I Could Be Wrong, But…

David Boyne with Domestic Partner, Newton "Dude" Golden, photo: Gerry Williams David Boyne's Inner Child... back-talk david David Boyne David Boyne now lives in San Diego because New York, San Francisco and Portland would not have him. For a long time David has been telling everyone that he is working on a novel. And for a long time David has also been saving up to buy a used kayak. David appreciates every food he has ever tried, except Jello® and sea urchin. David once considered trying to be a better person, until he learned that identity theft is illegal. David is happy, but is considering therapy to change that.

Slants | Short Stories | Essays/Assays | Magazine Articles |Novels |Really Bad Poetry | Interviews | Book Reviews

I Could Be Wrong, But...
Slants, by David Boyne

Why Obituaries Read Like Novel Plots
I’ll begin small and work my way up:

When walking my dog yesterday morning, two things happened that made me think about the infinite variables affecting the content and direction of each of our lives on this lonely planet...

Mean People Suck
Who invented the bumper sticker? I suspect an American invented the bumper sticker. Bumper stickers are brash, annoying, self-revealing and inane; a lot like people who use cell phones in restaurants and restrooms. I can't imagine some person in Peru or Japan or Finland thinking, "I'm going to print a terse message on an opaque weather-resistant material with an adhesive backing and then slap it on the bumper of my car!"

Hurry Up and Wait
I could feel the guy behind me practically running in place with frustration—but I was happily entranced, watching the blonde barrista's swaying tattoos, and taking great delight in the way she and the dark haired woman embedded complex philosophical syllogisms in a meaning-laden rise and fall of intonation when they said the two words, "you know.

Happy Accidents
Happy accidents are busting out all over. Pay attention and you will begin to see them bursting like soft fireworks all around you. You will even begin to hear them. They go snap, crackle and pop.

Past, Present, Future: September 11, 2001
Once upon a time in the Past—for eleven days in April of 1980—millions of people living on or near the island of Manhattan experienced a transit strike. What is a transit strike? It is when all the people holding down the non-managerial jobs of making the trains and subways and buses move, choose not to get out of bed and go to work. They place into the Future, a hope that if they stay in bed long enough, their employers will pony up more money for their paychecks. (And they lie in bed, sleepless, fearing they may lose their jobs.)...

Failing To Write
Sit next to an American writer on a bus, train, plane, or at a cocktail party and chances are she will complain bitterly that the National Endowment for the Arts doesn’t shower writers with money. While I agree that more American writers need to be showered, I think hot water and soap would do the trick, not money. Sure, there is a direct relationship between writing and money--but it’s a limited one...

Getting Enough
This is true: On three separate walks (two in Portland and one in San Diego) my dog and I came across uber-sized, perfectly intact, no delivery box in sight, pepperoni pizzas. The pizzas just lay there on the sidewalks, or in the grass next to the sidewalks, causing me to wonder, is there some kind of wormhole in the back of a pizza oven in Bayonne, New Jersey? Do random pizzas whiz through that wormhole and instantly appear on the sidewalks of Portland, or San Diego, or Kokomo? Is there a pizza on the roof of your house? Let me know...

Quo Vadis, Dude?
Sometimes—about once every 17 minutes—I ask myself, "Yo! What should I be doing? I mean, like, with my life?"

Shouldn’t I be doing something?

Shouldn’t everybody be doing something?

Sure, you’ve answered the fundamental question, "To be, or not to be?" But what do you do next?

Death To America
Used to be, when I would chance to think about Death, the American philosopher George Burns’s observation would come to mind: "Dying? Eh. It’s been done."

And I would blissfully return to my stumbling pursuit of happiness.

Death is like the weather...

Consume This!
I could be wrong, but I vaguely recall that my second grade teacher, Miss Talmadge, taught a course called Citizenship. I may even have passed it.

Yet in the decades since then, almost no one has ever referred to me as a citizen. Instead, advertisers, businesses, bureaucrats, economists, politicians (including the President of this country), and baseball team owners continually refer to me as a "consumer".

This makes me wonder two things...

Thanks for the Memory
Given my fractured mosaic of memory, it amuses me no end that what I am about to assert, I do firmly believe: memory is the central mechanism of evolution—for an individual, a nation, a species...

Love Bites
Why do people fall in love?

And for that matter, why do we say that people fall in love?

Why don’t people climb into love? They climb into bed, why not climb into love? Why don’t we romp into love? Skate into love? Slide into love? Or just plain arrive at love?...

Live, And Let Live
I don’t know about you, but being free scares me. It always has.

In fact, the only thing that scares me more than being free— is losing my freedom.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the fear of freedom, and the fear of the loss of freedom, has messed with people’s minds throughout history...

Shall We... Dance?
I could be wrong, but in all my many observations of people dancing in all kinds of settings, what they are expressing seems to always be one of two messages.

The first, and by far most common message people use dance to express is: I’m thinking what it would be like to have sexual intercourse with you.

Every time I'm in a crowded nightclub where there is dancing going on, I look around. Every person I see dancing is expressing this: I’m thinking what it would be like to have sexual intercourse with you. And you. And you. And you...

Readin, Riting & Rithmatic
I have a suspicion, too. I suspect Patti may have temporarily forgotten why she reads: she enjoys it. No, she loves it. Reading enriches her experience of life. Were reading illegal, Patti would be in jail. (And, jail security being what it is, she would probably have books, lots of books, smuggled in to her.)

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Short Stories
by David Boyne

The Road Taken
About a brother and sister...

Not in Your Wildest Dreams: Celibate in the City
New York Story #133,455...

Bums: A Christmas Story
by David Boyne
Butch did not start the riot. I know, because when the riot began I was sitting right next to Butch, in the basement cafeteria of the Third Street Mens Shelter.

Einstein's Eyes
by David Boyne
Inside the jar, floating in clear, viscous liquid, was a pair of human eyes. "It's a whole visual cortex." Dixon whispered. "Whose eyes, Sheldon?" I asked. "Albert Einstein's."

Knife
by David Boyne
…So it’s 1974 and I 'm seventeen and I'm a caricature: the angry young white suburban male.…

Newton's Comeuppance (Originally published in Wet Dog Magazine)
by David Boyne
…I'm a thief. Call me Robin, like that twelfth century thief with the bow and arrow and green tights. But I don't work a forest, as my worthy predecessor did. I work a beach…

The Immigrant (Originally published in The Portland Review)
by David Boyne
…he scratched at the sparse orange whiskers on his chin and said, "He looks dead."

Just Good Neighbors
by David Boyne
…When I got home I found the letter on the table in the front hall, the place I always checked for notes from my wife:Honey, I have left you. I was just not cut out for an off-the-rack lifestyle. It’s my fault, not yours, really. Sorry. My attorney will be in touch.

The Confession Booth
by David Boyne
…It was midnight. I stood in the plaza of the Seattle Art Museum and pulled my collar tight against the seeping rain. I stared across the street at the doors beneath the flashing marquee of the Pink Pussycat Theater.

Star 69
by David Boyne
…I was so nervous I started biting my nails, something I hadn't done since high school. I knew there was going to be violence. But I never thought someone would get killed.

The Veteran
by David Boyne
The bang of the gun was so loud I thought I had been shot. I could not move. I stood there, my ears ringing, until the smell of gunpowder tainted my breathing.

Survivor
by David Boyne
"Ma'am. You do understand that you've been in an accident?"
The woman was my daughter's age. I wondered what she had studied at University. I nodded. I said, "A plane crash."

Making Copies
by David Boyne
This was the one big opportunity of Reuben Sierra's life.
He seized it.

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Essays and Assays
by David Boyne

In the Name of the Father and the Son: Three Fragments
• In the Name of the Father and the Son, Part One
It is only by an unimaginable chance that our world circles just close enough to and just far enough from a single star. But that makes everything possible.

I watched a young boy playing, the day after the night he had fully and decisively won his place in this precariously balanced world.

• In the Name of the Father and the Son, Part Two
The boy watched his father and brother walking away and he said, "She hates you. She hates all of us."
But he had not said it loud enough to be heard.

• In the Name of the Father and the Son, Part Three
(Will be published in early 2004)

The Alfred Jarry Memorial Cycling Club, or, Diary of a Mad Cyclist
Alfred Jarry was a not very prosperous French author of absurdist plays and proto-science fiction stories. At the turn of the last century, Jarry would bicycle through Paris, outfitted with a brace of pistols which he frequently fired into the air. (No doubt as an expression of his intense joie de vivre.) Jarry also carried a fishing pole which he deployed from bridges over the Seine to catch his lunch or dinner. (No doubt an expression of his intense joie de eating)...

Confessions of a Copy Jockey
(Shorter version originally published in Troika Magazine)

Every now and then a customer will ask if he can drop his pants, sit on one of the self-service copiers and make a copy of his butt. "No," I always tell them. "Only people who work here can do that."

Memoirs of a Step-Dad in Training,
Part One (Originally published in Troika Magazine)
Jack created Smell Man. Smell Man has deadly breath. Smell Man runs around the summer day care center blowing his foul breath in the faces of unsuspecting five and six year olds. They are supposed to fall down. They don't always cooperate, and sometimes they call Jack a weirdo. However, when wrestling, should Smell Man expel his breath in my face, I always swoon, collapse to the floor, and beg for mercy...

Memoirs of a Step-Dad in Training,
Part Two
I wondered about a mother who would let her four and a half year old child gather fallen bird feathers, but when the sunlight came through the canopy of leaves over us, back-lighting her curls of auburn hair, I wondered other things about Jack's mom...

Zine Fever (Originally published in Wet Dog Magazine)
That's when it hit me. "Patty! That's a great name for a literary magazine!"

"I Hope You Don't Smell Like One?"

"No, Wet Dog!"

Patty kept her distance for the rest of the afternoon, as if I had been infected with a virus. I had.

All the Children
As I ran across the street, everything slowed, stretched, the way Einstein said traveling near the speed of light would be. I wondered, why weren't other neighbors appearing, drawn by the terrible shrieking? Why had she come outside just as we had gotten out of our car, as if waiting for us?...

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Magazine Articles
by David Boyne

T'ai Chi? Me?
(Originally published in Fahrenheit Magazine)

Sometimes my curious friends ask, "Are you still doing T'ai Chi?

"Yes."

"You don't seem the type to do martial arts."

"I agree."

"Can you bust a concrete block with your head yet?"

"T'ai Chi isn't about that stuff."

"What exactly is it about?"

This is a tough question. Sometimes I...

Alano Club: Island of Recovery
(Originally published in Fahrenheit Magazine)

"I had two kids, and the courts took them away from me… I was on the streets, sleeping under bridges. I won't ever forget how much it hurt. I won't ever forget how much pain it was."

House of Cards: The Lucky Lady Casino
(Originally published in Fahrenheit Magazine)

"People have these crazy images of prostitution and drug dealing going on in card rooms. These guys are here to play cards. A prostitute would go broke!"
Jan Beverly, General Manager

Lights! Cameras! Madness!
The BestFest San Diego Student Film Festival
(Originally published in Fahrenheit Magazine)

"Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance."
Larry Gagnon, Film Instructor

My Grand Kids Went to Mars and All I Got Was a Lousy T-shirt
by David Boyne
(Originally published in Fahrenheit Magazine)

While the inhabitants of Earth were burning up in a fever of pre-emptive blood-feuds, perpetual religious wars and the heroic struggle to put a Hummer in every wage-slave's garage, the Red Planet closed in, and no one even noticed or cared.

Wait. Some people did notice. And they do care. Passionately.

Who? The people of the International Mars Society, that's who. This organization of several thousand scientists, artists, filmmakers, writers, janitors, bus drivers and other brilliant creative misfits has been waiting, and watching, and preparing for this close encounter with Mars.

Guide Dogs
(Originally published in Troika Magazine)
by David Boyne
…"When I walked with a cane, it was like I wasn't even a person. Hispanic, white, it didn't matter: people wouldn't talk to me."

Sign Guys
by David Boyne
(Originally published in Fahrenheit Magazine)

"Mike’s all right. He doesn’t do drugs. He’s a Vietnam Vet, an alcoholic, but you can talk to him. I meet all kinds of people. Hear all kinds of stories. I got a sister who’s homeless, so I can identify. I know some Sign Guys that carry a gun, but I don’t."

Playing in the Streets
by David Boyne
(Originally published in CityBEAT Magazine)

Wayne Webster waves his fiddle bow in a slow circle that encompasses the Casa del Prado building in front and the Casa de Balboa building behind him.

“I got great architecture, great acoustics. I got lots of people, sunshine, fresh air. I even got some ducks that go by once in a while. I love ducks. If I don’t make any money, I can still just take my fiddle to Pacific Beach for the sunset. I don’t even put out my case for tips. Just want to play down the sun.”

Sam Chammas: Bunny-head Cookies, Knuckleheads and God
by David Boyne
(Originally published in CityBEAT Magazine)

"The bar business has more unexpected things happen than a job in a cubicle does. You've got people and you’ve got alcohol—the world’s truth serum. "

Petition This, California!
by David Boyne
(Originally published in Fahrenheit Magazine)

"We have the fifth largest economy in the world! We could be our own nation! Let's dump this Doofus of a Governor we have!" (Ron Piper, petitioner)

Writer Beware: Internet-based Scams Prey on Desperate Writers
by David Boyne
(Originally published in CityBEAT Magazine)

"Never pay a contest fee and never send money to a publisher for anything. Do not submit to these leeches."

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Novel Excerpts
by David Boyne
My Adventures In A Parallax World, by Oglesby Young
…I could feel my hands on my knees, but when I looked down, I saw only the black leather chair, and the faded orange and rose colored Persian carpet. What I did not see were brown suede shoes, grey slacks, blue wool blazer-- or the thin legs and round potbelly of my seventy-one year old body. I did not see me. I was invisible.

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Really bad poetry
by David Boyne
Poetry Without Pedigree

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Interviews
by David Boyne
Michael Steven Gregory
Writer, Director, Independent Filmmaker

Dorothy Annette:
The Artist as Cultural Force

Sam Chammas: Bunny-head Cookies, Knuckleheads and God
(Originally published in CityBEAT Magazine)

Chet Cunningham
Paperback Writer: 300 Books...And Going Strong

Matthew Pallamary From the Mean Streets of Boston, to the Rain Forests of South America: Matthew Pallamary's Vision Quest

Gerry Williams
San Diego Film Maker—or Martian?

Mary Olkowski, Children's Book Author and Illustrator

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Book Reviews
by David Boyne

Heart of a Pagan: The Story of Swoop
by Andrew Bernstein

Every Midget Has An Uncle Sam Costume—Writing for a Living
by Don Bain

The Dark Side
by David J. Sherman

Land Without Evil
by Matthew Pallamary

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