dr. moon, II

dr. moon is on call twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. he asks me to be on call too, in case he needs me. "this is why we make the big bucks." he says. i don't make big bucks though.

late one night, around one am, he calls me and tells me i need to meet him at the clinic. "A-S-A-P," he says. "a kitten is dying."

this isn't the first time he has called me late. i roll out of bed and wash my face and brew coffee, put on my scrubs and head out the door. the stripmall where dr. moon's office is very close to my apartment. i walk even though it is late at night. down the block past the post office, then around the corner past the gas station where i can see the dark skinned man inside, sitting behind the counter, staring out at the pools of light next to the pumps. a kitten is dying.

the kitten is small and grey. the owner is a tall woman, with dark black hair pulled back from her face, glasses on her nose. she is wearing sweatpants an over-sized hardrock cafe t-shirt.

"she's not breathing." the woman says handing the kitten to dr. moon who holds it with the tenderness reserved for newborns.

"oh she is scared. what is her name?"

"ginger."

dr. moon takes the kitten into the back and i follow. ginger is placed on the examine table, which looks cold and uncomfortable under the florescent light. the clinic is sad and quiet at one in the morning. ginger's breathing is shallow and short.

"she is going to die." dr. moon looks at me. he picks ginger up and rubs his finger against the space between her eyes.

"you aren't going to try to save her."

he walks out to the waiting room. i stay in the exam room and place my hand on the cold exam table, my palm flat against the flat, sliver surface. dr. moon comes back and turns off the light, ginger is still in his arms.

"i knew it. she is going to die." he hands her to me. i can hear the woman in the waiting room in hysterics. "ginger was playing a loose tab of tylenol. took a bite."

"cats can't have tylenol?"

dr. moon looks at me like i should know this. he is preparing a syringe. "it kills them. cuts off oxygen to red blood cells. nothing we can do."

i look down at ginger who is still breathing shallow and short. she closes her eyes very slowly, then opens them at the same pace.

"you want to hold her?" dr. moon moves towards me with the syringe. "you hold her while i make it better. while i make her not in pain anymore."

before i can answer he is shoving the needle in gingers fur. he pushes the liquid in and he pets her head. i look down at her face and her eyes open and close, like she is about to fall asleep. then she does and i am holding a dead kitten in my arms.

already did my laundry...

i feel tired today. today a man told me i had nice teeth. another told me i had nice eyes. today i talked fast because i was nervous and a little shaky from smoking too many cigarettes last night. i wondered if my heart was beating fast. i read girl with the curious hair and laughed out loud, numerous times. then i read part of it aloud to my friend. today i stole some cat food for salvador. i played scrabble only using christmas words. i decorated a fake xmas tree. i ate a bagel dog. i ate a whopper. ew. today i drank coffee instead of tea. i talked to my mom. i talked to tara about taking ballet. i talked to dane about the party we went to last night. i talked portugese. salvador won't leave me alone. he is licking my face with his rough cat tongue. he likes to step on the keyboard and delete everything.

i'm not thankful anymore

i'm really not into blogging right now. i'm not really into anything unless it includes eating and watching movies. on thanksgiving i had two dinners to go to. one at my house and one at daniel's mom's house. since i was so stuffed my stomach has streched out so much that i am only satiated if i am constantly shoveling food into my mouth. because i of this constant eating i am in a constant state of digestion. which means i have to sit on the couch a lot. or in a movie theater. or i need to sleep a lot. i think this might be the end of me.

i had an interesting conversation about writing and lit. classes with a friend of mine that is over thirty and teaches freshman and sophomore english on the navajo reservation in arizona. he said that teaching is a lot harder than he thought it was going to be. i said that i hate searching for the meaning in things because when i write i don't try for meaning. if its there thats great, but searching for it is meaningless. he had a different view because he had been out of school for so long, he actually missed lit. classes. he might move to portland to get his mfa at psu. i will probably move to portland to get my mfa, but i'm not sure where. it would be funny if we were in the same mfa program. he got his undergrad from university of idaho. he told a story about david foster wallace coming to teach. he said that david foster wallace slept with one of the students and that the girl told everyone that david foster wallace's penis is only 3inches long, hard, and that is why infinite jest is such a big book. to make up for it.

sour cream

so i was supposed to be making a sourcream apple pie for thanksgiving, but while i was making it i was drinking and i really wanted to smoke a cigarette and in my need for nicotine i forgot to put the sourcream in. so now it is just a regular apple pie. this might sound better to many of you, but really and truly, sourcream makes a huge difference.

dr. moon

dr. moon hired me as a receptionist and vetrenarian's assistant even though my previous jobs have been sales girl at a christmas tree lot and before that i worked as a customer service represtative for a company that sold italian charm bracelets on ebay. i was fired from that job because it started at six am and i was always late. the christmas tree lot job ended because of its obvious seasonal nature.

i don't have to be at dr. moon's until 10 am. he advertises his clinic as low-cost and has the words spay and nueter painted in the front window like grocery stores paint winter wonderland scenes or large, oversized turkeys. the clinic is snuggled in between a liquor store and a manicure shop in strip mall which also includes a taco stand.

when he hired me dr. moon asked, "do you love animals?"

I said, "yeah, sure." even though i really just like animals.

"then they will love you back." he said and then me told me to come in at 10 am the next day.

dr. moon looks like mr. miagi's runt twin brother. he shuffles around with his white coat on and kung-fu moustache. when he calls out for the next animal he doesn't call the owner's name but the animal's. once i forgot to get the name of a bulldog that came to get his ears cleaned. dr. moon peaked his head out of the door into the waiting room, looked at his chart and then looked at me.

"what is the dog's name?" he asked.

the only person sitting in the waiting room was the owner of the bulldog. a petite woman in a joggin suit.

"his name is adolf." she said to dr. moon, then looked at me.

dr. moon smiled, and nodded and waved her in the room. afterwards he said to me, "do you like it when people forget your name? or when they don't even bother to learn it and just call you girl?"


on wednesdays and thursday we do surgeries from 10-3. in the waiting room there is a dry eraseboard with the spay and neuter prices written on them in swirling cursive. i help in the operating room, like i am a nurse. i wear scrubs. before we begin to operate on the animal dr. moon holds it in his arms, or if it is too big he kneels down to it, so he is on the same level and says: forgive me for what i am going to take from you.

the first time...

remember the first time you puked from getting drunk. yeah, at the vineyard suites. derek was working the graveyard shift and he let us have smoking room and a sold us two bottles of wine. bigfoot red. yeah, thats what it was called. we drank a bottle each and smoked lucky strikes. it means fine tobacco, god, we thought we were cool. we watched reruns of saturday night live on the tv that was bolted to the ceiling like they are in hospital rooms. and derek told us not to mess anything up but i let a little out of my mouth on the way to the bathroom. and the toilet seat was covered in redwine and bile. derek cleaned it up as i apoligized, then nick gave me ride home in his dad's old mustang and i was seeing double. that's all i remember.

rate it

i saw finding neverland yesterday. it was really good. my brother always asks me to rate things in stars, 1-5, one is the worst, five is the best. when we get home from oregon, during the car ride from the airport to our house, he asks: so how do you rate your trip home. when we go out to dinner: how do you rate your dinner. i give finding neverland 4.5 stars. that is pretty good considering my brother always tells me i am way too hard on movies. i gave ray a 2.5, which dane (my brother) couldn't believe because he luh-uh-ved it. the incredibles, a solid 4. bridget jones: edge of reason, a 2. i give this blog entry a 1.

moore documentaries...

www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com/html/trailers.shtml

my mom told me about this movie that is coming out. watch the trailer. i am not sure how to create links so you'll just have to copy and paste the web address. deal. i'm not that blogerrific.

not related to lesbians...

today on the radio a professor at columbia said:

"...after 9/11 people went out and bought the Quran so they could figure how something like could happen, to try to understand it. I wonder if people in Fellujah are going out and getting copies of the Bible."

A Lesbian in the Afternoon

(this is a lesbian story for Argon, because he requested that I put a lesbian story on my blog. This story was not written by me though. It is available through a generous donation from the author, DAL)

What she said had plagued me for the rest of the day. Something about flowers. And I thought she was a lesbian. She’d lied to me. I cannot believe that she lied to me.
I go back to my job of selling furniture at wholesale prices. I mark a pink flower-patterned couch with a price sticker.
There I had been, thinking I’d finally had a friend that was a lesbian. But I was lied to. I guess it’s what I deserve. A couch the color of melon. That would go nice in my apartment, if I had one. I’m made to feel I deserve a lot of punishment and personal anguish and an empty future. Emptier even than wholesale furniture. That’s when I get scared and lock up, and develop night vision, and shake within myself to the point of splitting open. When this happens it ends with me suffering from a pulled muscle.
Homosexuals come in all day to carouse but no lesbians, until about four-thirty. She has short blue hair and dead dark eyes. She wears pants and a button-up shirt untucked. A green t-shirt underneath. I can still tell she has a womanly figure beneath the disguise.
I sit up on the mattress I’d been lying on, pretending to be far away, wishing I’d had a better disguise. Mine is that of a lifeless salesman.
I say hello to the lesbian but I guess she doesn’t hear me. She says she’s looking for a lime-green chair, preferably with matching ottoman.
Our only green chair is forest with wide fuchsia stripes. Vertical.
She nods then removes her button-up shirt, and I’m delighted because she does it seductively for some reason, looking at me for the first time. Her narrow fingertips, painted a shiny green apple, deftly glide down her front almost as easily as pulling zipper.
The look in her eyes changes, like I’m not even there, and she turns and walks away, meaning business, removing the shirt with her back to me and tying it around her waist. She walks fast to the Lay-Z-Boy section, me scampering behind on tip-toes. I’m very surprised to see that the green t-shirt she wears is actually kind of tight and does not hide the fact that this lesbian has heavy, round breasts.
Can I help you? I ask again.
No, I’m leaving.
I follow her to the door and gently grab her elbow before she exits.
What about before? I ask. With the buttons?
That didn’t’ mean anything. At all.
The lesbian leaves. I hesitate in the doorway then chase her to her car, saying, Wait, I’m not a boy. I’m not a boy, Miss Lesbian, I’m a girl dressed as a boy.
The lesbian looks at me this time, rather than through me.
Inside her car, some white Volkswagen from the early 90s, we smoke cigarettes and sit with our legs open.
We drive around in silence in lunch time traffic for about thirty minutes. She only says something when she points to Hollywood High School: I went there.
I want her to pull over and molest me again and again.
We stop to have lunch at a hamburger place. I’m intrigued by the way she dips her dill pickles into her strawberry shake and the way she inserts french fries into her mouth. I want her to insert my phantom penis into her mouth. I want to have a penis to fill her with. Change me, dear God. You can. I know that.

At her apartment we take long bong hits. She has a German all-glass bong and tells me what it’s called but I forget. It allows us the most efficient high possible.
Well, I’ve had a great time. I hope we can be friends. I hope you never lie to me, I hope.
The lesbian looks up at me with blurry eyes.
I get close to saying other heart-felt things but instead we allow each other to ravish each other.
Then I have to leave to get back to the store in time to close up the store in time and to make sure. Check, to make sure. I need to close the store. I need to be certain of things.

i have a boyfriend

i asked my brother and his boyfriend if i looked dykie (sp?). i was wearing what i normally wear.

my brother's boyfriend said: you look like you have licked a couple crotches.

my brother said: you have your moments.

i was telling my mom that if i ever go out i always go to west hollywood. i never hang out with straight people. i said that when your brother is gay it is like you are automatically a fag hag. and i hate that term. i jumped at the chance to hang out with tara last week so i could go out in a straight environment. but she was inviting me to the launch party of a gay magazine. we ended up drunk and talking to and extremely effeminate man from hondouras who managed a sporting good store in west hollywood. am i gay?

a nice day to start again (part two)

at jenna's wedding my mom pinches my arm and says, not too much champagne, as she dances away with my father, a coursage pinned to her white dress. jenna's dress is white too, but she got it for $23 dollars at a vintage store. it is fifties style, falling just above the knee, with darts for her small breasts, hugging her tiny frame. i told her it was perfect. i know, she said. my mom said, you are actually going to wear that. she is wearing it with black three-quarter length gloves and black heels. how is he supposed to put the ring on your finger, my mom asked. jenna looks like she belongs outside tiffany's eating a danish instead of at a wedding.

its perfect, i tell her. we are smoking, near the edge of the lawn, the party carrying on behind us. jenna stares at the cherry of her cigarette as she takes a drag, crossing her eyes.

do you think their happy now, she asks me.

mom and dad? sure. are you?

of course. i just want the party to be over. so what, i fell in love, she says pinching the cherry of her cigarette, the burning embers falling into the grass, it happens to everyone over and over.

jenna's husband comes over and grabs her and takes her away to dance and be in love. jenna hands me her cigarette butt, i look at the end, and i can tell it used to be white and not just because i know it. the fiberglass, or cotton or whatever filters are made of, used to be white and now it is brown because jenna pulled tobacco through it.

when jenna and were in high school we fought all the time. she started smoking when she was sixteen and i would call her white trash as she lit up on our way to school. the summer after my sophomore year my parents were gone and jenna had a party and i drank five coronas and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. when jenna left for college and I drove myself to school as I pulled away from the house i thought of jenna's empty room, and i cried.

a nice day to start again

jenna's hand are smaller than mine. everything about her is small her than me. people always mistake me as the older sister because i am physically larger than her. it isn't hard to be larger than jenna. she is tiny and delicate, and i would say she eats like a bird, but that description seems too prosaic for her eating habits. as my father has said, jenna likes to order food, just not eat it.

a waiter once used that word to describe a cheese plate we were thinking of ordering, prosaic. this upset jenna. i am not sure if it was because it was used to decribe a cheese plate, or because she though the waiter was showing off. it was in a fancy restaurant we were at for my parent's thirthieth wedding anniversary. we did order the cheese plate. i didn't think it was prosaic. it had blue cheese on it that was so strong i couldn't eat it. the restaurant was right next to the ocean, so as we ate cheese and drank cosmopolitans or vodka gimlets or peach on the beaches, we could watch the waves crash on the rocks by the wide windows.

but i am not large by any means. i have to know this and tell myself this as i look in the mirror because a little girl in my kindergarten class asked me if i was pregnant once. i was helping her write a sentence about her family. my moms name is...or my dad likes to...his hair is this color. i know that kids ask silly questions and she didn't mean to hurt my feelings but still i looked in the mirror that night and i sucked in my stomach and tried not to look pregnant, because i wasn't.

jenna is getting married. she wanted something small and quiet. modest, that is how she wants it. she wants her wedding to pass like a saturday afternoon football game, like there will be another one on next saturday. my dad wouldn't have it though. you deserve something larger, don't worry about money, he said and wrapped his bottom lip up over his moustache, nodding.

so jenna got a huge wedding with single white chairs for everyone and a white bow on the end of each aisle. i knew that she had never wanted a big wedding, her view on weddings had been expressed to me at bars over too many beers and packs of cigarettes, the cellophane wrappers crinkled up laying next to them. she did it more for my parents, more because we could, because we had enough money, not because it was something she dreamed of since she was a little girl. when my sister and i played barbies when we were young barbie was never getting married; she was putting on a short skirt and going to work at nordstrom's as a sales girl. that is was jenna and i's dream job, working retail at nordstrom's.

brunch

Jake insists we go to Denny's for brunch.

"It's not really brunch at Denny's. " I say. And I object for a brief second, but since I never let Jake get his way and since we got to sleep in, and it makes Jake happy to get eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes for under four dollars I give in. Denny's confounds me. Jake can get his grandslam for the price of dirt and all I want is toast instead of pancakes and all of a sudden the price is seven dollars.

I drive because I always drive. In the car on the radio they are talking about all these different types of soy sauce. The guest on the show is male and he says to the host, "here go ahead try this one." And I wonder if the host is really trying the soy sauce or just pretending to, maybe just holding it up to her lips and smelling it. "Mmmm...gingery," she says.

Denny's is packed and it seems like every child has a microphone held up to their mouths. There is a ten to fifteen minute wait.

"Let's sit at the counter." I say.

"No. I feel like everyone is looking at me when we sit there."

There is an old man by the counter in a red motorized wheels chair. The back has a placard that says [heart] my job, [heart] my boss, I'm self-employed.

"Come on, I'll sit by the old guy with the chair. You don't have to."

"I really don't want to."

So we wait by the door. People come in by the twos or the fives. We crowd into the little waiting area.

A couple months ago Jake and I had gone to Denny's and the couple sitting next us was old. The woman was incapable of moving by herself. I think her husband might have chewed her food for her. The man, well he was filthy. It looked liked he hadn't changed his clothes in a decade. He probably rarely took them off to urinate. We had sat next to them and grimaced at each other, drinking our coffee in silence.

The old man in the motorized chair is trying to get through all the people, to the door I assume, but he takes a left towards the tables. It smells like vomit, that nostril burning smell. The old man is double over in his chair, a puddle of vomit on the floor. A confused Denny's worker is standing over him, a girl calls an ambulance. I plug my nose. Jake looks at the man.

"I'm not really hungry."

"Let's just go." Jake agrees.

We step out onto the street and leave behind the confusion. We are running from it.

"That man was turning purple."

"Why didn't anyone do the heimlich?" I ask.

"I won't let you die at Denny's."

"I beg you. The grandslam isn't worth it."

In the car on the way home the cooking show is still on and you can hear things sizzling in a pan over the air waves.

hungover lipstick

my mind is foggy. i went out last night with tara to a magazine launch party and i drank too much and smoked too much. i am trying to work on a paper but i really just feel like shutting down for the day and watching freaks and geeks. i like that tara and i only go out if she manages to get invited to strange parties where there is an open bar. once we are there we grab drinks and find a corner and just sit and talk for hours until the party is ending or they have run out of vodka. we never really mingle. we just sit down and create our own little world with free alcohol.

second year twin

my brother was born two years and one day after me. i tell people we are twins, not the identical but the kind that look different from each other but still share everything. i tell people that i was born quickly and i came out fast but my brother was a whole day after me. i erase the first two years of my life. i can't remember them anyway, except for a memory that is foggy, like an old movie will most of the screen blacked out except for a circle in the middle, of sitting on a chair with my grandma, looking down a long white hall. this was the day my brother was born, the day after my second birthday where i am told there was a cake with a big two candle on it and it is true. i have seen the picture of me blowing it out, of my mom about to give birth.
i tell them that it took him a day to come out and that once he did he was a meconium stain baby. he almost died, i say, raising my eyebrows. i was almost one half of a set of twins. and i imagine what that would be like, to know that for a short time there was someone else who was you, or shared everything with you, alive on the earth. i imagine that i would feel like i always was walking around with a gaping hole on one side of me, waiting to be filled. i imagine that there would be no way for him to be completely dead, because i am still alive.
but he didn't die, just came out slow and crossed-eyed. i tell them how happy my mom was to have two healthy babies, a beautiful little girl, with perfect, tan skin and a cross-eyed baby boy who almost died. and as we grew up we fought like siblings and we weren't twins. he was my younger brother. he was annoying. he melted my barbie's hair on the woodstove, he embarrassed me in front of my friends, he always had a kool-aid moustache, he carried the cat around by its neck. but now that we are older i know he is my twin. i know that if he would have died i would be walking around with a big gaping hole in one side of me, waiting for it to be filled.

P-R-I-D-E

men with mullets hug wooden crosses
and handout light pink carnations
they say, “jesus loves you, you know.”
I know and I wrap my rainbow feather boa
around my neck and it tickles my nose
and little boys who finally feel comfortable
and might die of AIDS or maybe they’ll just get herpes
grab the boa and tell me I’m beautiful
and I smile and they say, “love you.”
the bathroom is filthy and I wonder how
many people have had sex in here
at one time
the wall says something about baptizing gerbils
and more about butt sex
the toilet seat is wet

the boy in the hall
braced, unblemished face
swears he is straight
but I laugh in his face
like I’d care even if he was
and then Blondie starts to
sing about kissing me deadly


I would like to leave
to go to
pineapple hills or coconut knolls
where drinks are cheap
and the bathrooms walls
don’t say anything

rain in the valley

there were days when i didn't want to know tara. days when i wanted her and our relationship to evaporate like the water on the street once the sun comes out, instantly. like the day in our coldwater apartment, we had gotten a couch and a desk, still no dining room table. i sat at the desk at the computer and she slipped into the front door, eyes wide and excited, smile tense. she had a lizard on her head.

"look, rick got a lizard. isn't it cool."

i looked up and tried to smile, tried not to look scared, tried to act like everything was normal. maybe that was where i went wrong, maybe i should have cared more, or attempted to care more. but now, when we are drunk, tara always tells me what a good friend i am and was and how i was always there. but i never felt like i was. that night she would try to convince me there were bugs under her skin, that i needed to take her to the hospital, but i wouldn't. i avoided her. i did everything in my power to ignore her. but still she gets choked up and says no, this isn't because i am drunk, i love you, you're my best friend.

so the day with the lizard tara said, "touch it." so i reached out my hand, slow, like i was like i was parting the air and i touched the top of the lizards head. it was rough, but it was a rough that you wanted to touch. a rough that felt good against your fingers. and the skin on the bottom of its jaw was soft, so soft compared to the rest of it. soft like i thought i could tear it with my finger tips.

tara disappeared into her room, then, even though i didn't really want to, even though i knew our exchange would be forced, would be like each of us reaching down each other's throats and pulling the words out, i would go knock on her door to ask her something, anything. just to get her talking, just so i could judge her, to make sure she was in the state i thought she was.

she answered the door, everything but the girl's tempramental album on in the back ground and i could hear tracy's low voice pushing out the words, how much of the day can you sit around, and tara was lighting candles. as we stood and talked tara raised her heel to the beat of the music.

"what are you doing tonight?"

"probably go out with rick, maybe to las palmas. you should come."

she always invited me.

"i don't know."

"mmkay." she said waving a match.

"i think i am going to a party with ben." i said walking across her room and lying on her bed. tara always had the softest bed, with expensive sheets and a big down comforter. sleep is very important to me, she'd tell me. the lizard was on her bed. i laid down next to the lizard and i ran my finger tips along its chin. tracy was singing, i don't care, but i do care.

maybe that is how i helped tara, by not doing anything.

animal style

while sitting in traffic i was thinking about harmony. how mates of state has harmony that makes my heart explode. it makes me think of driving up the 101 in late august and stopping at the trees of mystery and taking pictures under paul bunyan's big blue ox and his big blue testicles, but refusing to pay $12 to take a ride through the mysterious trees. the traffic was on the 101, on our way out to the deep valley to watch a movie for free and whisper jokes to each other in the dark theater, sitting in the front row.

after the movie we went to in n out and got double doubles, protien style and animal style. we also split an order of animal style fries. while eating the fries we had fat girl conversations like:

they should layer these fries.

i know, just the top has goodies on it.

they should make them like nachos.

later it was talking about teen movies from the nineties: she's all that, ten things i hate about you. she told me she had never seen reality bites so we went to find it at the used music and video store. they didn't have it so we watched ten things i hate about you and agreed that if we met julia stiles on the street we would definately sock her in the face.

the professor and i sing

last night i had a dream that when i went in for my meeting with forman she was playing rilo kiley on her computer. i told her i loved rilo kiley and we started singing along together. then she told me that she really like the werewolf part of my story and i should expand on it.

let me clear my throat

i feel like i have a lot on my chest. i liked what mitchell said in class today about blurring social issues and govermental issues. and i liked what jaime said about the unconsitutionality of issues, like banning gay marriage. i am moved by how upset everyone is about the results. i am upset. i am deeply saddened. i am afraid that religion will begin to play too much of a role in government. it should play none. but how do you govern with your ethics and morals when those ethics and morals are defined by your religion?

today i heard a radio clip, so this could be out of context, but the announcer said that a lot of evangelical christians had come out and voted. bush said he was glad so many people of faith had supported him. i think that he was glad that people of his faith supported him. but i am a person of faith and i didn't support him.

the show went on to interview voters who had been inspired to go to the polls because of issues like gay marriage. one man said that, "if you are gay that is fine, that's your problem. but don't go against god by getting married. don't shove it down my throat." clearly its not fine and i don't think that this guy would be invited to the wedding. and if he were and he went, i don't think the couple would shove it down his throat by sodoming each other on the alter. i am baffled as to how someone can describe an act of vowing commitment and love, as shoving anything anywhere.

i talked to my mom on wednesday, because i was sad. she was sad too. oregon passed an initiative that would put a ban on gay marriage in the state's constitution. in my religion and ethics class my professor said that it was important for us not to write off all those red states in the middle as all republican, that we shouldn't generalize. he is right. oregon went to kerry but they still banned gay marriage. we can't divide ourselves. in my conversation i had with my mom i was very angry at the middle and the south of the country. but i am gettting over it. i just have a problem when people say they came out to vote on because of "moral values", and see a relationship of love and commitment that doesn't hurt anyone as immoral because it is between two people of the same sex, yet killing thousands of civillians in iraq in the persuit of...what? is not immoral. on another radio show i heard last night the host said, "it would be interesting to know what the republicans pray for, because they might pray for the wrong thing, like truth."

blogerrific

THEY JUST MENTIONED BLOGS ON THE ELECTION COVERAGE. THE FUTURE IS NOW.

in vitro

They knew there would be mishaps. Nothing is really easy anymore, she told him. And he would nod and change the channel in time with his nod. Then she would get up and go into the kitchen and make a vodka tonic. I’m not going to be able to drink these soon, she’d yell into the living room, forcing herself to smile, the glass clinking against the aqua tiled counter.

The day they went to the hospital was cold, and full of dead leaves. Dead leaves in piles on the neighbor’s yards, clogging the gutters, on the windshield of the car. It was a clear day, empty, like God had sucked out the clouds. It seemed higher, the sky did, not hanging low like it did when it was burdened with clouds.

The night before:

So you’ll come with me, she asked, resting beside him on the couch.

Of course, he said, not looking at her. The room was dark, the only light was the television, with its incessant changing of light and sound. She held onto his arm and rested her head on his shoulder.

Will it work?

He shifted in his seat and turned to television off. I don’t know, he answered. I’m going to bed.


They had waited to have sex until they were married, believing in God and the sanctity of their marriage and the sacredness of lovemaking.

When it was over they fell asleep holding each other, so glad they had waited.



The day she found out she left the doctor’s office and went to the grocery store. She rolled the metal cart down the white aisles and pulled things off the shelf. Everything was new and bright and the wheels of the cart clicked against the floor. Milk, eggs, grapefruit, pasta, tomato sauce, vodka, chicken breast, orange juice, bottled water. The things you need to make dinner, and lunch, and breakfast, day after day.




You’ll be okay, her mom told her.

No, she said. I won’t. We won’t. It will just be him and I for the rest of our lives.

You have to believe in God’s will, her mom told her. This is your burden. This is your trial of faith.

When she got home he was sitting on the couch, watching television. She unloaded the groceries, made a drink, and sat down beside him.

You don’t drink, he said.

I think I am going to start.

Why? You want to destroy your body?

Yeah, she said. I do.





She pushed him away, then sat up and picked up her book, turning on the light.

It’s not worth it, she said.

Why not?

Nothing will happen.

We have done it tons of times where nothing did, where we didn’t even want anything to, where we purposefully tried not to let something happen.

It’s different now.

Now that nothing can happen?

It’s the possibility. I just want the possibility back.

He sighed and tried to pull her to him. She grabbed his arm.

We can do it, you know, she told him. There are ways to make it happen.

But that isn’t us. It isn't something that was made in us.

Millions of couples do it all the time.

We aren’t like them. We’re different. I thought you didn’t want to be like the world.

No. I do, she said. I want what everyone else has.



At the hospital they inserted a catheter into her vagina and from that catheter the fertilized eggs. Five lives swimming in her uterus. They told her to lie there for an hour. He waited outside.

Sir, you can sit in your wife’s room, the nurse said to him, holding the door open.

That’s all right, he said, holding up his hand. I’ll just wait out here.

So she lied there for an hour, alone in the hospital room. Her blanket was aqua, like the tiles in the kitchen. Connect, connect, connect. She said out loud, balling her fists, banging them against the blanket. Connect, please.

When they were leaving the hospital he asked:

What happens to the ones that don’t connect?

They save them in a freezer.

Don’t you think we should have them? Aren’t they ours?

She laughed. Don’t be silly. They aren’t alive.



When it didn’t work she cried. She rested her head on the kitchen counter and wept. In the living room the television blared as he sat in the dark flipping through the channels. She went to the freezer to get ice to make herself a vodka tonic. Inside the freezer, next to the ice trays, there were four test tubes.

What are these? She asked grabbing the test tubes and walking into the living room.

Your babies, he said.