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

  Dear Calm & Collected,

  What you want to do in this case is pack as much ancillary meaning into your life as possible. It’s sort of a trick, because those huge things like marriage and children and holidays are annoyingly large meaning suckers. It’s not like nutritional data, circulation, passing motorcycle cops, manganese, incidence numbers for worldwide injuries, neon green eye shadow, wrinkled silk suits, shadowboxing, sleek cars rushing through sunlit tunnels, pleated leather, plated scallops, a black calfskin sectional couch, heels on a chair back, freckles, butterfly migrations, cots and footlockers, snakeskin mini-trench coats, puppies in the mountains, pearl drop earrings on a cobblestone side street, sequin tentacles, and an updo stuffed with paper begonias. If you’re not careful marriage, children, and holidays assume this disproportionate status in a life. It’s easy to lose sight of all the ridiculously small areas of existence into which you can invest meaning if you are diligent and committed. For instance, you can have a shadowy figure in taxi yellow jeans invest meaning two nights a week after he guzzles a six-pack can-by-can, claims to have lost his cell phone, again, and arrives at your house banging on the windows and falling through the screen door.

  74 — Repressive

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  Sometimes I fantasize about sex. But I don’t think I’m that good at it. It seems like you’d have to be really, really good at it to meet the cultural standard. I don’t even have a ten-foot set of feathered wings. And I really have a hard time imagining slathering myself with a hot-thick layer of banana-passion body oil so I can be all self-possessed to hump two truckers and a wombat.

  Dear Repressive,

  You’re not alone. Well. You are. But. I mean a lot of people—look, it doesn’t matter. Just listen. Visualization is everything. Let's set a scene:

  1) It’s early. So. Get there. Get hateful and empowered.

  2) It’s a twin bed. Like at camp. Steel spring frame. Rusted-out joints. Everything.

  3) Now. Think of other sweaty people. As many as you want. But. There’s no reason to get greedy. Good. Get all worked up physically.

  Take it further. Figure it out. Have any sort of sweaty successful early morning interaction with two other people in a twin bed. I know it’s tough to imagine. But try. See it: Someone periodically stands up only to dive back in. That forces someone else down between the mattress and the wall, which make things impossible for whoever ends up in charge of fellatio. Don’t give up. I know it sucks. Seems like a terrible cross between naked roughhousing and the most awkward cramped contrivance for sex. Let it lead to flesh dripping with sweat, covered with a salt-glistening moist heat. Good. Wait. Yeah. You’re right. Let’s start over. This isn’t even close to the most ideal fantasy ever.

  75 — Embarrassing Evidence of Societal Entropy

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I’m single and, okay, I’m too old to be single. Let’s face it. I’ve got a vaginal death maw that can’t be unleashed at any backyard barbecue. It scares people. Men are afraid of its becoming a trap. But worse, married women are afraid their husbands are gonna fall into it and be ripped away into the vacuum of its black hole.

  So. Because of the vaginal death maw, I guess I understand why invasive control freaks who like me are always trying to set me up with these random single guys. Now. These guys aren’t random to the control freaks. They’re random to me. And. I’m random to them. But. The fact that these single guys are random to me and I’m random to them isn’t what matters. What matters is that the invasive control freaks get to neaten up their lives and get rid of any remnant single people. It’s the same as the way they put away their Christmas lights in big plastic tubs. They like order, I guess.

  Anyway. So me and these random-to-me-me-random-to-them single guys are supposed to go on dates or whatever. Sometimes I guess I do putter around my apartment thinking, "Gosh, I hope utter satisfaction comes to me by means of being a pawn in someone else's desire to stave off the socially awkward moments that the threatening presence of single people creates so that my being around stops undermining their entire familial structure." Well, okay. Fine. But. Yeah. I hate dating random people and random people hate dating me.

  Dear Embarrassing Evidence of Societal Entropy,

  Remember that game called Memory? I love that game! My kids have a version with famous photographs of all the national parks.

  37 — Celebrating a 25th Anniversary

  Service culture? What are you talking about? Pull off I-65 at exit 215. Go past the Arby’s, the McDonald’s, the KFC, the gas station that used to be owned by the Carters and could still be. Blinker’s on. Take a left. Limestone gravel parking lot. No ruts. No bumps. Always well maintained because Mr. Cover owned the Dairy Queen and he was also a contractor, as well as an eighth grade social studies teacher—all of which helped him stay in business as a small farmer in the outlying rural area around my hometown of Rensselaer, Indiana.

  The Blizzard and I grew up together. My dad took me to DQ. He liked ice cream. Once in a while, I’d go with the neighbor kids. We’d ride in another dad’s classic Skylark, or another year in his VW punch bug with countless golf tees on the floorboards. Other times, we went as a family of four, after church, plays, band concerts, piano recitals, and honors programs. We talked and laughed with people we knew who came in talking about great steals and slides evidenced by grubby socks held up with elastic from polyester uniforms, after Little League and summer softball. Yeah, I like Dilly Bars. And, the Peanut Buster Parfait has a place in my heart. But. Please. Step aside and let me order a Reese's Pieces Blizzard, medium.

  The Blizzard maker has a lot of artistic control. Or did in those days. The portions weren’t specified. So. The quantity of candy was an art more than a science. So was the length of time on the Blizzard machine. I loved it when they crushed the pieces beyond recognition, which made the whole thing orange. And, other times, I loved it when the pieces were just barely chopped, by some uninvested drive-thru slacker with no job security. The visored teenager haphazardly handed me something slipshod and careless, something in a blue-backgrounded waxed paper cup, something like a Reese's Pieces sundae.

  Ours was the regular DQ layout. There were plaques with pictures of softball teams near the entry and smudges of ketchup on the swinging trash can door didn’t last very long. The vertical glass-doored refrigerator meant for pre-made ice cream cakes later replaced a glass-covered chest of Dilly Bars. In the bathroom, there was that strange fabric loop with which to dry your hands. It replenished itself somehow. It’s possible that a few giggling girls may once have stayed in the bathroom diligently trying to pull out the whole thing.

  There is a misconception about the Midwestern work ethic. Probably reinforced by people like the DQ owner, with his four unrelated careers. I’m not saying that many, many people don’t work very, very hard. You have to when you’re poor. It’s imperative. But if you are sixteen, or seventeen, or (God forbid) eighteen, there is a different brand of vigor, something less harried, something less—well, less.

  At Dairy Queen, for at least twenty-five years, having a job—okay, fine, I’ll go—pays for the teenage gas that you need to drive an hour to get to the movies, if that’s the plan, with a date or a friend. Having a job means that for a few hours you aren’t drinking beer in the backseat of a car, drag racing between the cornfields somewhere. Having a job means you aren’t pregnant, just yet. Fine. These reasons to work—yours and your parents’—are a little different from working for the underwater mortgage, for the car title, for the night class, or for the kids’ Little League uniforms.

  I don’t know if it’s worse to work for the gas to drive to the movies or to be doing it for the revalued mortgage. It’s hard to say. And I don’t know if there is less perceivable angst in the teenager spooning glops of pineapple, hot fudge, and strawberry sauce on top of some ice cream and a broken banana or in the woman forced to take her child to work one day after learning her sitter “doesn�
�t work bank holidays.”

  Because maybe the teenager just got dumped. Maybe the father of four who thinks his kid should get a job to keep him out of trouble just found out his mother is dying of something he can’t comprehend. Maybe the twenty-seven-year-old is trying to find a way to pay for rent and student loans and martinis and credit card payments all at the same time. Maybe these three can’t be bothered, don’t have the time or patience or luxury to believe in God, in Country, in all the things that help turn “just getting by” days into diligent Midwestern work ethic days, into humble, hardworking, heaven-entry, patriotic, hellishly successive, interminable days of showing up—again—to the same place, to work.

  Regardless, if you make it through the day, if you make it through the week, if you impress your mother and father, your husband or wife, with your grades, with your batting stance, with your time on the gleaner, with your driving record, with your boyfriend, with your free throw percentage, with your first paycheck, with your raise, with your contract, maybe they’ll take you to DQ, for a Blizzard. Maybe they’re looking for a reason to go themselves. Yes! And maybe when you get there, a paid kid behind the counter will care a little bit more than usual, will not seem put-upon or bored, will say hello, will smile, and will let you watch how carefully the soft serve goes into the medium waxed paper cup, how evenly measured the Reese’s Pieces flavor morsels can be as they’re spooned into the cup, how particularly the fan blade on the Blizzard machine can be lowered into the ice cream, how the switch can be turned on, and how a person (who really knows the way to make a decent Blizzard) raises and lowers the cup, in an even rhythm, with skill. How that same person turns off the fan blade, slams the cup against the counter to get rid of that central vortex, shoves a long-handled red spoon into the cup, and hands it over to you, to someone who's been watching, waiting patiently, maybe all week, maybe longer.

  76 — Overwhelmed

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I like women. All different kinds but especially reinvented elastic driveway gate pinup girls rinsed sulfate-free. And sometimes I don’t mind taking one out for a nice meal. Or for a movie or something. But then about halfway through dinner I start to freak the fuck out, you know, because no matter what, I can just sense all these overwhelming expectations she has about the situation. You know how they are with their mounting emotive tensions. If they’re interested at all, you blink and they’re involved. Suddenly they want to date; nay, to love; who dares to dream so small! To perish together in a bed of bliss at the end of some well-matched longevity! She doesn’t know anything about who I am. So I usually just fuck her doggie style over the arm of my couch and then give her enough cash for a cab. Is there some way not to be overwhelmed by the dinner?

  Dear Overwhelmed,

  No.

  79 — Stating the Obvious

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  Sometimes people are assholes, pricks, bitches, and motherfuckers. Can you tell me why?

  Dear Stating the Obvious,

  Interactions work to keep people centered in the golden wheelbarrow on pavement iced with sweet-sixteen cadence-swung sun-damaged extremities. Everyone is always policing everyone else in these nurturing ways. When others are down, people bring them up. (That’s when you like people.) When others are up, people work diligently at bringing others down. (That’s when you state the obvious.) It works. Not like soluble fiber exactly. It’s more unblemished by instant feedback and awe-inspiring smoky eyes blasting some unforgettable announcement: the pampering oasis of an upcoming release to beat relentlessly through a sedentary layoff that will taper, burn, float, and record record surges. Helps us keep to the middle of the ridge as we walk our own paths through life. It's the grace of sustenance on a blue lagoon day for a brown woman in a bikini and knee-length cardigan.

  80 — Mommy Dearest

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I’m a stay-at-home mom, and I hate it. It’s the worst job I’ve ever had. I want to quit, but I’m deathly afraid of the societal judgment that I’d be forced to endure for the rest of my life.

  Dear Mommy Dearest,

  You know, perhaps there is a derivation of getting fired in the legal system. But the real issue is resenting that there’s never a way to kick back and rake in the unemployment. Such a nuisance. Try this: Be one girl with heart-shaped lips pomegranate-stained and coated with eight-hour shine fix polymers; try to chew through a dripping gold necklace. Do it a little too much until someone takes a stand, because what you want is to be laid off to avoid subjecting yourself to a lifetime of constant denigration.

  81 — Slacker

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  My motivation for everything in life has totally waned. I’m thinking about giving up. Advice?

  Dear Slacker,

  Picture a black woman in a white body suit. Get a bike. On the straightaways: don’t stop peddling; keep the rhythm consistent and set your mind free to explore unending horizons. Snap, float, high on private thoughts like oversized cards you can throw up against the low ceiling. Then, give yourself a white woman in low-rise purple pants, with a tramp stamp. Give her a purple hat, too. Make it big and floppy. But. Let her leave the sunglasses behind. They’re not forgotten. It’s a choice made with violins and candy apple-sticky lips. On the bike uphill: head down, power through, use your low gears, and always remember to breathe. Stroke a fluttering magazine filled with a camera’s collection. Scream no doom-boom at any close walls. This situation is not a breakdown, fully. Not a violation, at all. Let go. Get along with the woman who walks into skintight sunset-lit water. The silhouette of the fringe on her sarong proves nothing more than the woman solid-calved hiking the headlands with a farrier pack. On the downhill? Fuck it, there's nothing like descent. Keep your eyes open. Pick your feet up. Let the pedals fly. Smile. Steer the best you can. And enjoy that inimitable rush of wind on your face. The subwoofers are always there with the neon coil, flashing, reminding you to please, breathe, see, worst, need, and rock.

  48 — Mother/Child

  Mama, don’t stop being a child yourself. Freud should have kept his mouth shut. So what if we inch out on the limbs of idealized perfection, testing each soft spot with a toe? The blame game is bullshit even if we should have money in the bank, find at least one blast-lasting job, and keep our stabilized eyes in some sort of relationship established with unwandering over the great expanse.

  Motherhood lies in wait. A gorilla baby holds its mother, gripping her fur. Mary sits in my hybrid with gilt halo and child. Her palms open to the world.

  82 — Judgmental

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I’m really negative and critical. But I don’t like it when other people are. How can I pass judgment on others all the time without having it come back on me?

  Dear Judgmental,

  So today my dentist filled a small cavity. He was like, "You don't need the anesthetic, do you?" I was like, "Um, I guess not." But basically I was like, “Whatever, man. You tell me."

  If you don't enjoy submission, you've got a problem at the dentist’s. You're laid back, head in his lap, mouth open, can’t talk, and he's using incredibly scary tools in your face.

  Anyway, then out of nowhere he offered to sand down the chips in my teeth for free. He was like, "You want me to take care of that for you? I hate to see a pretty girl with an imperfection. My treat." I was like, "Why are you pointing out my flaws?" Then he was like, "Whatever, let me get in there with a sander." So fine. I’m game. Because, let's face it, this is the most bizarre gift ever.

  A minute later I was like, "My teeth are super hot." He was like, "Oh yeah. That's the friction." Then he got his fixated perfectionist vibe on, called about three women over to commend him on his achievement of sanding my incisors so well, and also for some reason to trash talk the other dentists all these girls used to work for, because apparently those guys would never treat their patients so well.

  Well. Then there was this weird sile
nce. I didn’t get it at first. But. Finally I picked up on the fact that he wanted validation from me, too. (So much for free.) But I’m like, okay, sure. "You're the best dentist who’s ever pointed out flaws and sanded down teeth as a community service to pretty girls."

  24 — The Status Report

  Here is one way to relate to the world. You may, at any given point in time, cry your status. Picture. Picture. Song. Politico. Picture. Here are the instructions: Give status reports on a periodic basis. Not every thirty seconds. Not once a week. But. Daily, appropriately.

  What is a status report? Pleasant things, seen and done. Or. Whatever! Virtually every conversation I can imagine is a status report. When friends get together the entirety of the interaction is one status report after the next. Men state their status in rather physical terms and women in rather emotional terms.

  Fathers may or may not be dozing in the front room while status reports are streaming by, but they have the authority to jerk to cognizance and demand the status of anything from anyone at any time. But it is the mothers who in particular are constant harpies of micromanagement when it comes to status. They are the revisionists, the censors, who demand to not only know where your physical body is in space and time but also such a plethora of data points on the status graph that anyone can succumb to a life comprised of providing one’s mother with data.

  Open up your wallet, suckah! Show me some sensory spectacle of self even if gray is the given field with absolutely no contrast where one is welcome to flail and panic and hyperventilate one’s way towards differentiation of some kind with blue bars—real or imagined.