Two Really Short Stories

Illustration by Milano Chow

Vice: When did you get the idea to do really short stories?

Jocko: The short answer is my friend Moni Mueller who does a radio show in Berlin asked a bunch of writers to write a 200-word story on the theme “Wednesday 3 PM.” I wrote about my neighbor kids playing in the aboveground pool, yelling “Marco Polo” over and over and the ice cream truck coming by. Short and sweet. About six months later I read it again and had a eureka moment: “I’m going to write more of these.” The longer answer combines the story for Moni with a general feeling of not having an interest in writing “short stories” in the usual format, of being bored with writing them and bored with reading them by others. Things start bubbling up as possible inspirations and influences: Joe Brainard’s I Remember, Sam D’Alessandro, Eileen Myles, the lyrics of the Minutemen and Flipper, and poems my father wrote in the 1950s. It was about an economy of words, of telling a story in the way you would say it in conversation, of trying to capture the reality of experience without being a windbag.

How long does it take to write one?

From five minutes to an hour.

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Jenny went to the pool to pick up her mother who was very excited and the first thing she said was, “I just swam with a dead guy!” It was at a pool in Frankfurt where mostly older people went and had a social time, not a real serious lap-swimming place. People were friendly and formal in that German way, swimming along next to each other and shaking hands in the water. Jenny’s mother went there all the time and there was one man she always saw that came every day. An older gay man who always dressed well, fastidiously, and wore a toupee. A serious swimmer who did his laps and said hello to everybody and shook hands. On that day he was there as usual when Jenny’s mom leisurely did her laps and then she noticed some kind of commotion so she stopped and saw the man being dragged out of the pool where he lay on his back at the edge with one arm in the water. Another woman stopped swimming and Jenny’s mother said, “Do you know what is going on?” and the woman replied, “He’s dead, he’s definitely dead.” Very nonchalant. He lay there with his arm falling further into the water. The lifeguards had left to call the ambulance but it was too late. It was just the two women in the almost empty pool and the corpse and now one of his legs slid into the water also. Jenny’s mother said, “Dead, really, are you sure?” and the other woman said, “Yes, he’s really dead.” “Shouldn’t we get out of the pool or something because he’s dead?” and the other lady answered, “Life and death are so close together so what does it matter, he’s passed on and they are coming to take him so why don’t we keep swimming?” She’d recently been in Mexico and there they had a better attitude toward death and passing on. Coincidentally Jenny’s mother had lived in Mexico so they got to talking about Mexico and the Day of the Dead and all that and sort of hit it off, swimming next to each slowly in the empty pool with the dead guy lying there with his arm in the water and his leg slipping further in, getting deader. Then Jenny’s mom said, “You know, he was never that nice to me and didn’t say hello like he did to the other people, but he did swim every day so as a testament to his memory maybe we should keep swimming.” So they kept going, a few more laps, in memory of the dead swimmer. ew sex techniques

My friend and I were at a bar with Blazing Saddles playing on the TV above us. Right after I said, “Hey there’s LaVar Burton,” Cleavon Little mouthed, “Excuse me while I whip this out” and though we couldn’t hear the words the bartender said them for us and laughed uproariously. This blond woman who I’d seen spooning (in the Welsh sense) with some guy and later stumbling with him to a car saying, “That looks like an Audi” was back inside and came over. “Hey, I know I know you. Where do you work?” When I said where, she wasn’t satisfied. “Where do you hang out?” Still this didn’t seem to please her and she got more demanding. “No, that’s not it, I know I know you.” Then she mentioned a bar right by my house where I went often, and she was triumphant. “That’s it! I totally remember you. I used to bartend there.” She was very happy to have figured out the mystery. Then she bought herself and us a shot of whiskey, telling the bartender that I was a good guy because I used to hang out at the bar where she used to work. She said she’d just taken a ride in an Audi with a guy she used to go out with who now wanted to get back together. “We had a nice long talk but we’re just friends now,” but then about a minute later she slipped in, “So I let him feel my tits in the car a bit, but I’m not into him anymore.” We were like, wait, you just said you only had a long talk. “All right, we made out a bit. He’s got a new Audi and kept saying how hot I looked and wouldn’t I come home with him. But you know, we used to fool around two years ago, and tonight he was saying things like, ‘You want to see my cock, don’t you?’ and I was just like, wait a second, you can’t pull out these new moves with somebody you used to have sex with, it just doesn’t work, all of a sudden he’s talking all dirty but he never did that when we were together. You can’t bust out these new sex techniques after all that time passed.” My friend and I both laughed and said, “So, you didn’t just have a long talk?” “OK, I gave him a blowjob. Big deal. I wanted to ride in the Audi, but I can’t get involved with that, I’m looking for a husband. Are you married?” When I said maybe this bar wasn’t the best place for finding a husband, she sighed and said all right it was good to see you and left.

JOCKO WEYLAND