Analog Assignment # 1.2: Write About An Experience You Had With Tim

I shared a bottle of 7—Up with him. We sat on an old shirt, on the sand, on the Jersey Shore. We were on tour with Our Town. We were tired. We talked about our brothers, and our lovers, and our friends, and the things we wanted. Someone yelled from across the room, they said, “hey, you’re the guy from that show!” They recognized him, but not me. I didn’t mind. I was so tired. I asked him if he would please carry me home. He said he’d carry me half of the way. He said that when we got to the half way point I would have to get down from his shoulders and tip the pizza guy, he could pay for the pizza, but I had to tip, because I got fifty dollars a week for an allowance, and I never spent any of it, so I might as well tip.

I asked if we could go to the clearing in the morning, I needed a wide open sort of  surrounding on account of it was time to organize my bottle caps. He said I could just as easily go by myself, he said I had to do some things on my own.

I said I was tired.

He said “hurry up kid!” I knew he was joking.

He pounded his fists together three times, one on top of the other, he started running, I thought it was funny that we were on a beach, we’re never on a beach.   

Patrons

Dear Mousy Brown Haired Girl Eating With Your Mother Or Aunt,
   Thank you for recognizing me, thank you for saying nice things. Sorry I was kind of bitchy. Sorry I possibly walked away while you were still talking. Its just that I was slammed on the patio. And that obviously was not my section you were sitting in, I was just dropping off your food, and checking to see if you needed salt/pepper/hot sauce/ketchup. I just didn't have time to chat. And sometimes when I'm busy like that, I sort of forget that I'm a Neo--Futurist. I mean, its stored on a completely different shelf, sealed up tight with the chili peppers and the lemons. And, furthermore, I'd be lying if I said my Neo--Futurist feelings haven't gotten royally complicated, and a bit sad. Nothing permanent, not really, I mean, I wont look back with utter disdain or anything. No, that's not it at all. The opposite. It saved my life. I figured out how to write. I realized I have opinions, and that they can be released from my mouth, and not my pores. I got a class, an eight week class, in which I am the teacher. That's huge. And that's only the beginning. Not to mention the people. The people paralyse me with love. Just love. Pure love. The real thing. The kind that constricts your air passage. Jesus love. Foot washing love. No! Not you! Not the audience. Fuck them! The ensemble. The people doing this with me every week, the blood. The terror. The cheesy love circle before every show. The tours across the country. The bulk containers of potato chips. The dropped lines. The homemade props. I want to kiss their eye lids. My favorites are T--Rex, and Sticky, and Angela. They've also moved on. Angela had a baby and is looking for jobs in Ohio, Sticky went to Montana with her boyfriend, and T--Rex went to Los Angeles to follow the heart of clown. I miss them like a dumb lyric in a pop song. I want to tare my shirt off, and stand in the rain. I think about them all the time, and its so weird that they're so scattered. Its like the end of summer camp. And the newest generation of Neo--Futurists are killing ass nails out of the park, and I had so much love casting them, and now I feel like I'm abandoning them. You know, I have issues. And now I'm about to sit through a whole other casting session, and these people I wont get to work with a lick. So, that's weird. And furthermore, there are things I regret that I couldn't, for one reason or another, accomplish, or even try. Like, I never produced a full length show, and I never took on a leadership role. That seems to be a pattern in my life. I'll work on that. I'm young. I'm 30. I got cast when I was 24. Now I'm 30. I'm young, but I do feel just a little older than I once was. And 11:30pm is so flipping late, such a weird time to call places, and also so unbelievably hard core. Its a lot to let go of, but its also time. As hard as it is, I'm still doing it, confidently, I want to do this. Roosevelt, look out bitch, I'm from the south side!

(Egg head, you suck. If I had the time, I would slander your name. You're lucky I'm a busy person.)

See Mousy Brown Haired Girl Eating With Your Mother Or Aunt, I just didn't have the energy to get into it. But, yes, I am a Neo--Futurist. Yes, you did see me in Too Much Light......Thank you so much, it really makes my day. And thank you so much for supporting live theatre. We couldn't do it without you.

Yours Truly,
Skin & Toast & Dumps Above Funeral Homes & What I Did In My Twenties

PS: You pay at the counter, bring your number up to the register.  

Its pride baby!

Everybody knows the best time to come on out to the ol' Neo Futurist funeral home performance art cult classic line up is-- your favorite holiday and mine--PRIDE! Excuse me, your pride is showing, its showing hard, you left the lube out all over the bathroom counter! Come on my brothers and sisters! Strap on your favorite pair of rainbow colored suspenders and get yo self a ticket! 100% of ticket sales go to this really cool organization called UCan. It's an organization that provides safe homes for queer youth who have been kicked out of their families. I mean seriously, buy ten tickets, do it! How much money did you spend on your last vibrator? C'mon, how much? Wow! It does what now? We've come a long way since the electric tooth brush! Just saying.

This Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm. Tickets available on line. Going fast!

And Sunday look for us in the parade, Oh my lanta, what am I gonna wear!? Oh yeah, nothing!

~Skinny toast & Tiny boobs

http://www.thequ.co/strap-on-your-rainbows-for-the-neo-futurists-annual-pride-weekend/

Dear Universe,

Please take care of Elaine. She is a neat lady. She loves uncle Don. Uncle Don loves her. They have a bunch of kids. They also have a cool new house with a big yard. They have a dog and a kitty. Please make sure Elaine gets better really soon. We all want to make sure she is feeling good and healthy because we all love her. She is neat and awesome.

Love,
Jess

Baby Jessica Down That Well

He doesn't get a bio. I wont tell you how hard of hearing his father was, or how obese his sister is. Or how estranged his adopted siblings are from him. Or how long he was married to my fake mom, or my real mom. Or the last time I saw him. Or how he sleeps in a bra. Or how good his spaghetti is.

I don't have anything to say.

There is a white rod iron bed frame sleeping in a crawl space above a garage, in a suburb, with sprinklers, and kitchen smells. It is very small; the bed, it is a child's bed.

But, I don't have anything to say.

Every once in a while I'll get a whiff of baseball, or be really early for an appointment and kill time at a coffee shop. And I'll kind of ache. For a moment. A thin layer of brown paper around a frozen sausage, peeling, shedding like an under wire bra after ten hours of working retail.

There are a few memories that don't make me curl with nausea, and those, by default, are nice.

But, I don't have a thing to say.

Where I come from you don't ever need a father, for the same reason you don't need a pedicure. Or a Shetland pony.

I didn't have a male teacher until the 10th grade, the same year I kissed the black poet boy on the church steps.

I have always listened to girl powered folk rock. I own two dresses, and zero pairs of shorts. I am not a pretty girl.

I can remember the thrill of escaping him. I can put myself back in that long weekend away, those two nights we allotted him to get the hell out. I can remember coming home to his hurried empty closet, and the ring of grease where his set of knives used to be. I can feel my parent's fate drooping down my shoulders like an ill fitting poncho.

























It really doesn't bother me these days.

























I love my husband more than I could possibly ever begin to measure. With the breath and width and depth of me.


And he loves all of damaged lil' me, every quilted daddy issue.

And he's so good with our pets.

And he has a silver haired quick witted coach for a pops I adore, law or no law.





Partners till the birds hit their heads.

But, of course I don't need a soul.

My mother raised me better.

Except for those sometimes I do really need you, here, like every morning, and every night.

And when I say need, I mean thank you, and when I say thank you I mean yes, always, of course.




Full circle on the men thing,
In love, and love, and love,
Skin & Toast

Willow

So, my old friend has a baby, my old 85 pound friend, my friend from high school who went with me to college, the first college, before we both found other colleges, before we never saw each other again, before I ran into her at the Gap, the Water Tower Gap of all places. She was working. I was trying to find something to wear to a wedding. Before she found me on Facebook. Before we wrote a couple heart felt messages, and now spend every lonely day together. She had a baby a couple of hours ago, and I think that is very nice. I think that is very happy and nice.

I'm also reminded of all the very complicated creams that can ice those early twenty relationships.

I'm reminded of the nights in the back seat of her boyfriends car, on the floor of her boyfriends dining room, spooning contact highs, and making love to empty sleeping bags. I'm reminded of how much I loved her parents, and how much they did for me, and of how I obviously loved them more than I loved her, in the end anyway.

I'm reminded of the trips to Ikea, I'm reminded of how we set up our play house, and then cocooned into our separate bedrooms and drifted.

I'm reminded of the hurtful things she said, I'm reminded of all the things I didn't say.

I'm happy for her. I am.

I don't know her any more. I haven't met her husband. I'm happy. I wish I could meet her now for the first time.

I carried my laundry this afternoon to the M & M coin Lavanderia. I carried my laundry in her laundry bag. For some reason I did all of her laundry the two years we lived together, every single sock and shirt, when we moved on, her laundry bag just got mixed up into my truck. So, I'm folding my tank tops this afternoon on an orange counter in Ravenswood, and I jog my memory down to the bottom of that bag.

She's probably having her baby right about now.

I say to my self, my cyber space networking self.

I say click click yes indeed, still gooey with vagina juice. Beautiful.

I'm agreeing here, I'm confirming with you that Facebook is weird. That friends are lazy, and the older you get the less energy you have to be nasty. And the older you get the older you are. And you're at that age where everyone is pregnant. And you've never wanted a black homosexual teenager more, but neither of you have real jobs, and you have a strong affinity for drinking till 6am, and sometimes you cross the street to the nice green park while you're waiting for your clothes to dry, and you sit on a bench, and you watch the sunset, and the dogs, and in these 40 minutes to yourself, you think; this is the life.

~Skin & Toast

The table cloth is burning

And there's cat litter in the bed
And and a hole in the floor
Not to mention that yellow film that coats the back door
The food in paper bags
The bugs in the wheat
Diploma tacked up between the cork and the coupons
Looking through a rice paper screen
My posessions on my lap
And my love up on the roof

Adjust the crown and sing with heart

~Skin & Toast