preached all day long about smartphone addiction while his daughter was on her smartphone, ignoring him
“A human life,” he was saying. “Controlled by a piece of plastic with lights. A destiny completely determined by a machine designed by corporations to become god, to claim souls. How blind, how utterly and impossibly blind a whole generation of human beings can be. To willingly subject themselves to slavery like that. Their thumbs and fingers always tap-tap-tapping that screen as if trying to break their soul free from beyond. But it never happens. You cannot break a door by merely knocking on it...”
“Whatever, dude,” said his daughter with the phone before her face
He shook his head and then looked at me. This time I too was looking at my phone. “I see she has corrupted you too,” he said. “Shame. I was hoping it could be the other way around just for once.”
I let the phone down. “Me? Oh no, I was just checking my e-mail. I've sent some poems to a bunch of publishers and was hoping to see a reply or something.”
the dreams of drunks are the strangest and often most beautiful
It’s what he came to think this morning after he woke up with the empty glass under the blanket
Surely it was that glass and the liquor in his guts that made him dream of a frozen woman, clear as glass
She smiled at him with diamond teeth and stooped like only a professional stripper could next to his limp body
She rolled him onto his belly and his limpid, numb eyes watched her grow an icicle from between her legs but they closed by the time she carved a hole into his liver and began to fuck him until the ice melted
That was a nice dream, he concluded
And tonight he’d go to sleep with two glasses and a bottle under the blanket
Father used his fists a lot Though never on the kids
On the walls and the furniture and the doors and the mailbox and the fence and the neighbors and random people on the street and strangers in the bar and a few times the poor dog and one time on mother
He was the childhood’s villain
To defeat him one had to become a hero
and becoming a hero took time
And today after all this time the villain of childhood was dead
He died at the hands of some other character, a neutral one
A cop who told him to drop to the ground and father didn’t so he got shot
That was it The end of his saga
Utterly unsatisfactory anticlimactic disappointing just bad
There was no final showdown between hero and villain
because those things only happen in childhood and childhood had ended a long time ago
“I was ten years old,” she said, her head resting on my shoulder. “And the flames covered the damn sky. Though our neighbor was actually lucky. Lucky I didn’t burn his house. I mean, motherfucker had it coming. You don’t run over a girl’s puppy and expect to get out scratch free, you know?”
“I too had a neighbor who ran over my puppy with his tractor,” I said. “I think I was also around ten.”
“And what did you do about it?” she asked
“Nothing,” I said
“What? But how?”
“Like I said, I was just some insignificant kid from the countryside. All I could do was cry.”
“My God,” she said, “that’s so fucking lame. Where’s that neighbor of yours today?”
“I’ve no idea. Perhaps he’s dead. He was pretty old when it all happened.”
“If that’s the case then you have the duty to go piss on his grave. At least.”
“Um… I wouldn’t know where that is. And besides, I learned to forgive.”
“That’s what the weak say. What kind of man are you?”
three weeks and the shards were still there still scattered on the tiles of the kitchen floor
that was a thick glass meant for classy strong drinks like whiskey
Yeah, now that he thought about it it was whiskey she ordered. But he filled the glass with milk and said, “You know what the doctor said, mother. No more alcohol for you. Here, try this instead.”
And he would strongly prefer not to remember what followed after
The shards were still on the kitchen floor
and the gash still on the side of his neck. Stitched now but painful nonetheless
At 22:00 she would come out looking for him Would call out his name and eventually find him by the sandbox or the slide and would dust him off a bit and take him home and feed him
As she’d put him to bed she’d kiss his face, sometimes his mouth and he’d ask, “Why did you do that?”
and she’d reply, “I don’t know. But did you like it?”
And he’d either nod or say yes, knowing that it’ll make her smile and then she’d cuddle with him until he’d fall asleep and whisper in his ear that she always wanted to have a little boy just like him and that he was making her unbelievably happy just by existing in the same room with her
She was the best neighbor he could have dreamed of
She gave him all the attention his mother gave to her bottles and her guy friends
When you see someone for long enough you get used to them and then you start noticing patterns in their behavior
he was their teacher in creative writing
weird guy in his late thirties going bald bespectacled pedo mustache scrawny body always wearing dark suits, a bit oversized
He sat at his desk and watched the students and the students watched him
Why does he always do that? they eventually asked. Why does he always tap his foot when talking to some girl but never when he talks to boys?
He would appoint a female student to present her homework or some project or something and stand her up and while she spoke he would stare at her and tap his foot and the tapping would begin light and would grow in intensity
strange guy
tap-tap-tap ta-rap-tap-tap went his foot as the girls talked
"I heard he's divorced," said one of the students.
"Yep," said another. "He is. Has a kid as well."
"Damn."
"I heard he's also got a brother in prison for rape or some shit."
and a few weeks later they were talking about books related to prison life and someone said, "You know how prisoners jack off in full view of guards and the female prison nurses without getting caught?"
nobody asked how but he went to say it anyway and he said "They wrap a string around their penis and tie the other end to the big toe of one foot. All beneath the pants. Nothing shown. And when the female is close they stare and move that foot and the string does the job..."
Daydreaming as a profession 