Recently asked a friend what the purpose of halos on angels were. His suggestion was that they could be used as a bunsen burner to cook on. Now I have this image of an angel making breakfast and yelling, "Yo Fred! Your eggs are ready!"
Wake Up by Dr. Dog lyrics:
Oh, wake up
Wake up, wake uuuup
We are only part of a dream
All the things in your heart
Like the things in your head
Are only what they seem
Books:
Mortality by Nicholas Royle
Side Effects by Andrew Burroughs
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
SEX SLEEP EAT DRINK DREAM: A Day in the Life of Your Body by Jennifer Ackerman
Handmaid's Tale by Margarett Atwood
Music:
Ra Ra Riot
Bat for Lashes
Bon Iver
Aberfeldy
Andrew Bird
Roisin Murphy
Short Story: Monopoly Date by Michael Hey
She reaches for her seatbelt, realizing then she’s already wearing one. He, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to need his. Doesn’t have that kind of patience – to sit still for any length of time.
Riding in his car, she understands for the first time in her life, the feeling of being a passenger. But the car is a Jaguar. Fear and excitement mingle in the pit of her stomach, storehouse of ambiguous feelings. He steps on the accelerator. She wonders bravely about what lies in store.
He had picked her up at seven.
“Where are you taking me?” she had asked, kicking off her uncomfortable shoes.
“My place,” he had said, with the air of someone used to taking shortcuts with impunity.
And now, much too soon, they are there. The drive has left her feeling empty, like an over-priced amusement that ended too abruptly and too soon.
“Would you like to come upstairs?” he asks, gallantly holding the door. She smiles feebly, as if she has just been given an option. He leads her to the elevator. Once inside, she watches him press “P” for “penthouse.”
The studio is spartan, in an expensive way. Twin towers of speakers stand guard on either side of the large bay window, yet there are no CDs to be seen or heard. The sparsely populated bookshelf contains classics such as Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Development for Fun and Profit.
The wide open space is dominated by a futon and a low table, on which he has set up a board game. For refreshment, there are chips and coke.
“Let’s play monopoly,” he says, as if this just now occurred to him. He seems comfortable in this mode of mock spontaneity.
“OK,” she replies unenthusiastically, wondering if dating white boys is always this exciting. Soon the game is underway – he the sports car, and she in the role of an old shoe with a gaping hole, game pieces he has chosen and laid out beforehand.
After the opening round, he owns the utilities, and she has to pay up.
“What was that?” he asks, but she didn’t say anything. The potato chips are gone, and her stomach has begun to growl.
“Nothing,” she says, rolling two sixes for the third time in a row. How appropriate, she thinks, to be rotting in jail. (For the uninitiated: Though the rule is contentious, it is a criminal offence to roll doubles three times in a roll – punishable by incarceration!)
After that, neither says anything for a while, though her stomach continues to growl conspicuously. She thinks that maybe she could like him, if only he were different somehow, or, perhaps, a different
person altogether.
He buys and buys and buys. He acquires Pennsylvania Avenue, and Park Place, and also manages to purchase Reading Railroad. “I should marry this guy,” she muses bitterly from her jail cell.
He has always been under the mistaken impression that the reason he gets what he wants is that he’s a “risk taker.” Such is the arrogance of privilege. The real reason, of course, is that there is no reason; that it is an unreasonable expectation to have everything one wants.
The experience of this date is surreal enough, for her not to realize quite how miserable it is. For one thing, she knows that win or lose, all games must end – eventually. But more keenly, she is aware of the fact that things could always be worse, somehow.
It is this mixture of hope and dread that makes it possible for her to continue, one toss at a time. A mixture that is symbolized by a stack of pink cards in the middle of the board: the stack called “Chance.”
The board itself is best described as a square circle, or perhaps a circular square. The same misery resurfaces over and over. Somehow, she manages to stretch the $200 she earns to cover her utilities and railway fares, to live another day. And every time she has to pay, she glances briefly at the pink deck of cards, taunting her like a lottery stub hidden in one’s pocket.
For him too, these are busy times. He has started to develop his properties. It begins with a few houses here and there, but he is looking ahead. His ultimate dream is for two luxury hotels – one on Park Place, and the other – he salivates as he thinks of it – Boardwalk.
It would be wrong to suggest that she owned no property at all. She does aquire Baltic, and Vermont, and a few others as well. And at one point he even lands on Vermont, and is forced to pay her for a change. He pays his 12 dollars graciously, in cash, and seems to harbor no ill will towards her.
CHANCE
“Go on, pick it up,” he says, unsmiling. And yet his voice is not without warmth. She has landed on chance after all, and he is happy for her. And then he surprises her with something akin to kindness. “Don’t be afraid,” he says.
What he noticed was not her hesitation, but the slight trembling of her fingers in picking up the card, and of her lips in reading it, first to herself and then aloud. But these tender moments pass. In the end, the card, as most things in life, proves a bitter disappointment.
“Get him a beer,” she reads, unable to mask her incredulity. But any doubt as to the authenticity of the card is quickly dispelled by his humorless smile. And so she does as she must, lingering in the kitchen just long enough to steal a pickle from the pickle jar. Surely he won’t notice it missing, even if this happens to be the only food in the fridge. She does know, of course, that in life, as in Monopoly, stealing is against the rules.
He seems genuinely grateful for the beer, even confiding that he prefers a glass, and telling her, in a completely non-threatening way, where glasses are kept. At the same time she lands on Pennsylvania Avenue, with its three pretty green houses, and for the first time in the game she can’t pay.
“I can’t pay,” she says.
“You could mortgage Vermont,” he offers. She follows his financial advice.
COMMUNITY CHEST
Though he lifts the card with some trepidation, his fears are soon laid to rest.
“The city is having a celebration in your honor,” he reads. “Your opponent shall bring you a beer.” He passes her the card to prove that he isn’t making this up. (For the uninitiated: the Community Chest is yellow, not pink). And while she’s in the kitchen, getting his beer, he does something dreadfully unsavory; he helps himself to an extra $500 from the bank. He then uses the money to build another house on Pennsylvania.
When, a little later in the game, she visits Pennsylvania for the second time, there is nothing left for her to mortgage.
“I have nothing left to mortgage,” she says.
“I will let you borrow from the bank,” he offers graciously. This is a clever bending of the rules on his part. Allowing her to borrow from the bank, rather than lending her the money directly, frees up some extra cash for him to invest. In this way the game is prolonged past its natural end, something he sees as a win-win situation.
COMMUNITY CHEST (again)
Here she can be forgiven for hoping, absurdly, that maybe, finally, it will be his turn to get her a beer. She reads the card in utter disbelief.
“You have violated the public dress code. Remove your blouse.”
She looks at him helplessly. He has no comfort for her, his cold hard gaze already focused on the garment about to be removed.
The game continues for another half hour, during which time he allows her to borrow the entire bank, so that all cash in circulation is now in his possession. At the same time, she finds herself violating the dress code on two more occasions, forcing her to remove both her skirt, and her bra. And to top it all off, she is forced to clean his toilet, on her hands and knees, leaving her to conclude that this could be absolutely the worst date ever, in the entire history of dating.
BOARDWALK (with hotel)
Finally, his grand vision has been realized. And the only sad part of it is that even the bank has no money left to lend her.
“The game is over,” she sighs, shivering slightly in her socks and panties. “I guess I lost.”
“No,” he says quietly, without a trace of humor in his voice. “The game is not over, and will not be over, until you pay back what you owe.
“That’s ridiculous. We can start writing promissory notes if you want, but I will never ever climb out of this financial hole. I have no properties, and no income to speak of. My debt can only grow.
“That’s not true.”
“How can I possibly pay you back?”
“You can suck my cock,” he says evenly. And she finds herself wondering when this game became so serious, and what it would take for someone – anyone – to point out that the rules make no sense. She tries to formulate this new-found realization in her brain. Perhaps, she is even trying to give voice to her thought, but there is no point. It has become impossible to say anything with his cock already embedded in her throat