Learning to Live with Aliens

They call it the communications age: social media, YouTube, the Long Tail. There’s something for everyone on the Internet. If you’re into movie stars, athletes, or pirates, whatever it is, you can find your people.

I was never really into aliens. This wasn’t something I could really relate to, there was nothing for me to talk about when it came to aliens. I have never seen a UFO. I thought the stories of alien abduction came from the collective unconscious. The stories of the aliens performing medical experiments were psychic scars from the trauma of modern surgery. I am interested in the mysterious dimensions of reality, but aliens? The image of the little chalky-white humanoid with a big head and large black eyes was just another pop culture curio.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a cool movie, but it is just a movie. Harold, a friend of mine, wanted help producing science fiction webisodes about aliens from another dimension that come to earth, and I resisted the idea. I didn’t want to waste my time on fantasies. I enjoy science fiction movies and books, but I wanted to get connected to Portland. I figured that documentaries, even commercials, were a better direction. My buddy said, alright, if you help me with my sci-fi project, I’ll help you with your documentaries.

Sex Machines Are Weird

I go to the bathroom for some quiet and call Jane at work. It’s getting late now. I listen to the dial tone. Muffled voices and music playing in the living room. The light from the window is the only light in the bathroom. I look at my face in the mirror. There’s no answer. I open the bathroom door and a girl goes in after me. I go into the living room. Funk music plays on the stereo and a few people dance in the living room. I dance with them. The only person I know at the party says, “You look sad.”

“No,” I say to Mel. “I’m not sad.”

Mel has red hair. She’s tall and beautiful. I hesitate. She smiles at me.

“You look great,” I say. She catches my hand and pulls me into her.

“Thanks,” she says. I put both my hands down around her waist. She holds me and says, “This is awesome.”

“You think so?” I ask. She looks at me quizzically.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I agree. “This is awesome.” The room fills with people. Everyone starts dancing when James Brown comes on.

“Sex Machines are weird,” Mel says.

“Yeah,” I agree.

“It’s gross,” she says.

“You’re right,” I say.

“Are you in love?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say. “I love Jane.”

“But she broke up with you.”

“I know.”

“Do you love me?” she asks.

“Can I?” I ask.

“Why do you have to have permission to love me?” she asks.

“Because,” I say, “what if I love you and you don’t love me back?”

“Would you be sad?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I would be sad.”

“But how do you ever know if someone really loves you?”

“You just know,” I say. She leads me by the hand down the hall and into a bedroom. She steps into the room and turns to face me. I see her haloed in the streetlight through the curtains. I walk into her arms. She pulls me onto the bed and says, “I am bigger than you.”

“Oh,” I say.

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

“Admire you,” I say.

“Is that love?” she asks and rolls on top of me. Static sparks on the sheets. She gets up and says, “Wait.” She leaves the door open and I sit up on the bed. A water filter gurgles in the fishtank on a shelf. I look around the room and pick up a remote controller and point it at the fishtank. A school of little blue neon fish, and one in particular, swims up at a sharp angle. I push the power button and the fish turns. I get up to inspect it and notice my face on the glass. My eyes puffy and tired. I look like I’ve been crying. Mel comes in the room and shuts the door. I can’t see my reflection anymore.

The Official Fight

Okay, the house is a wreck. The walls fallen in and dust everywhere. An oversized man with no shirt on walks out of the bathroom and sits at the dining table. Across from him is a little girl. He rests his head propped up in his left hand. His biceps bulge. He makes a swirling motion with his right forefinger on the tabletop. There’s a goldfish bowl on the table. Two goldfish swim in the bowl.

“My dad is stronger than you,” the girl says. The man stops moving his finger. The girl hops down from her chair and walks over to the man and kicks him in the shin. He startles and grunts.

“My dad will beat you up,” she says.

A blue van pulls up outside the house. “Daddy,” the girl calls. From a gaping hole in the living room wall, they watch a large man with a wide chest and strong arms emerge from the driver’s side. He walks up to the house and through the doorway, kicking aside the door hanging on one hinge.

The man at the table stands and turns to face the girl’s father and says, “I want single payer universal health care.” A loose ceiling tile falls. The father pulls out a gun and points it at the man.

“Who is the single payer?” the father asks. The man looks blank and withdraws at the sight of the gun.

“You are,” the man says.

“That’s right,” the father says.

“I want to marry your daughter,” the man says.

“That’s what she tells me,” the father says.

“You lunk,” the girl says.

The man looks hurt. He looks at the girl and she smiles and runs through a hole in the kitchen wall into the backyard. She goes to a rabbit hutch and opens the cage. She takes a large white rabbit out by the nape of the neck and holds it against her chest. Walking back to the house, she nuzzles the rabbit and steps through the hole into the kitchen. The man and the father sit across from each other at the table. The gun weights down one end of an architectural drawing. The girl climbs onto her father’s lap. She looks at the drawing and says, “The walls aren’t big enough. They aren’t strong enough.” The man and her father turn to the girl and say in unison, “Okay.”

God Loves You

A woman sits before an altar in her bedroom. The sun shines through yellow curtains warming the sandstone colored walls. A black and white cat rubs against the woman’s back. The doctor bill open and unpaid on the bed. She intones, “I am a one with creation. I am one with the all-loving creator. I am inside creation and the creator is inside me.”

She lights a candle and places it on the altar. Her cat jumps onto the bed and curls up. The woman puts her hands in prayer and bows before the altar. She sits erect and sits there for an hour with her eyes either open, and at times, closed.

A cellphone rings. The woman blows out the candle and unfolds her legs and slowly rises to stand. She walks over to the desk and reaches inside her purse. She opens her phone.

“Hello … Yes,” she says. “I gave the 360 design to Janice and she passed it on to Phil… Okay, I’ll see you there.”

The woman lets drop her white dressing gown and walks to the bathroom. She showers and gets dressed. When she leaves the house, she picks up the newspaper on the frontstep.

She looks at the frontpage and it’s blank. She looks at it and sees a candle flame.

A Friend in Need

The door swings open as I knock. A woman steps forward and I see the shotgun in in her right hand.

“Did you want some money?” she asks me.

“No, I am … just here to talk about wildlife,” I say. Her dog pokes its head out the door and looks at me. I step back and hold my Save the Whales clipboard against my chest. She steps onto the porch. The dog sits on its haunches. She rests the butt of the gun on the ground and holds the barrel at an angle away from her.

“This morning I woke up with a hangover,” she says.

“I’m sorry about that,” I say.

“Do you want to come in and talk about wildlife?”

“Okay.”

The woman steps to one side for me to enter ahead of her. The dog nuzzles forward and I offer my hand. He sniffs a moment and I pat it. “Nice dog,” I say and step into the house. The throw rug over the hardwood floor is so exquisite I think to take off my shoes.

“That’s okay,” she says. “Just wipe ‘em on the mat.”

I wipe my feet. The woman walks past the dining table and into the kitchen. “Would you like some tea?” she calls.

“Sure,” I say.

“So how is the wildlife?” she asks. “Is that what you came to tell me?”

“The largest mammal in existence is in danger of extinction.”

“You’re a concerned citizen,” she says. I walk toward the kitchen slowly. She wears a pink bathrobe and black rubber boots. Following my gaze, she says, “I was watering before you came.”

“Save the Whales is a non-profit dedicated to protecting whales.”

“You should have told me that before you came in,” she says.

I turn my head towards the opposite wall. “This is a really nice house,” I say.

“You could say I’m protected,” she retorts.

“Do you always answer the door with a shotgun?”

“Only when I want to make friends,” she says.

A man walks in the living room and says, “I don’t want tea.” He has a white T-shirt and boxers. He sits down at the table next to me and says, “I like the government.” He stares at me. His face is unshaven and I can smell his breath.

“I like the government too,” I say.

“Did you come here to sell me something?” he says.

“No,” I say.

“That’s good,” he says and pats the side of my face. The woman brings me a cup of tea. The dog sits beside the man. The woman sits across from him. “Stanley,” she says, “this young man is here to tell us about the wildlife.” I nod my head and smile.

Inside the She-wolf

Bob sits calmly and takes his glasses off. He rests them on the sidetable and leans back in his chair. The wind rattles the window and he turns to look. A face in the window. His reflection. A fright pure and simple and he closes his eyes. He settles back in the chair to sleep with one spell still on his tongue. Wilderness.

The window opens. You can say it’s time. Darling Bob. She rends his flesh. Lucky for Bob. He wonders at the sudden shift in consciousness. Bob considers the wolf. Her fangs drag across his chest. She claws him open and eats. There is no more Bob. I wouldn’t call her a friend. No, she eats me. What did you say? Yeah, I am listening. How many did you? A litter of six? You must be extremely proud. Oh, the little one passed. I’m sorry to hear that.

There’s a knock at the door. I get up and walk to the door. “You have an irrational fear,” she says. Her words settle into the back of my mind. No, not irrational, I think to myself. Just can’t do it like that. It’s not natural to have sex like that. There is a right way to do things.

He winds back the clock. An hour ago. Time narrows to this moment. A single split second. Then and now. Now and later. She climbs through the window. She strides across the floor. He swings wildly fear and hope and shutters to a stop. Oh baby, right now. Right now. It’s time. Yes, she started to call him by his first name. I wonder what she means? Bob? There is no more Bob.

The backsplash catches the water running wildly into the sink. His glasses dropping noiselessly to the ground. He can’t hear so good. They fall with the world around the sun. He looks up from his hands in the sink. His face in the mirror. I need to shave, he thinks hopelessly.

Her fur glistens in the headlights. Bob stops and gets out of the car. He stands frozen. The wolf panting hard. Her chest heaving rhythmically. Steam in puffs pounding out and out. She looks scared. Bob reaches for his phone and calls Mark. His friend’s voice calms him as Bob tries to describe what he sees.

“It’s not a dog,” he continues.

The wolf walks toward the dark of the woods. Bob steps back to his car. He settles into the driver’s seat and says to Mark, “She was pregnant. I think she was in labor.”

Bob speeds toward the moon dropping to the horizon. He thinks, I couldn’t help her. Pregnant wolf. Did she make it home all right? Dangerous animal. There’s nothing I can do. Let nature take its course.

Bob puts the kettle on the stove and rights his glasses on his face.

Snake Wielding Wizards

I sit at my dining room table and spoon from a bowl of vegetable broth. A bare lightbulb burns overhead. I look at my reflection dimly in the broth. The glare from the lightbulb burns in the soup. I can’t look. It’s making me nauseous.

My good friend Jason pretends he’s a waiter. He set the table. He serves the soup. “I care about you,” he says. I look at him. He stands beside me, hovering.

“I care about you too,” I say. Jason comes over once a week to make vegetable broth, or sometimes spaghetti. He goes into the living room and starts to stretch his arms overhead. He leans to one side and the other.

“You’re like a cat,” I say.

“You think so,” he says.

“Yeah, you’re stretching like a cat.” The light starts flickering overhead. Jason bends to touch his toes and there’s a knock on the door. He straightens up and goes to the door. A delivery man hands him a package. Jason thanks the man, closes the door, and sets the package on the dining room table. He gets a knife from the kitchen and makes an incision on one end of the box.

“Who’s it from?” I ask.

“The Wildlife Fund,” he says.

“Addressed to who?” I ask.

“To you,” he says.

“Holy shit,” Jason erupts.

I get up and look inside the box. A snake curls at the bottom of the box. I can’t tell if it’s poisonous, but I decide to kill it. On second thought, I decide to take it to the pet store. Then again, what is a snake for? Why me? “What should we do?” I ask.

Jason upends the box and the snake falls onto the dining room table. It has a luminous blue streak.

“It’s poisonous,” I say.

Jason grabs the snake behind the head and lifts it up. “Soup,” he says.

“I’m not going to eat that,” I say.

“Just kidding,” he says and looks from the snake to me and back to the snake. The snake flickers its tongue rhythmically. I start to think of fields of wheat. “Should we let it go somewhere?” I ask.

“We don’t know what kind of snake it is,” he says.

I go to the computer and Google images of snakes. I find a positive identification after looking at many snakes with blue streaks. It’s a distant relative on my father’s side of the family tree.

“Where do you come from?” I ask the snake. The snake doesn’t speak, but I discern a word coming from nowhere. Nowhere.

Sometimes You Just Can’t Stop

It’s two in the morning when the cat walks over my head and curls up on the pillow. I stare at the streetlight slatted along the bedroom wall and listen to the cat purring. A distant clink of silverware and clack of plates. I get out of bed and walk through the living room in my underwear.

Pam stands at the dishwasher with a bowl in her hand. She looks in my direction and feigns surprise. “Did I wake you?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “It was Mozzy.” I walk into the living room and turn on the radio and dial it to white noise. I put the volume at about four. It sounds pretty good. I lie down on the carpet.

I wake up on the floor. There’s a blanket on me and daylight through the curtains. With the blanket held around my shoulders, I walk to the bedroom door and look in. Pam’s chestnut hair splays from under the bedspread.

I carefully get into the bed and listen for her breathing. She’s still asleep. Mozzy is at the foot of the bed. I think about remodeling the basement. In another two years we’ll move. Pam wants to go back to New Mexico.

“Philo,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“You’re back?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I answer.

She falls asleep again.

I hear a knock on the door and pull on my pants and walk out to the living room. My neighbor Jerry is standing on the doorstep with my plunger in his hand. “Thanks man. You’re a lifesaver.”

“No problem, Jerry.”

He stands there in his blue one-piece with a patch over his left breast that says, Just Electric.

“Off to work?” I ask.

“Righto,” he says and salutes me.

I walk back into the house and put the plunger under the sink.

“What did you do with the plunger?” Pam asks from behind me.

“I lent it to Jerry,” I say.

“When?” she asks.

“More than a month ago,” I say.

“That’s disgusting,” she says. “Why can’t Jerry buy his own plunger?”

“He couldn’t stop shitting,” I say.

“Why not?” she says.

“Because his body was possessed, and I did him a favor.”

Pam shivers involuntarily and walks back into the bedroom. “What possessed him?” she asks from the other room.

“Oh, I think it was a TV show.”

For Every Man, A Mission

I stand on the doorstep with my arms full of groceries. I set one bag down at my feet and reach into my pocket for the keys. The curtain flurries at the window and Fran opens the door.

“Here,” she says, taking the bag of groceries from my left arm. Fran walks into the house. The cat runs out the door and walks jauntily to the sidewalk. Along our street I count three other cats perched toward the sun.

I sit down on the frontstep and reach into the grocery bag at my feet. I open a beer and take a drink. The sun ovals over the rooftops and slowly blinks from view.

My neighbor steps out of his apartment wearing a long black trenchcoat. “Hey Henry,” I call out.

“Hey Mark,” he answers. I watch him put on a pair of dark glasses.

“Did you get that coat in the Matrix?” I ask. He turns his head and looks over his shoulder.

“I can’t talk now,” he says.

I watch Henry start to scale the drainpipe of his house. He struggles to raise one leg up over the gutter.

“Do you need some help?” I shout.

Henry has both hands and one leg on the gutter when it pulls loose. Henry falls to the ground. I hear Fran gasp. I turn to see her standing in the doorway. She runs past me and our cat startles and lopes away.

I get to my feet and walk after her. Henry is flat on his back and Fran kneels beside him. I cross Henry’s yard and stand there.

“I can’t talk now,” he says.

“You know Fran, if he’s okay, maybe we should just let Henry be.”

“Are you okay?” Fran asks.

Henry turns his head toward the street and I follow his gaze. A man in a black trenchcoat and dark glasses mounts the steps to Henry’s house. His coat swirls about his legs. “Henry,” he says, “you didn’t wait for the signal.”

“Give me the signal,” Henry says.

The man takes off his glasses and stares toward the line of rooftops and sings, “Distant ship smoke on the horizon…”

He has a nice voice. Henry props himself up and then, slowly gets to his feet.

Oregon Geothermal: Tapping the Earth’s Power

The earth’s crust is in pieces. Huge continental-size plates. Along the seams, the crust thins and fractures. Mountain ranges form. Volcanoes erupt. The heat from inside the earth flows closest to the surface where these plates come together. Mount St. Helens is just one volcano in the Ring of Fire along the periphery of the plate beneath the Pacific Ocean. Oregon’s place on the Pacific Rim assures a resource of geothermal energy. Groundwater that flows into cracks and fissures of hot rock can carry the heat to the surface. A geothermal resource has three distinct applications: direct use of hot water, ground-source heat pumps for heating and cooling of buildings, and electric power generation.

Throughout the millennia, people have immersed themselves in hot springs. The minerals dissolved in the water at depth and carried to the surface have restorative properties. Belknap, Breitenbush, and Cougar are a few of the resorts people can enjoy in the Cascades. There are many more hot springs found just off the highway in Oregon. A geothermal resource near a town can provide hot water for heating buildings, greenhouses, and farming tropical fish.

Portland boasts the first commercial building in the United States to incorporate ground-source heat pumps.