they sit in the kitchen dinner is long over but they feel hungry still. so they eat swedish crackers with butter and fennel salami from milano. they are tempted to smoke again, but don’t do it. the woman puts her legs on the table and crosses them below the knee. she wears pink and white striped socks, jeans, a t-shirt and a thin blue sweater. after the crackers she gets out a trail mix she created herself. no almonds, she says, we havent got any almonds. the man sits down to write because he hasnt written all day. i dont really want to, he says and grumbles. you better do it, she says. you’re right, i gotta stay on the ball, he says. he fires up the small computer and longs for a cigarette which he knows to be a major distraction. as he writes word after word, he watches her over his glasses munching nuts and dried apples and rice cakes. he is out of words. she asks him a question, he shows her the finger. twitter makes you aggressive, she says. do you really think so, he asks. she is right, he thinks. this is not a way to behave nor is it a way to treat your woman. she smiles at him, thankful that he shows some remorse, and turns to her book. what are you reading? he asks. color of magic by terry pratchett, she says, and: anything else you’d like to know? it’s not an invitation, really. she puts the book down. looks at him, a long look, and lets an even longer silence follow. twitter’s all banter, she says. she is right, he thinks, and writes on. he is not logged on now, as they call it. logged, that’s not real, not trees or loggers, real men. when you’re logged, you’re connected, and when you’re connected, you’re on the net, it must be a kind of work, he thinks, or else it wouldn’t be called net-working. he thinks of a disgusting cronenberg movie where the people put video tapes in their bodies. he can’t remember the actual plot or the ending. it doesn’t matter. it’s the same thing – except that our bodies aren’t altered, they are simply ignored. it’s a lot more powerful, he says. what did you say? she says, what is a lot more powerful? he explains. she wrinkles her forehead. she is beautiful, right here, right now, when she thinks about what he says and shows it. her fine toes in the striped socks wriggle. he knows that she can put the second toe over the big toe which he can’t do. it’s a birth defect or a granted privilege, depends on how you look at it, he thinks. he forgets about logging and all that virtual stuff right here, right now, at the kitchen table covered with crumbs and the butter dish and dirty knives, and a book that looks like a fat fallen butterfly on its back. you are beautiful, he says. she smiles and says, you looked at me for 10 minutes straight just now, how can i not be beautiful. now he smiles and closes the laptop.

© 2009 finnegan flawnt

.. may still go to #hollywood.

the other day, i took a plane from hollywood down to cape town to visit @franki_ a girl who followed me via twitter, the latest and greatest in international memetic travel. we had to settle an underscore, so obstinately positioned after her name, so i took my french foil, which a fencing master had once given me upon sparing his sporting life. at that time, i was still famous.

twittergirl lived in a slummy neighbourhood compared to my los angelesian den: in the californian hills, i could have any number of half-baked stars for dinner and more. here, i smelled the stench of the grey bourgoisie, which brought me back to my boyhood and those school years in hammersmith. i felt nostalgic and sheathed my foil. this was going to be a fun trip, a summer vacation in the middle of our winter.

we met on table mountain for dinner: servants in white brought us quail and frog soup spiced with onions grown by namibian gangstas. i read the body electric out loud and cats responded. i drew my straw hat, which i had bought for the momentous occasion, and she spit in it. what had so auspiciously begun between characters and tweets turned into a party when her friends rode up the mountain in hoppers and vespas and motocross flitzers. the joy!

photographs were taken too and fed into a giant database of super models. these pictures would be taken on a mission by pioneer VIX who would probe the intergalactic space not carrying mathematical formulae or bach fugues, but images of the finest and most graceful of our race as well as our world’s most successful brands: a shoe from nike, a cellophane-wrapped hamburger from mcdonalds, and a new slimming coca-cola with not zero but negative sugar content. there would also be space on board, i was told, for an image of his majesty the frymaster. unfortunate for me, i was told that a giant iguana who also lives on the mountain, had jumped in front of the lens in the very moment the picture was taken so they could not accommodate my aspirations to transworldly stardom. since i had been famous before, i didnt even cry.

i yet had to have a single moment alone with twittergirl. alas, she was called away to a photoshoot involving a pair of large, enormously large gorilla toes. to prove a point which i have forgotten, but my dear friend professor pangloss assured me in our therapy session that i do not need to know everything, and i don’t have to go everywhere or talk to every single soul on the planet. this twitter thing, though, it does make you feel dizzy with possibilities!

i took off from cape town with a twist in my step and my stiffness all turned into tatter, leaving the promise with @franki_ to visit me in the hollywood hills. as my plane pulled away from the horn, i saw twittergirl stand on the platform, iPhone in one hand, tweeting me already.

© 2009 finnegan flawnt