Shockwave

I wake up, roll over and turn on my coffee maker. My coffee maker rests on my night stand; I don’t sleep in the kitchen. 

I lay in my bed for awhile staring at the ceiling, listening to the coffee maker bubble and growl. My stomach hurts, and I can’t tell if it’s from nerves or if I’m feeling a little hung over from drinking the night before. My brain starts to make  a sort of cause and effect relationship between my anxiety and the hangover, that maybe the anxiety is what caused me to drink in the first place, but something about the thought makes my stomach hurt worse, so I stop. 

When the coffee maker wheezes in completion, I roll onto my left side, kick off my blankets, and swing my feet to the floor. It makes me happy to do this for some reason. It makes me feel like I’m athletic. 

Although I am not. 

I put on some gym shorts and a white t-shirt and go to the bathroom. I urinate, shake the remaining drops from my penis and walk to the mirror while pulling my shorts up. In the mirror, I look fine. Maybe even good. My hair has taken well to my pillow and is shaped in an attractive way that reminds me of a number of famous, young, white actors with bags under their eyes and big, glistening smiles that show off their imperfect teeth. I smile at myself. I don’t like the way I look when I do this, so I straighten my mouth and look some more. My posture is bad and is making me look fatter than I am, so I straighten that out, too. I examine myself and see that everything is good enough. 

I turn on the faucet and splash water on my face. Before drying, I look up directly into one of the four light bulbs above the mirror. I feel the tiny muscles in my eyes flex as they adjust to the light. It’s a strange, delicious feeling, like biting the inside of your cheek or sneezing. I dry my face and return to the mirror. I look much older all of a sudden and I don’t remember the transition. I realize that things are much further along than I want them to be. I realize that I have so much longer to go. I’m not sure what this means, so I shake my head, put on my glasses and leave.

I go into my room and drink some coffee, my stomach growling for food. The nausea has been replaced by hunger and I want to take my time and relish in it. 

I open up the internet and read a news story about a girl who has died. She had been on a roller coaster ride that malfunctioned, the electro-magnetic brakes not getting enough charge or something like that. I imagine myself in the car with the girl, looking over at her the whole time, the wind making tearing sounds in my ears. I am yelling at her in this image–I’m yelling goodbye and that I hope there’s something after this, don’t you? and I try to reach out for her hand, but the security harness is keeping me pinned. I imagine myself turning my head, looking at the horrified faces of everyone in line as the car blows past them as if there were no stop at all. 

 

My Last Day of Grad School

Since my last post, I have gone to a semester of graduate school. Did you miss me? Did you replace me with something else (the news?:/ )? I hope not. I hope you’re not reading the news.

[Flashback]

“Editor?” I call, leaning back in my seat. “Who is our number one competitor?”

“Our number one competitor?” he calls from his office.

“Yeah. Who takes away the most of our readers?”

“I’d say our biggest competitor is most likely you and your unmitigated ability to take a good thing and–”

I slam my door shut and turn up Hybrid Theory.

[Flashback Ends]
I’ve decided that graduate literary study is not for me.

—

I sit in my last class. It’s a class about Toni Morrison. It’s a survey course, so we have covered all of her books. Today, on this final day of class, we will be discussing our final, seminar-length (15 pg) papers with the class. None of these people care what any of these other people have to say about Toni Morrison. We all just want to go back to our one bedroom apartments, get under the covers, and try to remember a time when crying made us feel better.

We sit facing one another at a large, square table. We are a melting pot of people. We come from all walks of life–white men with glasses (me), white men without glasses, a Mexican guy who looks like a well-tanned Jeff Goldblum, one black girl, who must really get a kick out of watching whitey talk about oppression, a mother or two, some MFA women who appear to have gotten their wardrobes from the dumpster behind their grandmother’s (whom they never visit) retirement home.

Our instructor is a diminutive black gentleman who always dresses extremely well.

“Who would like to go first?” he asks.

“No one,” I think to myself, and they say to everyone, loudly.

“Excuse me?” the professor asks.

“I didn’t say anything. I’m putting my head down.”

“Part of your grade is contingent on your participation in these presentations.”

“My grade in my Master’s level Literature course?”

“Yes.”

“Will you also decrease the amount of stardust in my moonbox?” I ask, then give a thumbs up. My professor smiles. I quickly turn the thumb down and make a fart noise with my mouth. My professor at first seems shocked and then quickly his expression becomes one of heartbreak.

“All right class, it appears I have been given a thumbs down and a fart from Mr. Irion. I don’t see any way to smoothly transition into our presentations, so let’s not even try. Who wants to go first?”

A mother with a young soul raises her hand. The professor nods approvingly. I slump in my seat, pull my shirt to the level of my nipples, and beginning playing in my belly hair.

“Mr. Irion, please,” my professor pleads. “Can you lower your shirt? We can see your abdomen.”

“You can?” I ask. “As a white male in a Toni Morrison class, I’ve always felt pretty invisible.” I sit up and pull my shirt down. “Go ahead, Ms. Simpson,” I say.

“Go ahead Ms. Simpson,” my professor says.

“Uh, is there an echo in here?” I ask, bringing my cupped hand to my ear, surveying my classmates’ faces in an “Am I right?” fashion.

“No, there is not an echo in here Mr. Irion,” my professor says.

“Sounds like it.”

“Yes, but there isn’t.”

“I know, but it sounds like there’s an echo in here.”

“Can I start my paper, please?” Ms. Simpson asks.

“Go ahead,” the professor and I both say at the same time. I give him a cutting look. I am going scorched earth.

“So can I go?” Ms. Simpson asks.

“Yes, I said. Who’s the professor here?” She’s struck dumb by my question. There are murmurs of confusion in the room. The MFA’s all lean back further in their chairs, trying to seem more even more blase about the class as a way to combat their fear. One shabbily-dressed man slips from his chair to the floor. They’re mortified. I can see it in their eyes.

“Do you have a syllabus?” one young lady, her lip trembling, asks me.

“Whose name should I put on my thesis board form?” Mexican Jeff Goldblum asks.

“Excuse me!” The professor shouts. “You are all graduate Literature students. Is it really that easy to pull the wool over your eyes?”

“It appears so,” I say softly, looking out at the confused, frightened faces, suddenly terrified by my own power. “I will now relinquish the class to this man here.”

“Who?” a fearful, portly gentleman in a sweatervest asks.

“My god,” the professor whispers, rolling his eyes.

“Everybody, this nice man will be your professor from here on out. I had a great time being your instructor this semester. Dr. Sherman–” I turn and gesture toward the professor, Dr. Sherman.

“Yes,” Dr. Sherman begins, the words coming slowly as if they pain him. “I am now your professor.” He winces. “Mrs. Simpson, will you please give your presentation?”

Mrs. Simpson gives her presentation. Then someone else does and someone else does and so on and so forth until it gets to me.

“Okay,” I start. I like to start this way. “I’m Kyle Irion. My paper is about–” I look out onto and into and out of the faces of my peers. I think of how much work some of the second year students have put in. I think of how hard it will be for them to find work any better than the work they had before they got here and how much worse that will be with $40k in debt. I think of how academic literature study’s sole focus seems to be sustaining academic literature study. I think about my own life, and how I thought this would fill the hole in my heart that the lonely drift of post-graduate life dealt me. Then I remind myself that I don’t need this.

“Honestly,” I say, “this isn’t very good.” I toss my paper onto the table. “It’s a lot of horse shit. At some point I talk about Morgan Freeman. That’s the high point. It all sucks other than that.”

I get up and walk out. And as the doors shut behind me, it feels like the building was, for a moment, more than just a building. I turn back and look before getting on the bus. It’s just a building again.

My First Day of Grad School

Alternate titles for this post: The Good, the Grad, and the Ugly, Grad Santa, Breaking Grad

—

I walk up four flights of stairs to get to my first graduate literature class. It’s a renaissance literature class–the “eat your vegetables” section of graduate literary study. On top of that, it’s a renaissance poetry class–the “eat your vegetables and also now there’s also someone screaming into your ear and slapping the food off of your fork” section of graduate literary study.

The room is small–smaller than any of the classrooms I inhabited as an undergrad. Centralized in the room is a collection of small tables, pushed together to create one, rectangular unit. We all sit in swivel back desk chairs. I look at the lovely desk chairs–they are nicer than any desk chair I’ve ever had (Desk chair #1: Bought at Office Depot for $30. Desk Chair #2: Found in house I moved into, structurally unsound, literally snapped in half after two months. Desk Chair #3: Stolen from ex-roommate, seat portion cuts me off at mid-thigh and makes my legs fall asleep if I sit in it too long.).

My professor is in his late fifties or early sixties, with a tomato-shaped head and eyes that seem–although stored next to a brain that he invested tens of thousands of dollars in–uncomfortable and approval-seeking. I make a mental note to bully the professor into giving me a ride home after class. I try to find his nipples through his shirt so I can practice Purple Nurple trajectory. Always envision your successes before they happen. See the hand, sweaty from note taking. See the nipple, barely visible through the canary yellow button up. See the contact. See the thumb and pointer finger move in seamless harmony, clamping down on the nipple, compressing it. Zoom up to the face of a broken down, frightened man. Cut to his attacker, who can be seen–in slow motion–mouthing his address and nodding.

“Okay, first off, my name is Dr. Scheffler. I’ve studied in Chicago, Iowa, and Cambridge.”

“Looks like we got a cool guy on our hands,” I whisper to the girl next to me. She looks over and does not respond. I take off my sunglasses and flip my collar down.

“This semester we will be talking about the renaissance poet Edmund Spenser. Has anyone here ever read any Spenser?” he asks. No one raises their hand. This silence is met with laughter by all, including Dr. Scheffler. “That’s okay. I didn’t think young people spent a lot of time reading renaissance poetry in their free time anyway.” More chuckles. Funny guy. I’m the funny guy. He’s the good looking one. That’s our deal. Except I’m also the good looking one. He’s the one with the nipples.

Except I have nipples.

This is difficult.

[Editor's Note: I'm pretty sure you used that joke before. The 'but I'm also the good looking one' one. You may want to delete that.]

[Kyle's Note: I'm currently working on my MA in Literature. Sorry, man. I don't have time.]

[Editor's Note: It took you so much longer to type that response to me than it would have for you to delete that joke. Just delete it.]

[Kyle's Note: Busy.]

[Editor's Note: See above.]

[Kyle's Note: Biz.]

[Editor's Note: 'Biz'? What are you talking about?]

[Kyle's Note: Too busy to write it out.]

[Editor's Note: You're too busy to type out "busy"? That's ludicrous. You just typed the word "busy" to tell me that you were too busy to type "busy."]

[Kyle's Note: B]

[Editor's Note: ...]

My professor goes on. “We’re going to spend a lot of time talking about the Bible in here as well, and some history. It’s a little difficult to read–the text, that is–because they used different type sets in renaissance presses.”

“Often printing solely in ‘Wingdings.’” I add.

“Uh,” he looks at me and then checks his notes. “No. That’s not the case.”

I “hm” in acceptance.

“Anyway, we’ll first be covering some of Spenser’s personal history. He had only one wife: Elizabeth Boyle.”

“She’s that old?!” I ask. I’m sitting on the opposite end of the rectangle from the professor.

“Who is that old?” he asks.

“Elizabeth Boyle. Did anybody see that clip?” Crickets. “That clip of her singing that song from Le  Mis.” Somebody out of my line of sight says “Oh my god” quietly, maybe to themselves, but I hear it, and it hurts my feelings.

“Are you talking about Susan Boyle?” a kittenish girl on the end of my side of the rectangle says.

“Yes!” I point at her and we lock eyes.

“Okay, that’s not the same person–they just have the same last name.”

“Elizabeth Boyle’s daughter, then.”

“Her daughter? Elizabeth Boyle was alive over four-hundred years ago.”

“Susan Boyle’s pretty old,” I say.

“Not that old,” my professor responds.

“Well, you’re the one who went to Cambridge,” I say, sighing. “I hope you got a good education at England’s number one community college.” I smirk and look at the girl next to me again. She doesn’t smile back. This infuriates me. “I’m never using one of your jokes ever again,” I say to her, then face forward, sullen. She begins to make a defense, but the professor raises a hand to silence her.

“Let’s just move on,” He paused. “Now, much of Spenser’s early work deals partly with the King’s Great Matter. Does anybody know what that was? Does anybody know what the Great Matter was?”

“I don’t know, what’s the Great Matter with you?” I ask, leaning forward in my seat. Somebody to my left laughs and that’s all the encouragement I need for at least four more jokes. I sit back before having a chance to register the professor’s reaction.

“He wanted a male heir, but all he was getting was females. One of these female heirs was…?” He pauses, waiting for student response.

“Anne Bolyn,” a male graduate student softly replies. The professor doesn’t quite make out what he says.”

“What was that?” the professor asks. “What did you say?”

“He said ‘Weenie Juggler,’” I respond.

“No I did not!” the graduate student responds, in a tone that all but guarantees me that he was beat up a lot as a child.

I shrug.

“I said ‘Anne Bolyn.’”

“Exactly right,” the professor says. “And please, sir,” he addresses me, “keep your comments to yourself.”

I nod, knowing I cannot possibly be expected to do this. Later, we study a passage from the book of Mark.

“When you see ‘the abomination that–’”

“Did you say the Obama-nation?” I ask, leaning so far over the table that I almost fall down.

“The abomination?”

“The Obama Nation.”

“Abomination.”

“Obama Nation.”

“Leave this classroom,” my professor says.

I leave, and wait outside the room to get my ride home.

Moving On

I walk down the sidewalk in Denton’s old-time downtown square. I’m taking one last stroll before I leave Denton to go to graduate school.

“Look how old all this is,” I say to my friend Derek, who walks beside me. “I wonder if I’ll ever be as old as these buildings.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure this stuff was made in the late 1800′s, so probably not,” Derek says.

“We’ll see.” I wink at him.

“No, we won’t see. We probably won’t be in the Denton square when we die.”

“God willing,” I say. “God willing I will die right here, pointing to the sky, screaming ‘My funeral! My funeral at Andy’s!’”

“That sounds like the most disrespectful funeral ever.”

“It’ll be all ages,” I say, looking out down Hickory Street, the setting sun at my back. “Five dollar cover to twenty-one and under, though.”

Derek shakes his head. We walk to Jupiter House, a coffee shop on the square. Outside the cafe is a group of older men, all with skin that is tan and leathery. They all sit in silence, as if to say that there is no news, nothing of interest to discuss, and to do so would just be a waste of breath and thought. It’s an expression that resembles a pained contentment.  “Look at them,” I say, smiling broadly, arms crossed. “Just look at ‘em.” All but one look up at me. I stand directly in front of their table. “I wonder if they can still hear me.” I look at Derek. “They’re so old, you see.”

“We can hear you,” one says.

“GHOST!” I yelp and begin to run down the sidewalk to Recycled Books. Derek follows. I’m his ride home.

We walk slowly through the shelves at Recycled Books. We’re in the fiction section. The fiction section is on a mezzanine, so our steps are bassy and distinct. I want to weep because I never–not once–thought of bringing my STOMP troop up here. I want to weep because I never–not once–had a STOMP troop of my own. I always had to borrow one.

I breathe deep the smell of books–that book smell that is the same everywhere you go. I have a feeling this book smell will remain unique to me in my mind as I move on, though. I breathe deep the smell as I pass great writers like Ian McKewan and Cormac McCarthy, but then am struck dumb by an olfactory intruder. It stinks of shit all of a sudden.

I shake the cobwebs of whimsy from my head and look down the aisle. Derek stands there. He’s leaning against the wall with his right leg pulled up to his chest, farting openly.

“I hate Thomas Pynchon,” Derek said.

“Okay, Derek,” I whisper-yell, “Pynchon is in the next aisle. This is L-N.” Derek drops his leg.

“Oops. Okay, thanks.” He turns to pass, “‘Scuuuse me.” In a moment, I begin to hear what sounds like a small duck quacking from the next aisle over.

The smell is like a swamp where the trees have all been replaced with the contents of a Taco Bell dumpster.

We leave Recycled Books, get in my car, and go to Green House for dinner.

“I just love this restaurant,” Derek says as we get out of the car.

“Me too. I love how it smells like delicious bar-b-que from the outside, but when you get on the inside there isn’t a single god damn piece of bar-b-que on the entire menu.”

“Why would you love that?”

“Because that is the restaurant telling us that it doesn’t owe us anything.”

Derek pushes his jaw forward a little and nods in agreement.

We order our food. It’s delicious. The combination of the top shelf food and the aesthetics of the restaurant  make us feel affluent like nothing else in our sad, shabby lives.

For lunch I had a can of black beans and water that I drank from the empty can of the black beans.

Derek ate the can.

I’m still feeling contemplative and make it a point to take in all the different faces of those at the Green House that I recognize. There are only like two, so that only takes me a few seconds. Derek and I pay our bill and leave.

“I drank fifteen scotches,” Derek says, rubbing his belly.

“Derek no you did not,” I say, scanning the parking lot for our car. Sometimes Derek lies like a child to impress/one-up me.

Our next stop is Lou’s. The ol’ stomping ground. Lou’s is a bar with indoor and outdoor areas, all contained by fencing that seems pointy enough to maybe be a bad idea to have around so many drunk people. Derek and I spend most of our time outside. There’s less cigarette smoke there and you can see more people and the music is softer, which means that conversation no longer requires the sacrifice of two twenty-somethings’ larynges . Derek is drinking a Shiner and I am drinking a double Wild Turkey and Diet Coke.

“I told the guy that I got Diet Coke for the taste, not for my figure.”

“Yeah?”

“He told me he listened to me talk for my order, not for my guilt.”

“Oh.”

“I tipped him thirty bucks hoping he would at least smile at me.”

“Did he?”

“No. I think he might have stuck his finger in my drink.”

“You think?”

“I was kind of misting up.”

“Oh.“

“From the humiliation.”

“Gotcha.”

The bar is particularly full on this night. Perhaps everyone found out that it’s my last night in Denton, of which I’ve had three.

One by one as people enter, I see my past paraded before me.

There’s the girl who I dated a two years ago and now we don’t talk. There’s the girl who I dated a few months ago who I broke it off with and for whatever reason I’m now mad at her. There’s the other girl I dated two years ago and I wish we didn’t talk but damn if she doesn’t just want to be my best friend in the whole world and why do you hate me Kyle?

I see guys that lived in my dorm, who I never hung out with outside of that building and that year, but with whom I feel I’ve always shared a mutual affection, perhaps because we were both present for one of the best years in each other’s lives.

I shake hands with one in particular who has stood out amongst the others, if for no other reason than because he’s the only one I see anymore.

I see people who were in my English classes who also graduated in 2009. We exchange friendly nods and the look on our faces is always somewhat apologetic–like we had all been party to some tremendous lie that we are only now beginning to understand the consequences of.

I see people whom I’ve seen around for five years and never spoken to.

I see girls who would be prettier if they just stopped trying for five minutes and actually said something.

I see a guy go number two in a urinal.

Derek and I have a few drinks and then head home.

We stop at Whataburger and get some food.

“You know, I’m going to miss this,” Derek says before biting into his sandwich.

“Yeah. Youth is something strange, isn’t it? You treat it as something owed to you, maybe even an inherent trait you have, and all the while it’s being pulled out of you. It’s like a currency that life demands. To move forward, you have to give up certain things.”

Derek is chewing vigorously, eyes closed.

“You can’t enjoy sex if you still want to hold onto that innocent, superficial understanding of what makes a woman a woman, you know? God, there are all kinds of things you have to give up if you want to enjoy sex.” I take a sip of my drink. “And you can’t have a really deep friendship with someone until you understand that people out there are very capable of betraying you–that even your friend has it in him to screw you over, but  he chooses not to and it’s that choice that makes him your friend.” I look out the window and see a car pull into a spot next to my own. “So yeah, I’ll miss it too, but I’m not sure if I’d go back if I was given the chance.”

“Go back where?” Derek asks.

“Like in time–to younger days.”

“Jesus, what are you talking about?”

“You said you were going to ‘miss this.’ I assumed you were talking about times like now.”

“I was talking about the Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit,” Derek says, staring at me over the sandwich as if I had offended a close friend of his.

“Oh. Yeah, that looks delicious.”

“Oh, it is!” Derek says. “It’s just delicious. I don’t care if it’s only a limited time.”

Mother’s Day

I need to hurry up and post this before it goes from just a little relevant to not relevant at all.

—

Sunday. Mother’s Day. I’ve come to Waxahachie, my home town, the place of my development into a post-adolescent before my exodus and further development in palatial Denton, Texas where I went from being a post-adolescent to a pre-adult to a pseudo-adult. If you’re a post-adult, you’re dead.

I wake up Sunday morning (I spent the night at my parents’ home) and get my mother’s present in order. It’s a card I purchased from Target. When I say “in order” I mean shoo the cat off of it and then wipe all the cat hair off and rub the card against something that smells normal and not like the underside of a cat who is too old and too bitterly entitled to take the time to wash anymore. I write “Mom” on the outside, so my father doesn’t find the unmarked envelope and mistake it for some sort of clue to something. I can hear the television on in the living room and the clink of glass and metal as clean dishes are being put away. I put on shorts and a shirt. I don’t usually do this. At my own home in Denton, I walk around in my manties all day. This is done with the same spirit of an animal who doesn’t cover its dung after excretion because it knows it’s the dominant predator in the region and has no reason to hide its scent. I just compared my uncovered physique to dung.

I walk out into the living room and greet my mother with a big “Happy Mother’s Day!”

I hand her her card. She opens it, smiling. She reads the outside page and then turns the card on its side and shakes it expectantly. The card offers nothing. Mother opens the card up, as if whatever she was hoping would fall out was simply stuck in its place. If she was hoping a few lines of poorly written poetry about mothers and sons would fall out–it won’t. It’s written there in real ink and not on a separate piece of paper. Internally, I kick myself for not writing the poem on a separate piece of paper.

A Mother’s Love

Mother, my mom. Bore me into this world.

Why the Hell did you do that?

It sucks here.

At least I get presents sometimes.

-Kyle

“Well, there’s no money,” my mom says, “but how could you afford to put any money in here with the,” she checks the back of the card “three dollars you spent on this card.” She holds her arms out for a hug. Her eyes are looking at the television, though. I lean down to give her a hug and her arms remain stretched straight out. I remain for a second, waiting to be wrapped up, but after a few seconds it’s clear that that just isn’t going to happen. I lean back and walk into the kitchen to make my breakfast.

My mother and father leave for church and I stay behind in case any of my intellectual friends are looking.

I try to read a bit, but I can’t focus, so I stop. I turn on the television. I’m supposed to be meeting my grandmother on my father’s side and some of my extended family for lunch. I assume it’s scheduled to begin at 12:30 or 1 o’ clock because my immediate family all go to church and couldn’t be expected any earlier than that.

I receive a text at 10:45 am from my cousin asking me if we’re coming to lunch.

“Yeah. When is it starting?”

“Now. We’re all here.”

“What the Hell kind of lunch starts at 10:45?”

“It didn’t.”

“So it’s not starting yet?”

“No. It started at 10:30. You guys are late.”

I feel pretty pushed out and victimized in general. I mark the meal up as a loss–I’m not dressed, I’m drinking my morning coffee and watching a rerun of SNL and don’t want to rush around to eat mediocre Mexican food on a full stomach and have four or five different people ask me what I’m up to now, their eyes going glassy as I respond.

An hour or so later, mom and dad return, a little perturbed by the lunchtime shunning. We all decide to meet my other grandmother (the one on my mother’s side) for lunch at a regular lunch time hour. I run into my room and grab my gift for my grandma.

My brother, sister and I drive our own cars and meet my parents, my grandma (my mother’s mom, father’s mother-in-law) at a mostly breakfast and lunch restaurant in Downtown Waxahachie. Pleasantries are exchanged.

My grandma asks my brother about graduate school and his upcoming marriage. He and his fiance seem to be happy and everyone relishes in this excited love. My sister rattles off a few amusing anecdotes about her son who is a little more than a baby but maybe a little less than a toddler. My parents ask if everyone’s ready to go. My sister tells them that we just got here and no one’s even ordered yet and what is wrong with them. My mom shrugs and my dad says something  incoherent about his upbringing that even he doesn’t seem to believe.

Finally, it’s my turn. “Tell me Kyle, what are you up to?” my grandma asks.

“Well,” I begin, “I just finished The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was a book I’ve been wanting to read for awhile, but–” Nobody cares. “I finally got to read it and it was good.” Everyone seems relieved that I stopped talking so fast.

“Mom, would you like your present?” my mother asks.

“Of course!” says my grandma, clasping her hands at her chest.

“Okay,” my mother says, echoing grandma’s excitement to a lesser extent. “Here you go,” my mother says, and slides a carton of cigarettes across the table. Everyone seems confused. My brother half smiles like he thinks it may be a joke. It isn’t.

My grandma seems the most confused. “I don’t smoke, dear,” she says, forcing a smile. “And the carton’s been opened. There’s a pack missing.”

“Long drive,” my father said, a pack of cigarettes rolled into his sleeve.

“It took me six minutes to get here,” I say.

“What is time?” my mother asks me in a hushed tone, leaning over the table.

“Okay, here. Nikki and I got you something,” my brother says. His fiance reaches down between their seats and hands my grandma her present. It’s a candle. My grandma loves it.

My sister gives my grandma a set of towels.

I hand my grandma her card. It’s larger than my mother’s, and everyone at the table can tell the exact moment when my mother notices this. It’s not hard to notice because she slaps the table and yells “God damned cheap skate traitor!” at the no one in particular.

“Let’s see,” my grandma says, smiling, reading the card. “Happy Mother’s Day, grandma.” She opens the card. Inside is a cartoon rabbit saying “It’s easy to see that my good looks and intelligence aren’t a fluke.” She reads the rabbit’s line out loud, starts to read what I had written beneath, then stops. “Kyle, what does this say?”

“Yeah, ur hott” is scrawled on the card just above “Love, Kyle.”

“Kyle,” my sister admonishes me.

My mother and father are busy arguing about cigarettes.

“It’s a joke,” I say.

“I don’t like that, Kyle,” my grandma says. The meal is finished in silence.

On the way home, my mother rolls down her window and tosses her leftovers onto my car’s windshield. An explosion of pinto beans and mixed vegetables. I almost hit a family of four.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Decision Time

“Editor, what is this?” I ask Editor. I’m holding an envelope that was left on my desk. My question is met with silence. I realize I’m at home and not at my office and that I had just placed the envelope down and forgotten about it after getting distracted by a sandwich whose origin was unknown.

You find a sandwich you don’t know where it comes from you stop and you try to figure it out, okay?

The next day, I walk into Editor’s office. “What is this?” I ask. Editor’s eyes bounce from me to the envelope.

“You haven’t opened it yet,” Editor said. “How can you, let alone I, possibly know how to answer that question.”

“I can’t tell what it is,” I say.

“It’s because it’s in an envelope, Kyle,” Editor says, calling me by my slave name [Editor's Note: Okay. That's enough of that. It's your name. It's what your mom and dad named you.]. “You need to open the envelope to find out what’s inside.”

I open the envelope and find out what’s inside.

Inside is a notice from the company I bought the domain name “ironkyle.com” from. Apparently, I have until May 30 to renew my lease on the internet super highway.

For the last two or three months, my posts have become more and more widely dispersed. I’ve begun working on some other things–other serious things, and I’m trying to find a balance. It seems like more and more often IronKyle.com gets the short end of my effort stick [sloppily writes note to self to henceforth refer to penis as "effort stick"]

This site gave me my voice as a writer–which may sound cheesy, but is said with the utmost of sincerity.

So now I have to decide whether or not to renew my lease on IronKyle.com. If I don’t, I won’t guarantee that the posts will stop coming on IronKyle.wordpress.com, but it would seem to be a distinct possibility that I’d just shut down the site altogether.

I’ll be thinking.

Letter to the Stranger Who Sat Next to Me in the Movies

Dear Stranger Who Sat Next to Me in the Movies,

I don’t know your name and you don’t know mine, but out of all the seats in the movie theater, you picked the empty one next to me to sit in, and don’t you think I didn’t notice.

I know that the seat next to me was practically the only seat left by the time you got here. I know that. I can’t help but wonder why you didn’t sit in the aisle, though. It’s so much easier to get to the restrooms from there and, judging from the jug of cola you’ve produced there, I imagine you’ll be taking a few trips there. You’re so round. What’s that like?

Is it like being a warm snow man, bound in leather?

If it gets scary, may I grab your arm? If it gets romantic, may I place my hand on your knee? I won’t move my fingers–I promise. If it gets thoroughly adrenaline-rush-y, can I punch you in the arm until the hormone spike goes away? These are the things I ask of those I attend movies with. You may have noticed that the seat next to me was empty. Perhaps this sheds some light on that.

You smell strangely, stranger, and I don’t want to be rude, but I’m going to have to lean far away from you for a few breaths every now and then. Don’t you dare lean away from me, though. I want your muffin top to spill over onto the arm rest like slow-moving lava. I want to be your Pompeii. Rain your ass on me. Oh, did I say ass? I meant ash. But you know what I mean.

[Editor's Note: What do you mean?]

[Kyle's Note: Editor! What are you doing in here?! This is a private letter!]

[Editor's Note: You put this on my desk.]

[Kyle's Note: I had to set it down while I took pictures of myself humping all your stuff.]

[Editor's Note: ... ]

Please don’t text, stranger. The light is so distracting. I know you’re busy, though. I understand that you’re going to have to text a little bit. I can tell by the loose-fitting Slipknot shirt that assures me that you’re fresh off of a big business meeting. Your long, stringy hair has that “Euro-trash” vibe that the less cultured eye might miss–but not me. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss a thing.

I don’t wanna miss a thing.

Stranger, when the film is over, which way down the aisle will we walk? Will you be the guide? I’ll let you lead. When the credits begin to roll, I’ll stay in my seat while you decide; I don’t want to pressure you. Then, you get up and make up your mind. I’m not going to tell you what to do. You make your own rules big guy–just like how you decided that it’d be best to mix your Milk Duds in with your bucket of delicious, glistening popcorn. You’re an innovator and a snacking pioneer.

Can you give me the recipe to your popcorn/Milk Dud combo? How many parts popcorn to how many parts Milk Dud?

Can it be eaten with a fork?

Oh, cool, you’re not even using your hands–you’re just kind of bringing the whole bucket up to your face and eating out of it like a horse with a feedbag.

You know what? That’s kind of gross. And you won’t stop playing games on your phone–which is worse than texting because it isn’t productive in any way whatsoever. I’ve had my hand up to block the light for roughly three minutes now. How do you not know why I’m doing that?

And I’m starting to think that you don’t care about your hygiene or your appearance at all, because there’s butter and Milk Dud all over your face and you didn’t even bring any napkins. If you wipe that junk onto your arm, I’m going to throw up.

Okay, you did it.

I’m leaving. Get–get back. Move your feet back, you idiot; I have to step over them. What are those? Are those Sketchers? Is this a pit stop on the way to a Christian pre-teen camp? Get it together, dude.

—

Dear Stranger Who I Sat Next to in the Movies,

Poop Tweets

At the request of a friend, I have compiled a list of all of my poop tweets. Enjoy! (@IronKyle)

—

I have a turd pressing itself against the door of my butthole. I lay in my bed, afraid. I hear it whispering my name.

I pooped a poop that looked like a little mud kitten curled up, peacefully asleep. The flush felt like murder.

I’ve had diarrhea all day. My butthole = a sick cat, where it’s crying out in pain, but you can’t explain to it what’s going on.

I drink like a fish, fuck like a rabbit, fight like a tiger, and poop outside like pretty much all the animals.

Shit the bed last night. Woke up and thought it was just a stinky snake that had fallen asleep in my bed. It wasn’t a snake. It was poop.

Among the documents leaked by WikiLeaks, a crayon drawing by President Barack Obama of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad eating “America’s doo doo.”

Sweat glistened on his brow and there was a tightening in his gut. The sound of a splash and the sudden knowledge. Poop had happened.

“Mr. Kyle, Sebastion called me Juan Poop but that isn’t my last name.”#hilariouscomplaints

“Would you still love me if I shit all over your bed?” #DeletedScenesFromTitanic

In a few hours, I’m going to be able to tell you how three pounds of lo mein looks coming out of a human butt.

Afraid to fart. #DiarrheaAllDay

Tried pulling a “it’s cool to poop your pants” in the vein of “Billy Madison” at school today. Didn’t work. Just ended up shitting myself.

Somebody’s cat pooped in the sands of time.

I hate when I poop in public and my butt gets splashed.

My poop this morning smelled like dog poop. Note to self: stop knowing what dog poop smells like.

My Time at the 35 Conferette

This past weekend was the SXSW-like 35 Conferette. 35 Conferette is a musical festival of sorts–kind of like an ACL or Lollapalooza if you spread out some of the smaller stages into a dozen small clubs. I play guitar/bass/synth/shaker and sometimes sing for singer/songwriter Roy Robertson. Here is my story:

—

“Tell me what you are going to wear,” Roy says to me from across the room. He’s wearing sunglasses that cost more than my entire outfit–than his entire outfit. He’s limply swirly his index finger in a circle, as if attempting to point at some rotating object. Roy’s hair is long and wavy and hangs over his eyes just a bit.

“I’m going to wear this.” I motion to my body (Sexy). I’m wearing a pearl-snap shirt and jeans and some old boots. I think I look pretty good.

“No, no that won’t do,” Roy says softly, and whip cracks himself onto his feet. He moves like a raised cobra toward me. He is inches from my face. I can smell his breath. It smells like vegan things. “You’ll wear what I have for you.” Roy takes off his sunglasses for what I suppose is emphasis, but his eyes are closed, creating an effect that is more chilling than intimidating. “Kyle, do you know why I wear shades all the time?” Roy whips his hair in my face, spinning his thin frame on strangely nimble feet. His arms flail about wildly. He sits back down, one leg jutting out, the other bent under his chair in mock-leisure. “I wear sunglasses because my future’s so bright, I need shades.“

I take a second to mull this over.

“It’s so fuckin’ bright, man!” Roy screams, taking his sunglasses off again. This time, he’s doing that thing where his eyes point in two different directions. “You think it’s easy for me havin’ such a bright future?” He stands up again and resumes his position immediately in front of my face. I can smell his breath again. It smells like raw, abysmal hate. “People said Bob Dylan had a bright future, too, and look what happened to him.” Roy points to a drawing of Bob Dylan that’s been tacked to the wall. It’s done in purple marker and looks like it’s been drawn by a child, but Roy has signed and dated it at the bottom as well as writing the time of completion. The drawing had been completed thirty minutes before I arrived at his house for practice.

“Bob Dylan did have a bright future, Roy. He’s incredibly successful.”

“Yea! But look at him now.”

Lacking the real Bob to look at, I just look at the picture again.

“He’s all old.“

“Well, Roy, I–”

“I’m never gonna be old. Nah man, not for me.” Roy lays down on top of his amp, curling into himself like a cat. “Now get out.”

I turn for the door.

“Oh, and Kyle? Be there at 4:30.”

He’s talking about the venue we’re playing at. We play on the Square Stage in downtown Denton–the only free stage at the 35 Conferette.

–Time passes–

At 4:30, I arrive downtown. I check my phone. A text from Roy. It’s just a picture of himself that he’s taken, making a pouty face at the camera. He sends me at least four or five of these a day. Sometimes with little messages like “What do u think?” or “Pain is beauty” or “Am I a 10?”

This time, it just says “I’m here.”

Moments later I get a call from Roy, telling me it’s time to unload the equipment. He tells me where he’s parked and that I can meet him at his car because he doesn’t go anywhere alone because only losers and homeless people walk places alone and then he says but aren’t all homeless people losers and laughs loudly into the phone in a way that I know he isn’t really laughing but just screaming into the receiver.

When I reach his car, he’s still sitting in the driver seat. His car is parked in a small parking lot behind one of the square’s buildings. A pit opens in my stomach and my face contorts to reflect this. Roy is looking straight at me and I can’t tell how long he’s been looking at me. Sometimes, it feels like he’s always been looking at me–since the day I was born. I approach the car and look into the window, my partially transparent reflection laid over, Roy, who gazes up at me.

“Please no,” I say.

“Unload, Kyle,” Roy says.

I open the door and Roy holds his arms out. I reach down and pull the lever to open the trunk. I then pick Roy up and manage to get him onto my back. I walk to the back of the car and pick up the bass amp and a few other things and begin the march back to the stage. The emotional anguish of something like this always makes me wonder about my life choices. Roy bobs along on my back like a child. He whispers “Weee” into my ear the whole time.

We get sound checked.

“Okay, I need the main vocal mic,” the sound guy says.

“Check,” Roy says, then turns away from the mic. The sound guy looks at the stage expectantly.

“I think he needs more,” I say.

“No he doesn’t.” Roy turns to the sound guy. “That’s all you need. Make it work. Lots of reverb.”

The sound guy half-chuckles “You want to sound like God out here?”

“I already sound like God, man! I just want some fucking reverb!” Roy screams into the microphone, punching the air three times in rapid-fire succession.

We finish the sound check and play the show. Roy almost calls off the set three times because “Can someone turn down the fucking wind?” No one could turn down the wind.

The final chord rings out and I feel a swell of relief.

I put my guitar away and carry Roy and the amps back to his car.

I return to the square and enjoy the cool breeze and the smell of food and the sounds of people talking and laughing. I remember how this was. I remember what it is to love music. I go to a local tavern and drink until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

ROCK AND ROLL!

Jury Duty

Haha.

[Editor's Note: God, that's creepy. What are you laughing at? You should let the reader know.]

Right.

—

The other day, I had jury duty. The day that wasn’t today. I couldn’t write in the courtroom. They don’t let you write. Maybe they’re afraid you’ll take notes on the case and then lose them at a fancy restaurant you’re paying to eat at with your luxurious $6 stipend they give you for missing a day of work.

[Editor's Note: Okay, so you're not going to tell them what you were laughing at?]

[Kyle's Note: Oh, something somebody told me at the grocery store today. It's not important.]

[Editor's Note: Then why'd you include it here?]

This is the second time I’ve been summoned to jury duty. The first time, I was able to nimbly slip out of duty by way of being a college student in another county. I don’t have that luxury anymore. I’ll have to get more creative if I want to get out of this.

So now I sit in the attorney’s office. He sits at a large oak desk. I sit in a somewhat comfortable padded seat that doesn’t recline. It’s the first thing I tried when I came in. I’m about to be interviewed to see if I’m fit for jury duty.

“Mr. Irion, how are you today?” the DA asks.

“I’m okay. I’m at jury duty, though. And that sucks.”

An uncomfortable chuckle. “Well, as inconvenient as it may be, we must all–”

“And I don’t like the way the DA’s looking at me. Looking at me like I got a knife in my left shoe.” The attorney stops laughing. His eyes dart to my left shoe. He motions to two bailiffs and they pat me down. When they get to my left shoe, I call out “Ah HA! My secret shame!” a menacing smile stretched across my face. They remove a half-eaten Butterfingers bar from my shoe. I reach out for it, licking my lips and making “mmmm” sounds. A bailiff swats my hand down and walks out.

The attorney and I sit again. I keep smiling at him and winking with both eyes. The attorney just squirms in his seat and pulls a pen from his pocket. I double wink at him five or six times in a row, rapid fire.

“Okay, sorry about that. We can’t be too safe here.”

“I understand. I understand completely. Danger is afoot,” I say, pointing at my right foot.

The district attorney sighs and waves the bailiffs over once again. This time he seems much less frantic. The bailiffs pat me down, one working my mid section while the other takes a knee and reaches down to my right foot.

“Yoohoo! My darkest insides!” Thinking on the fly, my declarations are sometimes abysmal and/or nonsensical. The bailiff pulls my shoe off of my foot and reaches into the shoe. In the shoe is a hand drawn picture of Apollo Creed standing next to my mom and me with Maury in the background saying “Apollo, you ARE the father!”

Disturbed, the bailiff hands the picture back. I crumble it up and throw it behind me.

“One more time. Here we go. Mr. Irion, why do you think you’d be a good juror?”

“Well, I’m used to making hard decisions.”

“Are you? Give me some examples.”

“Sure. I remember one summer my family and I were traveling across the country.”

“Has your family done a lot of traveling?”

“TONS.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt. Go on, please.”

“Well, we were going across the country. It was hot, of course, and we were running low on food and water. Problem was, we were out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Oh dear.”

“We reached this river, and the decision fell on me as to how we were going to cross it–if we were going to cross it at all. The water looked pretty deep, but I could still see rock formations, so I wasn’t sure how deep.”

“Wait, what?”

“We could either ford the river, look for another place to cross, or get a ferry.”

“Hold on a second.”

“Either way, we were all pretty sure Jed was going to die of cholera before we reached the other side.”

“All right. All right. That’s enough. Are you just recapping a game of Oregon Trail?”

“Yes.”

The DA sighs once again and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s holding his glasses in the same hand he pinches with.

“Fine. I really don’t want to ask this, but I have to finish the questionnaire with everyone. Do you think you could feel confidently in a decision on whether someone had committed a crime or not, although you would have no control as to what their punishment would be?”

“I’m okay with the chair, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s,” he looks at the card. “No, that’s not what I’m asking.”

“Well, okay, but for the record, I want it noted that I’m okay with the chair. I’m pro-chair. I don’t think we use it enough.“

“I don’t th–”

“Ain’t I crazy?” I ask, spittle on my chin, my hand waving wildly behind me. I don’t explain this.

“Well, Mr. Irion,” the DA says, standing up. “Thank you for coming in today. We’ll let you know in one half hour whether you have been chosen or not.”

I was not chosen.

The End.