random acts of fiction

Random Act of Fiction: Old Grandpa

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“Open that old mahogany cabinet and see what’s inside,” she said, and I couldn’t say no.

Kitty has dust on her shoes and on her shoulders, but never on her hair.  Her hair is always immaculate, and none of us have an inkling why.

But inside the Mahogany cabinet, well, tht’s a diffferent story entirely.  There’s a world of Old Grandfather in there.  It’s like he left his loves and lives in one place, hoping no one would ever stumble on them, or hoping someone would.

In 1876 Grandfather killed a bear with only a pea shooter and two thin peas.  In 1912 he rode a balloon over the peaks of Kilimanjaro and rescued a downed alien craft filled with Fish-men from Sirius B.  In 1948 he blew trombone for Glenn Miller and no man in Metropolis could match his boning.  Then in 1954 he invented time travel, then went back in time and invented it again.

I see dust and old letters and a pile of journals.  There are old photos of beautiful women and beautiful photos of old places they don’t write about in books.  Then there are devices I can make no sense of.  I’m not like old grandfather.  I live in a tract home outside a town they call Palmdale, CA.  Honestly, it’s nothing to be proud of.  There are no Fish-men in Palmdale.

Kitty sits back and marvels at the collection of Old Grandfather stacking up on the floor of the living room.  “You gonna sell this stuff?” She asks.  Kitty wants a new car and Kitty wants a new flat screen.  Kitty is my wife, despite my better judgement.

For once I look her up and down and say  no.  “No, Kitty.  No we’re not selling it.  I’m calling a museum.  Or the government.  Or the government museum,” and two minutes later I’m punching up “Smithsonian” on the Google while Kitty slams pots and pans on the stove in the next room.  “We never have nice things,” she says with her pots and pans.

The Smithonsians will come and take Old Grandfather away from me.  They’ll enshrine him in a glass case or stash him deep in a basement where no one will dare disturb his greatness.  And I will stay in Palmdale, where I sell insurance, a necessary thing in an uncertain world.

But I will sleep in a separate bedroom from Kitty from now on.

And I’m building my own time machine.

Fuck that bitch, you know?

Random Act of Fiction: The Swiss Alps

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“For six years I’ve felt what I call. ‘The Void,'” he drank his coffee and spouted low.  Spouted, yes, but low so as not to let ostentation overwhelm intention and push him into the headlights of pretension.

“Why not in the Swiss Alps?” he asked on the heels of his statement.  “Why are we not sipping cocoa in the Swiss Alps, but sitting here by the sidewalk with shitty coffee?”

His partner shrugged, his eyebrows stirring like two St. Bernards lounging by a fireplace in the Swiss Alps.  The dogs shifted position, looked up to see if a ski ranger was waiting red-faced and earnest at the door to take them into the blizzard to rescue the lost ski-orphans, then fell back to the floor with a gallumph.

“It’s the Void,” he said again.  “I’ve tracked it in my body.  I’ve measured it, circum… Shit, what’s the word?  Doesn’t matter.  I’ve found its borders and I’m having a tattoo artist ink its edges on my back.”

“It’s on your back?” the other man asked.

“Yes.”

“Not your heart?  I thought it would be in your hearts.  That’s where voids are, right?”

“It’s on my back, in the same place — at the same level as my heart, dead center in my spine.”

“The heart’s to one side, isn’t it?”

“It’s a metaphor, fucknuckle.  Don’t you care why you’re not in the Swiss Alps?  Don’t you care that traffic passes you and that’s all you see?  Birds fuck in the air over your head.  The ground under your feet holds the bones of people who trodded this earth thousands of years ago.  Day crawls over you like a fungus, and night won’t even give you directions to the bathroom, much less her phone number.

“We get older and pass into the biomass, eventually, the only animals to have invented cocoa, and who appreciate the Swiss Alps — not simply love, appreciate — them enough to build structures perfectly designed for drinking coca in their presence, and you get stuck on a point of anatomy?”

The silence hung there like a broccoli fart.  Then the man with the St. Bernard eyebrows said:

“I just need to get laid.”

“Not with those eyebrows,” said the first man, and poured more sugar into his coffee, hoping maybe he could see the Swiss Alps in the bottom of his cup.

RANDOM FICTION: Sinatra Punched a Dog

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Sinatra punched a dog once, back stage at the Sands.  No reason for it.  He came off stage, shoes gleaming, stinking of whisky, and there was a cocker spaniel with a “punch me” look on its face.

Well, what’s a man to do?  You pay so much for the suits, you gota put ’em to use.  Dog-punchin’ suits, they were, and that’s what they called ’em from that day forward.

The spaniel slunk out the back, chewed his paws and cursed the Sands good, like only a spaniel can.  He passed to dog Valhalla before the wrecking ball came, but on the day the cameras recorded the Sands crumbling to dust, there were a thousand canine halos circling that site. yipping at the explosive charges and taking one last spectral whiz on the lobby carpet.

I rode a pick up truck fifty miles outside of Vegas, looking for a brunette whore I could really, really care about, call my own, shower with pancakes and cream.  I found her, but she had a spaniel in her; an angry spaniel who mistook me for Frank Sinatra.

Must have been the dog-punchin’ suit and the pork pie pants.

RANDOM ACT OF FICTION: Packs of Wild Gods

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Jenna’s dad was a magician who ran with packs of wild gods. Sure, they started as dogs, these gods, but two decades of running with a real practicing magician can do a few things for a canine. You rise a few pegs when you cast a few biscuit offerings to the Grand Canine Forces that drive the dog world ’round.

And so Jenna would pack up in the trailer, a 1989 Winnebago with no distinguishable marks or discernible qualities, to avoid unwanted attention, and they would roll out on the highway, going from town to town to town, the real practicing magician and his pack of wild gods.

Jenna sat on the pump at the gas station, thirteen years old, pushing on the bubble of adolescence.

“Daddy, “she said, drinking a Monster through a straw, “When do I get a boyfriend?”

“Don’t drink guarana drinks through a straw,” he said and dropped another twenty dollars into the tank. Mr. Buster, dog god of thunder, lightning, rain and wet fur, watched through the back window.

Jenna slurped at her straw anyway. “I want a boyfriend who can fly, wears long green pants, and plays electric guitar with no amplifier so only ghosts can hear him.”

“Some day,” said her father, “But tonight we have to play at the Kiwanis Club of Desert Pines.” It was The Great Zarkanis and his magical dogs. He’d even trained the dogs to cut him in half. “Then we will run with the gods by moonlight across the desert, far away from the Best Buy and the Home Depot and the Jack-in-the-Box.”

“I want a boyfriend who can make hamburgers in his mind,” she said, and threw the can away, imagining green pants running across the desert of their own volition, empty legs and an invisible torso bounding toward the horizon.

RANDOM ACT OF FICTION: The Chain of Hate

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Billy hates fish sticks, and fish sticks hate the horse you rode in on. They hate the Gorton’s Fisherman, that smug motherfucker in his yellow slicker, and the Gorton’s Fisherman hates his wife for not keeping herself trim after they got married. It’s only been three years and all she does is sit on the maritime couch watching The Bass Channel.

The Gorton Fisherman’s wife hates Jane Fonda for her legwarmers. Bitch. And Jane Fonda hates Ted Turner for releasing “Barbarella” after they got divorced. Ted Turned loves “Barbarella” and still jerks off to it nights when he’s traveling without a mistress in town, but he hates the New York Yankees for reasons anyone outside New York can understand intuitively without explanation. It’s just in your bones.

The New York Yankees hate everybody, but they especially hate the Boston Red Sox not only for beating them finally, but for not turning ruthlessly evil (like they did) because of it.

The Boston Red Sox love Jesus and Ted Danson — though they love George Wendt more — but they hate with a passion that stretches through the fibers of every wooden bat that “Dirty Water” song.

That “Dirty Water” song hates AOR stations for not playing it more, and AOR stations hate Radiohead because pale British guys are cooler than Carly Simon, and Carly Simon is somehow now even cooler than Sting. Fucking Sting, man.

Radiohead also hates Sting… (Can we just point out that the entire civilized world hates Sting and move on?)
…but Radiohead really hates the asshole who runs the Wimpy Burger by Hyde Park, because he screamed at Thom Yorke once — more than once — for taking too many ketchups.

The asshole who runs the Wimpy Burger in Hyde Park hates God for giving him a hairy back and a small penis, while God must hate the Jews or he wouldn’t have inflicted all that horror on them.

The Jews hate themselves or they wouldn’t have let God get away with that crap, but really, deep down, they hate Sir Francis Bacon for inventing, of course, bacon, and making them really resent that whole “no pork” thing.

Sir Francis bacon hates Sir Isaac Newton for out-Sirring him in the history books, but more than that he hates the Earl of Sandwich for creating a food item even more popular than bacon in the hearts and minds of the world. Even Jesus loves sandwiches.

The Earl of Sandiwch is dead, but if he were alive he’d hate Popeye for stealin’ his gal, that scurvy dog. Popeye hates Bluto or there’d be no cartoon, and Bluto hates his father for pressuring him into a career in the navy.

Bluto’s father, after years of therapy, hates no one, but he’s never seen the appeal in Mickey Mouse. And on that I can agree with him. I never saw the appeal in Mickey Mouse, either. I don’t think anyone ever did. We just take it because Walt tells us to.

Damn Walt.

He hated Jews, too.

RANDOM ACT OF FICTION: The Color of Brown

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Through the doors everything is the color of brown. The linoleum floors and the absolutely-don’t-fuck-with-me polyester pants on the fifty-nine year old waitresses. The amber light fixtures are just the color of coffee watered down, of bargain scotch in a plastic glass.

My waitress has the rock of ages etched in her face and talks like a beer frauline at Oktoberfest. Knockwust, batwurst and saurkrat. Do you go home at night to Strauss waltzes and German translations of romance novels?

I’m at the counter, which means I’m in between spaces, officially fallen though the crevices, and I like it. The lunch counter is the space in the cracks of America, a place where you can be no one and nowhere. No family in tow, no apple-eyed girl to hold hands or argue with in the parking lot. No, I am free, a dust mote on the dashboard of God’s minivan, stuck between the cup holder and the square wedge of plastic below the radio.