"Jane, you are not going to believe this." I'm practicing what I'm going to say. I've been pacing up and down in front of her apartment building for a full twenty minutes. "Listen, Jane I've been offered a..." No, that's not going to work. "Jane, I'm sorry, but I can't let this go on anymore."

Yes that's it, I've got to make a change. It is still cold out. Even though we've had three days of sunshine and all the snow has melted and birds are singing in the trees they keep planting by the sidewalks. The trees that are never going to get older or bigger, but are going to die choked by cigarette butts and empty plastic water bottles, and chewing gum scraped onto their trunks.

I'm suddenly glad I'm not a tree. But maybe it wouldn't be so bad. If I were a tree I wouldn't have to see her with him. I know what they're up to. I know how she looks at him, when I'm in the room. Dance lessons, you bet your fucking ass, dance lessons. I'll eat my hat. What kind of dance do you do on the mattress when I'm not around?

No. Poison. That's a poison pill, that thought will grow vines and choke your mind. Stop it.

Just another nip from the flask. Wasn't it supposed to be warm today? We've had three days of sunshine, and the last time I read the newspaper my horoscope said I'd feel the sunshine coming through.

The homeless man on the corner, didn't ask me for change. He just let me walk on by. Do I look that bad? I know this coat is ripped, I keep meaning to sew it shut, but I've only got a little bit of time left to tell Jane that I'm leaving.


"Jane!" I shout up at her window. There aren't any lights on but I know she's there, hips tipped up to heaven and him pointing south at hell.

"Do you hear me Jane?" Lights go on and off in the other windows. Another sip, another smoke. Is she coming down? Should I run? Hearts beating faster. Why? I practiced this. There's a cop on the corner down the street.

"Jane I'm leaving now." I shout. I shouldn't shout so much. It is ripping up my throat.
I've got to go and sew my coat.

Tommy Andrews Lost His Tooth On March Twenty-Third

Last week Tommy Andrews came down the street holding his arm that was bleeding. He looked really pale and his shirt was all red. He was shouting at me to get inside and to have my mother call an ambulance. That's when the car drove by again and this time they slowed down and shot Tommy Andrews in the face. This morning I found one of his teeth.

All week long I've been staring in the mirror. At school I excuse myself from the classroom and go stand in front of the mirror in the boy's room. I look at my eyes for so long that they start tearing up. I think the teachers are just glad that I'm not talking to Jeremy Gunderson anymore.

I haven't been outside in a while. I'm not afraid that the methheads will get me. I know Tommy Andrews did something to them, and you can't mess with methheads, its like kicking a sack of badgers, you leave that to the police.

I just don't feel safe. I mean if a great guy like Tommy Andrews can get his head blown off in What Cheer Iowa, where are you safe? Tomorrow the sun could explode and we'd know about it eight minutes too late. I suppose there's nowhere safe and that I should just be ready to have my head blown off by methheads any minute, wherever I am.

I suppose I should take Tommy Andrews' tooth to somebody. I'm sure his family will want it. But how do you give them a part of their son? Here Mrs. Andrews, here's this tooth, I'm pretty sure that it's Tommy's. He took the football team to state, and here is his tooth. Do you think Mrs. Andrews will think about when she was pregnant with Tommy? Will she hold his tooth and think about the head that that tooth used to be in, and how that head was once in her belly? I bet that would be weird. I know my mom has some of my baby teeth in an old pill bottle somewhere, and whenever I ask her why, she says I won't understand until I have kids of my own.

Tomorrow is April 1st, and we're all going to the funeral. I hope Mrs. Andrews doesn't think I'm telling a joke when I hand her the tooth. I hope I don't laugh on accident because of how nervous I am.

Hot News

Hey Friends!

Due to a hatred of everything in it I am putting a full stop on that novel I was so jazzed about a couple of months ago.

We'll see how I feel about it in the future, but right now it just reads as a bunch of pretentious drivel, really it drips with angst.

So until I can cool down and come back to the work I am going to return to my first love, stories set in the Midwest in small dying towns!

Get ready for some guilt and nostalgia mixed up together with some prime self-hatred and regrets, we're heading back to the Midwest where everything started.

Here are the things that I don't like about my writing:
1. The misogyny, how come my female characters are always so shallow and useless?
2. Not enough imagery. You don't really get a sense of scene in a lot of my stories. I emote very well, but you rarely know what color things are.
3. Action, nothing ever seems to happen in the stories I write.
4. Depth, they're all so shallow. It's like I really have nothing to say. I suppose someday I will and it will be useful then to have practiced speaking, but I'm worried that the practice will ruin the later message.
5. Length, too short.
6. I can't keep a coherent plot together to save my life.

212 B

"Of course" She answered, not even looking up from the table.

"I'm, sorry but that doesn't answer the question I asked. I asked what room Alexandria Van Plotts is staying in." Timothy wasn't sure why he had apologized. The pale complexion of the counter girl, plus the ironic pill box hat perched precariously on her head, added to the too-red lipstick, meant that he wouldn't get a straight answer or good service out of the girl, she was too concerned with the higher truths of her complexion and image in the small pocket mirror cut through with neat razor slashes she held in her left hand.

"Sir, remain calm" The dreadful girl droned "We're doing everything we can to process your request, and we'll have an answer for you shortly."

"Excuse me, but it is a simple question. Don't you have a register or a computer or anything back there? Don't you write these things down?"

"Yes, we have all those things, and yes we write them down, but sir." With the last sir the young woman looked up at the young man, and with a twisted little delight in her eyes she said "We're doing everything we can to process your request, and we'll have an answer for you shortly."

Nothing was being done in the lobby of the hotel. The elevators were not moving up or down, and the ceiling fans were not even twirling. The air was stifling and stale.

"Look, I've got to meet Ms. Van Plotts, we've an engagement for the evening. You see I'm a reporter, well sort of, anyway, like I said, we've an engagement for the evening, and you know how she is, I'm sure you've read about her in the news."

"Sir, it is the official policy of the Whitmore Hotel to know nothing about this subject. The privacy of our guests is our highest priority." The pale girl said, that same wicked smile returning to her lips.

A man in a garish Hawaiian shirt casually pushed his way through the brass and glass of the revolving door. There was a camera around his neck, it wasn't a digital camera. A camera bag was carelessly hung from his shoulder. There was nothing about this man that indicated any sort of competency. He seemed to be the sort of man who would spend his whole Sunday drinking cigars and betting on horses or dogs at the track, if you take my meaning.

The girl behind the counter reached over and pushed Timothy to one side.

"Stu, you know the drill, third floor second maintenance door on the right, and this time you better get my split before Tuesday."


After witnessing this Timothy had come to several conclusions about the moral status of the Whitmore Hotel and its employees.

"Look, I just need to see Ms. Van Plotts. She left a message on my machine asking me to come here, she didn't leave a room number, anyway, like I said, we've got plans."

"I thought you had an engagement." The girl behind the counter looked very pleased with herself.

"Yeah, whatever. Look I'll give you twenty bucks."

"For what?"

"Just give me her room number."

The girl behind the counter leaned forward, which had the effect of drawing Timothy's eyes towards her bosom, and with some impossibly perfect swagger in her voice she said "Sir, the Whitmore Hotel is doing everything we can to process your request, and we'll have an answer for you shortly."

It had been twenty minutes since Timothy had first walked up to the desk. He leaned back on his heels, left hand to chin, and looked forward into the evening, he could scrap the interview, and he could stop dealing with this ridiculous facsimile of a person in front of him. He could go out to the bars and taverns and find someone to occupy his time until sunrise. Dinner could be found at any number of convenient and agreeable places, and in the morning at the staff meeting he could say that the Alexandria Van Plotts had not been at the hotel, and that a vomit stain outside of her door in the hallway had led Timothy to the conclusion that she was "in" for the evening.

It was going to be so easy. Timothy knew that the events he had just forecasted would come true if he let them. With a little smile on his lips he leaned forward and said to the pale girl, with the too-red-lipstick, and the coquettishly perched pill box hat, and said "What Room, please, is Alexandria Van Plotts staying in?"

Titles: If you're interested.

These aren't really that interesting but I thought you might like to have some context for the excerpts, because the chapter titles are all indicative of what the chapter is about, and they form a nice little view of the book as a whole.

Tentative Title for the whole thing: Our Selves Explode in Light

Chapter 1: At 11th and Florence and I'm Nobody's Sweetheart.
Chapter 2: Where There’s Tea For Two, And Songbirds Sing Like Barges.
Chapter 3: In The Hospital, Where I Met My Other Selves
Chapter 4: We Aren't The Ones To Answer Your Questions
Chapter 5: About Organs Breaking, And Barges Singing Like Songbirds
Chapter 6: Or Why I’m Safely Asleep In Your Mind
Chapter 7: Sometimes I Can Really See Myself With You
Chapter 8: But I Can't Tell Who I Am, And I Might Not Be Me.
Chapter 9: Even If You Wanted Me To Do Something, I Couldn't.
Chapter 10: Because Nothing Can Stop Me From Hurting Myself.
Chapter 11: And Dreaming All Of This Was Such A Silly Lie.
Chapter 12: In Real Life All We Can Do Is Watch
Epilogue: Our Selves Explode In Light

Excerpt 5: From Chapter 5

The man behind the desk was very angry. Blake could not understand why. He had provided proof of lack of identity. His fingerprints were entered into a computer and even after several hours of searching the faithful machine had not been able to find a match. A man was dispatched to one of the central bureaucratic facilities with a photograph of Blake. There even larger, boxier, angrier, computers would be put to the task of finding out just who our young protagonist was at that very moment of his life. These advanced machines were programmed to spend eighty percent of their processing power searching for just who Blake had been, his schooling, his grades in school, any crushes on boys or girls in his class that he had ever had. What sort of macaroni he preferred to paste onto construction paper, or how he felt about the very thrilling sensation of making a clean cut through card stock with safety scissors. The computers began a thorough search through every disappointing prom date that had been registered in the last quarter century, because their programming (correctly) surmised that Thomas had:
A) gone to prom in the last quarter century and
B) had disappointed his semipopular date (who it turns out was Kathleen Watkins, a basketball cheerleader who hated Chemistry but loved Physics for obvious and unknown reasons respectively)

However the advanced alloys and super-cooled central processing units of the servers assigned to identifying this physically broken young man could not find the answer to this solution. As Thomas’s jaw had been broken in several places in the accident the current alignment of his teeth, indeed even his mandibles could not be identified from extant dental records. In fact this line of investigation was pointless because Thomas’s parents had never taken him to a licensed dentist. They had taken him to their good friend Montgomery Alberto Montenegro, or as he preferred Monty. Monty had lost his dental license as a young upright man in the late sixties. He was robbed of this important facet of his life by a lawsuit against a former jazz musician, who after years of playing hard bop and an even harder secret heroin addiction, was no longer susceptible to the effects of any of anesthetics in Monty’s arsenal, and therefore felt very abused after a triple root canal.
Monty had preformed all of Thomas’s dental work, taken every last x-ray, even cemented and wired the youth’s braces. He was by all accounts a hardworking and honest dentist. Indeed the very paragon of dentistry. However through the cruel twist of fate and a lost soul’s abuse of heroin Monty had only attended three annual Dentist conventions and was therefore largely out of touch with the latest in dental techniques and practices. So to the trained eye Thomas’s existing dental records looked much much older, as the hand that had guided and shaped the jaw had been out of touch with the newer techniques to quide and shape the proud square jaws of Americas youth. Thomas’s newly squared and solidified jaw now fell into step with those of his peers. Whereas before he had a thin intellectual jaw, he now had a firm bold lantern jaw.
After seventeen straight hours of the whole bureaucratic facility’s computers being dedicated to searching the vast and transient networks and databases that currently define our societies definitions of life and identity (well at least as far as death and taxes are concerned) Thomas Blake was declared a non-person. This was a unique situation, and the decision has been studied at many of the secret universities that secretly train the citizens who become bureaucrats. It is known as the Clarence Richmond Decision, after the person who invented the form that allowed what happened to legally take place. In case you are wondering the form is available government wide, indeed it can even be requested from the Fish and Game office. The reason is that each of these offices needs to recognize the validity of the form, and intra-office politics dictate that if two offices have the same form and they both recognize it as valid, then both should implement the form. In bureaucratic circles this is referred to as Building the Dam.