Savage Tales

to tell it again but James said he wanted to hear it so finally Billy told it with the same agonized expression.
    James had a good laugh at it but then said, "Yeah, I'm not sure I believe you."
    "It's true!" said Billy.
    "He did come to class late that day," I said.
    "Yeah, maybe, but he could have been anywhere," said James.
    "It's not the kind of thing I'd make up," said Billy.
    "Yeah, I guess you're right," said James. "You should have made a go for the girl."
    "Gross," said Billy. "She just took a dump."
    "Still," said James. "I've seen porn like that where they take a dump then fuck or roll around in the shit or put it in their mouth."
    "You have any food?" I said, still hungry.
    "What do I look like, the Salvation Army?" said James. "What, is all this shit talk making you pussies hungry? You guys suck."
    James laughed and coughed and got up and left. Billy and I just watched him go, no desire to follow, even if he was a senior.
    "That guy's a dick," said Billy.
    "Yeah," I said.
    "But he's got weed."
    "Where do you think he gets it?"
    "I don't know. Maybe his parents have a stash."
    "I wish my parents had a stash."
    "And I wish I could fart gold, but that ain't gonna happen either. Our parents suck."
    "Yeah. I'm gonna go home and eat."
    "All right. I'll see you tomorrow, I guess."
    When I got home my dad was there and said he got a call from the attendance office and they said I wasn't in my classes.
    "There must be a mistake, Dad," I said. "I'll ask them tomorrow and have 'em call you."
    My dad seemed okay with this explanation, and I think he was more annoyed at being interrupted in his work by my school than by any absence on my part. And I knew he'd forget about it by tomorrow and the school would never call again.
    I microwaved some lasagna and burned it and then watched cartoons with my little sister. She was watching some crappy superhero crap but it was kind of funny. I went outside after that while it was still sunny and went downtown and near the park, then cut back by the school. It was funny that I dodged classes that day but that I now found myself back near the school when I didn't have to be there. I saw some girls coming out. One of them was Angelina Soli.
    I followed them a while at a safe distance, looking at their butts and imagining. I think Angelina was with Heidi McDonald and they were both pretty hot. I looked at their butts and even though it may have been a lie, Billy's story, I knew that they did it. Darkness spewed out of them, however pretty they might have looked. They were slugs, animals, no better than dogs shitting on a lawn. Because of this I hated them, because I still found myself drawn to them and there was nothing I could do about it. Every instinct within me wanted to hate them and keep them away, but that impulse was overridden by my lusts.
    Angelina looked back at one point, and I decided I had followed them enough and turned off and went back home. I did the homework that had been due in my classes that day, halfheartedly, limping through the routine. I liked not going to school, but I wanted to be around the others. I didn't like the smell of that building or some things that happened there, but I felt a kind of cafeteria nausea when I thought about the school suddenly vanishing, and all of us dispersing… where? Where?
    And yet in a few weeks school would be out for the summer. And in a few years school would be out forever. Oh, I could go on to college, but most of us would never meet again, and what would any of it matter?

POETRY

    Isn't poetry just words on paper. Isn't it sheer laziness. Isn't it lack of story. Isn't it.
    I once wrote a girl a poem so horrible it burned her eyes out. We never spoke again. We never spoke to begin with. I mean to say we never spoke at all.
    Since that day (I was being poetically metaphorical with her eyes) I have never written a poem. I write emails to employers and infuse them with poetry. Sometimes I get carried away. And I recognize that an accounting firm cannot be expected – does not have the capability to wind through my words and come up with meaning, an understanding of why they should put me on their petty payroll and call it a day. I have never met a poem as pretty as a paycheck.
    Sometimes I am tempted to scream. But there is nowhere. I have a room – something betwixt a closet and a dungeon, with all the light of a filmic darkroom. Beyond the walls are others like me, eking out their lives like cockroaches. To scream