Week 4 Sketches

This entry will be updated often over the next few days. I just need to put up sketches here so I don't forget to do it on Wednesday too...

i. Sunday Night Laundry

Bleach bleach-alternative no-bleach smells mingled with rainwater and clean linen and God knows what other additives. I hate doing laundry. The only good thing about getting my clothes wet-and-soapy-and-spin-cycled is folding the freshly dry cottons. Then they’re warm and don’t smell like anything but clean. I’ll admit I’m impatient. I sit on the washer to pass the time a bit more pleasantly. The driers don’t vibrate, so they’re just a source of tedium.

ii.

He plays jazz clarinet on the lawn by Post. Only after dark. I can just make out a silhouette by the old-fashioned lamplight. Johnny wears a baseball cap and sunglasses, even at midnight. Sometimes he has a tuxedo jacket over an old band t-shirt. I figure he's trying to impress someone. A first-year girl whose eye he caught at Jazz Night two weeks ago before she started laughing with her friends. She was somethin' else, wasn't she, Johnny? Frizzy red hair and a tight black dress that looked like you could tear it right off. Bright green eyes that danced an improvized swing. Whatever, man.

iii.

The pug is insane. He runs around like a little naked madman, eager to spread his love to all the nations. Starting with your shoe.
My brother saved up and bought Bruce with his own money. Why he bothered to name him, I don't know, because we just call the thing "Pug" anyway. Pug was a runt. A runt and a fully functional hermaphrodite. He could have impregnated himself. The very thought scares me. Imagine giving birth through your penis. Christ, that'd hurt.
Anyway, Pug likes to make his own fun. He sees a cat, so. He chases it. If it bats at him with declawed paws, all the better. Gives him something to bite at with those useless little teeth. Socks are his favorite prey. I've lost too many socks to that little terror.
When he got spayed (because he did get spayed and neutered), he had stitches he wasn't allowed to lick. So he had a cone. And pugs don't really have snouts, so he didn't have anything sticking out of the cone. He just ran around like a little cone-demon, and the cats laughed.

iv.

Physics is trying to kill me. I go into D108 and it assaults me with a revolver. It's always missed, so far, but one of these days I'll go in after pulling an all-nighter with the coefficients of kinetic friction and it'll have a slower target. It likes to think it's something out of "The Matrix," which kind of boggles my mind because I thought they weren't on good terms. It says "dodge this" every time it shoots. When you shoot from across the room, and you give that kind of warning, it's pretty likely that I'll dodge the bullet. I'll fall to the floor at -9.8 m/s^2and Physics will miss by inches. Take that, Physics, I say.

v. I'd really like comments on this one! I think I'll turn it into something bigger.

I'm weird. I know it. I revel in it.
I once figured out the best way to keep sixth graders from sitting next to me on the bus the high school and middle school shared. I wore a black leather motorcycle jacket with brass-colored fastenings. I didn't comb my hair. I sat with my enormous backpack crushing my legs and the headphone cord sticking out of the top. Headphones on.
Conducting "Bittersweet Symphony" with an intense, wild subtlety with one hand.
It was fun to watch them stare and pass me by for a seat a little further back. This way, I didn't have to listen to them practicing swear words or ragging on the President.
It always turned out that I got a sweet little seventh grade girl in pink next to me. It was lovely, having someone who didn't care what you looked like or what you were doing or what you were reading. (This one time, a boy saw me reading "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." He said, "Are you a witch?" I said, "No...", trailing off like that, leaving room for a question. Then the little snot says, "But you're reading about monsters." And I say, "It's a Harry Potter book." And he says that's for fourth graders and laughs with his little friends about the freaky high school girl.) The little girls in pink are always sweet and well-mannered, as long as they're not wearing make-up. At that stage, they're long gone. Glitter is death.