What Wages Beneath the Surface

I want to ask this girl from class if she would like to go out to dinner with me. I know it doesn’t sound spectacular, but in this particular situation, it has some poetry to it. I want to ask her tomorrow. A week ago—Valentine’s Day if you can stomach the cliché—she had plans to go with Mark to this downtown restaurant called Escobar’s. The place specializes in nuevo latino cuisine, and it’s the best in town according to our poetry instructor. You need a reservation to get in. Normally Escobar’s is closed on Monday, but it was open for Valentine’s Day with some forty dollars deal for couples. Our instructor asked everyone about their plans for Valentine’s Day, and she told the class about the deal and how she made the reservations a week in advance but cancelled that morning because, she says, it’s just too expensive. On the following Wednesday at the end of class, I hear her tell our instructor that this Mark scumbag went to the restaurant last night with a professor. She tells him, “we’re still friends,” and I wonder at all of the details I am missing.

I want to tell her that I would like to take her to this place. Really, I’d like to take her anywhere, but I also don’t want to be the schmuck with a pickup line. It may all be irrelevant, though, because I can see the red mark just beginning to expose itself, and the mound slowly growing into its protrusion. Most likely a white head will have formed on my face by morning. Slightly off-center on the bridge of my nose, just below my eye. If I were good-looking in the first place, the minor blemish could, probably, be forgiven. With this face, I’m not so sure, but here I go sounding like a fucking Hank Chinaski character.

***

I leave the mirror behind and go about the day, but in the car and through the aisles at the grocer, I’m reminded of those terrible junior high years…being on multiple medications, a treatment cream, a pill, a special facial cleansing soap…learning what a dermatologist was…being told my uncle had to be treated into his late twenties, that the Marines completely eliminated dairy from his diet. I used to pick at the flecks of dead skin—the medicine and cream and cleanser thoroughly drying out the pores, expurgating and eliminating the oil. I feared living later, covered in pockmarks like Robert Davi. Now, I worry about the lines mapping the creases of my brow into a permanent scowl. It’s mostly from thinking but it’s also from stress—my skin would always clear up in the summers—of work, school, relationships fallen by the wayside…memories like the day Angie Maskeet broke up with me. I wasn’t so bothered by her breaking up with me—I preferred to be with her best friend anyway—but with the fact that she did so on a day when she had the largest pimple brimming in the center of her nose just above the tip, agitated with a little red circle around the transparent layer of skin barely containing the white pus waiting below, waiting to burst forth into the light and wail its existence into the world like a just-birthed babe. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I remember glancing at her eyes once or twice to seem to be listening, and I remember the part where she said 'I only think of you as a friend,' but otherwise, I was transfixed on this thing ready to ooze on her nose. I wanted to pop it, if not only to get rid of it and start the healing process but to simply see what would happen. Would it burst in a terrific splash of wet pus, or would the stuff have become a hardened paste that had to be squeezed out of the sore, the enlarged pore, like it were a tube of toothpaste? I stared, dumbfounded, as she finished whatever it was she was saying, hugged me, turned and walked from my front door to her car, and left my driveway to go marry some zealot eight years older four years later, a guy her parents could accept because his favorite book is the Bible.

I return home and return to the vanity in the bathroom. Move my face within inches of the mirror’s surface to gain a closer look. Nothing has changed yet. I scrub my face with a palm full of acne wash. I know it does not matter at this point.

---------

The above is from a short work of fiction, entitled "Mirrors, or Intro. to Creative Writing: A Work of Fantasy." Most people that have read my fiction will note that I often have an almost obsessive perspective on skin in a lot of stories. The obsession is particularly marked with acne. The above is fiction, but of course, with fiction there is truth, and it's little surprise that there is a lot of truth in that obsessing, not just for me either.

It is true that I was plagued in junior high and some of high school with those irritating little red bumps. I still occassionally get flare ups of stress acne now just like the character from "Mirrors," who is and isn't me. In college, I was particularly conscious of the potential for breakouts, especially when I was elbow deep in dirty, greasy dishwater thirty hours a week for work. I scoured myself at home immediately upon arrival to purge myself of the dirt, sweat, and food oils from the job. For the most part it worked perfectly fine. The stress free summers were never anything to worry about. The warm and humid midwest air does my skin a great deal of good in keeping it moisturized. The harsh cold and dryness of the winter was and still is something to be combatted after showering and washing the face--the skin easily becomes dried out, cracked, and flaking under those stressful conditions.

But the end of this summer, unfortunately, has proved challenging as well. I think it's pretty safe to argue the correlation between employment and stress...and the pimples. It's been a long month of preparation and getting settled into the new home and work environment. Since last Tuesday, I've been putting in close to sixteen or more hour days, waking around five in the morning to work out and prepare for school meetings, setting up the classroom, developing lesson plans, and so on. And I've been working until at least seven or eight at night before calling it quits. Monday was the first official school day, and I crawled out of bed at 4:45 am, remained at school working until 4:45 pm, and then watched the boys' soccer game until almost seven before heading home to do another hour of planning. Today was pretty much the same story, except I had my first classes today--Monday was just an assembly with all students and faculty--and I worked until six before attending the girls' volleyball scrimmage night. My "me" time was grilling a small burger and watching an hour of the Little League World Series at home--did I mention I skipped lunch today to get some more class planning done.

It's no surprise to me that the pores are clogging up in rebellion against my body and it's current abuse. They're attacking the most vulnerable places, the weak points in the front line. It's like they're seasoned veterans when it comes to this war of attrition.

It's hard enough being a twenty-three-year-old teacher, only five years ahead of some of your students, trying to occupy a respectable position of authority in class. Matters are made worse when you're 5'9" and weigh 140 lbs. Showing up to class with a nice zit to the side of my nose makes me feel like I should be sitting in one of the one-armed desk chairs rather than standing in front of a bunch of hormone-oozing teens. I think the beard is about the only thing that sets me apart, otherwise I'd be blending in much too easily in the crowded hallways. At the same time, the beard is a contributing factor to my skin problems. As I said, it's a war of attrition in more regards than one.

One of my students, who I only met two days ago, helps me keep this in mind as he has dubbed me "The Resurrection" in light of my supposed Jesus-esque appearance, which in the Western mind equates to any white male with slightly longer hair and a beard. This stems from the traditional Western art depictions of, what I like to refer to as, "stoned-out hippy Jesus." I was assisting in another teacher's homeroom when this particular student brilliantly realized the most obvious and easiest referential point for my appearance--like I haven't heard the "Jesus" thing before (and both my hair and beard are many inches shorter than they have been in the past, and "inches" is not an exaggeration). I informed him that this connection was nothing new and that it too lacked certain attention to details. As I informed the student, who I in turn dubbed "Max Power" (you see, the pus is even affecting my brain at this point as I respond to a sixteen year-olds weak witticism with something equally juvenile), Jesus was a Middle-Eastern Jew, and I am neither Middle-Eastern nor Jewish and strongly doubt that I resemble the man in any real sense (it seems more likely that Jesus was a blackhead and not a whitehead). This was delivered in my near perfected Midwestern drawl at a precise sloth-paced monotone pitch and tone. The homeroom teacher, one of my former teachers and coaches, chuckled and explained to the kids that if they had Mr. Asscot for class, they'd have to be study the dead-pan humor to stay sharp with my passive agressive comebacks. Perhaps, I shouldn't be upset about the supposed likeness to Jesus, I mean if he reportedly cured lepers than a couple goddamned zits should be no problem for me. Right?

But that's the thing about students and new teachers, it's all about testing boundaries and seeing how far the line will bend before it breaks. What occurs on the surface is one thing, but what goes on below the surface is psychological warfare. In my weaker states, it's biological warfare, and casualties run high in the initial battles, while the surviving few sluggishly march on in Neutrogena's counterattack charge. Sometimes, it feels like you have to work miracles for the most basic of things, and you're just never compensated for those little troubles. In these struggles to maintain, if you really want to get under my skin, all you have to do is merely point out the slowly growing red protrusion with the milky white middle just off-center my nose, or corner-mouth, or chin, or cheek, or wherever those bastards choose to sneak attack next. Ssssh, don't tell Max.

Dreams of the Modern Woman

Yesterday, I dozed off on the couch during a ballgame and awoke nearly two hours later. While sleeping, I had one of the most inexplicable and strange dreams I've ever encountered. It was a two-part dream. The first was a somewhat surreal scene, steeped more in the ordinary with real details than fantastic but with just enough surreal coincidence to make the dreamer conscious of the fantasy. The latter half, however, was like nothing I've ever experienced before and I typed about 2,500 words last night describing the whole thing. Nevertheless, I have no intentions of sharing such intimate knowledge and experience as that of the latter half, but I would like to share an embellishment of the former. I know, I'm such a tease.

The eggs at Dena's Diner are always runny. I've never ordered them actually, but it's something I've noticed during my visits there. I usually just settle for a burger and shake. I'm a simple guy. In fact, the last time I was in here, that was exactly what I ordered. Burger. Everything on it. Hold the mayo. And give me a vanilla shake. It was months ago. Four in the morning after everyone else was closed, and I was craving something greasy on a bun after a late night. I dined with the pit-stop truckers coming through town for a bite and the morning delivery guys grabbing coffee before heading out.

This afternoon, though, I went with a veggie sandwhich and water. I've been trying to change things. Trying to get myself in shape. Trying to get things back to where they once were, like my weight for instance. I've been hovering around one hundred and sixty for quite a while and could afford to drop another five.

The sandwhich was alright. Not worth the five bucks I wouldn't say, but eating better costs in more ways than one. Dena comes over in her baby blue blouse and pulls the pencil from behind her ear. She's lean and her arms are covered in blue veins like running rivers and tributaries into calloused hands destined for carpal tunnel. She gives me a small, brief smile and then comes to the business. Her face is concentrated with that no time for bullshit look. She asks again if I want a beer despite the fact that I told her I'm living different now. She doesn't care. She remembers me from the old days.

I thank her again and politely remind her. "No thanks, Dena. Remember I'm trying to change things now. No beer today. Just the check please."

She smiles again, but it's a smile that says she doesn't believe I'm sincere, or rather a smile that says she thinks i'm full of shit. No matter. I like the atmosphere in Dena's, or rather the lack of atmosphere. And I like Dena bouncing back and forth in her baby blue blouse behind the counter with her no time for bullshit brow furrowed, coffee pot in hand constantly.

I pay the bill and leave a tip. It's a good tip. I tip well, and Dena knows it though she'd die before let me know that she knows it. I push myself up from the counter and give Dena a wave. "Thanks, Dena. I'll catch ya later."

She's flipping the patties on the flat-top, but she may as well flip me the bird as I wait a second. She ignores me, devoting all of her attention to those bloody burgers and the oily bubbling sound of the fries in the deep fryer. I shrug it off and head for the door. I only have a week in town before I leave for my new job in Wickenburg, just northwest of Sun City and El Mirage. Sure it's only fifty miles away, but it's another world all the same.

I'm thinking about what I should do for my last week in Phoenix when I catch sight of her in the booth out of the corner of my eye. I stop and turn to look at her. It is her.

She's focused intently on the screen of her laptop. Her eyes are concentrated on reading. I stand quietly for a moment until she becomes distracted and aware that someone is standing by her booth and looking at her. She looks up still with her brow knit in hard concentration, and she doesn't recognize me for a split second until the thought of what it is she has been reading clears from her thoughts.

I grin stupidly. "Hey. Hey, how's it going?"

She looks at me hard. She's surprised, and she assumes a look that suggests she thinks it's weird that I've run into her, a look that suggests it's weird like I purposely made this happen, an accusatory look like I've followed her here and am now feigning surprise at having run into her. But a nearly unnoticeable smile steals across her face for only the most miniscule moments, and she's considering it all and she's somehow flattered at the thought of it. She'd kind of like it if I had followed her and purposefully bumped into her like it was all a coincidence out of the blue. She'd like that, though she'd never in her life let me know that.

"Um, hi." Her accusatory look turns to that of curiosity.

I notice her hair's down, which is unusual. "What's been going on? How has your summer been? Let's see, the season starts soon, right?" I'm bombarding her with questions, but I haven't seen her for months, and she hasn't responded to my last couple of texts and emails, which is a sign.

"Not much." She folds her laptop down. "I went home for a few weeks until I got tired there and came back here. I've been running a lot to get back in shape, and yeah we leave for training camp at the end of the week."

I can tell she's been running because of the little bumps at the top of her forehead, along the hairline. Little stress acne bumps that I've always found so beautiful. When school starts, she'll be running ten miles a day and taking almost twenty hours of classes. She's a writing and aerospace engineering student. Her father works at one of the state's governmental labs near an air force base. He bird watches in his spare time. She writes the most exquisite poems about birds. "How's the ankle?"

"It's getting there." She's packing up to go. "How's the writing coming along."

I shake my head. "I've had to put it on hold for a bit now. I've had to focus on preparing for my new job. I got a lot done early in the summer, but it's been weeks now since I started and finished anything."

She shakes her head and says she understands, and I clench and unclench my hand in my pocket and tighten my grip on my briefcase with the other. "Well, I've got to run. I'm supposed to meet Mark soon."

Now, it's my turn to look at her accusingly. I do momentarily and hide it quickly but not quickly enough. She's caught my shift in temperament, but she continues moving, unperturbed. She gathers her gym bag, school bag, and laptop satchel and scoots out from her seat at the booth. I've tilted my head back and assumed a more nonchalant posture that's easy to see through. "Well, I hope you have a great season and get back to full speed soon."

"Thanks and it was good seeing you."

"Yeah, it was." She's standing and looking at me now. I can tell she's anxious to leave. "Send me anything you want an opinion on, you know. I'm happy to do it."

She smiles, and it's a somewhat pitious smile now. She's walking past me, where I'm rooted to the floor. "Thanks, I'll do that. Well, goodbye."


I watch her sandy brown hair kick up in the wind as she opens the diner door, and the little bell that sounds for new customers tinkles lightly. I watch her hair lifting up into the air like the desert sand on the wind, and she walks along the row of windows with her head down until she passes to where the drywall begins, and she's out of sight. I stand awkwardly for several passing moments, thinking.

I'm angry, but I know I shouldn't be. So she's back with Mark, but it's nothing unexpected. She's back with the guy she thinks she should be with, starting quarterback in high school, eats right, treats his body like a temple, has a great smile and a shit personality. It's nothing out of the ordinary.

I turn back and look at the diner for one last time, and Dena's staring at me with the pencil stuck behind her ear, chewing on her gum, and looking at me knowingly. She laughs with a single exhaled huff and turns back to her grill and bubbling fries. I sigh and walk out the door into the blinding sunlight. The clear glass door quietly closes behind me and shuts out the sounds of sizzling and bubbling and clattering dishes and the little tinkling sound of a customer who's had his last supper in this town.

from the Book of the Prophet Harold

"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."

Genesis 2.24



It's a played out verse just like the whole story...just like:

"Wives, submit yourselves to yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, s let the wives bo to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband."

Ephesians 5.22-33



I suppose I don't have that much of a problem with the whole idea of Eve coming from Adam's rib. Sure, it's demeaning in the sense that women are a sort of inferior by-product, but isn't it nice to think of man and woman as of the same original flesh, and the original man sacrificing part of himself for original, or perhaps subject #2, woman--the anatomy is off only slightly, but the modern-day equivalent would be woman ripping out the man's guts. Perhaps it is only inevitable that woman eventually make her way back to her origins in that supposed she-bitch (and now Demon Queen), Lillith, who told Adam to fuck off and make his own dinner since she was breathed life into the same nostrils made of dust and clay, yet she was no man's golem, if still God's fool like all the rest.

No, I suppose what really bothers me is that Adam names "woman."

"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

Genesis 2.23



This bothers me because to name is to give meaning and to control that meaning. It is a power to name, and anyone who has read "1984" or Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" needs little further explanation. Note that the King James Bible mentions nothing of Lillith in its beautiful passages.

But don't take my cynicism and embittered jadedness to heart, I'm only riled up because I see a friend who has become a drowning man. Maybe, I should've started with Jonah or Noah (a sort of parable where Noah doesn't take God or any of his friends' advice), or maybe my friend should've taken his wife's last name because the way she wears his just isn't working out. It's a marriage of deception, control, and not-light-hearted games, such as I-Spy and Guess Who (is not getting sex until I get my way). My friend, Fast Eddie, is looking more like Cool Hand, although we've already progressed to the double shackles and the hopeless stand off in the church point of the movie. I've never thought of children, especially babies, in this manner, but I fear the first-born here will be the blind man's bullet, a sort of nail in the coffin you know. It's quite sad to see the guy that I've always called Fast Eddie, Cool Hand Luke, Dean Moriarty, that spirit of American youth and freedom, no matter how deluded/dilluted, drowning in a pool of his own making--I guess it comes with that territory though.

On the other hand, I've been fortunate to see my good ol' buddy Hank Chinaski settle down with his Baker Baby. They've only been together a little over a decade. I was a groom in their wedding a few months ago, and it was somewhat strange to be sitting there on the day of their wedding because it seemed as though it had already happened, that they had already been married long before even I knew them. I ended up having a panic attack, in fact, only hours before the ceremony, and I had to lay down upon the marital bed in the bridal suite for several minutes to calm my breathing and wait for the heart palpitations to subside. Later, as we waited in the park for the ceremony to commence, the sky blackened and the thunder rolled. I thought surely the union of these two heathens was bringing forth the rapture, and we'd all be left below with boils growing upon the skin in a lava river of fang-toothed demons over head...hell, if Lillith made an appearance then it would really be a party. But alas, merciful God showed up, and the sky actually cleared, the clouds broke, and there was a glorious blue sky and golden sun for the exact eleven minute proceedings of the wedding. Within minutes of the start and finish, the sky was black, but for those brief moments of blasphemy, with Hank C. and Baker B., it looked like a paradise, or as much as it can in Bloomington.

And as strange as it was to be there for those two, it was even stranger last week when I had another deja vu like experience. My friend Dirk had told me that he had begun ring searching in the spring, and several Wednesdays ago had apparently found it. He and Honey Bee were travelling to D.C. for the week I heard, and I thought 'Ah, I bet Dirk proposes.' No more than a day later, I received the news that he had in fact done so. Again, I felt strange as if this had already happened as after being together for more than seven years, Dirk and Honey Bee's relationship has been more like a domestic marriage than anything else.

We were at Jupiter's Pizza Parlor celebrating the other night when I arrived late from a movie and met the happily engaged couple. The waitress promptly arrived to take my drink order and began rattling off a number of specials on beers and her suggested favorites, etc. I ordered an Oktoberfest, and she whisked off to take care of me, while I sat and amusedly listened to Dirk and Honey Bee inform me that she hadn't taken care of them at all for the last hour that they sat. They thought it was because I was single. I laughed to myself as they suggested that I 'make a move.' And I laughed as they compared her to Fast Eddie's wife-bitch. She did, indeed, look very similar in her features and somewhat in her mannerisms, and not that I much entertained the thought of 'making a move' on the waitress, but these details immediately made that an impossible thought. At one point it was almost too much when she came to the table and asked if I was 'doing alright,' and I assured her I was. She turned, took two steps, and then turned back to ask Honey Bee if she would like a refill on her completely empty drink. Quite amusing, but the moment became quite depressing as talk then turned to Fast Eddie and Mrs. Fast Eddie.



I walked out of Jupiter's with little thought for the waitress. It's been months since I wanted someone really. All of this marriage stuff this summer--I was in one and attended another four, while now my cousin has just announced his engagement to the woman that I will be sharing a classroom with for the next three months, and Dirk and Honey Bee are making the whole thing official--is forcing me to think about the stuff a bit more than I have in the last few years. I've worked catering and as a result over a hundred weddings in the last three summers, which has numbed me to the whole thing a great deal. It didn't help that my recent ex at the time got me the job, and I spent four months in the wake of a bad breakup working that special day for those seemingly happy couples alongside the girl who had just ripped my guts out. I was sulking around a lot and mumbling things about divorce while I made sure to perfectly pour the champagne toasts so that the cheap fizz only just reached the lip of the flute but did not flow over the side.

Now, I feel much better about things. I'm saddened by Eddie's hell-on-earth, but very happy for Hank and Baker Baby as well as Dirk and Honey Bee. Several years ago, I would have thought Dirk and Honey Bee (though I would have named her Lily, that most submissive of flowers, then) were making a mistake, and then, I do not think I would have been wrong really. Today, it is quite clear that the two of them are going to be very happy together as, perhaps not one flesh (if that is the thing we're going for) but as close as you can or should want to get as two people coming together to make, not a perfect, one, but an agreeable one, a loving one.



Now, it must just be the work again of that merciful God, or perhaps a chance will of maybe still not a completely-broke man to make his move and save himself. It's time for Fast Eddie to move fast and get out, find one that is going to work before it's too late.



And it is said, and where it is said, it is written:

"It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery."

Matthew 5.31-32

But it hath also been said, and it has been written:

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."

Bob Dylan

And I hath said, and I hath written:

Fast Eddie, in the times of Great Depression, many men would, unfortunately leave their wives and children, and hop trains across the country. Many left to find work, while many left only out of despair and embarrassment from their inability to provide as 'men' for their families. I say to you now, hop that train and get out. Ride the train to newfound freedom before you find yourself laying down upon the tracks--the cool steel rails and the warping wooden rib slats--because it's a slow train coming AND a hard rain's a-gonna fall...



AND it ain't you babe. Enough said.

The Twilight Zone

You have now crossed over into the twilight zone...

That was the little voice of Rod Serling that I heard behind the back inside of my head, which is to say, I was disoriented in the moment much like that description. I stood in the third base dugout at the middle school ball diamond where I played in seventh and eighth grades. Back then we made the first base side dugout our home dwelling. The switching of sides was not the only oddity to which I returned now nearly ten years later.

No surprise was the fact that my old coach was still there, coaching. He greeted me from the mound as he tossed balls to one of the high school players participating in the homerun derby--a break time and wowser display for the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders working to make the A and B teams on the second day of tryouts--as was a favorite sporting event when I was there. He said, "Is that who I think it is," as I dismounted my bicycle in the parking lot and walked toward the field past the newly constructed concession stand. "It can't be. He's been on the side of a milk carton since he disappeared." Everything seemed normal as the words danced on the air over my head. Coach was referring to my disappearance or quitting of the team after my sophomore year when we finished fourth at state for Class A.

I walked to the third base dugout where all of the young kids sat and watched the big kid at the plate whiff a lob pitch and finally end his turn with a weak line drive over second. I talked to Skindog, the on-and-off assistant coach over the last couple of decades, as Coach took several pitches in his at-bat and managed to squeak two over the fence before making his fifth and final out. I'd seen Skindog already a few times over the summer and we picked up the conversation from wherever we had left off the previous time.

After his fifth out, Coach came over to the dugout and amiably asked how I was doing. He had heard about my new job and congratulated me. We made small talk, and he told me how things were different...he wasn't the hell raising son of a bitch he'd been in the past. Then, surprisingly, or not surprisingly at first, he asked me if I had quit because of him. It's hard to put our relationship that spans nearly eighteen years succinctly. To simply explain, I was a 'whipping boy' for Coach many of the years that I played ball for him. Yet, I played a great deal as a seventh grader on the eighth grade team, and I started almost all of the high school games when I played as a Freshman and a Sophomore, in Center, batting second. At the same time, I was also made to run eighteen poles one practice on a windy day, in seventh grade, because I asked Coach "What?" when I couldn't hear his orders over the blowing wind and swirling dust. For those of you who don't know, a "pole" is the length along the outfield fence from pole to pole--I ran eighteen, which was some sort of team record at the time, before he told me to stop on a hot August day, which was surely around ninety degrees farenheit and a few degrees hotter with the heat index, most likely above eighty percent humidity as well. To put it even more directly, I'm almost certain I was made to cry by Coach more times in my life than nearly all other times combined...it's not even close when limited to crying in public.

I laughed at the question and shook my head, and he asked what percentage he was responsible for. I was accustomed to this sort of routine, his pushing to get answers to questions he wants answered by reluctant interviewees. I thought about it, though I found it ridiculous, and I said "forty" to end the probing if nothing else. In his anticipation, however, his eyes actually appeared to have a genuine concern for an infinitely small fraction, perhaps as small or as large as one of the granules of dust on the infield. I said forty, and he said he was glad that it wasn't at least or as much as fifty-one. He joked. I took the whole thing as the closest it would ever come to any sort of sincere apology. The old man may be getting soft now...his oldest son is just in junior high now, playing shortstop. I wonder what it's like to yell at other people's children and to yell at your own. I've only yelled out of anger once in the classroom. I imagine I'll have to do so much more on the basketball court...with girls. I've been told repeatedly that there will be crying every day. It's hard to imagine.

Pat Conroy's football coach-English teacher character, Tom Wingo, says in "The Prince of Tides": "A coach occupies a high place in a boy's life. It is the one grand component of my arguably useless vocation. If they are lucky, good coaches can become the perfect unobtainable fathers that young boys dream about and rarely find in their own homes." How is this with girls? Much different I think, though I will learn shortly.

The eerie music became audible as I stood in the dugout and watched myriad infractions take place in the course of two minutes that would have suredly resulted in an absolute hell-bent crisis involving spit-flying tirades and many many poles. These kids have no idea how easy they got it I thought to myself. I wonder what good or bad it will do them. I know being on constant edge five months out of the year was no treat. It didn't matter if it was on the field, the bus, the locker room, the classroom, home, or in your head, sleeping even...anything at any moment was liable to 'cause' a blow-up and resulting humiliation. A deconstruction of self for all to see and witness.

It's actually quite funny how people who have done such tremendous wrongs to you are the ones who most impact your life. The worst break-up of my life was the direct cause for my decision to remain in college for an extra year and complete a degree in rhetoric and writing. More deeply pervasive and omnipresent is Coach's creation of my mild-manneredness. My sloth-like manner of speaking, my easy-going-ness if you will. I took things hard then. I punished myself all through middle school, and it wasn't until high school that I could actually respond to the mini-tortures with a "fuck you" in my head, but in my head mind you, as nearly all my "fuck yous" remain in my head never to reverberate over the air waves. I suppose I've perfected the surface repressions now with my laughing in the face of sadness and hurt, the covering of emotion.

Coach asked me if I missed it. He said he knew then and it bothered him that I would one day regret leaving it. I told him I write a lot about it now. Then, a worried look flickered across his eyes before disappearing. He asked if I wrote about how I had an asshole coach. I said there's enough of those stories out there already. He asked me to come around and help as an assistant coach with the junior high kids like I did when I was in high school. I think practice starts in seven hours. They will have announced teams last Friday and had the first official practice on Saturday. I may bike over there in the morning and check things out...look for Rod Serling under the evergeen bushes just behind the outfield fence. They were barely roots when I played out there, now they're about ten feet high, casting a cool shade along the fence where the kids run poles.

Déjà vu

Déjà vu\dā-zhӓ-vü\ n [F, adj., already seen]: the feeling that one has seen or heard something before

I suspect it's because I'm logged onto the internet from a Springfield IP address, but I still find it disturbing that the fourth result on a Google search of "deja vu" provides a link to a review of the Deja Vu stripclub here in the capitol city. It begins: "Deja Vu Showgirls is a Nude Strip Club in Springfield, Illinois. So mine is the first review in 12 years, so here goes. I think this is the only strip club ..." I didn't click on the link to read further--one, I've been there and need little to take me back to that dirty hole; two, I have no desire to click on any page that actually wasted time to 'review' the Vu, even if it is the first in twelve years...that should tell you something about the individual writer as well as the 'place.'

But this is all a waste itself. I started writing this with no intention to discuss stripclubs, much less the worst one I've ever been to, which unfortunately was not the last, though I wouldn't mind going to the stripclub in Texas that Scott McClanahan describes in his story "THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN TEXAS." It seems they put on a hell of a show there. To the point, I have experienced two very surreal instances of deja vu in only the past two weeks.



It seems the sensation is most often connected to dreams, and I've had dreams before that have closely reflected real events that had already occurred, kind of like an echo. I've also had dreams that seemed so realistic that I confused them with waking, actual memory only to find later that I had mistaken the dream for reality. In the last two weeks, these instances of deja vu have been particularly striking because they involve dreams of the future, a realization of the potential for that future to materialize, and yet an unconscious (until afterwards) acting out of that dream-reality.

I had a dream approximately two weeks ago that I was at a friend's house for a party. In the dream, I spent most of the time talking to another friend and her mother at the party. I woke with the knowledge that I would be soon attending a going-away party for the friend at her house and that I would most likely see the other friend at the party. I did not suspect, however, that the mother would be present, and I laughed it off as merely a weird dream of the future and soon forgot. Several hours after returning home from that party, a week after the dream, I remembered the dream. It was a somewhat unsettling realization of dream and reality because I had indeed spent nearly the first hour or so conversing with that very friend and her mother at the party.




Some time later in the week, I had a very insignificant dream in which I was grilling food at my parents' home, and I recall a moment from that dream when I was standing in the kitchen, I think, perhaps, even thinking about being in the kitchen, and thinking about thinking about being in the kitchen, and so on. I mainly recall the kitchen scene because I experienced the very scene in real life today. It's not that I've never grilled out and been standing in my parents' kitchen before--I've done it quite often in fact--but in this precise moment, standing with a tupperware container full of marinating chicken legs and a plate of shish kebobs, I could feel the moment from the dream. The actual dream memory was triggered as I stood in the kitchen. I stood staring absently at the garbage disposal in the sink, and I could feel, I could recall the experience--not of real life memory but--of the dream, standing and thinking about thinking about being in the kitchen. I was at a sort of loss for a second. I felt like I was in the twilight zone...but I've been feeling like that more and more lately...

Memory Lane

Apologies to the few who actually read this sad excuse of a blog, I've been away working on being a better human being, which is unfortunately a lie and partly the reason why I should actually spend time working on it.

From James Baldwin's "Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South":

'It was on the outskirts of Atlanta that I first felt how the Southern landscape--the trees, the silence, the liquid heat, and the fact that one always seems to be traveling great distances--seems designed for violence, seems, almost to demand it. What passions cannot be unleashed on a dark road in a Southern night! Everything seems so sensual, so languid, and so private. Desire can be acted out here; over this fence, behind that tree, in the darkness, there; and no one will see, no one will ever know. Only the night is watching and the night was made for desire.'

I was taking a stroll down Memory Lane last night with the girl nextdoor, which means I was walking along Country Lake Road with the girl who lives a mile down that tar-paved pass. I think we saw five or six shooting stars, and I was taken back each time to the night I graduated high school. Sitting on a dilapidated couch on top of a cinder-block hut my friends had built for my previous birthday bash, I saw the biggest tail on a shooting star I'd ever seen. The whipping white light stretched across the sky and lingered for an entire five seconds before disappearing into another time, its flight forever etched in my mind--that white streak against the blue-black sky dotted with dead stars.

It was the first time I went for a night-walk around my old stomp in quite a while, and it was truly a remarkable experience re-engaging with the local populace. A young man and his girlfriend stopped their car to offer us a ride because, as the man driving pointed out, we weren't black, to which his girlfriend in the passenger seat told him not to "start in with the nigger stuff." We thanked them for their offer and left the rank odor of the car and their minds behind. Besides the incense of marijuana and beer oozing from the car, the country night sounds and smells took me back throughout the walk. The fresh smell of field manure and drying corn stalks, a sort of soggy grass smell hung on the cool but still humid summernight air. Just before I reached the last bend on the homestretch, I startled a doe that snorted at me and thrashed off through the high grass and pattered across the rock road before disappearing out of sight into the shadows of trees cast by the single light of an isolated electric pole. Earlier, a dark shadow, I assume an owl, had dove and soared off from a similar distant pole. I didn't hear any shriek of death, but I'm sure it was there if only cut short by the clenched talon. It sounds terrifying perhaps, but the deer snort can be much worse. That was the true sound of fear--my fear--when I first stumbled upon and surprised that buck many years ago. Last night, I was not startled in the least because I've heard it many times since. The first experience, I was paralyzed with fear and also confusion, having no idea what it was that was about to destroy me. The power of that snort, I thought I was being trampled by a horse or some ferocious beast of the forest. I was about to be devoured, until I heard the hoofs against the ground and saw the white tail erect and waving goodbye. It was only a deer of course, but how paralyzing and exhilerating simultaneously, the unknown.

In past walks, I have heard the packs of coyotes howling and cackling in distant fields as well as corn rows only across the blacktop and ditch. Once, I could see them running through the corn, only the second row in from the edge. None of it was as startling as that wide-eyed snort the first time. It is easy for me to conjure those past images, and I can come close to smelling or at least remembering the essence of those smells, but the sound is lost in the echoes of the mind until it is flushed out again by the repeat of the experience.

I was thinking last night about the connection of senses to memory, and this thought was really a continuation of a thought from several weeks before. I had decided that vision was the premature sensation of all the senses while taste, touch, and hearing were dulled. Smell is the grand ripple effect, the reacher of the really big rings. I say that taste, touch, and hearing are dulled, or at least muted for me. I suppose touch is most obviously registered with extreme sensations like hot and cold--the feel of chapping snow on the cheek when one is hit square with a snowball, the singe of the finger too close to the stove. They reside in the memory, but the everyday feel of clothes against the skin or the various textures felt in each moment seem to escape the fields of deep resonating memory for me. When I bite into something, I can store the sensation of the taste and other comparative flavors and I can even manage an immediate image to associate with the food, but the smell caught in the nostrils only moments before is lost to the overworking bumps of the tongue and the ever-flashing slidereal of images in the head. Sound works much the same for me, though, I must admit my hearing is so poor that I do not want to speak much in the way of my impaired judgement in that sense. As I said, vision is premature in that it works too quickly, it becomes over-excited and rushed like reels of film flashing and disappearing as soon as they come. There is no room for resonance, like the slow-working of the scent.

This was all prompted by the smell of a perfume. A girl who had just gotten off the bus behind me walked past. I was instantly struck by the scent of her perfume. I couldn't even describe the smell in itself and independent of the unbreakable association I have formed between the smell and the girl I knew who wore it. As the girl from the bus continued to walk ahead and the scent lingered on the air in her wake, the ripples floating in the breeze struck me in the face and worked through the nostrils into the brain. Instantly, I could see my friend's smiling face and then I could feel her thick black hair between my fingers, the soft silk texture against my skin. Her olive skin glowed in my mind. In a muffled distance, I heard the sounds and textured rhythms of her voice, a Columbian undertone in certain syllables that she accentuated. As the smell worked upon me for several minutes, I could finally taste both pairs of her lips, and I remembered. Baldwin, among scores of others, describes the burning of the tongue against the neck and chest in "Another Country." I never understood that description until this girl, and it was all washing over me in the breeze behind the girl from the bus. I felt the hot and cold tingling sensations coming again. I felt deeply moved and saddened by it all, the memories and mistakes, the losses from time past. What a strange feeling provoked after dismounting a municipal bus.

It was like moving slowly underwater. The reels had been tempered, and the images and sensations hung frozen like stars in the blackness of thought. Strange but brilliant vibrations enacting themselves. I said I was moved, and I often was in the same way, years ago, walking those lonesome high country roads in the rural Midwest, listening to "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" on repeat through the headphones. Looking at the distant set of yellow headlights against the blue-black night. Like yellow orbs they glowed and flowed along the empty road. I wondered where they were headed and where they'd been, if anyone was actually behind them, or if they simply sat on the road isolated to themselves like me and the shadows of memories in the night beneath the twinkle of stars already burned out in past unknown times.