The Atomic Punk

I am an idiot.

I shiver and hug myself, frantically rubbing my arms in hopes of restoring some sensation beyond freezer burn. 

I could be back home right now, watching reruns of shows that weren’t good the first time around with Anna.  In the house.  Where it’s warm.  And with Anna.  Instead, I’m hopping from roof to roof hoping to retain some small measure of body heat while still making this trip worthwhile and actually doing something productive. 

I am such a sucker. 

A few nice words from her and a pat on the back and I don’t even ask how high to jump, I just try to reach up and pull a star down for her.  I need to get my head examined.  And a full-body hand warmer I can wear like thermal underwear.  You’d be surprised how little protection jeans, a hoodie, and a leather biker jacket are against a wind chill in the negative 7 degree range.  My hood’s up and my mask covers the bottom half of my face, but it still feels like skin’s peeling off each time the wind screeches.

Nights like these reminds me why I love Spider-Man.  No other comic book character has to deal with crap like this.  It also reminds me why I don’t wear a cape.  It takes a special brand of crazy to rock a cape (like Batman or Moon Knight) or a god-like near-invincibility (Thor and Superman).  An idiot like me goes running around in a cape and while I’m jumping from one rooftop to the next, the wind gusts up, and I’m pulled off course enough for gravity to claim my pulpy carcass.

The next building’s two stories taller than the one I’m on, so I have to aim for the fire escape.  It isn’t a huge target, but I hunch my shoulders and only overshoot it by a little bit.  I bounce off the brick wall and back into the railing.  Then something pops.  I’m five stories up on a fire escape that I can now see is remarkably shabby and something just popped.  The dusty remains of last night’s snowfall drifts nonchalantly down around me.  Another two pops, like a double-tap, and the fire escape shudders.

Oh God, the bolts are snapping.

I’m running like my hair’s on fire.  Like someone’s chasing me.  Like someone’s chasing me after setting my hair on fire.  I hop the railing onto the first set of stairs and another bolt snaps when I land.  I zig up the first flight of stairs and then zag up the next.  The right half of the fire escape clatters and shakes like it’s just looking for an excuse to come free from the wall and drag me six stories to the ground.  I spin around the sixth story railing and this time a succession of bolts snap.  Three?  Four?  Eight?  I can’t tell.  What I can tell is that the whole damn fire escape is now slouching away from the building like a drunk trying to lean on his buddy’s shoulder to steady him, without realizing his buddy just walked away to talk to some pretty girl.  The drunk’s about to eat sidewalk.

Fuck trying not to disturb the fire escape any further; I take the stairs three at a time.  Bolts are snapping every time I land.  I turn up the last set of stairs when the fire escape’s finally had enough and pulls free from the side of the building.  I’m up the last flight in two jumps.  I step on the railing—which I fully expect to snap under my weight—and launch myself onto the apartment building’s roof. 

Considering I can’t think of any practical reasons why anyone would cover the roof of a building with gravel, I have to assume that it’s to embarrass up and coming superheroes such as myself.  I don’t stick the landing.  My feet fly out from under me, my body tries to roll both forward and sideways simultaneously, and I land in a mess of flailing limbs.  My head bounces off the gravel a couple times.

I suck.

The fire escape hits the ground like a thousand sheets of drama-club tin, but rustier.  Someone steps into my field of view.  She looks like she’s in high school.  She might be my age.  She has a round face, a silver ring in her right eyebrow, and a haircut that looks like she wanted to be punk but couldn’t quite pull the trigger.  She’s also holding a can of what I can only assume is mace.  Her eyes are too wide and she can’t focus on anything.  Guess she wasn’t expecting the fire escape to give out either.

 “You should call your super.”

“You should get the hell off my roof.”

Touché.

“Think anyone would mind if I used the inside stairs?  The fire escape kinda…broke.”

It takes her a moment of thinking to decide the stairs are for residents and unmasked vigilantes only.  “All the windows have nice ledges, you can climb down.”

“Are you sure?  Cuz I kinda think that if I move I’ll throw up in my mask…”

She steps back between me and the door and lifts her can of mace.

“You’re the boss.”

I roll onto my knees and elbows.  I can’t tell if it’s my head or the earth that’s spinning but either way it’s making me nauseous.  I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths.  A small, shaky hand presses against my shoulder.  I smell tobacco.  Guess that’s why she was up on the roof in this godforsaken cold. 

“If you’re really that sick, I can walk you down the stairs.”

“I—hulg—thanks.”

“I still have mace.”

I nod and immediately regret it.  “You’ve also still got your dignity.  Two-zero, you.”

****

She’s got her arm under my shoulder for the first two stories worth of stairs before I feel like walking under my own power is a good idea.  It takes another story and a half before she says anything.

“You’re, like, my age under that mask aren’t you?”

It’s moments like these that I wish I had a more manly voice.  The kinda voice that 80s action heroes had.  A voice that has its own beard.  Hell, I’d settle for my face having its own beard.

“I guess I can’t expect you to answer that.”

I rub my nonexistent beard and drown in awkwardness.

“I’m sorry I rode your ass with the mace earlier.  I recognize you from the news, but you kind of, ya know, surprised me.  But if—if you are in high school or some shit—that’s pretty cool.  Most people our age are too busy wondering if they’re zit free or if they’re wearing cool enough clothes to do anything really meaningful.”

“So does that mean you like my jacket?”

She smiles.  It looks good on her.  “Yeah, but, uh, I think you’d look better in tights, comic book-style.”

****

It takes me awhile to get back home.  I’m cold and somewhere between landing on the no-longer-standing fire escape and being escorted down the apartment building’s stairwell I cut my leg open from hip to knee, so I’m limping as well.  The cut’s not all that deep, but I bounced it off a rooftop and rubbed it in gravel, so it’s something akin to the world’s worst paper cut.  I change clothes in the forest preserve a few blocks away and call Anna, letting her know I’m calling it early tonight.  I gloss over the specifics of my tumble and tell her about the girl who almost maced me.  When I mention tights Anna starts laughing.  She’s still nearly choking to death when I hang up.

By the time I get home I’m cold, crabby, and the gauze and athletic tape deal I’ve wrapped around my leg has started to come loose.  I don’t get three steps into the door before Anna’s in the foyer with me, hot chocolate in one hand and dragging a quilt in the other.  I make a small, pathetic sound that translates roughly into gratitude beyond words.

Anna Riley. 

Five and half feet of soft curves and lean limbs.  Wavy, shoulder-length auburn hair hugs her round, dimpled cheeks.  But, like every lovesick little puppy, I look straight to her eyes.  At a distance they look either green or blue depending on the light, but up close they’re both.  Equal parts green and blue, the colors never muddle together, just dance around each other.  They remind me of a marble I lost when I was seven.  She’s almost literally the girl next door.  Her family lives across the street and two houses down.  They’ve been friends with the Rhodes family since before either family had kids.  Anna calls Susan and Paul Aunt and Uncle and considers Boone a weird brother-cousin hybrid despite not sharing a drop of blood.  She’s had a key to the house since she was old enough to walk over on her own.

Recently brought into the Rhodes household, I’m aiming for something a little better than surrogate brother.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s going my way though…

“Susan wants to take a look at your leg as soon as you’re settled.  She’s in the living room.”  Anna purses her lips to hide a smile.  “She’s not nearly as amused as I am.”

I figured as much.  “Yeah, I’m kinda banking on the fact that mothers aren’t supposed to beat their kids senseless.”  I tilt my head like I’m thinking, “Do you think that rule still applies for foster mothers and their fostered children?”

Anna rolls her eyes and trades my bag for the hot chocolate and then drapes the quilt over my shoulders.  As she’s adjusting the quilt she gives my ass a quick pat.

“And you’d look great in tights.”

I can’t feel anything but a spastic thudding in my chest as I wobble into the living room looking for Susan.

I am such a sucker.

The View from Suburban Chicago

I can hear the humming of small cars zipping around small, tightly curving roads; the idle buzz of sun-soaked conversations.  This is odd because I am not in a roadside café in Italy, but in my third floor apartment’s foyer in the suburbs southwest of Chicago.  It’s three o’clock on a Sunday morning.  The roads outside are not busy.  The neighbors below us are 87 years-old, they’ve been asleep since seven.  Our neighbors to the left just had a baby that, to my knowledge, is not an extraordinarily gifted mimic.  Marilyn and I have no neighbors above us or to the right; we live in the top-right corner of the building. 

She must have fallen asleep with the television on again.

Coat in the closet.  Shoes by the door.  I pull a handful of grapes from the cluster on the kitchen counter and start flipping them into the air.  I stand, head tilted back and slack-jawed, as the first grape falls and bounces off of my check and onto the floor.  I bite thin air when the second one hits my lips before joining the first grape on the floor.  I catch the third and then drop the next three before deciding I might still be too drunk to properly play with my food.  I shovel the last four into my mouth pointblank and decide I might be too drunk to be properly conscious.  In the far corner of the kitchen, atop the counter and nestled between the coffee maker and the toaster oven is a photograph taken of Marilyn and I in cooking class after a particularly spectacular failure.  The right half of my face is dripping the internal workings of a wild berry pie.  Little bits of crust sit suspended in the goo.  Marilyn is bent over the counter laughing and I am wide-eyed, not fully comprehending how the pie got from the counter to my face.  The picture is a commemoration of one of my favorite moments with my wife.  It is, however, misbehaving at the moment.  Instead of standing still incased in amber, as good pictures should, it is heaving and laughing and looking around for an explanation.  I can hear Marilyn’s voice, gasping for air between fits of laughter and ridicule.

How…how did you…

Behind me, I still hear sporty European coupes whirring through curves.  I turn and I see sporty European coupes whirring through curves.  Abstract black humanoids gesture lazily in time with the buzz of conversation.  A waitress sets down a tray of hors d'oeuvres before wandering over to another table.

Smooth saxophone flows from the living room.  There is now a vaguely cubist jazz club rendered in greens and reds and in full-swing hanging to the left of my entertainment system.

It occurs to me that my being drunk might be shielding me from the worst of the shock of seeing all the paintings and photographs in the house coming to life and that Marilyn, who is in all likelihood sober, might be having a harder time with the situation at hand.

I stumble up the stairs and find shreds of Grandma Addie Millar resting on the carpet below an enthusiastically disemboweled hand-carved wooden frame.  A few scrapes lead toward our bedroom. 

After seeing the finished oil portrait, Grandpa Frank had said it captured Addie’s essence.  After seeing the state Marilyn left it in, I assume it captured her lip as well.

Campfire Ugly

“Yeah.  Yeah, guy was a dick.”  Grayson rubbed at his stubble.

Rob chewed his lip and nodded jerkily.

Torver grunted.

Mercer exhaled and took a drink.  The silence stretched out.  It stretched until the only sound was the silent tearing apart of their peace of mind and the tearing grated mutely until no one could think of anything but that deafening tearing.

Mercer smiled.  “So what the hell is up with Parrish?”

Rob blinked and squinted, his eyes flickering wildly.  Comprehension dawned.  “She’s cool.”

“Cool?  She’s been around for, like, six years and now she’s cool?  She’s one of the guys, man.”

Rob dragged the toe of his sneaker through the dirt, building a little pile of dry earth and dead pine needles.  “Yeah, she’s cool.  She’s one of the guys, none of that catty girl bullshit.”

Torver nodded.  “That’s actually really solid.”

Rob smiled at his little mound of earth.  “Yeah.”

The silence crept back between them, sooner this time.  Each of them pulled at it, fraying the edges in nerve-numbed fingers.  When the edges they held unraveled, they tugged at the silence for more to fray.

Grayon bounced to his feet.  “I’m gonna build the fire back up.”  He picked up a leafy branch from the firewood pile and jerked it down over his thigh.  It snapped in half.  He picked up another branch, this one slid down the side of his thigh and jabbed at his knee.  He shifted his grip and broke the branch the second time.  Grayson scooped up another branch.

Rob toed the dirt.

Torver rubbed at his nose.

Mercer laced his fingers together, rolled his shoulders, and stretched his arms high over his head.  “Who wants another beer?”

Everyone muttered assent and Mercer ducked into the tent, coming back out with two beers, crossed at the neck, in each hand.  The bottle opener arced back and forth over the sullen fire.  A branch snapped in the flames.  A soft breeze, little more than a breathy exhale, drifted across their clearing.  Torver grabbed a handful of leaves off the ground, lit the tips in the fire, and let them stagger and spin like drunken firebombers wobbling around town square. 

“Yeah.  Guy was a dick.”

Violence, Idiocy, and Political Posturing or Why Be Calm and Reasonable When You Can Rant and Rave Like a Madman?

Okay, before I get this shit storm rolling if you're here (which is remarkable in and of itself) for the fiction then feel free to skip this post.  This is going to be a rant about the most recent wave of "Video Games are the Devil!  Ban them!  For the children!!" bullshit that has swept the nation.  Oh and spoiler, I think it's bullshit of the highest order.  I generally try to keep a level head about things in life.  I find the world to be a pretty stupid place and I'm a pretty animated human being so if I were to let myself get wound up over every single thing that irked me I would have surely turned into some sort of mythological spirit of rage by now and murdered dozens of people.  This recent round of condemnation of video games has struck me in such a way that I just can't ignore it.  For one, I'm a gamer.  I'm a gamer with some issues, but all-in-all I'm pretty damn well adjusted and healthy considering the state of the world.  I play violent video games.  I play violent video games and guess how many people I have shot because of that fact?  Hint, the answer's zero.  Secondly, I hate a system that allows and encourages those in power to exploit both the system and the people that put them in place.  It goes hand-in-hand with my problem with bullies, it's just wrong.

Okay.  Before I go any further let me post a link to the original...incident...that so thoroughly inflamed my delicate sensibilities.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/30/tennessee-senator-calls-games-a-bigger-problem-than-guns

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen.  "I think video games is a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people."

Really?  REALLY?!  Because if someone shoots you in the face with a gun, you're clearly not going to be affected.  Good call, dipshit.  Video games do not lead to violence and there have been zero proper experiments proving otherwise.  The closest anyone has come is to suggest a correlation, but the problem with correlation is that it is wholly inferior to experimentation because it does not PROVE anything.  It suggests the presence of a link, but it does not specify what kind of link.  It does not, cannot, determine whether video games cause people to become violent or if violent people are simply attracted to video games and anti-video game groups spin that correlation in their favor.  The amount of frustration this witch hunt has induced in me is incredible.  People are afraid of the levels of violence in this nation and this is an amazingly irresponsible amount of scapegoating that does nothing to benefit the people who are actually at risk.  What it does is guarantees that the real issue will not be addressed.  Why talk about something truly dangerous or truly challenging when you can just point the finger at an easy target and earn instant brownie points with those people that have been victimized by acts of violence?

And on a special note particular to this specific Senator, he's the most miserable kind of idiot crusader.  If he honestly believes what he says, he's not willing to commit to it.  He claims that nothing will ever come of it because of the 1st and 2nd Amendment (as if those are such awful things), so that he never has to truly put himself out there.  It appeases the anti-game crowd by saying "Games are evil!" without alienating the people that are on the fence because he will never have to actually take action. 

And now, to make the point that I have stood by since this whole thing began:  The world is not ending because video games depict violence.  The world did not end because children listened to rock 'n roll or punk-rock.  The world did not end when children read comic books.  The world did not end because someone put an eraser on their pencil (yeah, people freaked the fuck out over this one too).  This is just another fad.  People are looking for something to blame.  Politicians are jumping on the bandwagon because it will get them attention.

One final note, a point that is almost entirely ignored by those that publicly denounce violent video games.  A great many people claim that this violent material is geared toward children because it's in video game form.  This is either complete and utter ignorance of the medium or an unwillingness to accept the facts that do not actively strengthen their case.  Video games that are rated "E" are meant for children ages ten and up, "T" ratings are for teenagers (age thirteen and up), "M" ratings are for people ages 17 and older, and the rarely seen AO rating is for adults ages 21 and older.  These are very clearly laid out.  The system is quite transparent and is rather strictly enforced by retailers.  A Best Buy that I frequented in Columbia, Missouri was going to run a Halo: Reach tournament for the midnight release of the game.  Two people were not properly carded before they signed up and were too young for the Mature ("M") rated game.  Best Buy cancelled the whole tournament because of that.  Someone I went to school with got fired because they sold M-rated games to minors on more than one occasion.  So, how then does this violent content get into the hands of children?  There are a couple ways.  They could have a fake ID.  This is the same thing as a minor buying alcohol with a fake ID, it's not the alcohol's fault that some fourteen year-old is drunk and few people blame the existence of alcohol for such an occurrence.  Their parent could have bought them the video game in which case their legal guardian consented to the purchase the same way their parent can consent to let their child watch an R-rated movie.  Once again, most reasonable people won't blame R-rated movies because their twelve year-old kid saw a nipple in a movie they were legally admitted into the theater.  So why then do some parents think that because the inappropriate content comes in video game form that they are somehow not responsible for their children being exposed?

And now, having spent far too much time responding to a ridiculous claim I'm going to wrap this up.

For those of you who connected with any of this article, make sure you stand up and make your voice heard.  For those of you who I offended, sorry we don't see eye-to-eye on this one.  And for those of you who skipped this article entirely; don't worry, this isn't going to become a regular thing.

T.C. Boyle

“I do feel that literature should be demystified. What I object to is what is happening in our era: literature is only something you get at school as an assignment. No one reads for fun, or to be subversive or to get turned on to something. It's just like doing math at school. I mean, how often do we sit down and do trigonometry for fun, to relax. I've thought about this, the domination of the literary arts by theory over the past 25 years -- which I detest -- and it's as if you have to be a critic to mediate between the author and the reader and that's utter crap. Literature can be great in all ways, but it's just entertainment like rock'n'roll or a film. It is entertainment. If it doesn't capture you on that level, as entertainment, movement of plot, then it doesn't work. Nothing else will come out of it. The beauty of the language, the characterisation, the structure, all that's irrelevant if you're not getting the reader on that level -- moving a story. If that's friendly to readers, I cop to it."

And Now For Something Entirely Different...

Well shit.  Things have slowed down pretty good and I've got more time on my hands to actually get a bit of writing done.  However, I'm not back in the swing of things just yet.  The brain's like a muscle and all that jazz.  The fiction-writing portion of my brain has gotten a bit flabby of late, but I don't wanna keep neglecting this blog so it's time for an experiment...or a compromise if we're being accurate.  I've got a part of story that I'm satisfied with.  I like the story idea, I like the portion that I've written out, and I'm gonna post it and pretend that I've got enough followers to actually get some feedback on it in hopes of spurring me forward and toning my brain back up.  If any of you ladies and gentlemen care to feed my delusions then please lemme know whatcha think of this introductory excerpt and this experiment as well.  If this little experiment actually pans out (and who the hell actually expects that it will?) I'll prolly give this another shot--and even if I don't get any feedback I'll prolly still do this again if it tickles me right.

Soul Food (excerpt)

The sin-eater was tall, almost a head taller than anyone else in the room, and a malnourished-looking skinny.  His biceps and triceps were thin slivers of overly tenderized skirt steak glued to either side of his humerus.  A cheap fleece-lined hunting jacket hung across his too-thin shoulders.  It was probably green, but filth and exposure had rendered it a vague shade of dark something and gray-nothing bits of stuffing poked through the various slits and holes.  Underneath the jacket was a white t-shirt with a capital ‘A’ on it that could have been the anarchy symbol or a poorly drawn pentagram or even the beginnings of a mediocre attempt at Aerosmith’s logo.  His jeans were in shambles, worn through in multiple places and so thoroughly caked with dirt as to look like they had been brought straight from the sweatshop pre-dirtied.  His boots were almost entirely covered in various dark shades of duct tape.  Creased, dirty, and sun-baked, his face matched his clothes.  His crooked nose was too flat, his cheekbones pressed against his skin too hard, and his chin came to a point.  His eyes were small and dark and hid beneath heavy brows and his hair stopped at his jaw line as if raggedly sheared by the sharp edge kept by his jawbone.  He leaned against the wall and flurries of dust shotgunned off.

“Hi.”

Half the room started checking their shoelaces and the other half checked the wallpaper for tears.  One person made eye contact and offered a nod and a strained facsimile of a smile in return.  Mary Whitaker was the stout head of the Whitaker family and was determined not to show superstitious fear in front of anyone.  She was not so determined, however, that she would offer the sin-eater a handshake.  Whereas the sin-eater could have been hung up on a wooden post in a cornfield, Mary Whitaker could have been rolled down the hallway like Violet Beauregard—if the roller was willing to lose the hands with which they rolled and then be strangled with them.