A Scene in Public

65: The Smolderer

2012-02-26T20:25:00.003-05:00

4.

Gregory had to be at work at eight. I had to be in at noon, which meant I either went with him and hung out four hours early, or I walked in later. On the couch, at seven thirty, with a hangover and an almost total sense of displacement, I decided I would walk in.

“How long do you think it’ll take to walk to the mall from here?”

“I don’t know. Never done it. Forty-five minutes maybe?” Gregory said.

“Okay. I’m going back to sleep.”

“Sleep tight big guy. I’ll see you later.”

"Later man.” I went back to sleep.

Well, I tried to. I closed my eyes, but I was too drunk to sleep somehow. The world spun and my head ached and my stomach churned. I couldn’t remember what I had drank or where we had finished the night, or anything after going to the second bar, really. My wrist hurt, and for whatever reason, I wanted to fuck someone. Bad. I hoped the two weren’t related. I sunk into the couch. It was old and beaten.

After what may have been hours or minutes I rolled over and opened my eyes. I stared at my reflection in the television. I could see my face clearly. This was it. My first morning single. The first morning that waking up happy, that having a good day, that changing things was in my control.

“Oh fuck you, you optimistic shit,” I said, pulling the blanket off of me. “Stupid fucking make my life better bullshit.” I sat up. The world took a second to catch up to my head. I couldn’t focus. I wondered what my ex was doing, and then didn’t care. Against all recommendations from my stomach, I stood up. I wobbled myself into the bathroom, on the other side of the couch. The bathroom was small. More like a bathcloset. The toilet was at the end of it and I walked up to it and leaned over, resting my head against the wall. I unzipped, pissed and didn’t think anything had ever felt better. My knees were collapsible, but held up. The threat was there.

When I was done I walked back to the couch, and fell onto it and tried to piece the night back together.

There was nothing there.

I needed to fuck someone.

The morning droned by as I stared at the off television and occasionally at the clock. When it was eleven I decided I should get up and get ready for work.

Bachelorhood took control. I put on pants, shoes, and left the house.

5.

I stood behind the register. I worked in the hardware department. Hammers, drills, and shit like that. I didn’t do much, even, and especially in, busy times. The way it worked was there were salesmen for the hardware department. Guys who made a commission off of whatever they sold. Gregory was a salesman. The salesmen usually wanted to cash people out so they could collect on it. For most of my time, I ended up sitting behind the register reading a copy of “The Old Man and the Sea” that someone had left behind and making dick jokes.

I usually answered phones.

The phone rang.

“Sears hardware.”

Someone mumbled something.

“One moment.”

“Anthony,” I said to one of the salesmen. “it’s for you.”

Anthony walked his fat ass around the counter and took the phone. “Sears hardware, this is Anthony, how can I help you?”

He gave me a look as he realized it wasn’t for him and I just didn’t want to deal with customers.

“Tough shit,” I said and walked away to sit on a riding lawn mower.

Anthony clicked away at the register, looking something up for the customer. A few people straggled through the hardware department. Browsers. I put my feet up on the seat of another tractor.

“Hey man,” Gregory said as he walked up from around the corner.

“Hey.”

“You just get here?”

“Yeah. A few minutes ago. How‘s it been?”

“Dead,” he said. “I’ve been hanging out in electronics with Chris all day.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah. He said he might come over to the apartment later. I told him we were roomies and that we should have a get together and celebrate tonight.”

“Didn’t we celebrate last night?”

“He said he’ll buy some whiskey and rum.”

“Celebrating it is then.”

“Hey, did you see the new girl at the hair salon?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t been down that way yet.”

“Well, when you do, peek your head in. Make an appointment or something. You’ll be glad you did.”

“She cute?”

“Dude,” he smiled. “Yes. I mean, like all of them there are, but, yes.”

“Okay.”

Move your feet,” he said. I did and he sat down in the mower next to me. “I shit everywhere this morning.”

“Fucking whiskey.”

“Seriously,” he said.

6.

Gregory had said he had invited a few more people over, so we spent the evening moving all of the boxes into my bedroom and attempting to make the apartment look as if it wasn’t a store room for a homeless shelter.

Afterward, I took a shower, got dressed in my finest evening wear (my outfit from yesterday, as all of my other clothes were still packed and I was lazy), poured a glass of lemon vodka and sat on the ruined couch staring at the blank television and waited for people.

The vodka continued to be the worst thing I had ever tasted and the LED numbers on the clock sometimes forgot to change. Gregory eventually sat down next to me. He had crisp khaki pants on and a white button down shirt. His hair was gelled and he stank of Drakkar Noir.

“You getting dressed?” he asked.

“I am dressed.”

“Really? Didn’t you wear that yesterday?”

“Yeah?”

“We have people coming over. You don’t want to look like a scumbag do you?”

“We have Chris and a few other retards from work coming. I don’t really give a shit. They all know me. They know I don’t gel my hair and wear fucking Drakkar Noir.”

“Well, I might not have told you some things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I invited Lauren.”

“Who?”

“Lauren, you know, the new girl at the jewelry counter?”

“Oh, yeah. So?”

"So, she might come over.”

"Not really my type. Besides, she’s like sixteen. Not going to dig through my boxes and get dressed up for that.”

“Well, she might bring friends. She said she might.”

“Like who?” I asked.

“Dude, I don’t know, friends.”

“A bunch of fucking high school girls? Wonderful. All they do is fucking cackle and cry and shriek.”

“Wow dude. What’s up your ass?”

“I don’t know.”

“Trying to get you laid.”

“With underage girls? No thanks.”

“Goddamn it. You know, for someone always trying to be optimistic, you got a shitty fucking attitude. No, not fucking underage girls. I saw her talking to the girl at the hair place, and I invited them over. That’s all. Jesus. Way to ruin the fucking surprise. Now fucking get dressed.”

“Oh,” I said. “Wait, how old is the girl at the hair place?”

“Twenty.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, fucking ‘oh‘. You’re welcome. Now, get dressed.”

I got up and went to my bedroom. My six or seven small boxes were everywhere. I still didn’t have a bed or furniture, so, if things got out of hand, or in hand I guess, I would have to come up with a plan.

I dug through the box marked “CLOTHES” and pulled out a crumpled black button down shirt. I put it on. It smelled strange. Like mildew.

I walked back into the living room.

“Hey that’s better already. Take care of your hair and you could probably be done with it.”

“Do we have any air freshener or anything here?”

“Why? Does it smell bad in here?”

“No, my shirt stinks of mildew.”

“Oh, fuck. Well, you want to use my cologne?”

“We can’t both smell like high school freshmen.”

“Fuck you dude. Chicks love Drakkar.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’ve got a little Stetson left if you want that.”

“Whatever.”

“All right.” Gregory got up and went into his room.

A car pulled into the driveway.

“Someone’s here,” I said.

Gregory came back out and tossed me the bottle. “Go get in the bathroom, turn the shower on hot. Leave the curtain open, let it steam up. While your in there, hang your shirt on the door and do your hair. The steam from the shower will freshen the shirt, and if the girls come while your in there, they’ll think you just showered. Spray the cologne on, and put the shirt on and then spray that. You’ll probably be good after that.”

“Christ, that makes sense.”

“Go!”

I went into the bathroom and turned the shower on and began to follow the directions. I heard the living room door shut, but with the shower going, couldn’t hear much of anything else. Steam filled the bathroom and I wet my hair, towel dried it a little, gelled it into something I thought cool guys who didn’t care would do, let steam fill the bathroom while I drew dicks in the steam on the mirror.

7.

Chris sat on the floor and commandeered three quarters of a large mushroom pizza while Gregory and I sat on the ruined couch watching a bootlegged copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

8.

The sun was high and hot as shit as I walked to work the next day. Sweat poured over me and even though I was wearing a tee-shirt and shorts with my work clothes in a backpack, I was fairly certain I was going to fucking smell later. All day protection, my ass.

To get to the mall from the apartment I had to first walk a half mile toward town, turn left, and then a half mile toward the high school where the roads became less like a Normandy and more like long years of arsenic poisoning. The rich neighborhoods. Thinner roads without yellow lines. Stop signs every fifteen feet. Tall, sprawling white houses with red doors and black shutters and grass lawns three fifths of an inch high. They were fortresses. Pristine, polished, and imprisoning. I had had a fear of wealth from a young age, and that eventually became distrust and disdain. I was a class-ist, and I was proud of my poverty in the face of such flagrant displays of debt. I didn’t owe anybody shit and I was free.

I walked sweat drenched through enemy territory until at the end of the neighborhood I came to the foot trails. The trails ran behind the local YMCA, about two miles or so deep into the woods, and incidentally, right up to the mall if you took the right branches of the trail.

Beside the smell, the lack of cars, and the shade from the bastard sun, the trails offered something to me that no other leg of the journey could. A sense of adventure rarely felt since childhood, something I had been desperately craving since beginning my slow death crawl toward this whole “adult” thing. Since the strangling monotony of the relationship. Since I realized “Fuck, I’m not a kid anymore.”

Shadows and shattered light danced on the floor of leaves and needles and dried mud around me as the breeze blew through the trees in whispers and creaks. This beautiful haunted wood. This last paradise before the nine hour ache. The air, cool and soft chilled the sweat on my skin, now drying or retreating. Soon the sound of the road faded and only the trees spoke. I breathed deep and for the first time since leaving the house, looked up from the ground. The forest was beautiful, as forests tend to be. Greens, browns and majesty. I looked up through the net of branches above me at the perfect blue and loved. It, this walk, was peace. I knew I would look forward to this from here on out.

“Is this right?” I thought aloud to myself.

What?

“This. This life I made now.”

Are you happy?

“Yeah, I think so.”

Do you miss her?

“No.” I thought about it. “No, not at all really. Is that fucked up?”

I don’t think so, but you know, what the fuck do I know?

I crossed over a wooden bridge spanning a small brook. The water lapped up under it and made a beautiful soft clap each time it struck the bottom of the bridge. I stopped and stared at it. The water was clear and I wanted to lay down in it. I was hot.

“I might be dry by the time I get to work.”

Don’t be a fucking retard. Walk. You’re going to be late.

“Yeah.” I kept walking.

I daydreamed through the rest of the walk. About this new life. About this new space I had. About what sort of life I wanted to carve out for myself. About all of the feats I could conquer. Music. Writing. Women. I wanted to be the envy of all men. I thought then that I could be. I thought then that I would be.

9.

“James, take your break.”

“Okay,” I said. It was six. I still had three hours before close. I was hungry and didn’t have any cash but I had worked out a deal with one of the burger jockeys in the food court that they would slip me meals if I occasionally looked away while they shopped. Seemed fair to me.

I clocked off on the register and walked out of my C-shaped desk to the middle of the store.

As I turned the corner toward the exit into the mall, I saw the girl from the hair salon walking toward me.

I was instantly nervous. She bore a vague resemblance to Ashley Judd, I thought. Far too pretty for me to taint. Far too pretty to allow me to taint her.

We walked closer. Closing the gap.

I kept looking at her eyes. I didn’t want to. I just, did. They were smoky. Sleepy. Inviting.

She smiled.

I almost pissed.

“Your shoe’s untied,” she said.

“I uh, you…” I looked down. My shoe was untied. “Oh.” I stopped and knelt down and looked at her as I tied it. “You saved my life.”

She laughed and walked and I watched her tight black pants stretch mercilessly across her ass with each stride.

What the fuck? You saved my life? Fucking idiot.

I got up and walked ashamed to the food court. I got my burger, and took the long way around the store back to the break room. I sat down and unwrapped my black market burger and watched the news. A famous basketball player is acquitted of a rape charge.

Gregory came in.

“Hey, hey, Champ. How’s it hanging?”

“Fucking awkwardly.”

He laughed. “What’s that mean, like, in a hook shape?”

“No man. I talked to the hairdresser.”

“The hot one?”

“Most of them are hot, here.”

“True. The braids, the boobs, or the smolderer?”

“Smolderer?”

“Yeah,” he said, “You know, her eyes are all smoldering and shit. The smolderer. You know. Smolderer.”

“Well, that one I guess.”

“Really! The new one! That’s the one I was telling you about! No shit!”

“Oh, yeah, right on. She’s a fucking bone shaker.”

“Bone jerker,” he said.

I gave him a polite laugh. “I mean, like, she fucking makes me shiver she’s so fucking gorgeous.”

“Dude. I know. I just meant…”

“I know what you meant.”

“I want her to jerk me off.”

“I got it,” I said.

“I bet you do, you old dog, you. So what did you say?”

“I fucking froze man. I didn’t know what to do. I told her she saved my life.”

“Did she?”

“Nope.” I took a bit of my burger. “Just told me my shoe was untied.”

“And then you told her she saved your life?”

“Yep.”

“Wow.”

“I know,” I said.

“Better than nothing though, I guess, right? I mean, at least you talked to her.”

“Christ, I wished I hadn’t.”

“Well, you did. Shake it off. You broke the ice. Now plan out the next move and get on that shit. Before I do.”

“Sure.”

Next move, I thought. Fuck.

I finished out my shift in shame. Gregory went home at seven and I realized I didn’t have a ride home.

10.

I stood outside of Sears. The night was cooling, but still plenty warm. I stared over the embankment where the trail head lied waiting, blanketed in darkness and probably rapists and tigers for all I knew.

Rape tigers or… the long way? The long way was almost four times the length of Rape Tiger Alley. I would have to walk almost the entire perimeter of the town.

“Later man,” Chris said, waving as he walked out of the building.

“Later,” I said by reflex. “Wait. Chris.”

He turned. “Yeah?”

“Is there anyway you could give me a lift? Gregory took off, and I don’t want to walk. I’m lazy as fuck, I know, but, you know.”

He grimaced. “I’m sorry man. I have to meet my sister. I really have to leave now. I’m already late. I’m sorry man.”

“Yeah,” I said. It’s fine. That’s cool man.”

“Normally I would man, I promise. Any other night.”

People left the store and walked to their cars. Each a missed opportunity while Chris continued wasting his precious fucking time.

“No, it’s cool man. Go.”

“I can give you cab fair.”

“Aren’t you going to be late? Go.”

“Yeah. Okay, well, sorry again man.” He turned away and walked into the parking lot.

“Fuck,” I said.

“Hey,” someone said behind me.

I turned around. It was the hair dresser. My throat closed up. My joints tightened. “Hey.”

She smiled at me and walked away, to the parking lot.

She smiled at me and that was enough. I walked home, though I don’t remember which way I took.

She had smiled at me.

The Ten Minute Whiskey

2012-02-20T15:56:00.002-05:00

So there I was. Stars above me, twinkling and dying and making me smile. Everything was beautiful. The pavement on my back was cold and hard and the most comfortable thing in the world. I wanted to count all of the stars but I couldn’t. The night noise of the city sang around me. Voices shouting and laughing and talking and alive and wonderful. I began to close my eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Michael appeared above me. “Get up. You’re going to get fucking hit out here.”

“I’m fine.” I smiled.

Michael grabbed my arm and pulled.

I lifted a little. “Fine.”

“No, you aren’t. Come on.” He struggled with me and I laughed. “Stand, you fucking idiot,” he said.

I did my best to sit up and at some point his pulling and my center of gravity aligned and I was up, standing. First on one foot, then the other, then both. Michael grabbed me around the waist.

“Come over here,” he said, walking me to the curb. We walked together. I smiled and looked around at the yellow street lights and neon bar lights and white and red car lights. The people shuffling up and down the sidewalks. Everyone was beautiful and I was beautiful.

“Sit,” Michael said as we came to a bench.

“I’m fine,” I said and sat.

Michael sat next to me. “You’re lucky you didn’t get fucking run over.”

“It would have been fine.” I laughed.

“Yeah. I’m sure Marie would love that.”

“She probably fucking would,” I said. I didn’t laugh.

A moment passed.

“You’re going to be okay, man,” Michael said. “She just needs time.”

“Yeah, time. Time away from me. The fucking asshole.”

“Knock it off. Don’t start fucking blubbering.”

“Fuck you.”

“You don’t want to feel like shit, do you?”

“I always do.”

“Oh, fuck off. You do not. You’re just drunk,” he said.

“Yeah. I am. I miss her.”

“I know, man. I know.”

“You don’t.”

Michael was silent and I looked out at the street again.

“You don’t,” I said again.

Michael stood up. “Let’s get you to the car man. Come on.” He reached his hand out.

“No. I need to get laid or something.”

“Dude,” Michael laughed. “No one is going to want to fuck some incoherent fucking crybaby. Get your ass up.”

My stomach was in knots. The lights swirled around me. A girl in a short black skirt walked near me and I wanted to see her underwear and I leaned forward and fell off the bench onto my knees.

“Dude,” Michael said.

“Hey! I want to see your fucking underwear!” I said as the girl walked away into the crowd.

Michael grabbed me from behind and pulled me up. “Dude, get the fuck up, let’s go.”

“No. I want to stay. I want another drink. Buy me a whiskey. Buy me a whiskey Michael.”

“I’ll buy you one more, only one more, whiskey, if you go sit at the car for ten minutes. Only ten minutes, can you do that?”

“Ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes. Then I’ll buy you a whiskey.”

“Deal,” I said.

“Okay, let’s go.” We stumbled down the sidewalk and I couldn’t count the steps I took or see where colors stopped to become other colors or finish thoughts in my head and we were at the car.

Michael opened the passenger door. “Sit down man.”

“Ten minutes Michael. Ten minutes right?”

“Yeah man. Ten minutes and I’ll get you another. Just sit back and relax for ten minutes.”

“You promise? I’m not done yet.”

“Yes, I promise.”

I sat back in the passenger seat and I couldn’t see the street from it. The parking lot had one tall light in the middle casting an orange circle on the ground and I wanted to be in the circle but I wasn’t. I was in the black. To the side. Forgotten out here while time went by. While she needed time. I was drowning and no one could see me. Out here.

“Michael?”

“Yeah man.”

“Am I going to be okay?”

“Yeah, man. You’re going to be fine.”

“Okay.”

I closed my eyes and tried to keep track of the time.

Test of Metal

2012-02-16T11:09:00.002-05:00

I sat in the car. It was running and it was grey outside. Rain fell and streamed its way down the windshield. I stared through it. Not seeing it. Waiting.

I couldn't feel my skin. My bones. Nothing. A great void had opened up and I was a vacuum, eternally insatiable, internally devoid.

The passenger door opened. I heard it and Marie got in.

"All set," she said.

"Okay."

She buckled herself in and I ran the wipers over the diagonal ocean. For an instant, I almost missed it, but then it was gone and the world was the sound of the car. The rhythm of wipers, and a great deafening silence.

"Are you okay?" Marie asked.

"Yeah."

"I do still love you, you know."

"I know."

"Okay."

I put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking space and drove out onto the road. Recently I had developed an acute awareness of the depth of my consciousness. An abyss, littered throughout with fragments of things said. Things seen. Reverberating inaudibly through the space and walls of my skull. Vibrating me sleepless, hunger-less. I stopped at a red light. I could feel Marie glance over at me. I didn't know what to say anymore. I stayed quiet. The light turned green and I drove on.

"They said it should only take a few weeks."

"Okay."

She was trying to keep me awake, in a sense. I could feel it. "...Don't fall asleep James. Stay awake. Stay with me. Stay with me."

I could only visualize it as a car accident. One she survived flawlessly. One which crushed my lungs and took one of my limbs and burned my face. One in which I was pinned under sheets and tons of crumpled wreckage and she was kneeling over me. Pleading. Her hand over mine. Her tears.

Her wide open future after me.

"...Stay with me."

The vision faded and the wipers took away more rain and I pulled up to another red light. Marie put her hand on my leg. The weight in my chest swelled and I held everything back. Just as I had been doing for months. Just as I had to keep doing. A man could be empty. But not weak. Wasn't that what all of this meant? A test of metal? A great and ultimate reminder that I could never be that man? That brute and bearded man of men?

The light turned green and I was following a car now that had a sticker on the back that read "COEXIST" in various bastardizations of religious symbols. I passed the asshole gently and the wipers took away more rain.

"Idiots," Marie said. She rubbed my thigh. "At least three of those religions preach absolute segregation. How are they supposed to coexist? Change their religions? That isn't coexisting. That's being forced into it. They can't be who they are if they have to change."

"Yeah."

She sighed. "Yeah."

After a few minutes of the swishing of the wiper blades we pulled into the driveway.

"Are you coming in?" I asked.

"Do you want me to?"

"I don't care. Do whatever you want to do, I guess. Doesn't matter." I looked at her for the first time in a while.

"If you don't want me to, I won't. I just figured since you drove, you were, I don't know, sort of setting the stage for me to come in."

"Do whatever you want. If you come in, okay. If not, it was nice seeing you." I unbuckled and opened my door.

"Yeah."

I got out and walked up to the front door. I unlocked it and went inside to the kitchen. My head felt like it was full of clouds. It was swelling now and everything was coming to the surface and I poured a whiskey. The scream was roaring to my mouth. The plates and glasses and bottles wanted to be thrown and shattered and bled over. The house wanted fire. The world wanted fire and floods and terror and death and I wanted nothing. Nothing.

The front door opened.

"James?"

I drank the whiskey. "Yeah?"

"I think it's time we talked."

She came into the kitchen and I looked at her and she looked at me. Her face was flushed. Her make up had run. Her eyes puffed. I looked away.

"About?"

Every Cork in the Sink

2012-02-12T16:28:00.002-05:00

Winter was poisoning me. I hadn't written anything in damn near a month. Not a word. I had spent a fair amount of days staring at a blank white screen, but I hadn't written a fucking word. It was exhausting.

It had been a strange winter, for the northeast. In recent years we had snow storm after snow storm, accumulating foot after foot of snow, slush, and shit, but this year, barely a dusting. It was the middle of February and I sat at my desk, staring out the window at the dead grass and bare trees. I wasn't disappointed. I hate snow. I just wished it was fucking warmer.

To make matters worse, I was on a three to four month stretch of unemployment. In the fall, I had taken a job installing traffic counters. It was good money, and kept me out of offices and hostile situations, but it was technically seasonal. Tri-seasonal. We didn't work in the winter. Snow plows would fuck up our counts.

But there weren't any snow plows.

There was no snow.

There was nothing to do and nowhere to go. I was sedated.

I was living on unemployment checks and staring out the fucking window, waiting for inspiration to strike and it wasn't. I longed for summer. The days of warmth and sunglasses. Tee shirts and lake water. Public intoxication and women in bathing suits.

I could almost see it.

Out the window.

Laughing. Boat motors. The smell of barbecue. The cooing of gulls and crashing of waves.

I had gained fifteen pounds since the cold had set in. Since I had stopped working. Since I had been staring at the fucking screen every day.

Parts of my family had gotten a hold of me after many years and I played scrabble with them over the internet and thought about seeing them and didn't. I didn't leave my chair unless I had to. Unless it was time to eat. Or shit. Or sleep.

In November I had written a novel. In thirty days. I had been quite proud at the time, and planned on using my time off to expand and edit it.

Now I hated it.

It was awful. Self indulgent. A third of a story. Whining. I felt the compulsion to finish it. The innate drive. But I hated it and I hadn't looked at it in almost two months. It was shit. Everything I had written was shit.

I spent most of my unemployment on wine and thirty packs of cheap beer. Looking for some semblance of the same inspiration from the past year, the glory days of when I would drink and write and love and feel wonderful all of the times and nothing was ever really a problem. Now, I just drank until I fell asleep in my chair, wishing I was better. I hated myself for it. Every glass to my lips. Every cork in the sink, I hated myself. Every blank page. Every day faded in a clouded stupor. I hated.

Days ticked off of the calendar and I thought about calling friends. Getting out of the house. I missed my friends. I felt a chasm between us.

I didn't.

I didn't call friends.

I didn't write.

I sat back in my chair, stared out the window, drank, and dreamed.

"Someday," I said to myself, "someday things will be better."

It was cold out.

Two Few.

2012-01-31T13:13:00.003-05:00

It's been twelve hours since I slept for two after a long forty eight.

I am anxious, confused, and panicked.

I can't sleep.

65: First Night.

2012-01-22T20:21:00.002-05:00

1.

Gregory and I drove the curving country road away from everything. Away from a year of loneliness, silence, and ghosts. The sun slipped in through the tint of his Bronco’s windows. It always smelled strange in the Bronco, as if someone had at one point done something terrible in it and then cleaned it hastily with the strongest smelling shit he could find. Or, it smelled like an elementary school’s art room. I could never decide. Gregory had just bought it used in Vermont, where there were no lemon laws. He bought it for a thousand dollars and it needed brakes badly. It squealed in pain at every stop sign we rolled up to. We kept the radio up loud enough to ignore it.

Besides everything else, I had hated living this far out in the country. It took a half hour to get to the nearest sign of life, a gas station. Slow, rolling hills the road curved around. Fucking pollen in the air year round it seemed, and I prayed for work days, when I could escape my allergies and the walls I had, in only a few months, grown to fear and despise. A friend had died there. A relationship also, and somehow, a large part of me. I was feeling daily more and more like I was staring at life and the world and happiness through a long telescope, miles and miles away from a stone tower, built high above the world with no escape.

We were listening to the radio. Gregory was quiet. I was moving in with him in his apartment. I was fleeing. He had lived there for a few months. His friend was the landlord and I had drank there a few times. Not that either of us could afford booze at all, but by some stroke of luck, the previous tenant had left a stockpile of strangely flavored vodkas in one of the cabinets. One of them said “Lemon” and tasted like raisins. I drank that one. I liked the lie. He said his apartment was haunted. I didn’t know. Maybe it was.

“Is this all of the shit you have?” He asked, glancing at the rearview mirror at the small pile of boxes I had packed into the back.

“Yeah.”

“I could have swore you had a lot more.”

“I did. I left it. I don’t need it. I just wanted to get out.”

“Was any of it valuable?”

“I don’t think so. I just left some shit in the basement. CD’s. A box of clothes. A few notebooks I think.”

“All right. Well, if you want to go back and get it later, we can, all right?”

“Sure.”

“You okay man?”

"Yeah, I’m good. Relieved, I think.”

“It’s going to be awesome,” he said. “Roomies. Never had a roommate before. You?”

“Not that I wasn’t fucking.”

“Well, you ain’t fucking me, partner.” He laughed.

The gas station came into view and the first red light. I was a cashier at Sears at the time and drove this road to work everyday. Each mile to the red light was never close enough. And each mile back burned up much too fast. I had begun to get out of work at night and drive around the town. Drive slowly past restaurants and bars. Wish I was inside them. Laughing. Living. I would drive to my girlfriends work to pick her up afterward, an hour, sometimes two, late and she would scream at me. She couldn’t understand why I needed to drive around. Why she wasn’t enough for me. Why I didn’t love the country. We lived in one of her parents spare bedrooms. Her sister lived in the other and at the time, twelve dogs, seven puppies and five fully grown, shared the common areas. It was a modular home and not large. It was paradise to her and I was impossible.

Gregory drove through town and I began to think about the future. Being single, I had less money now. Less money and more bills. I had no idea how I was going to afford it. I just needed to try. I had no car, but the apartment was only a couple of miles through town to work, and Gregory was a salesman at Sears, so if our shifts aligned that would help.

It could be fun, though, I thought. Two guys, just turned twenty one. Our own place a few blocks from the bars. It could be a lot of fun. It could be a shove back into normalcy. It could bring me right back to life. I smiled.

“No weird sex stuff though,” Gregory said.

“What?”

“I mean, like, I don’t want to come home from work and find people leaking out of your bedroom in like, leather straps and dildos and duckbills or something.”

“Duckbills?”

“Anything like that, you know. Weird sex stuff.”

I laughed. “You think I’m into that shit?”

“Well, I mean, I know you’re a little, out there sometimes, and I know some of the stuff you’ve done, so…”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, man,” he said. “like that naked girl at one of your last apartments. That whole thing. Three ways and shit.”

“I can’t have a three way?”

“Well, I mean, no, it’s not like that. If you can pull it off, have a three way, but you know, a three way is like a six on the level of fucking weirdness. Try not to go above six, or maybe seven.”

“Three ways are a six? Christ almighty. You need to watch more porn.”

"Fuck you dude. You know what I mean. Also, I’m hoping to have the internet hooked up next month.”

“We should get some groceries and cleaning shit before we get there,” he said.

“Good idea.”

The summer was coming to a close and I felt like I should be mourning my relationship, but I wasn’t. I wondered if that meant it ended when it truly had to. When it was supposed to. If I had done us each a massive favor. Or, if it meant that I was just glad to be rid of it and the mystery and promise of the future was overwhelmingly exciting. These things aren’t always clear right away.

n fact, I’m still not sure about that one.

2.

Later. The apartment was small and at one time probably nice. The kitchen, where Gregory and I were sitting, taking shots of leftover vodka, was the worst looking part of it. Painted an unsettling teal color maybe forty years ago, it felt like it was large. The second bedroom was off of it, and so was the back porch, which was the third of our porches, and really not a lot more than a garbage dungeon. The floor in the kitchen was warped like ocean waves and all of the wood in it was rotted, but painted over recently with white. The stove was old and sat alone in a corner away from everything else. There was one window by the fridge with a spectacular view of the neighbors kitchen window. A ripped vinyl shade hung over it.

I took my third shot. Dark would be coming soon.

“You going to unpack tonight?” Gregory asked.

“No, probably not.”

“Right on. If you want, I’ll take you to salvation army tomorrow or sometime and get you a bed frame and a dresser. See if we can dig up a bed for you too somewhere.”

“Cool man. Thanks.”

“No problem. You’ll be all right on the couch though for now?”

“I’ve slept on worse.”

He laughed. “Okay man.” He took another shot. “Night’s young,” he said. “We should be out celebrating. First night as roomies and everything. Shit, it’s your first night being single in how many years?”

“Three.”

“Three fucking years. Christ. Let’s hit the bar.”

“No money man.” I took another shot.

“I got it tonight, then you can cover me sometime when I’m broke. Fair?”

“Sure man.”

“Cool. I’m going to get changed then. Clean up. You need the bathroom?”

“No, I’m fine like this.”

“You don’t want to clean up for the ladies?”

I laughed. “The ladies? After this long I wouldn’t know how to hit on someone if I was walked through it. Besides, what am I going to do? Bring them home to my couch?”

“Sometimes a couch is all you need.” He smiled and walked out into the living room and to his bedroom at the other end of it to get changed. I took two more shots and began to feel a little dizzy.

It was good to be free. My own place. Drinking in the daytime. Maybe I’d fuck a stranger, maybe I wouldn’t. It was up to me. I smiled, stood up and fell over.

"You okay in there?”

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go get drunk.”

3.

It was my first bar experience. There were people fucking everywhere. No light. The noise was so loud it was almost the absence of sound. A deafening silence. I sat on a stool next to Gregory and tried to flag down the bartender. A blonde woman who I would guess was forty or so, but was probably just a beat twenty something. Neon lights from under the bar made her look like a glowing double-D Skeletor. She kept walking past.

"What the fuck?” I said to Gregory.

“What?!”

“I said! What the fuck!?” I made a motion with my hand as if I were drinking.

“Oh!” He leaned over the bar and stuck a few dollars bills over it.

Skeletor came over and yelled something. I couldn’t tell what. Gregory flashed the peace sign and Skeletor nodded. Gregory sat down, and Skeletor handed us two beers. Gregory gave her cash.

“How’d you do that?!” I asked.

“What?!”

We drank our beers.

There were a number of women in the bar. Some ugly as fuck. Some gorgeous. Almost all of them looked great after our fourth round and the vodka from earlier. I kept staring at tits and asses and drowning in the scent of a thousand perfumes.

“I need a cigarette!”

“What?!” Gregory asked.

I made a smoking motion.

“Oh!” He nodded. We drank down the rest of our beers and left our stools, which were swallowed up by the crowd almost immediately.

We went outside and the world was so quiet. “Jesus Christ,” I said, digging through my pockets, looking for my lighter.

“What?” Gregory asked.

“Fucking loud in there.”

“It is a bar.”

“Fuck bars. I’ll drink at home.”

“No tail at home.”

“Like we’re fucking swimming in it now?”

“Good point,” he said.

"I think I left my lighter at home.” I looked around at the other smokers. A group of muscle-headed chest beaters. A strange kid in a leather coat. A group of two older couples, probably on a double date or something. Maybe swinging. A lone girl, somehow not already devoured by the Future Wife Beaters of America next to her.

She was thin. Straight brown hair. Heavy eyeliner. Built not so much like a woman, but like a girl who was in her final days of collegiate beauty. She seemed to know it.

I walked over. “Hi,” I said.

She looked at me, raised and eyebrow, then both. “Hi. What?”

Bitch, I thought. “Do you have a lighter? I must have lost mine.”

She examined me, tightened her lips down her face and looked at her purse. “Yeah, hold on.”

She opened up her purse and dug around, finally pulling one out and handed it to me. “Here.”

lit my cigarette and handed it back to her. “Thanks.”

“Yeah whatever.”

I looked at Gregory. He was shooing his hands at me, as if saying “Go for it man. Go!”

I looked back at her. “So, uh…”

She looked up at me. “Yeah? What? Are you going to hit on me or something? You aren’t doing too well.”

I took a breath. “Listen, I don’t do this often, and I’m already a little drunk, so, I think you’re pretty”

“Thanks. Is that it?”

“Um, no, well,” I looked at Greg. He was watching intently. I looked back at her. “My name’s James.”

“Great.”

I felt like I was fucking up.

I took another breath and tried again. “I think you’re good looking and I want to fuck you. How are my chances.”

She smiled. “If you lead with that next time, you might get somewhere. Good luck.” She smiled at me, kicked her cigarette into the street and went back inside.

I was astounded.

Gregory came up and I finished my cigarette.

“So?” he asked.

“I told her she was pretty, and she acted pissed off. I told her I wanted to fuck her and she said that if I led with that, I might get somewhere. What the fuck?”

“I have no fucking idea man, but I would definitely lead with it next time.”

"Of course.”

I butted my cigarette and we went to another bar across the street. I kept thinking about that girl. Some sort of messianic post-breakup pussy oracle. Showing me the way. I saw no one else I wanted to fuck that night. I don’t remember walking home.

A Denim Jacket and my Face Wiped with Spit

2012-01-21T20:42:00.002-05:00

Looking through a small pile of old photographs.

I'm a little kid.

4. 5. 6. So on.

I remember that house.

That coat.

My sister is so small.

I am so small.

I remember that day. Standing outside the gymnasium before the first day in a new school.

Sun shining in my eyes. My mother fussing over something on my face.

Wiping spit on me.

Kids staring as they walk into school.

My father was leaning against the car.

"Kick some ass bud" he says.

"You're going to be fine. You'll make lots of new friends and have lots of fun," my mother says.

I could piss I'm so nervous.

I remember the camera flash.

And I look back at myself over almost three decades of new schools, new friends, and lots of fun.

Right?

Funny, now. Thinking that then I felt so aware. So old already.

I was going to be a scientist.

A lawyer.

A Ghostbuster.

I nail hoses to the road.

A Quick Swim

2012-01-20T19:48:00.002-05:00

The whole apartment smelled of propane and I was getting headaches. We didn't have anything that used propane and couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I kept toying with the idea of lighting a match but didn't want to risk burning my goddamned face off. I was sort of fond of it.

So I sat at the computer and tried to write. I was hoping for some Delphic masterwork, some new Oz with creatures and characters unearthly. Maybe even a new breed of prose. The propane might even earn me a bestseller, or a bit of critical acclaim. I sat at the computer with a swirling headache, staring, and threw up in my lap.

The puke startled me from my daze and dizzy I leaped up and backward in my chair and spilled the fucking mess all over my chest, neck, face, and floor. The smell attacked me as I tried to get my shit together and get up and my abdomen kept tightening and releasing, fighting fucking desperately to let more out.

Nothing came. The dry heaves.

I got to my knees but my headache and some rush of blood prevented me from getting any further than that. I knelt on the floor of my apartment, soaked in and staring at pinks, oranges, bits, pieces, and puddles. The smell. My eyes watered and my head pounded harder. I moved myself a little forward and my knee slipped. My right half hit the floor and a shot from my hip jolted through me.

I cried out in slurred shock. I was choking on the smell. The sight. The headache. I crawled out, leaving behind me a path of hand prints and droplets across the carpet. I crawled over to the front door.

Air. I just need...air.

I got my hand on the door knob, and my hand, still wet slipped around it and I fell back to the carpet. The world was a haze. All of the colors melded together and I knew this was propane poisoning, or something like that. The door opened fast and hard and hit me square in the face as I faded out.

Suddenly I was awake again and my face was pounding.

"Fuck!"

I rolled over on my back and my face was warmer. I could taste copper now in the sting of the puke. Blood. I opened my eyes and saw Marie staring in horror at me, the carpet. The mess.

"What the fuck?" she asked.

A View Rarely

2012-01-16T21:24:00.000-05:00

Marie had made a large quantity of mimosa mix and put it in a cooler. I had asked Michael the day before if he wanted to come hang out on the beach with us and as far as I knew he'd be pulling into my driveway at any moment.

I wanted to dig into the mimosas, but as it was I wasn't sure there were nearly enough to last the day.

I was living out my last days before I went to work for the cable company. The whole thing seemed ridiculous. I was so worried about going back to work. I felt such dread. I couldn't understand it. All I wanted to do was lay in the sun, drink, write, and kiss Marie and pretend that this was July eternal. It's not like I had never had a job before. Like I had never worked. I had been working since I was thirteen, building houses in the summer Colorado sun. For whatever reason though, I waited nervously. Peering through my dark sunglasses. Lusting after some impossible freedom glimpsed only through television and daydreams.

"Are you sure he's coming?" Marie asked.

"I don't know. I tried to call him earlier, but he didn't answer. He never does though."

"Oh." Marie was sitting on the living room floor, putting eyeliner on in front of a large mirror she had stolen off of the porch of an abandoned house nearby.

I sat at the computer, typing and deleting.

Michael pulled into the driveway and I closed out my program and stood up to welcome him. I'm not sure if it was ever noticed, but I have always made it a point to show a certain level of respect toward people. Even during my anger, my drunken outbursts, my stupidity, I tried. I hope that is recognized before people forget me.

He had a large black car that he had somehow acquired from his mother, I think. I was never really clear on it and I suppose it doesn't matter either way. He turned it off in my driveway, got out, shut the door and locked it. He looked up at my porch. Despite our lengthy friendship, he had rarely been here. I supposed it was too far for him to drive. I opened the door,walked out and waved.

"Hey man," I said. "How are you?"

"Good, you?"

"Good."

He came up on the porch. I opened the door and said, "Michael's here, we're ready when you're ready."

"Okay," Marie said. "I'll be there in a minute."

I closed the door and sat down on the stone steps of my porch. "I think we're going up to Buttermilk today."

"I don't know where that is."

"It's beautiful. I keep going there lately."

"You can swim there?"

"Sure. Swim. Wade. Lay down. Do whatever you want."

"Cool. Should we get booze?"

"Marie made mimosas," I said. "But we can get more if you want."

"Okay."

Michael sat next to me. We looked out onto the street, not speaking. There was a sadness to Michael that I couldn't understand. It rivaled my own, but I couldn't see the root. I couldn't speak his language. We had talked about it on a few occasions, but we never got down to it. We always just ended up offending each other. So we sat in silence sometimes.

The door opened. Marie came out, the cooler in her arms. "Ready?"

"Yeah," I said. We stood up. "Are we taking our car?" I asked them.

"Sure," Marie said.

"I don't care," Michael said. "Whichever."

"Okay then, our car it is."

We put our cooler in the trunk. The towels. My messenger bag with my notebook and an increasingly beat up Hemingway. I got in the driver seat, Marie in the passenger, Michael in the back.

"What do you want to listen to?" I asked Michael.

"What's in here?"

I handed him the large CD book. "Just pass it up when you have something."

"Okay."

We backed out, and drove.

We listened to loud keyboards and guitars. Music from our budding teenage years. A nostalgic warmth to match the sunlight. The windows were down and we careened along the hidden roads between tunnels of trees and sparse houses. We sang along to growling vocals with broad smiles and laughs. I was forgetting for a moment. Marie smiled at me. Michael smiled. It was beautiful, there in my car.

After quite some time, we pulled off onto the dirt road leading to Buttermilk, and quite some time after that, we parked. My legs were cramped from the drive and my lower back ached but I didn't care.

I got out of the car and saw a small group of hippies coming up the hill. They had a small dog with them and they were speaking loudly and one of them was cross eyed. I tried to ignore them.

"Ugh. Fucking hippies," Marie said under her breath. "Stay perfectly still and maybe they won't see us."

"Hey dudes!" the cross-eyed one said to us as we pulled our things out of the trunk.

"Shit," Marie said.

Michael laughed. I turned around. "Hey. How's the water down there?"

The cross-eyed hippie had his dog in his arms and was trying to keep his balance. It seemed too early, even by my standards, to be fucked up. I wondered if maybe his depth perception was just off. His friends were talking between them selves and slowly piling into a beaten up Jeep. "Dude," he said. "Fucking a-ma-zing. I am so fucking drunk!"

"Todd," one of the other hippies said from inside the vehicle. "Get in the fucking Jeep man. Leave people alone."

"This is why I fucking hate bringing him anywhere," another one said.

Cross-eyed Todd began to walk over to us. He tripped over a rock and nearly launched his dog. "It's cool, it's cool," he said. "I'm good. He stumbled left and right.

Marie was bent into the trunk, not doing anything, but trying to ignore them. Michael and I watched him stumble toward us.

"Wow," Michael said.

"Yeah," I said.

"You dudes like to drink, right?"

I didn't speak.

"Well, fuck, I do. Fuck you assholes," Cross-eyed Todd said. He turned around. "Fucking pig pieces of shit."

Michael began to laugh quietly.

The hippie in the drivers seat got out. "Todd! Get in the fucking car!"

"Jeep! Fuck you!"

Sober hippie grabbed Cross-eyed Todd by the arm and yanked him. Todd shook and the dog fell out of his arm and yellped a little when it hit the ground.

"You made me drop Rufus you fucking scumbag!" Todd said and shoved Sober hippie. Rufus ran to and jumped into the Jeep.

"Todd! Get in the fucking Jeep!" Sober hippie grabbed Cross-eyed Todd again and dragged him toward an open door in the Jeep and crammed him into it like too many clothes into a suitcase. He slammed the door and looked at us. "I'm sorry guys, he's, he's got a problem."

"It's cool," I said. "We've all been there."

"Yeah," Sober hippie said. "Have a good one." He got in the driver seat, shut the door and before long they were gone.

"That was a little surreal," Marie said.

"Mimosas," I said.

"Right," Michael said. "Mimosas."

We locked up the car, and walked the path to the rock ledge I had fallen in love with. The path was barely a path at first, made up mostly of roots, jutting rocks and small trees to steady yourself with. Sun light fell through the canopy of leaves in circles and mazes of glowing leaves and sticks and rocks scattered around us. I was carrying the cooler and it I could feel the mimosa mix swishing around heavily it what I was sure were waves like a small ocean. I imagined tiny cellular societies, rising and falling, their time proportionate with their size. They all feared the massive waves, laming against their city walls, killing their families, destroying their cities. The gods were angry, but soon, a millennium or two perhaps to them, I would redeem the gods. I would drain the ocean, and no longer would they fear it, but instead miss it. Tell tales of the great body of champagne and orange juice. Pray for rain. Pray to me.

We came to my rock ledge and I set the cooler down. Marie laid out towels, and Michael stood at the edge of the water, staring out at Lake Henry from a view rarely spied.

"Is there a beach?" he asked.

"Not really," I said. "There's that area over there where you can wade a little though." I pointed off to the side where the slope of the rocks was gentler and went further out into the water.

"Fuck."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Marie pulled off her shirt and shirts, revealing a new bathing suit that she was quite proud to be wearing, and deservedly so. She sat on the towel and from her bag pulled out two water bottles and a cleaned out soda bottle. She poured mimosa from a spigot on the side of the cooler into each and handed us each our drinks. I was reunited with my wonderful green sports bottle at last.

I pulled off of it and it was light. Gentle, and understandably girly. I walked to the edge of the water, sat down, set my drink down, threw my shirt off, and slid into the water. It swallowed me up to my chest and I let it. There was something about the first time sliding into the water that was almost orgasmic to me. Reverse birth, perhaps, or an escape. Sliding beneath the surface into another world, where different life existed. Where there were no rules, expectations, deadlines, or anything recognizable to society or standards. Fresh water indeed.

Michael sat on the stone and let his feet in.

"Get in," I said.

"I can't."

"What? Why?"

"I can't swim."

"What?" Marie said from the towel.

"You can't swim?" I asked.

"No dude. There's no lakes or anything near Springer."

"Springer Lake?"

"That doesn't count."

"Oh."

"You can't swim?" Marie asked again.

"No, Marie, I can't."

"Well, fuck," I said. "If I knew that we wouldn't have come to the fucking ledges. We could have gone to the beach."

"I did ask."

I couldn't remember if he did or didn't. I drank some. "Just slide in and hold onto the rocks."

"No dude."

"It's fine."

"No, seriously."

"How about this then?" I swam over to the shallower part and stood up. The water bounced and curled around my waist. "This part is good. At least this way you can still get in the water."

He nodded and got up and walked over.

"Fuck guys. Now I have to move again," Marie said from the ledge, a ways away now.

Marie readjusted herself on the rocks, closer, and I found a chair under the surface, carved out over eons by lapping waves and silt and luck and just for me at that moment. I sat back, slid up to my chin and stared out at the dancing beads of light and the mountains in the distance. Out there, a mile or more away, people drove the state route northward, or southward. They went to work, or home. They began or ended vacations. They drove hurriedly to hospitals and baseball games, and to first dates. They drove in hostile silences at the end of arguments, and screaming at each other at the beginnings of them. Out there, the world went on. This point, though, on the shore, this moment, this ledge, it was outside of time. Outside of the world. The water existed around me, perhaps oblivious. Hiding me. Reassuring me. Nursing me. A small wave covered my face and I dropped my bottle into the water.

"Shit!" With a little more struggle than I was expecting I pulled myself out of my chair and further into and against the waves as they carried my green sports bottle and mimosa out. I swam out and rescued it, rescued myself and back to my chair. Michael looked uneasy. I felt bad.

"We can head out if you want. Big empty day ahead of us. We don't have to spend it all here," I said.

"No, it's fine. This spot is fine." He waded around in the water and eventually sat on a rock so he was halfway in. The waves swayed his probably ninety pound frame.

Marie tanned on the rocks and Michael and I drank and talked about our band and shows and the sad state of our local music scene. Our conversations rose and fell in as if mimicking the waves around us, occasionally leaving us in strange moments of silence, and perhaps loneliness.

"You're probably my best friend," Michael said.

I laughed. I didn't know how to respond.

"And you're like 'you're totally not.' Awesome," Michael said.

"Yeah, no. It's not like that. It's just, what do you say to someone when they drop that on you? 'You too man!' And then we what, hug or something? It's weird, but thanks."

Michael laughed. "It's cool. It did sound a little gay once I said it."

"See, I was doing us a favor." I should have just reciprocated. He was my best friend, at least at the time, and so what if it sounded weird? In my head I could hear every strong male figure I had imagined to life in my adolescence telling me that men don't speak like that. We grunt and we know. We just know. I found it harder and harder to justify.

The sun blazed across the sky and the lake came to life. In the distance vacationers and locals alike took to their boats and their barbecues and their memories of sun, sand, and smiles, all for rainy days and long grey years. It was beautiful. I refused to believe that it ever had to end. Despite that ticking in the back of my skull. The red x's across the calendar. The dwindling bank account, I refused to believe that I had to go back to work. That I had to do anything I found unpleasant. That this day would ever end.

We swam, sort of, for a few more hours, laughed, finished the mimosas, and eventually went back to the car. The afternoon was settling in and we were all smiling, refreshed and worried that it was over.

"We should get more booze," Michael said.

"You're buying," I said.

"Let's go to town then," Marie said.

I was about to watch two people fuck in front of forty, hang out with two mimes, and get pulled around in a rickshaw, but I was smiling because I didn't know any of that. Because I didn't want to know anything and at that moment, on that perfect day in July, I didn't have to.

A Six Dollar Bottle of Wine

2012-01-10T12:59:00.002-05:00

When do you start to worry? When you buy a bottle and feel bad about it? When everything in your brain says "wait, just, don't," and you do anyway? Or maybe it's when you realize that the only time you're worth a shit is when you're half cocked? When you're truly productive, fun, funny, alive, or happy? What then? Do you sit down and say, "I think I should kill all of that and see if I could be that way by myself?" Have I spent rent money? No. Have I cheated on my wife? No. Have I driven a car into anything? No. Then I'm still okay, right? I'm still functioning and I still have perspective, right? Right?

I don't know. I worry.

Im not sure if this sort of thing runs in my family or not, though it would be nice to know. What does run in my family, on both sides, is a sort of silent depression. A very British sense of defeat. Even if this was a trait, I doubt I could ever know about it. "Hanging on in quiet desperation..." as Roger Waters said.

I've been an asshole. I've said irretrievable things. I've made myself someone else. Repeatedly. In some eyes, I will never be seen as who I am, but who I was in a moment. So, what then? Would I stop? Would I make some fucking pledge to change? To toss aside this opiate? Would I say...

"I don't need this."

I worry. I worry that I do. Here I sit, drinking another bottle of cab, after swearing no more today. After swearing no more this week. No more at least until I get paid again.

So, where do I stand in all of this?

Face it or don't, right? Is it a problem? No, perhaps not. Is it an addiction, well, I don't know. I won't die without it, but I certainly wish I had it regularly. Its very much like sex I suppose. In college, I took psych 101, learned about "drives". The things that keep us motivated on primal level. The sleep drive. The hunger drive. My professor was wary to add the sex drive. We won't die without it, but we do a lot for it. I would in fact argue, that at the core, we do everything for it. Maybe that's the same level. Hunger, sleep, they are level 1 drives. Without them, I die. This and sex, that's a level two drive, I do everything I can for them, but I would go on without them, I suppose.

When do I worry?

When do I take a stand either way and either say "this needs to stop" or "I am functioning, happy and fine"?

Goddamn this all.

The Disappearing Wrist

2012-01-04T21:26:00.002-05:00

I sat in a booth on one side of a dance floor littered with harlots in tight dresses and boys pretending to be men. I didn't even want to be there, but it was New Years Eve and some of the people I was with decided that clubbing was the way to go. It was dark save for a few spotlights and reflections from the surely tacky-by-now mirror ball dangling from some unseen rafter above us. The music blasted so loudly and through such a terrible speaker system that I couldn't tell what type of music we were listening to, much less the song. Bass pounded, I knew that, but any frequency higher than it was lost. I alternated between my beer and a string of whiskeys, both of which were bought for me, and a steel water bottle full of wine that I had smuggled in.

Marie and her sister and Kris stood on the other side of the booth wall, on the dance floor. Occasionally they danced, so to speak. Mostly they laughed and wiggled and laughed.

I sat with John in the dark, staring into the abyss of a life style that neither of us quite understood. Every girl on the floor wore tight, short dresses. Most of the girls were far too overweight for them, and spilled flesh wherever the dress just couldn't take the goddamn pressure any longer. I watched a young man who may have just turned twenty one cram most of his hand into a particularly obese girl who had apparently given up all together on pulling her dress down as it rode up. I watched in awe.

"Do you see that?" I asked John.

He looked at me and raised an eye brow.

"I said..." I shook my head and held my phone up and pointed to it. Then I pointed to John. He looked curious for a moment then I repeated the gesture and he nodded and took out his phone.

I texted: "Is that guy fingering that girl?" Send.

John's phone lit up. He read the message and typed. My phone lit up.

"Where?" He asked.

I looked at him and pointed out across the floor. There was no question about it now. The beast was blocking the young man out of my vision almost completely. Only his arm was showing as it bravely circumnavigated the planetary monstrosity and then just below the wrist it disappeared again, far into her underwear. I imagined whale songs far under the sea and the look on the behemoth's face only reenforced the idea. I was in this club. But at least I wasn't that fucking guy.

I looked at John. He was still watching.

Marie swung her legs up over the half-wall and slid into the booth. She was good and drunk. Smiling for no reason. Puckering her lips and in every direction giving her smoldering supermodel look that she swear she doesn't give. She leaned over me and kissed me. "Hey!" She said.

I smiled.

Kris came over the wall and slid in between Marie and John. Marie's sister went off to dance with a man in a cowboy hat and suspenders.

"I fucking love you!" Marie said.

"I love you!"

"What?!"

I kissed her and she kissed me. It morphed into a nearly adolescent display of tongues and indifference to onlookers. Hands, grips, gropes and grinds. I went with it. While we were kissing, two girls stood against the wall. I looked up. One looked good in her tight, ridiculous dress. The other was the fat friend.

"Hey!" I said to Marie. "You're drunk! Poke her ass!"

Marie looked. "Her?! In the silver dress?!"

I nodded.

Without hesitation, Marie turned around, and grabbed the girl's ass. A fucking handful. Apparently satisfied, Marie whipped back around and began putting on makeup in the mirror of a compact.

"Who the fuck just grabbed my ass?!" The girl asked, loudly.

We all looked up at her, except for Marie.

The girl looked at me. Her face wasn't much to celebrate. "Did you just grab ass motherfucker?"

What luck. In my left hand, I still held my phone. In my right, my beer. I held them up. I shook my head and shrugged. She looked around our booth. "Queers."She and her friend waddled down a few feet.

I looked at Marie. She was laughing.

I sat back in the booth and finished my beer, then my whiskey, then my wine. My body was warm and my head pounded. I wondered if there was a three-way in my future before the night was up. I doubted it.

Peanuts (An Excerpt from "Mirrors Down")

2011-12-27T07:19:00.004-05:00

Marie and I walked in through the big set of double automatic sliding doors. The hot air from the vents throws our hair all over the fucking place, and now we almost fit in with the welfare denizens littering the aisles.

“You want a cart?” I ask.

“No, I think a basket will be fine.”

“Okay.” I grab a basket.

“Good afternoon,” a door greeter who must be pushing ninety says.

“Good afternoon,” I say.

“I’m going to grab some peanuts or something. I’m feeling a little hungry," Marie says.

“Okay. I’m going to start the loop.”

“All right.”

I walk into the store and take a left toward the Health & Beauty section. None of the people here look like they use either. It’s a fucking leper colony, except for a girl that looks like she might be a six or a seven. From a distance, anyway.

I walk slowly, and Marie catches up to me, with a small bag of peanuts.

“Mmmm, peanuts,” she says. “You want one?”

“No thanks. I’m not really hungry at all.”

“Okay,” she says, and begins to pick at them.

We walk along, stopping here and there, walking up and down the occasional aisle, not really looking at anything.

The Six or Seven turned out to be more like a Two or Three once we got up close.

“I thought that girl was better looking when we were back there,” I say to Marie.

“Me too, but she’s fucking gross.”

“Word.”

We continue on, and I remember I need shipping labels for work. I’d pay for them now, and then take the money out of petty cash later. It would save me a trip back here later on.

“We need to go to the office supplies.”

“For what?”

“I need to get shipping labels for work.”

“Oh, okay.”

We walk toward the center of the store, and to the stationary section. I browse the different labels for a while, settle on a type, and then we head up to the cash registers.

“You want to look at anything else while we’re here?”

“No, I’m good now.”

“All right.” I head to the self-checkouts, and begin to ring myself out. Scan, beep. Scan, beep.

“You want to get arrested for a bag of fucking peanuts?” comes a voice from behind me.

I turn around.

“Not you, your woman. Excuse me miss, you want to get arrested for a bag of fucking peanuts?” The guy is almost red faced and holding the now empty peanut bag.

I look at Marie. She is astounded. “What?”

I turn back to the guy. “Listen man, who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the guy that gets people arrested here. Now is someone going to fucking pay for these peanuts?!”

“You’re going about this all wrong,” says another man from behind the lunatic.

“Seriously,” I say. “If you want to talk about this, let me finish my business, and we can go outside and talk it out like adults. There’s no need to be raising a scene in the middle of the store, man.”

“Don’t call me ‘man’, motherfucker!” he says, and then grabs my wrist, and shoves me backward.

Marie starts shouting something, but I don’t really hear it. I have crossed over into rage mode. I lunge at the cocksucker and shove him into the candy shelf. The third guy grabs the lunatic and spins him around and screams “You keep this shit up motherfucker, I’ll fucking lay you out! You hear me?!”

“You’re all getting arrested!” screams the lunatic. “You’re all getting arrested!”

In a brief moment of clarity, I turn to Marie. “Go to the car.” Without hesitation, she begins to walk out, hurriedly, but calm.

The lunatic steps toward her and grabs her arm. “Where’re you going?! I’m calling the fucking cops!”

Seeing him grab her, everything in the world fades away, and I shove him again, this time across the lane and into the opposing cash register. “Don’t you fucking touch my wife asshole!”

“That’s it motherfucker! I’m calling the cops!” He gets up and takes his phone out of his pocket.

I decide it’s in my best interest to just get out of the store. With all the blood boiling away in my brain, I begin to follow Marie out of the store.

“Hey! You forgot your change!”

I turn around and the third guy is walking toward me with the eleven dollars I left at the register. I turn back and go get it. “Thanks man. I appreciate it.”

“Any time,” he says.

I take the money, and notice the lunatic is on his phone, walking up to me. I meet him and close his phone. “Fuck you scumbag.”

“That’s fine,” he says, opening his phone back up. He starts dialing. “I’m the guy that gets people arrested here, and you’re all going to fucking jail.” He starts talking into the phone. “Yes, my name is…” I don’t hear the rest. I begin to walk quickly out of the store. Marie is almost at the door. I catch up to her, and the lunatic is following close behind us. I can hear him talking. “Yes, it’s a woman with dark hair, in a black coat. She stole peanuts. I am at the uptown location. They are leaving the store right now. I am following them. Yes, peanuts. Then when I tried to stop them, her boyfriend attacked me…”

I am furious. Marie keeps flashing me worried glances. I knew this was going to happen someday. She has a habit of picking little shit up and then either eating or drinking it and leaving the wrappers or cans on some shelf, or just tossing shit in her purse. I knew something like this would happen. I fucking told her this would happen.

We leave the store.

“They’re in the parking lot now. I tried to stop them before they left. People can’t just steal peanuts. It’s bullshit. Sorry. I’m upset. He attacked me…” The lunatic goes on.

A few rows down, I see our car. Marie and I pick up the pace and get to the car. I unlock it and notice the lunatic is just standing directly behind it.

“Okay asshole, you made your fucking point. I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you might want to get out of the way. Cars tend to be heavy.”

He is still on the phone. “Yes, he just threatened to run me over. They are trying to leave, but I am blocking them in…”

After debating quickly on whether or not I should get this fucking moron out of the way myself, I just get in the car. It’s better not to have an actual assault charge if he really is on the phone with the cops.

I turn the car on, and Marie says “I’m so sorry honey.”

I have nothing to say except, “just buckle up.”

She does. “What do we do?” She asks.

“I don’t know.” I look in the rear view, and he is still there. Then, by the grace of whichever god looks out for people like me, the car in the space directly in front of me backs out and leaves. A wave of relief pours over me.

“Thank fuck,” I say and drive cautiously forward through the spot, and into the open parking lot.

“Hey you get the fuck back here you fucking dirt bags!” The lunatic yells after us before going back to his hopefully imaginary phone conversation.

I pull out of the parking lot, and onto the open, wonderful road.

31.

“I’m sorry honey. Are you mad at me?”

I don’t know what to say. I am furious. I fucking told her, I told her, I told her. My heart is pounding, and I have gone into “hardcore silence” mode. My jaw clenched, my chest heaving. I could kill a man.

“Honey, please say something.”

“You want to know if I’m mad at you?” I ask.

“I know…”

“You’re goddamned right you know. How many fucking times have I told you not to fucking steal shit?! How hard is it? Jesus fucking christ.”

“You know what? Fuck you then. How the fuck would I have known some fucking crazy guy would be following us around?!”

“It doesn’t matter if you knew or not! Just don’t fucking do it!”

“Oh sure,” she says. “You’re so great, and I’m just this huge fucking asshole. Just some piece of shit, right?”

“Oh shut the fuck up. I didn’t fucking say that. I hate it when you say shit like that. It doesn’t even make any sense in context,” I say.

“In context. Fuck you.” After that Marie goes silent and stares out the window.

My silent rage continues. So does hers.

I glance in the rear view, and see that I am being pulled over.

“Fuck.”

32.

The State Trooper walks up to the car, looking it over as he comes. He inspects the rear, walks up along the drivers side, writing notes, and then he sees my out-of-date inspection, gives a grimace at me through the windshield, and looks at my headlights.

“What do we say?” Marie asks. “Do you think it’s because of the thing just now?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not say anything. Maybe I was speeding.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

I keep my hands high on the wheel, and try not to look too aggravated or threatening. I have now seen one too many videos of cops freaking out and killing people because they thought the person twitched wrong, or had bad information. Police fucking terrify now. What happened to the world?

The Trooper comes up to my door, and gives me the “roll down the window” gesture. Slowly, I lift my hands off of the wheel and say loudly through the rolled up window; “The window is broken, I have to open the door.”

He squints, and then steps back a few steps. I get a little nervous as he put’s his hand on his hip.

Fuck, I’m dead. Fuck fuck fuck, goddamned peanuts…

He motions for me to open the door.

Still slowly, I crack the door open and repeat; “Window is broken.”

“Okay,” he says. “Just open the door up nice and wide.”

I do.

“License and registration.”

“Sure.” I SLOWLY sit up and take my wallet out of my back pocket, trying not to make any sudden gestures. I take out my license and hand it to him.

He looks it over. “Registration.”

Marie is digging through the glove box, coming up empty handed. “Excuse me officer?”

He looks into the car.

“Uh,” she says, “it is at my house. I can produce it if you need it, but it just isn’t with me.”

“That’s fine. Do you have your license?”

“Mine?” Marie asks.

“Yes.”

“Yes, hold on.” Marie begins to dig through her purse, finds her wallet, digs through that, and then pulls out her license. She hands it to him.

He looks over the two licenses. “You two are married?”

“Yes sir,” I say.

He inspects them more. “Which address is correct? The 23 Lowell Street, or the 6 Perth Avenue?”

“Perth,” we both say.

“Okay. Get that taken care of on your license Mr. Martin.”

“Yes sir.”

“Stay put, and I am just going to run these.”

He walks back toward his car and I close the door.

I watch the traffic go by.

“I know this is because of me. I am so sorry honey. I really am. I am a terrible person,” Marie says.

“Just stop. You aren’t a terrible person. I hate that.”

“I am though, and you deserve someone better.”

“Stop.”

“Okay. I love you honey.”

“I love you too.” Everyone is staring at us. I wonder if I know any of them.

A few minutes pass and Marie is getting restless. “What the fuck is taking so long? I bet they do this purposely to get you anxious.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how long does it take to run a license?”

“This long, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

We sit in the car for a little while longer before the Trooper returns. Slowly, I open my door again. He hands us our licenses. “You know your inspection is up?”

“Yes sir.”

“Get that taken care of. I’m not going to write you a ticket for it.”

“Thank you officer. Is that all?” I ask.

“Well, no.”

“Officer, is this about the guy in the parking lot?” Marie asks.

The Trooper is silent for a moment, then; “What guy?”

“A guy at Wal-Mart. Some crazy guy just like, attacked us. Screaming at us in line and grabbing and shoving us.”

“What happened now?” The Trooper asks Marie.

“We were there just now. We got some stuff,” Marie motions toward the bag of mailing labels, “and when we were in line at the registers, paying for our stuff, this crazy guy comes up to us and starts screaming at us about peanuts, and we’re all going to be arrested and swearing, and then he grabbed my husband, and it was scary. The man was a lunatic. I mean, I was really scared.”

“Was he security, or loss prevention?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think so. If he was he didn’t say anything, and he certainly wasn’t acting like it. I mean, he was really flipping out and screaming. Even the guy behind us in line was yelling at him to calm down. It was terrifying.”

“He grabbed you sir?” he asks me.

“Yes sir.” I held up my arm where he grabbed me, and was pleasantly surprised to see my arm was already bruising and there was a small cut in the middle, probably from a ring.

He looked at it. “Hmm. Then what happened?”

“After he grabbed me, I shoved him back, and the guy behind us in line grabbed him and spun him around and those two started yelling at him, and then I told her to leave, and she started to, and then the fucking guy, sorry, the guy grabbed her arm, and I shoved him again and tried to leave. The whole time he was swearing at us and telling us we were getting arrested and all kinds of things.”

“And then you left?”

“Well, we tried to, but he followed us out, and when we tried to leave, he stood behind our car, so we couldn’t get out.”

“But you did?”

“Yeah, the car in front of us left. So we drove through.”

“And he never said who he was?”

“No, the only somewhat identifying information he gave was that he was ‘the guy who get’s people arrested'. I mean, it doesn’t sound like an official title to me, but if it is, I mean, that’s cool, I guess.”

“Well,” the trooper says, “this is about that.”

“Goddamn it,” Marie says.

“Yeah,” agrees the Trooper. “Will you step out of the car sir?”

“What?” I ask.

“They want me to take you back up there. Apparently he was Loss Prevention, and they want to get to the bottom of it all. The Sheriff is up there now, and they just want you to ask some questions.”

“Me? Not Marie though?”

“No sir. They just said you.”

I look at Marie. Again, she is wearing her ultra-apologetic look. Fucking peanuts. I unbuckle, and get out of the car. “Can I follow you up there?” Marie asks.

“If you’d like to ma’am, but I can’t say what is going to happen. They seem to think there might be an assault charge.”

“Oh this is fucking bullshit,” I say.

“Could be,” the Trooper says.

“Okay, I will meet you up there baby,” Marie says.

“Okay.”

“Come over to my car, and just put your hands on the hood,” the Trooper says.

“Wait, am I under arrest?” I ask.

“No sir. I just have to make sure you don’t have any weapons on you before you get in the car.”

“Okay.” In full afternoon traffic, on a main road, just recovering from a fucking flu and fighting an LP guy in a goddamned Wal-Mart, I find myself bent over the hood of a cop car, getting searched. Classy.

The Trooper does a quick search, finds my phone, asks me about it, and then tells me I can stand up straight.

“So,” he says, “Are you going to get in the back, or do you want me to cuff you?”

“That’s kind of a fucked up question,” I say. “Does anyone actually choose to be cuffed?”

The trooper looks at me funny, and says “You never know.”

He opens the door for me, and I get in. I can see Marie in her rear view mirror, watching. I wave. She doesn’t.

The trooper shuts the door, and walks around to his side. He gets in, sits down and calls the trip in. He’s got the suspect. We’re going up.

“So, this guy never said he was LP?” he asks.

“No, he was a lunatic. He just kept screaming, and he grabbed me and my wife. It was fucking strange. But, I mean, a man comes up to your wife screaming and grabs her, what do you do?”

“I hear you. Well, it should all be on video. If it shows him touching you first, you might have a case against him. I mean, I can’t give you legal advice really, but I mean, you might have a case against a corporate giant, so, you know, go for it.”

I laugh. “I plan on it.”

“So, just so you know, regardless of what happens, you probably won’t be allowed back there again.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured. That’s cool. I hear they’re building a new one downtown anyway.”

“That’s what I hear,” the Trooper says. “So, maybe you can go there.”

“And fight L.P. guys.”

The Trooper laughs. “Well, maybe not that.”

We shoot the shit for a little while. We talk about local retail, and the decline of Mom and Pop shops. We talk about our failing economy, and the evil republicans. We talk about my lost generation, and the way we’re blamed for it. The Trooper is a cool guy. It’s a shame that we had to meet under these circumstances. He seems like he’d make a good drinking buddy. Unlike John.

We pull into the parking lot, and drive up to the front of the store, where the Sheriff is waiting. The Trooper parks and talks to the Sheriff for a while, before letting me out.

“All right, well good luck James,” the Trooper says.

We shake hands and he gets back in his car and drives away.

I turn toward the Sheriff. She’s a short woman. Mid forties. Looks like she likes the power the job offers, but complains about men being less than chivalrous as of late. She takes out a pen and a pad of paper.

“Okay,” she says, “before we go in there, why don’t you tell me what happened?”

For the second time in ten minutes, I recount the events. The screaming, the shoving, the bullshit. I show her my arm, she nods and writes. Nods and writes. I give her my name and address, Marie's name. Same address. Married? Yes ma’am.

I see Marie is parked in the parking lot, hiding a ways down.

“Okay,” she says after it all. “We are going to go in, but you will have to wait outside the door. You aren’t going to go anywhere, are you?"

"No ma’am. I did nothing but defend myself and my wife. I feel I am in the right here. It will all be on video.”

She warns me again of a possible assault charge. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous.

We go into the store. The Loss Prevention office is a small door at the front of the store that I don’t think I have ever noticed.

“Wait here,” the Sheriff says.

“Okay.” I lean up against the wall and the Sheriff goes in the office.

People are walking in and out of the store all looking at me. Do they notice this tiny door? Do they know what it is behind there? Do they associate me with the parked cop car out there?

I wait. And wait. And wait.

Finally, twenty-three minutes later, according to my phone, the door opens again, and the Sheriff comes out.

“Follow me,” she says.

Oh, fuck, I’m going to jail.

We walk out to her car.

“Okay, so, they aren’t pressing any charges, but you aren’t allowed here anymore.”

“Well, that’s fine. I wouldn’t come back here if I had to.”

“Right, well, do you need a ride?”

“No, my wife is here waiting for me.” I wave to Marie, and gesture for her to come.

“Okay. Well, I just have to follow you out of the parking lot when you leave, and then I believe we are all set here.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she says.

“I thought they were leaning pretty heavily on pressing charges. What changed their minds?”

She gives me an inquisitive look and a pause, and says; “I don’t know. They must have just changed their minds.”

“Right. Well, did the tape show him grabbing me or my wife?”

Again, the look. “No.”

“Well, I mean, what did it show? There are like eight cameras there. It must have shown something.”

Marie pulls up next to us.

“It only showed you shoving him.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

She was lying to me. The tape did show it, and Wal-Mart was trying to avoid my lawsuit. What difference did it make to her?

“Can I watch the tape?” I ask. “I mean, I feel like I have a right to.”

“Unfortunately, no, not without a subpoena. It’s private property.”

“Right. Okay. Well, this is my ride. Thanks officer.”

“Okay, I will just follow you out.”

“All right,” I say. “Have a good day.”

She doesn’t respond. Fuck her.

I get in the car.

“Well?” Marie asks.

“I’ll tell you in a little bit. Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”

“Okay.”

Marie pulls out of the parking lot, and onto the main road, with the Sheriff behind us.

“I’m sorry honey,” Marie says. “I won’t do it again.”

“I know.”

That Moment.

2011-12-21T09:53:00.002-05:00

It's time to say goodbye to this year. Its failures and victories. Laughs and silent sufferings. Its stories both told and untold. Its time to start looking forward to starting again, right this time (of course). So, I will finish this year off almost as I began it.

2011 ended just like every other year. A chill in my bones, a years worth of creations behind me, and the equally preposterous notions of aging miserably and hoping fortunate resting heavily on my bones. I've been sitting around in my house for a few days. Looking back over the year. Wondering what I could have done differently. What progress I may have made. What errors I failed to prevent.

I began this year working a job I both loved and hated. I fought a security guard over the honor of my wife and a bag of peanuts. I was detained. I fought a fever that brought such nightmares that recurring insomnia echoed throughout the remainder of the year. I recognized myself as not only a victim of this lost generation, but also the cause. I was suspended from my job for something I did not do, and when they realized it and took me back, I quit. Eventually I took a new job that I despised. Sometimes, you just can't work a job. I quit. I feared the worst, I broke down a little. I quit. Quit writing. Quit music. Quit a newly found appreciation for all things optimistic. The cold came and I began to dig myself out, but what damage was done, was done.

However, that is not to say that 2011, in all of its challenges, its trials, its impediment, was all bad. No.

I began the year as a great fan of the band Ghoul Poon. Then, I was asked to join them. I don't think anyone really understands what that was like for me. It was wonderful. It led to playing a number of shows, and once again becoming an active member of not only the local (and incredible) music scene, but also of a group of like minded creative individuals who slowly became friends, despite my natural anti-social state.

I wrote in 2011. A fucking lot. For me, creating is the single greatest thing a person can do in their time, next to, only, loving those around them. I am on a constant mission to amass a nearly unending creative legacy. Music. Paintings. Words. I can't say for certain that anyone would ever want to hear, see, or read what I make, but I refuse to die until I feel as though my soul could be pieced back together with the works I leave behind. So, I wrote a fucking lot this year. Beside maintaining this blog, I began three novels. Finished one, and thought another was fairly good. I wrote essays, rants, stories, and short little scenes. Some people I respect said some nice things about what I wrote, and that meant the world.

I took July off, mostly. I spent it on the beach with my wife. We drank wine, enjoyed the sky and the water. Read to each other under trees in the fading light of perfect days, and caught poison ivy. We swam near hidden ledges. For the first time, I tried mimosas and guacamole, and loved both. We lost weight, and looked quite good, if I am allowed to say so. We laid on blankets in the heat, browned, and smiled. July was the greatest month of my entire life, and worth every trouble both preceding it and yet to come.

Lastly, and most importantly, I found peace. If only for a moment (though still, I occasionally feel the resonance). I don't know how, or why, or what switch was flipped, but there it was. The weight of years gone, arguments had, battles lost, none of it mattered. The greatest victory of this year, and all of those before it, glimmered in front of me as I sat on a large hidden rock on the water, watching the light bounce off of the waves and running my fingers through my wife's hair as she laid with her head in my lap. Despite any bad that came this year, this is what I'll remember of 2011. That moment, when somehow, everything was okay.

Filthy Lesbo

2011-12-12T11:50:00.003-05:00

Deidre had hair so blonde it was white and she was a bitch. I was sitting in her living room with Jane, who was trying to fuck her, drinking my third cup of coffee and staring at my shoes wondering if I should wait until the hole was bigger before I replaced them. I decided I would.

Jane was clumsily flirting with Deidre who kept turning every advance into an opportunity to remind us of how unattainable she was.

"Maybe we could all go to a movie tonight?" Jane asked. She was using me as a safety net. Deidre wasn't into women, save for herself, and Jane wanted to make sure she could play the "why would I try anything if James was here?" card if she had to. She had explained all of this to me on the walk downtown to the apartment.

"Did I ever tell you I was in a short film?" Deidre said.

"Oh, no. What was it like?" Jane asked.

"It was in college. My friend Raul is a brilliant director and he said only I could play the lead."

"I bet you were great," Jane said.

I sipped my coffee and second guessed my shoe decision.

"Well, I think so," Deidre said. She laughed. She was sitting cross legged on her couch in short shorts and was hiding very little while Jane and I shared the loveseat with the broken spring in the middle. "But what really proved I was great was that after we finished, Raul, who is brilliant, did I say that?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, Raul told me I was extraordinary and he had never seen a performance quite like it."

"Wow. I 'd love to see it," Jane said.

"Did you fuck him?" I asked.

Jane and Deidre both looked at me. "What?" Deidre asked.

"Just wondering."

"Well, we did date a little yes, but it wasn't serious or anything. Not that it's any of your business, nosey."

I was trying to dissuade Jane from jamming her tongue into that bog.

"Well, a brilliant director, I can't blame you. And with a name like Raul..." Jane said. There was no hope.

"Oh yes, but it was truly out of respect, what we had."

"Do you have a copy of the film?"

Deidre sighed. "No, unfortunately. Raul had the only copy, but he said he was going to destroy it."

"I thought you said he thought you were extraordinary? Why would he destroy it?" I asked.

"Well, he did say that. About me. He just wasn't happy with how the film itself turned out."

"What type of film did you say it was?" I set my coffee down on the end table.

"It was very artistic. You probably wouldn't get it."

"I bet."

"I love art films," Jane said.

"I'm bored. Can we go for a walk or something? It's beautiful out," I said.

Jane looked over for Deidre's input. Deidre was staring at her fingernails. "I can't," Deidre said. "I have to do laundry."

"I can help you do laundry , if you want?"

"You just want to smell my underwear you filthy lesbo," Deidre said and laughed.

"Come on Jane," I said. "Let's go. I'm bored and Dee has shit to do."

Jane was hurt but didn't want to say anything. I didn't always understand Jane.

"Okay," Jane said.

We both stood up. Deidre continued fucking with her fingernails.

"Bye Deidre, I'll call you later," Jane said.

"Sure."

Jane and I left. Jane was a lesbo, and could be filthy, but Deidre was a bitch and Jane deserved better.

Working Out.

2011-12-02T21:23:00.005-05:00

I was drunk. I was in the passenger seat as Marie drove us home. We were stopped at a red light in the middle of our town's bar district. I saw a man outside with a woman. They were both obviously above forty. They were both obviously new friends. She was grabbing his waist. he was smiling.

"It's not going to work out, my man," I slurred from the car to myself.

The light turned green and we drove on at ten or twenty or however many miles an hour. As we passed the second and final set of bars on the other side of the road, Marie's side, I saw a young blonde girl with a man with pants around his thighs.

"You either," I said.

I felt bad for both of them.

"But what is working out now?" I said.

"What?" Marie said.

"I mean, does it mean, lasting forever? Fuck, that's almost impossible. And then, to be happy forever? Jesus Christ. That's like asking the sun to come down, and have tea with you. It's just not going to fucking happen man. So what is 'working out'?"

"I don't know honey."

"Maybe working out is just having something to look back on and smile about."

"Maybe."

"Maybe, amidst a 78 percent divorce rate, or whatever the fuck it is, maybe 'working out is just a moment. Finding a moment that in you darkness you can say, 'yeah, she was a cunt, but that time at the orchard was beautiful'. Maybe working out is just working toward a beautiful moment in life."

"What about people like us?" she asked.

"We have our ups and downs."

"True."

"And we have plenty of wonderful memories."

"We do," she said.

"Maybe what is making us 'work out' is this string of good memories and the promise of more, maybe the recognition that between the two of us the chance of good memories in the future is higher than normal."

"Maybe," she said. "So, what about true love?"

"What about it?"

NaNoWriMo, or, 175 Pages of Typos and Hell.

2011-11-02T10:52:00.001-04:00

As you may know, this November I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month). It is a challenge to anyone who is interested to write a novel of about 175 pages (or 50,000) words in thirty days. A previous winner (basically someone who completes the challenge) wrote the novel "Water for Elephants", which was later turned into a massive Hollywood film. So, I was tempted. Each day I wrote and posted it here for anyone to see. Five, ten, fifteen pages a day. Granted, it wasn't my best writing, or perhaps not even particularly good writing, but the fact of the matter was, I was doing it. Then I finished.

175 pages of typos and hell.

"Hmm," I thought, "now what?"

Over the past week, I have decided that after some serious editing and re-writes, it may be a decent novel, so I have decided to try to take it as far as possible. What if? Right?

So, I will be removing the NaNoWriMo posts and begin the gargantuan challenge of editing, drafting, submitting, and probably quitting writing a few hundred times.

I got a nice rejection letter from the New Yorker the other day for one of my shorts. I will have it framed.

Edit: I left the first chapter. What the hell, right?

A Dragon (NaNoWriMo pages 1-8)

2011-11-01T20:12:00.002-04:00

1.

My father stood in the driveway with a revolver under his chin. He had bought it from a pot dealer a few towns over and was screaming at our house. At my sister and I. At my mother.

“Let me in the fucking house Jean! Let me in the fucking house or I’ll blow my fucking face all over the side of this goddamned house!”

My mother was crying and zipping up my sisters jacket. It was November and dark out. The plan was that my sister (Rose) and I were going to slip out through the basement and the garage door and go to the neighbors house to call for help. We didn’t have a phone line.

I watched from the window through the blinds. My father stood staunch under the street lamp, never taking the gun from under his chin.

“James! James I can see you! Let me in the house! Don’t listen to your mother! Let me in my fucking house!” I didn’t think he would do anything crazy. He was my father. I had seen him in worse situations. My mother, on the other hand, was convinced.

“Is Dad going to die?” My sister asked.

“No,” I said. “He isn’t. It’s an act.”

“What?”

“You know, like a show. He’s pretending, is all.”

“Why?” She asked.

“He just wants us to let him in.”

“Why can’t we let him in?”

“It doesn’t matter. You know why. Be quiet.”

Her eyes were already glossed over, and now they began to leak.

“James, don’t be mean to your sister,” My mother said, adjusting Rose‘s hat. “She’s frightened.”

“No, I’m not,” She said, only tearing up, not crying.

“I hope he does kill himself,” I said.

My mother turned to me. “Stop that. Don’t say that. You love your father.” She kissed my sister on the forehead, and turned back to me. “Now, as quiet as you can, take your sister downstairs. Open the garage door, but keep the lights off, and quietly, please quietly, go to Helen’s. Tell her what is happening, have her call 9-1-1. Can you do that James?”

“Yeah,” I said, glancing towards the window, where my father was counting down loudly from fifty. “I’ve got it. Why aren’t you coming?”

“I need to be here.” Her face was red. Her eyes were puffed.. “Just in case.”

Rose gripped her little hand around mine as we moved silently through the unlit basement, toward the garage. The light from the street lamp shone in dimly through the small rectangle of a window near the ceiling, and grazed the boxes of unpacked who knows what from the move the month before.

“I love you,” She said.

“I love you too. Be quiet.”

We were ghosts. We were the sullen creatures under the stairs. We moved with weight and strength and fear. We moved as one.

When we got to garage, I began to panic. Would he hear me pulling it open? What if he really had lost his mind? What if he shot at us? What if he killed me? Or Rose? What if we leave and he kills Mom? I stared into the darkness for a moment. This could be it. David and Goliath, or it could not. I could die. He could kill me. What could I do to protect my family? Was calling the cops all that could be done? Can I defend them? I don’t think so, he’s a mountain of a man. A dragon. Who the fuck am I? Twelve years of nothing. Nothing at all.

I felt around the back of the garage door for the handle, and found it. Slowly but firmly I lifted only a little. It creaked and I froze.

“Shh,” Rose said.

“I know.”

I lifted a little more.

“Slide under and wait for me,” I said.

“I don‘t want to go first.” Rose said.

“Don’t be scared. I’ll protect you.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Okay.”

I could see Rose look up at me in what little light crept in under the door. She got down on her stomach and slid under. “I’m out.”

“Do you see him?” I whispered.

“No. I hear him over there.”

I lifted a little higher, and got down on my back. The door was heavier like that. Harder to lift. I pictured it slipping from my hands and crushing me, breaking my nose, or wrist, or ribs underneath it. I would cry, or whimper, and he would hear me. Rose would call for help. He would hear her. She was braver than I.

I stuck my foot under the door to keep it propped. It hurt and bent my toes, but I kept moving.

I could hear my father yelling on the other side of the house. “Nineteen! Eighteen!”

I got out from under the door, eased it down, and stood up. I took Roses hand, and keeping my eyes and ears tuned to the other side of the house, silently wished my mother as much luck as I could, and slipped Rose off into the night.

2.

Helen lived only a few houses down from us on the same street. I couldn’t hear my father anymore. I wondered if he had finished counting, and what that would mean. I hadn’t heard a gunshot, but I didn’t know what one sounded like either. I imagined I would know one if I had heard one. I knocked.

“Is she home?” Rose asked.

“I don’t know. I just knocked.”

“Oh.”

We waited on the porch. The night was clear and the air was thin and sharp in my lungs.

A light came on in the window.

“Hello? Who is it?” Helen said through the door.

“It’s James and Rose. My mom told us to come here.”

The door cracked open, and Helen, a stout middle aged woman, peered out. “What are you two doing over here? Is everything all right?”

Rose gripped my hand.

“My mom told us to tell you you need to call 9-1-1. My dad has a gun.”

“Oh my god! Kids, get inside!” She opened the door wide, and shuffled us in. “Is your mother okay? Where is your mother? Oh my god! Where is the g.d. phone?!”

She sat us on the couch and pulled the shades closed. “You two just sit here. I need to find the g.d. phone.” She shuffled off into the other room.

For the first time in about an hour there was quiet. There was a feeling of relative safety. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother.

Rose leaned her head on my shoulder. “James?”

“Yeah?”

“Is mom okay?”

“Yes, Rose. Mom is okay. You know Mom. She’ll always be okay. You know that.”

“I know.”

“James?”

“Yeah?”

“Is Dad okay?”

“I don’t know, Rose.”

“Okay.”

We sat on the couch, and stared at the blank television, at our black reflections. Mom was okay. She had to be. I knew Mom. She’s always okay. I knew that. I knew that.

”Found it! Christ!” Helen said from the other room. I could hear the tones of her dialing, and then, “Hello. I need Police or an ambulance or something. Please quick. Yes it’s an emergency! My name is Helen Thomas. I live at fourteen Maple… but wait, no, that’s not the emergency! My neighbor! Her kids are here. They say their father has a gun! I don’t know if the mom is okay. I haven’t heard from her. She doesn’t have a phone. Yes. Twenty six Maple Street. Halcyon. Yes. Red house. Okay. I will. Yes. The kids are with me. They’re safe. Yes. Okay.”

She looked in on us. “Everything’s fine kids. They’re sending help. You have nothing to worry about.”

We could only look at her.

“I’ll make some food,” she said. She went into the kitchen and occasionally she would mumble something into the phone. I couldn’t hear it.

I found the remote on the coffee table and turned on the television. I couldn’t think. My brain was all just chaos. Static and noise. Panic, rushing blood, and adrenaline. A feeling I was going to have to get used to.

I started flipping through the channels, looking for something to watch. I found music videos.

“I want cartoons,” Rose said.

“Okay.” I changed the channel to cartoons and leaned back on the couch. Rose leaned back on me and laughed once in a while at something on screen. It was all just colors and sound to me.

Mom is always okay.

After a little while Helen came back in with two bowls of macaroni and cheese. Rose and I took off our jackets, sat on the floor and ate.

A knock came on the door.

Helen moved slowly toward it. “Who is it?”

“Sheriff ma’am.”

She peeked out through the window, red pulsing lights filled the room, then went ahead and opened the door. “Good evening officer.”

“Good evening ma’am.” He looked in and saw us. “Can we speak in private?”

“Of course.”

The Sheriff and Helen went outside and shut the door. I tried to put my ear to the window and listen, but all I could hear was muffles. I looked through and saw Helen nodding.

“Can you hear them?” Rose asked.

“No.”

The Sheriff left, his lights no longer flashing. Helen came in and looked at us.

“You kids are going to stay here with me tonight.”

“Is my mom okay?” I asked.

“Your mom is fine. Everything is fine. She just had to go with the Sheriff to help them figure everything out, and then she’ll be picking you two up in the morning.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” Rose said.

“Okay,” Helen said. “Finish up your meals then kids, and I’ll get beds made up for you. It’s getting late, and you’ve had a long night.”

We finished up, and Helen laid out blankets and pillows on the living room floor for us. We got under our covers and she turned out the lights. “Get some sleep kids. Good night.”

“Goodnight,” Rose and I said.

I laid in the dark. Rose’s breathing eventually slowed and I stared at the light from the cable box.

Mom was always okay. I knew it.

Seven A.M., Halloween Morning.

2011-10-31T07:01:00.002-04:00

It's seven a.m., Halloween morning, 2011. I was supposed to be up for work an hour ago, but plans changed and now I am just up. I took two diet pills and am on my third cup of coffee, sitting alone in my dark living room, typing furiously and deleting doubly so while I wait for Marie to wake up. I'm trying to catch the dream state before it disappears entirely. There's a cloud in my head and it's filled with all of those thoughts I swear I think, all of the perfectly articulated stories, characters, plans, plots, and places. It's bursting with life, world, and mind changing ideas, my cloud.

So I try to catch it. Hope to write some of it down. Leave behind some record of dawning eureka.

What about the diet pills? The coffee? Shouldn't I ease up on the caffeine if I am trying to catch some waking dream by the tail? Probably. But I didn't.

The original plan was to eat better, lose a little weight (starting today, of course), sip my coffee in bed next to Marie and read some Hem shorts. It wasn't until halfway through "Fifty Grand" and three cups of coffee that I realized what brilliant blur of colors and moods, faces and words were whipping through me, being sucked out of me with each passing moment. I haven't had a drink in a week. I need every chance I can get.

I spilled my fucking coffee down the front of me as I burst out of bed.

"Shut up," Marie said from under her pillow as I clamored over the bed frame and through to the door.

I had to get to the computer. This was a typing situation.

But now, here I am. Staring at the screen, eyes burning, heart beating, thinking to myself: Well, what now? It's Halloween. I should write something with a chill to it, right? Or is that too expected? Maybe I should write about what I did this week? Well, fuck. I have been doing that all year. Well, then what?

I realize I lost the Cloud. It moved on, back over the desert of my subconscious, waiting for alcohol or sleep, or a mid-day thunderstorm inconveniently exploding to life while I am driving or calling the I.R.S. or fucking. The Cloud has moved on and I read back all of the words on my screen.

"It's seven a.m., Halloween morning, 2011..."

Fuck.

Bistro Chair.

2011-10-26T10:49:00.003-04:00

I had just finished playing a show and had already had much more to drink than I should have. That's one of the perks of being in a popular band: people are more than happy to help you make an asshole of yourself.

The night was warm and Michael and I were sitting outside of the bustling club, under a tent at one of a few bistro tables scattered around. The show had ended about twenty minutes before and already I had had a line of drinks set up around me that people had brought over. I began to count them. Six shots of whiskey. Two glasses, two cans, and one bottle of various beers, and a glass of red wine. A girl had brought that over, instantly becoming my favorite person so far in the evening. Most nights people bought us a few drinks, but tonight was a flood and for that I was thankful, because I was desperately trying to keep calm.

Across the parking lot, in front of the doors of the club, sat a fellow I had been waiting to run into for the better half of a decade. A fellow who had stepped on my toes, who had stolen my dance, who had pissed me off.

Michael was talking. I wasn't listening.

Someone gave me another glass of wine. Another girl.

"Good show," she said, and kept on talking.

I smiled and said thank you. I tried to be grateful and kind, but I couldn't bring myself to back down. I drank her glass.

"You know if you ever want..." she said.

I didn't. All I wanted, all I could dream of, all in my universe of stars and fire and chaos and endless limitless abyss, was the sound of my bistro chair as it broke teeth, eye sockets, skull, vertebrae. As it tore and smashed, ripped and crushed, over and over and over and over...

My eyes burned. The girl was gone. I took two of the shots.

The fucker.

The mongrel.

The cunt.

"James."

My muscles were booze soaked and bursting.

"James."

The scales between my revenge and my reputation were tipping with each drink. My need to behave began to diminish. I drank two more shots.

"James. What the fuck?" Michael.

I looked at him. "You see that guy?"

"What guy?"

I nodded in the direction.

"In the scarf?"

"Yes."

"Yeah."

"That's him," I said. "Alex." My body burned. Even sitting, my balance was faltering.

"Alex?"

"The guy I told you about the other day."

"The toe stepper?"

"Is that what I said?"

"Yeah."

"I guess so then," I said.

Alex looked at me, then away, and back to me. I could see him realize who I was.

"You going to be all right?" Michael asked.

"I'm going to kill him."

"He's not worth the trouble."

I drank the last two shots. "No, maybe not. But a man doesn't let someone get away with that shit."

"A man let's it go," Michael said.

I couldn't.

Michael stood up. "Before you do anything, come with me."

"To where?"

"Just come with me." He began walking back into the club. "Come on."

I got up, took two of the beers with me, and followed. Alex kept his eyes on me as I walked. I was still together enough to try to fight the urge, so I looked forward, smiled, and faked a conversation with Michael as we passed.

We moved through the crowd and the dark. A DJ was on stage. The smell of sweat and gallons of perfume filled the air. I saw a couple of guys with popped collars and wondered who did that still. A girl in tiny white shorts, choking a beautiful ass.

Michael pulled me aside, into the bathroom. "Look in the mirror," he said.

"Why?"

"Just do it."

I did. "So?"

"Take some deep breaths. Splash some water on your face."

"I'm fine."

"Just..."

"For fuck's sake!" I turned on the faucet and let it run into my hands before throwing it at my face. See?! Fucking fine!"

Michael smiled, holding a laugh. "You look retarded. Just relax man. It's not worth getting arrested over."

I looked back into the mirror. My hair was a mess, my shirt drenched with sweat, beer, and now water. My eyes looked sunken. "You don't understand."

"I know man. The guy's a scumbag. The things he did were unforgivable. You have every right to want to kill him, and no one would ever think other wise, but you can't. You aren't that guy. You're better than that. You know it and I know it."

I took the deep breaths. "I think I have to get out of here."

"Okay man."

"Can you and Grant grab my gear when you leave?"

"Sure. Come one. Come to the bar first. Let's have one more, and then we'll walk you to your car."

"Okay."

We left the bathroom and out into the S.T.D. pool. Despite my anger and my opinion on the young, rich, and carefree, I can't help but stare at small shorts or tight dresses. It numbs the hostility for a second.

I take a stool at the bar. Michael sits next to me.

"What do you want?" He asks.

"Whatever the next girl buys me."

He laughs. "Wouldn't Marie be pissed if she knew girls were buying you drinks?"

"No. I'm saving a ton of cash and being a complete asshole to them. She'd be proud."

"You're probably right," he said. "Until then though, how about a whiskey?"

"Okay. Double. Neat."

He flagged the bartender over. "Can of PBR for me. Whiskey double for my friend. Neat."

The bartender nods and hands him his beer. A few seconds later, me my whiskey. I swallow it fast. No bullshit.

"I'm just so fucking angry," I said.

"I know man. Let it go. You'll be happy you did in the morning."

"I know. You're right."

He finishs his beer and we order another round. I'm smiling. Feeling good. Some of the other musicians from the night come over and buy me drinks. An hour goes by as I laugh, drink, and watch legs and asses sway. Life is beautiful. Even in the midst of all you despise, it can be beautiful.

I start to feel weak. I have officially passed my limit. "Time to go," I tell Michael.

"To your car?"

"Yeah."

"You okay to drive?"

"Not right now, but by the time we walk across this fucking town to it I will be."

"Okay."

We stand up. Say our goodbyes. Finish our drinks. Everything had turned out fine. We pass through the crowd again, and by the door I spy a poster for the show with us at top billing. It makes me feel good, as little as it actually means.

We step outside and in a chair, Alex sits by the gate.

My brain lights up. "Hey! Asshole!"

He looks at me like he doesn't recognize me.

"You know who I am!" I say I stamped over to him.

"Nope."

"Fuck you!" I kick the back of his chair, just behind his shoulder. The chair falls over and he spills out onto the pavement.

"James!" Michael grabs my arm.

I barely hear him, and don't give a shit.

Alex begins to get up and people are shouting around me.

"You fucking asshole," he says.

I could only see him. Pinpoint focus. I am fire. I am a black hole. I am Hell itself. I can't speak.

Before he can get to his feet I run up and kick him under his chin. Something cracks. He hits the pavement again and spits out blood. Bent over, grabbing his side, he says; "James..."

"James!" Michael says.

I barely hear either.

"James! I'm sorry!"

Fuck him. Fuck his apologies. Alcohol raged through me like gasoline. I kickhis face hard with my heel.

"I warned you!" I say. "I fucking warned you!"

Alex rolls onto his back. I look around me. Watching for bouncers. A thousand onlookers, no bouncers. I wonder if Alex was the shittiest fucking bouncer. I see a bistro chair and grab it.

I pick up the chair. "Get up."

Alex just looks at me.

"Get up!"

"I'm sorry."

"Get the fuck up."

He comes to his knees, then stands. "Just please, let's talk."

"James! Stop!" Michael is yelling behind me.

I swing the chair. It hits Alex across his face. Without resistance, like empty clothes, he falls to the ground again. He doesn't move.

I drop the chair, and walk out the gate, drunk, vindicated, and immediately wishing I had listened to Michael.

A Mother's Air

2011-10-17T18:55:00.003-04:00

I walked along beside the road, crunching dried orange leaves littering the sidewalk. Evening was coming but it was already dark. A storm could have been waiting. The air was cold and sharp and when I breathed it in it was fresh. Not clouded with barbecues, or laughs, or thick with heat and freedom. No, it was restricting and comforting all at once. A mother's air.

My hair knocked around in the breeze. A long tattered parachute, filling and emptying with each stride, each passing car.

I had been sitting at my empty house all day, filling out paperwork and staring out the window. Over the past few weeks I had begun to feel more and more like a shut in. The neighborhood recluse. Shuffling patterns into the carpet and keeping the hours of some Lovecraftian mad man. But I played no cosmic nightmare anywhere other than in my head. I was beginning to go mad alone and unnoticed. Locked up in the wood paneling of my living room, illuminated by the glow of blank pages on my computer screen. Things were fine. I wasn't.

So, I decided I needed to get the fuck out of the house.

I dug my coat out of the closet, put head phones in my ears, and let a sad man sing me sad songs while I tried to cheer myself up.

The trees were baring. Little by little their oranges and yellows and reds were falling away revealing only thin grey skeletons. People always saw leaves, never trees.

The street lamps hadn't come on yet. It left the world in a state similar to abandonment. There were no cars. No people on porches. Only myself, and the air around me. I stared up at the sky. The peaks of roofs scraping gently against it. It's clouds were motionless, grey and white, thick and endless. I loved autumn, but it was never any good for me. As I walked I thought about the weight it placed on my chest every year. The inescapable sadness. I tried to figure it out. Sure, there were things in my life that had happened in the fall, but I didn't think it was that. There had been plenty of shit in other seasons. Perhaps it was the death of everything. The dying leaves. The dying summer. The dying carelessness. I couldn't put my finger on it.

I had walked almost a mile, and came to a bench. As I approached it, I flipped a coin in my head. Sit, or walk.

I sat.

The bench was cold against the back of my pants, but it was nice to sit and let the air settle around me. Together, we stared out at the skyline of the town and wondered if there was love in those windows. Or regret. Or indifference, perhaps the saddest of them all. The Air and I looked out at our world and I thought: I am okay.

You are, the Air thought back to me.

I sat on the bench until my hands went numb, and then the Air escorted me home in silence, patting my back every once in a while, letting me know that it was always there, I wasn't alone.

Prelude to Massachusetts

2011-10-13T17:12:00.002-04:00

The alarm went off at quarter to five. I was leaving at seven, but I had begun to set it early enough back to be able to hit the snooze button as many times as possible. It went off, and I woke up. I hit the button, and lied back down, staring into the darkness. I wanted to go back to sleep. I was having a particularly nice dream about Marie, a tight red dress and a mystery woman. I couldn't though. I just lied there, dreading. Dreading the nine minutes until the alarm went off again. Dreading the hour until I had to actually get out of bed, and dreading the two hours and fifteen minutes until I was to officially start my day.

I hadn't been able to actually speak to Marie since yesterday morning, when she happened to be up pissing when I left. I wondered if I would be able to convince here to start waking up with me so we might be able to see each other.

I pulled my body closer to hers. Her back rose and fell with each gentle breath. Heat wafted off of her and called me. 'Closer James. Come closer.' I did. Her skin was soft, smooth, flawless. I ran my fingers slowly down her side, from shoulder to thigh, and back up around the front. Up her stomach, to her breast. I wrapped my arm tight around her, and pulled her in.

The darkness. The heat. The woman I love. Three reasons to stay buried here in bed, this perfect adult womb.

Three reasons to drag my ass out into the world, to sustain it.

The alarm continued to go off every nine minutes, and I hit the snooze button each time, until 5:45. Then, with a deep sigh, a heavy heart, and a crushing sense of responsibility and honor, I sat up, turned off the alarm, and turned on the light.

It was a needle to my eyes. I shut them quick, and slowly opened them again in increments. When they adjusted, I stood up, and walked to the bathroom to piss.

I took my shower, got dressed in a uniform I was already resenting (I was not allowed to show tattoos, which I had, and therefore had to wear long sleeves each day, regardless of temperature), and had my coffee alone at the dining room table, staring out through the window at the cold black morning, and waited for Justin and the morning light.

Eventually they both came. One more welcome than the other.

I remembered to bring two water bottles with me. The green one, and a steel one. I left the house, walked down my driveway, and climbed up into Justin's company van.

"Good morning," I said, buckling.

"Morning. Ready to work?"

"I suppose so. Where are we today?"

He motioned for the clipboard on the dash. "Check the paperwork."

"You can't say?"

"I want you to get used to the paperwork."

"Okay." I checked the paper work. It was simple enough to understand. Look for the addresses in the top left corner. We had four sheets. In Massachusetts.

"Mass?" I asked.

"Yes sir. Going to be a long day."

"Great."

I leaned back and watched the world wake up as we drove in two hours of silence to our first job.

The Floor and Everything After

2011-10-11T14:51:00.002-04:00

I woke up on the floor. My phone was buzzing somewhere across the room. It was dark. I tried to stand but tripped and fell into the bannister.

"Fuck!" I wanted to say.

"Flgurph..." is what came out.

I could see the light from my phone flashing excitedly on the table. I stumbled over to it.

Marie.

I tried to answer, but my thumbs wouldn't cooperate, and she hung up. It was the fourth missed call.

The world was a shifting, dizzying haze of color and weight, all in the dark.

How the fuck did I end up on the floor?

I remembered. Too much wine, too fast. I called Marie back.

It rang and rang and split my skull open.

"Where the fuck are you?" She asked.

"Hon. Home," was all I could manage to get out.

"What the hell, James?!"

"I'm sorr... I fell sleep."

"Fuck you," she said.

"Honey..." She had already hung up. I looked at the clock. I was supposed to pick her up from work an hour ago.

"Fughxck."

I couldn't understand how I slept so long, or why I had been on the goddamned floor. I kept trying to think about it, but my brain swam in my head and it was no use. I was still drunk. I had to get Marie.

I grabbed my keys off of the table and ran outside. I got in the car, backed out and raced off to her. Now, I know this is how accidents happen. Criminal negligence. I know and I am not condoning it, but as any drunk will tell you in the moment: drinking and driving is easy.

I flew across town. Cars streaked by. Huge orange cones of street lamp light dotted the road. The radio was so loud.

I saw Marie walking down the road with our laundry in hand. She had done it at work. Goddamn it I am a piece of shit. I drove past her to turn around. She glared at me with full arms.

I turned around and rolled up to her. "Hey. Get in," I said through the open window.

"Fuck you."

"Just get the fuck in."

She threw the laundry in through the window, hitting me, causing my foot to hit the gas and I jerked the wheel, bursting off a little to the left. I slammed the brake. "What the hell?!"

"Are you seriously driving drunk?!"

"I was doing fine until you threw the fucking laundry at me!"

She tore open the door and got in. "Don't fucking kill us."

I pulled up to the light. Looked left, right, left again. Used my blinker, and slowly turned. We coasted down the street at a smooth thirty, braking and accelerating completely by the book.

"So, what the fuck happened?" She asked.

"I fell asleep."

"You mean you passed out."

"I guess. I just fell asleep."

"And you didn't hear your phone?"

"It's on vibrate, and it was across the room."

"Then you decided you'd make me happy by driving drunk LIKE A FUCKING IDIOT and telling me to get the fuck in?!"

I didn't know what to say.

We got home and I stumbled out of the car.

"Asshole," Marie said.

I got up to the front door and realizes I had left it open. I went in hoping Marie didn't notice.

She followed me in. "Go to bed."

"Why? I want to be with you."

"No. I don't want to see you."

"I'm sorry hon. It won't hap again."

"No," she said. "I don't want to be near you at all. You're all fucking slurring and drunk. Just get the fuck away from me. Go to fucking bed."

She wouldn't look me in the eyes. That meant she wasn't just pissed off, she was hurt. I was an asshole.

I went to the bedroom, turned out the light, and tried to sleep.

In the dark, with a gut full of cheap wine, I should have passed out immediately. Me eyes were heavy, my body weak, but my heart, my heart and my head were alive and not so well.

I'm such an asshole. She just wanted a ride home from work. She did our laundry. She always does. She probably had a long day, and just wanted to come home and lie down with me, but I decided to get drunk in the middle of the day until I passed out on the fucking floor, not even thinking about driving to get her later. I am a huge, selfish prick.

I lay there, and I just wanted her to know how sorry I was. How much I loved her. How it would never happen again. But I knew I shouldn't go out there. She didn't want to see me. It would only make things worse.

I got up.

Stumbling through the obstacle room, I got up to the door, opened it and found my way to the living room. Marie was on the couch. She looked over at me.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?"

"I want to be near you.

She sighed, and slid back against the couch, making room. "Come on."

I walked over and laid down in my lady's arms. She held me.

"This never happens again."

"I know," I said.

"I love you, but I am really, really pissed at you."

"I love you too."

I fell asleep as she watched a show about meth cooks.

Basements

2011-10-04T20:27:00.004-04:00

It was my second day in the field. Justin was talking to me again, acting as if we didn't spend the whole day before in awkward silence over something so petty. I carried on conversations with him and tried to pretend I didn't think him a self-important cunt. I imagined he was doing the same.

We were in Albany again. Something that apparently rarely happens. I was in the basement of a two story duplex watching Justin's drill bit bore through the floor into the basement making small one inch holes every ten feet, or every bedroom. I had the job of feeding wire up to him. He drilled and would call down "All right, feed the wire up. The one in the box." Every time. There was only one box of wire down here. I wondered if he was trying to agitate me. The whole fucking job agitated me. It was the second hundred degree day in a row outside, and in the sweltering basement, worse. I had been watching Justin. I had been paying attention (mostly) in class, but it wasn't sinking in. We had four stops that day, and apparently two of them were big jobs. I asked Justin in the van that morning what time we might be home. "Assume bedtime," he had said. We had left at seven in the morning.

I was tired. Irritated. Covered in sweat and I had forgotten to bring any water. All I wanted to do was go home.

"Feed the wire up. It's in that box!"

I glared at the floor above me. "What?"

"The wire! Feed it up!"

"Where is it?" If he was going to be a cunt, then so was I.

"It's in that box next to you!"

"The wire box?"

"Yes!"

"How much?"

"Until I tell you to stop!"

"Okay. The wire box, right?"

"God damn it!"

I heard something hit the floor above me, and then the stomping of his work boots. He was coming down to do it for me. Good, I thought. Fuck him.

He stormed down the stairs. "Right there. Behind you. The wire in the box." He walked up to me, behind me, and yanked the wire. It spun on it's plastic spindle and tore the cardboard around it. He looked for his fresh hole, found it, and jammed the wire into it. He shoved more and more in there, and I watched with a raised eyebrow. I wondered if I was taking my hostility for the job out on him.

"Don't be a god damned idiot!" He said.

Well, I was doing that.

Later that evening, I was sitting in the van while Justin waited on hold with the corporate office to approve activation of our third job for the day. We had been on the scene for six hours and the customers were beginning to be a little short with us.

I had been trying to hold back my sarcasm and general shit-headedness after the issue in the basement. The job didn't seem hard, by any means, but for whatever reason, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. The connection types. The box types. The paperwork. None of it was making any sense to me, but I was determined to do this job. I was determined to show all of those cavemen in my class that I was the best of them. I was determined to make Marie realize I wasn't a massive shit. So, I was doing my best to keep my mouth shut, and hope that Justin knew how to train me.

The hold music was a ten second loop of an electric organ playing the first twenty or so notes of what sounded a lot like the theme to Sesame Street. The speaker on the phone was broken and the music was coming out was distorted and sharp. Over and over. The sun was setting. The air cooling. I looked at the clock on the dash. I had ten minutes until I had been on the clock for twelve hours, and we still had one job left.

"What's the next job?" I asked.

"Just a service call a few blocks over. With any luck, we should be in and out."

"Cool." I went back to staring dully out of the van, wishing I was home. Over and over, the I had no idea how to get to Sesame Street.

I wondered what Marie was doing right then. Was she at work? Had she come home yet? I wanted to text her but my phone battery had died a few hours ago. I missed her. I was thirsty. Exhausted from the heat.

Justin's call went through, and we left to the final job. After re-wiring the entire basement and installing all new boxes, we were in and out, in two and a half hours.

Justin dropped me off at eleven. Marie was already asleep. I took off my boots, peeled off my clothes layered with dried sweat, pissed, got three long drinks of water, set the alarm for five, and lay down in the dark. I curled up next to Marie.

Only one day left in the week.

Writers

2011-10-02T01:22:00.002-04:00

I have a lot of favorite stories about writers.

Ernest Hemingway telling a reporter it takes about a "half inch" of whiskey to finish a paragraph.

Charles Bukowski telling his publicist that when he writes the stories, he gets to not be the drunken asshole on the plane.

Roald Dahl nearly beating a man to death in a Swedish airport.

Okay, that last one may have been a lie, but regardless, writers are beautiful. Lunatics. History makers. Story tellers. Drinkers.

They are your favorite uncle. Your tribe historian. The men (and women, yes) responsible for the emotion of a group. The memory. The folks who gather you around the fire, and through smoke and mystery, tell you how it was. It doesn't matter if it is accurate or not, they send the heroes on their quests. They bring the loves together. They lull you to sleep and keep you awake with excitement.

Just one more page, you say. One more story.

Fuck, without writers, we'd have no history. No Alexander the Great, who conquered the world, and claimed its most beautiful woman as his prize. No Shakespeare, no matter who or what he really was. No Christ. Imagine that. No Christ. No Buddha, no Mohammed, No Christ. Perhaps I've begun to make an argument for the world better without writers.

Shit.

Let me backtrack.

Writers are madmen. Dreamers of immeasurable depth, unbeatable loneliness, and incomprehensible brilliance. You see, they don't just write those pretty words, strung into tolerable sentences, with any luck left in your brain and heart for decades to come, no. They also think about it. They see the world around them and say 'this should be recorded, somehow. This is my world, and it should be known.' They see more value in their world, in your world, than anyone else. They are the reason you speak your language. The reason your country has history. The reason you can read this. And with any luck, the reason you can think now of your favorite quote, passage, or story.

Writers are the invisible girders holding this cunt of a world together. They are the spokes in the wheel. The grapes in the wine. They are your perception. Whether you like it or not.

Someday, I hope to be one.

Lonely Minx.

2011-09-30T23:26:00.003-04:00

In the morning, I went to work.

We had to be there at six to get our uniforms and meet our new "On The Job" trainers. The guys who'd be taking us in the field and showing us all of the bad habits we'd eventually be bitched at for. I was exhausted. Marie and I had finally had the energy to have sex the night before, and for whatever reason, I can never sleep after sex. I'll just lay there, making up stupid puns or insane conspiracy theories until my brain shuts down on it's own volition. So, three hours later, and I was standing in the parking lot with my fellow retards, waiting to be assigned.

Shawn read down a list of names, ours then our trainers, and assigned us.

"Benson, you're with Haverford." Benson walked over to Haverford.

"DiMarco, you're with Austin." DiMarco went to Austin.

It went on like this. They all shook hands, laughed about jokes I couldn't quite make out, and then climbed into their trainers vans and disappeared for their first day in the field. I waited.

"Fallinger... Harrison... O'Toole..."

"I think you forgot me.," I said.

Shawn looked up. "What was your last name?"

"Martin."

He looked back down at his clipboard, running his pen down the side of it. "Martin. Martin... Martin... Well looks like I forgot to assign you."

"Great. Can I leave?" The other guys laughed. I wasn't looking for laughs.

"No can do, bro. Time to get out there. You're with...Wilson. Wilson, you here?" He shook his shaggy empty head around, searching.

A short man came out from behind one of the vans. He had a do-it-yourself haircut and reminded me vaguely of a potato. "I'm here."

"Great," Shawn said. "You got Martin."

I walked over and shook his hand. "Call me Justin," he said.

"Nice to meet you Justin. James. Let's get the fuck out of here."

He smiled a little. "No problem."

We walked across the parking lot, got in his van and left. His van was nearly immaculate. Everything was not only organized, but zip-tied down, so as to prevent any "shelf-wear" type of eventual disorganization. To take something and move it, you really had to want to. It was fucking cold inside the van. The A.C. was blasting. I didn't say anything. It was his van. I sat back in the seat, and kept my mouth shut.

We left town, and got on the interstate, heading south toward Albany.

"All of our work's in Albany today," Justin said.

"Cool."

"Yeah, especially since I've been in Massachusetts the last four days. That sucks."

I was trying to figure him out. I kept looking around the van for clues. Personal trinkets he might have left around. A picture of a girlfriend or a kid maybe. His radio was on, but inaudible, and I looked to see what station it was, but the display only showed the time. I had nothing to work with besides talking. I was fucked.

The drive to the first job went easy enough. I don't think either of us were really comfortable, and preferred the awkward silence to asking about the weather or whatever sports teams guys like him were into.

We pulled up in front of a white two-story house just south of Albany, but close enough to still be in the moat of shitty neighborhoods surrounding it.

"Well, you ready?" Justin asked as he pulled a clipboard from the clipboard space he had designated between the visor and the ceiling.

"I guess so."

"Good."

He got out and I followed. Immediately I felt completely ignorant. I knew I was supposed to be watching his every move, but I felt like I should know a little more about the process before the company burdens an innocent man with me. Trudging me around. I could only hinder his speed. His paycheck.

"How long have you been doing this?" I asked him as we approached the door.

"Six months."

I stopped. "Jesus Christ. Six months? And you're training me?"

"I guess so. I'm kind of a veteran."

"At six months? How long are people usually doing this? A fucking week?"

"About a month or so," he said.

"Damn."

"Yeah."

We walked up to the front door. Justin knocked and I realized I was now the guy that everyone waited on for hours. That no one really wanted around. That was a ghost, only invading your privacy.

"Housewives ever try to fuck you?" I asked.

"What? No. Watch the swearing."

Maybe he was one of the uptight fuckers. The by the book-ers. So much for my self-loathing drunken genius. I was stuck with Justin, the future assistant manager.

I decided to try again.

"Just asking. Some little lonely minx never came strolling up on you out of a dark bedroom. Oh, I've got you sports package right here Mr. Cable Man. Mmmm, run that cable."

He set his clipboard down on a railing and turned to me. He looked me in the eye, like I was stealing his farm and giving it to the railroad company for westward expansion.

"Enough," he said.

"Wow. Fucking relax. I was just asking."

He turned back to the door and didn't talk to me again that day. He did each job, and I watched silently. I should have kept my mouth shut. I had fucked myself. Only five weeks and six days left.