Friend Request Denied

Genre: Lyric Essay

Girl searches for Boy. Finding Boy, Girl peruses profile. Girl is surprised to see that Boy has similar interests. Girl is surprised because interests were never discussed in person. In person very little was discussed - just breathy questions like, for example, 'how can i make you come?'

Girl doesn't feel so guilty about one night stand with Boy when she sees Boy's Myspace profile. Girl takes deep breath, Girl sends friend request, Girl takes shower.

Girl hears nothing from Boy. Naturally, Girl checks Myspace. Girl clicks 'Pending Friend Requests.' Girl reads 'No Current Pending Friend Requests.' Girl sits and thinks. This means one thing, Girl realizes. 'Boy has rejected my friend request!' Aghast, Girl grows angry. Girl writes message:

"Dear Boy, am deeply embarrassed, did not realize that I was worthy of penetration and am, in fact, not Myspace friend material. Sorry to have been so bold, will say nothing more. I hope you die. Sincerely, Girl."

Naturally, Boy checks Myspace, sees message from Girl. Deeply uncomfortable, Boy clicks and reads. Boy laughs. 'Stupid Girl,' he smirks.

Cut to Girl: at lunch, reciting above story, leaving out no details, friends listen. "Well," one friend says, "We could give him a virus," friend suggests. "What kind of virus," Girl says in growing interest. "A Myspace Virus," friend says twirling fictional mustache. "Perfect," says Girl.

One Day Later: Boy has disappeared from top eights of all his friends. Dead. Suspects: None. Cause of Death: Mysterious Infection of Myspace Profile.

Girl changes background of her Myspace Page to a very bright shade of pink.

Flashbulb of a Thought

Genre: Work in Progress

and so, i fell out of the cab, she- holding her hand tightly over her mouth. we stumbled to a decently lit parkinglot. she sat down. and i, well, i fell down. my head hit the dirt before the rest of me. somehow we were home, only slightly bruised. and i never got that kiss i've waited a very long time for. but i still got her, and it was not a night wasted.

tasteless

my parents raised us to have no taste. this is not to say my brother and i are anywhere near putting pink flamingos or garden gnomes in our front yards. we wouldn’t be caught dead in Hawaiian shirts and when prom came, we were certainly not wearing a cowboy-esque tux with a large brass button where a tie might go. but what i mean to say is that they were not picky people when i was growing up and are for some reason remarkably passive when it comes to things they like or do not.
“well, i wasn’t sure if you liked chocolate or not, so i decided on the marble cake rather than one that was strictly vanilla or strictly chocolate,” my mother’s friend says as she unveils a frosted monstrosity that reads “Happy Birthday Molly” written in a font resembling that of a third grade teacher who bakes for the Food Bazaar on weekends.

“cake is cake,” my mother responds with a shrug of her shoulders, dipping a finger into the frosting as her friend stands nervously before her, still holding the cake. i agreed with her, knowing she would have rather responded with “who the fuck cares as long as the shit is edible.” what’s the big deal? i thought. would a person actually refuse a cake because they didn’t like chocolate? then i thought of my mother’s cousin, karen. karen would refuse a chocolate cake. in fact, i’ve seen her do it. i’ve seen her nearly refuse to sit at a table where chocolate cake was being served. karen had taste. she hated almost everything.

she was the type of person who would accurately describe the sort of table she desired to sit at to the host of a crowded French restaurant, “nothing too close to the bathroom, please. and nothing where my elbows will be anywhere close to touching another patrons, and i’d like to eat my meal without listening to someone else’s conversation,” she’d say in her posh, faux british accent. karen loved the ballet, but hated the opera. was a fan of veal, but refused chicken with bones. she took her coffee black, her bread whole grain, and found denim was too coarse a fabric for her skin.

my parents, on the other hand, bought their meat according to what was on sale. would watch whatever was on television should the remote control be missing, refusing to get up. drank their wine from boxes, ate at whatever restaurant was closest to the exit off the highway. never did they proclaim an concern for what sort of bread be on their sandwich, how many lumps of sugar in their coffee, or what genre of film we watch. “it’s all the same,” they’d say in response to a comparison between anything. front row or back row, red wine or white wine, dead or alive. "we don't need to make a fuss."

and so, inherently, my brother and i were raised to not care either. i sometimes get confused when asked “how would you like your steak done, sir?” “well, cooked, i suppose,” i’d respond to the waiter. “what do you mean, what sort of bread? there’s options? well… Wonder Bread is what I’d use if i were to make it myself,” I’d think to myself at the deli. My all time most loathed conversation is friends deciding on where to dine.

“well, we could have Italian if we’re not worried about carbs, or mexican if we want spicy, chinese in this neighborhood is no good.” of course i’d be the unfortunate soul to say, “well, there’s a taco bell right across the street, that’ll do, won’t it?”

“bowen, we’re not eating at a fucking taco bell for lunch.” i didn’t get it. weren’t we just looking for food? of course, the longer i live in new york, the more finely tuned my taste becomes. given the option, I’d eat a sandwich for lunch with friends, rather than a bag of chips and an Arizona iced tea from the corner shop. when someone asks me how me meal is, i can sometimes come up with some sort of commentary, "it's good, a little saltier than i'd have liked, but nonetheless, it's decent." but still. refuse a cake? never.

plans, somehow.

anne and i sat across from each other at a small table, one of many tables, outside a very loud bar on greenwich avenue. it had taken us a while to find it because she was certain it was greenwich street, not greenwich avenue and so we went very far west, near houston and walked, smoking cigarettes, feeling stupid for not being able to find a bar that i thought i’d been to before. somehow, we ended up finding it and i had been before, but it had been years and i had been there for lunch, not drinks. we sat across from each other and talked about our plans, our extended plans, even though we don’t really have any. she wants to go to california and i want to go to scotland, but somehow we’re talking about moving to arizona where her sister lives and invests in real-estate.
earlier, when we were walking and feeling stupid for not being able to find the bar, we came across the entrance to a courtyard on a very quiet street. we held hands and barely walked around, since it was so quiet. we were in awe. as we turned to make a quiet exit anne said “look, this is me leaving for work in the morning.” she took two steps and looked up at the rod iron archway above her, her hands slightly out to the side. it’s always been this way, even before we met. we were always planning, with no real plans. thinking, plotting the little things. we’d stumble upon moments, places. things that seemed exactly the way we’d have written about them if we had written more often.
later, on bank street, after we had left the too loud bar, it happened again. this time it was a brownstone. “imagine,” she said softly yet earnestly, “we’ll walk down the steps, ‘oh, I’m just going to run and get a cup of coffee,’ because there’s an amazing coffee shop right outside our fucking brownstone.” this time we’re planning even further ahead. we decided that we’d have kids, since we’d actually be married if sexual discrepancies had not obstructed the possibility of straight-life. she’d have an amazing someone of the female sort, possibly. and I’ve have someone of the male sort, possibly. and the four of us would have a brownstone right on bank street, which is really just an excuse for anne and i to be together, and still be free. “but what if you broke up with your someone,” she said in concern. “wouldn’t happen,” i said, taking a pull from my cigarette, “we’d love each other too much to break up.” “hmm,” she thought. because if we’re planning the future, we might as well make plans for it to be perfect. and so the night went on, and we found ourselves at different bars, with different people we had meant to meet up with, but didn’t right away on account of our stumbling upon our hypothetical lives. somehow though, these stumbling always bring us together, both past and present, hypothetical and actual. she is, somehow, the only plans that i ever keep.

missed connections

nicolette wrote me a few nights ago to inform me that someone had miss-connected with me. and a few days later, another person stepped forward into the light and confessed that they too had miss-connected. and while it seems like this is something i might have been very excited about in the past, for some reason it did very little for me. it was a party, and i was among friends, and it is unsettling to me why two people might feel a connection of sorts and not say anything in person. moments like those, where someone unexpectedly and boldly reveals themselve is far better than a distant message written to no one but space. and so i didn't reply. not because i was offended or creeped out. but because i'd rather them just tap me on the back and introduce themselves, and if it was any sort of connection, that would be enough.

Flashbulb of a Thought

Genre: Work in Progress, Series

movies end because the spool can only hold so much; it's our misconception that things can fade out, happen in slow motion. the only music that will ever play as you gently caress my cheek is the stuff you put on your itunes. it's the beginning that feels so intrinsically comfortable, so unsentimentally sentimental as it is happening. it feels like slow motion; it's the closest thing you'll ever get. the only real ending is this.

you and i will die. you and i will die. you and i will die.

now. think about that beginning.

Flashbulb of a Thought

i found this yesterday in an old journal from highschool. i thought it was interesting and was worthy of transciption. i still fucking hate those moms that used to sit in their minivans and shoot the shit from car window to car window while waiting to pick up their brat from varsity soccer practice. but i forgot about them, so that's something.

And oh what will they say?
Eyes wide like guppies
As I stroll on down past their picket fences,
Past their green grass a-growing.

And oh it felt good today
As my thighs swayed like ocean tides
While I strutted my cat like pride
To the soccer moms with station wagons a-shining.

Say now 'what’s your story? oh we know.'
They say in a much less friendly way
Inside their shallow minds twirling.
Wouldn’t they love to know the secrets I’m not sharring.

But they just bide their time
As I pass on by
And turn to stare into my lurid eyes
Must forget my presence is their demise
My shadowed grin disturbing.

we haven't reall talked that much / i'm a fucking cliche

Genre: Lyric Essay, Memoir


i really hadn’t meant to love him. i like to think it actually crept up on me, like a menacing shadow in an already dark alley. there i was, alone in a city that i loved and that obviously loved me back, even when i littered it’s streets with cigarette butts and complained of it’s intolerable heat. i was capable for what felt like the first time in my life, although it wasn’t. I’ve been capable for a long time. the city had an astonishing ability to make everything feel like it was happening for the first time. perhaps that was it; perhaps i had felt this before and the city’s zeal had made it feel new-fangled.
nonetheless, i had fallen in love with him. i loved him for his ridiculously unkempt beard. for his strange collection of polyester pants. for the exaggerated inflection his voice took after an hour of smoking joints on his balcony. it seemed, however, that just as quickly and unexpectedly as it had started, he managed to end everything. and i felt naked. not naked in the sense that he had stripped me of anything. but more in the way one feels when one must jump from a situation of naked-ness into a place where one should be clothed. from the shower into the living room to answer a ringing telephone. from one’s bed to the window to flick a cigarette with a towering tip of ash.
and as if my sudden naked-ness was not uncomfortable enough, when he was through ending everything, i began to feel my naked body take on a deep pink. i was now naked and sunburned: in our favorite bar, seeing him dance with anyone within eyeshot (a steaming blister would rise on my subtle shoulder). in my room, listening to a song he had stupidly commented on after sex (my neck would burn, collecting tiny beads of sweat). now he hadn’t crept into my life like a shadow, he had invaded my mind with a fucking tank and built himself a desert fort of sandbags. i hated him and loved him at the same time and what is one to do in that situation but drink the entire contents of every bottle in one’s fridge and make the inevitable phone call - followed by an awkward invitation to meet up, maybe smoke a joint? it sounded like a friendly offering on my behalf, but free drugs were the only way i knew he’d come.
“we haven’t really talked that much,” i said, half accepting such as the truth and half hoping he’d disagree. but there isn’t much to disagree with when the obvious is stated, no matter how slanted i leaned inward. but we had talked much. i had talked to him in every word i spoke since i met him. when states, even oceans, were between us, my tongue spelled his name to a clerk at a train station, to louise, sitting across from me at a cafe table. i had said things. i had engaged in discourse. but he would not know of that. he would not know what i had built for us and only because it was not real. not real, in that it never actually occurred, but real to me because i devised it capable. his ignorance was entirely expected, but flickered like a knife turning.
however, to recognize guilt one must, at least at some point, have been guilty just the same. and i was guilty, maybe even more so than he; he who spoke so easily and taught me to do the same. his guilt laid in his convincing me with words enormously easy - i was guilty for being persuaded by them. and that was just the silky surface. i had committed worse. my expectations had always been conceited. i, who looks to my reflection from the corner of my eye and expects to see something more than what i know is there. i, who sways my belief, entertaining the idea that a person who is notoriously late might arrive early. i am as guilty as he; this i know.
“we haven’t really talked that much,” i said. and “i know,” his response. and i am unaware how situations provided for his speech, but nonetheless, a speech he delivered. he said he had been done with me for some time, that we had had our fun, that he expected more of me in vein of our ending, which i wanted to remind him in all respects was painfully easy. he said he had always considered my long-thought words to be sensationally cliché. “i am a cliché,” i thought. and for more than a fleeting moment, far after i walked down the street alone, even after i exhaled into my pillows — i agreed. but: i soon (soon being nearly a year later) came to understand that my mistake was not loving him, or believing his empty words. my mistake was my too long agreement that my love, my thoughts, my words, my nakedness, my sunburn- were cliché.