$20 for 6000 words

Behind schedule on Snugglekitty but it isn't all from slacking off. I'm working on entering a short story contest. More on this later.

Soft Handed, Callous

When I was in high school, our youth pastor told us about the summers he spent working construction to make ends meet. He would put in these long shifts carrying heavy things in the heat that kept him behaving himself since it was like a preview of the Hell he believed there was. He told us that, to cool off, what he would do is go sit in the porta-potty where the heat was intensified and the baked shit hung thick in the air. He would sit there for a few minutes and then go back to work feeling refreshed because, the air outside seemed cleaner and the 102 degrees didn't seem so bad next to the 115 in the plastic box.

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can use this method to increase my ability to channel that raw emotion I keep hearing about into writing. Is a porta-potty analogous to a passionate but short-lived relationship?

On a related note, there are times I wonder what the context was when someone uttered the words "true love always finds a way" because no one separated from what they think is their true love can be that optimistic.

Or maybe I'm just out of my element.

More Like a Tommy Gun

"FIVE CHAMBERS OF DICK."

-Jon Stewart on Chatroulette.

On Count of Three

I'm working really hard not to turn into the kid who writes poems that glorify the working class while he listens to NPR but, dammit, I've listened to Fresh Air twice now in as many days and I have a crush on Terry Gross.

I've written stories and stories and poems and poems about the perfect ways I could fall in love and none of them came true. So now I'm writing stories and poems about the ways I don't want to lose my parents in the hopes the same holds true.

I'll Die Trying

Haiku for the Economist

They say "words are cheap."

My book costs $90;

Veblen is my boy.

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed

The (almost) final draft of this piece in which I raised Mrs. Baker from the dead. My mommy said it was good.

Daisy Buchanan Can Eat a Dick

In my younger, more vulnerable years, my high school English teacher gave me some advice. I was thinking really seriously about going to college to study management but Mrs. Baker told me to follow my heart because “college is not a trade school.” My academic elitism get the better of me and, when my more pragmatic but less interesting relatives asked why I was studying English, I would declare “trade school is for a recession!”

Then I graduated in a recession and the books I had read did me little good as I drifted from commission job to telephone sales to temp work and back. Kids who had learned trades were employed, married, had children and lives while I crisscrossed the country, building up more debt than life experience in meaningless jobs with pay as miniscule as the impact I made on the world.

The morning I laid, staring at the ceiling, wondering what kept me beating on, a boat against the current, borne ceaselessly back into mediocrity and failed expectations, I remembered the punch line to all of it: That teacher, Mrs. Baker, lost her job a year before I graduated. Last I heard, she was working as a cashier at Walmart. I call that one a draw.

March On, Revision!

Let's celebrate the month of March with a mean little story I wrote while I was feeling down about being an unemployed 20something with writer aspirations.

Daisy Buchanan Can Eat a Dick

In my younger, more vulnerable years, my high school English teacher gave me some advice when I was thinking really seriously about going to college to study management. Mrs. Baker told me to follow my heart because “college is not a trade school.” I let my academic elitism get the better of me and, when my more pragmatic relatives who were living comfortably in what seemed like boring existences asked why I was studying English, I would declare “trade school is for a recession!”

Then I graduated in a recession and the books I had read gave me little solace as I drifted from commission job to telephone sales to temp work and back. Kids who had learned trades were employed, married, had children and lives while I crisscrossed the country, building up more debt than life experience in forgettable, meaningless jobs with pay as miniscule as the impact I made on the world.

The morning I lay, staring at the ceiling, wondering what kept me beating on, a boat against the current, borne ceaselessly back into mediocrity and failed expectations, I remembered the punch line to all of it: That teacher, Mrs. Baker, took her own life two years after I left for college because the cancer spread and, while fulfilling, her job as a teacher did not provide her with the means to effectively combat the sickness. I call that one a draw.