How Best to Avoid Dying

by Owen Egerton

  “What, my Lish, was your sweet wish?”

  Lish smiled and bit into her kolache.

  Rex H leaned in close. “Tell me a poem.”

  She yearned for poetry, hurt for poetry. Bubbles to words to stars. But she had never shared her writings with anyone.

  ~You’ve never asked to hear my poems.

  ~I don’t need to. I’m the one who writes them.

  ~You really believe that?

  ~Yes, I do.

  ~Then you’re a pretty shitty writer.

  “You got to partake to taste what’s at stake,” Rex H told her. Lish did sometimes perform her poems at home for an audience of a saltshaker and a ceramic paperweight. Lish would step onto a milk crate stage. She was always nervous while doing this, which is one of the main reasons she did it. Nothing else made her nervous, not the spelling bees she was compelled to compete in, not cheating on Professor Hoggles’ philosophy tests during her one semester of college, not any dance from her two years as “Lemon” at The Red Rose Entertainment Bar and Bistro. The nervous thrill of poetry was its own distinct feeling.

  She would pause, glance at the saltshaker and paperweight, and lick her lips. Then Lish would begin.

  “Polly Flip.” She would give the smallest curtsy and leave the stage.

  Another night her poem was: “Pitten Sour.”

  “Come on, sweetness, let me hear one.” Rex H smiled and his dimple came to life again.

  “Aroma Pension,” she whispered and did the best curtsy she could while sitting.

  “Nice,” said Rex H, leaning back. “But why so small? I mean a poem is a stack of words, a tower of words, that you can climb up on and touch the sky.”

  “Small flies.”

  Once she had tried to write a three worded poem. She got as far as “Loosely Gargle” and hit a block. For days she prayed that the third word would fall from heaven, float down like a piece of cloud and land in her pink and purple notebook. “Come on, God,” she whispered. “Lend a hand.” But God gave no word. Eventually she stopped waiting and considered the poem complete. When she read it, she always paused for an extra beat after “Gargle” and before her curtsy. That extra space is what made the poem special. It quickly became her favorite poem because it had been coauthored by God. She had written the words and He had written the silence.

  “Hey, I got to do this performing thing.” Rex H touched Lish’s hand. “Can we talk more afterward?”

  Lish nodded.

  The crowd, thirty maybe forty, packed the place. All here to see Rex H’s rising star. He had appeared on VH1, ABC’s Hot-Spot Poets, and had even made a guest appearance on the short-lived American Poet Idol. And though Lish had just met him, she felt proud.

  “Tell some truth now,” someone said from the middle of the room. Someone else whistled.

  Rex H swaggered onto the stage. His shoulders moved forward first, making big circles, and as if their momentum was enough, the rest of his body rose up the steps. The crowd went still and Rex H began.

  “Hot mother fucking trivial pursuit,” he slid across the stage, holding out his palms. “They have yet to film the yellow man’s Roots.” The crowded hooted. He closed his palms. “No Uncle Tom’s Cabin. No Schindler’s List. Not even our own Gorillas in the Mist. No story about the Yellow Man, no story about me. Unless you count Jackie Chan or old dead Bruce Lee.”

  ~He’s good.

  ~He’s not that good, Lish.

  ~It’s the energy. The emotion. It’s sweet.

  ~It’s trite.

  ~I think you’re jealous.

  “A white satellite can see the Great Wall from space, but no white sees past my yellow face.” Rex H paused, drawing the audience in with his Tootsie Roll eyes. “The reason I’m pleasin’ until you people be weezin’ and thinking of treason is—”

  “You suck,” someone yelled from the back of the room and then a few laughs.

  “As I was saying…the reason I’m pleasing—”

  “Boo! You’re the worst stand-up ever.” The voice was French, each syllable surrounded by a buttery crust.

  “The reason I’m pleasing—”

  “Here’s a poem,” the French voice said. “Go fuck a duck.” More laughter and what sounded like high-fives.

  Lish knew who it was. For the past several weeks the local art scene had been plagued by a cruel collection of beefed-up Dadaists.

  ~Beefed-up Dadaists?

  ~Quiet, you. I’m writing.

  The gang wandered about town in pinstriped suits tight against their bulging physiques and intruded upon any expression of art. Recently they had disrupted a downtown art exhibit, two high school plays, and a midnight showing of David Lynch’s Eraserhead.

  Rex H stood perfectly still and stared into the murk in the back of the room. The crowd stiffened. The air felt cold, dangerous. Rex H stepped from the stage onto a front row table.

  “Yo so French, yo snail-smacker,” he said, stepping from table to table until he was in the middle of the room, eyes fixed on the thick shadows. “No soap, no hope, just wine and crackers.”

  One of the Dadaists stood. He was over six feet tall and built like a linebacker. His shirt had been removed and painted on his chest was the word “excrement.”

  “Your poems,” he said, sucking on a long cigarette. “They tickle my scrotum like a well-placed piece of broccoli.”

  “I’ll show you broccoli,” Rex H said, stepping closer. The crowd cheered.

  The Dadaist causally grabbed Rex H’s leg. Umph—Rex H fell.

  Lish watched as the Dadaist kneaded his fist into Rex H’s face. She watched as a small woman flung her body onto the Dadaist’s bare back. She watched as the other Dadaists and poets rose for battle. She thought about the silence God had written. “And this,” she whispered.

  A coffee cup smashed against Noam Chomksy’s head. And this, she thought.

  Rex H, still in a headlock, bit the Dadaist’s bare belly. And this.

  Lish noticed that Rex H and the Dadaist were glowing. And this.

  The chairs, the tables, the small woman, the crowd, the floor, Noam’s broken face, the blood red walls, the kolaches were all glowing. And this.

  A toddler knocked over a votive candle and cried. And this.

  A woman scooped up the child in her arms. And this.

  The flame from the candle ate at a rope tied to bolt on the floor. And this.

  The burning rope said, Lish. And this.

  Someone slipped on the water from the Noam Chomsky fountain and pushed Lish against the wall. And this.

  The rope snapped and the oil painting of the British fleet defeating the Spanish Armada plummeted toward the back half of Lish’s skull. And this.

  Lish looked up to see that the approaching frame and the rope above it were also glowing. So were her eyelashes.

  And this.

  Lish stepped out of the way and the frame smashed to the floor.

  ~That was the painting. Why’d you let me live?

  ~I don’t have to answer that.

  ~But you let me live.

  ~The story isn’t over yet.

  Lish climbed up on a stool and looked out over the crowd, out over the conflict. And Lish saw her stool was a tiny stage. She was not nervous, she was not even aware of herself.

  “A Poem for Peace in One Word,” she said. But no one heard. The fighting raged on, more fierce, more powerful than any word. Then she spoke her poem. Her poem was a sigh, a bubble that burst. The sigh filled the room. It wet Dadaists’ eyes and poets’ bones. It ruffled Rex H’s hair. Rex H, still in a headlock, saw her. He released the Dadaist’s stomach from his mouth and smiled. And if Lish had learned to hold a moment forever, this would be the moment. She curtseyed. Rex H nodded. She looked down at the painting lying on the floor, a square of ocean, sky, and ships.

  And Lish dove right into the painting…

  ~Wait, Lish. I didn’t say you could do that.

  She jumped in headfirst. She half-expected another s
mack-crack but instead Lish found sky and an ocean below. As she dropped she yelled to the Spanish to turn back before it was too late. Floating on the ocean, between two burning ships, was another frame. Lish splashed through the frame, through water for just a moment, bubbles petering from the corners of her mouth, and then she fell into another sky above another ocean. Here the air was free of cannons and gunpowder. Below her on the waves, another frame. Splash! Into a sky filled with clouds and down into another frame floating on a blue-green ocean. Splash! The water was filled with the songs of whales. Lish sang along. Then another sky. Another floating frame. Splash! Sky. Floating frame. Splash! Dinosaurs waddling and watching from the shore. Lish waved. Splash! Sky. Sickly trilobites peeking from the surf. Floating frame. Splash! Sky. Below her boiling seas…

  ~Lish, that’s going to hurt.

  ~Quiet, you. I’m writing.

  Splash! Underwater volcanoes with lava like fudge. Sky and another frame and the seas were black. Splash! Cold. Another frame and there were no seas at all. And Lish fell even faster, an outlaw of physics. Another frame and she fell into stars, an ocean of stars, on which floated another frame and through that an ocean of younger, bluer stars, then glowing dust like speeding lightning bugs, one light, no light, one atom, no atom, one wrinkle, one nothing that gave birth to all something and the nothing is the shape of a frame.

  ~What’s there, Lish?

  ~I don’t know.

  ~Neither do I, so you can’t go. You can’t go where the writer can’t describe.

  ~You really are a shitty writer.

  ~I can’t follow, Lish.

  ~No need.

  ~Think of the sperm.

  ~I’m just doing what they would do. This is the kwaggle of all things.

  ~Think of Rex H.

  ~Floating frame. Nothing more.

  ~Think of me.

  ~I will.

  ~

  ~

  ~

  ~Goodbye.

  Goodbye.

  and this

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the excellent journals and insightful editors who helped craft and publish many of these stories: “Pierced” and “Heart Thongs for Jesus,” So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library; “The Martyrs of Mountain Peak,” Puerto del Sol; “Lord Baxtor Ballsington,” Word Riot; “Christmas,” Fish Anthology 2006; “The Beginning of All Things,” “Four Tiny Tales Concerning Transformation,” and “The Adventures of Stimp,” The Austin Daze; “Of All Places,” and “Lazarus Dying,” Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature; “The Fecalist,” Blow; “St. Gobbler’s Day,” Blow and in a slightly alerted form in Two Note Solo; “Lish,” Absinthe: New European Writing.

  Special thanks to my wonderful editor and wise counsel Liz Parker. And thanks to Megan Fishmann, Kelly Winton and the entire Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press family.

  Much thanks goes to Matthew Bialer and Lindsay Ribar at Greenburger Associates for excellent guidance and representation.

  And thanks to all those who read and commented on these stories including Ric Williams, Matt & Melissa Stuart, Stacey Swann, Manuel Gonzales, Mike Yang, and Michael & Stephanie Noll. And much thanks to Deltina Hay for originally putting this collection in print. And thanks to the MFA Program at Texas State University and all the fine writers and teachers I had the honor of learning from while there. Thanks to Paul Cohen and his wonderful family for continued support even after seeing me naked.

  Thanks, too, to my comedy colleagues—Les McGehee, John Erler, Jerm Pollet, and so many others. And to Tim and Karrie League and the Alamo Drafthouse. And thanks to Russell Sharman and Chris Mass for laughter and wisdom.

  I wrote most of these stories in the cozy corners and breezy courtyards of Austin’s holy coffeehouses. Thank you especially to Leslie and the crew at Bouldin Creek Cafe and Rob & Jenée and the gang at Once Over Coffee Bar.

  And finally, thank you with all my heart and all my smiles to Jodi, Arden, and Oscar. I love you more than Nutella and hot tea.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Owen Egerton is one of the talents behind the award-winning The Sinus Show and Master Pancake Theater at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, and for several years was the artistic director of Austin’s National Comedy Theatre. He’s written screenplays for Fox, Warner Brothers, and Disney studios. He is also the author of the one-man play The Other Side of Sleep and the novel The Book of Harold, which is currently in development as a television series with Warner Bros. Television. He lives in Austin.