by Peter Manus
Sorry. I’ve been AFK, so it’s much later now than when I took my first stab at this post. I was distracted by the people upstairs, who keep walking around as if in time to some beat that I’m hearing in their footsteps and also independently. My guess is that this happens to a lot of people. It’s weird, though.
I suppose I should apologize for having been away from—for having abandoned—the blog for so long. I’d like to say that Mysterious Hottie and I raced off to Reno for a quickie nuptial and are now screwing every night in freakoid bliss, but, alas, I have seen neither hide nor hair of the man since… Wise of him to disappear from the face of the earth, but, still, I can’t help wishing he’d knock on the door, be there with that through-the-eyebrows leer of his and his weight thrown carelessly on one hip, only to vanish like smoke while I sleep.
No, I’ve had no contact from Guy—if that was his name, but of course that’s as it should be, as I suppose the police are watching me still. I don’t believe Guy was fullfrontal, or a murderer, or that he committed suicide. If you’d met him you’d be exactly where I am, but I can’t worry about that anymore. I have enough on my hands, what with dickel being diagnosed with clinical depression. Like father, like son, they say, but I’d never really bought the idea of my father jumping in front of that freighter and then killing himself with his own meds a couple of months later. I was always sure that my mother and Frank pulled off those stunts together.
Sigh. Well, well, you live and learn. Somehow it doesn’t leave me with any sort of need to apologize to my mother. After all, she condemned me, so why shouldn’t I think the worst of her as well? Ah, but you all have mothers, so I’m sure you know how it is.
I’ve moved away from Boston. I needed to be where I could keep an eye on dickel. And of course I couldn’t live in that apartment after Burly-Bear’s murder.
Burly-Bear. Or should I say hitman? In spite of his assurances to the contrary, I finally put that together. Did anyone else? My breakthrough was “cya.” I thought hitman was using “cover your ass” in a sort of “fresh” way. No, no: it’s “correct you are.” Review the archives. It works. And we know whose signature phrase that was. Sad, that Burly-Bear died with a lie on his lips. Sad that to the end he simply couldn’t go off duty and just be straight with a girl. Fucking cop. It’s a calling, I guess.
I am bothered but not startled to find that even I refer to Burly-Bear’s death as a murder. Understandable, of course, since that’s the label the police affixed to it—creed of loyalty and all that—but when someone comes to a woman’s aid, surely that’s not murder?
But Burly-Bear, you are saying with incredulity! Such a stand-up swell guy, you are insisting! Such an American idol! So public spirited! Such a beautiful wife and child!
You know what? Every red-blooded American folk hero had a libido. We’ve all got dark recesses, but the male of the species’ darkest secret is poisoned with testosterone. He can’t help himself. He can’t just think dirty; he’s got to do dirty.
Let me play the part of wazzup!, our prescient Netherlands cheerleader: Shades of A Swell Kind of Guy!!! I win, my companions in pulp admiration!!!
Yes, well, exactly. And Escroto knows about it, too. You die with your pants around your ankles and distinct bruises shaped like your hands on the inner thighs of the girl sitting on the floor across from you, well, it’s not such a mystery what was going down when you got jumped. Ah, but why get all righteous…
The commandment that has never been written down…because every goddamn fool’s supposed to know it—yea, verily…take not advantage of thy neighbor with his pants down…
Anyone recognize that one? Of course I have no problem with the idea of Burly-Bear being fashioned a folk hero. Hell, he was every bit my hero, right up until he tried to stick his dick in me without so much as a “may I.” A momentary lapse, right? I’ve got no incentive to destroy the myth of the masculine hero. It’s my favorite fairy tale. But the truth is we’re all antiheros. We’re all struggling through our own inner noirs…
Hey, did you know that there are websites that make their entire theme suicide—people collect suicide stories from around the world and get off on savoring them, often with pictures…
…Indian woman commits suicide by fire…
…suicide skydiver cuts parachute line…
…father suicides over son’s accidental death…
…16-year-old girl commits suicide after breaking up with boyfriend…
…self-electrocution of young man…
…classic black-and-white suicide pictures…
…principal hangs self after student’s bizarre death…
…suicide by alarm clock…
…decomposed body of female suicide discovered in Romanian wood…
…body of male who hanged himself in tree discovered in park…
…7-month-old fetus stabbed to death…
…suicide by metro…
…remains of 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber…
…mother takes daughter with her in jump under train…
…Botswana man lies on train track…
…Israeli girl decapitated after jumping under train…
…Beheaded by train in Mexico…
…Morgue images inside!!!!!!!
Sigh. Anyway, I’m tired and I can hear dickel waking up. I’ve sworn off the blog, promised him that in return for his promise that he won’t flush his pills and saw his wrists open with the rusty edge of the medicine cabinet again. A fair bargain, don’tcha think?
You may be wrong, and exist comfortably in a world of righteousness, but you may not be right and live in a world of error, the kind of world that we seem to live in.
I’ll check in again, though, when it’s safe. After all, I am…ever so very…fickle.
GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT
chinkigirl @ March 10 07:10 am
I’m in shock. I don’t know what to think.
proudblacktrannie @ March 10 011:21 am
SHE IS LYING. TRACE THIS BLOG ENTRY, MR. ESCROTO OR WHATEVER YOUR DAMN NAME IS WE ALL KNOW YOU’RE STILL ON THE BLOG.
i.went.to.harvard @ March 10 06:33 pm
I think we leave it alone.
roadrage @ March 10 07:04 pm
harsh, dewd. But I gotta agree. By the way, chinkigirl, I want to say before it’s too late that I’m totally in love with you. Honestly. I’m glad we’re never going to meet because that would suck, but your voice will be in my mind for the rest of my life. I love you. Please don’t reply, okay?
36-D @ March 10 07:07 pm
Oh, god, I am in tears now. I mean I’m bawling like a kid, here. I don’t even get why.
webmaggot @ March 10 07:09 pm
Uhh, you’re an emo wuss?
36-D @ March 10 07:11 pm
Oh, shit, you would—now I am laughing and crying at the same time, and you have no idea how I hate getting all femmey and emotional.
marleybones @ March 10 07:17 pm
I think that’s all we can do. Weep like ninnies, each in our own blog doghouse. People go mad every day. Life goes on around its victims.
fickel @ March 11 01:00 am
…and a hush fell over the blog…
41
www.lowart.org
Group Fiction
Author: Penelope Dreadful
Date: August 24
Genre: neo-noir
Train Watching
Anyone could see they were in love. Why, there wasn’t anything subtle about it—the way they held hands when walking down the rutted road, the way a smile would pool in her eyes as she watched him drinking a coffee in the train station café, the way he’d notice that smile and then pull her chair around so that they’d be crowded together, elbow to elbow at the tiny wrought-iron table. Love’s a cinch to spot, and such a pleasure to observe, particularly when the boy and girl were as young and as commonplace as they were. Yes, somehow that doubled their charm.
On his own, you see, the boy might have been pe
rceived as some trouble, as he gave off an air of being a tough lot, with that length of chain looped from his belt and the ropey beard that sprouted only from his chin. And didn’t that t-shirt he favored bear a logo that almost resembled a swastika? Overall, in fact, his wolfish lean suggesting an almost feral belligerence that was impossible to overlook.
But when people saw the boy with the girl, how the two of them related to one another, well, it was almost as if all of the boy’s antisocial affectations came across as puppyish, and he really could seem rather sweet, particularly to the womenfolk. For the girl was really special, fine and merry and with a bright, accepting look in her eye that made every new person she came across feel momentarily blessed, and what kind of no-good punk could have won over a girl like that? Sure, she had that black-dyed hair that looked like she might cut it herself, and no apparent interest in makeup or perfume. But when she first met you, and she quirked her head to one side, tilting her eyes a bit upward and smiling—all quite unwittingly—ah, what a flight of sunshine she cast! True, she might not have been as fine-boned as today’s magazines would have you think a girl should be, but it was undeniable that she was all real, with a milky glow to her skin and a soft curve to her shoulders and hips—well, she certainly caught her share of glances from the men when she went about in her snug-fitting jeans, even if she did wear them with high-topped utility boots and one or another of the rather worn sweater sets she seemed to fancy.
The girl did everything for the two of them, it seemed. It was she who found them their rental unit over the garage out behind one of the fine chalet-style homes near the edge of town. It was she who steered the boy into a salaried job riding the freight line, and she who dealt with the tradesmen and neighbors and internet provider. It was she who sold several of the boy’s oil paintings—fine, rough landscapes, they were—through one of the local shops. It was her presence that made their landlady—herself a reclusive woman—come to perceive the young couple as a fixture on the property, strolling up or down the long shale drive, together or alone. Yes, the girl soothed whatever small ripples there were that inevitably develop when new folk settle in an isolated burg with no discernible reason for having done so, no seeming outside connections or history.
Of course, the Canadian countryside had much to recommend it: there was the clear air and a relative lack of traffic, the windy fields just outside of town, and a sense of quietude about the entire region. But most young people seem to flee from such bucolic settings, while these two were doing just the opposite, and no matter how sensible that might seem from the vantage point of age and experience, it was undeniably different. And so it was the girl, through the countless little ways that her appreciation for the simple life broadcast itself: the tucking of a tiny spray of brilliants behind her ear, the easy declination of an offered ride when strolling home in a sudden snow squall, the willingness to stop a while with women far older than she to laugh at some gossip. It was in these ways that she caused the two of them to meld into the local scenery, become an uncomplicated, unheralded element of a tiny community, within months of their arrival.
In truth, no one knew for a fact that they were married. In this day and age, one can never tell, and it’s considered awfully provincial to ask. He didn’t wear a ring, but then he was a painter who worked on the trains and rings get in the way when you need to wash up a lot, and, anyway, lots of men find jewelry bothersome. On her part, she wore on her ring finger a blue-white stone, about the size of a robin’s egg, that some folks might have guessed was an opal or even blue jade, mounted on a rose gold band, quite plain. Who could know what this treasure signified. She also used the boy’s name, a meaningful gesture in a day when so many women retain their own last name upon saying their wedding vows. But whether or not these two were formally married, they were without a doubt newlyweds. Every night, at whatever time his freight rolled into town, she was there for him at the rail junction, waiting. Sometimes when he had an overnight or a three-day stint away from town, she’d go down to the junction anyway. Anyone who happened to see her would have to remark to themselves that she really did get a thrill out of watching trains…
COMMENTS
Penelope Dreadful @ August 24 06:32 pm
I’m HUGE into group fic. :) Sooooooooooooo…any takers?
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