BANG OUT

TJ cursed at his computer screen, popped on his 3D screen saver showing a grimacing Magnus Robot Fighter 4,000 A.D., a downloaded 50s comic book cover, and shoved himself—in his ergonomic chair—away from his desk. He was out of words again. He had a few letters, some N’s for No, but was out of GLs for good luck. He still had some prepositions. He checked his desk drawer. Inside he scraped up the adjective ‘drastic,’ his favorite adj, the noun ‘spotlight’, and pronouns ‘she’ and ‘they.’ But these scraps were not enough to say anything. He plunked himself down on the edge of his bed and pulled on his Converses, tied the strings, and got up to find his wallet. Before he left for Tweet’s, the Twittermarket on Benedict Ave, he checked himself in the mirror, combed his curly hair with his fingers and pulled on the hair above his forehead so it looked pointier.

‘Love that swooshy door,’ he mumbled as he walked through the automatic door, and he smiled at the word swooshy. ‘I’ll have to use that,’ he thought. He shuffled to the Cap Letters aisle. He needed Capital R’s for Rochelle, if that was her real name. He had been tweeting her for the past week and liked her tweetbacks. She was sexy smart, he thought, deep. She noticed things, details about music and people and places. She would notice the swooshy door and maybe she would laugh and shake her head. Her hair might swing, if she had long hair. She sounded like she had long hair. He wanted to meet her, but first he had to impress her. He scooped up some Y’s for Yes then left the aisle.

He hesitated at the Adults Only aisle but decided he needed to clean up his palette for Rochelle and scurried over to the Art Words aisle. Rochelle was studying Art Concept at New York University. Not only that, she formed original works with found objects. Formed…she always used the word “formed” when she talked about her art. She would write, “I’m forming a new piece,” and “Was forming last night ‘til 3am.” He scanned the Art Words inventory and found ‘Conceptual’, ‘Warhol’, ‘Surrealism’ and ‘Deconstruction.’ Too high-minded, he decided, but picked up ‘NeoFuturist’ anyway. He could riff off other art words in the Nouns aisle by picking up ‘Surreal’ and ‘Concept’. In the Adjectives aisle he picked up other creditable words, such as ‘Creditable,’ ‘Immortal,’ ‘Outrageous,’ and ‘Beautiful.’ ‘Beautiful’ was always a gem-word for women. These 2 to 3 syllable words would be expensive but he wanted to make an impression.

The nouns aisle was difficult. He hadn’t planned out what he was going to say to her and went for the necessary nouns, like ‘Lunch’ and ‘Stuff’ and then chose some rare, more expensive nouns, like ‘Galaxy’ and ‘Downtown.’ It dawned on him to filter the word downtown, suck out the vowels and pick up the abbrevi-ated form, dwntwn, from the Lower Case Letters aisle to save on letter count.

Stock in the Verb aisle was expanding, he noticed. He took his time to browse the Verb aisle. He liked ‘Roam Around’ and ‘Noodle,’ meaning “to think” like “noodling out a plan.” He chuckled low in his throat and dropped it in his basket. He loaded up with the always dependable ‘to be’ verb forms. After verbs, he filled out his vocabulary basket with a few articles, a few more prepositions.

The Custom Words aisle was filled with bins of gold letters. He wanted to noodle out a special word for Rochelle, but scratched his pointy hair in doubt. He doubted he could measure up to her level of sophistication. He planned to tweet Rochelle that night and needed a word to describe what he had been doing since his last tweet without taking up too much of the 140-spaces limit. He hadn’t been doing much lately. Building plans, checking E-Bay, working on his blog, ‘Ultimate Smoke Screen.’ Then it gelled in his mind: Per-usual. Like, “Things are going per-usual for me.” He searched out the letters and slipped them into the word-sort basket provided by the store. He was planning to use the word ‘per-usual’ a few times, then shorten it to pru. ‘Look at me,’ he thought, shining in his own glow, ‘I’m Forming!’

Before he went to the cashier stations, he walked by the Deli, where you can buy a literary quote or pithy phrase, or hazard a stale cliché, but TJ wanted to be pure, original. His read on Rochelle was that she was special. TJ knew he should have prepared a TwitterMarket list, but originality rides on the slippery surface of spontaneity. Besides, TJ thought list-making was a dangerous habit, a fascist self-imposition.

At the cashier station, he handed his TwitterMarket card to the cashier, who wore a spray of feathers in her hair, a sweet hair ornament. He wanted to compliment her, but stared down at the words in his basket instead. He couldn’t easily say things out loud to people, simple compliments. He felt naked talking to people, exposed and jittery.

On his way out of the TwitterMarket, TJ knew his corpus of words was over budget, but he’d worry about that later, sell some stuff on E-Bay. The door swooshed as he walked out. ‘Outrageous door,’ he chuckled to himself.

Using his cell, TJ called Piazza’s Takeout on his way home, ordering a half Hawaiian/half pepperoni pizza. That way he would only have to wait ten minutes for dinner when he got home. As soon as he got back inside his apartment, he sat down at his computer and got to work on his tweet to Rochelle. He wanted to meet her somewhere.

He wrote:

R…Got your tweetback last night. GL on new art piece aka Galaxy Chaos. Immortal Concept! Need creditable objects? Idea: Meet me dwntwn to roam around, search for beautiful stuff. Spotlight on the outrageous, surreal. Lunch would be drastic. If N, you’ll noodle it out, your brain is rich. All per-usual here–Magnus.

The tweet amounted to 342 spaces. He’d have to cut it in half. He ran his fingers up through his hair, so it stood up 3 inches on his head. Over-counts always happened after he shopped at the Twittermarket.

He tried again:

R–Idea: We meet dwntwn, search for chaos-rich objects for yr Galaxy Chaos. Then eat on 48th, drastic place, NeoFuturist interior. Yummy noodle bowls.—Mag.

The tweet count was 138 spaces. Outrageous! TJ pressed the SEND button just as the pizza deliverer rang the doorbell, and he skid-skated to the door in his socks.

The pizza was tasty-messy. He ate more than half, wiped his face with a plaid dish towel and slid the rest of the pizza in the fridge for breakfast. Then he frowned. Now that his tweet was sent, he had to wait for Rochelle, for the Tweetback. He flopped down on the sofa and pulled a blanket up to his chin for comfort. He couldn’t work on “Ultimate Smoke Screen,” couldn’t play Magnus 4000 AD on the computer, couldn’t even laugh at old TV reruns of “The Zone.” He felt sweaty and cold and drastic. What if Rochelle turned him down? Or, what if she agreed to meet him downtown? The outcome, either way, was a horror show. TJ’s hands and legs started shaking and shivering in the icy time facing the Big Tweetback from R.




Copyright © 2011, Lee Stegner