Tricia Friedman has lived in China, Thailand, and has recently returned to the wonderful world of New Jersey after a stint volunteering with Peace Corps in Morocco. She tries not too eat an embarrassing amount of cheese, loves running, and would like to one Sunday be able to read the entire *NY Times* before noon.

Alpine SKIING! (May 20, 2010. Issue 17.)

Anthony woke up today, only to find he forgot all the noises. The alarm was unfamiliar. The refrigerator’s rattle was new. The birds in a small, snow covered yard chirped such foreign sounds. In defense, Anthony’s head tried to produce a migraine.

How old is this Anthony? Is he one of those unfortunate souls addicted to some new smokable illegal nonsense?

You aren’t asking the right questions.

Now, if you asked about…

And, fade to psychedelic screen saver, Anthony. I’m the one not asking THE RIGHT questions, buddy.

This is what happens when you have A MONTH to toy with an assignment. All shit, all of it, buddy, is the result of TOO MUCH THINK time. Think about it my friend, if you were responsible for dropping a bomb on some country, and you had ten seconds to decide, you probably wouldn’t do it. But, hey, if they gave you days in the room, THAT ROOM, alone with that button (the red button of unspeakable death), it would start to call to you. It would sound like some wacked out on-too-many-happy-pills mom. You know at first she calls you calmly. Then you don’t reply. She calls out one more time with the voice of an angel. Then if you aren’t there, she feels like she is wasting her happy pill high. So she screams at you to ‘GET IN HERE OR I’LL SLOWLY SCRAPE OFF YOUR FACE WITH A SPATCHULA.” Not a knife, not a squeegee, but a S-P-A-T-C-H-U-L-A.

After a while, just to shut that button up, you’d push it. You don’t think so, now, because nobody wants to think he’s the guy, that guy. But this world, I knew it by age ten; this world has just enough of ‘those guys,’ to make this world the shithole that it is.

But that’s the deal, that’s why you are JUST LIKE ME. You keep your pimply nose in a book. Any book. Keep sniffing a paperback that smells like mold if you have to buddy. That’s the sort of thing that gets you ready for an eternity underground: the sniffing of moldy Penguin paperbacks. At least, when you are in someone else’s head, you are NOT in your own. For some people a jog or a game of solitaire does it. But you and me, buddy we are the other breed. It takes a whole lot more than pounding the pavement to get a little R&R from the upstairs time bomb that is our brain. You and me, we don’t need expensive athletic shoes, we need another dimension.

We need some sitar music for brains like these, buddy.

But the problem with THIS DEAL is that, when you read a lot, you end up realizing how many of ‘those guys,’ are making sweet green at your expense. You’ve read so much garbage your brain can smell it. Some guy, a would-be-button-pusher writes a little formulaic novel, it gets turned into a movie, which has a soundtrack, which has action figures, you know: consumerism is a Pac Man bastard. Anyway, it pisses you off how the garbage is celebrated, WORSHIPPED, buddy. So instead of being another mouth closed, sheep of a shithead, you put your cleats on, you get your glove, buddy, and you hit the pitching mound. We both probably listen to the same Rocky theme music when we hit the free weights, don’t we, buddy?

Not that I’m on the mound. Not yet. Probably you neither. Let’s just say you aren’t. It works better that way. I doubt anyone confuses your work with Amy fucking Tan’s. (Now I’m wishing my parents gave me ‘Fucking’ as a middle name).

Let’s metaphorically imagine that we are both headed to see some lame off Broadway play in New York, but right now, we are both stuck… in Rhode Island. The train is delayed. We don’t KNOW why. That’s just the shit of relying on a train in Rhode Island. How’s that for a metaphor? Maybe I’ll use that. Don’t steal my Rhode Island metaphor, or is it an allegory? I’ll take my answer off the air, buddy.

You might be sitting next to me in that screenwriting class on Tuesday. Or maybe you are walking past me in the used book store. You are trying to hide that Anais Nin. You are one shy cowboy. I’ll pretend like I don’t see it. Where were we before you went a’huntin for erotica? Right, the RHODE ISLAND analogy, or allegory, or metaphor. We are both in THAT place. The place where you get ready to tell that story. The metaphorical state of Rhode Island. Look at my screen saver and repeat that last line, buddy.

But in order to tell that story, you have to spew a bunch of bullshit stories first. You know, be a chef, buddy, and fuck up a few eggs. Don’t fret, they had it coming. Which reminds me, you know that creative writing exercise they all make us do? You know, YOU KNOW! They tell you to roll your body into the shape of an egg, and get quiet. Be an egg for fifteen minutes. Then you are supposed to break free of egg-life and write something AMAZING. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dan Brown’s entire career is based on that very exercise…

The bullshit story this week is a HORROR story. Boo, buddy.

Problem is that trusted and true time problemo. Grande problemo. A soy grande problemo with a bran muffin: TOO MUCH TIME TO THINK. When you really think about it (HA!) there is nothing more overrated in this green-blue tree ornament than THINKING.

What that bad Haiku of a teacher SHOULD have done is said, “Look buddy number one, buddy number two, and all you other buddies, take a week. Write a little story about something terrible. Something gross. Take it easy on the sex because it only reminds me of how little of it I’ve had in my sad, Alpaca wool-wearing existence. Due in seven days, sweethearts.” You know, I bet Peru is actually an arse-kicker of a country. But all these would-be-button-pushers with their Alpaca and their Peruvian flute music have ruined that pocket of South America for me.

If I had a week to whip this scary, gross, horror story out, I wouldn’t be wasting my time trying to make ‘Anthony’ one freaky dude. It should be easy. I actually based ‘Anthony,’ on this dubious freak of a would-be-button pusher I know. Well, I know him as well as he goes to my gym. He weighs himself obsessively. He’s probably a wrestler. Or he was a wrestler. That sport buddy, that sport messes a guy up. You try wearing a uniform that molds THAT tightly to your unmentionables in front of your entire high school class, and come out of it as a regular Joseph. So this guy that I use to sketch from---he is always on edge. And one day, I realize, (my AH-HA moment) the way he reacts to noise, it is N-O-T on the level. Go ahead, feel free to AH-HA too. And I get an idea for ‘Anthony.’ Anthony will be a man who can never hear the same sound quite the same TWICE. The slam of a locker never sounds like the sound of a locker slamming. Why? Because our friend ‘Anthony,’ doesn’t remember what that sounds like. I’m not sure how this goes anywhere from there, but this is the only idea I have left.

Too much thinking buddy, and now I have a lot of purple scribbles. It looks like I took that purple marker to about seven or eight other ideas on his list over the wild ride of three and a half weeks.

What if we lived in an ever changing auditory world?

I know, buddy, I’m no Stephen King. You aren’t either though. And so, we’ll stay in Rhode Island a little longer.

The real, Swiss cheese tasting truth is that the real horror story is that NOTHING happens in this life. Even when something does happen, it only matters for a few hours of the afternoon. Even if you win a gold medal in Alpine skiing. You probably are happy as all hell for a day. Your uncles, cousins, grandparents, neighbors, former elementary school teachers, first and last girlfriends, bartender, and Facebook friends are all so happy. FOR ONE DAY. Then you wake up in the morning, and either you are going straight back into training to try and do THAT again, or you realize your knees won’t survive another four years of training, and so what’s done is done. Do Wheaties even put Olympians on their cereal boxes anymore? Would your ass look BIG photoshopped onto an orange cardboard box? Probably, buddy.

I can’t imagine any of my fellow creative writing colleagues would like listening to me read them the ‘Anthony Story.’

Especially not the pony-tailed girl named, Iris. I caught her avoiding my eye, my lazy eye. Everybody avoids it. But with Iris, I sort of like to test out how freakish my lazy eye can be. Iris’s ponytail punctuates her fear. She always turns her head too quickly. Her hair follows her violent jerk of the head.
I like to watch with my good eye, as that fake blond hair makes a slow-motion get away. And where does that pony-tail think it is going, anyway?

Iris, what should we tell Iris, buddy? Should we tell her that no amount of makeup or hair treatments, or athletic shoes promising to firm up the glutes does an ounce of good? It isn’t Iris’s fault. You and I both know that, buddy. But she isn’t even in Rhode Island. You can tell with a girl like that. There is no story deep down in her. And for that, maybe she is lucky.

Because when you have a story in you, you waste time waiting for that train to fix whatever maintenance problems are delaying it. You wait too long, and then, instead of ever getting to the big smoke, you end up with a motel room in Rhode Island. Not a nice part of Rhode Island. Not a part of it sectioned off for a family getaway. This part of Rhode Island is not where you want to take your daughters. Sorry, buddy, I can get carried away with the metaphors and allegories that I whip up.

But with Iris, you can tell she doesn’t have the will to wait for nothing. Not her. She is constantly on her Blackberry, doing ten million things to avoid the nothingness that is vacuuming up the dust in her bleach blond head.

Never forget for a minute though, that EVEN IF THE TRAIN WERE ON TIME, that lame off-Broadway play waiting for us would end eventually. It wouldn’t make it to Broadway. And if it did, IF IT DID, it can’t stay there for keeps. For the love of Shiva, even CATS! –they meowed their last kitty cat meow, THEY HAD TO.

That’s a horror story for you: how much you and I can wait… for NOTHING. We can. But you know what? That is also why we won’t be button pushers. We are fine with letting nothing take over. Like an a transparent blob. Like the biggest pearl of tapioca you could imagine. Thank fuck I have but one good eye, buddy.

I like to pretend sometimes like that lazy eye gave up on this world. Nothing to see here folks, it said. That’s okay, nobody ever laughs at that joke.
Maybe that whole ‘Anthony Story,’ isn’t horror. Maybe that is romance for you. Think about how nicer metaphorical Rhode Island would seem if we had an influx of new sounds constantly sound tracking our time at the station? Instead, right now, what I have buddy is that same ‘ding,’ that dings when my orange pekoe tea is done.

This is when you know you have given away a piece of your soul, buddy. You no longer boil water for your damned afternoon tea. There is something about that act of boiling water that keeps you at one with your ancestry, something about it that is sanctimonious. The microwave is for those of us who are ready to cut that tie, and float off.

There, that makes my point: too much time to think is no good. I really should take up running. Or at least, I could for once in my life, try to love the rattle of the damn fridge. I could for once try to translate the chirping of birds in my snow-covered yard. I could be, you could be, buddy…the romance of fictional Anthony’s condition. Maybe a game of solitaire it is then. Cue those Peruvian flutes!