Growing Up, Revisited

It's kind of seventies in here,
the paper bag spread out
beside the stove, swollen
with deposit bottles,

divorced and withdrawn,
ignorant of disease
the bareback ride into
an unknown desert,

the cheap meals
poured out of cans,
opened and baked,

silence while one works
and another rots her brain,
and sometimes popcorn
can be found tucked

behind the cushions
with loose change
and a comb whose origin
cannot be traced.

But outside, scandal and snow,
inflation, depression,
the listless and moribund
working class, drugged

by hundreds of channels
of saccharine fare,
cell phones and laptops,
internet, American Idol,

a viewed reality preferred
to any lived, a bubble of
righteousness in a world
so many shades of grey.

Mix

It isn't a medley
where the songs meet,

this new mix
of droning and pop,
a genre without a label,

no fan base
or t-shirt line,
no special section in stores,

no Rolling Stone reviews
or award ceremony
adulations,

no hip dance
or hair trend,

no upturned collar
or temporary tattoo.

These tones are new,
without study
and a good ear
incapable of being
understood,

but someday will go
number one
with a bullet.

The Chosen Ones

Sometimes you say
'So much for writing,'

toss it aside
for the night

and try to regain
that sense of who
you were,

tripping through words
and the consequences
they bring

under the light of
the brightest star
you have ever seen,

which is what
sent you here to write
in the first place.

A Murderer in the House

I received my letter from Reno today, a thinly-veiled apology within a list of excuses. Pointless, really. She signed it with her shaking hand, not a stamp. If she felt remorse, it wasn’t legible in her cursive, nor in the empty words that had been typed for her. I don’t blame her.

My dad’s here staying with me, and it’s uncomfortable for both of us. He didn’t bring Jessica, and that’s good. It’s hard enough just the two of us. With her here, I don’t know. It’s not like there could be more silence. He flew here on his own dime, has been here for three weeks since the memorial. I’m ready for him to leave, but he’s still clinging for that last bit of connection to family.

He ran off with the flight attendant, Jessica, five years ago, right after I got out of high school. It was no secret things weren’t good between him and mom, and it was only half-heartedly concealed that he’d been banging the waitress at the omelet shop for a couple years previous. She was okay. I don’t care for Jessica.

Dad and Jessica lit out for Australia, settled into a small town outside Melbourne. There have been calls and cards and letters inviting visits, but I have no interest. The snakes and spiders and the tension are all too poisonous for my taste. Mom had become a fragile figure in those years before he left. And once he did, she moved to Waco.

I am almost certainly the result of the last time my parents had sex. I have often wondered what must have passed through their minds when it was over. Were they hopeful? Were they drunk? Was it angry make-up sex after another bitter argument? Were they just having one last ride on his way out the door when they suddenly realized they weren’t careful?

It’s funny the things we inherit from our parents. Every relationship that crashed on me ended with one last roll. I was careful, mostly. The last time, not so much, but that’s been two years ago and I haven’t gotten any phone calls, so I guess it worked out. My older brother kids me about it, but I think it’s jealousy. He’s been married for ten years to a great woman. He told me once they’ve never had a fight. They don’t know the passion of make-up sex, that angry, “take that” attitude that makes the rest of us shudder and weep. But they work, and that’s good.

I showed my dad Reno’s letter, and he grunted oaths against the administration. A life-long Republican, his heart didn’t bleed. “Shoulda gone in there whole-hog that first time,” he said. “Shouldn’ta carried on so long.” It makes no sense to me, but I let him talk.

There was no chance of it ending well. We knew it from the start. Those things never end well. I know they had their reasons for moving in; Janet’s letter was full of them. But there was no harm in waiting. They weren’t suicidal. This wasn’t Jonestown. This was religion and guns, but nothing more. Sure, the guy was a lunatic, but his people were happy. Those that weren’t were allowed to leave.

You can hear it in a person’s voice when they aren’t convinced what they’re doing is right. I talked to my mom a few days before the end. I tried calling for hours before the busy signal lifted. I talked to David first. He started in on his rant, how they were being abused by the government, how they wanted to be left alone. “I just want to talk to my mom,” I told him. “I know she’s not coming out of there.” And then he put her on, and she told me she was happy. Scared, but happy. They thought it would end peacefully, and that gave them hope. Three days later I sat in an ocean-side bar and watched the compound burn to the ground live on CNN.

My mother had been shot in the hip during the assault, no telling whether it was from her people or the feds. She was wounded by the bullet, unable to leave her room, and burned to death under her bed. You have no idea how much heel-dragging goes on when you try to get dental records for identification purposes.

She must have suffered like hell that day. Koresh took the easy way out with a bullet in the head. He didn’t even have the balls to do it himself and made Schneider do it. What a pussy.

The people in charge always take the easy way out. My dad too. He was the breadwinner, paid the bills, sat at the head of the table. When the time came, when he’d had enough, he made the choice to leave. He left a big check on the table, grabbed some clothes and his life-insurance policy, and he never looked back. When she died, he felt obligated to return, to be here for Max and me, to be a shoulder to lean on, but we had each other and that was enough.

I don’t have much grief about it. She was doing what she loved. She was happy. And yet dad’s doing what he loves, and I want to tear his fucking throat out. If he hadn’t left, she’d still be alive. I blame him more than Koresh. I blame him more than the ATF. He’s the one who killed her. I have a murderer in my house and he won’t leave.

Tomorrow. I’ll ask him to leave tomorrow. Julie hasn’t been here to stay over in three weeks, and that’s too long. Three weeks is a long time to wait for sex, regardless of what you may think. If you think otherwise, you’re too old or you’re getting it plenty. Not that sex is what it’s all about, but I need the comfort of her arms around me, of her legs around me. I need to be as close to her as possible. But she can’t be here now, not with him here. I don’t want them to meet.

It won’t last forever, Julie and I. We work together at the paper, and there’s bound to be an issue someday. She’ll object to a line I’ve written and I’ll take it personally. There will be a closed-door meeting with tense lips and grinding teeth, then we’ll carry the argument home, I’ll insult her dinner, we’ll fuck the balls out of each other, and she’ll leave and not come back. There is no escaping it.

Patience has always been the enemy. We can claim to be strong and confident, but waiting makes everyone but Buddha crazy in time. Dad ran out of patience with the distance at home. Reno ran out of patience with Koresh. My hands are shaking from my own withdrawals, running out of patience for the desire to be touched. My heart hurts. Tomorrow I will take it out on him. It will start calmly, and if he puts up a wall I will tear it down, not brick by brick, but I’ll blast the thing to bits. I’ll come in swinging, and knowing him, how quick he is to turn tail and run, one little nudge will send him burning to the ground.

Metamorphosis

She has those tiny teeth
I like, and that beer
looks muddy enough

to please my palate.
I think of touching
her shoulder or

leaning in to catch
the slightest scent
she carries,

whether sweat or
perfumed skin,
whatever,

and then leaning in
for the laugh
at something I said

and then
dragging me home
and laying me there

among the storm of sheets
stained with last month’s blood
and whispering in my ear

i’ve come
i’ve come
i’ve come.

It's Not That Rhythm

You don’t need an
iambic two-step
to hold me close

or the stress and rests
of trochee.

The young man
from Nantucket
is not that well-built

and someone should have
punched Ogden Nash
in the nose
if you ask me.

You are the person
clapping off-beat

the one there
in the last row
with the torn jeans
and sneakers

who stared up
into the graveyard moon
that night you lost it
in the back of the Buick

and you knew then that
flesh against flesh
was good even when
it wasn’t.

The only form
I care about
is the one
inside those jeans

and once I get them off you

I’ll show you
what rhythm
is all about.

The Selfish Cry for Blood

This pallid sky mocks us. Even the greenest grass loses its hues, casting instead the image of instability, a modernist painting brushed by an artist lacking too many colors. Every shade of gray is accounted for above; you couldn’t paint it, nor would you want to. Too soon, too soon. Or, perhaps, an exercise in Seasonal Affective Disorder, practice for the next half-dozen months.

I sit away from the other parents, none of whom are challenged by the gloom. They are a mass of cavemen cheering savagely at their girls. Their yelling overlaps, a muddy mixture of encouragement more for their own behalf than that of their offspring. If only Ralph Steadman were here to capture this in ink. He would draw them without sympathy, some gnawing on the bloody bones of a mastodon, others standing and hurling red-faced pressure onto the field. A grandfather calls his charge’s name in every other word. “C’mon Betty, get to the ball Betty, that’s it Betty, get to the middle Betty.” Her name has been changed to protect her innocence; she’s got enough pressure to handle without appearing in these words of impractical voodoo.

He yells something about an opponent being slow, capable of being exploited on a breakaway. My heart breaks for the slow child who must hear his words; his voice has that peculiar timbre that cuts through any noise. I hope she isn’t comprehending his words are about her. Were it my kid, I would have said something.

My kid is slow too. She is not an athlete, at least not yet. Maybe she’ll grow into it, into something she likes. Or maybe she’ll sit down at a piano or pick up an alto sax and be able to speak through that. I find more satisfaction is creating a piece of music than I ever did hitting a 20 foot jumper from the corner.

Consider again these animals who guide their children with vague directions. Imagine if these creatures acted the same at their children’s band concert. Would this grandfather with the diamond-edged voice point out the flaws of the first chair trombonist if it meant moving his grandkid up a notch? “He’s got short arms, Betty. He can’t hit the high notes clearly, Betty. Hey Betty, her embouchure is sloppy, Betty.” What kind of world would that be?

And of course that world exists, but thankfully not in my circles. Competition is healthy, but hostile competition, wrongly guided competition, creates self-important jerks. It creates poor losers and even worse winners. It creates Republicans. Ye gods!

I’m glad my daughter has a different coach this year. The guy last year was a nice enough guy off the field, but during games he was only an assault charge away from being Woody Hayes. My kid doesn’t need that kind of pressure. She’s got enough to deal with without that jackass getting in her ear. But he’s not coaching her this year, and instead she’s got a really good guy fronting the team. He plays her regularly, knowing she won’t get better if she doesn’t play. He offers positive encouragement rather than angry shouts of guttural syllables that only served to make the animals on the sideline raise their passionate fists into the air and chant, “ugh ugh ugh ugh” in support.

This is exactly how the Tea Party started.

When she came anywhere near me, near enough that I didn’t have to over-extend my diaphragm to be heard, I calmly offered advice. “Stay with ‘em, girl. Move around, give her a target. You’re doing great, darlin’. Keep it up.” She would look at me and smile and twirl her hair and scratch her ear, ignoring the ball behind her. That’s my kid. I couldn’t be more proud.

As she sat on the sidelines, I considered what direction she might go in athletics. She could be a good golfer. Archery might be her thing. Watching her sitting on the blanket next to a teammate, suddenly throwing her arms around the other girl for a big hug for no reason that I could discern, I considered her as a cheerleader. She’s definitely supportive. Anyone who was there to witness it will never forget how she cheered the opposing team during a game of t-ball last year. So sure, a cheerleader. I feel good about this idea, though perhaps I won’t feel the same in another five years. I can see myself being a protective father. I remember the crushes I had on a couple of the cheerleaders when I played basketball. I also know I spent more time watching them than I did paying attention to the game, sometimes even when I was on the court. I will not be crazy about the idea of some hormonally-challenged boy ogling my daughter. Not when she’s fifteen, not when she’s fifty. Breathe. Breathe. Okay.

Children involved in athletics, if they are any good, at some point turn against their inferior teammates. They stop passing the ball, or they group together outside of practices and games and shun the less-talented. Yes, this is a generalization, but it happens more than any good parent wants to admit. I fear this for my kid. She’s sensitive to how she’s treated, and if such a thing were to happen to her, she’d be crushed. Admittedly, she needs to toughen up a bit. She knows it too. I have confidence that will happen at some point, but hopefully it happens before it’s too late. I hope, at some point, she’ll see what she is capable of and what is beyond her abilities, and make some hard choices. I was a decent-enough ball player in grade school, but I knew when I got to high school that I couldn’t and didn’t want to compete at that level. I hated stepping away from it, but to attempt to continue would have resulted in nothing good. And besides, those cheerleaders were way out of my league.

Her mother doesn’t value the importance of the arts. If my daughter shows some talent as a musician or an actor, her mother will struggle. I question her ability to be supportive, which for an artist is integral. It is up to me to suggest these alternate routes of growth and fellowship. I’d certainly rather hang out with a bunch of artists than with a bunch of athletes. I would rather my mind be strong than brag about how much I could bench. I would rather have dinner parties with copious amounts of wine than sit in a sauna for three hours trying to make weight. I would rather curl up with a good book than ride a bus for three hours only to run around in the freezing rain and get shoved around by a bunch of pituitary cases. But that’s me. My kid can do whatever she wants, and I’ll be there to support her. She’ll never hear me calling for blood, but she’ll hear me saying, “Good job, girl,” through my blue, shivering lips. And that’s enough for both of us.

And We Thought It Was Funny Her Dishes Might Give Me Cancer

I was reminded today,
as the water boiled for
the season’s first cup of tea,
how much I despise
the kettle you chose.

How quickly the rust
formed inside, my thick wrists
unable to squeeze through
the tapered rim
to scrub it free.

And have I told you that
in that dress
you look like a fat pear
about to fall
from an overstocked
fruit bin?

When framed with glasses,
you have the
second-most beautiful eyes
I have ever seen,
but without them,
you look constantly
stoned or surprised.

Your Midwestern dialect
is so charming in the
words you mispronounce.

When ground to dust,
the darkest coffee beans
smell of your thighs
on the days you
bleed your worst,

and that, of course,
makes me miss you
more than ever.

Observation

I might as well be
a baseball,

stitched up
and caught when
knocked foul
and held aloft

like a trophy
no one would pay
more than
a few hundred dollars
to possess.

A Note on Dreams

I think I’ve bought more juice in gas stations than in the grocery store, in quantity at least. Not quantity by amount of fluid, surely, but definitely quantity in number of bottles. This is where I arrive after waking from a dream.

I tend to dream often of gas stations, particularly gas stations in the middle of nowhere. Gas stations with a serious lack of sundries and food items on the shelves. An old pack of Snowballs, maybe. A bottle of grape juice, seemingly with the consistency of motor oil, covered in dust on the rusty grate inside an old cooler. I never seem to know what I want or why I’m in one of these places, but they are a regular stop in my dreams.

I should know better than to pay much attention to my dreams. Doing that hasn’t really taken my anywhere fruitful. There was that one dream – some of you know the one – that sent me into a quest to find this raven-haired woman that so significantly affected me in a dream. When I awoke from that one, I was so devastated to having realized it was only a dream and not real life that I cried for half an hour. And it isn’t like there was anything important about whatever sort of relationship I had with this woman in the dream; it was platonic, but somehow exceedingly important. Why I decided it needed to be real, why this subconscious sleep-induced fantasy meant so much to me, I have no clue. But it sent me looking for her. And then I found her – or someone I believed was her – and I of course fell for her. Within weeks, this relationship – one that went no where at all – was over, and now we are only tangentially friends.

And then years later, another woman who fit the description came into my life. Again, I fell for her. Again it fell apart. We, at least, have become and have remained good friends, though with all sorts of drama and caveats attached to the friendship, almost entirely from her end. Ah, the many times I’ve waited fruitlessly for her to visit or to call. And was she the woman from that dream so long ago? At this point, why does it even matter? Especially now that Karrie Anderson has come along.

Okay, as far as I know, Karrie Anderson does not exist. Karrie Anderson works at a rip-off of a Taco Bell restaurant. Before that, she worked at a White Castle rip-off (Brown Castle). She is the manager. She had very short hair, a sandy, reddish color mostly hidden by her hat. She has freckles, lots of them. She has a lovely smile and a great sense of humor.

I was walking down the street with some friends, trying to get away from them, really, so I could go get myself something to eat. They wanted McDonald’s, and I wanted anything but McDonald’s. They wanted to drive, even though it was only a couple of blocks. I hate that. They rolled down a window as they passed me and asked if they should stop at the gas station to grab some chips and dip or some other munchies. I said I didn’t eat that stuff (and I do try very hard to avoid that stuff), and I kept walking.

I don’t remember wanting to eat at this particular Taco Bell rip-off joint, but I certainly did go inside. I might have been cutting through the place to get away from my annoying friends. I worked my way up to the front of the place, and the lovely Miss Anderson (I didn’t yet know her name) looked up at me (I was floating) and said, “You have a very handsome face when you’re hungry.”

This floored me. Literally. My feet were again planted. At the time of her statement, I was, in fact, talking on my cell phone to some other woman, someone I was interested in at the very least. But when Karrie spoke to me and I looked at that wicked smile and the light in her eyes, I was stunned and completely stricken. I stuttered a “Can you hang on a sec?” into the phone, and then hung it up. I asked Karrie what her name was. She told me “Karrie.” She lived somewhere south of here, maybe Flint, maybe closer (but not much). She went to school down there somewhere.

“I have never done this before,” I told her, and it is true both in the dream and in real life, “but could I have your number?”

“Of course,” she said, and gave it to me. I asked how to spell her name, “With a C or a K?” “With a K,” she said, and I typed it into my cell phone. My phone decided for me that her last name was Anderson. Her number started with 225, so perhaps she’s a Verizon customer as well.

We made plans to get together the following night. I would go to her, and I would take my overnight bag because somehow I knew I wouldn’t be coming home that night. Or at the very least I’d bring my toothbrush.

I woke up shortly after this, while I was considering where to carry the toothbrush. I would be wearing a sport coat, surely, and would maybe stick the toothbrush in the inside pocket. No reason to worry about toothpaste; she’d have some. She’d have to have some with a smile like that.

And when I awoke, I was not devastated to be awake, though seldom do I have a dream where there is any specific connection between me and the other people in the dream. But there was enough of a connection for me to grab my phone and text her name to my email address, so I might look her name up and see what turned up.

I don’t know why I am an optimist about such things, because I clearly should know better. It’s a kind of desperation, I suppose. A sad, pathetic state of affairs that would send me on yet another pointless quest. But nevertheless, there I was, texting the name of a person I dreamed about to myself. And then getting myself out of bed at 3 in the morning and sitting down in front of my laptop to write about it, about her, about the juice.

Someone once told me that one theory about dreams is that we are somehow everything in our dreams. In other words, whoever we dream about, whatever we dream about, everything and everyone is a version of ourselves. This theory annoys the piss out of me. I don’t believe it for a second. It’s psychological mumbo-jumbo, some therapist’s explanation to some sick individual who insists on following his dreams (in the literal sense) in some reckless fashion. I suspect dreams are somehow representative of our subconscious mind, a way of allowing us to experience things we desire. In my experience, when not under the crazed dreams brought on by melatonin or tequila, this seems more likely. I dream of playing music or writing on a professional level, things I would really like to do and be successful at in real life. And in this case, in the case of Karrie Anderson, it is my subconscious mind searching for a relationship with some cute, interesting woman, which sounds more sad and desperate than I think I am now that I’ve written it down.

But it won’t stop me from writing about it. Nor will it stop me from looking her up, especially before I post this for the world to see, because if Karrie Anderson exists, there’s no way I’d tell you her name. She’s mine. I don’t want you going after her first.

Sisyphus

I awoke gasping for breath. She had come to me in my dream, wrapping her sweaty thighs around my head and making me taste her, laughing at me as my eyes bugged out in surprise. She slapped the top of my head over and over, grinding against me, and I struggled to find air.

Once I came to my senses, I tasted blood. For a moment, I mistrusted reality. Would I perhaps awake from a dream within a dream? She had been bleeding in the dream, this I remembered, and now I was tasting it. I rolled my tongue around inside my mouth. It was thick, swollen. I felt raised flesh around both sides, and finally understood that I had bitten it in my sleep.

I went to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on my face. I could still hear her laughter. It was sadistic, maniacal. The top of my head hurt like my hair had been pulled, and this with no reason. Had I thrust myself against the headboard, trying to escape the dream in my reality? Had I pulled my own hair? This pain would never be explained.

I sat down on the toilet to pee. It would have been impossible to do it standing up; I was hard, from both the pressure in my bladder and the content of the dream. It was a struggle to relax, to let it go. And when it was over, I was still hard, and I masturbated into the bowl, leaning over and resting my right hand on the floor when I came, groaning, hoping for some kind of relief to the tension.

I crawled back into bed and thought about her, about us, how far we had come sexually. When it started, it was romantic and playful, light, cautious. Within weeks, the lovemaking had become more aggressive, her asking for harder, rougher contact. My fingers would dig deep into her ribcage. She insisted I squeeze her hips as hard as I could when she rode me, and there were times when, the following day, my hands would ache. I left teeth marks on her sides, on her ass, on her shoulders, inside her thighs, wherever she wanted to feel me bite her. I didn’t need any of it; it was all her, but I was willing to give. I loved making her feel good.

She would be turned on by things that surprised me, since she was so shy in public. Once, my friend Charlie came up from the country to stay for a few days, sleeping on a pile of down comforters on the living room floor. She had heard the floorboards creak when he got up for a midnight piss, and she woke me with her hands and mouth, pulling me on top of her, jabbing at me, prodding me until I moaned, then slapping me to elicit more noise. She wanted Charlie to hear me. She laughed every time I made the guttural sounds that surely carried into the next room where he lay. In the morning, at breakfast, Charlie looked at us uncomfortably, but she just hummed Beethoven with a sly smile on her face while scrambling eggs in the frying pan. Charlie never stayed with us again.

The paramedics told me she suffered, which may be why I’ve been unable to let go. She had been awake, aware of what was happening, but unable to escape her fate. True to form, she accepted it and had ripped her own panties off from under her skirt so she could touch herself one more time before… before….

I take the bus to work now. I take it everywhere, really. Everywhere it goes that I need to reach, at least. Once in awhile I need to take a taxi, but I am never comfortable. The cabbies pick me up out front and ask about the car in the driveway, why I wouldn’t want to drive it everywhere just to be seen in it. I make up excuses, that the starter’s busted, that the brakes are shot, that I haven’t had a chance to renew the insurance. Sometimes they ask to look under the hood, but I feign that I’m in a hurry. I am never in a hurry.

My work has suffered because I can no longer concentrate. When I show some potential buyer a stove or refrigerator, I seldom hear their questions. I tell them what it does. I answer whatever question I think I’ve heard. They rarely buy. The manager has been decent about it. He understands that I am still lost, but I can sense his patience is running out. Soon I’ll be asked to straighten up or find another job. This should scare me more than it does because the job market is so shaky, but I also know I have enough of her life insurance money left to last me a few months if I need it. The only money I’ve spent from it was on her funeral, which was so surprisingly expensive. They were nice people, sympathetic and willing to do whatever they could to make my transition easier, but I couldn’t help but think how much of that money was going to new suits and ties. My transition. It was more hers than mine, I suppose.

Charlie let me stay with him in the country for a few days. I slept on the couch. He was distant, but had a willing ear. Neither of us brought up his last night at our place, but we were both thinking about it. We sat at his table and I scanned the walls, counting six crucifixes and one set of rosary beads hanging off the curtain rod above the kitchen sink. No wonder he was uncomfortable.

I tossed and turned for awhile, hoping to get back to sleep, looking at the clock every 15 minutes until the sun started coming in through the blinds. I got up, made some instant coffee and choked down a bowl of cereal. The hot coffee felt like shards of glass against my ragged tongue. I sucked on an ice cube and looked through the medicine cabinet for some Orajel to rub on it, anything to deaden the pain. Her toothbrush still hung on the rack behind the mirror. I hadn’t gotten rid of anything but the dress they buried her in.

I cried in the shower, something I do most days. I threw up after, as I also do most days. I pulled a clean shirt off the line in the basement and ran the iron across it, straightening the roughest edges but forgot the collar, which I hadn’t noticed was rumpled until I’d put it on and made my third attempt at a Windsor knot. I noticed the time; it was too late to fix it now or I’d miss the bus.

I slept through my stop, having fallen asleep to Hayden on my iPod. I walked the six blocks back to the store and punched in at the time clock. The manager didn’t look upset. I did some morning cleaning, dusting off the countertops, checking price tags for expired sales, slicing open an index finger on one of the thick labels. I sucked the blood off until the wound stopped bleeding. Again, that taste of blood, cleaner than hers but just as salty.

She’d taken a turn too fast one night, clipped a guardrail and nosed over into the river, and no one was around to see it happen. The car sank quickly, and she wasn’t able to open a door or break a window. Her seat belt had jammed tightly across her shoulders and hips. The water seeped in slowly, and while she must have had a few moments of panic, I doubt it lasted long. She was too strong for that. And then she reached between her legs, pulled her panties off from the crotch, and rubbed herself one last time. When they pulled her car out and drained the water, her hand was underneath her skirt and her panties had come to lie on the dashboard. They said she was smiling, but that her eyes were open and scared. The slow drowning, that’s why they said she suffered. A horrible way to go, they said. They didn’t question the position of her hand, her ripped panties, any of it, but I told them just the same. Knowing she was going to die, to drown, she was looking for that supposed “ultimate orgasm,” and desperately tried to make herself come while her air ran out.

Every night I wake up like that, gasping for breath. Every night I dream of her, something physical, something degraded, something messy. Every night I wake up hard, go for a piss and pull myself off into the toilet, and then struggle to go back to sleep. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I sleep and she comes to me again, begging for another finger or spitting in my face or into my mouth, biting my lip. She yanks my chest hair. And I wake up again and repeat the pattern of piss and come and then struggle to sleep.

Another Sleepless Morning

She kneels on the grass
out back, running her hands
cautiously across
the coarse concrete
like it were the chest of a bear
she was afraid to wake.

She squeaks when
the pipes knock,
then tiptoes away from
the burnt umber sunrise
into yet another
sleepless morning.

One for Lester

There is that old expression about music having the charms to sooth a savage beast. That can be true for some pleasant classical composition, something Brahms might have hummed over his breakfast of porridge and toast. But there are far more circumstances in my experience where music could turn a man into a beast.

It is just before three in the morning and I have been listening to a varied assortment of jazz for 18 hours now. I started the day with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, an accessible kind of hard-bop that gets a person moving, the sort of jazz a person can clean the house by, something to get the blood pumping. From there, I visited the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1989 with the recently-deceased Fred Anderson, which is decidedly a bit more edgy that Art’s typical tones. And from there, an assortment of mostly “out” players, occasionally stepping back into something a bit more calm (Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko’s quartet being one in the late morning hours), but only for short bursts of time, like a sorbet to cleanse the palate. For the most part, it’s been a diet of cats like Bobby Bradford (a 2009 live recording) and a whole slew of Art Ensemble of Chicago. And that’s where I am now, deep into a 1997 Chicago concert with the AEC, rolling a maraschino cherry between my teeth, the sweetness cutting the bitterness of the bourbon of this second Manhattan.

I don’t know how unique it is to pick out a single musician from a larger group to appreciate, but it’s something I do often. I was always more into Gilmour than Waters (yeah, I know, make fun of me if you want) and Peter Green was the best guy ever to play in Fleetwood Mac, but that’s rock and roll (or blues, if you want to be technical about it). In jazz, it’s a bit different, as there aren’t very many jazz bands that stuck with a certain lineup for a prolonged period. Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (or Horace Silver’s, if you are into that period) had a constantly evolving group of musicians in the band. Hank Mobley blew tenor for awhile. Wayne Shorter also held the reigns. And many others as well. Oscar Peterson had his usual trio of Ray Brown and Herb Ellis, and Coltrane had in his classic quartet Garrison, Tyner, and Jones, but those bands were followers of one specific leader. It was Oscar Peterson’s guidance on piano that we cared about, and it was Trane’s tenor or soprano that sold his records. There are few jazz bands that performed as a unit; the Headhunters, the Weather Report, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, mostly 70’s groups that evolved in one way or another.

One of the few jazz bands that retained their members for most of their existence is the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and like Gilmour and Green, my guy in the AEC was Lester Bowie on trumpet. Now this doesn’t mean I don’t think the rest of the guys in the band weren’t killer musicians too. Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell, the reed players, are stellar musicians. Don Moye is one of the best drummers I’ve ever heard. And Malachi Favors (R.I.P.) on bass, another gifted talent. The AEC were all incredible. But Lester was my man.

Along with the Art Ensemble, Lester led a group of horns called The Brass Fantasy, who were notorious for taking popular pop tunes and turning them into jazzy numbers. Lester also played in a band called The Leaders, along with fellow AEC member Don Moye on drums, Arthur Blythe on alto sax, Kirk Lightsey on piano, Chico Freeman on tenor, and Cecil McBee on bass. Lester was a busy sonofabitch, and a damn good trumpet player.

On stage, Lester was seldom seen not wearing a white lab coat. While the other members of the AEC would have their faces painted in various tribal designs, Lester stood out with his pointy goatee and lab coat. And his horn playing made him stand out even more.

While more than capable of playing a lovely ballad, Lester played his horn with a wicked sense of humor, bringing in honks and squeaks intentionally, shaping each tune into something beyond a simple melody. With his Brass Fantasy, one tune that stands out is a cover of the sappy ballad “Saving All My Love For You.” Just hearing the title makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, because you’ll immediately think of the sugary Whitney Houston version. But Lester’s Brass Fantasy version is a stunning, powerful performance with that trademark humor Lester brought to his playing. It may take a trained ear to hear the difference between someone intentionally playing “off notes” from perhaps bad embouchure, but trust me: Lester knew exactly what he was doing. And it’s not that he’s making fun of Whitney’s singing, but rather he’s making fun of the ballad form itself, something very difficult to properly pull off.

I am somewhere deep into this 1997 AEC show now, and Lester’s playing another solo, standing out from the rest of the band. This particular gig lacks the reed work of Roscoe Mitchell, leaving Jarman to handle all of that side of the performance, which might be part of why Lester stands out so much for me in this particular recording. But as I’ve noted in so many other performances, I can hear Lester playing some beautiful, moving notes, as well as some silly, chaotic belches.

Another of Lester’s highlights is a version of “Hello Dolly” that he plays, accompanied only by Bob Stewart on tuba. The trademark honks and squeaks are largely evident, but it is also a quite moving, emotional piece. Lester is not making fun of this music at all, but rather making it his own. Were it to be played “straight,” it would be just another jazz cover of a classic show tune. But the way Lester carries it, it becomes a new version of a great song; like the proper aperitif before a big meal, Lester’s version reminds you how good an old standard can be.

Of course, the Brass Fantasy is a different animal than the AEC. The AEC is often intense, and very seldom what would be considered easy listening. The horns are often chaotic, the drums tribal and effusive, the bass subtle. In the case of this particular recording that I am now nearly finished with, it’s heavy and vibrant. It leads to distinct and heady emotions. At one point, maybe an hour or so ago, I was filled with a great sense of lust, thinking that any woman in my presence during this music would be in great danger of getting fucked senseless. This isn’t all due to Lester’s playing, mind you. It’s the whole essence of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, at least in this particular experience and this particular show. Now, as this recording is approaching its end, it has taken on a Spanish vibe, Lester again standing out along with Malachi’s bass. It is a fitting end to a rather brilliant concert.

Lester died in 1999 from liver cancer, making him another in that long list of musicians I missed out on seeing perform in person. That is a very small list, with only Zappa (who quit touring before I clued in to his brilliance) and Stevie Ray Vaughn joining him. But thankfully there are so many recordings, both bootlegged and official, of Lester’s playing that can easily lead me into the state of bliss that only music can take me.

Birthday

There is one day each year when the people born on that specific day have the ability to transform any other person into anything they wish. They can only do this once each Birthday, and only on that day, which happens to be coming up very soon, a few weeks from now, in fact. The transformation wears off the following morning, the only stipulation being that the transformed person must get home before sunrise. If they do not make it home, that person will remain in whatever form they have become for the rest of their lives. This is a kind of Purgatory, but a short-lived one in the grand scheme of things. The poor people who fail to get home spend the next 364 days suffering their position, but thankfully, when the next Birthday comes, they lose all memory of their lives before and spend whatever time they have left with only the consciousness of their new form.

Some people caught in this scenario spend their last year mourning for the life they will soon forget. Others take advantage of their position, and spend their time getting used to their new forms. They retain their ability to communicate for this period as well, which is nice so they can properly say goodbye to their loved ones.

Few people are aware of the Birthday. Those that are aware tend to gather together in small groups and discuss among themselves what each of them would like to be, and then they take turns turning each other into birds or snakes or stalks of rhubarb or whatever, assuming they’ve worked out a way to get themselves home by the end of the day. And none of them talk about this to anyone not celebrating the Birthday; to discuss it with an outsider is considered a major taboo, and anyone caught talking about it is shunned from future Birthday parties.

While most celebrants use their power for good, there are of course a few who use their power for evil. One Birthday celebrant was an important figure in the automotive industry (his name will not be revealed). He was rather annoyed with a certain union leader who then disappeared without a trace in the mid-1970s. That union leader is now, in fact, a mulberry bush somewhere east of Telegraph Road in an upscale suburb of Detroit.

There were two friends who were born on Birthday, and they always spent their Birthdays together. David always wanted to be a dog, a different breed each year, and so Jon would turn David into the shape of whatever breed David wished. Jon enjoyed being amphibians and reptiles, and David would turn Jon into whatever creature he wished. As with all the other celebrants, David and Jon were wise enough to make sure they would be able to get back into their homes before the following morning so they would not remain a dog or amphibian or reptile for the rest of their lives.

David had installed a pet door into his house, which allowed him the freedom to come and go until bedtime without the hassle of doorknobs. David’s other friends, none of whom were aware of David’s gift, often asked about the point of having the pet door, because David did not own an animal. (David did, at one time, have a dog, but he had to get rid of it following one Birthday for reasons not discussed in polite society.)

Jon was less creative with his plan of entry. He had a sliding glass door in the back of his house, and would be sure to leave it open wide enough to allow entrance for whatever sized creature he opted to be on any given year. Thus, if he were going to be a Gila monster, he would leave the door open wide enough for a Gila monster to pass through. If he were to be a tree frog, obviously the door could be more closed. It was a simple plan, but it worked well enough as far as Jon was concerned.

Just over one year ago, David and Jon had a minor disagreement over a rather sensitive political topic regarding what rights a woman should or should not be allowed to have when it comes to reproduction. And with most disagreements on this issue, theirs escalated into something a great deal more than “minor.” David felt very strongly that it was no one’s business but the man and woman involved in each case, while Jon believed that conception meant life, and all life was sacred. David agreed that all life was sacred, but he believed life didn’t begin until the first breath was taken outside the womb. This viewpoint was tearing Jon apart, and so decided he was going to do something to set David straight.

When Birthday came, David and Jon met in their usual Birthday meeting spot, deep in the woods behind the local community college, a place where people seldom passed.
Jon arrived first, just as the sun was peeking through the trees. David arrived shortly after, still trying to decide whether he wanted to be a terrier or a beagle.

“Happy Birthday!” he greeted Jon. “What do you think for me this year? Beagle or terrier?”

Jon looked at his friend and said, “You are a viable fetus,” and David immediately became a fetus, lying on the dirt beside an elm tree.

“What the hell!” the fetus yelled at Jon. “What the hell did you do to me? What have you done to me?”

“Turned you into a fetus,” Jon said to the fetus.

“You sonofabitch!” cried the fetus.

“Don’t worry,” said Jon with a smirk. “You’ll be just fine. You are a precious life. Don’t you see? You are living and breathing, even though you aren’t completely gestated.”

“You sonofabitch!” cried the fetus again.

“Just trying to prove a point,” said Jon. “Just want to you realize what life is is all. Even though you aren’t fully developed, you’re alive. You see?”

“But it’s Birthday, Jon,” moaned the fetus. “I could be a fucking brick and still be alive right now. What the hell does that prove? Nothing! I’d be alive no matter what because I AM ALIVE. And how the hell am I supposed to get home now? I’m screwed, Jon. Screwed!”

“I’ll get you home, don’t worry,” said Jon. “I’ll get you home.”

“You ruined my Birthday,” said the fetus. “How’d you like it if I did this to you, turned you into something you didn’t want to be? This sucks, okay? This really sucks.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jon. “There’s always next year. Don’t take it so personally. I just want you to see that I’m right and you’re wrong about when life begins.”

“Yeah, well you’re a fucking maple tree, how’d ya like that?” spat the fetus.

And before the fetus realized his mistake, Jon became a 35-foot tall maple tree.

“Oh, this is just great,” said the maple tree to the fetus. “Now what are we gonna do? I was going to carry you home before sundown, and now we’re both stuck here. We’re going to be stuck here forever.”

The fetus was silent. The maple tree continued to speak. “I can’t get home like this. I’m rooted to the ground here. And you, you can’t even crawl home because you haven’t yet developed the muscles for it. What were you thinking?”

“I’m sorry,” said the fetus. “That was a mistake. I was pissed, didn’t think. Sorry.”

“’Sorry’,” said the maple tree, sarcastically. “Right. That fixes everything.”

As you might expect from a story such as this one, no one came along before the sun went down that night. The following morning came and went and neither the fetus nor the maple tree had much to say to each other. They were both resigned to their new forms, neither of which allowed for much mobility. The maple tree felt a tickle when a gust of wind rattled its leaves, while the fetus felt nothing but the occasional bits of dirt that blew across its body.

As the weeks passed, the maple tree began to feel very self-conscious about itself. It realized that it could live for a couple hundred years, barring any massive expansion by the college that might infringe on the woods. The idea of living for hundreds of years was overwhelming enough for the maple tree, but it had also realized that, once the next Birthday arrived, the fetus’s lifespan would be extremely short. Less than a few hours, probably. This saddened the maple tree because the fetus had been its friend.

The fetus spoke very little to the maple tree. It too knew its days were numbered. Its moods changed from moment to moment, sometimes feeling guilty and wishing it had not been so vindictive, but other times being downright pissed that the maple tree would live a good, long life while it, the fetus, wouldn’t last a day past its next Birthday. In these moments, the fetus would lob insults at the maple tree. “I hope someone comes along and drills a bunch of holes in you and takes all your sap,” the fetus would say. Or, “I hope someone makes a nice fire out of you someday.” The maple tree just sighed in response. The maple tree didn’t blame the fetus for these mood swings. It knew how difficult it must be to be a fetus.

Now you are probably starting to feel really sad about the imminent death of the fetus, but don’t worry. Because, you see, just yesterday, I went for a walk in the woods, and was I ever shocked to find a fetus lying on the ground next to a maple tree.

“Oh, thank Christ!” cried the fetus. “Mister, please, you’ve got to help me.”

Hearing words come out of a fetus is a pretty upsetting thing, I can tell you. A blaspheming fetus isn’t something you run across every day. And I, with no knowledge of Birthday at all (I was born, thankfully, a Libra), screamed so loud my throat hurt for two weeks.

“Mister, it’s okay, really, but you gotta help me, okay? What day is this?” the fetus asked me.

I told him.

“Okay, there’s still a few weeks to spare, that’s good. You’ve got to get me to a hospital, okay? Get me to a hospital before the end of the month. If you do that, I’ll have a chance, but you gotta get me there, okay?”

“What are you…? How are you…?” I stammered.

“When were you born?” the fetus asked me. “What day?”

And then, the maple tree behind me yelled, “DON’T YOU DARE!”

“Jesus!” I yelled, spinning around. “What the hell is going on here?”

“What does it matter now?” said the fetus to the maple tree, ignoring my question. “In a few weeks, I won’t remember any part of my past. I won’t remember my Birthday any more than you’ll remember yours. Our lives as we knew them are over. What should we care now about being shunned?”

The maple tree was silent for a moment, until it finally sighed and said, “Okay. Tell him.”

And so the fetus told me everything. It told me about Birthday parties, transformations, and everything. When the fetus finished the story, the maple tree spoke. “You should help the fetus,” it said. “Take it to a hospital. I’ll be fine here. If the fetus has a full life, then we’ll both be okay. That’s good. That’s right. Please help the fetus.”

I took off my shirt and knelt down beside the fetus, wrapping it up snuggly, cradled it carefully in my arms, and started away. “Wait,” said the maple tree. I paused, turning back. “Good luck,” it said to the fetus.

“And you,” the fetus replied. “Maybe we’ll meet again some day.”

“Maybe,” said the maple tree. “Maybe we will.”

I carried the fetus to my car and drove with it on my lap to the hospital. The fetus sang along with the radio, but said very little to me. It whispered another thanks as we pulled into the parking lot, and reminded itself it would have to keep quiet once we got inside. I took the fetus into the emergency entrance and the nurses and doctors came running. The police were notified. I gave a statement, not saying anything about the Birthday of course, or that the fetus could talk. I told them I was walking in the woods and found the fetus and that’s it. And then I went home. They promised they’d find the fetus a good home, if it survives. That it would get the best care, the best treatment possible. They said they’ll let me know, but I suppose they’ll forget. In the end, everyone forgets and focuses on their own lives. A maple tree will just be a maple tree, perhaps growing taller, but always a maple tree. A fetus may become a child, if it is lucky. And I will grow older, each year thankful not to celebrate a Birthday.

These Old Men and Women

To properly consider
these old men and women
who stand rooted beyond
the milkweed, their burnt
and scalloped skin peeling,

drop the pronouns
and listen for their names,
whispered from one to the next,
and address them

accordingly, for when
it is your turn to fear
the end of Fall, you
would hope for the same.

Night Swimming

Maria’s Melody bobbed gently on the tranquil waters. Brendan had dropped anchor about 7 miles off the Caseville shoreline as Dayna set out their lunch: tomato and avocado sandwiches and a chilled bottle of Vigonier that tasted faintly of cantaloupe. That had been two hours ago, and now Brendan stood at the stern looking through the field glasses he’d retrieved from one of the cabinets. Dayna lay on her back, rubbing the underside of her right breast, and then plucking the stray hair that had sprung – seemingly overnight – from the top edge of the areola. She held the hair up to her index finger and guessed the length at an inch. That wasn’t there yesterday, she thought. How could that have grown so quickly?

She released the hair into the light breeze and brought her left knee up to her chest, squeezing it with her arms, stretching the muscles in her back, and felt the last of Brendan’s warm fluids drip from inside her. Their lovemaking had been sudden and unexpected, as it often was. Brendan was a strongly passionate man and would reach for his wife whenever the mood struck him, which was, to Dayna’s satisfaction, quite often, but almost always from out of nowhere. This time had been particularly good, the best in the months that had passed since her mother had died. Dayna had struggled to move on from the loss, even though their relationship had always been strained at best.

But this had been a good day, and Dayna was finally feeling like herself again, thanks mostly to the fresh Lake Huron air and the weight of her husband upon her thin body. She smiled at the feeling of him coming inside of her, the way he throbbed, and the quiet moan that escaped from his lips before he withdrew. Neither of them had spoken after. Brendan had stood up and pulled his shorts on, waving off a schooner sailing by a few dozen yards of the starboard side of the Melody, acting out the common courtesy of checking on an apparently unmanned boat to make sure nothing was amiss. It was hard to know when not to come a-knockin’ when on the water, everything is rockin’. The sun was dipping into the horizon, and night would hit the lake before long, but with Brendan’s wave, the pilot of the schooner waved back his own acknowledgement and turned east toward shore, leaving the couple to themselves.

Their relationship had been struggling since her mother’s death. As she withdrew into herself more and more, Brendan grew frustrated with her prolonged silences and mood swings. Occasionally she had rebuffed his physical advances – something new to both of them – and that had done nothing to improve the state of affairs. Brendan had begun to grow silent as well, and there were many days over the preceding months where they had spoken fewer than a few hundred words to each other.

She looked back at Brendan, who was still standing there looking out across the water. She saw the dark scar on his back from his disc surgery, remembered his car accident, how afraid she was that he wouldn’t be able to walk again. At this, her mood began to darken again. Her mother had died in a car accident of her own, run down by some drunk teenager as she was crossing the street, never seeing it coming due to the grocery bags she had been cradling high in her arms. Dayna felt the tears coming, and as they spilled down, a sense of wonder that she could still have anything left to cry for.

Brendan chose this moment to look over at his wife. He saw the tears, and dropped the binoculars to the padded bench the spanned the port side of the vessel. “You need to do something,” he said to her sternly. “Do something, for Christ’s sake.”

“What do you mean?” she sniffed.

“Get a job. Take a class. Get a hobby. Something. Anything. I don’t care. Just do something to get your mind off of this.”

Now the tears came easily. “Please,” she started.

“’Please’ nothing,” he scowled. “You have to distract yourself, or give yourself something else to fret. Go peddle your maudlin ass to some lonely business traveler and deal with that guilt for a change. At least it would be something you could maybe get over.”

Now she was angry. “How dare you? How dare you!” At least the tears had dried up.

He muttered something under his breath, something she couldn’t catch. “Brendan,” she started, but he waved her off and sat down behind the boat’s steering wheel, looking back and forth between the compass on the console and the direction he’d been peering through the binoculars. He rested his hands on the wheel and his head upon his hands. The dimming sunlight glinted weakly off the Melody’s key which dangled on an elastic band Brendan wore around his wrist. He muttered again, “Fuck it,” she heard this time, and he slapped one hand down against the console.

“I could see someone,” Dayna said. “I could find someone to talk to.”

“You’ve been saying that for months,” Brendan replied. “It’s getting hard to trust your words. You know I’m trying to be patient, but my patience is all but worn out. You need a good kick in the pants to do something, that’s what you need. You need something else to worry about? Well guess what? You got it, baby.”

At that, he stepped over the port side rail of the Melody and dove into the lake.

“What are you doing?”

“Going for a swim,” he said. “The Charity Islands. They’re about 2 miles west of here, and if I start now I might get there before it’s dark. And if I don’t, well, I hope they got that lighthouse going.”

“The key!” she yelled at his back. “You’ve still got the key on your wrist.”

He turned back, treading water. “Exactly,” he said. “There is a blanket in the console, and you can use a life jacket as a pillow if you want. Sleep well.” He turned away and began a strong crawl.

“Goddamn you, Brendan, you can’t just leave me out here like this!” she yelled at him.

He swam on, aggressively, to the west, ignoring her. He heard her voice for the next half hour or so, slowly growing hoarse, until the rusty squawk of the seagulls covered any noise that might be floating with him on the dark water.

I Didn't Mean to Say That Out Loud (fiction)

Beyond the slick patch of sweat running down my spine, everything seemed all right. Rush Hour was a bitch, as it always is, those harried minutes between 4:30 and 6:00 when everyone who forgot some important ingredient for the night’s dinner descends on the aisles like cockroaches. Maggots. That’s what we call them when we’re out. Maggots.

I try to avoid the busy sections during Rush Hour, stocking the cleaning supplies aisles if I can swing it. That section is mostly safe from the heaviest traffic, or at least the worst of the maggots, the ones who bump their carts into your ankles while you’re putting the litter bags up on the top shelf and then look at you like it’s your own damn fault.

Today, I was running behind and ended up right in the middle of Canned Vegetables when it started to get busy. I busted out my boxes as quickly as possible; I’ve gotten good with a pricing gun. By the time it was over, the sweat was running but I felt good and had been uninjured in all ways but verbally. It’s like I don’t exist to the maggots until they need something from me, and I can’t tell you I’ve ever heard a please or thanks from any of them.

It was her shoes that I noticed first. They were completely wrong for her. The backsides of each had been warn away, as if she walks with all her weight on her heels. She shuffles her feet – I noticed this second, the sliding sound they made – and leans back into her stride. She had broad shoulders and a big ass, poured into her jeans in just the right way. She was alone, and wisely chose to do her shopping just as the worst of the crowd had thinned.

She carried a basket and a tiny purse, both hanging from her left elbow. Inside the basket, a box of panty-liners and a tube of mascara. I watched her progress in Frozen Foods, where she stopped every so often to examine the toppings on the pizzas. She opted for Barney’s Supreme, and failed to fit the box into her basket, choosing instead to carry it in her right hand. Her nails were painted mint green, matching the color of her ragged, flat-soled shoes. She passed by me slowly, eyeing the garlic toast and the waffles and the peas, selecting nothing. As she passed, the smell of her feet hit me hard and aroused me.

“Clean up on aisle five. Dennis to aisle five please,” interrupted the endless droning of lite-pop music, and I muttered, “Fuck.” I turned to head back to the storeroom for a mop and bucket – it was the tomato sauce aisle, and some dumb-fuck kid probably knocked over the Prego display – and as I did, I heard her say, “Rough day?”

I turned back to see her smiling at me. It was an understanding kind of smile, like she’d been there done that kind of job. She could’ve. Judging by her second-hand dress, her unruly red hair, and those fucking shoes, she didn’t look like she’d been born with one of them silver spoons in her mouth.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just… I thought… I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “Are you out soon?”

“I am,” I said. “Another hour.”

“Well that’s good,” she said. “You look like you need it.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, walking away, wondering what the hell she meant. Did I need to be out of work? Did I need to get laid? “It” can be so vague.

I cleaned aisle five quickly – I was right; it had been tomato sauce – hoping to catch sight of her again, wondering what she might say this time. She seemed interested, maybe liking my long hair or my goatee.

As I was about to drag the mop bucket away from the spill, I heard her voice again, this time from the next aisle over. She had run into a friend, and I heard very clearly her say, “Okay then, the bowling alley at 9. Sure.” I’d be out by then. I haven’t been bowling in awhile.

I got to the alley at 8:30 and took a lane at the far end, away from the leagues. I took my time getting ready, lacing the shoes, trying a dozen balls before finding one that fit somewhat better than the rest. I was in the middle of my first game when she came in. She was at the counter getting her shoes when I saw her. Those shoes would suit her stride, that shuffling walk. I stood with my right hand over the fan behind the ball return, watching her as she approached her friends only a nine lanes away from my own. She said hello to a few people, hugged a few others, and when she turned away to go pick out a ball, she saw me standing there staring at her. She turned her head slightly in recognition, and gave me a kind of half-wave, which I did not return.

I finished my first game as she was starting hers. I went into the bar and ordered a pitcher of Coors and a cheese pizza, and tipped a buck to the waitress when she delivered it to my table midway through my next game. I sat down and drank the beer and ate the pie, counting the chews and swallows, listening to the laughter coming from her and her friends, glancing between them and the Keno numbers constantly refreshing themselves on the television screen nearby.

When I finished eating, I returned to my game. I tossed my next ball directly into the gutter and heard laughter again. I glanced over at her group and noticed three or four of them – and her – quickly look away from my direction. My cheeks felt hot.
I left everything at my lane and retrieved my shoes from the counter, which was currently being attended by the waitress from the bar. As I slipped into my shoes, I heard a bell ring and the waitress ducked into the bar to collect another order. I hopped the counter and quickly found the girl’s worn-out, stinking shoes, grabbed the backs between the fingers and thumb of my right hand – already sore from that goddamned bowling ball – and hopped back over the counter and walked quickly through the door.

F.U.D.N.R.

Bit by bit, my only place of solace is being taken away from me. The first evidence arrived three months ago, when a port-a-john was placed on the north side of the lagoon, presumably for those weak-bladdered folk who couldn’t wait another ten minutes to get to the picnic-area bathroom. And then a month later, when they trimmed the bushes and trees far too much, killing a great deal of shade and atmosphere. And again today, with 8x11 yellow fliers stapled everywhere stating the area had been chemically treated with a wide assortment of nates and phates and phyls, warning pedestrians to avoid wandering from the paths or wading into the water. I wonder if the three fawns I saw last week were consulted or made aware. Did someone notify the rabbits and chipmunks?

And to be fair, this new sense of loss began even before I walked out my door. The hillbillies next door were about to begin a bike ride on the trails, and as I was in no mood to wave aimlessly at another chorus of “Hi, John,” I hid inside and waited for them to depart. It was a good ten minutes of listening to the fat mother tell her children to get their “fucking shoes” on, and to “hurry the fuck up” so they could leave. Who are these people, and what sort of damage are they doing to the karma out there? I feel a great deal of sympathy for the kids. Just yesterday, the littlest boy, standing outside in his diaper, saying a muffled hello to me, waving by splaying his fingers wide and then clenching into a fist a half-dozen times. He must have no clue what kind of life he is in for with these people.

When I finally get to the lagoon and see the warnings posted, I feel sick to my stomach. Almost every walk out there these days fills me with apprehension. I fear all sorts of things. I am afraid to see litter in spots from which I cannot retrieve it. I fear crossing paths with those I’ve wronged and who have wronged me. And now with these chemicals sprayed everywhere, I fear coming across the carcass of a deer or some other creature.

Chipmunks are on the path in great numbers today, skipping off into their personal gas chambers as I approach, and pop back out after I’ve passed. There are no deer to be seen. No herons. The swans are in a mood, flapping their wings and skiing across the top of the water to the laughter of the children fishing off the dock. A grandmother and grandchild, sex unknown, sit on a bench with rods. Cast, reel. Cast, reel. Who would let their grandchild touch a fish that came out of this water with these warnings tacked up everywhere? Has everyone lost their minds?

I notice my breathing has become irregular. I am holding it longer than I should, unconsciously trying to avoid breathing in the cancer they’ve spread in the brush. Near one bend, a small patch of wildflowers are an unnatural shade of green, the kind of color that, if I were to have mixed it, I’d scrape off with a palette knife and throw away because if doesn’t belong in nature. And later, a two-inch circle of bright blue petals, never before seen out here. Everything changes every minute, and seldom to the good. Maybe nighttime is the best time for me to go out there, so I can’t see anything disturbing.

As I near home, I hear loud voices coming up behind me. I turn to see the hillbillies also returning from their trip, and I quicken my step to get inside before the hassle of their madness. I drop the needle on Mudfoot, Blythe and Bowie, Freeman and Moye, Lightsey and McBee playing together as The Leaders, and wonder how I’ll make it through another week with no job and little hope for finding one. The bills are piling up, the creditors are calling. I am drowning, and the only place I have ever been able to catch my breath is now covered in chemicals. As if it weren’t enough for my relationships to try to kill me (in both the literal and figurative sense) over the last few years, now nature’s having a go at me too. I wish I knew how to fight back, but I’ve never been much for confrontation.

The Effrontery of Children

These two ten year old boys rode past me on their dirt bikes, one to my left, the other to my right. The second hit his brakes and did a skid in the gravel alongside the road, kicking dust and stone into the air. He stood on his pedals and rode off, looking back at me with a wicked grin as the dust he’d stirred up settled across my face and body. He got to the corner and made a left, when I finally muttered, “You little prick,” under my breath.

This is not the first time I have been the target of abuse from children. The first time was as a kid myself, probably ten or eleven years old. I was riding my bike out by the bay one day and I passed a boy who was much younger than me, maybe five years old or so. I smiled and said hello to him, and he snarled his lip and held up his pinkie at me, much the same way as you’d flip off the rat-fucker who stole your parking spot in front of the post office. I was stunned. First of all, I didn’t know why this boy was being insulting to me, someone he’d never even met. Secondly, I didn’t even know if I was being insulted.

One winter day few years later, I was riding a four-wheeler in the same area, a friend of mine riding behind me. I had remembered that altercation with the kid flipping me the pinkie and had told the story often, including to the guy riding with me. Suddenly, we see a young boy playing in the snow on the side of the road, and I recognize him as the pinkie kid. So I tell me friend, “Hey, that’s that kid! Give him the pinkie!” My friend pulled off his glove and flipped the kid his left pinkie. The kid, almost as if he’d been waiting his whole life for this moment, shakes the mittens off his hands and flashes both his pinkies at us. We drove on, both of us shaking our heads in disbelief.

Many years later, when telling this story to a friend, she told me what the kid’s gesture represents: not worth fucking. Okay, but wait a minute here. There’s no way that kid knew what that meant. I was thirty five years old and I didn’t know what it meant! Regardless, the kid meant something at least, and it wasn’t polite.

Then there was a kid named Rusty who used to skate at the roller rink some weekends. For months, I’d been trying to be alone with this cute blond girl (I cannot remember her name… Cindy? Jenny?) and had skated with her a few times during the ballads. But then one day, Rusty made his appearance, and the blond girl fell for the charm of Rusty’s long, sandy hair, no matter that he was significantly younger. He was a good skater too, and while I certainly had some pretty tasty chops in those days, a new kid with long hair streaming out behind him was something no thirteen year old girl could pass up. I disliked him immensely. He was competition, and that put an end to my hopeful relationship with the nameless blond. I’m not much good at competition. I need to be wanted.

Rusty turned out to be all right. We became friendly after a few weeks when all the drama had blown over. He was okay, but there are a lot of kids that age who aren’t. Most boys from 12-15 are douches.

I was at a wedding reception once and saw this early-teen boy dressed up in a suit and wearing sunglasses. He never took them off, either. He walked around with his tan suit, no tie, shirt unbuttoned one hole too many, sunglasses, acting like he were the coolest cat in town. He was trying to look cool, to be impressive, but in truth, to anyone over the age of 15, he looked like a douche. I kept tabs on him all night. There were no girls his age. Hell, there weren’t any boys his age. He was on his own, in his own world of imagined coolness.

Now I’m not saying that kid was a jerk like pinkie-boy or the kid on the dirt bike. This kid was just alone in his little world, acting in his own movie. He might have been a pretty nice guy. The kid on the bike, however, is a jerk.

As he rode out of side around the corner, I saw his future. Lots of detention, for a start. He’ll try out for the football team when he gets to high school, will make the freshman team as a wide out, but because he’ll never grow very big, his football career will end there. He’ll be highly skilled in mathematics, but will be too busy working himself into the popular social circles to enhance his education. He’ll get summer work at his father’s used-car lot, cleaning the incoming cars before they are re-sold. When he graduates, he’ll start selling cars but quickly find he’s no good at it, and instead find a fulfilling career as a waiter. When he’s twenty-one, he’ll knock up one of his co-workers, a sixteen year old hostess. He’ll move away immediately, to some city on the west coast, and he’ll learn to surf. He’ll pick it up quickly and move on to the big waves before he’s ready. He’ll have a wipe-out coming out of a tube and get hit in the back of the head by his board. His rescuers will be unable to resuscitate him. His death will be tragic for his family, but the funeral will be sparsely attended by any friends of his own. Even the mother of his unborn child will not come.

That’s a lot to put on someone for being a kid, but the malicious grin he flashed me as the dust settled over me wasn’t just some kid being a kid. There was intent in it, intent to fuck with me. To get sand in my hair and eyes, all over my clothes. And it’s not like I’m dressed up out there either. Nothing fancy. With the way I look when I go walking, I’ll certainly never pick up a pretty woman on the trail. In fact, most of the women I pass eye me suspiciously, like I might be one of those wackos who prey on women who walk alone. I have this crazy beard, and I wear an old t-shirt and frayed jean shorts and old tennis shoes, and I probably mutter to myself a lot. I look like a goddamned crazy person. But neither does this make it right for this kid to stir up the dust around me. Just because I look dirty doesn’t make it okay to make me dirtier. It’s like taking a box away from a homeless guy. How much more sadistic do you need to be, kid?

So home again to scrape the dust off my sweaty brow and arms and ruminate on my own youth. Was I a douche too? I know I never intentionally sprayed another human being with dust and gravel. But I have almost certainly “acted cool” in a situation where I looked completely foolish. But when? What did I do? Have I blocked it all out? These are the sorts of things that stick with me, things I have done that occasionally pop up in my head and embarrass me all over again, but for the moment, I am thankfully oblivious of any of these situations. Okay, wait. I did intentionally leave some dumbbells out when I woman-of-interest came over for the first time, but that was only a few years ago, far past the time period in question.

So maybe the kid on the bike will have a pointless life, but what of the kid with the sunglasses? Where is he today? He’s probably got his degree and is working for some investment banking firm, struggling with the current state of the economy but earning a decent living. He lives alone in a small apartment in Queens, reads a lot of comic books, orders out for Chinese nearly every night. Occasionally he goes to the bar, thinking he’ll meet some nice woman, but never finds the nerve to talk to anyone who fits his type. He will masturbate infrequently because the stress of his job drains his desire. But he’ll be okay. He’ll make it.

And as for pinkie-kid, your guess is as good as mine. I firmly believe that someday I’ll cross his path again. I’ll flip him both pinkies from my sides, like a gunfighter in a duel. He’ll look at me quizzically, turn to the gorgeous woman at his side and say, “What’s up with this guy? What a douche,” and walk away, twirling his pocket-watch by the chain, wrapping it around his finger in one direction, and then in the other.

The Good Things in Life

There is an expression about good things coming to those who wait. There is another expression about good things being worth waiting for. These expressions were likely coined by the same person, who doubtlessly made a lot of enemies is his life. I suspect the first time he said it, someone punched him in the nose. Hard. But he kept saying it, and someone took note, and now they are common expressions that teach the virtue of patience. But they also extol a kind of laziness. To follow these adages is to do nothing for one’s self and leads to no real accomplishments. Those who disagree with them may live by an opposing theory, that being to go out and find good things in daily life. They believe in taking life by the horns and living it to the fullest.

I am neither of these people.

Don't get me wrong. I have had a lot of good things in my life, but I have chased many of them away over the years, some for good reasons, some for selfish reasons. I have regrets about many things and people I have chased away, and I suppose it fuels that depressive side that strikes me every now and again. And when that mood hits me (like an anvil wrapped inside a pillow), it makes me wonder if I haven’t used up my allotment of good things. What if life’s great plan only allows for a limited amount of good things and if a person doesn’t use them properly, there are no second chances? Like the three wishes a leprechaun grants, the good things must be carefully nurtured and respected, but if they are taken for granted, you end up in a right mess of shit.

Twenty minutes ago, I told myself that maybe it’s time to be the other guy, to be the extrovert and take what I want. Time to get behind the mule, right? That idea made my muscles hard and my goals slightly less vague, but within moments, I shrugged it aside. It’s ain’t me, Jim. It just ain’t me.

This isn’t to say I don’t believe I’ll never experience any good things again. Of course I know that’s not true. But the good things only come occasionally, and not nearly often enough. Last night was a prime example, entertaining a handful of guests, playing music for people, laughing about old times, trespassing on state property in the dead of night and stripping off my clothes on the beach, wading several dozen yards out into the water with one of my oldest and best friends, each step reclaiming a relationship that had faltered due to the bad influence of an old love, and while that friendship has been properly rekindled for a good many months now, it is actually blooming into a better and stronger friendship that it ever was. These things, all of them, are good things, but they don’t happen as much as I’d like.

I take a moment here to contemplate the scar on my shoulder, rubbing the phantom itch, each time a reminder of how I received it, the story of one broken shoulder such a metaphor in itself. That scar is the perfect example of reaching out for life’s good things, and look where it got me: deeper and deeper and deeper into a mess there seems no way to escape.

I walk away to start “Darkness on the Edge of Town” for the second time, an album where every line seems directed at me. “Don’t waste your time waiting,” sings the Boss on “Badlands.” He’s one of those, you know. One of the “go out and grab it by the balls” people. So many people I admire or appreciate seem to be that kind of person. Put me on a stage with an instrument in my hands or with some well-written lines and a decent character to play, and I am not this me but one of them. Off stage, I am back to the real me. Could I just take one of Shakespeare’s famous lines (or the title of a Rush album) and reinterpret it for my own use and just imagine all the world as a stage?

That’s pretty optimistic, and probably slightly out of my grasp. In theory, I like it, but in practice, I’d annoy a great many people. Or maybe that’s just the residue of the relationship that led to this scar.

Most of my life is a performance. In public, I am not afraid to have fun and act like an oddball when the moment is right. I have no problem embarrassing myself in front of people. At home, alone, I write, I play music, I have imaginary conversations, often aloud, looking for the right words to get my point across in these potential situations. These encounters will never come to pass, but I would be ready if they did. Or so I think in the heat of the moment of these completely pointless exercises.

At this point, someone will step up and say, “Well you should be thankful for what you’ve got, or at least for what you get when you get it.” Oh, please. I am, okay? I am one of the most grateful people you know. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t appreciate life as much as I do, the good and the bad of it. Everything is fuel for my writing. Everything is worth observing and acknowledging, and I think few do it with the appreciation I have for it. I am all about the experience, whether it’s good or bad. No one will ever be able to say that I didn’t experience enough of life. Oh sure, there are times when I get agoraphobic and sequester myself in my rooms and listen to copious amounts of music, to write stories or poems or songs, to go in the kitchen and experiment with a new recipe, but I also certainly acknowledge that these moments are experiences of their own. The perfect meal is as good as any sex or any conversation or any piece of art. I find fulfillment in painting, being stripped down to my boxers and sitting on the floor, speaking to no one but myself, running the oils together on the canvas. Of course I also enjoy having company in these moments, as there is nothing quite as fun as getting nearly naked with a fellow traveler and painting together, or writing together, or making music together, the latter two of which generally include clothing.

I have had many souls share parts of my life with me, some good, some bad, but all worthy. They have all had a hand in making me who I am, for better or for worse. That is a blessing too, each of them more of those experiences that make life worth living.

I get up to start “Darkness” for the third time on the compact disc player. "Badlands, you got to live ‘em every day." Damn right, Boss. And now it's time I go live some more of this one.