10: Andy

“What’s up, Junior?” He pinches his unfiltered cigarette with his thumb and index finger from between his taunt lips. His other hand takes its usual position, casually hooked inside the front pocket in his jeans. But the fact that he can’t fit his swollen hand down into this too small compartment coupled with his unwillingness to let his arm fold at the elbow causes his shoulder to jut up toward his ear. He balances on one foot as he knocks his free heal on the steel toe of the boot planted on the ground. I’ve observed this habitual series of movements each time I walk outside on him taking a smoke.
“Nothin’” I walk toward him, yet I keep my distance from his self-made clouds of toxins.
“Nothin’? What’s wrong with you? Got nothin’ to do?” He waits a second after my lethargic shoulder shrug.
“What are you doing?” Neither of us is too keen on getting the conversation rolling and relies on the same, tired small talk we’ve used my entire life to get our feet wet.
“Smokin’” He points out the obvious and shoots me a shit-eating, half smile meant to taunt me—a warm-up to his routine teasing. He barely turns his head away from me, sticks out just the tip of his tongue, and then immediately recoils it back into his mouth against the spitting force of a small exhale: some dried tobacco found its way from between the rolling paper into his mouth and is now shooting from between his lips.
“Attractive.” I offer the same esteem building observation every time.
He cocks his head to glare at me from a different angle, relaxes his straightened elbow, allowing his shoulder to drop, and refocuses his rigidity by pressing his lips together. It looks as if he’s getting ready to tear me a new one; and maybe if I weren’t his sister he’d tell me how it’s “Nunya….Nunya business” in a tone he saw fitting to the stature of the wise-guy. But as it was, he slaps me with some tough-love warning, “I’ll kick yer ass if you ever thunk about smoking, Sam. A mean it, Boomer, I’ll k i c k y e r a s s.” He breaks eye contact as he looks out into the quiet, residential street and takes another drag from between his two pinched fingers. He squints as if he’s looking for some insightful last liner, but as an alternative he allows a fog of stress-relieving transparent white escape his lungs through the different holes in the front of his face: once again, an attractive look against his rugged dark features.
With the haze lingering around his head, he can barely make out the navy Chevy Suburban pulling in across the street. “She-iit: Holly’s home.” The fact that he curses makes him initially sound like he’s annoyed with his neighbor’s arrival, but his leisurely tone and reluctance to rush inside the sanctuary of his private bachelor pad speaks louder than his words. Holly is just his type.

Blog 9: Eavesdropping on Silence

Earlier this week, I sat on the bus headed out of Forest Grove and into Cornelius, where I would disembark at the WinCo stop, and beyond. I took my seat in the first row of forward sitting double chairs. This specific location supplied ample knee and leg room, but past that, it allowed me to confront the row of seats facing out the side of the bus; and this arrangement lessened the suspicion of my stare on my fellow bus riders occupying these sideways seats.
By the time I boarded the bus and took my strategic seat, I had my pick of prey already lined up. I sat very still so not to be detected, I narrowed my sight on my target, and I cocked my weapon—this week taking the form of my ears positioned on either side of my now inclined head; the sport: eavesdropping. My aim was set for what I assume to be a middle aged housewife of Mexican heritage, her 6 year old son, and preteen daughter.
“Gedda cake an round balls before Papa come home,” the housewife rapidly instructed her daughter. She showed the approximate size of these “round balls” by touching her two pairs of finger tips together and moving this junction away from her chest.
“Ba-lloooon-ss,” the girl corrected her mother in a quiet voice but loud facial movements that screamed the pronunciation of the word. She made sure not to make eye contact with her superior and instead focused her sight on her shoe swinging back and forth disappearing under the seat only to fully reappear a slow second later. She had to sit awkwardly in her seat to enable her left foot to swing unobstructed by the ground’s friction while her right foot remained firmly planted on the speckled bus floor.
The mother tilted her head toward her daughter’s wording suggestion but maintained her distant gaze on her son’s toy truck at her feet. She dismissed the strange word with its funny vowel arrangement, “Papa ged home not too late. We gedda floor swep ta-day, soon, and wash da plates.”
The girl shook her head in compliance without interrupting her trance on her pendulum shoe. Anyone who was observing this family understood that this young girl was to take on the list of chores piling up; the “we” was a euphemism for “you.”
“Papa ged home and your toys be pik-ed up,” the instruction was turned to the boy who looked up at his sister and smiled, as if to say “you will do it for me.” He was sitting on one leg, resting his chin on his other knee, wheeling his toy truck through the ridges of the walkway down the middle of the bus. His mother moved her old, unicolored, Reebok shoe in to the slim cushion of her son’s hip: a loving nudge to remind him of his place. He turned his smile on her and added his top, four front teeth with a bite that covered his bottom lip.
His mother opened up her thick arms, extending her dry hands down to him to signal his climb into her embrace. Her arms folded around the boy’s waist and he arched his back to pull away from her to show 6 fingers—one opened hand plus an index finger pointed towards the roof of the bus. “I’m six today!”
The women turned her head to smile at her daughter; but with further observation, this doting smile at a glance might have been a cover up to gain her daughter’s approval, confirming that the boy was holding up the right amount of fingers and claiming the right age. The girl indicated her approval by giving no sign of objection and instead returning her sight from her younger brother in his mother’s arms to the floor where she corralled the toy truck over to her with her foot.
“When’s Papa getting home?” the boy asked.
“Tonighd,” informed his mother. And the boy looked impressed that he would see his father so soon. The girl only picked up her brother’s toy as the three of them stood to make their way off the bus.
(It seemed more was said at the time I was on the bus, but recalling the dialog, more was communicated through silence and eye movement. The dialog that was verbalized used the same limited words over and over—just a note!)

8: perfect BLOG stranger

“Goin’ on a trip?”
My blog assignment started out backwards: I didn’t approach the stranger, the stranger approached me.
“Yep.” I lied.
I stared down at the red, roll-a-way suitcase in between my feet and was confident that my lie was planted in solid ground. I had just found an open seat, on the red Max line, with an additional open seat on either side meant to keep my personal space bubble from popping. Unfortunately, this prime seat lacked the still added bonus of facing open seats—surrounded by buffers and the inability of making small talk with fellow public transpiration riders. I lied because it was quicker than telling the truth—as to why I had my Samsonite carry-on. Small talk never interested me much. Whose business was it anyways?
Nonetheless, I had felt this man’s gaze on me since I sat down, immediately making me wish I opted for the handicapped zone where I ran the risk of looking socially insensitive, or having to move once someone worthy of this section got on my Max car, or heaven forbid making it appear as if I had some [hidden] disability. It took him about the time of seven awkward stops to wear down my darting eyes, where upon I finally met his yellowed ogle. Yes, let’s say I’m going on a trip.
“Where to?” He didn’t bother with the invitation of my raised head this time; I guess we were already past those formalities. A fast mover, this one was.
“Ahh, home—to Indiana,” I spoke as proxy for the suitcase. I took a better look at my single serving friend of the next fifteen minutes or so. He had me, and our conversation was going to happen if I liked it or not, so I might as well make the most of it.
Taking this second look at the skin covered skeleton across my way, I began to relax in the sincerity of his halfcocked smile and timekeeping head bobs.
“Indiana? Boy, now there’s some place I haven’t seen yet. What you doin’ in Oregon?”
Wait, who’s trying to get the life story of who here? I realized I had better turn this chat around if I was to have a blog this week.
“I go to school at Pacific, in Forest Grove. Have you ever been to the Midwest?”
Arnold, I read his name off his embroidered baby blue work shirt, uncrossed his legs and repositioned his stretched out elbows from across the tops of his empty neighboring seat on his now widely spread apart knees. Leaning closer to me, he started in with a chapter of his life story. He might as well write my assignment for me, I couldn’t help but smile at my luck. Arnold took my now cheery disposition and ran with it: hook, line, and sinker.
“I got to Colorado with my two girls about three years ago.” I almost opened a newspaper left within reach after hearing Arnold’s consideration that Colorado was the Midwest, but I figured I was in this far, why start all over later?
“Oh, cool. What’d you do there?”
“Just a family vacation. My wife, she don’t get too many vacation days so we make the most of what we got.” I pretended to be texting so I could shorthand his answers in my phone. To make sure he knew I was still interested in him and not my imaginary friend on the other end of my texts, I shot him with more questions. I felt kind of bad hearing in his hesitation since he wasn’t done with his first thought.
“Oh yeah? What does your wife do?”
Arnold straightened his back with pride and illustrated his wife of 23 years working as a 9-1-1 operator. He remembered with affection how, when they were first married, she typed along with the dialog on the TV shows to practice taking down callers’ exchanges—having to type word for word what these panicked callers had to say/scream/whisper/cry.
Another fellow Max rider who had found her way into our conversation in between one of the stops that had occurred since offered her insight on the salary of these 9-1-1 operators.
Arnold looked down for the first time that I knew of and shook his head, “yes sir, she make good money, but it take two with kids in this economy. I got a sick one in bed right now. Been sick for three days, poor baby.”
“Oh no, what’s he got?” the second stranger asked. I was out of the conversation, the outsider taking notes on the two new main characters.
“I got two baby girls.” Arnold corrected the other stranger’s last question before correcting himself, “Well, they ain’t babies no more, but they’ll always be to their daddy. She’s got the flu, though.” And in perfect timing, he pointed to some corner store as the Max pulled to a stop, “On my way to get her some medicine right now.” He said a one word farewell to the other stranger and granted me the same acknowledgment accompanied with the same sincere half smile and head bob that began our conversation.
I turned to capture a final look at my subject as he passed behind me outside the Max car. I caught him staring at me, eyes completely fixed on me since before I knew it, as he walked past. We met gazes and he showed me his pink palm accented with white cracks against his black skin. Arnold was a perfect stranger for what I needed for my blog, and as I opened up to the possibility of sharing with complete strangers as our conversation progressed, I made a complete circle to being freaked out once again with this intensity dedicated to me after he left the Max.

Hi, I’m Nervy

Uh, hi. I’m Nervy—nervy, as in, nervous, not as in…you know, like having nerves. Nerves of steel? Because that’s not me at all: having nerves of steel, being bold. No, no, no, that’s not me. I’m a very nervous person. I may not show it, but as soon as I open my mouth, you should be able to tell. I become flustered…very flustered. There’s probably a better word, a word with more oomph behind it, but I can’t think of it. As I did just now, with the lack of a better fitting word than ‘flustered, ’my mind goes blank—test anxiety in every situation. I know what I want to say, but I lose the ability to string words together in a logical…ahh, string (?), as soon as I hear my voice coming out of my face, for everyone to hear, everyone hanging on my thought. I freak out. I regret opening my mouth and wish people could just be happy with the fact that I nod in agreement. Why do they have to expect my input?
In high school, I had a few friends, well friends of friends—like the kind of friends that you don’t hang out with outside of class but you would if either of you wanted to—that understood my condition. Maybe ‘understood’ is the wrong word? More like they pointed it out every time I began to stammer some coerced banter that would go on and on since I never knew if they really got my point and felt like I needed to make myself clear on the original point I began to explain and every other point I wandered off to in the process. And they would tease me, and I would deserve it. They would squawk, “Sam’s nervy, Sam’s nervy!” stressing the two syllables in ‘nervy’ like every toddler-bully singing his teasing one-liners. To be honest, I was actually grateful they put a face to my nerves. It was like it’s taboo to point out that someone’s having trouble communicating because their mind is slowly unlearning social transactions. It actually takes the pressure off when I’m stopped in the midst of my unlearning and the obvious is pointed out. It was like their teasing was actually reassuring me: “We hear you, Sam. We hear that you’re having trouble talking to us, even though it makes no sense at all because we’re not intimidating, at least to anyone else. Take a breath and be reassured that you’re screwing up, hard to follow, losing our attention, but yet we are still here, if for no other reason than to poke fun at your expense.”
It’s absolutely exhausting being a nervous person. My mind’s running a marathon uphill in order to get a mile down the road. It’d be so much easier on me and those that are forced to listen to my stumbling tongue if I was just a fly on the wall, and we would have an understanding that my winged presence was better than a clumsy hornet’s flight around the room. And what’s more, being a nervous person doesn’t just end with awkward speech in every setting, it reaches into every facet of my life. But if it’s okay with you, I’ll stop while I’m only this far behind and save you from the rest of my droning. I really would much rather stop now, or that I never began, than go any farther.

6: On Long Distance Relationships

This particular subject may be difficult for many other people to celebrate; but for me, long distance relationships are a strange breed of good fortune. While I tend to become very close with the few people I form intimate relationships with, our bond builds into a kind of drug. My significant other and I produce a nasty habit of dependency. And as I can only speak for myself, my habit has grown into a controlling fiend.
Dependency leads to low self esteem, compliance issues, among other concerns in the individuals it overwhelms. Individuals with dependency disorders tend to:
• prefer to have someone they trust guide them
• seek advice for everyday decisions
• find themselves in situations where other people have made decisions about important areas in their life
• find it hard to express a different opinion with someone they are close to
• often pretend to agree with others even if they do not
• often need help to get started on a project
• are uncomfortable when you are alone
• are desperate to get into another relationship right away when a close relationship ends
• worry about important people in your life leaving you (en.wikipedia.org)
Treatment for dependency includes “managing distress, improving interpersonal effectiveness, and building skills for affective regulation...the goal of treatment is not independence but autonomy,” (en.wikipedia.org). Individuals with dependency disorders must build strength rather than foster neediness.
Specifically, dependency in my relationships is most effectively and quickly treated with the wondrous healing powers of the increased distance between the two of us. The long distance relationship is a break up in denial. I’m not saying that relationships will always fail when the two parties do not touch or at least see each other on a regular basis, but the mystery of the other party’s actions has an undeniable distress on the union.
Fast forward through the weeks or month(s) of excruciating, lonely pain, and focus on the only celebration in this situation. Long distance relationships force me to get on with my life. I cannot continually hold a white-knuckled, death grip on my cellular phone and wait for my faraway significant other to dial that precious phone call or type that treasured text. My life is happening in the now and in the here, not in the then and in the there. New faces pass my way, just as my significant other is now more open to considering their options in physical replacement partners, someone to fill in the black hole of lonesomeness and self pity. It’s easier to lie, or accept, that I am attached to no one, single, instead of being slapped in the face with the doubtful expression when explaining that I am in a long distance relationship—notorious for never working out. The need to be faithful lessens when I loosen up and allow myself to have fun outside of my previous commitment shackles.
With distance, I am forced to focus on only my life, my own good. There is no way to accurately monitor my significant other. Being freed of the weight of living for two is liberating, after the pain has passed. I begin to see clearly, to think for myself. I’m weightless. Time may indeed make the heart grow fonder, but this is only until the heart is starved by perpetual loneliness; then the more sensible proverb takes hold: out of sight, out of mind. It’s much easier to forget without (constant) reminders.
My long distance relationships are simply used to wean me off of the connection. We both change and grow, more often than not, we grow apart. We develop new friends, new interests and hobbies, and most tenderly new inside jokes that are too difficult to explain to one another. Visits become more of a burden and unwanted time away from my new life. The financial and opportunity cost is no longer worth the awkward encounters. Long distance relationships are the antidote for moving on to new possibilities, to becoming autonomous instead of dependent.
The average distance between two parties in a long distance relationship is 125 miles. They visit an average of 1.5 times a month. Calls are made on average every 2.7 days and last an average of 30 minutes. And the amount of time they expect to be separated on average is 14 months (www. longdistancerelationships .com). The average 14 months of separation may be ended by the two parties moving back together, or more probably ended by their acknowledgment of the break of their connection. In my case, it’s always the latter, and it never takes as long as 14 months.
In a personal writing, from a past long distance relationship finding its end ,I affirmed to my significant other that we were joking ourselves if we stayed attached by the single thread of the façade of commitment: I’m beyond it. I’ve moved past it. It is the past and I have no intension of attempting to revisit it. It is the past and that is where it shall stay. It is something that has crumbled in comparison to the now. What was once thought of to be so great is now looking not so great. The great has surpassed itself. A past excellence was really no such thing because of what is known now. It has over lapped itself—doubling itself yet cancelling what magic it ever once had. And now, even I am over it. Being over it and reaching acceptance, I conclude the only logical next step is for you to get over it as well. And my willingness to suggest this is proof enough that I will have washed my hands of it.
Long distance relationships are my celebrations of a new life.
True, this view on long distance relationships belongs to solely me, an unmarried, unengaged twenty-two year old with no prospects of long lasting belonging to another. Those that are married, or even engaged, are obviously free to have their own opinions. And those meant to be together, even with whatever happens while miles apart, will still be together once united in place.

5: Tall Tale of Hygiene

I impulsively shut my eyes so I can better picture my navigation in this spot where my vision cannot reach. My eyelids are hinged and latched, eyelashes intertwining with their corresponding lower lashes, like a locked door barricading the public realm from my feel-good secret. I cock my head and lean into it with an off center grin. One hand twirls my long shafted tool, all the while pulling it out just to stick it back in me. I can feel my sticky excretion gather around the bulbous end, the portion of my pleasure stick that is the deepest inside me.

Cleaning the inside of my ears with cotton swabs is the most satisfying task in my nighttime hygiene regimen. I save it for last. I brush my hair and pull it up into a high pony tail so no stray strands will interfere with my gyrating toothbrush, but most importantly, so no hairs will become knotted around the cotton swab dowel and ruin the gratification of my ear cleaning with the pin prick pain of being yanked out by the root. I rush through the ritual of splashing my face with the time consuming three step sanitization and refinement formulas employed by my Proactive system. But these preceding hygiene responsibilities are just foreplay. My ears are the vagina of senses; the cotton swab is the dildo of sanitary tools.

Like Xerox for copiers and Kleenex for tissues, Q-tip brand has become the universal household name for every kind of cotton swab. Actually, cotton swabs come in different assortments and qualities. Q-tips are superior to their off brand competition because of their high-quality. Q-tips are made of pure, off white materials: rolled paper pole and a bunch of cotton on either end. Their untainted appearance is like the innocence of a colorless wedding dress, waiting to be soiled by the honeymoon between cotton and ear canal. Each Q-tip is stored like Emperor Qin’s terracotta army—filed shoulder to shoulder in a well awaiting its calls of duty to battle…in this case, earwax. After the job is completed, the Q-tip stays in place to stimulate this sensitive region by tickling the minuscule hair follicles within the ear canal, provoking a toe-flexing enjoyment. More than two shakes classifies as playing with yourself. Their imitators try to disguise their faulty manufacturing by teasing users with flashy colors on their smooth, glossy plastic rods—the sluts of cotton swabs.

The purity of the Q-tip last only a few moments. And without its wholesomeness, it’s useless and is disposed of at once. Thankfully, once again like the terracotta soldiers, another is in line to take its predecessor’s post. There is no handkerchief parallel to the Q-tip; there are no reusable ear cleaners. Though each Q-tip is a virgin, it’s cursed to be a one-night-stand. And though its action maybe orgasmic, it’s infamous as a minute man.

4: neighbors and strangers

I relax on my roommate’s hand-me-down stained couch and listen to the evenly spaced thuds growing in volume just outside my apartment door. Someone is climbing the stairs, step by step, to get to the second floor apartments in my complex. Because of the positioning of the stairs and my apartment unit in respect to other stairwells around the complex, the only reason anyone would ascend the stairs outside my door would be to get into my apartment or my next door neighbor’s unit. These stairs have been relatively silent for the year that I’ve lived here. My roommate keeps a very busy schedule on campus and usually comes home after I’m tucked under my sheets, and she leaves in the morning before my afternoon alarm clock chimes—so I rarely hear her coming or going.
But the stairs have been under considerable more activity in the past few weeks. It’s obvious that the vacant apartment next door has finally been filled after more than a year of advertising its loneliness. For as much noise as my new neighbors make, I’d think that a family of six had moved in to the two bedroom unit. If this is the case, why haven’t I seen any of my new neighbors? They’re in and out and up and down the stairs more than I come and go. Why haven’t we once run in to each other and had that initial contact of welcoming? I sit on the couch and listen to scurried footfall throughout the day and the sluggish steps at night. I imagine a young mother hurrying her children around during the day, trying to make appointments and run errands while grabbing forgotten paperwork, a quick lunch and afternoon snack, or change of clothes for soccer practice after picking the kids up from school. The husband leaves early and returns late from some job that requires a black, leather briefcase with silver buckles. Their life isn’t too far off from my roommate’s and mine. My roommate stays at “work” all day, returning with bags under her eyes to match the bag on her back packed with accounting papers. I run myself around town picking up groceries, running errands for friends, and changing for track practice while I try to squeeze in a snake at the same time—the child in me still prefers peanut butter and jelly or grilled cheese.
The other day, I opened my door into my apartment just as my neighbor opened his to walk out. I rushed inside the isolation of my apartment without thinking. I feel as if too much time has gone by to introduce myself. Had I wanted to make friends with my neighbors, why hadn’t I caught them on the stairs when I heard them descending only a few minutes before I was to leave? Isn’t that the neighborly thing to do? At least I could say hello if I didn’t have time to bake a welcome basket of muffins for our introduction. Where had the neighborly love gone? My parents talk about their childhood running around with neighbor kids and sitting with the old widow in her cottage on the corner while their parents went out for a minute. But I never introduced myself to a neighbor of mine in my life, now that I think about it. I’ve never even seen my neighbors at my parent’s home. I never went around the dorm hallways to see who I lived next to. I avoid the people in my apartment complex in fear of starting an awkward conversation I can’t get out of; and heaven forbid they ask me for a favor, a cup of sugar? I’m scared of the strangers I live closest to. But they’re not strangers at all. I know more about their lives by listening through the thin sheet of plaster that separates our living quarters than my parents know about my daily schedule.
Yet I sit here on my roommate’s stained couch, listening to the thudding footfall climbing and falling down the steps outside. I’d like to think that I would come to their assistance if I heard a disturbance, but aren’t we supposed to mind our own business?

The Provider

My dad is hard of hearing—to say it politely. To be more direct, my dad has acute selective-hearing. More annoyingly, when I am able to cajole his attention away from The Big Game or his business papers, he sticks to his own unavoidable agenda of conversation topics: sports and my personal fitness.

Unlike his communication profile, his business-slash-social life is less predictable. He could still be home at one o’clock on a Thursday instead of at the office; he might be at a fundraiser instead of his usual lounge chair in front of the television on Saturday; he may very likely be at a banquet across town at nine at night on Monday instead of having dinner with his family. The best way to know if my dad is home is to see if his wallet is in its usual resting spot. If his wallet is relaxing innocently on the corner of the bar in the kitchen, he’s home.

Just like every other proper child in well-to-do suburbia, whatever conversation I may initiate with my dad, it always ends with an inquiry for a few extra spending dollars. And just like every other father in well-to-do suburbia, I know he’s good for it. But once I am able to establish my dad’s presence at home by the company of his wallet, it’s fastest to circumvent the inevitable fifteen minute, or more, interrogation about my latest workout and instead head straight for his leather bound cache. Cut out the middle man. If you want something, go after it with everything you’ve got. Every good parent’s generic life lessons become clear in situations like these.

My dad and I don’t use the same word for this folded piece of cow hide. He calls it his billfold, while the other three members of the family, all female, call it his wallet—the same way he asks if we all have our swim trunks instead of swim suits when we pack for vacation. To save face for both of us—me not training long or hard enough, my dad unable to come up with anything else to talk about with his daughter—I simply navigate my way to the kitchen to locate his wallet. I separate the black Italian leather at its most vulnerable seam. Beyond the mountain ranges of gold and platinum cards that cascade up the undersized filing system, and between the rivers of stashed receipts that are coiled and entwined with each other, frothing white as they stick out of the closed wallet, lies the prize. And in the well traveled kitchen, there’s no question about my whereabouts, like there might be if his wallet was in my parent’s bedroom or in his office. It’s so easy, it looks like it might be a trap—but it’s not. So, unnoticed I pluck one or two twenties from the well stocked leather pocket and am on my way.

The word ‘wallet’ or ‘billfold’ has been used since the first century A.D. Wallet initially meant a larger sack used to hold necessities—like a survival pack (Wikipedia.com). Therefore, it’s logical that the goods kept inside wallets have been coveted, and on many occasions stolen, for some time now in order for the thief to get by. Why stop the trend? I’m not trying to rewrite history. In fact sponging bills from his unprotected pouch has come to be a kind of tradition in the family, pasted down from mother to daughters, just as it’s been passed down through the generations worldwide.

After awhile of this embezzling routine, I’ve started to picture my dad and his wallet as two sides of the same coin. The black exterior emulates my dad’s black hair. The hand woven stitches parade around the edges of his wallet and his dress shirts. Both he and his wallet have the musty smell of his old office building. My dad protects his wealth and business practices like the folds and pockets protect his flashy plastic cards and evidence of business transactions. The precious cash is like his completion: fair from being locked away in the dark, away from sunlight, and craggy from years of dealing in business. I’ve started to think of his wallet as being the family provider—perhaps in more ways than one. Spending those intense few moments with his wallet is like spending time with a silent version of my dad that listens instead of waits for a response.

He doesn’t seem to mind that his wallet is lighter every time he picks it up from the kitchen bar to stuff in the back of his pants. Either he appreciates not being disturbed by the request of a sure thing, or he doesn’t notice that any of his money has mysteriously evaporated. But judging from the circumstance, I think this is one themed discussion tacitly understood as gratitude.

Gays vs Nazis—At Least in the Game

“It’s not like Adam and I do anything, gosh Mark-ie.” Abel adds a cutesy –y or feminine –ie to the end of everyone’s name once he’s been around them long enough: a time table understood in his mind only. Nothing about Mark is cutesy or feminine. Like every evening during the limbo between what should have been dinner time and the end of happy hour, this unattractive fact is proven again by the glow of the television monitor recoiling off of Mark’s bloated features. Otherwise hidden in the stale darkness, Able illuminates the air around him with his Love Spell perfume. The plums of fragrance are degraded to yet another racial knock, “Mexican bath,” blindly stirring up resentment throughout the room. By the off chance that something appealing does enter this dilapidated hole-in-the-wall bungalow, its essence are quickly drained from its core to the surface by the time it steps over the broken door jamb to the time its sinks into the stains and filth on whatever surface it attempts to rest upon.

Mark is now sprinting down the wooden floor; he’s dodging those opposing him and meeting eyes with those on him team. He receives a firm pass, and he shoots and scores. Videogames have successfully replaced actual exercise and sincere imagination in this hellhole. Tugging the joy stick all around and remembering the sequence of buttons to push are enough to tire Mark’s swastika inked arms. His smoke abused lungs are heaving under the weight of his man-boobs. This is too much excitement as proven by the baritone coughing fit that follows the animated, provocative victory dance of the videogame basketball player version on Mark and Abel’s initial implausible guarantee.

“Does he fondle your two big, bouncing balls as part of these rub downs?” Mark is able to squeeze this question out with the characteristic “gay lisp” he’s coined himself, between muffled throat clearings. He drops the videogame controller into this lap in order to bring his hands to chin level. With palms up, he wiggles his swollen fingers one after the other in an attempt to recreate what his last inquest meant to illustrate.

Abel places his nearly completed cocktail on the makeshift side table, among the armfuls of now bone dry vodka half gallon containers, empty pill bottles tattooed with names of people we’ve never met, plates that never held any kind of food but instead hold unidentified powders and straws, and other piles of garbage that detail the remains of our forgettable lives. His face shows no sign of disgust or rage from Mark’s flamboyant gesture. Instead, Abel crosses his legs, clad in his easy slip off Victoria Secret athletic pants, crosses his arms, shaping his biceps with his hidden hands, and bunches his mouth to the far side of his face as if to keep what may flow out of it as far away from Mark as possible. Everything on Abel’s body is locked up besides his eyes. His stare bores to the back of Mark’s head. Intensity and truth burn the communication airway between these two men. Mark’s forced to retreat back to his childish videogame while Abel continues to nurse the remains of his cocktail.

“That isn’t a ‘no’,” Mark points out in a dim, slightly quizzical voice as he lowers his gaze to the TV stand in attempted observation. The mood has changed; nobody is sure which team they’re rooting for.

My First Thought

My first thought was to turn my back on it. I intended to let my eyelids take on the weight of the situation, where upon I encouraged them to drop like horizontal blinds on the window to the entire day. My first thought was to ignore everything and smile subliminally as I allowed the next course of action to wash over me in a pool of ignorance. Everyone else could get on with his day. The world could turn, the clock could tick. I just wanted to crawl into the dark corner I had prepared for myself.

However, the sirens would not let me forget, or hide, or play dumb. It was constant and forever echoing itself. No matter how badly my cheeks and forehead reached for each other, for a grasp that would instantly lock my eyes shut, no such grip could keep the sound from reaching my ears. And still the screaming persisted. I couldn’t escape from the noise without fleeing from the sanctuary of my paralyzed state—comfortably numb in darkness.

Head-throbbing rotations of noise finally coax me out of my asylum, forcing me to move from the spot that gave me my last bit of consolation. My first thought, to turn my back to this whole mess, to simply ignore it, was a fading fantasy at this point. My body sunk deeper into its depression, under the load of surrender. My face relaxed its clasp on my eyes. It was only a matter of time before I was forced to face reality head on. All my physical and mental strength flowed to my arm as it left the warmth surrounding my body. To prove I was unarmed, I showed my open hand to the source of my annoyance. My sweaty palm reached outward it: a sign of mercy to the cruel sirens. Just as I looked most pitiful—head buried as if to cover shame, eyes still unaware of the light creeping its way into the room, hand surrendering all defenses—I turned. Instead of begging for forgiveness, I deliver a slap to kill. My hand plummeted down from its highest peak with the mass of my arm behind it for influence. At last, some part of my hand managed to collide with its small target, the off button on the alarm clock.

For a good minute, or maybe a year, that first thought returned after the noise is gone. That first thought and I, we were sorry we ever left each other; we felt stupid for thinking we could ever stray to another. I had comfort once more. I was still curled up in the warm layers of sheets and blankets, and for the time being, this first thought promised me that everything will be alright.

But it was too good to be true. This first thought of the day is a poisonous drug that clouds my perception. I had to quit it cold turkey and suffer the withdrawal. The layers that condensed the warmth were peeled away. My eyes reluctantly unveiled themselves. The cold and the light rushed toward me like a current overloading my circuits. This sent my body into spastic contortions as if my hands and feet were suddenly and dramatically repelled from each other. Each end of my body wanted to reach some distant point in opposite directions. This was my morning stretch: the cure-all to my first thought of the day. There is no looking back once this line is crossed—until tomorrow when it starts all over.