The Laws of Average Read online

  Paying phone bills isn’t Brandon’s thang.

  Gena moved out because Brandon occasionally likes to fuck Terry.

  Sharing Brandon isn’t Gena’s thang.

  Brandon’s job is okay for now but will get worse faster than he thinks.

  Terry comes over to Brandon’s apartment because Gena still hasn’t paid the phone bill since she moved out.

  It’s easier that way.

  Brandon isn’t sure if he should like football; all he knows is he does.

  Terry doesn’t like to wear shoes; Brandon, on the other hand, does.

  This is part of the reason why he fucks Terry only occasionally.

  Brandon has exactly $335.86 in the bank right now.

  Gena used to drive a Ford Escort.

  Black with red pinstriping under the door handles.

  No air conditioning.

  She carries a business card from a Van Nuys locksmith in her purse.

  Brandon always accuses Terry of not listening to him.

  This is part of the reason why he fucks Terry only occasionally.

  Brandon doesn’t know that Terry suffered from otitis media as a child because Terry doesn’t think his childhood influences anything he is/does as an adult.

  Brandon doesn’t know that Terry suffered from being a little girl trapped inside a little girl’s body; given what you know about Terry already, this shouldn’t be surprising.

  Gena doesn’t want to know anything about Terry, not one goddamn thing.

  Gena doesn’t like surprises.

  Nobody who has to drive to work in Inglewood does.

  Terry grew up in Ontario, OR, in love with KMart.

  She liked the shiny floors there because her mother would take her there every Saturday and let her try on shoes in the dressing room and open the big bags of socks and snap purple barrettes in her hair and her mother would tell Terry she was a princess and that someday Terry would Be Loved By Someone Really Special.

  KMart is now “Big K.”

  Gena’s father used to wear nice ties and went to a nice job and came home to a nice wife and nice children and always shopped at Woolworth’s and Osco Drug and Food King.

  In that exact order.

  Now Gena’s father wears old ties to funerals and only shops at Big K.

  Gena had breast reduction surgery when she was 15.

  They were Soleil Moon-Frye big.

  She was the first 16 Or Below girl to go under the knife in her area code.

  Before her surgery Gena’s mother used to mail order Gena’s bras.

  Now Gena’s mother uses the internet to order Gena’s mother’s bras.

  Brandon used to have a crush on Soleil Moon-Frye when she was Penelope Brewster.

  “Punky.”

  NBC.

  Sunday nights.

  Dan Rather served as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from March 9, 1981 to March 9, 2005.

  Terry’s father liked Dan’s hair before CBS started combing it the opposite way to boost their Evening News’ ratings.

  Shallow ploy.

  It worked.

  After Gena’s surgery, boys stopped calling her.

  Dan also anchored and reported for 48 Hours when it premiered on January 19, 1988.

  On November 22, 1963, Dan broke the news of the death of President John F. Kennedy while calling collect from area code 214.

  Brandon actually prefers Playboy over Hustler but doesn’t know Larry Flynt called Gena personally before she went under the knife.

  Terry finds sex confusing and generally painful but the only way he can maintain a relationship.

  Brandon’s mother remembers exactly where she was November 22, 1963: doing her first three way with the television on, Brandon’s grandparent’s bedroom, cousin Kirk and his friend K.C., strange yellow stains scrubbed and bleached by Brandon’s grandmother as she watched the funeral procession and listened to Cronkite’s voice crack.

  Terry’s mother hid a bottle of peppermint schnapps under the passenger seat, right under Terry’s dangling feet.

  Brandon has made a lifetime pledge never to drink anything clear and will be really pissed off when all he sees in the stores is Crystal Pepsi.

  Lucky for him, it won’t last long.

  Lucky for him, most things don’t.

  Gena can have pretty much anyone she wants.

  Gena is frickin gorgeous.

  The locksmith drives all the way from Van Nuys for free.

  Never charges her.

  24/7.

  Gena is infected sore inside, cold cream outside.

  Brandon fucks the shit out of cold cream outsides.

  This is part of the reason why he fucks Terry only occasionally.

  Sheila is 36.

  36 year olds can’t be gorgeous unless they’re on TV and made to look much much younger.

  Dan was born October 31, 1931 in Wharton, TX.

  Devil’s Night.

  When people still believed in The Devil.

  Dan doesn’t look a day over 1945.

  Wouldn’t you say?

  Dear That Other Trevor Dodge

  It’s beyond time we clear the air, sir.

  But first some history. And not history in the sense of some story. I’m talking about the real deal truth here, things that have really happened and the whole whatnottery to go along with that.

  Back in 1999 I was living in an apartment complex in Boise, ID. I had just figured out how to rip CDs to my computer’s hard drive, and I thought Yahoo! Messenger was the shizznit. Apparently your mother did, too, because she IMed one afternoon. She didn’t believe me when I told her I was really living in Boise, ripping CDs. She believed that I was living in an apartment complex, though. At least I think she bought that part of it. At any rate, we had a short but pleasant conversation, and I was ultimately able to convince her that Boise was in fact a very nice city to live.

  The following year, you attended Clackamas Community College and set a bunch of track and field records. I Yahoo!-searched you and everything on this. There’s that guy whose mom I talked to a few months back, I was thinking at the time. How about that, I was also thinking.

  The following year, I moved to the Portland area. By the following year, I was teaching at four different colleges in the area. Clackamas CC was not one of them.

  By the following year, I was still teaching at four different colleges in the area. Clackamas CC was still not one of them.

  By the end of the following year, I had taught at five different colleges in the area. Clackamas CC not only was one of them, but had given me a full-time teaching position. How about that, I was thinking.

  When the college issued me my ID card, my name was already in the system. That makes sense, I was thinking, because I had been hired a few months before actually getting my ID card. The first time I used said ID card at the library was when I tried pulling a copy of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes off a reserve shelf and claimed faculty privileges to do so. The librarian at the checkout desk swiped my ID card and told me I could do no such thing because I was a student. I turned the ID card around and showed the librarian my picture on the front and FACULTY printed above my picture on the front. How about that, she said, and she swiped my ID card again, and again she said I was a student. You should get a new ID card, she said, because there’s already someone in the system with your name and you’re not that person and that person was a student and you’re clearly not a student. Right, I said. I’m too short and too fat and too old and not nearly photogenic enough to be a student. True, she said. No offense, she said. None taken, I said.

  About a week after that, I met the college’s athletic director for the first and last time. I shook his big hand and told him my name. How about that, he said. We have a bunch of track trophies with your name on them over in that building over there, he said. But I’m too short and too fat and too old and not nearly photogenic enough to have track trophies with my name on them, I said. Tr
ue, he said. No offense, he said. None taken, I said.

  It’s now nearly five years later, Mr. Trevor Dodge, sir, and I live in the Portland, OR metropolitan area. One of the biggest daily pains in my life is having to drive US Highway 26 to/from just about anywhere I need or want to go. One of those anywheres includes Clackamas CC. I spend a lot of time on this stretch of road and I have been very lucky so far not to be maimed or killed while driving it. I am always thankful for that last fact, by the way.

  Lately, however, one of us hasn’t been very lucky as far as that last thing goes. Just a couple weeks back you were in an accident on US Highway 26. I Yahoo!-searched this and everything. “After swerving to avoid collision with an errant driver, Trevor ran into the median, totaling his vehicle. Trevor ended up receiving only a few minor bruises and lacerations, with no risk to life or limb,” The Internet said.

  I am tempted, of course, to say How About That right now, but that would be crass and insensitive and I really really really want you to like me. I am also tempted to be all clever and solipsistic, of course, and to falsely claim that I was that errant driver who forced you into the median and made you total your vehicle, but that would also be crass and insensitive; not only do I really really really want you to like me, I am *dying* to know (figuratively speaking of course) what make of car you drive. Because if you were to say a Dodge, well, frankly, that would leave me totally speechless.

  Yours,

  Trevor

  When You’re Dead You Can Do Whatever You Want

  Go to the grocery store. Open/peel/use anything you like as you ski its aisles. Your children are dead so you don’t require them for the distraction you normally had to make to accomplish this. But feel free to bring them along and share the bounty, the heaping of wrappers and sticky floors. After all you’ve put them through, they deserve to finally see you happy.

  DON’T JUDGE EACH DAY BY THE harvest you reap, BUT BY THE seeds you plant.

  Unsolicited Advice

  Do not underestimate how much local law enforcement absofuckinglutely wants nothing at all to do with anything even remotely related to any situation ending with you and or Sig.Other pushing the talk button on a grimy intercom terminal that’s been pop-riveted permanently into the chipping brick facade of your closest police station, whereupon you and/or Sig.Other have to catch your breath and lean in close enough to kiss the star-shaped pattern of small holes in the metal plate and taste your blood in your lungs and begin uttering the possessive phrase “My Ex.”

  a) Do not underestimate the number of times you think local law enforcement has heard that same possessive phrase. To be even in the neighborhood, you need to take your highest possible number and at least quadruple it. And that’s just since noon yesterday, since you’re almost certainly finding yourself in a situation where you’re considering taking the trip over there to the cop shop when it’s already evening, and quite likely deeply so.

  b) Your local law enforcement personnel are trained and drilled and retrained and redrilled in very effective modes/methods of communication with impaired people of all forms of impairment. They are professionals. They are very good at being professional. Just because you and Sig. Other watched through episode 3, season 4 of The Wire doesn’t mean shit, and doubly so if you are white, college-educated, and have set up a trust fund for your child and/or drawn from one yourself.

  c) If you are legally separated or divorced, keep a copy of your decree/agreement/court order on your cellular device so that you and/or Ex and/or Sig.Other can literally read it and weep when situations present themselves. Do not assume that you have this document Memorized, Every Fucking Word Of It, because you most definitely do not. And you especially do not if you were the sole author/editor/ notary of said document.

  d) If you are not legally separated or divorced, you, too, like the mentally incapacitated person, have no business reading this. If you cannot prove to yourself, Ex, and/or Sig.Other that the former relationship isn’t legally severed, you stand no chance. None. The only thing you’re lacking is someone to explicitly say this to you. So this is someone saying it to you. Right here.

  Walking Out of the Darkness

  I’m writing this from a place you haven’t even the faintest clue exists, let alone think possible. This is a place where the life you know is unraveled all the way down to the thin cardboard tube where it has been spooled for years you can count but no longer can feel. You don’t know the specifics, but you know what I mean, so you are compelled to trust me and there’s just no getting around that. So please pay careful attention now and really read what I have to tell you.

  I just came in from a long walk in the darkness out at your parents’ place, the one with the quarter-mile driveway, just walked it with nothing but starlight and a rusting sliver-moon. You have been walking this exact same stretch in the daylight while you are house-sitting for them. You walk it every morning to grab their newspaper and check their mail, before you water their plants and mow their big floods of lawn on a spritely John Deere riding mower. This has been your routine since they left, and also since your wife left before them, and also since your children left after them. You have spent immense and deafeningly quiet stretches of time by yourself here, time that has thickened and slowed not only because you are writing again, but because you are using that writing in part to try and explain to yourself why you think you are where you are and who you are. But more specifically, trying to come to an understanding of just who the fuck you think you are and what the fuck you think you are doing thinking about these things in the first place. Because the fact of the matter is that you have simply never done this. I don’t have to go into specifics. You know the thoughts you’re having. And let’s leave most of them at that. It won’t be as messy this way.

  But let’s talk about something that does need a little specificity. In a little over 24 hours you will sit across from her for the first time in over 20 years. This is something you already know, because you know you are about to do this. What you don’t know is you will leave this utterly and forever changed, and you will spend the next two years free-falling through/into possibility spaces that will smell and wrinkle like dreams when you first touch them.

  That’s right. I said touch.

  Touch dreams. Read extra careful here. Don’t mistake what I’m saying here as metaphor. I’m dead fucking serious.

  It will happen instantly, by the way, when you see the years on her and reach for her hand anyway, in a kinetic moment that precludes any rationality whatsoever. You will be afraid of how she interprets this, and you will worry, and the two of you will talk through it, and there will be more moments that defy rationality, more moments than you can imagine, moments that build an entire castle upon an entire world that precludes the very act of thinking.

  Because the two of you will fall desperately in love.

  You will leverage everything. And in doing so you will lose everything, and in doing so you will also win everything. This will be the most exhilarating time of your life and it will also be the darkest. You will know beyond the shadows of doubt what possibility really is; you will wonder about things you don’t want to wonder about; you will find you are largely alone and powerless; you will find you were never completely alone at all.

  These aren’t promises or rewards enticing you, no more than they are predilections or warnings discouraging you. I’m talking about things that are. This is simply what is.

  I’m going to explain myself more clearly now. Look carefully. This is a picture you haven’t seen for decades but can recall the tiny details of without prompt or prodding. This is her.

  Wait. Let me back up a step because I need to be careful here: this is your favorite image of her. I know this because I know your past as well as I do, but I also know your future. And the next two years of your future will involve knowing a great deal about her, yet knowing sometimes very little. You will learn about the twinned natures of fate and faith, at times spun together in thre
ads fine as cotton candy, that taste just as sweet and evaporate just as quick. It is not right to say that you will have her, because you cannot truly possess another person. Nor should you even want such a thing.

  But this image of her, you can have it. And you will. From my vantage point, it very really hangs on your wall. You in fact possess this image, the original printed saturation of inks onto big, thick paper that recorded the way she bent the light all around her on the day the shutter of the camera paused just long enough for the moment to crawl inside its machinery and live there forever.

  Just like she did inside you so long ago. I’m talking about the crawling inside and living forever part. See, you don’t know this yet, but you can probably sense it, and I say that with such confidence because 24 hours from where I am, the three of us will join hands and bring a dream to full and real life. Crawling inside and living forever. Where the darkness meets the light, and the driveway recedes to a simple structure built of petals, wood, and hope.

  Bertie’s

  Pepperoni and Olive?

  At Bertie’s Brick Pizza Oven, the servers sail through the open floor seating like wobbling frisbees, carrying spun metal trays with quarters and halves and sometimes whole spheres of fresh-from-the-brick pies, shoveling a slice at a time onto the melamine plates in front of their customers’ eyes and stomachs, the dirty tables stacking with rows of partially-bitten crusts and carcasses of slices past, the road kill of carbs and red pepper flakes and parm cheese strewn like the wreckage of a traffic accident.