Rock/Paper/Scissors: a series of Facebook fictionettes*

1
Douglas always fell in love with women from the Midwest. "Plain talkers," he told himself. "Or ones who don't talk at all." Aside from being plain talkers, they also stayed put. Douglas had never met one of them, never heard from them offline, although he thought about what he might say, if it happened. Two days after his forty-second birthday, Douglas received the first postcard he had seen in years--a tiny miracle.

2
Her name was Barbette. At least, that was the name signed in red ink across the postcard. Douglas gripped the picture between thumb and forefinger and stared down at the woman with the creamy skin, and hair the color of sunlit wheat. She posed in the driver's seat of a luxurious car--Douglas didn't recognize the make or model--with her legs resting on the steering wheel and a flimsy silk skirt drawn up over her hips.

3
Sweltering. The blond was so crazy. Twice a week she strolled into the P.O. wearing cut-offs and a t-shirt. And she mailed a batch of postcards--pictures of her daughter. Troy stamped each card of the soft-focus, housewife porn. Pretty creepy, though, mailing shots of her daughter to guys in California… Then Troy realized the blond was the girl, about fifteen years, twenty pounds and twelve thousand Bloody Marys ago.

4
The twins were fighting in the back seat of the beat-up Civic, all the way home. Barbara didn't care. She was thinking of herself as Barbette, the way she'd been signing postcards for the past month. Nothing to look at: Roads, fields, tractors. She'd rather be in her head, humming tunes from that ballet she liked. "You two shut up now or I'll leave you right here," she told the twins, and laughed. Swan Lakes. Pretty!

5
1) Pretty. The blond was so young and so pretty--her legs in the air like a ballerina. 2) She didn't come to his house. 3) She wasn't asking for money. Maybe she wouldn't ask. She was a good girl. He could see it in her face, in the tender lines of her body against the firm flesh of the car seat. She looked clean and sweet and quiet. Douglas pulled on his frayed, green cardigan and stuffed the postcard in his pocket.

6
August. Millie. Brunette. "Buckteeth." So she said when they first met. She kept holding the back of her hand across her lips, to hide her front teeth. Where did "buck" come from? Why "buck?" Douglas couldn't see her buckteeth, not for the longest time. She hid her smile from him. She wore a necklace of glittering stones. She drank gin through a straw from a special, little glass. Small fingers, slender toes: Millie.

7
The twins were frying red grapes in a skillet. The kid across the street had told them, that's how to make raisins. They didn't especially like raisins, but they wanted very much to make a change take place before their eyes. Jenny watched Jackie pushing the grapes around with a broken spatula. They leaned in closer, skinny seven year olds, arms almost touching, with a look of high seriousness on their angular faces.

8
By the time the twins helped Barbette smash the pillows, towels, and sheets into the trunk of the Civic and they hit the road, Jenny had a temporary eye patch and Jackie wore a 4-inch square Band-Aid, across the burn from an exploding grape. They were understandably sullen for most of the drive. Boundless fields and back-arching skies were wasted on them. So Barbette sang to herself all the way to Tustin, California.

9
The P.O. was busy all week. By the time Troy noticed the blond was gone, she was long gone. First she missed her Wednesday pickup, then Saturday, then Wednesday again. No forwarding address, but the box was paid for another month. Only one letter arrived after the blond took off. Faint handwriting on the envelope. Troy thought the delicate hand belonged to a woman. But it was from a guy named Douglas Plate in Tustin.

10
While Barbette drove west and sang off-key, Jenny and Jackie killed time in the back seat. The desert freeway inspired them to create the life story of their mother. Not Barbette. Not even Barbara, her real name. Their true mother was a tall, pretty, tragically dead lady from India, Norway and England. She had expired suddenly from falling downstairs, and the twins were traveling west to inherit their family fortune.

11
Troy chewed on the cheeseburger, at a careful angle above the coffee table, elbows out, trying not to drip on Douglas Plate's letter. An episode of Top Chef taunted Troy with Chateaubriand. He took a ravenous bite of beef patty. Any way he looked at it, the letter was a warning--to old Barb, or young Barbette or whatever she was passing herself off as. Polite. But the guy didn't want her to visit him. That was clear.

12
November. Not last year. Daphne. Quaker? Mormon? Douglas had his doubts: Daphne's long neck was encircled by a tattoo of vines and symbols. She came to his door selling magazines. They always came looking for him. She was a Virgo and a truth seeker, she said. Flirting. Lips. She asked his age, and told him he had the power to do anything he really wanted. When they met, she was a vegetarian. Her mood ring was yellow.

13
"You better do as your dad says." Barbette glanced in the rearview mirror. The twins looked up. Jackie said: "What's his name?" "Mr. Plate." "Do we call him mister or dad?" "Be quiet 'til he tells you what to call him. I'll be back in a few days, at the most, to pick you up." Jenny asked: "Are you going off to marry the guy from TV?" Barbette shook her head. They were slow, and plain, both girls. It wasn't her fault.

14
February. Three years ago. Caroline. Wore a wig, but Douglas wouldn't have guessed if it hadn't slid off her head while he was cutting her throat. It was a shame. She seemed like a nice lady until she started talking. Douglas couldn't understand why they kept coming to his house, the talking women. He didn't ask them to. He felt safer online, at least before the blond. Now here she was, walking across his front yard.

15
Barbette held a pair of cuticle scissors in one hand, just in case. Some guys seemed easy to handle and then turned funny on her. Once she had to stab a drunk with the scissors, and right up to that moment she would have said he was the nicest guy in the world. This one was lonely. He wouldn't mind having the twins for company for a while. Once she was married she would be rich, and she would come back for the girls.

16
Through the back window of the car, the twins watched her cross the dirt yard. Mr. Plate's house was small and painted cake yellow. The door opened and Barbette went inside. Killing time, the twins began to play rock/paper/scissors. Startled by a shout, they looked up. But all they could see was the dry scrub, tall fences, gravel drive. High up in the sky two sparrows circled--calling crazily--and flew away together.

Images & text copyright©2009 S.P. Miskowski
*Each FB fictionette or installment contains the maximum number of characters allowed in a status update in Spring 2009.

Why Can't Oprah Love Me When I'm Fat?

My holiday wish came true. Oprah got fat again.

Is that mean? Well, hang on. Sometimes I am fat and sometimes I am not. Most Americans live in the not fat-fat-not fat zone with me.

I know the reasons why I get fat: eating and drinking and sitting around. And I know what makes me thin: going hungry and forcing myself to do boring things over and over and over. Naturally enough, I spend a little more time fat than not fat, each year. But you want to know something? I don't care.

If you take how much I don't care about my weight, and quadruple that, and then multiply that by a hundred--that is how much I don't care about Oprah Winfrey's weight. And I like her. I have always liked her. I have even worried about her, and I have wished her well and I have wished she would come to my town for a visit. But I don't care what size dress Oprah wears, and I don't care how much she weighs.

Considering how little I care about Oprah's weight, I sure hear a lot about it in a timely manner. For example, I know the instant she discovers a new miracle diet. This year it was acai berries. Haven't heard of them? Nobody has, until Oprah says they flush all the toxins out of you. By toxins, she means: fat. That's right. You can drink a berry tea and forget about exercise. Forget about how much money celebrities spend on spa treatments and surgery to "supplement" their diets. No, the key is the acai berry. As long as you drink that juice, you're going to flush out all the fat that is hiding in every nook and cranny of your long-suffering body. You're going to be taut, tan, even tall.

Acai berry! Acai berry! Shouted the Facebook ads. Every time I navigated to another page, the acai fucking berries followed. Pop-up: Look at the abs I got from acai!

I tried answering the drop-down menu questions: why I dislike this ad. Uh. Irrelevant. Because I don't diet. Boring. Ditto. Misleading. Because I don't believe you for a second. Offensive. Because why do you want me to lose weight, anyway? You don't even know me.

But now Oprah has thrown herself on the broken diet sofa to weep inconsolably: "I am embarrassed. I am mad at myself."

Let me be the first, or more likely the four millionth, to say, Oprah: I don't friggin' care. I like you, and I don't care what size you are. Two? Great. Twenty? Great.

If only my unconditional love were requited, Oprah. Alas, I see you do not love me as I am when I am fat. I see it in the way you insist that I join you every time you decide to mercilessly pummel your poor body into a new shape. I see it in the dozens of ads on which your name appears: Oprah. Lose weight. Acai.

Why can't you stick with one diet and exercise program, Oprah? And why do you make me watch each new regimen as you contort your personal life and relationships to accommodate it? Is it not easier to shovel ourselves into dresses two sizes too small? Is it not easier still for a woman of wealth such as yours, to simply buy a bigger dress until the donuts wear off? Or do what the simple folk do, Oprah: Let out the seams! Let out the seams!

There is something still wrong, in the heart of all that self-actualization and fresh starting, isn't there? Perhaps something innately human, that will not go away, regardless of the power of the flush.

So, Oprah, let me say: Welcome back to my size. Welcome to being a person. Please stop asking me to go on a diet with you, or run around outside in bad weather. Please stop giving those self-hating interviews, and learn to love me as fat as I am. Then you might, just might, learn to love yourself a little bit, too.

Who Do You Think You Are?

This piece from the last issue of Wired is pretty amusing. Scott Brown explains How Facebook Exposed Us All As Freaks:

Beacon and tracking regimes like it violate the unwritten soc-site covenant: They don't care who you think you are or who you'd like other people to think you are. They barely glance at your meticulously managed profile — Chabon on the nightstand, Beirut on the iPod, gut carefully sucked in. Instead, they tail you, dissecting you site by site, purchase by purchase: the gorilla mask, the bucket of chicken, the webcam, the subscription to Mature Biracial Pony, the edible sweatpants.