Epilogue
They keep telling me I run the risk of contracting a fatal disease every time I inhale.
They tell me the doorknobs are spiked with poison capable of saturating the skin and rotting your flesh from your fevered body.
But you see, what worries me most isn't that I live in a world with sick murdering monsters and freakish viral infections, it's that I don't know whether or not sharks roar.
Okay, that's not true. Sharks don't roar. I know this as well as I know that you aren't going to find an ichthyosaur splashing with a croc in the shallows of the Congo.
What really actually worries me is that there's no worse sound than jocks laughing in a group. Because you know deep in your gut that whatever they have to laugh about isn't funny. Like tonight, when one of the phrases I heard between shouts of 'that's sick, bro!' was 'it used to be a mouse.' And you know, I might be wrong. I might be judging them too soon. I might be. But the sound of riotous laughter from these kind of men never bodes well for the innocent or the beautiful.
I want to give this a story arc, but it's always both hard and necessary to remember that not every idea makes for a good story. Sometimes you can tell before you put pen to page. Sometimes you know that whatever whisper of a thought it was that you had just isn't going to cut it as a full piece of finished work. Sometimes, though, you need to start writing to find out that you should have stopped while you were ahead.
I want this to be a story, except I don't want it to be framed as one. Do you often run into that as well? I could describe my setting:
I was quietly eating raw carrots in a wooden booth of a wooden room, all stained and polyurethaned to a glowing unnatural degree of woodness. A room, please note, which has things like antique ski poles mounted on the walls, as well as snowshoes, and if you look above the water cooler, you can find the horns of some quadruped which probably needed them a lot more than this room ever has. A girl sat across from me eating fries; not the stringy kind that cure my hangovers, but the thick potato-y ones that crumble a little in your mouth and dry you out. Two girls in the booth behind me - I usually have my back to a wall, but it didn't work that way this time. You can tell when it's a girl behind you: the air between you feels different. A television played through the news (some athlete; Eliot Spitzer; Madam Clinton and Husband); the news anchor had tastefully blond chin length hair that curled equally tastefully under, emphasizing the trustworthiness of her features... or something. She wore a blouse. News anchors can wear blouses, you see. News anchors and business women.
I was wearing a pair of dark wash Diesel jeans, a black tank top, and a mostly turquoise hoodie. My reddish black hair was pinned into spiky low pigtails; my bangs framed my eyes.
But, you see, I'm often told that stories require change. In order for it to be called a story, the protagonist needs to experience change after one main climactic moment.
I tend to judge a story by whether or not you could trade it effectively with a far eastern merchant for some wishes, regardless of traditional structure.
I'm listening to Rusted Root, thinking about how I have to be in front of a camera later tonight. Thinking about how I'm supposed to be writing some nonfiction.
And I suppose this could be considered nonfiction, except when it comes down to it, nobody has ever really told me that I run the risk of contracting a fatal airborne disease: it just seemed like a pleasant thing to start writing with. And I'm unfamiliar entirely with flesh rotting poisons: my doorknobs could probably benefit from making friends with bleach, but that's just because all doorknobs are kind of gross if you think about it. I mean, who really wants to think in depth about all the places the hands that regularly touch them have been?
And while I was thinking earlier about sharks, it doesn't really worry me.
So while this might be nonfiction, I've been lying to you from the very beginning. I am one of those unreliable narrators they like to teach you about in lit classes: I show you the world only the way I want you to see it, not the way it really is, or even the way I see it. Only the way I want it to look to you. I am manipulative. I cannot be trusted.
The guys were laughing too loudly, and it started to freak me out.
And I lost my appetite.
Vitamin Water markets itself as having specific qualities attributed to the different flavors. On my desk beside me is raspberry-apple flavored, enhanced with vitamin c and zinc. The bottle assures me that it will work well in terms of 'defense.' I feel sometimes like I need to be defended.
When animals are found inside of buildings - squirrels, bats, birds - they catch them and kill them. You know, in case they have rabies. Once I watched a bunch of jocks catch baby squirrels to turn loose on the top floor of a dorm. I didn't stop them. You see, the sound of jocks laughing often makes me wonder if they're going to try to catch me next.
Antisocial personality disorder, I'm told, is characterized by lack of remorse. Children, you know, like Damien in The Omen, who are so cruel that they seem demonic. Kurtz from Heart of Darkness. The Joker. Ah, Joker: the world's first homicidal artist. "Hunny, show the lady why you wear the mask."
I keep secrets because they often aren't mine to share, and because it was one of those things I learned as a child: your business is nobody else's.
Sailor grandpa, you know: loose lips sink ships.
This would have been a story about how listening to a group of guys eating chicken wings and laughing about torture made me feel.
But that would admit to having feelings. That's generally, you know, why I write fiction: I can lie without explaining what it was I was lying about. The climax would have been the final shout of laughter as a cell phone playing a video was passed around two tables away from me. The denouement would have been me walking away, feeling like the world is broken.
If there had been a post script, this would have been it.
They tell me the doorknobs are spiked with poison capable of saturating the skin and rotting your flesh from your fevered body.
But you see, what worries me most isn't that I live in a world with sick murdering monsters and freakish viral infections, it's that I don't know whether or not sharks roar.
Okay, that's not true. Sharks don't roar. I know this as well as I know that you aren't going to find an ichthyosaur splashing with a croc in the shallows of the Congo.
What really actually worries me is that there's no worse sound than jocks laughing in a group. Because you know deep in your gut that whatever they have to laugh about isn't funny. Like tonight, when one of the phrases I heard between shouts of 'that's sick, bro!' was 'it used to be a mouse.' And you know, I might be wrong. I might be judging them too soon. I might be. But the sound of riotous laughter from these kind of men never bodes well for the innocent or the beautiful.
I want to give this a story arc, but it's always both hard and necessary to remember that not every idea makes for a good story. Sometimes you can tell before you put pen to page. Sometimes you know that whatever whisper of a thought it was that you had just isn't going to cut it as a full piece of finished work. Sometimes, though, you need to start writing to find out that you should have stopped while you were ahead.
I want this to be a story, except I don't want it to be framed as one. Do you often run into that as well? I could describe my setting:
I was quietly eating raw carrots in a wooden booth of a wooden room, all stained and polyurethaned to a glowing unnatural degree of woodness. A room, please note, which has things like antique ski poles mounted on the walls, as well as snowshoes, and if you look above the water cooler, you can find the horns of some quadruped which probably needed them a lot more than this room ever has. A girl sat across from me eating fries; not the stringy kind that cure my hangovers, but the thick potato-y ones that crumble a little in your mouth and dry you out. Two girls in the booth behind me - I usually have my back to a wall, but it didn't work that way this time. You can tell when it's a girl behind you: the air between you feels different. A television played through the news (some athlete; Eliot Spitzer; Madam Clinton and Husband); the news anchor had tastefully blond chin length hair that curled equally tastefully under, emphasizing the trustworthiness of her features... or something. She wore a blouse. News anchors can wear blouses, you see. News anchors and business women.
I was wearing a pair of dark wash Diesel jeans, a black tank top, and a mostly turquoise hoodie. My reddish black hair was pinned into spiky low pigtails; my bangs framed my eyes.
But, you see, I'm often told that stories require change. In order for it to be called a story, the protagonist needs to experience change after one main climactic moment.
I tend to judge a story by whether or not you could trade it effectively with a far eastern merchant for some wishes, regardless of traditional structure.
I'm listening to Rusted Root, thinking about how I have to be in front of a camera later tonight. Thinking about how I'm supposed to be writing some nonfiction.
And I suppose this could be considered nonfiction, except when it comes down to it, nobody has ever really told me that I run the risk of contracting a fatal airborne disease: it just seemed like a pleasant thing to start writing with. And I'm unfamiliar entirely with flesh rotting poisons: my doorknobs could probably benefit from making friends with bleach, but that's just because all doorknobs are kind of gross if you think about it. I mean, who really wants to think in depth about all the places the hands that regularly touch them have been?
And while I was thinking earlier about sharks, it doesn't really worry me.
So while this might be nonfiction, I've been lying to you from the very beginning. I am one of those unreliable narrators they like to teach you about in lit classes: I show you the world only the way I want you to see it, not the way it really is, or even the way I see it. Only the way I want it to look to you. I am manipulative. I cannot be trusted.
The guys were laughing too loudly, and it started to freak me out.
And I lost my appetite.
Vitamin Water markets itself as having specific qualities attributed to the different flavors. On my desk beside me is raspberry-apple flavored, enhanced with vitamin c and zinc. The bottle assures me that it will work well in terms of 'defense.' I feel sometimes like I need to be defended.
When animals are found inside of buildings - squirrels, bats, birds - they catch them and kill them. You know, in case they have rabies. Once I watched a bunch of jocks catch baby squirrels to turn loose on the top floor of a dorm. I didn't stop them. You see, the sound of jocks laughing often makes me wonder if they're going to try to catch me next.
Antisocial personality disorder, I'm told, is characterized by lack of remorse. Children, you know, like Damien in The Omen, who are so cruel that they seem demonic. Kurtz from Heart of Darkness. The Joker. Ah, Joker: the world's first homicidal artist. "Hunny, show the lady why you wear the mask."
I keep secrets because they often aren't mine to share, and because it was one of those things I learned as a child: your business is nobody else's.
Sailor grandpa, you know: loose lips sink ships.
This would have been a story about how listening to a group of guys eating chicken wings and laughing about torture made me feel.
But that would admit to having feelings. That's generally, you know, why I write fiction: I can lie without explaining what it was I was lying about. The climax would have been the final shout of laughter as a cell phone playing a video was passed around two tables away from me. The denouement would have been me walking away, feeling like the world is broken.
If there had been a post script, this would have been it.