From the Diary of the Writer-as-Creep

I study her writing technique, her phrases, how she uses commas, and internalize her voice. If I think as she writes and write as she thinks, it will confuse our inner monologues, our identity lines soon indistinguishable. Once realized, we are either soul mates (lovesexlove) or long lost siblings (sexguiltsex).
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Problem/Solution/Com- plication

Problem: I can't dance.

Solution: I let the music give me more joy, so much joy that I can't help but move my hips whenever I hear it, and everything else follows. It's harder than it sounds.

Complication: Peeing at concerts. Or, for that matter, in the shower (I like to listen to music in the shower. And now I can dance!). I need a shower with a ceiling-high door, not a curtain. And God help anybody else who uses the soap.
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Problem/Solution/Com- plication

Problem: Summer rain has soaked my hair and I'm dripping on the floor.

Solution: A towel.

Complication: My new Chinese friend is now free to scream for help or beg to use the bathroom again or complain about how the nylon rope is cutting into his wrists and ankles or insist that it wasn't his fault that last night's delivery included four sweet and sour sauces and three spicy mustards when I specifically requested four spicy mustards and three sweet and sours. Oh, the injustice.
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What comes next?

I approach the bar. There is a woman there. I may have met her before. She looks at me.

"Hello," I say.

"Hello," she says.

What comes next? I always forget what comes after "Hello." My mind has gone blank and now it's thinking of raw carrots. Why am I thinking of raw carrots when I need to be saying something? And what is that something?

It's not "How are you?" -- which is a telephone question to my parents. When used in person, "How are you?" implies that a traumatic event has taken place. I could say, "How are you today?" but that strikes me as a question a nurse might ask. God knows why a nurse would ask it, unless she took pleasure from negative answers.

The woman at the bar stares at me, a bit bleary-eyed, but not in a drunk way. A strand of black hair falls across her face, and she does not push it away. Perhaps she's heavily medicated. That buys me some time. There are no awkward silences in prescription-induced haze (to be more accurate, the whole haze is one awkward silence in the scope of a life, so momentary ones have no meaning).

Damn! What comes next? It's not "How's it going?" or "What's up?" -- which are only male-to-male phrases, the former referring to amount of sex and the latter referring to the penis. No, neither of those will work.

She pushes the hair off of her face and turns slightly toward the bar.

Goddamn, I must know what comes next! I must have said it before. I'm not a hermit. I interact with people.

Oh! It might be, "Nice day today," but it's cloudy, neither hot nor cold.
Oh! It might be, "Have we met, or..." but a man ought to be decisive and ellipsis-free.
Oh! It might be, "Give me an example of a panagram." But what if she said, "Stoned purple boxes float high above any queer junk-man's yellow-coated maze." What would be next then?

Where is the bartender? I am a total social failure.

The woman turns back toward me. "What comes next?" she asks.

"I don't know," I say.
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Nurture gone wrong

He only feels good when he's under a dog, though he does not own a dog. Something about the the musky odor and the fur in his mouth comforts him. He slips a fifty to the manager of the pound to take Fuji or Roger or Gracie in the back room painted olive green, where he feeds them human-grade chicken jerky from underneath.

"No sex," the manager always says.

He stands five foot nine, muscular, black hair combed sometimes into a pompadour, sometimes shaved close to his perfectly smooth head, depending on whether he courts a Newfoundland or a Pug.

His pound-wear is the same gray sweatsuit because hair sticks to it. He doesn't shave so he can lick his moustache and taste the (potential) pet long after the encounter.

"The old dogs are the best," he tells me, "because there's none of that kicking and biting, just sweet smothering goodness."

Telling the few friends he has left that they must view him as a dog to generate his creative impulses, he whines and slides on his stomach to lick their feet. I step on his head or kick him lightly, but this does not discourage him. He must get a tongue full of foot before he can go home and write his financial planning column for a major daily newspaper.

His wife, a vacuous brunette who seems to be under the influence of intense g-forces, does not know about the dogs. That is, she does not know on a conscious level. We appease her with talk of hors d'oeuvres (usually crabcakes) and the latest Tori Amos single. One can only imagine the explosive properties of her husband's alleged deviance from the norm combined with Earth's gravity magnified several times.

He is completely normal and completely crazy, an example of nurture gone wrong. His mother did not have many dishes, and thought it appropriate to feed Baby from a chow bowl with a cartoon puppy on the bottom as a reward. For additional fun, she would add coins to the meal and let him keep them if not swallowed. Nature did nothing wrong, but is this what God had in mind?
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