Mark Baumer

I went somewhere once. I arrived early. I was hungry. I bought two burritos for $8. I sat at a little table. I thought of my mother. When she was my age she worked in a soap shop and she told customers things like, “This soap cleans really good. It can clean the bottom of a lawnmower and make your skin feel soft afterwards. I think this is the best soap I’ve ever used.” My mother spoke in a monotone. The manager did not like my mother’s monotone. My mother tried to be more excited. She used exclamation points whenever she could. Then one day the owner of the soap shop turned into a crow and was not legally obligated to pay my mother anymore.

None of the other people in the burrito shop were thinking about soap shops. Most of them were looking at me because I had begun humming loudly as I ate the first burrito. Most of them had crow smiles and it reminded me of the time when my mother didn’t have a job.

A few hours later I was in an empty room. I saw a podium. There was no one around the podium. I thought of my grandmother. She used to date a podium. She said, “He was a strange man.”  She met the podium when she used to work in a mental institute. At the time the podium was a journalist for The New Yorker. He had been published two stories in The New Yorker. One of the stories was about an ice cream truck. The other one was a letter he sent to the first lady. At first my grandmother really liked the podium, but then the podium got a job selling other podiums and this made my grandmother sick.

I continued to wait in the empty room. Mark called at some point. He said, “I spent the day trying to sell cars.” I asked how many cars he sold. He said, “I did not sell any cars.” I felt sorry for him. Mark said he was going to go to the local swimming pool and sink for a little bit. I told him to be safe and to not sink longer than he was supposed to. Mark said he would sink at a moderate rate.

I found a door. I asked the door if it was happy. It said, “I seem lonely sometimes.” I opened the door and found a music closet. There were some old trumpets and band uniforms in the closet.

I played the trumpet when I was eleven. My teacher was a man named Milt. He had a mustache. I was not good at the trumpet. I quit. Milt was a little upset when I quit. He patted me on the back and said, “It was nice knowing you. It’s too bad you just didn’t have the lips to be a great trumpeter.” Some of the clarinets called me a quitter. A tuba asked what I was going to do instead of playing the trumpet. I told the tuba that I might play basketball. The tuba said, “I think I want to be a famous rapper.” After I quit trumpet lessons I got in a car, moved to Florida, and retired. Sometimes I play golf with a pigeon.

Inside the closet I put on one of the old band uniforms. I picked up a French horn and blew on it. The sound was not interesting. I wished I had a guitar even though I do not know how to play the guitar. The band uniform I was wearing started to smell. I took it off. I tried to leave the band closet. The door was locked. There were no windows or anything in the music closet. There was no way to escape through the ceiling. I was sad. It looked like I would die in the closet. I began yelling. A security officer heard me and called someone on his walkie talkie. I sat in the closet waiting for someone to figure out a way to open the closet. I sat on the floor and wrote a four page email.

A Four page email: I was floating in a pool and the landlord’s niece was doing back flips and I decided I would do a back flip so I stood at the edge of the pool and jumped and landed on my head. It cracked right open and I fell in the pool and the landlord’s neice was laughing and I was bleeding, but I tried to play it off like I had done it on purpose. I started laughing too. Then I felt woozy and began floating to the bottom of the pool and wasn’t exactly sure how I ended up there and a memory of a little girl doing back flips turned into a kitten cleaning themselves and feeling good about what they had done. I remembered our family had a cat when I was seven and it ran out to the highway with our other cat and by the end of the day our other cat was dead on the highway and I didn’t know until my uncle called and said he had driven by and seen a dead cat at the end of our driveway and I cried and said, “No!” My father carried the dead other cat home with a shovel. Then we got another cat or something and made this other cat made an email account. It was 1997 so the email account was hotmail and some teacher said something weird at school and everyone laughed so I emailed my cat to tell him about it and then when I got home I held my cat up to the keyboard so it could respond to the email I sent him, but he acted like my grandmother and said, “The internet? What is the internet?” Then I dropped the cat because I was feeling mean and somehow the cat didn’t land on his feet and I began crying and the cat had a stroke and was dragging himself across the living room. His back legs didn’t work anymore and I asked the cat why it couldn’t use its legs, but he didn’t answer and I didn’t know what to do. My parents didn’t have cell phones. So I turned on the television and Back to the Future 3 was on. I watched that while I cried and the cat lay half dead on the living room floor. When my mom got home I said, “I think I killed the cat,” and she looked at the cat and said, “No, he’s had a stroke.” I didn’t ask what would happen. My mother got a shoebox and put the cat inside and went out to her car and started the car up and I saw her fiddle with the tailpipe. Then she came in and said, “Tell your father he has to bury another one when he gets home.” And at this point I realized I was still at the bottom of the pool and I was thinking of all these things, but none of them made sense and I could swear there were tears coming out of my eyes even though my whole face was already covered with water. I didn’t want to grab the stick they were using to fish me out. I wanted to stay at the bottom of the pool and continue feeling sorry for myself, but the stick kept poking me in the head and it hurt and I was out of breath so I gave up and grabbed a hold and then everything got blurry. Someone was at the edge of the pool yelling at it. I told the person at the edge of the pool I didn’t agree with them. Someone else tried to put a Band-Aid on my mouth. The pool manager said my hair was clotting the drain. I heard footsteps. I pretended I was a bird and could not walk, but who could only float. There was a heart shaped something at the edge of the pool. I picked it up and put it in a garbage disposal. Someone asked, “Where are my sunglasses?” I turned off the garbage disposal. I felt very excited. This was the wrong reaction. I thought of a man named “Andre Agassi.” I gave up on most of the things I was tired of thinking about.

I heard a voice coming through one of the walls. A kid in the band unlocked the door. He apologized. I apologized. The security officer didn’t understand why I had gone in the music closet. He thought I was an idiot. I tried to feel calm. I told the security guard that breakfast is my favorite meal. I could hear his eyes welling up. I told him not to cry. He said he wasn’t and then said, “I don’t know what I would do if there wasn’t anyone else left in the world. I guess I would eat breakfast each morning.” I told him these things were important.

A few seconds later earth walked up to a podium in an empty room and began to yell. 

There was a shopping cart on our street. Mark said, “It is discomforting to have the shopping cart be where it is not supposed to be.” I told Mark he was being a little bit pompous. He apologized and said, “I don’t feel like my head anymore.” Mark began talking about odd shaped things that had no contextual significance.

A few weeks ago I wrote a story about a shopping cart. When I reread the last sentence of the story I became very upset because it did not seem like a sentence I had written. It made me question my own thoughts. I had a very hard time dealing with the existence of my own head.

Mark took a deep breath. I watched him breathe and hoped my head would feel better. My head did not feel any better. The throat I was wearing felt strange. I began to worry about why everything felt like it was trying to crawl into my throat.

Yesterday, there was a lady outside the window and it sounded like she was going to rain. It made me want to be a very famous rapper. I thought of the lady throwing money in the air. I think the lady was wearing plants and she wanted to water her clothes. When I asked her what she was doing she ran off with my hose. I followed the hose and found the end of it next to a bus stop. I had never ridden the bus.

Three loud girls live upstairs. Every day they are ugly and drunk. Once they got so ugly  and scared they called the cops. When the cops arrived the girls said, “Whoops, we’re drunk.” Some bums moved into the third floor of the apartment. I got excited. I asked the loud girls if they wanted to have a party and invite the bums. The loud girls were worried that the bums would start killing each other and do weird experiments with their eyes. Mark once saw a bum take out his eyeball and exchange it with another bum’s eyeball. I wonder if all bums have interchangeable pieces. The bums on the third floor mostly kept to themselves, but the loud girls became angry and got really drunk again. The next day  I was playing in the back parking lot and I found an old syringe near the back entrance to the loud girls apartment. I did not knock on their door and ask if they were missing a syringe. I ignored the needle and continued playing. At some point I lost control of myself and knocked over a charcoal grill. There were a lot of grills in the back parking lot. When tenants move out of the apartment they usually leave their grills. I felt sorry for all these grills. They were orphan children. They deserved a better life. Someone should give them a parade. I called the city and asked if anyone wanted to make a parade for all the abandoned grills. The city said no. A few days later the loud girls were drunk and ugly and were very worried that the bums would fall through their ceiling and try to interchange eyeballs.

Once Mark was eating rice in the kitchen. Someone knocked on the door. Mark did not answer the door because he was eating rice. When he finished eating the rice he thought, “I want to be a kitten.” Mark went in the bathroom and tried to cut off his ears using the toilet seat. He did not turn into a kitten. He began to call his head, “the puppy.” A few years later Mark got a new dog but told everyone it was a kitten. When people laughed at his new dog Mark said, “The human race is incapable of understanding anything beyond the initial thought that we have heads and these heads think.”

On the last Sunday before rent was due again Mark woke up and found a four page email from one of the loud, ugly, drunk girls. It read: There’s an ice cube in my mouth.. It is talking to my tongue. I want to say a line that will make me let you crawl into a loud space. I am not wearing a shirt. All your friends are worried because you’ve been so quiet and sober your whole life. A few minutes passed. I have been sitting in a chair thinking about my empty shelves. I can hear you being really quiet in a small room doing nothing. I think you need to be more of a bad person. There once was a little drummer who lived near me and he was loud and bad. I miss him. He got really sad and wore a big drum on his head and walked around the park wondering how he got in the park and then he said he was going to start over and moved to Antarctica. I sometimes wish I wasn’t such a loud person. I sort of want to be a scientist. There was an ice cube in my mouth earlier, but I got bored and melted. I’m tired of being useless. Sometimes I wonder if you are still capable of thinking because whenever I see you and ask what you’re thinking you say, “Nothing.” Anyway, there once was a little scientist who lived in a tiny room next to my bedroom and he got really sad and wore a large beaker on his head and walked around the park wondering how he got in the park and then he said he wished he was Jesus. And a few days later he was still wearing the beaker so I tapped it and it cracked and the little scientist bled everywhere and I couldn’t help him because I had already run away.”

This morning when I woke up I found a plate full of half eaten grains of rice. At the bottom of the bed I found a can of peas. I cooked the rice and peas in the kitchen. It was not a great meal. I put spices on the rice. I watched a reality show on MTV. The people on the show were going out to eat and I got jealous of them. I wanted to go out to eat and order a plate of half eaten grains of rice and some peas.

Mark once spent the afternoon with a friend and they looked at a can of peas for a long time. They videotaped the can of peas for an hour and then called the video a cooking show. The video was edited a little. Mark tried doing a voice over. Later, Mark was alone, standing in line at the grocery store. The line was not moving. He was wearing my watch. He looked at my watch. He tried to read a magazine. The line did not seem like it was moving. Mark felt a little seasick. He thought, “The line is moving slightly. Unperceived motion must be one of my weaknesses.” Mark wished he had bought Dramamine. He could not read the magazines anymore. They would make him sicker. Prayer was not an option. It would not save Mark. His thoughts said things, but he could not understand them. They were washed out by the sound of young journalists in front of him in line, waxing infinitely about their bright futures. The young journalists enjoyed where they were. They were in front of Mark. He did not enjoy where he was. He pretended he was a carpet. This made him feel better. Carpet doesn’t have ears. The noise of the young journalists was turned off. They did not notice that Mark had sunk into the ground. He was content. He could not read the magazines, but he didn’t feel sick anymore. The young journalists’ bright futures vanished from Mark’s thoughts. Their happiness made everyone miserable. Everyone was jealous of Mark because he was carpet. Everyone in the world wishes they were inanimate objects. Mark forgot why he was standing in line. Even though he was a carpet Mark did not understand basic idea of being a carpet. 

A phone rang. Mark put the phone to my ear and said, “Hello.” The phone said, “Hmmm.” A thought existed. A phone hung up. A few weeks happened in Mark’s life.

Another phone rang last Wednesday. Mark was outside. I told the phone, “Mark is mowing your lawn.” The phone did not have a lawn. Mark purchased a pile of dirt for three billion dollars and tried to rake it into the shape of a lawn. Three years passed.

The next time someone called I said, “Mark’s lawn died three years ago.” The person on the phone didn’t say anything. I asked who was calling. For three brief seconds the entire world was quiet, no one said anything. I asked the person in the phone if their name was Seth. The person in the phone said, “Nah.”

The last phone conversation I ever had was with a guy at a pharmacy. He liked to chew on bottles of high fructose corn syrup.

This other time I heard someone at a pizza shop say things into their phone. I tried to listen, but everyone has a blurry mouth these days. I am worried that everything I say is blurry. I can’t help but think that long periods of my life have been blurry. Like once I was hanging out with a bunch of lawn care people who clipped grass nubs and drove pickups. The lawn care people sometimes raked things.

Two weeks ago Mark said, “I once had a sister and I used to like to rake my sister’s lawn. Then her husband pointed a rifle at me and told me not to bother his wife and pretend she was my sister.”

Last night I found a phone in my bed and it whispered, “I haven’t seen you in so long. It’s nice to see you. When you don’t see people for a long time you miss their intimate parts. I’ve missed you because your intimate parts have faded in my memory. I haven’t had a chance to say hello to your parts in a long time. I forgot what they looked like. Remember when I sent you a four page email? It’s weird. A lot of time has passed. I understand. We aren’t the same people anymore.”

A few months ago I remember thinking, “I should cover my ears.” Winter is coming. Faces are going to fall off soon. Some hats are very good at covering your ears. I think of these hats and then my mind says, “These hats seem very dependable.” My head begins to wander though and I begin to think of all the people who wear hats that don’t protect their ears. My head is confused by these people. I understand why so many people are going bald. Stylish hats make your hair feel insulted and it stops growing. Mark once picked up a payphone and heard a small voice in it say, “I am scared when I see little men with vending carts selling stylish hats.” Mark put his mouth on the payphone and said, “When I see little dogs wearing stylish hats it makes me want to throw these dogs into a pond.”

Mark made lamb for dinner a few nights ago. An hour before we ate I asked him how the lamb was coming along. He said, “Not good. I’ve never made lamb before.”

A four page email I found: I am not a virus. I was an asteroid in a tiny spaceship, but then a large palm held me and I thought, “I do not like the aura of being anything.” It didn’t feel good to be a mediocre asteroid. My mother once left ground beef out for three days and then put it back in the freezer. Today, I think I will buy a plunger and return it after I use it. Our demise will come soon. Yesterday I told someone it was my birthday. When stumps grow into calendar months one of them always says, “Remember when I was a stump? I wish I was still a stump. I should have never turned into a month.” The last stump I met said, “I want to be in your rainy days and talk to you in unmade beds. These will be our fuck days.” At my grandmother’s last birthday we had angel food cake.

Then I yawned. This yawn got all over the bed and it woke up some of the people sleeping in the bed. The people who were no longer sleeping asked what I was doing. I shrugged. The people who were no longer sleeping looked at Mark. He shrugged and then opened his mouth to yawn, but instead of yawning he said, “I fell in some paint.” The people who were no longer sleeping did not understand and decided to go back to sleep instead of trying to understand. A few days passed and then I saw a lot of married people buy some Oriental rugs. Mark asked if the rugs floated. The married people got scared and did not respond. One of the salesmen in the rug store stood up from his desk and walked across the floor to ask if Mark needed help. He said he didn’t. The salesman did not leave so Mark asked if any of the Oriental rugs floated. The salesman said that none of the rugs floated.  Mark didn’t believe the salesman. I walked over to the salesman’s desk. He had been playing solitaire. I looked out the store window. There was a post standing tall outside on the sidewalk. It was waiting to be driven into the ground. Lots of me were outside the Oriental rug store doing construction. A man with skinny legs and jeans that were too big was eying the post. It was either his job to put it in the ground or he wanted to steal it. I didn’t think he was capable of either. I stopped watching at some point. Mark was looking at some of the rugs. They stayed flat on the ground and didn’t look very appetizing. I asked him if he wanted to go get some Oriental food. He said, “I don’t think we are politically correct.” I walked back to the salesman’s desk and tried to move a seven of hearts onto a five of clubs. The computer would not let me. I thought, “Invalid code,” and then thought, “Idiot boredom,” and then thought, “Soup bouquet,” and then thought, “Argyle soup,” and then thought, “Oriental birds,” and then thought, “Microwave pizza,” and then thought, “People from my high school are getting married. I am not married. I hang out with myself in Oriental rug stores. People think I am gay with myself. People think, ‘Isn’t it strange how he isn’t married and doesn’t know how to play solitaire,’” and then I thought, “Fuck you people,” and tried to move a jack of diamonds on a five of clubs which made me think, “Invalid code.”

Rats were crawling out of the walls. This scared Mark. The rats looked like skunks. Sometimes when it is two a.m. and I am walking down a dark street the thing I am most afraid of seeing is a rat with a skunk strapped to its back. I’ve walked down various streets before. Sometimes I see rats. Other times I see skunks. These both scare me. The thing that would scare me the most though would be seeing a rat combined with a skunk. Then the rat could jump on your neck and gnaw at your face and the skunk could spray itself into the wounds. I don’t know if rats strapping skunks to their backs is ironic, but I think I should try to be less ironic. A man who did not like irony died today. He used to say, “Irony ruined my breakfast.” I did not know this man very well. One time he said a lot of things and bound the things he said in a standard bounded object and I skimmed through the first one hundred leaflets of that standard bounded object. Another time he was curious about the idea of infinity and looked up the theory in a math book and then said, “Hmmm, I think I will say something about this.” I heard part of what he said. I was in San Fransico and heard him speak to me from a clearance rack. The third time I met him I was mowing the lawn and I was wearing headphones and then I heard his voice and he said, “Once, I ate a lobster. Then another time I went to this award ceremony for porno stars.” That’s all I know of this man. I would like to revisit him. Because I do not know him very well I should probably not worry about him. I will worry about the rats. From what I know about rats, they do not spend the majority of their time looking for skunks to strap to their backs. They tend to look for little pieces of pizza crust and snippets of dog hair to wear on their heads. Sometimes rats sew buttons on old toys. Once a man went to a store and bought a rat and named it, “Puppy.” Another time a cow was on a boat and there were probably rats on this boat too. There was this other time, but I can’t remember what it had to do with rats. It was very blurry. I thought of all these stories as I saw the rats crawl out of the wall. One of the rats knew how to play an instrument or something that is not an instrument, but can kind of look like an instrument if your head is blurry. Nothing about this instrument shape me like this rat. I thought of breakfast foods. I thought, “Danish, soupy eggs, stale cereal, girls with crooked teeth, old ladies with droopy ears, salmonella on celery, rolling hills, the flock of pond ducks, people selling oranges after trading away their stock options, four page emails, old Christmas trees, little boys of the world that are unsatisfied with their name because it is Seth, and hamburgers.

Mark dreamt of the spotted camel singing Russian lullabies. In the morning he dug in the kitchen for a spot to pour his cereal. There were no boxes of cereal in the cupboards. All he found were green peppers, bread crumbs, and meat. Mark asked me if he knew what had happened to the cereal. He was wearing a collared shirt. A few minutes passed. I asked him for his shirt. He did not answer me. I went to the laundry mat. An Asian was riding a spotted camel. The camel was not whistling. The Asian was watching a telenovela. I grabbed some clothes and left. When I returned to the apartment I could smell something flooding. I checked my email and found a four page letter whose edges were folded into weird little crimplets. The email said, “Dear Person, Sorry to leave like I did. The girl with red pants called. I did not want to leave, but she said there is a banquet with a projector and a laser light show and free food so I decided to go and see the girl and her red pants. I do not know what time I will be home. I think it might be late. Do not bother waiting up. Regardless of what happens I think I will come home late. If the laser light show and dinner get done at five then I will go out for ice cream or something. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this to you yesterday, but what do you want to do about the basement flooding. It seems like it could become a problem. I don’t mind all that human sin floating down there, but the one-hundred years of invisible fish suffering is starting to freak me out. Maybe we can call an exterminator or a boat man. If we call a boat man we’ll still need to call an exterminator or a fisherman or something. The boat man would only have a boat which doesn’t really solve anything. I’m thinking we could make a boat tomorrow, but I don’t really know what you want to do. You usually have pretty good ideas in situations like this. Like that time we only had green peppers, meat, and bread crumbs and you made meat loaf. That tasted really good. I thought it was some of the best meat loaf I had ever tasted. Seeing that we only have green peppers, meat, and bread crumbs in the refrigerator right now then maybe you can make meat loaf tomorrow after we take care of that flooding basement. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. I’ll get some bread and peanut butter on the way home in case we just want something quick and easy. Alright, see you later. The end.” 

The woman in front of Mark at the donut store said, “I only wear red pants.” Mark looked at her pants. They were read. A few hours passed. A spotted owl rested in a meek position. Mark did not disturb the spotted owl when he returned to his office. Things got blurry after that. Mark said he wanted to only think about important things the rest of his life, but all that his head could numerate was a smile wearing sunglasses. The smiling was real loud. The sunglasses had no teeth. Trees were blowing. Things continued to be blurry. Mark’s old roommate’s girlfriend sold Mark a bed for more money then he wanted to spend and she would not take her foot off the pillow. Mark couldn’t move his lips so he couldn’t tell her to move. The smile with the sunglasses looked at Mark and smiled. The sunglasses still had teeth. Mark’s teeth began to hurt. The new bed said, “My bed hurts.” A foot stepped in a bear trap. My old roommate cried because his girlfriend was a bear. The bear did not understand. She looked at her foot and said, “Why does my foot hurt.” Then she said, “Ow.” Mark went in the bathroom to eat cereal because there was nothing else he could do for her, but the cereal box cracked his teeth.

Someone stole the canned beets intercom at the grocery store. A cashier needed a price check on canned beets and when she went to use the canned beets intercom the intercom was gone. The store was unsure of how to deal with the lack of a canned beets intercom. Mark ignored the problems at the grocery store because his basement was flooded and a one-hundred-year-old fish had died in his yard. He did not have any clean clothes left either. I would have helped Mark, but I had not showered in thirty-six hours and I was mostly useless. The manager of the grocery store was very worried he would be held responsible. Mark said, “Fuck it,” and ate the fish. I bought a green pepper and rubbed it on my armpits. I asked my mother to mail me bread crumbs and meat for my birthday. A woman in blue jeans got mad at Mark for eating the one-hundred-year-old fish and not saving it.

Yesterday Mark asked me if I remembered Oliver Todcreek. Oliver went to school with Mark and me in third grade. For his third-grade science project he melted pennies and made little BBs for his BB gun. He brought in his BB gun to show everyone and ended up shooting the teacher’s assistant in the eye. Oliver got scared and thought he would have to go to jail. He secluded himself in a metal cabinet and yelled that he would shoot anyone who tried to open the cabinet door. The teacher’s assistant lay on the ground holding her eye. She was bleeding. Mark was very scared. I was scared too. We ran outside and hid under the steps and covered our eyes. I was worried Oliver would track us down and shoot our eyeballs out. I don’t know what happened next. Later, I saw our principal, Mr. Doug, carrying an unconscious Oliver in one hand. Mr. Doug held the BB gun in the other hand. Oliver’s head was bleeding. One kid who didn’t cover his eyes because he had glasses said Mr. Doug pushed over the metal cabinet and then threw a chair at Oliver when he climbed out. The next week the teacher’s assistant was wearing a patch on her right eye. We never saw Mr. Doug again because he got fired. No one really knows what happened to Oliver. I thought he went to jail. Mark thought he went to a private school. Others say he somehow got his BB gun back in the principal’s office and killed himself.

Gumball machines sometimes die. Mark Baumer was friends with this one gumball machine that was very poor. It could not buy oil to heat its house in the winter. It could only afford one candle each week. It lived in an old refrigerator box behind an abandoned K-Mart. The gumball machine bought the candle at the grocery store across the street. The candle smelled bad. The gumball machine tried to make the candle last the whole week, but by Friday the candle would always die. Sometimes the gumball machine would try to burn the pennies people stuck inside of it. Most days the gumball machine stands in the cold outside of the Wal-Mart with the rest of the starving gumball machines and says, “Would you like a gumball?” Most people say, “No, I would not like a gumball.” Sometimes someone will say, “Can I get one for free?” The gumball is not allowed to say, “No, I cannot give you a free gumball.” A small, chubby goblin will sometimes whine and say, “Please. Come on. Give me a fat gumball.” The gumball machine says, “No, I’m not giving you a gumball for free.” One time a turtle got really mad when it didn’t get a free gumball and it threw the gumball machine in a dumpster. The gumball machine cried and said, “No one will ever buy gumballs from a gumball machine in a dumpster.” It is a very hard life to be a gumball machine. Cops give gumball machines a hard time. They walk up to the gumball machines and say, “Do you have a license to operate on this street?” Most of the gumball machines do not understand bureaucracy and do not know what a license is. Some of the smart gumball machines will say, “Oh, I left my license at home.” Other gumball machines have attitude. They say, “You fucking faggot ass pig. I don’t need a license. Go write someone a parking ticket.” This makes the cops mad and they usually crack open the gumball machines with their batons and steal all the gumballs. Once I saw a meter maid pick up a gumball machine and crack it against the side of a building and then dump all the gumballs on the sidewalk. Children and adults ran over and collected the gumballs. They felt rich. No one cared about the dead gumball machine. The other day when I asked Mark where he found the gumball machine he said he found it in a dumpster and it was crying. I asked Mark if this was true. He said it wasn’t. He said, “Even though I have never found a gumball machine in a dumpster I decided to write on my resume that I once found a gumball machine in a dumpster. I did find a gumball machine in a flooded basement that I think was flooded. It might not have been flooded. I think the floors were painted blue, but I am not sure. One part of me thinks my boots were wet. The other side of my head thinks no, my boots were blue because you stepped in wet paint. Regardless, I found the gumball machine on a table next to a set of golf clubs and a doll house. I did not rescue the golf clubs or the dollhouse because they were fucking each other and I didn’t want to interrupt them. The golf clubs were touch the doll house and saying, ‘Look at that ass. Have you ever seen an ass that good?’ When I picked up the gumball machine it said it did not want to be eaten. I told it that it was safe and didn’t have anything to worry because I would take it home and give you a nice place to live.” When Mark got home with the gumball machine he asked if the gumball machine was hungry. It said it was. Mark didn’t have much in the refrigerator. Only a few green peppers, some meat, and a container of bread crumbs. He asked the gumball machine if it wanted some meat. The gumball machine said it had never eaten meat.

A gray hawk dressed like a tortoise sat in the corner of a parking lot. Mark spent the afternoon looking at the gray hawk while sitting on a bench at the edge of the library parking lot. Around 3 p.m. he realized the gray hawk had not moved for a few hours. He looked closer and realized the grey hawk was a plastic bag. Mark stood up and walked over to some trash cans so he could look at the trash cans. I was still sitting on the bench. I did not want to sit on the bench all day. I asked Mark if we were just going to sit near the library parking lot all day and look at the trash cans. He didn’t respond. He touched one of the trash cans and said, “The trash cans were originally interesting, but my disinterest in their abilities diluted the air I breathe. This air told me I was bored.” I looked at the trash cans. They didn’t have lids. Mark said, “I think, maybe small creatures benefit from the present situation of these trash cans.” I thought of the books in the library looking out the window at us. I asked Mark if he felt self-conscious. He said he didn’t. I looked at one of the windows of the library. I couldn’t see inside. I wanted to go inside and crawl up next to a good shelf of books. The library was out of business. Mark climbed a hill near the back of the parking lot. He made his way through some trees. At the top of the hill was a road. Mark began walking down the road. At some point he stumbled upon a car instruction manual and picked it up and walked back to the library parking lot. At six o’clock the pay phone outside the library rang. I didn’t answer. Mark listened to it ring for five minutes. The wind picked up. The gray hawk danced.

Mark Baumer does not own a car. He was sitting in the passenger’s seat. He thought about watching TV. There was no TV in the car. Mark thought about his boredom. He looked out the window of the car. There was a mailbox. It started to laugh. The mailbox continued to laugh at Mark because he did not have a car. Mark got out of the car and began to push the mailbox over. It screamed. A person nearby said, “The government is going to lock you up.” Mark ignored the government and threw the mailbox into a tree where it hung open upside down. Money came out of the mailbox’s ears. Mark grabbed a handful of the money and took off running down the road. Someone called the government. A few days later the government filed an official report.

Mark Baumer used to know this girl who worked behind the counter at a gas station. Sometimes Mark would go inside the gas station and she’d say, “Give me a ride home. My shift is over in fifteen minutes.” Mark would wait around for fifteen minutes and then drive her home. Once, he told her he couldn’t drive her home because he had to go somewhere else. She acted disappointed and then told him she was going to let him make out with her leg. Mark left. A few years passed and the girl behind the counter began working less and less. Then she stopped working at all and the lady who owned the store said, “The girl who used to work here is now married and pregnant.” The store owner paused and then said, “Romantically we’re all fucked.” Mark did not understand. 

The falcon looked at Mark Baumer. He looked at the falcon and thought of the shape of his parents when he was six years old. His parents were holding a casserole party, but lost all their friends. Mark looked at his parents and said, “You can either look for your friends or fix the roof.” His parents fixed the room. Mark put his fingers in his mouth. Mark’s parents didn’t understand and told him to stop.

Mark saw a wet crumb on his face and then wiped it off. He tried to dry his face, but when he touched his head he only found a dirty cardboard box. He took the dirty cardboard box off his head. On the side of the box it said, “I just showered. Please don’t make my face dirty.” When Mark was a little older he saw another wet crumb on his face. He tried to dry his face with a napkin, but then it started to rain again. The crumb got more wet. 

On Thursday, after Mark bought a box of tangerines, he said, “If I had it to do over again I would have made more of an effort to be friends with the kid who used to live next door. I think his name Milt or Doug, but everyone called him Milkdud.” Once, on the last day of fall, Mark and Milkdud played street hockey together, but then when winter came around Mark’s parents signed him up for ice hockey and Milkdud’s parents signed him up for figure skating lessons. Occasionally, Mark would see Milkdud at the ice rink. He would usually eat a hamburger after figure skating lessons. Mark felt bad that Milkdud looked so lonely when he was eating his hamburgers, but he never joined him. After a hockey practice Mark tried to eat a hamburger, but it fell out of the bun and on the ground. Mark was going to pick up, but he remembered he was supposed to meet some people at the bowling alley so he went to the bowling alley instead of picking up the hamburger.

Mark had a hockey coach who once yelled at a kid on his team named Adam because Adam was always getting penalties and we give up more goals because he was our best player and had to sit in the penalty box. Adam became angry that the coach was yelling at him. He thought, “I am the best player. Why is he yelling at me? All my teammates suck.” On his next shift Adam hit a kid on the other team in the head with his stick and got another penalty. On his way to the penalty box he gave the coach the finger. After the game Mark and his teammates all got undressed and everyone was silent except for Adam who said, “I want to hit our coach in the head with a puck.” It was uncomfortable because Mark’s team lost and all his teammates except Adam all liked the coach. Most of the players on the team had also been pretending to like Adam only because he was really good. When the coach finally came in the locker room he said he appreciated our effort and then said, “It’s unfortunate that Adam has to be such an idiot.” Adam did not like to be called an idiot and quit the team. The coach then pulled a pumpkin out of his briefcase and then smashed it against the wall. Mark began to cry. Adam broke his stick in half and walked out. Some of the other kids on the team cried. A lot of them cheered.

It was not Halloween today. Mark asked where his favorite pumpkin was. It’s been missing for fifteen years. The pumpkin disappeared when he was seven. He carved the pumpkin himself and promised to be his friend forever. Two days after Halloween the pumpkin was gone. Mark was severely depressed and cried. I cried too because Mark was crying. He asked his mom what happened to the pumpkin. She said the pumpkin went to planet Saturn to live with its family. Mark felt a little better and went in the living room to watch cartoon cereal commercials on the family television.

Mark was in the forest pretending to be a tree so I would feed him human food like beef and horseshoes. Then I remembered the time Mark mailed himself to himself. I was too afraid to mail myself to myself so I just mailed a postcard to myself. I also bought $39 worth of stamps and tried to put them all on the same postcard. Only eighteen fit, but then I began to layer the stamps until they were all gone. I didn’t end up sending the postcard to myself. I forgot where I sent it. I think I might have mailed it to Europe or Asia. The postal worker who handled my postcard was named Lolly. Everyone called him Lead Feet. He did not seem impressed with my postcard. He looked disgusted. Most of the other postal workers think Lead Feet was weird. He didn’t have his driver’s license. He delivered his mail on bike. I did not know anyone in Asia or Europe. I asked Lead Feet if he knew anyone in Asia or Europe that would like a postcard. He didn’t know of anyone. I decided to send the postcard to the president of Europe. When Lead Foot rode his bike he sang songs he originally sang while mowing lawns as a boy in Ohio. Most of his old neighbors called him a curious boy. They ignored the yelling and read their papers. At the post office the government spoke to Lead Foot on a long string. Wireless capabilities didn’t exist at this post office. The voice over the line said, “An extensive poll of some people in the United States, mostly people who work at your office, think you’ve got brain problems, but are satisfied with your work.” The long string from the government had more to say, but Lead Foot’s mind wandered. He remembered getting five dollars for each lawn he mowed. Sometimes he would sing, “Oh, glorious Ohio. One day I will be king. One day I will be the president. Oh glorious day.” Once he tried to record his songs, but the lawnmower sounded like static and Lead Feet sounded like a small blind girl who just realized she was playing in traffic and was about to be run over. After I mailed the post card I checked to see if there was any mail for me in the post office boxes. I imagined a tiny girl would be waiting for me in my post office box. If I found a four inch tall girl I would probably put her in an envelope and give the envelope to Lead Foot. When I was leaving the post office I saw Mark at the counter talking to Lead Foot. I went outside to wait for Mark to come out, but he never did. I fell asleep and woke a few minutes later with my mother banging on the car window. She was wearing a lime green outfit. My mother wears lime green outfits because she is color blind and does not know they are lime green. Sometimes I feel bad for my mother and want to say, “Mother, you are wearing a lime green outfit,” but then she will probably say, “Lime green is my favorite color.” It is funny when I see pictures of my mother at work. She works with a bunch of men who wear grey suits. She is always wearing bright colored outfits like the lime green one and the red and orange and mango one she sometimes wears. Sometimes, I think of my mother and I do not want to go to bed because I think, “I have to make her proud and I’m afraid I didn’t do enough things to make her proud today.” Then I get a little sad because she doesn’t know I think this and I am too embarrassed to tell her. Then a few weeks pass and I realize I haven’t talked to my mother because I’m too embarrassed and she thinks I don’t like her because I don’t call and I think about writing a letter to the president about my mother, but I don’t know his address so I don’t do anything and nothing changes and I stay up late writing things about my mother that I’ll never show her. 

It seems there is an election every year somewhere on earth. College students with campaign pins bang on houses during face meat time and if no one is home they shove pamphlets inside a doors asshole if the door has an asshole. Mark Baumer ignores their propaganda. Election day is usually boring unless you decide to vote twice. Mark once voted twice. He voted as himself and he voted as me. Mark did not care about the outcome. He just wanted to vote twice. This past election Mark spent the weeks leading up to the election hiding in the forest. I brought him buckets of soup every other day. He looked a little dilated when I saw him. He kept saying, “The trees are telling me that I should vote for them and that they will make my life happy if I never leave.” Mark did not leave until the day of the election. He was happy that he did not suffer any campaign molestation during the hours of face meat. Before Mark left the forest he promised to bring the trees human food. Mark and I still return to the forest once a week and bring the trees soup. I am not sure that the trees like soup. Mark suggested we bring them lettuce or maybe drag a dead cow into the middle of the woods. I suggested a hamburger. Mark said, “Trees probably won’t like hamburgers.” 

Mark Baumer forgot to call my father on his birthday. He told his mother, “Please don’t get upset. I’ll make it up to him someday.” The next day Mark and I woke up at 3:30 in the morning to make eggs and waffles. I found the waffle iron. Mark found the stove. I plugged in the waffle iron and thought of floating knit stockings. Mark squeezed ketchup into these stockings and they fell in a river and drowned. We honored their death by pouring maple syrup into the river. It was still dark out. We didn’t want to turn on the lights in the kitchen because they would wake everyone. It was so dark out I wasn’t sure if there was even a river. Mark said he could still hear bats chirping in the black fog. I didn’t want to be left out so I lied and said I could hear the bats too. Things were cooked. I could only find the recipe for meatloaf. Everything was put into the waffle iron. I tried to think about the knit stockings again. The smell of burning waffles made it hard to concentrate. I forgot the stockings were dead. When the things were done cooking we brought them up to Mark’s father. He was still sleeping so we tucked the breakfast in with him under the covers and went down to the living room to wait. There was a rug on the floor. We studied the design for the rest of the morning. It reminded me of the dead knit stockings. Sometime around mid morning we heard Mark’s father wake up and wander around his room. I wish I could have seen his face when he found his treats. Mark didn’t realize his father was awake until after I pointed at the ceiling. This made me wonder if he had really heard the chirps of the morning bats. I did not care. When Mark realized what I was pointing at he ran into the kitchen and came back with the bottle of ketchup. He began writing on the wall in red. He wrote, “Happy Birthday Don.” Mark’s father’s name isn’t Don so I told Mark that his father’s name isn’t Don. Mark said Don was his father’s nickname. It was then that I realized I didn’t want to wish Mark’s father “Happy birthday.” I didn’t want to see his pajamas covered with the things we made with the waffle iron. I did not want to know if he looked like the knit stockings. I began to question whether it had really been his birthday the day before. I did not think to check to see if the waffle iron was still on. I did not care if there were empty bottles of ketchup on the banks of the river. I said, “Let’s go to the cellar and hide behind the hammers and wood cutters.” Mark and I both took off running. When we finally caught our breath we found ourselves in the darkness both wearing safety goggles and wondering how to turn on the chainsaws we were holding.

There was a bus. It was a blue and white bus. The kids that rode the bus had retarded eyes and scabies and in their bedrooms they keep tiny cages full of medium sized rabbits. Sometimes the children on the bus have trouble closing their mouths. The blue and white bus does not judge the children. It is an open-minded bus. This blue and white bus does not like yellow buses. Yellow busses laugh at the children on the blue and white bus.

One day Mark Baumer was driving a car. He parked in a lot across the street from a retirement community where old people bought cheap condos that would probably fall apart pretty easily. When Mark was in high school he planted a shrub in a retirement community. Once he used a lawnmower in a retirement community. Anyway, the reason Mark parked in the empty lot across from a retirement community was because he wanted to write a message on the blue and white bus that was also parked across from the retirement community. The message he wrote on the windshield of the blue and white bus was, “I love you.”

Mark Baumer met a toilet once. It said, “I am from the United States.” The toilet existed somewhere in the continental USA. Mark did not have a pleasant relationship with this toilet. Life was very stressful at the time. It was not the toilet’s fault. The toilet was in a basement. Upstairs there was a person with a disabled head. If Mark tried to use the toilet in the basement the person with the disabled head would open all the cabinets in the kitchen and steal the boxes of cereal. The disabled head liked to bring the cereal boxes to his room and hide them under his mattress. Mark was a sheriff with a bladder problem who had no cell to hold his prisoner. He did not really have a bladder problem. The previous sheriff said, “The guy with the disabled head once ripped off the refrigerator door and threw it into the television screen.” The sheriff before Mark that said, “He once ate a box of Legos and didn’t go to the bathroom for a week.” There was a long line of sheriffs with stories. Most of the stories were written down in a book of records. Mark’s first day as sheriff he wore a cowboy hat. He wanted to show the person with the disabled head he was the boss. After Mark punched the clock the disabled head took Mark’s hat and flushed it down the upstairs toilet. Mark made note of it in the records book. He said, “I should have known this would happen.” One of the other deputies lost his hat the same way. Mark called the deputy to let him know what happened. The deputy said, “I left you a surprise,” and then hung up. Mark called back to ask where, but the deputy’s wife answered. She began crying when Mark asked for the deputy. Through the tears he heard her say, “Someone with a disabled head half flushed him down the upstairs toilet.” Mark hung up the phone. The disabled head was climbing on top of the refrigerator. A few days later Mark got a letter. It said, “The basement toilet. Hidden.” Mark went downstairs and took off the top of the toilet. There was a brand new cowboy hat inside the toilet. He put it on. Mark heard the disabled head trying to eat the upstairs telephone so he could order takeout Chinese food. Mark ran up the basement stairs, but when he opened the door he realized it was all a trap. They were waiting for him in the bushes. A whole crew of them. Mark didn’t even bother to try and draw his weapon and fire back. As Mark lay on the kitchen tile at the basement entrance he heard the disabled head say, “Wong Tong soup.”

Mark Baumer showed up at my house and asked if I wanted to go to the movies. We rode the bus. He crossed his legs and wore a suit. He looked nice even though he wasn’t wearing a tie. Earlier in the week someone had knocked over Mark Baumer’s mailbox. He used all his ties to reattach the mailboxes. Mark was worried he wouldn’t get his mail. He said, “I feel guilty because my mailbox is broken and millions of babies die each day.” Mark was concerned with the number of babies he was responsible for killing. He did not want to miss work or begin buying Thorazine from the Chinese takeout delivery driver every day. He said, “Yesterday he woke up and ordered a pupu platter for two and the Chinese delivery boy asked me if I wanted to buy Thorazine or cocaine.” Mark thought about a high school band who all decided to hang themselves trying to play their instruments. Mark pointed at a lady on the bus who was carrying a set of 1860 encyclopedias. The woman told Mark his face was melting. She was lonely and on Thorazine and wanted someone to talk to. We got off at the next stop. The movie was not enjoyable. We had both seen it before. We did not realize this until we were back on the bus and on our way home. The movie had been translated and hadn’t had subtitles when we saw it the first time. A few days later Mark said, “I’ve never eaten Chinese food.” I agreed. I said, “It would not be a good political move if you wanted to be the president to eat Chinese food.” Mark said, “I probably won’t be president.” A little while later a guy named Lampbeat stopped over. His favorite movie is The Jazz Singer. He said, “I am wearing blackface.” We asked him how long he had been wearing blackface. He said, “I usually cover my blackface with whiteface, but I ran out of time.” He was a regular country white boy disguised as a white boy. Mark said, “From now on when people ask you tell them you’ve been ordering Chinese food and wearing blackface since 1991.” 

Mark Baumer said he was hungry. He walked home and looked in his sock drawer and under his pillow for food. The only food he could find was rotten. Mark began to get scared that some of his relatives would search for him on the internet and find a picture of him standing next to someone in blackface on Thorazine eating rotten fruit out of his sock drawer. 

“There was this disabled person,” said Mark, “He lives alone in the forest. He collects donuts, but doesn’t know how to care for them. He puts them in glass jars until they get hard and turn into rocks. The disabled person doesn’t know how to cook or bathe or sleep. People have to come to his house and show him. Today I tried to show him how to sleep, but he wouldn’t learn so I had to give him Thorazine. My co-worker took some pills and said, ‘I should take some Thorazine as well to understand the effects.’ He ate last month’s leftover pills. They were rotten and someone had painted them black. This didn’t seem like a good combination. Both my coworker and the disabled person began turning into sleep driblets. The co-worker said, ‘You should get out of here. There’s no point having two people here eating Thorazine and turning into sleep driblets.’ I left. He laid on the couch and began painting his face black.” 

The day rose and Mark Baumer found new trends crawling out of baby heads. A cluster of fronds beyond the front yard spoke to the earth sigh. Friendships fell off the trees. Someone was sleeping on the floor with a teddy bear. Fruit lay in a basket. Mark was still young and believed he would never rot. He stole little pieces of candy and hid them in sock drawers and under pillows. His thoughts figured he’d remember to enjoy the wealth later. One of Mark’s friends named Lampbeat began painting the fruits in blackface. Desire for these fruits increased. Everyone wanted to eat black fruit. Lampbeat said he was trying to discover an acceptable form of art or social commentary for the taboo of blackface. Mark ignored these comments and went to work. He showed up to work late and only stayed for six minutes. He wrote ‘eight hours’ into the logbook, then crossed it out and wrote ‘fourteen hours’. As he was driving home he passed a sign that said, ‘Lump.’ He slowed the car. He did not see any lumps. The sign was confused and didn’t know what it was supposed to be. Mark’s car kind of died. The brakes fell off, turned to lumps, and ran into the woods. Mark rolled the car into a ditch.

Mark got angry once in a basement. He thought he was a pastor, but he was not. He tried to sell some pumpkin-shaped ornaments to his neighbors for their Christmas tree, but they already bought their ornaments from a large corporation. Sometimes people get drunk and pee on the side of the large corporation. A few years ago, Mark bought new pants and was walking home. Then he saw his uncle.

Mark Baumer will sometimes look at corporations and say, “Remember when we used to line bags with tinfoil and duck tape and steal goldfish from large corporations because most large corporations have a company policy that says, ‘we are not a corporation unless we have a goldfish floating in our lobby’ and then the next day at school we would sell the goldfish for $40?”

When Mark Baumer’s mother was looking for a new dryer she got confused between the ones with ears and ones without ears.