fingered posting postponed
blogging postponed for hot sexy pacts. talk later, must drool.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
FINGERED: deafblog serial #5
by Joseph Santini
copyright 2005
"Hey," said one of the bartenders as they gazed at the crowd, "do you think Deaf people can think?"
"As long as they have $3.50 and don't spill Hefeweizen on the floor, they can do whatever they want, Earl," said his boss. Michael was a big... well, bear of a man? Not right, because he was totally bald. Even his eyebrows were thin hairs that looked painted on his face.
"Cause, see, I have a little voice in my head, right, that talks when I think, but that's because I can hear. They don't know what voices sound like, so how can they have one, right?" Earl gazed at his boss expectantly. He was the chick magnet from hell - handsome, graceful, and intelligent as a mailbox. Stuff went in till someone took it out. Still, Michael thought, Earl was sweet enough to make any poor woman ride the Excess-o-Guilt to Florence Nightingale city should they try breaking up with him. Mike resolved (again) that Earl would be on vacation when his daughter came home on break from Wesleyan. "Voices in your head, huh?" He went back to serving beer.
The light over the table in the Bowery Bar was so bright that Amil, watching Natalie talk to her friend, had seen for a minute only a golden glow, as if they were two sorceresses bathing prayer with light.
The one on the right, he knew, was Katherine, in charge of tonight's events; the sign proclaimed her Mistress of Deaf Professional Happy Hour, and described tonight as Special Poetry Night! All he understood of their conversation was bits and pieces, even after a week of intense study. He wanted to go up to her, speak to her. Ask about those classes. But something held him back. She wasn't sure how she felt about the Blonde Guy, for instance. And he had other considerations to think of before his personal desires. For now he hugged the shadows, while he hungered for the light.
"So Mark saw Amil, thought Amil attack me will! So - face like bull - horns - CHARGE!" Natalie giggled as she mimed Mark's full-on attack. Kate took a sip of her drink, brushing back the feathers of her hair from the sweet Irish tones of her face. As Mistress, she believed she had many duties. One was playing counselor in lieu of the bartenders (who couldn't sign anyway, and that cute guy just looked really stupid!)
She was doubly glad to do it for Natalie, even if it had taken five pints of Guiness to get the girl talking. Still, it was hard to keep a neutral face as her new friend explained what had happened at her sister's wedding. Kate had had designs on Mark once; she liked the loner/outsider types. He'd never made a move. Oh well, his loss; he'd never see her model her string bikini collection now.
Not that she had a string bikini collection. But she could do. She took another sip and decided she hated all men who displayed no respect for potential string bikini collection modeling. Then she realized what she was thinking and decided it was Water Time. The Mistress must be responsible, she thought.
To her right a Deaf couple rose from their table. Their conspicuously bare table. Sighing, Kate interrupted Natalie to engage in her second duty as Mistress, which was: Make sure they leave tips. No good setting up nice parties and getting reputations as "bad Deaf people," even if Deafies did sometimes think that tips were things that happened to other people.
It was Natalie's first ever poetry night, although she loved poetry. She'd just never found a terp around willing to work the English ones, and, well, ASL poetry was relatively rare where she'd been the last two years. She was nervous, not knowing what to expect, and excited, as she always was with new experiences. And this promised to be more fun than her mother's latest exciting recipe.
Kate came back from scolding the tip-hoggers and sat across from her again. "So... what's up with ASL poetry? I never before saw."
Kate frowned, then smiled. "My friend Pat explained, how? Poetry, point what? Recognition. Someone describes, explains feeling, experience, dream, maybe loss. Writer, uses words. Influence of words different from influence of image, motion, time. Can't stop ASL poetry to analyze one sign, like written! So - influence, affect, advise, what happens? Feeling in you, pulled out. Externalized. See. Recognize."
Natalie thought she understood, but it was still too abstract. Kate understood. "Wait, see," was all she said, as her eyes roamed around. "Hey, look," said Natalie, "Waiter over there, seems problem." Kate looked and sighed. Another Mistress responsibility; bars never had enough pens. She pulled a box of bics out of her pocket and walked over as the lights dimmed.
The first poem Kate watched was... well, disappointing. Some girl got on stage and, signing in a very englishey way, described the visual music of trees. In the middle of leaves falling all around on the ground without a sound, Natalie felt a hand brush her shoulder. She looked up at Mark's face, smiling, and froze. Kate was still walking around doing Pen Distribution. She was alone.
He sat next to her, his long legs fitting awkwardly under the table. "You thinking what?"
"Uh, interesting," she signed, nodding her nose at the girl now departing the stage. She glanced around. Mostly only hearing people were applauding. She winced in sympathy, but Mark just laughed. "Important, she tried," he said, then got serious. "Mine, when I started, they sucked!"
She blinked. "You performing tonight?"
"I'm last." He pointed to a list Kate had whipped out by the stage. She was checking off names, calling for Janna Middleton now. "This girl, she's excellent, skilled! Watch."
The first poem Natalie had thought of as englishey. This was anything but. It had a visual rhythm Natalie could see but not quite internalize yet, the way she'd been taught to internalize English poetry. Something I have to learn, she thought. Still, it was... clear.
Janna signed about America, the handshapes flowing into pregnancy then baby. The child was Deaf. That sign too morphed, becoming a paintbrush. But, the poet said as an aside while the child painted, that child could only paint in one color.
The poem continued as the child grew. It found another color, outside of the world its parents had told it to stay in. It destroyed the original drawings. It painted new ones to show its new view of the world. Then... it found another color. The cycle repeated, more and more quickly, until Janna's hands were blurring, then they came together with a strange, quiet crash over her head, and slowly separated, fingers flat and held together and pointing at each other, to describe an arc flowing down around her head. The sign for rainbow.
Then the sign melded again into America, and another child came, and the hands dropped at her sides.
There was a moment of silence. Natalie was entranced. Four more poets came after Janna, and though none were as good as she Natalie began to see... patterns. She began to understand how ASL poems were put together. Some people used the same devices Janna had, of a story coming back to a point. Others seemed to build up an image, like the guy who (remanuated) retold a poem which ended with a tree reflecting in water. "Clayton Valli, his poem. Deaf, died last year, yeah, one year ago," Mark commented.
Natalie ordered a cup of coffee. The glow of Guiness was gone, her mind churning so fast that the alcohol couldn't keep up any longer. "Mark Allbody," Kate fingerspelled to the audience from the side of the stage, and Natalie felt a pressure leave her as Mark stood and walked up.
It was a love poem. You could tell so much by his face alone; his expression became longing as soon as the stage light hit. ASL poetry has acting equal amount to ... words, I guess, Natalie thought, and she remembered her English Lit teacher explaining how Shakespeare the poet created a character, a Poet, in order to write his series of sonnets.
Mark's hands spoke of two people far apart, of one being so desperate to touch the face of the other again that he cut off his finger. Sent it across the sea. It crawled to a face burdened with sorrow, climbed up to its cheek. The face grew joyful as it was caressed, then saddened again as the finger exhausted, fell to the ground and faded.
Natalie applauded firmly, hands in the air. Normally she hated doing it, hated the "Oh, isn't that cute," look on hearing people's faces. She looked around anyway.
And saw Amil, who was gazing at Mark with his head cocked to one side, half-out of the shadows by the stairs.
She stood up, automatically. Something else took her over - an instinct, and she let it. In the CIA they'd trained her to trust her instincts. He saw her and got a... bloofy look on his face. Is bloofy even a word?
"What are you doing here?" she said, her arms folded. She wasn't sure what expression she had on her face right now, and didn't care. She was surprised when he started speaking and signed a few of the words. He spoke in his usual way, so she understood him pretty clearly. That instinct was still running, though... I just came to... I heard it was a Deaf night. I wanted to see more sign language.
"I see. But why stand in the shadows? You couldn't have seen very clearly back there!" She laughed, as if the answer wasn't very important.
Oh, he said, I guess I was just shy.
"Yeah, that's understandable," she said. He was watching me, she thought. Something told her it was more than just like. He was watching me with his business eyes, that's it, she mentally nodded to herself.
"Well, it's time for me to leave," she smiled, "work early tomorrow. You should get in touch about those classes!" Friends close, enemies closer. Another lesson she'd learned. And with that she turned away to Mark, to thank him and find Kate and go home.
That night she was restless, her body alternately hot and cold. She sat up and grabbed her sketchbook from the side of the bed, tried to sketch Mark's poem. Sketching had been another lesson - capturing someone's face, to help identify them later. But it proved difficult, and soon she realized why - she was trying to draw a poem, not a person. The sketch wasn't too bad though. She put it away and went back to sleep.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Monday, June 27, 2005
FINGERED: deafblog serial #4
by Joseph Santini
copyright 2005
Rosemary knew she was taking forever, but she couldn’t help it. It was the physics of the situation.
When Natalie’s mother went anywhere, she socialized like an orbiting rocket: circled around, chatted, circled, chatted, circled, started to burn, chatted, chatted, chatted, hit the center at re-entry speed, circled around and laughed, “Hello, hello, didjooknow,” to everyone in the place until the retro-pods fired and she landed in front of the host or hostess, telling them a funny little story about something or other. (Natalie often thought that this was the only way her mother was at all like a Deaf person.)
In this case, after witnessing the rushed and very careful wedding of her daughter, she spoke to Father Macauley because the In-Laws were Off-Limits. “She’s fine, dear, just needs a little hydrogen peroxide, maybe a band-aid, wouldn’t happen to know where it is?” Father Macauley indicated that he did, indeed, remember seeing the hydrogen peroxide somewhere, danged if he remembered where, hold on, Lashika! Lashika! Has anyone seen Lashika MacDonald? Lashika knows where it is, And before she knew it Rosemary was being propelled in a backwards circle towards the very door she’d come from. Only it wasn’t there, oh no, we moved it to somewhere else didn’t we? You’re right, Father, and again they moved into orbit around the crowd to another door. She was presented with a bottle, but the milling crowd made her somewhat confused. Where was she to go?
By the time she managed to get back to the little toilet and saw Mark trying to explain “No, I thought, you hurt, he take advantage will!” her patience was already worn thin. She’d learned a little of their sign to help her daughter, but she was never comfortable with it. She’d been glad of the space when Natalie’d decided to go to Africa and teach Deaf children with the Peace Corps. Two years, a long time, yes, but as her daughter had grown she just kept wondering what Natalie would have been like if she could hear. She’d never forgiven her ex-husband for the accident, even though the insurance and the courts had said it wasn’t his fault. He was the father. It had been his responsibility to protect his daughter.
Now Rosemary’s lovely girl had grown up to be part of a world that… didn’t adjoin, or even echo, her world. She didn’t know how to cope with it. And Natalie had returned from the Peace Corps even stranger than her mother remembered. A part of her would always blame Deaf people, even though she would, if anyone had asked, say firmly that nobody was at blame, things just happen, and she would support Natalie doing whatever she wanted.
But sometimes she thought: I wish I could hear my daughter on the phone. It was silly and sentimental. If Natalie knew, she’d spit and roll her eyes. And – which scared Rosemary more – she’d probably leave again.
It was nobody’s fault. Things just happen.
“Well,” she said, speaking and signing, “let’s see what’s to be done about the cut.” They seemed to ignore her. The boy gave her daughter some more water in her cup. Well, at least he was being helpful. Skinny, though. Her daughter didn’t take it. She slapped the cup out of his hand onto the floor. “Out! You embarrass me, attack Amil, my mother’s back, I need nothing. Please, go.” He tried to say something to her but she closed her eyes and signed “Please, go,” again. Finally he plucked a card from his pocket and threw it on the counter, then left.
Rosemary decided it was best to keep her mouth shut. For a few minutes, anyway, she thought.
When Natalie was firmly band-aided and peroxided her mother sat down next to her.
“You didn’t let him get much of a word in edgewise…” Natalie didn’t respond, but her lips tightened. “I think he liked you a lot. Don’t you?” Natalie’s nostrils flared. She sat on her hands. Her mother recognized this from when she was a baby – it was Natalie’s way of keeping her mouth shut.
“Ah, sweetie. I love you, but you don’t let me in. You don’t let anyone in, really.” She paused and bit her lip, then sighed and shrugged her shoulders back. “Why, I remember my own mother saying ‘you do best what you do most.’ And you’re getting very good at finding reasons to push people away. Why? You were such an open child. Why do you push everyone away?”
Natalie folded her arms on her lap and hid her tears from her mother, who stood and cleaned up the healing things – then turned around and put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder until she looked up. “I think you need to sit and talk to Mark. At least apologize for shoving him away. Whatever he did, however silly it was….” Well, she’d give her girl some time. “Go ahead and clean up, then come join us at the reception.” Natalie nodded, spotting her wet cheeks with a few squares of toilet paper.
As Rosemary left her quietly crying daughter, she wondered if she’d done the right thing, and what she’d ever do if she did get a deaf son. I suppose if she’s happy, that’s the main thing, she thought to herself.
Then there was light, and noise, and her other daughter Mandy danced out with her confused looking husband, and Rosie put her game face on.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
FINGERED: deafblog serial #3
by Joseph Santini
copyright 2005
Amil found himself in a little bathroom to the side of the church. Natalie’s injury wasn’t serious; she’d dinged her temple on the deceptively pink steel handle of her aunt-in-law’s strapless bag. Her mother had gone to get hydrogen peroxide and to make the lines to the side of the bride and groom even they’d asked him to help out. He suspected Rosemary might take more than the few minutes she'd claimed to get back.
Natalie had closed her eyes while he mopped a damp cloth over the freely flowing cut on the right side of her head. When she’d said hello to him and he’d shown her his little mouthing trick, she’d looked… tough. Lots of strength, but everything was, well, forward. Now he saw a little bit into the dark side of her moon. He wasn’t sure what to do next when she opened her eyes, looking around and blinking.
He bent forward, seeking her attention with his face. Do you need anything?
She shook her head and closed her eyes again. Mentally he was outraged at himself. She was hurt, bleeding, and certainly wouldn’t want to have to focus in order to lipread at a time like this. Then she turned her head. “Can you get me some water?”
He didn’t bother answering, just gave her the cloth (which she held up to her cut) and went to the sink; there were some paper cups in a holder on the wall. She drank gratefully, looking much better despite the bleeding cut. “Thanks for helping me out. Sorry to be so stupid.”
Not your fault. They said a baby’s bottle fell out of someone’s bag. Who could see the floor with all the chiffon? He waited a minute, then (trying very hard to seem really cool and intelligent and managing only to confuse his lips with his tongue) said, What do you do? and leaned against the wall.
She laughed, then started signing and talking at the same time. “You need to learn to sign if you’re gonna hang out with your friend’s new wife around. My sister’s Deaf too. I’m a teacher.”
Really? She didn’t seem like it. She had no patience with herself. Even now she was fidgeting, and she’d seen the self-disciplinary look in her eyes when she’d apologized for tripping. He thought Natalie was a girl who demanded perfection from everyone, including Natalie. Teachers looked for development, not perfection.
She shrugged dismissively. “Freelance teacher, ASL. I just moved back to the city. Trying to not be a problem.” Her mouth widened. “I’ve got a good rep already. If you’re up for it…” her hand groped for a pocket, and she immediately groaned; he ran to her, but she steadied just as he reached her. She looked up.
At that moment Mark walked in, worried look plastered on his face, and already in the middle of signing "What’s up? OK OK?" when he saw a strange guy’s arms around Natalie’s shoulders, and her eyes looking upwards at Amil, a hurt look on her face.
So he did the obvious, stupid thing and, anger painting fault lines on his face, rushed to protect the lady. Amil, powerless to stop the oncoming rush, did the stupid, obvious thing and sat there, mouth open. It was Natalie who reacted. She twisted to the right, out from Amil's arms, and spun quickly back to the left, arm outstretched, forcing Mark to stumble forward a few steps instead of ramming Amil’s head back into the cup dispenser. It happened so fast Amil took a second to blink, but when he had his eyes narrowed as he saw Natalie go to steady Mark.
Yeah, he thought. This is the one we’ve been looking for. And then: What the hell am I gonna do?
At that moment his phone rang. Perfect timing. They’ll be happy to have news. He turned to leave, oblivious to Natalie’s explanations to this guy who, by all appearances, seemed to be fitting in the role of Seriously Concerned Boyfriend, but before he could go answer the call Natalie had once again moved with those quick reflexes-
She hasn’t even moved the rag on her head, thought Amil. So graceful – as if she weren’t moving at all –
"Sorry," she signed and spoke, in a hurry and speaking a confused sort of Aslinglish, "My card –" she reached into her pocket, handed it to him – "you want class, go ahead, call me!"
Well, he smiled, now I have an excuse to call.
She stopped signing and said, slowly and deliberately, “Yes. Excuse,” she said, pointing at the card. She pointed at herself, leaning in a little close. Amil felt as if a tight but powerful beam of light had suddenly been turned on. “Reason.” There was a little smile, or a promise of a smile, then the spotlight vanished and she turned back to Mark.
Amil took a deep breath and turned to leave, aware as he did so that Mark’s eyes were watching him.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
visiting the birds in jersey
got to me mother's last night in the jersey wildlands. sure and it's green down here, trees preening themselves of leaves like cats posing and sunning themselves by the sidewalk. and i'm in a rather good mood, Dear Reader, because I needed a bit of a break, and a long walk with a big dog. love my work, but as the man said when I was a 13-year-old green-eyed blossom of youthful idiocy: "if you put everything you have into it, one of two things happens. you finish either full of amazing energy, or you collapse."
and have been putting a lot of everything i have into everything lately. which is perfectly fine, so no "take it easy" remarks; life should be lived like this.
interesting to see where FINGERED's going. Now the characters have pretty much all met each other, we've got a little friendship developing, and I am unable to allow myself to go "oh, I'll finish it later," because I have a few eyes on me. comments are more than welcome, never done fiction on the net before.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
by Joseph Santini
copyright 2005
The St. John's on 125th Street stood out, an organic Byzantine monster of a church set against the modern strips and lights of New York City. Natalie sighed. It was going to rain any second. She was ten minutes late. And this IDIOT kept grinning at her. But if they could pull this off, she might have the Pink Elephant off her back for a couple hours - and if they didn't, well...
"OK. Mother's name what?"
"Rosemary."
"Father's name what?"
"Gary."
"No talking, discussion, hello, nothing, who?"
"Room, left side, everyone."
"Why not?"
He blinked, then remanuated "Rosemary bought sister's husband's his parents plane ticket. Parents say thank you? No! Think me forgive? NO!" His face twisted into a perfect imitation of Natalie's perfect imitation of her mother. [Hearing people recite. Deaf people remanuate. Ok, I made that up. -Ed.]
So. Maybe he wasn't entirely stupid. For a minute she almost thought she saw sunlight through the clouds. Generally Deaf men drank too much beer and lost too many brain cells to remember more than three things at once, unless they were gay, in which case Ricky Taylor made them buy Cape Cods until unconsciousness dragged them home. This one appeared to be heterosexual and thinking, and she would take her luck.
Her spirits raised, they crossed the street. And as they arrived on the curb, the Pink Elephant burst through the doors, having, her expression clearly stated, Waited Enough. At first she appeared to be doing a bizarre vaudeville dance down the stairs towards them, but a few steps closer and Natalie realized, as the quicksand of despair began sucking, that her mother was simply lifting her skirts and coming unbalanced on the step down.
Natalie was a tough girl, her friends considered. She looked it, with slightly reddish brown hair, tight but brilliant green eyes, and slightly wide shoulders. Right now, prettied up in maid-of-honor pink, she looked less like her analytical, brusque personality and much more like, well, a runner-up for a reality tv program. She wasn't, like, GORGEOUS, you know? But she was pretty and backed with a personality that hit you like credit card debt. It might have been the clothes that made her falter, as she rarely did, when her mother fumed towards them, a steam train of ten-minutes-late righteousness.
"Where the hell have you been!" Her mother took out a cigarette and lit it, screaming at them from five steps up like a PMSing Juliet. She could sign and was signing, but her hand moved in an instinctive counter-arc to keep the cigarette away from her face which made the words kind of difficult to understand if you didn't have astigmatism or something. So naturally Natalie was surprised when Mark showed no difficulty understanding but stood up and said:
"Ms. Fallon? Rosemary, right? Sorry! Responsibility mine. Me coffee spilled, shirt dirty. Bought this shirt, ok ok for wedding, sorry horrible i know, how are you?"
And remarkably, her mother seemed shocked enough to go along with him and head back into the church. Natalie shrugged. Maybe old P.E. brain crash, she thought, or maybe she just thrilled have boyfriend... She shrugged. Whatever. Fire out, tree pretty, she signed, as she and her friends had done at MSSD whenever they did something they managed to get away with.
Inside the church was a madhouse of Fallons and Rinaldis, large men in black suits, the smell of incense. Mark found himself ushered to a seat in the theater. Natalie watched him go off, bemused, until she found herself being ushered (something she hated. Damn family, no respect for Deaf people, just pushing me around like they're so goddamn important, a bunch of fucking criminals-))
She pushed the thought away. Some things were better not to think.
Her mother - she finally saw - shoved her into place. Remember. Same rehearsal last night. Step, step. Your partner, Amil. She pointed over Natalie's shoulder, and a dark-skinned man with bright blue eyes nodded and smiled at her. He hearing friend of- she sneered, refusing to name the groom's mother, and took off.
Natalie smiled at Amil. "Can you sign?"
"Not at all," he mouthed. "(unintelligible crap, more unintelligible crap) for the weekend (unintellegible crap.)"
Natalie smiled gamely. "So, you're a friend of Adrian's?"
He stopped and studied her, then... did something. It was obvious he had experience with Deaf people. When I stop using my voice I seem to move my lips more clearly and people seem to understand me better, he mouthed.
"Whatever you're doing, it works," she replied. Finally, she thought, she was smiling at least somewhat sincerely today. And he was kind of cute. Then the music began blasting - her cousin Frankie had bought, like, the biggest-ass speakers, almost as big as at Deaf Way -
The speakers made her think of Mark again. Two at least semi-intelligent heterosexual men in one day. But she had no time to ponder the good luck, because she had been really drunk last night and had no idea what the hell the wedding march thing was supposed to look like.
Four minutes later she tripped over her own dress, fell into the Rinaldi side, and gave her mother another reason to be mortified.
by Joseph Santini
copyright 2005
Her neck craned, the nape stained brown with a tan obviously grown by much activity in the strong summer sunlight. Mark strained to keep his eyes from travelling down that neck to the well-kept body beneath. This is the A train, he muttered to himself. Finish respect!
But when he saw the hearing aid, he had to take a second look. Had he ever met her? It was her shirt that decided him, her black DeafWay II polo shirt which placed her as a volunteer at Gallaudet University in the summer of 2002. It was Natalie (SIGN IT HOWEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT ALREADY), the girl he'd met in the club who had to leave because "My hearing aid pain pain! Music loud, floor vibrate, me bounce outside!" She'd made him drool then, and it'd been dark. Now, in the bright subway lights, she had an extra dimension on her face, a kind of... honesty?
She wore her glasses like they were sunglasses.
He really wanted to tap her shoulder, but at the same time he was like, terrified. It was different from DC. Deaf people in New York - it's the kind of city where you're always rushing off to do something or meet someone, so bumping into another Deaf person on the subway wasn't the same as elsewhere. You didn't have the time for long heywhothefuckareyou conversations.
Plus, suppose goofy? Could happen me stand eyes-rolling person blah blah blah. Waste time!
Which summed it all up, right there.
But he'd been kicking his own ass about being too passive. "You, you never stand up, self defend," his friend Darren had told him, and he'd been right. Mark had never fought back when people picked on him in Fremont as a kid; it had worked in his favor, people thought him unflappable because he kept a good mask on, but the truth is he just didn't have a lot of... meanness in him. Their words didn't hurt, they just didn't make sense to him. Between that and being really tall and on the basketball team, people rarely bothered him and his friends were cool and partied [in a safe, productive manner such as washing dishes while dancing the macarena. Ed.] But they were friends who came to him; he never sought people out. Women, too; Mark waited for them to come to him. He hadn't even looked for a job; it had been offered in New York, computer stuff setting up a friend's website for a new magazine about Deaf Cuisine (mostly fingerfood.)
So just as the train stopped and the doors opened, he tapped her on the shoulder, twice.
Hearing people and Deaf people tap differently. Deaf people tap with their fingers tight together and the hands bent at the waist; they tap with the point. Hearing people keep their hand flat but relaxed and tap almost as if cupping a bowl - they tap with the flat of their fingers, and sometimes their palm. This is because Deaf people tap for attention, and Hearing people tap to direct other people (I want you to move this way....) So Natalie's head snapped around, she seeming a little shocked at a Deaf person appearing out of nowhere (you know what I mean) and she stared at Mark.
"Hey. Remember me? I saw you? Deaf Way?"
"Oh, yeah." She looked at him closer then her eyes widened. "Oh, fuck-" she said, turning-
The doors had closed. She turned back, her lips drawn tight, a rubber-band smile.
"Sorry, your name?" she signed.
"Mark. That your stop?"
She didn't answer. It was really obvious what the answer would be. Instead she said, "Thank you. I missed my stop, asshole. I'm going to be late for my sister's wedding. AND I don't have a date. So you just double-screwed up my day."
Mark just sort of blinked. "Oh. Sorry." His face scrunched, trying to be as sincere as possible. Then he had an idea.
"Want one?"
"What?"
"Want a date?"
Monday, June 13, 2005
conversations with butterfly, part i
BUTTERFLY:
at least this michael jackson nonsense is over
I wonder what the next big media obsession, completely unrelated to the crimes of this administration, will be
RAINMOUND:
you think?
hmmmm possibly another missing white woman
BUTTERFLY:
p'rhaps
RAINMOUND:
i wonder if cnn would even notice if condi rice went missing
i wonder if condi rice would notice if condi rice went missing
BUTTERFLY:
prolly not
RAINMOUND:
maybe if she had a skin change like michael jackson
*gasp* thats why the media paid him so much attention!
they thought his cocoon would fall off and he'd be a missing white woman!
BUTTERFLY:
heh...indeed
RAINMOUND:
it all makes sense now
what we need to do is convince CNN that the environment is a missing white woman
"Oh my god! Gaea is missing! Described as a statuesque blonde with breast implants, we must rescue her by cleaning the environment! Leave no contaminant unburned!"
BUTTERFLY:
heh
right...never mind about the curtailed rights of Iraqi women, or the women in Darfur who are brutally raped every time they go outside
RAINMOUND:
i wonder if things would improve if they wore twinsets and pearls
BUTTERFLY:
right...became perfect stepford wives with good ol' Christian values
too little, too late
The whole world now knows us as freedom fries country because of this guy. This I should forgive because he went to someone's funeral and feels bad? Shee.
Monday, June 06, 2005
mondays
all i can think of is: tomorrow is monday. and after that is tuesday.-kate breen, stating the obvious! hehehe
had a lovely weekend. relaxed, partied, ran through sprinkler with small child. also practiced drumming in style of keith moon.
anyone interested in some kind of continuing deaf story on these pages? hmmm....
j
Thursday, June 02, 2005
showdown in the AI corral
GEORGE: Tell them it's not a gulag. Tell them!
AMNESTY: Gooooo-lag. Which word in the sentence goo-lag do you not get? Oh, and your wife is a lesbian.
GEORGE: She is not. We haven't had sex in a while but... and she does spend a lot of time with... Laura? Condi?
LAURA: A woman has needs, George.
GEORGE: That's what you said about the Iraq war too and look where it got us!
LAURA: You know, all you had to do was read from "Beauty Released" while I was tied upside down and bathed in my own bodily fluids.
GEORGE: See? If we do it to each other can it really be so bad?
AMNESTY: Goo-lag.
Really, is it possible our First Couple is externalizing their sexual frustrations? If so, hard way to do it...
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