Pierogies (click to zoom)
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Smartr
You can now listen to all ten episodes of Smartr, a scripted comedy podcast about you know tech and Silicon Valley and stuff, for free, wherever you listen to podcasts, or right here.
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Walter White
My sister and her husband named their baby Walter White after Walter White, the character from the show "Breaking Bad." I asked them, why? What was their intent? They said they liked the show, and they admired Bryan Cranston's performance. Well then why not Bryan? A less dated name, and not all tied up with the villainy of the character. They looked at me like I was nuts. Your problem, they said to me, speaking in perfect unison, is that you're determined to live aesthetically instead of practically, and so you're incapable of making yourself happy. Then they stood up and left whatever room we were all in. Their words produced in me a moment of clarity, comparable to only one other time in my life, when my friend Mike called and asked me to give him a ride because he'd driven his car onto a median, and when I was on my was driving over to meet him, there was a troll in the road, a wild, three-foot figure with tangled, matted hair and filthy rags for clothes, stooped over and facing away from me and rubbing itself furiously, it would appear, through the front of its pants. I brought the car to a stop. It was dusk and my headlights cast a glow onto the troll's back. It was a narrow road and I wasn't sure I had enough room to drive around. The troll turned slowly and sneered at me, its back still bobbing up and down as it rubbed harder and harder with the flat of its palm. He grinned a mouth full of rotted, stumpy teeth. I flashed my high beams and it scampered off into the woods, cackling. Before, I said seeing the troll had been a moment of clarity -- what had I meant by that? I don't know. After the troll left I drove over to where Mike had driven his car onto the median and picked him up and took him to his girlfriend's place, his girlfriend was named Gina, and they broke up upstairs while I hung out in Gina's kitchen, or Gina's parents' kitchen, with Gina's younger sister, and then Mike came downstairs with frustrated, confused tears in his eyes and told me he could get a ride home, although God only knows from where. So I drove home. And when I got home my parents and my sister were out and all the lights were off except for one glow coming from my room. And when I got up there the troll was in my bed, under the covers. He was watching MTV on my 13-inch TV, he was watching that show Say What? Karaoke. He looked at me and said, "please, a-mister, I'm-a very-a sick." But how could I help him? I was not a doctor, much less a veterinarian. All I knew about trolls was they liked to eat garbage. So I collected some trash from downstairs, what looked like the heartiest morsels, and brought them up to him. He saw the bounty I laid before him and looked up at me, his face crinkled with gratitude, or the troll equivalent. He brought an empty soup can up to his mouth, but was too weak to chew. He waved me away, so I left to give him his privacy. I slept on the couch that night. No one asked me why. I could hear the troll cursing and grunting all through the night, fighting his fever. So again, what did the troll teach me? What truth gleamed in his black, beady eyes? Maybe something about the composition of the universe, the way the beautiful and the grotesque sustain each other. But I already knew that. So maybe that's what I learned, that I knew everything I needed to know, as if I'd lived this life a hundred times and was already acquainted with each of its grubby disappointments, and that anyone who tried to teach me anything or change my mind was a liar, everyone but the troll. In the morning he was gone, and all he'd left behind was a ripped-open trash bag and a thick, savory, rancid smell in the sheets that never washed out.
Saturday, July 23, 2022
The beach (unfinished)
I have nightmares. That I'm relaxing on a deserted beach somewhere, and a gaggle of scantily-clad women bound over and begin dancing for me, and one of them, the most provocatively-yet-conservatively dressed, not like the others, whispers in my ear that she'd like me to take her to bed. My therapist suggests this doesn't sound like a nightmare at all, it sounds, rather, like a rather pleasant dream. She suggests that the nightmare of it is not the dream itself but the waking from it back into my small bed with its limp, soggy sheets in my dreary, lightless apartment. When she says this, I think that my therapist doesn't know me very well. But I don't say this, I just say "yeah ok" and she nods with a very self-satisfied look on her face like she has successfully asserted her dominance over me. And then I talk about work or whatever until the session ends.
I can't afford the therapist, strictly speaking. I mean, I don't have the money to pay her. So what I do is, I give her increasingly large checks, for money owed plus an equal amount into the future "to ensure this doesn't happen again," which I know will bounce. But by the time they bounce, I've already gotten another session or two in, and then I can just give her an even larger check, to "compensate [her] for the inconvenience." The amount on the last check I wrote was somewhere over $16,000. It strains credulity, somewhat, that I, who at one time had less than $100 in my checking account, resulting of the bouncing of even my very first check, would suddenly have the $16,000+ necessary for this latest check to clear. But she goes along with it, every time. I suppose the upside is too enticing, or perhaps it's the downside, the pain of cutting your losses with all those sessions unpaid for, all those debts forgiven, that is the stronger motivation. Regardless, I think her advice is beginning to suffer, as if she's holding our her best analysis until I'm paid up. She recently suggested I indulge in my suicidal ideation of wading into the river and letting the fast-moving current drag me out to sea. She said it would "relieve [me] of [my] fear of rivers." (I confessed to no such fear and, in fact, have none.) When I mentioned idly reading a news article about a brutal war in some distant country to which I have no connection, she said, "you should go there." She didn't even pretend to offer any purported therapeutic benefit to traveling to an active warzone, she just said, "it will be fine." Of course, if I die in a war, she'll lose all hope of ever being paid, but I think her ultimate goal is something else, something more abstract, or maybe it's less abstract, and maybe she just hates me.
One good piece of advice she did give me, though, was to call you again. Even as the quality of her other advice diminished, she kept encouraging me to give you another chance, her enthusiasm for the idea only growing as I fell deeper and deeper into the red. She convince me that you've changed and matured since the last time we spoke, probably, and that it was "very unlikely" you would continue to exploit my feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy as you did in the past to dominate me psychologically, steal my money, make me quit various jobs that did not accord with your vision of the lifestyle you wanted, etc.
And I've changed too. I've made a lot of progress. I no longer feel compelled, I think, to tell lies about your sexual history to our mutual friends, your co-workers, my mother, etc. My therapist says she "think[s] it is unlikely" I will again burst into your office, scream "MARY FUCKS DOGS, SHE CHEATED ON ME WITH A DOG" at everyone, grab the phone and try to figure out how to make an officewide announcement on the P.A. system, be wrestled to the ground by two small receptionists working together, attempt to commit "suicide by cop" by rushing an unarmed security guard, and collapse into a heap and sob and apologize the moment I see your mortified face when you rush out to see the commotion -- she says the chances of that happening are "under 25 percent." And that I should give you a call and see how it goes, because, "what's the worst that could happen?" Which isn't analysis, I realize, but I think it is meant to be a kind of rhetorical device to make me be like, yeah, sure, I'll give her a call.
Do you remember when we went to the beach together? It was one of our good times, one of our last good times. I hadn't found out that you'd emptied my savings account to pay off your credit card, and you hadn't found out that I'd mailed a letter detailing several made-up sexual encounters involving you and our neighbor to your night school professor. It was cold so we kept our coats on but we took off our shoes and we stood in the sand and felt millions of years of obliterated rocks between our toes. We looked out at the waves and we started to argue about where the car was parked. Was it important, then? Faced with that heaving, immovable ocean pushing in, did it matter whether we'd parked in the main lot or the auxiliary lot, especially when there was no actual disagreement as to where the car was, just what the exact designation of the lot was on the official Beach Map posted near the snack bar? I've thought about it a lot, in the months I've been without you, and what I've realized is that, yeah, of course it matters. We're only on this earth for so long, and what's more important than
Saturday, September 25, 2021
Ass
I was playing Yahoo Pool in another window. It was my turn and my opponent was complaining I was taking too long. I asked "a/s/l" and they responded "fuck u go." I pulled the cue back and whapped the cue ball sideways at max power -- it didn't hit any other balls, just the wall a couple times. The other guy quit -- a ranked game, so, thank you.
I alt-tabbed back over to Brandy. One guy in the chat was calling her beautiful and asking for her MSN, he kept saying stuff like "i'm weeping watching you please." Everyone else was calling her a dumb bitch or a filthy slut except for one guy who probably wasn't a guy at all who was spamming coupon codes for fresh Black Sea shrimp. "FATTEST shrimp in the SEA," he spammed, "delvered fresh!! use coupon code shrimpJIZZ." Brandy stood up again and kind of puckered up her chest, to little effect. "Please show a little ass" I said and it looked like she was reading the chat but she didn't do anything and my request was washed away in a flood of profanity and shrimp coupons. I pasted the coupon code into a txt file just in case. One guy said "fuck your shrimp" and was swiftly kicked by the Administrator.
Brandy started speaking into the webcam. I rushed to jam the volume up in time to hear her say something about deep, undulating forests of kelp. My heart boiled with unrequited desire for a glimpse of ass. Brandy leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the desk and wiggled her painted toes right in front of the webcam. The foot freaks were going nuts, going "HELL YEAH" and sending little high five emoticons to each other -- there are always a couple foot freaks in any chat and they always have each others' backs, and to see those guys, so brotherly and fulfilled, it always makes me kind of wish I was one.
In the other window someone had entered my Yahoo Pool lobby but wouldn't join the game. I told them "lets go" and "a/s/l" but they just replied with spam: "Black Sea Shrimp CHEEP strait to your door in discrete packages! dm for exclusive qr code." There used to be hundreds, maybe thousands of people playing Yahoo Pool at any given time, in each of dozens of lobbies. You could get a game whenever you wanted and a lot of those people had pics of young women in their profile, and whether the pics were really of them or not, you could always pretend they were, but they all moved on to other online pool games that were more realistic and more fun, or they just joined Facebook or whatever. But I didn't want realism or fun, I wanted the same pool I'd been playing. Now I only had Brandy.
When I clicked back over to her, she was looking dead-eyed into the screen again. Nothing moved for minutes, until the back wall of her room started to slowly tip backwards, and then gravity caught it, and it fell and landed with a whumph of puffed dust. We saw now that she was sitting on the deck of a small ship that was bobbing out on open water -- the camera and the furniture and, until now, the wall had been fixed to the deck so the movement hadn't been perceptible. She didn't look back at where the wall had been. Behind her the horizon was swallowed abruptly by a thick, sodden fog clotting the pubic gray sky. "Throbbing VEINY SHRIMP 4 sale now to PREFERRED CUSTOMORS," promised the adbot in the chat. Brandy moved to the bed and started to roll around. She wrapped herself up in the sheets as if deliberately going out of her way to avoid showing any ass. Sea sprayed onto the bed and onto Brandy's hair and back. She pulled a towel out of the nightstand and patted herself dry and then put the towel away and went back to writhing around on the bed, showing no ass whatsoever.
She started talking about kelp again, but it was hard to hear her over the sound of the ship hurling itself into the waves. A gull landed on the desk next to her webcam and started yelping right into the mic. Brandy, still on the bed, tried to shoo it away with her foot but the gull just waddled closer to the camera, so she had to get up and chase it off. Right as she did one of the side walls fell forward and landed on the bed, then kept sort of sliding until it slid all the way off and landed flat on the ground. Shrimp and ice skidded from offscreen across the deck near the nightstand and there was swearing in a language I couldn't identify -- you could tell it was swearing though. Brandy bent over to grab a bunch of the shrimp and toss it back to somebody off camera, but the desk blocked any ass that might have been otherwise visible.
Brandy moved back to her computer and did a little logy dance back and forth but wouldn't spin around. I asked her to show a little ass please but she didn't. Her hair was salty and wet; condensation was accreting on the inside of the webcam lens. "Please show us some ass," I typed. She pouted and said something, generally, about her tip jar. I rifled through my desk drawer and pulled out a prepaid debit card some aunt had given me and punched in the numbers. The card had a hundred dollars on it so I gave Brandy fifteen. It asked me if I wanted to attach a note, so I typed "For ass, please," and sent it off.
The money landed in her tip jar with a little digital ping. It got her attention right away -- she checked her account balance and smiled. She said thank you and said my screen name; a little bolt of sugary blood shot up my spine, but she still wouldn't show any ass. Instead she shook out her hair and stood up and bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet and pushed her breasts together and pouted. "More if you show ass," I said. People in the chat were pounding me with abuse and slurs now, which happens whenever someone tips the girls, I've been on both sides of it, it's just how it works. Brandy twirled her hair with her finger and I felt like I was going to cry or punch a hole in the wall.
It reminded me of a time I was out to dinner with my parents. I was maybe in high school, or it could have been when I was trying college. The waitress brought me the wrong soda and was very friendly with me in correcting the mistake. "Isn't she nice," my mom smiled at me. My dad's jaw closed on an onion ring like a mousetrap snapping shut. "She wants a tip," he said. My mom's name is Linda. I forget my father's name, or I never learned it.
Brandy started half-heartedly lip syncing a song none of us could hear. Behind her, men in yellow raincoats entered the frame and started squeegeeing water off the deck with big squeegee-mops, returning sea to the sea. Then people started yelling and the engines slammed on with a deep, grinding roar, so I turned the volume down. Brandy winked and puckered her lips, then winked again. There was a boat way off in the distance, flashing blue and red lights and getting closer; the crew members were pointing at it and arguing with each other and just generally freaking out. "Why won't you show me ass," I pleaded in the chat, and the other guys started dogpiling me again. Brandy leaned forward and said something and laughed -- if it was in reply to me, I couldn't hear, but whatever she said, no ass came of it. All of a sudden Brandy was lost in a wake of deep black smoke, only her glassy green eyes cut through. The ship lurched to a stop, or not a stop, because it was being tossed arrhythmically by the waves. The smoke started to clear and crew members were screaming, frantically dumping shrimp off the side of the boat; one guy took a railing to the gut and tumbled over the side and slipped below the surface of the water and no one noticed or went to help him. Brandy, visible again, cupped her hands under her breasts and bounced them up and down. I was tired of being polite; I pounded out "ASS," nearly busted my enter key sending it. The other boat had caught up fast, and behind Brandy, men in uniforms with long guns leapt on board and started tackling people in a mad rush and restraining them with zip-tie cuffs. Brandy seemed to be reading again, looking bored with us; none of the men with guns were bothering her. "EMERGENCY SALE, ALL SHRIMP MUST GO, ORDER NOW BEFORE YOU CUM" the adbot screamed.
There was a clang, it sounded like metal on metal, but one of the guys with guns screamed "SHOTS FIRED," and they all tried to find cover. A crew member tried to make a run for the back of the ship and someone must have mistaken the squeegee-mop in his hand for a gun because his chest popped open twice with pinkish bursts like puffed dandelions, and he slumped to the ground, right at the foot of Brandy's bed. The last wall fell over as the men with the guns tripped over themselves to subdue the already-shot guy. Brandy peeked down at him, with just her eyes. I got a DM from someone in the chat promising me shrimp "at an absurd rate that cannot be offered to the public." Downstairs, someone was ringing the doorbell frantically.
Why won't she show ass? I cried aloud, at my desk. Brandy looked full into the camera now -- "come to the sea," she said, and she used my name, my real name, not my screen name. A wispy gray smoke quilted everything behind her and all there was was her face -- the soft glow of her laptop screen reflecting off her pancake makeup, incandescent in the haze. I started to type -- "just speak," she said, "I can hear you." Everyone else in the chat was booted by the Administrator in one flicker, almost tangible, like a deck of cards shuffling itself. Blood sloshed through my heart like ocean rushing into a tidal pool.
"If I come to the sea," I asked, my voice shaking, "will you show me ass there?"
"Ass cannot be demanded," she told me. "Only when you understand what a gift the ass is, and feel within yourself the love that must be felt to give ass and be given ass -- then you will see it, and then you will feel it. But if you demand the ass with entitlement, rather than meeting it with love, then all you will see is two vulgar cheeks."
Well, I got it. It was a metaphor or something. I don't have the patience for metaphors. I hear a metaphor and I think, my suffering, wounded heart leaks like a sponge, and here's someone who has decided to abstract it so the blood doesn't spill onto their shirt. I hear a metaphor and I think, here's someone trying to divide me by zero, when I am already zero. I hear a metaphor and I think someone's making fun of me. An explosion ripped through the hull behind Brandy and the ship began gulping salty water. The bed and the desk and the walls and everything suddenly fell towards the sea. Brandy slid on her back and dropped ass-first into the smoke and the black oily water churning around her. I recentered myself in the literal. I was not exploding, I was not sinking. I am here; I am alone; Brandy will show me no ass: what else can be known? I give Brandy love and she refracts it back at me as rejection and hate: what's left but to pay her back in kind? Brandy grabbed for the railing and tried to heave herself up; she was a bundle of flesh-colored pixels in a rectangle of metal gray sea-colored pixels in the middle of my laptop screen; I clicked away. Hell, let her sink.
The shrimp, when they came, were soggy and gray and rotten-smelling, and I ate them all very quickly over the sink, without putting them in the fridge, and without turning on a light.
Saturday, August 01, 2020
I'll wear a jean
And it's not just for show, I use that capacity, too. I'll fill my pockets up with interesting bits of trash I find walking around, trash that I think I could maybe use later. Or I'll fill them with nuts to throw at any critters that come too close to me. Sometimes I'll dip the nuts in something like detergent powder, to give the critters an unpleasant little surprise, like they think they're getting a delicious snack, but then they sniff their paws and they're all of a sudden covered in poison, or soap, anyway. But sometimes I'll just give them nuts not dipped in anything, and they're happy about that.
My sister, who worries, got me a pair of jeans last Christmas. Now, I'll wear a jean, when all my cargo pants are in the wash or whatever, I'll wear a carpenter jean with a little hammer loop, not that I carry a hammer generally, but it's nice to have the option. But this jean didn't have a loop or any kind of adornment, it was just, jean. And I did give them a try, for her sake, but they weren't right. I felt absurd, I felt vain. Like, what are these legs for? Not for carrying nuts or trash around, but I'm just, like, presenting them, like, thrusting them into the world, like, look at these legs, aren't they dainty, aren't they pretty? Look at how long and sleek and impractical they are. Aren't I a pretty boy? I tried to go places with them and I'd just, sweat all over and shake, I'd imagine people thinking, what's this guy trying to get away with? Who does he think he is? The kind of guy who wastes a whole pant, pisses away all that carrying capacity, because he's so in love with his leg, qua leg? So what I did was, I made a couple sacks out of some burlap I'd found, and sewed them to the side of the jeans, roughly where cargo pockets would be. And they're not pretty, because I can't sew and I get these dizzy spells that make it difficult to cut straight, but they carry. They carry really well, actually.
That seems right. It even seems right that the sacks are uneven and poorly cut. It answers the question: why are you wearing those jeans? It's not, oh, to show off my prissy, dainty legs. I'm wearing them, obviously, because I need to carry stuff around in these sacks. It answers the question so well that no one has to ask it.
I don't know how they do it, cargo pants, and jeans with sacks sewn onto them, make me feel like no one can see me, even when I'm the only one anywhere wearing them.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
What is a specific instance in which you used your customer service skills to defuse a situation?
Sunday, March 01, 2020
Candiotti
The doctor suggested I "munch" on carrots instead. I sneered back at him. He clearly had no idea what he was talking about. He thought that eating markers was some sort of nervous or obsessive habit, not a visceral pleasure in its own right. He has no clue what to make of the snap of the plastic case, giving way to the rich, spongy innards, soaking my tongue in thin, soupy ink. With the stiff, but yielding, tip saved for last. He simply had no idea!
I did get some carrots. I decided to give the doctor that chance. But the carrots were cold and rigid. They snapped off without any give, and of course, there was no sweet core inside, the texture was the same throughout. There was no air pocket through which my teeth would burst in search of ink, which would run down my throat. A poor imitation; not even an imitation.
Plus, the carrots were covered in filth, because I'd taken them directly out of the soil of a local farm. They were smeared with dirt and smelled of waste. I could have eaten cleaner markers directly out of the trash. Disgusted, I left the carrots to rot on my table.
Four days after I found the carrots, a farmer came to my door. He told me some produce had been recently removed from his farm and he'd received a tip that I might know something about it. My remaining carrots sat plainly on the table behind me, still dusted with black soil. He said he'd also lost some livestock and wondered if I might know anything about that (I had also, I confess, taken a chicken, but it had hopped out of my car at a red light when I'd had to roll down my window to catcall a hot babe). I denied everything, of course. I felt sweat soaking through the skin of my palms.
"Mind if I step inside?" he asked, and instead of waiting for an answer, he simply pivoted around me and stepped into my home. Soil fell from his filthy clothes, soil the same color and consistency, I couldn't help but notice, as the soil on the carrots. The farmer's name was Candiotti. His eyes fell onto the table and found their way to the carrots; my stomach dropped.
"Whence the carrots?" he asked. I squinted as if I hadn't understood the question. "Whither the carrots?" he demanded. I shook my head. "I haven't the slightest idea what objects you might be referring to," I said.
He grabbed a carrot from the table and waggled it at me, profanely. "From where did you obtain these carrots, son?" "Aah!" I said, brightening as if I'd finally understood. "The carrots? I purchased those at the carrot store." Candiotti looked skeptical. "Which carrot store?" he asked. In the days and sleepless nights since I'd taken the carrots and imagined this very conversation, I'd failed to anticipate a follow-up question. "The carrot store was called -- let me think -- " I stalled for time. "The carrot store was called, I believe, Stern's." Candiotti's expression was unreadable. "Yes, it was Stern's, I believe, although I could be wrong, but I believe it was Stern's, though I could be wrong, but I believe it was Stern's. The proprietor was an elderly Jewess." Candiotti's eyebrows shot up. Success! After all, who could doubt a story with such an expertly-chosen detail?!
"I don't believe I've ever sold my carrots to a Stern's," he said.
"Well, then it would appear that these are not your carrots!" I crowed. "In which case, your business here is settled, and you can make your way out." He frowned. "These are Candiotti Carrots," he said. "I'm the only one who breeds them this way." He shoved the carrot underneath my eyes and pointed to something with his grimy fingernails. Sure enough, inscribed on the shaft of the carrot in tiny orange letters was the word CANDIOTTI. I felt sweat prickling my hair follicles.
Candiotti had cornered me, and I had no choice but to quickly change strategy. "Why -- that means -- " I said, as if putting it all together. "Someone must have stolen your carrots, and brought them to Stern's...yes...and sold them to her, and then she...yes, of course...she, unaware they'd been stolen, sold them to me, even though...aah, but could it be? yes, it must!...and then I, most innocent at all, bought them from her!" I feigned a look of shock. "You poor man! I am so sorry for you to have suffered this outrage!" Candiotti scowled. "And your chicken," I continued, "must have jumped out the burglar's car window on the way there!" A sprinkle of truth, to help the lies go down!
"But I didn't say anything about a chicken," he said, "I'd only mentioned livestock, nonspecifically."
"Of course it was a chicken," I replied, "because a cow never would have fit into my car."
Well, old Candiotti cut right to the chase. "I think you know more about the carrots than you're letting on," he said. More? I'd already provided him a surfeit of detail, each elaborate element piling precariously on top of the last to build a perfectly impervious tower of deceit! The sweat poured off me. I pulled a marker out of my pocket and bit into it, a blue crayola. Yes, the different colors do have different tastes, incidentally, though the differences are subtle, and the flavors don't necessarily correspond to a same-color real-world food item. So blue crayola isn't, for example, blueberry, but a something in the way of a summery grass, sun-dappled and dew-spattered. Refreshing and pure.
"You, sir, are eating a marker," Candiotti said. Well, I'm used to the scorn and the mockery you get when you snap into a delicious marker on the city bus or at church. It unfortunately comes with the territory. The mockers and the spitters will make sport of your pleasure. Your friends will misplace their trust in your character and judgment, and they will stop returning your calls. Your doctor will insist that there's something deeply aberrant with your behavior. I'm sure there are thousands of marker-eaters who have simply given up on the one thing that brought them joy, despondent in the face of the public pressure; and thousands more who shamefully indulge at home, in private, hiding their true selves from even their family. In this regard, I am simply made of stronger stuff, and have learned to block it out, and live my life the only way I can bear to live it.
But I saw something else in Candiotti's face. Confusion, yes, but no judgment or scorn. Only...curiosity. And wonder, perhaps, that a person could live so freely.
And so, I offered him a taste.
Candiotti searched my face for a sign -- that I was trying to put one over on him; that he was being made a fool of. I calibrated my expression to communicate gentleness. He tentatively took the marker. He moved it towards his open mouth, then searched my face again for a sign that it was all a trick. I smiled serenely. He took a bite.
He seemed surprise by the crunch of the plastic. His mouth puckered around it, as if exploring some crashed alien life. I heard the sponge of the marker's insides on his tongue. His eyes bulged in surprise. He chewed and swallowed. He looked into what remained of the marker and knocked the ink sponge into his palm. He held it to his lips and took a deep, long pull (rude to do without asking, like scraping the frosting off a birthday cake with your fingers, but it was his first time and he didn't know better). His eyes got wider still. "That's incredible," he said.
I pulled out a pack from a drawer; his jaw dropped. He picked out a yellow (savory, salty, almost like a pork in the distance). He began to unscrew it to get right to the ink. "Ah ah ah," I stopped him. "You must enjoy the fullness of the marker. You must be grateful for everything it has to offer you." He was still wary of the plastic, but he trusted me, then smiled broadly when he'd done it and seen that I was right. We laughed and talked all night long, working our way through the pack, ink-drunk and brimming with newfound love for each other, for having found a linked soul.
Candiotti pulled up all his vegetables after that, and in their place, planted thousands of markers, standing in long rows of gradiented colors all the way to the horizon. I never told him the truth about the carrots, and I never will. I've told him things I've never told another living soul, but I will never tell him about the carrots. All friendships must be built on lies, because the truth, in the end, is unsurvivable. Bring the lies to the light and the whole thing dissolves like a sugar cube in hot water, and you are no longer friends, just two men, who don't trust each other, and chew markers.