Bed
I’m in my bed right now.
Here I can hoard all of these ideas like bananas and think of how
beautiful they might be on paper. But there are so many intangibles that I
neglect. I think of great metaphors or today I thought about milk trails running
out of garbage bags and how pretty the stream looked, broken like one giant
droplet of rain, but dirtier. Then I think about how that milk has been used to
fill little bellies upon little bellies. How much of that milk almost made it to
bellies? Anyway, I think of things that would work well, and sometimes I think
about writing something from a completely foreign perspective but all I can do
is create characters that are me in some way shape or form because it's all so
fucking familiar. But I can’t
because I can’t get out of bed. I just want to write stories all of the time.
Then I think about the
prologue and how I could explain it all in there but then I think that I should
save that for the last, and just write the damn story, to go at it. So I guess I
might start that tomorrow while I sit in my closet waiting for time to go along,
counting the minutes that I have until the lunch tables need to be placed
perfectly in the middle of the floor or else. Not really, but it could happen.
sigh.
This could be my masterpiece.
It could be like one of those eloquent short stories that starts out by
explaining itself with these giant sweeping motions, like air traffic
controllers on speed, or explaining a sweeping, -ing motion by comparing the
sweeping to that air traffic controller. Or
a novel that explains how that idea is entirely stupid.
So that novel might go on explaining to me, or you (if you let it), that
it’s something different, and keep going on until it finally ended,
untriumphantly, but with candor and superlatives, given to it from people and
not from itself. Itself is not something
that it’s proud of because it, or he, or she, or whoever decided to write it
realizes they were just kidding. Just
kidding or trying too hard.
Sometimes I think that
if I just sit down and write it will come out as a novel, in one giant burst of
orgasmic (organic?) energy. Orgasmic.
I once knew this doctor who would constantly and consistently use that
word, as if to awaken us, breathe cheeks and rosiness and “yes” and
everything he could into our failing lungs.
Lungs that would later get filled with dank smoke. Then we could dance
gleefully around the fire and get big gaping holes.
But I do want to tell
you a story about a girl. And explain why I am here. So I guess the best way to
do this is to just start. Before
you go any further though, I should warn you that it’s boring and pretentious.
It’s filled with all kinds of things that you don’t want to read
about at all. You are just going to
want me to shut up and tell the story. So
I’ll do my best to get past descriptions and tell it to you straight and good
like Jack Kerouac. But he does the
same thing actually. So anyway.
It starts with a
telephone booth. It’s red, with a handle that says pull.
I think it’s in London actually, one of those swanky little things you
might find planted in a nice sweet romantic comedy with snow and/or perfect
weather surrounding it. There is a
girl in it, with giant fluffy pink earmuffs and a cellular phone.
She’s talking on the cellular phone in a telephone booth. I laughed out
loud when I saw her and I just wanted to tell her how cliché and absurdly funny
it was. But the point is that I
didn’t. Instead I watched her
from a safe distance. Why was I
there? I don’t really know. I
think I was on a trip actually. Let’s
say that for now because it’s not important.
Anyway, I stood there
for a while, watching her in that shiny red capsule.
I thought it looked like a big Tylenol actually.
Then I laughed about that for a while.
I thought how impossible it would be to actually swallow this pillbooth
and I imagined turning into the shape of the pillbooth after swallowing it
whole, like in some really odd cartoon with dogs and cats and fairy things.
I could walk around looking like a big red pillbooth and children
everywhere would laugh at my misfortune. Oh,
but it’s not misfortune. If only
I could do that and not die. It would be so fantastic.
She leaves the booth,
okay? I know, I’m doing it again.
She leaves the booth frantically and starts walking down a street that should be
any street. It is any street. So
it’s pretty though. I mean I really like it, sparkly and dewy and new with the
girl and her earmuffs and cell phone. I
followed her for some reason, I’m still not quite sure what came over me but
it seemed like a really great thing to do.
She walks really quickly. (I
remember that because I felt like I was dragging my body along with my mind.
My mind wanted to be right at her heels but my body knew better.
It just wanted to lie on some nice plush couch in a secret room anywhere,
drinking up some soft fabric-y comfort while swallowing some real Tylenol).
My legs hurt terribly. I wasn’t sure how long I had subjected myself to all of
this.
But my mind is more
important to me so I decided to go with it.
I wrap my ancient coat around my body and keep up.
As we, the three of us respectively, walk together, I want to idealize
her and make her my best friend. (But I don’t like cell phones so I thought maybe it would present a
problem). I think she knows I
am following her, maybe not. Definitely not.
(I really wasn’t following her
though, I just didn’t know what else to do.
I had my freedom; I had to do something. God there were 8000 songs running through my head all
at once right then. What was I to
do? What would they have me do?)
Now the girl starts running.
I’m not sure what for though. Why
was she running? So I start to run
as well. I run blindly, legs
flapping like fancy Japanese fans. I wasn’t sure why, I just wanted her to
take me in with her. I didn’t
want to go back to it all, thinking about the milk trails and all.
She would understand it all! She
could follow me everywhere; we could take a magnificent trip to Mexico together,
drink margaritas and act extravagant. I would wear ovular dark sunglasses, with a scarf wrapped
around my fair head, a nice black and white bathing suit with spots and we could
laugh all about the red booth and Tylenol and she could even take her cell phone
and talk as often as she wanted to whomever she wanted. We would pick up exotic men and be best friends.
We would be the most profound best friends.
That was all I saw of
the red phone booth girl with the earmuffs and cell phone.
I remember reds and blues and whites, flashing violently, erasing the
snow and/or perfect weather and melting them all into dirty crimson milk trails
used to fill bellies and I remember men, lots of them, bland and not exotic and
I’m not in Mexico and there are no margaritas.
The men throw me on something hard and before I know it I’m spinning
and there are sparkly silver think black bands and I see sad liquid running from
crinkled bags and think my wrists are running too.
Then I am here. Nothing is really swirling anymore and I cannot move. No really, I can’t. I know soon that I will be will be swirly again and it’s not because of me or the girl or Mexico but because of the unforgiving bed that won’t untie me.
-Beth Blafka