King Thing

i got two birthdays this year.


by mike 'beautiful on the inside and outside' turner

"i wish i was smoking a grip of weed with you and looking at plants"

i c u, baby.

i can't call my friends because i think they are sleeping.

i had a dream last night that i came into some money. i went to the bank and asked for it all in 50s. there were so many 50s that they wouldn't fit in my wallet, then my purse, in all my bags and pockets so i kept calling in my friends and stuffing their pockets with fifty dollar bills, one after another and the 50s kept coming. i even woke up before we had it all.

i like to look you in your face, watch your pupils dilate

THE BIG DIPPER

i'm going wild. i wake up every morning happy as hell, i drink a ton of coffee, i stare down fiona until she barks at me, i walk around, look up houses for rent in portland, i get paid and put it in my savings. i fantasize about presents i could give to people, i almost crash my car laughing so hard, every day somebody has a big new idea and we fit it in. nobody's ever had it this good. the boys are supposed to be leaving at the end of october but the plan is always changing and last night allison drew out the blueprints of the farmhouse to show me and i've never been so in for anything. i wanna work. hard. for this life with these people. i told bill this morning "i cant be without you on thanksgiving" and he wrote back "you wont be" and i never felt so good.

eatin breakfast with alyssa, feeling so good it almost hurts. i just got to go for what i want and kill it, man. that's all there is to do.

when we are wild

i can't wait to be in a van with those dudes. woke up next to manny this morning, always a good thing. bills phone went off and i could hear him from the top bunk telling mike he was in his bed. drews dinner was unreal. drank riesling out of the Home Sweet Home mug. we held hands and allison said the blessing. "man...those days" -m

take your shirt off and eat a grip of hot sauce and sleep in weird places! get all fucking dirty and get all fucking clean!

i'm laying on this weird slant, the mattress is all messed up but i kinda like it. i keep sending myself text messages so i remember stuff. everybody does that, right? my mom killed a black widow on the porch with one of my shoes tonight. it was the first real spider i saw in the spider cave this year. my first boyfriend turned 25 today. my first boyfriend had a chocolate labrador named indiana jones. he played football and the saxophone and all the teachers in high school loved him. we would hide from our friends and lock ourselves in the upstairs room and we had to walk everywhere because neither of us had cars yet. he liked to call me katherine and remembered everything i said. a few weeks ago i started writing a love song and so far the only lyrics are "your beard is weird" but i figure if i sing it high and slow and pretty it might come off the way i mean it.

salt water chemicals might mess up my contacts but it's worth it. my pillows smell like sunscreen, new freckles everywhere. summers half over so alyssa's been gone a while. been thinking about that dude non stop. "i own this place, see me on the map marching around 100 feet tall."

i clear your stuff off the bed so i can lay down and see your face at the same time. you're standing right there, swaying with your eyes closed. here comes a sound i won't ever forget. it rolls out like a beach blanket, i see images of you in that good light then suddenly i'm alone in my car, sweating by the pool house, locked in the boys room, backseat riding, always evaporating, alone in your apartment on christmas eve, swinging in the doorway, by the fire in your grandma's backyard, over both bridges, sleeping on the couch, in front of your old house, soaked clothes, big dinners, through walls, open windows, i see you sitting on the side of the tub, i see you in the crowded kitchen passing out beers saying 'just like that, just like that.' you open your eyes and tell me 'this is where you come in.'

sometimes i just look at stuff and think- man you were so major

Mama Thing

she looks just like a woman. she laughs a woman's beautiful laugh and bounces a baby on her lap like aunts do at birthday parties. she has a woman's face set with strong, feminine, authoritative features. do i look this grown? i remember her squinting in the sun. i remember her wielding a garden hose and new braids, her boyish eyebrows and dirty arms. i remember that look on her face before she turned, always running, back to the house yelling, "i found it under a brick! and we can keep him! because he's a secret!"

i'm sleeping like a baby and dreaming every night.

he leaned over me and said, "and then i want to sleep until the sun comes up"

my favorite is when really hot dudes look kinda gross. i like it when good looking boys make ugly faces and wear the same clothes every day. give me that hideous laughing face, give me that weird beard, the smell of a person.

i'm gonna be your golden beach baby! i feel like yelling out things like this when i'm in a particular mood. lately when people ask me what i've been up to, i can't stop myself from telling the truth. i say things like, "working on my british accent," or "laying down all the time," or "i think there's a mouse in my room."

first blackout of the year and i was already in the dark. flares at the intersections lighting up the asphalt, casting rabbit shaped shadows across the stop signs because the traffic lights are still out. it's easter tomorrow and i wish you a great big hand full of delicious chocolate eggs!

i'm so hungry i could eat you right up.

i met you a long time ago, i wanted you bad.

my life for the past week:


le jeune fille, klimt

it feels like magic to try to hold in laughter when there's somebody sound asleep close by. i really forgot what it was like to make something with my hands. all my stuff is spread out on a sheet on the dining room table and i can't tell what's watercolor and what's wine. alyssa's sketch of a motorcycle is here- and she thought she couldn't do it! her in the that red sweater, talking with her hands. i feel like i've swelled up to feel everything at once.

"when we kiss it feels like a flying saucer landing"

if you ever wondered what my life was like in 2004 and 2005 all your dreams are about to come true. ladies and gentlemen, the aztec movies, by stacy marie astenius.

"Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; if you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry 'Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!'"

when i see fine dudes in public i just give them this look that says "yo boy! ur mine." nobody falls for it, but if someone ever does i'll probably just laugh all weird and confirm all suspicions that i'm a troll.

how come every time i get on the internet all i do is youtube jellyfish and look up flight information?

i know this is way gay but it took me forever so i don't care-

25 things:

1. i sleep best in moving cars.

2. once i was kayaking and i turned to look at the shore and everyone was waving at me so i came in and they told me they had seen a whale's tail come out of the water and he had been right under me.

3. one of my favorite memories in high school was when that stupid girl wrote "RAPE" all huge across the lockers and alyssa changed it to say "GRAPES"

4. my favorite food is spaghetti with some burnt ass toast.

5. i'm really good at building big indoor sheet tents.

6. in the 6th grade i turned the room under our stairs into a leonardo dicaprio shrine cave. i set myself up in there with a bean bag chair, a lamp and my boombox and would talk with my friends on 3 way calls for hours until i had to come out for dinner.

7. i used to get so busted as a little kid for bringing my two mice to church with me in my purse.

8. the first time i shaved my legs was the day of my 3rd grade open house because my brothers called me wolf girl. those dudes also told me they had a little sister before me named shannon, who they killed because she was so annoying.

9. despite this, paul and colin really are my best friends and my favorite people on earth. i would do anything for them. and i'm really sorry i snitched on them for their weed and mickey's stash when we were kids- i got pinched and i panicked, bros.

10. one day we all faked sick and when my mom left for work we put our mattresses on the stairs like a slide and rode down them on sheets all day and paul made us scrambled eggs for lunch.

11. to this day i get super embarrassed during kissing scenes in movies and i usually cover my eyes because i just. cannot. take it!

12. i collect my friends' stuff. if you've ever written on a napkin and forgotten about it, or tossed out a drawing you didn't care about, or disregarded something you made and i happened to be around, i grabbed it. i have it. it's saved.

13. when i was 3 my mom accidentally ran me over with a volkswagen van. not with the tires, but still.

14. i put allison as like 8 of my speed dials. i don't remember if this was an accident or what but it probably wasn't.

15. the summer when i was 15 i went on tour with a drum and bugle corps around western and central america. we traveled by bus and slept in high school gymnasiums and practiced in the fields when we weren't performing. the show's theme that year was i love lucy and i played lucy, red wig and all. it was one of the most embarrassing things i've ever done, but also one of the most rewarding. i think we were in michigan when we had our one free day and toward night time it started raining really hard and we had to head back to the school. there was so much thunder and lightning, it was the biggest and hottest and coolest storm i've ever seen.

16. my dad made me mix tapes when i was younger of songs that he thought i would i like. my dad also had a dotson that was mustard yellow with one white door. we called it "the little car that could" and i always had the front seat.

17. one night in rome we got lost trying to find the trevi fountain with two italian brothers. we tried to find it by listening for it but everybody kept laughing and we found ourselves sitting indian style and singing on the porch of the pantheon, where we also carved our names and learned a funny kids game.

18. i love to swim.

19. okay, i'm way into harry potter, twilight, and lost.

20. in my wildest dreams on a hot kinda windy night our whole state would have a blackout and all our cars and phones would stop working and everyone i like would live next door to each other.

21. i really really want to go back to the redwood forest.

22. i was in the opening ceremonies of the 2000 olympics, i've climbed part of mt. vesuvius, i've stood up on the back of a horse, and i've met weird al.

23. i grew up in the house next door to my grandparents. they had a sailboat, a real one, planted in their garden. in our front yard we had a tree swing and half an avocado tree.

24. i don't think it gets any better than group sleep. all my favorite people in one place just sleeping. and sometimes i like to be the only one awake, driving them home, reading, or turning out the lights.

25. when i love stuff i just love it and i can't help it.

zzzzzzzzz

she said boy oh boy oh boy so low you could hardly hear it and then she tried to hold her breath but she kept laughing. we get in the car and you put your palm on my chest, or you may as well have, you never make me nervous. i think about rich copper colored ferns, i remember the honeytongue.

suck it, haters.

it kinda broke my heart to go. we left portland at 5am and got home around 10. we definitely lost our shit in the car. everyone was yelling "mcnerney" "mcnerney forever" "fuck you mcnerney" "bride of mcnerney" "i love clayton" "nelson is so tight" "she's a boy" etc etc etc

( in my dreams there are dudes as far as the eye can see )

alyssa did a 360 on the freeway in the ice and somebody said "alyssa is always cool as a cucumber" and it's true. yesterday the boys took us to arboretum and everything was so wet and green. i fell down a bunch and manny lost his cool up there, i heard him yelling "my worm's never been so scared." tom hanks slid down the hill too and drew went out on the log and bill was yelling the whole time. there was mud everywhere all over us by the end and thomas helped manny wash his hands in the snow. we ate burgers and the boys bought records and then we played 7s. this game ruined us but dhani was so fun and allison was so tight and manny got everyone to chant "go against god." we danced all night until the end where bill had a battle royal with us girls, all fighting desperately, of course, for mike turner.

the dudes are making us breakfast this morning and everyone is reading or sleeping or on a walk while thomas is cooking. last night alyssa and matt broke into a house to get bills shoes. we all sleep in the basement in a row, except for someone gets the couch and someone gets the mattress down there. i'm so happy. foods ready.

no boyfriends except everyone i know

it started out and i was on this boat. it was a pretty big flat boat and i was on the deck. the boat had other people on it but i didn't know any of them and they didn't know each other, everyone was pretty mellow and calm and i imagine they would have been enjoyable too if i would have been talking to them. i was looking out over the broad expanse of shallow water in front of us. it was this perfect clear blue green and i could see white sand beneath it. there were big rocks, or maybe mountains, enclosing this space but i couldn't tell how far out they were, the water seemed to stretch for miles. although i had not seen them, i knew there were similar places just on either side of us, like all that existed was a vast gulf filled with these endless coves. someone said something, or pointed, and i looked to see the mushroom fish. they were giants, five stories high from head to foot, brown and white, beautiful, with a texture that seemed thick and slick to the touch. they were in a circle, like synchronized swimmers, coming up out of the water entirely and spinning gently- every pedal-like edge of their billowy bodies moved like jellyfish- before curving themselves outward and sliding in slow motion back into the water. we were all on boat because we wanted to be. we were here for our symbiosis, in the scientific sense, and no one was sad because it was just part of our inevitable nature. i could see the whales now clustered near each other but they didn't look like whales. they hadn't been born yet or they were hibernating like in a cocoon. they were wrapped in something like a corn husk, although it was dark gray. i was in the water near my whale then and there was a guide with very long arms explaining that our whale would smell us in their sleep and when it came out it would be very mad at us. she said our whales would get us and then we would see what was next. so i waded by my whale and got very impatient, i wanted to meet him! i went to the guide and asked how i could be sure that my whale would smell me and she easily took the bark of her whale's shell and pulled it back just enough to show me the head bones inside. she pointed to a wish-bone looking one and said riiiiight there. i went back to my whale and pulled back his bark too. i found the wish bone and i leaned close to it so he would be sure to smell me and then covered him up again. i don't know how long i waited in the water again, it could have been just a second, but then he woke up. he was pretty mad at me. he asked me why i peeled him like that when he had already known how i smelled. i said i was just making sure but he was still angry. the whale wasn't quite a whale anymore, but not a man either, he didn't have an exact shape or face. he started to chase me and i was swimming fast away from him, i swam in a circle around the guide and asked if this was right and she told me to let him catch me. i swam very far away and then i turned over to my back to face him. he swam without stopping into me. it was like he came in right above the knees and slid easily under my skin. it did not hurt, like putting on a glove, but i stopped him halfway up my chest, letting him just stay there, trying to feel the experience as myself. he was not angry anymore. he said he wanted to come all the way up because that is what we were supposed to be. i let him. he slid up through me until we were face to face, compounded inside of each other. and then oddly i could feel his nervous system hooking into my spine and it was a pleasant feeling, like someone draping a sheet out over me, letting it parachute down lightly over my body. and everything changed that easily. my ears opened, as if they had popped for the first time. i could hear everything in the ocean, every sound resonated deeply and musically, like many facets of one perfect bell. every inch of my skin undulated outward and inward simultaneously, completely enveloping my physical consciousness into unthinkable pleasure. the feeling was so overwhelmingly good that it woke me up from my sleep.

i don't really get sad all that often and i rarely get lonely, but there are a few times, spaced very far apart, that i wish i would come home and you would be here already.