A Poem for the Office Worker

The coffee is an ironically cold comfort, but it’s not as stale as the air, at least.

These colors must have been picked on purpose to stir some bleak into your day.

It’s as if the knowledge that this type of office has long been a cliché hasn’t yet arrived.

Don’t worry, we’ll get it. The same time the Ukraine gets beanie babies. 

 

Christ, Cheryl. Is that a beanie baby on your desk?

Parental Advisory

COMPLICIT IDIOCY WARNING

                My girlfriend is a kind and positive person, not inflicted with the same rage fuelled, world bending psychosis that colors the filter between me and the world. My girlfriend has the distinct ability; in fact I would go as far as to call it a gift, to work in retail. She comes home with work stories much like anyone else, but since she works in a shitty neighborhood in Worcester, Massachusetts, her stories tend to take on a different tone than Jane at the office having a baby or Margie winning a hundred dollar lottery scratcher.

                Usually her stories involve drug addicts passing out in the middle of her store, attempted robberies, the welfare check rush and the fear of walking to her car alone at night. These things, however, are not the kind of stories that get me incensed. Nay, kind reader, as my skewed, screwed world view must dictate, I nod politely and barely listen to these stories ripped straight from the headlines or an episode of The Wire, but hit the pulpit like a bat out of hell when she tells me relatively banal stories like one this one the other day.

                She mentions casually, off the cuff, that she had to remove a large amount of Christmas cards from the shelves due to a joke made in SOMEWHAT poor taste. I won’t go into the content of the card, because that isn’t the point. I don’t see the debate as being if the joke was bad enough to have it removed from the shelves, I would prefer the debate to be whether or not we keep the kind of people on our planet that go out of their way to complain about tiny, tiny things like this. The question I ask is simple, how little do you do in your life, how do you have such a trivial amount of issues in your day that you not only find the time to complain about something that doesn’t matter, but the energy to willfully ignore actual problems?

                Now I speak directly to you. To the letter writing, pettiness bleeding, defender of dogged doucheness that has to get in everyone’s way. You took the time to pick this card up, look at it, get offended ( a word I feel we should have stricken from the language, as it has been overused and championed by those we must rage against) and then take it to a target employee and say, with what you must consider righteous earnestness, “I don’t think you should stock this here, I find it offensive.”

Go home. Read a book. Listen to a record. Expand your horizons, live outside your conscious mind, take in the world around you, and gain that thing that seems to have become such a rare commodity due to mouth breathing idiots like yourself: perspective. Does the card with what most thinking people would consider perhaps only mildly offensive really need you to wage war against it? Perhaps your energy would be better spent reading up on the conflicts in Syria, studying the history of genocide, writing an essay about how we as a human race are not actually doomed to repeat our mistakes. Explain how written language and recorded events are the key to determining how we prevent the endless cycle of domination and murder that has plagued our race since we first began! Maybe, or maybe start with something smaller. Read an article, bring it up over coffee with a friend, and discuss it. Breathe through your nose for a whole day, pick your knuckles up off the floor, or find uses for your thumbs.                

Breathe Dave, Breathe.

 

                I know what you’re thinking. “You’re hardly doing that Siz old buddy, you are, by championing a cause against petty people, becoming rapidly more petty yourself.” And, in some ways, due to a long line of self-defeating concepts and logics that I run through in my life, you would be right. Ignore them, yeah? Maybe I should be concentrating on something larger, my scope is perhaps limited as well. Think on this, though. Offensive cards are never going to be the majority. Song lyrics will never dictate the movement of our race through the rest of time, they will never be in charge of the collective consciousness, but these… these people, might. I say to you, kind reader, that my cause against pettiness and small mindedness may be the most grand and important cause that exists. Perhaps we should all champion it, because if not we may start complaining about how “the website said this was 2.95 but it says 2.99” or that our kids snuck into an “R” rated movie and how that is CLEARLY the movie theaters fault.

                Adolf Hitler wouldn’t have liked certain song lyrics. He would have made sure plenty of things got taken off the shelves that offended him. Just think about it next time you see “rated M for mature” being argued over, or you see something censored on television, it all started with a letter or a phone call from someone who was offended.

You Know I'm Yours Just For The Taking

 

By David Clarke

 

                All the clichés applied, and you’d hear them like you heard them a million times before when the rabble saw her. Head turner, light up a room, legs for days, and all the other bullshit idioms suckers throw around just before they get suckered. She’d sit, half smiling, glancing around the bar looking vulnerable, looking like an easy mark, playing newly divorced or lonely shut in, braving this big bad world needing a big bad man to take care of her. All of it filled your head and sent it swimming without her even having to say a word. She’d say it with how she carried herself; she was the Audrey Hepburn of murderous harpies.

                In my world, there are two different groupings of scum. Flimflam men, thieves, card sharks and the like toured my circuit, and we didn’t overlap too often with murderers and psychopaths if we could help it. I could spot a ringer on both teams though, I knew she had a game, and I made up my mind to stay away from her, especially when I saw the baboons start to line up, mouths agape, targets lined up square on their backs. I wouldn’t be ogling her, or even looking with anything but the eyes in the back of my head, and that would be that.

                Las Vegas was shared territory for crooks, that was the way, but I found comfort in the fact that I knew most of them by sight. I didn’t share any friendships with these low lives; I was too experienced at being one myself to do anything silly like that. I had one I preferred to spend my downtime with, but only because he was almost as good as me, mutually assured destruction is the thing keeping conversation civil in my life at this point. It was Nicky I was with when she floated in, seemed like she was barely touching the ground. Me and Nick sipped brandy and shot the shit when he stopped short of a story about some Korean business type, too liquored up and too good at cards not to be robbed blind.

 

“Hello, gorgeous.”

 

The words spilled out from underneath his dark moustache with a typical southern drawl. He was the only man I had ever met that made those kinds of cheesy lines sound like something you’d want to sprinkle on your pancakes. Nick wasn’t a good guy by any stretch but I found comfort in his company. I met him when we were both much younger. I wouldn’t say he taught me the ropes, but he showed me they were there for swinging. What little direction my life had, he gave me, and I owed him for that. Bonds don’t come easy in this town, so the ones you get you tend to cherish, privately. His eye had wandered too far for me to do anything about it now; his mind was made up before he finished his sentence.

 I’ll admit, my blood is as red as the next guys, and it ran a little less cold when I saw her for the first time. Her hair, a color of black only God could make, and he doesn’t bottle his stuff, fell down her back and popped against a blood red dress you’d lose your left eye to trade places with the thing hugged her so tight. She was gorgeous, but like I said, too gorgeous. In my experience if something seems too good to be true you’re already cancelling your credit cards and begging your wife to take you back before you find out why.

“Well, my good man, I think I’ve just about finished planning the rest of my night.” Nick said, his eyes nearly bulging.

“Nicks, come on. You don’t see she’s working an angle? You think a woman like that is alone in the middle of a Vegas casino by anything other than choice? Don’t be an idiot.”

He didn’t even hear me, he was already eight steps toward my ‘I told you so’ and I chalked it up to him deserving whatever he was going to get. She was no working girl, but she was working, I could tell that much. Time for me to do the same, I thought, plus maybe I was wrong, but it had been a while since that happened.

My racket was sleight of hand, and I was the best. I was the best in a town that it was bad to be anything else. My father, a washed up headliner whose work dried up when magicians became less popular than comics, moved us here when I was twelve. My mom died a couple of years later, and he never cared where I was or what I was doing after that, so I learned a trade like the responsible young man that I was. The man was so self-obsessed he even killed himself with a narcissistic flourish, jumped out one of the top floor windows of the MGM. His suicide note apparently said something about it being “his last great trick”. Seemed to me there wasn’t a lot of magic in jumping out a window. I could never decide what was more pathetic, how he lived or how he died. He gave me one thing though, his hands, fastest hands in the desert.

Caught my mind wandering when I hit the floor, man in my business can’t afford that, not even for a second. In the 21^st century eyes in the sky are never blind, always gotta stay sharper than sharp.

I lifted a couple of chips from a crowded roulette table, the guys roll was going to end soon, it always did in this town, that’s why I don’t gamble with my own money, my hands are a sure thing. I threw down the lifted chips at an empty blackjack table, looking like I was addicted to the cards and the dice kept suspicions away, plain sight was the only place to hide out here.

 

“Chuck.” I nodded in the direction of the table and he began to pull cards.

“How’s your luck tonight chief?”

“Just starting, that’s gonna be up to you.”

“I don’t tell the lady how to dance, pal. We’re all hers just for the taking.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me.”

 

I slumped my shoulders and scratched my stubble, scanning the room, making a checklist. Regulars were off limits, so were employees. Anyone down on their luck was pointless to mark, and anyone too lucky had more eyes on them than Red Dress back there. Good, not great, blackjack players and one jackpot slot housewives are the smart odds. Beginners luck and veterans skill were going in my pocket tonight, like they always did.

The difference between me and a cheap pickpocket was I gave you the respect of being charming and looking you in the eye while I took your things. You liked me, you wanted to give me some of your winnings, you were paying for my company. Plain sight, like I said.

                I spotted a fat Texan, small business owner type; the rich oil tycoons aren’t actually ‘yeehawing’ around Vegas casinos, offering to sleep with your wives for money or whatever it is you think happens here. It’s a couple who just got their kids out of the house and took a trip. He’s played some cards in his day and she’s happy to watch or play the slots, maybe get a daiquiri because “it’s been years since I’ve had one of these. It’ll go straight to my head!”

 

Here’s hoping. They’ll do nicely.

 

I waited until they moved to the bar to take a break and went along shortly after them.

“Lucky tonight?” I asked casually.

“You know it, hos” Jesus, did they actually talk like that? Next he was going to ask me to bust up a chifforobe.

 

Charming them was the easiest part, it was the patience to wait, to make your move at the exact right time and not take too much, they have to think they spent it themselves or lost it. Greed is why the house wins. I walked them up to their room, the big Texan laughing to the point where his face turned so red it looked like he ate something out of Wonka’s factory. Fitting, as I led them up the stairs like the pied piper, and lifted one of the bundles of cash he had recently converted from chips out of his members only jacket as we stumbled around a corner.

“You two have a nice night, keep that luck alive in there brother!” I said with a wink.

The door closed and I made my way back down the hall, almost bumping straight into red dress and Nick. “My man!” he drunkenly exclaimed, “This, my dear, this is the best friend I have in the world, I want you to meet him.”

“My pleasure, miss.” I said with a smile.

“Likewise.”

Her voice was like velvet. I rarely knew Nicky to get this drunk, in fact, never. The guy always kept his wits, something was wrong here, but if he got taken it would be a good lesson for him. I made my way past them and back down into the lobby, I’d bet a little, just to be seen around the place, and then go home. The thrill of taking the Texans cash was dulled, the feeling of excitement not what it used to be. Maybe it was getting older, or boredom.

I drove down the strip; it took forever to get it out of the rearview mirror because the land was so flat. My house was a few miles away in the desert, felt like I was on an Indian spirit quest every time I needed to take a shower. Same house I grew up in, she hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint since Truman. The neighborhood, if you could call it that, looked like its most important function was bomb testing. It always took a little time for your eyes to adjust from the cold neon of the strip to the brown desolation of this attempted desert suburb. Everything got dusty the second you got out of the car, and it felt like the safer bet was to not know your neighbors. It wasn’t always like this. When my dad was a headliner this place was bustling, felt in my head like he was the industry that kept the place alive, but that was ridiculous. Vegas residency ebbed then flowed, we were in a long ebb.

I had a night’s sleep that felt more like being unconscious than resting peacefully, probably all the brandy I drank with the Texan. I always drank enough to look like I was keeping up but not too much, too much slowed the hands down. My mouth was as dry as the mud and mortar my house was made from when I woke up, felt like I was a part of the walls. I took a few gulps of water and a shower before trying to eat some breakfast, however unsuccessfully. After choking down a few bites of cereal and switching to coffee I flipped open my phone, one of those old flip burners, I had no interest in my phone being smart, gave me the heebies.

Seven missed calls. Number I didn’t recognize. I don’t know what it was about the twenty first century, every time people get calls from numbers not already stored in their phone they get a smack of anxiety, like someone they don’t know calling them is always to deliver bad news. I was no different, but what did people do before caller ID? I don’t remember the phone being a heart stopper when it sang its song from a fixed point in the house, not in my childhood anyway. Well, this time the anxiety was well placed at least, Nick was dead. Even sadder, I was his emergency contact, hospital left a chronological series of voicemails:

 

Nick was in the hospital at 12:33am, unresponsive, call back.

They stabilized him at 12:46am, no reason for alarm, something with his heart, call back or come in.

1:28am Cardiac arrest.

Time of death, 1:59am.

 

                Nick was young, Nick was healthy. Vegas don’t do anybody’s insides any favors but a man’s heart doesn’t give out for no reason. This had something to do with Red Dress, damn thing was a warning bell not a come hither, and I’d bet my biggest stack that she had something to do with Nicky dying.

What could I do? I was going to find out, and I was going to hold her accountable. My instincts screamed for me to do the opposite, there was no honor among thieves, I didn’t owe Nick anything. This was something else, though. She rubbed me wrong at the casino the night before, seemed she thought she could do whatever she wanted, but this was my city, thieves and cons I could share it with, but murderers aren’t something I want sauntering around my bars, they were more arrogant than careful.

                When I got back to the casino, I went back to the bar where I first saw her. Nothing there, as if I expected there would be. She could be in the next city by now, which I guess would have suited me, but I was hit with disappointment at the thought of it. I would have preferred to look her in the eye and let her know I was coming for her. Revenge had never been my game, but this one got under my skin.  Maybe I did owe Nick something, too. I left the bar and scanned the lobby, mostly dead save regulars at this time of the day.

The crimson was the first thing I saw, the blouse billowing loosely above khaki and moving almost in time with the click and clack of her long, grey stilettos. She stood out from the pastels and beiges of the crowd like the first shock of paint on white canvas. The blacker than black hair was spun up in a bun now, black rimmed glasses so straight they did nothing if not add to the perfect symmetry of her face. She moved too easy. Actually, she didn’t move at all, the world moved around her, she barely walked, she glided.

 

God damn Witch.

 

“Nick’s friend, right?” I snapped back to reality, what the hell was wrong with me? I was sharper than this. I had to be better, I had to get close to her and find out what she did to Nick, if not even for him, for me. Maybe I wanted to prove I wasn’t going soft lifting wallets and chips off fat Texans and spinsters.

 

“Yeah, that’s me. You’re the girl from last night, right?”

 

“Not as often as you might think, but your friend is quite charming”

“Was, you mean.”

“I suppose I do, he skipped out on me in the middle of the night, does he make a habit of that or was it something I said?”

If I knew anything, I knew a liar, and she was a damn good one. She anticipated. She was subtle; she was a damn fine actress.

“Skipped out on all of us, he’s dead. You didn’t know?”

The look of shock that flashed across her face seemed almost genuine, I had to hand it to her, she was even able to make the color drain from her face. Seemed to me like she missed her calling.

“Dead? There’s no way. What happened? Oh my. I must be cursed.”

“His heart gave out. Must have been genetic.”  I looked her up and down to pinpoint the holes, waiting for her to look back at me to gauge how much I believed her. Nobody was this good, she seemed… genuinely upset. Lying I can spot, but genuine emotion is something that nobody in my world can miss, it sticks out, and it’s uncomfortable. She started to cry.

“Just my luck, I meet a nice fella and I kill him.” She turned away from me and lit a cigarette.

“You killed him?”

“Worked his heart well enough honey. Ugh, poor Nick.” Her hands shook while she smoked.

Her voice was different than it was the night before. It was more gentle, softer, but still like nothing I had ever heard. It was like something out of a Greek myth; it went straight to my head. I think she was telling the truth, too. God, all my paranoia about her and she was more Creusa than Medea.

This town had poisoned me. I was Vegas, personified, all surface and bile, no truth to who I was at all anymore. Some poor girl came to town and found comfort in a guy she met, and I judged her because she was too pretty not to be up to something. Right when I saw her, too, like I was some sort of detective and had a hunch. I was no detective, I was a cheap pickpocket whose only redeeming quality was that he saved himself from being cruel to someone who didn’t deserve it.

She was crying.

“Hey, you wanna go get some breakfast? My treat.” I said

“No, I should go, I’m really sorry about your friend.”

“Up to you, seems two people upset about the same thing would be better off not splitting up. I’m not trying to pick you up or anything.” That was true, as well.  I was desperate to make it all up to her now, thinking that about her, and she was so beautiful, so vulnerable.

“You know what? You’re right. Why not? Lead on.” She smiled through her tears, and that was when I was sure, sure that nobody who smiled like that could be evil.

 

Breakfast lead to lunch, lunch to dinner, and I said goodnight, dutifully. We had spent the entire day together and I was walking on air. She was the first good thing that had happened to me in a long time, and I really enjoyed spending time with her.

Spend time we did, for the next four days we walked the strip together, sharing our whole life stories. I was trying to be a friend to her, but I kept most of my life hidden, changing the subject when she asked about my family, my job. She told me about her late husband, how he was a bastard, how she felt trapped and the only good thing he ever did for her in twelve years was leave her enough money to go on a trip and forget about him. She told me Nick was the first man she’d been with in as long, and how wonderful it felt to be free of her marriage. On the fourth night she kissed me.

“I’m sorry.” She said.

“Don’t be.” I replied.

“Do you want to come in?” She gestured to the door of her room. I hesitated. I wanted to, over the past four days I had fallen in love with this woman, this girl I thought was a monster. I didn’t have to protect her, she was a grown up and she knew what she was asking.

 

 

Yes.

 

 

I first noticed it when we were together, a little glint in her eye, a smile I hadn’t seen these past few days.

I then noticed it after, when I stood and smoked one of her cigarettes by the balcony door. I made a comment about how I rarely smoked, she laughed a laugh I hadn’t heard before. It wasn’t her laugh.

“What’s going on with you?” I asked, like I had known her all my life.

“Nothing, darling.” She said in a voice I recognized, but it wasn’t hers, it was the woman who took Nick into her room the last time I saw him. The last time anyone saw him alive. She moved to the desk and pressed a button on her mp3 player. Ella Fitzgerald crooned over the small speakers she had plugged in.

Why haven't you seen it? I'm all for you, Body and Soul…

“It’s good that you don’t.”

I snapped back to focus, “Don’t what?”

“Smoke often. Bad for you.”

She stretched her hands above her head, fingers interlocked, and bent herself backwards, I heard her back cracking, her muscles stretching. Her shadow looked like a half moon.

Her whole face had changed, bathed in the neon light of the Vegas strip but still white as a ghost. It wasn’t soft and open, it was sharp and cruel. She started to dance and sing along to the music, spinning slowly in the red light.

I spend my days in longing, And wondering why it's me you're wronging.

My chest tightened, that familiar diving bell of shock and anxiety plunged into my gut, and I stared at her, not able to speak. I looked down at my hand.

 

The cigarette, different from the ones she usually smoked.

 

I can't believe it; It’s hard to conceive it

 

I fell against the wall and then sideways, crashing into the bedside table. I heard her singing, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t tell if it was her or Ella, but I always liked this song.

I always liked it…

 

 

My life a wreck you're making!

You know I'm yours

For just the taking

I'd gladly surrender

Myself to you, Body and Soul…

Permanent Case of the Heebie Jeebies

                           

or, the day I stopped having a thing for katy perry…

                                               

                Well, I’m crushed. Soul destroyed, distraught. Tormented, addled, beside myself. Discomposed, unscrewed, unglued.

                I mean, it just hurts, you know? I knew that she was dating John Mayer, as if that wasn’t bad enough, now they’ve co-written a song together that is, to me, the equivalent of snuff.

I feel like this pouty lipped, mainstream, every bro with an acoustic guitar you met in college douchenozzle is trying to actively make me vomit. I could stomach the fact that he’s dating her but the lyrics to this song are basically her talking about how wonderful and glorious he is in the sack. The lyrics are putrid, sickening, vile combinations of words I am loathe to repeat, but I will for the sake of the fact that I must make every stride to take this man down.

 For the good of the land.

I actually find the thought of her banging John Mayer more gross than the thought of her banging Russell Brand. At least he’s funny sometimes, even if he does seem like the rejected third Gallagher brother, and I’d probably take hearing Wonderwall for the eleventy billionth time over hearing any John Mayer song more than once. I mean she could have anyone! (Even this wonderfully witty wordsmith that wryly wrangles language like Wally Whitman affectionately known as: Yours Truly. I mean, Jackpot.)

Ducking and dodging digression now and moving on to this hideously retarded lovechild they have created together. It seems like the imagery was plucked right out of the imagination of the guy in the hallmark meetings everyone thinks is too flowery, and puts the two of them right next to you making out like every gross couple discovering they had mouths in the 8^th grade. Let’s take it from the top, shall we? Cringe.

               

Lay me down at your altar, baby

I'm a slave to this love

Your electric lips have got me speaking in tongues

Laying it on a little thick there, Kates? It’s going to be hard to decipher what this song is about considering the fact that we are just drowning in subtext. Maybe you’re going super meta and trying to write lyrics as if Prince had suffered a traumatic brain injury? (That’s nothing to joke about, though, Prince is an American institution and could teach John Mayer a thing or two about being suave.)

Why do electric lips have her speaking in tongues? What are electric lips? Did he get them from Sky Mall? Are they battery operated or powered by his own smug sense of self-satisfaction? These are the burning questions. Moving on. It gets worse:

I have prayed for a power like you

To see deep down in my soul

Oh, you make me bloom like a flower, a desert rose

You make me bloom like a flower? You make me bloom like a fucking flower? Come on. Gross. Plus, I think the desert rose metaphor is getting a little tired, don’t you? Who does John Mayer think he is? Bono? Even Bono thinks that’s cheesy and he’s been grating mozzarella into his songs since the late 80’s. Double cringe.

Magic, or one, or mystery

All of your charms have worked on me

I would surrender myself

Holy hell, and heaven high

You will open up my eyes

And I am finally here

Good lord. John Mayer is heaven to you? Heaven. Like eternal bliss, everything you’ve ever wanted or needed from your mortal life embodied in one curly headed twit? Ironic because for me, Johnny boy would probably be present at the ninth circle of DK’s inferno. One man’s trash, I guess.

This is spiritual, under your spell

Phenomenal, the way you make me feel

Like an angel, oh, at blow

Like a feather, you make me float

Yeah. I think this last bit speaks for itself. The rest is just more of the same. The worst part is, this song is actually called “Spiritual”. Eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww.

Basically Katy Perry says that John Mayer is her religion, and she has sworn herself to him, and this leads me to the inevitable conclusion that he has either mastered the same brain washing tricks as scientology or invented love potion number 9. Either way, he’s used his powers for evil. Shame on you John, shame.

In any case, it seems like that’s it for me and Katy. Thankfully there’s like three actresses that look exactly like her that John Mayer probably hasn’t slept with yet, but give it time.

Now you might say, whatever Dave, you’re just jealous because he’s dating a sexy pop star and you’re not. That might be true, but I don’t think I’d trade places with him because, first off, I’d have to be John Mayer and that’s gotta be hard no from my camp. Second, I don’t really think I’d want her now, she dated John Mayer, that’s number three on my list of deal breakers after:

 1.)    Listens to John Mayer

 2.) Would date John Mayer.

Lastly, I’d like to thank Seth McFarlane for saying in 2009 in one sentence what I’ve needed several hundred to express:       

       

Petty or Small - First to Fall.

“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”
                     ― Jerry Pournelle 

                I do not suffer fools gladly. In fact, I suffer them with maddening rage that is akin to Bruce Banner, “hulking out” or a smash cut to the Hiroshima mushroom cloud. Fools, however, are a dime a dozen, and whether they are cutting you off in traffic or are too fucking stupid to have their money out before they hit the front of the line, they are an evil that my personal crusade is yet to vanquish.

                Fools, however, are only that by accident, and they can be afforded a certain level of forgiveness due to the fact that their idiocy is, for the most part, genetic or perhaps caused by some sort of head trauma. It’s the petty, the small, the lords and rulers of tiny worlds that attempt to destroy my day with what little power they wield when I wander into their dominion. Whether it is the traffic cop, with his small notepad and grandiose sense of purpose, or the high school teacher brandishing an “F” just to prove a point, I have ducked and dodged these cretins my whole life, and so must you I would wager.

                See, I know you, kind reader. I know if you’re reading this, you aren’t one of them, you’re one of the hip, happenin’, men or women about town that catch cool like a cold and are breezier than fall in New England. You’ve got better things to do than fuck with people’s day for no reason, right? Why be the person out to ruin everybody else’s good time? Don’t be the angry neighbor over the fence, shaking his fist while you attempt, fruitlessly, not to look at his wrinkly old man junk revealed by the bathrobes inevitable acquiesce to the wind. Put your old man junk away and come join the party, it really is fun over here.

                Now, I’m no psychiatrist, but I have watched A LOT of Frasier, so basically I am. (It’s a phony science anyway, but that’s a topic for another blog post).  I think I can speculate fairly easily on the root of what causes people to behave this way, and I think it can be boiled down to one, if not all three, of the following:

1.)    Revenge- 

This one is fairly self-explanatory. Basically, these small spineless little fuckwads that harass you over being two minutes late, harp on about forms being filled out or generally just go out of their way to make you feel as small as they do, are probably doing it because someone did something to them first. Maybe they were picked on (I wonder why), maybe Mommy and Daddy didn’t love them enough (you don’t have to love your kids if they suck, by the way, just try again), maybe they couldn’t run fast or jump high, whatever the reason, they are out for revenge. You, in their view, are a metaphor for everyone else that got them to where they are, gleefully signing up to be an R.A when they don’t need the free housing. They will put you in your place alright, next to them on the train to nowhere.

2.)    Genetics-

Small breeds small, as far as I’m concerned. Cats have litters of cats, mice have litters of mice, spiders explode out hundreds of creepy, gross little spiders, and the world keeps on turning. The same rule of thumb applies to humans, somewhere along the chain of human evolution we decided, for some reason, we needed bureaucrats, and wieners beget wienies. These hairless cats were allowed to survive and reproduce with others, creating more wiener sans toothpick (gross and useless, the toothpick makes the flavor in a cocktail sausage and its ilk, trust me.) Now, despite it probably being the most vapid and joyless sex that two humans can have with one another, and probably involves lists and data, it happens, and it happens enough to put more than one traffic cop, hall monitor, red pen wielder et al., in your life.  

3.)    Small brains, small dicks, small kingdoms-

The seemingly worst part about these people is their knack, nay, their talent, to find themselves in positions of power. They are in charge of your green card, your court date, your bank loan. Those of us who consider ourselves bigger than fine print are always hobbled by it, and it’s a sad state. A state that got me thinking about who arrived and got mercilessly devoured for hundreds of years first:

      The chicken or the egg?

Are these people a naturally occurring phenomenon or where they born as a necessary evil due to the positions we’ve created for them and the tools we put at their disposal? Perhaps, perhaps it is our fault as a society that we have created a virus that can’t be cured. I’ll give the working title of “petti douchicocci” but I’m no scientist.

Whatever the reason, we must suffer these tools gladly until computers inevitably replace them and start putting snide post it notes on everything instead.

Just remember, if you feel yourself taking pleasure, even a little bit, in actively causing someone else’s misery, or finding you can help someone but choosing not to because of your own twisted and tiny principles, check yourself before you riggidy wreck, yah dig?

Siz out.

Billy Bic

Billy Bic.

I was born, yeah that’d be right, I said born, in Milford, Connecticut. We didn’t like to say assembled, it felt cold. The year was 1961. I was a bright eyed young Bic lighter, eager to explore the world, they told us we were meant for grand lives back then, they told us lighters travelled more than anything else, they told us we’d meet more people, live more life, they told us a lot of fanciful tales that painted the world in black and white. I suppose it’s like a parent. They tried their best to prepare us, but we had to see it for ourselves. They left some things out, they left out the pain.

They left out the part about getting attached to your owner, only to be discarded. The part of your life when lighting his cigarettes or his pipe or his cigars is all you do. You do it for so long you can’t even remember a time when you were apart. If you were lucky enough, like me, you’d have a time period when an owner felt a connection back to you, and made an effort to keep you, for a while at least.

When I started, I was always smiling, I was red, and I was good at what I did, so I got a break, but not right away. I got noticed, but by the wrong people at times.  I thought I was special, but to most, I wasn’t. I suppose I was just an object, but I was glad for knowing those who saw me as more.

My first owner bought me at a grocery store in 1962, after a long time being packaged and shipped with the other boys all around the world; I still remember the box opening, the package tearing, and the manager of the place gruffly stuffing us into one of those cramped lighter holders. Tight fit, if I remember, but it’s been quite a while.

I stood as tall and as proud as I could. I did like they told us, I stayed positive, I smiled and I made eye contact. I was trying harder than everyone else around me and they all knew it, they resented me for it I think, but I didn’t care. I was the first one picked.

“The red one, on the right there.”  The sentence that launched my career and started my life and I was told I’d remember it forever. They were right about that, I just wish I could forget the man who said it.

He gave me my first lesson about the harsh reality of this world we live in, and it was one I’d never forget. His eyes were cold and dead, his brow was heavy and awkward like a badly packed bag. He smelled terrible, and his pocket was filthy.

I was there in all the meetings, I heard all the planning, I saw how he and his associates discussed taking a man’s life like it was some sort of nine to five they were muscling through, as if filing paperwork were the same as pulling a trigger. The rest of them, they seemed detached on purpose, like they were told to do a job and wanted to get on with it and go home. That doesn’t excuse what happened, of course, but I could tell the man whose pocket I rode home in every day enjoyed the idea of what he was about to do. I could feel his hunger for it, his anticipation for the day.

People speculate so much about what actually happened that day, and I have spent many sleepless nights wishing I could tell them who it was and what really happened, and now they will definitely never know.

 I’ve heard people say that everyone remembers where they were when John Kennedy was   assassinated, well I certainly do. 

The man who shot John F. Kennedy did it on a hill; The man who shot John Kennedy smoked Winstons. 

Thankfully we parted ways soon after that, but I knew what I had seen and heard would stay with me forever. I heard the people screaming, running crying, not knowing what to do. I knew it was coming.

And I heard him laugh.

He left me at a bar by accident a few days later. Considering how long I’d been with him and his other suit wearing badge wielding brutes he took little notice, but I was glad of it. A waitress picked me up and pocketed me.

Her name was Nancy Fielder, and she was beautiful.  

She smoked Lucky Strike and her boyfriend Marc smoked Lucky Strike. They were simple and kind and neat and organized and I was happy with them. I never wanted to leave, I tried to put the past behind me, but it would still come up in conversation and I would have to relive it all. They had no idea what had happened to me, so I couldn’t blame them, but I loved being their friend. They seemed to like me as well, they got a lot of compliments on my appearance, which made me feel good. People seemed to think I was sturdy, and I always lit first time, even in the wind.  

For a long time I hated Marc for handing me over and not coming back for me. For a long time I blamed him, and I just knew Nancy would be furious. I don’t blame Marc anymore, he didn’t know what he was doing, and we had our time together.

Listen to me, I sound like a rejected beaux.

Anyway, next was Mike, and he was forgettable, then John, and then Diane. I had begun to see a bit of the world, I remember planes and trains. I remember parties and conversations. I ended up with a slob named Felix, slumming with a drunk that lacked people skills and hygiene wasn’t the highlight of my year, but the Felix’s of the world do wonders for perspective.

Thankfully, I was his lighter for only four torturous days before I was taken by a girl attempting to grab her things in a 7am mad dash, filled to her brim with early morning regret. If you knew Felix, you wouldn’t blame her for feeling that way, but I was glad she arrived when she did.

She was a student, her name was May, and she didn’t smoke, but liked having me around for some reason. She would twirl me in her fingers, light me occasionally, and would help out strangers with a light every now and again, just to spark up conversation. Excuse the pun.

May was my education and how wonderful it was. She took her studies seriously and spent most of her time with a book or a notebook or in a class, and she would take me with her everywhere she went, without fail. I got to see beautiful, sprawling forests, mountain trails and lakes lit up by the moons glow at night. I saw life for the first time through her eyes.  I grew close to May in those months, and I know she was fond of me, as well. But I had learned by then not to rely too much on people for that kind of reciprocation.

My time with May gave me a perspective; it taught me where I was, when I was, and, most of all, who I was.

I was in Boston, it was 1969, and, through May, I now had opinions, I had a perspective. I supported women’s rights and learned all about the suffragettes, I supported Black Civil Rights and knew everything there was to know about Dr. King, I wept the day he died and at first wondered if it was the same evil fuck that shot John Kennedy.

May took care of me; she refilled me, which doesn’t happen to a regular old red Bic, let me tell you. She even gave me my name. I’d never had a name before, and I was so proud the day she said it. “This is my favorite lighter I don’t know why.  I take it everywhere I don’t even smoke. I even named it Billy. Billy Bic.” She laughed her awkward laugh and had no idea what she had done for me that day.

I could tell the blue eyed jerk she was talking to wasn’t listening but I didn’t care, I couldn’t believe it, I wasn’t just a lighter anymore, no longer just a red lighter.

I was Billy and the world was full of possibilities.

May got her purse snatched getting on the J train in Brooklyn while visiting a friend in the spring. I was in there, and it took me a minute to realize what was happening. I was distraught, at first, to be apart from May, but I consoled myself with the fact that she would be fine, she wasn’t hurt in the robbery, and it was time for me to see more of the world. I was grateful to her but I had taught myself now how to let go.

New York City wasn’t like Boston, it wouldn’t chew you up and spit you out, instead it felt like it would bite off a big piece and leave you to die if you didn’t have your wits about you.

But I did. I was ready, and I had something to prove.

I escaped from the thief quickly; he left me on the table at some party and a groupie for Fleetwood Mac picked me up. What happened next was a whirlwind of excitement and glitz, parties and glamour. The seventies was my decade, and New York was my city.

I saw Henry Fonda snort cocaine and I lit his cigarette afterward, I saw Joan Jett sleep with Stevie Nicks’ boyfriend in a coatroom and I saw the fight afterward.

I hung out with Ginsberg when he sat next to Dylan during the Rolling Thunder Revue and they jammed.

I swapped stories with other lighters that had done this circuit, some of them a lot older than me, and they taught me some survival tricks I hadn’t known before. Not lighting very well for the shitty owners, going first time for the good ones, refusing to light cocaine or burn up heroine cause that’s a sure fire way to run you out of gas. Even if you’re probably getting chucked somewhere after that, some hippie would pick you up, they spent a lot of time on the grass.

Discarded lighters are known to come out of whatever hole they are left in a little tainted, a little bit off. We met a couple on the road, the ones who had been dropped down couches or sewers just to wash up still working somehow, but not quite right in the head. I mean, I’d met them, but I never expected to be one of them, I was having the time of my life.

One of the roadies put me in his pocket at an after party. I never minded going with the road guys, they were good salt of the earth people, but this one let me slip down the side of a couch at some apartment in Detroit. Detroit. He could have picked a better place for my descent into madness, but I suppose every good time ends. Hell, most of them probably end in Detroit.

When the darkness hit, first there was panic. I reassured myself, it was all I could do not to fly off the handle. Someone would stick their hand down the side and find me. I had some near misses in my time, and told myself to remain calm. Then the hours started to slip away and I lost track of time. I remember thinking at one point I had definitely been down there for days, maybe weeks, and then the madness.

I completely lost it, and everything started rushing back to me. Everyone I’d grown close to was gone, and I was completely alone. Without any kind of contact, in a dark hole, your sanity goes quicker than I’m comfortable admitting. My thoughts were disjointed, the only contact I had with the outside world were grumblings, like I was hearing voices in my head I could barely hear.

I can tell you what the first drop of water feels like to a man dying of thirst, it was the same feeling I got when I saw the light again for the first time. The couch was being moved out to the sidewalk, it was old and ragged now, looked nothing like what I had fallen into in the first place. I didn’t get out as I had dreamed all that time, with the helping hand of a kind stranger; instead I fell with a loud CLACK out of a hole in the bottom of the couch and onto the stone steps of the apartment building.

One of the two movers picked me up on his way back in, and I would, if I could have, leapt with pure thanks as he slipped me into his pocket. I could not believe I was here, I was alive.

Where the hell was here? What month was it? It felt cold outside. Did I still work, could I still light?

The man who saved my life smoked Newport 100’s. His name was James and he was a part time mover, part time coke dealer in the year 1988. I had been in that couch for well over a decade and it showed. He blew the dust out of my head and tried to light me, I knew I had to concentrate and light for him or I would be discarded.

One flick, no light.

Two, still nothing.

I thought he was going to give up.

Then, on the third attempt, glorious and seemingly eternal I lit, and I stayed lit. He seemed happy with himself and his find, and he slipped me into his pocket.

Later, when a deal went bad and he got winged, he seemed to put the luck of not being dead on my shoulders, started calling me “lucky red” after a girl he once knew, although judging by some of the stories I heard about her the title must have been given ironically. Me and James were together for a long time, and despite him being a horrible piece of shit I grew fond of him. Call it Stockholm, call it whatever, but I was sad when they capped him.

I had to figure out what had happened when he didn’t come home one night. I felt like a police wife worried sick and brewing tea. I guess I was his lucky  red after all. I got scooped up by one of his “friends” when they were ransacking his place and then went on another cross country trip, one of those you get used to as a lighter, going from pocket to pocket. I had gotten my head straight after my time in the couch hole and I was ready to pick back up again. The fun was over now, though, and I knew it, it was time to try and lay low, keep my head down and survive. Maybe get picked up by a nice elderly couple and live out the rest of my days helping them through theirs. Always end up in the same place every night, always in use. Wouldn’t have been a bad gig to end things with.

But that’s not the way it went. Never does work out how you plan things, especially when you can’t move under your own volition.

I knew it was him right away, I recognized the must and whatever horrible hair product he still used somehow. I remember how that smell that turned my stomach the day he bought me. At first I prayed he wouldn’t pick me up, I’d been left at a bar, same way he left me all those years prior, with bags of relief and bad memories. The years hadn’t been kind to him, and a cold chill went over me when I saw his eyes fall to where I lay.

“Whose is this?” He asked, innocently enough.

“Someone left it here,” replied the bartender “Take it if you want it”.

“I think I will, used to have one just like it”.

“It’s just an old Bic, man.”

“Nah, they don’t make em’ like this no more.”

He wore an old paddy cap that sat snugly on his head above the cavernous wrinkles that had formed on his face. His brow still sat low and heavy like his face had trouble carrying it, shelter for his cold, dead brown eyes.

He was still shaved clean, and he still smoked Winstons.

When he took me, first I felt fear. Then rage, and then a cold, settled feeling washed over me. I knew what I had to do, I just didn’t know how.

I traveled with him for a long time, and he was still a horribly vicious and evil man, just no longer sanctioned by the government. The things I watched him do, powerless to change them, would break most people, but my mission was solitary, my purpose set.

Then, after so much pain, so much waiting, my moment came.

We had left the motel from the night before, me sitting solemnly in the bottom of his jean pocket, the girl from the bar lying lifeless in the room we absconded from so casually. We rumbled along in his massive Lincoln, presumably going onto the next town, the next horror, when I heard him stop. The familiar sounds of the gas pump leaving its cradle and going into the tank.

Then, as he brought the pump back out he swore audibly as the smell of gas filled my nostrils. Notoriously, my kind don’t do well with gasoline, but he has spilled it all over his jeans, and this was my moment. I wanted to do it right away, but I didn’t know who was around, what the damage could be. So I waited, and that wait was the longest of my life. Longer than the assembly line, longer than the couch, longer than my whole life, it seemed, but it was only a few minutes. I knew I was going with him, but I didn’t care, the bastard had to go.

I tried the first flick, the flint was soaked wet from the gasoline. My heart sank.

The second flick, still nothing.

The third flick, I thought I was going to give up.

A fourth, a flick, a flame, a scream.

I felt the road vanish from underneath the car, I heard him scream like I had heard him make so many others scream.

I smiled. Not because he died in pain, but because I remembered how I had lived with joy. I remembered all the people that I had come into contact with, those who had loved me even though I was just a lighter, just an object. They didn’t know me, but I knew them, and I knew one thing for certain:

I was Billy Bic.