Written Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006.

Dana and I pulled into the driveway in the 2006 rental car. The booming stereo ended with the engine as she turned the key to off.

How did we not see her in the driver’s seat behind that massive rack? Not the one I suckled as a child, appreciating every drop of life dripped from the loving teat, but the one she stood behind. Like she was driving a bus. A semi. A son crazy.

“Is that her?” Dana’s eyes were fixed at 12 o’clock, wide-eyed and knowing th answer.

“Yes.” I lowered my gaze.

“What is she doing?”

I cranked the window down as wildly as if I was winding a toy that would save my life. “What in the hell are you doing, mom?”

“Huh?”

She turned and displayed the rest of her dropping body. All the parts that were covered up by the monstrosity were in full view. There she stood, humping the back of a beheaded moose.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I don’t understand,” Dana said as her hands remained at the wheel. I looked at the key in the ignition and wanted so much to turn it. Motor us away.

“Her and Dad are really into taxidermy. This must be a new piece. Though, she doesn’t usually hump them.” I stared gazing as she continued. Maybe, to her, it wasn’t humping. Was it dancing? What is going on? “Let’s just get out and maybe she’ll stop.”

“Are you sure? Is it safe?” There wasn’t a tremor in her voice but in her soul it shook for miles.

“Of course it’s okay.” I reassured her though I was unsure.

My mother is losing her mind in front of my new girlfriend. In the driveway that I used to play in.

My mother is humping a moose head.

“Stop, mom. This is Dana.”

She stood, somehow defenseless behind the monster head and antlers. “Hi, I’m Jan.”

Written Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006.

He told me on my birthday. May 10th, 1999. “You’re twenty-one, Patrick. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know she’s the one. Why wait?”

“Because you’re young. We’re young. Shouldn’t we have adventures or something beforehand?”

“We have. Remember the baby pool?”

“That was stupid. And so is this. Don’t do it.”

“I’m going to. Sorry if you disagree. It just feels right. Will you be the best man?”

“Yes.”

It was a nice wedding for the most part. Cake, booze, and laughs.

His father had been dry for ten years until that day. After champagnes that numbered in the teens the shirt was removed (button after button flying with the things that he shouldn’t have said) and, above the wedding band, a declaration was made – “My son is an emabarassment to me!” Luckily, he’d been written off as an ass years prior, at a funeral (the reason for his sobriety).

The last smile, coupled with a hug, I witnessed was when Patrick got in the wedding car, a 1987 Mazda. “Thanks. We’ll send you pictures.”

I got the pictures. I’ve kept the memories that they’ve produced since.

Her hair singed when he pushed her head in the oven declaring, “Look what you did to the roast! Now what are people going to think!” His arm broken when she yelled from the pavement, “If you love me then you would’ve caught me!” “But you jumped off the roof,” was my educated interjection.

A baby. An accident. A forgotten innocent.

Unlucky for him. Lucky for those that know him. A lesson learned.
The words that I thought I would never mutter were the ones I delivered into his ear the night I found him in the bar disheveled and wanting advice: “Grow up.”

Written Monday, October 16th, 2006.

When I looked in the mirror I thought of everything I needed to get done before Terry’s dinner tonight. Pick up wine. Inquire on why it takes so long to get my Netflix in the mail. Get my passport. It wasn’t until I grabbed my keys on the way out that I thought of where I was going and why I was wearing a tie.

Papa died.

He had been in decline for a while. I started to wonder about his sanity when he became confused at an open-faced sandwich.

“I ordered a sandwich. There’s no bread on the top.”
“The bread’s right there.” I pointed to the overturned bun wearing lettuce and onion as a hat. “You can add some condiments and flip it on top.”

“That’s not a sandwich. Do I need a fork for this?”

“No…watch.”

Laughing with a mouthful of deli meat he told me how he found grandma dead on the bathroom floor. “She was still holding her pills.” My mother later filled me in that they revived her. I don’t know why Papa bringing it up was my first encounter with the story. Grandma seemed fine to me.

The air chapped my lips as I walked out the door towards the funeral home. I knew the scene well. Aunt Harriet smoking outside and laughing loudly, baring no teeth. Uncle Gary not talking except for disciplining his bastard grandson by simply muttering his name. Jonah. Myself catching up with my own blood who I would gratefully release from my life quicker than that from my own neck.

The food made me gassy and constipated. The conversation left me thirsting for solitude and tobacco. The hugs made my stomach churn almost to the point of blessed diarrhea.

Upon leaving I could reflect on Papa more clearly. His knack for woodworking. His filthy tongue. His love of jazz. His blotchy tattoo from when he crossed the equator in the Navy.

He was the only one I wanted to talk to the entire time.

Written Monday, October 23rd, 2006.

The night air was wet. It hadn’t yet, but I knew it was gonna make my blanket wet by sunrise. The kind of wet night that makes you worry that it’ll make you sick.

Spring Mill State Park. Mitchell, Indiana. Settler’s Village. 3:00Am.

I’m washing my clothes in the creek for the next day. (You see, though it’s 1999, we pretend like it’s 1847. Take it seriouly or leave the camp.) The fire was still going but conversation waned long ago. Fathers and sons nodding off alike, the fire warming their faces into tranquil unconciousness. Kelly, a girl roughly my age, astounded me from over my shoulder, “Hello.”

“Hi.”

I thought that she was going to come onto me. It frightened me because I worried that if she really tried to put the juice on I wouldn’t know how to react. Her prarie outfit opened up a part of my sexual being that was the opposite of fetish and that is revulsion.

Therefore, I had a short fuse.

She looked at me with the twinkle of firelight shining up a corner of her wet eyeball. “Kinda chilly to be away from the fire, huh?”

“You wanna hop in the creek? Clothes and all?”

She laughed and then stopped laughing. I looked at the water and listened to her walk away, her footsteps quieting as my heart slowed.

Written Tuesday, December 5th, 2006.

“Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

“Jesus, Terrance, yes. See…I’m pushin’ the button and since there’s no fire, it ain’t goin’ beep beep.”

All is quiet in the Thompson household two hours later. Terrrance sleeps with the television on. Mama Thomp sleeps with her arm in the crater where Papa Thomp slept when he was a free man. “Granbabes” sleeps face down in a crib that was found in a quiet alley, breaths coming further and further apart.

Meanwhile the fryer remains at 400 degrees. A bubble of oil pops and jumps onto the tablecloth. Simmer simmer…fake flowers eat up the heat and light the kitchen orange.

“Granbabes” didn’t smother from her face in the pillow but the black smoke that danced two inches above the floor. Papa Thomp never had a house or a family again.

Written Tuesday, December 12th, 2006.

The stairs creaked the same way each time he climbed them. One sounded dull, deep. Another sharp and cracking. Plastic covered the middle of the case, the most traveled part. It added a click to each groan. The handrails were painted a dark brown, shiny, and chipped. With the layers exposed one would think that there was lead deep down. One should think that. One should also think that if there was ever a fire you’re fucked. If the smoke didn’t get you the fumes from the plastic would.

She lived with two cats and another girl that was always asleep. Inside unit 3 one always held the voice to a whisper. It was situated where the sun always glowed through the blinds in yellow and brown and warmed the air with a smell of sleep itself. Drowsiness overcame all who entered and a whisper remained an easy tone to maintain.

Eric wasn’t in the neighborhood to do anything else except to visit Barbara. No one came here except to live or visit. Cheap rent and bothersome to get to. People die here and escape from living. She told him to come over. She’d have food and wine and maybe a walk. It was Sunday.

The cats sat in the window licking each other between glances at passers-by with grocery pushcarts and old, slow dogs. He asked her, “Are you really moving away?”

“Yes. I don’t like it here.”

“There are better places to live.”

“I’m going there. I don’t like Chicago. I have chili and bologna.”

“I’ll have chili.”

The wine was cheap and in a large bottle. Hamburger filled out the chili and his stomach and he drifted off to midday sleep.

He awoke with a cat licking the bowl in his lap. She had left, where he didn’t know. He found a note on the refrigerator but it made no sense to him.

The door couldn’t be locked without a key so he hoped that it would remain shut, giving the idea that it was secure. As he passed the front door he buzzed the apartment hoping to wake the sleeping roommate. A smile came to him as he pictured her rising from the undeserved slumber and finding the door open, locking it as she returned to her warm heaven on earth.

A snippet of fiction.

“Weddings force singles to think of the future, elders the past, and the intelligent to feel extremely uncomfortable.”
-unknown, 2007

Brian passes through the double doors and onto the back patio. A few lights remain on the fairways, but none on the sand traps or greens. He sets his drink on the cement and reaches for a cigarette. The humidity makes the whiskey and ice sweat, leaving a ring on the gray stone almost instantly. The insects bang into each other, the white lights, and our heads; the air scatters with clicks, whirrs, and buzzes. He tells himself that if one lands in his drink he will eat it. Down it.

In the near darkness the groom stands surrounded by his closest well-wishers. The remember-that-times are over and all that’s left is advice on how to deal with a bride. The advice spills like their staggering drinks and the groom takes it in like a vitamin or mineral. At this point he needs all the reassurance, all the fresh conversation; at this time he knows it will come to an end. It has come to an end. It might be like grandpa said, a beautiful beginning, or like the best man said, the death of everything he knows. Brian merely listens without caring. He smiles a smile that one could only hope would last for a thousand years. It is the smile that says something is figured out: a problem, a question, or just a hurdle gone forever. Whether or not he will remember the answer tomorrow is anyone’s guess, but he relishes in it nonetheless.

Into the air conditioned banquet hall all is white and sparkly. The elders are drinking, dancing, and the children are acting suspiciously sexual. Have they been sneaking champagne? The hour has arrived where random guests are cornering kitchen staff for more food or oral sex. “You Shook Me All Night Long” begins and the dance floor fills up. Heels broken, bowties removed–the second happiest day in their lives. Brian weaves his way to the bar.

“Another Jack on the rocks, please.”

The bartender is portly with a lisp. “Sure.” Brian finds comfort in his presence. If he’s gay than he must hate weddings as much as I. Or is it because I tip him that he is so nice? So much ice and so little booze. Well, when it’s a package deal I guess you gotta save money wherever.

“How’s your night going?” Brian drills the straw as deep as it will go while circling the rim of the plastic cup. His eyes meet the bartender’s.

“Alright. And yours?”

“Yeah, it’s okay. Say, do you work a lot of these?”

“What, weddings?”

“Yeah.”

“Not really. Maybe three a year.”

“Three? Shit. I haven’t been to one since my sister’s, and that was…um, six, maybe seven years ago. I’m hating it.”

“I can tell,” the bartender says as he refills the few sips that were taken.

“Well, see you soon. Thanks.” Brian walks a few steps and sees his table. The same people and conversation. The same goddamn humdrum and in and out piss-mouth explanations on this and that. Words, words, so many said but nothing said. He stops and watches the familiar hand gestures of casual conversation. What are they like alone in their bedrooms?

“Twist and Shout” blares through the hall as the young, old, and handicapped gather on the dance floor to recreate their dance, their secret. Adults crouch down and “twist” with the shorter, younger crowd. Onlookers snap photos and smile and nudge each other with observations. Brian returns outside.

The humidity is stifling. The heat isn’t bad. The grass of the golf course remains—nature shorn and molded to be trampled on by the animal that is killing it. Brian sits down on the same patch of cement as before, returning his legs to an outstretched, crossed, lounging form. I want it to stop. I want to find peace.