PJ's in the Dark

2010-06-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

THE SURPRISE OF A LIFETIME

It was springtime, but you wouldn’t know if for the weather. Rainy, cold, blustery. It wasn’t the kind of May you enjoy, but that’s global warming for you. I decided to administer a spring cleaning of the apartment anyway. Vanessa was going to be out of town for a week, and since she has always been the messy one in this relationship, I thought it would be a good time to get to work on all the nooks and crannies neglected during the winter freeze. Knowing Vanessa’s tendency to pack rat-hood, it was also a perfect time to get rid of some of the stacks of shit that have been annoying the shit out of me for ages, but I haven’t been able to actually 86 in her presence.

I did the kitchen first because that was the area that is usually the grossest, and I wanted to just get it out of the way. I wanted the wet work done first, so I swept then mopped the floor, even moving the garbage cans and recycling bins to get at all the raisins and onion skins and bottle caps that had been hiding there. When the floor was dry, I emptied the garbage (though it was only half full), tied up the newspapers and US Weekly magazines with twine, and dragged the lot to the curb. Lastly, I lit some incense.

Next stop: upstairs closet. This was the dry work, so I was a bit happier about that. The closet started off being a place to keep sporting equipment, but after my accident last year, I decided I wouldn’t be needing my lacrosse sticks and hockey gear anymore, so I ditched them, and the closet became a place where Vanessa started storing her shit. It started with clothes she hardly wore, and her ever expanding collection of vintage loafers (don’t ask). After a while, though, I noticed she was throwing other random stuff in there, and that’s when I started to get worried. Several times I asked Vanessa to clear out the crap in there, as I was worried it might become a nest where vermin could hide. She consistently ignored me, and the only coherent response I ever got to my plea was, “What for? You don’t have anything to put in there.”

“That’s not the point,” I responded. “That closet is a terrible example for the rest of the storage area in the house. Imagine what would happen if this closet started hanging around with the others? It’d be a nightmare.”

“Your sock draw would be the first to rebel.”

“Look, don’t start with me. A lot of people lay out their clothes for the week.”

“Not a month in advance!”

Bottom line: the closet never gets cleaned. So in I went. I didn’t last 5 minutes before I had to break out the face mask and rubber gloves. Filthy! Wow. I turned up film canisters, medicine vials, clothing, shoes, socks (mostly unwashed by the smell of them), old board games, unopened mail, and a motherlode of pistachio shells. I dumped it all in the trash. Then I got to the stash of Vanessa’s abandoned hobbies: a tennis racket, knitting needles, crochet pieces, even a make-your-own-beer set. It was ridiculous. I didn’t even remember all that shit. I started going deeper and deeper into the closet, not knowing where it was going or how far down the rabbit hole I could go. I was just throwing stuff over my shoulder with wild abandon, like nothing mattered. I tossed that stuff all over. Finally, after toiling thorough what looked like an entire year of tax exempt receipts, I came to a dusty shoebox. I was going to simply throw the entire thing in the garbage without even opening it, but stuck to the top were the disgusting remains of a banana peel—black and shriveled with wild whitish grey mold that, if left for much longer, would have probably taken over the entire closet, consuming it all with its bacterial spray. I almost threw up in my mouth at the sight of it. Not wanting to even have it poison my line of sight any longer, I reached my gloved hand out and grasped it betwixt my index finger and thumb and tossed it into the garbage. The banana peel must have been stuck to the shoe box cover, because in the process of doing this, off it came.

It was dark in that rear corner of the closet, but enough daylight reached in to glimpse a flash of reflected color. Curious, I pulled the box out of the corner and shed light on it. Inside was a pile of glossy photos, faded with rounded edges, 70s style. Most of them were from Vanessa’s college days, long before I knew her. Wow, they were something. She was thin back then! And sexy. There was something curious about the nature of the photos, though. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But the more I stared at the photos, they more it made sense to me. There was something about Vanessa—an essential essence to her that was gone. Something different abut her. She seemed so much more… I don’t know. Studious, different, more serious. Something about that young girl with crazy curly brown hair and paisley dresses… it just seemed like a woman that I didn’t know.

I kept going through the photos and I came across one that made me stop. It was a photo of Vanessa holding an infant child, which wasn’t too extraordinary—she was the oldest of a large family. But what made me stop was the crucifix I saw around her neck. I had seen it before, and that’s exactly what scared me

I pulled out my mobile phone and dialed her number. Though she was probably partying with her girlfriends for the bachelorette weekend, there was a chance she would answer, and I needed to know the answer immediately. To my surprise, she picked up. I described the picture for her and it took her a while to place it.

“Where the heck did you find that?"

“In a shoe box in the junk closet.”

“Interesting. So what?”

“Well, it’s the crucifix around your neck. I didn’t know you were Catholic.”

“I’m not technically. I was given that cross by a friend. She got it for me while I was traveling.”

“She didn’t happen to be travelling in Egypt, was she?”

“How’d you guess?”

I sighed. IT was a bad sign. A very bad sign. The cross itself was not a Christian symbol at all, but rather something that was used in a satanic mass in the 3^rd Century A.D. in the Egyptian deserts, near the Fertile Crescent, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers co-mingled, and humanity supposedly was born. Legend had it that it wasn’t just humanity that was born there.

“Vanessa, I just need to ask you one more question: where is that necklace now? Do you still own it?"

“Yeah. I think it’s still in my jewelry case. Bottom shelf. I hardly ever break it out, but it’s still oin there.”

My heart began beating faster. “OK honey, thanks. I’ll let you go now. Sorry to bother you over the weekend. Have a good time with the girls, k?"

The phone clicked off and I walked into the bedroom. It was quiet in there. Deadly quiet. I tip toed over to the jewelry drawer. Opening slowly, I heard a sound that was ungodly. I rifled through and found the cross. It looked evil. I smelled it. IT was evil. It chopped off my hand, and here I am today, an amputee.

I’m sorry my penmanship is so bad.

2010-05-01T06:11:00.000-07:00

Terrence the Terrible Roommate

Oh my God—you want to hear a fucked up story about that guy?

His name is Terrence. OK, I used to live with him, like, for a semester when I was studying in London. It wasn’t my choice—I wanted to live with these two guys I knew, but the school stuck us together because he didn’t know anyone on the trip. Whatever. So we lived together. We actually had to share a room, which was fine for the most part. He pretty much kept to himself; didn’t really hang with us too much. Once in a while he would smoke a joint with us or something, but that was it. I mean, he was a nerd, but I guess he was pretty cool. He really liked to read comics…

Oh my god--you’ve heard about that thing with him and the goat, right? Oh man. Different story. In a nutshell, Terrence went to India with these two kids I know, and like, they went into this village and there was this really poor family, and they had this goat, and that dude, like, killed the goat. I don’t know. It’s fucked up. I think maybe he was on anti-depressants, or maybe he stopped taking them. Alls I know is he killed the goat. Yeah.

Anyway, back to London. So this one night my friends Billy and James and I go out to this bar, Ricky Tiks. We liked to go there on Thursday nights because we had a short day of classes on Friday, and we would either sleep through it or go to the pool hall at UCL and get caned or something. So we saw Terrence out at Ricky Tiks this one night and he looked pretty wasted. He was hanging around with these American girls we went to school with. They were losers. So we leave that place—it used to get overcrowded with Yanks by like 10:30pm—and go home.

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I know, I wake up on the couch, Billy and James are gone, and Terrence is walking in with some chick. They come in and sit down in the living room and start chatting just like we’re all old friends and we do this all the time. So I’m half asleep, just trying to get my bearings, and I notice this girl is kind of… like, a little weird. She was this Asian chick and… she was kind of cute, but also like… kind of busted.

So we’re talking, she’s from out of town, just visiting some friends or something… seems pretty keen. And I’m like, hey this is cool, this dude is about to score. So we keep on talking, and then all of a sudden I’m thinking, “wait a second... he and I share a bedroom.” But then I was like, “oh, it’s cool. I’m sure if anything goes down, it’ll be out here in the living room.”

So we’re talking and talking… and as the conversation goes on, I start to realize something’s… a little off. I mean, I was half asleep, but even in that state of mind, I could tell that this girl should not be with this guy. Something was weird. Like, she was wearing this really strange Marilyn Manson t-shirt, and a really short skirt… and he’s like sitting there with tortoise shell glasses. It’s takes me a minute to put two and two together, but once I do, I’m like, “shit, I got to go to bed. I don’t want any part of this.”

So I say good night and go to bed. As soon as my head hits the pillow I’m thinking, “Crap, I hope I didn’t leave nothing out there.” Like my wallet or phone or something. God only knows what those two were up to.

So I fell asleep, and it must have been about an hour later, I wake up, and guess who comes sneaking into the room with the hoe in toe. Oh my GOD. I was thinking, “WTF is wrong with you, bro?” I mean, for the first 5, 10 minutes I was like, “this is not happening.” I was in a serious state of denial. I mean, she must have not even known I was in there because she was saying all this shit to him, giving him a little strip tease… Dude, I don’t even remember, but shit was getting gnarly for a second. They were getting ready for the deed.

So finally, I had to put my foot down. I just said out loud, “Yo, this shit is not cool!”

Dude. She freaked the fuck out. She like, jumped 10 feet off the bed! And he was just like, “uhh, OK,” and walked out, just leaving her in there with me. I mean, I felt bad, but… what the fuck do you say? “Yo, sorry my roommate’s an asshole…” You know? It’s funny in retrospect, but that shit’s just rude.

2010-03-13T22:40:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in the bar on a Tuesday night in December when my old friend Billy walked in. He had been away for the past three months. His skin tone was sun-kissed, and his hair had the frail look it gets after too much time in the pool. I greeted him, bought him a beer, and we took our usual spot in the dark corner of the establishment.

“So,” I said, “how was Bali?”

“Totally overdeveloped and commercialized. It sucked. But. The little island just south of it, Lombok, was awesome.”

“Really?”

“Just off the coast of Lombok,” Billy said, “there are three small islands: Gili Trawagan, Gili Meno, and Gili Air. Small, cylindrical islands you could walk around in about an hour. Very rustic. I stayed on Gili Air in this tiny shack that barely had electricity. There was a single light bulb in the bedroom that cast this gnarly, axe murderer vibe in the place.”

“A stabbin’ cabin.”

“Totally. It was frightening. But I loved it.”

“Good snorkeling?”

“Incredible snorkeling. I met this Italian guy with the most ridiculous accent. He was trying to start this psychedelic trance scene there, which strangely works with that type of landscape.” Billy started making trance music sounds.

“That’s hilarious.”

“Yeah,” Billy said. “He had these mushroom chocolates. I took the littlest bite, and oh-my-GOD. I mean… the sunset was bleeding, my eyes were bleeding… I was bleeding out of my eyes and my asshole. I fucked a cow. I fucked a goat. I tried to fuck a sand dune. I got stung by a manta ray…”

“Holy shit, you got stung?”

“It was the most primordial scene you can possibly imagine. There were pagan sacrifices occurring before my very eyes. I was weeping at the savage beauty and utter brutality of it all. Weeping.”

“Sounds intense, man.”

“It was. I missed dinner. The thing is, on this island, if you don’t eat dinner by 9:00pm, that’s it. You missed it. Because after that, everyone goes home. Everyone closes shop.” Billy took a sip of his beer. “So I’m walking down the beach, feeling like a schmuck, thinking ‘oh man, I’m gonna have to wake up early tomorrow to eat,’ you know. All of a sudden, I see a bonfire in the distance. And I’m fucked. I’m like, ‘I’m going to that bonfire.’ I get there and these native Indonesians are chilling like… they just looked like the most hardest, crustiest, old school fuckers you ever saw. Their faces were just these curled up, gnarly ass, wrinkled prunes…”

“You sure that wasn’t the mushrooms?”

“It could have been the mushrooms, but these guys were dug in, man. Deep. And I’m just walking by, and one of them came right up to me like, ‘do you want a sweet potato?’ Just like that, in that funny voice. And I was like ‘yeah,’ and they gave me a potato. They were all smoking these cloves. Damn! I wish I brought back these clove cigarettes they all had. They were so fucking good! So I’m smoking a clove and eating a sweet potato, and I’m like, ‘I hope they don’t think I’m looking at them weird because I’m so fucked up.’ So we’re smoking, we’re eating potatoes, I give them some of my water, they dug that. I say, ‘Hey, you want to smoke some weed?’ I don’t even know how we were communicating, to be honest, because they couldn’t speak English. I think the mushrooms actually allowed me to speak their language. Anyway, so we smoke some weed… Then all of a sudden, this little kid runs out of the woods screaming. Turns out, the kid’s father was stung by a manta ray as they were prawn fishing. These people just walk along the sand bar with a lantern and a net at night, and the prawn are attracted to the light, so they scoop them up. Thing is, the manta rays embed themselves beneath the sand so you can’t see them until you step on them.

“That’s crazy.”

“So this kid’s screaming, I don’t know what’s going on, I’m about to split out the backdoor, kind of backing away little by little. Then all these people look at me and they are like, ‘you come with us.’

“So we go with the kid, and the father is lying on the beach, has a hole in his ankle from the manta ray the size of a dime, bleeding profusely. He’s covered in sand and seaweed and salt water and shit... I am like, ‘Oh my god, this is way too visceral.’ But I have to help out, so I pour some of my fresh water on it, which was good. They liked that. Then they all start speaking fast to each other, and the kid go running into the woods. He comes back a minute later with this mixture of like, plants and mashed up leaves and vines and shit, and they put that on the wound.”

“Some crazy jungle medicine,” I said.

“Yeah. So then we just kind of sat there for a minute. The dad seemed to be OK, and I was just like, ‘Ho kay, I think it’s my time to turn in.’ And that’s when this guy’s daughter comes out of the tent.”

“What?”

“Yes! This girl comes out of the cabana looking like fucking Pocahontas of Southeast Asia. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I wanna marry you.’”

“Holy shit, man. That’s crazy,” I said. We sat there in silence for a moment, and then I felt like I had to ask. “Did you fuck her?”

“What? No, I didn’t fuck her. Her fucking father is right there with a fucking hole in his ankle the size of a goddamn nickel. You think that’s the right time to proposition a girl to make mixed race babies? But they did give me this little wooden amulet here.”

Billy held up the modest medallion, which looked like the sort of cheap trinket native people sell to tourists.

“What’s the amulet do?” I said.

“How the fuck should I know? Probably nothing. But it got me back here safely, didn’t it?”

“Indeed it did.”

“Indeed it did. Cheers.”

2010-02-13T09:23:00.000-08:00

Just Another Jerk in the Coffee Shop

I was sitting in a coffee shop on a frigid Sunday morning when I noticed a middle aged man hobbling to the counter to place his order: small coffee, milk and three sugars. On his wrist he had a black plastic brace, and he leaned heavily on a cane. He appeared to be in his 40s, but his gait was that of a man far older. He was shabby in dress and affectation, and bore dark, wiry hair and a pencil thin mustache. When the barista had filled his order, he sat down across from me and commenced having a conversation on his phone in such a lusty tone I couldn’t help but overhear.

“Hey, hey Ma? Yeah, it’s me… Yeah. Sorry to bother you again. I just wanted to tell you how it went with the lawyer… Oh he’s a reeaaal shitty son of a gun. Well, he told me… yes, the other tenets are getting paid for their suffering, but he doesn’t know that I know that. He told me that if I want to get my money, I got to go to small claims court to do it myself. Yeah… he’s real shitty. But he doesn’t know what this other guy told me, that the other tenants are getting paid for their suffering, but me, I got to go to small claims court and do it myself… I don’t know.

“But this other guy who lives down the hall, I talked to him and he says, ‘yeah, tomorrow when you go to church, I’ll go talk to him for you.’ I just came back from church. He didn’t go. He’s still sitting there in his pajamas. Yeah… So that’s it. That’s it. From now on, I just got to go do it for myself. From now on, I’m on my own. Yep. But that guy, he’s always so drunk anyway...”

Just then, he must have seen someone he knew out on the street, and he began banging on the window to draw his attention. Then he said, “Ma, I got to go... Yeah, but you are still staying over with me on Tuesday night, right? I said, you’re still coming over on Tuesday and staying with me, right? OK, good. OK… OK see you. Bye.”

With that, he got up, grabbed his cane, and made his way out the door, leaving at the table a mess of napkins and coffee cups.

2010-01-18T10:50:00.000-08:00

Shere in the Beginning of the End

We come back from the beach around 4pm. I’m tired, so I go into the bedroom and take a nap. I wake up about 30 minutes later, Shere licking my ears. I grab her, twisting around, and we begin wrestling. Her smell is all over me, her silky hair brushing my bare chest. The grasping becomes softer and softer until it’s little more than gentle groping: bare arms and legs, hands clasping, wet lips, breath. I give up and lay on my back. She puts her head on my chest.

“I can hear your heart,” she says. “It sounds big.”

“It is big. You could fit your whole head inside it. Then again, you do have a bird head.”

She slaps my chest, and though I can’t see her face, I can tell she’s smiling.

“I don’t have a bird head.”

“Fine, you don’t have a bird head. It’s more like a squirrel’s actually…”

Another slap.

A breeze comes in off the water and the cream-colored curtains breathe. Outside, the sun is reflecting off the bay, giving the water a shimmering, disco reflection. The silhouette of a sailboat drifts in the distance.

“What do you want to do for dinner?”

“I was thinking of making those sausages,” I say, “tomato-basil salad, greens.”

“Mmm.”

“Mmm-what?”

“Just mmm. Sounds good. Wine?”

“Do we still have that Barolo?”

“Drank it last week.”

“I think you’ll have to go get some then.”

She turns over and kisses my chest, then my neck, cheek, hair, ear. She really goes to town on my ear because she knows it drives me crazy. I start breathing heavy. My hands trace the length of her body. Pulling up her dress I see that she’s wearing no underwear.

Half an hour later, Shere takes the car to get some wine, and I light the grill on the deck, then go inside to start chopping tomatoes, red onion, and basil for the salad. I’ll need some red wine vinegar and olive oil, and when I go to the pantry, I see we’re running low. I call Shere to see if she can drop by the market. In the distance, I hear a phone ringing. I follow the sound to her handbag, which she left in the bedroom. I pull it out to see it reads “4 missed calls.” I usually don’t pry into Shere’s private stuff, but for some reason, I feel compelled to cycle through the missed calls. The first, of course, is mine. The other three are from a number I don’t recognize. It’s called “Secret.”

We put on some Alice Coltrane, open the wine, and throw the sausages on the grill. Sitting on the deck, watching the sun melt into the ocean, I can’t think of a single place in the universe I’d rather be. Still, “Secret” is lingering in the back of my mind… I push it out as much as I can.

“I was reading this book today that said that there are a million possible futures,” I say, “each co-existing in parallel dimensions. As we move forward in time, we close off each of the futures, collapsing dimensions, until we end up with the one true path we actually follow.”

“Each decision is a thousand renunciations,” Shere says staring out into the water.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could see into the future and choose which one best suited your tastes? Better yet, clone yourself, send the clones into the future to experience each of those possible futures, then report back on which path is the best to follow. That would be rad.”

Standing still in the fading light with her Wayfarers hiding her eyes, Shere looks like a Terminator. “Sure,” she says without a hint of emotion, “but that’s fantasy.” She sips her wine. “Each of us has to make decisions without pre-cognition; without clones. The definition of maturity is someone who can make a decision that they know to be the best, and then stick to it, whether it feels good later or not.”

Shere can be such a realist sometimes. Such a buzz kill.

When the food is ready, she pours us more wine. We eat, chat, chill, laugh, and enjoy each other’s company.

After dinner, I’m sitting on the deck, spacing out. Shere emerges from the bungalow with a joint. It’s dark, but the horizon is still emanating an indigo glow and the water reflects the light in cool tones of blue and violet. In the distance we can see squid boats, their underwater lights attracting the evening’s catch. We go down to walk along the beach.

“Nights like this make me wonder if there’s anything in the world we can ever truly know,” Shere says.

“Hmm,” I say, “interesting.”

“Is there anything in the world you want to know?”

“Many things,” I say, “but tonight, I’m just going to ask you one thing: you don’t keep secrets from me, do you?”

She looks at me, hurt. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“I don’t know. No reason. Just wondering, I guess. Wondering what’s next… Where do we go now?”

“What do you mean?” she says. “Why do you want to ‘go’ anywhere? Things are cool right here, right now, aren’t they? Can’t we just ride for a while? Isn’t this enough?”

I smile, knowing she is right, knowing it was a mistake to bring it up. But Shere won’t let it go.

“Why did you ask me that?” she says after a tense silence. “If there’s something on your mind, just say it.”

I’ve seen her like this before and it worries me, because when she gets like this, she can go really weird. She has the potential to go ballistic. I judge it best just to tell the truth.

“Look,” I say as sweetly as I can, “I looked at your phone and saw that you had some missed calls from… a number I didn’t recognize. ‘Secret.’ I guess it just bugged me out a little.”

“You looked through my phone? What the fuck? That’s not cool.” She walks ahead of me on the beach, then turns around, her face twisted with fury. “Shit. Why the fuck did you do that?”

“I don’t know. I called you when you were out and you left your phone upstairs. I went and looked at it, and then… I don’t know.”

“’Secret’ is my mom’s home line, OK? She lives in Secret Glen, that’s why. It’s not… whatever you thought it was.”

“I’m sorry, Shere. I guess I just… I wonder sometimes. But not because of you... it’s me. I’m just an insecure asshole. I’m sorry. That’s the truth.”

“Just…” She shakes her head, trying to blow it off, but I can tell it really bothers her. “It’s fine… just relax, OK?”

I feel terrible. The damage is done. This is the moment, I think, praying I’m wrong.

We go back to the house and watch a movie. It isn’t great. I fall asleep in the middle, and when I wake up, Shere had already gone to bed. The TV is a blue screen and I’m sprawled out on the couch in the dark. I get up, go outside and smoke a cigarette. The ocean is quiet. I can feel something in the air, a secret energy. The wind is changing.

That was the calm before the storm. Before everything changed. Shere got her contract with Ford in September, and we broke up soon after that. She would move to New York to start her career as an anorexic cokehead, and a beautiful one at that. I would move to Nepal to teach English for a year, then… well, that’s another story, I guess. But I often think back to that summer at the beach house. Those were good times. Magical times. What could have happened if I never looked at her cell phone while she was out? What would have happened if I never brought up the “Secret?” What if we decided to just sit up there on the deck instead of walking down the beach? If we never went down there, maybe I would have forgotten about it completely. Maybe.

So many maybes.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is our destiny. We are all where we are meant to be, no matter how many different ways we try to look at it.

Now is all we have to argue with.

2009-11-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

The Therapist

She was prescribed.

Whenever I tell people that little detail, they look at me like I’m crazy. Hell, I would probably think the same thing if I were them. But it’s the truth. She was prescribed for my own health and well being.

I never even knew doctors prescribed women, but I guess when guys like me come along--coming from the kind of situation I was in, being in that state--it makes sense. I didn’t know how to function in society anymore. Couldn’t hold a job. Hell, I could hardly tie my own shoelaces. But my doctor was very progressive, big proponent of this new way of healing. Even wrote her name and number out for me on a little prescription pad.

The first time we met was in a coffee shop on High Street. She was very polite, very sweet. Demure. I barely held up my end of the conversation, but she didn’t seem to mind. She knew exactly what to do. Didn’t ask about the war--never even brought it up. I was anxious she would, but she never did. We had a nice time.

On the second date, we went to the movies, and afterwards, eating ice cream, she asked if I wanted to come to see her flat. Said she had some records to listen to. I agreed.

Her flat was small but comfortable. Lots of soft surfaces and weathered fabric. I found it hard to stop thinking about her in that special way. That familiar feeling came back, rising up from my loins. It was a feeling I wasn’t sure was still there. But it was.

We were listening to “Angie” by the Rolling Stones, and all of a sudden her hand was resting lightly on my leg. I felt the warmth of her touch, the heat surrounding her hand. I looked at her, and she had this pensive look on her face, the kind you get when you look at the sky and can tell it’s going to rain. And then it did. My god, did it ever. For hours and hours, and when it stopped, the streets were wet and glistening and finally clean.

I continued to see her every week. We’d go to the movies, or have dinner, or just meet at her flat. I thought about her all the time. I guess I started thinking of her as a girlfriend, even though I knew she wasn’t. Introduced her to my friends, even my dad. Jesus, what was I thinking?

Then the day came when she said my therapy was complete. No more sessions. I thought she was joking, of course, but she wasn’t. I tried to reason with her, saying I’d fallen for her, that I couldn’t live without her, but she wouldn’t hear it. There wasn’t a thing I could do. She stopped answering my calls, didn’t respond to emails, even told me to get lost when I showed up on her doorstep.

I guess I’ve grown to become more of a functional human being from the experience, but I don’t know. I keep going back to that thought--how could a person be that cold? How could you just turn it off like that?

I guess you could say I’m having a hard time coming to terms with the feelings I have toward this particular brand of medicine—and I guess that’s why I’m back here again, doctor. But like I said, she was prescribed.

The Tennis Instructor

2009-10-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

Did I ever tell you about how I lost my virginity? Ha... lost. I threw off my virginity when I was 19 with a woman who was 36.

Back in Burlington, my whole family belonged to this country club. I took tennis lessons there growing up. I got pretty good, and when I turned 18, they let me work as an instructor. It was an easy gig and I got to know some of the really wealthy clientele. Lots of horny housewives in Burlington—more than you would think.

There was this one woman I knew—5’11”, blonde, a little older but she was still real hot. I would always see her there and I’d say hello when I had the chance—oh hey, how are you, how’s your game… you know, the usual. I later found out she was divorced, and she actually lived right around the corner from my parents’ house. So this one time she came up to me and said, “we should go kayaking some time.” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” We never actually did, but from then on things were a little more friendly between us.

Then this one Friday night, I’m walking out of the locker room, and she invites me over for pizza with her kids. They were like 10, 8, and 6 at the time. So I go over, we have some pizza, watch TV, the kids go to bed… and she just keeps bringing me more and more beers. She must have brought me five or something, and that was a lot for me at the time. We ended up on her couch… I think she blew me the first night. The next time I saw her was a couple weeks later, and we got it on. Let me tell you, from there on in, I would drop by her house any old time. I would be out with my friends, or on the way home from the bars… I’d just drop in unannounced. She showed me where she kept her key and I would just let myself in.

She was cool! Really cool… and she lived in this awesome, old Victorian house, but it was real creaky, so when I let myself in, I would go up the side of the stairs super careful, then walk down the edge of the hallway trying not to make too much noise. I was petrified of waking up the kids, but once I was in her room, I figured I was safe. I’d take off my clothes, jump in bed, and it was sexy time. I would just sleep over and go home early the next morning.

The next year, I went to college, but whenever I would come home, I would go over and have sex with her. She was totally cool like that. But this one night, I think it was the summer of my sophomore year, I came home from the bars at like 2am. I was really hammered. I crept up the stairs like usual, really quiet, went into her room, took off all my clothes, and as I was tip toeing into her bed, totally nude, I look down between my legs. A shaft of light from outside came through her window, and right beneath my balls I see her daughter, asleep on the floor. I was confused at first, but then I looked around, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark I saw that all her kids were sleeping in the room. It was like a freaking slumber party. I was like, “oh shit…” For a minute, it seemed inevitable that they would all wake up and see me standing there with nothing on. I was bugging. But I somehow managed to sneak back out with all my clothes and took off…

I never went back to see her after that. I don’t think she even knew I was there that night. My mom randomly started gardening with her a few years ago. I used wonder if they ever talked about it. “Hey, it’s funny we’re gardening buddies now, because I used to sleep with your son.”

Weird.

2009-09-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

One Wrong Turn on the Way to the Bathroom

by chris otchy

James woke up in the late morning and gathered up the porno mags that littered his room. The girl on the top of the stack had a dumpy face and brown hair that looked like a dirty mud flap. She reminded him of the first girl he ever made love to. Her name was Evelyn. Every night, before his hand disappeared beneath the sheets, in a ritual that preceded that most urgent grappling, he would open the magazine and remark to the photo, in a voice barely above a whisper, "Good evening, Evelyn, remember me?"

James considered jerking off again. "Well," he thought to himself, "I am going to be out of the house the whole day..." But just as he reached down for the lotion, he heard his mother calling from downstairs in a voice he wasn't exactly excited to hear.

"James," she squealed, "if you want a ride with me to the train station, you better get your backside out of bed, and I mean now!"

James' mother drove him to the station wordlessly. On that particular morning, she had what was known in those days as a pissy attitude. It was a fairly common sentiment, way back when. She hated her job. After spending 23 years at home in a marriage that ultimately failed, she had taken for granted the freedom being a housewife really afforded. Sure, she had worked before she was married, but she was a teenager then, serving up chocolate malts at a soda fountain. Getting your first office job at the age of 52 is a whole different thing. But what could she do? Times were tough. Someone had to pay the bills... And it only made things worse to see her 26-year-old son, a hack filmmaker who dropped out of the University of Illinois, show up on her doorstep. And jobless, no less. Sheesh.

"Don't think I can give you a ride home later, buster, 'cause I can't," she sniped, and hauled off in a cloud of perfume.

James rode the C train to 52nd St. and 8th Ave. That was where the New York State Department of Labor was located. Unemployed people went there, in those days, to attend meetings that were supposed to prove to the authorities that they really were trying to find work and were not just scamming money off the system. The fact of the matter was, James kind of was scamming money off the system. But he thought he deserved it after all the crap he took at his last job.

You may be familiar with the concept of school bands. If you aren't, here's a quick update. During the year, lots of grammar schools and high schools all across the U.S. have bands that ritually perform at sports functions, ceremonies, and painfully awkward recitals. The schools traditionally rent out instruments from a lending company--you know, oboes and clarinets and trumpets and the like. Well, during the summer, the company from which those instruments are rented cleans each and every one. This is where James used to work--piccolo department.

Here's how people get chosen for their instruments. The students who have any talent whatsoever, or exhibit even a hint of intelligence, get to choose which instrument they want to play. The real dumb asses get stuck with the piccolo.

In order to clean the piccolo, James had to take apart each section and polish it individually. Considering the clientele that normally used these things, you can imagine the gooey, nasty-ass, dried-up, spittle-y crap he ran into on a daily basis. Being a rather imaginative fellow, James was inclined to picture (involuntarily, mind you) where exactly this piccolo had been, and what abuse it saw in order to incur such horrendous scars. In other words, James spent the summer envisioning all the foul book bags, grimy desks, horrendously disorganized lockers, car seats, closets, and school storage rooms where these poor instruments had resided... in the hapless care of the least gifted students in the tri-state area.

James did this for minimum wage.

When September came and the company had their annual Fall downsizing, James gladly took his pink slip and turned it into $172.43 per week from the Department of Labor. It was like magic. All he had to do was call in to an automated system every week and hit a bunch of numbers that indicated he was still unemployed. Beats cleaning spittle out of piccolos. Yippee.

So away he went that blustery winter day, rolling down the gray corridors that are New York City's streets and avenues. He found his building--an undistinguished monster of granite hidden near the corner of 52nd St. and 8th Ave.

If someone had dashed up to James the very moment he walked into the New York State Department of Labor and asked him to describe the scene that faced him, here’s what he would have responded:

“Complete chaos.”

James was dumbstruck by the seething mass of humanity. Unregulated running and shouting seemed to be going on almost continuously, and no one was monitoring the use of the water fountain. A printer was puking blank paper like freshman at a keg party. Lines of people seemed to grow in every which direction imaginable. The right side of the room was covered. The left side of the room was covered. There was a bunch of people lying on the floor trying to form some sort of vertical line. Chaos.

Every race, class, and ethnicity was represented in that room, every religion and language. So much diversity, it was disgusting. There was only one thing every person in that room had in common—they all needed money to survive. That, and they all looked like they wanted to kill themselves.

A mousy woman with a flat head haircut suddenly appeared before him with a glazed look in her eye, grappling a manila envelope with fervor.

“Do you have an extra C-7 form? They didn’t tell me I needed one,” she said. “They never tell me the right forms to bring.” But before James could answer she began to veer off at an obtuse angle, continuing to talk a mile a minute… to no one.

He felt himself slipping closer to the brink of panic. “OK, James,” he said to himself, “just get a grip here. One of these lunatics must know where to go. They must. You just have to find the right person. Easy as that.”

But it wasn’t as easy as that. Forget asking someone a question, James couldn’t even get anyone to LOOK at him. Which, actually, was a pretty common problem for him. You see, in those days, eye contact between two strangers was considered a very rude thing to do. If you made eye contact with a stranger, it usually meant one of two things: either you wanted to beat them up, or you wanted to fuck them. Both impulses being rooted in the same place in the human psyche, you can see how repressed and anal people really were in that day and age. In any case, this particular afternoon, James found himself in a situation many of us would be familiar with—lost, with no one wanting to look you in the eye.

After stumbling around a bit, unintentionally crushing someone’s cheapo umbrella, being accused more than once that he was trying to cut in line, James finally located a woman sitting at a desk. From the look of her, she had one hell of a pissy attitude. Two men in business suits were shot down before he even reached her. His turn finally came, and when her putrid gaze fell upon him, it felt like Sauron’s Eye had eclipsed the sun. Trembling, he asked, “Do you know where I can find the unemployment office?” Steam starting pouring out her ears. Her face got beet red.

“Where do you think, jerk?!” She let loose a string of obscenities, then, “Jesus, I didn’t even have my lunch yet!”

James found a long marble hallway with people lining one of the walls. He followed this for a while, taking the protests of angry liners as encouragement that he must be on the right track. He hurried down two more corridors, then followed the line around a corner, and down another. At the end of the third hallway, to his chagrin, he did not find an Unemployment Office. Oh, no.

“This is the line for the fucking bathroom?!!”

“Uh, no, man,” a hippy in line replied, “I just got to go pee.”

He came upon a lesser-lined hallway with a great preponderance of locked doors and very busy looking people. Unfortunately, when he tried to get someone's attention, they all seemed to walk away or suddenly get distracted by something far more important. James saw one man in a train conductor's hat standing in front of a large door, his posture and demeanor lending him an air of distinction. James approached the man, and although he couldn’t be certain, James was almost positive the man timed a gaze at his watch specifically to avoid eye contact.

James cleared his throat loudly and asked, "Excuse me, sir. Do you know where I can find the unemployment office?"

For a frightening moment, James thought the man was actually just going to walk away, ignoring him completely. Instead, he found a fascinating piece of lint on his jacket as he replied, "3rd floor. Room 314."

Room 314 smelled something like a cross between a refrigerator of old food and a camper full of sleepy kids. There were a couple of fat guys sitting in desks far too small for them, and some weirdo Puerto Rican lady in the back. One dude definitely looked retarded, or maybe it was just his huge glasses. The moderator, a middle-aged loser who looked like her name was Flo or Marge or something, stared at James for a moment. She scratched her freakish mane, which was dyed a hue that does not exist in the natural spectrum of colored light. Her fingernails were green, with tacky miniature Christmas trees painted on every single one of them.

"Please take a seat if you are here for the unemployment meeting," she said, exhaling a thin vein of cigarette smoke. Her face resumed a queer, wrinkled expression that could only be interpreted as pain, or having to take a shit.

James stood there for a second, smelling the smoke. His brain was buzzing and he could feel a wicked head rush coming on. You see, for James, just walking into this office was quite a surreal experience. He hadn't seen a classroom full of such a random assortment of degenerates since high school.

"Detention," James suddenly said aloud, because that's what the scene reminded him of. James spent a lot of time in rooms very similar to that one while he was attending St. Jude's Academy for Boys--particularly between the hours of 3 and 4pm. He was a smart kid, but a lot of his teachers told his parents that James liked to "wise off." In St. Jude's Academy, kids who liked to "wise off" always ended up in classrooms chock-a-block full of degenerates between the hours of 3 and 4pm.

"In a moment I will hand out a quiz for you to take," Flo said. Her tone reflected the kind of attitude one adopts after doing the same, irrelevant thing with a bunch of complete strangers who don’t give shit, everyday, for 20 years.

"The purpose of this quiz is to determine whether or not you are eligible to continue receiving Unemployment Benefits. Do not look at your neighbor’s paper. Do not talk during the quiz. Do not use the bathroom during the quiz." At this last comment, a childlike sigh of discontent was heard from the back of the room.

"What, you got to use the bathroom?" Flo asked the Puerto Rican lady.

"Mmm hmm."

"Can you hold it for a couple minutes?"

"Naa un."

"OK, go for it," Flo said. "We're gonna have to wait here for a second, folks."

One of the fat men erupted, "Jesus Christ, what is this, kindergarten?"

"What do you want me to do? The lady's got to pee," Flo replied.

"Well... is this going to effect my union dues?" the fat man said, and James noticed the powdery blue scarf hanging out of his shirt. It was then that the idea of him being gay crossed James’ mind. James knew from the moment he saw him that he wasn't gay. But still... there was something inherently effeminate about this by-all-accounts rough-and-tough man. For some reason, it was just funny.

"What union are you in?" Flo said.

"Local 703."

"You're a plumber? An unemployed plumber? Oh, man... " Flo rolled her eyes. "Half the city can't get hot water and you can't find work? Crimminy sakes, my toliet's all fouled up, why don't you come over to my apartment tonight? Sheesh."

A few moments later the Puerto Rican lady came back in and sat down with a popsicle in her mouth.
"What the--?" the moderator stammered. "Forget it. I don't even want to know. Like I was saying, no talking, no bathroom visits, no nonsense. OK? All right."

She handed out the papers to the first person in each row and they passed it over their heads in turn. The quiz consisted of three questions:

1. Circle all the following sources you have used in order to find employment:
a. Newspapers want ads
b. The Internet
c. Personal contacts (family or friends)
d. Trade or union contacts.
e. None of the above. I have not been trying to find a job.

2. How far would you be willing to commute if someone offered you a job?
a. 1 mile.
b. 5 miles.
c. 25 miles.
d. 100 miles.
e. I am unwilling to commute.

3. Check the statement that most accurately describes you:
a. I am trying my best to obtain gainful (paid) employment.
b. I am applying myself moderately to obtain gainful employment.
c. I am doing nothing to obtain gainful employment

James had to sit and stare for a moment. Was this some kind of joke? He looked around and everyone else seemed to be taking it seriously. The Gay Plumber concentrated, taking great care in marking his answers down. After a little while the moderator said, "OK, times up. And the answers are… number one is A, number two is C, and number three is B. That's right, A,C,B. Pass 'em up. You can leave now. Thanks for coming. Have a productive day."

As he walked out into the swirling chaos that was the everyday machinations of the New York State Department of Labor, James felt as if he was waking up from a dream. Outside the same cast of characters were playing their predestined roles: the man in the conductor's hat, urgently peering at his watch; the mouse woman, still seeking out a C-7 form; the angry lady at her desk, still un-lunched by the look of her. Some newcomer was screaming for an eraser.

"Do these people ever leave?" James thought as he stepped back outside, the wind tearing at his unzipped jacket. "Maybe this is somewhere you end up if you take a wrong turn on the way to heaven." A lost looking soul walked towards him like a zombie, a familiar looking envelope under his arm.

"It's that door over there on the right," James commented, anticipating the man's question. A brief shadow of a smile passed over his face, and he walked silently on.

"No," James thought again, "it's just somewhere you end up if you take a wrong turn on the way to the bathroom."

(Download this story on Google Docs)

2009-08-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Hated That Guy
by chris otchy

Jonathan walked into Golden Gate Park with a floppy straw hat on his head and a banana yellow frisbee under his arm. Kids were splayed out on the grass like polka dots, lying on beach blankets, chasing each other around, sipping drinks, bumming cigarettes. He was looking for some fun, and the park looked to him like a fun factory waiting to happen. He scanned the area, seeing what direction he should head in, sending out his fun-feelers like a dolphin sending out echo radar. Suddenly, he saw her—a gorgeous, blonde, California maiden about 100 yards away, topless, playing with a golden retriever. All Jonathan’s internal alarms began to chime simultaneously: Fun, straight ahead.

When he got a little closer, Jonathan realized, to his chargrin, that she was not topless—she was wearing a flesh-colored bikini top. He kept on his course regardless, and when he was about 15 feet away, the girl’s dog charged into him, snuffling his head tightly into Jonathan’s crotch, giving his privates a little one-on-one attention.

“Teela, down girl, no!” the girl said in one hurried breath. “I’m so sorry! She’s has no manners. No, Teela, down!”

Jonathan put his hand over the dog’s head playfully, even though it was really awkward. The wind blew her hair toward him and Jonathan could smell patchouli. “It’s cool,” he exclaimed, “I love dogs!”

“Oh, me too!” the girl said. She rubbed the dog’s rump, her blue fingernails peeking out between its thick fur. She looked up at Jonathan, and her hazel eyes locked onto his like the Death Star coming into port. “Hey man, I know this might sound a little weird, but you look like a pretty hip guy. You know where I can score some grass? I was supposed to meet a buddy of mine up here, but he never showed.”

Jonathan just stared at her for a second, mesmerized by her buttery gaze. “Oh, you need some grass?” he finally said. “I think I might be able to help you out.”

“Yeah? That would be really cool, man. My boyfriend Kenan and I really wanted to get some and we’re totally out.”

“Kenan?” Jonathan said, stroking his chin. “Not… Kenan Cardellini, right?”

“Yeah, that’s him,” she said laughing. “Why, you know him?”

The skin of Jonathan’s forehead tightened. “Yeah,” he said, forcing the corners of his mouth upward, “sorta.”

Jonathan remembered Kenan Cardellini--of course he remembered him. It had been years since he heard that name, but oh yes, he remembered. How could he forget the man who single handedly destroyed his music career?

(Read on).

Welcome to my new blog!

2009-08-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone, this is my new blog. There are some teasers here for my stories. Click on the link, which will bring you to the full story in a Google Document. I thought this would make it easier for printing.

Thanks and enjoy!