imitation sun.

on the democracy of intoxicants

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:53:00 -0500

abw: beer = democracy
cec: cider = democracy
cec: beer is produced by the bourgeoisie to keep the proletariat down
abw: yeah i think historically you're correct...actually
cec: yeah, fermented fruit is democracy
cec: but mike's hard lemonade is not democracy
abw: amen

an old friend wants you to come out for “h.m.s....

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:17:00 -0500

an old friend wants you to come out for “h.m.s. pinafore.”

on fanciful (& incorrect) beliefs regarding neurobiology

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:06:53 -0500

kmt: the radio is now telling me about the neurotransmitters released during sexual intercourse
kmt: WEIRD!
kmt: but interesting i guess
cec: ah, the reptilian brain
cec: it loves sex, loud music and chocolate
kmt: nel
kmt: that's mammal neurocortex all over man
kmt: reptilian brain is hunger and anger
cec: CURSES
kmt: hahah
kmt: can you imagine a crocodile rocking out?
cec: yes
cec: HARDCORE
kmt: only in your anthropomorphic dreams, bucko

teaser for hearth gods no. 24(c.e. carey, inspired by otl...

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:21:00 -0500

teaser for hearth gods no. 24
(c.e. carey, inspired by otl aicher)

in which my career counseling is not appreciated

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:35:48 -0500

scd: c, do you know how phone interviews work?
cec: well, s, telephones were invented by alexander graham bell
scd: *hate*

in which my director and I express competing theories of law

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:27:07 -0500

cec: are you saying the law is all-encompassing
cec: because that sounds pretty socialist to me
cec: I want the freedom to de facto hate on people
cec: freeeeedom
wjm: the legal is political.
wjm: MARXISM OUT

das racist (feat. leif)“jungle fever”greedheadz EP -...

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:13:44 -0500

das racist (feat. leif)
“jungle fever”
greedheadz EP - 2009

everyone knows wallpaper’s remix of “combination pizza hut” et. al. dr are wildly inconsistent, but this is a great track.

the future is scary

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:43:21 -0500

I went on craigslist this morning at around 9:30 am, looking for furniture. (I’m redecorating, in case you needed to know. or wanted to buy me a nice mattress.) I came upon a table and chairs that looked good, contacted the seller, and set up an exchange for tomorrow morning. at 4 pm today, in the gym, a colleague of mine, b, came up to me.

“hey c,” he said. “are you getting a table off craigslist?”
“yes, b,” I said, “and chairs.”
“oh. cc [a mutual acquaintence of ours] and I were talking just now, and she said she knows the guy that’s selling it to you. she said I should tell you to act crazy to him. like a serial killer. freak him out. then say ‘just kidding!’ and run away.”
“okay,” I said. “wow.”

later I ran into cc.

“ohmygod, c,” she said. “are you getting a table?”
“b already told me,” I said. “you want me to scare him?”
“oh yes. please. he looked you up on facebook just to make sure you were real and asked me if I knew you because we were mutual friends and your picture is of you scowling. I said you were a real teddy bear, that you just looked that way, but you could totally get away with it. c’mon, creep him out a bit.”

the future is here. in it, everyone knows you are getting a table. it is scary.

also, maybe I shouldn’t scowl in my facebook picture?

the only ones - “another girl, another...

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:15:48 -0500

the only ones - “another girl, another planet”
7”, 1978

poetry: untitled (haiku)

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:54:59 -0500

bagel and donut
walk into a bar, saying
round about these parts

(2010)

non-fiction: the benevolent sun (part one)

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:13:36 -0500

non-fiction: the benevolent sun (part one):

my first published non-fiction work, on my trip to north korea in 2008.

part one. part two next week.

I, too, wish to annotate sarah palin's washington post op-ed

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:41:46 -0500

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

fffffffffffffffffffffffff. fffffffffffffffffffffffff. ffffff.

“Climate-gate,” as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle — the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference.

ff. fffffffffffff. “ffffffffffffffffffffff?” fff. f. ffffffffff. f.

The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won’t change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.

ffffffff!

The e-mails reveal that leading climate “experts” deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. (fffffff)

What’s more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff,

This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I’ve always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics.

(mirthless laughter)

As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicized science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled. I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide,

fff ffffff.

but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of “climate change impacts” was an abuse of the Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska’s economy and the nation’s, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development.

ffffff…. F(!?) FFFFF.

Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits — not pursuing a political agenda. That’s not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate — far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska’s communities and infrastructure.

[img-daft-punk-is-playing-at-my-house.jpg]

But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real.

FFF FFF FFF ffffffff

Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen — which actually allow them to increase their emissions — President Obama has proposed serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions. Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax proposals, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs (as Obama admitted during the campaign). That’s not exactly what most Americans are hoping for these days. And as public opposition continues to stall Congress’s cap-and-tax plans, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.

fff fff fff fffffff

In fact, we’re not the only nation whose people are questioning climate change schemes. In the European Union, energy prices skyrocketed after it began a cap-and-tax program. Meanwhile, Australia’s Parliament recently defeated a cap-and-tax bill. Surely other nations will follow suit, particularly as the climate e-mail scandal continues to unfold.

no u

In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to “restore science to its rightful place.” But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a “deal.” Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats’ cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs — particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.

f f f f f,
f f f f f f f
f f f F f

Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.

what

serial fiction: turkey out of joint

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:08:00 -0500

Part 5: The Fullness of the Lips
(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

A deep-focus shot of a warm orange room: first the edge of the ottoman, a blotchy velvet street find of the kind you’d leave in a sealed bag for three weeks to ensure the bedbugs were dead before using it. Then the narrow view of the hardwood floor, lacquered cheaply at some point in the seventies or eighties to maintain some false semblance of pre-war glamour. On either side, bookshelves, towering with volumes retrieved from estate sales, giveaways, and sidewalk vendors. Two worn 1908 editions of “Cymbeline.” A rubber-banded cache of National Geographics from 1953. Last week’s New Yorker. At the rear wall, the couch, of a similar (but not identical) velvet to the ottoman, regally-faded in comparison to the ottoman’s ratty covering. Finally, the young woman herself, legs folded under her on the cushions, wearing a long heather sweater that came down to her knees. Brown wavy hair and a penetrating stare. Finally, nestled in her lap, a single black-and-white cat, its eyes closed contentedly as her long fingers stroked its chin.

“Only you, Byron Xu,” said Elena Malcolm, the Queen of Cats, her voice echoing through my tinny computer speakers. “I figured if you were calling on Skype you were either in serious trouble or bored out of your mind.”

“A little of Column A, a little of Column B,” I replied, holding the ice pack to the back of my skull. “To be honest I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t pick up so I could tell you the story in more exciting terms.”

“No, you did quite well,” she said, shaking her head. “It was adorable. I’d say I couldn’t believe one man could be so hapless, but, you know, here you are. You knew full well the spam-bots were getting more and more resourceful. Just because it spoke to you in Spanish, you decided to talk with it?”

“It seemed so real,” I growled, looking away. “I’m still not convinced on that one.”

“Or on your dear conservative friend?”

“She drove me home! She gave me her number! You really think—“

“If I’d hit a man to keep my secret safe after I’d stupidly given it away, I would convince him that he’d been mugged, too, as soon as he’d gotten up.”

“But they used my credit card at Best Buy, like, within fifteen minutes. I had to spend ages on her phone with the fraud division.”

“You were right next to a Republican meeting place. Do you think they didn’t take advantage of a literal free market?”

“Oh, come on, they’re not thieves, they’re… Republicans.”

Elena rolled her eyes. “You’re walking into a witty retort. You know that, don’t you? Do you want me to break out the signal flags?”

I adjusted the ice pack. A bead of cold water dripped down the back of my neck. I shivered. “Look,” I said, “I… I dunno. Why would she give me her number, then?”
Elena’s face registered a blend of pity and disgust. “I have a list of men in my phone whose calls I ignore. Not a long list, but it exists. I don’t even feel a twinge of regret when I let it go to voicemail. Men are easy to find, and easier to ignore. Even a young conservative would know the value of that sort of list, darling. Didn’t you go to a Thanksgiving ball of theirs? Did you see the meat market?”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “So more of them come from the fat belt than usual. Maybe I’m intriguing to her.”

“I’m beginning to think that bump on your head has really caused some damage.” Her eyes flicked somewhere behind me, and I caught the flicker of a television screen reflected onto her pale skin. She stopped looking directly at me. “Then again, you’re one of those boys that does like their women to beat up on them. Probably something passive-aggressive. You should get that checked out when you go to get that bruise examined.”

“You know, you could at least turn the TV off before insulting me,” I grumbled. “Or move closer to the computer.”

“No,” she said, yawning, covering a smile with her hand. “I like keeping a respectable distance. Illusion of control and all. I take it you’re not going to San Francisco any time soon, then?”

“What? No, I mean, my brother’s fine with it.”

“Does he believe you?”
“I don’t know what he believes, but it doesn’t matter, my camera’s gone and by the time I woke up she was driving me down New York Avenue. He can run his article without pictures, and he won’t badmouth me unless he wants our folks, and his rent helpers, to hear that he sent me out to some godforsaken back alley in Northeast DC to get clonked in the head.”

“Nicely done. Though it sounds like some time deeper in Oakland couldn’t hurt the kid.”

“He’s twenty-eight. He’s past learning.”

“That’s a grim prognosis.”

“Yeah, well, I’m young and invincible and don’t need to learn from my mistakes yet, right?”

Elena shut her eyes, but smiled despite herself. “What a curious recurring theme with you, Byron Xu. Must be younger sibling syndrome or something.”

“So should I call her back or not?”

She put her eyes back onto the TV and sighed. “You have a steady relationship going, don’t you?”

“Who said anything about a relationship?”

“You didn’t, which makes me think you know it’s a bad idea but plan to pursue it anyway because you’re bored and unhappy with yourself and manifest it by taking it out on women, which I find symptomatic of Washington more than anything relating to genetics or upbringing or whatever.”

I thought about this for a second. “So what do I do?”

She looked back through her computer screen at me. “You want my honest advice? Clean your apartment. Get a cat.”

I looked around. She was right about the first part, at least. I sighed. “I just, I mean… I dunno. I felt like… like I had a choice, briefly. Like, a moral decision to make. That’s attractive. I had a chance to, like, make my own rules, and live with that decision.”

She was back to the TV, petting the cat with one hand and flipping through channels with the other. “Mmm,” she said. “So you’re addicted to choice now?”

“Pot, kettle,” I said.

“What?” She stopped clicking through channels, then looked out at me, then down at the remote. “Oh,” she said. “Cute. No, this is different, I’m just playing by the rules the cable company gave me. You had, however briefly, an actual choice that involved your own morals, yes, that’s true. Just because we went to college in Ithaca doesn’t mean you lived your entire life sheltered from that, does it?”

“Uh,” I said. “Have you ever hung out with a Chinese family?”

“I dated a half-Japanese man once,” she said.

“Elena. Let’s pretend you didn’t just say that.”

“Oh, you’re no fun when I can’t get a good rise out of you.”

I pounced. “You’re walking into a witty retort,” I said. “You want signal flags? Something like that?”

“Ooh,” she said, raising her hands. The cat looked up at her, displeased at this disturbance. “Touché, touché. At least Washington has given you a sense of proper repartee.”

I pressed her. “I don’t get what you’re saying, ‘addicted to choice.’”

She sighed and flipped the TV off. “Doing nothing is a choice too, you know. If you take every opportunity that walks in front of you, you’re going to get more unhappy and keep doing it. Men do this. They are dumb. So. Take my advice. Don’t. Also. Get a cat. Cats are honest. Clear?”

I shrugged, then winced. “Alright, alright,” I murmured. “Lemme think about all this.”

“Thinking!” crowed Elena. “If we get you to think about something this entire holiday season, I’ll count it a great moral victory. Now if you’ll excuse me, Bravo is showing some homosexuals marginalizing themselves by doing stereotypical and chaste things to help out unattractive straight women.”

“Have fun,” I said.

Elena went back to the TV and unmuted it, but I couldn’t make out the words, only the distorted sound bouncing off the long book-filled walls of her apartment filtered through the tiny speakers on the front of my laptop. Her eyes slowly glazed over, acclimating to the TV’s wavelength. I closed the computer.

The days were getting shorter, and the main room of our apartment faced away from the setting sun, leaving afternoons a long and shadowy affair. I undid my belt and leaned back in my chair, groaning as the blood rushed to the lump on my skull. Leaning back, I could see the sheet of legal paper I’d attached with a magnet to the freezer door, my wet fingerprints still on the bottom half. I stared at the numbers written in turquoise ink until my vision blurred like Elena’s in front of the TV.

After a moment, I struggled to my feet. A knife caked in dried peanut butter still stuck out of the jar on the kitchen counter. I wandered over to put it away. My jeans fell down. I tumbled to the floor, my arms flying out to catch the bulk of the blow, but I still yelped in pain as the bump on my head throbbed after my chin cracked the carpeted floor of the area between our table and the kitchen itself.

I rolled over onto my back and stared at the ceiling. Light began to fade. I spread my arms and dug my hands into the carpet, scratching at it half-heartedly. I glanced up at the refrigerator, then at the peanut butter, then at my computer, then at the mess.

“Well,” I said. “It can wait.”

The end.

serial fiction: turkey out of joint

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:37:00 -0500

Part 4: The Recesses of the Gums
(part 1) (part 2) (part 3)

“Are we there yet?”

“No. Stop complaining.”

“This is maybe the most awkward thing I’ve ever done.”

“Yeah, listen, that goes both ways. If someone pulls me over with you in the car I’m going to claim diplomatic immunity or something.”

“Wait, you’re not a citizen?”

“No, I—what do you care?”

“Making conversation.”

Her name was Delia Richards, and her license plates were from North Carolina. She went to UNC, she said, which was just liberal enough to convince her that liberals were wretching drunkards living off their parents’ money. When I told her she should try attending an Ole Miss game and get back to me, she told me to put a blindfold on. Aumerle House, she said, was a little ways away.

It was Black Friday, and traffic, judging by the amount of times we’d stopped and started, was wretched. I had no idea where one road stopped and another started, and DC’s bureaucratic grid did me no favors in helping me out. The little light that poked through the simple black fabric Delia’d brought as a cover indicated that we’d already wasted what little remained of the day by the time she’d showed up.

“So why bother?” I asked, after the silence had grown terminally uncomfortable.

“…coming to Washington? Working for a think tank? Helping you out?” I heard her laugh. “I don’t have the answers to a lot of those questions, but I highly doubt you do, either. What do you do, anyway?”

“I’m a student,” I said. “Grad student. Urban planning.”

“Bang-up job you guys did in this city.”

“Not our fault,” I replied. “Blame the British, they made it necessary to design the streets to discourage invasion.”

“And encourage traffic.”

“Look, everyone knew this place was a swamp when they built it.”

She laughed again. “So why do you bother?” she asked.

I had to think about this for a second. She snorted and shifted in her seat, so I coughed up a reply. “Boredom,” I said. “You can only learn so much.”

“Well, throw yourself into your studies, then,” she said. “You’re paying for them.”

“My parents are helping a little, with the loan paybacks,” I said.

She caught herself halfway between a snort and a giggle. “Liberals,” she said. “Always so keen with other folks’ money.”

“Ah, no, come on, we were having a nice trip, don’t bring politics into it.”

“You showed up at the ball. You asked for it.”

“You seemed nice enough to not make me worry about that ideological bullshit,” I snapped. “Besides, what were you doing at Pharmacy Bar? Getting your kicks baiting the pretty boys in Adams-Morgan?”

She slammed on the brakes. I let out a whimper as the shoulder strap of my belt caught me along the collar bone. “I’m doing you a favor,” she said. “You can go home if you don’t like my style.”

“Are we still in traffic?” I gasped. “Shouldn’t you keep driving instead of, I dunno, being, like, over-dramatic?”

“We’re at a red light,” she said. “I figured, hey, might as well.”

My BlackBerry buzzed in my pocket. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Phone,” I said.

“Your parents pay the bills on that, too?” she asked.

“Hey, step off,” I snarled. “They chose what to do with their money, isn’t that good enough for you?”

“I’m just saying, you’re the ones that’re proposing higher taxes for them.”

“My parents are not in that tax bracket,” I said.

“Everyone in that tax bracket except for the millionaires thinks they aren’t. Until they get taxed like they’re millionaires.”

“So you think we should tax millionaires more, then? I’m glad we agree on something.”

“Sure, let’s just build a big dam in the river of wealth during an economic meltdown.”

“You’re good at this think-tank rejoinder crap. Do you ever give the guys on the talking heads shows the talking points?”

“We are the talking heads.”

I shrugged. “Cool, I guess,” I said.

“Who would be calling you now?” she asked.

“It’s, what, like 4 pm on a Friday? Any one of my cool friends.”

“Having met one of your ‘cool friends’—“

“Reynard is not one of my cool friends. Well, I mean, he is a pretty cool guy, given his background. He’s just crazy, too.”

“He seemed quite the smooth operator.”

“You’re… how many big cities have you lived in?”

“Durham was big enough. This is too much.”

I shook my head. “Man, I can’t even wrap my head around thinking that way.”

“Sounds like you fit in here even better than I do,” she said, gunning the accelerator.

I wriggled my phone out of my pocket and brought it up just under my eyes, letting me look down into the open space my nose provided between my cheeks and the blindfold.

000lvidal000: @xubaihan vaya con dios a tus sueños incredibles

“Hey,” snapped Delia. “Watch it.”

“Just checking my messages. I’m popular. Kind of a big deal.”

“I’m sure. Why does your brother even want to see Aumerle House any way? It’s not that impressive.”

“What is Aumerle House?” I almost shouted. “Why am I blindfolded and being taken to see it by a needling young conservative with a cute haircut?”

A curious silence followed. Then: “Well, I’m glad someone likes my hair.”

“That was internal monologue.” I folded my arms in front of me and tried to nuzzle my nose down such that the blindfold slipped over my reddening cheeks.

“Well, since you’re monologuing, Aumerle House is just a policy joint. Staffers for all the Republican members of the House and Senate come out here to talk shop.”

“What’s ‘talking shop’ entail?” I asked, trying to put as much distance between us and my outburst as possible.

“You know. Discussing bills. Coming up with strategies on the floor. The usual.”

I sighed. “So why would my brother want a picture of it?”
“It’s not like Democrats don’t know that such a thing exists, and the house is pretty non-descript, so I don’t know, which is the only reason you’re getting to see it.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

“Yeah, uh, that aphorism applies to you, too, so you’re screwed either way.”

The car slowed to a stop, then backed up, then inched forward. The blindfold fell off my head, and I shielded my eyes as Delia opened her door, triggering the car’s lights. “We’re here,” she said.

The sun had already set, and light was fading from the sky. “You couldn’t’ve picked me up in the morning like I asked?” I muttered.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she replied. “Not even if Democrats pass a law saying you can be.”

I pulled my DSLR camera from under my coat with a sigh. “Let’s just do this and go home.”

The street was ugly, even with the rain having stopped earlier in the day. A few abandoned row houses stood in front of drooping trees. No street signs greeted us at the nearest corner—probably intentionally, I thought. The grass was an ugly mix of green and brown, neglected but too weak to make the argument for wild undergrowth. Delia looked nervously in all directions, then pointed out a light blue house with what appeared to be new windows, judging by the absence of dust and muck.

“That’s Aumerle House,” she said. “Get your picture.”

I dropped to one knee on the pavement. The camera quivered in my hands. I relied on the actual viewfinder to compose the shot, then pressed the button several times in quick succession. The snap of the shutter echoed up and down the street.

Satisfied, I turned to Delia. “Gimme one sec and we’ll go.”

“Hurry,” she snapped. “This’s a terrible neighborhood.”

I pulled out my BlackBerry and dialed my brother. The line rang only once.

“Little bro!” shouted Chris. I moved the speaker slightly away from my ear. Delia shot me a glare. “Where that picture at, huh? Did you get it?”

“I got it,” I said. “Just took a few of the side of the house right now. Anything else you need me to get?”

“Shit, man,” said Chris. “Why didn’t you get this done yesterday? We could’ve had you stake out the joint. No worry, we can deal. Just send ‘em over now.”

“Stake out the joint?” I repeated. Delia’s initial irritation shifted to genuine concern. “What would you ask me to stake it out for? Why do you need these pictures in the first place?”

A sigh crackled over the line. “Send them, and you’ll see tomorrow morning.”

Something in me snapped. “No, Chris, I’ve been chasing around this city for forty-eight hours, taking tips from a cryptic messenger and possibly banning myself from conservative mixers for life. What the fuck is this piece all about?”

Chris paused, then seemed to be talking urgently off in the distance. Finally, his voice came clearly through the line. “Fine,” he said. “You’ll get a kick out of this. But keep it on the DL, all right?” Delia took a step closer to get a better sense of the audio. I moved it away from her, but she grabbed my wrist and pulled the BlackBerry down closer to her level, taking my head with it in an attempt to stay connected.

“Uh, sure,” I replied, giving Delia a glare of my own.

“So,” said Chris. “One of the freshman Congressmen and a veteran’s page have been having a hot steamy affair. I mean, like, both married, both with children, both interested in taking their clothes off and fucking one another.” Delia’s frown remained fixed in place, but the color drained slightly from her face.

“So what? Happens all the time,” I said.

“They’re both men, Byron. They’re men who like men. Gay.” Either a gasp or an indignant yelp slipped past Delia’s lips. She took a step back and covered her mouth.

My jaw swung open, then worked its way soundlessly through a few syllables. “You say something, bro?” asked Chris.

“I… that’s crazy, Chris,” I finally said.

“I know, right?” My brother let out a cackle. One of the two street lights turned on. Delia looked anxiously up at it, then over at Aumerle House. “They’re using that place as their little love nest, at least that’s what we’re told.”

“How… how do you know this?” I asked. “Do you guys have proof? I mean, bad enough you’re outing guys, but you’re outing them like… on a hunch?”

“Byron, man, these guys are hypocrites. And of course we have proof. Other staffers talk about them all the time. It’s gross.”

“Office talk isn’t a reason to… I dunno, out someone,” I said, curling and uncurling my toes. Delia’s face had turned ashen, and she stared at the phone in my hand, her own mouth forming silent words now.

“Fuck, man, whatever,” snapped Chris. “We’re running this story at midnight tonight, just like how they bury stories over there. It’ll keep the politicos guessing until the regular news organizations pick up on it on Monday and the cycle’ll start all over again.”

“Man, you can’t just spread a rumor in print. Isn’t that, like… libelous?”

“Yes!” hissed Delia. I ignored her.

“Byron, listen,” said Chris, his voice assuming the tone he used to put on when holding the gate closed to get to the pool at the Y during the summer when we were kids. “We’re running this with or without the pictures. I just figured they’d add a sense of credibility. You get those to me right away and I’ll make sure you get credit, make friends here. Word travels fast in this town. There’s a big urban planning scene here, especially in Oakland. So c’mon, I’m doing you a favor.”

I stared at my camera as the street grew darker, then up at Delia, who seemed rooted to the spot. “Give me a minute,” I said into the phone. I hung up. She came alive in an instant, lurching towards me.

“You can’t,” she breathed, her voice equal parts venomous and pleading. “I knew, I knew this couldn’t end well, but you had that dumb look, tilting at windmills, and… I knew this couldn’t end well, and you just can’t… do this!”

I looked back over at the well-kept house next to its dilapidated neighbors. “Isn’t he right, though?” I felt my fingers close tighter around my camera. “Aren’t you all a bunch of hypocrites?”

“That’s… that’s not the issue!” she stammered. “They don’t even have proof.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe if there wasn’t such a stigma attached, your boys wouldn’t feel so stigmatized when they get outed.”

She moved like she was going to put her hands on her hips, but stopped halfway and instead balled her hands into fists to shake at me. “You don’t believe that. You’re just being argumentative. You know how dangerous it is.”

“They’re going to print it anyway,” I said. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I need the connections.”

Delia clutched her hands to her head, pulling the ponytail slightly out of place. “Are you just playing devil’s advocate or… or what? Are you winding me up? Fine. It’s working. I’m wound up. Nice job. Now cut it out and let’s get out of here.”

I stared at her for a good thirty or so seconds, then back down at my camera. “I need a minute or two to think about it,” I said.

She threw up her hands. “Stay right here. Do not move. I’ll drive around the block. But you decide to give him those pictures, you’re walking home.”

I watched her taillights recede, then shook my head. My BlackBerry buzzed. For whatever sick reason, I felt my heart leap. It was my anonymous follower, I hoped. He’s come to give me the answer at last. I held my camera up above my head in one hand while pulling my phone from my coat pocket with the other. Words flashed across the screen.

000lvidarl000: @xubaihan – a tu y tus problemas, links importantes: free-penis-report.co.nl y models-4-u.co.bz !!!!

Everything went black.

Part 5 Sunday evening.

serial fiction: turkey out of joint

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:03:00 -0500

Part 3 of 5
The Tip of the Tongue

(part 1) (part 2)

000lvidal000: @xubaihan si sabes nada, bailas mucho

The café was empty, save for the girl at the counter with a boxy dark grey cap on her head and a red checked keffiyeh around her neck. She was reading Franny and Zooey, making notes in the tiny margins with a purple Uniball pen that she occasionally used to brush her short hair back behind her ears. I tried to imagine the commentary. Double-underlines for particularly poignant or relevant moments. Maybe a “yes,” also underlined, for a whole paragraph. The word “hmm” a few times. The rain beat down behind the glass that separated my table from Connecticut Avenue. It was Thanksgiving.

000lvidal000: @xubaihan lo que no has visto, que te importa? la futura, tiene demasiado importancia en nuestras vidas

The coffee was too hot when I picked it up, but by the time I remembered it, it was too cold, and this wasn’t the kind of place with a microwave. My head hurt. I turned back to the computer and its maps. No open-source trickery of Google or its denizens, even an overlay of known conservative organizations, could bring up any mention of an “Aumerle House.” I even swallowed the anti-stalker bile and searched the first name “Delia” on Facebook. Then MySpace. No matches. I wiped my face with my napkin, checking to make sure the girl at the counter hadn’t noticed.

000lvidal000: @xubaihan in epocas dificiles, tienes que buscar la proxima fiesta

It would be worthless to try and get back in touch with Reynard—he refused to answer his cell phone on principle and was probably back filing visa paperwork for the embassy anyway. The French were big on holidays, but not American holidays. I began to flip through the cryptic replies my Spanish follower had begun to send me after asking about Aumerle House, with Google Translate and a skeptical eye. Who was this character? No given name, no location. His photo was some sort of bag—clicking on the bigger image revealed it to be a silicon implant. Her photo, maybe? Did the gender even matter?

I sighed and punched in a reply. “@000lvidal0000: no luck. My only lead, a conservative, disappeared. What do I do?”

I hit refresh a few times before the absurdity of the situation hit me, then shut my Macbook in disgust. The girl at the counter looked over at me, then put her ear buds in with a sigh, twirling her Uniball around the cord. I started, left a buck on my saucer, and stuffed the computer back into my messenger bag. My BlackBerry buzzed. I fished it out.

000lvidal000: @xubaihan para tu secreto conservativo, busca un baile secreto - pero traiga tu ballspende

Now it was my turn to sigh, then to pull my Macbook back out. I shot the girl a glance, but she was lost with Salinger in the music of their choice. What was this…person talking about? For my conservative secret, look for a… secret dance? Some quick Googling got me “ballspende”—a dance card. It was bad enough that I was following up on this enigmatic bullshit—but now it was multi-lingual enigmatic bullshit.

A dance card. A conservative dance… I clicked on the map with the think tanks and sighed. Washington might be one of the more reliably liberal cities in the country, but it had enough policy wonks from any ideological stripe to choke an issue to death from any angle.

The Heritage Foundation popped out at me, probably because it was so close to the Capitol. I clicked through their site. My eyes widened.

Thanksgiving Ball & Mixer
Tea and Liberty Served
Special welcome to interns/stranded members without a Thanksgiving feast of their own!
Semi-formal attire requested.

I slapped my computer shut again and went for the door, then tripped over my power cord. The girl behind the counter shook her head but didn’t remove her ear buds as I yanked it from the wall and stalked out of the café, putting my hat on and opening up my umbrella against the rain. I hadn’t worn semi-formal attire since the urban planning formal ball in Foggy Bottom. It’d be interesting to see if I’d washed it since then.

The Heritage Foundation’s headquarters sat next to a grim pizza joint, across the street from a barber shop, and cattycorner from a high-class liquor store. I looked up at its concrete façade, its chiseled faux-Roman lettering faded by acid rain. A few pockmarked young pale men in black suits whisked past me and through the building’s double doors.

“Hayek didn’t go far enough,” one was saying, waving his hands animatedly. The other ran his hand back through his greased hair.

“You can only assume the free market will correct market ills, though,” he replied. “Too often on issues of morality there’s a need to yoke the people under us…”

This was the place, all right.

Inside the hall, men and women milled about two tables full of finger food. Occasionally people stole glimpses at my khakis and dress shirt, and I felt like I should have at least stolen one of my apartment-mate’s blazers, or something. As I reached down to snag a Vienna sausage on a toothpick, my eyes drifted across the table.

In a simple white dress with a black handbag was Delia, seemingly recovered from Reynard’s advances, chatting amiably with another girl about my age standing next to her. I froze, my breath caught in my throat. A number of thoughts flashed through my head—how did my Spanish follower know? Did Delia know I was here? Did she even remember me, after Reynard gave her the works?

“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed a voice from the front of the hall, “welcome to the Heritage Foundation’s annual mixer for the conservatively-minded! I know that’s what President Reagan called a ‘big tent,’ so I’d like to thank you all for taking the time out of your days to meet one another.”

I moved up behind a short man with his hair parted down the middle to get a better glimpse of the speaker. A rotund little man in a tuxedo that bulged around his middle as if he were a little planet clapped his hands above his head and waved the other partygoers towards him.

“Let’s begin the mixing portion of this evening!” he shouted. “We’ve matched your RSVPs such that everyone from different organizations can get to meet one another during the dances, so, get out those cards and get ready to move!”

I let out a long string of curses in my head, but quickly cut myself off as I looked down to the hors d’oeuvres. The man in front of me—more of a boy, judging by the way he shifted his weight anxiously from foot to foot—had left his dance card with a corner wedged under a cheese platter. As he shifted again, I took a deep breath and yanked it out, then walked slowly to the other side of the room, as if getting ready. The rotund man mastering the ceremonies let out a laugh that echoed across the floor as others milled alongside me.

“Now, find your first partner and get ready,” he said. “This will be quick, I promise.”

I couldn’t imagine what music a conservative think tank would play to coordinate an organized dance. Memories of my parents blasting the classical music station in their convenience store at all hours haunted me. I couldn’t waltz. I could barely keep time. I’d be outed in an instant. I opened the dance card.

JACOB HIRCINE: project for the new american century
First dance: DELIA RICHARDS, heritage foundation

I blinked and shook my head. I could’ve made a killing at the Connecticut casinos my aunt and uncle went out to during this break with this kind of luck. I scanned the crowd for her white dress, but saw only a young man with his hair parted neatly down the middle pushing angrily through others. His face was a mask of anger and frustration, to the point where his horn-rimmed glasses seemed almost to be steaming and his double chin undulating under the pressure.

As I turned, Delia touched my shoulder.

“Jacob Hircine, I presume?” she said. “Or was it ‘Byron?’ Something tells me you’re not a Project for the New American Century kind of guy.

My heart leapt into my throat. ”Uh,” I said, twisting uncomfortably. “It’s ‘Byron,’ and if you want to know more, you’d better take this dance, uh, unless you’d rather have the real Jacob Hircine speed-dating you.”

I jerked my head over my shoulder. The young man with his hair parted was accosting another guest, demanding he show his dance card. The words were indistinct, but I could make out his high-pitched, nasal whine.

“GO!” shouted the planetoid of a man acting as master of ceremonies. A latter-day Britney Spears song burst from the speakers. Men and women laughed around us and began to dance leisurely to the beat, talking all the while. I stood in disbelief.

“I would’ve expected something… a little more conservative,” I shouted over the music, leaning in towards Delia. She began to dance.

“Not a conservative either? Can’t say I’m surprised, given your friend, ‘Byron.’”

I let out a bark of a laugh, but kept my face serious. “Yeah, uh, sorry about him.”

Delia kept the same bemused expression on her face. “And so you came out here just by chance?”

I shook my head in what I hoped looked like time to the spare beat. The real Jacob Hircine began interrogating another couple, closer to us than to the food table, now. “I wasn’t date-hunting, or, uh, nothing like that, no,” I stuttered. “But they mentioned you were… conservatively minded, and I thought maybe someone else here would know what Aumerle House was.”

Delia’s expression shifted to a concerned glare. “Keep your voice down,” she hissed. “Probably less than you’d think. And why do you want to know, any way? What reason should I give for trusting you?”

I winced. “Look, I bought you that drink last night, but I asked for change, it wasn’t like I was trying to bribe you. You came up to me.”

“Because I didn’t know anyone else except a few of us knew about it. I’m fairly low on the totem pole, it’s weird to have someone else my age snooping around. What if you were a Democratic congressman’s operative? What if you were, heaven forbid, a libertarian?”

I was about to laugh, but glanced to my right as I moved to the music. The real Jacob Hircine was now pestering the couple next to us. “Are you Delia Richards?” he whined. “I have this dance with her, you see, but I can’t find my card.” Delia followed my gaze, then winced.

“Hey, listen,” I said, moving in a step closer. “I’ll write down my number. I’m just doing research for my brother. He works on little things. You can meet me any time early tomorrow, and if you don’t believe me, don’t believe me. Just please believe this: you’re the only lead I have right now and I just want to help him out.” I began scratching my phone’s number onto the other half of Jacob Hircine’s dance card, then tore it in half and handed it to Delia.

“Tomorrow,” I said, “it’s gotta reach my brother before Friday ends on the West Coast. You can show up with a whole cadre of young conservatives, I don’t care, just… y’know, give me a break, here. I just want to help.”

After a moment, Delia took the card and put it in her purse. “Fine,” she said, “but I get to do whatever, blindfold you to take you to the house, not take you to the house, whatever.” For the first time, she seemed to blossom into a genuine smile. “Just promise me you’ll be a better dancer than—”

“Excuse me,” whimpered Jacob Hircine to me. “Is this girl Delia Richards? Because—”

In a burst that mixed emotion and inspiration, I tore up the second half of the dance card. “Viva Ron Paul!” I snapped, just loudly enough for Jacob Hircine to hear, then threw the pieces in his face. Jacob Hircine was so stunned that it took him a few seconds to even flinch, and a few more to gather his wits and move towards the rotund gentlemen in order to escort me out.

Delia smiled at me. “Libertarians,” she said. “No shame.”

“Not one,” I replied. “Just being a jerk. That I’m good at. Tomorrow, okay? I’ll play by all your rules. Just let me see the place, please?”

“We’ll see.”

By the time Jacob Hircine reached the master of ceremonies, the first song had ended and I was on the path back towards Union Station, my brows furrowed somewhere between puzzlement and hopefulness.

Part 4 Saturday evening.

serial fiction: turkey out of joint

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:56:00 -0500

Part 2 of 5: The Whites of the Teeth
(part 1)

“Ah, how do you say it, an adaptation.” He put one hand on the bar, the other on the girl’s shoulder. “An adaptation for our times. Pinocchio, you know, but, uh, he is a robot. And he just wants to be loved. But a girl robot. And he wants to be human. She. Wants to be human. And, uh, there is big boobs, so no one takes her seriously, they just want her for pleasure and because you can’t knock her up, but it will be sad! And then happy! But first she will adjust to the human life by killing the men who wronged her, maybe, in awesome fashions, just because I don’t want to make, uh, how do you say it, a film for the girls. Chick flick. Chick flick, yes, this I don’t want. More Pernod! Yes.”

I took off my hat. “Reynard,” I said, walking towards him through the cramped space, “you have no shame.” The walls of Pharmacy Bar were garishly painted and clashed with the exposed brick in places. Incongruous Top 40 hits of yesteryear brushed elbows with shoddy hardcore CD-Rs in its jukebox, and an orange Savannah Safari arcade machine took up valuable corner space, daring its users to shoot various endangered or threatened species with an orange plastic rifle for points or glory. At the back of the space sat the bar. At the bar sat Reynard, his broad and angular face enveloping the whole room as he turned to face me.

“It is an Asian dick,” said Reynard, waving his well-kept and pale palms in front of his dark Cameroonian face. “Also a lovely hat, Byron.”

“He hits girls,” I said to the bleach-blonde twenty-something sitting to his left. “And he doesn’t really say ‘how you say.’ Or even have an accent, really.”

Reynard frowned at me as the girl made her escape. “That is what the French would call asymmetrical warfare, huh? Do you like that hat so much?”

“I needed a seat,” I said, taking the newly-vacant stool. “And, uh, you might be the only black man I know smaller than I am, so…”

“The oppressed peoples, turning on one another rather than fighting the true enemy. What would your Chairman Mao think?”

“Probably a lot less of you for your French passport.”

Reynard smiled. “True!” The tiniest dram of Pernod slithered between his lips. “Alas.”

I ordered a Beefeater on the rocks. Reynard shook his head in disapproval, but said nothing until I had taken my first sip. His brown eyes studied my unkempt hair, my sinewy coat with its svelte shoulder pads. He was sizing up the nature of the request, I realized.

“A pathetic drink,” he said as I winced. “If one wants straight liquor, one should go for straight liquor, the kind that burns the lips and warms the soul.”

“Speaking of which,” I asked, “how’s business?”

Reynard threw up his hands. “Miserable!” he said. “On all fronts. I go to work, I am confronted by angry colonial men requesting work visas, or angry white women who want to work as teachers in Guyana, but I process their visas, and then I am taken out to these bars where the Americans have become so recalcitrant to my wiles, Byron, that I am tempted to give up on your society altogether and move to New York.”

I parsed this for a second. “You’ve been drinking for awhile,” I ventured.

“Were I not tethered diplomatically to this shit-hold, I would be gone in a heartbeat.”

“Shit-hole,” I corrected him. “Slang for toilet.”

He frowned. “That makes it much less interesting.”

“Yeah.” I sighed and twisted my plastic swizzle stick in my drink as the ice melted. “Anyhow, don’t go anywhere, I have a French question for you.”

“Charlemagne,” replied Reynard automatically. “Charlemagne or Charles de Gaulle. Two asshole Charleses, adrift on a sea of time. That’s usually the answer to most questions about France.”

“Not here. Here it’s, like, ‘cheese,’ or ‘surrender,’ or something like that.”

“Here? Not in Washington. They’re too literate for that nonsense, unless they’re actual elected officials. Sometimes they confuse pied noir, though, which is a little cute.”

I let the corners of my lips drop into a scowl. Reynard was the first person I’d spoken to face-to-face in twenty-four hours, but even then he was trying. “I need to know about a place called Aumerle House,” I said. “Does that sound like any French organization? You have any idea where it could be?”

“Aumerle House?” Reynard’s eyes flashed skyward. “I’m drawing blank, Byron. Nothing. Did you google it?”

I gave my eyes a more leisurely opportunity to roll. “What, you think I tracked you down because Google was down? Listen, my brother needs a photo of it by Friday, some big project they’re working on out in SF—“

“What’s SF?”
“San Francisco.”

“Oh. Gays and hills.”

“He lives in Oakland.”

“Blacks, gays, and an ugly bridge.”
“You’re vicious.”

“I learned a lot to get diplomatic work in your dirty country. So what? Why such a big deal? Is he paying you?”

I laughed. “Not likely. I just… I mean, look, I’m stuck out here over the break, Vicky’s not coming, I’ve got nothing… to do…”

“I can offer you a choice selection!” said Reynard, baring his pearly teeth.

Reynard’s mouth was a study in speed. The ends of his upper and lower incisors did not meet—they were pearly and precise, but rounded, slowly chewed-off. He kept them white through a steady diet of Trident gum when not crushing Ephedrine pills between his molars to extend his Adderall peak.

“Whoa, uh, Reynard, meth first and ask questions later?” I leaned back from him at the bar, taking my gin with me.

“Meth?” Reynard made a noise halfway between a dismissive “pah” and a snort. “How uncivilized. I let the French Embassy take full advantage of your health care system, then I take full advantage of it. Concentration’s a terrible thing to waste, Byron—want some?”

I stared at Reynard’s grin as it re-appeared with a mixed sense of distaste and elation. Something to push me through the night tempted me enough to begin the process of nodding before I caught the glimpse of a woman my age at a table next to the arcade game, watching. I closed my own eyes as soon as hers settled on me, but I’d gathered enough by her brown hair tucked back into a pony-tail and easy smile: a femme fatale for the quirky men. I was in trouble.

“That girl over there at that table is watching us,” I told Reynard, not altering my position. “Don’t look,” I added as Reynard’s head whipped around like a dog’s hanging out a car window.

“The one in the men’s dress shirt?” he asked. I’d been so taken by her face that her shirt hadn’t even crossed my mind.

That’s the one,” I said, fixing my gaze at the wall after a quick check to confirm.

“Ha, you are out of luck, my friend,” said Reynard. “No matter your intentions, she’s a—“

I cut him off with a curt hiss. The girl had stood up and was moving, empty glass suspended in her right hand, towards us. She separated us at the knees while at the bar and ordered a whiskey sour. After a premeditated beat, she turned to me.

“Did I hear you say something about Aumerle House?” she asked. “Sorry, uh, I don’t mean to intrude on your conversation, I just, uh, kind of noticed, and it’s hard to find.”

“Yes!” I almost shouted. “Can you tell me about it?”

“Wait,” she said, pulling out a wad of singles for her drink. I slapped a twenty-dollar bill down on the bar.

“Change please,” I said, adding, “Listen, that’s on me, I just need to know for an art publisher. Someone who doesn’t even do much of anything.”

The girl looked at me. Her eyes narrowed. A moment passed as she scrutinized my forehead. “I’m not even, uh, sure what to make of that,” she said.

“Sorry, sorry,” I replied. “I’m not trying to be coy, or any of those things. My name’s Byron.”

“Delia,” said the girl. “My friend Melanie’s in the bathroom, but I think I’m the only one who knows about Aumerle in my—“

Reynard put a hand on her shoulder.

“You talk to this man?” he said. “He hits women, you know. Claims it’s all safety. Me, I am, how you say, into protection.”

Delia turned to Reynard, yelped, and spilled her whiskey sour into the bar’s well. Her eyes filled with water as she twisted away from both of us and stormed out.

“Fuck! Reynard!”

“Now we are even,” said Reynard, putting his hands happily behind his head and lying back into open space with his eyes closed in contentment. “No one interrupts me hitting on women—especially not you, Byron Xu.”

“That was my only lead!”

Once again, Reynard deployed the worn-down smile. “There are plenty of fish in the sea,” he said. “Besides, I knew her. Not worth it.”

“What?”

Reynard sighed. “Do you think I hadn’t tried before? She’s a Republican, Byron. Out of your league. Forever.”

By last call, both of us were loaded out of disgust, and while Reynard walked home talking loudly to a girl who worked for Blue Cross/Blue Shield about my misadventures, I stumbled back towards the apartment alone, cursing my luck in exciting terms as I paced the pavement.

As I reached my door, my BlackBerry buzzed again. I dove into my pocket to retrieve it, but it was only a Twitter alert. Someone had responded to me again. Drunk and irritable, I passed by my Mac on the filthy table, stormed into the kitchen, flung my hands out in picking up a bottle of Coke Zero only to send the peanut butter knife embedded in the Skippy jar flying down under the dining room table, and fell asleep on the sofa, awakened now and again by a persistent, reliant hum from the phone—new messages, growing by the hour.

Part 3 Friday evening.

serial fiction: turkey out of joint

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:00:00 -0500

Part 1 of 5: The Roof of the Mouth

On the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving I was expecting a call from my then-girlfriend, so when the phone buzzed I left the knife in the peanut butter and dove across the floor of the kitchen to unhinge it from its charger. In the seconds between my belt-less jeans falling down and my own tumble onto the linoleum, I felt vaguely graceful, silhouetted in the dim light of the window above the sink as the rain poured down outside. Then I hit the floor, cursed, and clawed my way over to the wall socket where the charger lay nestled.

“Vicky?” I blurted as soon as I could press the phone close enough to my face. “Uh, hey, this isn’t—”

“OOH BYRON TOUCH ME HARDER,” moaned a gruff voice on the other end. I yelped and drew the BlackBerry away from my ear to check the name, then sighed.

“Chris, you fucking—”

“Happy Thanksgiving to you too, little brother! Where your turkey at? Where your girlfriend at?”

“Fuck, man, St. Louis,” I said, looking across the grim common space I shared with two other urban planning students. Was that my belt hanging off the folding table? Or maybe dangling from the fan?

“Well, fuck that, kid, fuck that,” shouted Chris. “Keep your turkey close and your stuffing closer, right? Right? Shit man, I’m drunk, I’m sorry.”

I looked at my watch. “Chris, it’s not even eight in Oakland.”

“Fuck you, DC! You picked up the phone! You gonna judge me? What’re you doing, eating peanut butter out of a jar and looking at street layouts going ‘hmm, yes, let’s play some fucking capture the flag, mmm,’ that sorta shit?”

I started and stared guiltily over at the Skippy on the counter. “Nah man, I’ve got plans. Just waiting for Vicky to call, you know?”

“Whatever, bro, ain’t no thang.” On the other end of the line, I heard a faint muttering, and then Chris speaking too fast for comfort. “Hey look, I called to ask a favor, alright? You know some place in Washington called…uh… ‘Aumerle House’ or something?”

Four credits’ worth of History of the District of Columbia wasted, I thought. “No,” I told Chris. “Not that I can think off of the top of my head.”

“Shit, man, shit. We’re putting out this piece on Friday and my editor needs a picture. Like, has gotta have it. A recent one. You know anyone that might know where it is? You think you can take this shot?”

I felt my brow furrow. “Chris, man, it’s Thanksgiving.”

“Fuck you, you Chinaman, you ain’t going back to see Mom & Dad!”

“You know, they told us at Cornell that people who use ethnic slurs as identifiers are really engaging in a self-loathing exercise.”

“Bitch, please, tell that to Jay-Z. They told us at Berkeley that Asian glow means danger zo-o-o-one, motherfucker,” shouted Chris. “Xu Bai Han, redder than the Red Sea in the Yellow Sea—”

“Fuck you, man.” I swung the phone back down. Chris’s voice blared through the receiver.

“Yo, hey, whatever, man, I’m just playing. I really need that picture. Byron? Byron?”

“By Friday?” I asked, already kicking myself for bringing the phone back to my ear. “Everything’s closed tomorrow, you know that. I have to wait for Vicky’s call, and… why’s it gotta be Friday?”

“I dunno, man, it’s always the way. Look, this is a big story, some sort of ‘put-our-names-on-the-map’ kinda deal. No one in San Francisco makes money doing this stuff, I don’t wanna have to go back to Boston and admit that Mom & Dad were right and I should’ve taken over the shop, so, yeah, man, c’mon.”

“Mom wanted you to go to law school,” I said.

“Fuck you,” replied Chris. “Go plan me an urban or something.”

I laughed despite myself. “You’re gonna owe me big time for this, okay? And no promises.”

“Dude, bro, I am forever in your debt. Seriously. ‘Aumerle House.’ A-U-M-E-R-L-E. Go get it.”

“You’re damn right you’re in my debt. Go sober up, man, you’re ridiculous.”

“Fuck yeah! Happy Turkey Death Day!” I caught the tail end of Chris’s exaltation as he put the phone back into his pocket: “Fuck yeah, he’s totally gonna—”

Three of us grad students lived in one apartment out west of Cleveland Park in northwest Washington, an angular, high-ceilinged space in a drab early-seventies bloc that we messily called home together. Both my apartment-mates had gone down to North Carolina for Thanksgiving, but my parents, industrious second-generation Chinese merchant-types, worked on all holidays that their Evangelical Methodism didn’t demand they take off, and I was in no mood for another lecture about how much of their money I was wasting by staying in school.

With Vicky electing to stay in St. Louis and both of us at an impasse over who was going to give up their non-cash-cow graduate degree to be with the other, it looked like all the hallmarks of a bad week, down to the pumpkin pie offer at the local Vietnamese restaurant, but Chris’s call gave me a strange boost. I cleaned off a portion of our disgusting table and opened up my laptop.

Googling “Aumerle House” produced nothing, so with some trepidation I turned to Twitter. I kept it simple, imagining the number of exciting spam replies I’d receive. “who knows where ‘aumerle house’ is in DC? or what it is?”

I flipped through the contacts in my phone, idly contemplating where my belt had gone before realizing that my pants were still down. It was times like this I thanked genetics that it took me a good week to grow something resembling the stubble my roommates seemed to produce on-demand, and by that thought process I came to a stop on Elena Malcolm, Queen of Cats.

As was typical, my fingers hit the “call” button long before I was actually ready to talk, and Elena was always more of an adventure than I’d bargained for, but if anyone else would be spending Thanksgiving with enough esoteric knowledge to solve my own little mundane mystery, it would be here. Still, I found myself hoping it’d go to voicemail before her measured voice came over the line.

“Byron Xu, I presume?” purred Elena. Few people look exactly how they sound, but Elena would be the picture in the Encyclopedia Britannica if they ever got around to putting in an entry for the phenomenon. Of average height and weight with a deliberate grace to her walk, she towed the line between a tomboy’s nonchalance and a dowager’s elegance, and her wavy long brown hair betrayed an exoticism that her Wisconsin upbringing profoundly defeated. Better to think of her from the wilds of Maine, or the bayous of Louisiana, as her lovelorn suitors often did.

“Hey, Elena,” I said, as a vision of her seated on my couch floated before me, hazel eyes locked on a point somewhere just behind my own.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” The sound of shuffling fabric came through the line. I felt my face flush.

“Ah, maybe a little hand with some research, actually,” I said. “I’m at a loss.”

“Are you familiar with this ‘Google,’ Byron?” said Elena, letting the leisurely tone ooze out of her. “They’re doing such wonderful things with it these days.”

I muscled some steel of my own into my voice. “I have better things to do than waste my minutes asking you to be my Google buddy,” I said. “I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard of a place called ‘Aumerle House.’”

“Yes, yes, I’ve seen your little tweet,” she said. “If you were enterprising enough to Google ‘Aumerle’ yourself, you’d’ve learned that it’s a title of a minor insurrectionist in Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II,’ who’s pardoned after Henry IV takes the throne despite his threat to Henry.”

“Well,” I said, scratching down “aum = sspeare” on my arm with a stray pen, “that’d, uh, defeat the point of having you around, wouldn’t it? Who would you research for, the cats?”

I heard the slapping-shut of a book—a thick one, by the way it carried over the phone. I envisioned Elena in front of the wall of books in her tiny New York studio, three mottled cats following her finger as she selected a particular tome. “Yes, well, that’s all I’ve got for you, I’m afraid, though as you know, if it happened after 1950, I’m just not your girl.”

The temptation for the rimshot proved too much. “Like your taste in men, no?”

An icy pause. Then: “I do value maturity a bit more than, say, you.”

I thought fast, then botched it and tried to laugh it off. “I mean, sure, look, you, uh, it’s just so easy to pigeon-hole the younger girl and the older men with their emotional hang-ups—”

A curt bark cut me off—a surprising outburst from the Queen of Cats. “As opposed to you, dear Byron Xu, the kind of younger man with emotional hang-ups that can’t wait ‘till he’s twenty-nine and able to sink his over-educated claws into those younger girls? Don’t worry, you’ll be there soon enough, and you’ll cast off your long-distance ball-and-chain, then use her as a crutch when you can’t be faithful to anyone for longer than a week.”

I must have stuttered into the phone, because Elena continued after a moment. “Yes, well, that’s what I thought you’d say. Anyhow, ‘Aumerle’ sounds French to me. Do you have any friends down there who speak French? Come to think of it, do you have any friends at all? Bourbon doesn’t count.”

I rallied—magnificently, I thought, though I was always up to a comment about drinking—and slammed the door on my own mistake: “Always a pleasure getting torn up by you, oh Queen of Cats.”

“Oh, Byron, it gives me such pleasure in return to tear you up. Keep your nose clean and all.”

“I’m not the one with four cats,” I said.

“Your loss.” The line went dead.

By the time I’d wriggled my jeans back on and found a spot on the couch untouched by pizza boxes to sit with a beer and collect my thoughts, I’d picked out at least one follow-up lead: Reynard, the French Embassy’s finest foreign officer. It wasn’t yet midnight – though the town would probably roll up the sidewalks early, given the rain, Reynard could be relied upon to find the last open bar in Adams-Morgan and reel in the drunken stragglers, even without the cell phone he detested so much and refused to use on principle.

Sipping my Sierra Nevada, I pulled out my BlackBerry again and checked my Twitter feed, despite having the laptop less than half a room away. A new follower’s reply greeted me:

000lvidal000: @xubaihan aumerle? aumeNTARle! (lo que quisiera, obtenga a la farmacia… o tu sepultura)

I moved my lips along to the words, struggling to remember high school Spanish. “Get it at the pharmacy… or your grave”? I shivered and took another pull from my beer bottle, letting the “phunk” of my lips breaking the seal around the neck echo through the empty room.

My eyes widened as I started drawing connections. Pharmacy… Pharmacy Bar? The dive on 18^th that Reynard often held court in during the weekdays, when it would be unseemly to be wasted on the dance floor? I gulped down the rest of the lager and checked my watch. Almost midnight. I had time before Thanksgiving. I put on my long, bulky Japanese coat to disguise my scrawny frame, slipped my roommate’s ridiculous wide-brimmed fedora on to keep out the rain, and stepped out the door.

It wasn’t until some time later that I realized I’d left the peanut butter open on the counter, knife stuck in at just such an angle, with the saturated fat slowly congealing around it in the rainy November air.

Part 2 Thursday evening.

on returning.

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:54:39 -0400

after some time, I am returning to this project anew. a formal re-opening will ensue.

further administrative notices

Wed, 20 May 2009 23:56:42 -0400

apologies as to the delay in updating. I’ve uprooted myself from washington and am currently in a suburban staging area, working on a grad school project and waiting to move my boxes into new york to start my new job. regular updating will recommence then. sorry.

on concise rejoinders to my thoughts in transit through america's right armpit

Sun, 17 May 2009 15:03:09 -0400

cec: I am driving through jersey & "thunder road" came on the radio, Bruce springsteen still sucks even in jersey, sorry
ahm: fuck ya jack... jerz rulz