Zee German

A middle-aged man in a windbreaker came up to the counter and asked in a German accent, "do you have a book of 1000 things every guy must know?"

"Uhm, I don't think so…"

"You know: clothes, music, what stories to read. That sort of thing."

"No, I don't think we have that."

"I know, it is a book only a tourist would ask for. Where can I find it?"

"I… don't know…"

He sighed, "well, you are just useless then, aren't you?"

"I- I guess so."

He slunk out the door, disappointed.

My Chronic Decapitation Experience

The first time I got my head cut off, I thought I was going to die.

I was thirteen years old, and there being not much else to do, I had allowed myself to become absorbed in sexual thoughts, ignorant of what the consequences would be. So the killer from the movies came over and chopped my head off.

The experience of having my head separated from my body scares me less each time it happens. There is impaired breathing and vision for a time, but the knowledge that, most likely, I will not die as a result of such an injury has made it easy for me to sublimate the original terror, gradually, into mere frustration at having my routine disrupted. Only the faintest clinging ghost of death-awareness remains.

Adjusting to the reality that we will all occasionally have our heads cut off is just a process that everyone has to go through in today's world.

Lately, whenever it happens to me, I just heave a sigh, pick up my head, tuck it under my arm, carry it up my left nostril and into the passageways of my sinuses, where I set it down on the proper shelf, and wait for it to fix itself.