Laughing out loud at the basketball game

You are too beautiful to be everywhere, but still you are everywhere. You are right beside me, I vaguely remember, as I am catching the bus at the bottom of the hill near the high school. And I feel your presence especially as I am getting into trouble for laughing out loud at the basketball game, for which you thought I was especially dumb. I try not to speak to you, or look at you for that matter, because you are so beautiful it hurts.

I haven't done anything...

I didn't seem too shocked to be back in school. Even the elementary configuration wasn't too startling and those old, rickety desks from the years of times tables and spelling contests were less than impressive. Someone resembling Mrs. Lilquist from my Washington Elementary days was presiding and a semblance of Maggie Bates sat somewhere near me. I sat in a desk, enormous chalkboard ahead and vast, blindless windows to my left, as the announcement of an exam came. It was no surprise to my classmates, most of whom I had been oblivious to until the news came, that we would be taking an exam about a Jane Austen novel, which we had had the entire vacation to get to know. I began to worry when I saw the stack of paper placed somewhat neatly atop an empty desk in the center of the room. The exams were alternately neon blue, pink and yellow, and I excused myself from the classroom after confessing to a classmate that I had "not done anything."

I made my way through the distorted streets of Fayetteville near the university.

In what was my bedroom for many years, Sara Miller waited on me as I gathered my things, mostly clothes, for our journey to her house. It was important what I chose to take with me because I was eventually to participate in a boxing match. At Caitlin Briggs' house down the street we discussed whether or not we would walk the couple of blocks up the hill to her mother's house. I was in favor, she opposed because it was raining. My persuasion almost brought her to tears. A few shadowy figures appeared outside of the glass pane, which constituted the entirety of the home's facade. One of them was Chris Byrne and I joyfully called out his name: "Gangster!" He entered the house, gliding in without using any door or breaking any glass. We shook hands the informal way and reveled in the fact that we were seeing each other for the first time in ages. I gleaned the dark corner across the street.

I am of Arnold

Arnold Schwarzenegger invited us all to his cabin - more like a double-wide trailer - in the woods.

It was rather hill-pretty and green, like that stretch of interstate between Ft. Smith and Fayetteville in April, May, or even June. We tried slaughtering him when he turned into "The Predator," even though he looked nothing like that alien thing we're all used to from the governor-filled films. He came back to life.

We tried again, this time succeeding at least in gashing a perfect circle-hole through his toned abs. Soon the circle was filled through some divine, perhaps satanic, process of mending.

At the University of Arkansas, after wandering the lots where cars cannot park without sticky sticker faculty passes, I found all the students in the university were studying, by obligation, the ins and outs of this Austrian "Predator."

"I don't get it" a journalism major complained. "I'm a journalism major. Why do I have to know about The Predator?"

Back at the trailer a Reed Indeed practice is going on without me, perfect practice for a porch, at the end of which Arnold is particularly strong.

He teaches me the secret of mending and I realize, at last, that I am strong and I am Arnold.

This is clear despite a marked lack of pavilion.

I found out after wondering for some time that Bob Saget gets his mouthwash from Estonia. Also, it turns out that while Estonians speak Estonian, they print all their mouthwash labels in Turkish.

I am on Hendrix campus, which has apparently undergone a total makeover since I last saw it in real life. There is a deep, rectangular hole in the asphalt of the parking lot and it is, for some reason, important. So that is where I park my car.

It looks like Memphis Pencils are playing another show at Hendrix. It is at this point - when I realize I am to perform - that I am back at my parents' house, snorting and licking cocaine off the kitchen wall. The walls were white, don't ask how I found it.

I apologize to my mother for getting blown just as she is leaving. She forgives me, though; she's in a good mood because she and Neil are about to see Frank Zappa.

I'm back into the party atmosphere. It doesn't look like Hendrix. It is probably still Hendrix. The first Hendrix didn't look like Hendrix either. There is a family-renunion/county fair/church picnic sort of thing going on. This is clear despite a marked lack of pavilion. Jesse Belt and I go to the nearby gas station where they return drunk-from beer cans to the shelves. I stock up on watermelon as he is probably buying cigarettes.

There is some boring shit with my family in there somewhere. Where we're going to eat, who's staying at home, whose birthday it is, who's driving which car. There is some really boring shit with my family in there somewhere.

I'm back at the real Hendrix, the real reimagined Hendrix. There is probably a pavilion somewhere. There are some acquaintaces from junior high standing on a sidewalk and I decide not to say hello. Memphis Pencils are about to perform, but alas - I'm in a dermal dilema. My ass is showing. Because my pants are assless.

Don't worry, I've ended up with a towel. Well, shit: it keeps falling down. It keeps falling down and people keep seeing my ass. Shit. Someone asks me about my shirt. I tell them all about how I designed it, but Neil reminds me that it was a gift from JD, that JD had done the design. Oh, right.

More importantly, Jamie Claire approaches me to ask where she should park her car - "Should I park it over in front of that building? I wouldn't want to get an arm on it."

"Oh, Jamie," I think, "I didn't know you were into non sequiturs!" But it turns out a bloody arm, cut at the elbow with hand and all and a Luger next to it, is lying in the perfect fucking parking spot. Now no one can have the perfect parking spot. That is so rude.

Daylight comes and still no police have shown up, but that's okay because the annual Halloween zombie parade is here. We, without knowing who we are, throw rocks at the zombies and say, in all caps, "FUCK ZOMBIES!"