There was a little girl named Rebecca who always used to dance. She danced all the time, but her favorite thing to dance to was Christmas music. She LOVED Christmas songs. Thanksgiving was her favorite holiday because that was the time, or at least her parents told her, that it was appropriate to play Christmas music. She loved the Christmas songs. She loved every cover and remix of every carol and sing-along. Rebecca loved Christmas.

Her favorite song was “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer,” because the illogicality of an old woman actually getting trampled by a reindeer was hysterical to her. Just the chorus alone made her swoon with glee. Besides, she thought to herself, deer are afraid of everything. Especially people! There’s no way grandma could actually get run over by one. Unless, of course, under the strange circumstance that the reindeer was super intelligent and had watched all of the Die Hard movies and thought that it was the reincarnation of John McClane (played of course by Bruce Willis) sent to earth to destroy terrorists. Rebecca, in her nine-year-old mind frame was pretty confident that this was not the case.

As smart as she was, Rebecca worried about her grandmother. She worried that maybe she would get run over. Maybe by a car or a drunk high school football team in an adrenaline fueled winterland frolic. Maybe grandma would get run over by Mr. Franetti’s meat truck, which brought all the frozen sausages and hamburgers to Johnson’s Grocers every Thursday afternoon. How awful it would be to see all those links of sausages and burger patties spill all over the road and get ruined by a silly little traffic light accident or an inexplicable rampage of meaty terror like Stephen King, past his prime, reaching for some kind of scary story to sell to an unenthusiastic publisher in Boise, Idaho. The scenarios, shall we say, were endless.

It was Christmas Eve and Rebecca danced like no one was watching.

She was the greatest ballerina in the world. Poised and dignified. Confident and content. Becca was a woman before she even knew what being a woman meant.

Christmas eve was her favorite night of the whole year. Even more so than her very own birthday. She loved the cookies and the hide’n’seek and, of course, she loved the presents. Rebecca never had to fake liking a present. She liked everything she got; even when it was a gift certificate or a polly pocket make-up starter kit that she had two years ago. She loved everything. She loved her family because they made her laugh. And at the same moment, every Christmas eve the whole party stopped to watch Rebecca dance in front of the Christmas tree to her favorite Christmas songs.

“gee,” said uncle matthew, “she knows the words to every song, huh?”

“of course she does,” Chaz replied to his brother.

“does she know what they mean?”

“what is that supposed to mean?” Chaz rebutted with a frustrated fit. “you think my daughter doesn’t know what the songs are about? Just because she is only nine years old you think she doesn’t get the Christmas cheer?”

“no, chaz, no,” uncle matthew assured him.

Chaz sat there uncomfortably, his thumbs caressing his bottle of Miller Lite, swirling around its condensation in an attempt to appear preoccupied or tired.

“I’m just saying that she is adorable,” said uncle matthew. “How is she dealing with the loss of her grandmother?”

Chaz walked away to the living room. Older men, his cousins and similar acquaintances were talking about football. He was more than happy to sit and shoot the shit with them, killing time as the entire cast of the houseparty anticipated the sterno-fueled entrée’s with nail-biting eagerness and sheer ecstasy.

Rebecca was, well, a picky eater, but she loved mashed potatoes. She loved butter. She loved bacon bits. She loved the small but familiar food pyramid that she was raised on and she never strayed far from it:

Potatoes

Turkey

Chicken

Corn

Pasta (with red sauce, of course)

Fried anything

This was rebecca’s diet. And it was never far from it that she strayed. No matter what. And no one…. NO ONE wanted to hear Rebecca cry. Her cry, lord have mercy, was like a million fire alarms accompanied by 46 thousand screaming babies during Easter Sunday mass. You didn’t want to fuck with Rebecca and her foods. Like a lesbian vegetarian who took offense to the dining selection at the Lombardi’s 1025 Club, Rebecca was, in all honesty, no different. She was set in her culinary selections. And if you valued your life, you wouldn’t attempt to tempt her to try something new. God bless your soul if you had the guts to try it. God bless you.

“Becca, tell uncle Bill what you want for Christmas,” Chaz begged his daughter with drunken delight.

Becca stalled and hid behind Chaz’s left knee cap, shyness taking over her previous unabashed dance recital of Christmas classics.

“Becca, darling, tell uncle Bill what you want for Christmas!”

“World peace,” she mumbled.

“Hahahah! World Peace! Isn’t that hysterical!?!?” Chaz said to his youngest brother with a quick jab of his elbow to Bill’s sensitive ribcage.

Chaz, still to this day, never under stood why his brother Bill was so hostile towards him. Someday he would realize, and naturally far too late, because Chaz never gave a mouse turd’s worth of curiosity towards his brother’s life or even his ambitions, hopes, dreams, and what have you.

“World peace is quite a wish,” Bill said to his neice, Becca.

Becca returned to her stupefied, petrified state of shyness and terror.

On their way home in their big family-sized SUV, Becca’s daddy sang along to the Christmas songs on the radio. He sang to the ones that Becca didn’t know. The oldies, sung by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. He sang to keep himself awake. The snow fell like quilted blankets on the forest green hood of his vehicle. There was a lot of snow and Becca couldn’t see out the window.

Chaz pulled over, as his wife slept in the passenger seat; curled up and retired from her day of cooking, cleaning, and dealing with that god damn dog.

He cleaned off the ice from Becca’s backseat window. He breathed heavy on the glass and drew a smily face with its tongue sticking out. Becca smiled. She liked when her father acted silly. It was especially late at night, so a long-awaken child-like amusement resonated throughout the car.

“daddy your hair is covered in snow!” Becca said.

Chaz said nothing. He shook his head ravenously, the snow flakes from his mane falling on his snoring wife next to him and filling the backseat of the truck. Rebecca laughed as softly as she could. Chaz laughed loudly, because he didn’t care. It was Christmas.

They continued on the highway for at least an hour.

“I think I see Santa!!!” Rebecca exclaimed!

“Do you see all 12 reindeer in front of him!?” asked her father, Chaz.

“Yes! I counted them!”

“Well then that’s him! We better beat him home!”

Chaz drove frantically, yet cautiously, to their one-floor ranch home and put Rebecca to bet immediately. She slept like an angel. She woke up at 4 am and came into her parents’ room.

“We forgot the cookies!” she said with tears running off her little chin.

“I put them out,” Chaz said as he rolled over.

“And the…”

“And the carrots for the reindeer…” Chaz said.

“I love you daddy.”

“I love you too,” he mumbled.

Rebecca turned on the radio in her room. She kept the volume real low. She heard all her favorite Christmas songs. Rebecca danced liked no one was watching.

Paycheck to paycheck, a fortune I’ve spent

Waking in morns to regret and repent

The catalogs I flip through now only mocking

Missiles and guises and traps made for locking

The desert my home, its sands get the best of me

And a fast fucking bird, my only sworn enemy

Time after time, with every bound and every leap

His haunting mantra, no words just “beep beep”

Every knot that I tie, every plan that I lay

Not a God that I know of for coyotes to pray

In my lonely self-indulgence, my façade of pride

Is a man, no a beast, and a part in him that’s died

Vengeance, my darling, how cold is your heart

How that fast fucking bird can just tear me apart

Paycheck to paycheck, not a cent did I keep

Thus I don’t eat, my nightmares scream “beep beep”

I wake to a new day, the same damned pattern

But a new magazine lies just outside of my cavern

Not my usual Acme weekly, I weep for the road runner

The magazine, carefully sealed, is entitled “American Handgunner”

The order is placed and the delivery is swift

What can brown do for you? I’d say quite a bit

The Styrofoam peanuts are many and more

And sobbing and laughing I fall to the floor

The next day, with an early start, not far from my abode

I perch myself, patiently, on the side of the road

The desert winds sting my face and my eyes

And under my furry butt the weapon resides

High noon, how perfect, I hear from a far

The steady speed of a train or a car

With ferocious breath I cackle to myself

For it is him, the runner, making his way round the shelf

As he quickly retraces his steps after his pass

He stands there before me, smiling, like a real wise-ass

He waits for a surprise, but I make not a peep

The roadrunner, he teases me with the same old “beep beep”

He may be fast, but I don’t miss a beat

My hand soon around his neck, the other about his feet

Squirming and shaking, his eyes going red

I slowly lift the shooter to his head

Without hesitation, as I watch him cry

The runner realizing his end is extremely fucking nigh

I kiss his cold beak and with a wink of my eye

The pull of the trigger sends that big brain through the sky

I return to my cave knowing that finally I can sleep

For never again will I ever have to hear

That fast fucking bird, that tormentor of my soul

No never again will I have to hear “beep beep”

I used to know a man who never made a fuss about anything. He bought all the same socks, on sale, from Marcel at the marché, so that he never had to bother matching them. The socks were white and came up just past his shins. But he always scrunched them down. You could tell when he crossed his legs. His name was Demitri and he was always early for everything.

Demitri set his watch ten minutes fast. And not even to trick himself, for Demitri knew that his watch was ten minutes fast. He just liked to be early. He hated when people were late. He abhorred tardiness. It was his sickness. It was the burden he carried for the world.

Every day at exactly 7:35 am he would wake up before his alarm clock, which was set to 8:00. He would stumble into the kitchen and crack two eggs. He listened to the news from the other room on his grandfather’s radio, but the news was never really the news he wanted to hear. It was gossip. Demitri lived in world of gossip, and it stabbed deeper and deeper every day.

If you can’t beat ‘em… join ‘em.

Never in his life could Demitri manage to construct a satisfactory omelet, although he tried over and over and over and over. He couldn’t flip it right. He couldn’t time it right. His watch was no help. Time was never on his side.

Demitri cooked in his apartment with no-stick, Teflon pans, but all the Teflon was gone. It was scratched away with tact-less impatience and frivolous intolerance. It was no use, and time was never on his side but he knew, in his heart, that one day, he would make the omelet of his dreams.

On Tuesdays the garbage men would vociferously stagger up the driveway to the parking lot behind his apartment complex. Demitri watched reruns of Gilligan’s Island and Mystères in his underwear as he timidly shoved his failure down his throat.

After his cold shower he would dress himself. He would dress for success. But success was a pipe dream, and Demitri was the grease build-up with no Drain-O in sight.

C’est la vie, mon frere. A demain, parce que c’est une autre jour malade, au jourd’hui. C’est la vie.

Tabitha would call Demitri every Sunday, usually rousing him from a beer-induced cat nap. Demitri hated cats, mostly because he was very allergic. Tabitha would always invite him over for tea but Demitri did not care for tea. He liked coffee and tea was not coffee. Besides, Tabitha had several cats. Il deteste les chats. They spoke for hours, pretending they were busy on their respective ends of the line. They were anything but busy.

Tabitha was a barber, I suppose. Her father died three weeks ago. She was studying Latin at the university, but that ended somewhat abruptly I guess. The things we love always end abruptly. If the end isn’t abrupt then it wasn’t love, I always say. Well, my father always said that.

Latin, the dead language, provided Tabitha with nothing when it came to cutting hair. Day after day, like a prisoner, she would hack away at greasy, grimy locks of mane. She shaved, too, for her father gave his patrons, if anything, a reliable shave. She almost killed a few men—men on their way to war, or worse. The barbershop, nestled quietly between the delicatessen and the boulangerie on Main Street, soon became a blood bath. It was a war path. Tabitha was the butcher. Tabitha was the renegade soldier. She came to hate knives, and they her.

I used to see Demitri every Thursday. He shopped on Thursdays because he hated the crowds. I shopped on Thursdays for the fresh fish. We used to smoke cigarettes on the wharf and talk about the sailboats. The harbor was almost always empty, like the pub over near la rue Saint Caire on a Saturday night. I could never get myself in there. It was hard to fit in, at least in those days. But the wharf was our only solace. Sure, the wood smelled poignantly of scrod and mackerel and, well, whatever catch was fresh depending on the season, but we liked it. We liked the smell. Not everything in life smells good. That’s what Demitri used to say.

Tabitha, much like all women I’ve known, was inexplicably dissatisfied with men. She was stingy and cold-blooded, bereft of affection. She was, shall we say, a challenge. With a sweet tooth and a superiority complex, Tabitha ripped through men like Genghis Khan. She was a warlord of love. She was exactly Demitri’s type.

Mornings in Calais were bleaker than the underworld itself. The fog never passed and the people never changed. Tabitha was bed-ridden with an illness that was undisclosed to me. This was mid-autumn, no more than a week or three before today. Demitri was ill as well, but not physically. It was his mind, in autumn, his mind that died and fell along with the leaves. By the end of it, which would be the days of present, Demitri was dejected. He was utterly miserable.

“How’s about a pint?” I asked him just the other day.

“I haven’t the money,” he responded.

He had the money. We both knew it.

“Well, what about a stroll through le jardin?” I insisted as my neck fell cold against the bitter railing of the dock.

“I am tired, Jean-Luc…”

“Tired?”

“Yes. I am tired of being here.”

“Then let’s get our asses off this arctic concrete and make ourselves an evening,” I said to him.

“No,” he said.

“Demitri…”

“No, I’m tired of this place… this earth. It turns and turns and it spins me like a top.”

“You have been drinking, Demitri.”

“NO!” he exclaimed.

With a stern glance I struggled to catch his eyes.

“D’accord, mon ami,” he admits reluctantly. “I have been drinking.”

“Je sais,” I reply with agreement.

“But not just this day, Jean-Luc. Not even just this week. My friend, mon copain, it has been a long time now… a long time… a long time since I have seen the days with clarity or optimism or delight.”

“Demitri…”

“It has left me, Jean-Luc, all of it. The Lord, have mercy on my soul, I pray to him at night, just before I vomit the worthless gut that remains in me, I beg him to deliver me from this peril, this injustice. But here I sit. Here is where I will die.”

“Demitri, come now, you are talking nonsense!”

“AM I, JEAN-LUC!? AM I!?!?”

“YES, YOU ARE!” I hollered with what seemed to be a tidal wave of disdain.

“I cannot have my life back, old friend. Not this time. The world has taken everything from me and now I have nothing to do but take my sins and bury the man I once thought I was.”

Before I could open my mouth, Demitri was walking away, off the wharf, towards the ocean. His eyes I could not see but the salt-ridden winds bit at his hair, standing the strands up in protest and begging Mother Nature for pity. Mother Nature is a bitter bride. Her whisper, a deadly secret of which no man can keep. These are her ways. These have always been her ways. A mother I cannot find in the brutal autumn sunset. She has no children. We have no comfort in the seasons.

Demitri walked right off the dock that day. His left boot slipped away from the very last plank of wood and he left the aridity of his life behind him.

It was low tide.

I screamed to him, “Demitri! Where are you going!? Pourquoi marches-vous dans la mer!?”

“Un autre poisson dans l’étang,” his voice echoed back to me. “Another fish in the pond… That’s what I am, so that’s what I must be.”

I watched his head sink below the mellow waves. The water was clear that day, oddly enough. It allowed me to watch his legs stride solemnly against the sheepish current. I could have stopped him. But Demitri was a man who made up his mind only once. There are two types of people in this world: people who make up their minds once and people who can never make up their minds about anything. I was the latter, I suppose. At least I was comparatively.

His head never came back up to break the ocean’s composure. The bubbles that were his breath stopped climbing above the waves.

I cried on the dock for nearly an hour. It’s funny, I thought to myself, how there’s no one there when you cry. No matter where you are. People take the detour. No one wants to be part of the crying, the melancholy, the despair… no one wants to care unless it affects their own well-being.

They tell you in school to cry FIRE instead of HELP when you are in trouble.

Demitri cried nothing.

He just cried.

I visited Tabitha just the other day dans l’hopital. Between small synapses of struggle and conjecture she pleaded me, with no poise or self-awareness, that I bring Demitri to her. I never had the heart to tell her that he swam away that day.

We never have the heart to tell the things that mean the most.

I held Tabitha’s hand for three days straight.

Doctors and nurses hustled and bustled in and out of the room. Vital signs and bed pans were their only concern. Hospitals are always the loudest places. A louder place on earth I’ve yet to find.

Tabitha died just today; this morning. She never knew that Demitri walked into the ocean. And she’ll never know that the ocean is where he believed she would be.

“Was it just the girl?” I asked myself, clad in black beside her coffin.

I sang to myself, just this evening, with an orchestral arrangement in my mind as I set the table for another meal to share with only myself. It was fresh fish tonight. I wasn’t delighted as I usually am.

I sang to myself a song that I had never heard before.

My friend, we were like brothers

My friend, I heard you scream

When love seems to slip away from us

You give up, yet I still breathe

Alone I walk the alleys

Alone you sleep with gravity

But if only you stayed to say goodbye

To me… to me…

Je vous manquerai…

Marcy was a bore. She was the most unoriginal woman I had ever met, which isn’t saying a lot. She was a Pisces; an escapist and an idealist, secretive and vague, weak-willed and easily led. She was easy. Easy to get drunk. Easy to impress. Easy to fuck. Even in bed she was a bore. Then again, so am I. I guess the only real difference between Marcy and me was the fact that I could balance a check book once a year. She’s never seen a check.

She was a runaway, like all women. She had daddy issues. You know, she couldn’t let go of that masculine image. She needed it. Needed it bad. I was the closest thing she had because I got drunk and had a dick. I guess that’s how these things work sometimes.

She was a Florida girl. That meant that she was from the south, but she didn’t have that charming twang that I hear so much about. Nope, Marcy was just Marcy. She never ingested a Florida orange other than a glass of Tropicana once in a blue moon. She’s too young to remember Elian Gonzalez or Slinky’s. God, those were the days. The news was slow, the economy was, well it was different, and people still played Monopoly on rainy days.

But the Slinky’s never went up the stairs. Only down them.

There were those quiet mornings, you know, the ones where no one wants to say anything and the morning-breath is slimier than the sin-ridden floor of a strip club. Those inevitable-regret mornings, those are what I miss about Marcy. I’d ask her things. Stupid things.

“You ever see any alligators down there in Florida?”

“No.” Marcy was very monosyllabic in the mornings.

“You ever go to the Everglades?”

“No. It’s just a big fucking swamp, Ben.”

“I know.”

“Honestly, what do you expect me to do in a big fucking swamp?”

“I don’t know, check out the alligators?”

Marcy would roll over; her spine might as well have been a big fluorescent neon sign reading: SHUT THE FUCK UP I HAVE A SPLITTING HEADACHE.

She always had a splitting headache. Marcy loved her splitting headaches. Sometimes I wish her head would split. Right down the middle. I wish it would just rip her in half, sometimes. Just rip her in half.

“You ever go to Cape Canaveral down there, Marce?”

No response meant that she was pretending to be asleep. She was a terrible liar. The worst.

“I don’t feel that leg twitching, Marce, so I know you’re awake.”

“You know everything about me now don’t you, smart-ass?”

Not everything.

So that’s how it went. A morning of hangovers in sweaty sheets, an afternoon of cowlicks and finding the best of the terrible movies on the TV. That’s what I miss. I miss having that one person around who’s the only person on this not-so-green earth who is worse than me at pulling their shit together. Just god fucking awful at it.

I smoked cigarettes and she watched. That was our relationship. That was it.

You know when you got that last butt and you are just dragging away at that measly last millimeter of paper before the filter? And you can almost hear that last ring of gunpowder just open fire into your life. POP! One less day to be old, to be gray. One more ring of fire.

Well then you are just smoking a burning filter, you know?

Yeah, that was it. Just like that. And every time I wished it was that hair of hers that was burning instead.

The filter is where they hide the good stuff.

The pillows always smelled like her; generic, name-brand substitute shampoo and a dash of hairspray from a purple aerosol can. She was like a finely trained chef when she did her hair, I’ll give her that. By God, I’ll fucking give her that. The tossing and the flicking—the detail and the meticulous precision—it was like watching the world’s greatest ballerina from the nose-bleed seats.

And the pillows always smelled like her.

“Why do you wear your shirt to bed?” she’d ask.

“What?” As if I never heard the question before.

“You’re a man. Act like one. Take your shirt off, I want to see that hairless torso of yours. What do you think you can do, hide it from me?”

“I have body issues.”

She would laugh. I would not laugh.

“I’m going to get out of here, Marce,” I’d tell her.

“Sure you are.”

“I am. I’m going to leave. God damnit, I’m going to get the fuck out of here. This city, it’s a dump. It’s a wasteland.”

“Shut up, you say it all the time and I don’t want to hear it.”

“Things are fucking different! This isn’t a fucking sing-along-teen-angst fucking nostalgic time we’re in, Marce. This is fucking hell. This is hell on earth and we all think it’s okay. It’s not okay. There’s not a job in the world that we can hold down. Not a fucking job in the world.”

“I can hold down a job.”

“You can hold down a fucking aspirin if you weren’t vomiting three times a day. Don’t you get it? It’s a different fucking world. We’re slowly coming to a place that we have made so democratically and arrogantly for ourselves, and we all think it’s going to be this better fucking existence but it’s the same. It is. The same. No, it’s worse. It’s worse, Marce!”

“Benny, it’s…”
“It’s fucking hell! That’s what it is!”

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who get up when there is coffee and people who get up to make the coffee. I wish I was the latter.

“You know all those times your parents told you to study something useful?” I tell her calmly, but probably comes out like a child picking up a trumpet for the first time; dissonant, piercing, and sad, “You know, that shit that will make you money when you’re done fucking around in college? This is what they meant! This is it! The fucking antithesis of what we are doing. It’s a dog eat dog world and we’re a couple of fucking french poodles, Marcy. Left for the vultures…”

My alarm goes off every morning at 10 AM. And just once in my life I’d like to wake up to it. But I’m always laying there; laying there waiting to hear that hammer violently hit those perfect little gold bells. It’s my grandfather’s clock. It’s old. Quite old. Older than God. Probably. It’s set to 10 AM every day, but those hands… those hands they still tell the same time that they did decades ago. The dust is proof. The cogs and springs inside only tell the same old stories, like drunk uncles on Easter Sunday, but the rest of the family isn’t listening. Not a word is heard. And it’s just so much easier to keep the whiskey flowing.

The clock. It’s a different time.

And those fucking pillows always smell like her. They always smell like her.

A logician walks into a cocktail party in a hotel. The hotel is as big as its respective city in which it stands. The party has an open bar and, although he is a logician, he is only human and takes full advantage of the opportunity to make an ass of himself. For, you see, all logicians (and most humans) make asses of themselves, especially in public.

The bartender is young and clean shaven. The logician, smirking, requests a Dean Martini. This is his little inside joke with himself, because the ingredients to this maniacal potion are as follows:

Three parts Greygoose Vodka

One part loosey (a single cigarette, preferably not a menthol)

One part book of matches

A recipe only one who studied a bartender’s manual cover to cover would know.

“Excuse me?” the youngster replies.

The logician, pleased with himself, laughs and orders a Whiskey Sour instead. The boy fumbles about with the shaker for the sour mix and creates the beverage with far too much whiskey; just how the logician likes it.

In the corner of the room there is a quartet of gentlemen playing violins and cellos. Undoubtedly, the logician thinks to himself, these fellows decided that providing a sort of catering service with their musicianship was monetarily more reasonable than playing in the symphony orchestra they inevitably very recently retired from. Or they just didn’t make the cut. The logician admired their reasonable attitudes, as he also finds that life is easier when you sell yourself and your talents to whomever might think they are interesting at the time; whoever thinks your worth something. Whoever’s flavor of the week you happen to be. However, these men, distinguished and proud, and frankly quite good at their craft; they remind him of the string quartet on a wealthy cruise ship, perhaps like the one aboard the Titanic—the one that kept playing as the ship sank on that frigid night those many years ago—and the logician feels remorseful.

He hurts. Just for a second. But just enough. Because he will never go down with a ship. Never. Why would he? He curses James Cameron under his breath. Fucking icebergs. Fucking Leonardo DiCaprio. Fucking aristocrats.

He twirls around the ice left at the bottom of his glass.

The party continues. The logician floats in and out of conversations, like a fly trapped indoors trying desperately to find an open window, constantly being swatted away by the home’s inhabitants. He doesn’t mind. He drinks more. Fucking icebergs.

“If all successful businessmen drink expensive scotch, and all people who drink expensive scotch are lonely, then it necessarily follows that all these assholes are just fucking lonely fools,” he says, perhaps a bit too audibly, as he catches the curious stare of a glamorous female partygoer nearby.

She caught his eye before, in fact. It might have been the dress. But, then again, they all caught his eye. The women. No matter where and no matter whom, they caught his eye. Every time. Every one of them.

“Well, hey then! At least we have something in common, right!?” he jests to her. The woman turns away, returns to her obviously fascinating conversation.

The logician’s steps become more sporadic as the night grows later. The musicians stop playing a little after eleven o’clock. They sit at the bar, indulging in friendly small-talk and domestic beer. The men are simple; not much older than the logician, yet sit with such posture it would make Caesar himself weep at the sight. His vision is blurry. Each image that fights its way into his cerebral cortex is like a photograph from a Polaroid camera.

The production of Polaroid film was discontinued last year.

Fucking icebergs.

“What are ya drinkin’?” the portlier of the players asks. The logician realizes his journey to the bar was shorter than he thought and that he had been standing beside the players for a good five minutes. At least.

“Another sour, sir?” asks the bartender, now cranky and anxious to leave.

“Give me a Bud, young scholar. You got Bud back there? Budweiser? You know??”

“Yes, sir, we do,” he snips.

“An American beer for an American man,” says one of the men, whom is presumably the cellist, he guesses. Cellists are usually taller. Their shoulders broader.

The boy twists off the cap of the bottle and hands it to the logician. The logician stands insulted by the gesture.

“I know what you’re thinking,” says the portly fellow again.

“Hm?”

“You’re thinking just what I thought. ‘I know I’m old, boy, but not too old to forget how to twist off the cap to my own damn beer.’ Ain’t that right friend?”

After a pause: “No. No, that’s not what I was thinking,” the logician says.

“Then what were ya thinkin’?”

Just then, before he could answer, the logician’s knees buckle under him and he hits the mahogany floor of the room like a magnet. His head hits first—the back of it—and it sends a wave down his body. The wave is warm, but only for a quick second. Then it is burning. And then it just hurts. It is a fantastic hurt.

Someone picks him up and sits him at a table. The tablecloth of this one has been relocated to the floor, apparently. He hears broken glass sliding on the wood underneath his dress shoes. They’re the ones that give him terrible blisters.

“Fuck!” yells the logician. “I guess I had just a tad too much to drink, huh?”

The man next to him chuckles. His laugh is hearty and the end of it is more of a cough than anything. The phlegm in his throat makes it sound more sincere. The logician likes that about him. He likes phlegm.

“Buddy you just got laid out,” he says.

“Yeah, well I wish I got just laid instead.”

“Well, buddy, I tell ya, you just described the story of my life,” he responds with another genuine gurgle. “But what just happened to ya had nooooothing to do with what you drank tonight. Nothing, I tell ya. There was a bona fide fucking brawl in here, friend.”

“A… a what?”

“Yeah, you heard me. Some big shots got heated and had it out right there on the dance floor,” he says as he points. “Those two assholes wrestled themselves all the way over here to the bar and took you out with ‘em. Surprised you weren’t out for longer. If you ask me, I think it was over something regarding the little lady over here. The one with the glitzy dress? You seen her tonight? But, well, in the end, ya know, all good fights, no matter what anybody says, they’re always over a girl, am I right?”

“Where’s my Bud?” asks the logician, slowly realizing that his kind companion is the larger man from the quartet. Second violin maybe? His untouched beer is placed in front of him. The logician feels a drop of sweat race down his spine from the top of his scalp.

It’s not sweat.

The logician passes out, hitting the floor again. Harder. A woman screams “Put him on his side!” Another woman shrieks “Oh God! There’s blood everywhere!” A man next to the logician’s head yells “Shut the fuck up, Marie!”

“It’s his head!” the man says to one of the other many people surrounding the logician, “The blood! It’s coming from his head! He must’ve hit it real good”

Everyone is on their knees around him, trying to decide whether to move him or keep him where he is. Do we try to keep him awake? Should we get him some water? Has anyone called 9-1-1 yet!?

Out again. And without a sip of his Budweiser.

* * *

“I’m in an ambulance,” he deduces.

The sirens somewhere above him are loud. They sound like music. Because of his concussion he cannot tell the difference. A figure dressed in blue holds a mask to his face, covering his mouth and nose. The logician’s head is restrained, but he manages to inch his face back and forth, frantically. The foam on either side rubs against his ears and mutes the sirens’ melody. His chest rises up and down. Up and down. He has no control over it. He feels a pinch in his arm, closes his eyes tightly, and feels his molars grind against each other. They scream.

The vehicle hits a bump in the road, possibly a pothole, who knows. Roads: they can be so unpredictable.

He opens his eyes again as a calm comes over him. The hair on the back of his head is wet and his shirt feels infused to his back like it was an eighth layer of skin. He knows that it is blood.

With glassy eyes he looks around the inside of the ambulance. The lights above are very bright. He blinks slowly. Each time, the insides of his eyelids depict familiar figures. Venn diagrams. Squares of opposition. Aristotle. Valid! Inductive!

[Existential Fallacy: a fallacy that occurs after the Aristotelian standpoint is adopted, when a particular conclusion is drawn from a universal premise about things that do not exist!]

If all A are B and all B are C… FUCK!!

He holds his eyes open again. It is not easy. There are other figures there with him, swaying to and fro with the motion of the automobile as it climbs hills and dodges cautiously through traffic signals and stop signs.

The band is there. They are the figures. All four of them. They are there with him. His friend, the portly violinist, has his hand firmly on the logician’s arm. The logician keeps his head still, squinting to see the string quartet through the blinding fluorescent lights. They all smile back at him. With his chest still rising and falling freely, he closes his eyes again. The sirens still sound like music to him.

“I’m the ship,” mumbles the logician.

It all happened so unexpectedly. It was a Sunday night and Peter was having sex with his girlfriend. Sex was something that they, as a couple, never took for granted and was never stale nor routine. Theirs was the kind of sex that other couples dreamed of having after five years of being an “item”. Peter was proud of his love making.

It wasn’t too long into it when Peter started feeling strange; something wasn’t right. He didn’t feel sick, necessarily, but just strange. Sometimes, he thought to himself, you just bite off more than you can chew. Maybe Peter just wasn’t in the mood on this particular Sunday night.

“Ellie, wait, I have to stop,” he told her, “I don’t feel very good.”

“Oh, um, okay… that’s fine,” she replied gently.

“I’m sorry.”

“Is it me? Did I do something wrong?”

“No no no, of course not,” Peter stumbled, trying to rationalize this sudden foible to himself.

He dismounted Ellie and retired beside her, kicking up the corduroy comforter with his feet to drape across and conceal their bodies; bodies that hadn’t even broken a sweat. They laid there in silence. It was a horrible silence. Ellie stared at the ceiling, and Peter at her. Her eyes blinked very rarely, once every two minutes or so, perhaps. The two slept spine to spine. Ellie left early in the morning.

Peter tried not to think much of it. He sat in his office, which was really more like a glorified cubicle, playing Mine Sweeper. Even after years of playing the game, Peter still didn’t quite understand the rules. He did not understand the little numbers or the teeny tiny red flags. Red flags never meant much to him. All day long, Peter stared vacantly at his computer monitor. He did not go to the gym during his lunch break. He didn’t even take a lunch break.

It was Wednesday and Peter’s thoughts were more occupied by cutthroat games of Scrabble with his roommates and organizing his queue on Netflix rather than the Sunday night incident. It was after a few cold ones and a late night I Love Lucy marathon that he decided to test the equipment. While Lucille Ball has been known to have this affect on her viewers, Peter’s decision to masturbate was more out of concern than anything else. It was an itch that needed to be scratched, or rather stroked.

Peter’s climax came effortlessly. His room was illuminated with the radiance of his computer screen; its walls played ping pong with the moans and groans and shouts and cries of palatable hardcore internet porn. When he came, Peter felt more terrified than ever before in his life. His were eyes wide and dilated with horror. His throat only echoed the shrill cry from deep within him. There was blood.

Miraculously, Peter managed to get an hour’s worth of shut eye, give or take, before he began his morning commute. It wasn’t longer than 30 minutes at work that he left to go see a doctor. He told no managers of his departure. He gave no notice other than a pink post-it note adhered to his keyboard that read: “EMERGENCY GONE TO HOSPITAL.” The truth is that no one even knew Peter was gone. Nobody ever really cared to ask. He figured as much.

Peter’s primary care physician was out of town. He had a practice over on the Cape twice a week. Peter changed his PCP online and called immediately after, demanding that he be seen by the doctor right away. The receptionist at the clinic said that the physician Peter so abruptly chose via his internet-ready Blackberry mobile phone was actually out of town, an ironic twist that Peter would normally find rather amusing, however Dr. Magiacomo would be happy to fit him in for a visit. He didn’t care, as long as he was seeing a doctor. When he arrived at the clinic, a not so easily accessible establishment in outer Brighton, Peter found, to his dismay, that Dr. Magiacomo was a woman. Just my fucking luck, he thought.

“So, Pete, what seems to be the problem,” she asked rather informally as the white paper covering the patient’s bench noisily crunched and crinkled under Peter’s insatiable positioning of his buttocks.

Not knowing quite how to word his ailment, Peter simply stated: “Last night I came blood.”

“Okay,” she replied calmly, “Was it all blood or was it more of a mixture?”

“Well, it seemed to be mostly blood. But it was dark.”

“I see,” she said.

“I mean, it didn’t hurt when it happened… but it was still very shocking.”

“Yes, well, I’m sure it was,” Dr. Magiacomo said with a chuckle. Peter found no humor in his tale.

He continued to explain the incident on Sunday night with Ellie. Peter told her that during the past week or so he didn’t feel sick, per say, but just did not feel right. He struggled to articulate the circumstances of his situation. The doctor remained composed, to which Peter found some sort of piece of mind, while knowing that it was a physician’s standard protocol to appear this way as to dissuade the patient from panicking.

They ran tests for the majority of the afternoon. Some tests were more uncomfortable and painful than others. The less scientific tests provided reassuring results. Peter did not have Chlamydia. He did not have Syphilis. Peter did not have any STD’s at all, but even he could have told the doctors that, even without having a giant cotton swab forced down his urethra.

As Peter dressed himself, he pondered the outcome of his cat scans and blood tests. He bit his fingernails down to the skin waiting for his affable M.D. to return to his room, which was littered with a child’s scattered crayon drawings. He assumed they were the masterpieces of Dr. Magiacomo’s offspring. Peter was not impressed, to say the least.

“Well, Petey, I have your results,” she uttered as she glided through the door way.

“Yeah?”

“Unfortunately, our tests didn’t tell us much,” she said. This was not what Peter wanted to hear.

“So what did they tell you?” he asked anxiously.

“Well, Pete, there’s a dark spot on your prostate.”

“A… A dark spot!?!?”

“Correct,” she said with a doctor-like inflection, “At this time we don’t know what exactly it is or where it is coming from.”

“So, what does this mean?” he asked nervously.

“It can be anything from Prostatitis, which is just a bacterial infection in your prostate that we could just treat with a lot of antibiotics, or…”

“Or?” he begged.

“Or it could be a tumor. It could be prostate cancer.”

Peter gulped audibly.

“We’ll know more in 48 hours, and then we’ll take things from there,” she said.

Peter only buys Charmin Ultra-Soft toilet paper. He likes having the extra ply when wiping his ass. It’s those little things in life that Peter appreciates. In fact, he often found himself insulted by the measly one-ply toiler paper that frequently occupied the bathrooms of his family and friends’ homes. The one thing I will never pinch pennies for is toilet paper, he would say. Even the leaves of Peter’s Charmin toilet paper in his bathroom, imprinted with flowers and other various designs, offered no consolation as he restlessly awaited the phone call from Dr. Magiacomo. Peter’s roommates were sullen during those grueling 48 hours. They conversed like strangers. Nobody knew what to say to him; no one knew how to act normal around Peter. Even Ellie found herself at a loss for words. “Waiting is the worst part,” she said to him over the phone. She did not ask to sleep over his place. Peter tried hinting that he wanted her to be with him. Ellie did not pick up on this. Peter slept very little. He did not go to the office for the rest of the week. Again, no one really noticed that he wasn’t there.

Saturday morning, Peter awoke to the maddening beeping of his cell phone. The device’s screen explained that he had one missed call and one new voicemail. Peter watched Sportscenter in the living room. His roommates slept solemnly in their bedrooms. He sipped his bong, ignoring the commentators’ coverage of the previous night’s humiliating Bruins loss to the Montreal Canadiens. He worked up the nerve to listen to his new voicemail. It went like this:

“Hi, Mr. Starch, this is Claire from Boston Medical Associates. We would like to schedule a follow-up visit some time very soon. Please call us at the following number…“

Peter called and set up an appointment for Monday morning. He watched television in a stoned stupor for the better part of the day. On Monday, he called out of work at 4:35 AM. He doubted anyone would get the message, never mind even care.

Ellie answered Peter’s call when he phoned her from the grimy Monday morning waiting room. She could not hear him very well over the sound of children scampering over the faded purple carpet. Peter studied various other patients in the waiting room as they completed necessary paperwork on the provided clipboards. Ellie didn’t say much. Their conversation was contrite and even more of a catalyst to Peter’s already teeming state of panic and terror.

“Good luck, baby,” Ellie said to Peter before they hung up their cell phones, “I’m sure you will be fine. Just keep your head up. Try not to stress out too much.”

“Easier said than done,” he told her.

“I’m just trying to help, Babe. I’m trying to be here for you,” she replied.

Peter hung up the phone without saying goodbye. He heard Ellie tell him that she loved him faintly as he pulled the machine away from his ear, ending the call.

When he finally got out of that god-forsaken waiting room he studied more crayon creations on the walls of his room. Dr. Magiacomo entered without so much as a “hi, how are you?” She did not look up at Peter as he desperately locked his gaze upon her distracted eyes. He did not blink. She peered up at him with a cautious smile. Peter’s body went numb.

“Mr. Starch,” she started, “I wish I had good news to tell you today.”

“Well? Just tell me, already,” Peter hollered.

Dr. Magiacomo gave him a disapproving look as if to say please don’t raise your voice to me. Peter studied his shoelaces waiting for her to say something; waiting for her to say anything else.

“Well,” she cleared the phlegm from her throat, “our best case scenario is no longer an option.”

“What… what do you…”

“What I mean is,” she interrupted, “it’s more than just an infection. We won’t be able to treat it with just a week’s worth of antibiotics.”

Peter’s body shivered and swayed. The sanitary paper on which he sat ripped and screamed as he adjusted his body to a more ergonomically terrified position.

“We need to run some more tests,” the doctor said.

Brian handed me a piece of paper, folded six times hastily and sloppily, that contained instructions on how to clean all the porn viruses off my computer. He was a smart guy. I was a smart guy, too, but I lacked common sense. That’s what mom used to tell me. But she also used to tell me that the crust was the best part of the pizza, which as we all know is a bold-faced lie.

“Just make sure you install those pop-up blockers and don’t remove any important software,” Brian said to me. “If you have any problems or if somethin’ ain’t workin’ right just call me and I’ll come over if you need me to. My dad fixed my bike this weekend so… ya know…”

“Thank you. You’re a real lifesaver,” I told him.

Everything would have went smoothly, had I remembered my key that morning. But of course, I forgot it. I still wasn’t used to having a key to my house. Mom would tell me that sooner or later I’d have to bear the responsibilities of being an adult, and part of that was keeping keys with me at all times. If I couldn’t remember my keys, she would say, then how could I ever expect to have a family. Meanwhile, my dad lost his keys more times than Michael Jordan slam dunked. You did not want to mess with the old man when he was looking for his keys, believe me. That was not the time for tom foolery.

My mother would always leave a spare key under the door mat for me. When I got home from school my parents would both be at work. Dad was a State Trooper and damn proud of it. He had this bumper sticker on the back of his car that said: “Rhode Island State Troopers: Always there when you need them!” Mom was a secretary downtown. I could tell you the address of her office, but never exactly who’s secretary she was. All I knew was that Mr. Fitzgerald worked her too hard and didn’t give her the respect she deserved, god damnit! Years later he died of lung cancer. “All those damn cigars,” my mother said.

Today there was no spare key because there was no door mat. Wouldn’t you know it, the mat was at the dry cleaners. Why my mother felt it necessary to clean something that people wiped their shoes on was beyond me. It was like that pizza crust logic, I guess. With no luck climbing in through the bathroom window, I retreated to my clubhouse in the backyard. I built the clubhouse myself, because dad had a bad back and had to put up with people’s shit every day and deserved some piece and quiet once in a while god damnit! Some people say you become a man when you lose your virginity, but I think I became a man when I learned how to use a nail and a hammer. They don’t teach you that in school. They just teach you algebra. And algebra never helped no kid build a clubhouse in his backyard.

I reached into my back pocket to study Brian’s directions on how to de-pornify my computer. I may not have had common sense, but I knew damn well how to follow directions. I had a lot of Lego’s. The crumpled piece of loose-leaf had a thumb print made of dried ketchup, a reminder, not only of the fish sticks I had for lunch, but the criminal consequences of my world wide wed explorations. The instructions read:

1) Go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs

2) Remove anything that looks fucked up or weird

(DO NOT REMOVE IMPORTANT SOFTWARE)

3) Go to Download.com – download Ad-Aware6.2

4) Install and run virus scan

5) Delete all files that it says are bad

6) Pray while your computer reboots

Seemed pretty easy, but computers never are. In 1997, at the ripe age of 13, using a computer was about as easy as talking to girls. In other words, it was impossible. I sat nervously on the 2×4 plank of wood that was the floor of my glorious tree house. It felt like weeks passing as I watched the street carefully for my mother’s station wagon to pull in the driveway. The streetlights came on and somewhere in the neighborhood someone was throwing some burgers on the grill. My apprehension was impenetrable, even to the sweet aroma of burning beef. I just wanted to get in the house and attend to the task at hand.

I was quite the welcoming party when mom finally got home. Kisses and hugs were plentiful. Compliments were meticulously placed and words carefully chosen.

“Randy, hunny, why aren’t you inside?”

“I was waiting for you to come home. I missed you!”

“That’s very sweet. Did you feed Memphis?” she asked kissing my head.

“Actually, mom, I forgot my key this morning,” I said with puppy dog eyes.

“What!? Why didn’t you go next door to the Levine’s? You know Carrie is home with the baby! Ugh, Randy!” She made her way down the brick walkway, its cracks plagued by tiny tyrannical weeds.

“That damn dog better not have pissed on the carpet!” she squawked.

The sound of the key penetrating the lock on the front door triggered Memphis to start barking. He hurried out, through mom’s legs, nearly toppling me to the ground. He ran around the yard like an NFL running back, weaving in patterns as if from a playbook. I followed my mother into the house. I watched her place her keys on the kitchen countertop, proceeded by a blank stare into the living room. I knew just what she was thinking: meatloaf or shepherd’s pie?

I liberated my torso from the grueling weight of my backpack as I ran into the family room. I always brought all my textbooks home with me, just in case I needed them, but there might as well have been a dozen bricks in that damn thing, further perpetuating my slouch and up to this day contributing to my horrific posture. I turned on the computer and made a sign of the cross as I waited five years for it to boot up. Pop-ups for busty nude xxx girls littered the desktop. She could walk in here any minute, I thought. I turned the machine off, the CPU’s buzzing whir being replaced by the sounds of my mother fixing herself a vodka tonic.

“Get off that computer and set the table, Randy!”

“What’s for dinner!?” I hollered.

“Shepherd’s pie!”

Dinner was the last thing on my mind. I had to de-bug that damn machine before my father got home or else it was curtains for me; grounded for three, maybe four weeks. My stomach growled and my conscience ached.

“And will you let that damn dog in!? He’s gonna scratch the paint right off that door!”

“Okay, ma!” I replied.

Dad got home that night shortly after mom told me to dig in before my food got cold. She didn’t like to wait for him; not anymore. They exchanged routinely rigid greetings. My father would never eat in his uniform. Sweatpants were a must at the dinner table.

“How was school today, chief?” he asked me.

“Fine,” I told him

“What’d you learn?”

“Nothin’.”

“Nothin’, huh? Well, then I wonder why we’re sending you to that fancy school when you’re learning nothing,” he said to me, but I knew he was really saying it to my mother. She glared at him, fork and knife in hand. My father did not look up. Mom sipped her vodka tonic.

He started up again, “I mean, if all that money is going towards nothing…”

“I learned about the ozone!” I interrupted, trying to save dinner. Dad turned to me inquisitively, as if saying oh yeah? Do go on, son… but he just stared at me, chewing his food.

“Yeah, I learned that 90% of our atmosphere is in the ozone,” I continued. I sipped my water as neither of my parents said a word. All I could hear was the rhythmic tapping of their silverware to their plates. “…Um, which is mostly in the stratosphere.”

“Well, that’s great, Randy,” mom said, “I didn’t know that.”

After dinner I took Memphis for a walk, as to avoid listening to my parents argue in their bedroom. I remember wearing a pair of my father’s sunglasses as I strolled the neighborhood. The sunglasses were big and fell off my face if I looked down at the ground. After a while they slid off my nose anyway from the tears. I was good at crying quietly. Memphis was barking at kids in the street playing basketball and at other passing dogs. I had forgotten about the computer. Oh, shit! I thought.

I dragged Memphis back to the house. The front door was ajar. Inside the house was silent. When I got inside, my mother was sitting at the computer in the family room. My stomach dropped. Oh my god, she’s going to find out… she’s going to find the porn… she’s going to tell dad… I thought. I was caught.

I hung up Memphis’ lease in the garage. From inside I heard my mother call to me, “Randy! Go to your room, okay?”

“What!? I don’t know what…”

“Just go into your room, Randy!”

I closed the bedroom door behind me. As soon as it clicked, my mother yelled for my father.

“Gerald! Get in here!”

“I’m getting out of the shower! Wait a minute!”

“GERRY COME HERE NOW!”

I heard my father’s wet bare feet walk down the hallway. I heard him scoff as he reached the wall-to-wall carpeting of the family room. I opened the door without a sound, poking my ear out through the crack.

“What the hell is this, Gerry!?” my mother hollered.

“What!? I don’t know what that is… you don’t… you don’t think that I… Helen… come on…. I am not looking at pornography on our computer… you can’t honestly think…”

“Oh, no, Gerry? Then what the hell is this!?”

“Helen… seriously…”

With that my mother embarked back down the hallway to her bedroom. I closed my door. My father pleaded from the living room. I heard her mutter to herself, “Fucking pig,” and slam the bedroom door.

I did my algebra homework and went to bed early.

            His sister had tossed it in the glove compartment. He knew this because he found the tiny blaster rifle that it used to hold on the floor under some McDonald’s cheeseburger wrappers and empty packs of Camel Lights. What the fuck? he thought.

After investigating the dashboard, finding the two little spots of glue where it used to stand so majestically, he took the miniature yet proud Boba Fett action figure from his dark tomb. He took crazy glue from the shoebox in the trunk and returned the tiny little bounty hunter to his rightful place on the dash, gun in hand.

Paul made a sign of the cross, kissed his index finger, and touched it to Boba fett’s helmet, gently as to not disturb the drying and settling of the glue beneath its feet. “My little Saint Christopher,” he said and he drove away, with the orange glow of a setting sun in the rear view mirror, north towards Boston.

Arriving at the lonely two-bedroom apartment, Paul had forgotten to lock his car doors after bringing load after load of nostalgic, sentimental junk up flight after flight of narrow stairs. No, instead of locking his doors, Paul went to Bertucci’s, the hidden one underneath the Java Stop and convenience store and the roomy Bank of America ATM. Paul got a drink there, flirted with the hostess, watched half an episode of Law & Order SVU with the subtitles on, tuning out the drone of the “authentic” Italian soundtrack that echoed through the restaurant.

When he came back the car was gone. Paul thought about Boba Fett standing there on the dashboard. “Whoever they are and wherever they are going, keep them safe!” he shouted down the street. A man walking his dog gave Paul a confused and nervous look. Paul stood embarrassed in the street. He figured that the glue had dried by now. He hoped that the thieves didn’t throw his tiny guardian back into the glove box as he ascended the stairs to his apartment.

The next day Paul ate breakfast with his roommate, Deb. Martin’s Diner was busy, as it usually was on Sunday mornings after people got out of 10:30 mass at St. Mary’s. “Are you sure it wasn’t just towed?” Deb asked him. Paul stared blankly, trying to disguise his humiliated realization. “More coffee?” asked the waitress.

Paul made some phone calls, hailed a cab, and was at Brighton Towing & Repossession company within an hour. He reluctantly dished out the $119 fee to the attendant there, whose long, fake, fire engine red fingernails made Paul want to vomit his omelet all over the counter. But he held it in. When he opened the car door, there was Boba Fett. Tall and triumphant. Paul made a sign of the cross, kissed his index finger, and gently touched it to its helmet. “My little Saint Christopher,” he said.

I always wanted to be a Power Ranger, but I never had the motivation to take a martial arts class. Let me tell you, though, that show was my life. I lived, breathed, ate, bathed, and slept Power Rangers. I had the whole nine yards. But as I grew up, which unfortunately most of us do at some point, I was faced with the crushing reality that being a Power Ranger was really just a pipe dream. Some kids wanted to be firefighters or astronauts or NFL first-string wide receivers. But my aspirations were simply left behind with everything else that made up my childhood.

            At some point in my young adult life I decided I would be a writer. This decision stemmed from a long line of other decisions, summer romances, top 40 records, and college majors. I moved to L.A. to try my luck out on the west coast. All I found was whores, drugs, and the occasional celebrity appearance, which truly is the only reason any soul would ever move out there. It was more rational than trying to make it as a writer, at least.

            Shortly after I sold most of my possessions for rent money, I got picked up for a sitcom on CBS. The show was this little twenty-six minute moving advertisement for the white middle class youth, also known as a “Teen Drama.” It never made it more than the pilot, which only 4.3% of American households tuned in for. It was eventually replaced by reruns of CSI. But I had blood thicker than stone, so I drank myself stupid and started all over again the next day. Wasn’t the first time.

            In my desperate and self-loathing depression I showed up to a casting call for extras for some movie about Jake Gyllenhaal fighting off global warming with his boy-next-door charm while Dennis Quaid walks through a lot of snow or some shit like that. I forget what it was called. I didn’t get a callback, needless to say. But while I was down there in the land of studios and boom mics I stumbled into a building that was seemingly off the radar. I suppose you could say I took the road less traveled. As I entered I heard the faint, familiar music of a boy’s crushed childhood ambition. I walked toward the set. My navigation, across the room through racks and racks of costumes and clothes, brought me to, of all things, the set of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. I kidd you not. Months later I am a Megazord.

What you have to understand is that in every episode of the show there is a battle between a giant, robotic, Optimus Prime-esque vehicle and an enormous monster that terrorizes the city. However, as naïve as I can be, I knew that they were never really fighting in a real city. The cities are made of cardboard and thin, dry sheetrock whose heights never exceed six feet. The Megazord and respective monster are, in fact, men in costumes. The Japanese casting director, Mr. Hiroshi, gave me the job when the old Megazord, Carl, quit to go back to school in Eerie, PA. This was fate at its finest. As someone of the Hindu faith would say, I was receiving some pretty damn good karma.

            After the tapings, Phil, one of the other “actors”, and I would go out for drinks at this dive called Johnny Dick’s up in North Hollywood. I remember this one night we both had enough liquor in us to kill a beluga whale and Phil was rambling on about God knows what. That dude just doesn’t shut up when he drinks, let me tell you. But this was the night before the accident. And I still remember everything we said.

           

“You know what would be an even better gig, Scotty?” Phil beckoned.

            “What’s that?” I replied.

            “Being one of those guys who does the reenactments for documentaries on the History Channel. God that would be fucking great.”

            “How in the world would that be great?”

            “Because you’d feel like you were a time traveler, man! Think about it. In just one week you could be a Jesuit monk, a renaissance aristocrat, an FBI agent, a mobster, whatever you want! You could see it all! No… you could live it all, man. You know what I’m saying, brother?”

            “Hold that thought, I gotta use the little boys’ room,” I said. I quickly meandered my way over to the bathroom.  Whenever I say “hold that thought” what I really mean is “I’m really bored with this conversation.” The walls of the 7×7 men’s room were covered in graffiti. Tiny little conversations between defecating, alcoholic ghosts took place on the more blank sections of the walls. As I steadied the weight of my drunken body against the right wall, trying unsuccessfully to maneuver through my button-fly jeans before I piss my pants, I read quotes written in different colored pens and felt-tip markers:

            “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.” ~James Dean

            “Be good and you will be lonesome.” ~Mark Twain

            “Everybody must get stoned.” ~Bob Dylan

            It was all the usual sayings you might find in bars and café’s frequently occupied by the multifarious army of counter-NYC west coast hipsters, starved for attention and dying for someone to discover their post-modern expressionist photography or their one-man, two-act arguably autobiographical play. I took the longest and most introspective piss of my life that night.

            When I returned to the bar, Phil was talking to this real gussied-up cougar in a small booth in the corner of the room. She was wearing a pair of high heels that would intimidate the average twenty-eight year old Hollywood bachelor. Phil was telling a seemingly long-winded story, so I decided to fly solo at the bar for a little longer. I ordered another shot of Jack and a Heineken, glancing over at my comrade’s progress every so often. 

            I was twenty-three; five years younger than Phil. He got married when he was nineteen purely because he needed a place to live after his parents had kicked him out of the house. His father, an alcoholic diabetic, didn’t come to the wedding, which was paid for completely by the bride’s family. It was an embarrassing time in his life, as he explained. He left her when a talent agent found him playing piano in a department store at the Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio. Shortly after he moved out to Los Angeles, his agent, I believe his name was Terry, took all of his money and disappeared. Phil, a natural born optimist, laughed it off, wrote a few songs about it, and moved on. He played around for a while at some upscale piano bars, eating primarily bologna sandwiches and tuna fish, until finally his winding road led him, as well, to the set of Power Rangers.

            I watched the Lakers game on mute for the rest of the night. I drank modestly, but enough to comfortably space out among the roaring Thursday night crowd at Johnny Dick’s. It was around 1 AM when Phil came up to me to tell me he was leaving.

            “Hey, man, you see the broad I been talkin’ to over there!? God damn, Scotty, I think I got butterflies in my stomach. She’s incredible! I didn’t even have to ask her to come over, man, she invited herself over. This chick’s a real catch, man. I think I’m in love,” Phil mumbled to me. Shaking myself out of my hypnotic trance I spin my barstool around to reply to his youthful, grinning face.

            “That’s awesome, dude. She’s a real fox,” I say.

            “Ugh, is she ever!!”

            “So, you two are heading out now?”

            “Yeah! Oh, hey man… I’m sorry I ditched you tonight. Don’t hold it against me, okay?”

            “Sure thing, Phil,” I sweetly reply. I can’t be mad at him. He was glowing so much he was practically illuminating the room.

            “Alright, good. Seeya tomorrow, Ice Man. Get home safe, ya hear?”

            I laughed and turned back toward the television. I left just as the bartender was making his last call announcement. I slept like a hibernating bear that night.

I awoke from a dreamless sleep in the morning to my cell phone alarm. Elvis Costello was still playing on the stereo from the night before. I was bare-ass naked with the exception of my socks. I remember giggling about it all morning on my way to the studio. I was excited to tell Phil when I saw him, confident that he’d get a real kick out of it. Although, I was sure he’d have a more grandiose story about his night with his new lady-friend.

I was getting into my costume, which is essentially a full-body black unitard under a colorful armor of shiny, plastic and foam, when Phil, as expected, came floating onto the set.

“Man, that girl was such a trip. That Karen, man… she’s a real shot of life,” he said.

“Are you still in love with her or were you just drunk?” I ask jokingly.

“Oh, no, Scotty. This is for real. I just know it. I can’t remember the last time I was so happy.”

I believed him, because I, too, couldn’t remember ever seeing Phil this happy about anything.

“We talked all night and then we had this real romantic sex. You know, when you have that real like romantic kinda sex with someone the first time and it just feels right and you just hear Marvin Gaye in the background somewhere even though there’s no music on?”

“Yeah, buddy, I know what you’re saying. You better get dressed, dude, another epic battle in the city of Angel Grove is waiting…”

And then we fight. Phil was dressed as a Rhinoceros-like creature with wings and one eye. The storyline never really interested me anymore. The rest of the episode was meaningless. All my life I wanted to be on Power Rangers, and now it was just another job. I felt more like a dancer than a super hero, what with all the choreography we had to learn before our fight sequence. I never even met any of the Rangers. But I didn’t care.

Phil and I battled, humming our own fighting music to ourselves in our heads. The director yelled out cues like “Scott, take a fall to your left!” or “Phil, block the attack!” Things of that nature. As usual, with a triumphant thrust of my sword, the monster, Phil, is destroyed and, with some later computer editing, explodes into scattered particles of light. The city is saved. I want to take a bow, but I never do. I retreat to the dressing room for a bottle of water and a cigarette.

“I thought you had me there for a minute,” I say to Phil jokingly as I sometimes do. I place my helmet on a chair and light up a Lucky Strike.

“Scott, seriously, I just can’t get her out of my mind. I’m gonna see her again tonight. We’re going out for Thai. Imagine that! We both love Thai food!”

“Great, man. I gotta meet this broad sometime. See if she has any single friends. We could double date or some shit like that.”

“Yeah I’ll ask her. That’d be great, man, just great,” Phil says, but his mind is obviously elsewhere.

Mr. Hiroshi drops in and tells us that we did another great shoot. We know. I can tell he likes us, and at some point I plan on asking him to come out with us some night. He’s a good guy. Besides, Phil always says how having an Asian in your crew makes you look cooler.

            We get outside to the busy Los Angeles streets and everything feels calm. The traffic is moving, but in strange silence. Phil tells me more about Karen; the subtle blonde highlights in her hair, how well kept her downstairs is, the way she snorts when she laughs and gets embarrassed, things like that. At this point I am finished humoring him. I don’t want to hear anymore about it. The traffic got louder and the wind started blowing.

            “Phil, I’m really glad things are working out for you. I really am. I look forward to meeting her. But I gotta get home now, man. Call me up this weekend.”

            “What the fuck man? Can’t you just be happy for me just this once?” he snaps.

            “Dude, I just told you I was happy for you, okay? I just don’t want to hear anymore about this hussy from the bar, alright?” Poor choice of words on my part.

            “Hussy!? Fuck you, Scott. I really like this chick.”

            “For Christ’s sake, Phil, you just met her last night. At a bar, nevertheless.”

            “Don’t get cocky, boy. Things don’t just work out for me like they always do for you. This isn’t the show, ya know. Why do you always feel like you have to be the victor, huh? Why you always gotta kick me down?” Phil is now yelling at me. I feel like I am being scolded by my father.

            I don’t know why I got so upset at Phil on this afternoon. I don’t know why, but I wanted to see him fail. That’s how it works, though. I’m the hero and Phil is the villain, doomed to be defeated no matter what. There was a script to our social life that paralleled our professional life, and that was the way I liked it. I realize all this now, but at the time, as we were standing there on the sidewalk, I wasn’t thinking of anyone or anything but myself.

            I don’t respond to Phil for at least a minute. As I lifted my head to look him in the eyes and appologize, I find myself looking at his knuckles instead. Phil slugged me right in the jaw. I felt it pop. I tackled him to the pavement and pumelled him. I think I might have broken his nose, but I’m still not sure.

            At some point a security guard and a couple nearby pedestrians broke us up. The fight was pretty one-sided. I always figured Phil to be stronger than me. I guess I was wrong. I hailed a cab and went home.

            That night I called Phil to appologize. I had a couple cocktails and wanted to make ammends. I was never one for confrontation, but Phil was really the only friend I had. I called three times but he never picked up. I left this message the third time:

            “Phil, it’s me. Look, dude, I don’t know if sorry will make anything better. I was an asshole today and I just want to appologize for what I said and… well… you know. Anyway  call me back, okay? Let me take you out for a drink or something…”

***

            At around 2:30 AM I got a call from Saint Vincent’s Hospital. Phil had just passed away. He asked that I be called. I guess he knew he wasn’t going to make it. The doctor on the phone said that he was hit by a taxi. Phil had a blood alcohol content of 0.14. Karen was there with the doctor. He asked me if I wanted to speak with her, but I told him that I didn’t. I couldn’t. I tried to cry but I couldn’t. I was half awake and half drunk. It was all hard to absorb.

***

            At Phil’s funeral I made a speech. But it wasn’t a very good speech. Karen didn’t show up. Phil’s cousin from Santa Cruz was there with his fiancee. I didn’t really recognize the others. I’m sure they didn’t have a clue who I was.

            I didn’t go back to work for a week and a half. When I finally returned, Mr. Hiroshi had hired a new guy to replace Phil. I never bothered to learn his name. But I let him fight as the Megazord. I played the monster. I’m still the monster to this day.

The vomit seemed endless. There was ketchup in it. He could barely make out the rest. His nostrils stung like angry bees were flying out of them. Opening his eyes, he realized that he was vomiting again. He cried a little.

            Stephen Bradley laid on a cold tile floor in the smallest bathroom of the smallest apartment in all of Manhattan. His arm crossed the diameter of the toilet seat. His head, pounding and unforgiving, rested on it as he fell asleep. He awoke to a timid knock on the bathroom door.

            “Stephen, everything alright?” asked Margot.

            “Yup. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

            “Unlock the door so I can take you to bed.”

            Stephen crawled to the door. The trek seemed like miles. The tiles were colder than he remember them being earlier. He unlocked the door and fell back asleep.

He awoke again on an air mattress. Margot laid next to him with her head on his chest. She was in a night gown. Stephen noticed her cleavage as he lifted his head. But as he came to, so did his body, and Stephen’s body was not happy. His headache returned mercilessly. Surely he was being punished for last night. It was hangovers like this one that convinced Stephen that there was no God. If there was a God, how could he allow a soul to be tortured so brutally? Stephen tried to fall back asleep.

“This is definitely a Top 5,” he mumbled to himself. Margot woke up. She didn’t open her eyes, just rolled over and pulled Stephen’s arm over her. He felt her legs rub against his. Apparently his pants had been removed at some point. His eyelids stuck to his eyeballs from falling asleep with his contact lenses in. His eyes were thirsty, as was his throat. Stephen knew that if he stood up to get a glass of water he would run the risk of this devil of a hangover multiplying itself. He swallowed back the vomit that was trying to desperately to flee his body. Margot sighed. “Fuck it,” Stephen thought.

Stephen woke up again and heard the shower running. The white noise, usually a welcomed symphony to the ears, was more like a jackhammer on his skull. Margot was taking a shower before she headed out to work. She worked at an advertising company making layouts for the company’s website. She was paid very well, but not quite well enough. “No one can really ever afford to live in New York unless they’re Sarah Jessica Parker or a relative of Ralph Lauren,” she said one time at a party. The guests laughed. Every once in a while Margot could have a brief moment of humor. That was something Stephen always liked about her. He felt that there were two types of people in the world: people who told jokes constantly in the hopes that maybe one or two would make people laugh and they could exhale victoriously as a social demigod, and people who rarely told jokes, but when they did they were timed perfectly and made people laugh legitimately, from the very bottom of their bellies. Margot was the latter.

“How are you feelin?”

“Well, I’ve certainly felt better. But my headache is subsiding at least.”

“Good, glad to hear it.”

Margot was standing in a towel. Her medium-length black hair was dripping with water at its ends as she toweled it vigorously.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Stephen said.

“Oh no it’s okay. I shouldn’t have let you drink so much. I was being careful. I’m impressed though, not many seventeen year olds can pull off the shit you pulled off last night. Kudos,” Margot said with a generous chuckle.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you were buying beers at Kenny’s Castaways and then you started flirting with the waitress. Don’t you remember? You did a couple shots with her. She gave you her number. Ringing any bells?”

Stephen didn’t remember any of that. He vaguely remembered being at a bar. He definitely didn’t remember flirting with any waitresses, never mind how the hell he got back to Margot’s apartment. But Stephen smirked.

“Oooh yeah. Right. I forgot,” he said.

“Well, anyway, I’m going to go get ready for work. If you want there’s a little store at the corner that has food and drinks and stuff.”

“Okay sounds good,” he replied.

Stephen put on his sweatshirt and his sneakers and walked outside. He liked New York City much better during the day. The people seemed friendlier. The air seemed cleaner. The bums were sleeping. The cabs were driving sanely. Stephen lit a cigarette.

When he entered the convenience store a small bell above the door rang. This made Stephen laugh a little bit. He bought a Yoo-Hoo and a newspaper. He left all his change in the Take-A-Penny-Leave-A-Penny receptacle, even the quarters. In his head, Stephen narrated his walk back to the apartment. There was adventure in his steps.

When he returned to Margot’s apartment, she was putting on her makeup in the bathroom.

“What’s it like outside?” she beckoned.

“It’s, um, it’s nice out I guess,” Stephen replied hesitantly.

He heard the whir of Margot’s blow-dryer start up; a reminder of his previously subsiding hangover. Stephen looked through the stacks of books in her fireplace. Margot hadn’t read a fraction of the texts, but she was “going to get around to it, eventually,” or so she said.

Margot kissed Stephen as she left the apartment on her way to work. A spare key sat on the bedside table. Stephen laid his aching body on her bed and turning on the TV. However, Margot didn’t have cable, thus the TV was turned off shortly after. The pillows on the bed smelled like Margot’s shampoo. It was Garnier Fructis. This particular shampoo’s scent was one which Stephen could pick out of a crowd of hundreds. Two of his past girlfriends had used the product, as well as Margot, whom Stephen had known for several years.

Stephen and Margot were neighbors. Stephen’s family lived in a small town in northern Rhode Island and Margot’s mother, recently divorced, moved next door to the Bradley’s five years ago. They were close friends.

The first time Stephen and Margot had sex was a year ago. Stephen was sixteen. Margot was twenty-eight and blind fucking drunk. It was the night of Stephen’s great grandmother’s 90^th birthday party. A big celebration was held. A tent was rented to shelter the guests from inclement weather. Stephen’s great grandmother never liked Margot. She always said things like, “look at that one… always drinking.” Of course, it was humorous to hear a 90-year-old Italian woman say such things, but also very true. Margot was a wine-o, so to speak. Nobody would go as far as to call her an “alcoholic”, but it’s not as if the term hadn’t passed through everyone’s minds once or twice. She and Stephen made love in her mother’s empty house after she puked his backyard. Nobody ever found out.

Margot always wondered if Stephen had sex with her only so that he could tell his friends that he banged a 28-year-old, which he never spoke a word of to anyone. Stephen always wondered if Margot knew that he came inside of her that night, which she didn’t but bought the Morning After pill the next day anyway just to be safe. The two never really had very good communication. In fact, they had little to none at all.

Stephen left the tiny apartment, feeling claustrophobic and nauseous. He spent the day walking around the city, riding the subway, going to café’s, record shops, art galleries, thrift stores, and various other hip New York holes-in-the-wall. David Cross once said in a stand-up routine, “In New York City, at any given moment, you are faced with the most difficult decision of your life. You can either look at the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, or the craziest man you have ever seen.” Stephen found this to be a reality.

Around 12:30 Stephen got a call from Margot. She was on her lunch break. She asked if Stephen wanted to meet up with her and grab a bite to eat, but he had wandered all the way uptown and was too far from Margot’s office. He told her about all the people he had seen and the places he had gone. Margot laughed and told him that she’d see him when she got out of work.

Stephen found his way back to the tiny apartment with the use of a handy little pocket-sized map of Manhattan, which must have made him seem like quite the tourist, but he didn’t care. He fell asleep on Margot’s bed listening to the streets buzz with traffic and children and dogs.

That night Margot took him out to eat at a somewhat fancy Greek restaurant in the East Village. They talked about films and politics. Stephen told her about the great new bands he had been listening to, relating them to similar, more popular artists that Margot would know. They returned home, got drunk, and made love.

The sex was weird. Stephen felt uncomfortable about it, but couldn’t deny the innate, adolescent sexual urges flowing through his bloodstream. Margot cried a little, but Stephen didn’t notice. They laid beside each other, in tangled sheets and post-climactic ecstasy. Margot held her lover’s body tightly, resting her head on his chest. All Stephen could think about was how he wanted to run right out the door and never look back. He felt wrong. He felt seventeen years of Roman Catholic upbringing haunting his every passing thought. He looked at Margot’s naked body and felt a chill run up his back.

“Let’s get married,” Margot muttered. Stephen couldn’t tell if she had fallen asleep or not, so he didn’t reply. Sure enough, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes waiting anxiously for an answer.

“Oh, um, what did you say? I was spacing out, sorry,” he said with a hard gulp.

“Let’s get married. Fuck what everyone else thinks. I know we’re a few years apart, but I’m in love with you. I want this forever.”

“A few years? Margot you’re almost thirty. I’m still in high school.”

“I don’t care, Steve. This is the happiest moment I can ever remember.”

Now Stephen could see her crying. She put her head back on his chest. He felt her tears run down the side of his pale white torso. They tickled his ribcage. Stephen rubbed her head until she fell asleep.

The next morning the two of them got coffee at a small café down the street from Margot’s apartment. Margot drank it in silence. Stephen tried to crack jokes, but Margot wouldn’t crack a smile. He tapped his sneaker against the leg of the chair rapidly and anxiously. He was done with New York. He never wanted to come back ever again.

Stephen kissed Margot at Penn Station, but she did not kiss him back. He got on his train back to Rhode Island, unsure of how to feel. He didn’t know if he loved Margot back. He didn’t even really know what love was. To Stephen, love was James Taylor’s greatest hits, snow days, and his used Dodge Neon with its side-view mirror missing. Marriage was the last thing he was thinking about. But his stomach tossed and turned the whole ride home with guilt and regret.