Tag: short-story

Plunk

by Connor M, posted in Anywhere, Philosophical woo, Uncategorized

I was cutting up nearly frozen chicken thighs with a pair of orange school scissors. They were crusted in permafrost, so my thumb started losing sensation as I padded around the tense marbled fat. Ran it under water. Snip, took off a colossal hunk. The graveyard of pink and white was growing on the board.

I had on a chess game in the background. Caruana vs. Kasparov, a classic. My phone sat on the toaster, the tiny screen almost impossible to watch. I couldn’t look up, lest I cut a finger. I just listened to the wooden “plunk” on the gameboard when they moved, a small cough, nose breathing in concentration. I squinted up, but couldn’t tell who was winning.

My mind wandered to a girl I used to work with. A southern beauty, deep blue eyes, curvy figure with ancestral hips. Little gap tooth that made me almost believe in a creator. She had that wild head-toss laugh, had to touch you when she did it. She got real serious about energies, alignments and moon signs. I imagined we were out at a get together, a bunch of people from work went to the lake one summer afternoon.

5 of us on an overgrown grass patch, blankets, phones, wilting strawberries, bodies splayed wide to hope for evaporation. The drone of the speedboats playing in the middle of the lake. By the shore the hot brown water is lapping at the rocks, squelching Tevas sneak through the mud. A fat man struggles to get in a deflating tube nearby, his daughter laughs. The sun is finally taking less of a beating on our little group.

She’d get up, ask me to help her with something in her car, flash the beer breath smile. I’d follow her to the parking lot. She’d lean on the frame of her corolla, door open, the alarm croaking softly in the humidity while we scanned each other. I’d peek in, see the starry roof liner, some rubber ducks on the dashboard. She’d ask me if I like her bathing suit.

Plunk. Kasparov goes g6.

In the fluorescent kitchen light, I can only see their hunched figures with the tiny gameboard overlay in front. Audience member whispers. Camera clicks. I lean over to get a view, chicken grease drips off my hands. Plunk.

She’d push up off the car, step closer. I do the lightest touch on her skin, testing. She gives the eyes, I put my hand on the wonderful little pouch of fat on her waist, feel the sweat, pull her in. I’d look towards the lake; nobody is paying attention. Grab a handful of ass. She gasps, smacks my stomach, tilts her head to the side.

Plunk, plunk. They’re onto the endgame; the pace is starting to pick up. I peak up for a moment, sense them breathing heavier, thinking harder. My pace quickens in turn. The scrap pile is now the carnage of Mongol horde, unceremonious, teetering, wasteful. Pink and white. Plunk, pause. Plunk, plunk. I squint my eyes, see if I can tell who’s up. My stomach grumbles.

After a moment I’d pull back from her, knees bent awkwardly to hide a half chub. Couldn’t look down, she’s a swirling mirage of smile, tan skin and bikini. I breathe in deep, hold her hips for stability. I’d suggest we just get a room somewhere close; we shouldn’t drive too far. She pulls my hat down over my eyes. Oh really? Where?

Plunkplunkplunkplunk. Plunk. Their chair shuffle, they stand up and shake hands. Game over. I can’t tell who won, they’re the types who look angry no matter the outcome. My eyes itch from the baseboard dust, I blink furiously to moisten them, holding t-rex arms above my plate of carnage.

I toss the cutlets in Tupperware and stir them with barbecue sauce, onions, peppers. A random winter draft creeps around the apartment, hits unexpectedly. I turtle my neck down. An ad automatically plays on my phone, colorectal screening. Loud acoustic music, mixed race doctor, happy looking old couple, Perspelimanga… I lost track of what it was called.

The image of her blue eyes come back. We’d sway for a few more minutes, then she’d go back to the group, I’d stay put. I’d let her walk first so I could see those bouncy castles reanimate under her little shawl dress, swishing across the pavement, flip flops clacking. Orange sun would start lighting the thicket, insects getting louder. She’d reach the group again, strewn about like bronze Muppets, didn’t even notice we’d left.

I’d lean against her car, feel the warmth, fish in my pocket for my vape, forgot I don’t do it anymore. Look down and inhale the patchouli beer lavender scent on my chest hair, send her a quick text.

The ad is over on my phone. Now it’s silent, with the two men’s side profiles staring at each other on the loading screen. I have garlic wedged between my fingers, I keep kneading the shloppy cold thighs, air pocket farts as I twist, I hope to not smell anything.

The apartment is still cold, or I’m anemic. My feet never defrost, unless I put on thick ass socks, which don’t fit in shoes, and make me feel house bound, like I’m forfeiting to winter. I can’t give up, yet. Another nose itch comes in from the hot air. I sneeze and accidentally touch chicken grease to my nose. Motherfucker.

I try to picture her again, the lazy heavy heat of ideas. It’s fading quick, her laugh blends in with crickets and humidity, floats over the lake with an exhale. The hot pavement cools into dead yellow tile. My tan skin is gone.

Look at my sickly white, cracked knuckles. I’m in a down jacket filled with little holes that puff out feathers around the apartment. If I cook too hard, move too emphatically, it looks like a pheasant was processed in here. Feathers on the floor, marbled fat stack, the orange scissors in the sink, slimy and ashamed.

I can’t get her back. The body odor, cackle, the flop of her sandals on the grass. I’m grateful for the small trance while it lasted.

Grateful for whatever machinery my brain needed to teleport away from my cold fluorescent dissection, to keep itself alive and awake. Anything but the present.

Quiet internal desperation to displace the external, in the form of mutilating a chicken in a tiny box room under a squeaky light, in winter. No snow. Bare everything.

I take that split moment of escape and run with it as far as I can.

I’ll put on another chess video, maybe a longer one this time, hope that rhythmic plunk conjures up another dream. Winter is long.

A wink at the intersection

by Connor M, posted in City, People, Philosophical woo

Bringgg, bringgg, on the cot beside me. Like a little bird trapped in the sheets. A banner across the top of my phone “Malaria Meds”.

She looked up briefly, disinterested, professional, and carried on.

I giggled, only I knew the absurdity.

A little intersection of two parts of my brain, high-fiving in the red-light district alley. The horny, fresh haircut traveler finally giving in and the recreational germaphobe fresh from exploring un-sanitized regions of the world.

I’d gotten all my shots before Africa. Typhoid, Diphtheria-Tetanus, give me a lollipop. Careful with malaria, take Malarone daily, and seven days after you leave. I was by then several days past that window.

She keeps going, I look around the room at the low lights, feel the heavily scented air. Fiddle with the phone volume briefly.

Health abroad is one of my forever vigilances. The first mis-timed sneeze and I’m at the corner pharmacy. Paying a grinning doctor way too much to give me a Z-pac and send me back to the dusty streets.

Bringg, Bringgg. I grab the phone, finally silence it. Exhale.

She looks up at me, “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you finish.” Maybe she thought it was my wife? Or the cosmos was randomly chiming in to wrap up this unsavory encounter?

I had strolled the Red-Light district a few times, a couple 50 euro notes burning holes in my pocket. Got back to the train car hostel, pop my pill, wondering when I was going to slip behind a curtain.

The two currents weaving through each other, health freak, horny guy, shadow selves in the forest. Never noticing each other until they were face to face.

Oh hey. They shake hands. My Id family reunion at the brothel.

We’re always at the intersection of some neuroses, fantasies, laundry.

Adrift in a Pacific garbage patch of junk food and overstimulation, or riding a swift current trying to keep a newborn alive, ignoring every other force for the moment.

The more you push one down the weirder places they pop up.

I’d googled all the rigorous health protocols that prostitutes undergo there, felt reassured. I made some loops, found different alleys.

The red glints on the cobblestones, foggy air, laughs of the high British tourists stumbling around with Heinekens. Churches from 1640, austere, having to look down at the oldest human desires they couldn’t wash away.

Eventually, I caught the eye of the most animated lady: big fake tits, easy smile and laugh, warm eyes. I felt like she cared. Rapport matters, in any business.

I walked in and she closed the curtain, triaged me like a field medic. Faint conversations of passersby in the alley.

“It’s more to touch,” she said, watching my eyes drift.

Now the phone reminder’s off, but the alarm echoed in my head.

I didn’t have a reminder that told me to go to a bar and try to chat up a cute traveler, or one in the busy hostel.

No alarm that said chill the fuck out you’re not going to get malaria 2 weeks after from a mosquito that got stuck in your carry-on.

Just these stale pathways rooted in me, twisted by loneliness, travel fatigue, adrift with my own paranoias, crossing paths.

What current pulls you? How many secrets up your sleeve don’t make it past the grocery line conversation.

Get a note that grandma is in the hospital while you’re chuffing up a mountain feeling alive.

Think you’re writing a novel in a coffee shop but you’re really just aura flirting with the girl in yoga pants. Wallowing in self-pity at a drive thru when the cashier with the Chia Pet hairline asks how your day is, and you stop to actually take a look.

Riding one wave until another knocks you back to center.

Horny/hypochondria. Odd bedfellows. They briefly winked at each other as I sat in that brothel. You realize how absurd you are right, Guy? See you soon.

Choose your American Dream

by Connor M, posted in People, Philosophical woo

It’s 9:58 pm Saturday night at a restaurant in downtown Nashville. The restaurant closes at 10:00 pm. A couple walks in wearing Savannah Bananas gear (the comedy baseball team). The lady is a tiny pixie haired shrew, and the man looks somewhere in the middle of Jabba the Hut and the Mucinex man. His poor knees buckle as he shuffles his belly to sit like a pregnant mother. I, the waiter, run over and tell them the kitchen closes in 2 minutes, so we’ll need to get their order as soon as possible.

This brings the dirtiest look I’ve ever seen from the man who complains to my manager he’s being rushed. She offers a free dessert and an eye roll when she walks away.

Instead of getting ready to close, the servers groan as the man settles in, drinking his sprite with diabetic fingers and a knowing grin.

Meanwhile, in the open-air kitchen 30 feet away from sloth and gluttony another drama is unfolding. There have been recent Immigration raids in the area, ICE is stopping foreign looking people at random and asking for papers. There had been 100 arrests, many already on the road to deportation. Panic is setting in amongst the undocumented kitchen staff.

This had been escalating for a few days. They’d been carpooling with white people, sneaking in through back doors. South Nashville (majority Latino) was a ghost town. All the recreational spaces were shut down, no more football, dance clubs, pop up celebrations. Just eerie silence and waiting. Word reached us that ICE was two streets away doing stops.

In the back of the kitchen was a mother and her son, a middle-aged woman from Guatemala, and 3 cooks in their 20’s, all with families. The sous chef paces back and forth to the front window looking out at any passing police cars. His eyes are welling with tears but he’s holding them back. A stoic leader is vital right now.

You can feel the silent terror just sitting on them like a blanket. They’ll be ready to run out the back door any minute. These people are working 14-hour days, living with 6 others in a house. The chef hasn’t seen his family from home in ten years. They risked their lives to get here to just scrape by and sacrifice so their kids might have a chance.

Out front, Jabba is eating his pizza thoughtfully. He considers the crust, shuffles his gut forward, asks for more ice and another sprite please. His casual tone broadcasting his inalienable right to comfort and relaxation. He side-eyes the chef when he comes up to look out the window. They’re the last table in an empty restaurant, still ordering food.

The front of house is standing there with eye daggers pointed at him.

The man had come from a comedy baseball game, the purest American form of leisure and absurdity. He came in entitled and ready to sit for as long as his bloated legs would hold him, savoring the opportunity to punish us for rushing him.

The 14-year-old dishwasher in the back, weighing all of 90 pounds is eating scraps, checking his mom’s phone. It took weeks for him to make eye contact, just the occasional wry smile. His worst fears were confirmed when his cousin was arrested last week. He and his mom took a few days to hide in their house. Now they can’t leave with customers here, can’t go outside while police lights blaze across the windows.

The Irony of the American dream playing out with vivid contrast. An entitled beast coming from a baseball game, not a care in the world. Eating himself to death because he’s allowed. A kitchen full of people working 60-hour weeks for minimum wage, clinging to each other in fear they’ll have their life swept away any moment.

Labored breath from both parties, 30 feet away from each other. Ask them what they think they deserve?

Gravity Shifts and Grocery Stores

by Connor M, posted in People, Philosophical woo, Uncategorized

Kroger grocery store midday on a Tuesday. Winter still around in Nashville, you feel it most in the parking lot. The people who normally stroll through the parking lot like kings on parade are actually putting up a brisk pace. Trash tumbleweed and cold cigarette smoke hit you right before the sliding doors open. I started hearing a child shrieking behind me.

It’s the nervous high-pitched yelps a child might make on Christmas, mixed with some anxiety. It immediately sours my mood as I walk in the warm lobby. Why didn’t I hear a soothing mother’s voice hushing him? I head to the carrots, perturbed.

“Ah… Ahh Ah!” Little rapid fire blurts, then silence. They follow in behind me. Now it can be heard in the whole store. I turn around to see a little kid sitting in a cart. He can’t be more than 3 or 4, swinging legs dangling through the holes. His mother is overweight, looks like they’re struggling a bit, but she has a huge smile on her face. You can tell undefeatable energy when you see it. “AH, ahh”.. he bleats on.

She stands next to a man near the entrance. They’re beaming at each other for a moment, and she rapidly moves her hands to start talking in sign language. He nods and signs back.

They carry on, with the little child smoke alarm still going off. People skirt around them, confused. The two are locked in, their faces and hands show two friends catching up at a coffee shop. The child continues. I stood by the produce and watched for a beat too long.

 I’m a sensitive person, I will fully admit I suffer more from sounds, textures, and spatially and spiritually unaware people than others do. This odd little family juxtaposition entertained and annoyed me. I wonder what everyone else briskly moving by thought.

Does the mother know or simply not care? Is this child responding to never speaking out loud with anyone by just yelling out? Is this the rhino and the little bird on the savanna living in symbiosis to help each other? God smiled on this Deaf mother and her Siren son pairing.

Her warm, unconcerned smile could be a rare time he sees that reaction, this pairing couldn’t be out of randomness. The cosmic balance walking around Kroger looking at bananas.

We all go about our lives tumbling and yelling and butting heads or melding in with others, circling in orbit hoping to find our gravitation counterpoint. The romantic in me hopes I can find this partner by luck or action, the calm deaf person to my wailing boy. The antidote to occasional genius or madness with a warm, calm demeanor.

Meanwhile I’m strolling through Kroger head down, working, going to the gym. No drastic bends to the fabric of normality, trying to present as cool and collected.

Maybe I have to get so hot and uncomfortable that I let the steam out at the grocery store, or Twitter? I plow forward with everything on my sleeve. Everybody is broadcasting something; has some frequency that can complement and balance another. The mother and son some odd reminder that maybe there is a point to it. I try to pick up alterations in the daily life, later that day on the same busy road I saw another kind of shift.

Coffee Shop

That afternoon at the coffee shop. Homeless and drunks and hipsters all working away at something. It’s a place of quiet conversations and politeness, political correctness and funky couches that have their own Instagram account. I saw another glitch. A homeless lady walked into shop slamming the door behind her. She ignored every hello; how can I help you?

I looked up to see her, huge backpack slouching off the shoulder, burnt from head to toe and layered in heavy coats. She went to the counter, grabbed the bathroom key and strolled to the back to lock herself in. Some murmurs from the workers, a subtle smile to each other.

After a couple minutes, as simply as she came in, she walked out of the bathroom with the key, again ignoring the barista calling after her. This time all eyes left their bible studies group and almond lattes to follow her on her march. Like the aforementioned kings of the parking lot, she strolled right past everyone. “Ma’am!” She swung open the front door, stepped off the curb and onto the busy street. The barista charged after. He intercepted her as she was about to Frogger her way through traffic.

She was unaware of every person, custom, traffic law. She said nothing but had everyone’s attention for that brief period. We all sat in brief discomfort of her signal, slapped physically and olfactorily.

There was nobody there to offset her heavy presence, but she could have been on her way to meet her counterpoint on the other side of the road. She could be bulldozing normality and serving looks to wake us up from our mundane discomforts. Eventually she’ll run into traffic or a life changing opportunity.

Or do you just go down the middle and not need the balance? Be palatable. Work, drink, weather, football, complaints and aspirations that won’t turn any heads in the grocery store.

There’s people at grocery stores and coffee shops and street corners who are heavy walking billboards of harsh truths. Autistic infants, patient mothers, homeless women plowing into traffic. We’ll scramble to avoid looking at ugly realities.

The more fortunate polish their billboard every day, online and in real life. Annoyed by the yelling infant, buying craft beer, curating the same sheen in mind, body, and status.

The harsher your truth the more drastic the balance.

I have to figure out where my weight goes. All the dogshit humanity beneath my Republican haircut wants to breathe. It’ll pull and repel rather than just cling to a false self-image. I’m not an algorithm, despite how much optimization seems to build your prestige.

My ideas or sadness or joy will only matter if seen unfiltered.  When I walk into a room with only the weight of my presence and not my baggage, I’ll find a genuine conversation. Be the squealing infant when you need to say it, rather than burying it with dopamine hits. Grab the key and walk into traffic instead of pruning your eyebrows. No more diet coke friendships that feel good on the surface and make you sick. No more hiding the dark, let the light find it.