announcement

nanowrimo is for the bored.

First first day

You cannot resist
it creeping on
you. It smells
like butterscotch or cat
pee or burnt
soup or maybe
that's you. You are
the second person,
and it is your first day
of crazy.

No stimulant
needed, no
nothing but light.
It's like you took
a food
pill except that
pill is crazy
and it's
lodged in
your cortex
pinching
your sight
until that squirrel
is your sensei and
that reflection is
you and you
are not you
anymore
because you
are crazy.

Because who
needs containment.
You are not
a casserole. You are
not off season.
And cold isn't
cold is just a
feeling and feelings
aren't real. Neither
ideas. So how
can you have
disorder.
You're automatic.
You don't even need
a seal. You need
a cape, and
a change.

Today someone asked me if I'd gotten wet, and I said no, I was just disheveled.

I keep thinking of small things to say and then not saying them and then forgetting them.

All the married ladies, all the married ladies

Beyonce rages. She flips her ample hair and kicks her slender feet. Jay-Z wonders, idly, if she’s dancing. The pillow room is not working, has not been working for a long time. She demanded a feather room, a straw room, and a brick room, but none of them are working either. It is nothing short of writer’s block.

Beyonce consults a hypnotherapist, who is a quack, and who says her writing had nothing to do with the pillow room in the first place. He does not understand superstition or ritual. He only understands hidden recesses of memory. In Beyonce’s brain he finds a small spotted puppy and a heap of spaghetti dinners. There is nothing malevolent lurking in there; as a result, she should be able to write. Try deep breathing, he tells her. Beyonce rages.

She presses pen to paper, while sitting at the kitchen table. She will write an anthem for women who are happily married, whose husbands are talented moguls and yacht-owners. She composes a single line: All the single ladies. No! It’s stuck in her head again. She cannot get past it. She tries again: All the married ladies. No! No! She picks a fight with Jay-Z as he makes a peanut butter and honey sandwich. He tells her it’s almond butter and not to worry. He smiles at her and kisses the top of her head. Beyonce rages.

She must take on a new character, one with a shady man and hard luck. No more Sasha Fierce; now she is…Bobbie Jean Tomorrow, who believes in the goodness deep down inside of even the man who beats her. She is a woman who names her babies Star and Angel. She is a woman who stands tall even after a tornado hits her modest shack, razing it. Tomorrow, she writes, tomorrow. Everything happens tomorrow. The spell is broken.

Today I am locks-of-loving my hair.

Thinking about it makes me feel faint.

The demonstration anticipated

Suri Cruise likes to wear red velvet. She appreciates the full flavor of a fine, hand-rolled Cuban cigar. She understands that sometimes you must break your opponent’s nose to break your opponent’s spirit.

Katie Holmes-Cruise watches Suri rehearse her African dance steps and anticipates. She sucks at the bottle hanging on a string from her neck. Potato-leek soup today.

Tonight they are targeting another celebrity couple. The man of the house could not care less about religion; what he cares about is science. He cares about spontaneous regeneration, but more than that he cares about deliberate generation. One time he spat into a treated petri dish and a fully formed human sprang from it less than a minute later. It was covered in hair. Its teeth were green. But it was clearly a copy of the man of the house, gone wrong. The man of the house lifted his high-powered rifle and shot it dead.

Tonight Katie Holmes-Cruise will tote Suri, who will gulp French martinis from her sippy cup. The man of the house will hobble her tongue in this way so she does not forget she is a child and speak in a clear voice about weapon maintenance. In these moments, Katie feels like a mother must feel.

The giant man and the tiny woman will eat grilled prawns and drink mineral water. They desire to make children, but they do not want to ruin their bodies or destroy the mystery that is a natural part of early marriage. There will be a demonstration. The man of the house will make her spit into a treated petri dish. Her saliva will make bunnies. It will charm them. After they leave, he will declare her saliva weak and Katie will pet the bunnies for hours, until she is led away.

The internet is my most boring friend

Me: What do you want to do?
The internet: I don't know. What do you want to do?
Me: Is anything new, like really new, or interesting, like really interesting and not just sleazy?
The internet: I don't know. You could probably find out if you scanned me for a couple of hours. But you might just fall into a stupor, too.
Me: Yeah, already there.
The internet: [Silence.]
Me: Click click click.
The internet: [Silence.]

Change is never easy

Lindsay Lohan knows Brody Jenner from the club scene, but more than that, she knows Brody Jenner from television programs that follow his life. He knows her, too, from tabloids mainly, but also because she saw her ex-girlfriend Samantha Ronson having lunch with him at Qdoba in Sawtelle. Lindsay Lohan can read lips, not because she is partially deaf, but because it is a useful skill. They were talking about her. They were feeling sorry for her.

Once Lindsay Lohan read a book that said you shouldn’t bother feeling sorry for people; it is a waste of energy. We must hoard our energy so we can release it like an all-consuming fireball when we walk into a room. Others will feel our heat and want to make physical contact, but we must not allow that because withholding is the key to stoking desire. Samantha Ronson made fun of that book and would poke at Lindsay when she tried to withhold physical contact from her, much like a little sister. Lindsay Lohan hates her actual little sister, which just goes to show the tabloids aren’t always right.

It is when she drives past the Baja Fresh and sees Brody Jenner munching one end of a taco while her actual little sister Aly Lohan nibbles the other that she realizes the truth: Brody Jenner is trying to steal her life. His hair is definitely slightly lighter and longer than it was the last time she saw him, and his physique and mannerisms are more feminine. She can’t pinpoint how exactly; it is just a feeling.

Lindsay Lohan goes home to take action: She calls her plastic surgeon to schedule a breast reduction. She calls her salon for a cut-and-dye. Her dermatologist has been experimenting with a freckle remover on famous people’s little sisters; it only gave Noah Cyrus first degree burns in its last application. She has heard that Brody Jenner’s genitalia can be easily mimicked. Now is the time.

Perhaps being Brody Jenner will be simpler. Certainly people won’t worry about her weight fluctuation as much.

Taco salad

As Brody Jenner is being dressed and re-dressed for his daily lunch date, he thinks about requesting that his manservants call him “your majesty,” as a joke, but no one understands Brody Jenner’s wry sense of humor. Someone bald helps him into his boxer briefs.

Brody Jenner wishes he’d been born at a time when being a bon vivant was respected. He just knows Oscar Wilde would have written a play about him.

Craig’s List has saved him. He preys on the curious--dazzling strangers with his wit, sharing meals at corner tables in unfashionable restaurants. Today, a nameless beach café in Tijuana, tomorrow a Chipotle in Redondo Beach. Brody Jenner likes Mexican food. His Craig’s List ad says as much. He screens the applicants carefully, asking questions like, “What do you think about Brody Jenner?” and “Have you ever killed anyone?”

Today he meets a young woman for taco salad. He speaks with her and watches as the expression on her face changes from star-struck to genuinely interested. It happens around the eyes and mouth. A certain tightening, a certain loosening. He suggests they share an entrée and then take a stroll. She acquiesces. They talk easily, natural and quick conversationalists. Both are witty. Both appreciate wit.

Their fork tines intertwine deep in the taco salad, and she attempts to wrest hers away, but the cheap cutlery bends easily; their silverware resembles a piece of modern art, impossible to eat from, nuggets of ground beef trapped in the interstices. There’s been a shift. Her mouth is puzzled now. Is this a trick? Is this really Brody Jenner? She yanks his fork away from him and works to rip apart their utensils, tearing at the tines and making frustrated animal noises. Brody Jenner watches in horror. All they have to do is ask for more forks. There are always more forks.

The meal ends silently. They take turns attempting to eat off the fork sculpture. Neither succeeds. It should have been a popcorn moment; they should have brushed skin.

Must be made up

Katie Holmes-Cruise hasn’t seen her daughter in five days. Usually, each day, an averagely attractive nanny brings in a child that may or may not be the same one she birthed, and together they make baby dolls walk around like adults. Like humans. They all have bowl cuts, round faces, and slightly Asian features. The children. The dolls are western European. The carpet is white. The baby dolls are porcelain. The baby grand piano is a lurid turquoise that makes everyone look like they might throw up when they are in its shadow.

Katie sleeps in this room, under the piano. It’s her fort. The child(ren?) get led out at dusk, and she drapes several cashmere throws over the piano’s back and curls up on the carpet. It is surprisingly scratchy and leaves small welts on her face. Katie arranges her cheek on her shoulder. Katie wakes with a crick in her neck to the sound of New Age jazz. She rolls expertly from her fort, like a threatened homeless person.

It’s only Suri. Her feet dangle from the bench; one frilly white sock hangs from the stumpy toes of her right foot; the other is completely bare and flawless. One must start in on pedicures early, else feet become craggy. Suri is a talented musician. She can play the miniature violin, the miniature harp, the miniature saxophone, the miniature electric guitar, the recorder, and the baby grand. Katie runs to get the baby dolls, to make them promenade around the keys, but Suri stops her with a hand gesture so reminiscent of the man of the house that Katie tastes ammonia in her throat and sinuses. She mustn’t cry.

Suri’s baby voice disturbs Katie. Her soft palate has not yet fused, and the sibilant consonants trigger something in Katie’s brain that make her long for tapioca, zwieback, and serenity. Suri’s baby voice is telling her it’s time to go. She must be measured again. She must be made up.