4:34 pm | 17 April 2003 | Chick Habit; instances #1

This track goes out to Blueberry, but everyone else should download it too, because it's fucking genius. I wish i could just give it to you directly, but i don't have that kind of bandwidth, y'all. And Epitonic.com is totally boss, so check them out.

Oh, and here's another story fragment for y'all. Peace out. clm.

The weathered boards of the back porch are littered with them�not kids, but not adults, either; late 'teens to early twenties; the population of clothing ads, tan, scruffy, happy in torn jeans and worn flip-flops. One boy's parents, too wealthy, are on some distant coast, and so his friends have gathered here, brown and gold and warm, strong, young. They have, at this moment, everything they truly want. They will never be happier than right now.

It is nighttime, summertime, just late enough to be pitch-black. The crickets have stopped singing, but the tree frogs have just begun. The humidity of the day still drapes over their necks and shoulders like the arms of a jealous girlfriend, mingling with the salt smell of skin, the fumes from bucketed citronella candles, casual drifts of smoke from cigarettes. Their laughter has a gentleness to it. They are playing euchre with a deck of Dukes of Hazzard cards�they have decided that Tom Wopat is the ultimate trump, and have named their drink after him. It is a foul concoction involving whiskey and the sickly sweetness of grape soda, housed in red plastic cups with white interiors.

One girl, younger than the rest, does not know how to play euchre. She knows best how to be alone. The lip of the empty red-and-white cup in her hand is racked with nervous bite marks. She pushes herself off the porch and walks down a few steps to the swimming pool, where she shucks off her jean skirt and steps in.

The water is cool against the heavy air, against the healthy swell of hot skin, and she slinks in, stroking to the deep end of the pool. The edges of the white tank top she wears flutter against her sides as she floats silently, star-shaped, staring up at the sky. Her ears are submerged, and the chatter from the porch blurs into the muttering of distant pigeons. Her breath sounds immediate; the slightest movement of arm or leg provokes a new ripple of sound. She closes her eyes.

From the shallow end, she hears the curl and gurgle of someone else entering the pool. She tips upward to look, her hair seal-slick against her head, and he is sliding towards her, too fast, his brown eyes layered with laughter that masks absolute intent. This is what she wants most. She feels a kind of fear.

She pushes herself around the water with loose arms, her skin dead white in the moonlight. She is not one of the creatures on the porch, streaked with sun. She is pale, all angles, stark, black-haired. She is a mimeograph among photos, rendered in grayscale.

Nevertheless, the boy takes another stroke towards her. She is dizzy with the nearness of him, the tautness of his young raw body, and grabs the edge of the diving board over her head to stay above water.