I Have Become Accustomed To Rejection

I went and saw Takers on Monday evening. I could not resist. Also, the movie was $5 and when the ticket lady told me this I said, “So it’s like free then.” She looked confused but whenever something feels like a bargain, I like to say it’s free even if I have to exchange some money. It makes me feel like it’s an even better bargain. Try it some time. Anyway, the movie looked terrible and I cannot resist a terrible movie. I loved Takers. I LOVED IT. It was thoroughly entertaining and one of the more consistently terrible movies I’ve seen in recent memory. It was very slick looking with some fantastic action sequences. The only time the movie wasn’t great was whenever an actor decided to speak or when the production team interrupted the mayhem with some sad little strands of plot.

It took four people to write the Takers screenplay which is always a good sign. Anytime more than two people write a screenplay, a movie is guaranteed to be full of face acting. Takers was no exception.

Trivia for a cocktail party: Morris Chestnut was one of the producers. Oh yeah. You are welcome.

Another aside: There were some people in the theater who decided to narrate the film and add commentary such as, “Oooh he fine,” and I thought, “Oh stereotypes, must you always be grounded in truth.” I was going to scold the young’uns but the desire to do so made me feel old which thrust me into a midlife crisis. This all happened over the course of five minutes.

Takers has one of the most random casts ever assembled. Every “hey! it’s that guy!” was in this movie. Nothing shocked me more than seeing young Annakin Skywalker on the screen looking as pale and waifish as ever. What a fascinating career choice for Hayden Christensen. He was joined by Paul Walker, Idris Elba, TI, Matt Dillon looking aged, Michael “Pretty Eyes” Ealy, that young man who likes to beat women and then complain when no one buys his shitty records, the black lady from Without a Trace, Jonathan Schaech (like, really?), the guy who played the captain on 21 Jump Street, and Zoe Saldana whose only task throughout the movie was to look thin, beautiful, and perfectly complected the few times she graces the screen. She acquits herself well.

A note about Paul Walker: He is fine. He loves to act in movies with black people. I made that theory up a couple years ago and am pretty obsessed with it now. There’s not a lot of evidence to support this theory but it sounds good and sometimes that’s all a theory needs. So. Paul Walker LOVES to act in movies with black people. He’s such a curious fellow. He is quite good looking but he cannot act. He has the most bland voice and when he speaks, he can never fully round out his words which only makes him sound like more of a dullard than he looks. He is also incapable of vocal inflection. He lacks vocal range. Paul Walker gives one the impression that it would be best to pat him gently on the head and say, “There, there. Just be quiet and look pretty.” Paul Walker is also an indiscriminate face AND volume actor. That is, instead of acting normally, he relies on his face and modulating the volume of his voice to convey emotion, intensity, and whatever else might be required in a given movie scene. He does look very good in a suit and he does love to act in movies with black people so I can live with most of his flaws.

A note about Idris Elba. I have an irrational, completely unfounded hatred of Idris Elba. His head is shaped strangely. I call him coconut head. I don’t find him attractive. But this isn’t about looks. Who am I to judge? I mostly hate Idris Elba because he is an overactor. He uses his size and imposing presence to chew up scenery like he’s on a daytime soap opera which would be fine BUT. That’s not the worst of it though. I especially hate how he brings a certain sanctimony to almost every role he plays as if every word he utters is the most important word that has ever been spoken by an Actor with a capital “A.” Any time I see Idris Elba on the screen I want to punch him in the face 111 times. In Obsessed, he drove me so crazy I tried to use my brain power to insert myself into the movie so I could run him over with a car. I failed. I haven’t fully gotten over that. Whenever he appeared on screen in Takers, I tried to block the trauma out. What a smug bastard.

A note about Zoe Saldana. I see you. You will never be one of the people! I could go on forever. Once I saw she was in this movie, I immediately texted my youngest brother some key lines from Avatar.

A note about Chris Brown. He is a douche bag. I hate his face. I HATE HIS FACE. That little abuser and his catchy songs make me crazy. Let’s set aside the fact that he’s a woman beater who is also unrepentant because frankly that’s all we really need to know about this man child.  He also can’t act and what makes me so sick to my stomach is that you can totally tell he thinks he can. Anytime he’s in a movie, he has this smugness about him as if he is doing something profound with the one-dimensional, reductive, piece of shit roles he is offered. Why do singers/rappers try to act? Why do actors try to sing? Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? Why can’t people simply do one thing well? I want to punch him in the face too. I also want to kick him in the nuts seven times. Why seven? I used a complex calculous to arrive at this figure. I can’t really explain.

I didn’t really know who TI was but the loud, annoying students (ahem) in the row in front of me discussed his fineness, fineness, and fineness, at length so I’m pretty clear now that TI is, well, fine. Let me clarify though. I know who TI is. I listen to a couple of his songs and I know he went to jail. I do live in the world. I just had no idea what he looked like. Personally, I wouldn’t give him the time of day nor would he I. Our enmity would be mutual and thank goodness for that. I will give him credit though, for not tattooing his face. It’s weird that this has become something worthy of appreciation but there are a few rappers in some kind of unspoken competition for who can ruin their faces the most. TI’s not in that race. Gold star for him!

So there are these guys in a criminal enterprise. I like to think of them as a girl scout troop. They’re a higher class of criminal, though, so it’s totally okay that they break the law. We know this because they wear suits and talk finance and have a private banker who flies their ill gotten gains to some magical Caribbean island where their money is washed clean and pure and therefore holy. The movie opens with a bank robbery and an awesome escape where they hijack a news helicopter which seems like such  fun way to spend an afternoon. Then there is a celebration because crime pays very well. Michael Ealy (Jake) proposes to his hot girlfriend Zoe Saldana (Lily) who is not required to speak. She just smiles and holds her tiny little hand out to receive her massive diamond ring. She doesn’t express much joy. She has dead eyes. It’s weird and creepy but hey, they ring is gorgeous, and diamonds are the only thing that matters in an engagement anyway. DeBeers taught me that. Jake also has a little convo with his baby brother Woman Beater and they agree to buy their imprisoned father a house when he gets out of then pen in like a nickel. That’s five years in prison slang. Don’t worry about that random ass plot thread. Like most of the plot threads in this movie, it will never be heard from again.

Note: in the above scene, they mistakenly refer to prison as jail and those kind of inconsistencies are super annoying, aren’t they? THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JAIL AND PRISON and for a detail like this to be SO WRONG in a movie about crime is, well, criminal.

While this is going on, TI is released from the clink (that’s like slang for jail, right?). He goes to visit some ugly Russians and something happens that I can’t remember so it must not be important.

When Paul Walker gets back to his fabulous Los Angeles home, all modern slick wood and glass, TI is there waiting, drinking some of Paul Walker’s (who loves to act with black people) excellent scotch. TI got caught after a bank robbery five years earlier and on the day he gets out, he decides what would be the smartest course is to get right back on the horse that kicked him off. Good for him. Persistence is truly the cornerstone of any great success. Anyway, TI is all, “I have an awesome idea. Let’s do some more crime,” and Paul Walker is all, “Dude, you just got out of jail,” and TI is all, “NO probs. I had plenty of time to come up with a plan.” Paul Walker says he’ll take the plan to the rest of the girl scout troop and then TI goes to try on fancy suits and the girls in front of me swooned incessantly. It’s just a man trying on clothes, girls. Take a breath. It’s all make believe.

Back at Michael Ealy’s very successful and sexy night club, in a secret room, the girl scouts chit and chat about how rich and awesome they are. Crime pays! Paul Walker raises the topic of the deal and everyone’s skeptical except for Woman Beater (of course) who is very much into the idea of committing more crime. Paul had told TI to wait to hear from him but TI wanted to show off his shiny new church suit so he comes into the Boom Boom Room where the girl scouts are mulling over a new heist and this is when we learn that Lily used to be TI’s lady friend. DRAMA. [insert cat hiss] Some meaningful and potentially dangerous looks are exchanged. Don’t worry about this plot line either. It is mentioned again but not in any satisfying or meaningful way. Also, don’t get too attached to Lily. I don’t want to give it all away but Lily might not be long for this world which is just as well. She’s practically mute and soul dead and that’s no way to live, that latter condition.

The girl scout troop decides to get their armored car hijacking badge and begin to plan the heist for an indeterminate amount of money but you know, like $25 or $30 million, basically a lot. At this point, I should tell you that the movie from this point forward is basically The Italian Job remake with black people. And Paul Walker. [repeat chorus] This filmic plagiarism is so blatant that TI actually says, “Let’s pull an Italian Job.” I was the only person who laughed at that line and well, most of the other “lines” spoken throughout the movie. Takers was, what I have termed an unintentional comedy.

While the planning and whatnot is going on, there are two crimesolvers on the case. This is the movie of random ass subplots that quickly become dead ends. Rather than get tedious about it, I will just offer you a quick list of the sublots–Matt Dillon (one of the cops) as a bad father. Jay Hernandez (the other cop) as the father of a kid with some kid of kidney problem requiring dialysis. Jay Hernandez as a cop stealing drug money for his sick kid. Idris Elba as a man with a crackhead sister. Russian mobsters. An internal affairs investigation.The love triangle. The best part about all these dead end subplots is that most of them are conveniently solved with an untimely death. Four script writers = four times the awesome.

So Matt and Jay are trying to hunt down the girl scout troop but there’s no real explanation of why Matt, in particular, is so intensely interested in apprehending these criminals, I mean other than the cop thing. I hate that in movies, when the cop is unjustifiably interested in justice. Relax man. Crime pays.  Jay doesn’t really give a shit. He wants to sit around, staring at Matt adoringly, occasionally offering Yanni-like wisdoms such as, “Take care of the things that matter.”

Blah blah blah, big explosion, forced dramatic tension, gun fight, armored truck go boom,  girl scouts get money, Woman Beater runs runs runs and does lots of parkour. Woman Beater kills Jay Hernandez. The girl scouts gather at The Roosevelt and talk about their money and TI shows up and you can tell he’s about to do some dirty. He slips out to powder his nose. The Russians (who? what?) arrive and a massive gun battle ensues but its totes okay because the cops don’t intervene so they’re allowed to carry on in a blaze of drywall, down feathers and gunsmoke. You might call it glory. Annakin Skywalker dies and his friends put his fedora on his chest. Bless. Woman Beater and Michael Ealy head back to the sexy night club and they are surrounded by cops so they pull a Thelma and Louise on foot after finding Lily dead (don’t you dare cry. I told you not to get attached to her), and they die together, as brothers in an artistically rendered moment where all we see are their blurred silhouettes falling to the ground. Violence can be so touching.

Sidebar: have you noticed how parkour is randomly injected into almost any action movie these days? In Salt, at one point, Angelina Jolie is on the run. She’s heading down a fairly open sidewalk next to a building and for no reason she starts to run up the wall, launches herself off the building, and continues running on the empty sidewalk. WHY GOD WHY??? Stop trying to make parkour happen. Gah.

As Paul Walker is getting gas (never drive on an empty tank, kids) he chats on the phone with Idris and has a profound revelation. I swear to God, he basically says, “you know, I bet TI is going to try to steal all the money for himself.” The money, you see, is with Jonathan Schaech, the private banker, who is about to fly it to the islands from the Van Nuys airport. Idris totes agrees with Paul and he’s all, “You so smart Paul Walker! That must be what’s happening. I’m so happy you love to act in movies with black people.” More shooting, angry Matt Dillon shows up to avenge his friend only he doesn’t do shit but get shot and TI dies and Jonathan Schaech dies and Extra #34 dies and Idris is shot but that’s okay. He and his crackhead sister Paul Walker take their money and drive off into their happily ever after, carefully sewing their Armored Truck Heist patch onto their girl scout sashes.
That’s how you make a goddamned movie. I cannot wait to see Takers again. You know why? Because takers take. That’s just what they do.

To summarize: Paul Walker loves to act in movies with black people. Let’s make this happen, please.

I have many things to tell you.

I was rejected by The Lifted Brow whose editor likes the stuff of mine he’s seen online (but, and this was unsaid, not the stuff I submitted; that stuff sucks I guess). I will try again. I have enjoyed the pieces from that magazine I’ve read. The second rejection burns a bit more. It was a solicited rejection which is [insert choice vocabulary here]. I am really lucky in that I get solicited quite a bit but it is so hard to figure out what to send. Editors say, “I like your stuff,” but then I send them “stuff” and sometimes, it seems that they want not stuff that’s different from my extant stuff but rather, stuff that is the same as that extant stuff they vaguely refer to as “stuff.” Does that sentence make any sense at all?  The editorial staff loved the story in question but felt it read as autobiography. I found this criticism strange and frustrating because authenticity, for me, is one of the primary functions of good writing. It was also odd because the story in question is one of my few stories that is totally made up. Still, I accept the feedback. I don’t know what to do with it, but I accept it. They asked me to send another story and I will but I honestly have no idea what to send at this point. Most of my writing has that autobiographical aesthetic to it. That’s just… how I write. I have nearly nothing out for consideration. At some point this week, I’ll get off my ass and get some submissions out into the world.Hopefully I will also get some writing done.

The first week of classes went well. Freshman comp is, well, freshman comp. I don’t mind teaching composition. I enjoy it, even. Freshmen, at 9 am, are a challenge. I am up to that challenge. You will laugh at my jokes, teenagers! Just you wait and see! My professional writing class is a real kick. They’re enthusiastic and engaged so I am optimistic. My new media writing class is full of pre-law students and they’re pretty engaged but I don’t think they realized what the course would entail, that we would be focusing on both theory and practice. We’re going to be discussing Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto on Monday. That’s going to be a real treat. There’s nothing like a little light reading to get the blood pumping.

My office on campus is what I like to call an ice box where my heart used to be. I will be bringing a jacket (parka) to work next week. I refuse to complain though because I’m certain a temperature adjustment would make my office the Sahara and that would be even worse. I was in a colleague’s office on Wednesday and it was sweltering in there. I know I have the better deal. Writers? I’m going to come calling soon. There’s a magazine at EIU and it’s awesome and it’s only going to get awesomer so prepare your manuscripts! Submissions open pretty soon.

I’m going to have to adjust my mindset to function well in academia. I am struggling with the notion that we have to constantly quantify and verify the work or “service” we do. I was talking to a colleague about something I was going to help her out with and she said, “Oh I’ll give you a letter to put in your file,” and I was like, “It’s going to take me five minutes, it’s not a big deal,” but she insisted. I’m the kind of person where if you ask me to do something, and it’s within my abilities to do it, and I have the time to do it, I will. I won’t even dwell on it. I stick and roll.  Tenure is important for the preservation of academic freedom. However, there’s a fundamental flaw in the system. I probably shouldn’t say this but my god, the way the tenure system makes people look at their jobs like work makes me profoundly sad. I love what I do. It doesn’t feel like work. Having to collect little pieces of paper proving I’m awesome? That feels like work.

I went to a party at a colleague’s house in Champaign and had a great time. We had excellent conversations. I work with really friendly, smart, witty, sarcastic people and I’m not just saying that because they might be reading this. They suggested maybe I’m on too many committees. I said I think it’s going to be okay and if it’s too much, I’ll quit one. I need to fill my time or I will be so bored. This entry is pretty boring.

I spent Saturday afternoon playing Scrabble. Now, when you think of playing Scrabble you are probably thinking about a fun afternoon with friends laughing and making up words and having a jolly old time. The people i played with today are HARDCORE. They have a club. They use chess timers. They have special cases to carry their Scrabble sets which swivel on turntables. They keep score meticulously AND have rankings and little competitions like today, it was the best word using the letters D and L in honor of a club member’s birthday. I WON a $2 bill for “lodge.” Holla. I played pretty well. I won four games and lost two. In one of the losses, my opponent wiped my ass. She had like 482 points and I had 327. I was completely decimated. I was SCHOOLED. Lesson? Learned. I’m ready for a rematch. I’m going to take her down. I have a ranking now. I was charmed by the whole thing. Also, they were super intense. You know me, I crack jokes, I banter with wit. Well in the last game, I expressed glee over getting a tile I wanted, and my opponent, who waxed my ass, also schooled me that you’re not supposed to be like chatty and open about what you have on your board during Scrabble. Oops. I learned SO MUCH. I totes can’t wait until next month when the club meets again. Oh and one of the guys is like  a top 10 player in the country. I’m pretty sure he knows everything about Scrabble that could ever be known. He barely has to consult the computer to check words. I’m pretty sure he is a computer. Also, apparently “bassiest” is a word. Whatevs.

I’m going to a nearby city tomorrow to spend time with a man who has really nice eyes. There is a man who is not happy about this. When he voiced his displeasure, I said, “This is not about you.” Because it isn’t. I made it clear that part of moving involved moving on if I had to move alone. That wasn’t a threat. It was an observation. He can’t have it both ways, staying in his comfort zone and keeping me on a tight leash. That’s not how it works. I’m not moving on to anyone  but I can’t sit around making myself miserable. That’s how I spent most of July and August and frankly, I’m over it. I’m tired of being unhappy. Sadness requires so much energy. I spent the past year, year and a half in a fugue state. I had good reason. Some day I will write about it. I will say, “This happened to me,” and I won’t veil it with a story. I will find the right words to explain. But right now, I’m coming out of that fugue state. I’m breathing again. I feel a little less guilty when sometimes I stop and think, “I am happy.”  I don’t feel that exhausting sadness as sharply. It is there but it is muted. It is a sound I hear from another room.  I owe a lot of that to him and that’s hard to let go of or move on from. I owe a lot of that to a friend just for being herself and for being there even if she didn’t know she was being there. I think she knows or at least I hope you do.

This is a terrible segue but Charleston is the Jorts Capital of the World. I thought it was Houghton but I stand corrected. People in Illinois are very comfortable with jorts and why not? Two awesome things together–jeans and shorts. Hell yeah. Also, at the County Market people walk into the store without shirts on. I’m fascinated by that little grocery store which has, by the way, the most depressing meat selection. I don’t get it. This is the Midwest. This is Beefland. What’s the deal with that? I have seen some truly fascinating fashion choices at County Market including jorts, mullets, those tank tops where the sides are cut wide open, elaborate bears, unruly hair, cowboy hats, dirty trucker hats, and pajamas. Lots of girls walk around in pajamas here, as is endemic to college towns. I also like that big girls in Charleston are very comfortable wearing very skimpy clothing. At first, I was like wow but man, I love everything about that choice. Represent!

I want a unicorn. If you can make this happen, inquire within.

I watched a couple movies today. The Time Traveler’s Wife, I put off watching for a long time because it seemed so cheesy. Well, another lesson learned. The movie was amazing. I may have watched it twice but I will not admit to anything. I loved everything about the movie including the ridiculous plot, the inexplicable time travel and inconsistent logistics, the vague pedophiliac vibe of a guy going back in time to chit chat nakedly with his six year old wife, the time traveling fetuses, the absurd premise that a woman would be crazy in love with an absent husband, and by the end of the movie, I was bawling. I am the worst kind of cliché. When studio executives sit in their dark evil lairs coming up with formulas for minting money, they basically create a profile of me. It’s fine. I surrender to the excellence of The Time Traveler’s Wife and the Hollywood machine. How funny is it though, that he always travels through time naked? WHY? Eric Bana is impossible to resist. If he knocked on my door, I’d… pass out. When I woke up, I’d pass out again. I think he’s sublime.

I also watched Delta Force. There is approx. one word of dialogue used throughout the movie—America(n).America America America America. That about sums it up.  You’re welcome. I saw Delta Force years and years ago and loved it. Back then I was an uncritical consumer of popular movie fare. Chuck Norris? FUCK YEAH! As an adult, and one with a functioning brain, I cannot believe how much Delta Force serves as patriotic American propaganda. Seriously, that movie was out of control (awesome). How horrifying was it that the terrorists (Middle Eastern, of course) re-enacted the Holocaust on the hijacked flight? Like wow, that would NEVER fly (no pun intended) in a movie today.  The even weirder part is that the movie was produced by an Israeli film company. The terrorists in Delta Force were totes, “Bring us the Jews,” and the poor German stewardess (it was the 80s, they were still stewardesses then) was so sad and shrieked, “But I’m GERMAN.” I couldn’t stop laughing and feeling horrified by the whole thing. Then there was the Russian version of biblical Peter who kept shouting, “I”m not a Jew! I’m Russian! I’m Christian Orthodox,” and the other passengers started agreeing like there couldn’t possibly be anything worse than being Jewish, which, on that flight was kind of true. Truly terrible stuff. I had to accept I was watching a cultural artifact so I could enjoy the Chuck Norris, FUCK YEAHness of the movie. That man can wear a mullet, bless his heart, and in Delta Force, he pairs it with a moustache and beard. Still, every other word out of a given character’s mouth (be it the pilots, soldiers, terrorists, or passengers) was AMERICA! The only thing that differed was the intonation–either reverence or revulsion. My favorite part of the movie is how sincere all the actors were. Even Delta Force soldier #3 had an intent look about him as he aimed his sniper rifle at the enemy. Everyone on that set was committed to their roles. RESPECT. I suspect that there was a high incidence of spittle during the filming of that movie. I would have walked around in a sneeze guard if I were on the production team. YOU SHALL NOT SPIT ON ME, SIR!

I used to check Duotrope obsessively, like several times a day. Now, two or three days can go by before I check on what’s happening. I am always fascinated by how AGNI responds to submissions in massive batches. Bananafish is doing Editor Editions and to start the series off, they feature my story, Bad Seeds. My dissertation is finally done. It is 245 pages long. I found an interesting argument in all my blathering–we are failing our students and providing them with an impoverished learning experience because what we say and what we do when it comes to student writing are two different things. When I turn this into a book, it’s going to be pretty bad ass and I hope it creates a big controversy. That feels like it would be neat.

Let’s not waste any time. Let us away with the foreplay. I saw The Expendables. It was the most ridiculous movie I have seen in recent memory which is saying something given that I’ve recently seen both Twiblight and The A Team. The thing about these supergroup movies is that the only thing you’re really seeing is a bunch of recognizable people in the same place at the same time. Visually speaking, The Expendables is pretty traumatizing for those of us in our thirties or forties who remember these actors when they were young and less… deformed. As I watched the movie, I kept thinking, they should have called this Brief Conversations With Hideous Men. That basically sums the movie up. I don’t know what Sylvester Stallone has been doing to his face and body but dear God, we should stage an intervention. Steroids are a hell of a drug. Let’s start with his hands–they are massive. I know a thing or two about men with big hands and Stallone makes J’s hands look like delicate little flowers. Sly’s fingers are bulging sausages. I don’t know how he is able to articulate those meat slabs to do anything other than hold a cigar which he does, in this movie, with a surprising deftness. His face is at once stretched tightly and falling and his lips have clearly seen the injection of several toxins of a possibly illegal nature. His arms are thickly corded with muscle but not in a sexy way. Instead, he looks more like a creature Frankenstein hath wrought. His elocution skills are about the same as they always were so I was comforted by the familiarity of his thick drawl and open vowels and let’s face it, this is not a movie about dialogue so his speaking skills are pretty irrelevant.

They dug Dolph Lundgren out of whatever C-movie jungle he has been hiding in (USA, every night at 2 AM) for the past 20 years and his face basically looks like the cut up face Hannibal Lector wore inside out in The Silence of the Lambs. He was pretty sweaty for most of the movie.

Terry Crews, who I find to be hugely annoying, has arms the size of small cannons. If there’s a gun fight, his arms are taking no prisoners. Jet Li was in the movie for some comic relief as was a man with cauliflower ear who I am pretty sure is some kind of wrestler. There was a brief cameo by Arnold with a funny joke about his wanting to be president but my goodness, Arnold’s face looked like it was being stretched back with invisible fishing line. It made me so uncomfortable. He was also quite tan. The macabre ensemble was rounded out by Mickey Rourke who looks like, I don’t even know what but he can act so it all works out. The transformation of Mickey Rourke from beauty to beast is intriguing. The movie 9 and 1/2 weeks is one of the sexiest movies I have ever seen. Mickey was so hot in that movie with his shiny pouty lips and his perfect cheekbones. If you were to put a picture of 80s Mickey next to the new millennium Mickey 9/10 people would not believe they were the same person. It saddens me what he has done to himself. I imagine his dark transformation must fill him with a lot of grief. He’s working from a place of pain, obvi.

Three men in this movie look good–Bruce Willis who has aged naturally and gracefully, Jason Strathan who is not old, and Eric Roberts who simply has the best surgeon. He looks nicely tanned, smooth, debonair. He’d totes get it. Eric Roberts is so reliable. If you need a villain in Hollywood, you know damn well that there’s no point in fucking around. All devious roads lead to the brother Julia Roberts pretends does not exist. He was, as he always is, perfection. He was smarmy, irreverent, and quite open about lacking a soul. I like a remorseless villain.

I would talk about the plot but as with most movies (beat dead horse) there was no plot. Instead, there were random conversations in locations with poor set dressing followed by car chases or foot chases or explosions. There were approx. 33 words spoken throughout the movie most of which were incomprehensible because so many of the actors were afflicted by steroid neck.

There were two women in the movie, Charisma Carpenter as Jason Strathan’s sort of girlfriend and some hot Latina who was the evil General’s daughter. The general (imagine me pronouncing this HENERAL with a lot of throat spit) is evil, not the daughter, in case that wasn’t clear. See, there’s a made up island, Vilena, vaguely located in “the gulf.”  What gulf? Who cares. They speak Spanish there and there are maybe 3,000 people living there according to estimate by The Expendables. The Expendables are a bunch of guys who know each other and ride motorcycles and kill people. How did they come to know each other? WHO CARES! Stop asking questions that make sense. They shoot big guns and blow things up and make unwitty quips. Dolph has gone crazy from the mayhem so he’s a drug addict and they don’t trust him so they stop taking him on “missions” and his poor feelings are hurt so he betrays them only he gets back in their good graces at the end and everyone hugs it out.

Sidebar: Jason Strathan’s girlfriendish person got tired of waiting for him to come around. He didn’t call her for a whole month OMFG MEN! She took up with a guy who has asshole written right on his forehead and Jason warned her but Charisma wouldn’t listen and then a couple minutes later, and I predicted it, she had a big terrible bruise on her face and Jason Strathan ( I love saying his whole name) went and beat the tar out of the bad boyfriend and his basketball playing buddies and then he basically told Charisma, “I told you so,” by saying, “That’s what I do for a living. I’m not perfect but I’m a good man.” And a serial killer, but that’s just a detail, right? Right. Murder is okay if it happens for pay. Write that down. Charisma got on the back of his motorcycle, and it was all very romantic if romantic means absurd and ridiculous and a little creepy. We never see her again. She literally had five minutes on screen but she looked great, so there’s that.

Anyway, Bruce “The Man” Willis, or my father’s favoritest actor in the whole wide world, he comes to The Expendables with a job–kill the HENERAL, so Sly and Jason go to suss out the situation and they meet the hot Latina and they encounter some soldiers and basically kill an entire unit with their bare hands and then they leave and Sly is just plagued with the memory of the hot Latina who uttered maybe five random sentences that gave us very little clarity. That’s enough for Sly.

The HENERAL he delivers his lines terribly. He’s that guy you see in a bunch of movies, playing ethnic roles. He was in Oz where he was some kind of troublemaker. Half the time, he utters these lines that are clearly meant to be significant but they are delivered like after everyone else has exited stage right so his sad little line is left, hanging in the air and its so uncomfortable you have to look away.

There’s a profound moment with Mickey Rourke that turned out pretty well. He’s hideous but he wears it well and wisely.

Before The Expendables return to the island, the hot Latina is tortured and then Sly saves her and they blow EVERYTHING up. Seriously, there was like nothing left of pobre Vilena by the time The Expendables were done. That’s basically it. Seriously.

Moral of the story: bad things happen to men without the love of a good woman.

I was rejected by Red Fez who said, “It’s pretty good, a style that we like but could use tightening a little.” They actually have a weirdly passive aggressive rejection message. They say, “Right or wrong, we have decided against using your work in our next issue,” and “Having said that, we’re just one publication with one opinion. In the end we can’t help but publish what we like. We could be wrong about your piece and it wouldn’t be the first time.” Now, as an editor, I understand where they are coming from by saying look, it’s not you, it’s us, don’t take it personally, but is all that really necessary? We’re all adults. No is no. You don’t like a given story or poem, fine. The world continues to turn. If writers have a problem with that, it’s them not you. Editorial correspondence is endlessly fascinating to me.

Todd Keisling was kind enough to feature me on his blog. I answer some questions. Sheldon Lee Compton was also kind enough to invite me to write about writing for his fantastic blog Bent Country. There is so much kindness in the world. Also, at Barrelhouse, I write about my hatred of the third dimension.

I have been a little reckless and it has been pretty fantastic. I have decided upon my fall office hours that students won’t attend where I will “work” if to work is to play Prolific or Lexulous on Facebook or otherwise use the Internet in the way God intended. I endured a two day faculty orientation that was clearly well-intended but deeply troubling in ways I want very badly to articulate for you. There was the diversity session that as such sessions are wont to do approached diversity in fairly reductive, limiting ways. There was a session on the millenial student that constructed a mythological student who can barely function or communicate and a session on incorporating video pedagogically that felt… dated and introductory. The academy has to stop treating YouTube videos like some kind of pedagogical revelation. Teachers have incorporated different media into their classes forever. It’s simply the type of media that changes. As I am going to tell my students on the first day of my new media writing class, new media is in fact not new. I don’t think there’s an easy way to do a faculty orientation with so many faculty coming to the sessions from such different places, with very different levels of experience, and academic interests. I bear no ill will toward the organizers but it was largely an utter waste of time that bordered on insulting. New faculty need to know the basics–where do I get my key? How do I check my e-mail? How do I teach in the computer lab? Where do I park? What about my ID card? Benefits? All these things I figured out for myself, as I should, I’m an adult with a bunch of letters behind my name, but it would have been nice to have a little pamphlet on the more logistical aspects of getting started.  I mean really. It took me 8 days to get into my voicemail where I found a message from my BFF dated 8/10. There was critical information about pancakes in that voicemail message.

I was supposed to go home this week but that trip will be delayed by two weeks or so. That did not go over well back home. There was a tone in his voice when I delivered the news. I know his tones. He normally handles unexpected news well. I once told him something that surprised both of us. I told him while we were sitting on my back porch on my landlady’s yellow metal furniture. He was out there smoking and I brought him a beer. This was during the days I only saw him at night. He would come over to watch television while I worked and then we would retire to the bedroom. I made it clear I couldn’t entertain him. He ignored that.  He liked to watch me on my laptop, how my face changed depending on what I was doing, how sometimes I laughed like I was reading about the best secret, how he wanted to know that secret. Sometimes, he would take my laptop from me and stand on the coffee table and hold it over his head and I would pretend to be angry and then he would run to another room and hide the laptop and when he came back I would give him my undivided attention. He liked that too.

On the porch, it was October and cold and the air was crisp and smelled of fall. After I handed him his beer, I sat on the long bench, one leg pulled under my body. It had been a long day filled with the deliberate consideration of difficult decisions. I was tired and he could see it. He took a long sip of his Bell’s Pale Ale and leaned toward me, resting his elbows on his knees. He said, “You look tired,” and I shrugged and tried to swallow the unbearable nervousness in my stomach. My hands started shaking so I sat on them, took a deep, almost painful breath. It would snow soon and the snow wouldn’t stop for months. I made mention of the weather. He said, “Is that what’s really on your mind?” This was during the days when I underestimated him and he knew it and still he stayed.

I told him what I needed to tell him, and I spoke in a tight, nervous voice, talking so fast that each word was mostly indistinguishable from the next. I tried to ignore the joy beating beneath my breastbone. I said, “I don’t know what to do,” and I said, “This doesn’t have to be your problem” and he said, “I hate how you always think the worst of me. I hate how you always decide how something’s going to go before it happens.” He stubbed out his cigarette and waved away the smoke hovering around us. He sat on the bench next to me and pulled one of my hands from where it was tucked beneath my thigh. He held the palm of my hand against his chest and said, “I am a steady man.” I curled my fingers, taking hold of his t-shirt. I remember it said something vulgar that made me laugh when I had let him into the apartment earlier.  ”Don’t make me love you.” I started shivering and he pulled me close, wrapped his arms around me. He said, “I’m going to take care of you no matter what,” and I could tell from the tone in his voice he was making a promise to me, to us and I knew he would not break that promise. I know his tones.

I was driving on dark, twisty country back roads the other night. I was alone. I had just been somewhere unexpected and was making my way home. There were no other cars. The narrow, barely paved road was flanked on either side by deep and endless rows of corn, standing tall, ready to be harvested. It was a bit frightening and a bit lonely. I started to worry about whether or not I would make my way to some landmark I recognized, something I could hold on to.  For some reason I decided to look out my window. The sky was so full of stars I felt like I was seeing every star God ever thought to create. I told you that part. What I did not tell you is that  looking into those stars, that breathtaking night sky, it made me think of you.

I was rejected by Smokelong Quarterly. They sent me a nice note saying they tried to make room for my story in the next issue but alas. That’s kind of frustrating. SLQ is my writerly grail. No matter what I send, they reject me. I will never have a story accepted by them. These are dark days. Hope wanes.

A meditation on sweatpants. My sister in law had a baby. The baby is awful cute. Yesterday, I ate one of the baby’s tiny toes with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Meanwhile, I’m watching my nephew who has two football practices a day. This means I have to drive him to practice, drive home and wait but not have enough time to really get anything going, go pick him up, try and accomplish something in between practices, take him back to practice, return home, wait but not have enough to really get anything going, go pick him up, maybe put some food into him and see that he doesn’t like die or anything  and then he wants to like talk to me and by talk I mean try to win some kind of award for the number of words that can be spoken at a given time and then he’s all, “let’s play video games” or “can we have a Nerf gun war in the basement” or “smell my fart” and I’m thinking “can I pay you to stop talking for about five minutes so I can think even though I love you very much” and one day of that has rendered me basically catatonic. Anyway, you know how popular culture caricatures moms who wear sweatpants? This morning, at 5:30 AM (OMFG) when I got up to begin the second day of transportation slavery (which I am happy to do), I thought, “I cannot muster the energy to zip and button. I simply cannot.” I put on sweatpants to leave the house for something other than going to the gym. I was horrified and then I entered a state of resignation and then I achieved acceptance and finally, pride that I had managed to brush my teeth and put on clothes and drive my car at a time when people shouldn’t have to be awake. It has been a busy morning. I am ready to have a child. Fate has… intervened thus far but I think I could do okay with the parenting thing. I also know, however, that I’m going to require a significant support staff in addition to my baby daddy because the amount of work required to deal with little humans, and working, and all the other life things required of a person, is just too much. I feel like I’ve been punched in the face 111 times after one day. I am weak. The interview question I am probably asked the most is, “How do you get so much done?” Umm, that’s EASY. I don’t have a kid. That’s how. I have so much free time. I don’t do nearly enough. I am wasting my free time. I know that now.  So the next time you see a soccer parent with unkempt hair wearing sweatpants, it’s not that she’s oblivious to fashion or that she doesn’t care about how she looks.

I’d write more but I literally have to get back in my car now.

PS. Yesterday, my nephew said, “Roxane, you’re my friend.” How goddamned adorable is that?

There are things I should be doing. I am not doing these things because my ability to focus is, well I don’t know where it is, and there’s no one to talk to, and no exciting news via e-mail and the Internet is strangely quiet and oh boo hoo, poor baby. I’m boring. It’s okay, we can talk about it. The brokenness of my record is no longer interesting. That record should be left on the front seat of a hot car in the deadening heat of high August, left to liquify into the seat filling the car with that burnt record stench and then I should have to sit in that burnt, liquified stench. I should have to sit there and let the fumes consume me as a reminder of the fumes I make you consume by reading this blog. I’ve also been told that the one paragraph aesthetic is not ideal. Last night BRAD GREEN (PANK’s right hand submission reading man and my friend) e-mailed me a fantastic (really) poem voicing some feedback:

Paragraph Breaks

Are not evil, you know?

I miss those cute spaces on your blog. A space is like taking a breath
in the middle of an orgasm.  First you think you can’t do it, that to
slow down amid such tension would shatter the effect. To breathe can
feel like it’s slipping away, like you’re watching your daughter’s
fingers slip from yours as her bare feet dangle over the wobbling
bridge, but it’s not that way. That breath gives one the strength to
be better sapped at the final full stop.  Without the space the words
are like a soup with too much broccoli or meat. To cross the finish
line so drained leeches some power from the text. Give us a breath.
Just one, at least. A quick insuck gasp. It’s torture, I tell you,
torture to keep tickling the same spot.

That’s both sexy and sentimental, right? So fine, paragraph breaks. I’ll work on it. I love commentary in the creative form. The thing is I just start writing. There’s no planning or thinking. It comes out of me in one breath so that’s how it reads.

I have a story in the Hint Fiction issue of Wigleaf which also includes words from David Erlewine, Donora Hillard, Michael Martone and others. My story is called, “I Know Things About the Girls Next Door.”

There is a temperature measuring thing, a thermostat, in my office but it cannot be controlled. It’s like the Hotel California. Look:

I don’t know why the picture is sideways. Tilt your head to the left, you’ll be fine. I could really use a map of this building. I spend an embarrassing portion of my day looking for the bathroom. I have some kind of short term memory issue where the location of the bathroom is always a mystery. Oftentimes, I just go down to the second floor where I know there’s a bathroom. It’s a hothouse of a place, humid and foul smelling, badly in need of an architectural update. When I had my campus interview, there was the biggest bowel movement I have ever seen in my whole life resting quietly in the bowl of the first stall. I literally gasped aloud when I saw it. There is some trauma there. Every time I go to that bathroom now, I’m quite tense and I judiciously avoid that stall. Bad things happened there.

This week has been trying. I haven’t slept much–my old bedroom didn’t have windows which was annoying but a blessing because it made the room pitch dark. This was useful because after waking up at 6 am to send J off to work, I could fall back asleep without having to deal with the sun  My new bedroom has a huge window situation. We installed curtains but they only offered privacy. I bought some room darkening temporary blinds but they don’t darken so much as shade. All has been quiet on the writing front which I suppose is better than rejection so I am not complaining about that so much as wondering what’s going on with the many, many outstanding submissions wanting to be loved. I am sick of staring at my laptop. I am staring at my laptop because I’m revising my dissertation. I am very near the end but that last stretch is proving difficult. It is supposed to be difficult. I know that but my brain hurts. I do not feel smart enough. I have too much on my mind. I have too much to do.When I finish, I’m taking a little break, a couple days, to read and lie around without feeling stressed, and maybe take a little trip. Sometimes, my mind works strangely. Because I know I have this major thing to finish, and very soon, I am unable to really work on anything else so things are piling up. I took stock of all the things I need to do in the next three weeks and made a list using Google Tasks and it is ridiculous. I spent nine hours yesterday staring at the cursor in my Word document. I wrote 57 words. I opened another file and started a new story that is dark and angry but in a subtle way and I’m excited about it but I couldn’t focus because I knew I really needed to focus on the dissertation so I returned to staring at the cursor, struggling to pull my thoughts together in a coherent manner. A friend GChatted me and randomly asked about my dissertation and I was able to explain, in a smart, interesting way, what I’m doing. When we finished talking I returned my attention to my dissertation, and remained stuck. I do not understand why this disconnect is happening. To GChat. I made that a verb. I desecrate the English language. Every morning, when I wake up, I think pitiful thoughts I won’t bore you with and then I make a series of promises. I will eat healthy today. I will not be self-destructive today. I will go the the gym twice. I will not call you. I will not bother you via e-mail. I will not think about you too much or inappropriately. I will not obsess over ridiculous things. I will accomplish everything I need to accomplish. I will not drive North. I will not quit. I will take my vitamins. It doesn’t take long; one by one I break those promises. Every night before I fall asleep, I assess that day’s failures, and chastise myself for all the broken promises and I think, tomorrow, I will be better and then I start the exhausting cycle all over again. Last night, I started today’s promises before I fell asleep to give myself a head start. I will go to my office early. I will work diligently. I will finish the revisions. I will focus. I will not sit and stare at the cursor. I will be brilliant. I will be great. I have not yet gone to the office. I have showered so there’s that but I’ve mostly just stared at the cursor again. My probably soulmate (I have accepted this) sent me a box with explicit instructions not to open it until 6/29. That was supposed to be the day of my defense. That was postponed so I decided to wait to open the box. Then today, she said, open the box. I did. That box was taped up like Fort Knox. It took a goodly amount of effort to deal with the tape but it was totally worth it. I won’t tell you what was in the box but I will try to summarize it in one word: AWESOME. No, let me clarify. It was the perfect gift. I literally laughed my ass off and got very misty where misty is, maybe crying. I don’t deserve my friends. I am not worthy of you. He woke up when the sun grew too bright, too warm on his skin. He said, “I’m so sorry I fell asleep,” and I smiled. It made my face ache, remembering how to smile but it felt good too. In the bathroom, I shaved his face for him because he hates shaving. He sat on the toilet and I held his chin in my hand. I carefully dragged the razor along his jawline, down his cheeks, his neck. “You’re good to me,” he said as I used a damp washcloth to wash away lingering dollops of shaving cream. I said, “I try.” The plan, he informed me, was to do fun and interesting things and that is what we did. We ate fudge and rolled up our jeans and waded in the cold lake water. At night, I let him be gentle and good to me. When he spoke to me, I responded. He said he didn’t feel lonely anymore. He said it so eagerly my breath caught in my throat with my guilt and I stumbled as we walked through a garden swollen with beautiful flowers. He caught me by my elbow and I vowed to do better, to be better. We played golf and bought tacky t-shirts and ate more fudge and went to a house of butterflies where we were surrounded by hundreds of satiny soft wings. When a butterfly landed on his hand, he stilled, didn’t try to wave it away. I was struck by his contradictions, how on a Friday night, he could work himself into a rage and run after a guy who looked at him the wrong way waving a pool cue over his head and how in a house of butterflies he was so gentle a butterfly wanted nothing more than to hover near him. On the last night, we took bottles of wine  and a blanket down to the beach and he made another fire and he said, “We should talk about the future.” I was sitting with the soles of my feet pressed together and I leaned forward, touching my forehead to my toes, trying to relax, feeling my spine stretch slowly. “What about the future?” I mumbled, trying to ignore the way my stomach rolled when I thought about the long string of days ahead of us that we would be spending in vastly lesser ways than we had planned. He asked a question he had asked before, more than once. I lifted my head and crawled over to where he sat. He lifted his arm the way he does when he wants me to lean in to him and I did, tucking my head beneath his armpit. I took his hand and traced the letters, y, e, and s. over and over and I closed his fingers over those invisible letters, kissed his wrist and for a long while, I allowed myself the uncomfortable pleasure of believing I deserved a happily ever after. He said, “Good. This is good. We are good.” I nodded. I couldn’t say the word–I wouldn’t say no but I couldn’t say yes. To say it would  have allowed me to feel free. I didn’t deserve to feel free. He needed to believe I was fine, that the hardest days were behind us, that I didn’t still feel dry and hollow and cut up inside. I needed to give him that and so I did. I said, “Yes, baby. We are good.”

The bridge stopped working and for an hour, my phone rang off the hook and friends and colleagues from back home sent at least five breathless e-mails on the subject. What makes me homesick (among many, many things that I’m too proud to dissect here) is that the biggest, most exciting thing going on was the broken bridge and people stranded on either side, just wanting to get going, to get somewhere, to get home. I want to get home. Months passed, months of quiet and something that wasn’t quite sorrow because it was lined with so much anger. Finally, one day he said, “I miss your voice,” and I tried to smile at him but the muscles in my face had grown weak from lack of use. We were sitting in the living room, on the couch, watching television. He tried to touch me, rest his hand on my thigh and I pulled away. I had been doing a lot of that because it was too much to be touched gently and he didn’t have it in him to hurt me as often as I needed him to. I had to push real hard to get him to punish me, hit me, hate me, hurt me, to take me to that place where I could finally feel because I was close to breaking. He called me from work several times each day to check on me, urge me out of bed, and I would listen, silently, as he asked me how I was doing and told me about the things he was doing with his day. Every time he hung up he said, “Well that’s all I have for now,” and then he told me he loved me and we would end the call. Sitting on the couch that day, there was something in his eyes, something that let me know that if I didn’t reach for him, I would lose the best part of him not because he would leave, he would never leave, but because he would lose hope. I was not so far gone I was willing to lose him. I swallowed hard and I closed the space between us and I pulled his hand back on my high, tracing the scars on his knuckles with my fingernails. My mouth was dry and the first words I tried to push out were empty bursts of dry air like my body had forgotten how to speak. I frowned, swallowed again, and tried harder, tried to find my voice wherever it had gone to. I said, “Okay.” It was one tiny, nothing of a word but he smiled and jumped to his feet and pulled me from the couch and he started dancing us around the living room humming a country song and then we started moving together real slow and I let him hold me, I let him really hold me, and it was like the warmth of him made the blood start rushing through my body again. He said, “Let me take you away,” and I dug down into that place where my voice was hiding and again I said, “Okay.” That weekend we got in his truck and I didn’t ask where we were going. I trusted him.  I wanted us to go far, to leave behind his fires and anger and my emptiness. We drove for hours and crossed a very long bridge and parked the truck and got on a boat where he stood behind me and rested his chin against my shoulder and reminded me to talk to him. The boat took us to an island and from there we rode in a horse drawn carriage that ferried us to a grand hotel that was in a movie once, one of my favorite movies. He knew that. He remembered. The hotel loomed over us, bright white and majestic. I slid my fingers into his, shivering at the way our hands always locked so perfectly. I whispered his name and when I looked at him, he was smiling so proudly, his chest thrust forward, his head held high and I thought about how so often people say men are simple and how those people don’t really understand men at all. We checked into a room with furniture so pretty it looked like it belonged in a dollhouse. We ate dinner that night at a restaurant where our waiters wore tuxedos. We both dressed up. He wore a tie and dress shirt and a blazer and slacks I didn’t even know he owned. I wore a dress he didn’t know I owned and shoes that made me even taller and made my legs look good. I wanted to be beautiful for him. I had been ugly for too long.  After dinner, we went for a walk on the beach. He carried my shoes and about a mile away from the hotel, he put his blazer on the sand for me to sit and he found some driftwood and started a small fire to keep us warm. He had gotten so very good at burning things and taking care of me. I sat next to him, running my fingers through the cold sand and slowly, I started talking, telling him all the things I had kept locked deep inside. I couldn’t stop and he just listened. He didn’t try to fix me. I talked until my throat grew sore and my voice hoarse and he said, “Let’s go back.” In our room, I knelt next to him as he lay stretched out on the bed. I kissed his forehead and his shoulder and he whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you,” and I kissed his lips, softly, so softly and I said, “You don’t have to.” Later, I sat outside on the balcony, wearing his dress shirt, his boxers. I held my stomach where the scar, now healed, was still tender. It was a constant. I was learning to live with it. He came to find me just before the sun rose, knelt down, his hands on my bare knees. He said, “You should wake me up when you can’t sleep. I don’t want you to be alone.” I laughed. I said, “I’d be waking you up all the time.” He grinned and rubbed his stubbled face. He leaned back on his haunches and lit a cigarette. We probably weren’t supposed to be smoking in such a beautiful place but I asked him to light me one too. I told him a story about when I was a little girl and how even then I wouldn’t sleep at night and my father, who worked all day, he would stay up with me to keep me company, just sitting next to my crib as I lay there, quietly, staring at who knows what.  ”You remind me of my father,” I said, exhaling a long stream of gray smoke. “That’s a good thing.” I pulled my knees toward my chest and dropped the smoldering remainder of my cigarette to the ground. It burned slowly, the thin line of smoke curling around us. He edged himself closer to me, lay his head against my feet.  I wiggle my toes and pushed him away gently. I slid to the ground, wrapping my legs around him. He sighed and leaned into my chest, hugged my left leg. I ran my fingers through his hair the way he likes, slow, not a lot of pressure.  It wasn’t long before I heard the light hiccups of his snoring. I can’t sleep at all if I don’t hear that sound, if I don’t feel his breath on the back of my neck. As I held him, I felt something so deep and strong it made me dizzy–it was love and something stronger than love and an echoing sorrow. For the first time in too long, I could breathe again, really breathe. If I let him, he would always fill some of the emptiness that what we had lost had carved into me, into us. We stayed like that. The sun rose over us.

I have new stories in The Northville Review and at amphibi.us.  I love both of these stories and am really happy to see them out and about. In the Event of My Father’s Death originally appeared in Pear Noir 3 which is a really interesting magazine. If you haven’t read it yet, check out an issue. Of course, #3 is out of print but #4 looks excellent.  Then I wrote about angry Internet people and two memoirs. Speaking of things you should read, this story will trap your heart in your throat and wrap its fist around both of them squeezing slowly, almost imperceptibly until you pass out. After a very long wait, my furniture was delivered and last night, I sat on a surprisingly comfortable couch. It had been so long since I bought my furniture, I actually forgot what I had purchased. I was pleasantly surprised that everything fit in my new place and looks quite chic. I’m going to get a high narrow table to put behind the couch facing the television and I need some artwork, something vintage industrial I think, and I would love to paint some of the walls but I’ll just do all that in increments. This is the first time I’ve had a place I actually want to decorate. One of the first decorative elements is a headless baby mannequin. S/he does not yet have a name. The arms are magnetic and strong. I held it for a moment but that felt weird so I set it on the kitchen table. It might need an outfit. It feels a vulgar having baby splayed out naked like that. I got access to my new office today. There is a blue wall behind me so I cannot stare into it and imagine a sun-soaked, clear blue sky as I procrastinate. Instead, I am staring at a beige wall. The possibilities in that are… limited. I can, of course, rearrange my furniture but for now, I will let things stay as they are. I have a laser printer in my office. It is tiny and cute and I have printed some pieces of paper just on principle. I also have manila folders. I am playing office. If you were here, you could play office with me and we could pretend it was Mad Men and wear mod clothing and have high balls and then, we could do something imaginative involving my desk, something industrious. When we pulled up to the apartment, we sat in his truck for a long time, smoking cigarettes until the air in the cab was so thick and gray we could hardly see each other. My lungs ached terribly but I didn’t want to stop smoking. I wanted to sit there. I wanted to be still. I wanted to hurt myself, punish myself. He said we should go inside, that I needed rest. I said, “That’s not what I need,” and we both knew that so we sat there longer. I lit another cigarette, felt the lining of my lungs singeing each time I inhaled. Finally I told him I couldn’t go inside. He nodded and drove us to his trailer. His mother saw us pull up. She was always sitting or standing on her porch like a sentry, studying the landscape, warning visitors away by her very presence. She walked down to the empty land where his trailer sat as he was helping me out of the truck. When my feet hit the ground, a strange pain rose through me and I gasped, tightened my grip on his arm. I felt hollow, scraped out. He held me steady. He pressed the palm of his hand to my cheek, whispered, “We should go back to the hospital.” I shook my head. I looked up at his mother who stared at me with her lips pursed. She said, “Well, it’s probably for the best.” I tightened my grip on his arm, my breath quickened. She looked me up and down, said, “You don’t look good, best lie down.” I had no fight in me at all so I didn’t say a word. He told me to go on in and I hobbled into the trailer, sat on the small orange couch, turned on the television, left the volume low. His cat jumped into my lap and I groaned. Instead of shoving the cat away like I normally did, I let it sit on me, ignored the itch in my nose, rubbed my hand along its spine awkwardly. I’ve never been good with small things but I’ve always felt a kindness toward them. Outside, I could hear him, his voice raised and blunt. He said, “Don’t you speak to her. Don’t you even think about her,” and she said things that were shallow and cruel because those were the only things she knew how to say. I told myself I would never forget the things she said. I would never forgive her. When I got my fight back… when I got my fight back, she would know. I heard his fist against the side of his truck. He’s a fighter, my man. Slow to anger but when he gets there, to that place where he gives in to his basest instincts, and especially if he has some drink in him, there’s a lot of trouble and I have to talk him down or wait him out or walk away. I stood slowly, went to the door, leaned against it as I pulled it open. He was standing next to the truck, his fingers closed in tight red fists. His face didn’t look angry though. He looked old, used up and worn out. I said, “Baby come to me.” His fingers uncurled and he shook his head. He told his mother, “Not one word,” and I think she believed him, heard in his voice that she was about to push him to place where she would never reach him again. She said, “I was only thinking of what’s best for everyone.” There was something like sincerity in her voice. His body tensed and the muscles in his forearms bulged like he was about to force something evil out of himself. I said his name and I said, “Come here please,” and I was real quiet and careful about it because that’s what he needs when a real cold anger gets in him. He waved his hand away from his body as he turned and came to me. She looked in my eyes as I closed the door and even though I didn’t have any fight in me, I didn’t look away. I wanted to tell her, “He will always choose me.” If I had believed it, I would have. Inside, I got a bag of frozen vegetables from his freezer, it was corn and the food was so long gone the kernels of corn had frozen together in lonely little masses I could feel through the plastic bag. I sat next to him on the couch. I said, “Give me your hand.” The knuckles were scraped and bloody. I brought his hand to my lips, kissed each of the knuckles, tasted his blood. This was a ritual for us, something familiar, him wrecking himself in a rage and me trying to put him back together. I pressed the frozen bag against his hand until those lonely little masses loosened and then I held his bruised hand between my hands. For a long time, we sat like that, staring at the television flickering silently in the dark of his trailer. It was black and silent outside when he spoke. He said, “Let’s lie down, my body is tired,” and I said, “Mine is too.” The bed in his trailer is narrow but we fit, the two of us. We took off our shoes and our clothes and he gave me one of his t-shirts to sleep in. It was soft and gray and nearly threadbare. When I lay next to him, he slid my shirt up and he checked the dressing over my wound and rested the palm of his hand on my stomach just above the fresh scar. I wanted to push his hand away but I didn’t even though it felt like his skin was going to burn itself into me. He whispered things that were beautiful in the coarse way he makes everything beautiful and the more he talked, the more something welled up inside me until I couldn’t breathe. It felt like everything in my body was trying to get to the outside. In some ways, it already had. I started shaking and when I opened my mouth, little sound came out, just hot heavy breath and a high pitched wind of something deep. Tears slid down my face and into my ears and along my neck. I wanted to tell him I was sorry and that he should save his kindness for someone deserving. I didn’t. I wouldn’t talk for a long time. We didn’t know that then, that among the things I would lose, that we would lose, would be my words. I turned into him and I wanted us to stay like that, me holding on tight, his lips against my ear as he told me all about all the ways he loved me. The next morning, we went back to our apartment. He went in first, his eyes alert, looking for something, I’m not sure what. I held on to his shirt, curled my fingers through it. I would do that often in the coming months because it felt like he was anchoring me to the ground. The doors to all the bedrooms were closed. In the kitchen, there was a rust-colored stain near the stove and next to it a bucket filled with dirty water, a dry sponge. He said, “Don’t look at that. I’ll finish dealing with it,” but I grabbed his elbow, squeezed. I sat at the table, stretched my legs out. I was exhausted and sore and everything in me felt wound up tight. He sat an ashtray in the middle of the table, two glasses, reached to the top of the cabinets for a bottle of gin, stood on the tips of his toes. He poured a splash of tonic over ice in each glass and a much larger quantity of gin. The sun was pale and high and shafts of morning light poured through the window in the back door. There was a pen and an torn envelope on the kitchen table. I wrote, “I love you,” and slid the envelope toward him. He smiled at me, this soft perfect smile that made me feel something that didn’t hurt. We sat and we smoked and we drank, never grimacing as we swallowed the bitterness.