Wicked Game

Dear Gwyneth Paltrow,

The day we spent together was totally the bee’s knees. When I saw you at the Country Cousins Country Feed and Gasoline Outlet I couldn’t believe it. I forgot what I was doing and overfilled my gas can. It got all over my crotch. You made a joke about piss and “petrol”. I asked you if you always pretended to be English. You laughed and I got a little faint. It could’ve just been the fumes. I’m not really sure how the conversation went after that. I just remember something about four wheelers and you giving me a ride on yours. And we were off.

I have to tell you that I was impressed by your ATV skills. The way you would take those hills reminded me of the feeling you get when you drive over hills really fast in a car, or on a rollercoaster. Only we were on a four-wheeler. You drove us through that giant mud puddle and I named it Lake Gwyneth. We stopped there and you shared your bag of Trolli Mini Brite Crawlers Sour Gummy Worms and Mountain Dew Code Red with me. It was the best worst lunch I’ve ever had. I never wanted the day to end.

I appreciated you giving me your itinerary for the next six months. I especially liked how you customized it for me by writing my name on the top. There’s a lot of contact information in there. I could seriously get in touch with you almost anywhere you’d be in the whole world, and at any time that was not in the past or the future. But then something terrible happened. I woke up, and I couldn’t find it.

It only got worse. I couldn’t find it because I’d dreamed the whole thing. It hit me hard. Suddenly I understood what Chris Issak was singing about back when I was 9 years old.



It really was a wicked thing to do. It all seemed so real. I even thought I remembered your mother’s phone number from the contact list. I called but got Emily’s Pet Taxidermy in Keamy, Arizona. They had no Blythe Danner there. I had to face the reality. My brain had taken drugs behind my body’s back. There was no other explanation for how real it seemed when you laughed at my sub-par jokes. Actually, that should’ve been my first clue. Needless to say, I only had one quarter-pounder with cheese meal that day and I didn’t even large size it. All of the colors drained from the sky, the trees and the grass. It was really cloudy outside.

Regardless, I wanted to thank you for our time together, short lived as it was. You helped me acknowledge all of the things I want and might not ever have since in reality you’ve now been tainted by Cold Play’s bold spray and given birth to several fruit flavored children. I’ll always hold a special place in my heart for you, and I’ll try really hard not to hope for your marriage to end in divorce.

Love,
J. Ham

In Retrospect.

My mother is Vernita. She’s from here. My dad was born in Michigan. They were married once, and then they weren’t. My mom says I stick my pinky fingers out like him when I eat sandwiches with two hands. I don’t remember the way he ate sandwiches. Vernita married Donald, and then we lived on Whippoorwill Road in a trailer, down the street from the trailer park. My sister and I didn’t see my Dad anymore. I never found out who her dad was until she turned 21, or that she had another brother named Joseph. I went to T. Walker Elementary until Michelle had a baby and finished high school, and then I had to catch the bus to Orchard Grove to do another year of 5th grade in the 6th grade. All my friends went on to a junior high that wasn’t also part of their high school. Mom shopped for cars and Donald packed his bags. I wrote a poem that mom found in the garbage can and recited to me as if I hadn’t put it there. It was about the same whore that we would fight about four years and a homecoming parade later. Mom wouldn’t let me be the girl’s escort because she was pregnant. It wasn’t mine so I didn’t see what the big deal was. I played basketball in high school, or was on the team twice. Syed moved in with Mom around the same time I moved back from Grandma’s. I learned a lot about Pakistan and car dealerships. I got into Nirvana and it got me a blow job and a girlfriend. My previous girlfriend wasn’t into either. I played guitar and practiced being frustrated. I got better at it. Then Jesus came, and I left for a spell. I found all of my broken CD’s and my high school diploma where he’d been. I thought it’d make a cool collage. Grandma died and Syed crashed his plane -- into a tree, not a building. I took some of his pain pills when I broke my rib. I’m sure my brother thinks I’m gay now because of it. His name is Edward and my Dad raised him proper. He was 12 when he got busted for pot. I had just started smoking cigarettes. Syed left and Grandpa died. I lost my shit when I cleaned out his house. Now I liked Radiohead and my new girlfriend liked sex. She needed more of it now that she was away at college. I played guitar and practiced being sensitive. Something wasn’t working. I tried whiskey and pot and decided to keep trying until my head cleared. When it did there were people in my house. They climbed in through the window. When they left, so did I. I moved to a college town and worked at a guitar store. I played power chords and practiced being lonely. I started a band. My new girlfriend moved to Seattle. She loved me, a lot. The guy she cheated on me with was named Joseph. He reminded her of me, so much. Fortunately it was not my sister’s other brother. The band broke up. I got fired and went back to school. I found domesticity for a bit, but the foundations fell into disrepair. My ex-girlfriend majored in math, but we could never make any sense of it. I stopped playing guitar for a while, but got better at being alone.