Doc’s Blocks

“So you’re saying,” gesturing down to the open wooden crate between them, “ you went all the way to El Paso to get him?”

“That’s right. Your mother, may she rest in peace, had read about him in the newspaper and figured this was going to be the miracle that would cure her.“

Jimmy and Harry were standing in an old deserted warehouse in Bayonne, New Jersey  sometime after midnight. Jimmy, a gangly middle aged something and Harry, a white haired man with a beer belly, crowbar in hand, were standing staring down into the wooden crate with its top laying on the floor.

Jimmy was slowly shaking his head back and forth seemingly mesmerized by the crate’s content. “I can’t believe you stole baby Jesus.”

“I still can’t believe you told your Mom I stole baby Jesus.”

“Give me a break. What did you expect? I was 4!  Mom really thought he could make a difference.”

“What else was I going to do? I would have done anything for my little sis and your mom was too sick to go to El Paso, so I had to bring Baby Jesus to your Mom!”

 “Some miracle. She was dead within the month.”

“Who knows? Maybe the miracle Baby Jesus of El Paso gave her that extra month”

“Yeah, right. So, what I’ve never understood is why did you end up keeping him all this time? You couldn’t have just dumped him. Why keep hiding him in this warehouse forever.”

“What else was I going to do?  I was lucky I didn’t get caught stealing him. I just never figured out how to not get caught putting him back. Someday I’m going to figure out how to make this supposed miracle lump of concrete payoff finally.”

“Uncle Harry, you are one strange dude.”

“No shit.” It was strange to hear this sort of comment spoken with a baby’s voice and even stranger that it had come from the crate.

The metallic echoes of the crowbar hitting the floor blended with the receding footfalls racing into the darkness of the warehouse as the sound of a baby’s laughter filled the night.

Of the four elemental forces of nature; gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, gravity is supposedly  the weakest. Go figure. Try and tell that to a two-year who’s trying to learn to walk. Young children spend an inordinate amount of their time coming to an accommodation with this invisible force that keeps making them “fall down and go boom.”

But accommodate we do and soon gravity becomes nothing more than a nuisance factor in our physical lives. “I spilled coffee all over my shirt”. “He dropped the fly ball.” “I tripped over the cat”.

Granted, it still, on occasion, can dominate our physical world. Bungee jumpers and skydivers depend upon it. Bartenders would be lost without it and of course, it forever holds a position of supreme power in the annals of Armageddon, “Fuck with us and we’ll drop the Big One on you.”

What intrigues me is that as we get older and gravity plays a smaller and smaller part in our physical  lives, it tends to grow in power in the metaphysical. He fell from grace. She fell into the habit of smoking. He fell in with  a bad crowd. Nobody ever falls towards grace, plans on smoking  four packs a day or plots to join a street gang. It’s just something that happens, that we’re not aware of, or have no control over. Gravity is the universal cop out. It’s the invisible force that is forever plotting to bring us down. As it becomes more and more rare for us to actually  “Fall down and go boom,”  it becomes increasingly possible to “fall into a funk”,  “drop the ball” at the big meeting or just to be “down” when the rest of the world expects ”up.”

I guess all of this has been on my mind lately as I find the truce I made with gravity when I was four or five has been, in reality, a temporary one. As it turns out, gravity is a very patient opponent. It bides it’s time during the middle decades of our lives with the occasional spilled coffee on the shirt or misstep with the cat while gravity patiently awaits our senior years. It turns out that the sun isn’t the only thing that is going down in our sunset years. I seem to be hitting the ground with frightening regularity. Steps have suddenly become an adversary and cracks in the sidewalk? Forget my mother’s broken back, what about mine?  Because gone are the days where you can fall and get away with a Band-Aid on your boo boo. Now that fall from grace can be the broken hip, first act fall, in your final swan song.

So be it. I’ve literally had a good run. My dance with gravity has been a fun one. I have risen above some of life’s obstacles and been able to climb out of the holes that I’ve dug for myself. I’ve been blessed to have fallen in love.  And, if I can say, that after a lifetime of falling down, both literally and figuratively,  I only fail to get back up once, I’ll figure I came out of the whole thing a winner.

I can’t spell or punctuate worth a damn but I hope you get my drift. The words are probably different in other languages, but I bet the physical cues are pretty much universal, transcending linguistic boundaries and making communication relatable on a whole new level. Eyes all scrunched up, conveying confusion or mischief. Tongue stuck out, a playful gesture of defiance. And most importantly, thumbs stuck in your ears with fingers wiggling on either side of the head—nothing says taunting quite like this classic move, an act that inspires laughter or annoyance alike. It’s so iconic that it has almost become a rite of passage for children across cultures. Except possibly the old Viking tradition of baring your butt and waggling it at your opponent, an act that could only be described as audacious and utterly hilarious. Butt waggling, the ultimate taunt, was not only a display of bravado but also a playful affront, the cornerstone of the Viking’s fearsome reputation. They utilized this cheeky display to unsettle their adversaries, demonstrating both confidence and a somewhat irreverent sense of humor. And no one, before or since, could butt waggle like the Vikings; their mastery of this primal taunt was legendary, forever etching their antics into the annals of history and popular folklore.

“Na na na na na”. This in no way should be confused with “Na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye”, the 1969 tune from the one hit group Steam.

 Get a grip, Doc! This whole “na na” thing has become a bit of a fixation.  The very phrase taunts me. Why this sudden preoccupation with taunting, you may ask? It couldn’t be the Leonardo DiCaprio movie “Catch Me If You Can”, which I caught on the tube the other night, could it?  Cute movie but normally not considered a real thought provoker. Then it dawned on me. Catch me if you can? What an incredible thing to say to somebody. I couldn’t imagine those words ever escaping my lips. Come to think of it, those words have never escaped my lips.

Oh, come on Doc. Are you going to sit there and tell us that not once in a childhood of running around, the phrase “Catch me if you can!”, never escaped your lips? Not once. And I’ll tell you why. In running situations fat kids are never the taunters but rather the tauntees. And before you get all  “poor fat Doc” on me, you’ll notice I used the qualification “running situations”. Taunting is very act specific. I could imagine a fat kid who was taunted for being slow, turning around and taunting a skinny kid for not being able to pack away six hot dogs at lunch.

So what makes a taunter? Is it just confidence with a side of bullying? Perhaps. You’re not going to bare your butt and waggle it at someone if you’re not pretty sure that you can successfully slaughter all the men, rape all the women, burn down their village and then carry their children off to slavery. You’d just look silly otherwise.

I think it’s more than that. A taunt is an advertisement. It’s a declaration. It’s a big fat “Look at me!”. And more precisely it’s a declaration that you can do something that the other person can’t. And I’m starting to think that is why the whole taunting concept seems to be so foreign to me. Why would anyone in their right mind want to warn the other guy about how good they are? To what end?  Beats me. Maybe they’re just really into butt waggling.

Personally, I keep my butt in my pants, fingers out of my ears and a big smile plastered all over my face. It’s the smile that does it. They never see me coming. Right up until I slaughter all the men, rape all the women, burn down the village and carry the children off to slavery.

Na na na na na. Indeed.

I thought I was drowning. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Now the unvarnished truth of the matter was that some Dr. Pepper had gone down the wrong pipe and I chocked a little bit but who am I to deny a listener the thrill of participating in a near life ending experience? Who am I to burden some poor soul with the tedious recounting  of my miss- swallowing when I can just as easily bring some life or death excitement into their humdrum lives with just a soupçon of embellishment?

As my dear wife would say  “Doc never met an inch that’s he didn’t claim was a mile.”

My life long love affair with hyperbole is so much more than a selfish attempt at self aggrandizement. I feel the commonplace exaggerations of the little man are beneath me. Do we really believe the obviously five foot seven man who claims to be 6 feet? Or the over photoshopped influencer really has flawless skin? Of course not. But more to the point what is their motivation in telling us such bold face lies? Is it, in the end, for our benefit? I think not. They embellish and exaggerate  to deceive. To shamelessly puff themselves up.

I, on the other hand, use the fine art of hyperbole as an art form  to enhance the drab reality of mere facts, to entertain rather than just elucidate, to bring joy and excitement to those less fortunate than myself. After all the dictionary definition of hyperbole is “exaggerated statements or claims not  to be taken literally”.  So when I tell you I have an IQ of over 200, I of course, don’t mean to be taken literally. I’m merely “varnishing” the truth a little bit, selflessly allowing you to gain stature by telling all your friends about the fascinating man you just met.

I guess for me it all comes down to why cry “Cocker Spaniel!”  when it’s just as easy to cry “Wolf!”?  I’m just  trying to get more bang for my verbal buck.  Where’s the harm in that, I ask you? After all is said and done, you know, I know, you know, we all know, that I’m full of shit but in this age of fake news and spin my flights of factual fantasy are never meant to deceive or be taken literally. They are merely the selfless acts of a man who never met a truth that wasn’t worth stretching or an inch that wan’t at heart a mile just waiting for me to come along.

The old lady was holding a stick and she was pointing it right at me. I swear I had never seen this woman before in my life and I had absolutely no idea what she was doing with the stick. Most of the old ladies I had known up until this point would take one look at me, shriek and run away. A very few, the brave ones, would stand their ground and if something was throwable, pitch it my way.  The only reason I’m here to tell you this tale is that most old ladies throw like old ladies.

As it turns out, I should have been more worried about this old lady and her stick, because long story short, she zapped me and three of my buddies. And it was just like you see in the movies. A bright light, glitter in the air and a harp glissando. And no, my life did not flash before my eyes. Which, under the circumstances, would have been pretty easy, as I have spent my entire life as a field mouse and we don’t tend to live very long, though I do have a cousin who works in a lab who is incredibly old, like four.

But, where was I? Ohh, yeah. Getting zapped. Well let me tell you, getting zapped is no fucking fun. It may look cute in the movies but I’m here to tell you, in real life, some old lady with a stick in hand, can just about ruin your entire fucking day. Pardon my language, but I’m as vain as anyone and putting on a couple of thousand pounds instantaneously is tough to take.

Not that I have anything against horses, mind you and I have to admit, I was one real fine looking horse but when you get right down to it, I didn’t ask to become a horse. This crazy old lady with a stick just up and decides to make me a horse. Maybe if she would have asked nicely I would have been OK with the whole thing. “Listen, Mickey, I’m in kind of a jam here. I got this friend, Cinderella, who needs to go to a ball and seduce a prince and live happily ever after, but she needs a ride.”  But instead of asking nicely, I and my buddies, just get the stick.

And I can’t even tell you what she did to the pumpkin.

And it went all downhill from there. It turns out, there was a lot of fine print in the zapping. After hauling the little Princess all the way over to the palace, she takes her sweet time seducing the Prince, so we all end up zapping back to the way we were, miles from home. The pumpkin didn’t seem to mind, he  was after all,. nothing but a pumpkin but Princess was so pissed she threw her remaining glass slipper at me.

And I’m only here to tell you the tale because she threw like an old lady.

The men who had gathered around the store’s potbelly stove leaned in to hear the punch line of Tom’s story,

“And the cow sat down and ordered a beer.”

They all burst into laughter, except for Caleb, a good looking, tow headed young man, standing off to one side, eyes closed, apparently day dreaming. Tom, still chuckling, got up from his chair and went over to Caleb and put his arm around him. “I’ll explain it to you later son. Sorry, I went on so long. Do you mind bringing the wagon ‘round?” Caleb smiled and nodded.

A chorus of “Night, Caleb” followed him out into the cold dusk. Relief flooded over him. Outside is where he belonged, outside and alone, if truth be told. It had always been this way as long as he could remember.

Inside, around others, he had always felt apart.  He could remember the worried look in his parents eyes when he was still a small child and how the other children at the one room schoolhouse taunted him. Inside, surrounded by books, numbers and people, it seemed they all spoke a language he couldn’t quite understand. But once the bell rang and they all ran outside, it suddenly seemed to all make sense. The other children babbled on, leaving him one with his surroundings, the sky, the animals and the fields. Outside, he was no longer the outsider. Outside, he belonged.

It wasn’t long before the people in the small town began to notice his obvious strengths as opposed to his perceived weaknesses and soon the taunting stopped. ‘The boy may not be the most sociable thing, but by God, he knows the outdoors.’

“Is there a storm coming Caleb?”

“That new calf of mine is feeling poorly. Could you stop by and take a look at her?”

“You were right about that apple tree. It’s right as rain now. Here’s a pie that Maud made with its fruit . Thanks again, Caleb.”

Caleb stood for a moment outside the store basking in the dusk’s embrace.  Not for the first time, Caleb marveled at his good fortune. In the big city he would have been an outcast, a stranger, the different one. Here he was accepted for what he was rather than for what he wasn’t, for what he could do rather then for what he couldn’t.

Caleb smiled and shook his head. On the ride home Pa was going to try and explain, what in God’s name, a cow was doing ordering a beer. And they had thought him the strange one?

Moving sucks.

Consequently, it’s safe to say most of us will move as little as possible, given that we are all creatures of habit, moving is change, and change is the biggest enemy of habit.

So, we avoid moving at all costs, unless, of course, there is some obvious large benefit involved, a new job, a new partner, or a new warrant out for our arrest, for instance.

So, it is with some pride that I can report I have just successfully made the biggest move of my life.

A big move. A big move of less than 3 feet.

I have just successfully moved my wife and I from a king bed into two twins.

You gasp in amazement at the magnitude of my endeavor. I bask in your awe. Even the moving man who, with an assistant hauled away our massive king mattress pulled me aside and whispered, “How the fuck you ever convince her to do it?”

And there lies the rub. Everyone knows that single mattress cohabitation is convenient for sex, but it sucks for sleep. After all, “sleeping together” is synonymous for sex, not slumber. We all know this, but women especially have been brainwashed into thinking “sleeping together” is “romantic” instead of downright impossible.

“You don’t love me anymore!,” my wife had exclaimed.

I had a rejoinder for this much anticipated concern. “Love is you never having to say you’re sorry for punching me in the nose in the middle of the night.” When in doubt, go for the guilt.

A cheap shot, but it worked.

Now, we both now sleep like babies, except for those nights when I tip toe across those 3 feet and I hear a low throaty chuckle in the night.

“Uh oh, Big Boy’s making the big move.”

Sure beats getting punched in the nose.

My time is very different from your time.

I have heard your time referred to as a river, a smooth continuum, a flow if you will.

How very strange.

You see, there is no flow to my time. My time is not on a continuum. If your time is a slow-moving river of ice, then mine is a random group of icebergs that have calved from the glacier’s front wall and are distinctly unique, adrift on a calm sea. When born in your glacier, one berg, one memory, appears fused cheek by jowl with another, but out on my ocean it’s every berg for itself.

For you, my internal clock must be a thing of terrifying beauty. With memory and time all a jumble, tenses for me are tenuously terminal. What was, what is, and what will be all share a common weight. They are all ephemeral. Just out of reach. One berg just barely visible on the horizon. One step away from being real.

Which, of course, brings up the issue of time codependency. I long ago realized my time is not your time. As I am acutely aware of the difference between the two, I, of course, defer to your time, figuring that there are so many more of you than me. So, I end up borrowing your time. You don’t seem to mind, and it makes my life ever so much easier.

You say, “Meet me at 8:00”. If I manage to remember the meeting at all, you can be damn sure I will be there before you, because it’s the least I could do for having borrowed your time.

After all, there is no reason for me to be rude just because your sense of time is all fucked up.

Welcome to my world.

It’s about time.

“What’s in the box?”

It’s a question as old as Pandora, as famous as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman or as current as a little child shaking a gift from under a Christmas tree. At one time or another we have all wondered “What’s in the box?”.

And up until about 120 years ago it was a question that could be answered quite simply. You opened the box. Voila! For Pandora, it was every evil in the land, for Julia, a diamond necklace, for the little boy, a toy truck. You opened the box and whatever secret magic it may have had disappeared. An open box was a box without mystery.

And then in 1894 Gugliemo Marconi invented the radio. And he put his radio in a box. So, the humble box, an inanimate, ubiquitous mechanism of containment and transportation for thousands of years, became a magic box. A box that could talk, play music or bring into your living room a baseball game from a 1000 miles away. And unlike most every box before it, it could not be moved, for it was attached to the wall by a cord and most importantly, unlike any box before it, if you looked inside, it would still not reveal its secrets.

I’m not so old that I remember the Golden Age of radio, so it’s almost impossible for me to imagine the wonder and the amazement of it all, as entire families sat gathered around the Magnavox, a great hulking box of furniture, listening to Fibber McGee and Molly, talking to them from the box in the corner of the living room. It must have been as if the dog had broke out into an aria from The Marriage of Figaro.

My magic box was the TV. An RCA Victor TV, a great hulking box of furniture, with black and white pictures, 3 stations and Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless. That was 10 years after the Golden Age of radio and we had already become jaded citizens of the world of tomorrow. My generation was the first generation to accept the reality of a magic box. We took its wonders for granted.  We even pretended to be blasé  when the radio lost its cord and became portable, when the pictures on the TV came in color and music came to us on tape not vinyl.

I’d be lying to say that the blush on my blasé hasn’t gotten a little rusty with the advent of the ultimate magic box, the computer and all of its myriad attendant magic boxes. What one generation considers wondrous is old hat for the next. I sit here writing these words on a magic box they call a notebook, with a keyboard and screen that’s smaller than the paper notebook I carried in high school. I’m told if I wanted it to, it could connect me to the rest of the world. I still haven’t figured out why I would want to do this, as I think of the rest of the world the same way I do as the people in the DMV. I know they’re there but I choose to mix with them as infrequently as possible.

Now we’re all surrounded by a world full of magic boxes. They’re everywhere. The phone, the TV,  the remotes for the TV, Alexa, Siri, my car “keys” and ATMs. And no one seems to even notice. All the boxes are sealed in the factory so that we couldn’t open them if we tried. And to what end?  I could no more explain or comprehend the inner workings of the first simple radio, let alone the transistorized algorithms that have somehow managed to put Tom Cruise on the touchscreen of my phone. It’s all magic to me.

So it seems as if the humble box, inanimate and ubiquitous, isn’t so humble anymore and the question is not “What’s in the box?”. But rather “Who, or what, is putting the magic in the boxes and what do they want of me?”I certainly don’t know the answer and I have the funny feeling that, more and more, few of you do.

But that doesn’t bother me because I’ve already picked out my box. Mahogany, satin lined with four bright brass handles.

“What’s in the box?

Doc’s in the box.

Good luck, Pandora. I think you’re going to need it.

I must have drifted off because Jenkins is gone. He must have left to find something to eat and if he doesn’t come back soon, I’ll assume the something ate him.

I’ll miss him. Not the specifics of him, mind you. After all was said and done, he was a stupid, uncouth little man with rotten teeth and far from the best of company. But he was company and by the looks of things he might be the last company I’ll have. Oh well, I should have known, when I signed up for this Arctic expedition, it wasn’t going to be a regatta.

What I didn’t sign up for was the ship getting stuck in the infernal ice, leaving some of us to try and walk out over the sea and land, only to end up at this God forsaken piece of nowhere.

Oh, the tyranny of hope! When 12 of us set off from the ship, under the impression there was a British whaling station just on the other side of the island, we had been led to believe it was a bastion of civilization in the Arctic wilderness. Instead, the remaining four of us, who managed to survive the harrowing 16 day journey, found nothing but this abandoned shack, my present palatial surroundings, teetering on the edge of yet another expanse of ice.

Inside there was one rope strung cot, two chairs, one table and a rusty iron stove. Such were the lilliputian dimensions of the shack, Smithfield and Porter volunteered to take the last sled and explore down the coast in hopes of finding help. We divided up what little was left of our supplies and that was the last we saw of Smithfield and Porter, leaving Jenkins and I to fend for ourselves.

Perhaps I have been a bit harsh in my description of Jenkins. He was certainly not one that you would have thought of as fourth for whist. But this little Cockney from the Docklands of London had an almost feral aptitude for survival. In truth, I would have perished long ago without him.

In the few remaining hours of sunlight left to us each day he foraged for any available food and fuel. I am not ashamed to report that on one occasion, we gorged ourselves on a semi-decomposed seal pup that he found. He also managed to scrounge most of the scraps of wood that we used to keep at least a semblance of a flame in the stove. He had ascertained correctly, that in this barren Arctic wilderness, there was more food than fuel and when our precious limited supply of oil ran out, wood would be our only source of heat and light.

We were down to the dregs of the oil. As it was our only shelter, we couldn’t very well use the wood from the walls of our shack for fuel. So we slowly fed the furniture to the flames. If the members of my club, or, God forbid, my wife, could have seen Jenkins and I on our  last night together , I would not have to worry about dying of hunger or cold. I would have died of the shame.

There we were, fully clothed, huddled together under three moth-eaten blankets, in the cot that we had shoved up against the stove.. The cot would be the last of the furniture to be fed into the flames as we would not have lasted the night lying on the bare frozen floor. We were chatting like an old married couple.

“‘She’s not a bad lookin’ crumpet.”

Jenkins was referring the reproduction, the shack’s sole decoration, just barely visible in the flickering lamp light. It was crookedly hanging on the wall just over the stove.

“I’m quite sure that her Highness, Her Majesty Queen Victoria, would feel heartened by your approval.”

“It’s a shame she’s got to go.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You two related?”

I was speechless. The non sequitur and lack of food had left me slightly lightheaded.

“I just figured all you knobs were related and you would take exception to me feeding her to the flame. The way I see it, the paper she’s on and the frame around ’er ‘ead could be the last things we’ll find to burn.” I saw his point.

That was the last thing I remember him saying before I drifted off. And now he’s gone, leaving me alone with Her Majesty. For the life of me, literally, I don’t think I can bring myself to consign her to the dying embers in the stove.  After all, if I must die, at least I will die a proper English gentleman.

The harsh Arctic winds shake the cabin and make Her Majesty dance upon the wall.

“God save the Queen!” Was my mind going? It sounded like Jenkins!

I staggered out from the cot and threw open the flimsy door of the shed. There stood Jenkins. A rotten toothed smile spread from ear to ear.

“I found Smithfield and Porter!” He was pulling a sled that was stacked high with driftwood, the carcass of a large sea lion and a small barrel of oil.  

Like a proper English gentleman, I would not assume to bother him with any prying inquiries. We embraced and proceeded to unpack the sled.

When most of us ponder pockets

we think of pants

or of other places on our person

where we put the particular pieces

that don’t fit in a purse or pouch

perhaps like the pennies

that we are too preoccupied

to put in the Piggy Bank

But those are particular pockets

pertaining to our person

and do not pertain to the places

that do not fit in with the other places where they are put

Perhaps Paducah

a pocket of poverty in an otherwise prosperous populace

Perhaps the perennially prosperous

a pernicious pocket of privilege

in a world of potential paupers

Perhaps polio

a pocket of pestilence in an otherwise healthy population

Or puny Palestine

a pocket of persistent problems

In a particularly perplexing

portion of the planet

And pardon me for bringing up

the all too personal periodontal pockets

that seem to pop up with their plaque partners

with perplexing persistence

And of course the air pockets in planes

when we plummet that make us puke

Or the hot pockets that please our palette

Or the pockets on pool tables

where we project precisely proportioned projectiles

All these are pockets

the perennial placeholders

of the pieces of the planet

that have the potential to perturb our peace

that plague us

that perplex us

or that just plain piss us off

Praise be to pockets

for putting away the pieces

that are out of place

any place else

                                                                       

For as long as anyone in the family can remember the Wall has always been there. And the Smyth family has been here for five generations. A good 200 yards back from the sun porch, down in a little hollow nestled among the ancient chestnut forest, the Wall is as much a fixture in our lives as the rising and setting of the sun and the changing of the seasons.

The Wall holds many secrets. As far as anyone can tell, it follows no property lines that have ever existed, and in this part of New England, where property records extend back for well over 300 years, that is saying something. The Wall is strangely incomplete— forming a right angle, that from its nine foot high apex doesn’t extend more than ten feet in either direction, with the ends descending at 45 degrees down into the ground, so that when you stand in the bottom of the hollow and face the corner, it has the appearance of a pyramid. It was as if the remainder of the Wall had somehow sunk below the leaf littered ground, leaving only this one corner above the surface, like the bow of a sinking ship.

 Who had built it? What had it protected? Obviously a person of great means had built it to surround some structure of great import. But nary a foundation stone of that original structure has ever been found and of the remaining segments of the Wall there is no trace. No loose stones or bricks have ever been found in the surrounding forest floor.  It is if the Wall is the last vestige of a mystical kingdom. Or at least that is how it appeared to us kids.

 The construction of the Wall only deepens its mysteries. The bottom 5 feet of unmortared,  worked fieldstone is so finely joined that one is reminded of the stonework of the Incas. Then comes four feet of intricately laid brickwork, in a herring bone pattern, which appears to have been laid by a master Mason and atop it all is an elaborately carved granite capstone that is countersunk into the top course of bricks. The three structural elements, fieldstone, brick and granite shouldn’t work together, but somehow they do and add enormously to the Walls overall presence.

It’s obvious that at some point in time, the capstones had been intricately engraved, but the years and the harsh New England winters have smoothed out the sharp carvings to blur both its message and design. As children we scaled the Wall to its corner, to try and decipher its meaning, despite the dire warnings from our parents of the Walls imminent collapse. We laughed knowing that their parents and their parent’s parents had warned each succeeding generation of exactly the same fate.

And each generation added their interpretations of the blurred markings on the capstones. Could those markings have been a date? 1387 obviously could not be correct, as this certainly wasn’t a vestige of the indigenous Seneca people. And despite the fact that this spot had been named the “Captain’s Corner”, based upon what appeared to be the letters “Capt”, etched into one of the stones, it was just as likely they weren’t letters at all, but part of the intricate design, that magically put dreams of a pirates buried treasure into impressionable young minds.

For there is no doubt that the Captain’s Corner holds a strange power over all who sees it. It has impressed us to such an extent that it stands unblemished by the hand of man. The surrounding chestnuts bear many signs of human presence. Extending out from the wall there are signs that humans needed to mark this spot in the forest if not the Wall itself. Some faded slashes of what appear to be early Indian trail blazes, alongside carvings of long lost loves from 100 years ago, intermingle with bright swirls of Dayglo spray paint, which I’m ashamed to admit my little brother Billy and I had some hand in doing. But in the center of all this human induced chaos the Wall stands inviolate. Such is the power of the Wall that even as children we would dare not attempt to mark it, if even with our own piss. It was just a dare that no one dared speak. For even the chestnuts themselves did not encroach upon what is left of it. Limbs and roots mysteriously stop, uncut, within eight feet of the Wall’s unseen boundary.

But we children couldn’t stay away from it. It was indeed one of the greatest joys of our childhood to rest our hands upon the warm fieldstone rocks and feel the hairs on our arms rise up. And no journey to adulthood was ever complete for children of the area, without spending at least one night in the embracing arms of the Corner.

And though we never spoke of it amongst ourselves, we would be amazed to find that those nights were all strangely similar. The campfire was always built at the apex of the corner, though it left no trace upon the stones from its flames or smoke. If two of us were to spend the night, each would lay their sleeping bag along one side of the wall with our head towards the fire. If more, each would lay their bag like spokes of a wheel, each facing towards the fire in the corner of the Wall. Nothing was ever said about these arrangements and now that I think about it, it was very much like the prohibition of leaving any marks upon the wall, it was just somehow understood.

And what magical nights they were! Gazing up at the sparkling sky, it seemed like shooting stars were common, full moons an every night occurrence and even the Aurora borealis seemed to shine well into the spring and fall. We would tell each other tales of pirate’s treasure and our hopes and dreams for the future, until the fire was but a pile of glowing embers. And then we would sleep the best sleep we’d ever had, for nightmares had no dominion within the embracing confines of the Captain’s Corner.

It’s been decades since I’ve walked across the fields, into the woods, to gaze upon the Wall. Part of its mystery is that it has always been a children’s place, a place that somehow, we adults grew out of. So, it comes as a pleasant surprise that as I hear the laughter of my grandchildren, as they try and decipher the mysteries of the Captain’s Corner and the Wall that forms it, I find myself drawn to it yet again.

I hear my wife calling me for dinner from far away. But I am already heading towards a different destination.

My eyes grow heavy, a smile spread across my face, as I feel the wall envelope me in its arms one last time and all of its mysteries are mysteries no more.

“I wish I may. I wish I might. Have this wish I wish tonight.”

Rosalie Evans eyes and hands were clenched tightly, as she knelt by her bedside, just as her mother had taught her how to do. Rosalie’s mother, Anna, God rest her soul, was Roma, fiercely proud of her traditions and her people. But generations of persecution had left her with a vibrant distrust of the outside world around her. And before she passed, she had passed that distrust and a world of secrets, down to her only child, her daughter, Rosalie.

Rosalie’s father had left mother and daughter shortly after Rosalie’s birth. Very shortly after. “I will find a woman that will give me a son!”, he roared as he stormed out of the delivery room, never to be seen or heard from again. With a stoicism born from generations of male neglect, Anna never shed a tear. For she knew the true power of the Roma. And though she could tell no outsider, she knew that power didn’t come from a prick. The true power of the Roma had come down through the generations of their women. The secret words. The secret glimpses of the future. The secret spells cast in the dark of night. But most of all, the secret power of the wish. Let their men swagger all they wanted to, but even they, deep in their hearts, knew where the Roma’s power lay. It lay buried in the wet womb of its women, where the true power of life and death sprang forth.

No amount of time or location could change this. And Anna and Rosalie didn’t live in a caravan in Romania. They lived in a MacMansion in Scarsdale. And Anna’s customers in her dry-cleaning empire had no inkling of Anna Thompson’s background. The Roma, to them, we’re just gypsies who would travel about offering to resurface your driveway at half the cost of anyone else and then move on before the next rain washed the black paint into the gutter.

Anna was well aware of what the outsiders thought of her people and so she kept her background a closely guarded secret. But she poured all the secrets of her people into her daughter from a very early age. Even before Rosalie could talk, her mother would place her baby fingers into the complex intertwining that would pass for prayer to the outsiders but was really a direct connection to worlds they had no inkling of. To worlds of the past and of the future, where the bridge between the two was sometimes as simple and as powerful, as a wish.

So, Rosalie grew up in two worlds. One world filled with TikTok, toys and learning how to read. And the other, kept totally separate, was a rich world of spells, incantations and Gods that would have been totally incomprehensible to the members of the First Presbyterian Church of Scarsdale that Anna took Rosalie to every Sunday. For of all the secrets that Anna had poured into the young Rosalie from her earliest age, there was one that she kept to herself. For on one dark rain driven night when Rosalie was barely 14 months old Anna had seen a glimpse of the future. She needed no crystal ball. All she needed to see was in the dancing candle flame that shone alone in the room she was in. And in that flame, she had seen her own death. There was no fear but a certain urgency that she needed to pass on all she knew as quickly as she could to her young daughter before the sand in her hourglass ran out.

So, with the blissful ignorance of a child, Rosalie’s life was filled to overflowing with the two worlds that she inhabited. And like a child that had to learn two languages from birth, she knew inherently how to keep the two separate and with Anna’s help she learned how to translate the ancient language and rituals of the Roma into the innocuous day-to-day utterances and activities of a small child in upscale America of the 2020’s. And she learned her lessons well. So well, that when her mother passed when she was only eight years old Rosalie didn’t shed a tear in private because she knew that Anna and her secrets would always be by her side.

As a child of the moneyed class Rosalie was not forced into the desperate life of a foster child. Arrangements had been made well beforehand and Rosalie found herself living with the childless couple that had been the primary attorneys for Anna’s estate. They were delighted with the raven-haired little girl and Rosalie was delighted with them. For as she grew into a beautiful young woman Rosalie kept contact with her mother on the other side. Not often. Nor did she use her powers indiscriminately. She never played the lottery. She avoided looking into the future. Her life was good and while she might have once wished for a certain college acceptance, no one at Harvard was the wiser for her academic record was excellent.

That’s where she met Tommy Evans. She was swept away. He was handsome and even richer than her. He seemed so perfect that she didn’t even bother to look into the future for she was that assured he was the one. And after graduation they were married at the First Presbyterian Church of Scarsdale. After their Tahitian honeymoon they settled down in a duplex on the Upper East Side. Both had landed mid 6 figure jobs with investment houses down down on Wall Street. Everything was perfect. The Roma side of her life seemed very far away.

That was before the first time he hit her. She had always known he had a temper, but she had found that exciting and thought it gave him depth. But the novelty quickly wore off as the attacks increased in frequency. Which brought them both to the fateful night when he kicked in the door to their bedroom. He had obviously been drinking and was wearing only an Oxford shirt with his prick sticking out. “You can stay on your knees for what I’ve got ready for you!”

If the light had been better and he would have been a little bit more sober he would have noticed that her fingers were interlaced in a very particular manner. It looked like she was praying but what the hell? The last time either one of them had been in church was their wedding nine months ago. He started towards her. Fists clenched.

“I wish I may. I wish I might. Have this wish I wish tonight.” He never even heard the ancient Romani words that lay just beneath the surface of her childhood prayer.

She opened her eyes and slowly looked up. All that was left of Tommy Evans was a crumpled Oxford shirt on the bedroom floor and the seed that he had left it in her womb. Rosalie needed no ultrasound to know that it was a girl. Anna will be pleased.

“And the cow sat down and ordered a beer.”

All of the men who had gathered around the store’s potbelly stove to hear Tom’s story burst into laughter. All except Caleb, a good looking, tow headed young man, standing off to one side, eyes closed, apparently day dreaming. Tom, still chuckling at his own story, got up from his chair and went over to Caleb and put his arm around him. “I’ll explain it to you later son. Sorry, I went on so long. Do you mind bringing the wagon ‘round?” Caleb smiled and nodded.

A chorus of “Night, Caleb.” Followed Caleb out into the cold dusk. Relief flooded over him. Outside is where he belonged, outside and alone, if truth be told. It had always been this way as long as he could remember.

Inside, around others, he always felt himself apart.  He could remember the worried look in his parents eyes when he was still a small child and how the other children at the one room schoolhouse taunted him. Inside, surrounded by books, numbers and people it seemed they all spoke a language he couldn’t quite understand. But once the bell rang and they all ran outside, it suddenly seemed to all make sense. The other children babbled on, leaving him one with his surroundings, the sky, the animals and the fields. Outside, he was no longer the outsider. Outside, he belonged.

It wasn’t long before the people in the small town began to notice his obvious strengths as opposed to his perceived weaknesses and  soon the taunting stopped. ‘The boy may not be the most sociable thing, but by God, he knows his weather.’ After all, this wasn’t the big city, this was the country of the Big Sky and anyone who was in tune with it, who could read its signs, who could sense the very beating heart of it, was someone to be respected  and listened to.

“Is there a storm coming Caleb?”

“That new calf of mine is feeling poorly. Could you stop by and take a look at her?”

“You were right about that apple tree. It’s right as rain now. Here’s a pie that Maud made with its fruit . Thanks again, Caleb.”

Caleb stood for a moment outside the store basking in the dusk’s embrace. Venus sparkled on the horizon’s brow. Not for the first time, Caleb marveled at his good fortune. In the big city he would have been an outcast, a stranger, the different one. Here he was accepted for what he was rather than for what he wasn’t, for what he could do rather then for what he couldn’t.

Caleb smiled and shook his head. On the ride home Pa was going to try and explain, what in God’s name, a cow was doing ordering a beer. And they thought him the strange one?

“Cut.”, almost in a whisper. On the giant soundstage, the only sound was Jonas Faulk’s uncontrollable sobbing. Imploringly, the director again, in a whisper, “Did we get him?” The DP, without ever taking his eye from the viewfinder, motioned an emphatic thumbs up over his head.

The cast and crew had gathered for this final set up. And to a person, they silently knew they were witnessing not a performance but rather the final act of sacrifice.

Transformation had been the bestselling novel that every actor in town had fought to lead on screen. But Ben Harrelson, the director, had decided on his best friend, David Starling to star.

David Starling to play Jonas Faulk? Had Harrelson lost his mind? David Starling, “The Funniest Man Alive”, playing Jonas Faulk, the most tortured soul in contemporary American fiction?

But it turned out the director knew exactly what he was doing. His decision to shoot in chronological order, unmercifully using his friend to tell the tale of a jovial man’s descent into madness forced Starling’s seamless metamorphosis from standup comedian to actor, to the mad Jonas Faulk, to unfurl onscreen for all to see.

From the first day of the grueling shoot, where Starling had everyone on the set doubled over with laughter, up to today, when the ambulance pulled away from the back lot with him still sobbing, strapped down in back, there seemed to have been a frightening inevitability.

In accepting the Academy Award for Best Actor for his best friend, Ben Harrelson hopefully remarked, “Laughter Is the best medicine”.

But David Starling had become Jonas Falk. And Jonas Faulk had long since ceased to make anyone laugh.

Sometimes best friends know you too well. Especially best friends who would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Director.

My name is William Harrison Ferris III. My friends called me Billy. And as far as I know I’m the last human being left alive.

I ran into the second to the last survivor just last week. Her name was Sarah. She tasted just like chicken.

Oh sure, there may be an odd billionaire left in a bunker in New Zealand. But I wouldn’t bet on it. The rest of the rich kids, Trump, Putin, Bezos, Zuckerburg, and Musk himself, burned up in a blaze of of billionaires on the launchpad of the Elon Express. Serves ‘em right. We fucked up Earth and they were gonna fuck up Mars.

So how did I end up here all alone on the beach in Barstow? Good question. Jeanie and Junior, my parents, had such high hopes for me. I was no accident. I was planned. I wasn’t the result of a slam bam thank you ma’am passion fuck at a drunken frat party. I was cooly conceived through the modern medical miracle of IVF at the Palos Verdes Medical Center.

And upon my birthday, February 4th, 2025, Junior told anybody who would listen that I was the best baby money could buy. Selfish bastard.

What in God’s name had they been thinking? That things would get better? Based on what? Social Fuckin’ Media!?

We were all fucked from the get-go.

Think about it. It’s 2025. Not one of the 9 billion of us stood a chance. Every last thing that was going to bring our species to an untimely end had already started. Trump’s in the White House for the second time, and despite his claims to the contrary, climate change was already in full bloom. We’re drowning in garbage. The Doomsday Clock had just been reset to 89 seconds to midnight and this little minor thing called Bird Flu was just on the horizon and oh yeah, Trump’s in the White House.

What could possibly go wrong?  

All things considered; I’m surprised we lasted as long as we did. Bird Flu was always going to be a bitch anyway, but by the time Trump admitted it was real, there was almost a billion dead right there.

Then there were the wars. Israeli/ Iran, US/Denmark, and A.I./U.N., all nuclear, of course. And who knew you could melt the entire island of Greenland with a couple of nukes? Certainly not Der Donald. Surf’s up in Santa Fe! Oops! Five billion more dead.

Then there was the Siberian Methane Fiasco, The Great African Drought and Famine of ’36, The Australian Big Burn of ‘40, and, last but not least, the coup du grace, Bird Flu Two. That was three billion,easy.

200,000 years of Homo Sapiens reduced to one burned, balding, bitter, bastard who will never see 50, writing a message, by hand, no less, that, if it’s ever read at all, it will probably be by a cockroach with a PhD in Human Studies.

Dear Mom and Dad. . . Thanks for nothing.

Billy

Not for the first time, I search the face in the photograph for some signs of commonality. I’m standing in the attic of my grandmother’s house on the Cape, surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of accumulated history. Dust moats glide down the sun lit avenues streaming through the windows.

The face staring back at me is literally one from another century. As devoid of color as it is of emotion, I’m stunned, as always, by its apparent indifference. I, who post images of myself almost daily, photoshopped shamelessly,  to garner the approval of total strangers, am mesmerized by the image of this man, who seems to care so little about what others might think.

Or so I surmise. I obviously never met the man, as he was my great great grandfather and passed away decades before I was born. Perhaps he was just a mass of indecision and anxiety like me, hiding behind a mask of cold steely determination so common to the portraits of the time. But I’ll never know, as I find myself in the interesting position of knowing as much about him as you do.

Yes, you’ve seen this picture before. The neatly trimmed mutton chop whiskers. The slightly ostentatious stick pin in his tie. And the trademark pince nez  glasses perched on the end of his nose. His Wikipedia entry styles him a self-made man. A rags to riches story. Horatio Alger in the flesh. A “Titan of His Age”. But who really was the man behind the cliché. In the end, who really cares?

My great great grandfather, the Titan. But how can you grow up in the shadow of a Titan? The money he amassed in his lifetime has somehow flitted away through the generations leaving only his stifling presence as my inheritance. “Your great great grandfather would be ashamed of you.” “Compared to him,  you’re just a small little man.” This last from my father who spent most of his life in a bottle.

I take one last look at the man who has haunted me for my entire sixteen years and slowly and deliberately rip him into a hundred tiny pieces that flutter to the floor of the attic.

Then, with a look of cold steely determination, I head back downstairs past the bodies of my parents and my grandmother, slinging the automatic rifle over my shoulder and extra ammo into my pockets.

I stride out the front door, out of the shadows, and head off to school.

Strangely, I can’t remember the first time I was afraid. But I can tell you exactly when and where it was. 2:15 on the afternoon of October 17th, 1948. Methodist Memorial Hospital. Indianapolis.

Afraid? Hell, I was terrified!

One second, I was just hanging around minding my own business. “As snug as a bug in a rug” as I had heard my mom say on many occasions, and then all of a sudden someone is pushing me from behind and the next thing I know it’s real bright, real loud and some huge monster in a mask, grabs me, lifts me up like I weighed no more than a doll and proceeds to beat me on the butt. And up until then, I didn’t even know I had a butt.

Then there was the whole air breathing bit. Let’s just say I had not had a lot of practice in this regard, as I had been, up until this point, making like a fish, and I suddenly realized I’d better get the hang of this air breathing bit real quick or I could die. No pressure.

And it actually got worse! If you can imagine it, I find myself connected to, but not controlling, mind you, these things, with these squiggly little things on the ends, that are flapping around in the breeze and heading off in every conceivable direction.

And if all of this weren’t terrifying enough, the monster in the mask proceeds to pick up a knife to make sure that I can never go back to doing what I had been doing forever, just a few moments before.

And I can’t even bring myself to tell you what he did with the knife next.

So that was the first time I was afraid. And I don’t mind admitting to you that the whole experience left me crying like a baby.

The kid in the back seat was still crying. Not that I blamed him you understand. I’d be crying too if I had an iPhone jammed halfway into my mouth. I had tried to get it out, but pulling on it only made him cry more, so I figured to leave well enough alone. The crying was bad enough, but the damn phone was playing some kids game at full volume, and I couldn’t get to the volume button because it was somewhere around his tonsils. God, I hate modern technology.

I was starting to regret this whole reverse bucket list thing at this point.

The idea had been relatively simple. Bucket lists were supposedly made up of things that you had always wanted to do but never had the chance and now that time was running out you had the opportunity to do them. I’d had a wonderful life and done just about everything I’d ever set out to do. So, I had decided, after probably one too many rum and cokes, to try and do all of the things in my life that I had avoided doing. To do and experience all the things I had vociferously said I would never do once or ever again.

 It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Take for instance my present situation. “ Number 2 on my list was ” Get to know a kid”. I have never liked children. I truly don’t understand the concept. We’ve got plenty of people, kids are expensive, they defecate on the furniture and they have an attention span that’s even shorter than mine. What’s to like? I had gotten spade when I was 21 and always thought it was the best decision I had ever made in my life. And here I was with a bawling little human, of indeterminate age, who besides crying had loud space saber noises coming out of his oral orafice.

This was turning out to be as bad as number 6, “Go to the opera”.  The only thing that had made that even tolerable was that I had taken out my hearing aids somewhere shortly after the musical introduction. Good God, if humans were supposed to make those horrible noises, we would all be singing arias instead of chatting on the phone. The only decent thing about the opera was that I figured after I had suffered through it, I didn’t have to do numbers 12, 14 and 15: going to a play, watching a modern dance performance and sitting through The Sound of Music, in that order.

Some things on the list turned out to be relatively painless if not gastronomically satisfying. Eating oysters, number 11, eating a Mexican dinner, number 9 and coming in at number 17, eating a dill pickle, were each as bad as I had expected, whereas eating sushi, number 7, was surprisingly bland. And to round out the reverse Bucket List Cullinary Hall of Fame let us not forget number 8, eating a fresh tomato, which lived up to my every summer camp memory, with their singular ability to make me hurl. There’s a reason that stop signs are red and that Hoosiers have a great proclivity for beige food.

But you’re probably wondering about the kid in the back seat. First of all, put away your potty brains. I had long ago done everything sexual that I had wanted to do, and it had been a long time since I was able to do anything about it anyway. What I had been doing was taking a long road trip, number 3 to nowhere, number 4. Let me explain. I have always hated to drive and was a great proponent of the “Beam me up Scotty” mode of transportation. I also had firmly believed throughout my lifetime that the concept of “the journey is everything” and the destination is secondary to be absolute bullshit. The journey is just filling time until you get to your destination.

So, that’s how I found myself out in the middle of the Texas, just being there was number 10, headed towards the next gas station restroom. And let me tell you I wasn’t happy about it. Every fiber of my being screamed to be in a flying titanium tube headed to Paris. But instead, here I was, in a rental Nova, headed to God knows where, on a dusty road that looked like it had been plucked from a Larry McMurtry novel. So, you can only imagine my glee when I came upon the still smoldering wreckage of a Land Rover SUV in a ditch off to the side of the road. Five-year-olds have been less excited upon seeing the Spires of Disneyland from an Anaheim parking lot.

After pulling over and ascertaining that emergency services had already been on the scene, amidst the smoldering remnants of flares in the road and multiple tire tracks around the SUV I did a little jig of happiness. This had nothing to do with my list but rather the fact that I detested Range Rover drivers almost as much as Tesla drivers. Realizing that I had missed all the action, I decided to make some of my own, and headed off into the scrub filled field to take a leak. That’s where I found the boy. At this point he was still wasn’t making much noise and a good 20 feet from the car, so that’s why the emergency crews had missed him.

It’s here when I got to check number 1 off my list. I used my phone for something other than making a telephone call. Which was a good thing because there wasn’t a telephone booth anywhere in sight and I got nada from 911. But did you know if you press enough buttons on these newfangled phones that a map will come up on the screen? And it will tell you where you are?! And tell you where the nearest hospital is?!

I still hate modern technology, but we made it to the hospital in one piece, I got to drive over 100 miles an hour, number 16, the kid’s parents were OK and they even got the phone out of his mouth with no permanent damage. That still leaves me with number 13. There must be a roller coaster somewhere in this God forsaken state.

“I’m not sure I ever told you how I met your your Mom.  It was at. . .? “

Pause

“Denison.”

“. . At Denison. Yes. At a Phi Delt Mixer. And. . .?”

Pause

“You were the social chairman.”

“I was the social chairman. So, I was in charge.“

“That’s my Dad.”

“Did I ever tell you how I met your mom?”

“No, you didn’t. Tell me.“

“I was the Phi Delt social chairman. I was in charge. There was a party. It was my party. And I was in charge“

“I bet you were.”

“And there were all of these women. Beautiful women. They were from the best sororities.

Kappas. And Tri Delts. Nothing but the best for my boys!“

” And then you saw?”

“I saw her. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.“

“But. . .”

“But. . . I was afraid.”

“Why were you afraid? You were in charge.”

“Silly girl. I was in charge of everything except the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen. You should understand. You look a lot like her.“

“Do I?”

“You have her eyes. They sparkle when you smile. Your smile. . .”

“Yes.”

“It reminds me of her.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You should be. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.“

“So, you say.”

“Her name was Helen.”

“That’s a beautiful name.“

“But she was so much more than beautiful.”

“How so?”

“She was so kind. Everyone she talked to believed they were the most important person in the world. She made everyone feel so special.“

“You OK, Dad?”

“Tired. I’ll take a little nap now. It was very nice to meet you. Tell me your name again. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

“Helen.”

“That’s a beautiful name.”

“Honey, have you seen my lighter?”

“Have you checked the couch? That’s where you found it last week.”

 And there it was. Stuck down behind the cushions, snuggled in with some old popcorn kernels and a ball of matted dog hair, his Zippo, in all its stainless-steel glory.

“Snug as a bug in a rug.” He leaned down, plucked the lighter out from its nest in the cushions and held it up to the light. “What’s up with you old friend? My pocket suddenly not good enough for you?” The Zippo did not reply. Nor did he expect it to. With old friends, sometimes words just got in the way. Sometimes it was just enough that they were there.

Looking at the scrapes, scratches and small dents in its case he realized he and the Zippo had been together through one wife, three kids, six grandchildren, two jobs and one tour in Nam. Hell, no wonder it was a little dinged up. But by God it still had the old heft, the old clunk when you snapped it open, the old rasp from the wheel on the flint and the old sharp snap when it closed. No damn puny plastic BIC with its tacky click and whiz-bang adjustable flame was ever going to replace it.

He slipped the Zippo into his pocket.

Jenny had assured him she would bury him with it, and he was sure she would. Because a deal was a deal. She would let him keep his Zippo if he gave up the cigarettes. And he hadn’t had one now for over 20 years. A man had to have his priorities straight and good friends were hard to find.

“Found it! You were right. It was in the couch.”

He patted the solid weight in his pocket and went to kiss his wife.

 It’s the summer of 1968. The summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college. I’m 20. Suzy and I had been seeing each other at school which is a nice way of saying we had been fucking our brains out as only two novice adults, exploring the new world of sex could. You don’t nibble at your first buffet.

Suzy lived a couple of hundred miles away and was on the phone. We hadn’t talked since we’d left for home on summer break 3 weeks earlier. It hadn’t been a real talking kind of relationship, if you know what I mean. So, I was a little surprised to hear her voice. With no small talk pleasantries, she got right to the point.

“I’m late.”

To my credit, at least, I did not respond with the classic chestnut, “Are you sure?” Let’s face it, there are just not a lot of snappy rejoinders to the statement, “I’m late.”  To be perfectly honest, I can’t really remember what I said for most of the call. But the gist of it was she was two weeks late; I was the only one who could have been responsible and neither one of us had any plans to get married in the near future.

I do know that I stepped right up and said that I’d take care of it, having absolutely no idea of what that meant but knowing it was the right thing to say. I ended the conversation with a chipper, if somewhat feeble, “Everything’s going to be alright.” Yeah, right.

This being 1968, if you can believe it, abortions were illegal in the entire United States of America. And to make matters worse the only form of contraception readily available wasn’t readily available at all. For most Americans the Pill was just a dream, and you could purchase condoms, but only if you were a certified adult with a birth certificate that gave your date of birth as just slightly before the Punic wars, you were willing to fill out the forms in triplicate and you could survive the withering interrogation of the pharmacist as to just what you wanted a prophylactic for. Only then he would retrieve one condom at a time from his safe that was securely locked in the basement. Little wonder that most of us who could get our hands on a condom didn’t wanna to waste it on sex and preferred to keep it safely in our wallets so long that it would eventually leave a ring in the leather.

In reality, for our generation, the only truely two safe sex (no kids) options were what we nastily refered to as period poking, frighteningly self-explanatory, or sex that finished with a hopefully well timed and hasty withdrawl. It goes without saying that it appears that in our case, in the heat of the moment, my timing between coming and going, was all fucked up. And now it was time to pay the piper.

Through a friend of a friend, I got the phone number of someone who could “make things go away.” I was told to gather $750, put it into a plain brown paper bag, deliver it and Suzy to a downtown intersection I normally wouldn’t drive by in a tank, at noon on the following Thursday and pick her up three hours later at a different shady intersection. In the meantime, she would be picked up by someone in a red Camaro, blindfolded and driven to where the “Procedure” would take place. For her safety and those of the other felons involved, she would be blindfolded the entire time. The mind absolutely reals as to what this was going to be like for her.

But I made the arrangements, called Suzy and we decided she’d drive up on the following Wednesday. My parents were going to be out of town so at least we could do the deed without parental supervision.

Wednesday arrived and so did Suzy. Strangely enough, due to the circumstances, this was as emotionally intimate as we had ever been, and we didn’t quite know how to handle it. So, we reverted to form and spent the afternoon fucking. And for the first time in our relationship, we didn’t have to worry about her becoming pregnant, because she already was. So, no period poking, no withdrawals, just all the best manic pre-abortion sex we could handle. But the terror of tomorrow could only take us so far in bed. So, what the hell? We might as well try some other things we had never gotten around to doing together. So, we decided to go out to dinner and see a movie. What will those wild and crazy kids think of next?

We had dinner (I still don’t see what the big deal is about watching some woman eat) and guess what? A revival of Gone With The Wind was playing at the local theater. If Rhett and Scarlett couldn’t take our minds off of our present situation nothing could. So, there we sat, sitting together but actually miles apart in our minds while Atlanta burned to the ground, dreading the next day, resigned to our karmic comeuppance.

An elbow in my side brought me back to the reality of a screen filled with fire, smoke and thunderous music. Had she run out of popcorn? Good God, we’d just had dinner.? Didn’t she know I was psychically fragile just then? She was frantically saying something, but the music made it hard to understand. Then I noticed she was pointing urgently down to her lap. God don’t tell me she’s lost a contact! That’s all I need right now. With the red of the burning Atlanta filling the theater, it took me a second to realize what she was pointing to. Spreading across the ersatz velour of the theater seat, a red tide was spilling down her tan thighs, heading out from the hem of her mini.

Our heads both snapped up from her lap at the same moment, our eyes locked and then we stood and broke out into loud celebratory laughter. We were equally oblivious to the fact of Atlanta’s demise and the loud shushing emanating from our fellow theater goers as we embraced as only those who had just been given a second chance could.

Still laughing loudly, we exited the theater leaving a packed house wondering just what sick human beings found such merriment at the expense of others.

We didn’t even make it to the car before the true depths of our young relationship came once again to the fore. We took each other up against the wall of the parking garage. Period poking at its finest. We were still laughing as we finished, a little bloody but certainly unbowed. She drove home the next day, and I had myself spayed two weeks later. She transferred to another college later on that summer and I never talked to her or saw her again.

Ah, young love in the 60’s.

We were cruising along, as we had for what it seems like forever, on the massive good ship S.S. Civilization, the culmination of countless generations of technology and knowledge.

Bobby McFerrin’s “Be Happy” playing over the loudspeakers, over the all-you-can-eat buffets.

Then bingo.

We’re in this crappy little lifeboat.

What happened?

Cruisers aren’t losers!

But all of the sudden, we’re sharing too little food and too little water with too many people.. . . the plastic surgery influencer blond, with millions of followers, the guys from the engine room who don’t speak English and the idiot from the owner’s suite who claims he’s building a rocket to fly us all to Mars!

Our room steward, Mahatma is here. He’s OK. Nobody can fold a washcloth into a swan like Mahatma and he always gave me an extra pillow candy every night. Who knew he had a doctorate from MIT?

But the shit. On the big ship, it just went away. What did we look like, sanitary engineers? We were on vacation for God’s sake. Now you throw the shit over the side of the lifeboat and the next wave just sweeps it right back into your face.

And then there are the scared people. Scared people will believe almost anything. A combover idiot was trying to tell us that we really didn’t sink. That it was just some wild crazy plot by the guys in the engine room who were eating babies and sacrificing virgins.

He wasn’t rowing, so we threw him overboard.

But it still seems there isn’t enough to go around.

Except for the booze and drugs of course. We’ll run out of food and water way before we do booze and drugs. Which is a good thing because familiarity does indeed breed contempt.

All of a sudden, it’s all “us or them”. Everyone for themselves. Appropriate in an all-you-can-eat buffet line but dangerous in a lifeboat.

Then there’s disease. One cough could kill us all.

Of course, there is a bright side.

All of us with a 30-year mortgage or a student loan are feeling pretty damned smart right now.

And everyone over 60 knew their best cruising days were over anyway. So even if they’re the first ones thrown overboard or eaten, they’ll go with fond memories of the all-you-can-eat buffet.

And while we row, we can’t help but giggle about all the times we spent worrying about the future. Will we have enough for retirement? Will our child marry a loser?

Now it’s, “What future?”

And, at least, we will have gotten our last damn annoying robo text.

Plus, someone gets to be the last man standing.

Literally.

And it might have as well be me. All liquored up, clutching my washcloth swan, stuffed to bursting, after an all you can eat buffet of influencer blond, picking the plastic out of my teeth, popping just one more OD inducing fentanyl filled, pillow candy into my mouth.

Bon Voyage, losers.

My time is very different from your time.

I have heard your time referred to as a river, a smooth continuum, a flow if you will.

How very strange.

You see, there is no flow to my time. My time is not on a continuum. If your time is a slow-moving river of ice, then mine is a random group of icebergs that have calved from the glacier’s front wall and are distinctly unique, adrift on a calm sea. When born in your glacier, one berg, one memory, appears fused cheek by jowl with another, but out on my ocean it’s every berg for itself.

For you, my internal clock must be a thing of terrifying beauty. With memory and time all a jumble, tenses for me are tenuously terminal. What was, what is, and what will be all share a common weight. They are all ephemeral. Just out of reach. One berg just barely visible on the horizon. One step away from being real.

Which, of course, brings up the issue of time codependency. I long ago realized my time is not your time. As I am acutely aware of the difference between the two, I, of course, defer to your time, figuring that there are so many more of you than me. So, I end up borrowing your time. You don’t seem to mind, and it makes my life ever so much easier.

You say, “Meet me at 8:00”. If I manage to remember the meeting at all, you can be damn sure I will be there before you, because it’s the least I could do for having borrowed your time.

After all, there is no reason for me to be rude just because your sense of time is all fucked up.

Welcome to my world.

It’s about time.

“You’ve got to believe me. I know you guys think I’m full of shit,  but it’s God’s honest truth. Nurse Jackson is an alien!”

“Jesus Stan, not this again.”

“Stan, you’re starting to sound like a broken record.”

“Earth to Stan. Earth to Stan. Come in Stan.” Stan had become used to the mockery from his buddies but that wouldn’t stop him. He just had to make them believe.

“Have you looked at her eyes? I mean really looked? There’s something very strange about her eyes.“

“Says the 85 year old man with cataracts. Stan, we’re in an old folks home, for Christ sake. None of our eyes are any good anymore. Have you ever thought that this Miss Jackson’s eyes are different just because they’re not cloudy with wrinkles all around them?“

 Stan had already thought about that. And in fact he did have cataracts and his vision wasn’t what it used to be. He knew the others would say that. Stan was old but not so old that he’d lost his marbles. That was the one thing he was sure of.  And he was sure something about Nurse Jackson just didn’t add up. Hell, even his son Tommy, when he came to visit the other day, had agreed with him. “Pop, that Miss Jackson is one strange woman. Ever notice her eyes?“

Stan understood why his friends would have a hard time believing what he was telling them about Nurse Jackson. After all, it was hard to believe that the four old friends, could be sitting together in this sunny day room, in a expensive suburban senior citizen facility, discussing the fact that the head nurse had come from another planet.

Stan had to admit it was a little far fetched. He chuckled to himself. After all was said and done, did it really make any difference if Nurse Jackson came from the planet Zebulon?  Stan still had all his marbles, was in a nice place, surrounded by friends and Tommy came to visit at least twice a week. “Fuck all you guys. I hope she walks in here and zaps all of you with her ray gun! Whose deal is it?“ The guy’s laughter swept over Stan like a warm wave.

Suddenly, the door to the hallway sprang open.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I found him!”  Diego flicked on the light illuminating the cramped dirty slop sink closet. Stan Bartelston, dressed only in a filthy hospital  gown, squatted  on the floor, facing the corner.  It was the third time this week the nurses at County General had had to track him down. It didn’t help the old bastard never talked. God knows what he was thinking.  Well at least he didn’t have any family to notify. That really would have been a mess. And if Diego could just get him back to his bed without Nurse Jackson noticing, all the better. Nurse Jackson made Diego nervous. It was something about her eyes.

Slowly committing suicide by sucking up the sun at our apartment complex’s pool, an old bald headed me slyly looks over at the butt-flossed bouncy brown bottom of the sweet young thing lying two chairs down.

Before I know it, a half century drops away and I find myself, with a ponytail halfway down my back, starring slack jawed and wide eyed, at Barb West in all her glossy bottoms up glory.

She’s rolling a joint, that looks like a Lucky Strike, with one hand, while laying face-down on a cheap sun lounge. Next to the lounge is a bottle of baby oil spiked with iodine and Coppertone, a spray bottle of lemon juice for her hair and a foil wrapped double album of indeterminate origin.

Even though it’s still the 60s, the temperature, the humidity and the decibels are all in the 90’s. And to top it all off, there seems to be a lot more Barb than bikini.

“Got a light?” I fumble for my Zippo. Soon we’re both basting inside and out, our ponytailed heads bobbing to In-A-Ganda-Da-Vida, on the big speakers, as one thing led to another.

The next morning, sliding off the slippery satin sheets I look down at a sleeping Barb undulating on the   waterbed. I can’t help but bask in the Neapolitan wonder of her. Pale white, fringed by strips of red and then a sea of mahogany skin that George Hamilton would kill for.

“Take a picture. It’ll last longer.” I’m slammed back into today; my sly perusal of the sweet young thing, two chairs down, seems to have devolved into the aforementioned slack jawed, wide eyed countenance of my youth.

Sheepishly, I flip over on to my stomach and even though I would swear there’s none around, the smell of Coppertone fills my head.

On a mission

She passes a foot from him

but doesn’t turn ‘round, smile or speak

empty large shopping bags clutched tightly under her arm

down the corridor between the

stuff

that at this point narrows so

that she must walk sideways

with her back to him

so that her matronly hips do not disturb

the teetering

tottering walls of

stuff

that rise almost to the ceiling

that threaten to collapse at any moment

that extend into

what was a dinning room

where the corridor between the

stuff

turns right into

what was a kitchen

all the while she’s careful to watch her footing

picking her way through the

stuff

that has fallen from

the cascading cliffs of

stuff

onto what was once a floor

because her children

who have long since fled the house

tired of being secondary to the

stuff

and have long since tired of telling her

that emergency crews can’t bring a stretcher into a house filled with

stuff

so she slowly continues her torturous journey to the back door

for her every Thursday two-for-one sale at the resale store

where the clerks wait for her

like hungry pushers

selling junk on a street corner

all the while she is driven by

the siren call

of the hunt for

stuff

and the blissful calm

only a shopping fix can bring

with the nagging knowledge

that the fix will fade even

before she gets home

when she will need yet more

stuff

to fill the void that the

stuff

never quite fills

but still she leaves

her husband

sitting majestically

on his Barcalounger throne

a sultan of

stuff

in what was once a living room

in what was once a house

but now is a

castle of consumption

with the moat

inside the walls

The word had come down from headquarters last night.

We were going over the top at dawn.

Not at 6 or 6:15, but precisely at dawn. The General had been quite specific about this.

Some saw it as a romantic gesture. An appropriate chapter heading for the old man’s memoirs. “Victory At Dawn”, or some such rubbish.

“It’s bullshit, is what it is.” Danny Sullivan’s standard response to any orders. “Absolute bullshit!”, crouching, head down, flicking his cigarette butt hissing into the foot of stagnant water at the bottom of the trench. He was cold, wet, filthy and frightened. We all were.

“So, tell me.”  Still not looking up. “Who’s the poor son of a bitch that gets to stick his fookin’ head up and tell us when the fookin’ sun’s comin’ up?”

Good question. Heads up meant heads off, we always said.

And besides, none of us had even seen the sun for over a week.

Still, 40,000 men were taking quick glances to the east.

40,000 men straining to see the first signs of light in the darkness.

While, at the same time, 300 yards away, across no mans land, this coming dawn drew no more attention than any other.

But for us it was everything.

For the General, with his “romantic gesture”, had taken our destinies out of the hands of an officer with a watch and a whistle and handed it to each one of us with an eye for the light.

40,000 men. Some who had never seen a sunrise until they were in the army. Others who had seen thousands, from behind a plow, and for some, ironically, a sunrise was but a signal that the party was over.

And they say one man’s sunrise is another’s sunset.

Well, 40,000 fathers, sons, husbands, lovers, and brothers were, as one, waiting on this particular sun to rise.

But as it turned out, Danny Sullivan, and some 10,000 others on our side, would never get to see it set.

For them, there was no victory at dawn.

Only death.

It was the smell I first noticed when I opened the door in the morning. It was a smell that didn’t fit with the crisp cold and the blinding white snow just outside. It was a smell that belonged with steamy heat, fetid swamps, and the damp. Death was the word that leapt to mind and then evaporated in the cloud of my next exhalation. Had some animal crawled under the cabin during the night to escape the bone chilling temperatures and found out too late that the light from the windows held no warmth?

Stomping my boots on the rough pine threshold and clapping my hands together, I shook my head vigorously. Time to chop wood. Now where the hell was the ax? The fire of last night’s Maker’s Mark heading down my throat had wonderfully mimicked the soft tongues of flame licking up from the fireplace wood. But last night’s indulgences were obviously to blame for this morning’s olfactory hallucinations. For hallucinations they must be, as I looked over at the thermometer. Even without my glasses, which I must have misplaced in last night’s ragged bourbon fog and the fact that my eyes were watering, obviously from the cold, I could tell that the mercury hovered around zero. And it doesn’t take a freezer salesman to tell you that decay doesn’t happen at around zero.

Maybe Mary would know. And I wouldn’t have to tell her about the Maker’s Mark, would I? After all we had come up to the cabin to get away from all that. The multiple rehabs, the recriminations, the fights.

“Mary, come smell this!

Mary?”

I turned.

The inside of the cabin was as silent and dark as the smell.

It was the summer of 1980 in Hollywood and I was the new kid in town. I had found my apartment but I had yet to find my bar. To a serious drinker this was no superficial search. The mix of clientele, ambience and bartender needed to be just right.

It was then I found The Firefly, or just The Fly to the regulars. It was three doors down from the iconic intersection of Hollywood and Vine. With no pretensions of being anything other than a dive bar, (a shot and a beer, a buck and a quarter),  it suited me admirably, as the clientele consisted of a mix of losers, colorful characters, such as myself and sex workers. They didn’t call themselves that then. They were either hookers from the Walk of Shame or the strippers who were working at the burlesque house three blocks down. The girls would come over during their breaks in the show, sometimes only wearing a raincoat, over a g-string and a boa, constrictor or feather. The hookers and strippers added a great deal to the overall ambiance but none of them could stay long as they were the only ones with a regular job.

Despite the best efforts of the cleaning lady, who came in once a decade, the place reeked of stale beer, cigarette smoke and vomit. No one, of course, noticed  because the patrons themselves were responsible for the smell.

The long bar ran down the right hand side of the dark narrow room, jute box tucked into the far left corner and three tables jammed in to the far left wall. There were rumors of restrooms back in the far left corner, but the regulars only used the alley for obvious reasons.

Deano, the bartender, fresh off a three-year stint for involuntary manslaughter in Pennsylvania, was poetry in motion, whether pouring drinks, making change, or leaping over the bar with a Louisville slugger in hand to adjudicate philosophical arguments amongst patrons. Ever the showman, he could run a 3 foot line of coke down the bar or a 15 foot line of lighter fluid which he would light when things got a little slow.

My summer at the Fly lasted for four years. But I eventually had to get a job and it was as if a summer romance had ended. But, oh, what a glorious romance!

People joked that I had married both the Vondorfman brothers. And in many ways, I had. Taciturn Earl, the man I walked down the aisle with and dear Fritz, his brother, bubbling with a joy of life that was infectious. Earl, who could look me straight in the eye and Fritz who towered above us both. Earl, the love of my life and Fritz who was just down the hall, in his boyhood room, even on our wedding night.

It had been a good spring, with plenty of leeks, asparagus and spinach to sell in the neighboring towns. Most of the time, Earl was in charge of the cows and Fritz helped me tend to the crops. We’d spend hours together hunched over, laughing, while pulling out bits of gossip from one another as we pulled the weeds from the dirt.

Tonight was going to be special. I was hosting a Tupperware party. The first in our area.

Eva Taft was the dealer, but I was the Hostess, as Eva’s font room wasn’t big enough to host a flea circus. So, Fritz and I had read up on our obligations, cleaned and mopped the parlor and felt well prepared for what was to come. I would be damned if those newfangled “suburban” women would outdo us.

The party was to begin at six, so I gave Earl a quarter and sent him off to the movies.

Eva arrived at 5:30 to set up her wares. Fritz, dressed in his finest Sunday go to meeting outfit, took immediate charge and helped her set up her mountains of plastic into a veritable wonderland of form and function! And later on, he helped organize the games and got everyone involved as only Fritz could. Pauline claimed she had never laughed so hard in her life. She ended up buying at over 20 pieces! I bought eleven and Fritz bought six, though for the life of me, I could never figure out what he was going to do with them.

All of the 11 women that night, including my mother, accepted the fact that Fritz would be the only man there. It never occurred to any of us that he wouldn’t be there. It just seemed as natural as hay in the loft. I’m not so naïve to think that there wasn’t some talk in town about Fritz, but never to his face as you would need a stepladder to talk to his face. And never around one of his friends, which meant if you had anything bad to say about Fritz, you would have been talking to yourself.

It’s been almost 40 years since that first Tupperware party. 40 years of the sometimes maddeningly repetitious life on a farm. 40 years of plowing, planting and eventually putting those two wonderful men into the ground. But after all those years I can still see the smile on Fritz’s face, as he gathered his plastic bounty and friends about him and bid us all goodnight.

I meant to say no. I really did. I just wanted to score a little pot to move around campus to make a few bucks. That’s all. So how did I find myself with a kilo of cocaine to move? And in debt to a man I never wanted to be in debt to. In debt to a one-armed man, no less. Sounds like a cliché, right? “The Fugitive”, right? But George is no cliché. And he is very definitely a man you don’t want to be in debt to.

How the fuck do I move a kilo of cocaine to a bunch of stoners? Hell, if I know.

How did George lose his arm? Hell if I know.

It’s not that there aren’t a lot of arm stories out there. A rattlesnake bite? An off-target shotgun blast? And my favorite, the pissed off alligator. But there is no doubt, that the single limb look, gives George a great deal of cache, in certain circles. And unfortunately, I find myself right in the middle of one of those circles. Like a bullseye in a target.

In an amazing series of “Yes’s” that should have been “No’s”, I’m across the table from a one-armed man who’s wearing a short sleeve Hawaiian shirt, no less. No pinned up long sleeves for George. And when he gets excited his stump pokes out from his sleeve. And George gets excited a lot. Excited, like if was the alligator that got George’s arm, George isn’t wearing alligator shoes by coincidence, kind of excited.

Wanna buy some blow?. . .Please.

Before it can become its true self, it is an amorphous green blob, trussed up with three quarter inch rope, laying in the bottom of a canoe.

Maybe three feet long by 1 and a half feet deep, it weighs more than any one of us kids can carry. Despite our best efforts to keep it dry, it is invariably damp and permanently suffused with the odor of old canvas.

For old it definitely is. Though we kids could never understand it, it spoke of battles and the boredom of bygone wars.  But its glory days are long over now and it is but an old army surplus tent used by summer camp kids.  The smell of gunpowder replaced with the sharp tang of bug repellant and the earthy mustiness of age.

Setting up camp at night centers around building a fire and the metamorphosis of the blob into our primary shelter.

Depending on the weather, the mosquitoes and whether we have been fed or not, this process can take up to an hour.  

Eventually, where there was blob, now stands, or technically speaking, hangs between two pines, a 6 foot wide, 6 foot tall, 6-foot-deep tent, whose roof slopes, down to 2 feet in the back for drainage.

It must be said, that even in its transformational majesty, it is an inelegant thing.  A network of canoe paddles, a maze of rope and improvised wooden stakes extend out from its canvas core, holding up its outside corners.  A veritable minefield of tripwire for those unfortunates that have to use the Northwoods in the night.

With only 36 square feet it is a snug fit for 5 gangly boys, 5 backpacks, 5 air mattresses and 5 sleeping bags.

Invariably chaos ensues.

Amidst flailing elbows, newly learned curses and contortions worthy of Houdini, soon each boy is safely nestled in his own cocoon for the night.

And if we are lucky, it will rain.

Each drop, one note, played on threadbare canvas, in a celestial lullaby.

And, once again, this old tent becomes its true self, the sanctuary it was always meant to be.

It was raining like a son of a bitch and I had had maybe one too many, after work brewskis, with the boys at Sammy’s.

Boys will be boys, right? And it was Friday night for Christ’s  sake!

But I knew Lizzy would be pissed and the last thing I wanted to do was get a ticket or God help me wrap the Camry around a god damned telephone pole.

So I’m being careful. I mean really, stupid careful. Like maybe, I’m doin’ 20 coming up to the intersection with Third.

And for some reason,  it’s lit up like some God dammed Super Bowl halftime show!

First thought. . .  it’s a fuckin’ cop drunk drivin’ stop.

Where are the the fuck are my Tic Tacs?

But instead of cops, in the middle of the intersection, I kid you not, are these three doors set at an angle.  In a row.

How the fuck did they all end up all standing up on end after falling off a truck?

And as I get closer, I realize there’s  a man standing out in front of the doors.

With a microphone in his hand and a shit eating grin on his face.

In the pouring rain, under the bright lights, no less.

But he’s bone fuckin’  dry.

And. .  it’s,. . .wait for it,. . .Monty. .  fuckin’. .  Hall.

I kid you not.

So I stop and  get out of the car. What the fuck else am I going to do?

Run him down?

It’s. . . Monty. . . fuckin’. .   Hall, for Christ’s sake!. . .  And of course, I went with my  lucky number.

Door Number 3.

Et voila!

 On our yacht,  moored off our villa, overlooking the Mediterranean, I sip a vibrant piquant rose, and think back on those frolicsome Friday nights at Chez Sammy’s with my cohorts.

AUGUST 23,2035–

DAY ONE—Jeannie and I got on board uneventfully. There were just three restrained passengers on our flight to Memphis and just two active shooter incidents at the dock. Because we were Elite Cruisers we got to pass right through the Covid Zeta XV screening unchecked. It was a breeze! Once onboard we passed on the mandatory lifeboat drill. Boring! The damn thing is unsinkable! More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY TWO— The Colossus is everything we hoped it would be. 400 passengers, 4,000 crew. Our suite is 26 floors above the water. We could have had a meeting of the entire Beverly Hills Water Allocation Committee on our veranda! And Enrique, Maria, Mohammed (Can you believe it?) Ling and Bantu, our suite staff, are a marvel! They fold washcloths into swans, leave sativa filled chocolate candies on our pillows, hand plumped, no less, and Ling gives a mean massage! I told you guys you should have joined us! More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY THREE— Heading down the Mississippi Inland Sea. Must admit we expected boring and got it. If you’ve seen one refugee mega raft you’ve seen them all. Jeannie, bless her heart, threw pillow candies over the side for the children to dive for. Passed over New Orleans. Not much to see. Bummer. Neither Jeannie or I are much good at snorkeling and our experience over Saint Mark’s square in Venice in the glass bottom boat left us a little bored. More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY FOUR—Had a good day at the casino! Won $107,000 on the dollar slots! “Cruisers aren’t losers!” has always been my motto! That should pay for at least half of our bar bill! LOL! Jeannie has, of course, been checking out the shopping malls on board. There are three. A word about our cruise. It’s a “Cruise to Nowhere”. Sure, we’ve done a couple of “Underwater Cities” itineraries before. Miami, Athens to Venice, for instance. But on this cruise, we’re just exploring what’s left of the Caribbean Islands and enjoying the multiple wonderful shipboard amenities! It must be our sense of adventure! More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY FIVE— Passed what’s left of Cuba on our starboard side. Havana’s gone, of course. All those great old cars! Bummer. Now just a bunch of mountains sticking out of the Gulf of Mexico with a bunch of homeless camps speaking Spanish around their base and a bunch of people swimming out to the boat. As if we would stop. Jeannie threw a few candies overboard. If it weren’t for the oil platforms there would be nothing interesting to look at. More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY SIX— Interesting incident today. Jeannie threw a chocolate pillow candy to a Haitian kid swimming out to the boat. Hit him smack in the forehead! He sank like a stone! Bummer! I guess even a pillow candy from 26 stories up pack a punch. Hope his friends got him. More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY SEVEN— More about the ship. There’s an Influencer Only bar (250,000 followers minimum), two real freshwater parks and four helicopters available for Elite Cruisers, to view illegals on their mega-rafts and the spectacularly colorful floating plasticbergs. The fun just keeps coming on and on aboard the Colossus! More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY EIGHT— Heard about another supposed “Big Burp” of methane in Siberia. Feedback loops my ass! Let’s face it, if I wanted to see ice, all I have to do is go to anyone of the 27 bars on board. Jeannie bought a Snow Leopard coat at the Endangered Store today. Even had a “Possibly Extinct” label! She looks great in it! More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY NINE— Did I tell you guys about the incredible Captain’s dinner we had last night? We actually had blue fin tuna! The God dammed Japanese are paying five million dollars a fish for one of these!  We both had seconds! Spent the entire $107,000 slot winnings on a bottle of Helsinki Lafite Vineyards ‘29 that was worth every penny! I told you you should have come along with us. More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY TEN— Three active shooter incidents and an outbreak of an unknown virus reported today down in the crew decks. The only dark moment in our day however was hearing from Stan that the water had stopped flowing all together in Beverly Hills! Bummer! We will have to look into this as soon as we get back. Until then all our best wishes to all of our neighbors back home. More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY ELEVEN— Jeannie and I wanted all of you to know that we plan to bring back as much desalinated water as the porters can carry.  The ship makes tons of it. Just don’t know how much the airlines are going to let us check through baggage. Love to you all. More to follow. Love Dick.

DAY TWELVE— About that water. . .wouldn’t count on it. It seems we’ve hit a plasticberg and I’ll be damned if the damn thing didn’t rip a hole in our hull! Bummer. Turns out there aren’t nearly enough lifeboats for everyone! Another bummer. Probably should have gone to the lifeboat drill. But we were supposed to be unsinkable, and no one wanted a lifeboat in front of their cabin window, so it looks like we’re going for a little dip! LOL! How bad could it be? The water’s hot, (Can you get hyperthermia?), there won’t be any sharks, (all dead), Jeannie has her snow leopard coat pockets filled with pillow candies and I’m sure we’ll get picked up by a mega raft. One just drifted by us and managed to pick up our entire suite staff but then they just kept going! Jeannie had even thrown them some pillow candies!  Bummer. Hope more to follow. Love Dick.

When most of us ponder pockets

we think of pants

or of other places on our person

where we put the particular pieces

that don’t fit in a purse or pouch

perhaps like the pennies

that we are too preoccupied

to put in the Piggy Bank

But those are particular pockets

pertaining to our person

and do not pertain to the places

that do not fit in with the other places where they are put

Perhaps Paducah

a pocket of poverty in an otherwise prosperous populace

Perhaps the perennially prosperous

a pernicious pocket of privilege

in a world of potential paupers

Perhaps polio

a pocket of pestilence in an otherwise healthy population

Or puny Palestine

a pocket of persistent problems

in a particularly perplexing

portion of the planet

And pardon me for bringing up

the all too personal periodontal pockets

that seem to pop up with their plaque partners

with perplexing persistence

And of course the air pockets in planes

when we plummet that make us puke

Or the hot pockets that please our palette

Or the pockets on pool tables

where we project precisely proportioned projectiles

All these are pockets

the perennial placeholders

of the pieces of the planet

that have the potential to perturb our peace

that plague us

that perplex us

or that just plain piss us off

Praise be to pockets

for putting away the pieces

that are out of place

any place else

“Gather‘round and step right up ladies and gents for the experience of a lifetime! For just one quarter of a dollar you can not only see the Eighth Wonder of the World, but look upon the other Seven, as you gaze in awe on the pulchritudinous splendor of Talulah, The Totally Tattooed Lady from Timbuktu!”

As the rubes lined up outside the tent, money in hand, Esther rose from her stool, carefully laying aside her dog-eared copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the original Greek, donned her wig and adjusted her costume. Hell, the girls in the girly show, two tents down wore more, but they only got a dime a look. And they didn’t have their likeness painted on canvas 12 feet high over the midway.

Esther owned the entire midway and Talulah was just along for the ride.

And what a ride it had been. Esther was the eldest of eight children born to a hardscrabble farmer and his withered wife outside of Marion, Ohio. People in town were amazed that such a beautiful young lady could be so smart. Everyone thought she would actually to go to teacher college on a scholarship.

But then there had been the fire.

No one would ever know how it started. Esther had been at a Future Teachers of America meeting at the high school. Walking home, she looked up to see an orange glow in the dark, where her home and family were supposed to be. She broke into a run leaving her books scattered in the dirt.

The small crowd standing in the front yard, futilely passing buckets back and forth from the well, never saw her as she streaked past them into the inferno.

Of her parents and siblings, she was the only survivor.

It was widely surmised that the only reason that she had survived was that one last bucket of water had divinely drenched her just before she ran in.

Then, there were the agonizing months in the hospital.

And the three years where her physical pain diminished as her mental pain slowly sapped the spirit from her being.

As she sat in the darkest corner of the local watering hole, nursing a “on the house” beer, a tall stranger came up and stood before her.

“Looks like life dealt you a hard hand little lady. How would you like to turn that seven high hand into a Royal Flush? “

Phil, the artist, Esther, the canvas. Seas of scar tissue became the battle of Trafalgar, the Great Pyramids at Giza, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, leaning provocatively over Esther’s cleavage towards the Eiffel Tower. Her scared face beneath the flowing blonde wig, an astonishing replica of the Mona Lisa.

Talulah was born.

For most, life is an endless series of incremental changes, for Esther it had been one of transcendental reincarnations.

Phil affectionately patted her on her Great Wall of China. “Go get ‘em beautiful.”

Esther smiled fondly at her husband before striding out into the lights.

The rubes, as one, gazed in awe.

Linda Swanson and me

On a soft spring night

Watching the submarine races

On Lake Michigan

In the front seat of Mom’s brand new

‘67 Cougar

I’m reassessing the bundling board restrictions

Imposed by the

Heretofore sexy bucket seats

But the windows are already foggy in anticipation

Of the the countdown

All systems are go

With the heart rate of a gerbil in free-fall

I lean in. . . .

A moment of

Awkward dueling noses

But if awkward were to stop me now

I might as well move to a monastery

First contact confirmed

We have lift off

Lip to lip at last

No granny cheek pecking here

We’re swapping spit

Nothing sloppy

You understand

Tenuous

The first fluid sharing

of our young lives

Let the hounds loose

Let the fire fall

I don’t know what I’m doing

But I want to do it more

Slamming the door

On childhood

Swept away on a tsunami tide of testosterone

It’s time to try. . .  

the tongue thing. . . .

But what’s this?

She’s beaten me to it!

Sweet mysteries of life!

From pecking to penetration

In one easy move

For the very first time

in my wretched

miserable

monastic

monosexual

life

I’m in

Someone else’s body

And they’re in mine

Gently

Gently now

There be teeth in this pleasure portal

Tongue tip

To electric tongue tip

Reveling

In the spit slippery

essence of of one another

If this is the appetizer

The entrée

Will kill me

60 years later

The tongue thing

Fades into memories mist

Like a soft spring night

On the shores of Lake Michigan

As two breathless kids

Come up for air

“I love you”

“Shut up, stupid

And let’s try that tongue thing again”

We do

As the yellow submarine

Wins by an awkward nose

Trust me, I’m not afraid of water. That would be aquaphobia. Not hydrophobia, mind you, which, for some watered-down reason, is a distinct symptom of rabies.

I just don’t like the bland tasteless stuff very much. Which I call hydromisia. Oh sure, I’ll admit, there are times when I actually fear it. Waves for instance. Vertical water is an affront to God and gravity. And let’s not overlook the very basic fact that you can’t breathe the stuff. You’d have to be an absolute idiot not to be afraid of something that can fill up your lungs and kill you. It’s called drowning. And unless you are looking for an absolutely horrible way to end your life, it is not to be recommended.

For the most part though, water just pisses me off. On a trip to the beach for instance, I’m confronted by the six S’s: sand, salt, sharks, seaweed, sewage, and surf. Not one of these hazards would you face in a cornfield in Iowa but for some reason people absolutely flock to the beach, while the Tourist Bureau in Des Moines goes begging for business. 

That’s because I think we are just plain water wacky. Eight 8 oz. glasses a day?! Are you insane?! Do you have any idea where that stuff has been?! Every drop of the stuff, before it ever gets to your gullible gullet, has been through billions of bladders. Not millions but billions. Of creatures great and small. That gulp of plastic incased, over marketed, overpriced stuff that you slug down at the gym, at one point came whizzing out of a T-Rex or more recently from under the upraised leg of Rex the Wonder Dog. And if that’s not enough to give you pause, it is exactly the same stuff that right now is just sitting around in the bottom of your toilet, just waiting for another run through a sewage treatment plant (or so we’re told) before it ends up in the aforementioned plastic bottle, that has the half-life of plutonium. 

Look it up:  It’s called the water cycle. And if you ask me, it should be called the sucker cycle. Because it has been around forever and watching any good Dracula movie should tell you that you should never trust anything that refuses to die. Good heavens, you can kill yourself by drinking too much of it!  The fact is, you can die much faster by drinking too much of it than not drinking any of it at all. It’s called water toxemia. That, if nothing else, should tell you the damn stuff is just plain wrong. And don’t get me going about rust! Never trust anything that eats steel for breakfast. And sweat and piss?! Isn’t it obvious that your body is just trying to get rid of the God damn stuff as fast as you keep pumping it in? 

You only have to look at the language to seize the common sense of hydro abstention. Using the most cognitive part of your body as a battering ram let’s dive right into a few examples. If we really think that water is so good for us, why is the language replete with phrases such as 

Water hazard

Watered down

He’s wet behind the ears

She’s all washed up  

He washed out

Pissing in the wind 

That boat won’t float

You’re all wet

Under water

Rain on my parade

Water over the dam

Waterboarding

Chinese water torture

Not a positive thought amongst them. 

In your poor waterlogged mind, you are probably wondering how a true hydromisiac gets along in this water wacky world. He probably stinks, you’re thinking. A common misconception. Think about it. If you don’t drink water, you don’t sweat. And if you don’t sweat, you don’t stink. Voila! Bathing becomes an uncomfortable but tolerable seasonal activity. Much like rotating the tires on your car. 

But what about drinking, you query? Good question. I find I do quite nicely with a combination of Chardonnay, bourbon and Diet Doctor Pepper. There is of course water remaining in all three but the alcohol in the first two and the special artificial chemicals in the Diet Doctor Pepper help negate the harmful natural properties in the water. With due diligence, I manage to keep my intake of the bland tasteless stuff down to about a cup a month. After all, taking your vitamins with a shot of bourbon would be just plain crazy.

Thank God humankind’s misguided relationship with water is finally coming to an end. In the face of rising sea levels and floods, Elon Musk is building a fleet of spaceships that will take us to Mars; a planet, that as far as we know, does not have one single drop of liquid water on it. I always thought he was just an idiot, but I now applaud Elon as a true visionary and fellow hydromisiac.