--IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN

…I hope you’re having a great weekend.  A stellar weekend, in fact.  I know it’s been a hard week for you.

…I had my reading Friday night in Ballard.

The weather was a nightmare and traffic a real bitch, so I expected there to be about 10 people tops, especially since there were only four of us reading.  Yet there were probably upwards of 100 people there.
It was a very fun evening.  
I went third. 
The first two readers read stories that were jovial.  The first was hilarious.
Then came me with my dark, gut-punch stuff.  Looking out at the crowd, they seemed quite attentive, but the applause was somewhat stymied.
Still, it was my best reading ever.  I was hardly even nervous.

…Here’s one of the stories I read, that someone labeled (and rightly so) a “crippling piece”:

 

                                                      Triplets

 We are three that are one that will always be linked: brothers--Ron, Rex and me.

Rex is home this week for saying to a junior, “Only fags wrestle,” and then dismantling the stunned guy after practice.  Rex is large and surly, and so the kid’s family is suing.

Ron is writing new songs and trying out the lyrics on his Taylor guitar.  When I press my ear to the wall that separates our bedrooms, the words from the other side lift and break apart and the cadence catches me off guard so that I have to put a hand over my mouth in order to hide my sobbing.

I keep the lights off in my room, let the lava lamp run while watching the glowing worms reshape and seek new identities. 

I was the first one of us out of the womb but I am third.  I am both the fag and the girlfriend in a song.  I am someone’s choke hold and a broken guitar string making the wrong music.

After tonight, though, I’ll be the first one gone from this world and I’ll leave it up to them to decide whether that makes them twins then.