Jay Thomas
Dimensions
Certain databases are called "cubes" even though they have an arbitrary number of dimensions.
The cube that we budget with has eight.The covered pops cube has two.
But the dimensions I'm really thinking of are those of his ass.Like a woman's.Huge hips to hang on to.Maybe it's the peppermint schnapps talking, but something tells me to pull the Gideon Bible out from under the yellow pages and start preaching.Just open it at random, let the words spill right out into the open air.I've never seen him laugh so hard.
"You can do it again," he says a few days later.So I pull out my penis and flap it up and down at the camera like it's waving goodbye.I think he'll be really proud of me, and that my parents will be proud of me too.It's just that I always blink when the shutter's open.
"Did you know there are bombs all over your house?"
"Where?"
"The furniture.Look."
We slide under a puffy living room chair like mechanics.A layer of rough, translucent gauze brushes our noses.
"There."He points to a tiny white cocoon at the intersection of three pieces of wood and hands me his pocket knife.The plastic handle's warmer than my fingers.
"You've got to diffuse it."
"I can't.The furniture--"
"Want your parents to die?"
I make a tiny incision in the gauze.Little shudders crawl up my arm as the blade stretches every fiber to the breaking point, then beyond.
"Give it to me.You don't know what you're doing.Watch."
By the time he finishes it's winter and the trench he dug for the coy pond has filled up with snow.
"How had you intended to keep the fish alive?"
"They're stronger than you think."
So we substitute glassy stones for sod.Who likes sod anyway?Just replant a couple of those trees you uprooted and run a coy pond around the edges.Put the tables in the middle, with arched wooden bridges connecting the island to the “mainland”.Perfect for weddings and corporate luncheons where the only open seat is next to the fascist.Although it's clear he's a fascist from conversation alone, the butter -- melted like transparent lip gloss onto the outward curve of his bottom lip -- really gives him away.He never completely closes his mouth, so his lip just keeps on reflecting the fluorescent tubes overhead.
That there are 50 fish in the pond isn't as important as the fact that someone had to count them.Also -- each of those three pieces of wood is at 90-degree angles to both of the others.(In a two-dimensional universe, this would be impossible.)