GIRLS ARE PRETTY

Ask For A Raise Day!

Say, “Boss I think I deserve a little more than what I’m getting, okay?”

Your boss will tense up, getting ready for a tough negotiation. “Okay,” he’ll say. “How much money you want?”

Say, “Don’t want no money. I just want to be touched.”

Your boss will look unsure of how to counter-offer.

“You don’t want an increase in salary?” he’ll ask.

“Nope,” tell him. “I just want to feel the warmth of your hand on my person sometimes. Nothing sexual, necessarily. Just in the morning, maybe you can rest your hand on my back when you stop by my desk to say hello.”

Your boss will hesitate, waiting to see if there’s a catch.

“And maybe,” you go on. “Maybe you could occasionally tousle my hair the way my dad used to. Oh and I want a five-second hug goodbye every single day. A five-second hug and a whisper in my ear that you’ll never forget the time we spent together each day.”

Your boss will think about all of your demands. He’ll weigh your recent job performance against that of your coworkers and try to determine if everything you’re requesting is within the realm of what he thinks you deserve. 

Finally, he’ll come back with a counter-offer.

“A three-second hug,” he’ll say.

“Four,” tell him.

He’ll say deal. The two of you will rise and shake on it. Feel his skin, focus all of your attention on that touch. That’s two human beings right there, clasping each in the other’s grip, sharing a moment temporally and physically, reinforcing the belief that both of you really are right there, that this isn’t a dream, all of it is as real as the warmth of your combined body heat. That handshake, that’s all there is isn’t it? All those desks and file cabinets and all the money that comes in and out of that office, there’s nothing real to it. Nothing you can feel. Nothing as real as the touch of a man holding onto another man’s hand.

Happy Ask For A Raise Day!

Tell Your Dad He’s Been Replaced Day!

“I met a boy,” tell him. “He’s everything you’re not.”

“Guess he’s not awesome then!” your Dad will say as you lift up your bags and walk out the door. He’ll run to the door, laughing, and yell at your back, “I said, guess he’s not awesome! Come on, that was awesome!”

You’ll keep walking to your new boy’s apartment, vowing never to see your dad again. 

Three months from now your new boy will cheat on you and you’ll look up your Dad but he’ll be dead. When you go to his grave you’ll whisper, “You were right, Dad. He wasn’t awesome.”

The epitaph on your Dad’s grave will read, “I Die With Just One Regret - That I Couldn’t Have Been Born On A Planet That Could Handle My Awesomeness.” You’ll pray for him to find himself on that planet in his next life, then you’ll go back to the boy who cheated on you because with your Dad gone, all the remaining men are all the same.

Happy Tell Your Dad He’s Been Replaced Day!

Fist Bump Day!

Today when you fist bump people it means you once heard your mother tell a friend of hers that she regrets having you.

“Don’t you love your offspring?” you heard the friend ask your mother.

“I think he’s okay,” your mom said. “But sometimes when the phone rings I imagine it’s the police telling me he got in a car accident and died, and I get a little giddy. Then when it turns out not to be true, I get bummed out.”

You heard your friend tell your mom that she knew of a guy who buys kids. You were only eight at the time and the friend told your mom eight is the max age he’ll buy. Your mom asked what the guy buys kids before and the friend said she didn’t know.

“Do you care?” you heard the friend ask.

Your mom shrugged and said she’d think about whether she wanted to sell you, when you were almost at the age when you could run errands.

That’s what it means if you fist bump anybody today. That you heard your mom have that conversation. If you fist bump tomorrow, it goes back to meaning you’re afraid of strongmen tearing your hand off at the wrist if you engage in handshakes.

Happy Fist Bump Day!

Ask The Barista Day!

You like that brown-haired girl who always sits in the corner of the coffee shop working on her laptop but you don’t know how to say what you feel so ask the Barista to say it for you.

“Instead of her name, write what I tell you on the side of her cup,” you say to the Barista. He is an angry person with a turtle tattoo on his left hand.

“What’s in it for me you fuck?” he asks. You don’t take it personally. It’s coffee shop policy to address every customer as “you fuck.”

“I’ll drop two bucks in the tip cup,” you say.

He nods. You drop the bucks then you tell the barista what you feel. He writes it all down then he shouts for her to pick up her drink.

“You in the corner. The way your brown hair cascades over your laptop makes me wish I could be your laptop, that my body parts could be the keys on your keyboard, like that my penis was the space bar since you’d be hitting that one a lot, and I guess my eyes would be the bracket keys or something. Anyway, you’re the most beautiful girl in the coffee shop and I wish I knew what you smelled like but you sit so close to the bathroom. Come get your drink and let me love you.”

She gets up from her chair to get her drink and finds you waiting to give it to her. She takes it from you, reads from the side of the cup all that the Barista just shouted, then removes the lid and throws the drink in your face. Luckily, it was iced.

“Are you okay, you fuck?” the Barista asks.

You’re not. “I guess this is goodbye,” you tell the Barista. “I only came here so I could imagine my life with that brown-haired girl. Now that she’s given me her answer, I have to go to find another coffee shop where I can fixate on a new stranger.”

The Barista says, “I won’t let you go.”

He invites you into the back, where he knocks you unconscious and keeps you locked away for months. He keeps several other customers there too, customers who were thinking of frequenting other coffee shops. He’ll slowly poison you with ammonia dosed lattes. Your bodies will be found in a pile under some beans. Your Barista will escape to get a job serving coffee in a new town, developing new, indelible relationships with the regulars.

When your face appears in the paper as one of the dead, the brown-haired girl won’t recognize you.

Happy Ask The Barista Day!

The Bulbs In The Streetlamps Day!

Only one of your neighbors on the community board is still fighting you. Go see him today.

“I just want a month,” you tell him. “A single thirty days of red bulbs.”

“Too dangerous,” he murmurs. He didn’t even turn the TV off. You had to grab the remote and mute it. 

“She loved red bulbs,” you say. “Her rose garden. Everyone marveled at it. She gave so much to this block, asking for nothing in return. Let me give something back to her. Let me turn the entire neighborhood rose-red for her.”

He snorts.

“What’s so funny?” you ask.

“I was you once,” he says. “When my wife died I wanted to scratch her name into the sky. I wanted to do what she ‘would have wanted.’ Soon you’ll accept that she wants nothing anymore. That’s the good part of death. The wanting stops.”

You both sit in silence.

“Unfortunately,” he adds. “You have to accept that she doesn’t even want you anymore.”

He cries in his chair, staring at a court show. You drop the photos on the table.

“I know you had your neighbors’ tree branches cut down,” you tell him. “It wasn’t the storm. You used the storm as your excuse and cut down the branches reaching into your yard while the Canters were away.”

He stares at the pile of photos without reaching for them.

“Approve the red bulbs at tonight’s block meeting,” you tell him. “Vote yes on turning the neighborhood red in honor of my late wife’s rose garden. Let me mourn my wife to the fullest of my ability. Or so help me God the photos of you shouting up at your tree surgeon will be on every folding chair at that meeting.”

You leave the photos there for him to peruse. Tonight, you can be sure you’ll get the votes necessary to give a proper goodbye to your sweet, departed bride.

Happy The Bulbs In The Streetlamps Day!

499 Days Day!

Today you got into a car accident. You changed lanes without looking first and you sideswiped a guy. The two of you pulled over and exchanged information. You have a good insurance plan and you told him he should be fine. 

“I hope so,” he said. Then he asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

You said, “I’m going to be murdered in 499 days.”

He said, “I’m sorry to hear it.” Perfect poker face.

You said, “I wonder if you’re the one who’s going to kill me.” You looked at his information and added, “Arthur Douglas Prescott.”

He said, “I’ve never hurt anyone in my life.”

You told him we’ve all hurt somebody at some point. He said that’s probably true. He has broken a heart or two in his rear view.

“Sometimes needlessly,” Arthur said. “Just to prove to them that, by hurting them, they were wrong to have gotten involved with me.”

Arthur ran his hand through his weak scalp of brown hair. It was getting messy in the wind.

“I feel like we’d be friends under other circumstances,” you told Arthur.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Arthur said. “Or wait, is this insurance info for real?”

You told him yes, it was. It’s not that. It’s just, now that you’ve crashed into each other, you’re in each other’s orbits.

“Who knows how this will play out?”

Arthur seemed to size you up then. It’s like he was trying to figure out whether he could overpower you physically, or would he have to use a weapon?

“Maybe I’ll see you again,” you said to Arthur.

“Not if I see you first,” he said.

It’s moments like that one—and like the one you had later in the afternoon when you were cheating on your wife with a married woman, and her husband came home and chased you out of the house vowing to kill you if he ever finds you—that make you realize it could be anybody. Anyone you meet could be the person who takes your life 499 days from now.

Happy 499 Days Day!

You Just Left The Witness Protection Program Day!

The two of you sit watching the news. There’s a photo of you on the screen.

“I can change it.”

“No.”

You want to hear them say it. You want to hear them say that your life is in danger, that you aren’t a hero, or a villain. You want to hear them say that you’re just a living thing trying to stay alive.

“They keep calling me an informant. A rat.”

“They have to tell the story the way they know people want to hear it.”

He puts his hand on yours. You fall into his chest and cry. Then you’re kissing, crying into his mouth. Your blouse is on the floor. He’s carrying you to the bed. Will this be the last time?

“Why don’t they assign girl Feds to watch girls in safe houses?” you ask, after.

“They do sometimes. They send the Feds that the Feds running the case trust.”

You consider asking if he does this with every female witness, but you know he doesn’t. From the very first time, you knew this was as alien to him as it was to you.

“Could you protect me. Outside?”

“For a year. A few years. Then it’d be luck.”

You consider your options. Take down the entire organization, then go live somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with nothing, without him. Or.

“I choose you.”

“I love you. We have to move now.”

In an instant his clothes are back on and he’s got a bag packed already. He’s got wads of cash in a money belt around his waist. He’s spraying the house with gasoline so it looks like the two of you were firebombed. It’ll be days before they realize you weren’t there.

“You’re really going to throw away the bust of the decade for me?”

“Let’s not make a federal case about it.”

You both laugh because that was a joke since he’s a federal agent. You’re in the car now, a block away. Back at the house the match hits the gasoline. The rear-view mirror turns orange. You just left the witness protection program.

Happy You Just Left The Witness Protection Program Day!

You Just Came Out Of A Forty-Year Coma And You’re About To Learn About The Internet Day!

There are news cameras aimed at you. Everyone wants to watch you learn about the internet.

Someone hands you a laptop.

“This is a personal computer,” they say. “Type something you want to look at.”

You type the words, Chicks peeing on guys’ buttholes.

“It’s magical,” you say as the search results scroll down the screen.

They suggest maybe you could type something else. “You can even write a blog post to get your own ideas out there,” you’re told.

They open a blog template for you. The title of your first post is, “9/11 Was A Joint Mission Of The CIA And Israel And Was The Result Of Airplane Shaped Robotic Missiles Remotely Controlled By George W. Bush.”

A reporter asks, “How did you even know about 9/11?”

You explain it was a hunch. 

The cameras stop rolling. Everyone starts packing up.

“Wait,” your doctor says. “Try using the computer to look at an adorable video of a kitten.”

You watch an adorable video of a kitten. Then you ask if there’s a way to call the kitten a homosexual and tell it that you’d like to rape it. You’re directed to the Youtube comments section.

“Why’s everyone leaving?” you ask.

You’re told that everyone was hoping to see how the internet would be used by someone who’s never seen it before, but they’re bummed because you’re using it just like everyone else. You stop listening to practice the Harlem Shake.

Happy You Just Came Out Of A Forty-Year Coma And You’re About To Learn About The Internet Day!

At First Sight Day!

You have your hand on the back of his neck when he first sees her. You’re walking him to the exit. When a kid gets suspended you have to stay with him until he’s through the door, then it’s his parents’ problem. So your palm is on his skin, feeling the heat of his neck, when he first puts his eyes on her.

When you got assigned a high school, the guy at the security agency warned you not to become close with the students. These kids aren’t your buddies, he said. Told you you shouldn’t try to relive your high school years, thinking maybe you can get it right this time around, get the football quarterback to like you this time around, convince the head cheerleader not to pants you at homecoming this time around, get the yearbook editor to not mix up your senior photo with the janitor’s staff photo before he goes to print this time around. 

They were afraid you’d get conned. Afraid the kids would cozy up to you, make you think you’re cool with them, and before you know it they’re running drugs and guns and smuggling exotic birds through the halls and you’re looking the other way solely because they promised to let you come to the big party after the game.

To be truthful, you do treat this job kind of like you’re back in high school, in that you try to keep your head down and avoid getting noticed very much. 

At about ten yards from the doors, she comes walking in. The other kids have already cleared a path, rubbernecking to see the suspended kid get sent home, so when she enters the school and starts coming toward the two of you, you feel like you’re his best man, and you’re both watching the bride walk down the aisle. 

His neck goes hot under your grip. You feel his goosebumps rise. You have to raise your arm as he grows taller, or maybe he’s floating a few inches off the ground. 

You want to let go but can’t. Not just because it’s regulations to keep the offender in hand until he’s vacated the premises, but because you want to feel love’s birth. You never had anything but unrequited crushes in high school. You fetishized girls you couldn’t have, and knowing you couldn’t have them was the main attraction. It was never an honest love. Having your hand on that kid’s neck is as close as you’ve ever come to experiencing love at first sight. You feel the weather in his body change under your grip. Your palm is a layer of skin away from his brain-stem, right at the very instant when the chemical signals letting him know he’s fallen for someone have begun their transmission.

She walks past you, turns her head just a few inches and holds his eyes. As she passes, you both stop, you both turn, you both watch her walk away. As this kid falls in love, you two are one person.

She looks back at you once before she turns a corner and disappears.

At the front door, you let go of his neck. You turned and face each other, not knowing how to put what just happened into words. You’re only a few years older than him, but you feel like his father, like he has your blood running through his veins, and you have his. You feel like you need to say something wise.

“Enjoy your 5-day suspension,” you tell him.

He nods, then steps through the door and goes on his way.

Happy At First Sight Day!

He Fell Asleep In Your Sonata Day!

His intentions were good! He came to you to offer you his heart! And he waited on your doorstep for you to come home, he’d have waited all night if he had to! But he’d been drinking! And waiting was boring so he drank some more! He got tired and noticed your Sonata in the driveway so he climbed into the passenger seat to rest! While waiting for you! But you know how he has those night terrors?! Well he had one! While waiting for you! And his flailing arms must have knocked the gear out of park and into neutral! So the Sonata rolled out of the drive and down the hill and into an intersection where it got jackknifed by a bus! So he’s dead now! For you!

He died for you!

Sorry about your Sonata!

Happy He Fell Asleep In Your Sonata Day!

Pet Store Day!

Your mood was so cranky today that when you walked into the pet store all the pets committed suicide.

“Your ‘Say No To Life’ demeanor inspire my merchandise to bring about their own furry little ends!” the pet store owner shouted. “You’ll pay for those!”

You suggested that maybe the two of you could come to some other kind of arrangement. The pet store owner made love to you on a very large doggie bed. After the sex you told the pet store owner you love him.

“And I love being a pet store owner,” he said. “I can’t have you in my life if you’re going to fall into these moods that make my pet inventory die by their own paws. Will you go on medication?”

And that’s why you finally started taking medication and got a handle on your depression. For love, and for animals. 

Happy Pet Store Day!

Your High School Love Is So Strong It Made Your Principal Abduct His Ex-Wife And Commit Grand Larceny Day!

You remind him what love is. He had your love once, with Denise. It was just as strong, he could swear it was. He watches you two walking around his school, the affection and desire you feel for each other is just a glowing force-field around you, like you’re walking inside a giant illuminated globe of love. He wants to be inside that globe again.

He’d become convinced that if Denise could encounter you and Jack, if she could see what he sees every day he passes you two in school, she’d remember what was possible. She’d remember the kind of love that was achievable because they’d already achieved it. If they hadn’t been distracted by the laser-focus on their careers, and the long dark period after Denise’s parents died, they might never have let it go.

Denise got the Honda Accord in the divorce. He got the Volkswagen Golf, but he still had the keys to the Honda. So one day after school he went to her office, got behind the wheel of the Honda, and when Denise came out he told her he wouldn’t get out of her car until she took a ride with him.

They started at the park. He drove the Honda up to the ridge overlooking the camp area down below. Lots of kids from the vo-tech trailers go down into that camp are during school hours to smoke cigarettes. Other kids go down there and hang out after school, get high. That day you and your boyfriend were down there, sitting on the trunk of a knocked down tree, making out.

Your principal and his ex-wife watched you for about a half-hour. Your boyfriend’s hand went up your shirt. Both your hands would go down each other’s pants sporadically. Occasionally you’d just stop and nuzzle your heads against each other’s necks like animals keeping warm, like your principal remembered he and Denise would do when they first fell for each other.

You didn’t see him in his car when you climbed back up the ridge because you weren’t looking anywhere but into each other’s eyes. Had you peeked inside you would have seen your principal’s ex-wife crying. Your principal was right. The strength of your love affected Denise. She saw what he saw. She remembered how they felt when they first fell in love. But it didn’t give her any hope of rekindling that love. It just made her sad for all that was lost.

Your principal’s ex-wife explained to him, “It’s like being forced to attend a second funeral for a loved one I’ve already mourned.”

Denise’s lawyer later explained that if they ever wished to press charges, his entering the car without her permission, and driving the car without her permission constitutes larceny. And even though she got in the car of her own volition, without being forced physically, she did so under the threat of not getting her car back otherwise. That constitutes kidnapping (though it would be harder to make stick). 

They filed a restraining order against your principal, no phone or email contact except through an attorney. No face-to-face except by appointment, arranged via an attorney. Denise has been cool enough to get her lawyer to refile in such a way that the order is part of the divorce filing, so a restraining order doesn’t show up when future employers Lexis your principal.

And it was all so your principal could drive his ex-wife around town and watch you make out with your boyfriend.

Happy Your High School Love Is So Strong It Made Your Principal Abduct His Ex-Wife And Commit Grand Larceny Day!

February Man Day!

Today, you’re February Man. No matter what challenges might face you, no matter what evil might be lurking in your city, waiting to do harm to your neighbors, you have the power to say, “Fuck it it’s February fuck you if you want me to do shit it’s too fucking cold Jesus how can this be the shortest month of the year I wake up every morning in pitch black darkness using all my strength to not drink a bottle of bleach and you expect me to try this month? If you get in trouble in February it’s your fucking problem, not fucking mine. I’ve got my own fucking February to deal with. I’m fucking February man. Jesus, how many more days of this? I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I just can’t.”

They’re going to write comic books about you one day, February Man.

“Who gives a shit? Fuck you. I can’t. I ca—”

Happy February Man Day!

Walking Home, Listening To Some Songs Day

You have 90 blocks. Approximately seventy minutes. Time for approximately 12 to 15 songs that celebrate you having just said hello to your ex and his date.

It’s cold. The bones of your ribcage, you feel them all, each one colder than the next, like you’re nothing but skin wrapped around a fancy party’s ice sculpture. But you’re not getting on a bus or a train or hailing a cab. You have songs you need to listen to.

You’re the soundtrack to his evening. It’s important to you that while he’s still at the bar, having a third-week-of-dating conversation, you’re walking through his city, listening to the songs that take your broken-up-after-two-years heartache and scream it over organs, pedal steel guitars, and sad atmospheric, electronic dirges. You’re dragging your frozen bones along miles of icy sidewalk while he’s warm and unsure whether he should put his arm around her in front of his friends. Are they there yet? He doesn’t know.

Your walk home takes place on one half of an imagined split-screen, your ex and his date smiling and drinking on the other half. You’re bathed in the glow of a Don’t Walk sign waiting for the light to change as a singer howls for something lost, while your ex is laughing politely while his date tells a story. You’re leaning into the wind while slow drums build under a sparse guitar line, and your ex is telling his date that not very revealing story about a high school teacher who believed in him. Your eyes are on the moon as the lyrics in your ear wish a departing spouse well, and your ex is playing with his date’s hand in across the table.

He has no clue that the two of you shared this night. No clue you’ve DJ’d a 70-minute soundtrack to his evening, a musical storyline playing out concurrently with his quiet date in a booth at a bar. Send him the playlist maybe. Songs For The Sadness You Inspire, maybe. Or, Songs To Walk Away From You To.

Happy Walking Home, Listening To Some Songs Day!

New Netflix Category Day!

A new Netflix category just popped up in your streaming catalog. It’s called, “Movies That Aren’t Really Movies They’re Just Video Recordings Of You Doing Stuff You’ve Never Done.”

The first one is a three minute video of you riding a horse. You’ve never ridden a horse.

The next one is seventy minutes of you asleep in a seat on a zeppelin. That never happened.

The third one is called “Madison Square Garden.” It’s video of you hanging around in a bathroom at Madison Square Garden, until a guy walks in with a brief case and enters a stall. You enter the one next to his. He slides the briefcase under the stall to you and walks out. Then you open the briefcase and reveal several hundred thousand dollars in cash. You look satisfied. Then you walk out. That never happened, even though it’s right there streaming on your TV.

The next one is called “First Kiss.” And it’s you sitting in your car, honking your horn loudly to interrupt your daughter having her first kiss in the parking lot of a movie theater. The boy she’s kissing gives you the finger, so you get out and threaten him. A police officer interrupts you and he smells liquor on your breath. Your daughter cries and says, “Daddy you promised never again. You ruined my first kiss.” You tell the police officer to take your daughter home because you’re never going back there. The next shot is of you on a bus to Mexico. You pull a photo of your wife and daughter out of your wallet and throw it out the window as the bus crosses the border. You don’t have a wife or daughter.

There are 27 more titles in the category but they’re pretty boring so you just scroll up to look through Romantic Movies With A Weak Female Lead That Take Place In A Dystopic Future And There’s A Dog. 

Happy New Netflix Category Day!