Butter Not Shortening

I don't do this often, but I'm going to do it now. I'm going to tell you something I'm good at. I'm good at making pie crusts. I'm better at it than anyone I know. I'm sorry. You're all just doing it wrong, bar those ladies down in Westport. They've got it, too. I love the rest of you, though. You're probably good at making money and impressing your families.

Thanksgiving was with Josh's family this year. We didn't go around and say anything we were thankful for. I think we assumed the usual. Thankful to be alive and so forth. I wore a bow tie and Josh's sister said, "I like your neck situation."

I had a neck situation circa Christmas 2005. Josh gave me a hickey and I had to drive all the way to Kentucky with it. I tried to wear a scarf indoors. When that didn't seem plausible, I just kept putting my hands on my neck. The hickey faded before my family could ask about it. I will not lie, I was kind of disappointed there wasn't a confrontation. This was also around the time I was making scarves that were multi-pronged. They were like veins or antlers or something. They were not well-received. I'm going to try again and see what happens. I hope someone I love makes fun of me.

The book, my book, you guys. I hope you all read it when it comes out in a little over a year. If you do and you see yourself in it, well duh. If you don't like what you see, just remember I am an awful person and all my dreams are about unfulfilled sex and venomous snake bites. All my stories, too.

I crushed around with this guy some years ago and I woke up the other day with the realization that we never ate together. I don't know what he looks like when he eats. I don't know if he makes weird noises. I don't know if the sound of him chewing would make me sleepy. I mean, I also don't care, but no wonder that crush turned to sand. Eating together is important.

The more confident I get about what I'm doing with my life, the more I find out no one knows what I'm doing with my life. The people closest to me get presumptuous about offering alternatives. Like, "Casey, you're good at making pies. Open a pie shop."

Just so you know, I would run a business like that into the ground. I would eat all the pies. I would keep important documents in a grocery bag. And then I would throw away the grocery bag because anything in a grocery bag automatically becomes garbage. That said, if you want a pie, I guess I'll make one for you for the tiny price of just hanging out with me and letting me have a slice of the pie I made for you.

If you're getting me anything for Christmas, get me an apron. I would use an apron. Also, more pie plates. Pyrex, preferably. But don't get me anything, really, because I'm not getting you anything but paper in an envelope.

To Shut Up About It

I've been quiet lately. There are stories I've been working on. And the book, too. It's coming together. I say that every time, but it's true. It's in so many parts, it can only come together now. I'm still far from finished. People ask what it's about, and I want to say, "What's the last year of your life been about? Neatly now. Be pithy." I don't say that, though. I just say, "It's about a ghost."

Otherwise, I've just been thinking and mourning. Three people in my family have died over the last month. I haven't been back to Kentucky since April, and I'm not going home for the holidays. I don't know why I treat Kentucky like a foreign country. Maybe it's because I made my home elsewhere. Still, I romanticize my hometown. It's the only place I can be sad and then leave that sadness for a year or so at a time. It will be there when I go back. When I need it again.

I know I've said this before, but I don't think you can be happy unless you're fine being unhappy. I just think you need a good place to put it. Another person is probably a bad place to put your unhappiness. Put it into something you can hold and destroy.

Good stuff happened and I'm trying to appreciate it for what it was rather than what I built on top of it. It's hard for me not to write a story over the life I have. One of my friends pointed out I'm getting more white hair. I guess that's age and stress, but I like it. White hair is good stuff, too.

I'm going to Chicago at the end of February/the beginning of March for AWP. I'll be reading at the Beauty Bar with some very talented people. I don't know what I'm going to read. If you have any ideas, shoot, I'll take them.

I'll tell you a Kentucky story. My mother's family lives in the country. We were at one of my uncle's for a birthday. That uncle hunts, I know. We were eating on the back porch, and a fawn walked in the backyard. My uncle got up and fed the fawn from his hands. We watched the fawn play in the backyard all afternoon. It became normal, like when someone has a dog with three legs and you start thinking it doesn't seem so bad. The dog seems happy. The fawn seemed happy, too. A cousin said the fawn's mother must have died. My uncle put his head down.

One of my friends called, and I said I had to go. My aunt asked if it was my girlfriend. My mother said, "He has so many girlfriends." I looked at her and I knew she couldn't help it. I said, "Yeah, one of many." I was out then, but that took longer to become normal. That took years, and Josh, and hearing stuff I pretended not to hear. That took not wanting normal at all.

Parks and Divination

There have been a lot of dogs barking lately. I keep thinking there's going to be another earthquake. There were earthquakes last week in Oklahoma. People here said they felt the aftershocks. We ate potatoes and felt nothing.

I saw two friends and a baby today. One of the friends said she didn't recognize me because I was so skinny. She said she thought I was a clone of my other friend. My other friend has been skinny from birth. The first friend is right. I have lost weight. I didn't know how to respond, though, so I just said, "No, not true."

Josh and I saw the fox again. She was standing on the curb like she needed to cross the street. I said, "I bet that's a good omen," but then I felt stupid because I never say the same thing for squirrels or opossums. A squirrel has never made my day better by running out in front of my car.

A couple of my stories were published this past week in great places. The first story is in Annalemma. The second story is in HOUSEFIRE. I'll let you guess which one has my sex dreams stuffed in it. (The answer is: both of them.)

There's so much more I want to tell you, but it's all stupid and embarrassing, so let me tell you this: I'm going to have the last beer in the fridge.

Hallowiener

Josh and I went to a Halloween party on Saturday. We went as the demons of homosexuality. I did the thing where I got drunk too fast and turned stupid. I talked to a lot of people. Some of those people make comic books. I read an X-Men comic book last week and the guy who wrote it was at the party. That was fun and weird.

There was a couple at the party I know pretty well. Somehow, they didn't know I was a writer. They said they thought I just sat around all day and played with toys. I have no idea what their reference is for that, but it's not reality. They are the sincerest couple I know. I told them I was working on a book and they acted like I'd hit it big. I let them think that.

I should have left my phone at home. It's a problem when I'm drunk. If I drunkenly sent you a text message, I just want to say I'm sorry, and I love you, and don't judge me.

At the party, someone was wearing a costume that had gold tinsely shit all over it. The gold tinsely shit kept falling off. The host's cat ate some of it and then threw up this ridiculous tinsel ball. Poor cat.

I'm in PANK Magazine's second annual Queer Issue. My story is a couple shades away from being the color of non-fiction. Chew on that, you little weasels. It just got real in here.

Call Me Hannan

I just forgave summer for ending. It's fall and I need to get used to it. It's a good fall, though. I had the best weekend I've had in a while. Josh's show is over. An opossum walked in front of my car and peeled a flattened squirrel off the street like the squirrel was a fruit leather. I got drunk and made fun choices I've wanted to make for a while. I was called "Hannan" a lot and I really, really liked it. I submitted two stories. I read a magazine. I read a book. I helped Josh find the right pair of jeans.

Saturday night, I was at a party and this guy tried to talk to me about writing. He wanted to talk about how much he struggles to get anything written. I said the process of writing is different for all of us. The guy repeated what I said but in different words. Then he was like, "You know what I mean?" I just looked at the thickness of his legs and thought about his lucky girlfriend. His lucky girlfriend was standing there not saying anything. A drunk woman came up to this guy's lucky girlfriend and said, "Your job must be to stand there and look pretty." The lucky girlfriend did not respond in any way.

At the next party, I sat on the world's smallest porch and listened to a cute guy play guitar. The cute guy had a gap in his two front teeth, so I forgave him for everything he said. There was a banjo, too, but no one could play it. I drank a lot of beer and wine to catch up with everyone else. All the glasses were dirty, so I drank out of a coffee mug. It had a big A on it. A is for asshole. I don't know anything I said at that party, but I know everything I said after. One of the things I said after was, "Hello," to the toilet. I said this about three times.

It's that time of year when big, black snakes cross the street and look like pieces of animated tire rubber. I beg you to keep your eyes open. I ran over one of these snakes last year, and just today, I saw the remains of another poor snake. I have a heart for snakes, which probably means I'm evil. So be it. Wrap me in snakes and see if I don't ascend to a higher, shadowier plane.

Speaking of evil, I have a black dot on the bottom of my left foot. I think I'm marked for death. A few centuries ago, my lover would've seen the black dot on my foot and called me a witch. We would've been burned at the stake together, because duh, gayness wasn't allowed then. I'm so grateful to live in a time when you can be gay and a witch. You can be a gay witch. Or a gaywich, which is a pastry that resembles a macaroon, but when you eat it, it tickles the roof of your mouth.

Since all the leaves on the ground are cracking, I can hear whenever someone walks between our house and the neighbor's house. I'm usually in the shower when I hear it. We open the window when we shower to discourage the growth of mold on the walls and ceiling. Because of this open window policy, I would wager someone has seen me naked on accident. We have curtains, but they're thinner than tissues. If you've been creeping outside my house, I must ask you this: how did I look?

Fox Parts

I've seen the same fox a few times on the way to Josh's work. It looks like it's waiting for us. I want the fox to mean something, but I guess it doesn't. Sometimes, there are deer in the same place as the fox, and once, I saw a bobcat there, too. It's just a park, but it has all these animals in it, right there in the city.

Someone's going to tell me there aren't bobcats in this city and I'm going to tell them there are. But don't ask for a picture, because I didn't take one.

As for foxes meaning something to someone, there's a man in town who dresses like a yellow fox everywhere he goes. When I see him, I try not to make an event out of it even though it's a very special occasion. The man is not like a fox in any way. He's maybe more like a fox on the inside. He wears jeans and t-shirts but also fox parts and makeup. I would like to know if he wears fox eye contacts, but I've never looked him in the eyes.

We had some mice in the kitchen this summer. Two of them. Abbi named them Chester because we thought there was only one. I set out some live traps, but Chester was uninterested. When Abbi left for Oxford, I put out the meaner traps. I don't have problems killing mice. I feed dead mice to my snake every two-ish weeks. Before my snake eats the mice, I have to thaw them in warm water. I like how simple that is for me and the snake.

My great-uncle died. We used to visit him every summer when I was a kid. He lived in Tennessee. Once, he lived in this big, old house with his wife and her daughters. The house had so many rooms and it seemed like they were always changing. My cousins and I went into a room once and there was a hospital bed with an old woman hooked up to some machines. No one told us to look out for that. I don't remember who the old woman was, but her bed was sitting in the middle of this huge room. I think there was a piano and a chandelier in the room, too. Everything is bigger when you're scared. My grandmother tells me that house burned down. She has different memories of her brother, of course.

Last Christmas, my family got me home even though I resisted. They rented a car for me. I drove on ice the entire 600 miles. No one knows this, but I was on the interstate going down a hill and my rental car spun across the median and into the opposite lane of traffic. I've only ever thought I was going to die in a car.

When I got home, I stayed at my grandmother's and so did my great-uncle. Our bedrooms shared a wall. Sometimes, I could smell my great-uncle smoking a cigarette early in the morning. I would wake up and feel like a kid. My grandmother's house is the house I started growing up in. My grandmother bought it when we moved. There has never been a house that smelled more like home to me, like cigarettes and soap.

Speaking of home, I'm more and more tangentially related to people from my home town than I ever thought I'd be. I'm now "related" to some people I crushed on in high school. That's how it is, I guess.

I looked for the fox again this morning, but we were thirty minutes late, and the fox has a morning routine, too. It wasn't waiting for us. There were just people and their dogs, and they were standing around like they might see something other than each other.

Don't Be the Bunny

Josh is going to be in a musical down by the river. It's not the part of the river that smells like sleep breath. It's the part of the river that smells like coffee. Like, coffee all the time. It's a place for young, urban professionals and the people who go through their garbage. I saw someone chasing a cat down there, and I thought, what is that cat running from?

You can buy tickets HERE if you're in KC and want to see my boyfriend act like a singing and dancing corrupt senator. If you don't want to see that, I don't know what's wrong with you. What are YOU running from?

I sat on the porch last night and smoked a single mentholated cigarette with my friend and sister-like equivalent from Arkansas. We watched an opossum cross the street. The opossum did not look both ways. This is probably why I've seen the inside of an opossum more times than I can count.

It's been a while, but I have a couple stories coming out. Neither one has a ghost in it. One of the stories is sexy and the other is funny. They're both pretty gay. Pretty, pretty gay. And the book! The gay ghost book! It's the gayest, ghostiest book you'll ever read. If you're uncomfortable with ghost penises, maybe don't read it. Or do read it. Challenge yourself to face your ghost penis fears. They're just ghost penises. They'll go right through you and you won't feel a thing.

You should know I'm about to go make one of these fake sausages.