Money for Nothing

America is in dire straits, and this is not news. We have known this for a while now, and I think we knew it in our collective subconscious well before we really “knew” it all over CNN and Fox News and that other stupid channel that I forget the name of.

America is in dire straits in part because of politicians who have shirked accountability while looking desperately around the world for someone else to blame. Well, they weren’t the ones doing the looking actually. This was and is done by the men and women of our military. 

Then, when American voters (I’d say citizens, but politicians as a general rule do not give a capital-f Fuck about citizens unless they can fire them) realized that our bravest men and women had been sent around the world on a wild goose chase for a vague “enemy,” that is anywhere and everywhere, and that many of them were dying in the process, the politicians decided to send out these big science fiction planes called Drones that can seek & destroy this “enemy” that way. Except, by definition this enemy can be anywhere at any time and actually technically can exist in anyone as well, lying dormant until something is pushed too far. There is no winning a war on terrorism, not by any stretch of the imagination.

However that is just part of the problem. I could write another scathing paragraph about the media, our country’s richest citizens, the corporations who have outsourced like crazy or the banks that gave a mortgage to anyone with a pulse and a 3^rd-grade education. But that’s not what I want to say today.

The other part of the problem that is being largely ignored is US. Us. You and fucking me. Your Uncle Ned. That co-worker who always has the runny nose. You name it. Us. The Normal People. Average Americans.

Every day I hear people just like me squawking at work, on the bus, at the local orgy, playing the same no-win game that the politicians tried to play all over Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan for years. Blaming Democrats. Republicans. Kenyans. Muslims. Immigrants. The Rich. Congress. The President. All the while contributing to our very dire straits by spending $200 on a pair of Beats headphones and $499 on an iPad for the kids and then crying poverty because there’s no money left for a vacation in Aruba this year.

Around this time, I usually hear this complaint, in some form: “The American Dream isn’t real anymore. Things used to be so much better in this country.”

Um.

When?                             

                                                           

We can’t ignore the fact that in today’s America minorities and women and gay people are actually treated like human beings (For the most part. I agree that we still have a long way to go in a lot of ways). That’s been a big step forward, and it’s happened relatively recently given the fact that this country is 236 years old and counting.

Do you mean the 1990s? When everyone seemed to have everything they possibly wanted, unemployment was low and the stock market was sky high? When the internet boom was making 23-year-old kids bazillionaires and everyone in America owned their own home? When the economy was so great that it seemed too good to be true?

Yeah, because it WAS too good to be true. That’s why we are where we are today. People spent too much, saved too little and no one told them that it was wrong. Everyone spent too much, actually, and it built up a few huge bubbles in our economy that grew and grew and fucking burst and left us all covered in gross bad-credit ectoplasm, Ghostbusters-style.

Or maybe you mean the simpler time of the 1970s and 1980s?

Here’s a secret about that time period: They weren't spending $200 on a pair of headphones. Or a piece of plastic and glass that does neat things when you touch it. Remember that scene in Adam Sandler’s movie “The Wedding Singer” when that guy who looks like Brendan Fraser and is supposed to marry Drew Barrymore shows off his fancy new stereo with a CD player? Everyone thought he was a huge douche for spending that much money on a toy. They were logical about it, and laughed it off as what it was: A child who didn't get everything he wanted for Christmas compensating for it as an adult by denying himself nothing.

The good people of yesteryear didn't live like Glenn Guglia (the Brendan Fraser lookalike). They lived like middle class people should live – modestly yet comfortably. The Family Vacation was a major part of American life because that was the priority of the adults in the households. They didn't buy their kids $500 toys; they took them to Europe. Those were the values of the times, and, more importantly, the values of the people.

The American Dream isn't lost or gone or dead. It just isn't as simple or easy as we've diluted ourselves to thinking. The equation was never Work Hard = Get Rich. It goes more like this:

Finish High School + Go To College or Learn a Trade + Stay Out of Trouble for the Most Part + Get a Shitty Job that No One Else Wants to Do + Graduate College + Work that Shitty Job for a while Longer + Look for Less Shitty Job + Get Turned Down a Lot for Good Jobs + Don’t Become an Alcoholic + Finally Get a Good Job + Work Really, Really Hard at that Good Job for a Long Time + Save Your Money + Invest Smartly + Don’t Buy Frivolous Things + Keep Working Hard + Stay Healthy + Ask for or Apply For a Promotion + Move Up in the Company + Keep Saving your Money + Take a Vacation + But Not 10 Vacations + Invest Even Smarter + 401k Fund + Use your Expertise To Make your Company Better + Get Compensated More for your Wisdom + Stay Motivated + Suddenly Have a Great Job.

That is the path to the American Dream of a nice house and a white picket fence and enough disposable income to piss off the neighbors. But it does not come easy – it’s not supposed to. Wealth is a privilege. Not a right.

End.

Sturgeon (Sorry for Leaving)

Hello,

 First of all, I apologize for my long absence. Between two job transitions, graduating college and focusing on some longer form works, I've truly neglected this blog and, by doing so, those loyal few who actually read it. I promise that I will try and do better in the coming months, and at least conclude the tale that I set out to tell nearly a year ago, "The Tale of Loring Manor."

 My current major work outside of Loring Manor is a screenplay, as you may expect, about a New England town. This is a small, coastal town; a fishing town called Sturgeon, where, as in so many other small towns across America, a greedy few control everything through manipulation and corruption. I love the story deeply, and I even truly hate a few of the characters, particularly a union thug named Gary, the ice cold son-of-a-bitch who betrays the most righteous man in the whole film. I won't include an excerpt of the script on here - yet. All I can give you now is this, a short description of the screenplay that I intend to use for marketing purposes. I am about 85% of the way done with the writing process, so hopefully I will share a little more of it with you soon.

 "In the small fishing town of Sturgeon, Massachusetts, Patrick “Mack” McLaughlin and his best friend, Jacob “Cobb” Riley are a couple of young muscle guys for the local drug and labor racket run by the old dockworker union and their political affiliates. Along with their mentor, Senior Headbreaker and Hitman-in-Chief Alan “Soup” Suprin, they bust jaws, break fingers and bash kneecaps all up and down the Merrimack Valley to “regulate” competition. For a salary significantly better than that of a construction worker or longshoreman, this is their version of a career. After a transport of coke and heroin gets jacked from a truck that was technically under the crew’s protection, the three of them face tough choices in the face of nostalgia, loyalty, and the strong, relentless current of a violent way of life that churns the conscience the way the Merrimack churns the Atlantic at the river’s turbulent mouth."

 I hope that that excites your imagination for now. I apologize again for the disappearance, and I promise that the concluding parts to Loring Manor will be posted in the near future, one after another after another (yes, there are three more).

The Tale of Loring Manor, Part Two

The next day at school, I couldn't stop hearing rumors about Jamie McLean and her suddenly absent husband. As soon as I heard a group of cute chicks talking about it outside the gymnasium after lunch, I was ready to rock despite any previous reservations. Everyone at Salem Junior High, especially the girls, will want to hear all about how we stormed up the stone stairs of Loring Manor and launched our own investigation right there, just us and our flashlights.

Nick caught this vibe, too. He wanted so bad to be a real tough guy and not just another kid from a Boston suburb. It had seemed like he had been yearning for street cred since the third grade; and busting onto some real rich guy’s property and trying to dig up a murder victim? Yea, that's pretty legit.

Chaz on the other hand never gave two shits about what anyone thought of him, so I was surprised to learn that he was more fired up about the plan than the day before.

“You guys pussy out yet, or are we still goin’ up the steps to find that corpse?” Chaz said, walking up to my locker with Coop waddling behind him. Nick and I shared a set of lockers, with his being on the bottom and mine on the top. Every Friday he would threaten to “shank” me so he could take the top from me as we hustled to grab our coats and hit that sweet weekend pavement.

“We’re still down, Gamble,” Nick said, standing up and slamming his midget locker. “You got a plan?”

“Not yet,” Chaz admitted as he made eye contact with me. “But we’ll work on that today. After school meet up in back of the soccer fields. You got any butts, Nicky P?”

“You know it.”

We slapped skins and started to split up. Chaz let Nick and Coop walk away before he started to walk with me towards my American History class.

“You’re gonna be late for gym again,” I observed, not wanting to get into our planning routine before class, as it usually involved a lot of my thinking and planning on my part, with him egging me on to be ‘less of a pussy’ and ‘tougher than a bag of lettuce for once.’

“Fuck gym,” he said, looking over his shoulder to make sure no teachers heard him. “I want to make this happen. Before it was just to scare Coop and show him that he’s an idiot, but now I want to go up there and see what’s what. If we don’t, some other group of kids will. Gloucester kids, or Marblehead jackasses, I don’t know. I just want to do this ourselves. We always talk like we’re the shit; well, let’s fucking prove it for once.”

He didn’t bother checking to see if anyone had heard him swear that time.

“Mr. Gamble!” Mrs. Adler shrieked from her open classroom door across the hall. All four feet, eight inches of her came flying at my best friend; her face was a cross between a pit bull and a witch doctor channeling the dead. She had been a Navy officer in her twenties, and here in the halls at Salem Junior High, thirty years later, that toughness and discipline had only sharpened over time. I cowered from the scene as she grabbed hold of Chaz’s ear by sliding into my own classroom for the next period, which was luckily across the hall from Mrs. Adler’s.

“Yo!” Chaz yelled as she began to usher him to the stairwell and down to Vice Principal McCarron’s office. “On the hill! After school!” His voice got further away as he was led down the stairs by the Admiraless of SJH, the way a cartoon character’s shouts slowly dissipate after they fall off a cliff. “After detention…” I heard him add, far away and trailing off. I imagined Mrs. Adler giving him a hard nudge in the ribs after he had the audacity to try and make after-school plans while he was her prisoner. Chills went down my spine.

Last period went by slow. I listened to McHugh drone on about how messy things were in the 1840’s as the country attempted a hard transition. In my head, I was at Loring Manor. Not in it, yet, but around it. I was across the street from the house, regarding the steps, the massive front porch, the strange pillars that had a Greek or Roman quality to them. Inside, someone was waiting. I didn’t know who they were and they sure as shit didn’t know who we were – who I was, actually, since I was alone. The darkness of the windows seemed to reach outwards, somehow creating an effect that was the complete antithesis of shining. I reached one foot off the curb and into the street; off the safety of my sidewalk, towards the big stone steps.

After school, we circled up on the Hill behind the school that overlooked the soccer fields to wait for Chaz to get out of detention. We huddled behind a row of tall bushes that shielded the grounds of the school from the residential neighborhood adjacent to it. This is where Chaz and Nick liked to smoke their Lucky Strike's out of the view of the teachers and the lamer kids who were known to snitch to get on Vice Principal McCarron's good side.

"I don't know about you guys, but all this talk about Old Man McLean all dead and bloody is really pumping me up," Nick said. "The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Hot chick marries old dude with lots of money. She thinks hey, it'll give me an easy out in life. She don't have to work, she gets access to all the finest shit, and soon enough he'll be gone anyway and she'll have it all for herself. Hell, she can put up with the old man for a while if she gets a free ride out of it. But not so fast; he ends up being more of a burden than she expected. He's so rich he don't have to work neither, so he's around all the time. He tries for a while to keep up with Jamie's party lifestyle but ends up dragging behind, and since he has all the money, he's calling the shots. If the Old Man's not going out to party, Jamie's funds are limited. She only has what he'll give her. So she gets pissed; decides to cut out the middle man. Now, the party never has to stop - she just has to cover it up. Considering they got that big old house and close to no contact with the outside world - at least the one that us normal people live in - it would seem like she's home free."

"So I guess it's up to us," I said, matter-of-factly. I still felt partially stuck in the daydream from history class.

"I don't know guys," Coop started. "I don't really think we could find anything anyway. I mean, we're not cops or anything like that. How would we know where to look?"

"Relax Coop," I replied condescendingly, even though I have less than a sliver of an answer. "As long as we get up there, it'll be worth it."

"Exactly!" Nick exclaimed with the enthusiasm I’d been counting on from him to make my lame answer feel more legitimate. "We'll just tear the place up!"

Coop shook his head and kicked away a pile of dead leaves that were at his feet. "Even if she did do it, I don't think we'd have any luck at all up there. It'd just be a scary time where we'd probably get caught for trespassing again. My dad'll never let me hear the end of it."

"Oh fuck you, pussy," Nick sneered. "At least you won't get hit. Every time the cops drive me home I take a hiding that you could never handle." This was probably true, although at the time we all dismissed as typical Nick Peabody tough talk. We didn't want to think about someone we knew so well actually getting beaten by their dad, so we chalked it up to bullshit. That was probably a mistake on our part.

“You never get hided, Peabody,” Chaz spat out as he climbed the grassy side of the hill up to our little alcove. “But I sure as hell will for saying ‘fuck’ in school again.”

“I do too get hided!”

“Chaz,” I said, “how was detention?”

“It was fine, but they made me write some bullshit essay about the ‘proper tradition’ of Salem schools and how my language was a determinate to that.”

“Detriment,” I corrected him.

“My way sounded better,” he said with a straight face. “So, you guys come up with anything yet?”

“No plan,” Coop said, sounding defeated and exhausted. “They just want to go in guns blazing and dig up any damn spot we see.”

“Is that our plan?” Chaz asked, looking to me and then to Nick. I shot Coop a dirty look and Nick spat on the ground.

“Our plan,” Nick started, “is to go up there to Loring Manor, and to look around, and to either find a dead old rich guy, or to take something that proves that we tried. And then, we tell everyone except for our teachers and our parents.”
“Or the cops,” I add, making eye contact with Chaz, who has a bad habit of thinking he’s better than officers of the law.

“Or the cops,” Nick allows, handing Chaz a cigarette. “That, gentlemen, is what we’re gonna fucking do. Any god damn questions, pussies?”

The guys finished their cigarettes as shot the shit about curfews and sleepover arrangements that we could lie about to our parents, and we walked down the hill and off towards our houses. Nick split off towards The Point, and Coop got picked up at the corner of Wilson and Jefferson by his mom like always. Chaz and I were left to trek back down toward Wisteria Street, where we had both lived our whole lives.

"Are you really excited about all this?" Chaz asked me.

"Kinda," I said, trying to act cool and level about it. "It'd be pretty badass to find out the truth for ourselves. Even if the Old Man is alive, we'll be the ones who have the eye witness account of it. We'll know the real story before anyone, and that's pretty boss."

"You've always been all about the stories, man," Chaz said with a chuckle. He was always giving me shit about how much I loved telling stories. For someone who brushed everything off, I guess it was weird to see someone who had an overwhelming need to dramatize everything for any audience that would have it.
Suddenly Chaz looked sad. This confused me at first, considering we had just been laughing. Then I remembered what he was going home to.

"Wanna come over for a bit?" he asked. “I don’t feel like starting homework yet.”

The Tale of Loring Manor, Part One

“You guys never believe me,” Chris Cooper said, disappointed, as we sat in his room one Tuesday after school. “I swear guys, Joe O’Donnell told my brother Mikey all about it,” Coop stammered. “They were in high school with that chick, she was two years ahead of them. They said there’s gonna be an investigation if the old man doesn’t turn up soon!”

“Bullshit,” said Nick Peabody, the designated badass of our little gang. “That’s just Joe talkin’ about nothin’, that’s all people ‘round here ever do.”

“There’s no way anything that cool happened in Salem,” Chaz Gamble, the undisputed leader of our gang said.

“Yeah, that chick probably just ran him off with all her shopping and partying," I said,

"The old fart just couldn’t keep up with a stallion like her I bet,” Chaz chuckled, nudging both Nick and I on the arm alternately.

‘That chick’ referred to Jamie McLean, formerly Jamie Allen, who was once the prom queen of Salem High School, and the undisputed hottest girl in town. She was eye candy to every kid our age since we were old enough to pretend to care about girls. Every girl in middle school was compared on an attractiveness scale of 1 to Jamie, no joke. She had up and married a much older man shortly after she dropped out of college at the age of 19. As you may expect, this older man, Dick McLean, was very, very wealthy. I mean stinking filthy fuckin' rich, this guy was loaded to the god damn gills.

The two had moved into Loring Manor, a large old colonial house that was set back from the rest of Loring Avenue by a large hill. The house was accessible only by its gigantic stone staircase that ascended the hill. These steps had once been surrounded on either side by gorgeous green bushes that framed the elegant property perfectly. However in the past several years, these bushes had stopped being maintained, and then after one Winter, they disappeared completely. They were replaced that Spring by an overgrowth of gangly looking thorn bushes that seemed to stretch up to eye level and then out over the stone staircase, turning back anyone who would try to climb the steps to Loring Manor.

The rumor in question, which Coop was now so adamently defending despite our refusal to believe him, involved the recent absence of Mr. McLean. No one had seen him down at the yacht club, which was the one place he had previously hung out, playing tennis on days when he knees weren't acting up. When they were acting up, he mostly just drank. Jamie, on the other hand, never saw tennis and drinking to be mutually exclusive, and unlike her spouse, she had been seen down at the yacht club lately. Quite a bit, actually, and usually with a collection of other young, pretty girls, often from out on Marblehead Neck. They were the queen bee's of the dining room there at the Corinthian, and they had made many a man feel weak and many a woman feel worthless with nothing more than a well-timed stare. It was something in their eyes, Jamie's especially, that was menacing in a way that was certainly sexy but also slightly dangerous. It was that exact stare that had probably prompted the first housewife to mutter the phrase, "I bet she killed her husband. He hasn't been seen in weeks, you know."

A comment such as that is often not intentional, and is often later forgotten in moments of logic and reason. However a comment like that is also always overheard. In this case, it was likely a Marblehead High school kid bussing tables who heard it, and he surely passed it along, half jokingly, to a half dozen or so co-workers to get a reaction. They apparently must have reacted fantastically, because now every older kid from Gloucester to Saugus knew the rumor. Even us lowly middle schoolers were hearing about it now, albeit with help from our older brothers.

"Do you guys really think it's impossible?" I asked. We all had walked by the house recently, and Mr. McLean's car had been right in the spot it was in over two months ago. It seemed to be gathering quite a bit of dust next to Jamie's shiny Lincoln that she took out so often to cocktail parties and gallery openings.

"Well, of course it's possible," Nick Peabody said. "I just don't think it happened."

Coop, the one we all called a pussy so often, gulped. "I don't know, man. The windows of the house are all smudged and shit. You can't even see in if you walk right up to them, I bet. I don't know. I just don't know."

"Quit babbling about it," Chaz chimed in. "If you pussies want to know for sure that Old Dick is still alive and well, why don't we go knock on his door. Worst case, he answers the door and we all go home bored and pissed off that another cool story turned out to be bullshit."

"What's the best case?" I ask, genuinely curious.

"Jamie opens the door, says she's lonely for a man, and invites us all in for some handjobs!" Nick says, snickering with Chaz about this ridiculous possibility.

"Or he's actually dead," Coop says. "And we find the body when we go up to check it out. Probably hidden in the basement or something." This was unlike Coop. The kid was always so carefree and naïve. He wasn't himself because of this dumbass rumor, and I was damned if I was going to let this shit continue.

"Okay," I say, "Let's go then. This Friday."

"What?" Coop stammered.

"Yea," Chaz said, "Why not? There's probably so much cool shit up on that hill to check out. That chick almost always goes out on Friday's anyways so we can look around the backyard and stuff. If the old man's there, we'll just run away and say we were playin' man hunt with the older kids."

"I love it," Nick said, looking eager. "We're gonna find a fuckin' dead guy."

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe we'll just get handjobs."

We all laughed and stood up to grab our bikes and head down to the park to play some wiffle ball. Chaz grabbed Coop around the shoulder on the way out and said "Look, Coop. We're not gonna really find a dead guy. But you gotta learn sometime not to believe dumb shit, so we're going up there to check it out."

"Yea," Coop said, "I know. I just don't want to get us into trouble, that's all."

"Pussy," Peabody sneered.

Just like that, it was decided. Friday night we'd climb the stairs to Loring Manor. Then what? Would we just dick around in the backyard, looking for body parts and hoping we didn't find any? Probably. But when Nick and Chaz got together and excited about something, especially when it involved proving that Coop was a pussy, crazy shit always seemed to happen.

Fireworks in the Point

It’s a little before midnight as I walk up Lafayette Street in Salem, past Los Amigos Market and Harbor Street. The sound of a loud bang startles me, and I feel terribly unnerved as I try to keep cool and continue on my way. A second clap of violent noise follows, however it is accompanied by bright blue and red lights in the sky. I feel instantly relieved. I had forgotten that it was two days before the Fourth of July, and it was only natural for the neighborhood kids to test out a couple of their bootlegged fireworks in advance, if only to make sure they hadn’t been ripped off. Three nights ago there was a shooting on Ropes Street, right behind Major’s Pub, about a block from where I am when I see the fireworks. Tonight, the commotion in this neighborhood is celebratory in nature, but I wonder how many other people jumped when they heard the first bang tonight.

I always look out of place on my late night walks from the Hotel to my house on Linden Street. My tailored suits and designer ties get strange looks from the people who pass me on my journey. Most people have been out of work for hours by the time I begin my trek home from the office. Sometimes I’m curious what people think. In a town that is rarely innocent or normal, I doubt people draw the correct conclusions. A young man in a nice suit walking through a rough neighborhood at night could mean any number of things; an aspiring sports writer who is working a hotel job to make ends meet doesn’t seem as plausible in this neighborhood as a prominent drug dealer, a corrupt local politician, or a crooked used car salesman here to buy stolen parts from carjackers. Any of those things would fit in better here than I actually do, so sometimes, I pretend.

Often times I find myself thinking about the guests of my hotel on these walks. The people who stay with us are often here for their annual vacation, or for a wedding, or a graduation. They see the sides of Salem that they want to see: historic, intellectual, up and coming, “liberal” and “green”. The dozens of museums and gift shops and boutiques give a great image of a beautiful New England vacation destination, and as a transplanted local I have to admit these tricks sometimes fool me as well. However the real Salem is here, in the Point, and once you’ve seen it you are always aware of it’s presence. This town is not rich; in fact it is barely even middle class. The incidence of mental illness, drug addiction and alcoholism is startlingly high, and the longer you live here, the more visible it becomes. Spend even one day volunteering at the homeless shelter downtown and you will realize the sad reality that there aren’t enough beds there for those in need, even in the warm summers. The disparity between the perception and reality of Salem has become irreconciliable.

The Hotel, which sits on the edge of Pickering Wharf, the Point and Downtown, is a symbol of the duality of the city. A four-star, luxury facility, the Hotel is mandated by law to provide public bathrooms. The result of this law? The homeless come here to piss and shit. If you work the front desk, you get to know many of them by face, and the more amicable ones by name as well.

I never really know how to feel about these conflicting aspects of Salem. Living in a relatively safe and nice neighborhood allows me a certain amount of distance from the harsh realties of Life Bridge Shelter and Lafayette Park. Being a college student gives me the even greater luxury of belonging to a unique and united subgroup of the cities population. In many ways I admit that embracing these factors is a cop out; a way of ignoring how hippocritical it is for me to stand behind a desk and ask for $265 for one night of shelter while dozens lack money or food just a few blocks away.

Tonight, however, there are celebrations. There are fireworks in the Point, and there will be tomorrow as well. After Monday, the sources of sounds of the night are anyone’s guess.

On Working and Karma

In our world, to work is to exist. At least that’s what I tell myself whenever I find myself lugging wheelbarrows full of crushed rock from one end of a yard to the other at 7am on a Tuesday morning. It seems like a strange job, when one examines the implications of putting down something as ordinary as rock in someone else’s garden so they can later show it off to others as a symbol of their own success and hard work. Such an analysis shows the hierarchy of the situation: that person is not only successful enough to have a wonderful garden, but to have the luxury of paying others to move their barrows of crushed rock for them. They’ve worked so hard that at this point, they’re beyond hard work. What a life.

Of course, in this whole scenario, the job of moving and then arranging glorified pebbles isn’t the strangest occupation imaginable. Consider, for a moment, the life of the man whose job it is to crush those rocks, or pluck those rocks from the earth to be crushed, or to choose which rocks would look lovely in a garden after being decimated into tiny remnants of their former selves. Such jobs seem to me like the work not of men but of minor deities, at least in terms of responsibility. I don’t think I could ever be comfortable with such an arrangement; I would just find myself feeling sorry for the rocks.

That’s not to say, however, that my capacity for weird jobs is limited to picking up small bits of stone from one place and moving them to another. I have had a whole plethora of odd experience. For a ten month stint a few years ago I was a butler for a very wealthy 104 year old woman living on the top floor of a rather upscale hotel just outside of Boston. My tenure with Mrs. Kirshner was not ended by her death, as one may expect, but by an argument I had with her rather confrontational daughter, June, after I had allegedly lost Mrs. Kirshner's slippers. They were later found in the backseat of June’s car.

Before beginning my tenure with Mrs. Kirshner, I held a temporary job at a prestigious University in Somerville. I was hired as a “Security Technician”, a job which required me to walk through each of the University’s twenty-six buildings while they were unoccupied and check the accuracy of the floor plans. The most important part was to make sure that every door in the floor plan would swing open in the way indicated on the chart I was given. The purpose of this endeavor was to ensure that, in the event of a hostage situation, a State Police sniper would know where to aim his weapon when dealing with any given door on the campus of this prestigious institution of higher learning. One would surely expect that I had some knowledge of architecture, or training in security planning to be selected for such a position. However I did not have any of that, and was hired solely on the basis that I didn’t mind spending the summer of 2006 walking through the empty buildings with endless floor charts, opening hundreds of doors to ensure that they did, in fact, swing open in the correct direction.

Over the course of that summer I found seven mistakes on the University’s floor plans, read fifteen books rented from the University’s library, and made exactly one friend. Alvin was a janitor on the North side of campus who would occasionally bring an extra donut to work for me and thought it was fascinating that people actually used GPS devices while driving. In the world Alvin grew up in, everyone just tried their best to make it to where they had to go, and if they needed directions, they asked at a local gas station or coffee shop. Him pointing out things like this contributed to my ever increasing cynicism towards the changing landscape of our society. The GPS itself represents a world where people care only about the destination and disregard the value of the journey. Such thoughts make my brain feel sore and tired, a feeling I truly detest.

It was realizations such as this that led me back to my landscaping job. Here I can be sore of body, but rarely sore of mind. There is honesty in this work, and even when I don’t know where my next job site is, I never use a GPS to get there. I trust that the roads will lead me where they are supposed to, and take in all I see as I daydream about the day when I can pay someone else to make my yard look good enough to show off to the neighborhood. I don’t think I’ll ever have the heart to use crushed rocks though. No matter how much of a big shot I become, I refuse to take the role of someone who sentences something as indestructible as a rock to its demise. I believe in Karma.

Her Sky

I took a walk the other day,
Down to this park that meets a beach
That I hadn’t seen before,
And there you were, but you didn’t see me.



You weren’t looking out or down or around,
But up, up at the sky above the water
That swirled with colors of purple and red
As the clouds danced around above you
In other worldly steps with the stars.



Now, I saw it too but I knew right away
That they were dancing for you.
And with every twitch of wonder in your eyes
The colors got brighter and the movements
Of the moons and stars more elegant.
I had no idea you were a choreographer.



Really though, part of me did know,
Because although you always denied being an artist
I’ve said from day one that
Every little move you make when we’re together
Is a chapter in a story I hope you never finish.

40 Ruthellen Way

It was December of 2007 when I decided to steal Kelley’s wife. This was before I knew that him and I would transform Sawyer Motors into the most successful Ford dealership in New Hampshire, and I was still just a salesman at the time. Marissa wore a red dress to our company Christmas party, and her short blonde curls showed off her classic beauty. When she approached me, I tried to act like I didn’t know who she was.

“Greg Bonner,” I said, reaching out my right hand, “And you are?”

She smiled coyly, looking down at her dry martini. “Two fish are in a tank, one turns to the other and says ‘Do you know how to drive this thing?’” She broke into a cat-like smile as she looked up at me. Forty-five minutes later we had talked about India, the Kansas City Royals, and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’, and I was sure that we were in love.

Five months later, my phone rang at the office.
“Greg Bonner at Sawyer Motors,” I answered.
“Hey, Sparkleboy,” Marissa whispered, “Are we all set?”
“Of course,” I replied. “Remember, 34 Turtleback Road. There should still be a ‘Sold’ sign out front. The key is under the wooden sailboat on the front porch. Kelley’s still here, but you should probably leave soon. He’s been ducking out early lately.”

“Bastard,” she said, “Okay, I’ll get going then.” She paused for a second. “Two hats are sitting on a hat rack, when one turns to the other and says ‘You stay here, I’ll go on a-head.’”

“Your delivery is getting better. I’ll see you soon, Mariss” I said, and as usual she hung up without saying any sort of a goodbye.

Kelley stood in my office just a few minutes later, hands in his Khaki pockets, his handsome face and short brown hair looking All-American as ever. He had played football at Delaware, which may not have been Notre Dame but still topped my spot on an intramural basketball team at Endicott.

“Got anything planned for this weekend?” the should-be Senator asked me.
“Not really,” I lied, while looking at my reflection in his shoes. “Just some wine and old movies. Yourself?”
“Oh you know, gotta clean the gutters and trim the hedges. Never a dull moment at 40 Ruthellen Way,” he said as he turned and walked out of my office, leaving the door open behind him.

He always referred to his home like that, flaunting his perfect address like he had invented it or something. Even so, there was no denying the purity of it. It was almost like it pardoned him of all his sins: his strip club visits, his fondness of reality television, even his inclination to end a converastion abruptly, which, judging by his wife, was a sexually transmitted affliction. I wondered how long it would be before I started sending e-mails that were half-finished or waltzing out of bars without finishing a story about the worst test drive I’d ever taken.

I got up, still pondering this question, and closed the door to my office. I had expected a wave of emotion, but much later, like three months down the road when I ran into Kelley at the grocery store and saw him buying a month’s worth of T.V. dinners. Somehow it had crept up on me, and as I sat back down at my desk, I began to cry. My sobs were short and silly, reminding me of Marissa’s jokes. The only difference was my tears had never resided at 40 Ruthellen Way.

Selected Poetry - A Collection

The American Dream

People say The Dream is changing.
Deal with it.
Sell your truck,
Downsize,
Spend smarter,
Eat less,
Read more,
Learn Spanish,
Love better,
Lower expectations
(Especially of our “icons”).
And most of all don’t complain,
It’s really, really not helping.


The Big Finish

This is the solution.
The necessary alternative
To years in a nursing home
And old age.

Six months before my 60th birthday
I reminisce 10,000 feet above the ground.
I had a good run, a great one mostly,
And the future offers little more than
Chronic health problems and
The steady disintegration of the body
That once popped jump shots into hoops
Over hot blacktop down at the city park
And once could hike mountains for days at a time
Just for the fun of it.

Now I can still climb the stairs,
But barely,
And living to see the day I can’t
Would just be too much for me.

This seems like the right way to go,
Skydiving with no parachute,
Naked,
Right into the middle of the Super Bowl.


The Catcher - A Poem for the memory of J.D. Salinger

Last night another big one fell.
There’s fewer left everyday.
Someday there might be none,
And then what?

Who will tell us when
To kill the rock stars now?
There are no more bananafish.

Sick Day

I woke up sick today.
I wasn’t positive at first,
But now I’m sure
Because all I wanna do
Is watch re-runs and take naps
With my gallon of water by my side
(I’m out of cups again).

I should be writing
Or working out
Or accomplishing
Any number of tasks
That need doing.

All that can wait, though,
Until my head stops feeling
Like it’s stuffed as full as a piñata.
I wonder if there’s candy in there?
That’s the fever talking.
Holden Caulfield has checked out.

How To Feel Alive

We showed up late to miss the opening act,
The kind of bold move you only make
When you’ve been drinking
And you have tickets to see your favorite band.
A group of diehards who know all their songs
And memorize set lists of every show they see,
We held our heads high and our spirits higher.

The mass of tie dye moved about anxiously
In anticipation. As the band emerged onto the stage
The chants and the pipes sparked up together at once.
“Umphrey’s! Umphrey’s!” we yelled,
And the scene could best be described
In their own words:
“The air felt different at the start of the show
As every breath resembled smoke”.
They began to play and those who had not
induced euphoria on themselves already
Were now forced into it and beyond.

Love in the Zombie Apocalypse

Love is learning how to use a twelve gauge
When the flesh eating monsters tear down your girlfriends door.

Love is sprinting out through the chaos and anarchy to the car defenseless,
Just to move it closer so she doesn’t have to risk her life
anymore than she has to.

Love is ignoring warnings to fend for yourself and forget all others
When you agree to her sobbing pleas to go back inside for the dog.

Love is holding her hand tight as you purposely ram your car
Into the stumbling masses who crowd the once civilized streets,
Hoping to god you inflicted enough damage to keep them down on the blood stained pavement.

Love is trying your best to make it out alive together,
And knowing that if they get her, you’re going down too
But you’re taking as many of those zombie fucks with you as possible.

That’s love.

Move

I want my words to move like you.
I want them to tell of beauty and pain and dreams and death.
I want my words to dance on the page like you dance on stage,
And to have the flexibility you have, and the stability, and the confidence.
I want my words to make you dance the way your dance has made me write,
And even though this poems for you I hope others feel like dancing too.
I want my words to be as soft and as smooth as your skin
And as full of wonder as your eyes.

I want my words to spring and kick and pirouette,
To shine and shock then fade to black.
I want my words to command the spotlight
And do with it what they will,
And I want my words to get your attention
And hold it like you hold your breath
As you wait for my next word.

Pyromania!

When I was twelve, fire was awesome. I’m not sure how or when it happened but at some point, playing with fire surpassed basketball, kickball and tag on the streets of my neighborhood. My good friend Ben had a hobby of stealing lighters from the local convenience store, and we’d play “The Nose Game” to figure out who would steal the Lysol spray from their parents bathrooms to help create the torch. We’d take our homemade torches out to the neighborhood park and have a grand old time out there in the fields and the man made dunes behind the hill. Most of the people who walked through these dunes were either high or drunk, and many of them were homeless as well.In our town a bunch of kids playing with fire would have been met with several PTA meetings and mandatory fire safety classes in all public schools, so we committed our acts of minor arson and pyromania in seclusion, around people who at worst ignored us and at best crowded around to watch as we burned someone’s shoe while it was still on their foot or sprayed a soda bottle full of aerosol and lit it on fire to blow it up like a bottle rocket.

Eventually we started getting bored with these simple tricks, so we’d switch it up: One day PJ would ride his bike through the flames created by double torches, the next day we’d light a stuffed animal on fire and play hot potato with it. Finally, our friend Mike got his hands on some black powder, the kind they use in shotgun shells or other minor explosives. These and CO2 cartridges became our new best friends, using them to blow up dollhouses and film it, that sort of thing. It was the most fun you can imagine at twelve years old, just a bunch of kids running around some old train tracks blowing up old toys and spraying fire at each other for fun after school. It was real, I think that’s what we all liked about it so much.

This obsession with all things hot and dangerous led to the production of our first short film, the appropriately titled Playing With Fire. Mainly it was a compilation of our favorite fire tricks and various other mischief around town, set to the music of The White Stripes and the theme from Peter Gunn. MTV’s Jackass was huge at the time, but that was only part of our inspiration. We were also influenced by Saturday Night Live, Led Zeppelin, George W. Bush, Nirvana, Lord of Illusions (an awful film we all had seen together at a sleepover), the 1960’s, our 7th grade math teacher and our parents disapproval. Some of these influences got references in the film’s credits, some did not.

I don’t know if it was the lack of recognition or the material in the film itself that my mother was upset about at first. She had come home from the gym one day and found the tape in our VCR, clearly labeled “DO NOT EVER FUCKING WATCH THIS, MOM.” She ignored the warning, and watched the tape in its entirety that afternoon, supposedly. I’ve never actually believed that she was able to make it to the end with all the vulgar language and physical violence. My mother never had a stomach for that sort of thing. Regardless, she read me the riot act and threatened to call the parents of all those involved in the production of The Monstrosity, as my household was now calling it.

I managed to talk her out of becoming the village crier, in return for me promising not to steal my father’s camcorder ever again and to immediately throw away all six of the lighters I owned. This was a good firm reaction on her part; strong enough to send a message, but weak enough to have loopholes. The six lighters she had found had only been my reserve stash; mere backups for the three I kept on my person at all times and the two I kept hidden behind the back fridge for emergency situations. As far as the camera situation, my father worked days, and my mother didn’t know a camcorder from a kumquat. That being said, our film crew was back in business 48 hours after the Firegate scandal broke, and we were out for blood this time. The critical and commercial response to our first film had been overwhelmingly positive, at least among our classmates, and Firegate had added an element of controversy that made it even sexier. We had to capitalize with a well-timed follow up that would shock and scare our captive audience.

The production was harder this time; this film had to be different. It had to be more deliberate and cruel, and it was right from the start. The opening scene involved one of our gang pouring a huge amount of salt right onto an unsuspecting slug, and we progressed from there. We staged an egg fight between all of us at the park and pelted each other so bad we had welts the next day. We covered our friend in potato chips and made him lay on the boardwalk while seagulls and pigeons picked them off his body. We glued quarters to the ground, and when old ladies bent down to pick them up, PJ would run up and perform humping motions in the air behind them while giving the camera a thumbs up. It was pure artistic genius. The White Stripes were replaced by Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith, trading new raw sound for old raw sound. It was our golden age, creatively speaking.

Salted debuted to a crowd of about sixteen after two solid months of hard production. The film was praised as “hilarious,” “side splitting,” and “fucking sick.” It was as proud as we ever were of our exploits, mainly because we actually had tangible evidence of our debauchery for once. Usually, it was just our stories. Actually, I guess that’s all the films really were, too. They were just a little harder to ignore.

Thank God

I hate business trips. I hate business trips and I hate television and the movies for convincing me that they would be paid vacations where I could goof off all the time and get my boss drunk. I hate the endless meetings that are followed by dinner with “colleagues” where small talk becomes the national pastime until some idiot has one too many Makers Mark’s and overshares about his personal life. I hate leaving the comforts of home only to work harder than usual and meet crooked, driven executives from other branches and regions that have no use for my Dallas charm. I hate business trips.

Now, I’m sure Seattle, Santa Barbara, Nashville, Myrtle Beach and Fort Lauderdale are all wonderful places. I can even admit that Buffalo, Atlanta, Newark and Minneapolis may have their charms. However between the car service, the hotel, and the conference centers there usually isn’t much room for interpretation or judgment. These are about all I ever see of a place on a business trip, so usually I don’t have much to say about a place once I’ve returned.

The sole exception to this was Los Angeles. As a God fearing Texan, I shudder when I remember that this place is actually called the City of Angels. Never in my life have I ever seen such an abomination. Everyone is jaded, no one is righteous or just, and everyones trying to get laid – or rather whore themselves out. After my second trip there – one which featured a stoned waiter, a bipolar bell hop and a transvestite cab driver – I vowed never to return to that unholy city. As it turned out, the choice would not be mine.

“Keller was a real shark in his day,” Jim told me, as if that was supposed to excite me about the prospect of traveling with a guy who had retired three years ago and had no real interest in the company anymore. For Keller, this probably was a vacation.

“I can’t wait,” I lied through my teeth. “Where are we going?”

“Los Angeles.”

Fuck. “Really?” I asked.

“I know, I know. I spoil you with these sunshine and palm trees trips, but I hope you remember to get some work done,” Jim said while I pictured myself beating him to a pulp with the lamp on his desk. “Keller will stay on top of you, I’m not worried.”

I drove home from work that day with my head in a fog. Los fuckin’ Angeles, with Keller, the retired shark. Chalk another one on to my losing streak. I stopped for a quick bite to eat; there was never any food in the house since Jane left in August. The pregnant waitress flirted with me shamelessly, unaware that I was the victim of a divorce and custody battle gone wrong. She might have been cute, but all I saw when I looked at her was sin and loss. I glanced at the T.V. At least the Mavs were winning.

That’s when it occurred to me. I had forgotten completely about this weekend’s Western roadtrip: the Mavericks were in L.A. for a Sunday afternoon game with the Clippers. I loved going to basketball games live, but the success of our home team had driven ticket prices higher each year. Surely the lowly Clippers had tickets that were easier to get, I thought. No one could possibly be devoted to a team that horrible. I could see the team I loved, that I dedicated my passion to year in and year out, play for mere pennies on the dollar.

I paid the bill excitedly and drove home, eager to look up tickets online. I would buy one for Keller, I thought, as a gesture of respect and goodwill. Then he couldn’t possibly turn me down. The prospect was still percolating bliss through my being when I passed through my front door and walked right to my computer. As I logged onto the Clippers ticket site, I felt my Blackberry vibrated in my pocket. I ignored this for the time being, manuevering through the internet to eventually purchase two center court tickets for a grand total of $24, about $40 less than a single similar ticket at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

Once I had confirmed the order, I took out my phone and saw an e-mail from Jim. Attached was my boarding pass for Los Angeles, and as I remembered how much I hated LAX, a horrible thought dawned on me. What if Keller was a horrible person? Not in the sense of being a bad tipper or an axe murderer, but in the sense of having poor taste. What if Keller hated basketball as much as I hated L.A.? Or worse, what if he loved the “City of Angels” so much that he relished in it and insisted on showing me around the sinners paradise one shithole strip club at at time? I panicked, he was my elder and my superior, so I was essentially at his disposal. Purchasing the tickets may have seemed courteous at first, but I was forcing my agenda on him which was unwise and impolite.

It was also clear that I wouldn't be seeing Keller before the trip. He was a seasoned vet being called in for duty; he had no reason to show up at the office for a briefing or anything like that. His assignment was easy: he was coming along to make sure that I didn't go crazy plaster the hotel walls with my brains. Now, that's not to say that Jim or anyone else at the office knew I was slowly climbing out of the crater left by a catastrophic few months... but damn near everyone could see that I hadn't been myself lately, in a worst case scenario kind of way. I ate alone at lunch. I drank after work, but avoided the bars where my friends would be intentionally. I was reading a lot of Nietzsche. These symptoms of psychosis, or at least depression, were visible to all. Was this intentional on my part?

Whatever the case, Keller wasn't along to help close the deal. He was keeping an eye on the talented young headcase who was taking on a job that was well within his normal capabilities. Misery may love company, but true and total destruction requires absolute solitude. Keller was my link to society for this trip into the horrid city that scared me more than even my own thoughts.

I still had no idea what to do about the tickets as I drifted through a week of bullshit and preperation. The flight was scheduled for early morning Thursday, and as I left work on Wednesday I felt sick to my stomach. I decided against getting dinner on the way home, resolving instead to heat up some frozen pizza back at the house. I was going to be away from my home for four days, and I could use a heavy dose of it before I left. It was all I had kept in the divorce.

About two minutes after I got in my door, the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Paul. It's Cap Keller. I just wanted to call and touch base."

"Oh, yeah, great. We take off in about twelve hours, huh?"

"That's right," Keller said. His voice lacked the predatory nature of the shark he had once been. "What are your thoughts?"

"Well, I actually read over the briefing again today and it looks like we're in good shape," I answered.

"Good," he paused. "Actually, I kind of wanted to see what you'd like to do on Sunday before our return flight. We should have the deal closed by mid day Saturday at the latest, you know? I lived in L.A. back when I was first married, so I know the scene pretty well."

Christ, I thought. I was right. This man had spent the first few years of marital life diving head first into the full contact strip clubs of L.A. county. He was probably planning on buying me a dozen prostitutes after Sunday brunch, just so he could watch and get some sick kick out of it. My silence prompted him to speak.

"To be honest, I'm not really into much of it out there," he admitted, sounding defeated. "I just figured a younger guy like you would want to see some of the City..."

"No," I said, trying to sound tired rather than relieved. "I'm not really much for L.A. really. It's too..."

"Dirty," he concluded. "And compromised. I know. I never liked it, but my wife fed off the life force there, I guess."

Wow, I had hit the jackpot with a travel companion. This guy actually seemed to be on my page, somehow. Suddenly I was seeing Jim as a genius rather than a cruel operator. If someone was going to look after me, this Keller, the upstanding, honest citizen who succumbs to the needs of others was clearly the best candidate for the job. Perhaps for any job in the history of the world. I would have nominated him for Senator based on our brief exchange.

"Well," Keller started, "what are you into, Paul?"

It was more wide open than a foul shot. "Well, basketball mostly."

"Basketball! That's right! The Mavericks are in L.A. this weekend! You a big fan?"

"Oh, yeah," I said, "Huge. Once I nail enough of these business trips for Jim I plan on getting season tickets."

Keller chuckled at this. "Well, what do you say? Want me to snag us some tickets?"

Shit. If I had just had faith in the higher being and waited for things to work out, I wouldn't have even had to pay... oh, well. Too late now.

"Funny thing Cap, I kind of jumped the gun on that and already ordered a pair."

He exploded with laughter at this, taking great pleasure in the fact that he'd found out about my secret agenda. "That's great, I'm glad we'll have something to talk about on the plane tomorrow. A fan like you must really know his stuff about the game. I'd love to pick your brain."

Too good to be true. The guy even wanted to listen to me talk about basketball. "Sounds great," I said, "I'll see you in the morning?"

"That's right, have a nice night, Paul."

"Have a good one, Cap." Cap. Fucking Cap. This guy was clearly my new best pal. I was so excited to spend time with the basketball loving Christian who had dominated my profession for twenty-five years once upon a time that I could barely fall asleep that night. It was like waiting for Santa to come.

My alarm was actually welcome that morning, despite the early hour. I got ready fairly quickly, and the cab came right on time at 5:45. I was ready to meet this Keller character and start our assault on Los Angeles, business trips and all things unholy.

I tipped the cab driver way more than usual that morning, aspiring to show the courtesy I expected others to show me on this long West Coast adventure. I grabbed my suitcase from the trunk and slung my backpack over my left shoulder. When I found the security line for our terminal, I saw Cap Keller waiting for me.

He was wearing a brown suit, jacket and all. I had ditched the blazer for this flight for the sake of comfort, but I now felt underdressed. He was almost bald, but short white hairs were visible above his wrinkled forehead and green eyes. He formed a close mouthed smile when he saw me approaching and realized that I was the boy wonder he was here to accompany.

"Pleased to meet you Paul," he said, thrusting his hand out towards me. I set my backpack down and shook his hand. He didn't have the commanding grip I expected, but no one's perfect.

"You too, Cap. You ready for this trip?"

"Ha, I'm never 'ready' for a work trip," he said, "but hey, weekend warriors, right? Oh, by the way, I've got to show you something." He unzipped him suitcase and pulled out a red baseball cap, hiding what was on it from my view.

I was curious; was this an expression of company pride? I had never seen a Oasis Education Corp. hat, but maybe it was from his day as a sales rep. Maybe it was a ritual: a lucky sales hat that he always wore on flights. I stood there waiting for an explanation.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Sure," I shrugged, confused by his excitement over a silly hat.

"Alright!" he exclaimed as he put the cap on his head. I was speechless.

It was a Los Angeles Clippers hat. A representation of the most unsuccessful franchise in the history of American professional sport... an emblem of loss. Yet he wore it with a smile... was it a joke?

"You're Mav's are goin down, buddy!" he said.

Nope. No joke here. This man was an honest-to-goodness Clippers fan. The personification of sorrow and dissapointment. Every season that began was like the start of a funeral for a fan like him, a slow procession towards a burial that most of the world was entirely unaware of and unconcerned with.

I was surely a miserable person all the way through my being at that point in my life, but I felt lucky at this moment. I hadn't been born into the tradition of unconditionally supporting a perennial loser. I had the constant comfort of knowing that the team I supported at least wasn't cursed. Things could be worse for me, I realized at that moment. My facial expression must have gave these thoughts away, because his smile dissapeared and he looked down with a defeated nod.

"Yeah," he said, "I know. It's rough."

Billy, the Kid

I was twelve minutes early for Human Biology class. I had come to the Academic Building to get a coffee at the Jazzman's Cafe before lecture and there hadn't been a line. After navigating the empty back hallways of late afternoon, I arrived at the classroom to find a kid who lived in my Hall, Billy, already sitting in class, looking very pleased. I didn't know Billy well, but we were clearly aware of each other's existance due to the proximity of our living arrangements and accursed mutual friends. This made the awkward gesture of sitting far away from him and scrolling absent mindedly through my cell phone unacceptable and so I was forced instead to sit down near him and exchange at least the casual pleasantries.

He had chosen a seat in the dead center of the classroom. If the room had windows this would have bothered me, but it did not. As a matter of fact, this was one of the only rooms I ever came across at Newport that didn't have a view of something pleasant, like the ocean or a grove of pine trees. All it had was four off white walls, a white board, a model skeleton and grey plastic desks. As I eased down into one of the clean grey desks, I gave Billy a half smile and a half nod, hoping it would appease his need for forced social interaction.

"How's it goin' man?" he asked happily. My double half-gesture clearly hadn't satisfied him.

"Oh you know," I replied, "Same old."

"Nope!" he exclaimed excitedly with a dogshit smile on his face.

Thrown off by his volume and unusual response, I stammered for a second before letting out a semi-timid "What?" and taking a giant pull of my coffee.

"No," he answered, "I don't know how it's going for you. I don't see you half as much as you see yourself, so I don't know. That's why I asked. And you didn't even think to ask me back, because you don't give a shit. You gave a shitty answer and showed no courtesy."

As he watched my facial expressions contort with shock and sudden discomfort, he looked even more pleased than before. Finally, he broke eye contact when it was clear that I had no solid response to his lecture on the art of pleasantries and small talk. He reached into his backpack and took out a wooden ruler. I watched him intently as he began measuring every edge of the desk. Once, twice, three times he measured it; making observations under his breath that seemed to be of the utmost importance.

"Is... is it changing?" I asked.

"Well, it's a desk." He replied matter-of-factly.

"Oh."

With that, I forced my expression back to one of casual contentment, turned to face the front of the classroom, and took out my notebook. I flipped it open to the middle, turned it upside down, and wrote "Chapter 777" in my best cursive. I stared straight ahead and began furiously jotting down notes off the whiteboard at the front of the room. There was nothing written on the whiteboard.

"Hey," Billy said, taking a break from his measurements to inquire about my sudden dilligence. "What are you doing?"

"Shhh, if you keep making noise like that I won't be able to concentrate, and then we'll both fail this course, and they'll bury us in the marsh with the soccer team."

"Settle down chief," he said in the most civil and normal tone he had used yet. "Class doesn't start for another six minutes, and I don't think they even send people to the marsh. Just sports teams who can't play anymore... right?"

"Hm," I pondered as I continued my work, squinting at the empty board to read the small print that didn't exist. Billy looked uneasy and out of ideas. People were filing into the classroom and taking seats around the room, meaning the professor would seen be here to put an end to our cruel games. Then suddenly I saw a smile smear across his face slowly like a cancer spreading right before your eyes.

"Say," he said slyly, leaning towards me, "any chance I could borrow your notes? I blew off the reading last night. It's been tough to focus since the gerbils died."

My notes were mostly full of Caddyshack quotes, along with a detailed drawing of Goofy and Donald Duck curbstomping Buggs Bunny. However to explain this to my nemesis would only prove that I was more sane than he was, and that was precisely how one would go about losing the battle in which we were entwined.

I smiled back politely and said "Sure." I ripped the page out of my note book and handed it to him, and he took it and laid it on his desk so he could examine it. Billy snickered and I became nervous: was he planning on showing everyone the evidence of my insanity which he had provoked? I would be finished. Where was his goddamn ruler now? I couldn't find it, nor could I find his stupid dead gerbils that were probably hidden somewhere under his desk. All evidence of his Socialist views and sure Satanism had disspeared, and there he sat, holding the one document that could put me away for 10 to Life. Billy's laugh began to grow as if it could sense my fear, sending me into a maddening state of anxiety. He pounded his fist several times on the desk for emphasis on the humor of the situation.

Billy rose to his feet still laughing while looking down at my notes on his desk. The growing audience in the room now included our professor, standing in the doorway.

"You won't believe what this idiot did!" Billy said to no one in particular. I was sweating now, I could feel the heat overtaking my body and could hear the asylum doctors making small talk in the hallway as they waited to take me away.

"I'm not even IN this class, and this poor sucker gave me his precious notes!" Billy announced before breaking out in an extreme fit of laughter. Confusion hit me like a folding chair in a wrestling ring.

"Now," my sinister opponent said while looking right at me, "this is mine." With that, Billy stood up, balled my paper up, shoved it into his mouth and began chewing on it. He then collected his own notebook from under his desk (which was clearly marked "Human Biology") and began to walk towards the exit of the room. Just before he reached the door, Billy flipped open his notebook and began to write something. As soon as he finished he turned around to face me and held it up:

"I POISONED THE FUCKING COFFEE"
it said.

I immediately spat out a mouthful of coffee all over my open notebook and formerly clean grey desk. With that, Billy laughed, his mouth still full of paper, and he turned and walked out of the room.

He was the victor that day.

The Willow Tree

There is a certain time of year in New England when all of a sudden the trees are all on fire, which you notice while you’re walking between two destinations that probably don’t mean much to you. The trees are just on fire and so is your soul, and the weather is getting colder and trying to put all the fire out with it’s damp chill. It’s the best time of year to take a walk for no reason, but no one has the time. There is always too much to do and denail about the onset of winter and a girl in your life that you should be paying more attention to you. This part of the year, deep autumn if you will, is so fleeting and fragile that there are some years when you won’t notice at all, and many more when you will almost miss it. The fire can’t be held on to, but it can be admired and felt and used while it’s still there.

It was exactly this time of year when we sat under the willow tree in front of our dormitory on a Thursday afternoon and smoked a joint while we talked about life. It was warm out for deep autumn, but the wind blew a steady breeze that felt amazing in your hair and made it okay to wear a sweatshirt. The leaves of the willow were turning red and orange all around us, and the smoke drifted up through them towards the sky and it looked mezmerizing.

“Voting for McCain makes no fucking sense,” I said to no one in particular while staring up into the tree.

“Ya, no shit,” Nicole answered. “Anyone’s better than Bush though, at least we know that.” Dan was busy climbing up into the tree while Mike chased him and Sully looked on laughing. I thought about how much I hated the President, and how there probably wouldn’t ever really be a good President given the way things were going now. Everything was a mess, and we were all stoned and Dan was up in the tree again.

I flipped my hood up and enjoyed that it was still light out. The light was catching the leaves and made us look like we were all on fire inside the tree. The willow tree would lose all its leaves a few weeks later, and we wouldn’t really smoke there or sit there much anymore because then anyone could see you and it wasn’t just a secret place where you talked about how awful the world was. We liked it like that, or at least I did. I think Dan just liked to climb, and Mike liked to try and be better at things than Dan. Sully probably liked just about anything and was always happy, and Nicole just wanted to be with Sully and get stoned. Those might be the real reasons, but it really felt like we loved that tree when it started losing its leaves in November.

I wanted to bring up the Red Sox, but I realized that no one would have cared really because Fitzy wasn’t there. This meant that I had run out of things to talk about that weren’t either about sports or completely depressing and disturbing (like religion or television). Dan decided right then that it was time to jump out of the tree and say the smartest thing anyone has ever said.

“We should go grab dinner from Wakehurst, they usually have good food on Thursdays.”

“I’m in,” Sully responded.

“Let’s go,” gasped Mike as he struggled down from the tree.

Off the Clock

Donyell was a well groomed twenty two year old store clerk at the Friendly Mini Market. He was always on time and his clean cut appearance made him a favorite among the assortment of misfits who worked at the store, both with customers and management. He had started working there at sixteen because it was easy and in his neighborhood, but after his failed attempts at higher education it seemed he was now working his way towards the position of Assistant Manager.

All of that was pretty irrelevant at the moment, however, because it was ten fifty-five on a Monday night and his shift was about to end. All he was waiting for was Barry, the scruffy over night clerk who always reeked of Lucky Strikes. A middle aged woman walked up to the counter and stared up at Donyell from under her frazzled orange hair. Donyell knew this lady as “Loony Liz”, and he had seen her riding around town on her ancient bicycle with a milk crate on the front that was usually full of empty redeemable cans and bottles or one of the scraggly looking stray cats that populated the Beachfront neighborhood. Loony Liz pulled a stack of scratch tickets out from her huge black fur coat (which would have undoubtedly cost a fortune had she actually purchased it) and plopped them down on the counter. Donyell stared at the stack for a minute; they looked damp. Her crackly voice started up: “I think there are some winners in there.” Donyell picked through the tickets, some of which were as much as three years old. All in all, out of eighteen tickets, Loony Liz had five winners. They paid out a total of eleven dollars. She walked out of the store singing, hopped on her bicycle and rode over to the nearest trash can, which was in the center of the parking lot. She began to dig for aluminum and glass; Donyell figured she didn’t plan on making the eleven dollars last too long if she was already back to work.

Barry then emerged from the back room with a paranoid look on his face as usual and smelling worse than normal. He had his uniform vest slung over his shoulders and his glasses were nearly falling off his unkempt face. “Shows over boss, you can head out,” he said, trying too hard to seem “chill” and “cool”. Donyell nodded and said “Have a good one, bud. The crazies are out tonight.” He picked up his messenger bag and walked out the front door, past Loony Liz and her bicycle full of recyclables, down the dark street and towards the peer and the ancient amusement park that defined Salisbury Beach.

He slunk into the beachfront public bathroom, which was empty at this time of night most times. Occasionally a man in a business suit, inevitably on a cocaine binge, would be using the urinal, but otherwise Donyell was always left in peace. Once in the stall with the door locked, Donyell began his transformation. The mild mannered store clerk became a glamorous drag version of the Tooth Fairy within minutes. His tiara fit over his short mulatto hair, and his dark muscular legs sprang out from his tutu. He held a wand with pink translucent streamers, and prepared to walk down the strip in his high heels like he owned the whole beach.

Donyell emerged from the bathroom, lit up a Virginia Slim cigarette and began to strut down to the pier. He walked through the broken gate of the amusement park that had closer two hours before and past the two alcoholic homeless men who sat against the fence and next to the merry-go-round. He danced to the music in his head under the neon lights as he approached the group of fishermen who sat on the pier every night and waited for the best drag queen meth dealer in town. He walked through the group of Portuguese immigrants, old local sailors and former high school football stars and collected money for his grown up version of rock candy. One old salt named Doug McLaughlin would give him fresh fish every week for his girlfriend Cindy to make for dinner on Tuesdays. Donyell just told her he got them from a friend at work, which was as close to the truth as he could get with her. “Much better than last week,” grunted Doug as Donyell dolled over his fifteen dollar rock of heaven. “Atlantic Cod. No more herring for you and your girl.” Donyell smiled coyly and simply replied “Thank you, Mr. Doug. Have a good night now.”

He continued on his sales route, dispensing drugs to off duty cops and out of work bartenders, until three forty five A.M. His last call was spent with his back against The Pavilion while he whistled a cheery melody for the dark and grungy world around him. A little music made everything about his own life seem less fucked up; the women’s clothing, the crystal meth he distributed for his parents, the girlfriend with an eating disorder and the dead end job at a convenience store that he dreamed of one day blowing up with a fertilizer bomb he’d build with his younger brother in their basement.

After the last of the junkies had approached him at his regular closing spot, Donyell stomped back towards the pier bathroom on sore feet, hoping that he didn’t walk in on one of his customers overdosing or soliciting prostitution for another hit. These weren’t common occurrences, but they could never be ruled out and Donyell dreaded those moments above all others…except for the moment when he walked in the door at Friendly Mini Market everyday.

The Tarantula Hawk

On Thursday Chris Whynock’s boss, Dan Smolinsky, told him he was doing a great job. Chris drove home, hit a Bar & Grille on the way, and told the bartender what a good week he was having. “Great fuckin’ week,” he said. After a few beers and a nice steak, he drove home and went to bed with a smile on his face, excited for his early morning bike ride and the weekend he had earned by doing a “great job” at work.

On Friday, Chris got the letter at lunch time, dressed up with Horizon Technologies letterhead, and full of words like “regret” and “apologize”. He read it over seven times in ten minutes, but it didn’t change. A financial death sentence; so much for doing a great job. This is fucked up, Chris thought. Nothing could be more fucked up than this.

That afternoon he cleaned out his desk and removed his inspirational images from the side of his cubicle, most of which were clippings from Cycling magazine. He was escorted out of the building at 2:30 with everyone watching. At least Fridays were short days.

On the way home in his dark blue, way-too-expensive Nissan Altima, he untied his tie and threw it out of the car on the interstate; a gift for Silicon Valley.

A car followed him to the bar that night, an old beat up Buick with one missing hubcap.

As Chris sat at the bar that night, he told the bartender about his day. “That’s fucked up,” Chris said, “name one thing more fucked up than that.” Listening from across the bar was a man that Chris had never spoken too. Jesse had worked with Chris at Horizon Technologies for months, and on that Friday evening, Jesse still had his job. He was a quiet, intelligent man who was easily fascinated by anything pecuilar, from people to insects. He ordered a soda water with lime and garden salad. He listened to every word of Chris’ story.

That night, Chris called his friends and told them about what had happened while drinking and watching the Padres play the Dodgers on his flatscreen television. Jesse tried to forget about Chris’ story and researched political uprisings in East Africa on the internet.

On Saturday, Chris sulked. Around two he went for a twenty minute bike ride. Jesse cooked himself a healthy dinner and ate it while watching the Discovery Channel. There was a nature show on. The tarantula hawk, a wasp who paralyzes tarantulas by laying eggs inside it, was spotlighted. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the tarantula from the inside. That, Jesse thought, is fucked up. I don’t know what could be more fucked up than that.

On Sunday, Chris went for a long ride along the coast, and then drank. Jesse went to Borders to read more about the tarantula hawk. While flipping through an issue of National Geographic, he briefly recalled Chris’s story from the bar on Friday night.

On Monday, Chris scoured the internet for job openings and went for a bike ride, the best ride he’d had in months. Jesse went to work.

By Wednesday, Chris had two interviews lined up for Thursday, and went to bed early that night. Jesse checked out two reference books from the library that had articles about the tarantula hawk and stayed up reading as usual.

At noon on Thursday, Chris finished the second interview of that day. He had done great in both, and was excited to see where this new career path would take him. He went for an especially tough bike ride and drank a glass of wine instead of several beers that night.

At around 1:30 that day, Dan Smolinsky spoke to Jesse for only the third time in two years. Smolinsky told Jesse that he "was doing a great job”. Jesse lay awake that night, thinking about the tarantula hawk.

On Friday, Chris was hired as a software engineer at a progressive San Francisco technology firm. He wasn’t required to shave the goatee he loved so much, which he had been forced to do at Horizon. Short sleeve polo shirts were acceptable attire at this new job.

Jesse went to work at Horizon Technologies, and was half an hour early as always. At around 10:00am, the dynamite strapped to his body began to make him uncomfortable under his long sleeve button up.

At 11:28, Jesse thought of the tarantula hawk.

At 11:32, he walked into Smolinsky’s office.

The Truth About Nostalgia

Sometimes the dilemma and the therapy are the same thing. Sometimes the problem is that you just want to lie in bed, listening to songs that remind you of past times. Not necessarily better times, just times that you won’t ever get back again; things you are no longer capable of seeing or feeling or living because they are now the past. Ironically, you spend this time reminiscing about the very path that you got you to where you are now, and these memories you dwell on were accomplished by living in the moment. Rarely do we remember a night laying in bed with Broken Social Scene and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! playing, but often do we spend nights like this thinking about the first time we heard “Cause=Time” in the backroom of Mike Morrissey’s house in high school after getting stoned for one of the first times. The only cure is to ride the wave, so to speak. Go with the memories for as long as you need to and once you’re nostalgia has passed, you’ll be more than ready to live your life again. That’s not to say that you should ever forget about listening to “Tidal Wave” while driving on the first perfect day of summer with three of your best friends on the way to Mill Pond to jump off the ropeswing…you just shouldn’t spend all your time thinking about how that ropeswings cut down now and the three of you haven’t been in a car together for years.

Everyone dwells on some memories; this comes from having experienced any events that were more important to you than you realized at the time. You never realize in the moment how important those small memories will become to you, and even when they’ve become so important there is no “why”. They just are, and you spend little time questioning it. They are there, in part, to remind you of the beauty of life and the moments when you felt the most “alive”. Never again will I be able to feel so purely 16 as I did during the moments I lived at age 16, but listening to the songs again can make me feel close. Is that something to aspire to? No. Something to be ashamed of? Even more certainly no.

The Radio Show

Everyone has secrets. Some construction workers lock themselves in a room with no windows or doors on the weekends and write romantic poetry while listening to opera. There are body builders out there who prefer to spend their alone time wearing a leotard and dancing to the soundtrack of Grease in their living room by the light of the fireplace. For Toph, it was the radio station. On Wednesday nights at around ten o’clock he would sneak out of his dorm; shortly after the nightly pot smoking walk ended and just before the discussion about political conspiracy theories and religious propaganda in Hollywood started. Every week he had a different excuse: seeing a girl across campus, going out for late night food with an old friend he hadn’t seen lately, etc. The whole experience was exilerhating to him, partly because he was terrified of his friends and roommates finding out what he was really doing. Luckily, none of them even were aware the college had a radio station, so his secret was safe.

The ornate building that was the Wakehurst Student Center stood in a beautiful grove of trees set back from the heart of campus. Although it was a hub for activity during the day, by ten o’clock at night it was always deserted. This added to the thrill of Toph’s escapades down the old, wide wooden staircase and into the basement of the Newport mansion turned college building, his heart racing as he readied to broadcast his thoughts and feelings in the form of other people’s music over the digital airwaves of this New Frontier.

The inside of the radio station broadcast room was the best place Toph had ever been in his life. Top of the line audio equipment was everywhere, from speakers to mixers to Macintosh computers with libraries of over 60,000 songs. They even had those badass headphones that were made for planes and canceled out all other noises. The best part was the fact that down here, you could play whatever the hell you wanted however loud you wanted, and no one could complain or judge you. The building was virtually empty, the studio was basically soundproof and if anyone caught you playing Cyndi Lauper or a bad KISS record, you could blame it on the request line.
The radio shows Toph ran for two hours consisted of very little talking. He preferred to play long, unorthodox tracks that regular radio simply wouldn’t ever imagine putting on the air; stuff like B-sides off of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma album.

On one particular Wednesday night he decided to start off his show with the Bob Dylan epic “Desolation Row”, only to lead directly into “Spirit of the Radio” by Rush, his favorite song to hear on the $600 speakers he was surrounded by. The absurd transition from Dylan’s soft acoustic to Rush’s hard progressive rock made the power of the song that much better. That night he had logged four listeners so far, most of which were probably other DJ’s from the station who tuned in just to hear what everyone else liked to play during their show. There was a late night hip-hop show put on by a kid from Chicago, a smooth jazz show that played Monday nights and most lunch hours, and the Party Boy Power Hour, the most popular show at the station. That particular show ran Thursday nights at eight, and played whatever was on the charts that week. As unfortunate as their taste in music was, the DJ’s were pretty cool guys and usually logged into Toph’s show to see what he would throw on the air.

All the music DJ’s felt a kind of brotherhood; the feeling of being able to control what was being sent out on the airwaves was an addictive one that could only be understood by those who were as passionate about their music as these students were. The talk radio DJ’s had their own uniting force: the love of their own voice. There was no doubt the Political Talk Show host and the host of Dorm Drama had much in common. The only person from the station who didn’t fall into either camp was the station director, Matt. He was a portly kid with a thick brown beard and short messy hair. His messenger bag and navy blue Chuck Taylor’s were like staples of his personality, and might have even had more personality than he had himself, or at least let on to others. Undoubtedly Matt stood for everything the other DJ’s hated: station regulations, cheesy station identification breaks, and hipster indie music that every god damn college radio station was playing constantly. God Speed You! Black Emperor and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club seemed to magically appear on other DJ’s playlists, and Elliot Smith was always playing when Toph walked into the studio on Wednesday night, even though Matt supposedly put the station on shuffle after his five o’clock show.

Needless to say, when Matt showed up to Toph’s show as “Spirit of the Radio” faded into “Breathe” (the Easy Star All Star version, off of Dub Side of the Moon of course) and waltzed into the studio, dropping his messenger bag at his feet, Toph was none too pleased. Sometimes he simply liked to show up during other people’s shows, which was most likely for lack of anything better to do rather than out of interest in the station itself. This forced someone to interact with him not only socially but in an environment that involved music. This was almost like shooting fish in a barrel, but far crueller. This was like putting innocent fish with good taste in a small bowl and playing Damien Rice records for hours on end out of audio equipment meant to blare Zeppelin or The Stones. Toph was done for.
“Hey buddy,” sang Matt as he hunkered down into the second DJ chair that looked so much better to Toph when it was vacant. “What’s on your playlist for tonight? Anything I’ll like?” All Toph could do was sigh on the inside and think to himself that the next two hours were no longer going to be the most relaxing of his week as Matt rifled through the playlist Toph had prepared earlier that day in Psychology class.

An hour later, they were listening to Radiohead’s “Palo Alto”, one of their newly discovered mutual likes, while enjoying a flask of scotch together. They hadn’t stopped laughing or raving about teriffic albums for at least forty minutes, leaving the microphones off and letting the tracks play right into each other. “I still just can’t say that they’ve made a better album than The Bends,” confessed Toph, “I know OK Computer is great, and it’s certainly genius, but I don’t think it’s better music. Better rock music.” Matt responded with his favorite retort: “Bullshit! OK Computer is a rock album! Airbag! Electioneering! Lucky! Great fuckin’ rock tracks!” “I don’t know,” Toph replied, “it just isn’t as raw and true as The Bends for me. Want to smoke another joint?” “Jesus Christ,” Matt said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

As they continued their downward spiral towards utter insanity they put on The Strokes’ “Barely Legal” and sat back, letting the studio fill with smoke while they listened to the raw garage sounding rock. “Do you ever feel like they’re out to get you?” Matt asked casually, out of the blue.

“All the time,” Toph replied with certainty. “Wait, who do you mean?”

“Everyone who tells you what’s right and what you’re supposed to do,” Matt answered. “They just tell you what they were told when they were your age by the people that they despised and rebelled against, don’t they? They don’t have any original advice, and they know how much the advice they were given fucked up their own lives, but they still regurgitate it. They’re trying to kill us, and pretty consciously.”

“Well ya, I guess, but I think they at least sincerely believe it all now…you know, all the bullshit. I don’t really think they’re trying to crush my spirit or ruin my youth, most of the time at least. I just think they were told all that shit enough to finally actually buy into it.” Toph paused and thought about it for a minute, “I think it would kill them to realize that they’re doing to us what all the parents, professors and jackasses did to them when they were young.”

“I think they just hate me,” Matt said. Toph remembered how he felt about Matt when he wasn’t stoned with him in the radio station. In Matt’s case, maybe they did just hate him.

“Someday we might be like them,” Toph said. Matt turned red with anger, looking as if he couldn’t be more offended ever in his life. “Bullshit!” Matt replied, as usual. Toph thought this struck such a chord with Matt because, in truth, he had already begun to buy into the idea of authority and blend into the vast canvas of those who ran other people’s lives. His job as the station manager proved that, and he probably realized that. The thought clearly terrified him…he was becoming a part of the very organization that he claimed was trying to kill him. To him, accepting the life they had pushed him towards was death, and he was well on the way to the grave if that was indeed the case.

After shifting the topic of conversation to baseball, something Matt surprisingly knew a decent amount about, the two traded a few more song choices. It was The Shins and City and Colour that set the backdrop of the conversation about the lack of quality catchers and second basemen in the league these days. Morose songs by sad bands that acted as a casual reminder of the conclusion of their previous conversation: Everyone dies, but most people die twice. Once in spirit, somewhere between the age of 15 and 50, and once in body, a true death that is probably far more painless to the one it actually occurs to.

Once the reel had run out on “California One” by The Decemberists, Matt grumbled his way to his feet and thanked Toph for his company in the studio. Without commenting on how the show had gone, he grabbed his messenger bag and sauntered off, reminding Toph to lock up the studio before he left: A clear sign of the terminal illness of the spirit that Matt was suffering from yet denied so vigorously.

Toph sighed, scrolled up for a few seconds and decided on a Dave Matthews cover of “All Along the Watchtower” to close out the night. The radio station that usually calmed him down so well had filled his head with unsettling thoughts that night; thoughts embraced far too readily by his paranoid mind. He would be back next Wednesday, and would play a very unique radio show that featured Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and The Flaming Lips “Fight Test”. That particular playlist might have been the most open to interpretation as any he would ever make, even to himself.