Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 28

The Dart League

Dave was in a good mood as he drove down Mount Mercy following a six day fishing/camping/hiking trip at a remote cabin. The lack of communication with the outside world had done wonders for his overall attitude. It’d annoyed him how much TV he’d been watching. He’d done plenty of fishing on a small boat, especially the night of the fullest moon that he’d seen in his entire life that lit up the lake as bright as if it had been day. The fish were jumping that night.

He was happy he’d took Frank Higgins’ offer to use the cabin.

Now, as Dave drove east, the mountains began to flatten out, the pine trees thinned and suburbia bloomed all around him like a surprise: the blinking LCD lightscape of his new home.

The town looked the same, and he grinned with satisfaction, whenever he left for too long he always expected to come back and find it completely different. His friends were obsessed with the end of the world. The joke he had told himself over and over again while fishing, was that on his return, the town would be completely gone. A smoldering crater. People sure can influence you.

When he saw the sign for Burgerland ahead, he pulled in. Six days of fresh campfire fish had been great, but, truth be told, he was ready for some “crap food”, before his Wednesday night dart league.

At the drive-thru he got a double cheeseburger Mega-Meal with fries and a milk shake. He ate it in the parking lot with the radio off because he was trying to keep his cool, concentrating before competition.

It was really, the biggest thing he looked forward to. He couldn’t think of a single person who knew his birthday or his middle name besides the girl who did payroll at the marina. He couldn’t remember her name either. They were even.

Sure, he thought, the guys from the league were weirdos and gave him a definite ‘odd vibe’, and he wasn’t too hot on the idea of throwing darts in the empty shell of what had been Wicker World, but, after a year, it was still a new town for him and he was happy at least to have made some acquaintances, finally.

Never much of a dart guy, he’d been sucked in. They made him feel so welcome. “Need another beer, champ?” It was probably mostly that they suck at darts, he thought. Maybe they even let me win. Yeah, get real. No way.

It was true, Dave was well ahead in first place. His name right on top of the leader chalkboard. Pepsi guzzling, bug eyed Frank, was his closest competition, but whatever, Frank really stood no chance.

At Dinosaur Liquor, Dave grabbed a 6 pack, surprised not to see Becky Higgins working. His ritual was to pop in before the league and joke around with her/brag about how he was gonna level her husband Frank in the evening’s competition. Instead, he bought the beer from a somber grey haired woman with a large mole, drove the rest of the way through town to Wicker World.

Seeing that he was short two dollars cash on the purchase, Dave almost took his New Balances off, to dip into the $250 he always carried with him, but, he didn’t. Instead, he paid with his debit card. A Visa with a very beautiful painting of the planet Jupiter.

******

Dave, was stunned to see that the Wicker World plaza was full of flashing police lights, cops coming in and out of the store.

A stretcher was pushed into the back of an ambulance.

Dave parked his car and staggered up to the yellow police tape.

A cop grabbed his shoulder.

“Yo! Stop.”

“What happened?”

“Sir, you need to turn around and go back to your car.”

“That’s my dart league …”

“It’s a police matter, you can’t be here.”

Dave walked back to his Camry and watched from the driver’s seat as more ambulances came off the highway, stopping directly in front of Wicker World.

As more and more stretchers came out of the store with bodies under white sheets, Dave put the car in gear and slowly drove back to his apartment, numb for answers.

************

The bell rang, Dave Milo opened his door with trepidation. A young blonde anchor-woman from channel 4 and a heavy set camera man greeted him.

Dave was hiding from the world, the incessant phone calls, the strange accusations from the local newspaper, the theories about him that all his co-workers and neighbors had formed. Even Jose. He had to set the record straight.

A televised interview was his best shot.

“Mr. Milo? So nice to finally meet you face to face.”

“Come in,” he said. She shook his hand enthusiastically, sliding past him, into his home. The camera man could care less.

“I was expecting UPS,” Dave said, “I had to order new sneakers, ’cause … the police took mine.”

They’d been orange New Balances, just like what all the other members of the dart league had worn when it all ended.

“That was the first clue that Frank was a little odd. The orange sneakers … He bought everybody sneakers,” Dave said.

He offered a seat to the reporter on a wooden chair from his kitchen. The camera man set up his gear. At her urging, he plopped down on the couch.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said.

“Sure.”

They’d talked in length over the telephone about his side of the story, and she’d made him very comfortable that the TV interview would be, ‘this conversation we’re having now, all over again, only we’ll be talking face to face, just me and you.’

The camera started rolling; the interview began.

“Mr. Milo, start from the beginning. How’d you come to Abbington?”

“For work,” he said. “Trix’s marina needed a forklift operator. I took the job.”

“What was your impression of the town.”

“I dunno. Normal. A normal town. Strip malls. Lots of residential developments. The people seemed nice.”

“What was nice about them?”

“Oh, they wave when they walk their dogs and stuff. My neighbor Jose once dragged his hose across the street and washed my car for me ’cause birds had crapped all over it. Stuff like that. People were just nice.”

“How did you first find out about ‘The Bullseye Squad’?”

“I was bored in town and saw a flier hanging up at Fried Paradise. A dart league. I’d never been much for organized sports but it seemed fun. So, I went.”

“And what happened?”

“That first time?”

“Sure, start there,” she said.

“Well, I went and I got drunk and I won,” Dave said. “First time throwing darts and I won. It was great. Fifty bucks they gave me. Next week I went back and I came in second place. That was thirty dollars. I was hooked.”

“They weren’t very good? Were they letting you win.”

Dave got very offended by that question, “Oh, they were pretty damn good. I mean, sure, they seemed distracted and all that, but they were just as good as any other darters that weren’t tied up in a doomsday cult.”

“Describe the doomsday cult side of the dart league.”

“Well, I guess the name says it all. Doomsday cult. They thought the world was ending and they had to get off Earth before it was too late. Before the regular weekly tournament would happen, we would all line up, twenty two of us and we’d throw our darts at exactly the same time and try to hit every slice of the dartboard, including the bullseye. Frank Higgins thought if we did that, we’d go to Jupiter.”

“How?”

“He said our spirits would leave our bodies and fly there on a psychic jumbo jet.”

“If all the darts landed correctly covering the whole board.”

“Yes.”

“Investigators say that the board was found that way. Bodies all laying on the ground. They’d poisoned themselves, with soda.”

“They were big Pepsi people. That was the weirdest part.”

“Do you think they went to Jupiter? Their spirits.”

“I have no idea.”

“What’s on Jupiter?”

“You’d have to ask Frank, but he’s gone. Along with the rest of them.”

“You didn’t believe this would work?”

“Not in the slightest. I just liked darts.”

“Members gave their houses and cars and drained bank accounts and gave it to Higgins …”

Dave nodded.

“I had no idea.”

“Why did they give him their savings and deeds and …”

He interrupted, “I have no idea.”

“But you gave them your car. You gave them the deed to a piece of property outside Slip River.”

“The car was an old junker and I got to write the donation off on my taxes. Frank said the car was going to ‘Cars for Tots’. The property? It was an investment I was interested in making. Someone had illegally dumped hundreds of thousands of old paint cans and toilets and TVs and … It wasn’t worth peanuts. A couple of the guys from the league talked me into signing it over to them cause they were going to clean it up with heavy equipment and make a shelter that could …”

“Could what?”

“Survive the apocalypse that Frank and the others believed was coming, if they didn’t get off Earth in time.”

“None of this scared you off?”

“It was weird, but … It’s hard to explain. I usually won the dart games. It made me feel good. I think at the time it was all I had in my life that felt good.”

“What about the money that was found in everyone’s sneakers? $250? What was it for?”

“I have no idea.”

“You didn’t do that?”

“Why would I? I just liked darts. That’s it. End of all the controversy.”

“Describe what happened on that fateful night, April 31st … What made you decide not to go to your dart league? All told, forty two people lost their lives that night, men, women and children. All member of the league, except, you. Why weren’t you there?”

“I went on vacation.”

“Where?”

“I went fishing up in Mount Mercy. That’s it. That’s all that happened. I caught a bunch of fish. I read a couple books. I watched the moon rise over the lake and it was beautiful–the opposite of what happened here that night. I’m still shocked, and heartbroken, I’d just like to move on though. I’d like to get on with my life and forget about what happened.”

The interview went on like that for a little while longer, the woman seemed to be trying to catch Dave in small traps, making him retell his version of the story in various ways, but when it was all over, nothing had been exposed.

He was the lone survivor. That was all there was to it.

The weeks went by. The seasons changed. He continued to operate the forklift at the marina. He continued to eat at Burgerland twice a week. During Christmas, he took a second job, over night stocking at Food Universe. He continued to await for further instructions from Frank Higgins, curious if they would ever come. He continued to carry $225 in his shoes to cover the passage on the psychic jet, for a very long time, wondering how things would work out.

He was lonely. He couldn’t win anymore. It all seemed so strange and illusive; and who knows?

Chapters 11-13

*** continuing the serialization of the novel Tollbooth***
click here to start at the beginning

 

11

I had three strands of hair left on the top of my head. Sometimes I would look at them in the mirror, inspecting them for split ends. I’d treat those hairs with fine conditioners. I tried to show them that I loved them so very dearly in case they could spread a message and wake the ones sleeping below my scalp.

It was two days before the wedding. Sarah and I were getting married in a little church by her sister’s house, since she didn’t have a big family and all I really had was Ted. It wasn’t going to be a big wedding by any means, but our friends, mostly her friends, would try their best to fake their way through the motions, whatever.

Sarah said, “I want to take you out tonight. I want to get you real drunk and take advantage of you before I have to go to my sister’s.”

And so my Sarah, my little bride to be, took me to the local neighborhood bar, where we’d been time and time again. We sat in a booth, letting the waitress take our order.

Sarah’s long blonde hair fell across her shoulders. She kept flashing smiles. Perfect teeth. I smiled and ran my mouth, complimenting her. I was very much at the apex of my love for her then. After a few drinks, when we were being all lovey dovey to each other, the waitress said, “Thank god for a cute couple. Most people who come in here look like they want to cut each other’s heads off.”

“Well, we are getting married in two days, so I guess after that we’ll want to cut each other’s heads off.”

The waitress walked off, Sarah said to me, “You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah, I know that.” I stood up from the booth. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

Sarah looked nervous.

“Hey, babe, look,” I said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made that joke.”

“I think we are gonna be a cute couple,” she said. “Forever.”

“I know we will be. That’s why I want to marry you.” I leaned over and I kissed her on the mouth. She grabbed my shoulders and held me there, over the table.

At that moment, the drinks came: two gin and tonics. I started to take my drink, but she grabbed my hand.

“It will still be here when you get back.”

“Oh, so this is how it’s gonna be.” I smirked as I walked off to the bathroom, feeling vaguely drunk but not that bad considering that I hadn’t had too big of a dinner on Sarah’s request that we get nice and drunk, super drunk (me especially), so that she could take advantage of me. When I came back from the bathroom, Sarah was putting something in her purse.

“That was quick,” she said.

“Most of the time, boys don’t have to sit down or lift the lid.”

I sat down at the table, and she looked away as if guilty.

“What were you doing, stealing silverware? Putting it in your purse?”

She laughed, “Me? No, of course not.”

“Oh, because I thought I caught you in some kind of criminal act.”

“No, I missed you, and I’m getting drunk, so . . . ”

“So?”

“So maybe after this drink we’ll get going.”

“Already?”

“Yeah, I’m kinda getting in the mood. To . . . ”

“Oh, in that case!” I said, tipping my drink back, gulping half of it down. She watched with intrigue—smiling broadly.

She smiled wider when I finished my drink, took hers and drank that too.

Halfway home, the last thing I remember was Sarah saying “Jimmy, you know that I love you right?”

“Yeah babe,” I slurred, amazed at how drunk I was already, “I know . . . ”

“Good.”

My head slammed into the headrest, the world was a tunnel closing in on itself. Then, as it happens occasionally, the world vanished.

When I opened my eyes, I was face down in a bedspread, but I couldn’t remember whose bedspread it was, what my name was, who I was, where I was, why my mouth was so dry, or where my pants were (likewise, my shirt).

I suspected foul play.

My head throbbed viscously.

I grunted, rolled back over, “Sarah?”

I couldn’t remember that she was gone. My balls itched, and my dick was hard. Where was my Sarah when I needed her?

I had to piss. I had to scratch my nuts. When I reached down there, my balls felt funny. They were cleanly shaven. I was drooling everywhere.

I looked at my nuts . . . yeah, cleanly shaven! I didn’t remember doing that. While looking down, I also saw that my belly had been shaven of all of its fine black hair. My pubic hair was gone. So there I sat in bed, naked and without my natural defenses against the elements. That bitch!

I stood up out of bed, walked to the bathroom—the pain deadly. When I got to the toilet, there was a note taped to the lid. I lifted the lid, note and all, and pissed into the abyss of the porcelain pit.

When I finished, I closed the lid and grabbed hold of the note—surely some love letter from my beautiful wife to be.

Jimmy,

OK look, you know I love you right?

Well I do love you, from the bottom of my heart. I’m truly sorry about last night. But it was the only way that I could go through with the wedding. You are the perfect man for me and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but there is just no way that I could have walked down the aisle with a man with a comb over. It’s just not how I pictured my special day.

I thought long and hard about how to confront you with this, but the truth is that I could come to no easy resolution, the only way was for me to take action. I am just so very sorry that that action was against you in the way that it was.

I hope that you can forgive me for what I have done to you. I had to drug your drink and shave your head while you were passed out . . .

I looked in the mirror and let out a little shriek. I was a monster! My head was clean shaven, two shades whiter than my already white as powder face, which I might add was also freshly shaven.

“Biff, Tom, Gregor!”

I had named my last three hairs after my three favorite literary characters. Biff Loman from Death of a Salesman, Tom Joad from The Grapes of Wrath, and Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis.

. . . I don’t know how you feel about me now, after all of this deception, but I must let you know that it took me months to build up the courage to do it. Otherwise, I thought we had a great time last night and, I know you probably don’t remember because you were passed out, but the sex was amazing. I had a little shaving party with you and then, well . . . oh my GOD! Also, I just want you to know that I think you are so sexy with your new haircut. I know that you will be mad at me for a while, but I hope you will forgive me by the time we exchange vows tomorrow.

Yours Truly,

Your wife in twenty something hours,

Sarah

PS. Attached you will find a page where you have signed a legal document agreeing not to call the wedding off, or else you will be liable for all of the costs.

Love again,

Sarah

 

The attached document said:

I, James Saare agree to let Sarah Culbert shave my head so that I will look my best for our wedding day which will join

us in holy matrimony forever. I also agree to put the toilet

seat down when I am done with it and to not go out to a strip

club for my bachelor party or ever after that for any reason,

because it would really hurt my beautiful wife, who is my life.

I also agree to never look at another girl ever again or drink

out of the milk carton with my bacteria laden lips.

X   JAMES SAARE

 

It appeared to be signed in blood. Sitting down on the bed rereading the letter, I found the band aid on my forearm, confirming that, yes, the document was signed in blood . . . my blood.

 

 

 12

 

The rear end of my Subaru was hurting—hanging low—its suspension crying. Everyday, I’d throw in handfuls of pennies and quarters, nickels, dimes and Susan B. Anthonys: the change that missed the basket, bouncing down onto the concrete outside the booth.

When the jug was full, I’d take it to the bank.

The manager had to help. He didn’t like it the first time I’d brought him out to the car, pointed to the plastic vat of happy money. I said, “We need to get that out of the trunk and inside.”

He shook his head in anger, “Sorry, buddy, not my job.”

The girls who worked in the bank were hawt little things, though, watching us through the huge plate glass window.

“Come on, help lift this out. You don’t want to look weak in front of the girls do you?” I conned.

He nudged me out of the way and pulled the change vat out of the trunk. I heard a wet pop, the sound of a piece of human anatomy being dislodged. While he grunted and hefted the bulk, the lowest rank teller opened up the bank door.

I went to the automatic change counting machine. I had a plastic beach shovel and a beach chair. I sat in the chair and shoveled the change into the mouth of the machine as it emitted clanks and hums.

During those trips to the bank, I was convinced I had the best job in the world. It was all I had to look forward to in life, really, that and seeing Gena.

I missed my hatchback Volkswagen though. A car that had been taken from me, by a cruel, unloving universe. That car would have fit so much more spare change than the Subaru. I’d have been rich.

13

When I woke up in the morning the rain was torrential, so was Sarah. She was mad at me, but we didn’t ever talk about what was wrong. So neither of us really ever knew.

She sat by the window, whispering one-sided questions to her pregnant belly, “Are you going to be a boy or a girl; a girl or a boy?” They were almost indecipherable whispers, but seemed amplified a hundred thousand decibels.

When she caught me looking, she stood, opening the thin curtains. The muted sun was just coming up, but no one could tell; our days were ambivalent.

“It’s a pretty bad storm,” she said, “maybe you . . .”

“It sounds like the end of the world out there, but I’ll have work,” I said.

“Bring an umbrella,” she suggested, “Or call out, fuck it, right?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but she’d already left the room. The tea kettle was screaming. Or it was a pterodactyl crashing through the kitchen window to consume us in its thrashing jaws, whichever.

It was true, pregnant women do glow. It was true, Sarah had once rescued me from the bottomless pit. It was true, I’d replaced the lust in my balls for her with a lust for a trashy little whore who made photo copies in an office supply store. “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R Us Kid,” I sang, swinging my feet out of bed, walking balls ass naked out of the room, “ . . . there’s a million toys at Toys ‘R Us that I can play with . . . ”

In the kitchen she sat staring at her steaming tea cup, waiting. I walked past, singing to her, pointing, “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R Us Kid, they got the best for so much less . . . you’ll really flip your lid,”

I sauntered down the hallway, she laughed, “From bikes to trains to video games,” she sang with me in unison, as I turned on the shower with a flick of the wrist. I hummed the song all while I washed, but there was nothing in that steam that held anything for me, so it was quick, routine. No deviations. Strictly business. Like a fool, I expected Sarah to come in the bathroom and climb in with me.

Before this thing happened to Sarah, this horrible tragedy, she was so good to me, so willing in bed, but not anymore. Flat tire. Broken window. All systems failure. Dried-up river bed. Bones of mythic creatures bleached by an unceasing sun. Sarah why did you ever get yourself pregnant on top of my dick like that?

When I came out, she was still at the table.

“I’m not talking to you, don’t bother talking to me,” she said playfully.

“I wasn’t going to,” I said, “but you know, you did just talk to me.”

“Well, from this point on,” she said, grinning sheepishly.

“That point?”

She made a motion of locking her mouth shut with a key. I went to the refrigerator. There was nothing for breakfast but eggs and toast and bacon and pancakes and cereal and sausage links and corned beef hash in the cupboard and coffee. I was starving. We were all starving. I didn’t want any of it. I wanted it all—immediately.

“You hungry, babe? I thought I’d make you breakfast?” A ploy.

She opened her mouth as if to say something, then she threw the imaginary key inside. Swallowed. I hoped that key didn’t hit my unborn namesake and cause a miscarriage.

I hoped.

I hoped. I closed the fridge.

“Look, I don’t want to fight,” I said. “I’m sorry, and I have a suggestion. I thought of a name for the baby.” Her dark eyes brightened. I went down the hallway, got my baseball cap.

“Do you want to hear the name of the baby before I leave, or are you still going to be . . . “

She just shook her head, naaahhhhhh.

As I left, not a single raindrop was able to touch me.

Instead of driving to work, I drove downtown where I used to live. I stopped at the gas station, called work.

Larry answered, I could hear him slurping Raisin Bran at his desk, “Hey, I’m sorry to do this to you, but I’m feeling really sick today. I don’t think I can come in.”

“Oh, sick?”

“Yeah, not very good at all.”

“Well not to call you out or anything, but if you are too sick to come to work, why is the caller ID showing a pay phone?”

I didn’t say anything. Touché. What a chess player!

“OK, my car broke down. I’m sorry I lied . . .”

“Just stay home, OK,” he said, then hung up. What a championship boss.

Review ‘The Cards We Keep’ by James Duncan

I really enjoyed this short story collection. It had me highly entertained and the pages went very quick, in almost an addictive manner.

There’s an argument that often pops up on writing websites, in message board threads, in conversation, that centers around “genre fiction vs. literary fiction”.

The general claim by lit. fiction writers being that genre fiction doesn’t hold any artistic value and that by nature it’s formulaic plot structures and hokey dialogue and stereotypical characters can’t hold a candle to their counterparts found in literary fiction.

Genre fiction writers point out that lit. fiction is too flowery, takes itself too seriously and that people who don’t write just want a good read, they don’t care about a curtain fluttering in the breeze, ect.

Of course, there’s a place in the middle between all things, genre vs. lit. and The Cards We Keep is a good example of how it can be done to appease people on both sides of the fence, keeping the art very much alive, and keeping the entertainment right there in equal doses.

James Duncan’s The Cards We Keep is a collection of wonderfully written genre-fiction short stories that takes on a wide variety of genres, purposefully, and carries them through to succession with some sharp writing, interesting characters, and non-formulaic plotting.

The great fun of this collection is seeing how many genres the short stories can cross in just 160 some odd pages. There’s the story about the private eye and his investigation of a cold blooded killing with a pearl handled knife to the neck; the hobo who wanders the countywide with his train hopping traveling companions; the horror story, “Weeds” about a lawn maintenance man whose brother holes up in city hall with a gun because his wife’s eyes have changed and he thinks they are eating his life; There’s the story of two weathered hit men hanging out in an empty restaurant (reminiscent of the one from Goonies) waiting for their mark to show up with $10,000; then there’s “Due to an Earlier Incident” the sci-fi story of a near future bounty hunter who is patrolling NYC with a massive neuro gun at his hip. It’s all here. Ten stories, that dip in and out of specific genres for a little while examining what the genre is, and what it means as a device to tell an entertaining story.

The Cards We Keep is the opposite of Seinfeld storytelling, which thrived on the idea that, good writing can make “a show about nothing”. Which is how I’d describe most literary fiction. A well done George Saunders short story is about nothing and everything at the same time. James Duncan’s Cards We Keep is a book about the bigger things beyond the characters. Dialogue here is not offhand, it is all pointedly delivered, sometimes even revved up larger than life, with it seems, the author knowingly poking fun at the pulp fiction attributes of the style he is writing in and also paying homage to. There’s never a gun too far away from the plot lines in James Duncan’s collection. Sometimes the women meet a fist. The dogs are always nameless mutts, everyone is guilty of B & E. Jumping a train and riding it towards a circus town is not just a romantic thought, but a real possibility.

Really, most of the writing calls back to dime store detective novels (in the best ways), and there’s a tone of the dusty 40s time period feel to most of this, all the girls are gals or dames. The men long for steaks and cold beers.

Part of the joy, and overall entertainment of these stories is not only guessing what will be the ‘twist’ towards resolution at the end of the ‘tale’, but what does the next story coming up on the next page offer. Will it be set in the Old West? Will we be venturing to Mars? Is someone going to plan a heist at a racetrack.

There’s something very pleasent in that.

The real twist of the collection comes in the final story, Luanne of Los Angeles which itself steps out from the entire genre-fiction overhang, and takes a look at the writer himself as a protagonist, and how when he was a kid, he wanted to be a hobo. In Luanne of Los Angeles, the major plot points are stripped, the guns and hit men are gone, what’s left is closer to real life. Love. Sickness. Worry. It stands closer to Raymond Carver than Phillip Dick, a testament to James Duncan’s understanding of what good writing is, as a writer, editor and reader.

The Cards We Keep does something very interesting to close the book. Duncan has included notes to accompany each story in the collection, giving a ‘behind the scenes’ that gives a glimpse into the inner workings of where the idea came for the story, for instance, the story The Toybox, has an interesting scene in it about where the protagonist explains the tension with his brother and his youth in general because he would be out with his family, and would see police lights passing, he’d imagine that the killer was already at his house, hiding in the toybox at the end of his bed.

That sums up the overall feel of the collection itself. There’s a darkness in all of these stories, hiding just around the corner. Whether it’s a dead body rotting behind an apartment door; the imminent disintegration of a marriage, physical violence at the drop of a dime, the weight of a gun in the pocket.

This one is recommended. Read more about it here

purchase it here

Tollbooth: Chapters 8-10

*** continuing the serialization of Tollbooth***

click here to start at the beginning

Here in Bud Smith land, I’m gearing up for a few release parties for Tollbooth down in New Jersey where this book takes place. I’m also on my way tomorrow to the post office to mail copies of this book out to peeps who have requested signed ones. If you would like a signed one, hit me up,click here

 

8

I called Ted from a pay phone. He was my only remaining friend. “It’s been a while,” I said into the phone. “What’s new?”

Ted was at his desk at the DMV, where he worked, ate, and sometimes slept.

“Nothing,” he admitted. “Gym. Paperwork. Kelly wants to go to get passports. We’re talking about visiting Peru.”

“Peru! Holy snap! I should be doing that. I should be going to Peru.”

“Yeah, yeah—you should, really,” he said. “You’ve literally never been anywhere.”

“There’s a world beyond the prison walls of New Jersey? Do they have tollbooths out there?” I scoffed. “Sorry, I haven’t kept in too good of touch.”

“Well I haven’t either. It’s just been this career, you know. I take it so serious,” he joked. But it wasn’t a joke. I pictured him in his clean dressed pants and button up shirt. Slim, smelling good, faithful to his wife. Ted is the kind of black guy that really has a tight head of hair at all times. Manicured to the nines. I admire him for it, for most things really.

I’m a mess. Every inch of me, interior and exterior.

“Rightfully so, that you take your job so serious,” I said.

“I love being chained to this desk!” he said. “How’s that booth working out for you, dreamer?”

“You know what I realized?” I said, yanking on the metal chord of the pay phone.

“What?” he asked, in his deep voice.

“We’re both pathetic pussies.”

“Not me. Buddy, I’m on my lunch break. I don’t think I want to be belittled anymore than my desk job already belittles me.”

“No, I’m serious,” I said earnestly.

“OK, but I gotta go,” he insisted. “I only got six more minutes here for break.” I knew he was glancing at his heavy silver watch. “My Hot Pocket is getting cold.”

“What kind?”

“Pepperoni,” he said.

“N-n-n-nice,” I laughed, “I need a favor before you hang up on me,” I pressed.

“What?”

“I’m gonna give you a license plate number, Blue Ford Escort—I need you to figure out an address.”

“Oh, this again, goddamn it,” I heard him gather his paper and pen. He sighed, “alright, what’s the plate number?”

 

9

Dear Kid with Clown Head,

I came home tonight to my empty house, and all I kept thinking about was how great it was for you to come across the great divide like that. My dinner tasted sweeter than any dinner I’ve ever eaten, and it’s a fucking pepperoni Hot Pocket—so you go figure that one out! An old friend recommended it to me, and I thought, what the hey . . . so sick of tuna. But then I am so sick of a lot of things.

Don’t worry about anything. This isn’t a sinister letter or anything. You won’t even get a ticket in the mail.

Oh, I forgot to mention who I am . . . I’m the guy from the tollbooth! I don’t know how many tollbooths you fuck with, but if you think back, I was the really skinny guy with the green sweater on. I don’t know if that helps. I look like a lot of people, and I act like a lot of people, not how you conduct yourself—OUTSIDE THE BOXXX!

I noticed something tonight. The tollbooth and the downstairs bathroom in my house are the same dimensions: three and a half feet by three and a half feet. The broom closet in the house I grew up in was the same exact size, too. Coincidence? Or is this how the universe reveals itself in it’s puzzles?

When I was eleven years old I used to sneak into the broom closet to jerk off to dirty photos. Now that I have grown up, I go into my downstairs bathroom and jerk off. I have this sick fantasy about this young girl that I know I will never get, but anyway . . . my point is that I work in that same tight spot, that three and a half by three and a half square, and I feel like a stupid prisoner of my own hard-ons and do-nothingisms. Ha! Maybe I need to see a therapist instead of writing some crazy kid with a clown head a letter of confession.

You’re my hero! You’ve come out of the blue and attacked the very thing that has . . . I don’t know where this is going. I’d like to burn down the tollbooth. That’s probably my life’s ambition.

I’m not a very brave person. But look, one more thing: I RUN THE TOLL BOOTH WHENEVER I PASS IT. I get tickets in the mail, and I pay them even though I work for the fucking system. Talk about a dizzying circle. I can’t decide whether I want to be the wolf man or the milquetoast, but you got it all figured out. And this is even crazier, but I was fantasizing in my downstairs bathroom about that girl, that young chick I was telling you about, earlier. Usually I am the star of my own fantasies, and I think for most people it’s that way, right? Anyway, in this one, I was you! I was ME, don’t get me wrong, but I went right up to her, myself dressed all in clown face, and kissed her semi-violently. I remember the grease smearing, which is gross, and that shit usually doesn’t turn me on, but . . .

I found this picture of her the other day in a bathroom stall and pasted her head on this roller skate clad centerfold from a Hustler magazine. There I was, on the brink of cumming, when the phone started to ring. It just kept ringing, ringing, ringing . . .

Then, the front door opened.

“Honey, are you going to get that?”

Sarah, my wife.

“In a minute!”

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, I shot it. I shot it and it hurt. Some splattered the mirror. Wow. “Hey Jim! JIM, WHERE ARE YOU?” Sarah picked up the phone. I frantically cleaned up the cum. Then, I folded the picture, stuck it under the sink.

“JIMMMM, IT’S FOR YOU!”

And let me tell you, Mr. Clown Head, my head was spinning in so many ways. Sarah was pounding on the door, “IT’S UNCLE FRED!!”

“TELL HIM I’M NOT HOME!!”

“He can hear you saying that!”

“Oh well.”

Kid with Clownhead, let me just make one little suggestion to you: don’t get married. While you are it, don’t get your wife pregnant. Because that’s what I did, and why I have no chance of ever, ever escaping the booth.

Sarah stood in the kitchen with her untrusting eyes, taking groceries out of that paper sack while I tried to pretend away the problem and hold back my lust for Gena and my lust to go to Officetown and retrieve my order.

Then, as if to twist the knife even deeper, my Sarah rubbed her belly, feeling the bulge. She had to sit down. From the chair, she said, “Gee, Jim. It won’t be too long now.”

Ain’t that the shit.

Your Friend,

Jimmy Tollbooth

 

10

I wasn’t always bald. It’s shameful, yes, and I am embarrassed of it now—but when I was twenty-seven, I had a king size combover. Mammoth. I was almost completely bald on the top of my head, but I grew the remaining hair on the left side of my head, and brushed it up and over the top like a tidal wave.

I’d go to see Kimmy Simmons at her salon, she’d trim my eye brows and sideburns. I wouldn’t let her mess with the top.

I’d read somewhere that the direction that people part their hair indicates how cool they are. I laughed at that idea, but still, I parted my hair the Superman way, not the Clark Kent way. Check for yourself: Clark Kent is to the right, Superman is to the left.

I had this spray glue. First, I’d spray my head, then gently, I’d place the wave of hair on the glue. When I checked the mirror, I knew I looked like shit. “At least I look better than if I was bald,” I’d say, believing it.

I was engaged to Sarah at the time. We’d been together since the eleventh grade, and never once did she mention the fact that I was losing my hair.

I loved her for that. She loved me unconditionally. For most of our time together, I did the same.

Back then, I had a baseball cap that I wore everywhere. One month I never took it off, even to bed for sex with Sarah. I never took it off. She didn’t say a word about the baseball cap, which I had personally embroidered at the mall:

ABOLISH

NJ TOLLS

There was a real sexy chick who worked at the embroidery stand. Sarah was just as hot, but that attention that she gave me just didn’t seem to mean as much as the attention I received from girls who were new, who didn’t love me with all of their hearts, who weren’t prepared to stay with me until death dragged us away.

One day at the mall, I was hanging around Embroidery Stand Jill as she made me a new baseball cap. Flirting. She touched my arm, laughed at everything I said. She pushed a button, the automatic sewing machine pummeled thread into the baseball cap. She said, “what do you do anyway?”

“I work in a toll booth on the Garden State Parkway.”

“Oh my gawd! That’s so funny!”

She wasn’t very bright, but she was staring right at me with this look in her eye. It was a look that a girl gives a guy when she is thinking about how her arms would feel wrapped around his neck, his dick sinking in, her legs squeezing his back, as he kissed her neck.

“You would look pretty good without a hat on,” she said. “You always wear a hat?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

I didn’t want to get too far into that line of conversation, so I changed the subject. There was a T-shirt with a picture of two men smiling, one old, one young. The shirt read, “Thanks for Life Dad!”

“I just lost my father to cancer,” I said. “I wish I had a shirt like that with his picture on it.”

She was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out what to say. It was then that I realized that the proposal I’d given Sarah was all concerning the legs I did not have to stand on in the world. I had lost my father as a small boy, I had just lost my mother, and needed someone to cling to.

Wouldn’t it have been impossible for her to refuse me? I supposed this was her great dilemma too, something that she was thinking about while out looking for a wedding dress with the stranger she called a sister in the barren grid of lower Manhattan.

“Hey, do you get a lunch break?” I asked Jill.

She gave me an awkward look because she knew I was gonna ask her to come to lunch with me.

“No, no lunch break, plus I’m married,” she said sourly.

The hat was done. She handed me the hat.

“You aren’t married,” I said. “Sorry for bothering you with the lunch offer. I didn’t realize you were so high above me.”

I took the hat from my head, revealing my expert comb over, “by the way, I’m not bald. I know that was what you were assuming.”

“That’s a comb over,” she said.

“No comb over,” I demanded, brushing the hair quickly with my hand, while the special hair glue held it steady. I tossed her a twenty dollar bill, didn’t wait for the change. After all, she was a pathetic liar and needed the cash more than I did, because I was bathed in my virtue of truth and all.

Levitation Ring

All afternoon there was thunder

out the window the green blue light

but no rain came

we laid on our sides facing each other

eyes look like tropical birds

hearts maybe a cave of shiny stone

the storm that took the neighbor’s house

and scattered it across the fields

is long gone

but in the yellow clouds

there’s no flash of lightning

there’s no face or road or dream

I sell levitation rings for seven dollars

she floats in her sleep for free

I’m an optimist

I should be shot

All the weathervanes do the twist

Just like they did last summer

I walk slow

Days spent looking up

where the moon might be

me, having walked into the sea

birds above made of gold carry

blue quasars in their mouths

dropping them into the waves

that blast apart

leaving only seaweed and sand

and the shadows of the new mountains

now that the sea is gone

The moon shows up kinda sorta

where I would’ve guessed.

First Time: an anthology about lost virginity

Last week, the First Time anthology was released. It’s my first attempt at gathering together some of my favorite underground writers to weigh in on a collective topic. As it turns out, First Time, just so happened to be about how 48 or so writers lost their virginities. Wild, hilarious stuff. Pretty punk rock too, I might add. Judging by how fun it was to do, I’m excited about a call for submissions for another anthology that’s soon to be announced.(Too Much: about the time you got too fucked up)

All together, I am really happy with how the First Time collection came out. It’s the first release by Unknown Press, which is going to be where I release future anthologies and books by peeps that I really respect. The cover was designed by the always super talented Rae Buleri. I did a lot of the artwork inside the book myself, some of the art was public domain sketches of nature (Like the GIANT snake that accompanies Nicole Adam’s stand out story “Baby Size Arm”)

Some contributors include, Gus Sanchez, Aaron Dietz, Robert Vaughan, Meg Tuite, Lynn Alexander, Heather Dorn, Ashley Perez, Allie Marini-Batts, Alex Reed, William Seward Bonnie, Wolf Carsens, John Yamrus …

It was a great project and its available now on Amazon as a print title and coming soon as a Kindle title once the formatting gets completed.

———-

Coming next month, from Unknown Press, Chuck Howe’s collection of short stories “If I Had Wings These Windmills Would be Dead” will be released. Keep an eye out for that.

In the meantime, you should give First Time a look, but be warned, it’s pretty raunchy stuff and will make you laugh out loud. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen.

Check it out here

Soon there will be some readings and radio appearances for First Time. I’ll keep you in the loop.

Tollbooth Serialized

So, I’ve been running my new novel, Tollbooth on this site, serialized, and I’ll continue it until the entire novel is posted. I love giving stuff away for free.

Below, I will post chapters 5-7, there’s a link in there to start at the very beginning, as I post each section of chapters, I am llinking it to the next set (Tuesdays and Thursdays I post new segements.) If you fall behind, or would like to read a lot in one shot, you can go up to the search bar and click on “books” then, beside “Tollbooth” there should be a drop down menu that opens up with all the current chapters posted there for convenience.

I’m also, selling the book on Amazon and on Kindle and still mailing out signed copies if anybody would like one.

I am also signing copies

and snail mailing direct to you for

$12.00

follow the paypal link below. I’m only shipping to America though. Thank you.

Here it is, Tollbooth chapters 5-7

*** continuing the serialization of Tollbooth***

click here to start at the beginning

5

There was a man in a silver Cadillac immune to the laws that governed the rest of the world. He appeared as a mirage up the highway traveling super sonically, darting through shadows, cutting sharply to avoid the other motorists who struggled in their low performance vehicles as if wading through glue.

The man in the silver car always had exact change. Everyone else had to slow down for the toll, he accelerated. His sunroof opened automatically, his hand appearing out of that opening. In his fingers, perfect coins. With a delicate flick of his wrist, he’d hook shot the change into the change basket.

Every time, as he zoomed away at high-speed, I’d sit there thinking about how absolutely dead-on his precision was. Looking down that highway at the fading thought of his reflection, his tail lights shrinking and his sunroof closing . . . I knew he wasn’t thinking about anything behind him.

He was in flux. I was not.

I imagined that the things he passed through were either parts of my dream or parts of his dream that I was inside, or that we were just parts of someone else’s dream and that none of it mattered—least of all how we are impressed by motions and precision and quality.

It was hard to gauge reality from inside the booth.

6

I went in to check my order, again. No Gena. Two of the stock boys were leaning against the shelves. They looked at me as I came down the aisle, unimpressed. I didn’t command much of an impression. They kept on with their conversation, hoping that I would continue to shuffle past and keep my stupid question to myself.

“Beethoven was no way deaf, dude. Just no way,” the tall blonde kid with the nose spike said to the stock boy with the missing arm.

“How you figure?”

“Back then they didn’t have any of the devices to like, uh, prove that he was deaf.”

“I’m not so sure about your logic,” the armless kid said.

“And think about it, dude: if I was a kinda OK composer back then, back in the day, I would definitely try to work some kind of gimmick to try to get noticed. It’s like how KISS dressed all in clown makeup to get music executives to notice.”

“Awww shit.”

“Beethoven could hear shit, he could hear all of it. Don’t believe that vibration bull crap. That motherfucker had ears like a hawk.”

I laughed like a creep, they turned to look, “You guys know if Gena is working tonight?”

“Nawww,” said the nose spike historian, “she ain’t here on Thursdays or Tuesdays.”

“Or Wednesdays or Fridays,” the one armed boy said. “But she’s so hot I wish she was here all the time. That girl has some tits, oh man, the kind to just suck on all day. Troy, you sucked them tits before, right?”

“Naw, I wish, oh I wish.”

Silence.

“Yeah, I wish too,” the stock boy with the missing limb said.

“But what about Tommy’s party? I thought you sucked her tits at Tommy’s party.”

“Nawwwwwwww, somebody else was sucking those tits at Tommy’s party. But man, I would have loved it to be me sucking those tits at Tommy’s party.”

“Do you guys have a bathroom in this store?” I ask meekly.

Really, I just had to use the bathroom. I wasn’t going to go in there to unleash some porno movie from my mind into a tissue or anything.

“Do you guys have a bathroom in this store?” I ask meekly.

“Not for the public,” Troy said.

“Oh.” I started to shuffle off, defeated.

“Dude you can use our bathroom,” the stock boy with the missing arm yelled, punching the other kid in the shoulder, saying to him, “Don’t be a dick.”

He led me through several doors to a metal door tucked between piles of cardboard boxes that said PRIVATE. “Oh, yeah, and take it easy in there OK?” he requested, “I just had to clean this thing up yesterday.”

I wanted to ask him so bad how he lost his arm. My guess woodchipper. Or . . . woodchipper—that’s all I had.

I walked inside and sat down, there were magazines on a little table: I scanned through them. Foreign cars, import cars, import foreign custom cars, tailpipes that sounded like lawnmowers. Of course those shelf stocking idiots would drive little shitty cars, the kind that came through the tollbooth—sounding like chainsaws at their arrival and departure, a skateboard with an engine, a mouse sized joke for the race lane  that made my head ring. I got so pissed that I wished I could do something cool like punch the mirror and knock holes in the wall. Why couldn’t I do something like that?

I shifted my weight on the bowl, lifting my leg, pushing my safety steel toe shoe into the little table. It stood on its side legs momentarily, before dropping back into position, wobbling.

I could definitely raise hell. I knocked the magazine table over. It crashed to some triumph. “Haaaaaa!” Then, I stood up and wiped. Fuck these kids. I was tired of taking everybody’s shit. I threw the dirty paper in the sink; I didn’t flush. I picked a few of the magazines, poised to chuck them into the back of the toilet tank, when a photograph slipped out from between them. It was my little sex machine, Gena. A prom photo of her that one of the kids had been whacking off to. The photo was crusted up.

These perverts. I decided that I had no choice but to walk out there and show the photo directly to their manager. It was the only honorable thing to do.

But instead, I took the photo, put it in my pocket, left the store as quick as possible.

7

I flipped on the switch, the cars came at me on parade. When they saw that the red X above my booth became a green O, the people were filled with such delight.

“Can I have a receipt?”

“Can I have a receipt?”

“How much is the toll?”

“Can I have a receipt?”

“Can I have a receipt?”

“Can I have a receipt?”

I was a stand-still robot with simple math skills who knew the change for a dollar.

A blue Ford Escort pulled up to the booth. I turned to face the driver, saw a clown head. Grease paint, bubblegum hair, blue stars for eyes. A yellow Joy Division T-shirt. There was a person with a stocking over his head in the passenger seat filming us with a camcorder. We were the stars of some epic showdown between good and evil. I wasn’t sure who was good and who was evil.

“HEY, MOTHERFUCKER!! SEE HOW YOU LIKE THIS SHIT!!!” the clown screamed.

“Like what?” I said, like a dope.

“THIS!!!”

Laughing maniacally, the clown leaned forward and started to spray some kind of substance into the coin basket. It was bright yellow and growing. I made no attempts to stop him; I just gazed ahead in some haphazard triumph. Finally, a member of the populous had broken the spell. I wanted to give the kid a hug.

“YOU LIKE THIS??!!!” he demanded, twisting the can, sticking out his tongue to mock me, “YOU LIKE THIS, UNCLE SAM?!”

When he was done shooting the goop into the basket, he threw the can against the booth. It rolled under his tire as he peeled off in his blue car. A photo of the license plate came up on the screen, I hit delete.

I will save you, anarchist. I don’t think you deserve the whipping of the state. I applaud you. I commend you.

I put on the red X, indicating that my lane was closed. I stepped out of the booth, picked up the crushed can. The print was still legible: “WONDASTUFT: QUADRUPLE EXPANDING MEGA FOAM SPRAY INSULATION FROM THE MAKERS OF CRACKZAP AND WINDOW GOOP.”

The change basket was quickly becoming an impenetrable dome of plastic-like foam. Then, HOLY SHIT, a car was zoomed at me. I tried to move my feet, almost fell over them. An orange Honda Civic doing at least forty-five through the toll; a red headed chick, window down. Change smashed against the booth—pennies and nickels sliding down into the foam, lost forever.

I went back in the booth, the red X steadfast, and stayed there until my lunch break. When I walked into the break room, I looked Larry in the eye. I knew that he didn’t want to be there any more than I did. I nodded at him, put seventy cents in the machine, got a PayDay, opened it, took a bite, and chewed. Then, still looking at him, I said, “Hey, I don’t know how it happened, but somebody shot Quadruple Expanding Spray Foam Insulation into my change basket.”

“Huh?” he says.

“I wouldn’t know,” I explained, “but I think it’s the same stuff that contractors use to seal up doors and windows.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Will change still go in?” he asked, scratching his head.

“Well for a little while . . . ‘til it’s solid,” I explained.

“Then no?”

I took another bite. The wrapper made a joyous sound.

“Yeah, definitely not after solidification.”

—–thank you for reading.

Warm regards,

Bud Smith

Nuclear Construction

I suspect I’m not legally insane. I had to go through a full psychological evaluation in order to get through the gate at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Forked River, NJ.

They were hiring for an outage, and had an ad in the newspaper, taking people for janitorial jobs (mopping the floor of the plant to keep radioactive particles down during a phase of heavy construction, transporting decontamination suits, ect.). They were also hiring unskilled non-union labor for other things like safety watches, fire watches, ect.

When I was hired in, it took a week for me to get inside the gate of the actual plant. Every morning, I had to report to a big warehouse in the parking lot of the nuke plant, and they’d process the information of applicants, taking names, giving full medical screenings, sitting applicants down with FBI agents who’d go through the applicants entire criminal record. They also wanted 10 references, phone numbers, emails, how long you’ve known them. All this to qualify for a temporary position to mop the floors for 30 days. But, at least they were paying you to undergo all this.

On my fifth day of processing, I was taken to a small room and given a multiple choice exam that read things like this:

Which do you prefer the most

a) being with friends and family

b) being alone

c) masturbating while being asphyxiated

d) going for a walk with significant other

e) Christmas

What accurately describes your childhood

a) locked in a 55 gallon drum

b) happy, healthy, fun

c) boring, isolated, not fun

d) participated and excelled in many community activities such as any of these; little league, Boy Scouts, Pop Warner football, ect.

e) I liked to kill animals with other animals I’d killed.

How do you view others?

a) generally trustworthy

b) they steal my food and air

c) we are all part of a bigger team that seeks to improve society as a whole

d) walking, talking transporters of disease and illness that must be eliminated at all costs

e) they’re just pretty cool in general

There was a couple hundred questions like that, and then they showed me a bunch of ink blots.

“What does this one look like?”

Really, it looked like anything. All you had to say was:

“It doesn’t look like a pile of dead bodies.”

The next morning, I was sent to a new warehouse, that had been set up to represent the inside of part of the plant itself. I was taught the correct way to put on my decontamination suit, shown the proper way to enter a radioactive area, shown the proper way to exit a radioactive area and most importantly, how to strip out of my decontamination suit, so as to not spread radioactive particles all over everything.

After that, there was a few classes on how nuclear energy is actually generated. A few classes on the perils of radiation exposure, and how to minimize said exposure, also how to read the radiation monitor that I was then assigned.

Day 6, I was finally through the actual gate, finally entering the actual facility itself.

At the gates, guys with machine guns chewed gum and didn’t wave hello when you waved at them.

Inside the turn around trailer, where all the outage workers were kept. I met my contact there, who gave me paperwork to fill out.

“You’re Bud Smith?”

“Yup.”

“Hey! You won the safety award! They randomly drew your name out, and you get to pick from a list of prizes, color TV, digital camera, remote controlled car, laptop.”

“Nice.”

“You also won the check pool!”

I’d thrown in five dollars the second day I was in process, getting FBI screened and understood now, that I’d won $525.

It was all working out pretty well for me at the nuclear plant.

My boss came and found me that morning. A chubby man named Sam Gob. He said, “Ok, you’re going to be an FME safety watch during the outage. Which means you’ll sit in a chair next to this hole and anytime somebody goes down into the hole, you have to make sure they don’t have any pens or anything that can fall out of their pockets and land in the water (the Torus). Divers will be going down the hole and swimming around for a month, inspecting the floor. Think you can handle sitting in a chair for 30 days straight?”

“Sounds fine.”

“Here’s how it’s gonna go down, I have to go to a meeting now, then there’s a meeting after that to discuss the first meeting, what time is it now? 7am? Ok, we’ll meet back here at 2pm. See you then.”

“Ok.”

I sat down at the table and opened my newspaper.

“What are you doing?”

I shrugged.

“You can’t sit in here. You have to go walk around the outside perimeter of the plant and look busy til 2pm.”

That sucked. You had to keep moving. It was a constant shuffle between non-radioactive parts of the plant, stopping at vending machines, eating candy bars and drinking sodas to quell the boredom.

Every day was like that. 7am until sometime after lunch, just wandering around aimlessly through the nuclear plant, trying to look busy, having nothing to do.

But, when the meetings were over and Sam Gobb finally got me to my spot as the FME (foreign material exclusion) safety watch, things got worse.

It was just me in a chair, saying, “please take all the pens out of your pockets and leave them here with me.”

They didn’t want any pens or tape measures or ear plugs or anything falling into the water/equipment/reactor, whatever down below, through the hatch that I guarded.

Thousands of pens. Thousands of them, I was the keeper of all the world’s nuclear pens.

Everyone else in the plant appeared to be in the midst of horrible jobs, sweating like death in their rubber decontamination suits, duct taped at all the seams, I was sitting in a comfortable chair, though, occasionally harassing some Canadian divers to hand over their pens and take out their Canadian diamond earrings and all that. Sometimes some of the mop girls would come and keep me company, talking about things like “all this mopping sucks” and “oh, look at this, I need some more soap for my bucket. Oh joy!”

There was one other guy who was doing the FME safety watch. He was down the hall from me, I talked to him a little bit about the job once in the cafeteria while we both ate rice pudding and drank lukewarm instant coffee.

“Pretty boring,” I said.

“But, the plus is I got plenty of pens now.”

“True.”

“And I don’t care,” he said, “I just put on my headphones and read a magazine or whatever.”

“I tried to do that, they took away my magazine,” I said.

“That’s ’cause you’re over here in the limelight. Nobody comes down the hallway where I’m at.”

I shrugged.

The other FME watch didn’t make it much longer. The outage went on. The twelve hour days stringing together. My boss came and found me, sitting in the chair, surrounded by pens, he said, “They fired Johnson.”

“Who’s Johnson?”

“The other FME watch.”

“Oh. For what?”

“The president of the nuke plant caught him sleeping in a chair, listening to an iPod, a Hustler magazine on his lap …”

“Did they confiscate the magazine?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll need that back, that was mine.”

My boss didn’t laugh. No one laughs in a nuclear power plant. That’s the most definite thing I learned from working at one for 30 days worth of sitting in a chair, flirting with the girls who were bored from mopping up toxic waste, and while I munched candy bars from the vending machine. I must have guzzled a thousand sodas. That’s what nuclear construction is all about.

All that.

And if you’re wondering, I took the remote control car as my prize.

Tollbooth reading NYC/ “Chaz and Betty” published

Tonight at Revival bar (129 E. 15th street) on the lower east side, I’ll be reading from my new novel Tollbooth for 25 minutes or so as a featured reader for Su Polo’s Saturn Series. The party starts at 8pm, and there is a sign up sheet for any open mic peeps who’d like to come and read something, (get there early). I’ll have copies of Tollbooth on hand for anyone who’s interested.

Rumor has it, that Mark Brunetti of The Idiom/Piscataway House will be there reading and handing out free Idiom zines. Julie Allen will be reading her essay from the just released First Time anthology about how 4 dozen writers lost their virginity. I always have a real great time at the Saturn Series. Come check it out.

Also, I got an email early this morning, Thrice Fiction #8 is out and I have a short story in it called “Chaz and Betty” which was illustrated for inclusion (artwork by David Simmer II) in Thrice. Always nice to see that kinda thing. There’s some great work in the issue from Ann Bogle, James Claffey, Susan Tepper, and a bunch of writers I haven’t met yet, but will certainly be reaching out to.

I’m happy to see “Chaz and Betty” find a home at Thrice, it’s a publication I really dig, and the short story is part of my new collection “Lightning Box” coming out from Kleft Jaw Press in December. Lightning Box is similar to my last collection Or Something Like That but a little closer to old school fables and the Twilight Zone/Amazing Stories vibe … It’s been real fun exploring farther in that direction, and digger deeper into the weird world where all the characters in the books I write live, they’re all strange neighbors.

Tomorrow night, on the Unknown Show, I’ll be reading some of the Thrice release, as well as some selections from First Time: anthology

Thanks for reading and for reaching out. Hit me up if you would like a copy of Tollbooth, I’ve been signing them and mailing them out as quick as I can. Post office on Wednesday. Thanks!