Bathroom Monologue: Kick a Child, Save a Life

I'd like to ask you a question about violence.

Consider the platform at any train station. The sky is grease-grey today. Many adults are lined up waiting for the train to come in, and it blares its horn to signal its closeness. One of the adults is a mother, who looks exhausted, smudged with grime, leaning for a moment's respite against an advertisement board.

Her son springs from her side and runs down the row of waiting adults, arms out at his sides, pretending he is flying. He whirls around a bench and flings himself toward the train tracks. Just as he crosses the warning line at the edge, one of the adults whirls around and kicks him squarely in the chest, such that the boy falls on his butt on the concrete rather than fall onto the tracks. The boy opens his mouth to cry as the train rushes into the station ahead of them.

How do you feel about what the adult did?

Bathroom Monologue: The Segregation of the Best Man

Finally, here comes the bride. I didn’t know they wore white, too. Looks funny against her… brown. Why don’t they call them ‘brown’? You should call a thing what it is.

Think better thoughts, man. Think warm thoughts; look like you’re thinking warm thoughts. Look at Jasper; look how he’s looking. Okay, less lust than he’s got. What a perv. You can ogle her later tonight, dude. Her parents’ are in the front row.

Front row left. Front row right are Jasper’s. White on right, or, I guess kind of beige. His dad is kind of turnip-colored now. Souse.

Why are my guts churning? Why does this feel wrong? Jasper’s so happy he’s rocking on his heels. The perv looks horny as hell, which is as close to happy as he gets without pot in hand and baseball on TV. He isn’t wrong. My guts are wrong. Look at her.

Am I wrong?

Rainbows. When we were really little and I drew rainbows, I’d have all the colors in their own bars. Nobody said that was wrong. I’d look out and see a real rainbow and all the colors would mix into each other, and I go, “Oh yeah, that’s what it is.” But the next time I got out my Crayolas, damned if I didn’t scribble all the colors in their own lines. That wasn’t wrong. Everybody draws rainbows like I did, except sometimes I forgot orange.

That’s just how people work. Jasper knows this. Akeelah knows this. You jump rope during Gym, and you draw rainbows during Art, and then you put all your papers together in a binder. You have a sock drawer, and a shirt drawer, and a pants drawer. If the economy isn’t crapping on you, you have a bed room and a kitchen. You put kitchen things in the kitchen, and bed things in the bed room, and socks in the sock drawer. Akeelah didn’t get that dress from a pile of crayons and used books. She bought it off a rack of dresses at a store that sells dresses, because that’s how order works. Wish she’d bought a looser one.

Okay, smile. Smile. Yes, smile for Akeelah like you don’t think this is weird. A little nod. Let Jasper make the big gesture. Don’t make it seem weird that she’s not wearing a veil at a freaking wedding.

Think of sports. Think of all the players in all the teams in all the cities in all the divisions in all the conferences in all the leagues in all the world. Number 67 from the Red Sox can’t just join the White Sox because he feels like it, or because he loves the shortstop. They’d holler at him, just like my mom would have hollered at me if I tied a red sock and a white sock and called them a pair. People have sock drawers for a reason.

Is the room dizzy?

I am not going to pass out. No, I am not. Jasper will never forgive me. Okay, he’ll forgive me a minute later, but he’ll never let me live it down. If I pass out on top of the groom, or worse, fall onto Akeelah’s side. Onto the black side. The brown side of the wedding. Then I’ll be the one messing up the order of all things, and Jasper will never stop making fun of me.

Jasper! Stop eye-banging her like that. She’s a person, not a pair of floating mams.

She’s a person. He’s a person. They want to be together. Isn’t like I’m going to scream, “Rainbows!” when the pastor asks for us to speak now or never yadda-yadda. I know I’m wrong.

Do I know I’m wrong? My guts know one thing: sock drawers, baseball, Gym class and English. Separating things is the way. It’s human nature. Can I go against it? Is that possible? I mean, if I know that what I know is wrong, then don’t I also know another thing that is right, and isn’t that also in me? Am I right and wrong, stowed away in the same brain drawer?

I mean, I don’t have to marry her. I don’t even have to touch her. Jasper will take the ring and then he’ll touch her. They’ll handle all the touching themselves. God, she looks so happy.

I will not pass out. I will not pass out.

Say your vows already! I need to sit down. About now, I need a bottle of Grey Goose and the head off of that ice sculpture.

Not that ice sculpture heads go in drinks. Cripes, she’s getting to me.

They’re not even listening to this priest. He probably cost a lot of money, and all you’re doing is salivating. Jasper, your mom is watching. Your bride is watching. And Akeelah, you, you…

Man, she is watching. Has she been looking in his eyes like that this whole time? Why isn’t she mad at him? Don’t they get mad? How can you not be mad at such an obvious perverted fuck? I mean, he is my friend, but he wouldn’t be if he stared like that. I even want to slap him, and I’m not on her side. I mean, the best man is never on the bride’s side, but that’s only… fuck it.

Did she wink at me? Is she happy I’m here? Lady, you would not be winking if you could hear my thoughts. Unless you can hear them. In which case… I mean, why didn’t you wear a veil? Also, is his horniness funny to you, or do you actually love him? Because I don’t know if I can handle this. I’m really sorry if I pass out at your wedding. You look very nice, as Jasper is making obvious. I think I wouldn’t mind red and white socks going together if they looked as happy for it as you do.

God, please make them say their vows already so I can get drunk.

Bathroom Monologue: Life is Backgammon

“Backgammon is the game of our age. The Munenori and their Contiguities see it as a sport for kings, able to be played sitting. For the commoners, though, it is the correct balance of chance and strategy. In Chess, there is nothing uncertain save your enemy’s strategy. That’s nothing like life. And in Dice, there is nothing planned, only the value of a face roll. In Backgammon, you roll and are given this many spaces to move your units, and must move wisely. You plan into chance, and you organize what you’re given, all at the peril of another person who is doing the same. You need to build blots of defenses, but you also need to expand beyond them, into increasingly perilous territory. To each player there is a reassurance. To the strategist, there is strategy. To the layfolk, there is the luck of the roll. Neither skill nor chance will grant you victory every time. Best and last: you can get exceedingly lucky and make it all the way to the end, then not roll the proper numbers to get your pieces off the board. It’s the board game equivalent of losing a war to budgeting, which is the theme of our age.”

Bathroom Monologue: Never Okay

"What if her blouse is soaking wet?"

"Then that's gross."

"What if she doused it on purpose? Then she's inviting it."

"Then she's gross, and you shouldn't give her the attention she wants."

"What if she's wearing a really bright green bra that I can see through her tank top, and it catches my eye because it's so unusual, and I can't help but look for a second on instinct?"

"Then look for one second. No longer."

"What if she takes her top off?"

"In what situation are you going to see someone do that?"

"Well, besides with you?"

"That's becoming iffy as it is, Samuel."

"What if her tanktop snags on a passing truck, tearing it off? And she's thrown to the pavement by the sudden blow?"

"What the hell?"

"She could be hurt from her fall, and I'm the only one around. Surely I should go over and help her, and in the course of being a good Samaritan, I'd look occasionally. I'm her only hope of medical attention."

"Then throw yourself under the truck to stop the driver, and ride with her to the hospital."

"Cripes. That's just mean."

"It was your stupid hypothetical, Samuel."

"Well, is it at least okay to look at her boobs while we're riding to the hospital?"

"For one second. No longer."

My Big R.A.Q. 2012

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this year's Rarely Asked Questions. Hopefully I'm in a cake-coma right now, but rest assured when I regain consciousness I'll be very grateful to you all. Cheers!

Jihan asked: Have you ever wished you were a girl?

Certainly! What man hasn’t stood in a long line for the Men’s Room, seen the empty door to the Lady’s Room, and pondered a temporary swap?

Jamie Cameron asked: You are briefly transported to a universe where everything is the opposite of what it is in this universe. (Everything in this universe still exists in that one, however. So, for the case of this question, the opposite of here is there, not nowhere.) You track down your parallel self. What is your parallel self like?

Parallel John never shaved his beard. I watch him from afar for several days, in mixed awe and disgust. He walks away in the middle of most conversations, not out of deliberate rudeness, but because he's bored and uninterested in pretending otherwise. He's at least a hundred pounds heavier than I am, having clearly indulged in every food I've weeded out of my diet. He's made quite a living writing formulaic Genre fiction with no prose style on the Kindle, and using a pseudonym to sell positive reviews to self-published authors. He's never gone bankrupt over a surgery like I have, though he's needed more surgeries. He talks to himself so much that even I feel sorry for him, though he seems to enjoy his imaginary friends more than I do. I think our crucial difference is that a decade ago when he started serious critical thinking, he applied it outwards to the world rather than inwards. I can't be certain, though, because a decade ago I focused my criticism inward and thus suffer from irrational degrees of self-doubt.

Karen Wojcik Berner asked: What's your favorite vegetable?

Every one that came to mind is actually a fruit, so I’ll say fruits are my favorite vegetables.

Tony Noland asked: Has your life turned out the way you expected it to? So far, anyway?

I’ve developed far fewer superpowers than I’d expected at age 10. Certainly, with the neuromuscular syndrome, none of my adult life has been what I anticipated. But I think by the end of my teens I developed a reasonable outlook, if a little pessimistic, and where I’ve deviated from there has largely been positive. I’ve been more successful in publishing and making friends than I’d imagined, for instance. Also, I really can’t undersell how much I did not expect dieting and exercising to destroy my gallbladder. Healthy living, baby!

The Elephant's Child asked: What is your biggest regret? And thank you so much for giving us your birthday present. A truly generous gesture.

My regrets can be funny things. My biggest regret ought to be letting the doctors perform such egregious malpractice that they crippled me at 13, or exercising myself into a gallbladder failure, or at least not figuring out my girlfriend was cheating on me sooner. But I’m at peace with those, possibly because they were so big that I’ve thought them through. My long-festering regrets tend to be petty, like not thinking of a clever thing to say until an hour after an argument ended. I’m writing this before going to a major literary convention, and I almost guarantee you that as of this posting, on that day, I’ll more acutely experience regretting not asking another author out to coffee than I do never getting to know my paternal grandfather before he died. I can be a petty little beast, even in hindsight.

Joshua Londero asked: Will you remember the little people when you are famous?

Never. Godzilla was an early and profound influence on me.

Ross Dillon asked: Which 21st century technology are you most intrigued by for its future?

Digital data storage might be it. If cognition, of a human, transhuman or other stripe, can be stored, invented, duplicated and modified as such, we’re looking at a punctuation in our evolutionary equilibrium. The problems it poses, for the replication of self, the loss of the analog original, and a suddenly laterally expanding society, are only rivaled by the wonders it offers. Never in medical history would we have such a shot at isolating and treating mental illness. Is your knee inoperable? Try this new prosthetic body. And just imagine where fetishes will go once Dad’s midlife crisis causes him to download his consciousness into a Corvette.

Helen Howell asked: What is the best lesson you have learnt so far in your life?

By far, it’s how to be alone. I’m at my worst when I forget that one.

Tim Van Sant asked: If we describe the best of the questions you get as being well done, how will you resolve the paradox of something being both well done and rare at the same time? And what medium will you use to resolve it?

High quality does not require high frequency, so there is not actually a paradox to begin with. There is some coping necessary, though, to handle persistent mediocrity or poor quality. This I will remedy through passive aggression and ice cream cake. I’m told there’s an ice cream cake in the house right now, so I’m ahead.

Tom Gillespie asked: When is it due?

The doctor has begun drilling into Dustin Hoffman’s teeth, so I should say it will only be a minute.

Susan Cross asked: Do you take your cell phone into the bathroom with you?

I only have my cell on me when I go out, and it would be suspicious to leave the phone outside a public rest room. Historically, I prefer talking to myself than listening to messages while on the can.

Peter Newman asked:  Right, so a question I wouldn't ask of anyone... On judgement day (or equivalent), what crimes would be weighed against you?

My sense of humor. I imagine cheating on my diet so often will come up, especially when I kept claiming to strive on it. The money I spent on anything except charity, I imagine, is something I’ll get hit with, just like every other human being. We’re all going down for that.

Samari Smith asked: How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

There is no way that this is a question you ask rarely. I’ve only reproduced your question here to publicly shame you.

Marc Nash asked, with his own unique choice of capitalization: who wrote THE post-war Epic American novel, Don Delillo ("Underworld") or Philip Roth ("American Pastoral")?

Don Delilo strikes me as likely to live longer, thus sucking up to him has a better chance of bearing fruit. Thus: Don Delilo’s evanescent masterpiece, Underworld, best captures the post-War heart of America.

Larry Kollar asked: Indie or trad?

In a decision between a major publisher or an independent publisher, it’d probably go to whichever had the healthier marketing plan. It’d be something of a dream to work with Tor, and they have such admirable editors that I think I could get a lot out of the collaboration, in addition to giving them someone who is to the left of Scalzi on the Goofy Scale.

Anonymous Sylva asked: As you are someone who would be categorized as 'awesome' by even the most conservative estimates, I believe you to be uniquely qualified to answer this two-part question. First, what do you consider the most radical of dinosaurs? Second, how would you have made said dinosaur even more better on a redesign?

It’s hard to deny that Grimlock am king. I’d make him even more better, and perhaps demonstrate finesse, by granting him the Autobot Matrix of Leadership and putting him in charge of the good guys in my new robot cartoon, The Incompetons.

Beverly Fox asked: What's the most messed-up ill fate you've ever wished upon someone? (This someone, BTW, can be a fictional character you really hated or a superhero that was too cocky for you to stand- it doesn't have to be a real person.)

I’ve routinely wished evil fates on hard bosses in videogames. The one that amused and horrified the most bystanders was, “I hope your kids need things you can’t pay for.” I feel like that’s at least a start.

Bathroom Monologue: Praise for Lindsay Cavanash’s New Novel

“…possessing a unique merit…”

“Cavanash’s novel is so funny you’ll almost laugh.”

“A sure bet to be nominated for many obscure awards, and to likewise win none.”

“Fearlessly apes the least appealing strands of [Hawthorne] and [West].”

“Seldom does fiction have such a sense of place….

I thought we’d all gotten over that.”

“…America’s only heir to J.D. Salinger, surely chaffing to be disowned.”

“One is almost disappointed she did receive warrant a fatwa.”

“Painfully funny, achingly entertaining, rigorously enthralling–

[C]avanash simultaneously captures what we go to novels for

and sucks the fun out of it.”

“Comes with a flashlight app.”

Bathroom Monologue: Sleep in Your Mother

He slept in his mother. She held him safe and stiff until the Devil came. God was always there in a square of incognito, but you couldn't see Him all the time. Only when the Devil came. He shone through the gap and illuminated all. His fingers got into the boy's eyes, and he shrugged off his mother for the day ahead. He never abused her. He stayed in her arms no longer than he was asleep, and always reset her sheets. Respect was important in the room.

He had twenty-one guards. Three were horizontal, and eighteen stood vertical. They were cold, standing near enough that no one could slip between them. Not even when the boy was first born and thrown into the room was he small enough to escape. The guards only stepped aside when his meals were brought. Afterward, they always they swung back to cold attention.

There was firma and incognita. He spent most of his time on firma, allowing his mother to slumber while he stared at the guards. Firma was supportive. It never shifted or sent him away. It was always cool beneath his bare feet. In the winter it grew bitingly cold, but not of its own volition. It had no more choice in its temperature than incognita did of its ungraspable height. Some days he looked at incognita, high above and housing the square that was God. Some years he wondered when he would grow tall enough to touch them. No year yet had he gotten tall enough.

As much as he enjoyed the sight of God, the ability to regard the guards and fathom incongnita, he loathed the light. If he sat in it too long his skin ached and burned. It was sent of the Devil. The Devil illuminated all and woke up the others. In the halls beyond his guards, mad men screamed nonsense. They threatened, fought and murdered each other - always in the presence of the Devil. Never in his absence. Never when God was alone, when it was dark and when mother welcomed him into her lap.

He showed the Devil his strength. He showed him that he could clean his mother and keep her straight, and showed him that he did not need her. He spent hours laying on firma with his bare skin. He would sit up over and over, or climb the guards and suspend himself. Every day he exercised his body, not until it was sore, not until the veins in his limbs stayed out, not until he was so tired that eyes quaked - but until the Devil ran away. Then it was dark. Then he lay there in his mother's grip and whispered to her how brave he was. He promised into her down that if the Devil came back, he would do it all again, and show that beast he was strong. The Devil always came back.

Bathroom Monologue: At 29

At 29 I realized I needed to become famous soon or Charlie Rose would retire before our interview.

Bathroom Monologue: The Newcomer

Simon fell into the keyboard arrays, armored legs twisting as he sought orientation. He felt drunk, even though he hadn’t touched a bottle since last night. Montgomery stepped in to help, but Simon put up a robotic gauntlet to stop the approach. “Just keep briefing. Touch me and I’ll sue you for sexual harassment. I’ve got very good lawyers.”

“As you will.” Montgomery took two steps away from him, struggling to keep his eyes on the PDA rather than Simon’s busted suit. “His first appearance this morning was at 10:01. It’s conveniently time-stamped on an ATM camera. He stopped two men from mugging an elderly woman cashing her social security check. It’s on Youtube.”

“What a sweetheart.”

“At 10:05 he stopped a locomotive with his bare hands.”

“Bare hands?” Simon asked, pulling off his armored gauntlets. As soon as the servos disconnected, they snapped from the frame and thunked to the floor. He shook feeling into his fingers and found contusions all the way up his forearms.

“His bare hands,” Montgomery confirmed. “Three minutes later police saw him take those bare hands into a warehouse being held up by the Mastiff Brothers. They emptied five clips into his forehead and didn’t even disturb his spitcurl. The Mastiffs are in custody, though they already have three appeals filed.”

Simon stroked his chromium mask, searching around the hand-shaped dent over the faceplate for the release valves. “Shot in the bare forehead?”

“One would presume, sir. There may be video this afternoon.”

Simon lingered on that as steam spat out from the valves. He let the crumpled chromium mask drop to the floor, then wiped his brow. He didn’t think he was bleeding. “Did he do anything between getting shot at 10:08 and 10:21?”

“Well, you encountered him at 10:19. So he did at least one thing for two minutes.”

“If I hired you for your wit, you’re fired.”

“Fortunately I was hired because you don’t know how to make Youtube on your own. Do you want help with that?”

“Search engines were invented by rabid monkeys.” Simon braced one titanic boot on the control panel and leaned as far back as he could. The dents along his chest-chasse were so deep that neither of the hinges would come loose. He clawed at them for another impotent moment before shrugging at Montgomery. “You could get me a crowbar. Maybe a jaws-of-life?”

Loyal Montgomery traveled to the workbenches, one hand searching for the appropriate tool, while the other held up his PDA. “He was on the way to something big, possibly an earthquake in South America since that’s where he’s gone since, when 10:19 happened. It’s also on Youtube, if you’d like to see it again.”

“Not right now.” Simon pinched his eyes closed and groaned; he was only now getting feeling back in his ass. He’d never imagined how much he’d miss feeling down there.

Montgomery returned to him with a blowtorch tucked into his armpit and a crowbar in hand. He offered the tools, then stepped back, withholding them as he asked, “What are we going to do about him, sir?”

“Well, you are going to get my other suit. The Alexander Amosu with the pink tie and cufflinks.” He snatched the crowbar and dug it into his armor’s mechanized hip, grinning to himself. “Meanwhile, I’m going to see if he needs a best friend.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Tepid War

"This not a cold war. The empire keeps invading our Frontier, one brigade at a time. They’re small spurts of combat, skirmishes for which we don’t retaliate because it’s anarchy out here. When a band does counter and run to their side of the continent, the Munenori wipe them out, and having wiped out the isolated psychopaths, have no nation to retaliate against. Thus, it never bursts into a hot war. It’s neither cold nor hot; the result of utter fascists bordering utter decentralists is a tepid war. The kettle has been on long enough that it will burn your fingers if you touch it, yet the water inside is too meek for good tea. You’d probably get sick drinking it. The tepid war. It’s a unique dilemma that kills only anyone dumb enough to deal with."

Bathroom Monologue: New Department Signage

The location is a posh New York City mega-boutique, a spot too big to hold real style while too rebellious to turn profit of anyone but those who pursue true style. It boasts unique department signage. For instance, on your left as you enter the door you might notice the sign hanging from the ceiling boasting a man in his underwear (he is clearly an abdominal model) yelling the word “Fuck!” The word “Fuck!” is in a word bubble, and is the only word on the sign. His department would feature rugged jeans, flannel shirts and sundry overpriced hats. This is, of course, Men’swear.

Bathroom Monologue: The Newsroom Day Two of Two: The Support

“We need the past to be brighter than the invisible darkness of future. We need a history of heroes to let us know that bravery is possible. A Greatest Generation and a century of inventors and soldiers and firemen leave us with the belief that many humans have the potential for action, not merely one president or general or saint. We need a canon of many saints who slump towards us. The photo of the many men raising the flag on Iwojima, the tales of many men running into the towers on 9/11, and that the Constitutional Congress was the labor of many minds rather than a gift to a lone Moses - these things tell every man and woman that history beckons widely.

“And we need to feel like we’re failing, because any other feeling will lead us to complacency. For whatever amalgam of reasons, we are the most likely nation to pursue self-improvement. By harkening to the great decisions, of Cronkite weighing against the Vietnam War and Murrow standing up to McCarthy, we invite a generation to seriously look at what present mistakes and evils are going unchallenged. The truth is that history assures we will always have made great decisions, and human nature assures we will always have great decisions we are not making. If history can goad us into living better, then we ought to lose our feet in its tide.

“A hundred years ago we saw Europe at war and could not let the forces of democracy be slaughtered. Today we see blood running in the streets of the Middle East and find ourselves too tired, too weary, too taxed and afraid, and ultimately too confused to answer the simple question of whether we should attempt to stop it.

“You were telling an audience to do more than sit, and for all the current anchors and writers and bloggers to do more than spend twenty-three hours of the day asking whether a single mother eight states away was a good parent. Using the past as a prop to coerce us into thinking we’re failing? We needed that, because we are failing, and if the truth won’t convince us of it, we’ve got to find other means.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Newsroom Day One of Two: The Attack

“When exactly was the United States of America a moral nation? When it interred a million Asians? When it only went to war against the Nazis because it had been bombed? Or perhaps it was in our golden days, when it was slaughtering natives and receiving shipments of blacks to pick cotton. We didn’t go to war for moral reasons. We went to war because we wanted Texas, or didn’t want Spain interfering with our interference in Cuba, and the newspapers were right there toadying. Benjamin Franklin was the first great American op-ed writer and he was such a stooge for the establishment they almost let him write the Constitution.

“This illusion! This illusion you have that the American public was ever informed. There was more than a century when the only reliable way to get a presidential candidate’s platform was if he happened to visit your town. And the Founding Fathers knew people were ignorant and never expected better from them, and so while they enshrined freedom of the press, they also institutionalized the Electoral College for Congress and a Presidency – a private crop of people who would select another private crop of people to decide everything while most of the country tried to survive the flu. Maybe, maybe the second private crop of people decided things for moral reasons, or maybe they fed into a Military Industrial Complex that Lyndon Johnson warned the entire country of live on television and still no one did anything meaningful about.

“So tell me when America knew what it was doing. Was it when we were scalping the natives for government credit? Was it when we were enslaving anyone even descended from an African? Was it when we dropped an atomic bomb on private citizens? When did we qualify as the greatest country in the world, who is the greatest country in the world now, and why on earth would we want to be that thing again?”

Notice: Newsroom Monologues Coming

Tonight is the season finale of HBO's The Newsroom. It's been a provocative show for many people, myself included, and we're going to play with some of what it's provoked. 

On Monday and Tuesday I’m going to run two related and contradictory Bathroom Monologues reflecting based on the series's seminal event. Will McAvoy’s inciting monologue went viral both in his fictional world and in our real one, and it’s stuck with me all season. It’s inspiring to sick-and-tired idealists, while also uniquely troubling with its rosy view of American history. You don’t need a feminist to tell you why the ethos, “we acted like men” is worrisome.

So on Monday we’ll see a monologue attacking Will McAvoy’s rant, and on Tuesday we’ll see a monologue supporting it, though maybe not for the reasons you’d immediately expect. If you like, record an audio or video performance of either monologue and link them in the Comments. It would be fun to do a mega-post of your performed debates.

True Story of John: Eulogy for the worst person I’ve ever met

It was an overcast afternoon and my family was exhausted from packing and the road. My little sister had leased her first apartment and was finally taking everything she’d left in our basement, and during a lull, I went out to cook for the group.

Most people don’t count wasps as people, but he was too much of a dick to grant him the excuse of non-persona. He buzzed with a friend as soon as I opened the door, flying directly at my face. I waved them aside with the spatula, but they only circled around the air-current and continued. I had to constantly wave the spatula to blow them aside as I turned on the grill, and he still managed to fly around to my chest, where I felt his stinger bounce off my shirt. I swatted him to the ground, but let him live. This was a mistake as he and his partner zipped up towards my exposed arm.

I ducked inside the house to let them cool off. There are no wasp nests on my deck, nor on the grill. These wasps were visitors. I chatted with my brother and sister for a few minutes before someone complained of hunger, and I went back outside to put the burgers on.

As soon as I reached through the door to open the grill, the wasp flew straight into my forearm. I felt the sting as it jabbed me, and it rebounded off my flesh, having flown so hard it couldn’t control its flight after impact. It fly between the bars of the grill, stuck to a heating vent inside, and melted. He kamikazed me.

I was dumbstruck, never having been so angry at something for dying before. I’m also allergic to wasp venom, so that wasn’t a peach. I swore the stupid bastard’s memory for several arm-tingling hours afterward.

Bathroom Monologue: I Love American Writers

"Your book ending. She is like Sherlock Holmes, except not mystery. She keeps explaining things like they are important, and audience doesn't care. Is fascinating. I love American writers."

Bathroom Monologue: A Son of Rape

“I was conceived in an alley in Missouri. My mother fought him, but he broke her arm and muffled her cries with a garbage bag. If only it had happened a few years later, his blood under her fingernails would have mattered to the police. Instead they said little, the hospital charged her a ridiculous amount that she spent years paying off, and she went home to keep it quiet, until she wasn’t welcome at home anymore. I was born in Iowa.

“It was my birthday when, and you’ve got to imagine what feelings my birthday meant to her as opposed to any other sort of mother, the things… Excuse me.

“The only time I ever asked about it was after my sixth birthday. She put a candle in a Little Debbie’s Fudge Round, either because we were that broke, or because I loved them. I remember both answers on different days. As I climbed a stepladder to help her wash the dishes, I asked why she’d kept me. I remember her kneeling on my stepladder to be at level with me, and her resting a fist on the top rung. I could still smell the smoke from my birthday candle as she said she couldn’t get rid of me because she’d known I’d turn out like this. That’s what a mother told her son, so believe however much you want. I don’t think she slept for a week after my birthday. I never had the guts to ask her again.

“Rape was on my mind, not because I knew what it was, but because every child I ran into had an opinion. Did I know my Mom should have pulled me out with a coat hanger? Or thrown herself down some stairs? Did I know that any time he wanted, my father could come and take me from her? I remember having nightmares of him coming for me with a garbage bag, so I didn’t sleep a lot either, which is how I knew when Mom was sleeping or not. These children informed me that I wouldn’t have even happened if she didn’t dress like a whore, which made no sense to me, since she dressed the same as other mothers, just that she always walked on the other side of the curb from them.

“One of my earliest memories is watching two girls run away from me, I don’t even remember what they’d done, but I was lying on my back on the pavement in front of our school, and wondering why the two of them couldn’t have been aborted. I was just trying to live while everyone I knew was evil to me. What sanctity did they deserve? Even outside of their mothers’ wombs, why were they special?

“Mom didn’t allow that kind of talk. It’s very important you know that - she controlled conversations and forced you to be polite. She didn’t just do it to me; I overheard her doing it to the strangers.

“I always thought it was strange that Mom would volunteer. She worked no fewer than two jobs in a week, and sometimes four, and yet there were afternoons and late nights that she brought me to the local hospital or homeless shelter, where I’d wait in rooms the size of closets while she talked to strangers. She had… she had the bravery that changes the times. She spent our spare time counseling girls at the hospital. It didn’t matter how they were hurt. It couldn’t matter because when that program began, they didn’t think they could say they’d been raped. I think the only time I ever heard her speak that word, that actual word of what actually happened to her, was when she didn’t know I was outside the door while she was convincing strangers they had rights.

“It wasn’t fair that she died so young. Thirty-seven isn’t even an even number. She had a weak heart, the same as what killed her Dad. That’s why he didn’t come to her funeral, and I’ve never bothered to pursue why no one else from her family did. They were holes my whole life I never filled. Did you know…?

“You know, I don’t know how old I was before I met anyone who actually liked my mother. The shelters, the grocery stores and post offices where she worked were uniformly tense whenever I visited with her. I don’t remember a single landlord who looked her in the eye. Whatever you think of her decision, she didn’t deserve her son to think ‘Whore’ was her middle name, and it was adults that convinced me of that. I like to think she changed the world since then.

“So maybe her funeral was the first time I ever heard people be decent to her. A couple pews of people came, mostly young women, mostly unaccompanied, none with children. I didn’t have children either, but I couldn’t help looking for them for weeks afterward. These young women, and this one incredibly old man who needed two canes just to stand up, called her “bold” and “original” and entire sentences which would have made more appropriate middle names for her. No one cried, but there was this one Jewish lady who knelt and kissed her casket. I didn’t have the guts to ask what Mom had done for her, just as none of these people had the guts to say what they’d thought of Mom before she couldn’t hear it anymore. Nowadays, when I don’t sleep, what I think most about is how to get by, and second-most is whether I said enough to her when she could hear.”

Bathroom Monologue: Gyration Narration

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”

“Hang on, hang on… it’ll pass.”

“Are you dancing at me? What the Hell is that?”

“It’s a neuromuscular syndrome. It’s complicated. My nerve-endings are messed up, and there these muscle spasms. Give me a minute.”

“It’s a what?”

“It’s kind of like muscular dystrophy, I guess.”

“It’s like what?”

“How about Parkinson’s? Not that it’s really like that, but...”

“What’s Parkinson’s?”

“You’ve never seen Michael J. Fox? Jesus. Okay, what about nerve damage?”

“I’m not really into that.”

“Into…? Listen, you ever thrown out your back?”

“No.”

“Then why am I talking to you? Get the fuck away from me and get some life experience.”

Request for Rare Questions

It's the time of year when I get to ask, "Have you seen my RAQ?"

The Rarely Asked Questions is my birthday tradition at The Bathroom Monologues. Until Friday night, August 31st, I'm requesting all readers leave questions they don't normally ask anyone. They can be questions about me, my writing, or anything entirely unrelated. Consider:

-What's the boiling point of Tungsten?

-What does my mother's snore remind you of?

-If he wants to avoid the conductor and skip the fare, what is the best time for a Mummy to hop the Baltimore light rail?

What you don't normally ask anyone else is entirely up to you, but please ask it of me. I'll compile every question and answer at least one per person on September 4th - my birthday.

That's how I celebrate. With my big RAQ.

Please leave your mysteries and queries in the Comments section of this post.

Bathroom Monologue: Abusive Alcoholic

"He was an abusive alcoholic. The man punished his liquor. Entire bottles of Jack Daniels suffered his nightly reigns of terror, and he never met a scotch he wouldn’t swear at the moment it was gone. The lucky ones were scattered on the floor, but by nine, or ten at the latest, he’d toss them to shatter against the wall behind our TV. And he loved liquor, that’s why he spent so much on it, so it’s no wonder he’d be crueler to the people he didn’t love, like us kids. I’ve heard he’s gotten much better. He only drinks out of Styrofoam cups now and seems to have a cordial relationship with coffee."

Bathroom Monologue: Imp and Triclops – A Love Story

“How could I not love you?”

“Have you tried?”

“Do you remember how we met?”

“I do, which is why I think you oversentimentalize it.”

“I hired twenty-five bodyguards for that cargo.”

“I could have told you it was too many.”

“The raiders ate twenty-four of them! After a week, I thought they’d eaten the supplies, too. If you’re dumb enough to kill for a living, you’re dumb enough to eat a syringe.”

“It was difficult gathering new beasts of burden and driving the lode to the hospital on my own. But of course I’d do it; I’m a man of my word.”

“You went to all the trouble of honoring your contract. So much blood, so much struggle, and yet you arrived at my hospital smiling.”

“You had lives to save with that medicine.”

“I made outrageous profits with that medicine! With all the convoy attacks that year, I was the only business for three cities in any direction.”

“That’s how a love story starts?”

“That’s how mine did. The wallet wants what it wants.”

Better Responses to Terrorism

I’ve been thinking about terrorism a lot this summer. It’s easy to, between awful events abroad, and multiple shootings here in the U.S. Terrorists are a peculiar set of murderers; they are one of the few segments of the human population who it is laudable to kill. They are black sheep who bring it upon themselves, folk who perform such evil work that no one will tell you to stop hating them.

There’s a corrosive irony to hating people for their hatred, and I fear in many cases it leads to harmful reciprocity. My family mostly hails from Ireland and what was once Czechoslovakia, two sources of nightmarish reciprocal hatred. Hutus and Tutsis, Jews and Arabs, Protestants and Catholics – history can be a catalog of revenge, but there are more personal examples. Consider Harvey Pekar being beaten daily in his childhood by black children who had experienced such oppression that they attacked a light-skinned child out of instinctive reciprocity.

In that context, even feeling terribly for his victims in Aurora, the national rush to hate Jason Holmes unnerved me. Especially if the man were insane, hating him would neither repair what he did nor better equip us to deal with others like him who are out there now. These are feelings I haven’t worked out, but they’re the same that gave me no pleasure at the killing of Osama Bin Laden. The “5/1” episode of The Newsroom reminded me how out of sorts I felt that night, when the U.S. celebrated that they’d shot a man.

Helping the harmed is more worth celebrating than punishing the harmer. That is how you spread a valuable behavior; we can be compassionate every day, rather than vengeful once, and if we were violently vengeful every day the world would be awash in gore. I appreciate catharsis. I understand our long (and likely genetic) history of vengeance, and that our senses of justice vary - but under no circumstances where there are victims ought compassion to be disengaged. After the Texas A&M shooting, I wondered why it was that millions of people can watch a news program hating a killer, rather than paying attention to those directly affected who require assistance. It would be ugly to reduce this to entertainment value.

This is why I support Indiegogo’s donation drive to assist victims and surviving families of the shooting at Milwaukee’s Sikh Temple. To the cynics: this is a cleat example of good in the world. This isn’t even a Kickstarter that will get you a neat gadget or album in the end; it’s just a drive by some connected people to connect many others in gestalt aid.

This is not about judging or hating a shooter. This is about compassion for victims. All proceeds will go to paying medical bills and funeral costs for people who were caught in this terrible event. Already over 1,500 people have pledged to help with medical bills of survivors and funeral costs of the deceased.

It’s heartening that they’ve passed their original $25,000 goal to (at this writing) $155,310. But anyone who has suffered the pain of burying a loved one knows funerary costs can be immense. The United States’ healthcare system has a proper reputation, too, for disastrously high costs for dramatic injuries, even with health insurance. In this case, no wounded victim could have suspected such problems before bullets tore into their place of worship.

If you can spare a donation, please consider it. If you can’t, and plenty of people can’t in this economy, please simply consider every other way we participate in these matters. It will determine what world we live in.

Bathroom Monologue: A brief autobiography.

At least once a week for as long as I can remember I have been overwhelmed by the desire to exuberantly express to someone how lovable they are, or how funny and insightful, or how giving and kind, or how beautiful, or otherwise how I am positively enraptured by their existing at the same time as I did.

Also at least once a week for as long as I can remember I have been overwhelmed by the desire to scream expletives directly into the mouth of another, or to seize them by the shoulders and beat them in the face until their nose was as flat as their brows, or to otherwise exuberantly express my displease with their passion, religion or other elements of their person.

In my entire adult life I have striven to exercise the first of these overwhelming desires, and likewise striven to prohibit appearance of the second. As a direct result, a few people like me, most people don’t know who I am, and a slightly larger number than that hold me with outrageous contempt. I’m quite at peace with all of this.

Bathroom Monologue: Zhanjee Vs. The Dactyls

No sooner were the Greater Sauropods pacified, then the Dactyls emerged. Previously Tyrannosaurs had frightened them from hunting the plains; now, without the king lizards, the winged beasts descended. They roamed in flocks, each able to carry off a bison or hogbear for its lunch. They possessed ceaseless hunger and soon ravaged Frontier farms and set about eating Munenori platoons.

Zhanjee the Butcher was already in the Old Valleys for the incursions against the Sauropods, and so he intervened. He climbed to the tallest peaks to observe. The Dactyls nested low rather than high, cherishing water sources. Above human or khimeric flesh, they loved the fat of the Cloud Seals who played along the high waterfalls. Whenever a Cloud Seal would dive from a waterfall, a Dactyl would swoop in to snap her up.

Zhanjee waited atop the most popular waterfall. He watched as one Cloud Seal dove, and a young Dactyl struck. He watched as a second pup dove, and was similarly struck. He bided his time until all the young had Cloud Seals, and it was only the mother who remained hungry in the skies. Then he flung himself off the falls.

When her jaws attempt to catch him, he jammed the great Deviltongue between them and propped them open. Sheathed as not to slay the beast, he rested the endcap into the soft flesh of her lower mouth, digging it deeper whenever she resisted his steering. Then he mounted her neck and forced her to ground her young. Within the evening, he became the first human to break and teach a Dactyl mount.

It was ironic that he seldom rode them, preferring the company of horse or bison. Yet the Munenori army was eternally grateful for the gift of war from the sky.

Bathroom Monologue: The Descent of Magic

That an infection could reanimate the dead is preposterous, and it appears more preposterous for every zombie that gets back up and wanders around The Z. How could microbes cause dead cells to not only reactivate, but coordinate movement, digestion, the senses and complex motor abilities?

Because they’re magic microbes. All science has been a cover-up of the obvious and insulting answer that just as life began at the microscopic level, so did the arcane. If you study fossils or present live bacterial cultures, you’ll find they’ve evolved little since the dawn of life. That’s because they mastered it. All they needed was to develop enough magical potential to survive a little better than anyone else. The typical virus either dies out fighting the immune system or dies out when it kills the host. The magic microbe that could magically reanimate its host was much better, and spread its offspring much better, given that zombies shamble around sharing the miracle.

Coincidentally, vampirism is believed to be the work of a more advanced but less photo-resistant microbe. Lycanthropy, though, is just a hoax by guys in hairy suits. All real magic in triclopes, humans and imps can be credited to the plagues that first bred it into us.

Bathroom Monologue 2000: A True Story of What Makes John Tick

This is the 2,000^th post on The Bathroom Monologues. I’ve been daily for a few years now and even I’m surprised I got this far. I asked you what you wanted for our 2,000^th get-together, and the majority of people said they wanted either a true story about me or an explanation of what makes me tick. I’ve done my best here to do both.

I didn’t actually remember this story until my sister told it to me a couple years ago. She was in college then, doing a paper for Developmental Psychology, and chose me as a subject. I took this as both amusement and offense. Rather than merely interview her subject, she interviewed our mother to find out what I was like before now.

I was the first child in the family – first to our parents, and first to all four grandparents. I enjoyed being the center of the world for about two years. They sang me songs, they read me stories, and took me everywhere, until my brother was born. Surely you’re familiar with how much older brothers love being ousted.

While Mom claims they didn’t entirely ignore me, the shift in attention clearly registered that way on the two-year-old John. I cried more, picked more arguments, and tried to interject myself on situations where the baby was getting too much attention. My father’s general answer was to send me to the basement to play by myself. This was wretched to the two-year-old John, though realistically that basement was stocked with colorful toys.

I told you all of that so I could tell you this: one weekend my parents heard me get up early and make noises for attention, but they refused to cave in. They were exhausted, and my father would be furious if I woke the baby. They heard come closer to their door and babble at it. They heard me rustle around the kitchen. Then the noises stopped. They didn’t hear anything for an hour.

My mother did what any mother would: concluded I’d killed myself, and ran around the house to find me. I wasn’t in my room, or the halls, or the kitchen. She heard a low hum from the basement and went down to check. There I was sitting in my little onesie, staring up at the television on the shelves. I’d figured out how to climb them to turn it on and was watching a cartoon about The Incredible Hulk with such awe I didn’t notice my mother had arrived.

This is my sister’s favorite part, and she got Mom to repeat it for me. “He was just watching the cartoons all morning,” she said with an adoring smile. “And he never came back.”

According to her, that is where my career in Speculative Fiction came from. When my parents were too tired for a bedtime story, now I'd offer to tell them some version of The Smurfs, or GI Joe, or The Hulk.

Hey Mom, can I use this as an author photo?

Two years later, my brother was ousted by our newborn little sister. Suddenly he couldn’t get time in Mom’s lap or on the family bed. Suddenly he was spending a great deal of time in the basement, starved for attention. Mom feared I’d use this position for revenge on the boy who had ruined my perfect existence, and we certainly fought a lot, especially once he grew big enough to hit back. But she was surprised to find that I commiserated with his ousting and took him under my wing in games. It seemed I kept coming up with stories for us to live in while our parents were busy. I’d had two years with the television to train.

Twenty years later, this helped my sister pass her Developmental Psychology course. She ran the paper by me to check its grammar and if the narrative made sense. She claimed that for her entire life I'd had the talent.

Bathroom Monologue: Paul Ryan Worked At McDonald’s

“Find out the specific years, the specific store--and who was the manager? I heard a rumor that his manager thought he lacked social skills. Confirm it. Find me anyone who worked at that McDonald’s with him; Wisconsin is full of Democrats, sure enough we can find some who’ll say something. Find me surveillance video of him jacking off in the deep-fryer and I’ll marry you.

“They keep mentioning this because it brands him as the common man, so we have to show that he was a shitty common man. Everyone loves the idea of their neighbors until they get to know them. Why’d he quit? Who resented him? What has he said about it since then? Has he ever talked shit about the job? Did he hate the people, or the pay? God bless him if he bitched about the pay that millions of Americans are still trying to get by on.

“What town was it in? I bet your ass its mean income is under what he spends on suits today. Pelt him with questions if that town makes too much money. Pelt him with figures of how few dollars they’d get under his tax plan. Ask him how many of his co-workers could afford healthcare on their salaries. Do you think we could be lucky enough to find one who got cancer and couldn’t afford it? Or if she died and only her kids are left. One of those kids would be worth ten Joe the Plumbers.

“And is the store still there? An old McDonald’s probably looks like hell. Can we use a black-and-white of it in the background of an attack ad? Because I’m imagining water stains, foggy windows, a morbidly obese Latino frowning into a Big Mac, and an overlaid quote about Paul Ryan getting his start in business by exploiting unhealthy eating habits.”

Bathroom Monologue: Be Another Yourself

“They don't want you to be yourself. And it's not just because deep down people are insecure, scared, misinformed, hungry and horny. Your base characteristics are not your real safe. No grandma that pats you on the shoulder and says, "Just be yourself" is saying "Go be a braindead animal." But that grandma doesn't want you to really be yourself, either.

“That grandma and her society don’t even want you to like Yu Gi Oh cards. It certainly doesn't want the full person inside you. Not the one who finds that anodyne department store music helps her concentrate. Not that one that will never be a full crossdresser, but certain days doesn't understand why a long skirt isn't an option for him. That one that, every few Wednesday nights, wants to cry to reruns of Barney the Dinosaur.

“Society does not want your personality. It wants a norm we've all unconsciously assented to, so nobody gets weirded out and everybody gets home with minimal eye contact. You and me both signed the contract in invisible ink. If you don’t remember anyone else being there, it’s because we were all ignoring each other. That’s the benefit of suppression.

“You must be this tall to ride this girl. You must look this sad to enter this funeral. You must be this embarrassed that this number of your countrymen don't know where Yemen is on a map, even if you know that the economy is so bad that none of those people will ever get the chance to visit that hemisphere. You must, above all things, suppress your bullshit in favor of the bullshit of society. This is because none of us want the real you. We want the real us, and if we can't get the real us, then why the fuck would we want the real you?”

First look inside The Last House in the Sky

I’ve been tagged by Adam Byatt and Danielle La Paglia to share a snippet from my work in progress. Here’s the deal: you’re supposed to search through your document for the word “look,” and then share the surrounding paragraph. I presume you go with the first occurrence of “look;” I got lucky with mine. Then we tag a few authors to get them do the same.

So here is a first look inside The Last House in the Sky, introducing one of our heroes:

"He was too naked. There were men who were simply not built for nudity, and this was one of them, with his long, rat-nested hair, and his paunch, and the way his hips leaned a little too far forward such that even if he put trousers on he’d still look indecent. A black cat pawed its way around his shoulders and messy mane."

I'd like to pass this on to:
Linda Wastilla
Tony Noland
Emma Newman
Linda Wastilla
Laura Eno
Tom Gillespie

Bathroom Monologue: "Mech Fighting" Added to Olympics

In what was either a legitimation of Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots or a robust embrace of the late Richard Matheson, this week the Olympic Committee announced that in addition to Sevens Rugby and Golf, “Mech Fighting” will be added to the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.

Grappling between human-piloted titanic machines has been popular for so long as they’ve been built, and truly before that, for as long as people could draw them into cartoons. With international standardized rules requiring all models feature butts they can be knocked onto, medical tests proving it was less hazardous to the health than Judo, and the overwhelming number of appeals from fans, the Olympic committee simply couldn’t keep it out, especially not if they wanted to keep Equestrian.

Still, Mech Fighting has its detractors. Some claim it will be too easy a competition to medal in, given how expensive a proper mechanized unit can be. Only a select few first-world nations can afford to build “medal gear.”