So, yes, yet again, I was at the damn public library trying to get some writing done. If you are familiar with my other library rants, you’ll know I always seem to run into some kind of trouble or annoying distraction at my local library.
Well today was no different as some miniature Ralph Malph mofo from the Happy Days universe in Milwaukee appears out of nowhere and starts talking to me. I’m sitting there all alone at a private booth with ear buds on, minding my own business, listening to music of high vibration and positive energy, and typing away at my laptop. I give him a perturbed look, remove my ear buds and say “What?”
He starts in on how’s he’s selling books to raise money for something or whatever, I really didn’t catch that part because he was talking so damn fast, and he starts showing them to me and they’re all books about God and living a godly life and going to church and having abundant joy and so on and so on… And then he had a book about Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., too, and I was like “You know he was all about civil rights and equality for all people and an admirer of Gandhi.” And the kid was like, “Yeah, of course I know that… He was also a Baptist minister and had a strong Christian faith so that kind of cancels out the other things.”
As soon as he went on talking, I put up a hand and said, “I’m really not interested.” He gave me a butt hurt look and immediately walked away mumbling something about me being a “Jerk who lacks true faith.”
I had initially heard the boy, who sounded like a girl, talking to someone else in the booth behind me and I seriously thought he was giving an oral book report to a teacher or something but then he just kept dropping the word God and so I thought maybe he was a student at a religious school. Nope. He was trying to sell religious books to people in the public library. Has the whole separation of church and state thing just gone completely out the window?
How the fuck is this allowed? I guarantee if some kid was running around the public library trying to sell Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim texts, people would lose their minds — kind of like how Al Pacino does when he sees a cantaloupe.
Now, the kid can sell religious books out his ass if he wants, I have no problem with that, but at least do it in the proper forum. And I guess I can’t completely blame the kid because there is probably some oblivious nut-job adult behind the whole scheme. Yeah! Sure! It’s a library. The library has books. What a perfect place to try and sell books! I don’t know. Maybe during a book sale? Outside? I surely don’t appreciate someone coming up to me while I am trying to get some work done for my heartfelt, yet edgy and subversive literary website, and push religious books on me. I don’t go to his church on Sundays and try to drum up followers for cerealaftersex.com. Are you kidding? They’d have me sent directly to hell without passing GO. And all without reading one word of my work. Kind of like passing judgment without reading the Bible. That’s called a zinger.
Now, you’ll have to forgive me if I am coming off as a bit harsh today, but it’s not been the best day. I have chemical imbalance issues that no one has really figured out the proper remedy for and so I have days where I lose my shit, get dark and withdrawn, and am generally not very pleasant to be around. I’m also upset about not being very successful. That’s really been buggin’ me lately. I may end up working in the sporting goods section at WalMart next week. No offense if you work in the sporting goods section at a WalMart. It was the first thing that came to me.
Anyways, I’m all about equal rights and religious liberty and all that jazz. If that’s what you believe and the way you want to live, fine, have at it, but don’t try to push it off on me, especially when I’m writing bitchy op-ed pieces at the public library. So, there you go mini Ralph Malph, go be giddy about God and sell your books until you’re heavenly blue in the face, just do it somewhere else.
And even though I shot him down like an autumn mallard dancing in a blue sky, at least the kid probably has a bright future in missionary work… come to think of it, so do I.
Feldon Fartz sat nervously in the waiting area of the glossy Fifth Avenue Doll Salon. It smelled like makeup and money and there were a lot of people moving around and phones ringing.
His dress clothes were too tight, and he was squirming like a galactic worm under the sun after a rock was upturned. He ran a finger inside his collar in an effort to loosen it. He felt like he was being strangled by society.
His thin and perfectly manicured fingertips were gently strumming the cover of his portfolio, a portfolio of few accomplishments. He wet his miniature lips with his snake-like tongue, cleared his throat, and pinched at his eyes. He was being impatient. He was tired and restless. His sleep lately had been unsettled.
He had very feminine features for a man. His face was clean-shaven and baby-butt smooth, his nose was thin and slightly pointed, as was his jawline. The color of his skin was peachy, but he had rosy cheeks. His red hair was split in the middle and went down both sides of his slightly elongated head to just the tops of his ears. He resembled a soft-muscled prince from a magical kingdom as he sat there so at odds with the world, but in fact, he was some sort of a regular man, a real man, one who longed to do great things.
Feldon had pale blue eyes, and the rusty lashes were soft and upturned. He fluttered his lids like a butterfly toward the woman sitting across from him and he asked her, “Are you interviewing for the position, too?” His voice was quiet and soft, like a feathery pillow in the dead of night.
The woman looked up at him and smiled slightly. He could tell she was a bit annoyed by his intrusion. “Yes,” she answered him, and then she tried to look away but really couldn’t. He was just so strikingly odd.
A door suddenly opened, and a sharp-dressed black woman stepped out. She was very sparkly. “Feldon?” She looked down at a piece of paper and paused. “Fartz?”
Feldon raised a finger and smiled. “That’s me,” he said, and he stood up and followed her. As he went by the woman who was in the waiting area with him, he gently tapped her on the arm and whispered, “Good luck.”
The interviewer led him down a short hallway and into a small, brightly lit office of glass. She directed him to sit down. He immediately leaned forward and gently tapped his finger on her desk.
“Actually misses, my name is pronounced Fairtz. Like, say, the county fair, but with the letters t and z at the end.”
The interviewer put on her glasses and glanced over his resume, troubled by her mistake. “Oh. I see. My apologies, Mr… Fairtz.”
Feldon leaned back in the chair and playfully waved his hand at her. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone gets it wrong.”
“That must get very annoying at times,” she said with a feigned smile.
“It did annoy me, but now I’m just so used to it I kind of have to just laugh it off.” Feldon chuckled oddly, and then he felt her staring at him strangely. He could sense she knew he was lying. He hated his name, and the ridicule he’s endured forever.
“Have you ever just considered changing the spelling of your name to reflect its pronunciation?”
Feldon stared at her, dumbfounded, lost in space. Pondering the ridiculous question, once again.
“No,” he answered a few moments later. “I shouldn’t be forced to change the spelling of my name just because the rest of the world sucks.”
The woman was uncomfortably silent, cleared her throat and went on with the interview.
“I have to say,” the woman began. “I really wasn’t expecting any male applicants for this type of job. You do understand this is a position for someone to provide beauty salon services to our clients’ dolls, don’t you?”
“Yes mam. And I do hope you understand that you cannot discriminate against me based solely on my gender.”
The woman glared at him from across the desk, then smiled seriously. “Yes. I’m quite aware of fair hiring practices.”
“And I’m not gay, either, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No, of course not, that has nothing to do with anything, but…”
“I like to plow the feminine fields of love just as much as the next guy — if you know what I mean.” Feldon winked at her.
“Let’s just try to get back on track with the interview, Mr. Fairtz… As I was saying, and I mean this in no way to reflect a preference between male or female applicants, but this position has traditionally been filled by women and I am rather curious why you feel you would be a good fit for us in this type of environment.”
Feldon straightened himself in the chair, cleared his throat softly, and tried to remember what he had practiced in his bathroom mirror the night before.
“Well,” he began. “I enjoy beauty. All kinds of beauty — whether it be a sunset or a flower or even a doll. I feel like there is enough ugliness in the world, too much ugliness in fact, and I just want to be part of a team that adds a little sweet frosting to the beautiful birthday cake of life.”
The woman leaned forward and smiled again. “You do have a very intriguing attitude, Mr. Fairtz, but what about the skills and past work experience you have listed here on your resume? Tell me more about that.”
“Yes mam.”
“You can call me Shirley.”
Feldon smiled and chuckled again. “Surely Shirley. As you obviously have seen, I have worked in a real salon with real people as a shampoo agent. I very much enjoyed that feeling of soapy hair all over my fingers. The clients always raved about my scalp massages, too. It was all very exhilarating.”
“And may I ask why you left there if it was so exhilarating?” Shirley glanced at his resume again and then back at him over the top edges of her thick glasses. “It looks like you weren’t there for very long.”
Feldon shifted uncomfortably. “Well. There was a misunderstanding with a client. Someone claimed that I purposely got shampoo in their eyes… Which is a complete lie. I did no such thing. I believe the real reason they let me go is that the other employees felt threatened by my advanced skills.”
Shirley stared at him like a pondering stone. “Hmm. I see.” She scribbled something down. “And what about your position at Sahara’s Department Store? It says here you were the senior mannequin manager.”
Feldon touched the tip of his long, pointed nose with a finger and then pointed at her with a finger on his other hand. “Bingo,” he said, and he chuckled. “I mean… Yes. That’s correct.”
“And which of these two positions do you feel suited you the best?”
Shirley feigned another laugh, put her elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “Mr. Fairtz, the details of the job are quite rudimentary, and of course we’ll train you on exactly how we want things done around here. The challenges in this position come from the reality that despite the fact you will be working with dolls, those dolls belong to real people, very serious real people. We do cater to a very upscale clientele, and what may seem frivolous and grossly shallow and unnecessary to most, is very important to the people we serve. I guess the bottom line is, Mr. Fairtz, is that even though the dolls don’t talk back, the moms and daughters, and believe it or not, a few of the fathers and sons, do. I’ll be blunt. People can be very particular and demanding about these things. How do you think you will handle that kind of pressure?”
Feldon looked up to the ceiling and thought hard to himself. Then he smiled and looked back at Shirley. “With the upmost dignity and giggly delight,” he answered.
She beamed at him and scribbled another note. “That’s an excellent answer, Feldon.”
“Thank you. Did I get the job?”
“Um, well. We’re not quite through yet. You seemed to have really enjoyed working as a mannequin manager, so, I’m curious as to why you left that position.”
Feldon fidgeted nervously again. “I guess you could say I had a disagreement with management.”
“Really? Tell me about it.”
“They felt I was spending way too much time prepping the mannequins for the sales floor. I took my job seriously but apparently they thought I was overly consumed with the details.”
“That’s odd,” Shirley said. “Usually, employers are thrilled to have someone who pays attention to details. I know I am.”
“Right. That’s how I felt, but instead they just wanted me to get the mannequins churned out as fast as possible to drive sales. That’s all they cared about. They didn’t care about the time and pride I put into it. Those assholes only cared about profit. I just can’t be rushed like that when I’m really into my work.”
“I appreciate your straightforward honesty.”
“Sure. Did I get the job?”
“Well, I do have some other applicants to interview. And I’ll have to check your references, of course. But I do like you for some strange reason. I really do like you.”
She stood up and extended her hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Feldon. We’ll be in touch.”
The Linguini Ballroom is a black and blue champagne glass the bubbles being elevators to space the crystal reflections being the light the people spinning lovely my heart-wrenching demise — the parquet floor of time is a long-bedazzled square of lines and rituals carved in it greasy secret codes and polished roadmaps to secrets and sand one must step lightly on the floor for it is slick and one could slip spilling their brains all over the barn — I had to get outside the Linguini Ballroom sit on a bench smoke some rope try to get my heart to stop beating it’s wrinkling my roughshod tux looking like my little green jeans muddy and torn as I spun like a wheel on the oceanside roundabout years ago… Before the wind dragged me back inside the Linguini Ballroom and the liquid slide and the rhythm of the jazz is all hyped up and pounding the feet are all slapping the floor dreary teeth are spitting limbs are making me dizzy, the way they spin is so criminal and I pound my fists against the gold, velour wallpaper and it’s soft like cloth and no one can hear me begging to escape from the madness of the Linguini Ballroom — and a cold mountain of snow crowned by a ring of trees comes to my aid ever so suddenly and it’s depression on snowshoes looking for an ice spear to shed a tear across blue-black veins freezing and down the hill rests a little town and the sign says Damnation and it’s straight to the whiskey bar I go like Jim and family portraits are nothing but piss and winter sweat and I drown in the rollback stitches tearing down my spine… And someone taps my bowed head seems I’m back at the phone booth cradled behind the glass to keep the mad steps away swirling lavishly beneath bee lights of the Linguini Ballroom dripping cancer and JFK — eyes drooped so low I push the doors aside and take my stride to the gun cabinet tucked neatly back in the Linguini Ballroom vault reach out for a magnum sunflower a golden crown of velvet peace take my stance on the mossy drawbridge and blow all the wishes from the stage, to send the spores to Heaven’s edge.
He watched her from the safety of a window inside as Gracelyn poked at the worn strip of earth below the swing with the tip of a shoe. She slowly swayed in the cool air of the playground, oblivious. Her thoughts were listless, yet on fire. She gazed into the emptiness around her and then bit into a hard apple she had plucked from a tree near the schoolyard. It tasted too sour in her mouth, and she threw it.
Astron Puffin turned away from the window and went to stand before the corkboard in the art classroom where he admired Gracelyn’s crayon drawing of her pastoral life. His eyes slowly scanned every sloppy detail — the clear-blue sky that was too blue, the camel hump green hills that lacked realistic detail, the crooked house in the middle of a field, the lake that was unnaturally circular, the red lighthouse she left structurally unsound.
He smiled and laughed to himself. Then he reached out, tugged the drawing away from its place beneath the pin, folded it, and stuffed it into his pants pocket before going outside.
He walked boldly to the playground, her back turned to him as she floated in the air atop the swing. He said nothing when his hands grabbed the chains and drew her back like an arrow on a bow. She screamed when the hands released her, and she shot forward. When she swung back, the hands pushed against her lower back, and she swung forward again. She struggled to twist around to see who it was. Then again, the hands pushed against her back with more force than before.
“Stop!” she cried out. And again, the hands pushed against her when she swung back, but this time, Gracelyn jumped off before going too high.
“What are you doing!?” she screamed out, tangled up in a cloud of dust on the ground.
Astron Puffin was startled by her reaction. “I was just giving you a push. You looked sad. I thought that you might like to go high on the swing.”
“You scared me half to death!”
“I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t sneak up on somebody like that… It’s unsettling.”
“I’m sorry,” Astron repeated. “I didn’t mean to unsettle you. I thought we could be friends… It’s such a lonely place, don’t you think?”
Gracelyn huffed in frustration as she got up and brushed the dirt away. “Why are you still here?” she wanted to know, stern in her tone. “Why do you keep following me? Can’t you just leave me alone!?”
Astron froze for a moment. He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t answer her — no thought that made sense came to his mind quick enough.
“Well!?” Gracelyn demanded.
He turned away from her and ran off.
“Wait!” Gracelyn called after him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” Then she watched him get smaller on the horizon until his body completely vanished beyond the edge of the dark woods.
Gracelyn meandered as she rode her bike back home from school. She looked up at the sky. The sunlight was dying earlier every day now. Summer was over for good, and the Earth was moving toward autumn. “At least in this part of what’s left of the world,” Gracelyn reminded herself. She slowly shook her head. “I’m getting very bad at talking to myself. I should find myself a doctor of the mind.” She laughed at the absurdity of that thought.
When she got back to the big white farmhouse she called home, she lazily dropped her bike in the yard, scrambled up the steps and went inside. She immediately locked the door behind her and went around the house lighting a cathedral’s worth of candles. Moses came out of his hiding place, twisted around her legs, and demanded to be fed by means of loud, repetitive meows.
“All right, all right. At least let me catch my breath and get situated,” she said to him. Then something caught the attention of her mind, like an invisible tapping on the shoulder, and she slowly walked around the house to investigate the feeling. Gracelyn carried an LED lantern that swung on hooks attached to a handle to light her way. She didn’t like the lantern as much as she did the candles. The light of the lantern was too harsh, too bright, too cold, but it was the best way to crawl through the darkness that fell upon the house in the deep of night.
She poked her head in all the rooms on the first floor — the living room with the old furniture, musty drapes, and cabinet TV; the front parlor with its large bay windows; the study with its shelves full of books now dismantled by technology — before going up the stairs to where the bedrooms and a bathroom were. She stood in a long hallway and held the lantern out in front of her. All the doors to the rooms were closed despite the fact she always left them open. She went to the door of her bedroom and pressed the side of her head against it and listened. Once she was satisfied there were no sounds inside, she reached for the doorknob, turned it, and went in.
Gracelyn was startled to see that the doors to her closet had been thrown open and now all the clothes she had inside it were piled on her bed. “Robbers searching for something,” she breathed. “Or lunatics.” The air in her room felt cold and she looked and saw that her bedroom window was open. She went to the sill and peered out, but the gathering darkness provided no clues as to who or what had entered the house. “Someone is trying to trick me,” she said to herself. “Or at least scare me.”
She sighed, uneasy. Gracelyn reached up and pulled the window down tight and locked it.
When she returned to the kitchen, she cranked a can opener around the top of a can of cat food and plopped the factory churned seafood delight into a bowl. Moses didn’t wait for her to set the bowl on the floor but instead jumped up on the counter and ate right there. Gracelyn stroked his fur as he gobbled up the food.
She let Moses be and went out the back door that was off the kitchen and walked into the backyard. A screen door with a spring that croaked like a frog when it was stretched slammed behind her. Tall trees fenced in the yard on three sides. An opening to the left led to an old barn and the fields and wilds beyond. Gracelyn went to the firepit she had constructed out of stones, added a few new sticks and small logs, then lit some crumpled-up paper beneath the wood with a Bic lighter until it caught and spread. Once she had a lively fire going, she stood there for a moment, mesmerized by the orange light and the soft crackling of sticks and the sizzle of sap.
Dusk was retreating and full night was coming on and with it the first few lights in the heavens flickered to life. She looked up, hoping to find something she could wish upon. But she gave up quickly because the heaviness of the world came upon her again like it so frequently did. She looked back at the house and the gently shaking soft orange glows of the candles in the windows. She saw a silhouette of Moses, licking a paw and washing his face just beyond the screen door. She tried to smile but found it hard. The thought that someone had possibly been inside the house frightened her. Then she realized she had forgotten to look in the basement. It was too dark for that now, she decided.
She looked up again at space. “I can’t stay here forever,” she said to the sheet of stars unfurled across the night. “I need to find a way to get out. I’m afraid.”
Gracelyn spun around and pressed her back to the counter. Her heart started thumping inside her chest, lit up with fear. “Who said that? Who’s there?” she called out.
The door to the stall slowly opened with the squeak of a metallic mouse. A small man, husky, and with a very round face emerged. There was some gray in his hair that was creeping out from beneath a crooked pointed winter knit cap that sat upon his head. The salt and pepper scruff on his face was uneven, choppy like a soured sea, as if he had used a dull butcher knife to shave. He had a lot of wrinkles around his cold blue eyes, the skin like rivulets streaming in from somewhere beyond his temples. He looked tired, Gracelyn thought, but not overly threatening. “Who are you?” she asked.
“The name’s Astron Puffin,” he said, and he spoke with an accent, like from the Old Country on the other side of the planet.
As he grew closer, Gracelyn saw that his skin had an almost pale-green hue to it, like he had been washed in over diluted watercolor paint. “Are you sick?” she wanted to know.
“No. I’m not sick at all. I swear it. Would I even be here if I was?”
“Right. Here. Then why is it you’re in the girls’ bathroom? I’ve never seen you around school before.”
The man looked around at all the pipes and pink and porcelain, confused, as if he had just discovered where he was. “I don’t know. I just figured it might be the safest place to be at the moment.”
He stepped forward and Gracelyn shifted away from him. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he assured her. “I just wanted to wash my hands.” He was not much taller than she was, but definitely wider. “I’ve never hurt anyone in my whole life. Yet here I am, left to suffer alone in a world such as this.”
“You said you thought my speech was wonderful. How did you hear my speech?”
“I was hiding outside an open window, near your classroom,” he said, shaking water from his hands and then rubbing them against his clothes to dry them. “And even the softest voices carry far in this weight of silence.”
“Have you been watching me? Following me?” Gracelyn demanded to know.
Astron Puffin turned his moon-like and pale-green face away from her. “You’re the first person I have seen in a very long time,” he shyly said. “Please don’t be upset. I was just trying to make sure you weren’t evil. I suppose I’ve decided you aren’t.”
“You’re right. I’m the farthest thing from evil, most of the time,” Gracelyn pointed out. “But where did you come from?”
“I had my own cabbage farm, far over the hills to the west. The nights grew to be too long and lonely and much too dark. I set off to see if I could find someone else. To keep madness at bay… And that’s how I came upon you.”
Gracelyn hesitated for a moment and then moved toward the door. She quickly turned to look back at him there. She was scared yet felt pity for him. “It was nice meeting you, however strange of a meeting it was, but I really should get to my next class before I’m late,” she said.
Astron looked hurt. “Oh. All right, then. I shouldn’t keep you from your lessons.”
“Maybe I’ll see you around again, somewhere,” Gracelyn added, in an effort to give him a small bit of hope for whatever future he had.
Astron attempted a smile. “Yes, perhaps. I’d like that. Good luck with your schoolwork… What was your name?”
The girl hesitated for a moment. “Gracelyn,” she said, and she went out of the bathroom and into the dead hallway that glistened with lonely solar energy falling across the plains of the universe.
Gracelyn sat alone in her art classroom. She reached into a box of crayons and retrieved a periwinkle blue. She held it under her nose and smelled it deeply. “I just love the scent of a fresh crayon,” she said to the quiet air. Then she applied the tip of the crayon to a blank sheet of drawing paper and moved her right hand back and forth until a sky appeared.
She then retrieved from the box two shades of green, a burnt umber, and an earthy yellow to draw the hills, forests, and fields that surrounded her home. She mixed white, and gray, and black to construct the house. She grabbed a darker shade of blue to color in the lake and used the gray and black again to create a stone pier. Finally, she grabbed brick red to create a lighthouse that sat tall at the tip of the pier, and silver to add a shiny light that looked out all around the world.
When she was done, she held the drawing in front of her and looked at it. She cocked her head to the left and studied it more intently. Once she was satisfied with it, she signed her name at the bottom in bright orange — Gracelyn Polk, sixth grade, 413 years old. She then got up and walked her drawing to the front of the classroom, turned to face the empty desks, and held it up for no one to see.
“This is my drawing of where I live,” Gracelyn began — speaking much more confidently than she did in her history class earlier — and then she pointed with a finger. “This is my beautiful house. I live in the country, surrounded by lovely green hills and trees and golden-brown fields. It’s all very pastoral — that means being peaceful in the lands beyond the broken cities. Further off, you can see the great lake, and there’s the lighthouse with its bright beacon guiding safe passage for all… Thank you.”
Gracelyn turned and stuck her drawing to a corkboard with a push pin. She went back to her desk, put the crayons back in their box, and put the box back into a wine-colored cubby hole in the cubby-hole cabinet near the front of the room. She looked up and saw the big poster that showed the map of the entire world. Her eyes scanned it for a moment. There were so many red Xs drawn over so many countries. She sighed with faint hope, faint promise. She pulled the classroom door open, walked the somber corridors alone, and went to the playground for another desolate recess.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 