My brain’s become mushy bananas. Yesterday I was okay; today mushy bananas. My neuroses, left unmedicated, are all in cahoots to kill my concentration by throwing tiny bombs about my mind. Yesterday, for example, I swear I saw two dwarf unicorns at a diner. It was later pointed out to me that what I thought was a unicorn was actually a gnome and miniature easter rabbit.

Later what happens is:

She tells me she likes me. She thinks I’m cute. She’s told her boyfriend about me. She touches my hair. I’m shaking. I don’t know what to do. She tells me she wants me to take advantage of her. She moves in closer. Now I’m really shaking. I mean, this is my friend’s little sister. I’m trying to be good here. I haven’t had a drink in a month, which crowns me crazy in the first place, and now this? Oh! Too much… Too much. This girl has no idea what kind of superhero of vice she’s dealing with here. I’m ready to take her on the table, but be cool, Jen, be cool. It doesn’t work like this anymore. Not for you. Re. Lax… Oh, but I can’t. I got the jitters, and I don’t know what to do. She tells me she’s never liked a girl before. She’s never been with a girl. She’s never even kissed a girl. I’m shaking. Instinct battles reason. Emotion battles mind. I’m shaking.

I freeze as she fucks with my head.

They do this to me. Why do they do this to me? Why do they all fuck with my head? I don't care about your boyfriend. If you do, cool. Then leave me the fuck alone, already. Don't give me reasons to think it's a go. I'll see green. It's all I'll see.

Be clear. Tell me no. Tell me fuck off. Don't tell me you think I'm cute. Don't hold my hand, even if I try to hold yours. Don't give me your jacket when I'm cold. It fucks with my head. They always fuck with my head.

I want to see a unicorn. I don't want to see your douchebag boyfriend.

Oh, but here's the problem, right? Here it is: I have a full set of teeth and an education. Such liabilities!

Oh fuck. I just want that unicorn to fly back to me and perch on my shoulder and tell me to stop obsessing, tell me to go ahead and fuck the bejesus out of whomever, and think not of the consequences, emotional or otherwise.

Ok? Can I have that one, please?

It's 11:12. I know because I've been staring at my digital clock since 11:09 waiting for 11:11 so I could a make a wish. Today my wish went something like this:

"I wish for the best night ever. I wish for fun. Fun with the girl. I hope the band blows my mind and her mind too and in that amazement she finds me amazing. She will fall madly in love with me, and I with her, and we'll be mad for each other for the rest of our days which will be lived out in a raw industrial space turned residential space overlooking the City of Los Angeles; the top floor preferably with a roof deck, where we will frolic with or without clothes, it won't matter. We'll be looking good. Looking good together. On our rooftop. Naked. Looking good. Nothing will sag. Nothing will ever sag. Nothing will wrinkle. Because stress causes these things and jobs cause stress, but we won't have jobs, so we'll just be. Happy. In love. Forever. In our urban haven, living in perpetual youth and leisure."

Then it was 11:12. I don't know how much of my wish I spit out before the digit changed. My eyes were clamped shut. I was wishing very hard this time because my wish was very specific. Usually I go for a more generalized wish, like "love and happiness" which is really quick - so quick that it becomes a minute long mantra repeated until the single digit switch at the end of 60 seconds. But this time my wish was very detailed. It was detailed because there's no part of my wish that could be wishy washy. It was an all-or-nothing kind of wish. Pull one part out and there goes the whole thing. Like Christmas lights on a string. Each bulb counts.

Each.
Bulb.
Counts.

In my dream I died. I died and went to heaven. But first I went to hell. It was a basement full of Arabs and Mexicans. My Mom was there and so was my Grandmom. It was horrifying running into them there. Then God was like, no, not you. You come back here. So I ascended into Heaven.

Heaven was a roller coaster filled with hot young girls in their twenties. They were really into me. I forgot about hell.

When I woke up this morning, it was 1995 and all I could think about was how great my life would be because I was about to leave my little town and move someplace far and distant where no one spoke my language. There I would meet some beautiful man, a Frenchman ideally, who would teach me all about wine and bread and cheese. His fingers would be soft and his penis humongous. He would fall madly in love with me, naturally, and we'd live somewhere in Europe in his classic villa overlooking the Mediterranean.

This is what I thought my future would be like. That and maybe a couple of half French children who laughed at my horrible American accent, even though most people couldn't tell I wasn't French myself.

Flash forward fifteen years.

Am I really as happy as I seem? Not really. If you held my real life up to the one of my dreams in 1995, I'd for sure choose the other life. Only with a French lady, instead of a dude; enormous tits instead of a dode.

But whatever. I've got a pulse, and a bottle of wine I picked up at Fresh & Easy for $1.99.

Sometimes though, I really wish I would have gone to law school.

i.
abandoned storefronts, choppy gravel. my tongue, distant as chueca, metro azul. a thief tried to rob me & i laughed. stab me, i said, in this crowded plaza

ii.
littered floor. black boots, t-shirts, tight jeans. a lady screams in spanish. a man screams back reckless sound waves. my hands work to muffle screams from another voice, more foreign than those in the alley

iii.
lights on 7th go one way. green. green always. i see red, pretend it's green

iv.
garbage trucks, screaming infants, car horns. i rent this room & forego sleep

v.
i absorb her words, her images. i want to watch her hands create; ask if she remembers those times i saw her

i absorb best by touch. i can't touch her. she wouldn’t remember me anyway, head far above tight spaces where my type waits with heavy lungs.

funny how water can kill or make clean
i have water issues
that have nothing to do with my building's bad plumbing
or the ants that come in through cracks in the plaster
drawn by wet wood
but at night time
the tidal wave hits me
sometimes i fall over the stream
(or just jump)
i need to be clean
and in the day nothing changes
only i'm awake
suffocated by want
always clean
but arms like string
i never learned to swim.

Title: THE MYSTERIOUS BOX ON JUPITER

Genre: Sci-fi Realism

ACT I - COLONISTS on JUPITER are tired of Jupiter. Sent by the US GOVT to extract mega-uranium for the military, this is the mission from hell. They are sad, lonely, and physically exhausted due to the inclement conditions on Jupiter. Then they find a mysterious BOX in a great sea on Jupiter which cannot be opened. They screw with the box and then there is an ELECTRICAL STORM which screws with everything and the colonists can’t communicate with the people on earth, including the government.

ACT II – A couple of COLONISTS disappear. One guy, THE DOCTOR, turns up DEAD altogether. Now the colonists are not just tired, but they are scared too and they can’t get medical treatment. They want to get the F out of Jupiter, but guess what? They can’t! Their spaceship, which was plugged into a mega charger, lost all power when the electrical storm hit and blew the mega charger right out of Jupiter and clear into Saturn. But if they could somehow get communications up and going, they might be able to get in touch with a small AFGHANI space station. The only thing is that the AFGHANS are still a little sore about how the US did ‘em dirty again and again a couple hundred years ago. So, it’s kind of iffy, but a definite maybe, especially since the colonists have a herd of goats and a virgin to trade. (C STORY)

MICK JAGGER MACGYVER (played by Channing Tatum) is the only NAVY SEAL amongst the colonists, which makes him the obvious GO-TO-GUY when the shit hits the fan. The whole time the colonists are losing their minds, Mick is taking care of business, all the while checking out the beautiful scientist MICHELLE OBAMA RODRIGUEZ, who suffers from chronic diabetes and also herpes (B STORY & D STORY). He knows that to stand a chance with both MORTALITY and ROMANCE with Michelle, he has to get the spacecraft going somehow and get to the Afghans with the goats and virgin still alive. This is no easy feat, especially considering that Mick has a human adversary that he doesn’t know about. He thinks all the colonists are in it together, but little does he know that one amongst them, RICHARD “DICK” ROCKAFELLA, is actually a bad guy, on the mission only to foil it so he can pillage the mega-uranium for his cronies at BLACKWELL, a big bad corporation that has been legally wreaking havoc on the planet Earth for many centuries.

ACT III – Mick discovers that when you cook a goat on Jupiter, it turns into electricity. In this way, he can get the ship going. But he could also stand to lose the goats, and he has only one virgin to offer. He decides that he will risk life and love and power by sparing two goats and hoping he makes it there on time. Just as he makes this decision, he finds Dick cooking up goats just for fun. This is how he discovers that Dick is a villain. A vicious fight ensues. Have you ever seen a navy seal do hand to hand combat with a businessman? Well, let’s just say, Dick turns up cooked himself; albeit by accident – a happy accident, as it were because Mick then realizes that humans cooked on Jupiter elicit threefold the electricity than do goats and now he can get to the Afghans, no problem.

The Afghans happily accept the two goats that remain, and the virgin is happy too because after thirty six years of virginity, she’s kind of sick of holding off for the right guy. Mick and Michelle have a big sweet kiss after they charge up the spacecraft. Now they can go back to Earth and get Insulin shots (so she can live) and Valtrex (so they can have sex).

THE END