Felt so bad so long

I sure am glad I was drunk when it happened. My memories are all so soft and blurry, merciful. It's funny because the day it happened I felt so bad about being drunk. I felt bad about it for months after it happened. For a couple years actually. But I don't feel bad now. I'm just glad.

The reason I was drunk was that I'd been up till 5 AM drinking because I'd just gotten fired. I wasn't working in the Towers--that would have been too weird. And I wasn't drinking alone. We had a party. I'd known for a long time they were probably going to fire me because I was barely showing up anymore, and I kept saying we'd have a party when they finally fired me. Me and my friends, I mean. So I came in that Monday morning and they fired me, and by suppertime I'd already been to the gym, gone to see a movie, changed the sheets on my bed, and been to the liquor store and bought three twelve-packs and eight bottles of vodka.

People started showing up around 8 and I remember we had music on incredibly loud and there were women I didn't know, because I told people to bring women, and my friends are amazing, even though almost everybody had to work on Tuesday. I got drunk so fast. I was drunk maybe by 9 PM and I stayed drunk until Tuesday afternoon. At 5 AM there were just three of us left, me the only one still drunk, there was silly string all over the apartment, and a hundred Solo cups, and I was so happy because I had such great friends. I went to bed happy as it was just starting to begin to get light outside.

I guess I woke up at about 9 because that's what time it would have been. I only know my phone had been ringing for five minutes because that's what Jess told me later.

"Ricky, are you okay?"

"I was until you woke me up!"

"Are you still drunk? Are you okay?"

"Yes, why?"

She tried to tell me but she didn't make any sense, and then she told me to go up on the roof. I went up on the roof and saw the smoke in the west, and it looked just like a nature show I saw about a forest fire once, and I guess that's why I just knew there was a forest fire. In downtown Manhattan. Until Jess finally got through to me.

"Ricky, I'm freaking out. Nobody knows what's going on. They think maybe all of New York is going to be bombed. Jackie said people are trying to get out on the bridges and they can't, everyone is trapped in the city."

I couldn't focus myself to save my life. Everything was funny, like amusing funny, even though I knew in the back of my mind it was deadly serious. I heard myself talking more than I actively talked. I heard my voice coming out and hoped I didn't sound too stupid. "It's all right, Jess. Just stay calm. You're not in any immediate danger. Right?" My head was floating about five feet above my body all day as I talked to Jess, and Jackie, and Brian, and Rachel, who said that one of her cousins worked in the Towers and wasn't answering. She was freaking out, she was crying. Everyone wanted to know if I could see anything from my place. I spent all day out in the sun on the roof. Somehow I had to be there for all these people and as the day went on I began to understand that there was no way to do it, there was no way to make anything okay, and I was completely and totally inadequate and I never should have gotten drunk the night before. And I felt like shit about that for a long time.

Rachel moved out of the city a couple years ago because she still couldn't sleep. Brian is in Afghanistan. And I'm fine, I still live here, that whole day is now like a tape of a cartoon to me, barely real. It's funny I felt so bad so long about something that was really just a big blessing.

Note: Googled "I sure was glad I was drunk when it happened," went off this picture.

The five things

There are five things that need to be done today.

One is that I have to get all of the robots working. I have thirteen robots and three of them are broken. I need all of them to be working because we are having a robot soccer game on Saturday and Josh Michael Henry Tommy and Jake are coming over and there needs to be enough robots for all of us. Ben probably isn't coming but he might come.

Two is that I have to make the invitations for the robot soccer game. They have to have a picture of a robot that I have to draw and they have to have the time the date my address and RSVP on them. I already told everybody about the robot soccer game but I want to have invitations because this isn't like a normal everyday party. This is a big deal and there needs to be invitations. I will give them out when people get here.

Three is that I have to clean my room. There are way too many clothes in here it's like crazy! There are so many clothes that it would be like the robots were climbing over mountains, and they couldn't get the soccer ball. We are just doing soccer this Saturday. On another day we could have war with soldiers and robots.

Four is that I have to be nice to my sister. No hitting yelling pushing or shutting her fingers in the door. I didn't shut her fingers in the door on purpose but she was trying to get in when I was doing explosions and I had already told her no girls were allowed but she wouldn't listen.

Five is that I have to call Josh on the phone because he needs to bring the soccer goals we made because they are at his house. I was supposed to bring them home when I was over there but I rode my bike and I forgot. Also you can't carry them and ride your bike at the same time. Josh is very absent-minded and so he might forget to bring the boxes on Saturday. I am worried, but he will probably bring them. Josh isn't allowed to use the raptor robot because he broke it one time.

Note: Googled "There are five things that need to be done today" and went off this picture.

Post-Improvement

I wanted to be told what to do. I wanted this, suddenly and profoundly, more than I had wanted anything lately beside a piece of chocolate pie. Bones were scattered around me, all over the floor, I had put the other astragalus somewhere unknown when I stopped to take the phone call because I always do that, my hands move completely independently of my consciousness when I'm on the phone. Trying to break up over the phone. Saying, "No, I know, I know that," my hands picking up astragalus and ulna and metacarpal and hiding them on me while my mind was twenty miles away. My body misbehaves.

It is impossible to work when one is ending a love affair. It is especially impossible to do creative work. Moreso when one has been hired, one suspects, on the strength of one's resume and not on one's knowledge, the resume having been concocted from scratch while drunk at the behest of this man. When I got the call for this particular installation I was dead sleepy, which is almost as good as being drunk, which explains why I wasn't too startled and frightened to say yes.

I was surrounded by the bones of one medium-sized Deinonychus, plus one replica of the Arc of the Covenant, one mounted oryx head, and one life-sized wax figure of Buffalo Bill Cody. My instructions were to create a Post-Ironic display for my employer's gigantic foyer using these four objects as motifs. I didn't know what Post-Irony was. I'd meant to Google it before I left that morning but once again I'd set my alarm for 7 p.m. instead of 7 a.m. and woke up at 8 and so there was no Googling.

I did know how the bones of a dinosaur go together. But I had never worked in a museum--as my resume averred--because museums don't hire people who don't have degrees. I learned how the bones go together from him, the way I learned how a lasagna goes together, the way I learned how a resume goes together. He was very interested in improving me.

It was impossible. I attached the skull of the Deinonychus over the skull of the oryx that night, in the silent cathedral-like place, and slid one of the long femurs into Buffalo Bill's hands in place of the rifle, which implement of destruction would then make up one of the legs of the dinosaur. The Arc I draped with Bill's fringed calfskin coat for an altar cloth. I found the lost astragalus on a windowsill, and eventually placed it back there in a hopefully Post-Ironic way. I picked up my phone and put it down again ten times. I didn't know how to break up with a man who had made me his life's work any more than I knew how to put together a proper art installation. I was without a prayer. I was Post-Improvement.

Somehow during the night one of the little foot-bones made it into my pocket. I didn't find it till I got home, but you know that of course I kept it. I love the shape of metatarsals, like distended drums, lithe and instantly recognizable. It was a message. It said, "What you take without thinking is more important than what you are willingly given."

Note: I googled "I wanted to be told what to do," and this image came up, is where this odd little story came from.

Jeshua and the final act

He knew it was going to happen as soon as he walked in the door and saw her there. She was standing by the table in her blue dress and she hadn't gotten Timba from school yet. In the space of a second he felt hot, then cold, then nauseous, and then that it was absolutely imperative to keep her from saying whatever it was she was about to say.

He opened his mouth and brought up a hand sharply, but she was already talking. "I had a vision," she said, her head tilted down but her eyes looking up, into his. She seemed to be speaking to his shoes but then she seemed to be speaking to his chest, then his face. "As soon as they brought us on the ship, I saw it. That if I gave in to them immediately, everyone would be spared, but if they had to go to any effort to get the information out of us, we'd end up being destroyed. I don't know how. I just saw it and trusted it." Then she stopped talking and finally, slowly, stood up straight and faced him square with her eyes on his. She was completely calm and waiting for him.

His body was cold and his ears were hot. His tongue was thick in his mouth. He saw her there by the table, the blue dress taut over the shapeless middle, the slack shoulders and the dark shadows under the eyes and the coarse hair, and the nausea in his stomach curdled with hatred. This old, ugly, foolish woman. He could not stop staring at her graceless face. His teeth ground together and his lip curled up and he was so hot that his vision began to tint red, and he wanted to do something terrible to her. Netra was there in her crib in the side room, quiet.

"I was accepted onto the council today," he said, his tongue so thick he could barely get the words out. He had a bitter disappointment that he couldn't say it with triumph.

She nodded.

He knew he wouldn't hit her, and he knew with a sicker and sicker sinking feeling that he wouldn't disbelieve her. He knew she had chosen this day to speak because this was the first day in twelve years that he wouldn't have disbelieved her. But how close it was! The hatred for her was complete and animal, a raging culmination of everything he'd ever felt for her over the past twelve years pressed into one day; more. For her weakness, her betrayal, her cowardice, her age, her reputation, her lack of beauty, her lack of desire for him. And it still couldn't obscure that thread of knowledge that was so thinly but solidly there for him now, that she was telling the truth. He saw it like he saw her eyes were blue.

His hand was still on the door latch. For a minute or longer he could manage to do nothing but hold onto the door latch. Finally the swooning hatred abated a little and he backed out of the room, swung the door behind him and slammed it shut, and soon he was in the small one-windowed room by the dock without having seen where he was going. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He was sick with disappointment. This was the worst thing that could have happened to him. This was the worst thing. Everything he'd been fighting for for the last decade and a half, all in pieces. The world was upside-down. He'd known as soon as he'd seen her standing by the table.

And yet she had waited for him all these years... waited for him to grow up, he knew, thinking of Netra in her crib. He could barely wrap his mind or his heart around the enormity of it. This woman. Calla. A liquid warmth trickled into his misery; he was cracking open like an egg. And he had thought he was one of God's faithful! How he'd resented every sacrifice; the waiting, the awful marriage, every night in that bed with her and the compromise to his principles that Timba had represented.

His heart was peeling open. Feeling it he knew that this was what he had wanted, more than anything. To be shown by God what true grace was, to be shown what truth itself was. The fact that it was being shown that he didn't have it and she did, he knew, was immaterial. His hatred had passed and he rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. The world was so much larger than he thought! He thought of Calla, in their quarters, her slouched and shapeless body now poignant to him. Why would he have been so sure she stooped from the weight of guilt and not from some other weight?

She had waited for him.

He went back to his quarters, again without having seen where he was going. He opened the door and she turned from Netra's crib.

"I'm unworthy to be your husband," he said.

Tears shone in her eyes and she shook her head and came forward to take his hand. "Do you think I'm some kind of saint?" she said. "Do you know how angry I've been at God, do you know how I've hated my life and hated you, despite how everything you've done has been for our people? I've been so inconstant."

"But you kept faith all this time."

She laughed, which gave her beauty instantly and which he had never seen. "I did not keep faith all this time. If you could've heard what was in my head some nights... the only thing I did was keep my silence all this time."

And he was silent too, for a moment.

"It's unbelievable," he said. "And yet I know it's true. Because you were silent all this time."

She gazed at him and nearly laughed again. "How I've hated you."

"I'm ashamed to say the things I've thought of you. God," he called, lifting his eyes, "forgive me for thinking I would never see a true miracle." And then he closed his eyes and was quiet again and the disappointment and weight of everything began to sink in, heavier than before.

"So you're on the council now," she said.

He was going to say something about the impossibility of his task now, to not only change the laws about children and save the People from extermination, but to right the years of injustice to his wife and the entire system, the entire way of thinking, that had allowed her to be so scorned and shunned and hated since the day her team was taken by the enemy. Seeing it all at once now he thought it was impossible that he should be able to accomplish this, that the most he could hope for was to start things and perhaps his children would be able to do the real work. Because he would not be a successful and an acclaimed councilman as he'd dreamed. He saw now that he would be hated too.

"Dear woman, I need your help," he said.

Welcome

...to my new visitors, and to those of you who already know my fiction, welcome back. I started blogging fiction in 2005 as an exercise in writing fast, without the "internal censor" that is the devil of creativity. I chose to blog because I thought it might be more motivating to write knowing that somebody might actually see what I wrote. The stories and scenes you'll find below, from 2005 to today, vary widely in quality and in length; most are science fiction, and they allow me to toy with ideas about both the future and my own present. If you enjoy a story, leave me a comment! I need all the motivation I can get.

You say she left you an hour ago

"The only reason you don't want me to do it is because you won't let yourself do it," she said. "And you won't let yourself do it because she wouldn't let you do it. But you say she left you an hour ago, so why are you still taking it out on me?"

He stood there with the phone number between his thumb and his index finger, staring at her. "That's not the reason," he said.

Her eyebrows shot up. "It's not dangerous."

"You've got a funny idea of danger."

"You're more likely to die in a plane crash," she said.

"Who's talking about dying?" Kevin waited until she looked back at him, and said, "You're not worried about the risk to your personality?"

Amber snorted. "No."

A slow grin crept out on Kevin's face. He pushed the piece of paper into the back pocket of his jeans. He crossed his arms. "You're not worried at all. You want to be changed."

She lifted her hands and let them slap down against her legs, rolling her eyes. "Who would do this who doesn't want to be changed?"

"Yeah, but you don't just want enlightenment. You want to... not be Amber anymore."

By the time she had stepped up to him her face was blank, and her hands on the back of his jeans were rough, careless. "Why should I? You didn't want me as I am," she mumbled against his neck. "Still don't."

He shook his head but remained mute. His face was hot as she pulled away, the phone number in her fist. "So you're going to go... let some dirty Korean with a giant magnet jolt everything away."

"I'll remember everything. It just won't matter anymore. My agonies will be gnats. They say that. You and her, gnats." She was already turning to walk away. "And you still won't let yourself do it!"

He stared, and kept staring, as she walked. Was he immature for not wanting to make his agonies into gnats? "It's just that I don't want to change who I am," he called.

"No, Kevin. It's just that you're not hurting badly enough. Wait."

Been mistaken

Every guy I dated was a pilot. The first one, I went with because he was a pilot. The second one, I went with despite that he was a pilot. The third one didn't tell me he was a pilot. I found out later. The fourth one told me he was a commander, but he turned out to be a lying pilot. After that, I decided the universe was trying to tell me something. I decided to become a pilot.

I only met two other women up here. One looked like a man, and the other one looked like my mother, and I never made friends with either of them. It took me four damn years to get my wings and when that was done, and I started to fly ships, I realized that nobody had any clue what to make of me. Not the other pilots, not the mechanics, not the soldiers-on-contract that were all so bulked up their shoulders pressed against each other when they all sat down. Half of them treated me like a little girl and half of them treated me like an untouchable, and one treated me like his sister, which creeped me out so bad I kept the cabin door locked for the whole flight. Nobody's nice up here unless they want something from you. If you can't figure out what that something is, you better run.

After the universe told me to become only the 16th woman to qualify to steer a freighter, I kept waiting for some other message, like "Start the fourth war," or "Sleep with the commander to steal his secrets," or maybe "Steer the ship into the sun and sing 'Band on the Run' as it goes down," but nothing came. Not a whim, not a thought, not a peep. So I began to get angry. I started to take zeiger pills. I'm not one of those idiots who thinks zeigers improve your performance, I know they're just a palliative, but it's true they make you feel good and it's true they're undetectable, and so I flew one, two, three missions with my blood hot as runny lava.

"India," said Lincoln my nosy co-pilot on my fifth run high on zeigers. "What are you doing?"

"Flying like a zeiger freak, Lincoln," I said, tapping the engines up to full.

He laughed in a rotten way. "Okay, but you're not on zeigers. And you don't want them to think you are."

"I am on zeigers." I looked him full in the eye. How obvious can a girl be?

He twisted so his harness strap was cutting across his neck. "India... and you complain about people not taking you seriously?"

I stared straight forward again. "No complaining here. Woman of action."

"Just throttle down. I can't keep covering for you. You know some of the brass is looking for an excuse to get rid of you."

The anger mixed with the hot love in my blood in the most thrilling way, sending me into a wicked little euphoria that made the hairs stand up on my thighs and set my tongue to clicking in my mouth. All the controls looked a little green to me. The red had drained out of my vision. It had been seduced somewhere else. "Do they think I'd ever do anything to endanger a ship full of..." I fished around in the soup. "...aristocrats and mercenaries?"

"And volunteers? No, not dangerous, they don't think that." He twisted in his harness again. "They want to think you're incompetent. And lately you're not doing very much to dispel that impression."

Anger is like a warm milkshake sometimes, so sweet and thick I can hardly stand it.

He said, "You're not exactly fitting in."

"You're not exactly pilot material yourself," I said, hearing the words come out of my mouth more than saying them exactly, wanting to giggle at my own childishness. I didn't giggle but I did grin.

Lincoln stared straight forward. Through the blur of the zeigers he looked like a rock star, a lit-up mop-haired boy with shiny lips. I drummed my middle finger on the engine lock. These things, these pills, are absolutely the hail and hallelujah for cancer, and if I'm not cancer, a lump of unwelcome matter in the midst of all these men, then what am I?

"You're not on zeigers," he said. "I wish you'd stop trying to get attention. Just do your job. You don't think I get sick of them sticking me with you? Don't you know how everyone sees you?"

"The universe told me to do this," I said.

Lincoln sat there a few seconds then flipped open the cover for the radio.

"And if it isn't going to tell me what to do next," I said, "I'm going to steer this ship into the sun. The universe owes me that."

"The sun is 50 AU from here."

"Five minutes," I said. "If I don't get a sign in five minutes, we're all going down." I was happy because my body felt so good and my mind felt so loopy and supple, but I knew I wasn't happy.

"CT-789, this is CR-990, come in," said Lincoln into the radio.

Jarrod was my first boyfriend. He'd wanted to be a pilot because he thought they had the hardest training. He gambled so much he sold my car to pay a debt, and I called the police and then I dumped him. Micah was my fourth boyfriend; he'd wanted to be a pilot so he could make commander. He cheated on me with another girl, and then he dumped me. Harry was my third boyfriend. He wanted to be a pilot because his father wanted him to. He was a doormat and I dumped him. Skylar was my second boyfriend. He wanted to be a pilot so that he could defend our people if the fourth war came, but he also wanted to be right and punched me in the face when I took that away from him. Then he tried to force my pants off. Then he dumped me. I was as humiliated then as I am ten years later.

"Lincoln. Zeigers don't do anything. They just make you feel good."

"Shut up, India," he said, waiting on the radio. "The crazy act might have gotten Boomer a medal, but it's not doing anything for you."

"Five minutes up," I said. I reached up and shut down the engines. It got so quiet I could hear my red blood cells banging against each other.

When I didn't say anything else, he said, "Some people just aren't cut out to be pilots." His shiny lip curled a little. I saw it.

"I might have been mistaken," I said. "Been mistaken before. But I don't think I was. Maybe it's the pills talking but I still think I was right," I said. That the universe wanted me to be a pilot. But our leaders didn't and they were coming to rectify their mistake. Clap me in irons.

"Give me a break," he said to the control board. "Pretend to be doped out on painkillers but you won't just admit you're not cut out for it."

"Give me a break," I said.