War Is Language : 101 Short Works (9781937316044) Read online

  Wait. No! I know! Low overhead with screen printing and cheap shirts. Do it in the basement, or wherever. I can sit for quite some time watching the sailboats on the water, watching the trees toss their bright new green leaves in the wind, while munching pistachios. But. Sometimes I do other things. I enjoy drinking myself into a stupor, driving while under the influence of whatever I can afford, sleeping with strangers, spending money I don't have, going places I’ve never been, and being an insufferable bitch to the people I care most about. I also like being outside on a gorgeous day.

  They are doing exactly what everyone does at the mall!!

  I have racked my brain trying to come up with a conversation I have had recently which is not essentially a status report. Currently worth billions, these collective status reports have risen to a sort of pinnacle of human interaction.

  72 — Bother

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I’m real apathetic about life and don’t really feel like eating. Do I have to bother?

  Dear Bother,

  No. Don’t bother. It’s all too much trouble. The flavors. The sensations. The memories. The dishes. The recycling. The trash. The traditional recipes. The years on top of years. The guilt. The ghosts. You don’t need it. Having to have the oven at 400 just to honor your heritage seems not at all worth it. You can subsist on things like granola bars and serving-sized bottles of cheap wine.

  83 — Poor, Benighted, Self-Centered, Bitter Soul of Vengeance

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I got herpes from some asshole at a frat party. I am so pissed off you have no idea. I’m definitely spreading this shit to as many dickwads as I can. Sure, I almost like some of these guys, and, okay, fine, I can’t seem to get over that. At this point, I don’t give a fuck about anybody but myself. So is there anything I can do to extinguish any hopeful, happy feelings that may arise while I’m destroying as many people’s lives as possible?

  Dear Poor Benighted Self-Centered Bitter Soul of Vengeance,

  It sounds to me as if you know exactly what’s best. Have a nice time!

  78 — Owner of Dynasty

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  Everyone else I know got married. I’m not married and hate the idea of another person living in my home and eating the stuff in my fridge. But I want to do something really big and showy, send great cards to everyone. How should I word the invitations for a commitment ceremony to my shar-pei, Dynasty?

  Dear Owner of Dynasty,

  So after a while I put on some red lipstick and walked down on the beach to watch the jugglers. Right now I'm getting a six-pack and heading over to a friend's house for dinner. I take pretty decent care of myself. And I’m really good at my job.

  Wait, what was your question?

  84 — Familial Run-in with Religious Hypocrisy

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  Sometimes I get confused about right and wrong. I mean I do absolutely everything everyone tells me; I’m sure I do because I resent everyone and everything, am frustrated all the time, absolutely must be with people constantly, and have no ideas of my own. So I know I’ve got that part right. Okay. So. I go to church and sit next to my bratty kids who kick my shins for an hour solid with their cheap patent leather shoes. Well, last week, during the invocation, I was on my way to make ten gallons of coffee in the ancient percolator and noticed my mother making out with the hot teenage acolyte in the choir practice room. She’s almost sixty-three. Shouldn’t Mom have a little fun with a boy toy in her spare time?

  Dear Familial Run-in with Religious Hypocrisy,

  What’s he look like?

  86 — Should Have Gotten Knocked-Up at Fourteen

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I went on one date from a dating website and now I’ve been getting harassing phone messages from the guy for almost a year. I’m not being singled out. He seems to use telemarketer technology. But I get these horribly intimidating sound-effect voice mails. They are the worst. It's totally psychologically traumatizing. I stopped checking my voice mail in the fall because of them. I couldn't deal with it. They are weird, mainly. Like movie sound effects. The scariest one is of gunshots. It sounds like it's coming from inside a firing range. I’ve got the cops on it, but I was wondering what to do about procreation.

  Dear Should Have Gotten Knocked-Up at Fourteen,

  You think too much. Cops will get you nowhere. You need to take matters into your own hands. Look at everything that’s already on your plate. It’s getting ridiculous. I mean your daily to-do list is like this: 1) leave the house; 2) start dating again; 3) find a soul mate in order to fulfill all life dreams; 4) be sure all the guys who turned out not to be the soul mate aren't skulking around in your vicinity honing malicious intentions just for something to do on their days off; 5) become completely and totally paranoid about ever leaving the house again.

  But moving from the general to the specific, let’s get down and dirty about how to cope with this phone harassment. I suggest an M60 mounted on the hood of your Prius. Just drive past that guy’s house and mow his ass down. You’ll probably get the old lady watering her geraniums next door and the guy who’s out front there waxing his car, but at the outset factor in that kind of minimal collateral damage. There is nothing that should be coming between you and your life plan. You are on birth control for the first fifteen years after puberty, then you come off it, and go straight to the fertility clinic. This is society and those are the rules. You can’t be getting sidetracked by some idiot who wants to intimidate you, just because this culture has him completely emasculated.

  87 — Book Worm

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I almost checked a book out at the library, but there was no one at the circulation desk. I didn’t know what else to do so I just took the book and walked out of the library. But somehow the book set off those alarms at the doors. It’s so ridiculous. All that does it is this magnetized metal strip. So unfair. If I’d just taken the strip out, there never would have been a problem. Well. The librarian came over and made a big thing out of it like the book was hers or something. She completely embarrassed me. Shamed me and shit, you know? But I want to go back and get more books to keep for myself. I need them to put over my fireplace because they look really good in the marble bookends I got from IKEA. How I can deactivate the sensors in the collectively-owned books so that those stupid alarms don’t go off next time?

  Dear Book-worm,

  Who does she think she is? Incompetence has reached its tipping point. Rip the covers off and run.

  39 — July Visit

  Mother is in town. Chicago is as good as life gets in the middle of July. We met, as soon as I could stand it, at the new Modern Wing. The Art Institute’s new twin. We stood on the walking bridge talking about literature for an hour. I did not hate her so much anymore but still hated her garish jacket. My mother looked out at the water. I looked down at the prairie flowers and gravel paths in their planned boxes in the Lurie Garden. My mother stood at the edge and leaned over. I couldn't. Couldn't stand it.

  88 — Want

  A isolationist alienated insular island-man joined the one-set to not be so me-too-mummy-cling marginalized. Why? Because one of the one-set went to the no kind of answer, about which so many ask. And he stood there, looking, you know? Really looking.

  Hobble. Cobble. Gobble. Go.

  For a moment, even to him, it seemed like maybe being one of the one-set may not even crash-test matter. No. Untrue! He was really looking. And not just to look but to find, to know, to believe, to become.

  46 — Love/Pity

  There are corn and cattails elsewhere. Whether or not piano eyes aspire to penetrate that stained glass Joseph at the chapel I am no witness, no more. Darkness consumes objective truths but as my hand reaches out to them, they ripple. Summer thunder, snow, and gleaming memory, but I am no witness no more, whether layered bakery rolls flake apart in church basements, even if milkweed seeds
silk-drift through unmoving air—despite their anchor weight—and rise past beech groves, up into sycamore-leaved nets, or if creeks still hush dry as they season pass.

  If mossy summer crawdads vacation in galvanized tubs on cement slabs still shaded by remembered peonies, then likely there a praying mantis still looks down from a leaf with reserved disapproval. My father said, “Never confuse pity and love.” His advice became a litmus test for coiling tendencies that seeped in through the chinks of my life where diagnosis and judgment made worm trails through my have-to-know-it-and-why mind.

  Even to this day I’d rather know if the summer auditorium curtain at the high school bike rack still gets filled up with tan kids near a place where slow continual invisible men chew limestone out of the earth, lift it by dump truck, shake it up conveyor belts, pile it high to make dust and our mini-mountains. Not knowing, I’d guess a swan has stopped for a bit, again, and is preening on the quarry lake that stands at silent capacity rain after rain.

  92 — Me

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I want to write in to ask you something, but I don’t really feel invested in my life. I feel like I’d rather watch reruns of reality TV. Maybe wait for the repo guy to come get the car I leased last year. Can you think of some questions that I might be able to write in and ask you so I can point to the entry in the paper and show it to all my friends and say, “That’s from me!”

  Dear Me,

  If you really want to latch onto existence, then it’s about savage recalcitrance against the status quo. So I guess you could ask me why the fuck I care.

  93 — Fuck up

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I’ve recently gotten sober after fucking myself up on a regular basis for a solid fifteen years. I’m wondering what to do about lack of sensual stimulation. I get sort of bored, then it’s almost like I’m grounded. I hate it. I want it to stop. I’ll do anything. Seriously.

  Dear Fuck-up,

  It’s too bad you’re sober. I quite enjoyed having a little nip of rye whiskey this afternoon while reviewing pages at this stainless steel table, with its brushed swirls, where my bouquet of lilacs and white tulips lies so carefully on a diagonal over a corner. I’ve yet to get a vase. The flowers drip every once in a while from the sopping wet purple tissue paper base. The water is pooling on the antique seat of a wooden chair next to me. But even if you didn’t mention it and won’t, the idea of your eating tea cake and ham after sex somehow disturbs me. I'm not quite sure why. Because, if I’m honest with myself, salt-cured meat, masticated, swallowed slow, is a perfect sort of indulgence for those most sober of individuals, such as yourself.

  95 — Self Help Nightmare

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I’m a co-dependent enabler and I love it. For ten years Dr. Phil and Oprah have made me feel really guilty about having any self-worth at all since I derive all mine from others. I don’t care what the Feminists say, Womanhood has a lot of momentum and it doesn’t just stop on a dime. The patterns are really old. For me, self-abdication started very young. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve harbored more and more silent resentment and frustration. I don’t know. When it's another person’s turn to support me somehow it never quite happens. There’s always a logical explanation. That's the part that pisses me off. Not the not having support. But. The constant explanations about why I can’t have it. What can I do to evade the pressure from the narcissists who dominate my entire existence?

  Dear Self-Help Nightmare,

  I can’t be distracted from broadcasting my overbearing influence by considerations like that. Of course you resent the world for not recognizing your needs but what can be done? Living in an emotional hell doesn't compromise "who you really are," as no one else really has access to your internal shit anyway. We're all alone. Get over it.

  96 — Heretic

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I don’t believe any of it. The only reason I go to church sometimes is to feel some continuity in my life, some sense of familiarity, some connection to my childhood, and to the space beyond death.

  Dear Heretic,

  It doesn’t sound like you’re going to be able to get your quota of a derivative God. This has to stop. Don’t mess with any of that shit in the beyond. It’s best to stay home. How will Santa find your stocking? You can’t be at Grandma’s on Christmas morning. Get your mom, or some other member of your inner circle, to sync-in with a church community so that you can show up surly twice a year. God will know you’ve done all you can for your spirit.

  98 — Sit-Down Dinner

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I would love to have a party where there's an auctioneer selling off abstractions all night as you make your entrance through the foyer. He’d be on stilts and have those thirty-foot stilt pants, metallic-striped, and yellow, with flutter, flow, and wooden clicks on marble floors where spring-loaded spills get cleaned up thud-quick-quiet so he won’t fall. He’d stand there, shifting his weight back and forth, lifting his feet, alternately, hunched over, making a rhythm, making a spectacle, making a left, right, left, right, left, right mockery march the way stilt walkers do, entertaining onlookers with a precarious gravity play that might maybe, yes, almost betrays its physics after all, once, no, yes, after all these galactic eras, and he’d look for the highest bidder for what can’t win: philosophical theories, macroeconomies, political spheres, and many too many emotional responses well-rationed. There would be no question about value. No low-bid contracts undermining insta-structures. He'd be streaming. And, as the hostess, I’d pay him in advance to have a cracked-out, verbal-solid, six-and-a-half hours of old-time auctioneering, calling our times into high frequency question, as treble over the deafening electronic downtempo beat, coming from somewhere out on the lanai. But I’m wondering what kind of table service I should have.

  Dear Sit-Down Dinner,

  Set a table with twenty-four place settings of your finest china and silver. Use the good crystal. At each place setting leave a square mirror and a small pile of cocaine. Give each little powder pile a calligraphied place card. Prop it up there. Have each guest introduce himself or herself to his or her neighbor on the right by snorting a line. And, if anyone wants to meet the persons on the left? Pass the Limoges oyster plate, where 70mm, 75mm, 80mm diaphragms are arranged as special order select delicacies.

  99 — Altruist

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  Most of the acts of my life have been altruistic. I'm basically trying to give myself permission to make decisions that may benefit me first and foremost and other people secondarily. This is REALLY tough if you've been taught the good opposite.

  I wouldn’t really mind catering to the group and putting everyone else’s needs first. But it doesn’t really seem like I have a pack for my pack mentality. Do you know what I mean? From personal history, I've found that trying to benefit the greater good, or the familial good, or the husband good is impossible. So what’s a good little altruistic self-sacrificer to do?

  Dear Altruist,

  Not sure why you care. But we can go there. How are you even going to offer yourself for the greater good? Consensus has been deconstructed. I’m not an altruist at all. Why would I ever want to bother to help anyone else?

  55 — Pothead

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I’ve been trying to reckon my identity but can’t seem to remember anything that I’ve figured out.

  Dear Pothead,

  My approach to the reclamation of identity is more involved than the IKEA standard "some assembly required."

  Forget everything you’ve already forgotten but don’t forget this:

  When you build your own contraption out of spare parts from the junkyard, which I do all the time, you don't really think, “Yeah, this is definitely going to work."

  Not at all. There's no warranty. No receipt. No little baggie of plastic pieces carefully counted in China. There's just you and a bunch of
ideas about how it all could be.

  Fine. What do you do with it?

  After you rig the thing with a hope and prayer, you think, "Well, if it does work, it'll be awesome. I made it myself and got all the pieces for cheap.” There's also a strong, “And I didn't get tetanus or lose a finger" component in there somewhere, too.

  101 — Lonely Broken Heart

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I go to fancy restaurants by myself...no problem. Go to the movies by myself…no problem. Go to plays alone...fine. Go on vacation by myself...great. Ice cream. Shoe stores. Bars. Concerts. Readings. Weddings. Baby showers. Business trips. Laser treatments. Haircuts. Workouts. Appointments with the financial planner. Dinners with friends. Bed. But once every couple months I'm like, “I do not want to go to the freaking grocery store by myself ever again!"

  Dear Lonely Broken Heart,

  Rent a husband.

  If you’ve got a demand? I’ll make the supply. I am SO the woman to start a temp-husband service. Better yet, why not form a co-op? Let’s do it! I know some pimps that buy huge quantities of Viagra from the pharmacy for their employees and clientele. I figure it's just a matter of chatting these guys up and adapting the business plan. I'll make a phone call.