In Which We Wade Into The Ocean And Try To Start Fresh Again

I Feel How You Look

by Alex Carnevale

We were born the adopted son of Pete and Trudy Campbell. We aged, but thinly.

We asked, "Should Don Draper throw a courtesy bang to the one-legged widow of the guy whose name he stole in the shit? Should Joanie get peeved off at her fiancee for pulling an Irreversible in her boss' office?"

Our teenage years were not notable, except when our mother forced us to suck on melting cool phalluses str8 out of the fridge.

Is American life all alienated, we surmised, letting our bodies drift among the waves? I don't want to end up signing my life away in a board meeting to a guy named Duck. I just don't. I miss Duck's dog. Shit, I miss Duck.

Women and minorities dump us on bus trips to protest their disenfranchisement, and we stand for it? It's lonely in that little office, Peg-Leg. It's damn lonely.

When we go to check on our vampire's resting place, nothing's there. We try but it makes our boner too big, too quickly. We prefer working with a margin for error.

When I was a young man, I met Roger Sterling. "You wouldn't be the kind of man to dump your wife the second she showed a wrinkle and refused to get a vaginal rejuvenation, would you?" I asked him. He stared me straight in the eyes and said, "No."

That was one way to handle the situation, Don. The other way is to start piling up the bodies.

Somewhere along the line, our daughter starts up with a gross dude. He's in advertising. Our daughter is barren, so we say it's all right.

Don Draper's daughter is on the phone. I don't care if she has an Emily Watson thing going on, I'm not taking her call.

It hurts to talk, breathe and sleep like this.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

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