23 posts tagged “virginia”
Restructured to make a little more sense. Still haven't gone chronological, though. Everything that has been added in this iteration of the compendium has (new) next to it. Six (new)'s under non-fiction and five (new)'s under other. So, eleven entries worth putting on the revised compendium. The last time I did one of these was about this time last year. Not a good sign.
Non-fiction Stories(with no organization whatsoever):
(new)You're Creepy, Hunter - A girl tells me I am creepy. I get even.
(new)Phoenix - I don't think I am supposed to write about something that is supposed to be anonymous. Oh well.
(new)Strange Format - Saturday Show - Seriously the strangest format or lack thereof I have ever used. Almost like a poem. I've bad luck and things get out of hand.
(new)Graham's 21st Birthday - "No, dude, we're walking home. It's like two blocks."
(new)Dead Cicada - A woman is assaulted while holding her child. I intercede.
(new)A Warning - First Friday's in Richmond!
Salvia Gets Too Real - Fourth and worst trip on Salvia.
The Most Puke I Have Ever Seen - Imagine this next scene. Try to visualize it with me. My eyes open to the ceiling, my body shocked out of deep REM sleep. My legs and waist are moist. . .
Drunk People - An interesting twist-- I'm not drunk in this story. For once in my life.
Black and Mild
- I'll miss drinking with friends on top of the roof at my old
apartment. I will miss that Mediterranean market, with its natural
soaps and cheap spices. I will miss all those families who called the
cops on me when I played music too loud on Monday nights. Ahh
Hunter Takes it to the Limit, Throws Up Everywhere - In The Top Five Drunkest Nights
Pissing in Pools I & II - My double standard on people who pee in pools.
A Retelling of the First Time I SmokedA Trip To Walmart - Seriously one of the best destinations while high. Interesting, entertaining, sometimes a little creepy.
To Move My Body - When reality sinks in, when you think you've got nothing, you become psychic, telepathic, and shameless. This story has procession of Segways!
The Things I Remember - I somehow wake up at 2PM in my dorm, still drunk from the night before. A rough bus ride does me in.
Hunter Blacks Out, Goes To Patient First, Blames Free Beer - Pretty self explanatory.
A Tucker Emulation, It Seems - The very first story I wrote.
Handcuffed, Robbed, and 6 O'clock Rush - Pretty self-explanatory. Breakfast club.
Hunter Gets High, Driving Barely Ensues - I get high, and drive. Sort of.
Lebanese: A "Nice Guy" Failure - Nine Guys, One Girl. I get the girl and ride off into the sunset(upstairs), but turn out to be a "nice guy."
JMU, PART I
- The first and, since, only time I have been breathalyzed. There is
no part II. Part II would be better though, as it includes doing
mushrooms, a starving French guy, five plus parties, nearly getting run
over, really drunk chicks with australian accents, and BLOODHOUNDS.
But this story has none of that.
THE WEEKEND - A three day bender, with a decadent interlude of cheating debauchery. All set to the soundtrack of the very trite Garden State.
Perfect Night Ruined by Marriot, Morning -- This story is far too long to hold your attention. Do not read it.
Short(or long) Stories(Fiction):
Saint Dympna - My favorite.
The Sink at Sunset - Guy has mobile home of a heart. This is life at 20.
Shells - My drug induced interpretation of the scramble suits in A Scanner Darkly caused this short. Later turned into a short fiction piece (for a class) called Mise en Place or The Writer.
Nine-Tenths is Nothing - Our children are here to replace us. One man attempts to slow this process by proving he is better than them and protecting his wife from kid perverts.
The Last Boat to the Disappearing - A seven vignette fiction piece about flaming zombies. As much as I wish I had written them gay, they are actually on fire.Story Starter Exercise - A brief story about a friend who got kicked up and did a lot of drugs while living in the woods.
Other:
(new)At The Edge of The Neighborhood - Vivid zombie dream.
(new)Shut Down or Reset - Up late? Two options. Special bonus feature: scene from this year's Best Friends Day @ Hadad's
(new)A Haiku - About a day I spent at the river getting drunk with someone I didn't know. She was taken and I fell and cut myself on a rock. Then there is a sexual allegory at the end. There, I ruined it.
(new)My First Near-Ticket on a Bicycle(new)Autumn - The Greatest and Best Time of Year
Can Blood Cells Have Car Accidents? - Thoughts after the fire.
Janus - Girl cheats on me. Girl dies in short story Sink at Sunset.
Transcribing the Knowledge of The Smoke, Part I -- I test my voice recorder during a toking session. Heavy on the dialogue.
Transcribing the Knowledge of The Smoke, Part II -- The better half of the overall recording experience. A lot of in depth high conversation.
Friend's Mom Finds Out About Hunter's Livejournal, Missiles Fly - Probably one of the more significant events in the history of my online writing.
Under a Hot Chicago Sun - I didn't even know my neighbors name.
H-D-P-E Does Not Spell "Hope" - Recycling is hopeful. I am not.
It Is Only Hubris If I Fail - Childhood with a heavy dose of failure, sprinkled with Sloane Crosley.
Sick Dream D.A.N.C.E. - Dreams are fun. Dreams about partying and religious fanatics that all have the same face... strange. Sick dreams are most disturbing.
Rape, Tacos, and Love - I get raped, noticed for my writing at a party, have sex for the first time high, eat really good tacos, and listen in on a nasty girl shit.Tainted Elephant Oil Prices Dowsed in Sickly-Sweat-Stained Dreams - More sick dreams, musings on family life and relationships.
Metal Shows - Are awesome. Especially when you know the band. Even if it's at a lame venue.
Derelict Father, Are We the Cause of Our Suffering?
Shit's Run Its Course - I inherit a bike from a metal head who stole it from a crack head.
The Bear, The Bee, The Rhino - I connect with mother nature, understand things I never thought possible.
Night Luck - I have only gotten in trouble with the law when sober. Sobriety really takes the spine out of me.
Condom Debacle - A young Hunter hides a partially used condom in duct-tape.
Jesus Freaks - I lament about my hatred for street-preachers. This is a Facebook classic.Bloody Knuckles - It wasn't a game that gave me these.
Diphenhydramine - The first time I ever tripped on a deliriant.
Bulgarians are Hardcore - Intoxicated 5 times the lethal limit, this Bulgarian gets hit by a car and sent to the hospital for minor head trauma.
Sunchips? - Do you know why they call them sunchips?
LIRICKES - The funniest rap "lirickes" you'll read all week.
The Binary Universe and How Choice Works - With diagrams and shit.
Poems - A little too sing-songy.
Soundscape - High times.
The Nature of Souls and Soulmates - Got a decent response for this one.
Scanner Darkly and the Universe as a Vague Set of Prepositions
Demon Play, Demon Out - Your shoes are not an extension of anything that matters to your person.
Clocked Out - A New Year - 2007. Some things get better, other things are mentioned less.
New - I miss writing.
I'm sitting in some uncomfortable chair, a style of which I have never seen before. It has the usual aluminum grey frame, a backrest adjusted to a standard of height, blah blah-blah. But it has these strange pads connecting the seat, pads that shoot up and fill some of the space between the back rest and the ass rest with some sort of. . . spinal rest? The color of the rotund woman's shirt--toothpaste blue-- outlines this extraneous pad.
I stare at her, her lumpy body a pile of toothpaste squeezed directly into the same spot. I play with the bracelet on my right wrist. I wonder if it is really home made. I doubt it.
I gaze around the room. Most of the crowd is young. A guy in the corner looks like a disgruntled underwear model. Not big time, just a locally owned department store maybe. There are many attractive girls my age.
Several people speak out of a small paperback. Everyone seems to have a copy. After introducing ourselves, I get one too. One with numbers. Not the numbers of the many attractive girls. Just numbers with male names next to them following MEN: at the top.
"How are you?" she asked me. No, wait, it was "Are you well?" Or maybe it was neither, but had the tone of both, concern backing the question.
I told her "I'm fine," with little enthusiasm. The tree above would wet us occasionally with drops of dew. She bounced her baby a bit, gently, and a breeze blew his wispy hair. He was concerned with the wind. He stared into the soul of a wavering plant, trying to understand its movement.
"He doesn't really understand object permanence yet," the father, my friend Tyler, said. I didn't want to say Piaget was wrong. I didn't want to say anything. But I said something like, "You mean like peek-a-boo?"
When I introduce myself, I am the only one that simply says my name. This is my first time and I have not yet developed the ability to confess my heart to strangers. A kid younger than me speaks up. Says his life is better now, says he's happy ninety-five percent of the time. I think bullshit, life is a constant of inconsistency. Fuck your 5% estimated blue time. Then I realize he at least thinks he has something worthy of sharing. I cannot begin to imagine a similar image of myself.
I said goodbye to the family after a walk down the street. It was pleasant. The sun was just beginning to tire and the air cool. Leaves tumbled to the earth around us as we all hugged. Phoenix, their child, grabbed hold of my bracelet. His grip was strong and I didn't want to pry his hands off of what he wanted to hold. But they had to visit another friend(a mother) and I had to go home. So Kat pried his demonically possessed fingers from it and we said goodbye.
Ice floats on emulsion, melts, spins clinking.
He tries to fish a cube with his tongue, but ends up gulping the mixture.
His throat burns, but he has the cube. Splinters it with a worn incisor,
crunches it with the rest. The iced warmth travels to the back of his throat,
down, and to his belly. Nothing tastes as good as this, he thinks.
The sting, the texture. The undeniable tinge of regret-- relieved.
The man child's mind cauterizes memorable moments,
forgets the ones he wishes to, remembers none other.
The ice tray with its half frozen surfaces and liquid
guts, he's chewed it all away.
Chipped, his tooth's in pain.
Mustache froth, what is love's directive? On the verge of 'quit,'
he wipes it away, remembers sister, a non brother.
The man's child mind: acorn fights, memorable memories.
He doesn't understand why he attempts this poetry,
but lines don't lie, they tell the only way.
Can you believe that this is my communique?
Maybe I will understand this another day.
to be clear, I have not written poetry in forever, suck at it and am a little drunk thanks to a friend. . . so maybe we'll just put this in the "in progress category"
She looks over her shoulder. Her face, a chapped jag slanted under two pills, pulls life from the dying world around her. The air saturates her lungs and dements her spirit. Leaves drift in purposeless circles to the ground around her. One lands before her foot, makes a scratchy noise against the cool asphalt.
She turns her head forward, walks toward the white building. Brittle leaves crackle under her shoes as she makes her way up the curb, across patches of brown grass and to the side of the stacked white cinder blocks in black trim. She peers through wooden window frames, the panes within laced with mesh metal. The opposite side is raised level upon a hill that descends into a shallow valley clear of these trees. She looks to the side of the building. A barricaded ladder leads to a further walled well of stairs. She begins to scramble-- scrapes her stretched triceps. She makes it, bleeding and teary eyed, to the top of what now seems like a complex. The roof is black, the sky is grey.
Over the field her eyes see nothing but colorful streaks of salt water. The desolation of the empty field breaks her heart and she begins sobbing. "My husband," she babbles. "My husband, oh!" she wails. "This building," she shrieks. She shrinks into a bouncing mound of hysterical nonsense. She falls asleep and dreams of her husband-- a lab tech. involved with the whole mess. His bifocals behind beakers drift in and out of her sleeping head.
This building's flesh decays, its roof rotting. It squishes underneath weight. A breathless still settles. A distant hum approaches. Closer and closer, the fluttering of a motorized heart. I stand, rifle in hand. I walk to the sleeping woman and nudge her with my foot. This does not work. I kneel and cup her jaw with my hand, gently rapping with my fingers. Lids roll back and reveal an empty stage.
"Ride's here," I say. She staggers and looks to the street. From this angle, the small car looks like it will crash into the corner of the roof. It disappears instead so we walk to the edge of the building.
We carefully descend. Our backs to the white, we see a dark woman with nappy hair standing frozen in front of the vehicle. The woman retreats, her gaze locked to us, and bumps into her car. A pale young man opens the passenger door. He is clearly mentally retarded.
"My husband!" cries the woman to my side. I turn. The alleged husband stands hunched in a doorway, a now open entrance to the building.
"Get away!" yells the dark woman. The pale young man rushes toward us.
"My husband-- we need to get him out of here!"
The husband steps through the doorway. From black, grey illuminates his lurid face. His jaw slacks to one side. Aphotic circles drag away from sunken eyes.
"You're alive! I can't believe your alive." The beady eyed woman swells. She moves to him. Before she can reach him, the pale young man has her by the waist. He drags her, kicking and screaming, away. I level my rifle and blast the retarded kid in the shoulder. Bits of shattered bone explode outward. Blood rains down in giant globules, painting a wide area. The kid falls back with the woman on top of him.
The dark woman begins yelling at me. "What the fuck! You shot him!"
I return the barrel to the husband. I tell the dark woman the kid should not have grabbed my companion.
The husband shambles toward me, vines of viscera swaying from his gut. I squint as the ghoulish pendulum makes his way.
"Don't, no, don't shoot!"
"Shoot him!"
"No!"
"If you can shoot a kid, shoot this. Now!"
I shoot him in the chest. Cracking ribs echo the rifle. I shoot him again in the knee. He drops to the ground and begins crawling. I pull the trigger once more. A head shot. This evaporates the right side of his face. His eye oozes out of his head and teeth begin pinging off the asphalt. His rotting flesh slides into a gaping hole in his head. This does not stop him. I pull again, nothing happens. I am out of ammo. I am frozen. Closer and closer, the faceless gore inches. I drop the gun and stare into its vacant eye.
The bleeding young man escorts a now even lower-functioning life form, the wife, to the car. They get in.
The corpse grabs my ankle and looks directly past me. Its head rears and lunges. Before contact, the butt of my rifle smacks him in the jaw. Still, I watch the dark woman roll the corpse over with her foot and circle round me. She grips the barrel and lands a crushing blow to the skull of the corpse. It twitches, releases my ankle. The skull caves in and she takes one final blow which spews goo, grey on everything.
She drags her breath out, cracks her neck and frowns at me. "We need to go," she whispers.
Notes: This dream takes place in a park by my grandfather's house in South Boston.
I ended up using a lot of alliterations after seeing a few good ones in a poem the other day.
I would never actually shoot a handicapped person. Unless they were a zombie.
I wrote most of this down in one of those black and white composition books as soon as I woke from it.
In an effort to turn this dream into something serious on paper, I removed the fact that the husband was actually William Petersen , pretty much as he is in CSI.
The other night I got called creepy and I really wish I had had a voice recorder on me. Because I didn't and have no idea what exactly was said, this is a dramatization.
The other night my friend invites me out. My link to her group is shaky because I hook up with one of their friends and proceed to hit on, while drunk and via text, another one later on.
Via Text calls me outright creepy, so I begin following her asking her why I am creepy- my actions a self-replicating definition of the word.
I talk to her through the bathroom door.
"Why am I creepy?"
"Oh my god, are you seriously outside of the bathroom?"
I follow her outside.
"Why am I creepy?" a hint of hurt in my voice. Who wants to be creepy?
She turns and scowls, says, "You want to know why you're creepy?" She gets all close staring at me, then breaks and says to follow her.
"Yeah, let's talk over there," I agree, not wanting to be outed as a creepy person in front of presumably non-creepy people.
We sit next to each other on narrow, warped stairs. Moonlight and bulbs bear down. I think, this is creepy. She says I text her when I'm drunk and ask her to hang out, which never happens. I figure this is more "unreliable" than anything else but she continues to berate my character.
I feel this is unfair. I must now get back at her by actually being creepy to her, openly, in front of everyone.
At one point I have the guy next to me looking all physically uncomfortable or offended at what I'm saying. He is in the middle of introducing himself(and thusly hitting on her) when I interrupt, telling him this girl is bad news, that she broke my heart, had my abortion. All of which, except maybe the first one, are untrue. Out loud I imagine how our relationship ended. I pass this as truth like a delusional person. Whatever I say at this moment makes the guy uncomfortable. Via just stands there and shakes her head.
The guy trying to hit on her attempts to make fun of me. This is impossible. I am so imperviously in creepy character that everything he says turns into another offensive and sketchy joke about my faux-love for this girl.
I start harassing Via about going out for coffee. She says she leaves in a week for good. I repeat, "and it won't go anywhere, so just come out for coffee with me. We can make it reeeeal public." Someone suggests I should try to play with her hair.
"What's the point?" her eyes ask the same thing.
Some time passes.
I try to reclaim sunglasses I left at my friend's house months ago. She says they look better on her. They do. I am no longer upset about losing them. I now feel bad for blaming my roommate for losing/breaking/selling them/whatever. My friend has awesome hair and jumps on my back for a totally one-sided chicken fight.
Some time passes and the group turns against me. I hurry to unlock my bike and leave. Via says something like Take Your Creeper Ass Somewhere Else or You're Insane or whatever. I don't remember. As I am riding away-- and I remember this-- she says, "For the record, I don't really think you're creepy."
I say, "Whatever, you are!" and nearly crash my bike into a trashcan.
5.10.09
Last night(rough estimates):
-9:45PM: Got off work
-9:45 + however it long it takes me to get to and surmount the hills on Riverside: Noticed untrue back wheel, didn't notice parked car.
-10:02: Hobble around cursing myself. Leave in a hurry.
-10:30ish: I am home. There is a grinning sweat stain on my shirt, a deluge of sweat down my back.
-10:45: Porter comes over
-Ambiguous(~): Tommy and friend come over. Friend's name is Brooke
~Sit around and smoke. Brooke asks who is reading Infinite Jest. Her brother is a physicist. She is smart and has a tiny bladder. 1100 sucks and so do the people living inside-- there is no TP.
~I tell her to use gauze. This makes sense, gauze are just far more expensive.
~ + ~/10 minutes: Brooke needs to pee again. There are no more gauze so I look through my closet and find a large shirt with the silhouette of a head shot in, trimmed in green. The white figure has green eyes and headphones. There are two CDs on the back of the shirt and a tape deck on the front with some advertisement in Russian along the bottom. I hand it to her. It is Luke Koftan's shirt and I haven't seen the guy in years.
Midnight?: Nicole and Wes come over. They make small talk and I decide to sit on the stoop.
Midnight plus: Introduction to World War and the fallout that endures. Some scrawny straight edge spits in a neighbor's face. She comes out with a base ball bat and starts screaming. They run off only to return with reinforcements. Several run to the center of the confrontation, one of them remains. To watch us and make sure we don't get involved or something. Adrian brims with hatred.
He swings it, round and round. It forms a ring around his body, like that of Saturn's, but these aren't frozen space particles-- this is fiery hatred! An absolute expression of the life and death of flame. He swings two chains around his body. Flame trails from rods wrapped in lighter-fluid-drenched swaddle, hits and crawls along the uninhabitable asphalt. In fashionable blue.
I can feel the heat
from several feet.
His body must be
hot and sweaty.
The ring secured around his finger snaps and he loses grip on the chain. It hurdles, ball over chain right into my face and my beard bursts into flame! I am now writhing on the cobble in front of Gallery 5 trying to extinguish my face.
Okay, that last traumatic bit does not happen. Just something I envision while spectating.
Tonight is the first night I am able to go to a First Friday event on Broad in over a year. For those of you not from Richmond or for those of you who have been epically lazy, First Fridays are a huge celebration held on Broad from about second or first to about Belvidere. It's like seven block parties, all devoted to art galleries, bars, and live music.
I arrive alone and am drawn to Gull ( you really have to watch the videos of him play to get the idea ) who is playing on the sidewalk. He is a masked musician named Nate who sings and plays guitar and drums all at once. This is riveting but I must meet with my friends, so I do. We watch Poi outside of Gallery 5 for half an hour.
I feel like this guy created it. Or at least brought it to the forefront in Richmond. Or at least was a main contributor to those who did.
His name is Evan Moses and this is an old ass picture of him that I creepily stole from facebook. He introduces me to poi three years ago, so I have seen poi a million times(maybe exaggerated). It is only when this older chick dressed in all black comes to the center of the crowd with a hula hoop and some fire am I impressed. She looks like Leslie Mann and becomes one with the hoop, which is on fire. It is sort of like this but set to trance, not porno groove. And there is only one hula hoop. But it's on fire!
I miss Andrea's lantern workshop, which sucks because I see like twenty people around 10:30(which is half an hour after the event is supposed to wind down/cease to exist) and they're totally awesome, albeit really cheap lanterns!
My group wanders back to Broad where Brandon and I end up singing with Gull. This is his last song and he encourages people to join in. He even repeats the seven syllable chanting part like ten times, just so we get it straight. He looks to Brandon and I, the only two really participating and, through his skull-like mask with his totally distorted microphone, tells us to do it louder. He raises his free hand(for the moment) at us. We sing louder and he begins the drum part to accompany the pre-existing guitar. More people join in. Eventually, at least half of the 30-40 people there are involved. The tune is stuck in my head for the rest of the night. It is stuck now.
I eventually leave and ride home. I blow through a stop sign and am stopped by the cops for the second time. I mean, I see the car, looking all innocent in its idle darkness and say to myself, "Shit, I'm gonna get pulled." Of course they let me off with a warning, it is two cute, younger rookie female cops. I win. Though one of them writes something on a pad of paper after ID-ing me. Guess I better take this warning. Be careful, right?
"You got lights?"
"Yeah, I just turned them off to save batteries." I stammer, "when you pulled me."
7:30AM Fly keeps landing on my skin-- wakes me immediately. Something unsettling and frustrating about the little tingle of a landing. One goes in my ear.
8:17AM I stuff my laundry into a stuffed Element. We drive. I worry I will cough while the dentist has some diabolically sharp tool down, scraping around in my mouth. I envision severe blood loss as he stabs me in the back of the throat and they have to sit there with the vacuum tube, sucking up all my blood.
8:20AM I see a homeless "vet" His sign says, "anyting will help." Another one, a few blocks up, his sign says, "Layd Off." My dad wonders out loud if this is intentional. For them to misspell something, he says, probably gives them pity points. He discourages me from ever standing on a corner to beg. He wouldn't do it. He announces he is poor again. "A car knows when you have extra money," he says. I tell him a fly flew in my ear this morning and got stuck.
8:37AM We're about half an hour early and so they see us as such. It lasts about 50 minutes. Much better than the 2 or so hours it took as a child because the entire family went in at once. I make my mouth a gaping maw for examination. I maneuver my tongue in anticipation. I remain silent and suppress my cough. I am the best patient ever. They reward me by not being too harsh in comparing me to the dental standard.
9:25AM Not so bad. No cavities. Raised gums and scraped teeth. Oh, and my favorite, the car wash toothpaste scrub-- the one that always tastes horrible. We are back in the Element and my dad starts retelling a story about one of his favorite Westerns.
euphoria's endearing
A little letter to the owner of Positive Vibe Cafe, a place I am thinking will be the subject of a little editorial.
Garth,
I cannot believe you allowed my firing. Did you tell him beforehand that it was okay to phase me out early? I don't think that's the case. Or at least I am holding on to the last bit of your image that I can. Let me explain.
Working at the Vibe has really encouraged me, inspired me. You're really doing a good thing, you know? But for you to terminate me--prematurely-- based on Jason's abundance of poor judgment is just disrespectful and against everything you seem to believe.
Was it as simple as him telling you I was hung over, or calling out because it was my last stretch? Why would I do that? To avoid money I desperately need? Well, I went to the doctor the next day because I couldn't breathe or swallow without immense pain to accompany. Turns out I was/am sick! I was given antibiotics and told to rest. As of (8/31) I am no longer contagious, according to the doctor. I could have worked all week, doubles if they wanted, but Jason would rather not listen to me and instead give me a snide, "Don't bother coming back." This is an attitude he carries daily, with everyone. Without compromise. I can't believe I put in a good word for him, to you, Garth.
All in all, I don't hold it against you, he is the chef now. And though I don't respect him, I respect that. If I didn't like someone working in my kitchen(should I have my own one day), I would probably fire them too. I just don't understand it. But more than anything, I don't appreciate it. I was counting on working--not hoping for the chance to catch and spread something contagious. The options presented were: A) Fire Hunter B) Bring a contagious Hunter to work who will handle food and prepare very many people's meals. No hard feelings, I would just like to understand the situation better.
Sincerely,
Hunter
If more people were like me, they would probably be a victim of some sort of abuse. Not talking about the time when my boss, the owner of the Positive Vibe Cafe, goon-handed me. I speak of a particular event totally unrelated to the assault I experienced ALONE on the line at PVC.
So I sit here after a fun night at a local bar with some fun people. They're all great but they don't matter to this story. I sit here on Graham's computer watching inane youtube videos. I hear some arguing at the end of the block and pause the video. I foolishly ignore(foolishly because the last time I ignored arguing, someone got shot two houses down from my previous residence[like if I had been paying attention I would have stopped it, hah]) the arguing and unpause my video.
The arguing escalates and I see a woman push another woman, both dark-skinned in the unlit street. The pushee has a six year old kid in her arms. I begin walking in their direction, leaving Graham's computer behind. It is less important than this violence.
Let me explain:
When I am intoxicated, I actually care about people I do not know. Were I stone-cold sober, I would have gone inside. I mean, "What is wrong with you?" doesn't even begin to affiliate itself, as a question of morals, with whatever problem this is. Whatever flaw.
When we(and you know who you are) were all on the roof of 1100, that time we got yelled at by the Moors to get off the roof and Lee(that thieving fuck) told the "Muslim bastard" to fuck himself. What did my five-beers-deep-self do when I got to the bottom of the fourty foot ladder? I broke up the fight--with help from Ben-- and got punched in the face. So, of course, this history repeats itself.
I walk toward the women and yell, "Whoa, hey, what's the problem" as one attacks the other. A girl by the side of the car rushes in and tries to bear hug the attacker, says "c'mon [name I forgot], they're gonna call the cops!"
"Get the FUCK OFF ME," she breaks free and rushes in, her overgrown vines for hair, her huge stature. I step in her way and grab her. Our eyes meet. Well, my two eyes meet one open eye and one shut with bruises and blood. She tells me in wet, pungent words that I am not her target, to get out of her way. She pushes me back and I chase after her. The mother drops her kid and takes a hit. I ask the kid her name as I pick her up and take her to the sidewalk.
"Ariana? That's a beautiful name. Let's go over here so you're safe." She begins crying, telling me her mother is going to die. I tell her she'll be fine and set her down on the sidewalk. Some feeble fifty-year old resident shambles up to me, his thin hair flopping from side to side as he walks. He pleads for a cigarette for several minutes as I tell him more important things are going on. I eventually give him one and then he starts yelling at the women who are, at this point, safely separated by the asphalt.
"YOU STUPID BITCH, GO BACK HOME, YA NIGGARZ!" He berates them for like 5 minutes while smoking MY cigarette. I calmly ask him to tone down the language around the kid. It is already hard enough for her having to see this, I tell him. He just puffs away, looks past me. The car drives off, leaving the mother with this crazy racist old man and myself. Both of us are intoxicated. I turn to the mother and ask her if I can help her get home. She says I've done enough, whatever that means.
The drunk, thin-haired man scoffs, squinty in the low light. He looks at Ariana with something in his eyes. Some kind of hate. He takes a step forward and I put my arm out to stop him. The mother has her kid by this point and says she "Don't want him near [her] baby." I look back and nod, tell him to go home.
"THIS IS MAH FUCKIN HOME, AND IF IT WANT FER YEW FUCKERS, NO ONE WOULD BE YELLIN! STUPID BITCH AND DON'T FUCKIN' TOUCH ME."
He doesn't want me to touch him. Fair enough, but, I reply, "Why don't you just go home, man, you're the only one yelling, you're making this situation worse, a situation which I am trying to diffuse." He stops and looks at me everywhere but in the eyes.
"You know what would diffoose the sitiation?" He pauses, baiting me, but continues before I say anything. "Another cigarette."
"Are you serious? No. Absolutely no. Go home."
He stumbles back where he came. I turn to the mother. She is now several yards away, walking out onto the highway. I stand there for a few minutes, alone on the sidewalk. The next night I save a cicada from marauding ants. Graham and a neighbor tell me not to. That it's natural. I claim I am nature, so what does it matter. "It's supposed to die," our neighbor says. I save it anyway. But here it is, half in half out of its husk, surrounded by others who succeeded.
