Red is hot. She’s totally hot.

Dude, she could, like, sit next to me and hang out, maybe go surfing or to the skate park or shopping at the Natural Food store and everyone would look at us and say, “Whoa,” because we would look so awesomely perfect together.

This one time, these dudes were all, like, up in my face, totally resenting the fact that I was a way better surfer than they were. For some reason people seem to get all envious around me. So I was like,”Hey dudes, chill,” because really I’m all about harmony and peace. I’m a big fan of nature, too.

Anyway, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Red watching me. Totally checking me out. I could tell from the way she was blushing that she was totally impressed with my awesome freshness dealing with those dudes. Plus I’m pretty fertile. So when I strolled up to her and said “What’s up?” and she called me a stoner, I was like, that’s so uncool. But then I figured it was just because she was intimidated by my healing powers. And the fact that I’m, like, totally loaded.

She digs me, she just doesn’t know it, yet.

(Sound of bong water gurgling, followed by a long, satisfied exhalation).

Dude, what was I talking about?

It’s about suffering and redemption.
Infidelity and infertility.
Betrayal and heartbreak.

It’s about the choices people make when at their most vulnerable.
Their most courageous.
Their most inebriated.

But mostly, it’s about peanut butter.

The players are the usual suspects. The hero. The villain. The doting wife. The overbearing mother. The comic relief sidekick. And the lovable dog who inevitably gets hit by a car or otherwise injured and yet miraculously survives in the end.

Nothing changes. There’s no character arc. No one learns anything. They all exist in a cocoon of consumer excess and designer drugs and reality television. So don’t expect growth and revelations. These are, after all, mostly men.

So why would anyone care about what happens to these people? That’s simple…

Because of the peanut butter.

People are always asking me why I’m so angry.
Telling me to slow down.
Suggesting that I wear some sunscreen.

I’m not sunburned, bitch. This is my natural coloring.

You have no idea how many times some young punk has walked past me and coughed the word “Visine” into his hands. Or what it’s like to have to deal with the constant barrage of relationship-challenged men telling me I look hot.

What I want is for people to just shut the hell up and stop projecting their perceptions of what they think I represent on to me.

Passion.
Embarrassment.
Anger.

They don’t understand what it’s like to go through life with these expectations to live up to, always being associated with some manufactured image of love or power or sex.

Roses.
Ties.
Lipstick.

And then there’s Green who is always hitting on me. Says we belong together. That we “complement” each other. Like peanut butter and chocolate.

Stoner.

The reason for the apology? This blog is a re-post from May 2008. So yes, I’m recycling. But at least I’m admitting it. I’m up front about what I’m doing. Plus, I’ve got a perfectly good excuse for re-posting this a year and a half later.

As an exercise, I’m going to do a series of these flash fiction posts as different colors, just for fun and to give me something to do that’s a little creative. I’ve already written the next one, but since it’s from the color Red, I thought it relevant to post this one as the first in the series and then go from there.

So, without further adieu, the color Yellow…

People are always asking me what it’s like to look like urine.

These are the people who laugh at me. Who walk away snickering and high-fiving each other and thinking they’re all that.

Men usually.
Teenage boys.
Fraternity members.

Assholes.

Women, on the other hand, are more likely to ask me how they look in me. Personally, I wish they’d ask the question in reverse but for some reason, most women tend to think I’m gay. Maybe not as many who think the same thing about Pink, but then that’s kind of a no-brainer. He’s Pink, for Christ’s sake.

Then, of course, there’s Red, Pink’s cousin, who most women find totally hot. Fucker. He’s all show and no substance. But it’s kind of hard to compete with Red when your complementary color is Purple.

Edgar Allan Poe

To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe, I thought it appropriate to share the following abridged retelling of his poem, “The Raven,” which I originally penned for a friend on the occasion of his 40th birthday.

The friend, like many others at the end of their fourth decade of existence, was dreading turning the big 4-0.

It seems doubly fitting considering Poe died at the same age…

Ode to Poe: The Raven Reprised
Once upon a birthday dreary, as I pondered, weak and weary,
Over thirty nine years of curious memories I’d forgotten long before.
Feeling spent, I started napping, when there came a subtle tapping,
The sound of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
‘Tis some solicitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember how I once was young and limber,
And my hard, athletic body made women’s jaws drop to the floor.
Drowsily I wished for slumber, for an age of lesser number,
To remove, to unencumber, what the years had brought before.
To fit into the button fly blue jeans which I often wore
In mothballs now, for evermore.

Presently my sleep grew troubled, so out of bed I on-the-doubled,
And pulled a muscle in my back that I had injured years before.
With Icy Hot I started wrapping, but still there came a gentle tapping,
The sound of an insistent tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
“All right, all right,” I mumbled softly and opened wide the door;
Darkness there, and nothing more.

For a moment I stood fearing, that age had finally claimed my hearing,
When in there stepped a stately raven, uninvited, through my door.
Not the least respect he paid me; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But like an old, incontinent lady, shat upon my hardwood floor –
Then perched upon a lamp from Macy’s just inside my chamber door –
Shat, and sat, and nothing more.

While this brazen bird sat mocking, I, mouth open, stood there gawking
Until I found my voice and questioned what the bird had come here for.
“With thy crest so shorn and shaven, why choose here to take up haven
Ghastly grim and ancient raven who tapped upon my chamber door?
Tell me why your black butt wandered in and shat upon my floor.”
Quoth the raven “Nevermore.”

How I marveled this ungainly, ill-mannered fowl had spoken plainly
Though its answer seemed bizarre and enigmatic to its core;
Not another word he uttered; not a single feather fluttered–
So with aching back I muttered and cleaned the bird shit off the floor:
“Stupid raven, quit the stained glass lamp inside my chamber door.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

Ignoring his reply so spoken, as I wiped up the bird’s fresh token
I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the shiny hardwood floor.
My waistline had become my master, and my hair was a disaster
Thinning fast and thinning faster until it covered less than more.
Till I wondered if I’d even look appealing to a whore.
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, sitting lonely on the stained glass lamp spoke only
That single word and shat again upon my pristine hardwood floor.
“Asshole,” said I, patience shrinking, back and neck tight and kinking
And I betook myself to thinking what this stupid bird of yore –
What this rude, obnoxious, one-note, defecating bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but my mind it kept digressing
To thoughts of Rogaine and Viagra, to how my youth I could restore.
This and more I sat divining, the fantasy I kept refining
Until I once more started pining for the years that came before
For the thirty-nine years of youth and vigor I had known before
Years recaptured, nevermore!

Then, it seemed, the air grew thicker, and my breath a little quicker,
As perception dawned like sunlight on a shadowed, misty shore.
“Wretch!” I cried, “Oh beast of treason, cursed bird I know the reason
Why you’ve shown up at this season — to mock the past that I adore.
Please grant respite, and diversion, from what forty has in store.”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

“Villain!” said I, “dark intruder.” Then I called him something cruder.
“Have you no compassion for the life that I once knew before?
Youth and muscles once I flaunted, now by excess years are taunted
And my face by wrinkles haunted — tell me truly, I implore –
Is there — is there life past forty? — tell me — tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

On the lamp the bird did linger, so I, with grace, gave him the finger
And called him vulgar names that would shame my mother to the core
“Tell this soul with sex drive waning and with old age quickly gaining
Is there nothing else remaining? Is this to be the final score?
Will I have another chance to once more spread my wings and soar?”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, stupid bird!” I yelled, upstarting –
“Get the hell out of my house and speak to me of this no more.
Leave no black plume as a token of the gloom thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my vanity unbroken! — quit the lamp inside my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy black butt out my door!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the stained glass lamp from Macy’s just inside my chamber door.
And he quotes with constant nagging to remind me how I’m flagging,
How my flabby ass is sagging almost to the hardwood floor.
To remind me how my waistline and the hair that I adore
Shall see my thirties — nevermore!

Okay. So it’s not Eddie Murphy. But he looks enough like him to pass for the real thing. I quit smoking two years ago and stopped carrying a lighter a year after that. You never really quit smoking until you give up the lighter. So I can’t oblige Miss Eddie, who saunters away looking for someone else to hit on.

Did I say I was in the Warfield Theater? My mistake. I’m at SFO, Gate 33, waiting to board United Flight 4117 to Boston. And Bon Jovi’s not about to take the stage, though several of his songs are on my iPod, so I’m sure he’ll show up sooner or later.

Did I mention I’m a professional liar?

Prevaricator, actually. Professional prevaricator. I get paid to tell lies. To husbands. Wives. Children. Accountants. Nannys. Athletes. Doesn’t matter. I’ve lied to them all. Well, most of them. I still can’t lie to my urologist.

Eddie Murphy in drag? That was the truth. Dead ringer. But he didn’t ask me for a light. He didn’t even walk past me. He’s sitting across from me, applying another coat of lipstick. It looks like bubble gum.

And I never smoked cigarettes. Or owned a lighter.

So here’s the ending I wrote for my beginning:

By the time the fire department and the paramedics show up, the nurse is dead, my third Thursday three o’clock is unconscious on the floor in a pool of sculpting gel, the leprechaun has stopped breathing, shoved halfway into the mouth of his sousaphone, and the gerbil has escaped with my virginity and the contents of the cash register.

I always was a sucker for rodents with a French accent.

a setting, an object, a profession, an animal, and a mythical creature.

 For this exercise, those elements turned out to be:

a hair salon, a sousaphone, a nurse, a gerbil, and a leprechaun.

Below is what I came up with:

One day at the hair salon, I’m giving a simple cut and wash to my third Thursday three o’clock, when in walks a leprechaun with a sousaphone.

“Mind if I play?” says the leprechaun.

I look at the leprechaun, all three feet of him, staring up at me over the lip of the tuba, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a bad idea to say “no.”

“Sure, whatever,” I say, figuring it’s better to be safe than sorry.

The woman in the chair, my third Thursday three o’clock, looks at me in the mirror and says, “That’s strange.”

I figure she’s talking about the leprechaun, who’s standing by the hair driers playing the opening notes of “The Girl From Ipanema,” when in walks a nurse with a gerbil on a leash.

And I’m thinking that this looks like trouble.