Unacceptance
Being bullied as a kid really jacked me up.
I still remember their names: Jake Jackson, Riley Jewkes, Derek Gallagher, Brad Matson, countless others. And I still remember the day Jake and his crew surrounded me in the woods behind U-Park Elementary, laughing like hyenas, casting insults like rocks, every one gashing another bloody hole in my tender 4th grade self-confidence... |
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Cool Kids
Thomas Crane’s suicide was on the news again.
Deryl Lewis’ deep news-anchor voice buzzed across the room. The atmosphere was almost holy: no one spoke too loud for fear of blaspheming the shrine of all things manly that was the Kaleidoscopes pool hall. Dozens of low voices like whispers in a church. Cracks of numbered balls like tinder strikes... |
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Mortal Art
Published in Oregon East 2012-13
“I need another brick,” Francais (pronounced fran-swah) muttered from behind the viewfinder of the camera.
“Get your own brick,” I thought but didn’t verbalize, “I sure am not missing this.” Oh, a brick is film-jargon for a camera battery—aptly titled by camera assistants required to carry multiples of the weighty objects. The cold weather was dropping them like flies. Getting bricks wasn’t my job, yet for some reason all of the unpaid production assistants (a fancy name for a go-for) had made themselves scarce in the cold weather, and that left me as the most expendable; I was the unfortunate go-for. And, while I was as eager as the rest of my film-fellows to watch Junichi Nakamura cut the supports from his magnificent sculpture, Attacking Claws, Francais, my cameraman, couldn’t run out of battery. So, through snowflakes smacking my face, with boots freezing into the ground from the weather and snow pants trying to fall off, I ran to grab and return with a load of bricks... |
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