Of Aliens, Achilles' Heels, And Joints.

My thumbs still crack as much as they used to, tightening and cramping with about as much regularity as you exhibit. In the cold night air, first five wet, clicking snaps go off, starting with one abrupt sound, like a tree branch breaking underfoot in the middle of woods devoid of birds or any other small, noisy creature--then, more hesitantly, with the rasp of skin on skin as the appendages are pulled back manually, the other four fingers go. Crack, snap, click, pop. Then the other five on the other hand, in descending order, an arpeggio of joint, fluid, and bone.

There are people who will tell you that cracking your knuckles like this will swell them up like soft flesh balloons in your old age, penitence for years of self-abusement. People also tell you that you'll go blind from masturbating too much, and that you cannot lick your elbow. Well, I can, so I'll continue on being That Person who does it as a nervous reflex, a self-calming ritual as soothing as sucking your thumb, yet still publicly acceptable at nearly 21. Plus, what if they crack themselves? What if they elect, on their own biological and anatomical accord, to freeze up and crack? I have never had to force my thumbs to release like the trigger of a gun. I have never had to wrestle with them in a pantomime of a singular thumb-war and get them to give and function again. Instead, they always do it on their own-- a tightening, followed by a reflexive bending, at which point the spine of the thumbs give way like the spine of last year's biggest best-seller-- a fictional account of one passively-aggressive, neurotic man's triumph over the impending doom of intergalactic space invaders come to rid the world of it's inhabitants and bring back all the Fluff to their planet of Doom and Fluff-less peanut butter, which has since been opted for a movie, like War of the Worlds but with less Tom Cruise-- as the heel of your foot pushes down on it where it lies, spread-eagle on your bedroom floor, now broken, eternally open to those two pages detailing the struggle between the main character's desire to turn his back on his world and wallow in his own self pity, or to climb through the alien spaceship's air duct and kick some E.T ass, and you look down at the face of your former lover on the back cover's flap, trapped somewhere yet still smiling thinly under your Achilles and you think, "Well, if that isn't fitting?" and then you smile, and mash down on it just a little bit harder, because, you know, you're alone in the privacy of your own house and bedroom, and no one else is around to see your quiet-yet-clicking moment of vindictive triumph about something you should have rightly been over nearly six months ago, after they traded in a huge second book deal and a Lamborghini for your relationship.

After all, life can be stranger than fiction.

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The thing that I love about writing fiction is that it never ends up ANYWHERE near where I thought it would when I started writing it.

And who knew War of the Worlds stayed with me so intensely, bad acting and all these years later?

XOXO

And P.S-- Yes, I can really lick my elbow.