Bury

We are called back into a litigious labyrinth we thought we had done
with. There is a hearing room with heavies at the door. They only
lounge there; no force is otherwise implied. However, we don't try to
leave.

The question for the Case Management Conference, the hundredth in a
series, is the figure of speech possibly mentioned, maybe thought, in
one of our depositions.

"We will bury you."

It may have been "Wilbur, you ...", as that was the name of the
bailiff. (Young then; he now is retired and sets his teeth in a glass
overnight, we hear during our long hours spent on these premises.)

There is on our land, we understand, a mound which resembles a grave.
It is considered by all parties that perhaps the inferred, implied, or
imagined threat might be alleviated were we to level that ground, thus
causing less anxiety for someone, or no one, who might link a
simulated (in the mind of a casual viewer) grave to the fantasy quote
from a deposition. We do not even begin to take up the odds anyone who
mangled a transcript from a court reporter might also walk upon our
grounds and spy the mound and be sore afflicted by it.

Okay, we say, and stand.

The judge intones, "One other matter ..."

We sit.

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The Club

Monica had written extensively about Disgustus, the primitive manlove tribe which would not allow women among their illustrious charter membership. This was because, as J Cletis the spokesman would inform the admiring cub reporters, men are better. Boy, said J C, do we love us some men here at Disgustus.

They would, however, allow in maids and cleaning ladies, secretaries, if they went about their business without jostling the guests. That's how Monica sneaked in. As an office worker. She took her own private notes of the gossip in the kitchen and laundry room. How the boys acted like frat fools away from the family. Towel popping, raw unfunny humor, raunchy comments, vulgarity, odd wrestling in the
sauna.

The story hit the front page of the Atlanta Clarion under an alias by-line. Some consternation resulted at the club, for what supercilious executive can afford to look like a loutish teen in public?

It was calculated some feminist must've sneaked in under a menial's disguise. Rules were changed. Henceforth, no maid or laundress would be hired if she knew even three word of English.

Especially were they careful during the week of the US Open. After all, the overweight drunk and the obsessive philanderer would not care to be interviewed while off the links. One must retain one's indignity at all cost.

The heavy drunk had a typical last round, for him. Slicing into the trees, dumping into the rough, even missing the ball during a put. But he was such a good sport nobody minded. What a guy; tossing a wedge into the lake then diving in after it. The gallery loved it.

When the cameras were turned off, another came on. From across the fairway a solitary figure, the overweight drunk approached, weaving, staggering. Dropping his driver along the way. Strangely, as he drew near the camera, he seemed to collect himself, walk upright, straight.

On the green, he pulled off the Hawaiin shirt he always wore. Took off also the padding beneath, then the trousers with the stuffed leggings. Stood there in shorts and tee, smiling. Maybe you saw it on YouTube?

Monica.

In the office of Disgustus the week she worked there, it was she who took the call to alert the club the drunk was back in rehab. Kept it to herself until her story ran, and the story became the most sensational to hit that town since the Civil War.

Our Show

What's anything but as it's valued? -  Troilus and Cressida.

All day we wander these corridors. The set is a shopping mall, but the walls are plastic and styrofoam designed to look like stucco and brick. There is all manner of vegetation about, made from nylon and other fabric.

It does look like a shopping mall, at that, with folks milling and walking and sitting and talking. We are, all hundred and twenty of us, paid extras in the giant reality program Our Show. We do what most do in such places, except leave the premises. Ever.

Our living quarters are on the second floor of the end closest to the parking lot. The walkways are very long and, as you can't see from one end to the other because of the dogleg at the end away from the parking lot, nobody knows just how extensive is our home ground.

I used to know directions. Like, which way is north. Now, I only know from the parking lot.

It doesn't really matter, though, because we have enough room to wander. Besides, once you go out any exit, you can never enter the premises again. (It is rumored a whole gang in a shop were expelled with the shop in one fell swoop. They didn't like the diner on the set and what's a half-dozen more or less millers along the mall? They sealed it off and built something else and never again were seen those who had wandered into the shop.)

The camguys carry their tools unobtrusively on a shoulder. They swing their arms as they walk so we hardly notice them. At first there was the tendency to act out before the cameras like all the other shows, but that became too much effort after a time. If you are always on-screen, then you never are truly. At least that's what some of us have decided.

Anyway, all the passion necessary for melodrama just fades away with time.

A condition of our participation is that we never forbid the camguys from wherever we may be. If any of us hook up, then they might follow us up to our rooms. Nobody seems to mind anymore. It will be shown vividly in it's time, but we never know when, as the live stream for Our Show does not follow consistently the day it was taped. There is ever, as we say, a mismatch in the sequence. Besides, loving up in the rooms has become similar to what goes on elsewhere. I don't mean we make love in the fountain (that's only happened a couple times since I've been here); I mean all we do has become ritual and has sort of lost its excitement, if you know what I mean.

We are of all ages, though like most shows (and like most malls), the young predominate. The lady I often sit with at the taqueria (no kitchen, that we can see, so the grub must come from elsewhere -
the shops carry real corporate names, though, as they sponsor the show - we are cautioned to never complain about anything but one another) is a senior, in fact. I mean, she's elderly; we aren't allowed to ask how long anyone has been in Our Show.

What is strange is that ... I do complain about those who annoy me to Alice. She nods and seems to understand. I tell her Jack is messing up scenes because he can't seem to remember who he is. He was in the obnoxious jock role and yet there he was crying down by the fountain because all his pals were alienated from him.

I never saw Jack anywhere about the set after that.

Sometimes we talk about the life we had before. Some say they did something useful and the others will laugh her down and she won't be convinced by anyone that what she did might have been accomplished just as well without her. Besides, what is 'useful' outside has no real application on the set. Everything is of the same value in here. It's good when it's on tape and worthless otherwise.

Some fall in love, or seem to. But it's just too difficult to distinguish that from any other act which brings pleasure and perhaps prestige - along with a camguy. We all make gestures, after all, hoping (with a degree of avidity inversely proportional to the length of our time on set) to end up on tape for the day. We are, after all, under the illusion we are worth the tape and also there is the suspicion (unstated) that a certain time without tape means expulsion.

Some have been disappeared from Our Show. They broke a rule, like hitting the exit and wildly chasing off into the night, screaming. I don't know what happens to them then. Maybe they go back to doing something useful outside. We never see them again.

And whenever I complain to Alice about anyone, that one is gone immediately. Maybe there's a parallel set they are cast into. Maybe there are many parallel sets for any number of expulsions.

Some days I just don't feel like rising in the morning. And that's all right. Nobody seems to mind. Or even notice.

Houses Divided

There is a vast neighborhood welling up out of the foothills. It begins innocently enough; low wall the color of the sandstone and both growing with the hills. It's going to be something, all right.
It will be an insular city, like all of them which would select us over them. Only it will take up every buildable acre between the sheer wilderness canyons on either flank to where the mountain grows too serious for civilization.
A homeowners group has already formed. It was a bone tossed to the wretched poors. A full 10% of the townhouses shall be reserved for the working stiffs. As those are designated the first built out on the plains without a view, they are the units first completed.
Okay, says the HOA for the poors, we're ready to move in. Not so fast, says contractor Bilge Builders and financiers Acme Hushfund, for if the poors move in now, we won't be able to sell the upscale units higher up.
Too bad, say the poors. Give us the keys. Forget you, say Acme, come only when you're called.
Lawsuits brewing on the rocky plains. Lawyers gathering like gulls at the dump. An ex parte halts all building.
Everyone sits, or waits in the corridors of the courthouse. Out on the lonesome prairie, nothing moves. Each side blames the other. If we wait, our poor clients will never be able to moves in, for the project shall never be completed. If the lower sector be trashed, then the building shall end anyway, for who wanted to invest the amount necessary to return our investment on a slum?
The judge sought mediation, suggested arbitration, tried to force settlement. Nothing worked. First he would have to reconfigure human nature.
Out in the red sandy foothills, dust blows over walls unable to hold out the ravages of human nature.


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Stories in Dark Stone

The grounds around the school are oak-shaded and spare.  

The building is a simple boxy structure of five stories in dark stone with no pleasing aspect. Nor am I pleased to be heading into it.

I am not remembering which the class subject is. I do know I am not fit for it, or, as I prefer, it for me. I know it is something for which I cannot muster the slightest effort for learning, as that describes practically my entire school day.

My jeans are spotted. Something has marred the shins of my jeans. This is only another mark against me. I walk alone, marked as an outsider, without sufficient notice to graduate to full-on rebel.

Realization like an epiphany warms over me. Hey, I really don't need to do this. Always this is salvation for me, who am caught in a conveyer designed by and for strangers. For what's the point? Just to sit bored and embarrassed in order to vex a teacher and encourage classmates that at least they ain't dumb as me.

I don't have to enter that lifeless structure. There is another way. It's along the path around the monolith to the gate and escape. Why didn't I think of this before?

There are stoonts gathered by the front parking lot. I pass at a distance, but I need not worry about notice even were I to walk right through them.

A girl is dancing and chanting a skit.

I know how to groom
I learned it in home room
My heart is a cardigan
Woven on a loom!


My last decision on the campus is to never attend a reunion.

Yet the dark walls follow me.