the yellow jacket kept flying against its reflection in the glass until she walked in. it was the lady who left with the Guy Denning pieces last month.

things learned/observed:

name: Anne

stance: prefers to lean on left leg when standing

home: in Vista and it’s messy

breakfast: coffee. she doesn’t eat breakfast

taste: deceptively similar to mine

viscosity: lingering and restrictively sticky. frosted tree sap, thin tupperware in the sun. overall, she was far less frantic than before, clinging long enough for the sunlight to find its way through the hole in my tarp.

act ii

the next week she returned. she spent nearly the entire day in my booth. luckily the banter was there. or else I’d draw a line. pick her up and place her on the other side. give her three taps on the top of her head. and then have a sit. but she had wit and held her own stick.

a lot of the rambling circled around the grandeur of my booth objects. she flew around them, drawing my eyes into the paintings and the books and the poems and into the rugs I don’t really like. and then just as I was pulled in, she’d divert her path. I’d be had with a finger on my chest. not a pressed one but a caressing, inquisitive one. she burrowed into our shared hatred for realism in art and pierced to the other side. then she started asking about how the objects of my booth pertain to me. where I found them, why I chose them, why I placed them where they were.

I swatted her inquisition away. I gave her vague, satirical tracings of their origins. and of me. I expected that to occupy her time. but she was skilled. she grabbed the pen and filled in the rest.

act iii

we had sex. the waves were glassy and clean and plump for a week straight. so it was coming.

I tried to jam levity between us as we hung out more. I mainly kept her around while I was with the other guys. but any gaps she found, she would fill herself. made me into something she wanted. and I’m a nice guy. my limbs pick up to the tugs. I bee what they see. I am never one to kill a buzz.

missionary I know is her favorite even though she tells me she prefers to be on top.

I’m a hack. a wannabe curator of art. a blue collar philosoburrr. a thunker. I will not build walls in wide open spaces. I will not take the brush out of the artists hand. even if they’re bugged and drugged.

so I let her say she preferred to be on top. just like I let her tell me how much she appreciates how stable I am, how much I know what I want, how focused I am in my beliefs in passions.

act iv

she caught feelings. she tried to slow-play it, but I felt it ever since she said she likes the smell of my 1991 Ford Ranger. on the plush cloth seats inside, she smells the plaster of her cast drying. the sober odor in actuality is just a concoction of exhaust leak and mold—flatulence from frayed manifolds and leaky window linings.

the waves became small and windblown.

act v

she visited me at the booth the next sunday even though she said she wasn’t going to. I learned Louie had told her about the hidden mirror I kept in my shop. ravenous, she wanted, or in her words, “yearned” to see it. my silence scratched her this time. she kept pressing.

while she talked about our shared intimacy and what was owed and not owed I drifted off and noted down several ways to enact revenge on Louie:

-take him to Laguna Beach

-go see a Metallica tribute band

-take him to brunch and order papaya salad

-push a skateboard mongo past him

survival instincts brought me back to her when she asked me if I know what she means. I didn’t say anything.

I walked over to a picture frame. It was the same piece of glass that the yellow jacket flew into those some weeks ago. I took it from its leaning place and handed it to her. she grabbed it and looked at the empty frame with the blank black foam board. she didn’t see her reflection. after a sigh, she lowered the frame to her hip. she again pressed to see my hidden mirror.

my limbs move when they’re tugged. so I obliged. I bowed my head. I lifted my brows in defeat. and then I walked her to the back of the booth. putting my hands on her shoulders, I placed her in front of me. then I stepped back.

“okay Anne.”

she leaned to her left leg. her hand lifted to her hair. she pulled at it like she did when she looked at art.

“here it is.”

I opened up my arms and widened my stance. she stared. her hand dropped her hair.

“here’s your mirror.”

act the end

when she left, she didn’t take the picture frame with her. she placed it on the stand next to the tapestries. she never saw the poem I had written on the backboard.

it’s a shit poem. a trance-y gimmicky poem. a sad attempt at rhyme. poem. but I guess I wanted her to tell me that. or maybe see what a great artist she is. see if she can paint over my tongue.

she stopped coming. but the yellow jacket returned after a while. or its cousin. I don’t know how long yellow jackets live for. it flew against the frame glass. crackly sparks shot across as its diamond eyes tried to cut into the reflection.

Description: a because we can, a nana nana boo boo look what I can do. While being an impressive creation, this album completely disregards human capacity. Overfilled with aesthetics, it frays synapses, causing an itchy irritation to the eardrums (song for refrence). It often leaves listeners in a state of flippant stupor (song for reference), which has uses in specific cases (see below).

Uses: disarms moments of chaos, pandemonium, and stress, often adding a comedic tinge to the hoopla, by combating the over-stimulus with more stimulus (double negative = positive). Proven to be useful in events such as neurotic traffic jams, gnats swarming the face, short stories such as Silver Backs, etc.

Cost: free will

***fine print backslash symptoms***

Note: In some patients, a dull itch has persisted long after consumption. In newly appreciated silence and in noise alike, these patients are left with a longing, a desire to hear something with more depth. It has been reported that periodically reapplying this album has alleviated these symptoms.

***click here for backstory and character list, and here to start from Ep.1

Silverbacks—Ep.7

A floating orb caught Manny’s sight. He brushed his thick, dark strands of hair off his forehead and leaned into the window. The flying 1991 Ford Ranger had struggled to keep a regular flight pattern above the city. Each time the truck pitched and swerved, Manny braced himself against the door panel with his knee and with his elbow against the cloth center console. He had flexed into this position when he saw the orb, even though at that precise moment the flying 1991 Ford Ranger flew clean and true.

It was only when his muscles grew a little fatigued, and he relaxed, that the truck misfired and dropped several feet, leaving them momentarily weightless. After catching gravity again, Manny flashed a look at Jo. Jo’s left foot sat up on the vent that blew constant ambient air. He steered with a single finger on the wheel. Looking back at Manny, he gave two antagonizing raises of his eyebrows as he continued to nibble on the dead skin on one of his knuckles

Normally, Jo hid the abilities of his magic Ford Ranger, but it was not necessary above La Paz, Bolivia, a city with no boundaries for what’s acceptable. The city sat in a natural bowl scooped out of the high Andes plains. Sitting to the north, the ancient silverback mountain of Huayna Potosí looked indifferently upon the city’s fractal bustle.

Jo traced the Ford Ranger around the lip of the bowl before slowly starting a swirling descent. Manny saw another orb in the distance, then another directly below. Blue and shiny, they moved slowly. He found another climbing up to the top of the bowl at around eye level. With a closer look, he realized it, and the rest of the orbs were attached to cables, and that the orbs were, in fact, Gondolas. Dozens of them moved lazily above the hazy brick and cement buildings. As they swirled further down towards the heart of the city, Manny could see individuals inside.

“Told you it was bullshit,” said Jo.

Manny looked over to Jo. Jo dropped his foot off the vent and made a banking turn. He looked down into the city through the side window.

“It still flushes in the same direction down here.”

“You never told me shit,” said Manny.

“I didn’t have to…” Jo straightened the truck out. “It’s what everyone says.”

Manny looked back out the window. On a street in the distance below, he saw somebody in a full giraffe costume running through the traffic. Another person, dressed in a zebra outfit, chased after him.

“What is this place on?” said Manny.

“Welcome to the real país libre.”

A stack of cars waited for a red light. Jo landed his truck right behind them. None of the public seemed to notice or pay any attention to their mystic arrival.

Jo followed the flow of the cars. At the next light, he jumped out, leaving the car running, and walked to the Toyota Corolla wagon sitting in line in front of them. With no hesitation, he climbed into the backseat. Manny clicked his teeth and rolled down the window. The light turned green, and the Corolla pulled away. A car horn blared. Manny looked back to see a van full of people. The driver made a shooing gesture with his hand.

“For fucks sake,” Manny muttered to himself before climbing over the cloth center console and getting behind the wheel. The horn’s blare turned more aggressive as others further behind also chimed in.

It took Manny a moment before he found the Corolla. It had made a right turn down a small one-way street. As he pulled up behind, the Corolla’s brake lights came on, and before the car came to a stop, Jo hopped out with the car still rolling. He left from the opposite side of the car where he entered, and he had thin wire sunglasses that he wasn’t wearing before. Casually, he walked back over to the passenger side of his magical truck and hopped in.

“The fuck?” said Manny.

“Ah, they were nice,” replied Jo.

After they parked, Manny followed Jo into an unmarked building. Dried leaves, spices, and bagged food hung from the ceiling. Jo walked over to the counter and bought a sack of leaves and two large beers.

In the same building, they climbed some stairs to find a small terrace. With plastic chairs and tables, a few people slowly worked through bowls of food. In the corner of the terrace, a kitchenette and a bar stood with large glass jugs resting on top. An older toothless lady sat next to the bar and nodded at the pair walking in. She was chewing on a wad of something in her mouth and spat some of it into one of the large jugs at her feet. As they made their way to the corner table, she grabbed a pinch of yellowish mash from a plastic sack and placed it in her mouth.

“You drugged me again, huh?” asked Manny. Jo sipped on his beer as he scanned around at the sight of the surrounding city. After a couple of quick swigs, he motioned over to the server and ordered some food.

Pushing his lips to the side of his face, he said, “That’s the problem, actually.” He kicked his feet out and started reaching into his pants pocket. Manny brushed the hair back off his forehead. Dropping the bag of leaves on the table, Jo unwrapped the plastic and took some out, holding it toward Manny, “Take. Takeeee.”

Manny grabbed it hesitantly, pinching the dry broken leaves with his fingers. “Do I get to ask what it is?” asked Manny.

Jo picked out another large clump of the leaves and stuffed it into his cheek. He smiled broadly with an open mouth as he sat back. “Coca.” He closed his mouth and sucked and swirled some saliva around the leaves before he said, “Helps with the altitude.”

Manny nodded his head with softly closed eyes. He gave a shallow swallow before placing the leaves into his cheek.

The coca leaves and beer playfully wrestled and fought for superiority in their blood. They shared a silent observation of the unhinged streets below. A llama walked by alone, rope dragging on the floor behind. Another furry costumed person crossed the street and entered a phone store. Down one of the nearby small streets, a small crowd gathered around two foosball tables. At a traffic light, three kids climbed on top of each other while the one on top began to juggle.

Manny took a large swig of his beer. He leaned back and smiled. His eyelids sat low and relaxed. “This place is sick,” he said.

“Costco certified,” replied Jo.

The bowls of food came. Manny did not know what Jo had ordered. Meat on the bone sat in a green, clear broth with a yellowish oil slick sitting on top. Balls of potatoes sat at the bottom. Manny took a first sip with his spoon and started coughing and choking.

Jo followed with a small sip directly from the bowl and laughed with some slight coughs of his own. “Peanuts.”

Manny looked through his bowl as he swallowed coarsely. “What?”

“You’re choking on peanut powder. This is sopa de mani. Peanut soup.”

Manny took another careful spoonful.

“It’s good, no?” asked Jo

“Yeah, it’s good.”

“Personally, prefer it with a little more chalk, a little more choke,” said Jo.

They finished the sopa de mani. The old lady behind them kept chewing on the mash and spitting while watching them. Jo pointed up the hill over Manny’s shoulder. “You see that?”

Manny twisted around in his plastic chair. A mess of beige and brick stretched up the hill with the incessant flow of people spewing between them.

“See what?”

“Down that small alley,” Jo lifted out of his seat slightly as he leaned forward and pointed. “There.”

The alley Jo pointed to had a curtain of furs, dried vines, and other objects hanging from small canopies. A sea of swaying legs and arms swarmed throughout. Further in, a hazy smoke poured out of one of the doorways, veiling what lay behind.

“I see it.”

“That’s a witch market,” said Jo.

Manny glanced towards him with strained eyes.

“No more diluted panchos, my friend. Nobody in North County has what they have down there.”

Manny gave one more look towards the alley before sitting forward again. He let his fingers gently tilt and rotate his empty beer bottle on the table while he studied Jo.

“You want some chicha?” asked Jo.

“Yeah, let’s run it.”

Jo motioned over to the bar and ordered two chichas. The worker nodded and opened one of the jugs of fluid sitting on the bar. Manny watched as they lowered two small glasses to scoop the fluid inside. As they walked over to deliver the drinks, Manny found the eyes of the toothless old lady. She gave him a slight smile and nod before spitting into the jar at her feet. When the glasses clinked down onto the table, she reloaded her cheek with more mash.

Featured art: British artist Alabaster DePlume and his Album, “To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol.1” (pictured album below)

Appearance also by Japanese Jazz Artist, Shintaro Quintet

Rules don’t apply inside the Oceanside Flea Market. People sell and eat trinkets and drugs and dance with critters and do things out of accordance of laws and physics. Some of the vendors are friends. One of them, Jo, drives a 1991 Ford Ranger that can fly and float and do Pirate-y things. With it, he collects different trinkets of art from the creative world and sells/shows them at the Oceanside Flea Market.

For back story and Character list, go here.

Ep—6 The Many Ways in Which Honey Drips

Their eyes had long, hairlike fingers reaching out of them. Translucent with a yellowish tar hue, the fingers could not be seen against the backdrop of the dry suburban coastline, but they were felt.

Louie’s 1992 Jeep Cherokee sat parked on the Pacific Coast Highway bridge. He was behind the wheel with Manny in the passenger seat and Kevin in the back. An Alabaster DePlume tape played through the speakers. The cassette player clicked every handful of seconds. A swap meet churned below them in the Oceanside Harbor overflow parking lot. A couple of perched up alley cats, they observed the swap meet with both hisses and licks of indifference.

Their touching sight scurried across the skin of the observed. The swap meet workers felt the faint feeling of spider legs running across their tatted arms and the back of their sun-baked, fruit leathered necks. The sensation of the distant sight on them was too soft for a scratch or a swat and instead brought on slow investigative glances over their skin. The fantom touch returned often, and they kept checking, but could never identify the source of observing eyes. It forced some exchanged looks amongst them, but nobody verbalized the shared feeling. To the new and trendy swap meet crew, appearances remained their ruler, and nobody wanted to stand up to crazy.

Manny had been fiddling with loose items in the car between his passing glances. He found a tub of creatine under his cloth seat and began pouring some out on the back of his hand as they continued to rifle through what their eyes found.

“Stick on callouses.”

“They eat parfaits out of cast iron pans.”

“Subarus with knobby tires.”

“They give themselves bed head after waking up with perfectly combed hair.”

“Cloth pants only.”

“They pat when they hug.”

“Septum rings.”

“Fucking septum rings.”

Manny snorted the line of creatine on the back of his fist. Louie looked at him and held in the laugh that Manny mined for.

“Suppository would have been more efficient,” said Louie.

Manny nodded and looked back down over the bridge. He threw his thumb in that direction and made a long falling cartoon whistle sound, finishing it with a splat.

“There’s your efficiency,” said Manny. He wiped off the back of his hand, then pinched his nose and sniffled. “Can’t take the fun out of it, though.” He grabbed the tub and twisted in his seat to face Kevin behind him. “You want some?”

“Why?” Kevin rolled up his sleeve and flexed his bicep in Manny’s face. “Does it look like I need it?”

“I said did you want some,” said Manny, placing the tub back down at his feet.

Kevin leaned back. He looked through the car seat headrest for a while before looking back down at the swap meet. He knocked his knuckle against the car glass. “Nobody likes to do tasks on a Saturday. Their cloth pants will lose their softness. Their blond streaks in their hair will fade. And the butterflies will get tired and all the shoppers will land back on us and our Sundays, where bargains belong.”

Louie looked at Kevin over his shoulder. His chin led with his crown tilted back. Air rushed in through his nostrils. “I’m not worried.”

The Whisky Story Time song came on. The speakers kept clicking. Attendance at their flea market had plummeted. Their overflow of stock leaked out of their homes and cars. As they sat from their perch above the swap meet, the whys this had happened, why the swap meet workers came, why the shoppers chose to go there, snorted and prowled around them in the jeep. More of an unfortunate condition, an instinct, than a choice, they colored the whys threatening. And when they looked down on the swap meet market workers, they drew horns where their septum rings were.

Jo had handed the Alabaster DePlum tape to Louie right before he left to hunt down some trinkets in Myanmar with Mason. After Louie took it, Jo clamped his hands around his cheeks and smooshed his face together before yelling, “Jazz is back, baby!”

And it was true. It was there, playing on the bridge. And it helped pour out the creatine, helped them turn their heads, and allowed for some licking peace between their biblical judgments. The jazz injected play. It placed a comedy, made some dropout nihilist for the zoomed-out perspectives, and brought them down into the moment, into the cuddle puddle of the jeep parked on the bridge with all of its improvisations.

Louie found a straw in the door pocket. He tapped it on the shifter to break the paper wrapper free. Reaching between Manny’s legs, he grabbed the tub of creatine. He dumped out a pile of the powder on top of the steering wheel, carelessly letting clumps of it fall on his knees and the floor. Sticking the straw in his nose, he snorted through the creatine. He accelerated away after several quick karate chops on the horn.

An ease blanketed over the swap meet. The booth workers smiled without knowing the source. Percolating sweat retreated on their fruit leathered necks. Their skin was touched by nothing other than the soft sting of the salty ocean air. In one of the booths or in one of the parked cars or in one of the nearby condos, a Shintaro Quintet song came on.

Later that afternoon, both groups unknowingly convened together and chose to surf the same sets of waves breaking off the same south harbor jetty. The swappers flipped their septum rings up when they surfed so the flea market crew did not recognize them.

Manny rode as if people watched him from a bridge. He did not share waves. He unknowingly and indifferently stole a wave from one of the swappers. The swapper took the slight on the chin and watched with a marked indignation as Manny sprayed water off the back of the peeling wave. It was out of character for Manny, a surfer always aware of his fingerprints, to miss seeing him despite their proximity.

The ocean did have a large amount of loose floating seaweed, enough to catch fins and leashes and hairlike fingers. So Manny’s stolen wave had rationale—as did the septums and the overflowing stock. The whole lot, North County, fat on rationale, had enough to lay their heads down into Sunday, enough for the car speaker’s next click.

The waves must be checked before surfed. There must be a walk across the cobbled stones. There must be banter and debate. The view from the parking lot does not suffice. The cliff dust, the thirty minutes, the tide changing, the setting, all need the brush of calloused feet that come to enjoy them. All steps are obligatory. The surf spot has a specific name, but amongst them, they call it Poopers.

The rocks rolled under the waves, and the deep, marbled sound pushed up the jagged bluffs. The air glistened in a static mist from the thrashing salt water. Across the cobbles, Louie and Jo picked their way through with a pirate’s meandering step.

“You’ve seen those stories written about us?” asked Louie.

A set of waves came in the distance. Jo studied them rolling in. The first smaller wave peeled to the left. The second and third had two peaks that pulled the center wave down in a single crash.

“Yeah, it’s kind of funky,” replied Jo.

“It’s you, right?” asked Louie.

Jo’s foot slid off of a matte purple cobble and he had to quick step to keep his balance. After he recovered, he stopped and looked over at Louie. He smiled and held in his bottom lip underneath his front teeth, “not me.”

Jo stopped there, not quite to where they usually paddled out and sat on top of the rocks. He kicked out his feet. Louie sighed and sat, crossing his legs next to him. He picked up some smaller stones, letting them slip through his fingers.

“Not you. Okay. Sure. I believe you. Not you. Not you at all,” said Louie.

“Just somebody who really knows us, I guess.”

“Not you.”

“Not me.” Jo picked up a pebble and lazily tossed it in front of them. “I told you. I’ve been working on my book and on my poems.”

“I gotta find one of those.” Louie tossed a pebble of his own that plopped and ricocheted back towards them before sitting back on his hands. Jo smiled and waited for Louie’s imminent jab. “I needa find me some ambiguous project, something that halts inquiry, something that camouflages all my bullshit.”

Jo laughed and leaned forward, pulling on his calves. They sat for a while. The sun baked their necks. Pelicans traced an unbroken wave. A squirrel ran down to give the cobbles a sniff before retreating to the foot of the cliffs. And it was a bad late morning to be a throwable pebble.

After a while, Jo reached out toward Louie, holding something in his hand. “Here. Proof. My bullshit has the camouflage of a peacock.”

Louie opened out his hand. It was a poem Jo had written titled young sand.

disclaimer: this is a DIY comfort manual which sometimes can cause symptoms such as the throwing of Molotov cocktails and the urge to kiss somebody you don’t know

scrape a handful of people off of some random sewer walls (must be random)

place their brown blonde and balding on a large granite boulder

now give it three pats on the top of its head and say nice sand

let the mixture sit

the randomness of their meeting will make them lighter

how they never should have shared a seat together

will take the weight off their bones

and make the large hard boulder two-ply comfy

wait longer and then much too long

until they soften into a puddle

until the young sand boulder ages

and through the lapidary of chance

it presses through their toes

The waves must be checked. There must be a walk across the cobbles. There must be banter and debate. The view from their parked cars does not suffice. All steps are obligatory. They call the surf spot Poopers.

Flea market morale held at the apex. A dull shock ran through the dissipated lot. Some vendors packed up and left. Others lingered and did triage on their fat stock. The afternoon weather was sunny and unnoticeable. Wrappers and flea market debris trembled on the pocked asphalt, begging for a gust from the ocean breeze.

“Dressed-up words don’t make the fleas go away,” said Manny. He and Mason sat on Jo’s booth couch, with Jo lying on the rug on the floor at their feet. They unwound from the day’s barter.

“Emm,” said Mason as he rocked forward, readjusting in his seat. “Yeah, this isn’t a tea party.” Mason blinked cheek to brow. “What even is a swap meet?”

Manny rolled his inner lip between his teeth and picked at one of the callouses on his hand. “Who knows. A guy walked by my booth with a brand-new poncho hoodie. Still creased. Not one of mine. He looked full of creatine and internet forums if that tells you anything.”

Mason moved to his elbows on his knees. He bounced his leg and folded his hands. He flicked glances between Manny and his bony fingers and to Jo. “Should we do anything? I mean, we were here first.”

“Mmm, do something. Sure, I might have to find new work. Maybe I’ll start collecting and training fleas. Sell it to salted-up people like you,” said Manny.

“Go where the market flows,” said Jo from the ground while he leafed through some papers.

Mason opened up his hands. They gesticulated and churned as he spoke. “Saturdays don’t even make sense. That’s the day to forget. The day to purge. And then Sunday is the day to prepare, to brace for what you tried to forget.” Mason sat back into the couch cushions and pulled his ankle over his knee. “Who wants to do tasks on a Saturday?”

Manny turned to Mason. “Amen! But why the fire, Mace? You’re not the one losing cash.”

Mason's shoulders rolled back. He looked around and pushed himself further up with the armrest. “Principal. Plus, I had some ideas to open up my own booth. But now, I’m not so sure with these swappers running at the harbor.”

“Yeah, now, your idea actually has to be good,” said Manny.

“Do you think it’s because they’re catching people just going to the beach? With us up here in the valley. People don’t come here unless to come here,” said Mason with a bobbing head and a finger pointed down. “I just don’t get them. I don’t understand.”

Manny reached over towards Mason. He placed his hand with his long fingers on his shoulder, “Where you going to put it?” He started pushing and pulling on Mason, making him rock. “Huh? It’s gotta go somewhere. Where're you going to put it?”

Mason swatted off Manny’s hand with a chuckle. “I dunno. Need to hit the waves,” he said with a flare of the nostrils.

“Constructive,” said Manny. “That will show the swappers what’s up,” He leaned to the edge of the couch onto his feet and cast his head directly over the top of Jo’s

After giving Manny a quick glance around the loose papers that Jo held, he started ruffling through them quickly. He stopped when he found the paper he searched for. It was a poem by Adrienne Rich. Crossing his ankles, exaggerated and unruly, he recited:

Stone by Stone I pile

this cairn of my intention

with the noon’s weight on my back

exposed and vulnerable

across the slanting fields

which I love but cannot save

from floods that are to come;

can only fasten down

with this work of my hands,

these painfully assembled

stones, in the shape of nothing

that has ever existed before.

A pile of stones: an assertion

that this piece of country matters

for large and simple reasons.

A mark of resistance, a sign.

Jo placed the stack of papers down by his hip and put his hands on his belly and let his eyes blur.

Manny bowed his head for a moment looking down at his feet before turning toward Mason, “Let’s surf?”

Looking out toward the distant dry hills, Mason’s lips peeled open. He touched the edge of his lips with his tongue. A cellophane wrapper shook against the awning post. He looked over to Manny and widened his eyes, sucking in air through his teeth before standing up.

Jo drove his 1991 Ford Ranger straight into the harbor. The whole flea market gang braced against door panels and B-pillars and grabbed at whatever their hands could find. They never really know where they're going when Jo picks them up, but none of them expected the Pacific Ocean.

"Ay, we giving this fruit to Poseidon?" said Manny as he looked through the salty foam dripping down the car window.

Jo shook the shifter to find neutral. Turning to the backseats, Jo looked at Mason. "Mace, can you reach through the window and grab the bag."

Mason obeyed with wide eyes and reached through the back window into the truck bed and pulled in a plastic bag of fruit. He'd never been in a floating 1991 Ford Ranger. They dropped off the blood oranges to the harbor bar that likes to put them in their bloody marys before continuing to bob along through Oceanside harbor. Kevin sat in the back with a jumpy chuckle as he watched the cars driving parallel to them on the dry road. In the other back corner, Manny mumbled a melodic set of curse words around his accepted fate. Sitting in the front, Louie looked out distantly and massaged the corners of his mouth to corral an unruly smile. As they passed the final jetties of the harbor and moved out to sea, Mason sat up in his middle seat for an obligatory check of the waves.

Jo sat with his bare left foot on the dash and with his wrist bone resting on the gently vibrating shifter knob. As North County continued to lose its definition behind them, their hands pulled and played with the cloth seat threads and picked up and put down the random loose items inside the cab.

"Ye Jo-ster, I can't help but notice, we're pointed toward the horizon," said Kevin.

"Is that what you see?" replied Jo.

Mason sat forward and poked his head between the two passenger seats to look further out. Jo looked over to Louie and then passed his eyes over the others in the back.

"France. We're going to France."

"Muuther fucker," said Manny as he gave a laughing shout.

Louie's shoulders bounced as he broke into a manic giggle. Mason turned to look through the back window toward the ever-thinning strip of land.

"Boyys time," said Kevin, who nodded while looking through Jo's backrest.

"Exactly, Kev," said Jo.

"But this thing does fly," said Kevin. "And we're going further west."

"First. Impressive map skills, Kev. Second. I just prefer to sail sometimes, ya know? There's something peaceful, something correct, something wholesome about moving by the power of the wind. So quiet. Makes you feel connected and remember how big the world is."

"Yeah, I can make the walk to my shitter feel big if I drag myself by my tongue," said Manny as he kicked his knee up against the front seat, slouching back.

Kevin looked in the bed of the truck to confirm what he already knew. "There's no sail you kook."

It was true there was no sail, but they went on at sailing pace. They headed south and fished when they found seaweed patties and surfed when they found waves. When they reached El Salvador, they drove back onto land and fattened up on pupusas before crossing into Honduras and heading back out to sea. They had moments of mania and moments of sanity. Jo brought only one album to play on cassette: "A Shaw Deal" by Geologist, D.S., which played on repeat and tested the spans of the ocean. They whiplashed through days of sobriety and days of rum benders. On the coast of Africa, Manny caught a Sarpa Salpa (“dream fish" in Arabic) that has psychedelic symptoms when consumed and is multiplied by twelve when mixed with rum and Salvadorian hash and too much sunshine. After they ate it, Kevin lay on his stomach on the truck hood. He pressed his chin into the metal and let his eyes get lost in the web of refracting ocean light. Manny went up on the roof with Mason and a guitar. Together, while Mason drummed on the steal and sang high-pitched and raspy, they wrote a nice, deranged little song. After Jo ate the fish, he slept for four days, so Louie had to drive. But Louie was also high, and when he drove, he thought he was back in California driving on the 395 on the way up to Mammoth Mountain. And so when sobriety finally seeped back in, they found themselves amongst ice caps, completely lost. Unsure of what pole they were at, they bobbed around for a few days before eventually meeting an outgoing Beluga whale who led them south along the coast of Norway and gave them further instructions on how to get to France. Ultimately, the trip took forty-seven days and an entire paragraph to happen. And not a single one of them got scurvy.

They landed at the coastal French city of Les Sables d'Olonnes. When they arrived, they kissed the ground and skipped along the boardwalk and dined on wine and oysters and the faces of strangers. They slept the night directly on the large sand beach. In the morning, they surfed and ate breakfast and bought cigarettes before hitting the road.

The clean-cut fields and lazy rolling hills and cicada songs stole their words for the beginning of the drive. They took in the sceneries and impressions and forgot how to say where are we going. After an hour or so, with a wand's wave of baguette through the cabin, Louie asked, "What's up with France?"

"I don't know, but they hate consonants," replied Jo.

Manny said, "Yeah, we've been coming here a lot lately."

Jo drummed on the steering wheel. "What's up with France. Well, can feral men be domesticated?" Nobody responded. "We’ll find out. Plus, I dig Paris. It reminds me of an expanded flea market. All of it is packed in tight, fractal. You can go from Beijing to Sri Lanka to Dakar to Paris all in a twenty-minute walk." Some of them nodded softly to themselves while they kept their eyes on the passing countryside. "But we're not going to Paris."

"Bombay, Bangkok, Medellin—those places are packed in tight," said Kevin after a while.

"Feral. And…” Jo let go of the wheel and twisted all the way around in his seat to face Kevin. Louie kept his legs crossed and casually reached over to steer from the passenger seat. "I'm here to buy something for my booth. It's called free dental insurance. Next trip, we can take your Tacoma though. You'll probably need to find new things to pawn."

They traversed the countryside and stopped in the Rosnay region in the small town of Le Bouchet. The area was in the middle of the "empty diagonal" (the flyover states version of France). To the boys coming from days at sea with nothing but their imaginations, the emptiness bustled. Everything, the cobbled roads jostling steps, the churches whispering out to the meadows where livestock nuzzled, the small lakes catching bird song, filled their starved sensations.

Jo drove them up to a park to stop for a picnic. Sprawling out of the truck, Manny and Kevin ran off to look at some curious mules standing in a corral. The others followed Jo up to a stone building. They entered a gift shop where they perused around, thumbing through books and trinkets, before going upstairs.

Jo had visited the small, rural gallery before. Dark ceramic sculptures sat around the open yellow room. A callow wonder stitched through each of the pieces. Created by Joëlle Gervais, the works ranging from pigs to bunnies to children, induced skips and twirling steps to its observers. Louie held his elbow behind him and spent meaningful time with each sculpture. Mason bounced around irregularly and dribbled out commentary. Jo walked straight up to the one he planned to bring back home with him.

Three ceramic girls sat on a bench with swinging legs and open stares. Normally, Jo stalked art, tiptoeing up to it with pacing steps. He remembered how he hopped right up to this piece when he first saw it. The girls' gaze reminded him of how he used to look through the car window in his youth, full of senseless questions and empty of knowing.

As he carefully plucked the piece off of its small yellow shelf, he looked out of the gallery window. Down in the corral, Manny hugged the neck of a mule as it ran with rabid kicks in an effort to buck him off. Kevin gave chase behind, bent and crippled with laughter.

When they all gathered back up for their picnic lunch, the sculpture of the girls sat in the middle of the park table. None of them objected as they tore baguettes in all the wrong ways and ate cheese crust and took apple bites out of sticks of saucisson and loaded up on their company in the unbounded air.

Way zoomed in on the dry Sunday back of North County, a kaleidoscope flea market folded and shifted in its haggling and exchanging of items. A flanneled and hatted man named Kevin pierced through the commotion with a determined click to his knees that comes from somebody who expects something for free.

Word on the street was Jo had a hot new song that makes people wiggle and bow their heads and cross their legs real tight. Kevin wanted to use the song as a part of a plan he’d been scheming about all week.

“Ahh, fuck. What the hell, man—you weird me out when you do this shit,” said Kevin as he entered Jo’s booth.

An opossum sat on the shelf of books and Jo was bending over, mumbling to it. The opossum looked at Kevin and gave it a smug look that said I bet you don’t know how to spell. After a lift of its pink nose, it turned and disappeared behind the books.

Jo stood up slowly and faced Kevin. He wore steampunk goggles and an open Hawaiian T-shirt over black running shorts.

“I was just asking if it liked the food scraps better when this lot used to be an old drive-in movie theater,” said Jo.

Kevin blinked softly a couple of times before a quick thrash of his head. His hand flopped in front of him at elbow height. “Do you have it for me?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Jo. He stood for a while there with no effect to his words and just looked out through his dark, smudged goggles to the surrounding flea market and to the distant hills cupping the valley.

Kevin raised his hand to dab the formed sweat on his hairline and broke the stress of the silence, “If you stopped talking to things like opossums, maybe a girl like her would be into you.” Kevin had a booth selling dental insurance and vague extravagant cruise vacation packages to different parts of Baja. At last week’s flea market, a girl opened up a booth next to him who makes her own hats and clothes and small pillows. She has high cut bangs and an array of tattoos and she makes people laugh uncertainly with her third eye banter and her stare that never budges. Kevin usually didn’t go for girls like her, but he lost power to the cut-off black shorts she liked to wear and the midriff she liked to show. He wanted to play the song on his speaker and use it as an icebreaker. “Jesus christ, you’re a tripper. Earth to Jo-ster. Can you get the song, please?”

“Yeee,” replied Jo. He tiptoed through his booth, holding the corner of his Hawaiian T-shirt balled up in his hand behind him. He bent down over his cassette-filled old wooden milk crate and started rummaging through. He put the songs in cassettes because it fit the flea market aesthetic better and made the songs more sharable and holdable when written in stories.

The song he’d been passing around was called “Better Weather” by the artist Danika. As he had explained, and as Kevin had ignored, the song must be listened to loudly without other ambient noise. Jo viewed the song as a wedge for opening the overlooked creases of life with its loping beat and swirling falling-snowflake melody. He did not know anything about Danika but could feel her visceral disappointment if her song were to be used to interrupt a witty girl from selling her crafts.

Jo knew exactly where the song was but rummaged for effect. Knowing Kevin would come for it, he had taken the sleeve off the song earlier that morning and placed it over “Play” by David Banner. It’s a song that Jo hoped Kevin would blast loudly and interrupt his entire triangle of the flea market.

“Oh, there she is,” said Jo, plucking out the cassette and dragging the moment on. Slowly working his way to the front of the booth, he held the cassette out, “There you go Kev. Lather up.”

Not even Jo’s drawn-out tone was enough of a hint to Kevin of the sleight of hand. Jo looked at him curiously as he took it with a quick wave and disappeared into the stream of passing shoulders. He found it difficult to believe Kevin’s faith in him, but as the flea market folded into its next scene, he let it be and supposed Kevin just couldn’t see clearly with the high-cut bangs in front of his face.

***For more about featured artist Danika, click here

Rules don’t apply inside the Oceanside Flea Market. People sell and eat finery and drugs and dance with critters and do things out of accordance of laws and physics. Some of the vendors are friends. One of them, Jo, drives a 1991 Ford Ranger that can fly and float and do Pirate-y things. With it, he collects different trinkets of art from the creative world and sells/shows them there at the Oceanside Flea Market. '

Ep.1

Louie stopped at the entrance of Jo’s booth with a clear glass bottle in his hand. He gently rolled his head and shoulders to the music playing. Jo didn’t look up. He sat next to the green, floral couch in a folding camping chair in the back of his booth with a book in his hand. “Whatchya reading?” asked Louie.

Jo looked up. In the sight of Louie, he bowed his head slightly to the side and his mouth broke open a little in a way that said hello my dear sweet bastard friend. “Nothing now,” Jo replied with a shoving smile.

Louie stared back and gave a couple of knocks on the bookshelf with the bottle. Clear fluid with a slight blueish hue sloshed around. The flea market voices of reason and barter and debate percolated under the marine layer around them, giving the short standoff some static.

“Get in here Lews,” Jo said with a wave of his hand.

Louie danced and tiptoed around the ceramics and stacks of paintings and cassettes and piles of stained papers and random stripped bolts and kept bobbing to the music and through Jo’s flee market booth that was somewhere between fifteen and forever feet long. Once he made it to Jo, he stepped over him with a passing hand on his sitting shoulder before throwing himself on the couch.

“Do I get a commission if you sell this?” Louie threw a thumb toward the old cassette player that played the Exuma, the Obeah Man album he had shown Jo a few weeks earlier.

“If I get commish for your tomatoes,” replied Jo as he folded his book and placed it in his lap.

“Oh, yeah?” replied Louie while untwisting the cap from the clear glass bottle.

“Yeah, I pee in your garden sometimes and flick my fingernails and boogers into it.”

Louie smiled and handed Jo the open bottle. Jo took it and brought it to his nose with a quick sniff. His eyebrows and lips peeled back, trying to run away from his nose.

“Hee, heeey,” Jo wheezed.

Once his face snapped back, he looked at his wrist at a watch that wasn’t there and looked back at Louie. Louie held his cheek in his hand, with strands of his dark hair falling off his forehead. He looked at Jo with skillfully bored eyes. Jo took a swig. After he swallowed he pulled his lips back and gave a couple of quick, ticking breaths.

“Just traded it for a bunch of radishes,” said Louie through Jo’s wincing.

“Mezcal?” asked Jo as he returned the bottle to Louie with a twisted face.

Louie didn’t answer or move for the bottle. He just rolled in his lips and bounced his eyes from Jo and to the clear, blueish fluid. “It’s 8:30 in the morning. I’m not drinking that.”

Jo sat back as a small smile fought its way through his sigh. He placed the bottle and the book of Japanese death poems he was reading on the ground before crossing his legs and lacing his fingers around his knee. Louie noticed the book as he placed it down. Jo liked to use the Japanese death poems as a net whenever his thoughts turned a little rambunctious. For whatever reason, the intermittent haikus of Zen monks begging for more life kept his thoughts from straying too far.

“Mace did the grossest thing to me today,” said Jo, referring to their friend, Mason.

“Yeah, I can tell. You look like shit,” answered Louie.

“The dude handed me his brain. His gray fleshy brain. With puppy eyes, he pointed to a hole in it and asked me to fill it…with a pretty please.”

Louie lifted himself and reached into the back pocket of his loose jeans and pulled out a zip-lock bag with a grinder, weed, and some rolling papers inside. The vegetable booths on a Sunday were a less welcome place with all the bickering seagulls and people with opinions.

“Did you take a bite out of it?” asked Louie.

Jo stared at his knee. Louie laid out a paper on his thigh and started twisting the grinder.

“He asked me for a book,” Jo said.

Louie froze for a second. “That’s what you want, right?” He flexed his eyes toward the overstuffed bookshelf in the front of the booth.

They met Mason surfing through a mutual friend. He was a little younger than them. They liked him because he laughed when others didn’t and he had excitement for things when they didn’t and he had an originality that helped them fight boredom.

As time went on, Mason started spending more time around Jo and his flea market booth of collected art. At first, it was because the booth seemed to catch things like mezcal and weed and fun people, but slowly, a genuine curiosity about the booth’s contents developed. After marinating in Jo’s weird microcosm, he started to see the creative world as something more than just an accessory to his strutting style.

Mason asked for the book earlier that morning while helping unload things from Jo’s magical 1991 Ford Ranger. Jo knew the question went beyond making small talk about props, so he told him he would think of something.

And so Jo spent the rest of the morning thinking about it and wrestling with how much weight to give the decision. He understood that Mason wanted to stop living by the seat of his pants, to stop ending up in places and with things. He wanted to start participating and engaging, to start thinking for himself.

It was kind of the whole point of Jo’s booth. He craved a community fat of bleeding, articulating minds. He started his flea market collection of weird creations as a way to bolster and celebrate and contribute to the arts, to the parts of humanity he cherished most.

Louie and Jo exchanged books and music and art all the time. But their momentum was set. They met each other while spiraling way off in the weeds with their brains already bashed open. There wasn’t a lot to change. But with Mason, a well-placed book could completely alter his trajectory. It was well-timed books that built Jo’s presence there.

“What’s the weapon of choice when somebody wants to have a look?” asked Jo.

“The Alchemist is the easy answer,” Louie replied as he carefully crumpled the rolling paper around the crutch and ground buds.

“Yeah. It’s hard to say anything bad about that book,” said Jo as he let go of his leg and shifted his weight further back in his chair, crossing his arms. “I just think the job is done. Mace has already made the decision to go on his little journey. The Alchemist is better for helping people make that first step. But our little Mace is already asking questions. He’s ready to run. Poor guy.”

Louie lifted his eyes towards Jo as he licked the paper and sealed the joint. He had a nudging lift to his cheeks and brow.

“Must be something in your tomatoes,” said Jo.

Louie flicked the joint around in his fingers. “What about Dharma Bums?”

“It’s good, but I think he might get lost in the weeds with that one. He doesn’t need any help consuming or humping things.”

After lighting his joint, Louie made a testy inhale while looking at a shopper lazily glancing over a box of drawings on the ground by the booth's entrance. “Just give him Thoreau if you want sober fun.”

“Not Thoreau,” said Jo, twisting his body more to face Louie. “Hesse. Siddhartha. If somebody really wants to fight themselves, get to know who’s behind the wheel, then Siddhartha—that’s the weapon. I think.”

Louie’s joint blossomed red. He exhaled and then held it towards Jo, who distractingly waved it off. Louie leaned back into the couch. “I remember when you gave me that book. It made me slow way down for a couple of days. I started talking to seaweed and shit.” Louie laughed before lifting the joint to his lips again.

“Yeah, and I feel like it’s well-known enough but deserves more somehow, you know? Like it should be up there with The Alchemist as one of the books that shuffles a young spirit’s hair best,” said Jo before readjusting in his chair and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know, though. There’s some sneaky bastards in there.” Jo tapped his temple with his pointer finger. “A part of me thinks I’m a coward, and I’m just giving myself these justifications because I know I will sleep easier at night knowing it’s only the effects of Siddhartha rattling through Mace’s head. Worse that can happen is he’ll start humming to trees.”

“Or he’ll call you god,” said Louie, leaning into Jo’s worry.

“Heh,” said Jo in half chuckled sigh. “I prefer mommy.”

“I’m kidding. Let go. You’re choking this thing, man. If not you, somebody else,” said Louie.

Jo lifted his head and smiled, his eyes drowsy and knowing. Louie clicked his teeth and smirked back before something caught his attention near the front of the booth.

Standing up quickly, Louie stretched out his large arms with the smoke of his joint disappearing into the overcast skies. “What’s up, Mace! You got a rat's nose. I knew you would smell this thing.”

Mason picked his way through the booth. Louie stepped past Jo, placing a hand on his shoulder before reaching the joint out to Mason’s eager hands.

***if you decide to purchase any of the books mentioned above, please remember to support your local bookstore. if you live in the US, you can search for yours here. HAGS

Welcome to Jo, a never-ending parking lot hang. This is a banter factory, a saga, an epic, a never-ending series of stories that resonates like a raspy laugh.

Each story, each episode, is a crossover where literature meets other art forms (music, painting, sculpture, etc). Think of these luminous pages as a curated gallery, and the stories are the museum, the brick, the cold cement, the forced walk through the souvenir shop. (Even if the building sucks, the art and displays will provide some worthwhile substance).

Come for the art or come for the prose, but in a world of escapism, mainly come for the palate change, for a craving of the present.

Character List and Back Story

Rules don’t apply to the Oceanside Flea Market. People sell and eat items and drugs and dance with critters and do things out of accordance of laws and physics.

One of the vendors, Jo, drives a 1991 Ford Ranger that can fly and float and do Piratey things. With it, he collects expressions and trinkets of art from the creative world and sells/shows them at his booth. Between the commerce, friendships form, banter boils, and unhinged adventures spill out.

Characters:

Louie

Vegetable shop vendor. Dark brown and wavy hair. Rather ambiguous in both appearance and in action. Prefers to sleep on extra-firm mattresses or sometimes the ground.

Surfs with great skill and style but he’s a purist and only surfs shortboards even when the waves are fat and slow and beg for a fat and slow board.

Deeply pained and lustful for the human experiment. Often forgets himself as an individual. Believes in autonomy. People label him mysterious and paint him however they want him to be. And he likes to play with those expectations.

Manny

Black Hair. 6’2, but on Tinder, he’s 6 foot. Sells goods from Sinaloa and Mazatlan, where he’s from and where he frequents.

By far the best surfer. And musician. And trivia player. But he only likes to do some of those things.

He runs on laughs and will do anything for them. He will eat through a wall if forced to sit still (sober). Hasn’t provided an explanation for himself since ‘07

Jo

Sells, trades, and collects trinkets of expression (art, music, literature, etc.). Mouse brown, curly/wavy hair. Taller than he looks.

Hard to tell if he’s deranged or lucid, if he’s broken or crafted, if he’s intentional or haphazard. Believes the creative world is the spice of life, the beat of humanity. And he’s passionate about enhancing, spreading, and contributing to that world.

A versatile but unfocused surfer. Chases barrels and extra sandy foam balls.

Mason

Wirey build. Blonde Hair. Doesn’t have his own booth yet, but appreciates everything flea market

Takes in life with two thumbs up. Obsessed with Mexican food but only ever orders bean, rice, and cheese burritos. An exceptional illustrator. Borderline ambidextrous.

Very good all-around surfer. Has moments of absolute awe. Potential to be better than the rest.

Kevin

Light brown/streaky blonde hair. Runs a revolving door of quick money-making booths (dental insurance and cruise trips to Baja currently). Oddly good at karaoke.

Values his friends and family above everything. Has a best mile time of 6:47. Balls up his toilet paper before use.

Surfs in short bursts. Prefers to ride bigger boards but will never (out of principle) walk the nose.