SOFTBALL

“Hey you guys think you could maybe turn the lights down a little bit?”

The fact that the request was met with awkward silence and simple empty stares of the suited men told Mike at this point that he was FUCKED, I mean totally absolutely FUCKED. If it were a simple thing he could just go back six or eight moths and maybe just take everything back? Oh yeah right, and we are all just going to act like nothing happened; just carry on like it was no big deal. Forget the wife and kids, forget the long drive home and the strange light left on like someone left the bathroom water running and the tub was filling up and he’s just kind of wondering when its going to spill over. All over the floor, and now he’s going to have to call someone. Someone is going to have to clean up this mess. It won’t be him though, it will be someone else who rushes in; bathwater up to his neck and tell him everything is going to be fine and gives him a hug. Oh shit wait maybe not a hug but perhaps some kind words and a gentle pat on the back but I don’t think we can have that either. Maybe they just stare at the mess with their stupid little hat on and shop vac and Mike just stares back in his soaked shoes and pants and maybe the clean up guy has a family and maybe he has a wife and kids and maybe he comes home to his loving hard working wife of fifteen years and just says,

“fuck I don’t know how he let it get so bad…”

Mike knows he’s right. He understands he could have turned the water off at any time but he just let it run. Maybe it will climb up to his neck and cover his nose and his mouth and he will look like that video where the water keeps coming up to the guys mouth and he just lets it fill and it dumps out every time right when he’s about to pass out. “No Surprises” that’s it, the song is called no surprises and it’s a music video for the song. Mike was a kind man, not the type to let things get out of hand. Nothing ever got out of control and this was no excuse, so how did he let it get so bad. All he had to do was walk away and now he’s in this little weird room with these strange Human Resources people who he’s never met before in his life. They just kind of showed up, came up out of some floor somewhere and sat down at this table and turned all of these lights on him. Have they been in these situations before? Are they somewhat versed in this type of thing or are they just as scared as he is? Mike can’t see the sweat dripping down their shadowy faces. They are seated in such a way that he can’t see their faces but one of them sort of looks like Tom from client retention and more than once Mike thought for a second he could meet the man’s kind forgiving eyes. Tom and Mike had played on the company recreational softball team together five years ago. They patted each other’s butts and shared sweaty high fives on dusty fields under summer and fall sun and sunsets. The occasional night game lit up Tom’s lightly tanning skin and Mike fought hard to hide the massive erection that was growing under his shorts. After games they would have light beer drinks at Field-House; a local bar down the road from the softball park. The beer was cold and it left the taste of summer on their lips. Mike would often have too much and one night Tom gave him a ride home after a big win against Lewiston Krantz & Krantz. Mike thought he might throw up, watching the lanes pass under him and the streetlights fly over made him dizzy. Tom took care of him, drove him home and told him “good game” and touched his arm before he got out. Mike felt his body shift and thought maybe again he would loose it all over Tom’s leather lined Lexus, only he didn’t. Mike kept it together, acted tough and said goodnight to Tom and slowly stumbled up the brick walkway to his front door. The light was on, just like always. What might seem like a welcome sign that someone was waiting up for him was now a hazard light; someone up the road had died in a car crash or something, a bridge was out, turn around and go back. Get back into the car, he needs you. That touch was meant as affection, leave your family; Kathy can take the kids. They don’t talk to you anyway, growing up sideways with the entire school talking about you and your family and how fucked up your dad is. Leave the water running, let it trickle up to your neck. Feel how warm it is, let it wash over your body. Now its climbing higher, to your mouth but you pathetic fuck, you still gasp for air. Fuck man, you can’t do anything right can you. Just relax, let it pass over your mouth up to your nose. Relax. It’s so much easier if you don’t fight. Stop fighting, you know this is ALL YOUR FAULT. Kathy will find you dead, bloated and purple in the bathtub in the morning. Mike watches the red lights of Tom’s sedan drift off and remembers the touch. The home run and the beers, the encouraging pats on the back; guy stuff. The dusty field was the proving ground, a colosseum of gladaiatic display. Blood, sweat and now tears. Yes, tears. Now Mike has found himself in some other strange sadistic theater. Where what is right and what is wrong will forever be inscribed in some record. Tom will descend, in some Mosetic fashion with a tablet and smash it on Mikes head. At any point Mike expects and hopes Tom will poke out of the shadow and pat him on the shoulder like he used to. Tell him it’s going to be okay and all is forgiven, like he let a foul ball go between his legs or threw to third instead of home. One day, they will have a laugh and a couple beers over all of this. Like good guys, old friends…

”god why don’t they turn the lights down in here.”

Mike knows now, that this is in fact hell. Tom is staring back at him, his face an unnatural red. Maybe some of those little horns poking out of his head, is this what it looks like? Death? The end? Some stupid fucking room at the end of the hall? Surely, this is hell, he has died and he is being judged. Holy shit, did he kill himself? Did he finally do it? He stares down at his wrists, to see the marks from the cuts but there’s nothing but the watch Kathy got him years ago. Oh shit, or was it Tom; after his promotion? Oh god that’s it, they had sat at the table at Remington’s and hadn’t Tom presented the small box? Why this, why should these be his chains? Whoever is writing this thing doesn’t know the whole story. Or else, why would they throw that in his face like that? Maybe he should shake it at his inquisitors as evidence. To say that what had happened was something special, something great. Why would Tom give him that, in secrecy; at their favorite place now tainted and fried in Mike’s memory with tears and hate and fucking excrement! It had gone on for two years. Two fucking years and he thought they were safe. No-one is safe. All are punished and judged and shat on and there is no love here for these men. Its just business, Mike fucked up and he knew it. The man who never took anything too far took it too far.

He knows from movies that those things stay behind as atonement, like Marley and his chains; to let all the other souls being judged that you. YOU thought YOU could judge. You tried to play god and for a split second you succeeded. They all sat and waited for the divine to take them at their time but you. You just couldn’t wait. Mike feels the sting of the sweat and the heat of the lights again.

These are all the list of choices that he has made, some better than others and some he feels he has not made at all. Some of them, he feels were made in some sort of sacred union. Why this hellish place with its insane lights and awful stale air. Why is this it under these putrid arches does he see him for the last time. Look upon the weathered face, with the five-o-clock shadow he used to give him so much shit for. Why Tom, why here? He starts to think that some of the choices were made for him. Mike’s mathematical mind sweeps over and now his only quest is to know what, why, and most important; where. So he can warn other dangerous liaisons to take time. Think about it. Don’t make that late night call or text. And for gods sake don’t accept sweet heartfelt gifts of watches and chocolate. It will burn you and then bury you alive. We’re all fucked. Still it lingers, where is he? What obscene part of the building, has he walked past the room before? Maybe on the way to the bathroom? Or maybe he got lost one day years ago and passed it. Was some other poor soul being examined? Judged? Excommunicated? Executed? And if so, for what, crimes of passion? Heated exchanges and loosened ties in back rooms and mop closets? Was he only inches away from this cursed barlow and he just didn’t know it? How could he have known it, he hadn’t done anything wrong had he? Had he touched someone the wrong way after the game? Had he gotten too close? Sent to many texts? Some inappropriate late night phone call wanting advice on an account but its just to hear the voice on the other end. Had he sat up pacing in his empty living room with that god-forsaken lamp left on like she always did and dialed his number and what if he hadn’t answered?

“Tom?”

“Hello?”

“Tom? Its Mike. Mike Crane.”

“I know Mike. How much have you had to drink?”

“I don’t know I just uhh…I drove past our place”

“You drove?”

“I think….“

“Mike, it’s 2:30 in the morning. We talked about you not calling me at home. Not when you get like this.”

“Tom…I think I hit something.…I don’t know how I got home”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I don’t know what to do”

“Mike, stop. I’m calling the police.”

“Tom, Oh God. Tom I’m so scared”

“Mike. Listen, I need you to listen. I’m calling the cops. Don’t leave the house.”

“Tom. I need you.”

“Mike, Jesus Christ, Mike you’ve absolutely lost it.”

“Tom…”

“It’s over. We cant keep doing this you know. It was a stupid mistake. The police are on their way. I’m hanging up now. Don’t call me again.”

“Tom?”

“Mike. You need to hang up. Wash your face, probably change your fucking shirt.”

“Do you think we could turn the lights down a little bit?”

BAR STORY

He ran his hand over the wooden picnic bench and felt a smooth divot where countless hands, ring fingers mysteriously out of a Friday night had caressed the oak or cedar top. Naked from any claim or memory, lightly unhinged and waiting like he waited now for her to come back from the bathroom. It was a long bathroom break he thought to himself but wondered if maybe she was doing something else. The way women used to go to powder rooms and re-apply their make-up that had melted off or washed off over the span of the evening. Tears, or rain or wind or snow or the salty taste of sweat dripping off your forehead. Some skinny man behind the counter shuffles and keeps eyeing the table, his movements are measured by minute to minute interactions with the divorcees and the future divorcees whispering softly that nothing without sweat or tears or rain or snow will ever work out.

He wondered if he had told her, the woman in the bathroom about the time he was engaged for a span of entirely three months which felt like the six years that preceded it. Until he came home to his fiancé and another man in their bed. He wondered if he told her about after the break-up, his future wife had told him about all of the seven times she cheated on him with other men and one woman. The love that was made in their bed while he was working overnight at the call center. How the headset left marks on his cheek, how dry his throat would get. How tired he would be walking to his car under the strange green-lit parking lot. Had he told her about how he left the job? Or how he was let go after the mess of his life spilled over onto his desk and into the conversations with claimants and policyholders, the tears onto the papers and the awkward hallway conversations with managers and regional managers. Under the false halogen moonlight backrooms. These people weren’t sympathetic, in a system built on sympathy and empathy there were as vacant as the left side of the bed in their home. In what was their home, she had given him thirty days to get out and he had managed to make it in three, shoving his clothes into trash bags and taking a moment to look back at Clementine. “Clem” they called her was the small gray kitten she had gotten for her as a surprise while she was visiting her parents in England. The now 4 year old full grown cat stares back, having stopped playing with the trash bags scattered across the bedroom floor. This is always the worst part of any of these things. Who decides what happens to “them” the unspoken for, the pets and the infant children with their lack of language cry and scream and run after the end of things instead of away from it.  Clem stares back and he swears there is some exchange here. Some sort of good-bye or good-luck or good-job being that aside from the marriage, everything else around them turned out just fine. They hadn’t had any kids yet but if they did they would be probably in their infant state or at least very young and clinging to some crib walled thing. Looking over the edge of the world as they know it past the toy mobile and binkies and stuffed animals to see collapse.

“One day you’ll miss me” He thinks to himself.  Some years later he gets a strange Facebook message and the hard English accent is pulling through.

Immediately after the split she went back home to England with her parents and spent time there. Got accepted into a literary revue attached to the distinguished Trinity College. They catch up strangely well and there is nothing strained about the interaction, nothing official; they talk briefly about the one time they attempted to get back together a few years after the split.  She was still in the house and invited him over for drinks after a few ghostly instagram conversations and a movie date had been arranged. Maybe he was stupid or lonely or both and it seemed she was the same. She was stupid drunk sitting in their bedroom just like they used to do after seeing some movie about an alcoholic woman who covets motherhood and watches the lives of others from a seemingly never ending train ride. Its gotten late and she tells him he’s too drunk to drive but if he’s going to stay it has to be for good. Something about the idea makes him run. He did not forget and the gravel of the long driveway leading up the house chatters under the tires of his 1996 Nissan. The one that was at one time parked for so long in front of the house it had permanent stains on it from autumn leaves collecting. The headlights illuminate the address one last time, before disappearing into memory.

NIGHT HUNTER/WHALE SONG

She must have waited for the train for 45 minutes, maybe an hour.

It was getting dark and the forest gave way to a shape that she did not recognize. Trees were moved by an unseen breeze. A streetlight plastered yellow onto green grass. The circumstance had pushed her far enough away from the city that the markets had closed and the lonely lights that would normally illuminate the paths for the late walkers were nowhere to be found. Up ahead she can see in the sunset a figure bustling about near the train stop; an elderly woman clutching a bag hovers around the last dying light. Perhaps she understands too well the unknown that crept out from the west. The tree line, the edge of the pink sky when mothers call their children home. Here is one, I meant to say: you missed one. This child is very lost and is a very long way away from home. She approaches with a degree of warmness that is not returned right away. From the bit of streetlight the woman’s glasses are reflected and her long wrinkled face stares at the impending doom figure with apprehension. Aside from the language barrier there is also a clear cultural barrier evident as well. We are not so very open in these parts.

Like two ships bumping in the night, we cannot clearly see one another and are surprised by the interaction. A lonely call from the mast out to land hits the waves and bounces back to empty.

“Hello?”(crashing waves and wind, the approaching night storm)

It’s not that they don’t see each other, it's really only that they choose not to. Eyes are kept down and we try not so much to become so very dependent on these concourses. The one way couldesacs of human exchange. It’s as if the STREET NOT THRU sign that we are so accustomed to in the states had been lifted completely or perhaps placed as a blanket statement over all things humane. Turn around. Don’t bother. Unless you are really lost and hungry, cold and tired. Nobody is going to help you this far out from town. A lone wolf howls in the forest and there is a sweeping cold as she outstretches her hand from the oversized coat in some sort of waving motion. This is seen as a friendly gesture, she does not mean any harm but still the woman is fearful and cannot bring herself to look up.

“Is there a Carrefour near here?”
The woman stumbled with light English and finally responded, flustered.

“At this hour?!”

Granted it was late. Sunday, twelve A.M. Amsterdam time. She hadn’t eaten anything all day and no one here was any help whatsoever. It was only her and the wild. There was the moon, the dark and the unconscious dutch forest. For years before men had hunted these woods. Foxes, hounds, duck and quail, all ages gone now. Their bones lie scattered, discarded a foot below the surface. Below a thin layer of pine, like sawdust; waiting to be uncovered by feral dogs and cats. There was a time when a welcome fire may have been waiting for her and perhaps a hunter willing to share catches from the day with a weary traveler. For certainly he had been there before, we all have felt the incredible feeling of loss and being lost. The lonely journey of dusk into night. The only people out now are the ones who have nobody to come home to. To sit alone at dimly lit wooden tables with old silver pots of coffee resting on a stove. The coldness of evening is welcome as a warm fire.

The simple fluorescent lights of the market illuminate some key points of interest to the night hunter; a chocolate bar, a coke, a vegan meat patty. A collection of dusty tinned things with a smiling face and a salty snack in a bag. Is this what we have resorted to? Picking up dead things from shelves in a strange light? How unnatural, the cashier asks if there will be

anything else? What a strange question; since if there were, surely we would have grabbed it by now. Before we got in line. Before we committed to saying we are finished and that is enough. Is there something we missed? Something we didn’t find in the pathetic plastic shelves under the harsh neon lights? Is this it? Will that be all? I don’t know, I guess you should tell me.

The night she called him. This was the first night in the forest, the first night in the camper. The darkness was pure and nothing could come from it. She and a man sat alone at the train stop and she worked on the chocolate bar. The man seemed strange and distant as he shuffled on the bench. Suddenly he was up and shouting at the tracks. Nothing, he was up and shouting at nothing. His dutch expletives broke the silence and it was as foreign as the sound of lovers’ laughter on a loners walk home. The chaos of his screams ripped into the black and settled as the static hum on the channels you don’t get. She is reminded of how she would sit as a child and stare at the screen until the shapes came out. The dark spaces between the white specs of snow. She does speak the language but can tell he is clearly upset, his voice is broken by crying and screaming. Something or someone was lost and cannot be brought back. Above the stop she can see the line is “twelve-blue”.

“Twelve-blue” and she is met with the sudden realization that this is not the right stop. She will have to abandon the insane static screamer and walk perhaps another mile to the next stop. The woman is gone. The man is getting silent behind her and stands in the middle of the tracks staring. Watching her go. Into the night.
“We shared this moment together. By force or pure happenstance, we shared this moment together”

The sun has set and another wolf has made its presence known in the wilderness. For now all she can tell is that there are two of them. They are still a great deal away, she had learned as a child not to be afraid of the night hunters. They will leave you alone as long as you leave them. She counts the moments between the howls.

One Two Three Four...

They are five seconds apart before the night is broken by another lonesome call. She can tell by this they are still very far and for the moment want nothing to do with her. Reaching deep into the pocket of the oversized coat she fumbles with the headphone. Calling him, she only hopes that he will answer.

The noise of the bar is so great he barely notices the phone ring. There are pinball machines firing and people yelling at ridiculous decibel levels and the laughter of drunk happy couples together. The warm lamp light of a local bar illuminates the faces just enough to make out features. Man, woman, child, mother and father. Here we forget the color of each other's eyes or the nuances or facial features. Was he wearing a hat last time? Something feels different. Still he picks up the phone and will try to talk. The hardest thing of all of this has been the wedge of distance between. The time gap and the impossible reality of the fact that this relationship could not possibly survive. At some point the rope will break and someone will be lost at sea. The beacon blast of the light house house across the water makes another pass. A distant fog horn of a lost ship calls out to the abyss. The dialogue is awkward and ancient. Like the caress of a digger's brush uncovering trapped Jurassic amber. To hold it close and say;

“You lived and You existed. Now I have to uncover you. Now I have to figure you out. Put you back together. Why did you do this to me? Why now? What happened to you, to leave you this way. Twisted in some final death sprawl, now I have to figure you out.”

What is left when the things cannot touch and we can no longer see the rocks from the water? This is the siren call that will bring the primordial soup up from the bottom of the ocean. He had been told that is where it all started. The origins of life. In some volcanic eruption a million years ago somewhere in the warm mist of the pacific. Along the coast of California. He dreams of it falling back into the water. The great return to the mother source. Jutting out from the mist that would become a beacon of hope to wayfaring travelers for centuries.

They set out from Amsterdam, from Florence, from Leeds and Liverpool with the best intentions. Fleeing persecution and famine; pioneer to the falls. Standing in the mist, bathed in the kaleidoscopic vision of water and sunlight. Now they just sit and wait. Lost at the bottom waiting for something. Someone to stumble upon them again and feel human touch. To suppose and project over their lives and purposes. How can life begin here? In such a cold desolate place. In the

dark, the land of strange alien shapes. Creatures that have evolved with no eyesight and the forsaken LampFish, lighting its path for no-one going no-where. There is a certain static and these trans continental phone calls feel more like nautical signals, inaudible to the ear. Like the shadow of a passing humpback whale or the chirping back and forth of dolphins in the warm pacific. The sonar buzzing of a creature that does not know any other language than to send out a signal. I am out here. I am alone and I am scared.

“I’m scared. I can’t hear anything. I just want to hear a sound. Something,
Anything.”

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this, my god.”

For someone who had surrounded themselves with nothing he thought for the resounding fact that she had found it here should come as no surprise. Once they had gone out shopping at night near her apartment back home. Once he had dreamt of what home might look like. A small house in the city, white fence around it, maybe a dog, a kid. Driving to the store they passed one such house and he commented on it. She was always so certain that it was not something she wanted. Crusher of dreams, dweller of Spanish cave village at the edge of the earth. She would send him pictures to prove that they were real. To live off nearly nothing, no god and no country to tell you what to do. Perhaps this is what she wanted all along. Then these must be the crazed desires of wanderlust, like some romantic prince setting out to see the world. For certainly there has to be more than just his dreams of family and a dog and fence to keep the dog. A single car garage and tenure. Here at the Whole Foods; twelve P.M. central time, the dreams of the future seemed to dance on his fingertips. He wanted to stop and sign in the aisle, alive with bombastic energy. The magic of togetherness like two workhorses hitched together. We are in this for the greater good, old friend. Yes, it will be hard work but in the end we will get a treat and it will not be so very cold. We will be given a roof over our head and lights from the house in the distance will reflect in our eyes and inspire our dreams until we die side by side, me after you or you after me.

Together, we will see through this task together. Like the bridle horse and the wagon pulling oxen; though our backs are broken, there was a sense of knowing and a feeling of togetherness. Like the overstocked underfed pack mule teetering on the edge of some precipice, inches away from death but still looking straight ahead, fearless or just blind to it. Half asleep from exhaustion but guided by the infernal rope of its master. Tied together by something. You see, you cannot fall now. If you fall, I fall.

If you die.
I die.
The rocks do not discriminate man from the unwashed heathen beast. We go down together.

They ran through the store grabbing candy and cookies and a frozen pizza. Like crazed animals let loose from cages and running wild in some sort of urban sprawl. Grabbing whatever they could and giggling the entire time, two night hunters moving together as one.

DOGS OF THE AFTERNOON

So I’m sitting there. It's my old apartment and it's my old writing group. When we got together, we would watch movies and talk about them and then write short stories together. At least I did. Maybe I just did that. Anyway, “R” is there..

I should let you know that these are real people. These are real events that happened in my life. I'm not going to use real names. If you are stumbling upon this, just know that these events shaped who I am today.While people change and evolve over time, these events occurred in my early twenties, in a fog of drug abuse and confusion. I often wasn't sure what to make of what was going on, my surroundings, environment, family life, everything like that. The years passed over me like thick Pacific fog. The kind that ships might get lost in, believe me this is the shit of legends. Folklore, made up of countless retellings and every time it gets a little weirder. Further from the truth and closer to whatever fantastic dreamscape you choose to believe. These events kill people, or they get left behind or they kill themselves. Death comes into the picture, holding its pale hand over your face in one final sweeping motion and like that it is over. You are folklore, some art school dropout in his 40’s will sit by the fireside and tell his nonexistent children or 23 year old girlfriend this story and they will sit wide eyed and captivated. This fog got a hold of me and I landed in a rehab facility for a year. It gave me wrinkles in my face and popped a blood vessel in my right eye. I had to have corrective laser surgery otherwise I was going to go blind, you see. Blind.

            -R-

Back to this shit. “R”was at the time one of my closest friends. We don't talk too much these days. R and I; well, we don’t really talk at all. We follow each other on social media. Keep tabs on our lives, peer inside the scope of what the other is doing. Oftentimes it ends up being some gut wrenching phone call that I keep seem to get away from. I keep looking at my phone to see how long we have been talking. What is the safe zone and how long do I allow this torture to continue. Two hours, three hours, I never know how to end anything with “R”; other than to simply tell him that I don’t want to hear any more about his failing marriage or the kid back here somewhere that he never talks to.  The secret he knows is that at some point he will reference either something from our childhood or from the apartment. We grew up together, two houses away from one another. At night I would sit up in my room and every light-left-on I would convince myself was his.  I don't know for certain how interested he is in my life, probably not very much at all. I can say this because most of the conversation is about “R” and the struggles that he has endured. The life of “R” and honestly I could care less but still I endure. I endure because I know, he knows that he has me captured, held in place. Living with my parents I walked past his old house and noticed the family that has since moved in. Probably having dinner, probably having some domestic dispute upstairs with some estranged teenage son, or daughter. I am my Mothers child and I will love you until the lights go out. Until the breath leaves my lungs. Until you call the cops on me.

So we are just sitting there. In the living room. Watching FARGO I think or Bloodsport, which in itself I understand is chaotic and random but I'm pretty sure that's what was going on.  The three of us are sitting in the front room and it’s gotta be like high fucking noon o’ clock because the light(and ill never forget it) the light is something fierce coming through that back kitchen window.

The very same window I witnessed the expansive hair of my first real girlfriend smoking a cigarette on our fire escape. My admiration was that of a child watching a city pass before a train window before the child is hauled off and all he has left is the sticky polaroid his mother took of him. Remember the Sears Tower, how it spiked up into the sky and how you were afraid of the elevated trains as a small boy. You will remember all of this someday and you won't know what to do other than to put it down to some kind of memory. Orange and yellow and my god there is just the most terrible glare coming in and casting a violent square on the TV. I literally can't stand it. To the point I feel like I might fall over if I have to withstand another second of the glare. Or I have to get up and do something about it.

The next thing I know I'm standing on top of the couch and nailing a blanket to the wall.

“My god this is gonna be so much better.”

Nobody says anything. Nobody takes their eyes off the screen.

“You guys. I’m gonna fix this fucking sunset glare so we can all watch Bloodsport in all its glory”

Guy now has turned his attention from FARGO to me teetering on the top of the couch. He’s a big kid, over 6ft but is sweet and gentle and always laughing. I was introduced to him through a roommate and he and Gus(today we will call him Gus tomorrow he might be someone else)and the roommate all went to school together.

I should also mention they are 5 to 6 years younger than me respectively so there are moments when I completely unravel in my would-be-assumed-mentor-drug-dealer role and crumble into a blithering sad, lonely pathetic twenty-something with no hope and no future silly uncle figure. A comic of some sort, some kind of village elder with rotting teeth and bad eyesight but still they endure me.

Guy(I assume it is Guy even though I can't see him because my back is turned facing the wall and the sheet I am trying to hang) is staring at me in some profound state of confusion. Some semblance of leadership with the crown half cocked laughing and falling three feet to his death.

“A hearse,

My kingdom for a hearse”

          -N-

But god dammit the sheet is up there and we are gonna watch fucking Bloodsport later, if it kills me and it just might. Not this exact day precisely but the lifestyle that was attached to this day.

A thunderous clamor that could only be recognized as the fearful sound of a knock on the door. As mentioned earlier this was in my previous life as a low scale inner ring pot dealer. I never kept more than an ounce in the house since the kids were always coming and going and none of them knew what the fuck they were doing with any of that shit. So anyway, there's a knock on the door and we all kind of stare at each other, looking around and silently asking who is going to answer that shit. Since I am the only real resident and these other two are just here every day, it has to be me. I have to answer the door. But the fucking sheet doesn't want to go up and now I’ve got myself in this fucking spot with the shirt and the box on the TV which I absolutely cant handle. I’ll admit I am a little high and this is honestly one of my favorite movies and this fucking shit outside is just killing it. Nonetheless, Steve Buscemi just broke into the house so there's a good ninety minutes left of this movie before Bloodsport comes on. I can walk away for a minute to answer the door. I mean who the fuck could it be anyway? Okay, I’m gonna tell you something I think I should have told you before in one of these discombobulated stories that just kind of fades away into some dusty relic pulled off a shelf. Her name is Natalie, she is beautiful; she will leave me in six months for a guy that she met on one of her fantastic trips. At this point Natalies career she is taking frequent trips. I kiss her and tell her good luck and that I miss her every time. I wait for her to come back.

I wait for her to answer my calls and my texts.

Some crowded bar in Wicker or some guy's apartment, filled with some cool shit I’m sure and not filled with pot-head-coked out rangers out of work and out of their minds. No glare on his nice TV. Lots of books to readily pluck off built in shelves. The smell of sandalwood and clean white walls. I never hear any of this. It is entirely fabricated in my mind and gets crazier every time. Sometimes there’s men, women, multiple men and women. A cat and a dog she occasionally walks. A whole other life outside of the one with me, perhaps the one of her dreams. Or mine. I am occasionally jealous of her trips back to my hometown. Years later, our paths will cross at a liquor store in New Orleans. I will feel a woman's hand grab mine and through some wormhole I am not standing anymore with my fiance on our trip. I am here with her now.

Again.

Days or a week later, comes home complaining about flights and all the stupid fucking photographers that she has to deal with and the wind in Chicago this time of year and how the set literally blew away in some Ingrid Bergman end of days scenario and her pale skin is stretched over the beach. Her arms are extended in some strange manicured way and the man is yelling “yes honey yes! that's it!” And there are crashing waves. Why don't I ever go with her? Am I just a shit boyfriend? Does she understand how she will never really let me go? How the touch of her hand might punch through the fog like a toy boat on a string. Pulling me back to cocaine nights.

“I’m better now. It was hard but I’m better now. After you left, I fell down some stairs and almost died. I did three lines of Oxy after these girls told me it was coke. I Hit my head and my band had to call my parents.”

“Let’s go get drunk and stumble around the night city like an Elliot Smith song.”

“What part of ‘I’m better now’ did you not understand?”

There was a moment of silence, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. My fiance is calling me, or texting me. I don’t know how long I have been gone, maybe an hour or so. People go about their business buying things, talking and the man at the register ticks away. I focus on the ping of his scanner and faint laughter of couples getting drunk. New Orleans this time of year is magical. Nothing matters and anything can happen. I nervously shuffle my feet and wait for her to suggest going to the cemetery and pissing on Nick Cage’s grave.

“The part where you said ‘you’re better’.”

Didn’t you know?

They will never let you go.

-K-

I get to the door and I am waiting for this tall bun of hair to appear in the top window portion of the door and just to see her wild crazy face peeking in. Always laughing about something, I don't even know what half the time. Pale skin, black hair and green eyes. Wynona Ryder out of 1995 and she picked me. Jesus christ please let this be my girlfriend because I am so fucking high right now and this would just be so rad.

So I’m getting closer now and I can clearly see. It’s not her. It’s not my girlfriend. Fuck, its fucking Kenny. I can tell already because he has this thing he does when he whistles nervously when he's waiting for something. Like something out of an old movie, like he's hiding something. Only he never is. Kenny has got to be one of the easiest people to read. You know how they say

“you could tell by his shoes he was born to sing the blues.”

Kenny wore his brain on his sleeve, fuck his whole life was there. Within five of minutes talking to this guy he has already told you the story of the last girl who dumped him,how it broke his heart,how his dad hit him with a bat when he was a kid and that's why he has a lazy eye, and how he never finished high school, how he taught himself to play guitar upside down. I don't mean like hanging upside down or behind his back like Hendrix or anything cool like that. I mean actually he picks up a guitar and doesn't know how to play it so he starts playing it upside down. He’s not even left-handed. He is just an absolute genius.I am Kenny, in every way. Kenny’s perpetual faded half open smile, eyes half closed. Kenny and his innocent mind elsewhere, Kenny and the dark side of the moon, the sea of tranquility, the flag and the tiny man stuck next to it. I am Kenny and the dark childish admiration of the far-away satellite. I am the constant thing and the tie that binds, the sense of normalcy in an uncertain world.

It helps to think that we are sleeping underneath the same night sky.

So now I can tell it’s Kenny and I'm dreading this interaction. Why is he here? What does he want? One time I was passed out and forgot I had to work that night. I wake up to somebody tapping my arm and it's fucking Kenny. I don't know how he got in. I guess I left the door unlocked but he got in and he's waking me up and telling me I was supposed to be at work an hour ago. He walked 6 miles just to wake me up and tell me that. So in the back of my head, I’m thinking

“Oh Fuck. Am I supposed to be at work right now?”

I mean, why else would Kenny be here? I really hope I don't have to be at work right now because I am really fucking high and I don't think I can handle that. Not right now.  I poke my head back in the room and Gus and Guy are still there. If Kenny is fucked up and tries to kill me I have Jon and Evan to protect me.

“Hey guys, um so Kenny is here….”

They both kind of look over at me and give me a real solid “who cares” and we decide as a group that Kenny should be let in. So I go back to the door, I open it and he’s just standing there.

“Hey man. What's going on.”

“Oh, not much, what are you guys up to?”

Wait. Hang on, first of all why are you here? Second of all, how does he know that Gus and Guy are here with me? I peek around the wall outside and notice the window is open. Fuck, I could have fallen out there while I was fucking with that sheet. I could have fallen out of that window and died. I look down and notice something blue on the lawn. It’s a blue size twelve sandal. Gus has a habit of taking off his shoes when he comes over and I guess he thought it was appropriate at whatever time to throw the shoe out of the open window. So that's it, Gus gave us away. Kenny was probably walking by and saw the shoe and decided that we were partying.

“You um, want to hang out or something?”

“Yeah man, I got some mushrooms and I can't do them because I have to go to work.”

“Oh shit. How many?”

“I have three one-eighth bags.”

He has three bags of psychedelic mushrooms and there are three of us. There are ninety minutes left before Bloodsport comes on. I decide it is probably best if I let him in. So he only really comes in for a minute. Says what's up to everyone and drops off the drugs. Shit, I even asked him if he wanted to watch Bloodsport with us. But he’s like

“Nah man I gotta work in an hour. I just thought you guys might want to do this.”

Let me just process this for a minute here. So this guy who nobody really likes and who plays an upside-down guitar like a goofball just shows up as we are watching FARGO and drops off three bags of mushrooms and doesn't even want to hang out? I know I mentioned earlier I was high but this is beyond that. I just can't believe it and am standing in my dimly lit kitchen basking in afternoon light, the possibility of Bloodsport and knowing that I am about to be so far gone the square on the TV won’t even matter.

Kenny drops the three plastic baggies on the kitchen table. Now, about this table. This was “R”’s table. He had it growing up and we spent a lot of time as kids sitting around it. Now it’s ours. We break up weed on it, fight over it, have meals on it and live around it. Kind of fucked up that now these three little baggies of shriveled gray fungus are sitting on a childhood artifact. We used to talk about moving to Chicago when we were kids. We’d get our first place there and I would be happy, it would be like a homecoming for me. I would sit up in our shitty Logan Square apartment and write. You shouldn't talk about things like that when you are a kid. If you ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up. Always say “Cop” or “Astronaut ”. Never say,

“struggling writer who moves in with his childhood best friend whom he is secretly in love with and will break his heart every day that he can…”

Don't wish for that, I am saying this now to ten-year-old me. Don't wish for that shit, keep it distant. That's what dreams are made of. That other shit is too real and will probably actually happen. Then you'll just be disappointed wanting to change your dream back to “Cop” so you can not give a fuck about any of this shit and not have every day for the next year be an existential fucking exercise.  Fuck, there’s a choice to be made here. Three bags of substance sit on the kitchen table. It must be like three or four o’clock now because the light has changed.

I always notice when the light changes here because I notice things like that. The square is gone off the tv and FARGO is over. Somehow Bloodsport has not started, or maybe it's about to. There is a commercial stuck in time, maybe, I think for Taco Bell. Instead of all of us at once getting up and piling into my car to get Taco Bell we are frozen in some writer’s block moment. There is little or no interaction until suddenly “R” asks if anyone remembers the carpet outlet store commercial from my childhood that featured two sisters floating over the arch on a magic carpet. The other three do not. They are light years behind us and for a second instead of collapsing on the kitchen floor I am ten years old. It pulls me in the way it always does. It is his secret weapon against me, because he knows that I submit every time and I have no defense. I do not realize that we aren’t even watching tv anymore, the mushrooms have taken effect; Gus is puking his guts out in the bathroom, Kenny has left and Guy is hanging half out the window screaming at the size twelve sandal. It's time for the three of us, the sole inhabitants of this space to cast each other into yet another void of oblivion. I feel the weight of the empty plastic bag in my hand and for a split second start to wonder about the cascade of choices that I have made over the past 2 years. Choices that have driven me away from the family that kicked me out just shy of my 22nd birthday for doing coke off my windowsill. This is when it gets dark. When I meet these people again years later at a wedding or at a funeral and we start to tell stories none of it makes sense.

How is it like that?

Was it like that?

Did I really do that and did he really say that?

We notice when our warm-lit faces turn to confusion and suddenly nobody is laughing. Maybe someone is crying, and it all comes back up. The hurt, the pain, the mad fury and the love.

“Cascade” for lack of a better word would describe it best. Or maybe “waterfall” but what does a waterfall do? That's right, it cascades. My estranged relationship with my family, my crumbling friendship with my best friend. My old roommate and our childhood best friend passed-out in Seattle somewhere.

Needles in his arms.

Statistics, cascades of statistics.