my fault—but she seems nice, and she’d be a good representative, I guess. Sure, Stuntman and I are both African American, but he’s got that big chip on his shoulder, and the way I was brought up . . . well, I was always told to be proud of my heritage and ancestry, but that pigmentation don’t make a person much beyond being darker or lighter than someone else. That’s easier to believe, I’ve found, when you’re out in the middle of the Grand Tetons than when you’re in the middle of a big city like LA, where the color of your skin sometimes seems to be all that matters, but I’m not going to root for Stuntman because of that. If he wins, fine. But I’ll root, a little anyway, for Rosa.
What’s for me after American Hero? I really don’t know. I’ve been giving it more thought lately, since everything ends real soon, and especially since Curveball and Simoon and the others took off. I’ve had offers from a couple seed companies for endorsements, and there’s this agent who says he wants to handle me, but I don’t know that that’s what I want. I want to see what happens out in the world, with the aces who left here.
I do know there’s one thing I’ll do, no matter what. Once this is all over, I’m going to go back home and be with my parents a bit and talk to them about things, then do some hiking and camping on my own. Out there in the Tetons, the cold air might clear my head enough that I can see where I’m supposed to be going.
Once I know, once I’m sure, that’s where I’ll go.
Confessional: Howard Hawkwood aka Jetman
The Discard House has grown very quiet.
I am not complaining, mind you. I welcome the quiet. I can actually hear myself think. We no longer have Reverend Wintergreen insisting that we say grace every time we send out for a pizza (which I don’t do very often, the pizza out here is terrible). I don’t have to fight King Cobalt over the remote anymore (he tried to put on some moronic Mexican wrestling show right in the middle of a rerun of Thirty Minutes over Broadway, the classic Howard Hawks version, not the stupid remake with Dudley Moore). No more steel wool pads left in the sink after Rustbelt scrubs the spots off his elbows, and no more of Hardhat’s filthy language (his mother should have washed his mouth out with soap, that’s what my mother says).
And we still have a good crowd when we gather around the dinner table. Joe Twitch grows more annoying every day, and I have grown a little tired of Wild Fox and Spasm with their stupid pranks, but the rest are nice enough. Diver misses the swimming pool, of course, but she and Gardener are both nice ladies, Jade Blossom is very beautiful, and Blrr is always giddy and girly and full of fun. She is all a-twitter about this sitcom pilot that’s being developed for her, Who’s That Grrl? She even offered to give me a guest star role, as a dotty inventor who sells her a pair of jet-powered skates. I’m no actor, though, so I said thanks, but no thanks.
I do miss Bubbles. She’s a good woman, bright and friendly, and always cheerful and kind. Earth Witch seems pleasant too, though she started as a Heart while I was on the Diamonds, so I never knew her well. I wish them well in Egypt. I wish all of them well, even the ones I did not especially like. I think they made a hasty decision, and one that they will regret, but I know they wanted to do good.
It was quite a scene here with half the house rushing about and packing and the rest of us arguing with them and telling them they were idiots. Well, I didn’t do that, personally, but Tiffani wasn’t shy with her opinion, and neither was Joe Twitch. Gardener just got quiet, Jade thought they were all funny, and Buford tried to phone his uncle in the Everglades to ask if he should go along. And Rachel . . . well, she got so angry when Bubbles said she couldn’t come with them that Diver had to hide her bag of stuffed animals. All very exciting for the audience at home, I’m sure.
We’ve had too much excitement this last week, if you ask me. The big