PET-A-CAT MONDAY

That's right. Here at Dick Fancy, we're proud to sponsor PET-A-CAT MONDAY. All you have to do is get out there and make sure you pet at least one cat today. It's much harder to pet a cat than it is a dog, because dogs have parks and leashes and demand walks, whereas cats generally keep indoors unless they're feral. SO, if you don't already possess a cat in your own home, you'll have to do a little groundwork in order to find one you might pet. Don't be creepy about it. Just call up a friend who you know has a cat, and ask if you can come pet it. Or, maybe a way to be less creepy about it is to call up this same friend and not mention the cat at all. Just ask if this friend wants to hang out at their place, and then while you're there you can get in a little cat-petting. Don't make it obvious that this is the only real reason you went over there. Your friend will be offended if you do. If they already read Dick Fancy (and WHO DOESN'T?!!!), they'll probably be on to you. So, proceed with caution. But definitely make sure you pet a cat.  Oh, and if you don't have friends who own cats, you'll probably have to go to the nearest feral-cat hangout with an open can of tuna fish. (If you're in the Brooklyn area, I definitely know of an outdoor lot on Manhattan ave between Driggs and Nassau that seems to be a very hip spot for feral cats to grounge (lounge and grunge.)) Good luck. 

I'd love to see some pics of you petting a cat, so if you're out there and you've got a camera, take a shot and send it to me.

If you don't, I'll be super embarrassed. I understand this is a distinct possibility. However, I enter into this request understanding there exist some inherent risks one must be willing to take for the sake of PET-A-CAT Monday.

Included below is a small passage from a story I'm working on. I don't know yet what will become of this story. There is much to be figured out. Thanks for reading.



And onward....
From "Unpronounceable Towns:"

Sofia crawled in her dreams. She was an adult who could not stand, no matter how hard she tried. Her husband floated in a fish-tank just beyond her reach, but he was alive, and looked remarkably happy there in the water.

WHY DON'T YOU LEAP OUT AND HELP ME, she would sometimes shout to him. She wasn't sure how long it had been like this: she, sprawled and helpless, her husband floating, flippered. WHY DO YOU DO NOTHING? She saw his teeth sparkling against the small waves he made as he flipped and twisted. It was very frustrating to her, to be without full access to her height. She wondered why, wondered what had happened, why everything around her was weirdly blindingly gold-white, why there was no furniture. No one else seemed bothered by it, but, then, there was no one else. There was her husband, the fish, en-tanked. There was her body, mysterious and uncooperative.

She crawled her way to the edge of the tank. It would be too high to climb inside, but, still, she clawed at it, desperate. Her love was inside, her love. He was so, so close. And he was alive—this was the important part. He had not been alive, she'd thought, not that long ago, though time, she knew, had been somehow bent. In what direction, she couldn't say, but he was here. That was what was important, some impressive meddling the universe had taken upon itself. A hand extended through impossible circumstances to save them, to return them to each other, despite the ropes of death. So, he was a fish. So her legs were lead and dragged beneath her, useless, without explanation. This could be overcome—all of it—as long as she could see him, as long as he existed. This was what was important: existing.

He pressed his cheek against the glass, near the bottom, where their bodies could have met if not for the thickness between them. MY LOVE, she cried out. She pressed her lips to the glass, and he in kind. MY LOVE MY LOVE. Her heart was full-up; her legs melted into the whiteness beneath her. He could not speak, or she could not hear him, but his lips moved. His fish-y lips. They'd always been big, the way she preferred lips to be. Womanly lips that bloomed upon his face, announcing his handsomeness. The lips of a fancy model on the face of a fisherman.

Before he was a fish and the world was entirely white, when her legs still worked and when most things made more sense than they did now, they'd wake together, pressed to the sun, the dirt-scent, the smell of horse shit rising almost sweet through the windows and he would run his big model-fish-y lips over her arm, shoulder, the tendons in her neck. Her mother was downstairs, clomping around on the cracked tile floor, stirring things in pots. Fernando and Ignacio were still sleeping, else frantically stunning themselves awake with internet porno or, more than possible, Fernando was at the university library, which he said was properly quiet in order he might study in peace. She'd heard him muttering the name Fermina again and again for the past several months, in the passing dark, when she'd creep downstairs for water or swigs of homemade wine from cloudy glass jugs in the middle of the night. As far as she knew, he had not slept in that long. Fermina, Fermina, like some demented, feverish man upon his deathbed, barely audible, pained.

She understood this now. Her husband, the fisherman, had become what once he hunted. This almost made sense, too, if she thought about it long enough. The hunter becoming its own prey. She prayed some larger thing would not swoop down and attempt to hook him at the mouth, gut him, make him flip wild in its big death-y hands, while she watched. The world was white. What color would his blood be?

His cheek against the glass against her cheek against the glass. This was what was important. He was here. She could be happy this way. She could learn.