The state of being called, "Hangover," doesn't effectively describe what I was this morning. Naturally, several hours, glasses of water, and aspirin later, you could've used 'hangover' to describe me. Now that I think about it though, why do we call them hangovers anyway? Why not something that applies, like, "Fuck you, don't talk to me." Example.

*ring ring*
Actor 1: Uh... Hello?
Actor 2: Hey good buddy, how about that party last night.
Actor 1: Fuck you, don't talk to me.
Actor 2: That good, huh?
*click*

I should mention that they're actors not because this is a sketch, but because I hate actors. Another phrase that would work well is, "Temporarily Dead." Eeeeeexample:

*ring ring*
*smash, and other noises that resemble a phone being destroyed*
The next day:

Boss: Why weren't you at work yesterday?
Employee: I was temporarily dead.


Anyway, just a thought. Today is actually an important day in my yearly calendar, because it's Alisa's and my anniversary today. Creepy huh? I can't give any more details right now, on the off chance she'll check my site before I pick her up.

Stay off the sauce kids.

So, in a drastic maneuver involving a small amount of drinking, I did some stand-up last night. It went swimmingly. For those of you that don't know what the adverb 'swimmingly' means, it means 'well' or 'good' depending on usage. That's not a webster quote, but I think you'll find that it will suffice.

The best part, in my humble opinion, of my act last night was my heckler. She was a girl, and she was really drunk. Every other time I've performed, hecklers have fucked my world. I would lose my train of thought, forget jokes, generally get flustered, etc. This time, however, I gave it to her. It was like the pent up rage at every heckler I've ever seen or heard of bubbled out of me in this stream of witty insults (some original, some not.) There are two specific instances that come to mind, though there is a third I'll explain in greater detail. I should probably preface this by saying that I might have provoked her. The story goes like this: Her band went before me, and they kept asking for encores. The vast majority (at least of people around me) wanted them off the stage. I had been waiting for 3 hours to do my 7ish minute act. This is how open-mics work, I wasn't pissed about this. I mean, it's like 15 more minutes when I've been waiting all night, you know? I was trying to grasp the balls it would take to ask the audience to ask you for an encore, and then when nobody says anything, to keep playing WAY (Is that emphasized enough? I don't think so), WAY past your allotted time. So the first thing I said on stage, after "Hello Dinkytown!" was "Let's all give a big round of applause for pretention. Yeah, come on, give it up, pretention everybody." Some people got the reference to the assholes ahead of me, some didn't. Anyway, enough prefacing. Moving on.

I was doing a bit about Jesus (well, it's not really about Jesus, it's really about something else, fuck I'll just write out the bit) and she shouted out, "What would Jesus do?"

The bit goes something like this: Jesus is credited with saying, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth." I don't really know anything about that, but I do know one thing the meek won't be inheriting: Social Security. Because it's all gone, and there's nothing funny about that.

But in the middle of it, she demands that I answer, "WWJD?"
I said, "Jesus would shut the fuck up."
The crowd rather liked it, but I think it would've been better to say something a bit more whimsical like, "Jesus, what would Jesus do? Well, are we assuming that he's here, and listening to my act, like the rest of the audience, or just what would he do in general. Oh. You hadn't thought it through that far, well, by all means take a few minutes, then interrupt me again when I'm trying to tell a joke that depends, very much, on pacing and timing."

Anyway, I said that jesus would shut up, because it was the first thing that came to mind.

Well, that really pissed her off. In the middle of my bleu cheese bit, she started yelling, and I (yes, I'm ashamed of it) ripped off one of my favorite lines from Mr. Show, "Look lady, I don't come down to where you work and slap the dick out of your mouth."

The crowd loved it (now I'm getting to the third thing she did, after which she shut her mouth), and she got angrier. She walked up to the stage and was swearing at me, and I was swearing back, and she tried to take the mic next to me (Lo and behold, it wasn't on.) Then I moved aside and told her and my mic, "No, take this one, you are funnier than I am."

She said something into the mic about Dave Chappelle being better than me, "Dave Chappelle would kick your ASS!" I think that was it. I thought, "Yeah." The fact that she doesn't know that Dave Chappelle has about 10 years of life on me, and likewise has been doing comedy about 14x as long as I have made the statement very funny to me. I'm assuming she didn't know, because if she did, she would've known that it wasn't a very good insult.

Then they cut the mic out on her. That specific moment was one of my best ever. I just need to not get so worked up over hecklers. I mean, I kind of had to shout, to override her voice (the sound system there sucks) but I shouldn't have kept shouting once she got on the stage. I dunno, you live and you learn. One of the best shows I've done at a place where people don't come to hear comedy. Swimmingly. Quite.

Hey kiddies, I'm pretty sure everyone that is going to read the below post already did, so let's go ahead and bump it down. Let's be sure though... yep, my mom already emailed me, so everyone's read it. Thanks to everyone for the kind words about my fiction.

I'm working on another story at the moment, it'll probably take me several weeks to finish, as it's just a wee baby right now. More details on that later, but think: Trans-Galactic Gargle Blaster, and you'll at least be heading in the right direction.

Oh, and buy every Douglas Adams book you see. I just finished his final (and posthumous) publication, The Salmon of Doubt. It's an amazing read. I logged on to Amazon.com as soon as I finished it and spent over $100 on books he recommended in the course of his own. My regret is that I was never able to recognize what a sheer genius the man was while he was alive.

On a much more personal life-ish note, I ingested a heroic portion of psychedelics a while back. While you might think, "Shhh, haven't you heard of a little thing called the MotherFucking Patriot Act?" I don't really give a shit which FBI agent is doing unassociated online research at the moment, because I'm done with drugs. I know it sounds funny, but I'm not breaking their laws anymore, so fuck 'em.

The trip itself, in retrospect, reminds me of two quotes from Zoolander. I can't find direct quotes, so forgive me.

1. My friends and I have been dropping acid and sunbathing with spidermonkeys off the coast of Madagascar for the past two weeks, changed our whole perspective on shit.

2. So my rope slips, and I start to fall. Then I think,"Haven't you been smoking peyote for 10 straight days, and couldn't part of this, maybe be in your mind." I was right, I've never even been to Mount Vesuvius (spelling is hard.)

Yeah, so it was a singularly life changing experience that I wouldn't be able to repeat, and wouldn't want to, because it was the worst night of my life. On the other end, I'm glad it happened, because I've finally been able to stop trying to control everything and just let go. Of course, just saying it like that sounds incredibly trite, but I can't summarize it in any way that Chuck Pahlaniuk hasn't already. At the very point that I knew, and didn't fear that someday I was going to die, and accepted it, EVERYTHING changed. And it is prefereble to the way I was living.

Happy Trails, I've got some work to do.

Holy shit! An update. Wait for it... wait for it...

Blam. This is a 21 page fiction story I just finished. It's going to take a long time to read if you happen across it, but I have no real fear that anyone will actually read it. If you are, however, hopelessly lost in this wealth of information we lovingly refer to as 'the internet,' don't worry, we'll take good care of you. Oh, and please forgive the format errors, but I don't have the time or the energy to re-indent everything. I am putting in the page-breaks that didn't make the transition from Word though.

On a different note, before we get started. I just turned 21. I have officially discovered that I have all the requirements of a writer. I love to drink, and I love avoiding writing. Cheers!



Subcutaneous [beneath the skin]

I’m sitting here, in a pissant Mexican restaurant, eating a soft-taco. It’s almost a fast food joint, almost a restaurant, but neither. The food reminds me of a restaurant, but the prices are low enough for migrant workers to eat heartily and not worry about how much money they send home to Mexico. I’ve got two bean burritos and a soft taco, wrapped in wax paper, sitting on an aqua tray in front of me. You can purchase food here with either relevant currency. It cost me $2.13, about double what the Mexican in front of me paid.
It doesn’t bother me. I’m not even hungry, I’m paying the swarthy man behind the counter for some time. Time to think. I’m trying to keep a low profile for a little while, until at least part of this shitstorm blows over. It’s hard to keep a low profile when you’re carrying so much fucking money. Everyone you meet wants it, and knows you have it. Every pair of eyes in the restaurant is burning a hole in my briefcase. They know.
I sit back and make myself chew slower. They know nothing. I’m fucking golden. I watch a little Mexican girl take a newspaper from the rack next to the front door. The door is glass, just like the front of the building, as if it was transplanted straight from a strip mall. This little girl must be around six years old, with jet-black pigtails and squinty brown eyes that contain some sort of mischief way, way back inside them. She sticks her tongue out at me so forcefully that it makes a noise. My mind churns so fast I almost hear it clicking.
Everyone here must know. They’re all working for them. They put her up to this to distract me. The Feds found me. Any second now, the windows will implode in a shower of tear gas canisters and flash grenades, and I’ll die choking and blind. I can fucking feel it coming. I hunch down as the paranoia threatens to overwhelm reality. The bean burrito I was eating squirts into the tray. Oops. I must look like a feral rodent, with my eyes darting around, gripping a mess of brown beans and flour in two paws, chewing every bite like my only goal is to swallow it before I die. Calm, I have to be calm. I take a deep breath and sit up straight, wiping my hands on a napkin.
Cynthia, what I’m calling the Mexican girl, stops making faces at me as her mother walks up and scolds her in Spanish. Cynthia’s mother rips the newspaper out of her hands and puts it back on the rack. Still speaking too quickly for me to follow any of it, she storms back to the family’s booth with Cynthia in tow.
I’m finishing my last bean burrito when a cop walks in. He holds the door open, blinding anyone who looks in his direction. I don’t look. All talk in the restaurant stops.
Nobody who eats or works here wants trouble from the police. He knows that patrons with green cards are rare in El Burrito Dallas. They know he knows, but as long as they cause no trouble, and build highways and corporate skyscrapers for less than minimum wage, he’ll let them stay.
He lets the door close. His belt jingles as his tactical baton, ammunition, handcuffs, keys, and pistol bang against each other. I pretend to chew, while my left hand grips my own weapon hard enough to kill a small mammal. He’s wearing standard blues with big, fuck-off mirror shades covering most of his face. It’s like he looks at the room with his moustache, then proceeds to the counter of the establishment. After he arrives at the desk, he hikes his pants up, back over his hips, but below his rather formidable gut.
He has papers in his hands, and gives one of them to the owner-manager-cook of El Burrito Dallas.
“Put this up in your window. Comprende?” He says the last part with as little Spanish as he can muster. What a fucking cowboy.
This first generation entrepreneur knows that giving trouble to the police means that his restaurant will be shut down, and that his children will have no chance at a college education. He nods vigorously.
Officer Wimble turns and hikes his pants up, and in seven steps, he’ll have to do the same damn thing again. He’s carrying about fourteen pounds of gear on his belt alone, and it’s threatening to drag his pants to his polished boots and deposit him firmly on the floor. Wimble begins to walk away from the counter, then spots me.
At the same time, my eyes dart to the paper he just gave the restaurant owner, and I see my picture on it. I try to think faster.
He doesn’t know. He’s with them, but he doesn’t know what I have. Then why the fuck is he walking towards me? He knows I speak English. Let’s run with this idea, Jack. I continue chewing, with only my right hand visible, holding the ass end of a bean burrito.
He heads over and stops, hovering over my table. I look up.
“Is there anything I can do for you, officer?” Sweeter than your mother’s apple pie, I am.
He eats it up, “I’m looking for a white guy, five-eleven, ‘buck fifty, brown hair and eyes, wanted for triple homicide.” I try not to recoil from my description.
“No sir, I haven’t seen anyone. You know, about forty-seven percent of Caucasian males are five-eleven. Honestly, though, this isn’t a place where many white guys hang out.” I said too much that time. I don’t want to kill him.
“Hmm,” he says, “Never heard that before. What brings you to this neighborhood?”
I had a big fucking beard yesterday, now I look nothing like myself. “Never heard what? That most white males are around five-eleven or that not many white guys hang out on this side of Dallas?”
“I’m asking the questions here, son. What are you doing in the neighborhood?”
“Nothing really. I was on the way to pick my girlfriend up, and I decided to stop and have some food. I hate showing up to her place hungry.”
“Your girlfriend lives around here?” he says, tipping his shades down on his nose. That move is in some law-enforcement textbook, I swear. He wants me to think he doesn’t believe it. Amateur bullshit.
“Yeah, Maria lives 3 blocks north, on 15th.”
He pushes his sunglasses back up his nose. The sound that issues from his face is a sniff, but it has a definitive ‘honk’ quality about it.
“Thank you for your time citizen. If you see anything suspicious, please call your local police station. There are phone numbers on the bottom there.” He sets a sheet of paper on the table, tapping the bottom of it with his index finger. The paper shows my face.
“Will do, officer.”
He begins to walk out, but as he stops to hike his pants again, he says over his shoulder, “By the way, Jack…”
I turn around and say, “Yeah?” Before I realize what a mistake that would be. It’s hard to not respond to your name. After it’s out of my mouth, he sees my face as I realize what a mistake it was. I panic with my mouth still open, as an expletive leaps from between my teeth. “Fuck.”
My H&K forty-five is out of my suit coat and on ‘fire’ mode as recognition spreads across his bovine visage. He moves like frozen pork fat. He turns sideways, as he was trained to do, but can’t get the pistol out of his jingling and jangling belt. It’s snapped in.
“Stop that, shitsmear.” He stops fumbling with the clasp on his pistol, and then gives up, deflating like a used sex doll.
I see movement from the family booth and I drop my burrito as I pull a 9mm from my belt, pointing it at the booth. Cynthia isn’t there. It’s a family with three boys, and none of them have pigtails. The mother is forcing the boys under the booth, shielding them with her body. I’m not going to kill anybody this time. What the shit is going on? Wimble is still here, but the girl I gave a name fucking vanishes? Fuck.
I hesitate, but nobody notices. My two pistols are at a forty-degree angle away from my body and I say, “Calm is good. This will be over in thirty four seconds.”
I indicate with my forty-five pointing at the fat fuck in blue. “You. Back up until you hit the door, then stop. If I don’t like the way you move, I’ll put a bullet in your sinus cavity. You’ve read my sheet, so don’t fuck around.”
He nods and backs to the door. Someone is scared shitless by the smell permeating the restaurant. I pocket the nine-millimeter in a pants pocket while I lift my briefcase from the floor. Careful with that, Jack, they’re worth nothing broken. Then I walk over to him, put the .45 on his frontal lobe, and pull the trigger.
Oops.
I try to dodge the spray as I step out the door with my gun inside my suit.
The sun is bright, and I shield my eyes from it as I locate my car.

*page break*

Seventy hours ago, I was such a nice guy. I worked for the World Wildlife Foundation, and made a damn good living. I had this graying ponytail that came down between my shoulder blades and a fuck-all beard. I hadn’t shaved in years. I believed in my job, I wanted to save all the pandas and crocodiles and fuck. I can be realistic about it now. I was a desk jockey, a drone that wasn’t saving anything but a 401k. We thought we were making a difference.
Marcus, the guy who worked the cubicle across from mine, was probably my best friend at the time. Over the course of several months, we had both developed a substantial coke habit. Actually, I had developed a substantial cocaine habit, and he was my dealer. The way it worked out, he skimmed from the coke he got for me, and got high for free.
We were in the bathroom at work, doing lines on our lunch break. I was fucking livid, and I knew it was a bad idea to get high when I was pissed.
I took mine through a rolled up dollar, and asked Marcus, “You always knew, didn’t you?”
He took his line, so he could think of a response, “No fucking way. Jesus, I’m as surprised as you are.”
“That slimy fuck,” I spit, “I had dinner with him three weeks ago, and he mentioned the wildlife refuge. I was like, ’We can’t let that pig-fucker drill Alaska, Johnson, just tell me what to do.’ He just fuckin’ smiled and said, ‘Leave it to me, Jack.’ I think he was gonna try to get me in on it.”
“That’s fucked up, Jack.” Marcus said, calm as a Hindu cow.
“You had nothing to do with this?”
“No, I didn’t.”
I handed him the napkin with hasty scrawling on it. He looked at it like I was holding a dripping handful of toxic waste.
“The fuck is this?”
“You knew. You knew Johnson sold everything. Anyone he couldn’t cut out, he cut in on the boatload of fucking money. Our PAC was the biggest fucking opponent to drilling that oil reserve, and you just fucking went along. What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“Jack, let me explain—.”
“Shut up, you disgusting fuck,” I screamed. ”Did you eat paint chips as a child? What? What is the fuck matter with you?”
Then he got mad. “Who gives a shit about a bunch of fucking polar bears and fucking elk? Fuck, at least guys like us get a piece this time.”
“It’s not about the wildlife, it’s about not letting these guys get their way. Don’t you get it? We’ve never been fighting for the animals. We’re fighting against the retards that direct our species. We’re protecting Homo Sapiens, by protecting everything else that has to be there.”
“Get off it. You’re pissed because you didn’t get paid. It’s your same fucking complex. I was in ‘Nam too, you fuck. Yeah, yeah, I know, you can’t even say what you did. It's still top-secret. Bullshit. You’re a fucking hippie. How did that switch come about? You probably protested the whole damn war, and you haven’t learned a damn thing. Grow up, this is just the way the world works. Guys like us get trampled on when they make waves—“
At this point I stopped listening, mainly because I couldn't hear through this loud 'snap' inside my brain that meant something was broken and could never be fixed. I uncapped the pen in my coat pocket, and in one fluid motion, drove it into Marcus’ skull, through the left eye-socket. He started to scream at the same time I put my hands around his throat and slammed his head into the bowl of the toilet. I flipped him over while he gasped for breath to scream again, but then I started throttling him. As he choked on my fingers, with the back of his neck on the toilet bowl, he started to turn red. That exact moment was when I took one hand from his throat and put it back on the pen. He flailed like Michael J. Fox, twitching and writhing, trying to push me off. More blood flowed down his face once I severed the optic nerve behind his eyeball. In order to get my pen in further, I had to use the palm of my hand and put my shoulder into it. He stopped thrashing once it probed about three inches into his face.
I wiped the blood off of my face and hands with toilet paper from the stall. Marcus didn’t look good anymore, but I propped him up on the toilet seat, hoping nobody would look inside. I walked out, thinking. It didn’t take me five minutes to figure it out. The first part is always the easiest, and I was committed beyond repair by the bloodstains on my hands. I just hoped nobody would notice a quiet guy on the john for a few hours.

*page break*

I’m outside the restaurant. Wimble’s thinking-organ is splattered all over the glass door. His corpse looks like an anthill made of meat just inside. Where the fuck is my car?
All of a sudden, this girl, this little girl who looks like the Mexican girl Cynthia appears to my left.
She says something familiar in a deep monotone, “Lay your head down child, I won’t let the boogey-men come. Put your head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the water drops. Go back to sleep, waking yourself in this way is unhealthy”
I draw a pistol, firing three times in the arc my arm makes before it’s leveled at her. Three holes in the glass of El Burrito Dallas. Then I squeeze the trigger again.
What? I’m not a monster. She scared me. I don’t like little girls.
But I didn’t hit anything.
She’s gone. What the fucking fuck? You know, I give and give to a reality that I assume to be stable and then out of fucking nowhere a little Mexican girl can appear and disappear? I don’t even know what’s real anymore. Her words tickle my brain in a remembering way, but it all dissolves to a misty uncertainty before I can wrap around it.
“Pull it together, Jackass, you have to make this count.” I say.
When I look around again, my car is right where I left it, sandwiched between an El Camino and an El Camino. Weird.
I hear sirens in the distance now. I don’t have the time to be fucking around.
I get in my car. It smells like rot and ketchup, a fruity amalgam that everyone bitches about. It could come from the leak in the roof that gets mildew in the back seat. The smell could be the half eaten, Nitrate-free hotdogs in the passenger foot-well, and I guess it could even be my secretary’s feces, vomit and piss seeping in from the trunk.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here with the key exactly halfway in the ignition, just thinking. I have no time. Fuck, and you know what? The smell could even be a combination of the mildew, the secretary sauce, and the McDonalds. I never thought of that.
And it won’t start. It makes that pathetic crahng-crahng-crahng sound of an engine that won’t turn over. I lose it. I start to flail around, banging the flats of my palms on the dashboard, the fraying cloth seats, and everything else in reach.
“Fucking shit on a brick. FUCK!” And the car doesn’t even respond.
My secretary says from the trunk, real timid-like, “What’s happening?”
Why didn’t I gag her? Or at least fold up the seat that leads to the trunk
I shout at the back, “You know what hostages do?”
“No…”
“NOTHING. You’re a fucking hostage. Shut the fuck up.”
I talk to the car, which is just listening to our conversation. “C’mon baby, you can do this.”
I turn the key again. There’s enough juice for the radio to be active, and “Pet” is on by A Perfect Circle.
The lyrics fight out the starter cranking, “Don’t fret precious I’m here. Step away from the window. Step away from the window. Go back to sleep. Lay your head down, child. I won’t let the boogey-men come. Count the bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the water drops.”
I can’t believe Cynthia’s parents let her listen to this band.

*page break*

I remember this one time, driving through Elmwood, this pseudo-suburb in Dallas, when my car didn’t start. It was raining bricks of water, the kind where you drive slower because you’re afraid the water will break your windshield. You can’t see anything through the giant pieces of water colliding with your windshield. It’s like having your wipers on underwater.
Elmwood has never been a good neighborhood, but we were seventeen and wanted to party. Elmwood’s Caucasian population quadrupled on weekends. When I think back on it, the whole thing was pretty disgusting. A bunch of pasty suburbanite culture-leeches taking their parent’s cars and driving to a place that knew how to have fun, because none of us did, otherwise.
I told my mom we were going bowling, which is what I always told her, so she thought we always went bowling on weekends. I bowled a 52 in gym class, the one time I was forced to play the game. I hate bowling.
But I would tell her this, and she would give me a curfew to ignore. Then I’d leave. I’d pick up all my friends, because none of them had cars, and we’d head south. We’d listen to whatever bands were getting the most press at the time. We were the people record companies loved. They sold it, and we bought it.
Anyway, this time we were driving. My friends were smoking pot. I think I was too, but I don’t remember. I don’t even remember their names, that’s how much I hate who we were. We were talking about how shitty our parents were, about “the man,” and about life, the universe, and everything. Mostly about how great we were. We were beyond useless by a factor of ten.
So I hit a puddle, and the back of the Gremlin got away from me. She hydroplaned across the street and the passenger side hit one of those massive light posts. All I saw was the dashed yellow line while we spun across the street. I guess we caused enough of a wave to clear that part of the street while we got royally fucked.
My seatbelt was fastened. Guess who else had taken the metal part of the buckle in their right hand and pushed it into the metal part in their left hand and tightened the strap before takeoff? Nobody. I’m not defending myself. I was high, and I was going too fast. But every time you get into something that moves faster than any human ever should, though, at least take the precautions listed in the operating manual.
I only remember this much about my friends. There were three in the back and one sitting shotgun, and my car didn’t smell so bad. Oh, and the one sitting in the front was female. She never stood a chance. The pole crushed her skull once her window collapsed into something resembling shrapnel. The three in the backseat were luckier, though only two of them survived. One of them was launched through the passenger window and his left shoulder hit the pole, which paramedics said snapped his spinal cord. The other two just sort of slammed into that guy’s lower torso, and he cushioned the impact for them. I tried to drive away, but my car wouldn’t start. The most tragic thing was that my greatest fear was what mother would say. How fucking pathetic can you get?
I never thought of this then, but I wonder about it now. When lemmings start throwing themselves from cliffs, do the ones in the back make it sometimes? I’m not asking if there’s ever a lemming who says, “Fuck this. You guys are all insane.” Because there isn’t a species on this planet that can break out of the cycle it’s in. What I’m saying is, you’ve gotta consider that there’s a cushion at the bottom by the time two thousand splatter on the rocks below. Critical mass aside, if there’s enough of you, maybe you make a pile high enough, and with enough soft tissue in it, that someone can survive. It worked for the guys in the backseat.
We had all the answers, and never knew the questions. I feel so close to finding those questions now.

*page break*

Crahng-crahng-crahng.
Crahng-crahng-crahng.
“Come on you piece of shit.”
Crahng-crahng-crahng.
Turn the key. Don’t pump the gas, or you’ll flood it.
Crahng-crahng-crahng-thrack-thrack-thrack.
And just like that, it catches.
I say, “I fucking told you, Alice! What did I fucking tell you? We’ll make it out of this yet!” My secretary doesn’t respond, but that’s okay, because I told her not to talk. I don’t want to listen to other people speak anymore. I’ve heard enough. I’m not going to figure any of this out by letting people explain
My automobile squeals out of its parking space as I apply the pedal, stripping paint off of the El Camino to my left. The sirens are closer. I skewer my foot on the gas as I shift to second. The head of the shifter got lost somewhere, and the threading digs into my palm. I couldn’t give less of a shit. I’m hauling ass through a few back streets littered with bums and alleys where trash hasn’t been collected in months.
“Alice, don’t be scared. I’m trying to save you. And not in that creepy Jesus way.” Relief at the car starting uncorked a stopper somewhere, and shit just starts pouring out of my mouth. “You just have to trust me. I know that’s hard to do, from everything that’s happened, but I’m trying to save you from them.”
Another Perfect Circle song is playing, it must be triple-dose-Tuesday or some shit. The trick to getting away from the scene of a crime is to get a few blocks away, then slow down. My car’s a different color than they think, so unless someone runs my plates, it’s easy like Sunday morning. It took me almost three hours to spray-paint it this afternoon.
“I’m hungry.” Alice says.
Fuck, I forgot to get her something.
“What did I tell you about hostages?”
She doesn’t say anything. She always was a quick learner, but how she found out about Marcus, I’ll never know.
“Like I was saying.” I pull into a busy street from an alley, like some asshole who just got his car out of a garage “You’re locked in this culture, Alice. Do you really want to be a secretary for the rest of your finite life span? Well? Answer me.”
“No, I don’t.”
“That’s what I’m trying to save you from, and that’s what would’ve happened. You would’ve worked for some jackass after they canned our entire department. Johnson was doing it, you know. Then you wouldn’t have been a collective secretary, but is that even a step up? At least, you would’ve worked for this jackass until arthritis or carpal tunnel or some shit made it impossible for you to type and answer phones all day. Then, unless you hitched up with some other fuckhead who could support you, you’d be out of a job. Nobody will take care of you, you’ve got to do this on your own.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t try to understand,” I take a left, into a merging lane for the George W. Bush turnpike, “Just listen.”
She doesn’t say anything. Thatta girl.
“When you were in college, did people ever have those conversations where they talk about how smart they are, and they talk about the stupid kid in their classes? You can answer this one.”
“I think so.”
“You don’t wanna think. You wanna know. The kind of conversation I’m talking about was on the back porch, smoking cigarettes, people talking about what scores all their friends got on this specific standardized test and how the world sucks and everyone’s stupid except the people they know. Have you been there?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. That situation sums up human existence. Homo Sapiens are on this planet, and they’re the smartest organism on the planet. I’m not going to tell you butterflies hold infinite wisdom if we could only speak with them. Humans are the smartest, and they spend all this time reveling in their sheer intellect.”
She’s silent. I can’t tell if she’s thinking about it or afraid to speak.
“The bottles of beer your friends were drinking, you remember those?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how people make beer?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s genius. They take yeast. Yeast is a fungus that feeds on sucrose. Sugar. Sugar is in every plant, because plants, by definition, take water and sunlight and turn it into sucrose. Every organism needs sucrose. Now, depending on the beer, you take hops or barley or whatever. What matters is this: You use a plant, usually a grain. With me so far?”
“I think so.”
“Do you think or do you know?”
“I know.”
“Okay, so they take these plants and put them in a bottle with these yeasties. The yeast chow down on the plants. They eat the sucrose, and they shit out this strange compound called Ethanol. Ethanol is alcohol.”
There are cops all over this fucking freeway. They’re moving in and out of traffic, topping 120 mph. No sirens, no lights. Everyone is watching them, and going 10 mph under the speed limit. Myself included. I’m sweating.
“They keep eating the sugar until there is so much Ethanol that they drown.”
“What do yeast breathe?”
“I don’t fucking know, I said listen.”
I wait for a response for a couple of seconds.
“The point is, they can’t breathe alcohol. They eat sugar and shit alcohol until they all drown in their own shit. Collectively, we are a yeast colony trapped in a bottle we call ‘Earth’.”
She doesn’t say anything. She knows what I’m going to say.
“We’re trapped in a bottle, and we’re about to drown in our own shit.”
I look around the traffic, which is always horrible, then I say, “Okay, Alice, there are some things you should know.
“First, I killed Marcus, Johnson, and some other people. I’m not proud of it, but there are omelettes and there are eggs, and the masses are hungry for breakfast. I also stole some things. Ironically enough, I stole eggs.
“After I killed Marcus, I went to every zoo that we sent a California Condor egg to as part of the Condor rehabilitation program. I said there was a mistake and got them all back. I’ve got 8 eggs in this briefcase.”
I pat the briefcase affectionately, but she doesn’t see it.
“And we’re going to sell them.”
“Why? I thought you wanted to save the animals.”
“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Oh, and shut up. Quiet hostages are living hostages. I’m trying to save you, but you’re one of them until then.
“I stole the eggs for two reasons. One: The investigation, when they don’t find the eggs, will uncover the vast amount of money flowing into that corrupt shit hole. That’s my last attempt to get our current society to fucking work. Two: When that doesn’t work, I’ve got another plan. Before we go into that though, I have to explain something else.
“This culture you’re living in doesn’t care, which we’ve discussed. Basically, our species has seceded from the natural order and created our own, and ours isn’t any better. We’re killing everything on our planet. Everything. Yeast in a bottle, baby. The planet will survive it, but Homo Sapiens will not.
“Daniel Quinn puts it better than I can. His theory goes something like this: Cultures based around consumption, when there are six billion seventy-ish kilo creatures on a planet, isn’t just destructive, it’s suicidal. And we’re going to fix it.”
She says, “You are an insane person. You’re fucking cra--.”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP! I’m not finished.”
“What we’re going to do is exploit the system that’s going to destroy me. I had to rebel against it, and nobody can break themselves out of the cage they’re in. I had to, they’ve been lying to me for fucking years.”
“All I can do is let you know what you can do before I die. You’re going to take these eggs and go into hiding. Inside the briefcase are a number of people I met in the service. They know people who will buy the eggs. You sell them all, and live cheap in a country where the capitalists won’t find you. When the time is right, and you’ll know when, you find someone like I found you. Someone that wants the bad men to pay, and you do something like this.”
I think she’s crying, but why, I can’t imagine. Sometimes the sun hurts your eyes when you get out of the cage. I cried for hours after I killed Marcus. I didn’t cry for him. I didn’t.
“Just make sure they understand these things. We are not going to be rich. We’re going to rally enough money to fight them with their own system. My notes from Economics are in the briefcase as well. As long as there isn’t a substantial change in the NYSE in a few generations, we’re going to use their money to bring the whole fucking thing falling down. And before it does, we utilize the system to seize control. I can’t tell you how to do that, because I don’t know what will happen. We’re going to die, but we’re working for something. This isn’t a job. This is what we’re working for.
“Got it?”
“I think so.”
“Are you going to do it?” I say. “This is our chance. Just remember that we are not them. Always remember that.”
“Y—yeah,” she says, “Okay.”
There are too many fucking cops on the highway. I take the Jupiter Road exit. When I see the tollbooth, I swear. “Oh shit.”
I can see metal glinting from the passenger seat, and while I’m in line, I lean over and start rummaging through the garbage. Nickel, nickel, dime, fuck pennies, quarter, quarter, quarter, quarter. Hah! I think it’s a buck-twenty at this exit.
The flustered clerk doesn’t give me a second glance through his mat of curls that hang like you’d think of vines from a decaying building.
I say to Alice, “Around the corner is a motel, and I’ve got a room for you. Don’t stay for longer than fourteen hours. I’ve got some food, hair-dye, and other things you might need in the backseat. Take a taxi to Oklahoma City and call the first phone number on the list, he’ll get you a new I.D. and a car. Then to go to Canada or something.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve got several likely contingencies covered in there too. I’ve been busy these past few days.”
I pull into the Motel 6. I got a room here when my car was still wet with red paint. I take a look around, and it’s clear. There’s a privacy fence on two sides, the back of a gas station on one, and shuttered windows of the motel on the last side. I remember this place, it’s the kind of place that fills up every night with johns and prostitutes, then empties every morning. The girl that died in the accident, we had sex in the room I rented for Alice. The only beverage in the Coke machines is Diet Shasta Raspberry-Ginger-Ale. What can I say? I love the details, I guess I’m just an old-fashioned romantic that way.
I open the Motel door, then go back to the trunk to retrieve Alice. She’s still in the fetal position, and looks damn good, considering what she’s been through. What a fuckin’ woman. Once I throw her over my shoulder, I hot-step inside the room, where I set her on the bed. Then I get her supplies and the briefcase. Now it’s time for the moment of truth, I close the door and bolt it.
“Don’t move, Alice.” I say, and retrieve a pocketknife from my pants. She almost screams, but keeps it in her open mouth. I bend down and cut her loose of the duct tape and zip-ties.
“Look at me.” And she does. “Do you understand what you have to do?”
“Yes,” she says. I hear steel rebar through her sniffles, and I see concrete under her red-rimmed eyes and matted hair. She’s got it.
“Now, I’m going to say this until you understand it.” I say. “The assertion that capitalism is either an inevitable or efficient form of structuring human society is based, not on facts, but on an apathetic resignation to the status quo.”
She didn’t get it all. I say it four times, until she repeats it word for word.
“Don’t just memorize it, know it. Write it down, and remember that just because other structures for human interactions on a broad scale have not worked, doesn’t mean they can’t. We need to keep trying.”
She writes the mantra down.
“Goodbye, Alice.”
“…Goodbye, Jack.”
I step out of the door, with seven bullets, two pistols, a pocketknife, an empty wallet, a black suit without a tie, and the biggest smile I’ve ever worn. Cynthia takes my hand, and it seems perfectly rational, natural, and right. I step outside to find my death. I have time to hope. I have time, for the first time in my life, to hope that we can do it. As I drive out of the parking lot, I’m elated. I didn’t do my job this time. This time, I worked for something.


And there it is. Hit up the tagboard.