My mother works for Johnson & Johnson. This has turned her into a world traveler; she hands out Cleanpaste dental floss and Q-Tips to the poor or unhygenic and brings back kabuki fans from Tokyo, olivewood crucifixes from Tel Aviv, and most recently, from Mumbai, a marble, talismanic, S-shaped elephant penis, thinking it was a mortarless pestle. I much prefer the confines of America, where there is a significantly lower incidence of decapitation by extremists, gang mugging by gypsies, or the accidental acquisition of a bewitched phallus. When I told my mother as much, she sighed. “You sound exactly like your father.”

My father is an hypochondriacal psychotherapist for the criminally insane. He drives his Volvo C30 hatchback via backroads one half mile to the hospital, where he tries to fashion logic from the fantasies of the unrepentantly disturbed, which is one half mile from Bunicu’s Apothecary, where he purchases his weekly battery of ginseng, omega 3’s, vitamins and purifying bath oils, which is one half mile from the supermarket, where he gets frozen vegetables, orzo and Grape Nuts, which is one half mile from his home, where he can clean, clean, clean and sleep. On GoogleMaps, his daily travel route looks like an adorable flux capacitor. When I told him about my plans for Yellowstone, he sighed. “You are your mother’s son.”

Yellowstone seemed like a domestic adventure that would satisfy everyone, but instead I failed them both. Were they a happily married duo of either adventurers or recluses, they could have coordinated their disapproval of me and molded me into a disciple of whichever life paradigm they agreed on. Divorced, they tossed me back and forth like a lump of Play-Doh, each making shapes from me the other found obscene. When thrown back, they hacked away at the unsightly appendages I acquired that represented the values they despised in each other and I became something new entirely.

At least Reni was happy.

Yellowstone was her idea, as most of our excursions were. She hated that she was the one who made plans for us and that I just went along with whatever. If I had a great time, everything was cool, but if I happened to have a miserable time I would subconsciously blame it on her because she was the one who dragged me out from underneath my covers in the first place. It made me look childish and thoughtless. “Childish” I can accept, but thoughtless is a stretch. I have thoughts all the time. Exhilarating daydreams are the landscape, population, and stormy climate of my waking mind. I just space out when people talk about their family and job and hopes and dreams and stuff. I’m not thoughtless, I’m just irrevocably egomaniacal. Eight months later, Reni would make this perfectly clear to me. But that’s the next story.

In preparation for Yellowstone, I did some Internet research, which is the kind of follow-through I’m capable of since it easily segues into checking the latest celebrity gossip. The U.S. National Park Service webpage said:

Yellowstone! Wyoming, Montana & Idaho!

But when I GoogleMapped Yellowstone, I learned that Montana and Idaho are almost completely fraudulent partners in the Yellowstone National Park enterprise. The park is a green stamp placed on the upper left corner of Wyoming which overflows the state by a few miles north and west. Idaho is the more egregious offender, claiming only a few square miles of the western overlapping. I’m assuming Idaho just wants to be known for something besides potatoes, “I da ho!” shirts, and the fact that the whole state looks like a falling stock market report.

The website contained photography featuring elk, buffalo, and colorful hotsprings. These all seemed like impressive creations that I could brag about seeing first hand. Plus, starting a story with, “When I went to Yellowstone National Park…” would make me seem traveled and sexy despite the fact I used to urinate in my houseplants.

We arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah without incident. I say without incident because insane things that are rarely my fault tend to happen to me and it’s important to note that I did not have a run in with local authorities or angry Mormons. SLC is small and scary-clean. We took pictures of the Latter Day Saints HQ, bought some CDs, rented a car, and got the hell out of there.

Late Registration got us to the Utah/Idaho border (including multiple replays of Gold Digger and Diamonds From Sierra Leone Remix), Guerro got us to Pocatello, I-20 was almost entirely Demon Days, and Erin McKeown’s We Will Become Like Birds took us clear through the park and to the front door of our cabin. We arrived at sunset. The clouds were explosions of color. A huge elk walked by car. I bought a winter hat since I had packed poorly, we had dinner, and went to bed.

*****

Yellowstone is a truly magical place and I took 600 hundred pictures of animals and geysers and other subjects of unspeakable majesty. I show these to people now and they think I am well traveled and sexy. I had never been on a major trip with Reni before and we got along famously. We ate well, drank well, took our first horse ride together, hiked, photographed the feces of various creatures, woke up to the barking of bull elk, made love every day, and I did not murder any wildlife while disregarding park speed limits. Our final morning, I lazed nakedly under the covers and watched the foggy reflection of Reni get dressed through the cracked bathroom door. I was in love and surrounded by the most glorious of God’s creations. What could possibly go wrong?

I’d fallen asleep and when Reni ripped the sheets off of me. She was all packed. It was early, we had a plane to catch in Utah and we had planned to see Old Faithful erupt before we left. I’d slept through shower time and grudgingly put on clean clothes over yesterday’s skin, speed packed, got in the car and drove out the pearly gates.

An hour later, we passed by a huge lodge that looked way too much like the one in The Shining. This was the Old Faithful greeting center, full of Yellowstone memorabilia and park rules. I did not read them and we walked out to the geyser, scheduled to erupt in fifteen minutes.

A small crowd of late-season tourists began to meander into the amphitheater around the geyser; light rain misted around us. I closed my eyes, tilted my head heavenward, and let the heavy air settle onto my face. A quiet murmur drifted in on the wind and I expected it drift away when the gust subsided but it did not. I turned and saw a little Native American girl in a wheelchair. She nodded her head rhythmically to her own quiet language. I couldn’t see her eyes so it was hard to tell if anybody was at home; the impression that she was forming actual words was vague at best.

She was flanked by her white mother and her white father, who must have been her adopted parents, barring some freak Native American milkman accidental impregnation scenario.

She was dressed in the exact same outfit as her white father: jeans with elastic ankles and a matching jean jacket with a fluorescent green shirt underneath. Fluorescent green, I think, so that in case the girl was abducted or got lost in a snowstorm she would be visible by helicopter. The mother wore something else entirely and I wondered if she had mutinied against the family dress code.

I began daydreaming about a world in which I was the only person who could understand her and how I would serve as her personal interpreter. She and I would go on tour together, appear in science and nature magazines, Letterman, the Daily Show, I could help her compose symphonies she’d been banging around in her head, write some fanmail to George Clooney, who would naturally invite us to his place on Lake Cuomo. Next thing you know, she’s on a Jet Ski with Matt Damon and I’m making out with Sandra Bullock.

But as Sandy B feeding me grapes cross-faded back to reality, the girl was not only looking at me, but pointing right at me. And just as I thought she might be pointing to my hat, something blocked her from my view. This something said, “What the fuck are you looking at?”

This something was her father. Apparently, he thought her mumbling signified some sort of discomfort on her part, the source of which, she appeared to point out, was a scruffy 20-something that he caught staring at his wheelchair-ridden adopted Native American daughter. I stared at the father for several seconds as I rewound the previous moments in my mind, searching the frames for any offense that I may have perpetrated. It’s like when someone refers to your actions or comments from the previous night of heavy drinking, except it’s like that for me all the time.

So I’m sitting there getting up to speed and he’s standing there misinterpreting my silent cogitations for guilty quietude.

ANGRY FATHER
Do you have any god damn idea how rude it is to stare like that?

MIKE
Oh…no.

(Pause. I meant to disagree, but I answered his question, and not in the way Angry Father wanted. I attempted to self-correct.)

MIKE (cont’d)
I mean. That’s not –

(Pause. I am usually adept at covering for stupid things said but it is still early and I had had no coffee. I must say something, and quick. Remarkably, the truth is the only thing that comes to mind.)

MIKE (cont’d)
I think she likes my hat.

ANGRY FATHER
Well. I think you should MYOB.

(The truth rarely works.)

MIKE
Listen man. If she wants to point at my hat, I think that OUR business, ok?

At this point Reni stood up and left. That’s her little way of telling me that I’ve probably taken things one step too far again and she will stand by with first aid.

“Your business,” he chuckled, as if the idea of her and I having any sort of legitimate connection were an utter impossibility. He found it so absurd he said it again.

ANGRY FATHER
Your business! Do you see what your “business” has done to my little girl?”

And with that he swung his arm around to show me what I had wrought. For some reason, she was now crying, but it was clear to me that this grandiose gesture was just to get the crowd involved, inviting the late season tourists to enter their judgment into this developing drama. About 15 people started to watch and a Russian guy began filming me. I became acutely aware that anything insane I did in next few minutes would probably end up on YouTube and could seriously jeopardize my fledgling acting career. I’d come back to New York and meet with Ingrid French and she’d be like, “Yeah, you’re great! …But aren’t you the guy who went apeshit at Yellowstone?”

So I just sat there, handcuffed by outrageous misfortune, the Hamlet of Old Faithful. The crowd continued to stare at me, waiting for an apology or an explanation or even better, some violence. I looked around for a little help but none came. Reni had abandoned me. The old people in the crowd thought I was a troublemaker. The 30-somethings remembered themselves as 20-somethings; smoking pot and tormenting the retarded, and I’m sure they figured I was getting my just desserts. A concerned park ranger passed nearby and he could tell I was the epicenter of some minor sociological earthquake. I could feel his eyes looking me over for Yellowstone contraband; weapons, drugs, maybe a smuggled pine cone or two; anything so he could swoop in and take me to the lodge for a good tongue lashing or maybe even a $25 fine.

Ordinarily I would have apologized to the father and slunk away, but for some reason, this had become larger than myself. It had turned into bizarre test of wills; after all, what had I done? I felt blameless under the circumstances but I also understood and even appreciated this white man’s rage. Confrontations like this one are so rare in my life that when they do come up I need to focus my energies, take my time and make it right so that when God plays back the tape at the end of all things, He will pat me on my back with his giant hand and say, “Nice work, Mike Lavoie.”

So I did not apologize. I did not shout or cry or even tell him to go shove something inside himself, his wife or another man. I simply said nothing, and sat there absorbing his venomous glare while trying to radiate a sense of benign martyrdom. The blood slowly drained from the giant hard-on this moment had become and the audience seemed disappointed by the anticlimax. We had given them a great deal of foreplay and then fell asleep. Old Faithful began to come to life, the crowd turned its attention away from us, and the father returned to his family without a glance back. I heard Reni’s camera firing away behind me before she sat down on my lap. I knew I would have to give her the blow by blow later and I wondered if I could purchase the video from the Russian and save myself the trouble.

I dared a final glance at the girl; she had stopped crying and was watching Old Faithful with a wide-eyed fascination. I sat there for a moment and tried to enjoy this majestic landscape that my forefathers had appropriated from hers. But I wasn’t sure if her father would come back to administer some better rehearsed lectures, so I slid Reener onto the bench and ambled off.

Inside the car I consoled myself with some glove compartment dark chocolate and tried to figure out how I could blame this on Reni. In the distance I saw a buffalo eat some grass and then take a shit and I wished my life could be as simple as that. Where did all my well-meaning human intentions get me? Sequestered in a Honda. As reclined my seat all the way down, so I could hide from anyone who might try to find me, I closed my eyes and hoped that spirits of the girl’s ancestors had been watching. I figured if anyone could empathize with a kind but tragically misunderstood soul like mine, it’s probably them.

Clyfford Still,
Your paintings
Are boring.

I will never go
To Denver to the
Clyfford Still Museum.

I would only sleep
On its empty benches.

ClyffordStill.net
Has too many ads
By Google.

Your descendents
Are selling you out.

I do not blame you.
Abstract Expressionism
Is the culprit.

You are merely
The messenger
That I am killing
Posthumously.

Your early work
Was quite good
When you were
Trying to be 
Salvador Dali.

However,
I will remember you
As a sharp dresser.

Because that is the only picture
I have ever seen
Of you.

The end.

I feel no pity for their plight. When I see them pancaked by taxis, their putrid guts mashed onto the New York tar, their peers feeding on their very brains, I am filled with an odd serenity. It is bliss in its most diabolical form: the extermination of that which I hate.

But as I stumbled my way home at 2 AM, Gorillaz in my ears, Pimms in my bloodstream, the exquisite shadenfreude of pigeon death was not among my thoughts.

Hoyt Street, Brooklyn is generally silent and safe at this hour, though on a several occasions, after passing through the local projects, I have been trailed for a few blocks, young toughs sizing up me versus my drunkenness.

Can he fight?
(No.)
How fast is he?
(Not very, bum knee.)
Is his iPod worth it?
(Absolutely, all I care about is self-preservation, take it. Here, my wallet. Here, my pants.)

Little do they know my sole defense against the physical and emotional traumas of this world involves the ground and the fetal position.

I hope they don’t read blogs.

Every few paces I look around, I stare down passing cars, I am vigilant. I am alone. I am two blocks from home when a woman, white, in her 40’s, tears around the corner, mouth agape, spindly arms and legs awhirl, her black hair trailing behind her.

Terrific. A crack whore.

I prepare to play possum and pray for a quick robbery/mauling when she comes panting to a stop. I remove my earbuds.

“HELLO. I’M SORRY but you’ve GOT TO HELP me. There’s a PIGEON on my DOOR. He won’t LET ME IN. Can you MAKE HIM GO AWAY?”

My earbuds are out. Why is she yelling at me? I know I look mildly foreign when I am unshaven, but this is ridiculous.

“Sure thing.”

“I’M SORRY. I’M SCARED OF PIGEONS.”

She lives in a brownstone a block away. There is a gate in front of the front door. Perched at the bottom is the largest shit bird I have ever seen in my life. It looks like an owl with mange. I climb the stairs to the gate. The woman is in the street, on the other side of a parked H2.

I look down and hiss. (This works for my cats). The bird does not budge. I kick the gate and it adjusts its retched feet, but does not vacate. There is something wrong with this pigeon. Finally, I toe it off the gate and toward the stair ledge. I keep steady pressure on its back, forcing it to walk the plank. At last, it tumbles half way down the stairs. It must be injured. The woman squeals.

“BE CAREFUL!”

I look up. I can’t tell if she is worried for the beast or me. You can only have so much respect for these things, lady. Violence is the only thing they understand. Still, she cowers.

“ohmigod.”

She says this in a tiny, quavering voice that concerns me. I look down. The animal is now climbing back up the stairs toward me. This is not good.

I wouldn’t call the clenching sensation in my guts at that moment “fear,” but a giant winged rodent limping toward you… it’s disconcerting. It’s like a zombie baby; harmless, really, but if it gets close enough bad things are going to happen. Additionally, this thing is clearly sick, and I’m not just talking about Hep-C. It’s either deranged or a masochist or, good lord, maybe its vampiric like those finches.

Suddenly I am very sorry for casting myself as the star of this farce. When that batty woman came up to me, I was filled with a sense of chivalrous duty. Finally! A manly task deserving of my attention!

When I had a girlfriend, I led a life full of blue-collar utility; pickup heavy thing, open tightly closed thing, reach thing on high, kill insect thing, make love thing. Now I am completely cerebral and useless. This was the first request a woman has made of me besides “Buy me a drink” or “Stop following me” in almost two years. And now this bird thing is one foot and peck away from infecting me with a host of unclassified viruses. Fantastic.

It shuffles its mortal coil to within an inch of my New Balance and with that, some ancient mechanism, quite underneath my conscious mind, begins to turn its gears furiously, and the confusion of the moment congeals into a single, beautiful act. A synapse fires, a tendon tenses, my hot blood radiates into the cool night. With a crisp snap from a rotten knee, my leg springs into the early morning air and the monster goes flying, end over worthless end. My inner child roars with delight. It is the culmination of almost three decades of repressed desire. Finally. I have kicked a pigeon.

The wretch completes its ungainly trajectory with a feathery thud and roll; its tiny, diseased organs rattle around in its horrible flesh. It is wonderful. The woman thanks me, emerging from behind the H2, but providing the justification to fulfill a lifelong dream is thanks enough. Is this how cops feel all the time? I think I’m in the wrong line of work.

The woman sprints inside, thanking me again and again as she fumbles with her key. She is traumatized. She feels violated. She needs a bath. She slams the door.

I am alone, calm. Righteous adrenaline has sobered me. In the pocket of my hoodie, tiny beats thump away. Summer leaves wave hello; the five visible stars wink at me knowingly. The universe approves.

Lying in bed, I relive the moment, watching the animal flailing through the air against its will. I should feel bad. No matter how accustomed you are to anything, even flight, no one likes being forced to do something when he is against the idea. All he wanted to do was chill on the stoop. Who is this woman to make demands of him? Or me? And who I am to acquiesce? Isn’t this thing deserving of some respect? Or a name? Frank?

But I do not feel bad, not a whit, other than the fact I only got to kick him once, and not hard enough. I sleep and dream of beautiful things.

The next morning I see Frank the owl-sized shit bird atop another flight of stairs. Clearly, he has not learned his lesson. I feel the itch to give him a good punting. But it is daylight, citizens are about, and without a middle-aged addict in distress I cannot don the mask of valiant knight-errant/punter. But I am consoled by the knowledge that soon enough darkness will descend on Hoyt Street and once again I will be alone with my New Balance, my metastasizing vigilantism, and Frank.

After all, he can run. But he cannot fly.

Dream, Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica

Serena

## Indicates a change in author. I began.

STORYTIME 1

“This isn’t what I had in mind at all.”

Roman waited for a response. It was a funny thing to say. Not hilarious, but deserving of a chuckle. One, from someone. He adored his own wit but no one laughed. No one moved. The air smelled sweet. He had made the punch too strong.

“Let’s go, let’s go.” He murmured weakly. Not that he’d be able to do anything should his encouragements be heeded. But at least the will was strong. The body can recover but once the will is dead, the body becomes largely meaningless, except to science.

There were bodies everywhere, in various stages of undress. He sat in the corner in his underwear, feeling fat. This is not the position he had pictured his future self being in hours ago. The record had reached its end and the whole lodge filled with a hiss that made him sleepy. The embers nearby whispered their last as the windows reappeared in dull grey.

Roman hated sunrise. He tried to slump over but found himself quite paralyzed. He couldn’t even motivate himself to curl up next to one of these seminude nymphets. The floor was no more appetizing, but closer.

##

Five hours later, there was a knock at the door.

Roman assumed that he still couldn’t get up, which was fine, because he didn’t want to.  But then his thighs tensed, he felt a rising sensation, and he realized he was heading for the door.

Amazing how powerful the sense of obligation is, he mused, and immediately felt an immense pride in the coherence of this thought.  It confirmed that the punch’s effects were not permanent, which was just what the brochure had promised.

He tripped over four prone lovelies on his way across the room, but – thrillingly – did not fall.  Reaching the door, he steadied himself on the doorknob and leaned his throbbing forehead against the wood.  The knock came again, jarring his head brutally, and it was in a spirit of irritated defiance that he boldly flung open the door and stepped up to face the invader.  The glare of sudden daylight nearly blinded him.  He threw an arm across his eyes.  A breeze tickled his chest hair.  He suddenly felt naked.

“Good morning.”

He shifted his arm and tried to peer into the stabbing light.  The voice was female – bright, chipper.  It made him want to kill.

##

“Would you like to purchase cookies to benefit the Girls Scouts of America?”

He coughed, squinted. A figure materialized. It was dirty blonde and wore a false grin like his junior prom date. He swallowed his phlegm.

“Yeah. Sure.”

She turned and bent at the knees, rummaging through a box. Her adorable skirt filled him with rage. She popped up in a 180-degree turn with boxes in various primary colors.

“How many you want?”

“How many you got?”

He led the way back into the dark, staggering along the island chain of rug submerged among the bodies. The room reeked of unshowered revelers. Still no movement. The girl was strangely unmoved herself by the whole spectacle.

Shouldn’t these fools be coming to? How curious.

She placed the box on the table. Roman sat.

“That it?”

“I’ve got more in the car.

“Good. I want everything.”

She made six trips in all, the silly girl. Roman sipped stale water from a gallon jug. He handed her two crisp hundred-dollar bills.

“I don’t have change for that,” she panted. Her obscene voice made his eyeballs throb.

“Keep the change.”

She pocketed the cash.

“You must be thirsty. Care for some punch?”

##

The girl gulped the punch down greedily, Roman watching her like a hawk.  With his eyes readjusted to the gloom, and the girl thoroughly engrossed in her beverage, he treated himself to a good long look.  She was tall for her age – lean, but not bony.  Her clothes were a little too small for her, but it was impossible to tell whether she was keen to show herself to advantage, or simply growing very fast.  She had freckles and dimples and oddly flat breasts.  The fact that he despised her made her somehow more enticing.

Roman popped another cookie.  They were sandy and slightly bitter, but he was ravenous.  He was already halfway through the box.

“Big party, huh?”

She was standing in the middle of the room, swaying slightly – nervousness, maybe, or else the punch was kicking in.  Seated on the couch, Roman smiled.  This was going to be easy.

“Mrrrraggh gmbbbb dnnn.”

That was odd.  He’d meant to say “You have no idea” or “It’s just getting started,” or something else that was quippy and vaguely ominous.  He tried again, but this time all that came out was drool.

Good God, Roman thought.  What’s in these cookies?

##

The floor came quickly this time, all at once and at his face, but he felt no pain upon impact. The blow separated his spirit self from its sheath, and he found himself swimming in a pond of purple nothingness below, his body above. He looked up at the surface, the flesh log Roman feet away from the kneeling scout, gagging on her manicured fingers, spilling yesterday’s punch over the polished oak planks. He rather liked this angle. Very cinematic.

A feeling of sorrow seeped into him. Could this be death, these netherwaters, or just a nasty trip? Would he see mother again? He never read The Odyssey. He felt vulnerable and young. He just wanted to be home, away from these people, this mess. Just sober and showered. In bed. At peace.

The eyelids of his body above closed and he was neatly yanked into the black abyss below.

*****

Consciousness returned. He inhaled, exhaled. Alive!a Something smelled like Sun Ripened Raspberry lotion. He opened his eyes.

He had been moved. He was next to the trashcan. In front of him, two sisters were stacked like crushed cars. Somewhere, someone spoke.

“Everyone’s dead. You got that? They’re fucking dead.”

##

The girl scout loomed into his field of vision, looking down at him.  Her hair was up, in a smart little bun.  She wore a tailored gray pantsuit.  Her breasts were bigger.  Even her freckles were gone. She was definitely not a girl scout.

“How much did you use?” she said.

Behind her, men in coveralls labeled “Unity, Inc.” were disposing of the bodies.  One of them was listening patiently to the near-hysterical lodge owner, who kept pointing out over and over that the bodies were dead.  Eventually, while the girl was talking, the man zapped him with a taser and loaded him into a truck.

“How much did you use?” she repeated.

“Whole package,” Roman muttered.

The girl cocked her head and pressed a finger to her ear.

“Everything’s fine, sir,” she said.  “The product is flawless.  He just used too much.”  She turned her attention back to Roman.

“You gonna kill me?” he asked.

The girl smiled.  She still had the dimples.  “Oh, no,” she said.  “We can always use more guinea pigs.”

Roman fumed as the workmen flung him into the truck beside the unconscious lodge owner.  This wasn’t what he had had in mind at all.