fiction – DAVID V. MATTHEWS

Please Don’t Clap

Another excerpt from my eternally-upcoming novel, Normal Tastes. (For previous excerpts, please click here, here, and here.)

●

The fountain outside Kornwald’s Department Store spumes upward to about twelve feet. Jill drops a penny into the fountain’s circular reservoir and watches that coin sink to the bottom.

“What do you think the mall does with all the money that people put in there?” she asks.

“Keep it for themselves,” Alan says.

A few dozen pennies cover the bottom, along with some nickels, some dimes, a few quarters, and several arcade tokens.

“Well, I think they donate it to charity,” Jill says.

“Do you think Bigfoot exists too?”

“Some people are nice, Alan.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The fountain spumes downward.

Alan can stand the Garnetville Mall a little better, now that he has a girlfriend. Holding hands, they walk away from the fountain and through the corridor, sticking to the right, passing Five Star Video, and Everfun Toys, and the Haunted Halloween Store. Soon they approach Wynkoop Organs. Standing near the entrance, they watch the obviously middle-aged white guy who works there—combover, bifocals, maroon suit.

“What a stud,” Alan whispers.

Jill laughs.

The Stud sits down at a deluxe organ, dark gleaming walnut that looks genuine and features a two-tiered keyboard with almost enough knobs and buttons and faders to fill a professional recording studio, the type of studio that rock stars use when not playing in concert or making videos or snorting cocaine off stripper tits. He exhales, stretches his shoulders, cracks his knuckles, places some sheet music in front of him, opens it, adjusts a few knobs, and commences playing something jaunty.

“Hey, that’s ‘Tell Her about It,’ ” Jill says, referring to the recent hit by the American singer Billy Joel.

“Yup,” Alan says.

A few onlookers gather around them.

“You know, I’ve suddenly realized something,” Jill says. “If I were Billy Joel’s daughter, my name would be Jill Joel.”

Alan despises this song, a fucking Fifties tribute about how you need to kiss your girl’s ass so she doesn’t leave you.

And yet, as the Stud continues playing—

“I like this version,” Jill says.

“Me too,” Alan says. “I like it better than the original.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. It sounds more…heartfelt?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Plus this guy’s a snazzier dresser.”

The performance ends. Everyone except Alan applauds.

“Please don’t clap,” he tells her. “We’re not at a concert.”

“That’s what you think,” she says, still applauding. The Stud smiles at his audience and salutes it.

●

“What do you wanna do tomorrow?” Alan asks her. They’re sitting across from each other at a blazing-orange plastic table near Aunt Rita’s Pretzels.

“Could we visit the Carnegie Museum?” Jill says, pronouncing the founder’s surname the way most Pittsburghers do, as Car-nay-gie.

“Why?”

“I feel like looking at the paintings and sculptures and all that stuff.”

Alan bites into his pretzel, chews, and swallows. “Right.”

“And you don’t?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause looking at art makes me wanna—”

Alan closes his eyes, lowers his head, and pretends to snore.

“Very funny,” Jill says. “So what would you rather do?”

“I dunno. Hang out at your place?”

“Again?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s…well…it’s like you never want to go out with me.”

“I go out with you.”

“Yes, but you never seem that excited about it.”

“Do you want me to dance a jig or something?”

“No, but—”

“But what?”

“I don’t know.” Jill nibbles at her pretzel. “You could have clapped after that man played the organ.”

“I didn’t feel like clapping.”

“You liked his performance.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t feel like clapping.”

“Okay, you didn’t feel like it. But I did. And you tried to stop me.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did. You said ‘Please don’t clap.’ ”

“That was a request.”

“It sounded like an order.”

“What difference does it make? You clapped anyway.”

Alan finishes eating his pretzel. Maybe he—

“Do I embarrass you?” Jill asks, sounding angry for the first time around him.

“Excuse me?”

“Do I embarrass you?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

“An important one. Do I embarrass you, except when you want to have sex with me?”

“Jill—”

“Is that why you’ve never introduced me to your friends?”

“No, it’s ’cause I don’t think you have much in common with them.”

“I’ve introduced you to my friends.”

Yeah, friends straight from the barnyard—dogs, pigs, and cows. “Okay, the next time I hold a tea party for the guys, I’ll invite you. Ha ha.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have laughed.

“Do you even like me?” Jill asks.

“What?”

“Do you even like me? Have you ever liked me?”

“Cut it out, Jill.”

She looks as if she’d just seen Middle-Eastern terrorists, or Central-American terrorists, or actually any kind of terrorists, blow her family to bits.

“Oh, all right.” He starts clapping rapidly. “Hooray. Hooray for the organ player. Hooray for Billy Joel. Hooray for your friends. Hooray for you. Hooooray.” He stops clapping. “Happy now, goddammit?”

“Yes, happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” Jill says in a tremulous voice. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

“Ha ha.”

“I’m serious, Alan. I’ve felt this way for some time.” And here come the tears. “You don’t like me or respect me.”

He considers his options. Should he take that song’s advice and kiss her ass, while apologizing profusely and begging her to take him back? Or should—

“Are you on the rag?” he asks.

Really, how else could he have answered? He has a pair of balls.

“Goodbye,” Jill says, standing up.

“Yeah, yeah. Can I have the rest of your pretzel?”

She walks away sobbing.

“Call me when you decide to stop acting like a fucking idiot,” he shouts. Some fat bitch lumbering past his table, a couple fat kids in tow, gives him an offended look. Mind you own goddamn business, lady. And do some aerobics, why don’tcha, he thinks as he chomps into Jill’s pretzel.

How Normal People Behave

I present yet another revised excerpt from my perpetually under-construction novel, Photorealistic Raccoons.

THE STORY THUS FAR: Gerry Blanchard is a freshman at McGowan University, in Western Pennsylvania. The university has assigned someone he can’t stand—his neighbor Trent Deutsch—as his roommate.

■

That evening, inside his dorm room, Gerry sat at his desk, cramming for his math mid-term, his record player/cassette player/AM-FM radio tuned to the local station.

So don’t wait up for me, babe
’Cause I ain’t comin’ back
I took a wrong turn when I metcha
But now I’m on the right track
Yeeeeeaaaah
Now I’m on the right track
Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaah
Now I’m on the—

“Gerry?”

No response.

“Gerry?”

“What.”

Trent sat at his desk, his black hardbound journal open, his fluorescent lamp shining bright. “Could we listen to my music, please?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause your music sucks. It’s all bleep-bleep-bleep-bloop-bleep. It’s even worse than disco.”

“Then could we—”

“No, whatever it is. Now shut up, I need to study.”

Now I’m on the right track
Yeeeeah, yeeeeeeah, yeah, yeah

“Gerry?”

“What.”

“Why do you hate me?”

Brief pause. “Because you’re so fucking annoying.”

“In what way?”

“In every way imaginable. Want some advice? Watch how normal people behave and start acting like them for a change. Then maybe I won’t hate you as much. Now I really have to get back to studying, if that’s okay with you.”

Yeah, now I’m on the right track
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah
I’m on the right track
Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhh

“I ran into a couple Zeta fratboys today on the Quad,” Trent said, his voice in dying-battery mode. “I’d never seen them before, but I could tell they were Zetas by their sweatshirts. The ones with the Grinch on them? Dr. Seuss ought to sue that fraternity for copyright infringement. So, anyway, I ran into those Zetas, and I had no intention of talking to them, but the biggest and meanest-looking one wanted to talk to me, of course. He said just one word: ‘Faggot.’ How creative—people have called me that since grade school. I’ve tried ignoring them, but it hasn’t worked. So this time, I thought I should try something different. I said ‘You supposed to be a macho man? Not a very convincing performance, pal.’ I guess he didn’t like my retort, for he rammed into me, knocking me onto the ground. Fortunately, I hit the grass, not the sidewalk. As I lay on my back, he pointed at me and said ‘You want a convincing performance? Fine. We see you around here again, we’re gonna kick your faggot ass, faggot.’ Then he said ‘Have a nice day,’ and he and his fellow mouth-breathers left.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, they call everybody a faggot, including me,” Gerry said.

“But they actually seemed to think I’m one, and it made them angry. So how—”

“Like I said, start acting normal.”

“But—”

“Now I need to study, okay?”

“But—”

“Okay?”

Brief pause.

“Okay,” Trent murmured.

Gerry returned to his notes about monic polynomials, constant polynomals, incredible polynomials—wait, incredible? Maybe irredeemable. Irritable? No, irruh, irruh, irreducible. Irreducible polynomials. But even if he didn’t have stroke-victim handwriting and could read his notes more clearly, he still wouldn’t be able to concentrate. He kept thinking about—

■

April 1977. He was sixteen years old and walking out of the local Stop-N-Go, the convenience store comprising his suburban neighborhood’s entire business district. He had purchased one of his favorite beverages, a frozen concoction known as a Slush Puppie. Specifically, he’d purchased a large grape Slush Puppie, which he planned to drink standing outside the store, eyes half-closed, no expression, the epitome of coolness.

But before he could take a sip, three players from the high-school football team, the Center Trojans, lumbered over in his direction. The team had gone eight-and-two last season, their best record in years, which made it the most important event in the history of the world, judging from how the school had reacted, all but prostrating themselves before those morons. The three particularly moronic jocks at that convenience store must have liked the adulation almost as much as they liked going around together beating the living crap out of anyone they considered nerdy, or retarded, or—

“Hello, fairy,” said the biggest and meanest-looking jock, an offensive tackle named Shawn Kozar.

“You talkin’ to me?”

“Yeah, you fat fairy. Gerry the fairy.”

“What a witty comment.”

“What a witty comment,” Shawn said in a high mocking voice.

His buddies giggled.

“So you wanna suck my dick, fairy?”

His buddies giggled again.

“Actually, no, I’d rather not,” Gerry said, “but I do know someone who would.”

“Who, your mom?” Shawn said.

“No, it’s someone from school. Someone you might know.” Gerry leaned in close to whisper. “Rhonda Dennison.”

“Rhonda Dennison?”

“Uh-huh. She’s sucked half the dicks in town.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me. Right before she sucked my dick. It almost choked her, too, it was so huge.”

The jocks laughed.

“Anyway, I gotta go. If you see her, tell her I said hi, will you?”

“Yeah,” Shawn said.

Gerry walked off in the opposite direction, sipping his Slush Puppie. Mmmmm.

He’d never spoken to her and had no idea what, if anything, she did with guys other than hand them those little comic-book-style tracts where sinners who laugh at getting saved (“HAW HAW HAW”) die and end up burning in the everlasting fire, but she was the only girl Gerry could think of at that moment. (Also, she had given him a boner that one time, despite her Popsicle-stick body and her brown slacks.) If she’d never even held hands with a guy, but Shawn and his pals wanted the blowjobs they felt they deserved as gridiron heroes, well, maybe she could, at long last, kneel down for something other than praying. And if at some point the jocks did relay the news that Gerry had said hi, and she asked him about it, he would tell her “Come on, why would you believe anything they say? They’ve had one too many concussions on the ol’ playing field.” Maybe she would fall for it, maybe not. But Gerry never found out, for once again, nothing happened. Plus she would move away over the summer, and (even better) the football team would go three-and-seven that season (but unfortunately would suck slightly less the following season, his senior year, going four-and-six).

■

Though Gerry knew how to kick someone’s ass, he also knew how to talk himself out of an ass-kicking when he faced a much more powerful opponent, or when more than one opponent ganged up on him. Trent, on the other hand, was doomed. The Zetas would probably start pounding him a dozen times a week, making him even more brain-damaged. And if the Zetas didn’t pound him, other people would. That retard had no knack for self-preservation. If he continued behaving the way he did, antagonizing the world with his mere presence, he would end up leading a miserable life and dying a virgin; you can bet even retarded women couldn’t stand his countless idiosyncrasies.

Gerry could have ended up just like him, reading funnybooks while listening to atonal mechanical crap and never, ever getting pussy. Well, okay, Gerry himself hadn’t exactly gotten pussy yet either, unless you counted his right index finger. But he had a far better chance of getting pussy using the proper appendage than Trent did using any appendage. Perhaps Gerry could help his roommate score? Eeeugh—why would anyone help him?

“Mmm mmmm hmmmmm mmm.”

Because, oh goody, Trent had commenced humming under his lamp. Banging a chick even once could, at least temporarily, distract him from his weird robotic antics while offering encouragement to act like a normal guy, the type women prefer, no matter how desperately they need hot beef injections.

Copyright © 2025 by David V. Matthews
January 31, 2025

An Actual Emotion for a Change

An excerpt from my someday-finished novel, Photorealistic Raccoons.

■

“Cyborg Prophet’s pretty good this month,” Trent said.

“I hate Cyborg Prophet,” Gerry said.

“Why?”

“ ’Cause it’s so boring. The characters do nothin’ but talk about machines and philosophy and stuff.”

“Some comic books prefer to spend their time making you think.”

“I do enough thinking at school.”

Another fine afternoon at Trent’s house. No one else was there. Both Trent’s parents worked, making him the first latchkey kid Gerry had ever known, years before either boy would hear of latchkey kids.

Whenever Gerry would visit, he would hang out in Trent’s bedroom to read comics. Trent stored his collection upright in a long white cardboard box, in alphabetical and chronological order, on his dresser. He would spend a few moments checking out the comics Gerry had brought, which usually featured capes and/or punching on their covers. Then, without a word, Trent would walk to his dresser, remove the lid from the box, set the lid down next to the box, and let Gerry pick out a few titles that usually featured spacesuits and/or punching on their covers.

Trent would slide the comics out of their clear plastic sleeves. (Of course he kept his comics in clear plastic sleeves.) “Treat these with the utmost care,” he would say as he handed Gerry items such as Mindburn #17 (March 1973), or Explorers of New Terra #3 (October 1972), or other full-color pictorial narratives that allegedly might increase in value someday. Trent called them “pictorial narratives.”

After reading each comic book, Gerry would return it to him. Carrying that comic flat in his hands, Trent would walk to his desk and turn on his desk lamp, the quintessential blunt object: twelve inches of brown metal with a heavy, curving, pyramidal base. The lamp had a brown metal shade about a foot-and-a-half long, the longest Gerry had ever seen. A fluorescent bulb under the shade would provide enough light for Trent to inspect the comic minutely, from cover to cover, squinting, his mouth hanging slightly open, as it tended to do when he concentrated on a task of the utmost importance. Sometimes he would tsk-tsk Gerry for, say, leaving a greasy thumbprint on the front cover, or for minutely creasing the lower corner of page seventeen; usually, though, Trent would close his mouth, turn off the lamp, insert the comic into its sleeve, get up, walk to his dresser, bury his treasure once again inside the box, pick up the lid, clamp it down tight, and pat it a few times.

He was the first collector nerd Gerry had ever known, years before either of them would hear of collector nerds—or of nerds, for that matter. Trent certainly looked like a nerd: black-framed glasses, bowl-shaped haircut, acres of pimples, Funny Bunny T-shirt, brown floodpants, dark-brown clodhoppers.

That afternoon, the boys were lying on their stomachs, on the floor, the usual way the boys read comics together. Trent had gotten halfway through Captain Cobalt #14 (July 1973), which Gerry had already read during the previous visit and proclaimed the dullest issue yet, endless exposition instead of the gargoyle showdown that title had promised last month, though of course Trent loved endless exposition (and rivets—lots of rivets in that title, endless rows of them on every mechanical device). Gerry had almost finished something he’d brought from home, The Red Laser #1 (August 1973), one of the best comics he’d read so far that year, about a short, puny, and homely teenager named Mike Morganson, not the most popular guy, who—

“Hmm mmm, mmm hmm mmm mmm.”

“Stop it,” Gerry said.

Trent stopped humming.

—who lives in this big city called Biggs City. One night, he borrows his parents’ car without their permission and goes out driving in the country alone (“I’m sick of everyone hassling me!”) and sees a flying saucer. He gets out of his car for a closer look, and the saucer beams him aboard, and the invisible aliens inside—

“Mmm hmm hmm hmm.”

“I said stop it,” Gerry said.

Trent did.

—the aliens, from a planet called Laseria, tell him, Mike Morganson, that their advanced scientific technology has determined that of all the known lifeforms in existence, he’s the Chosen One, the super-warrior who can protect the universe from the ruthless evildoers who threaten its very existence. (“Me? I’m the Chosen One? You sure it’s not Joe Namath?”) The aliens zap him, Mike Morganson, with a luminous red ray to bring forth the powers he hadn’t known he possessed. He now can transform himself into a tall, handsome, muscular guy who has the strength of a thousand Earth men and can fly at the speed of light and—

“Mmm hmm hmm.”

“I swear, Trent, if you hum one more time, just one more time, I’m gonna beat the livin’ crap out of you. Got it?”

“Uh-huh.”

—and most important, can shoot red lasers out of his hands. So he calls himself the Red Laser (“Good enough name as any”) and wears a tight red costume that covers his entire body, and he—

“Daid skunk, yeah, there’s a daid skunk.”

“Trent!”

“Daid skunk, dead skunk, dead skunk on da road.”

The song “Dead Skunk” by Loudon Wainwright III had been a hit that spring. Gerry had liked that song; well, he used to like it until that moment, when Trent started butchering it. Needless to say, Loudon Wainwright III hadn’t sung the original version tunelessly with a goofball hick accent, an accent Trent would adopt on occasion in a futile effort to amuse people. And those weren’t even the original lyrics.

“Violate da speed limit, hit dat skunk with your car.”

“Will you shut up!”

“P.U., a daid skunnnnnk! Yeah, yeahhhhhhh!”

“That’s it!”

Trent started to stand up, but Gerry tackled him, knocking him onto the carpet and perching atop him.

“I’m sorry,” Trent said, flat on his back. “I won’t do it again.”

Gerry removed Trent’s glasses.

“Please, those cost sixty-three dollars and seventy-eight cents.”

Gerry snapped the glasses in half and tossed them to one side.

“You owe me for those.”

Gerry punched him in the mouth. Another punch in the mouth. Trent looked frightened, displaying an actual emotion for a change. With increasing frenzy, Gerry punched Trent’s face, Trent’s arms, Trent’s chest. At first Trent writhed around, but as the beating progressed, he gradually stopped moving.

Gerry pulled Trent’s hair.

“Auuuugh!” Trent yelped.

“Shut up,” Gerry said, punching him in the mouth yet again. More punches and slaps to the face. More hair-pulling. Several karate chops to the face, neck, and body.

Finally, Gerry grew tired and stopped.

Trent cried, his nose trickling blood, his mouth pouring blood, his eyes squinting due to the lack of corrective lenses.

“Tell on me, and you’re dead,” Trent said in a low voice. “Got it?”

More crying.

Another slap, the most powerful one in recorded history, a slap that actually hurt Gerry’s hand.

“Got it?”

“Yes,” Trent said.

Not saying anything else, his hand still hurting, Gerry picked up his comics from off the floor and went home.

For the rest of the day, he had a sense of impending doom. He thought any minute now, his parents would confront him, his father asking “Did you beat up Trent Deutsch this afternoon?”

“No,” Gerry would reply, “I beat the living crap out of him, ’cause he deserved it. He was bothering me.”

“Well, even if he did deserve it, he’s a retard. You can’t go around beating the living crap out of retards. They’re—well, they’re retards. Which means I gotta beat the living crap out of you now. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t take very long. I have work to do.”

But nothing happened. And when Trent showed up at school the next day, a swollen eye, a swollen lip, a couple bruises on his face, his glasses masking-taped together, he acted as if he didn’t know Gerry, which suited the latter boy just fine, who hoped this development would continue so he, Gerry, could read The Red Laser #2 in peace, if the comics company ever released another issue, and why wouldn’t they? (They never did.)

Regular, Sincere Applause

Another revised excerpt from my eternally-in-progress novel, Normal Tastes.

●

Lying in his hospital bed, his left wrist handcuffed to it, Zach thinks he must have suffered brain damage from that ass-whooping back in his cell, ’cause a song he hasn’t heard since high school, “Closer”—not that Nineties hit “Closer” about, uh, bleeping like an animal, by that cool American band Nine Inch Nails, a band that’s grown on him over the past year, but the other “Closer,” the more recent one, by, uhhh, that not quite as cool American band the Chainsmokers?—well, that song keeps playing in his head. In that song, the male singer runs into his ex-girlfriend at a hotel bar after four years, and that couple ends up bleeping, presumably not like animals. Or maybe just like animals. Who knows?

Zach doesn’t really hate that song; the guest singer—a woman named Halsey—has a nice body, plus how can he hate any song that gives a shout-out to another cool Nineties band he’s started liking, Blink-182, also American? No, it’s just that the song reminds him of the time he attended the morp, or reverse prom, an event held every autumn in his high-school gymnasium. Unlike the regular old springtime prom, open to only juniors and seniors, the morp was open to only freshmen and sophomores. Also, if you felt like it, you didn’t have to wear a tux or gown; you could wear whatever you wanted. And you could go alone. And no slow, goopy prom tunes—the morp played much more exciting music: the latest in rock, rap, hip-hop, and techno-electro-dance-whatever-you-wanna-call-it.

He attended his first and only morp when he was sixteen, one Friday night in November Twenty-Sixteen, about a week and a half after the presidential election. He’d donned his usual outfit of jeans, sneakers, and T-shirt. Specifically his newest T-shirt, the one he’d bought at the mall for just that occasion, a T-shirt that showed a full-color drawing of his favorite videogame character, Gunner. Usually Gunner looked freaking badass, but here he looked freaking cute: disembodied round head—full-on view, giant eyes, chubby cheeks, toothy smile—above his catchphrase MAKE THE RUBBLE BOUNCE in puffy, candy-colored letters.

Zach hadn’t brought a date, because he wanted to enjoy himself on his own. He needed a break from girls. A break from striking out with girls, to be exact. He preferred porn girls lately anyway, whenever he had a chance to check them out on his phone or computer, on websites his parents hadn’t already blocked.

After arriving on time for the morp, eight PM, he got down to business. He strolled to the refreshments table near the boys’ locker room and drank Slammin’ Berry Cola from one of those deluxe clear plastic cups that the best events have, cups you probably wouldn’t find at the poorer schools in town. He hung out with the guys from school: pimply, dateless guys like him, guys he considered his friends, since they liked videogames too. He drank more Slammin’ Berry Cola from another clear plastic cup. And he joined the thirty or so dancers on the basketball court for several songs, the first time he’d danced in public in, well, ever. He swayed left to right, swayed back and forth, pistoned his arms forward, and spun around in circles. He even twerked, squatting a little and wiggling his butt. And best of all, after he’d finished dancing, several morpers, male and female, applauded, and it wasn’t sarcastic slow applause but regular, sincere applause with even a little bit of whistling. So they’d watched his performance and liked it. He took a bow.

A minute later, standing by the refreshments table, drinking his third cup of Slammin’ Berry Cola so far that evening, basking in the afterglow of peer approval, he realized that for a brief moment on the dance floor, he’d turned into that most prestigious of dudes, a cool dude, someone almost all the cliques at that high school liked: the jocks, the goths, the art geeks, the band geeks, the drama geeks, the loners, the stoners, the skaters, the smarties, the normies, the trendies, and—last but most certainly not least—the hotties. If he could make that transformation permanent and move beyond his own clique, the gamers, a pretty fun clique but a limiting one regarding the female attention he received, then he could—

Gretchen Bove, a girl from his social studies class, walked up to him, carrying a cup of cola-slash-pop.

“Hey hey, Zach,” she said.

“Hey hey,” he said.

“You’re a great dancer.”

“Thanks. Just one of my many talents.”

“Yeeeah.” As usual, her voice sounded as if her batteries had nearly died.

“Nice costume, by the way.”

“Thank you.” She’d always looked as if people never gave her a second look: not too rich, not too poor, not too tacky or sexy or whatever. In other words, she’d always looked like every other middle-to-upper-middle-class teenage girl, only more so, with a flat chest, but this time—well, you apparently could wear whatever you wanted to the morp, for Gretchen wore a brown top hat; a long stringy purple wig; a frilly low-cut maroon dress; a black leather vest, open, held together in front with a thousand black leather belts; a thousand more black leather belts around each wrist; brown tights; and black leather knee-high boots, sort of like the boots Zach’s grandpa used to wear as that pirate in those YouTube videos. She still had a flat chest, though.

“You supposed to be someone in particular?” Zach asked.

“Yeah. Vertiline Lewis?”

“Who?”

“Vertiline Lewis. From this graphic novel called Vertiline?”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s the best graphic novel ever. It takes place on Earth in the year…well, they don’t say the exact year, but it kind of looks like the Victorian era in a steampunk kind of way? With some manga thrown in? Know what I’m talking about?”

“Uh-huh.” Zach did know what she was talking about.

“So anyway. Vertiline, she’s, like, this alien from outer space, an alien in human form, a real supergenius who—”

“Is she an illegal alien?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. ’Cause if she was, Donald Trump would be pissed.”

“Ha ha, yeah, he would. But I don’t think they have illegal aliens in that universe. So anyway, Vertiline, she lives in this huge metropolis called Dreme City? Spelled D-R-E-M-E?”

“How’s the ‘City’ part spelled?”

“The usual way. C-I-T-Y?”

“Darn.”

“Yeeeah, uh, ha ha ha. So anyway, it’s, like, this futuristic city in the past, with lots of blimps and—”

“Belt buckles, apparently.”

“Yeah.”

“And she has all sorts of adventures, right?”

“Right. That’s ’cause, in order to make a living, she runs this, like, firm or business or something called Scientific Investigative Services? Or S.I.S.? Sis, get it? And she has this all-female crew called the Sisters, who—”

“Dress up like nuns?”

“No, they wear ordinary clothes.”

“Like Vertiline does?”

“Yeeeah, I guess. So anyway, she and the Sisters, they investigate, like, strange phenomena? Like flying saucers and mutated animals and so on?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Plus she’s on the run from, like, bounty hunters from her planet, for reasons the book doesn’t go into? Maybe they’ll mention them in the sequel, if they have a sequel. I hope they do, ’cause I love this book. I highly recommend it.”

“Uh-huh.”

The Chainsmokers song started playing.

“So have you read any good books lately?” Gretchen asked.

“Yeah,” Zach said. “Let’s see. Uh, oh yeah, To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“I’ve read that. It’s a great book.”

“I dunno. It disappointed me a little. It turned out it wasn’t a how-to book.”

“Yeeeah, okay, ha ha.”

“Maybe I should write my own version: To Kill a Mockingbird for Reals. I’d describe how to, like, smash its head in with a sledgehammer? Or, like, how to blow it to pieces with a shotgun? Or, like, like, likety-like like like like like?”

“Yeeeah, ha ha ha. Excuse me.”

Gretchen walked away. Zach waved goodbye to her.

In retrospect, or so he feels lying in the hospital, maybe he shouldn’t have been such a wiseass. Or asswipe. Or anything else with “ass” in its name. She did show some interest in him, unlike the other girls at school. Too bad he’d never bothered talking to her again.

Ah, who cares? He has more important things to worry about now.

But he might have—no, he should have—stopped being so assy for once. He should have overlooked her flat chest and gotten to know her better. They could have ended up liking each other. And they could have ended up having sex. He wouldn’t have almost died a virgin from that prison beating.

But virginity’s cool now, according to some article he read somewhere on the Internet.

Ha, fake news. Ha ha. Ha.

Zach starts crying. After several seconds, he starts crying harder. He’s actually wailing, something he hasn’t done since childhood. The uniformed corrections officer, sitting as usual next to him, doesn’t look up from his, the officer’s, phone.

A Sensitive Palate

A revised excerpt (or a revised outtake?) from my forever-upcoming novel, Normal Tastes.

●

“My beer tastes funny,” Officer Petrovich says.

“Really?” Officer Chandler says. “Lemme have a sip.”

One sip later:

“Tastes fine to me,” Officer Chandler says.

“Could I have a sip of yours?” Officer Petrovich asks.

“Go ahead.”

Officer Petrovich takes a sip.

“Hmmm. Tastes the same as mine,” he says.

“Must be your palate,” Officer Chandler says.

“Yeah, you always did have a sensitive palate,” Officer Tate says.

“Perhaps you should order something else,” Officer Donovan says.

“Nah,” Officer Petrovich says. “If I did, I might like how it tastes and drink a lot of it.”

“And that’s bad?” Officer Tate says.

“I told my girlfriend I would cut down on my drinking.”

“We tell our girlfriends lots of things,” Officer Wilcox says.

Five white police officers, all male except for Brittany Donovan, sit together wearing their civilian clothes and drinking beer at Sluggerz Sports Bar, one of the most popular social venues in that neighborhood. Framed, autographed items hang on the walls: photos, newspaper front-pages, magazine covers, trading cards, hockey sticks, basketball jerseys, empty Wheaties boxes, and other sports memorabilia pertaining to male athletes, white and black with a few Latinos.

“Maybe I should get drunk, just to celebrate,” Officer Tate says.

“Celebrate what?” Officer Petrovich asks.

“Not giving a dime to my brother. He stopped by my place last night. He only stops by when he wants something, and sure enough, he said he needed new tires for his car. I asked how much. He said ‘Six hundred dollars. I’ll pay you back.’ Bullshit he’ll pay me back. I felt like tossing him out, literally tossing him out as far as I could, head-first. But I was bored, and I wanted to have some fun. So I said ‘Okay, I’ll give you the money. But first—you hafta take out your dick and jerk off right in front of me.’ ”

The table erupts in laughter.

“He laughed too. I said ‘I’m not kidding. If you really want me to pay for those tires, you’ll take out your dick and jerk off right in front of me. And I don’t care what you fantasize about. I don’t really wanna know, actually, just as long as you do what I say. Hell, you shoot a huge load, I’ll throw in an extra ten bucks for free, as a gift.’

“Well, he looked at me. Then he laughed again and said”—Officer Tate points straight ahead and adopts a slightly squeaky voice—“ ‘You’re a real nice guy, you know that?’

“I said ‘Yeah, I’m a real nice guy. Say a word of this to anyone, and I’ll say a million words about that weekend in Fort Lauderdale. I mean it.’

“He laughed some more, said ‘Smell you later,’ and exited the premises.”

“Brotherly love,” Officer Wilcox says. “But what happened in Fort Lauderdale?”

“That’s classified.”

“Pleeease?”

“He drank milk and read the Bible, okay?”

More laughter erupts.

●

“Didjoo write that thing for tomorrow?” Officer Chandler asks.

“Yeah,” Officer Donovan says.

“So did I.”

“Good.”

They stand outside Sluggerz, vaping.

“You look thoughtful,” Officer Chandler says.

“I was thinking about that kid we arrested today for selling pot. At the community college? He wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist, was he?”

“Nope, he wasn’t.”

“It was a bit too easy, arresting him.”

“It was. But I’m not complaining.”

Officer Donovan puffs on her e-cigarette. Menthol blast. Her favorite.

“I used to smoke pot,” she says.

“You did?” Officer Chandler says.

“Uh-huh. When I was a teenager. Me and my best friend, we’d get high in her bedroom whatever chance we could. Once we got so high, we listened to the same song ten times in a row.”

“Which song?”

“Uh, ‘Rude’?”

“Never heard of it.”

“It was real popular back then.”

“I listened to classic rock. Who did that song?”

“A group called MAGIC! Their name was spelled all in caps with an exclamation point at the end. ‘Rude’ was their first and only hit. It was a reggae-rock song about this guy who’s singing to his girlfriend’s father, and the singer asks him for her hand in marriage, but the father says no, so the singer, in the chorus, calls him rude. I thought it was the greatest line ever, with deep layers of meaning in that one word, ruuuude, but of course, I was stoned as hell. Any word would have had deep freaking layers of meaning. When you’re a dumb kid like I was, you need those layers to feel smart, I suppose.”

Officer Donovan takes a drag on her e-cigarette.

“Anyway,” she says, “I haven’t heard that song in years. Nor have I smoked pot in years.”

“I’ve never smoked pot,” Officer Chandler says. “I’ve never done any drugs.”

“Weirdo.”

●

POUND POUND. POUND POUND POUND.

Huh?

POUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUND.

Some jagoff’s pounding on the front door.

The noise continues as Mike Chandler stumbles out of bed and through the living room, wearing his Skorchin T-shirt and his red-and-white plaid boxers.

He looks through the door window and grimaces. He opens the door.

“Hello,” Denton says.

“What are you doing here?” Mike asks.

“Could I come in?”

“I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Just for a minute?”

Denton barges past him and sits down on the couch.

Mike pauses a moment, then closes the door.

“How’djoo get here?” he asks.

“I walked,” Denton replies.

“Good. Good thing you didn’t drive in your condition.”

“My condition?”

“You’re a little drunk.”

“I’m a little buzzed.” Denton flaps his arms. “Bzzzzzzz.”

“Sure.”

“I called a couple times, but you didn’t answer. I left a voicemail.”

“Sorry, forgot to check my phone.”

“All night?”

“What do you want, Denton?”

“For starters—where were you?”

“Why do you wanna—”

“Just curious. Where were you?”

“At Sluggerz.”

“With your fellow police officers?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know they served donuts there.”

“If I gave you a drink, wouldjoo leave?”

“Maybe.” Denton notices the e-cigs on the end table. “You’re still vaping? Oh, Mike. You must be pretty popular with the junior-high crowd.”

“Ha ha.”

“If you must suck on something—”

Denton slowly opens his legs.

Mike sighs.

“What? It’s better for you. It doesn’t contain nicotine.”

“Please leave. Now.”

Denton doesn’t budge.

“I said now.”

Denton grins.

“You’re not sexy at all.”

Denton smiles.

Mike sighs again.

He kneels down and unzips Denton’s khakis.

●

Mike and Denton lie naked together on the living-room carpet, navy blue speckled with plain old blue.

“I like your carpet,” Denton says.

“Thanks,” Mike says. “It’s the first thing I bought when I moved into this place. I’ve always hated living rooms that aren’t carpeted. They look, I dunno, primitive?”

Denton reaches over and slides his index finger across Mike’s face, a sensation Mike enjoys, the long soft finger pressing gently into his scratchy cheek.

After their last, uh, get-together, Mike vowed he wouldn’t get reeled in again.

“You doing anything tomorrow night?” he asks.

“I have to work,” Denton says.

“On a Friday night?”

“Cops work on Friday night too.”

“You’re not a cop.”

“I need the money.”

Mike stares into Denton’s eyes.

“I should get going,” Denton says. He stands up and looks around for his white boxer shorts. He finds them hanging from the top edge of the couch.

For some reason, most of the guys Mike has gotten involved with have worn boxer shorts. He’s never asked guys about their underwear beforehand, though, instead preferring a sense of mystery until…the mystery vanishes.

“You could sleep here if you want,” he says.

“I have some stuff to do at home,” Denton says.

“What else is new?”

“I’ll sleep over next time. I’ll even bring a casserole.”

Mike sighs and starts hunting for his own boxer shorts. He sees them lying under the second thing he bought for this place: the seventy-inch widescreen TV hanging on the wall. He slips back into his sleepwear and watches Denton get dressed. Not everyone can pull off the white-polo-shirt-and-khakis look as well as Denton can—not even President Trump on the golf course, ha ha.

“Okay, so, catch you later,” Denton says.

“Yes, definitely,” Mike says.

They kiss, a five-second-or-so kiss with mutual tongue.

Denton leaves.

Mike tries resisting the urge to vape.

Copyright © 2025 by David V. Matthews
2021 (revised January 10-11, 2025)

Fixing Postures

A revised excerpt from my upcoming (or uncoming?) novel Normal Tastes.

●

“I remember this song,” Dr. Kip says.

“Me too,” Alan says.

“You know you’re old when the music you listened to in high school is now classic rock, ha ha ha.”

“Ha ha.”

Alan’s lying face-down, in his customary polo shirt and khakis, on the examination table, his face inside a donut-shaped pleather headrest, his head gently clasped between Dr. Kip’s hands, in the year Two Thousand and Seventeen. The doctor’s actually named Kip Molina-Alvarez, but he tells all his patients just to call him Dr. Kip. His thick gray hair has not a strand out of place, probably due to several layers of industrial-strength lacquer, judging from the extreme shininess. His glasses feature round tinted lenses and sparkly brown frames. His floral long-sleeved shirt has the first few buttons unbuttoned, revealing a gold-colored—maybe actual gold—necklace hanging above a hairless—maybe shaved or lasered—chest. And his tight black jeans show off his, you gotta admit, impressive rear, firm and compact, no noticeable droop. He looks like a geriatric gigolo in Alan’s opinion. Geriatric gigolo—a pretty good line, also in Alan’s opinion. “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” from the British progressive rock band Yes, plays on the Eighties Hits channel on a laptop next to the table, the song encouraging you to overcome your loneliness by getting out on the market and actually making an effort to get laid, advice that works well for successful rock stars and probably almost as well for successful chiropractors with great asses.

“So did you like this song in high school?” Dr. Kip asks.

“Uh-huh,” Alan replies.

“Me too, but it took a while. I was a huge Yes fan, a Yes-man so to speak. I owned all their albums, I loved all the stuff they did, but I absolutely hated this song when I first heard it on the radio. I thought they’d sold out just so they could have something I considered far worse than the bubonic plague: a hit record. You don’t want too many people to like what you like, right? But the more I listened, the more that song grew on me. I loved its drum loop most of all. Buh buh buh buh buh, buh-buh-buh-buh-buh! Having normal tastes for a change made me feel, I dunno, transgressive? Ha ha ha.” His fingers press down with increased pressure. “Take a deep breath. Exhale.” He sharply twists Alan’s head to the left with a loud crack. “Again, take a deep breath. Exhale.” He sharply twists Alan’s head to the right with a louder crack. “You all right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

●

Two weeks earlier, Alan’s wife Nikki asked him to accompany her on her daily power-walk around the neighborhood. She’d never asked him this before. He’d never power-walked before, either, and certainly didn’t want to start in twenty-degree weather. But she insisted, grabbing one of his love handles and saying “You’ve grown a little squishy, no offense.” He almost grabbed one of her tits and said “Well, you’ve grown a little droopy, no offense,” but she, the fitness fanatic, might have gotten so angry, she might have once again done something he had always dreaded as long as he’d known her—namely, close up shop for a couple days or longer. Cyberporn has its charms, ha ha, but—call him old-school—he prefers real-life access. Plus, though her tits had started drooping a little, he still actually greatly valued them, to say the least. So he put on his coat, cap, scarf, boots, and gloves and walked out the door with her.

Half a minute later, he was flat on his back. He’d slipped on an icy spot on the sidewalk in front of his house. Lying there, every pain-receptor going full-tilt, he regretted not having poured salt on that area himself earlier that day. Instead, he’d ordered his seventeen-year-old son Zach to do it, and Zach must have done a half-assed job, the same way he does everything else. When will I ever learn? Alan thought. When will that fucking kid ever learn?

That night, Alan and Nikki walked into their son’s bedroom. Zach lay on his bed, playing on his widescreen TV the videogame Gunner II: Shock and Awesome, in which the cyborg mercenary Gunner—just Gunner—blows away reptilian humanoid terrorists in the fictitious Middle-Eastern country of Bluddistan.

“We need to talk,” Nikki said.

Zach pressed pause on his controller.

“Sure, Mom, what about?” he asked.

“What do you think?” Alan said.

“Oh yeah.” Pause. “So how are you feeling, Dad?”

“Nice of you to ask. Well, I’m pretty banged up, though I don’t think I fractured anything. Oops, I mean, I don’t think you caused me to fracture anything. Plus you didn’t cause me to break my neck and die, so, hooray.”

“Sorry. I’ll be more careful next time.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I will, Dad.”

“I believe you,” Nikki said. “But you still need to face the consequences of your actions. That’s why your dad and I have decided that you’re grounded for a week, starting now. That means no driving. You can’t go anywhere except to and from school, on the school bus. And no allowance, either. And no videogames. Do you understand?”

Zach sighed. “Yes, Mom.”

“Good. You know, your dad and I don’t like punishing you for this, but—”

“Actually, I do,” Alan said. “I love punishing you for this. I wanted to punish you much more severely. Hell, I wanted to tie you to a post and give you a good flogging.”

“Okay, dear,” Nikki said.

“It’s not okay. He nearly killed me.” Alan looked him right in the eyes. His mother’s eyes. “You’re grounded for a month with no allowance. And not only do you lose your videogames, but you lose the rest of your electronic devices as well.” Alan started waving his hand. “Goodbye, phone. Goodbye, TV. Goodbye, computer.”

“I need my computer for school,” Zach said.

“For porn, you mean.”

“Dear,” Nikki said.

“Don’t ‘dear’ me. He’s gotten away with his shit for far too long.”

“Look, I know you’re angry, but—”

“But what? He said he was sorry for nearly killing me?”

“I really am sorry, Dad,” Zach said.

“Liar. You’re grounded for two months.”

“Dad—”

“No, you’re grounded forever. I’ll chain you up in the basement. I’ll feed you nothing but bread and water, and not gluten-free bread, either.”

“We need to discuss this in private,” Nikki said.

“Oh, don’t bother, Mom,” Zach said.

They looked accusingly at Alan. Two against one. How familiar.

He agreed to the lenient punishment. He was pussy-whipped, goddammit—the same reason he didn’t say a word two days later, when he walked past Zach’s room and saw the videogames had returned. And not a word the following day, either, when the kid asked Nikki if he could borrow her car so he could drive to the mall, or so he said. She owned a larger and nicer car than Alan did. Of course she said yes, the kid could borrow the car, the goddamn car, the goddamn fucking pro-environment, save the fucking ozone layer 2016 Lexus ES Hybrid, giving him the keys right in front of Alan. “Thank you, Mom,” the kid said so politely, you wanted to puke. At least he didn’t ask for money, though that could have meant she’d unilaterally resumed paying his allowance. Who cares, as long as that kid didn’t ask him for money. Let her support that leech for a change.

●

Dr. Kip presses his palms between Alan’s shoulder blades. “Deep breath. Exhale.”

A push forward. Crack.

●

Since the accident, Alan’s back has hurt like hell. It doesn’t matter if his wife withholds sex or not, since he’s in no condition to fuck her or anyone else, plus he’s had slightly fewer Internet jerk-off sessions. The electric heating pad and Extra-Strength Tylenol haven’t helped much, and he didn’t want to see his primary care physician, who’d probably prescribe Vicodin or some other opioid, causing Alan to get addicted and lose everything and turn into one of those ope-fiends who lived in the white-trashy part of town. So Alan thought he might as well try a chiropractor. At least his health plan covered it.

●

The doctor’s hands rest diagonally on Alan’s lower back in opposite directions, the right hand atop the left. “Deep breath. Exhale.”

He pushes forward. CRACK.

“Relax right here for me,” he says.

Alan does. For the first time in weeks, his back has stopped hurting. Okay, mostly stopped hurting. Another session or two, and he could start having sex again, either with his wife or his hand or both. No, on second thought, maybe this is temporary. Maybe all that cracking just released endorphins, and after those wear off, he’ll once again feel like a goddamn—

“Owner of the Kwik-E-Mart / Much better than the Homer and the Marge and Bart.”

“Why’d you decide to become a chiropractor?” Alan asks, not that he cares. He just wants the doctor to quit singing along to that Yes song.

“Well, when I was seventeen, I injured my back playing killerball with the guys.”

“Really? I used to play that myself.”

“Then you know what it’s like.” Killerball’s like American football, only with enhanced physical contact. Anything goes, short of actual killing. You keep playing either until you get bored, or until no one’s ambulatory. “So—it’s, what, the ninth quarter? We’d stopped keeping track long ago. My team’s behind, seventy-seven to nothing. Hey, we can still win this. I’m a tackler, you could say a tackling dummy considering how well I’ve played, ha ha ha. But this time, I somehow have the ball, and I’m running across the field, an empty lot, avoiding my opponents, getting closer and closer to the end zone, just a few feet away—until Lonnie Devin, this pituitary giant I barely know from high school, rams into me, knocking me down. Not a scratch on him, but my back’s totally messed up. Bent forward. I’m literally turned into a knuckle-dragger. I can’t walk more than two steps without excruciating pain. This goes on for weeks. The doctors think I’ll need surgery on my spine, and even then they think I’ll have limited movement for the rest of my life. So as a last resort, my parents take me to a chiropractor named Dr. Cal. They’d heard good things about him, they told me. The second I saw him, I knew he was a top-notch medical professional, ’cause he had one heck of a permatan. Ha ha ha. Anyway, that first appointment, Dr. Cal fiddles with my spine—CRACK! CRACK! CRRAAACK! And long story a little longer, ha ha ha, I can move my back again, with the pain mostly gone. A few more sessions, and I’m not hurting at all. And I’m standing ramrod straight, something I’d never done before as your typical slouchy teenager. So you can guess my experience with Dr. Cal had a significant influence on my choice of career. Relieving pain, fixing postures—I was hooked at seventeen.”

Dr. Kip pauses.

“And that’s my origin story,” he says.

One Obligation after Another

Robbie “Horseface” Doyle’s a guy from your tenth-grade shop class. He says he doesn’t mind that nickname, even telling the other guys “My face ain’t the only thing horselike about me, ha ha ha ha ha,” as he points at his crotch. For whatever reason, though, he’s never talked to you—what a shame, right?

But then one day in shop class, as you stand in line to use the bandsaw, he strolls up and says “Hello.”

“Hi,” you say.

“Wanna know what I did last Friday night?”

You don’t answer.

“Well,” he says, “I went to the mall and met this girl at the arcade, and believe me, she was hot, with boobs out to here,” using both hands to squeeze his own boobs a few times, invisible boobs, double-D’s from the looks of it. “So we got to talking, and I mentioned I took this class, and she told me, she said”—high-pitched voice—“ ‘Wow, I like a guy who builds, like, stuff with, like, tools and stuff.’ So we went to her place and got hammered, ha ha ha ha ha. We drank a bunch of screwdrivers, ha ha ha ha ha. And then I screwed her. I nailed her. I drilled her a couple new holes. And it was pretty easy, getting her to do me. I told her, I said”—grabbing his crotch—“ ‘I got some wood right here, babe! Ha ha ha ha ha!’ ”

You turn around. You bend over slightly.

PBBBPPBBBBT.

You turn back around and use both hands to wave the noxious fumes toward him.

A couple of your classmates laugh. Horseface doesn’t. He strolls off and never speaks to you again. What a damn shame.

■

Late one night, while channel-surfing as you sit alone in your apartment—

“So how many of you have kids?”

Yep, it’s Horseface, right there on your screen. A few years after graduating high school, he moved to New York City and started doing stand-up comedy.

“I have a kid,” he continues. “A seven-year-old son. Great guy, I love him a lot, but—lately, he’s started asking me questions about, uh, the birds and the bees?” The audience laughs. “And it’s not like he wants to know where babies come from. I think he knows that already. Instead, he wants to know about certain details of the process? Even when he doesn’t know they’re certain details? Even when they’re, like, adjacent details?”

Until now, you’ve never seen one of Horseface’s cable-TV specials, because, come on, seriously? But now that your third wife has left you and filed for divorce, a wife you actually loved—well, your life sucks already, so why the hell not watch that geek perform at Carnegie Hall or the Laff Hole or wherever?

“Like, one day he came up to me and asked, he asked”—high-pitched voice, about the same as Horseface’s female voice from shop class—“ ‘Daddy? What’s dick cheese?’ ” The audience roars. Horseface points at the side of his head, his own head, says “PPPBBOOO” as if he’s shot himself, and staggers backwards making a goofy face, the audience laughing and applauding.

You gulp down the rest of your beer.

“So I told him, I said ‘Uhhh, where’d you hear about that type of cheese?’ And he said ‘I heard Uncle Percy talkin’ on the phone? An’ he said that Uncle Jack made the most delicious dick cheese in town.’ ” Huge laughter from the audience. The two Uncles are probably recurring gay characters. Your brother, who’s gay himself, would love them or maybe not.

“ ‘So what is dick cheese, Daddy?’ ‘Uhhhhhhhhhh, you know what? It doesn’t really matter, ’cause you’re allergic to it.’ ‘I am?’ ‘Uh-huh. You can eat any other type of cheese, American cheese, Swiss cheese, Lithuanian cheese, but if someone offers you dick cheese, you should not, under any circumstances, eat it. ’Cause if you do, your face will bloat out like this.’ ” Horseface places his hands on his cheeks. He quickly moves them, his hands, away while saying “AAAAGGGH!” Laughter and applause from the audience. You hope his kid, if he even has one, grows up to blow every interior decorator on Fire Island, that vacation spot your brother visits every summer with his husband. His first husband so far.

You haven’t contacted your brother in months. Perhaps you should, out of familial obligation. Life consists of one obligation after another, sometimes interrupted by something fun, such as, well, let’s see, something fun you’ve done lately, uh—

“Meet my boss,” Horseface says in a deep, authoritative voice, pointing with both hands at his crotch. The audience roars.

A Tough Love Kind of Way

November 6, 2024:

“Y’wanna know the main reason Trump won yesterday?”

“Sure.”

“It’s ’cause he loves us so much.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

“I’m serious. He loves us but not unthinkingly. He loves us in a tough love kind of way, so we’ll improve ourselves, so we’ll succeed just like him.”

“Tough love. Yeah.”

“And judging from yesterday’s results, the majority of us crave that love.”

“Yeah. Including blacks and Latinos. And the poor.”

“And me, apparently, heh heh.”

“You voted for him?”

“I would have, if I’d bothered voting. I don’t really need too much tough love, though, just enough to make me even more perfect.”

“Riiiight. I would have voted for Kamala, if I’d bothered voting.”

“What a surprise.”

“I thought she would have appreciated at least one vote from a guy.”

“You and Kamala, sittin’ in a tree—”

“A coconut tree.”

“Coocoonuts.”

“Plus I don’t sit in trees. No back support.”

That Cute Little Button Nose

An excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Photorealistic Raccoons.

■

Sitting on an old white bedspread under a tree, Gerry looked through his stack of comic books, wondering what he should read next. Perhaps Mekka Lords? Nah, he’d grown bored with the current plotline; Dr. Harmer has taken control of Mekka City’s protektors again? Shouldn’t the chief protektors have gotten fired after the second time at least? Or how about the new Silverquake? Maybe, but leafing through the issue, Gerry could see the story took place in the ghetto. He saw enough blacks in real life, thank you. Or The Mighty Victors? Pretty good art by Dick Dobbins, especially during that quantum matter battle in the Zordonian space station, but Gerry had already read that issue twice. He should have taken the time to choose better comics instead of waiting till the last second then grabbing whatever he could find at home. But even the worst comics were better than this sorry place, Presque Isle, that peninsula jutting out into Lake Erie, near the city of Erie.

His parents sat behind him in folding chairs, his mother reading Newsweek (THE NIXON TAPES), his father reading U.S. News & World Report (BUGGING INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE). Gerry had always had an interest in current events, not as much as his parents, but enough to make him feel more sophisticated than his classmates, whose favorite pastime involved placing ketchup packets on the street, watching vehicles drive over the packets, and—

“Excuse me?”

Two people had walked up: a man carrying a folded folding chair, and a girl carrying an oversized tote bag.

“Excuse me?” the man repeated, addressing Gerry’s parents. “Do you mind if my daughter and I plop down next to you, here in the shade? If I spend more than five minutes out in the sun, I turn into beef jerky.”

“I know what you mean,” Gerry’s mother replied. “I burn pretty easily myself.”

“So you don’t mind if we plop down here?”

“I don’t mind. Do you mind, Roy?”

“Nope,” Roy answered.

“Thanks,” the man said. He unfolded his chair: green mesh fabric on a gray aluminum frame. “What a coincidence we have the same chairs, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” Gerry’s mother said.

“Great minds think alike.”

“They certainly do.”

The man sat down in his chair. The girl sat down next to Gerry on the bedspread and placed the bag between them.

“So, I guess we should introduce ourselves,” her father said. “We’re the Seahorse family. And yes, really, that’s our last name, Seahorse. It’s been in our family for generations. Along with”—he pointed at his face—“my cute little button nose.”

Gerry’s parents laughed. In reality, that guy had a nose like a bloated cantaloupe, like the Screaming Ghost’s nose in Hatchetman, not one of Gerry’s favorite comics, one he’d stopped reading months ago after that boring Battle Renewed plot where the characters spent far more time whining about their lives instead of, you know, battling.

“Anyway, you can call me Jake,” he continued. “And this here’s my perfect peach, my daughter Margot. Margot with a silent T at the end—a T for ‘terrific.’ ” He turned to face her. “Say ‘hi,’ Margot.”

“Hi,” she muttered.

“Tell them how old you are, Margot.”

She didn’t respond.

“Margot?”

No response.

“She’s thirteen. You know how moody teenagers can get.”

“No I didn’t. Thank you for sharing that with me,” she said, staring at something in the distance.

The adults laughed.

Jake and Margot looked alike. They each had light red hair, pasty skin, and a lanky physique. And—ahem—that cute little button nose.

“I’m Roy Blanchard, my wife Helen, our son Gerry-with-a-G,” Gerry’s father said.

“G for ‘Gee, our son’s great,’ right?’ Jake asked.

“Right.”

“How old are you, Gerry?”

“Twelve,” he said.

“He’s growing up fast,” Helen said. “He starts junior high in a couple weeks.”

“Hell on Earth, trust me,” Margot said.

“Trust you? Maybe next time,” Jake said.

That Serious about Directing

I present the following excerpt from my upcoming Kindle book, The Making of Indecent Betrayal: Two Versions.

■

“I have some news that’ll knock your jock off,” Frank told me one morning as I wiped down the espresso machine. We were baristas at Coffee Clutch, the airport development district’s latest upscale coffeehouse. “I’m going to direct my first movie.”

“Really?” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to direct.”

“Neither did I, till a few weeks ago. I thought, why the hell not? I’ve always liked movies.”

“That doesn’t mean you know how to make one.”

“Anyone can make a movie if they really want to.”

“Whatever you say, Spielberg,” I said, placing an eighteen-ounce bag of Coffee Clutch Dark Decaf Ground Coffee, Special Yellow Ribbon Edition (an unspecified portion of sales going towards unspecified 9/11 charities), onto the shelving unit next to the machine.

“I’m serious,” Frank said. “I went to the city last week and bought some pretty advanced filmmaking equipment—uh, let’s see, two digital videocams, some tripods for the videocams, some digital recording gear, some special-effects software, a couple of spotlights, even one of those clapperboards that you clap down on when you wanna start shooting a scene? Yeah, I bought all that stuff. It cost a little over five grand.”

“Wow.”

“Told you I was serious about directing.”

“Where’d you get the money?”

“I maxed out my Discover card, the only card I had left. The only card I hadn’t already maxed out? The one I try to avoid using, ’cause it charges a million and a half percent interest each month? I’m that serious about directing. I’ve even written a screenplay, my first one ever.”

“What’s it called?”

“Indecent Betrayal. It’s an erotic thriller. I grew up watching erotic thrillers on cable. What can I say, I like boobies.”

“Right. So when do you plan to start filming?”

“This Saturday. At the mansion.”

“Do your parents know?”

“Uh-huh. I told them. They thought it was cute I wanted to direct, like they thought I was five years old and I had said”—high-pitched voice—“ ‘When I gwow up, I wanna be a fi-wuhman, or, or an astwonaut, or, or, or Chief Justice of the Supweme Court, yaaaay!’ ” Frank had clapped during that “yaaaay!” part but apparently not loud enough for our supervisor to hear in the backroom, or else she would have stepped out front and berated us. The two or three customers sitting in our coffeehouse (it was the mid-morning lull) apparently hadn’t heard, either.

“Anyways,” Frank continued, “my parents did permit me to film there, at the mansion, as long as I didn’t do any damage. Plus they’ll stay out of my way, ’cause I knew even before asking that they’ll be in Miami for the weekend on business. But they don’t know about the mature content I plan to film, so”—Frank lifted his finger to his lips—“Shhhhh.”

“Yeah.”

I put some Coffee Clutch Maximum Mocha Cake Pops into the display case.

“So I was wondering,” Frank said. “Would you like to help me out on Saturday?”

“Help you out?”

“With the cameras, the lights, all that technical stuff.”

“I don’t know a thing about movie-making.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem for you, Mac.”

“I guess not.”

“I’ll give you a copy of the screenplay beforehand, soon as I can get copies made.”

“Okay.”

“So you in?”

“I don’t know. How much you paying me?”

“Nothing. But I can give you five percent of the profits from DVD sales. I plan to make this a direct-to-video release.”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, seven percent. That’s as high as I can go. Whaddaya say, Mac?’

I paused.

“Go fill the napkin holders,” I said.