John and Mary meet.
What happens next?
If you want a happy ending, try A.

A.

John and Mary fall in love and get married. They both have worthwhile and remunerative jobs which they find stimulating and challenging. They buy a charming house. Real estate values go up. Eventually, when they can afford live-in help, they have two children, to whom they are devoted. The children turn out well. John and Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex life and worthwhile friends. They go on fun vacations together. They retire. They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually they die. This is the end of the story.

B.

Mary falls in love with John but John doesn’t fall in love with Mary. He merely uses her body for selfish pleasure and ego gratification of a tepid kind. He comes to her apartment twice a week and she cooks him dinner, you’ll notice that he doesn’t even consider her worth the price of a dinner out, and after he’s eaten dinner he fucks her and after that he falls asleep, while she does the dishes so he won’t think she’s untidy, having all those dirty dishes lying around, and puts on fresh lipstick so she’ll look good when he wakes up, but when he wakes up he doesn’t even notice, he puts on his socks and his shorts and his pants and his shirt and his tie and his shoes, the reverse order from the one in which he took them off. He doesn’t take off Mary’s clothes, she takes them off herself, she acts as if she’s dying for it every time, not because she likes sex exactly, she doesn’t, but she wants John to think she does because if they do it often enough surely he’ll get used to her, he’ll come to depend on her and they will get married, but John goes out the door with hardly so much as a good-night and three days later he turns up at six o’clock and they do the whole thing over again.

Mary gets run-down. Crying is bad for your face, everyone knows that and so does Mary but she can’t stop. People at work notice. Her friends tell her John is a rat, a pig, a dog, he isn’t good enough for her, but she can’t believe it. Inside John, she thinks, is another John, who is much nicer. This other John will emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon, a Jack from a box, a pit from a prune, if the first John is only squeezed enough.

One evening John complains about the food. He has never complained about her food before. Mary is hurt.

Her friends tell her they’ve seen him in a restaurant with another woman, whose name is Madge. It’s not even Madge that finally gets to Mary: it’s the restaurant. John has never taken Mary to a restaurant. Mary collects all the sleeping pills and aspirins she can find, and takes them and a half a bottle of sherry. You can see what kind of a woman she is by the fact that it’s not even whiskey. She leaves a note for John. She hopes he’ll discover her and get her to the hospital in time and repent and then they can get married, but this fails to happen and she dies.

John marries Madge and everything continues as in A.

C.

John, who is an older man, falls in love with Mary, and Mary, who is only twenty-two, feels sorry for him because he’s worried about his hair falling out. She sleeps with him even though she’s not in love with him. She met him at work. She’s in love with someone called James, who is twenty-two also and not yet ready to settle down.

John on the contrary settled down long ago: this is what is bothering him. John has a steady, respectable job and is getting ahead in his field, but Mary isn’t impressed by him, she’s impressed by James, who has a motorcycle and a fabulous record collection. But James is often away on his motorcycle, being free. Freedom isn’t the same for girls, so in the meantime Mary spends Thursday evenings with John. Thursdays are the only days John can get away.

John is married to a woman called Madge and they have two children, a charming house which they bought just before the real estate values went up, and hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging, when they have the time. John tells Mary how important she is to him, but of course he can’t leave his wife because a commitment is a commitment. He goes on about this more than is necessary and Mary finds it boring, but older men can keep it up longer so on the whole she has a fairly good time.

One day James breezes in on his motorcycle with some top-grade California hybrid and James and Mary get higher than you’d believe possible and they climb into bed. Everything becomes very underwater, but along comes John, who has a key to Mary’s apartment. He finds them stoned and entwined. He’s hardly in any position to be jealous, considering Madge, but nevertheless he’s overcome with despair. Finally he’s middle-aged, in two years he’ll be as bald as an egg and he can’t stand it. He purchases a handgun, saying he needs it for target practice—this is the thin part of the plot, but it can be dealt with later—and shoots the two of them and himself.

Madge, after a suitable period of mourning, marries an understanding man called Fred and everything continues as in A, but under different names.

D.

Fred and Madge have no problems. They get along exceptionally well and are good at working out any little difficulties that may arise. But their charming house is by the seashore and one day a giant tidal wave approaches. Real estate values go down. The rest of the story is about what caused the tidal wave and how they escape from it. They do, though thousands drown, but Fred and Madge are virtuous and grateful, and continue as in A.

E.

Yes, but Fred has a bad heart. The rest of the story is about how kind and understanding they both are until Fred dies. Then Madge devotes herself to charity work until the end of A. If you like, it can be “Madge,” “cancer,” “guilty and confused,” and “bird watching.”

F.

If you think this is all too bourgeois, make John a revolutionary and Mary a counterespionage agent and see how far that gets you. Remember, this is Canada. You’ll still end up with A, though in between you may get a lustful brawling saga of passionate involvement, a chronicle of our times, sort of.

You’ll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don’t be deluded by any other endings, they’re all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality.

The only authentic ending is the one provided here:
John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.

So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with.

That’s about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.

Now try How and Why.

The bank robber told his story in his notes to the bank teller. He held the pistol in one hand and gave her the notes with the other. The first note said:

This is a bank holdup because money is just like time and I need more to keep on going, so keep your hands where I can see them and don’t go pressing any alarm buttons or I’ll blow your head off.

The teller, a young woman of about twenty-five, felt the lights which lined her streets go on for the first time in years. She kept her hands where he could see them and didn’t press any alarm buttons.

Ah danger, she said to herself, you are just like love.

After she read the note, she gave it back to the gunman and said:

“This note is far too abstract. I really can’t respond to it.”

The robber, a young man of about twenty-five, felt the electricity of his thoughts in his hand as he wrote the next note.

Ah money, he said to himself, you are just like love.

His next note said:

This is a bank hold up because there is only one clear rule around here and that is WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF MONEY YOU SUFFER, so keep your hands where I can see them and don’t go pressing any alarm buttons or I’ll blow your head off.

The young woman took the note, touching lightly the gunless hand that had written it. The touch of the gunman’s hand went immediately to her memory, growing its own life there. It became a constant light toward which she could move when she was lost. She felt that she could see everything clearly as if an unknown veil have just been lifted.

“I think I understand better now,” she said to the thief, looking first in his eyes and then at the gun. “But all this money will not get you what you really want.”

She looked at him deeply, hoping that she was becoming rich before his eyes.

Ah danger, she said to herself, you are the gold that wants to spend my life.

The robber was becoming sleepy. In the gun was the weight of his dreams about this moment when it was yet to come. The gun was like the heavy eyelids of someone who wants to sleep but is not allowed.

Ah money, he said to himself, I find little bits of you leading to more of you in greater little bits. You are promising endless amounts of yourself but others are coming. They are threatening our treasure together. I cannot pick you up fast enough as you lead into the great, huge quiet that you are. Oh money, please save me, for you are desire, pure desire, that wants only itself.

The gunman could feel his intervals, the spaces in himself, piling up so he could not be sure of what he would do next. He began to write. His next note said:

Now is the film of my life, the film of my insomnia; an eerie bus ride, a trance in the night, from which I want to step down, whose light keeps me from sleeping. In the streets I will chase the windblown letter of love that will save my life. Give me the money, My Sister, so that I can run my hands through its hair. This is the unfired gun of time, so keep your hands where I can see them and don’t go pressing any alarm buttons or I’ll blow your head off with it.

Reading, the young woman felt her inner hands grabbing and holding onto this moment of her life.

Ah danger, she said to herself, you are yourself with perfect clarity. Under your lens I know what I want.

The young man and woman stared into each other’s eyes forming two paths between them. On one path his life, like little people, walked into her, and on the other hers walked into him.

“This money is love,” she said to him. “I’ll do what you want.”

She began to put money into the huge satchel he had provided.

As she emptied it of money, the bank filled with sleep. Everyone else in the bank slept the untroubled sleep of trees that would never be money. Finally she placed all the money into the bag.

The bank robber and the bank teller left together like hostages of each other. Though it was no longer necessary, he kept the gun on her, for it was becoming like a child between them.

-The Bank Robbery by Steven Schutzman

burningmillrex:

The End of the End of the World by Dominic Mallary

 

Leah was behind and beyond and right in front of me, twirling her pasta around her fork to soak each inch in the red stew of sauce. In the movement of her hands she was herself, but her eyes were a link between her and some long tradition of beauty, deep-brown like cemetery earth, dark bulbs that could grow into anything you could desire. But she was all her own and everything to me, and maybe that was because I kept her so far, as the only way I could keep from loving her was to let her get to know me and that I could never do. On my lap I carried a tattered, overfull notebook and a pair of sweaty palms. She slurped her spaghetti between her lips and smiled slyly at me as, with her hand, she wiped away a trail of red from her redder mouth.

“So, when do you leave for school?”

“Not until the first of the month, I …” trailed off. It wasn’t the sort of question that necessitated an interested response by either party anyway. I depressed my fork against my dinner and let the blood dribble out. The barbeque hollered on behind us. The kids who were going away were getting drunk and the kids who were staying were getting even drunker— somehow, they were going even further away and everyone knew it, especially them. People describe these end-of-the-summer parties as being bittersweet, which is a really polite way of saying they are downright fucking tragic. I kept my eyes on my plate and my body shifting against the weathered picnic table, always fidgeting underneath the weight of our gone time together. Leah seemed impenetrable, a nomad of heavy emotion; her defense was to move on before she ever arrived. But she did carry her loss and her mistakes gracefully, faithfully. And every time I looked up she was still beautiful, if no longer sixteen, if no longer a girl who held infinite possibility around her like it was only a scent, the natural perfume of radiant youth. That much was gone. For the first time in so many of our lives, the world was certain. And I didn’t find that bittersweet at all.

It was early yet to get as drunk as I wanted, especially for someone like myself (or Leah), who, having been accepted to a college outside of my hometown, was expected to go bloom into something far superior to the soil from which I sprang. I didn’t even care to go to college before it meant being far from her or disappointing her. All the talk I wanted was big and right now, Leah did not appear prepared to give me anything but crumbs. I crushed my steak again with my fork and glanced up at her. She watched my dinner bleed with a polite grin and starry, bittersweet eyes. Her plate was almost as empty as mine was full. I took another slug or three of my beer.

“Leah” I let the word trail like the beginning of a question that actually matters, “Where do you see us going?”

“What do you mean?” She gave me an honestly puzzled head-tilt … dark hair brushing off an late afternoon sun-lit shoulder.

“I mean, where do you think we’ll be in, I don’t know, a decade?” I could feel the first lift of the alcohol in me, a microscopic expansion of the possible world. She smiled in that way that pleads for rest.

“Here, silly!” A pause. “And you’ll be getting drunk over dinner asking me where I see us in, oh, I don’t know, ten years.”

And, for all its hopeful kindness, that was probably the worst thing she could have said to me. Everyone knows that the kids who go away to college always plan on living in town forever and all the kids who stay are forever moving out. She smiled, pulled her body up from the table, turned (magically), and strode over the dry August grass towards the kitchen and the coolers. I swished the cold brew between my rotten teeth. Her plate was clean and mine was covered in blood.

Read More

I read this every couple of months. It’s really a brilliant piece of writing. I encourage everyone to give it a glance if you have the time.  

Originally published in Story, Winter 1995.

Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he’d built out of a metal pole in the yard. Super Bowl week the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod’s helmet and Rod had to clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off. On the Fourth of July the pole was Uncle Sam, on Veterens Day a soldier,  on Halloween a ghost. The pole was Dad’s only concession to glee. We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us as we poured ketchup saying: good enough good enough good enough. Birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream. The first I brought a date over she said: what’s with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking.

We left home, married,  had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dresssing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow. When an earthquake struck Chile he lay the pole on its side and spray painted a rift in the earth. Mom died and he dressed the pole as Death and hung from the crossbar photos of Mom as a baby. We’d stop by and find odd talismans from his youth arranged around the base: army medals, theater tickets, old sweatshirts, tubes of Mom’s makeup. One autumn he painted the pole bright yellow. He covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth and provided offspring by hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards. He painted a sign saying LOVE and hung it from the pole and another that said FORGIVE? and then he died in the hall with the radio on and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day.

Using Facebook as Zuckerberg intended:

4:44pm Vincent Milburn hooks my wall up with the video for The Verve Pipe - The Freshmen.

4:47pm Vincent Milburn hooks my wall up with the video for Deadeye Dick - New Age Girl.

4:51pm Vincent Milburn hooks my wall up with the video for Bloodhound Gang - The Bad Touch.

4:54 Vincent Milburn hooks my wall up with the video for Sum 41 - Fat Lip.

The following day:

8:57am I hook Vincent Milburn’s wall up with the video for Sugar Ray – When It’s Over.

8:57am I hook Vincent Milburn’s wall up with the video for Smash Mouth – Walkin On The Sun.

8:58am I hook Vincent Milburn’s wall up with the video for Switchfoot – Meant To Live.

8:59am I hook Vincent Milburn’s wall up with the lyric video for The Dead Milkmen – Punk Rock Girl.

8:59am I hook Vincent Milburn’s wall up with the video for Crazy Town – Butterfly. 

10:20am I hook Vincent Milburn’s wall up with the video for Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – Zoot Suit Riot.

We, then, tag each other in this series of posts:

Chuck Young loves Spacehog

Vincent Milburn listen’s to Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy” every morning in order to get in “the right head space” for his day.

Chuck Young once spent an entire weekend locked in his room with a copy of Len’s “You Can’t Stop The Bum Rush” LP

Vincent Milburn can only put the moves on a girl when playing Marcy’s Playground songs in his head.

Chuck Young still pops a chubby every time he hears Ginuwine’s “My Pony,” due to a developed Pavlonian response based on hundreds of middle school bump n grind seshes.

When asked why he likes D’angelo’s single, “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” so much, Vincent Milburn has always said, “That video, man…just…that video.”

Chuck Young, tell me all your thoughts on God?

If you could only see the way she loves me maybe you would understand, Vincent Milburn, why I feel this way about our love and what I must do.

It putters out. Our collective FB friends rejoice!

theneweryork:

Let’s get weird. 

(Source: kickstarter.com)