A/N: After much deliberation (as you can see by the date I wrote this, below), I have decided to post this to the universe.  Rated under R just in case some are offended by sexual themes. Just know (all you readers) that this was another wonderful brain spasm induced by great amounts of coffee and raspberries. And chocolate. So, blame all of those things if this offends.  Without them, this would never have been written.

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PICTURE: CONSPIRACY

Well when you’re stuck at ten pages

And you don’t know what do when you’re listening to glam rock on repeat

And your letters are starting to stutter along with your thoughts

Shudder and halt along with the ever-nagging need for symbology

And deeper meanings in this world of face-front realism

…And you say you’re not bitter.

You just like to think. Think about love, about trust, about the million hearts you’ve broken by standing by the wayside. By avoiding—the inevitable. And when you say you’ve finally found her, told all of your friends and relatives that this is the one, and you say you’re going to marry her and make babies…you know it’s not true. You know that this Mediterranean beauty with her Colgate smile and faint smell of sea salt and lilting laugh…you know she’ll never make you happy.

That is what you tell yourself when you’re caught servicing her younger brother in her bed…in the bed that’s been in their family for years, decades, probably centuries. The bed where, as the old story’s told, every baby has been born, every death has taken place. And, every time the story’s been told, (and though you never really believe the tale); the mere thought makes you sick. You wonder how many people’s bodily fluids rest in the slightly lumpy, dusty grey mattress, in the crumbling down pillows, in the recesses of the simple iron metalworkings of the frame…and, as you bring the young boy (that is your fiancée’s own tanned, beautiful flesh and blood) to a toe-curling (yet oddly methodical) orgasm…you fight to keep down the delirious laughter welling up in the recesses of your hollowed cheeks.  You’ve just added a few fluids of your own… And you realize how closely tied to this family you really have become.

Three years later, after the publicized (at least amongst the members of the family) breakup, you’re smoking a cigarette in some remote Southern California town with all the modern conveniences of a Nordstrom’s and an ice cream shop.  You cross the sunlit promenade and listen absentmindedly to the chatter of the teenage girls, their eyes peeled for the occasional model-worthy punk rocker or college prep…you know they’ll probably become professional stalkers someday, by the expertise in which they trail their unknowing prey, marking them with giggles and lipglossed grins and a nonchalant flip of their bleached-sunshine hair.  They move as one, and interest you…their clothes even match, and you almost laugh aloud at the absurdity of it all.  You glance at the street sign. It reads ‘Birch Street’, and though seem to be no Birch trees in sight, you’ve never been a botanist.  The palm trees might be hybrids. Hell, they might not even be palms. You always knew there was a conspiracy somewhere.

4-18-04