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Rachelle: Well, how do you know that?
Rachelle: No.
Rachelle: Really?
Rachelle: She pretended to retch?
Rachelle: Because you told her you liked her sneakers?
Rachelle: That is pretty extreme.
Rachelle: Was this one of the sorority girls who lives down the street?
Rachelle: The one who looks like Jennifer Lawrence?
Rachelle: I thought so.
Rachelle: And did you tell her this in a way that sounded like what you really meant was that you wanted to see her naked?
Rachelle: I see.
Rachelle: Yes, of course.
Rachelle: Look, I know you’re just trying to generate some light in this crazy, angry world, Pickle, I get that!
Rachelle: And sure, somebody has to help scantily clad sorority girls who are 30 years younger than you, feel like they’re making the right fashion choices.
Rachelle: Imagine if every time one of them passed by a much, much, much older man and he didn’t say something about what they were wearing? What would happen then? Their self-esteem might just crater and then who knows what might happen?! It could be catastrophic!
Rachelle: I’m not being sarcastic.
Rachelle: No, I’m not.
Rachelle: Nope.
Rachelle: Jesus Pickle, OF COURSE I’m being sarcastic.
Rachelle: It’s amazing to me how slow you are to pick-up on sarcasm!
Rachelle: Like at the park when that woman was complimenting how high you could go on the swings?
Rachelle: That was sarcasm.
Rachelle: And at the drum circle, when that man said that you “displayed a beautiful mastery over movement?”
Rachelle: That was sarcasm, too.
Rachelle: Oh honey, I’m sorry.
Rachelle: I am.
Rachelle: You’re right, sarcasm truly is the lowest form of humour.
Rachelle: Look, it’s taking me longer than I thought here, do you mind picking Jones up from daycare?
Rachelle: Oh, I didn’t realize your group was meeting tonight.
Rachelle: I think it’s sweet that you guys get together and play Dungeons and Drama every month! Do you think you could let Jones join in? He’d love to dress up as Spiderman for it!
Rachelle: Dungeons and Dragons?
Rachelle: Oh, I always thought it was Dungeons and Drama.
Rachelle: I don’t know, I guess because of all the screaming and Lord of the Rings languages. Just seemed really dramatic.
Rachelle: Like an even nerdier version of Improv dramatic.
Rachelle: Whatever.
Rachelle: Okay, I get it.
Rachelle: It’s not a children’s game.
Rachelle: Very sophisticated. Very strategic. Good leadership training.
Rachelle: I’m surprised corporations like Google and Starbucks don’t use it as a training tool for their employees.
Rachelle: It really is a journey of discovery, isn’t it, Pickle?
Rachelle: Yes.
Rachelle: That was about 98% sarcastic.
Rachelle: Okay, don’t worry about it. I’ll pick Jones up, and you, my little Dragonborn Sorcerer, you have a great time playing Dungeons and Diggers! xox
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“In this picture I was thinking about the colour of the car, how it was like the bottom of one of those above-ground swimming pools that the poor people put up in their backyards. I grew up with a real pool. We were rich. Pools are a good way of excluding people and creating pecking orders. The football guys liked to hangout at our pool, but without the pool, who knows? I was also wondering about all the sex that took place in that car. A lot, I bet.
“ In this photograph I was thinking about what it would feel like to shoot a monkey, the Ikea Monkey in particular. What was his name? Genesis? Something stupid. Anyway, ever since that monkey became a big media story I’ve been having fantasies about shooting it. Not sure why. It might be the little, gay coat that bugs me. It’s not natural that a boy monkey is dressed that way. “
“ Blow Jobs and the way that pets look at you funny when you’re having sex.”
“I don’t want to sound vain because I’m a man of the people, but I was thinking that I look good in hats. A lot of people say that you can measure a politician’s success by how natural and at ease he looks in different hats. (Don’t know what the policy is for chicks). I think a lot of my political success has to do with my ability to look good in a hat.
“ I probably should have been thinking about the owl, but I was deep in thought right there considering the works of Roman poet and philosopher Lucretious and his views on Epicurean principles and Atomism. I think that a lot of people misunderstand hedonism and I was trying to untangle that philosophical quandary and than suddenly I was like, “Oh fuck, an owl!”
The person on the other end of the connection was just going to get taken advantage of, “fucked-over and left to rot, dammit!!” His manner was so florid and over-the-top that I wondered if he was actually communicating with anyone other than himself, the phone serving merely as the magic portal for his interior dialogues.
On the patio at the Second Cup sat three teenagers. “Did you hear about the cannibal in Miami?” the Asian girl asked. Smiling, she leaned forward and relishing each word she slowly added, “He ate the face right off a guy while he was alive!” A campfire ghost story told over steaming cups of coffee.
Two other teens, both younger, walked toward toward me. One of them was heavy and had the wounded look of a bully-magnet. He was upset that his younger brother was getting his own bedroom at an earlier age than he did. The look of hurt and anger on his face was so sincere that it was both funny and sad, and then after a moment, a little bit scary. Engrossed in his own misery, he passed by this flier posted on a newspaper box:
A little further up the street a Native man was selling dream catchers on the sidewalk. The woman he was talking to looked enthusiastic and hopefully flirtatious. She had a last-call hue to her, and braless beneath her sundress she was hoping that the sunlight was catching in all the right places. The man was looking at her, a little bit pleased with himself, “ Chile?” he responded, “I used to sleep with a couple from Chile a few years ago.”
A skate boarder, cut off by a car, shouted curses and banged his fist on the trunk. The car came to a stop and everybody on the sidewalk slowed down– curiosity, anxiety and excitement now humming like a hydro wire. The window of the car powered down and an open-palmed hand emerged followed by the face of a middle-aged man. “I’m sorry,” he said, “it was my fault. I’m getting old.” The skate boarder, taken aback, wasn’t sure what to do, so he just got back on his board and slipped invisibly into traffic, as if a fish free from the hook, now cutting deep into familiar waters.
A woman who was probably around 50 hadn’t been paying any attention to this little drama and was walking through the cluster of pedestrians stalled on the sidewalk. She had a salon tan and was wearing red jeans and jangly jewelry. Speaking firmly into her phone she said, “I love you. That’s all. I love you.” And then she flipped her phone shut and smiling to herself, or to anybody who cared to notice, walked past the Shopper’s Drug Mart and turned the corner.
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