No actual programming is necessary.

Bob and his matronly wife Mindy, crocheting project perpetually in her lap, sit nightly in twin light blue Laz-E-Boys with homemade armrest covers pinned in place, finding great humor in and making constant idle commentary on the commercials in between as broadcast on the dense console TV that rests heavily on a clear plastic floor mat, protecting the aging plush from unsightly furniture dents.

“Well if that ain’t the darndest thing,” says Mindy sweetly in response to a miniature blender that’s activated by pushing repeatedly on the lid.

Bob responds in scripted step.  “I swear…,” he says shaking his head in apparent disbelief and chuckling dryly, “…what will they come up with next?”

As they continue to genuinely marvel at the televised advertisements, at times flipping through the channels in search of more, their slightly more modern son Clint disrupts the dialogue by entering abruptly in dusty coveralls reeking of rural chores, waiting for supper to be served.  “What…?”  he says in response to their disinterested gesture of acknowledgement, now staring back in an almost accusatory way.  “You know…,” he continues, “…one might get the impression from looking at the two of you that you just got TV out here on the farm”. 

When forced to go into the city on weekend nights to satisfy his wife Gretchen’s annoying and sometimes contrived cultural and culinary ambitions, Clint naturally transposes his mocking demeanor to more urban landscapes, especially when tricked into buying overpriced tickets to modern art exhibitions which have always failed to impress him.

“This here?” he points in response to his attention being called to a large scrap-metal sculpture standing in hefty angular awkwardness on the poured cement floor of an exhibit hall.  “This here looks like an old cattle catcher I got sitting out behind the tool shed back home”.  People dressed in tight black clothing with sculpted facial hair and what he describes as weirdo haircuts look at him and roll their eyes.  He’s one of those people.

Clint’s sarcastically convinced he could become a goddamned millionaire if only he was willing to showcase the old farming implements lying around his property.  “I don’t mean to sling no bullshit here so as to misrepresent myself, but if it puts food on the table then I’m more than happy to have a bunch of snooty folks walk around my place for $5 a pop to call all the rusty crap I got laying around whatever the hell they want to”.

He pauses to adjust both a disintegrating toothpick and his Pioneer Seed cap.

“Hell…,” Clint rambles on, “…I’d even consider selling the stuff to them for a decent price so long as they can haul it back to town themselves on top of their damn Volvos or in the beds of manicured pickups”.

Pointing to the growth on his head to pacify all the curious stares, Tony states, “This here, that’s my little head complete with eye sockets and a bump for a nose, an imperfection or crease for a mouth, and…,” he pauses for a brief moment for effect,“…a mind of its own”.

Part of the problem is that people don’t want to look that closely to judge the accuracy of Tony’s description and his recent qualifying remarks do nothing but to bolster this stance, meaning that those he hoped to bring closer to understanding and acceptance are now standing further away.

Tony’s older brother Ricardo had a more compelling approach, but then again it was more of a daunting defense mechanism he’d crafted in response to the way in which especially bold bystanders ogled his wife at galas and charity auctions around town, often commenting on her relative beauty. “Exquisite” they’d say in feigned aristocratic voices, kissing their manicured fingertips as if having just eaten the finest pasta dish in existence.

“Ah…,” he’d respond in a diplomatic tone, thoughtfully touching his own chin partially out of spite and to dirty her image in the eyes of others, “…but you have not yet seen the large hairy birthmark on her right foot”.  Abrupt reactions are spurred by this comment which is just what he wants, a quality that Tony has always admired and tried to emulate.

“Yes…,” Ricardo knows the phrase ‘large hairy birthmark’ evokes shock, “…it is almost as if this dainty foot that you imagine started life as a hoof and eventually grew to a human form but not before leaving its livestock print on my heart”.

To Tony’s recurring astonishment, those who are bold enough to do so rarely comment more than once on the relative beauty of Ricardo’s wife, fearing that he has the power to transform animals into women, or that she may be related to a family of spiteful Minotaurs.

 

Alan is outside the building in the early morning verbally forecasting an oppressive heat for later in the day, enjoying a morning cigarette with his vending machine coffee and looking forward to another eternity where his minty Nicorette gum will taste like stale beer and the acrid scent of his dead grandmother’s carpet along with all the odiferous trimmings of last night in the thick of a pool hall.  He’ll drag and drag out the inevitable by making several subsequent trips to this same spot on the pavement to yellow his fingers in anticipation of having the same mist and reality follow him into the morrow.

Others with gravely voices and smelling of a rustic taste will offer commentary on the heat as well while not attempting to distance themselves from cliché or adage.  Alan nods his stained beard to dissuade persistence and gives an understanding glimpse of burnt marshmallow teeth, for putting up with inane banter is the price of being a professional and the true cost of being a smoker.

 Across town and heading into the thick of a swampy afternoon, Shantel drags herself, optimistically, to the door again to face the drone of cicadas, prickly brown grass, and helium bomb sun threatening to kill or approximate all of these external factors while at the same time satisfying the strange insect, landscape, and heat source hidden from sight by the cracked tan of her hide.

It’s there near the weather-checked parking lot that Liz joins her to talk about how fucking bad she needs this.  They inhale with a shared sense of purpose to vent, to run tongues over heat, and to paint their insides with a learned residue.  Squint-provoking warmth soon clears the fog that billows from the brown filmed interior of their lips like stinky phantasms, escaping nowhere, never clouding the atmosphere except through repetition.  Yet the haze in their minds is already returning as the nicotine colleagues take turns kicking at the faux gravel of the stand-alone ash tray before entering the excessively cool halls of outdated and speckled office carpet that beat a worn path back to the same place they’ll be returning here from in the next 30 to 45 minutes.

 As evening dawns and takes root in a historic neighborhood, the coolness has now occasionally blown through the vacant walls of porches like a vapor invader, but still there lingers doubt in Karen’s mind about compulsion, compulsiveness, indecision, and question of ample supply, burning as hot now as desire in the yellowed flesh of her cheeks for another taste of the dirty snack, the purpleness of exposed veins deprived of oxygen, or the softer colors associated with a good night kiss.

Anne of Green Gremlins drives by as the orange horizon becomes more fabric like, honking and extending her pale hand out the window in a gesture of greeting followed by a hoarse shout.  The glowing cherry from her menthol blows into the colors of dusk, prompting rhetorical questions about the location of her damn matches.

Karen sits waiting for something on the bench swing that descends on chains from the tongue-in-groove ceiling, but she’s not sure what.  Perhaps relief from this pang will finally be smitten into attrition by extensive exposure to fresh air.  But not wanting to risk that sickly feeling again, she places another ‘after dinner mint’ into a long black filter from back in smoking’s glory days, and draws on it fully in order to feel like a temporary celebrity.  But at least she’s politically correct about it.

Her smoke wafts upwards like family tradition through Aunt Ginny’s open bedroom window where she’s poised on the edge of the bed in a padded night coat inhaling with nostalgia, resisting change as firmly as the hardened Aqua Net that keeps her beehive upright.