Writing Prompt: They toured the house with the real estate agent. “We love it,” he said. “Is there anything we should know about the house’s past?” The agent looked down.
Her feet, beneath her, were mute, as always. They rarely spoke. On occasion, if she'd been wearing footwear inappropriate for the length of time she'd gone without resting her ample derriere on a convenient, or, for the sake of rest, even inconvenient chaise, they might mention via twinge or gently pulsing ache a displeasure with their mounting discomfort. But today, they were content to hum one of the more scandalously popular tunes of John Cage, at a lowered volume. In their not-talking, they seemed to say, don't look at us, anymore than you'd look at the distant honk of one of a hundred automobiles in a busy city. We're your feet, yes, but we're of no interest in particular. To even consider us is fetishism, indeed, you'll then only naturally consider the considering of us, which at best will evolve into the considering of considering in general, and in this thought's using itself as an example, you'll slowly, luxuriantly even, fall into a black-hole of self thought, the opposite of a zen moment if you will. All of this her feet seemed to say by not speaking, such that the agent was an accidental catalyst to a koan of sorts. And in this way every incidental thing by not being what it isn't is a catalyst to koan, which is how all things can be one, and though the agent's feet were currently mute, they couldn't help but to scream the universe into and out of existence with their utter silence.
The agent looked up. The couple, a large man and a larger man, both named Steve Jackson, unrelated, except by contract of law, that is to say, married, looked at her expectantly. Steve, the one who had asked the question, looked at her with expectation of someone waiting for a chuckle, a gentle guffaw, or a light snort, on the level of the question having not been at all serious, because if someone had been violently murdered in the house, surely the Steves would have either known or been told about it before. Violent murders being, on the whole, extremely rare, and within the walls of a three-story victorian, even more rare. Steve, the one who had not asked the question, looked at her with sincere expectation of being reassured that no one had been violently murdered in the house, since a murder in the streets, replete with blood and and some innocuous detail, like the way the laces on one of the shoes of the murder victim were untied, which added a tagic poignancy to seen, was not quite as violent, in apprehension and perception, as any kind of murder that might be committed within the walls of a three story victorian.
Nor did second Steve consider at all that although no one from the first caveman through the entire evolution of people leading to an inevitable Frank Lloyd Wright conceptualized a three-story victorian as in invention of a context to make a murder that much more seemingly violent, nevertheless the public at large had inherited, in the Jungian way of having seen the same movies and TV shows and read the same books, a common understanding that basically the only reason to describe a house as a three-story victorian was to conceptualize something antithetical to the connotation of propriety associated with “three story victorian.” And whether one calls this a maladaption of culture or uses some other phrase that only college professors and their earnest pupils toss around as a kind of secret code to remind one one other how intolerable intelligent and utterly useless to society as a whole they might be, the upshot of invoking that sense of propriety is to give anywho who hears you describe a house as a three-story victorian the heebie jeebies.
“No,” the agent said, which was technically the truth and therefore also a lie. For the word “technically” is only ever applied to the word “truth” when it suits the speaker to invoke that irascible inconsistency between word and thought, which is to say, the universe of black-and-white details made manifest in their desirability by the not-ironic black and white letters and pages to establish reality as a system of interlocking but necessarily different things, and the universe of reality experienced by feeling, emotion, and the irrational desire for morality with all of its pursuant hanger-ons: propriety, righteousness, justice. Technically, the letter of the law in no way precluded a real estate agent from omitting in conversation over, say, a bagel she bought them as a means of seduction to trust her enough to buy the house she told them to buy so she could get her commission and buy her daughter the summer pass to expensive club where her richer friends spent most of their days from school-down to school-up, the salient facts as to who, with what manner of shotgun, stalked the halls of this three-story pile to execute his abusive father, complicit mother, and rather sadistic grandmother, and that on the eve of his 27th birthday.
But when someone buys a bagel for one or more Steves, even if the same Steves are of a practical enough mind know that bagels are usually nothing more than the currency of charm that real estate agents have evolved to trade in, there is, despite all unspoken understandings about the business-nature of breakfast-foods proffered in the spirit of getting one to fork over a hefty wad for a pile of bricks, nevertheless an unstoppable element of emotional connection between the bagel buyer and the bagel eater. The latter, all stoic cynicism aside, will feel a tiny morsel of trust begin to flavor the relationship in the same way a sesame seed will change that sector of bagel from boiled dough to the crumb that inspired the revival of reenacting the last supper on the lips of every devout catholic squired in the obligatory cathedral. And the former, by asserting without confirmation that an unwritten contract will balance micro-agrresions, as they form in the effort to get the couple to spoon up a saucy dollop to feed the bank that belches loans, against the cost of a bagel, one of the goods ones, like an “everything” with extra schmear, will also feel a small sense of emotional responsible begin to think about sparking itself into existence.
Such that not revealing to the Mr. and Mr. Steve and Steve Jackson that before the house came on the market the owner, a stalwart writer of very bad poetry, although not bad in the sense of poetasting or the kinds of screeds folded up and cut into snowflakes understandable to no one save the ones the writer perforce attempted to inoculate readers against their ignorance so to its meaning via autobiographical ramblings at the breakfast he and his fellow writes shared at the poetry workshop retreat where he was about to offer these poems for the first time, but bad in the sense of being always dissatisfied with the way the words in faint pencil failed to agree with the feelings that burned in the part of his brain that he knew must be in control of his heart resulting in his never actually writing anything, which we can all agree is the worst kind of poet, had, in frustration, attempted to kill himself with cheap rum and a handful of pills, had failed, had been shipped off to a loony bin, where, inspired the figurative excrement one his fellow inmates called poetry as written in literal excrement in his cell walls, he eventually wrote a poem of such subliminal beauty that no without perfect beauty in their own soul could see it for the beautiful poetry it was, or would not have, if anyone had read, which they didn't, because the aforementioned shit-poet had discovered the page on which it was written and had eaten it (without reading it) and the writer never knew this or he would have laughed when he realized the the shit poem the shit poet wrote a few days later consisted of the fiber from the page on which the subliminal poem had been written, was maybe a bit of a social faux pas.
Years later, when the Jackson 2 sat in rocking chairs and sipped weak tea since Steve had a weak stomach at his age and Steve was always supportive of husband and shared if not his gastrointestinal despair, at least the despair of drinking weak tea, they would look back on a variety of fond memories, such as how they met, both of them running into one another again and again at casting calls, neither one ever getting the part, neither one really being very good actors, or actors at all, never having acted in anything, but giving it a whirl, in the case of one Steve, on the advice of an ex-boyfriend who, frankly, was one of those unimaginative types of people who just say whatever comes to their mind, and in the case of the other Steve, after reading a horoscope that said “move outside your comfort zone” and decided that horoscopes were definitely outside his comfort zone and so too was acting, or the memory of when they found out about the writer who had gone to the loony bin and was trying to sell the three story victorian to pay the loony bin bills.