Very Good Posting, Says Eric Horsting

Back when we were at Antioch, Amanda and I would spend most of our evenings having deep conversations in the C-shop or flailing and cursing unintelligibly in front of Tekken 3 in the fishbowl arcade. We were first year students in the Creative Writing Program under the tutelage of one Eric Horsting.

And that's as far as I'm going to go in explicating the inside joke that now stands as the title of this post.

Really, I'm posting to see if I can get this going again. Now that I am officially a very important writer, I think my trio of non-loyal readers will profit from my very important musings. (Though I regret the seeming immodesty with which I refer to these musings as "mine." Nay, I am but a humble conduit through which the overwhelming genius of the universe has deigned to speak.)

Here is an excerpt of what the universe channeled through me when I was 7:

Cathy is my sweetest friend
Cathy is so kind
Cathy is imaginary
she exists inside my mind.
But soon I must grow up
and leave Cathy behind
so that when I look for her,
Cathy I won't find.

I suppose I find the universe's inversion in the above emissary to be less than seamless, but who am I to judge.

At 8, the following was birthed from my subconscious like an inken Christ child from holy genitalia:

"My love is lost
like a needle in the hay,
I hope to find it
back some day."

We can only stand slack-jawed before the decisive power that would choose to render such powerfully unique thoughts of love via a child of 8…

Nineteen years later, I like to think that having written several thousand (bad) poems has forced me to grow as a writer (I mean, has enabled the universe to better use my body as its divine spittoon), but in reality I suspect that the poems with which I was somehow admitted to graduate school are simply the late-twenty something version of “Cathy” (which, and don’t tell the ether that I said this, is obviously a rip-off of “Puff the Magic Dragon”). Still, as Thoreau advises, I am going (quasi-)confidently in the direction of my dreams (the dreams of writing poetry, not the dreams I have at night, like the one where a group of hicks welded several differently shaped saws into the skull of a T. Rex, fitted it inside the emptied body of a crocodile, then used it to stalk and consume a smoking hipster boy).

And so you have been (nearly) brought up to speed. Here’s the rest: since my last post, I finally finished the last of my MFA applications, purchased the full 20-volume edition of the OED, helped to start an (ultimately unsuccessful) union, saw my only snowfall of the winter while at a porn convention in Las Vegas, met television’s “Screech,” found a one-hundred-dollar bill on the floor, quit my sex toy job, got hired for a sperm bank job, turned it down for a part-time editing job, did a one-armed push-up, lucked into a full ride (and then some) at the University of Oregon’s MFA program, got hammered on champagne with Lee, went to Hawaii, got married, accepted a free car from one of my neighbors, and learned the word “cankle” while watching VH1.

More soon. If I dare.

Resurfacing

I am finally getting ready to mail my goddamn motherf*cking mustard-spitting yak-quoting polyglutenous applications off to various and sundry rejection panels---wait, I mean admissions offices---and it feels roughly akin to waking up in an ice cube--filled bathtub in a French Quarter hotel with my kidneys missing. Only, in this case, I've spent the past six months cutting apart and reattaching my kidneys in the attempt to make them more appealing to the organ thief.

More soon, as the ice of pre-application tedium defrosts into the soft mushiness of post-application normalcy.

Breakin' Up 2: Employer Blogaloo

I am totally falling off the blog wagon. The blagon. Or whatever. (At long last, Marketing has finally stumbled on a decent radio station that is now playing "Heroes," by David Bowie.) It has been an incredibly, painfully, shockingly, cruelly, miserably stressful couple of weeks, culminating in yesterday's decision that I'd had it at work. I wrote my boss an email that literally said, "We need to talk," and am now fantasizing about breaking up with her. I'm imagining something like this:

I invite my boss to lunch at "our restaurant"---the cafe of the Oakland Museum where we've spent so many afternoons enjoying various salads and facilitating digestion with long walks through the sculpture garden. I have planned ahead, and paid the cafe pianist to play only break-up songs; now, the piano blows the soothing notes of Patsy Cline's "I Fall To Pieces," Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U," and Wilson Phillips' "Release Me" into the air like so many directionless kisses. I am sitting at our favorite table, on the edge of the patio beneath the vine heavy trellis. Laid before me is the Tabouleh Salad, stabbed gently with two forks.

And then, there she is, breezing through the cafe doors like she did at our first interview all those months ago. For a moment, seeing the familiar slant of her Mont Blanc pen peeking from her left pocket as if crossing her heart, the easy grip of her black leather day planner in her elegant typist's fingers, the barely perceptible swish of her MBA in her confident swagger, I question my resolve. In the afternoon light, surrounded now by the mournful chords of Abba's "Fernando," she looks so professional. Should I reconsider? A shiver runs down my spine and my savings account as I remind myself of the weeks of consideration I've put into making this decision. I will press on.

"Employee," she acknowledges me, folding crisply into the chair, "I'm sorry if I'm late---I got hung up talking to Prissy the Psycho over at La-La-Leather-Land. Mmmm, is that tabouleh? My favorite!" I am silent for a minute as she lifts a measured bite to her mouth and chews methodically. Taking a deep breath, I begin.

"Boss---"

"Yes, employee dear?"

"Boy, these last few months sure have been a hell of a ride, huh?"

"They sure have," she says, slowing her chewing. A vague glint of concern appears in her eyes like a cursor on a freshly roused computer.

"It's just that...for the past few weeks, I've been feeling a little, I don't know, different. It's, I mean, when I first started I was so excited about forging ahead, about the possibilities, about the sample toys and design contests and porn conventions, only now...now..."

"Now what?" she says, pulling the Mont Blanc from her pocket and rolling it over her pin-striped thigh.

I feel as if I can see inside her---see all the way inside, down deep into the glowing Excel spreadsheet of her soul as an incomplete numeral segment is introduced to column F8, eliciting a silent and boldface Does Not Compute. "Well, now...now the excitement has worn off and I am faced with nothing but naked impossibility. It's not just Prissy the Psycho, it's that all of our vendors are jerks. The vibrating false teeth guy has called me every hour on the hour for 2 weeks! And if that weren't bad enough, our own people are turning against me. Yesterday, Sandy Licious emailed me and called me an insensitive flaggist for suggesting a union jack dental dam; the day before that, Brenda Moon-Lavender-Aphrodite pointed out that I was discriminating against cement by having allowed Marketing to name the vibrating blender 'The Mixer.' I just, I can't---"

"But I've told you I'd help you with that stuff," her voice is raised now, her affect desperate. "I'll deal with them for you! I'll tell them to back off! I'll, I'll, I'll..." and she begins to sob.

"Don't do this, Boss. Don't do this to us. This is hard enough as it is---this was not an easy decision. Please, bossy, please," I beg as I feel my will begin to crumble.

"No," she rebuffs my hand as I reach for hers. "I don't need your consolation. I DON'T WANT YOUR PITY!"

I look at the half-finished tabouleh, and consider the crumbled remains of the half-finished salad of our relationship. "Then all I can say is, I'm sorry. And, cliche or not, it's really not you---it's me. I'm not cut out for this 9 to 5 world, not ready for the desks, the MicroSoft Outlook archive function, the code for new Access databases. I'm sorry, Boss. I'm so sorry."

She pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath, then stands and brushes a few invisible tabouleh crumbs from her blouse. "No, employee. I'm the one who is sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't make you happy. I'm sorry this didn't work. And I wish you well, but I don't think we should see each other for a while. I...I need time."

"I can give you that," I whisper to the table, barely audible over the crescendo of Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me." "I just can't give you my heart." But she is already walking away, across the empty patio, past the sobbing piano and out onto the lonely Oakland sidewalk.

(Now playing on Marketing radio: "Walk Like An Egyptian.")

What I Did At Work Today

New scanner...bitchin'

My Career

Earlier this afternoon, I was queried by an overseas sex toy distributor. Visiting the company's web site to browse their product listings, I encountered several products that will be of obvious interest to all of you red-blooded young men and women out there.

Starting things off with a bang, we've got "Headless Erotic Virgin." Pretty self-explanatory.

In case, however, you're kind of a perv and actually like your women headed, also available is a regular "Erotic Virgin," or, as I like to call it, "Large Shapeless Blob Of Rubber With A Big Peach Vagina Painted Atop It."

For those of you who wish to cut out all those irrelevant female body parts betwixt orifices, try the aptly named "Breasts, Pussy, and Mouth," a pair of enormous breasts with a mouth sticking out from above and a vagina sticking out from below.

And don't forget about "Wrap-around Slut"! This product will certainly appeal to those among us whom have always wandered what it might feel like to bed a giant, quivering chunk of opaque placenta-textured ectoplasm.

Finally, for you purists out there, this prolific company has developed plain old "Vagina." Do note, however, that the packaging for this item lists its contents as: "Rubber, Flesh."

Since the catalog goes on for roughly a dozen more pages and I hate to be long-winded, I'll spare you descriptions of the products that I've affectionately renamed "Gun Shot Wound On Disembodied Elephant Trunk," "Sexy Rubber Trout Mouth," "Anemone Infant Fist," and "That Lady's Got a Fever. No, really."

After all, some things are better left to the imagination.

I have questions

Why isn't this week over. Why did I have to go and give myself sciatica. Why have I never before purchased Nacho Cheese--flavored Soy Crisps. Why don't I get paid until midnight. Why do birds suddenly appear.

Why can't I wear my hair in pigtails without getting 800 billion new boyfriends. Why did I ask my trainer if we could move our Saturday morning sessions to 7 am. Why golf.

Why would someone send my office a box full of razor blades. Why would I fail to mention that they are safety blades. Why can't I walk past a McDonald's without having an overwhelming desire to dip their hot, crispy french fries in a creamy chocolate milkshake devolve into a spasm of guilt that results in a trip to the fruit vendor for a delicious and crispy...pear.

Why haven't I called my grandmother in months. Why did I blush when my boss told me we could "hang out by the pool" in LA. Why did I commit to volunteering all summer and kick it off yesterday by spending 120 minutes trying to get a hyperactive 6-year-old to stop screaming "POOP!" long enough to write a newspaper article on Sponge Bob Squarepants.

Conspiracy to commit freud

Last night, I dreamt that I was a yellow plate displayed on a narrow wooden shelf high above a floor of orange ceramic tile. I suppose I was a sentient plate, because I was conscious of the floor and thought, "If I fall all the way down onto that tile, I'm going to shatter." As soon as I thought this, of course, I tilted forward, flipped over the edge of the shelf and began to fall.

Suddenly, I was human again and running down flight after flight of stairs in the cinderblock stairwell of a decaying office building that had devolved into a crackhouse. Swatting the fluorescent lights from my face, I reached the basement and proceeded into the furnace room. There, wielding a machine gun made of....wait for it....orange ceramic tile, stood the head dealer of said crackhouse. As he swung the muzzle toward me, I pulled my gun (where it came from, I couldn't tell you) and aimed it for his heart. We were in a deadlock.

"You've forgotten one thing," he said as a grin slithered over his face. "You're the ice woman and I've got a flamethrower." With that, he sprayed me with a stream of fire that, instead of melting me, covered my skin in frost.

And then I woke up.

To my subconscious, I would just like to say: Thank you, Captain Obvious.

EUREKA!

All my months of sweating and whining and self-flagellation have finally paid off: I wrote a good poem.

I felt it when I was writing in. I felt it when I was revising it. I felt it when I submitted it to workshop. And today, my professor emailed me to say that my poem was "tremendous" and "sublime" and to urge me to submit it to The Iowa Review. Which I probably won't, but who cares, I feel elated now. I've been working relentlessly on my poetry these past six months (not to mention the two decades of messing around before that) and struggling and fighting and hating every other word I've written. To finally get just one poem right, and to have that validated by a professor that I respect, one who has pushed me and demanded quality from me and never failed to point out a flaw from which I might learn, is just...

So happy.

And beyond happy, I'm relieved. I feel like I've proven to myself that busting my ass can actually have a positive impact on my writing. On some level, after my 3-year hiatus from seriously writing, I felt I'd lost "it," and it's deeply comforting to know that "it" is still there. If things don't work out next year, there's still hope for my Polish ass.

The hilarious part is that I'll most likely be back to feeling like a talentless hack by tomorrow. To preserve the moment, I've abused Illustrator and created the celebratory death bunny you see above. Death bunny knows that euphoria is fleeting, and one must cherish the moment by leaping through the rain on a sunny day over a field of gaping hearts while quoting Lewis Carroll.

In other news, I won the auction for an almost-new pair of black Frye Campus boots (pair number 5, joining pairs 1 through 4 in blazer brown, banana, purple and white, respectively---what the hell is wrong with me) and found out that I have tomorrow off (along with my usual Wednesday) so I can rest up and prepare to march in the huge San Francisco Pride Parade on Sunday.

Life is good, folks. Let's keep the spirit of death bunny alive.