2 Minutes. Go!

     "Are you sure you want a clear wipe? There is no going back."

    "Absolutely, Doc. Wipe that shit clean. Good memories, bad memories, feelings of inadequacy and past relationships be gone. Jobs? Done. Friends? Fuck it, I'll make new ones."

    "There will be a sense of disorientation that is strong. Sometimes there is a fracture that we do not foresee. Ego obliteration is one thing; a completely blank slate ... not that it is unprecedented, but it is usually used as a means of punishment and control."

    "Alright. I'm punishing myself. You're in control."

    "And what, exactly, are you punishing yourself for? The clean slate is usually reserved for the worst our world has to offer."

    "Yep. That's me. I'm a fucking mess. I can't get it down, this grown up thing you guys all bought into. But I also can't seem to just relax and go with it. I actually want people to be honest, accountable you know? I own the bad shit I do, how come no one else does? Clearly *I* am the problem here. I just want you to wipe that shit clean, so I can start over and be like everybody else."

    "You think you're ... different, is that it?"

    "Look man, I'm not being superior. It makes my life miserable. I don't know how it happened. Maybe I missed that week in Kindergarten. Maybe I had a fever that went too high. All I know is, long as I can remember, the world did not get along with me and vice versa. I'm tired of trying to explain myself. Hit the button."

    "Sir, this isn't a fast food restaurant."

    "Yeah, no shit. No happy meals. Come no, man. I paid the fee. You have the money. Don't try and pretend that you have, er, ethical problems with this. You wipe people's minds for a living. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot. You ain't in consideration for the priesthood, you feel me?"

    "Insulting me is probably not in your best interest."

    "Are you threatening me? Is that what that was? I can go someplace else. It's not like you're the only goon in town doing this ... ahem ... good work."

    "No, no. No problem. We'll begin now. Nurse? Injection?"

    The patient's eyes closed almost immediately.

    "Jesus, did you hear that one?"

    "Yes, Doctor. Shall I take him to the O.R.?"

    "Nah, wheel him down the hall to 409 with the rest of the assisted-suicides."

    "Suicides, Doctor?"

    "Problem, Janet?"

    "No, Doctor. Of course not."

    Janet did as she was asked. Otherwise, she would be the next in line for room 409. She knew that. That was one thing she did know.

2 Minutes. Go!

She got her high heel boots on; it’s a long walk to a backward con. 

Listen to the clapback, all them cobblestones she’s walking on. 

Don’t get it twisted; it’s just life in the city; man, she gon’ roll along.

She so cute with that Instagram smile, all ducked out and small. 

Take her down to the Taste Freeze, fill her bags up at the mall. 

She’s got boxes full of drama, and that’s not all.

Beneath the heat, the sly smiles wither. 

Look at me coming yon, coming hither. 

Listen to the morning birds while they dither. 

There’s a mud castle, and it’s decorated just the way you like it. 

No car, just bike it. Can’t love it, like it. 

Stay away from brujas, them bitches mad psychic.

Take me down the bodega, turn the hydrant, pass the popsicles. 

Stand in front the ice cream, turn you into an icicle. 

Be radical. Magical. Done give up; it’s tragic y’all.

Or turn yourself to stone, wondering where the greenery grow. 

Who’s there finding out, and who already know… 

It’s summer in the city, and the rooftops smell like snow.

2 Minutes. Go!

Junkies have priorities, it’s just that they’re fucked, but they’re not as simple as Hollywood leads you to believe. Being a junkie takes motivation, and that drive sometimes leaks into other places. Revenge. Sex. Love. Work. There are all kinds of junkies, and some of them do real well for themselves. 

It’s fucked if you think about it. We hate all addicts except the ones addicted to money or work. What is Jeff Bezos if not a fucking money junkie? Self-respect? What’s that? The opinion of your loved ones? Doesn’t matter. It’s how YOU feel, right? But don’t let that money lust manifest in booze, drugs or sex unless you’re a degenerate. 

Workaholics are heroes. You miss your kid's birthday because you’re a drunk or a gambler? Degenerate. You miss every birthday because business doesn’t take the day off, and it’s your job to provide? That checks as long as you’re a step away from food stamps. When you’re puling down 500K a year and no one would care if you took a Saturday afternoon off, you may feel like a real go-getter, but, to the rest of us, you look like a junkie. 

Hypocrisy is the name of the game. Politicians preach about righteousness while they sell their tongues for corporate kickbacks. 

You run a mega-church? I hope there’s room in mega-hell.

How do you deal with a world like this one? Thug cops on a murder trip. School shootings. Chinese concentration camps everyone pretends not to see. Don’t look where those missiles went, the ones we sold, the ones taking babies out before they get old. 

Tell me what a Billionaire is except a fucking sociopath? The Kardashians may aspire to that, but the rest of us would be a whole lot better off trying to be decent people. Keeping our eyes on our own, individual prizes instead of buying into the money/power worship.

But maybe I’m just a simpleton; I’m sure not powerful. Nor rich. Nor influential. I’m not super talented, and I don’t grind 24/7. I like to fish. I like to spend afternoons reading in the shade of a tree. See, I figured something out. I watched a man defer happiness and die before he got to tap into it. 

Fuck power; I just want this lazy smile pasted to my face. 

You can have the rest of the cards, Slick.

I’ll keep my hidden ace.  

2 Minutes. Go!

The wind changes the texture of the air, sends ripples across the surface of the water. It carries the smell of honeysuckle and pipe smoke. It is a chorus of murmurs through the dry leaves. 

Andrew watches a leaf drift by, first plummeting, before being sucked up, up, up, high into the air on updraft after updraft. It rides the same currents the osprey does and he wonders where each will be when the sun goes down. 

Andrew will be at home. 

Right now, however, he is not at home. He is shin deep in the cold, clear water of a runoff stream, rod in hand, feeling the wind on his skin and wondering if the trout are feeling hungry. 

He imagines they are. It’s been a long winter. 

In later years, he will come to think of it as a time of directions. Everyone left and nothing went right. He could almost find a bit of humor in that somedays - dark humor, small and sticky like a ball of pine tar.

Through all those months, all the trips to the hospital, he had found solace by the water. There was a logic in it that he appreciated. You fished. If the fish were hungry and if you didn’t screw up too bad, you caught some. Fish like an idiot? No fish. Fish aren’t interested? So be it. Some things are beyond our control. The fish were just. There was no justice in sickness or doctors. I

Illness was the bravado and optimism of fishing, with nothing else. And it waited. 

Illness has immense patience. 

He tried to push it out of his mind and almost succeeded. For a few hours, he was almost as pure as the water. He was connected to something, tethered. 

He could not float away.