Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Waiting

“Mommy” was the call.

“She’s not here” was the response.

They sat to my left.

In the corner an old woman reads Golf Digest. Her wrinkles and liver spots remind me of my own mortality and why I am here in the first place.

I’m suddenly nervous.

A nurse walks by with a clip board and calls a name.

“George Erickson”

A man I hadn’t noticed before stands up. He is probably in his late 40s. He looks fit, in shape. He probably doesn’t really need to be here. Maybe he is getting a physical because a new job requires it. Maybe his wife just felt something abnormal in his testicles while they were making love. Maybe she talked him into getting it checked out even though he takes good care of himself.

The nurse leads him away into the examining room where Doctor and patient will laugh together about how wives don’t understand the male anatomy and never will. They will exchange golf tips.

“Mommy!”

“Your Mother isn’t here, Caitlin!”

The man tries to keep his patience.

The girl huffs and scowls.

I notice that somebody has carved the word “FUCK” into the arm rest of my chair. “How odd”, I think but I suppose even vandals go to the Doctor.

Or maybe it was simply a man who just found out he had cancer or AIDs or some other fatal disease. Maybe “FUCK” was his way of letting off some steam, getting something off his chest.

I sigh and bury my face into my hands and wonder if I will be feel the urge to vandalize something after I’m done with the Doctor.

Before I left Angie asked if "it was fear or worry".

I told her "I think it's both".

In a while I will be home and everything could be different.

This is waiting.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

A Song to Make One Feel Like Singing

She stood on the hill with her hands in her pockets.
This is the story how Paul met Amber.
He smiles from a distance and walks toward her.
It is a love story.
She pulled her hands out of her pockets when she saw him approaching.
It is a true story.

Paul was a sad man. He had been single for nearly 11 months. Dumped. Alone. Eating poorly. Sleeping poorly. It wasn’t for lack of trying. He had gone on a few dates here and there. Made eyes at women. He wasn’t unattractive. He simply had very high standards. He had very specific tastes that were hard to live up to. For example, his partial list of things he looks for in a mate:

-Hair at least shoulder length (preferably light brown or strawberry blonde)
-A keen sense of fashion but nothing too bourgeois. (“Thrift store chic” he calls it)
-No vegans/vegetarians.
-No smokers
-Must own at least one album by the Velvet Underground.
-Must like children.
-Large breasts but nothing too large (“just shy of Dolly Parton country”)
-Tattoos a plus.

To pull him out of his self imposed misery his Sister decided to set him up on a blind date. A woman from her office. Named Claire. Claire was nice enough. Average. Slender fingers and long brown hair that ended in ringlets. She wore glasses made of wood. She called them "designer frames". Paul liked her but wasn't smitten. She was a driven woman. Paul wasn't driven. He had no ambition. He was content to drift. To wander. They didn't get along for this reason.

They ate sushi and drank sake and smoked cigarettes. He studied her face and she talked about herself and her 5 year plan. When she asked him about his 5 year plan he excused himself to the restroom and changed the subject upon his return. In order to make him seem more daring, more spontaneous he suggests they go do karaoke after dinner. They arrived at a place called "Songs" at midnight.

Amber was already on stage. She was singing "Superstar" by the Carpenters. She wore a silvery dress and it shined bright in the stage lights.

Long ago, and, oh so far away
I fell in love with you

Paul was instantly transfixed. He couldn't remember his date's name (Claire). He could barely remember his name. It wasn't that Amber was especially attractive or well put together. She just had a spark. She looked exciting. She wanted to do more than just watch the evening news before bed or the daily crossword puzzle. He could tell. She was wild. Maybe even a little dangerous? She had a big mess of black hair. She was pale but not in an unattractive way. She looked European. Perhaps even Parisian. The way she moved on stage was silly. She collapsed to her knees. She theatrically clutched her chest.

Don't you remember you told me
You loved me baby?!
You said you'd be coming back this way again baby!

She rolled on to her back and did scissor kicks into the air.

Paul is mesmerized. Claire teases him to "take a picture, it'll last longer" but he ignores her. The song ends and she returns to her seat in the back with her Sister. They laugh to each other. They hug.

Paul and Claire take a seat at the bar. He offers her a drink but she declines. She says it’s late and she’d better get home and walk her golden retriever. This strikes Paul as funny for some reason and he cracks a smile.

He watches her leave and orders a whiskey and coke. He studies Amber and her sister in their booth. They eat gyoza and calamari and drink cheap beer. They take turns singing on stage. The sister is cute but not quite as appealing. She doesn’t have the charm, the charisma.



Paul’s curiosity gets the better of him and he approaches Amber while her sister sings David Bowie’s “Changes”.

They exchange a simple greeting. He tells a joke about David Bowie. She laughs. He asks if she comes there often. He kicks himself for the cliché sounding question. She says every week because she loves performing. She asks if he likes karaoke. He says “I do now”. She laughs again. She asks him to join them and proceeds to entertain him all night. She tells him her ideas for plays. She confesses she grew up wanting to be Cher. He tries to hold his own. He exaggerates his participation in his High School's drama club.

They make loose plans to flying kites in the park on the next Sunday. Paul feels good. Excited. He wakes up Sunday feeling energized, refreshed. For the first time in a while he doesn’t need coffee. He walks to the park instead of driving. He sees her in the distance.

She stood on the hill with her hands in her pockets.
This is the story how Paul met Amber.
He smiles from a distance and walks toward her.
It is a love story.
She pulled her hands out of her pockets when she saw him approaching.
It is a true story.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Pride of the Shore

There isn’t a patch of wet cement in a 30 mile radius without your name scrawled in it.
There ain’t an old oak tree in the park without our initials carved across its trunk.

We have a fine view of the park. It isn’t of anything especially pretty or interesting but it is pleasant. If you stand on your tip-toes and lift your head in a certain way you can see the tops of the trees turn to brown and red and orange in the Fall.

It is Fall now. The air is turning crisp. We both have tickles in our throats. It’s going to be a cold winter.

Soon we’ll make snow angels every chance we get. Soon there won’t be a night of rest for the fireplace. We’ll duplicate cave drawings on the dust of the windowsill when we get bored from being stuck inside with nowhere to go. You’ll begin building a better body in secret. You'll do push-ups and sit-ups while I am at work. All winter long, in long winter clothes.

You’ll stun boys at the beach come June.

We’ll sit on the sand and I’ll tell you that the sting of loneliness can really hurt a man like me and you will touch my arm and tell me that I’ll never have to worry about that. We’ll build sand castles every chance we get and your bathing suit will be the pride of the shore.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

This Doesn't Feel Like Home

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, she says, while beating eggs in the kitchen. She’s referring to my idea to paint the coffee table blue.
“So you like the coffee table as it is?”
“Well, I think it’s fine. No reason to paint it”

To break eye contact with her I look at her nose. It is a small nose with a little bump in the middle. I move my attention around her face and look at her ears. She’s wearing earrings that look like tusks.

I love this woman but she doesn’t understand me. She doesn’t understand why I need to do things like this. Painting the coffee table. Cause living in this city is killing me. Not having a job. Wasting away my afternoons on the porch with stolen cigarettes and tap water and stray cats for company. We’ve been here for 3 months and I have yet to even get an interview. Restaurants, movie theatres, coffee shops. All have turned me down. This is why I like making things, painting things. To feel productive. To feel useful.

She repeats “no reason to paint it” like a mantra. We said a city would never break us but I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
All we ever do is fight. All we ever seem to do is say “I’m sorry”. This doesn’t feel like home.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Last Words You Said to Me

Sometimes to make time pass quicker I imagine what you’ll look like pregnant. I picture you with a round belly and holding your back and shuffling around and breathing funny. This thought makes me smile.

Sometimes, too, I think about my lips pressed against the top of your head and your head pressed against my chest. And in this moment I am scared of this intimacy and you say, “Sometimes you just have to let go, Henry”. You say this with a Southern accent even though you’ve never been to the South.

Every once in a while if I shut my eyes I see you running at me, angry and beating your fists against my chest. And in this imaginary moment you say, “Sometimes you just have to let go, Henry”. But it’s hard to hear the accent because you’re yelling.

Once I had this dream where we ate ice cream cones in the winter on a snow covered hill. You turned to me and told me about a hypothetical bank robbery we could commit if we had tear gas and Doctor’s scrubs.

When I’m waiting for a bus or in a long line I picture us at my Mother’s funeral. And you’re standing next to me in a very elegant black dress. The mood is very somber and a fog creeps in. I start crying and you put your arm around me and pull me towards you and whisper, “Sometimes you just have to let go, Henry”.

The last words you said to me echo through my head like “Hello!” into a canyon.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Judy

Her name was Judy. She was once a cold woman. A widow. Then she saw this Indian guru on public television and started doing yoga and became a vegetarian. She also started doing things like making her family come on retreats with her to the woods.

They all piled in to her 2004 Jetta and left the city on Friday night at 7:30pm. Among them was her son, Kenneth. He was a small man in his early thirties. He had been divorced once and was on his second marriage to a woman named Susan who was also accompanying them on the trip. Her young daughter, Amy, was also there, in the backseat.

"O.k. Does anybody need to use the bathroom? There's a rest stop coming up?"

"No, Mom. Let's just try and get there tonight"

"I do! I need to go potty!" yelled Amy.

"Ken, Amy needs to go. I could stand to stretch my legs. 5 minutes won't kill us" Susan said this while putting her hands on his shoulder from the backseat.

"Alright, alright"

Kenneth was frustrated. Not just with the situation but with life in general. He hated his job, his house, his family. He knew all this made him an asshole but he couldn't help it. He missed his glory days of sleeping until noon and catching a double feature at the run down movie house down the street from his tiny studio apartment. The key word being "his". It was his apartment, his neighborhood. His bottles of beer on the kitchen counter. His one night stands. His cigarettes on the porch that he didn't have to hide from anybody or pretend he was giving up.

He met Susan when they were both young. He had just gotten divorced from his high school sweetheart. Susan was a waitress at a restaurant he frequented. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, with long red hair and perfect skin. He barely spoke to her when she waited on him because he was so nervous around her. One night she was getting off her shift when he was leaving. He was tipsy and decided to walk her home even though she only lived 4 blocks away. She thought it was sweet and they started seeing each other. They broke up 3 times within the first year of their relationship. She had an affair with another man, which is where Amy came from. Their relationship hasn't really ever been stable and they both knew it. Kenneth only proposed marriage after he had gotten her pregnant. She had a miscarriage but he couldn't call off the wedding after that. What would his family say? What kind of man would he be?

"Poppa! Poppa! Look, a cow!"

"Oh! I see that, Amy. Good spotting" Kenneth was tired.

"And what sound does a cow make, honey?", Judy added.

"Mooooooooo!"

They family continued their drive to the woods. Kenneth only agreed to go to keep his Mother company. He worried about her after his Father died. He didn't want her to get into accident or get lost in the woods or bamboozled by some fly-by-night self-help author. But in the back of his mind he hoped that the stress relief seminars and the peace and quiet and the meditation classes would help him. He needed to relax, get used to the idea of being a man and not a boy anymore. He was turning 32 in a month. Susan was only 28. Amy continued to yell about the cows as the family pulled into the rest stop.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

The Couple, The Restaurant

The young couple eat alone in a nearly empty restaurant. Their candle is the lone lit one in the old Italian place. Their breath smells of red wine and garlic.

She ordered the fettuccini alfredo, he ordered the veal parmesan. She normally wouldn’t let him eat something as barbaric as veal but it was a special occasion. It was the 2nd anniversary of their first date. Suddenly, there's a buzzing sound.

“Oh, great! Uh, would you excuse me? I have to take this phone call” he says to her, clearly annoyed.

“Oh, sure”

He runs out into the cold night air, pressing his cell phone against his ear, shouting to be heard over the traffic noise. She waits patiently inside, making a game of how long she can leave her napkin over the candle on the table before the flame dies out. After a couple of minutes, he returns.

“I’m sorry. It was my Mom”

“Oh. Is everything o.k?”

“Yeah. My Uncle just got a hernia and he’s in the hospital. It’s not that exciting”

“Is he o.k?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s fine. It’s just a hernia”

“That sounds serious to me. A hernia”

He laughs. “Are you kidding? Do you know what a hernia is? I’ve had a hernia and I lived”

She laughs in response. “You? When did you have a hernia?”

“When I was a kid. I’ve never told you the story?”

“I don’t think so”

“Oh, man. Well, when I was a kid…probably like 9 or 10 years old…I did something to piss off my Mom. Talked back to her or refused to eat my vegetables or something, right? And so my punishment was to go to turn off the TV and go to bed. Now, when I was a kid I was obsessed with television, I watched like 6 hours of it a day. So I threw a fit because I was watching a show I liked. So in defiance I decided to take the family TV into my bedroom and watch it. Well, the only problem is that our TV set was huge. One of those big wood paneled deals. It weighed a ton. So there I am, this scrawny little 9 year old trying to lift this like 100 pound TV. And it gave me a hernia. I had to go to the hospital and have surgery and everything. My Mom still teases me about it to this day”

She laughs. “I had no idea”

“And my Aunt Betty, she was worried sick. She sent me comic books and cookies like everyday. It was really sweet.”

“Did I meet her?”

“I don’t think so. Did you go with me to that family reunion last summer?”

“I think I was in Boston”

“Oh, yeah”

“I’m going to go to the restroom. Excuse me”

She gets up and goes into the bathroom, pulling her cell phone out of her purse. Once inside she makes a phone call.

“Hey. Greg? How’s it going?” she laughs at his response and continues, “I see. Well, yeah. We’re still on our big date. But what are you doing tomorrow?” Another pause. “Well, he works all day. I can do whatever. You want to come over at like 2?” Some more laughter “O.k. See you then”

She exits the restroom and returns to the table where a large piece of cheesecake waits for her. She sits down and begins to cry.