Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

kurt vonnegut

Face (Part 2 of 6)

II. 2:30 p.m. Tuesday

“Vince, I believe you’re sublimating repressed issues with your father through these dreams. You’ve been having them for over a month now, and my professional opinion is that you need to confront him. Your peace of mind relies on it. Thankfully he’s still alive. There’s a lot you can do on your own, Vince, and I can prescribe you pill after pill, but you have to tackle the core issue here if you want to get better.”

He placed an emphatic inflection on the words “professional opinion,” as if he was actually getting tired of hearing the same thing over and over again from this patient and that, god, it had actually come to asserting his credibility as a licensed professional.

“Red, you’ve got to be kidding me. If my unconscious was trying to tell me about how much I resent my dad, why would I be dreaming about some random guy? Besides, what am I supposed to do? Forgive the asswipe? I hate his goddamn guts and I’ll always hate his goddamn guts. Fuck, it isn’t my place to forgive him. What am I supposed to say, hi dad, I forgive you for deciding that for your midlife crisis you’d get a new woman. Oh yeah and dad, mom’s bleeding from the wrists on the dining room floor and Sonny is buried under rubble in Afghanistan where he fled to get away from the wreck you left behind, so they’re not around to say it, but they forgive you too. Asshole. Thanks for leaving the mortgage payments up to our nerve-fried wreck of a mother. Yeah Red, that’s a sound fucking plan.”

Red Greenwood sighed and pressed his thumb and forefinger lightly into his eyes, massaging the tiredness out of them. After seventeen years in the practice, this particular man was doing the best job yet of chipping away at his patience. Then again, it had been a long month. Maybe he was getting old. Maybe he needed a vacation.

“Jesus Red, one thing’s for sure, I’m tired of seeing the same face over and over again every time I go to sleep.”

---

4:19 p.m. Tuesday

“Ron Yager?”

Ron had been brushing dandruff off the shoulder of his dark gray cardigan. He came to attention, stood up and walked to the clipboard-toting nurse smacking gum and standing at the door.

“It’s Hager.”

“Oh yeah. So it is,” she hissed with what Ron thought an unnecessary coat of sarcasm. She tilted her head and gave him a patronizing look and turned around. “Follow me.”

“Bitch,” he mumbled very lowly. She led him to a set of scales.

“Step on.” He stepped on. She moved the big bar to 150 and the small one to 30, 40, 45, 47. No dice. She looked up at Ron’s five o’clock shadow and then immediately down at his protruding gut.

“It’s been a stressful month.”

“Uh huh.” She rolled her eyes, obviously not believing him, or caring. She

moved the big bar to 200 and the small one to 10, 20, 26, 28. “228 American pounds mister Yager.”

“Hager. Maybe you should be the one coming to the doctor, get that head

checked. Your memory doesn’t work right.” She wanted to fight. He had gloves.

“Uh huh.” That eye roll again. “Follow me.”

She led him into an examination room. “Have a seat and get naked. Doctor’ll

be in in a sec.” Her back to him, she looked down at her clipboard and mumbled something that sounded a lot like “bitch,” and with this strutted out the door, clipboard and chewing gum and eye rolls and all, and slammed it behind her.

“Christ hell.” Ron’s exasperated voice reverberated off the wallpapered borders of the room with a stale ping. He took his sweater and shirt off and stared down at the brown hairs on his fat stomach and fat chest with detest. Slumping over and rubbing his sunken eyes and the dark ellipses beneath them, he let loose a heavy sigh and hoped that this visit to the doctor would be the last step of solutions in what had been a nightmarish chronicle of bad nights of sleep.

]

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Personality Disorder:	Very High
Schizoid Personality Disorder:	High
Schizotypal Personality Disorder:	High
Antisocial Personality Disorder:	High
Borderline Personality Disorder:	Very High
Histrionic Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Narcissistic Personality Disorder:	Very High
Avoidant Personality Disorder:	High
Dependent Personality Disorder:	Very High
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Moderate
-- Take the Personality Disorder Test -- -- Personality Disorder Info --

I've Just Seen a Face (Part 1 of 6)

I. 4:34 a.m. Tuesday

Dolores Wayburn’s belly jiggled with the vibrations of the bus’s erratic movements and engine gyrations. The low-hanging late afternoon sunlight bore through the tinted window adjacent to her and cast nuances of shadow on her polyester floral dress, through which the forms of a rotund belly and tired breasts were visible. The heat of the engine and thuds of shifting gears could be felt through the floor and the brown loafers she was wearing. A gray leather purse rested squarely on her pudgy lap, which she clutched forcibly with an air of anxiety.

It was Sunday; she was on her way home from church. She already had the rest of her day planned: feed the cat, water the plants, tidy up her one bedroom townhouse, eat a roast beef sandwich, catch the six o’clock news. There was no doubt in her mind that performing these perfunctory tasks would tire her enough to sleep, and she would.

There were exactly four other passengers on the bus with Dolores. She didn’t pay any of them attention for the duration of the ride, except for a young couple sitting close to one another, to whom she smiled shortly. Conversations hardly ever came up with other passengers on these bus rides. Pleasantly complacent with the routine of her Sunday bus trips, she never felt it necessary to concern herself with anyone else. It was always easiest and simplest to mind her own business until she saw the familiar landmark of Derrida Elementary as bus number 27 rounded the corner of Mort and Coupable, at which point she would pull the stop cable and subsequently thank the bus driver, receive some form of acknowledgment (though she admitted that bus drivers seemed to be getting ruder and she found herself appalled at some of the half-hearted head nods and grunts they gave in reply) and step off the bus.

This is what happened on this particular Sunday, only something stood awry as she did. She could count on her fingers how many times another person had gotten off at her Mort Street stop. In fact, she’d gotten so used to being the only person to use the stop that, when a man dressed in jeans and a black V-neck stepped off the bus after her, she felt it an intrusion, as she’d developed an imagined sense of ownership over the stop. Realizing it was silly, (she shook her head and chuckled to herself softly at the thought) she began her seven-block hike home.

Crickets were beginning to chirp as the sun crept toward the horizon. These days are getting awfully short, she thought to herself. She waved warmly at a bald man reeling in a garden hose on a spindle at the side of his house; a man she’d seen countless times on her way to the supermarket or on Sundays like these. The comfort of his familiarity, though she did not even know him, brushed warmly at the inside of Dolores’ stomach. Sundays were so enjoyable because they were placid and familiar. She saw her own childhood neighborhood in this one; she could feel Hank’s hand in hers. He was gone now and so were her parents and siblings, but on Sundays their memory made her happy, not lonely. She was oddly anxious today, though. This Sunday felt different from the others and waving hello to the bald man did not give her the satisfying comfort she’d come to expect from him.

She looked up at the intersecting street sign: Bataille Drive. It wasn’t necessary to look at the signs; she could’ve navigated the street with her eyes shut. But trying hard to restore a stable mind frame, she began grasping at any hint of familiarity. Passing Bataille, she noticed the sound of boot thuds behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the man in the black sweater who’d gotten off at her stop was still behind.

She’d shared the stop with other strangers before, but never had anyone actually come this far. This fact may not have shaken her on another day, but there was an indiscernible perturbing tremor in her consciousness she could neither place nor grasp.

Her pace quickened slightly. By the boot steps behind her, to which she was now scrupulously paying attention, so did his. She was coming up to the sixth block. There was only one more to walk before she arrived safely at her doorstep. It was hard to balance running for her life and looking composed and unsuspecting at the same time. After all, offending a random stranger by running from him in unconcealed terror was not on her list of things to do.

A volume of tension escaped her chest when she saw the sign reading Henderson Ave. She was home. The metal gate clinked shut behind her as she rushed up two painted concrete steps onto the haven of her front porch. As the adrenaline subsided from her blood, the peace of home began taking over her silly and arbitrary panic. She could see her brown tabby cat sitting at the window blinking lazily. One second sweetie pie, Dolores assured. Releasing the metal clasp on her purse, she looked down into it, fumbling through packets of chewing gum and odd receipts to find her keys. She grabbed them. The last peeking sliver of sunlight glinted over the rooftop across the street on her round golden keychain. When she looked up to put the key into the deadbolt, a man in a black sweater was standing in front of her.

---

8:03 a.m. Tuesday

Morning was coming in through his window whether he liked it or not. When the sunlight pouring in through the east-facing bedroom window and birds chirping had made it irrevocably clear he would not be sleeping another moment, Ron rose out of bed. He rubbed his ankles and legs, which were sore. He squinted at the digital alarm clock and cursed at it before standing up.

Geezus. Feel like I ran a marathon last night, he thought as he limped to the bathroom. He pressed his hand into his side, which was also sore. Ron had been having trouble sleeping lately and this new detail was only one among an overwhelming pile of others that had grown far beyond his grasp.

Ron finished urinating and walked over to the tub where he turned the shower on to warm the pipes up. He stared at his reflection and asked himself, somewhat rhetorically, “what’s next?”

He looked it in the eye and told it NO

"the folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us"

paul valery

beautiful birthday

i turned 23 and am still alive-

this year, the days are only going to get better. you know, to balance things out.

read it while it's free.

buy it while it's in print.

espresso and cigarettes in parisian cafe.

that's the trouble with romance.

---

smelly flat feet or flatulence in bed

just flatulence

public flatulence

pubic fuzz

private fondling.

getting along not getting along

in the bed

talking in the car.

creating a scene over drinks at every-

other restaurant

(little boy looks)

mom

what are they fighting about?

present situation: unclear future: dismal unsure past

romance is a glue

but the glue is not romantic

that's the trouble with romance

getting along, not getting along

in suburb of chicago on sunday street

die Stadtzentrum von Vienna auf Strasse von Sontag

oder

le centre-ville de Paris sur la Rue de dimanche

was ist argument auf deutsh?

HYSTERICAL

jovial cuddle, voluptuous woman

jive cunt, vile wretch

vile WRETCH

CLASSIFIEDS: ROMANCE:

sickly, pasty relationship

seeking tan

willing to pay

in shrugs and sighs

joy and joy and JOY AND JOY

lugubrious, dour, morose, somber seeking a pasty tan

or russian hand massage job

but joy, JOY

BUTT JOY

---

james dean smokes cigarettes

paul simon smokes cigarettes

naomi watts smokes cigarettes

charles bukowski smokes cigarettes// and BEER

j d salinger writes about girl on sofa at party s.c.

kevin barnes sings about s.c.

football club manager of manch. untd. s.c.

passive film protagonist observes but does not confront

loser

novelistic protagonist angsty rebellious--EPIPHANY

still loser

black/white film portrait subject smokes cigarette ((avedon))

(trouble with romance)

this fat winter jacket would make a writer out of anyone

pockets to hold at least

ten packs

---

western europe general,

mid 20th century

cafes and cinemas and apoteks and biblioteks and discoteks

that's the trouble with romance

half karat diamond

engagement ring

for sale

used once