Chapter 1
I've decided to start writing this "book" on an old abandoned bull-dozer. It is sickly piss yellow. The kind of piss that smells while it is coming out. The leather seat is eaten away by weather and hungry squirrels. The seat somewhat reminds me of a turkey carcass after Thanksgiving dinner. The locks concealing the gas tank are rusted to the point of nothingness. Abandoned spider-webs shine and reflect the sun and make pretty colors. Apparently, the bulldozer is not even fitting for an arachnid. Ironically, I find it to be just fine for me. I plant my pooper on the grungy hood, sure that when I stand back up my anus will be covered in paint chips.
I look to the road, where a guy whips around on a go-kart. He looks so cocky as the engine sputs out a few blobs of black smoke. I just learned that means the engine is burning oil. I think to myself how funny it would be if he crashed and the car exploded. I could just imagine the entire scenario. The driver's arms and legs would be flying through the air, followed by a drizzle of bloody rain. The smell of burning flesh could be smelled from a mile away. Some of the neighbors would come out to see what happened. Eventually someone would call 9-1-1. Maybe no one would come out. Maybe everyone in this neighborhood is used to exploding sounds. It would probably keep my attention for a few minutes as I watch the burning debre.
The neighbor, next door to the bulldozer, comes home. He glances at me and then does a double take. He doesn't bother to hide that he is staring at me. He gives me a dirty look and walks inside his garage. I know he is just jealous because I have hair. He comes back out and grins at me in a sarcastic and disapproving maner. I think to myself how he will spend the rest of his life trying to climb the corporate ladder. He'll work all day and come home to eat and figure out the bills he has to pay. Then, he'll sleep and do it all again the next day. He'll work until he can retire, by then he'll be old and crusty. He'll enjoy a few years of retirement and then die. Knowing this, I laugh in my head and smile back. I mutter, "Screw you" under my breath and continue writing. This is my life.
CHAPTER 1
The players:
Richie
This is me. My favorite color is green. I prefer argyle over plaid. I spend much of my time trying to save the world from ignorance. When I'm not playing super-man, You can usually find me philosiphying. For some reason I am destined to get rid of everything good in my life, and ruin as much of it as I can. When I look in the mirror, I never look at my face. I only admire my hair and then walk away. Someday the me on the other side of the mirror will show me for who I really am. I think I look like a leprechan and I'm proud of it. If I could pick one thing I thought bothered my friends most about me is, it would probably be the fact that my mind does not work normally. If I could pick the thing my friends enjoy most about me, it would be the fact that my mind does not work properly. I have a list longer than my femur of all my idiosyncracies. One of my main issues is how I cannot look anyone in the eye. If my eyes happen to come in contact with yours, you'll notice it will quickly scatter to some other object. I am definately afraid of eye contact, so deal with it. I'm the kind of kid who will break into your house to smell your fabric softener. I'm the kind of kid who doesn't know what he thinks or wants a lot of the time. I rarely show emotions on the outside, except for happiness. The world is better off that way. I'm the kind of kid who accidentally pisses on his hand and then gets his man-meat caught in his zipper. This is my life.
Lauren
I've known her all of my life, so far. Her house is one hundred yards from the bulldozer. I decide to go over and hang with her while I write this segment. Upon walking over, I realized the longer you know someone, the less you have to say about them. This is because words cannot describe the feelings of such a long bond. I usually ring her bell and she comes to the door. She first looks at my feet and then her eyes travel to my face. We stand in silence. I usually brake the silence with some sort of unorthodox movement as I shove the door aside. I head straight for her food closet to apprehend some crackers and/or Doritos. A liquid beverage is removed from her refridgerator as I sprawl out on her couch. I watch her tap away on her computer while eating her food. At times we can go hours without speaking. When you know someone long enough, you don't have to say a lot to them.The silence between us is never uncomfortable. When you know someone long enough, silence is not empty. Rather, it is filled with warmth. it is the kind of silence when someone is sleeping on your shoulder and you breathe quietly, as not to wake them. I take ths silence in through my lungs and it falls to my stomache in a soothing liquid form. As I watch her, she clicks a pen in her mouth with her tongue. I look around and inhale another moment. Usually her clothes are strewn about, mixed with crumbs and papers. She doesn't bother to hide the mess, after all....it's me. She plots in her mind how she can steal the notebook I'm rapidly writing in. I know that at any moment she is going to lunge at me. I just have to wait for the crooked grin. She flashes the smile and then attacks. She lunges towards me as I embrace the notebook, which is now the point of all of her attention. She sits back down and shoots the pen out of her mouth at me. I did not predict that. She is not always predictable. The Bouncing Souls spew from the low-watt speakers on the side of her computer. She excidedly repeats, "I love the Bouncing Souls!" Sometimes the smallest things can over excite her, like waffles. Lauren is the kind of girl who is afraid of the telephone, along with long term relationships. The phone rings, she ignores it. I sip my iced tea as she inches toward me. She grasps a chunk of my hair and calls me a "dirtbag". This...this is my life.
Sio
To sum up Siobahn Schell in one word, I'd say, "superior." Why? Figure it out fools. I stand about one or two inches taller than her when she's wearing those cool lime green Chuck- T's. Her hair, short and her eyes deep with stars. She shops the thrift store, and buys kids clothes, child medium or sometimes small. The sleeves three inches from her wrist and the shirt tight enough to be a turniquette. Somehow it looks perfectly natural. Her voice is unmistakably hers. I tell her she looks and sounds like a munchkin. I can't tell if she hates it or loves to hate it. Most of the time we spend together is consisted of beating the crap out of each other. I love it. Sometimes I'll push her cheeks together with my palms so her lips resemble those of a fish. I look into her eyes for a brief moment, long enough to realize how much I want to kiss her 'munchkin' face. We rarely, if never kiss. Neither of us is prude or crap like that. It's just people are always around. To me kissing in front of people is like picking your nose. Everyone knows you do it, but it is still artless to do it in public. Sio is the kind of girl who likes to play my immature games. At a concert we found out the floor was slippery, so we took advantage of it. We'd run and then slide down the whole thing, shoving people out of the way and screaming like fools. She's a fun kid. Sio is the kind of girl who enjoys seeing me do foolish things. She tells me to follow the kid with the baby blue velor sweatpants and stroke the material. I go willingly, as long as it makes her smile. She has great ideas that never involve her, rather me doing some deed that will cause misfortune to myself. I always agree and go willingly. As long as it makes her smile. Some day we'll act like we're going out. This...is my life.
Joe
Joe is a tall lanky kid who likes great music. Big words hurt his brain. I think of him as one of my apprentices. I am slowly teaching him my ways. His feet look like skis, he is like size 2349539, or not. Not a lot can be said about Joe because he is rarely serious. He's a pretty good artist and he always says the funniest things at the wrong time. Joe does not understand the ladies at all. Some day he will get it down. Until then, he'll be the Joe I know and love, not corrupted by romance. This is my life, including Joe.
I was sitting in a bathroom unknown to me. It didn't matter anymore. It was either fear or relief. I chose relief. I sat on the toilet with every muscle relaxed. I felt a brown snake slither out of my anal orphis. With a quick *plop* I knew it had fallen to its death. A sigh of relief exits my nostrils. I looked in the porcelain bowl to view the toilet fish, but it disappeared into the flusher hole. With a feeling of dissatisfaction I close one eye and try to squeeze another out. Every time I inhale, I fight back the tears caused by the rancid air. Another snake tries to make its way out. It creeps slowly, then suddenly stops. Both my eyes open wide and I suddenly feel very nervous. It was stuck. I shook my turd maker left and right trying to expel this brown beast. Stubbornly, the snake held on so tightly. I thought maybe I could use some toilet tissue to brush it free. I looked to my right to see there is no toilet paper left. I was stranded, alone, in a bathroom not my own, and with no toilet paper. I knew someday this would happen. Then I hear it. Everyone and their mother are standing outside the bathroom door, laughing. They did not see but somehow they knew what had happened. Surely I'd die here. They will find my corpse, sitting on the toilet, with a petrified brown loaf stuck in between my decomposing butt cheeks. I knew it would end like this.
I woke up. Sweat beaded on my forehead and a cold chill ran down my spine. Eye boogers are making opening my eyes a painful chore. I ran to the bathroom to make sure it was just a dream. Happy to be awake, I realized that was obviously a sign of things to come today.
The rest of the day dragged on like a traveling salesman with no legs. The halls were filled with people who were doomed to lives of tragic disgrace. I knew that in ten years I would see these dirtbags working at such places as Wal-mart, Mcdonald's, and maybe even the gas station. The hallway air is polluted with curse words, bad grammar, sentence fragments and ebonics. I hear my name screamed through the crowd, but I'm too lazy to turn around. Some kid walks up to me and tells me my clothes are "gay." As he walks away, he proceeds to tell his friend about how he went tanning the other day. Sudenly, I felt a very bad vibe all around me. Then I saw it. The janitor's closet door burst open and a gang of Amish people came pouring out. Their beards looked extremely threatening and unclean. They were weilding gardening tools and they were running straight for me. I tried to escape, but to no avail. One of them, I think Zebabdiah, tripped me with a shovel. I fell to the ground helplessly as they kicked me in the stomach and took my money. They went through my book-bag and took my geometry homework. With one last punt to my stomach, they decided to flee. They hopped into their get-away horse and buggy and rode off into the distance. Laying on the ground bleeding, I thought about how my geometry teacher would never believe Amish people took my homework. I decided I'd just tell her my dog ate it.
I came in my english class moments after I recovered from my mugging. I sat down oblivious to the world. I was in my own world. The kind of world where old people are doing the jitter-bug while poodles sing karaokee. Yeah, it it my place. I am ripped out of my world and thrown back into reality as the girl next to me decides to interrogate me about my life.
"Where do you get your clothes?"
"Where do you get yours?", I reply
"The mall, but how do you get your hair like that?"
"I never wash it, and there's glue in it so it never comes out.", I reply once more.
She makes a face like she just smelled sulfur and shakes her head disapprovingly as she says, "That's digusting."
I think to myself. I am outraged at her ignorance. For one thing, she believed me. Another, she does more disguting things all the time. Does she know what is in her make-up, that is caked on her face? She uses tampons, a concept which I never really understood. Aren't you bleeding to get rid of something? So by shoving a wad of bleached material into your Vee-Gee, aren't you stopping a healthy occurence? It is a cosmetic need. They call them sanitation napkins, but how sanitary are they really? I guess I got off topic. She brags about sleeping with guys twice her age with no shame. She is definately a walking STD.
They rest of the day passed and the bus ride home was hell. The bus smelled like a fat man sitting in a sauna, wearing sweatpants, not wearing deodorant, and eating garlic soup. All of the black kids sit in the back because it's "cool." I just don't understand, their anscestors fought so hard to get out of the back of the bus and now they sit there freely. They have no respect. Finally my stop arrives and I run to the doors. On my way out, my hair grazes the top of the doorway just enough to cause pain to my scalp. I quickly run towards my house because I had to pee. On my way to my door-step I slipped on a steaming pile of dog crap and fell in the wet grass. Now I was soggy, I smelled like fecal matter, and I had to piss.
After I finally got inside and drained my bladder, I decided to sleep for the rest of the day. Hopefully tomorrow won't hurt so much. I feel my eyelids growing heavy as the world around me goes out of focus. My breathing becomes steady and I am officially unconscious.
Waking up the next moringing to the sound of the static on my radio. I set it to a station that doesn't exist. I figure the static is better than any music they play on this wretched machine anyway. I realize I slept in my clothes and I remove them and put on some clothes radomly laying on my floor. My pants sort of smell like bannanas and popcorn. I don't have to put my mohawk up because I forgot to shower last night. Somehow hours slip through my fingers and I have to run to catch my bus.
Another day passed. Same toilet, just different crap. Sio came home on the bus with me and Lauren. On the ride I bothered Sio the whole time, trying to pick her nose and poke her in the eye. Lauren was looking out the window. I could tell she had gone to the place inside her mind. A land, I imagine, that is filled with dying trees and cloudy skies. There are probably monochromatic people with no expression wandering aimlessly in this place. She hasn't been the same lately. I think she's bored and frustrated with this fecal matter we call "life". We get off the bus and it is a gloomy day. We go our seperate ways.
I came home and headed for my stereo. I threw in a cd and turned on the computer. moments later, Joe was at my door. We really had nothing to do since it was raining, so we went to Laurens house. When we got there, I pressed my face on the window and made a cloud of condensation with my breath. Sio answered the door because Lauren was in the shower. One thing lead to another, and next thing you know, we're playing the "steal Sio's shoe game". We tossed the shoes around over Sio's head and hid them in the microwave. She would find them and then I'd take them from her hand. She would bite me and I would pretend I did not feel the burning pain in my flesh. I bit her back, grabbed her ankles and threw her over my shoulder. This was just enough time for Lauren to steal her laces. Eventually we got bored and gave Sio her shoes back. We decided to go to my house. To make a boring day short, Lauren and Sio left because me and Joe had to eat chinese food. They were vegitarians, so they had no business there anymore. I tried to teach Joe some of my Philosophical theories, but I could see the smoke from his brain. We spent a lot of time arguimg about my perception theory. It was funny because he didn't even understand it, but he still argued. After Joe left, I realized how segregated from the world I really was.
I can be sitting in a room full of my friends and still feel like I have nobody. I have yet to meet a person who even comes close to understanding all of my thoughts. I put on a ska song and wallow in my self pity, alone. I read the newspaper to find out that someone has beaten three exotic birds to death at the zoo. Citizens of my town are enraged. So many people wanted to catch these bird killers that the reward was huge for any information leading to the wherabouts of the criminals. I scratch my head. Why is it that we feel no guilt for killing tons of people in war, but feel such empathy for birds? I turn the page to find out a man who killed his pregnant wife will be charged with two charges of murder, if he is proven guilty. The court decided that the pre-born baby's death counted as the murder of a human being. Not only this, but a new law is being signed that murderers of pregnant women will be charged with two charges of murder. Yet abortion is still legal. I think to myself how society is perfectly fine with the double standards in the system as long as it is convienient to them. Fed up with the world I turn up my ska music and I lay face down on the floor, alone. This is my life, sadly.
