Life in E-Mail

From: Gorton, Jenilynn 
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2014 4:13 PM
To: Pim, Gabriel
Cc: Robb, Jacobus
Subject: Sunday 6/1

Hey Gabe, would you be able to take my shift on Saturday 5/31 (9:30 a.m.) so then I could work on Sunday 6/1 instead of Jake?  He’ll be here late on Saturday night with inventory.  If you can switch, Jake will pick up one of your Sunday shifts for a trade.  Just let me know! 

Lynn Gorton
Operations, The Store

From: Pim, Gabriel 
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2014 8:49 AM
To: Brite, Ava; Franks, Bradley; Veniamin, Rick
Subject: FW: Sunday 6/1

 Hey boys and girls…  It’s time to play Family Feud with your host Richard Dawson.

Top three answers are on the board, here is the question:

“Name something wrong with the request contained in the email below”

 From: Brite, Ava 
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2014 8:52 AM
To: Pim, Gabriel; Franks, Bradley; Veniamin, Rick
Subject: RE: Sunday 6/1

Survey says….our inventory is on Saturday, May 31st?!  (If you swap places with Lynn, will you be excused from our inventory?)

From: Pim, Gabriel 
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2014 9:07 AM
To: Brite, Ava; Franks, Bradley; Veniamin, Rick
Subject: RE: Sunday 6/1 

#1 answer on the board!!!!!

Would you like to play or pass?

(#2 answer is: “Why can’t you work late Saturday night for inventory and then work Sunday morning?”)

(#3 answer is: “Ava is over it.”)

From: Brite, Ava 
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2014 9:08 AM
To: Pim, Gabriel; Franks, Bradley; Veniamin, Rick
Subject: RE: Sunday 6/1 

If I’m playing for time with Richard Dawson, I’ll pass.  If I’m playing for Richard’s booze, I’ll play.

From: Pim, Gabriel 
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2014 9:26 AM
To: Brite, Ava; Franks, Bradley; Veniamin, Rick
Subject: RE: Sunday 6/1 

You selected the #1 answer, the choice is yours.  Booze it is.

The guys can have Boozer.

From: Brite, Ava
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 3:42 PM
To: Aidan, Cat
Subject: RE: Pffft`

Hi Ava,

I thought I saw you.  But then, it was not you.  I was disappointed – -I said hello from afar and the not-you gave me nothing.  She couldn’t even fake a wave.  Shame.

So, now that I thought of you, ‘cause I saw it wasn’t you, I wanted to let you know that I was thinking of you.

To be clear, I am not drunk at work…officially.

Cat
Operations Specialist, Manager |Accounts Receivable

From: Brite, Ava
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 3:15 PM
To: Aidan, Cat
Subject: RE: Pffft`

Cat,

Will you be my hero and apply for the HR Director’s job?

Ava

 

From: Aidan, Cat
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 3:18 PM
To: Brite, Ava
Subject: RE: Pffft`

“The hero knew what he had to do and he wasn’t afraid to fight,” I am singing some David Crosby song that you’re too young to know.  Angry.

If I applied for the HR job, 1.) they wouldn’t give it to me. 2.), the current director maybe hired as a contracted part-timer.  3.) by the time I got done with putting things right… there would be no more useless upper management.  Folks would be put out on the streets with no freaking notice. Unfortunately, I have no background in such areas. Otherwise, I would love to be YOUR hero!

Cat

From: Brite, Ava
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 3:21 PM
To: Aidan, Cat
Subject: RE: Pffft`

Do you really think that I didn’t think the whole thing through before asking you?  I don’t suggest stuff just because.

I hate David Crosby songs.  Not as much as I hate Ebony & Ivory, but close.

From: Aidan, Cat
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 3:25 PM
To: Brite, Ava
Subject: RE: Pffft`

Very true AB, there is a reason why certain people are held down.  We should rule the world! And I’d do it ghetto style (ummm, I gotta figure that one out first, just cause a gal is Pecan Brown, does not mean she is in the know).

ROTFLMBO, Ebony & Ivory happens to be a song for the ages. It’s better than that “say, say, say” stuff, I cannot recall the title of….

Cat

From: Brite, Ava
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 3:34 PM
To: Aidan, Cat
Subject: RE: Pffft`

You should ask Mel about how I would torture her when she tortured me with Ebony & Ivory.  I swear I just feel like driving a broom handle through my eyeball every time I hear it.  Every time they would play it in the store, I would immediately shoot a hateful e-mail to Mel, Grey, and Laurin.  I SHOULD like the song.  Stevie’s great, my parents raised me on the Beatles.  I’m multi-racial.  I like people getting along.  I hate that God damn song!

I can’t even type about it anymore.

 

From: Aidan, Cat
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 3:36 PM
To: Brite, Ava
Subject: RE: Pffft`

Haha

I am going to leave you alone and promise to do my best never to mention the song that shall not be named.

Hey, were you invited to Hayden’s new job drink fest? Are you going?

Cat

From: Brite, Ava
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 3:42 PM
To: Aidan, Cat
Subject: RE: Pffft`

Yes, and probably yes.  I doubt I’ll stay long.  Just a drink or three.  Are you going?

From: Aiden, Cat
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 3:48 PM
To: Brite, Ava
Subject: RE: Pffft`

Yes, I am going. Just a drink or two… I may need to drive Hayden.

Cat

 

 

Half-Marathon; Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Body

My experiences with weight problems have been different from @akmakansi’s, (which I haven’t yet shared) but her words connected with me. There’s something brilliant about the line (that I’m paraphrasing): “…I never wanted to abandon my ability to eat wantonly and without fear…” Continue running towards you happiness, @akmakansi!

The Z-Axis

I’ve never told anyone these things. My parents, my sister, my friends – no one. So heads up. You’re the first to know.

For the last few years, I have grown, slowly but steadily, to despise the way my body looks.

When I was a kid, I was always told how skinny I was. I didn’t break fifty pounds until I was eight years old. In high school I was always the smallest – height and weight – of my friends. I grew up knowing, somehow, intuitively, that ‘being skinny’ was something good, that it was something I should maintain. In high school, that belief was confirmed and reinforced by magazines, friends who were constantly ‘dieting’, and my school’s insistence on athletic rigor and social ostracism of students who didn’t fit the body ideal. But I was always warned that, as a woman, ‘my time would come’, I would have kids…

View original post 892 more words

Brother

His body can be dark from the sun,
His hats are ringed with salt.
His head is held high, though his mind has found fear.

He cannot dispose of the mice my cats destroy.

I cannot find our similarities.
Though not joyful, he is full of love.
What shakes me only stirs him. 

He has a musician’s hands.
They close windows and he walks outdoors.
He runs up the stairs to the smog filled air.

May 1, 2014

Dear Reader:

I am writing because this is all an experiment.  I’m currently looking for a way to wend myself into your mind.  We may know each other– I may have met you a few years ago somewhere.  Or perhaps we don’t know each other at all– You may be a person in a distant land whom I shall never see.  I just really like writing with you in my imagination, and because you’re reading this letter, you seem interested in what I have to say. So I thought I’d reach out to see if you might be interested in wandering through some of my writing. I’ve heard that the writers from other blogs who have worked with you have found improvement from working with an audience.

Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m thirty-five years old, a 2000 graduate of UCLA with a B.A. in fine arts. The work gathered here has not been awarded or given any notice other than by you and maybe my cousin. I’ve published several poems in various anthologies with titles that sound like soap operas. The experiments I’ve just posted are scraps of a lust story, bits of an outsider’s life, dollops of lives lived in my head. There might be a main character.  She might be a teenager.  Or a senior citizen.  A story may document two decades.  Or two minutes.  The work is ultimately about a needy woman chancing upon the conflicts of being a real person. Can she mold herself into being her idea of lively or eccentric or seductive or adventurous or nurturing or authoritative or mysterious?  Can she affect a persona to be those things?  Or is she organically all or some of those descriptors? 

I have no aim for these trials other than to get them out of my system, to let them emerge into the world. But instead of having them be a straight biography or diary, I want to write a circus about people, crossing paths in invigorating, dangerous, and loving interactions. I give you my e-mail for reply: fictitiouslyeasy@gmail.com, or you can contact me by leaving a comment here – whatever’s easiest. I would love to send you into the maze of my thoughts, though I make no promises to stay of this path.

Thanks for your time.

Best wishes,

-Fictitiously Easy

Levi

There is a man I work with who is shaped like a bowling ball.  The astounding thing is, he was a marine when he was young.  Now, he is in his fifties.  He dyes his hair a black that reminds me of watching my father polish his shoes when I was a little girl.  This man, Levi, has his sons (who are in their 20s) help him with the hair dye. The blackness is part of his attempt to woo the ladies as are the baths he takes in cologne bought at RiteAid.  He has neither a command of English nor Spanish but seems to think he possesses the language of love.  He asks, “What?”  Or, “Huh?” after every sentence spoken to him.  Is he trying to buy a moment before answering?  Or does he truly not hear?  Or is his questioning now an automatic reflex?  I believe he chooses not to hear.  Although, when he listens to his ipod, the volume is turned up high.  If he is standing 20 or so feet from me, I can hear what escapes from his earphones.  I yell at him to turn the music down.  Oddly, he can hear my yelling.  He will turn to a person near him—someone not listening to music—and say, “Yeah!  Turn it down!”  Then he will carry on a five to ten minute long conversation with this person, without lowering the volume of his music.  Those are the moments when I threaten to others that I will kill Levi.    

Character Development: Ava

Ava had a round, plump face with high cheekbones and a double chin. Her not-quite-the-same-size eyes were a cognac color, and her thick but well-groomed eyebrows were shaped into an oddly sensual arch that fit with the curves of her face. A petite nose perched over continually chewed upon lips, which were coated only in Blistex in an unsuccessful effort to mask her lack of lipstick. Dark brown hair, made thick from her mother’s Japanese genes, was pulled up in a lumpy pony-tail.  The doughy features of Ava’s face were merely a reflection of her entire body structure, and everything—from her fleshy arms to her soft waist—screamed of overindulgence. She walked in uncomfortable loafers, her shoulders slightly rounded and face tilted to check her text messages, wearing black slacks and a grey & pink floral print blouse with a grease stain just over her right breast.