Story #37

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the thirty-seventh in a series of fifty-two weekly very short stories I am publishing on this site, and thank you for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #37

“Have you ever met her before?” Eldon said to Margie as they stood in line for the guru. “I guess you could say that,” Margie replied. “What do you mean?” “Well it would be like saying I’d met a cloud, or a star.” “Can you describe the meeting?” Margie paused and felt the cool, dry air of the convention center rushing into her nostrils. She had been dating Eldon for a month. He was a neurosurgeon, a man of science. She liked him a lot and was afraid he would be skeptical about this important part of her life. “It’s hard to describe,” she said. “Maybe after we both meet her today we can discuss our experiences. Do you think you can have an open mind and heart about this?” “I’m here, aren’t I?” Eldon said in annoyance. They had waited for two hours and there were still fifty people ahead of them in line. Eldon’s lower back hurt and he had to pee. “Men’s room,” he said, and wandered off. Margie felt a thick, tight band around her head. Under the bright fluorescent lights, Eldon moved past folding tables on which mountebank remedies were being sold by skinny bearded men in white gauzy shirts and women with bright daubs of yellow paint on their foreheads, an enviable calm in their eyes. In the men’s room he urinated, washed his hands, and leaned heavily on the sink to rest his lower back. There were two small, brown, sandaled feet under the door of one of the toilet stalls. A high, clear feminine voice sang from behind the door: “Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar, and be better off than you are, or would you rather be a pig?” Eldon found himself floating in the darkness of space in his khaki pants and white polo shirt. When the paramedics arrived, there was nothing they could do but wait. Margie came into the men’s room and saw him curled in a ball on the floor, grunting in pain. He looked up at her and said, “These back spasms last about an hour, then I have to take it easy for a few days. Do you think you could love a man with back spasms?” Tears were streaming down Margie’s face. “Yes,” she said, “and how did your meeting with the guru go?” “Oh,” he said, “it was kind of like brain surgery.”

Story #36

Dear Readers,

Here is the thirty-sixth in a series of fifty-two weekly one-page stories I’m publishing on this site. This one is inspired by a slide show created by the artist Ad Reinhardt and shown recently at a gallery in New York, though Mr. Reinhardt should not be held responsible for the story. Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #36

It was quite a slideshow. First there were faces, then just eyes, then feet, then buttocks, followed by triangular things, round things, stripes, archways, turrets, rows of windows, crucifixions, etcetera. “I wish this guy had designed our city, which is so ugly,” a man said to Tim when the lights came up. On the elevator ride to street level from the sub-basement where the slideshow had taken place, the man said, “I’m Benny.” “Tim.” “Wait, are you the Tim who’s friends with Chris?” Tim’s heart beat faster and he said, “Yes.” “Oh, man.” The elevator doors opened. The two men walked down a dark tunnel, through a metal door with a rusted exit sign above it, and out onto the dark street. “Look at this,” Benny said, “it’s hideous, this whole neighborhood, the cheap materials, the uninspired shapes, the hasty construction, a festival of expediency and greed.” “I agree,” Tim said, “and yet people are planting gardens, making murals, having parades and parties in the streets, organizing slideshows. People are resourceful and resilient.” Benny said, “So are cockroaches. These buildings make me crazy. And it’s no better elsewhere, even in the so-called Golden Acres area of town, what an atrocity that is.” “Well,” Tim said, “I don’t know, some real innovations were attempted there.” “Yeah, yeah, it’s all ‘green’ and ‘flowing’ and ‘mixed use,’ with ‘indigenous plants’ and ‘lots of sunlight.’ The architects are a bunch of self-serving show-offs, if you ask me.” “I’m one of the architects,” Tim said. Benny said, “Yes, Tim Tonglen, designer of the Mucker Building. You might as well have designed and built a giant asshole. What kind of a name is Tonglen, anyway?” “It’s the name of a Tibetan meditation practice where you breathe in the suffering of others and breathe out happiness for all sentient beings.” “What about the happiness of our friend Chris?” Benny asked. “Ah, Chris,” Tim said, and felt a familiar leaden weight descend on his heart. Benny said, “What good is ‘Ah, Chris’ going to do him now? You could have awarded his company the contract for the Mucker Building but you didn’t, even though you guys were childhood friends.” “His bid was too high, he employed non-union workers, and his safety record was abysmal, so no, I couldn’t have awarded him that contract.” “But did you have to turn him in to the police?” “After he showed up at my house with a gun and threatened my family, yes, I did.” “Do you visit him in prison?” “No,” Tim said, and had the familiar wish that the earth would open and devour him. Benny said, “Prisons are the worst spaces of all. I don’t have to tell you what’s happening to Chris in there. I’m going to give you a beating now.” Tim looked around the dark street at the terrible buildings that would be the audience for the beating he was moments away from receiving. “These buildings want to watch you beat me,” Tim said as Benny walked toward him, hands balled into fists. “Don’t let them. Don’t let your surroundings make you a monster.” “Tell that to the guys who are raping Chris.” Tim couldn’t hold it any longer. He cried like a baby. Benny screamed. They stood there, one crying, the other screaming. Tim backed away, then turned and ran down the dark street. Benny remained motionless, as if held in place by invisible walls.

Story #35

Dear Readers,

Good day or good evening. Here is the thirty-fifth in a series of fifty-two weekly one-page stories that I am posting on this site, in an ongoing experiment in web publishing. Thank you for reading.

Best wishes,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #35

Linda had promised her son Chuck that he could Facetime with the Christmas tree before she put it out on the curb, so on the morning of December 27 she called her ex-husband’s wife Savannah’s phone, since Savannah was more likely to be with Chuck than the ex was. Chuck answered, meaning Savannah had seen that it was Linda calling and passed the phone to him. “Hi Mommy!” “Hey Chuckie, how’re the Bahamas?” “Good.” Chuck, who was six, was sitting on a towel on the sand looking at his mother’s face in his stepmother’s phone. Behind him was the supine, oiled, youthful body of his stepmother, in full view next to Chuck’s face on Linda’s phone. “Honey, would you mind facing the other way?” “What?” “Uh, here, you want to talk to Chrissy before I put her out on the curb?” “Chrissy!” Linda propped the phone against a milk carton on the kitchen-slash-dining-room table next to the tree and cleared away breakfast while her son conversed with the tree. On one of her trips back from the sink she heard him saying “…except this morning when we got to the beach Savannah told me to go all the way back to the hotel room because she forgot her sunscreen and when I got to the room Daddy was wrestling on the bed with Yvonne and they were in their underwear.” Linda froze behind the milk carton. Chrissy, the Christmas tree, asked, “Who the hell is Yvonne?” “My nanny.” “How did you feel seeing them wrestling?” “Okay, not bad and not good.” “Did you tell Savannah about it?” “No, she’s not interested in wrestling.” “Where’s your dad now?” “I don’t know. Chrissy, can you put Mom back on the phone? Bye!” Linda picked up the phone and looked into it at her son’s face. He was lying on his back now on the towel and holding the phone above him so she couldn’t see Savannah anymore. “How was your Christmas, anyway, Mom?” “Pretty good.” “Savannah told me it’s okay to be sad.” “Why, honey, are you sad?” “No, you are. I’m gonna go swimming now with Savannah. Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon. Bye!” Linda’s phone went dark. “Chrissy,” Linda said to the tree, “what am I supposed to do about this?” “Hire a better lawyer so Chuck can be with you next Christmas and you won’t have to go alone to the Michaelsons’ party, stand in a corner, come home, drink whiskey, and cry your way through Terms of Endearment again.” “Even if I could do that how am I going to compete with a five-star hotel in the Bahamas?” “Listen,” Chrissy said, “I know your human problems are very pressing but let’s not forget that you drove out to the country, cut me out of the ground, strung me to the roof of your rusted-out station wagon, drove me back to the city, stuck me in a shallow bowl of water that often went dry before you refilled it, and hung things from my branches while I slowly died to complete your annual ritual. So forgive me if I’m not aces at alleviating your winter holiday crisis.” “Wow, when did Christmas trees get so judgmental?” “Ah, lighten up, Linda, I’m just fucking with you. Come on, take these ornaments off me and bring me down to the curb so you can get on with your day.” Linda eased all the ornaments off the tree, put them back in the ornament box, and carried Chrissy down the stairs to the sidewalk. “This holiday is always a bit sad,” Chrissy said, as Linda laid her down on the cold curb, “but I guess that makes sense.” “Why’s that?” “Well, we’re celebrating the life of Christ, right? And so even among the rare families in which there hasn’t been a major rupture and no one acts like a schmuck, you can’t fully celebrate it without touching the suffering.” “Well you’re definitely the most philosophical Christmas tree I’ve ever had.” “I’d say I’m about average, you just happen to be in that moody kind of space where you’re paying more attention this year, so if you look at it that way the holiday’s not a total wash.” The sanitation truck pulled up to the curb. One of the workers leapt off of it, picked up the tree, threw her into the back of the truck, and set in motion the device that came down upon her and crushed her together with her brothers and sisters. “Bye Linda!” Chrissy hollered cheerfully above the noise of her own destruction. “Bye Chrissy, and thank you!”

Story #34

Dear Readers,

Here is the thirty-fourth in a series of fifty-two one-page stories I am publishing once a week on this site. Thank you for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

P.S.: A few people have told me recently that they’ve tried to leave comments on this page and have been unable to. If you are inclined to leave a comment, and the website prevents you from doing so, would you kindly tell me so via email at poopsie.schmelding [at] gmail.com? Thanks.

Story #34

A woman called Felix on the phone, said, “Hi, this is Sheila from Transcorp with your credit score,” and then told it to him. “Is that high or low?” Felix asked. “Low.” “How important is it?” “Well, Felix, I guess if you’re planning to buy a house or a car or apply for a loan or rent an apartment or an office space or start a business or get a job, it’s important.” “I live with my mother and I’m set at my job so...” “Then why did you want to know your credit score?” “Because I went on a date with a woman the other night and she asked me my credit score and when I told her I didn’t know it, she excused herself and left the restaurant.” “How rude!” “So, Sheila, you don’t think a person’s credit score should be a criterion for falling in love with that person?” “Felix, I was a math major in college, and I find numbers to be beautiful and mysterious, whereas credit scores and all the other ways in which we use numbers as an escape from recognizing how unquantifiable and unknowable our fellow humans are, are a desecration of numbers and therefore abhorrent.” “Sheila, isn’t this phonecall being recorded for quality purposes?” “Probably, but my supervisor gets about four migraines a week and doesn’t have the time or wherewithal to listen to the recordings. Transcorp sucks the life out of its employees.” “Including you?” “Including me.” “Then why do you stay?” “I’m supporting my parents and it’s hard to find a job in this economy.” “Sheila, would you please go to dinner with me?” “Felix, yes, but first I have a request.” “What?” “Come to my house tonight at ten o’clock, let yourself in with the key under the urn, walk through the living room and down the hallway, and when you get to the last door on your right, find the light switch on the wall and push it down to the ‘off’ position. The whole house will then be pitch black. Open the door. I’ll be waiting for you.” “Why don’t you want us to see each other?” “I do, eventually. But not at first, because in this world you can’t look at a face or a body without assigning them credit scores of beauty.” So that night at ten o’clock Felix went to the address Sheila had given him and did as she asked. When he turned off the light and opened the door, he heard her whisper, “Felix, is that you?” “Yes, Sheila. Why are we whispering?” “Because my parents are sleeping down the hall, and they are old and sick. Will you place my hand on your heart?” He felt in front of him for her hand and brought it to his chest. She said, “It’s beating so fast! Here, feel mine.” She guided his hand to her heart, which pushed wildly against his hand through her soft flannel shirt. “Come here,” she said, and guided him across the thick carpet of the room, in which he could see nothing. “Here is a sofa,” she whispered. He felt his way onto the sofa and she sat beside him. They were still. He saw in the air in front of him the face of a clock reading 10:06, the second hand racing down the right side of the clock and up the left, toward the moment of his own death and well beyond. The clock vanished. Felix just sat there and so did Sheila, into the night. “What do you think will happen tomorrow?” he asked. “I don’t know,” she said, “but do you want to know what will happen in thirty seconds?” “What?” Felix said, lifting his head off the back of the couch in alarm. “I’ll fall asleep,” she said, and she did.