Balcony Muse

It was the cologne I think
I have this thing for the way something smelt.

So all the sterile, forgotten leapt back in intense colour.
I had to stand there for a moment, and fight for control.

The fuel and green fields, merciless sun.
Nothing on our mind.

A train thundering overhead
And a lazy cigarette in the bridge below.
Dangling legs.
Peace.

The intensity in everything you said and did.
Wall flowers on my library book.
3 am on a watch tower.
Blue smoke and minimal rooms.

I miss you.

I missed you while we sat there
And I looked at eagles from Prax
And pretended you didn’t exist,
While all I felt was intensely alive.

And on odd mornings,
Dire straits. A sunny balcony.
A busy street outside,
And me – with the day to myself,
I think of you and

I learn to grow old.
Gracefully.

Infinite possibilities

A garish beach track mixed with an infurating digital voice that screams 'Its time to wake up' 'Its time to wake up' breaks the morning air.
I hit the snooze.
Silence.
There can never be a pleasant alarm clock sound. Ever.

The proverbial tomorrow is dawning over a yesterday hangover. I can feel yesterday still pulsing in my head. It can’t be time yet – it just can’t.

In inalterable regularity, almost merciless - the digital display mutely blinks, morphs into the next number – instantly the alarm scream rents the air again. 'Its time to...' - a trained slap shuts it up mid-shriek.

Slience.
The held breath turns to a sigh - muscles relax, the air stills - Deep hush.

I could be the only one alive on earth right now –
The bed is warm. The 7 am sun is streaking all over the curtains where last night's headlight patterns faded on and off – in the drowsy irregularity of nighttime traffic. A page lazily lifts on the half read book beside me and falls back again. A spider makes a slick move on the ceiling.

To be alive – alone, without a thought or need, lightly treading the boundaries of the harsh world of waking up, its time to hover, lithly, in that No man’s land of a misty in-between.

This morning floating feeling - its the 15 minutes of my life I’d kill for. It’s the only thing in the world that truly belongs to me - these lazy, unaccounted minutes of floating - to be random, delusional, unattached. To be free.

15 minutes of chasing cars.

Homosapien-ity

The Friend of a good friend. The Never-met-before person. That Much Talked-About Friend.
I was that, recently, and found my faded doppleganger and some minus points for humanity along the way.

I d blame it on the talk, if I didn't know better. Beacuse it was through all that talk that the goddamn love grew. That curious kind of love lavished from second-degree association. Through it all, I had developed into a doppleganger - someone they knew. And liked.

Like a long absent old friend, I had become a phony part of their universe of connection. Over many evenings, my doppelganger had matured from a ‘good friend’s good friend they didn’t know’ to a ‘good old her’. They had laughed and nodded along their gradual journey of assimilating me from an arbit ‘her’ to “she’s so that”.

But unhappily for this warm get-together, we don’t know each other from Adam.

Facts have an uncomfortable knack of getting in the way of mediocre make-believe. And so it was... as I burst upon the scene, in-the-flesh, so to speak... with an offensive alien air.

Shockwaves.

Here I was - a trespasser on their hither-to happy, make believe perception of me. My uncalled turning up in person was blowing it. I had intruded. And caused communal unrest in this happy, warm gathering of friends.

I was almost apologetic as I watched my doppleganger slowly melt like the snowman in summer.
‘She’s so tall’ I heard them whisper. They had certainly not expected it.

An abandoned rocking chair, on its last legs stood on the balcony and I tried to hide my abnormal span behind it. I hoped it presented a less offensive length of me for scrutiny.
It didn’t.

But they were large hearted and forgiving, as we ploughed ahead and communed, the doppleganger faded away.

But thats not the point.
The point is that I m quite sick of having to experience, first hand and repeatedly, that which makes us all so hopelessly human.

It’s categorically the vilest part of what makes us people. Connection at all cost. This depraved, urgent need to form a bond – of whatever kind. I can feel those eyes searching for a fix to fasten a belief. I can hear it: ‘yeah but she’s kind of bitchy, right?’ or ‘isn’t she sweet?’

It’s not so much them or me … the shame is in its need. Its thirst. In that solely human sensation to want to connect. I can feel it sucking at me like that goddamn Under Toad.
Like garbage on the road or exhaust fumes – a reminder of the intrinsic sham in everything we do and think - of everything that is so awfully human.

It kills me.

The diameter of the bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard.
But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won't even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

- Yehuda Amichai.

Heartfelt and then some.

The Solitary Reaper

So then that superhero bully brother of mine got married. I mean, good for him. People who want to get saddled should be allowed to. Freely. I’m for things like that.

But what I m NOT for is making something so intensely personal into this ‘come over, gawk at my family and interrogate them for free’. It’s a malevolent antithesis of everything a marriage is supposed to be - in the whole friggin universe.

So for 3 whole days, an army of relatives personally subjected me to an on the house back poking and cross-examination exercise of the worst kind.
What’s shocking is that these people have the time and the energy to swathe themselves in various saris and muscle their way across town for 3 bloody days – for what? To turn up and comment on why I should get knocked up right away and present myself with the token baby in tow for their viewing pleasure next time…and put on more weight while I’m at it. Killing 2 birds with one stone, see?

They chuckle, poke and ask me to recognize them at command.
Oh my god.

The whole thing left me foaming at the mouth, wanting to subject frail creatures to pain and express rage in short bursts of incoherent speech – for days. My faith in humanity would have packed up and left for good if it weren’t for this one beautiful moment of unqualified redemption.

I was at my weakest on the third day of this epic ‘coming together of man and woman’ … and among the assorted ghastlies that presented itself in a dizzying array to my dimmed consciousness – this one stood like a sharp wet slap of reality. A completely out of place Accordion player was belting out an incongruous rendition of The Blue Danube, while all around the fury of a south Indian wedding raged on at full power- a mass of fast talking aunties caught up vigorously. Small children, high on sugar, ran round and round, screaming at the top of their lungs. The bride’s friends giggled sharply and continuously.

What on earth was this guy doing here? In the middle of this merciless battleground, in a tux, playing a friggn accordion for cryin out loud? Will somebody please step up and explain?

Before another second passed, a few spare aunties bore down upon me and poked my nephew who screamed loudly and started banging his head against my shoulder in protest and almost by cue a wizened old man jovially asked me to recognize him and a small child repeatedly asked me for food.

Tears of rage welled, obscenities welled, impotent ire welled… I’d have thrown myself on the ground and cried in long bitter sobs and then died instantly if it wasn’t for that accordion player.

A sense of calm descended amidst the chaos as I saw him … in the background…playing away like his ‘song could have no ending’, alone and oblivious, while the wedding raged in deep red and furious all around him.

‘O listen! For the Vale profound, Is overflowing with the sound’.

God bless him, whoever he was.

Where’s your drive?

It’s the highway to hell. Officially. There are no signboards calling it out, you’re just expected to know it and abide, or get the hell out of the way.

Every road in every Indian metro is a do-or-die dash to the finish line. There are no prizes for winning - the winner is the guy who stays alive. That’s the incentive.

“Wanna play?” asks the inviting stretch of jam-packed, smoky road with curses and loud horns renting the air – it’s a war cry: “Wanna play? COME ON then”, they say… “There’ s absolutely no space, but come on anyway”.

Assorted automobiles vie for 3 inches of space between the large smoke belching bus and the local cow. Death defying moves are made on-the-house. Red lights, stop signs, pedestrian crossing and lanes are things of the past. Don’t let them stop you from Getting Ahead.

Sign of having humanoid scruples - any dithering or an iota of fear is honked at, overtaken, cursed and sniggered out of the way. Any attempt to put your life or basic decency above the GOAL is not acceptable. ‘Get Ahead, Proceed’ yells the impatient public. ‘Make your little polite speeches and bows later on. We have no time’.

Welcome to the Indian roads – welcome to Hell. Out here, no rules apply.

When you make the decision to get on the road, you’ve automatically agreed to risk it all. Partial hearing loss, smoke inhalation, loss of limb and sanity is all part of the deal. Once accepted, the arms are thrown wide open. Senior citizens, candy seller with dog in tow, techies, college kids, fruit vendors, socialite aunties, who-the-hell-ever in whatever state of inebriation or sobriety. All are welcome. Age, gender, caste, status, time of day or night, physical condition and mental state and the weather are of absolutely no significance.

If you’ve chosen to be on the road - you’ve chosen to fight, chosen to reach point B from point A, chosen to risk it all. That’s enough. You’ve chosen life.

Welcome aboard!

Checked out.

I check. Every 21 st of a month at an auspicious time. Looking for an update. Its never there.

'Outer reaches of Alaska’ features. ‘Xinjiang experience who can speak Uighur’ features. Where on earth is the name of the goddamn country I LIVE in? Its just NEVER THERE.

In my lifetime I have:
Owned a goat...
And a cat with the sex drive of a rabbit - and therefore 54 kittens splattered across the length and breadth of my childhood.
Tolerated several Choms - one of whom infiltrated and became a friend.
Wore my brother's hand-me-downs till the age of 15.
Tolerated very old people give me advice at several doorsteps. Really long advice. Really slowly. And none of them were knifed. By me, ie.

So I qualify. Unconditionally and in flying colours.
But no goddamn feature. Ever.

They're right. It IS a bleepin’ Lonely Planet.

54, Gandhi Bazaar.

If I rack my brains, most of what I can remember of it is wood. The whole house reeked of wood. Wood when it bloomed, when it was burnt, when was framed, hung, drawn and quartered. Spooky wooden flooring in the room upstairs, storage rooms that smelt of pickles and stored wood, burning wood that heated the large copper boiler, wooded trees falling from which, several generations had enduring scars on varied body parts. Wood banister polished with the friction of assorted backsides sliding down it. Horror stories of children just like us who died painfully doing this Very Same Thing didn’t stop the practice. Risks of hideous deformities were taken in one’s stride.

– The wood gnarled itself into the house, spreading its roots, holding it together, breathing into every corner of it. Almost alive – listening to the slow passage of time through the black stoned corridors of 54, Gandhi Bazaar.

And there was plenty of cruelty to boot - we regularly wished each other dead, pushed each other down the stairs, abandoned the runt of the pack to run away and hide, laughing gleefully in our sleeves. Fell into wicked looking storerooms through holes in the tiled roof. Chocked on 5 paisa candies and fought over who will ride an old abandoned bicycle - 5 feet taller than the tallest amongst us. We lived through moments of impotent anger and selfless generosity. The years grew into the house and as the house grew into us – inextricable woven into all the rage and calm of being alive.

Cousins from ‘abroad’ landed in regular irregularity. Speaking in unfamiliar twangs, leaving bathrooms smelling gloriously of ‘America’, brandishing gadgets and promising to curl our hair – what a treat! We lined up before them at the crack of dawn, all heads sporting 2-inch tufts of wiry hair – the result of a wholesale summer-cut that disregards age and gender. Missing teeth, semi bald and fist fighting for first place at the salon table.
So…cousins came and left, bruises were made and healed, Enid Blyton was discovered and life was not the same again. Time passed… Summers passed into monsoons-

And that year, it was particularly vicious monsoon. People shook their heads at the rain... The wind howled and in the backyard, the amte-kai tree’s old roots groaned in the vicious wind. After much ghostly creaking and groaning through the night, it fell across the sweetwater well that contained a turtle. We ran to see it in the morning, me clutching on to a smaller cousin who in turn clutched on to his beloved blue bunny. The tree lay, sprawled across the huge backyard, the old sap from its roots mingled with the misty morning air.

Grandmothers, fathers and aunts were gathered around it – they were talking about the tree - when it planted as a baby sapling and how it grew through the years, the millions of jars of pickles it had provided. An unintended obituary for something that grew in the same soil as the rest of us and died where it was planted – surrounded by its kin. Through its monstrous size, through its fight with the lashing rain - when it finally lay there, uprooted and felled …there was gentleness in its death.

The wild monsoon passed into quiet drizzle and faded into the clear light of another day… Time passed… unobtrusive and trackless.

The little cousin with only 2 halves to his face – one half a large forehead and other half a pair of humongous brown eyes – slowly grew into the vast expanse of his face. His beloved blue bunny ceased to be the center of his Universe. He went to college.

Time passed…

54 Gandhi Bazaar is now a brand new Bank – ‘a friend you can bank upon’. And in what was the old backyard, devoid of most of the old trees is an swanky apartment. Its doors and patio is fitted with wooden panels from the old house. They look strange on the new whitewashed Asian painted walls.

I don’t go by there if I can help it.

Shoebox reflections

Everything I ever owned which is of value – it fits in a shoebox shoved under my bed. There is a Time and Place for things made up of nothing more than useless sentiment – under the bed is a good Place. And Time…well that’s the tricky one.

Shoebox delvings are meant for certain type of days- when the sun shines a little gentler – when the current road seems too beaten to death and its time to blow the cobwebs off on things that cannot be supported by 4 pieces of cardboard. A guided tour down memory lane requires environmental support.

So I yanked the old box out one morning.

An old postscript to ‘my little lady, from Grandpa’
Reams of angst ridden poetry in support of a current love interest.
Play tickets.
Newspaper write ups cried over and loved.

Suddenly…an email.

A sign of modernity - an email worthy enough to be printed. Proof of the early days of distrust in the transient cyber world where one click can destroy – that’s where I found him.
Immortalized in low quality jet print on file paper.
Forgotten in a shoebox.

All I could remember of the writer is this vague combination – of laughter, elaichi tea and a cheap paratha place with red plastic chairs… throw that in with some indistinct pursuit of artistic endeavor- and that just about makes the cut.

That’s it.
Nothing more.
In complete shock I realize that I can’t remember anything else.
Zilch.

There’s a sickening quality of a Hannibal Lector about Time. It creeps up on you and slowly erases, in parts, a lifetime filled with sensation and action. And one day, out comes a shoebox and you hit pause mode, turn back and it’s a wall of blackness. You’re left to grope and snatch at what was so intensely alive and all you can get … all there’s left are a bunch of dull freeze frames randomly strung together, with an insipid sepia about it.

Time wrecks havoc.

I sat there, clutching at this piece of paper …watching another day draw to an ominous close... Another day of consequence and events that will slip behind that iron veil…into the wall of Time. Unrecoverable.
Inviolable.
Gone.

"You once said to me: 'If we never meet again - it wouldn't make a difference'. But you didn't say it wouldn't matter. Do you know I understood the nuance. It was really long ago, but but did you know?"

The email ended with the day.

Of Adventure mostly...

A room grows dark. A blue light envelops it…and suddenly, through a crack I can see those simmering eyes of Galadrial burn at me with …oh so much compassion.

I can hear my brain say aloud “It’s got to be Elven”…and the rest of the thouht just fades into a strange tongue….and I realize I know the meaning of those words although I can’t understand it. … “Its got to be Elven when there is such compassion that’s never been seen before on a human face”.

Then…she lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark.She stood tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful.

Those blue eyes framed in that ethereal face moved into expression…And then she's gone…the dark fades as a trashy tubelight flickers on...

... And I read the book. Now its all just in there.

That book is a part of the Life I never had…a life that peeks open through doors in dark rooms and fade with the light of an alleged Reality.

Some times, even when I don’t know it, I find myself walking down the roads on the Other side. Without knowing it, my feet took a turn at a Time warp…and ….I’m on the Road.
Rickshaws pass me by and people talk in a language unknown to me…I walk apart from the roaring crowd that marches to the rhythm that’s unfamiliar to me. … A map in my bag and I smell Adventure.

Or the banks of some sacred river at sunset….watch the faithful go to prayer at a melancholy call across the landscape…or when the sun rises a top a temple in Rajashtan.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The trip ends and magic and adventure sinks into the gaps between…the pages of a book.
I switch the lights on in the dark room that flickers to harsh glow of Reality.

And I read the book. Now its all just in there.

The world, someone said is divided into those who have read the Lord of the Rings and those who are going to read it.

AfterGlow

Some people, I have heard…strictly a rumour… these guys….they are worried about their teeth. They go to other people who know how to heal teeth and pay large sums of money for it. It’s supposed to be some strange ritual not known to many people – LIKE ME.

Goddamn dentists – what kind of sick society would create a niche for such creatures to exist and THRIVE. Like viruses.

Is it virii in plural? I hate grammar.

Anyway… this raises many questions like: What’s the deal with grammar, for instance? And famous ones like: What is the Government doing these days?

But all these are rumors. Strictly. So we will move on…

So the other weekend, I blew it on a Lighting workshop. Intense 6 hours per day for 3 days and I must admit I’m quite impressed with the whole thing. Stage lighting to recreate life – or even something quite unlike it… There’s this sense of power associated with the ability to throw light on something – and define it…artistically.

God, for instance was accused of it.

I remember long ago, someone said something like Nature of Imagination is esemplastic. I like words like that. It gives me the happy feeling of empathy with the person who twisted a feeling into a word.

Anyway, this Lighting workshop… it esemplasted the Hell out of my infantile ideas about Lighting. Who would have guessed…a console on top of the theatre is the seat of power.

Good stuff.

I watch the afternoon sun suddenly and think ‘Harsh white – Fresnel light. Cut shadows with backlight and Top of House’. And move on.

The Lighting workshop changed my life.

Thought Bubble

Intelligence is critical to life. In more ways than you might think.

Given that ‘more ways than you can think’ is an infinite variable scuttling around like the freakin Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle itself, it’s quite hard to peg this intelligence thingy down at a value. Its safe, it follows logically, to leave that at that secure value - immeasurable.

To have it - that one crystal clear thought – separated from the rest of the neuron generated heat- like a blissful, unconcerned, superbly crafted notion. To have that, amidst the rest of the white noise – that capacity for clarity without crutches. It’s…well…somethin’ else.

I guess I should lead this up with a wonderful instance of such intelligence, but, unfortunately, no such luck.

Trip shit...

Another undated day in my life - indeterminate time, indeterminate event, indeterminate people. Coordinates of Time, Space and Action is somehow irrelevant to Life. They’re just incidental detail to be updated on a need-to-know basis. This time, in the words of a famous Somebody, I don’t need to know. Einstein, if you’re rolling in your grave, well, sonny, somebody had to tell you the Truth. It had to be me. The irony is incidental.

Anyway… it was indeterminate coordinates when I looked up and then there it was… circling in the sky like some Goddamn unaffected planet - at the same instant, Floyd was singing the favorite.

Suddenly she said, ‘That’s the thing with Floyd’. Everyone present just nodded. There was a palpable agreement in that pleasant silence.

I like these moments.

Either no one is listening or no one gives a rats ass. Either way I like it. You throw a meaty bone and the well-fed dog just sniffs and says ‘Thanks but no thanks’. The comfort is in the fact that no one cares about your feelings. I like this neglect. It’s wonderfully comforting.

Saying the Thank Yous and Spreading all that Love and Happiness, Agreement and Democracy, Ass licking, Smiling, Be Happy, Be Positive just GETS to me like a million skunks on overdrive. The problem with the world is that too many people want to agree with each other.

Lets be REAL for a while and tell people what we really think. What a wonderful thing that will be for the world. No more Stupid social gatherings with Aunties and Marriage proposals and “I just bought a new house and by the way, I’m a superstar” tête-à-tête.

Sample conversation between A & B:

A: ‘Hey there! Here's a thought - how about you never talk to me again as long as we both live? Cos the truth is, I can't stand you. ”

B: ‘Sure thing’

A & B part ways.

This is the world I want to live in.

It was Sunday

It was Sunday.

One of those indeterminate times between late afternoon and just about evening when the winter sun decides to go surreal. It filtered in slanting golden through foliage and concrete and lit up everything in sepia glow like a Grace Kelly movie.

So from the balcony I was sitting on…everything moved in this afterglow-flush in suspended animation. A cyclist creaked past and someone made their way across the road and disappeared into a school building. Nothing else moved. Then a couple of kids ran down the footpath tripping over each other. Nothing much else happened.

It was like the city had holed itself up and gone to sleep ... and in that rare moment of respite everything slowed down and breathed.

So I was watching the scene ... sentence hanging mid page of Catcher in the Rye the hundredth time over– and suddenly... it was Perfect. Like a Dave Mathews song or like comic timing.
The whole damn thing was Just Right - for no fathomable reason.

Just then some idiot honked loudly... as if by cue the traffic picked up, the sun started to fade and I remembered I had to be somewhere else. The quiet blurred out of focus … and the moment crumbled – it was over just as it happened.

I guess that’s what’s killing about it - Perfection is insignificant.

Go against the flow!

Sometimes I think all this thing about Change being a good thing is all crap.

Look at what it did to my city. I can’t stand it anymore… It bothers me intensely. It really does. The fact that Bangalore, from its quaint, slow paced, treelined, simple city populated with soft spoken laid-back dosa-eating coffee-drinking public is fast turning into a mess. It’s become an unrecognizable grimy, anonymous, insipid, borderless city…

I miss it. The good old times that turned ugly so quick that I can’t comprehend it. I miss those times…

Times when the streets of Malleshwaram smelt of a curious mix of rasam powder, flowers and wood smoke…when the best hangout places used to be India Coffe house, Koshy’s, galaxy theatre, airlines hotel and Pecos… when Koramangala was still a swamp…

I miss my old Bengaluru… the city it used to be and more than anything I miss who it allowed me to be.

And so here I was, musing on retro mode when I stumbled across this piece – written by someone from across the planet, who felt that same way… that maybe change ain’t such a great thing after all, maybe somethings should remain the way they are… simply cos what is, is so immesurably valuable.

Anyway…there was something so touching about how it was written, I simply had to put this up.
So here goes…

I grew up in the 50s with practical parents. A mother, God love her, who washed aluminum foil after she cooked in it, then reused it. She was the original recycle queen, before they had a Name for it... A father who was happier getting old shoes fixed than buying new ones. Their marriage was good, their dreams focused. Their best friends lived barely a wave away. I can see them now, Dad in trousers, tee shirt and a hat and Mom in a house dress, lawn mower in one hand, and dish-towel in the other.

It was the time for fixing things. A curtain rod, the kitchen radio, screen door, the oven door, the hem in a dress Things we keep. It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me crazy. All that re-fixing, eating, renewing, I wanted just once to be wasteful. Waste meant affluence. Throwing things away meant you knew there'd always be more.

But then my mother died, and on that clear summer's night, in the warmth of the hospital room, I was struck with the pain of learning that sometimes there isn't any more.Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up and goes away...never to return. So... while we have it... it's best we love it.... and care for it... and fix it when it's broken...... and heal it when it's sick.

This is true. for marriage..... and old cars.... and children with bad report cards..... and dogs with bad hips... and aging parents..... and grandparents. We keep them because they are worth it, because we are worth it.

There are just some things that make life important, like people we know ... or maybe just a way of life that was so worthwhile… and sometimes, it makes sense to take the time and learn how to resist the urge to start over new. Cos the old is valuable. More than we’ll ever know.

mADAM and stEVE???

I recently saw someone walking around with a discerning T-shirt message–
‘Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it’.

It really got me thinking about how true that was… “We’re all alike under the skin” and other noble minded asides of similar genre sagely presented themselves at regular intervals…

…Till I got this email that propounded the exact opposite sentiment…and how! It had me rolling on the ground in splits! Here I present the contrary view in acknowledgement of the sheer brilliance of it:

"Men Are from Mars, Women Are From Venus" -
Offered by an English professor from the University of Phoenix.

The professor told his class one day: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."

The following was actually turned in by two of his English students:
Rebecca and Gary.

THE STORY: (first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. " A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.

(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)
Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F--KING TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!"

(Rebecca)
A**sh**e.

(Gary) Bitch

(Rebecca)
F@#% YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!

(Gary) Go drink some tea - whore.

(TEACHER)
*A+ - I really liked this one. *