A Wildly Unsuccessful Playwright.

I am slowly and painfully editing my way through the rather uneven novel I wrote last year and below is a section that I think is kind of interesting. All you really need to know here is that Viv is a wildly unsuccessful playwright and that she’s having a bad day.

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Viv's Ten Second One-Act.

Viv's Ten Second One-Act
by james bezerra

The story Viv is telling me started out as a story about a play that she’d written:

I wrote a play once about these people who only felt things for ten seconds. They could only feel their own feelings for ten seconds and then the feelings went away. They could still remember that they had felt them, but they couldn’t really feel them anymore, you know? Well it was just a one-act play, one little set that was just supposed to be a living room and the characters were a family, a husband and a wife and a teenage son and a little daughter. The play was about how great and how terrible it would be if you only felt things for ten seconds at a time. At the beginning of the play the FATHER comes home and he’s holding a dead cat and he says, Everyone I just ran over our cat and I feel terrible about it.

And the DAUGHTER says, Oh no my cat Schrodinger is dead and my father killed him! I hate my father! I hate him!

The FATHER says, I am so ashamed and I feel so guilty.

The DAUGHTER takes the body of the cat and starts to cry with it on the floor.

Then the MOTHER comes in and she says, What is going on in here?! Why is my daughter sobbing on the floor with her cat, which is dead?

But the FATHER, his ten seconds are up and he doesn’t feel bad anymore.

The FATHER says, I ran over the cat with my car just now.

The MOTHER is angry and pounds on his chest: Why? Why? did you run over that cat? You know it is the only thing that makes her happy!

But now the DAUGHTER’s ten seconds are up. The DAUGHTER says: I did love my cat but he is dead now and there is nothing that anyone can do about it. I will go back to watching TV.

Then the SON comes downstairs: Why is everyone being so loud down here? Can’t a teenage boy quietly masterbate in his room in peace?

The MOTHER screams: Your father killed the cat!

FATHER: That is a true statement; I did.

The SON is upset now: But I loved that cat! Why are you trying to hurt me?!

The MOTHER, her ten seconds are up now: Do not yell at your father. It was clearly an accident.

FATHER: Yes, you are not allowed to yell at me and must be punished. Go get a switch from the willow tree.

SON: I hate you!

The FATHER and MOTHER and DAUGHTER all sit on the couch watching TV and with the dead cat still on the floor.

The SON returns with a switch but his ten seconds are up now too: Here father, I have brought a switch so that you can punish me appropriately.

The SON pulls his pants down and bends down to stick his ass in the air and the FATHER begins to beat him with it.

The FATHER actually hates doing this and starts to cry and so does the SON because his ass is flaming red now.

Then the doorbell rings and the MAIL MAN is standing there: I brought your mail because that is my job.

The MOTHER rushes to the door, she is blushing and it is obvious that she has been having an affair with the MAIL MAN. The MOTHER is overwhelmed with lust and kisses the MAIL MAN and he starts groping her in the doorway.

By now the SON has stopped crying and pulled his pants up.

The FATHER drops the switch and rushes to the doorway: Hold on there now, that is my wife and you can’t touch her like that!

MAIL MAN: Yes but I love her and I hate you!

The MOTHER: It is true, we are in love with each other and you never understood me!

The HUSBAND is so angry that he punches the MAIL MAN in the face, but the MAIL MAN’s ten seconds are up and so he just cups his nose, which is bleeding.

The MAIL MAN says: You had every right to do that and I apologize for being inappropriate. Here, please take your mail. There are some bills in there.

The MOTHER’s time is up too and she buttons her blouse and says: Yes, I was wrong to fall in love with him.

But the FATHER is still fuming and says: I hate that in a few seconds I won’t be angry anymore!

But then the FATHER’s ten seconds are up and he glances down at the mail and says: The electric bill has come.

And that’s when the lights fade to black.  

Viv and I just keep on walking for awhile until she says, “I guess it’s all in the delivery, but I think that it is supposed to be about how the stuff that makes life unbearable might actually be the stuff that makes it worth living. I don’t know. I think that’s what it was about.”

We walk some more.

I don’t know what to say, so I just say, “I would have gone to see that play.”

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Pictures.

Much like everyone else with an iPhone I consider myself to be the greatest photographer who has ever lived. I’ve become a SUPER WHORE about the picture taking (I’m jjbezerra on Instagram!) and here below are some of my favorite pictures from the past several months. I’m too lazy to upload these in any particular order, so think of this like a grab bag of fun! (I know how much you like grab bags of fun*)

* “Grab bag of fun” is not a euphemism for anything**

** Not in this context anyway.

This is the classroom where I actually sort of try to teach stuff to people.

This is a picture of those things.

Marcel Duchamp is proud of this picture.

Popcorn. I will do terrible things for good popcorn.

This is a picture of this.

A distant snowy fort.

A rare picture of your humble author.

Just a pretty little stone church.

The public library in New Milford CT.

This is what the North Pole probably looks like.

Manhattan stairwell.

Looking west along East 118th Street 

If you are looking at this building, then you are standing outside my brother's apartment.

This is what a building looks like when it looms.

An accidental photo of my wet shoes.

Inside a NYC cab in the rain.

My ride.

Bringing sexy back? Sadly, no, but not for lack of trying.

This is what an unpublished novel looks like.

They made a lame documentary out of a superb book. Sad face. 

What it looks like when I drive home.

A heart of stone.

What the morning looks like in my kitchen

 Charging my phone while taking a picture of my phone charger.

What Utah looks like if you're six miles up and color blind.

Stigmata Barbie

The best bed sheets ever.

"Hey, everybody come see how good I look!"

Having beers with some of my brothers. 

Waking up in someone else's bed.

"Hi, I'm the Chrysler Building. Be cool about it."

Someone spilled wine on my sketch of the perfect outfit, making it slightly more perfect. 

I have a ton more pictures, but I'm too lazy to load them right now. #justbeinghonest

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Kafka Can’t Cross a Street.

Kafka Can’t Cross a Street

by james bezerra

One night

Bukowski visits me,

dead more

than twenty years now

he looks

the same, since he always looked

mostly dead

anyhow, except for his liver which

always appeared

to be a throbbing stone.

Perched at the corner of

my mattress,

shoulders slumped like

Rodin’s sketchbook,

he’s a patient Jacob Marley smoking

the cigarettes

I hide from myself in a kitchen cup and

he’s ashing

into my carpet.

“We fuckers are all beatified now,”

he growls,

looking at me across his sharp

shoulder blade,

“You know how many movies they’ve made

about Ginsberg?

We’re all whores, to be sure

but death

is humiliating enough without getting

screenwriters involved.”

Ash. Puff. Ash. Puff.

Ash. Puff.

“They teach McCullers in classrooms now

class rooms!

She tabledanced with Marilyn Monroe and

lived with

Gypsy Rose Lee and

she’d be

mortified if she found out.

Kafka can’t

cross a street without signing

an autograph.

Poor bitch so shy he couldn’t drop

his trousers

on a nudist beach.

They make us into idols so they can

forget us.

Kerouac is chained to the radiator at a

book group

right now. You wanta go bust him out?”

Instead we drink whiskey from

coffee mugs

until the dawn breaks and his

cock crows

and he fades away so slowly

leaving nothing

but stubbed out butts and a hole

of smoke.

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So, I Wrote This Thing. Whatever.

Below is a little thing. It is not much of a story. Sometimes one just needs to write to write. They can’t all be winners folks! But you already knew that if you’re at all familiar with this blog.

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Dutch Apple Pie.

Dutch Apple Pie

by james bezerra

There was a ghost waiting at the bus stop and I just can’t pass up that sort of thing. I didn’t need to ride the bus anywhere but I sat down on the bench just next to her and cleared my throat and said:

- Excuse me but did you know that you are glowing?

- Oh yes, quite sadly I do.

- Might I ask then how did you come to this ghostly state?

- Oh I’m not a ghost. A ghost is a lost soul. I’m on my way to get my soul. I just hope the bus isn’t late.

- Your soul won’t wait?

- Oh no, they’re flighty things. Like frightened birds.

- Where is your soul?

- With my body, still, I hope.

- And where might that be?

- Oh, they buried me today.

Just then the bus arrived, and though I don’t need to go anywhere, I also had nothing better to do. I located some bills in my wallet and boarded behind the ghost/not-ghost. Obviously she paid a discounted fare.

- If you don’t mind me asking, how did you die?

- Baking. Right there in the kitchen, I had a massive brain aneurysm. My pies burned too.

- That’s terrible.

- It is. Dutch apple I was making. I had vanilla ice cream waiting in the fridge. Got to put it in the fridge first to soften it up because my wrists can’t scoop it frozen anymore.

- I like it a little melty too.

- That really is the best way. Now would you pull the cord?

I pulled the cord and we disembarked at the dark and hazy cemetery. Her glow threw enough light for us to see by.

- I think this is me. Yep. Here I am. Gosh that’s a pretty stone they got me.

- Your family?

- Two sons, adopted. I couldn’t have them myself, we tried all the things, but my body just wouldn’t. At a certain point you have to give up on making your own tragedies. So that’s how I got my two boys. Only one was here today though.

- It is very pretty. I’m sure he wished he could be here.

- I know he did. Now let’s find a good hiding spot.

For an older lady she hunkered down quite spryly behind a large headstone nearby. I laid on the wet grass behind a smaller stone and we talked in hushed tones while she assembled a butterfly net from pieces in her purse.

- What is it like to be dead?

- Well, it comes as quite a shock. The death part comes quite quick though. It makes me so glad I didn’t have a drawn-out death. The act of dying is the tail end of living, you see. That’s worse than being dead. Makes me think of my poor Robert, it took him years to go, but then he always was a touch lazy. I will say, I do like not having a body anymore, mine was worn out like old socks.

- You don’t miss your body but you need your soul?

- Well heavens boy, you try living without a soul! I can’t tell which way is up. I’m half tempted to run for Congress or some such thing.

With her net assembled, we waited. I offered her my coat to help hide her glowing and she draped it over herself thoughtfully and efficiently, like her own snug ghillie suit. We waited and waited. It grew cold enough that I started to miss my coat.

- Here we go now, get ready.

- What? That green light?

- Sshh! Your voice. Yes, see how it’s coming out of my plot there? That’s the soul waking up. Death is much harder on the soul and it takes a few days.

The green haze around her headstone began to take some shape and narrow down into something of a beam coming out of the recently placed sod. Then within the beam there was something else. A trail of little lights began to ride up the beam and swirl around. They looked to me, as I peeked around my headstone, to be tiny trained insects performing some choreographed dance in the air. It was a frantic green ballet. They began to swoop and swirl around each other until there were enough of them that they began to follow one another and then they were spinning in the air like a double helix twisting and and then the little insects began to form together into the simplest impression of a vaguely human form. Small and helpless in the way a fat baby is small and helpless, and all the while floating in the air above the grave. The bugs went through several incarnations, from fat baby to little girl to big girl to young woman to woman then to a form I distinctly recognized as a mother, though I can’t explain how I knew that in that moment. Each form melted away as the bugs zipped apart and then back together.

- It is trying to remember ... Now get ready …

The insects began to swirl into a sort of ball which continued to float and rotate there above the grave. They seemed to like this shape and became less restless.

- Now!

She shed my coat like a second skin and then she was running toward it with the net above her head. Having no net or any sort of an idea what I was doing, just just ran behind her. With a swift swoop she netted the glowing green ball. She was quick to twist the with her hand to prevent the ball from escaping. It jittered with life and tried to fly up and away, but it was too solid now to escape through the net. I knelt down beside her and we waited for the ball to calm down.

- Poor thing doesn’t know anything about the world.

- You’re very good with that net.

- One can learn to be good at anything if one needs it badly enough. Now hold right here, I’m going to fish it out.

And so she did, while I held the net she reached carefully down into it and withdrew the glowing globe, which was placid enough now that she could hold it with both hands. I went and retrieved her purse and gently she placed the ball inside. We walked back to the bus stop.

- I can not thank you enough for your help.

- No thanks are necessary, but you are of course very welcome.

- I can walk from here. I don’t have far to go now. Do you have correct change for the fare?

- I do.

- Well best of luck to you then. Be safe.

- You as well.

As I waited for the night owl bus, I watched her go off down the block. When her shape was too far away to see anymore, I could still make out her glow, but then the bus approached out of the long darkness and its white yellow lights washed her out. I boarded and moved to the back to look out the window, but by then even her glow was gone.

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