it's buried in you somewhere

the bad employee

He does not care about the company mission statement; he knows he has signed up for an execution: the murdering of his years. She knows that the only 5 year plan is escape. It is a masculine quality that makes her a bad employee. He can survive with the company as long as he wears the feminine mask of cheerful compliance. The art of concealing murderous defiance with a blowjob smile. The bad employee approaches his work with the black humor of the Gulag. His prison is a shiny happy place where you're allowed 1 hour of freedom. She learns to keep her mouth shut when she realizes that the good employees are unnerved by her words. She doesn't care about money; she only wants time. He disguises contempt with shyness and bides his time. He knows that the good employyes enjoy the security of their stations. She knows that no matter how hip the boss is, he is not her friend. He is her arbitrary master, the one who controls her movements, even her bodily functions. She is not ideological; she only cares to free herself. He doesn't care to impose his rebellion on others; he just would prefer not to. 

kids in a parking lot 1992

A flannel shirt, blue with green plaid squares, hung loosely about the hips. It was warm for late October, and everything still smelled of fertilizer. She breathed into her hands, adding the scent of flesh.

When would he come?

It was 6 a.m. She had finished her chores and was now waiting for her friends in the Costco parking lot. She lit a cigarette. There was no one around. Beyond the lot was a lone road, stretching for miles and miles into the great nothing and everything of the cornfields. The ash of her cigarette glazed hot orange and then faded to gray against the concrete. From far away she heard music.



They were coming. She squinted her eyes and tried to count the heads, little specks in a red pick-up truck, but she could not tell if he was among them.

Something flutters inside her.

The vehicle pulls up to the curb where she stands, butt in hand. One by one they pile out like clowns. She does not bother to say hello because, like a vision, he's there before her. Kids at school called him Moses because he always wore sandals, but she thought he looked more like Jesus, that beautiful long-haired, doe-eyed man who haunted her Sunday school readers.

Fatties and forties are offered and rejected; she wants to keep her system empty out of respect for the miracle that may or may not occur this morning. She weaves her way through the chattering groups surrounding the truck. She is trapped sitting on the hood talking to someone she doesn't care to know. It takes an eternity to talk her way to the flatbed, where he lies smoking with an acquaintance. She is uncertain, sweaty, pained with desire to not let this go. Some contact must be made.

A smile. A hand. Success.

The others giggle, pile back into the truck, a parade of sad intoxicated clowns not yet ready for the drudgery of the rest of their lives. They speed away, back down that lonesome, endless road.

And now they are alone. She bites her tongue. No, don't say anything. She closes her eyes. She hears the power plant humming far away. Her father will be driving to his job there soon, and her mother will begin baking that pie that she will let cool on the windowsill. It's morning in America. For them.

Her eyes are still closed when he kisses her. They walk alone into the cornfields.

Doom of DOMS

When you first start working out again, your whole body aches, as though to punish you for all those weeks, months, or years of inactivity. DOMS, they call it, an appropriately foreboding acronym. This is a condition that slips over you like a dark storm cloud, making everyday activities difficult or even impossible.

After over two months of holiday season-induced couchpotatodom, my first sets of squats and lunges made climbing a simple flight of stairs seem like scaling the facade of Everest with broken legs. Reaching for that box of morning cereal became an Olympian task following my first round of push-ups and shoulder-presses. Even getting out of bed was a revelation of agony after a mere 20 minutes of crunches, sit-ups and planks the day before. 

It's enough to make you give up this whole "healthy lifestyle" thing. Sure, you felt like crap as a couch potato, but at least you weren't in constant physical pain. 

The Corpse part 1

It wasn't until the next morning of their camping trip that Susan told Fred about the corpse. She had wanted to tell it around the campfire like a ghost story. She had imagined a very particular scenario: they would cook hot dogs in salt water and heat beans over a fire; they would roast marshmallows and smoosh s'mores (she was not going to worry about her diet); she would share with her beloved the story of how she and several other children had happened upon a partially-decomposed human corpse in a marsh directly linked to the very island where they were now camping. But this plan did not pan out. First, they discovered, only as they just lay down their packs at the camp site, that they had left the cooler containing all their food and water in the truck of the car. They were only 5 miles from the parking lot, but it involved another trek across the mud flats of the marsh. Fred had almost lost his shoe in the putrid muck and nearly passed out from the smell. "It's healthy," Susan grumbled in reply to his complaints. "It means the ecosystem is functioning." She was annoyed with him. She had told him to wear rock shoes--why had he insisted on wearing good sneakers? His plaintive whines about the smell struck her as effeminate.

When they first realized they had no dinner, they laughed. What helpless city slickers! But Susan couldn't help but notice the fear at the bottom of it; Fred's guffaws wore pink panties beneath the guttural belches. She didn't even have the opportunity to suggest turning back. "I'm not going back through THAT again," he announced. Susan didn't bother reminding him that they would, in fact, have to trudge back through the marsh eventually if they ever wanted to get back to civilization. He suggested they dig for clams.

"What about red tide?"

"Fish, then."

"How will we catch fish without bait?"

"We'll dig for worms."

"And without fishing gear?"

He paused.

"We'll eat the worms instead."

Susan realized she wouldn't be telling any ghost stories.