The More You Ignore Me by Travis Nichols Page A

feels after, and what kind of excremental end point the whole process comes to. There, I am able to read that my condition is improving.
    On a camping trip by myself in March, for example, I noted that I had, from morning until midnight, ingested nothing but tamari almonds and red wine.
    I fell asleep on a partially inflated air mattress in my tent and awoke just as dawn broke over the hills.
    I felt an overwhelming urge pressing at my lower back.
    After running into the freezing woods, I unleashed, with an ecstatic grunt, an inverse cast of my large intestine.
    I stared at the steaming pile in wonder, then scrambled back through the wet leaves to my tent to record the event in a joyous fever.
    That digestive event remains one of my most cherished memories of the past few years; not a birthday, not a vacation, not a party—that big defecation alone has made me happy!
    But whom could I share this happiness with?
    The last girl I dated, a thirty-five-year-old hussy (who, I should note, misrepresented herself in her online profile to a nearly criminal degree) remained squeamish about digestion issues the whole time we were together, claiming to her perpetual horror that “boys always have to talk about it.”
    Always one to zig when the boys zagged, I acted very prim when I was first with her.
    No bodily conversation, no restroom visits without matches, and thorough wipings of the bowl after urination.
    It had become such a repressed digestion environment that once, when I hovered over her on her couch, kissing her neck in my patented way, she adjusted her weight and squeaked out the tiniest piff from her digestive tract’s end point.
    I laughed and told her it was like the sneeze of a rabbit.
    Eyes wide in horror, she ran out of the room in shame, thinking I was disgusted at her little explosion.
    I realized then that I had perhaps overplayed my hand.
    Our relationship ended soon after—for obvious reasons.
    Back to the point: I believe in you, dear readers, and I know, since I have recorded “rough cuts” of a few of the “Charli” screenplays whilst playing each part myself, that these scripts are not unrealizable .
    Looking back on my most recently finished scene—one that I may indeed post for you should anyone express an interest—I am astonished at my facility with the genre.
    What a scene! I admit, I have impressed myself.
    It’s only a matter of time before you see this scene (and the others I have on file!) on screens across the country.
    The full-length feature will be called, I think, The Rapists of a Generation .
    I see David Duchovny playing a certain pivotal role.
    But please don’t be distracted by this hint of riches!
    Come back to me, dear readers!
    I have merely mentioned the screenplay to illustrate a point, that the TRUTH is being suppressed.
    How do I know these things?
    How can I predict the future in this manner?
    Is it because I possess a superhuman intellect?
    Perhaps.
    I have never been given the proper tests, but I believe this genius is simply a product of observation and deduction—and age, of course; it does beget wisdom about some things, despite what you have heard.
    Strange, isn’t it?
    I’m beginning to reclaim all the power now despite what it might look like.
    I have nothing, you see.
    I am a nobody.
    What could this puffed-up somebody possibly do to me that hasn’t already been done by countless others?
    I’m like the Vietcong, the Sandinistas, the PLO , the American Revolutionaries, while Chris is just a bruise in the side of a dying empire.
    A bedsore.
    I know.
    But it is just those bruises, those bedsores, that will become infected and run with pus and eventually weaken the immune system so that the host will cough his last burbling soon enough.
    Yes.
    He appears to have everything, but more importantly he believes himself to have everything. Of course that makes him weak.
    A name, a job, a reputation, a