He sought perfection. He sought it in the way the light came through the window in the morning. He sought it in the way that birds wove their song into the air. He sought it in the way that the leaves on the ends of branches bounced on invisible currents. He sought it in others. He sought it in himself. With the exception of nature, he was sorely disappointed, and after a day he gave up looking.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
She stayed on the phone while her husband stood there, beckoning her to go to bed. She wasn’t ready so she used the hand that wasn’t holding the vodka tonight to point at the receiver cradled under her chin. The phone was a Bakelite relic she had bought at a yard sale and converted expensively to a cell-phone cradle and charger. Her husband rolled his eyes a little. “I’m going,” he said. She nodded, and then began to talk, slowly at first, then more quickly, about the crisis at work, about how Anne had put the wrong file in the wrong folder, and then Gary had, upon opening the right folder and finding it empty, come bounding out of his office with his tone already at the top of the arch, leading Anne to push back twice as hard, as Anne did, and that in turn led Frances to sigh, stand, and intervene, palms out like an incompleted prayer. Her husband was gone now. She sighed. If she had been more drunk she might have told him that there was no one on the other end of the line, that she was faking the call. But she was only two drinks in and so she started up again. “Frances,” she said. “What a major problem.”
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
There were things he couldn’t say and things he couldn’t say to her, and the second set was a subset of the first, though he knew that if he had the chance, he would say to her some of the things he couldn’t say, in lieu of the things he couldn’t say to her, prudence forfeited for an imperfect intimacy. But that was all part of the future, and he was part of the present, which was about the car he was sitting in, and the emboldening romantic music on the radio, and the way his hands were shaking.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
“The five pillars of satisfaction are Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishments. The six pillars of satisfaction are Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishments, and Risk. The seven pillars of satisfaction are Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishments, Risk, and Downtime. The eight pillars of satisfaction are Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishments, Risk, Downtime, and Not Being Beaten.” He was alone in the cell, staring at the wall where he had drawn pictures of himself. The pictures were his audience. “The nine pillars of satisfaction…” he started, raising his voice to drown out their boos.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
She didn’t understand his relationship to things. She didn’t understand his relationship to his things. They were a mystery to her, not just in terms of his attraction to them, but in terms of what they in fact were. Some looked like clothes but had no holes for arms or heads. Some looked like books but she couldn’t read the titles. There was a picture of a crying girl who had her face from when she was a girl but could not have been her as it was painted a century before her birth. There were miniatures of buildings that existed in no place, fabric samples, wires. “You have to get rid of these things,” she told him. “They’re killing you.” He looked up from a deck of cards he was shuffling that had images of insects attacking dogs with the heads of cats. Did he see her? She was wearing a dress that he had once called “criminal,” holding a picture of the two of them on their honeymoon. “They’re killing us,” she said. But what she really meant was her.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
“You never get it back unless you never give it up to begin with,” she said. She was watching a movie distractedly, unless she was watching the movie intently and talking to him distractedly. She had a sweater on around her shoulders in what he assumed was a parody of a woman in another movie, one he had never seen. “Bucking the system is making a call out of the house on a line that’s been cut,” she said. “You can say anything you want. You should say it. But no one will hear.” Her voices was insultingly light given the weight of the things she was saying. It wasn’t a sweater around her shoulders at all. It was a mink. And she wasn’t watching a movie but a painting. It was a painting of the two of them, sitting in the room they were sitting in now. Behind them was a figure in a hood, exuding all kinds of menace. He didn’t want to turn around now but he forgot why almost instantly. Maybe he was the one who was distracted.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
The hand never shaken shakes. The man standing as still as a statue directs a stream of invective toward a man thirty years his junior who happens to be his son. The wizened woman in the chair next to the bed is playing “Dazed and Confused” at top volume and singing even louder. Her daughter taught her this song. She misses her daughter even though she’s only a staircase away. The lecturer on television begins with a warning that falls are second in peril to injuries suffered in a fall. A grandchild shivers in the shadow of a chair. Most mornings he feels unloved and in that he is very much his grandfather's grandson, his mother’s son. Three figures come across the lawn, rosy cheeks, white hair, looking like a trio of James Madisons, bearing proclamations that will liberate or disembarrass the family inside the house. They plan to bound up the front stairs, trying their level best not to fall.
©2021 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
He came out of the cave, blinked at the light. It was the sun. He had been warned. “What’ll get you first, well, it’ll be the sun,” said his wife. She wasn’t coming out of the cave just yet. She had plenty to do in there. She was cooking more than ever, had learned to paint, was midway through The Collected Works of Billy The Kid. People came to see her from time to time, stood at the mouth of the cave, announced their names, waited until they heard the tinkling of the bell from within that instructed them to enter. He had been isolated nearly the whole year, with only his wife and her occasional guests as company. He had started projects but had not, to date, finished any of them. As it became clear that he’d be able to venture out, he started to retrain himself: how he would greet people, what his first words to them would be, the importance of keeping conversations economical if for no reason other than communicating a command of himself and his actions, a command that he knew was entirely mythical and that he knew they would know was mythical as well. Without the preparation he would have flung up a hand wildly and yelped his hellos like a dog. He knew he might still. The sun was in his eyes and for a brief moment he loved the feeling before the anxiety closed over him like the sea unparting and he began to gasp for breath. He considered going back into the cave, admiring his wife’s paintings or maybe even sitting for one, but he knew he couldn’t. He had been warned. “What you’ll be thinking is about turning around,” she said. “But you’ll just have to soldier on.” He holstered his fear and took his first fateful step forward. Was this what it meant to make yourself a hero?
©2021 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
The band in the park was playing, well, you know: Earth Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, a Van Morrison or two. “Beatles!” one man in the front yelled. He was Indian, tall, had once been thin, wore a shirt that showed a picture of Jerry Brown and a slogan, “Get Down With…” on the top and an obvious bottom no one could read because it was tucked into his black jeans. “Beatles!” he yelled again. The lead singer came out of the end of “Jackie Wilson Said” and acknowledged the yeller. “An enthusiast,” he said. “A maniac,” the man called back. The singer turned his back on the man, faced the band, said a few words. The opening notes of “Within You Without You” floated out over the park. “Come on,” the tall man said. “You’re better than that.” The singer shook his head and grinned: no, not better. In the back of the park, a number of young women twirled blissfully.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
She had a hard time sleeping and then a hard time waking up. She had a hard time eating and then a hard time not eating. She had a hard time getting started with her work and then sometimes the sun would set and rise while she sat at her desk, mind whirling wildly. She bought bicycles, left them in public without a lock. She tried to balance on one leg but fell. She spent money like an inebriated seafarer. Through it all, she had a friend, kept a friend, eyed him with a mix of suspicion and barely contained joy, felt the wings of hummingbirds beating in her bloodstream, and finally went to bed with him. He had never seen her in anything but complete clothes and the sight of a thin band of fabric bridging skin kicked the breath right out of him. She had an easy time sleeping and an easy time waking up.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
