take a picture of my shirt

like her hero fitzgerald, riley tried to achieve death by candy bar

(revival)

“Marriage” by George Ha
I was being interrogated on the whereabouts of my wife. I was in the chair and looking out the window while the officer asked me questions. I had been looking at the same set of long, white legs, but couldn’t make out a face to go with the body. I left my glasses on my nightstand.
The officer was a heavyset man, short curly hair with a toothpick hanging out of his mouth. He was reading from an important looking piece of paper, but I couldn’t make out the words on the page. I had an impulse to roll up whatever it was that he was reading and thwack him in the head with it.
“How long has your wife been gone, Mr Johnston?” he asked.
“Sixteen days.”
“Did she know we were coming for her?”
“She’s gone, isn’t she?”
I kept looking out the window. The set of legs got up for a minute, but the officer blocked my view. He pulled the toothpick out of his mouth and jabbed the air for a few seconds and then put it back in.
“What do you think?”
“About what?”
“This whole murder thing.”
There’s a lot to explain about that time and about what had happened with Jackie. Divorce rates had skyrocketed to 93% in the fall of 2019, and coincidentally, suicide rates had also gone up. The lawmakers in D.C. decided that the number one reason for divorce was adultery. Human beings had proved incapable of being faithful to one another. A law needed to be put in place. An act of unfaithfulness to one’s spouse was now punishable by death. I thought it was a bit overdramatic, seeing as the adulterers were now replacing the suicides, but I’m not a lawmaker, so I don’t know.
Jackie had made love to a mysterious stranger and felt such remorse that she murdered him and tried to hide the body in a closet. The officer said that the entire thing had been done quite hastily and that Jackie had probably left right away. They found the man just hanging there by his jacket with a toothpick in his mouth.
“I’m wondering, if you don’t mind, what it is that happened between the two of you.”
I was thinking pretty hard at this point but I couldn’t think of much outside of opening cereal boxes the wrong way. She had yelled at me a few times for that. I never knew what she was talking about, but she yelled at me anyway.
“Mr. Johnston?”
The acid I had taken with coffee that morning was really starting to kick in. The flashing lights around the officer’s head were now turning shades of blue and purple, and I found myself more attracted to them than the conversation I was having. I looked out the window to see if the moon was outside, and I noticed that the legs had disappeared.
“What happened to the curves outside?”
The officer looked out the window.
“What are you talking about?”
“The girl that was sitting there.”
“The old man that was out there? That wasn't no girl.”
“She had these long silky legs.”
The officer looked puzzled and went outside to talk on his phone. Memories of Jackie asking me to call her started to flood in. After school she would say, after work, after I picked up the boys from school, after doing the groceries, after having a cigarette, after making a sandwich, after making love. I grabbed the apricot that was sitting the floor and kissed it before wrapping my mouth around it. I didn’t bite into it - I was trying to see if I could suck the juice through the skin.
I wondered if the officer had known about the girl outside and had told the old man to take her away.
“Let her stay,” I murmured under my breath. “She didn’t do nothing wrong.”
I laughed. They taught us never to use double negatives starting in kindergarten. I thought of the pilgrim hats we made out of construction paper for Thanksgiving and wondered if the real pilgrims had made their hats in the same way. I started to think of this girl who had a slight hunch just like Jackie that I had a crush on back then, but I couldn’t make out what she looked like. I tried to sound out her name.
“Jassie… Jessica….Jasper…”
Jackie had changed her name from Florence right when we got married. I was confused at first, and would call her Florence on accident. She would get mad and say she thought that “Jacqueline” sounded elegant and that it reminded her of the first lady and that I had no business telling her what her name could and couldn’t be. I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she yelled at me anyway.
The officer came back in smelling of cigarettes.
“Hey, do you mind? The smell of those things is giving me a fucking headache.”
“You said it was alright earlier. You even offered me one.”
I didn’t remember. I might have. I had tried giving up smoking but I started back up when Jackie left.
“I’m sorry, officer. I’m trying to quit. You know how these things go.”
“Mr. Johnston, are you all right? You look a bit scattered.”
I heard Jackie’s voice calling me from upstairs.
“John, honey? Are you smoking down there? I can smell it from up here! Are you smoking? John?”
“It’s just the officer, honey, go back to sleep.”
The officer put his hand on my shoulder.
“Who are you talking to?”
I couldn’t sit still. I got up on my feet and started to move around, stopping to examine everything in the living room. I picked up a picture Jackie in her wedding dress and positioned it in front of my eyes. I looked over at the officer, whose head was turning into Noah‘s ark. I looked back at the picture to stay faithful, but Jackie had turned into an old man with long legs. I started to think about those girl’s legs and a giraffe’s neck side by side. It all made sense to me then. I looked back at the officer and tried to articulate what I was feeling.
“Your head looks just like the boat that the pilgrims used!”
“Excuse me?”
“Noah used a boat just like that too!”
“Mr. Johnston, you’re not making any sense.”
“Don’t you feel like you don’t stretch enough?”
I leaned over the chair as if I was trying to touch my toes over it. As soon as the officer reached over to stop me, I picked the chair up and clobbered him over the head.
He was lying there silently now, eyes open. I was looking at myself in the mirror, and he was looking at me too. If the officer saw something, he didn’t offer his opinion. If my reflection saw something, he didn’t say anything either. I felt lonely all of a sudden. I reached into the officer’s pockets and pulled out a lighter and some smokes. I took a cigarette, held it between my lips for a second, and looked at my reflection. I liked the way I looked when I smoked. I lay next to the officer, put his arm around my torso and looked at the ground, smoking my cigarette.
I took his hands and ran them through my hair slowly, the way Jackie used to. She used to touch my scalp with the tips of her fingers, and look off into the distance as if she was thinking about something else.
“Jackie?”
I let the smoke out of my lungs slowly and shook her arm gently. She never said anything.

I'm sitting inside Tauscher's guest room at 7 in the morning thinking about life and why exactly I've chosen to devote the last four years of my life to such a small part of my personality. I never really cared about the importance of "art" or "writing". It was just something I did to make myself feel better after working hard during the day. And it's become that again for me, a source of comfort throughout the mindless 60 hours a week I've been working.

I'm sorta tired of the artsy conversations I've been having in college. I don't regret majoring in writing, it's helped a lot. I just sort of lost sight of why I started to write in the first place. Two reasons - one, like I said, to get away from real life for a while and just have a place where I could talk about anything I wanted without fear of someone coming in and shitting up my creativity; and two - (that was a terrible use of a semicolon by the way - on purpose) to make people laugh. To entertain people. I'm not just a writer, though I've been trying to play it off like I've been. To hell with writers who strictly write. To hell with people who ask me what I've been "working on". I wanted to reply "nothing" so many times, but I've always had to make up some sort of something to talk about when really I just wanted to eat some pizza and run around in circles for a while.

I was never meant to be confined to a room all the time just to write.Forcing the words out of myself has never been fun for me. I've enjoyed acting and tricking people far more than actually writing. Sometimes all I can write about is writing, and for me, it's just as dangerous for me as taking crystal meth. It leads me into the same type of awful place.

Here is the break in the middle where I tell myself to stop smoking because goddamn it it's 7:30 in the morning and I feel like someone's ripped one of my lungs out. My grammar seems to be all wavy right now. I feel all wavy. There's this waiter who works for us, John, that always does power stretches when he gets a free moment. I've been trying to push myself to be like that, to never idle. I want to be pure MOMENTUM (personified).

I think Mike's dad came into my room at about 3am when he was leaving for work, and I remember being paranoid for a second or two about my appearance - pretty much half naked wearing these goddamn hilarious white briefs with my legs all contorted over the blanket. Then I laughed and dreamed about how I had woken up at 4 in the afternoon and that the sky was purple and everything in my life was falling apart. In a strange way. Like people jumping up and down in inflatable jumping castles for some reason. IT always makes sense back then.

I guess there's not too much else I want to say. I just wanted to make a point to myself that I'm not just a writer, and I'd be foolish and idiotic to live my life thinking that was the most important part of me. It's not even close. Ellery told me I had this aura whenever I walked around somewhere, and I definitely try to present that on purpose, but I haven't really been upping my skills any lately. I don't want to wake up and feel like I've wasted years drugged up and not being number one all the time. I'm ready to step it up,
to be
pure

m o m e n tu m.. . .. ! !


p.s. i wish i had someone like clint eastwood to tell me everytime i was a pussy in my youth. i feel old, but maybe its because i've become so goddamn weak back in california. i love it here though. everything i said about it has been a goddamn lie.

been working hard at ha's.

a big fuck you to:
dasha bulatov
tony schiavo
teresa braun
christopher bartles

and the rest


(after months of just talking and being intoxicated, i will whisk you away into a place of laughter and misfortune. the latter has to do with a caterpillar that shouldve eaten alice)

an example of my mornings:

george:
ZZzzZZZZZ

5 year old cousin jasmine:
HEY GEORGE WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP

george:
mmofai;mao;isef can u give me 55 mi nntesss

jasmine:
GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE

here's what i've been up to:

my parents made me go to tahoe with them to see joan rivers on saturday, and that was alright, except they were so conscious of the level of fun i was having that they overwhelmed the fuck out of me.

here's an example of being uncomfortable:

JOAN RIVERS:
FUCKING VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA AM I RIGHT


MOM:
GEORGIE THIS IS SO FUNNY OH MY GOD SO OO O FUNNY don'T YOU THINK THIsi s FUNNY??!

ME:

( ; _ ; )

also, was i really fucking watching vampire shit on hbo til 4 in the morning last night? get me the fuck outta there PLS

not hanging out with the right people in california. why does everyone i know have to be addicted to heroin

california day one (i know i told some of you i'd document my progress in montreal with the writing, but to be honest, that was an absolute failure. i jailed myself)


my parents seem so stressed out, saying stuff like "you gotta come home NEXT summer to help us out with the restaurant!!!"

it was really annoying when i was a kid, and though i'm sort of feeling grumpy right now, this is the truth of the situation my family is in. we're all broke and it didn't seem that way while i was in canada.
then again, i was also a drugged up lunatic trying to abandon all thoughts of my past self.

maybe i'm just tired from not sleeping enough. i feel pretty grumpy. this writing is choppy and my mom has been talking to me for the past five minutes while i've been writing this so i pretty much can't focus. but i'll update often... with adventures and ideas that have been expanded on. it seems as though im going to be working a lot this summer (tired of saying bullshit like bux money and kewl projex,... have i really been this disillusioned as to not concentrate on more accurate wordplay? here is the truth:
stoned out of my mind again and thinking about only hanging out with minorities)


what am i saying




i'm home. i miss you guys. let's hang out

STEVE
hi im here to get a physical

GD
alright just sit right there

STEVE
what on that log?

GD
yeah get naked on that log

STEVE
it doesn't look pleasant.

GD
your legs are gonna get so scratched up

STEVE
are you going to give me a physical?

GD
patience is a virtue.

STEVE
what's that mean?

GD
put the lotion in the fucking basket

STEVE
what?

GD
you aren't from winnipeg are you?


STEVE
yeah i am, as a matter of fact.

GD
it's a great city, there's a ton to do

STEVE
best city in the goddamn world.

GD
i can go outside and be bored then go inside and be bored then go outside and be scared for a little while
it's amazing

STEVE
are you being sarcastic?

GD
you're a lovely lady, steve.i thought you should know

STEVE
how do you know my name?

GD
myspace

STEVE
im not on that shit

GD
myspace.

STEVE
o. okay..

GD
are you hungry?

STEVE
a little, wait what?

GD
do you wanna go out sometime for some food?

STEVE
um, no.


GD
no one wants to get food anymore everyone is like
drugs this drugs that i dont wanna eat food
i just wanna like do my cat drugs and then be a
cat for a while, but im telling you steve
you can't be a cat all the time it's a terrible life
listen to me steve.

STEVE
i think i might have pleurisy

GD
you should probably eat something then.

STEVE
i just had boustan.

GD
BOUSTAN! thats the cause of everything. dont eat the
kafta schwerma pita arayess falafel kebab. itll give you herpes b.

STEVE
i didn't know there was a herpes B

GD
yeah, but it's the good kind so you can take your girl there.

STEVE
i would, but she doesnt really eat food. (but she already has an std?)

GD
thats the problem with people these days, never eatin food.

STEVE
i don't know what you're talking about.

GD
typical winnipeg.

STEVE
hey leave winnipeg outta this.

GD
leave the JETS outta this! they suck enough without you going and defending them.

STEVE
are you going to fucking give me a physical or what?

GD
and don't get me started on the expos, what's their record now,
like 150 wins and 2 losses ? terrible.

STEVE
are you okay? or should i go back and ask the nurse if -

GD
im sorry steve. my wife just died an hour ago, im not taking it very well.

STEVE
oh.

GD
she won the only gold medal for canada last year. fucking world record. i bet none of you
winnipegers have ever won a gold medal for anything.

STEVE
actually, winnipeg is a PART of canada

GD
do you want your physical or not?

STEVE
yes, yes, thank god, i was about to leave.

GD
bad news steve.

STEVE
what

GD
you got the pleurisy

STEVE
how do you know?

GD
that's the bad news. there's some good news too.

STEVE
what's the good news?

GD
you don't have pleurisy, you got hep c.

STEVE
i want to see another doctor.

GD
there aren't any more doctors, i ate all of them.

STEVE
you remind me of my father.

GD
Steve, I'm your father because i had sex with your father
and you came out
. im sorry it had to be this way.

STEVE
what are you talking about?

GD
it's going to be ninety bux.

STEVE
i don't have ninety bux i just spent it all on pornography

GD
well maybe if you weren't so goddamn winnipeg you wouldn't be in this mess!

STEVE
this scene doesn't make any sense.

GD
yep.

STEVE
is you on drugs?

GD
yea, i is.