Free refills.

He sat, unflinchingly, in his hard wooden chair with a lukewarm cup of coffee in front of him, the paper edges turning sewage brown.  In his hands, he held a book.  He was trying to read the book, but could not concentrate.  He was trying to drink the coffee, but did not like coffee.  It was the cheapest thing on the menu.  And there were free refills.  And this happenstance allowed him to sit for hours, trying to read, pretending not to steal glances at the girl making the coffee.

He was young.  That was part of it.  He did not see value in himself.  He felt small and weak, like a freshly hatched chick.  He looked the part, too.  He was thin and birdlike, with soft, thin down upon his head.  She was about his age.  Maybe older.  There was something fierce about her.  If he was a chick, she was a Peregrine Falcon.  She wore vintage clothes that seemed mismatched but weren't.  She had tattoos on her arms.  He did not know what the tattoos were because he could not see them with his averted eyes.

He felt foolish.  All the hours spent in the cafe, pretending to read, drink, live.  He occasionally worked himself into a feverish state...convinced himself that he would just talk to her for god's sake.  It wasn't like she was better than he was.  Or was she?  Was her towering confidence superior to his life inside his mind?  He knew he was not a bad person.  If he was a person.

He sometimes doubted his own existence.  It was like a house of cards.  He got lost in philosophical labyrinths that led to more self-doubt.  More self-loathing.  Then, he would decide that it was all futile anyway.  He was perfectly content to drink tea and read in his apartment.  But if this was true, why the facade?  Why the lukewarm coffee?  He lied to himself and, this too, made him question his existence.

After months and months, he decided it had to end.  He walked to the cafe, his sneakers slapping the sidewalk.  He was going to talk to her.  If it didn't work, so be it.  The stasis was killing him.  He felt strong in his resolve.  He felt the sun on his shoulders.  He felt a kind of pride welling up in him like a storm wave.

He turned the corner and his resolve grew stronger.  He knew exactly what he would say.  And how he would say it.  One part Jimmy Stewart, two parts Bogart.  He might have to start smoking.  When he opened the door, the cafe was the same as always.  With one small difference.  She was gone.  Without asking the man with the goatee behind the counter, he knew that she was gone for good.  He actually laughed out loud.  It was comical.  All that money spent on coffee.  All the emotional turmoil.  At least the refills had been free.

He stepped out of the cafe and into the liquor store next door.  He did not know what brand of cigarettes to buy, so he looked at the man behind the counter, put on his best Stewart/Bogart and said, "Surprise me."

That old feeling...

Joe sat on the tired bench and watched the pigeons scuttle and peck, forging their way through the crowds of tourists.  His sunglasses, dark black, covered two eyes that had not "seen" for almost twenty years.  Since the accident.  But it did not lessen his ability to see the pigeons work their magic.  At times, he thought he could see more clearly now than he had ever been able to before.

The accident was one of those things.  One of those things you beat yourself up about until you're on the ropes, until it doesn't make sense anymore...until you have to forgive yourself.  Fireworks.  A dumb prank.  But it had cost him.

Ally had been so beautiful.  It made him do stupid things.  Jump over fire pits that spat embers into the night sky.  Write songs that never landed right.  Songs he was always convinced were brilliant.  He liked to practice and practice, imagining her reverent face...the love radiating from her smile.  The reality, a kind of awkward silence.  A thank you...the kind you give when you get a sweater you don't like.  Well, it always made him up the ante.  And then it took his eyes.  And he grew up and she married and moved away, but, by god, he could still see her face, too.  As clear as if it was in front of him.  For years, it made him angry to think of her.  These days, it just made him sigh.

There was no one to impress, now.  He spent his days sitting in the sun, drinking in the noises of the tourists and the cries of the gulls.  The seals.  He often chuckled at how similar they sounded.  He could see himself, too.  The old blind man chuckling to himself.  He wondered if he looked the way he did in his mind.  He wondered if he was kinder or more harsh in his assessment of what the years had done.  He wondered what that said about him.  And he realized it did not matter.

Losing his eyes had taught him that...the most important lesson of all.  There was not a lot that did matter. There was sleep, a good meal, friendship and love.  It taught him that the things he focused on were not the important things.  Perhaps blindness had made him a better person.  Closing his eyes had opened other parts of him.

He did see her face this day.  And he felt those old urges.  To prove he could run the fastest, drink the most, be the...best, most daring...something.  Perhaps that was what propelled him forward.

Witnesses told the police the basics.  The old blind man...the one who always sat on that bench...out of nowhere - over the railing and seconds later screaming and flailing in the icy waters of the bay.  They did not realize that the screams were screams of joy, dredged from deep within him, tainted with years of...well, life.  They did not try to speculate about the smile, and he did not feel the need to explain.  They took him home.  And the next day, he was back at his spot, listening to the pigeons and children scuttle about.  Nothing had changed.  He felt younger.  Fresh.  He wanted to ask if he looked younger. But it didn't matter.

The red ball.

The one they had at recess.  For kickball.  For general mayhem.  The one that inflated and warmed in the sun.  The one you took to the nuts a couple times.  The one that embedded your braces in your lips.  The one you could really sink your foot into.  Crosshatched and beautiful.  Remember that ball.  That ball is your world.  Everything you ever needed was embodied by that ball.  But you got greedy.  You got monied.  You stopped empathizing with Holden Caufield and realized he was the phoniest, whiny-bitchiest one in the book.  Much rather be friends with Stradlater.  Fuck, even Ackley.  But man, you could kick the shit out of that ball.  And that used to be more important than almost anything.   And then you moved on to drugs and parties and girls and bullshit jobs you hated, hoping in some dark, cobwed infested part of your mind that the kickball was still waiting.  But it is not.

Morgen Bailey's lovely podcast.

Morgen Bailey did a critique of my story, "Green", featured on this blog.



Thanks Morgen!

The drunken pencil.

      A man named John wakes up.  It is Monday morning.  His eyes and throat burn with regret.  There is a film of bourbon sweat on his forehead and upper lip.  His forehead is wrinkled and creased with age.  John is 42 years old.
     John woke up because the alarm woke him up.  He takes a shower because otherwise people will view him with contempt and snicker behind his back.  It doesn't matter what John does for a living.  The only thing that does matter is that he hates it.  He loathes it.  It is a parasite sucking the very hope from his shriveled heart.  Every day John goes to work and every day he smiles and agrees with something which, in his soul, he thinks is repugnant and devoid of value.
     John has car payments to make and his student loans never seem to disappear no matter how often he wishes that they would.
     Sometimes John talks to women.  In fact, he is relatively certain that he could have a girlfriend if he really wanted one.  There is just some block.  Something that prevents him from pursuing the matter.  He is like a bird dog that is too old to hunt.  John is only 42 years old.
     Beer cans collect beside John's stove.  He is ashamed of them, but he also doesn't care.  They make him drunk enough to tolerate the banality of his existence in the world.  Sometimes John thinks about the past.  When he does he usually thinks about third grade.  There was a girl in third grade that John loved more than he has ever loved anyone or anything since.  Her name was Rachel and she had hair that fell in soft waves and curled around her face.
     In third grade, John was the best artist in his class.  Everyone agreed.  He was neat and orderly with his lines, allowing them to fall onto the paper using his hand muscles only to guide their descent.  John flew threw his drawings.  When he was holding a pencil he felt free.
     Throughout the rest of John's educational career he got by on his ability to bullshit and the fact that artists were considered different.  He was allowed certain freedoms that he did not appreciate.  John thinks of this sometimes when he is on his fourth or fifth beer.  Sometimes he even picks up his pencil, but he can never think of anything to draw.

Anthony

My stomach turned as I felt the bat sink into the
softness of Anthony's skull.  I had expected it to be
harder.  It wasn't hard at all.  I thought it would
feel like hitting a wooden block.  It felt more like a
watermelon.  Everything slowed down for a second after
the initial impact.  I watched his legs crumple under
him and he fell like a shadow.  Like all the air had
been let out of him.  He fell in rhythm with the
churning of my stomach.  There was a sickness inside
me.  I felt the echoes of the blow.  Felt them in my
spine.  Anthony lay where he fell.

I looked around me.  Nothing.  No one.  It was dark
and the night was thick with fog.  I reached numb
fingers into Anthony's pockets and found little.  A
few dollars crumpled in the pocket of his jacket.  His
cell phone.  His inhaler.  I took the money and the
phone and then I started to run.  Everything was still
too slow.  My thoughts.  My feet.  I wanted to speed
them up.  I ran for what seemed like hours and then I
slumped against the wall.  I wondered if Anthony was
dead.  When I had first thought of it, after school,
it seemed harmless enough.  I would hit Anthony with
the bat and that would be enough.  He would know that
you shouldn't mess with people you don't know anything
about.  Now that I'd heard the sound.  Now that it was
locked inside me, rattling through my body, it seemed
a lot more complicated.  I turned my head to the
side and the vomit erupted from me.  Even when it was
gone I couldn't stop.  I felt my body trying to push
it all out of me.  Then I realized
that I was crying.

Doris

            Frank was in the backyard tending to the nightcrawlers while the rest of the family cleaned the dishes.  It was three in the kitchen.  Mom, Dad, and me.  Frank was on nightcrawler duty because he called Doris the Whoris a cunt.  Doris was one of our neighbors.  I didn’t know what a cunt was at the time.  Or what a whoris was.  All I knew was Doris liked to wear her red and black bikini all the time.  She liked to drink beer.  She made my Dad blush.  And my mom hated her.

            I was just glad to have a night away from the worms.  Usually it was something Frank and I did together.  He was 16, eight years older than me, and he spoke in a language I didn’t understand.  It was all ‘shit’, ‘pussy’, ‘fuck’, ‘cocksucker’.  I didn’t know what they meant, but I liked the sound of them and I knew better than to ask Mom or Dad.  I didn’t like the word ‘cunt’.  Mom and Dad were yukking it up while I dried the dishes, and I rolled the word around in my mouth, enough to realize I didn’t like the feel of it.  It seemed to be rough on every edge.  I knew it was a dirty thing to call Doris.  So, I was mad.  I liked Doris a lot.

            The reason I liked Doris was because she was unlike any woman I had ever met.  She wasn’t what you would call pretty.  She was certainly lumpy.  She was soft and nice, and she always smelled like straw.  She’d always invite me over for a glass of tea when I passed her house.  She even showed me her boobs once which made me feel strange.  She was mad about some complaint from a neighbor.  “For shits sake, they’re just tits!”  And then they were right there and I felt funny and Doris laughed.  “Honey, you blush like that, you’re gonna make me change my ways.”

            My mom didn’t like me to hang out with Doris.  None of the moms in the neighborhood liked it, but we were there all the time.  She was the kind of woman that children feel safe around.  I heard my parents arguing about it one time.  I couldn’t make out the words at first, just the name.  Then I heard my dad shout: “Jesus Christ, Arlene.  You know them boys down the way fucked her up so she can’t have none of her own.  Have a heart.”

            It had never occurred to me that any woman could be incapable of having kids.  I told Frank about it, but he already knew.  I guess everyone knew but me.  I was too young to watch the news.  But after that I was more careful about spending time with Doris.  I walked by more often.  I let her hug me a little longer.  I knew what it felt like to want something you couldn’t have.  I knew that feeling all too well.