The Writer's Colony

My Great Uncle on my Mother's side died and left a plot of land in my care. I sold the land and three weeks after closing my realtor notified me the land was rich with oil and could have sold for hundreds of times more.

I used the funds to sign up for a militant writer's colony. Each week we are expected to pen a new book.

We have individual cabins. One room, one bed, one toilet, one sink. Rations are served through a slot under the door. There's a spit stained mirror over the sink. I ripped one of my good shirts to clean the surface but now it's just smudged. Now all I see is a blob of black beard and maybe some bloodshot eyes.

The only time we are allowed outside is for the Muse Sprint. At three miles we have to write a four stanza poem; by six miles a ten page outline of a novel; by ten miles a rough draft of chapter one. The path is crowded with stringy haired, lanky bohemians unfit for combat. The best of us have fallen off course and gone AWOL.

In the trenches I remove my helmet and look at a picture of a girl I had taped inside--the photograph was slipped in the slit between the mattress and box spring. The mere reference of her visage inflames such inspiration!

I write:

The cruise line veeres off-course
to a land of broken 
lobes.

I swim in hairy juice,
peppered with blue sprinkles,
alone.

Later, I forgot to
buy eggs. Write a list next
time.

A trumpet player burps,
we laugh and blow our tears.
There is no moon tonight.
There is no moon tonight.

My sergeant is pleased with my poem and invites me to his cabin after lights out. As I knock on his door the searchlight towers bloom illuminating the campus closed off by barbed wire gates. Jimmy, the poet from Ohio, is running in the open with nothing but white boxers on. A patrol golf cart stocked full of faceless fatigues whizzes by me and plugs Jimmy with non lethal bean bags. They tie him up with twine and drag him back to his cabin. His bruises are already turning yellow.

The sergeant finally answers and welcomes me in. He says hello with a lot of h's, there's liquor on his breath. This cabin is bigger. There's two beds, a closed off toilet, and a clean mirror. I ask him what he uses to wipe it down, he tells me: bacon grease.

"Have a seat." I sit in the only chair. He walks circles around me. The night lights up again, someone else is trying to escape.

"What do you know about women?" He asks me. Someone cries after a concussive thud-thud-thud of bean bag ammo is unloaded on them.

I don't consider myself an expert but am a great listener.

"What does it mean when one of them tells you they are going to stay with their mother for a few weeks? Is that code? I worked as a windtalker during the war but never came across a cipher like this."

Did she leave with packed bags?

"Yes."

Did this happen after an argument?

"Yes."

Was there a spatula next to her nightstand.

"There was a wooden spoon."

Oooo, that's bad. She's upset about the way the cars were parked. You're lucky it wasn't a plastic spoon, then you'd have to do some facial reconstruction.

"So what do I do?"

Park your car around the corner for a month. When she comes back move it across the street, and when she replaces the spoon with a bobble-head you can move the car back in the driveway. Do you have a garage?

"Yeah, but it's a mess."

My advice: clean it up and make room for the car. Your wife will be back in no time.

He throws a toothpick at my eyebrow. It hangs there while he screams at me.

"She's not my wife!" The sergeant dips a cloth in a bucket of what I presume is bacon grease and cleans the mirror. "She's my sister."

I'm sorry, I didn't know.

"It's okay. I like your arms. Nice and meaty. Here, have this." He hands me the greasy cloth. "We start the Muse Run at dawn."

Thank you, sarg.

"No, thank you."

A golf cart escorts me to my cabin. I wipe down my mirror and sit staring at my reflection until dawn.

Camera Me

My father's back gets a pinched nerve at the most random times. He says it's from working as a landscaper, all the bending and horizontal mending. But when we were younger he had a camera the size of a small dresser mounted on his shoulder, he captured every moment, whether it was me locking up my brother in the tv closet, or my mother dropping the birthday cake after tripping over the lip that needed fixing.

My brother quotes scriptures or sings Barney songs and receives a round of applause for his performance. He finds the camera's eye and stares at his reflection--it's unsettling watching them now. 

I had two personalities when on camera as a child.

One: absorption. The camera sweeps behind me while I voice the army men to a sing along. Drawing circles on the carpet and connecting the circles with a long drag of a finger to make glasses. The frame captures my natural habitat. 

Two: awareness. After noticing the large box next to my father's head I claw his leg and order him to camera me. Enter a room and direct attention to my winking eye-brows then conjure my best bugs bunny impersonation, which is mediocre at best. The frame captures my projected reality.

I say, "get me, Daddy. Camera me, Daddy."

Now the cameras are smaller but my Dad is busy chainsawing a tree. He climbs the branches and ties a string to one of the three limbs. There's a moment when he jumps from the top, me, my brother, and my mother all gasp. Will the impact shutter his spine and leave him crawling on the ground? 

"Pull," he gives me the string. "I don't want to fix the neighbor's fence when the tree falls over."

He cuts a diamond out of the tree. Wood chips glide on the grass like snow. The limb sways and I pull. It falls. 

Dad climbs the tree again. We watch clasping our hands into fists. My brother recites scriptures. My mother drops a birthday cake somewhere. I'm winking my eye-brows. He ties a knot and drops to the ground. 

Thud.

He cuts. I pull. The limb falls.

My brother and I clear the fallen limbs out of the way. We come back to the tree and Dad is bending over. He can't stand upright.

"Rats," he says. My mother guides him to a chair. 

"Climb the tree," he tells me. "You're the tallest. Tie a knot as high as you can reach."

I grab a branch in each hand and pull myself up.

Get me, Daddy.

I find my footing and grab an even higher branch.

Camera me, Daddy.

My family is the size of my shoe from up here. Their heads are pointed up. All eyes on me. I grab the next set of branches and pull.

Get me.

The stick I step on cracks and there's nothing for me to hold onto. As I fall the string dances in the air like a flying snake and slithers on top of me after I fall on a bed of wood chips.

Thud.

"Are you okay?" Someone asks.

What's up, Doc.

Soggy Buns

I wasn't always single. Believe it or not I was known as a relationship guy. Now I'm the one who acts like walking around with a manicured hand around your arm is the noose around your throat getting tighter.

The NyQuil is running out faster, and the pillows are crusted with tears.

But I have had girlfriends. As hard as it is to believe, I did.

Trust me.

This one time she decided to cook dinner. I'd made this mistake before: eating her food. She cannot cook the same way a monkey cannot type a complete sentence on a typewriter; they both have opposable thumbs but something gets lost in translation.

The last time I tried her cooking she sprinkled cough drops on a pile of spaghetti, 'for the menthol flavor.'

She was making something special, something that requires so little ingredients to mess up: hot dogs. When she served it the buns were soggy, and not like a little damp from the water she boiled them in, they were drenched.

"Did you throw the buns in the pot, too?" I asked.

"No, I grilled the dogs."

"Why is it so wet then?"

"I don't know, I took them out of the freezer."

I grabbed the bag of frozen buns and read the expiration date.

"These are from 2008."

"The expiration date doesn't matter if you freeze it. My grandmother does it all the time."

"Your grandmother also likes to microwave donuts."

"So you're not going to eat it?"

I held up a cube of buns.

"Fine, don't eat it then." She raised one of the soggy hot dogs to her mouth and took a bite. A mess of meat juice and freezer water dribbled onto her plate. She chewed like she was eating soup.

"I guess I'll order a pizza."

"Fine, I'm not eating any."

"Fine, I'll eat the whole thing."

"Good."

"Fine."

Most of our arguments were meaningless and would go on for days beginning and/or ending each sentence with 'fine,' even though nothing was fine.

I went home with a stomach full of pizza and threw out whatever bread we had in the freezer.

"What are you doing?" said my mom.

"You'll thank me in three years."

She never did.