Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

27 November 2003 | Ghost

From an email from a friend, Alec, a man I’ve never met:

26 November 2003 | Sandwich

I am writing a novel. Or rather, this is what I hope I am doing. Novel writing is like this: As you do it, or as you try to do it, you don’t really know if it’s what you’re doing. This is different than, say, making a sandwich. When beginning to make a sandwich, you can state with some certainty that you are making a sandwich, that a sandwich will result from your efforts. Not so with a novel.

Over the last twelve years, I’ve begun eight different novels. Of these, I’ve finished two. Of these, I can still bear to read one, but only barely.

If I were a horse, I’d be given long odds to win this particular race, with winning defined as finishing the thing and liking it. But who knows? I have broken from the gates and am galloping along, astonished at the way my legs feel beneath me.

Also it’s a very big track—endless, really—with no clear route around it.

And I’m completely alone.

23 November 2003 | Porch

I was hitchhiking cross-country with a woman I hardly knew. Previous to this we had held hands on a porch. There had been other people on the porch and I had stood next to her thinking about how much I wanted to hold her hand. Then, somehow, our hands brushed together and our fingers touched and suddenly we were holding hands. Later we discussed this moment in retrospect and she insisted that though she had wanted to hold my hand, she hadn’t instigated it.

Somewhere in Iowa, for reasons I’ve since forgotten, assuming I ever knew them, we stopped talking. We continued on to California—another three days!—saying practically nothing to each other.

All this really happened. I am being careful not to add anything.

22 November 2003 | Request

Help, please. I am trying to rename the Oblivio homepage section currently called Found Things. If you don’t know, that section contains links to various pieces by others on the web. There’s an extensive archive of these pieces, going back two years. I used to call the whole thing Choice Cuts, but grew to hate that. I want something not boring but not pretentious. The simplest solution. I’ve thought of Things I Like, Things I Found, and Favored Links. None of these seem quite right. The ideal solution will fit on one line, but doesn’t have to. It doesn’t have to be so simple either. I’ve considered a line from Pynchon: The broken, the spilt world. I’ve considered a lot of things. It’s beginning to bother me.

*

UPDATE (Sunday): The response has been overwhelming. Many many suggestions received. I’m going to give it a few more days to see what else comes in, then decide. Much thanks to everyone who contributed. This has gone so well that I’m planning to ask for my readers’ help the next time I need to decide which shirt to wear on a date.

*

UPDATE (Monday): It is one thing to claim one is crazy and to write stories in which one appears to be crazy, but now you will see what crazy really means. As of 10:24 p.m. Monday, I have received exactly 150 suggestions (thank you everyone; you are all, each of you, my hero), and I don’t like any of them. Or rather, none seem quite right.

Three seem pretty good, though, and perhaps something can be gained by writing down what I do and don’t like about them.

» Good Stuff

• Simple and straightforward: good
• The word stuff feels slightly too informal: bad
• The “more” link would say more good stuff: nice
• The archive page would be called Good Stuff: okay

» Recommended

• Simple and straightforward: good
• The “more” link would say more recommendations: so-so
• The archive page would be called Recommended: so-so

» The Garden

• Evocative: good
• But also hokey: bad
• The “more” link would say what?: bad
• The archive page would be called The Garden: Now I forget why I like this one

I am getting depressed.

Still, I want to add that I like The Garden as a concept—that is, the idea of a concept—only this particular concept feels a bit too hokey.

Also, Good Stuff is probably too informal, and Recommended too boring.

Plus I’ve resigned myself to probably having to add some explanatory text under the title; something like things by others. By resigned I mean something like, I will do it if I have to, but it still makes me want to tear off my eyelids.

If you think I’m being absurd, just imagine what I’m like when something actually matters.

*

UPDATE (Wednesday): A good friend suggested Things By Others. When I wrote back that I liked it, she replied, “This is my job: listen and repeat back to the other what they have said without hearing themselves.” She’s a therapist.

Truth is, I’m not entirely thrilled with it, but I like it better than anything else, besides also being dead tired of thinking about this.

I may change my mind in five minutes, but for right now, 6:29 p.m. Wednesday, it’s Things By Others.

Thanks to everyone who helped, or tried to help. I am a bad client.

*

The list as of 6:31 p.m. Wednesday (exactly 200 suggestions):

• A La Carte
• Accessories
• After Taste
• All You Can Eat Buffet
• All Your Words Are Belong To Us
• And Now Presenting…
• Another Man’s Treasure
• Arcade
• Archaeology
• As Seen On Oblivio
• Ask Me, I Like To Help
• Baby On Board
• Back Scratching
• Baubles, Bangles, And Beads
• Beachcomber
• Between The Leaves
• Beyond
• Big Pimpin’
• Big Top
• Bits Of Elsewhere
• Brain Cramps
• Brain Sparklies
• Bunnies Of Dust
• Cattle Call
• Caught My Eye
• Chocolate Kisses
• Chorus
• Cognate
• Collectibles
• Collections
• Community Garden
• Consortium
• Constellation
• Convolutes
• Crack Whoring
• Crackerjack Prizes
• Customer Service
• Customers Who Bought “Oblivio” Also Bought
• Daily Memories
• Damn Good
• Damn Goodins
• Damn Goodums
• Damn Gooduns
• Dandies
• Discovered
• Disjecta Membra.
• Droppings
• Elsewhere
• Ettes
• Evocative
• Favored Bits
• Feedbag
• Fertilizer
• Field Guide
• Figments/Fragments
• Fine And Dandy
• Fire Eaters
• Fish Bowls
• Float Your Boat
• Floating
• Flotsam
• Fluff And Fodder
• Fluke
• Flyover Country
• Fodder
• For What It’s Worth
• For Your Pleasure
• Friendly Fire
• Frollic
• Fucking Brilliant I Say
• Further
• Fuzzy Lint Balls
• Gas Pockets
• Gems/Baubles
• Goddamn The Pusher Man
• Good Reads
• Good Stuff
• Good Things
• Humane Society
• I Like These
• If A Tree Falls In The Woods…
• In Other Words
• Instances
• Intruders
• Ivory From The Dog’s Mouth
• Jetsam
• Juicy
• Karma
• Killa Bits (Archive: Killa Bytes)
• Kismet
• Lagniappe
• Landfill
• Leave
• Linger
• Look Here Upon This Text
• Look Over There
• Lost & Found
• Lost Dogs
• Marking
• Mass Market
• Meat Raffle
• Might I Also Suggest
• Mind Munchies
• Minutes From Life
• Mishmashmush
• My Back Pages
• My Favorite Wastes Of Time
• Not Another Word
• Not Mine
• (Not) My Gems
• Note This
• Obliviettes
• Off Ramp
• Offerings
• On The Shelf
• One Hand Clapping
• Only The Lonely
• Orbit
• Orbiter
• Other Delusions
• Other Favorites
• Other Liars
• Other People’s Lives
• Other Stories By Other People
• Other Voices, Other Rooms
• Otherwise
• Oubliettes
• Outback
• Party Barge
• Pathology
• People Who (Also) Think Like Me
• Phylum
• Pieces Of The Pyramid
• Pimpalicious
• Playmates
• Pocket Change
• Polyglot
• Potluck
• Presents!
• Pretty Pennies
• Produce
• Purspises
• Raked
• Recommended
• Redirected Reading
• Rice Weevils
• Sample Room
• Satellites
• Savory Text
• Scatterings
• Scintillating
• See Also
• See Here
• Seeds (Yawn)
• Serendipity
• Share The Love
• *Shock And Awe*
• Side Orders
• Side Trips
• Sideshow
• Sighted
• Sloppy Seconds
• Snip Pets
• Space Invaders
• Sparklers
• Spokes
• Stories In The Rough
• Strip Mall
• Suburbia
• Surf’s Up
• Sweet And Salty
• Tasty Bits
• Tea Room
• Text Quota
• The Angst Reader
• The Buffet
• The Garden
• Them
• Things By Others
• Things That Make Me Go Mmm
• Things That Make The Heart Beat Faster
• Things We Said Today
• This Is DOPE
• Tiny Bubbles
• Titillation
• Toys In The Attic
• Trail Of Tears
• Unearthed
• Viewfinder Slides
• Vignettes
• Voyeurism
• Wander:
• Weeds I Like
• Weekly Rations
• Well Met
• Whack Like Me
• When Visiting Oblivio, Be Sure To Check Out…
• Windfall
• You Be The Judge
• You Best (F***In) Click On This
• You’ve Got A Friend

21 November 2003 | Leaves

I come to the door, late, and the door is locked. I knock but no one comes. I will miss all. I laugh at this. To have come so far, six and half hours on a bus, and not see you. I laugh and laugh. Oh, how I laugh. Still, how long can one laugh? I leave to find the time. There is a half hour left to the play. Through the door I can see the door that leads to where I could see you. I try to hear through the door but can’t. I leave once more and walk. There is a place to buy food. The food comes in a box. I wait by the door and eat it. Leaves fall on me. The food is bad. All I can think of is you and how bad the food is. A man walks up and in a flash I know him. He looks just as you said he did. The same man. The one you live with and love. Though not for long now. He walks past and I watch him. He looks at things and does not leave. He is here to meet you. This time I don’t laugh. I cross the street and sit on a bench in a kind of park. From here I can see the door. I watch the door. My plan is to watch the man greet you. I hope I’m wrong, I hope the man is not who I think he is but a man who looks like him. I will know for sure if he greets you and you walk with him. But where is he? Much time goes past. It feels like too much time, it feels like you should have come out by now. I keep my eyes on the door. Zilch. At last I cross the street to the door. I have the thought to go to the door itself and peer in. The man I don’t see. Ah, now I do! He sits by a tree! As I see him, I turn and head down the street. Back to the park I go, where I wait in the same place. Where are you? Is my sense of time all screwed? Have I fucked up in some way I can’t think of? If so, the man has fucked up as well. Then at last he stands—I see his head come up—and off he strides. What is this now? I watch for two blocks and he is gone. All so strange. I cross the street for the last time, try the door, ring bells. Zilch and more zilch. I find out the time. It is a half hour past the time you should have come out. I hold my ear to the door and try to hear the play. I think to go but do not. A short time more, I think. Then that time too is gone. Was there a door in back you left from? That is all I can think. At last I leave. Half way down the block, you walk my way with two friends. Now all thought is gone. It is you. You don’t see me. You speak with your friends and walk. I come to you and touch your arm. What do I say? Not a word. Like that, your friends are gone. They are there but gone, poof.

What is the rest? You know the rest. The play had not gone on, for so few had come. You drank at a bar one block down with friends. The man had meant to join you, but the plans had gone wrong. He sat by the door, by a tree, and got mad. You held me hard and pushed me to the wall.

20 November 2003 | Death and Genitals

My favorite moment from a brief and remarkably superficial New York Times Magazine interview with Noam Chomsky (who, one imagines, brushes his teeth in the same terse and humorless manner in which he answers journalists’ questions):

19 November 2003 | Bad Witch

Rachel’s nieces Sydney and Hannah were in town for the weekend, and Rachel and I babysat them. It was the first time I’d seen the girls since Rachel and I broke up, fifteen months ago. Hannah, who’s almost five now, told me I looked different. I thought, You don’t know what different is. I missed a quarter of this girl’s life, and it freaked me out.

After dinner Hannah insisted I play “bad witch” with her. I was to be the bad witch.

“What does the bad witch do?”

“Bad things.”

Fine. Bad things. I stuck her in the bathroom sink and told if she tried to get down, I would turn her into a bar of soap and wash my face with her.

She liked that.

Then she demanded some bugs to eat, so I got her a handful of grapes.

“If you eat all these bugs, you’re going to become the fattest girl in the world.”

“Why?”

“Because these bugs get really really big inside you, and you can’t ever get them out.”

“I’m going to eat them anyway.”

“You won’t be able to leave this bathroom if you do, because you won’t be able to fit through the doorway.”

“I don’t care. I’m hungry. Give them to me.”

“Suit yourself. Since I’m a bad witch, I want you to eat the bugs because it means more soap for me. I like soap.”

Chomping on the bugs, Hannah asked why I like soap so much.

“Because it’s made from little girls.”

I laughed demonically, branishing my claw-like hands.

Hannah was unmoved. “You don’t scare me, you soapy witch. Now bring me more bugs.”

*

Later Hannah gave me a drawing she made. The black part, she felt compelled to explain, is my t-shirt.

18 November 2003 | I and This Mystery

From Whitman’s Song of Myself:

17 November 2003 | Fridge

Something strange just happened. A sound came from the refrigerator that made me suddenly aware of what I’m doing, which is that I’m sitting in a room, in my underwear and sandles, writing things on a computer. I’ve been doing this for several hours now.

Sociologist Marc Smith: “People like computers because there are people in them.”

But also because there aren’t people in them—because they aren’t people.

16 November 2003 | Gus

I’m standing outside Tom’s Restaurant waiting for Dervala who is staying just four blocks away and who told me she was going to walk out the door the moment we hung up, which was fifteen minutes ago, minimum, so where is she? The only reason I ask is because it’s cold and windy and because the jacket I’m wearing, which I picked because Tom’s is just two blocks from my apartment, is absurdly insufficient.

I would go inside and get a table, but Dervala doesn’t know Brooklyn or Tom’s, so it seems better that I stand outside and freeze my ass off waiting for her.

No, forget that, I go inside to warm up, and there I get into a conversation with Gus, the super-nice but pervy-seeming guy who runs the place.

Last year I brought an out-of-town friend to Tom’s and told her, straight-faced, that Gus is a known pedophile but that it’s cool with folks in the neighborhood because it’s all out in the open. Sometimes people even joke with him about it, I told her, especially cops for some reason. My friend thought I was serious, which I didn’t realize until the next day when I read about it on her website.

Today Gus says, “Waiting for another lady friend, are we?”

I quickly count in my head and realize he’s seen me with at least five different women, all of them attractive, and so he has concluded that I’m some kind of Tom’s-based ladies man.

“It’s not what you think.”

“You’re secret is safe with me.”

“That secret is an illusion.”

“You’re being modest. What do you tell them?”

“I don’t tell them anything. Women don’t like to be told things.”

“Too true.”

“Instead I suggest.”

At this he moves closer. “Excellent. Let the woman decide.”

“They do anyway.”

“You’re a philosopher. What do you suggest?”

“The banana walnut pancakes.”

Back outside, Dervala shows up from the wrong direction, wearing no jacket. She walked down East Parkway west instead of east, asked ten quasi-helpful people directions, ran for a time, doesn’t know how she got here, seems tremendously pleased with herself. Also (I’ve never met her before, so I didn’t know this in advance) she’s beautiful. I bring her inside and introduce her to Gus, who takes her hands in his super-nice but pervy-seeming way.

“May I suggest the banana walnut pancakes,” he says. “They’ll warm you right up.”

15 November 2003 | Question

do you want two turtles to put in the pond? because i need somewhere safe to put them because i have to get rid of them my parents say so. one is called tommy and the other is larry but you can call them anything. sometimes i call tommy larry and larry tommy just to see what happens but nothing happens because they don’t know their own names they’re just turtles.

14 November 2003 | Sand

I forget what I read. Even in the best case, I retain little more than a vague sense of things, perhaps a fragment, a single thought. When I like something, I can rarely say why.

The problem applies across the board. I forget things. It’s as though my head is an Etch-a-Sketch. When I shake it, I lose everything.

13 November 2003 | Pillow

Funny scene (no one ever writes about this) in which we tried the slide a pillow under her. She arched up, left elbow on the bed to steady herself, and pushed the pillow under from the right. I helped using my left hand while propping myself with my right. The idea, which I’m pleased to report went well, was to avoid slipping out.

Several times while writing the previous paragraph, I had to go over to the bed and act out, alone and fully clothed, what I was trying to describe.

12 November 2003 | Semantics

Some guy named Clay Shirkey recently wrote a piece about why the Semantic Web is a bunch of hooey, which a lot of other people have responded to with pieces of their own (e.g. Danny Ayers, Tim Bray, Paul Ford, Shelley Powers).

I think I’ve read everyone’s pieces so far, and I have to admit that I don’t understand what anyone is talking about. I can follow the sentences and even, it seems, the arguments, but evidently some necessary thing is missing to make me understand what everyone is saying and why.

This reminds me of something, but I can’t remember what.

Maybe it’s being a kid and overhearing my parents and their friends talk about sex and having the sense that something important is being said but not knowing what nor being able to figure out what no matter how hard I try, despite knowing all the words pretty much, except maybe a handful.

That must be what it reminds me of.

Anyway, speaking of sex (which to this day still mystifies me, despite my having long since learned all the words, including some my parents never used or probably even knew), I realized recently that I understand vaginas better. I saw some photographs that helped.

I’m not kidding.

11 November 2003 | C0cksucker

So it’s true: I took a job writing spam headers. I won’t try defend this decision because I can’t. That’s my defense: I have no defense. Anyway I just wrote headers; no body copy. It wasn’t because headers are less disgusting than body copy or anything like that; I just wouldn’t know how to write body copy if my life depended on it.

Not that I was so hot with headers either. Probably I was lousy at it. The guy who hired me, I’ll call him Josh, would pay me by the header. He’d say, “Give me twenty headers about sucking c0ck” and I’d spend half a day writing the world’s best headers about sucking c0ck, which was ridiculous because he was paying me a flat rate and then would use maybe two or three headers, total.

This is a problem I have: I have to do the best job possible or I feel like crap. It’s always been like this. When I was paperboy, I would place each paper directly in front of each person’s door, face up and facing the door, so that the person could read the headline as he or she reached down to pick up the paper. All the other paperboys would throw their papers from the sidewalk, which was obviously more efficient and anyway no one cared if they could read the headline right away; it was just something I decided to do and couldn’t stop myself from doing.

Anyway I quit writing spam headers when it became clear that Josh didn’t appreciate my work. The final straw was the aforementioned c0ck sucking assignment. I wrote one header in particular I really liked but which he considered “overly modest.” It went:

i am not perfect but i do suck c0ck

I got the idea from the signature line of a guy I once hired to do some database programming. His line was: I am not perfect but I do know Perl.

As I saw it, the reader would read this and imagine a woman who was trying to be realistic and forthright about her strengths and weaknesses. This made her seem pretty compelling to me; in fact it made me want to know more about her, but Josh didn’t care for such subtleties. He preferred the hard sell, as it were, which I find distasteful.

I guess you call that professional differences. We had professional differences and I told him to go fuck himself. This is another problem I have: I get upset when I make something that I think is good, but then people don’t like it. Probably I should be less intense about this, more philosophical, but I can’t help myself.

05 November 2003 | The Obvious

E reported over dinner (excellent new Italian place on Vanderbilt) that it’s over between her and J, who is in love with and has evidently returned to a woman he once had a long-term affair with, under the nose of the woman’s then live-in boyfriend. E said that the cuckolded former boyfriend, who is either a big fucking idiot or someone who gets off on being betrayed, once phoned his girlfriend at J’s apartment, right after his girlfriend and J had had sex, to ask what she was up to.

“Lying naked with J,” she said, as though joking, which in a sense she was, the joke being that the joke wasn’t a joke.

E ordered meat ravioli; I had vegetable polenta. The food was yummy and we both liked the décor, which made E think of a bed and breakfast, and me of the hull of a ship. We sat at a table for four and I noticed that you couldn’t fit two chairs under the same side of the table at the same time, that either the table was too narrow or the chairs too wide. I pointed this out to the waitress, who kept leaning over the table and tilting her head in such a way that made E think she was flirting with me. I disagreed, or rather I thought that if she was flirting with me, which I suppose she was, she didn’t actually mean anything by it and was instead pretending to mean something, which to my mind made it different from flirting, which is all about possible, not pretended, meaning.

E said that her instant messaging program lets her know when J’s computer has been idle more than a certain number of minutes, this being information she uses in her speculations about whether J is talking to, emailing, or having sex with the other woman.

I suggested the obvious: Delete him from the program.

She responded with the obvious: This is her only remaining connection to him.