Brad Simkulet's Blog, page 15
June 17, 2017
gb.i
she told him if he wanted to transition she’d support him. he knew she was telling the truth. she’d support him and love him once he became she. he knew she meant it and would live it if he made the transition. suddenly it became possible, which made it something to think about. all change.
June 16, 2017
abbey road b-side
if you listen to the b-side of abbey road in its entirety and you don’t recognize the genius of the beatles then you are failure as a music fan.
that is all.
fb.i
It figures. They were just talking about Rod, and there
he was.
Not ten minutes before, they’d been walking along the
trail and Brad’d been listening to the kids complaining about their neighbour,
and he’d finally given voice to his own fears about Rod, and there Rod was in
line at the Three Sister’s Dairy Bar.
He heard, “Ugh, there’s Rod,” issue a little too
loudly from one of his freshly teenage twins, Brontë, then he heard her twin sister
Katy pipe up with, “What?! Where?” He caught Harrison in a “don’t-say-anything”
look before he could open his lips, but Rod didn’t seem to notice their words
or them as they approached the line, two places behind him.
Rod was in a heated discussion with a short, round man
that Brad liked to think of as “Bowling Ball.” He was one of Rod’s work crew, and he looked none too
happy about something. It was probably nothing serious. Probably some work
related bullshit, some mistake of Bowling Ball’s crew that needed to be sorted
out, some debate over payment or benefits or work conditions – some prol
bullshit – nothing more serious than that. But Brad couldn’t get his mind off Brontë’s
theory that Rod was a serial killer and that his construction company was a
John Wayne Gacy style front for his nasty habits. Perhaps Brad should try to
curtail her morbid fascination with the macabre. “Naaah,” he thought, “It’s way
too much fun.” But while the kids debated the flavours they’d be requesting on
their cones, Brad couldn’t help picking up bits and pieces of conversation from
Rod and Bowling Ball.
June 15, 2017
eb.i
–Don’t tell me. Let me guess …. Catholic.
–That obvious?
–I can picture you as an altar boy.
–On my knees?
–Did that happen to you?
–No, no.
–It’s a bit soon to be cracking priest jokes, don’t you think?
–Impossible to do that too soon with a fellow Catholic.
–Mormon.
–Bullshit.
–Fuck you, “Bullshit.” I am fucking Mormon.
–You may be Mormon now, but you started out Catholic.
–…
–Tell me I’m wrong.
–…
–Are you mad?
–Umm … no … it’s just that I …
–Oh Christ. You were molested by–
–Hell no.
–I don’t understand, then.
–How did you know I was Catholic?
–Your Mormonism gave you away.
–What?!
–It’s true. I swear.
–Mormonism gave me away?
–I can’t help it if you’re still Catholic underneath, if your guilt overpowers your …
–My what?
–Your hopes.
June 14, 2017
db.i
He wasn’t about to tell Kyla where the damage deposit and final month’s rent had come from. He was there alone in the rental office, in a town she didn’t even know she was coming to, and he hoped it wouldn’t even cross her mind. He would just get her out of there tomorrow morning and they could get back here to Washburn and put it all behind them.
He put his name on the lease, passed their new landlord the envelope and watched Mr. Reyes big fat fingers push across a pair of shiny keys.
“Take those, Terry, can I call you Terry?” Terence nodded uncomfortably as what he’d just committed to settled in, “Let’s go get this inspection done and you’ll be all set.”
Mr. Reyes pushed out from behind his desk. Terence snagged the keys with the tip of his forefinger as he let the enormous man pass, then he followed in the man’s cloyingly cologned wake.
“Building three, second floor, 3213. That’s you.”
Terence had nothing to say. He didn’t want to say anything, actually, but his silence felt immature somehow, so he squeaked out, “Cool,” then wished that Kyla was here with him after all. She always knew what to say at times like these.
June 13, 2017
cb.i
her name was philomena. her mom called her phil, but her teachers called her philomena. miss keegan, the librarian who knew how much she loved mathematics, called her pi. no one else called her anything because no one else talked to her. this wasn’t her imagination, not the bi-product of her terminally low self-esteem, it was truth. she hadn’t spoken to anyone besides her mother and miss keegan in two years, except to answer the rare questions a teacher might pose to her. she said hello to no one and no one said hello to philomena.
philomena lay with her head on her pack beneath a carrel in the far corner of the library where the periodicals met the reference books, where no one ever went anymore because all the reference they needed was on the computers, and she finished her book.
she absorbed the final line – “
“My Master,” he says, “has forewarned
me. Daily he announces more distinctly,—‘Surely
I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly
respond,—‘Amen; even so come, Lord
Jesus!’” – then thunked the hardcover closed and dropped the dense book on her abdomen. she rubbed the skin of her face hard, wished it was a prettier face as she did every time she touched it with her hands, then reached over her head and pulled a blue pen from the top pocket of her pack.
she didn’t fumble. her hands were sure. entirely by feel, philomena unzipped the top pocket, sifted through her school detritus, found a pen, pulled it out, zipped the pocket back up, and pulled the lid off the tip of the pen before before replacing it on the end of the pen. then she flipped onto her stomach, opened the book and turned to page 87. the same page she turned to in every book she read. she went as close to the spine as she could go and in the smallest printing she was capable of, she wrote the words, “i know loneliness.” dozens of books throughout this library bore that inscription on page 87. scores more, in used bookstores, left in bus stations and cafes, or now safely back on her mother’s bookshelf, all bore the same words.
and she did know. she knew loneliness intimately. it was her only lover.
June 12, 2017
June 11, 2017
bb.i
chopping lake white caps
make the loons bob up and down
so they remain mute
their warble soothes me
makes me feel real in the dusk.
not someone’s figment.
i evaporate
and disperse into the dark
why do i remain?
June 10, 2017
ab.i
Daylight was the thing that she feared the most because it brought waking with it, and a return to the world she longed to leave. She had considered suicide many times over the years, but if she took that way out of what was supposed to be her reality, she would never see him again, never be able to help him, and he was enough to hang on to waking pain for. She didn’t mind that her life didn’t pass its own Bechdel Test, that her reason for hanging on was an him – a dream him even – nor that as her days passed almost mutely in the bakery that most of the voices that spoke around her, that spoke the lines and drove the waking plot around her were male.
He may have been what kept her alive in the day, he may have been the reason for her existence, but she was also the reason for his, and when darkness came and the drift of sleep carried her to him, she actually came alive. Waking was a plodding nightmare, but sleep was a glorious existence of sensation and safety and him.
Daylight had come a few minutes before, however, and it had slipped its millipedenous silia underneath her eyelids and pried them inexorably apart. And he was gone without a goodbye. They never had time for a goodbye, but by now she wouldn’t be able to bear those words from his lips for fear that it would be all too real, and that she would never hear anything from him again. She couldn’t stop it. She awoke. She was back in the “real” world.
I could use that sort of kiss about yesterday.
I could use that sort of kiss about yesterday.
