Originally Appeared in Unit Circle #5

An Excerpt from December 22

Chris Romano

August 27, 1992

I'm ringside, watching a combination boxing/wrestling match between Tex Cobb and "The Wildman." I don't remember what happens.

Everything changes, and I can see Tex Cobb and The Wildman sleeping next to each other, in sleeping bags. They seem to be sleeping next to a large window in a skyscraper. I'm in a helicopter, looking down on the two of them. I'm filming them.

They're fighting and The Wildman is winning. I think he's got Tex against the wall and he's beating in his ribs. But then, Tex Cobb gets up and starts landing these round-house kicks to The Wildman's mid-section. Tex pushes The Wildman back against the window.

There are two announcers - where they're located I don't know - and they're calling the play-by-play action.


Linda and I are lying in bed together. I know I'm pretty much naked, but I'm not so sure about her.

Linda picks up my limp penis and looks at the head. She then looks at me and tells me I have to "stop jerking it."

August 28, 1992

I live in a light house or a tower of some sort. It's tall and skinny and very dark.

I enter my darkened room through the old, wooden doorway. Then I leave. I enter my darkened room through the old, wooden doorway again. And then I again leave. I enter my darkened room through the doorway a third time. And then I leave a third time.

There's a girl walking up the staircase, and I think I say "hello" to her.

I quickly go back to my room-again-because I'm in a rush and I need to go somewhere and I need to change my clothes. It seems my cousins are over and there are two new babies with them. I sit on the couch and I play with the babies. I'm lying on my stomach, on the couch, and the babies are sitting on the back of my head. I'm doing push-ups or something like push-ups, because I'm lifting the babies up and down off the floor. They seem to like me doing this, but I have to stop playing because I need to change and leave.

Before I can go, though, I'm forced to play "traffic light" with the babies. I don't want to play and try to explain to my aunt Carol that I must go. She gets angry at me, which makes me angry at her because I feel like I'm being relatively selfless.


I'm in the halls of Art Center, sitting and talking to other students. An asian girl walks up to me - she looks like a cross between Jan, the Kerckoff gallery girl at UCLA; Julie Miyoshi; and Wendy Asato. She's actually kind of plain looking, but she has an attractive smile.

She asks me if she can see my grades. I pull them out of a folder, and say, "But I hardly know you."

She just rolls her eyes and says, "I'm not going to make fun of you."

I hand her my report card. She looks at it and begins to laugh out loud. I can't understand why I got a "B" in one of my classes, but she says my report card says I got a "D". I decide to just hang my report card in my studio for all to see.


I walk into my bedroom and see two larger-than-life condoms, unused and still in the wrappers, lying on my floor by the closet. Curiously, I pick one of them up-it says "Optima" on the wrapper.

I notice a huge sheet of unused condoms and put them in a drawer in my room. I get the strange feeling either my father or Andrea Chavez dropped them off.


Unit Circle Fiction