Copyright Ken Pond

Chris and Sarah T. had come over early to watch schlocky movies. This is my reputation among my friends. Ol' Thomm can be depended on for something cringingly bad or bizarrely esoteric. I swear I love quality movies, but they are less convivial to talking through. I don't see the point of social activities where I must be silent. I am also not the person you want to invite to see a movie in your home, at least without asserting I need to behave myself.

We made it through The Killer Shrews, some of Noon Blue Apples (I can never deal with the concentrated psychotic ramble of whole, almost plotless movie), and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Amber suggested I order pizza -- an implicitly social food. They were not interested, having had a late lunch and possible plans to eat later.

Around six, they said that they were going to some purgatorial musical at Vassar, for which I envied them. At best, it would be a unique experience worth discussion. At worst, it would be a source of future mockery, an "Oh my gosh, I just remembered that time we watched some white girl breakdance and 80s rap to plead her case with Charon, the Ferryman of the River Styx."

I can deal with socializing that doesn't stretch into the night. I am apparently old now and Amber has me on a schedule where 11pm is "late." Still, I was prepared with ten more hours of weird movies if the occasion called for it. It is best to be overprepared.

I made my goodbyes, my promises that we would see one another soon without making more concrete plans than "You are coming to my anniversary party or I am disowning you." Then, I relaxed onto the loveseat and read a little more of The Trickster and the Paranormal. Another chapter completed and highlighted, I decided that Ken needed to get an ebook reader so we could discuss this, assuming he could get into it. (The book is dense, and so will be helpful for me in writing my novels, but might be intimidating to the layperson for whom "the psychic dimensions of UFO contactees as it applies to hauntings" isn't old hat.)

After asking what I mean by "ebook reader," Ken invites us to take a walk on the Strand in Kingston, or doesn't invite us and I assume an invitation because he is mentioning an activity to me. This may be a social narcissism. Why else would someone be mentioning future plans if not to include me in them? This slowly metamorphoses via a series of "Oh, I wasn't inviting, but since you mentioned it..." and "Oh, I wouldn't want to impose" into Amber and I going to their house to sit beside the fire.

I feel the urge to stay home. These plans would not have existed if I didn't decide to message Ken, and Amber and I has already socialized enough for one weekend. We watched several movies, damn it all. But I think, wouldn't I want to socialize with people on a day? Isn't that closer to the sort of life I ought to be leading? Wouldn't Thomm a decade ago have jumped at this?

Outside our apartment, Amber and I hear a roar in the sky. There is an intimidatingly close hot air balloon in the sky. I shout. They wave back. There is a festival for these occurring in Rhinebeck, but this is a miles off-course. Had we not decided to go to Holly and Ken's I would have missed this sighting, so I take it for a good omen.

Their neighbor, the judge, comes out and says that he saw our smoke signal that said we needed frozen margaritas. I was unaware smoke could be so eloquent. The three of them have some of the ivy green drink. As I am not supposed to have alcohol, I sip a little of Amber's. Ken cautions that it contains tequila, implying that Holly is an untested tequila drunk. Perhaps all her clothes will evaporate, or she will get into a street fight. We can't know.

We talk around the fire of things one talks about around a fire. Or, rather, within ten feet of the fire, as we eschew sitting on the grass or in supplied chairs, instead standing, then sitting, on pavement bordering their property. Ken has quit smoking, though I associate this pavement with his smoke.

"Is everything you write true?" Ken asks.

I consider my words, reminded of the duty of a memoirist to hold his audience's interest. "What I write the first time is pretty much true. When I put it in a book, I may goose it a little to make it a better and more coherent story."

"What he writes isn't always true," says Amber, her pouting lips begging to be kissed, a ravenous glint on in her eyes betraying her despite the night, clear that she wants to be in my arms and bed instead of considering the balance between objective truth and compelling narrative next to a basketball hoop. Oh, how she craves my touch, but she mustn't say it. Ken would be jealous, and then they would fight over me. Though Amber has trained with the Seven Sacred Masters, we cannot know that she would win. Holly is, after all, an untested tequila drunk.

"But is it emotionally true?" I ask. "Is it what it felt like?"

"It's true to Thomm," says Amber. "It is not necessarily true to me or to objective reality."

"And I'm the one writing it. If objective reality wants its perspective enshrined in posterity, it can start a twenty-year-old blog. Otherwise, what I write is the truth."

Being discussed in this way, the style of how I write, would ordinarily make me want to shrink into myself, but I am trying not to be bashful for my greatest passion. I don't love being discussed, but I do crave to be read. These things will have to go together.

Soon in Xenology: Writing. Summer. The Sheet.

last watched: Lucifer
reading: The Trickster and the Paranormal