LONELY TIME

Back about 1996 I got sick. Came in from work one day and fell on the couch, fevered and exhausted.
My then-wife asked me what I needed for medicine
“I don’t know” yelled, “Just get me something” I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Shila was nudging me awake.
“Here , I got you all this” she said, and there were about 10 bottles of medicine lined up on the coffee table.
I groaned and said “What is all this SHIT?” and she said “To hell with you”.

And so fast forward about 6 years. I’ve run everyone in my life off, in my addiction, including Shila.
I was working at Subway, and my only friends really were the High School kids that worked there with me.
I got sick. Bad case of flu. There was no one to call for medicine. So I drug myself up to the Albertsons to get some. I stopped at the Subway on the way. I stood there feverish in front of the counter and told these two kids that I worked with:
“Don’t do what I did, kids. Don’t run all the people in your life off, or you’ll end up just like me”
And I just broke down and wept, right there in the Subway.
Like the old Dylan lyric "An old man with broken teeth, stranded without love".

Sometimes I wish I could run into one of them, and show them how I'd changed, and find out if they had taken my words to heart

It would be another 4 years before I got clean and came to a program that said:

"One of the signs of having had a Spiritual Awakening is and end to the feeling of loneliness"

WHIPPED CREAM AND OTHER DELIGHTS

 

In my dream sequence I am playing frisbee with Beautiful.
It’s a pleasant sunny day.
The dream shutter clicks, and now all I can see is Beautiful, naked, wearing only a necklace with a huge silver feather hanging between her breasts. Only she isn’t naked, quite. She is covered in feathers, delicate downy white feathers, exactly as the girl on Herb Alberts album cover for “Whipped Cream and other Delights” appeared, lathered in whipped cream. Right down to the single red rose and green background.

Its classic. Every man in America knows this album cover.  And like the cover, Beautiful is gorgeous in her feathers.
Its just a split second, they say most dreams are, then on to the next vignette in the dream sequence.

 

A PRAYER WE DIDNT KNOW WE WERE SAYING

Through the pines and the one maple I hear her.
𝘐 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘴𝘩.
𝘐 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘴𝘩.
There she stands
legs impossibly long
pink and black polka dot swimsuit baggy
pole in her hands
and a little oval sunfish impossibly on her hook.

I don’t tell her, but I do think
Oh, sweet girl, life is always like that.
Fishing before you know how to fish.
Leaving before you know how to leave.
Speaking before you know how to speak.
Fighting before you know how to fight.
Loving before you know how to love.
Dying before you know how to die.

We are all the child with the pole
worrying about who we’ve hurt.
And we are all the fish on the hook,
hoping for mercy.
Her aunt hears her muttering prayer
and though she hasn’t unhooked a fish in 30 years
grabs the wriggling innocent in her hands
and dislodges metal from cheek.
And this, too, is all of us.
Saved again and again by prayer we didn’t know we were saying
and a witness we forgot was listening.
- Courtney Martin -

OUR TRUE SELVES

Its OK to joke yourself, but you shouldn't joke other people.

Like the time I took a bite out of Joanna Rodriguez's sandwich in the LD Bell lunchroom and put it back in her bag. It was supposed to be a mystery, a secret, like a funny (haha) who-done-it. She would open her bag and see the big bite out of it and smile, and say "Who is the comic genius that took a bite out of my sandwich." I would fess up, and I would be completely endeared to her (even though we had not been formally introduced) her saying "Oh how clever you are!" But it wasn’t a secret for long because of my overbite, and the peanut butter and jelly on the corners of my mouth. That was a dead give-away. It wasn’t funny either, haha, especially to Joanna who was pissed that some asshole with an overbite had secretly taken a bite out of her sandwich her mama had packed for her. Right there in the lunchroom, while she went to get her milk.

What was the country coming to, that you couldn’t set your lunch down for not even a minute?

In my minds eye I can still see Joanna, as I'm sure you must be seeing her now, disgusted and fuming, unceremoniously stuffing the sandwich back into the bag, marching to the trash can and slam dunking it, madder'n Charles Barkley.
And it wasn’t funny to me, me suddenly being absolutely horrified at what I had done, and the fact that it wasn't a secret, or the least bit funny-- which is what I was shooting for, haha-- at all. No sir, it wasn’t funny at all.

Addendum:
This story came up during an online recovery zoom meeting today. The topic was the masks that we wear and our true selves. I shared that even on a good day when I seem confident, polite, courageous, friendly, funny, urbane, and sophisticated, that deep down I'm like an awkward little boy that just wants attention, approval, and acceptance. And I'm afraid that I won't get it.
I think about this story often.
Sometimes you think maybe you're misunderstood. But you're not misunderstood, you're just doing stupid stuff. Fifty years later I still have to remind myself not to take a bite out of other people's sandwiches in order to get attention, and live in a certain amount of fear that I will have a momentary lapse of reason and resort to such tactics.
I get a lot of mileage out of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich don't I?

 Joanna, pictured left.

"MY NAME IS STEVE AND I AM AN ADDICT"

 I had a boss the last 6 years, a Marine veteran. He struggled with alcohol and no telling what else. His story was typical. Joined the corps out of High School. Spent 20 years at it. Several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Returns home broken. Gets his first civilian job. Soon to follow is a divorce. He told me one time that he had no idea what to do with his kids. Just could not relate. It was hard enough on the job. I was exactly the kind of guy he couldn't stand, Funny, big-hearted, happy. He looked at me sometimes like I was the Taliban. I used to have to tell him "Hey, I'm on your side, remember?"

 Several times I contacted corporate that we had a problem down here. The boss is showing up drunk if he shows up at all. They seemed to be limited in what they could do. I watched the guy disintegrate the last two years. And then one day last September he shot himself in the head while I was on vacation.

Grief counselors came to the workplace and we had a meeting. They spoke to us (an office of six) and opened the meeting up for us to share. Everyone was silent. Maybe 30 seconds, or 45 went by. And thats when I launched into “My name is Steve and I work here.” I shared about my feelings on Tom, and what had happened, and how I was disappointed the company seemed to let Tom down.

That's how you get it started. Identification.

It broke the ice and everybody shared from there. It's what I've learned to do through my narcotics anonymous program.

I guess now its my habit, my nature.

FUCK YOU FRANK

 What a marriage! From acimony to alimony in six months flat. An alligator ate their dog. There was a parrot, whose only phrase was "Fuck you, Frank, fuck you, Frank." After she left he took to drinking, a fifth of vodka a day. Sitting in the backyard with a high-powered rifle, waiting for the alligator to come back. 

He blamed the state of Florida. It was his idea of a bad idea, and by that he meant the whole damn state. There was a For Sale sign in the front yard. But nobody was buying, what with the real estate slump and the alligators and the not-so-distant roar of the traffic going from nowhere to nowhere on the causeway.

He ate frozen pizza every single night. Alone at the kitchen table, or standing by the patio window, on the lookout for the alligator. It was her dog, a tiny chihuahua with a mean streak. One minute it was yapping in the backyard and then it wasn't, and there was an alligator sauntering back to the canal, belching. They should have put up a fence but there wasn't time, between the swearing and dish throwing. 

He wanted her back, that was the amazing thing. He even wanted the parrot back. Sometimes at night he would look at himself in the bathroom mirror and say, "Fuck you, Frank. Fuck you, Frank."

UF Mike

WHISPERS

 Sillage (n.)- a scent that lingers in the air; the trail left in the water; the impression made in space after someone has been and gone; the trace of someone’s perfume.

“The alphabet of grace is full of sibilants—sounds that can't be shouted but only whispered: the sounds of bumblebees and wind and lovers in the dark, of whitecaps hissing up flat over the glittering sand and cars on wet roads, of crowds hushed in vast and vaulted places, the sound of your own breathing. I believe that in sibilants life is trying to tell us something. The trees, ghosts, dreams, faces, the waking up and eating and working of life, are trying to tell us something, to take us somewhere.”
~ Frederick Buechner

~Image Rene Magritte

APRIL SHOWERS

 

She lived down the street from me. I was 17 and she was 14. Looking back, it seems like she and I played in the rain like this all the time. Most likely it was just one 30-minute rain shower that seemed like an eternity. I walked her home and kissed her on her front porch. It was a real kiss, and I remember being surprised I would do that, and how good she kissed for being just 14.
I think back sometimes, and wonder was it her first kiss. Judging by technique, I would say not.
If it was a "date" then it was the date all other dates are judged by.
Of course, she doesn’t quite remember any of it.

APRIL SHOWERS

She and I played in the rain

We would walk to the top of the hill

And break a small piece of twig

To float in the gutter

Back down the hill we would follow our twig-boats.

Wait patiently for them to free themselves from eddies.

Watch delighted as they bounded over and around.

Small rocks,

Clumps of leaves

Cracks in the pavement

Then skipping through the rapids

We landed at the bottom of the hill,

Drenched and happy

Running back to the top

To do it all over again.

Bullet holes 5/2013 

Sometimes when I meet a girl and think maybe I like her I wonder to myself if she is the kind of  girl that would float twigs with me.