Secret Stories

by Dwight Peters

of within it—no longer a boy, no longer hiding—knowing what it means to be grown.

  I couldn’t tell you what the difference was that caused this change, but there was a difference. But I am not a man now because I cower less or because I am no longer hidden; it is much more than this to be grown. I am a man now because that part of myself that was still a boy has grown enough to get me to that place. Getting grown, at whatever age, is different for different people, but a lot is also the same—much more than it can sometimes seem. Perseverance and strength become present, and there is responsibility that is wild and taming—a place where you and others are nearly fully present, and you have to act accordingly because it matters. But anyhow, I am saying all of this here and now because I simply wanted to tell you my story of finding freedom on the frontier in the cool waves of the ocean and about the cow.

  Untitled

  This guy goes up to this woman on the subway and sits in the seat right next to her and tries to hit on her. The woman lifts her left hand to show him and says “Sorry, I’m married.” The guy lifts his and says “Me too!—See, we have something in common already.”

  Is there a meaning to this story? Probably. Are we going to look for it? I’m not. You can, though.

  Why does it happen in the subway? No reason whatsoever. It could have happened anywhere—even the woman’s house, the man’s, or yours—but not with you in the story because you don’t belong in it. If it makes you any more happy, you can be in some other story— not in this one though, like I said already.

  Do the people in the story both have to be married to other people for it to work? No. Do you have to be married? No. But you might consider it, lonely!—You might consider it, grumpy!

  Do I need to mock you and poke fun? Yes, definitely.

  Were the people in the story wearing rings? Maybe.

  Was the guy rude? Maybe. Was the woman? Maybe.

  Do I need to go to the bathroom? Yes.

  By the way, this story was actually titled: Masturbation for Realists, or, Masturbatory Zealots, or, The Happy Story.

  Audience

  There was a movie played in a theater. It was an intense and sad story. A man cried about something else that the end of the movie reminded him of and ran to the bathroom. Some of the other people who were at the movie, who saw this man, thought that the man must have found the end of the movie to be too much to experience without crying.

  Crane

  From my apartment, there is a 150-foot crane across the street. It falls sideways and kills me as I write this.

  A crane flies by.

  Sightseeing

  They held each other as they looked up at the religious building that people of all beliefs had come to see for many years. They experienced a period of inspiration beyond what they had experienced at any time before.

  With no particular beliefs of their own, nothing that they held up as truth beyond the data of facts—with not having ever known such sustained inspired experience—they wondered exactly what it was that had happened to them? They wondered what could cause the creation of such beauty?

  Why?—they needed to know—were the temples created—different throughout the world—throughout different beliefs and lives of faith? What was such inspiration? How—they asked—could it be so real yet so distant from the experiences of what they knew as their lives?

  Internet Cafe

  It happened to them, different people scattered throughout the world; they stopped communicating: the part within themselves that made all of their relationships matter was no longer possible to express. They spoke words from their mouths, but they were completely insignificant. They went on their computers and wrote messages and then more messages, but none of those meant anything.

  Then, they all imagined one place they could go where communication was completely possible—and where they could be with everyone everywhere. They all imagined a small cafe, a mile’s walk from wherever they lived, where they went to and met all the people of the world. In this place, everything that they heard and spoke meant something. In this space, there was a connection beyond place.

  Water Music

  A person was unsure of what to do. The difficulties of the situations that were and continued to be started a small fire within this person, starting in the outside part of left leg just above the knee, moving through the body burning various parts in varying degrees. A fire that, while this person rarely thought it to ever have taken over the body completely, in moments closer to clarity clearly caused severe distraction from finding the ability to perceive what was happening and from making helpful decisions.

  What once seemed clear and full of potential at once was engulfed entirely, so that in the same place that passionate, thriving ecstasy for all that was the wonder of life once was, there then became a temperature that left all as nothing as the fire flared. This person, if not dead to life forever, through the outcome of the actions that occurred during this, dead at least in the moment of this heat to how this person knew all that had mattered.

  Fire Music

  There was a place that sank into water with all its people. The people did not die: but their blood lost heat; their movement lost force; and their minds became frosted with numbness. The people tried to live as if nothing had changed, pretending that their lives were the same; but living their lives coldly in slow movement pushing against the water, bodies needing a heat that had left when the water came: living portions of full lives that had been lost with the force of the water.

  Generations past, and the new generations never knew warmth. At this later time, a person in this place, who had never experienced anything but the cold of the sunken place, traveled to the edge of its border, finding under an uprooted tree stump a hole in the ground from which an intense sensation flowed out of. Traveling back, away from the edge of this place, the person soon realized that the sensation that was felt was an experience of heat.

  With the experience of heat, the person said nothing for a little over five years, upsetting with worry those close to this person. When the person could speak again, heat flowed along with any words spoken from the person’s mouth. Soon everyone in the place heard of this and traveled to this person and had also experienced heat.

  Nearly seven years passed, and during this time, while the place wasn’t full of people who could not speak, there was a strong silence felt. But this ended when there was a very loud sound and then two more afterwards—three people in different areas of this place erupted with intense fire—the heat from each evaporating all the water around, these spaces covering the whole of the place so that the cold water was gone.

  The Salty Madness Of Mixed-up Nuts

  This squirrel says to this bird: “It is no good to be a squirrel. I’m up here in the trees all day and sometimes run around down there down on the dirt running around but…”

  The bird and the squirrel are up in a tree together —the squirrel keeps talking and says: “…But most of the time I’m up hopping around these trees playing with nuts and stuff, trying to eat and stuff like that, and all the time all I’m thinking of is flying around like you with wings and not having to jump and grab and worry about falling. You know I had a really good friend and some family—some family I really liked too—fall. And you know what happens when that happens. I know it’s pretty up here, and I now it’s the nice part of the tree. I can tell you all this because you’re a bird, but what I really want to tell you is that I want to be a bird too, like you. But I still want to be me, you know. I want to fly from tree to tree and place to place and glide down slow when I want to go down to places. But I still want to talk like a squirrel and be known as a squirrel and do squirrel things.”

  “You’re nuts,” says the bird. “How does anyone get so mixed up? I’ve enjoyed our conversations in the past, but maybe somehow you’ve gotten the wrong ideas from me. Being a bird is not always easy. Do you really think that it isn’t hard work to fly around so much? Have you ever done jumping jacks
or just flapped your arms a bunch? Imagine doing that for a whole day, and if you mess up, you fall. And you know what happens when that happens. I sometimes have wanted to be a turtle or worm or something, something that isn’t much work.”

  “I’d be a turtle,” says that squirrel.

  “Alright,” says the bird.

  They both become turtles. And they both fall out of the tree. And you know what happens when that happens.

  But that’s not the end of it because for us they are still turtles, and in some, which is our, way of seeing and telling things, they end up together in the water. Also, it isn’t all that clear what was what before, but now one is a guy and the other is not, so there are little turtles and that kind of thing. And they all play together in the water teasing tadpoles and other fun things.

  Until one day, when one of the little turtles starts telling stories from the perspective of the time in the past when it was an adult bird, but telling the story as pretty much a baby when not even half the age of the adult bird that is says that it was. The whole thing sounded like a whole mixed up mess of time and total strange confusion of being a turtle. But the little turtle said things like: “When I was a bird and had a family and bird friends, I would fly around and sit in trees