The day I deign
To the catheter
And breathing tube
The stale air of things
That are, or almost, ending
You, inattendant
Spelling a decade of mistake
An age of decay
I, no longer nature-able
To expel poison intake
Self-insufficient
Drawn a picture-perfect
Independence to scale
A machine making man
Accordion pumping
Dry potpourri red
Flaking empty ventricle
Your slender fingers detached
From the keys
Delete the song
We sang
In the round
To find the end of a circle
In synthesized bisection
Conjure another picture
Replay a recording of
The voice you’d use when
You were smiling
A trick that always worked
Calling forth
Any other reality but this one
To have to do this again.
14 Secret Traits That All Successful Listicles Possess
Scientific studies would show, if they studied this sort of thing, that what you read on the internet is really important. Wait, maybe they do study that. I think I read an article on some Spirit / Science website that the things you read on the internet make you a good person if you’re reading things about spirit and science and if you use your mind to do quantum mechanics, but only in a positive way.
Since we understand how very important reading is to using everything from Buzzfeed to your favorite Instagram hashtags, it’s crucial to understand the best way to read online – the listicle.
The listicle has plenty of advantages that make it the best way for you to read. First, the whole thing is numbered, so you don’t get confused about which paragraph you’re on while you’re jumping word-to-word from left to right. Second, they’re easy to understand because of the number thing. So maybe there’s only one advantage.
Anyway, if you’re going to read listicles at a high level, you’re going to need to know what makes a successful listicle so successful. Then maybe you can implement those success factors into your own listicles or even your relationships.
1. Remove Negative People
This is one of the most important listicle items ever, appearing in what Forbes calls “98% of all internet listicles.” To be able to spot a negative person all you need to know is whether or not that person agrees with you. If they do, they can be in your listicle or pilates class. If they disagree with you, they are “negative” and they will only cause you to question yourself and your beliefs, and you might find out you’re not doing something right and that will ruin your listicle or pot luck dinner. Seriously, kill everyone you know who isn’t named Pollyanna.
2. Be Vague
Most listicles don’t realize how important it is to say really general, non-specific things. This is “negative” like people are. If you say specific things, chances are people will stop paying attention or maybe disagree with you and then you, my dear listicle, will be forced to remove those people (see #1). By being extremely vague and not insightful at all, you can make people agree with you, according to Time Magazine.
3. Say “Look At Me”
This may sound simple. I mean, all you have to do is write “look at me”. I just did it twice. Trust me. It works. If you’re worried that it won’t work, try “hey, look at me,” so you know you have their attention first.
4. Be SO Headlines
If you don’t know what this means already, you’re probably a terrible listicle and shouldn’t have any friends to go to the movies with. You need to start your headline with a number, and this is one time you don’t want to be vague. You should be very specific about what your number is. It’s best to use the amount of items in your listicle, but this isn’t crucial because no one will check. What is crucial is that it’s an exact number. No confusing fractions. No big numbers. Also, no ugly numbers like 10. 10 looks like a skinny person next to a fat person and that will only make people feel pity or shame, and they won’t want to read your listicle items or take you to prom. Also, it’s important to use your headline to make them think they’re about to be stunned or amazed or have their lives changed or that they will “win the internet” with you. That’s how you get and keep a man.
5. Use Three Big Words to Sound “Legit”
One of the best ways for people to know you’re a smart listicle is for them to see exactly three big words somewhere in your listicle. This will let them know that a truly prophetic writer is among them (that’s one – prophetic – hope you’re paying attention). If you use more than three big words people will mistake you for a book or an essay or an article for “normals” and then you will lose them as readers or people to build sandcastles with.
6. Make People Feel Good Without Effort
Now that we’re in the meat and potatoes of our adventure, I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s called “manipulation”. Don’t tell, or else people will think you’re “negative” and burn you with a cattle brand. Manipulating people is totally okay if you do it for the right reasons. People generally, according to internal Monsanto studies, don’t mind being manipulated if you make them feel good, sooooo… make them feel good! One way to do this is by telling them they’ll achieve great things by doing exactly what they’re already doing and thinking what they’re already thinking. This is where we remember #2. Make points like “all successful people eat meals” or “the greatest artists of all time agree that you should have some amount of ‘me’ time, no matter how much”.
7. Make People Feel Superior Without Effort
This is the second step in the manipulation of readers or of fellow Starbucks line inhabitants. Make them feel better than other people even when you know they’re not and they know they’re not and everyone else knows it too. Good ways to do this are to A.) be vague and B.) set up a “second class” of citizens who are the “bad people” i.e. the people who aren’t doing the good things your listicle tells you, whether or not you know anyone like that. Say things like, “you’ve raised your standards” or “you have empathy for your common man”. It doesn’t matter if everyone believes they have these traits. In fact, that’s better! That means everyone will feel superior to everyone else, completing a perfect circle and sending you to sit at the right hand of the father, while everyone else gets snuffed out like a Red Wedding style massacre.
Have at you, Gluten!
8. Use ‘Game of Thrones’ References
Self-explanatory. Don’t be dense.
9. Be All Affirmations
The best way to get people to read you / like you / want you to be the one the arrow lands on when you’re playing Spin the Bottle is to give them positive affirmations all the time. This is the last step of the manipulations. You might ask, “why wasn’t this grouped with the other manipulations at #8?” and the answer is simple. I only just now thought about the Game of Thrones thing and realized how important that was and ALSO now you’re distracted from the fact that this is basically the same as #6. It’s important to realize that all truly happy people need to tell themselves over and over that they’re happy. Otherwise they would forget that they’re happy while they’re doing other things besides reminding themselves and then they might feel bad while reading your listicle and then we’re back to #1 and you have no one to play catch with.
10. Cite Sources
It’s important that people believe you have a mastery of the subject matter and the best way to do this is referring to other people who had the idea first. It actually doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a good source or a bad source. The fact that it is a source will let people know that you’ve done your research and then they will trust you. Good sources to cite are ones that you know will fulfill all the rest of the items on this listicle. At all costs, do not make people go to another site where they might feel bad or have their views challenged or you will end up with no one in your wedding party.
11. Write One Incredibly Smart Entry in the List
If you write one AND ONLY ONE smart thing if your listicle, you may be able to trick 50%+ of the ‘educated’ population to share a listicle on social media that they wouldn’t share otherwise, this according to the good people at lawofattraction.com. One smart and insightful thing will get that precious share and then you’ll have even intelligent people wasting their day reading the rest of the listicle items. Make sure to write it well. It’s probably best that one of the three big words be in this entry. Again, be sure not to have more than one smart entry or else people might have their views and opinions challenged and then you will have no readers and people will steal your waterskis.
12. Use Pictures of Awesome Things
When people share your listicle on Facebook, a picture will come up. If that picture is of Jennifer Lawrence or a weird castle built into a cliff, you will attract more readers and then you’ll have someone to hold your soda while you use the restroom. Celebrities are great to use, especially if you can “manipulate” your reader to think that they might be as successful or good-looking as that person. Then they will share your listicle and maybe let you get to 3rd base on the second date.
13. DON’T BE UNIQUE
This is the most important thing I have to say. That is why I put it last. A big finish is important, says Reader’s Digest. Plus, you know that readers of listicles always make it to the end. These people have exceptional attention spans. That’s why making sure you have an exact, whole number in the headline is important (see #4).
Every listicle is the same and you don’t want to be different. SO BE THE SAME. I can’t stress this enough. Every listicle is the same list of items, just with a different headline. That’s why it’s important to be SOOOOO headlines. Just look at the hero of all the internet, Elite Daily. That site hasn’t had a new word on it in 12 years. They just shuffle the headlines between articles and WHAM-O, new content. If only every listicle could have realized that groundbreaking technological breakthrough at the same time, the internet would be skinner and they wouldn’t have to have birth limits in China. So make sure your listicle is the same as every other one if you want it to get a real job.
Understand, the joy of reading listicles is that you’ve already read that listicle! Why waste time reading for new information? Your old information is good enough, especially when it looks like new information. The other joy is not having to notice different paragraphs. Oh, shit. No one will read this.
Happy Mask
Whenever she wants to hurt me, she chides me about how I’m emotionless, how I can’t be hurt. She does this unironically, and it does, in fact, hurt me.
“That’s not true,” I say honestly, in a way she won’t believe.
The truth is she wouldn’t understand the truth. Between pretty pictures and inspirational quotes and brunches at hotel pools, she’s convinced that everyone feels everything the same, or at least they should.
Happy. But not real happy. Just that kind they describe in self-help books. The kind you can achieve by telling yourself over and over that you’re happy. The simple sort of greeting card happiness. When did the goal and the wish for the goal become the same?
She tries to corner me. They all do. They want to understand, and when they can’t understand, they want to change what they’re looking at until they do. Box me, mould me, filter me, until they ‘get it’. But they don’t get it.
The cold stare and unaffected demeanor isn’t a mask or an act. It wasn’t described in The Secret or in The Power of Now. I’m not the exception that proves the rule. I’m just an exception. And there is no rule.
But that’s not clean and pretty and who wants to deal with that?
“You think you want me for more than this, but you don’t. Sooner or later, you’ll realize that,” I explained. I’ve said it before. It’s rehearsed. I’m good at saying it. I say it with every bit of sincerity I can muster, but it’s hard to seem genuine anytime you’ve said the same thing enough times.
“What if I do?”
“You won’t. I promise you won’t. Everyone thinks they do. Because it’s different and it seems…different. But that’s the problem. You don’t want different. You want the same things everyone else wants,” I said.
“And what’s that? How do you think you know what I want?”
“Because I know. You tell me every time you get mad that I can’t hang out or when you think I’m not texting you enough.”
She rolled away, onto her back. She stared at the ceiling. She sighed. It was faint. It sounded familiar. It was the sound she made at the end of her sixth orgasm last night. It all made sense.
“Honestly, you don’t even know me. Not really. You just know what you see. And I don’t even know what that is. You just like that I make you come and that you can’t figure me out. That’s not a relationship.”
She turned back toward me. “Is this fun for you?”
“Fun? Is what fun?” I climbed out of bed, pulling on boxer briefs and walking out of the room. She sat up as I walked out and I could hear her bounce into the mattress as she slammed herself back down in frustration.
“Come on!” she yelled from the bedroom.
I was pissing and I pretended I couldn’t hear her.
“What?” I flushed.
“Nevermind. I think I’m going to go.”
“Okay,” I said.
She got out of bed while I separated cheap coffee filters that always come out two at a time even though no one ever needs two coffee filters and they should’ve done a better job with their production process. I rinse yesterday’s coffee out of the pot, or maybe the day before’s. I pour Trader Joe’s ground coffee into the machine, but it goes everywhere through the ripped opening. Their coffee is average at best and the packaging is shit, but if I wanted something else I’d have to go to a second grocery store and I can’t even comprehend the anxiety level I’d have to endure in those circumstances.
“Are you making coffee?” she asked, as she walked into the kitchen, wearing nothing but expensive looking lingerie. I wasn’t sure if it was expensive or not. She seemed like the sort of girl who would wear Agent Provocateur, but not ever buy it. So it was either Agent Provocateur or Forever 21, I guessed, though it didn’t matter and I didn’t care and the only question worth asking was why she wasn’t wearing more clothes and leaving like she said she was going to. I didn’t have anything important to do today, but she didn’t know that.
I stared at her. What other reaction could you have when someone asks if you’re making coffee while you’re very obviously making coffee? I knew she’d go back to telling me how unnecessarily asshole-ish I was being so I reveresed course and smiled. “Yes. Want a cup?”
“I really should get out of here.” She paused, leaning against the counter, adjusting her stance in increasingly seductive ways.
“I’ll wa –“
“But what the hell? I’ll have a cup. I need to wake up. Lots to do today.” She stretched over the counter and began to dig through the cupboards for a cup. “You don’t mind do you?”
Hiphugger panties turned into a thong along her perfectly tanned ass and it became irresistible. I pressed ‘brew’ and walked toward her, slinking up along her side, behind her. Her hair smelled like a field I ran through as a child and I felt like I was home or somewhere safe even as a cold shock passed through my nervous system, reminding me I was nowhere close.
“They’re right here.” I pulled a cup down. It was from Urban Outfitters and an ex bought it for me years ago. I kept it because, fuck it. A small piece of ceramic can’t hurt me. Memories don’t fade in trash cans or dumpsters or landfills. There’s a scrap heap in my soul where a thousand coffee cups lie broken. Just leave them, I knew. They’re of you. They are you.
You can’t run from your own shadow, I thought, as she pressed her ass into my crotch. My hands traced the hard curvature along the top of her pelvic bones, up to her breasts. My right hand pulled her left bra strap down, passing her elbow. I discarded it and cupped her underneath her bra. She grabbed my hand and pirouetted, moving it between her legs. She was gasping before my finger even slid inside her. She spun another one-eighty, bending slightly over the kitchen counter, hands gripping the bottom shelf of the open cabinet. Reaching back with both hands, she slid my boxers down before tugging her lingerie past her hips until they decorated the dirty tile.
She pressed her hips back, reaching between her legs, behind her, to pull me inside. She rocked into me. It was slow but hard, like she was trying to have me dig a different path out of her.
“Fuck me,” she screeched.
This is a mistake, I knew, as she tightened, coming hard.
“Come with me.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I don’t feel anything.” But I kept going.
Her hand moved from the shelf into the cabinet, gripping a coffee mug.
“You never feel anything,” hissed out between disjointed gasps for air. Mug in hand, she backed me off, turning quickly and shattering the hard ceramic across my left cheek.
I staggered. “What the fuck?” My fingers passed over my cheek, a gash opened, brailing the word ‘wound’. “Burning rage”. The words shot through my mind in a pulsing red light, signaling a time-bomb, about to explode. I disarmed it. She’s a woman, what can I do? Besides, I couldn’t allow her to win. Not like that.
The coffee maker beeped repeatedly, telling me that it was finished brewing.
“Say something,” she screamed.
“I’d like it if you left.” I pulled a broom from the pantry and began to sweep mug shards from the tiled floor. I was meticulous and focused, still naked and half-hard.
“I’m sorry.” She pulled her bra and underwear back on. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“Yeah.”
“Come on. I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry. Are you okay?” She put her hand on my shoulder, I shrugged it off and kept sweeping. She walked out of the room. I put my boxers back on, grabbed a dustpan, and swept the broken coffee mug up. The pieces clinked together, falling into the trash can below the sink.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and walked to the balcony. I lit an American Spirit from a pack that she had left out the night before. I stood with my back to everything inside, smoking and sipping coffee. Behind me, she was dressing, making sure she had everything. She must know, I thought, that she’ll never be here again. There was some small satisfaction in that.
She came to the sliding door. “Hey.”
I smoked. She sighed. I didn’t turn around.
“Are those mine?”
I palmed the pack of Spirits and turned, handing them over. I turned back.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and walked away. She stopped. “Why don’t you care about me? Why am I just nothing to you?”
I exhaled a plume of smoke. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
She left.
The ability to hurt someone is a strange desire for someone so concerned with happiness.
She did it though. My swelling cheek throbbed and burned. My pride was in a pile of unswept shards on the floor. My dick even hurt. Congratulations.
The truth she couldn’t know was that I’d already hurt too much. The truth she couldn’t know was that I wasn’t insensitive. I was hypersensitive and I could never trust her enough to tell her that. I’d hurt more in recent memory than she’d hurt in her lifetime, or at least as far as she was aware. That’s the danger of the happy mask. Everything sad or dark or painful gets pushed away while pretending to be grateful for whatever you get. More gruel, please, sir.
Everything I felt was too sharp and too overwhelming to share with anyone, least of all someone with such a glaring inability to handle it. My therapist had told me again and again not to spend time with her.
Now I knew why.
Fountain
She was the kind of pretty where you can’t help but feel “less than”. The kind where you make sure to point out all your flaws before she could ever notice them, just to soften the blow when it falls apart. It always does.
“I’m old,” I said.
She was twenty-two, a fit version of waiflike, with sand colored hair – I wasn’t sure if it was natural, but it looked like it on her.
“My hair is going grey. I’m going to look like a grandfather by the time I’m thirty-six and I won’t even be a dad.”
“But your face is young,” she said. “And besides, you’re only as old as the woman in your bed.” She smiled in a beautiful, dreadful way that left me uncertain. I didn’t know why.
I smiled.
“I like that philosophy.”
We ate at one of those hip sorts of restaurants with paper ‘tablecloths’ and crayons so that you could draw for fun or for a souvenier or in case you have nothing to talk about while you wait for your food to arrive, knowing that food signals the safety zone because it’s rude to talk with food in your mouth. She drew a clown. A colorful clown. It was good in a bad way. I took a black crayon and drew a Hangman and dashed out space for eight letters.
“S,” she guessed.
I drew an empty circle for a head.
“You have to draw a face for him.”
“Well, then you’d better win this round. Would be a shame to hang a guy we know based on letters.” I grinned. She ate it up. I drew two eyes and a nose.
“Where’s his mouth?”
“We have to find out whether you win or not. I can’t very well draw a smiley face on him if he hangs.”
“C.”
I drew a stick body and a surprisingly realistic noose around George’s neck. He’s called George now. She doesn’t know it yet, but that’s his name. I assume she’s going to lose at this point, but I was making up the thing about not hanging a guy we know. He’s just some crayon wax on a sheet of paper that’ll soon be stained with a splash of wine as the waiter’s wrist twists the bottle too slowly to catch the drop that falls after he fills my glass – the one emptying faster than hers.
“The ribeye, medium rare,” as the food runner sets her plate in front of her. It tips and red meat juice cascades onto the clown’s eye, forming a strange sort of tear or sweat on his otherwise happy face.
“Your clown!” I laughed.
“He’s crying,” she says, exaggerating a frown.
“Or maybe he’s sweating. Or maybe he’s crying from laughter. He’s a clown. Or maybe he’s the original sad clown. Maybe this is exactly how the sad clown was invented.”
She stared at me. I didn’t really know what I meant either, I was just talking.
“The monkfish, sir. Can I bring you anything else?”
I twisted my hand in her direction, asking if she needed anything.
“I’m good. This looks amazing.”
I always love a girl who orders steak or whiskey. She might be insane, but at least she’s not high maintenance.
“Actually,” I stop the waiter in his tracks, “another bottle of wine would be great.” I turn to her. “You’ll have another glass, right?” She nodded. “Yeah, one more bottle.”
When I woke up, my mouth was dry and my head was all dubstep, pulsing and pulling and exploding in rhythm. Another day, wasted, I thought. No gym, no writing, no reading. Just reloading the timelines on social media, watching things on TV with the goal being “clearing off the DVR” rather than being entertained. Hey, you find your progress where you can on a day like today. Stay positive, everyone says.
She stirs but doesn’t wake. My white sheets have a slight orange tint from bronzer I didn’t realize she was wearing until now. I’ll have to wash those today. I made a mental note that I was sure would be erased. My dog whined from the floor. How did he get down there? Harsh summer light cracked through every space the blackout curtains didn’t cover, defeating the purpose. The packaging said they eliminated 110% of the light, which is impossible. I should’ve held it against them when I was making my decision to purchase but I figured instead that they must be really confident in how well their product performed. You can’t win them all.
I got out of bed and pissed with my head pressed on the cabinet above the toilet, helping me steady myself. It felt like rest. Cold water from the Brita to a cup to my mouth. It restored me momentarily.
Now what? How can I get her to leave? I think I really like her. The disparity of emotions on a morning like this can be daunting. I promised myself I wouldn’t fuck her, not tonight, but promises to yourself are the easiest to break. This has to stop.
I called my agent and canceled a general. Generals always feel pointless. Besides, I probably had to take her to breakfast before calling her an Uber.
I wondered if I’d get a nap in.
I wondered if I had a dehydration problem.
Atherosclerosis, I wondered.
Cigarette burn in the ottoman, I noticed.
Half empty bottle of whiskey, I registered.
I’m going to fall asleep during the movie with a different date tonight, I imagined.
This has to stop, I knew.
“You’re only as old as the woman in your bed,” she said.
And I understood why my first reaction was dread.
Reflexes
All my exes
Live in reflexes
In the sweet, soft, singing
Stinging
Terrible scent
Cascading
From the
Dead fox noose
Wrapped neck
Of a woman twice her age
For the half step through
Sleep deprived synapse static
To register
That it was a trick
She never
Broke her mind on your pillow
Where black mascara
Marked every
Wasted
Tear’s small grave
That was someone else
Remind yourself
As the dread wrenches
Your gut
Pulling you spine first
To a rung a little farther down
The rot-wood ladder
You convinced yourself was progress