"It's not about you!” I said.
"True,” she said, without asking how I felt.
I left serial messages on Steve's cell phone, then waited for a callback. He didn't call, but showed up around one. “I didn't hear the phone ring,” he said and I said, “Oh."
We snuggled in bed.
"I thought you wanted to talk,” he said when it was obvious I was going to say zip.
"I do,” I said, not knowing what to say. We fell asleep and I woke up before him and watched his profile bloom in the morning light.
If only Steve didn't have spots! My fingers walked along his skin until they found a small white circle on his thigh. I'd never noticed it before, because of his leg hair. I'd thought I already knew everything about him, so this new spot bugged me. I wasn't paying attention and didn't notice when I started to rub harder, with as much pressure as I'd used to scrub the sheets. My fingers dug into his skin like a number four eraser trying to snuff out marks left by a number two pencil.
Steve said, “Ouch!” and I saw I'd drawn blood. “Baby,” Steve said, “what the hell are you doing?"
"I don't know,” I said. “I wasn't thinking."
"Well, think,” he said with a laugh. “For my sake, think."
He stared at his leg and said, “Jesus, what did you do?"
I apologized for making him bleed. Except it was worse. Instead of the white patch disappearing into the black the way I would have expected, I had erased the surrounding dark pigment and made the white part spread like melted butter.
"I didn't mean to,” I said. And I had a terrible thought: that it might be easier if Steve was white.
"Oh, man,” he said with a sigh. “Think you're the only one who worries we'll face problems?"
"It doesn't matter. We'll work it out."
"Is that right?” he said. “I don't believe you."
I didn't believe me either, which scared me.
Steve said, “We should see a counselor."
"It's too late for talk."
"I suppose you're right,” Steve said.
Because Steve disliked rubbers, I was having a baby. This wasn't fair! I stared at the insensitive, selfish man I was about to marry. Maybe he wouldn't be such a good father after all. I climbed atop him and scrubbed the white patch on his chest.
"Please stop,” he said, but I kept at it until I made the white spot stretch.
"I can't handle this!” he said. “Why should I change and not you?"
"What are you talking about?” I said, letting go. “You want me to change? So, change me!"
Steve held my arm and picked at a freckle on my arm. Massaging the brown spots with his thumbs made the color break open and seep into the white. He darkened a full moon across my shoulder before stopping. “There,” he said. “How's that feel?"
It felt all wrong.
I touched Steve's new white patches. They felt bay leaf dry. “Shit!” I said. “I'm so sorry!” I really was.
"This is stupid,” he said.
"No duh,” I said.
I laughed and so did he. Our first big fight; no wonder we weren't any good at it.
I rubbed big circles over my tummy, wondering if that could make the baby change colors.
"Even if you turned me white or I turned you black, this baby's made,” Steve said.
"I'm not ready,” I said.
"Me neither,” said Steve.
"Oh well,” I said.
"Exactly,” said Steve.
I remembered why I loved him. I felt something weird from inside that began as a tickle and grew stronger, like a skater tracing a figure eight into the ice. “The baby!” I said. It was kicking with its tiny feet. Was it was trying to change me, the way babies did, from the inside, in ways you couldn't see?
"Let's call it, Domino,” I said. “You know—because a baby topples the stack."
"Good one,” said Steve. “Do we stand by and watch everything fall? Or do we try to just pick up the pieces once they scatter?"
I hugged him tight. “We have to be ready for anything."
"You're right,” he said.
I felt happy. We both stared at my belly, curious, maybe a little scared, and waited, helpless to do anything but watch for the baby to make its next move.
* * * *
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The Faith of Metal in Ghosts
Richard Polney
"Surrender the consciousness to the rhythms and spectacles of the natural worlds,” Annie thought as the embers in the fireplace dimmed. She wanted her father to tend it, poke it, and move the coals with his bare hands. She remembered his pores were the old style, random KISERVA equations—slightly artificial. She felt in her jacket pocket for her cigarettes and cell phone and when she found it, it rang. She answered.
"Surrender!” said the voice. She dropped the phone and the battery broke from the phone's body.
It rang again. Annie's younger sister, Susie, got there first but she didn't answer it. She could only hold the cell phone at arm's length, staring at the IR outlet. Susie put the phone under a couch cushion.
"What should we do now?” said Annie.
Susie was leaning by the window, looking out, and talking to no one. She assumed the pose of a Victorian-era woman waiting for a lover, but she was more afraid that the phone would ring again. It was close to midnight; Annie returned to sitting in the sink while rocking just slightly, smoking her cigarettes.
To kiss her father in his grave.
"'Ghosts are ghosts because they don't permit social reconstruction of their biorhythms,’ is what mum says.” Susie muttered. Mum always made things better. Surrender the consciousness.
"Mum says there might be good news for the rest of us,” said Susie, thinking of her own sputtering cadmium-nickel batteries as she took the seat next to Annie. Although MANOVA programming dictated them to sleep, the girls instead spent the night in nightmare. Compound symmetry and spherical equations could not ameliorate the contradictions of ghosts running upside down on bedroom ceilings.
To morning, first thing.
Their mother greeted them at breakfast. Annie walked into the kitchen first; wishing that father were already there, eating some fourth-rate magnesium fuel cell that mum swiped from the candy factory. Annie stopped for a moment to touch a layer of dust on the spectacles resting on the kitchen table.
The girls registered happiness smiles to their mum who began to prepare breakfast. “It's Them and Us,” mum thought, snapping algorithms.
With a spasm, Susie lurched inches above the ground. She'd gone into saint mode! “Look, your father's holding her up!” said mum in awe. The three used multivariate criteria to test the statistical significance of the possibility of future repeated visitations, contrasting colors of three suns. “He's giving her a consciousness-insight,” mum said. Annie rested her cheek against Susie's cold, floating knees.
Their faces were almost sentient. “Surrender the consciousness to the rhythms and spectacles of the natural worlds,” they said in church-unison, algorithms snapping, knees going cold and dead.
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
Home and Security
Gavin J. Grant
With thousands of like-minded others, I went to the big peace rally in New York City on February 15th, 2003. It was a cold day, and my wife and I walked up Third Avenue from 32nd to 68th Street before we could cut over to First Avenue and join the rally. Which was really a slow march, but since the city government wouldn't give us a permit to march, let's call it a rally.
* * * *
What do we want?
So many things.
When do want them?
It doesn't seem possible, but now, please.
* * * *
...March 5th, 2003, Local News: Writer and editor Gavin J. Grant, 33, (picture) of Northampton, Mass., is believed to be one of hundreds of detainees held after police and other government agencies moved in to calm a noisy and potentiall
y-violent peace rally in New York City's Washington Square Park....
* * * *
I joined the United for Peace and Justice email list for information on future rallies. I forwarded their email about a march and vigil on the fifth of March to my wife. She had to pick up some freelance work in New York and readily agreed to go.
* * * *
Tell me what a democracy looks like.
From here, a dictatorship.
This is what a democracy looks like.
This march, or this war? It's hard to tell.
* * * *
...March 7th, 2003, Email: Gavin, Dad here. Got a call from INS (IRS?) saying you had been held (under Patriotic act?) after rally and asking re: marriage and so on. Confirm ok by you to send these? Love, dad and mum. xx....
* * * *
The march and candlelight vigil on fifth of March was as depressing as the February 15th rally. Thousands of people gathered outside Senator Hilary Clinton's office and marched to Senator Chuck Schumer's office to protest their voting to send the USA into war with Iraq. We marched down Third to 42nd Street and then snaked over to Fifth, blocking crosstown traffic. We marched to Washington Square Park and were closely watched by the Fifth Avenue business owners,- some of whom seemed to dither between a desire to join us and a fear of the crowd. But we were no mob. People drummed and danced, sang the usual songs, held or wore signs that were as funny and direct as ever ("The only Bush I trust is my own” was more popular this time), yet, will this stop a war? Hundred of police seemed to think we might start a Battle of Seattle ourselves. Which leads to thoughts of whether we might place some of these police in the White House.
* * * *
...March 8th, 2003, National News: Detained immigrant Gavin Grant's website (Internet Archive link) has been taken down by the federal government under suspicions of terrorist links. Grant, a freelance writer who has written for alternative publications such as The Urban Pantheist, Weird Times, and Xerography Debt, recently published altered transcripts of two of President Bush's remarks on Iraq on his website. Citing freedom of speech and linking to satirical websites such as The Onion, Grant simply switched the President's name with Saddam Hussein's in two transcripts. The first transcript made it appear that Hussein was about to attack the USA with 3,000 cruise missiles—with no differentiation of civilian and military targets. The second transcript, however, was perhaps even more threatening and, given the present Orange Alert, is likely the reason Grant was arrested. Grant altered President Bush's remarks on the possibilities of an internal coup in Iraq and changed them to suggest that generals and others in the U.S. Armed Forces might find themselves well rewarded if they initiated an internal revolt. The White House announced there would be a press conference concerning the latest detainees at 2 p.m. today and referred all questions to Richard Ashcroft's office....
* * * *
We, The People, Don't Want This War!
Shame Bush hasn't noticed.
March 15: The thing is, I haven't been arrested. I'm not even in hiding. This morning I sanded the ice in my driveway and talked to Jeff, our contractor, about building some bookshelves in a room upstairs. When I opened my email there were 250+ emails—mostly from people I don't know. 90% were supportive, but some were just vitriolic. I haven't even posted my articles yet—they were just ideas I was playing with. I was going to contact a lawyer friend and a guy I know who ran a satirical website to get some advice before I posted. The lines keep moving and I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to cross any of the dangerous ones.
* * * *
...March 12, 2003, NYPD Spokesman: We can confirm arrests of a number of individuals participating in an anti-government rally in Washington Square Park on the evening of March 5th. These individuals are no longer in our jurisdiction. They are being held under the auspices of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 in an undisclosed location....
* * * *
I don't like singing and chanting with the other marchers. I think walking quietly is just as important. That way we don't all look as if we're being carried away in an ecstatic trance. A few people jangled their keys as they walked. I wondered if it was just an impulse to be rhythmic or if they had read Ursula K. Le Guin's story about a revolution, “Unlocking the Air."
* * * *
Drop Bush, not bombs.
Or at least his lapdog, Blair.
* * * *
At the end of the February 15th rally when the closely-herded thousands of us were leaving, I went to walk around the outside edge of a phone box. A policeman stopped me and told me I had to stay on the sidewalk. Cold, frustrated by this abject stupidity and niggardliness, I objected.
"That,” and I pointed to the two feet of sidewalk between the phone box and the street, “is the sidewalk.” The policeman declared it was not, and another policeman moved closer to us in case I was trouble. I repeated that the space between the phone and the road was, in fact, sidewalk. The policeman, putting his hand on his billyclub, repeated his determined opinion that it was not. I held my hands up in the air to show I wasn't about to start anything, could not stop myself from calling him a fascist, and left. I wondered how near to arrest I'd been.
* * * *
...September 5, 2003, National News: Detainees from the March 5th peace march in New York have now been held for one hundred and eighty days without access to family, legal aid, or media. The Department of Homeland Security refuses to release the number of detainees or any identifying information. Twenty-three of the detained have since been stripped of their citizenship and deported to their countries of origin. Mothers of the Disappeared, a new New York City-based organization claims that the detainees are being tortured and tried in secret courts. White House spokesman Jim Morrell refused to comment on what he called “pure fabulation."....
* * * *
The US government declared the war in Iraq over in May 2003. The ongoing reports of killings in Iraq remind me of growing up in the U.K. War was never formally declared in Northern Ireland, but the headlines were often about bombings, murders, and shootings. The peace process in Ireland is one thing that fills me with hope. Perhaps the past can be let go—not forgotten—and a new future can be chosen based on peace and negotiation rather than on the acts of a randomly chosen period one, two, or three hundred years ago.
* * * *
...March 5, 2004, National News: The one-year anniversary of last year's national peace rally and the accompanying series of arrests was marked today by rallies, countrywide student sit-ins, and the third masked Black Bloc flashmob appearance (exclusive video) in New York City this week. Although a number of the detainees are known to be serving prison terms, the Department of Homeland Security resolutely refuses to release the original number of marchers detained, or any identifying information. Mothers of the Disappeared claim the detainees have been moved to the US military base in Guantanamo Bay and that, citing Amnesty International interviews with ex-prisoners from the Afghanistan war of 2001, the conditions in Guantanamo are an abuse of the detainees human rights. White House spokesman Jim Morrell refused to comment on what he called “pure fabulation."....
* * * *
I never carry my green card with me. I know the number, but I don't want to lose it if my wallet were stolen. So if I were arrested my identity cards would be my New York driver's license with my old address on it, credit cards, and membership cards for the library, Pleasant Street Video, AAA, and Amnesty International. I look in the mirror and I'm not sure who's there. There's a man with lines around his eyes, and a somewhat blank expression. What does he want? When does he want it? Not this President. Not this future.
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
The Greebles
Jason Stewart
Beware, boy pretending to be bewildered,
For sitch-swipping with their villainous Vernious
Grabble the Greebles o'er the moon-splashed rooftops.
They sniggle the criggle c
racks like starry hounds,
Cursing with cries, “Gillify!,” without a sound,
Until a little noggin full of whimsy
Sprouts a glozing dream, plump and ximbsy.
Sprigging betwixt the shingles and the shadows,
These vile glossolalists mumry ecstatic—
Woe! to those whom they choose to extricate, boy!—
Bridilling you with their graveyard caterwauls,
Their hoary fingers swish and fish in your skull,
Wheedling your slippery persimmon glands free,
They sitch-swip them, then burple back to the roof,
Riding the breath of your great-grandmother's ghost.
The Vernious vrawls, the Greebles gruggle “Grumgaw!"
And with your persimmon gland snitched and bewitched,
They sliff back to their Greeble-holes to distill fine
Dream-wine,
* * * *
So remember my boy, and beware my boy,
The noises that knock on the rooftops at night,
Come from the jibbering Greebles who bite.
Keep your skullcap and scalp fastened quite tight,
And never, never let your dreams out of sight.
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
Dear Aunt Gwenda: Advice from a Better Time & Place
* * * *
Dear Ms Bond,
I share a house with my boyfriend and another guy. While we have our regular share of visitors, one in particular takes ‘guest’ to its absolute limit. Let's call this unwanted visitor ‘Steve’ and characterise him as someone who talks a lot and has a non-subtle presence. While Steve initially came over a few times a week to hang with the guys, he's settled into a routine over the past couple of months where he comes over every evening specifically to hang with my boyfriend.
Apart from the fact I don't have any evening time with my boyfriend any more, I no longer enjoy a quiet night at home as Steve's favourite place is our lounge room. I'm happy for us to have visitors and I genuinely like Steve, but his presence in the house has gone from innocuous furry visitor to full-blown pain-in-the-ass Stephen King rodent. I've talked to my boyfriend about asking Steve to come over less often but he's unwilling to get involved. He doesn't want to upset a long-standing friendship and believes that the situation will sort itself out when our housemate moves out in a couple of weeks. I'm in total disagreement with this. The moving-out housemate finds the continued presence of Steve as annoying as I do and doesn't want him to become a regular fixture at his new place.
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 13 Page 4
