The Shadow of the Valley

Dear Westboro Baptist Church,

I'm writing to you because they carried my brother back from Iraq, and members of your congregation came to protest at his funeral. When someone from your lot came to greet me directly I understood the gentle healing powers of your lord, and socked the guy in the Adam's apple before taking his legs out from under him. For whatever reason I remembered that Bible story about the mat being lowered to the cripple, and I couldn't help but wonder if my brother died gurgling and afraid on the ground somewhere he didn't belong. I know it wasn't right, but I just kept kicking this guy in the Lambert and Tatman parking lot, and yeah maybe your Jesus came, but if he was around he didn't have shit to say to me.

Get Me Going

You'd think it would be obvious if you were a premature ejaculator, but what if you just never discovered what really turns you on? At twenty nine I thought I was a normal heterosexual male of average prowess experiencing a period of sexual stagnation. Then, walking home one night from from another failed relationship, another girl lecturing me about my lack of passion, a frothy-jowled doberman came out of nowhere, sinking its ravenous jaws into the ass of my jeans and I came like never before. It's an embarrassing condition, but now my eyes are alive as I stalk through the black neighborhoods, pitching a tall erection next to the oily discs of bologna package-taped up and down my thighs.

I Don't Believe in You

I look down at the sheet of music, hundreds of little black notes stemmed together like tiny books of matches, and now more than ever I wish I could strike one and watch the whole thing go up. It's been three solid years of crisis, of defeat, of struggling to even remember the things I love, and now I'm left with two unfilled prescriptions and a simple choice. Go or stay, finish this degree or don't, and so I crumple up the page with all its sacred little dots and drop it into a mug of water on my desk, watching it bloom and sink to the bottom. I can do this, I know, because I don't believe in them, either.

Watching the Rain Come Down

Guided by Voices

The British lesbian with a tracheotomy drawling from our GPS was leading us in a circle. She would invent a street, and when we didn’t plow over someone’s yard and scrape in between houses she would recalculate our course. We’d follow her instructions to the tee, but she would recalculate again, directing us to exactly where we started. Over and over I saw the same children tumbling through grass, the same women drinking tea on their porches, the same men shingling a roof, and they all watched us chasing the same mistakes.


Andrea

“I’ll just try and give her a call,” Martha said to nobody as she Pacman-ed her way around her Charleston, West Virginia home in search of the phone. To my mom and me on the living room couch, she said, “Andrea’s mother died and she hasn’t been coping very well, she keeps buying poodles. She’s got so many now she can’t afford to take care of them, so I think she’s looking to try and get rid of some.” Martha emerged from the kitchen with a small silver portable, plucked the paper bag she had been wearing as a hat from her head, and began punching in the code that would eventually summon the poodle woman.

Uncle Sam

Martha greeted us with paper bags, rims rolled up so that they would fit snugly, rectangular comics cut from the newspaper pinched into rolls on their fronts. “I figured these would be cheaper and more fun than party hats!” Martha said as she passed them out to everyone, even Sam. Uncle Sam is my grandmother’s brother, a profoundly old-fashioned, feeble man with small twinkly eyes who has lived slowly for many years with his stomach removed, and has ended up with lung cancer. When we crowded around him to sing happy birthday, I thought of how pissed off at us he must be, surrounded by everyone, tethered to an oxygen tank with a paper bag on his head.


Romantic

My cousin Phil asked me about recommending some classical music, and so I’ve been trying to explain to him the difference between the Romantic and Classical eras amidst the hectic traffic of people delivering covered dishes to Martha’s kitchen. He receives the information with his mouth hanging open, surprised to hear that there was ever a traditional standard of tonality to move away from, because he wants music to have always been special and otherworldly, not something that people could just put together like cars or cakes. He thanks me and tells me he’ll check out some Debussy and Berlioz, but when he turns to go help in the kitchen he doubles back and says, “I tried to study music, like theory and stuff, but at the end of the day it’s about whatever sounds good. You know, at the end of the day it’s whatever gets you off.”


The Poodle Woman Herself

Sammy has four teeth, ironically just the canines, and exuberantly headbutts me in the tummy before wriggling off into the great abyss behind Martha’s couch like the Gollum of miniature poodles. An identical black cotton swab, Norman, lies slack on my mother’s lap, and looming on the love seat caddy-corner to the one on which we are lounging, is the poodle woman. Andrea sits under her ample pile of blonde cake trim curls, her nose emerging from her face like the keel of a cruise ship, her beady marble eyes glassy as she describes her dedication to the poodle calendars she creates for her neighbors each year. She pauses and makes a lilting motion with her head towards the two small dogs, opens her mouth to say something more, and falls apart.


Phil’s Happy Ending

Phil used to date a girl who worked at JC Penneys and was pretty until she smiled, revealing a mouth full of teeth arranged like a pack of chicklets that had been taped to the side of a bottle rocket. At the time he confided in me that he loved her to bits but was lousy at sex, and shortly after this she and her awful teeth gave a blowjob to some redneck and sent poor Phil careening precariously through the next few years, skidding to a stop on Easter Sunday at Martha’s house in a forest green pickup with an obtrusively pregnant woman by his side. She might be ten years older than him, but Phil did his best to explain to his mom that he’d found the love of his life as they watched lizards dart out from under rocks in the backyard. At the dining room table, the hamster-faced mother-to-be gazed into the spaces between strangers and said, “Yeah, I’m definitely keeping it, this could be my last chance.”

When the Poodle Levee Breaks

Andrea sits on the couch, hemorrhaging tears from her watermelon pink face, wailing, “I can’t leave Sammy, I just can’t, the other dogs need him I’m so sorry!” My mother and I turn to each other, exchanging looks that our faces are only capable of forming when we find ourselves stroking the nearly-toothless poodles that belong to a woman we’ve known for less than five minutes while she sobs like she’s on Maury. We want to tell her that we didn’t even ask to see her dogs, let alone entertain a desire to take one, but she soldiers on through her tears, telling us about how she found Doogie Doogster in a dumpster in the McDonald’s parking lot. “Oh, and you have to meet bubbles,” she says, winding down, “we found her under a bridge living with a hobo woman.”

Turkeys of Fate

Joyce is Martha’s thin-haired bird sister, her peckish counterpart who can’t stop hooting stories and political musings at the table, her eyes blinking sharply like a chicken’s behind thick black-rimmed glasses. She has a giantess of a daughter, a thick trunk of girl who wears the same glasses as her mother and clucks with the same goading voice. While Joyce and her daughter rattle off shreds of their lives I watch Uncle Sam bring up a faintly trembling forkful of cake, and as he tenderly mashes it around in his mouth I wonder if he’s been listening to all this. Acceptance, defeat, and attention all blur into a single far-off stare, and somewhere I hear Joyce say, “Remember when our Uncle got those turkeys and they all drowned watching the rain come down?”

Answers Come Too Late

Dear Braxton,

People don't understand me. There are times where I don't understand myself even. I feel so alone, and I desperately want to change that, but I can't let someone get close to me without me shutting myself off and pushing them away. I look into the future and I don't see anything. I am a college student, but I don't know what I'm doing all this work for. For some job? That's the point, isn't it? To get money, and build a family? What family? I feel like I don't have a future. I'm currently in a relationship, but I don't think that will last. At the start I was funny and charming, but I know she's going to get to know the real me soon and when she does she'll be gone. People go away when you stop making them laugh and start sharing yourself. I'm sorry if this isn't coherent, I guess my main question is why should I stay alive?

Anyonymous



Dear Anonymous,

You could have called the Suicide Prevention Hotline, but you didn't. You contacted me, and Nancy, that about makes me as appreciative as hell. May I call you Nancy? You seem like a sweet guy, Nancy. A real tender soul. These things hurt, I know. It's tough to look out into the world with all its corruption and unfairness and see a place for yourself. But I'm here for you, buddy.

In my experience, chronically unhappy people are often missing the big picture. What I mean Nancy is that people like you are often buried in their own sorrows so deeply that they stop considering the whys and hows of things. Now, stop me if this has occurred to you (it hasn't) but who ever promised you a purpose? Who ever sat you down and told you that your life is special and precious and that not only will the world notice when you're gone, but it will boohoo its great big eyes out and wave little Nancy flags on Nancy Day over your glossy Nancy yearbook pictures? Have you ever thought about whether or not you even deserve to be happy? Why is it all about you?

None of those questions were rhetorical. I really want you to think of who promised you those things, a purpose and happiness and all that nice meaningful stuff. Do you know who it was? I'll tell you: your mom and Walt Disney.

Consider the sources.

The same goes for everybody else.

Now it's common in these cases to feel angry, but hold on there Nancy. What are you going to do about it? Your mom is your mom, she's the only person that will in your entire life truly believe that you're something else. And old Walt, well the worst you can do to get back at him is thaw his head out.

There's even an upside to these liars! This is America. Your mom will coddle you until you die, and because of Mr. Disney there are so many blindly idealistic teenage girls that you could stack them on your dick high enough for a brown man to run a plane into them. Live it up!

The truth is, Nancy, you shouldn't even be asking. Asking someone else how to find happiness is like waiting by your 9th grade social studies teacher's car, rehearsing how you're going to demand at least a hand job, wearing nothing but a knife and a smile: maybe you'll get what you're asking for, but it won't be the same as it just coming to you.


You really just need to shut up and stop thinking. Shut up. Everyone has felt this way. Buy a Nintendo. Go hiking. Fuck your girlfriend in a car.

Or, you know, kill yourself.

Choose meth,

Braxton



Dear Braxton,

my bff is sooooo clingy she never leaves me alone whenever im trying 2 b alone w/ a guy shes always txting me or if she can interupt in person i cant hang out w/ other people cuz if she finds out shell b mad what am i suposed 2 do b like your annoying what do i do 2 make her back off?

Rebecca KS




Dear Rebecca,

The solution to this problem seems fairly obvious to me:

A jug of gasoline and some black kids with no future.

That's a sleepover I'd go to.

Land of the free,

Braxton




Dear Braxton,

Can losing your virginity cause irregular periods? The first time he got in me there was some blood, but the next week when we tried again there was enough that I had to get new sheets. We tried a couple of days after that and there was less blood but still some. I'm pretty sure I'm completely broken now.

I haven't had a period since the last time we tried to have sex. I did a couple of pregnancy tests but they were both negative. Is this normal?

Mandy OH




Dear Mandy,

If you're not pregnant and you're not bleeding from your cock poncho I don't see what there is to bitch about, normal or not.

Periods are gross. I mean, grade-A-no-compromise-pregnant-Korean-dog-orgy gross.

Stop having them. Stop it.

If you quit eating they'll quit happening. You know now what you have to do.

Cow,

Braxton




Dear Braxton,

I say my girlfriend's name when I masturbate. Not like just at the end, but over and over. Like a mantra or something. I don't think I'm gay, but we've made out a few times. What do you think this means? Should I tell my boyfriend?

Katrina



Dear Katrina,

I think this means braxtonmakesitbetter@yahoo.com

I think this means if you have a Gmail account there isn't a size limit for e-mail attachments.

I think this means what you think it means. Click click, flash drive, Merry Christmas to me.

As for your boyfriend, go ahead, tell him. The mantra's a little weird, but whatever. I don't think it'll be any big thing for him. If I were him I wouldn't make a fuss over someone bringing a little autism to the lesbian orgy. Might even make it better. I usually can't look anyone in the eye after sex anyway.

Can you smell that?

What is that?

That's the future of a beautiful romance.

Say no to Birkenstocks,

Braxton




Dear Braxton,

I turned 36 today. I am a real estate agent. I date sometimes, but live alone. I just can't seem to find any energy by the time work is done. Every day I go back to my apartment, drained and depressed. I think I'm actually clinically depressed, I was just never diagnosed. I feel like I walked into a tunnel in my twenties and never found my way out. I need something, but I don't know what exactly. I feel like if one great thing could happen, I would never feel like this again, and my life could begin for real. How do I jerk myself out of this funk? Please, help me.

Robert PA



Dear Robert,

You've touched me. Really. Your pain is a hand that has reached into my chest and delivered the gentlest loving flick to my heart's clitoris. I'd like to share a story with you, if I may.

A couple weeks ago I got lost in the city. You see, every night I go for a drive to take the edge off the day. Nothing but a finely rolled joint, a Wendy's cup full of Jose Cuervo Silver, and the open road. One second I was ashing my joint out the window in the middle of downtown, and the next I was, well I don't know where. When you're high you can't remember what you were just doing. When you're drunk and high you can't remember where you just threw up. When you're drunk on tequila and high you can't remember whether you threw up on a hooker or just a normal girl, where your car is, or why you're in a neighborhood of about 25 Kanye Wests that are shoving you and trying to pull your pants down.

My point is, that tunnel you were referring to, we're all in it. There is no way out. So what do you do? You graffiti the fucking tunnel.

Life is what you make it.

The only way to spice up your life is to do something that could kill you.

And there is time to be filled.

The moments where you truly feel alive are the ones that fill up your time in a way you don't understand. Life is driving your faggot ass Prius into a lake. Life is doing drugs until you aren't racist. Life is buying your own personal breathalyzer and watching videos on the internet of dudes in oxygen tanks really giving it to dolphins and trying to blow a .08 before your load. It's pissing in someone's mailbox. Human tears touching your penis. Dropping acid without a baby sitter and going to a Baptist youth group. Bacon with peanut butter. Armpit sex on Thanksgiving. Wondering whether your butt is still a virgin.

Whoever kills today gets to make tomorrow.

Stop waiting for something great.

Go nuts motherfucker,

Braxton

A Bible in My Back Pocket

Pop!

The firecracker flickers high above our heads and Dave reaches in his pocket for another, waving at me dismissively with his free hand.

"Oh hush, they don't have souls like us," he says.

He lights another, squatting to propel himself upward with greater force and hurls it into the night sky where it explodes. In the flashpan dazzle we watch the bats go crazy, plummeting through the air, blind.

Dave laughs, and there was something I forgot to say.

Check Your Smile 2

She has a job at that stuck-up tattoo parlor on 19th street and her name tag says "Bryn" like we all don't know what that's short for. She thinks she's hot shit right now, thinks that "y" is gonna save her, but give her a few years and you'll be able to call her up and she'll bring her own Swiffer Wet Jet. Her sister Sage works in a little shop that sells shit like hemp iPod covers or knit drawstring bags the color of the Jamaican flag or lucky rabbits feet covered in authentic Navajo period blood. Their parents tried really hard.

Check Your Smile

Oh, why yes of course, we're all unique. We're all people with complicated universes of thought and perception and each and every one of us has something to offer. Like, take Brenda for instance. Everyone named Brenda is a cleaning lady.

Aweigh

I feel shipwrecked. Not like I experienced a shipwreck as a passenger, like I am the ship that has wrecked. Water rushes in through my splintered hull, filling me up with God knows what I'm going down I can feel it. The only island, that gas station down the street, that minimum wage raft and a life jacket with my name on it.

This Was What I Meant When I Said Some People Are Pointless

Blood on the carpet, on the couch, amongst the broken glass from the back door strewn like spilled sugar. Blood of a father, of a son, of a driver's ed teacher with a dog and a keychain garnished with gas station rewards cards. A quiet afterthought, raspberry drizzle on a small slice of store-bought cheesecake. The blood of a surprised man.

Every Step is for the Last

I find it very sad that the ones who know the most about the world are dead. You and I, we wake up in the afternoon and find all of our things right where we left them, we assume that we're headed out into the same Earth as yesterday. The ones who are dead now went out to meet yesterday's world and found something completely different. Tires sliding on wet cement, a bird in the plane's engine, the Jehova's Witnesses on bicycles circling the blood bank with Molotov Cocktails.

Hibiscus Blooms

Lucifer sniggers heartily, crunching an apple on the floor of God's studio apartment, declaring, "I got the woman to eat from the tree, so what now?"

He doesn't have to say "i told you so," he just waits for God to damn them too.

A pencil slips from God's fingers, slapping against a filled up pad of paper, and in a shaking whisper he replies, "I'm going to let them create each other. They will make as I make, and you can twist them all you want, but they will unfurl so swiftly and with such force that your head will spin even as they are wrenched from the burning earth."

'Neer

Jaundice light loafs to the painted wooden extremities, waxing the fake hanging plants, glassing up our eyes. We tap the tabletops dotted with stray coffee, sunk in booths the color of cheap crayons, forest green, the waitresses in uniforms of the same. A soda fountain erupts on and off and plates ring against plates as hot bottles of syrup, dark and swirling koa, thud in front of red-faced drunks. Their cackling scratches the ceiling and crystallizes overhead. Our discourse encased in unsteady glee, a tomb of laughter. Don, the manager with the Icelandic wife asks us to lift our feet so that he may mop, and we all begin to yawn over the whiteness of a gloom-glazed morning paling the pavement outside. Bills are paid, a pack of matches taken, and lit one by one on the empty interstate home.

Maybe Pay More Attention

The other day, I saw a woman drop a baby. People gasped and crowded around her, she cried as she picked it up and stroked its head. I joined the throng, getting close enough to the woman to knock the blubbering infant out of her hands again.

"That's what you fucking get," I said.