“One day while I was real depressed
I could not even sing.
I thought about the girl I loved, and
bought her a diamond ring.
I sent a package thirty miles
to East Somerset.
Looked at the clock. In one day's time
her package she will get.”
The next day in East Somerset,
where Lily did reside,
She heard a knock upon her door.
A package has arrived.
She moved her hair from her eyes,
while she untied the string.
She was startled by a blinding glow,
of a 3-inch diamond ring.
Her sister came into the room,
after hearing Lily's gasp.
“Who sent you such a lovely ring?
You know I have to ask.
Was it Peter, Frank, or Joe?
Or Willie Connelly?
Or is it from that soldier boy,
from Knoxville, Tennessee?”
“No, it isn't Peter, Frank, or Joe
or anyone like that.
It's from that no-good singin' drunk,
Jim Jehoshaphat.”
“Fat ol' Jim Jehoshaphat?
Who left on your wedding day?
He left town but in the morning,
returned for his pay.”
“Yes, that's the one, I must admit.
Now he lives in reclusion.
Drinking and singing from dawn till dusk
is his only solution.”
“But how could a man so underpaid,
afford such a pretty ring?”
“My sweet sister, I do not know,
but it does not mean a thing.
Since he must haunt me a taunt me
and tease me and vex,
I shall call unto the netherworld
for to cast on him a hex!
Obollo Shee, Karink Karink
Karink Obollo Don,
Fat Ol' Jim Jehoshaphat,
for you this hex is on.
May you feel an deep unholy burden
bellow deep down in your mind.
May your mouth fill up with dirt and sand
when you attempt to rhyme.
May when you drink a drop of whiskey,
gin, vodka, or champagne:
May your ears tickle and your nostrils flare,
until you're hopelessly deranged.
Don't call my name, Jim Jehoshaphat,
you're time isn't very long.
I hope you find time before the coming pain
to sing one last song.”
“My baby put a hex on me,
Demons are talking to me,
I sent the girl I love a diamond ring
and now I c-c-c-c-a-a-n't s-s-s-s-s-i-ing
I got another bottle of whiskey
one of gin, of rum, and schnapps.
But I can't tap into my liquor case,
for it's Hell to drink a d-d-d-r-r-op.
Oh my dear, Lily, this song's for you.
I have tried not to write a rhyming word.
It might be hard not to drink whiskey.
Might be hard not to drink rum.
But there's one thing you've overlooked
So long as I've got my guitar I can-
I can-
I can-
I can s-s-s-s-s-t-t-r-u-m.”
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Fair Lily and the Folk Singer
My First Million (Part Three)
You can read part one here and part two here!
“Hey there.”
Startled, I lost my footing on the uneven ground and crashed backwards to the ground, frantically trying to aim my piss away from myself. I heard female laughter coming from a few feet away and looked to see a random girl peeing next to a bush. I quickly averted my eyes in the other direction, and she laughed some more. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you were there,” I exclaimed quickly, trying my best to avoid looking like some sort of sexual deviant.
“Are you OK over there?”
“Uh, yeah, I’m fine. I think I kinda pissed on my shoes, but I’m unharmed if that’s what you’re asking,” I replied as I tried to push myself up off the ground without getting more urine on myself. I eventually made it back on my feet and faced my back to nature girl.
“You can turn around now, I’m done.”
I turned around as she was pulling up her jeans. She was wearing a pink thong, which I could see clearly as she buttoned her fly up. The cigarette in her mouth lit up her face as she took a drag from it. Her lips pursed tightly around the white cylinder as her cheeks pulled in, and she didn’t break her stare for even a second. She had brown hair that was even shorter than mine, and big doe eyes. She exhaled as she extended her hand to me. “Hi, I’m Jo.”
“Marcus,” I said, as I shook it.
“Nice to meet you, Marcus. Hey, does this look like poison ivy to you,” she asked, motioning to the plants she had just relieved herself in.
“Uh…”
“I’m just kidding. It’s probably not. I have been drinking though, so I guess it’s possible that my powers of observation are suffering. I didn’t mean to scare you there, I just thought I’d let you know that you weren’t alone. That bathroom line is a bitch, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is.” I was staring.
“Interesting. So, uh, are you just going to stand here for the rest of the night, or were you planning on going back inside, because it’s kind of December, and it’s kind of not warm,” she said as she started leaning back towards the house. She was completely captivating; an ingénue, mysterious, and wholly striking. Entranced, I followed her into the house, where we took a lean against a kitchen counter. “So what’s your deal?”
“What do you mean by that,” I asked.
“Anything, really. What brings you here? Do you go to school here? If so, what’s your year and major? If not, what do you do for a living? Prospects, stock options, income, the like. Did you come with anyone, or are you here by yourself?”
“Are you asking if I’m single,” I asked, trying to be as charming as I could while swilling whiskey from the bottle.
She laughed sincerely, “You wish, buddy.”
Defeating. “Alright, fine. I’m here with a friend, I graduated from UGA two years ago, I live in an apartment a few blocks from the 40 Watt, I work for UPS doing manual labor, and I have absolutely no grasp on finance, nor do I have stocks, bonds, or any sort of investments, and I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing with my life. Anything else?”
She crinkled her face at me a little bit, staring me down. I laughed as I broke the stare first. “Oh, come on, you’re no good at this game! You gotta at least try. Come on, round two, and…go!”
We locked eyes again. Her eyes were blue. Hazy blue; not too deep, not too bright. Larger than average irises, long eyelashes. Gorgeous. Hypnotizing. During the staredown, I could feel her searching for what was behind the red strains obscuring the whites of my eyes, feeling out my intentions, trying to imagine the flesh color under the circles surrounding my eyes. She began moving her head closer to mine and bit down on her bottom lip. I closed my eyes and moved in for the kiss.
“You suck at this game,” she said, moving her head back away from mine.
I hung my head, defeated once more, and took another swig of the Blue Label. I was sufficiently not sober. I could stand to be more sufficient, though.
“So, who are you here with,” she asked.
“I’m here with Kevin. Red hair, trying to score the holy trinity with Katie and Cathy over there by the beer pong table. Hold on, what’s your deal? Answer me all those questions you asked me before.”
“Hah, and I was beginning to think you weren’t interested. Well, I am a junior at UGA, fine arts major, I live on campus, and I’m here with my roommate, who is upstairs fucking some guy in the bathroom. Your nose is bleeding, by the way.”
“Fuck, I’ll be right back,” I said, working my way over to the bathroom, where I was able to bypass the line by brandishing my bloody hands at the people in line. Inside the lavatory, I used toilet paper to soak up the blood, and cursed myself for being so ill-fortuned. Once the bleeding stopped, I washed my face off in the sink, and examined the damage in the mirror. My eyes were blood-red the whole way around, and my cheeks had sunken. Under my hat, my hair was greasy, and there was a small but noticeable blood stain on my t-shirt. I was a wreck. Everything was fried and out of focus, so I tried to compose myself as I left the bathroom. I walked back to the kitchen, where I had left Jo. When I returned, she had moved from standing at the counter to sitting on the floor.
“Your whiskey disappeared,” she said with a bit of a slur.
“Disappeared where, pray tell?”
“Very possibly, it went into my stomach.”
“Good work.”
“Why, thank you,” Jo said, smiling, as I sat down next to her. “Tell me, Marcus Aurelius, would you like to leave?”
“To be perfectly honest, I’ve been wanting to leave since I got here.”
“I feel as though you may not understand. Would you like to leave here now, and take me with you,” she asked, sitting up and leaning toward me.
“Yes. Yes I would.”
“Excellent, let’s go.”
“Hold on, shouldn’t you tell your roommate?”
“She’ll be fine. Come on,” she insisted as she took me by the hand and led me through the kitchen into the foyer. As we passed the dining room, I yelled at Kevin that I was leaving, and he shouted back that he’d be getting a “ride” from the K(C)atherines. Jo swung open the door, and I shouted “Thanks for the hospitality, Duke,” and as we hurried out the exit, I heard the faint echo of someone yelling, “Townie asshole!”
We made it back to my apartment building after a hilarious parking debacle, and didn’t even make it through the door before we were both halfway undressed. It was nice, being that close to someone again. Sparing the details, she was perfect in bed. She was new, different, exciting. I completely forgot that I hadn’t blown a line of coke in hours, and I came down with ease and without completely crashing. After it was over, we lied in my bed, and she asked me if this is where I saw myself two years ago.
“Realistically? Yes, mostly. Idealistically? No, hardly.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, you can either keep chucking boxes at UPS, finishing your night shift with an 8-ball, and sleeping until nighttime just to do it all over again, or you can leave this comfort zone you’re in, and do something with your life. It’s the million dollar question.”
“Well, I guess I don’t really know. It’s not easy to leave it.”
“Leave what? Living alone? The unfulfilling job? The coke binges? The borderline alcoholism?”
“Now hold on. What makes you think I’m unfulfilled in my job, or that I’m a coke head, or that I’m bordering on alcoholism?”
She laughed and pulled her naked body closer to mine. “Well, the empty wine bottles in the trash can next to your bed, and the way you didn’t think twice about driving scream ‘drinking problem.’ There’s a slate of mirror and a razorblade in the drawer in your nightstand where you keep your condoms, which is totally unsafe, by the way. You reach in there in a moment of passion one night and you’re going to end up with an accidental suicide.”
“You know, you’re really much chattier than my other one night stands.”
“Aw, would you look at yourself and your sense of humor? You’re cute when you’re avoiding questions. Besides, the number of condoms in your drawer and the expiration dates on them imply that they’ve been sitting idly for a good while now.”
“You’re the one who’s avoiding questions. How would you know that I’m unfulfilled at my job?”
“Because you just said you were. Plus, come on, a film major doing manual labor? Clearly, your interests are not being fulfilled. And working the graveyard shift? When was the last time you even saw a movie that wasn’t on cable?”
Checkmate.
“I am…speechless. I’ve got nothing,” I admitted.
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. You’ve only got nothing because you’re not aspiring to anything. So, once more, the million dollar question: What are you going to do about it?”
It was almost like she was daring me. Her big blue eyes stared up and met mine. “Well, what should I do about it?”
“You should stop asking me, and make the decision for yourself. If you want to stay in this rut, in your clean apartment, at your dead-end job, then by all means, go right on ahead, but if you want that million dollars, you’re not going to get it by spending your UPS paycheck on booze and coke.”
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
“So come on, then. Million dollar question: yes or no,” she asked one last time as she sat up, covering herself with the bedsheet. It was morning now, and the sunlight was seeping in through the blinds, illuminating the dust particles I had fought so hard to be rid of floating through the air. They swirled and danced through the beams of light like tiny little living organisms, framing Jo’s silhouette as her shadow fell all around me, eclipsing my body as the sun passed from one side of the room to the other, bouncing off the white comforter on to the weathered headboard, and the shadow lifted as the whole room became bright in the full light of day.
My First Million (Part Two)
You can read part one here!
We walked up the stairs to the front door and walked on in. The Duke, almost on cue, was ripping gravity bong hits in the foyer as we entered. The Duke was a big guy in all senses of the word with long, scraggly blond hair, and a former frat brother who still wore his letters proudly, much to the chagrin of his former brothers. As we saw him when we entered the doorway was the quintessential view of Duke: hunched over a large spaghetti pot, huffing weed smoke out of a three-liter soda bottle. He took the hit, expelled an enormous cloud out of his mouth, and spotted us.
“Boys! Welcome to the party,” Duke shouted, dispensing dude-hugs to us. “Get in here, do a shot with me.”
It was hard to say no to The Duke, so we followed him through the throngs of underage Bulldogs and their friends to the kitchen, where he opened his legendary liquor cabinet, and asked, “So what’s your poison, gentlemen?”
“Is that a bottle of fucking Blue Label in there,” I asked.
“It most certainly is.”
“I’ll take that, then,” I said, reaching for it. Kevin seconded my choice, and The Duke, indiscriminate powerhouse that he was, happily filled three two ounce shot glasses, and handed them around to us. The Duke was an enthusiast of excess.
“Down the hatch,” Duke commanded. I hated lame college clichés like that, but abided anyway. The whiskey burned on the way down, and the shot was way too big. I’d be feeling it later, no doubt. “Alright, boys, I gotta move on to some other d-bags, but there’s beer pong in the dining room, wine pong on the second floor, and if you wanna drop some acid, there’s some cats doing it up in the attic. Shit’ll freak you out, man,” our host informed us before parting ways.
“So what now,” I asked Kevin.
“I don’t know, I think I’m going to see what’s up with beer pong. You want me to mark us down?”
“Nah, I think I’m going to go steal a bottle of wine from upstairs and suck on that for a while.”
“Wanna go do a bump first?”
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
The only available bathroom was on the third floor, so we walked in and shared it with a tripping couple who were making out in the bathtub. Tripping or not, I was a little jealous that this unwashed dickbag could find a mate who wasn’t just an ex-wife looking to make herself feel young again, although the circumstances were probably strikingly similar. Kevin kindly closed the shower curtain to give them (and us) some privacy. While Kevin searched under the sink for a handheld mirror, I took out my driver’s license and my baggie. Kevin found a mirror, and we cut out two lines each, blew them, and left the amorous couple to their business.
Kevin and I parted ways at the second floor landing, and I snatched a bottle of red wine from the wine pong room. I was by no means a wine connoisseur, but drinking wine in such a way seemed frivolous and wasteful. My train of thought told me that I was liberating this bottle of wine from people who were just going to chug it out of red plastic cups. Honorable. I left the room, and began walking down the stairs to the ground floor, when I heard a voice from behind me yelling, “Hey, you can’t just take that!”
I turned around. She would have been cute if she hadn’t had so much to drink already. It was a real shame. The kinds of girls who start shit at parties are never good company. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I doubt you’ll miss this one.”
“Don’t fucking sweetheart me,” she said, and laid a hand on the wine bottle.
“Tricky situation, Marcus,” I thought to myself. She had the higher ground, and by putting a hand on the bottle, she’s already implied that she’s ready to use force to get it back. If I had pulled back, I’d have been putting myself in any number of undesirable situations. She could have an angry and overprotective boyfriend, or worse yet, a knight in shining armor could spot us wrestling over this bottle and try to make himself a hero. Getting into any sort of physical altercation with a girl at such a public occasion is always asking for trouble. Reluctantly, I loosened my grip on the bottle of Yellowtail, and acquiesced control of the situation.
“Townie asshole,” she muttered as she walked away with my wine. I wished I had stayed home.
Slightly fazed, I walked back down and met Kevin by the beer pong table, where I filled up a red cup with whatever watered-down piss was in the keg. Kevin was talking to two moderately attractive girls, who would have been knockouts by the end of the night. The one on the right, to whom Kevin was directing most of his attention, had long straight blonde hair that swayed when she nodded her head, which she was doing quite a lot, and was wearing a shirt that was just a little too short for a girl of her build. Not to say she was fat, of course, just that the shirt probably didn’t fit her the way it used to. The one on the left was a brunette, shorter than her counterpart, and noticeably less interested. She was slightly more attractive from where I was standing, but Kevin always had a thing for blondes.
“Ladies, this is my buddy Marcus. Marky, this is Katie and Cathy,” Kevin said, motioning towards me. I fucking hated that Marky shit, and he knew it.
“Katie and Cathy? Seriously?” I asked without thinking.
“Dude!”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, but how often is there an occurrence like that, you know?” I said. “Nice to meet you both.”
“So do you go to UGA too,” Katie (the blonde) asked me.
“Uh, yeah. Well, I used to. I graduated in 2005.”
“Well, what do you do,” asked Katie.
“I, uh, work at the UPS facility over on the other side of town. Graveyard shift.”
“Oh, so you’re a townie now,” Cathy asked. Kind of a bitch; I liked that.
“According to the angry wine pong queen upstairs, I suppose so.”
“I don’t get it,” announced Katie.
“It’s nothing, just a joke. Some chick up there called me a—“
“Oh,” Katie interrupted, obviously not paying attention. “We’re going to go get some drinks, do you guys want some?”
“Yeah, I’ll take one. You need a drink, bud,” Kevin asked, to which I shook my head no. “Yeah, just one,” he said, handing her his cup as they walked off. “So what do you think, man?”
“They seem nice.”
“Come on, Marcus, I’m trying to do you a favor here.”
“And I appreciate that, I’m just not really that into either of them. I’ll leave it up to you to take a stab at the trifecta though,” I told him, looking off at the living room where a group of designated drivers were quietly watching Old School and ignoring their surroundings. I imagined that Katie was having the same conversation with Cathy, which was comforting.
“Goddamnit, you are so fucking frustrating sometimes, dude. I’m just trying to get you out of this rut you’re in.”
“I’m not in a fucking rut,” I yelled a little bit too loud.
“Alright, alright, fine. Have some more to drink, man, it’ll level you out. You’re high-strung as fuck. Your face looks like death.”
“Yeah…yeah,” I replied, unable to think of any other response, as I walked over to the keg, passing Katie and Cathy on my way.
After getting to the keg, I downed a couple of beers, and then moved on to The Duke’s liquor cabinet, where I pulled out the bottle of Blue Label, and began sipping liberally from it. I took the bottle with me and meandered through the crowds to the bathroom. There was a line, so I went to the second floor bathroom, and was headed off at the pass by the wine girl and whatever boy toy she had on her arm.
“Yo, I gotta use the bathroom,” I told her.
“Well, I was here first. Use the one downstairs,” she said, pulling the male closer to her.
“Oh come on, the line is huge!”
“I don’t give a fuck,” she snorted as she closed the door. “We’ll be a while, so I wouldn’t wait here if I were you. Unless you’re trying to get some sick perverted thrill.”
“Bitch,” I stated as I headed back down the stairs. I wasn’t even going to attempt the third floor bathroom. It was much too late to be interacting with the trippers upstairs. They were easily frightened, and they could have weapons. I exited the house through the back door, and found a nice secluded spot near the back of the fenced in yard in which to relieve myself.
to be cont.
My First Million (Part One)
The tiled floor of the bathroom was exceptionally cold on my bare feet. With it having been evening in December, I should have expected as much, especially since the heat had been off for days. Unsure of whether I was shivering from the cold or from the previous hours of sobriety, I stumbled into the bathtub with my feet hanging over the side, and my head resting uncomfortably against the soap dish. The hot water was refreshing, and I immediately felt cleaner when I saw the dried blood from around my nose washing down my chest. I had put in ten hours on the graveyard shift at the UPS loading dock where I worked, and when I came home that morning, I finished off a bottle of wine and cut out a few lines before falling asleep, or more accurately; passing out. About halfway through the night (or day, rather), I woke up to a bloody nose, which had become increasingly common in the preceding weeks. After a half-assed attempt at washing myself, I shut off the water and dragged myself out of the tub, and back onto the freezing tiles
Dressing myself had become nothing more than routine. I never had anything to get dressed up for. No one was dying or getting married, I didn’t have any job interviews, and the closest thing I’d had to a date was when I made out with some random divorcee in the ladies’ room at a bar a few weeks ago. I probably could have taken her home, but when I asked if I could blow a line of coke off her tits, I probably crossed the line. Usually, older women like her are more willing to let a much younger man attempt such a degrading display. It’s a lot like when my little brother would let my friends and me put him in mortal danger just so that he could hang out with us (although, my little brother probably wasn’t trying to make his ex-husband jealous). Either way, she wound up giving me a sort of awkward “maybe later,” which pretty much meant “fuck no,” and I left one drink later, turned off by the fact that she wasn’t quite prepared to embrace single life like she thought she was. Her constant talk about her kids was wearing thin anyway. Part of me hoped that her revelation might have led her back into the arms of her husband. The other part of me assumed that he wanted nothing to do with her.
Anyway.
I threw on an extremely faded, black A.F.I. t-shirt that was old enough that it actually read “East Bay Hardcore” on the back, and a pair of unfashionably worn down blue jeans. Before putting on my shoes, I did a bump, brushed my teeth, took a shit, and quickly cleaned up the dishes I had left out that morning. If nothing else, the coke was good for the cleanliness of my apartment. I looked down at my watch; it was about ten o’clock in the evening. I had my first night off work in over a month, and my place wasn’t going to get any warmer, so I called Kevin. Kevin was a dude I had met while we were both students at UGA, and we quickly bonded over a shared love of punk rock and substance abuse. I had graduated two years prior with my degree in film, and Kevin was in his fourth year, working towards super-senior status. Since I was living in a one bedroom apartment in Athens, and most all of my graduated class had either moved back to their respective hometowns or moved on to more exciting locales like Atlanta or Savannah, Kevin was my only liaison to the outside world.
“Big party at The Duke’s place tonight, you should come,” Kevin told me. The Duke was an affectionate nickname for a mutual friend who lived off campus, and had the unfortunate birth name of David Duke. We called him “The Duke” because of his highly eccentric nature, and his predilection towards hallucinogens similar to that of Hunter Thompson’s Raoul Duke, and also because calling him by his Christian name was always kind of terrifying. For as much as we had in common, Kevin was a social butterfly, and I, myself, couldn’t stand most people, so things like this were always points of contention.
“Eh…I don’t think I’m really feeling up to it, man. You go ahead, I think I’m just going to go to the 40 Watt and flirt with the bartendress. I think the Slippery People are playing anyway.”
“No, fuck you dude. You’ve seen the Slippery People like six times now, and you know that bartender has a boyfriend. I haven’t seen you in like two months, now get over here.”
He was right. The appeal of a Talking Heads cover band really lost effect after the third or fourth time, and I was pretty sure that the bartendress severely disliked me. I just didn’t want to go to some absurd party that would eventually get shut down by the cops and end with me running out a back door back to my apartment. I was too old for it.
“I don’t know, man, I just really don’t feel like going. There’s never anyone I like hanging out with there, and I don’t feel like watching The Duke trip balls or huff a bunch of shit all night. I gotta clean the apartment anyway, and that’s gonna take a while, so why don’t I meet you there if I finish early enough?” Foolproof.
“Well, I’ll come help you then, and we can both get there earlier. I was gonna stop by Whitey’s place anyway and pick up an 8-ball, and that’s right on the way. Want me to get you one, too,” he asked. I was screwed. There was no way out of this.
“Uh…Yeah, grab me one, and I’ll pay you when you get here,” I said, reluctantly.
“Sick dude, I’ll be there in like fifteen minutes.”
“Peace,” I said, and hung up the phone.
“Fuck,” I said out loud, looking around at my spotless apartment. Afraid of letting my friend know that I had lied to him, I started dirtying up my three small rooms as best I could. After a few minutes, my drawers were mostly emptied, and the sink was full of clean dishes. I stood and looked at the damage I had caused for a second, before immediately realizing that there was no sense in trying to pass off such an obvious lie on someone who knows me that well. I put all the clothes back into the drawers, the dishes back in the cupboards, grabbed my keys and a hoodie, covered my disheveled brown hair with a knit cap, and walked out the front door just as Kevin was approaching it. With a dour look on my face, I slapped a few twenties in his hand and walked right past him.
“Cleaned up the whole place already, huh,” he snidely commented.
“Fuck you, let’s go. I’m driving.”
“I mean, if you’re not done yet, I can wait. I don’t want to rush you or nothing.” I continued to walk ahead to my car three stories down, as Kevin followed. “Place wasn’t even a little dirty, was it?”
“No.”
“And don’t tell me: I’m even willing to bet that you considered dirtying the place up before I got here, if you didn’t actually do it in the first place.”
“Fuck off,” I said, as we reached the street, and I unlocked the doors to my gray 1984 Nissan Stanza.
“Wait, wait, wait. Did you actually do that? Because I was kidding.”
“I may or may not have participated in the activities you have just described,” I replied as I slid into the driver’s seat.
“You’re a strange egg, sir,” Kevin told me as he got in opposite me, and tossed the baggie of coke in my lap, his red hair and beard and his white face illuminated by the Athens streetlights. “Did you have dinner yet?”
“Nah, but I’m not really hungry. You want to stop for something?”
“Oh, I already ate, I was just asking,” Kevin said, looking ahead at the road. His southern hospitality was always a little amusing to me. Kevin had lived around Athens his whole life, and it’s always interesting to encounter for a person who grew up in a point much further north. I put on some unobjectionable Al Green song, and started off toward The Duke’s. Almost immediately, Kevin reached for my iPod, and I smacked his hand away.
“Oh come on, man. We’re going to a party! We’re gonna get fucked up! We’re going to have fun. Let’s listen to something fun.”
“What’s not fun about Al Green?”
“Oh no, there’s plenty of fun about Al Green, but that’s if we’re talking ‘Take Me to the River’ or maybe even ‘Let’s Stay Together,’ but your choice in Al Green songs is just sad.”
Utterly confounded, I responded, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Alright, you could have picked any of the what, forty or fifty Al Green songs on here? And you chose to go with ‘Tired of Being Alone’? Consider what that says about your mental state going into this event.”
“I give up, what does it say?”
“That you’re fuckin’ tired of bein’ alone,” he laughed, letting his southern accent slip through. “You gotta find yourself a girl, boy.”
“Not with this shit again, man. I’m fine, dude. I don’t need a girl. My life is fine. I’ve got a clean apartment, a job that pays pretty decently, and I’m happy.”
“If you say so, chief. So how is your life going?”
“I woke up last night, and my nose was bleeding. I think I’m dying,” I told him.
“You see, that’s what I’m talking about, you neurotic sonofabitch. You gotta get your life in order, stop worrying so much, stop avoiding coming out with me, stop hitting on the old ladies at the bar, get yourself an age-appropriate lady friend. And you’re not dying; you’re just doing too much coke.”
“And I’m glad you’re doing nothing to encourage my habit.”
“Hey, you’re as aware as I am that you and I have never been good for each other’s health.”
“Touche,” I responded as “Tired of Being Alone” ended. “Alright, you can change the song now, I don’t care.”
“See what I mean. You’re a self-fulfilling prophecy, man,” he said, and scrolled through my iPod for a minute or two before setting on Dillinger Four’s Midwestern Songs of the Americas record. “This is what we should be listening to. It’s upbeat, high-energy, sing-along-y.”
I lit a cigarette and continued to drive, while Kevin sang along with the record as the words of Paddy Costello left my rattling speaker system and evaporated into the night sky. Suddenly, Kevin snapped me out of my haze, grabbed my shirt collar, and shouted along with the song into my ear, “Let’s tie a yellow ribbon around the necks of the motherfuckers living for the giving in!”
“What the fuck, man? You’re gonna fucking kill us tonight,” I said, unable to conceal my laughter as we pulled onto The Duke’s street and parked the car. The Duke lived in a very old-world neighborhood on the outskirts of Athens, which was a drastic change from the college town innards of the city. His house was large and Victorian looking, with three ready-to-live-in floors that were all fully furnished. No one really knew how The Duke managed to live there on his own. There was a revolving cast of roommates, sure, but supposedly none of them ever paid rent. Theories circulated: that his parents owned the house, and just let him live there, that he had won some huge settlement with the school after having been hit by a car while walking from the football field to the student center, that he was selling way more drugs than we thought he was, but The Duke never confirmed nor denied anything. He was enigmatic like that.
to be cont.
Monday, December 3, 2007
At Sea
I am sitting in a drab, pale blue colored room. Surrounded by sad, solemn faces. All waiting, like me, to end one life and resume another. I’ve forced myself to go numb inside. If I let one emotion trickle in, it would turn into a waterfall or tidal wave and drown me in my sadness, regret, anger...
It’s raining outside. Normally I like the rain, the way it clings to trees, grass, windshields, making the world sparkle and gleam like Christmas and then when it’s gone the world is left a little cleaner, the air a little fresher. But today, it’s suffocating. Water running down windows is washing me away. Every drop of rain is filling my lungs. Every blue-gray puddle I pass reminds me of death.
On the way in, an innocent looking girl standing under the shelter of a huge black umbrella gave me a judgmental stare and a pamphlet. It was a last minute attempt to change my mind. A last ditch effort to have me reconsider the choice I was about to make, as if I hadn’t already considered both sides. As if, I hadn’t visited every website, read every article, made a thousand pro-con lists.
I really wanted to tell the girl that I was on her side once upon a time and that this isn’t really me. The woman in front of her is all an illusion, a series of misguided decisions, influenced by insanity and loneliness.
* * *
Throughout all of my high school years, I’d looked forward to going away to school. My mom had always told me that people were more accepting in college. You could be different and still fit in. Guys were different too, she’d said. I’d like college. Silly me, I believed her, like when I was little and I’d believed her when she said that if I peed in the pool, it’d turn green. It was never really true, just a lie to get what she wanted. She wanted me to go to college.
My dorm was located in the University City district of Philadelphia. Towers Residence Hall at Drexel University. It was a gray concrete fourteen-story building, located conveniently across from a 7-11 and a row of brownstone houses. From my window seat I could see a small park, complete with beach volleyball courts and an AstroTurf soccer field. It all seemed so perfect, so picturesque.
When I toured the colleges, I had quickly decided Drexel was the school for me because it was so full of life. The campus was in the heart of Philly; there was even a subway stop across from the library. Even during the summer, students milled around, carrying shopping bags and talking animatedly about parties they’d gone to and concerts they’d seen. With so many different people on campus, it seemed unlikely that I wouldn’t be able to find friends.
School started in late September and it appeared as though all of my fellow freshman had already been there for years. They all had huge groups of friends; all of their days were filled with plans and their nights with parties. I didn’t know then that these so-called relationships were superficial and very few would remain consistent beyond the first few months of freshman year, and so I wanted to be a part of them.
I was never what you could consider popular in high school, a source of much anguish, but nonetheless I had managed to find a solid group of friends to hang out with. When I moved to Philly, from the suburban sprawl that is Long Island, I expected to quickly have some semblance of a social life. I was shocked when this didn’t immediately occur.
My first weekend at Drexel, I sat on my bed, reading and listening to music, as my floor-mates primped and pre-gamed, yelling up and down the hallways:
“Yo, Sara! Can I borrow a black bra?”
“Sure, if you wanna give up some alcohol.”
“Ugh, fine! What party are you going to anyway?”
“Ummm that frat house on Powelton? You know, the big one with the lawn?”
“Oh, yea! Sounds fun, I heard those guys are really hot. Maybe we’ll stop by.”
I don’t know why I didn’t have the confidence to go up to one of their open doors and see if I could join in the fun. Instead I just sat on my bed, listening to their progressively slurred screaming, until all were gone and the halls were quiet again.
Three weeks into the year, and I still had no one, no real friends. My family was hours away and everyone from back home went to school miles and they were occupied with their own lives. I couldn’t help but feel like the whole world was moving forward, and I was barely treading water.
* * *
I am in a room adorned with various posters, some touting the benefits of contraception and others depicting diagrams of proper condom application, all messages that most of us have sadly missed or forgotten. I look at the girls huddled around me. Most are young. Some have brought moral support. Others are alone, like me, desperately trying to hide the mistakes of the past. Some are crying and others are stoic. They too have built up that internal dam.
I look down at the pamphlet. A smiling, happy baby stares back up at me. Flipping through the pages, it seems as though they’ve found a collection of the world’s cutest, bounciest, well-behaved infants and toddlers, all of them looking up with bright and eager eyes, pleading for their lives with the women they know will be reluctantly reading.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” I say meekly to the girl sitting next to me as the guilt further cements itself in the pit of my stomach. She turns to face my direction, her big, brown, tear-filled eyes never quite meeting mine. She can’t be more than sixteen.
“What else are you going to do?” She replies, as one single tear breaks free from her eye.
* * *
I was never actually alone. I had a roommate, Christina, who promptly began to drive me insane with her incessant talking. The sound of her fake nails clacking away on her keyboard late into the night, became more like nails on a chalkboard, slowly but surely eating away at my sanity as I tried to fall asleep. She was always in the room. When I woke up in the morning, she was still in bed, farting in her sleep, and remained there until after I left. When I came back from classes in the afternoon, there she was. One day when I walked into the room, she was sitting on the ground painting dots in various shades of gray on pieces of paper strewn about the carpet.
“Oh my god Liz, you won’t believe this assignment I have for my design class. It’s crazy, I have to make 50 different shades of gray and arrange them in order from dark to light. Isn’t that so weird? I mean, when I’m an interior designer, what is this going to do for me?” Of course I’d get stuck with someone who wanted to be an interior designer.
As I looked at her side of the room, with its overly coordinated sheet and comforter sets in various animal prints, and her walls adorned with Dali posters, that she thought were artsy, and I just saw as pretentious, I couldn’t help but pity the poor souls that were duped into hiring her.
“Yea, that is pretty strange.” I responded with disdain.
She continued talking, despite the fact that I wasn’t listening. After a few weeks I’d developed the uncanny ability to block her out. It wasn’t until I heard another voice that I started paying attention. I looked at the door to see a short, round, Hobbit-like girl with disheveled brown hair talking at me.
“Liz. Heyyy Liz!” It was Rene, the only person in Philadelphia that I could remotely consider a friend. She was perpetually stoned and left the scent of weed behind her whenever she walked away. I could smell her from my bed, at the opposite side of the room.
“Liz, you wanna hang out with some of these guys I met?” She asked me.
“Oooh, guys?! Can I come?” Christina squealed obnoxiously.
“No.” Rene was as irritated by her as I was.
“So how do you know these guys?” I asked on the walk over to their building, the honors suites on the opposite side of campus.
“Oh, well this one guy, Chris, is in my AVF class and I ate lunch with him and his friends, and they’re all really cool.”
I didn’t care if they were cool, they could’ve been the biggest assholes in Pennsylvania and I’d probably hang out with them, just as long as I had plans and could get away from Christina.
We walked into their suite and were bombarded with the mixed scent of sweat, stale beer and cologne. A group of five guys turned away from a red cup covered table, the only furniture they’d bothered to purchase, and looked at us.
“Hey! You’re just in time for beer pong ladies!” Said a tall guy standing at the head of the table. Judging from the empty cans strewn about the floor, they’d already been drinking for some time.
“You! Hey, you,” Another tall kid with long curly black hair and piercing green eyes called to me. “Be on my team. I need all the help I can get over here. I’m Jeff, by the way.”
“Uh, sure,” I responded. “I’ve never really played before though.”
“That’s cool. Those two are completely gone anyway,” he said, pointing to our opponents, both of whom had that glazed-over look in their eyes. “So what’s your name?”
“Oh, yea. I’m Liz.”
“Ok Liz, so basically you have to get this ball,” he said, holding up a white ping-pong ball, “Into the cups over there on their side. Easy enough, right? Go for it.”
I threw the ball and missed the cups and table completely, and the ball went flying down the hall of their suite.
“So that probably wasn’t good, huh?”
“No, not really, but whatever you’re a beginner. It’s all in the wrist, kind of like basketball, you know? The wrist flick is what makes the shot. Watch me.” He threw the ball and it gracefully arched into the front cup. “See, that was easy right. Now they have to drink the beer in that cup cause I got it in.”
As the game progressed fewer of our cups remained, and my shots were getting no better.
“I see you haven’t really mastered it yet. Let me help you.” He said, putting his arm around me, the way people on TV or in movies do, when some guy is teaching a girl to play golf or pool, it’s all really just a ploy to achieve physical contact. I never thought those things would happen to me, so I missed the obvious move. Together we threw the ball, his arm guiding mine, and it landed perfectly in a cup.
“See! Awesome!” He gave me a wry smile and put his arm around my waist.
After a several games, most of which were lost due to my utter inability to make a shot, I was significantly drunk.
The first few shots that I actually made were accompanied by platonic high fives, but as the night wore on and got blurrier and blurrier, these high fives progressed to celebratory hugs, then seemingly innocent kisses on the cheek, and finally, after our first and only win, an excited kiss on the mouth. Apparently Jeff had morphed from a benevolent teacher to an instructor with ulterior motives and everyone had noticed but me.
* * *
“Elizabeth Austin?” A nurse dressed in head to toe white, with long blonde hair and pale, almost translucent skin, calls from a door leading to the back. I stand up and walk nervously over to her. My stomach is twisted into knots, my hands are shaking and my legs don’t want to support the rest of my body. My heart is pounding like when you’re riding waves at the beach and one takes you by surprise and you can’t tell which way is up and you think you might never find the surface, that you might never breathe again. My lungs want to explode.
“How are you today Miss Austin?” Her name tag says Mary. She takes my hand and leads me back to an exam room. She starts explaining what’s going to happen, how I’ll feel after the procedure. The doctor comes in and gets me ready. Their mouths are moving but I’m too lost in my own thoughts to listen. Everything is like a horrible dream and I keep trying to wake up, hoping I’ll be back at home, in my bed with the sun shining in through a big, open window and my dog is laying next to me waiting for me to get up and play. I keep trying and trying but I won’t wake up.
* * *
Before I even really knew what was happening, Jeff was taking my hand and we were stumbling down the blurred hallway to his room. It felt like I’d slept with my contacts in; nothing was in focus and my eyes felt heavy. My feet didn’t make it off the floor with every step.
“Let’s watch a movie. I’m not tired.” Had I been in the right state of mind, I would’ve recognized the deeper guy-world meaning behind “watch a movie.” I would’ve known that ‘watch a movie” was yet another ploy for physical contact. It was just a cheap method to get girls into their rooms and ultimately their beds.
“Ok! I’m not tired either.” I chirped. I didn’t want this night to end. And in my drunken fog, this was a way to prolong it forever.
He put on Orange County, as I climbed my way into his lofted bed. Twenty minutes of Colin Hanks and we were sloppily making out. His breath tasted like beer and peanuts, but I didn’t care. I was finally getting the attention I’d wanted, but had been denied, since coming to Drexel. This was my mom’s prophecy about guys in college being fulfilled. Nothing was going to stop it, not even the quiet utterance of “I don’t have any, you know, protection.”
He didn’t call me the next day, or the day after. A week. A month. It’s not like I had expected a relationship. Even as it was happening, I had on some level known that it was a one-night stand. I had never done that before. I’d always been the kind of girl that needed a relationship. My last boyfriend and I had dated for three months before I’d even made out with him.
I had pretty much known the moment it happened or at least the morning after that something within me had changed. I once read a story about a girl who woke up one day and was in labor, she hadn’t even known she was pregnant. That girl had to have been completely out of touch with her own body because before the missed periods, before the strip turned pink, I knew. I knew because I could feel it- a strong attachment, an almost animalistic instinct to protect something, but what? I knew.
And that was it. That was the shitty moment in life everyone experiences; where they’re forced to grow up, despite all self-preservationist instincts to stay young forever. Life tried to prepare me. It sent me curve balls and important decisions to make, but I just let other people handle it all, and now? Now I was screwed. Now I was forced to grow up in a second, go from 18 to 35 in less than a minute.
And that’s how I wound up where I am. That is the sordid, sad and regretful tale that brought me here: The Planned Parenthood Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center on Chestnut, just five blocks from school.
“If it was a boy, I would name it Thomas,” I say blankly to Mary, the nurse, “and if it was a girl, Melissa.” One tear escapes me, and the dam is broken. Every emotion I have been holding in comes flooding out in a torrent of hysterical crying as the doctor injects a sedative. I try to fight off the drowsiness, but despite my best efforts, the white light of the room slowly fades away and everything turns to black. My thoughts are silent, the guilt is momentarily gone, for the first time in months, if for only a second, the waters are calm, the sun is shining and I can finally just float.
Death and Taxes
Sam and Megan sat across from each other at the breakfast table. It was 4:00am or 4:30. Neither of them was sure of the time, because the clock on the wall was broken. Sam sipped his drink of whiskey and water.
“So what’s he like?” Sam asked breaking a twenty minute silence.
“What is who like?”
“The other guy you’re fucking.”
“That doesn’t seem like an appropriate question.”
“Just trying to make conversation.”
The two fell silent again. It was unbearably hot even in the early morning hours. The apartment was stuck in a seemingly endless New England summer. A light ran fell outside. The clouds darkened the sky, that was usually beginning to brighten at that hour.
“For starters, he reads better books than you?”
“Oh really?” Sam asked “Like who?
“Ezra Pound”
“You know he was a poet , right?”
“Of course,” she said. “Why?”
“We’ll you said that this guy read better books, that implies novels. Pound was a poet and a shitty one at that. And on top of that a Nazi sympathizer. I bet this guy also reads Celine.”
“You have something seriously wrong with you.”
“Thank you.”
Sam finished his drink and poured himself another.
“Fucking poets,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean.”
“Nothing, like most poetry, or just a simple statement of what seems to be your new past time.”
“and you wonder why I’m leaving you…”
“I don’t wonder why,” he said. “I wonder when.”
“That was clever, asshole.”
“I’ve given up trying to figure out what’s running through that 8 pound blob of mass you call a brain.”
“You always were such a charmer.”
Sam finished another drink and poured more whiskey into his glass.
“Neal doesn’t drink,” Megan said.
“I don’t like him,” Sam replied.
“I figured you wouldn’t.”
“What kind of man doesn’t drink?”
“Plenty of people don’t drink.”
“Hemingway drank. Bukowski drank. Those were men.”
“and they were both assholes.”
“Touche.”
Megan looked at the clock on the wall and remembered it was broken. Her cell phone was still on the dresser in Sam’s room and she did not feel like getting up to get it.
“Don’t you have work soon?” she asked.
“No. I took the day off.”
“Why?”
“I was gonna surprise you and take you to the beach. I had a lunch and some wine packed and everything.”
“Really?”
“No, but I did buy a shit-ton of wine.”
“You’re such a prick.”
“It’s shitty wine too.”
“I bet.”
Sam got up and grabbed the three boxes of wine. HE placed them on the table. He tapped one.
“See…cheap.”
“So what are you going to do with your day off?”
“Well, I was thinking about quitting drinking and turning my life around, but I’ll probably just watch re-runs of Seinfeld and get drunk on wine. You know? Modest goals.”
“Sure. Why set the bar high?”
“Exactly, especially when you know you can’t reach it.”
Megan stood up and got a glass from the cupboard. It was dirty. Sam always put glasses black without washing them. Megan rinsed the glass out as best she could in the sink. There was no soap.
“See, if you leave me, who’ll wash my glasses?”
“I’m sure you’ll live,” she said filling the glass with wine.
Sam put his head down on the table. Megan wondered if the whiskey had finally gotten to him. He’d drank three quarters of a bottle in the hours that she’d been there and he was drunk on whatever else before she’d came. She felt a faint pang of concern. Sam lifted his head.
“So this is really it, huh?” he asked. His was voice wavering a bit, so much so that Megan was caught off guard.
“Yeah. I think it is.”
“I suppose I can’t blame you, but I do so hate blaming myself for anything.”
Megan laughed.
“There should be more fanfare,” Sam said. “I should be with another woman and/or you should be breaking dishes and screaming horrible things at me. I could punch you, even. It would give me more street credibility.”
“You can punch me if it’ll make you feel better,” Megan said. “Just once though. Two black eyes would be terribly unattractive.”
“Nah. I couldn’t.” The misogyny is all an act.”
“I know.”
“What will I do without you?”
“You’ll probably keep on writing in drinking, like you did before and during your time with me.”
“ Who will love me?”
“Oh please. Don’t think you’re fooling me with this vulnerability shit, and even if you were, it’s not at all becoming on you.”
“I’m serious. It’s easy for you to find someone else. You’re beautiful and charming. You and I both know I’m an asshole.”
“You could try not being an asshole.”
“How does one do that?”
“The first step I would take would be to stop drinking.”
“I don’t think I’d like that.”
Megan got up from the table and finished her glass of wine. She went into Sam’s bedroom and got her phone. She’d left many other things in Sam’s apartment, but they weren’t worth much. She’d come back for them later, if at all. She walked back to the table.
“Listen, It’s 5:15. I’m gonna go.”
“Alright.”
Megan brushed Sam’s shoulder, as she walked past him. Sam was sitting with his back to the door and he did not turn around to watch Megan leave. She lingered a bit in the doorway. Sam began filling his glass with whiskey again. She wondered if he was actually capable of finding another woman or if the buck stopped with her. She shut the door and walked out into the parking lot of the apartment complex. It was still raining
You Were Warm, Like Rose Pink And Coffee Stains
March 27th was the first day that didn’t require a jacket in four solid months, so it was the perfect day for Lloyd to kill himself. But before committing his heroic act, he thought himself obliged to bid all those places he had fallen in love with one final adieu, and this is how he ended up on a bench under a willow tree in the Public Gardens. When he was young enough to still enjoy things like the Swan Boats, Lloyd’s mother brought him here to throw bread at the begging ducks’ heads while a sullen teenager paddled the adorably red, flat boat around the shallow pond. Two days later she died of a brain aneurysm while reading to Lloyd Make Way For Ducklings, something he never quite forgave Robert McCloskey for.
He thought it appropriate to do his last deed in that place that would lead to his greatest heartbreak. There were no razor blades to the wrists nor nooses around the neck in Lloyd’s final plan; he decided to quietly down a vial and lay under the willow tree, letting it’s drooping, nurturing arms be the last of his views of this world he no longer belonged to. Not that he ever did belong. At an early age Lloyd came to the conclusion that he was not like other children when he watched his first television show and was disconcerted to see that no one else’s closet consisted of strictly fire-engine red pants and stark white t-shirts. When Lloyd went to elementary school he noticed that none of the other children were wanting to discuss Durkheim and how religion is the social solidarity of our society. During the middle school years he took less interest in how he was the only seventh grader to spend their weekends inside the walls of the Museum of Fine Arts, editing their fourth opera in an overstuffed armchair underneath Michelangelo. And Lloyd certainly knew that he was the only teenager to celebrate their sweet sixteen by meticulously counting how many bricks were used to construct the southern wall of the Old State House. But that’s just how Lloyd was, and he reflected upon this as he sat and watched a duck bob underwater to get at the plant life growing beneath the murky water’s surface.
On the other end of the same bench under the same willow tree watching the same duck bob sat Allison, a pretty yet meek Christian girl who had just handed over her virginity to a father of two. Needless to say, it was not her ideal vision of a day going smoothly. How would she tell her evangelical parents that she would no longer be joining them in the Lord’s eternal kingdom? Some how she didn’t think they would be very pleased upon hearing news of how their delicate flower had lost it’s petals to their pleasant neighbor who, turns out, only agrees to eighteen holes of golf every Saturday with Allison’s father in order to to get himself his own piece of the Virgin Mary. As far as Allison was concerned, she was done for, and the only answer to this heathen act lay in the barrel of the gun that was tucked inside the waist of her jeans, hidden by her monogrammed sweater. Her only solace was the thought that her damned mess would leave something warm for the ducks to eat for dinner. Surely the mucky treasures that baked at the bottom of the water were not enough to keep even a duck satisfied.
Lloyd never had a girlfriend; the world doesn’t allow the ones who don’t belong to love the ones that do. And Lloyd knew this and accepted this fact after he slipped a valentine into Susy McDuggan’s locker in the fourth grade and she reciprocated the gesture by lovingly spitting in his left eye. After that he decided to only love turtles because people were just things for him to avoid; also, turtle’s don’t have salivary glands. Lloyd no longer noticed pretty girls, of even the ugly ones for that matter, so it was puzzling to him when he noticed himself noticing Allison who seemed to be noticing something that wasn’t there in front of either of them. He wondered if that something ever noticed her back. He was fairly certain she hadn’t been there when he had sat down, but then again it had been some years since he took part in reality. It was odd to Lloyd to be sitting in such close proximity to something that had the ability to see him back, as he made it his number one priority to only sit by things like dictionaries and vases and the occasional turtle. So he was caught off guard when the pretty girl turned to meet his stare, something one would never experience from a dictionary, and it no longer mattered who had been sitting down first.
“I know what you are thinking,” were the first words that had been said to Lloyd since last September when someone had apologized for stepping on his foot in the farmer’s market at Copley Square. Lloyd was silent, unsure of how to use his voice box; one of those “use it or lose it” types of things.
“I know, and I’ve had that exact thought until I realized that I was a fool. You should know that. You should know that I was a fool.” Allison stared at Lloyd as if she were catching him rummaging through her closet and discovering the old diaries from eighth grade that she had stashed away, embarrassed but what they had to say of her.
Again Lloyd was silent. Allison turned her stare to the duck that was now perched on the stone edge of the pond. Unable to look away, Lloyd struggled to find all the words he wanted to say, how he wanted nothing more than to turn everything back and to put the world in reverse. He tried to figure out how to form the words to explain that he all he wanted was to make the leaves drift back up onto their respectful branches and to make the books go back into fountain pens and to take all the words that were never meant to be said and put them back into strangers’ apologetic lungs. He wanted to tell Allison about all the sentences he had never said and about all his lies and his facts and his stories and his truths that could sound like lies if not said at the correct time of day. He would tell her about the lives he wasn’t living and the ones he would grow to live. He would tell her of his vial and how he wouldn’t need it anymore because maybe he could be OK if he could just sit on this bench with her and her monogrammed cardigan for the rest of time.
Lloyd opened his mouth to say these things, beginning to form his tongue and lips into familiar feeling shapes when he realized the ground under his sneakers was starting to tremble and his ears were filling with an overwhelmingly loud roar that was vibrating the air. Taking his eyes off Allison, he raised his face to the sky to meet the underbelly of an abnormally low flying commercial plane that seemed to be gliding in slow motion above the tops of the trees. As he stared, perplexed by this occurrence, Lloyd thought that he could faintly hear a pop that had been almost drowned out by the noise of the massive engines, and thought that he felt a warm slime on the his cheek that had been facing Allison. When he looked back to face her, Allison was no longer sitting there but instead seemed to be napping on the ground next to the bench underneath the willow tree with its drooping, nurturing arms.
Whether for Castes
It’s later than it ought to be and the streets are completely empty. The tired lights shine on stubbornly, trying to compensate for the lack of sun. The cold air bites into the exposed skin of my face and hands and so I do have not have ability to protest when he opens the door for me. If the temperature were higher by ten degrees I would have found the time and patience to debate over formalities. However, a late night caffeine kick was calling my name and I reason it couldn’t hurt if for a few moments he felt glee at performing a gentlemanly task. After mumbling a thanks, I march up to the counter and without a thought order the elixir for exhaustion. He stands shyly next to me and asks for a tea. The coffee shop owner takes a look at the two of us and a smile overtakes his weathered and wrinkled face. The barista behind the counter let her eyes linger over the silent statue at my side before starting on my coffee. Unknowingly I inch closer to claim my territory. The owner hands me my coffee and lets his fingers awkwardly touch mine, staring too closely into my eyes. I hand over a bill before my date can even reach into his pocket. The owner hands over the tea and gives my statue a little wink.
I sit down first at a table beside the front window. I want to have the option to look at something interesting if the time calls for it. My companion sheepishly sits across from me, the table too wide for the two of us. We are the only customers, the room bare and made of wood, where echoes effortlessly bounce off the walls. I use both my hands to grasp the paper cup and wonder, why him? Why did I choose to bring him out of anyone else? I haven’t spent any of my free time seeing anyone and here was my first human contact in days. By deduction, he was the only soul at home on a Saturday night who was willing to go out and walk with me and listen to my bumbling. It wasn’t a secret how he felt. I stare at my hands and the wood grain of the table. It is uncomfortable to look into his eyes. I know how he always looks at me. I know how he studies my face with intense precision. When I look at my hands, I feel him staring. I look up suddenly and glance into his eyes, catching him off guard. He gives a small smile and looking at him becomes too difficult. His eyes are filled with too many promises. He looks at me with such endearment that it becomes embarrassing. I look over his shoulder and tried to keep my proud voice at the volume of a whisper. The coffee shop is too quiet, too hollow, and I was simply trying to fill the void.
You see, that night in the coffee house I looked into his eyes and foretold the future. Back then, I predicted the day that we had together last week. We walk in sync down a cold rainy street together with our arms linked. I am not so angry at the world and I have learned that gentlemanly tasks are few and far between. I hold my red umbrella over our heads and he complains that he cannot see where I am leading him. I actually have been happier than I have felt in the past few weeks. A smile remains plastered on my face from when I first met him at the park.
It’s still the early evening as it should be and the streets are filled with people rushing home from the rain. The rhythmic sounds of tires on wet pavement compensate for my wet wool coat. The moisture in the air kisses the exposed skin of my face and hands and he did not have the ability to protest when my hand squeezes his upper arm. If the raindrops would fall slower by ten percent we might find the formality to not stand so close. However, a quick hesitation from walking was calling my name and we reasoned it couldn’t hurt if for a few moments to wait under an awning until the sky stopped crying. After whispering a declaration of love, he steps up to me and without a thought plants a kiss of appreciation on my lips. I kiss shyly back and wished for another. The guitar shop owner inside takes a look at the two of us and a roll of the eyes overtakes his bored and begotten face. The customer inside lets his eyes linger over at our still statues before continuing his browsing. Unknowingly I find myself staring at him to analyze my conquest. After a quick judgment call, I say a quick goodbye and turn away before my date can even reach for my hand. The guitar shop owner delivers a knowing look and shakes his head in understanding.
You see, that afternoon on that Manhattan street I looked into his eyes and I saw the present state we were in. I had a vision of that night we had so many years ago. He told me I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He made the mistake of telling me to think about that. He procrastinated and took three years to finally act upon his observation and show his appreciation. I am not so romantic about the world and I have learned that true gentlemen take action in the immediate. Instead of turning around, I conjured up an image of his face. It was of his reflection in the coffee house window, a ghost of his face. I find it easier to bear. A reflection carries no promises in its eyes. I find it difficult to not get frustrated with his shortcomings. He has always been too quiet, too hollow, and I foolishly try to fill the void. I actually am even happier than when that stupid grin was glued to my face.
You see, that moment I realized I was holding my red umbrella and I left him as a fool in the rain.
Stars Fading But I Linger On Dear
When I was a child my mother, my sweet mother, used to sing me to sleep. Her favorite was “Dream a Little Dream of Me” by the Mamas and the Papas. The whistling, the chorus, the verse, the everything.
Now listening to this song, on constant repetition, I feel comfortable, calm and certain everything is in its right place.
My mother, the band’s loyal fan, would patiently sing this to me every time I wished to hear the melody. Slowly rocking me back and forth in her arms. I remember her scent, the texture of her arms, and her cool breathy voice whispering into my ear. I remember the sensation of feeling perfectly safe. I remember the simple feeling of life being perfectly in its place. The simplicity of childhood, of family, of pure love.
I cannot listen to this song without thinking of this kindness, this pure simple loving kindness. It takes me back, not to a childish era, but that of a refined and easy life. The life of a mother just loving her daughter. The life of a daughter perfectly happy with a mother’s love, nothing else.
If only life could be this easy. If only I could be as comfortable, calm and certain all the time. If only I could have my mother slowly rock me back and forth breathing love into my ear. If only I could time travel.
But what if? Why not? How come?
I believe it could happen. Why not? Anything is possible. I can still be a sweet hippie child, cradled in the arms of a mother with nothing to give but love, with nothing of need except love.
Homeward bound I am, wrapped up in the idea of what is ahead. A break of love, kind simple love. A break of comfort, calm and certainness. A break full of a mother, a daughter, a song, and loving arms. A break of the past come back to warm my heart and soothe my mind. Restore my life. Repair my heart heavy with burden. Heavy from lack of simple love.
On Discipline
I spent two whole days crying in Virginia. The hotel was beautiful and accommodating, but I could not stop myself from thinking about how unhappy it was all making me feel. And yes I might have exaggerated a little when I said I spent two whole days crying.
In the fall of my ninth year in school my father, the great golfer, gained a spot in the coveted United States Amateur Golf Tournament in the hills of Western Virginia. I remember the plane ride from Dallas to Raleigh, then the commuter flight from Raleigh to God-Knows-Where, Virginia. I remember the car ride from God-Knows-Where, Virginia to the hotel through the black application mountains with my father trying to avoid the deer. And most of all I remember the majesty of the front of the hotel, with the illuminated clock tower that hovered over the large deep front porch. That image, the image of the old world, was something so contrasting with the modern life that I lived day to day. That was the last night I spent in awe of this place, for when morning came I realized that this old world, as much as I admired its beauty and simplicity, did not suit me well.
The hotel had made a mistake; it placed a family of four in a small two-bed suite. My father had made a mistake; he had brought his city daughter to the middle of a country resort in a town so small it did not contain a grocery store.
The view from the room that my brother and I shared was green. There was a large tree just to the left of the wall of windows that distorted the view of the rolling hills that lead to the green bowling lawns in back of the hotel. The bowling lawns however where shadowed by the large mountains that stood watching in the background. Basically, the large mountains shadowed everything from the hotel to the little toy town. I spent two mornings listening to my father getting ready while reading the breakfast menu, and watching the golfers walk across the bowling lawns.
At first my brother wanted to experience everything the hotel had to offer, particularly the shuttles that took the guests from each activity to the next. This was back in the day when my brother based his friendships with other people on personality rather than looks, which caused him to make friends with all of the drivers. From the moment he woke up to the moment he crashed into sleep he had a sense of go go go. Nothing could stop him, he wanted to play cricket, ride horses, gallivant in the town, swim in the pool, and watch my father play golf. None of those things interested me, yet I had to entertain my mother by agreeing to join.
The horse ridding was horrible. The smell of the barn, the flies swarming the horse and the incessant talking of my pubescent brother squealing with joy. My mother, my brother, the guide and I started down the dirt trail on the side of mountain. To the left I could see straight down at least 20 feet, and to my right was this vast expanse of green trees lit from behind by the sun. It was beautiful, there is no doubt in my mind even 6 years later that this resort was beautiful, but I could not relax, not when I could tell my horse was not comfortable with a person on its back. Especially when this uncomfortable horse could not walk in a straight line. I pulled, he pushed forward. Our struggle continued for twenty long minutes until I surrendered to his strength. He bucked, I yelled, and from then on I was pulled by the horse, who was in turn pulled by the guide. That horse from Western Virginia was the first and last horse that I have ridden.
As the shuttle sped through the darkening woods and my brother continued to talk the driver's ear off, I could not stop thinking about how I could not control that horse, and if I could not control the horse then how was I supposed to control myself? I have always had a problem with discipline, and even though I have been aware of this I have not been able to come to my senses and do something about it. That night as I ate and watched pro-wrestling with my brother in our room, I could not stop thinking about how I had no control over myself. I thought about how in 3rd grade I had cried during a social studies class because I knew that when I grew up that I would start smoking. I thought about how I had grown into this scholarly procrastinator, and I had not even reached high school. I thought about what the future would bring if I continued to not have control over myself, and above all I thought about the obscure surrounding that brought about this revelation. The horse, the woods, the shuttle. All of it added up made me realize that I needed to start learning how to implement self-discipline.
I could not sleep that night. The wind howled and the large green tree kept scratching the window. A storm was coming, from the north the weatherman said. Around 4:30 am I decided that I had had enough of trying to fall asleep so I turned on the light and pulled out a book. The rain started at 5:15, waking my brother up and causing a dog from a nearby house to start barking. By 5:30 my brother had fallen back asleep while the rain continued on and I charged through Gore Vidal's Palimpsest. I charged through the witty narrative that depicted his youth, the time he spent in the military, the house he bought in communist Cuba and the emotion and drive that Mr. Vidal experience through it all.
I remember being woken by my mother telling me it was time for breakfast. I remember rolling over in bed causing one the pages of the memoir to rip. I remember how ironic it was that I fell asleep with a book next to me without even trying when I had tried so hard before. I remember getting dressed and walking down to the dining room with my book in my hand, and feeling comfort in the hardback cover. I spent the rest of that day studying every word Gore Vidal said, reading multiple chapters multiple times, drinking hot chocolate and sitting on the expansive front porch. I watched guest come and go in the shuttles and saw golfers arrive back at their temporary home dumbfounded by the course that demolished them. I listened to the elderly couples sitting around me talking about the beauty that stood before them. I even got up to wander around the hotel's land, exploring the Roman architecture of the spa and seeing the bowling lawns for the first time without a glass panel standing in between us.
I wrote all of this down, everything from the moment I woke up in the morning with dark circles under my eyes to the golf gala that my family attended that night. I had found a purpose that morning, reading about the life of Mr. Vidal. If he could be this involved with so many things he loved, then what was exactly stopping me. Why was I being dragged down by this persistent lack of discipline? I had to do what I wanted. I could no longer be just dragged around like a follower. I had to become who I am, not something that other people wanted me to be. Instead of doing something because I had to, I wanted to do something because it would turn me into a better version of myself.
I remember having another night of restless sleep, of tossing and turning. I starting crying because I had become irrationally overwhelmed with the idea that this purpose would only last in the state of Virginia. I remember waking up and having a cup of hot chocolate. I remember sitting on the great wide front porch with my mother, watching the bellmen load up the rental car. I remember my father not talking on the long ride back to the airport in God-Knows-Where, Virginia. I remember writing down everything I saw, from the green trees to the deer grazing beside the highway. I remember coming back to our house on Windsor Parkway, and writing down a detailed depiction of my room and realizing that I had started my life over again but this time with a purpose.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Those Times I’m Like Magellan
“Go!”
She cheated and started early, leaving me behind to chase after her distancing demand. Sprinting, I felt the wind whipping against my cheeks and whispering in my ears, tales of how one day my mother will fall down the stairs, and there is nothing I can do to stop the process of life. By the time I made it to the end of the field Isabelle was balancing on the stone wall waving a daisy through the air, conducting a symphony of hiding crickets. It was late dusk, that time that bathes everything in a glow of orange and yellow and tricks you into thinking that peace is capable and that one day you will have the perfect job and big house you always pictured in your mind. For Is, dusk was that time when she was infinite, the time she was queen and I was king and the world was ours to grab and shake until all the parts were scrambled into confusion. We liked things scrambled. We lived for mayhem.
I sprawled out in the grass at Isabelle’s feet, basking in what little light still remained awake. Turning my head to face her, I took Is in for everything that she was, an off type of a vision: unkempt hair, barefoot with grass stains on her knobby knees, staring off into the air thinking about the communication between elephant tribes, exactly how she was when we first met, when we were but mere children.
I was only eighteen that day Is appeared, the day I was faced with my first life altering decision that was not a decision at all but life twisting around and shooting off to the right giving me no choice but to follow its lead. Sitting on an empty Greyhound traveling towards Portland at one in the morning, I dozed off. I awoke to discover that I was not as alone as I had thought, a realization that applied to more than just the stale smelling bus, but also to my entire existence up to that point. I found myself suddenly holding a crumpled napkin on which a stranger had scribbled with red lipstick, “Could you ever love an explorer?” and that exact stranger perched in the seat next to mine.
But Isabelle was a fool, because I had been loving her since the day I discovered I had a beating heart inside my fragile ribcage. I had been waiting for her to come along and make my life make sense, to put together the pieces I could find no place for. I somehow knew she was coming, but the minute details of her physical being had been in a blur before then. It was as if that crumpled napkin with the lipstick scribbles snapped my eyes into focus, and suddenly I saw how my life would be for the next ten years. In reality I knew it wasn’t the napkin that made the difference, but it was everything it represented. The napkin was Is, I knew that, and in it she whispered every secret I had ever kept from parents, and she told me how she had never meant to become a vagabond, but being a ballerina never quite works out like one plans.
“I’ve let down my fair share of strange lovers, but you and I will be an epic tale,” her owl eyes told me in an instant. With a blink and a sigh, she told me that with her I was soon going to learn why exactly the Bermuda triangle eats up elderly widows and sailors searching for the earth’s secrets, and that the Grand Canyon is mother nature’s answer to all the lost souls who have asked, “What is the point of this hellish existence?” while sitting at their dinner tables with their beautiful spouses and three perfect children. I could tell from the way she bit her lip that her words were true fifty-one percent of the time. But when she spoke it was just like that Billie Holiday song I was always fond of, and her lies always sounded like truths so I couldn’t help but devour it all. I didn’t want the facts anyways. Isabelle spoke with passion, and that canceled out her fibs; it’s the cardinal knowledge of the bohemian that a life spoken with passion is not a lie at all but in fact is the most truthful thing you could ever say.
That night not only brought along Isabelle with my future in her palm but also washed away my past and my ability to use the past tense. Before that point I might not have even lived, and sometimes I forget that we lived separate secret lives that did not bleed onto the other’s. Those lives didn’t matter, they only shaped us as each other and prepared us for the now, for the destitute and fly-by-night ways we swore by. But it would be a lie to say that my heart has stopped pining entirely for the material comforts of an old suburban town; sometimes I wouldn’t so mind that white picket fence or even that boss I kind of hate but play golf with anyways. But it’s like Is says, the world isn’t going to fall in love with itself. I have the clouds, and that’s enough for me.
Gently, Isabelle nudges me with her toe then kneels to tuck her plucked daisy safely behind my ear.
“This earth’s fucked up,” she says, “but that’s what makes it irresistible.” I don’t remember where it was in Portland I was going to, only that I never actually made it.
Stars Fading But I Linger On Dear
When I was a child my mother, my sweet mother, used to sing me to sleep. Her favorite was “Dream a Little Dream of Me” by the Mamas and the Papas. The whistling, the chorus, the verse, the everything.
Now listening to this song, on constant repetition, I feel comfortable, calm and certain everything is in its right place.
My mother, the band’s loyal fan, would patiently sing this to me every time I wished to hear the melody. Slowly rocking me back and forth in her arms. I remember her scent, the texture of her arms, and her cool breathy voice whispering into my ear. I remember the sensation of feeling perfectly safe. I remember the simple feeling of life being perfectly in its place. The simplicity of childhood, of family, of pure love.
I cannot listen to this song without thinking of this kindness, this pure simple loving kindness. It takes me back, not to a childish era, but that of a refined and easy life. The life of a mother just loving her daughter. The life of a daughter perfectly happy with a mother’s love, nothing else.
If only life could be this easy. If only I could be as comfortable, calm and certain all the time. If only I could have my mother slowly rock me back and forth breathing love into my ear. If only I could time travel.
But what if? Why not? How come?
I believe it could happen. Why not? Anything is possible. I can still be a sweet hippie child, cradled in the arms of a mother with nothing to give but love, with nothing of need except love.
Homeward bound I am, wrapped up in the idea of what is ahead. A break of love, kind simple love. A break of comfort, calm and certainness. A break full of a mother, a daughter, a song, and loving arms. A break of the past come back to warm my heart and soothe my mind. Restore my life. Repair my heart heavy with burden. Heavy from lack of simple love.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Panic
to you on your way up
the world isn’t against you my dear,
it just doesn’t care.”
- Modern Life is War “Marshalltown”
Rob hated explaining himself. The doctor shifted in her chair, not giving Rob the slightest bit of insight as to what she thought of him. She did cringe a bit with the profanity.
“So what did you do next?” she asked.
“I’m not so sure,” he answered. “I mean I know I left the mall, but it’s all a fog and a blur. I can’t tell the difference between what really happened and what is my mind filling in the blanks. I could’ve done anything really and that’s what scares me. What I’m capable of, you know?”
“And what are you capable of?”
“To be honest I was hoping you’d know.”
“And how could I possibly know that?”
“I don’t know. By asking questions and making inferences and all that other psychoanalytic shit.”
“You seem like an intelligent man, Mr. Collins, however I would very much like it if you didn’t refer to the sum of my education and life’s work as ‘shit’.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Accepted,” she replied. “I guess the question I’m institutionally obligated to ask is are you capable of hurting yourself or anyone else?”
Rob sat silent for a bit. He wondered what reaction an affirmative answer to her question might elicit.
“I don’t think I’m capable of either.”
The answer seemed to placate the Doctor and both parties understood why. The session ended and Rob left the startling, institutionalized white of the Doctor’s office and drove back to his apartment.
Rob wondered on the drive back why he’d sought counseling. After all, misanthropy paid the bills for his car and apartment. Rob Collins was forty five. He’d been the guitarist for Nervous Breakdown, a popular and vital band during Punk Rock’s nascent stages, when he was 17. He’d since gone on to front Bulldog Front, in the late 80’s and early 90’s, a band that by all accounts, defined the genre of post-hardcore. Rob had always lived on society’s fringe so, why now, would he attempt to change.
In the mid 90’s Rob disappeared from music altogether, choosing instead to take a wife and start a family. Rob told his new bride nothing of his screaming, angry, past and didn’t keep so much as an old acoustic guitar in his apartment in Manhattan. After 9/11 and a messy divorce, Rob moved to his hometown of Washington D.C. He’d started writing again, though poetry and short stories rather than songs. Rob was still very much focused and angry.
Rob sat down in the back room of a used record store in Washington D.C. The walls were lined with flyers from 80’s hardcore shows boasting lineups with Minor Threat, Black Flag, Bad Brains, and Rob’s own band Nervous Breakdown, among countless others. Rob was being interviewed for a documentary on American Subcultures throughout the 1980’s.
“So Rob where were you when Punk Rock started?”
“Probably, huffing glue in a basement listening to Black Sabbath.”
Rob immediately did not like his interviewer.
“Your band, Nervous Breakdown, is credited with furthering a certain angrier and more violent strain of punk rock, that many writers call Hardcore. This is something you’ve since apologized for in a recent interview, why is that?”
“I’ll answer that question with another,” Rob said. “How old are you?”
“21, but that doesn’t seem…”
“And if you’re lucky enough to age 24 years, noting that it’s a longer time period than you’ve been alive, do you think that everything you say and do now, will stay the same?”
“I guess I see your point.”
“To flatly answer your question, I never set out to be a mouthpiece or a spokesman for anything. I was just another dumb, angry, pissed off, brat. I was sick and tired of eating shit, so I bit the hand that fed me. I wanted to destroy and annihilate. I had no intention of creating anything, let alone a movement of any kind. It was all about blind destruction.”
“But it’s since become so much more.”
“Hitler started out an artist and became a dictator, that doesn’t mean it worked out for everyone.”
The interviewer fell silent.
“Listen, Nervous Breakdown was a time and a place for me.” Rob said. “I was proud of what we did when we did it. Writers, fans, whomever can take what they want from those songs and those records and I’m fine with that, but I’m really anxious about having my name attached to any sort of movement or ethos. Nothing good can come of that.”
The interviewer seemed relatively happier with this explanation and moved on to the topic of Rob’s band Bulldog Front.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” The interviewer said nervously. “But what the fuck is with Bulldog Front?”
Rob laughed.
“Bulldog Front was a weird reaction to what I called the ‘metallicization’ of punk rock,” Rob said. “I really wanted to create something that was the opposite of the ‘tough guy’ sludgy, stupid mess of bands that were coming out. It was all about creating a more artistic style of punk. I don’t know if we achieved it, but we sure as fuck made some weird records and the kids seemed to dig it at the time.”
“This was a very different approach than that of Nervous Breakdown.”
“Yes, in a lot of ways Bulldog Front was the musical antithesis of Nervous Breakdown. It was about creation rather than destruction. We were all still really pissed off, though, which I believe is the bridge connecting the two. Otherwise, you have two completely different viewpoints.”
The interview ended amicably and Rob left the record store and walked back to his apartment.
“Rob, there’s really not much I can do for you,” the Doctor said. “Short of prescribing you Xanax or something for your anxiety and I know your feelings on that.”
“Yeah.”
“You do have anxiety disorder though. I want to make that quite clear. There’d be no harm in taking the pills for that.”
“With all due respect doc, I feel like if you don’t have anxiety disorder in 2007, you probably don’t have a pulse.”
“Point taken,” she said. “I guess the question I put to you now, is where do you see this going from here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, have these meetings with me been helping at all.”
“In some ways I guess they have, but for the most part things are still same as they ever were.”
“I’m sorry to hear that and I ultimately wish you the best.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“Hello?” Rob answered.
“Happy birthday, Dad!”
The voice was that of Rob’s son Henry (named for Bukowski and Rollins). His voice was significantly deeper than when he and Rob had last spoken.
“Thanks, Hank”
“Dad, you know I don’t like being called ‘Hank’”
“I’m sorry Henry. How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“How’s school going, you still giving your teacher’s shit all the time?”
“No sir.”
“Good, How’s your mother?”
“She’s okay. I think she’s dating another guy now.”
“Weird.”
“Can I ask you a question, dad?”
“Sure.”
“Were you the singer for the band Nervous Breakdown?”
Rob paused.
“Cause Mike gave me a CD by them and the guy on the cover looks like you, only a lot younger.”
“It was a long time ago Henry, but yes, that was me.”
“Does mom know?”
“I’m not sure exactly. She knows but I think she tried to ignore it all those years.”
“You were really angry, huh?”
“At the time I was, but that was years ago, things have certainly changed.”
There followed an awkward pause. Rob thought of the CD cover his son had referred to. It was a close up picture of him screaming, with a mask of blood from a cut on his forehead, and the words “Alone in a Crowd” (the name of the CD) in the bottom right corner in black military stencil font.
“I listened do the CD, Dad and I like the music. It’s cool.”
Rob paused again and thought that this was probably the scariest thing his son had ever said to him.
“I guess I can’t really tell you how to live your life Hank and there’s certain realities I’ll never be able to fully protect you from, but don’t listen to those records. If anything I’ve ever told you sinks in please let it be this: we make mistakes in life and things can seem like they make sense, or don’t make sense and never will, but it’s always changing, Hank. All of it. It’s always changing.”
“Okay Dad.”
“Just don’t think that you’ve go so far in one direction that you can’t ever turn around.”
“I gotta go, Mom’s dropping me off at Mike’s house to sleep over. Happy Birthday again, Dad.”
“I love you, son.”
Rob was not sure if his son had ended the phone call before or after he said ‘I love you’, but the line was dead now. Rob was forty six and it didn’t feel any different, but it was and forty-seven would be too. It was always changing. Rob celebrated his birthday with a few friends from the DC area and he stood on his roof at sunrise as he finished a beer.