NEW new blog

Head on over to lucasloredo.com

Excuse the mess while I get it up and running. The writing's the most important thing—so the look of the blog will have to come along slowly!

New Blog!

Hey everyone (all two of you):

I've shifted over to Wordpress! Better functionality, more visibility, all that jazz.

Head on over to wethemountain.wordpress.com for the new digs.

Still working out all the kinks, working out the looks of it—but I'd rather write new stuff than fiddle with layouts for 2 hours. So, excuse the mess while I get everything up and running!

<3 Lucas

Marquise and Hudson excerpt

It was six stories of dust held up by 100 years of paint. And inside, they were spraying. Marquise shot fat yellow lines at the cracked white plaster wall and said softly, Real easy baby. Easy, now. He was negotiating—he coaxed his NYC fatty into swoops and jags of bright color. It was night—cold, breath out and white and then gone. Marquise’s little brother Hudson was on watch, perched up in a deep windowsill, his knees up to his chin, watching for cops through the gaps in the boarded windows. Let me do some, Hudson said. Please. Marquise changed the fatty at the end of his spray paint can for a flat tip. No one going to respect me if you do it, he said. But you messing it up, Hudson said. He lined a chalky circle on his knee with his index finger. I can do it better. Marquise grabbed green out of his drooping black trash bag. I told you no, he said.

The whine of floorboards, prickling at the neck. Hudson shot up and stood on the sill, startled straight. The big Texas moon crowded the window and pinned Hudson’s shadow to the floor. Someone here, he whispered. At least two of them. Hudson lifted his chin and squinted down over his nose, trying to catch a glint of smiling teeth, a flash of a watch, a small burst of white sneaker in the dark. Too many columns shoring up the paper ceiling, too many corners—anyone could be anywhere.

Another whine, closer, and Hudson was down off his perch. He waded around in the thick, cold air, lifting his long heron legs and bobbing his head. Marquise spayed faster, looping up and striking down thin beams of green and blue. Come on, baby, he said. He was carving out the last letter of his alias—MARS.

Who’s there? Hudson said. Then a voice rang out clear and hollow. This our spot, it said. And three dark, hunched ghosts slid sideways out from behind the doorway at the far end of the room.

The place used to be a writing bay for the Houston Times before the Chronicle bought them up, and the upturned desks made it impossible to see the three figures’ feet. They drifted forward.

Marquise was throwing a black outline around everything, cleaning up. Hudson drew close to his brother. I don’t see you with no cans, he said. We the one’s here.

Marquise finished outlining the S and bagged his spray paint. His eyes fumbled in the dark trying to pick out shapes. He heard something metal dragging on the concrete floor, and the sound approached with the three figures. Then a flash, quick and sharp, wrapped around the aluminum barrel of a baseball bat.

Three kids, young, Hudson’s age. Eleven, maybe. Their black outlines and dark skin barely popped out of the night that had them all surrounded. Marquise’s brain worked. You gonna write with a bat? he said. You ain’t got paint.

Another glint, higher this time around one of the kids’ necks, and suddenly all three looked like baseball card silhouettes, arms draped around the bats pressing down on their shoulders. Naw, the one in front said. But you do.

It was too quick—a cry of wind being ripped through then a shout clawing up through Hudson’s throat. The bat had come down on his thin left leg and busted it clean. Hudson fell sideways into his brother, who held him up, and Marquise swung his bag of metal canisters around his head once like a primitive slingshot and brought it around to meet the kid on the left’s face. The black plastic bag tore open and canisters and paint tips spewed into the still air looking like Christmas tinsel.

The kid in front laughed. Watch the paint, he said. We trying to write tonight. Marquise squeezed the empty black plastic bag . . . To be (maybe) continued~~

That last post—it had some promise before I came back at 3 am and hacked away at it like a tired butcher. But for now, it's enough. I'll look at it in the morning. Hope it's better than I think it is.

But the important thing is—I wrote. My promise to myself, my 30-day challenge, these are the sort of nights that make or break you. Come back at 3 am, want to pass out, want to curl up—but no, you write. And it's no good. And you still get something out. And you still get your thousand words. And you're doing it.

Intimacy

Around corners, everyone is fucking. There is sucking in the room above my head, and in the bathroom stall quiet kisses leak away. I think there is an worldwide radio station—90.1 FUCKFM, say—where everyone learns about places for, and who is interested in, fucking. Except I am tuned into 99.9 LAMEFM. I am Cold Showers in the Morning with DJ Lucas. I am your humble radio host.

My dear friend and I share with each other our sexual exploits. Last night I was talking to her on the phone and she was sharing with me a story that happened a few nights ago, where she straightforwardly asked a very attractive guitarist if he wanted to go home with her. And they did.

And I’m back on LAMEFM and I wonder, How am I not a part of this? And how am I missing out? What does everyone in the world know that I don’t?

Even now my brain turns, working through my life and wondering about myself. Count them: I have had sex with six women in a span of five years—about one sexual partner per year. Okay. My friend is going on eight per year—and damn. And I think about this.

It’s not the number I have a problem with—because it’s not a conquest. I am not interested in conquest. If you ever find yourself at an impasse and the solution you come up with is, Sleep with more people, then the question is wrong, or the answer is wrong, or both—but nothing is ever solved by sleeping with more people.

No, I’m interested in intimacy. I’m interested in real connection. I’m interested in being with a woman and being acutely and fully aware of what is happening in that moment, right then—intense and sensual and good. 

My friend goes to a small liberal arts college, where people sprout up through the grass and say hi to each other. I go to Stanford, where life is bleached down. Where’s the funk? And where are the outlaws? And where are the tattooed women and the writers and the artists and the people with space in their mind for looking up at the night sky and wondering—Does the moon look bigger here? And how close is the sky? 

Nope, not here. At least—these people are rare and take time to find, just as rare things do. Here’s how it happens—in Austin you meet a woman with her dog at the park and strike up a conversation because you both like Rottweilers. That woman mentions an art show she’s going to that night and invites you. You go, have a wonderful night of paintings and sculpture and wine, then tag along to a party she’s going to. At the party you meet ten new people who are your people. Doesn’t matter what happens the rest of the night—you could go home and pass out no problem. Thing is, you’ve got a dozen new friends and a wonderful night in your back pocket and wasn’t that easy? And wasn’t that nice?

In Austin, this happens. In Portland, too, and New Orleans and New York City—all the places I’ve spent time in have that sizzle of possibility hovering around my ears at all times. The buzz of spontaneity wraps around every moment like a cat around ankles.

Here at Stanford, it’s grey. There’s no buzz. Most people here are on their track and have no interest in looking up to check for full moons, or running their hands through the wheat grass outside Arrillaga Dining, or whistling back at the birds (am I the only one who does this?). And God, it’s stifling. And God, it’s enough to make a man doubt himself.

See, in Austin or Portland or wherever—you know, places where the whole mainstream, sterile thing is the minority and not the majority—there are women who are attracted to me. Physically, sure, but intellectually and emotionally attracted, too. Here—are you kidding? My kind doesn’t fly here. No one’s interested in bald men. No one’s interested in a man with an earring, who writes fiction, who likes watching good movies and also shitty movies, who likes reading books before bed because he likes reading books and not because he has assigned reading. No one’s interested in a man who’d rather paint houses and write novels than write code for a startup company. And that’s it. And that’s the truth. And really—that’s it.

The problem—it’s spring quarter of senior year. Time to check out. Time for the next big ride. Because I have started discovering some good, honest, fun, artistic people lately. They do exist. They’re just so rare, so hard to find, it’s taken me four years to do it, and now I’m so tired and so ready to go that I think—What’s the use? And it’s a shame. Because I really have met some great people the last couple weeks. But we all feel it—our lives are about to twist away from each other and we’ll probably never meet again. And it fills me with sadness, and it fills me with regret, and why the hell hadn’t I found these people earlier?

The nice realization is that there hasn’t been some terrible flaw in my character that was keeping me from making connections with people. Not that I ever believed that—it’s just, after four years of searching for friendships and connections in the wrong places and having no luck, I started to wonder about myself. But no more.

And this isn’t about sex, either. When my friend told me about her sexual exploits the other night I felt weird. I thought I was jealous because I wasn’t going out to parties and hooking up with women and enjoying being single. And I thought I felt bad about myself because I was completely behind on the numbers game. But it's neither of those things. Now don’t get me wrong—I want sex. But more than that, I want intimacy. And I also don’t want a committed relationship. And that’s what wavelength I’m on. And I know there are a lot of women on that same wavelength—just most of them don’t go to Stanford.

Intimacy is the thing. Slick backs. A fistful of sheets. Reaching out and grabbing a hand, an anchor. Out of breath because it means something and you’re in it. That’s what I want. And more than that—connection. Friendships that mean something, people that mean something. People tuned to my radio station. You’re out there, and I’m coming for you, and it will be like a happy reunion with a person you could swear you’ve always known.

Who's Nuclear?

We read an article in my feminist and queer theory class that used the phrase “designer baby” and I imagined a white butter whip of a baby with a D&G medallion hanging from his creamy neck. And sunglasses, ones that would shade his entire face.

This is not what the author meant.

The author meant babies with good and then better and then best genes. Rich people now can shop for good sperm and good eggs. It’s kind of like the film Gattaca, except it’s very real for those with money. You can poke around online and look at your donor’s profiles. Take Ryan: a blonde, well-built, handsome, Ivy League graduate, with no history of genetic disease and strong cheekbones. Now pair his sperm with the egg of a young brunette woman just out of college—Rachel, let’s say—and Rachel is an up-and-coming artist who needed the $20,000 for studio space and art time, who is quirky and has a hawk’s eyesight, who is dextrous and can play Chopin, and who comes from good, Polish stock. Now take that egg and that sperm and put it in the womb of a woman we’ll call Lucille, who lives on the East side of I-35 and takes the bus to her job at the Vick’s Vapor Rub canning plant. Her perfume can never quite cover the menthol that wraps her skin.

Nine months later Lucille gives birth to a baby boy at Seton medical center and Lucille never sees the kid, just goes back to her job canning Vick’s, and a family is made happy. Did I mention the parents? Barbara, early forties, lawyer, with a big mouth and small teeth and sterile since forever. Then Bob, with nervous fingers and a job writing scripts for iPhone games about high school drama.

The kid they name Rigel, God knows why. It’s the name of a star and it’s kind of like Rachel and kind of like Ryan but not too like them, because Rigel’s their own, of course. And Rigel has five parents. And Rigel is a designer baby.

So that’s the question—who are Rigel’s parents? Certainly his biological parents are Rachel and Ryan, though maybe we should add Lucille to the mix because she did give birth, after all. Or was she just a glorified test tube? Just a warm womb with blood and nourishment. A pre-babysitter? Well, 2 1/2 parents let’s say.

Then Barbara and Bob are Rigel’s adopted parents, of course. But are they really? They’ve known about Rigel before Rachel and Ryan ever did. And maybe, probably, Rachel and Ryan never knew about Rigel.

So who the hell are this kid’s parents? If this class has taught me anything it’s that—it’s complicated. I have this image in my head of a silhouette dad and a silhouette mom and a silhouette kid with a baseball cap and they are called the Nuclear Family. Father, Mother, child—that’s close, that’s nuclear. Like a nucleus. Tight, compact, made of just a few discernible parts. But who’s family is like that anymore?

My mom died when I was 12, and my dad partnered with another woman when I was 14. Now, 22, I’ve almost spent half my life with this new woman with whom I am very close, and whom I would even call a second mother. So who’s my mother? What happens when I turn 25, and I’ve spent more time being raised by my stepmom than my real, biological mom? Is she my mom? What about when I’m 40, when my biological mom is nothing but a long faded memory—when she’s from a different life altogether?

The point is—nuclear families are rare these days. Divorced parents, adopted parents, two fathers, two mothers, designer babies, international adoption (paging Angelina and Brad)—who’s nuclear? And does my image of the silhouette family even make sense anymore? I have three parents, some have four, some have more than that.

And wouldn’t it be weird if a guy’s sperm ever became a commodity? Take our buddy Brad Pitt—everyone wants to have Brad’s baby. I know this because I have heard many women say, “I want to have his baby.” What if his sperm was available for purchase? There would be a lot of Brad babies, and there would be half-siblings spread throughout the globe—and then who’s family?

And then who’s nuclear?

30-Day Challenge

I'm nervous. Today is the first day of my self-imposed 30-day challenge. I'm going to write 1,000 words per day, five days a week, for a month.

I've done it before. I've done more, actually, during the National Novel Writing Month two Novembers ago. Then, I wrote 1,111 words seven days a week for six weeks. So it's not unreasonable.

Thing is—I'm nervous. Why? There's a lot behind this. I wrote before about taking my shot. I'm doing it. I've decided to hell with those copywriting jobs—I'm going to focus all my energy on my writing and take a real shot at it, and if I have to wait tables or bartend or work a ski lift, that's what I'm going to do.

What's scary is I'm putting my writing on the line. I've been sitting in a paddle boat with my feed in the water, butted up against the shore. Finally I'm picking my feet up, rolling back—I'm in the boat. And off it goes.

That's what it is—there's no one forcing me to do this. There's no assignment. It's just me making a deal with myself and a deal with the page, saying, Here's where my writing begins in earnest. Here's where the urgency begins. Because the sooner I can get good enough and put out enough work to make a living, the sooner I'm not a waiter.

Damn. How's that for motivation?

I don't know what I'll write about. I liked "Vials of Juliet"—that was great fun to write, it's nice and tight, and I think I'd do well to have more short shorts like that. Build myself up to bigger things.

It's just scary. Only me and the page now. Nothing outside of that. It's a new intimacy. A new kind of closeness. And damn it's quiet here.

A quick thought:

There's no way in hell I'm wasting this life.

In my What The Hell Do I Do When I Graduate class (Thinking Like a Working Writer), we've had a handful of people come in and talk about their jobs. Electronic Arts, The Wall Street Journal, Google, the non-profit flavor of the day. And I got to thinking—I refuse.

Graduation—I'm six weeks out. Everyone around me is flipped. What am I going to do? Will Facebook hire me? I'll work for two years to pad my resumé then I'll really start living.

And to me that's no way to live. And to me it sounds like poison. And I refuse to do it.

The more I heard about writing filler articles for The Wall Street Journal, writing copy for startups, padding and waiting and curbing, the more I think—don't you get it? We have One Shot at this thing called life. Only one. And am I going to wake up when I'm eighty and say, I've had a decent run, it's been a pretty good life, or am I going to say with deep laugh lines in my face and roughed-up hands and a gimp leg—What a rush. 


I don't know what I'm going to do when I graduate. But if that means waiting tables, Fine! If that means working on a farm, Good! The one thing I refuse to compromise is my writing time. Because that's my thing, that's what makes me happy, and I want to be an author, and I want to make a living off my writing, and all else is waste.

Vials of Juliet

When Eliza and Danny Whitlock first took their own lives they were giddy. Danny said with a smile, I'm nervous, and Eliza told him, Don't be so soft. And they tangled their arms like they'd seen older kids do, but instead of saying bottoms up and drinking alcohol they said bottums up and each child drank a small clear vial of Juliet.

One minute later they took their first breaths and their hearts spontaneously thumped, singular and hard, like an underwater detonation. Their sleeping muscles kneaded blood back through their dried veins, and when their eyes fluttered open they looked at each other. Still nervous? said Eliza. Danny said, I don't remember anything. Eliza said, Me too, except everything was purple. Like closing your eyes and opening them up again, Danny said. They both sat up and Eliza guided her black course hair over her right shoulder and sat stroking it, and Danny tugged on his shirt which ate at his small chest. I don't think I would want to do that forever, Danny said. You're such a weenie, Eliza said, but she was looking down at her hair. Maybe, said Danny, but I still wouldn't want to do it.

It became ritual, this brother and sister, in the hours before afternoon service every Sunday, their parents busy drinking the mimosas they'd let sit out overnight, marinating. Juliet was not hard for the children to get. It was expensive, but they piled their allowances for a taste of the clear liquid vials, for a taste of the dark coolness of death and then the sudden explosion of the heart, and the warm blood creeping back like roots reaching through dirt. The blood seeping back, Eliza said once. That part makes my toes curl.

On Easter Uncle Bob came from out of town with his wife, Beatrice, and his son, Kurt. Kurt was ten—one year younger than Danny and two years less than Eliza—and he wore a blue clip-on tie decorated with dyed eggs wrapped under the collar of a thin, white, short-sleeved dress shirt from the boys section.

In the play room Eliza said, We'll all take half—you won't be out ten seconds. It's purple, Danny said. Kind of like sleeping but not exactly. The vial was big compared to Kurt's hand, the exact size of the stretch between the base of his palm and the end of his middle finger. I don't want to, Kurt said. We'll get in trouble. No one's gonna know, said Eliza. They're partying, don't be so soft. Kurt looked to Danny and Danny nodded, though he wasn't sure why, and so Kurt watched as Eliza and Danny did the familiar dance of arms and said bottoms up and brought the vials to their lips. Eliza slid a glance at Kurt, who was obligated to put the half-vial of Juliet to his mouth. Eliza said, Tastes sweet, too, and then they were out.

Sound seeped warm into Kurt's ears like melted chocolate. His eyes flitted open. After a moment his vision faded in and he saw Danny and Eliza were already sitting. Eliza was grinning down at Kurt, and Danny was turned away searching the blank wall and tugging at his shirt. Told you, Eliza said. Like butter cream.

Kurt lay on his side, didn't get up. He said weakly into the carpet, I don't get it. He rolled up his legs into his gut and pressed his clip-on Easter tie to his eyes. He cried, quiet and bald. I hate it, he said. Yeah, Eliza said, but now you know.

Mr. Whitlock called from the kitchen, Ready for takeoff! and Eliza jumped up. Alone, Danny said to Kurt, It gets easier. Kurt said, It felt like dying. That's because it was dying, Danny said. Kurt's small soft face twisted up like it was trying to catch an idea. But I don't get it, Kurt said. It was nothing. Danny said, I hate it too. And then they left for afternoon service.

The next time was at Danny's twelfth birthday party. Mr. and Mrs. Whitlock rented a bouncy castle, which Danny and his friends were just barely young enough to still enjoy. It was a family affair—each kid came wrapped with two parents, all of whom joined Mr. and Mrs. Whitlock for cool screwdrivers. It was hot out, bathing suits ran around attached to kids and bundled down the Slip 'N Slide. At one point Mr. Whitlock, who because of his job at NASA was always stuck in aero speak, hoisted Danny from the armpits, threw him up into the bouncy castle, and shouted, Liftoff! As Danny flew through the air laughing he thought how neat it would be to build rockets like his dad.

Later all the kids gathered in Danny's room and taped a note to the door that read, Boys Only, to which all the parents chuckled. Eliza was in there, too, but when one of the boys protested she slid him a look that said, Oh no you don't. Eliza had made Danny spend all the birthday money his grandparents sent on vials of Juliet.

Kurt was there in big Hawaiian trunks with palm trees that swallowed his rear. I'll watch, said Kurt. Eliza was lifting vials from a small brown bag. Fine, she said. No one's forcing you. Sissy, someone said.

The boys talked. I heard it was purple, someone said looking at Danny. Danny nodded, staring into the opposite wall. Tommy Meyer got grounded for a whole year, someone else offered. Like he'd leave his room anyway, said another boy. Eliza passed vials around—ten clear wraps of glass in all. She emptied Kurt's vial into her own. Good, Kurt said.

Danny was still staring into the wall. I don't want to anymore, he said, and poured his share of Juliet in Eliza's vial. Eliza grabbed the boy next to her, Jimmy Studebaker, and wrapped her arm around his. Jimmy's eyes jumped out of his head and he smiled right into Eliza's chest. Jimmy had never touched a girl before—not like this. Eliza said, Bottoms up, and Jimmy would have said anything to her so he said, Bottoms up, and Danny said—Don't. Eliza looked Danny firm in the face. Well I'm trying to be prepared, she said, and then she and Jimmy were gone.

Kurt got up and left the room. Danny had never watched someone turn off. It was like the taut strings that hold a person up were suddenly and permanently cut. Danny could almost hear a sound, deep and dark like the bottom chords of a piano, punctuate the moment his sister slumped over.

Jimmy Studebaker came to sixty seconds later with an erection. He looked all around and when his vision finally faded in he stared at Eliza. The boys stared at Jimmy. Jimmy couldn't stop smiling, looking down at the girl who entangled her arms with him. What was it like? one boy asked. Jimmy stared and stared. Who cares, he said—did you see her grab me? After a while another boy said, Man she took a lot.

The door opened and there was Mr. and Mrs. Whitlock, screwdrivers in hand, with Kurt hiding behind Mrs. Whitlock's yellow summer dress peeking in. Mr. Whitlock looked down at Eliza and said, How many? And Danny said, Three. Mine and Kurt's. Mr. Whitlock handed his drink to his wife and picked up his wasted daughter and carried her into the master bedroom. Danny heard him through the walls talking to his mother. Mr. Whitlock sighed and said, Houston, we have a problem.

Kurt was still drippy from the Slip 'N Slide, his curly black hair stuck to his forehead like electrician's tape. Jimmy Studebaker's eyes drifted dreamily onto Danny. Your sister has a thing for me, he said. This is stupid, Danny said, and he grabbed his young cousin's hand and he and Kurt left the whole thing.

You guys saw, Jimmy said, turning back to the group. She wanted it. The kids were entrenched in leftover hose water, circled on the floor around the empty brown paper sack. No man, someone said, pouring out his vial of Juliet on the dry bag, you didn't see her. She was really out.

Jesmyn Ward

Tonight I went to a reading by Jesmyn Ward. She read from her book, Salvage The Bones, and then is when I realized I need to step my game up. I need to take my writing to the next level.

Her writing was so tight. And so imaginative. Listening to her similes was like having someone turn my brain 90 degrees. Yeah, it all still worked the same way—but damn if the world didn't look different.

None of the writing is lazy. Each sentence has urgency and heat and energy. There isn't a wasted moment—there were no throwaway lines.

It was encouraging, though. Encouraging because I thought to myself—this is amazing, and I don't know if I could do that right now, right this second—but maybe, actually, I could. I think I actually could see the world at my own version of 90 degrees. She saw everything fresh. Fresh, fresh, everything was like it was being described for the first time.

And what a breath of clean oxygen, and what an inspiration, and what talent, and damn I need to buy that book like yesterday.

In retrospect, I feel bad for Spencer the Animal. I did not feel bad at the time. At the time I wanted to break him and make him understand that you can't smash and tear things and scream hurtful insults and ask women if you can fuck them.

But now I feel bad for him, because he's a senior and he's about to graduate and he's an alcoholic, and here at Stanford you get chance after chance, but in the real world you get put in jail and you abuse your wife and your children and your life is a Waste.

I do not want Spencer's life to be a Waste. Tonight, for Spencer the Animal, I'll pray.

Spencer the Animal

I have been called four different names in the past eighteen hours. Five if you count "bald asshole" as a name, which I don't.

I like imagining other names I could have had and if having a different name would have made me a different person, or if it would have at least made me a different shade of the person I am, who is Lucas. I went to my friend EL's birthday party last night, which was fun, and there were lots of nice people who all knew each other. It was my job to pick up EL and blindfold her and drive her to the party. I held her hand as we crossed the street and she pointed out that we were holding hands awkwardly, which I took as an invitation to interlace fingers, which I did. And there were a lot of PHEs there at the party, a PHE being a Peer Health Educator, and a Peer Health Educator being the person every resident relies on for condoms. PHEs, I learned, like to Party.

Sexual tension is a funny thing, especially when it's one sided. There was this very nice girl named T who arrested my beer and told me we were going to dance. This I did. I don't remember much what she said because she kept pressing her breasts into my chest and gliding her lips along my ear, and I don't think she remembered any of what she said on account of the alcohol escaping her lungs. She must have tasted like fire. I did not check. T was aggressive with what she wanted, which I am certain was my mouth being on hers, and I was aggressive at trying to escape. Why? I was not into T. Nothing against her or her looks—excessively drunk girls turn me off. I escaped by getting into a big group hug with a circle of PHEs. The PHEs were everywhere, really. My new friend MD told me very seriously, I hope you're okay with orgies because PHE parties always turn into orgies.

I wish the party would have turned into an orgy because then I could cross Orgy off my Life List.

We paraded around campus. Six of us, including my female friend EL, marked a wide perimeter around a stretch of parking lot with our beer pee. I claimed a tall tree with wispy leaves and a double trunk, and I drunkenly apologized to it before I relieved myself. T had long since, I'm guessing, found another person into whom she could press her breasts. Anyway she was not there. And we hopped from place to place, and we ended up at The Knoll, which is the multimillion-dollar recording house on campus. It sits on top of a large hill and used to house the university president, and there are rooms everywhere which housed the president's servants.

EL said, I wonder if we can get inside. I used to work there, I said, maybe my keycard still works. I had not been to The Knoll in three years and I knew they had already deactivated my keycard, but EL and I still went up to check the front door far up the hill while the others waited far down below on the curb. No one was behind the tall glass doors at the front entrance, so I took out my keycard and waved it in front of the card reader. The light turned green and the lock snapped back, ready to be opened.

Holy shit, I said, it still works. EL said, I heard you can get up to the roof and watch the stars. Did you know that? No, I said. Don't tell them we can get in, EL said. Let's go up to the roof tomorrow. Okay, I said, and then is when I remembered that my friend K told me there had been an elaborate ruse. The ruse was: It was not an accident that I was the one that blindfolded EL. It was not an accident that I was in charge of bringing her to the surprise party. And it was not an accident that I would have to hold her hand.

My friends are cunning.

After a while we all said our goodbyes and EL and our friend LL and I headed back to our dorm together. EL got a text message from one of the RAs saying there was trouble. We all headed to a guy named Spencer's room.

Spencer was creating a Scene. I use Spencer's name because I do not give a shit about Spencer, which is something I try not to ever feel toward a person but with him I cannot help it.

He was like a crazed animal that had suddenly found his cage unlocked, after all these years. He was furious at everything. He was wearing a nice black suit and a skinny black tie and he was hitting things. His knuckles were bloody. EL and LL convinced him to let them bandage his bloodied hand. EL took out a band-aid. Can I fuck you? Spencer said. Not tonight, said EL. Can I fuck you in the asshole? Spencer begged. How about we worry about the band-aid, said EL.

Spencer was asking everyone if he could fuck them. He saw me leaning against the doorjamb with my arms crossed. I would imagine I looked disapproving. Who's this bald asshole? Spencer said of me. I'm Lucas, I said. Shut the fuck up! Spencer shouted, and he was coiled for hitting things. He started ripping the posters off people's doors and laughing like a person about to die. It was like crying but also like screaming, and it was all laughter, and it made my heart beat in a way that made me aware I was an animal, too.

He made a mess of the stairs and opened an emergency exit on his way to the lobby. There, he kicked in a metal trashcan with his nice black polished shoes and sent an armchair into the wall. He asked LL if he could fuck her too, and also in the butt, and then yelled again as if I'd been following him around his whole life, Who is this bald asshole?

He took off in his underwear. I did not see him take off his dress pants but he did in that mysterious drunken way that I sometimes confuse for gracefulness, and he laughed his way into the Papua New Guinea sculpture garden. When we found him he was on the phone with, coincidentally, my friend MR, and he asked her if he could fuck her. He was relentless, though I'm certain he did not fuck a soul that night.

By then we had dialed for the police.

Who is this bald asshole? Spencer was sitting down on the stone railing of a low-water bridge. I'm Lucas, remember? I bet he has a big dick, Spencer said into the phone. And then he peeled off with shrieking laughter. How big is your dick? Big, I said. He ventured a guess—About seven? he said. Yeah, about seven. He's seven, pushing eight, Spencer said into the girl in the phone. Tell MR I said hi, I said. I was trying to distract him. Who is this bald asshole? LL said, You know his name already. Josh? he said. I tried to help him out.

It starts with an L, I said. Luh-luh....

Loo?

Loo, loo.

Luh—Lucas!

Yes! I said. So now you know who the bald asshole is.

Spencer was warming up to me.

And then Spencer took off into the woods in his nice black polished shoes and his boxers and his coat and skinny black tie.

The police caught him in the end and I'm not sure what happened. I heard that Spencer has already been kicked out of housing. He's a senior, like me, but not like me at all. He asked everyone around if he could fuck them. He laughed in a way I never want to hear myself laugh.

Spencer reminded me that I'm an animal with adrenal glands and fists and that my body could be used as a weapon, if it had to be. I didn't like it, not exactly. But it reminded me that sometimes life comes down to confrontation and loud yells and asking everyone if you can fuck them. Spencer must be a lonely person. But there I go, projecting again, trying to make excuses for people, trying to be empathetic. Sometimes people are just assholes.

It was by then three in the morning. I walked back with EL to our hallway and said goodnight. I knew what I was supposed to do, because K had told me, he had said laughing—Don't forget your job tonight, meaning that I had to remember the elaborate ruse and why they had pulled it. But I was too tired, and I had been called Josh and Justin and a bald asshole all night, and I had had so much blood pumping in my head, and I had been reminded that I was an animal, and I know that animals are supposed to fuck, but all I wanted was sleep.



This morning a kid I know called me, on accident, Sam. Josh, Justin, now Sam. In a story I named a version of myself Danny. I am collecting names, holding them in my hands. I don't know why—but they were given to me. They were Gifts, and I will keep them.

Half-finished second tries at things

There was of course The Time Mom Died Scuba Diving. There was a hungry shark and can you blame it? And there was a funeral at sea and we scattered poppy petals for Mom, and Dad wore a snorkel and mask and fins to the wake because immediately afterward he dove into the sea off the coast in Akumal, Mexico, and found that bastard shark. He fought it underwater one-on-one with the serrated hunting knife he keeps by the rocking chair for intruders, and he killed the shark and took a tooth and so did I and now we wear them around our necks, and Dad's has carved in it Bastard and mine says Shark Fin Soup.

There was The Time Mom Died by Toaster Oven. She was getting my frozen pepperoni pizza out of the metal electric trap with a fork when all of a sudden, Zap!

Of course there was The Time Mom Died Falling Off the Merry-Go-Round, and The Time Mom Died by Frogs. I remember The Skydiving Incident clearly, though Crossing South Congress Avenue on May 14th is still hazy because of all the buzzing buses everywhere, and then the one bus that whisked her under.

I can count the ways Mom bit the dust. Trolley Fishing, The Backward-Falling Chair, Losing in a Duel Over a Pair of Sandals, Saving Me from a Rabid Dog. Of course there was That Time Mom Rented the Wrong Movie on the Wrong Night, and also Death By Knives.

When I was seven Dad and Mom were out on the porch and it was raining outside and they were there, sitting, and sitting. And Mom was smoking a cigarette, and I was out there to ask her if my buddy Ryan could come over to play, and I saw her drag on that skeleton bone and I told her, You're going to get addicted again, and I said it serious like an adult even though I was only seven. And she said, I won't, and I thought, But you will, and then she did.

Four years later when I was eleven my mom started working nights at the neonatal intensive care unit. Babies born with their insides on the outside, things like that. I am not kidding. And often babies died on my mom's watch and she would come home in the morning with breakfast tacos and slip into her bedroom as I slipped out for school. And the graveyard shift is what they called working nights.

That last year when she was working at the I.C.U. was the worst, because it was so different than the Mom I was used to. When I was a kid we'd run around Zilker Park and then lie face down on the grass with our arms out, her in her big Snoopy sweatshirt, and she would say, Lucas, look, we're hugging Mother Earth. And we'd hug her. And our neighbors told us once that they could hear my mom laughing all the way across the street. And my mom and I would have Falling Asleep Competitions, and we read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss together, which was our favorite book.

All of this is to say the I.C.U. changed (verb) my mom. Something about the incubators. Something about the little chests trying so hard to do something they were so new at. Something about the sun always being down, the night always being out. You could say she was Changed, like a wolfman, except the transformation was slow and it was permanent.

The Last Memory before the Worst Memory—it has to do with smoking. I was twelve waiting under the elm tree at my middle school for my mom to pick me up. I waited and she did not come, and I waited more. I got comfortable and spread my legs out with my back against the tree trunk and my butt in the dirt. I would have taken a book out of my backpack and read but I wasn't a reader back then, so I lifted my CD player from the bottom of my red pack and listened to something loud. And I waited. And I could have gone to the office to call. And I knew she had just fallen asleep because of the Graveyard Shift. And I knew she'd come get me. But I did not go to the office and I did not call. I just waited with my butt in the dirt and my legs spread out and my back anchored against the elm and my lips firmed up.

After two hours I spotted her dark eggplant of a car at a stoplight. Down the road. I twined my headphones around my CD player and tossed it into my red pack and drew up my knees. Then I sensed the light turn green and I heard a shriek of rubber and my mom's eggplant car came toward me too fast. I saw a cigarette spring from the window, still lit. The muscles in my face went slack and downward and I stood up quickly and found myself on the curb. When I opened the door Mom looked at me with Graveyard Eyes.

"Why didn't you call me?" she said. "You should have gone to the office. I was asleep. I was asleep—you could have called. I'm sorry. Why didn't you call?"

And I didn't look at her I just looked straight through the glove box and I could not say one word.

When I think about the next day I think about crane flies. Crane flies are like mosquitos but much larger, and they have very long legs and they don't bite, and they bob up and down in the air like fishing floats. Crane flies have been everywhere in our house lately. It's the spring rain that brings them. I love crane flies but on accident I keep killing them. They are so so fragile. They are everywhere against windows and above lampshades always glittering around the edges of my vision. I try to catch them and put them outside in the night, but all I do is crush their legs in the gaps between my fingers. Sometimes they die all on their own—on the counter they get stuck in thin slips of water until they drown. I want to say, Hey, stop flying inside there's nothing good for you in here. But they're attracted to light, or they get sucked in by our air conditioning, or they have small brains, and so I keep trying to rescue them and my success rate is about one half, and that is what it's like trying to think about the next day which houses the Worst Memory.

The next day my mom passed away in the bathtub from a blood clot in her lung, and I happened to be home sick that day, which was a Wednesday, October 3rd, 2002. And it was violent and fast, and loud, and I called the ambulance while my dad worked on my mom, and there was a lot of yelling and crying which I had a hard time understanding was coming from my own lungs, and then the paramedics and the firefighters came and one of them told me, "I don't know if you believe in God or Buddha or whatever, but if I were you I would start praying."

Our family friend M.G. came to pick us up in his dark green convertible, though the top was rolled up, and he drove very fast. We came to a red light but he did not slow down, just sped up, and we jerked left and the tires yelled out and we were almost sideswiped, and the oncoming car would have hit my side and I could see it coming, but it was like seeing the world through gauze.

At the hospital they made us wait in a room with a brass placard on front that read, Family Room. Inside sat a therapist whose job it was to try and make small talk with us—we who were waiting to hear if someone we loved had died or not, we who were waiting to hear whether our lives would be changed forever or not. And that poor psychologist tried to make small talk though I can't remember anything she said.

The doctor called my dad out of the room and I couldn't hear anything they said, but it didn't take long, and when Dad came in he choked, "I have bad news," and that was it. And that was it.

(I need to find the line of this story, I think it's deteriorating quickly into something sentimental. And where to from here? Where do I go? What is the main line I'm trying to follow? I liked the energy at the beginning but now I'm not so hot about any of this last stuff.)

Writerly Cures for Feeling Like a PoS, Picking Gravity's Pocket, Sexy Yoga

I haven't been good about blogging—or writing—lately. When I don't write I feel like A Piece of Shit. That gets capital letters because I know everyone feels that sometimes. It's a mixture of sadness, guilt, shame, desire, and laziness. Feeling like A Piece of Shit can go two ways. You can feel like a PoS and decide, Enough, I'm done, I'm going to do something about this. Then, feeling like a PoS is good because it at least gets rid of the laziness—because you're doing something—and it also gets rid of the guilt—because at least you're trying. But feeling like a PoS can also be a self-fulfilling prophecy that makes things worse. You feel like a PoS so you start hitting yourself about it. Hitting yourself about it brings more sadness, guilt, and shame. You feel Overburdened. You're driven deeper and deeper. Now you're so deep you can't do anything, and you feel even lazier, and yadda yadda yadda, on and on, until, damn, do you ever feel like A Piece of Shit.

So—enough of all that.

I have a backlog of ideas for the blog to which I need to give words.

I remember the moment I first swung a bucket of sand around in a windmill and discovered centrifugal force. It was a whisper, a rumor around the playground—swing it around and nothing will come out. Surely, a trick. Surely, a pile of sand on my head and a big, bullying laugh from everyone around. So I used my hands to gather the loose, dry sand in the sand pit and quickly and quietly filled my blue plastic bucket. Careful—not too much. Careful—no wet stuff, because first it could be pee, and second it'd be easier to get dry sand out of my hair. I slipped through the playground, behind the slide, on the outer edges of the trees surrounding the gravel, and found a nice quiet corner where the fences met.

I could barely be seen through the trees and the kicked up dust from two dozen of my fellow classmates causing playground trouble. And no one was watching and I was alone. And my sandy right hand gripped the bucket handle. And I held on tight. And I swung the bucket back and forth like a pendulum, gathering speed, gathering momentum for the eventual loop-the-loop, seriously contemplating my doom. And then—with a heave!—I flexed and tightened and swung as hard as I could and I almost fell with the force but the bucket flew over my head and around again and when I looked down and when I looked at my shirt and felt around I realized—no sand. No sand.

I had picked gravity's pocket. I had slid one by. I had found an anomaly. The bucket was upside down and nothing came out. Nothing fell. Upside down, and nothing. And that day I knew I cheated something, I knew we had all cheated something, us playground desperadoes, because we had figured out something the grown-ups didn't know about, because surely if they knew they would go around all day swinging buckets of sand. And how lucky we were. And how carefully we guarded this secret. And how precious we held this magic.

What

   about

      firemen

        reciting poetry

    on their way

  to a burning

building?

Here are two quotes I like from "Miss Sophia's Diary" by Ding Ling, who was a female writer during the Maoist Cultural Revolution in China:

"I drank as though the liquor might ease me toward death tonight."

"I imagine the pleasure of sex to be like bones dissolving."

I was in yoga the other day, wrapping my hands around my calves, and thought, Doing yoga is like having sex with yourself. I'm not sure how to feel about that, but really—when you do yoga you get sexy with yourself. How else can you describe it? You pay your body acute and unwavering attention, you move slowly and sensually for your own benefit, you relish in your own breathing, in the stretch of your own muscles. It's body worship. Like sex is. Except it's your own body. It's like having sex with yourself. Honestly, it feels strange to be so intimate with myself. I do it, and I like it, it's just new.

And there's nothing like seeing a woman get down with herself. I've decided and it's now a Lucas Law—yoga women are the most attractive and desirable of all women. Why? Well, sure, they're always with the skin-tight yoga pants and the nicely fitting shirts, and downward dog, despite all my attempts to divert my gaze does always yield a nice view, but women these days wear those yoga pants everywhere (though I assure you I do not complain), and the downward dog scenic overlook isn't anything I haven't seen before. It's more than that. Seeing a woman in touch with her own body, seeing the way she rolls her torso and bends toward her calves, hearing her exhale in that special, centered way, seeing her discover her own supple muscles, the grabbing, the smoothing, the reaching, the breathing—that is It. It's enough to make me dumb, and it does, and I very often have little to say after yoga class.

And that's all for now~~

Just to be clear: death still scares the ever living shit out of me.

Clarity, clarity!

The Black Stone

I just read something very useful, something that was just what I needed. I don't feel better, per se, though I feel a little better. I feel at least like I'm on the cusp of feeling better, that I can see what feeling better looks like. And actually, in this case, feeling better means embracing the fact that I don't feel better.

Yeah yeah, I know. Hocus pocus. Voodoo magic and maharishi donganonda propaganda. Really, though.

Lately—and I can't escape this, can't escape writing it down and talking about it—I have been afraid of death. It is hard to describe the level of fear. It is at the same time large and consuming, and also specific and acute. It's a sense of doom. If I sit quietly at night and think about death—which I do—a sense of doom washes over me and I feel petrified, terrified, it makes me cry in a useless way, as if I were crying because the sky is blue or because there is oxygen in the air. There isn't any fear larger than the fear of death because that's the end, and there's no escaping it. That's what is the hardest for me. In life we can fight and claw to get what we want. In life we always have options, we always have the ability to change our lives. No matter how hard I fight and claw and scrape and say No death will come along one day and say quietly, Yes.

I don't feel better. In fact, I feel like every night I open up this box. It's made of paper and it's small, and the only thing keeping it from bursting open is a small toothpick weakly barring it closed. It's not fooling anyone, least of all me. That box can't stay closed too long, and it can be punctured and maimed and it must be treated with the utmost care for it to stay Useful. So the last few nights I've been finding this box which, did I mention?, is conveniently tucked away under many other boxes, much bigger than our little paper box, hidden in the corner under piles of papers and socks and dirty sheets, and all of this is in the very last room on the right that I never visit anyway, tucked away in the last house on the lot of my mind.

You could say this box is Hidden.

Lately though, I've been making the trek to that last house, to that last room, and taking the time to throw off all the trash until I've uncovered my little paper box, and then slowly sliding the toothpick through the paper wedges at the top, and looking inside. It is scary to open the box. I am afraid some black shadowy hand will reach out and grab my face and blind me. Or that I'll be sucked inside by a supernatural vortex and never make it out again. But it does something scarier than that. It does nothing. It just sits there, open, letting me look, and I know that I will have to cover this box again and put it away and know that it still sits there for me, patiently, waiting to be uncovered again.

What is inside the box is a small hard stone. Black, matte. There is no reflection in this stone. You look into it and nothing stares back at you. There is just you looking in, it absorbing the light around it, its blackness weighing heavy in the box, and you left wondering what it means. And looking at it, trying to figure it out—I am made mad.

This morning I woke up and rolled over and picked up a book, Awakening Loving-Kindness by Pema Chödrön (which E.M. gave me for Valentine's Day [thank you, E.M.]), and began reading. I used to read it every day but I hadn't in a while because—of course, hey, it's obvious—I have a handle on my life. Who needs lessons?

But this day I needed a lesson and I must admit it was serendipity. Because it talked about Death, the ultimate terrifying thing that trumps any and all other fears. In the last chapter it talked about being Safe. How we're always trying to do things to maximize safety and comfort. Which I do. Which everyone does, because why wouldn't we? Chödrön said that we can spend all our lives trying to cultivate these zones of safety that are always falling down until we're at the end of our lives and realize what a mistake we've made.

Or, she said, we can leap. We can let all these zones of safety shake down into dust and let ourselves be open to whatever may happen without withdrawing into ourselves and seeking safety. "That's what stirs us and inspires us:" she said, "leaping, being thrown out of the nest, going through the initiation rites, growing up, stepping into something that's uncertain and unknown. From that point of view, death becomes this comfort and this security and this cocoon and this vitamin pill-ness. That's death. Samsara is preferring death to life" (188).

I'm not ending this post with hope because that feels cheap. And I'm not ending it with a revelation because, damn it, this process isn't something you instill in your life immediately after reading a chapter in a book one fine morning. All I will say is that what Chödrön says sounds pretty damn good and I would like to get to that place.

I still have to contend with my black stone. I think I will try relocating it, giving it a better home. In fact, I will give it a home in my pocket. And, better, I'll remove it from its paper house and hold it in my hand, black and smooth and earthy, and let the chalk rub off on my fingers so I don't forget what it is I'm trying to do.

Plans plans plans

Is it possible to get tired of your own voice?

Oh, yes!

It's strange, my desire to blog lately has been at an All Time Low, though considering I've been doing it two months that's not saying much.

Part of it, I think, has to do with what's been on my mind—namely, death and dying and saying goodbye sorts of things. That's something I have trouble writing about. Doesn't everyone? And I've been avoiding it.

I need to get back on that horse. I feel myself wanting to write something more focused. In my Thinking Like a Working Writer class we all had to write blog posts about how to write a good body of work over the course of a lifetime. There were some good tips from everyone. One that caught me right square on the chest was, Finish Something. That is, don't just piddle around in half-finished work. Because then what do you have to show for it? A whole lot of nothing, or at the very best a whole lot of half-somethings, which aren't impressive to anyone.

Blogging is good, it keeps me sharp and it keeps my brain working and grooving.

It's time to finish something. Wait, strike that, rewind it—it's time to start something, then I will finish that thing. Yes? Yes, that's how the order goes.

I'm not sure what to do, exactly. What to write about. What my project should be. What could I finish? Well, I have Radioland Number Nine going. That's something I could definitely finish. And something I should finish.

And to hell with it. You know another piece of piece of advice? Instead of doing five things half assed, do one thing well. That has to do with Fear. Funny how that is—it's all based in fear. Here's the thing—I commit myself fully to a project like working on Radioland Number Nine, and finishing it, and then what if nothing happens? I can't say I didn't put my all into it, because I did. That's why working on multiple things at once, that's why working on things and not finishing them, that's why I do them—because it protects me and makes me safe. If I don't fully commit to a project, I'm never disappointed.

Now I need to give myself credit. I have finished a handful (okay, three, but don't get so particular) of stories and they're good, they're decent. And I have written a novel draft in six weeks (and come on now, Lucas, that's an accomplishment). And I've finished a graphic novel with a team of artists. And I have and I have . . . yeah yeah, okay, so I've done some things.

That's great. Good for me. Now it's time to do more.

I've got Radioland just sitting there. It's time to dust it off, reread what I've got, find it's pulse, and start pumping blood into that sucker. That's all it needs, a little lifeblood, a little love, and a lot of energy and effort and devotion. But mostly love.

Maybe I'll post some excerpts of Radioland Number Nine up on here. I've got the first two chapters decently solid. I think, though, for a children's book (and any book in general) I could afford to have a good plan. Not an outline—my God, not an outline—just a plan, something to go by. The initial want, the initial conflict. We'll see how it's resolved as I write. But as I learned with Bordeaux Born Anew (wow, it seems forever ago), I would do well to have a solid idea of the initial conflict, the initial premise, before I start.

Plan of action! Reread Radioland, get a plan working, and go go go. Write like NaNoWriMo, write with fingers on fire. That's the way. Write with finger's on fire, write with heat in the stomach, write with lava in the lungs. Write fast and strong and confidently and without hesitation.

Then we'll see what to do about it.

Johnny Victory

Johnny Victory
The unconquerable pilot
Sailed his sea plane
Through shoestring eyelets.

How, you ask?
It's clear to see,
The bumbling scarfed man
Stood, in inches, nothing point three.

How to Write an Amazing Body of Work Over the Course of a Lifetime

In my Thinking Like a Working Writer class, in which myself and a handful of other graduating seniors stare at each other asking excitedly and not without a hint of fear, What do we do now?, we're supposed to gather a bunch of quotes that will guide us to an Amazing Body of Work.

What's an Amazing Body of Work? It's a lot of work. For me an Amazing Body of Work means being prolific, because if you're prolific that means you're getting a lot of practice, and if you have a lot of practice then, very probably, you're writing is good. It is the best sort of self-fulfilling prophecy—write a lot, be good a lot, rinse, repeat.

How do you become prolific? Besides the obvious answer—Just suck it up and write already—it means becoming Unstuck. Becoming Unstuck means getting out of the way of your own writing, it means letting things flow freely and often and always. Becoming Unstuck means listening to your Inner Voice and letting it do the crazy things, because who knows in what strange and wonderful places you'll end up. Becoming Unstuck means removing the filter, it means go go go, it means writing habits and it means looking at the world with genuine wonder.

An Amazing Body of Work begins with writing—a lot. And it means turning the filter off, and it means making a mess and worrying about it later. Maxwell Perkins said, "Just get it down on paper, and then we'll see what to do about it," and that's useful. It takes the pressure off, let's you go and go without waiting for the inner editor to catch up and whisper murky doubtful things in your ear. And then you have to be hard nosed, you have to press yourself and get tough. Stephen King said it best in his wonderful book On Writing, "Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."And there's no way around it—an Amazing Body of Work means a lot of hard work.

And we must have courage. And we must be sincere.

Tim O'Brien gave a talk at Stanford last year. And Tim O'Brien writes about war. And Tim O'Brien said that he doesn't write about war—that war was the vehicle he used to write about the human heart. And we all write about the human heart, in one way or another, and we use our own vehicles to get at some Truth. And Truth means describing something deep in our chest to the best of our abilities. What I mean is—we must have courage to write about the things close to our heart, and we must be sincere in writing about them. Kurt Vonnegut said, "Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style." And that is advice that is true now and will be true when we are middle aged and when we are old and when we are long gone.

Michael Chabon said, “Nothing is boring except to people who aren't really paying attention.” I think we, as writers, not only should see things differently but I feel it is our charge, our obligation to do so. Roald Dahl said, “Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.” And Albert Einstein—who was not famous for his writing but is certainly one of those sorts of people—said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

All of this is to say, our eyes must be Open. We must see things in a way no one else does. And actually this is easier than it sounds, because you are you, and no one else is you, and if you simply look at things in your own natural way then it will be different than the way others see them. To be more reductive—be yourself. If you want an Amazing Body of Work it will have to come from you. And not from you-who-is-trying-to-appease-others, and not from you-who-is-writing-to-the-market, and not from you-who-is-trying-to-offend-no-one. An Amazing Body of Work comes from the essential you, the one deep down, from the Inner Voice, and nowhere else.

I think that's what it takes. We must become Unstuck. We must have courage. We must be sincere. Our eyes must be Open. And, above all, we must write a lot.

Here are a few more quotes. They didn't quite fit in to my post as I was writing, but they're too good not to pass along.

"Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic." Stephen King, On Writing

"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open." Stephen King, On Writing

“One of the few things I know about writing is this; spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.” Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Here's a link to Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules For Writing Fiction. These I love.
This is essential viewing: Maurice Sendak on the Colbert Report. (And don't miss part 2.)
And a great TED Talk on writing and creativity by Amy Tan.

Second Try: To Tata, on the eve of Something I Do Not Understand

I have been avoiding this. Doing it well, too: I have found every speck of dust to be plucked away on the floor of my room, I have made and gone to appointments, done my work early—I have finished every unfinished thing in order to prolong the inevitable, which is my second try at this big thing, this Something I Do Not Understand, which is Tata living in that strange twilight between this world and the next. She's not fully here, she's not fully there, and we can only get sips of her, cool little refreshing bursts of the Tata we knew before the bottom dries out again and the fog clouds her eyes and when I ask her ¿Entiendes? she replies in English, Not really.

When we arrive I hear her before I see her and she sounds tired and when I round the corner I see her—there, in that big armchair, looking small, looking around, seeing things a second after they happen. I go up and say what I always say—¿Qué pasa chica? ¿Qué pasa linda?—What's up girl? What's up pretty thing? and I bend down and kiss her on the cheek. Mi corazón, she says—My heart.

For the first time I see my grandmother's scalp. It's tan somehow, and leathery. Her skull is a good, round shape. Thin grey hairs sprout like so many untended blades of dying grass—and my grandmother is proud, too proud to have no hair, and I know this. You look like me, I say, I can give you haircuts from now on. I motion with my invisible electric clippers around my shaved head. Zip zip zip. And she laughs.

I sit down on the carpet next to her. I think she must feel very small these days, and I want to be small with her. So I sit on the carpet and rest my hand on hers, and mine is live and strong and hers is splotched with liver stains, and her veins rise up blue and inky like gorged rivers, and we talk.

Tata asks, How is your girlfriend? I tell her we're not dating anymore and she nods. She holds on too tight, she says. And I say, Yes. A few minutes later she asks me, How is your girlfriend? And I say steadily that we are not dating anymore and she nods again. You are so young, she says, and there are so many. Yes, I say.

I am holding her hand and I've never done this before. I've never held her hand, not really. I forget that so much can be communicated through the strength of a grasp, through a squeeze, and I'm suddenly terrified she will communicate something to me that I do not want to know. I squeeze her hand, which means, I'm here, Tata. She squeezes mine, meaning, Hello, mijo.

I squeeze hers, I don't mind sitting next to you on the ground.

She squeezes mine, I can't understand what they're saying.

I squeeze hers, I can't understand what is happening to you.

She squeezes mine, It is lonely here.

I cup her hands in mine, Does anyone else hold your hand anymore?

Her hand is limp, I can't understand what they're saying.

I turn over her palm, What are your dreams like?

Her hand is slack, I get so tired.

Then—I squeeze my grandmother's hand. Are you afraid like I am?

She squeezes mine. I love you, mijo.

I excuse myself for a glass of water downstairs. Really I'm leaving to take a break. It takes a lot of energy to hold onto someone's hand when they're trying so hard and wanting so much to float away from this world, and I'm exhausted. Dad is downstairs on a conference call and I'm yelling loudly inside my head, Help, Help, because I've left Tata and my stepmom and Tata's sister alone upstairs and what will they talk about? And who will make jokes about my bald head? And who will hold her hand?

When Dad is done we go upstairs together. I take my spot again on the carpet, make myself small up against her arm chair, and take her hand. I start to say things but her eyes remind me of a clean cup of water clouded with milk. I ask, ¿Me entiendes?—Do you understand? She says in English, Not really. So I start doing my best to speak to her in Spanish and it's as if her mind turns on again after so many years of disuse. I see the light behind her eyes, she understands my every word—I have my Tata again, after I thought I had lost her completely. We chat excitedly for a bit, and I tell her that when I was in Spain the locals would always turn their noses up at me when I tried to speak Spanish to them. She says something too fast for me to hear—later I figure out it was métetelo en el culo—and my dad laughs, and I ask what she said, and Dad says, She said they should shove it up their ass. This is my grandmother.

After a while it gets hard, it gets impossible. It's too exhausting—trying to hold onto Tata's hand to keep her from floating away, swimming in my sloshy brain that's halfway between Spanish and English and doing neither well, seeing Dad smiling and knowing how he will cry when we get downstairs. It's too hard to communicate. So I just hold Tata's hand and hope that will be enough.

There are so many things I want to tell her and ask her, so many things I want to say to comfort her, but she won't understand me in English and I don't know enough Spanish. I think for a while. Finally I look at Tata in the eyes and I say, Somos dos personas en la neblina—We are two people trapped in fog. And she says tiredly, thankfully, Sí, nosotros dos—Yes, us two in the fog.

They talk. My dad, stepmom, great aunt, and the caretaker. They chat, this and that, nothing really. The new Hunger Games movie, magazines, work, travel—my great aunt is going to Panama soon—and I can tell Tata isn't understanding all of these English words buzzing by her. I wonder what's going on inside that tan scalp, what she's thinking, what happens in a dying brain. ¿Que estás pensando? I ask, What are you thinking about? She says, without hesitation, Musarañas. I ask Dad what it means. If there was any light flitting around in his eyes, it drains away. He looks at his mother and says, Cobwebs.

They talk more. I'm still there, small on the dark yellow carpet next to my Tata holding her hand. English words zip by us. I want to know if she's still thinking of musarañas, because if she is I think I will have to get up for another glass of water. I ask, ¿En qué estás pensando ahora?—What are you thinking of now? She looks down at me. En tí, she says—Of you.

It is time to go. We get up to say our goodbyes and I promise Tata I will send her a letter in Spanish and attach a poem by Pablo Neruda. We shuffle out. Inches by the door, my great aunt says, Pórtate bien—Behave yourself. My grandmother looks up at us, looking small in the enormous armchair that swallows her. She is far away, or deep underwater, or high up behind the clouds—somewhere that is not here. He tratado, pero no es divertido. And I don't need a translation for that one. She said—my Tata—I've tried, but it isn't any fun.

To Tata, on the eve of Something I Do Not Understand

This is hard. I'm back at Stanford now and I know I need to write about my visit with Tata. I know I want to write about it . . . it's just not easy.

I have been so afraid to visit her. What if she does not recognize me and I can't talk to her? What if she does, and I have to? What do I say? How much can I handle? It is not easy to see a dying person.

She is sitting in her chair looking small. She has thin grey hairs dotting her wrinkled scalp and I say, I got the same haircut as you! And she laughs. I tell her I can give her haircuts from now on. I motion with my invisible electric clippers around my head. Zip zip zip.

And this is hard to write, and this is close to the chest, and this and this and this—

She says to Dad, Mira que grande es—Look how big he is. She asks me about my girlfriend and I say that we're not dating anymore. She nods her head and says, She holds too tight, and I say, Yes. We chat about some things for a while and then she asks about my girlfriend and I say that we're not dating anymore, careful to be just as invested in my response as the first time. She says, You are young, and there are so many, and I say, Yes, and she doesn't remember to ask again.

I show her the front of the journal Dad and Shakti got me in Tulum. It says, El tiempo ne elige lo que se lleva—nosotros elegimos lo que se queda—Time does not choose what it takes—we decide what remains. She says, Bonito, and I say, Yes.

I tell her about the dream I had, about her in the ocean swimming, diligently smoking a cigarette, about me flying over on a kite, about her asking, What are you doing? and me saying, Estoy volando—I'm flying. I tell her about the way she chased the escaping gray sinews of smoke and inhaled them back in, making a big show of it, and she laughs and laughs.

And this is hard, so hard, I can't get the creative juices out of me, and it feels like trying to pull essential things from out of my chest and I just can't get them out. When I wrote about my dream earlier, I relished the moments when I could make it sound beautiful, when I could observe things, when I could twist those words around my tongue and light them delicately on the page. Now—I don't want to. Because it's writing about someone who's disappearing right in front of you, who's disappeared a little more every time they ask you about your girlfriend, and you tell them and you can see they had no idea.

...will finish later~

Rough Drafts of Things, Part One

And so it begins. I need to write something for the Creative Nonfiction competition this year. At Stanford, they give out prizes for best undergraduate fiction story, best senior fiction story, best poem, and best creative nonfiction piece. The undergrad and creative nonfiction prizes both offer $1000 for first place. The senior prize is $2000 for first place. I will speak plainly—I need that money.

I've never written with a contest in mind, with money in mind. They key to winning, of course, is to forget about the money. It's just another deadline. So, that's how I'll treat it.

I think for the undergrad prize I'll use "Signed, The Repairman" and for the senior prize I'll use "How to Forget a Father." Last year I entered "River Road" into the undergrad competition and I didn't even place. That made me feel Shitty. If I can't even place competing against Stanford kids, how do I compete with people trying to get book deals? But here's the secret: book deals aren't about competing, they're about using shoulders and elbows to make room where you want it, and inviting people into that space. And there's room for everyone. Someone said in a book I liked, There's always room at the top. And I like that. That's good.

I'm at Jo's on South Congress. There's a song playing with violins and the singer is crooning, Sugar Man, Sugar Man, and hey, that's pretty good.

I hear "creative nonfiction" but what my brain really hears is "talk about Mom." That's one of the times I feel like it's okay to talk about it extensively. But, at the same time—who wants another sob story. I refuse to write a sob story—I will write a story first and if a person sobs second, then by God it's a good story.

I have this Last Memory of Mom before the Worst Memory. It's one of those memories you have to work on, like it was a house that needed to be built up, or a shed in the back that needs tearing down. It's costly and weighty and I feel it right Here, right There, and I don't think about it in waking life often but when I do I feel guilty and then sad and then a warmth settles in my chest because I know there's nothing I can do now and that feels Okay.

The Last Memory before the Worst Memory has to do with smoking.

I have to remember—damn it, Lucas. You're writing this for you and no one else so just be you on the page and create and think about it and if you see it well enough then they'll see and don't forget that.

The Last Memory before the Worst Memory—it has to do with smoking. I was in seventh grade and it's the last thing I remember about Mom before the morning she passed away. And I don't want to shock or awe because there's nothing awe-inspiring and there's nothing to gape at and nothing to cry or feel bad about—my mom passed away when I was twelve. There it is. Kurt Vonnegut said in his rules about writing stories—which I find hilarious, that Vonnegut of all people wrote rules (I think it must have been a joke, but Still)—that the reader should know as much as possible as soon as possible. He said to hell with suspense, that cockroaches should be able to eat the last pages of your story and the reader would still know how the story ends. So, this story begins when my mom was in a bad way with bi-polar disorder and pills, and it begins with the best mom in the world who does things with you like lie face down on the grass and saying We're hugging Mother Earth—things like that—and it also begins with her passing away from a blood clot in our bath tub, and me seeing it happen, and calling the ambulance, and to hell with suspense, and the story begins with me shutting down and Plugging In, as I like to call it, to the Internet and the television and living inside buzzing wires so I didn't have to live out the Worst Memory anymore. And our story begins with this, and my dad and I Making It Work, and having a lot of hard times, and him finding three years later the most wonderful woman who could never replace my mom but is the next closest thing, and this story begins with me loving her, and loving my dad, and hard times, and it begins with middle school and high school and being Plugged In and going to Stanford and slowly Unplugging and realizing all these things about what I had missed, and what I had kept my eyes from—things like the Last Memory, things like the Worst Memory. And this story ends with me typing this story as I sidle up to graduation day smooth and steady and wondering what will become of life.

Like I said, the Last Memory has to do with smoking. It's almost worse than the Worst Memory, which means I have my labels mixed up, but each of them have their own taste and the names seem to fit in a strange way, like when people say, I'm doing fine, thank you—which can very often mean, I'm not fine at all but I don't want to talk about it. The point is, just because something has the wrong label doesn't mean it's talking about the wrong thing. Because sometimes a wrong label tells you more than the actual thing does. (?)

And I feel myself resisting the memory and having to suss it out. Crane flies have been everywhere in our house. It's the spring rain that brings them. I love crane flies but on accident I keep killing them. They are so so fragile. They are everywhere in our house always glittering around the edges of my vision. I find them and I try to catch them and put them outside in the night, but all I do is crush their legs in the gaps between my fingers. Sometimes they die all on their own—on the counter they get stuck in thin slips of water until they drown. I want to say, Hey you're so stupid stop flying inside there's nothing good for you in here. But they're attracted to the light, or the air conditioner, and they have very small brains, and so I keep trying to rescue them and my success rate is about one half, and that's what it's like trying to suss out my memories.

Or maybe that's only half what it's like. I have another memory of smoking where my dad and mom were out on the porch and it was raining outside and they were there, sitting, and sitting. And Mom was smoking a cigarette, and I was out there to ask her something, and I saw her drag on that skeleton bone and I told her, You're going to get addicted again, and I said it serious like an adult even though I was only somewhere between seven and eight. And she said, I won't, and I thought, But you will, and then she did.

And three years later she was still smoking but then she was working the night shift in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Babies born with their intestines on the outside. Things like that. I am not kidding. And often babies died on her watch, and can you think of a worse thing for a person who was bipolar and whose father had just passed away and who was on medication and who was working the night shift and who was not lying on the grass anymore and saying, Here is Mother Earth?

And then is the time of the Last Memory when I was waiting for her to pick me up under the elm tree in front of my school. And I was eleven years old and I waited and waited and she was not coming, and I could have gone inside to the office and called her, because she was probably sleeping because of the night shift, which they called the Graveyard Shift—but I wanted her to feel guilty.

But now I can't help thinking about all the ways Mom died. There was That Time Mom Died by SCUBA Diving. There was a hungry shark and can you blame it? And there was a funeral at sea and we scattered poppy petals because they were her favorite, and Dad found and killed the shark one-on-one and he took a tooth and so did I and now we wear them around our necks and Dad's has carved in it, Bastard, and mine says, Shark Fin Soup. There was The Time Mom Died by Toaster Oven. She was getting my Bagel Bites out of the metal trap with a fork when all of the sudden, zap! And I do not eat Bagel Bites anymore, mostly because I have outgrown them.

Of course there was The Time Mom Died Falling Off the Merry-Go-Round, which does not need explaining, and The Time Mom Died by Frogs, which does, but is irrelevant. I remember The Skydiving Incident clearly, though Crossing South Congress Avenue on May 14th is still a little hazy because of all the buzzing buses everywhere, and then the one bus that whisked her under. I can count the ways Mom bit the dust. Trolley Fishing, The Backward-Falling Chair, Losing in a Duel, Saving Me from a Bullet, of course That Time She Rented the Wrong Movie on the Wrong Night, and then Death By Knives.

My mother died in so many ways. One thousand, I know, because I counted. And that's the mystery, and that's what I think about sometimes when it's quiet, because all those One Thousand Deaths are so much better than The One Death, and what about a little imagination? And I'm not delusional and I'm not delusional about anything, but why not make it something magnificent and spectacular, and why not make things up, and why not, and why not?

I was talking about the Last Memory, which is a memory about smoking, and how I was waiting to be picked up, and I waited for an hour under the cool shade of the elm tree in front of my middle school, and I didn't go into the office to call. And then I saw Mom's car at the light far away, and when it turned green I heard rubber cry out and I knew the tires were hers, and she sped toward me and I saw her inhaling and then throwing a cigarette out the window, and I knew it was Bad, and I didn't want her to feel guilty anymore.

I invented things when I was young.

(here, Infinite Telescope, or The Doppler Effect, or Time Travel...)

(more soon...)

Ice cream social

I had an Adventure today.

I made good on my promise: I wrote a poem in Sharpie marker on a piece of paper that went, I am a stump / It's sad to see / At the very least / Please sit on me? and put it one my across-the-street neighbors' stump. I held it in place with a dandelion and a stone. It made me smile—it was Guerilla Poetry.

Fun things happen when you carry a ukulele around. I walked through my neighborhood down to Zilker Park, and on the trail next to the blue-green water under the bridge sat an Australian. His name was Simon. I said Hi and he said Hi and I asked what he was doing and he said reading and writing, and I said Hey I write too. And we got to talking.

Simon is visiting the United States until the end of May. Simon plays guitar some. He got to play at Antone's last night somehow with the house band, and he said he played just Okay but that the experience was much better than his playing. He said he got to play on the same stage as Stevie Ray Vaughn and I said That's true and then I offered him my ukulele and he played some blues. I wish I could play blues.

I forgot to mention that I've been practicing saying Hi and/or smiling at every person I see whether they look friendly or not. This means I often get rejected—this also means I am often surprised. Those surprises are to die for.

I got to Zilker Park and sat out on the big rock in the middle and the whole city was out playing in the grass. There were two soccer games going on—most of the players were a little overweight, but their feet were still light and they looked graceful with the ball at their laces. There were women sunbathing and I couldn't see their faces but skin is skin and I appreciated it. I played ukulele for a while and made up a new song based off C.W.'s chord progression—Am, C, G, F, and I was mostly picking and it sounded nice. Then I read the last 80 or so pages of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which E.M. gave me for my birthday, and every time I came across her yellow underlining I felt like I knew her better. And I started underlining with blue. And sometimes our underlinings overlapped and it made green and that made me Happy.

I walked around Barton Springs road with half a mind for coffee and writing, but was sidetracked by an airstream trailer called Ice Cream Social. They were barely open because no one was out. I knocked on the glass and a woman I later learned was named Meredith slid the window open. I asked if they were open and she said they were, and I asked what her favorite thing was and she said salty caramel ice cream, and that she had just made fresh waffle cones, and I said, Yes.

Meredith was very friendly. She said her friend in the next-door Cajun food truck just got breast cancer, and that on Sunday they were going to have a big benefit brunch with old-timey Country Music and that the money would help pay for her friend's treatment. She invited me to come but I would be out of town by then, so I promised I would come for Sunday brunch when I got back to Austin. Incidentally, it was the best ice cream I'd ever had in my life—no kidding.

Walking back I saw a cool house that was three stories tall and red brick and looked out of place like there might be magic in it, and nearby a woman walked her tea-kettle-sized dog while jingling a bell she held between her fingers.

I walked under the shade of elm and live oak trees on the way back to the house. Boys played little league and their dads yelled and their moms cheered with every ping of those aluminum bats. Two chubby boys, one bigger than the other, played catch outside the fence by themselves. They were wearing outfits. The bigger one said, Remember when he hit that pop fly out in midfield? And he threw the ball to the other boy, who said, Uh-huh, and threw it back. The big kid continued, And I ran out to catch it and I was like I'll never make it and then I did and everyone was saying things? The smaller one caught the ball and said, That was nothing.

I walked home eating the ice cream. When I got back there were three people hanging out on the front porch of the across-the-street house, and one of them, a woman in her late twenties with long brown hair and a nose piercing, was sitting cross legged on the stump.

The Battle of Moon Crater Four

Us Skyboys fought well
Hurled great clumps of moon rock
Monsters by thousands
Stormed our sky docks.

A roaring great battle
The best of the age
Books written in ink
Will light me on their page.

We drove them away
Each tail between legs
Their terrible scales
Flashed bright with red rage.

We ate fat Moon Pies
Drank glasses of cheese
We partied all night
Until we were ordered to leave.

Out flew the last Sunboat
But I was hot under the skin
I relived the great Battle
While they sailed off on the Wind.

I beat all of the monsters
Down in Moon Crater Four
And now I'm alone in space
No one comes this way
Anymore.

Cosmic Humor

My friend E.M. gave me a book to read—The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It's lovely, Lovely. There is a moment when the main character Charlie is sitting around with all of his friends and everyone is just sitting there, getting it, and he says, "I feel infinite." That's good, that's a truth—and here, in Austin, I can feel slivers, shivers of that. Usually it's looking up at stars that does it for me. If I ever actually look I feel very small, and the world and space and the universe feels very big, and I feel like an ant on top of the Himalayas. The thing is, the world is big, and it used to scare me so much I didn't think about it. Now, I think about it in small sips. Let my brain open up to infinity in little bursts, and the bursts are so bright and so good that that scares me a little too, but it's so big and so grand that I have to love it, and I do, and I'm working to get to a place where I can taste it all the time always without shutting any of it out and I'm getting there and it's exciting and whew.

Which makes me think about people with Cosmic Humor. I like those people.

Three nights ago I slid down a piss slide. What I mean is—it was a piss slide. Someone had pissed on it. I was at the park with E.M. and her friends T.M. and S.P. We were howling at the moon, which is what you do at night in a park with friends. There was a twisty slide I had to go down, and I did, and I said, Damn that slide was wet! And it was. And I said, Hey E.M. come see—isn't my butt wet? So E.M., in her infinite generosity, came and patted down my butt. That's a wet butt, she said.

Meanwhile our howls had attracted a pack of prowling high school boys. I knew they were in high school because one time one of their voices cracked, and all the other times they were being Asshole Youths. Later, my friends told me that one of the Asshole Youths said, Don't slide on that slide, we pissed on it. I did not hear this, but I heard the word piss and I heard the word slide, and I then knew that my jeans were connected to the inside of one—or all—of these boys' bladders in a way I had not anticipated. In short—their territory had been marked.

But you know? I had to laugh. T.M., bless his soul, was livid for me. He is very soft spoken and only threw comments over his shoulder as we retreated to the parking lot, but he kept saying, I can't believe it, I can't believe it. I don't remember what S.P. said but I think she was trying to judge my reaction. I didn't know either of them well, but I think they were surprised that I laughed.

E.M. was laughing too because she has a Cosmic Sense of Humor. That's the whole deal—you look at yourself from far enough away, from a star in the milky way, from the edge of the universe, everything is Pretty Funny. Relationship shit. Family shit. School shit. Piss on my pants shit. I'm no damn saint and I get as rattled as the next person, but I'm thankful for those moments where my brain is in the right place and I can just laugh.

Then E.M. said a Thing, which was—I don't care if I slide down it, or you, and it's funny. But that's fucked up that they would piss on a slide that my little sister might go down.

And then it wasn't so funny anymore, because she was right. And that was a pretty fucked up thing they did. Because the park was at an elementary school. And if my ass hadn't slid that slide clean, hundreds of elementary-school students would have piss jeans—and there's nothing funny about that.

Well, maybe a little funny, but only if you're feeling a little Sadistic and a little Dark. And sometimes that's an okay thing, too. Those are the limits. Sometimes my stepbrother D.S. accidentally makes a joke about my dead mom and somehow, some way, we laugh. And I mean hard. And if I ever try to explain it to someone else it sounds sick. And we sound sick. And they don't get it. And I guess not many people really could. But it's funny because he's my brother and I love him and my mom died and he accidentally made a your-mother's-a-whore joke and I still love him and it didn't hurt my feelings so, pretty soon, the only option is to laugh hysterically because what else can you do?

And maybe we are a little Sick. But if that's Sick, Lord my Lord, I do not want to be Well.

A collection of random things

No writing in a while makes me a sad man. Writing now, again—that makes me happy. Here are some Random Thoughts:

I came home and the house across the street was naked. A tree too big for arms sat and grew there my whole life. Now it is chopped down and there is only a stump left. I decided that I will write a note and put it on the stump. The note will go like this:

I am a stump,
It's sad to see.
At the very least,
Please sit on me?

Two nights ago I was Very Content—it made me feel like I could evaporate. No, not quite—I felt my molecules slowly separate, like they carefully shed their charge and drifted lazily away so I was just a collection of atoms in air.

I love crane flies but on accident I keep killing them. They are so so fragile. They are everywhere in our house always glittering around the edges of my eyes. I find them and I try to catch them and rescue them and put them outside in the night, but all I do is crush their legs in the gaps between my fingers. Sometimes they die all on their own—they drown themselves on the counter in slips of thin water. I want to say hey you're so stupid stop flying inside there's nothing good in here for you, but the air conditioning is on, and it is awful nice, and so I can't blame them.

I hated Making a Move. In high school—I could never do it right.

Hey man, you were with her last night? Did you make a move?

What, you took her to the movies? So did you make a move?

Dude, I made a move last night. You did? Yeah. You did? Yeah.

Because in high school how the hell are you supposed to know when to Make a Move, and how are you supposed to know when to go in for you first kiss, and how are you supposed to know how to use your lips and what Feels Good, and how are you supposed to, and how are you supposed to

High school was filled with a lot of How Are You Supposed To...?s My first kiss on the lips ever was with my friend C.W. It was in the script of a play. And I tried to play it cool because I'm a junior in high school and of course I've had my first kiss already. No—I was all sweat and butterflies, and I went in and pecked her on the lips and I felt weird and I was both thankful and sad. Sad because it had taken me until I was 17 to get my first kiss, thankful because it was C.W. and I love her and it's a Pretty Cool Thing that she was my first kiss. Plus, I knew to Make a Move, because it said in the script, He kisses her.

Are you ever with an insecure person and a Wishing Event happens? You find an eyelash, there's a shooting star, the clock turns 11:11—point is, they say, Make a wish. Everyone's done that. But have you ever been with an insecure person who loves you and they say, Make a wish, but what they really said was, Make a wish about me and about us, please. And then they ask, Did you make a good wish? But what they really said was, Did you make a wish about me? And that makes me upset and it makes me feel like my dreams have to be about another person and I don't like that. Maybe I want to make a wish about you, maybe I don't. But don't hijack my wishes.