7 november

Pulling over his pullover, he picked up his wallet and room key card, taking care to put each in separate pockets. That demagnetization thing was real enough to be annoying. He tried to be careful. Should he drive? The store was maybe a half mile away. He imagined somebody noticing him from a distance drive away and pull up. Ridiculous, that person would think.

How much of life is based around calculations of awkwardness? He wondered this often.

He decided to drive. Ridiculous, he thought.

At the store, he picked up a magazine and a small bag of honey mustard pretzels along with the deodorant. He didn’t really need either. Again. It just seemed awkward otherwise.

The girl behind the counter didn’t say anything. No doubt she had her own thoughts. There were basically two options. Either she had it totally together and would imagine his doubts ridiculous, or she was just as confused as he was to be up in the middle of the night contemplating this purchase and the deeper questions revolving around the innate awkwardness of life.

6 november

“Dennis?”

It was Denise. She was standing above him, had her hand on his shoulder.

“What?” He was startled, but pushed off the syllable in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner. It was like that sport where they throw the heavy weight across the floor -- ice? -- and then sweep after it. You wonder what the sweeping has to do with anything but clearly it must help otherwise why would they and why would it be a sport. Is it a sport? Curling?

Denise, however, looked concerned. Maybe he hadn’t swept hard enough. Anyway, he hadn’t cleaned up.

“What are you doing out here?”

He looked around, oriented himself in the present tense. He asked himself: How did he get here?

She went on. “I asked you to come out and get this chair like half an hour ago. Have you just been rolling around in the parking lot and daydreaming all this time, or what?”

Dennis was sorely tempted to ‘Or what’ this one, but the first half seemed to be spot on, as far as he could tell from the evidence.

5 november

And what to say? So much time to stand around or sit around or be around with other relatives. Looking at pictures was at least something. Sometimes Dennis would find himself in one of the group shots. He particularly admired a certain kid’s cowboy hat in one photo -- then was totally surprised at his mother’s totally surprised face.

“Dennis. Honey.” She pursed her lips. “Don’t be vain.” She looked pained, glanced around. “This is hardly the place.”

Apparently it was him -- about age seven. Surprise. He considered asking his mother when she might suggest he be vain, but he decided against.

It was hardly the place.

4 november

Author’s Note: This week I had a little pink tin pail on my desk full of candy for trick-or-treaters. There were five or so types of different Hershey treats from an assortment pack, all pretty good choices. When I picked up the pail at the end of the day to dump it -- in another candy dish, not the trash (let’s make smart choices, not ridiculous ones: I’ll be out next week and someone else should eat all that before I’m back) -- there was a single crowning mini Snickers. How did it get there? It had landed out of nowhere, as if from a totally different candy planet. I didn’t overthink -- I ate it. I’m totally sure it’s because I wrote about Snickers the other day. Simple -- reality. Boom!

3 november

Before leaving for work, she noticed that her cat, curled tightly, fit perfectly on the frisbee she’d recently unpacked from the junk box. It was like a pot pie made out of cat. A plate of catterole. Catterole? Too much. Why did she even come up with this stuff?

Sometimes she was fairly sure that she had an excellent future ahead as a comedian. Of course, a lot of people seemed to talk about the importance of “being discovered”, but she really felt like discovering yourself was more important. How can you be a comedian if you don’t know it? Like someone will just walk up and tell you ‘Hey kid, you’re a comedian! I’ll take you places!’ and all the time you thought you were a clerk.

You have to know who you are. This she found to be a core tenet. There were probably a handful of others, but who’s counting? If you know you’re a comedian, you are. You can make it happen.

Keep in mind, nobody here’s saying comedienne. That’s gross. Knowing who you are means figuring out what you’d agree to be called. Comendienne is not an option. Please.

Her cat didn’t seem to mind being the main ingredient in a fresh catterole, but she silently promised a better option. It would come. That was the point of going to work, after all. Occupy yourself with something requiring mechanical engagement but allowing mental escape and you’ll be free to come up with all kinds of good lines.

2 november

He stayed in his own lane these days, mostly, and so he’d pass these fly-by-diners and head to the news shop to pick up swedish fish and cheetos -- two things that he always craved but could not bring home. If the shop had chocolate milk, too, so much the better. With his loot, he would find a quiet airport corner to stuff down the cheetos, making the most of the crunch and the favor while making a conscious effort to minimize the snow of fluorescent cheese powder all over his clothes and skin -- and wash it down with the chocolate milk, as available. Once satisfied and thoroughly scrubbed -- especially those carefully licked fingers -- he would board the plane and strategically angle for and then down the swedish fish throughout the entire flight. Sometimes he would precisely subdivide the flight by fish, keeping clear intervals and exercising his powers of self-control by letting the fish melt in his mouth on particularly long flights. He’d come to see it as a form of meditation, almost, and had often considered bringing it up with someone. But again -- what would he say, and who would he say it to? “Hey, I’m getting a little close to achieving inner peace and possibly even enlightenment over here by slowly sucking on a red gummy fish. You should totally try it.” No doubt the people sitting next to him were already well aware of what he was doing, if not the internal mental digestion of the fish. It’s hard to do much on a plane that goes unnoticed by those beside you -- especially if it involves food, especially something sweet, and especially if there’s some kind of cellophane packaging.

1 november

The story starts in an airport. This is an ideal place for a story to begin because it’s an ideal look at the problem of defining where a story really begins in the first place, if there is a first place.

Even a simple line -- the man getting off of the plane, returning home from a business trip, dreams of making it home in time to tuck in his children. This is a picture so known you can see the man’s tired rollerbag following dutifully behind him, the unevenness worn in his shoulder where his laptop bag has unbalanced his jacket. You imagine dust on his shoes, even inside this modern, mostly linoleum corridor. No matter whether I stretch this man or your imagination in any number of directions -- his “children” are all parrots, his children are characters on an evening sitcom, his children are in the cemetery -- the appearance of the man himself begs all kinds of questions, if you’ll pardon this grossly common misuse of the phrase.

Where is the man coming from? What was he doing there? How long has he been away? Simple questions, maybe, perhaps, with simple answers. Go bigger. Why did he choose this flight and time? Was it chosen for him? Why did he choose this family? Was it chosen for him? Is he a traveler or a pilot? Does he sit or does he also stand and serve? Where did he get those socks? Bigger, broader, back. Where did his story begin? Who would he be if his mother had sat next to someone else on the first day of high school in a new dress in a new town?