his name.
“High school can be unsettling,” Dad says. “A lot of stuff can make you anxious. I’m sorry you’ve been carrying around something like that. What a thing to be thinking about! But sometimes everyone needs a reality check, right?”
“Right.”
“So, you feel better now?”
“Yeah, I feel better. Thanks.”
But he keeps studying me as I walk away, like maybe he knows I’m lying. My parents have been noticing how anxious I’ve beenlately. My dad thinks I should take up a sport to release my nervous energy. My mom thinks I should do yoga.
9. You Are Not the First and You Will Not Be the Last
The sea stretches in all directions. Before us, behind us, to starboard, to port, and down, down, down. Our ship is a galleon, weathered from a million voyages going back to ages even darker than this.
“She’s the finest vessel of her kind,” the captain once told me. “Put your faith in her and she won’t steer you wrong.”
Which is good, because there’s never anyone at the tiller.
“Does she have a name?” I once asked the captain.
“To name her is to sink her,” he told me. “That which we name takes greater weight than the sea it displaces. Ask any shipwreck.”
Above the arch of the main hatch is a sign burned in wood that reads You are not the first and you will not be the last , and I marvel at how it makes me feel both insignificant and singled out at the same time.
“Does it speak to you?” the parrot asks, perched above the hatch, watching me, always watching me.
“Not really,” I tell him.
“Well, if it does,” instructs the parrot, “write down everything it says.”
10. In the Fright Kitchen
I visit the White Plastic Kitchen almost every night. The particulars change each time, just enough that I can’t predict the outcome of the dream. If it was the same, at least I would know what to expect—and if I knew, I’d be able to brace myself for the worst of it.
Tonight I’m hiding. Scarce few places to hide in the kitchen. I’m wedged in a state-of-the-art refrigerator. I shiver, and I think about the captain. How he called me a shivering pup. Someone opens the door; a mask I don’t remember. She shakes her head.
“Poor thing, you must be cold.” She pours some coffee from a full carafe, but instead of offering me some, she reaches right through my navel and retrieves the milk from somewhere behind me in the refrigerator.
11. Nothing Awful Is without Its Beautiful Side
Beneath the main deck are the crew’s quarters. The crew deck is much larger than the ship appears on the outside. Impossibly so. There’s a long hallway that goes on and on and never seems to end.
Between the slats of wood that make up the hull and decks of the ship is foul-smelling black pitch to keep the water out. Nowhere is that smell more pungent than down below. It’s sharp and organic, as if whatever life-forms that were distilled by time into the tar haven’t entirely finished decomposing. It smells of concentrated sweat and body odor, and the stuff that collects beneath your toenails.
“The smell of life,” the captain said proudly when I once asked him about the stench. “Life in transformation, perhaps, but life, nonetheless. It’s like the briny reek of a tide pool, boy—pungent and putrid but at the same time refreshing. A wave will pound that shore, sending spray up your nostrils, and do you curse it? No! For it reminds you how much you love the sea. That summery smell of beach that brings you to the most serene place in your soul is nothing more than a gentle wafting of marine putrefaction.” Then he had taken a deep satisfying breath of it to prove his point. “Indeed, nothing awful is without its beautiful side.”
12. Spree
When my friends and I were younger and we were at the mall bored out of our minds, we used to play this game. We called it Psycho Shopping Spree. We would single out someone, or a couple, or sometimes a whole family—although for the purposes
“High school can be unsettling,” Dad says. “A lot of stuff can make you anxious. I’m sorry you’ve been carrying around something like that. What a thing to be thinking about! But sometimes everyone needs a reality check, right?”
“Right.”
“So, you feel better now?”
“Yeah, I feel better. Thanks.”
But he keeps studying me as I walk away, like maybe he knows I’m lying. My parents have been noticing how anxious I’ve beenlately. My dad thinks I should take up a sport to release my nervous energy. My mom thinks I should do yoga.
9. You Are Not the First and You Will Not Be the Last
The sea stretches in all directions. Before us, behind us, to starboard, to port, and down, down, down. Our ship is a galleon, weathered from a million voyages going back to ages even darker than this.
“She’s the finest vessel of her kind,” the captain once told me. “Put your faith in her and she won’t steer you wrong.”
Which is good, because there’s never anyone at the tiller.
“Does she have a name?” I once asked the captain.
“To name her is to sink her,” he told me. “That which we name takes greater weight than the sea it displaces. Ask any shipwreck.”
Above the arch of the main hatch is a sign burned in wood that reads You are not the first and you will not be the last , and I marvel at how it makes me feel both insignificant and singled out at the same time.
“Does it speak to you?” the parrot asks, perched above the hatch, watching me, always watching me.
“Not really,” I tell him.
“Well, if it does,” instructs the parrot, “write down everything it says.”
10. In the Fright Kitchen
I visit the White Plastic Kitchen almost every night. The particulars change each time, just enough that I can’t predict the outcome of the dream. If it was the same, at least I would know what to expect—and if I knew, I’d be able to brace myself for the worst of it.
Tonight I’m hiding. Scarce few places to hide in the kitchen. I’m wedged in a state-of-the-art refrigerator. I shiver, and I think about the captain. How he called me a shivering pup. Someone opens the door; a mask I don’t remember. She shakes her head.
“Poor thing, you must be cold.” She pours some coffee from a full carafe, but instead of offering me some, she reaches right through my navel and retrieves the milk from somewhere behind me in the refrigerator.
11. Nothing Awful Is without Its Beautiful Side
Beneath the main deck are the crew’s quarters. The crew deck is much larger than the ship appears on the outside. Impossibly so. There’s a long hallway that goes on and on and never seems to end.
Between the slats of wood that make up the hull and decks of the ship is foul-smelling black pitch to keep the water out. Nowhere is that smell more pungent than down below. It’s sharp and organic, as if whatever life-forms that were distilled by time into the tar haven’t entirely finished decomposing. It smells of concentrated sweat and body odor, and the stuff that collects beneath your toenails.
“The smell of life,” the captain said proudly when I once asked him about the stench. “Life in transformation, perhaps, but life, nonetheless. It’s like the briny reek of a tide pool, boy—pungent and putrid but at the same time refreshing. A wave will pound that shore, sending spray up your nostrils, and do you curse it? No! For it reminds you how much you love the sea. That summery smell of beach that brings you to the most serene place in your soul is nothing more than a gentle wafting of marine putrefaction.” Then he had taken a deep satisfying breath of it to prove his point. “Indeed, nothing awful is without its beautiful side.”
12. Spree
When my friends and I were younger and we were at the mall bored out of our minds, we used to play this game. We called it Psycho Shopping Spree. We would single out someone, or a couple, or sometimes a whole family—although for the purposes
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