..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Sunday, April 23, 2006

"Sorry, old timer, but you're only part poison and I need meat."
- The Ballad of Cable Hogue



so in the eleventh hour, i got into grad school. friggin' relief. now i got to figure out a way to squeeze it in around my job because for the first time in like 10 years i'm working somewhere i don't hate. i thought i wasn't going to get in because it was coming up on Easter and i still hadn't heard back, so i start writing out a nice bridge-burning, sour grapes, recognize-the-skills-type post and luckily i got to delete it. thing is i got burned once before, years back when i was trying to escape Toledo, when i applied to Illinois and North Carolina. i got the packet in the mail with "welcome!" and all the housing info and registration stuff and then, when i called, they said, "uhhhh, well, we're waiting to see what these other guys do" so basically they offered the spots to some genius and whoever that was hadn't made up their mind yet. nothing like being told you're on the 2nd-string list right off the bat, eh? so that didn't work out, and this was going to be my last attempt because my GRE scores would have expired and i was dangerously close to not giving a fuck anymore. and when i called over at Pitt they said "well, we're waiting to see what this other guy does and..." so i figured fuck it. concentrate on work and writing on my own time. but then the letter showed up after all. so i guess i'm grateful, but when i get there, i sure want to know who the prodigy is that always gets first dibs on these offers. watch it be someone with a tiny book of poetry or a story called "A Dream of Fruit" but with really good grades. i'm thinking that when i send a stack of stories and chapters to these schools, there must be some people in those committees that really don't like it. clearly someone does, but someone must really have their concerns about...i don't know. something. i can't make it more obvious that i will write massive amounts of fiction. i'm not going to be one of those clowns that turns in high school shit or floats by on some book they've been screwing with for the past five years. i will write stuff that week to be read that week and that's very rare in these workshops. hopefully it'll be different in grad school, but in undergrad, people were always in love with the "idea" of being a writer and they never produced shit. they would turn in what was clearly chapter 9 of the sci-fi book they wrote in Jr. High (not a typo is sight because it's been through 3 other workshops already) and i'd drop 35 pages that i just wrote in their laps and none of them would read it. i know this for a fact because i would put these lazy bastards into my stories as characters that got their lunch money taken away or their heads held down in toilets as a way of daring them to find themselves in there, and when the day came to evalulate it...crickets chirping. so anyway, grad school should be nothing but people who are serious so we'll see.

on an unrelated subject, here's an email i just sent so a friend that i thought i'd drop on here to see if anyone likes westerns as much as me:

...you know, you're right that the "The Wild Bunch" is the probably the best Penkinpah (and maybe the best all-time western too. that and "Once Upon a Time in the West") but i'm still partial to "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" for a couple reasons. on paper Wild Bunch has the most creative animal slaugher (kids fucking with ants, then adding scorpions THEN lighting them on fire. jesus christ, kids, run out of ideas?), by far the bloddiest gunfights, the most complicated plot, a cast of like 10 main character, the most iconic dialoge ("Let's go." "Why not." "If they move, kill 'em" etc.) but there's just some things about Cable Hogue that wins me over every time. where Wild Bunch is this fevered, angry movie, Hogue is (besides maybe "Convoy") the only Sam movie i ever saw where he was either sober or just in a good mood or something and it shows through. normally, i love the cynical, nasty stuff, but with ALL his other stuff being that way, it's downright alien to come across such a loose, snappy flick by him. i mean, this things got fucking original SONGS written for it (one about butterflies!), men actually smiling, and a woman that doesn't get slapped. and even though it's "happy" it's still violently happy. the first guy to stop for a drink at Hogue's "god-given" water hole is killed by Hogue and buried next to it. doesn't sound like it here, but that was fucking funny. the next guy who stops by is a bizarre priest who's carrying naked pictures of women, and when he tries to drink from the water hole, Hogue says "give me a dime you pious bastard, or i'll bury you, too." also...funny! they become friends and you know the rest, but the movie is so simple and sure of itself i just think it's great. and the little growing graveyard he ends up with out there next to the water hole is an awesome idea. i think he did "Straw Dogs" right after Hogue so, clearly, whatever was making him happy and confident didn't last too long. in his biography he says that the indifference to Hogue's release made him angry at the audience (normally he was was just angry at the producers 'n stuff and never even though about the public) so that's what "Straw Dogs" was, a big fuck-you to the audiences who thought Hogue wasn't nasty enough. he said, "oh, not mean enough for you? how about a double rape scene and a fucking bear trap snapping on some guy's head?"

"The Ballad of Cable Hogue" seems like a glimpse of what a successful Sam Peckinpah would have been doing more of. they'd still be violent movies, but they wouldn't be so schizo and choppy and such obvious vendettas against studios and imagined enemies. Hogue is like a fable and Jason Robards is really the only actor that Sam ever got such a great fully-fleshed character out of. you know, thinking about it right now, he's the only main characer in one of Sam's movies that (except for the opening credits when he's dying of thirst) isn't sadistically punished throughout, or at the end of the movie. actually i'm going to watch all of these movies ("Ballad of Cable Hogue," "Wild Bunch," "Ride the High Country," and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid") all day today as I'm working on my first western script, so i may move this email to you over to my blog to invite people to talk about westerns with me...

epilogue (with spoilers):

in spite of what seems to be Cable Hogue's death under the wheels of one of those new fangled "horseless carriages," i believe that he actually lived a long life after that day. there's three clues:

first, the fact that, after Hogue gets run over by the car, there's a quick cut in mid-sentence to them all in black at the funeral, suggesting that time has passed and the preacher is simply remembering the game Hogue played when he asked for a eulogy while he was alive.

second, the crazy preacher says something about how it took true love for Hogue to "finally leave his desert." if he died after getting run over, then he never would have left.

and third, because the sniveling warden from Cool Hand Luke says "i'm sleeping in town tonight" after the funeral, suggesting that he's been in charge of Hogue's waterhole for a long time, ever since Hogue left the desert to live with his woman in San Francisco. the fact that the men on the dvd commentary miss all of these clues, and still talk about the ending as if Hogue died from getting run over by the car, is completely inexcusable. again, i'm utterly shcked that the man who wrote "If They Move, Kill 'Em," the best biography of all time, is so fucking clueless when it comes to the climax of one of Sam's all-time best flicks.

another epilogue (even more shit spoiled):


my answer to my friend Mark's email with some specifics about the strange goings-on i noticed on this new 2-disc set of "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid":

...okay, as near as i remember from the videotape i have, the Turner version is the same as my 90s videotape. this is, by far, the superior version and, according to his biography, the exact version of the movie Sam screened for guests at his home. this is more than a "directors cut" or "preview" version of the flick, whatever that means, it is EXACTLY what he wanted to release but couldn't. so don't get me wrong, it's great that it's finally on dvd and included here, so that's all good.

the problem is that the new 2005 version that adds a couple things and rights a couple small wrongs is fucked at birth because they used the theatrical version as a starting point. that means that the extras that are added here, are added to an edited lame version that i, mercifully, had never seen until now. so they start with the half hour shorter, bloodless version of the movie and put the extras on that? that's just stupid. so i thought, "how could they justify that?" and i listen to the commentary around the scenes that i know were cut out, and they just talk about how Sam wasn't really forced to cut the movie down to shit for the theaters, that he was simply "fine cutting" the movie very quickly, and that short shit is the version he would have preferred. which is complete revisionist bullshit, because he showed the "Turner" version to people like Kristofferson for years at his own house. it seems like these egomaniacs just wanted to fuck with someone's movie and, since it's impossible to add anything 30 years later, they do the only thing they can do to it, they cut shit out to pretend it's their movie now.

so the 2005 version is a bust with, as near as i can tell, about THREE exceptions that make it worth even existing. the only things i noticed in this 2005 version that i hadn't seen before (and it was tough because you know i like this guy's movies and i spent most of the time yelling at the TV, "WHY??? WHY TAKE THAT OUT??? WHY??" but here's what's new and worth seeing in the 2005:

1.) Pat Garrett had a wife??? who knew. he goes home to his wife for about 5 seconds, looks very uncomfortable, and storms out. this scene is cool because it shows him walking through a bright white picket fence, and then at the end of the movie he goes through a shitty white picket fence and i'm a sucker for symbolism like that.

2.) the scene where Slim Pickens walks to the river to die now has the lyrics to "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" in it. i know we've heard this song a million times but this is the whole reason the song exists. the lyrics specifically talk about the death of this character. in the Turner version it just had the music and was still haunting, but this is even better because that whole scene has such a dark cloud over it. this is where Garrett deputizes Pickens to help him go "question" L.Q. Jones who used to ride with Billy and everyone is shooting of course but it's not the usual shootout. this is where Garrett seems genuinely haunted by all the killing he's been doing and when L.Q. Jones says "we shouldn't be doing this, there's not a lot of us left" and they cut to Pickens holding the hole in his stomache, i still get a chill. the Dylan lyrics makes it even stronger now. Pickens was building a boat, so he walks to the river to die and when the song says "take this badge" and they show Garrett in all black walking up to Jones, he looks weary of the killing, like it's starting to fuck him up AND he still looks like a complete badass. good good shit.

3.) there seems to be an extra song with the new opening credit sequence. instead of the Turner version where they freeze-frame in black and white for each credit, just like the Wild Bunch (and Devil's Rejects!) this one has another song and some wild west photos that are intersting. since it's extra stuff i hadn't seen, i thought it was cool. even though that makes like FOUR openings in this 2005 version before the movie even gets started: Pat getting shot (because of the editing, he's getting shot by Billy! very cool), the chicken slaughter conversations, the "he's my friend" intro in the bar, THEN the credits with the song.

so that stuff is new and good, but here's what's missing (from what i remember from my old videotape):

-less chicken slaughter
-no L.Q. Jones saying to Billy "well, he ain't your friend anymore"
-no "i'll take you for a walk across hell on a spiderweb!" line from Ollinger the crazed zealot sherrif (my favorite line in the movie!)
-no second shotgun blast into Ollinger's corpse after Billy says "keep the change!"
-less brutal cockfighting (where the one rooster gets the other's eye)
-when Garrett runs into the guy with his horse the guy no longer says "what the fuck!"
-missing a scene where Garrett's partner slaps around some locals (i think)
-less scenes of Bob Dylan's Alias character mugging and grinning and looking lost in the movie, which i guess isn't such a bad thing after all.
-shorter rape scene with the mexican dude's wife and less bullet holes when Billy rides up and kills the rapists and then decides to go back to Fort Sumner
-no line when Peckingpah himself, doing a cameo as "Will" the undertaker (!) says to Pat Garrett, who's on his way to kill Billy at the end of the movie, "go on, you gutless chickenshit son of a bitch" this is my other favorite line and a very strange moment considering the director pops up in his own movie to insult the main character. i thought it was great. that and the fact that Sam is standing there in the dark building a child's coffin. they say he was drunk mook during filming but this guy's got artsy symbolic moments coming out his ass. this is more good shit that they had NO sane reason to be leaving out of any new version.
-no follow-up to the elderly Garrett murder scenes. with is real stupid because the 2005 still keeps the opening elderly Garrett "present day" scene but drops the closing one?? why the fuck would you not put the other bookend scene on the movie? that's what i mean. just careless bullshit like that that makes me believe these assholes were just chopping scenes for the hell of it. probably more missing that i didn't notice after the one viewing but i see no reason to sit through that version any more than once. now i know what was added and that's all i care about.

anyway, don't worry. you still own the preferred version on disc II, and with the extras on the shit version, you can just think of disc I as a deleted scenes disc. so you have all possible material in this new set and for that i'm thankful. there's just no real reason on this earth to ever watch the entire 2005 version unless there are short-attention spans or children in the room.

okay i'm posting this too...

also started reading "The Authentic Life of Billy, The Kid: A Faithful and Interesting Narrative" by Pat F. Garrett. it's reads like a man trying to justify being a murderer all his life.

::: david - 3:28 PM [+] :::
...

"What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?"
"At that that I have killed, my lord, a fly."
"Out on thee, murderer! Thou killst my heart."
- Titus Andronicus



FICTION:



Sharks With Thumbs



-Do you ever get the feeling that
someone is talking about you?

I’m right at the end of the movie when the
speaker starts popping and I hear those words. At
least I think I hear those words because I’m too busy
crawling like a whipped dog over to the wall to
unplug the television. Once a week, right when I’m
finally starting to relax around this spiderweb of
power cords and surge protectors, I’m reminded I
can never trust the wiring around here. I never
should have moved here just because I liked seeing
the river out my window.
I panic and crawl faster as I remember the
last time an electrical surge in this shit apartment
blew out my receiver and how I couldn’t afford to
get it fixed. And I think about the time I turned on
the microwave, the radio, and the dishwasher at the
same time and how the cable box hasn’t worked
since that day. And I’m thinking about the time
before that when a nearby lightning strike fried
something inside the picture tube and put a freaky
green line through the middle of the screen. That
green line was there for about six months, mercifully
getting smaller and smaller and almost fading away
until it was just a glowing yellow smear in the
corner of the TV, like I’d smashed a lightning bug
on the glass and never cleaned it up. I don’t know if
this room is some sort of electric Bermuda Triangle,
but I can’t risk any more equipment and that’s why I
move fast when I hear a speaker snap, crackle or
pop. It’s bad enough having to listen to a movie
squeezed through this one tiny speaker, but it’s all I
got left. And I don’t do subtitles, so here I go again,
an animal fighting against a leash, pulling on the
power cord as hard as I can.
The prongs on the plug are bending, but they
don’t give up their grip on the socket. And I’m
ready to pull again with my teeth when suddenly I’m
hearing two voices from the speaker that I know
aren’t part of the movie. I know this because the
movie was at the end, right at the part where
everyone gets what they deserve, and all I should be
hearing is gunfire and one-liners and big, dumb
music. However, this whispered conversation is
something you’d hear in the middle of a flick, when
you’re not sure what the characters are really up to,
when the second act crisis is introduced, when the
writers are trying to make you all suspicious of
everyone.
And it’s too early in the story for that.

-The sad thing is, he has no idea that I hate
his fucking guts.

-I know. I don’t think he realizes that no one
can stand to be around him.

I drop my hand from my leash, and I sit
down next to the speaker. Like an idiot, I’m actually
thinking about getting a glass to put up between the
television and my ear to hear them better.

-He was telling everyone that story about
his lawnmower? Remember that one? Even the
goddamn dog was rolling his eyes.

-Can a dog roll its eyes?

-Why not?

I adjust my legs to get comfortable, hoping
that the reception lasts a while. I know that “hearing
voices” is supposed to make you nervous for your
sanity, but it happens in this building sometimes. A
couple times, a year back, when my surround-sound
speakers were still plugged into my
recently-deceased receiver, I picked up some
random banter between truckers. It’s the shit wiring
that does it. Sometimes, you’ll suddenly get three
more people in the middle of your phone call, and
you’ll find yourself answering a question about the
first time you stuck a finger up someone’s ass
instead of answering your dad’s question about your
car insurance.
Only those fractured conversations lasted a
minute at the most, and they were nowhere near as
clear as this. This is like I’m holding the tomato
cans between both people with their strings coming
out both my ears. Leaning in close, I forget about
the stupid climax of the movie where the good guy
kills fifty dudes, gets his hand tight around the last
bad guy’s throat, then decides not to kill that final
villain because he “ain’t worth it!”

-If that bastard had any idea what people
say when...

Right then, the speaker crackles and the
voices are buried under static. I lean in closer and
bang my head on the glass and there’s a final POP!
and I have to yank the cord from the wall. I sit with
my back to the TV, feeling the electricity tickle my
neck as both me and the equipment power down. I
reel in the cord, wrapping it around my knuckles,
working to bend the prongs straight.
I hold my breath when I plug it back in, but
thank-fucking-Christ it still works. I stare at the
green stain in the corner of the picture. It’s big and
it’s back. With a vengeance. Sounds like a movie.
I think about how I obsessed over it for weeks when
it first showed up. But it really doesn’t bother me
any more. I’d still watch television even if the
whole screen was green. Somehow, that would
make perfect sense.
I’m always amazed how, when something
important breaks, I get used to it being gone pretty
quick. It’s like I expect everything to break
eventually.
Nothing happens in the corners of a movie
anyway.
At least, that’s what I told myself to get
through the day with that green stain. And after a
few weeks, the only thing that ever really bothered
me were those green sunrises that popped up every
so often during most westerns. None of the
gunfighters seemed to notice.

* * *

When I say there’s a long list of things about
her that used to drive me nuts, I’m not talking about
a sheet of paper, or even a stack of paper with both
sides filled plus illustrations in the margin and a
flip-cartoon in the corner to re-enact the top ten, I’m
talking about the kind of list where you could stand
at the top of the stairs and you let the pages drop and
they bounce down the steps and unroll out the door
and down the hill and across the street and over the
cars and stray dogs are crashing through it like a
finish line. That’s how long my list is. And at the
top of that list? Number one with a bullet? That
would have to be the way she used to walk into the
bathroom to use the phone. It drove me fucking
crazy. Not crazy enough to hear voices or anything.
Just crazy enough to ruin my day. Luckily, that’s
one thing I don’t have to worry about anymore.
This new girl I got? She stares right at me when
she’s on the phone. She let’s me listen to the even
her most embarrassing conversations. She’s never
turning the volume down on the receiver in case the
caller says something I shouldn’t hear. She’s never
pressing the phone hard against her against her
head, so afraid that a secret would sneak out while
she was talking. So hard that her ear looks like a
ripe tomato slice when she finally snaps the phone
shut.
This new girl? She’s got nothing to hide.
She’s in the bathroom right now, and I trust her so
much I’m not even turning down the volume to
listen to her piss.
Then the toilet flushes and she walks back
into the room. Her hand slides down to her hip in a
quick motion that would make any gunfighter shake
in their boots, even ones that aren’t afraid of green
sunsets. And my smile slips when I see her phone
drop into her pocket.

* * *

It was too cold to have a fly on the window.
Inside or outside.
There’s no leaves on trees. The birds are
long gone. The morning before, I dug my car out
from under the wake of a snowplow with cold, red
fingers. It’s impossible. There’s nothing alive
outside without fur, nothing alive outside smaller
than a rat. Still, there it was.
One of those big, blue-eyed garbage flies,
crawling around the edges of the glass, like it was
summer out there, like there wasn’t a kid kicking the
head off a snowman two houses down. In a
daze, I pull the black tape off the window, taking
some of the paint with it. I sigh, knowing it’s going
to take another hour to seal that window back up,
but I can’t help myself. I pull the window up with a
grunt and the cold air freezes the snot in my nose.
Then I realize something else.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a fly trying to
get in instead of out.

What the hell do you feed a fly? Usually
you’re trying to stop flies from drinking off the edge
of your pop can. You’re always trying to kill a fly
instead of keeping it alive. So I just stand back and
let it ricochet off the walls like a drunk hoping it’ll
find a stray cornflake or damp toenail to munch on.
I watch it circle the room about six more times,
increasingly confused by its behavior. Never mind
the fact that this thing seems to grow in snow, it’s
the first fly I’ve ever seen that doesn’t head straight
for the windows or the lightbulbs or my goddamn
ears. It just cruises in frantic figure-eights about a
foot from the ceiling. Finally, I grab a stuffed
animal that’s still upside down in a corner from
three ex-girlfriend’s ago and chase the fly toward
the bathroom. I slam the door and cross my arms,
satisfied. If I’m going to have a pet fly it should be
near the bowl, right? I mean, I’m a pretty clean
dude, but I figure if there’s anything around this
place that a fly can eat, it’s going to be in there.
Makes sense to me. Hell, cats and dogs get water
bowls, right? Even a pet hermit crab gets it’s own
bowl, right? I feel I should write the name “Spike”
on the side of my toilet.
An hour later, the window is sealed back up,
and my nose is warm again and dripping like it
should, and I forget I even let a fly into my home on
purpose. I go back to the power cord to finally
finish that shit movie, and I get a static shock before
the prongs even touch the outlet. I drop the plug
and stare at my fingers looking for a burn.
Grandpa called those tiny specks on your
fingernails “little white lies.” I never knew whether
that meant I had lied to him or he was lying to me.
He said, smiling “who knows, it could be both.”
And he told me that people started calling them
“little white lies” because they heard the words
“little white lines” and got confused. He said not to
believe anyone who tells you it’s an iron deficiency
that causes those lines either. That’ll just make you
even more confused.
He was right, too. After that explanation, I
was confused as hell. See, I was too young, and he
was always talking too fast, and until I was twelve, I
thought he was saying little white “lice” and I
checked under my nails for bugs twice a day. And I
also thought he said “irony” instead of “iron.”
My grandpa said a lot of things. When I
came home with a folder of my first school portraits,
he told me that if you lined up every picture taken of
someone from kindergarten until their senior year
you could see them getting angrier and angrier. He
said that was because the kids were learning more
about each other every year. He said, “you might
think they’re smiling, but they’re really not.” He
pulled out my picture and said that “if you stare at
even the happiest photograph long enough, you’ll
see the smile slip.” I stood there staring at my smile
in the photograph, and I saw it twist into a frown
just like he said it would. He seemed surprised
when I showed him, saying that “it’s only your first
picture, it shouldn’t be that angry.” He said I
needed five pictures, at least, and one day I’d have
enough to line them up in front of me. He was
wrong though. I never got another picture taken for
school. I only needed one.
He also told me that all girls lie, and that
there is nothing you can do about it.
The best advice he saved for last. He said,
“if you ever get the feeling that someone was talking
about you, that’s because they are.” Then he said,
“don’t worry about it though, everyone will talk shit
at all times.”
I tried to do what he said. I tried real hard.
But it’s tough to listen to advice about lying. You
get caught in a loop, hearing that word too much.
And suddenly you’re thinking that everyone is lying
about lying about lying. My grandpa? He only lied
to me once.

* * *

The next day, this new girl comes over to
watch a movie. Halfway through, the speakers start
popping again, and while I’m screwing with the
wires in the back of the box, she sighs and runs to
the bathroom. And suddenly, I’m listening to her
piss even though she’s 100 feet and a closed door
away. It’s splashing so loud that I flinch, thinking
that she squatted down over my head.
That’s when I remember the fly. I twist the
frayed end of the wire, hissing as the sharp ends stab
my fingers, craning my head for any signs of her
making a phone call on my toilet. I hear the trickle
of urine in the bowl start to fade away, and for some
reason, that makes me relax. I start to think about
my fly and whether she’ll try to swat it. That’s when
I hear the voices coming out of the television again:

-Same old shit, you know?

-Why do I come over here?

-I don’t know, I guess I thought he was
someone else...

The voice is fading, so I crawl over to my
bookbag and pull out my headphones. I quickly try
plugging the headphones directly into the TV and I
get zapped with static instead. Like a fool I sit there,
with the headphones unplugged and dangling, still
listening for the voices. The headphones are new.
They’re the kind that go into your ears instead of
over them. In too deep sometimes. And you have to
be careful if scratch or you might lose one in your
head. I resist the urge as long as I can, but I start
scratching almost immediately. And just like my
grandpa always told me they would when people are
talking shit about me, my ears started burning.
We talked about this once. He said, real fast,
“it doesn’t take a detective to understand that this
phrase originated from a situation just like this, and
it may seem like backwards logic, but how do we
know? Think about it, the words make no sense at
all unless someone’s ears were really burning.”
He’s right. How do we know that someone
wasn’t talking shit somewhere and somewhere else
someone was listening and getting angrier and
angrier, and scratching the hell out of their ears at
the same time?

-I have to go watch the rest of this horrible
movie, if he can get it to work...

I’m so excited about hearing someone’s
voice through unplugged headphones that I don’t
care what she’s saying. I don’t care that it’s her
voice in my TV. Or that she’s whispering about
me...while sitting on my toilet. Okay, that part kind
of annoys me.

-I think we’re doomed, but I have nothing
better to do...

It’s not like the truckers I heard before. This
time I can only hear one side of the conversation.
Her voice is like the hiss of a tire valve.

-Maybe I’ll pretend I’m sick.

The toilet flushes, and it’s as loud as a
fucking hurricane in head. I grab the sides of the
TV in case I start spinning around a drain and get
sucked down.
Then I’m staring at the headphones, rolling
them around in my hands like someone handed me a
business card with “turn over” written on both sides.
I’m so wired about this discovery that I’m
smiling like a maniac when she comes out,
struggling to keep my new eavesdropping skills to
myself. We finish the movie, and by the time the
hero realizes all his mistakes and actually kills the
last bad guy, I realize that it’s not just the
headphones.
The fly was in there with her.

...first time I ever saw a fly trying to get in
instead of out...

This new power is coming from the fly.

* * *

She’s gone home, and I’m thinking I should
call NASA, or whatever government office deals
with the physical manifestation of metaphors. I
figure they’ll strap me down to study my brain, then
in the third act, I’ll escape, grab my headphones and
tie the fly back onto my finger as I roll under the
slowly closing gate. And then I’ll use its powers for
evil instead of good. Or, at the very least, to spy on
ten more people that I suspect are talking shit about
me. I’m already making a mental list when I go
back into the bathroom.
The fly is dying.
At least, it’s moving slower. My eyes follow
its sluggish path until it vanishes into a crack in the
porcelain box behind the toilet. I panic and shove
the clock radio and empty box of tissues onto the
floor and take off the lid, shaking my head in
disbelief as I look inside. Impossible.
The fly is caught in a spiderweb, flailing like
a drunk trying to navigate a beaded curtain to leave
the party. Flies that grow in snow? Spiders in the
toilets. What’s next? Bugs under my fingernails?
Suddenly, I know what to do. I tie it outside
the bathroom window, and, just as I hoped, the cold
air seems to revive it. I squeeze my head in both my
hands and stare at it in amazement as it flies in an
ever-widening spiral, faster and faster and faster. I
think back to that poem from high school about the
end of the world. Remember that one? Where the
falcon circles too far from the falconer and he can’t
hear him anymore? About nine teachers made me
read that thing, and it never made any sense to me. I
always thought it should have been a kite the man
was flying, maybe shaped like a falcon. Point is,
whatever was flying, it should have been on a leash.
I stare at the fly. It’s moving fast again, but
it never gets back to full speed. It’s not going to last
much longer. I check the clock radio on the
bathroom floor to try and estimate how much time
the fly has left. The display is flashing a green
“12:00 am” since I never figured out how to set it.
Now I’ve got two problems:
A time limit.
I’m not good with numbers.
And I can’t get them all into the bathroom.

* * *

I stare at the word “Spike” on the bowl and
decide that I should take my fly for a walk. That’s
what every pet needs, I decide. I remember when
my grandpa told me that he used to stick flies to his
fingers with honey when he was a boy.
He said, “we were bored as shit back then,
so if you didn’t have toys, you played with flies.”
Then he added, “just don’t think I’m
reminiscing so I can tell you how it built character,
or any stupid noble shit like that ‘cause the only
thing that playing with flies does is make you kind
of crazy and wish you had toys instead.”
No, wait, it wasn’t honey that he used. I
think it was candlewax and shoestrings. And I think
he was telling me how my uncle, or my dad, used to
do that stuff, not him. Yeah, now I remember, he
told me that his toy flies didn’t fly too long after
they were captured because he always smacked them
and stunned them too hard by accident. Yeah, that
sounds more like my dad.
Well, mine won’t last long either, I’m
thinking. I have to move faster than I am.
I look around the bathroom. I don’t have
any candles left. She took them all back to her
mom’s place. Hold on, I do have some dental floss.
Let’s try that...
I have no trouble grabbing it out of the air,
and it’s still sluggish enough to tie a leash around
it’s body without risking a swat to stun it, but the
floss is way too thick for a knot. I look around and
around and around, and finally my eyes stop on the
answer stuck to the side of my toilet, underlining my
pet fly’s name. I crouch down to get closer.
All this time I thought it was a crack in the
porcelain but it’s a long black hair stuck to the
moisture on the side of the bowl. I peel it loose and
hold it up to the light from the window. It’s one of
hers, I’m sure of it. And even though it’s just a hair,
even though I haven’t cleaned the bathroom since
she left, I’m still amazed to find a piece of her still
here.
I’d be less surprised to find a five-foot-five
layer of skin she’d shed, rustling and drying in a
corner, holding a stuffed rabbit.
I stare at the hair for awhile, half-expecting it
to twitch like a severed spider’s leg. Then the fly
starts to hover again, and I have to grab it and sit
down to work on its leash. With the long wet hair, I
tie the leash real quick and easy. Almost too easy. I
decide that it’s because I had one of my hands
buried in her hair for so many years that, when
they’re not connected to her head anymore, they still
know my fingers and sometimes I can still get them
to do what I want.
I tie the fly to my ring finger where the skin
is still white from the ring she gave me. Then I put
on headphones plugged into nothing, a power cord
dangling down and tucked into a belt-loop. I start
my day.

* * *

I’m out the door, looking at my watch, and
see that it’s time for free doughnuts. The gas station
makes new ones and throws out the old ones at
exactly 8:00 every day. They’re always real cool
about giving me those old ones, but you got to time
it just right. It’s 7:55. Perfect. The fly tugs on its
leash, circling my ring finger, then resigning to wrap
itself around the steering wheel. I worry about a
sudden turn breaking the leash, so I pull over and
carefully unwind the hair without breaking it. As I
do this, I think about the old westerns my grandpa
used to watch, and the way they could make their
horse stay put by dropping that leather strap across a
bush or a twig without even tying it or anything.
Those horses never knew that they were loose and
could run away at any time. My fly finally secure, I
put the car in drive and slowly pull back into traffic.
My timing couldn’t be better. The girl
behind the counter smiles, and I grab one of each
kind of doughnut before the kid can slide them into
the trash. He sighs and waits for me to drop them
into my bag, then he quickly clears the case. I take
longer than usual because I’m trying to keep one
hand behind my back. I don’t know what would be
worse, someone thinking that flies follow me
wherever I go, or someone seeing that I keep one a
tiny little leash.
I walk around with my bag like I’m still
shopping, and I wait until she’s ringing up the next
guy and the kid goes out to the dumpster before I
bring out the fly. I quickly unwrap the hair from my
finger, and I tie it to a bag of peanuts near the cash
register. I don’t even tie a knot, I just wind the hair
around the peanuts one time, and then I run out to
pump my gas.
Standing there in the cold next to my car, I
see the girl at the counter talking to the next guy in
line and he throws a thumb my way. I quickly pull
the headphones from inside my shirt and put them in
to see if this guy is talking shit. Turns out he isn’t.
She is.

-You think it’s sad that we give him
doughnuts? It’s even worse when you have to see
him every day. He comes in smiling, and I know
he’s just waiting for me to offer him the doughnuts
and he knows I know he’s waiting, but he just tries
to act like he had no idea they were free even
though he was in here last night, and it’s annoying
as hell...

My head down, I go in and grab my fly and
hurry out. For the first time since I started coming
into that gas station, she talks to me.

-You paying for those peanuts, asshole?

* * *

I stop at the library to get some free movies.
I need lots of movies these days. Not just because
my cable box is fucked, but because I simply can’t
stand the music at the end of a film. I can’t stand
the empty feeling in my guts when the credits roll. I
even lied to my grandpa and told him that my VCR
broke just so I could hook up a second one. Not so I
can record stuff, but so I can start another movie
right away, before the first one ends, and then I
never have to endure any of that quiet time between
flicks. That’s even more depressing than the music
during those credits.
Getting my movies from the library reminds
me that, later, I’ll have to go get my books from the
video store. Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense
eventually.
I’m walking in the door, and I stop to hold it
open for this girl coming up behind me. She
breezes by, smelling real good and smiling at me. I
watch her turn the corner and sit against the wall by
the computer books.
I start to feel self-conscious about the fly on
my finger, so I run to the bathroom and leave my
black denim jacket in the stall with the fly tied to my
Mad Mex button on the pocket. I still have my
headphones with me, even though I’m starting to get
self-conscious about those too. At least they’re the
ones that go into your ears, so I can wrap one
around my neck and tuck it away like I’m
hearing-impaired or Secret Service or something.
My ex-girlfriend enjoyed stealing these from me to
use with her phone, probably for exactly the same
reason.
I go back around that corner and start
moving books around. I figure that the real
employees might think I’m nuts (or borrowing a
shitload of computer books) but, hopefully, this girl
will think I work there.

-Sorry about the noise, I have to move this
section over.

-Don’t worry about it, I’m good at tuning
things out.

-Why? You teach sixth grade or something?

-No, I’m in medical school. Just started my
residency.

She smiles at me over her glasses, so I work
harder moving the books. I don’t understand why a
medical student would need to “tune things out.”
Does that mean she tunes out mothers running in
screaming and carrying kids with missing heads?
But I don’t ask her about that. I just keep shifting
my books, trying to get a glimpse of what she’s
reading. I tell myself that once I see what she’s
reading, I will know everything I need to know
about her. I keep talking to her to kill time until,
hopefully, she lifts the book off her legs so I can
read the cover and make my decision.

-Did you dissect any dead bodies?

-Oh yeah.

-Was it hard to do? I mean, did you know
their names?

-No, not really. It wasn’t how I expected.
When it was all over there was a memorial service
after the semester was over, and all the relatives of
the donated bodies came and...

Turn over your fucking book, I’m thinking.

-I actually got tears in my eyes and...

How am I supposed to know anything about
you unless you turn that damn book over?

-...it meant a lot to me because my father
donated his body to science. And when he died in a
car crash, when I was little, my mother had to stop
me from reaching into his pockets at the funeral
home because I was crying and telling her that I
wanted his wallet because I needed to scribble out
the part on his driver’s license that said he was an
organ donor because I didn’t want him cut up on a
stranger’s table, but now I realize that I was wrong
and...

I tune her out, thinking if she doesn’t stop
rambling on and let me see the cover of that book
soon, I’m going to stop pretending that I work here
and walk out. Doesn’t she realize that me seeing the
name of the book she’s reading is the kind of thing I
need to get to know somebody?
Is she talking? Her voice is like the white
noise between channels. It’s irritating. People don’t
really tell you anything personal anymore. You
have to look at what music they’re listening to or
what movie they’re watching or what book they’re
reading if you want to learn anything about them.

What the fuck are you talking about
anyway?

-...not because it’s important to science, even
though it is, but it was important for me to finally let
my father go. It was probably the most important
moment in my life when...

She’s never going to turn that goddamn book
over. And now I’m sweating my balls off, and this
pile of books is getting so high it’s going to fall over
soon, and I’m going to get bounced right the hell out
of here. Do libraries have bouncers? They really
should. In desperation, I decide to keep her
babbling about medical school or whatever the fuck
she was saying.

-So, uhhh, does anyone pass out when they
see the corpses?

-Yeah. Mostly young men for some reason.

-Really? Weird. I wonder why that is...

I want to just come out and ask her what
she’s reading, but I can’t do it. If I ask her, then
she’d know that was the only reason I was crawling
around this corner so long, stacking fifty copies of
“Computers For Anacephalics” as high as my head.

-I saw a movie once where they said all the
medical students smelled like formaldehyde.

-It’s true! We get so used to it though. We
don’t even realize it when we’re out and around
regular people.

-I don’t smell anything.

-You sure?

What is she smiling at? I look behind me
and that’s when I hear it. Oh shit. What’s that
buzzing noise. Is that my fly? Did she see the fly?
Did it get loose and follow me out here? Did I
really just stand there and try to talk to this girl with
a fly buzzing around my head like I’m a walking,
talking, fucking landfill? Wait, no, that’s
impossible. I left it tied up in the stall, just like the
cowboys used to do.

Hey, where are you going?

She takes out her angrily-vibrating cell
phone and walks away to have a conversation.
I decide that I need to start looking for girls
without thumbs. If you didn’t have a thumb, you
can’t make a phone call. It’s true. Just ask the
fucking dolphins.
She leaves her book open-faced to save her
page and her seat. I still can’t see what it is. I want
to grab it but I can’t risk her seeing me do it. I go
back into the restroom to gather my thoughts. I stare
down into the urinal as I piss, and I see what looks
like a tiny rubber door mat under a drain that shouts,
“Don’t Do Drugs!” Frowning, I try to trace all the
letters with the stream.
I make it to the “g.” As I zip up, I wonder if
they drug-test their employees. And for some
reason, this message in the urinal starts to make me
angry. Maybe anything you read seems threatening
when you’re standing with your pants down. Maybe
that’s why some restaurants will hang the
sports-pages in their restrooms instead of the
headlines.
I zip up and go check on my fly. It’s sitting
on the collar of my jacket, cleaning a leg, then using
that leg to stroke its wings. I want to go hurry back
out to the computer corner, but now I’m worried
about my fly. What if someone swats it? Or steals
my jacket with it still attached?
I take off my shoes, leave them in front of
the toilet, then close the stall. Then I remember why
I came to the library in the first place. I can’t
believe I started working for free to impress
someone. I wouldn’t have worked that hard back
when I got paid for it. At least until I had to quit
because people couldn’t stop talking shit behind my
back.
I stop at the door and look back to see how
my shoes look. Oldest trick in the book. Um, if
“the book” in question is about using subterfuge to
protect your psychic fly.
The shoes look perfect. Just like I’m still on
the toilet. Just like they do it in the movies.
I wonder if a pair of shoes in a stall would
keep people from talking about shit that they’d talk
about if they thought they were alone at the urinals.
To curb malicious whispering at the pisser, maybe
restaurants should try putting a pair of empty shoes
in every restroom instead of just those sports pages.
I think about what my grandpa said about
renting movies. He said, back in his day, all they
did was read. He said, that if there had been movies
to watch, he might not have gotten angry enough to
rip that book in half when my grandma was ignoring
him. He swears that everyone would still be
together, every Thanksgiving, if there had been
movies to watch when he was younger. He said
that’s one of the reasons it was just me and him
growing up. When he said that I was confused all
over again. He wasn’t talking too fast that time, it’s
just that I was nine, and for years I thought he’d said
“throwing up.” instead of “growing up.” I asked
him where my mom and dad went, and why it was
just the two of us, and he said that, a long time ago,
someone killed someone in our family, and everyone
that was left went their separate ways. Except for
the two of us. I asked him who killed who, and I
think he told me, but I was so young that I can’t
remember what he said. All I remember is that he
was lying.
I tried to tell my ex all about it one time, but
she couldn’t wait for me to stop talking and one-up
me with a traumatic story of her own. One that I
know she had just pulled out of her ass.
Anyway, this girl is still on the phone, but
I’m so busy circling her book that I don’t even
worry what, or who, she’s talking about. I even
think of something to say to her when she finally
hangs up. I’m thinking about how she said that
young men are the first to drop when they see the
cadavers, and I figure I could tell her about how I
used to lifeguard and confess to her that, during our
training, I almost passed out when they showed us
bright red cartoon depicting various injuries. Then
she’ll imagine me in class with her, or maybe
imagine me saving someone’s life, and she’ll believe
everything I say because I’ve added this
vulnerability of me fainting to my story. I’ll tell her
how I saw one particular drawing of a hand with it’s
ring finger flying off in a hurricane of cartoon
blood, and how it was the sudden splash of red after
20 pages of black and white that made me start
getting dizzy and...wait a second. Maybe that was
driver’s ed. class, when I saw those slides of the car
wrecks...maybe not.
She glances over at me, still talking on her
phone, and suddenly I forget about what she was
reading, and I need my fly. Now I want to hear her
conversation. I know she’s talking about me, and I
know I fucked this up already.
By the time I come out of the bathroom with
my jacket and my fly tied back on my finger, I’m
thinking of at least five different ways to attach my
fly to someone without them knowing it. But she’s
gone. It’s just as well, though. All five ways
required that I knock her unconscious.
After I’m leaving, after I check out 14 more
movies for the week (14 is the new limit and I
suspect that I’m the reason they lowered it) I hear
the girl behind the counter muttering to herself.

-You know we have books here, too?

I walk a little slower.

-It’s not like you can watch that many
movies in a week.

I stop at the door and say:

-Yes, you can.

A boy frowns in confusion as he walks in
past me.
As I step outside, and the insect’s wings kick
back into gear, and it circles my hand faster and
faster and faster in the cold air, I understand
something.
I heard the voice without the headphones.
And the fly wasn’t anywhere near her.

* * *

Do you ever get the feeling that someone is
talking about you?

I stop at the post office and check the stamp
machines in the lobby. Just as I hoped, there’s a
wagging tongue of five three-cent stamps sticking
out. I tear them free and put them in my pocket.
Ever since the price of stamps went up, people
usually leave the difference behind. When I have
enough, I mail out my story. Tomorrow, I should
have enough. I have nothing to send right now
except a follow-up letter, but I’d feel like I
accomplished something if I got it out. I remember
some parts of the letter because I’ve typed these
words more than a few times to more than a few
different magazines:

“...and my only conciliation is that this will
be read out loud in court when the day finally comes
when I work my way through the building and the
staff, crash into the office on the top floor, and wrap
my hands around the last editor’s throat to break his
fucking neck. Don’t worry though, there’s a good
chance I might get confused and say, ‘you’re not
worth it?’ or something equally stupid...”

-Good luck!

The girl behind the counter smiles and
waves as I leave. I think I told her about my story
once. I can’t remember.

-Is it the same story he brings in every time?

Standing by my car in the parking lot,
looking through the windshield at the fly tied to the
steering wheel, I can still hear her talking inside the
post office.

-He doesn’t have three cents? He’s got to
steal three cent stamps?

What the hell?

-You’d think he’d stop trying to get that
story published.

I scratch my ears hard to see if the voice
goes away. It just makes it louder. If I could scratch
my ears with my foot, I would.

-I’ll bet they’re stories about stealing
stamps.

The headphones are around my wrist. The
fly isn’t anywhere near her. And neither am I.

* * *

I go to work. When I say “work,” I mean the
place I used to work.
I spend (what would have been) my lunch
hour sitting in my car with the headphones on, just
like I always do (did), with the end of the cord
plugged into wad of gum on the dashboard (again).
I can’t hear anything yet, but I figure it’s worth a try.
There’s no telling what other powers I got.
I count at least three people who I’m certain
would have talked to me if they hadn’t seen the
headphones and thought I was busy listening to
music. Including some new girl who was probably
hired to replace me, who I’ve been waiting for an
excuse to talk to for a week. She does a
double-take, smiles at me, then reaches down to
knock on the windshield. I look away and her fist
hovers over the glass a moment and then she walks
away. I feel bad doing that, but if she’d asked what
I was listening to, I’d have to show her that my
headphones are now plugged into my apple. I figure
that whatever small talk she was offering was no big
loss. I’d rather hear what she has to say when she
doesn’t think I’m listening.

* * *

I go to the diner after I get off work. I meant
to say that, by the way. This shit is work.
Fucking hell, are there girls behind every
counter? Do they grow them back there, just out of
sight? Are there ten more girls behind the counter
that you can’t see yet, because they haven’t grown
high enough for their heads to clear the register?
The best one is working tonight, though.
The girl with the pen shaped like a tiny pool cue. I
stare at it, hypnotized, every time she takes my
order. I like to pretend that she memorizes all the
orders, and she’s secretly drawing confusing and
disturbing doodles on her notepad instead. I asked
her about the tiny pool-stick pencil once, but she
ignored me. Tonight is no different.

-Waitress, There is a fly in my soup...

She looks down at the fly tugging against its
leash on my finger.

-...and holy shit, the little fucker just lassoed
me.

She wanders away, a miraculous
combination of expressions on her face. I didn’t
think it was possible. Confused, disturbed, and
bored? All at the same time?
I stop in the restroom to tighten the leash. In
the urinal, stuck just above the line-of-fire, there’s a
sticker that declares:

“You hold in your hand the power to stop a
rape!”

What the fuck?
For a second I think the sign refers to the fly
crawling across my knuckles. Then I’m suddenly
ashamed. Why does it say “hand”? How do they
know I’m not using two hands? And how do they
know that I’ve used my powers for evil instead of
good? Is it so wrong to be “the fly whisperer?” If
you were to believe this urinal, using my fly to listen
to people talk shit makes me some kind of crazy
stalker or something. Again, I have to remind
myself that stalking is, and always will be,
underrated. I explain to the fly that it truly is the
only possible way to meet someone these days. I tell
the fly that talking to a stranger never works, that
you have to run into her a few times, wait in some
long grocery lines together, see her at her job, at the
counter, in her basement, through the window after
it’s dark, maybe slash her tire and wait for her to
find it, then come around the corner smiling and
rolling a new wheel on the end of a stick like
goddamn Huckleberry Finn. Otherwise it’s just too
awkward and strange. I tell the sticker in the urinal:
-See, there’s nothing wrong with what I’m
doing...
And I don’t know why that waitress never
laughs at my jokes. I’d put the fly on her, if I didn’t
already suspect the reason. You’d think she’d
appreciate the fact that I never touch the soup, never
even touch the spoon. They can use all that stuff
over again. Now that I think about it, she hasn’t
talked to me since I told her I lost a quarter in the
diner’s bubblegum machine just so I could get that
rubber ball for free.
I’m surprised she didn’t try to get that ball
for herself. I noticed it in there six months ago, the
exact length of the average relationship. It was the
only black-and-white one buried under a mountain
of color, painted like a tiny 8-ball, patiently waiting
for the right combination of state quarters to drop.
Would have went perfect with her pen. I was going
to give it to her, I swear.
When I’m zipping up, one headphone falls
from my left ear and plops into the urinal. I sigh,
pull the rest of it out of my shirt and toss it all on top
of the drain. I stand there a moment, watching the
tangle of wires slowly sink into the piss and ashes
and thick, black hairs.
Oops, I forget, did I still need those?

* * *

I go to the record store to sell some cds. I’ve
sold my entire collection for three reasons:
To pay the rent that has doubled since she
left, to talk to my ex-girlfriend behind the counter,
and to sell her own cds back to her.
She’s usually right there by the door when
you come in, scanning the stacks of music that
people drop in front of her, holding them up to the
light, looking for holes, blowing off the dirt and
food, counting all the defects as they cringe. This
cracks me up when I think back to how she treated
her own music, especially the ones she left behind in
my apartment. I have a hard time keeping a straight
face when the same girl that once used a brand-new
cd to slice a pizza is now carefully holding them by
the edges like she’s a health inspector that just
found a rat in the rice. Sometimes I watch
her squinting over the scratches on some miserable
kid’s videogame while he waits nervously to see
what it’s worth, and I’ll see him squirming there and
I think:

I know how you feel, dude. See that frown?
That’s exactly what she did every time she looked at
me in the sunlight.

But she did smiled once (I say “once” as I
hold up exactly one finger) on the day I first met her
in here. And even though it’s long over, like an
idiot, I keep coming back to see if she’ll smile again.
Back then, to get that one smile, I had made a joke
about how she looked like a bouncer on her stool,
and I said:

“Do you have to check for fake ID’s because
you’re guarding the door?”

She laughed and said, “Can I see your license
please?”

I was like, “good joke” and she goes, “Uh,
no, seriously, can I see your license?”

Turns out they have to check your driver’s
license every time you sell them a cd. I felt like a
dumbass, but it was worth it to establish a way into a
conversation the next time I saw her.
When I walk up, I don’t see her guarding the
door. I carefully crack my knuckles and then
remember that I left the fly tied to the steering wheel
because there’s no way I could explain to her why I
had it or the last eight hours of my day. Small talk is
all that we’re allowed now, post break-up small talk,
but I guess there’s worse things in the world than
that.
I walk in with the last cd that she left in my
car to sell it back to her. I doubt she’ll even
remember. She never remembers.
It’s not her fault, though. I mean, it’s been,
like, days.
Inside the store, she’s not anywhere I can
see. I set our last cd in front of the 12-year old
working the register and wander toward the back.
She used to hide back there to eat her lunch. So far
I see nothing but guys. And this place is small.
There’s only one other room that she could be in,
and it’s not even a room really. I mean, it has a door
but the walls don’t hit the ceiling. If you stand in
the back next to all the marked-down, scratched-up,
shit albums they’re selling for a half a cracker or
five buttons, you’ll see that the wall above this door
stops about five feet from the roof. And this door?
It looks like one of those doors in the cartoons that
one animal draws in the empty sky and slams shut
out of nowhere in the middle of the desert to make
the other animal run through it and straight off the
cliff.
One time she told me that hiding in that
room for a half hour lunch made her feel safer than
six months in our apartment. I told her I’d knock
the tops off some walls if she really wanted to live in
a fucking cubicle, and I even started to do her this
favor on the bedroom wall, but she just kept
screaming something about me missing the point.
I stare at the gap above the door, listening
and sniffing the air. I can smell food. Or is it
sweat? Hard to tell with all these greasy boys
bouncing off the walls in this cage. What’s up with
that? I thought there were some girls working the
counters in here.
Suddenly, like someone tripped over the
jukebox wires, the store is mercifully between
songs. In the silence, I hear someone behind the
cartoon door rattles some ice cubes and takes a
drink. Then I hear that same someone crumble the
paper around their burger and take a big bite,
crunching through the lettuce, but spitting out the
tomato.
Then the pop music starts blasting again, and
I can’t hear anything at all. I do a couple laps
around the soundtracks in frustration and look at my
watch. If she took her lunch at seven, and she gets a
half hour, then she’s only got about...twenty-seven
minutes and sixteen seconds to go. Approximately.
Fifteen seconds. Fourteen seconds. Thirteen
seconds. Something like that. That’s not that long.
I shrug. Could be worse. I decide to wait.
I do another figure-eight waiting for the song
to end so I can see if I recognize the way this person
in the back thoughtfully but annoyingly chews on
their straw after each bite. You know, I hated this
song before, but now I suddenly love it. You know
why? Because it’s pop music playing overhead,
girl’s music, something that none of these boys in
here would ever listen to in a million fucking years.
It must be her eating back there behind that cartoon
door.
I quickly walk toward the front of the store
to get a look at the three cds they display whenever
the employees pick their favorite music to play. I’m
excited. I know I’ll recognize the album cover as
soon as I see it if it’s something that she used to
have. Something I sold back to her lately.
I’m almost running, thinking about all the
shit music that she used to listen to and how I would
always try to find a reason to like every bad song.
How I tried to hear it through her ears and
understand that, even if it doesn’t mean anything to
me, maybe it could mean something to her and that
would be enough and...
The cartoon door opens.
I spin around and watch some greasy little
prick stumble out. I look him over in disgust, point
up to one of the speakers on the ceiling and say:

-How can you listen to this shit?

On the way out the door, the kid behind the
counter says my (her) last cd isn’t even worth a
dollar. He says I didn’t take care of it very well. He
asks me:

-You use this thing to scrape ice off your
windshield or what?

-Fuck you. It’s not even mine.

I look down at the tattoo on his arm. I
always thought it was a snake, but it turns out it’s a
spinal cord. I say to him:

-A backbone, huh? Ever use it?

The kid that was eating his lunch in the back
steals a look at my cd before I can grab it back and
leave. He recognizes it as something that only a girl
would own.
He smiles and asks me:

-How can you listen to this shit, faggot?

On the way out the door, I rip the
headphones loose from a listening station and stuff
them in my pocket. No one stops me.
Outside, back in my car and seven rows back
in the parking lot, I watch them all through the stack
of windshields and defroster lines in front of me.
There’s a loud buzzing in my ear, and before I can
think about it, I reach to answer a cell phone that
I’ve never owned. Then I spit at my fly to get it
away from my head. It jumps back down to the
steering wheel and cocks its head to watch me.
After a moment, it straightens its wings and scurries
up to the top of the wheel and seems to be looking
through those cars at the record store, too.
I can still hear them laughing in there.
And I don’t need the fly or the headphones
to know that they’re laughing at me.

* * *

I stop at the garage and get air for my tires.
It’s the only place in town where you don’t have to
pay fifty cents to do this. The guy who owns the
garage gives me a knowing smile and a wave. I
wave back and accidentally bounce my fly off my
forehead. I hope he didn’t see me do that. He’s
cool, though. Last time I was there he laughed and
agreed with me that paying for air is “freaking
ridiculous.”
I get out, tie the fly to the compressor, hit the
button, and snake the hose to my tire. Then I pull
out the headphones I stole from the record store and
put them on. They’re older. They got the fuzz that
covers your ears. It feels better putting headphones
“on” instead of “in,” at least for a second anyway.
But almost immediately the foam starts making my
ears itch worse than the other ones. I start
scratching harder and harder and chunks of the foam
are raining down my back. Then I remember I don’t
really need them anymore. The reception’s fine
without them.

-How fucking low do you have to be to steal
air...c’mon.

Was that a girl’s voice? I look back at the
garage and see only shadows. How can I be hearing
a girl’s voice? I thought it was all guys in that
garage. Maybe I’m hearing someone from one of
my earlier stops.
What kind of reception does this fly get,
anyway?

-No shit, dude. Seriously. Who the hell
steals air?

I get two tires done and stumble as I snake
the hose around to the other side. It’s a race against
time before I have to push the button again. Even
though I didn’t pay the 50 cents, I still feel like
having to push the button again and admitting
failure. Like I’ve wiped my hands on my legs rather
than push the button on the restroom hand-dryer a
second time.

-I heard of someone stealing dirt once, only
that was from a construction site and that shit ain’t
cheap. Air? Nope. Never heard of anyone stealing
air.

I’m on my last tire. I figure I’ve only got
about 10 seconds to get it back to 30 pounds of
pressure. This is my worst tire too. It’s always had
a slow leak. I keep taking my thumb off the valve to
let the stalk pop out so I can read it. And this slows
me down.
It’s at 25...27...29...and then the compressor
stops rumbling. My fly strains on its leash, then
curls back to land on a coil of hose.

-I’ve heard of people stealing water once,
but that was during the war.

I throw the hose and grab my fly. It’ll bother
me, but 29 pounds will have to do for now.

-Honestly, who the hell steals air...

I can’t contain my anger any longer, and I
scream back at the shadows working inside the
garage.

-Who the hell sells air?!?

All the shadows stop moving. Three
mechanics slide out from under their cars and into
the sunlight. They stand up and walk toward me,
wiping grease from their fists, blowing sweat off
their noses, and staring at me like I’m insane.

* * *

Do you ever get the feeling that someone is
talking shit about you?

I stop at the video store. I head for the dvds
even though, at the moment, I can only play
videotapes in my home. But it’s not movies I’m
here for. I get my movies at the library. I’m here to
get something to read. I grab a new-releases
brochure from the display on the counter, and then I
go up and down the rows, popping open the dvds,
sliding out the little booklets from inside and
stuffing them into the flyer.
I do this because they really are good
reading. Sure, sometimes you get a paragraph of
summary or some decent production notes or an
interview, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I
steal the inserts because I like to read the chapter
titles. It’s like a whole movie, I mean book, in ten
seconds. The chapter titles tell you all you need to
know about the story. Even if it doesn’t make any
sense, you just fill in the blanks with your
imagination. And the “blanks” isn’t some abstract
concept. It’s really the blanks, the space between
the numbers, where the movie in your mind gets
made. Try it sometime. I’ll read a random one right
now. What have I got in my hand? Okay, how
about this movie:

Flies On Shit.

No? Too obvious? Let’s try...this one:

Sharks With Guns

Chapter 1: What’s that in the water?

Chapter 2: They can’t do that!

Chapter 3: Love on a lifeboat .

Chapter 4: Are you gonna eat that?

Chapter 5: Dolphins are not our friends.

Chapter 6: Bringing a shark to a gun fight!

Chapter 7: Shark factory revealed.

Chapter 8: Duel to the death!

Chapter 9: The end...or is it?

See what I mean? What are you missing
after you read that? It’s all in there. The crisis, the
love interest, the surprise ending, the climax. Didn’t
someone once say that there are really only two
stories you can tell? A stranger comes to town and a
man goes on a journey? See, with the exception of
the dolphin attack (?) it sort of fits, doesn’t it? I
mean, if you had the chapter titles for the ancient
dvd of, say, “Hamlet,” it would look just like this,
wouldn’t it? With the exception of the “shark
factory” that they seem to reveal at the beginning of
the third act, it’s the exact same story! See the arc
of this tale with just these chapter titles? How come
my character doesn’t get to have an arc like that?
There are many similarities, however. I will
admit that these stories all end up in the same place,
just like every relationship I’ve ever had. What song
was that where he said, “everything moves towards
its end?” I don’t remember. It really does, though.
I wonder what my chapter list looks like.
Am I already near the end of it?
You know, I don’t know why I make this
drive. This video store is ten miles out of my way,
and there’s at least two more of them that are closer
to my job or my home.
Actually, I do know why. The girl behind
the counter looks exactly like my ex-girlfriend. Or
maybe she just said something once that reminded
me of her. I keep forgetting. Either way, it’s worth
the 10 miles. But I’m too busy looking at the box of
the shark movie to look around for her right now.
Look at this thing. There’s no way that shark could
hold that chainsaw, much less a gun. They don’t
have any fucking thumbs. See, now that would be a
scary movie:

Sharks With Thumbs.

They wouldn’t even have to attack anyone to
be frightening. I guarantee all you’d need to do is
just show one shark using its thumbs to make a
phone call and every asshole in the audience would
start screaming his fucking head off.
It could happen. I’ve seen more far-fetched
things than that in a movie. One time, in the
bathtub, my ex-girlfriend checked her phone
underwater so that I couldn’t see who called her. I
figured she’d ruined it, but it turned out that the
phone worked fine when I blew the bubbles off of it
later that night to check that number she was hiding.

* * *

I go up to the counter and grab one of those
free internet cds to stack more dvd chapter books
inside of it. She is up there, and I see a strange light
flickering in her eyes, and I realize that the girl is
watching something under the register with the
volume turned down.
When did she sneak a TV in here?
Suddenly I have to know what movie she’s
watching. Is she watching something she’s not
supposed to? Why else would she have the volume
down like that?
I ask her for the key to the restroom and
leave the fly in there, tied to condom dispenser. I
come out and browse some more, watching that
flickering in her eyes, trying to get an idea of what’s
on her hidden television by her reactions. I do six
more laps around the new releases, every few rows
popping open a movie and collecting the tiny
booklet. Sometimes I do the quick cough to cover
the noise when I open the movies, but I don’t really
need to. She’s so into whatever she’s watching, I
could drop down and shit on the floor and she
wouldn’t flinch until she smelled it.
A sign at the counter says they’ll give you a
free rental if you let them cut up your other video
store membership cards. I already exhausted that
loophole. I went through about nine cards, signing
up at every video store in the area and then getting
even more cards by saying I kept losing them or
asking for an extra card for my brother in the
wheelchair. I noticed that they weren’t even looking
at them when they cut them in half, so I let them
chop up my library cards too. Then my social
security card. Then some pictures of my cats. Then
a drawing of a pinball machine that my cousin had
sketched on a candy wrapper. They finally caught
on when I got down to my driver’s license and their
scissors jammed.
I smile to myself, thinking about how I
originally used to scam them by coming back every
third movie and saying it was broken to get another
free rental. You have to say it’s fucked up at the
end, or else they’ll make you get the same movie
again. I had it down to a science before I could even
drive a car.
It got so bad, one of the employees saw me
coming through the door, and he started mocking
me by pulling out a box of Crackerjacks, looking at
it real confused, then shaking the box in my face and
saying:

"Uh, I tried to rent 'Crackerjack The Movie'
and something is wrong with it. Listen, hear that
rattling? Something in there broke, I think.
Anyway, I’ll just go grab ten more movies for free,
okay? See ya tomorrow!"

They got a good laugh, but I still got my free
movie.
I stop in the restroom to get my fly and slip
the dvd booklets into my sleeves. I use their urinal,
hesitating when I see some ice cubes piled over the
drain. Confused, I piss holes through a couple and
wonder if they’re in there to keep you focused.
Maybe they think a target makes you less likely to
splash urine all over the walls? Maybe by giving
you a little challenge to see how many you can burn
through before you’re done, you forget all about
vandalizing? Makes sense to me. There’s
something about being alone with a strange toilet
that just makes you want to destroy everything in the
room. Maybe it’s the fumes. The way a dog has to
piss everywhere when it smells another dog. You
use a public restroom, and the stench of everyone’s
shit makes you want tear the toilet up from the floor
in a slow-motion rage.

What the hell are you watching?

I walk past the girl at the counter.
I’m thinking, don’t make me leave my fly in
here to find out what you’re up to. I got too much
shit to do today. Goddamn, I do love watching a
girl watch a movie, though.
I wonder why that is.
On the way out, I finally see what it is. A
security monitor.
She was watching me steal those dvd inserts
the entire time. I can see myself in the corner of her
screen, standing by the door, hunched and alone,
looking over her shoulder, guilty as hell. And
for some reason, the screen is green.

* * *

Sitting in the car with my hands on the
steering wheel my heart jumps. The fly is dangling
on the hair like a suicide. I turn on the
air-conditioning, open all the vents, and hold it in
front of the cold air. It starts to climb back up its
leash like a spider. It’s moving slow, but it’s still
alive.
I realize that every time I hide the fly, it
starts to die.

Sounds like a children’s rhyme, doesn’t it?

I drive back to the same gas station since I
forgot to pump gas when I was stealing my air.
There’s a girl at the pump next to me, and
suddenly I’m hearing that buzzing noise again. It’s
not my fly, it’s the cell phone in the pocket of this
girl. She’s ignoring it. I don’t know what makes me
more mad, when a girl answers a phone call and
walks away to talk, or when she ignores the call. I
knew a girl once who never answered the phone
when I called. She’d call me back five seconds
later, but she would never answer when I actually
called her. It was some sort of game she played, a
power play where, even if I had to wait for one
second, she was satisfied that I got no answer and
she had to call me back. I told her that I knew she
was doing it, because the ringing in my ear on my
end of the line would do this weird little skip, like a
DJ scratch noise, every time she turned off her
ringer on her end. That’s how I knew she was just
turning off the phone and walking around a corner
to call me back. I told that I could hear that noise,
that I could actually hear her thumb turning off her
phone every time she did it, and she looked at me all
scared. She said she was scared of me, but I know
she was just scared she got caught. And she kept
fucking doing it. The problem with her little game,
however, was it had the opposite effect that she
intended. Once I figured that shit out, I never called
her again.
I tie the fly to the wiper-fluid bucket next to
the pump, and the winter air winds it back up to full
speed. I leave the fly to circle the trash can and then
go inside. I put on my headphones so I don’t have
to talk to the girl behind the counter. And as I’m
giving her my dollar thirty-six, coming through my
headphones loud and clear is the voice of the girl
outside at the gas pump.
Incredibly enough, even when girls are not
on the phone, even when no one is within 50 feet of
them, they still talk shit.

-Why can’t I get gas without some sad
bastard trying to make eye contact? What does he
think will happen if he gets me to look at him? Does
eye contact mean he wins something...

And even with the fly outside, I can hear the
girl behind the counter, too. Talking without her
lips moving. An angry ventriloquist act buried
behind that robotic smile.

-How many times do I have to see this freak?
What’s worse, him stalking me or that he’s just such
a cheap asshole? There he goes. Grabbing pennies
from the cup. Does he know that his headphones
aren’t plugged in to anything...

I pull the headphones down from my ears to
explain to her that the only reason I’m taking nine
pennies is because I wasn’t paying attention when I
was pumping my gas. And I’m trying to save money
because she moved out, and I got fired, and I’m not
really this cheap, and I know it looks like the
headphones aren’t plugged in to anything, but if
you’ll just listen for a second you can hear that...
I hold out the headphones, and I count to 30
before she takes them from me.
I tell her she can have them and she still
won’t put them on, so I start to tell her about the fly
trying to get inside instead of out.
She’s calling the cops when I leave.

* * *

The fly is dying. I have to go home. Get it
to the bathroom. Or a restroom. You ever notice
how cold the water in a toilet is? Even on the
hottest day? Even if you know what’s been in there,
it’s got to be tempting to swim in it. For a bug, I
mean.
I drive fast, checking the size of the gas
stations, trying to gauge whether they’re big enough
for a public toilet. I glance down at the fly and see it
slump on the string and swing from the hair like a
pendulum. I slam on the brakes and make a hard
right into the smallest gas station I’ve ever seen.
I ask the third-grader behind the counter if
they have a restroom. He says no and turns back to
counting the candy bars. In desperation, I hold up
my hand with the limp fly swinging from my finger.

-Dude, my fly needs to drink from a toilet
fast or it’s going to die.

The kid smiles over a huge piece of gum and
stares at me for 13...14...15 seconds.
Then he points to the door behind the beer.
He says:

-Hurry up.

Unfuckingbelievable. Guess he’s seen
stranger things than this.
Inside the gas station bathroom, I’m
assaulted by a stench worse than any outhouse.
I walk over to the toilet and cautiously lift
the lid. The water is clear as a mountain spring. I
carefully lower my hand until the fly’s head just
brakes the surface. I think about the part of the
buddy-cop movie right around the second act where
the drunk partner has to get revived by the
wise-cracking partner, and he shoves his face in the
toilet. I’m much more gentle than that.
And it works. The fly starts to activate,
cranking its legs over its head to clean itself off. I
smile. It looks like it’s playing a tiny air guitar.
Relieved, I turn to the urinal. How can I
keep pissing when I haven’t ate or drank anything?
I’ve been drawn to toilets like fucking lighthouses
today. I’m starting to unzip, when I’m forced to
actually stumble back a step. I’ve found the source
of the smell. I look down, fully expecting to see that
someone shit in the urinal by mistake
There’s no shit, but it’s filled to the brim
with steaming yellow piss. The holes of the drain
are clogged with pieces of gum. I count nine pieces
covering all the holes except one. What the hell?
Maybe it’s true about not being able to digest gum
for eight years if you swallow it. Maybe it comes
shooting out your cock like a kidney stone. I don’t
think I’ve ever swallowed gum in my life, so I
wouldn’t know. I zip my fly back up, and corral my
other fly in an open palm and walk back out.
The kid behind the counter winks at me over
a jawful of aggressive gum chewing and I give him a
nod of thanks, understanding everything. I guess he
needs to play that game at the urinal to relieve the
boredom.

* * *

Back in the car, I wonder how many people
would believe that I’m actually worried about this
fly. I try to imagine myself in the waiting room at
the veterinarian. I’d be the only person that a kid
with a sick hermit crab could feel good laughing at.
I watch it perched on the radio knob, cleaning its
wings.
I’ve spent more time worrying about this fly
than I worried about my ex-girlfriend. Even when
she had her appendix out.
On the drive, I play with the equalizer.
That’s a good word, I think.

Equalizer.

I open the glove box, looking for more lost
cds, and a videotape slides out when I take the next
turn. I pick it up, read the label, and throw it out the
window in zero point two seconds. I hear it
detonate on the highway behind me, and then I have
to endure some hard-ass pulling up next to my car,
matching speed and glaring at me until I finally
glance over and he sees that I can see his
disapproval.

Fuck off.

I mouth the words and angrily flip the switch
to the vents a couple times. That’s a good word too,
I think.

Vent.

Sadly, the switch still doesn’t activate a
flame-thrower.
Does anyone ever watch homemade porn
after they’ve made one? I mean, if you’re in a
relationship, why bother watching porn? And if
you’ve broken up, it’s way too depressing. You
think it’s strangely heartbreaking finding a picture
of your ex-girlfriend doing something stupid like
building a pyramid out peanut shells? Try
stumbling across a video of her sitting on your face.
It’s true what they say, memories were meant to
fade.
This music sounds wrong.
Is the fly messing with my settings?
I adjust the bass and a few more random
knobs, all the while imagining wings on my car
popping out the sides, missiles rolling out over my
head and locking into place, an oil slick and a
fishtail of Crackerjacks spilling onto the road behind
me.
Nobody swerves. I’m tempted to turn on my
hazards.

Hazards.

That’s a good word. Not as good as “vent,”
though. Or “equalizer.”
I’m saying that last word in my head over
and over and over and over and over, and suddenly I
understand something.
It just seems like I care about the fly more
than her, but if you were to line them up against the
wall and put a little pencil mark over their heads,
you’d find that actually my feelings about the fly
and her are exactly the same.
And it’s not that I think more of a fly. It’s
just that, the more I find out about human beings,
and the more I listen to their voices when they don’t
think that anyone can hear, the less I think of them.

The fly is dead.
I think about how I wasted the power that it
gave me. I punch the toilet in disgust. If I’d have
been more careful, moved a little faster, I could have
been spying on about 50 more people today. I know
that sounds selfish, but what are you going to do?
Use it to foil a robbery? Use it to save the
President? Use it to get a baby out of a tree? I
gently set the dead fly on the windowsill, holding it
like it’s a long, unbroken cigarette ash. Then I crack
my knuckles. I’m thinking I’m ready to leave the
voices behind.
Did I mention that, when she walks into
another room to use the phone, it drives me fucking
nuts? Did I tell you about how I never saw her miss
a call, but, for some reason, she never answered the
phone when I called her?
One time I told her that I was going to invent
a phone that, instead of ringing, released a swarm of
bees instead. I said it would guarantee she would
answer the thing every time I needed her to. She
didn’t understand what the hell I was talking about.
I think she thought I was talking about some special
ringtone. I said, “okay, listen, how about just three
small bees, just enough of a scare to buzz around
your ears and make you swat the air in a panic every
single time I called you?” She had no answer to
that.
So anyway, my ex-goddamn girlfriend used
to do that shit, and now my new goddamn girlfriend
is doing it, too. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. I
tell myself that I’ve seen it all, and they all do it, and
if I don’t want to be alone, I’m stuck with girls and
their phones.
I walk out of the bathroom, and I see her
reading that same magazine again. I don’t know
why she says she wants to come over and watch a
movie if she’s just going to read that same fucking
magazine every time. I mean, it’s not one of those
“Choose Your Own Adventure” books. She’s not
going to discover a surprise ending when she flips to
the end of those 500 ads for the fifth time. Plus, that
magazine has a prescription label with my
ex-girlfriend’s name on it. You’d think that alone
would make her not want to read it.
Wait, did I say “prescription?”
Because that is exactly what I meant.
I can understand some frustration since it’s
been three days and we’ve yet to finish this one
goddamn movie, but I’m paying the late fees, or at
least I would be if this wasn’t a free rental.
If only she wouldn’t hide things from me.
Problem is, my house is so small that there’s really
nowhere to have a private phone call. My ex used to
keep walking away from me, no matter how hard I
tried to head her off, no matter if I made a quick
football fake, or kicked a shoe into her path, she’d
out-maneuver me every time until she got done
talking. It’s as if we were two magnets facing the
wrong way, balanced on the ends of my fingers, and
I’m trying to slowly squeeze them together until they
finally fly out of my hand.
This new girl? She hasn’t sneaked a phone
call today. So, when she gets up to go to the
bathroom, and I pause the movie, it takes three
whole seconds before I even start to wonder if she
took her phone with her or not. I get bored waiting
with the movie paused, so I stop and start it
frame-by-frame, trying to freeze it with all the
characters’ eyes closed at the same time. I get all
but one. I’m playing this game with my nose
sizzling in static on the TV screen, becoming
convinced that this particular actress must have died
during filming and she’ll never blink, when the
speaker suddenly starts popping again.
Shit. Fuck. Shit. I pull the cords on
everything. I hate the wiring in the this house. It
eventually destroys everything I plug into my walls.
I hear water running in the sink, and I figure she’s
going to be in there awhile. She does that
sometimes. Runs the sink so I can’t hear her piss.
Like I’m really listening to hear her pissing.
Suddenly I remember something, and I quickly
crawl to my box of old cassette tapes rotting in the
corner.
It’s my worst, last pair of headphones. Huge
ratty ones from the ‘80s that cover your entire
friggin’ head. I hesitate to put them on.
My headphones are getting bigger and
bigger as I seem to be sliding further back down the
headphone-evolutionary ladder.
The fly’s dead though, right? What the hell,
she won’t notice there’s no sound. She wasn’t
really watching the movie anyway.
Once I’m holding the headphones in my
hands and blowing the dust and insect shells off the
foam, I realize that they’re older than I thought.
They’re from the ‘70s, not the ‘80s, and
they’re the only thing left of my mom. One time,
she came up to me and put these over my ears, and I
was pouting about something, so I didn’t say
anything, didn’t even look up, but I didn’t take them
off my ears either. And I still can’t remember the
song she wanted me to hear or why she wanted me
to hear it. Maybe there was something funny in the
song? Maybe the lyrics meant something to her?
Maybe she thought it was my favorite band? I can’t
remember. I was too busy ignoring her. And now,
I’ll never know what it was because I just sat there,
arms crossed, mad about something stupid I can’t
remember, frowning until the song was over and she
finally walked away.
The strange thing is, when I think back to it,
I could have sworn I was outside, sitting with
crossed legs and crossed arms under a tree, when
she walked up and put these over my ears.
The cord couldn’t have reached that far.
Could it?
I screw them down over my head, thinking
about what my new girl was doing while the movie
was on. She was trying to be all sly, turning pages
in that magazine on the floor with her toes when the
most important characters were getting shot. I brush
a tangle of cobwebs and dust and hair off the bridge
of my nose and crawl back to the TV.
The videotape has stopped and now there’s a
fake psychic on the screen. I know she’s fake
because someone who could actually hear what
everyone was thinking would be furious at all times.
And this bitch is smiling.
I’m still looking for the hole to plug into
when I start hearing her voice.

-I don’t know if he knows...

Then the sound of a toilet flushing roars in
my ears and I flinch and throw the headphones to
the ground like they bit me. Shit, that was loud. It
echoes in my skull like someone flushed a toilet
inside a car, inside a garage, at the bottom of the
Grand Canyon.
She comes out of the bathroom, sighs when
she sees me messing with the power cord again and
says that she can’t watch the rest of the movie
anyway. She says she has to give her friend a ride
home from work and she’ll see me in about nine
hours.
I don’t understand. Was it the fly or the
headphones that gives me the power? Or is it
neither? Nine hours? I’m so confused now that I’m
ready to plug the TV into my ass to see what I can
hear next.

-I think I’d know if he knew something.
He’d be acting even stranger, if that’s possible.

I start to wonder if I’m hearing the girl at the
gas station who I gave my other headphones to. No,
there’s no way. She’d never have the initiative to
plug them into her navel, too.
No. It was the new girl I was hearing. It’s
her voice. The same voice. The only time I ever
heard two voices was when I picked up that first
conversation. Before I found the fly.
She doesn’t know I know what?

* * *

You know, my grandpa only lied to me once.
When he took me aside by my ear and told me he
was my dad. I shook my head and shrugged it off. I
already knew that it was true that everyone
eventually lies to everyone. Still, I think the only
reason he did it was so I’d recognize it the next time
someone lied to me. It was just like he was teaching
me to ride a bike, or tie my shoe, or swim through a
giant toilet dodging all the shit.
Fly on the wall. Ears are burning. Talking
shit. Burning bridges. Little white lies.
It’s the oldest trick in the book, and always
judge a book by it’s cover.
Isn’t that what a grandpa is for? To throw
out classics like those? Even if he talks too fast and
gets them wrong most of the time, that’s the one
thing my grandpa did that he was supposed to. He
served up the head-scratching wisdom just like a
grandpa should. Otherwise, why even have a
grandfather?
Burning bridges? Think about that. My
grandpa told me that it’s not so hard to believe that
someone actually burned a bridge once, and that’s
where that phrase came from. The only thing I
know for sure is, the more you know about anyone,
the more you realize that humans are fucking awful.
If there ever was a man who really heard voices in
his headphones, he would kill everyone that
ever...hold on. I already said that.

Do you ever get the feeling someone is
talking shit about you?

Grandpa asked me that question when I was
way too young. You ask a question like that to a
little kid and who knows what associations he’ll
make. Talking shit? What does that mean anyway?
Add some flies to the mix, show your grandson how
to tie one to a leash and name it “Spot,” and you
fucked that boy up for life.

Did you ever wish you were the fly on the
wall?

Didn’t he say that too? You hear something
like that when you’re too young and...
I see something moving in the corner of my
eye, and I look down at my fingers. I see something
squirming, and I panic and shake my hand around
like it’s on fire.
For a second, I could swear I see about ten
white ants boiling under each fingernail. Then my
eyes clear and I see that there’s only white lines, like
Morse Code, across each nail, just under the edge
where I’ve chewed them down.
That’s a lot of white lines.
Wait, does that mean I’m lying, or she’s
lying, or is it really just an irony deficiency?

* * *

The wind blows the dead fly around on it’s
string. My ring finger is white from lack of
circulation. I unwrap the leash from my skin,
waiting for the bloodflow to return and paint the
white knuckle red again. I’m amazed at how strong
her hair was.
I stand in the tub, pulling down the tiny
window and unrolling the electrical tape back across
the seams to seal it back up. I look around at the
pink soapy rings where her products used to be. It’s
true that the bathroom is the last place where the
remains of a relationship will linger. Not just
because of the stray hairs, but because of all tubes
and bottles they leave behind. Sometimes it’s
tempting to use them up and save a little money, if it
doesn’t bother you that you suddenly smell
something like a vanilla melon slice when you’re
sweating through a red light.
It’s true though, the bathroom is the last
place an ex-girlfriend exists.
I walk over to the toilet. A toilet is a dog’s
best friend, right?
No. A toilet is a fly’s best friend.
I stand over it. There’s an old yellow-eared
sticker above the bowl that is almost too faded to
read. It says:

“No poner la mano dentro o bajo el
conducto de descarga!”

Translation: “Do not put hand into or under
discharge chute!”

Above this is a crudely drawn cartoon of a
bloody hand with the ring finger flying off. It’s for
the immigrant workers who apparently lose ten
fingers a day if it wasn’t for this helpful child’s
drawing. My friend gave me a stack of these
stickers from his short-lived summer job at a tomato
factory. In spite of the fact that the
Spanish-speaking workers considered them an
insult, we loved these things, and they kept us
occupied for at least half a day. At first, we thought
it was funny to stick them over any toilet we saw.
Then we started sticking them to bumpers, vending
machines, hand dryers, drinking fountains, my
girlfriend’s ass when she was sleeping. We even sat
through an insufferably monotonous church sermon
just to sneak nine of these things into a pew full of
hymnals. That was the best because we actually saw
some mother smack a hymnal out of her daughter’s
hand in panic when she saw the sticker. Later we
argued that, obviously, she must have known
Spanish. Or, obviously, she didn’t. I don’t
remember which side of the debate I was on.
The sticker is supposed to be posted under a
tomato-chopper or a catsup-squasher or a
finger-slicer or some such shit, but it really does
look best stuck onto a toilet. I mean, think about it.
On a hymnal? Jesus Christ, that doesn’t make any
sense at all.
And instead of talking about how
condescending the image was to the migrant
workers, me and my friend spent hours analyzing
their choice of the ring finger as the digit that gets
severed in the cartoon. My friend said it was
probably because so many people wearing their
wedding ring to the job site eventually gets that ring
caught on something, and it rips off that particular
finger 90% of the time.

“In fact,” he said, “My uncle just got 19
stitches last year after he slipped and got his
wedding ring caught on the top-rung of a ladder.”

I argued that the middle finger would be
most likely to get severed, but they couldn’t show
the middle finger flying off in the cartoon because it
would translate in any language as a big bloody
“fuck you.”
I also told him that his uncle couldn’t ask for
a more symbolic injury.

And my friend said, “who the fuck asks for a
symbolic injury?”

I said, “you know what I mean.”

And he said, “what do you mean?”

I said all I meant was that it happened for a
reason. Just like when my grandpa lied to me.
He didn’t lie to spare my feelings. He was just
training me to recognize a lie. I told him that it was
precisely this training that allowed me to recognize
the story of his uncle as bullshit.
Then I said that he should tell that story
again, but make it his dad instead of his uncle that
loses the finger.

He asked, “how do I do that when it isn’t
what happened?”

I said, “you just say it.”

I told him that it would make the story better,
bring it closer to home. He laughed and said that for
him to pretend that his uncle was his dad is as weird
as me always pretending that my dad was my
grandfather and that my dad killed my mom. This
turned into an argument and me on my knees hastily
scratching a detailed drawing of my family tree into
the gravel with a stick. And eventually we forgot all
about those stickers. The last thing I said to him that
day was:

“Who’s lying, him or you, and what’s
worse?”

He never answered me, but I really didn’t
expect him too. Shit, the little bastard was only
eight. So who was lying, him, you or me? All I
know is that eight is a little too young to be working
in a tomato factory, so you figure it out.
I stop and I wonder if I had the fly on the
wrong finger the whole time. Maybe that’s why it’s
dead. I look down at the pale ring of skin where her
ring used to be. It’s still white, like I’d worn it
happily married for 30 years, even though I only had
the ring on for six hours before it shattered under a
punch against the dashboard of my car. Rings
stolen from bubblegum machines don’t last that
long. However, it’s not the ring that made it white.
The blood never came back to that finger
because the fly was tied on too tight.

* * *

The next day I finally take out the trash. Not
a second too late, either. I can see a box of
sweet-and-sour chicken moving down there, and
suddenly that fly ain’t such a miracle anymore
because I can see at least three more green-eyed flies
bouncing around in the bag with their snouts
dipping in and out of a month of our scraps. You
know how they always say that tiny little fish will
appear in a mud puddle if it sits undisturbed long
enough? Not true. They were talking about
mosquitoes.
I shake the flies off the soggy white box and
unfold the top like it’s Christmas. She used to talk
me into getting sweet-and-sour chicken at least once
a week. She’d say, all smiling, “I drove past the
restaurant just now and they’re throwing them
away!” It was cute and I fell for it every time. I put
my head in the garbage and breath deep. It’s rotten
and my eyes are watering, but it doesn’t smell that
bad. Now my head’s in past the edge of the can, and
the smell of the trash has me swimming in nostalgia.
I feel like climbing all the way inside. Hell, if the
toilet was the size of a pool, I’d be doing laps in it
right now.
You know how they say that the bathroom is
the last place your girlfriend exists? Apparently,
that’s not true.
I take out the trash. Then I just keep walking
past the dumpster to throw my headphones into the
river before I change my mind.
It’s one of those rivers that looks good from
a distance. Then you’re standing next to it and you
catch a smell of what’s been dumped in there for
years. Wasn’t this the river that caught on fire
because of the pollution? You’d think my toilet
would have ignited from all the cigarettes she
flicked in it. Is this the river where that little boy
swore he saw the shark?
I think about the three girls that made me
want to hide my fly. I try to think of a connection,
force one if necessary, for the sake of the story if I
ever tell it.
Okay, one had black hair, one red, one
blonde. And if they didn’t, they should have.
Then the real connection hits me. It’s no
accident where these three girls worked. When it’s
the end of the world, the only thing left to do is
entertain yourself. Music, books and movies are
quickly becoming all we have left to look forward
to. My dad said that.
I think about a girl that used to work at the
book store, and how I was in there loitering one
night, and she came in right when they were closing.
My heart jumped, and for about ten seconds I
thought that she had stopped by to see me. Even
though there was no way for her to know I was
there. Then one of the guys came up from under the
counter, and the two of them left together. I felt
bad, but not too bad because I still remembered that
10 seconds before the register made a noise, before
the counter coughed and spit out a rival to walk her
to her car, 10 long seconds when I thought she was
there for me. I understand that’s what keeps me
from going crazy from frustration or hatred or
loneliness. Imagination, replaying that ten seconds
in my head for days. Thinking about her existing in
my ten seconds. Maybe trying to figure out who I
was, where my car was, what’s the last album I
stole, what’s the last movie I snuck in to see, how
often I speed-read a new book while standing there
in the store...and who she was taking to on the
goddamn phone. It was a good ten seconds and it
was enough. I know it sounds nuts, but I swear it’s
the voices in my head that keep me sane.
The headphones bob along, riding the brown
waves, then something under the water takes a
couple bites and finally pulls them down. There’s a
girl standing next to me when I turn around.

-Why did you do that? You don’t listen to
music anymore?

-Huh? No. No. They were just hurting my
ears.

-You know what you looked like to me just
then? You looked like the last scene of a movie.
The part where the cop throws away his badge after
he quits the force? Or maybe you’re the hero
throwing away his gun after he gets the bad guy?

Translation...she watches movies.

I decide to test her with a question.

-What about when the bad guy throws away
the gun?

-Huh? No, that never happens, she says. At
least not at the end of the movie.

Holy shit, I’m in love.

-Hold out your hand.

She does. And when she uncurls her fingers
for me, I expect something to fly away.

-Or a book.

-What?

-Or a song.

-What are you talking about?

Translation...she watches movies and that’s
enough.

Just remember to keep hands and fingers
clear...

-Nothing.

I think about my mom putting those huge
headphones over my head when I was little. I can
remember it now. I was under a tree, and it didn’t
matter that the wire didn’t reach that far because
they were plugged into nothing. There was no song.
There must have been something she didn’t want me
to hear. She only put those headphones on my head
to protect me.
I shrug off the memory and see the girl
again. She’s waiting, staring at me. Her hand is still
open but her fingers are starting to curl. I decide to
ask her one more question for the road.

-You know why the bad guy can only throw
away his gun at the beginning of the movie?

-Because he can find another one before the
movie’s over, she says.

I stare at her for seven...eight...nine seconds.
Then I write down my phone number.

And just for laughs I draw a fly underneath
it.

-Sorry, I like drawing flies.

-I don’t smell anything.

-What?

-Never mind. No, I like it.

-They’re easy to make. It’s like a smiley
face. You know why everyone draws smiley faces?

-Why?

-Because there’s less than five lines you
need to make before you can recognize it.

-You read that somewhere.

-Sure did. And he was right. Those five
lines are what gives it power. Do you know what a
drawing of a fly can do when you...
I hear the buzzing sound again, and I know
what it is before she even pulls it out. She smiles an
apology and presses the phone deep into her face,
quickly walking away before she starts talking.
It doesn’t bother me at all.
I walk off in the opposite direction to give
her some privacy. I think of my phone number and
the fly I drew on her skin, and I cup my hand around
my ear like a seashell.

-I don’t know why. He drew a fly. No, that’s
not a children’s rhyme...

Even when she’s miles away, even when her
head and her hand are the only things visible above
the waves smacking my head and filling my nostrils,
I still keep my hand over my ear, and I can still hear
every word of her conversation like she’s swimming
right next to me.



© 2006 david james keaton

::: david - 3:33 AM [+] :::
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