I took a programming class in college and have had this inside joke url ever since
Back when I first introduced this site, I told you that I had all kinds of lofty ambitions. Flash fiction, I promised! Poetry! . . . “I don’t know”! Oh yeah, and stick figure collections.
The night Brendan and I met, I told some anecdote and he made a casual aside which went something like “yeah, but you’re a crazy bitch.”
“What!” I thought indignantly, “I’m not a — ” and then I remembered that I needed to scan and upload these.
Full album here.
The first time we broke into the building together it was broad daylight and I was carefree. We all met in the parking lot of a pizza place to casually leave in groups of four. “Look cool, but don’t look like you’re trying to look cool,” Andrea stressed. “Talk to each other, but don’t be loud. We were thinking, maybe it’d be good if people smoked cigarettes.”
“Pffft,” I said.
Nick had thrown a rope over a wall earlier that day and repelled into the courtyard. He was inside now, waiting for us.
“Are you nervous about getting arrested?” someone asked.
“Are you kidding me? I would love to get arrested today,” I cried. “That shows cops are actually around. Which implies a certain degree of security and safety . . . sanity, order . . . that let’s just say, I’d love to feel around here. Anyway, I decided long ago that I don’t care about my legal record. I will never have that kind of job.”
Seriously though. I write about my life (mistakes) on the internet. I take my clothes off in bars and hotel conference rooms. Getting arrested for breaking and entering an abandoned mental hospital would be just another awesome thing you wish you were telling your grandchildren.
“. . . Unless there’s a fee involved. Nights in jail I can do. But really, I can’t afford even a twenty-five dollar ticket.”
We slipped in the side door, confident, chatty but muted, smoking cigarettes, and waited for the next group of four. The walls fluttered with peeling paint. Afternoon sunlight broke in through crumbling windows and everything was glowing, shifting, crunching under our feet. This was the kitchen. Here is the old sink. This was the sponge they used. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
“Uh, guys . . .”
Scott nodded his head toward the door, which was now wide open. A uniformed man had propped it with his foot. His left hand was shading his face from the sun, his right hand was on his hip. He was just standing there, like a man who has stood there many times before, waiting to be noticed.
We filed out, one at a time. Hop over broken glass, jump down to pavement, scamper scamper. Then he closed the door behind us, and wordlessly returned to his squad car.
Here is how it would be:
I would look like a nice girl. I would be in flats, jeans, hair in a ponytail. I would have makeup on but not too much makeup on. I would be able to explain our act to you in detail, maybe we would rehearse it. I would tell you all about the kooky van ride here: the bag of Harvest Cheddar Sunchips and peanut M&Ms I’d had for lunch/dinner (no water! Why do I always refuse to buy water), the fact that the more I get to know these people, the more I tend to forget that these are stage names — and the singalong to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” that made me feel like a total poser.
The rest of the van had just belted out the entire first half of the song, punctuating octave shifts with diva hands. I was swaying in the backseat like an anthropologist, trying to memorize the song as it played and smiling hesitantly. This is fun, right guys? Somebody whooo! Somebody whoooo!
Sugar had turned to face me, and was slowly beginning to look more and more perplexed. “Wait a minute,” she said, then. “. . . Have you never heard this song before?”
“Uh, well . . . I don’t think so, actually. But . . . maybe. Who’s this by, again?”
“Oh my God! You haven’t been to enough gay bars.”
“You’ve never heard this song before?” Miss Gingerita cried.
I was haggard, thirsty, unwashed; jacked on salt and neon candy coatings. And it would begin with this confessional. I really want to belong here, but I’m afraid that I don’t. (Everything I have written about confidence has been fiction. I am a ruse. You’re about to find out. What on earth am I doing on a stage in New York City?)
Let’s just put that on the table, human to human. I think that would be really helpful, actually: recalibrate expectations. Yes. Before our act.
Just in case you were starting to think I’d gotten so wrapped up in other things (boobies!) that I didn’t love this crazy thing called Radio any more: some pictures from The Megapolis Audio Festival which took place in Cambridge, MA last weekend.
Full album from a weekend of break-ins, poetry, 40s and lectures incorporating hamster wheels (wait . . . what is this, college?) here.
And to celebrate the transition from poetry month into bicycle riding month (I’m all about commemorative periods of time lately?), here’s a poem that branched off an instant message exchange earlier this morning. For Angie, who was having the kind of day that caused her to ask “What Am I For, What Is I.”
You Are For Hula Hooping
And For Experimenting With New Cameras, the
glossy boxes full of shaped glass that arrived in your mailbox today, carefully cushioned in packaged air you are for
Your Garden,
a chainlink fenced in square which, before you was weeds, wildflowers, dry
dirt and now look just look! you are for
Water Fountains In Parks
Credit Ratings and The Machines Who Keep Track Of Your Credit Ratings,
Supermarkets and The Machines Who Keep Track Of Supermarkets
Honeydew Melons and Unskinned Rabbits and That Goat Cheese
Which Traveled By Plane, Train Automobile All The Way From France
Just For You
To Spread It On A Cracker, Today
You Are For
Quitting Jobs Sometimes, Oversleeping Sometimes, Forgetting To
Feed The Fish Sometimes
You Are For Traffic Signs and the way they’d point us —
Left, right, up, down, the mandala of
the rotary late night last summer
When I’d forgotten how to ride a bicycle
but you adjusted my helmet
and we went out the door.