notsolinear.net

Grunts and Laughing

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:35:20 EST

I am already dead. And thank God, really. It's such a relief. To have that out. To be done with the deviling drama. At least that's over with! I think, taking a hydrant photo, chewing on sugar cane. When you already know the worst, you can face the rest. And the rest is just me. Here. The rest is just this. This peace, and this piece. Of history and time.

I'm not myself

When you think about it, the death explanation is the one that makes the most sense. It's the only thing that accounts for it, really. The nothing. And space. This void in my head where an intellect used to be. This life-well I've filled with various poisons and anecdotes to loneliness. Serums to quell various maladies and states of living. A life-well teeming with bats, and which I lean over and into on days that burst with joy, and just scream. And the scream just echoes and echoes and descends to the toxic mess at the bottom.

This is death, then. Ha! Well it can't get any worse than this, then, can it? Thank God. It's a relief to know what has caused them. These symptoms. The regressive non-firing of synapse. The aggressive firing of sin.

This is not how health should feel

I'm sorry. I know I'm repeating myself. Repetition of thoughts. Repetition of sounds. It is part of my narrative "style" to do that. And it has outlived me, it seems. It is like a cockroach. Our narrative styles outlive us all, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your circumstances and your feelings about history. Your feelings about things like "narrative style." Jesus.

"All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music," said Pater. I am always thinking in songs. I am always wishing for music.

We're all dead now, join hands and we'll sing
To the glory of hell and the virtue of sin

Let me try this on: The last five years of my life never happened.

Or maybe this: The last five years of my life are the only years in my life that have ever happened.

I like both of these refrains. These five years have been the most certain of years and they have been the most dubious. I've never been so unfocused. And at the same time, my vision has never remained so consistent. My voice, never so clear. But while I seem to have all the words for music, I lack all the letters, the vowels, the consonants, the goddamned notes and tones with which to construct them.

I have been reduced to grunts and laughing and fucking and piss.

I'm dead now, can you hear the relief

Part of the reason we can't understand a thing, a concept, a thought, is that we don't have language for it. And yet, the reason we don't have language for that thing, that concept, that thought, is we don't fully understand it. It's like a chicken and an egg staring at one another over a game of Yahtzee.

My grandmother used to like Yahtzee. She played it with me when my brain was forming. She played it with me over sugar and fruit and Italian cookies at her dining room table on quiet summer afternoons that were full of play. That were full of her fun and her energy and her voice.

She told good stories.

She had good narrative style.

She recently turned 91. She still laughs sometimes, though I don't think she knows why. She had some good luck. She has had a good run. That's probably a good enough reason.

Christ, I have lost my train of thought.

There is something wrong with me.

Let me try this again: I am already dead.

Yes, that seems right to me.

We will come back to this.

We will always return to this, I'm afraid.

Photo: Close, Antony Gormly, Hakone Sculpture Garden, Japan. Taken by Me.

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Because, I Still Can

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:52:51 EST

Audio Available (with dog barks):

This will not impress you. I can not impress upon you enough how much this will not impress you.

Don't tell me what to think, you say. Don't tell me how to feel, you say. Don't try to control my emotions.

Of course not, I say. I would never be so bold. Which is a goddamned lie and I know you know it. That is all I am ever trying to do. That is the entire point of this. Do not ever trust me.

There are words and words every day in places far more respectable and celebrated than this for people who go about the searching of words. As I do. As you do. As we all do. These hallowed halls of textuality and of contextual duality and of high-minded, reverant consubstantiality. Where we feel we belong. Where we go searching for enlightenment and to hear opinions from writers we've taught ourselves to identify with and from whom we pull ideas like junk food from their bored and jaded beaks. I spend a lot of time in these places. I spend a lot of time appreciating these places. I spend a lot of time resenting these places.

I used to write stories about my life in this space. Then I grew cold on that. I think I wanted to be less subject and more object. So I began writing stories loosely based on my life instead. Thinly-veiled little vignettes. Crafted in such a way so as to distance myself. Not so much "trick" any of you. More to trick myself into saying more than I normally would. These sketches, set in environments not unlike my own house and back yard. With characters not unlike the ones I eat with. Not unlike the ones I drink with. Not unlike the ones I sleep with. Set in frames of mind not unlike my own dog-obsessed inner universe. I did this to give myself emotional distance from my nagging bugaboos. But I kept falling back on what I knew. Which was this: honest little essays about my life. It seems I can't escape that.

So I've come here today to confess. To myself mostly (because I'm sure the rest of you knew it already) that I am a journaler. I journal things. I take photos. I write notes. I document. I've learned to be this way from other people I admire. But it's also come from somewhere else. Maybe my parents. I discovered books of journals from my mom after she died. And I've been told to expect the same from my dad. So maybe it's some kind of gene passed on from them. Or maybe it's just some impulse given by the High Oyster we call god. All I know for sure is I've been doing it since at least third grade.

Yes, I'm a journaler, it turns out. My god. Against all my better schooling. Against all my better learning and good judgement and grade point averages and high-minded college essays about Modigliani and Melville and Rothko and Wittgenstein. (I had such promise!) I'm a journaler. Not to be confused with journalist. Which is a far more reputable and prominent thing to be. With their adherence to the true fact over the true emotion. With their steadfast worry over details. I admire many of these folks, as well. Many of them have great hair. Which is a thing we should all have, at least once in our lives.

I have not given myself the luxury of writing here as often as I used to. Because it seems indulgent. It seems like time wasted. It seems like the time would be better spent on my novel or crafting essays that will appear in the hallowed pages I've mentioned already: the online spaces of journals and lit mags and magazines. To be one of the mama and papa birds doling out sugary food and loving the little chirps and tweets they get in return. But however nice those online spaces are, those pages, they are not the thing I have here. Which, in the end, is the only thing really worth anything to anybody that matters. Certainly to me.

I want to be clear: this isn't a call to myself to retreat into a cave. I want to continue to try and have my words in other people's places. But I miss the freedom of just writing because I want to say something trivial or non important or, sometimes, extremely important. To me. Things about my life. Thoughts and ideas and stories that are only half-formed. But still out in the world and not hidden on a hard drive. I want to start giving myself that luxury again. It's something I told myself I would do in 2013. And I'm finally doing it, by god, even though it's taken me 45 days or so.

The other day, it snowed about a foot of snow here in Jersey. Nowhere near the 28-30 inches of accumulation that New England saw, but enough to fill up my yard and driveway pretty damn good. When I went out Saturday morning, I went out with a plastic yellow snow shovel. I have two plastic yellow snow shovels. One I keep in the back and one I keep in the garage. Part way through my shoveling, I was offered a snow blowing machine by a neighbor, but I turned it down. Because even though I was drenched beneath my warm clothes with sweat and my arms and back and wrists were tired, I like to do it with a goddamned snow shovel. The reason I like to do it with a goddamned snow shovel is because I still can. And I know very well that there will be a day when I can't. When I will sit in my house and look out at a blizzard and remark to C about its beauty and hope to hell somebody young comes early in the morning to dig us the fuck out of that beautiful thing. And I know when I get to that point, I'll want to be able to get up and do it myself. I'll want to do it more than anything else. I'll want to do it the same way I'll still want to punch a bag. The same way I'll still want to drink too many beers and do too many shots. The same way I'll want to fuck. But I know that I won't be able to do it anymore. That I really shouldn't do it anymore. And I'll listen to my body and I'll appreciate what it's given me, and I'll concede to what it's telling me. Which is that shoveling snow would be a bad idea. And I dread this day more than anything else.

So, for now, I will use a goddamned shovel. And every day from now until I can't.

And I suppose I will do this to, this journaling thing. I will do this journaling thing so I can document the ways I am and the ways I change. So I can remember the greenness of the grass. Or the way a flower bed looked before I put a fence around it. Or the satisfaction of laying two yards of Shenandoah river stones. Or the way my dogs play or curl up with one another on the couch or lick each other's ears.

And maybe these will look like somebody else's stories one day. When Honey and Rothko are gone. When the only things I can remember are the things I'm doing at that exact moment. Like, opening the pill box on the "M" or the "T" or the "F" and dumping the contents into my wrinkled hand, the satisfying "click" it makes when I close it. These details. These journalistic facts.

The reason I do it with a shovel, and the reason I write, is because I still can. And there will be a day when I can't. And I will look back fondly on the days that I could. And I want to look back on those days and I want to say, look at that, I used to be able to clear the driveway with a goddamned shovel. And that will be something to me then. It will be something important. It'll be everything.

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Watching Jessica Watch Jessica

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:49:56 EST

I am a low-light worker. I think it's because it helps me zero in on the thing at hand. At any given moment, there are any number of things, to which I owe no small degree of hands. I have two hands, and they are large, as hands go. Still, they only seem to work on one thing at a time, which is both frustrating and sobering for a thing like a hand, particularly when there are two of them.

The low light I work by serves as a spotlight of sorts, to cast the focus. This way, my hands can be busy with the right thing. In a consciousness full of things, the right thing tends to be the one that spews the greatest guff.

I hate guff. I consider guff the same way I might consider a mouse living in a grill. I would like to drown all guff in a plastic bucket, along with any guff-causing entities, which fuck and multiply perpetually and forever (as you might imagine from a thing like guff.) You can't drown guff, though. You can't hit guff with a frying pan. Guff is not a rodent. However little sense a rodent has, it is far greater than the sense contained in guff. Guff keeps ringing, even when you don't return its calls. Guff will sit outside your door, legs crossed, on the floor, waiting for you to cave and open it. Guff will keep coming back, and then it will keep coming back some more. In order to get rid of guff, you have to face it head-on and find out what makes it tick. You have to talk to guff. You have to get to know it. You have to pamper it and make it feel understood.

You have to realize: Guff is guff because it wants to be something else.

And look, I'm really pissed off because I actually have a kind of soft spot for guff, as you can probably tell.

So to recap: I work in low-light to better tackle the thing at hand. The thing at hand is the thing with the greatest guff to spew. The thing spewing the greatest guff is almost never what it could be. Nevertheless, the thing spewing the greatest guff is always what it has to be.

I don't mind telling you: I am terribly unfocused. Or maybe you guessed that.

The precise way I like my workspace set up is, I like a dark room with a bright light directly above me. I like a clean desk, with maybe a drink and a set of Baoding balls. I like my laptop in front of me, and a camera handy, usually at my right, though it can also be behind me or to my left when circumstances dictate it should be there, either due to insufficient right-hand space or sufficient left-hand presentiment. Also, I usually have an iPod and headphones somewhere nearby. Where exactly doesn't matter, but I will say they are almost never at my feet. I do not smoke at my desk. I'd rather risk running into Gary then smoke at my desk. Even though I am known to snap the photos, and sometimes I will stop to do just that, I do not like a lot of snapped photos around me while I'm engaged in guff confrontation. Maybe just one snap. Or two. But often, none.

One of the reasons I like this hotel is I'm able to sufficiently engineer this workspace. The rooms here are quite good for battling guff. And that's pretty much all I could ask for from a hotel room.

Monica left a few minutes ago. We talked for a bit but we didn't have sex, which is strange. I had invited her up with the intention of sex. What other intention would there have been? And it was clear when she walked in, that it was with the intention of sex. Smelling like she did. Moving like she did. There were no greeting formalities. Just a deep and sudden tongue kiss. One of those kisses where your teeth knock and accidental bites occur. But then we wound up on the couch and, as clothes were falling from body to floor, I started talking. And what I started talking about was guff. And you could literally feel the sex get sucked out of the room, like through a hole in the fuselage of a plane. And I considered trying to put my hand over the hole. I thought maybe I should try to salvage some of this sex. But it was too late. Even merciful blow-jobs do not survive in this atmosphere. And so then we were just there, partially naked, talking and fidgeting with each other's skin, the mood suddenly as benign and sexless as Monday-morning news radio.

"I'm thinking I might not go back," I said.

"Why would you do that?" she said. "There is nothing for you here."

Fucking guff. Among the many things to not like about it is its ability to destroy sex. Which is funny, because one of the ways I've discovered to bring on some really killer guff, is through sex. Particularly hotel sex. Or wall sex. Or floor sex. Or over-the-desk sex. Or camera sex. (My god, camera sex.)

So now it's just Honey and me. She is on the made bed. The made bed Monica made earlier today. She's curled up right in the center. A small lifeboat of smooth fur in a big ocean of cool cotton, oblivious to any and all displays of guff heroics or parries.

For now, I've given up. The surest sign of my giving up is that I am watching a video of an artist and heroin addict alone in her room recording herself masturbate with her Web cam. Her big walnut eyes are staring into the screen, less an expression of pleasure on her face than one of fascination. The way an artist might look at her subject. Just there, staring directly at herself, which is also directly back at me, and us both watching herself. As she fucks herself.

Let me back up...

One of the things in my possession is a hard drive. It's something that was given to me by the mother of a former student of mine. It's funny how you can be an influence on somebody and not even know it. As a professor, you usually know the students who have gotten something important out of your class. You know by their involvement. Even if they don't come out and say it (they never do) you know when they feel excited about the thing you're teaching. Maybe what they're sensing is their own glimpses of guff. Maybe what they're sensing is the thing they want to do battle with. In any case, it wasn't really like that with Jessica Ann Giraldi. Which is why I was surprised when I got the hard drive from her mother. And this note:

Dear Mr. Case,

My daughter died a few weeks ago and, my god, I have so many things here. These things that belonged to her and it tears me up. I am just so sad. She was a beautiful girl but she took drugs. It is what killed her. Heroin. She would come home sometimes and she would be clean. And then she would leave and it would start again. The thing that hurts is I knew this would happen. I loved her and I am sad every day. I think about that maybe I could have stopped this. I tried. Maybe I didn't try hard enough? She talked about you a lot when she was in college. She said you had a way of making words interesting and she said you inspired her. I know it's been almost ten years. Do you remember her even a little? Her thing wasn't writing so much, so you may not. She liked taking photos. And she also drew and painted. She got pretty good at it. Though I never much cared for her subjects. The stuff is all in boxes here around me. I can't look at it. I don't want to look at it. Anyway, I think you should have this hard drive. I know you write and Jessica always said how you also liked art and would talk about it in your classes. I just wonder if you would find things on this that would inspire you. Somebody should. Somebody should be inspired by her. And I don't know who else to send it to or who else would. Definitely not any of her friends. And I won't have need for it.

Sincerely,
Robin Giraldi

It came in a plain brown box. Just the note, with the strange last sentence, and the hard drive wrapped in bubble-wrap.

I didn't do anything with the hard drive or the note for about a month. I kept it in its opened box on the kitchen table, where we never eat. My wife asked me what it was. I told her. She said it was creepy. I agreed. This was before I left. This was before my sabbatical. Which may become less of a sabbatical and more of an extended stay.

I did remember Jessica. She had only been in two classes of mine: a freshman-level English class and an advanced-level 20th-Century American Novel class. We didn't have any one-on-one conversations, even though my door is always open to students. What I remember is that she wrote well, though not in an "academic" voice. Her papers weren't exactly "A-Grade" material. She had insight, but her prose was rough. Her arguments were sometimes sloppy. But they were always interesting, in the end. The main thing I remember is that she always included a photograph on the final page. It would be glued on. It would have some connection to the paper, however loose. I found this charming, if completely irrelevant. I would tell her as much. I would write this in red ink in the margins. Interesting...but irrelevant. She kept doing it, though. Considering we never really had a conversation, her papers—and those photographs—are why she stands out to me at all. I think I mostly gave her a B- with advice written on the back of the final page on how to clean up her prose and tighten her argument.

After several weeks of the box just sitting on our kitchen table, I finally wrote a note to Robin Giraldi:

Dear Ms. Giraldi,

I am very sorry to hear of your loss. From what I remember about Jessica, she was a creative student with a lot of promise. I am very sad to hear that she has passed.

I must admit that I am surprised that you even knew who I was, much less felt compelled to send me this hard drive. But I will keep it.

Very best regards,
Michael Case

I was purposefully vague in the letter about whether or not I would even look at it. But I have. I have, by now, looked at all of the art on the hard drive. The photographs are more mature than what I remembered from her papers. Mature both in subject matter and in technique. They are more professional, but also more distrurbing. Most are highly sexual. Often violent. People who have been scarred from what appears to be horrific accidents. People injecting drugs. Prostitutes. Johns. They make you feel the need to shower. And somehow you like it.

In addition to images, there are folders filled with video. The video is mostly of Jessica. She seems to have liked photographing and filming herself. Her self-portraits are scattered around the hard drive in different folders, but there is one folder that is filled with just that: self-portraits and self-video. Many of these ones of herself are flattering. But many are not. Some seem to be intentionally unflattering. There is one of her vomiting into a toilet. One of her injecting heroin into her hand between her knuckles. She seems determined, in this very raw, journalistic way, to document her obsessions and addictions and torments.

I'm watching this one I particularly like right now. The laptop is on the floor and she is on the floor in front of it in nothing but a bra and panties. Her legs are spread open to it and she is pulling aside her panties. Not in a sexy way. Just in this very slow, deliberate way. And she is watching herself with her big almond eyes that don't blink. She tucks in her chin, keeping her eyes on the screen. Changing the direction of her profile to see the effect on the image staring back at her.

If you want to see something honest, watch somebody as they're looking at themselves in a mirror or camera. It is one of the most pure, unaffected things a person does. People tend to be bridled with self-consciousness when they are going about their daily lives. But when their eye turns on themselves, and it is just that person and their self, the worry of other eyes disappears for a moment. This is true even in public spaces: A store-front window reflection, a mirror in a department store. But it is most true in private: in bathroom mirrors, in rear-view mirrors, and in Web cams.

When you're watching somebody watch themselves it doesn't get any more real than that. People do not get any more real than that. And watching Jessica, watching Jessica watch Jessica, I didn't feel bad or like I was invading her privacy. It felt like this is what she wanted. To present herself honestly to the world. To some stranger's eye. In those moments she was alive with me, this stranger I didn't know at all, but who I may have known better than anybody I've ever known. Who did the things we do when we are alone and the door is closed. The things we all do. The things we all pretend we don't.

In some parcel of time and space, we are—all of us—never alone. We are all doing this private thing together. And we are doing it to ourselves. Somewhere there is a mirror and a morrow that we are always staring at or into or through. And what I think we all hope, secretly or not-so-secretely at all, is that somewhere there is somebody staring back. And not judging us. And seeing the person we are and the person we were and the person we want to be. And accepting that.

I watched Jessica watch Jessica on my screen and I thought: This is Rita.

The letter I wrote to Jessica's mom was returned to me months later. It was inside another envelope with no return address. It said:

Dear Mr. Case,

Thank you for writing. I'm sorry to inform you my sister Robin has passed away. She has committed suicide. She never read your letter.

Regards,
Samantha Baxter

Fucking guff.

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Speaking in Neologisms

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 08:07:30 EST

I am big on repetition. I worry that this is a symtpom of my atrophying mind. I worry I have to repeat things in order to understand them. And that maybe I'm not smart enough to understand them the first time. But then I think I have probably always been this way. Because I've always been big on repetition. So perhaps I have never been smart enough and this is nothing new and I should stop worrying.

Or maybe it's just that I like repetition. Maybe that's all it is.

If I were a lawyer, I'd be a staunch advocate for repetition. If I were a doctor, I wouldn't treat anything presenting as repetition, even if it were infected and festered. If I were a fighter, I'd have repetition's back, by god. And I'd cut an asshole that got all up in repetition's face.

At night, when there are no other options, I do the dishes, which are usually caked with nothing except a day of rinse water from sitting at the bottom of the sink. I busy myself with various chores of organization and alignment. The bottle which goes back in the cupboard. The butts which go in the trash. The photos which go back in the shoebox. The clothes which go back in the corner. The putting away of things. The composition of a life so I can deconstruct it all again tomorrow.

I do this and I think about the problems and the problems go where the things go. The problems of narrative and the problems of character. They find their boxes and they find their shelves, and they find their miserable little sentences and paragraphs.

And it always feels better to have composed and disposed. To have conducted this transposition of evidence, this shift of blame and complaint.

I like to repeat words. And I like to repeat sounds. The repetition of many sounds can lead to a song. And the repetition of many songs can lead to a theme. Repeating sounds and songs—and finding themes and discovering voices—adds layers to the composition I am seeking out.

More than anything, I like to repeat mistakes. And I'll repeat a mistake as long as I'm allowed to do it, or until I'm bored by it. My mistakes have names. Like Smitty. Or Bupropion. Repeating words and repeating mistakes are the same thing. I am always more impressed by the music of words than I am with their meanings, and that constantly gets me in trouble. I feel like I am always not saying what I mean. And I worry that everything coming out of my mouth is a series of neologisms, understood by nobody. Not even me.

There is a form of dementia called frontotemporal dementia. In medical articles, it's shortened to FTD, which reminds me of flowers. FTD reminds me of flowers because I live in a commercial landscape that lends itself to economic and capitalist associations.

Capitalist associations are not the worst kind of associations a person can make. I could say FTD is to frontotemporal dementia as DOA is to dead on arrival. We are all dead on arrival. Death is a chronic, degenerative condition caused by living and we all have it.

(God, I am so tired of comparisons.)

Anyway, one of the symptoms of FTD is repetition, along with an artistic obsession with one thing. To take a real-world example, Ravel's "Balero" is said to be an early symptom of the composer's dementia, his imminent unraveling. But let's use a hypothetical: a rose, let's say (to keep with the flower theme.) A painter who has FTD might paint a rose one hundred times. Or more. One thousand times. A thousand renditions of a single fucking rose. And as he is going about repeating and exploring this obsession with the rose, he is also, quietly, in the background, losing his mind. Losing his ability to make words about anything else. To make thoughts about anything else.

Of course the rose could be anything.

It could be an orange. Or a goldfish. Or a dog.

Christ, could you imagine being reduced to doing nothing but picture after picture of dogs? Not even dogs plural, but the same dog?

I hate how people are always explaining things. Explaining an intention or a mood. A color choice. As if explaining these things somehow explains themselves. Turning each decision into an existential, self-satisfied manifesto. Explaining why they bought the eco-friendly vehicle with the eco-destroying battery instead of the thirsty sports car. Why they went with cloth diapers instead of disposable. Why they only watch feminist porn. Why they only buy local. (Or why there is really no such thing as "local" anymore.) Explaining the correct way to think about race, or gender, or sex. Or an abstract thing like "privilege." Spending the space of a couple thousand words dissecting it and analyzing it. Reaching no real conclusion, but explaining the hell out of it, nonetheless.

Explaining things is easy. And it feels like a proper thing to do. It is good to explain something. It is good to justify. It lends itself to the notion that you will, that you can in fact, be understood by other people. That you are not alone.

For me, however, the explanation of a thing often seems inversely related to the understanding of it. Often, the more a person explains something, the more questions I have, and the less I actually seem to comprehend and know.

Understanding things is really, really difficult. Nevertheless, doing the act of comprehension lends a certain credibility to existence. And helps us, in turn, make a long line of explainable decisions that we can feel comfortable about when doing our taxes or applying for a marriage license or saying our prayers or doing our yoga exercises. And so we are always engaged in this explaining business.

I admit, understanding things makes me feel upstanding and moral and legitimate. It makes me feel like a decent citizen to come to an understanding about something. To form an opinion on it. To have reached a conclusion and to make sense out of it, and be able to explain that sense-making to others. But at the root of reaching a conclusion is the belief that there is a conclusion to be reached. Which is a belief I simply don't have about most things. And therefore, I almost never feel upstanding. Or moral. Or legitimate.

I say we stop explaining. And we stop trying to understand. And we just play and experiment and repeat the words that are beautiful to us, even if they are mistakes. Don't explain to anybody why you fell down at your daughter's dance recital and cut your head. Why you then ran out onto the lawn, where the sprinklers happened to be on that night, your head bloody and your body wet, and why you fell to your knees and vomited cranberry and vodka. Don't explain why when your ex tried to help you up, you stood up and spit at him while your daughter and your daughter's friends and their parents and your husband's new wife looked on. Don't explain why you fucked your friend's husband in your car at a rest stop off of Highway 81. Why you told her you'd always have her back and would always be there for her. Why, when you meet her at the Main Street Tavern for drinks, you carry a note her husband wrote you in your purse and you sometimes leave your purse open when you go to the bathroom and the note folded, but showing, right at the top. Don't explain that shit. Just do it. You may find others begin to understand you better. You may find you begin to understand yourself better

It is so much harder, so much lonelier to do: to not explain. To let people form opinions without your help. But the reality is that they're going to do it anyway. They'll ask for your goddamned birth certificate and after you give it to them, they'll still assert you're not a citizen. They'll ask for a blood test after your race and when you come up clean, they'll still say you've cheated. They'll understand the story they want to understand. And if you don't try to give them the story, you'll feel less marginalized and angry when they get it wrong.

Fuck it. I want to always speak in neologisms. I want to set out in making sense to nobody, least of all myself. And to take pleasure in the repetition. The ongoing narration. The layers and layers of sound and voice.

The survival time for somebody with FTD is about seven years. Probably only three or four of those are actually somewhat decent. Seven years is a pretty long time to work on the project of dying. In seven years, a person can die of a whole host of other living-related side-effects. Murder, for instance, is a side-effect of living most people don't have to confront. There is no cure for murder. Once you get it, the prognosis is grim. It takes only a fraction of the time FTD takes. It is contracted by motive, and sometimes it is spread by an accomplice. Suicide is a variant of murder, but sometimes they can present with a lot of the same symptoms.

Of course I'm talking about the narrative now. I'm talking about the character of me, here.

Not me.

I couldn't be fucked to actually map out my own death.

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The Blue-Eyed Man in a Suit

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:56:47 EST

The Blue-Eyed Man in a Suit

On Rollerblading and Mylinating

If I wanted to be an expert at rollerblading, and if I believed Malcomb Gladwell about achieving expertness, I would have about 9,997 more hours of rollerblading practice ahead of me, give or take a few minutes. In those hours of breath and sweat and flailing arms, my body would gradually get more familiar with the sensation of gliding on concrete. My sense of balance and timing would adapt to the reality of wheels. I would be able to anticipate dangers quicker. My awkward, jerky motions would turn into smooth, confident strides. It would become less an exercise in careening, and more of just plain exercise. Muscles in my legs and core, muscles that before were weak and unused, would get stronger and bigger.

Also, my brain would grow new white matter.

According to Rex Jung, a neuropsychologist interviewed by Krista Tippett for an episode of On Being about Creativity and the Brain, Myelinating is the process of forming new connections in the brain, new white matter. And in the process of becoming an expert at rollerblading, I would myelinate like a motherfucker.

If you want to know the truth, this last thing is mostly why I've decided to start rollerblading. Sure, it would be nice to be able to go zipping on wheels through the paved streets at the reservation with the dogs. Sure it would be cool to have them run and pull me, like Cesar's dogs on the Dog Whisperer. But mostly, I want to exercise my brain. I want it to grow and not atrophy.

Also, I do not want to die.

Two studies, one from 2004 at University of Regensburg, and one from 2009 at Oxford University, examined how learning to juggle affected the brain. MRI scans of participants showed an increase in white matter and enhanced connections. I love this. How as I practice a new thing, my brain will physically change and grow, not just in an abstract sense—like I will develop a more nuanced perception of my environment, or better control over my actions, quicker reflexes and timing—but in a very concrete, physical sense. Certain parts will get bigger, like a muscle. I love what this says about the connection between body and mind, how doing a physical thing can increase cognitive ability.

Vats Hold Butter, Not Brains

I do not believe I am only my brain. I think "soul" and "essence" are good words, and I believe we have them, but I don't think either exist entirely in our white and grey matter. When I refer to "me" I'm referring to something else. Something we don't leave behind. Something we take with us when we die.

That said, I believe that if you destroyed my brain, you would destroy a significant part of me. If you took away my brain's function, you would take away the "me" I am now. In all practicality, I would die. The me who likes oatmeal at breakfast and an IPA or six with dinner. The me who types stories into machines. He'd be gone. I could not speak. I could not laugh. I could not cry. I could not scream or whisper. I could not drive a car. Or play music. Or talk to a friend. I could not touch a woman's face or feel the sweat at the small of her back or taste her sex. And all of this means that I would be dead. I would not be the same "me." I am of the unshakeable conviction that this is true.

But the "essence," the "soul" of me: that would still exist. Somewhere. Not here. Not physically. It would exist in the memories of other people. It would exist in stories. In words on paper. In images and photos.

Eulogies are Songs, and This is the Chorus

My brain surely looks different today than it did ten years ago. Also, I look different today than I did ten years ago. It's not a coincidence. These two things are related.

When I look at myself, I don't see the same person I used to see. And when I go searching for words, I don't find the same ones I used to find. I've died many deaths. And I will die many more. I've written scores of eulogies for myself. And I'm composing at least three right now, not including this one.

I've listened to songs and other musical things that have made my heart so happy it swells in my chest and gives me the cold, tight goosebumps. A well-timed cymbal crash in a Wilco song. An Ani DiFranco lyric. An Oscar Peterson solo. The emotional build of a tune or speech. The appropriate silence.

The laugh of my wife.

The smile of my best friend.

And I've listened to other things that make my heart ache and ache. A piano blues crawl. An Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis saxophone wail. Tom Waits singing "Anywhere I Lay My Head."

The way we look at each other.

The scared cry in the middle of the night from my wife.

The tears of my best friend.

The silent tension of hospital rooms.

Boarding a plane to leave my dad.

The whispered voice of my sick mother.

I've taken my bed sheet and balled it with my fist. Both in times when I'm crying and all I want to do is die, and in times when I'm coming and everything gets boiled down to that one sweet thing, focused and clear and good and right. I've felt the cool, calm oblivion in pain and joy. And I've held on to it for as long as I can, the way you hold on to a good drunk.

And I've wished for some moments to come back to me. And I've hoped some moments never end. The good ones, and the bad ones.

I've loved the people I've loved. And I've watched them die. And I've felt okay about both.

The things I've done have changed me. The thoughts I've given into. The thoughts I've let consume me. The foods I've eaten. The drugs I've taken. The measured drinks at the measured times. The hours I've spent online, in front of a screen writing sentences. The things I've read. The movies I've watched. The thoughts I've squeezed into 140-characters or less. The drugs I've taken. The people I've fucked.

All the things I've chosen to practice in my life.

This. Now.

My brain is not the same. It is expanding and it is also dying. It is changing and growing and it is also remaining the same and atrophying. It has lived and died in the stories I've told. It has lived and died in the stories of others.

Intentional Accidents

Everything I've written over the last year has ended up being about my mom. I think mostly this is a necessary and healthy symptom of her death. Even though it has put a freeze on some stories I was writing before she died, it has lead to me writing a lot of words that I wasn't able to write before. So that's good. But it has also given rise to a trend in my writing where she appears in pieces almost by accident, but not quite. Sort of an intentional accident.

A few months before my mom died, after I knew something was wrong with her brain, but before I knew what it was, she came to visit me in New Jersey. Things were not okay with her. Her staying with me made that painfully clear. I was scared for her. I was scared that she woke up at night and didn't know where she was. I was scared and heartbroken when she fell asleep in front of the TV and woke up so confused only minutes later. The look of near panic on her face.

My fear often came out as annoyance. I was annoyed she couldn't remember what we were doing from one moment to the next. I was annoyed she couldn't converse with me like she used to. I was annoyed and angry she was not the same woman. I felt like I had already lost her. I felt like the woman I knew no longer existed and that this woman was an imposter.

And then, out of nowhere, there would be these moments of clarity. Moments of intelligence. Or wisdom. Or humor, or joy. And suddenly she was herself again. And I would get optimistic. And I would hold on to a hope that she wasn't dead, after all.

One weekend while she was staying with me, I drove her to DC to see her best friend. It was a Saturday morning. It was drizzling and the I-95 was wet. We had just passed the Delaware toll booth into Maryland. I had country music on. It reminded me of when I was young and we would drive from Houston, Texas to Georgetown, Kentucky each summer to see my mom's sister. And we'd drive through Arkansas and Tennessee and manually turn the dial (no digital scan) from one country music radio station to the next, listening to the songs that were popular in the early 80s. My mom was not a southerner. She grew up in Michigan. But she always liked country music. She liked the lyrics of country songs. She liked the voice and timbre and twang.

I didn't have a lot of the country she knew readily available on our drive to DC that Saturday morning, but I did have some Old 97s, so I put that on to help break up the silence. And to help break up the monotony of the discussion we kept having: Where are we going?...Oh that's right...How long will I be there?

I just heard a Soundcheck episode about how music can help people with dementia. How it can help them regain enthusiasm and confidence. How it can help them feel and remember. I know this was the case with my mom. When we listened to the songs she knew, she was always the person I remembered her to be. But even with songs she didn't know. Even then, there was something there that wasn't before.

When "Victoria" played that morning on our drive, my mom's face, too often riddled with confusion or worry, got peaceful. She nodded her head to the beat. She said, I like this. The song had played on my various listening devices hundreds of times. Maybe thousands. Still today, it cycles on my iTunes at regular intervals. I don't really pay any attention to the lyrics anymore, except for the way the words sound. Song lyrics and even some poetry is like that for me: less about the meaning and more about the sound.

This is the story of Victoria Lee,
She started off on percodan and ended up with me.
She lived in Berkeley 'til the earthquake shook her loose.
She lives in Texas now where nothin' ever moves.

We drove, listening to the music and watching the windshield wipers push water off the glass in front of us. My mom seemed more relaxed. She took her hand off the "oh-shit" bar above the passenger-side window. She tapped her finger on her lap.

She lost her lover to an accident at sea.
She pushed him overboard and ended up with me.

My mom laughed. I asked her what was funny. She said, "'Lost her lover to an accident at sea.' Not exactly an 'accident,' was it?"

She'd only heard the song one time and she was listening close enough that she found the irony in the lyric and it had resonated. So much didn't resonate with her anymore. She missed so much. And yet, she caught this. I'd listened to the song a lot. And, to be honest, I hadn't ever given that particular lyric much thought. Even though I'm a fan of irony, I hadn't ever explicitly thought about "accident at sea" being "pushed him overboard." I have to admit: I'm a little embarrassed to admit this.

I looked at her, and right then I saw a version of my mom I hadn't seen in a long time: Smart. Sharp. I remembered those road trips she and I used to take. I remembered how she loved songs by Willie or Waylin or Conway Twitty or John Conlee. I remembered her singing along to "Hello, Darlin'," or "On The Road Again," or "Rose Colored Glasses." I remembered how those trips brought me so much happiness, just being with her. I remembered how comfortable I felt and how safe and secure, and how sure I was that as long as I was with her, everything would be okay.

I rarely felt any of that anymore. When I was with her, it usually made me anxious or worried. I was the caretaker. She was the child. But right then, I remembered that this woman from my past had existed. That she still existed somewhere. And that I loved that woman and also the woman that existed now. And it was possible to remember both of them and love each of them equally.

We Are the Stories We Tell

Memory defies the traditional metaphors we often use to describe it. Memory is not like a file cabinet, filled with documents that we thumb through until we find the right one. It is also not like a hard drive filled with 1's and 0's. When we remember a thing we aren't "accessing" that thing. We aren't going to a location and pulling it out, like some hard, true artifact, like we would in a library. Thank God. Because I can never find a damn thing in a file cabinet, or a library. If it is not out in the open for me to see, then I completely forget it exists.

Research done by Joe LeDoux, who has studied fear in rats at NYU, has demonstrated that remembering is actually a creative act rather than an act of searching and finding. If you want to learn more about this, listen to this great RadioLab episode. The two big findings of his studies are these: First of all, memories are actual physical things. They are structures, proteins, that connect one thing in our brain to another. Secondly, these proteins get re-created each time a person remembers something. I find the implications of this research fascinating. If we are creating a memory from scratch each time we remember it, we are creating that memory within a new context of our current life, of our current selves. This inherently changes the memory. A memory becomes something different each time we remember it.

Consider that: Remembering our stories is an act of creation. Each time. All our nonfiction is actually fiction.

Even when my mom could not remember what she ate for breakfast that day, or the very fact that she had a brain tumor that would likely kill her, she could remember many of the stories she'd told me about her childhood. When I would get frustrated answering questions about where she was and what was happening to her, I would try to get her thinking about these things, instead. I never knew my grandfather—her father—so I've always enjoyed hearing about him through her memories of him. The stories she told me while she was in the nursing home with a brain tumor were (more or less) the same stories she'd told me my entire life. If the findings from Joe LeDoux's research are correct, then she was re-creating these memories in her ravished brain, even while she could not re-create memories about what was happening to her at that very moment: what she was eating for lunch, where we were going each afternoon at 4pm, or even me being there with her.

Where were these memories about her father? Were these even "memories" anymore? Or were they stories, created out of emotion and love, that she'd become good at telling. Were these stories her identity? Were these stories her "essence?" Her "soul?"

This idea, that we are the stories we tell, is a hypothesis put forth by a neurologist named Paul Broks who was on another RadioLab episode titled Who Am I. I like this idea a lot, and I've stolen it on more than one occasion. But I believe there is more to it.

We Are the Stories Other People Tell

When my sister was alone with my mom in the nursing home and she would mention me, my mom would say to her, "Oh, David was here?" She was surprised. She didn't remember that I had been there with her for most of the day. She didn't remember that I had come down from New Jersey to live in Dallas for a while. My sister would tell me this delicately because she didn't want me to be hurt by it. But I wasn't hurt by it. I was fascinated by it. And I was also grateful. Because whenever I walked into her room each morning, sometimes with Honey, sometimes by myself, she always smiled and she always knew who I was and she always was glad to see me.

Her story of me wasn't gone. It's just that her story of me did not involve this place she was in. Her story of me did not involve this time. I prefer the story she knew, frankly. I'm glad to be that story.

I Can Prove Empiracally That I'm Not an Idiot

They say the best way to learn a thing is to teach it. The better we get at telling a story of something (the better we get at re-creating the memory) the more we come to know it. Also, the more we make the thing we're teaching our own.

I've found this to be true. In one of the jobs I had years ago, I used to train people in various technologies. When I taught those technologies, I got better at understanding them myself. I put the technologies into language that was my own. I re-created those pieces of knowledge and made my own stories to illustrate them. I could remember these stories better than anything I'd ever read.

I am horrible at remembering jokes. This has always been a real handicap for me as a bartender. I'm also horrible at remembering plots and characters in books and movies. This was a real handicap for me as an English major and it continues to be a handicap for me as an avid consumer of culture. Sometimes I see a movie on a Saturday and by Sunday I can't remember the name of it. But I can recall a scene from the movie. Or an actor that was in it (which I usually identify not by name but by "that actor who was in that other movie I love about that other thing.") Mostly, this whole exercise makes me feel like an idiot.

I've come to know this about myself, that I can't remember shit about plots and characters and names, and it's made me careful about bringing up books or movies with friends. It's impossible to appear like a reasonably intelligent person when you say to somebody, "I saw an excellent movie yesterday!" And then when they return with, "Oh yeah? What movie?" you give them a blank stare and say, "I forgot the name of it."

Look, I'm fairly positive I am not an idiot. In fact, I believe I can prove this empiracally: 1) My college, despite my terrible remembering skills, awarded me a scholarship my junior year for "academic excellence." 2) I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 3.9 GPA. 3) I spent a part of my life programming Web sites to interact with databases (something that even now sounds completely daunting to me.) 4) Even though once, early on in my childhood, I put my shoes on the wrong feet, I never repeated the mistake...sober.

See? I'm fairly postive I am not an idiot. But I will tell you this: In college, I was terrified by exams that I knew were going to ask me to "ID" passages, or recall character names. I could write excellent essays regarding the concepts and themes of a book or story. But when it came to any factual pieces of information about the piece, those things never stuck. If I knew I had to remember actual, concrete facts, I would study feverishly for days, storing everything I could in my short-term memory, only to forget it a few days after the exam.

This troubles me and it scares the shit out of me. I'm worried about having the same fate as my mom. I already forget way more than I remember. Eventually, I will forget just about everything.

On the other hand there are many books and movies I can speak about in great depth and I can sound almost like I know what the hell I'm talking about. So here's what I think: the books I've read and the movies I've seen are no longer the movies or books themselves, they are the stories I tell about them.

I will say that again: The books I've read and the movies I've seen are the stories I tell about them.

You don't get any more real than that. Nobody does.

There is Always a Blue-Eyed Man in a Suit

Even though our minds change, there are constants. There are things we keep remembering: there are the stories we continue to create and tell. Some of the stories are happy. And some of them are sad. But they stick and they stick. They are stubborn like that. Things happen, and we try to make sense out of them. And we get obsessed with them. And the obsession fuels our desire to understand them. And so we tell stories about them as a way to sort them out.

I've often heard it said that novelists tell the same stories over and over again. I think this is true, and not just of novelists. Songwriters, too. All artists, in fact, have their bugaboos. I can tell a mean story about love affairs and illicit sex. Or family dysfunction. Or existential angst. Or, on a happier note, dogs. To me, these are the only stories. There are no other ones worth telling. Don't ever ask me to write a story about orphanhood. You'd be better off checking out Charles Dickens or John Irving. If you want something with historical accuracy, a sweeping saga perhaps, set in a particular time or place, James Michener might be your guy. If you like stories about the Jewish American experience you might be a Philip Roth fan. Or maybe you only read him for the kinky sex.

Nobody is good at all things. Even when we're good at one thing, we're really good a subset of that one thing. And it's the thing that drives us to obsession. It's the thing that drives us to work on it and work on it and try to perfect it.

We spend 10,000 hours on it. Maybe more.

But no matter how good we get at it, it never makes complete sense. We never get it "perfect." If we did, we'd stop needing to practice it.

Even though my mom would forget that people had come to see her, she would remember certain things about certain visitors, and these things would get stuck in her brain. For instance, she forgot that her brother had come to see her. But she did remember there was a "blue-eyed man in a suit," that had visited her, and she would mention this several times a day. The thing is, I have no idea who she was talking about. Her brother had blue eyes but he never had on a suit. There was a minister that came and he was dressed nicely, but also not in a suit. And I don't think he had blue eyes, though I can't say I noticed.

But she believed this as much as she believed anything: that a blue-eyed man in a suit had come to visit her. It was the story she told and it was as true as anything she knew, even when it wasn't. It was concise. Not much of a plot. A bit open-ended. I'll say this: it left a lot to the listener's imagination. But it was her story, one of several she told in that last month or so, and looking back, I'm glad I got to hear her tell it. Because it was evidence of her spirit and her ability to create. It was evidence that she was alive. There were so many stories she could no longer tell. But she could tell that one, by God.

Sometimes, I find myself mourning the loss of the stories I used to know. I mourn the words I can no longer find. But then I'll get Honey and Rothko and we'll go for a ride in the truck, and we'll go to the places we visit. We'll walk paths and we'll come back and look for rabbits under the shed. And those are words I didn't used to have. And I'm so fucking grateful for them. And I'll repeat them until I can't. And they'll be good.

And maybe eventually I'll wear my rollerblades to the reservation. And my leg muscles will get bigger. And my balance will get better. And I'll grow that new white matter and make those new connections in my brain. And I'll myelenate like a motherfucker.

I don't always find the words I want to find. The stories I tell are never perfect. But I will keep trying. And as long as I find words. Some words. Any words, goddamnit. As long as I do that, I will tell the story I have to tell, and I'll be the person I talk about, which is what I have always wanted to be. And I'll keep looking for my own blue-eyed man in a suit, right up to the end.

-----

Further Exploration:

Creativity and the Everyday Brain, On Being. Rex Jung interviewed by Krista Tippett

Memory and Forgetting. RadioLab. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich talk to writer Jonah Lehrer and neuroscientist Joe LeDoux.

Who Am I. RadioLab. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich talk to writer Jonah Lehrer and neurologist Paul Broks.

Memories Through Music, Soundcheck. John Schaefer speaks with Dan Cohen about how dementia patients can benefit from music.

Juggling 'Can Boost Brain Power', BBC News.

Juggline Increases Brain Power, BBC News.

Go To Post

The Killing Things

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:03:41 EST

The good thing about working on my novel every day and treating it like a job, which is something I've done since returning from South America a month ago, is that I'm slowly making progress. I do a little each day. There is still no end in sight, but I'm learning to enjoy the process. I'm seeing the benefits of keeping my head in the game and how it's paying off over time. I'm learning to confront the fear I have over this thing. Not the novel in specific, but the writing, in general. So there's all that to be excited about. Which is a lot, I think.

The bad thing about working on my novel every day and treating it like a job is that I have nothing to post here. Which probably bothers nobody except me, but does bother me nonetheless. Posting things here has always been a little reward to myself. Which seems silly to hear myself say that. But I think it's true. So today I'm going to post the chapter I just finished, even though it's probably not really finished. I do need to stop working on it for now, though, and move on to something else. So, in part, I think posting it here will help me get it off my plate, psychologically speaking.

While there are important things going on in our world, and protests happening downtown, and economies like ours that don't seem to be recovering, I fully understand the insignificance of my little pieces of prose that contain my little preoccupations. And that insignificance stings a little bit. But it doesn't get to me as much as it used to. Because one thing I realized, thanks to C and also thanks to my friend Paul, is that if I died today, my biggest regret would be not following through on doing this. Which means it is significant. To me. It has to be.

In the past I've offered little explanation of what I post here, but with this I feel different. With this, I'm proud to call it the "big thing I'm working on." With this, I want people to know what it is and not wonder "What the fuck?"

This is chapter eleven. The chapter I posted here last time was chapter one. A lot happened in between. Posting random chapters out of context seems like precarious business. There are things happening here that have significance to earlier chapters. There are characters that are mentioned here that were introduced about thirty thousand words ago. At the same time, there are self-contained things here that can stand on their own. And themes that fit in with other things I've posted here on this site, not to mention real-life events. This might make it ideal to post here. Or confusing. Or redundant. I'm not sure which. Maybe all three.

A fair warning: bits of this are R-Rated. If you're not into R-Rated reading, maybe skip this, okay?

One more thing: This completely violates the rules on length I've set for myself on what I post here. Hell, this introduction alone violates it. I'm honestly banking on the hope that most of you will see how long it is and decide not to read it. Which begs the question: Why post it?

Whatever. I'm not going to over-think it. (Too late, I know).

The Killing Things

The things that are going to kill me are the things that help me forget that I'm dying. Not that I'm dying, in the terminal-illness sense of the word. More like, I'm dying in the we're-all-dying sense. And I think about that all the time. Which is not a great way to live. So to put it out of my head, I pour another drink. Or I take another pill. Or I smoke another cigarette. Or, if things get really desperate, I have sex with somebody I barely know. And for a few moments I am just in that moment doing that thing. And I am not floundering. Or sad. Or confused. I'm not thinking about what happened earlier that day. Or how I could have dealt with something differently. Or what I'm going to do later. I'm not in the past or the future. Just the now. And it feels good. And it feels right.

Until later. When I realize that doing these things I do will eventually bring about the thing I'm avoiding.

If I keep smoking every time I start worrying about cancer, there will eventually be cancer to deal with. And hospital beds. And breathing trouble. The same way it was for my grandfather, whose labored mechanical breathing, and the rise and fall of his bird-like frame in the last few hours of his life, still haunt me.

And if I keep drinking on top of the pills I take to relieve my anxiety? The anxiety which may give me ulcers? Well, then I might get ulcers. All the labels say this. All the goddamned labels on all the goddamned bottles. They all say this. "Daily alcohol use is risky."

Risky? Let's talk about risky.

Risky is getting up in the morning. Risky is driving to the grocery store in your car. Risky is riding a bike down Massachusetts Avenue. Risky is standing under a goddamned tree. It's getting married. Or having kids. Or meeting new people. It's loving somebody. Putting your trust in a friend. It's all fucking risky.

And while I'm on the subject, here's another thing that's risky: putting my tongue against the warm, wet cunt of every girl that helps me forget I'm alone and focuses me. Which, at the end of the day, is the only kind of girl worth knowing. The kind with the dangerous laugh. The kind with the perilous skin. The kind I want to consume. The kind that eventually consumes me. And I just don't care. I don't care because when I'm with that kind of girl, I don't care about anything. I don't care about my mom slowly dying in the nursing home. I don't care about Jenny and the baby we lost. I don't care about my failing career and my lost personhood. I don't care about getting older and the pain creeping into my hands and neck and joints. I don't care if this time I am consumed to the point of oblivion. I don't care if this time I don't recover.

Some things you don't recover from. Some women. Some drugs. Some cures. Anything worth doing. Anybody worth knowing. They have the kind of consequences you can't undo.

On the other hand, maybe none of these things will get me. It's possible, it might even be probable, that they won't. And that's the thing that's truly terrifying: Maybe in the end, it'll be my brain to go. The way it is with my mom right now, who's forgotten how to dress herself and how to do the things that used to make her happy. And maybe there's nothing I can do about that. Maybe this is my future no matter what, no matter how many cigarettes I do or don't smoke. No matter how many scotches I do or don't drink. No matter how many women I do or don't fuck. And so I should just enjoy the things that help me forget. And go about doing them over and over until I can't do them any longer.

Risa wasn't the first woman I'd been with outside of my marriage with Jenny. She was just the first woman I'd been with who I loved. She was also the first woman I'd been with who was married to my best friend. Despite, or perhaps because of these things, she let me forget. She gave me a respite from death like nothing I'd felt for some time.

She supplied the oblivion I needed.

It's always about getting that oblivion, until one day the oblivion gets you.

The Monday after the party at our apartment, I went to my studio and listened to the tracks Risa and I had recorded together a month earlier. Then I called her. She was still sleeping.

"Hello?" Her voice was low and sleepy.

"Hi."

"Oh, hey." She yawned. She audibly stretched.

"Is Adam at work?" I asked.

"Yeah. Of course. What's up?"

"You should come by the studio today. I'm finally done mixing the tracks. You could listen to them with me. See what you think."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I think they're ready."

"Ok," she said. "That's..." I could tell she was stretching again. She yawned. "That's great."

There was a long silence, which was filled with the things I wanted to say but didn't. Like maybe I was in love with her. Like maybe this thing was about more than sex.

"I'm glad you called," she said finally. "I've been thinking about you since Saturday."

"It was good seeing you," I said.

"It was," she said. "For me, too."

More silence.

"So you're coming over?" I said.

"Yeah. Give me about an hour."

"Good," I said.

"Bye," she said.

I used to think that I could trick my shadow. That if I ran fast enough, I could beat it. And when that didn't work, I'd try walking extra slow, and I'd lift my foot and put it down with painstaking precision so as to make it not meet the shade it cast at the concrete. When you're young, you think these kinds of things are possible. That you can out-run yourself. Alter reality. You don't need help getting high. You don't need drugs, or money, or people to do it for you. You just leap off the ground. By yourself. You make that leap, off of brick retaining walls in the manicured gardens of shopping malls, out of trees in neighbor's front yards, on your bike on a ramp you make out of dirt and mud on the trail near your house. You do it every chance you get. You do it to see if this time it will happen. If this time, you'll lose your shadow. And it always seems possible. Because, to you, nothing is inevitable, yet. The certainty of foot meeting silhouette. The predetermined mathematics of terminal velocity. The ineluctable truth that you will die. You can go up in a plane, even, and somehow avoid the thought that this hulking hunk of metal and gasoline could easily fall from the sky. All it would take is one malfunction. Some ice on the wing. A bird in one of the engines. But even at that altitude, you're able to avoid it: the thought of death. It's not that you don't understand the concept. It's not that you don't know about crashing planes. You just don't think it could apply to you. It seems implausible. Planes that crash are the kind of planes that other people are on. The kinds of planes you get on are the kinds of planes that fly and fly, and fly forever.

Then you get on a plane one day and you look around at the people who are just like you and you ask yourself: Why not? Why not me? Why not this plane? And from then on, you can't get that thought out of your head. But you keep getting on planes, anyway. And you keep going up in them. And on each new ride, you hear that white roulette wheel ball bouncing. Especially when you're coming back from a sleepless weekend in Vegas with your amphetamine and scotch buzz wearing thin.

And so, to get rid of the thought, you watch the girl who's putting her luggage in the overhead compartment next to you and how her sweater lifts a little bit and you can see the tattoo on her stomach. And the upper hem of her black panties against her olive skin makes your heart leap and you feel it hover there above you and you want it to stay there. And she catches you looking at her and you meet her gaze, which is a gaze into eternity, and your eyes say, You caught me and I don't care. And you smile. And she smiles. And then your eyes say, I want you to jump off the ground with me and we could avoid our shadows together. Just for a little while. As long as we can. And hers say, That sounds nice. And when the plane lands safely at your destination you make sure you're walking behind her off the jet bridge and when she stops at the terminal to adjust her luggage strap you bump into her and you both laugh and you apologize. Then you ask her if she'll have a drink with you. And you don't hide your wedding ring. In fact you put your left hand on display at your right shoulder, not only to emphasize the broadness in your chest , but so she can see that band clearly. Because something tells you she's the kind of woman who holds a lot of interest in that sort of asset. Because you know addicts and addicts know you. And you say to her, "I've never been to this city before." And you say to her, "I don't know anybody here." And these things are lies, because you actually know lots of people here. Because you've actually just landed in your home town.

I know now what everyone comes to know: that I will never put my foot down on the sidewalk in such a way that I will beat my shadow there. But to give up on it is to give in to cowardice. Cowardice is not loving. Or not living. Which are the same thing. When you're doing either well, you're doing something inherently risky. When you're doing either well, you're doing the things that cause you to stare at death. You're doing the things that bring about oblivion, which are the same things you need to keep you from oblivion, suspended in mid-air.

It is the bravest thing to love well. To live well. To be reckless in it. And to let go. And give up control.

And to be ready to die while you're up there in it.

When Risa arrived at the studio, she came in and took off her leather coat and set it on the chair at the soundboard. Her heavy, black biker boots knocked on the wood floor. They had a silver buckle in the leg, and there were faded white stains at the toes and on the sides, which came from walking in salty snow and letting them dry without wiping them. She had on a long-sleeved ,green v-neck t-shirt with a heavy silver necklace that held a black stone pendant. Her black hair, which was so black it was blue, was up and her neck was exposed.

One of her songs was playing. She smiled. She said, "Nice. I like it."

I said, "It's good, right? It has that thing."

"It does," she said and crossed her arms. The bracelet on her right wrist clanked. "It really does. You nailed it. You nailed the sound."

"We nailed it," I said.

"Right," she said. "We nailed it."

"Do you want some coffee?" I asked.

"Ah, yes. That would be awesome," she said. "And one of these would be good." She shook a cigarette from the soft pack I had sitting on the soundboard and took a lighter from the front pocket of her faded jeans.

I had just boiled some water in the electric kettle. I poured an instant coffee packet into a cup and then poured the hot water and stirred it with a spoon. Then I handed it to her.

"Thanks," she said.

When she took the cup, our hands touched, which made my heart lift. The same way it lifts from having the first cup of coffee in the morning. The same way it lifts after my second glass of scotch. Her scent and the smoke surrounded me and wrapped itself around my grey matter and it held on.

I lit a cigarette too. And we stood in the small studio together enjoying nicotine and listening to the recordings we'd both been a part of making. We stood there and we sipped our coffee and we smoked our cigarettes and we moved our heads to the sound. Occasionally she would nod at something and she'd look over at me and smile. A few times she frowned. I heard some things I hadn't heard before. I made a few notes on a yellow pad about some changes I wanted to make.

It's hard to understand that thing you feel when you're listening to music and you connect with it and it connects with you. I've experienced it from several different perspectives: as the person playing the music, as the person listening to it, as the person recording it. I'm what people would call a "music-industry professional." I've learned lots of things about the academics of sound. I've learned the right words to use in talking about it. The right words to use in making it, and listening to it, and recording it. But despite all the things I've come to know about it, despite all the ways I've learned to describe it, I still find myself surprised by it all the time. And that's when I know I've found it: when I discover that special thing I can't explain. Or rather, when I discover that thing I can explain, but explaining it still doesn't make it make sense. When there is still something mysterious about it.

We tend to think of music as coming from the musician. We see it as this solitary, heroic act of genius. But I think this is wrong. I've seen a lot of music being made. And I've made a lot of music myself. And here's what I've come to know: music is an energy independent of us. Musicians tap into it. It doesn't spring forth from them. This doesn't mean that they aren't talented or that it doesn't require some degree of heroism to play. Musicians still have to be brave enough to give themselves to it. And they still have to practice and be talented enough to play what they hear. But the genius—it doesn't come from them. They are just people who happen to be at the right place at the right time. Mostly, because they allow themselves to be. Some people are at the right place at the right time more than others. We call these people "prolific." Others aren't. We call these people "one-hit wonders."

A musician has to learn how to tap into that energy and keep tapping into it. Risa does that. She lets herself play and experiment. She writes songs that are great. And she writes others that aren't. But she keeps doing it, no matter what. And that's a difficult thing to do. To keep playing.

Just to keep playing.

Tapping into the energy is frightening. And exhausting. But it's also intoxicating. To let it consume you. To let it wash over you and to feel the adrenaline and then to have it drain you.

I heard a musician say that every time he tapped into that thing, every time he wrote a new song, it killed him a little more. It killed him to do it, and ride it, and let it consume him. And afterwords it killed him not to do it, during those times when he'd lose it, and when he couldn't find it, or when it couldn't find him. He said that was the reason he drank: to dull the pain of not having it. To dull the way it left him alone afterwards. He said without it, without that energy and adrenaline he'd feel, the rest of his life hurt, and when it left him all he wanted was to have that thing back. But he couldn't just get it back. It didn't always come back. He had to wait for it, sometimes. And the waiting was excruciating.

The longevity of somebody like him has everything to do with a willingness to wait and face the possibility that he may die and that the thing may not ever happen again. That the best sounds are now behind him. There's no way to know. This may be the last crash. This might be the one you don't recover from. And not knowing can actually make you want to die. Which is the ultimate irony of the thing: how a longing to die can rise out of the fear of a death too soon.

Risa and I listened to all the tracks. And when they were over, we got up from our seats and we shook off the listening we'd done.

"They sound great, Nick," she said. "They really do."

"I'm pretty happy with them," I said.

"Yeah, me too."

"So what's next?" I said. "CDs?"

"Yeah," she said. "CDs. I need something to hand out at shows." She leaned against the wall near the door and crossed her arms.

"So let's talk about that. How many do you want? How much do you want to spend? I can talk to some people about artwork for the cover, unless you already have something in mind."

"Alright," she said. "Let me think about it some." There was a silence. We stood there looking at each other. I thought about that night: Her tied to the radiator in her living room. In Adam's living room. The way she pushed against me. The heat from her skin. I reached for the cigarettes.

"You okay?" I said.

"Yeah..." she said. "Just thinking."

"Me too."

"You're kinda cute when you're serious."

I smiled. "You're kinda cute...when you're not," I said.

"I'm almost always serious," she said. "It just seems like I'm not. Playing is deadly serious. But it has to appear like it's not. It has to appear effortless."

I stood there with an unlit cigarette in my mouth. I said, "I think you're right."

She moved over to where I was at the soundboard and stood close to me. I put my hand to her arm. She rested her hand on my belt, then took hold of it, her fingers slipping inside the waist of my jeans, her hand tightened around the leather. She pulled, bringing me closer to her. I let her. I removed the cigarette from my lips and dropped it on the floor. I lowered my head so it was next to hers. Our cheeks nearly touching. Our lips just short of kissing. We stayed like that, barely apart, separated only by the thin sliver of magnetic pull between us, which we resisted and which we withdrew from, even as it brought us closer together. Our lips touched finally, and the touch was loud and unmistakeable. Like a plane crash. And there was the roaring sound of metal on concrete and the tearing of fuselage and the heavy, heavy inexorable crush and scrape. And we pulled away, lifting up a little longer, suspended off the ground. Prolonging the inevitable. And there was heat now, and a rush of sound in my ears, and there was the smart from that initial landing, and there was the draw of the ground, pulling us back. But there was also the opposing desire to remain up, and to hold on to this temporary pleasure of floating, where it seemed like we could stay forever, not quite together, but not quite apart, racing hearts and pounding heads. That rush of flying. That surge of adrenaline. Hovering just above the earth, alert with anticipation, and ready to die.

And then the landing happened and we let it. The full force of the crash. Me into her. Her into me. She was against the soundboard, and her hand went back and touched some knobs and the music started to play again, and it was loud and it drowned out the sounds we made. And we were joined now and there was no going back and I pressed against her and she pressed against me. And there was nowhere for either of us to go except into each other. And there was no shadow between us. There was nothing from which to run.

I thought briefly that this might be wrong, but the thought was small and had no room to fight against this thing that was happening. I put my hand to her chest and her hands went to undoing and unbuttoning and unzipping. And her hands were decisive. They did not equivocate. We kept our lips together. I felt for the bottom of her shirt and I lifted up on it and brought it over her head. And her warm skin was there and her small breasts underneath the blue shiny fabric of her bra, which I unhinged in back, and let hang there on her shoulders for a moment, cupping her underneath it and then lifting up on the bra and easing it off. And I was becoming unhinged too. My mind. But also, my jeans, which hung, not quite on, but not quite off, momentarily suspended, undone and loose around my hips. I stepped back and brought them down off my legs, revealing my hard-on, full and up and unmistakeable against my innocent boxers.

Risa sat on the edge of the soundboard, and she leaned back and put one of the salt-stained, black boots to my chest. It smelled the way a boot should smell, like leather and dirt and the hard earth. She said, "Wait."

"What?" I said.

"Just wait," she said. She kept her eyes directed at mine. Her jeans were also unbuttoned and unzipped and she put her hand underneath them and underneath her blue panties.

She kept her boot against my chest. She said, "I want you to grab your cock."

I put my hand to my hard-on and I held onto it over my boxers, which should have felt ridiculous, but somehow didn't in front of her. There are the things we do when we're alone, and there are the things we do in front of the people that make us feel like we do when we're alone. Both are the things that make us who we are.

"Take those off," she said, referring to my underwear. "But don't stop looking at me."

I did. I kept my eyes directed at hers. She lifted her boot off me so I could bend over and pull my boxers down around my ankles. Then I kicked them off. I stood up straight again and she placed the boot back on my chest and the boot was cold and left grit on my skin, and it was rough like sand between me and the smooth sole. She leaned back against the soundboard again and she was looking at me and her expression was playful and her expression was also sober. She looked the way she did when she sang. She looked the way she did when she made music.

She said, "I want you to stand there in front of me. I want you to jerk off. But keep looking at me, though. Don't look away."

"What if I do?" I smiled. She didn't.

She said, "Don't talk. If you talk again, I'm going to fucking hit you."

I said, "Somehow I doubt..."

I didn't finish. She sat up and slapped me hard across the face. The slap was loud and it stung. It was strong and it was serious and it wasn't fucking around.

My face turned to the side. Risa cupped her hand roughly over my mouth. I could smell smoke on her fingers. She put her lips to my ear. "Do. Not. Talk." She spoke each word slowly and her voice was even and low. Then she let go and leaned back on the soundboard again.

I looked at her and saw that now she was smiling. I felt something like rage for a second. There was an instinctive urge to retaliate. To hit back. To grab hold of her and to push her to the floor and fuck her. And the feeling washed over me and made me excited and made me forget who I was.

I smiled back at her. I said, "I want you to hit me again."

There's so much pressure in thinking we're responsible for everything we do, in thinking that we're the ones making the music, that we're the ones controlling the sounds. Because when it's there and we have it, and the sounds are coming out of us and they're good, they're really good, and we really have it. And it's easy to feel something like pride about it. And it's easy to say, these are our sounds, goddammit. But then it's gone. And when it's gone, it's really fucking gone, and it hurts. And the absence of it teases us. And at those times, it's easy to feel like you've failed. And since you can't control the good, you turn to the bad. Because you still can control that. Maybe that's a little bit what my dad was thinking. Maybe it's what he felt as he sat underneath the tree in our front yard and put a gun in his mouth.

A lot of the time, I try to fight the idea that I might be like my parents. I see myself doing something they did and I think, "Oh, God, I do not want to be like them. I don't want to end up like they did." But other times, I find a certain comfort in it. Being like them means not being alone in the things I do. It means I'm not alone in the mistakes I make. Because the mistakes have already been made by them, and by their parents before them, and forever and ever before them. And I can't hide from them or undo them or change them. I can only confront them and accept them and know that I'll either survive them or I won't. And either way, it's not going to be that bad. Either way, it's fine.

I'll land on my feet. And I'll meet my shadow there. Until one day I won't. And when that happens, that might be the only thing truly unique to me. Is the way I die. Which is what we all do, eventually. We do that completely alone.

When I got home from the studio that evening, my body was bruised and there was a bright red scratch underneath my left eye. I took a shower before Jenny got home. I started making some hamburgers for dinner. I was in the kitchen when she came in the door. When she saw the scratch underneath my eye she asked me what had happened. She asked if I'd fallen down. She asked if I'd been in another fight.

I told her the truth:

It had been a beautiful day and the sun was shining and so on my way to the studio, I'd gotten a little high and fell in love with my shadow and the way it moved below me.

And then I lost myself in that feeling and fell down against it, and hit my face on the sidewalk.

And my shadow had been there when I fell. As it always was. As it has been for as long as I can remember.

And even though I wasn't proud of it, I'd probably do it again.

Go To Post

Mitch and Naoko: A Toast

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 11:17:03 EST

This is the toast I gave at Mitch and Naoko's wedding...September 24th, 2011 after only two beers and one sake....

Mitch and I had a lot in common in high school. We were both tall, skinny white dudes into classic rock and "alternative" music.

We were both kind of awkward. Kind of.

We both drove boats for cars. Mine was a 1984 Oldsmobile Delta 88. Which seemed big until you saw Mitch's car: a Lincoln Town Car.

Have you ever seen a Lincoln Town Car from the 80s?

It was immense. The hood stretched out forever in front like a California King mattress.

And this was before they'd changed the car's shape to be more rounded. So it was just one. big. rectangle. Tremendous and imposing. Like a battleship. Forcing Texas trucks out of the way throughout our flat, suburban Houston landscape.

Often Mitch drove. And it always surprised me how effortlessly he'd pull that monster into a parking spot. Me all wincing in the passenger seat. Him all cool. Non-flinching.

The other thing I've always admired about Mitch, aside from his ability to drive a big car, is his memory. He always had the ability to recall things—little tid-bits of information that most people forget. It made him great at trivial pursuit.

Today, I use Google as my memory, but back in high school my Google was Mitch.

When did the Beatles form? What was the Stone's drummer's name?

He even helped me remember things that only I knew.

Like what I did last week.

Or...last night.

Or, you know, who that guy was in that movie I just saw yesterday, which I already can't remember the name of ...you know, the one everybody's talking about... with that guy...who was in that other movie.

Mitch would know.

I'm sure all of Mitch's friends would say that Mitch, aside from being an excellent repository of information, is also an excellent friend. He's always been somebody I knew I could count on. And somebody I could talk to about just about anything. The bad. And the good.

I have had the good fortune to hang out with Mitch and Naoko twice. Once when they visited C and me in DC and another time when we visited them in Japan. And based on those visits, it seems like Naoko is the same kind of person Mitch is: Warm. Generous. Easy to talk to and to be with.

It's clear to me they make an excellent couple. And that they both admire and respect each other.

Naoko, one thing I know is that you will always be able to depend on Mitch during good times and bad. To help. Or just to listen and be there.

Or to park a big car into a small space.

Or as you get older, to remind you what you did yesterday. Or what you had for lunch.

I wish you both a long happy life together.

Go To Post

Conversations About Missed Things

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:02:56 EST

I am always just missing trains. Doors are always just closing. Lights are always just fading into a tunnel. I'm always standing alone on a platform humming with post-departure silence. Calculating that, if I'd just started running sooner, or if I hadn't stopped to buy that bottle of water. Calculations that never add up.

Look, if you want to know the truth, I probably just make as many trains as I just miss. But negative experiences tend to outweigh positive ones in the brain. So it seems like I'm always just missing trains. When it would be more accurate to say: Sometimes I just miss trains, and sometimes I just make them.

Fuck that. Perception is everything.

I am always just missing trains.

I don't care if this isn't true.

I heard it pulling onto the platform above me as I was finishing my cigarette at the gum-stained sidewalk below. I flicked my butt to the street. Broke for the stairs. Me and this other guy. We were running up the steps two at a time. We were running, and we were running, and we were running to make the train.

We reached the platform just as the doors were closing. I laughed as it pulled off. I laughed, not because it was funny. And I looked at my watch and it said 5:32 am, which was just an arbitrary time, but marked the precise point of my exact lateness. The skin on my back crawled with fresh sweat. The other guy threw a piece of paper at the moving car with the tight closed doors and the unconcerned people inside. I said, Motherfucker! I said, You wouldn't believe how much this happens to me. And he said, with absolute, unadulturated New York inflection, Eh, whadda'ya gonna do? And hearing him say it almost made me glad I missed the train. Almost.

The other guy and I, we stood next to each other on the still platform for a while. The streets below were calm and dark and wet beyond the cover of the station. The small sounds of waking. The humid air. The warm ground by the tracks where the rats hunted for food.

Since we were the only two there, it felt like this should be the beginning of some conversation about missed things. Some exchange that was about nothing and everything. Where the stuff we said revealed something deeper.

It would go something like: "I missed a train outside of Boston once. It was the biggest mistake of my life."

And he would say: "Fuck, man. I know what you mean."

And I would smile knowingly.

And he would smile knowingly.

But we were either too tired or too disinterested to get that going. The guy moved to a bench to eat a breakfast sandwich he had bought from a street vendor. And I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

I still had the smell of my friend's cunt on my facial hair. I don't normally say "cunt." I don't normally press my face against the side of a woman's head while I'm behind her, and insider her, and breathe that particular syllable. But she'd asked me to. And she'd brought her hand around to my face and pushed it against her ear. And when she did, she scratched me. Either accidentally or on purpose. It doesn't matter which. And the paint on her nails was chipped and black, and a heavy breath escaped her lips, and she closed her eyes, and she asked me to say it again. Because she liked feeling that hard consonance inside her. And I liked it too. I liked giving her what she liked. And she said, You feel good. And she pressed into me. And I was consumed by her. And I felt hot and flushed when I came.

I stood against the wall in the station and I adjusted my hat so the brim sat lower on my head.

My hand smelled like latex and spermicide.

More people emerged from the stairwell and stood silent with themselves on the platform. I was thirsty. My drunk was wearing off and my hangover was setting in. I waited. And I waited. And I waited for the train. And eventually there was another. And I got on it. I got on the next quiet, morning train.

I sat across from a guy who looked like he never went to sleep and never stopped drinking the night before. Which is probably exactly how I looked. And right then, he was my brother in whatever it is we'd done. Which is what we'd always done, for forever and ever. And forever before.

A woman sat next to me and I could see her reflection in the darkly-mirrored glass of the doors opposite us. She didn't seem to notice, or maybe she just didn't mind, the smell of cunt and condom. In the forced intimacy of crowded city places, nobody seems to care about anything.

We left the station and moved on rails toward the East River and Manhattan, where I would catch another train to New Jersey and then drive home.

Home. To my wife and my dogs. Where I had a life completely different from this one. Where a line of tall pines stood proud along the back fence. And where a shed gave shelter to an impressive array of lawn equipment and the neccessary tools for a proper life in the suburbs. Where there were two cars and at least as many mortgages. Where I shared as much with one person as I ever would with anybody. Where the only secrets that were left were the ones we chose not to talk about. Because they weren't secrets at all. Where myself and herself were indistinguishable against the ocean roll of our life together. Our shared experiences. Our consolidated identity. Where we had the things that people strive for. The things people say they want. Where there was enough quiet to hear the snoring of the dogs at night. And enough silence to hear the whispered, "I love you" we said to each other when we went to sleep. But where sometimes we'd miss it anyway. Because one of us had already fallen asleep and one of us was just too late in saying it. And so one of us would turn out the light. And one of us would put fresh water on the night stand next to the other. And then crawl back into bed. Where together we would sleep, sometimes touching. And the next morning, we might have a conversation about it. About the missed things we were too late in saying.

A lot of the time, this is what I find myself talking about when I talk about love.

I don't care if it isn't true.

Everything is perception

In a strange coincidence, my friend and I each had had minor surgeries recently. A bandaid still covered her wound. I found it while touching my lips to her belly. I no longer had a bandage covering mine. It was just a raised purple scar. I could see it, dark on my thigh as she was taking me in her mouth.

I told her I wanted her to get herself off. She said, I can do that.

She lay back next to me. The single finger on the hood of her clit. The wet sounds of two inside herself. The fast, then slow. The out, then back in. The patience. The well-rehearsed rhythm. The practiced self-fucking. The short quiet breaths.

I like to watch. So I did this. And while I did, I worked slowly on myself. Slowly, so I wouldn't come. And as we lay next to each other, separated only by the sounds of our own trip, she relaxed and let herself go. The build and the tensing up. The final release. She stretched her legs. Pressed her hand between her thighs. Squeezed them together. She turned her head to me and smiled.

It was all so very casual. So very easy. A gift she gave to me simply because I asked for it. No self-consciousness. No apologies. And I felt close to her for her letting me in on it. And for sharing and not talking.

And right then, I was as close to her as I'd ever been to anybody. And I thought, Maybe there is never any closer than this. And I thought, I'm not missing anything. And I thought, There is nothing to miss

We were there in this moment and we were naked to each other, save for our bandaids and scars, which we could never fully explain, even if we tried. And there was no early and there was no late and there was no on-time. There was just the satisfying now.

Before I left her apartment. Before I sprinted up some stairs only to miss a Manhattan-bound train and have a near-conversation with a stranger about it, I asked if she wanted me to turn out the light in the hallway.

She said that would be nice.

It's comforting sometimes, the closeness of strangers. Sometimes it's the most comfortable thing. A shared missed connection. Or the casual letting go with somebody you call friend.

The nearness and the separateness. The not quite knowing. The lack of a back story. The holding on to your identity. The illusion of control.

Sometimes, this is what I find myself talking about when I talk about love.

I don't care if it isn't true.

Everything is perception.

Go To Post

The Hourglass

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:03:41 EST

(published in The Good Men Project)

Three months to the day after my mom died from complications involving lymphoma in her brain, my dad called me to tell me he had cancer in his throat. The prognosis was good for a recovery, he said. But he was going to need to have surgery to have it removed, followed by six to seven weeks radiation. I said, Six to seven weeks is a lot of radiation. He said, Sound familiar? I laughed.

I was at the gym when he called. I am often at the gym when people call. I don't always pick up, but this time I did.

I knew he had bad news as soon as I heard his voice. He said, I can call back. He said, I hate having to stop in the middle of a workout. I said, No, it's okay. I said, What's up? He said, What are you working on today? I said, Back. And triceps. I thought, You didn't call me to ask about my workout.

I assumed it was my grandmother. This would not be a surprise. I thought about what I needed to cancel for the weekend. I thought about dry-cleaning.

I seem to always need dry-cleaning in the wake of bad news.

Generally, I don't like phone calls. The only time people call me these days is when they have serious things to discuss. Like tumors.

Okay, look: I fucking hate phone calls. And I sometimes don't check my voicemail for weeks. It's nothing personal. I just have an aversion to it. So if you really need to say something to me, send me a text message. Even if you're breaking up with me. Or giving me news that I'm going to be a father. Or telling me I have cancer.

No, really.

I sat on a bench near the exit sign alone and listened to him speak. I said "okay" a lot. I said, Damn, Dad. I'm sorry. I said, Let me know when you want me to come down there.

After we hung up, I thought about calling my sister. My dad is not her dad. And we'd just been through the thing with my mom. She'd understand. She'd be strong for me. At that moment I was tired of being strong. I was tired of lifting weights. I wanted to unload them on somebody.

But I didn't call her. I didn't unload.

I finished my workout.

I worked on my back.

The people I love are grains of sand in an hourglass. And they're starting to slip through the narrow curve at the center.

And I am the hourglass. And the longer I stand upright, the more the weight shifts, and the more empty I feel up top.

And every day I think about breaking that fucker. And putting an end to this slow, terrible drip.

I'm so glad for my job. I really am. Being at work helps me forget. I get lost in the routine of it. I put my energy into a well-mixed cocktail. When I take a pint glass from the cooler, I flip it before resting the inside of it against the cool, wet nose of the tap.

I like how each motion I make is calculated. Decisive. Fluid. How I can look away as I flip that glass. How I could even close my eyes if I wanted to.

And I just open my hand and the glass falls into it because I know it will be there. I don't need to think about it. Or wonder. I like how my muscles act independently of my brain. I like that they are strong and certain.

They don't equivocate over a strong pour.

They don't pause over a row of shots.

I like the clinking sound of the glass. The shaking sound of ice in the tins. When I'm done, I like to put them back clean on the rubber bar mat in front of me. I like to chill a martini glass before I fill it. I like to do things the way they should be done.

And also: I like giving people what they need. I like listening. I like showing them I understand. And that I will not judge them. And that they can count on me to be there. That they can use me for that.

I am comfortable around drinkers.

I'm as comfortable around them as I am when I'm alone.

I try to always be alone or around drinkers.

Lately, it feels like I'm that much closer to being truly alone. And it bothers me. A lot. It bothers me that I can't talk to my mom anymore. It bothers me that I can't hear her voice and feel the warmth of her words.

I've been dreaming about her lately. But the dreams haven't been good. She's been confused like she was before she died. I want to dream about the woman she was before that. I want to talk to her in my dreams like I did when I was a kid. I want to wake up happy.

But instead I wake up crying. I wake up with my chest hurting.

I have many brothers and sisters. Joined to me by various ways and means. Some by blood. Others by thoughts and words. Others by taste and smell. And sex.

And they're all going through that curve in the hourglass. One by one. Until there are no more grains of sand.

Or until there is no more hourglass.

The call at the gym was a month ago. Today he's having the tumor removed. Right now, in fact. As I post this. June 16th, 8 am. It's the first step in what will be a fairly long and unpleasant battle. And tomorrow I'm getting on a plane to go to the same city I went to earlier this year. A city where, only a few miles from the hospital my dad is in, there is a parade happening to celebrate a basketball team winning The Finals.

It's my second time this year to travel there to see a parent in the hospital with cancer.

And all I can think about is that I wish my dogs were going with me.

If things go well, he'll go home on Saturday. And I'll keep him company on Father's Day. And make him blended vegetable smoothies so he can keep his nutrition levels high.

I believe things will turn out alright this time. For him. For me. My dad is a healthy guy. And he has a strong will to fight. Unlike his first son, he doesn't spend time thinking about the past or contemplating the what-ifs. He doesn't spend time shoulding.

He's made mistakes. I'm old enough now to have made some of the same mistakes he has. And I'm not angry at his mistakes anymore. And I'm proud of the way he's chosen to live his life.

For the past fifteen years, he's been a source of strength for me. He's helped me put my life in perspective. To see the black and white of a decision instead of all the shades of gray.

He called me last night just to tell me not to second-guess the decision I made to go down to Dallas on Friday instead of Thursday—instead of today. He said, We both made that decision. He said, It was the right decision. He said it with certainty.

He said it like a strong pour.

He said, Don't beat yourself up if things don't turn out as expected.

He knew I already was.

Like his dad before him, he's made me appreciate the simple beauty of good work. That it's important. That it's its own reward. And it's all we can do. For him, it's putting numbers together. For me, a well-made drink. A well-crafted sentence.

He's made me see that I should take control of the things I can control. And I should let go of the things I can't. And I should practice each thing I do until I can do it with my eyes closed. And do it artfully. And with style. And with pride.

And when I go to sleep at night, I should be tired. And when I wake up in the morning, I should be happy. And awake. And ready to do the things I've planned. Even if the things I've planned turn out to be a mistake.

I count on him to remind me of these things. And when I close my eyes, I know he'll be there when I put my hand out, regardless of where he is. Regardless of where I am.

I'm not ready to lose that, yet.

I'm not ready to be that fucking alone.

I don't think I ever will be.

Go To Post

Walking On Top of the Earth

Thu, 19 May 2011 10:04:40 EST

Sometimes all I want is him in my mouth. And so I sit at the bar and look at him like I've got something really important to say. Something he needs to hear. Only him. And he'll lean over the mahogany that separates us, which has my drink on it, and he puts his face next to mine and his calm finds me. In the din of the crowd, his quiet heat. And he'll say, "What?" And I won't say anything. And I'll smile. And I'll look him in the eye, then away.

And later, when I'm on my knees and putting my lips around him in the small bathroom that smells like cinnamon air freshener, I do the same. Look him in the eye. Then away. His pants around his ankles and his thickness on my tongue, and his belt buckle clink, clinking on the cold tile floor. A bar towel still flung over one shoulder. His hand, strong at the back of my neck, the other against the door that opens inward and doesn't lock. And if somebody tries to come in, the door might open a bit, but then he pushes it firmly shut.

And when he comes, he comes hard. And his breath, his abdomen pushing against my forehead, and the short, choked sounds he exhales, which echo in the tight room. For a few moments before, he struggles against me and starts to pull away, but I grab his ass with one hand and pull him toward me. And my other wrapped firmly around him, pulling in time with my mouth. And I have to use all my strength to keep him there. And finally, he gives up. And finally, he gives in. To me. Into me. And his fingers tighten in my hair, and clinch. And his legs go weak. And I control all of this. I cause it to happen and the happening of it is real. And the happening of it is good.

I get wet over this. The power I feel. The control. Wet knowing I can do this thing to him and at that moment all he can do is sink into me. And at that moment there is nobody else for him, even if there is. And he needs me for this. He needs me to yield to and to take him down. And even if he complains, it's what he wants. And it's what I want, too: to molest him.

I told Mike about this thing I do to my bartender. I described it in detail because I wanted to see how he would react. I wanted to see if he would squirm.

He did not.

Whatever kind of guy Mike is, he is not the kind of guy who shows discomfort.

I love this about him.

Also, I want to change it.

Sometimes when you tell a guy something like this, something like having sex with another guy, something like sucking a guy off in a bar bathroom, he thinks you're coming on to him. He thinks it's some kind of fucking foreplay. I hate that.

Mike just listened when I described it to him. He sat in my living room, in the big leather chair. His legs crossed. He smiled. He stroked his beard. If he got hard, he didn't let on.

And when he left, I had to masturbate. I didn't use the Butterfly Kiss, though. The piece of shit is already broken.

----------

My mom doesn't know who I am anymore. I mean, she does, but not really. She's not herself, either. She forgets where she is. She can't understand what is happening to her. Last time I went to see her, she asked where she was. I told her she was in an assisted-living home. She asked who had brought her here. I said I had. She said, "Well, you selfish bitch."

I laughed. Because the words were not her words. They were not the words she would have spoken. And the irony was funny.

In many ways, she is not the woman I've known.

Still, other things she does are completely her. The way she laughs. The way she makes conversation. Most of the time she has a sense of humor. And she talks to the people who bring her her pills. She says, "I take all of these?" And she holds them in the palm of her hand and looks up at the nurse. And the nurse will nod. And so she will shrug and take them and chase them with water. And then she thanks the nurse. Because that's her: kind.

But other times she's confused and scared and she doesn't talk and she turns inward. And the TV is on in the dim room, but it's like it isn't. Because when I ask her what she's watching, she doesn't know. And this is when things are bad.

I've learned I don't need to be there all the time. It was hard at first. To not be there. But you begin to see that being there isn't necessarily the best thing. For you. Or for her.

For anybody.

Either that, or I am: a selfish bitch.

----------

Here's the plan. I'm going to make Mike want me. And then I'm going to make him hate me. I'm going to make him think I'm a bitch. I need to see if he has it in him. I need to see if he can be my murderer.

It's been raining. And the ground is soggy. And even though it's still cool, sometimes I go outside and walk barefoot in the puddles of the gravel driveway that Mike and I share. On these mornings, I walk proudly and make large circular footsteps in the water, soft ripples that radiate outward and end where the puddles do. And I feel the rocks dig into my feet and I don't wince. And the reflections I cast in the water are the reflections I make. And I don't stop to worry over wet feet or pause to wonder about the times I was dry. I do it like I've always done it, until the puddles disappear into the ground.

And until I walk on top of the earth again.

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A Camera Kind of Love

Wed, 11 May 2011 12:02:29 EST

I read this at the Doolittle Reading a couple of weeks ago. It started as a story, not as a poem. And I think it's going to go back to being a story. A slightly longer story. With the kind of arc you've grown accustomed to in my stories. I think I like it better that way. But I figured I'd post it in this form, along with the video of me reading it. Scroll to the bottom if you're interested in seeing my first attempt at reading in over 10 years. And watch the lights dance on my shiny, bald head.

A Camera Kind of Love

I went to the city
to take pictures
with a girl
who could see through me
with her camera.

She told me I was
well-grounded.
I suspected a loose screw
seeing as I was the
least grounded guy I knew
But I liked her
imagination--
how it saw something
in me I didn't.
And so I let her hold on
to the delusion.

We were in high school
then. Two friends. Sitting
in my not cool car, killing
time in a Chili's parking lot.
Can't remember why we were
just sitting there.
Maybe we were waiting for somebody.
Maybe we were waiting for each other.
Whatever.
Sitting in cars
is just something people
do in high school.

We were photographers that day.
On a mission of truth.
Copping our cold cameras
like talismans in front our
frightened faces, hiding them
from each other. From ourselves.
Shielding us
from the things we
weren't sure we wanted
to find. We used downtown
Houston as our
our canvas. The steamy streets.
The molten concrete. We stood among
art installations
and tall, modern buildings of
glass and stone.
We looked up and over and through.
Trying to see the things we weren't
shown. We looked anywhere
but at each other. Swimming with
the business-suited masses. Grinning at
our flat freedom, which
was an illness
we didn't know
we didn't have.
Yes.
We used our cameras like shields.
Protecting us from the words
we might have spoken.
Protecting us from the touches
we might have made.

I took one shot of her,
her face framed by a sculpture--
a Dubuffet. Her eyes
grinning. Her smile
slaying. And because I was
young. And because I thought
such things were possible,
I told myself I had
captured her "essence."
I told myself this thing
I had done was
the most noble thing
a person could do.
And I was proud of myself for
seeing it.
And I was proud of myself for
knowing when to press
the shutter.

And I know that's all bullshit now.
I know I
knew nothing.
I know I
saw nothing.
I know damn well I
did nothing.

We were practicing
a camera kind of love.
Capturing things at
a safe distance.
Filtering feelings through
the shallow lens of
our flawed, untried perception.

We sat there in my
brown Oldsmobile.
And for want
of knowing
what to say,
I leaned forward and
smiled at her. And
I hoped the smile might
lead to a kiss.

But it didn't.

She lifted her camera to her
face. "Don't look at me like that,"
she said at my smile.
And she could see
through me.
And she could see
through it.

So I backed off.
Because I didn't yet know that
girls who could see through me
would be the best catastrophes
of my life.

My friend died
sophomore year of college. She died
when a car ran a stop sign
and drove into the side
of her light-bodied Ford
pick-up. She died
and left me with
the pictures we'd taken
and the letters we'd
written, and the words we'd
almost spoken.

It was the stuff that
made up everything.
It was the stuff that
felt like nothing.

***

Her mom gave all her CDs to
her friends. And I took
Doolittle.
I took it
not because I liked
The Pixies. Rather, because I
thought I should.
I didn't play it
for years. I
just carried it to the places
I lived. And
imagined how she'd
listened to it and
imagined how she'd
loved it.

I saw the Pixies with her at
the Houston Summit.
The sharp scent of weed,
like the good sexy musk of a
lover's underarm,
and our collective
breath and bob,
and the pulse of the
hard noise, those
cannon-thunder, bass-
drum booms, strong
and persistent, the
dull thud of it against us.
Like fists, and sharp hips
boring down.
The sweaty brows and carnal sounds.
Erotic smells and
the wet Houston heat
that always found its way into
every inside place.
The way it covered us, and blocked
out everything else,
and put us squarely
in that moment that
felt dark, and illicit, and good.

And Black Francis singing:
The Devil is Six.
The Devil is Six.
The Devil is Six.

There is nothing like a rock show
to put you in the
mood to fuck.
But we didn't

fuck. That night
or ever. I still
think of her, though, whenever I
hear the Pixies.
And that's something:

to be dead
twenty years
and somebody still
remembers you

from hearing a song,
or seeing
a sculpture,
or just sitting in
a parking lot in
front of Chili's.

That's everything.

And dammit, one day,
I'm going to leave
that Pixies CD
behind too.

Go To Post

Cake Shop Reading

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 11:37:32 EST

I'm reading. Poetry. In public.

I know what you're thinking: You don't write poetry.

I know!

But I did. I wrote some poetry. Because this is going to be a great event. And I would love to see you there. Truly love it.

To sweeten the deal...I will have gifts (until I run out).

Here are the details:
Polestar Reading Series
Doolittle : Poems Inspired by the Pixies' Epic Album
Sunday, May 1 2011
5 PM
CAKE SHOP 152 Ludlow Street, NYC
DOOLITTLE Reading Event on Facebook

Here's a selection from my piece:

I saw the Pixies with Steph at
the Houston Summit.
The sharp scent of weed,
like the good sexy musk of a
lover's underarm,
and our collective
breath and bob,
and the pulse of the
hard noise, those
cannon-thunder, bass-
drum booms, strong
and persistent, the
dull thud of it against us.
Like fists, and sharp hips
boring down.
The sweaty brows and carnal sounds.
Erotic smells and
the wet Houston heat
that always found its way into
every inside place.
The way it covered us, and blocked
out everything else,
and put us squarely
in that moment that
felt dark, and illicit, and good.

And Black Francis singing:
The Devil is Six.
The Devil is Six.
The Devil is Six.

Hope to see you on May 1st!

Go To Post

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:44:22 EST

I just finished a story. Normally, I'd post it here, but I need to wait a bit before I do.

In the mean time, because I'm itchy to put something new up here now, I've decided to post the first chapter of my novel. As several of you know, I've been working on this damn novel thing for...way too long. One thing I've discovered about myself, is I seem to process things by putting them up here. I don't feel any urgency unless I know something could be on public display instead of squirreled away on my hard drive.

Today, I'm resurrecting my novel effort. It's not an April Fools joke either. Something about my mom's death put a spur to my ass. This shit is real. I've started speaking with my inspiration. And asking it "What the fuck? Why'd you leave me hanging on this shit?" And my inspiration said, "I got bored. You've got to take more risks, motherfucker."

That bitch is always right.

Anyway, this is the first chapter of my novel, which is currently titled "Not About Love." It might end up being all I post of it. Or it might be another narrative line on this not-so-linear site. We'll see.

****

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

My dad shot himself in our front yard when I was eight. He did it in the plant bed surrounding the big maple tree. It was a cool Tuesday afternoon in November. According to Mrs. Anderson, who lived across the street, he sat there for a few moments looking up at the sky, then he took a handgun from his coat pocket and fired a bullet into the roof of his mouth.

The week before, he had raked up the fallen leaves, mulched them with his Toro lawnmower, and distributed some of them back into the same bed his body would lay slumped in a week later, the same bed which also contained the dying remains of the fall mums he'd planted in September, which he had planned on digging up and mulching and throwing in the compost.

Dad always said recycling was important.

I was at school that day. My mom was having a liquid lunch of gin martinis with Mrs. Pope, like she did every Tuesday.

He wrote in his note to me, a note my mom kept from me until I was in college, that he did it there in the front yard on that day so we—my mom and I—wouldn't be the ones to discover him with his head blown off. I guess he thought that would be the considerate thing to do. Sometimes concepts like "considerate" are all a matter of perspective.

In the note, he said he knew somebody would find him long before we got there. The garbage men, perhaps. Or a phone repair man. Or worst case, a neighbor. It turned out the worst case was how it happened. Mrs. Anderson, who was retired and recently widowed, had just gotten off the phone with her daughter and had made herself a little lunch of peanut butter and banana on wheat toast before settling into her high-backed chair next to the window, where she liked to sit and gaze at her bird feeder in the afternoon and read her magazines and work a crossword puzzle. She watched my dad, curiously at first, then with horror, as the inside of his head erupted onto the trunk of that maple.

She managed to dial 911. But she could barely hold the receiver in her trembling hand. After the operator's voice came on the line, she only let out a series of incoherent exclamations before falling to the floor of her kitchen, unconscious. The operator had heard the thud of her body and then the phone hitting her linoleum kitchen floor. He sent an ambulance to her address. To rescue her.

Mrs. Anderson had liked my dad. She was always impressed at how hard he worked on the lawn. And he would take the time to talk to her when she was filling her bird feeder. She used to give him a box of homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies each Christmas to share with us, which I loved.

The year my dad shot himself was the first Christmas I remember not having those cookies.

Much of what I know about my dad is based upon what other people knew, which is that he was smart and funny and a great professor and writer. And nobody could make any sense of the fact that he had killed himself. They blamed my mom mostly, or as I had heard Adam's mom refer to her once in what she thought was a private comment to his dad: that alcoholic bitch. I think everybody who knew my dad considered themselves to be one of his close friends. It's the way he made people feel. He had a knack for making them feel comfortable and important and good. That's what he would have called it—a knack.

I remember at the funeral this young guy, a student, came up to me and said, "Your dad was great. He really inspired me to learn." And this made me feel good, to have strangers tell me my dad was "great." It made him seem legendary. Famous. And, of course, he was. Famous. To a small community of students, writers, and academics who lived in our little college town. And I believed them when they said he was great. Because at eight years old, I thought he was pretty great myself.

I cried at my dad's funeral. I cried a lot. My mom never did. I remember being angry with her about that. We had a fight about it many years later when she was visiting me at college in DC.

"You're like this black hole!" I told her. "You feel nothing. You've probably never even felt any guilt about dad."

"Should I?"

"Yes," I said, exasperated. "Goddammit. Yes. Are you kidding me?"

I remember she was silent for a long time. We were tucked into a booth of some smokey rowhouse basement bar in Dupont Circle where I used to play on Saturday nights, before Dupont Circle became a bunch of fast food chains. She rattled the cubes in her gin and tonic. She lifted it to her lips and brought it back to her lap. One. Two. Three times.

"Dad made people happy," I said. "With his teaching. And his writing. You make people...fucking miserable. You make me fucking miserable. You..."

She interrupted me: "You know what happens when you try to make everybody happy, Nick?"

I stopped. Waited. She sucked on her cigarette and exhaled a white plume of smoke from her cold lungs.

"Somebody always gets hurt."

"Really? And I guess that was you? I suppose you were the one hurt?"

She didn't say anything.

I said, "The thing is, mom—you're never happy."

"Jesus!" She said loudly. I remember being terrified that she would cause a scene. My mom never had any qualms about making a spectacle of herself in public. I looked at the people around us but everybody was engaged in their own conversations and the music tended to mute everything anyway. "You think your Dad was happy?" She laughed. "That he went up to his study every night and planned for his classes and that he was....what?..." she spit the word at me: "content?"

My mom drew on her cigarette and blew the smoke through her lips, making this sardonic "ffff," which turned into "fffuck." She shook her head. "He was miserable. But he always pretended he wasn't. To everybody else. He never had any problem telling me all about it."

"Poor you."

"Yeah," she smiled sarcastically. "Poor me. And poor little Rebecca Greene. And whoever the fuck else."

"What?"

"Those students idolizing him. Spreading their legs."

"You're crazy. Dad...Dad?" The thought of my dad screwing around seemed entirely foreign to me. Mom, I could see. Mom, I'd always suspected, even. But dad?

"He didn't hide it from me, Nick. It's not something I wondered about. I didn't need to. Because he didn't hide anything. He didn't hide pretty little Rebecca. Or the others. Not from me, anyway. Just from everybody else."

I shook my head. "I don't believe you," I said.

"It was the seventies. Relationships were supposed to be open or... permissive or whatever the fuck."

"Christ," I said.

"Every generation thinks there's is the first one to have issues and weird crap to deal with," she said. "There's so much you don't know, son."

I didn't say anything.

She said, "Let's have another drink, shall we?"

At one point in my life, I remember having two parents. And a house. And a yard. And oatmeal chocolate chip cookies on Christmas morning. I played with matchbox cars and under tables at my parent's dinner parties. And I didn't have much to question. And I didn't think much about bad things.

Then I became the boy whose dad put a bullet through his brain under the big maple tree in our front yard. And whose mom, from that point on, brought a flask with her to my tennis matches and soccer games And life seemed to make less sense.

Now I'm the man I am now. And I think I'm a little like him. And I think I'm a little like her. But I don't feel much like myself. And I don't even remember what it was like to be that first boy again. And most of the time I wonder whether or not he even existed.

Go To Post

Place Always Matters

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:03:50 EST

The following is the eulogy I read at my mom's funeral on February 26th, 2011 at P--- Church in Dallas, TX. There is audio of me reading it at the service if you want to listen while you read it. I've also included images of her California Trip journal which I read from.

First, the audio...

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

And the text...

First I want to thank everybody for being here today. My sister and I are very honored that you are here, and I know my mom is as well.

As most of you know, I'm a writer and I've written some thoughts down, and I'd like to read them to you now. When you're doing one of these, your mind races through all these things you want to say. All these stories you want to tell. And there are lots of them I've thought about over the last several days. And I could stand up here for hours doing that. I think probably most of us could. And so I'll do a little of that, now, but we don't have hours, so I'll make it as brief as I can. We can do more storytelling afterwards. I think she would have liked that. The being together. The storytelling. The talking. Mom enjoyed being around the people she loved and chatting and having a good time. So us being being together and doing that would have made her happy.

There are the obvious things about my mom, like how she was a caring, loving person who always thought the best of everybody she met.

Like how she was honest and hard working.

Like how she sacrificed for her children, Kim and me, but how she did it in a way that made it seem like it wasn't a sacrifice at all. Because honestly, I think for her it wasn't.

Like how everybody loved her laugh and how it would fill your heart to hear it and how it made you laugh with her.

Like how she was smart and wise. How she loved to read books. And how she reflected on things carefully. And when you asked her for help or input, she took it seriously and said what she knew and she said what she felt.

Like how she was beautiful and always carried herself with a certain elegance and grace.

Like how when she decided to do something, she put her entire self into that thing. And owned it and made it hers. And how she was creative that way.

There are a couple of stories I want to tell. They are more like little vignettes than full-blown stories. I can't tell you exactly what they mean or why they keep popping into my head, but to me they offer glimpses into what she meant to me.

The first one isn't so much a story that I remember, but one she would tell me. It was about the time I put my rain boots on by myself at daycare. And how I came stomping out to the car all proud and smiling...and with the boots on the wrong feet.

And I got into the car, and I said to her, Mom, I put my boots on by myself. And she said, I see that.

She knew I messed it up. But she never said anything. It probably wasn't the first time she did that. It definitely wasn't the last.

And what I know now is that it's good to have people you can make mistakes in front of. And she'd let me do that. But she'd always be there if I needed a hand getting things back straight.

In junior high and high school, a big chunk of my life revolved around swimming. And I don't know how many of you know this, but it's been written somewhere that swimmers are to get up at the crack of dawn and practice early in the morning. And since I couldn't yet drive, it meant she needed to get up too. And she would. And she never complained about it. Even when I did. And sometimes my swim practices were far away, and driving home and back to pick me up would have been impractical. So she'd just sleep in the car while I swam.

The other thing about swimming is that when you're doing it 5-7 thousand yards a day, you also need to eat a lot. So she would also cook me huge breakfasts each morning. Two eggs. Six biscuits. Grits or Malt-O-Meal. I had courses for breakfast. And while I ate she'd pack my lunch. Two sandwiches. An apple. Four cookies. Wheat thins crackers. Coke.

And you know...I have no idea what she ate for breakfast. I have no idea what she ate for lunch.

In college, I used to call her nearly every day. And a lot of the time it was when I'd be up late torturing myself over a paper I was writing. And I'd reach that 11th hour and I'd suddenly realize that the paper I'd been working on wasn't the paper I should be writing at all. It was this other paper. It always seemed to happen that way. And so I would call her in a panic and I'd say, What am I going to do? There is no time. And she would remind me that I'd written before and I would write again. And that some part of me needed that kind of pressure that I put on myself. And that it would come out. And I just needed to take a deep breath and it would be okay.

And it would....and I'd write the paper I needed to write. And it would be great.

I would read my papers to her on the phone ... because there was no email then. And she would listen on the other end and tell me whether or not they made sense. And she was tactful when she'd tell me.... sometimes ... that they didn't. And I probably got my feathers ruffled a little bit. But then I knew what parts I needed to work on.

I stopped needing her in that way in the years after college. And other people came into my life who'd give me feedback on my writing. And that was probably bittersweet for her. I know she liked helping me. But I'm sure she also liked knowing I could do it on my own. And that I didn't need her anymore.

When I picture my mom, I remember the elegance she carried around at my wedding. When we danced that night, she cried. And she said, "I'm so happy." And she was. I like to picture her just like that. I think we all should.

Being in that place and having mom and the rest of my family with me was one of the best moments in my life. Sometimes being in a good place is all about the people you're with.

But sometimes you feel a bond to a place for no reason in particular. My mom understood that about certain places. That sometimes there was this affinity you had that you couldn't explain. The Bay Area around San Francisco was one of these places, and my sister and I had the fortunate opportunity to go with her and tour that area.

My mom kept a journal from that trip, and I found it recently. I love being able to hear my mom's voice in these words. It's probably the best treasure I could hope for. I wanted to read the first page of that journal for you now...

Preliminary Information—

As an "Associate" employee of the C--- Church for ten years, I have been given the very nice gift of one extra week vacation and compensation in the amount of approximately $1200.00 to take a trip wherever I choose.

It has been a long time dream of mine to make a return visit to California. I lived there over thirty years ago and have been back a number of times since, but not for many years now, due to my limited financial situation. Making this trip is like a dream come true.

In addition to my wanting to make this trip I've always wanted to have my children with me, because I wanted to show them the places I love. That is the best part of this whole trip—they are with me.

She wanted to show us "the places she loved." I love that. I love that she felt that so strongly.

I share the connection my mom had to certain places, like Northern California. And I always liked talking to her about that because I knew she understood it. When we went on that trip with her, she made that area seem so mythical. And that's the way it has felt to me ever since.

Washington DC was another one of those places that my mom loved and that she spoke about often. My wife and I wound up moving there several years ago and I remember calling mom from the steps of the capital one morning when the sun was still low and orange in the sky. I told her where I was standing and that I wished she could be here because it was beautiful and powerful. She told me that she could almost picture it and she was glad I was getting to experience all of that.

It's the idea of place that I've been thinking so much about the last several weeks in relation to her death. Because I was in so many different places with her. The hospital. The nursing home. The assisted living home. The radiation place. The ice cream store. The places, or rather, the locations were kind of familiar to me. The streets they were on, the intersections they were at. I knew them well because I used to live and work in the area many years ago. And I'd driven around them many times before. But they were different to me now. And I was different. And it was strange finding myself in these places with her and doing the strange things we needed to do in them. Like radiation therapy.

The place you're in can seem right. Or the place you're in can seem wrong. I felt like I was in the right place for many of the last several weeks. I was with her. But then suddenly I was in the wrong place when she died. I was in the air between Newark, New Jersey and Dallas, Texas on a flight that had been delayed three hours. And it seemed terribly cruel and ironic and wrong. But maybe it wasn't the wrong place at all. Because the idea I keep coming back to now is that I think the place we're in is always the place we should be. The place we're in always matters while we're in it. And it's terribly important to live that way. It can seem like a place has absolutely no meaning sometimes. Or that it means everything. But most of the time, it's a little of both. And it always matters.

Today, she'll be in one place, which is where she'll remain. She'll be here. And for a whole host of reasons, it's very meaningful to me that she'll be here. And I think it would be meaningful to her too. She loved this church, though she wasn't able to come the last several years. She raised me in a church very similar to this one, both in spirit and in philosophy. And I know she received great comfort from going to church and from praying. And she taught me to pray. And she knew God and God knew her.

I've known this place, this church, Elizabeth, for many years. At one point it was part of my day-to-day life. But back then, it didn't mean to me what it means now. And I never thought it would. I actually worked on a Web site for the Columbarium that's just outside these doors and which is where mom will soon rest. I worked on that Web site over ten years ago, and I never dreamed my mom would be in it one day. It's really amazing how that happened, and I honestly feel like we were brought to this place. I kind of think we always are. We're always brought to the place we're at.

The truth is, my mom made every place she was in her own. It wasn't always the place she would have most wanted to be, like Northern California, but it turned into a special place, anyway. Because she made it that way. She made a home in Houston, Texas, a place she never thought she would live and a place she didn't even like at first. But she made the most of that place. She made it hers. And it became the place she needed to be. And I believe she felt she was supposed to be there. I certainly do.

Once again, she's going to be in the place she's supposed to be. The thing is, she's always been in that place. Because she kept the right things in her heart. And she lived like she knew it. She lived like it mattered.

And if I've learned anything from her it's that: You don't always find yourself in the place you expect. But it's important to always live in that place with your whole being and to make it matter.

I'm always going to live with my mom's spirit in my heart. And like her, I'm always going to strive to live in the place I'm at. And make it matter. Because that's what she always did.

Go To Post

Eating Sushi at Stoplights

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:32:32 EST

(published in CRATE and The Good Men Project)

I've been washing clothes for a woman that used to wash mine. And I've been helping her put them on right after she comes out of the bathroom all inside out. And it makes me remember one of her favorite stories to tell used to be about the time I put my rain boots on by myself at daycare. And how I came stomping out to the car all proud and smiling and with the boots on the wrong feet. And how when I got into the car, I said to her, Mom, I put my boots on by myself. And how she said, I see that.

She knew I fucked it up. But she never said anything. It probably wasn't the first time she did that. It definitely wasn't the last.

It's good to have people you can make mistakes in front of.

I tell her it's time for radiation. And she says, I've done this before, haven't I? And I say, Two weeks. And she says, Two weeks? I say, We have three more. And she shakes her head. She goes to the bathroom to get out of her nightgown and into her clothes. And when she comes out, her pants are on inside out. She isn't all proud and smiling. She is weary and disoriented. And she holds her hand to her head and she says, What's making me like this? And I say, You have a tumor in your brain. I say, It's the radiation. And she says, How long have I been like this? And I say, Two weeks. And she says, How much longer? And I say, Three more.

But I don't know if that's true.

I say, Mom, we need to put your pants on the right way. I say, Your pockets are on the outside. And she looks down and says, How did I do that? And it's not really embarrassment I hear in her voice. Just confusion. And so she sits on the bed and she takes off her pants. She takes them off in front of her son. And it should be painful for her to do that. In the past, it would have been. But now it isn't. Because now it doesn't matter. And she sits on the bed in nothing but her underwear and a bra. And she looks frail and her thin gray hair is uncombed. And her skin is loose on her bones. And I pull the pant legs into themselves so they are the right way out. And I hand her the pants. And she takes them and puts them on.

I've been bringing her things to make the place she's at feel more like home. A blanket. A picture. A clock. I'm bringing them from a home she really doesn't remember anymore. A home full of things she used to love and cherish and collect. It's a home she left over a month ago in a truck with the lights on top. And even though she can't remember it, she says she wants to go back there every day. And she asks me every day if she will. And I lie and I say yes. And I think how maybe that's not really a lie at all. Because we all return home, in the end, wherever that is. And I don't tell her I've been out all day looking for a different home she can stay in while we wait.

And me, I've come back to a city I used to call home. And I've been driving and driving. Because that's what you do here. And sometimes I even get in my truck and drive two hundred feet to a parking lot across the street. Like when I'm going from the gym to the smoothie store.

And everything is familiar here. Except me. I don't recognize my voice. And when I take calls from strangers, I think, whoever this guy is, he isn't so bad. He talks pretty. And I go about these one-act plays, rehearsing the scripts I've written in my head. Changing up my inflection. Practicing my smile. Now the nurse in the hallway. Now the hospital chaplain. Now the woman selling me a new home for mom. Now the girl at the beer store. Now the smoothie guy. Now the dude at Coffeeland. Now mom telling me she hears music.

But there is no music.

I've been eating sushi at stoplights. And grocery store parking lots. Not really in the moment, but not entirely out of it, either. Swallowing my thoughts and words before they form. Tasting things only briefly before erasing them with ginger. And I've been spitting butts out my truck window when the paper burns down. And dressing inappropriately for the weather, and cursing the cold rain—and the bright sun—in equal measure.

And yesterday, as I sat there waiting for the light to turn, I remembered Monica in that hotel room in Tennessee, and how she rolled over and cried after she came. And how I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling still feeling her wet on my skin. Still tasting her. And how I didn't speak for swallowing. And how I felt myself go soft for her, but I didn't touch her. Because I'm not interested in that kind of mistake. And we were there in the quiet room, as close and as far as we've ever been. And we fell asleep that way.

The next day we got dressed in silence. Outside in the cold, she said, You know, he's not coming back this time. She said, I think I fucked it up. And her brown eyes were hollow. And her brown eyes were wet. And before we got into our different cars, I put my hand to her neck and her neck was warm.

Behind my truck seat, are plastic bags I've sealed with a knot. Inside them are empty sushi trays. Only a lump of wasabi remains in each. Honey doesn't care much for wasabi. So she leaves them alone. And sometimes I'll collect two or three of these tied bags before I remember to deposit them in the trash. And it feels good that I can gather them no matter where I go. Because, in modern cities, there is always a place to buy sushi. And so there is always a place I can call home.

Until one day when I won't be able to remember home anymore. And I'll just have these broken memories of things I used to collect. Things I used to cherish. Things I used to do that I was proud of. Things I used to do that I wasn't. And I'll talk about them to strangers who bring me medicines. And I'll say, There was a time I ate sushi at stoplights. And I'll say, I listened to someone cry once and I didn't know what to do and so I did nothing. And I'll say, I'm not sure if I should have helped her live, or helped her die. And I'll say, I've made so many goddamned mistakes.

And it'll be just another thing that won't matter. Like putting my boots on the wrong feet.

I'll say the words until they become my stories. I'll keep stringing them together the way I've learned to do. And I'll repeat them over and over. Until finally there is nobody left to hear them. Until finally the words themselves will fade and become meaningless.

And it won't be so bad when that happens. It really won't.

Go To Post

The First Draft

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:16:08 EST

Our selfhood, the thing we refer to as the "me" or the "I," is just a story we tell ourselves. And maybe mine is one long suicide note. The words scrawled out, forming the pavement for this curvy, wet, cliff-side road I'm driving. My foot pressed hard on the clutch, engine revving. Then up. The other foot down. And the squealing of these ball-point tires. The long insurgent slide. The excited fall. And then nothing. Silence. Peace.

Because at the end of all that skid and confusion, this feeling. That I'm not going to die. Not now. Not ever. Because I've found that thing. That person. And this time I'm going to let myself fall.

It's not so much a sense of being invincible. It's more like: It could kill me, and it would be okay. It could kill me, and it would be good. He could kill me, and I wouldn't die.

A murder is just a suicide without the self-incrimination.

Mike and I went to dinner the other night. And he told me some of the story. When we came back here, we didn't fuck. And that's good, because fucking has a way of killing the story when it's done too soon. I do feel close to him, though. Which kind of scares me. We spoke over a few Irish whiskeys. And pretended we weren't thinking about the thing we were thinking about. He put his hand to his beard when he spoke. And sat with his legs crossed casually. And he always looked me right in the eye. I laughed at something he said, and I actually spit out a little whiskey on my shirt. Jesus.

I played it off, though. I said, "That's funny...I usually swallow." He laughed.

When he'd had too much to drink, he talked about his ex. And the place they used to live in the burbs years ago. He told me this story about a conversation they had once about beer bottles. I made a little sketch of it on the page this morning while it was fresh in my mind. I'm not sure if it happened like this. In fact, I'm sure it probably didn't. But this is the way it happened in my head. Which is the way I'm going to tell it.

I have a lot of sketches like this one. And together they make up this body of work. But to me it never feels like the body of work. There is always just the last sketch. And the one before it. And Christ, I hardly want to look at anything beyond that.

This is probably boring you. I'm sorry. I've got other stuff you might be interested in. More about my dad. Or how I never visit my mom anymore because she doesn't recognize me. But I'm too tired for all of that right now. So you're stuck with the little stuff.

Like how I've been changing up my morning routine. And actually this isn't so little for me. It's big. Huge, in fact. Because I'm very into my routines. But I think mine needed changing. This hangover I wake up into each morning—it just wasn't going away with the usual prescriptions. So I've taken to blasting music. Rock. Or rap. High-energy shit. And dancing in my pajamas in my living room. And I throw up a middle finger to the nature outside my window. And I straighten my lip and I bare my fucking teeth. And I shake out last night's demons.

Also, I'm using the mug without the handle. The one that broke in the move. It used to be my favorite. My hand found it the other day in the dim of my kitchen while the coffee brewed. It was so early, the moon still showed big and luminous outside through the pines. I started to reach for another. And then I paused and I put my hand back on the broken one. And kept it there. And I said, Why not? So now I grab for it each morning, this partly broken thing, and I rinse it in the sink if it's dirty, and it's always dirty, and I fill it and hold the entire mug in my hand. And the heat feels good in my palm on these cold morning tremblings.

I guess I should also mention the new vibrator.

It came in the mail a few days ago. It's called a "Butterfly Kiss." It's called that because there is a little butterfly-shaped thing that's supposed to flutter against your lips while the wobbly little shaft is inside you. I don't know if "flutter" is really very accurate. And that's kind of disappointing. Because "fluttering" had seemed to me like it would be really, really nice. But it's definitely more of a "vibrate." More of a "buzz" than a "flutter." Oh well. Also, the part that goes inside you, even though it has a pleasantly-sized swollen tip, it's just way too bendy.

Whatever. I still got off on the thing, but it did take some effort. You'd be surprised what I can get off on. Or maybe you wouldn't.

Most of the snow has melted off the gravel driveway leading to my house. So I got in my car and I drove over to the Main Street Tavern yesterday. And I told my therapist (bartender) that I've been feeling more contented lately. That I've been feeling something I might even refer to as "focused." And that, you know what, I don't actually need to fuck you anymore. Which was a lie, of course. And I'm not really sure why I said it. It might have been because I felt like hurting him a little. It might have been to try and make myself believe it. It might have been to see if he would push back. To see if he would try to make me fuck him. Or if he'd just fuck me regardless. I'm not sure what I wanted, really. Maybe I just felt like being a bitch.

The truth is, I have no idea who my bartender really is. I mean, I know how his chest feels when I'm hitting it. And I know the way his mouth feels when he's biting my shoulder. I know his real name is Danny but people at the bar call him Smitty. Whatever, they both end in "y." I know that he seems to want to grow facial hair, but it just doesn't quite happen for him, and how it doesn't really matter that it doesn't, because it's still kind of sexy. I know when he pops a cap on a Miller Light, it is swift and decisive and fluid, and he lets the cap fall on the floor and how this doesn't seem to bother or distract him, and how he eats me out with the same casual intensity. I know he smells like youth. I know he tastes like an engine sounds.

But I don't know what he wants. And I don't know what keeps him up at night. And I don't know how he puts his clothes on in the morning.

God, the thing that worries me constantly about people is that I've got them all wrong. That the way I'm painting them on the page, in my mind, is not the way they really are. That Mike, for instance, is not Mike. Not my Mike. Because there's so much I don't know about him. And I'm scared of what it's going to mean to find out.

But there is no right or wrong in this. I have to keep reminding myself of that.

Maybe what I'm really scared about has more to do with me. Maybe what I'm really scared about is that I'm the one not true on the page. That I'm not this me. That I won't get it right. That I don't have the courage to carry this thing off. And by the time I realize it's all wrong, by the time I find that person I am, it'll be too late.

The self. The me. The I.

I will always be a goddammed first draft.

Go To Post

A Good Bowl of Soup

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:34:34 EST

The impulse to die and the impulse to start over are really the same thing. I'll do the one so long as I can't do the other. The reasons why I can't are many. And the reasons why I can't are not impressive. Maybe my house is too messy. Or maybe it's wet outside and I like rainy days. But the dialogue. This either/or proposition. It runs like a soundtrack. And seven years ago, with it playing at full volume, I sat in my car with my daddy's gun, which was now my gun, which I'd taken as my own when I found it in a shoebox in his closet after his own tragic ending, and I thought about my boredom and how I felt betrayed by it, and how the day before, for whatever reason, had been the best day, and how today it wasn't, and I put my lips around that hard steel choice. And my mouth watered a little the way it does before you're about to vomit, and after some amount of time that might have been minutes and might have been hours, I decided that, instead of dying, I would start over. Because I remembered that today was the day they served my favorite soup at the sandwich shop down the street. Corn chowder. And so I took the gun out of my mouth. And I put it under the seat. And I applied some lip balm to my dry cracked lips. And I went to that shop, and it was hot that day, and it was even hotter inside the shop, and I told the guy behind the counter, who I think was the owner, You know, your soup saved my life today. And he had sweat on his forehead and he smiled and he said, Thanks. Because he thought I was simply paying him a compliment. Because he thought I was just making some friendly conversation about corn chowder. Because he didn't think I'd just been in my car with a gun in my mouth.

The phone woke me from a sleep that was in no way natural. A sleep that had been brought on by a number of chemicals, some of which, if you want to be technical about it, do occur naturally, I suppose. But if you think, like I do, that you should define sleep as something that happens organically, like when you're tired, something that you fall into as a result of natural fatigue, a byproduct of natural activities—you know, like talking and engaging in the world and going for walks and stuff—well, then this sleep wasn't that.

I didn't look at the number. I just answered to stop the ringing.

"Hello?"

I heard Mike's voice on the other end and winced.

"Rita? Hey. Were you sleeping?"

"No...yes."

"Should I call back?"

"Yes...no...fuck."

These are good responses to sufficiently kill a conversation. There was silence, save for the timbre of my own slow-grinding thoughts. My head was a rock. The shades were all drawn and it was dark in the room and I was sweating even though it was cold. I felt around my nightstand for my glasses. "What time is it?" I asked.

"It's five."

"Jesus. In the morning?"

"No, it's five in the evening."

A better question might have been, What day is it? But I let that one lie.

"Look, I was just calling to see if you wanted to head into town," he said. "Get dinner."

"Dinner?"

"Yeah."

"Like, together?"

"Yeah."

"Now?"

He didn't respond. I searched my heavy head for an answer.

Finally, I said, "I don't think I can make that happen."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry. You caught me at a bad time. I'm just in the middle..." I didn't finish the sentence. It was one of those sentences you don't really intend to finish.

Mike said, "Sure. Sure. It's last minute, I know."

I put my hand to my forehead.

Then he said, "Maybe tomorrow?"

"Yes. Maybe tomorrow. Call me tomorrow."

"Goodbye, Rita."

"Goodbye."

I got up and went to the bathroom. I set my glasses on the basin and brought cold water to my face. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. The puffy eyes. The lines in the forehead that weren't there last year. My stomach had some kind of storm swirling in it, so I sat on the toilet and wished for it to be gone and I waited and I put my head in my hands.

You don't escape yourself. Or the people you've learned to find. You just keep waking up and they're there. And maybe the point is to dive head-first into them and see what you can. While you still can. While you've still got your wits about you. And there in the bathroom with the cruel lights on, having dinner with Mike seemed like a great thing. To let this thing happen. There would be dinners and conversations and sex. And over time, he'd tell me the story. Because I was stuck, after all, and he was there to hand it to me. I could use him for that. He could be my goddamned hero.

The decision to put the piece in my mouth seven years ago had been just as arbitrary as the decision to take it out. People want to blame others. An abusive parent. Or lover. A misunderstanding world. White-hot intolerance. Or the hollow demons of a tortured soul. People want to point fingers and do forensics on the whole thing and put order to it until it becomes a neat little story with a headline that's easy to swallow. Like all good fictions. Because the truth is way too messy: that some people are just biding their time until there are no more good bowls of soup.

Go To Post

Landing Punches

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 11:57:04 EST

(published in Rose & Thorn Journal)

My dad bought me a pair of red boxing gloves when I was seven. I would put them on and stand on my bed and pretend I was somebody who would kick somebody's ass. Mostly I was not somebody who would kick somebody's ass. I'm still not. But sometimes I hurt people close to me by accident. I once gave my best friend a black eye with an Atari gaming apparatus. Years later, at my wedding, I got the same friend to put his hand on a scalding hot snifter full of Sambuca. He's still got the scar today. But here's the thing: I stuck my hand on a burning snifter that night, too. Because, you want to know a secret, (which really isn't so much a secret)? I'm best when I'm hurting myself. Pain's always sweetest when it's self-inflicted. And you do it by being careless. Or irrational. Or both. And sometimes there are innocent casualties caught in the crossfire. What I'm trying to say is, if I hurt you, it's not intended. It's just because you were standing too close. Knowing me has consequences.

Around the time I got those boxing gloves, I had a lot of anger about things I had no control over. Like the reality of too-short visits with the one person who made me feel like myself. Two-day bursts of self-affirmation followed by weeks of doubt. Mementos would be purchased when we were together. They weren't necessarily intended to be mementos. But they always turned out that way. And they'd remind me of him for days and days. Like those red boxing gloves. And somehow putting on those gloves helped me feel more powerful and less small. And at the same time they made me sad. And at the same time they made me angry.

And one morning when I was upset because we were about to leave each other again, I put the gloves on and sat on my bed and smacked them together. And he came in that morning and he sat beside me and he smiled the way he did and he made jokes. And I was trying to tell him look, I don't want leaving to be something we do anymore, like I did every time I was with him. I was trying to tell him, I'm scared of this kind of pain. But that wasn't a language he spoke. Because he was in the business of letting go. He was in the business of reality. And me, I just had those gloves on. And because I couldn't look at him without crying, I kept looking at the gloves. And he said, "Do you want to hit me?" And I shook my head. And I said, "No." But I did. I did want to hit him. And he fucking knew it.

I still like being careless and irrational, though I'm rarely either. I still like hurting myself. Or finding the right people to do it for me. But I've also learned the language of letting go and how you can use it to fight. It's a language that comes easy as soon as you study it. The grammar. The proper way to construct a sentence. The way this verb fits with this noun. The use of idioms. You start by learning the rules. And then, like with any skill, you learn how to break them. This way, you make the language your own. You develop your own combination of jabs and hooks. One-two-three-cross-hook-uppercut. You learn what works and what doesn't. You develop a style.

It wasn't hard telling Monica I was leaving. It wasn't hard saying the words as I packed up my shaving gear. It wasn't hard telling her I had no idea when I would be back. That I wasn't even sure I'd be back. She spoke this language, too. And she had her own way of throwing words and landing punches. And we tried a few combinations on each other to see which ones worked and which ones didn't. And it turns out: We were both good at throwing. We were both good at blocking.

Today, I have a pair of boxing gloves I bought myself. They're black. And they don't remind me of anything except the satisfying sound of glove hitting bag. Two or three times a week, I put them on to prove my body can still give and receive punishment. And I'm no longer scared of the kind of pain I used to shy away from. I stand and face it with my lead foot in front. And I throw my shoulder into every jab and cross. And I use my stomach muscles for the body punches and hooks. And even though it's bad technique, I practice with my guard down. Because fuck you is why.

It makes me feel tough. To inflict this hurt on you. On me. In the end it's mostly about me, though. I'm the one who's going to feel it later. And you're just standing too close. And the truth is, it doesn't hurt that bad when we're doing it. Does it? It's a good kind of hurt. The feeling of movement. Of affecting change. The carrying out of a combination. The spitting of breath and words. It's always a couple of days later that I'll feel it: the real pain. The real ache. From the ghost touch. The missing smell and closeness. The unsaid words and the absent smiles and jokes. And it never hurts as bad as that.

Go To Post

The Sky is Always There

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:24:45 EST

I saw Moses in the Catskills at a place called "North Point," a high, flat surface of rock that looks out over the Hudson and some lakes that go by simple names like "North" or "South." He was wearing a Yankees shirt and he'd shaved the gray hair on his head and face down to rough stubble. At first I didn't recognize him, but his clear blue eyes—so much like the sky that day, so much like the luminous optimism I'd begun to feel—they were unmistakable.

I said: "You."

He said: "I knew I'd find you here."

In a way, so did I. I always find something when I'm out here. I always find it because I'm not looking for it. Because I'm preoccupied with the here and the now. The doing. The shaking, shivering this. Temporarily sheltered by this enterprise of movement and exercise. My mind happily crippled by a kind of purposeful short-sightedness. I'm guarded with my sanity. And tight-lipped and stoic toward the everyday shit that normally robs me of it. That's when I'll see it. Or that's when it'll see me. I'm never sure which.

Honey was happy to see Moses. Her back formed that c-curve of euphoria. She became her tail wag: an indecent paroxysm of happiness. Her ears folded back close to her head, she hopped and danced and slapped Moses on the legs with her front paws. When she's in this state of heightened excitement, she lets out small pleading whimpers, high-pitched and urgent. Like she will at any moment explode from elation.

It is a great thing to be greeted like this, with this kind of canine orgasmic hullabaloo. But I wouldn't want it from people. I'm suspicious of humans who are this transparent with their emotions. It makes me instinctively reach for my wallet.

Moses said he had spent the night out here, and that he was heading back the way I'd just come. I pretended I was continuing on so we wouldn't have to entertain thoughts of walking together.

Moses carried his tent and other gear on his back—not in the bed of his truck, the way I'd transported mine to my crowded campground. He'd only brought what was absolutely necessary. A bed. A basic shelter. I suddenly felt embarrassed by my pansy-ass car camping and how Moses didn't seem concerned about not bringing a cooler full of beer with him. Fucker. He probably started a fire with his bare hands. Or his breath. Or by banging his huge testicles against his thighs like thunder claps.

I don't know what somebody like Moses wants from a guy like me. I don't know why he keeps seeking me out. Or why he keeps allowing himself to be found. (I'm not sure which...maybe there's really no difference.) I don't know why I feel compelled to listen to the things Moses says. Or why the things he says seem to make so much sense. I think it's his unquestioning eyes more than anything. The way they seem to understand the simple hardness of the earth and the clear blueness of the sky.

We stood there for a little while. We squinted at the Hudson in the distance and we breathed the air which tasted like the sun. I offered him some gluten-free trail mix and he palmed a handful and brought it to his mouth.

He chewed, and he said: "The sky is always there. You don't need to be way up here to see it."

I nodded. I said: "It's harder down there."

He said: "I don't get why you won't let go."

I said: "I don't get how that's all you do."

Go To Post

My Mind Carries a Glock

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:12:00 EST

The other night, I woke up to pee. I was in the hotel again. Monica had been there earlier, but now she was gone. I could still smell her on the pillow next to me. And on my hand. Now it was just Honey in the bed, curled up in the greater-than sign of my knees.

I got up. Made my way to the bathroom. In these moments when I'm barely awake, I'm always struck with a kind of infirmity. Fuzzy vision. Or worse—no vision whatsoever. Eyes glued shut. My body feels swollen and bruised. Like it's been in a fight. Often it has: with an IPA. Or six. My mind isn't any better off. It's full of some terrible static. And since neither mind nor body can fully depend on the other, they begin to act independently. Each one thinking he knows best. Stubborn. Mean. Two sorry gangsters with loaded guns unable to see eye-to-eye, ready to pull the trigger if the other so much as looks funny. And let me tell you, they both look funny.

I'd told Monica about the conversation with Gary. I'd asked her why she hadn't told me about him.

"Because. I didn't think I had to. It's really not your business."

"I run into him all the time. Don't you think...I should know?"

"Why? He doesn't know anything."

"This is a small hotel. He knows."

"He's not that bright."

"Perhaps, but that beard. I think it knows things he doesn't."

"If you'd of asked me, I'd have told you, Papi. I will always tell you what you don't want to know."

God, I love it when she says things like that.

In these moments of early-morning wakefulness, my body is the wiser of the two gangsters. That doesn't often happen. But Body knows we have to do this thing and he figures the quicker the better. Mind isn't entirely convinced. He has his own agenda. And he carries a Glock, so there's that. Maybe we can stay here a bit longer, he says, waving that piece around like a drunk mafioso. It's not quite a question. He calls this "reasoning." He says: Maybe it'll just go away, this urge. Let's just stay in bed. He says: If it comes to it, we could just do it here. And Body's irked response: We go through this every time. It's not...proper. In these moments, Mind always feels a little betrayed. He feels like he's just being dragged along. Like he has no say in this matter. He's not used to that.

And Body...you'd think he'd like all the power, but he's really not too keen on the whole thing either. He moves awkwardly. He slams his shoulder into door frames. He kicks stray rawhides with his bare feet. He's often reluctant to let go of an erection.

And both act blameless over this last thing. My god, the finger pointing. The name calling. Body: You were the one with the fucked-up erotic dreams, asshole. Why don't you get rid of it. By the way, what was with her? And the boxing gloves? Mind: I have no idea what you're talking about, you perv. And, would you look at yourself? Christ, you look ridiculous all hunched over like that. Are you actually going to try to piss that way? Body: Look, I've done this plenty of times. Just go back to sleep. I'll take care of it.

It's in these early hours that both Mind and Body are a little on edge. Scared and mistrustful when it comes to familiar things. The floor fan. The light switch. The bathroom sink. Silent things seem suspiciously animate. Quiet things seem downright rowdy. And loud things seem...goddamned ferocious.

God, this early hour bathroom dance...when it's still so dark. A hand on the wall. Searching. For a light. For a switch. In the hotel, we need it. Because it's all so unfamiliar. And it's awful, really it is—awful and jarring—when it pops on, shining a spotlight on this mafia showdown. But we search for it anyway. And when we find it, we have to figure out how to operate it. In the more modern hotels, you just put your finger on this little indention on the wall, and the light goes on. Like magic. It's hard to grasp at three in the morning. No switch?! I've been in a few rooms where the light comes on automatically, too. Motion sensors and all. You'd think these would be good. But they can make you paranoid. And they don't go off without a fight.

This hotel isn't new. It's got a switch. And while those are easy to wrap your head around, they still have to be found. And they come with sounds.

But we do it. Mind, Body: The ugly team of us. We manage to find it. And we flip the switch up. A loud pop. We look around the bathroom and try to suppress our panic. We mark the goal. There! There it is! We understand our position in relation to the other objects in the bathroom. The sink. The trash can. The toilet. We organize the space between here and there in our head. We do this in a split second. And then it's back off with the light. Another loud pop. And we walk over to where we are. And we stand there. And we do what we've decided we must.

And here's the thing that strikes me this time: when you flick on the light like that. On and then off. Real quick like. The image of the scene remains, burned in your vision. In your mind's eye. It just hovers there in the darkness. Etched on your retina. As real as anything you've ever felt or touched. And it feels close. And it feels distant, too.

And it occurs to me in that moment, that sometimes things are like that. Real things. They remain with us, long after they've disappeared. We can see them. We can smell them. We can taste them. They are both close and distant. And it's not imagination. It's some other faculty that operates independent of our consciousness. The light comes on, the bright 100-watt bulb, and the things are there. And the light goes off, and they stay with us for a bit. Even if we move around. Even if we leave them.

Go To Post

Rabbit Speed

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:59:46 EST

You're still doing groundhog speed.

You need to kick it up to rabbit speed.

Short Order Cook

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:50:12 EST

He's taking orders. Make up your mind. You wanna go in on a half-dozen squirrel with me?

Symbology

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:01:21 EST

H 6 26 NOM ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

Hydrant: Ely, UK

Protective Unit

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:37:56 EST

JESUS ARE YOU SURE THAT'S SAFE?!

Brain Hots

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:56:31 EST

hot season at the park,

it started.

i have dat boil brain.

toddy hot bake.

duck shit.

slappy.

smell somma it.

bocci ball disco and the

bald man. dig

pond scummy scum.

i have dem brain hots.

Pullulate

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:13:03 EST

There was a lot to worry over today. Not the least of which concerned the remarkable growth rate of the peonies. If the stalks do not stop this absurd upward charge, we will have to build more sky into which they can ascend and pullulate. And the worry, as worries go, is that they will loom heavy and darkly beautiful over the house, and cast a shadow and a powerful murk until the apocalypse, or at the very least mid-summer.

Love Taps

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:48:51 EST

Listen to me, Runt: "tapping that ass" does not mean what you think it does.

Tall Green

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:06:05 EST

I'm just saying, he left and the ground erupted in the tall green. You don't find that suspicious?

Armitage Shanks

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:39:07 EST

If you're like me, a fan of Green Day in the early 90s, the urinals (or toilets, or sinks) in England will keep the song Armitage Shanks running through your head.

Windsor Hydrant

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:21:29 EST

Windsor Castle is well-marked with hydrant signs. Some have measurements displayed as metric and some (like the one pictured here) are imperial. This one is probably one of the most photographed hydrant signs in England because it has prime real-estate at the changing-of-the-guard ceremonies.

In other Windsor news, the "Royal Standard" flag was raised on the tower, which means the Queen was "in residence" while we were there. It's unclear, however, whether or not this means she was actually physically on the Castle grounds while we were there.

It's also unclear whether or not she was "in residence" because she knew I'd be visiting.

Or if she likes hydrants.

There is a lot that is still unclear in all of this.

Except for this: It is quite clear that one of the songs the military band played during the ceremony was "Skyfall." Yes, from the recent James Bond movie.