Once Again...

He was getting rather forgetful in his old age. Maybe it was all the long days and little hours of sleep... He'd spend hours working on little projects in the basment and then forget to ever go back and finish what he'd started. Margaret never would have let him get away with that but she was no longer there. Oh, How much he did miss her. Maybe that's why he was so forgetful? Perhaps she was the missing piece that kept him from being whole and when he wasn't whole, then he simply wasn't himself. He hadn't been himself for awhile.

But then Charlie, his wife's favorite Tabby cat, jumped up on the desk and reminded him of what he had forgotten. Maybe Charlie was the key to curing all this memory loss...

Socio/Economic Footnotes

Dear Mom and Dad,

I wanted to thank you, first of all, for being the unwavering support you've always been to me all of these years.

(Wait, didn't I write the exact same thing to you last year?

Fuck...I guess so.)

It's been cold down here. I hope it's been nicer up there (snore).

You know how expensive my full-spectrum omega vitamins are, right? (probably not as much as I'm leading you to believe.) This week my supply is pretty scarce. Since I already call you and ask for so much so often, I thought I'd write a letter this time. (You know, snail mail...just like you guys were always so fond of me doing in the past. Does my nostalgic creativity earn me any points?)

Don't feel obligated to send me money, though (I know you will anyway). If anything, what I really need is some new(er) shoes. Shoe sizes are weird, so a gift card will be easiest (though plain money is, of course, always better).

Mom, you always made me write thank you cards for my holiday and birthday presents. (Why? Because it's less personal and obligatory than a phone call. I get it now.) I imagine it was to bridge the gap between traditional courtesy and modern flippancy. I feel bad that I haven't made more of an effort in my adult life (not really).

I've been thinking a lot about college recently, and possibly going back (how else am I supposed to meet women? Online dating has been a joke). What do you think? I'd probably major in education (and minor in late night Taco Bell runs).

There's no structure to this letter, I apologize (actually, I don't regret it one bit, but I still need you to send me money without feeling like I'm being an ungrateful asshole. Perhaps if I act more scatter-brained you'll be more willing to upgrade me to a better therapist, which will in turn help me construct a more distinctive yet palatable personality. That way I can get laid more.).

I just wanted to say that I love you guys, but sometimes I get sidetracked (and I'm too much of a pussy to tell you genuinely with my own voice).
You guys tell me this so much, and I'm sorry if I sometimes seem distant and have stunted affection

(I don't know if I really love you anyways, since the two of you encapsulate an ironic hybrid between a crippling obstacle to my unattainable goals and an ego-boosting encouragement to my weak self-esteem...the deadliest combination imaginable. This “love” is most accurately allegorized as a vaulted wonderland of unhealthy comfort that I refuse to depart from).
I'm working on that, please understand (don't give up hope on me, sweet parents, for the final advantages have not yet been taken of you).

Hope to see you guys soon! (a white lie, but how else am I supposed to end this damn letter?)

Love (doesn't exist),

-Your Son

PS:  I am not your son.  You can call me the demon of sobriety.

The Emotionalist

-->

‘How’s it going?’

‘Fine, you?’

‘I’m single again.’

‘I’m sorry, hon.’

‘Want to go on a drive tonight?’

‘Will it last longer than a night?’

… ‘Probably not.’

… ‘When will you pick me up?’

‘I’m already on my way.’

And so the cycle continues.  He has been playing it this way for years, not going more than five minutes alone, perhaps making up for lost time in his simultaneous dating of several women.  He’s committed to all of them, only not exclusively to any single one. He shows affection only to Elisabeth.  She’s not one for conversation.  The rest are an occasional trip to the cinema, a casual lay and an awkward goodbye, usually only lasting the thirty seconds it takes him to put on his trousers and walk out the door to his car to go to work.

He drives incessantly.  He has eight different places in this county alone to take a woman and treat her as if she is all that matters in his world.  And for those brief moments, he makes the particular woman just that.

He considers his biggest relational problem the fact that he cannot find a woman who fits with him.  He could never see himself spending a lifetime with any one of the women he is seeing.  He is an unusual magnet for insecure women and is very aware of this.  Yet these women represent the broadest extremes, from the most passive deadbeat to the most aggressive feminist.  He thinks he wants someone in the middle, but in his mind he’s already passed through seven of them, while at the time not knowing that they were the right ones for him.  He discovered this while passionately kissing Agnes.

He sees himself as some sort of Phil Connors.  He can work his routine ten times without a repeat.  He can sharpen it up and try new things the next time around.  He knows that he is failing at life, but has such low expectations for himself that his conscience is expiring.

He is the product of seventeen years of incessant emotional manipulation, and all forms of abuse.  He has no trust for the government as a result of the numerous cries for help, an extremely brief investigation, followed by an eventual grand maternal manipulation, the likes of which Katherine Hepburn had never reached.  As soon as they had come, Social Services had left, four times over.

A mixture of his own narcissism and insecurity have fueled him his full time pursuit of  women since the age of fourteen.  He is a man of no special talents or abilities.  He has many books, most of which have never been opened except upon arriving home after a purchase when they were to be stamped, ‘From the Library of…’

But for a moment, once, he was in love.  21 November 1999.  She's married now.  Now he searches evermore for that same feeling, fleetingly.

The Café

The Café never closes and he likes to be the first to arrive before the breakfast crowd because he enjoys the early morning stillness and his coffee and the music from the aging speakers.

Earlier, he had stirred in the predawn black because he heard snoring in the adjacent apartment. It must have been very loud, but through the dampening walls it sounded like the softness of one man’s true and indecipherable and earnest claim and it steeled him to rise and comb his thinning grey hair before leaving. 

Eggs and toast, he said to the waitress. And, will you sit and join me again?

No I have to stay working today.

I think everyone is set now, he said looking around at the empty room.  Let me buy you breakfast.

Smiling, she said, I’ll join you for a cup of coffee. She poured another and the eggs came out, and she brought them to the small cracked leather booth where he sat.

It is really good to see you.

Always.

They both sipped their coffee and looked out the window at the dark fog that made her think of even darker mornings more fondly than she thought she would.  His inadvertently good company seemed to bring a steady glow.

He took another sip and began, I don’t remember where I learned this, but did you know that great white sharks generally live near the coast where they have enough food?

That’s what I always thought, scary.

But then, sometimes, and scientists don’t know why, but they’ve tracked their patterns and the noticed that a large portion of these sharks will make a long journey to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and will dive hundreds of feet down and then return back to the coast to live out the rest of their lives. This is a mystery to them and they call this area in the middle of the ocean The Café.

She smiled.  Really?

Yes, why do you think they do this?

Well, there must be something really important out there for the sharks I suppose. 

Yes. Do you know what I think? I think some of them don’t make it back. I think some must swim too far or dive too deep, and I wonder what it might be like for a sinking shark trying to make it back.

We might have to go out to the Café to find out. 

And dive down deep to find them?

And dive down deep to find them. But there might not be anything there, I don’t want you to get your hopes up.

That might be just as well.

The bell above the door jangled and a young family with an overstuffed van outside poured in.  She turned her head and looked back at the family and then straightened upright towards him with a heaving smile and squeezed his bent fingers as she got up.

Damp Morning

      Jesse finished his cigarette and stamped it out. It was a cold winter morning, although it was eleven o’ clock, it was foggy and damp and uncomfortable in general. He didn’t mind though, he never minded.

He casually checked the bolt in his 7mm rifle, although an efficient weapon, it wouldn’t have been his first choice, but he was hired and given a weapon to do the job and it was best not to question it. He was under strict orders to do this job quickly and efficiently, without any complications to slow down his getaway. Kill and get out, a simple directive that rarely bothered him and frequently paid well.

 There was his target, just like his source had told him. He didn’t have a problem with his profession, killing. It was the only thing that he had really ever been able to understand, it was quick and it was definite. There was no uncertainty about it. He had once been an accomplished man, in his country’s military. He was proud of his accomplishments as a man who had once helped defend his country. He didn’t like to think of himself as a man who took life, he instead liked to think of it as trying to make a living.

He let out a deep sigh, he considered lighting another cigarette to calm his nerves, but he had been considering trying to quit smoking and decided not to. He went back to his personal thoughts. Somewhere, he had a son, he had had a wife as well but she had not wanted his trouble. He missed his Jacob, he missed the way that he laughed, he missed the way he cried, he missed everything about his son. His thoughts were pleasant ones about his family and the time (no matter how short it might have been) that they had spent together. He wished that he could find a way to get his old life back, his life of normality and trust, not this life of grey areas,  no rest,  and constant fear that he might be caught at any given time. But all these thoughts were foolish ones, and he was a professional who tried to rise above sentimentality in order to perform the task he had been assigned.

It now dawned on him that he had wasted precious time in his thoughts, his target was still there though, his life of grey areas still waiting on him. He, without putting thought into it, lined up the target in his scope and pulled the trigger. He walked away that day thirty-thousand euros richer, and he convinced himself that it had been worth taking a human life in order to obtain it. But it was his sincere hope that he could, someday, have a normal life again.

Violet

"A priest, a rabbi, and a duck walk into a bar.  The bartender looks up at them and says, "Is this a joke?"

This is what it has taken me two hours to write.  A bad joke meant to mock the mother of  all bad jokes.  My name is Barry Chumble and, right now, I am sitting in the Des Plaines Public Library, preparing a stand-up routine for my first ever open mic.

The open mic is on Friday.  Today is Thursday.  I have, in my repertoire, a half-memorized monologue about the time I was mistaken for a street performer in Lincoln Park and a probably misogynistic rant against women who drive Smart cars.  It isn't great stuff, but my life doesn't afford me great material.  I'm Barry Chumble - hotel bartender by day, aspiring comedian by  night.  It worries me that I don't have enough anxiety in my life.

The fluorescent lights in this room are making me sick. How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb?  Change?  Why change?

I should stop staring at the ceiling.  It isn't helping me think.

Across from me, three tables down, clad in a violet suit jacket and rosate khaki shorts, Bill Murray is reading a magazine.

It takes a moment for that to register and I begin to realize that I have been sitting in this room for at least an hour with one of my comedy idols, as if this were an every day occurrence.

He looks thoughtful and I can't quite see the title of the publication he's reading, but  I'm sure that, whatever it is, I want to be reading it too.

Nearby to my chicken scratch notes, full of the fruits of "As-Seen-On-TV" comedy classes, there is the dog-eared copy of National Geographic. Its cover article is about the South American snapping turtle.

If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?

This is a disaster.  Focus.  Maybe it's not the seminal star of Ghosbusters and Caddyshack  after all.

I sneak another glance.  It's definitely him.

What is Bill Murray doing in Des Plaines?

Doesn't matter.  I need to speak to him.  How many aspiring comedians would kill for this opportunity?

Then it hits me.  I come up with an ice-breaker line - just obscure enough to show that I'm a true fan, but not so obscure that Murray himself wouldn't get the reference.  Maybe something from Meatballs or Stripes?  Definitely nothing after 1993.  Any movie made after Groundhog Day isn't vintage Murray.  I say the line to Murray and he laughs and shakes my hand.  Or maybe he doesn't.  Maybe he cruelly and viciously puts me down with the caustic arrogance of a Hollywood star.  Either way, I have a story, a real story, from which to build my act.

Bill Murray has fixed my writer's block.

All right, Barry.  Take a deep breath.  Get up from that chair.  Today is the day for decisive action! ...or is it?

The End

It’s not when you’re 13, 18, or even 21. You become an adult the first time your heart breaks.

I was 16.

It’s not what you think. Call off the witch hunt for some poor girl who is now in her late twenties. My kingdom for a female who made me feel that happy before she made me feel that sad; a dragon truly worthy of believing in and chasing. I guess that’s why they call them heroines. There I go again talking about women. Life would be so much more productive if I were asexual. Back to my figurative Bar Mitzvah...

I was home alone. My dad was traveling and my mom had taken the ferry off the island to visit the hospital again. I'd survive, there was a pizza in the freezer. It was the summer before the Christmas my life would change forever and I would get a cell phone, so our only lifeline was our landline. We screened our calls. I would have picked up anyway but since Mom’s voice was just a half pitch lower I grabbed the phone a half ring sooner. There is no useful transition with these things. Hello leads directly to he’s gone. I cried, she cried, we cried, then I had to figure out how to cook the pizza.

Preheating the oven gave me a few minutes to think in place. Some rationalizations poured in at least. He was well into in his 70’s, an outcome that a 16-year-old version of himself likely would have jumped at in Vegas. But my brain was not fully formed and I grew up with stem cells and Oprah, so I was having much more trouble. Everything was okay when I focused on the periphery and complex elements of it all, but everytime I circled back to the simple issue at hand - my grandfather was no longer present with us - that’s when everything crashed back down. The oven beeped to welcome in the pizza and allowed my brain to dodge the simple reality again for a second and step back. 

But you can only play Jenga for so long before it all comes to an end.

Kino's Fate

Kino had been sold to the statesman at a very early age. He briefly remembered his mother, but never met his father. In those days, that was a common way to grow up for someone like Kino. He had been a gift to the statesman’s children, and as such, had been assigned the task of protecting them. While the statesman seemed to despise him, the children loved him, and Kino felt the same. If it were possible, he would gladly raise them as his own.

Today, however, Kino feared that he had made a grave mistake. The statesman’s most prized possession, a jade-colored talisman, was lost. The children would, on occasion, use the talisman in their games– the statesman was not opposed to this– but Kino was always sure to return it to its rightful place. 

‘Surely the children had been using it outside again,’ thought Kino. ‘But it is not in any of the usual places. The master of the house will forgive his children, but he will not forgive me.’

He decided to search a second time, now more frantic than before, and ever increasingly so. It was not by the old oak, where the young master had climbed too high for Kino’s liking. It was not in the statesman’s garden, where the young mistress would pick berries for them to eat. It was not by the riverbank, where they loved to splash in the summertime. It was not by the gate, where the master daily greeted his children, and through which Kino would likely be leaving by day’s end.

It was nowhere.

As the sun began to set, the children came out to play. How Kino would miss their innocent faces, their giggles and squeals! He cherished the evening that would probably be his last with them. 

“Papa!”

The statesman entered the gate. A wave of shame spread over Kino’s face as the children ran to leap into their father’s arms. He carried them into the house as Kino trudged to his own quarters. It was only a matter of time. 

The next morning, Kino awoke, or rather, decided to stop trying to sleep. He could hear noises inside the house– surely his time had come. Kino’s heart froze when he heard the statesman’s voice, then turned to stone when he saw his face, and then–

He had the talisman! It wasn’t lost!

“Kino! Come here, ya dumb dog! Get your frisbee!”

Kino bolted from his house and jumped all over the congressman, tongue flopping and eyes dumbstruck with glee.

“I bet you wouldn’t be so happy if you knew what the vet was doing to you today!”

Dedicated To My Friend Jared

   Fifteen minutes south of the taco bistro I found a piece of the craft. I could tell because it was metallic in color and texture and the break pattern seemed to indicate intense stress as if by heat and friction. Jared was brave enough to scoop it off the highway barehanded but it was heavy and hot so he couldn't bring it more than a couple yards before dropping it to the asphalt. I can't really explain what happened next. I remember being awake the whole time but it was like a dream at the point where you begin to focus on the problem and experience incredible abilities motivated by your awareness of the dream state. Six manlike forms embraced me. At first I was confused and fear urged me to aggression. An axe swung into the neck of the first and he fell as I prepared for a second but they didn't harm me. I woke in the road on my back with a migraine and when I returned to the van Jared was asleep. We drove with the windows down and the shrapnel on the back seat and that night I discovered Jared had died.
  The lights woke me in our motel room and I jumped out of bed for fear it was the police. Having no where to go I found myself desiring the axe I'd dreamt of before and peeked through the blinds. Outside in the grass an amber orb of light rose straight up to a height of two stories. From it emerged another and another straight out from the first. I had courage I've never witnessed in my self or others and presence of mind to run out into the field shouting and waving my arms. The lights responded by dimming and returning to the original orb before it streaked away overhead.
    Then the voices came around me but they did not know I was with them. Coming close without contact a chill came over me and I could scarcely breathe. I began to run back to the motel where I found Jared. He said they spoke to him while I was asleep. He said they want the fragment back and they'll take with them the one who found it. I told him he was crazy and I take responsibility for abandoning him. He walked outside for fresh air and a cigarette. I didn't join him.
    It was just a weekend to relax and explore Tubac. Maybe we would brave the headhunters and go across the border for the afternoon. Or finally make it to his cousin Marvin's to shoot skeet like he's always talking about. Instead we saw it fall past the sun and cast a flash of shadow as it screamed to the desert sand. And we had to follow it. Then I realized Jared doesn't smoke. He was my friend and I'm sorry I didn't believe him when he needed me to. 

This Season is Over

-->

     I know that look. I’m trapped. This always happens, what my dreadful mother called, ‘the angle of repose’. Goodness, I can’t stand it. Her eyes are kind, but wary in case a bulwark must be raised in haste.

     Now’s the time, Damian, you gotta come clean. I am agog. Mouth open; nothing comes out.

     “You can say it,” she says, “I’m here. Nothing’s going to change.” I don’t believe her.

     Okay, here it goes… “I’m seeing a therapist.”

     “That’s it. Just that. Okay. What for?”

     “Actually… I’m currently seeing three different…”

     This makes her uneasy. She writhes subtly in her seat, “Three therapists… a week?”

     “Yeah… Well, truth be told, almost every week I see a fourth, but it’s always different because there’s a whole slew of physicians that do introductory sessions for free. It’s kinda like any other business plan; get you addicted for free and then punch up the cost once you’re hooked. So, I’ve been meandering on the fourth because I really can’t afford another. I tried some of those group sessions, but the fix of it is that I just don’t get anything out of those. I don’t really want to hear what other psychos have to yammer about.”

     “Psychos?”

     “Sorry.” Awkward silence. “No offense.”

     “Three therapists?”

     “Well, yeah, like I said, I’ve been trying to find a way to get a fourth.”

     “Okay. Four therapists… anything more to say?”

     At this I get indignant. “Hey, you don’t know what’s wrong with me! I could have been raped!”

     Scowl. “You weren’t raped.”

     “That’s not the point.”

     “Then what is, Damian?” Her hands reach across the table for mine. I have to memorize my story. My life. My life, my story; not the place for false anger.
     “I… I have a problem.” My eyes well up. Right on cue. I’m in the zone, peering into her eyes without blinking, without turning away, without remorse. I’m in character now. I will play the part. I will be the best emotionally deranged therapy junky there ever was. I will play the part, telling myself that this isn’t me. “I go there to make up stories. Currently, I have cancer of the eye, I have homicidal thoughts, and I gave my kidney to my brother who then drank himself to death.”

     Silence. She takes her hand away from mine. “But you don’t have a brother.”

     “I don’t have eye cancer either.”

     “Do you want to kill me?”

     “Why would I? Oh, right... I don’t really struggle with that.”

     “You’re just a pathological liar.”
     “No. I know I’m lying. I enjoy the fable.”

     “I have to go.” 

     She leaves.

     Sigh.

     Lying never gets me in trouble. I grimace as a wave of self-hatred seeps in. She’d still be here if I kept lying.