| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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a woman i know named sherry had invited me. i don't know her that well and hadn't seen her in years, but we ran into each other at a store and she told me to "come around" in her twangy texas accent. she's married to a slob named bobby and they have a cute little six year-old daughter named anna who definitely. got there at about 10 last night. there were too many cars on the street and in the driveway to me to get to the house directly in my wheelchair, so i went a couple of houses down and rolled along the front lawns. i went around to the back, since i wouldn't be able to get into the house unless they carried me in. the back yard has a tall fence around it coddled together with posts, wooden planks, and chicken wire to keep their german shepherd lynyrd from terrorizing the neighborhood. sherry was in the back yard when i got their and she rushed over and gave me a hug. there was a small crowd in the yard - a mix of bikers, rednecks, middle-class types, a few college kids. sherry poured me some bourbon from a bar set up on a picnic table. i started talking with a guy named lightnin', a weird guy that always seems to be hanging around sherry. he's from a little town about 45 minutes northwest of fort worth. he lives with his mother in a tin trailer that sits alone in the middle of a field that's in the in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere. he's 36. his mother is a big, scary woman who reminds me of the monster's mother in john gardner's "grendel." cyst will get this reference. he's called lightnin' because he talks reeeaaal slooow. not just in a syrupy southern way, but in a low-grade brain-damaged kind of way. after lightnin' i talked to a guy from northern ireland. he had a battered face and a deep, raspy voice that, with his accent, was really cool. he had tried to set up an irish pub here, but it went under. now he's working at a plant somewhere. next was a big biker guy who was wearing a leather vest and no shirt. it was held partially closed over his big pot belly by some links of chain. he had been giving me serious looks earlier. when he sat down next to me he asked me a couple of questions about how i got into a chair and then launched into his own back injuries. i'm always a magnet for people who want to talk about their ailments. something about a truck engine falling on him and injuring his back (he worked at a plant that built semis). he had spent a few months in a chair. he got philosophical about how it had changed his outlook on life. i couldn't have cared less. after this i heard somebody call out my name. it was a guy named john, whom i hadn't seen in years. he came over and shook my hand and said i looked great, etc. he looked good, too. when i last saw him, somebody had shot him - just a random shooting at a party out at the lake - and it had really affected him. he had become more serious and cynical, which was completely against his nature. but he seemed to be back to his old self now. we talked for a while and then he went back into the house to play pool. i drank some more and talked some more. to of the bikers guys started playing mumblety-peg with a bowie knife. one would throw the knife down to stick it in the dirt in the ground between the other's feet. a gap of about 8 inches. as i watched, i felt a cold liquid on the top of my head. i tried to move but couldn't. two guys had come up behind me and were holding the backs of my wheels while they poured two full bottles of beer over me. they ran off back into the house when they finished. i shook the beer out of my hair hair. sherry was standing near me, looking mortified. i just shrugged and asked for a towel, which she got for me. i dried off and cleaned my wheels. i was sitting on a patch of dirt when this happened and the beer run-off created a little mud-wallow. i went over to one of the tables and had another drink. lightnin' seemed to like the show: "maaaan, theey haaad ya din't theeey. couldn't gooo nooo wheeere!" john came back outside. "what happened to you?" "showered with love, man. i'm fixin' to blow this joint, we need to get together again sometime." "i'm gonna blow this pop stand myself, can i get a ride home?" we both turned to go. on the way out i passed a styrofoam cooler. inside it was about 7 beers, a bottle of champagne, and a bottle of vodka. "john, this is my cooler. grab this for me, willya?" i got to catch up with john in the car. he was working at a surveying company now. his uncle had gotten him the job. he said he was doing well, and i believed him. john's the kind of person who could do things well and with great focus, but only for short periods of time...until he gets bored. we got on the subject of guitars and he told me he was learning segovia. he will do that every once in a while - he can't even make a c-chord, but he will be the music to some classical guitar piece (last time it was a transcription of "claire de lune") and teach himself to play it. pretty well, too. he lived in a sprawling apartment complex with those modular, house-like apartments. he suggested we go sit out by the pool and play a little guitar (it was probably close to two by now), and i said sure. at his apartment he told me to wait outside while he got his guitar, so as not to wake up john jr. john jr.? we both plopped onto deck chairs at the pool. he played his segovia for me - some spanish thing. then i said: "john jr?" "I got married, didn't you know that?" "no. to who?" "rafaela, who else?" "i don't know. last time i heard anything about you rafaela had kicked you out, then you went to live at bart's place and he kicked you out for wrecking his motorcycle, then i ran into max and julio someplace and the said you were, and i quote, living in a dreary little apartment, with a dreary little roommate, in a dreary little town...." "has it been that long since i last saw you? when did julio die, like 5 years ago? jesus. doesn't seem that long. anyway, yeah i got back with rafaela and started living together again. then one day she got pregnant, so we married. then i got that job at the surveyors and this apartment, my uncle owns this complex, and...here we are. it's ok, but rafaela just blew up after the baby was born. she used to be an attractive woman, but now...ugh. sometimes i just have to get it somewhere else, you know. and i do. sometimes i'm gone for the whole weekend. rafael said to me one day, 'if you want to leave, go'. but i said 'that ain't gonna happen'. i want this marriage to last long enough for the kid to know i'm his father, you know what i mean? now he's still in his mamma phase, you know. when he gets old enough to really know me as his father - a couple more years - we'll see what happens." not much to say to this. he was drinking the beer from our stolen cooler and i was swigging the vodka. he gave me the guitar and we started singing drinking songs, blues, improves of our own or whatever we could think of. we did a bunch of rocky horror tunes - we, the group that included john and i, went to rocky horror alot and the songs became our campfire songs. we were belting out "nobody knows you when you're down and out" when this big, burly figure started appeared before us. the security guy from the front office. he said that an old lady had called to complain and wanted us to stop. adding that she thought that we were pretty good. we said we would. john and i shook hands and went our separate ways. ********************* this morning the hangover wasn't to bad. when it's only a moderate one, i crave sweets for some reason. i made a pot of a coffee and rooted around for something. i had honey - i decided on a butter and honey sandwich. i took a stick of blue bonnet margarine out of the fridge and put it in the microwave to soften it for spreading - 3 or 4 seconds, i figured. within one second the stick burst into flames. the wrapper was partially foil, which reflects and makes sparks when you put it in the microwave. the paper part caught on fire. i turned the oven off, pulled the stick out and blew on it. the flame had just burned the inch of free paper at the end where there was no margarine. then i made the sandwich and had the coffee. |
So....could you tell us a story about your parents? Any kind of story: how they met, or a memory you have from childhood that involves them (one or both of them), or something eventful that happened to them, or whatever else comes to your mind. I don't have any ulterior motives, I promise. I like the tone with which you write, and I'm interested in seeing how you would describe your parents. You know, using your tone. But you don't have to if you don't want to. Or you could send it to just me. Or not. Oh, forget I said anything! I'm still posting this, though. |
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i wrote all of that quickly this morning and didn't proofread it. i was unaware that i had a tone. story 'bout my parents, huh? i'll think about it. gotta go, now. dinner date. |
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last time my special friend was over we played a game I made up. one of us names a book, movie or maybe an album, and the other names the first scene or line or image that they think of from that work. if he had mentioned john gardner's "grendel," I would have had to have told him I didn't remember a specific scene, I only remember being disgusted that it was cruel, violent and sexual. that was 11th grade. I should read it again now. it was dark and we sat outside and I finally told him the present I'd always wanted to give him, not the photo project with the ecclesiastes line you told us, but the pretend, impossible gift, and then I cried a just a very little, my face in his shirt, and I don't think he noticed. my voice was catching so I stopped then after a while we went back inside. later he said, "I can't tell which one of us is trembling." my very first thought was, "it's not me, asshole," but this time I didn't say anything. |
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bastards. it seems that every childhood error i made will never die. i made cookies when i was 8 and forgot the flour. my mother claims 13 years later that i am a horrible cook and shouldn't be trusted in the kitchen. how would she know, she never let me cook after that. in a moment of self-pity i'll tell you something sad. my family always raved about how smart my brother was and could be if only he would apply himself. superior to all. when i was 11 or 12 they selected kids for 'quiz bowl' and my brother was selected, i was jealous. i told my mother that i was going to work really hard and try to skip a grade. my mother told me that some people were born smart and others just couldn't hack it. i should just accept not being very smart. i tried to prove her wrong... i have an academic record that would make most parent's proud. not my mom though... she admitted to me once that she felt very guilty about what she had done to me during my childhood. she didn't mention what she does to me now. oh well. what is all the talk about mail art? |
what do you all think? |
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i just looked him up on the internet. he gets a quote in the u.s. v. microsoft case. This action comported with the suggestion that Microsoft’s Thomas Reardon made to his colleagues in November 1996: "[W]e should just quietly grow j++ [Microsoft’s developer tools] share and assume that people will take more advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps." I heard he got a degree from harvard when he was a teenager. he's really cute. next I'm going to meet jeff bezos. |
my friend introduced me to this nice, tall, smart, rich industrial-design guy, and last night I went to his beautiful tudor house and then we went out on his big sailboat, and he's great and he wants to take me out and everything. so of course I have a crush on his underachiever friend who's in middle of a messy divorce. |
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my jones need mail art. i saw a movie version of 'grendel' (animated) when i was a kid. it was on tv one saturday afternoon. peter ustinov did the voice of grendel. the only scene i remember now is the end where grendel is lying on a hillside after beowulf had ripped his arm off, dying. i didn't even know it was a book till a ran across it at a half-price books when i was in my early 20's. rhiannon - i might actually do that...send you the story. don't know when. i'll probably just have it in the back of my mind for a week or so and then just right it down on impulse (like i do everything else) and send it to you. you can psychoanalyze, even; in fact, i encourage you. you can be my online therapist. and warrior princess. if i prove to be too mentally disturbed, you can put me down with a poison dart. by the way, as i write this my mother is somewhere in seattle, where she'll be for the next 3 days. then she'll be roadtripping down the coast to san francisco. if any of you sorabjites on the pacific coast happen to run into a 57 year-old, 5' 1" blonde woman with a genial yet abstracted nature, buy her a bottle of wine. |
I bet the demands of my new job will preclude my having a double seattle-portland life, the one I've always wanted. every time I need a haircut I will go to portland. that's what I've been saying. once every six weeks. but I didn't want to come this time; I had to come to get my stuff. the drive is too long. but then I wake up here and I remember that this is better. today I got up and went outside and plucked the ripest, sweetest, juiciest, most perfect bing cherries off the tree. the morning sun had warmed them just a little. had them with an iced latte. it's been five degrees or so warmer down here then up there in that cold, cold city. now I'm going to go to wal-mart and I will be fulfilled. seattle paycheck, portland (no sales tax!) shopping. this is good. |
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must have something to do with the drugs. |
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must have somethin' to do with drugs. |
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i discovered that they used simple cassette tapes in the bell tower. there were no bells, only outrageously amplified tapes. a friend told me about it. so we went to church (i'd never been to that church before) & then sneaked up into the bell tower. we popped out the bell tape, put in cheech & chong, & got the hell away. so church lets out, and instead of bells, the parishoners heard, "D-A-V-E! open up the goddamn DOOR! it's DAVE!" it went blasting out across the whole town, followed by that skit on the same album about acapulco gold ("no stems, no seeds that you don't need--acapulco gold is badass weed!"). took the friends of jesus way longer than it should have to figure out what was going on. ah, memories. |