Projector

A high school poet leads a fragmented life and struggles with relationships.

The Prologue

This has been a mistake. We are throwing you away.

 

You dear,

 There is a curse to attractiveness. The “self” suffers. Are you writing?

Lord, are you writing?

Are you a writer? Are you commonplace? Are you the end to--

One loop. One dash. One finish line. One marker.

Signed,

“THE EXPOSED.”

 

Take it easy though, it’s nothing if it isn’t a bore. I was making my Powerpoint when it ran all down the scream (sic.) The operating word is Powerpoint. In the 90’s things were different. Projectors had slides. Projector. Projector.

 

Projector.

By McSmithy

Copyright 2013

 

Ch. 1

Projector

 

“I said that already!”

She had actually. I didn’t know what to do. Thumb wars.

She was teacher, and I was hot for teacher. So I was teasing her.

“How old are you, exactly?”

She said, “If the class hadn’t left already you’d be getting laughed at!”

“But you never told me.” How coy was I!

“You need to leave the classroom now, Jacob.”

 

I did leave. It wasn’t hard to, like last time when I had the boner and had to side-step to the door. Why was she such a hottie? Maybe because I was learning from her or her dress. The project she explained would be easier if we had a PC at home. I didn’t, so I had to use the school library. I went directly there.

They didn’t have coffee like the hospital. I thought of masturbating in the bathroom.

Straight into the floor.

 

Two days pass like bicycles…

The test begins now…

 

1. What is the longitude of Bristol?

2. How many large cities are between Bristol and London?

3. Short answer. Why would it be difficult to ride a bicycle from London to Bristol?

I don’t even have a map. I want that Bristol sound. I want to sound Euro, I want to fit in, I want to make fun. I’m afraid of the population of Russia. I’m afraid of the local Neo-Nazis. I’m afraid of the police, who control the dullards they police, and police, and police.

              4. Isn’t Venice nice?

(Circle yes or no.)

My “A” was assured. The test was over. I went back to the library to work on my presentation. I had just 30 minutes before lunch was over.

              “Who wants to show their Powerpoint first?”

“Me.”

I opened my email on her computer which caused some fuss and then opened the slideshow.

“This slide…”

The presentation was over in one tenth the time I spent on the presentation itself. What a disappointment. But she loved it.

“Thank you, Jacob.”

She had refreshed my boner like the lovely wench she was.

Damn.

 

Ch. 2

Believable

One soda machine worked. The other gave you doubles every other other time. The line was huge for that one. Everyone wanted their double soda. It had been like that all week, which was about how long anything would quit working before being taken away or fixed at my high school. I was in line for the working soda machine because I didn’t want doubles. I was the one who rigged the other machine, and I was too cool to actually wait twice as long for a chance at doubles. It was like the time I freaked the kid out by pulling 6 heads out of heads or tails in a row. Of course I was a lucky bugger. But it required a certain amount of skill to really impress people with magic these days.

Sorry. I’m so sorry. I know you appreciate an apology. I feel like trash, Lisa. 

Why does her man look like that guy?

Did she take look around and find out she was wrong? I remember her lying on her back taking photos of herself with the digital SLR camera. I remember the time fondly. Maybe she thinks I topped her with my magic. Maybe she thinks everything was wrong. Maybe she needs me. Maybe I need her. Maybe, just maybe,* --but no, we were high school friends. There’s no way we could get together again.

              *maybe I miss her                       

It was terrible folly to be in the bathroom with the spirits. The magic was understandable, but the fact was that I was seen, and they knew magic too, and what was magic anyway? The exercise that it was, I barely made it out alive.

 

Whole

By Jacob Hosty

              My girl. Do you take me whole?

              I know what will happen if you say no.

So do you take me whole?

Find a memory. The pain of stuffing your nose.

The stuffy winter of your friend.

Carlos. The apartment he died in.

I remember. I am willing to do anything.

 

Predictive text is such bullshit. I did not intend to say Korean or anything else. I’m an empowered speaker. I meant Jordan.

Jordan, will you return?

That’s what the message said. I sent it at breakfast, the free one I fashioned for myself because my mom is a teacher and our income is low. AP classes? That means no texting. The classes themselves were too difficult for some. Chemistry and Calculus were too difficult for me. But AP Literature? All mine. All mine. Projector.

Projector.

Jordan’s is a chemical story. We met in the rolling valleys of DMT intoxication. Between one unending hill and another psychedelic lawn, and the falling sky, we finally made that connection. In reality, we met at a party. But there was nothing like that connection that I had felt with Jordan since Lisa McGuell drank with me in my mom’s basement.

Jordan was a writer. I couldn’t do it. I had too much faith in the universe, I was too convinced  that everything had an end. Jordan couldn’t see the end. He toiled for ever and ever. In the middle of our DMT trip, he had told me that he saw his a memory of his god. A carnal scene, he said: a party in hell. His god, Daria, the spunk which created him, was exploding. Then, when his god was dead, Jordan knew the pain of abandonment.

He said that he also knew the memory came from my brain. I told him it could not have been me, even though I had lost touch with reality myself. When he returned to the electronic world of DMT hallucinations, he asked me to conjure his god. I tried to picture myself.  

 

Ch 3.

Markup

 

“Is the font a gimmick?”

“Why would you be swindled?”

“I am easily swindled by distractions.”

“Then the markup is for you. Take some time to get to know your mind. It should not be swindled by gimmicks.”

“So it is a gimmick, then.”

I wanted to get busted. But the drugs weren’t mine. I’d probably just get narc’d if they found out about us.

 

*            *            *

 

From the Top to the Bottom

By Jacob Hosty

Power in principle does not sacrifice any of itself because those under its rule rise up.

The weird point I was trying to make to the kid was that if you looped your dick into

arcs, then the only way to end the pain was to get a boner and come so hard

that like a missile your dick launched from itself to the walls and pinned

itself there like a dart, and then of course to escape you would need

to hook yourself to where your dick stuck against the walls and

use your arms to pull your a*s free from the terrible

machine which wrenched your inputs and outputs

forever. You cursed veteran of the war on

Earth for the right to evolve, and mate

with others. I know this as a

magician. I know this as a

magical being. I am

the truth.

This is magic. I had flipped the coin, and out of two options, I chose to die.

 

Ch 4.

Morning.

 

 In twenty minutes, I could be ready for school. I wondered if I would forget the mornings. Last week’s mornings were a fog. Would I remember a single morning from my junior year ten years from now? Maybe in the bathroom, with him. Tim. His bedroom was right next to the bathroom, and I brushed my teeth always and quickly put my clothes on after the shower. He made sure of that, then drove me to school.           

His penis pump I never saw. Or I don’t remember seeing it. He talked about it often.

He had survived HIV/AIDS for over ten years, and told me: if you don’t do something right, don’t do it at all. He served in the Air Force. He moved to New York where he was from eventually. I knew things about him that he would cry and tell me after a few martinis, who’s olive sea-ness I had never tasted until I met Tim, the magician.

Was being a magician right for me? Could I learn the ways of illusion and tricks, and power and grace? Would I memorize spells? I wanted to. I must have been desperate. I knew he was desperate to f**k me.

One morning at the cabin we tried poppers, which make you high, which gay people use to make their orgasms more powerful. Like a wizard tonic, he sniffed it on the porch and then I tried. Heady, swirling dimensions opened up before me. And we would smoke weed�"but this was all later.

I’m foreshadowing.

             

Untitled

By Jacob Hosty

each second drip drip

the neurotransmitters click

the fuel injector mists

flammability into an engine block

pop fizz bubbling meninges

static zap

brain stem's connected to the

thought bone

fifteen dimensions right under your nose

(through the roof) you can't see the hole in the floor

thought bone's connected to the

step through the threshold

brain fits beside the head

guts wrap around your belly button

and you will spin on stage wearing wooden-toed shoes

an underground tunnel connecting

all the houses from here to Devil's Peak

you will fall upwards and become an exploded diagram

heart among tissue and bone

click click you can hear the applause slip

brain reactor

meninges bubbling with quantum foam

fizz pop grey matter is a fountain drink

 

It’s the beat to my step. Rise and shine. In public. Starting to breathe slower. Wanting to start. Five�"

Pounds,

Six�"

ounces.

I was a healthy baby boy.

I was a blessing.

I was an angel, or a god.

My birthday was three sixteen ninety. My name was Jacob Hosty.

 

107.7 FM

BOB

96.9 FM

NPR

104.9 FM

The X

-local stations I listened to at the time

Why can’t I go back?

I find myself trying to understand what other people think of themselves, instead of what I should think about them. I want to appreciate that person’s view and be liked by them, but peoples’ image of themselves conflict with others’.

              I tend to worship people. It’s almost getting to be too much. I can’t keep trusting others and seeking approval. Especially from the one I love. I need to be a dick and show her that I am the man for her. But she fixes the board with little hints that she wants to be alone.           

Why Australia? Is she an island?

Why division? Why not fractions? Is she into me less now? Am I on an uneven keel to her? The sharp point of fractions would have made me horny. Or by using Spain as an example. Something off the map. And to look directly at me, like I stare, so full of want. I wanted also an upskirt. I wanted a DP scene. I wanted a cumshot.

              I had to stagger out of the room, heartbeat pulsing. I brushed across Lisa McGuell, and felt that youthful breath, and wondered if I was looking for too mature of a lover. I could actually share my mind with someone my age, and it would be okay. Something about it not being okay turned me on.

I wasn’t taken to not being enjoyed. So when she tried to avoid me, years later, I wondered why. Was Lisa McGuell throwing me away, and everyone else? Did she have a routine of learning what to think about other people? Did she care what they thought? Was she smarter than me? Could she memorize the poems I wrote her after school? Did she feel smart? Did she have a ruined brain from the pain pills and medication? Was she an addict? Did she need me? Where did she live? Why did she live there? When could we be friends again? Why am I so alone?

I don’t know where to look for her. Yukon. With that guy that looks like the other guy. And everyone who looks like her.

Wine. I remember. The drug-talk, the wine. Her leaving. It was soulless. It was scary and dark and she avoided me because of my mother, I knew it now. I wondered when she decided I was a bad guy. Or why she called me a monster. Or when we could be in love again.

I’m talking about Lisa McGuell. The teacher just wants to suck the cum from the hard helmet at the end of my dick.

Why was I in the middle, or behind, when it felt like I was in front? Was I being punished for cheating? Illusion is an art and I deserve credit for every magnificent lie I weave.

Cum.

 

Ch 5.

 

Can I say shut the f**k up and start walking?

.             I am a master of worlds and the world. My lists and my pictures have been uploaded to the internet. I meditate on them. The next morning, I see the faces that are online, and I say the names who I have listed. I am a projector. Once it is in my head I make it whole.  

Do I have to spell it out inside this box and without my shell?

Morning; waking up I wonder if I can still remember exactly what I need to do before school.

Night; why can’t I see? Would I be dead in another era? Was it from reading or just genetics? I wonder this in my bed, high, after jacking off. Monday.

Morning; my day is being lost, and it’s impossible for someone like me to find that again.

Night; my day has improved significantly since this morning. I’m lying here and I’ll be asleep in seconds. No weed for me. I’m out like a light. Tuesday.

Morning; opening the door to a woman in my life would be more right than white light.

Night; everything is passing so quickly. Is it already Wednesday? What do I have to say for myself? Guilty as a wren. Wednesday.

Morning; facing determined enemies scare me and my powers are weakened. Maybe.

Night; four days later and I’m sick of myself. A new period of depression has kicked in. This is my week at a glance. It is weekend now. Thursday.

Friday. We park out cars into the spots with our names on them. We leave school to get high. When we’re back we walk the halls like magistrates.

I am a master of worlds and the world.

 

The legends of real men and women who I have met bounds to the edge most regions of believability. They are strong; I am weak. I learn from them, my teachers.

They took me, whole. 

They broke me, completely.

I checked my teacher out from my desk. She does have a wonderful behind. But when do I graduate?

Have I already graduated? The tests are easy. She’s looking at me.

And I can’t take my eyes off her.

Lisa wonders out loud where I’m going. I tell her to the lake of passing grades.

 

Ch 6.

Out-of-breath in time with the cue in the orchestra, the dancer’s panties fall

 

              For conjuring Jordan’s god I get a meta-package of friendship. We are friends; everyone knows we are friends; and we tell the police that. Whether or not we actually harbor feelings of friendship is irrelevant. Jordan is my friend, for all concerned. I use the relationship to help me with progress.

Tim said, “Can you tell me you understand? You wrecked the car, didn’t you?”

I really didn’t know. It was when I said “greet death.”

Or maybe the poetry made it happen, in the car, drinking coffee.

Jesus. What was I doing? What did it mean? I remember the code.

I remember you saying, dream. I was taken by sex.

I was a slave by sex.

Bye. Bye, bye sex.

“Are you hot for teacher?”

I am instead of you.

 

Four years later….

I found out they weren’t so delicious when they had been left in the fridge overnight.

My mom was clean and sober, and my only friend an immature hardware specialist from Portland. I lived in a different town, hadn’t seen anyone for months, and tried to have sex with him. That’s how seriously desperate I was.

This is around the time I was forced down, and everyone let go of me. I felt destroyed. I wondered why it had to happen this way. What had I done wrong between that night of wine with Lisa McGuell and then, the now, my situation at that moment? I find teachers in everyone, and seek that extra credit. I listen to my sex and it tells me to learn. I’ve learned enough. I can’t learn anymore. I can’t stay the child student. I’m not young in Tim’s eyes anymore. 

It was simply embarrassing. I didn’t know the impact of what I was doing, and I never stopped learning. I wish I could take it back. I feel emotional pain made physical. And my interest in magic? Projector.

Projector.