Human of the Year

HUMAN OF THE YEAR

INT. CATHEDRAL – DAY

Several large stained glass windows depicting the Virgin Mary and the apostles. The cathedral is illuminated and various members are dispersed throughout the pews. KARL is sitting in the fifth row to the left of the pulpit. SISTER MARIA and PRIEST are standing at the head, below a bronze statue of the Ten Commandments. PRIEST watches fondly as two young acolytes come up the pews and organ music begins. PRIEST tries unsuccessfully to speak above the music.

PRIEST

Hello…hello…

Organ music stops. PRIEST takes a drink of water.

PRIEST

This Wednesday, we will be commemorating the 7th year of our brotherhood with St. Demetrius’ in Appleton, West Virginia by planting a Spruce tree in the courtyard. Perhaps an apple tree would be more appropriate.

PRIEST laughs at his joke and quickly regains composure.

PRIEST

Sister Margaret is starting a new choral group for 7-12 year olds called ‘Sister Margaret and the Holy Sweet Merciful Blessed Descendents of Abraham.’ Also, I will be holding this week’s Young Men of the Lord club in the YMCA sauna. New members are always welcome. And now for the Lord’s Prayer.

SISTER MARIA taps PRIEST on the shoulder.

PRIEST
(distressed)
Oh, it seems I have forgotten something. Oh good gravy, to heck with it! Sister Maria, you do it.

SISTER MARIA
(bashfully)
Oh, no, no, no. Well, alright. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

SISTER MARIA kisses her fist and points up.



SISTER MARIA

Calling a Mr. Karl Projectorinski to the front of the cathedral.

ALL turn to KARL, whom is nervously clinging to the edge of his pew.

SISTER MARIA

Calling a…Karl Projectorinski…to the front…of the cathedral.

ALL are eerily chipper. WOMAN turns around to face him.

WOMAN

You have won, dear sir.

MAN extends his hand.

MAN

May I congratulate you first?

BOY

Oh, what an honor!

A moment of silence elapses. Finally KARL wipes his forehead and begins to speak.

KARL
(muttering)
What…what have I won?

WOMAN

Oh, the poor thing! What humility! Sweetheart, the contest is over. You don’t have to grace us with your charm any longer. You’ve won!

KARL

No, honestly I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.

PRIEST

Human of the Year, dear son.


SISTER MARIA

You have won!

PRIEST

All rise for the Hallelujah procession of communion!

ALL

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

PRIEST
(suspiciously)
Drink from the cup of life, Karl.

KARL takes communion. He returns and fidgets in his pew, repeatedly wiping the sweat from his brow. MAN sits beside him and places his hand on his upper thigh.

MAN

Why are you so scared? Listen, the icons are whispering to you.

KARL hallucinates that the stained glass figures are speaking to him.

APOSTLE PAUL

Right on. Way to be the chosen one, man.

APOSTLE JUDAS ISCARIOT

Psychedelic.

APOSTLE BARNABUS

Shut up, man. No one likes you.

KARL throws his shoe through the window, starting a car alarm. He shakily hides himself under the pew. BOY joins him.

BOY

They’re just old men, like on the benches in the park. Except their balding spots are glistening with gold.


PRIEST
(resting his hand on the boy)
Sweet, sweet wisdom of youth!

BOY
Listen, outside the cars are beeping in your honor! And…even though they do not know it…all mankind are now your brothers! You are the Human of the Year!


KARL
(suddenly excited)
I’m human of the year!

KARL begins crying, hugging WOMAN, etc.

KARL
I’m human of the year!

SISTER MARIA
(eerily)
Hello, hello. Calling a Karl Projectorinski to the front of the cathedral.

KARL is lulled by her voice, and makes his way to the front. He is weeping with joy. There are two acolytes on either side of SISTER MARIA. They begin beating KARL with their acolyte sticks. KARL winces in pain, and the rest stand motionless.

SISTER MARIA

You have won.

Every Three Seconds: in the works

Every three seconds, a child dies. But really, that's a fairly narrow-minded way to look at things. Every three seconds, children lay waste on hundreds of verb phrases. Children plow their way out of women's vagina's every three seconds. Children pet dogs and chase girls and ruin their aristocratic parents' social standing by spreading fleas every three seconds. They finger-paint and ribbon-dance and other things that are "creative" and "unconventional" because they're happy little hyphenated noun-verbs. They play psychological games like "who can give the most adults the most hemorrhages." And then, they grow up to be normal adults who do normal things like file tax returns and pretend not to notice when their wives gain weight every three seconds, but kids don't know that. Kids still think it would be fun to be a firefighter because firefighters wear red and are prominent figures in coloring books.

I was more like the three-second dead kid than any of the other three-second kids.

It wasn't that I was void of emotion, I was simply less susceptible to the mass conglomeration of stimuli that other children were bloated with. I did thing that my mother would label as "quirky", simply because she didn't have the vocabulary or the gall to call it like it was.

My parents weren't coffee drinkers, but after a particularly taxing day at the Metropolitan, my father made himself a cup in our hotel room.

"Can I have some?" My brother asked.
My parents chuckled that annoying adult-joke chuckle, and my father handed him the mug.
"That's disgusting," he said, quickly shoving it away.
"It's an acquired taste," my father explained. "Sometimes, you don't realize you like things at first, but later you begin to appreciate them."

For a few years following, I applied this concept to magazine and newspaper clippings. Particularly displeasing images remained tacked to my walls until family visited, and I was forced to remove them against my will. I would then replace them with equally displeasing fragments. In theory, I should have begun to admire these items with time. It soon became apparent to me that man was flawed and so were his theories.

stomach acid infedelity

these exiguous words will not
feed you
they do not contain caloric value
and they will certainly not give you
the gall
to "go naked into that good night",
sir

instead they will stay tangled
betwixt my vital organs
and it would not be shocking
if I confused my inability to speak them to you
with an appendicitis attack

please don't stick your finger down my throat
because I've been trying to abstain from
upchucking about sixty poems, some adderall, and
neglected obligations all over your face
for quite some time

so
remove your hand
before you reek of stomach acid
infidelity

and when you're ready for my honesty
I'll be sure to provide you with a more pleasant metaphor


*I quote Lawrence Ferlinghetti, not Dylan Thomas.
If it were Thomas, I'd be misquoting.

Morose

The skies were clad with shades of grey and blue, leaving just enough light to see the dark streaks of tire. I methodically turned on the air too high for comfort. Familiar jaded tunes pressed the speakers, competing against the hiss of wet streets and the broken metronome of drops on my windshield. A dull, orange light flickered on my dashboard, accosting me and my irresponsibility.

I pulled into a Valero station.

I tucked my wallet in my pocket and locked my car in fear of the Valero night creatures. The teal awning didn’t sufficiently tuck me away from the rain. Selecting the low-grade fuel, I grabbed the nozzle. A small Hispanic man lit a cigarette by the front doors. Behind him, I saw yellow—stalks of bananas. I looked again, laughing that I had mistaken individually packaged gluttony for yellow fruit. But in that instant, the neon fruit was reality. There was something other than Pall Malls or Slim Jims or other morose items with names that rhyme to disguise their grip on the mundane. Instead, there was just rain and florescent lighting.

I got in my car. The same frigid air pressed my skin, and the same drone flooded out of my speakers. I grabbed my friend’s jacket, left behind on another voyage, in hopes of reminding myself of something other than these monochromatic nights. It was grey and had a familiar, but insignificant, musk. I laid it down and drove.

Parting of the Red Sea

Fresh from the womb and cut from the vine, they dressed me in white and sprinkled holy water on my head. I imagine us fitting perfectly in that scenario. I imagine my big-haired older sister wrapping her little hand around my father’s finger, and my mother smiling wide as I coo. I equate my baptism with The Lion King; I am young Simba as the pastor lifts me above the congregation with outstretched arms. All the wild animals of Africa, or literally, the white-haired ladies and their liver-spotted husbands, roar in appreciation.

I was raised on red kool-aid that represented the Red Sea, Jesus’ blood, and Hebrew sacrifice. I was also raised on color-by-number Adam and Eve, which, depending on the publisher, sometimes depicted them with an apple tree and sometimes did not. Naturally, the former was favored, due to the magic marker color variety an apple tree brought. We frequented the “Jesus is your shepherd, and you are his sheep” lesson. Maybe it’s because kids are simple and cute and sheep are simple and cute and gluing cotton balls to construction paper is, in theory, simple and cute, but I now regard the texture of cotton balls with utter putrescence.

As for the years of puberty and the immense tension it created, church was my vice. As for the correlation between corndogs, mini-scooters, and Jesus, it’s still a mystery. Nonetheless, church was there. Church’s voice wasn’t cracking, and church wasn’t finding out cooties is a fake disease that boys don’t have. It was a sense of stability that pretending I was watching Disney instead of MTV when mom walked by didn’t provide.

It’s been sixteen years; sixteen years of becoming the Bible-memory prodigy, of Sunday school and Vacation Bible School, and of tithing ten percent of my measly allowance. I know when the petit blonde woman will choose to embellish the worship song and when she’ll refrain. I know when the sermon really gets to people, not by the copious amounts of amen’s from the ladies to my right, but when the chairs squeak as people get nervous. I know each pastor’s quirks and ticks and speech patterns. Mostly, I know that the vaguely acquainted women will pinch my face and tell me I’m pretty until the day they die. This truth, being that these people have some sort of unbeknownst love, leaves no room for my adolescent cynicism, and for that, I will be an eternal paradox of gratefulness and confusion.

Damn, Platonic

Hypothetically speaking,
You'd be wearing red leather
Tacky like "Hell no"
And we'd verbally piss on society
Off buildings we scaled with bare hands

You'd still be less like James Dean
And more like a coffee-drinking, satirical-thinking adolescent
But I'd let you talk suave to me
Like you've never done before

I'd be the fire-mouthed babe
That quick-wit, back-sass, bad-ass babe
With hair like "Hell yeah"
Stone to emotional susceptibility
But I'd still be prone to ravish giggles
At your quirky odds and ends

The streets would reek with secret envy
While we defied pop culture
And kissed their measly cheeks

Preconceptions

She was eleven
Squeezed between the cracks of France
Like God's finger and thumb
In vain friction.

Mona Lisa lurked behind her eye
A sick look and a grainy photograph
Squished in time
Forever haunting.

Flirting is Wrong

"You shaved you're legs."
"Yeah."
"And you're wearing a dress."
"Uh-huh."
"Does that mean you're flirting with boys?"
"Well, uh, typically the estrogen found in females combined with the testosterone found in males creates that sort of action."
"You know that's not appropriate."
"What?"
"It's wrong."

Beeping

There’s a persistent beeping coming from the oven in my kitchen. Its repetition is driving me into an incredible pit of angst.

Last night I asked a legitimate question and was answered by, “You’re drunk, aren’t you?” I tried to justify my question, minimize its stupidity, but the question was raw and completely intended.

I turned up Animal Collective on my iTunes to an ear-piercing drone, but it’s choking out the persistent beeping.

I heard one, two, three. Louder.

We made plans before he left. There was undeniably something interesting. He left many days ago. I’m now undeniably forgotten.

One more.

“Seriously.”
“Seriously what?”
“I wasn’t drunk.”

I’m constantly fighting this battle with the mundane.

The beeping is competing with my beats.

I hate partiality.

I’m turning the little black knob again. Louder. More sound to drown out sound.

It’s disgusting. It’s absolutely disgusting how long you can spend next to someone and have no idea how their mind could correlate with yours. Sometimes I’m awfully pretentious, typically driven by a fear of rejection. Sometimes getting closer is only a matter of letting vulnerability seep through. This is probably the closest I’ll ever get, and it’s absolutely disgusting.

My music is winning, but pretty soon the beat will fade and I’ll hear that constant reminder of the mundane.

Airplane: Non-Fiction

Another screaming child on another plane ride going somewhere at some point in time. Right? The insignificance, the unmitigated frivol of the people surrounding you is almost uncanny. The less than satisfying bag of peanuts will soon pass, and you’ll soon trade this pressurized air for something slightly more natural. But honestly, flight attendants don’t get paid to put on a fake smile can play safety charades for nothing. These people, these screaming children bearing, mouth-flapping, insignificant others could be the last people you ever see.

I safely stored my baggage underneath the seat in front of me and released my chair into the abyss known as 94 degrees (as opposed to 92). Too many anxious people with numbers and letters determining their fate filed to their seats. A college kid with his hat tilted frat-boy style, about twelve middle-aged unnatural blondes, and a bowl-cut kid with Sudoku passed by. Fate hadn’t allotted them to be with me.

“John-John, you better shaddup!”
“You don’t have to…yell at him.”

Oh joy. The designated screaming child of the aircraft plopped in front of me, followed by his miffed, but otherwise normal looking parents. The man was balding and had wire-rimmed glasses. His wife was another one of the unnatural blondes and was wearing a lavender sweater.

“Well, someone has to teach him what discipline is,” she squawked.
“He’s four years old! You don’t need to yell at him.”

Cue wailing John-John.

“Oh, shut up!”
“Look, you made him cry!”

I wanted to drop a parenting magazine in their laps and kindly ask them to resolve their marital issues elsewhere. She started cursing profusely, occasionally sputtering the word “discipline”.

“Why don’t you just leave me. You obviously don’t like me.” She drew certain words out and revealed her arms in drastic motions to the rest of the cabin.

Poor John-John. If you weren’t screaming out my eardrums, I’d hand you over to social services right this instant. John-John screamed the word “bathroom” at the top of his lungs about ten times until his father finally picked him up.

“Hurry up. That’s another thing; you always take your sweet time.” She turned around in her chair to curse at her audience and revealed a mouthful of decay.

Amidst John-John and Daddy’s lavatory trip, on wheeled the last guest. He was the new center of attention in all of his cowboy-hat wearing, one-legged glory.

“Kin I have a standin’ ovation,” he asked, followed by the loudest laughter at one’s own joke I’d ever heard. Crazy Rotten Tooth stood up and clapped, along with a single flight attendant.

“You can’t do it ‘cause you only have one leg,” remarked the flight attendant. More obnoxious laughter.

John-John and Daddy returned.

“Sit!”

John-John shrieked. Dear God…

Words

She said a lot of things. Vernacular vomit. She said things, and intended things, and wanted you to agree but secretly admired those who could resist agreement. But mostly, she just spoke.

"Oh my God, I feel like a hot dog about to explode in the microwave because you didn't poke holes in it."

Relentlessly followed by, "You know, Michelle?"

She would say it in that tone. That alluring tone that made you want to shake your head and be her slave. And in the moment, it was the most profound thing. Yet it meant nothing to her.

"This is like string cheese. Except not cheesy."

She'd always give a little chuckle when she realized she was vomiting again. But sometimes, she'd start off with a "listen to me" and turn down the dial on whatever faux-classy music she was listening to. And she'd mean it.

"Good writers will face persecution. You do not change your writing because someone tells you to, or it feels a little uncomfortable. You go naked, or not at all."

And she was right.

Holy

What is holy? Sacred? Pure?

I suppose I should feel close to God in my church. In the fellowship of others, "Amen's" from the lady in blue. I suppose the melodic tune of the preachers words should make my heart swell, my pulse tighten. But often...it doesn't.

What is holy?

Because lately, the times I've felt closest to God are not when I'm on bended knee, or singing hymns.

Walking in freezing rain.
Listening to the Born Ruffians.
Dancing to the clang of pots and pans in a friend's kitchen.
And standing in a crowd.
Holy, holy, holy, holy.

Who are we to judge? The lady in blue may say the preacher's words are holy, but who's to discount the sanctity of a warm bath? The holiness of walking down a grocery isle?
Not I.

Meat

Richard breathed. Heavy. His dull, grey eyes rode backwards as he groaned and slunk into the decaying pastel lawnchair. Only the finest. This time, he didn't even try to make small talk. Usually, I would have been glad; small talk is like performing the Heimlich on yourself. But Richard had become voided of all social niceties and his stagnant ale breath pierced the room from all directions.

Over the years I had known many Richards. There was the Christian Richard, who suddenly flaunted crucifixes on gold chains, and plastered the back of his El Camino with "God Bless America's". There was the love-sick Richard who drank cheap red wine and pretended to be "flipping through the channels" when I caught him watching some cheesy romance flick. But even the wall-punching drunk Richard was better than the rage-induced apathetic Richard.

"What, you just gon' sit there?" He asked as he shoved a piece of meat into his mouth.
"Excuse me?"
"I said, you just gon' sit there?" He caught my eyes for a second as if to punish me for not eating, but then he refocused on the meat. I traced the lines of grapes on his peeling wallpaper. The sound of his fork scraping the plate wrung in my ears.

"Dammit," he said. He threw down his fork and massaged the wrinkles on his brow. And in that one word he had expressed the hatred of his own inadequacy that had plagued him for years.

"I'm sorry," I tried.
"Don't be," he snapped.
Under the sickening heat of night we sat in silence.

raw; Icicles

Consonants
words—
Yours—
stale Bread

Ornamentation
Heavy—beaded
Lies
hanging icicles
shatter

i like you when hands are not
(your hands are bigger than mine—it’s Quite alright)
issues, and Skin is yours and mine
but we eat each other’s words first course
yours
and Mine

please dont
filter
pretend
or What
ever it is you do

i like Things raw

Intellectualism

Intellectualism kissed her on the cheek
and then asked her how she felt about it
"Good."
Tongue trained only to release what is safe
Good was good
But good was not enough this time.
He whispered gently down her neck
Crevices cringed in psychotic delight
Nails scoured her palms
As she grabbed one last breath of sanity
Cynicism shot through veins
Addicted
She bellowed her submission
But he was gone.

Something

Excuses cursed his fingertips as they approached her. “A friend of a friend.” She bit back with sarcasm, in bitter compliance. She pretended to be bored, but these were her favorite type of games. Mind games.

“Something,” he muttered. That was all that was left; something was everything. He craved nothing, lusted it, desired it, but nothing was something and she was something. And he wanted her something.

Intoxicated, she buried herself beneath the sea of sheets. Vacant eyes followed the curves of her toes as she swallowed, heavy, lifeless. The stranger understood. She hated him for it, but she loved it. Everything was a paradox. Everything was new and immense, yet inconsequential and numbing. Beautifully ugly. Wrong, but right.

There was something, and it was good.