Q. Where is my valentine? I am alone in my apartment, starting at a fishbowl. I have one window. There is a sunset.
A. I like your question. I can see your lovesick tableaux. Your valentine is somewhere else right now, infatuated, crushed by a neverending corporate February. They are kissing someone else. Sorry! I cannot lie. They are kissing someone else, someone who has given them a wilted white rose and a little golden chain. Someone who is, respectfully, a total weasel, dickable and dying. Your valentine is saying Thank you for the gifts, my weasel, and the dick weasel dunce is saying I love you baby, and your valentine is saying Oh I am so delighted, my weasel, my king. And Cupid hovers above, flapping his fatty wings, saying Look at these pinheads.
I like to imagine this scene because it tells me that reality is a folded loop. That every chapter is temporary. Your valentine will be there, ensconced in the dick dunce, only for a moment. In three weeks time there will be a breakup. The dunce will cry. Your valentine will go to the movies, Hope Floats in IMAX, and then in a moment of grief buy a basketball online. They will meet a friend for coffee, decrying the very concept of the dunce. They will return to their childhood home in Ann Arbor Michigan, wondering about God and careers. Their father will make them deviled eggs. They will write strawberry poems in a lockable diary. They will slowly descend into a routine. Mornings touch a lucky coin. Nights finger a deck of magical cards, staring out the night window, imagining you, yes you: visualizing your pretty face in the middle of the dog constellation.
So anyway that’s where they are. Ann Arbor Michigan. You may find them someday. Important thing is: do not test the distance. Respect the width of Michigan. You need time to marinate, recuperate, perambulate, peregrinate, alleviate, speculate, simulate, basketball de-dunkulate. If you were to find each other now, you would swallow each other whole.
Q. How do I know when the moistness is too moist?
A. Guess what? Some people do not like the word “moist.” Not me. I like it. I say it a lot, like at church, when I am eating the rice ball and saying the Vivian prayer. No no I mean when I am eating the apostle sausage and performing the Mallory rite. Oh god I do not remember what church food and church rituals I like to do! It has been so long since I became a chosen Son of God, a true purity brat, in the magical house of heaven. You know the place: White couches. Blue curtains. Sunlight skittling in through the windows. Where I whisper, kneeling on a pillow, in the ear of a lovely crumpled nun:
Thank you, Father God, I will eat this moist cracker in the name of Liquid Moses. He was moist in your holy name. Delivering Ten Commandements. He was moist, because he was peeing in a basket, when he was but a baby. Amen.
I say “moist” at potluck suppers, too:
Hey potluckheads (haha) quick announcement: the mushroom pie is moist. That napkin, the one in Blythe’s hand, is also moist. Everything in this room is moist: we are surrounded by a vast moist network of change and consideration.
Or also when I am writing my first-person science fiction novel (The Scary Alien), at night in my nightgown, and night hat, and long fantasy socks:
I am happy. I am brave. I am ready to punch the The Scary Alien in the friggin’ head. I am moist in the right way: in my mouth and eyes, and nowhere else. Everywhere else is dry as a puppet. I have never been dipped in the sins of holy wetness, looking at a screen, rivers running from my heart and hips. I am the science fiction hero. I am a wizard. Or an elf. Or like a mystical astronaut or something. Welcome to science fiction.
I just realized that moist comes from the word moisture. Right??? God I am smart. I have a nut-sized brain. Which is big. A nut is big. Like a macadamia nut. Not a peanut. Haha. Imagine. A peanut for a brain. But wait do not laugh. Probably true for Neanderthals, who lost in the species war, because their peanuts kept getting outsmarted, due to our having souls made by God, who also made Adam and Eve, but not Neanderthals, in their meat swarms, who didn’t even know about the Bible.
Anyway - no. There is no such concept as “too moist.” Get all of it.
Q. What would you do in a zombie attack? Like if you were in the end of the world and zombies came up to eat you? How would you survive?
A. I will tell you about this. I will tell you how I would survive Zombie. I would tell the zombies, in no uncertain terms, to take a hike. I would say “Hey get outta here!!!!” I would yell that very loud at Zombie and the entire clicking horde. And then I HOPE they would listen and respect my wishes.
Because have you ever noticed how in the zombie shows nobody ever tries yelling at a zombie in order to survive Zombie? Sure they try to stab them in the brain. Sure they try to fling them around the barbequed city, as if the zombie was made of green cookie dough. Does it work? No. More bites. The world is badly bitten. So I would yell at the zombies instead. I would yell “Get lost!!!!!!” I would yell that at the main zombie. Then the side zombies, the freaks with no ideas, would hear it, thereby getting lost as well. I would yell “Hey we don’t want any more Zombie crap!!!!!” I would yell that from the roof of a city building. I would then get a key to the city from the mayor, for my work on Zombie, even though the city is barbequed now, and all messed up :(
Q. I am falling for my friend who has a significant other.
A. Hmm this is less of a question and more of a Thing You Have Said. Anyway, to this I say: curiosity killed the cad! (Did you think I was cool right now when I said that interesting old saying about a cad? Do you feel interested in my writing now? Please say yes. I am doing this to be impressive to people and to make them think of me fondly. I do not want to disappear someday like an unknown putty into the sea. I want people to remember me fondly, like a lily, like a video game with easter eggs, like a log.)
I will continue. See, throughout history people have fallen in love. But over the years people have grown SICK of it. Ooh ooh gimme gimme kisskiss wetass. A big no thank you from me. Giving yourself away for a millisecond of hope? Wow. You are wishing to not be sad someday, via this love. Ah but. You will. Ah but life will always be frighteningly cruddy. And then death comes. Physical dying? True. Spiritual dying? A bigger problem. Kissbutt-lousy touch will not save you from a death.
And, even more, I will say that you feel this with your friend who, according to custom, is encircled by a SIGNIFICANT other? How significant is this other? Either way I would drip a Rosary candle down my blue overalls before I got snared up in that kinda boiling trouble pot. You are about to ruin a friend, someone you care for, for a love that will not be what you imagine. Keep the friend, forget this weak love. (What you are describing is, anyway, not love. It is strong delusion. How do I know? You called it “falling.” Is falling healthy? No. Nobody has ever fallen anywhere and said “I am glad to have fallen hard. Blessings for the fallen me.” We walk on ice and try NOT to fall. We brace ourselves. We walk on boats and try NOT to fall into tempestuousoceans. We lean away. Life is the same.)
Q. When I am cold, how can I warm up and still look cool?
A. I would say you could try the following things:
Hug your Christian friends. Their bodies will be warm due to: spirit. And they will be happy too, because maybe you are wearing silver glitter angel wings? (You are.) Can they kiss an angel? They have wondered this forever, and at long last it has happened. Can they put their hands on the orange creamsicle-smelling bosom of an angel? They will pray and ask God. God will not answer someone who can answer for themselves. And the answer is yes.
Many people believe in God, but why? Yes faith. Yes belief. But have you seen God’s angels? The angels are very sexually strong. They have fit waists and precision curves. Yes I am talking about angels again. All angels are perfect tens. If angels were NOT perfect tens? I am sorry to say but they would appear and we would simply move along with our day. Oh there is an angel, horn blowing, looking mediocre, and we would say What do you want? And the angel, who is NOT hot mind you, would command you to Obey and you would say No thanks please move. You would shoo the angel like a mere salad bug. How sad! This point I am making is an important commentary on our shallow minds, hey look I am making a very interesting commentary, hey listen, look at me, hey look I am doing something deep and grand with my angel discussion.
Another way to be warm is to: wrap yourself in swaddling clothes and lie in a manger. Which brings me back to my second point. About Christians. Indeed: all of the Christian royals are volcanically hot. Mary? Steamy. Apostles? Uh huh you know it. The King J himself? Beautiful beyond the rose hills of Athrea. Why am I saying this? Have I simply lost it, my friend? Am I three acres shy of a successful wheat farm right now? Am I flossing without a plan? Am I blaspheming like a horse in heat? I am only telling the truth. About how to stay warm. These original people were beloved because they were hotter than the whole world.
again and yes thank you