True story: "You're Going to Die"

Last night was the supposedly-happens-monthly-but-seems-to-happen-every-six-or-seven-weeks literary¹ reading, "You're Going to Die," at Mojo Bicycle Café on Divisadero @ Grove. The seemingly morbid title is nothing more than a reminder that life is fragile. So be yourself and don't worry what other people might think if you stumble through your reading because really it's unimportant in the grand scheme of things because one day you'll be dead and so will the English language. So take advantage of it while you can.

Lately I've been taking advantage of it to write² flash fiction, which gives me the opportunity to play around with writing non-linear fiction³ without committing myself to something for which I've got no time and maybe no interest (e.g. another novel). My goal with non-linear fiction is to write stories that begin at the end (i.e. beginning of the text is chronologically the end of the story) and then transition to the beginning (chronologically) and follow the story back to its end (with regard to both the text and chronology). So there is text at the beginning of the story that repeats itself at the end of the story, and here is the challenge: My goal is to write stories in such a way that it isn't clear until the end of the text that the end of the story's chronology was the beginning of the text. I want the transition to be invisible when you're experiencing it for the first time. Raise your hand if that makes any sense.

Last night I read, "The Houseguest," and although I didn't achieve my goal of keeping it at 300⁴ words or less—303—I'm relatively happy with how it turned out, though I did kinda stumble through one or two of the sentences when I got confused by my own handwritten notes. But whatever. Someday I'll be dead and none of that will matter. You know, I should probably just memorize the story next time. Put a little more effort into it.

1: Almost always poetry.

2: Ironically the entire rest of this paragraph was lifted word-for-word from a footnote in one of my earlier posts. Whatever. The time was right to upgrade the sucker to a primary body of text.

3: Not all flash fiction needs to be non-linear. In fact nearly all of it is not (i.e. nearly all of it is linear) but that's what I'm feeling right now. Non-linear fiction. Also, in the first footnote of this post I wrote that the entire rest of the aforementioned paragraph was lifted word-for-word from a previous footnote, but that's not entirely true, because all of these words here—i.e. in this footnote—are new, not lifted from anywhere, because, as much as I'd enjoy the option, to my knowledge there is no way via Blogger to footnote footnotes, which is why it's of course impossible for a footnote to have been lifted word-for-word from another footnote, and if there were a way to footnote footnotes, I'd probably footnote this sentence in order to make a comment about the fact that I probably shouldn't be so lazy as to use footnote as a verb. Yes. This is fun for me. So is writing flash fiction. You can read the rest of my flash fiction here, none of which I've bothered to publish until today.

4: It's generally accepted that flash fiction is any short story 1,000 words or less; however, I think 500 words is plenty, and too often writers of flash fiction use 1,000 words as a crutch, filling up the word count the same way a lot of readers last night (and at any poetry reading) will chew-up the allotted five-minute limit and try to spit out as many words and poems as they can. Personally I read most 1,000-word stories and think, "I think that could've been done in 400 words, 500 tops." One of the lessons I teach kids when I volunteer creative writing at 826 Valencia is, "Don't use words if you don't need them," but lemmetellyousomethingmyfriend: If a kid gives you a seven-page story, and you suggest maybe cutting it in half—because any writer will tell you the best editing is almost always accomplished with the delete button—they categorically will look at you like you're crazy, because why would I want to undo all this work that I already did. But it's cool. I didn't learn that lesson until I was like 25. These kids are ~15. Shorter is better. Unless I'm blogging, in which case I'll make it as long as I damn well please.

Flash fiction #3: The Houseguest

Larry sipped coffee, followed by a bite of toast, followed by orange juice, his daily routine of hot, crunch and cold. Today he’d also made tea: dollop of honey, spoonful of sugar, two fingers of milk. He’d offered some to his unexpected visitor, but she wasn’t in the mood.

It was quieter than Larry would have expected.

There was broken glass in the sunroom, adjacent to the kitchen, and Larry heard footsteps. He chose a knife, not the sharpest but the largest, and sharp enough, dull and wide. He tracked the footsteps, from the sunroom to the living room, past the den, library and bathroom, then back to his coffee, toast and orange juice, where he found the intruder.

Larry ate with his left hand, and gestured with the knife in his right, casually, like friends. “What in the fuck of fucks are you doing in my kitchen?”

She had cased his home, and explained that he was supposed to be at work, as if this made everything OK.

“When I was real young,” Larry said, “I thought prosecute meant execute. That’s probably why I never became a violator.”

“What?”

Larry ignored her confusion, and instead answered his teakettle’s screams, with a dollop of honey, spoonful of sugar, two fingers of milk.

“You want any?” he asked.
“I’m not in the mood.”

Larry sipped coffee, followed by a bite of toast, followed by orange juice, his daily routine of hot, crunch and cold.

“The signs. I’m sure you’ve seen them. Violators will be prosecuted? I used to think prosecute meant execute, and now that I’m older I think it’s a right shame I was wrong.”

Her confusion lifted, slowly, and seeing her dull reflection in the knife froze her body with fear. She never reacted.

It was quieter than Larry would have expected.

Flash fiction #2: The Bully

Jonathan wanted an iPhone for as long as he could remember, which was not long. He was only eight years old. The other boy was older, eleven maybe, but Jonathan was big-boned, and armed with the element of surprise, having stalked him for two blocks, from the alley at the movie theater to the corner with the bakery that also sold travel packages, and that’s where Jonathan made his move, quick and quiet and with violence. He planted his foot into the side of the older boy’s kneecap.

The film was rated R but Jonathan snuck in through the alley door, behind the teenagers who drank beer and smoked Swishers. He sat in the first row, and until the previews ended, he thought maybe the older boys would invite him to sit in the back and raise Hell.

Jonathan didn’t respond to the repeated thump, thump, thump, thump against the back of his head. Jujubes and Junior Mints and Sno-Caps and Milk Duds, and when those were gone, it was ice from the smuggled Rum and Cokes. Jonathan fought back tears but betrayed no emotion.

After the film, in the alley, and drunk on warm beer and cheap rum, the teenagers surrounded Jonathan and played pinball with his clunky frame, stopping only when spotted by a priest, the sight of whom made the boys scatter.

“You OK, son?”

Embarrassed, Jonathan nodded. He committed his eyes to the pavement until the closing credits rolled on the Fatherly monologue.

“Let that be a lesson to treat people well, boy. What were you doing with them older boys anyway? Stick with kids your own age, and not them bad ones neither.”

“Yes, Father.”

Jonathan peeled his ego off the pavement, and left the alley on high alert, swiveling his head back and forth and back again, and that’s when he spotted the boy, older, eleven maybe, but Jonathan was big-boned and armed with the element of surprise. He stalked the boy for two blocks before he made his move, quick and quiet and with violence. He planted his foot into the side of the older boy’s kneecap. He grabbed the iPhone and ran, stopping only to call Mom for a ride home.

Flash fiction #1: The Greek

Fat Tony’s crotch was sticky and stiff with wet semen and dried blood, but he was not uncomfortable. Instead he was distracted by the briefcase and pistol, a German semi-automatic Sig Mosquito that was ten percent smaller than its Sig Sauer sibling.

The weapon was safetied but his decision-making had not been. Only minutes ago he and Ice did lines of, well, ice, right off the bottom of the weapon’s magazine well.

Ice emerged from the dressing room, money in hand and void of pretense.

“Put that away. You make me nervous.”

Fat Tony slid the Sig down the back of his Dickies, awkwardly, playing the part of a professional but betraying his amateur status.

“Half back from the package. Two weeks, ten thousand dollars, zero excuses.”
“Where you going, honey?”
“Off to see the Greek.

Fat Tony suspected Dmitri was gay, but he thought this about any guy who stayed in shape and dressed well. Today Dmitri wore Prada loafers with jeans and a black tee.

“The job is simple, my friend.” Dmitri called everyone, ‘my friend,’ even Fat Tony, the sight of whom he found revolting. “Go to this address with this package and exchange this package for a briefcase. You know the drill but not the people, yes? Any questions, no? Good. One hour.”

Fat Tony arrived at the uninviting warehouse and climbed to the third floor, stopping along the way, cautious and curious and needing to catch his breath. There was no irony to Fat Tony’s name.

The ground floor was littered with discarded appliances. Washers, dryers, A/C units, refrigerators. On the second floor, plastic crates, wooden palettes and a Paddington Bear stuffed animal that had been there for God knows how long. The third floor featured more blankets and quilts than he had ever seen in one place, forgotten and dirty, and a loud television thirty yards away, in front of which sat today’s temporary business partners.

Wanting there to be no mistaking who he was and why he was there, Fat Tony held the package deliberately and walked slowly, but said nothing, saving his breath for the marathon walk of less than one hundred feet. He was ten yards away when he spotted the Sig. The pair of goons were still unaware, their attentions that tethered to the television, and Fat Tony’s footsteps muffled by the bedding on the floor. He dropped his package and lunged comically for the weapon, never thinking that it might be unloaded. Unfortunately for the goons it was loaded, and Fat Tony added to this misfortune by marching them down to the second floor, where he retrieved Paddington Bear, who bravely served his purpose as a silencer.

Fat Tony got a fresh shirt from his trunk and drove straight to the familiar Lighthouse, where he wasted no time finding Ice. He spotted an almond-skinned dancer with chestnut hair and eyes spaced awkwardly far apart. Ice noticed Fat Tony noticing the newbie. “She’s new here. We call her the Greek.”

TATTOOS. POETRY. FLASH FICTION.

TATTOO STUFF
Late Thursday night¹ I got my first tattoo. Or at least the first half of the outline of my first tattoo. I've got approximately five sessions remaining before it's finished. The outline² will take one more session. Followed by two sessions of shading with black and gray. And only then, after four total sessions, will George³ dip the needles⁴ in color. If you want to see a few more pictures of the outline as it stands today, saddle up your Internet skills and ride this link. My next (i.e. second) appointment is August 6. One or two people have asked me WHY: I find this question a bit passive-aggressively rude⁵—or maybe I'm just sensitive?

POETRY and FICTION and OTHER WORDS and STUFF
Thursday night is the fourth open-mic You're Going to Die⁶ poetry⁷ reading at Mojo Bicycle Café. Actually it's the third reading at Mojo. The first reading was in Ned's living room. I attended the first two and missed the third because I was out of town. It's supposed to happen monthly but it's been more like every seven weeks. I'll be there Thursday night reading a piece of flash fiction⁸ I wrote. In the next week or so I'll post two or three pieces of flash fiction I've written over the past few months. I've been meaning to do it but unfortunately have been too busy watching Brother Ali videos on the Internet.

MORE TATTOO STUFF
My buddy Shadow (aka pelechati) works at Apture and asked me to beta-test a new feature allowing users to create embeddable modules that display custom content. So I created one with photos of tattoos done by George Campise, and also a short video bio of the artist, who says, "The reason I think most people get tattooed—and this is going to be a generalization—but I think it's just to have a little bit of control of their lives."


1: It was probably unwise to schedule a nighttime appointment at Seventh Son, which is located at 6th and Howard, which itself is basically in the middle of Hell. Even during the day it's maybe not all that smart to be anywhere near 6th St. Especially between Market and, well, Howard. It's only ¹⁄₅ of a mile between those two places, but that two-block stretch is—flip the fraction, bitches!—a minimum five-times sketchier than any other spot I can recall off the top of my head. A few years back on Thanksgiving I volunteered with the San Francisco Food Bank to deliver meals door-to-door at the SROs that litter that area, and even during the day, on Thanksgiving, with a group of four or five or six or seven other people—granted, all of 'em were like 90-pound women whose fiercest weapons were polite smiles, but whatever—it was a fairly frightening experience. At the very least disturbing. One guy answered the door completely naked, strung out on God-Knows-What. (Actually God probably has no idea. There aren't nearly the amount of junkies Upstairs as there are on 6th St.) Another guy answered the door just a crack—lights off and room inexplicably dark even though it was the middle of the day—just wide enough to sneak his hand out to grab the boxed dinner, and his hand was bleeding from all five fingernails. Seriously. WTF. That was pretty much the breaking point for me. Now I volunteer teaching creative writing to kids. Hopefully bloody fingers in my future will be a plot-point and nothing more, and definitely tattoo appointments in my future will be scheduled to end sometime before midnight. Preferably before sundown.

2: At the very top of the tattoo will be Point Bonita Lighthouse, which is out past the Golden Gate Bridge and is the entrance to the San Francisco Bay. Also yet to be outlined is the backside of the arm, which most likely will feature more crashing waves and some rock formations. Some of the specifics are still in progress.

3: George Campise is the artist. He's known for his color work and skeletons, and of all the portfolio books I reviewed, he also does the best lighthouses. I've been working with him for more than two months now, and he's been professional and collaborative throughout the entire design process. The final design was a far cry from my original proposal. I basically told George the personal reasons that drove me to want the tattoo, along with the three elements that definitely needed to be included—skeleton holding keys, heart lock, something from the Bay Area—and said, "Listen, dude, I'm not an artist. If my ideas suck, ignore them and do something cooler." My ideas sucked. George's ideas don't suck. End of story.

4: Apparently tattoo needles are actually tiny groups of even tinier needles. Sometimes it's just one needle (I think) for the minutiae, but for the most part the outline is done with needles in bunches of three and seven. Or something close to that. Same goes for the needles he'll eventually use to color it in, although the individual needles in those needle groupings are spaced farther apart, which he says is why a lot of people find the coloring less painful than the outline, because the needle pressure is distributed over a greater surface area. Makes sense. Whatever. It doesn't really hurt that bad regardless. But when that needle gets close to your armpit, it basically feels like hot death, and I thought to myself, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! I'd give up State secrets in about three seconds."

5: Unless said people are inquiring about the story behind the tattoo itself—i.e. why this particular design—in which case my answer is, "Um, there is definitely meaning behind the decision but it's kinda personal. I'd almost certainly tell you but not via my blog or Facebook or Google Chat or Skype or smoke signals or mental telepathy or even carrier pigeons," and to be honest, most of the time it's relatively easy IMO to determine when WHY = WHY THIS PARTICULAR DESIGN as opposed to when WHY = WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? And for those times when WHY equals the latter, the only answer I'll give you is that it was the best choice for me.

6: The name is far less sinister than it sounds. The gist of the name is, "Dude, you might as well write some poetry and then get up there and read your poetry because someday we won't exist and neither will the English language." So take advantage of it while you can.

7: So far the event has featured mostly poetry but you can read whatever you want so long as it doesn't exceed seven minutes. Most of my flash fiction takes maybe two minutes to read. Three tops. I let the other minutes go to waste. Brevity is king, people. Can't you tell? I'm all about brevity. Seriously, though, some of that poetry just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and much of it is terrible, IMO, but in general I'm not really a fan of poetry. I don't write poetry and I don't particularly enjoy listening to poetry. I wrote poetry when I was in high school and some in college. But in the past 12 years I've written a grand total of one poem. I wrote it in Manhattan Beach a couple months back when I was with my buddy in the Emergency Room all night. He was sedated under a mountain of wires, et cetera, and his wife was asleep, so I wrote this poem using the Notes application on my iPhone. You like the brevity, don't you? Stay tuned and in 2021 I'll bless you with another poem. This one is untitled because I'm too lazy to give it a title. Actually, let's just call it Footnote #7.

Footnote #7
At dusk she arrived;
My new morning, divine
And inspired and inspiring.
I felt the way she moved
Me, unafraid of the dark.

8: Flash fiction gives me the opportunity to play around with writing non-linear fiction without committing myself to something for which I've got no time and maybe no interest (e.g. another novel). My goal with non-linear fiction is to write stories that begin at the end (i.e. beginning of the text is chronologically the end of the story) and then transition to the beginning (chronologically) and follow the story back to its end (with regard to both the text and chronology). So there is text at the beginning of the story that repeats itself at the end of the story, and here is the challenge: My goal is to write stories in such a way that it isn't clear until the end of the text that the end of the story's chronology was the beginning of the text. I want the transition to be invisible when you're experiencing it for the first time. Raise your hand if that makes any sense.

Mammy and Baby O!

TODAY I finished Infinite Jest for the second time, and I enjoyed round two¹ even more than my first reading. Mammy² here is reading it for the first time. She finished maybe three sentences before trying to lick her way to the ending.

TONIGHT I finished the summer tutoring session at 826 Valencia in The Mission, where I worked with kids on creative writing. High school and middle school kids from San Francisco. All talented and motivated. Evidenced by the fact that these Monday night summer sessions are 100% optional. What kind of kid spends his summer writing fiction and poetry? Answer. The kind of kid I wish I was. Actually that's not entirely true. I spent my summers cliff-diving and doing dumb stuff that I regret only marginally. And I guess I turned out OK regardless.

I'm bummed that it's over but it'll be starting up again in September. In the meantime I've got a chapbook³ of the kids' writings, "Parasol and Paroxsym!" To be honest I had to look up paroxsym in the dictionary. But the dictionary doesn't know what it means either. So I asked Justin, who runs the 826 Pirate Store and also the summer tutoring sessions and who also is primarly responsible for screen-printing and publishing the super-cool chapbooks, which you can buy at 826 Valencia for ten dollars. Justin described paroxsym as a sort of panic attack. Turns out he had the definition correct and the spelling wrong: PAROXYSMAL ATTACK!



Somehow I doubt anyone will notice the misspelling—not any of the writing students nor any of the writing tutors. Does that count as irony? If you look at the picture above full-size you can see the chapbook in all its glory, and you can also see me via the mirror in the upper left-hand-corner of the photo. If you're wondering why there is all kinds of girly stuff in the room, it's because it's my friend Lindsay's room. Not my room. Lindsay is one of the two girls lucky enough to own Mammy and Baby O. But I'm sure you already knew that.

TOMORROW I hope to learn whether or not I've found a new apartment for September and beyond, or if I need to keep looking. If you've read the footnotes⁴ so far you already know this. The same way you already know Lindsay and Lace own Mammy and Baby O.

Time to walk the dogs again. I'm out.

1: I'm not normally the type to read books more than once. I don't think I've ever read a book three times, and the only books I recall reading twice are three Kurt Vonnegut books (God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; Hocus Pocus; Mother Night) and Infinite Jest, which, to put in perspective, I'll at some point read a third time. It's that good. Seriously. It's amazing. Incredible. I almost can't even believe it exists.

2: Mammy is one of two Boston Terriers that I'm dog-sitting this week. They belong to my friends Lindsay and Lace. In September I'm moving into a new apartment. Where exactly and with whom I'm not 100% sure. I may move-in with three of my girlfriends: Natalie, Elise and Claudia. I've lived with Natalie once before in the past. For about two years maybe five years ago. One of the main reasons I want to move is to get a dog, so obviously that's gotta be cool with the girls. It's definitely a deal-breaker for me, though, especially after these past few days with Mammy and Baby O. They're awesome. I even geeked out and took a few photos. Partly because I was bored and partly because they're that awesome. I even uploaded a 30-second video of Olive to YouTube. Partly because the iPhone 3GS makes it that easy but mostly because I'm a huge dork.

3: The Moleskin book—also free—came courtesy of Moleskin. The company invited a bunch of us at 826 Valencia to write or draw creatively in an empty Moleskin. When we finished we exchanged the creative work for another empty Moleskin, with which we can do whatever. Mine will probably sit on my shelf unused for close to forever. Then Moleskin takes our creative works and displays select books—I'm not even sure where. Bookstores? Museum? Corporate headquarters? All I know is I had to sign a waiver granting them commercial rights to my story, which was about a man who is on the phone with his girlfriend, not really paying attention, the way we all do when we're on the phone—[and if you've read Infinite Jest you're probably nodding your head in recognition of the 10-plus-pages scene where he discusses the rise and fall of videophones]—and his girlfriend is the queen of a local parade, and she's upset that he stayed in the hotel room inside of seeing her at the parade, and while they're on the phone her parade crashes headfirst into a funeral procession, and he watches the whole thing unfold from his fourth-floor hotel room—and while that entire scenario sounds (arguably) childish and (definitely) implausible, it was a writing prompt, and those were the ingredients (i.e. parade crashing headfirst into a funeral procession) offered, and besides, I had maybe 20 minutes to write the whole thing—by hand—and lemmetellyousomethingmyfriend: Writing with a #2 pencil gave me hand cramps. It's been too long.

4: If you're curious why I write using so many footnotes despite the fact that it's obnoxiously reader-unfriendly, here is your answer, and you probably recognize it from childhood from whenever you questioned your parents, and I'm not at all trying to get all parental on you, I'm just saying: "Because I can," and that's the same reason I start independent clauses with conjunctions, which we all learned years ago is not cool when in the presence of middle-school teachers, so if there are any middle-school teachers out there, I'm sorry, and I promise I won't teach your students—if they're students at 826 Valencia, that is—that it's OK to do that, nor will I teach them that it's OK to choke your readers with run-on sentences (a la right now). But to be honest some of those kids can probably write better than you already. Because some of 'em are that good. And there I go again with (three-straight!) sentence-starting conjunctions.

Birdz N the Hood

Walking down San Francisco's Eddy Street is a bad idea. Don't do it. But if you do—please don't—keep an eye out for the star of my new iPhone 3GS production. Also take a minute to explore buddythebestcat, whose cat-impersonating-a-cop updates are reason enough to join Twitter.

Easy like Sunday morning

ONE: I'm in the process of reviewing another book for the San Francisco Chronicle: Jessica Anthony's "The Convalescent¹," published by McSweeney's and currently living on my bookshelf next to a book written by—excuse me while I throw-up in my mouth—Nicholas Sparks, whose website also makes me gag. Yes, I will read "The Wedding." No, I am not excited about it. No, I did not buy the book. No, it does not belong to me. Yes, I will put it off for as long as possible. No, it was not my idea to read the book. No, I am not embarrassed. Well, maybe a little. I probably won't read it on BART.

TWO: Today I'm gonna head to the Asian Art Museum for its Lords of the Samurai exhibit. Samurais are by default kinda awesome plus it's free plus I plan to read Shōgun in the Fall plus the Asian Art Museum is a 10-minute walk from my apartment plus I'm hoping the gift shop sells swords so that when crackheads in the Tenderloin³ fuck with me, I can stab them in the eye. Seriously, I will stab you in the eye, crackheads.

THREE: I've been volunteering at 826 Valencia in the Mission. I help kids with their creative writing. If you like fictional pirates and children who are smarter than your kids—seriously, your kids are dumb!—check out 826.

FOUR: I'm one of the judges for Casilda's Hat Contest. It's unrelated to 826 but it also involves kids and creative writing. There are about 20 finalists whose stories I'll read. Kids wrote stories using this video as a prompt. I'm not really into cartoons but the video is impressive work. Casilda is a scary little girl with supernatural powers who wears a black hat with three bloody human teeth on its side. The winner of the contest is the kid who tells the best story of how Casilda came into possession of the hat.

FIVE: Yesterday on my way to the Dolores Park³ in the Mission I walked down Langton Alley, where you can find the Mac Dre Memorial. If you're not familiar with Mac Dre—and unless you're from the Bay Area you're probably not—he's a legendary Bay Area rapper ("Feelin' Myself") who was murdered in 2004. He basically invented the culture that led to the Hyphy movement, and he definitely invented the Thizzle Dance. He was a weird dude whose music I don't always enjoy, but I do appreciate weird people. Unless it's crack that's making you weird, in which case I will stab you in the eye. We've been over this already.





1: Publisher's note: The Convalescent is the story of a small, bearded man selling meat out of a bus parked next to a stream in suburban Virginia... and also, somehow, the story of 10,000 years of Hungarian history.
2: (1:36-1:42) Get back motherfucker, y'all don't know me like that!
3: SETTING OFF ILLEGAL FIREWORKS IN A CROWDED PUBLIC PARK IS NOT COOL. Seriously, what is the appeal of M-80s? All they do is make a loud noise and introduce to the party the risk that someone might lose a hand. Please explain to me why this is fun.

Two Gs + 3GS

Cobra Deez rocks the Stanky Legg¹ while helping me test video² on the new iPhone 3GS.


1: Stanky Legg pro-fessionals.
2: Recorded and uploaded using nothing but the iPhone. No laptops necessary. Way too solid.