Knitting.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could fall asleep at the same time and wake up in the same dream?

"Oh I've heard of this, it's called Para...Para..."

Parallel Synchronized Randomness

"Exactly! Oh, how beautiful if it were possible..."

But it is! It's only extremely rare. We could build a raft and float out to the Atlantic and sword fight with giant Marlin!

"Drinking those Austrian wenches under the table! Shopping in Puerto Vallarta! Camping in the Catskills!"

All in six hours...

Perth Amboy's Rogue's Gallery (featuring Stuntkid)

So I had the idea for this post about three nights ago. The damn thing kept me up all night but I just never got around to writing it. As of right now I'm writing this on my phone. So excuse me for any typos or other elusive mistakes. Edits will come later.

Everyone at some point or another meets their match. In middle school I had Brandon Campbell who i believe i spoke about before in this blog.

A new threat has entered the picture. Diane Snead. This lady needs help. She comes in to purchase two cell phones. Before i ask if she needs any help, she tells me she just spent am hour on the phone with Sprint working out a rate plan for her family. While I'm upgrading her phones, she tells me, at great length, about how great Sprint has been to her and her family. How they set her up at the Grand Hotel in Las Vegas and her daughter winning a brand new Htc Evo 4G in a dance contest at a NASCAR event. There was more, but i tuned her out after the bit about the Evo. So i set up her phones. She takes a look at the contract I've printed out for her and a switch flips. She says I've changed her plan into two family plans at $129.99 each. I tell her there is no way i could have done that, it must have been a mix up from when she was on the phone with them earlier. She complains to my manager that I changed her plan and was "rude." Which isn't completely false, but I'd say i was more neglectful than rude. Whatever, she told me this situation made her stomach turn. I thought that was a gross exaggeration. I wanted to tell her that normal people don't act the way she is acting but my job description includes a clause of severe tongue biting. So whatever. That's why i have this blog. Anyways, she's on the phone with Sprint for awhile longer after i explain that i did nothing and can't help her with this. Of course, she gets it all straightened out and her stomach returns to its upright position. When she leaves my Manager tells me how this lady was crying because *Company Name Omitted Because this I don't have the money for a Constitutional lawyer to take you fat fucks on* threatened her life! Lady, who's life isn't threatened every Black Friday between the traffic and the over eager crowds of trampling moms much like yourself who need that Action Bastard doll for little Jimmy?

Gimme a break.

My manager told me yesterday that she called back after she left to say she was coming in Sunday to iron out a few other details. Whatever, bring it on. You're no Brandon Campbell. That kid had gumption and moxy.

I don't think anyone has noticed, but in case you have, I've adopted a pen name. You'll notice it in any posts from now on as well as any stories I publish here or anywhere else in the future. You may be asking why I would adopt a pen name. To be honest I don't think my name is very scholarly. So I when I was reading Drown by Junot Díaz. Díaz grew up between the Dominican Republic and New Jersey and several parts of the NYC area. Anyway, he mentions a city in New Jersey and it just kind of stuck. If you haven't read anything by Díaz I highly recommend him. As of now, he has one novel (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) and a collection of short stories (Drown) in his repertoire (these coupled with his work in various magazines I'll never get my hands on, though I don't really care, these two are enough to satisfy me for the time being.)

So that explains that.

I've included a work by a local RVA artist Jason Levesque Stuntkid. I really dig his work so if you'd like anymore information on him, you can find his blog and art at blog.stuntkid.com Unfortunatly I couldn't figure out how to post a link. So for now you'll have to copy and paste. Very sorry.

Hot Showers and Dead Fathers

Wow, okay. Now that I've taken probably the hottest and most relaxing shower I've ever been able to get in this house, I can tell you what just happened.

By the way, is it just me or does anyone else sit down in the shower?

Today my mother wanted to talk to me about something that happened to me and my father a while back. Driving to my Grandparent's house one morning, my father was struck with a sudden seizure with me in the passenger seat. We were barreling down Indian Head Highway at around sixty mph. I remember telling him about Pokemon. The game was relatively new then and I was explaining the intricacies of the card game. It was at that time the muscles in his face seemed to tense and contort and he began making a noise I could only describe to the nurse as how Chewbacca sounded. We ricocheted off the center guard rail and darted across three or four lanes of traffic and an intersection where we jumped the curb into a parking lot where we plowed into a parked car sheltering a family.

Years later I would be snooping through a box of my mother's keepsakes. Me and my brother's birth certificates, news articles and a cassette my mother had recorded of my father's message left from the answering machine. I believe she wanted us to always have something to remember his voice. I played the tape on an old stereo we had in the sun room of our old house. I must have been 16 or 17 years old here. After a brief introduction by my mother, there was an eerie dead air in the speakers. I know I was about to hear my father's voice by I didn't know exactly what to expect.

"Hello, You've reached the Whetsell residence..."

It wasn't familiar. I know tape recordings distort voices to a certain degree, but this wasn't distorted. It was clear but I couldn't fit his face to the voice I was hearing through those speakers. I played it a few more times over before I set it back in the lock box in my mother's closet. That was when I came across the police report of the accident. The report mentioned some small traces of marijuana found in my father's blood tests. As I read on I learned about the Mother who was left a widow and the children left orphans. This news was a very tough pill to swallow at the time but I've come to terms with that reality.

I feel a need to post this tonight not because it serves as any sort of therapy for me. I've long since come to terms with the death of my father. First, I write this out of a strong respect for the documenting of life, especially the tragedies held within it. I'm writing this for my mother. Because when she came to speak to me earlier she wanted to know what I'd thought as everything was happening. I told her I didn't want to talk about it. It's not a tough subject for me, I'm only exhausted of running through the story. After all the counselors, after all the family members, I don't feel any more need to talk about it. However, it became more and more apparent to me that my mother was blaming herself for what had happened this day. I poured my heart out to her. I explained that she could have never anticipated such a thing to happen and she shouldn't blame herself. She kept saying she felt responsible so I suggested that perhaps she had some issue with the accident. She got up quietly and walked away.

Bernhard

“It’s probably just before dusk. I’m eight and my friends and I are running across a field toward the edge of the woods. I recognize this place as Mr. Montgomery’s estate off Backlick road in Fort Washington. He was a good friend of my grandfather’s. We’d do yard work for him in the summer when I was out of school. Anyway, we’re running for the woods when I look to my side and recognize a young girl running next to me. She’s smiling at me and reaching out for my hand. I take it and we run together and I’m smiling and the high grass is cutting our legs as we race closer and closer toward the thick trees ahead. I hear laughing. It’s that common children’s laugh you hear all the time in movies or television, but this doesn’t register because I’m trying to place where I know the girl from. We slow down and watch my friends disappear one by one into the woods. It’s not a slow vanishing either. It’s like a blip, like someone editing them out of the dream. One by one. And I start getting this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. This feeling that something terrible is happening to us but I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to move. That’s when I wake up.”

I turn my head from the acoustic ceiling tile to look at Bernhard. He wants me to call him Bernard because he’s afraid I’ll mispronounce his last name. Something Swedish.

“Do you feel physically ill when you wake up?”

I’ve been seeing Bernhard once a week since my dad died. My mother set me up with the visits to help with some of the problems I developed. Anger and depression. The anger subsided about a year after when I realized the old man was really nothing to hate. He lived most his life (and subsequently, mine) in a drug induced haze. You can’t fault a guy for that. You get through life anyway you can.

“It’s not the same as in the dream. I was scared at first. But then I just really wanted to know who the girl was.”

She only exists in dreams. She’s not real. When I was eight, I had pneumonia. The fever had me hallucinating that small insects were climbing all over my arms and legs. My mother was up all night watching my small eight-year-old chest rise and fall. I dreamt of this girl before. I remember her curly brown hair and the yellow sundress. This time, I chased her down creek behind my house. When I’d finally caught up to her it was raining and she asked if she could be my girlfriend. I never answered but she would show up periodically in my dreams throughout my adolescence. Now I’m twenty-one. And she’s there again. Bernhard thinks this means something. I tell him it means nothing. I tell him it’s all Jungian, no Freud, but the guy won’t budge.

It’s a weird relationship we have. We’ve seen each other probably fifty weeks out of the year, but it’s all professional. I never crack jokes that I do with my friends, but we have this intellectual understanding between us. He understands my philosophies and I understand his. We may not agree but once a week we swap a story that in some way or another will jog the cogs of awareness.

...

I've been dwelling in this uninspired mood lately. It's a drag but I managed to purge a little something out for you this evening. Nothing spectacular. I can't work on Russo because I've become slightly disinterested in it for the time being. I made notes on a physical copy last night and even began to make changes to the electronic copy on my laptop. So there is a story. It is finished. It has an ending and I'm really happy with it. I just need to beef up some sections and amend a few errors and I'll have it posted here.
I want to mention that Russo started where it ends. Meaning, I wrote a small excerpt and decided to put it in a larger concept. I wrote that excerpt in retaliation to a poor simile written by James Franco in his short fiction I Could Kill Someone where he says,

"I rode fast and the cold air on my face felt like I was riding through ghosts".

I liked that simile so much but I felt it wasn't strong enough. So I wrote it better. It wasn't until a few weeks later I thought,

Why is he riding? There might be a story here...

So that's where all this started. The next day I had the day off so I jumped on my computer and wrote the first seven pages of what would become Russo.

Exit.

"It's the feeling when everything overwhelms you. Seeing everything for what it is, but you're seeing it from every angle at the same time. So in this universal sense, you can never tell if this insight is everything. It grows up inside of you. Which could have happened a lifetime ago. Or it could have been eight years. It might as well have been your entire life. And then it ends and you know it will come again someday. But you forget that feeling. And so, essentially he laments for all the children who will grow to have this same experience. He laments for himself because he knows he might as well be a child, fated for the same experience again and again."

Just Another Working Class Rant

It's been difficult lately. I'm inching closer and closer to a reasonable conclusion. If it were up to me, I'd be more prejudice as to who I let in the store. Last night, in walked the loonies. I'd say about 9:00 post-meridiem, "Right on time," I say, checking my watch. I turn the corner and a young guy walks up to me. He's a little odd looking. Very well dressed, dockers, plaid button-up, a nice pair of dress shoes. He's got this real choir boy look about him that doesn't belong on a Tuesday night. The guy comes up to me and gives me this look like he knows me from before. He's holding a pair of head phones in his hands when he says,

Hey, remember me? They didn't work, can I get an exchange?

What am I stupid? I don't know you. I didn't say this. I could've been wrong after all. I can't be responsible for remembering every customer. So I ask him for his receipt. He doesn't have it.

Aw, no. Can't I just get an exchange?

This is where I call bullshit on the guy. I tell him I'm not taking anything back without a receipt. I offer to look the receipt up but he tells me he paid in cash. So no deal.

That's fine, I'll just buy another pair.

So I take the guy around the corner to show him the other headsets. I pick a pair up off the wrong shelf. Somebody must have placed them on the wrong hook. I tell him these are made specifically for his phone (Blackberry headphones for a Blackberry phone). He's looking at them, when he mother (or what I assume to be a mother, you never really know with these nut jobs,) walks up to us. She asks me how much and I tell her $24.99. She noticed that I picked it off a sign that said $19.99and starts to argue that because it's on the wrong shelf, I should give it to her for $19.99. I tell her that she can't be seriously holding me responsible for someone picking up a product and placing it in the wrong spot.

Do I sense a little stress in your tone?

You're goddamn right you do. I can't do this much longer. Dealing with these people. Somebody needs to say something. Somebody needs to say,

You're fuckin' wrong. And you're not getting your way, because you are a grown woman and you can pay five bucks.

We can't keep silent in the face of blatant idiocy. This is not how the world works. You aren't entitled to anything. You are a small, insignificant being. But with hard work, and humility, you can have those headphones at a discounted price, you can get your book published, you can pay off your loans. It isn't a ruse. There's no ancient Chinese secret. It's just hard work.