Alrighty, it’s story time. Because last Saturday was that kind of Saturday. The kind involving Asian food and rainbow eye shadow.

-

CREATIVE NONFICTION…I GUESS.

Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Fizzy Panda (after Wallace Stevens’ “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”)

I. My cousin Joe always talks about transcendence. Rise above the bullshit is what I think he means by this. Do better and be better and grow is the underlying message.

II. Joe’s place is messy, beer-bottle-caps-and-pizza-stained-test-forms-on-the-floor kind of messy. We eat dinner here anyway because Joe’s pan-fried eggplant and sesame chicken taste like childhood. It’s the first home-cooked meal I’ve eaten in months. He always leaves the door open.

III. Joe doesn’t call people by their real names. Rather, the formula is as follows: modifier (often pertaining to taste) + animal. He is friends with milky cats and salty badgers.

IV. Chris’s (Joe’s roommate’s) black futon takes up most of the space in the dorm room’s common area. Apparently a lot of women have slept there. That’s the joke, at least. It’s funny because Chris is a metal head. It’s funnier because Chris is an engineering major. Chris tells Joe and I that his favorite colors are black and dark black. This, too, is kind of a joke, for Chris is as Anglo-Saxon as Frosty the Snowman. Pardon my crude similes. It’s Joe’s fault I’m like this.

V. Joe owns a costume horse head. No one really knows why.

VI. He calls me cousin bear. I call him cousin bear, too, though in the general case I’d consider him a fizzy panda.

VII. “Just do your thing, cousin-bear,” Joe tells me. He rubs the top of my head like I’m some sort of dog. It’s an affectionate ritual if anything. I do the same to him; Joe’s hair has that freshly-cut feel to it, reminiscent of suburban lawns and what have you—tame but with life teeming underneath.

VIII. Joe and I are at a coming-out party. I’m wearing a rainbow dress and have rainbow eye shadow on and am dancing with people of all persuasions. It’s a genuinely wild time, and I feel welcome here. I’m persuaded by these jubilant hooligans of various persuasions that I have good taste in friends. Maybe that’s genetic. Joe is completely out of his wits and feels just as welcome as anyone else.

IX. We all ended up crashing at a friend’s place and spent more hours laughing at our respective stupors than sleeping. Joe compulsively takes our bags and throws them in the hallway.

X. I’m just about to walk back to my dorm wearing the same clothes from the night before. The rainbows on my eyes aren’t as faded as expected. My hair’s a mess. Joe and I laugh at how quintessentially college the past twelve hours have been. He says, “Remember, little cousin—it’s not a walk of shame; it’s a strut of pride.” 

XI. Joe lets me borrow his sweater even though I’m from Chicago and he’s from Las Vegas and he definitely needs the sweater more than I do. I look at the stitches of navy blue and am thinking a lot about this whole transcendence thing.

XII. One time I ran into Joe in a room with tiny lamps hanging from the ceiling. He lied down and looked at them as though they were stars.

XIII. I take the long way through campus. I cross the streets when I’m supposed to and don’t stare directly at the sun. I say to myself, absorb all this, it’s Sunday morning, hold it closer. Carpe. I say to myself, the day is young. Diem. I’ll see Joe later and we’ll beat box and tap dance and get to homework eventually and transcend.