookies in the oven so they'll be ready for dessert—Mary Elizabeth's mother often made cookies during Hanukkah. The family called them her Moses cookies.

Mary Elizabeth got up and followed her mother into the kitchen—Mom, why can't you be happy for me? Why do you always have to spoil everything—Her mother had her back turned as she was sliding an aluminum tray of blobby dough into the oven. She refused to answer her daughter—So help me mother, if you don't speak to me now then I don't want you to have ANY PART OF MY WEDDING—Her mother whipped around and stared at her daughter with horror—You would do that, wouldn't you? On top of everything else, you would just cut your own mother off. What did I birth? What did I do to deserve such a hateful child—Mary Elizabeth had heard enough—YOU ARE NOT WELCOME AT MY WEDDING MOTHER—She tore open the back door and ran into the night, leaving a hole in her mother's home that remained even after the door had been shut.

Mary Elizabeth's mother ran sobbing, back into the dining room where her husband and her daughter’s fiancé had been listening in disbelief to the argument raging in the kitchen—She hates me. She hates me. Her own mother—Her husband asked the fiancé if he would please excuse them. He took his wife upstairs and held her as she sobbed. They fell asleep only to be woken by the smell of smoke. The Moses cookies were blackened. They looked as if they had been hit by raining fire from one of the ten plagues of Egypt. For years, her mother blamed Mary Elizabeth for the burning of her famous Moses Hanukkah cookies.

The Day the Preacher Understood the Shame of Jesus

The Preacher shuffled up to the pulpit. He was wearing a white silk robe. He had no pants or undergarments on underneath. He arranged his Bible and poured himself a glass of water from a crystal pitcher, a gift from the Women’s Auxiliary. He cleared his throat and addressed the congregation—Ladies and Gentlemen, God is angry. God is upset. He has given us laws to live by. Simple laws, yet so many of us seem to fall prey to temptation and sin—His erection was beginning to stir underneath the robe—For so long God has been patient with us, and I ask why Oh Lord. Why do you have such precious patience with us Heathens? What did we possibly do to deserve this infinite gift of your attention and salvation? That you would send your only begotten Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our wicked and sinful ways and yet we still refuse to give them up, Oh Lord I’M SORRY. I’M SORRY WE HAVE FALLEN INTO THE DEVIL’S HANDS—He grabbed himself down there as he spoke. Oh God, give me strength not to do this. Please. I can’t continue doing this. It started off innocently. A scratch. An adjustment. But then he got worked up. Spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke of the infinite love of God by sending Jesus. It was the same speech every week, just different words. He took hold at a moment of great passion. One moment he was damning the Devil and the next he was jerking for Jesus.

He continued with his one-handed sermon—We are living in the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. Whores on every street corner. Porno directors without scruples. Why, even the institution of God has become corrupted by the Devil’s seed—Oh God, please no. Don’t let me do this in your home. I can’t stop, it feels too good. This had been going on for about six months. The Preacher rationalized it by believing that his acts of Holy Masturbation were a covenant between himself and Jesus, something sacred only both of them knew. But there was someone else who knew. The Preacher glanced at his wife, sitting in the front row with a decent viewing angle behind the podium.

The Preacher realized, with horror, that his wife was watching him. They both remained frozen. He stopped speaking. The congregation became uneasy. Murmurs rose to a cacophonous roar. His wife stood up and ran into the Preacher’s office, behind the pulpit stage. His jaw locked. His tongue wouldn’t work. He turned to run after her, but his robe caught on a broken piece of lamination from the ply wood pulpit. The robe tore off and there he was, his back to the congregation, bare ass exposed, looking up to the wooden crucified Christ that hung on the wall highlighted by track lighting. He fell to his knees and raised his arms to the wooden idol as if to say—Why have you forsaken me Lord—The congregation was disgusted. They rose in rotting masses and filed languidly into the receiving room. Some took their offering out of the collection plate on the way out.

The Preacher lay on the couch in his office with his head in his wife’s lap. She was stroking the locks of hair that lay across his forehead. She was completely calm. He was staring at the ceiling as if waiting for a bush to grow out and light itself on fire, telling him he was redeemed. His wife looked at him like he was a child—You know, sometimes you’re like that damn vase you love so much. So fragile. Sometimes that’s what I see you as, a human crystal vase. Something that needs to be guarded against falling and breaking—The Preacher turned his gaze from the ceiling to his wife—You know that vase has been in my family for generations, Mary Elizabeth. It was the only thing left standing after my family was raided by Indians on their voyage west. And that was only because my mother was using it as bedpan for fear of peeing in nature—His family had actually been robbed by other white settlers, but the story sounded more in tune with American History when he told it this way.

His wife continued to look at him with pity—Well, all I have to say about this incident is that you’ll recover. Apologize to the people that decide to come next week and they’ll forgive you. They are Christians, after all—The Preacher’s lips pursed because he doubted his own congregation’s ability not to judge and to forgive, particularly since he judged every person he saw at every opportunity he had. He also held very little forgiveness in his heart. His wife gently pushed his head off her lap, got up, strung her purse over her shoulder and began to leave. She turned around and looked at him, still lying on the couch—Make sure you’re home in time for dinner tonight. Mary Beth is bringing her new boyfriend. And please be cordial—The Preacher shifted on the couch and closed his eyes—Is this the kid with the barbwire tattoo? The one that doesn’t go to church—His wife nodded her head—I know, I’d like to say something to her too, but I’d feel just like my mother. Mary Beth will learn. She just needs time—She opened the door and left. The Preacher rolled over, facing the back of the couch. Shuddering violently, he wrapped his arms around himself and began to cry.

He was a Poet
by Joshua Minton

I had almost forgotten where I was going until she asked me. My granddaughter, Erin, asked me what a poet was. I had told her before that I had once dated a poet when I was younger. I tossed that word out as if it were common knowledge that everyone should know what a poet is. I didn’t know what to say to her. How could I explain? How could I even scratch the surface of what that man meant to me?

I said, “Baby, a poet is someone who uses words to show their feelings.” She seemed satisfied and went back to coloring. I looked in the rearview mirror at my older granddaughter, Rebecca. She had just turned seventeen and her mother made her come with me on this trip, because she wasn’t trusted to stay home alone. Rebecca had been caught by her stepfather sneaking out with her boyfriend and smoking marijuana. He found them in the park. My daughter, Donna, said that they started to tape Rebecca’s phone calls when they found a pipe in her drawer.

Rebecca had headphones on and her eyes were closed. I wonder what she was thinking about. I tried to remember what I thought about when I was seventeen. Then it occurred to me that I was seventeen when I met Taylor. I was just a young girl, knaive and trustful. He was raw and brazen. He represented everything my parents hated about the youth of that time.

It was the fifties, 1957 to be exact and I had just turned seventeen. One of my girlfriends took me to a soda shop for my birthday. There was a poetry reading going on, and there were saxophone players and drums along with bearded men reading aloud from leather-bound diaries. He was sitting in the corner, half-listening to the speaker and half-reading a Henry Miller book. I think it was Sexus. We got our milkshakes and sat down. I looked over and he was staring at me over the top of his book. It was one of those looks that seems to exert no energy from the one giving it; just a lazy gaze and he turned back to his reading.

He was very plain looking. He had on a flannel shirt and a goatee that was neatly trimmed. He looked like one of the poetry readers, but then again he didn’t. Something set him off, something made him different from the rest. At that time, I wasn’t perceptive enough to recognize it. Behind that casual look, there was the experience of something greater, something deeper that I’m still not sure how to define.

When I got up to go to the bathroom, I walked past the table where he was sitting, and when I came out, he grabbed my wrist and asked me to take a seat. He asked my name and I told him it was Gianna. He asked me what I loved to do most in the world. I told him that I didn’t know. Nobody had ever asked me that kind of question. Usually guys were only interested in talking about themselves. I had never even thought about what I liked to do. Since I was twelve my mother had been grooming me to be the perfect wife. She taught me how to cook and how to treat a man that was courting. My mother was a product of the Gone with the Wind generation, raised in Georgia; she felt that a young woman’s place was at the side of her beau.

He laughed when I didn’t have an answer to his question. I asked him why he was laughing. He said that the question was one that I should never stop asking myself. I didn’t understand this until years later. I was cleaning the bathroom one day and realized that I hated to do it. Then I started thinking that I didn’t know what I loved to do. This made me think of Taylor, and I started crying.

The first time I brought him home, my father really liked him at first, until they spoke. My dad asked him about Russia, and Taylor said that no one could win a war of ideals. My dad was a Marine in World War II. He saw what the Russians did to German women and children and so he took offense at Taylor’s comment. They got into a big dispute that ended in my father telling Taylor he was no longer welcome in his house or with his daughter. The thing is, that I agreed with Taylor and I realized that my parents were wrong about some things.

We had to meet in secret the whole summer. He would read me his work and I would act like I understood everything he said. The truth is that I had no idea at all. I just loved to hear him speak. When he talked, it seemed like there was nothing in the world that was unapproachable. His voice curled around me and put me in some kind of verbal stasis. He had an opinion about everything and it all revolved around poetry. He could discuss the holocaust and make it sound like a beautiful thing that people suffered so bravely and still remained rooted in their beliefs.

Rebecca’s voice jilted me back into the nineties. “Grandma, can we stop at the next rest stop? I have to pee.” We pulled in and unfastened our seat belts; the girls went to the bathroom. I didn’t have to go and sat outside instead. We were approaching Ojai. I could smell the orange trees in the breeze. I thought about all the great people who lived in this valley, Henry Miller, Krishnamurti, Taylor. Except Taylor never became famous. He was a genius, but he was deathly afraid of becoming famous or being in the public eye at all. It was a subject of which he almost never spoke. I think he was afraid of his art becoming something pornographic to himself. He didn’t have any money and I was the only thing in his life that he considered beautiful besides his art. He told me this, but the truth is that I really wasn’t that beautiful. I was just a little nuclear-raised white girl that didn’t know a damn thing about beauty or the real world.

My father followed me one time when I caught the bus out to Ojai to meet Taylor. Taylor had rented a wooden shack from one of his college professors. It wasn’t much, but there was a beautiful view down into the river from the back yard. We would kiss and talk until the Sun went down and it was time for him to take me to the bus stop. Those were the days when a kiss meant something. My father caught me on the way home. My parents sat me down and told me how dangerous subversive thinkers like Taylor were. They talked about drugs and senseless poetry and said they were only worried about my future.

None of their arguments made any ground, so they bribed me. They knew that ever since I was seven, I had wanted to go to the Sarah Lawrence school for girls in New York. The first time that I saw Martha Graham dance, I had wanted to go there. Joseph Campbell taught mythology, and his wife Jean-Erdman Campbell graduated from there and become one of the best dancers in the world.

I didn’t like to dance myself, but I loved to watch the dancers. The truth is that I was afraid to dance. I was afraid to dance for the same reason that Taylor was afraid of becoming famous. I was scared that I would lose the part of myself that I held sacred. To me, the will to dance clashed with my desire to observe beauty.

I was afraid that my dancing would not be as beautiful as the desire to dance itself.

I got my granddaughters back in the car and started down the dirt road that led to the shack and the river. The groves of orange trees started peeking over the horizon and eventually overtook the whole scenery. It was breathtaking. I thought about the last time I saw Taylor. It was the day that I told him I was leaving to go to school on the other coast. He breathed deeply, put his head back and closed his eyes. I could tell that he was trying to fight back tears. I never told him that my parents bribed me to get me away from him, but I’m sure now that he knew it.

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I took my clothes off and gave myself to him. We had never really talked about sex, although I’m sure it was on both of our minds the whole time. It was a beautiful first time for me, but was also very sad. I lied to my husband and told him I was a virgin. Taylor gave something to me and I took something away from him. He trusted me. He opened up to me and I ran away at the first offer of something better.

After we had finished making love, he stood up and looked down at me, then turned and walked away. We didn’t speak a word on the way to the bus stop and the goodbye was half-hearted. He kept silent and I never heard from him again, until years later. It was after both grandchildren had been born and my husband had died. I loved my husband, but it was in a completely different way than I loved Taylor. Taylor touched something inside me that wasn’t put there by my family or my education. He touched something eternal in me, and I feel really stupid using that word but it’s the only one that I can think of to describe it. My husband was a companion, but Taylor was a lover and the only one that I would ever know.

We pulled up to the shack and I looked at my two beautiful granddaughters. Erin was still coloring and sipping her coke through a curly straw. She smiled at me. Rebecca was writing in her journal and listening to her headphones. I told them that I would be right back and they nodded, uninterested.

I saw the headstone in the backyard. Taylor died in 1985. He named me as his sole beneficiary and I was in charge of the care of his body and personal assets. He had purchased this land and lived here until he died. He left me all of his original poems and stories. I was approached by NYU to start a small library dedicated to the preservation of Taylor’s work. It seems that he gained a small cult following during his life and they wanted to keep his work safe and allow it to be printed. I couldn’t object. When I got the boxes of papers, I found a hand written scrap addressed to me. It said, “I never stopped loving you. Taylor.”

I had him buried on the same spot that we made love that day. I discovered that I had found the two things that I loved to do. I loved to observe beauty and I loved to be with him. I thought that having him buried here would be appropriate and what he would have wanted. I could never get up the nerve to come and visit the grave, but I promised myself that I would do it before I died. I owed that much to him.

I ran my fingers over the engravings. “Taylor Dorin (Poet) 1937-1985.” I started to cry. I felt so stupid, like I was seventeen again. I realized that this was the spot that my childhood ended and my life began, and now that I was back here I felt like a child again. It was a complete circle and that made me smile, it was the same smile Taylor had that day in the soda shop when we first met. It was the smile of knowing something through pain, through experience. He was the storm that tore down the bridge between my childhood and becoming a woman. I wiped my eyes and walked back to the car, where my granddaughters were waiting.

©1997 Joshua Minton

LINKS:

The BGSU Creative Writing Program (my Alma Mater)
Wendell Mayo (the greatest fiction author I studied under)
George Looney (the greatest poet I studied under). Buy this book">this book and this book--you won't be disappointed.

Lovell Edward Boner was the greatest book thief in Sangamon County and he approached the university library desk with the same smugness his great-great-grandfather had with the slaves he oversaw in Georgia cotton fields.

The library was a hundred and fifty two years old, illuminated like an Irish pub at midnight, and Lovell E. Boner (as he liked to introduce himself to women) was still wearing his $900 custom made sunglasses that bore a lazered imaged of himself smiling in each lens and were animated when struck by light. Smiling Boner morphed to smirking Boner and back again as long as the light remained.

Boner also sported behind the neck earloop headphones whose mp3 emissions inspired him to sing along with the chorus of Snoop Doggy Dog’s opus "For My Niggaz and My Bitches." He passed quiet foursomes whispering in the sharp panic breaths of a Friday morning chemistry quiz.

Halfway from the door to the desk, he pulled the loops from his ears and they hung blaring over his shoulders so everyone in his immediate proximity could “Thow theah muthafuggin hands in the a-yah” with him.

Boner gripped the edge of the cherry wood desk as he inched up on it, swinging back and forward like a sling shot, putting his face inches from that of the reference room clerk who was reading the campus daily news and popping bubbles with her breath gum.

Boner parted his lips, bared his teeth, and huffed hot breath in her face like someone in a commercial who just gargled with mouthwash.

Her pupils were telescope lenses under a star dome sky and he was a supernova that drew her immediate attention to the horizon. Her face registered no emotion or muscle movement and her reaction was genetic.

Can I help you?

Boner smiled and pulled the sunglasses halfway down his nose. His eyes darted to the nametag.

Yes, hehloohoH Janice. My name is Lovell E. Boner, nice to meet you.

He plucked her first two fingers from the page she was reading and gave them a loose shake.

I am interested in viewing a book in your antique collection and I would appreciate a comfortable room in which to purvey it.

Janice replied in a tone of voice she normally reserved for phone call salesmen during dinner.

What’s the book title?

Boner nodded at her like accepting an overdue apology.

This is a very rare book and the author was Hammil George Winslow.

She bugged her eyes out at him and her voice coiled to a huff.

What’s the title?

Boner cleared his throat.

The title of the book, Janice, is The Art of Nipple Sucking.

He looked at her breasts as he spoke the title, smiled, and looked back to her face. He spoke to her as if he had just seen her naked at her request.

The book was written in 1572 in what eventually became the Massachusetts Bay Colony…

Her tone had become sales phone call at dawn.

…Uh, I got it.

Her eyes were still bugged out and the breath gum now hung stuck from her bottom lip like porno semen.

He touched her elbow with his first two fingers now joined by a circling thumb on her upper forearm.

Janice, this book was the authoritative text for almost two hundred years and is the first documented American experience with getting an infant to latch onto a nipple immediately following birth.

The moment spiraled as they stared at each other. She was here on a work-study program. He was engaged in Grand Larceny at the paid bequest of a 56-year-old health insurance corporate CEO. Their circumstances were now intermingling in the contact of his rubbing thumb pad and the freckle tanned flesh of her upper forearm.

The moment broke and she pulled away in revulsion and began attacking the keyboard of her reference computer with keystrokes. She forced herself to stare at the screen to avoid looking back at him. She did look up once out of disgusted curiosity. He winked at her and pushed the sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose.

After typing exactly 47 characters, she asked him for ID and he snapped a driver’s license from his front pocket and held it an inch and a half from the bridge of her nose like an American Express commercial gone wrong.

When she walked to the copy machine with his license, he stared at her puffed out butt cheeks muffled by the thick cotton skirt. Boner looked up to find himself caught by a steel-eyed old betty who eyed him with the knowledge of a father meeting the guy he knows is banging his daughter.

He gripped the temple of his sunglasses and slid them down his nose, launching a dirty look that said, What the fuck are you looking at lady?

She turned and huffed to the elevator, stopping only once to look at him with tightened eyes.

Janice directed him to the fourth floor, handed him a permission slip, and turned her back on him when he bent to grab and kiss her hand.

The elevator buzzer counted to four and the doors slid open to reveal a dark wood paneled room with an alabaster ceiling. There was a monstrous desk in the center mounted by the same old betty he had just scrapped eyes with.

Boner took off his sunglasses and eyed her nametag.

HehloohoH Betty.

He tossed Janet’s permission slip on desk.

I’ll take this book, Betty, and a cozy little room with a fireplace and an 18th century leather back wing chair to read it in.

She stared at him for a moment and spoke with the exactitude and drained-of-bullshit tone that only someone at the very end of their life can pull off.

You’re an asshole.

She left to retrieve the book and returned to find Boner casually reviewing and finger-shuffling her desk papers.

Here’s the book.

He nodded again in the semi-DeNiro smile.

Excellent.

Boner snapped three times and finger waved her a summons for her to cross the room and hand him the book, which she did.

He took the book from her and put the earloop headphones back, the mp3 player now leaking "Against the Wind" by Bob
Seger.

She stood next to him as he flipped to the fourteenth page and began scanning while fingertip soloing the first stanza of the Seger song on the desktop. He began singing, nothing left to burn and nothing left to prove.

He licked his finger and thumb and flipped three more pages. Wish I didn’t know what I didn’t know then.

He folded a corner of a page and shuffled on. He finally looked up and feigned surprise to find her still there. He shook his head back and forth in a contained motion of genuine curiosity when he spoke to her.

What do you know about nipple sucking, Betty?

He reached out and touched the cotton covered swell of her left breast with his left hand.

She spun around and hunched away in recoil like the Germans were still bombing England. Boner profited from the violation by slipping the book into the back of his pants, increasing the value of their contents by $7,463.

She picked up a sharpened pencil on the desk and lunged at him with the speed of an earthworm fleeing freeway traffic.

He backed away from her, punched the elevator button and smiled when the doors opened immediately behind him. No one had used the elevator after 23:00 for the entire three weeks he performed observational research on the target and their immediate availability was an assumption his plan depended upon. The assumption paid off.

He brushed aside her feeble sharpened graphite attack and pulled the stray wisps of white hair behind her right ear. She screamed and he slapped her face on a downstroke, forcing her to the ground in a crying, mumbling heap.

Boner pulled the fire alarm next to the call button, backed into the elevator and punched the star button with the fluid motions of a rehearsed physical comedian in a primetime sitcom.

None of the seventy three people in the library (including the rent-a-cop) noticed a man wearing sunglasses and earloop headphones exit the library with a rectangular load in his pants because the shrieking of the fire alarm had them all squinting their eyes and covering their ears in pain.

Lovell E. Boner had struck again in the name of the righteous and wealthy who, because ridiculous tax laws drained all incentive from taking financial risks, allocated their abundant resources to acquiring every slob pleasure the people who worked for them could uselessly dream of one day owning for themselves.

Lovell E. Boner, Knight of the Round Table that seats only one, walked square-ass into the parking lot darkness with the shrill fire alarm singing his crimes and triumphs behind him.

TAGS:
Joshua Minton, Short Story, Short Stories, fiction, Literature

Okay, I'm invoking the Meemaw Clause on this short story. My MeeMaw (my grandmother) sometimes drops in to read my blog and I told her that whenever I put up a story that had a lot of bad language or explicit sexual content, I would warn her so she wouldn't read and be offended. Meemaw, don't read this story because it's got a lot of both. Don't say I didn't warn you.

This story is still in rough draft, but I thought I'd put it out in its infantile form to see what kind of reader response it got. Feel free to let me know what works for you, what doesn't, what you liked, and what can make it better. You can leave a comment or send me an e-mail through the Contact link in the sidebar. As always, thanks for reading...

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Where did the Whole Thing Fall to Shit
by Joshua Minton

This was the defining question of Ronnie Dawn’s life and his preeminent preoccupation as he stood in the Kroger pharmacy line metamorphosing from lower middle class slave wage worker to a criminal. It was getting dark outside and a black drug dealer named Ralphonso was waiting in a 1973 Chevy Impala for the two pill bottles Ronnie Dawn was about to exchange for a legitimate physician’s note. Ralphonso is going to unscrew the pill bottle, shake the capsules into his hand, eye them, smell them, pop one, and then funnel the rest back into the bottle. If the pills are good, he will reach into his left jacket pocket and pay Ronnie Dawn six hundred dollars in twenties and tens. If the pills are wrong, he will reach into his right pocket and pull a Targus .38 snubnose revolver, jam it into Ronnie’s ribs and tell him to take over the driving. He would then force Ronnie to drive to the junkyard that Ralphonso uses to store his drugs and he would either beat him mercilessly with a pair of brass knuckles (also in Ralphonso’s right pocket) or would murder him outright to save time.

Even under the harsh fluorescent lights of the Kroger, Ronnie was still the good times man, twice-married with two kids he knew for sure were his and one that was still a rumor in his mind, a story from long ago passed from acquaintance to friend to his ear during a bullshit session over a sizzling pig, a case of Keystone light, and the Bristol NASCAR race. The rumor was that his first wife, Holly, had given birth to a son seven months after she put him out by flicking a lit cigarette at him and telling him to get right the fuck out and never come back. If it was his son, he only hoped he fared better with women than his father did; but besides these well-wishes, it was an urban legend to him.

There were seventeen people in line and the ribbon ropes were effecting traffic in the winding snake pattern that summed up the modern state of humanity, at least the slice that Ronnie had been relegated to graze on during his time on earth. They kept calling for Mr. Flick over the Kroger intercom and the woman in front of Ronnie kept huffing and shuffling her plastic sack from one hand to the other. Ronnie could see the circular plastic puff of an Oscar Meyer bologna package and a six-pack of V8 vegetable juice in cans through the tan translucent sack. She turned back to look at him, hoping to find another disgruntled line waiter. He moved his eyes away to avoid the woman’s suspicion. It seemed lately he was always moving to avoid being suspected of one thing or another.

It felt like he had spent the last eight years of his life setting up pristine bowling pins which had all been knocked down in the last two months in some kind of cosmic strike, a cruel joke. He was eight weeks from being laid off and two weeks from last speaking to Lori, his present wife, who didn’t flick a cigarette at him but told him to get the fuck out all the same. He hadn’t seen his kids in a week and a half and it was like someone did invisible surgery on him to remove everything that made him a man. Hell, it wasn’t someone—he knew exactly who it was and he hoped the bitch burned in a diesel fuel fire.

Ronnie had squeaked by in life with the juvenile notion that men were the powerful pillars that kept the wheel swinging and the birds singing. And even as he stood in awe of Lori’s pregnant belly, he didn’t realize that there was multitudes more power in that ball of flesh than the highest yield nuclear warheads in the pocket arsenals of the masters of war. He and Lori had built a life for themselves but once she was pregnant, nature marginalized him into some kind of bystander. Life was just happening to him again.

Women had always ruled his life though he tries to remember it different. In his mind, he smacked his mother across the face when he was seventeen; stormed out of the house, fired up his Ford Ranger, and sped off into the hot summer afternoon of Central Ohio feeling like a motherless child. In his mind, he yelled so loud, so long, and so many times at Holly that she finally dropped down like a bleeding dog that learned its function in the world. There were nights when she slept on the couch and he would stretch out his arms and legs in bed like the Vitruvian Man in some kind of post-battle victory pose which always involved him being alone. It never occurred to him that victory could involve two hearts celebrating mutual achievement—the trophy always got dipped in blood when he threw down.

Life is a struggle—that’s what his mother taught him and was the true legacy of his fatherless rearing. His mother’s voice rose from his memory as he stood watching the woman continue to shift the bag from hand to hand, grump, and huff about the wait. His mother spoke from the halo of cigarette smoke he held her memory inside and her sentences always cracked free from the smack of her lips together like the warning clap of a thunderstorm. Life sucks and then you die, Ronnie. He had done so many things to make her prophecy come true. He imagined her in hell right now, cackling, coughing, and laughing at him through the flames.

He thought of Arlene in hell, her devious ways catching up with her on final judgment where she would be asked to account for her emotional crimes. The awful judge would run ‘em down, the whole list, how she went from man to man, sucked him dry and moved onto the next one. Her attention was intoxicating on them. Her compliments were poisonous weapons of wooing that spun webs in the minds of her prey and when she finally bit, she always bit deadly. She was one of those witchy broads, as his cop brother referred to them. One of those gypsie-like bitches who infested a man’s mind like cockroaches in the cupboard, scuttling around until they ruined all the food equally. Of course, it started off innocent enough. She was working as a cashier in the drive-through oil-change joint he had been assistant manager for during the past year. The Warlord Oil Change Company offered him salary plus immediate benefits starting off at eight grand more than the Jiffy Lube he worked at before.

Your butt looks really good in those slacks. That’s how the whole thing started. It wasn’t even a battle tactic for him to be pursued; he had no attack plan as response besides, Thanks.

Then it was, I had a dream about you last night, acrylic nails and tanned flesh on his arm, fingertips making circlets on his tricep and his dick getting hard. Then it was drinks after five—ostensibly with everyone and eventually happy hour dwindled to horny minutes, erect and swirling around them both with margaritas, draft beers, soaked cardboard coasters, wadded up napkins, and finger trails through the nearly clear beer spilled on the table. Lips were licked. Glances given. Innuendo was the common tongue in the world they built for themselves between his wife and her absent conscience. There was lipstick on half the pilsners left on the table when they left the bar and even though he had a full tank, he stopped at the gas station on the way home to pump $1.23 worth of premium unleaded so he could spill some on his hands to mask the scent of her saliva, perfume, and the musk of her twat.

The line was moving now and Ralphonso was probably shifting in his pleather seat, fingering the trigger of his .38 and jonesing to light the overstuffed blunt roach in the rusted ashtray of his gray Impala. A severely obese woman left the counter with four stapled bags of pills or creams or whatever it was that fat people used to treat themselves against themselves nowadays. The huffing woman in front of him turkey necked to the right and left of the man in front of her, cursing the fat bitch for not moving quicker.

Lori never suspected a thing even up to the point when he told her because guilt got the better of him and because he was bad off when Arlene dumped him after their third hump in the back of his father-in law’s Chevy Astro Van he was driving because the bank claimed the unpaid note on his pickup truck the month before. They did it between the car seats that his children sat in each morning and where his wife put the milk and eggs so they wouldn’t roll around in the back. The van rocked so hard that the little mirror fell off which let him see what his kids were doing in the backseat while he drove. Afterwards, he collapsed against her, his jeans around his ankles and his white calf socks collecting fragments of dead leaves from the van’s filthy floorboard.

He never felt so lonely as that night when he drove her back to her car still in the oil change parking lot. Her tanned arms sparkled in the moonlight from the expensive fruit lotion she put on to mask the scent of their sex. She huffed and grabbed the ceiling handle when he ran the red light and turned left across a busy intersection to drift recklessly into the Warlord’s parking lot, brakes squealing into the manager’s parking space. She reminded him of his wife when she huffed at him and the mental connection triggered a wave of neurochemical disappointment cascading through his nervous system. And it was that moment when he felt Arlene slipping from him as the diffused physical attraction between them bled into their past, leaving only the monotony of strangers without the sweaty possibility and mysterious feel of each other’s sexual organs one day touching each other. The loss of hearing her say, See ya, turn her back and walk to her Ford Festiva was as poignant as watching a loved one slip away in a cold hospital bed. He missed her wholly before her vaginal fluid had even dried up and evaporated from his matted pubic hair.

The huffy woman was at the counter now, the sack with the bologna at her feet. She was barking directions at the pharmacist, brandishing her insurance card like a VIP pass, slapping it down on the counter, pointing to the brand name of her carrier, and pushing it forward into the pharmacist’s space with the snobbery of European royalty. She held her fat head high on her rounded shoulders and reminded Ronnie of the pictures of Old King Cole in his son’s book of nursery rhymes that he used to ask him to read to him before bed every night.

One week after their car seat fuck, Arlene was heading off to the bar with the head mechanic, her car stayed in the parking until late at night or sometimes the next morning. Two weeks after that Ronnie was laid off due to cutbacks. Warlord was closing six branches and eliminating an entire level of middle management as they invested in a better inventory tracking system and instituted a work-group based reporting structure where head mechanics shared managerial duty in exchange for a greater share of the bonus that formerly all went to the assistant manager. Sorry Ron, it’s a hell of a thing was the only comfort that the bald headed store manager offered him after taking his signature on the consent to release form.

It was his turn in line. The huffy woman was making her way through the electric doors, mumbling to herself and creating a void of humanity in front of her as people strained to get out of her way and avoid speaking to her. The pharmacist was smiling. Ronnie began to sweat.

Two years ago, he had suffered a major back injury when he fell down into the lower garage. He thought the platform was up and it wasn’t. He landed on a tool box, dislocating three vertebrae and shattering his right radius. He was given Oxycontin to treat his pain and he was addicted by the fourth day. From that point on, he took two pills three times a day religiously for eight months. He couldn’t function unless he was in a narcotic haze and after the surgery, when they had him on morphine, the hunger for numbness grew into an essential food group in his mind.

By the second month of recovery, he had invented a perpetual phantom pain to keep him in dope and the doctor kept writing prescriptions. Ronnie even broke down in tears once when lying to the doctor about how bad his back hurt. In true junkie fashion, he believed his lie before he even told it and now he was cashing in on his addiction. And why not? Truth be told, he wanted to grind the whole bottle up, snort it, and die with blood streaming from his nostrils. Anything to kill this empty fucking feeling he had. It was like his integrity got sucked out of his dick somehow and ended up in that festering little twat’s cunt, his sperm probably sentenced to die in vagina wash with the acidity of battery acid. Everything he once admired about himself had been flipped over and the grub worms were crawling all over his self image, feeding on whatever tentacles of his guts remained.

The pharmacist returned with two stapled bags. Ronnie didn’t even need to read the instructions or warnings. He knew the dangers of what lay inside all too well and this was his last chance. That $600 in Ralphonso’s left pocket was going to pay one month of his three-month late mortgage before his wife and kids got put in the street by the sheriff. It was too soon for a divorce since he and Lori had only been separated for a couple weeks now and the bank called once every other day. The phone was set to be shut off next week and the television had been feeding off antenna reception for two months now, cable cancelled by Lori the day after he lost his job. This was his last chance to ever sleep in the bed they bought on joint credit and made payments for three years for. This was it, jack—the last stop before he didn’t want to think where because his thoughts were growing dim. There wasn’t much light left shining out of him.

Jesus Christ, how can people do these things to each other? I mean, what the fuck is it about that little wet slit between a woman’s legs that makes a man lose all of his self worth, drop to his knees and beg like a fucking dog for a scrap of table meat? She wasn’t even that good, always primping while we fucked, fixing her hair and pouting her lips out like there was a hidden camera in the van. And her nipples were too small. She had narrow hips, and this annoying fucking way of circling them around when she rode me; it was like an old fucking dog circling a blanket to lay down. And her moans were as fake as a President’s promise for peace. Why did I throw my life away for that miserable little cunt?

The electric double doors whiffed open and the cart boy was piloting some contraption that drove at least thirty carts into the cart bay. It was raining out now and the day had drained almost completely away as he stood in line for his drugs, for his life. He could see Ralphonso’s Impala and the wipers were going, making shrieks as metal scraped against glass. The driver’s side window was cracked and Ronnie smelled marijuana as he approached the car. The passenger side door opened. Get in nicka! What the fuck took so long? Shit!

The pills were good. The money was good. The Impala was road bound again and the engine roared up the country road that Ronnie used to drive home from the Warlord on. Aye, whur you wohn me tayk you, fooh? Ronnie stared straight ahead, watching the screaming wipers still going full speed despite the lack of rain. Take me home, man. He thought about the day his son was born, how he put down the video camera to cut the cord and lost the moment on film. It was the most vivid memory of his life and had become his cornerstone of peace. It was the only light left in his mind.

Lori heard the Impala turning the corner onto their cul-de-sac. The screen was down on the front door because the cloudy heat of the rainy afternoon made the city like a sauna. She heard the screaming windshield wipers coming closer and somehow knew that Ronnie had come home. Part of her felt relieved. Part of her hated herself for that relief.

Ronnie walked up to the house as the Impala roared down the street, Ralphonso finally turning off the wipers and giving him a chopping salute of parting with the first two fingers of his left hand hanging outside the car window at the stop sign. Lori was watching him walk up the gravel driveway through the screen door. She didn’t open the door but she didn’t tell him to get the fuck out either. Her head disappeared and the door was unlocked when he pressed the button on the handle.

The slam of the heavy aluminum door against the splintering wood frame was a blessing of invocation.

TAGS:
When the Hell Did the Whole Thing Fall to Shit?, Short Story, Short Stories, fiction, Writing, Literature

It's hard to explain to people who don't write fiction what it's like to become a channel for a story. The worst writers approach their fiction with an absolute end in mind. It's okay to have a concept and a "feeling" for the story and then write from that. But one must be pliable and willing to bend the way the tale unfolds all the while keeping all sense focused on theme, arc, tragedy, and consequence.

And there is a zone, believe it. Soemtimes I have written things while in the zone that, years later, it's like a stranger wrote the words. And although I am my own worst critic, sometimes I am pleasantly surprised by what I find.

The other day, I cam across about sixty pages of a novel I started four or five years ago and put down for some reason or other. Here is the first chapter:

Great Awakening by Joshua Minton

The End

The secret of a great marriage is two-fold. The first thing you have to do is bare your thoughts and fears completely to another person. The second thing is to apologize immediately when you know you’re wrong and to always forgive when you know that you’re right.

The secret of politics is to stay as far away from them as possible. Treat politics like an overbearing stranger who approaches you aggressively on a dark street.

Now, Jason, you don’t have to worry about the secret of life for many years now, but you need to be prepared for the question because it is by far the most deceiving of all of life’s major questions that mature adults must search out for themselves. But when the time does come, consider the meaning of the question of meaning.

I offer this advice to you, young man—when you’re old enough to confront the concept of death and truly understand its enormous implication, you will be proffered for a meaning. Everyone is standing with their hands clenching outturned pockets, blank expressions on their face and their shoulders shrugging. What does it mean?!—this is what they are not saying but Help Me?! is what they mean.

Picture the perfect death—this is the secret everyone use to murder each other over—the secret that many have understood and gone beyond. Yet it is still such a secret that so many more people need to understand before everyone can hit that next stage of consciousness.

Jason, the secret of life is this: Picture the perfect death as a goal and then work backwards, setting benchmarks of achievement that go as far back as this very minute. Now you’ve got a timeline and a goal list. All you need to do is supply the talent, desire to gain skill sets, and faith in the inherent goodness of time, existence, emotion, and the universe itself. Men have been killing for this secret knowledge for 4,000 years when it’s available to any honest and serious thinking heart and mind. There is no cost for this treasure, other than the time to put the thoughts together, the mental energy to spend on the experiences that provide applied understanding, and a depth of heart that loves and supports the community you find yourself in. Life teaches lessons by the millisecond, Jason. You’ve got to be really quick to catch them all.

The old man held his grandson on his knee while the rocking sofa creaked against the evening sounds on the Miracle Farm. His grandson just turned eight today and he was spending his birthday in his most favorite place doing his most favorite of activities—lap rocking in eve of his grandfather’s oak tree, listening to the old man talk in his sing-song and drawn out voice. His grandfather’s tone was always laughing, praying, and cursing at the same time.

Larry Miracle was a teacher pure and simple. He was first a devoted father. Then he was an attentive husband. Then he was an enlightened trillionaire who gave millions to charities of his own choosing. He spent laborious hours pouring over the charter documents of organized charities. He refused to give to any charity with a paid staff. Miracle money shaped the world in his image and with same stroke of love with which he was received by humanity during a crisis point and saved everyone through the perfect blend of reason, emotion, and spiritual inspiration.

Larry Miracle was a decent carpenter, having made several of the pieces placed at strategically cogitated locations throughout Miracle Farm.

A white tinged yellow tabby head rushed Miracle’s shin and figure eighted to the other. He extended his arm to the ground and frisked his fingers together, drawing the cat who was now purring.

J, the secret of getting a cat to like you is to rub a little earwax on your fingers and let them lick it off. Do this three times and you’ve got a friend for life. Of course, a cat was still eat your face if you happen to die and lay undiscovered on the floor for four days.

His grandson scrunched up his face in revolt and Miracle laughed. He was sardonic at times and his humor often offended more than it amused.

Lawrence Miracle was a former President of the United States and leader of a globe spinning chaotically off balance and in danger of tipping beyond the returning point. The world was now as peaceful as the silence between one hinge creak and another of the glider that now supported this frail man with long white hair tucked back into a thick pony tail and the handsome blonde grandson who sat attentive and adoring in his grandfather’s lap.

The United States of Earth now held geodemocratic presence on every continent as well as the lunar colony which had registered for charter only sixteen months prior to this moment in time. And the system was working.

The founding documents of this culture were the very same that once founded that Eastern country where men wore powdered wigs, carried walking canes and used quill toothpicks to dislodge the nightly fare of low lit restaurants that only held the clicking of glass together and what remained the patriotic ether that bound human beings together in a way that only happened once since—under the Miraculous Reign as his tenure of leadership had now come to be called with the solid respect lacking in terms like The Roaring 80s or The 90s Scandals.

The democratization of the earth was accomplished through a layering of words and sentiment at some parts of the process and by the muzzle of a gun and the single use of a low-yield nuclear weapon at the right place and the right time.

Beyond that, Lawrence Miracle was single handedly responsible for accomplishing in two terms what the British Empire did not over several hundreds of years accomplish—making democracy take root in the so-called third world heart and mind. He accomplished this because he threw away terminology and talking points and spoke to the people of his world like they were intelligent beings that could understand the workings of interpersonal relationships between men and women in all of facets of existence—man to man, man to woman, woman to woman and larger and larger groups of people to other groups of people. Everyone can know the secret, he always said—all they need is a point in the right direction and a stiff kick in the ass. Sometimes, he always followed this anecdote up with, a simple point is all it takes but most of the time you end up spraining a leg muscle.

But there were times when a kick to the ass wasn’t enough. At one point, Islamists (Islamic Fascist) terrorists infected a few letters and mailed them out to targeted individuals, unleashing a stream of human misery and needless suffering that might have widened into a river if it had not been for the defense and response. The individuals were caught in hours even though they were holed up in a dusty cellar in a desert neighborhood in the Middle East with an unpronounceable name on the North American continent.

There were four of them and they were sentenced to the Barbara Olsen and Rudolph Giuliani Public Prison where they were forced to live the remainder of their lives in a twenty by thirty cell that was protected by clear concrete (a marvelous invention of transparent building materials that allowed clear views into and through buildings).

These blasphemers of the will of the divine lived their days in full view of the public they so despised that they would attack and maim without provocation or justification. Teenagers often gathered to smoke marijuana and gawk at the Islamists as they used the facilities—showering, defecating, urinating, pleasing themselves—nothing was private for these criminals. They were nothing more than zoo animals now at the mercy of the public’s undying attention—a hell far worse than Dante’s soaring imagination ever dared to proffer.

Terrorism was a thing of the past as was economic deficiency in the global market of the exchange of goods, services, and ideas.

But all of this public nonsense was the last thing on Larry’s mind as he sat and rocked his grandson in the late August evening of Eastern Ohio.

The crickets had taken over the voice of the outside world and the moonlight split and sprinkled through the stretched up maples of his farm. There were virgin trees in the government nature preserve that bordered his retirement property and he often felt as if were in the protective palm.

He entered his home, closing the round wooden door behind him.

He punched in the house alarm code as he wiped his feet on the boot brush rug and called out for his wife.
She responded from down the north hallway and he began walking toward her voice.

Nancy and Larry Miracle had been married for almost fifty years now and she always found new ways to amaze him. She was always changing, morphing, improving; whether a new hairstyle, outrageous handbags and hats, spiked heel shoes or scuffed ballerina flats, she swung back and north so many times that to catch her in definition was to already have missed.

Time had never been able to grab Nancy and hang on and this was why Miracle loved her—the eternal motor pump that kept their little Fountain of Youth flowing all these years. She was something like the cool breeze that catches wetness on bare skin and makes it feel like ice.

He entered the room she was sitting in to find her cross-legged and wrapping a birthday present for her niece. Hi sweetheart. He bent to kiss her. Hi baby. She craned her neck to receive his affection. You wrappin’ Wilma’s present? He asked her without honest interest. Yep. She answered as uninterested as he did. Well, I’m gonna’ hit the hay, babe. Love you.

He turned to leave the room and then turned back to her as she put a ribbon between her lips and squinted at the tape line on the triangle fold of the package side. She mouthed UMK SUVEETHARD through pursed lips and he smiled at the expression which was one of his favorites. He shuffled back up to the foyer and kept going straight down the south hall to his bedroom.

After showering, shaving, and brushing his teeth, he laid down between 2000 thread count white cotton sheets, sighed the exhalation of an expert at the end of a demanding day. He closed his eyes and died as left the world as peacefully as he had entered it.

Author's Preface: This story was written nine years ago and was workshopped by George Looney's entire Creative Writing Workshop class at BGSU. This was a rather bold experiment with the second person narrative that didn't go over too well--partly because of the radicalism of the ideas expressed, partly because of the drug references, but mostly because it took someone with balls as big as the world to even attempt to write something like this. [Editing Note: This was scanned in OCR and there is likely some mistakes that will be fixed in the coming days--please forgive these in the meantime.]

He leans across the front seat and rolls the window down. “Get in. Throw your bags in the back.”

From the back of the green station wagon, you see him run a hand through his gray hair and extinguish a cigarette in the ashtray. You walk to the passenger side and get in. He shakes your hand. “My name is Joseph Cooglias.”

He looks you up and down, you feel as if your clothes are being scanned and catalogued. You are sure that he has noticed your tongue stud and he’ll never see the nipple ring. “You’re not running from the law are you?”

You shake your head and say no, my name is Crystal Noman and I’m just trying to get a ride to Cincinnati. My best friend from high school has Pink Floyd tickets for me, but I have to be there two days ahead to claim them. And since it’s the middle of the week, nobody at school’s leaving till’ the weekend, so I had to hitch. Let me ask you a question, you’re not one of those freakrapist-sickfucker’s that you hear about on the news are you?

He shakes his head, smiles and offers his hand again. His hands are rough with calluses that dig into your own soft skin. When you close the door and roll the window back up, he accelerates slow and smooth back into the traffic of 1-75. No one says a word until the first rest stop. He buys you and himself a Coke and Butterfinger. “Crystal, what are you studying in school?” You look at his face and tell him you’re an economics major with a minor in marketing.

He chuckles inside his mouth without making his obvious condescension into a public statement. Butterfinger crumbles from his mouth and falls into his lap. He brushes it onto the floorboard. “You know what kid, you might as well go buy a safe, lock yourself inside and wait to die.” You recoil in surprise and your face becomes hot, your hands begin to sweat. What the fuck are you talking about mister? student graduating with honors next semester.

He pulls a Marlboro medium from the pack, lights it and rolls the window down halfway. “What I mean Crystal, is that what this world needs today are not pimps and pornographers, but intelligent people that are sensitive enough to free themselves from this nightmare of chaos that the state of the world is in today.”

You ask what he means by pimps and pornographers?

He glances at you serious and pulls a silver flask, engraved with the initials IC, from his jacket pocket. He fills it with a bottle of Jack Daniels that he takes from under the seat. “All advertising art is pornography since it’s intended to make the observer possess the object being represented. A pimp is someone who pushes something on another person by using this pornographic method. Crystal you are in school learning how to be pimp, selling shit to people with pornographic methods and that’s a fact.”

You’re pissed. Your hands clench and sweat more. He takes a drink from the just filled flask and winces, while screwing the top back on. You ask what gives him the right to pass judgement on you. “This isn’t about me Crystal, this is about facts. And the fact is that propaganda and belief rule this melodramatic world of human affairs. Belief is the only thing that could possibly separate the human race.” You cock your head in confusion; the insult is slipping away. You say, what do you mean Joe, there’s lots of things that separate people; things like race, religion, and what economic or political society you belong to?

He laughs, staring at the passing farms. You notice the roof of one barn has a huge rebel flag painted on with a “Member of the Local Klan” sign by the fence in the yard. “Crystal, who or what is it that acknowledges those differences you listed?” His question intrigues you and throws you into a wall at the same time. You say, what do you mean, I’m the one who acknowledges them?”

He puckers his lips and blows a breath of disapproval. “Crystal, were you born knowing how to talk or how to drive a car?” No but I don’t see how that... “That means that not only those differences you listed, but the very way that you think has been acquired by your mind through experience and time. That is the essence of belief. Belief is of the past and the past is experience of suffering, so the mind, acting through experience of the past, carries suffering into the present moment of life.”

You switch your weight to lean against the door. You say, that makes sense but what’s so wrong about it? e takes another drink. “Beliefs separate human beings. The Christians say they believe in God, the Muslims say they believe in God, and the Jews say they believe in God, but at the same time they’re all fighting each other because they each have different metaphors for the same idea.”

You realize that this is correct and you ask if he is an atheist. He shakes his head. “No, I’m a very religious person, but the word God is a belief, an idea that has been created out of fear, and it has been used to exploit people.”

You say, but you do believe that God exists? He looks into your eyes.

“Crystal, whether you believe that God exists or not has absolutely no relevance to the fact that human beings all over the world suffer. You don’t ask if the Sun is shining or if London exists, it’s there, it’s a fact. And as long as one human being on this planet suffers, the word God is an illusion brought about by insecurity and fear.”

You say damn, I guess that means that something’s wrong with the way that human beings think. You look ahead to the stretching highway that lies before you. Clouds are gathering from the south.

He nods his head. “That’s right, children in school aren’t taught how to think, they are taught what to think. Now Crystal, you’ve got to understand before we go any further in this conversation that I’m not trying to prove something to you. I’m not trying to be some damn genius or make you think that I’m this savior come to heal the world or any bullshit like that, I mean heaven knows I have my vices.” He holds the flask up. “I just want to have a discussion with you, as a member of the generation that will inherit control of this ecopoligious madness. I wonder how you, a child of the democratic dream, plan to govern the affairs of this world?”

His long wind stimulates you in a deep place, possibly a door in your mind that you didn’t even know was there.
You nod without expression and enter Joseph’s head. His movements, his gestures, the energy behind his words are tempting your morals, questioning your beliefs, opening you up, perhaps even causing you to consciously mutate into a state of open inquiry. You are completely alive.

He takes another swig from the flask, winces again and offers you some. You refuse and pull a joint out of your own pocket. You push in the car lighter and wait for it to pop. “So, you’re going to see the Floyd huh? I saw them in 77’ at Riverfront Coliseum during the Animals tour. I sat in the fourth row.” Yo ‘re intrigued agaiir this man has to be about fifty years old. You ask what a guy like m was doing at a Pink Floyd concert, mald a mental note that at the time he stated, Roger Waters was still in the band and the Animals album was a concept derived from the George Orwell book Animal Farm. You pass the joint and he takes a hit, holding the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds and then exhales through his nose, dragon-style.

He passes the joint back to you. “When I was a priest, a member of my parish operated the ticket sales for the amphitheater. Now this was back before Ticketmaster made a monopoly on concert sales.”

You’re amazed that this guy used to be a priest, but after a few seconds you see that it fits, but there has to be more to this story.

You look at him closely; his black sport jacket with the flask pocket on the inside, his black suede boots, black silk slacks with business socks and a button up white silk shirt. He has a violent scar running from his ear to his lower chin. He catches you looking.

“I got that in Vietnam. I was a chaplain in the Marine Corps, and the VeeCee attacked our unit in the middle of the night. The soldier that did this told me just before I passed out, that the only reason that he left me alive is because I was a religious man and he considered it a bad omen to kill a holy man the first time they met in combat. The Vietnamese are a very deep and proud people Crystal, but you’d never know that living here in rural Ohio.”

He shakes his head in what appears to be dismay. “You don’t hear much of anything about reality around here.”

In a flash of memory never experienced--you can imagine, you can fantasize and speculate about the miles that this man has walked and the light years he has traveled inside his head. You say, if you don’t mind me asking, why did you leave the priesthood? He clears his throat and looks at you serious again, probably attempting to ascertain if you were ready for what he was about to say.

He puts the roach in his mouth and swallows. “I left because of a difference in expression of belief that I and the Cardinal shared. About twenty years ago at the beginning of the New Year, a young boy in my parish testified in court that the Cardinal had molested him on several occasions during private communion conferences. When I confronted the Cardinal about it, he threw his position in my face, saying that if I understood how much power the Church had in the world, I would keep my mouth shut and help to maintain the integrity of the only institution that keeps order in the midst of chaos.”

His index finger punctures the air as he’s speaking, emphasizing the Cardinal’s blasphemy. You put your own fingers up to your face and rub your lips, the warmth of contact feels good against the cold flesh that this mans story inspires. You ask what happened. He lights another Marlboro and continues, “Well, I told the Cardinal to stick his position up his ass and I testified in court to what he threatened me with. The evidence was only circumstantial, but the Cardinal was still defrocked and banished from the Church. He now rut boein Lexington. I was rewarded for my effort by the Bishop, who I also told to stick it in his ass. It was soon after that I became a freelance writer and that’s what I’ve done ever since, just travel and talk.” He nods, marking the end of his story. He flicks the butt out the window and lights another cigarette, looking at you for your response. You are completely silent.

You just passed the halfway mark of the journey and rain begins to pelt the car in fat droplets that spread across the windshield. You will be approaching Dayton and soon after the ride will end. Now that you’re good and stoned , you can concentrate more on the conversation without regards to the conclusion or the arrival.

You say, Jesus how do you feel now about the Church? He looks down to his lap and brushes the remaining Butterfinger crumbs away, then looks back to the road.

“I've thought about that for many years now, through drug experiments, through drug addictions and through drug withdrawals. I’ve thought about the Church and the Bible through my stages as an alcoholic and a womanizer. And even though I’ve been down, lying in the gutter, soaked with my own vomit, I’ve never been low enough to step one foot back inside a church, mosque, or temple of any kind, and I never will. No matter what drug I’ve been addicted to, no matter how desperate I was for a fix, I always knew that the addiction to religious ritual and metaphor is the deadliest vice a human being can hold! Religion has killed more people than any war, disease or natural disaster ever.”

He puts out the cigarette and you can feel your beliefs begin to smolder and ash.

You stare at nothing, your head swaying to the rhythm of emptiness as it pulses inside you. You feel as if you’ve touched the other side of a mystery beyond comprehension. It’s all one big confusing mess. When you recover, you ask if he still considers himself a religious person.

He smiles and grips the wheel tight. “Yes, but to me the truly religious person isn’t the one who goes to church faithfully and worships some god created by man. To me the religious person is the one who steps completely out of the stream of information. The human being that thinks independently of any system of thought or particular ideology, to me that’s a truly religious person.”

Your thoughts gather and you follow the lead of insight by asking him about people like Adolph Hitler who also stepped out of this so-called stream of belief? “But did Hitler step out of the stream completely, or did he merely change the direction of the stream? If he stepped out completely, then his actions in the world would not have been reflective of securing knowledge or territory, because these are things in the stream of experience called time. Jesus Crystal, Hitler’s not the one you should be scared of, it’s the minds of the automatons that followed him that’s really scary.

You ask how he knows all of this. “Have you ever read Mien Kampf?”

You say no.

“It should be required reading, not for worship, but to understand the mind of a deluded individual. Hitler had a limited vision, he was even a very dogmatic person, but the passion that he developed for ritual is what led to the horror of the holocaust. If no one would have followed Hitler’s lead, he would have been a crazy artist with deluded ideas, and he would have died broke and alone. When you can really see the Nazi ritual that millions of Germans worshipped, you’ll understand what happens when people limit themselves to a particular method of society or system of belief.”

The point is well made and leaves you silent. After a few minutes you look back at him and ask how he compares Nazism with his experience of the Church?

He seems almost surprised at your question and a smile invades his face. “There is no difference at all, only for the historian and the fool.”

You ask him to explain.

“Well, the expression of ritual is superficially different, but the source is still the same, fear. All over the world human beings may have different skin color and come from different environments, but underneath this flesh we are each bundles of skin, nerves, muscles, beliefs, desires, fears and conflicting emotion. We are power hungry security fiends. The frightening thing is that some people are more passionate about their suffering than others and seek to blame something or someone, which leads to exploitation and ultimately to the hiding of truth under the veils of lie and belief, which in my book are the same goddamn thing!”

His hands grip the wheel tighter and the whites of his knuckles are exposed, as what seems to be years of penned up aggression come spewing from his mouth. You can almost feel his frustration as if it was infrared radiation and you were a radio telescope. He needed this conversation as much as you did.

You are aware of his bitterness and ask if he is a pessimist?

He shakes his head, “Oh no, not at all, but I am a fan of the observation of reality. I know now that when I began to understand the limitations of my own mind and I dropped all of the beliefs that I had been taught to cling to for security, that’s when I became a sensitive and therefore a religious human being.”

He nods the release of his personal truth to you.

You ask what he considers to be a sensitiv person?

“To me, a sensitive human being is one that listens very close to what is happening around them. Alert and conscious of everything with the eyes, ears, nerves, senses and the brain operating in the most acute fashion, each alert to the slightest stimulus while at the same time understanding their own limitations. To me, only such a serious mind can understand what truth is and what the meaning behind the metaphor God is!”

There is something so empty in what h&s saying, something so final in his words that it creates a void deep within you, a hole that used to be filled with religious scriptures and belief that has been passed down in your family for generations. All of that false security is burning away and the feeling it leaves can only be described as cold. You say that not all priests rape little children. He was a good priest, so why should he condemn all organized religion for the mistake of one human being?

He taps the odometer shield and the needle swings back to the left. “I simply came to a point one day when I realized that throughout recorded history, the human race has created religion only to relate with an environment of constant death. That’s all there was in the beginning of human time, was death and life. There was no word of god, because first man had to think the word to worship it.”

You finish your Coke and lay the can on the floorboard, asking him to go on. “Well, in the beginning of human worship man was a hunter and the animal, Sun and Moon were the primary objects of worship. This worship of nature was carried through when the cultivation of farming brought with it the worship of the Earth Goddess and eventually the territoriality of the human animal brought about the worship of the tribal war deity, or deities, to allow the mind to relate to the constant invasions by barbarian-nomadic tribes on these farming communities.”

You bring your left leg up on the seat, pulling your right leg over your ankle, accidentally kicking the can of Coke underneath the seat. He continues, “All of these ways of worship eventually merged into one when a system of religious metaphors was set on paper and in the mind. Instead of worshipping a sky-god or the Sun, the human mind began to worship the word and the ritual. As soon as we started to put emphasis on the ritual itself instead of what it was meant to be symbolic of, we became lost to reality. And psychologically as a species, we’ve been trapped at this point of delusion ever since.”

This almost sounds like a school lecture except this time you’re actually creating the conversation in the moment so the learning is immediate in small flashes.

You say, why don’t you write a book or something Joe? I mean you’re a genius, you could go on talk shows and shit, fucking Jerry Springer man!

He laughs and looks seriously at you again; “Do you think that you can teach another human being how to love?” You think about it and say, no I guess not because if you could, then all of these organized religions and nationalistic rituals would have actually helped alleviate human suffering instead of further separating us. He nods approval at your insight. “Now you got some smarts kid.”

You shake your head in disbelief at all that has changed in this two-hour car ride.

You ask how he lives in the world everyday knowing what he knows?

He says, “I do the only thing that I know how to do. I live my life with the people around me. If you’ve got no cracks in the mirror up here,” he points to your head, “then there won’t be any craàks in the reflection out here.”

He gestures to the passing farms in reference to the outside world.

You begin to recover as a few more levels of dust are cleared from your mind.

“Now Crystal, notice that understanding has nothing to do with becoming something better than what you already are, or in being some kind of spiritualistic ideal; the understanding of what it means to be religious has to do with how you relate to another human being in everyday relationship.”

You nod in agreement.

“After all, relationship is the one connecting factor of the human race. Society at its basic level, is the relationship between human beings and if I’m in conflict in my relationship with you, then I’m in conflict with the rest of the world. If I’m separated from you by belief or experience, then we’re all doomed.” He closes his eyes for a moment and then rubs them with his forefinger and thumb.

You ask if he means that if we can sit here and have an open discussion, not just debating with one another and running around circles of logic, but instead actually put our minds together to discover the truth that we all share, that the very nature of suffering in the world around us could change completely?

He nods, “That’s right Crystal, one act without clear reflection is enough to prevent the survival of our species. I know it sounds incredible and overdramatic, but if you really look at the whole thing, and not just superficial but subtly, it all becomes quite interesting and extraordinary.”

You ask what he means, “Crystal I guess what I’m trying to say is that in order to discover the whole truth of the limitation of the mind, you must first become very sensitive to what is false and move from there. Begin with doubt and probe into the complicated nature of your own relationship to life. Oh course, what I’m saying is only a bunch of words if you don’t understand that this isn’t a theory to me, or some philosophy that I learned from a book or in school, this is how I live my life in a world of human suffering!”

You pass the Dayton exit on 75, which means about another 25 minutes until your destination. It has stopped raining and the Sun appears on its front porch of the horizon like some prophet of life who’s lived next door forever. Most of the remaining trip is spent in silence, watching the passing farms grow into golf courses with wealthy communities surrounding them. Joe speaks only once to remark about how golf courses are the biggest waste of real estate. “Golf courses and Cemeteries, I mean Jesus Christ, how outdated is this ritual of burying the dead in metal coffins? Burn those bodies and pour ‘em in the lakes and streams, scatter the ashes in the wind. The Earth needs the phosphorus, sulfur, and carbon. Whatever it is that makes a human being alive has obviously left the body, so why do we worship death instead of life that’s been freed from suffering?”

You don’t answer his question because you realize that there are no answers, none that he would accept and be happy with. There is only silence and the timeless energy that comes out of it. You pull up to your friend’s house. She’s not home from U.C. yet; the thirty-minute commute from downtown Cincinnati to West Chester sometimes stretches itself to an hour and fifteen minutes during rush hour on 75. You get your bag out of the back and as you walk past the passenger window you look inside.

Joe leans across the seat and rolls the window down. “Goodbye Crystal, it was a pleasure to meet you, and thanks for the discussion. It’s not that often that a young person such as yourself is willing to sit down and actually listen to what someone else has to say without trying to prove ‘em wrong right away. Of course, you needed the ride and I needed to vent.”

You laugh and say that it was also your pleasure. You thank him for the ride and everything else, especially the Coke and Butterfinger. You pull another fatty from your pocket and throw it on the seat next to him.

He winks and starts the engine.

The car backs out of the driveway and Joe waves to you as he pulls away, back to his life, back to his quest for perfection in an imperfect world. But in a way, you suppose that he’s found some kind of truth in that imperfection. You try to remember his last name, the next time you’re in a bookstore or library; you want to look his shit up. It was Joseph C-something, oh well. You look up to the sky; it’s both sunny and cloudy in West Chester, Ohio, home of the fighting Thunderbirds. As you walk up to the house, you look down to your pocket and pull out ten hits of recently dipped blotter acid.

You think it’s time to leave the world for a few days.

...is the issue of publicly-funded art. So Rush and Hannity can humbly kiss my ass as I disagree with them on this point.

I have been without cable since the last night of the Republican Convention of 2004. I did this for the main reason of purchasing a new computer while not having it affect my monthly budget. So, for almost two years, I was living without the influence of any mainstream media source upon my intellect and judgment. I chose every avenue from which I received my information on a daily basis.

But until I started watching my local PBS HD channel (which is the best looking channel on my $50 antennae); I had no concept of what fantastic programming they hosted on there. This is worth funding; but I believe it is paramount that partisan political thinking (the worst kind of thinking there is for everyone) must be kept to a minimum or always brought back to the center.

That is being fair and level and letting your audience decide; Right?

I support PBS for the same reason I passionately support the private funding of local libraries who participate in a large-scale sharing program. It's far better than the alternative...

...Imagine a world where the poor and disinterested had no avenue to gain the information and skill sets to encourage their passions to become their livelihoods while giving back a significant portion of that wealth to the social structures around them.

That is what living in a community is all about and it seems that we should be making more of an effort to sanctify the ground around us and see it reflected in the other inhabitants of this planet who immediately surround us in life.

A significant part of any "compassionate conservatism" should be compassion and neither sides in the political rift in America have any abundance of compassion. That's where we as individuals must step in, step up, cock our weapons once again and aim at the tyrant who seeks to take away that which Providence allowed a great nation to be built for the sole purpose of--bringing to light the freedom of the individual acting in the best interests of themselves and everyone around them.

And this tyrant is not any one man or group of people--the tyrant is fear. The tyrant is ignorance. The tyrant is compulsive disregard.

This is the enemy to be defeated in the War on Terror. This is the whole point of fighting a war, right?

Or is the goal still taking away the toys and essentials of others, call them us, and move on to the next unlucky culture? If this still is the goal, then someone at the committee forgot to copy me on the memo because I was under the impression we were trying to get to the whole "I Have a Dream" world, just over the mountaintop, where everyone eats at the table regardless of their skin color, where they come from, or who they are?"

If this isn't the goal then what the fuck are we celebrating on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday? Are we rewarding ourselves for slipper further into the nightmare? Or are we celebrating the ideal as a substitute for the action?

I believe in a world where every human being whose lungs are filling and emptying with the correct oxygen to atmosphere ratio, on regular basis, has complete and total access to the creative thoughts and artistic productions of fellow human beings.

Art should be both publicly and privately funded. It will be the true mark of historical social progress for us when artistic funding has been unleashed from the corporate and political fence post it has been tethered to for three thousand years. But when art is totally funded by private citizens, you will know that we have reached a milestone in our social evolution.

TAGS:
Art, Funding, PBS, HD, High Definition, Sociology, History

The people of the colony gather around the rubble of the fallen temple. They are staring, shaking their heads and murmuring amongst themselves. There hasn’t been so much as an uncontrolled fire in the colony, much less a disaster of this magnitude. A silence falls over the crowd as a figure climbs to the top of the rubble. He is holding a human head with hair. In his other hand, he holds a sword that catches the light of the Sun and reflects it back into the eyes of the people.

Jordan speaks, “Citizens of Tranquility Colony, today you are free. You are free from ignorance. You are the ancestors of conspiracy. These men, our ‘Elders,’ have taken advantage of our species since the dawn of time. Their reign is over today!”

Jordan steps down a level. He is knee deep in rubble. “No longer will you be dictated and told what to do. No longer will you live in ignorance or fear of each other. No longer will you watch each other and report your neighbors. No longer will you consume chemicals that deny your humanity.”

“Our ancestors died because they fought over symbols that the ‘Elders’ gave them to fight over. No longer! If any files can be recovered from this building, let them be known to all. We must each understand the history of our species. And though I am no longer human, I am your brother. I will watch over you and protect you, but I will not be your leader. I will not dictate orders to be followed or rules to rule you.”

The people look at each other. The murmuring continually grows louder. Jordan says, “The truth will be hard to accept. The blood of our ancestors made a sea for us to sail to this world. They have sacrificed greatly and we must honor them. We must honor them by learning from their mistakes. We will not kill for any God, die for any flag, nor suffer separation between nations. We are one, a whole entity, complete and undivided. Let no man dissolve what has been assembled this day!”

Jordan steps off the rubble completely and hands the head to the man standing nearest to him. “Put this on display for all to see. May we never repeat the past again.” The man takes the head and looks at it. He looks back at Jordan, speechless.

Jordan walks to the center of town. The people turn to watch him. He thinks of his mother. He wishes she were here to see this. He misses her, but he does not grieve her death. He thinks about death. He thinks, “It’s far luckier to die than most believe.” He wipes his forehead with his palm and looks at the Earth in the sky. There is a break in the rust-red clouds, which allows him a hint at the surface. He thinks about the rivers that probably still flow on that planet. He wants to be there, to sit next to them and know the mystery of unsynthesized water.

Jordan sits down and looks up at the sky. His stomach is making noise. The people leave him alone. He thinks they fear him, as they should. He is the destroyer and the protector. He is the light at the beginning and the void at the end. Life is in between and everything else is just rumor and mystery. He is now the only God the human race knows. He looks at the sky and ponders the limits of divinity.

© 1998 by Joshua Minton

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