mumbling
sitting in a
waiting room
mumbling
to myself
this how the
poems are
made folks
there's another
guy sitting a few
chairs over, he's
looking at me
i start to mumble
louder, hoping
he will move
he got up and
walked to the
other side
and they say i
don't know how
to handle being
in public
------------------------------------------------------------
all the miles between them
the devil is a soft-skinned
mistress somewhere in
minnesota
the foul-mouthed madman
is comfortable in his lonely
life in ohio
misery is all the miles
between them
there is little chance this
will end up as a lifetime
movie
------------------------------------------------------------------
stay quiet about the dirty dreams
is it better to
exist or live
like a fool
love a whore
or stay quiet
about the dirty
dreams of the
pastor's daughter
make fun of the
homeless or give
them a new brown
paper bag for their
alcohol
i often find myself
sitting at a red light
blasting music from
a century or two ago
i get some funny
looks but every
once in a while
an old soul will
nod in approval
when that happens
i immediately
change the channel
i stopped being a
monkey for your
attention years ago
at least have the
decency to make
one believe there
will be some money
involved
--------------------------------------------------------------------
darkness is an old friend
i have lucid
nightmares
that creep
into my
thoughts in
the middle
of the day
i can still
taste my
cousin's
nipple in
my mouth
all these
years later
i still
remember
how cold
the bathroom
floor was
darkness
is an old
friend
but at times
it likes to
leave me
crippled
and begging
for death
one of these
days i'll be
free at last
--------------------------------------------------------------
might as well throw out a few bombs
never fall in love with
the wrong woman
the beautiful one with
a great memory
the type of woman that
remembers every stupid
thing you ever said in
a fight
especially the really
cruel shit that was
meant to hurt her
because you thought
well, we're never going
to speak again, might
as well throw out a few
bombs
those women will haunt
your dreams until you
die
they will remind you
of all that stupid shit
you said at any moment
they deem necessary
i suppose this is what
i get for remembering
someone's birthday
if i truly was the fucking
asshole i am being accused
of
i certainly would have
forgotten the fucking
day
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is trapped in suburbia, plotting his escape. He has been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Cajun Mutt Press, Mad Swirl, Disturb the Universe Magazine and The Rye Whiskey Review. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
The beating of the hollow bamboo kulkul pulled her from the dream world. Sounds of roosters and dogs crowded her consciousness. Through the wooden grill she glimpsed mist drifting upward, blurring the tall dark palm trees at the edge of the gorge. In the distance, she picked out Mt. Agung, silhouetted against spreading wisps of orange. Like a woman’s breast, the quiescent volcano nurtures nearby Besakih, the Hindu mother temple of Bali, she thought. Anna rolled her naked body over the edge of the low bamboo bed. Feet touching the cool tile, she stepped slowly through the carved open doors onto the secluded balcony.
Already Ketut was moving about the losmen, a small compound of bungalows, gently placing incense and offerings in the doorways – small woven palm baskets filled with flowers, bits of rice, meat, and vegetables. He gave a slight kick to the gifts intended for the bad spirits. “We take you to Barong Dance,” he had said, “then know for long time good Barong dance with evil witch Rangda.”
Large white puffy clouds hung over the crater. Anna smiled, remembering Ketut’s words. “Clouds over Gunung Agung mean good lucky.” She went back into the bedroom and pulled the sheets over her, drawing the last of the night’s coolness from them.
The hot sun drove through the open window. She jerked awake. Nine years, and it’s not finished, she thought, even when I think it is. The nightmare had chased her half-way round the world. The divorce judge asks if she has anything to say. She can’t move, speak. She fades into the dull light of the courtroom. I am not going to let this dream destroy my vacation, Anna reminds herself.
Anna slipped into a turquoise T-shirt and brightly patterned shorts she had bought in the states. She loved wearing them because the children were drawn to her, laughing as they touched the patches of fuchsia, yellow, and purple. Their playful game took her back to the long summer nights of her childhood. After splashing water on her face and running a brush through her short hair, Anna strolled to the dining porch high above the terraced rice paddies.
“What for breakfast?” asked Ketut.
“Teh, two eggs, soft-boiled, toast bread, and fruit salad,” she laughed, thinking there’s not much choice at this losmen. Breakfasts were good. After two weeks, Anna was just tired of the same thing. Or, was it three? She pulled out the bamboo chair, her mind drifting back to that first day.
She remembered how the plane had raced the sun toward Indonesia. The reddened sky formed a backdrop for eerie cloud formations that seemed to grow like stalagmites from a sunken lake. Dropping over tiny green islands, edged with beaches, the plane began its long descent and taxied toward a primitive building with a tin roof.
Children raced toward the tarmac to greet the landing in the early dawn. A pregnant woman and two children were silhouetted against the sky; three men hunkered in the grass along the runway. Anna walked toward the airport through the heavy air. A warm light rain brushed her face. Ancient sounds pulled her up the stairs and down the long wooden walkway to the holding area where she saw singers and dancers, dressed in feathers and fluttering strips of grass, welcoming passengers. Tears came to Anna’s eyes. She wanted to sob. Home, she thought, I’m home, even though I’ve never been to these islands.
“It’s the people that make Indonesia,” a man standing next to her said.
Ketut laid out her breakfast. “Program today?”
“I am thinking of going to the market, so I can try more kinds of fruit. I’m also thinking of looking for a place to get my watch fixed. Is there a place in Ubud?”
“No place here. Must go to Denpasar, maybe Gianyar. You want me take on motorbike?”
“The first day I am here, my watch stopped running. I think maybe I need a battery. You sure there is no place here?”
“No, no place here,” he repeated.
“I am afraid of motorbike. I also need to confirm airplane reservations. I could hire a driver to take me to Denpasar and do everything the same day.”
She watched Ketut walk toward the stairs that led to the kitchen below. Typical Balinese man, she thought, shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, small round buttocks, firm straight legs, black curly hair, unselfconsciously sensuous. Anna laughed softly with pleasure, not wanting him to hear.
Any illusions about Balinese lovers had been quickly brushed aside by expats. Activities involving the physical senses, including eating and making love, were finished as quickly as possible. Balinese desires seemed to be centered on living in harmony with each other, the natural world, and the spirit that animates Life.
After she had checked into the losmen, she and Ketut walked up the stairs to her room. “Already married?” he asked.
“Already divorced nine years.”
“Maybe you like Ketut be Balinese husband?” He put her luggage down.
“No, Ketut,” she said, with a hasty, forced laugh. “I’m old enough to be your mother! I have a daughter twice your age.”
He handed her keys to the room. “I hope sleep good. I down stairs if need anything.
Selamat tidur.”
She felt a slow burn rise in her belly. Ketut was the age of the boy she had met in high school who would become her future husband. Rich had seen her across the cafeteria and knew the shy girl would be his. They talked endlessly about books, movies, ideas. His favorite author was Hemingway, hers Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They would study literature in college and create a life filled with things they loved.
One night, after her parents had gone upstairs to bed, they turned off the kitchen lights and whispered in the glow of the wall heater. “Sit on my lap,” he said. It was over before she knew what happened.
The next day Rich called. “You have to marry me. No one will want damaged goods now.” She felt confused like she had been when she told her father she wanted to go to college and get married after graduation. “If that isn’t the damndest thing I’ve ever heard. Girls don’t need to go to college. Some boy will get you into the bushes before that happens.”
Her mind, returned to the past, made Anna feel like she was having a near-death experience. Memory chased memory.
“If you drop out of college and save money,” her fiancé said, “we can get married sooner. You can go back to school when I graduate.” She settled into a secretarial job. “I need a master’s,” he said, “so I can get a good job.” Rich didn’t specifically state what he meant. Anna knew she would once more set aside her own education.
Two years later Rich had an appointment with his thesis advisor to wrap up the details of his degree. He came home, gathered up the baby and held her softly to his chest. “What’s for dinner?” he asked.
“I tried a new recipe, lamb chops stuffed with blue cheese. I think they’ll be great, but dinner will be a little late. I just had to finish sewing this baby dress. Isn’t it cute?”
Rich picked the tiny dress up with his free hand and said, “Yes, it is. I’m excited, too. My advisor told me the department chair wanted to see me. Bill offered me a job as a teaching assistant and invited me to enroll in the Ph.D. program, so I could teach at the college level. I accepted both offers. I hope we can make it now that you are working part-time.”
When their daughter was ready to start kindergarten, Anna’s slow burn burst into flame. She shoved her anger deep into her gut and announced, “I’m quitting my job and going back to school. I’ll take one course at a time and fit it around your schedule.”
Over time, TV and a six-pack of beer began to preempt dinner. “You’re becoming an alcoholic, please get help,” she said.
“I’m not,” he snapped. Eventually, two six-packs and no dinner defined their evenings. “Can’t you even come and sit with me on the couch during commercials?” Anna asked one last question: “Will you come with me to therapy?”
“I’m happy. You’re the one that’s not.” Two visits later, the therapist ended the sessions.
“I want out,” she said.
“I’ve always loved you. I have never been unfaithful. How can you do this to me?”
It didn’t occur to Anna to ask Rich the same question.
Anna thought both of their parents sounded like echoes. “How can you, a wife, leave your husband?” Their daughter, who now lived in New York City, was the only one who dared mention the word she had stated when she was thirteen. At that time, she had asked her mother, “Why don’t you get a divorce?” Anna wondered how a young child could know what she was feeling, when she scarcely knew herself.
Within a year of their divorce, Rich married a student, fathered a child, and moved into a huge house with a swimming pool. Like her ex, the men she met preferred women half their age.
Anna moved into a studio apartment and cried every day for a year. Verlaine’s poem Il pleure dans mon coeur (It Rains in My Heart) saturated her mind like an unending squall. Their friends became his friends. A pariah, she left Michigan and drove cross-country to California.
Her mind drifted back to what she was going to do about the broken watch. Anna had managed better than she thought and wondered if she could put off the repair until the day of her late afternoon flight. The unrest of the past year, precipitated by Mandela’s freedom, the Gulf War, and the tumbling of the Berlin Wall, might make it too risky to wait until the last moment. She had to have the watch fixed when she hit work in her deadline-oriented public relations job.
A few months ago, Anna had read in the Los Angeles Times about the fast-disappearing paradise and knew with piercing clarity that she must go there. “I want to take a two-month leave and go to Bali,” she said to her boss, a tall beautiful woman who liked to say she spent more money on clothes in a week than on the monthly rent for her high-rise condo.
“I took a chance on hiring you, mid-forties, no experience. I can’t afford to have you gone that long. How about two weeks?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I need two months.”
“If you go, I can’t guarantee you’ll have a job when you get back. There are plenty of young barracudas ready to edge you out.”
Anna walked across the hall to her office. She carefully shut the door, even though she wanted to slam it – something she had never done in her life. Her legs felt like overcooked spaghetti. She whispered under her breath, “God damn it! My father, my husband, and now my boss driving my choices. When am I going to be in the driver’s seat?”
During her lunch break, Anna bought a ticket from Garuda airline. “May the holy bird Garuda carry you safely to Bali,” the agent said.
She signed the credit card receipt, her hand shaking, her silk dress damp with perspiration. Anna walked toward her car, laughter and crying twisted into a rivulet of tears. She wondered how she could throw away her job, retirement, and maybe the niggling dream of finding a husband.
Anna leaned her weight against the side of her dark green Ford Fairmont and tried to find her compass. She clutched her hands to her head and said, “After more than twenty years, I’ve got it: I’m what Betty Friedan called a trapped woman, another casualty of the feminine mystique.”
A man, getting into the silver Mercedes next to her, said “What’s the matter, lady?”
In a suffocated voice, she said, “I’m wondering if Betty Friedan is laughing or crying with me.”
He shouted across the top of his car, “Who cares? You’re better looking.”
I care, she thought. I’m going to please myself. Anna looked at her watch. Oh, my God, not this minute. I’m going to have to go to a drive-through, grab some food, and eat at my desk, so I can turn in the Anderson marketing plan to the big guns by three.
The short time in Bali had already helped her kick Cronos aside and slip into the loving embrace of Kairos. Anna loved being in the moment. She was beginning to understand the dance that had brought her to this place. She didn’t know if she still had a job. She did know that when she returned she was going to visit colleges in the area and find out what it would take to teach at one of them. It was time to come home to herself, to the longing in her soul. Repairing her watch could wait, the hole in her heart couldn’t.
She cut the egg shells with quick strokes of her knife and scooped the golden contents onto her plate, adding butter and pinches of salt and pepper. Satisfied with breakfast, she settled back to savor her ginger tea, the fragrance competing with the sweetness of the frangipani.
Anna caught a speck of scarlet coming across the rice fields, reminding her of the brilliant red, orange, and pink hibiscus in the gardens around the bungalows. The woman, dressed in a drab sarong and long-sleeved shirt, approached a man who was already cutting the bulging rice stalks. She shook out her long silky black hair, wound it quickly into a knot, and finished with a second knot. The two were joined by another woman, also plainly dressed, wearing a huge hat woven from palm leaves.
They quickly cleared the wet paddy and neatly stacked the sheaves on the narrow grass path surrounding it. The woman with the bright head covering walked to a hut nearby, returning with an old metal barrel on her head that she dropped with a dull sound onto a large indigo mat the others had spread over the muddy earth. They carefully positioned the barrel, and the woman in the scarlet headdress began beating the bundles against the metal, turning them from front to back as the mat received the tiny grains of rice. The other two moved to a new sawah, their scythes playing a slow rhythm against the sounds from the other woman’s barrel.
Anna, lost in the wordless harmony of their work, didn’t hear Ketut come up beside her.
“You no go to market?” asked Ketut.
“I don’t think so. I was watching the workers and forgot about time. It’s too late and too hot. I am going to swim. Can you bring soup for lunch, please, when I get back?”
She continued to look toward the farmers. “Hard work, isn’t it?” Even in paradise, she thought, but they work with such ease.
“Yes,” said Ketut. “Only three in family. My family have fifty people for rice cutting.”
Surprised by the large number, she turned to look at him.
“You go to odalan again tonight?” he asked.
“Yes. You, too?”
“Of course, family temple. You come again with family? We bring flowers and
incense for prayer. Seven o’clock we go.”
“Thank you, Ketut. I will remember to wear my sarong and prayer sash.”
Her mind drifted back to last night, the beginning of the four-day odalan to celebrate the anniversary of the temple. For hours, women, dressed in sarongs and sheer kebayas, ornaments and flowers in their hair, had processed to the temple with carefully arranged offerings piled high on their heads. The men were equally adorned in beautiful sarongs and headdresses laced with gold and silver, flowers tucked behind their ears. The gamelan players, a mass of turquoise silk shirts, punctuated the ceremonies with their ritual clanging music. Well-behaved children were dressed in their best.
Sounds and images of the previous evening came back in a rush: joking; laughter; cigarettes; prayer and a blessing by the priest; bright parasols with fringe; dancers; black and white checked sarongs; strips of gold and white cloth wrapped around the intricately carved gods. The ceremony continued long after the moon appeared in the star-filled sky.
“Isn’t it late for little children to be up, Ketut?” she asked.
“No. Good not sleep much. Keep close to dreamtime. All life dreamtime.”
Fay L. Loomis, member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and Rats Ass Review Workshop, lives a quiet life in upstate New York. Her poetry and prose appear in Best of Mad Swirl 2022, Herbs & Spices Anthology (Highland Park Poetry), As It Ought To Be Magazine, Down in the Dirt, Five Fleas, W-Poesis, Spillwords, and elsewhere.
Chapter
Got to get through
this chapter
easy enough
to do
the pages swing by
I’m skating across
this frozen pond
of words
towards another
mile marker
the next one
the author set
knowing full well
that even devoted
readers, like me
need a break
like now
I need to shower etc.
to get my other life
going
and there’s
this chapter
I’m writing
about today
and how I got through
this bit
this other chapter
someone else wrote.
Storm Warning
Mid-afternoon and
They’re predicting
A big storm
But I’m mid-chapter
Miles from here
Years from here
Berlin in the 30s
The characters don’t
Know of the storm
Coming their way
But like some demi-god
I know what’s coming
More storm than
Eight to twelve inches
Of snow we expect
Our storm will be easy
To clean up, but theirs
Will take the rest of the book.
Spy
In my other life or in my next one
I’m a spy or will be
Out in the cold, into subterfuge
A burning fuss ready for action:
Losing any tails, changing trains
Taking alleys, using dead drops.
Some CIA or NSA or DIA
Have me or will, hell even
MI6 or DGSE or Mossad if need be.
A multi-purpose, shadowy figure
Blending in, jumping out
Whatever seems necessary.
I’ll look for the signs
Read the coded messages
Intercept, overhear, follow
Be in the right place as needed
In carefully thought-out scenarios
Out of Langley or Fort Meade or
A rather inconspicuous office in
Paris or London or Tel Aviv.
I’m there now, that other me
Or will be in my next life
A regular James Bond but better.
In many ways invisible
As invisible as I feel most of the time.
Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian writer and photographer. Recent work appears at The Notre Dame Review.
Spirit of a Place, Spirit of a Thing (Artist Statement)
In an off handed remark during an interview, U.G. Krishnamurti, called by some an anti-guru, and by himself, ‘Something like a philosopher,’ said that he once thought he could sense the spirit of a place. But then he brushed it off through words and body language. It didn’t fit in with his philosophy and message. But I resonated with his statement anyhow, because I had always felt that I could feel the spirit of a place and also a thing. Old town, lake still and wide. City street, carnival game vendor and prizes. Bee. Spider. Flower. Vine. Ridge. Summit. Stone. Petal. Stream. Sun. Cloud. Bird and dusk, horizon and dawn. Lock, denoting love, affixed to lonesome bridge alone in the rain. Artifacts. Areas. Some saturnine and some sanguine. Hundreds of places and things, their spirit, against reason and logic, somehow speaking out, not with language of course, but calling out nevertheless. Semantics and nomenclature could argue what spirit means. Is it the atmosphere, the daemon, the angel, the area, the vibration, the feeling? Is it physical, metaphysical, true and there, or purely imaginary and projected? Difficult to know conclusively. But there is something I think in all that mise- en-scene, and so on the rural footpaths and metropolitan worlds also, I try and photograph it and also write about it, this spirit of a place and spirit of a thing.
The Widow
Many months, she mourns
Many weeks, she's weak
Many days, she's depressed
Many hours, she unhappy
Many times, widows couldn't meet their financial needs
Managing the home, becomes hectic
She feels shy, whenever children ask
A homemaker can't make the home joyful again
When money is lacking, a human can misdo
Tears tear off a human's joy
Such is the plight of a widow
Many failed promises, worsen the situations
Many widows have no means of survival
Be of help to them
listening to the Heart of the Sunrise in a field of radiant canola flowers
even Vermeer's name glistens
my dead brother's apothegms keep bouncing off the walls
dog-eared obituaries of old age
the inch worm when she's full grown
taking a night course on mass-extinction planning
rainy night train crowded with philosophers
I'm on a Dirac diet of one word per hour
upgrading my inattention to transcendental occlusions
he was the kind of man who always came to a complete stop
Pot Luck
My next-door neighbor was throwing a little party, a get-together, a pot luck. He couldn’t very well exclude me since the whole building was invited, so I made my signature pot luck dish, a simple but popular potato salad made from halved boiled new potatoes, skin on, dressed with tarragon mustard, mayonnaise, and capers.
I put some pants on and rang the bell next door. One of the guests, another neighbor, opened the door with a chicken drumstick in her right hand. I knew her face, but not her name. “Come on in and join the festivities,” she said.
I introduced myself. “Pete,” I said, and extended my right hand to shake as I balanced the bowl in my left hand against my chest. She shifted the drumstick to her left hand and shook my clean, dry, recently washed right hand with her greasy one.
“Tanya. You live right next door, right, Pete?”
“Right,” I said, “I share a wall with this apartment.”
“I’ve heard,” she said.
What did she hear? What did the neighbor tell her?
“Oh?” I said.
“Yes indeedy. Your next-door neighbor and I have no secrets from each other!”
Was it something that could count as a secret? What could the neighbor have heard?
“Some pretty amusing stuff, I’ve got to say,” she added.
Amusing? Do I talk in my sleep, loudly enough for the neighbor to hear? Does he have access to my unconscious, an access even greater than mine? I needed to find out what the neighbor heard. Should I be blunt, get right to the point, or would it be wiser to start by fishing around?
I decided to cast my line and see what bit. “Amusing?”
“Surely you wouldn’t disagree.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Are you serious?”
“Sure I’m serious. Why shouldn’t I be serious?”
“Well,” she said, “it’s just that it’s really funny to a third party, to be honest. No offense.”
It must have been pretty funny to a second party too, if the neighbor told her about it.
“I guess I’d have to hear it through your ears,” I said, hoping she’d get the hint.
“I guess you would,” she replied. “Well, have a good time. This chicken’s really good, by the way. The old Greek lady in 2B made it. I don’t know what these herbs are, but it’s so yummy.” She walked away.
I found a table to drop my potato salad bowl on and picked up a drumstick. Tanya was right. Yummy.
Then the neighbor, my next-door neighbor, that is, saw me and came over. “Welcome to my humble abode,” he said. “Are you having a good time?”
“Well, I just got here.” Then I said, “I’m glad I decided not to skip this shindig and stay in my apartment. With all this crowd noise it would be pretty hard to get anything done, what with the thin walls and all.”
“Thin walls? I’ve never noticed. Well, have fun, and get yourself a glass of Zinfandel before it’s all gone.” He walked away, and soon I saw him whispering conspiratorially into Tanya’s ear.
“Mrs. Papadopoulos!” I said as the lady from 2B came toward me. “Your drumsticks are delicious.”
The Efficiency Expert
I was walking back to my cubicle from the pantry when I noticed a meeting in the fish bowl conference room. Seated in the room were my boss (the head of editorial), her boss (the head of creative), and her boss (the head of marketing), as well as a person I did not recognize at first. Then it hit me. I rubbed my eyes. Yes, I was sure, it was the neighbor! What’s he doing here? What business does he have with my management chain of command?
I sat down with my tea and tried to make sense of the situation. Then Susheela, one of my co-workers, came by. She said to me, sotto voce, “Have you heard about the efficiency expert?”
I wondered if they still used the term “efficiency expert” in Mumbai, where she grew up. A good old no-bullshit term, tells you right where you stand, unlike “management consultant.”
“No,” I said, “What gives?”
“There are rumors of big cuts coming. They want to make us leaner and meaner.”
“I could certainly be leaner,” I said, “but I don’t think I could be any meaner.”
“This is no joke. Nobody’s safe,” she said.
Least of all me, I thought. Who gives a shit about proofreading in the 21st century?
Was the neighbor the efficiency expert, the management consultant? I was never sure what he did for a living. What a coincidence that of all places he’d be doing his dirty business here in my front yard. Surely I’d be the first to go. That bastard has a vendetta against me, I was sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if he engineered this whole thing himself, just to get me fired from my job, or perhaps to see how I’d grovel under the threat of impending unemployment.
Well I wouldn’t grovel, nosiree Bob. I’m close enough to retirement that I could just bite the bullet, maybe freelance a little. I’d have more time for writing. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.
A few minutes later, my manager came over to my cubicle. Uh oh, I thought, here comes the bad news.
“Hey Pete,” she said, “the guy whose company services our printers said you look just like a guy from his apartment building.” I knew it, I thought, until my manager added, “But you don’t live in Bay Ridge, do you?”
“No, Park Slope.”
“I thought so. Well, I guess you have a lookalike in Bay Ridge.”
Whew. I dodged a bullet, for the time being at least. So it wasn’t the neighbor after all, and it wasn’t the efficiency expert.
But what if the efficiency expert rumor were true nonetheless?
Well, at least I’d stand a fighting chance with a total stranger.
The Neighbor Asks a Question
One day in the elevator the neighbor asked me something surprising. It was surprising enough that he even asked me something, since he often stares at his shoes and ignores me if we happen to be sharing the elevator. He asked me, “You know Judy Lieberman, don’t you?”
The only Judy Lieberman I could remember was a grade-school classmate, and all I could remember about her was the Valentine’s Day card. It was our teacher’s idea, and I can’t imagine such a scheme would fly today. We would pick a name at random from a box and send a Valentine’s Day card to that person. The boys picked from a box of girls’ names, and vice versa. So each boy would send a card to one girl classmate, and a different girl, in my case Judy Lieberman, would send one to a boy. I suppose a boy and a girl could have drawn each other, but I don’t know what the odds would be given about 15 names of each gender. I can’t remember who I sent mine to, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Judy Lieberman, and I’m positive it wasn’t Susan Klugman, my arch-enemy from spelling bee—that I’d have remembered. I do remember Judy Lieberman’s Valentine’s Day card. It had a drawing of a dachshund and it said “I long to be your Valentine.” Why was the neighbor asking me about Judy Lieberman?
“Well,” I said, “I went to school with a girl named Judy Lieberman, but I haven’t thought about her in over fifty years.”
“As I thought,” he said.
As he thought? Why did he think anything about me and Judy Lieberman? How did he even know about her? As far as I know, he’s not from the old neighborhood.
“Did you go to P.S. 217?” I asked him.
“No.”
“Did you know Judy Lieberman?”
“No.”
“Then why did you ask me if I knew her?”
“Just checking,” he replied as the door opened to the lobby.
Being Human
I woke up wondering if I was human. I pinched myself, my left cheek with the thumb and forefinger of my left hand; I’m a lefty. I felt something, so I figured I must be corporeal. And if I was wondering about my humanity, I was clearly sentient. So why the concern? I chalked it up to AI.
I had been experimenting a lot with the new generation of artificial intelligence chatbots. I had prompted them to write stories in my style, and the ones that were generated often called the main character Peter Cherches, which makes sense since many of my stories have me as the main character. Not me exactly, a fictional analog of me. But that fictional me was always a reflection of the real me, a vessel for my own anxieties and confusions. Look, I won’t deny the fact that I’m a narcissistic S.O.B. My stories have been about myself for years, though I only started using my own name regularly in the past ten years. Before that it was usually I or He, and for a while in the nineties it was Clarence.
On the surface those AI stories about Peter Cherches were pretty good counterfeits of my fiction, but on closer examination there was something off about Peter Cherches, something not quite real, something like a hologram of Peter Cherches, a hollow illusion. The Peter Cherches of the AI stories was a stranger to me, and now I was starting to feel like a stranger to myself.
I need to get out, I thought. Sitting in the apartment, alone in a chair pinching my cheek, was not helping things. I needed social intercourse, human contact, to reconnect with my own humanity.
Maybe I’ll go to the Korean produce shop across the street and chat up Tai, the owner. Wait, what was I thinking, Tai’s place has been gone for at least fifteen years; now it’s a coffee place. I guess I’ll take a small load down to the Wash-Dry-Fold Laundry and exchange pleasantries with Judy, the owner. So I gathered up some dirty clothes from the hamper, threw them in a laundry bag, and left my apartment.
As I was leaving the building, the neighbor was just coming in. He was smiling. Not just smiling, beaming. Completely uncharacteristic for someone best described as a prune.
“Ain’t it grand to be human?” the neighbor said as we passed each other.
The Laundry Room
I don’t do my own laundry, I send it out, but I do pass through my building’s laundry room to get to the recycling area. The other day I saw the neighbor down there, taking his laundry out of the dryer, engaged in conversation with Mrs. Papadopoulos from 2B.
The neighbor was talking loudly, agitated. “He’s not a nice person! You should see the contempt on his face every time he looks at me. I swear, one day I’m going to kill that scumbag.”
Who was he talking about? I wondered.
“You’re just imagining things,” Mrs. Papadopoulos said calmly.
“I’m not imagining things. And don’t think I don’t hear him talking about me all the time. Lies! Bald-faced lies!”
Who would be talking about him all the time, telling lies?
“He’s always been very polite to me,” Mrs. Papadopoulous said. “A very considerate young man.”
“Young man! He’s no young man. I’ll bet he’s at least as old as I am.”
“At my age you’re a young man too, young man.”
Who were they talking about? To Mrs. Papadopoulos he’s a very nice, considerate young man, and to the neighbor he’s a scumbag. I suspected it was somebody who lived in the building. I didn’t want it to look like I was eavesdropping, so I passed through to drop off my paper recycling.
As I was walking back through the laundry room, to the elevator, Mrs. Papadopoulos called out to me.
“Top of the morning, young man!”
