I got audited by the IRS this year, and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT for all this vanguard graphic design they sent me!
fig 1. 3D-rendered marble staircase floating into a pixelated black&white sky. This was titled “Stepping Through the Examination Process.”
fig. 2 IRS logo with strong 90s HyperCard vibes. Take that, design decorum.
fig 3. Rad return envelope security pattern. Penalty for private use of envelope is $300.
I bummed a cigarette off Chris Owens. I recognized his laugh first from across the bar like a squeaky wheel. Looked up and saw him with a yellow bandana around his wrist, like he did when we were sixteen: Summer and the sound of a shitty boombox blasting Black Flag across water. I dropped the case of Narragansetts next to the cooler. Tired. Been working. But the night’s almost over. ‘Chris Owens,’ I said. Of course he remembered. We shook hands. I asked him about the revolution. ‘I’ve been getting drunk in East Tennessee,’ he said. ‘Now I’m just trying to get my degree.’ He was drinking a Dr. Pepper. ‘Are you studying Politics?’ ‘No man, Renaissance Art.’ We were going to burn everything and rule the world. He lit the cigarette for me. I’m there, jumping into the river. He stands on the bank with the boombox on his shoulder, laughing.
Dim Sum brunch. San Francisco, summer of 2012.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR ROAD TRIP1) Vague plan
2) Old car
3) Luggage
4) Friendships [in various states of disrepair]
5) Tape deck adapter
6) Wrong turn
7) Small town
7) Motel
8) Cheap beer
9) Strangers
10) The Argument
11) The Disappearance
12) The Search
13) The Reconciliation
14) Highways
15) “Road dogs”
16) The ocean at night
17) Arrival at destination.
Porch polaroid.
There was an old half destroyed school building on the street where I lived. It was on the outskirts of the city. (“You live there?” etc.) Sometimes men in Jeeps came to look at the school, and to point. They covered the building’s face with a blue plastic tarp, but the winter tore that thing to shreds like shipwreck sailcloth.
I only went inside once. It was easy to climb over the bent wire fence and to walk right up a pile of bricks into a classroom. Holes had rotted through the floor. I wasn’t afraid of falling. I was afraid of possums. Have you ever seen one of those things? I imagined a lot of teeth. I touched a ghostly tanline on the wall where a chalkboard used to be.
Then I scrambled up some planks into the schoolhouse’s second story. It was a pretty good view. The street was empty, as usual. There was this big green van covered with bumper stickers. An old man lived alone inside the van. He rarely showed his face. The whole world was awfully quiet and dirty. That’s it. I climbed back down the wreck, and went home.
ALL THE TIME! BROOKLYN, NY. GETATME: BREADCITY.ORG. TWITTER@KOOL9000. GRASS.CASKET@GMAIL.COM.
