From the Archives: What Happens When I Try To Write Fiction

This is a fragment of a story I wrote several years ago. I was hanging out at my friend's Katie and Cara's apartment, and they stepped out to go to the store. I stayed behind, and wrote a story to pass the time. When they got back I read it to them. As I recall, Katie laughed, but Cara didn't really say much.

Rather than fry his bananas, he elected to give them to Goodwill where they would be of use. He was sad when the Goodwill truck came around and told him that they didn’t trade in foodstuffs.
“If you have any old furniture or clothing we could take that.” said the buxom truck driver.
“Well, I do have this chair I don’t really want.”
He invited her in, and they dined on tea and bananas until late in the evening when he tried to put the moves on her, but she declined.
“I feel kind of full, and might be sick,” she told him.
So they met the following evening, and this time they had sex before they ate, and he was pleased. She was kind of non-plussed, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she kept quiet about it.
After the sex they went to the park and bought some hotdogs, which they ate with sauerkraut, not because they liked it but because it was German. They then stumbled over to the local art museum to look at paintings and found it closed. So they sat down to chat.

“I don’t know how they expect to stay open if they are going to be closed on Mondays.”
“They don’t charge for admission really, it’s kind of a state-funded thing.”
“That is no excuse.”
‘”I blame the Republicans. They are always cutting funding for things.”
“My aunt is Republican.”
“Really?”
“Oh don’t worry, I’m not one. I’m an independent.”
“Most of the independents I know are too ill-informed, whether due to stupidity or laziness, to form an opinion about political issues.”
There was a long silence interrupted only by a small dog that ran by at full speed barking it’s head off.
“I wonder what his problem is.”
Following the dog a moment later was a man on a bicycle riding fast and screaming. They couldn’t make out much of what he said, but the word “allegorical” was clear. As the man crossed the street he was struck by a VW Bug. The man flew high into the air, and pieces of his bicycle flew all over the street. Katie got out of the car and started to apologize, but the man took off running after the dog. He called something back. It was also hard to make out, but the word “allegorical” was still clear. He mispronounced it the same way he had the first time.
She looked at him, and he shrugged.
“He mispronounces allegorical.”
“Yeah.”
“The other day I was at work, and there was a man buying hot cereal, and he told me that I reminded him of his cousin. Jonathan. That was his cousin’s name.”
“That’s so great.”
He walked her home, not knowing he would never see her again. The next day she stowed away aboard a whaling vessel headed up the Mississippi toward the Great Lakes where, the Captain maintained, a large population of clever whales had been hiding for many years.

Enemies

I was not popular in middle school. I was a nerdy little boy, always trying to endear myself to a teacher, or proclaiming my indifference to what other people thought, or talking about the violin. I only listened to classical music, a source of great tension with my peer group. I remember one nice girl trying to understand my musical taste: “Have you heard the theme song to Fresh Prince of Bel Air? You’d probably like that—there’s violins in it.”
Yes, I fell into a trap that my parents, like so many other well-meaning adults, had set for me. I was convinced that if I would only “be myself,” then friends would follow. In truth, this strategy doesn’t apply to middle school. Nobody is themselves, and those that try are mercilessly torn down until they conform.

Early in my middle school career, before I’d been beaten into a certain amount of conformity, I knew a boy named Jermaine, and we hated each other. Jermaine was in my gifted class, and he would roll his eyes at every word I spoke, and I would do the same. When I sucked up to our teacher he would call out to the class that I was doing it. When he asked to go to the water fountain in order to go to his locker and get a piece of candy, I would announce his true intention to the teacher. To him I was a sniveling little ass-kisser, and he called me “Fat-ass.” To me he was a bad kid, a rule-breaking future criminal who probably stole from the school store, and I called him “Douchebag,” something I heard my father say while he drove sometimes.
Our class took a field trip to Baltimore to visit some ridiculous seminar for sixth graders at Johns Hopkins University. The trip involved a stay at a hotel in Baltimore’s inner harbor, and Jermaine was put down as my roommate, to our mutual dismay.
We approached our hotel room bickering and arguing about petty things, tired and cranky from a long bus ride. Before I turned on the light Jermaine ran in and jumped on the bed, and immediately cried out.
“What is it?!” I cried, turning on the lights.
The bed he had jumped on was soaked in urine.
We found our teacher, who secured us a new room, and while we waited discussed what a shitty hotel we were staying in.
“What kind of hotel has pee on the beds?” I asked him.
“A crappy-ass hotel, that’s what kind,” he answered.
Crappy-ass. I liked that.
Later, in our new room Jermaine let me see an X-Men comic he had bought after dinner.
“Wow, did that guy just kill Magneto?” I asked him.
“Nah, they always try to make you think somebody died but they always come back like an issue later,” he told me.
We discussed video games, television, movies, and discovered we had lots of mutual interests. Then Jermaine went to the phone. Before I could ask what he was doing, he picked up the receiver and punched in four random numbers. There was a pause while it rang, and then a voice said “Hello?”
“BIAAAHTCH!” yelled Jermaine and hung up.
This was the greatest thing I had seen in my entire life. We didn’t stop laughing for several minutes, and then I had to try it. Four random numbers, and--
“BIAAAHTCH!” I yelled.
We rolled on the floor.
“BIAAAHTCH!!” we yelled into the empty stairwell.
“BIAAAHTCH!!!” we yelled running down the hall past open doors.
“BIAAAHTCH!!!!” we called out on the bus the next day.
How we didn’t get in trouble for doing this is a mystery to me, but we didn’t.
When we got back to Norfolk we said good-bye, and went our separate ways.
The next Monday at school I saw him in the hall. Neither of us said hello, but we grinned at each other, and though we were never exactly friends, we didn’t hate each other either. I would kiss the teacher’s ass, and he said nothing. He would go to his locker for candy, and I said nothing. And when his friends started to pick on me, he changed the target to someone else. Friendship might have been unrealistic, but peace was enough.

Out of Touch

Walking down the street toward Strawberry St. Market, I crossed paths with two young men going in the opposite direction. They didn’t notice me, as they were deeply involved in their own conversation. One was distraught, and his friend was consoling him.
“Man, I couldn’t believe it,” said the one, “I made out with a fat chick, and I didn’t even fuck her!”
“I know man. It’s okay. You’ll get her next time,” said the other.
Bewildered, I got my coffee, all the while wondering—“Is that normal? Is that how people are and I just don’t know it?”

In Memory of Nick Bognar

I called my friend Nick to talk about Clay and his horrendous poem the other day. Nick was in the same speech class with me where Clay wowed us with his line about patriotism, and he remembered the poem “The Game of Life.” We chatted awhile and reminisced about days gone by, and Nick said if anyone ever wrote a poem like that about him he hoped he would be dead and wouldn’t have to hear it. I said, “Shit, Nick—I’ll write that poem right now!” To which he replied, “Awesome, nothing would make me prouder!”
It was decided that the poem would be about Nick’s new cat and the cat allergies Nick has been struggling with since acquiring it. The poem presupposes that Nick has died from his allergies, choking to death in the night for the cat that he loves.

Coughing, coughing through the day
I love my kitty anyway

My kitty’s dander makes me sick
A sick that makes my mucus thick

He nuzzles me, his coat is soft
His purring sets my heart aloft

Coughing, coughing through the night
I love my cat with all my might

I love my cat with a love that’s true,
But I’m dead now, my face is blue

From choking on my own thick snot
My kitty’s love I still have got

Jesus walks beside me now
And when he talks it sounds like “Meow.”