We could offload the boats very quickly. So quickly that people’s heads spun. It was a dangerous place to be, many would walk backwards off the pier. The cakes were exquisite. The government wouldn’t allow us to keep them at home, nor would the rest of the free world if they knew what we had. It was difficult enough for us to defer satisfaction and wait until we were each served our pieces, hunched on the docks each man eating two 11×9 panloads of sweet yellow heaven. The captain would watch over us and laugh quietly to himself.

I was living this life for at least 2 and a half years when we were challenged by a fellow group of cake smugglers. The events were simple tests of dexterity and willpower; hold on to a merry go round as one team member pushed it faster and faster, who could destroy a stranger’s ship the fastest and which group could lose the most weight in 2 weeks. My dog thought the last one was a trick, the other team were scrawny bastards with metabolisms comparable to the sun’s power to waste away hydrogen atoms on things like light and heat.

The day came to start the competition. I thought I would gain an edge by drinking sugar but I arrived at the piers parched and sweaty. My teammates looked at me with disgust. I had enough. I sat down on a field overlooking the piers and watched the teams duke it out for supremacy. They planned on staying overnight at the area so no one could cheat by cutting off a teammate’s leg or torso.

Observing from the hill for the first week, I realized how stupid it was. By the second week I was aching to become a part of something more than the dumb club I had started with the grasses around me. We were called “The Things That Like To Be In This Particular Spot” and I painted every member’s head a delicate red to indicate our collective passion. As I watched the other team declare themselves victors and throw our cakes into the lake I shouted from my perch. I shouted sounds I never knew I could make and I shouted math formulas that felt right. I sat back down and mumbled to my club members “The oranges for organs for the sickly. For me, for you. It’s what I gotta do. Gotta do.”

I’m not sure that my doppelganger will appreciate my planned weight loss.

I bought Howard Zinn’s book and I want to go back and get more. I also walked over the Williamsburg Bridge and my legs are dying. I am terribly out of shape. Expect pictures sometime next month.

Oddly enough, I finished reading Franny and Zooey this week and was wondering how I could work Zinn into my lessons.

a

The world waited with bated breath as Tiffany stood in the grocery market aisle that housed the various kinds of fruit spreads for sandwiches and toast. She tapped her toe and nodded her head this way and that while she compared the qualities of two jars of strawberry jam from two competing companies. A company in the state of Massachusetts held its breath in unison. Tiffany made her choice and set it down in her cart. A California farm declared bankruptcy as its stock lowered into the Marianas Trench. Tiffany had an unusual control over the economy.

That is to say that she had complete control over it. Tiffany was single-handedly responsible for the airline crisis in the early 90’s when, as a small child, she pointed to an airplane and said “Me no likee”. Several Delta employees committed suicide when they heard the child’s pronouncement, so great was her power.

As she grew, Tiffany didn’t think much of her authority. For her it meant that she could get mostly what she wanted. Pretty much anything really. When she was in elementary school she had several countries’ GDP by the throat with her love for various kinds of ponies. By high school her friends on various social networking sites numbered in the thousands (most were businesses).

Tiffany had her father to thank for her grip on the market. Coming already from an already fairly wealthy family he had investments in major companies and did particularly well in accruing positions on the boards of most of the important corporations in the country. Eventually he concentrated the power of his investments into himself and then by extension his daughter. When he died, naturally his power transferred to her.

As she was rather young when he died, Tiffany didn’t really get a chance to know her dad. This lack of a father figure in her late teens manifested itself in a slew of lovers that she kept in, what she referred to as, her stables. “Oh, I feel like taking Eric out for the day” she would say to herself. And then her handlers would cart him out in a fancy Italian car. They would do their business wherever the mood struck; Tiffany paid off the Disney corporation weekly to have access to the Magic Mountain. A lady in a Mickey Mouse costume shooed away disappointed families.

Tiffany lost feeling in her legs one day and used her influence to build robot legs 3 years before futurists said they could be built. Turns out she had just been sitting funny one day and could still walk but Tiffany did not care. Her life was becoming dull. She started to think that her father’s death was possibly a suicide. Surely his pilot of thirty years didn’t suddenly decide to crash his private jumbo jet into the ocean on purpose? No one had investigated because Tiffany hadn’t asked but Tiffany, as she matured began to think her mother was behind it. Tiffany hated her mother. She sort of wanted her mother dead. But she still had laws to contend with. Money was power but not the legal kind. So she got elected (with economic threats and promises of free Jonas Brothers tickets to the entire United States) and passed a matricide law to kill her mother.

One day a race of extra-galactic beings came to her private country. Urgently they spoke in unison “ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THE WORLD!” Tiffany quietly asked them to turn off the CAPS LOCK.

“Only you can save the world Tiffany J—. There are forces on the way that are more powerful than us and much more evil”

“How evil?” Tiffany asked.

“They eat only the cutest puppies and kill animals that resemble the babies of your kind as a kind of sport”

“That’s evil I guess” Tiffany drawled. “Can we cut to the chase?” She started to tap her toe.

“But there’s a whole mythology behind these guys, it would be important to hear…” the beings pleaded and went down on what would be described by humans as their knees.

Tiffany looked at them over the sunglasses she was wearing.

“All right. Take these seeds, and plant them like regular tobacco plants are planted on your planet in a place suitable for them. But only YOU can plant them. YOU must tend to them, make sure that no one uses the plants and that YOU end up with a least a 90% yield.” And with that, the beings exited through a tear in the space time continuum with the sound of a fart.

Soon Tiffany, who could think of nothing better to do, planted the crops herself on a small plot of land in Virginia. A secretive person by nature she cordoned off the state, sent the residents to live in either neighboring West Virginia or the ocean while she lived in a small mansion on her farm. The plants required the most work she had ever done, digging holes in the ground, watering and generally looking out for living things that were not herself. She broke several hoes, and several nails but the thought of puppies being eaten in front of their horrified owners (namely herself) kept her going. Within a few weeks she had the plants on her hands (with a weak 91% yield) and the extra-galactic beings came back.

“Great job, thanks.”

“That’s it? What about that race? How will this stop them?!” Tiffany threw up her arms, now angry there was no explanation for the work she had just had to do.

“You didn’t care to hear about the mythology so we don’t have to tell you.”

“What the fuck? I worked my ass off for those!” Tiffany screamed

“There’s a saying on earth that could sum up your situation: life’s a bitch and then you die. Have a nice life.” The beings again made the sound of a fart and Tiffany was left alone her bedroom feeling a tad crazy.

Eventually Tiffany became an old woman and died leaving the earth a lot worse place than she came into it. Luckily she had a shit-ton of abortions so she couldn’t produce an heir. Most of the money was left to her cat that wiped out 17 species of fish. And life, which sucked before, sucked even harder.

I am being paid to teach now. All of you that read this probably know that though, because there is one person that reads this: myself.I have written a bunch of things. You will see that I have improved. Hopefully. This is a picture of my friend Zack. I think that’s how he spells it. [Edit: That is not how he spells it, but it should be.]

I drove through bridges and tunnels,
alleyways and crowded streets
to meet You in a shady hotel
on the bad side of town;

an occurrence once repeated earlier
with two other girls.

Though this time was different.
I wasn’t lying when I said
“Because of You, I burn brightly”
and then You began to cry

From my whiskey soaked room and mental state I can see the masses outside on the campus, hunched over and walking through the snow. They are cast as black figures, contemplative things, with the lights and their shadows stretching over the small clearings cut by sidewalk and piles of snow.

leaving my feet and body an island.

With the water gone, I was left

Soaked

with my thoughts