LAIRD’S NEW TOY
My best friend Laird lost his younger brother just over a month ago, dropped instantly dead at his workstation in a sheet-metal factory buried in South Carolina. Just forty-six, but grossly over-weight and hopelessly mired in a life stalled by narrow-minded tedium. I don’t know, but maybe Laird’s brother longed for something new, something beyond his control that would appear unexpectedly and rescue him from life’s onslaught of stale routine. Well, death is certainly something new, if not wholly unexpected.
Laird shares his anger and sadness with me via the miracle of my cell phone as I sit imprisoned on Los Angeles’ most notorious freeway, the 405. Hideously large jets packed with perpetual strangers choke the sky above me on their way to controlled crashes. I realize I’m preoccupied with my current situation and wish I had a hands-free headset as Laird grills me about my own views of life and death and how I think we travel our individual paths. I try to listen better, but the curiously attractive older woman in the car on my left is using one of those little pink disposable razors to shave a bare leg with long, sensuous strokes, her right heel solidly indented into the dashboard of her decrepit Toyota.
“I’m telling ya, it doesn’t make one god damn bit of sense anymore! What the fuck does it all lead to anyway Wayne, all this shit of living and always…ALWAYS dying?”
I’m inching forward in a sea of slow-motion lemmings, doing my darnedest not to run into the Jaguar in front of me while I practice a little shaving voyeurism, but more than its content, the tone of Laird’s question calls my attention back. The crackling of static in my ear gives me the feeling I don’t have to rush my answer.
“I don’t know Laird.”
After careful consideration, these are the only words of comfort I can produce, and the hot verdict of Laird’s silence shames me into stammering rhetorical platitudes of withering emptiness.
“Maybe it was simply his time Laird, you know, like we all must have a destiny, right? I mean, like, hey, I don’t even know if I’ll make it home today with all these Mario Andretti wanta-be’s fuckin’ with me out here”
I notice the speedometer indicates a little over fifteen miles-per-hour as I finish talking, and I begin to drift away once more, enraptured with the idea of what death would look like at fifteen miles-per-hour. Slow, simmering agony as my body…
“Fuck destiny Wayne…And fuck you and me and everyone else! We’re all gonna die, and it don’t matter when it happens or how. If there is a higher power, it should show its hand and quit messing with our heads. I’m just too tired of all the shit life offers up to go on believing in something nice and shiny waiting for me just around the bend. And I’m done with believing I can make it better somehow just by believing it will be!”
Deep silence penetrates the vacuity of my car, and I feel like getting out and running away from whatever it is that Laird and I have unearthed. I pull the phone away from my ear and see that the battery is running low, and I use the break in our conversation to look around for the woman with the wonderfully bare leg and pink plastic razor…I could introduce myself, I think, and get in with her and her smooth legs, and we could drive away and be happy somewhere out beyond the horizons that form my life’s borders. But she’s vanished, and I wonder if she ever really existed at all, the impression of smooth flesh against my brain the only evidence of her passing. And in the near distance, Laird’s voice sounds like a tiny, tin music box as he calls out to me from the phone now cradled in the hand tensed between my thighs.
“Wayne, where’d you go? Come on bro, I can hear the traffic…”
My body feels rigid and heavy, especially the arm attached to the hand that cradles the phone. Raising the phone to my ear takes considerable effort, and I realize that the herd of autos is loosening up a bit as my speedometer passes forty-five in a slow arc of hope. Finally I answer;
“I’m still here Laird. Battery’s running low though…might get cut off.”
“Okay man, I gotta get going anyway, but I wanta tell ya about my new toy. Just got it last week.”
And suddenly I can hear the stain upon his voice left by tears already fallen, and the future echoes of those still to come. This makes me feel softer, sadder and lonelier than I’ve felt in a long, long time. I don’t really care to hear about this “toy,” but I ask anyway, knowing he longs to break free from something hard and all too real. In complete jest I ask,
“What did you get Laird, a sports car or something?”
“Oh man,” his voice chirps, “How’d you know? I found a sweet little 1999 BMW Z3, like the one that Pierce Brosnan drove in that James Bond movie a few years back, remember that one? Mine’s charcoal-gray though, with a black convertible roof and gray interior. Only 60,000 miles and super clean. Ya gotta come down soon and check it out dude!”
I find myself amazed by this revelation, not only because I guessed correctly about his new toy, but more so because of the change in his demeanor as he talked about it.
“That’s awesome Laird! Sounds like good medicine to boot. I’ll see about coming down next weekend…Ya gonna let me drive it?”
“Ya, ya, of course bro. It’s just a thing anyway…Hey Wayne?”
“Still here dude, what’s up?”
“You know I love you man.”
“I know ya do buddy…and right back at ya.”
My phone goes dead as I offer this last sentiment, and though I’m not even sure if Laird heard me or not, I know he already knows. I’ll call him back when I get home anyway, and besides, the traffic is really starting to move and I feel the need to concentrate more than I usually do. All around me is the burgeoning rush of cars and more cars carrying their drivers and passengers toward the infinite mystery of their separate destinies, too fast perhaps, to allow time for the remembering of where they’ve been.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
ALONE I'M HOME
Alone I'm home, so
Weary from battles fought solo.
Convalesce I must amid
Obsidian dreams of
Things I missed
I’m home so, alone
In this place this time that
Dwells outside of me.
Smirking, I think
I missed things
Home so alone, I’m
Rife with crazy reality now dormant.
Of this and that
Sweltering all around,
Missed things I
So alone I’m, home
Among these brittle bowed bones,
As Eternity’s fair shadow
Engulfs all the
Things I missed
Alone I'm home, so
Weary from battles fought solo.
Convalesce I must amid
Obsidian dreams of
Things I missed
I’m home so, alone
In this place this time that
Dwells outside of me.
Smirking, I think
I missed things
Home so alone, I’m
Rife with crazy reality now dormant.
Of this and that
Sweltering all around,
Missed things I
So alone I’m, home
Among these brittle bowed bones,
As Eternity’s fair shadow
Engulfs all the
Things I missed
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Sunday, June 03, 2007
THE REGULAR CROWD SHUFFLES OUT
The light inside Billy O’s Pub appears as dim as the hopes of the regulars who line the U-shaped bar, totally focused it would seem on dissolving away their past, present and future. My wife Jane and I shuffle through a puddle of vacant gazes and seat ourselves in a burgundy-vinyl booth just beyond their misery. Gray, duct-tape patches hide drunken wounds and untold tales of conquest, real and imagined. It’s eight-thirty on a Saturday night and I’m feeling invigorated and strangely at ease as we join our world to the pub’s reality.
Neil Young warbles from the jukebox, “See the losers in the best bars, meet the winners in the dives,” and as I casually observe my fellow patrons I can feel the truth of his words flowing through my membranes. There’s no deceit here tonight, just the raw edge of being human and frail. Each secret that lingers needs only the right question to set it free, the burden of proof entrusted to the one brave enough to inquire. A woman obviously snake-bit by time and destiny rests her right elbow on the bar, her hand poised like some 1950’s matinee idol and cradling a smoldering cigarette. No one cares enough to ask her to extinguish the smoke.
A younger man approaches her, leans in close and says something. He waits for a few seconds, then leaves, brushing by us beneath a quick smirk of embarrassment. The woman takes a long drag and stalls before exhaling, automatic and despairing, as if she’s done, one way or another, with everything she set out to do in her life. I watch her rise, semi-amazed at whatever unknown motivation pushes her unsteadily after the younger man. As she wobbles past us I choose to see her closer to her beginning than to her ending. Without asking I know her deepest truth, that she is or once was someone’s daughter.
Jane and I have journeyed out this night to see our friend Chris perform with his band in the dingy yet comfy confines of Billy O’s. As the band straggles in and begins to set up I sense the first glimmers of change swirling through the pub and its crusty denizens. I know they’ve seen this before—-their “home away from home” is a frequent venue for bands who play music they don’t care to listen to-—but still, I sense a sadness pervading their world, that they are powerless to stop the temporary onslaught of tonight’s festivities. There’s no struggle looming on this horizon, just the simple dynamic of one world replacing the decline of another.
By nine-forty the band is ready, having robustly tuned-up for the ten o’clock start. Those lost souls who populated the premises when we first arrived have been replaced, save for the few too imbibed to move or even care, by a transient crowd of groupies and the mildly curious. A blush of possibility pervades this new crowd, though I detect in them the same underlying vulnerabilities already excavated and exposed among the pub’s more faithful clientele.
At ten o’clock the band begins their first set, too loud and perhaps too deep for this weary point in time. And Chris sings of things I’ve seen here tonight, of those other realms that are perhaps more genuine then that which we proclaim as our one, true certainty. Jane and I, now perched like aged voyeurs along the mirrored back wall, have witnessed the passing of the guard tonight, when the regular crowd shuffled out.
My head swims gently from the combined effects of several Newcastle beers and a certain spontaneity I can’t identify. I close my eyes, intent on absorbing the epiphany at hand. And suddenly I realize that maybe the regular crowd already knows something I’ve been chasing my whole life…that it isn’t about “this” or “that”…it simply is what it is.
The light inside Billy O’s Pub appears as dim as the hopes of the regulars who line the U-shaped bar, totally focused it would seem on dissolving away their past, present and future. My wife Jane and I shuffle through a puddle of vacant gazes and seat ourselves in a burgundy-vinyl booth just beyond their misery. Gray, duct-tape patches hide drunken wounds and untold tales of conquest, real and imagined. It’s eight-thirty on a Saturday night and I’m feeling invigorated and strangely at ease as we join our world to the pub’s reality.
Neil Young warbles from the jukebox, “See the losers in the best bars, meet the winners in the dives,” and as I casually observe my fellow patrons I can feel the truth of his words flowing through my membranes. There’s no deceit here tonight, just the raw edge of being human and frail. Each secret that lingers needs only the right question to set it free, the burden of proof entrusted to the one brave enough to inquire. A woman obviously snake-bit by time and destiny rests her right elbow on the bar, her hand poised like some 1950’s matinee idol and cradling a smoldering cigarette. No one cares enough to ask her to extinguish the smoke.
A younger man approaches her, leans in close and says something. He waits for a few seconds, then leaves, brushing by us beneath a quick smirk of embarrassment. The woman takes a long drag and stalls before exhaling, automatic and despairing, as if she’s done, one way or another, with everything she set out to do in her life. I watch her rise, semi-amazed at whatever unknown motivation pushes her unsteadily after the younger man. As she wobbles past us I choose to see her closer to her beginning than to her ending. Without asking I know her deepest truth, that she is or once was someone’s daughter.
Jane and I have journeyed out this night to see our friend Chris perform with his band in the dingy yet comfy confines of Billy O’s. As the band straggles in and begins to set up I sense the first glimmers of change swirling through the pub and its crusty denizens. I know they’ve seen this before—-their “home away from home” is a frequent venue for bands who play music they don’t care to listen to-—but still, I sense a sadness pervading their world, that they are powerless to stop the temporary onslaught of tonight’s festivities. There’s no struggle looming on this horizon, just the simple dynamic of one world replacing the decline of another.
By nine-forty the band is ready, having robustly tuned-up for the ten o’clock start. Those lost souls who populated the premises when we first arrived have been replaced, save for the few too imbibed to move or even care, by a transient crowd of groupies and the mildly curious. A blush of possibility pervades this new crowd, though I detect in them the same underlying vulnerabilities already excavated and exposed among the pub’s more faithful clientele.
At ten o’clock the band begins their first set, too loud and perhaps too deep for this weary point in time. And Chris sings of things I’ve seen here tonight, of those other realms that are perhaps more genuine then that which we proclaim as our one, true certainty. Jane and I, now perched like aged voyeurs along the mirrored back wall, have witnessed the passing of the guard tonight, when the regular crowd shuffled out.
My head swims gently from the combined effects of several Newcastle beers and a certain spontaneity I can’t identify. I close my eyes, intent on absorbing the epiphany at hand. And suddenly I realize that maybe the regular crowd already knows something I’ve been chasing my whole life…that it isn’t about “this” or “that”…it simply is what it is.
Friday, June 01, 2007
CRY UNCLE
Chauncey lays in bed enduring yet another unwanted free-fall through the muddle of faded memories and vanquished hope. Sparse remnants of his radically brilliant father evaporate into the dark shadows of his dreams. He blinks at his dingy, yellowed ceiling, hoping to spot the first traces of random intervention arriving to rescue him from the day’s impending obligation.
He staggers from bed and glimpses a younger image of his father as he passes the vanity mirror, then continues unsteadily to the toilet and the day’s first piss. He aims into the water and senses his hunger for the simple diversions of life’s innate functions. As the last few drops fall he feels his despair and loathing return.
A forty-something version of his father stares back as he brushes his teeth. Chauncey automatically counts thirty strokes for each surface as he carefully maintains the proper angle of attack, just like dad had taught him in that other lifetime.
It’s funny, he thinks, how things become gospel, as if there’s only one correct way to brush teeth.
He spits into the sink, still weary from the night’s unrest.
Chauncey pulls on his pants, then sits numbly on the edge of his bed to slip on his socks and shoes. He contemplates the collective weight of each seventy-five minute drive to his father’s new residence, the ‘Gentle Estates Senior Care Center.' And for the umpteenth time he replays the lies he and his sister had shared, that “it’ll be best for dad,” that “one visit per week is doable,” that somehow “things will be okay.”
And he also remembers this…That last Sunday morning the head nurse had called to say, “Your father was found naked except for one white sock, fetal and sobbing beneath the word “Uncle” smudged on the wall with his own feces.”
Chauncey bends to tie his shoes, silently wishing he could cry “Uncle” too.
Chauncey lays in bed enduring yet another unwanted free-fall through the muddle of faded memories and vanquished hope. Sparse remnants of his radically brilliant father evaporate into the dark shadows of his dreams. He blinks at his dingy, yellowed ceiling, hoping to spot the first traces of random intervention arriving to rescue him from the day’s impending obligation.
He staggers from bed and glimpses a younger image of his father as he passes the vanity mirror, then continues unsteadily to the toilet and the day’s first piss. He aims into the water and senses his hunger for the simple diversions of life’s innate functions. As the last few drops fall he feels his despair and loathing return.
A forty-something version of his father stares back as he brushes his teeth. Chauncey automatically counts thirty strokes for each surface as he carefully maintains the proper angle of attack, just like dad had taught him in that other lifetime.
It’s funny, he thinks, how things become gospel, as if there’s only one correct way to brush teeth.
He spits into the sink, still weary from the night’s unrest.
Chauncey pulls on his pants, then sits numbly on the edge of his bed to slip on his socks and shoes. He contemplates the collective weight of each seventy-five minute drive to his father’s new residence, the ‘Gentle Estates Senior Care Center.' And for the umpteenth time he replays the lies he and his sister had shared, that “it’ll be best for dad,” that “one visit per week is doable,” that somehow “things will be okay.”
And he also remembers this…That last Sunday morning the head nurse had called to say, “Your father was found naked except for one white sock, fetal and sobbing beneath the word “Uncle” smudged on the wall with his own feces.”
Chauncey bends to tie his shoes, silently wishing he could cry “Uncle” too.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
A SMOKE IS JUST A SMOKE
Smain lights a Barclay even though, and precisely because, he’s on the verge of expelling the meager contents of his ravaged stomach. The first bottomless drag quells his nausea as he sinks into a third-world crouch against the living room wall, his nemesis smoldering seductively between skinned knees. Damn it all to hell, he really thought he’d make it this time! Six days instantly evaporated in the smoke meandering toward his yellowed ceiling. Six edgy days estranged from his tar and nicotine coffin, but at least that lid was still open.
He hits the Barclay again, more toke than puff, and hazily recalls the sweet days of his youth and Camel no-filters in soft cellophaned packs. Now that was a smoke my friend, a real thoroughbred compared to these turds. They socked you like a locomotive at daybreak, a ‘Mickey Mantle’ homer every time. He closes his eyes and smiles his way to happier days for just a bit, and then, with the laid-back air of some 1950’s matinee idol, he taps forgotten ash onto a floor more Petri dish than anything else.
Another deep drag and he starts to analyze the disaster of his small apartment: Skeletal rattan furniture turned drunken nest for his pal Skeeter and his robust snores; a lonely tone-deaf guitar; several shoes, dingy socks and flip flops searching for mates; an unruly stack of ‘Rolling Stone’ magazines threatening collapse. Mostly he sees the bittersweet secrets of reluctant bachelorhood, random fragments of squandered possibility, and life squared.
“Skeeter…Skeeter…SKEETER! Get your ass UP!”
Smain waits for signs of life from his friend, takes another life-sucking breath from his Barclay, then expels a thick, squinty-eyed plume in Skeeter’s general direction.
“WHAAAHOOOOOOO….ack…humpf…ackkkk.”
Smain’s war cry and subsequent hacking smacks against Skeeter’s slumber and rousts him into the slightly altered state of “where-the-hell-am-I???” Smain grins at this small victory and rises unsteadily in search of caffeine.
He staggers into his kitchen, one last suck before stubbing the Barclay into the stagnant pool of his kitchen sink, and finds the jar of instant Maxwell House lurking among junk mail and Taco Bell remnants. He fills his lone sauce pan with tap water and places it on the range top…click, click, click, click, click…Damn thing won’t light! He pulls out his lighter…WHOOSH!
“FUCK!”
The rude perfume of burnt hair greets his nose, and closer inspection of his left hand reveals the absolute of yet another hangover’s hard lesson. Still, he laughs just a bit, and absentmindedly knocks another Barclay from its box. Quickly between his dry lips, hand cupped, flick, flick, effortlessly lit, another engaging first drag. His nostrils flare and shoot dragon trails of compulsion.
“Hey Schmain, bring me a cup-o-joe dude, I’m hurtin’.”
Skeeter always plunged the “ch” into the nickname Smain had self-inflicted as a kid back in the Carolinas. Smain, Schmain, it’s always the same…his well thought out replacement for “Smith,” a little incognito to assist in his escape from the ordinary.
“Hey, chill Skeet! Who’s your bitch last week?”
Smain stares across the void, mild concern spilling across his face as Skeeter withholds his usual sarcastic retort.
“Hey pal, you okay? Whata you say we hit the beach in awhile?”
Skeeter swallows his stomach’s sour objections before rasping his well-worn question;
“We gonna get some brews to take?”
Images of unraveled souls and their threadbare world skip upon the broken record of Smain’s mind, and he mutters his resignation to things in general;
“Same old shit, different day.”
Skeeter’s brow scrunches into a puzzle, not at what he didn’t quite hear, but exactly because of the unspoken ‘something’ now lying there between them like rotting carp on a river’s bank. Smain bakes from scrutiny’s flame just a bit, but quickly recovers his facade of bravado, and kicks the rotting ‘something’ into the surrounding shadows. As his trademark grin fights to the surface and erases whatever simple fears his friend had stumbled upon, he strains to hear reassurance in his words;
“Sure thing Skeet, if we can scrounge up some friggin’ dinero.”
His grin continues to drone sweet requiem for his friend, and now he hears his own voice as if from some distance;
“Water’s ‘bout ready my brother. How thick ya want it?”
Smain recedes back into the sad embrace of clutter and fermentation that is his kitchen. He measures two ripe tablespoons of promise and delivers most of it into decrepit cups, then pours in the boiled water and stirs the tonic to life. He balances the two cups and decaying cigarette against the gouge and hard grain of his life as he makes his way into the living room, smoke and steam intertwining toward some invisible destiny.
He hands Skeeter a cup as hot gray embers timber unnoticed into his own.
“What the hell, Schmain, you doing that shit again?
He waits for Schmain to shoot some ‘fallen angel’ logic his way, but hearing none, proceeds to quietly sip from his own cup of despair. He wonders about them, he and Schmain, the future, the past, how it will finally all fall together or fall apart…
“Just today Skeet, that’s all, I swear just today. Ah...af…after last night I was cravin’...I...I just really need to burn a few.”
Skeeter inspects his friend’s eyes and sees only the stammer of other truths and faded dreams staring back…And Smain, not knowing what else to do, can only look away, maybe to some long ago place before all the stiff ‘what ifs’ and subtle ‘should haves’ appeared. Smain nods in silent agreement with something…then hoists the Barclay and inhales his life.
Smain lights a Barclay even though, and precisely because, he’s on the verge of expelling the meager contents of his ravaged stomach. The first bottomless drag quells his nausea as he sinks into a third-world crouch against the living room wall, his nemesis smoldering seductively between skinned knees. Damn it all to hell, he really thought he’d make it this time! Six days instantly evaporated in the smoke meandering toward his yellowed ceiling. Six edgy days estranged from his tar and nicotine coffin, but at least that lid was still open.
He hits the Barclay again, more toke than puff, and hazily recalls the sweet days of his youth and Camel no-filters in soft cellophaned packs. Now that was a smoke my friend, a real thoroughbred compared to these turds. They socked you like a locomotive at daybreak, a ‘Mickey Mantle’ homer every time. He closes his eyes and smiles his way to happier days for just a bit, and then, with the laid-back air of some 1950’s matinee idol, he taps forgotten ash onto a floor more Petri dish than anything else.
Another deep drag and he starts to analyze the disaster of his small apartment: Skeletal rattan furniture turned drunken nest for his pal Skeeter and his robust snores; a lonely tone-deaf guitar; several shoes, dingy socks and flip flops searching for mates; an unruly stack of ‘Rolling Stone’ magazines threatening collapse. Mostly he sees the bittersweet secrets of reluctant bachelorhood, random fragments of squandered possibility, and life squared.
“Skeeter…Skeeter…SKEETER! Get your ass UP!”
Smain waits for signs of life from his friend, takes another life-sucking breath from his Barclay, then expels a thick, squinty-eyed plume in Skeeter’s general direction.
“WHAAAHOOOOOOO….ack…humpf…ackkkk.”
Smain’s war cry and subsequent hacking smacks against Skeeter’s slumber and rousts him into the slightly altered state of “where-the-hell-am-I???” Smain grins at this small victory and rises unsteadily in search of caffeine.
He staggers into his kitchen, one last suck before stubbing the Barclay into the stagnant pool of his kitchen sink, and finds the jar of instant Maxwell House lurking among junk mail and Taco Bell remnants. He fills his lone sauce pan with tap water and places it on the range top…click, click, click, click, click…Damn thing won’t light! He pulls out his lighter…WHOOSH!
“FUCK!”
The rude perfume of burnt hair greets his nose, and closer inspection of his left hand reveals the absolute of yet another hangover’s hard lesson. Still, he laughs just a bit, and absentmindedly knocks another Barclay from its box. Quickly between his dry lips, hand cupped, flick, flick, effortlessly lit, another engaging first drag. His nostrils flare and shoot dragon trails of compulsion.
“Hey Schmain, bring me a cup-o-joe dude, I’m hurtin’.”
Skeeter always plunged the “ch” into the nickname Smain had self-inflicted as a kid back in the Carolinas. Smain, Schmain, it’s always the same…his well thought out replacement for “Smith,” a little incognito to assist in his escape from the ordinary.
“Hey, chill Skeet! Who’s your bitch last week?”
Smain stares across the void, mild concern spilling across his face as Skeeter withholds his usual sarcastic retort.
“Hey pal, you okay? Whata you say we hit the beach in awhile?”
Skeeter swallows his stomach’s sour objections before rasping his well-worn question;
“We gonna get some brews to take?”
Images of unraveled souls and their threadbare world skip upon the broken record of Smain’s mind, and he mutters his resignation to things in general;
“Same old shit, different day.”
Skeeter’s brow scrunches into a puzzle, not at what he didn’t quite hear, but exactly because of the unspoken ‘something’ now lying there between them like rotting carp on a river’s bank. Smain bakes from scrutiny’s flame just a bit, but quickly recovers his facade of bravado, and kicks the rotting ‘something’ into the surrounding shadows. As his trademark grin fights to the surface and erases whatever simple fears his friend had stumbled upon, he strains to hear reassurance in his words;
“Sure thing Skeet, if we can scrounge up some friggin’ dinero.”
His grin continues to drone sweet requiem for his friend, and now he hears his own voice as if from some distance;
“Water’s ‘bout ready my brother. How thick ya want it?”
Smain recedes back into the sad embrace of clutter and fermentation that is his kitchen. He measures two ripe tablespoons of promise and delivers most of it into decrepit cups, then pours in the boiled water and stirs the tonic to life. He balances the two cups and decaying cigarette against the gouge and hard grain of his life as he makes his way into the living room, smoke and steam intertwining toward some invisible destiny.
He hands Skeeter a cup as hot gray embers timber unnoticed into his own.
“What the hell, Schmain, you doing that shit again?
He waits for Schmain to shoot some ‘fallen angel’ logic his way, but hearing none, proceeds to quietly sip from his own cup of despair. He wonders about them, he and Schmain, the future, the past, how it will finally all fall together or fall apart…
“Just today Skeet, that’s all, I swear just today. Ah...af…after last night I was cravin’...I...I just really need to burn a few.”
Skeeter inspects his friend’s eyes and sees only the stammer of other truths and faded dreams staring back…And Smain, not knowing what else to do, can only look away, maybe to some long ago place before all the stiff ‘what ifs’ and subtle ‘should haves’ appeared. Smain nods in silent agreement with something…then hoists the Barclay and inhales his life.
GORILLA DREAMS
My first impression of Phillip was that he was blessed with ignorance. Ten months gone had merely produced a stalemate; I did everything for him, and he simply stared into the distance while I toiled at his upkeep. His coal-black eyes would sometimes follow me as I went through the routine of maintaining his immensity, but I was no longer afraid. I had quickly learned that if I turned and met his gaze, he would immediately look away, seemingly embarrassed that his voyeurism had been detected.
Phillip had arrived to great fanfare just over one year ago on a reproductive loan from the Saint Louis Zoo. He was in his prime having just turned twelve, and at nearly seven hundred pounds was quite large for a Western Lowland Gorilla. Silver streaks mapped the contours of his thick back, and I swear that Juanita, his intended mate, had swooned just a little when she saw him exit his travel cage. In a subtle gesture that in hindsight foretold so much about Phillip, he turned his back on Juanita and the rest of the world that first day and sat quietly in the shade.
When I was offered the opportunity to become Phillip’s primary caretaker, I jumped at the chance. A Primatology major in college, I dreamed of someday traveling to faraway, exotic places to conduct field research while living the bohemian lifestyle central to all my fantasies. Instead, I found myself slaving away at the San Diego Zoo, scraping exotic animal dung from my boots each night before falling wearily into bed. Phillip, I thought, would be my salvation from such drudgery.
At first I did all of my business with Phillip from outside his cage, or from behind a safety partition that could be raised to split his habitat in half. As I went about the myriad tasks required to keep Phillip healthy and happy, I’d talk to him about Juanita and how he should proceed with his mission. Due to my own lackluster love life, I would often converse with Phillip like some guttural protagonist:
“Look at her Phil, you should give Juanita some gorilla meat right now big guy! You know she wants it bad! Make her scream, eh?
I’d shoot him knowing looks as I talked, but Phillip would only stare at the ground, unmoved it seemed by any of Cupid’s arrows
Over the next eight months Phillip showed no interest in Juanita in spite of her best efforts to impress him. When he wasn’t slumbering outside under her watch, Phillip would move to the man-made cave at the rear of their enclosure to be alone. Poor Juanita seemed to know better than to follow, and would fret and stew like a spurned teenager until Phillip re-emerged.
When allowed, Juanita groomed his fur and cooed like a baby as she consumed the lice and bugs she found. She brought him bananas and corn husks stuffed with peanut butter as proof of her love, but to no avail. Phillip simply wouldn’t mate. I felt sorry for Juanita when she was eventually moved to another enclosure, the throb of her primal longing echoing deep within my own womb.
From that point on, my conversations with Phillip became quite pedestrian, yet I think we both looked forward to them.
“How’d you sleep Phil?”
“What’s the weather gonna do today big guy? I heard it’s gonna be a real burner!”
Phillip’s answers remained in character as he quietly stared at the ground and kept his own counsel. It was also about this time that I decided to go against Zoo regulations and not use the safety partition when I was in his cage, choosing instead to trust my own instincts which said Phillip trusted me. I was right, and so it went.
---------
Today is Sunday, an early pink-orange sermon of a morning, the perfect time to beat the heat and get a jump on cleaning Phillip’s enclosure. I find him posed like a big stone Buddha just outside his cave, all four fingers of one massive hand curled and clinging to the cliff of his lower lip, completely enraptured with some gorilla daydream known only to him. In my best street-jive lingo I offer up the day’s first platitude,
“Hey Phil, what’s hanging today my man?”
Phillip stares at the ground, and thusly assured that all is right with his world, I began my chores. The first item of business is to get a ladder and clear those eucalyptus branches from the top of the cave. I get the ladder and return to find that Phillip has retreated into his cave, so I whisper in tempo to the morning’s rhythm;
“See ya later Phil.”
I set the ladder in place and ascend to the second highest rung. Hmmm, higher than I thought. I ease myself onto the top of the ladder and press my body tight against the rock, my plan to stretch on tippy-toes still seemingly coherent. As I strain for the end of a medium sized limb I feel the first wobble...Abruptly, the ladder slips away, and for the briefest of eternities, I’m floating free, temporarily absolved of all past and future worries.
The first thing I notice is that my head feels like a broken melon looks, all sticky pain and jumbled contents.
The second thing I notice is shattered bone jutting through my left shirt sleeve, so white it looks like fresh snow. I can’t get up, I think I’m going to be sick...
The third thing I notice are coal-black eyes floating above me as strong arms lift me effortlessly from the dirt. Warmth spills from his body to mine, and I let myself collapse into pungent pain. He carries me into his cave and sits placidly with my broken body securely on his lap as I manage to weakly mouth “Hi Phil.” And now I understand as I see my reflection in those eyes. It’s me he sees, it has always been me.
My first impression of Phillip was that he was blessed with ignorance. Ten months gone had merely produced a stalemate; I did everything for him, and he simply stared into the distance while I toiled at his upkeep. His coal-black eyes would sometimes follow me as I went through the routine of maintaining his immensity, but I was no longer afraid. I had quickly learned that if I turned and met his gaze, he would immediately look away, seemingly embarrassed that his voyeurism had been detected.
Phillip had arrived to great fanfare just over one year ago on a reproductive loan from the Saint Louis Zoo. He was in his prime having just turned twelve, and at nearly seven hundred pounds was quite large for a Western Lowland Gorilla. Silver streaks mapped the contours of his thick back, and I swear that Juanita, his intended mate, had swooned just a little when she saw him exit his travel cage. In a subtle gesture that in hindsight foretold so much about Phillip, he turned his back on Juanita and the rest of the world that first day and sat quietly in the shade.
When I was offered the opportunity to become Phillip’s primary caretaker, I jumped at the chance. A Primatology major in college, I dreamed of someday traveling to faraway, exotic places to conduct field research while living the bohemian lifestyle central to all my fantasies. Instead, I found myself slaving away at the San Diego Zoo, scraping exotic animal dung from my boots each night before falling wearily into bed. Phillip, I thought, would be my salvation from such drudgery.
At first I did all of my business with Phillip from outside his cage, or from behind a safety partition that could be raised to split his habitat in half. As I went about the myriad tasks required to keep Phillip healthy and happy, I’d talk to him about Juanita and how he should proceed with his mission. Due to my own lackluster love life, I would often converse with Phillip like some guttural protagonist:
“Look at her Phil, you should give Juanita some gorilla meat right now big guy! You know she wants it bad! Make her scream, eh?
I’d shoot him knowing looks as I talked, but Phillip would only stare at the ground, unmoved it seemed by any of Cupid’s arrows
Over the next eight months Phillip showed no interest in Juanita in spite of her best efforts to impress him. When he wasn’t slumbering outside under her watch, Phillip would move to the man-made cave at the rear of their enclosure to be alone. Poor Juanita seemed to know better than to follow, and would fret and stew like a spurned teenager until Phillip re-emerged.
When allowed, Juanita groomed his fur and cooed like a baby as she consumed the lice and bugs she found. She brought him bananas and corn husks stuffed with peanut butter as proof of her love, but to no avail. Phillip simply wouldn’t mate. I felt sorry for Juanita when she was eventually moved to another enclosure, the throb of her primal longing echoing deep within my own womb.
From that point on, my conversations with Phillip became quite pedestrian, yet I think we both looked forward to them.
“How’d you sleep Phil?”
“What’s the weather gonna do today big guy? I heard it’s gonna be a real burner!”
Phillip’s answers remained in character as he quietly stared at the ground and kept his own counsel. It was also about this time that I decided to go against Zoo regulations and not use the safety partition when I was in his cage, choosing instead to trust my own instincts which said Phillip trusted me. I was right, and so it went.
---------
Today is Sunday, an early pink-orange sermon of a morning, the perfect time to beat the heat and get a jump on cleaning Phillip’s enclosure. I find him posed like a big stone Buddha just outside his cave, all four fingers of one massive hand curled and clinging to the cliff of his lower lip, completely enraptured with some gorilla daydream known only to him. In my best street-jive lingo I offer up the day’s first platitude,
“Hey Phil, what’s hanging today my man?”
Phillip stares at the ground, and thusly assured that all is right with his world, I began my chores. The first item of business is to get a ladder and clear those eucalyptus branches from the top of the cave. I get the ladder and return to find that Phillip has retreated into his cave, so I whisper in tempo to the morning’s rhythm;
“See ya later Phil.”
I set the ladder in place and ascend to the second highest rung. Hmmm, higher than I thought. I ease myself onto the top of the ladder and press my body tight against the rock, my plan to stretch on tippy-toes still seemingly coherent. As I strain for the end of a medium sized limb I feel the first wobble...Abruptly, the ladder slips away, and for the briefest of eternities, I’m floating free, temporarily absolved of all past and future worries.
The first thing I notice is that my head feels like a broken melon looks, all sticky pain and jumbled contents.
The second thing I notice is shattered bone jutting through my left shirt sleeve, so white it looks like fresh snow. I can’t get up, I think I’m going to be sick...
The third thing I notice are coal-black eyes floating above me as strong arms lift me effortlessly from the dirt. Warmth spills from his body to mine, and I let myself collapse into pungent pain. He carries me into his cave and sits placidly with my broken body securely on his lap as I manage to weakly mouth “Hi Phil.” And now I understand as I see my reflection in those eyes. It’s me he sees, it has always been me.
THE VIRGIN DAWN
From just one eye
still crusty with night’s fog,
I watch you breathe, all
smooth crescendo, balanced pause.
Burnt-orange slivers flash
corn silk-yellow,
and Tinkerbelle upon a dingy wall,
while that unruly ficus rakes
semaphore against window’s pane.
This half-world nest--
cotton plate tectonics,
warm vanilla skin--
imbued with the scent of
our nineteen years.
I linger, calloused hand
cupping soft breast,
as day’s new light
joins me to you,
and the virgin dawn.
From just one eye
still crusty with night’s fog,
I watch you breathe, all
smooth crescendo, balanced pause.
Burnt-orange slivers flash
corn silk-yellow,
and Tinkerbelle upon a dingy wall,
while that unruly ficus rakes
semaphore against window’s pane.
This half-world nest--
cotton plate tectonics,
warm vanilla skin--
imbued with the scent of
our nineteen years.
I linger, calloused hand
cupping soft breast,
as day’s new light
joins me to you,
and the virgin dawn.
A BULLET'S TALE
Destiny has entrusted me to the will and whim of Lt. Reginald Holcomb, a seven year veteran of the LAPD Drug Interdiction Unit. Randomly plucked from a box of one-hundred 9mm bullets, my nine brethren and I breathe as Reginald does, from the edgy air of mean streets and smoggy clandestine meetings, from the man-made world of hope, despair and altercation.
We began as legions born where form meets function, our uniformity a thing of beauty and purpose, each one of us a classic killing implement when coupled with the proper blend of skill and intent. Hollow points that flatten on impact to bore through flesh and shatter bone, smooth brass shafts filled with gunpowder ejaculate to ensure a smooth trajectory. Our every atom begs for empowerment to simply do what we do. In our realm there is no ‘good’, there is no ‘evil’, there is only cause and effect.
On this day, perhaps my day of awakening, Reginald pilots his black and supposedly “unmarked” car toward an abandoned warehouse near the wharf, my own vessel tucked away by his left beast, out of sight, always at the ready. I can feel his excitement mount, the rhythmic cadence of his heart quickening against my chamber. There’s a certain promise in today’s air, as if for me it will end somewhere other than tucked away in the drawer by Reginald’s bed, always within instinct’s reach.
A voice barely one octave below frantic breaks from the police radio, and suddenly Reginald is throwing the car around corners, speeding haphazardly down streets choked with traffic. Laconic urgency ripples across his surface, I feel it also, and I tense against the near-future seemingly pregnant with the very thing I seek. It’s as if some divine alchemist has taken over our ‘present’, melding Reginald’s flesh and bone with the power and resolution of my solitary purpose. We are truly alive, he and I, here together on Life’s canvas of the absurd.
Of course time doesn’t really exist you know, and now I see it all unfolding at once, simultaneous and pristine, like a beautiful three-hundred and sixty degree view of the infinite provided just for my pleasure…Reginald slides the car to a sideways-stop, flings open the door and spills his person into a crouch behind it while slipping his gun from worn black-leather in one practiced motion. He guards his profile as best he can and aims my host toward someone still invisible. I quiver upon the precipice of my future.
Twenty-five or thirty feet ahead and to the left lays a man, perhaps one of Reginald’s comrades, unmoving and awash in a dark-burgundy pool of sultry consequence. Pandora’s Box ripped open it seems, and Reginald’s demeanor absorbs the pallor of his surroundings as his resolve hardens.
Some small movement tugs his attention to a point near the rear of the building, just behind a stack of rusty barrels needing only one or two stout gusts to send them tumbling. Reggie takes a deep breath, exhales nearly half, and refocuses his aim and perceptions. He freezes, posed like some statue of the already-dead.
I see the future of the supposed perpetrator, still young, his time expired before wisdom comes his way. He looks for escape, over the sagging fence and into the decadent bowels of some Bukowski-like salvation. He quickly gauges his odds, and breaks for the fence some ten feet away… he never sees me.
Reginald pulls the trigger, which causes the hammer to almost instantly impact my firing pin, and I’m free, flying across the thirty-odd yards ahead of sound and fury, ahead of any dreams left unfulfilled. Unrealized possibility becomes certain destiny as I enter balmy flesh still lusting for better days. My soft-copper head flattens as I tear through his left kidney, continuing on to shatter his spine before ricocheting through his stomach and into his bladder. Almost immediately I’m still, alarmed by the enormity of my disfigurement, yet awed by the intoxicating flush of such battle.
My new host finds himself thusly shattered, crushed into the fence that now marks his passage from this life. I’m too deeply ensconced in the soft tissue and ebbing warmth surrounding his bowels to see his difficult death-slide mimicked as his belt’s buckle snags on the decrepit fence, suspending his body like some sad caricature of agony as he sucks one last gasp of despair.
I hear footsteps now, strangely muffled, not like the crisp sounds that reverberated through the gun’s metallic womb. The footsteps come close, then cease, and I think they must have been Reginald’s. And I wonder what he sees in this aftermath, do things seem as surreal to him as they do to me? This hoped for resolution no longer shines as it did from the ‘before’ side of things, and I wonder what now? Once more I hear footsteps, except this time they seem to be fading away, leaving me all alone among the silence and chill of death.
Destiny has entrusted me to the will and whim of Lt. Reginald Holcomb, a seven year veteran of the LAPD Drug Interdiction Unit. Randomly plucked from a box of one-hundred 9mm bullets, my nine brethren and I breathe as Reginald does, from the edgy air of mean streets and smoggy clandestine meetings, from the man-made world of hope, despair and altercation.
We began as legions born where form meets function, our uniformity a thing of beauty and purpose, each one of us a classic killing implement when coupled with the proper blend of skill and intent. Hollow points that flatten on impact to bore through flesh and shatter bone, smooth brass shafts filled with gunpowder ejaculate to ensure a smooth trajectory. Our every atom begs for empowerment to simply do what we do. In our realm there is no ‘good’, there is no ‘evil’, there is only cause and effect.
On this day, perhaps my day of awakening, Reginald pilots his black and supposedly “unmarked” car toward an abandoned warehouse near the wharf, my own vessel tucked away by his left beast, out of sight, always at the ready. I can feel his excitement mount, the rhythmic cadence of his heart quickening against my chamber. There’s a certain promise in today’s air, as if for me it will end somewhere other than tucked away in the drawer by Reginald’s bed, always within instinct’s reach.
A voice barely one octave below frantic breaks from the police radio, and suddenly Reginald is throwing the car around corners, speeding haphazardly down streets choked with traffic. Laconic urgency ripples across his surface, I feel it also, and I tense against the near-future seemingly pregnant with the very thing I seek. It’s as if some divine alchemist has taken over our ‘present’, melding Reginald’s flesh and bone with the power and resolution of my solitary purpose. We are truly alive, he and I, here together on Life’s canvas of the absurd.
Of course time doesn’t really exist you know, and now I see it all unfolding at once, simultaneous and pristine, like a beautiful three-hundred and sixty degree view of the infinite provided just for my pleasure…Reginald slides the car to a sideways-stop, flings open the door and spills his person into a crouch behind it while slipping his gun from worn black-leather in one practiced motion. He guards his profile as best he can and aims my host toward someone still invisible. I quiver upon the precipice of my future.
Twenty-five or thirty feet ahead and to the left lays a man, perhaps one of Reginald’s comrades, unmoving and awash in a dark-burgundy pool of sultry consequence. Pandora’s Box ripped open it seems, and Reginald’s demeanor absorbs the pallor of his surroundings as his resolve hardens.
Some small movement tugs his attention to a point near the rear of the building, just behind a stack of rusty barrels needing only one or two stout gusts to send them tumbling. Reggie takes a deep breath, exhales nearly half, and refocuses his aim and perceptions. He freezes, posed like some statue of the already-dead.
I see the future of the supposed perpetrator, still young, his time expired before wisdom comes his way. He looks for escape, over the sagging fence and into the decadent bowels of some Bukowski-like salvation. He quickly gauges his odds, and breaks for the fence some ten feet away… he never sees me.
Reginald pulls the trigger, which causes the hammer to almost instantly impact my firing pin, and I’m free, flying across the thirty-odd yards ahead of sound and fury, ahead of any dreams left unfulfilled. Unrealized possibility becomes certain destiny as I enter balmy flesh still lusting for better days. My soft-copper head flattens as I tear through his left kidney, continuing on to shatter his spine before ricocheting through his stomach and into his bladder. Almost immediately I’m still, alarmed by the enormity of my disfigurement, yet awed by the intoxicating flush of such battle.
My new host finds himself thusly shattered, crushed into the fence that now marks his passage from this life. I’m too deeply ensconced in the soft tissue and ebbing warmth surrounding his bowels to see his difficult death-slide mimicked as his belt’s buckle snags on the decrepit fence, suspending his body like some sad caricature of agony as he sucks one last gasp of despair.
I hear footsteps now, strangely muffled, not like the crisp sounds that reverberated through the gun’s metallic womb. The footsteps come close, then cease, and I think they must have been Reginald’s. And I wonder what he sees in this aftermath, do things seem as surreal to him as they do to me? This hoped for resolution no longer shines as it did from the ‘before’ side of things, and I wonder what now? Once more I hear footsteps, except this time they seem to be fading away, leaving me all alone among the silence and chill of death.
Monday, February 19, 2007
THINGS THAT GO CRUNCH IN THE NIGHT
Crrrunch! Nolan smirks at the image his mind paints of fluidic muck and fragmented shell beneath his right shoe; always the right shoe because right is might, as if the left shoe will somehow remain ignorant and therefore absolved of such malice.
“Take that you slimy little fucker!” he says, and lightly swirls his right sole atop the manicured grass that borders his flower garden. He carefully follows the stone path back to his patio and turns to gaze upon the austere beauty of his little tenth acre, each plant, each unique decoration, every solar light and sprinkler head offering irrefutable testament to his need for order and clarity.
“Here, I’m God!”
He pauses for a moment and wonders just whom he’s informing of this self-ordained status? He stoops to remove his shoes and places them toes-first on the bottom shelf of his gardening bench, then goes inside to construct yet another tidy, eight-hundred calorie brown-bag meal for work.
“Five three Juliet, Mugu Approach, how do you hear me?”
“Uh, five three Juliet’s got you loud and clear approach.”
“Five three Juliet, roger. It’s crowded out there today and it’s in your best interests to stay awake. Five three Juliet turn right heading zero-five-zero, vectors downwind.”
“Roger approach, five three Juliet turning left zero-five-zero.”
“That’s RIGHT zero-five-zero, a right turn heading zero-five-zero for five three Juliet.”
Jesus Christ, what a fucking moron! Nolan had endured and perhaps saved countless pilots who were well behind the situation, but lately his tolerance for incompetence was almost nonexistent. Nolan often wondered if he’d make it to retirement without a total meltdown beating him to the punch. Survival, survival, survival! His mantra at the finish line of a career he didn’t choose. Strange how the fates throw us around in this life, he thought, even as he continued to control and pre-empt the small calamities blossoming on his radar screen.
“Hey Nolan, you ready for a break yet my man?”
“ I’m beyond ready Freddy. Stick a fork in my ass, I’m done!”
“Okay ya old fart. Let me take a leak and I’ll be right there to bail you out.”
“Sure Freddy, take your time.”
Nolan ejected this last declaration rife with sarcasm. Relief time was three minutes ago dude, that “leak” should already be in the archives. And it bothered him immensely that Freddy probably thought he would indeed be bailing Nolan out of things beyond the older controller’s decaying abilities. Hell, no one else in the room tonight was even twinkling in their daddy’s loins when he first became a controller, so fuck them all.
After his shift ends, Nolan drives home in a somnolent stupor. Darkness remains as he pulls into his driveway. “Damn it!”, he spits out angrily. Those motion lights he’d installed last week were already fucking up, another piece of life moving just outside his grasp. He lets his head thump heavily into the steering wheel and sighs in resignation. He lets it come this time, no energy to resist this thing that keeps showing up. Okay, okay he thinks, let me have it, let’s just get this shit over with...
Nolan lies in a field of wild flowers and tall grasses leaned gently by a smooth breeze succulent with aromas of warm vanilla and brown sugar, of mom and her kitchen. Sunlight gleams and illumines everything in an unfamiliar yet pleasant fashion. He relaxes and revels in its warmth, feeling safe even as something unforeseen approaches.
Snails everywhere. Giant snails that slide towards him like some mucous-born army. Atop the biggest and closest rides his mother, no longer ten years dead, radiant and smiling, the Snail Queen. As the circle of giants closes tightly around him, she raises her right hand and they stop.
She beams her approval down at him, just like the time he showed her how smashed lightening bugs continued to glow on his skin, like she had when he won third place in the fifth-grade science fair, and when he scored the first and only basket of his lumbering basketball career.
“Hi Mom,” he shouts into the onslaught of her approval. “How you been?”
No answer save her smile and strange fury of endorsement. As Nolan luxuriates within his mother’s aura he begins to spin, weird and wonderful vibrations of light and tenderness pulling him apart molecule by molecule. He observes, quite happily, as he becomes nothing and everything…
Nolan pulls the new day into view and rubs his fingers across the groove etched into his forehead by the steering wheel. First light winks seductively at him from just behind his neighbor’s roof. His mouth sticks together, and the dry taste of poodle feces comes to mind.
“Holy crap!”, he gurgles as he forces his body from the seat and into the vague semblance of a man walking calmly towards his door, as if he always slept in his car. He’s still muddled and has trouble fighting the key into its lock.
Inside he stumbles to the kitchen, sets up the coffee, then opens the slider leading to his self-imposed sanctuary. Dew bejewels everything, and his hands move a small torrent to the edge of a garden table. Water cascades over the edge and falls upon a snail making its way across the vastness of his patio to some hidden place and agenda.
Nolan crouches to examine the agonizingly slow advancement, the delicate silver ribbon, the dogged certainty with which this small creature does its business. He could take his right foot and quickly end its trials and tribulations like he’s done so many times before. He should.
Now a sudden accomplice, Nolan gingerly picks up the snail and grins as it quickly withdraws into its narrow perception of safety. He strides across his perfect lawn and laughs at the crisp footprints that mark his passage. And ever so gently, he lays the snail beneath an azalea, among all the dank secrets, into the elusive aroma of warm vanilla and brown sugar.
Crrrunch! Nolan smirks at the image his mind paints of fluidic muck and fragmented shell beneath his right shoe; always the right shoe because right is might, as if the left shoe will somehow remain ignorant and therefore absolved of such malice.
“Take that you slimy little fucker!” he says, and lightly swirls his right sole atop the manicured grass that borders his flower garden. He carefully follows the stone path back to his patio and turns to gaze upon the austere beauty of his little tenth acre, each plant, each unique decoration, every solar light and sprinkler head offering irrefutable testament to his need for order and clarity.
“Here, I’m God!”
He pauses for a moment and wonders just whom he’s informing of this self-ordained status? He stoops to remove his shoes and places them toes-first on the bottom shelf of his gardening bench, then goes inside to construct yet another tidy, eight-hundred calorie brown-bag meal for work.
“Five three Juliet, Mugu Approach, how do you hear me?”
“Uh, five three Juliet’s got you loud and clear approach.”
“Five three Juliet, roger. It’s crowded out there today and it’s in your best interests to stay awake. Five three Juliet turn right heading zero-five-zero, vectors downwind.”
“Roger approach, five three Juliet turning left zero-five-zero.”
“That’s RIGHT zero-five-zero, a right turn heading zero-five-zero for five three Juliet.”
Jesus Christ, what a fucking moron! Nolan had endured and perhaps saved countless pilots who were well behind the situation, but lately his tolerance for incompetence was almost nonexistent. Nolan often wondered if he’d make it to retirement without a total meltdown beating him to the punch. Survival, survival, survival! His mantra at the finish line of a career he didn’t choose. Strange how the fates throw us around in this life, he thought, even as he continued to control and pre-empt the small calamities blossoming on his radar screen.
“Hey Nolan, you ready for a break yet my man?”
“ I’m beyond ready Freddy. Stick a fork in my ass, I’m done!”
“Okay ya old fart. Let me take a leak and I’ll be right there to bail you out.”
“Sure Freddy, take your time.”
Nolan ejected this last declaration rife with sarcasm. Relief time was three minutes ago dude, that “leak” should already be in the archives. And it bothered him immensely that Freddy probably thought he would indeed be bailing Nolan out of things beyond the older controller’s decaying abilities. Hell, no one else in the room tonight was even twinkling in their daddy’s loins when he first became a controller, so fuck them all.
After his shift ends, Nolan drives home in a somnolent stupor. Darkness remains as he pulls into his driveway. “Damn it!”, he spits out angrily. Those motion lights he’d installed last week were already fucking up, another piece of life moving just outside his grasp. He lets his head thump heavily into the steering wheel and sighs in resignation. He lets it come this time, no energy to resist this thing that keeps showing up. Okay, okay he thinks, let me have it, let’s just get this shit over with...
Nolan lies in a field of wild flowers and tall grasses leaned gently by a smooth breeze succulent with aromas of warm vanilla and brown sugar, of mom and her kitchen. Sunlight gleams and illumines everything in an unfamiliar yet pleasant fashion. He relaxes and revels in its warmth, feeling safe even as something unforeseen approaches.
Snails everywhere. Giant snails that slide towards him like some mucous-born army. Atop the biggest and closest rides his mother, no longer ten years dead, radiant and smiling, the Snail Queen. As the circle of giants closes tightly around him, she raises her right hand and they stop.
She beams her approval down at him, just like the time he showed her how smashed lightening bugs continued to glow on his skin, like she had when he won third place in the fifth-grade science fair, and when he scored the first and only basket of his lumbering basketball career.
“Hi Mom,” he shouts into the onslaught of her approval. “How you been?”
No answer save her smile and strange fury of endorsement. As Nolan luxuriates within his mother’s aura he begins to spin, weird and wonderful vibrations of light and tenderness pulling him apart molecule by molecule. He observes, quite happily, as he becomes nothing and everything…
Nolan pulls the new day into view and rubs his fingers across the groove etched into his forehead by the steering wheel. First light winks seductively at him from just behind his neighbor’s roof. His mouth sticks together, and the dry taste of poodle feces comes to mind.
“Holy crap!”, he gurgles as he forces his body from the seat and into the vague semblance of a man walking calmly towards his door, as if he always slept in his car. He’s still muddled and has trouble fighting the key into its lock.
Inside he stumbles to the kitchen, sets up the coffee, then opens the slider leading to his self-imposed sanctuary. Dew bejewels everything, and his hands move a small torrent to the edge of a garden table. Water cascades over the edge and falls upon a snail making its way across the vastness of his patio to some hidden place and agenda.
Nolan crouches to examine the agonizingly slow advancement, the delicate silver ribbon, the dogged certainty with which this small creature does its business. He could take his right foot and quickly end its trials and tribulations like he’s done so many times before. He should.
Now a sudden accomplice, Nolan gingerly picks up the snail and grins as it quickly withdraws into its narrow perception of safety. He strides across his perfect lawn and laughs at the crisp footprints that mark his passage. And ever so gently, he lays the snail beneath an azalea, among all the dank secrets, into the elusive aroma of warm vanilla and brown sugar.
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