The Love Machine & Other Contraptions Read Online Free PDF

live. And Hanna, really—I don’t want to call her “Mom,” I’ve had enough of that—Hanna isn’t such a bad choice. She’s ok. She’s even really ok.
    And she loves me.
    But it’s still all pretty weird.
    I don’t know how long I can stand this.
    At least until I’m born, that’s all I can say.
    We live at Grandpa and Grandma’s place, and there we’ll stay. We don’t have the money to move. I wanted to buy a computer, but there’s no money for that either. They’re expensive, those things! From time to time, I still run the damned record backwards, just to pass the time.
    ~
    August 29, 1984, 04:32
    I was just born.
    I had a really hard time making that happen. Hanna wasn’t ready at first, she wanted to have a career. She drove me crazy. She didn’t understand why it was so urgent for me to have a child. You try to explain it.
    Truth be told, I got used to her. I don’t think of her as my “mother” at all anymore. She’s really okay usually, and I kind of love her.
    But still, it’s difficult.
    The baby is screaming like crazy. You would think that he already understands what’s in store for him, but I don’t remember knowing anything like that, when I was him.
    ~
    August 29, 1989, 20:44
    Today I caught Grandpa telling the kid all kinds of lies about how he was a pioneer and worked in drying the swamps. When I came in the room, he didn’t even blink. There’s no one in this family who isn’t a liar. It’s really unbelievable. At least Grandma wasn’t there to see it.
    ~
    May 14, 1990, 09:54
    I feel old. My childhood memories seem to be dimming. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and the house doesn’t look the way I remember it from my own childhood, but rather like a strange place, an alien place. Maybe I should go and see a shrink.
    ~
    May 15, 1990, 10:60
    Or maybe the kid should go see a shrink. In my whole life I’ve never seen such a crybaby. I just refuse to believe that I was really that way. I mean, of course I was, the evidence is right in front of me, but... I don’t know.
    Perspective, even more than being complicated, is embarrassing.
    ~
    August 29, 1991, 19:20
    That’s it. I ran away. Couldn’t stand it anymore. I’m going to America. I left Hanna a note, wrote that I love her, but that my mental condition... blah di blah. She’s going to hate me. She thinks that she’ll never see me again until the day she dies, but I know what’s really going to happen. I figured it out already. In order to continue living, to continue existing, I must someday return.
    ~
    April 1, 1999, 03:12
    I have returned. At last. Old, bitter, and with a silly moustache and sillier glasses, hoping that she wouldn’t notice. Here comes Uncle Haim. Damn it.
    ~
    April 2, 1999, 17:33
    And here’s Hanna. She still looks young. I still love her. Maybe. But I’m the uncle—the father has gone. I don’t know whether or not she recognized me through the disguise and the additional years. I just have no idea. The kid recognized me, for sure. He grew up quite a lot while I was gone. On the other hand, he doesn’t look anything like me. I’m sure that as a teenager I wasn’t so fat and flaccid. And, alas, stupid. And a Nudnik .
    He started asking me some very uncomfortable questions. Foreseeing this, I gave him a chemistry set that I bought for him in America, just to shut him up. Or so he’ll blow himself up, or something. It worked, at least temporarily. I need to keep giving him gifts like that. Meanwhile, I’m trying to get him interested in computers.
    ~
    December 7, 1999, 18:30
    I looked for that album and for the band that recorded it in every record shop in town, and in several other towns. Nobody has ever heard of it. Where did Uncle Haim... where did I find that damned album? I mean, I still have my own copy, but...
    Ah.
    ~
    August 29, 2000, 21:45
    I bought him a snake for his birthday, which was a bit of a death wish on my part. It almost worked—Hanna almost killed me. The more