3:AM Magazine

By Ben Mirov.

Handsome Pete

If I am ever a Chinese Orphan I will call myself Handsome Pete. As Handsome Pete, I will spend a lot of time sleeping. I will probably not spend much time eating because there will not be much to eat. I will probably never play basketball. Most of the time, I will sit in a chair and look at a wall. If I am lucky the chair will be a rocking chair and I can rock in it.

One day after staring at the wall for many years Handsome Pete will see the face of God. The face will be tiny and white like unbaked dough with beady eyes like watermelon seeds. The Face of God will look at Handsome Pete. Handsome Pete will know it is God’s face because God’s face is known to everyone, even Chinese orphans. God’s Face will not say anything. It will watch Handsome Pete rock forward and backward in his chair. Handsome Pete will not say anything to the face of God because he has not thought about what he’d like to say to God’s disembodied face. The face of God will stay very quiet and it will not appear anywhere else in the world.

Kage’s First Xmas

I am thinking of him and her having sex. I am thinking of them having really great sex, probably in front of a mirror. I am alone in the house. The TV is on, but everyone is asleep. I am about to turn twenty-one. When I turn twenty-one I am going to put on snowshoes. I am going to put on snowshoes and walk as far as I can into the snow. Once I am out in the snow I am going to sit down. I will probably sit in the snow for a long time. I’ll bring a sandwich and some juice. When I return to the house it will be Xmas morning. I will take off my snowshoes and I will tell my family my new name. I will say, On advent of my twenty-first birthday I have taken a new name. Henceforth I shall be called Kage. Kage with a K and not a C. From now on I will only answer to the name Kage. Thank you very much, and then I will walk out of the room. Then I will probably take a shower because I will be cold from sitting in the snow. I will walk into the bathroom and take off all my clothes and look at my body in the mirror. I will probably flex a little. Kage likes his new body. Then I will take a long shower. I will wash every part of my body, including my asshole and my ears and toes. Every part of my body will be clean.  Then I will get out of the shower and go have Xmas. I will open my presents and say, Kage does not want this. Kage has no use for a Playstation. Kage does wear sweaters.

No Mom, I Don’t Want to Give this a Title

My friend Brian and I were at a truck stop and all the people were eating hamburgers with raw hamburger meat. Then my friend Tom was there. Brian and I said, Tom! you’re here! and we hugged him.

I ordered a raw meat burger with chili. I was a little afraid because the woman behind the counter was twenty feet tall. I was also afraid because I had never eaten raw hamburger meat before. I wanted to impress Tom and Brian, but Tom and Brian are not impressed by anything I do because they know I am not an impressive person.

Tom and Brian were not impressed. They ordered curly fries. Then we ate. I ate most of my burger. I couldn’t finish it, but I liked eating it.

When we finished eating we walked back to the parking lot across the street where our car was parked. There was a huge black limousine parked next to our car. Tom turned to me and said, This is the Enemy, and he held out his hand like a model in a game show who is showing the audience a washer and dryer.

Nothing happened. Tom had a huge grin on his face. I knew we had to get out of there as fast as possible, but everyone was frozen except me. I climbed over a chain link fence and disappeared.

The Shapeshifter Cannot Sleep

I wake up at 1:32 in the morning and make a frozen lasagna. I use a fork to pierce the plastic film. I heat the lasagna for six minutes. Once the food is done, I eat it while it is too hot and burn my mouth. I get a blister on the inside of my cheek. I feel the blister with my tongue. It is small and round and smooth. I pop the blister with my tongue and go back to bed. I cannot fall asleep. I think of everything that’s wrong in my life and I cannot sleep at all.

I get up and pick up the phone and call this girl. The phone rings twenty times and the girl picks up the phone and I say, Listen, I will date you OK? I will go out with you and you will like it. We will go on a date to the park and find the imaginary buffalo and you will fall in love with me. The girl does not say anything. I take this as a sign and I continue. I say, On our second date I will build you a boat from trash and people will take pictures of us standing by the boat and then a whale will beach itself by the boat and everyone will be quiet and sad. On our third date, I will buy you diner at a French restaurant and I will forget my wallet and we will run out of the French restaurant and laugh. On our fourth date we will return to the beached whale. The beached whale will be disgusting and rotten. I will say, see I told you so, and you will nod your head because you know that I was right. On our fifth date, but then I will realize there is no one listening. The girl is not on the phone. I put the phone back on the hook.

I am still not tired. I decide to write a story. I decide to write a great story. What should my story be about, I think. I sit and think for a long time about my story. Then, I begin to write. I write:

Once there lived a lonely Shapeshifter. The Shapeshifter was the only Shapeshifter in the world. He lived in Reno by a small pond filled with garbage. He ate small insects and frogs, mostly. On Sundays he would make hip hop beats and sell them through the internet. Over the years he had amassed a large fortune by selling his beats. He had a bank account with millions of dollars in it but he did not spend any of it. The Shapeshifter was pretty happy in Reno by the pond filled with garbage.

One day the Shapeshifter went out to find true love. He met an old woman and turned into an old woman. The old woman did not love him. He walked around and met a man named Buzz. He turned into Buzz and Buzz freaked out and stabbed him with a screwdriver. The Shapeshifter was ok, but Buzz was not ok because he had just stabbed a mirror image of himself. Buzz went crazy and ran away. This made the Shapeshifter sad because he had fallen in love with Buzz. He looked everywhere in the city of Reno for Buzz, but he could not find him. The Shapeshifter returned to the pond made of garbage and sat around. It was one of the saddest moments of his life. He missed Buzz with all his heart. He sat around the pond for weeks and barely ate any frogs. Pretty soon he learned to love again, but he was never the same.

The Shapeshifter became a philanthropist. He donated all the money he had saved by making beats. He donated some of the money to geriatric homes in memory of the old woman who was the only human he had ever met besides Buzz. He donated the rest of the money to a dating service that helped people find true love. The Shapeshifter died alone and pretty happy.

I finish my story and I feel good. I read it once or twice and it’s ok. I staple it together and put it in an envelope and mail it to the New Yorker. Then I sit around and wait. I wait and wait until the sun comes through the window. I don’t know what to do. I never know what to do.

Someday I Will Join a Band and I Will Feel Pretty Much the Same

Someday, I will play keyboard in a band. The band will play electro-funk music and we will make people dance. Everywhere we go people will beg us to play our electro-funk music so they can dance and dance.

I will meet many women. I will meet tall women named Barbra. I will meet short women with red hair and bunny tattoos. I will meet women with wonderfully shaped noses and eyes like the eyes of an extinct woodpecker. I will meet these women and I will feel very happy and I will also feel a little empty inside.

I will wear shirts with the collar open and a little of my chest showing. I will probably own a sailboat, or I will tell people I own a sailboat. When I am alone I will sit and think about True Love. What is true love, I will think, and how do I get it?

I will make many women and probably a few men dance. I will make them dance and dance to my electro-funk music until the police come and shut everything down. The police will come and shut everything down and I will stand there and look at them with a look that says, I am stronger than you. Then I will say to the police who have come to shut everything down, You can shut everything down police. You can shut down electro-funk music and anything else that runs on electricity, but you can never shut down True Love. You can never shut down True Love because True Love is stronger than the police and it is even stronger than electro-funk music, which is very strong. So chew on that, I will say.

And the police will chew on it.

Then, the police will look at me and say, You’re right. Please continue to play your electro-funk music. We were secretly enjoying it very much and we did not want to shut everything down, but we had to because we are the Police. We are sorry to have disturbed you. We were acting like robots. And then everyone will cheer and cheer and cheer and I will think about a woman who left me in 1989.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Mirov lives in New York and attends the New School’s MFA program in poetry. His poetry can be found at Shampoo, H_NGM_N, Coconut and in Beeswax Magazine. His book reviews can be read at Coldfront, and at the Brooklyn Rail. He is the managing editor of pax americana (paxjournal.com). He would love to talk to you.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Friday, January 9th, 2009.