“That girl needs to be fucked”: language and responsibility
I thought, “That girl needs to be fucked.” I could feel the thought in my body. It fell like a heavy lack toward a corner of my back. My back–but it wasn’t mine anymore: the thought was using my spine to move me. “That girl needs to be fucked”–I was thinking it about myself as if I were somebody else. Who did I think I was?
I remembered a night–it was New Years Eve, about to be 2005. I remembered the hand that was on my back–I was lying face-down on a bed. The hand was on my back and there were two men on the bed with me. They were talking about somebody–I had made sure she wasn’t me–and one of them said, “That girl needs to be fucked.” I understood that he meant someone should have sex with her because she was a little too independent and because he liked to lose himself in sex (I had had sex with him); or just that she had done something that made him want to push her down a little, make her a little less noticeable to herself, a little less of a self. READ MORE >
how to snort an owl
For many years my doctor has prescribed owls to me in pill form to help me cope with the mental disorder of my personality. He said, “Swallowing owl pills will help you not suffer as much attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Owls are composed of a number of amphetamine salts that are thought to increase the amount of dopamine in the brain. Like many stimulants owls affect the area of the brain that controls the amount of rewards or pleasures you are capable of feeling. Sometimes after I ingest an owl I experience a psychological positive value that is beyond any positive value I have ever experienced from the natural pleasure systems of eating, drinking, fighting, or doing sexual movements. Recently, I have been under a lot of stress. My throat has been really dry and it has been very difficult for me to swallow the full grown owls my doctor has prescribed. As a result, I’ve had to develop a new system of ingestion that involves snorting the owl. READ MORE >
Once, I got romantic in a Shaws grocery store and bought a bottle of pamplemousse rose flavored perrier water and then climbed a mountain of snow until I found some craters on the top. I played in these snow holes until packets of taco bell hot sauce fell out of my pocket. Before the mountain of snow melted I drank the rest of the bottle of pamplemousse.
A week later, I tried to buy more pamplemousse. There was no pamplemousse. I went to whole foods. There was no pamplemousse. I drove to three other grocery stores. I could not find any pamplemousses. I looked online. I could only find some gland cream. Months passed. I forgot about everything I ever knew about my mouth enjoyment.
Last week, I went to Stop and Shop to buy eggs. I looked in the water aisle out of habit. I found twenty bottles of pamplemousse. I bought them all. I drove to another Stop and Shop. I found ten more bottles. I have over thirty bottles of pamplemousse. I’ve returned to the Stop and Shop since, but there has been no more pamplemousses.
It’s nice that I have all the pamplemousse left in the entire world. If you would like some pamplemousse I can send you an empty bottle and you can let it drip on you and then maybe you can suck on these last drips.
I tried to teach a math class
I decided it would be better to TA a math class than to teach a creative writing class, so I called the math department at Brown and told the person who answered about my predicament–I’m in the writing program, I need funding so I have to teach, but I don’t want to teach in my department, I’d rather assist with a math class, would this be possible?
The person who answered transferred me to a different person who arranged for me to meet with himself and some graduate students. They would ask me some questions and, based on how I answered, allow me to teach in their department.
Dear Evelyn you forgot to sign out of your computer in the computer lab…
Hello Evelyn. How are you? I haven’t seen you in a few days. The other day I saw someone and we talked about you and how you like to play settlers of catan. That’s a really good game. I used to play with my roommates, but they would always beat me. Anyway, I was wondering if you could post something on HTMLGIANT for me? It’s a story I wrote for a website called Urlesque. The story is about Emma Watson. Everything in the story is non-fiction except for the title. I feel kind of dirty asking you to post a link to my story because the reason I want you to post a link is purely monetary. The editor of Urlesque said if the story gets a lot of views then I will make more money. I don’t want to want to make a lot of money but it is tough not to want to make money so I’m asking you for a favor to help me make money. If you don’t want to post a link then that’s fine. I understand. I am sort of using you for my own personal gain. The idea of using your name to help me make AOL pay me is not something that feels good (p.s. Urlesque is a subsidiary of AOL). In my head I have this distorted vision that by doing this I am taking my first step up the corporate ladder. I am sort of scared of the idea that AOL now controls a segment of my brain and can make me do cocaine even though I’d rather not do cocaine. Anyway, here’s a link to the story: my date with emma watson.
If love can be a brainworm then I would like to talk about my brainworms
I met someone who gave me brainworm recently. I used to think of brainworm as something that I would own and hold. I thought, “The person who gives me brainworm will be mine and I will be theirs.” The new brainworm I found does not feel like something I need to own or hold. It is a thought that continues to eat wherever it wants to eat. I enjoy the feeding of this thought. The feeding is endless. I could let this feeding continue the rest of my life and I would be happy even if I never saw the person who gave me the brainworm. I am so full of brainworm that I am sick. It seems stupid that I could be so happy about having something as dumb as a brainworm.
Tonight I ate some cheese. I was one of the last people in a room eating cheese. An elderly woman who reminded me of my grandmother began talking. She talked about the time she saw William S. Burroughs read. She went to the reading because she wanted to ask him a question. A lot of people at the reading just wanted to take William S. Burroughs out and get him drunk to see what would happen. She never asked the question she wanted to ask because she didn’t know how to formulate it. I continued to eat cheese and listen. The elderly woman said, “If I had a chance to ask William S. Burroughs a question now I would ask him: but what about love?”
My roommate just got home. He said, “Hellllwwwwwooooo” when he walked in the door. He likes to pretend he is a cat and an Asian when he says “Hello”. When he said, “Hellllwwwwwooooo” just now he was actually saying “Hello” to all the haters who will say they don’t believe in brainworm and think its so heterosexual to believe in something like brainworm.
But yes, I have a brainworm that I’m prepared to live with for the rest of my life and not doing anything about.
Are Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez really brothers?
I woke up this morning and sat on a stool in the kitchen and watched a cat named Jim watch a squirrel. I did not know the squirrel’s name. It was on a fence post.
Last night, I went to a party. Joanna Ruocco was there. I started talking to her and told her I really liked her books and she said, “Publishing on a small press is like being the best at something that no one else has ever bothered to think of doing. In my head, I picture thousands of people doing really unique things that no one has ever done or will ever do again.” I laughed. When I stopped laughing I realized the person I was talking to wasn’t Joanna Ruocco. I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t see Joanna Ruocco the rest of the night.
I like the WNBA a lot because it is a place I go when I want to be alone
I woke up today and looked at my boyfriend. He looked at me. People make a big deal out of today. My boyfriend and I didn’t do anything except look at each other. Then he made an omelet and I drank a glass of water. Today was not a big deal in the chronology of my life. After I drank some water I went on my computer.
I got an email from the illegitimate-seventeen-year-old child of someone famous. She sometimes emails me when she is upset. She is upset almost every day.
Luke Wilson on Writing
Luke Wilson in a movie I watched on cable called The Family Stone:
“Maybe you should stop…(Luke puts hand on Sarah Jessica Parker’s hand)…just stop…stop trying…it’s exhausting…trying to keep that lid screwed on so tight…just…ah…you know…relax…”
What happens when you talk about money?
Right now you can pre-order the 10th issue of MAKE.
Pre-ordering is like clapping for a performer before they’ve appeared on stage. You’re clapping for what they’ve already done, hoping that the performance about to begin will be at least as good as that. Or maybe it’s more like buying a ticket, saving your place by saying, I want to be there when it finally happens. Of course you’re saying it, but with money.
Just now, typing this, I’m noticing that what usually happens when I talk about money is happening–I start to listen to myself from a place outside of myself, and the self who goes on talking starts to feel that what she’s saying is lame, and the self who listens gets suspicious of the self who goes on talking even though she feels that what she’s saying is lame. Does something like this split happen to you when you talk about money? If it does, I wonder whether it’s an American thing to feel this. Does this happen for people in China? Russia? The Congo? How do other people feel when they talk about money?