The Atomic Man Pt. 1

(The other day sitting in class I thought I overheard someone say "atomic nights." This is the beginning of a story built from that phrase.)

Charlie couldn't get his bowl lit. He sat on the bare mattress in his bedroom, holding a purple lighter nearly out of fluid, trying to smoke the little bit of dope he picked up from his cousin last weekend. It would have been hard enough with the piece of shit lighter, but the ceiling fan was on, dousing every feeble flame he managed to coax from the sputtering lighter.

Charlie was getting angrier. Like idling at a green light. Nettles and stinging sweat.

He was tired of fugue days and atomic nights, blazed into fecklessness, nuked to sleep only to rise and face another inscrutable morning.

"Ahh, fuck!" said Charlie the Atomic Man, the housing contractor aging at quantum speed, 28 going on 40. He flung the lighter across the room.

An Abridged List

Must remember to stretch when I wake up.

Must remember to say "Bless You" when strangers sneeze.

Must remember to keep practicing my whistle.

Must remember to shave that weird hair on my nipple.

Must remember that it's all so funny.

Must remember to be grateful for misery.

Must remember the way the stars looked when I was drunk, like falling tears.

Must remember how happy that woman was when she found five dollars on the street.

Must remember: Mountains.

On a neighbor's front porch during a thunderstorm

"I know this black guy." Jason stood as he began to relate his story, eager for my undivided attention.

"He's a gangbanger, he used to hang a blue rag out of his left pocket, because he's a Crip. He could walk around all day and nobody would want to look him in the eyes." The tale picked up pace.

"I have this other friend, big fucking swastika right here." Jason slapped the spot on his bare chest, three times.

"We went to the beach in LA. He had his shirt off, he's a big guy." He knotted his shoulders to emphasize, looking like someone pushing a wheelbarrow.

"People would come up to him, ask him about it, make conversation. He talked to them, he's actually a nice guy. But it goes to show you, in this country, people are more afraid of a black gangbanger than a white guy with a fucking swastika tattooed on his chest."

A combination of driving through New Jersey, half-remembered dreams and frantic words scrawled in a notebook at 4 a.m. (Part One)

I awoke this morning stuck between sky and earth. As I began to squirm free, I realized I must have rolled over in my sleep and wedged myself into the horizon. For a moment, I stopped struggling and as I considered whether to go back to sleep I took a moment to appreciate the intimacy of the situation. My bed had been empty for some months, and the closeness of the eternal, inscrutable blue above me was comforting, though my back itched from the dirt. Half-imagined fantasies, like time-lapse videos of flowers, blossomed and withered in my sleep-drugged consciousness.

Several hours later I woke again. I was still ensconced, but the cool serenity of summer's dawn had given way to imperious noon: a bone-bleaching Sun had ascended to its throne and forbade a return to sleep. Licking parched lips, I propped myself onto my elbows and started to shimmy free. Scraping my knee against a sharp rock on the ground, I managed to escape, and set off in search of a cup of water.

Descending into a bowl-shaped valley, I saw a sprawling industrial town. Heralds of acrid smoke, burning plastic, rushed up the hillside to greet me. Great steam towers like ram's horns boring vertically into the earth emitted a drone which reverberated mightily throughout the town. Cathedral steeples in the distance roiled in the heat of the factories, like a reflection in dirty water. The whole scene was like an overexposed photograph, I could feel the dirt under my fingernails as I held it in my hands.