Family Feud

My feelings.

The “batman cowl” look of John Kerry’s forehead, nose, and eyebrows.

My feelings of guilt at having sold my brother out to the cops in Nevada.

The desire not to write or think about the pervasive feeling of nausea.

The desire to write about things I don’t like to think about but think about too much.

I have a coquettish relationship with myself whereby I think everything I produce is valuable, but still feel compelled to dismiss it all as worthless and trite.

I can’t tell whether I revise too much or too little.

Fantasy basketball statistic checks in regular intervals. Feverish attempts to construct pin-shaped joints out of roaches that we’ve collected in empty yellow box tops. Irregular bouts of Halo undertaken in sudden and intense moments of determination.

When the late-night programming roster begins, I feel a sense of relief. I have my choice of syndicated reruns and B-grade blockbuster movies. Roseanne, M*A*S*H, Roseanne, Bad Boys, Cops.

Earlier today I watched an episode of Family Feud, the version before Ray Combs.

The host had an alcoholic face and a full head of graying hair that he wore brushed forward all around with fat chop sideburns. He wore a polka-dot tie with a fist-size knot and ate a ripe strawberry bite-for-bite on the air with a game twenty-two year old female contestant [he asked in between bites] before he kissed her on the mouth in front of her father.

This prompted Hichem, sitting next to me on the couch and scowling at a roach he was having difficulty lighting, to take a moment and say: “This guy is like the most pimp dude ever.”

He then shuffled down a notch and kissed a tall blond on the mouth before introducing himself, breath stinking, to her husband, a stiff man with rose-colored glasses who stood to her right in full military uniform.

The first question, dating the program to a time at least two decades before now: “Children can be spanked. What can you do to discipline a teenager?”