Frog City Updike

By Arthur Graham

Frog City Updike is an off-beat collection of short stories, flash fiction, and other miscellanea compiled with its title as a structural and thematic guide. But where exactly is Frog City Updike? What possibilities await those who dwell there? And where in the hell are all the dang-blasted frogs?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arthur Graham
• Release date: Mar 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458068552

Arthur Graham

Hailing from the north woods of Michigan, Arthur Graham currently resides in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife and her cat. He writes his books alone in the dark, usually nude, surrounded by empty bottles and loaded guns. Occasionally, he prefers to work nude while astride a rainbow. His style is one that willingly loses itself in the false dichotomy between "genre" and "literary" fiction, with much of it cleaving towards satire and surrealism. His work has been called "clever", "tacky", and "even a bit obscene", and one reviewer was kind enough to label it "Burroughs-lite". His novella Editorial was recently picked up by Bizarro Press, and his short story "Zeitgeist" is set to appear in an upcoming anthology from the same imprint. One day, he hopes to sell enough books to supplement his drinking habit, but not so many that he's forced to claim the income on his taxes.

Book preview

Frog City Updike

& Other Short Writings

by Arthur Graham

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Published by

Arthur Graham via Smashwords

Copyright © 2011 by Arthur Graham

* * * * *

For Jayna,

who provided the spark

* * * * *

WELCOME TO FROG CITY UPDIKE,

POP. 7,886

The first thing you should know about Frog City Updike is that there are relatively few frogs living there, actually. To be perfectly honest, there are only about two hundred or so in the entire area, and most if not all of them are concentrated around the small pond at the shady heart of Frog City Updike City Park. Quite rare is it to see a frog anywhere beyond this pond or its immediate environs – at least one that hasn’t been flattened by a car or carried off and pecked apart by a bird somewhere. But the frogs of Frog City Updike – confined as they are to their pond at the center of Frog City Updike City Park – they don’t much complain about their lot in life.

Another thing the reader should be aware of is the fact that Frog City Updike isn’t technically a city at all – weighing in with just 7,886 yearlong residents, it would be more accurate to call the place Frog Town Updike. But, as is the case with all such misnomers, the fact of the inaccuracy is not as important as the truth of it. Whenever the place was first referred to as Frog City Updike, or whoever first referred to it that way – these questions are purely academic. For those who call it home, Frog City Updike simply is what it is. Frog City Updike is just what the town has always been called, and since the name stuck as well as it did, no one really sees much point in trying to change it on a technicality now.

The last thing the reader should know about Frog City Updike (last of the first three anyway) is that there has never been any family, business, or public office with the name Updike listed anywhere in the local phone book. One can imagine how hard this has made it to look up the local post office, or anything else for that matter!

MAKING RELATIONSHIPS WORK

I was sitting in the Frog City Updike Public Library the other day, reading one of the many great works of literature available there (absolutely free of charge, mind you), when in walked a young, hip couple. I could tell they were young due to their solid, slender physiques, smooth skin, and overall lively demeanor. They were hip obviously because they were dressed in the latest fashions of the time, which at that time consisted of an all-black winter ensemble accentuated by bright pastel accessories. As for how I could tell they were a couple, well, there were two of them present.

I watched them for a while, wondering who they were and what their relationship was like, justifying my curiosity by promising to avoid making assumptions. After they disappeared into the stacks at the back of the library, where the video collection was kept, I forgot all about them and went back to the book I’d been reading.

When I saw the female half of the young, hip couple again, she was on the opposite side of the library and alone. She was facing away from me and I could only see her from the shoulders up, but there could be no mistake that she was the same girl.

When she turned and stepped out into the aisle I was sitting in, I could see right away that I’d been mistaken after all – this woman was evidently much older, maybe twice as old even, and would more likely have been the girl’s heavier, greyer, wrinkly faced mother. She too was dressed in tight fitting black pants, black boots, and black coat, though these didn’t impart quite the same flattering, thinning effect on her significantly saggier, more rotund form. Her movements were slow and sad and the vibrant pastels of her scarf, earrings, and purse had faded to the color and consistency of dry, dead flowers. Surely this was not the same girl!

Then, as if to prove me wrong yet again (proving me right by proxy), the male half of the couple came shuffling into view, as unmistakable as his younger, hipper counterpart. His appearance and behavior had undergone a similar depreciation – his hair thinner now with pot belly overhanging studded leather belt – and he followed the woman at great distance, whereas before he’d fawned over her every step. Abandoning my prior promise to not assume anything about them, I was forced to admit that they both looked positively miserable.

The woman paused at a shelf near my seat and spent a few moments perusing its contents. The man stood back a ways, fiddling with the buttons on his undersized pea coat and glancing about at everything but the woman standing between us. I tried to pretend that I hadn’t been thinking intently about their personal lives, which was easy now that I noticed their combined effluvium of french fry grease, cigarette smoke, and mildewed undergarments.

As they finally walked away, leaving me sorry for ever having considered their existence, I noticed the title of the book the woman had selected:

MAKING RELATIONSHIPS WORK

After they’d checked out and left the building, I realized that the experience had taught me three valuable lessons:

1) It takes more than the latest styles to make a person hip,

2) it takes more than hipness to make a person young, and

3) it takes more than two persons present to make a couple.

On the other side of the library, back over by the video collection, a young boy is standing beside his young father.

Are those books, daddy?

No son, these are VHS tapes.

What’s a VHS tape?

A VHS tape is a movie you play in a VCR.

What’s a VCR?

Don’t worry your little head over it…

STAYING TRUE TO YOURSELF

About a week ago I was walking down the Frog City Updike street when I noticed, there on the Frog City Updike sidewalk, the following words written in powdery blue chalk:

BE WHO YOU TRUELY ARE

This caused me to smile in spite of myself – I who so rarely finds cause to smile these days – as I stopped and stood there reading it over and over again. I actually began to feel a warm tingling somewhere in the bottom of my heavy cynic’s heart, and there was something in the fresh cool breeze of early spring that truly made me want to believe in those words of pure honesty and benevolence scrawled upon the sun-drenched sidewalk. Given how artificially most people seemed to behave most of the time (your humble author included), I found myself thinking, you know what? People really should be who they truely are!

So, taking my own piece of chalk from out my coat pocket, I knelt down and appended the message as follows:

I, FOR INSTANCE, CANNOT SPELL TRULY

I had a great chuckle looking at what I’d done and found my heart growing even warmer. I’m telling you, it really made my day!

The next day I walked past the same spot and found that someone else had came along and appended my appendage:

YOU, FOR INSTANCE, ARE AN ASSHOLE

Hey, if the shoe fits…

THE JEAN JACKET

Now here comes a classic Frog City Updike character – Frog City Updike Tony. Here he comes now with his backpack and long hair and jean jacket. If you look over there, you can see him walking up beside the Frog City Updike Greyhound terminal across the street.

Tony is a young free spirit who loves to travel all across the country and write all along the way. His backpack is full of notebooks and road food (beef jerky, apples, little cans of tomato juice, etc.) and a couple changes of clothes. He only has one jacket with him – his jean jacket – because it is his favorite jacket and the only one he’ll likely need in the climes he’ll be visiting.

And he is ready to go!

It makes him happy to think of the new places he will visit and the new people and things that will be there waiting for him, and the new writing he will do in their company.

As previously mentioned, Frog City Updike Tony loves to travel and write. But it should also be mentioned that he has another love, a love whom he is coldheartedly neglecting while he goes running around the country for three weeks on this writing trip – his girlfriend, Frog City Updike Sheila.

Unlike many girlfriends, Frog City Updike Sheila was not the type of girlfriend to insist that her boyfriend never go anywhere without her. This wasn’t to say that she was happy he’d be leaving for a bit – quite the opposite, actually – or that she wasn’t at all jealous or perhaps even suspicious of his motives for not taking her along, but Sheila knew that Tony loved her very much and would come back again as promised. The reason why she let him go, despite her many reservations, was that she loved him very much as well and wanted him to be happy.

Of all this Frog City Updike Tony was already painfully aware, especially so as he joined the line boarding the bus to god-knows-where while Frog City Updike Sheila was most assuredly sobbing into her pillow at home. But he had to