chapter four: ripped shoes, canvas foot knuckle

they were the only shoes I ever really owned. it started at the beginning of last summer, when I got it into my head that I was going to be a completely different person when it was all over- work, school, this year.

I figured if I was going to turn into somebody new, I wanted to be that person, inhabit every single molecule of him, and I didn't want to see anybody else in my eyes in a mirror. No imitating or mimicry or mime or nothing. If I was going to suffer and strip off all the shit that stuck to me while growing up, I wanted to own who I became, fully, unequivocally.

So I cashed my first paycheck and bought a pair of white canvas shoes from Target, for twelve dollars, to work in for the rest of the summer. They were navy blue. The sun bled heat on them and my feet baked into hurting, sweatty loaves. So I bleached them yellow-white and wore them till now.

The sad part is, I bleached them for too long, and I wore them weak where the bleach had burned the fabric thin, in the knuckles and joints near the base of the toe. Now there is a long, frayed tear across the right one, and the left one, you can see little separatist canvas wisps raising out of the weave.

Now I'm back to my good brown boots, which my parents gave to me, though I don't know if I'd earned them. I know it's absurd to think about making a pair of shoes proud, but I hope I did anyways.

chapter three: dear lou

Dear Mr. Dobbs:

I can't stand you.

I don't mean to assail you by saying that. I don't want to injure you at all. It's because of that, my not wanting to hurt you, that I say that I find you wholly disgusting and pitiful: I don't want to mislead you as to the subject of this letter, as I take it very seriously, and I figured I'd use that opportunity, at the opening of the letter, to get that one personal bias out of the way, so that it wouldn't taint the rest of what I say. To do anything else but that would be dishonest, and any brand of dishonesty, even the well-intentioned kinds, will not suit the subject I want to ask you about.

Barrack Obama has recently said something about small-town hard-working moms and dads being bitter about their government's apathetic attitudes towards fixing the economy, specifically those areas that directly affect them and other moms and dads, many of whom are from small towns, and hard-working, etc. He listed guns and religion as means of coping with their government's troubling lack of concern for those it has sworn to protect and serve.

Mr. Dobbs, you and I are Americans. Our current President is serving out the last months of his second term. He did not win the popular vote in the election that gave him his first term. Neither this fact, nor his invasion of Iraq on faulty intelligence, nor his signing of the PATRIOT Act, was enough to keep him from winning a second term.

My parents are members of the American middle class. They are very hard-working. I would also call my hometown small. Today, it became impossible for a student in my state to get a federal loan to help pay for a college education. In one week, when I turn eighteen, I can go down to a military recruiting office in Worcester, a city outside my small hometown, and bring a few papers back for my hard-working mom and dad to sign, and then I'd become a footsoldier in President Bush's war on terror. I'd get paid to do that.

I have two questions:

If you can sell your life, shouldn't you be able to buy it back?

And:

If my government doesn't want to help send me to college, but is eager to send me to war, why is it bad for a politician to say I'm bitter?

That's basically it.

Regards,
___ _____

chapter two: notes of distinterest

from xenith.net, thread named "Recent":

Apr 4 2008, 10:23 AM Post #4108

I recently misspelled "uninteresting" as "untinteresting" in the topic heading of one of my blog posts. I don't know how to fix this, and wouldn't if I did.

One could say that I'm... untinterested.

chapter one: bugshit creek

SCENE:

Restaurant. It's busy and dimly lit inside and people are staring either at the food they're about to put into their mouths or the people they're talking to, perhaps watching while they eat, or drink iced tea, or Coke with lemon. The waitresses are inexperienced, and don't know how to ask for a tip without asking for a tip. This creates confusion and chaos and every so often the kitchen doors will flap a little too loudly, which is the sound it makes when one of the green ones rushes out back for tears or punching things or a smoke. A has ordered some chili. B is looking behind the place where they'd hung their coats. There's a very, very short man with razor burn red and angry on one side of his face, and cuts and stuff. If he turns too quickly, B knows he'll exhude a smell of heavy, overdone cologne, and that it'll waft their way on the crest of a pitiful, sad wave, and B does nothing with this foreknowledge, and suffers the odor because of it. B thinks of old people. A is eating some quesadillas.

A (reaches for fork, overreaches, knocks fork over, swears) : Have you ever tried cocaine?
B (startled, not showing it yet) : No.

A attempts to share the quesadillas with B. B is unsure of accepting anything from A after A has already mentioned cocaine as a thing to "try." B has absurd thoughts about quesadillas as a gateway drug. B does not just say no. That would be too insulting.