Sketch

There’s a girl over there reading John Searle, The Mystery of Consciousness. She’s taking notes like a demon. Focusing large, squinty-eyed, absorbed within, pondering, gathering clues, tying things together, flipping pages, back and forth.

There’s another girl reading On the Road, people still read that? So influential but not common. It’s content with Kerouac, not craft. One could easily make the opposite case, esp. for his later works; Gerard is boring, nothing happens. She is not a young girl, at least looks old.

There’s the woman who calls me “red-hat;” she’s sitting with the poetry professor who cancels class or holds class minutes after, locks the door, my Latin class can’t get in, but he never erases the chalk boards and we feed our eyes on the poems which are usually very good.

There’s the strange bearded man with the wonderful voice—he really ought to be an actor. I’d love to see him in a film. He would make a great straight-comic actor.

 There a lot of boring people here—just regular studying, with laptops or anything, Spanish class, design. And one couple perhaps who are in love—sitting eyes locked edging closer legs entwined faces rounded in smiles, speaking in low tones, softly, slowly. A whisper, a kiss, they lean in and hide in a mesh of wild hair, their love is secret. 

Thoreau on the Classics

The student may read Homer or Aeschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

From Walden. Of course the gendered language troubles me, but let us imagine the thought otherwise.

Ode on my Found Bicycle

Hey master Raleigh I found your punk ass.
You cannot get too far away from me:
you rolled off my front porch but Levi last
night found you, lying nude on Eugene street.
Where was your protective lock, the one I
always wrapped around your waist? I forgot
it that night and fell asleep. The next time
may not be so lucky and you’ll go uncaught
as some vicious cretin rides you away.
I’m glad those hipsters found you in the ditch
lying left to die. They gave you back. “Hey,”
they said, knowing how much life is a bitch,
“We ride bikes too, we know how much it sucks
when your bike’s stolen by some stupid fuck.”

Read the prequel here.

Quit Complaining, John

John Dorn was not a faggot. They called him that and worse, the jocks did, but he knew it wasn’t true. Page 82 of the Tome of Magic got him too excited for him to be a faggot. He might be a bundle of sticks, though, he knew. David Hume, the wise philosopher (Honderich calls him “the blessed Hume” in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy) wrote, “I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” John felt like a rapidly changing collection of everything.  Especially when rolling his stats, like he was now.

“I wanted to play a ranger,” he whined. Jeremy didn’t say anything. “14, 11, 9, 12, 6, 3. Seriously? I have to re-roll.” John picked up his dice and tossed them on the table.

“Seventeen! That’s better. Sixteen. Looking good. This ranger is going to kick some ass.” But Jeremy interrupted him.

“No John. Stop. Stick with your first stats. You know this is an old-school game. Straight 3d6 down the line. You have a Charisma of 3 and Strength of 14, so that’s it: dumb warrior.”

John let out a sigh. “But, Jeremy, dude, I was ready to play a Ranger! I have a background all ready to go. I wrote this thing last night!” He held up a sheet of unlined paper, covered in neat lines of handwriting. He’d tried to sketch out a character portrait in the top left-hand corner, but he couldn’t draw very well, so he erased it. All that remained was a large black smudge.

“You wrote all that?” Jeremy asked. “Jesus, your character is probably going to die anyway. I told you. This is old-school, brutal dungeon-crawling. This isn’t going to be some faggoty Dark Elf bullshit. What did you write?”

John was hurt. There was that word again, like a slap on the face. He stared at Jeremy, thinking about leaping over the table and punching him in the face. He would do in in one deft move, pushing himself up and over with his left arm, while at the same time throwing a punch with his right, landing a blow on Jeremy’s nose, breaking it. Blood would gush out of his face like Kool-Aid out of a hose.

But he didn’t do that. He looked down at the page and began reading.

“At the tender age of twelve, Jor-Gon the Ranger became an orphan. Raiders from the North rode down on his village and slew his entire tribe and family. They were all terribly killed. Jor-Gon still has nightmares of seeing his father beheaded before his eyes. But his father was a great warrior of the tribe, and Jor-Gon thought that life was hopeless without him. And amazed that he was killed. The raiders did not kill everyone. The love of Jor-Gon’s life, Raena, was kidnapped. He still remembered the day she taught him to make a flute out of a blade of grass and wept. He vowed to follow the raiders and slay all of them and bathe in their blood. So he learned the two weapon fighting style from a grand master…”

“Dude, what the fuck are you reading?”

Jeremy and John turned. Rob had come out of the bathroom. His fly was still open.

“I’m reading my character history,” said John.

“Oh. It sounds horrible. Why bother?” Rob yawned. “Hey guys, who used the bathroom last?”

“What?” asked Jeremy.

“The bathroom. Whoever used it flushed. We should be environmentally responsible and not flush the toilets. It isn’t necessary unless there is something nasty in there.”

“Did you just flush?”

“No. Of course not, man.”

“Well you were in there for a while, did you–”

“Look, it isn’t necessary. It wastes water.” Rob sat down at the table with them. “There’s usually a drought in the summer and it’s because of all this flushing. One point six liters per flush, man. Don’t fuck with that. Have you rolled your character up yet?” He turned to John. “I’m ready to kill some monsters and take their stuff.”

“I was just re-rolling…”

“No, you weren’t,” interrupted Jeremy.

“Re-rolling?” Rob yelled. “There’s no re-rolls in this game, what the fuck?”

“I’m not going to let him re-roll,” said Jeremy.

“I have to re-roll! I have a Charisma of 3!” yelled John.

“Who cares? Charisma is useless. Just play a door-basher dude.” said Jeremy.

John slammed his fists on the table and stood up.  “No, it isn’t useless, not for my character concept. I put a lot of work into this and don’t want some crappy rolls to ruin it.

“What else did you roll?” Rob yelled back at him and bolted up out of his chair, which fell backward.  “Have you even looked at my character sheet? I don’t have any stat over eleven! Plus your backstory sucks, you just ripped off Conan. What the fuck kind of a name is Jor-Gon for a ranger anyway? You are a barbarian.”

“No, no I’m not. I am not a Barbarian.”

“Fine, fine,” said Rob. “YOU aren’t. Jor-Gon is. Your whole in-character knowledge thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know. Just, just stop it. You can’t just pick what you want like that. Jeremy wanted an old-school game and that’s what we agreed to.”

They both turned and looked at Jeremy. He raised his hands, as if in self-defense. “Guys,” he sighed, “I don’t know if I even want to run this game anymore. It is way too much trouble at this point.”

Rob and John stood and stared at each other until John looked away and fingered his character sheet.

“Fine,” Rob said. “I’ll let you lovers decide what you want to do. In the meantime I think I’ll head to the bar and hang out with some people who aren’t nerds.” He left and slammed the door. Neither John nor Jeremy said anything for a long time. Only the sound of John’s cuckoo clock gently ticking in the corner disturbed the silence. John sat down, picked up his dice, and began rolling them, recording the numbers on the side of his sheet.

“He knows,” said Jeremy.

“So?”

Jeremy got up and left the room. “Gotta piss,” he yelled back. John finished rolling up new stats and was happy with his new numbers. Since Jeremy was in the other room, he decided to alter a few of them, increasing them by a few points and putting them into the proper order. But he wouldn’t be a ranger this time. He knew that Barbarian was the best thing to be. A buff barbarian, with a rippling muscules and wearing naught but a loincloth and wielding a massive broadsword. Yes, and he would kill Rob’s character the first chance he got. Perhaps Rob would get greedy and be searching through a treasure chest, and John would come up behind him and chop his head off. But Jeremy started yelling something.

“What?”

“I said, that motherfucker. He didn’t flush.”

“Oh yeah.”

“There’s a huge turd in here, it’s poking out of the water.”

John began laughing uncontrollably. Turds.

The End.

How To Eat Gelato, Pt. 2

You want to get a prostitute. “Honey,” you tell her, “I’ve got a lot of money to burn on you and I want you and me to pick up another girl and we gonna haff a threesome.”

The girl you got is massive, a full head and a half taller than you. But it’s okay. You give her the money and you walk down Lee St. towards the college.

“They got good ice cream down here, but is Italian. You buy it for me. I mean you pay. You pay.”

She laughs.

“Here. Here, I don’t care. I give you everythin and you and me preten like you takin me out.” You take out your wallet and hand it to her. She opens it, takes out all the money and puts it in her purse.  Then you keep walking and you try to hold her hand so that you can feel romantic but she is too tall and it is awkward.

When you get to the shop, outside you say, “Right here I had a seizure once. I had a seizure and the only cure was some o that cow-bell.” She laughs, thinking that you’re telling a joke. But you aren’t.  The crazy baristas with the hair came out and banged on the pots to snap you out of it. You don’t tell her that part, though, because she might not like seizure people. Instead you grin and nod. Like it was a joke: you are a silly man.

You go inside and you order the gelato and sit down in one of the nice chairs. You think to yourself that things are going well for the night already because there is a mousy blonde on the couch across from you. She’s reading something and you ask what it is. She tilts up the book so you can see the cover but it all seems like a haze, a blur. You can’t see for a minute.

The girl you hired comes over with the gelato and says she’s going to go outside for a smoke. So you lean in to talk to the blonde some more.  Ask her what she does.

“I’m a teacher,” she says. “Fourth grade.”

“Oh…ooooh. A teacher. I can see that. I can tell, that you’re very smart and you’re very beautiful. You’re curious about me, aren’t you?”

She bobs her head up and down but without a smile. It may be that she doesn’t know what to do because you are so overwhelming and handsome. You tell her that you are here on a sting operation. You say,

“We have him a little worried, my friend’s ex-fiancee. You saw her? The girl with me? We came down to visit him and we have to go out to dinner but he thinks we didn’t made reservations. He doesn’t understand. He thinks it is a setup. And we didn’t make any reservations. Because the reality of the situation is that it is a setup, and he’s going to jail. He’s very narcissistic. I am too, actually. I just found this out, that I am a narcissist. I don’t really care much but my ex she told me and some other people verified it.”

You’re losing the blonde. She keeps looking back at her book and not at you. But there is a magazine on the table between you two and that is closer to her.

“I love the cover of this magazine,” you say. “I gives you a nice summer fresh taste, with the tomatoes there? You see?” Lift the magazine up. “Summer is on the way. I can feel the summer.”

She only nods and doesn’t look up.

“Let me give you my card and you can give me a call. You know, I’m friends with Bruce Willis. And my ex-wife is in a reality show right now. You and me can go down to visit her and be in an episode. Surprise ex shows up with new young girlfriend.” You laugh at your own joke but she does not laugh.

This isn’t working so you look around, feeling bored and fidgety. Your mind is tired. How long has she been out there? Smoking a whole pack? There are two bearded lonely men sitting in the corner not far from you and they have been talking the whole time but now the darker one raises his voice.

“No, I am distrustful of the second person. The rhetorical imperativity of the author imposing on readers. There can be no immersion. Otherwise word salad. There is no person. Stance flawed.”

Nod-head red face. Your brain is fizzling. The couple ensconced in light. The red beard bursts in flame. Everything stops but the buzzing rises in your ears again and it is happening again. The sound of engines and pulleys kicks up and you see it descend from the ceiling: the bleeding severed head of Kofi Annan. Its face in frowns and his weary creases are filled with blood. The veins dangle like dead tendrils from his neck, his eyes heavy with sorrow, but the eyes see. And the bleeding head of Kofi Annan fixes is gaze on you, and opens its mouth and speaks to you.

“I see what you did there.”

You are judged. Close your eyes and think about what you did.

Think about what you did.

Antiworlds

Last night I stayed up too late. I was very tired when I got home and my numb mind wouldn’t let me think of anything, and I was feeling dead all around and alone. I wanted something similar to my mood, so I pulled something Russian off my shelf: Andrei Voznesensky’s Antiworlds. Not that I’d read it before. No, it’s just that the Russian soul is lonely and cold.

Voznesensky happily writes the virtues of loneliness. Here are some poems or fragments of poems:

In these days of unheard-of suffering
One is lucky indeed to have no heart:
Crack shots plug me again and again,
But have no luck

Other poems are more hopeful and quiet…but turn to despair:

Voznesensky may one day be graven
In cold stone but, meanwhile, may
I find haven
On your warm cheek as Andrei.

In the woods the leaves were already falling
When you ran into me, asked me something.
Your dog was with you: you tugged at his leash and called him.

He tugged the other way:
Thank you for that day. 

I came alive: thank you for that September,
For explaining me to myself [...]

But you are leaving, going
As the train is going, leaving,
Going in the other direction: we are ceasing to belong
To each other or this house. What is wrong?

[...]

The leaves are swept away without trace
But millions more will grow in their place:
Thank you, Nature, for the laws you gave me.

A love affair which teaches something, but the realisation that things end, necessarily, and there will be others; countless others. These are the seasons of life.

A third poem, “Dead Still,” builds on an image of two lovers’ backs as “two shells in moonlight,” and the “load of stress and bother” of this troublesome world “will but press us closer, one to the other.” Would that this happened! The stress and bother falls like a dagger and only harmfully crushes.

Then there’s “Homeless,” which opens with the line “We’re hoboes,” but fairly soon in the poem I can’t help but assume V. is saying that homelessness is the condition of humanity:

We're closest, aren't we, when we're most away,
embraced
		by ghostly strangers in the dark,
whose kisses scald and stay.

But this was my mood, and it felt good to spend some time with V. Depressing but true.

How to Promote Yourself

Hi I am Anthony and this is Beu and we are going to let you know now that we are promoting art and Nick Nickerson. Nick is an artist and I am an artist but we are here to get the word out to everyone that we can. I know, this really is last minute as shit but here is a flyer. That’s me there and yeah, we call it the Carpet Style Crew.

We will have art everywhere all on the street and if I could paint the sky orange right now I would it would brighten the day. We are going to be here all the way from here all the way down to downtown and by January first everyone will know my name. We are making it happen right now this time the joint is on. If I hear from you, I’m saying, you have my number now on that paper, if I hear from you then it is on any time. My art is here in my bag and if you just call me after this I will let you know where it is because we are on the move to get known.

I’m almost eighteen years old so it is okay. And I’m just saying that I have six hundred milligrams of the detox medication with me right now in my bag all ready to go. Ever since that day and it’s been getting worse, it’s been more powerful and happening, ever since I’ve been having these dreams–I have a vision, these visions and it’s going to happen, I’m ready to make this, so you should call your parents. Don’t worry about the detox because I have that ready.

But you have a good night and remember that my name is Nick Nickerson and I’m promoting art and I will see you soon, things will be taking off and by next week, we will be having lunch.

An open letter to Mr. Saulters

Andrei, S. V. V.

I haven’t seen you in a number of days, but I did think of you recently; or a conversation we had about zombies and the apocalypse and apocalyptic fiction, because I read a passage in a pulp novel which touched on some of our discussion. “What are the implicit arguments of the genre?” you asked me. We discussed it at length in that local bar not far from everything else we do.  Neither of us were drunk, so I believe you must remember it well. But I must apologize for my incoherencies, since I have not had my morning coffee and am being subjected to vulgar music which regrets me to hear.

One of us said that the conditions for the apocalypse were brought about ordinarily not by outside forces, but by the logic of the society which it destroys.

The book I was reading recently was The Fallible Fiend, by L. Sprague de Camp. You likely don’t know the book, and neither did I until recently. I went to a used bookstore with a friend whom we both know; I wanted something cheesy and easy to read, something that wouldn’t tax my brain too much. After browsing the fantasy/sci fi mass markets for some time, I picked the book with possibly the worst cover and title. It was only seventy-five cents, a price I couldn’t pass up.

The protagonist of the novel is the demon Zdim, summoned from the Twelfth Plane to do service. The idea is that demons are ‘drafted’ into service of Prime Planers to do duty in exchange for iron, a scarce resource on the Twelfth Plane. The demon then observes and comments on our strange human customs and foibles.

It turns out that the book is cited by Gary Gygax in Appendix N of the first edition of the Dungeon Master’s Guide; this book was one of the major inspirations for Dungeons and Dragons. But let us not speak any more of that here. My concern is with the cannibals who threaten to eat everyone and destroy society.

The idea of a cannabilistic army which wages a war as a foraging expedition is absurd, but what excites me is the reasoning of their General, who explains the reasoning to the demon thus:

“Demon, we have nought against your kind as a whole. But, by working for the Novarians, you have incurred their guilt. You have committed a moral outrage that merits instant death.”

“How so, General?”

“The Novarians, like the other folk of this continent, are irredeemably wicked and therefore should be destroyed.”

“What does their wickedness consist of, sir?”

“In making war upon one another. We have looked into the matter and know they are all given to this vile practice.”

“But, General, you are currently making war upon them, are you not? Wherein, then, lies your right to judge them?”

“Oh, we are not making war! We are conducting a foraging or harvesting expedition. We harvest a crop–a human crop–and we do it for the simple, normal, wholesome purpose of feeding our people. Since all creatures must eat, this is a natural and hence moral procedure. But to slay men for no good reason is wicked and immoral. Those who practice it deserve no mercy.”

“But, General, I am told that the folk of this continent, when they make war, claim to have equally just reasons.”

“What reasons? So that some political adventurer can extend his rule over more human beings, or seize their wealth, or convert them to his particular superstition, or kill them off so that his own folk can occupy their land?”

“How about those who defend themselves against such attacks? We demons of my place do not practice war, but we do recognize the right of self-defense.”

“That is mere pretext. Two of these nations go to war, each claiming the other has attacked it, which is obviously absurd–albeit the most diligent inquiry might not be able to assign the true blame. Besides, if one of these paleface nations defends itself now, you can be sure that it has attacked some neighbor in the past. Nay, the only legitimate reason for slaying another human being is to eat him. So the only sensible thing is to round up the whole fractious lot, salt them down, and consume them. Since we Paaluans do not engage in war, we are obviously more moral than the palefaces, and it is therefore right and proper that we should so use them.”

In this way we see that the war-making logic of Novaria (which is a large area comprising several kingdoms) has wrought its own destruction; and these cannibals, in that they crave flesh and brains, are not unlike the zombies with which we are so familiar. Are the Paaluans a force of apocalypse? And it seems here that the arguments are not implicit but explicit: apocalypse comes as a dōm.

Ode on my Lost Bicycle

Lost Mister Raleigh, who now straddles you?
His or her groin nestled close in your seat–
You wandered from my hallway, why you chose
to leave, I do not know. But with you gone I weep.
My feet, not new to walking, now complain
of cruel abuse, unused to longer treks
and I have lost control of my thought’s train,
no need to mind my course for fear I wreck.
But I know that you’d never leave me of
your own free will, but stolen by a thief
who just last night stole you, my steel-framed love,
your rear red wheel rolls in my dreams. I grieve,
but know that you will traitor him and rip his jeans
and make him wreck, to suffer from lobotomies.

[Draft 1.5]

Family Happiness

He was coming out of the house before she had even closed her car door.  He moved slowly, measuring every step for its gravity, testing the concrete driveway and the strength of his own hips.  Not only was he old, but he had suffered a minor stroke just a few weeks ago.

How are you feeling, dad?  She asked.

I’m feeling just fine, thank you, he replied, and he brushed her away from the door.  He opened it himself.  He eased himself into the car’s front seat, but slowly.  He could not force it or sit easily like so many lazy young men he’d known.  If he did his body would break like raw pasta bent too far.  Amy stood waiting.

Would you like to go to someplace different today, she asked.  He was almost in and ignored her question, concentrating on the robotic movement of his legs and his back, the slow mechanical processes of moving each muscle involved in sitting, of shifting his hip here, then his left leg there, then his right leg, then his shoulder.  He shook his head when Amy put her hand on the door to close it for him. Instead, he leaned over and took the door handle and closed it himself. It didn’t close all the way, so Amy shoved her hip against the door.

Back in the car, starting the engine.

Dad, I didn’t hear you because the wind was blowing in my ear.  Do you want to go to the same place or somewhere new?

Well, the other place I’d go is a little bit down the road. I don’t know if you want to drive.

It’s okay Dad.

I would appreciate it.  It’s a little down the road like I said.

Just tell me where to turn and everything.

He put his head down and began shuffling through the paper he’d brought.  Now they were out on the road.  She paused for traffic and turned right, passing an old faded billboard that only read “farm my fresh.”

You really ought to wait there, he said.  You need to look to your left.  Cars are coming from that way.  Cars do come.

Okay.  I’m sorry.

They rode in silence for several minutes.  She changed lanes.

I looked dad, to make sure there wasn’t anyone in the lane.

Good.

He opened a pamphlet and thumbed through it.

Here, there is a college course on language and…language.  Language and…I’m sorry.

It’s okay dad.  I can get that for you if you want to learn about it.

Just let me look at this Amy.

He seemed irritated.  She decided to give up on conversation for now.  They passed discoteques and strip malls and tarot card readers; they came to the end of the bus lines and the end of the city limits and the buildings were less frequent.  There was only the sky and the road and pastures filled with grazing horses.

About another mile from here, he said as they passed an abandoned gas station.  They drove for three more miles.  Eventually on their left loomed a fat brick building labeled Family Restaurant.

Here.

I’m going to have to make a u-turn.  She stopped at the red light.

Just go, goddamn it.

The car lurched forward but then stopped. Another car was coming from the other direction.

I can’t go.

Well, you could have gone. He sighed. I don’t know why you don’t listen to me.

I’m sorry. I just thought that the cars were going faster. I’m going now.

Amy pulled into the parking lot and found a spot by the front door. After she got out of the car she walked around to help her father out, but again he refused help.

Go on inside, he said. Find us a seat.

She walked into the breezeway and picked up a weekly, pretending to flip through it while watching him close the door and make his way toward the door. When he saw that she had not gone into the restaurant, he scowled and waved. Amy shrugged her shoulders and went inside. A pudgy waitress wearing a hairnet smiled at her.

How many ya’ll havin’, the waitress asked.

Just two.

Her father opens the door. The woman looks at him and then back at Amy with a frown.

Where ya’ll wan sit? Right here by the door’s open.

She picked up two menus and silverware from the basket on the stand and moved toward the table.

No. Not there, he said. I don’t want a breeze on me while I eat. I want to sit in the back.

The three of them walk to the back of the restaurant, Amy behind her father, the waitress behind her. The wall is mirrored, and Amy watches herself following her father, but imagines that she is seeing a girl she doesn’t know. She’s with a bitter old man who isn’t her father, who can barely walk. The girl she sees is embarrassed, because the waitress can tell something is wrong.

We’ll sit here, he says. He puts his hands on the table and lowers himself into the chair. Amy waits until he is seated before she sits down. She smiles at the waitress.

I’ll have a coffee, the man says. The waitress puts the menus on the table.

Awright. Ma’am, coffee for you, too?

Amy shakes her head. No, thank you. I’ll have hot tea please.

Awright. I’ll be right back with that for you.

While the waitress is gone, Amy keeps her eyes on the table, picking at the napkin, pulling it apart. The old man says nothing to her. He rubs his hands, looks bored. The waitress returns.

You guys ready?

Yes, the man says. Two eggs. Over easy. Bacon. You have bacon. Two, three slices. Cup a grits. And I’ll have toast with that, please.

The combo comes with two pieces of bacon, hun.

Three slices. Three. He holds up three fingers. Amy smiles.

I’d like just toast, please. And I’ll have bacon. Dad, I can just give you one of my pieces of bacon.

No. No. You have your own bacon. I want three slices.

Amy nods to the waitress. Okay Dad. She turned to the waitress and said quietly, Just put one of mine on his plate. I only need one piece.

The waitress smiled and walked off.

She doesn’t seem like much of a waitress, he said. I don’t believe I’ll be l-leaving a very good tip today.

Amy stirred her tea. How is your arm?

My arm is fine, Amy. I don’t know why you would ask me about that. He covered the bandage on his forearm with his hand.

Well, let me see.

A week after the stroke—he’d fallen and grazed his arm against the stove. His skin, old and tissue-thin, tore open, exposing the muscle beneath. He was due for a skin graft, but until then he was  under orders to keep it covered and clean.

I’m not going to show it to you, Amy. That’s really not your business. It’s my body.

I know, Dad.

Amy. Amy, I’d like to come over to the house sometime.

Why?

I want to see what you’ve been doing.

I haven’t done much with the place at all, Dad.

Well, you’re not working. Figured you’d be productive. I just want to see my daughter’s paintings, that’s all.

I would have to ask Mom about that. If you can come over.

He leaned forward. She doesn’t have to know, does she? If I just came by and had a peek.

No, but she would be really upset if she found out. It’s not done up very nice. She would be embarrassed.

Well what I really want to see is your paintings.

It doesn’t matter. You would see the rest of the house if you went inside.

I think you just don’t want me to see your paintings.

Amy sighed.

That’s it, isn’t it? Have you even been painting?

There’s been a lot going on right now.

Amy, you have to paint every day. It takes effort.

I haven’t had time lately. There’s been a lot going on.

If you want to be an artist, you have to work at it. You have to paint every day. You have to…to devote yourself, to sacrifice. Takes hard work. He stopped to sip his coffee.

Like I said, there has been a lot going on. I have had no time to make it to the studio.

I don’t think you understand what it takes. To be a painter. You can’t be great this way.

Just then the waitress came by to top off his coffee. She said nothing, but only eyed the two of them. Amy thanked her, and after the waitress left, her father spoke again.

You’ll never be great.

The words slapped her. Amy’s lip quivered.

You’ll never be great, not this way. You don’t have a job, you have a place rent-free. You should take advantage of that. You’re wasting your life.

There’s been a lot going on. We’re had a lot of trips to the hospital with the stroke.

Don’t you dare blame this on me, Amy. Don’t you dare. Don’t blame it all on me.

But Dad, why are you—

Dammit Amy. If you’re not going to keep painting then you ought to give it up.

Amy knew he was right. That she needed to paint more often than she had been.

You won all those awards, he said.

She had. Well, one award, and she applied for and received two grants to support her painting. She’d had a showing and given a talk. And she was officially an artist in residence at the hip collective gallery uptown, but she never stopped in. She remembered that she must have left her horsehair brush there. Yesterday she had pulled out a half-finished canvas and stared at it for twenty minutes—it was a piece she’d worked on fervently several months ago, but had encountered a problem in the composition and set it aside to mull it over for a day. Then the stroke happened and she forgot about it. But yesterday, while looking at it, the structure came alive again in her mind. She could see the lines dancing. The painting was an abstract study of perspective. She wanted her brush from China, the one an old lover gave to her, to make a mark in the upper left-hand corner.

And now you’re farting around, her father said. What are you doing? You’re not doing anything.

The waitress arrived with their food. She set it on the table in front of them without a word. Amy was thankful for the interruption. The two of them ate without looking at each other or saying a word. As a result they ate quickly.

You know, he said, pushing his plate aside, I don’t like you babying me. I don’t.

I’m not, Amy said. I’m helping you.

The waitress dropped off the check. Wait, said Amy. She opened her bag and dug out her money. She counted out a few bills. Keep the change for your tip, she said.

Dad, I think we should go. We need to go now.

He pushed his chair backward in small slow steps and lifted his body with his arms. Amy went and stood by the front door, waiting.

I’m not going to stand for it, he said when he finally caught up to her.

Stand for what?

Fuck you, Amy. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. The way you live.

His face turned red as he continued to yell. Amy started to go out when he paused to catch his breath.

I don’t like this, she said. I’m leaving.

Wait, Amy. I need your help. I need your help.

She stepped outside and let the door close behind her. He began to yell fuck you again, over and over. His voice was muffled when the door shut. Amy sat in her car while her father came out into the bright afternoon sun, squinting his eyes and clinging to the door for support. He stood there, bracing himself, shouting at her.

Fuck you Amy, fuck you. I need your help. I need your goddamn help.

Amy started her car and let it idle. She put her hand on the gear stick. This sort of thing had happened before, even before the stroke. How many more times would it happen? He looked tired. He stopped shouting for a moment. Amy could see the waitress and several other people all standing by the door. They didn’t look like they were going to intervene. They just wanted to watch her life fall apart. They all probably thought she was a bad daughter, then. She felt like one. She rolled down her window.

You can just take the bus home. I don’t want you in my car right now.

There’s no damn bus line out this far, honey, he said.

She knew it was true, and realized he’d planned this out from the start. He let go of the door and shuffled toward the car, carefully stepping off the curb with his arms raised, as if balancing himself on a beam. She didn’t say anything or pull away as he made it to the passenger side and opened the door and began the process of getting in.

Why did you do this, she asked.

He didn’t answer until he was seated and had closed the door.

I did it to tell you to leave me alone and live your own life. There’s better things out there.

He snapped his seatbelt into place.

Now I’m going to need you to take me home.

Amy put the car into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot. She remembered that she needed to pick up a prescription from the drugstore and call to confirm an appointment with the doctor for her father. She needed to finish his laundry.

She needed her horsehair brush, but that would have to wait.

[Draft 1.3 - Comments appreciated]