Saturday, May 24, 2003

Define "Pretty" Day!

When you're out on the street tonight looking for a drink and the whores and the policemen start grabbing at your shirt cuffs and shouting out their demands for "a simple definition of pretty, faggot. Too good for us to let us in?" Surprise them by not picking up your pace or ducking into a place that's built solely for quick escapes like these. Stop where you are, turn around, take your hands out of your pockets and raise your voice. "When things don't try to shout overtop the warm hum inside your head. When you're a teenager driving your mother's car with a friend by your side who is uncharacteristically quiet and the street has many brown trees and very few stoplights and the light of the autumn evening sky has the color of the warm hum inside your head. There's a song playing on the stereo. The song is pretty." Then grab the lit cigarette from the hooker's mouth and put it in your own. "A lit cigarette is a good effort. But effort eats its own." Exhale a plume of smoke, snort from the flower in the policeman's lapel, and say "It's when everything at once feels there's no need to shout." Then walk away.

Happy Define "Pretty" Day!