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Shitless | Jan 09 2002

So Josh and I were emailing about some high-level writer stuff, stuff about tense and stuff, in particular how commendable it is when you simply abandon the whole notion of tense and just write the way that Josh wrote in 1976, with each clause its own little universe of time, the way it is in dreams, time being thrown out the window or jumbled to the point of irrelevance, only it wasn’t Josh who was saying this stuff but me, although he wasn’t disagreeing with me either, although, fine, I wasn’t really saying most of it but rather thinking it, when I remembered this story I once found on a pockmarked piece of notebook paper in a gutter by a bus stop in San Francisco, that big street whose name I’ve forgotten, the one that went out to where I was living then, not the Sunset but the district just north of the Sunset, the, the, the, fuck I can’t think of it, the Something district, so I went and found the story and sent it to Josh, who in his generosity said that it was ten times better than his story, which it isn’t, that’s cracked, but I do like it and have more than once thought of it, because as I see it there’s a kind of wisdom in it, which at the time, I have to admit, scared me shitless.

ONCE THERE WAS A GIRL NAMED RANATA. SHE WAS LIKE ALL THE OTHER GIRLS, EXCEPT FOR ONE THING. SHE ALWAYS WORE A GREEN RIBBON AROUND HER NECK.

THERE WAS BOY NAMED SCOOBY IN HER CLASS. SCOOBY LIKED RANATA, RANATA LIKED SCOOBY. ONE DAY HE ASKED HER, “WHY DO YOU WEAR THAT RIBBON ALL THE TIME?” RANATA “I CANNOT TELL YOU” SAID BUT SCOOBY KEPT ASKING, “WHY DO YOU WEAR IT?” AND RANATA WOULD SAY, “IT IS NOT IMPORTANT.”

THEY GOT MARRIED AND HE STILL ASKED. FINALLY, SCOOBY AND RANATA GOT OLD. RANATA GOT REAL SICK. THE DOCTOR SAYS SHE IS DYING. RANATA CALLED SCOOBY TO HER SIDE. “NOW I WILL TELL YOU ABOUT THE GREEN RIBBON. UNTIE IT AND YOU’LL SEE.” SCOOBY UNTIED THE RIBBON AND RANATA’S HEAD FELL OFF.

THE END