June 12, 2011

            We all change, but I hope we’re all in it together.

            I’m driving to my high school for our ten-year reunion. We are the Class of 2010, and I haven’t seen most of my ex-classmates for almost the full ten years. I didn’t like my class very much—there were some cool people, and that was it. It was supposed to be a great high school offering amazing possibilities to stretch your mind and make you gape in amazement. It did that occasionally. Most of the time it gave us so much work that we couldn’t lift our head up and look around without feeling like we are wasting precious seconds that could instead be used to do intriguing chemistry homework or commit crucial history dates to memory. We, or at least I, studied from Sunday morning till Thursday night, couldn’t wait for classes to end on Friday at 3 pm, so we could get drunk. And that lasted until Saturday night slowly grows lighter and turns out to be Sunday morning while we were still drinking, singing, dancing. Then we went to bed unwillingly and woke up three hours later to go home and start memorizing shit again.

            I had dinner alone as soon as I got home, but I also sat with my family as they were having dinner. I counted the minutes I spent with them. As soon as they went over thirty, the guilt in my stomach made me mumble something about how much work I had, and I walked up the stairs to my room with a sinking heart. Cleaning the kitchen took at least forty-five minutes, and I hated it because I could have written one more page for my paper had I not cleaned the kitchen. The guilt, or stress, or whatever, gnawed at my stomach, and nothing was good enough.

            Fuck that, I think while turning left at a small traffic light. Ahead of me I have a ten minute drive on the road surrounding the city, so I can enjoy the trees on both sides of it and the holes in the road, although I need to admit they are in a better condition than usual. It’s 6 pm, and the roadside ladies are swaying their hips, looking at drivers, hoping to make some of them happy after they have sat on their asses in the office all day long. I always look at the roadside ladies. I drive up and down this road ever since we moved in our house, but I still stare at the ladies’ colorful but austere clothes as I’m driving to go out or come back home. I wonder what it’s like to get fucked so many times per day, to give so many blowjobs, and to see so many dicks. I know condoms are obligatory, but giving a blowjob to a dick wearing a hat is disgusting. Don’t their mouths go dry? Don’t their pussies hurt? Do they shave completely? Do guys fuck them like pieces of meat on the backseats of their cars? Do angry, bored men treat them badly, or do they not care at all? I wonder what they are thinking while they are looking for the next client. I know some hookers are elite, but these are not. Still, they look like they know what they are doing.

            In a little while, the trees on both sides of the road grow fewer, and a construction site greets me on each side of the road. I press a button under the radio in my car to stop the air conditioner from taking any air from outside: the air my car is splitting in two is so dusty. I stop at a traffic light, and I pull up slowly because there’s a heavy-looking truck in front of me as dusty as the air. It’s marked with a foreign register number (?), but my eyes aren’t strong enough to let me read the small print of which country it is. Green light switches to yellow while I’m driving slowly, but it’s not my fault I didn’t stop: if I had tried to be a perfectly conscientious citizen, I should have stopped in the middle of the crossroad, which is also illegal. The car behind me, though, decided to play cool and cross too, although he could have stopped perfectly well. To his bad fortune, there is a policeman waiting for guys like that right after the crossroad. He waves to the car behind me to pull over. Poor driver, they are also trying to fight corruption, so I would not try to give him ten bucks to fight it off. He would have to listen to a criticizing lecture pour out of the policeman’s mouth and then pay his fine. Too bad, I hope you’re not in a hurry, poor guy.

            In ten minutes, I park my car in front of my old school gate. I leave the car under a tree that’s blooming, and I know from experience that it drops some thick, sweet liquid that forms sticky drops on the windows. It’s like permanent rain on my windows, so I don’t move the car.

            It’s 4.47 pm, and Anna said she’d be here by 4.45. She pointed out that she was punctual now. That’s impressive, I thought, remembering the times when the other girls and I told her we were meeting at 6 when the meeting was actually at 6.30. I sit on the front hood of my car and waited for Anna—she hasn’t changed that much, it seems. 

June 8, 2011

I am driving behind this jeep, and I watch the guy driving it stick one hand out of the window to tap his cigarette. Ash falls from it, and my car, moving forward, reaches up to meet it. We, all the drivers in the vicinity and I, stop at a red light just a little further. It’s not an intersection, there’s simply a crosswalk from a school to some apartment buildings whose paint is peeling off. They put a light here several years ago kind of out of nowhere: who spends money on traffic lights these days? The roads are so bumpy that drivers need to keep their eyes on the road at all times, which means that if you spend precious milliseconds looking at a traffic light, you risk your car going into some bump or hole and breaking down right there, all this because you decided to be a good driver and look at the light.

This is why the guy in the jeep tapped his cigarette without looking at it. The sun was just rising, so it shone abundantly on the bald back of his head. Actually, his whole head was shaved, so it’s not fair to call the back of his head bald, but anyway this is where the sun shone. The white-pink skin pulled over his skull reflected the light, so it shone back at me. The guy lit another cigarette. In this traffic, I often found myself wishing I smoked, but that never sufficed as a motivation. 

What an Ostrich Can Do

            I don’t want to tell the ostrich that his head is funny. It’s so small compared to his butt. His butt has so many feathers, and I don’t think there are any feathers on his head. Even if there are some, they are very tiny and look more like hairs. The ones above his eyes are really long and sticking out. Some old men have eyebrows like that with hairs hovering dangerously over their eyes.

            We all keep quiet because the ostrich is bending his legs to sit down. We all sit on the floor of Mom’s and Dad’s bedroom, and we listen intently, expecting a speech, but he keeps his beak shut. We wait.

            Something new is going on in my head. My thoughts jump so much that it scares me how many things I can think about in a single second. I can see how a thing contains other things in all its nuances, and it’s so natural—of course we see things this way, we don’t know any other way to think, why is it weird to see it so clearly, hmm. I float far away to something dark that I’m sure I know very well but can’t recognize. I decide to land back into my body sitting on the floor with its legs crossed.

            “I think you all feel it by now.” It’s the ostrich speaking. I thought an ostrich’s voice would be squeaky, but not his. It sounds a little bit like the voice I would imagine Zeus has, it’s so deep and manly, with the right intonation it could be the sexiest ostrich voice I’ve ever heard.

            “Let’s talk about what is going on inside you.” The ostrich acts like a therapist. His neck is so long that when he speaks, his head moves up and down on the tip of that neck as though it were a snake. When we found the ostrich, he was standing on the corner of Main and Corner with a sign “Help the Ostrich Eat” tucked under his wing. He stood still, only moving his head up and down. We stopped in front of him to ponder the issue. He didn’t start talking to us right away, but when we told him we wouldn’t mind helping him, he nodded his head wisely and said his name was Charlie.

            Simon is the first to respond to Charlie’s suggestion to say what is going on inside us.

            “Things are like forks. You can pick them up, take something else with them, and bring that thing close to your face. Although, th— if you are trying to pick up another fork, it will be hard, and you can never know if you’ll be able to make it.” Simon’s eyebrows rise up on his forehead and almost soar above his head like a halo. Apparently a fork lifting a fork is bewildering for him, especially if the outcome is not certain. I am glad Neville put him in charge of The Richest Kitchen, he is the perfect guy for that. His face looks even more naive with his eyebrows so high up. People make that face when they are having an orgasm or when they are eating “the best cheesecake in my life.”

            “And those forks don’t need to be grounded.” I don’t know how much time passed just now, but this is Rina speaking: “They could be floating around, especially if they are in outer space because of the vacuum.” Rina is in charge of The Space Travels Living Room. I know that recently she’s been going crazy trying to find nice but cheap outer space materials because we are pretty tight on budget. “We don’t know, though, what will happen if the forks are sucked away to an unknown part of the Universe,” Rina scratches her right nostril. “We might not be able to keep the forks suspended there because that area might have different physical laws, so we might be doing things wrong according to those standards.”

            “We could also suspend other things in outer space,” I add. “Because anything can be compared to anything—even if you take a blade of grass and happiness, you can find something they have in common. Oh yeah, if I connect enough things, maybe I would see everything… no, not at the same time, but I wish I could see everything.” Behind the things I’m seeing, I know there is a dark blank, and it scares me.

            I am in charge of the Nonexistent Cellar. I am still figuring out what to do about it. We gave a theme to each room in the house because we were tired of boring houses. It’s Neville’s house, but we all started hanging out here instead of in coffee houses which someone else created because they thought they knew where we wanted to hang out. Neville started THE SHIT. He inherited the house from his grandma, which meant he could change it however he wanted. He asked all kinds of people to come over, and they did, talking, laughing, dreaming, making love, occasionally going to the bathroom. Soon, the place became an informal, home-like coffee house at first run by Neville only. In the beginning, he called it THE HIT and wrote that on the front door. But a very witty someone added a big, fat S before HIT, so now it reads THE SHIT.

We weren’t all here from the very beginning. The first to join Neville was Karla because they spent a night in what is now The Music Bedroom and got together after that. Then came Simon and stayed because of the breath-taking snacks in The Richest Kitchen. I, Lilit, joined because it felt cozy. Rina was the last one to join the team (not counting the ostrich). I think she stayed because she is generally an air-head. Whenever we ask Neville why he decided to start THE SHIT, he shrugs and smiles knowingly, muttering something about being scared of ghosts when he is alone in a big house. He let us choose what to do with these rooms, he only asked me what I’d make of the room, I said a nonexistent cellar, and he said okay. I thought there was something fishy about that, but I’m not too worried now because it seems like Neville knew why we wanted to make weird rooms. He probably also felt the need to put his fears into something, something he created, in order to unleash those fears and ride them.

            Charlie the ostrich has been silent for awhile. Then he remembers something and goes berserk with laughter. His head faces the ceiling, his beak wide open spitting out dark air in mouthfuls, and then he suddenly falls silent. His feathers flutter and sound like countless pieces of lace sliding across each other.

            “It’s my smell, it makes you see your forks, your outer space, your everything,” Charlie says quietly. “It’s been doing that for a while.”

            We don’t think of much to say.

            “If you want me to stay here, I can stay,” Charlie adds.

            I think about it. I could get used to seeing everything. It’s a little too much, but I need to know what the darkness behind it is.

            Charlie stays in Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom, it becomes his temple. People who usually come to chill out in THE SHIT now know about our ostrich and tell their friends. We put up flyers whose big letters shout “Let the Ostrich Help!” There is a photo of Charlie, and at the bottom it says: THE SHIT, 154 Corner Street, open all the time. We really are open all the time. We take turns, there are five of us, so it’s not a big deal. And about Charlie, I’m worried that he never goes out, and I don’t even know when he sleeps, but it’s his own business. People stop by all the time and wait in line in front of Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom. Simon’s really happy because everyone buys things from The Richest Kitchen. He even got two new kinds of sandwiches and some new juices. The juices I don’t care about much, but one of the new sandwiches, the one with butter, salami, and strawberry jelly, is so good that I lick the jelly from my fingers every time I have it.

            We decided that people should go in one by one to see Charlie. They stay in for only five minutes, it’s enough to make them see their things, and they walk out not blinking, with their jaw hanging. In one or two days, they come back. I spend some time with him every day. His scent makes me see things I don’t want to see, for example how overarching my loneliness is or how permanent doubt is. But, as Freud said, repressed thoughts threaten to pop up at any time, so I’d better face them.

Today, Charlie asks me about what I see. We don’t usually talk, so I just sigh. Maybe I could tell him about the doom.

“I don’t want to believe in the doom, but I think it’s quite possible. It’s not some profound doom, it’s just the fact that whatever you do, it will never be entirely satisfactory. That goes for anything: a piece of art, a dish, a conversation, a relationship, a moment as a whole. Whatever I do, I won’t be able to make it perfect. The problem is I don’t know why I want to make it perfect; I don’t even know what it would be if it were perfect. When I have your smell inside of me, I can look at anything and there will be a shadow behind it containing its perfect version. It just haunts me.”

Things are rarely unexpected to me, but this one was. He touched my hand with his wing. I almost pulled my hand back in surprise, but in the end I didn’t.

“I know I am an ostrich,” Charlie said slowly, “but I understand.”

I stroked the feathers protecting his slender wing.

            February is the shittiest month of the year because it’s so cold that it bites my nose off. I just got off the subway and turned into Corner Street—a narrow, sunken street leading away from Main Street as quickly as possible. I get to 154 Corner Street, the address of our cozy coffee house and home. It’s almost 6pm, which means it’s my turn to manage THE SHIT until midnight.

            Simon shouts over everyone’s voices to ask customer after customer, “What can I get you?” in The Richest Kitchen. They shout back, Simon gives them what they want and takes their money. Now he’s shouting to the next person. I go behind the counter, he hugs me and pats me on the back with his skinny palms, I reach from under his armpits and pat him back. It’s my shift now. I sell food and drinks like crazy for the next two hours and watch people stand in line to get some of our ostrich’s precious scent. When they walk out, the doom is written all over their faces. I don't know why they keep coming back to Charlie. The same goes for me, though.

            Once (most) people are satisfied with their dinner, I check on the rest of the house. The Space Travels Living Room is fine, two girls have put on 3D glasses to look at these really pretty images of the horse head nebula. This nebula used to be one of my favorites, but Rina told me that people put in artificial colors in the photos, so the nebulae aren’t really that pretty at all. It’s quite disappointing, but I don’t tell the two girls with the 3D glasses.

            The door of The Candle Bedroom is closed. I put my ear to the door, and I hear the bed screeching and a girl moaning. I got it, two people are drowning their loneliness, I’m not going in. When did this house turn into a cheap motel.

The door of The Music Bedroom is also closed. Once again, I put my ear to the door, but there’s no sound—people aren’t fucking violently in there. I knock on the door, no answer. I press the handle slowly, slowly, the door slides open, and I look inside. One guy is lying on the bed with headphones on his head, and another one, headphones on his head too, is prostrated on the ground like a canvas. We put a bunch of sound equipment in The Music Bedroom, so people can go crazy with music. These guys’ faces are twisted, though, something’s tormenting them. The doom’s getting to them too; I leave.

Neville comes over around 10, but there isn’t much to talk about. He asks about the profits, I recite a number, he nods. He knows my heart’s not into it anymore because I’m not a business person. I don’t blame him for being one, though, he had a good idea, it brings him money. I hope he misses the nights when it was only the five of us, no clients, no products to sell, dreamily making plans about our crazy house. We were going to show people rooms full of fantasies.

Rina takes over The Richest Kitchen at 11.45. I gladly drop whatever I was doing and go to Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom. Charlie’s hairy eyelids droop slowly over his eyes. People have been going in and out of his temple since early morning, and now is the first time that he can pause and breathe on his own. I ask him why he stayed with us, and he utters a short, exhausted laugh, like an old man. It hurts me to see you so tired, I say. I don’t really think about it, but I hug him, and my arms hold on to him as hard as they can. His feathery wing brushes my cheek and lifts my chin up to his beak. We kiss very lightly.

His scent has gotten deep into me when I open my eyes: all my fears are lined up there next to each other. Like clouds of heavy smoke, they hover above the rest of my thoughts, hug them, and suck out any warmth they may find. Repression isn’t keeping them back now, it never kept them back very well, only so much that they wouldn’t stop me from getting up in the morning. My heart sinks with the weight of those clouds of fear. It turns out I’m always afraid, but I just don’t face it. Fuck it, I think, this time I’ll face it.

            I know Charlie is worried about me, but I prefer to look out the window. Only ten feet away from us are the neighbors’ windows, and I can see directly in their homes. I zoom in on a guy on the fourth floor, but I still notice the darkness that fills everything around him until he looks like a distant, 2D image about whose jerky movements I really don’t need to care. He is cooking, and steam is rising from the stove above his head. I bet that if I stuck my head out the window, I could smell what he is making.  Maybe he is frying some carrots, but I’d prefer it if there was some meat with those carrots. He is following a recipe because he’s not an excellent chef, but this time he wants to make a fantastic dinner. But carrots with meat doesn’t sound too amazing, so I hope he’s cooking something else. I’m pretty sure, though, that in the end it won’t be what he tried to make. On his right, I’m not sure if it’s the same apartment, a woman is reading beside the window with a reading light next to her head. If it was summer, she would be reading out on the balcony. Poor lady, the mosquitoes would eat her alive unless she used some repellent. On top of that, she doesn’t know about the dark air hovering around her little apartment. In summer, the balcony would have flowers all over. She would probably do nothing all day but water those flowers: some people have cats, others have flowers. Two of the flowers—one on each side of the balcony—would have long stems hanging down, almost reaching the balcony underneath. There a kid is playing with an orange truck, a toy, obviously, banging it against the door to the balcony. He turns his head sharply to the inside of the apartment. Someone probably called out to him. And they should, it’s bedtime. Oh, he turns to his orange truck again, apparently not bedtime for him; what are those parents thinking. A kid needs to sleep a lot to be healthy, needs to eat nice things, and to play with his toys. But he also needs other things to be a nice kid, and we don’t know what they are. If we did, it would be way too easy to raise a good kid. Please, kid, grow up to be a happy old kid. Two windows to the left, a purple light is shining in the room. Wow, it looks cool, it looks as though it’s on a TV screen miles and miles away, I can’t reach—

“Lilit,” Charlie draws me to him cautiously, “Lilit, where are you?”

“It’s okay, Charlie,” I say, drifting off afloat my fears.

“I can leave, Lilit, if I leave, you won’t have to see your fears.”

“Shut up, Charlie.” I breathe in. One thing I fear is being honest. “I don’t want you to leave.” I’m being honest. “Because I don’t want to be alone, that is.” I am also afraid of being alone. “I mean, I can be alone, it’s okay, but it’s better when you are around.” His beak clicks on my forehead. That’s an ostrich kiss.

 “This doesn’t help me make things perfect, though,” I go ahead with the loudest fear, the doom arching over our heads like cigarette smoke piling up below the ceiling of a suffocating nightclub. “I need to make at least one perfect thing.”

Charlie rarely sleeps, but I guess I made him sleep last night. I must have fallen asleep tucked under his wings, between his feathers, and when I wake up in the morning, I see his tiny head relaxed against the window pane. I like to sleep lying down, but maybe it’s different for an ostrich. I crawl out of his hug carefully and put a blanket on top of him. I don’t know if ostriches get cold easily, but I’d rather not risk it. Walking out of Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom, I see two guys and a girl eating breakfast and sipping coffee. They sit on the ground around a low wooden table, but when they see me coming out, they jump up, lusting Charlie’s smell.

“He’s asleep, you junkies” I say.

Neville pulls me aside to the back of The Richest Kitchen. “What is wrong with you? They are customers, be a little nice.”

“He’s asleep for once,” I murmur looking at him underneath my eyebrows. “I gotta go buy some stuff.”

I buy some white paint. A lot of white paint, actually, and light bulbs. I come back to THE SHIT where people are waiting in a line in front of the front door. They push those in the front up the stairs, against the walls and the door—it’s closed, it’s full inside, but they are still pushing. The Richest Kitchen, The Space Travels Living Room, The Music Bedroom, The Candle Bedroom, probably even Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom too, none can hold any more people, but twenty more are waiting outside to get squished in like canned fish. I push them left and right to get in and walk straight to The Nonexistent Cellar—I don’t want to hear Neville whine again about how I’m not good with the customers.

There is a bunch of trash in the Nonexistent Cellar. We call it nonexistent, but it is perfectly existent, the idea is that I’ll do something so cool with it that it will seem nonexistent. When I open the door, it creaks just like a serious old door should and reveals wet, rotting boxes stacked in rows and columns. There are torn blankets thrown on the floor, and also half a bike rests against three boxes. I step in and feel dirt sticking to my shoes. It will be a lot of work. I feel weak just like every time I begin making something. I really don’t want to touch anything in this disgusting cellar, but I do.

For hours I throw things out: I pick them up, I carry them to the street, I drop them in the dumpster. My back and my arms ache with the weight that they carry, I am sweating like a dog, but I’ve never felt this strong. For several hours I don’t think about the doom, but that’s only because Charlie’s scent is not around. If I let Charlie leave, I could stay with my fears subsided; we could all live like we lived before. I don’t understand why people keep coming to Charlie, when his scent torments them. It’s the same for me, though, every time I get close to the doom, my mind screams that it wants to get away because it’s painful, painful and impossible to make something perfect if it exists around us or in us. Which means that only The Nonexistent Cellar can be perfect.

“Charlie,” I whisper to wake him up, “Charlie, come with me.”

“Where?” his eyes search for a clue, still dizzy.

I take him by the wing and we walk into the hallway where people are eating, drinking, talking. They all stop doing whatever they are doing: no one’s seen Charlie come out of Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom. I wave my hand for people to follow us.

We walk down the stairs, and people follow in a long, snaking line. We progress slowly because the stairs are simply wide, wooden blocks nailed to the wall. It’s hard to distinguish where one ends and the next starts in this dim light, and I don’t want Charlie to break his bony leg. In an hour or two, approximately, we get to the door of The Nonexistent Cellar. People give it weird looks because I painted it white, and cellar doors are usually anything but white. Whatever, I think, and open the door.

Charlie and I walk in and lie on our backs, my head on his fluffy chest. I painted everything white—the floor, the walls, the ceiling—and put up all the light bulbs I had. Others’ bodies squish against mine, and we lie there like canned fish, but we can’t see each other: there is so much light that we only see white everywhere. We fall silent as Charlie’s smell generously envelops us all.

Nothing changes, there is nothing to perceive, so no shadows annoy us with hints that the thing could be more perfect. We don’t have memories or thoughts about the future now. The doom’s clouds of smoke can’t come in because the light disperses them even before they have formed; simple, white light can’t be made more perfect. Charlie’s feathers are on my cheek; his scent is deep into me.

A Penguin

Jeanie was in her small kitchen, making breakfast: a tuna sandwich with tomatoes on top and a big, round mug of black coffee. There was a postcard above the sink, one of those postcards with sheep saying something sweet. Her mom had given it to her when Jeanie moved out because she knew her daughter loved sheep. Her exact words had been, “The sheep will keep you company, I’m sure.” This postcard said, “There is nothing in the world I like as much as you.” There was a picture of the Earth, and the sheep listed things from around the world saying he didn’t like them because the only thing he liked was “you.” On the bottom of the Earth, there was a penguin standing upside down and shivering. There was an arrow pointing at his feet and a little note: “cold penguin feet—I don’t like.”
Jeanie laughed quietly. She read the “cold penguin feet” joke every morning, and it was still funny. She thought about her mom for a little bit and then turned to her sandwich. It was sitting on a plate, and the round mug was steaming. She carried the plate and the mug to the coffee table next to the window. Oh, breakfast could begin now.
While she was eating, Jeanie decided to focus on the air outside. She tried to see it for a while, and then a sparrow flew by. As he was flapping his little wings leisurely, he stopped in midair. He looked around, found what he was looking for in Jeanie’s window and landed on the windowsill. He lifted one skinny leg and knocked on the window twice, impatiently.
“Hello,” Jeanie said.
“Hello to you too,” the sparrow said, hopping and landing in the chair opposite Jeanie’s. “Before you have said whatever it is you are going to say, keep in mind that I am a penguin.”
“Okay, I will try to do so.” Jeanie responded. She attempted to set her buttocks in the chair again but noticed she was the only one who had a drink. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Breakfast?”
“Thank you, I had my breakfast already, but I would appreciate a cup of hot coffee. I take it white.”
“White?”
“Oh, excuse me, with milk, no sugar. This is how the English call it—white.”
“Oh.”
Jeanie set off to the kitchen to make some hot, white coffee.

Jeanie needed to set up a conversation.
“So what does being a penguin involve?” Jeanie asked more casually than she had ever asked a question before.
“Traveling long distances,” the sparrow-penguin answered thoughtfully. “It’s hard for one’s family, but it leads to success. One needs to learn how to fly for ten, sometimes fifteen hours at a time. At first it made me so exhausted that I began hallucinating. But now it’s been so long that it has become a part of my body’s adaptations; I listen to music during the whole flight, and I forget I am going to work.”
“Sounds like it’s useful,” Jeanie agreed.
“Diseases also travel long distances, a very good example being STREP throat. If left untreated, it can reach the heart and lead to a fatal end. Note, if you would be so kind, that I am not claiming it will lead to a fatal end; but it might.”
“Noted,” Jeanie nodded.
They drank their coffee, Jeanie with her mouth, the sparrow-penguin with his tiny beak.
Jeanie sighed. “Distances are annoying.”
“I could not agree more. Most of the time crossing a distance is a waste of time,” the sparrow-penguin was quite definitive in his answer.
“Especially when it comes to crossing distances between people,” Jeanie was trying to get personal.
“I obviously cannot speak about people, as I do not identify as one.”

The sparrow-penguin took a nap. When his head rested against the back of the chair, the fine feathers on his head gently changed shape to comfort the skull inside.
Jeanie played the piano a little bit. The song she could play best was called “A Perfect Indian.” It was about some quiet Indian guy who kept coming into this girl’s dreams, but she wasn’t happy about it because this was the only time he smiled at her. And not in reality, Jeanie filled in. She couldn’t really figure out what the song was about.
The sparrow-penguin’s beak moved up and down almost imperceptibly with the rhythm. When Jeanie stopped playing, he opened one eye.
“You are a mediocre pianist. This is remarkable for a person with fingers as short as yours.”
“Thanks,” Jeanie said. Something told her this was a compliment.

“Okay, but you are still a sparrow,” Jeanie observed.
“In a way, yes” the sparrow-penguin did not seem disturbed. “In your case, your forehead is big, and you are still Jeanie. But I did not say anything about that, did I?”
“You just did, of course,” Jeanie was a little offended.
“Of course,” the sparrow-penguin didn’t seem to care. After a minute or so, he added, “My wife told me I was a penguin. She is sometimes delusional. She thinks our children are penguins too. I tell them not to make fun of her because she might be delusional but she is still their mother, and an incredible mother at that.”
“So that’s why you’re a penguin. You love your wife,” Jeanie said wisely.
He shivered and let out a little cough instead of responding.
Jeanie looked at the floor for a while. When she looked up, there was no sparrow sitting in the chair. Clearly, there was a penguin sitting there, wings folded on his lap. Clearly, very clearly, a penguin.
“I wish I was a penguin too,” Jeanie said.
“I will get going,” the penguin said, standing up. “Thank you very much for the coffee, it was decent.”
“I am glad,” Jeanie responded and reluctantly opened the window. “You are welcome any time,” she shouted after the flapping penguin wings.
After the penguin left, she sobbed a little bit and then made another tuna sandwich.

Red Trees

Lately I’ve wanted sex pretty badly. It’s not a new thing for me to want sex, but I thought I had it under control this time. At first it was really hard, but then I forgot sex existed. I thought about food, classes, people, interesting questions, my parents. I walked and smiled at the sky. But then on a nice Saturday morning, I woke up. My head aching, the world spinning, I pushed away from the bed and landed on my feet. Oh, was it hard to balance! I peed in a hurry because my stomach was screaming for food. I practically ran to breakfast and chewed on some cheese while I made my real breakfast: bread, peanut butter, cheese, and many, many oranges. Why oranges? Cold, juicy, fresh oranges taste incredible against the roof of my mouth on a tough Saturday morning.
I’ve been in this new place for about a month. New country, new people, new everything. Many things are nice but still foreign. Even the thought about an ice cream back home on a sunny day brings pain in my chest. The ice cream here is also good, but the air just doesn’t smell the same.
At 2pm I was more or less better. I found myself going to basketball practice. I met the others, we started warming up. Naturally, I was watching the guy leading practice. Turned out I’d seen him before while studying. Weird, I didn’t know he would be here (Okay, I knew, but that had nothing to do with why I came to practice). He is quite a wide guy, I usually like skinnier ones. There is a warmth in his eyes saying he will not cause you harm unless you annoy him. He knows his worth.
Still, there is something so sexual about him. Maybe because he looks straight ahead or because his posture keeps an air about his body. About a minute after he starts moving across the court, I know I am attracted to him. I begin following his presence, absorbing his movements, his facial expressions, his voice. All this stirs me and tells me to act. Based on experience I say, no, sit still, don’t act different from normal, when you do, it always fucks things up. So now I am trying to be me while absorbing every scent of what he is. Shit, this is bad, and I laugh nervously under my breath. He is running, and the animal inside him starts to breathe. His arms become tense, his body moves skillfully, like a flowing river. His ass is also excellent, slightly wide. It suits him, you know it’s tight, and I can only think of how it moves forward and backward when he fucks. Oh God, I’m sorry, I missed the last set of instructions he gave.
He shows us what to do and goes to each person to tell us whether we suck. I have a question, I really do, so I ask and keep my voice steady. He attempts to touch me and correct my position; he pauses, as though waiting for approval, and I nod my head with an unconcerned expression, yeah, I don’t care. He stands behind me, holds my arms and aligns them, correcting my body posture slowly and firmly. He controls his strength, and his movements are so clean that I cannot help but admire his skill. The animal strength is evident in the veins of his muscular arms, but that doesn’t make him less warm or caring. His skin touches my skin, his thighs touch my butt, his chest touches my back.

I’m sitting in an armchair facing a huge window. I watch people walk up stairs beneath the green-red-yellow crowns of enormous trees. Red trees is all I see. I don’t know why they are so beautiful, except that they are red, but that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason. Gray squirrels seem like ants hopping about their business. I watch and sit, sit and watch, and then just sit, unable to do my work because warmth and sex are on my mind. Damn, I feel like a kid blessing each second of attention the awesome guy gives me. I don’t like that. It’s not like when I’m in love. When I’m in love, the feeling has become inherent, it is no longer a surprise that I melt away when that person is near. While in this case, with this sudden rush of anticipation, I have to remember my crush every morning: oh, that guy, yeah, and feel my insides turn in agreement. I like it, but it also annoys me. Sex is on my mind. Him having sex is on my mind. The two of us having sex is on my mind.
As I sit in my armchair, I stretch to grab my bag. I feel the muscles in my arm contract, and I smile conceitedly: I like the strength, although I know it’s actually of no use. It feels like my body is working for me and I am working for my body. I learn to accept it and work with it or make it look pretty, and I’d better because I’m not getting a new body at least until the afterlife comes about. I decide to go work out, so I go across campus. I love the narrow gray paths connecting everything to everything. Now they have yellow and red leaves all over, the gray path a canvas, and the leaves painters exposing their own bodies. I want to learn to expose myself in the same way.

This place is not home yet. Back home, I used to know tall, gray, ugly buildings staring into each others’ windows. I used to play in the parking lots between two tall buildings because a garden was too rare of an occurrence. As a small, chubby girl, I used to go up and down an enormous elephant-shaped slide, and every time I was at its top, I wondered if I would land on Earth unharmed. Some ten years later, it turned out the slide was pretty small. At that time, we drank beer from big, plastic bottles, and when we finished half the bottle, the stuff left inside tasted like pee, but we’d never have admitted it. Maybe sometime in the night we’d go up and down the slide again to make sure we weren’t too full of ourselves. Weird: going up a slide, going down a slide, going up a slide, going down a slide. It’s quite pointless.
I used to know illuminated night streets after a disgustingly hot day, after a light rain, or in a snowy fog. These night streets flash softly with their shop signs, their street lamps, their reflections of car lights, while a car rolls along them, pushing the concrete back into the ground with its weight. Along these streets I’ve ran to catch the bus, I’ve walked with someone or with an endless pack of people, I’ve walked alone with my music or the city noise. In these streets, I found out what spring sun means, and I learned how slippery mud takes you to the ground. The mixture of old and new buildings never managed to be beautiful, but it did get under your skin. I could look at it and wonder why anyone would ever create it, but then it turned out I liked it. It’s like when my little brother helps me reach new levels of annoyance, but when I shout at him to leave and I see the door close behind his tiny back, I instantly call out to him to get back here.

At the new place, I could still find some rusty buildings and illuminated streets if I need them that badly. I’m sure I could also find someone to annoy me, but I doubt he’ll be as skilled as my brother. So I go on to more mundane items. Oh, yeah, that guy. I don’t like being pushed around by my own romantic whims, so I try to make the desire for him disappear. It doesn’t really, I still want to see him naked and hard, and he sends my blood spinning whenever he is near me, but I want to be happy just because he is somewhere there, doing his own things. It’s tough, I’m not going to pretend it isn’t, because I still admire his flowing movements, his skillful strength… damn it, I should just take a shower and make myself happy.

But, a friend exclaims, “What is wrong with the world? Seriously, red trees! What the fuck is wrong with this world?!”
I shift one step to the side and the sun appears, blinding me, in between the thousands of leaves. The tree is not brown and gray anymore, it is bright red, almost orange. I stand directly below the branches with my eyes fixed on the leaves. They sail upon the wind, and I look. My hands in my pockets, I teach my eyes to drink, in and in.
Well, what can I do. He’s a nice guy, I’ll wait for the whole love thing to go away and then I’ll tell him, hey, do you know I had a crush on you? He will say, whatttt???? and we’ll laugh about it.
It’s not painful anymore to be in a new place and not in the old one, it’s just a matter of habit. When I arrived, my bed was stiff, but a few nights later it began to show mercy. My balance began to fall into place. Tonight I am walking out of a building, and I stop. At first, I don’t know why I stopped, but the moment whispers to me, see, that’s why. In front of me this new land is revealing itself. Its grass is black in its sleep, and the concrete paths flow like silver rivers. Each silver river bounces off of another silver river like a ball on a pool table. I attempt to take a picture, but I can’t find any resemblance between what my eyes register and what the camera registers. That’s right, this same tale will never unravel itself in the same way, but that’s how everything works. I walk away to my dorm with the beige walls that carry the marks left by many others before me. I smile as wide as my mouth allows me. I say bye to the red trees. Their crowns are hunched over in their sleep like babies snuggling under their pillows. I’ll go now, but tomorrow I’ll come here again to smile some more.

The House on San Stefano 6

The house was amazing, one of those which you see and immediately know they have a spot in your heart. There was a shadow over it, and the garden was abandoned just like the one in The Secret Garden. A tree was growing in the middle of the staircase, the branches got in the way of the eyes just like when I have a smudge on my glasses. I can’t help but think that if we had stepped on the grass, the branches would have moved and lashed us back just like in Sleeping Beauty the branches didn’t let the prince get near the castle with the princess.
The color of the house was peeling off elegantly, it’s that disgusting orange-pink, but when it’s in the shadow, you don’t notice it. The windows looked like they would calmly open and close in unison with the wind. The central gate opened slowly, attentively completing a duty, but unable to stop those foreign hands: numerous Nestea bottles and bleached cigarette packs marked the time of this mini-jungle, fifty years ago a luxurious residence house, in central Sofia. There are some weird scars, for example security stickers, oddly out of place but deemed necessary. The whole thing is an anachronism that burns across your eyes. No one is surprised when others also come to a halt next to the fence with a lack of comprehension.
I want to go there at night. There’s a gate that lets cars in or, with a bit of imagination, carriages. It opens readily and even stays ajar to see who might dare come in. Who knows what’s inside—junkies, prostitutes, vagrants, mafia, concentration camp, demons? I feel Ryuk is watching over this disintegrating splendor because every experiment with humans he’s designed has been beautiful. Again he’s showing off a wide smile with pointed teeth and he’s chomping on an apple. See ya, man.



Ryuk:

ON SEX AND BEING FREE

ON SEX AND BEING FREE

“Aren’t there any bitches to fuck OUT HEREEEE??”
The shout was still bumping off walls with their creamy color peeling off. No answer came, so the guy walked down the corridor to make sure he hadn’t missed a girl shyly opening her door. No such sight shone before his eyes, so he slowed down and wished he hadn’t left the party upstairs because there might have been some alcohol left.
A door opened several meters ahead of him. A girl in a wide T-shirt came out with no pants underneath, her hair messy, reaching little below her ears, and her reading glasses giving her a scrutinizing (and sleepy) look. She inspected him as though sending an x-ray beam from top to bottom, made a few steps, took him by the hand without smiling, and closed the door of her room behind their backs.
Her roommate was out, but there was also little evidence of her living there. Maybe she had a boyfriend who tucked her into bed under the sheets next to him, so she didn’t have live in her own dorm. But she hadn’t even made an effort to make a comfortable space in this room; the girl in the wide T-shirt didn’t appear too disappointed.
The girl lifted a laptop and a book from her bed, placed them on her desk, and removed her glasses. She bent over to look for something beneath her bed. A box of condoms emerged, and she left one at an arm’s reach. She turned to the guy--he was the only article not in place yet. This time she didn’t take him by the hand but sat on her bed alone. He looked as though mesmerized or simply bored by the feeling that he was about to fulfill a duty he had chosen himself, the pleasure already cut down by half; or increased by the fact that she honestly wanted him? He pressed on top of her and attempted to stick a kiss on her lips, but she craftily turned her head right, so that the saliva on his tongue ended up on her neck. He mechanically spent a minute and a half getting her ready for what was about to follow, and she patiently endured it all. Luckily, her pussy was quite obliging and moistened readily. He entered it, rubbed it, scratched it—satisfied it for a day or two. He didn’t enter her; it wasn’t his fault, it was the circumstances’. Two bodies of human beings making a favor to each other. Their minds brushed against each other but each knew better than to try and make some contact with the other. Would there be a way, in theory, for two minds like these to fall in love only after bumping against each other like this? Love at first sight is a rumored phenomenon, but it is said to happen when the two keep their distance and don’t show any belonging to the other. While sex, no matter how much modern time tries to twist it, brings an immediate connection that marks the two who shaped a memory together. It’s interesting how extreme opinions can be here. Whether sex is so intimate that you have to do it only with someone you care about, or love (this one’s considered old, but it’s surprising how many people still stick to it), whether it can be a pleasure for you by yourself, so you can be engulfed in your own sensations and label as ‘one’s own business’ whatever the other person feels, or whether sex is an independent and only slightly dependent thing you have with someone: a web of two intertwined human bodies that very well realize their own solitude and make a temporary favor to each other. It comes out of a little desire to smile at someone in a similar position like yourself, not as much as to help him but to comfort him for a split second. It seems more beautiful to me if the guy sees it that way, and, surprisingly, that happens often: the more a guy is used to fucking a girl just this once or a few more times, the nicer he is to the next girly faces that fly by him. About girls I got no idea; I dare say they are more selfish, they know they appear more sensitive and when they are not hurt, they use the stereotype to fight against an innocent (on this occasion) guy and try to make him shed some blood. I might be too tough on girls though; they do eat the Big One often enough (I hope guys eat it as often too).
Sooo, I was wondering whether those two who had sex so suddenly and so silently could have fallen for each other after this one night maybe precisely because they were so free and so candid. After they decided (without shedding a word) that they were finished, she lay on her back ready to drift off to her unclear, distressful, curious dreams, but he attempted a hug: a purely warm, human, I-just-had-an-orgasm-inside-of-you hug. She didn’t protest but didn’t reply either. He was the one who had sought refuge by hugging her, even though so slightly and unobtrusively. Therefore, she had the right to just sigh, feel more independent than him but leave his bodily warmth on her left breast, on the left side of the tummy, on her left leg. Her pussy hummed softly to the rest of the body with a trace of satisfaction. Her mind drifted off to a field of interconnections hopping one over the other, unknown faces resembling known characters, a sun, a textbook, a wallet, a llama. The fact that she couldn’t place each one precisely in a precise row of her table with sensations (because it was a dream-like thing) freaked her out. Before her heart could leap again with curiosity and fear at the edge of a mind which she recognized but could not control, zzzzzz.
In the morning, she looked with thanks and scorn at the body beside her. She went to the bathroom, peed, brushed her teeth, took a shower, and dried her skin with a towel. When she went back in the room to choose some clothes, the male body explored her body only with his gaze this time. It took him a fraction of a second to recall last night’s ending. She gave him an innocent, understanding smile.