3 TEXTS

Jason Bredle

THE SEX PARTY

I'm at a party and a fight breaks out

between the Sharks and the Jets. What to do!

I grab the first item of defense I can find: a bouquet of roses.

Freak, and tonight I was to propose marriage to my girlfriend!

A Shark disembowels a Jet

a mere four feet away from the shrimp cocktail

which is a mere two feet away from me!

Should I jump out the window?

I really don't want to be disemboweled like Jeremy.

Boy, is this ever one of those times I wish I’d been friends

with that guy in high school

who had a chainsaw head

because he could really get me out of this jam!

But he died, falling asleep

on the couch while eating Rice Krispies,

accidentally disemboweling himself.

Oh man, it's Sunday, and not only am I witnessing

this truly exceptional knife fight

between two rival gangs

but I also forgot to call my dad

and he's still mad about how I ignored his demonstration

of the neat seat because I thought I looked like Rafael Nadal.

O, the tornado of this life,

the fighting, the bleeding, the love, the hate,

the disemboweling. I like trampolines

but I don't like tramps or lines or the letter o.

The Sharks and the Jets are cats and I'm painfully allergic.

No one warned me of cats at this party,

particularly cats in gangs

who are disemboweling Jeremy and now Christine!

Should I subscribe to Tricycle Magazine?

Rivers Cuomo is in the new issue,

but I don't know if I can handle any more subscriptions.

They pile up endlessly by the door, by the blender,

by the toilet, by the radiator, by the little table where we keep

all the menus,

and every night when I park my car

I imagine someone will emerge from the shadows to quietly

slit my throat.

ELEGY FOR ARCHITECTURE

I was headed home after a day of really good sunbathing, and,

I don’t know, it was weird, because I took an alternate route,

to break out of my cocoon or whatever,

and I ended up on the outskirts of town,

like, near the river,

down by that haunted mansion,

and I don’t know what came over me, but I was just like,

screw it, I’m going into that haunted mansion,

and you know what?,

I bet I end up finding a real nice old lady in there

with a lot of cats who just happens to be misunderstood

but who bakes extraordinary chocolate pies,

and in fact the old haunted mansion isn’t haunted at all,

and I was thinking about this while peeking though the windows

to see if anybody was in there,

and I didn’t see anybody,

and it turned out the back door was unlocked,

so I went in, and it was weird in there,

but then it got really weird

because I made my way upstairs

and I heard the back door slam shut, so I was like, holy fuck,

and then every time I took a step

in any direction the floor was just creaking like crazy,

so I stood still for a while, and I didn’t hear anything,

but then I was afraid the sun would set

and I’d be alone in the dark in there,

which I didn’t want, and I was thinking

man, where’s this real nice old lady

with the awesome pies right now? I’d really like to see her,

but she didn’t ever show up,

and I decided that rather than continue exploring the upstairs

I’d just get the freak out of there

because I started thinking,

what if there’s a corpse on some antique canopy bed

in one of these bedrooms and I walk in and the corpse just sits up,

and it’s like the corpse of the real nice pie lady?,

because I just don’t think I’m emotionally strong enough

to handle that kind of scare,

so I turned around and just freaking sprinted out of that house

like you wouldn’t believe

and sprinted all the way home,

and Raul was there, at home, and I was like

well, I thought there might be a nice lady with cats and pies

in the haunted mansion, so I just went in there,

but there wasn’t a lady like that in there,

and I got scared and the sun was setting, so I took off,

and then I wanted to stay fit, so I just ran all the way home,

and he said that one time Brian went in there

and fell through a trap door,

which is crazy, but even crazier is that apparently that house

used to be part of the underground railroad

and he actually fell into a secret room and saw the ghost

of a black man.

KITCHEN STADIUM AT TWILIGHT

Man, that dude looks exactly like Scott. I mean,

freakishly tall, yet also short with crazy non-crazy hair

falling all over his shoulders which aren’t shoulders

but instead butterflies.

It turns out the three of us—

me, Scott, the guy who looks like Scott

who’s also named Scott

which is just kind of a bizarre coincidence—

all attended the same college

and were all in the Squirrel and Chipmunk Watching Club

together although none of us remembers the other

and at the time Scott and Scott’s resemblance to one another

was, essentially, non-existent, and I most resembled

a chipmunk named Raul.

He was so persnickety, that chipmunk,

but I loved him all the same.

He munched me a tremendous model

of old New Amsterdam one Christmas

for which I’ll be forever grateful.

You should have seen the detail! It was Oscar season

and he was all pumped up

for Gangs of New York. God do I miss Raul.

I remember one night when I was upset about my life,

my failures and so forth,

he called me and told me how special I was

without even knowing.

He just did things like that. It was summer

and I couldn’t find a job and was painfully alone,

which meant I spent a lot of time in the kitchen

remembering the kitchens of everyone I’d ever loved.

I was subletting Genevieve’s apartment, who was so nice

and had a hook hand.

Why would I tell you such things?

When I was really upset, I’d crawl inside the refrigerator and cry.

How I wanted to leave this world, to become a waffle iron,

to give a sleepy hungry person the love

to begin each day unlike me.

oddily constructed. It had a family in it.