ACTION

REVISITING THE B TEAM

I used to have this group of people on the Bend site called the B Team. Writers. One of them was, Megan Baltimore... an old friend, my boss and a very talented scribbler of words. Someone reminded me about the B Team work I had up on the old Bend Interweb Machine and I wanted to share them again. So here you go, Megan Baltimore...

COULD THIS BE POSSIBLE?

JUST ONCE

"Take a seat," the man said without looking up.

'Why take a seat? Does he really want me to take it. Where would I take it?'

"Please... sit."

'Whoa. Did he read my mind?' As Archie began to sit, he became self-conscious. He refocused, but only to begin concerning himself about how he sat and how he was being observed as a sitter. He crossed his legs just so, but he wasn't quite sure what to do with his hands. Whenever he placed them on his thighs his thumb would eventually begin to feel as though they it were on the opposite side of his hand. That freaked him out, reminded him of school. Sitting at his desk in class, he would sometimes get the sensation that everything around him was growing. Just a little. By, maybe, 120%…  The people got bigger, the walls would expand, his desk grew. He would close his eyes in an effort to avoid the sensation, but even then, a smokey image of the things around him still felt bigger. 

Eventually he rested his left arm on the chair and put his right hand up to his beard. He stroked it. This looks stupid, he thought and quickly dropped his hand into his lap.

"So." Pause. "What brings you here today, Mr., ah…" flipping through papers clamped in a clip board. "Knowles. I noticed a few blanks in the paperwork. Do you mind if we fill them out now?"

"Sure." Had he forgotten to add some trivial insurance information? The number of his emergency contact, maybe?

"Sure, you mind? Or sure let's get them answered?"

That was dickish. "I'll answer them."

"Good, good. Let's see…" more flipping through papers in his clip board. "It seems you forgot to list your birth date here."

Relief. Was that it? "12/10/73."

Scribble, scribble. "And here you didn't list anything on your history of illegal substance use," he said without looking up, his glasses resting on his forehead as he combed the paperwork.

Archie squirmed. He thought they would breeze right over that one. Should he tell the truth with the possibility of being turned away? Or should he lie and hope to not be caught up in it later?

"I'm not here to judge."

"Well, it's not like I've ever abused drugs."

"Like I said, I'm not here to judge."

How honest should he be here? Maybe total honesty wouldn't bode well in this instance. 'He'll judge me,' Archie thought. 'He says he won't, but he will. He'll think I was an idiot for climbing that lightpole in Dallas, or driving around in slow motion freaking out on everything in that strange, ghostly city — all while buzzing on mescaline. But only once. I only did it once.' Archie decided to start with something less… illegal.

"Well, ah, I smoked pot once." A few hundred times. Does he tell him about the first time, when he'd also been drinking? Does he tell him how he pissed his pants in the grocery store that night after kicking a loaf of bread down the aisles?

Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, "And I did acid once." Just once. At home. Alone. Powered by the tab, he figured out the hidden meaning of Captain Beefheart's, Trout Mask Replica CD and sat in front of an open refrigerator touching tomatoes.

"Continue."

"Ecstasy. Once." Only once. On his birthday at a Skinny Puppy show. That had been a fucking weird, shaky trip. He remembered the singer being pushed out on stage in a mucus and gore-covered rubber bubble which he eventually tore himself out of. Or had he? Details remain sketchy.

"Oh, and mushrooms, I did those tw…once — as well. Just once." Both times in the desert at Joshua Tree with a group of friends. On one trip they had laid on the piles of giant rocks, laughing, teary-eyed, until a ranger showed up and let them know they couldn't camp in that specific area. The crew piled into Paul's SUV and drove off. Archie was convinced they were going to be stopped by the authorities, so he had Paul pull over dispose of the evidence by throwing the bag of mushrooms as far as he could into the night. It glided about 6 feet, falling just inside a barbed-wire fence.

"So let's review; marijuana, acid, ecstasy and mushrooms," the man pauses and looks up at Archie over his glasses.

Pause. "Oh, and mescaline." Archie's thumbs were beginning to change sides.

"Just once, I'm guessing," he asks as he scribbles.

"Yes."

"Does that about cover it?"

"Yes. I believe so."

"You believe so, or you know so?"

He shifted butt cheeks on the chair. "Know so. I know so."


Bender. Originally published in issue #33 of Monster Children.

I'VE BEEN LYING TO MY PSYCHIATRIST

Her building is pretty non-discrete and sits amongst a crowd of hospital structures. She works in an office on the 2nd floor. And she has a view, which is nice. I often find myself looking out the window as she scribbles notes.

When I walk into the lobby, the fist thing I have to do is announce myself by writing my name onto a waiting list and pressing a button on the wall which let's her know her next appointment is in. Then, I grab a clip-board with a standard questionnaire attached to it. I have to rate, one through five, a plethora of personal questions. Well, they aren't even questions, they're just words:

Depression  1  2  3  4  5
Stress 1 2 3 4 5
Anxiety  1  2  3  4  5
Sleep 1 2 3 4 5
Restless Leg Syndrome  1  2  3  4  5
Diarrhea 1 2 3 4 5

Etc.

I finish it and wait. I get a glimpse of the other folks waiting. None of them seem outwardly depressed. Do I? I look through the magazines. Even ones I would never otherwise open. I Instagram one of the empty chairs.

There is an elderly couple beside me and they are talking very loudly about nothing in particular. The woman gets up to check on their appointment time. She farts rather loudly. Everyone pretends not to notice.

"Andy." It's her. She comes to the door herself to call her patients.

I get up and walk past her towards her office. She is tiny. I'm 6' 2". It always feels weird walking in front of her. My pants sag. In her room a beaten down cream-colored couch awaits. I hand her my questionnaire and sit.

Her: "How have you been doing since we last met?"

Me: "Good, good." Half truth. You know how it is. Pat answer. It's the same response we all give random someones when they ask "How are you, man?" Good just comes out of our mouths.

Her: "That's great to hear. How's your anxiety been?"

Me: "Not bad." Again, half truth. For instance, right now, as I write this, I'm sitting in a chair, drinking coffee, tensing and un-tensing (is that even a word?) my legs, scratching my head and worrying wether or not this piece of writing is going to be worth a shit. At times I will get up and walk around my office. Just pace. Look out my door to see if anyone is noticing. I also have this habit of gnashing my teeth to the beat of whatever music is on. Right now it happens to be Ornette Coleman. I scratch my nose a lot.

Her: "When you say 'not bad' do you mean better than the last time you were here?"

"Uhm, well, I'm not sure." True.

"Think about it a minute."

Silence while I think. I look around her office. A fan, a tiny refrigerator (what does she keep in there? Her lunch? What does she eat? Drink?), a shelf filled with self-help books and covered in pharmaceutical flyers. The meds. Sales folks give those flyers to the doctors. I think about the sales people and the meds they pedal. "Worse. I think."

Her: "Do you think it's the fact that we reduced the (insert drug name here)?"

How the fuck should I know? "Ah, maybe. Sure, I think so."

She scratches on her note pad. I notice my file has gotten thicker and thicker. Have I been coming here for that long? Holy shit, I must really have a problem(s). "Well, let's up the (insert drug name here). What do you think?"

She's asking me what I think about meds? "I have no idea," I tell her. True.

"How's your exercising going? I see here you've lost 10 pounds."

"Pretty good. I walk the dog every day." Lie.

"How long are your walks?"

"30 to 35 minutes." Lie.

"Can you up that to 45 minutes?"

"Yeah, I think so." No. I love my dog, but 45 minutes a night?

I can't help but wonder what she's thinking, if anything at all. How many patients must she have? Is she curious why my t-shirt says "Listen to Gwar" on it? Does she ever wonder about me, or is she thinking about her next break when she can rummage through her tiny fridge for a yogurt? Wait, she doesn't like milk-based products.

Her: "How about diet? Are you eating the things we talked about?"

Of course not. "Ah, I've been trying. But I slip and have a burger on occasion."

"OK. But have you thought about erasing the carbs? Can you have the burger without the bread? Maybe just wrap it with lettuce…"

"Hmmm." That's dumb. If I have a burger, it has to have bread. I want to tell her about all the things my mom fed us growing up. Our closest thing to green food was Iceberg lettuce. But there's not time to look backwards here — that's for therapy. Which reminds me, I should set up an appointment.

The questions come rapid fire.

Her: "Hobbies?"

Me: "Does writing count?"

"Sure. Are you a writer?"

"Uh… I write things down." Does that count?

"How do you feel from a 1 to 10? 10 being great."

"You mean right now? Or yesterday? Or an hour ago?"

"Let's say, right now."

I hesitate. "Uh, a 7 and a half?" But I know I'll be at least an 8 after I leave her office. "Do you ever have anyone say 10?" I ask.

She scribbles a bit, "No." Hands me a prescription, "OK then. I'll see you again in 6 weeks."

Cool. That's about when my next Bender is due.


Bender. Originally published in issue #41 of Monster Children. 2013.

TIP JAR

I walk this way to lunch a couple times a week. The restaurant is about 200 yards away, a straight shot down a lonely sidewalk. On this particular day I saw a figure ahead. In front of Monk’s. I knew, right away this was going to be interesting. It was just a feeling I had… no other reason, really.

As I approached, I got a look at her. An overweight woman in a pink nightgown and slippers moving around erratically just outside the door. Her dirty, curly blond hair in tangles and falling over her haggard face like wild vines. I walked past her and into the side door. She followed me in. It was really busy inside. Busier than I’d ever seen it. I stood in line to make my order.

She wandered around in front of the register for a while before she started talking.

She leaned in over the counter. “Someone back there get me a salad.”

The register girl piped up, “Ma’am, you’ll have to stand in line like everyone else.”

“I want a salad. Hey you! Get me a salad!” Her nightgown was sleeveless and you could see her blubbery arms shaking at the line cook. Her pale face was half covered in bright pink melanoma’s and twisted up in a sort of confused expression.

Everyone in the place ignored her. Make no eye contact. You could feel the tension building.

“Get me a Pepsi too.” She took a seat on one of the stools near the counter. And that’s when I made the mistake of looking at her. She looked back. Damn it.

She began to walk over. I thought she was going to ask for money.

She didn’t ask for money. “I don’t like you,” she told me right to my face.

“OK.”

She kept staring at me, then turned around and went back to the stool.

I placed my order. I gave the woman taking my money a little lifted eyebrows look. She gave me an Oh Well shrug. I moved back and waited for my order to come up. She came at me again.

“I don’t like you.”

This time I just stared into her eyes. I wasn’t sure why, maybe I was hoping to intimidate her. She stared back, but here eyes were vacant, there was nothing there behind the angry face. My only thought was, 'Just don’t touch me.' I looked around and everyone was ignoring the situation.

"I could kill you, mother fucker! You're an immoral person and you don't go to church or pray! I don't like you." She then turned towards the counter, “Can you call the police on this man!?" she yelled while approaching the register.

Suddenly, with a fumbling, awkward move, she grabbed the tip jar with one hand and turned quickly towards the door. As she snatched it, change went flying around the room and onto the people and floor. One man grabbed at her arm and even more change exited the container, but she held on.

When she reached the door, about 10 feet away, she pushed the handle, slammed face-first into the glass and fell backwards, even more money scattering onto the floor. The woman landed on her back but managed to stagger up quickly and towards the door again. This time she pulled and ran. Well, it was more like a shuffling limp at this point.

Everyone watched the pink woman stumble down the sidewalk to a bus bench across the street where she sat down and started counting the remainder of the change.

Inside Monk’s it was silent and still for a few seconds. People just sort of looked around at each other with varying expressions. Some almost laughing, some stunned, some sad. Then a couple of people started collecting the change and putting it back on the counter. And everything just went back to normal.

“You sure know how to attract ‘em, Jenkins!” My co-worker, Mark, was in the line behind me — I hadn’t even noticed.

“Ah, yeah,” I answered.


Bender. Originally published in issue #45 of Monster Children. 2014.
Illustration by Travis Millard.

DECEMBER 10TH, 1986

The day at work was typical, although I knew something birthday-like would go down — it always did. When would it happen? How? It was after lunch when I realized no one had sung the traditional song yet, or brought up the subject at all (they were building up for the big one, I thought). I hate that feeling. The waiting. Pretending you forgot it was your birthday so you can act “surprised” when someone tells you. Blah.

Anyway, it was after lunch when she came into my office kinda nervous and excited saying, “You’ve got to go up into the front office!” I did what I could to act unknowing, like, “For what?” I asked. Smart, eh? She replied, “Just do it. Go now!”

So I did. I strolled off thinking, all right, all right, no big deal, I’ll just act surprised… in reaching for the door knob my anticipation peaked. And on opening the door my heart sank and my throat swelled. I froze momentarily, staring. I was taken back by the unexpected; a very small man stood in front of the receptionist’s desk. He was barely taller than the desktop. He’d come to pick up something and courier it away. He’d come to do his job. His JOB.I tried not to look at him and gazed around as if searching for someone. My mind was racing. He knew what was going on, I thought. He’d faced it all his life — the stares, comments, snickering, jokes, pokes. And here I stood, just another faceless observer. A fool. Yet, I’d like to think that under “normal” circumstances I would have reacted differently. Maybe with some tact.

Bullshit. I was thrown headlong into a situation I was unprepared for. I went back to my office, stunned and mad and there she was, waiting for me to say, “Man, that guy was small! Can you believe that?” Instead I tried to ignore her.

“Isn’t it sad? God…” she said. I looked at her drooping eyes, her viewpoint, and thought yeah, how sad.

Later that day, the cake had no taste. Happy Birthday.


I wrote that a couple days after it happened, 28 years ago. I was 23, so the writing is a little, "young." Strange day.

NUN-CHUCK JIMMY

Jimmy wasn't too sharp. He once knocked himself out in the parking lot of the restaurant where we both worked. We'd just gotten off when he pulled out a set of nun-chucks and started them up as if he knew what he was doing. Almost instantly he was out cold on the ground. Wooden club to the face.

The manager had sent him home one afternoon to shave his stubbly face. He came back an hour later with bloody dabs of kleenex all over his beard line. It was as though he'd never shaved before. The manager sent him back home.

But for all his density, he was one cocky son-of-a-bitch who could stand up for himself… when he wasn't on the ground out cold. He once served a drive-thru customer who had crossed him, with a frozen patty in his burger. When the guy came into the restaurant threateningly, Jimmy just stood behind the counter taunting him with a hot, greasy spatula.

Every night after closing, one employee would stay on a late shift and deep clean the restaurant. Everything from vacuuming the dining room to scrubbing the frying vats and flushing the ice-cream machine. Jimmy was a regular closer.

One night William and I hid in the cubby space above the walk-in freezers and waited. From up there we had access to most of the one-level building. It was simply a matter of peeling up the false ceiling. At about midnight we started our assault.

Picking up the ceiling tile in the men's bathroom, we lowered a broom down and hit the knob on the hand-dryer. By the time he came over to investigate, the WHOOSHing of the dryer had stopped. After he left, we hit it again.

From above the salad bar island we, again, pulled up a tile to shake the line of beads that hung over it.

We dropped ketchup packets onto the floor he'd just mopped.

Eventually, he started yelling as he stalked the restaurant, asking, "WHO'S THERE! MOTHER FUCKER, SHOW YOURSELF! COME ON!"

Before we could come down from the cubby, he charged up there, adrenaline flowing and a large knife in his hand. We tried to stop him, but in the darkness, he stabbed down onto my accomplice's hand. The blade went through the boney appendage and into the wooden floor. When he realized who we were and what he'd just done, he backed up, jumped down to the restaurant floor and stomped out the back door into the night. We never heard from him again. William never came back either.

Soon after that, I quit and went to art school.


Bender. Originally published in issue #42 of Monster Children. 2014.
Illustration by Travis Millard.

WANDERING

Does the dog need to go out?
Is the back door open for him?
What about that strange old man we saw this morning?
He could just wander in.
Would he come in and get close enough that we could smell him?
He's wearing all dark clothes, greasy with dirt, spit and living. He would speak to me a few inches from my face, his breath destroying the oxygen between us.
But I wouldn't be thinking about his smell if he were threatening me with an ice pick. Holding it directly over my heart inbetween two ribs.
Would I say out loud that I don't want to die like this? I don't really mind dying, just not like this.
And why at ice pick? Icepicks aren't common at all. How do you sharpen one? With a rough, rusty file.
How would that damage your organs? A deep, tiny hole? Is it worse than a knife wound?

Wait... how the fuck did I get here?

Oh yeah, the back door.
Does the dog need to go out?

WHORE

I look at the clock (actually, I look at my phone. Who has a clock anymore?) it's 2:30pm. Christ. I still have two and a half hours to go. I have enough work to tide me over until 5, but the motivation isn't there. Only yawns. I stretch and look around my office for some sort of message. None. I get up and go for a cup of coffee. Black.

3:04. Holy crap, the day has just stalled out.

4:15. Ugh.

4:46. I can do this.

5. I'm out.

I make a quick stop to pick up my dog from the kennel and he settles into the back seat.

Merging onto the freeway is always an anxious moment. Cars in front of me are always merging too slow and the cars already on the freeway fly by. I have to blink and either barge or be barged on.

Today the traffic is almost stopped. I slip in behind a giant container truck and wait with all the others. This goes on for some time.

Finally things start to move and cars go into a frenzy. Which lane i faster? Is that bus holding things up? I better switch over to the left. Maybe the right. Why is that guy still moving so slow?

Finally, I exit the freeway and am trapped behind an over-loaded pick-up truck, tools and junk hanging off like hair. About two blocks from my house we I stop at a 4-way. The truck in front of me, painfully slow — that's the last straw. I snap and pull around him quickly. I forget to stop at the sign. The oncoming car  starts turning in front of me and we both hit our brakes. There is now about 10 feet from my face to his between our open windows. I look at him and he is in a full rage, his face all twisted up and red. He is ugly with anger. We both speak at the same time…

I start, "I'm sorry man, I made a mis..."

He yells — much louder than I expected, "YOU WHORE! I'll kill you and your dog!"

What? Did he just say that? No… he couldn't have. He wants to kill me — and my dog? For cutting him off? He must have said, I could have killed you and your dog. Yeah. We each drive off and I cant help but to yell.

Well then, "… FUCK YOU!"

That was smart. The dude calls me a "whore" and all I can think of is Fuck You. Classic. For the rest of my short drive home, I think of alternative responses.

"And a good day to you, sir."

"Who's the whore here? Whore."

"Whore? How does that possibly make any sense?"

OK, so I have no good alternative responses. I park in front of my place and look back at my dog. He's sitting up in the seat, tongue out, a smile on his face.

Asshole.


Bender. Originally published in issue #44 of Monster Children. 2014.
Illustration by Travis Millard.