April 25, 2004

Flushed with inspiration, I paused in the middle of our second game, my ball suspended in the air, to reveal that bowling is the most dramatic game ever invented.

“It’s just like a Greek tragedy,” I told Simon and Heather who were smiling at me from the bench. “The curtain goes down after each of the three acts as characters on stage are killed by fate — the endless variations that lie in the flick of the wrist.”

They didn’t seem convinced, so I illustrated the idea with great flourish by flicking my third ball down the lane, killing another actor before the curtain fell. The audience in my head clapped ecstatically when the drama ended and the pins were cleared off for the next performance.

More insights followed. For instance, I realized that you need a mantra to play well.

“Empty your mind of everything except a single, painfully important thing,” I said. “And boil that idea down to a single word that can be groaned as you hurl the ball.”

Words starting with M like “metadramatic” and “mayhem” worked well for me, as did the word “pussy” — I groaned it rather loudly before getting a strike. But the words “Katie West” worked the best — they made my aim deadly, beautiful. Katie fed me bones the last time we came bowling (I was wearing my collar), and that’s why her name worked like an incantation. I used her magic to win the game.

After we exhausted the magic, the three of us went for coffee. Heather is flying over an ocean this Wednesday so we wanted to say goodbye. But instead we discussed how to interface with machines by fucking (forget typing) — that’s my newest ambition. We need machines that orgasm convincingly while caressing the user with their digits. They accused me of filling everything with sexual agony.

Why does everyone resist my most penetrating ideas?