What Happened While You Were in Africa



    I ran a fever for three days. It started a couple hours after I got home from the airport, actually, but I didn't notice until later. By then, of course, it was far too late to do anything. You know how fever are: if it isn't breaking 100 degrees, it isn't trying, so I spent a couple evenings roasting my brain. Anyway, I spent that night drinking water and mildly hallucinating. There wasn't anyone in town, with you and everyone on the plane, so I couldn't get anyone to go to the store for me, and of course I couldn't drive myself. Became paranoidly convinced that the tap water was contaminated for a few hours there, which resulted in the couple gallons of water sitting in the kitchen. Eventually I got my aunt to bring me milk and gatorade, and after a while I started to feel better.
    It rained. For most of a week there it rained once a day, around noon. Reminded me of when I was in New Orleans. It was nice to have the rain, so far into the summer: we need the rain. No matter what the season, flash floods and all, I always think that. It's what my mom used to say, and every time I see stormclouds or get caught in a shower, I think "we need the rain." Part and parcel of being raised in a pseudo-desert during an extraordinary drought. That's what they call it if the rainfall is less than a certain percent of the average, and I remember several summers coming up, when we were under boil warnings, burn bans, or water rationing. Lately, a year doesn't go by without four months of burn ban, though. There were four or five years of extraordinary drought in a row when I was a kid, and I guess it really affected my outlook. I remember I was 15 when my folks took us to Toronto, and we took a day trip to Niagara Falls. Took the train, and my brother got to practice his Japanese in the station, when a little old lady dropped her ticket. Standing there, though, looking at the falls, the first thought that came into my head was a paralyzing panic, that all that water was just pouring down a hole. It was like the biggest faucet in the world, and someone had just left it on. It was pretty hot even up in Toronto, but not dry. Maybe we'll have a mild summer this year, with the late rain. If we ever move to some place where it rains a lot, like Washington state or something, I'll probably still say "we need the rain," and the natives will look at me funny.
    I cleaned the kitchen, top to bottom. Found out where the fruit flies were coming from. I didn't even know we had a bag of potatoes.
    Once I was well enough, I got some books out of the library. Read through a whole stack of books I'd been meaning to get to. Some of them off of the GRE English reading list, some of them just good. I'm still not sure if I want to do History or Library Science and Informatics yet, but I'll figure it out. Also read some Wodehouse, because I love Wodehouse and there can't be enough of him in my life, and re read Dune. Re read Brideshead Revisited, too. Don't know why I keep coming back to that book, but there you have it. Keep thinking about digging up a copy of Vile Bodies for a change. Haven't yet. Read an interesting little book called Topper isn't Going Out. I think it's "Topper." Forget who wrote it right now, someone properly famous, though. It'll come back to me.
    I rode your bike about a mile every morning. I'd have used mine, but the list of what it needs to function starts with a funeral and goes down from there. Did some stuff with free weights, too, trying to get back into something like shape. Kept my busy, anyway, and gave me a reason to get out of bed in the morning, before it got too hot.
    Dio died. I had the NPR station on most of the day, and when the alarm went off and they were playing "Rainbow in the Dark," well, you know what that means. Some pre-existing condition type thing, his heart or brain or something. Not one of those messy, o.d. or car crash rock-star debacles. He died like a human being, of some pernicious medical thing, but yeah, Ronnie James Dio died. So did Gary Coleman. And someone else, a woman. Can't think who. Coleman died of what's been killing him his whole life. Dwarfism comes with its own medical problems, after all.
    I adjusted the rear brake on your bike, by the way. It isn't as mushy now, but it still screams. I think maybe the wheel's out of true, because the wear on the brake pads is pretty uneven.
    I did see a few of our friends, after they got back into town. Hung out with Nate from upstairs. That Beer of the Month club he's in has both advantages and disadvantages. Filled out a couple job applications. Out of the last six jobs I applied for, I heard back from two. One was a form letter. The other was a form letter from someone who hadn't even bothered to read the resume, or had unusual difficultly deciphering my gender from my name. You know I sign email with my initials, and have my full name on my resume? The reply used the wrong title of address. Anyway. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky. Historically, though, the jobs I get are the ones I walk into. I think it's hereditary. Blind applications are just not my bag. It'll work out, though.
    The feed store caught fire. The one right by the railroad tracks, not the one out past the highway. Must have caught fire in the night, because I drove past it the other day and it was just half gone. The office and animal store looked okay, but there wasn't much left of the feed lot and storage. They'll have to pull it down, whether they're going to try and reopen or not: I can't imagine there's enough of that left to be rebuilt. Don't know where I'm going to get a hedgehog now. And the work on the grade crossing finally got done, too, so you could get into the parking lot again. They've actually finished with that whole line, now, so going across it you don't risk taking out your undercarriage going over them anymore. Haven't done anything about the pot holes, yet, but I don't think that's Union Pacific's problem.
    I spent an entire day cross-dressing. To pass. Went out for a couple hours, for research. It was terrifying. Also inconvenient.
    My cousin got married. The next boy down from me, aunt Mary's oldest. Three years younger than me and married already. I hope he knows what he's doing, though part of me thinks he did it to get away from his mother, and have a room he only has to share with one other person. My brother reports that the other five were well turned out, though Evan looked like a gangster. Think Marlon Brando in the Godfather, but without the excuse of age. A bit tight in the suit, I suppose. I sent a card. Mom says my cousin John is getting married, too. Different set of cousins. My aunt must be ecstatic. It'll be up at the cathedral in Denver, I guess. John's my brother's age, he's the one who got in that car accident. Was up late working on his Eagle Scout project, driving back from Grand Junction, and he fell asleep at the wheel. Drifted into the oncoming lane and hit a motorcyclist. The car saved his life- it was a Subaru, the engines on those drop down under the car if they're hit, otherwise it would have gone into his lap- and my aunt won't have any other kind of car now. As it was, he's probably still pulling glass out ten years later, and he gave the EMTs a bad scare when he wouldn't come around at first. The other guy wasn't as lucky. He died. John wouldn't drive for years after; he was only seventeen or eighteen, senior year of high school. I'll probably send a card to that wedding, too. That's fine. Greek Orthodox- you have to stand the whole time. I'll pass. Even more ornate than that Byzantine Catholic wedding we went to, with the crowns and all. The bride regal and resplendent, the groom inevitably looking like the birthday boy at Burger King. My uncle will probably officiate- what's the use of being a G.O priest if you can't perform your son's wedding?- and uncle Joseph, the other priest in the family, will probably assist. So much for the great Schism.
    I hung those pictures we've been keeping around. Still haven't gotten my diploma framed, but it's not going anywhere, and it's in that case thing. Got a couple brochures for grad schools I'm not interested in, threw them out. Maybe I should just sit the GRE and go from there.
    There's a gift card on the fridge. I got a coupon, fill a new prescription, get a gift card, and since I needed to fill that scrip the doc gave me, I went ahead. Results of my bloodwork came back, too, no surprises. You should probably get screened, too, since you didn't have a chance to get your jabs before you went over. I'm sure you're clean, but there were dengue and typhoid outbreaks just over the border from where you were, and it doesn't hurt to get checked. Apparently there was also a rash of copper wiring theft in Cape Town, people hacking open streetlights to get the wire out of them. The BBC world reported about it. They said the city was leaving the lights on all day to deter theft, because the promise of electrocution does that, so if you noticed the lights, that's why.
    The fish are fine. Mom's dog got into something last week and had to go to the vet, her head swelled up to twice its normal size. She's fine now. I dog sat for my aunt a couple of days ago. He's much the same as always, a bit blind and a bit daft, and now he's walking sideways for some reason. The vet wants to deal with the hair-in-the-eyes problem by pretty much giving him a facelift, trimming skin from his upper and lower eyelids to reduce the hairiness quotient. Give him the Joan Rivers special. Nothing more expensive than a free pet. I still can't believe the horses-and-retrievers lady has a Shi-Tzu.
    Oh, yeah, I did kind of accidentally break the front window. They're coming to fix it tomorrow. Does that answer your question?

Brick Is Red, page six



    Peter stepped out of the relative calm of his kitchen and immediately regretted it. The living room had been rearranged to host the party, furniture pushed back to accommodate the bodies sitting standing and sprawled out over all available space, and he wasn't looking forward to putting it back together again. Not quite on the carpet, he took a slow pull off of the bottle he held by the neck, hanging between one room and the other: someone passed behind him with a refill, upsetting his equilibrium. Propelled by a convivial slap between the shoulder blades, Peter lurched forward into the descending spiral of his birthday party.
    Zooey had gone to some effort to round up the crowd, a mixed bag of people he knew from bars, support groups, and the local activist front. His housemates had their individual reactions, Ian having barricaded himself in his bedroom and Michael taking the opportunity to compare fetishes with a statistical sampling of the local queer community. He currently held court seated in their floor, cross-legged, holding forth on the relative merits of rope and leather to an audience of lifers, hobbyists, and the merely perturbed; Peter passed by with a wave, dutifully making the rounds, and fetched up in a corner, well away from the stereo, in a small knot of his own.
    "Hey, it's the birthday boy." Jordan was drunk already, and gripped by the terrible belief that he was funny. "Congratulations, you made it to twenty-two. So you're gonna start shaving soon, right?"
    Peter didn't bother bristling, his still-smooth jawline a deeper subject than Jordan's liquor could carry. "You first." He lifted the bottle again, reflecting that the advantage to bantering with drunks went with the disadvantage; witty or not, they'd laugh. The hops caught on his tongue and the back of his throat, thick bitter scent sawing into muscle memory, and he swallowed more than beer. From his station at the edge of the room he could watch the crowd reveling in honor of his birth, little groups and larger spreads, interacting strangely in the suspension of alcohol and hormone therapy.
    "Peter, get out of that corner. You're not going to spend your own party moping around, I forbid it." Zooey appeared from behind the wall of the rugby team, bearing down on him. "Come on, let's have some fun. You remember fun, right?" She slipped both hands around one of his arms, pulling him up against her as she sailed back out into the human minefield. "Smile, talk, and relax. You're already home and everyone here is legal, so there's nothing to worry about. It's just a birthday party."
    "I swear, if anyone tries to give me birthday spankings, I will light them on fire." He addressed the comment for her only, easy enough to do in the growing din.
    "What," she gave him her best smile, "Even me?" He glared at her, and she rolled her eyes. "Kidding. Unless you're into that. You know, since it's your birthday." She found a clear space on a couch and fell into it, shoving someone's feet out of the way while she was at it. "Sit. Enjoy the energy." Her first instruction, he followed.
    "Thanks for doing this. Putting the party together." Someone turned the stereo up again, pushing Peter further over in his effort to be heard. Zooey flashed him another smile in reply; when the song changed, though, she got up and joined the vocal minority claiming part of the carpet as a dance floor. He watched her for a while, before the pounding of the bass started to rattle his molars, and then got up and took the longest available path back to the kitchen.

News Etc


  Hello, everybody. Been moving around for the last month, hence the radio silence. Yesterday was my birthday so there's another Sunday down the drain. I should have another page of Brick up in the next couple of days, though, and maybe something extra as an apology to whoever reads this.

Brick Is Red, page five

    Carol yanked the handbrake, halting the slow backward wobble of the car in the pull-around, and killed the engine. Keys still in the ignition, she switched the fans, lights, and radio off, practiced fingers flicking through a check that always reminded Wendy of a pilot in the cockpit.     "This is the right thing to do, right?" Carol looked over at her, hand stilled on the key, as she breathed the sentence out. "I mean, I'm not moving out or giving up. We just need a little distance. Some perspective. So this is good, right?" Facing carefully forward, she kept her eyes on Carol, beside ... (read more)

Third for Adam

    Three days' indifference after the word for Kate and him had ceased to be 'we,' Adam lay looking at the falldown sky, clouds standoffish bickering, and wondered if it would rain. Kate had liked the rain, curled up in sweaters and windows in her apartment, for the slow dull atmosphere it imposed: not like Lisa, who'd played in summer storms, soaking wet in borrowed trunks and sad opaque t-shirt. Not like Amy, who'd needed the weather clear, blue sky hard December powder or deep June sapphire, so long as she could see the sun, or suffered. Kate was over now, but lying under a tree in a small patch of green two blocks from his apartment Adam ... (read more)

Info &c

  Just a reminder, if the infrequent updates bug you, the RSS feed is available and takes much of the frustration out of life. And for any of you on Twitter, I do make an announcement when I update: if you're willing to put up with the other sort of stuff I tweet, you can follow me, twitter.com/marxalot. Anyway, I better get back to the grindstone and all that. More coming on both fronts, word of honor.

Brick Is Red, page four

    "So, what's going on with you today, Peter?" She gestured over at the loveseat that occupied most of the opposite wall, and he sat, things between his feet.     "It's my birthday. I'm twenty-two." He was a slow starter, but she had experience drawing him out. Still looking at his helmet, he saw her uncross her legs and lean forward.     "Well, happy birthday. Doing anything to celebrate?"     "Yeah." He settled back into the cushions, straightened up from his near crouch. "Some of my friends are throwing a party at my place tonight. People from ... (read more)

Another One About Adam

    Slick as he turned them over, Adam watched antibacterial soap make frictionless surfaces of his hands, inhaling the simple clean scent he knew of the iridescent bubbles on his skin. Behind him Linda lay in the bed, murmuring her way into or out of REM sleep she hovered just below consciousness: later she would tell him about her dreams, the strange turn they took to some suspended reality corresponding with his trip to the bathroom, though neither of them would make the connection. Fingers glided apart for the awkward turn of the handle, trailing suds back to the sink he rinsed them away and rubbed himself with the handtowel, supple skin ... (read more)

One about Adam

    Perhaps Adam had learned to drive, in a borrowed car during his sweaty adolesence or on a long trip some time in college; perhaps he knew how to sit behind the wheel and take a vehicle through its paces, in some quiet unremarkable part of his mind that harbored latent reflexes, like how to catch a baseball just seen from the corner of his eye. Stepping from sidewalk to bus to subway to station, Adam betrayed no secret knowledge, though, of talents buried, unused. Privileged private citizen on public transport, Adam knew that he never racked his nerves front bumper fairly on top of the tail lights ahead of him in traffic jambs, never ... (read more)

Brick Is Red, page three

    Zipping up his leather jacket, Peter was conscious of the extra layer of insulation the compressor provided. Standing still, the day was mild: at forty-five or sixty miles an hour, though, it was a different story. He pulled on his helmet, swung a leg over his battered cruiser, third or fourth hand and going strong, and swore a brief prayer as he punched the electric start. It turned over and he grinned, patting the gas tank affectionately. All straps secure on the backpack he wore, the kickstand clunked up and he jarred the engine down into gear, nosing out onto the shady street on his way to alternating Thursdays' therapy ... (read more)