We’re Incapable of the Kind of Love

-N. "Yanni" Stefani

Johnny get your gun…

I waded through the sea of people, scanning the room for her with heavy eyes fighting off the effects of a long night’s alcohol binge. Guitars roared, punching out a battery of power chords and inharmonious grunts that seemed to stutter. It proved exhausting. I paused for a second and noticed my clothes soaked with the sweat of heaving, grinding bodies, and my own warm beer I had been nursing.

Someone’s yelling fire, in a theater…

My thoughts drifted as my pursuit resumed. I had seen her perfect chest before, although at this point I wasn’t sure if it was a dream or reality. She had posed topless in a magazine once and she was proud of it. She showed me her pictures, even gave me one to keep. She said “for your eyes only”, with that penetrating smile and I was hooked on her. She didn’t need a name, she was my brother’s girlfriend, maybe forbidden. We got close one time, at least I felt so, and we were interrupted by his footsteps down the stairs.

This is the year of the party crasher…

I caught a glimpse of her exposed shoulder blades, the rose tattoo, her unmistakably blue dress trailing behind her body as she glided up the stairs. I pushed my way through the maggots, a gigantic body of one, squirming, twis ting about in violent spasms as screaming vocals and pounding war drums echoed through their collective organs.

Why do I give myself away?…

I reached the stairs and began to ascend. They were steep and crooked. I lost my footing as I rushed to catch her. My spilled beer quickly seeped into the old, dirty wood. At the top I was met by a large room painted in bright colors, orange, red, yellow, blue. Strange drawings and pictures lined its walls and ceiling. Clowns with gaping mouths, horses headless, and solitary people depicted looking…just looking. Some looked toward the floor, some toward the ceiling, some East, some West, in a hundred different directions, no two the same. I moved forward cautiously. Sabrina! I called her name out to her. She didn’t need one, but she had one. I’m here! She called back, but I couldn’t decipher from where. I moved forward again, the floorboards creaking underneath me, worried they might crack.

Come down from there!, or… the Horsemen, come crashing through the Gates…

A half dozen different doors and staircases beckoned me in a dozen different directions. I tried the doors first. Half were empty closets, half led to more staircases. Some went up, some down, some left, some right, some steep, some flat, some narrow, some wide. I called to her again. No answer. I took the safest looking set of stairs up. This set was longer than the others, or so it appeared. Up and up I went. And up. And up. Finally I reached the top of the stairs, struggling to catch my breath. Here I found only more doors, more stairs. Dozens of them, an incomprehensible reality that couldn’t be so, but so it did seem. I closed my eyes, then hung my head and inhaled. Up here, well beyond the noisy, thick air downstairs, the sweet smell of mild tobacco filled my nostrils. A fresh, smoldering cigarette lay between a crack in the floor at my feet. She was close.

mind eraser, no chaser…

I composed myself again. Dozens of doors, dozens of staircases to choose from. One set up was shrouded in darkness, different from the others. I peered up and saw light at the top. The choice being clear, I began my ascent. It seemed 500 feet up as my body’s lactic acid seeped into its dead, aching muscles. Slowly the light drew closer and my pace hastened. Seemingly in response, the staircase narrowed like an unfathomable set of hungry black jaws set to swallow me whole. I was too far up to turn back. Faster I climbed, clawing my way up with wild arms as my toes planted into the old wooden steps, and I propelled forward with a second wind like an Olympic sprinter. The walls closed in further on my body, tighter and tighter, squeezing my tight at the peak. I turned myself sideways to slide through the narrow opening, just barely escaping the wretched staircase with the last of my desperate, failing energy. And finally at the top my fleeting relief was once again dispelled by more of those horrid paintings, but this time to my despair there were no more stairs up. No more possibilities. This room was tiny, with a thick, many years deep layer of dust which coated the creaky floor. “Sabrina!” I called out to her once more knowing the futility of it all. No answer. Yet I called again anyway, and wished my own shallow echo would come alive and say something different back to me. I turned back, my shoulders low and hanging with aching legs, and I squeezed my body back through the narrow opening of the staircase. I descended back into the nightmarish maze, my former desperation replaced by overwhelming nothingness.

I promise we’ll behave, like perfect prisoners…

I looked back toward the sliver of light at the top of the narrow staircase from where I had come, and watched it fade away with each heavy, downward step. In the room of a dozen doors I had passed through on my way up the smoldering cigarette was now a cold lead, a simple pleasure consumed and forgotten and tossed aside, only the faint smell of nicotine left behind in the stale air. My return continued on down the next staircase. The bottom of the stairs emptied into a smaller room, but a different room. Had I reached the bottom too quickly? Had I taken the wrong stairs? So many fucking stairs. I ran back up. Which stairs? They all looked different now. Which one had I taken? Was it a door I had to open? Which door/s had I opened? I opened them all this time as quickly as I could. The doors of course only provided more options. Far too many options. Filled with panic, I blindly chose a staircase and ran down, determined to get anywhere, to be rid of the riddle of the house. Down I went. The hellish paintings with their maniacal faces, looking everywhere, filled with sinister indecisiveness, raced past my eyes as I fled. More staircases and more floors greeted me. The very wood surrounding me seemed to grip my insides and squeeze them tight, as the dust filled my lungs and blurred my desperate vision. Finally, my ears found the growing sound of the writhing bodies below, the maggots still hard at play. I followed the voices, the screams, and the familiar shouts to my freedom. Louder and louder they became as I closed my distance. So close now…My legs pumped faster than ever, matching the pace of my frantic heartbeat. Cold blood began to trickle from my nostril, perhaps my body’s attempt to expel the house from inside of me. Finally I met the lights of the rave downstairs that seemed to control the mass of bodies. They cleared my blurred vision and felt warm inside my head. I coughed puff after puff of a long history of dust from my burning lungs, taking in deep breaths of safety. I regained my composure quickly and straightened my sore back. Through those writhing bodies, I peered, adjusting my dry eyes to the light. I managed to glimpse the tail-end of a bright blue dress trailing behind a beautiful rose tattoo. I pushed through the crowd…

Playing Chicken

I first saw the black hen on my dreaded morning drive to the office three Mondays ago. Another long drive to another day of long hours and misery at the law firm I still wasn’t a partner at after ten years. As I crossed the bridge, from nowhere, an acute, dense fog swallowed my vehicle. The lower register of my high beams caught a sudden flash as something crossed them. I quickly switched to my lows in the fog and nearly spilled a latte down the front of my Austin Reed suit when the black hen darted into the road directly in front of my SUV. Her sharp claws clacked on the stone of the old bridge. When I was sixteen my father told me never to swerve for a small animal. “Just flatten the bastards”, he had said in his war voice, which differed little from his father voice. In that moment on the road, lesson tossed aside, I reacted on instincts and swerved, saving the hen’s life. I should have run her down.

On the Thursday morning of that same week, traffic slowed to 20 mph as I approached the bridge again on my way to the office. A dozen emergency lights flashed ahead, blinding me with blues and reds. There she was again, my little black hen, on the right-hand shoulder strutting along shards of broken glass, her neck bobbing as chickens’ necks do next to an overturned sedan. I stole a glance from the poor woman being loaded into the back of an ambulance on a stretcher. She tilted her neck up just enough to get one more look at the strutting hen and the mangled sedan, then lay back down exhausted. The black hen stopped her strut and stared right at me. Her cold, black eyes pierced mine as I watched her antics through the safety of my vehicle.

She took Friday off. By the time Monday of the following week came I had almost forgotten about the black hen. I had had only the most fleeting thought of her and her destruction as I got into my SUV. As I crossed the bridge on my morning commute the Honda in front of me slammed on its brakes. I was savvy enough to avoid this accident, and even saved my coffee as I swerved out of the way, a maneuver my father would approve of. I looked back in my rearview as I passed by the Honda, but I saw no black hen as I had expected, just an idiot driver looking confused as if I’d done something wrong. I almost felt the day might pass without her.

By the time I was in sight of the office my hopes of peace from the black hen were dashed. In my normally empty parking spot in front of my office was a fire truck with a company of men spraying a large hose directly into my office window. Huge orange flames roared out of my office keeping the firefighters at bay. I sped up and peeled into the parking lot to get a closer view. I didn’t want to admit it, but I knew that black hen was behind this disaster. The one I had almost forgotten about. That fucking chicken had destroyed my office and set fire to it. As I pulled up next to the fire truck I saw the faint outline of a car inside my office through the flames. I snuck my way up around the firefighters closer to the destruction that was my office, desperate to know what had happened. Within twenty feet of the building a window suddenly blew out in the office next to mine and sent me flying backward. I landed hard on my side, my elbow smashing into my ribcage. This got the attention of the firefighters who rushed over and carried me back into the parking lot. They asked if I was okay over and over again, and ignored my questions about my office and the “accident”. Feeling helpless, I sat on the back of my car and lit a cigarette while watching my office burn to the ground, the fire hose doing little to suppress the gigantic flames. That’s when I saw her. From underneath the fire truck the black hen came strutting out, pecking at the ground. She barely cared to look at me this time, just gave me a quick glance and what looked like a little grin, and kept on going. For some reason I couldn’t get up, didn’t care to get up. I just sat there. Maybe she just wanted my attention, wanted me to stay still and listen. I turned back and watched my office burn to the ground until naught but some twisted steel and ashes were left, along with some random papers blowing around in the parking lot. I never tried to rebuild afterwards, and I never saw that black hen ever again.

Bi-Millenial Creation Tale *(need a better title)

To All Of My Seed,

This is Adam, the Patriarch. I am your father, the father of all mankind. My seed has givin life to you through Eve. Her woom carried you like a satchle of destiny. Divine inter-vention brought us together on Thursday, December 12, 2012 when all the world’s population vanished, except for my queen and I. I had prophecied this destiny for many moons in my visions where I saw the Goddess Eve spread eagle on a bed of palms, awaiting to birth the world’s children. We immediately began to repopulate. I took Eve into my arms and I furtilized her again and again. An oracle named Darwin predicated our survival and evilution, and thus yours, ensuring the survival of all humanskind. I trust my strength and wisdom will been passed on to you, the way it had been passed on to your ancestors when last I appeared on earth, and gave rise to all of you.

Fair well my children,

Adam the Father of Father’s

To Whoever might read this,

I’m starting to believe that I’m the last woman on earth. My name is Eva. I was a concierge at the Radisson in Pasadena on a Thursday, December 15, 2312 when it happened. I was working with Adam, the intolerable hotel porter on summer break from studying computer gaming. Myself and Adam were helping Mr. Takashi, a frequent guest, up to his suite on the fourteenth floor. Halfway in between the twelfth and fourteenth floors Mr. Takashi just up and disappeared. I stood there unable to move for a moment, basically paralyzed, afraid if I even flinched that I might disappear too. Finally I worked up the courage to scan my eyes, still afraid to move my head an inch. I felt Adam doing the same. Mr. Takashi’s shirt, tie, belt, watch, underwear, and pants lay on the floor of the elevator, a smoldering pile of ash, his toupee setting gently on top.

When the doors opened again at fourteen, after what seemed like hours, Adam and I kind of just looked at each other, completely bewildered. Nobody said a word. What do you do when someone vanishes in front of your eyes? Well, we looked in the elevator, but there weren’t many hiding spots. I even was about to shout inside, “Mr. Takashi!”, but by the time I got to the “s” in mister Adam was glaring at me and I was already whispering, realizing the foolishness of my call. Outside the elevator, everything seemed normal enough at first glance. We walked by the elevator and took the stairs down to the lobby to further investigate and were surprised to find it completely deserted. The only traces of other people we could find were similar smoldering piles of ash all around.

It’s been three days since then and we have yet to see another person. It’s the same thing no matter where we go and I’ve lost all hope that the story is different anywhere.. I guess there are worse places I could’ve been than Pasadena when all of humanity disappeared; though I’m cursing my parents for naming me Eva, close enough to Eve for Adam to satisfy his agenda. Adam won’t shut up about repopulating the earth. He’s been ranting about our duty and destiny, and some ridiculous vision that he claims to have had. I don’t know much about destiny, but I know mine is not to carry the child of a 17 year old in order to repopulate the world.

Plus, he hasn’t bathed since Thursday and he thinks it’s okay to fart everywhere just because there’s no one else around. I can’t get any privacy anymore. He insists on watching me bathe and calls himself, “The Father of Humanity” and “The Father of Father’s”. I asked him if he’s ever heard the words, “if you were the last man on earth…” But nothing stops him from touching himself in front of me constantly, as if I might become inspired to “spread his seed”, as he likes to say. I just want someone to talk to, but all Adam thinks about is sex. This is who God chose to represent the LAST MAN ON EARTH!? Maybe it’s just karma come back to slap me in the face for all the great guys who listened and respected me that I dumped in favor of the bad boys who took me for granted and tore me down for a few sexcapades. Anyone, really anyone but Adam would suffice.

Whatever this is, whatever it means, I’ve been clinging to the hope that I will wake up one day and it will all be a bad dream. That hope is fading with each sunrise. I’ve only ever been to church a handful of times, and now suddenly I’m supposed to be Eve, the mother of all of humanity? Nobody prepared me for that kind of responsibility. Well how could they? And why couldn’t I have the hot, ripped Adam with the six pack from the story? I don’t think I’m ready to be a mother, especially not THE mother. I just hope the world’s tequila hasn’t disappeared yet.

-Eva

We're Incapable of the Kind of Love

We’re Incapable of the Kind of Love

-N. "Yanni" Stefani

Johnny get your gun…

I waded through the sea of people, scanning the room for her with heavy eyes fighting off the effects of a long night’s worth of alcohol. Guitars roared, punching out a battery of power chords and inharmonious grunts that seemed to stutter. It proved exhausting. I paused for a second and noticed my clothes soaked with the sweat of heaving, grinding bodies, and my own warm beer I had been nursing.

Someone’s yelling fire, in a theater…

My thoughts drifted as my pursuit resumed. I had seen her perfect chest before, although at this point I wasn’t sure if it was a dream or reality. She had posed topless in a magazine once and she was proud of it. She showed me her pictures, even gave me one to keep. She said “for your eyes only”, with that penetrating smile and I was hooked on her. She didn’t need a name, she was my brother’s girlfriend, maybe forbidden. We got close one time, at least I felt so, and we were interrupted by his footsteps down the stairs.

This is the year of the party crasher…

I caught a glimpse of her exposed shoulder blades, the rose tattoo, her unmistakably blue dress trailing behind her body as she glided up the stairs. I pushed my way through the maggots, a gigantic body of one, squirming, twis ting about in violent spasms as screaming vocals and pounding war drums echoed through their collective organs.

Why do I give myself away?…

I reached the stairs and began to ascend. They were steep and crooked. I lost my footing as I rushed to catch her. My spilled beer quickly seeped into the old, dirty wood. At the top I was met by a large room painted in bright colors, orange, red, yellow, blue. Strange drawings and pictures lined its walls and ceiling. Clowns with gaping mouths, horses headless, and solitary people depicted looking…just looking. Some looked toward the floor, some toward the ceiling, some East, some West, in a hundred different directions, no two the same. I moved forward cautiously. Sabrina! I called her name out to her. She didn’t need one, but she had one. I’m here! She called back, but I couldn’t decipher from where. I moved forward again, the floorboards creaking underneath me, worried they might crack.

Come down from there!, or… the Horsemen, come crashing through the Gates…

A half dozen different doors and staircases beckoned me in a dozen different directions. I tried the doors first. Half were empty closets, half led to more staircases. Some went up, some down, some left, some right, some steep, some flat, some narrow, some wide. I called to her again. No answer. I took the safest looking set of stairs up. This set was longer than the others, or so it appeared. Up and up I went. And up. And up. Finally I reached the top of the stairs, struggling to catch my breath. Here I found only more doors, more stairs. Dozens of them, an incomprehensible reality that couldn’t be so, but so it did seem. I closed my eyes, then hung my head and inhaled. Up here, well beyond the noisy, thick air downstairs, the sweet smell of mild tobacco filled my nostrils. A fresh, smoldering cigarette lay between a crack in the floor at my feet. She was close.

mind eraser, no chaser…

I composed myself again. Dozens of doors, dozens of staircases to choose from. One set up was shrouded in darkness, different from the others. I peered up and saw light at the top. The choice being clear, I began my ascent. It seemed 500 feet up as my body’s lactic acid seeped into its dead, aching muscles. Slowly the light drew closer and my pace hastened. Seemingly in response, the staircase narrowed like an unfathomable set of hungry black jaws set to swallow me whole. I was too far up to turn back. Faster I climbed, clawing my way up with wild arms as my toes planted into the old wooden steps, and I propelled forward with a second wind like an Olympic sprinter. The walls closed in further on my body, tighter and tighter, squeezing my tight at the peak. I turned myself sideways to slide through the narrow opening, just barely escaping the wretched staircase with the last of my desperate, failing energy. And finally at the top my fleeting relief was once again dispelled by more of those horrid paintings, but this time to my despair there were no more stairs up. No more possibilities. This room was tiny, with a thick, many years deep layer of dust which coated the creaky floor. “Sabrina!” I called out to her once more knowing the futility of it all. No answer. Yet I called again anyway, and wished my own shallow echo would come alive and say something different back to me. I turned back, my shoulders low and hanging with aching legs, and I squeezed my body back through the narrow opening of the staircase. I descended back into the nightmarish maze, my former desperation replaced by overwhelming nothingness.

I promise we’ll behave, like perfect prisoners…

I looked back toward the sliver of light at the top of the narrow staircase from where I had come, and watched it fade away with each heavy, downward step. In the room of a dozen doors I had passed through on my way up the smoldering cigarette was now a cold lead, a simple pleasure consumed and forgotten and tossed aside, only the faint smell of nicotine left behind in the stale air. My return continued on down the next staircase. The bottom of the stairs emptied into a smaller room, but a different room. Had I reached the bottom too quickly? Had I taken the wrong stairs? So many fucking stairs. I ran back up. Which stairs? They all looked different now. Which one had I taken? Was it a door I had to open? Which door/s had I opened? I opened them all this time as quickly as I could. The doors of course only provided more options. Far too many options. Filled with panic, I blindly chose a staircase and ran down, determined to get anywhere, to be rid of the riddle of the house. Down I went. The hellish paintings with their maniacal faces, looking everywhere, filled with sinister indecisiveness, raced past my eyes as I fled. More staircases and more floors greeted me. The very wood surrounding me seemed to grip my insides and squeeze them tight, as the dust filled my lungs and blurred my desperate vision. Finally, my ears found the growing sound of the writhing bodies below, the maggots still hard at play. I followed the voices, the screams, and the familiar shouts to my freedom. Louder and louder they became as I closed my distance. So close now…My legs pumped faster than ever, matching the pace of my frantic heartbeat. Cold blood began to trickle from my nostril, perhaps my body’s attempt to expel the house from inside of me. Finally I met the lights of the rave downstairs that seemed to control the mass of bodies. They cleared my blurred vision and felt warm inside my head. I coughed puff after puff of a long history of dust from my burning lungs, taking in deep breaths of safety. I regained my composure quickly and straightened my sore back. Through those writhing bodies, I peered, adjusting my dry eyes to the light. I managed to glimpse the tail-end of a bright blue dress trailing behind a beautiful rose tattoo. I pushed through the crowd…

I would like to skydive so I can poop on a bird's head. How's that for irony birds?

Finally, Salvation!

Off of work today, I set out in search of adventure in the searing humidity of Western New York. I carefully positioned a Skoal mint pouch in my front left lower gum area as I usually do and I went to pick up my check, but was disappointed with its absence. From there I sadly turned around and began driving back home. But I was jamming out to the sweet melodies of Jimmy Page, and decided to turn around and drive back into the city for no reason in particular.

The Zeppelin got me thinking of California. Then, I passed That Taco Place, this little hole in the wall taco joint, inspired by a California vibe, oddly supplanted 3000 miles away. It's sad that there aren't more places like it. More and more of them seem to keep disappearing when they're the only authentic businesses we have left. You know they did it for the love of their food, the love of serving people, being close with their loyal customers, knowing their names and faces. Their customers aren't just faceless wallets walking in and out, preferably as quickly as possible, so as to get the next ones in. I am a proud local business supporter, if for no other reason than the sense of pride, creativity, and identity they bring to a city.

For some reason at this point I decided I needed some new T-shirts. I went to my favorite store, the Salvation Army. It amazes me what you can get for five dollars. I think this world would be a much better place if we could apply the concept of donating old, unused clothing to the Salv-A to every other facet of our wasteful lives. The amount of waste in this world, compared to the amount of people with nothing is mind boggling, to say the least. Well, I ended up picking up some 22 year old hipster with aviators on T-shirts and my morning was satisfactory. Fuck Abercrombie with their $30 tees that cost 50 cents to make by some poor third worldian. It's sick that they can get away with the markups on some of these clothes.

I am moving to Northern California to live a life of tranquility in some beautiful, pine inhabited ski resort...and maybe take some acid.

Back to basics,
N. Stefani

First Post

I was inspired to write by Hunter S. Thompson, so I must give credit. I just finished watching "Gonzo", a documentary about H.S.T.'s life and work. This man is incredibly interesting and inspired those around him to contribute to a truly fascinating and well-produced documentary. After his unfortunate death by suicide in 2005, he had his ashes shot into the scenic Colorado sky amongst a grand display of fireworks. Unarguably, a great way to go out. Here are some others,

Sharkbait: Fleshy remains fastened to lines and trolled behind a boat off the coast of South Africa where those sharks on Planet Earth soar out the water for their prey?

GOP aintball: Ashes mixed into paint, then formed into paintballs which will be used in a paintball war between Republicans and Democrats to decide the 2060 presidential election. No wiping Florida! (Independents referee)

Money Shot: Ashes snorted up Lindsay Lohan's right nostril.

Pass the salt please: Remains delicately prepared, cooked, and served a la foie gras by Gordon Ramsay to Andrew Zimmern on Bizarrerer Foods. "It's an interesting texture, like warm goat bladder, though a bit gamier...This guy must've worked out!"

I had a lot more to say, but it's time for a beer. And not Stella Artois!

It's Alright,
N. Stefani