Every day there is more of me. Each and every day I am a walking and talking mess of salt and sugar digesting. I lay awake in bed, I feel heavier than everything in the room.
I feel hungry but I look down my torso and spy my man tits staring back up at me and I decide that I can probably handle skipping breakfast. I instantly want to put a shirt on. I instantly want to mask my 20% body fat with 100% cotton. I am so damn depressing. The really sad thing is that I saw this coming. I didn’t just wake up fat today. I didn’t wake up fat yesterday or the day before. This was a slow progression. I noticed my pant size going up, year after year. My cholesterol going up month after month. I noticed my self-esteem diminishing day after agonizing day. I felt my charm with the opposite sex slipping slowly. The really tragic thing is that even as I look down at my hideous body and all I can stand to think is “You are an ugly fat fuck”, I still crave food. I crave fatty food. Bacon and eggs. Steak and eggs. Sausage and eggs. Chicken fried steak and eggs. Eggs and eggs. God, I am sickening. Isn’t depression supposed to lessen your appetite?
I look over at the clock radio on my night stand and it’s a quarter past noon. I am contemplating going back to sleep. I figure the more I sleep the less I can eat. I don’t know but something has got to give. I can’t keep up this routine:
WAKE UP
BRUSH TEETH
EAT (BECAUSE I AM HUNGRY)
WATCH TV
SEE COMMERICAL FOR MCDONALDS
CRAVE MCDONALDS
GET DRESSED
DRIVE TO MCDONALDS
EAT MCDONALDS
MOVE ONE STEP CLOSER TO DEATH
DRIVE HOME
WATCH TV
WANDER AROUND THE HOUSE
DECIDE TO WRITE THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
FIX A SNACK
TRY STARTING THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
ABANDON NOTION TO WRITE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
GET BORED
EAT DINNER
TURN INTO A FAT SLOB
UNDRESS
WATCH TV
EAT A MIDNIGHT SNACK
GET DEPRESSED
SLEEP
REPEAT
Of course, it always varies a little. Some days I say to myself, “I’ll go catch a movie” and yes, sir, I would like butter on my popcorn. Always. Some days I elect to read. Some times it is the great American screenplay or it’s learning how to paint instead of the novel. Some days I propose to start exercising. Some days I manage 10 push-ups, others I’ll do 20 jumping jacks. It isn’t always McDonalds. Sometimes it is Wendy’s or it’s Kentucky Fried Chicken. Or Jack in the Box. Sometimes I want to run for the border, sometimes I want it my way. Occasionally I will get a hankering for a meatball sub. Or it will dawn on me that I would kill for a large sausage pizza with breadsticks, handy ranch dipping sauce and a side of buffalo wings (mild). And washed down with a soda. Always washed down with a soda. But never diet. That shit causes cancer, you know. I swear that my piss is probably caffeinated by now. God, I am depressing. Book me a hospital room right now. Call the piano movers to move my coffin. Call me an ambulance, I am counting the days 'til my heart gives out. It is already broken so it’s only a matter of time now.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
December
It was the middle of December. I was in a car parked outside of a Burger King on the outskirts of a small college town. I was waiting for my Rachel. I was passing the time reading a novel with a silver cover. I didn’t know much else about it other than it was the basis for a horror film from the 70s. Most of the time I judged books by their covers. I liked the way the silver cover felt in my hands, cold and glossy.
The car door was wide open and the cold air was blowing into me. It might have been raining lightly but I couldn’t quite tell. The radio was playing a song my Mom used to always sing when I was a kid, “The Night Chicago Died”. Right then I felt good, as if the world could end right then and there and it would be o.k. If I could see the buildings fall and the sky light up with fire, it would be spectacular enough to be the end for me. Life flashing before my eyes as the world collapses. These are the thoughts that I am occupied with on a winter’s night in a one horse town. I can barely concentrate on my book, reading the same sentence 4 times in a row to comprehend it. Each second feels like a minute when Rachel isn’t around.
The car door was wide open and the cold air was blowing into me. It might have been raining lightly but I couldn’t quite tell. The radio was playing a song my Mom used to always sing when I was a kid, “The Night Chicago Died”. Right then I felt good, as if the world could end right then and there and it would be o.k. If I could see the buildings fall and the sky light up with fire, it would be spectacular enough to be the end for me. Life flashing before my eyes as the world collapses. These are the thoughts that I am occupied with on a winter’s night in a one horse town. I can barely concentrate on my book, reading the same sentence 4 times in a row to comprehend it. Each second feels like a minute when Rachel isn’t around.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Drums for Days
“This T. Rex song, man. This one has drums for days”, you say as you turn the radio up.
It’s another one of those things you say that I’m not really sure how to respond to.
“Yeah”, I pause, “sure does”. But before I even finish the “ah” on “yeah” you’ve already turned the radio up to such an obscene volume that you couldn’t have possibly heard the rest of it. Even so, you give me an obligatory “yeah” and finish playing the drum part on the steering wheel.
We are 10 minutes outside of Olympia, Washington and we aren’t stopping until we hit Portland.
You’re listening to 97.8 HITS FM. Good hits, great oldies.
You turn the radio down suddenly.
“Oldies my ass! I was 14 when that album came out”
“Yeah”, I search for words. “What’s next? Nirvana?”
“Huh?”, you ask before answering your own question. “Oh, yeah. Ha. Tell me about it”
Chuck Dobson here with a quick weather update for you. Looks like high winds expected tonight with showers off and on. So, in other words…don’t go out if you don’t have to.
“How’s the stuff looking back there?”
“Huh?”
“In the bed of the truck”
I roll down the window and look behind me. That blue tarp you insisted on is flapping around like crazy. My IKEA coffee table is getting wet.
“Uh”, I say while ducking back in, “It’s fine”.
“Staying dry?”
“Looks like it”
“I bet you’re happy we took that tarp of mine now, huh?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Dad” We sit in silence for a few more seconds before I start wondering if this should be a touching moment or not. A man's only son moving out of the house to go to college in the big city. Is this a bonding experience?
Without realizing it at first, we have pulled off into a rest stop. When I finally figure out we aren’t moving anymore, you are already gone. In the bathroom no doubt. I take this opportunity to get out and stretch my legs. After some stretches I sprawl out on the hood of the old pick-up. Before too long I feel a presence next to me and look over to see you lighting a cigarette, sitting beside me. You silently try to pass me the cigarette, to take a drag off of it.
“You know I don’t smoke”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I forgot”, you respond with each word coming about 10 seconds apart from one another. You seem different, distant.
“Is everything o.k?”
“Huh?”, you pause, “yeah. I’m fine. Why?”
“You just seem…down, I guess”
“Well,” you take what feels like an impossibly long drag off your cigarette before you continue, “I mean, I guess I ain’t exactly thrilled that my wife got sick of me, packed up and moved to Arizona and now my son is packing up and moving off to Or-ee-gone”
The honesty of this hits me like a brick.
“Oh,” I struggle for words, “I mean, it’s not cause of you, Dad. I love you. I just…I need to try something different”
You take another long drag while staring up at the darkening sky.
“I know. I was your age once…”, you trail off. I sense a story coming on but instead I get a face full of smoke. I cough in response and it seems to snap you back into reality.
“That’s how I met your Mother, you know? Moving to the big city”
“What?”
“When I was 23 I was sick of living in the sticks. 23 years of Moline, Illinois is about 22 years more than anybody ever needs to get their fill of it”
I laugh at this and it makes you break into a half smile.
“So…I packed up and moved to Chicago. Your Mother had an ad in the paper for a used bed she was selling. Now in those days I didn’t have a pot to piss in let alone a bed so I called her up and charmed her from $50 down to $20. When I come to pick the damn thing up, I step out of the car and she is the most beautiful gal I’d ever seen. And there’s some pretty girls in the Midwest. But back then I didn’t have the nerve that I do now so I just sweated and stammered my way through the transaction and went on home. Few nights later my Brother comes up to visit, help me settle in. You know, Uncle Danny?”
“Yeah”
“Well, you wouldn’t know it to look at him now but in those days Danny could drink with the best of them. So, his last night in the big city we go on down to damn near every bar we find and get 3 sheets to the wind and Danny says ‘Hey, Brother. You best call that girl of yours. The one with the bed. Unless you are yella?’. And I’m so full of gin that I go ahead and do it. And before you know it, we’re sharing that bed she sold me”
“You should have asked for half your money back”
You laugh hard at this with the lungs of a veteran smoker. It eventually dissolves into a series of coughs and grunts. You compose yourself and add, “and not much longer after that we had you”.
“So, I was born in Chicago?”
“Yeah. But we moved out of there pretty quick. Up to Washington before you were old enough to even spit”
“Why?”
“Well, we’d both gotten sick of Chicago by then and my buddy Dave Nechack, he told me that I could probably get a job real easy at Boeing with him. So we loaded up the car and gave it a shot”
Without referencing time or lateness or the road, you stand up and toss your cigarette into the gutter and remove the keys from your pocket. I follow you into the truck and shortly after that the radio finds its way back on.
97.3 HITS FM. Good hits, great oldies. It’s closing in on 8pm here in rainy Washington. It is nasty out there. Right here is some “Jackie Blue”to brighten your night. By the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
We pull out onto the highway as you turn the radio up again. I admire the way the trees look illuminated by headlights.
“Man, where the hell they playing Buddy Holly and Richie Valens? The classical station?”, you yell.
“Yeah,’ I say it without really thinking. Then the joke catches up with me and I laugh.
“Hey, how much longer 'til Portland you think?”
“Oh,” you check your watch, “About an hour. An hour til you start your new life”. I feel your hand on my shoulder and it startles me.
“O.k.”
97.3 HITS FM. A quick traffic update for you: I-5 South is looking like a real mess past exit 308. So if you’re traveling down South give yourself plenty of time. Especially going on down into Oregon, it’s a real parking lot at the border. A two car accident is shutting down two lanes. It’s a zoo out there.
“Shit. Make that 2 hours 'til you start your new life”
“I’m in no rush”. I look out towards the bed of the truck again. I stare at the tarp as it billows around the edges of my dresser. I look up at the sky as the night takes over. I image Mom in sunny Arizona and the windy air over Chicago and I wonder whatever happened to that bed of yours. I think about asking you right then and there but we have a long drive ahead of us and only so many words to pass the time with. Another 2 hours til I start my new life.
It’s another one of those things you say that I’m not really sure how to respond to.
“Yeah”, I pause, “sure does”. But before I even finish the “ah” on “yeah” you’ve already turned the radio up to such an obscene volume that you couldn’t have possibly heard the rest of it. Even so, you give me an obligatory “yeah” and finish playing the drum part on the steering wheel.
We are 10 minutes outside of Olympia, Washington and we aren’t stopping until we hit Portland.
You’re listening to 97.8 HITS FM. Good hits, great oldies.
You turn the radio down suddenly.
“Oldies my ass! I was 14 when that album came out”
“Yeah”, I search for words. “What’s next? Nirvana?”
“Huh?”, you ask before answering your own question. “Oh, yeah. Ha. Tell me about it”
Chuck Dobson here with a quick weather update for you. Looks like high winds expected tonight with showers off and on. So, in other words…don’t go out if you don’t have to.
“How’s the stuff looking back there?”
“Huh?”
“In the bed of the truck”
I roll down the window and look behind me. That blue tarp you insisted on is flapping around like crazy. My IKEA coffee table is getting wet.
“Uh”, I say while ducking back in, “It’s fine”.
“Staying dry?”
“Looks like it”
“I bet you’re happy we took that tarp of mine now, huh?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Dad” We sit in silence for a few more seconds before I start wondering if this should be a touching moment or not. A man's only son moving out of the house to go to college in the big city. Is this a bonding experience?
Without realizing it at first, we have pulled off into a rest stop. When I finally figure out we aren’t moving anymore, you are already gone. In the bathroom no doubt. I take this opportunity to get out and stretch my legs. After some stretches I sprawl out on the hood of the old pick-up. Before too long I feel a presence next to me and look over to see you lighting a cigarette, sitting beside me. You silently try to pass me the cigarette, to take a drag off of it.
“You know I don’t smoke”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I forgot”, you respond with each word coming about 10 seconds apart from one another. You seem different, distant.
“Is everything o.k?”
“Huh?”, you pause, “yeah. I’m fine. Why?”
“You just seem…down, I guess”
“Well,” you take what feels like an impossibly long drag off your cigarette before you continue, “I mean, I guess I ain’t exactly thrilled that my wife got sick of me, packed up and moved to Arizona and now my son is packing up and moving off to Or-ee-gone”
The honesty of this hits me like a brick.
“Oh,” I struggle for words, “I mean, it’s not cause of you, Dad. I love you. I just…I need to try something different”
You take another long drag while staring up at the darkening sky.
“I know. I was your age once…”, you trail off. I sense a story coming on but instead I get a face full of smoke. I cough in response and it seems to snap you back into reality.
“That’s how I met your Mother, you know? Moving to the big city”
“What?”
“When I was 23 I was sick of living in the sticks. 23 years of Moline, Illinois is about 22 years more than anybody ever needs to get their fill of it”
I laugh at this and it makes you break into a half smile.
“So…I packed up and moved to Chicago. Your Mother had an ad in the paper for a used bed she was selling. Now in those days I didn’t have a pot to piss in let alone a bed so I called her up and charmed her from $50 down to $20. When I come to pick the damn thing up, I step out of the car and she is the most beautiful gal I’d ever seen. And there’s some pretty girls in the Midwest. But back then I didn’t have the nerve that I do now so I just sweated and stammered my way through the transaction and went on home. Few nights later my Brother comes up to visit, help me settle in. You know, Uncle Danny?”
“Yeah”
“Well, you wouldn’t know it to look at him now but in those days Danny could drink with the best of them. So, his last night in the big city we go on down to damn near every bar we find and get 3 sheets to the wind and Danny says ‘Hey, Brother. You best call that girl of yours. The one with the bed. Unless you are yella?’. And I’m so full of gin that I go ahead and do it. And before you know it, we’re sharing that bed she sold me”
“You should have asked for half your money back”
You laugh hard at this with the lungs of a veteran smoker. It eventually dissolves into a series of coughs and grunts. You compose yourself and add, “and not much longer after that we had you”.
“So, I was born in Chicago?”
“Yeah. But we moved out of there pretty quick. Up to Washington before you were old enough to even spit”
“Why?”
“Well, we’d both gotten sick of Chicago by then and my buddy Dave Nechack, he told me that I could probably get a job real easy at Boeing with him. So we loaded up the car and gave it a shot”
Without referencing time or lateness or the road, you stand up and toss your cigarette into the gutter and remove the keys from your pocket. I follow you into the truck and shortly after that the radio finds its way back on.
97.3 HITS FM. Good hits, great oldies. It’s closing in on 8pm here in rainy Washington. It is nasty out there. Right here is some “Jackie Blue”to brighten your night. By the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
We pull out onto the highway as you turn the radio up again. I admire the way the trees look illuminated by headlights.
“Man, where the hell they playing Buddy Holly and Richie Valens? The classical station?”, you yell.
“Yeah,’ I say it without really thinking. Then the joke catches up with me and I laugh.
“Hey, how much longer 'til Portland you think?”
“Oh,” you check your watch, “About an hour. An hour til you start your new life”. I feel your hand on my shoulder and it startles me.
“O.k.”
97.3 HITS FM. A quick traffic update for you: I-5 South is looking like a real mess past exit 308. So if you’re traveling down South give yourself plenty of time. Especially going on down into Oregon, it’s a real parking lot at the border. A two car accident is shutting down two lanes. It’s a zoo out there.
“Shit. Make that 2 hours 'til you start your new life”
“I’m in no rush”. I look out towards the bed of the truck again. I stare at the tarp as it billows around the edges of my dresser. I look up at the sky as the night takes over. I image Mom in sunny Arizona and the windy air over Chicago and I wonder whatever happened to that bed of yours. I think about asking you right then and there but we have a long drive ahead of us and only so many words to pass the time with. Another 2 hours til I start my new life.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Carole King's Longing
MARIE:
Marie sits lonely on her bean bag chair circa 1979 with a cigarette in her left hand and a coca-cola in the other. Her head is surrounded by the black plastic warmth of headphones. She is singing along to some old Carole King song she had heard a band cover earlier in the week down at the Western Club. She had never much paid attention to “that old rock and roll stuff” but she figured if it was good enough for them to cover then it was good enough for her to waste time on. Time was one thing Marie had plenty of to waste these days. She had just quit her job at the video store. She was your standard “I know more about movies than you because I work in a video store” character. She was always right about movies.
Right now, Marie was miserable. She sat low and tired with the stench of cigarette smoke lingering above her body, her slightly acne covered face light with sweat and oil doing damage to her pores. Soon the cigarette smoke would find its way up to decay and putrefy the pages of her books on the shelf above her. An old copy of “The Old Man and the Sea” that will smell even worse in a couple of years, a high school yearbook’s pages vandalized with punk rock inscriptions from forgotten friends might age prematurely, its hand drawn skulls could possibly get wrinkles or the fingers on the cartoon devil hands could jaundice and fill with cancer. Just like people, some things can’t last forever.
Right now, Marie was in the losing corner in a bout with depression. Her heart was too weak to be broken fully, too damaged by all the smoke left there to rot. It was put there by James, her ex-boyfriend who really never gave her much besides a couple of guilt trips and a nicotine addiction that she couldn’t fight. Her phone started to ring in the next room but “You’re So Far Away” was bleeding into her ears at such an obscene volume that she didn’t notice. The song was making her start to cry. The tears on her cheek continued on down towards the corners of her mouth, reflecting her cutting edge book collection along the way. Thought after thought transcribed on page after page, glued in between cover after cover. Half the books she hadn’t even read yet, the covers just looked interesting. Most of the time she judged books by their covers. She judged most things by their appearance. That was her first mistake with James.
Her phone continues to ring but she is too lost in Carole King’s longing to notice. Nostalgia was her drug of choice and right now she was overdosing.
JAMES:
I hold the receiver a few inches from my ear and wait for an answer. The phone just rings and rings. A call comes in on the other line but I don’t dare pick it up because it will undoubtedly be some dumbass customer who wants to know what time the 7:00 show starts.
Just then a woman enters the door to the lobby and I am instantly stunned by how much she reminds me of my Grandmother. Coming to a love story alone, her hair recently done and her face lightly touched with discount make-up of which her supply is surely dwindling. She doesn’t buy it for herself anymore and the husband who used buy it for her is long gone. I can smell the make-up from here and it is making me homesick. I can see her walking out of the movie, smiling, getting her bus fare ready from her pocketbook to return to an empty apartment on the edge of town that’s embarrassingly clean in the hopes that she will have company again one of these days. The woman asks for a senior ticket and I feel like a kid again. I am a sucker for nostalgia. Even to the point of being nostalgic for things that hurt. This is why I am calling Marie. Maybe she wants to meet for coffee? I suddenly realize that I am still on the line and it is ringing hopelessly. I hang up. It is probably for the better. The old days with her weren’t as golden as I’d like to think, I suppose. Hindsight is 20/20.
It is 6:59 and the movie is about to start. The other line is still ringing.
Marie sits lonely on her bean bag chair circa 1979 with a cigarette in her left hand and a coca-cola in the other. Her head is surrounded by the black plastic warmth of headphones. She is singing along to some old Carole King song she had heard a band cover earlier in the week down at the Western Club. She had never much paid attention to “that old rock and roll stuff” but she figured if it was good enough for them to cover then it was good enough for her to waste time on. Time was one thing Marie had plenty of to waste these days. She had just quit her job at the video store. She was your standard “I know more about movies than you because I work in a video store” character. She was always right about movies.
Right now, Marie was miserable. She sat low and tired with the stench of cigarette smoke lingering above her body, her slightly acne covered face light with sweat and oil doing damage to her pores. Soon the cigarette smoke would find its way up to decay and putrefy the pages of her books on the shelf above her. An old copy of “The Old Man and the Sea” that will smell even worse in a couple of years, a high school yearbook’s pages vandalized with punk rock inscriptions from forgotten friends might age prematurely, its hand drawn skulls could possibly get wrinkles or the fingers on the cartoon devil hands could jaundice and fill with cancer. Just like people, some things can’t last forever.
Right now, Marie was in the losing corner in a bout with depression. Her heart was too weak to be broken fully, too damaged by all the smoke left there to rot. It was put there by James, her ex-boyfriend who really never gave her much besides a couple of guilt trips and a nicotine addiction that she couldn’t fight. Her phone started to ring in the next room but “You’re So Far Away” was bleeding into her ears at such an obscene volume that she didn’t notice. The song was making her start to cry. The tears on her cheek continued on down towards the corners of her mouth, reflecting her cutting edge book collection along the way. Thought after thought transcribed on page after page, glued in between cover after cover. Half the books she hadn’t even read yet, the covers just looked interesting. Most of the time she judged books by their covers. She judged most things by their appearance. That was her first mistake with James.
Her phone continues to ring but she is too lost in Carole King’s longing to notice. Nostalgia was her drug of choice and right now she was overdosing.
JAMES:
I hold the receiver a few inches from my ear and wait for an answer. The phone just rings and rings. A call comes in on the other line but I don’t dare pick it up because it will undoubtedly be some dumbass customer who wants to know what time the 7:00 show starts.
Just then a woman enters the door to the lobby and I am instantly stunned by how much she reminds me of my Grandmother. Coming to a love story alone, her hair recently done and her face lightly touched with discount make-up of which her supply is surely dwindling. She doesn’t buy it for herself anymore and the husband who used buy it for her is long gone. I can smell the make-up from here and it is making me homesick. I can see her walking out of the movie, smiling, getting her bus fare ready from her pocketbook to return to an empty apartment on the edge of town that’s embarrassingly clean in the hopes that she will have company again one of these days. The woman asks for a senior ticket and I feel like a kid again. I am a sucker for nostalgia. Even to the point of being nostalgic for things that hurt. This is why I am calling Marie. Maybe she wants to meet for coffee? I suddenly realize that I am still on the line and it is ringing hopelessly. I hang up. It is probably for the better. The old days with her weren’t as golden as I’d like to think, I suppose. Hindsight is 20/20.
It is 6:59 and the movie is about to start. The other line is still ringing.
52 Stories
This will be the home of a brand new short story every week for a full year.
I decided to do this to have a place to put the writing I have been working on and to force myself to keep writing as the year progresses. I am notoriously guilty of saving ideas for "something bigger and better" or creating ideas and doing nothing with them in the hopes that they will fit in to a screenplay. This accomplishes nothing so I figured I would at least put them up somewhere, if only even in a blog.
So...here you go. 52 stories.
-Jason Ryan
I decided to do this to have a place to put the writing I have been working on and to force myself to keep writing as the year progresses. I am notoriously guilty of saving ideas for "something bigger and better" or creating ideas and doing nothing with them in the hopes that they will fit in to a screenplay. This accomplishes nothing so I figured I would at least put them up somewhere, if only even in a blog.
So...here you go. 52 stories.
-Jason Ryan
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