He told people his name was Greaser. Years ago I am sure he made a conscious decision to cultivate this persona. From the Misfits imprinted loafers and close fitting jeans to the scuffed old leather jacket and perfectly cut and styled pompadour he lived in character. He had adopted the psychobilly style, clothes, music, tattoos, and women. Sleeves of ink, featuring playing cards, pinup girls and punk logos, swept into Dickies brand collared shirts. Each career was sketchy and sure to make money but they never lasted. The latest was hairstylist but before that it was, anti-sequentially, cook, bouncer, inmate.

His name is Milton. He started college sometime around 1970. Always changing majors,never graduating.

Became a legend in campus. Many generations
of students heard about him, talked about him. Some even claimed to have met him!

By the early 90s he became the object of a Borges like polemic regarding his very existance. Graffitti appeared around campus decrying- "Milton does not exist"

A composer wrote an avant garde piece for soprano, chorus and electric guitar titled
"Milton does not exist!" It was performed to great acclaim, something rare in a country that has an almost allergic dislike for contemporary music.

But Milton does exists.
I've seen him. Met him, even.
Meeting him is like meeting the invisible man.
He does not talk, he whispers.
And he dissappears as suddenly as he appears.


Universidad De Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus

Her name was Lily. I was doing a volunteer/internship thing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute in New York. I was between college and fashion school; she was between high school and college.

She was doing the internship because her father was a friend of the curator; he was the curator or president or something of a museum in Israel. She'd grown up there, going to a mixed Arab/Israeli private school when not jet-setting around the world with her parents (she showed me her passport; it had two extra books of pages put in, all completely filled with stamps.) She was fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, and spoke English like a more animated Paris Hilton. She must have been one of the richest people I've ever met; spoiled rotten, oversexed, bleach-blonde, funny and loud.

Our task over the summer was to do an inventory; go through the drawers and shelves and closets and take note of what was in each. She went hog wild when we were doing the shoes, squeaking and squealing in delight at the Vivienne Westwood and Manolo Blahniks. For lunch we'd walk to Lexington or somewhere and she'd strike up conversations with the guys behind the counters of convenience stores in Arabic. Once we were eating lunch when an ambulance passed by, and she started shaking all over. The sirens, she said. She'd gone to school near a Sbarro's that was blown up.

She was nervous about college, wondering if she'd fit in in America, what it would be like. It was hard for me to imagine a person with such a ridiculous set of life experiences fitting in at my school; everyone there just postured like they'd been places. I could see her being either the queen bee herself, or being completely lonely without anyone to talk or relate to.

When the summer was over she gave me a hug, called me something in Hebrew, and was off to school. Work at the museum changed from inventory to data entry, in a tiny windowless underground room, but it didn't really matter, because the damage had already been done.

The girls in the lab call him CJ. creepy jason. The legs of his wrinkled pants only reach his ankles. He wears white socks with his brown hushpuppies. His lips are chapped and his skin is dry. The flakes gather in his Colonel Sanders style moustache. He speaks to his friends in a confident, loud tone.

He knocks on my office door, saying in his best gangster accent, "Mistuh Thomas, you comin' to lunch or is things going to get ugly?" I cringe, wishing he would lower his voice, praying that no one sees him in my cube. I relent, in hopes of ending the spectacle. He tells me about his life.

A perfect day for CJ includes a lunch of Cheeseburger and Fries, Chocolate Milk, Yogurt, A piece of pie, and raisinets for the afternoon. Where does it go? His 6'4" frame could not weigh more than 140. He goes home in his sensible sedan and paints his warhammer 40K miniatures with a loving hand. He hopes that one day soon his fiancee will get a job or at least stop playing guild wars long enough to clean the house. He tries not to think to hard about it. Like his dad tells him, it's just one of those things, like politics, that doesn't merit much concern. It's not like he can do anything about it, anyway.

He is Russian. His father a soviet military man of Jewish descent, his mother old Russian aristocracy, they named him after a French revolutionary.
He had a limp, I don't exactly remember what sort of handicap he had on one of his legs. A scar on his lip. Always walked on our right side of us when walking down the mall. He was half deaf from that ear. His shoulders broad, he was truly built like a closet and had the flexibility of a dancer; which he also was. Plus Aikido black belt.

Overachiever wouldn't even cover it for him. He must have spoken at least five languages. including Farsi.
Slept barely 3 hours per night. 4.0 gpa, don't know how many clubs he was active in (yes, ballroom dancing one too) and flirting. A lot of flirting. The sexiest most popular beast on campus.

But there was only one person that caught his heart. My best friend.
His five years senior. (the age difference did matter to her, she wouldn't take him seriously)
The goddess Athena from the isle of cyprus. Her last name unique in the language. Her father the Finance minister at some point. He send her to London to study Finance. Half way through she finally made her stand against him and transfered to our Uni for english lit. Athena is a poet.
Her personality is a force of nature. Nothing has ever stood in her way. But she's usually had bad luck when it comes to her lovers. They tend to become obsessed about her. Things end up badly.

So she could never take him seriously. He never stopped his stormy advances for her.
Two years later he was in Georgetown for his phd. She was back in London for her masters.
Now she's in Cyprus teaching english, running a theater troupe, writing poems.
He's quite predictably become a diplomat. I think he stopped in Larnaka a couple of times on layover.

Lee had worked with me on and off for about a dozen years before we ran into each other working an embassy gig for the Brazilians in Japan. I don't know what his real name was, when we were federal employees he was called Jim Sykes, although I know that was not his real name and I was never really sure which agency he worked for.

Brazilia had called us in as outside security to watch their people on the ambassdor. Never a very nice job watching the watchers, especially with the Brazilians who were all in all a good bunch.

Lee was amicable and chatty without really ever saying anything. He was sixty if he was a day and thin. Weatherbeaten skin and thick fingers and silver hair that was blown back in that peculiar way that only old guys could pull off. He was definitely not grandpa material though, his smoke scarred voice was more suited to calling for a scotch from the bartender while ordering a hooker on his cell phone than in fatherly pursuits. He dressed very Vegas, old Vegas not the bullshit baggy shorts and sandals Vegas you know now. He preffered pinstriped suits and collared shirts with wide lapels, open at the neck. Flashy watches. The last time I saw him, fighting with the old lady trying to trigger her bomb, he was wearing a purple shirt and dark gold rimmed aviators. His face was locked in a tight grin of effort as she broke his grasp.

Vic, as in "Victim", ran away from home at the age of 16; home being a trailer park along "Hurricane Alley". Working his way westward, from strip mall to abandoned resource towns, his existence became repetitive, like a Michel Gondry video; slight variations to a common, overall pattern of petty crimes across the States.

His name was Flipper, Flipper the Dauphin. Came out of the ruinous history of late 21st century France driving a Fiat with chrome sugar skulls winking along the grill. he was five feet four if he was foot and had a nasty rictus carved into his face via severed nerves and muscles.

He wasn't the first to transubstantiate lip gloss into Soma, but he was the best. After him we just didn;'t see any point in keeping our bodies anymore, who wanted to, blasted landscape all around you and the sky scraped a magnesium clean by the two suns.

It was bad there for awhile, but now we're free. We wished that Flipper the Dauphin could have come along but it's like he said, "Some of us our for follwin' and some of us are for doin to follow."

We'll miss him, but it's ok, they programmed him into every karmic node, when young lovers go there to ask their fortunes, Flipper's there, and he looks so much better with the new face.

Wait, are these supposed be fiction or non-fiction? Mine was non.

Or does it not matter...?

Jake, and a smile to kill.
The way he raises one eyebrow when he's listening to something, trying to understand. A soothing voice when he's speaking to a customer, voice that says "I am here to help with whatever you ask."
Ambitious, he wants to write for Microsoft. I told him he's a wanna-be Microserf, and he didn't know what I was saying.
He's writing a novel right now, for his college English course. It's about werewolves in England a long time ago. He gets me to read each chapter, even though its not work-appropriate.
A smile, a raised eyebrow, an ambition.

quote:

Originally posted by IndividualFrog:
Wait, are these supposed be fiction or non-fiction? Mine was non.

Or does it not matter...?

doesn't matter, just so long as you find the character interesting.

quote:

even though its not work-appropriate.

mmmm?

ever hear the phrase 'don't dip your pen in company ink'?

but it is a lot of fun.

She hops from bar to club and back again. She is alone although everybody seems happy to see her. She is horny tonight and pretty sure she will hook up. She knows that it will only relieve the boredom and loneliness for a short while though.

But maybe.... maybe this time he will care. He will listen. He will want to spend time with her instead of just spending the night.

If nothing else she will get a few drinks and maybe even an orgasm and for a little while that will make it seem ok.

sunday afternoon, heading on to evening. domino's pizza is in this industrial estate type place. kind of middle of nowhere feel, though there are vast decaying housing estates just across the road. shimla village indian, global video, KFC and McDonalds drive throughs, tanning bed salon, and the domino's. there is a team of pallid staff, that look like sun light might come as a shock that kills. amongst them, one girl, her eyes made up DARK, in a manner that seems to throb in contrast against her discoloured flesh. she stands poised at the pizza making table, her eyes looking like they might just roll up into the back of her head if she doesn't do something. vacancy in this head, previous tennant: stoner rock girl. visible signs of wear: discolouring on her bare arms, likely source being biting. her hair is tied back, up in a blue hair net, a cap on her head, as he head bobs in concentration, beating out pizza base and chucking on toppings. one woman conveyer belt system.

Doctor Ramadan is a quantum terrorist, which to the lay-eye may appear indistinguishable from a quantum mechanic, however, there are some subtle but major deviations. The quantum mechanic believes in rationality and belief only with evidence, repairs your broken quantum wave-functions into more perfect and enlightened unions, and writes books about how the universe is computing its own evolution. The quantum terrorist believes irrationally, dogmatically, that the universe is actually computing jihad on the enlightened. That each wave collapse is really the collapse of a grand spire of a rational, subatomic society, sending these democracies into entropy and anomie. They believe that the universes constantly bubbling into existence are really Allah's dreams, ever evolving universes in which infidels suffer more pain and destruction, much like plots to annihilate the United States bubbling in the mind of Osama Bin Laden. These quantum terrorists -- though they may be carefully disguised in white lab coats with PhD certificates framed in their offices -- will, without a second thought, sacrifice their own neutrons, sending them careening at astronomical speeds to collide into the magnificent, rational societies of subatomic particles known as atoms, destroying these unions all in the name of furthering and studying cosmological jihad. (Quantum terrorist are also suspected to be nihilist, believing that quantum theory tells us there is really nothing in the universe, that it is cold and meaningless, just a lot of quantum vacuum. They are also probably postmodernists.)

Enlightened, rational scientists of the West of course must, regretfully, collide some atoms, in order to further our scientific understanding of the world, however we have completely rational, scientifically supported systems of ethics and morality to guide us. We will never collide particles without their prior consent and even then, we will only destroy irrational, tyrannical societies of particles with bloated, corrupt proton governments as an absolute last resort, where the happiness and well-being of the whole is at stake. Some sacrifices must be made in those cases in the name of rational progress.

Paco is sitting in his low rider parked at the corner of Escobar and Sanchez. His girlfriend Valaria is getting some face time in his lap. Paco is a happy guy. His head is bobbing up and down to Valaria's rhythm. He is enjoying the sunshine and smoggy air coming in his open window. Life is good. He is thinking they would have fish taco and cerveza for lunch.

Salvator approaches the Paco's car from behind, walking down the street along the row of cars. Traffic passes closely on his left. The wind from the closely passing cars stirs his clothing. He does not notice. His left hand is empty. He's waggles the fingers of that hand as he walks and hums tunelessly to himself. When he comes next to the open window of Paco's car, his right arm comes up. He places the muzzle of the nine millimeter automatic pistol held in his right hand into Paco's left ear. He pulls the trigger before Paco even knows its there.

Paco's head explodes across the passenger side of his car. A large portion of Paco's skull exits the car through the open passenger side window and falls onto the empty sidewalk. After spitting the dead Paco from her mouth, Valaria begins to scream hysterically.

Salvator stuffs the pistol into the waistband of his trousers at his back and saunters away. The hot end of the muzzel burns the naked skin of his backside. He does not notice. He hums tunelessly to himself as he walks. He turns right on Sanchez. He's thinking about having fish taco and cerveza for lunch.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Black Jacque,

Sometimes you do met people that clichés or stereotypes are based on. The Pinball Girl was one of them.
Short, very thin, lightly tanned skin; bleached hair with 'lights', which back then were just beginning to come in vogue. She was always accompanied by one skinny, taller fellow, that some said was his brother, and he did had a passing resemblance. He always wore a cheap-looking suit and tie; when she sported a longish dress and blouse, they looked like bank tellers, office workers. Sometimes, she wore tight-fitting jeans and a leathery-looking jacket over an usually black t-shirt.

This being back when most videogame arcades were not yet sanitized for families, the atmosphere of that place was, if not dangerous, not really prone for making anything more than passing acquaintances. Apart from the banks of videogames, there was a small area with a row of pinball machines; a few old-school electromechanical ones and the then state-of-the-art models, with LED scoreboards, voice synthesis software, flashy gizmos on the playfield. Always a queue for playing the most popular machines, a lineup of stacked coins on the cabinet front. 4-player matches between strangers were common. So, back then, seeing a woman attending that dark, dodgy place was rare, and even if there was one, she was more likely to be engrossed in some two-player videogame with a boyfriend or bored to tears watching him racking up a high score.

But she played pinball. And she was good. Strong grip on the headboard, quick, exact taps on the flipper buttons; but it was the body english that helped her win the credits. Sensuous pelvic thrusts nudged the ball where she wanted it to go. The right amount of force so while TILT might flash a warning the game continued. Fine tuning of the initial plunger thrust, starting things right. Coaxing the machine to please her whims with sneaky side pushes, split-second right-left flipper action to deflect a ball going straight to the gutter; stopping it dead, effortlessly passing it to the flipper with the best angle for hitting the next lit target, zooming thru an enabled gate or falling into the kick-back hole granting an extra ball.

And when the ritual motions were completed and flashing lights came alive and two, then three balls were set free on the board, it was ecstatic. The speed of the quicksilver, the mounting score, her precise, swift reactions. The fanfares when a free ball was granted. Her intense gaze, her bared teeth; tension and, yes, pleasure from the stress, from the display of her skill.

And sometimes, there was the big one, the climax: the low, gunshot-like THUNK-THUNK deep inside the machine's guts, a solenoid's spasm signaling a free game earned. For the crowd of teenagers around, witnessing this during a multiplay round was akin to communing with her. She had toyed with the machine, and with them, too; had tamed its' wild force and channeled the energy bursts to suit her desires. She had conquered it and achieved release of pent-up tension, and she enjoyed it, and they enjoyed it along with her.

And then, as her round ended, she'd wait for her next turn amid the crowd. Her long, thin fingers tapping the glass plate of another machine.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fuldog,

Hot. DAMN.

Effing brilliant.

i like fuldog.

quote:

And sometimes, there was the big one, the climax: the low, gunshot-like THUNK-THUNK deep inside the machine's guts, a solenoid's spasm signaling a free game earned.

For me, this sentence was worth the price of admission alone.

***

My old best friend back in them days (I'm talking circa 1980, give or take) performed a similar role at this bowling alley that was the local pinball hangout.

When he was 'deeply engaged', and missed, and the ball would do one of those suicide drains like a squirrel running under your car at the last minute, he would convulse, galvanize like a squid hooked to electrodes, arch his back to an impossible right-angle, reach his hands up like a Mississippi faith healer, fingers writhing (but without dropping his perennially lit cigarette), and roar like a skewered dinosaur.

The crowd that had gathered round to watch him (mostly younger kids aged 10-16) scurried away like hyenas discovering the water buffalo wasn't dead but merely sleeping deeply.

This was the most impressive part of his mastery, his apocalyptic grief at losing when victory was nigh to hand.

Only TV news dudes had minicams back then, alas.

Charles Stephen Zubizarreta, 1961--1989