You and Indiana and I

(Genre: Lyric Essay)

A few days before I was to leave New York, to drive across the country, to build a new home somewhere in the mountains of California, I sat around the butcher block table in the center of Natalie and Kara’s basement apartment in Brooklyn. I asked Natalie what was worth seeing in Columbus, Ohio. “Skip it,” she said, “go to Cincinnati,” her girlfriend added, slumped on a stool beside her. I had no interest in Cincinnati, the town the pair was from. It must have shown on my face. “Columbus has great thrift stores,” Natalie offered optimistically. Still, I had only asked about Columbus as it was the only major city on my route from New York to Bloomington, Indiana where I would reunite with you.

A few days later, as I made my way across the border of West Virginia and Ohio, a cicada hit my windshield; its body instantly no more than a large smear of exoskeleton and guts obstructing my view. I thought of Natalie then and how she spoke of the cicadas in Ohio from her youth. She once recalled to me the feeling of their bodies beneath her feet as a girl, the same guts rising up between her toes, how their buzz signaled a return to school, how they died in slow cycles like civilizations.

It was midnight by the time I entered the outskirts of Columbus. I pulled off the highway and parked in the closest parking lot. Three neon X’s buzzed in the sign above an adult bookstore across the gravel lot. I tried to find comfort and sleep, curled across the front seats of my Jeep. Sometime in the night the temperature dropped to an all time low for Ohio in September.

As I slept, knotted and uncomfortable, my mind drew connections between my location and my memories, my emotions and my associations. This is how we do. I dreamt of driving through the cold air, my headlights cutting through the frigid fog. Ahead of me, growing closer in the beams of light, stood Natalie and Kara. They were bickering on a cold highway. Me, behind the wheel, squinting as I made out their familiar shapes, the color of their hair. Drawing so close I could see the fear expand in the whites of their eyes as I crashed into them.

I awoke with two gasps, one for each of them. I found myself there in the front of the Jeep, cold beneath my quilt, the cicada still smeared upon the windshield.

I sat in the Jeep with my eyes adjusting to the light, my lungs to the cold. It was just after six in the morning and I turned the key in the ignition and threw my blankets and pillows in the passenger seat beside me. I was something like seven hours away from Bloomington, Indiana where you had started graduate school the day before. The parking lot of the adult bookstore where I stopped was now filled with 18-wheelers, two of them at my either side. I backed out as though through a long hallway and drove west, half asleep. I made it there around noon, found the main gates to your campus and sent a text that read: I’m lying in the grass by the corners of Indiana and 2^nd Streets. Get in touch when you’re around, I wrote, hoping to sound undemanding. You replied that you'd there in ten. And I smiled.

Anticipating our reunion this immediately became painful. It came to mind that I might not be able to distinguish you from the other passersby. I wondered if we might be unrecognizable after only a few years and what that could mean. I felt a soft panic – a nervous twinge. It was the same dull and aching pain I’d endured throughout the two or three years since I met you. It stemmed from my blind and persisting love. It was irrelevant where we were, how long since we’d spoken, how soon we’d see each other. In these years since we met, I have experienced an ignorant love for you. I can say this now without embarrassment. A love like an always pressing thumb upon the chest. When I thought of you a firm print was left over my sternum. It felt a lower temperature than my own and unrelenting. It was ignorable if needed, but nonetheless consistent regardless of our inconsistent correspondence or the ebb and flow of my personal circumstance.

You know how it was. We were always apart. We were always cryptic and scattered in what we said and how we said it to each other. And always, for me, a cold thumb-print. And then, there I was. Sitting on your college campus and waiting for you. I suddenly remembered a letter I had wrote to you maybe six months before asking that you not contact me again, that it was nothing but painful for me, and child’s play for you. I’m not sure how I’d forgotten writing it. It was laughable that I had intentions of seeming undemanding, calm, unnerved. I looked up from the grass where I sat and for you drawing near, the thumb colder, harder than ever.

I scanned the passersby from the grass and anticipated. Around me were students carrying books, wearing their university sweatshirts, walking swiftly. I saw myself from their perspective. They probably assumed I was a student as well, if they even noticed me sitting there. But I was not a student at your school. I was not wearing your school colors and carried no books. I was wearing jeans and boots, a yellow knitted cap and a green t-shirt that exposed my tattoos; new since I had seen you last. I didn’t look like I belonged in classes here, or drinking at a beer pong tables. Still, I could pass for a student in age and in indifference. I laid back and covered my eyes from the Indiana sun with my bare arm until I heard a familiar call of a hawk and saw your shadow bounding towards me. You were undeniably recognizable. And so I shifted my indifference.

Our visit was as it should have been, I can infer now. I’m not sure how you saw it, but it made sense to me. We were stony and silent. We were over-talkative and interrupted each other excitedly. I painted your kitchen and made you dinner. We drank wine and smoked joints on your porch. I walked your dog while you did the readings for your classes. And as light sank from the windows and the night tided in, we played music and lit candles. Beside you the pressing thumb subsided and was distracted by your actuality – the tone of your voice, your posture, the furrow of your brow. All of it made up for the years and miles between us that disallowed for any real meaning, any real emotion. The distance, the vaguity of our correspondence was what let me feel a persisting tightening of my chest at thoughts of you and our time together.

“Where should I sleep?” I asked after our first day.

“The couch is pretty comfortable.” You simply replied.

I thought suddenly of you years ago, a stranger, asking me if I wanted to stay, to not go back to New York where my job and life were waiting and instead, to stay. To drive from Los Angeles to Northern California. To stay.

“The couch is pretty comfortable.” I didn’t respond, just stepped out the door and went to my Jeep to retrieve my bags. To exhale into the Indiana night.

There was a time when we slept face to face in the back of your van on cold mountain tops, our inhales and exhales in opposite, the passing back and forth of a fragile object.

There was a time when you removed my wool cap in your sleep and your breath warmed the back of my bare head.

There was a time that I thought I could love you through everything – the ebb and flow.

But the couch was pretty comfortable, you said. The couch in your rented fixer-upper with the kitchen I’d just painted – the couch was pretty comfortable, I tried to conceive.

Somehow I hadn’t expected this and yet had not expected much more. And so I slept on the couch, which as it turns out was not very comfortable. You slept in your room with the door open to my eyes. I can’t say exactly what I dreamed our how I slept or how I felt when I awoke the next morning and hiked the back trails beside a creek – only that there was a time and it had passed. I spent one more night and awoke feeling the same thumb, now colder than my own body, and understood the pull to leave. On my last night there though, you shared with me a letter you had received before we had met.

You tossed it to me while I sat on the couch, ready to sleep. It was addressed to you from an unnamed address in Arizona. I pulled the creased pages and unfolded it to find pictures of a woman and her family – her husband and young son. They looked familiar and I began to understand, to remember the story you had told me as we drove through the mountains of northern California. You had discovered in this letter that you had an older sister who your parents had decided to put up for adoption before you and your siblings were born, when they were young and unable to conceive their own future.

The woman, now in her mid-thirties wrote to you to tell of her being, of her adoption, and of the years of her adulthood during which she felt a pressing desire to find her biological siblings whom she’d never met, but loved. I read the letter in full, somehow feeling parallel to the lines printed on each page. She pleaded with you to understand that she merely wanted a relationship with the family she never knew, but whom she belonged to. I read and came to understand the circumstances – that of your parents, that of a woman who felt a blind and unyielding love for a stranger, and your experience, you – who received these three pages in the mail and came to understand the same.

The next morning it was clear I needed to leave and with age I’ve learned not to question the things that are unspoken but nonetheless undeniable and so I packed my bags and said a brief goodbye. I told you to look me up in California if you ever passed through.

I drove through Indiana in a cold silence, windows down, the sun tanning my outstretched arm. I was a day ahead of schedule and wasn’t expected in Kansas for two days. Sometime near sundown I pulled off the highway and onto a side road in Missouri. The side road quickly became a dirt road with pale gray gravel that left a cloud of dust behind me. The trees along the road were dusted in the same pale gray, a black and white relief of the green beneath. I found my way to the end of the road when it hit the Missouri River. A signed hung on a clapboard building reading Catfish Katy’s Kamp Grounds. I drove through a field of soybeans and found a small stretch of the Missouri that was lined with mowed lawns and littered with fire circles and site numbers. I was the lone camper at the campgrounds minus the campsite host. One small trailer sat locked with a small barking dog within and an air-conditioner on high. I knocked to no answer and so I made my way down the mowed banks of the river, parked my Jeep and pitched tent. I scaled the inclined and muddy banks of the river in my bare feet, collecting driftwood for a fire. I piled them high in the fire circle of my site and sat, guitar on lap and waited for the dark to come.

An SUV pulled into the site beside me. Awoken from my own contemplative silence I watched as a woman sat inside the vehicle with volume on high and cried. Soon thereafter she opened her door and dipped down the banks of the river behind the trees. I returned to my silence until I heard her scream. One and then another. I stood to reveal a view between the trees of a woman clutching her journals covered in mud and tears streaking her face.

I offered her a towel and while she wiped the mud from her legs she noticed the plates of my Jeep and asked, “New York?”

“Yeah, I’m headed for California?” I said as a question.

“I’m sorry?” she asked.

“I’m moving to California.” I said, this time more assured of my direction.

“Wow, huh. Wow. Well, I just came down here with my beer and my journals and I just came down to sit and write. I left my girls at their father’s house and just came down here to sit and write and the next thing I know I’m falling in the mud and so I throw my beer, I throw my beer to get a free hand and I grab on to these roots and they all break off and I’m like you guys are weak. Weak!” She was speaking in a tone somewhere just between crying and laughter, almost hysterical.

“So this is it?” She paused and asked, gesturing at my Jeep stuffed with duffle bags and pillows.

“You just quit your job and decided to move out West and go for it?”

“More or less,” I answered with a smile.

“What?” she said, leaning forward, “I’m sorry, I’m really hard of hearing.” It seemed a strange characteristic to me; somehow improbable that a beautiful woman should have such a flaw.

She asked if she could join me by my unlit fire. I obliged and she went back to her SUV to retrieve her beer. We sat and talked, she more than I. She explained that her husband, a local real-estate developer and millionaire had nabbed her with his charms when she was only eighteen. She was pregnant only a few months later, married, and kept pregnant for the next five years. She had four daughters who she loved, but seemed to hate her more by the day since she divorced their father. She had discovered upon breaking into his office one late night that he had been advertising himself quite shamelessly for sex on numerous websites.

I was quiet mostly. I had expected to be alone and up until her arrival, had felt as I did pulling away from your house – that there had been a time and it had passed, that this day didn’t seem a time, but the absence of the one that had passed. Perplexed, somewhat sullen, and contemplative. But suddenly that seemed an impossibility. The woman saw me a handsome man with a guitar. She told me this quite forwardly. I saw myself from her perspective – a romanticized version of myself, independent, free, and utterly present.

She spoke of her love of music, how it was the only thing she truly had. Yes, there were her daughters, but they seemed so outside of her and growing foreign. Music, she listened to it constantly, and though her husband never let her go to college or take lessons, she had bought a guitar and taught herself to play. She asked me to play something, said she wasn’t good enough to play herself just yet, but demanded I play something for her.

I, now slightly drunk on the wine, and lost in her stories and the way she saw me, had no hesitation. I played her all the songs I knew and with each one, she drew nearer on the picnic table beside me, eventually her hand holding my knee as I sang. And after the last song, she moved in and put her mouth on mine. I kissed her back. I strangely, perhaps drunkenly, saw us from your perspective. I pushed that thought back and continued with her. She left sometime in the night. I woke up and realizing she was gone, lifted my phone and sent you a text message to tell you I had just made love to a woman beside the Missouri River.

I didn’t know what to do when I woke the next morning, my head pounding, my eyes red and angry at the hour and the brightness of the sun. I remembered the night, cringed, and looked at my phone to see what I had said to you via my drunken text message. I cringed again.

As I fled the state of Missouri and drove on towards Kansas, I tried to understand what had happened, how these days had led to the present. How, after wanting so bad to be in your bed, if not to make love then to just feel your arms as we slept, did I find myself in the arms of a stranger, a woman? A woman who wanted me to be someone I was not, who saw me as she needed – let me embody the freedom she wanted for herself. I thought of your sister of how she needed you to be. We see people as we need them to be.  It is a rare case that we love others truly as they are, but more actually, as we want so badly for them to be.

This time has long since passed, since we met and slept in the mountains, since we reunited in Indiana, since I made love to a woman in Missouri. I’m older now, building my home. I am far away. We speak now and then. And since then I have not stopped loving you blindly, but stopped feeling pain in doing so. I love you as I need to. When I have to need to reminisce. When I have need to remind myself that I am capable of doing so. You are who I need you to be. I have resolved my affair in Missouri a sort of dream of associations. Your sister, her love, how she saw you, how I saw you. In the Missouri night, in the company of a stranger, I let them entangle and held a woman tightly. I saw her as I needed, I let her be something she was not – but who reflected my personal circumstance, my ebb and flow. This is how we do. And so, I’m writing to tell you – that since Indiana, that cold, pressing thumb has lifted but that I will always keep my ignorant love of you.

Nurse of Greenmeadow

(Genre: Dramatic Monologue) For NPR's 3 Minute Fiction

The nurse left work at 5 o’clock. The doctor left thirty minutes before her. The nurse was a younger woman, fair featured with a smile that did not reveal her teeth. The doctor was a middle-aged man, gray at his temples and through his brows. I was a single, middle-aged mother with a teenage son sitting alone in the waiting room of the Greenmeadow's cancer ward. I was watching their affair play out in front of me, of this I am certain.

He left a half of an hour before her each day. He would smile at her as he left, say goodbye to the two other nurses, wink at her, and leave. From there, I’m sure he would drive his Volvo away from the hospital and park in the hills behind it. Maybe get out of his car to relieve himself while he waited for her. I would study the nurse after he left. I could tell that she found the half hour without him excruciating – she acted, tried to cover it up. But I could see that the final 30 minutes of her day were spent anticipating a meeting with her lover, a middle-aged married doctor. How terribly cliche of them.

To think! That this sort of thing goes on in hospital waiting rooms, this adulterous mayhem, for anyone’s eyes to see. It was something I was shocked to find. Several months ago my son called terrified from his college dorm room and told me that he had found a lump in his testicle. I was leaving the grocery store and was shocked to hear my son speak of his testicle on the telephone in the middle of the day. I nearly dropped my groceries. Then I was hit by a wave of panic. My only son was potentially ill and was scared and I wanted nothing more than to sweep him up.

The truth was, several months later I was still uncomfortable with all the talk of my son’s testicle. Shortly after he called to reveal to me that he had found the lump in the shower, I worried it was my fault. I worried that maybe it was because I didn’t love him enough or that I let him sit in the hot tub at my sister’s house too much when he was a little boy. Or worse – that perhaps my own discomfort with my genitals resulted in the abnormal growth he found on his own. These were foolish thoughts to think, I know. But I could not shake them.

I distracted myself by becoming a deep observer of others, trying to decipher their goings on. That day I had watched and discovered that the nurse left work exactly a half hour after the doctor and they were having an affair – Of this, I could be sure. I sat back and watched as the nurse found petty things to do in her final thirty minutes at work. She replaced files and made small talk with other nurses. Hussy.

I sat on a couch with a pile of gardening magazines beside me. In front of me I held a paperback romance novel I picked up at the grocery store. I looked over the book at the nurse station where the young adulteress flitted about. Beyond her was a hallway, and beyond that was a room where my son removed his pants and underwear and sat on a table. He was staring at the ceiling waiting for someone to enter the room and begin. That day they were doing a sort of ultrasound on his testicles, or so the hussy nurse explained.

My son, Logan was uncomfortable too. He laid down naked from the waist down beneath several white blankets in the examining room. He's an only child. Everything is harder for an only child of a single mom. Finally two nurses entered the room with the lab technician and they began. The hussy nurse sat beside him as the lights were dimmed. “We’re going to begin now,” she said somewhat coyly. She spread the blankets away from his middle region, found his testicles and brought them out before laying the blankets back down around them. He stared up beneath the blankets with his testicles exposed. “So are you in college?” the nurse asked as she applied a cold gel to his testicles. “Ugh, I’m…” he responded uncomfortably.

The lab technician interrupted, “I’ll take over from here, thank you Shelby.” Shelby, the hussy nurse glanced up at the clock as she removed her gloves and left the room. It was nearly five o’clock and she was happy and smiling smugly. She was leaving to meeting her older lover. She hung her lab coat on a rack, pulled her hair down from a ponytail and passed me as she left. “Have a good evening, Mam,” she said as she passed and placed her hand on my shoulder. Don’t you dare touch me, I thought to myself. I sort of nodded in her direction. And returned to my romance novel.

Why I'm Staying

(Genre: Dramatic Monologue, Lyric Essay)

You might be surprised how well I’m doing. Not just personally, not just emotionally, but financially too. You’d be surprised how well I’m doing, I’m sure. I heard the way you said “Altoro?” when I said I’d moved to Altoro, California as though you were sure I could never do well here.

Well, as it turns out, I’m doing very well here. I am just a little bit surprised myself, I’ll admit. I didn’t know anything about this little town before I came here. Well, I only knew it was hidden in the Silicon Valley and that it’s mostly populated by computer programmers, and code writers, and that there is a rumor that the inventor of the internet lives here.

And as it turns out, this is all true of Altoro. Well, I’m not sure about the inventor of the internet because I’ve met a few men who claim to be him. But one thing I’ve learned since I left the East Coast is that people can describe towns and cities to you, but you can’t really know until you’re there. When someone says ‘Oh yeah, that town up in the mountains,’ you can see it, you can imagine a little town up in the mountains, but you’d never guess what it’s like to be there. You’d never guess how deep that statement really goes, that description…

I only say this, because when someone once described Altoro to me as a town primarily populated by computer programmers and code writers, I never imagined how that would feel, to be here, to live here, among those people.

You see, this town is populated by linear thinkers, by real code writers. It is a town just stuffed to the brim with people who must think about each and every symbol in each and every code that makes up the entire internet. You can imagine how exhausting this is for them. Or maybe, you can’t. Maybe you never thought about how deep that runs.

I discovered this accidentally. I was parking my car one afternoon outside the grocery store. I have starting cooking, which you may be surprised to learn. Back East, I wasn’t even interested in cooking. It was out of the question, really. I never had the time. I only realized after leaving the city… that New Yorker’s do about ten times as many tasks in one day than the average human being. It’s a severely exhausting strategy, but it was all I had ever known. Anyway, I cook now. This is just one of the many ways in which I’ve changed and also one of the first ways. But it’s an important one because it brought me to the grocery store that afternoon. I was going to buy tomatoes, and cilantro, and whatever goes into fresh salsa. I was making fresh salsa. I know you’d hardly believe that of me.

Anyhow, I pulled into the parking spot, the windows of my car down, music pouring out. The woman beside me, who was presumably coming or going, she stopped and looked at me as I was turning the engine off, gathering my grocery list and re-usable grocery bags.

“Excuse me…” she said. “Yes,” I responded. “That music, you were listening to music…” she looked confused but I assumed she just wanted to know who it was. “Yes, I was listening to Sarah Harmer; she’s Canadian, a lovely voice right? She has this wonderful song; I forget what it’s called…Oh, basement apartment. The song, it’s called ‘Basement Apartment,’ and it’s got wonderful lyrics, about the smell of bleach seeping through her door…that reminds me, bleach!” I scribbled it down on my grocery list. “Anyway, I love that song because I once lived in this horrible basement apartment in Redhook and I remember the smell of bleach being awful.”

By this time, I had gotten out of the car, and was resting my elbow on the woman’s car window. She was still just staring at me, sort of slack-jawed and bewildered. Then, a smile. I smiled back at her and continued…

“You should look her up on iTunes, or LimeWire, or even just go to her Myspace page. She’s got something like 10 albums. Some are better than others, but they’re all decent. Oh, I should ask you, you look like you come here a lot. Do they have stamps at this store? Or do I have to go to the Post Office?”

“No,” she said. “They don’t have stamps here. You must go to the post office for stamps.”

“I hate that. Don’t you just hate that? I always forget to get stamps unless they are on the grocery list, which is why I just love when you can get them at the grocery store.”

“You’re not from here, are you?” She asked sort of excitedly.

“No, I just moved here from New York. I only sort of accidentally ended up in Altoro because I found this really cute little cottage in the back yard of these super nice people. And anyway, I was a curator in New York. I curate art shows and now I don’t know what I want to do. I’m sort of, you know, swimming, swimming in it. Feeling it out.”

She seemed fascinated by me. I could feel it. I’m very intuitive, you know this about me. But I’ve never really had anyone respond to me like this.

“What do you do? You’re driving an awfully nice car, here. You must make a killing at whatever it is.” I said.

“I’m a programmer. I… program. I’ve never met a curator before. Only, other programmers,” she responded in a dull voice.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. I’ve got to get to my groceries,” I patted her on the arm and made my way towards the entrance.

“Wait!” she called out. “Thanks, for the music. I’ll… I’ll listen to it.”

“Oh no worries. Be well!” I called back.

See, initially, I was a little taken back by her fascination with me. I was a little creeped out to be honest. But part of me, a small part of me, was flattered. It seemed I offered her something without even knowing. Yes, there was the music. But it seemed something more to her. I noticed it again at a gas station. A man was paying for his gas in front of me and fiddling with some change. I was on the cell phone leaving a voice message for my father.

“Ok, so tire pressure. What’s it all about, Pop? How do I know how much pressure I need? Because I haven’t put air in my tires the entire way since New York and I feel like I’m driving on soggy donuts. But I’ve been too afraid to put air in the tires because I don’t want to put in too much, you know? It’s because of that movie, where he’s changing a tire and it explodes in his face. Oh my god, can you imagine? So what’s the deal, how much do I put in? How much air? Call me back!”

He was sort of stalling in front of me, the man paying for his gas. He was sort of just standing there with two quarters in his hand. Finally, I leaned forward took a quarter out of his hand, set it on the counter in front of the cashier.

“There you go. It’s 40 dollars and 25 cents.” I said.

“Thanks. It’s just that, you’re not from here are you?”

“Nope, just moved here from New York.” I smiled at him.

“Oh. What do you do?”

“Um, well, at the moment, nothing. I was a curator. I curate art shows in museums and galleries before, but now, I’m not sure. And you?” This conversation was becoming entirely too easy for me. It seemed the same as every conversation I ever had here.

“I’m a computer programmer.”

“Oh, ha. Seems like everyone here is.”

“I’m not.” Said the cashier, sort of angrily.

Come to think of it, the cashier was the first person I’d met who wasn’t a computer programmer. Not that I’d met many people, just my landlords, the woman from the grocery store parking lot, and the man now starring at me in that same slack-jawed manner as they all had.

As it turns out, the cashier, whose name was Tad, was actually the only person in all of Altoro who was not a computer programmer. You may ask now, what about the people who worked at the market, what about the people who work at coffee shops and bars? They were freelance computer programmers. And they were not very good at serving coffee and cocktails. They were slow, and obsessed with proportions.

Tad explained to me, frustrated and clearly tired of telling people in the gas station that while being incredibly intelligent, programmers were a different breed. They were linear thinkers. They were quite strictly this, born and raised. See, Altoro was in fact the town which was at the epicenter of web-based technologies in America. They were the people who had really come up with HTML. If you’re not familiar, HTML is the hidden code of which the entire internet is made up of. It’s everything. Even this email you’re reading, it’s presented to you by HTML. And it had taken a quite linear train of thought to create HTML. I learned this from Tad.

Now, Altoro was the home of several generations of purely linear thinking programmers. All those who were not linear thinkers had been, well… sort of forced out. There weren’t many jobs for them. Rent was high enough that only people with one foot in the computer programming or code writing world could really afford to live here.

So I realized then what there fascination with me was. I am, as I’m sure you’ll agree, quite far from a linear thinker. I’m visual and abstract if that. And so, it seemed my train of thought, my speech patterns, my gesticulation was all too much for them. But I could see in the flicker of excitement in their eyes that they liked it.

See, linear thinkers work entirely with a process of thought which follows known cycles or step-by-step progression where a response to a step must be elicited before another step is taken. And with me, well, how do I explain? If they were dancing, it was something like a march. And if I was dancing, I was, well, drunk and doing back-flips and a tango to the side with jazz hands and a baton.

And the way the brain works, is that it sort of has these pathways, these tunnels that we use over and over. Mine go every which direction and are totally random. I do everything differently every time. But these people have been writing codes, programming computers, thinking linearly for almost three decades now. Their pathways are worn in. And when I spoke to them, their thoughts took a step off the beaten path.

So, as I’m sure as you might have predicted by this point, I became a masseuse. The only masseuse here in Altoro. It was a logical step for me. You remember, for a few years back in the 90’s I had that stint working as a sports medicine therapist, right? Well, anyway, I’m not certified in the state of California, but business has been booming and shows no real sign of slowing down.

I started off with three clients. You remember that woman from the grocery store parking lot? Well, her name is Cindy. I knew I could reel her in if I could find her. As it turns out all it took was returning to the grocery store at exactly the same time in exactly the same spot one week later. See, that’s how linear people think. They find a code that works, they write it, and they stick to it. Cindy is real great and sort of addicted to massages at this point. She has one every other day.

And then that guy from the gas station, not Tad, but the man who was struggling with the quarters, Gary. He was my second client. Again, he got gas every other day at the same gas station, Tad told me. So I showed up and I just said, “Hey, Gary. You look a little tense. Do you seem like you could use a massage. It’d be great for you. You can lie down, take a load off, I’ll put some music on and we can just chat while I give you a good rub-down.”

He was hesitant. But just by having someone offer him something so strange, his mind was sent spinning and he just sort of stood there with his change in his hand, his bottom lip hanging away from his teeth. To be honest, he looked more relaxed already.

I came up with the idea for offering massages because I knew that people who sit at computers all day were prone towards musculoskeletal disorders. They really needed a good massage the most out of all working professionals. But really, it was a way of keeping them a captive audience. I needed a way to get them relaxed and follow my stories.

With Cindy, who was a sort of somewhat lonely character, I focused on her lower back. She was single and sat unusually straight in her chair at work. She said her mother, who was also a programmer, once told her the highest paid programmers and engineers were attracted to girls with good posture. So, with her I massaged her lower back gently while I told her stories about my hitch-hiking romances.

“So I just wandered in to town just before dark and I didn’t have any real plans but I knew I probably needed a campsite because it was sort of cold and a fire was the only way I’d stay warm and so this guy walks by, right? Really tall. And I say to him, ‘hey, do you happen to know if there are any campgrounds near here?’ and he says that he thinks there might be some up by his cabin and do I want to get high. So we hop in his pickup and ride up the mountain, but first we stop at this crazy glass blowing shop where they sell the most amazing bowls…”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhh...” says Cindy. See, she needs this. Her mind just doesn’t take those pathways naturally, they never would. Cindy comes from three generations of programmers. Her peak romantic experience came when she traded office chairs with the cute Asian guy in the fish-bowl office next to hers. And what with being a linear thinker, she builds her understanding of things based on progression. You can only imagine how these stories excite and expand her mind, and also overwhelm. When I am in a session with Cindy I must be very careful not to go into territories that might cause her to spasm.

My third client was Tad, the gas station cashier. As it turns out, it is very hard for Tad, being the only other non-computer programming resident of Altoro. He complains about it quiet openly with me now. Truthfully, I feel sorry for him. He’s fallen in love with several women who stop to get gas or ask for directions, other non-programming types. But they always leave within minutes, pull away and go towards some other town with multiple industries, go on living their non-linear lives.

I now have over fifty-something clients. Some I see almost daily. Others can only truly handle my services and company on a monthly basis. They are mainly first generation programmers and I don’t blame them. I’m very cutting edge with my massage technique. Some people are opposed to change, to trying new things. It’s not their fault, it’s just human condition.

And as for me, well, I’m happy. I’ve found a real niche here. I’ve always got people to talk to. Everyone is very interested in hearing about my past careers, my many lovers, sometimes they even ask for me to read them my poetry. And I do, because they appreciate it. Some of them, they even need it. And that’s why I’m staying.

A Hunter's Son

Genre: Poetry


The spent head of a deer,
hanging from a tree branch,
in the thicket past my father’s
yard –
is left to find maggots and drip-rid
his eyes and flesh.

A full three years and still he hangs,
with a dumb-struck deer smile,
declines decay, keeps his flesh and fur
looks
with hardened gray eyes – waxy, like prunes.
says, “I’m here –

I will not go inside –
to be mutely mounted
in the house beyond that yard.
I
cannot bare it,” and he smiles, nodding
there with me.

I, a visitor to
my father’s hushed house, stand
stoned and protesting with him, the
deer
whose job was just to drip-rid those eyes,
shed his flesh,

lessen to skull and horns
so that, by my father’s
hands, the same hands that held the gun,
can
be mounted on cedar or oak and
prized–

With no eyes nor dumb smile,
just quiet bones on wood
against white walls, over pure pine floors.
No
flesh. No indications of life or
fear or indignation.

I know too well how to
contradict my father’s
demands, but turn at his call and
make
my way across the yard, “why are you
nodding, Bo?”

i dance on all the mountains.

(genre: visual)

A found piece of poetry by Gary Snyder recently made it's way into my sketchbook.

Candlestick

I recently scavenged my head-space for old material in an attempt to find out how much and what of my own writing I actually store. I managed to remember a few poems from early 2000, some nine years ago amazingly enough. I remember reading it at the public library in my home town to a room filled with society ladies. Since it stayed with me for this long I decided to use it musically and did a short arrangement on the ukulele I recently received as a birthday gift from a dear friend. Enjoy.

Englishman

image by bowen.ames, who urges you to visit englishmansounds.com

Why I'm Staying (II)

Genre: Flash Fiction 

This is Part Two of a flash fiction piece titled "Why I am Staying." Flash Fiction refers to the original publishing style.  I crafted Part One shortly after moving to the West Coast and decided to publish each part in email form.  Part One and the continuation below were sent in the body of an email to a fictitious friend and BCC'd (blind carbon copied) to several hundred unsuspecting friends, family, and readers on my mailing list. My intentions in employing this experimental form were to provide the reader with a voyeuristic and perhaps scandalous reading experience, providing that each recipient supposed they had received the story accidentally.  Moreover, it created widespread and skewed understanding my chosen occupation and current location.   Enjoy.

 How are you? Things are going well in Altoro. My massage/talk therapy venture is really taking off. Also, I'm seeing someone, but before I tell you about him, I've got to come clean. I know I’ve told you several times that I’ve met many of the men I’ve dated at Space Bar. Well, I need to tell you something. Space Bar isn’t a really bar. It’s not even a place. I know you’ve tried to find it. I remember when you called me. You said you were in front of a Garage that had Hello Kitty graffiti on it. Well, I’m sorry. I felt very bad when I got your voicemail. And then we never really talked about it. But Space Bar doesn’t exist. So, there you have it. I lied. I’m a liar. There you have it.

And while you have it, you might as well know that the reason I was always telling you that I met those guys at Space Bar, it was always code for… okay, here it is. Online dating. I date online. I do, I date online and all those times I said I met those men at Space Bar, I really met them online. Ugh, I feel so much better. I feel like I’ve been carrying the weight of a desktop computer on my shoulders.

I don’t know why I kept it hidden from you. I guess it’s because I always made fun of you that time that you dated that guy from online. I felt like a hypocrite. I’m sorry for that. I’m really sorry. It’s just that those were different times. That was 2000 back when online dating was still creepy and stigmatized and you might have been murdered and I just found that so funny. I couldn’t help but make fun of you. I’m sorry.

But now it’s 2009 and things are very different and we can be open about it. I date online. I’m not ashamed of it. My roommate does it to. We kept it a secret from each other at first too. But then we just… well, god who cares! Now we sort of look at it just like if we were to have met someone on the subway or at a bar.

I can understand if you’re still somewhat resistant to the idea. It can be difficult to believe that meeting a perfect stranger who may or may not have seen naked photos of you online is safe. But it’s safe now! It really is. I like to think that online dating is actually our generation’s reward for having made it through the 1980’s when kidnapping was so popular. It’s like we can finally taste the forbidden candy being offered by strangers! You know? It’s liberating, right? It feels good, right? I mean think about how rarely you hear about people getting killed by psychopaths they meet on the internet. Hardly ever anymore, right? It’s very rare. True, psychopaths are probably still online, but they’re online looking for love!

Listen, I’m sure you have some questions and you’re probably still very disappointed that Space Bar doesn’t exist. But I’m happy to offer the internet to you as a replacement. I mean, just look at the several dozen men I’ve been with in the last few years. True, those weren’t lasting relationships, but those are memories that I will hold dear, truly. That guy that I met in California on business and then lived with in his van – he was from online. But that was MySpace. That was before I was really comfortable with the idea. Myspace seemed a sort of lighter version of the real online dating sites. Before that it was Friendster, and now take your pick! Manhunt, OK Cupid, Lovelab! I’ve got six profiles running right now.

That hitchhiker I met in Colorado on my way to that wedding in Portland. He was online, and he wasn’t a hitchhiker. I met him on a proper online dating website and he wasn’t a hitchhiker, he was just unemployed. So when we hit it off I offered to take him as my date to the wedding. I know I told you that I met him at a coffee shop and that I had innocently asked him if there was a campground nearby… well it’s not entirely untrue because I was on my laptop at a coffee shop when I met him online. I was really just looking for campsites online and it was taking forever so while I was searching I logged into my OK Cupid account there he was!

But you should know that I’m very safe. You’ve got to be safe. I’m always safe and I always meet them in a brightly lit place. And if I meet them in my apartment, I make sure that all the lights are on. But anyway, you know me, I’m very good at reading people. I almost never meet psychos. Though, this guy that I met recently said that it wouldn’t matter if he were a psycho anyhow because psychopathic characteristics wouldn’t show upon first glance.

The real reason that I’m bringing this all up is because I wanted to tell you about who I’m dating. His name is Bill and he’s excellent. He really is. But now that I’m in Altoro I can’t very well tell you that I met him at Space Bar. There are no bars in Altoro so I decided to come clean. I am glad that I got my crash course in online dating in New York City where there are real psychos out there. I’m very confident I can handle any computer programmer I meet here.

So Bill. He actually contacted me first. I’d seen his profile here and there and I could tell he was fun, but I was playing coy so I didn’t send a message right away. He asked me only after the first couple messages if I was interested in partying with him. I knew that this didn’t mean playing beer pong so I said, “What kind of partying did you have in mind?”

He replied, “What sort of mind-altering substances do you like (esp. ones which augment libido and extend sexual performance)? I'm friendly.”

At least he was honest. I replied, “I mean, pot is cool. I've been thinking about trying to get some shrooms recently, but haven't found any, which is surprising because I thought they might just grow outside my cottage since it’s California and I thought that shrooms were all the rage. Ha.”

See, the great thing about dating online is that you can really test your boundaries. I didn’t really have any intention of meeting up with him. I usually limit myself to people within a 20 minute drive and he lived about 30 minutes outside of Altoro. It just seems silly to set yourself up for such a long commute for casual dating, you know? And anyhow, it’s true, I was thinking about finding shrooms. I just think it might be a fun way to fully experience what remnants there might be here from the Summer of Love. And even if he and I weren’t a match there was the chance that he’d have a connection to some shrooms.

He replied, “There's cooler drugs in California than shrooms, I would hazard to say. Anyhow, mushrooms make me nauseous, unfortunately. I prefer K for hallucinogenic experiences... also dig GHB and ecstasy. But I have a really strong sense that it'd be fun to get into some mutual molestation with you. Are you working tomorrow? We could do this tonight.”

Well, this would usually be the point that I immediately eliminate someone from my contact list. If someone thinks that I am interested in virtually shaking hands and nothing more before I dive into an actual bed with them, they aren’t getting any real sense of me at all. But something told me an on-going correspondence would be entertaining at the very least. I replied,

“Hmm, I don't do K for sure, maybe E, but I had to Google what GHB even was. And what made you ask? I'm only entertaining the idea because I haven't tripped in ages, but truthfully, meeting up with a stranger and popping some hard drugs and maybe getting murdered sounds less than appealing to me at this point in my life, let alone tonight.”

His response, “Puhlease.... I put the wood chipper away last month, I'll have you know... and why would I want to waste some perfectly nice recreational drugs on a corpse-to-be? I asked because you look like someone who enjoys recreational drugs from time to time in tandem w/ having great sex, and I'm in that sorta mood tonight.”

See, I told you. Hilarious. And to be honest, I was sort of aroused by him making jokes about killing me. Or rather, not killing me. Anyway, I told him that I might consider meeting him for a beer. I didn’t hear anything back for a few days. I was all like what happened to him? What was he doing?

There is something about online dating that truly mystifies your understanding of others. It’s somewhat easy to imagine someone sitting at their computer, their face lit by glow of the screen, smiling as they toss around witty banter. But in the time that goes between messages, one is left to fictionalize the life of their hypothetical other. Where do they live? What side of the bed do they sleep on? Where do they work? Perhaps you’ll even bump into them as you go about your day.

Well, as it turns out, Bill was unemployed. Eventually he wrote back sternly, “What's your insistence on meeting out for a beer? It's quaint but it kind of bores me.... it implies either that you fear you'll be in some danger in paying me a visit (long after I've stowed away the wood chipper for the season). This itself displays some naiveté about the nature of nefarious people (the worst of them don't exhibit their sociopathy right away, but tend to wait till many months later, after they've intertwined their finances, insurances, lease, etc. with yours).... or that you worry I won't be able to handle your rejection, should it come to that, and the crowded conditions of a bar will be what prevents me from lapsing into hysteria or something. Anyway, I'm really not a drinker anymore, and don't really frequent bars these days.... think you can brave it and come hang sometime in the near future?”

Do you see? Do you see my attraction building? His intellect was apparent. I’m not interested in playing games. But this was different and I was ready. I knew that my response must be sharp and distant. I mustn’t allude to any interest in meeting him at all.

I wrote back confidently, “Well, as it goes, I like to function at some level of comfort. Please, don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to discomfort, I just moved from New York, I'll remind you. And being that I'm twenty-five, I feel quite comfortable at a bar stool. I don't feel that same comfort knocking on the door of a stranger and trying hard to seem as though I'm maintaining said comfort when I am indeed not comfortable at all. Add that with a Dixie cup sitting on the coffee table, and well... I’ll be honest, I'm a bit of a yes man, especially when offered free drugs, which has proved both rewarding and damaging in the past. My fear, if you can even call it that, is that before I know it, I'll be high as a kite and watching a stranger roll around on the floor trapped in K hole and that, well, I'll just leave and thusly leave you to die alone in your apartment. Or worse, the roles reversed. And so, albeit a grandiose forecasting, a bar stool is a simpler alternative, a calming one. And, also, you're a little creepy. But, maybe.”

He responded within an hour, “I can work with maybe... How's this evening?.... I got a new Monster Mash album I can play in the background when you get here... BTW, there's no need to knock; the front door creaks open on its own to admit you when you arrive I'm also out of Dixie cups... if you could bring some that would be much appreciated. You got a # my people can reach your people on?”

I wrote back at my own leisure, “I do have a phone number. Would you like it? While I wait for your response I'll mull over our hypothetical meeting and drug doing more. See, you haven't exactly decreased your creepiness with anything you've said. Also, your last message completely ignored my request to meet at a bar and now has us hypothetically back at your place. Which now sort of makes you seem pushy. Either pushy or dim-witted. Also, I suspect your place smells bad. Something about your single profile photo screams of smelly apartment. I mean, I don't mean to be offensive or presumptuous, but I don't want to be murdered or die in a K hole in some creepy guy’s smelly apartment.”

His response was perfect. It was when I knew he might be the one. “I’d rather you die alone than in my smelly apartment. That will be all.” It’s been six months. Bill and I are still laughing about how we met.

Scissors

(Genre: Poetry, Visual, Dramatic Monologue)

Nobody Leave the Room. Cut.
Not one of you leaves this room.
We had seven pairs of scissors here
at two o'clock and now (shh)
there are two pairs
and it's two-thirty.

Quiet. No one move. And

hush.

Quiet. I want those scissors
right here on this table (shifts his view)
I can stand here all day.
Scissors can't wander or fly
or drive away.

With stern eyes:

Linda, close the door.

We need those scissors.

Being in love or Not...

Genre: Visual Thesis (Sketchbook)