Tom Kim

I had a conversation with the baker today. Turns out his name is Atreus. I had come around to collect my loaves, and he had not finished letting them cool. I sat at his stool, fanning myself, as he shuffled, looking for excuses to putter about. He was clearly uncomfortable. I suspect the islanders all expect me to corner then and start ranting or chanting spells or some such thing. I’m sure some of them have heard how animated I must get with my visitors, urgently railing down the street with them. But it’s all because I’m an old man — I am, by definition, un-becoming. And that is why I would just as well sit in a shady stoop and watch children sneak off with fruit from the bazaar, unable to hide their secret smiles.

Atreus is a good man. I might be cynical about how he sets aside my three loaves, anticipating my weekly visit, but I can taste that he uses the good honey in them. He is a shy man, like I am. A man who keeps his questions like a gathering of black oil in an urn.

Some people eat food so sensually, so passionately, that you yourself start to salivate, to desire to eat as they. This is not Dan.

Dan eats lecherously but without real feeling or pleasure. He stuffs his face, talking and mawing in ceaseless smacks, never pausing for a sip or even a break in the torrent of flavors muddying together on his palate. As a matter of course, Dan always orders the most expensive entrees on the menu but will plow through them as if rushing to belch. I sometimes do think he only tastes his meals in these gassy after thoughts.

Dan is not merely democratic in his tastes, he is positively post-structuralist — he appreciates no difference between an amuse bouche and fried finger food, a tough tenderloin and a feathery filet of tilapia. I correct myself — he does have some preferences, several quite obstinate ones in fact, but these verge on the perverse. He likes his calamari rubbery, his wine cloyingly sweet, his meat gray on the outside and dry and coarse on the inside. He insists on swirling pasta around his fork and then using it as a paddle to sling heapfuls into his mouth.

Dan is a douche bag of gourmet.

I must have been seven or eight at the time. We lived on a single story ranch home in Alexandria, VA. Lower middle class suburb. Small brick houses with yards.

I was taking a dump. It must have been urgent because I didn’t bring anything to read with me. After the initial relief, I was faced with the inevitable tedium that followed, like the antsy sit-through of a long division problem, wanting to get to the remainder after the first solved digits. I looked in trash bin for a left over newspaper — no, only tissues; I stared at the interlocking planks on the floor till my eyes crossed; I rifled through the nearby drawers of the vanity. Q-tips, disposable razors,… matches.

I struck a match and let it burn as far as I could tolerate. I then shook it out, wincing from the pain. I read in a book that Spiro Agnew, a mean bald-headed man, used to intimidate people by letting matches burn right to his fingers. I struck another one and tried again, counting down as the tiny flame licked its way down, edging into my fingertips. I shook it out again. My pinching fingers still pulsed from the heat. I stared at the scored, charred matchstick.

I tried again. Again the dancing flame leaped its way in toward my fingers. It seemed to shrink and leap, like the Chinese dragons at New Year’s. As it began to sting and sear, I shook it again, but instead of vanishing in a wisp, the flame leapt again like a pouncing predator. I cried aloud and shook the matchstick loose from its grip, letting it drop into the little waste bin beside me. The waste bin full of tissue paper.

My heart lay bleeding on the table, and I was pissed. The crimson syrup pooled right out to the edge, spilled over in fingerling rivulets, and made startling little splashes on the white tile below. I skimmed it with the tip of my finger for a taste. Oh it was magnificent — smooth and not cloyingly sweet, a hint of the tang of the blood oranges.

I tugged at the knife and was surprised to feel it tugging back. The knife actually bit into the wood of the tabletop — it must have literally been thrown with some force. Thrown precisely, too. It was a clean slice into the gelatin, and most of the blood seemed to seep out from the bottom. The knife jutted out from the heart violently, obscenely, at a rakish angle.

I gripped it from below the handle and jerked it out. I couldn’t help admiring how perfectly viscous the blood was. Drawing the knife to my temple like Norman Bates, I bellowed, almost screeched, “I want to know which of you fuckers leaked my fucking cake!”

I swear I heard stifled guffaws from some of the cubicles.

“It was for my Acme Halloween presentation, you assholes!”

As the hatchback reached the opening of the parking lot, Fish thought suddenly of changing his name. He had gone as Philip, his middle name, in grades five through six, tired of feeling like an accidental celebrity constantly making rounds on local morning talk shows, always having to deal with the same questions and reactions to his unusual first name. Now it occurred to Fish that he not only had to deal with that shit but also now the acute self-consciousness of the heavy-handed aptness of his situation. Fish in a new school. Wink wink. Hardy har har.

Fuck it. Even as Philip the other kids soon got to calling him Flipper. Not really much better on the scale of things. The car slowed to the curb; Fish pecked his mom, drew in his breath, arched his eyebrows, blew out his cheeks in a “here-goes” parachute-jumping mugging, and dragged his backpack out of the car. Most kids seemed to be crowding into the front door. No one was smoking out on the steps or playing hacky-sack on the lawn. Fish set his jaw and joined the crush.

Well, at least students were talking in the halls. Fish drew out his schedule from his pocket when a silver-haired figure in a short dress shirt and high pants planted himself in front of Fish and gave him a once over.

“Steinwick?”

Fish nodded. Math teacher. Or the headmaster. Had to be.

The silver-haired gentleman practically narrowed his eyes. He was tall, six and four inches maybe, and he took a step back to take Fish in. Fish was, technically, in dress code.

“Your first class is Calculus. With me. Room 232.”

The Free Library is putting on an annual Philadelphia Book Festival this weekend at the Central branch on 19th and Vine.

Some anticipated highlights:

• Saturday
  • 12:00 - Francine Prose (Reading Like a Writer, author of Blue Angel)
  • 1:30 - Harry and the Potters
  • 5:30 - Patti Smith (WTF!!!!)
• Sunday
  • 12:30 - Black Identity Panel with the authors of The N Word and When She Was White

Free and worth coming to.

Melvyn was rapidly approaching the end of the second act of his show. Dora could always tell by the swell of oohing and aahing that inevitably accompanied the dancing card routine. It was a flourish that Mel did better than anyone else; Dora saw other magicians flick cards almost five feet up in the air and have it precisely boomerang back, but only Mel could practically juggle four or five them in perfect synchronicity. Dora dutifully counted to forty-six potatoes every time, but she didn’t need to anymore, really. She could tell by ear how the crowd’s appreciation rose and peaked in near audible gasps.

Forty-four…forty-five…gasp…and Dora slammed the large red button to her right to release the doves. In the instant transforming applause, she casually went back to dusting Ahab. In the next second, as always, the right phalanx of stage assistants brushed past, bitching–as always–at the frenzied rush of the dove release.

“Jesus, I swear I felt one of them let me have it”

“Well, he practically flings them out. Whaddaya expect?”

Ahab and Dora swiveled insouciantly around as the stage assistants rushed past in their high-feathered headdresses. Always the same complaints. Ahab went back to licking his paws as Dora gave him a final whisk.

“All right, Ahab. It’s showtime.”

Ahab whimpered and purred as Dora lifted the slate-grey tabby and placed him at the head of the chute. She reached for the catnip ball in her tote bag to the left and flung it past him.

Fish laid one of the uniforms over the rumpled spread of his bed. He looked at it, arms akimbo, then pivoted over to his computer, shuffled around the mouse, tapped a few keys, and dialed up the speakers as it blared a wash of music. He returned to the uniform, staring as the woofers steadily rattled in their cages. Wearily he raked his right hand through his hair, his left index and thumb pinching his lower lip.

He touched his toes to pick up the page he tore out. Earmarking the dress code as a picture of a smiling black student, in uniform, knowingly acknowledging the camera as he happily trotted off to a class somewhere. Fish tore the corner picture off and flicked it under his desk before picking up a highlighter to carefully go over each line of restriction.

1. Dress shirt must be buttoned and tucked in pants.
2. Tie must be worn at all times.
3. Male students must wear dark khakis or slacks. Female students must wear dark knee-length skirts.
4. Underwear must not be visible.
5. No sneakers or caps.

“Is there something wrong, Starfish?”

Fish bristled. The use of his full name gave away her remorse. His mother wouldn’t even look at him and just kept dodging from the stove to the refrigerator. He hated to see her capitulate like this, which, of course, drove him to take advantage of her capitulation.

“I need seven more uniforms.”

An anniversary poem for my beloved. Based on “Ulysses” by Tennyson.

O Listless Me

It little profits that an idle Kim
In this still warm hearth, crabby and careless,
Matched with a patient wife, I oft cajole
An unequal place. Like a savage I
Hoard and sleep and feed and forget the chores.
But I cannot rest from duty. I ought
Remember this: All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, but the best
With her, that loved me, and not alone. And
Thro’ scudding drifts I go back to that brisk
Evening in March, when you became my name.
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much had I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, seasons, secrets, societies
Of honour and disrepute alike,
And drunk delight of fatuous passion
Though it was ringing plain there was no joy.
I am a part of all that I have met
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when we move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use.
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and if that is all
What then remains? Every hour that passes
In silence humbly yearns for something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some five suns to store and hoard myself
And this lax spirit complacent like a
Star sinking in the knowledge that this is
The utmost bound of our contracted sphere.

You are my wife, and I am your husband,
Though I wield the sceptre to our island—-
Beloved, you are the one discerning
The labour, by slow prudence making mild
This chaos I create, and through decree
Subduing it to useful purpose.
Most blameless are you, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, pious
In adoration to both home and God.
When I am gone, I know you can go on.

Here is the ring I lost beneath the bed;
There you lie beside me, reading. My love,
Soul that have toiled and wrought and thought with me
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Freedom for a life with me. You and I
Are still young. Time has not yet taken toll
And kept one from the other. There’s still chance;
Some work of noble note may yet be done,
While this gray recognition still remains.
The glass door dims a purple blue.
The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs, the streets
Shudder with passing whispers. Come on, lout,
‘Tis not too late to bridge another life,
Push off, and, putting your house in order,
Take up the mantle of your charge. For you
Are no mere liege (or leech) or guest but lord!
And ought command and soldier on beside
Your fellowship. Your helm is needed not
To rule but show your proper stewardship
To her who waits for your engagement still.
Though much is taken, much abides. And though
You are not now (nor ever were) that strength
Which can turn the tide, you are what you are:
One tempered to match a heroic heart,
Made weak by temperament, but strong in faith
To yield in meekness — thus the lead to take.

This is fiction, another chicken scratch from my weekly writing group. We were to write a list of things we know, and so I started this fictional list because my 8th grade class is currently reading Taming of the Shrew.

1. You have really bad athlete’s foot. The skin on the bottom of your feet peels off in little flecks, and you spend an inordinate amount of time rubbing and scratching between your toes, which you makes your feet smell pungent and rank.
2. You never finish reading anything. Magazines, cereal boxes, novels, newspaper articles, furniture assembly instructions. You make a big show of reading the first 20% very carefully — out loud — but then you stop as if that was all you needed to know. You don’t even skim to the end. You just stop. And then you often pointedly discuss things with me from the fragments of what you’ve read.
3. You do not like condiments. This may not be particularly odious to me had you not an extraordinary sensory sensitivity to the presence of the consumption of condiments. Once I had a hot dog with ketchup from a stand, brushed my teeth and flossed after my workout at the Y, came home and had two beers, and when you walked through the door, you knew immediately. You refused to come upstairs and puttered around in the basement like a grouch all night long.
4. You are color blind, a fact clearly established through several empirical demonstrations, and yet you refuse to admit this.
5. Relatedly, your choice of socks is atrocious. They frequently clash, not only in color but also in style, with the rest of your couture, and yet you insist they are “cute.” Your socks are not “cute” or “witty” or whimsical or quirky; they are distracting and desperate. They even look a little depressed, as if trying too long to stay chin up amidst a constant witheringly malodorous environment. This annoyance is only compounded by the fact that your taste is otherwise impeccable.

Yes, I realize I only got to five. If you care so much, write some suggestions in the comments to help me finish this.