Who is that?

You've changed your life's path a couple of times that I know of.

I hate to bring it up, but I'm pretty sure Martha Stewart would say, "It's a Good Thing."

You've recreated yourself so many times that you occasionally appear lost. Are you a farmer? A massage therapist? A meat packer? A plumber? An actor? A salesman? A writer? A liar?

Of the choices, the latter is the safe bet. Along with the actor thing. What is an actor but a liar for profit?

Oh shit, might be an artist. Might be thinking of the mother next door who's looking through the window at just the moment when someone is 13 years old, driven by beautiful lust, sniffing her daughter's nightgown at a slumber party, and she just watches. She doesn't need a flashlight now. She can bash his brains in and get away with it.

Her daughter's nightgown might have smelled wonderful. It might have opened up dreams.

The mother still haunts. The mother unconfronted. The mother that got away.

What's a mother to do?

As a rule, women are smarter than men. But then, so are most dogs. So I'd take that statement with a grain or two of salt.

I'm beginning to think that Freud was correct. It's all about childhood and sex.

Also, Freud understood that people could change. Under certain circumstances...

Confronted with the evidence, I suppose that someone has to own up to being a nightgown sniffer.

Nothing but blue sky above...

Last Dancing

I guess it finally ended for me staring at my unshaven, bloated, and bleary-eyed face in some unknown motel room mirror. I looked bad. Felt worse. At least it was over.

I met her on a Tuesday. There’s no deep meaning about the day Tuesday except for the fact that that was the day I met her. She was just completing her daily run—blonde hair in disarray, sweet smelling glorious sweat dripping from the tip of her nose—she was too damn healthy looking to be real. She reeked of sex.

Me? I was at the pinnacle of my former unhealthiness. I knew how to drink then; drinking had been raised to an art form amongst the friends that I lived with. Residing less than three blocks from a liquor store eased the logistical burden of such a lifestyle tremendously.

At that time, we inhabited a quaint old house in Fort Lauderdale. At night, the salt would roll in on the fog and engulf us, smothering us in demented ecstatic humidity. Great drinking weather (as if we needed an excuse). We knew we were brilliant, then. We used to run the tape recorder continually so we would not miss anything. Never know when someone might be seized with some sort of inspiration—besides, it sometimes came in handy to review exactly what lies had been told the night before.

I was blessed with looks. If there is a God, (which I seriously doubt), he must have had a couple shortly before making me. By then, I knew how to (no, had perfected the ability) exploit my looks—I could look smart, competent, brave—anything I needed, in order to get what I wanted. I wanted her. Bad.

That first meeting passed without incident, fortunately, because I could barely stand up at the time. She worked with my best friend, who I shared the house with, and had merely stopped by out of boredom. It just so happened that we had run out of beer and were leaving for more when she chanced to catch us on our way out. She caught me sunglassed and past the point of no return, or at least non-returnable bottled. I put on my best smile and posture, hoping to make a good impression. It worked.

She asked about me the next day.

When we met, again it was on my own ground. A party. Halloween. At the time, I attributed her lack of costume to the notion that she was bouncing between parties and had only stopped by our dingy place out of curiosity. It never occurred to me that there might exist a lack of imagination. She was just too damned perfect for that. God, she was hot! Had on this slit skirt thing and a blouse with one of those Victorian collars. Looked like the greatest, sluttiest, horniest virgin in the whole fucking world. If I hadn’t been soused at the time I’m sure I would have punched a hole in my pants. She was bending over my record collection (this was at the beginning of the CD age) as I sauntered up and asked, “Is there anything I can help you with, ma’am?" Works every time, callin’ ’em ma’am.

“Do you live here?" she asked, disbelieving.

“Yup,” I drawled. I usually drawled to hide my slurred speech when I was drunk. Worked, of course.

“Great record collection. Are a lot of these hard to find now?”

I took that as a kind way of implying that I was more than a little older than she was.

“I don’t actually know. In fact, I don't really listen to that many of them any more.” My way of implying that I was not that old.

I reached down and grabbed up “Synchronicity” by the Police and managed to hit the turntable with it. When the first song came out of the speakers, she started jumping up and down like a cheerleader, and with a high-pitched squeal shouted “Sting! I just love Sting!”

Jesus! I thought. I never said “Jesus” until then.

Continuing in the same overly girlish voice, she remarked, “This place is sooooooooo cool!” Brains, as you might guess, was not one of her strong points. Should have sent up a red flag or something. Didn’t though.

I was hooked. We danced a little, and that’s how it started.

I thought, at least for the next few months, that my whole formerly screwed up life was finally going to turn around. I swore off the booze, surprised at how I didn’t really miss it. Started having those daydreams where you imagine that you're going to live happily ever after. Red flag time? Hell, I was so blissed out I never saw it. Too busy putting my faith in someone other than me.

Her parents hated me. No, only her mother hated me, which I took to be a good sign. I am a firm believer that if a potential mother-in-law actually likes you then get the hell out of there. Not to worry, then. Her father seemed to not exactly dislike me, only to be extremely indifferent towards me.

“He’s only a teacher,” I think is what her mother said. Those were her exact words.

Oh, yeah! Like some fucking asshole lawyer would be better for her unbalanced, not-overly-bright daughter! Like I was the one that would have her lie across a bed with her pants pulled down around her ankles while someone beat the shit out of her with a belt! Like I was the reason that she would walk in her sleep at night and wind up on the living room floor in a fetal position, sucking her thumb, crying, yelling “No Daddy, don’t!” Yeah, I was the bad guy. Sure.

“He’s only a teacher,” I can still imagine her saying. Now here was somebody I could love to hate. I did not waste any time trying to win over “Mom,” instead, I concentrated on trying to get through to this girl's brain.

Talk about a hard case, she was a past master at keeping people at an emotional arm’s length.

She let me in, a little. I like to think she wanted to open up, only she lacked the ability, the proper training. I’d be fooling myself, though. It was then that the word “love” reared its ugly head.

Love had nothing to do with it when I splashed my best cologne down around my belly button when I was sure she would be “dropping by.”

Love had nothing to do with it when we would grind ourselves together in slippery abandon.

I finally realized that love had nothing to do with it only after we had long since parted. C’est la fucking vie!

She did finally open up, once. We were driving to Miami one weekend, one of those “let’s go somewhere and get a motel room and go nuts!” kind of deals, and on the interstate I saw a billboard that said, “Silent Screams—Abortion,” or something to that effect. I think my comment was, “They don’t tell you anything about why people choose abortion, do they?”

Set her off. Wouldn’t stop crying. “Who told you?” she kept screaming. “Who told You?”

Jesus. I had to pull over. Then, I asked her the question. Boom. Couldn’t believe I was hearing me say those words. Just popped out. She answered, kind of.

“You don’t fucking know me! You don’t even know who I am! You think that because everything seems to be going good between us, that because we have a sex life, that your fucking car payments are made, that everything is Hunky-Dory! Well, let me tell you Mister—things ain’t gonna keep goin’ your way anymore!”

We had a problem.

After it faded, which was only after a prolonged and enjoyable delving into the absolute dark side of relationship hell, I quit teaching. Jesus, I was only a teacher, anyway. I had doubts, you know. I went back to playing trash guitar again, which was how I made a living during my college years, and even though I wasn’t what you would call happy, I was at least comfortable. For a while.

My friends tried to shake me out of my decline, to no avail. They would come in and sit on the edge of the bed and plead with me to get up, to go somewhere with them, to do something. Tried their best, but I wouldn’t budge. I was reveling in my suffering—raising some new obsession to an art form. After months of deliberation, and only after sinking to extreme depths of a magnificent depression—self-inflicted mood—I decided to leave Florida. Got up one morning and just hit the road. Probably possessed by the spirit of Kerouac or something. I needed to escape.

I left a letter on the phone table telling my friends not to panic, that I’d be gone for a while. I think they were going to request a resignation from the “Organization for the Advancement of Intoxication and Certain Selected Social Diseases”—another name for the household—anyway. Oh well, I supposed most of my work to have been done. I simply walked out the door and down to the coastal highway.

Made my way back to Texas, and I found myself on the edge of a farm-to-market road, thumbs up, with only a guitar in hand. No clothes, but a little cash. My brain refused to shut up. Tried damn near everything to get it to. Had a thirty-two caliber piece of shit automatic pistol, pawn shop special, in my crotch. Just knowing it was there, right next to where I used to apply the cologne, gave me a perverse tranquility—steel blue peace of mind.

Out of the haze, a pickup pulled over, grey-fendered and everything. I threw my guitar in the back and climbed in. I slammed the door on the hot West Texas dust storm just coming up, relieved to find myself in air-conditioned comfort. I desperately wanted to see a neon sign. Any sign.

The driver was some old cowboy type, scraggily-bearded, with some middle-aged red-haired barfly sitting right next to him. It was evident that something a little stronger than dust was screwing with their brain cells.

“What in the hell are ya’ll doing here?” I politely drawled (yes, again), not really caring.

“Me and Cathy was gonna kill ourselves,” he said with purposeful hesitation, “but we didn’t have enough drugs!”

Oh great! Like that’s really conducive to good mental health!

“We’re goin’ to my brother’s place in Amarillo—he’s got a bar and shit and we can drink all the fucking gin we want and won’t have to pay shit, man!”

Jesus. I was feelin’ better already. They took a liking to me (I put on my best good-ole-boy facade for them) and convinced me to accompany them on their jaunt. I let them talk me into having a “little drink” just before making a final decision, though. Big mistake. I had so far managed to avoid alcohol in my plunge. Did it all on my own. A completely natural depression.

I kept going over the story, bit by bit, looking for an alternate ending, wishing for that second chance deal. Kept on going over the final part, imagining how her mother must have felt having to clean the blood out of the bathtub after it was all over. I kept thinking, “Should have done something!” Didn’t even go to the funeral.

The dust storm had rendered the city almost completely black as I looked out of my motel room in Amarillo. Could barely see across the street. I could tell, though, that the sun was just about to go down, so I went inside. I looked in the mirror and ask, “What in the hell are you doing here you good looking son of a bitch?”

I collapsed onto the bed with my guitar and my lies, blew the dust off the industrial-strength Bible, placed the pawn shop pistol on it, and drew comfort from the knowledge. Then I started to laugh. I laughed so fucking hard that I fell off the bed, and continued to laugh on the floor. Laughed until my stomach hurt.

“Shit,” I said to myself, “you don’t do funerals.”

I fell asleep on the floor, and I had this dream:

I am lying on the edge of a body of water, undrinkable and stale, and it is very hot—unbearably hot. I am dehydrated to the point that I am feeling physical pain every time I swallow. I can no longer see anything close to me, only that which is far away. I look up into the sky, a very blue sky, and see something between me and the sun. Buzzards. Hundreds of buzzards are flying and looking down at me. I am positive that they are looking at me! I can’t run. I can’t hide. I can find no trees to seek shade under. I am profoundly and terribly alone.

Just at the moment when I expect the buzzards to descend upon me, knowing that they will pick the flesh off my bones while I am still conscious, I suddenly notice that they are making the most beautiful dance across the sky. Zigzagging back and forth, they are flying in a repeating geometric pattern. It is a pattern that I must understand, but cannot.

I realize, before I awaken, that I am not ready to understand. I am not ready to dance. I am not ready to do that dance.