Short Stories, Long Odds

Things have been light here because I was working on this column for Fort Worth Weekly about censorship and hometown regression.

(This story was written just after the Austin Democratic presidential debate in 2008, and is truish.)

“Hot damn,” shouted Wilson. “I feel like, like an animal. I’m ready to do something wild.”

Wilson is a prime time politico, feeling the stirrings of excitement brought on by the rush of national politics. Nothing could stop the beasts that had put on their Sunday best in case they ended up on CNN after some event where a presidential candidate rallied the masses with a visitation and a little of the old laying on of hands. We were all touched by something special in our state – relevance, and import. We were at the downtown hotel with all the other Democrats, holding down the epicenter of what felt like a political nuclear reactor.
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I was in the middle of a serious WiiFit session when the door bell rang. I picked Molly the Corgi up because she is crazy and I walked over to the foyer. We don’t have windows or a peephole so I couldn’t see who it was before I opened the door.

Standing there was a man in a suit and a woman in a dress. They had literature. As we are coming up on a national election, I figured they were either Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Republicans, or Democrats. Or possibly Obamacans. They were too old to vote for Ron Paul.

“Oh, you have your little puppy there,” the man said, obviously offput by the fact that I was holding a dog. It may also have been my appearance. I hadn’t showered yet and was in my workout clothes, and if you’ve ever seen what my hair does when I sleep, you would know that if not for the fact that I answered the door from inside what is ostensibly my home, I appeared to be homeless.

“We just have some information for you,” said the woman. They were both kindly enough up until this point, but the woman thrust the pamphlet into my hands and said, too loudly, “Who really rules the world?!” Those words were printed on the pamphlet, but her verve told me they were also in her heart and mind.

“Okay,” I mumbled, looking at the pamphlet and seeing Jesus throwing up the dis to a pair of obviously malevolent, disembodied hands trying to fork over the National Mall.

“Just an interesting question for you to ponder,” said the man.  “Could Satan  have offered Jesus all the world’s governments if they didn’t belong  to him?”

“Belong to Satan?” I asked.

“Yesssssss,” intoned the woman. “The world’s governments are in Satan’s hands!”

Maybe they are voting for Ron Paul, I thought, and smiled a little.

“Does what we say ring true?” the man said, encouraged by my facial expression. He took a steep forward, making his best Barry Sanders break for daylight.

I said, “Let me leave you with this, wanderers. I’d like to give your church $30,000.”

The woman gasped. “How wonderful!” exclaimed the man.

“I also have bad news for you. I just offered you something that I don’t have, and can’t actually give you.”

The silence was stony, and I sensed any shot I had at a free copy of The Watchtower slipping away.

“We’ll just leave that with you then,” said the man.  I closed the door.

I didn’t have a camera on me so I can’t show it to you, but on the way home from watching fireworks, we took an unusual way home and saw something amazing. On the roof of a nice house with a Prevost bus parked outside, a giant peace symbol was drawn in white clinking lights. Sort of like what you might see at Christmas, when someone on your block writes “SANTA LAND HERE” on their roof in imported Italian twinkle lights, surrounded by angels and snowmen. It was enormous, and brazen, and simple.

I don’t really have any commentary on it, I just wanted to share it with you. I certainly didn’t expect to see something like that but when I get all philosophical about my country on July 4th from now on, I will think of that house and the statement it made.

I.
At the high school reunion
Although I hadn’t spoken to her in years
we were always seriously connected
like good friends
(she assured us)

and another girl’s Libertarian boyfriend
cornered me to talk about Uribe
and Chavistas

and said, alternatively,
“The government should get out of our lives.”
and
“Are we gonna take him out or what?”

I kept drinking, and nodding.

II.
Waitress: “Do you want another bourbon?”
Me: “What do you think?”
She brought me two.

III.
The guy with the crewcut
is a cop now.
Which totally makes more sense than anything else out of the whole night.

IV.
On all fours
and dressed to the
nines, scrubbing the

carpet with an old toothbrush
while Ben Folds sings ‘Evaporated’.

Thankfully, I am medically
unable to see metaphors.

V.
Pal: “Hey, do you remember on New Year’s that one time when that guy passed out and pissed in your bed?”
Me: “I thought that was you.”
Pal: “You’ve been telling people I pissed in your bed for ten years?”
Me: “I thought that was you.”
Pal: “No, that was Matt. I just put him in there.”
Me: “You’re as good as guilty then, and it is going in my book. Read all about it, from Random House: You pissed in my bed.”
Pal: “But that’s not true!”
Me: “Random House has lawyers.”

VI.
She asked me if I
drank scotch and sat behind a
big desk and wrote about politics and stuff

I said, actually, I do
She said, is that fun

I said, I would maybe say it is more interesting than fun
She said, You always seemed like a guy who would think interesting things are fun

I said, How’s your father