prole's New Writeups

We Perjurers (event)

2009-07-15T23:56:19Z

Under oath, I am bending the questions as they leave the judge's lips, rationalizing the lies I'm about to tell. Looking off into the distance, she is asking whether the marriage has become insupportable with no hope of reconciliation, etc., etc.

"Yes, Your Honor," I whisper. I'm trying to speak loudly enough to appear confident, but not loud enough to be heard by the rows of people seated behind me. The uncontested docket is a grab bag of court cases, and most of the people behind me aren't here for divorces. The ones in suits come up when the names of corporations are called to be handed their documents by the judge with no swearing-in and no more than a sentence exchanged. The few wide-eyed soon-to-be-ex-couples go first to the reference attorney and then come to the judge with the gait of people exiting a burning building without pulling the alarm in order to ensure they make it out first and alive. There…

I have no scars. I have never loved. (idea)

2009-07-03T22:29:17Z

The five-gallon bucket of eggshell white comes with the house. There's linoleum but there's not wallpaper, so she's able to begin immediately covering the sponge-painted periwinkle walls of the entryway. It's hot and empty, the window boxes humming low and the fans making a gentle occasional whap when they get too far out of orbit and have to reset themselves.

In the Materials section on Craigslist there's a ship's chain for sale she happened across looking for cheap doors and extra tile. Should have bought it. It matches the house perfectly. Not the color but the concept.

She's painting her interiors white and she's painted her life white. Her sound is the sound of air conditioners in empty rooms. The past is trapped safely under two coats of primer, where kids and pets can't get at it. The screwholes and gashes in her walls are puttied over…

May 17, 2009 (event)

2009-05-17T05:31:51Z

I've been waiting on this show for about three months. I've seen the band before, but they're one of my Top Five, which is meaningful mainly because I like almost everything I hear. I'd see them again and again and again. I was about to leave during the opening band nonetheless, appalled that I'd paid thirty bucks to see a show that may as well have been a stage at a festival, with porta-potties and uneven ground and mosquitoes and the works. But they started playing and I got over it.

I react badly to crowds, like a petulant child. I've left really good shows because of really bad audiences and I will probably do it many more times before I die. Someone diagnosed me as a claustrophobic while I was playing paintball, which is about the worst possible time to figure that out. Since then it makes more sense and I try to prepare myself better for it, but I don't enjoy people touching me and shit.

The…

May 10, 2009 (personal)

2009-05-10T20:48:18Z

Today I finally filled out the Petition for Divorce. It's short, just a few checkboxes where you reiterate that you don't have kids, no, not even adopted ones, no, not even disabled ones, and then some lines on which to itemize your assets. The final portion is simply titled "Prayer," and the prayer goes like this:

I ask the Court to grant me a divorce because the marriage has become insupportable due to discord or conflict of personalities that destroys the legitimate ends of the marriage relationship and prevents any reasonable expectation of reconciliation. My spouse and I do not get along and do not plan to live together ever again. I also ask the Court to make the other orders I have asked for in this Petition and any other orders I am entitled to.

I really have no idea if this section is necessary. I'm using forms that I found when I googled "Texas DIY divorce" and it may not be required that I perjure myself, which is what…

secret city map with pins set at the places their eyes had met (fiction)

2009-04-04T20:58:21Z

In their flannel suits and skinny ties, they stand facing the wall, mute as mourners. The fragile map has been moved and hung up on the wall carefully as an archaeological artifact, the pins painstakingly replaced in their microscopic holes by the latex fingers of small-statured surgeons. It shows the city as it was, as no man here ever saw it, whole and alive with no sense of its imminent demise. The map gives the charred ruins names. The pinholes indicate... what, exactly? They shift their weight, smooth soles of shiny dress shoes brushing the floor, and make muffled throat clearing noises as they try to look immersed. They are all thinking the same thing. What the hell are we supposed to do with this?

The prisoner down the hall has told them nothing. When they interrogate her, she doesn't even bother to put her dentures back in. She…