The Boy and The Indian: A Short Story

Outside a tourist center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a little boy was selling painted horseshoes from a large wooden wagon. He sat on a bench just beside the entrance to the shop, his wicker hat lay next to him, his small legs swung at the people walking by. Nanette circled the building twice before she stopped. The little voice behind her ear said it wasn’t appropriate to talk to him – hassle him with questions. Really she knew she wasn’t stopping because nobody else seemed to be stopping. That was the problem with other people; they were always around to remind her of how close she was to being exactly like them – scared, polite, infinitely similar. An awful beige monotony she had no desire in joining, which was why, as she came around the corner for the third time and saw he was still there; still largely ignored by the people walking directly past him into the tourist shop to buy plastic rulers and light-up keychains with their names on them; she stopped, as casually as she could.
“Did you make these yourself?” Up close, she was startled by how gray and big his eyes were, how thin and soft his hair looked.
“Painted em, yeah.” He swung his legs challengingly. His teeth were bucked like a twelve-year-old boy’s teeth usually are.
“Cool. How much?” She stood about four feet back with her arms folded, focused on the horseshoes as though she had never seen one before: she was shy around men when she wasn’t drunk.
He hopped up from his bench. “These big ones with the pictures in the middle are ten, these ones here are seven, the little ones are five each and the ones at the top here with the stars on are a little more expensive, those are twelve fifty. You can buy a little string like this” he pulled one from his pocket “to hang them with for fifty cents. If you buy two you get a discount.”
Nanette nodded, taking everything in.
“Okay. Give me the little black one and the little green one.”
“You want the strings too?”
“Sure.” He pulled another string from his pocket, began working it through the holes in the horseshoe in that self-consciously aggressive way that boy’s hands do men’s work. His hands were exactly like her brother’s hands.
“Seven dollars please.” He tugged on the strings to make sure they were secure, handed her the horseshoes. Nanette dug in her bag for her wallet, in her wallet for her money. The boy looked past her at the people walking by. She handed him three bills.
“Thanks.” She put the horseshoes directly in her handbag. “Do you mind if I sit here and smoke?”
“No, go ahead.” His small hand gestured hurriedly and ungracefully – a movement he would not fully gain control of until he was much older. She sat on a bench nearby, tried to think of something to say to him. Now that she was here, she could not think of a single question. They watched the sky turn from blue to slate.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“India,” she said, “but I live in California now.”
“Oh,” he nodded, his eyes rather big. She wondered if he knew where India was on a map. She wondered if he knew where California was.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
“About a mile from here.”
“Did you walk here?”
“No, I can ride this thing,” he indicated the wagon.
“Oh wow. How do you do that?”
“I put one knee on it and use the other leg to push.”
“Oh, like a skateboard.”
“Uh huh.” Silence again. Nanette blew smoke at the sky.
“What kind of music do you like?”
“Oh…I dunno.” He shrugged and smiled.
“Do you listen to the radio?”
“No.”
“But you can, right?”
“Yeah, if I wanted to.”
“Do you know who the Beatles are?”
He shook his head. The air went heavy all of a sudden – rain about to fall. The grass looked darker than it was. Across the road, corn marched in the wind like neat rows of soldiers. Nanette pulled a bag of chocolate covered raisins out of her handbag and offered it to the boy. He came over to her and took just one, didn’t take another when she offered again. They watched the people go by. Nanette was surprised at how few seemed to notice that he was even there. Some did, but seemed too nervous to stop. It was a fragile situation, Nanette supposed, to feel curious but to feel like you had no right to be curious. I mean suppose, she thought, you had never met a gay person before?
“Do you get bugged when people ask you a lot of questions?”
“No, I don’t mind it,” he said. “People are curious.”
“What’s your name?”
“Gideon Jr.”
“Gideon? That’s a cool name.”
“Thanks.”
Nanette clawed through her mind for more questions. So much for being a reporter, she thought. Suddenly she had infinitely more respect for Joan Rivers.
“Still trying to sell them horseshoes, huh?” A man with a pot belly and a crew cut walked by. He was walking a tiny dog on a leash too big for it. His daughter and her mother followed, the girl looking unabashedly at Gideon through her hair.
“Was that one, Mommy?” she said as they went inside.
Nanette finished her cigarette, looked around for a trash can. There was one about ten feet away. She stood up and stretched, flicked the butt in the can. Normally, she would toss it on the ground and stub it out with her toe, but that felt rude in front of Gideon. She checked her watch – she was signed up for a tour that started in five minutes. Out on the road a buggy and horse went by, snorting and sweating proudly.
“Hey, excuse me?” It was Gideon behind her. “Would you mind watching my wagon for a minute? I have to use the bathroom.”
“Of course!” Nanette’s heart flapped a little. It was silly, she thought, such a small favor for him to ask, but she was flattered to have earned his trust. He ran inside and she sat behind the wagon, imagining what it would be like to sit behind it every day.
In the corner of her eye, a group of people was milling around the door where her tour would start. She sat up a little and waved, trying to catch someone’s attention, suddenly angry about trapping herself behind these horseshoes. The tour guide came out of the door and they began traipsing inside. She looked around for Gideon. He was nowhere. She thought about yelling out to the guide, but felt silly. It was only a fifteen dollar tour, and after all, she was already talking to the real deal! What tour could be better than that? She lowered her hand, didn’t attempt to catch the tour guide’s attention when he looked around for people he had missed.
The sky was still out there. Still as damp and as gray as it had been. It would probably rain later, she thought. Or perhaps that was just how the sky looked here. She had only been here for two days, what did she know about the weather in Pennsylvania? She wondered how many of the people walking by did know about the weather in Pennsylvania and how many were tourists like herself. She wondered how many were tourists in their own towns. Gideon came out of the shop.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No problem.” She stood and went back to her bench. “What’s the weather usually like here?”
“Usually pretty good around this time. It snows in the winter and we get good rain in the spring for the crops.” Gideon was no tourist.
“Alright man, how much for one of these things?” The pot-bellied man was back. His daughter was swinging from his arm like a little monkey, the dog trying to lick her face. Gideon hopped off the bench, gave him the spiel. “Alright, I’ll take one. Princess, what color do you want?” The little girl, suddenly shy, peeked at Gideon before pointing to a pink one.
“You want the string to hang it up for fifty cents?” The man nodded and pulled out his wallet. His wife came out of the store, carrying a menu.
“Honey, they say the wait in the café is about twenty minutes. Oh you got a horseshoe!” She had a vaguely Spanish accent. Nanette wondered if it was Mexican or Cuban. “What’s your name?” the woman said to Gideon.
“Gideon.”
“Oh that’s a nice name!” She tossed the menu at her husband and sat down on Gideon’s bench, blocked him from Nanette’s view. “Tell me, Gideon, do you celebrate Christmas?”
“Yes. We celebrate Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving and sometimes New Year.”
“That’s interesting.” The dog was trying to lick her face now. She pushed it away. “Could I take a picture with you?”
“Oh,” he looked embarrassed, “We don’t really do that.”
“Oh.” She looked around and spied Nanette. “Excuse me,” she said. “Excuse me! Yes, you dear. Are you from New York?”
Nanette frowned in surprise. “No, I’m from California.”
“Oh. Why do you wear that hat?” Nanette touched the big crocheted beanie slouched on the back of her head.
“I have very short hair and my neck gets cold,” she offered.
“Oh,” the woman looked disappointed. “I thought you were Jewish.” She turned away from Nanette, back to Gideon. How dare that woman sit between us! Nanette was fuming. I missed my tour to watch his horseshoes! Jewish?
She couldn’t hear what the woman and Gideon were saying, so she watched the woman’s daughter. The little girl was spinning circles a few feet from the bench, long brown hair whipping innocently in front of her eyes. Nanette tried to look at Gideon to see if he was watching her – she was about his age and she was pretty cute – but she couldn’t see his face. The girl’s father was trying to control the dog and read the menu at the same time.
“Princess, do you want grilled cheese or chicken nuggets?” She wasn’t listening. “Princess!” On the bench, the woman seemed to be talking pretty nonstop to Gideon. Nanette wondered what she was saying. What she was asking him. She wished she had been able to think of so many questions. She felt bad about being bitter about the woman – after all, she was a better Joan Rivers than Nanette had been. She caught snatches of his answers; “I have seven brothers and two sisters,” “No, we don’t have TV,” “I play baseball and volleyball and help my parents.”
“No drugs huh?” the husband cut in suddenly. Nanette turned her head. He was peering at Gideon over the menu. Gideon shook his head.
“Uh uh.”
“Jesus, you see, smart people. Smart people.” The pot-bellied man tapped his head and walked away, stood near Nanette.
“That’s one thing I wish I never did,” he said. Nanette realized he was talking to her. He watched his daughter grab his wife’s hand and drag her inside, Nanette assumed to the bathroom. “I have friends, you know, not one of them is happy, you know, that they did it.” He quickly lit a cigarette. “Not one person I talk to doesn’t regret it. Smoking weed, whatever.” Nanette made a sympathetic face and nodded. She had spent the last year in LA getting high and had loved it. “It gets you.” He said. “It made me quit school. You know, I dropped out of school because I was smoking weed. I have friends who are lawyers and engineers now, you know, they’re successful.”
“Man, I have friends who are in college studying to be lawyers and engineers and they still smoke weed,” Nanette said. The man rubbed the top of his head.
“Yeah, yeah. I guess I had friends like that too. I guess they just didn’t smoke it as much or something, you know? I dunno.” He turned and looked out into the sky, seemed to be studying a grain silo on the horizon. His eyes told her he had just realized what she already knew: that it wasn’t the weed that made him quit school.
“Where do you live?” she asked him.
“New Jersey.” He filled the heavy air with smoke.
“Is it nice?”
“Nope.” His voice was flat, matter-of-fact, proud of its knowledge. “You know what rat race means?” Nanette nodded. Rat race, fat race, mouse and cat race: it was the same everywhere. The man was still studying the grain silo. “Not like here,” he said.
Nanette turned to Gideon.
“Do you like Shoo Fly Pie?” she asked.
“My mom makes it,” he grinned.
“How did it get its name?”
“I dunno. I guess one day they were making it and they had to shoo some flies away from it.”
Nanette imagined Gideon’s mother shooing flies away from her pie. She felt that the kitchen would be yellow and the table cloth would be checkered. There would be jars of jam on a shelf above the stove and a large dog asleep under a chair. Somehow it had everything to do with what the pot-bellied man was talking about.
“Honey!” His Mexican or Cuban wife stuck her head out the door. Nanette quickly looked to see if the man had put his cigarette out. He was holding it behind his back. He waved to his wife.
“Looks like my table’s ready. Nice talking to you.” He stubbed out his cigarette, put the half-smoked butt back in the pack for later, went inside like someone walking into Gettysburg, the dog tucked under his arm.
Nanette raised her eyebrows at Gideon, who swung his legs at her. In this way they filled the silence until Nanette’s phone rang. It was her mother.
“I’m in the parking lot. Are you ready to leave?”
“Sure. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you too.” Nanette closed her phone. “Well, I guess I’m on my way too,” she said to Gideon. “It was nice talking to you.”
“You too,” said Gideon. Nanette thought about writing him a letter when she got home, but she doubted that his trust in her extended as far as giving out his home address. She dallied for a couple of seconds, feeling like there should be more to this farewell. There wasn’t.
“Well, bye,” she said.
“Bye,” he nodded. She made an awkward shrugging gesture, as though he should care that she was leaving, and walked away. As she was about to round the corner into the parking lot, she thought of something.
“Hey,” she called back to him, “Don’t work too hard.”

On the way back to their hotel they stopped at Staples so her mother could buy a digital camera, and while Nanette’s mother berated the stringy haired, acne-d salesman; first for letting them stand around waiting to be helped for fifteen minutes, and then for not having the camera she wanted in stock; Nanette browsed the aisles. On aisle 7: New Technology, she found something called a Sony E-Book. Nanette had read about them but had never seen one up close. She touched the screen, followed a brief tutorial. For the very reasonable price of three hundred dollars (plus the cost of each book), the tutorial said, you could have access to a nearly unlimited supply of reading material.
“You know they have a printer now that prints in 3D?” her dad had told her a week before. “You feed it raw materials and it prints you a shoe, or a coffee mug, or whatever. Fascinating! It’s like living in Star Trek!”
Nanette shook her head at the E-Book and looked over her shoulder for Big Brother. She was always doing this. It was part of being in the race: you always had to be checking to make sure He wasn’t gaining on you too quickly. He wasn’t there: instead she saw her mother striding huffily up the aisle.
“They don’t have the camera I want. Honestly, how can it be so hard to spend two hundred and fifty dollars in this country?”
“Hey, what do you think of this?” Nanette picked up the E-Book.
“What? Oh. Well, I don’t know. I suppose anything that makes people read is good, but it would be hard to curl up with in bed.”
“E-Books don’t make people read,” Nanette said bitterly. “Harry Potter makes people read.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Her mother wasn’t really paying attention. “Shall we go?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
They walked to the door. Nanette was surprised to see an Amish woman at the check out. She was pleasantly round, with an unpretentious frizz of black hair and a unibrow. She could have been Gideon’s mother. Nanette had learned at the tourist center that they sometimes shopped in “our” stores for things they ran out of. She wondered what an Amish woman could possibly be buying at Staples. Were they secretly using electricity? Were they secretly reading E-Books? She imagined little farmhouses full of Amish families huddled over E-Books, eating microwaved Shoo Fly Pie, taking turns on the X-Box, their father watching through the curtains in case a tourist should come by. Gideon buying pre-painted horseshoes in bulk from a craft store and riding into town on his brother’s Vespa, parking it somewhere out of site, hiding his Blackberry in his shirt pocket and smoothing out his answers to banal questions. Had she been taken in by this little con artist? Somehow she doubted it. And even if she had, she thought, she would rather keep intact her vision of the yellow kitchen, the jam jars, the sleeping dog. If nothing else, she wanted to hold on to that image for the sake of pot-bellied college dropouts everywhere, who needed to believe there was something else out there beside the rat race.

To see more pictures of my trip to Pennsylvania, click here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39760&id=1168357147&saved

Hot Blonde Friends

Hot Blonde Friends are absolutely the worst enemies one can have. Personally, I try to keep my number of Hot Blonde Friends to a minimum, though this strategy is only marginally effective, because one Hot Blonde Friend can easily draw as much attention as ten Hot Brunette Friends and five Hot Redheads. My advice when dealing with Hot Blonde Friends is Do Not Invite Them to Places Where There Are Guys You Want to Fuck. If you have your eye on a particular male, do not ever introduce him to your Hot Blonde Friend, because whether she means to or not, she will steal him, and you will end up sitting in your apartment at Twelve Twenty On a Saturday Night, watching Revolutionary Road and Drinking White Wine by Yourself. You will probably also be texting your ex-boyfriend who lives two states away, asking him what he is up to, and wondering if he would just like to Chat for a bit. If and when he responds, you will usually end up insulting him because you are Very Drunk and somewhat Pissed Off.
When you go out with your Hot Blonde Friend, you have to keep in mind that she has Very Long Blonde Hair, and that you yourself have Very Short Mousy Brown Hair, and that guys usually dig Long Blonde Hair, and usually don’t give two fucks about Very Short Mousy Brown Hair (because sinking one’s hands into Long Blonde Hair while Fucking Extravagantly From Behind is probably a lot more Fun.) The Long Blonde Hair Situation is a tough situation to navigate, especially for the Socially Awkward. It requires a great deal of finesse, and should usually only be attempted by the Extremely Self-Confident, or the Criminally Insane. Going to a bar with a Hot Blonde Friend can be incredibly damaging to one’s self-esteem if not given the proper consideration or planning. Do not ever involve yourself in a situation where Raspberries or any other kind of Fresh Fruit is present, because your Hot Blonde Friend will undoubtedly know all kinds of Tricks of the Trade utilizing said things, and you will be left watching as she Repeatedly Catches Raspberries in her Mouth, Eats Them off People’s Fingers and just Thoroughly Enjoys Herself. Once any of the aforementioned things have happened, you are basically done for, because her confidence and presence will continue to climb, as yours slowly but surely buries itself like a forgotten pet.
If you are better at Holding Your Liquor than a Hot Blonde Friend, my suggestion is that you get As Trashed As You Can before even leaving the house (and by house I mean apartment), because a Drunk Hot Blonde is at least ten times more appealing than a sober one, and a Sober Mousy Brunette is never attractive. Though you may think that your Ability to Hold Liquor, and your Excellence With Cigarettes is a turn-on, it turns out that guys usually don’t like Girls Who Can Do the Same Things As Them. They especially don’t like girls who can do the same things as them, only better. It has come to my attention recently that guys like girls because they are not guys – they are girls, and they do Those Adorable Things That Girls Do. Similarly, girls generally like guys because they are guys and they do Those Infuriating Things That Guys Do. While this seems both blatantly obvious and somewhat ridiculous, I have found out that to attempt to change this situation, even slightly, usually Does Not Work.
The worst thing about Hot Blonde Friends – one of those things that makes you feel like a Terrible Human Being – is that they are your best friend, and you love them. The other Really Depressing Thing is that you know that they love you back, because last night they made you Macaroni and Cheese at Three in the Morning when you were Wasted and crashing at their house.

Giraffes

Let us discuss, for a moment, the topic of Giraffes. They are, without a doubt, a matter of extreme importance, and merit a position of great loft and heft and other such things. So much loft and heft in fact that many all-inclusive books – books that are apparently about Everything and have therefore a plethora of opening subjects to choose from – have been opened by them. Not literally “opened” of course, as we all know that Giraffes do not actually know how to read and are Merely Looking at the Pictures, and so rarely actually open books for fear of being laughed at by other animals who do know how to read and might be Looking Over Their Shoulders; but figuratively, because as you can see, the opening of this book is somehow entirely and tragically about Giraffes.
The great thing about Giraffes is that you can talk about them anywhere. You can talk about giraffes while you are Sitting at the Bus Stop, or Eating Acid, or Walking to Your Friend’s House Because You Left Your Sunglasses There Last Week and Just Happened to Bump Into Him at Seven Eleven. The best time to talk about giraffes is right before you meet a homeless guy named Moses who will hoodwink you and play you a song on his crazy wooden flute that will be The Worst Song You Have Ever Heard but will end exactly when you think it should, in the most awkward way possible – the way a friend says goodbye when you never really patched things up with him. You will clap and tell him it was awesome and you will mean it.
Giraffes have extraordinarily long memories. They can remember when Dr. Pepper Only Cost a Nickel and a buck fifty would get you a movie, a popcorn and a hand job in the back row if you played your cards right and didn’t go and piss your date off by bringing up The Holocaust or some other Totally Inappropriate Thing. Giraffes hate The Holocaust. They also hate Gypsies and Homosexuals. These are the only three things that giraffes have ever been documented as having strong feelings of resentment toward. (Though they have also been documented as having mild to moderate feelings of resentment toward a number of other things – namely: Lucky Charms, Hiccups, The Economy, Strawberry-Banana-Flavored-Yogurt, Syrupy Greeting Cards With Pictures of Puppies on Them, and Other Giraffes.) Giraffes have been known to hold grudges for up to a century at a time; the longest on record clocked in at one hundred and ten years and twenty three seconds, and was held by a Giraffe named Choco Fereldaby against his mother for Leaving the Toilet Seat Up.
One thing giraffes absolutely love is to draw pictures (remember, they are quite illiterate) of Very Important Things That Are Going to Happen in their day planners, so that they can fully prepare themselves for The Inevitable. Giraffes are fantastic at planning, and consequently you will always find them at the tops of things, and always with their heads above water. This leaves them with a fairly disposable income, and time to pursue a myriad of Leisurely Activities. On a stifling day in any major American city, you can find veritable gangs of female giraffes slathering themselves with olive oil and taking to the streets in search of The Perfect Tan. They never find it, though they will spend hours looking down every storm drain, inside every derelict microwave, and Under Every Stone. When they are not doing this, Giraffes enjoy Lounging on The Balcony, Drinking Excessively, Eating in Fancy Restaurants, and Rape. Their absolute favorite thing to do in the world is watch as your own feeble organizational skills fail in every way to prepare you for The Future, and your once promising life is prematurely snuffed out by a lack of sharpened pencils, sharpened wit and an open day planner – that, and a penchant for Saying Fuck It, Smoking Weed and Playing Call of Duty 4 All Day. Giraffes are fairly vicious bastards.
The other very intriguing thing about giraffes is that they were invented by Scientologists to communicate with The Mother Ship. This is why they have Those Useless Little Lumps That Look Like They May Once Have Been Horns on top of their heads. Do not ever, ever mention these Lumps to a giraffe; they are incredibly self-conscious about them, and they will kill and eat you for bringing it up. If you ever find yourself being killed and eaten by a giraffe, the best course of action to take is to Play Dead: struggling, as we all know, will only prolong The Inevitable.

Is Your Baby Racist?

No, but if it’s born in America, it might grow up retarded.

This is basically the message I am taking away from the recent malarky over Newsweek’s controversial cover story (Sept. 14th.) While Newsweek now seems to be closer to The National Enquirer in terms of content than to a reputable news source, I admit that I did pick up this one. I was on an airport layover in Denver, Colorado, and as I passed a newsstand, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the baby with the deep innocent eyes and the words “IS YOUR BABY RACIST?” stamped across its enormous baby forehead. As I locked eyes with the sweet little thing, and let it draw me across fifteen treacherous feet of crazed travelers, I imagined its little cupid mouth opening to coo at me: “Yeah that’s right. You walk right on over here and pay six dollars fifty for this magazine that you don’t need because your parents get it delivered to their house. You nigger.” What can I say? I fell for it hook, line and sinker (it was the second time in my life I have been called a nigger, but that’s a story for another time.)

Between Denver and San Jose, I read the article. I expected an analysis of the infant brain – an in depth scientific look at the chemistry that makes up racism. Is it a genetic thing? Is there something inside the human brain that makes certain people assholes? I didn’t know. And after reading this article, I still don’t know. What the article told me was basically that kids begin to distinguish groups (racial or otherwise) much earlier on in life than we have been giving them credit for, and that by the time most parents deem it “appropriate” to discuss race with their children, it is too late. It also called for the necessity of specific language when addressing children about race. “We’re all friends” is apparently too vague a message for children to understand that it refers to skin color (and probably especially confusing when the message is being delivered by an enormous yellow bird, an angry green pedophile in a trashcan, and a meth-addicted blue…cookie monster guy.) I don’t know if it’s just the way I feel about the subject – and perhaps I am being naïve here – but I just don’t think it is necessary to talk to children about race. Kids can see that everyone is different. And they usually don’t care. They only begin to care when adults make them feel like they should. Bringing up race to your child, even if your intentions are good, is racist. Children are not born racist: we make them racist. “You look at a baby, and it's so pure and so free and so clean. And adults are, like, this mess of sadness...and... phobias.” So says Mary in Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind. And I agree.

Anyway, invalidating the article wasn’t really what I set out to accomplish here (though let me add as a final spur that after ten pages, the article just…stopped, as though someone forgot to put in the last page. I don’t know if it was just my copy, or if someone at Newsweek had a few too many at lunch, or if they just ran out of room and figured nobody would notice, but something was wrong. And I did notice. And it was fucking weird.) The reason I started writing was because of another Newsweek article I read today, in the Greenest Big Companies in America issue. It was a follow-up to the racist baby article, and it dealt with everybody’s favorite Rush Limbaugh, who accused Newsweek of using the story to speak in code to liberals. According to Rush, “Is Your Baby Racist” actually translates to “Republicans Don’t Support Obama Beccuase They’ve Been Racist Since Birth” (Newsweek, Sept. 28) He went on to whine about the fact that liberals continually label Republicans as racist because they refuse to support Obama, and talk about Maureen Dowd’s comment that Joe Wilson’s outburst at Obama’s healthcare address was actually racist code.

Which brings me to my point: why is everybody in this country so fucking insane? And, yes, by “everybody,” at this particular moment I mean “Rush Limbaugh,” but honestly, let’s stop for a moment and take a look at the bullshit that has gone down recently:

Death Panels/Sarah Palin in general. Yes, it was absolutely ludicrous that anyone with half a brain was swayed at all by her presence in McCain’s campaign. Yes, it is frightening, to say the least, that people can be so easily manipulated. But you know what is worse? The fact that John McCain chose her in the first place! How can a man who believes himself to be in a fit state to run a country have possibly made such a ridiculous decision? Did he talk to her at all before appointing her? (I mean, apart from the part where she asked him if she could suck his dick in exchange for the position and he said, “By all means.”)

Joe Wilson’s tourettes-induced freak out. I mean…come on. How could anybody in their right mind think that yelling “You lie!” at the president during an important speech is a good way to get things done? And even if it was, as some suggest, not a moment of coke-induced derangement, but a coded racist slur (and don’t even get Rush Limbaugh started on that) it doesn’t change the fact that it makes Joe Wilson look crazier than Kanye West in a Crazy Suit, holding a sign that says “I’m with crazy” with an arrow pointing to himself.

The Wii incident, brought to my attention by the marvelously irate Tyler Compton. (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=138462866364&ref=mf) Do the people in charge of this country really have nothing inside them except an empty hole for the money to fill, and an intense hatred for everything good? The people at the tops of our major news corporations are so completely and irrevocably blinded by the light reflecting off their Bentleys and shiny bald heads, and so deafened by the sound of billions of dollars worth of loose change floating around in their pockets, that they have finally come to a pinnacle of luncacy in this country: they are being paid to report the news without actually having to report any news. And, as far as anyone can tell, they aren’t going to start reporting any news any time soon.

“Obama is a Nazi.” This goes hand-in-hand with the previous paragraph. Obviously, insurance companies have contracted that fatal disease that has become so common among America’s aristocracy: Crazymoneybrain – a condition in which there is so much money in one’s wallet that it actually starts to seep out, through the back pocket of your trousers (in this case, really expensive, and yet somehow still hideous, slacks) and into the blood stream. Once in the blood stream, the liquid cash goes strait to the brain, where it clogs up nerve endings and blocks synapses, severely interfering with motor-skills and even the most basic levels of human understanding. This is why insurance companies are so unable to grasp the concept that PEOPLE ARE DYING because of their inability to do anything decent and not financially motivated. This is why they fund ridiculous “Obama is Hitler” propaganda-campaigns that get everyone riled up and distracted from the real issue at hand. I suppose it’s really not their fault: they literally have money on the brain, and it makes them technically retarded.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go out and buy a helmet. The kind Mike Myers wore in that SNL skit where he’s chained to the climbing frame. I’m going to buy this kind of helmet because I have a theory: that theory is that if I wear something on my head for three years, people will catch on and it will become trendy. It happened with those awesome headphones I have (which they now sell at Urban Outfitters), and it really should catch on with this; considering that everyone in America either is, or is slowly becoming, retarded, and could really use this kind of head protection. I’m going to wear this helmet night and day, in the hopes that the constant pressure on all sides of my cranium will combat the pressure building inside it. In this way, I hope to stop my head from exploding before I have time to go out and buy my AK-47 (I don’t condone guns, but desperate times and all that) and my big-ass boat, and sail into the middle of the Pacific Ocean where I will spend the rest of my life eating Mercury-tainted tuna and twitching. The gun is really just there for show – if I run into any Somalian pirates, I will probably just beg them for sweet release.

Go Away Alice

I.
In the dream, there is a girl. The girl has no name, or at least, I don’t know what it is. She’s quite young – perhaps twelve or thirteen – and she lives in one of those little houses in New York that are surrounded by more houses on both sides, with a stoop out front that you can sit on. She’s a happy little girl.
At some point, close to the beginning of the dream, she meets another little girl, called Alice, a ragdoll of a girl with a dismal gray skirt and a threadbare wool sweatshirt. Alice is a bad girl. We know Alice is a bad girl because she has vacant eyes and sunken cheeks, and drowns kittens in her spare time (she says.) I never witness her doing these things in the dream, but it is one of those things that is blurrily assumed.

II.
Barack Obama has the hardest job in the world. Not only does he have to keep himself from being assassinated on a daily basis, he also has to sort out the disaster we like to call “America.” When we elected him, it was with an almost violent fervor, a palpable excitement for the change he was going to bring us. I remember watching his inauguration with my knees curled up to my chest, one eye closed, praying, “Oh please don’t let him be shot. Please don’t let him be shot.” Every step he took onstage was another small triumph – every moment that his brain was still inside his skull, and not splattered Kennedy-style all over the front page of tomorrow’s paper, was heart-pounding relief.

III.
The night sky. What number of carefully arranged adjectives and hopelessly imperfect sentences can describe it? It’s like a velvet blanket covered with spilled talcum powder. On a clear night, when you can see Orion and Cassiopeia and Signus; when you know you are in Santa Cruz because the North Star is there to your left and the Summer Triangle is directly overhead, it is one of the most heart wrenching sights a human’s eyes can absorb.

I.
What we don’t find out until later in the dream, is that Alice is not actually a real girl at all, but a figment of the other girl’s (for some reason I’m beginning to think her name is Sally) imagination. Alice is Sally’s dark side, her psychotic break – the part of her that will tear through the silk screen that separates a dream from a nightmare, and drag her screaming into inky blackness. Alice is, I suppose, the thing that we all fear the most inside ourselves. That part of us that bites our nails until they bleed, smokes cigarettes, refuses to be a good hostess, hates making small talk, wants to fuck just for the hell of it even though we know it will make us feel worse. Because we are bored with the rules and decorum, and, most of all, the effort it takes to be a functioning member of society.



II.
Barack Obama’s campaign was based on Hope. The hope that we could drag ourselves out of this quagmire and emerge, dripping and cursing, a powerful Empire. There is no doubt that America is the next Great Empire. And there is no doubt that, like Rome and England and China and Spain, the Empire is crumbling. It is crumbling the way all Great Empires and mediocre cookies crumble – from the inside out. The reason it is crumbling is because it is an Empire built on nothing. It is an Empire built so far ahead of itself that it has nothing to stand on. America exists in a cloud seventy feet or so above the earth. Everything that can be done in America nowadays can be done online. That is why there are no decent railroads, factories or solid institutions. America is the youngest nation in the world, and consequently, it is being built on the youngest technologies in the world, before it has had a chance to establish the old technologies. Countries like England, France, China, have all had a chance to root themselves to the Earth with sheer manpower and brute strength – wooden ships filled with iron men. America, poor young bastard sibling that it is, is attempting to build an Empire out of air – paper ships filled with wires and plastic and a computer for a brain. It is a premise that has the potential to work, but only if the youngest people in the world are willing to take the wheel of these new technologies, learn how they work, and use them to steer the ship – or at least remotely control it from the harbor.

III.
There is absolutely nothing in the world that is older than the night sky. Nothing. Hundreds of bajillions of years ago, cavemen with badly plucked eyebrows and broken noses looked up at more or less the same sky that we look up at today. They saw more, because there were no horrible, cancerous cities like Los Angeles to pollute the sky with their artificial light, but the basic premise was the same. Stars have come and gone, burned out and been born, but the same constellations have pretty much been there. The same three little dots in a diagonal line with three even littler dots falling away from them have been Orion’s belt and sword. And it is somewhat relieving to know that no matter how much invisible matter we vomit into the universe in the form of emails and youtube videos, the blackness that surrounds those splattered stars will never become cloudy or spaghetti-gray. We Hope.

I.
Eventually, Alice becomes such an overpowering force in Sally’s life that Sally goes completely insane. From her pole position in the back of Sally’s head, Alice tells her to do terrible things, and Sally, being the blonde little innocent that she is, cannot handle it. She is sad all the time. She hates herself and she hates Alice, but as we all know, something so evil and so strong cannot be easily banished.

II.
This is why I feel (I know) that the future of America depends on us. We cannot be a nation of apathetics anymore. We are the iGeneration, the generation that elected a “just add water president.” We are so used to instant gratification that we expect our president to be an immediate solution to our problems. Need I remind anyone that Kool-Aid powder does not become Kool-Aid simply by adding water? You have to stir it. We seem to think that our job is done: we elected him, and that’s all we had to do, right? Wrong. Obama is a great leader. But a great leader’s job is not to fix a country’s problems. It is to inspire the country’s people to want to fix the problems themselves. That is what Obama does. That is how he won his campaign – through inspiration and Hope. How many of us remember watching the inauguration? How many of us remember going outside onto our balconies afterwards, smoking a cigarette, looking at the world and thinking, “Yes. I can do this.”? And perhaps you don’t have a balcony, and perhaps you don’t smoke (you shouldn’t, according to everyone) but you know what I mean. Changing this country is not Obama’s responsibility. It is our responsibility.

III.
When the sky is foggy in Santa Cruz, you can’t see a goddamn thing at night. The clouds settle over the Earth like a lid. During the day it’s like being in a pot full of water about to be boiled. It’s a welcome change from Los Angeles, where you can’t see the sky period. Where the night sky isn’t black and white, it’s vaguely orange. Where the entire sky looks like one big Northern Light (except you’re in the South.) In Santa Cruz, the fog hangs like cobwebs until about noon, when suddenly the sun shafts through and everything is burned away within a matter of minutes. It’s like watching the curtain rise on a magic show. In Los Angeles, the smoke and grime seem to intensify the sun, pulling it closer to the Earth, trapping and heating it until even shadows sweat. In Santa Cruz the sky is covered by fog. In Los Angeles, the sky is covered by smog.

I.
The most vivid part of the dream, the part that everything else seems to be hazily surrounding, is when Sally comes home from school one day and Alice is lounging on the steps outside her front door. Taking up the entire stoop like she owns it. It is the first time I have seen Alice in the flesh. She has stringy black hair and a stitched-up cut on one cheek. Her head is sewn onto her neck. She looks like a twelve-year-old junkie. Sally is so scared of Alice that she cannot get into her own house. She panics and doesn’t know what to do, so she decides to run away and hide until Alice is gone. It is then that she notices what is written on the wall next to Alice:
GO AWAY ALICE
Exactly like that, but with an ‘x’ dotting the I. And Sally realizes that she must have written it herself, at some point within the last two weeks, or two months, or two years, or however long it has been since Alice started haunting her. She wrote it herself, in a moment of madness, trying to get Alice out of her own head. It is not a strong statement. It is not a stern warning to Alice that she’d ‘better get out of town or there’s gonna be trouble’: it is a plea. A weak and desperate attempt to gain control of herself and rid herself of this nightmare.

II.
We have two choices before us: we can give up and give in to the downfall of America – allow it to collapse and crumble and become a crazy hobo on the sidewalk of the world; or we can fight. The trouble with fighting is that it takes effort: it takes character and strategy and cunning and all the things that we, as a generation, seem to lack. Sure, we have education. Sure, we have a smarmy attitude and great sales skills. But do we have the character it’s going to take to tie the American Empire to the Earth and make it something lasting? Or if we can’t make it lasting, can we at least leave something valuable behind? What is our Mayan Calendar? Where are our aqueducts? Do we even care?

III.
On my ceiling, I have a representation of the night sky. It took me about three days, when I was fifteen, to paint it. I cut out stencils from cardboard, saved money to buy spray paint, spent days on a ladder with a tiny paintbrush dotting stars onto my ceiling. Sometimes, when I go to bed, it is my lullaby. A sky full of stars sings the most beautiful lullaby when you are lying on your back with your hands behind your head. Other times, though, it is a map. Like a pirate, I can memorize the patterns and constellations, I can look through the pinpoints to the greater picture behind them. Usually, the way I see them depends entirely on how exhausted I am at the end of the day – if I’m tired, I’ll let them sing me to sleep; if I’m wired, I’ll sail off into an adventure (second start to the right and strait on til morning.) Sometimes, though, I like to force myself through exhaustion and into the next big adventure. It’s a test of my character, strategy and cunning. It’s a much more rewarding way to spend an evening than lying on my back with me hands behind my head, ignoring everything and seeing nothing, pretending to be asleep.

I.
So the little girl runs away down the street and huddles next to a brick garden wall or something like that, because she’s too afraid to go into her own house. Suddenly, the dream becomes a montage – all I see is the girl huddled next to the wall like a hobo, growing older and older. So time is passing – the seasons all lend their different hues to the picture (spring is green, fall is red, winter is stark and white.) She sits by the same wall until, at the end of the dream, she’s a very old, very fat, very bald man, whose head is on backwards and who walks on all fours like a crab with a head that looks up at the sky. The man wears glasses and is pitiful. The very end of the dream is almost an interview – a perky but severe-looking woman with a microphone is about to ask him questions about his life, but he just looks up at her with eyes full of regret and limps away.

II.
We are a generation huddled next to a brick wall, scared to go into our own house. At the end of this dream, when Barbara Walters sticks her phallus in our faces, will we tell her about the aqueducts we built, or will we simply look up at her, through glasses full of regret, and limp away?

III.
Four hundred million bajillion squadrillion years ago, that star to your right died. How long will it take for people to forget about you?