(I have decided to write about myself from the only perspective which makes sense: Curious George.)

What is this I see? A tree? This is a very shaky, very short tree! But wait, this is not a tree! It is a man! Haha, hee-hee, I can be so silly, but I am really not silly, just curious! "Curious little monkey, you better watch out!" they tell me. But this shaky man is oh so curious and he scares me too. I would not eat his bananas if he were a tree. Maybe only one or two, but only out of curiosity, haha, hee-hee.

He is not an old tree. I mean man. Silly me! His hair is so brown like coconuts dipped in very brown ink. And he looks at paper with his eyes! Lots of papers! I have never seen so many papers, haha hee-hee! Papers like leaves covering everything! Is he a tree? He does not move much and is very quiet. Very curious, very curious... like me! I will make this funny man-tree my friend!

There is a time when I was not so curious. Scary George, they called me! Imagine that! "Scary George, let go of that diseased bat!" my friends would yell at me. Now I am just curious. You know me, always up to something!

La, la, la, if only my mommy could see my new friend! "George, leave that poor tree alone!" she would say. She never likes my friends! But oh, god, mom, does this poor pathetic-looking tree need me. It needs me to plant him someplace lush and fertile. It needs me to coo monkey songs to him. It just needs a little fucking help is all. Mom, just let me help him. Please.

The And*

 

* My childhood memories are colored with vivid images of sequined sombreros and pub brawls. Our family lived in the Union High School district, a poor Irish-Mexican ghetto not far from Woodland Hills (Tulsa's equivalent of Hell's Kitchen). Being neither Irish nor Mexican guaranteed the everyday prejudices my brother and I faced. Kids taunted us on the streets and at school, teachers ignored us. Despite the beatings and a minor skirmish involving a potato-peeler and a switchblade, Rudy and I managed each day magnificently, largely because of our two friends, Mike and Marc.
  When I first encountered Marc Arboreal, he was bandaging the wounds of a runaway chinchilla. Chinchillas are the softest animals in the world, but even they aren't as soft as the spot Marc reserves for animals and Republicans. With his soft demeanor and his ebullient laugh, he struck me as one of the few sensitive souls in the slum. Years later, Marc confessed that he had actually been taping fireworks to the chinchilla, but that was long after we had become close pals.
   Marc had an older friend named Mike Mason who played soccer on Rudy's team. Mike was the team captain and a natural athlete who could dribble the ball down the field like he was carrying it in his hands. In fact, he was regularly penalized for doing just that. Although Mike hardly let Rudy play a game, they got along famously off the field. The four of us became inseparable growing up, but the bliss of our impoverished younger years was terribly disrupted when my mother decided to move us a thousand miles away to the coastal town of Portenver.
  Little did I know that in leaving Marc and Mike behind, I was planting the someday dream of Me Head. We stayed in touch, first through letters, then through email. In some ways, the volumes of correspondence served to contort our writing skills into what they are today: confused, dilapidated constructs that barely make sense, even to us.
   My years away from Tulsa are a foggish drama that I'd rather not go into here (I did compose a short, misled "novellita" born from the chaos I encountered in my first year at ASU. It's called Syg's Nervous Breakdown, and there aren't any more copies available, I'm happy to say. In retrospect, I shouldn't have published it, it was too honest), but I eventually found my way back to Greencountry and launched Me Head (the journal) with the help of Marc, Mike, and a heckuva talented girl, Amber. A few months into the folly, we adopted one Jared Gilbert, our bigger-than-life intern. While it lasted, Me Head the Business was beautiful, largely because we made no money. It was an exercise in both generosity and massive debt accumulation. It was heaven.
  Of course it failed.
  But the heart-chakra of Me Head still radiates online and in a monthly Tulsa event called "Show Us Your Shorts." Marc and Mike manage the website and occasionally ask for my input. Jared left for South America and remains unheard from, and Amber has a little secret I'm not authorized to disclose right now.
  Here comes the humbling part: I'm laying low, eeking out a small existance as a parking lot attendant in downtown Tulsa. I spend hours each day in a tiny, white cell, watching the city roll and unfold before me. It's a job that picked me, I think. In the long lulls between cars, I'm inking article ideas, penning a few letters (mostly to Kate), and scratching out an idea for a bigger work. It gets lonely in my booth, but it isn't a loneliness born from isolation. That I can handle. It's a loneliness my brother left, one that I'm gradually making friends with, one that I can't ignore.