This work [“Tony and Sarah” by Brooks Kohler (2011)] is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
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Disclaimer
This story is fiction. Similarities to any person living or deceased are coincidental.
Written and created in the United States of America.
© 2011 by Brooks Kohler. All rights reserved.
Begin Story_____
Tony and Sarah by Brooks Kohler (2011)
Everybody thinks Tony is odd. I just think she was born in the wrong place, maybe even the wrong time, and the boredom is seeping out. Tony knows way too much about the world beyond our rural town. She can rattle off stats, figures, and names like a lead cop in a detective novel. She is constantly reading online news, surfing blogs, downloading whatever and everything, and using her knowledge to justify why she does the crazy things she does, like downloading whatever and everything. “It’s information!” she exclaims. “Good or bad, it’s information, and, d****t, Sarah, I’m going to get it!”
“Yes,” I reply with my finger in the air for dramatic effect, “but what about the ethical dimension of that argument?”
“What about it?” questions Tony. “They should have thought about that before they turned us loose! Their problem is not mine. I’m simply using the damn thing they invented, and don’t tell me about morality. I’m so sick of people claiming that the Internet is amoral. How the hell can it be ‘amoral’ when it can’t even think? Doesn’t any type of morality imply consciousness?”
It’s a good question. I let it slide.
The Absurdity of Non-Rated Films
Tony enjoys talking to strangers. She carries on email chats with all sorts of creative minds. Her most recent contact has been with a film professor in New York. For the past few days, they have carried on a rigorous discussion about the rise of the Non-Rated film. Tony is of the opinion that they all suck and are little more than a way for cheap freaks to make quick money off stupid gimmicks that neither shock nor have any creative value. The professor is of the opinion that they signal a need for a more expressive film genre and reminds her of the auteurs of the seventies.
“He’s everything I can’t stand about the post 9/11 film buffs,” shouts Tony as she types away on her keyboard. “They all tiptoe around the real issues while watching the world through their jittery camera lens.” She shows me a Wikipedia page dedicated to the subject.
“I see,” I reply, raising up and thinking.
“It’s either documentary or slap happy crap for these jerks!” continues Tony. “If this guy had his way, we’d be watching dogs stare at each other as their owners are brutally disemboweled by the mailman carrying a propaganda letter from some bureaucrat! Meanwhile, I’m forced to stand in the rain and pilfer through what they have in that stupid box! Damn, I miss video stores,” she concludes with a sigh.
“That’s great,” I add, watching her peck away at the keys. “What are you typing?”
“Oh, this?” she questions. “I’m telling him about this great recipe I have found for making chocolate coffee that will pep, pep, pep you up, if you know what I mean, Skipper.” She winks. I chuckle.
Nicknames
Nicknames are Tony’s specialty. She gave me mine after watching a Gilligan’s Island marathon. I suggested Mary Ann, but Tony scanned me up and down with her best detective stare and shook her head. “No, no, no,” she said, “I don’t think so. You remind me more of the Skipper.”
“Why the Skipper?” I asked. “He’s all fat and old.”
“I don’t know,” she said, studying me and tapping her finger to her chin, “but you do have a good point. Maybe Professor would be a better nickname for a girl of your caliber.”
“I’ll admit he’s in better shape,” I replied, “and I like his cleverness. What’s wrong with Mary Ann? I think she and I have a lot in common.”
“No, no, no,” retorted Tony, “that will not do. She’s nothing like you. You are smart, and she is all hick. Just look at how she dresses! In fact, I can’t believe you would compare yourself to that foot-stomping brat. You are more like the Skipper.”
“A Skipper, or the Skipper?” I questioned.
“Just Skipper,” she concluded.
Be Honest
Cigarettes can be purchased easily in our town. They practically give them away at conception, as though the use is some birthright or state funded mandate. Most of the girls and boys in high school, the fodder for the creepers as Tony calls us, gather at lunch hour and puff, puff, puff away, doing what their parents and grandparents had done before them. Tony sees nothing wrong with this tradition. She even posts pics of herself, smoking online, and this entices the principal to call for a locker search. The last time it happened, she summed it all up in her own special way. “They missed me again,” she said, laughing, as we fled from the school and entered into a sea of our puffing peers.
“Yeah, I heard,” I replied, marching along. “Why do you do that? You know you’re just hurting yourself.”
“Am I?” she questioned, pulling a cigarette from a pack hidden in her sock. “How the hell am I hurting myself?” she inquired, strutting along and palming a light. She blew out a cloud and sauntered through it. “The way I see it, dear Sarah, is this. They are the ones who are hurting us and themselves with their silly rules to legislate morality, and for what? So I don’t get sick and they don’t have to pay for it? Well, boo f’n hoo. What a joke. Be honest, d****t,” she said, spinning around and shaking her fist. “Be honest, you people who claim to know so much and need a sign and name tag to prove it. Just say you don’t care about my misery! Why just look at me, sweet, innocent, precious Sarah. Observe me as I am puffing away as freely as any honest criminal and doing so without tripping or falling into some spastic fit of rage. Why, if I was to believe all I was told by the keepers of the torch,” she concluded, jumping back around and proceeding forward, “the sidewalks would be padded and the sky would be propped up with balsa wood. They thought they had me in there, Sarah, but I had these suckers stashed!”
Tony stopped, kneeled down, and tucked the pack back inside her sock.
“So you broke the rules to prove a rule,” I said.
“Precisely, my precious,” she replied coyly, “it’s up to me to point out the weaknesses in the net so all the other itty bitty fishies who enjoy the taste of moral freedom can swim through.” She ended this rant by chuckling and waving her hands through the air. “Go on, little fishies. Go on. Swim to wonderful nicotine puddles.”
“That makes no sense,” I replied, “but it does sound rather novel. If it’s yours, you should write that down and do it tonight before you forget it.”
“Ever eaten tuna?” asked Tony, batting her eyelashes and blowing out a plume.
“Is this some weird, lesbo question?” I asked.
“How sick!” shouted Tony. “I wash my cooch, you sniveling wench! No,” she continued emphatically, “this is not that sort of question. Open your sleep-encrusted eyes and look at the side of the recycled can! Dolphin safe is what I’m referring to, not some stinky hole of fun and ooze!” She calmed, walked a bit, and continued. She did this, and I wanted to vomit but held back by covering my mouth. “The way I see it,” she said, “you naive thing you, is this. It is they, not us, that need to be careful.”
“How?” I asked, regaining composure.
“Because,” continued Tony, “when they build a net for sifting the sea of treasures, my dear, sweet, precious Sarah, they need to be careful they don’t snag anything other than tuna.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Stop speaking in metaphors, Tony!”
“Metaphors, meta-w****s!” she snapped. “They got Ralphio for pot today.”
“Really? So that’s what the cops were doing at lunch hour?” I replied with squinting, suspicious eyes.
“Yes,” replied Tony with authority, “and weren’t we led to believe they were searching for cigarettes and nothing else?”
“Yeah, I guess, but I don’t think they have to say what they are looking for,” I reminded her. “They can search for everything and anything. They have full power.”
“To lie and deceive?” questioned Tony. “To cast the net,” she continued, “while searching for tuna? To discover sea turtles in the glorious depths?” she shouted, jumping and skipping ahead. And then, like that, she stopped, causing her white-sole tennis shoes to screech on the sidewalk. “Now that’s not right. Is it? They toss turtles back,” she concluded, walking up close and pressing her forehead to mine. “But what about poor Ralphio, Sarah? What about him? He has a scholarship for that big school. Do you think he’ll keep it, now that they’ve cast their sneaky net?”
The Booger Game
Tony picks her nose and flicks her boogers at me. She has made it into a game and does it whenever I look bored. The rules are simple. Anything in the hair is a foul. Anything on the neck is a point. The cheeks, the nose, and the face are worth two points, and the mouth is worth three. It is so gross. The first time she did it was the worst. I was sitting on the couch, numbed out on reruns and a bowl of so very sweet, nonnutritious cereal. I began to chew something mushy in my mouth. The sweetness of a healthy pick-me-up changed to salty gum. Tony began to laugh. I chewed slowly and looked at her. “Three points!” she shouted. “Whoo hoo!”
“Three points?” I questioned, while carefully trying to hold back a white stream of spittle.
“Yea!” she laughed, slapping her hands. “Three big ones!”
Tony stood up and started to do a little dance, shaking her butt this way and that. She was acting like a cheerleader, throwing around imaginary pompons and trying to do jumping jacks without slamming her head into the ceiling. I watched her for a few moments, and then I looked down at my bowl. On top of my golden cereal were several small balls that looked like peeled off rubber cement. I looked up. My smile was now a crease and forming a whimper. Tony laughed insanely at my awareness. She was still dancing, and then, realizing that the salt was compliments of Tony’s mucous-coated nasal passage, I puked all over myself.
Pirate Radio
“Check this out,” says Tony.
It is late at night. We are in her room. I am at the foot of the bed. Tony is at the head. She leans over, puts down the magazine she is reading, and turns on her clock radio. Rap music begins to blare from the cheaply made speaker. It sounds awful, somewhat like AM with too much static. “Turn it off,” I say. “I’m trying to read.” And I am. Tony has a collection of homosexual magazines she has pilfered from dumpsters. I am deep into a story about two guys who are in college and just happen to live on the same dorm floor.
Tony laughs and smiles. “It’s pirate radio,” she says.
“Well, that’s good, but turn it off.”
“I think it’s the neighbor’s radio,” she continues. “The music changes.”
“That’s good,” I reply numbly.
“Yeah, I think it’s on his computer. Some days it’s country, and other days it’s rap. I even heard moaning once.” Tony chuckles, but I pay her no mind. She grins and kicks me.
“Hey!” I shout. “That hurt!”
Tony crawls down and climbs on top of me. “Aw, baby,” she says, playfully, “do you want me to kiss it and make it better?”
“Get off me, d****t!” I shout.
Tony laughs wildly and rolls away. She ends up on the floor with her hair a mess and her face in a cute but stupid expression. “I need a smoke,” she says. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Random Thoughts
The park is our special place to hang out. I am
sitting in a swing, my feet dangling and digging into the slippery pebbles below. Tony is high above and resting her chin against the handrail of the slide. She is smoking a cigarette and philosophizing on life. She has so many wacked out ideas about it and can come up with the craziest things to think about. “You ever wonder what is happening on the Titanic?” she asks.
I pause for a moment and quickly look up at her. She is sucking hard on her cigarette, waiting for a well formulated answer. I give her a question instead, “Are you being serious?”
“Yes,” she snaps.
“Do you,” I question, “or is that just random?”
“Yes,” she snaps again, “I think about it all the time, and, yes, it is random.”
“Well, then,” I reply slowly, “why?”
“Why not?”
“Because,” I continue, “most people would not even entertain the thought.”
“Then it must be random,” replies Tony. “And why not?”
“I don’t know. Most people would wonder about something else.”
“And what would that be?” asks Tony. She throws down her cigarette and lights another. She takes a long drag and blows out her smoke really hard. “What would most people talk about, you fingering twit?”
“I don’t know,” I reply.
“Well, obviously you do,” she argues. “You have suggested they would, and that implies you know they would. So what would they talk about?”
“Not the Titanic,” I say laughing. I wait for Tony to join with a snicker, but she holds back. This is something she is really serious about. I can tell. I straighten up. “They would probably talk about the weather or work,” I continue, “or maybe even their love life.”
“So the Titanic is completely off the table?” she says, puffing away.
“Well, not completely, but maybe so,” I reply.
“I see,” says Tony. “Well, you need to broaden your conversation capabilities. There are probably lots of people all over the world tonight wondering what is happening on the Titanic.”
“And what would they be thinking is happening on the Titanic?” I ask.
Tony pauses before going any further. She stares down at me and lingers on her next word. I look up at her with curious eyes. She takes a drag while still staring at me. She blows out some smoke and then clears her throat. “They would be thinking about the fish,” she says. “They would be thinking about all the fish inside it and other things that float around inside it.”
“Yeah,” I reply, “I guess they would, but wouldn’t that get old after a while? I mean how long could you drag out that kind of conversation?”
“It could lead to other things,” says Tony, perking up. “It could lead to talking about how the rusting, old ship is being used by all the life forms for shelter, or what it might be doing to the ocean by rusting away.”
“And that would be a good conversation?” I ask.
“It would be a start,” she replies. Tony pushes back and gets to her feet. She climbs down and walks up to me. She leans in close, real close. She gets right up in my face. I can smell her cigarette breath. My eyes are going in and out of focus as I try to focus on hers. I can feel her legs press against my knees. They are warm. Mine are cool. She grabs the chains of the swing. I flinch. She pulls me in. I gasp. She grins a bit. “I’m tired,” she says. “Let’s go.”
Shadow
I think that Tony is running my life. She is always questioning everything I do and always acting as if she knows everything. I realized this one day while I was in the bathroom. I told Tony about it. She leaned up and hugged me. Then she stood, patted me playfully on the top of my head, and reached over my shoulder to flush the toilet.
The End
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