BENDER : Monster Children, issue 23
No Good For Your Heart.
___I’m not supposed to drive the truck on the freeway, but I do. Usually at the end of my morning, after the 10am run, and only because I’m late already. I get it up to about 70 and it shakes so hard the empty racks fall off the shelves in back. Sometimes I try to get them all to fall before I get off the freeway. It gets pretty loud.
Driving back into San Pedro, I merge onto the 110 south from the 105 east. This is probably the tallest overpass in the world. This is where I am always sideswiped by a large tractor trailer hauling important consumer goods. The bread truck I’m driving careens off the cement and metal rail meant to keep me from falling off the overpass (it works), then skids, squealing across traffic and is smashed into by a red extra-large man’s truck that sends me spinning, then hitting — backend first — into the opposite cement and metal rail. This one does not work. The truck and I, and all my empty bread racks, plunge backward over the edge, proceeding past a middle-pass (where I catch the eyes of an astonished mom in a mini van), and down to the grounded freeway below.
___This always feels pretty real... for a moment. Minus the physical sensations, of course. How does it really feel to be descending to your death? It is slow? Fast? What are the G-forces like? Would I be conscious? When exactly would death occur? Would I be crushed when the truck landed on solid earth, or be finished off when the speeding traffic slammed me? Ahead, in the dust on the back of the tractor trailer that might have killed me, someone has scrawled two words with their fingers;
___Que Dios?
___I look over at the car next to me. There is a woman, sleeping, head tilted back at an impossible angle, mouth wide open. I sit up as straight as possible, tip my head left and right to adjust the neck, clamp my hands a little tighter at 10 and 2 on the wheel and stomp the gas pedal.
___When I pull into the bakery it’s quarter to 11. That’s 15 minutes late. I have a procedure when this happens. I park and walk quickly through the front, where my dad is usually too busy to say anything. He never gives me the business in front of customers. I keep walking, slip out the side, unlock the gate, get the truck in, open the back, quickly pick up a couple of the empty racks and lean them against the building. Then, I stop for a quick smoke on the far side of the truck with the big, goofy portrait of the old man painted on it. Archie Knoll of Knoll’s Rolls. My dad. It always watches me smoke, with its big head, little round body and piles of bread surrounding him.
___Tons of fucking bread.
___“The first $4,500 paid to a son or daughter as an employee is tax FREE!” He reminds me of this every year. I can never understand why that matters, really. It couldn’t possibly add up to much. He barely paid me minimum wage, didn’t seem to like my “work ethic,” and I smoked around the bread.
___“ADAM!” His whisper-yell. The words shoot through his teeth from under a gray, paintbrush mustache.
I throw my cigarette down. Crush it. “Don’t worry... there’s no bread around.”
___“It’s your life, smoke it away if you want... but you’re late again.” He stands directly under the portrait. “And that effects my life and I don’t appreciate it. Get the truck emptied out, Carlos is ready for those racks.”
___“Dad...”
___“Just do it,” he stomps inside. “NOW.”
___“I quit.” I mumble this to the charicature before unloading the racks and sweeping out the crumbs. That’s what I get, the crumbs. Well, the squirrels get the crumbs. I’m supposed to put them in the compost bin out back, but I leave them on the asphalt so I can squeeze in a decent lunchbreak. The little bastards clean them up quick. Thank you little bastards. I get on my skateboard and push down to Monk’s. It’s Friday, the day I eat with Franklin.
___It’s about a half mile down. You smell it first — burning meat, the aromatic nemesis of baking bread. The awnings are faded to an old denim blue and coated with pigeon shit. Cracks spread all over its Plexiglas sign. Inside, the wood laminates peel from the table edges, but there on Monk’s window, a blue letter A, the California seal of approval.
___The same woman with the black beret has been working here since I was a kid. She’s never once acknowledged me as anything but a customer.
___“Can I help you?”
___“The usual,” I answer. She just stares, looking confused behind her thick glasses. This from a woman who has watched me grow up. “A #4. No pickles. Coke.”
___“$4.95 please.”
___I give her my last five and head to the far corner table with my plastic number.
___“Sir, your nickel...”
• • • • • • •
___Franklin always comes in after me, a Barney’s or Nieman Marcus bag in his hand, and orders an Orange Bang before he sits down. And he always bros me.
___“What’s up, little bro?” I hate that.
___“Not much. Fed the squirrels, now it’s my turn.”
___“Pissing dad off again, huh?” His hands are busy tightening his long ponytail. “Dude, I just saw the raddest El Camino on Sepulveda. The fucking license plate said ‘ARMAGTN’ on it! Damn...” He takes a deep slurp. A busboy pushes my brown tray onto the table and takes the number.
___“Armageddon...” he says, shaking his head. “How awesome is that? I wish I’d a thought of that one.”
___I want to tell him about the finger-scrawled graffiti, but don’t. I just nod and look out the window. His car sits out there. Some sort of revived muscle machine from the 70s. Fatter tires on the back end. Perfect royal blue paint. I catch his profile reflecting in the window as he pushes a napkin across the table. I take it, pull the envelope from under it, hold it in my lap and gaze in.
___“What’s this about? That’s gotta be twice as much as usual.”
___Under the table he’s pushed the shopping bag over until it rests against my leg. “No reason, dude. Just treat it like all the rest. Same thing. Straight over to Deaver’s place, drop it — that’s it.”
___My burger is burnt. There are pickles in it. I pull them out one by one. “No such thing as ‘no reason,’ Franklin.”
___He shakes his head, puts the cup down. “And there’s no such thing as questions, Adam. Remember?” He gets up to leave, “Just do it.”
___That’s twice in one morning. I tuck the thick thing into my back pocket, throw out my tray and begin my skate back to work.
___The bag is a navy blue paper one with those twine handles that hurt your hands. A GAP logo on each side. Fairly heavy — substantial. I don’t care what’s inside and I don’t want to know. I just imagine Franklin shopping at the GAP. Buying tight jeans with cash. His pager going off while he’s flirting with the sales girls. Adjusting his ponytail.
___When we were kids, he’d come into my room and leave with stuff. Small things. Hot wheels, G.I. Joe accessories. Once, I called him on it and he denied everything. “I didn’t steal nothin’! I already have one of those! Here,” he shoved a small plastic machine gun at me, “take mine, you pussy.” I cried. But it was my gun, he’d just brushed over it with black model paint. I scraped at that paint for a long time.
___I drop my board between the seats and set the GAP bag carefully in the passenger seat of the truck and seatbelt it in so it won’t tip forward. I wonder what time it is.
• • • • • • •
___“Godammit Adam! You get 30 minutes!” He’d been waiting for me. “You can’t eat in 30 minutes? Carlos here eats in 30 minutes! Your sister eats in 30 minutes!” Carlos is already loading the bread racks.
___“Well?”
___I shrug. How do you answer a question like that? I bend to pick up a full rack of buns and the cigarettes and lighter fall out of my breast pocket. The smokes fall out onto the buns and the lighter clatters on the cement floor and slides under a dusty metal shelf. Though I don’t look up at him, I can just see him shaking his head. Then it comes. Methodically, every syllable enunciated, “J e s u s C h r i s t A l l M i g h t y !” Then faster, “I don’t know why I’ve got you in here. You have no interest whatsoever — in fact, you don’t give a rat’s ass about this business do you?” He stops just as quickly as he started, closes his eyes, sighs, turns and walks to the front. “Just get those buns delivered.” There, I beat down the Bun King again, without hardly trying — and lost a perfectly good lighter in the process.
• • • • • • •
___The cash is almost an inch thick in my back pocket. I pull it out as I drive. Look at it. Put it back. Wonder why. I get caught at a light and take the time to glance over at the passenger seat. It’s still there. It hasn’t moved. I think of looking in it. A slim crossing guard holds up a large, red stop sign so a group of peds can traverse the crosswalk in front of my truck. One of them gazes at me with his pleasant moon face, mouth slightly open, vacant stare. That guy’s obviously retarded — wait — they’re all retarded. I scan for the chaperone, there’s always a chaperone. There —t he black guy in a brown warm-up suit, clip board, toothpick in his mouth. He looks so relaxed, how can he be so relaxed?
___I look over at the bag again. Still there. What’s in there? I think of hiding it under the seat and start reaching for it — KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK on the window to my left. I flinch so hard my right knee cracks the old steering wheel. Outside, the big pleasant Moon Face stares up at me through the glass. Smiling. I have no idea how to react and before I can, the Brown Warm-Up Suit pulls Moon Face away and says something to me.
“What?” I mumble. The chaperone says something again, but I still can’t tell... my window’s closed. I open it quickly, but he’s already walking away, practically dragging the Moon up the far curb as the light turns green. “LET’S GO TOMMY! Come on, son.”
___BEEEEEEPPPP BEEP.
___I rub my knee and grind the long shifter into first. Shit, shit, shit. A glance in the rearview out through the two small windows at the back of the truck tells me Moon Face and crew are gone in the swirl of activity on Gaffey at 5pm.
___I fell into zero time after that. Zoned everything out, went blocks without realizing it and almost missed the turnoff to downtown Pedro, where Deaver lives. The squeal around the corner onto 9th street dropped a full tray in back. Not my day. When I turned to look at the damage, I blew through the light at Harbor.
___Siren. Motorcyle cop. GODAMMIT.
___I reach for the passenger sunvisor where the registration lives — under my father’s name, of course — and I see it. The bag. The fucking GAP bag. I should have tucked it under the seat. If I do it now, he’ll see me duck and get suspicious. Pull his gun, maybe. Wait... it’s a GAP bag. As far as the cop — or I — know, it has GAP clothes in it, right?
___The cop is taking his time on the CB. I look at my watch. My mind starts to tick through images — my dad, Franklin, Deaver... I reach for my wallet and feel the thick wad in my back pocket. Doom.
___Riding down the opposite side of the road is a worn old man on a woman’s bicycle. Bulging green garbage bags hang from both sides of the back rack. He is steering a set of longhorn bull style handlebars, chopper-like with colorful plastic danglies flowing from the ends. He’s going about his way, headphones on, focused. Doesn’t even notice the fat man on this truck, or the cop’s confident swagger as he approaches me, the light on his motorcycle flashing a red message to the surrounding area, Look, I got another one. My dilemma. I wish I was that old man. Doom.
___I’ll hand over the bag and turn myself in. Use my one phone call to apologize to the old man before I get thrown away. Here he comes. I need a cigarette. I put my head down and give my temples a rub.
___All the time in the world.
___In an instant I’m knocked from my self pity by the loud screech of tires grabbing asphalt and a fleshy loud thump that rocks my truck — the rearview is blown straight forward 45 degrees. Up ahead a uniformed body tumbles in slow motion.
___9th is a narrow street and fairly busy this time of day and apparently I wasn’t the only person not paying attention. A tall, primered Blazer blasts past and skids 180 degrees into oncoming traffic before it rocks violently and stops. The body stops. For an instant all is silent.
___No time at all.
___I reach for my door handle and the Blazer begins to tear away in reverse. This is it, I think. This is what happens in real life. The momentum of living diverted in an instant. There is no bread, no brothers, no bags of God-knows-what... now it’s just blood, torn flesh. Glass. Incoherent moans. I reach him, the man, a real man right here on the ground at my feet, broken — his name perfectly etched on a badge pinned to a black uniform. I am yelling for help and applying pressure. I am the only one and he stares into my eyes. He is calm. It calms me. I talk to him. I have no idea what the words are. He listens.
___Others come at last.
___The area was roped off. The broken cop hauled away. I am asked a lot of questions, which I answer, then I sit on the curb just inside the yellow tape, in front of the Knoll’s Rolls truck. Something hard digs into my back. “Oh, sorry, man. I didn’t see you there.” Behind me the inevitable crowd. I didn’t know.
___“It’s okay,” I tell him.
___Is it okay? Time comes back. My mouth is dry. Blood on my hands like faint watercolor stains. I am just a witness here. I can go.
___Eventually the crowd thins to one or two locals who chatter quietly with bored cops. The motorcycle is towed away on a flatbed, the street swept up and yellow tape taken away. I sit on the curb a long time more. My right ass cheek numb, reminding me of the cash. The GAP bag. Deaver waiting. Franklin. My dad. Carlos baking warm loaves for people to eat. I feel cold and sore and start to get up but cannot. Looking over at the truck, I notice a kid staring at the charicature and smiling. It’s Moon Face. No brown-clad chaperone. The Moon turns and catches me watching him, an invitation to walk over and sit down next to me.
___“Dat is a nice picture on your truck. I like it. I like bread.”
___The picture saw everything. Knows everything. Knows me. Never moves, never judges, just fades a little all the time. Cigarette — I have cigarettes, I need a cigarette. I pull the pack from my front pocket, then remember the lighter resting peacefully out of reach.
___“You have a light?” I ask.
___He tilts his head and squints his eyes.
___“Matches.” I show him the pack. “For these.
___“Oh no, no. Smoking is baaad — that’s what Terry tells us. No good for your heart.”
___“You mean, lungs.”
___The Moon just stares at me, grinning. I take the creased envelope from my back pocket. It flops in my hand like a fish. I grab his hand and place the fish in it.
___“Here — for you.”
___He just looks at me, the Moon does. “You should not smoke.”
"Bender," is a regular piece by Andy Jenkins for Monster Children magazine
All words/images
©2009 Bend Press
& Andy Jenkins
All Rights Reserved
BENDER : Monster Children, issue 22
A Few Things I Should Confront. Or Not.
___One of my best friends is also, technically, my boss. As the years pile up this becomes more and more awkward. It shouldn't, and I believe both of us feel this way, but, for some reason we defy reason. Friendships require maintenance and I'm not very good at personal mechanics. She'll probably read this and agree.
___My dad died 20 years ago. He was buried across the country in his hometown. I didn't go to the funeral. He had a big family and they mostly live in the same area. I'm in touch with only one person on that side of the family. One of my cousin's kids. Sometimes I feel like I should be sad about this or reach out to them in some way. Then, other times I don't give a shit. Or maybe I just don't think about it. Much.
___One of my co-workers farts too much. I mean, everyone farts, but she's too comfortable around me with it. She is an attractive woman and it doesn't become her to let loose like this. Sometimes I don't even think she knows she's doing it.
___I secretly want to talk much louder than I do. I've been called a mumbler.
___Cutting my own hair is the only option for me. I never know what to tell a barber and they always want to talk to me. So I shave my head with a #3 attachment once a year.
___Some call me a fast walker. I think it's just that my legs are long, but then I notice I start to sweat quite easily on regular strolls.
___I carefully examine a dentist's hands before I allow them to put them in my mouth. Well, I mean, I don't ask them if I can actually look them over, I just have to know how big they are. Once, I had a Samoan dentist who's hands were hams and my mouth still hurts.
___A friend has a theory that people stop changing their style when they reach a point in their lives that they feel comfortable. Like, say, if you wore black rimmed glasses, a bushy goatee and flannel in the early '90s and you felt pretty good about it, you'd stop there. I guess I did feel pretty good then.
___I will never have money. I don't know how to make money or handle money at all. I think people with money laugh at people like me... they know things I don't. I just get older and accumulate more debt. I've heard all the talk about how our capitolist society actually enslaves us. I can live with it. I guess.
___I think I will be on depression medication the rest of my life, however long that may be. Do the pills help me live longer? Don't know. Sometimes I just want to tell my doctor to fuck off and eat the stuff himself. Maybe he is. He's a nice enough guy, but when I ran into him at a middle-school basketball game, he looked all weirded out. I'm not sure what the protocol is when meeting your general practitioner in public. Is there one?
___The other day, when you came over, I was really there, but I hid and pretended not to be home.
___My cat and I have staring contests and I always win. Actually, I think she lets me win. I get the impression she knows I need it. Little bitch.
___I know my hybrid car has a battery in it that will lay in a landfill and leak lead way past my own lifetime. But I get 40 miles to the gallon, and I simply can't ride a bike to work — it just wouldn't work. My knees would hurt and I'd get too tired.
___A few weeks ago I managed to clog the toilet at my most frequented restaurant — the only place to eat that's walking distance from where I work. There wasn't a plunger in the bathroom, so I just snuck out the back and returned to work. They know me there and I'm pretty sure they know I was the one who left the turds behind. Now I can't go back.
___In the apartment building across the street, there's a man who constantly keeps an eye on his mid-80s white pick-up truck when it's parked in the street. He's been known to video tape people if they loiter around it, and has even called the cops on occasion. It's not even that nice of a pickup. Secretly I want to egg it from my balcony, but then I just know he would track the trajectory of the eggs straight back to our house and call the cops. He'll probably never read this.
___On occasion, I think that, no matter what we do or how hard we try, the earth will bury us all.
___Need a more positive end note? Think of puppies and chocolate covered strawberries. Rainbows and Barak Obama.
___But you will probably never read this.
"Bender," is a regular piece by Andy Jenkins for Monster Children magazine
All words/images
©2009 Bend Press
& Andy Jenkins
All Rights Reserved
BENDER : Monster Children, issue 21
Potential Synopsis for Possible Movies About Fairly Ordinary People
___Anthony Billiarty is a technician for a local radio station. He's in his early 50s, drives an expensive sports car and lives in a small one bedroom apartment on a street mostly inhabited by young families. Anthony, or "Tony", or even "Tone," as his friends know him, spends his afternoons off polishing his car and making sure it sparkles metallic blue in the Southern California sunlight. In the evenings, he covers it with a custom made tarp that fits the car like a glove.
___Tone's shift at the radio station begins in the late evenings and goes through the night until 7am the following day. He sleeps in the morning and early afternoon. He hates Wednesday mornings because that's when the yardmen work the lawns with their loud mowers, trimmers and blowers. Doesn't like Friday either — garbage and recycling trucks.
___He has a small office on the lower floor of the station and spends much of his time online searching for matchbox cars and pencils, both of which he collects. Occasionally he will dial up some porn, but is always nervous about being caught. Yet, somehow, he's fine with stealing various bits from work.
___Tony has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which flares up on him every few months or so. He was diagnosed in his 20s, but hasn't seen a doctor since. He drinks caffeine excessively to help combat the flare-ups. He thinks the coffee works well but plans on seeing a hypnotist to try and quit. The hypnotist he plans to visit is a young, voluptuous gypsy woman from Spain who was cursed by a fellow gypsy who's dog she had foretold would die horribly, and did. She has grown an eye in her left armpit.
• • • • • • •
___In the old downtown area there is a thin old man with wispy white hair who rides around on an old rusty beach cruiser. His lower arms, legs and neck — the only parts of his body you can see — are covered with blurring dark blue tattoos. The tattoos seem random and independent of each other.
___The locals know him as Sailor James, Jimmy, Jimbo or just plain Jim. Some people call him Popeye, though that really sets him off. Popeye wears the same "outfit" all year long; a dirty white sailor's cap with a black brim, a royal blue, short-sleeved rugby shirt over a thermal long-sleeve tee that he has cut-off at the elbows. Over this he drapes an old, blackened newspaper boy's bag (The News Pilot) that is stuffed with trinkets, notebooks and at the bottom, unscratched Lottery tickets. A too-long floppy leather belt holds up what used to be brown knee length shorts that are so filthy they appear to be made of cardboard. On his feet are a simple pair of dirty white sneakers.
He smokes and he curses up a storm, even when alone. An actor has been following him around hoping to glean a little part of Jimbo's "street vibe" for a role he's just gotten. The actor is a has-been whose last gig was a TV detective show in the 1970s. Sailor James has become rather tired of the actor who is a pompous, very pushy man who never brings him cigarettes. Eventually, Jim will stab the actor with a ball-point pen on the steps of the local tattoo parlor.
• • • • • • •
___Thomas killed a squirrel in the backyard with a wrist rocket and scrambled to bury it before his parents got home. He was frantically digging a hole for the dead critter, when he discovers one (or two) of the following;
1) an ornate crown
2) some human finger bones
3) a small handgun
4) a box filled with plague
• • • • • • •
___In the late '70s a piece of the infamous Skylab landed on a hinge factory in Perth, Australia. One woman, Lois Ruiz, was seriously injured when several metal splinters lodged themselves throughout her body. She lost her job while she was in the hospital. Unknowingly, the surgeons did not remove all the splinters, Lois is sure of this but no one really believes her or seems to care. She wakes up some nights to find her arms stretched straight up to the sky. Sometimes she has the sensation that her hands are twice their normal size, and that her thumbs are on the opposite sides of her palms. She gets a schematic of Skylab tattooed on her inner forearm.
___Lois is short, but doesn't look short. Depressed but doesn't seem depressed. Her hair is pitch black. She decides to take culinary classes at a local chef school in Joondalup, but usually cuts class to practice with her punk band, Los Bichos (The Bugs). She plays bass and writes songs about space, the universe, the ocean and the boy who works the camera counter at Big W. But her band won't play them.
___Her middle-aged chef teacher is an amateur cartographer with a dream of mapping Area 51 in Nevada. He is fascinated with Lois's story and sometimes jokes and asks her to go on a surveying trip to Area 51 with him. Lois mostly ignores him, but has secretly started to research this "Area 51."
• • • • • • •
___A man in a coma is moved to a different part of he world where his only family resides and will care for him — an elderly grandmother in Cairo. The man is in the care of a doctor in an Egyptian hospital when his grandmother dies in a house fire which destroys everything and inadvertently leaves the comatose man stranded. He wakes up after several months with total amnesia, in this Egyptian hospital with poor record keeping. During physical therapy he befriends a janitor who takes him in when he is released and gives him the name Hup (short for "hupnos" — Greek for "sleep").
___Hup begins to suspect the janitor, Amon, of being involved in some shifty activities when he finds a stash of money behind the bathroom sink cabinet. He spends days attempting to figure out what Amon is up to and eventually draws the conclusion that the man runs a grey market of anti-depressant drugs, after finding a large stash of the pills.
___Hup decides to self medicate with Welbutrin and Prozac and slowly steals bits of the cash until he has enough to run away. While taking cash one day he runs across an old wallet. In it, an American driver's license from California and a pharmacist's ID card. The photos and names on both are of the same man, Anderson Raimey. The photos... are of him. Hup has found his original identity — he deducts that Amon has been using it to acquire the drugs.
• • • • • • •
___Carlos Benitez is a day worker who was fired when the steps he built for a bandstand collapsed on a local business man running for city council. The business man, Reginald Pingree, is a very large man with radical views on creationism and immigration. He was at a rally protesting illegal immigration when he fell off the bandstand, landing on an older woman and crushing her under his massive weight. She was later pronounced dead and Reginald went on to lose the city council seat and return to his small store-front business on Lomita Blvd selling antiques and vintage furniture. Carlos, the day worker who had been fired for the faulty construction, could not find work and began to drink more and more heavily. The bar in which Carlos spends much of his time is on the same block as the would-be city councilman's shop. Between the two spots is a carneceria where Carlos lost a job bid to his cousin, Juan, a younger, better looking man who was a charmer with the ladies and played accordion in a mariachi band.
___By coincidence the three men are united when they find themselves in the local bank at the same time as a gunman who takes everyone hostage after a botched robbery attempt.
• • • • • • •
___Bobby hates his name and has decided to call himself Thornton. His mother has no idea how he came up with this new name, but she calls him by it to humor him. His father, on the other hand, just calls him "boy."
___Thornton collects buttons, marbles, change and any other little things he can put in jars. In his room he has shelves stacked with these jars full of bits and bobs.
He brings these items home in his pockets — pants pockets, jacket pockets, shirt pockets — and it drives his mother crazy.
___"Thornton, be sure you empty your pockets before you put your clothes in the laundry hamper, son! I'm gettin' tired of all this junk clanging around in the washer and dryer."
___"I do!" is always Thornton's reply. His mother saves all the bits in a jar on the dryer and occasionally Thorton will sort them and combine them to his collection.
___On Saturdays his mother lets him ride his bike to the local bank to get his coins switched to paper cash. The clerks all know him and smile when he shows up. Unfortunately, on this particular day, Thornton is taken hostage along with three grown men in a botched robbery attempt.
"Bender," is a regular piece by Andy Jenkins for Monster Children magazine
All words/images
©2009 Bend Press
& Andy Jenkins
All Rights Reserved
BENDER : Monster Children, issue 24
Frequently Asked Questions
1) What's up?
2) How yah doing?
3) Are you gonna eat that?
4) Why are they driving so fucking slow? Fuck.
5) Do you have to drive so fast?
6) Do you have any change?
7) Have you experienced any depression?
8) Does this hurt?
9) Cream and sugar?
10) What do you mean?
11) Do you want room for cream and sugar?
12) Can you turn that down?
13) You should iron your shirts.
14) Give me an example of when I was mean to you! Can you?
15) Aren't those dangerous? I couldn't ride one of those.
16) Do you still skateboard?
17) Do you know Tony Hawk?
18) Are you self-taught?
19) What time is it?
20) What the fuck?
Frequently Asked Questions; Part 2
1) What do you mean do as you say and not do as you do?
2) Is there some logical reason why you always have a goatee?
3) Why do you get mad when you drive?
4) Is there some reason you don't answer me when I talk to you?
5) Well?
6) Is it true you don't wash your hair?
7) Are you scared to skateboard?
8) Do you choose to be anti-social?
9) Do the drugs really help?
10) Why no inspiration to keep the clutter down?
11) Can you hear me?
12) Is it true you did self-surgery?
13) Do you wonder?
14) What are you thinking about?
15) You never offer to do anything... why is that? Don't you care?
16) Why don't you plan something for a change?
17) Why do you always have to play the music so loud?
18) Can you really tell the difference between all those beer brands?
19) What the fuck?
20) Do you still love me?
Read previous "Benders" here. More episodes to come in each new issue of Monster Children magazine.
All words/images
©2009 Bend Press
& Andy Jenkins
All Rights Reserved