Blood -a Response to Clicking Heels by Ryan Novack-

            The blood was thick in his eyes.  Warm.  Slick to the touch…like motor oil.  His Dad’s suede jacket was ruined.  For some reason this affected him more than the smoking wreckage of the mini-van. 

            Was everyone OK?  That was the first thing.  That was everything.  And everyone was.  Battered.  Broken glasses.  A cut knee like a crescent moon.  The twisted metal had shaved half of his head and there was the blood, but it was OK.  His arm burned.  His back was numb.  OK.

            He wished he was dead.  It was stupid.  But he couldn’t help it.  He could still hear the screams.  He knew he would always hear the screams.  See the sparks.  See the center divider rocketing toward his face.  Always live in the slow motion nightmare that had just unfolded without his permission.

            That was the worst part.  Without his fucking permission.  It had all happened so goddamn fast.  And there was one person who could have stopped it.  Fixed it.  And he knew who that person was.  And he knew that everyone else knew who that person was. 

            He was dizzy.  He checked on his friends and then he sat down and started vomiting.  And then there were lights.  So fucking bright.  And police.  And paramedics.  And they were all very kind.  And they spoke in calm voices.  And he hated them for it. 

            And then there was the board.  Strapped down.  News camera in his face.  White spotlight.  He was not a violent person, but he would have given anything to beat that reporter with his camera.  Blood still in his eyes.  And grit.  Broken glass, they said.  He had already rubbed it in. 

            Rub it in.  He knew that everyone would rub it in.  He had no disillusions about the ugliness of the world.  It did not surprise him when he returned to school half-scalped and the first girl he saw said, “So, I heard you tried to kill all your friends this weekend?”

            But we are not there yet.  Cops.  Drinking?  No.  He had never been really drunk.  Not yet.  But, by god, it was coming.  Years of it.  He asked the cop if they would get in trouble for the cigars in the van.  The cop gave him a long sad look he would not understand for twenty years. 

            Is it impossible to lift someone into an ambulance gently?  It must be.  It must always be whack, thud, slam.  More soft voices.  Going to the hospital.  Call your parents.  Oh, god, please don’t call my parents. 

            He was lying on his back when they came to pick him up.  Everyone else had been released with minor injuries.  His were more severe, but not severe enough to keep him in the hospital where he was safe.  There was no talking on the way home.  His mom tried to help him as he stood, hands braced against the sink.  Trying to get all the glass out of his hair and eyes.  Dad put a stop to that.  He spent the night lying in bed, bloody, spinning, wondering if he was alive and hoping he wasn’t.  He would spend many nights like that, years, before he realized that there wasn’t any penance that needed to be paid 

Coffee Shop.

            John woke up groggy, with sandpaper eyes.  His thoughts were scattered and absurd.  He could not remember whether or not he needed to get up.  He was lost in the dream, its tendrils clinging to his arms like limp spider webs.  He was confused.  His confusion made him angry.  His anger made him apathetic.  His apathy made him pull his pillows over his head.  Pulling his pillows over his head made everything dark again and, in the darkness, he felt safe.  He felt as if nothing could harm him.  He also knew that the darkness would not last. 

            John’s thoughts were gaining momentum and it felt as if his chest was being crushed by invisible weight.  John thought with a shy smile that he might be having a heart attack.  In some ways he hoped that it was the case.  It would simplify certain things.  It would create complications for others, but John would be free.  Thinking about this made John feel incredibly selfish.  Feeling selfish made John feel indignant.  Feeling indignant made John thirsty, so he dragged himself out of bed and made a cup of tea to take into the shower. 

            The tea made John feel like maybe he would be able to survive the morning.  It was sweet and warm and everything that the world was not.  The world was cold and gray, literally and figuratively.  The world was filled with droning voices and boring people.  Ugly, belligerent people.  Stupid people.  John hated the world.  But he also didn't care.  He was conflicted, and the hot water pounding on his back only added rhythm to the confliction.  There were snatches and snips of songs in John's mind.  Lyrical turns.  Phrases.  John's mind was a jumble.  Propaganda.  Sitcoms.  Commercial jingles.  John's mind was junk food and chips.  Candy and pretzels.  John was halfway dressed when his self loathing began to ebb.  It was replaced with resignation.  Another day, another dollar.  Ed would say it...as soon as John walked into the coffee shop, he would say it.  And John would smile, but secretly he would want the coffee shop to explode.  Another day, another reason to drink too much.  Another day, another genocide somewhere in the world.  Another day, another emotional pinball machine explosion.

           

            “Another day, another dollar, eh Johnny?”

            Ed was a block of a man.  He was tall and solid right down to his brain.  He was not a bad person.  He was simple.  Many times, in fact, John thought it was he who was the bad person for loathing such a poor, ignorant bastard. 

            “Yeah, Ed.”

            The coffee shop was an institution in West Grove.  It had been there as long as anyone could remember.  It would probably be called a diner by a visitor (if anyone ever visited West Grove).  The name of the coffee shop was Coffee Shop.  Ed was the owner, his great grandfather had been the first oaf to man its cash register.  John was the cook.  Waitresses came and went, fluttering like fall leaves.  They rotated based upon school breaks and graduations.  They were impermanent.  Not so, Ed and John.

           

            John was 20 when he started working at the coffee shop.  That was ten years ago.  The world was a different place then, but the coffee shop was the same.  This is the main thing that John hated and loved about the coffee shop.  It was quiet for a few minutes as John got his area set.  Plate with a big slab of butter…meats organized.  Then John went out to sit at the counter where Ed was waiting with a cup of coffee. 

            “So, how you feelin’ today Johnny?”

            “”Good Ed.  I feel good.  How about you?”

            “Oh, you know.  The kids are home from school so there’s always something going on at the house.  Trevor is gonna be the death of us all, I swear it.  That boy has the hellfire in his eye.  Came home the other night drunker’n a skunk and puking everywhere.  All the time, just smilin’.”

            “Yeah, he’s at that tearing it up age, I guess.”

            “You weren’t like that Johnny.”

            “I was getting up at 5am and standing over a griddle all day.  I was too tired to tear anything up.”

            “Yeah, I reckon that’s right, ain’t it?  Sometimes I forget you never went to school, what with them books you’re always readin’.”

            Both men looked up as the bell above the door tinkled.  It was Henry.  He was always the first customer.  6am.  Right on the button.  The other regulars would be in soon.  John walked back into the kitchen and started on the two eggs and bacon Henry began every day with.  Henry never talked.  Years ago they had fallen into a pattern.  You order the same thing in the same place long enough and people start to catch on.  Henry never had been chatty; now he only spoke in grunts.  One for hello and one for goodbye.  He was a funny old man.  Eighty if he was a day.  Always dressed in a suit.  The pants never quite matched the jacket, but he was clean and dignified.  His face was a mass of wrinkles, haphazard lines cut by something harder than laughter.  John hit the bell and placed the steaming plate onto the counter.  Ed grabbed it on his way around the ketchup boxes and placed it in front of Henry who nodded and picked up a fork.

            You didn’t know Johnny when he was a kid, so let me fill you in a little.  Almost everyone in town knew Johnny.  They knew him for two reasons.  He always had the best grades in his class, and he could throw the holy heck out of a baseball.  But that was about all they knew.  He was quiet, polite, and got in just the right amount of trouble.  He was a tough boy to dislike.  Maybe that’s why certain things went unnoticed.  Like the fact that Johnny always had more bruises than the other kids.  Folks just figured he played every game with the heart he played baseball with.  But there were other things.  Forged notes.  Missed class trips.  His parents never saw a game.  And the town never saw them. Something about Johnny deflected questions. 

            Johnny was popular with girls his whole life.  He was dopey-eyed and handsome in a sloppy way.  He was gentle and kind.  In some ways, Johnny was the pride of West Grove.  No one doubted for a second that he would go to college, throw the heck out of some baseballs, meet a sorority girl, and get married.  Johnny graduated with the highest GPA in West Grove history.  His valedictorian speech was short.  Humble.  Everyone wanted their picture with Johnny afterwards, which was easy since his parents were not there to get in the way.  When Johnny didn’t go to college, the town was shocked.  He’d had plenty of offers.  Then Johnny disappeared.  Then a year later he was back, with a stoop in his shoulders and calling himself John.  He got the job at the coffee shop and a library card and that was that.  Johnny was dead.  Off the face of the earth.  Unless you went to the coffee shop, and even there he was lost in the sizzle of the grill.  Just a balding man named John.

Rain

The rain is a gentle reminder.  That all things will come to this.  To this apartment and this day and this life which is like so many others.  It is a cruel realization for the rain to force upon you.  Fight it if you must.  You will lose the fight.  You will be one tiny person fighting an avalanche of crushed dreams and broken spirits.  The streets of San Francisco are haunted by despair.  You can hear it ricocheting off the billboards.  You can hear it whispered from derelict buildings.  It is the tick of machinery.  It is the sound of misery.  It is the gentle reassurances which ring false in fluorescent light.

Why don’t you believe when you know that it is true.  You think that I am a liar and you find some kind of solace in this.  I find solace in the dark clouds.  In the fog that comes regular like clockwork.  In the masses of people, silent armies sludging their ways through hasty commutes. 

We are sick.  You are sick.  You are dying of caffeine and cigarettes and sitcoms.  Greasy food and easy living.  You are a parasite on the earth.  This is not an insult.  It is fact.  You are a creature sucking trees and oil.  Devouring them.  Taking them in and giving nothing back.  You are the boogey man.  You are hiding in the closets of the rainforest.  You are the tree frog’s nightmare.  But he doesn’t realize it. 

So the rain reminds you.  It is a catalyst to your awareness.  You ignore it.  You ignore so many things.  Really, you have gotten quite good at it.  (We all have.)   Now, the time to take a step back and recognize the security you take for granted.  The food in your belly.  The roof that keeps the gentle rain at bay.

Pop!

His brain exploded, POP!  He stood, rooted in place, watching the white orb float lazily against the expanse of perfect blue sky above him.  There was a slight wind, just enough to move the damp hairs on his neck and forehead.  A tingling awareness.  A tension.  He did not breathe.  He did not speak.  He watched the white sphere hanging from the heavens and time was nothing.  Time was gone.  And at the same time it was hurtling past him with a subway whoosh that would ring in his ears forever.

            Beneath his feet there was thick green grass.  Beneath that, rich earth.  And in it, and through it, inhabiting it, there was a world more vast and complex than he could imagine.  One that he never thought of.  The creeping, crawling, slithering things that he found easy to ignore.  But they were there.  Civilizations and complex structures.  Lives and governments and systems so complex they could never have been devised by man.  They were born of eons of trial and error. 

            In the boys’ mind he was dying and being reborn.  He was living generations inside his mind.  He was lost in heartache and tenderness and fear.  He was soaring on the wings of pure adrenaline.  He was fully aware and fully attached to the moment and the white against the pure, crystalline blue.

            There was a rage of noise around him, but he was oblivious to it.  Decades passed and dreams floated through the air on silent owl wings.  None of it was real.  It was the most genuine moment of his entire life.  He was surrounded by humanity and totally alone.  He would never have a moment as unadulterated…as perfect and seamless…not for the rest of his life. 

            If anything it was like the moment when you learn how to dive into a swimming pool.  When you finally grapple with the short-breathed panicking terror and you push off with your toes and slice into the cool, blue water and you are ecstatic with the simplicity of it.  You want to do it again and again.  It was like that except he was frozen in the moment…toes leaving the sandpaper grip of the board.  He was wooden and alive and terrified and filled with a kind of reverie he had never experienced and never would again.

            The feeling of death and birth must be very much the same.  Lightness into darkness or the other way around.  You must understand that the boy felt it all.  He was time.  He was powerful and weak and craven and brave and, god, he grieved for it.  There was a palpable sense of loss and a searing slap of redemption. 

            It was close enough now that he could see the red stitches on the white cowhide.  The ball spun in slow motion.  His mouth was dry and the sky was so blue that it pained him to look at it.  The noise around him was reaching a crescendo…a chorus of hopes and dreams pinned on something meaningless that meant too much. 

            He raised his glove, underhand, and he knew in his unconscious that the ball would fall into the webbing and he would feel it inside his hands, firm and real and undeniable.  He felt a surge of joy and sadness, the  two emotions like the very strands of his DNA.  And his eyes were glued to the ball.  His every sense attuned to the thunk of the ball as it glanced off the tip of his glove.  He watched the ball fall to the soft, green grass and his mind backfired.  Faltered.  Implosion.  He knew that his life would never be the same.  

The Dance

Life is a convoluted thing, John thought.  Wrong in so many ways.  No matter how you choose to live your life, you have no choice how or when it comes to the end.  You can live for the first sip of wine, the perfect sunset, adrenaline, the sudden rush of soft, first-kiss lips…you can live a series of climaxes and the end can still be anticlimactic.  White rooms that smell like disinfectant and friends who avert their eyes when they visit.  Or you can live a life of safety and reserve and be eviscerated by a bear.  There’s no sense to it.

            He knew that his days were numbered.  He’d always hated that cliché, but the fucking doctor had numbered them, literally, so what was he supposed to do?  Nothing.  And John was not a man who could do nothing well.  So he lay on starched sheets and endured visits from old girlfriends, women still beautiful and fresh.  He knew they tried not to look at him.  Tried to ignore the patchy head of hair and the gaunt cheeks. 

            He was aware of everything, but his body was betraying him.  He could not speak.  He could not walk.  He lived inside himself and thought of former victories.  Carefree days of sport and drink and conversation.  They tortured him, but he could not stop them.  He did not want to remember.  Yet, he could not help it.  Convoluted.  Indeed.

            He had no real concept of time except that he knew it was passing.  He could feel it whispering in his ears, shimmering into the distance.  So much irony in dying.  You live your whole life with all the time in the world.  And then, like an optical illusion, you see it refracted and shrinking into nothing.  All the hours spent watching bad movies and forcing your way through depressing chit-chat small talk at cocktail parties.  Not enough time making love.  Too many books still waiting to be read.  But all of this means nothing.  It all means nothing. 

            Doctors and nurses and orderlies and janitors shuffled in and out, but John was becoming less and less aware.  He lived in a dream.  It was comforting and horrible.  He had lost all his senses save the sense of touch.  He felt the violation of needles and sponge baths and poking fingers. 

Deborah was new and not yet bitter.  She still believed that nursing was the greatest calling in the world.  And maybe it is.  But along the years her colleagues had stopped believing it.  She hadn’t.  So, some nights, when things were slow, she would stop and sit with the patients.  Read to them.  Tell them stories.  Some smiled or cried.  Some did not move.  Some could not hear.  John was a mystery to her.  There was something about him.  Something different.  She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew somewhere deep inside her mind that he was in pain.  He did not move.  He did not speak.  His face was blank and soft like freshly poured concrete.  But the whisper of pain was there.  She was there the night he died.  Sitting beside the bed, she had the sudden impulse to grab his hand.  To softly kiss his cheek.  And suddenly John’s mind exploded in light and sound.  He was in a vast ballroom.  He was wearing a tuxedo.  He was holding the hand of the only woman he had ever truly been afraid of.  He was watching her twirl in her brave red dress.  He was thinking maybe he could love her for ever.  And they spun together, laughing, finally free.

The Funeral

My father's hands were like dead frogs. I stood in front of the mahogany casket we couldn't afford and felt the breath in my lungs like the fluttering of wings. I stood for several seconds.  He looked out of place in a dark grey suit. Like someone had dressed him up for Halloween as the 'corpse prom date'. I tried to dredge some feeling of remorse or sadness from the hurricane of emotions in my brain. I tried to focus on one thought. It was like Bob Barker spinning the big wheel. When it came to rest, it came to rest on this: 

I was ten years old.  The stream we were standing by was small. Impossible that there could be fish in so little water, but there were and we knew it. We squatted, our toes squelching into the mud, forming tiny lakes where our feet floated like pale canoes. Like dead fish. They rocked on their white bellies and kept us from falling over. You have to be quiet, he said. Very quiet. I held my breath. It was summer. Morning. You could feel the heat in the air. It was like a stern glance, a warning of what was to come. I don't remember anything about the rest of the morning. I recall no fish. What I remember is the subtle play of the sunlight on the ripples. A fallen tree branch. Sky that was one color when you looked at it and another when you turned away. I remember feeling that something important was happening.  The whole trip had been so sudden. We had never gone anywhere without Mom.  She was angry and didn't want to come. 

An old lady behind me cleared her throat and I stepped forward. I saw a smudge on his shoe and wanted to rub it off, but didn't. It was the only part of the whole thing that had any legitimacy. It was more real than the dark suit. More real than the pews of relatives I didn't even know. People I had never seen without a plate of cole slaw and fried fish in their hands. My brother and I had made a bet about whether or not Mom would show up. I was glad to see that I had won. She would have hated it.

It was on my computer...I guess I wrote it.

Blah….

I woke up this morning feeling a little worse for wear.  I have decided that eBay addiction is cheaper than alcohol addiction.  And they are about as much fun…i.e., not much.  Transitory band aid over the pulsing brain torment.  That’s about it.  Nothing to stop the slow drip of time as it rolls down my face like molasses.  I am disappointed in myself.  My imagination is tired.  There is a yacht in the Bay that is worth more than everyone I know combined.  I find that hard to reconcile with the current state of my employment (un) and the current state of the world (completely fucked).  I hate rich people without much cause.  Not proud of it.  But I can also see how slippery the slope would be.  Normal people find normal things to bitch about.  And bitching is in our nature.  We bitch about taxes and bills and our neighbors.  But what if you lived on a giant fucking yacht?  I’m talking the length of two city blocks.  Four viewing decks ABOVE the actual boat part.  Surely you have a crew to make sure the boat runs.  And a chef.  And probably some other employees who do mostly everything for you.  And we think…man, what could they possibly have to complain about?  But I bet you the used knife I just bought off eBay that they DO complain.  And they complain about things we can’t comprehend.  Like if the chef overcooks the steak.  If the bathroom is not SPOTLESS.  Sure, it may seem trivial to me, but I don’t live in a giant floating mansion. 

            See, this is the problem.  Everyone thinks their shit doesn’t stink, right?  Seems to me that everyone thinks their shit DOES stink.  And not only that, but it stinks worse than everyone else’s. 

            I lay awake at night sometimes and wonder where I am.  We all take so much for granted, and we have no reason to do so except that it is easy.  This explains religion.  This explains our outrage when politicians act like politicians.  Not to sound like a stoned high school kid, but can we take any of it for granted?  I mean, who the fuck knows really?  Dreams can last seconds or years.  Or cover years in seconds.  Maybe I am a toddler fussing during my afternoon nap.  I have just as much reason to believe that as I do to believe that I am 32 years old and typing on my laptop (which is probably the most valuable possession I have that does not require gasoline).  Maybe I have suffered a head trauma?  Maybe I am someone else’s head trauma.  Maybe I am the small blue jar of coins that sat on my Nana’s dresser and that lives so vividly in my mind.  Maybe I am the stories I have told that were never true to begin with.  Maybe all this pseudo-intellectualism is my way of making up for the lies I pass as truth.  But I believe them.  And I believe that I am 32 years old.  And that my daughter will wake up from her nap soon.  And that we will go on an adventure.  And it may be real and it may not.  And I don’t really care. 

Blah….

            When I was a child I would lay on my bed for hours and throw a racquetball against the wall.  I assume this was some kind of self-hypnosis.  I spent many hours inside my room and inside my head.  I’m not sure where it all came from.  I collected small things.  Tiny pocket knives.  Miniature knick knacks.  I think that their fragility made the world seem more sane.  More safe.

            We never lived anywhere longer than three years when I was growing up.  My Dad was in the Navy.  There were positives to this, but I did not see them when it mattered.  I saw the world as a constantly changing place.  And I was lonely.  I was depressed before I even knew what depression was.  And I was always looking for escape.  Books, adrenaline, TV, daydreaming…I huffed my albuterol inhaler once my parents went to bed.  This was when I was six or seven.  Too young to know that models were killing themselves doing the same thing.  Too young to even realize I was getting high.  I would exhale and then inhale as many puffs as I could and hold my breath until the world turned to bright light and helicopter chop.  I held my breath a lot.  And I waited to piss until the last possible minute.  I endured pain to feel the rush of relief.  I know many people have done things like this.  I am not trying to prove my originality.

            I was very young when I developed the poker face I have never been able to shake.  It haunts me still.  With my daughter, it fades.  With everyone else, I stare blankly and try to keep all expression off my face.  It is a hindrance now.  It was probably a hindrance then.  But it came in handy.  New schools all the time.  New friends.  No friends.  Bullies.  Name calling.  My insides may have been tearing themselves to shreds.  I might have gone home and cried.  But, in the moment, my face was stone.  Because I learned very early that the only way to beat the world is to show it that it can’t beat you.  Even if it can.  Because appearances count for a lot more than they should.

            I imagined I was a hawk, slowly looping in the sky and catching updrafts.  Soaring for hours with only a slight adjustment of wing.  Up in the clouds there would be peace.  It was all I wanted.  To be alone, looking down on the world, feeling the wind and hearing the roar of white noise in my ears.  I would eat when I was hungry, I suppose.  But mostly I would just turn in slow circles.  I would be detached from the world.  I would be a helium balloon with the twine snipped.

Blah….

            He started to run.  Past the houses and cars and barking dogs.  Past the school and the library.  He ran with tears streaming from his eyes.  He was not sad.  He ran and felt the gravel pelt the back of his bare thighs like little pin pricks.  He was not wearing a shirt, and his blue swim trunks whipped in the breeze.  Like his light brown hair.  Like the loose sloppy socks that put elephant ankles atop his blue converse all stars.

            The shoes were new and slapped hard against the ground.  He had asked his mother for black Chuck Taylor’s.  They were his key.  His secret.  His parents wouldn’t shell out the money for Nikes, but Chuck Taylor’s were cheap and still relatively cool.  It had been an easy sale.  He needed new shoes.  That was for sure.  And his Mom was so happy that he wanted cheap shoes.  But at the shoe store she had insisted on blue.  Same price.  Said they would look better with jeans.  And he looked at the black shoes.  And she asked him, didn’t he think the blue would look better with jeans?  And he said yes, but his mind was a vortex of frustration and pain.  Blue shoes would be one more thing to make fun of.  Why did his Mom even care?  Why couldn’t he stand his ground and say he wanted black?  The mannequins leered and the JC Penney’s seemed smaller and smaller.  He could not get enough air.  No one noticed, but he was drowning in an ocean created, drop by drop, by small meaningless defeats.

            He felt good when he was running as fast as he could run.  So fast it was dangerous.  Out of control.  He felt good when he jumped off of high places.  He felt good when he hurt himself.  When he was scared.  At school, the kids took ballpoint pins and rubbed the tips across the desk’s surface until they seared like match heads.  No one could hold the hot pen on their arm as long as him.  No one had as many sesame seed scars on their arms.  But it didn’t make him feel included.  It just made him weirder in their eyes.  But it was everything to him.  He couldn’t be the coolest.  He couldn’t stick up for himself.  He shied away from confrontations of all kinds.  But he could hurt himself more than anyone he knew.  He did not realize this.  The same way that he did not realize that he was doing the same thing, years later, pouring bourbon down his throat when everyone else was puking or passing out.  Always down for one more bowl, one more line, one more tab.  Always.  No one could lose their mind like him.  And he was still the freak.  And he still just wanted to be able to say that he had had enough.  But he had a reputation to uphold.  And it was all he felt worthy of.

Blah….

            I would like to teach the world to sing.  Seriously, you all suck at it for the most part.  I would like to never sing the Happy Birthday song again.  I would like for people to start using their turn signals.  I would like for all new cars to come with headlights that are automatic like they are on motorcycles.  I would like for there to be some kind of special punishment for people who have tattoos of cartoon characters (except my friend Pat).  I would like for people to stop making exceptions for those they care about.  I would like alcohol to be illegal and for marijuana to take it’s place.  I would like the wife-beating, spouse cheating, self defeating drunks of the world to become overeating stoners.  I would like it if people were not judged on their looks and rewarded for physical attractiveness.  Either that or I would like to be much more attractive.  I would like it if they stopped selling pleated pants…I feel it devalues our existence.  I would like it if I did not have to clean my motorcycle chain, take shits, brush my teeth, pay bills.  I am tired of maintenance.  Of all types.  I would like to have the ability to beat box.  I would like to explain to everyone I know that they have faults and not have them call me out on mine.  I would like it very much if my daughter never sheds blood or experiences any pain.  I would like my daughter to have a relatively normal childhood.  I would like to speak briefly to the man who touched me when I was in middle school.  I would like to know that he realizes that he took something from me.  I would like to never see him.  I would like to live in a world where people are satisfied, even grateful, for what they have.  I want more stuff.  I would like it if people in the Mediterranean stopped slaughtering songbirds.  Honestly, of all the fucked up things…songbirds?  Are you fucking kidding me?  I would like for people with dogs to understand that there are people that don’t like dogs.  I would like to stop having dogs jump at me and lick me.  I am astounded that we crucify smokers, but no one says anything about the fucking dogs.  I would like to pee outside without getting a ticket.  But then again, I’m not a dog…just a taxpaying human being, so that would make NO sense obviously.  I would like to have a glass of iced tea that never empties.  Ice cubes that never melt.  I would like to live the rest of my life three beer drunk and never get a headache.  I would like to be more like my wife who does not drink caffeine, alcohol, smoke weed, curse, or do any of the things that I’m not supposed to do.  Or I would like her to be an alcoholic so she couldn’t pass judgment on me.  I would like it if people did not write long pieces of prose without paragraph breaks.