--YOU KISSED A GIRL AND YOU LIKED IT

…I had this piece, “The Rinse Cycle” up at Cease, Cows:

http://ceasecows.com/2013/05/10/the-rinse-cycle-by-len-kuntz/

…Last week I was called “a modern master” and someone else called me “brilliant.”  Really?  No way.  Half the time I don’t even feel like a real writer.  Half the time I wonder if I don’t suck.  But I’ll admit the comments felt awfully nice.

…Here are some things I like to start a new week:

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx

"If a man hasn't discovered something that he would die for, he isn't fit  to live." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I have simply tried to do what seemed best each day, as each day

came." Abraham Lincoln

"I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know." Lawrence Durrel

"I'm completely optimistic - I know the end is coming!" Lydia Lunch

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt

"I'm no hero.  I put my bra on one boob at a time like everyone else." Tina, "Bob's Burgers"

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." Gandhi

"For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive." D. Lawrence

"I am what is changing secretly in you." Paul Valéry

"Most of us can, if we choose, make this world either a prison or a palace." L. Avebury

"We each have all the time there is; our mental and moral status is determined by what we do with it." Mary Blake

"To write is to talk to strangers." Tracy Kidder

"Reading is not only entertainment; it is a kind of silent conversation with ourselves… We are taken out of ourselves and moved more deeply into the process of living." PW

" ... Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the Ten Thousand Things? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you even know the difference? ..." Denis Johnson

"In things pertaining to enthusiasm, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions." Henry Beecher

"Sometimes we just can't save ourselves from stupid." Men's Health

"Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they've stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments." Kevin Costner

"Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in." Andrew Jackson

"You’ll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind." Irish proverb

"Don't write what you know, write what you feel." Alice Hoffman

"The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated." William James

"Discovery consists in seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi

--YOU LOOK FANTASTIC AND I LIKE YOUR FRIEND

This Is Not a Love Poem

You are in Switzerland noshing patchwork cheese,

buying wristwatches with Andre or Gary.

The sun is gentle and restrained on your faces.

A breeze kicks up enough that your hair flounces around your cheek

while seeding the air

with the honeysuckle notes of your perfume,

and at this moment

on our very planet

there could not be a more lovely creature

than you.

Over here

there’s no yellow brick road

so  I’m heading off to where

the trails are paved with razors pointed topside,

sticking up jaggedly,

a billion blades

of glinting metal teeth.

To get where I need to go

requires more than faith and

means taking a blood bath.

You should be so thrilled.

Perhaps you can toss confetti across your gazpacho

or shoot up the next guy to slip you the finger.

Mind you, this is not a love poem.

Mind yourself

and mine those men with their ceramic smiles

and candy cane eyes,

their Dudley Do-Right jaws as reliable as oxbows.

Take them in the crux of your kiss,

your armpit

or crotch

for all I care.

Crush them like scrawny spiders or

choke them with a designer garrote,

but leave me out of it,

I’m busy.

When I brushed my teeth this morning

they bled inky black, liquid licorice.

I tried gargling with salt water but that did nothing to stem the flow,

the blow as it were,

so the doctor has fitted me with this muzzle thing

and now the only way I’m able to convey how much I hate you

is to type it

like I’m doing right now.

--SEE YOU SOON

…The day before yesterday was George Clooney's birthday.  He turned 52, same age as me, which is kind of hard to believe as I always think of him as older than me.

…Yesterday I wrote my 1,040th story and had my 720th story accepted.  That's a lot of words in three years, not to mention the three novels.

…Last week a senior-citizen couple in Sweden faced harassment charges after blasting Iron Maiden to exact revenge on a neighbor.

…I'm off to Portland for a few days.  Until then, here are some things people had to say on Facebook:

-My shitty neighbor Buffalo Bill now has a roommate that looks like Charley Manson. They play death metal all night not even good shit. Now they have a friend come over that looks like Otis from House of 1000 Corpses. That music is driving me f'ing nuts! Plus they've been carrying out black bags of something and hauling it off. Probably body parts.

-One of my students, 18 maybe, just dyed her hair gray. one of the coolest things ive seen in a while maybe...

-Forgot to tell you guys that a man with one eye told me I looked pretty on the subway the other day, so Philadelphia is still the best/worst place of all time.

-Kid quote of the day: "Dad, your beard is so inappropriate."

-There are way too many studies about male facial hair lately.

-I feel like a blur in time right now--I'm not really here, mostly. I'm in your future.

-There are about 22 people who come to mind instantly that should be banished from ever using Facebook again simply because now you can tag how you're FEELING beside your posts....

-My cat just burped.  I didn't know that was possible.

-Fuck. I need a cupcake. Get me a cupcake, damn it!

--OUR HEARTS BEAT LIKE THUNDER, I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY DON'T EXPLODE

…I’m back from Napa, a little darker and a lot fatter.

Even though I ran three days, it’s still impossible not to gain weight.

I went to seven wineries I’d never been to.  One (Hess) contained a private, two-story art museum inside with painting by Marc Chagall, sculptures, wall-sized paintings, film reel art, etc.

The place was magnificent.  My favorite piece was an old Smith-Corona typewriter placed on a pedestal with real flames coming out of the center.  I bought a poster of it and hope to hang it somewhere nearby my office.

…Here’s something I wrote before leaving for California:

                                                  A Car Ride of Second Chances

            It was my therapist’s idea.  Ordinarily, he merely listened, taking a note or two during our sessions, but I could tell my exhibitions of misery were frustrating him, which is why he came up with the suggestion last week.

            When I objected, he said, “Don’t forget, you’ve made mistakes in your marriage, too.”

            That poison dart stung, coming out of nowhere.  I felt a moment of betrayal, but then realized the irony of my thinking—me who’d been the unfaithful one.

            I call our lawyers before leaving, tell them we’re just trying to get out of town for a couple of days, drive to Portland where people are less likely to have heard our news.

            The second lawyer, the needling, suspicious one who often seemed to be on the prosecution’s side, said, “Check in.  Call when you get there and give me the hotel’s phone number.”

            He was a squat neckless blob, a human Jabba the Hut.  I imagined shoving a stick of dynamite down his throat and watching him choke on it right before all 300 pounds of him splattered across his mahogany office.  See, that’s what all this had done—turning me violent and resentful, into one batshit, childless husband.

            Loading up the SUV, I see the Millers across the street watching us through parted drapes.  When I give them my middle finger, they disappear while the curtains sashay like randy ghosts.

            Ghosts.  I believe in them now.  Sometimes it takes a tragedy to open up your mind to new possibilities and once you have, well, you don’t feel in anyway enlightened or liberated, just confused.

            I see her ghost every day, several times a day.  She glides across the room, floats above my head, always swaddled tight like a cocoon.  I hear her gurgle and coo, feel her hot baby’s breath.  She never cries.  Never.

            Near Tacoma, the vehicle starts to rattle the way it has all month, although now there’s an added rumbling sound beneath my feet.  Just another one of our broken things, I think.  I turn the radio up louder, even though it’s a ridiculous rap song and I hate hip hop.

            My wife stares out the window, any number of thoughts going through her head, or maybe nothing at all.  Or maybe she’s reliving everything.

            Near Chehalis, I turn the radio off.  The car still sounds as if it’s going to collapse.  I say, “Hey.”

            She doesn’t turn and for a second I wonder if she might be sleeping.  When I lean forward to check, it’s too late.  The deer has loped onto the highway. 

            I brake hard, even though as I do it, I realize you’re supposed to hit the accelerator instead.  The animal slams into the fender—fur, hooves and horns--twirling in the air as if in slow motion.  I’m certain that it’s going to land on the windshield, break through the glass and crush us.  But it doesn’t.  Instead the deer drops onto the top of the SUV like a boulder, then rolls off the back end. 

            The car finishes its skid, squealing in a semicircle, spraying gravel from the side of the road.   The air smells like burnt rubber.  Over our heads, in the middle space between us, there’s now an inverted dome of metal from where the deer landed.

            “Are you okay?” I ask.

            My wife is pale, the color of faded lavender, and her chest heaves.

            “Are you all right?  Are you hurt?”

            She shakes her head, eyes the widest I’ve ever seen them.

            Police arrive less than ten minutes later.  They want to call an ambulance, but I won’t let them.  “We’re fine,” I say, “just a little shaken is all.”

            When he checks my ID, the officer’s face corkscrews and I know he’s realizing who we are.  “Where you headed?” he asks, the inflection in his voice not unlike Jabba the Hut, my attorney.

            “Portland.  For a break, a getaway.  Just a couple of days.”

            “Your people know you’re going?”  I understand what he means.  This is unbelievable.  I feel myself ripen with anger.

            “My people?”

            “Lawyers and such.” 

            I want to tell him to go fuck himself.  I want to ram the door against him, break his hip or a few ribs.  Instead I say, “They do.”

            “Good idea.”

            He stares at me for a few seconds, but it feels longer.  Then he leans down, looks across at my wife.  “Sure you’re not injured?”

            “Just shaken,” I say again, and the officer chuckles, repeats “Shaken.”

            The SUV won’t start, so the police write up some kind of note and stick it under a windshield wiper.  “Be a bitch of a bill, towing that all the way back to Seattle,” one of them says almost merrily.

            “I’ll have it towed to Chehalis, get it fixed there.”

            “Yeah,” he says, and I don’t know if it’s a question or if he’s agreeing with me.

            “Want a lift into town?” he asks.

            “We’ll call a cab.”  There’s no way in hell my wife and I are getting into the back of a squad car.

            “Sure?”  He’s disappointed.  Probably wanted to grill us on the ride in.  “Save you fifty, sixty bucks.”

            “I’m sure.”  If he doesn’t get the fuck away from me, I’m really going to whack him with the car door, get out and mash his face in with my boot.

            Finally he says, “Suit yourself,” then to his partner, “Let’s go, Bob.”

            In the rearview mirror, I watch them walk back to their cruiser.  “Can you believe those assholes?” I ask.  But my wife doesn’t answer because she’s started sobbing.

            At our hotel room, my wife sits in a chair by the window weeping silently.  She won’t stop and she won’t talk to me.  When I tell her I’m going for a walk, she doesn’t even bother to look up.

            There’s not much to see outside, the downtown area filled with feed stores and others that sell fertilizer and farming implements.  The sun is a ripe blister in the sky, its rays scalding my upraised face.  Almost blinded, I nevertheless walk up and down the streets for hours.

            I find a bar called “Last Chance Saloon”.  It feels like something out of frontier times.  I sit at the bar ordering whisky after whisky until the jukebox is drowned out by a jar of angry hornets scouring the inside of my skull.

            Back at the hotel, my wife’s still seated in the same spot, but she’s stopped crying.

            I sit on the edge of the bed next to her.

            “Hell of a day,” I say.  “Hell of a month.”  I sound like an idiot but I don’t know what else to say, and besides, I’m quite drunk.

            “I didn’t do it,” she says.  They’re the first words I’ve heard from her since yesterday. 

            “I told you I believe you.”

            “You don’t act like it.”

            “How am I supposed to act?  She’s dead.”

            “Everyone thinks I did it.”

            “We have lawyers.”

            “Why would I?  She was my baby, too.”

            “We’re going to have to learn to live with this eventually.”

            “What kind of mother would shake her child to death?  What kind of animal?”

            What kind of man would cheat on his pregnant wife? I think.

            It feels hotter in the room than it did outside.  My sweat-soaked shirt clings to my chest making it easy to see the rhythmic thudding of my heart.

            I slide off the mattress and kneel down in front of my wife.  Her hands, her cheek, her earlobes—everything trembles.

            “Look at me,” I say. 

            I reach over and lift her chin up.  Mascara is smeared down her cheeks like black scars.

            I don’t know if she did it on purpose or not.  The experts know.  But I tell myself I can live with it either way.  What I can’t do anymore is hide or lie.

            I take a gulp of air and swallow.  “I have something to tell you,” I say.

            “What?”

            I take my time.  I tell her everything.  Outside a stray siren wails in the distance while I wait for judgment, punishment or forgiveness.  Anything to set us right.

--I NEED YOU

…I leave for Napa today.  Wine will be willed, food will be ingested, brain cells will be squashed.

Doesn’t it sound like fun?

When I get back I head to Portland/Vancouver to hang with friends and essentially do more of what I’ll be doing in Napa.

Hey, life is short, right?

…The other day I was asked to write a story for a journal.  The theme is “Shaken” so yesterday I wrote a piece (a longer one, for me—1,300 words) about a couple in distress, who are leaving town for a getaway, end up hitting a deer in the highway, and then come to term with their demons.  It’s called “A Car Ride of Second Chances.”  My daughter gave me the title incidentally.

…I saw this article in the Seattle paper and thought it was kind of funny:

            It’s tough being a Starbucks barista who has to write customer names on cups.

            Is it “John” with an “h”? “Thanh Ha” with three h’s?” It’s all part of Starbucks’ effort to personalize things.

            But one barista got a little too personal, when a customer named Virginia ordered a drink from a Starbucks in Hong Kong. According to the woman’s sister, the drink came with Virginia’s name scrawled as “Vagina.”

            “Fancy your staff not being able to spell an American name like Virginia. Forgiving she has been with every misspelled cup,” the woman’s sister said.

            “Her cup was once ‘Virgin.’ Every Starbucks experience for her has been coupled with fear and anticipation. But THIS is just UNACCEPTABLE.”

…Here are a few things I like:

"A good way to start each day is by asking, 'What can I do to take care of myself today?'"

"To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think is what makes men martyrs or reformers -- or both." Elizabeth Charles

“Don't ask who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.” George Seferis

“I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders;
and now you want me to climb
on a jackass? Try to be serious.”
― Mirabai

--SOMETIMES I CAN STILL FEEL IT

…On the treadmill this am I listened to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZTpLvsYYHw

I have a boy crush on Brandon Flowers.  My favorite bit of the song is “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier.”

I also listened to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCnfVD8aNo0

I have a girl crush on her.  Just love them.

…Do you ever feel like a slacker?  Just a little bit?

Yesterday I watched a man with no arms play guitar with his feet, his toes.  His voice wasn’t the greatest but his guitar playing was pretty stellar.  I’d always wanted to play guitar, and then a few years back, I attempted to do so, but after nearly a year I gave up.  Kumbaya was about the only song I could play, which isn’t really much of a song, right?

Anyway, watching that guy play was really something and it made me feel like a slacker.

…Here are some things I like to start the week off with:

"When people say they have no regrets--no regrets about anything, anything they've said or done--well, I regret and I'm sorry." R. Seagal

"You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it." -- Adrienne Rich

"The moon is a gentle reminder of every woman who has drowned a man without apology." Gabriel Don

"I have a sad heart but a merry mind." Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me. Herman Hesse

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I'm about as happy as the Louie on the show.  I don't mind feeling sad.  Sadness is a lucky thing." Louie CK

"Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles but in

avoiding them.  A masterly retreat is in itself a victory." Norman Vincent Peale

“Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.” - David Foster Wallace

"There was no such thing as half-trying. Whether it was running a race or catching a football, competing in school -- we were to try. And we were to try harder than anyone else. We might not be the best, and none of us were, but we were to make the effort to be the best." Senator Robert F. Kennedy, in a tribute to his father

"For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive." David Lawrence

"Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint." H.W. Beecher

"One climbs a mountain not to conquer it, but to be lifted away from the earth up into the sky." Russell Banks

"The truth will set you free, but not until it is finished with you." David Foster Wallace

"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop." Rumi

--IS THIS THING ON?

…I’m a big fan of Vampire Weekend.  Their music is like nothing else.  New album comes out in two weeks.  I can’t wait.  It got a whopping four and a half stars in Rolling Stone.  Five stars is tops and is usually reserved for albums like Sergeant Pepper, Blonde On Blonde, Thriller, etc.

A while back, when I first discovered them, I wrote a story using the title of every song of their first album.

And I wrote this, too:

                                                            Vampire Weekend

           

What was I doing with these kids?  I was ready to kill any one of them.

            “Ew!  He’s licking my bloody nose!” Archer said.

            “I’m a vampire,” Lewis said, “that’s why.”

            “Let me have my own stupid bloody nose.”

            “I must feast when I can.”

            “Knock it off.”  I wanted to be the cool dad, but the price was too high.  I smacked Benjy, who was my own, pushed Lewis against the car window and glared at Archer, all in a millisecond, from the front seat, hardly taking my eyes from the road.

            “He thinks he’s a vampire,” Benjy said.

            “I am.”

            “You’re so freaking stupid,” Archer said.

            “Don’t say ‘freaking’,” I said.    I saw their dopey stares.  “It’s the same as the real thing.”

            “What’s the real thing?”

            “Fucking.”

            “Who said that?” I asked.

            Archer laughed and that was when I hit the car in front of me.

            Her name was Glenda Henderson from Everett or Mukilteo and she couldn’t have been nicer.  She said she’d been expecting the accident and when she read my confusion she explained how she’d had her cards read earlier in the day and that an accident loomed in her future.  She was so relieved it was nothing more than a fender bender.

            “The cards don’t lie,” she said.

            My wife said I had issues.  She knew me well, so I when I had a moment I gave her input a great deal of thought.  She didn’t come right out and say it, but she implied things, that I was a lousy dad for one, that I was selfish.  My career came first and she and Benjy were accessories, she pointed out.  Why else hadn’t we had other children?  I didn’t dare call her bluff on that particular because it had actually been me bluffing all this time.

I hated kids.

            I couldn’t sleep.  It wasn’t right what I was thinking and feeling about myself.  I even doubted God’s grace if it spanned so wide.

            In the morning I woke early because I was already up, if you know what I mean.  “I’m not good with them,” I told Leanne as soon as her lids lifted.  I didn’t even notice how horrible her breath smelled.  “I’m clumsy,” I said, ready to confess every guilty sin.

            “No you’re not.”

            “I feel like it’s a sham, like I’m playing charades, acting.  Maybe it’d be easier if I was gay.  It’s ridiculous how I feel.”

            “You just need to do it more.”

            “What?”

            “Parent.”

            “What the fuck does that mean?”

            “For starters, watch the language.  You’re not nineteen anymore.”

            The truth was I wished I was, I’d give anything to be nineteen again, the world wide open, no wife or job or chubby kid sopping up the last bloody drop of gravy with his porky pig fingers.

            “You’re becoming bitter,” she told me.

            “That doesn’t even make sense.”

            “Well, think about it.  Fathers aren’t bitter.”

“You mean ‘Good Fathers’,” I said, sinking so low as to add in the air quotes.

“It’s like anything—the more you do it, the better you get.”

I had a crack about sex ready, but let it pass.

“Okay, so what?”       

            I laid down the law then.  I told the little shits that none of them were getting ice cream if their voices got too high, if anyone farted or punched or swore or gave anyone a wedgy.

            They were quiet for a safe passage when Lewis started to moan.

            “What the hell’s going on back there?” I said into the rearview.

            “I’m dying.  I need sustenance.”

            “How do you know that word, sustenance?   You’re twelve.  Anyway, we were just at Burger King.”

            “You don’t understand.  I need blood.”

            I smacked the steering wheel.  “That’s it.  Baskin Robbins is nixed.”

            I watched Benjy and Archer punch Lewis, quite hard it appeared.

            “Hey, take it easy.”

            “I don’t even know why I’m your friend,” Benjy, my son said to Lewis.  But I knew why.  My son had two friends on the planet and they were both in the backseat.

            Lewis did look pale, butter-white as if jaundiced.  His mouth gaped open like a stroke victim. 

“Leave him alone.  Lewis, what’s the deal?”

“You don’t believe me,” Lewis said, his voice low and smoker-coarse.

“You can’t be a vampire,” I said.  “They don’t survive in daylight.”

His yellow eyes widened.  “So you believe in vampires?”

I was going to say, Of course, what do you think I am, stupid?  I was a boy once, but instead this is what I said: “You’re really starting to piss me off.  If you don’t knock this crap off, I’m tossing you out of the car.”     

Archer jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow.  “You’re ruining everything.”

“The next one that touches Lewis is grounded.”

“You can’t ground me,” Archer said.  “You’re not my Dad.”

“Fuck that.”

“You said ‘fuck’.”

“Indeed I did.  Just go ahead and fuck with me and see what else happens.”

Archer blinked several times and then closed his eyes, his lip quivering as if he had Parkinson’s.

When I looked back at the road it seemed I hadn’t traveled more than a few miles.  Where was I even going?

“Where the hell are we going again?” I said.

“You swear a lot,” Archer said.  Benjy smiled.  Lewis might have stopped breathing at that point.

“The party is somewhere on Seattle Hill.  Mom gave you directions.”

“No she didn’t.”

“Yeah, she did.”

“You should have Mapquested it,” Archer said.

“Shut the fuck up,”

Lewis groaned, clutching his stomach.  His breathing sounded thick and grassy.

“Stop screwing around,” I told him, but his eyes were closed.

“Lewis is such a pussy,” Benjy said, all three chins working on his grin.

“Watch your mouth,” I said.  “Where the hell’d you learn to talk like that?”

The flashing lights pole-struck my heart as they always did, except this time they were really meant for me.  I checked the speedometer and saw that I was going ninety.  “Fuck me.”

“What’s the rush?” Officer Steadman asked.

“You know, I just lost sight of how fast I was going.”

“No shit?”

I flinched, then grinned, easing into his familiarity. 

“I’m a real fuckup.”

I realized he had a mustache when he glowered at me.  “Nice mouth you got there.  Kids hear you talk like that?”

Stunned, I shrugged and held up my palms.

He craned his neck into the back seat.  “Hey boys.”

Archer and Benjy looked like a crocodile had just stuck its jagged jaws through the window.

“Whoa, that one in the middle don’t look too good.”

“He’s stupid,” Benjy said, his boy man-boobs jiggling.

“I need blood,” Lewis rasped. 

“You feed these kids?” Officer Steadman asked me.

I was starting to get pissed.  Write me the fucking ticket.  “Sure.”

“Sure,” he repeated, coating the word with a lisp.  “Hey,” he said, tapping Lewis on the chest.  Lewis opened his eyes to half-mast, not alarmed whatsoever.  “I’m going to call this one in.”

“Huh?”

“That kid’s three sheets to the wind.”

“He’s not drunk, if that’s what you mean.”

Officer Steadman scowled, his whiskered upper lip twitching critter-like.   

Benjy and Archer got out of the car and pitched stones toward the out-of-reach river. 

I kept thinking about what would happen if Lewis died.  He couldn’t die, could he?

I got into the back seat with him.

“Are you just fucking with us?  Lewis, are you?”

He gasped, and fettered a spasm of air and skin.  “I need, I, I need.”

“What?”

“Blood.”

Officer Steadman was on his phone.  The boys were collecting stones.  I pulled the neckline of my shirt to the side and leaned into Lewis, my neck tingling for the first time.  “Here,” I said.