Table of Contents

poetry

(the passionate stuff)

performance art

(9/26/15 “to the Bottom of the Earth and Back”
                show poetry at Chicago’s In One Ear)

prose

(#metoo)

prose

(the meat & potatoes stuff)

lunchtime poll topic

(#metoo)

Save the World

the cauldron of sunset

Slight rain across the forest
A tree’s calm presence, its roots,
deep under the surface of things,
hidden within earthen mold
and a mightier silence
A tree’s calm presence,
a tree’s calm presence
the mightier silence of earth.

about ayaz daryl nielsen

    ayaz daryl nielsen, veteran and former hospice nurse, lives in Longmont, Colorado, USA. Editor of bear creek haiku (30+ years/145+ issues) with poetry published worldwide (and deeply appreciated), he is online at: bear creek haiku poetry, poems and info

Cotroceni Monastery

(i)

Brightest colors they are through the ages
straight verticals built strong composites
where purple and reddish red triumph
next to green of complementary dresses

Under and upper common and cover
draperies unfold in rock-shaping
triangular squares in lightest red still
capturing attention amidst vibrant surrounding

Because of miniature designs
like clover leaves and embroidered circles
when the bright environs
only show some hatchings as shades

To oblique draperies ...
with golden rims down
through the seeming dominant verticals
a myriad of obliques appear on closer view

(ii)

The faces of the Saints seem to mirror each other
they join young wrinkleless skin
to old and deep eye and mouth shades
deep brown brows wing a long nose

To connect brown eyes to red mouth
again mirroring inside the roundest hairdos
whose oversimplication adds youth
to the monks that much more frank

Than the delicacy of their dresses
that wear tradition like a heavy
but beautiful load of clothes
which is expressed by deep wrinkles

Around eyes and mouth
like they are very far
from natural nudity
of sinlessness in Paradise.

The Gypsy Girl from Ghergani
Ro. Ma. Ni. A

        If it is racial hygiene
        Why do we feel so dirty?
        (Tks to 신 신 영 Sun Yung Shin)

Half-length she stands out among the nobles
rich and wealthy by a natural pose
and loveliness that makes her face
glitter like the vessel full of liquid
she is leaning against

Like the light sparkles in the body of the vase
it tips and taps on her teeth and nose
and her eyes that are partly hidden
by blackish hair—she’s lifting her head
to look you right in the face
showing both esteem and challenge

Her pale dress runs from slow veil
that covers her hairs like a halo
and necklace of coinless coins
counting the beauty of her breasts

Rather than the money in her pockets
of the gracious jacket that falls too wide
for her elegance posture

Covering up her female shape
to only regain frivolity
in a reddish softly green
cloth belt around her waist

The cloud of the veil shines
like ivory of her teeth
in which dark eyes
invite you unto an
eternal sun dance

    Romani from Roh-mey-nee-uh
    still selling love for life
    provoking governments
    as much as bad tastes
    of forced repatriation
    to environmental racism.

from Eighty Days

July 12, 1881
 

Garfield:

In my lifetime I have witnessed
the invention of the telegraph and telephone,
two amazing new methods
of rapid and remote communication
And now I find myself the subject
of much of that communication,
too much so
I am flattered at such interest,
but is it absolutely necessary
to update the nation three times a day
concerning my condition?
 

Guiteau:

“I have just discovered
that all the papers setting forth my motives
in attempting the president’s removal
have been suppressed”

This cannot continue to be the case

“Eighty Days” consists of dramatic monologues of varying lengths
for each of the eighty days from July 2, 1881 through September 19, 1881,
the period from when President Garfield was shot until he died.
Each date consists of monologues by Garfield and Guiteau.

from Eighty Days

July 17, 1881
 

Garfield:

Today a Latin phrase came to me:
“Strangulato Pro Republica”
which would be translated as
Tortured for the Republic
“I wonder
if all this fight against death
is worth the little pinch of life
I will get anyway?”
 

Guiteau:

“Today
I suffer in bonds as a patriot
because I had the inspiration and nerve
to unite a great political party,
to the end that the nation might be saved
another desolating war”

The history books in the future
will speak of my service to the Republic

“Eighty Days” consists of dramatic monologues of varying lengths
for each of the eighty days from July 2, 1881 through September 19, 1881,
the period from when President Garfield was shot until he died.
Each date consists of monologues by Garfield and Guiteau.

please forgive me for existing

i’ m sorry i asked, mother, i’ m sorry i asked
please forgive me for existing;
i never meant to burden you with my presence
forgot that i’ m just the spare daughter
you have when you tell people
that you have children—
forget my need, i’ ll keep this sorrow;
apparently that’ s the only inheritance you’ ll give me
i’ m sorry i ever asked you for anything at all
sorry all i can ever do is let you down
give you reasons not to be proud of me
i’ m sorry that i don’ t mean anything to you, at all;
please forgive me for existing—
i wish i knew not to miss you as you do not miss me
wish i knew not to come home because you
don’ t want me there,
i wish i knew how to shut out my emotions
so you never knew i felt a thing;
because i can see that i never do anything right
please forgive me for existing—
i just don’ t want to die,
but you’ ve taught me it’ s a crime for me
simply to live
even if my heart is full
of magic, of love, of light.

far too many gods

i thought mother
stood for unconditional love,
but it seems i’ m the one
doing all the forgiving;
and you’ re the one giving me advice
i never asked for
telling me that i better not be a lesbian—
i don’ t usually love women,
but i loved one once;
does that make me less your daughter?
would you revoke your kindness
from me
if you knew the truth?
love is such a wonderful thing and i won’ t
ever regret it
i know you may not understand,
but why fall in love with bodies when you can
fall in love with souls?
i am who i am
cannot change that for anyone
not like anyone would choose to be that way
it’ s just who they are,
and why should anyone be forced into silence?
to hide behind viels of solitude that aches
in a sorrow that is hard to articulate with words,
but i will try to illuminate you;
i know you feel it’ s wrong because religion has taught you so
but i won’ t listen to the words of men who only want
to twist my hands behind my back and force me into their image—
far too many people thinking they’ re gods
instead of worshipping in church.

moments like these

    wish someone was brave enough to reach into the dark when i cannot beat off all these insecurities and doubts, i wish someone could save me from this monster; i get so exhausted saving myself all the time— i am a goddess full of divinity, full of power, full of magic, full of light; but even i need help sometimes— all the clouds have a family that fades into the blue of the sky, seems i am lacking the blue to fade into; don’ t know how to fall out of this sorrow— i wish i could cut out this root of anger and pain, but these roots are deep and ruthless; maybe without these things i could not feel the deepest and most profound of joys in the most simple things— but sometimes i tire of all this aching, sometimes i am tired of being exhausted, sometimes i just want things to be simple and easy; want my mind to stop overcomplicating and overthinking everything so i can know a moment’ s breath of peace— i bet it is the softest of white lilies, at least, that’ s what i think it is from what i can remember; there’ s not much kindness in the past for me to decipher in moments like these.

Save the World?

Children born addicted to drugs
Dolphins born into plastic nets
that quickly become their graves
Amazon
the lungs of the Earth
reduced to a few precious capillaries
and I’m supposed to save the world
I can barely save a dollar
and I don’t even have a cape
How do I stop black suit mafioso men
from stealing sand from the ocean floor
I know why the sea levels rise
I know why natives lose the only home they’ve ever known
But I don’t own a home
a piece of land
I don’t even own a red cape
I’m not Super Man
But I have my thread
cloth to spare
I can lend you my sleeve to wipe away your tears
I can teach you to play a tune
and hum along with your truth
And when you don’t have the voice to speak
or the breath to bring your battle cry to life
I will give space for every mumble and ever peep
I can’t save the natives
or grab the stolen sand
filling the ocean again
But I will grab a protest sign
use it as a surf board
waving my dingy tear-stained sleeve as a white flag
drifting in the ocean
trying to save the world

Amerasian

She sits on a park bench
And watches a man throw
Bread crumbs on the ground
And her body is the same
Color as the sun
And her eyes are taking
In the world as it awakens
I look at her and im grateful
Two worlds came together
She is what makes America great
I watch her as she walking
away, lovely as the sun

Coffeehouse Poem # 168

A latina woman comes
In as i’m watching a
Documentary
I’m silently admiring her thick legs
As she stands proudly
In roman sandals
Her butt moves in rhythm
Whenever she moves
I look at her full mouth
And i wish i could be smeared
With her lipstick

Alley Way

Red lipped cigarettes
scatter in the alleyway
discarded by the lost dreams of angels
too ashamed to look for heaven.
Broken bottles glisten among
the torn newspaper covering old bricks
left by a city forgetting it has mercy.
A song plays out of tune
the night robs day of its promise.
Along a busy street, an old child
looks past the decaying light,
hoping to see a tomorrow
buried in the darkness of a passageway
left long ago with no way out.

How Disturbing

A single drop of rain lingers
on a limb, hesitating, then
silently falls to a bird bath’s pond.
Ripples fan out from the collision,
waves of panic crashing
into concrete walled shores,
bouncing back to each other
like an echo’s recall.
The water again grows silent,
as scars disappear beneath
the water’s reflection
leaving no history of what
had just passed.

An Old Woman

That morning
on my way downtown
I chose a seat
in the back of the bus;
just wanted to be free
of a heaviness
that was smothering me.

I felt beaten, caved in,
had given up,
considered death
the only viable option
for a release.

I found breathing a chore
started thinking
how it would happen,
where it would take place,
and on what date
it would occur.

After arriving down city
I had to switch buses,
walked over to
the Newport stop.
I had a fifteen minute wait.

It felt an eternity.

A tattered old woman
ancient and bent,
cane in one hand,
a creased and worn
brown paper shopping bag
clutched to her chest
with the other
sat down beside me.

While resting there
beside me
she scrutinized me
on the metal bench.

She said she recognized me,
but was mistaken,
still, she insisted
shook her bony index
finger my way.

“You stop thinking
like that, Danny.
Wake up, boy,
it’s a new mornin’.
You ought’er thank
the sun
for risin’ each
and every day.
Life is for livin’, not dyin’ boy,
givin’, and singin’
in the rain.
and once in a while,
it’s about laughin’ at ya’self
not regret...”

She scared me a little.
My immediate thought
she was off her rocker.

I blinked my eyes,
jerked back my head,
twisted it to the side,
returning to her
a half ass smile.
She gave me a quick nod
and winked her left eye.

I was at a loss
for words.
Our bus had arrived.

Lending my hand,
I relieved her burden
of that weighty paper sack
as she hobbled on board.

Self pity
and thoughts of death
I left there
on the sidewalk
at Kennedy Plaza.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Picture a fabulous soap opera
joined to “The Greatest Show on Earth,”
with makings of a Greek tragedy...
CAUTION: There are no heroes here,
no “good guys”... no “bad guys,”
that’s far too easy.
Our cast includes
a demagogic, bullying,
unpresidential president,
lying more than typical,
partly reflecting his barker’s personality;
main media figures waging a jihad
against an obstreperous president
they consider “unfit,” “Illegitimate,” “insane”
“un-American,” “immoral,” “racist,” “_______,”
you fill in the blank;
a special prosecutor
who’s on a chartered fishing expedition,
a statutory choir master
shaking down caught up presidential associates
who’ll sing like canaries
to avoid bankruptcy and jail, on occasion
passing the ball to another jurisdiction
for a full court press;
a jury of slobbering politicians
who, with but few exceptions,
are pursuing their dirty daily business
of satiating a core constituency
baying for blood
or placating another who’re swearing absolute fealty...
CAUTION: There are no heroes here,
least of all, not you or me;
for as with regular projective tests,
amid swirling claims and counterclaims,
whatever you perceive, ultimately
may tell more about you
than an underlying reality.

Previously published in Tuck Magazine (December 18, 2018),
with line change and added prefatory statement.

Ready-mades

Marcel Duchamp
thought himself ingenious
when he submitted a urinal
as “found” art,
signing its’ gleaming porcelain
“R. Mutt”
and christening it
a “Ready-made.”
Of course, today
such artifice is passé
as we’re extensively overstocked
with TV’s Ready-mades,
those bobble-headed pundits
mass produced
by expediency
and ideology’s
cookie-cutter art,
all fabricated
indistinguishable
and functional
like Duchamp’s urinals.

Zombie Platitudes

Out from America’s supermart of ideas
shamble zombie platitudes
including:
‘Government surveillance
only threatens those with something to hide,’
‘When you play by the rules
the system will reward you,’
‘[Our] government [is] by and for the people;’
which, while disproved by daily experience,
due to their gratifying views
rise anew
as undead truisms
that snap at our good sense
and then, if we’re not adequately skeptical,
bite us in the ass.

Why Poetry In America’s a No Sale

Business is the poetry
of America;
obtaining wealth,
its’ muse;
so then,
when even time “is money,”
why fritter principal away
by paying its’ fiscally challenged
for quarrying
“fool’s gold?”

Ode to Ischtucknee Springs

Waters cool, Crystal clear and sacred.
Blessed Organic Sanctuary
Otters grace your Presence,
Great Blue Herons too.
Lilies grow in abundance upon your shores.

Some travelers are too loud.
Yet all are smiling,
All elevated,
All share greetings,
All refreshed,
All renewed,
All feel “youthened.”

Your loveliness unfouled
By man’s machines & wastes.
Though sadly, giant cypresses were stolen,
And your panthers are nearly extinct.
The ancient Indians have gone,
Fleeing the White Man’s Burden.

Emerald green surrounds and protect
Your sparkling aqua water
Shimmering in the golden sun
Rippled by gentle breezes
O Ischtucknee Paradise
We are thankful you exist
You inspire us
You heal us
You forgive us
You confirm us
You help us re-member.
You help us forget.
You are good in yourself!

__________________
Ischtucknee Springs and River are located approximately
thirty-five miles north/northwest of the University of Florida,
Gainesville, in a state park of the same name.

In-sanity

Despair, grief,
pain, distress,
dreadfulness
all led me far afield.

Losing my grip on reality,
insanity gained a foothold
with searing white-hot pains
and soundless screams.

Incessant compulsions
skewed my perspective,
spewed vengeance and
bequeathed no discernible reality.

Everyone stared,
distrust swarmed
and then -
They become the threat.

For Far Too Many Years

After news reports of fires
along the coast of California
and through National Forests
filled half a newscast,
a reporter then said on live tv,
“We will now have to learn
how to live with fire.”

Live with fire, he says
after I escaped the gates of Hell
and am now forever
forced into purgatory.
I spend every waking moment
licked by flames.
I know what it’s like to be parched
because all this time I’ve been scorched.

And I wonder why everyone else
hasn’t been living with Hellfire
all this time already.
It’s been around us
since the beginning of time,
for far too many years
for it to not find you.
All this time,
it’s been breathing down my back,
teasing me.
Whispering to me.
Calling to me.

Spain

    It’s strange how certain stories get recycled on an endless loop at family gatherings while others get skipped over like stones across the water never to drop beneath the surface. Every time someone mentions Spain, there are the funny stories of my sunburn and the overnight train ride shivering on a hard bench across from the Japanese couple who merely dropped their chins to chest to sleep peacefully while we restless Americans twisted and turned, grumpy and complaining. And how the Spaniards simply stepped outside to grab a smoke while the strike left us stranded in the middle of nowhere just a couple miles outside the Madrid border. But no one talks about my brother’s heartbreak as we traveled, him dutifully showing his little sister around the tourist sites. And no one mentions the outing that ended my innocence and will forever haunt my subconscious.
    Pent up energy ready to explode, I rebelled when my older brother said he would lie down for a nap upon arriving in Córdoba. I simply could not hide in his heavy shadow any longer. Energized by my 16-year-old independent streak I head out to the park to read a book on my own. Not paying attention to the name of the hotel we had just checked into and too engrossed in the intriguing sites to pay attention to street names, I wandered down the cobblestone with a book locked securely under my arm. I reveled in the romantic scent of freedom, alone in a foreign country, finding my own way, Spanish words bubbling up and sporadically popping effervescent from my brain. Finding an empty park bench, I sat down purposefully and strategically avoided the prying eyes of passersby determined to lose myself in my own version of this moment and not wanting a mirrored reflection of myself as an awkward American staining my experience. I have no idea what I was reading or even if I in fact was reading. It was more a staking out of place, a reclaiming of identity in a foreign land with a distant brother and no reference points.
    I don’t know how long I sat before I noticed a slight change in the light sifting through the canopy, but I had that entrenched sense in my gut that it was time to head home. But just as my muscles were tightening to stand, I caught sight of some teenage boys in my peripheral vision and decided to fall engrossed in my book for just a few more minutes until they meandered by. But no matter how hard I tried to ignore them, I eventually could not deny their incessant attempts to get my attention, first gradual like they were calling a cat “psst” then angry guttural sounds as they grabbed their crotch each egging the other on.
    I finally looked up and my eyes fell on the leader of the pack, dark hair falling in soft waves, body forming a staggering S, all bravado with sleepy eyes drilling into me. I gradually became aware like a camera coming into focus that he was standing too close and the others were forming a semicircle around us blocking any view of a now almost entirely empty park. Startled and confused by my rapidly changed environment, I strained to understand their Spanish words that were hitting my brain like staccato notes. Something hard and bitter was getting caught in my throat and tears threatened to sting my eyes as I desperately tried to decode the situation. Then next thing I knew he was next to me, embracing me, and I was numb as if I were watching the scene from outside my body. My skin felt hard, the border of my being closing off in defense to the intrusion like even the cells of my body were uniting, squeezing the space between them to create a more defined barrier.
    The next thing I remember was the sound of dried, crunching leaves behind the bench and looking at the branches of the trees towering above me while a disembodied voice was telling me something I couldn’t understand in tones no longer aggressive but sated, soft and wistful. As if I was waking from a dream, I struggled to remember who it was that was talking to me, this stranger who was whispering to me as if we had known each other for years. Disoriented and stunned, I had the sudden realization that he was telling me goodbye. He pulled my hand open in front of him and gently placed an earring in it as a parting present. I stared in disbelief that he thought I would want a memento to remember this night. Then he was gone. I watched like a stunned animal as he strutted off with his fawning posse in tow.
    Blinking, I quickly become aware that I was alone in a darkened park without any sense of which way I had come from. The darkness of the trees was now feeling oppressive like they were tightening in around me. My breathing grew heavy and my chest began to heave. No time for tears, I staggered out and head instinctively in the opposite direction from which they had sauntered off. Reappearing abruptly from what seemed another dimension, my eyes searched desperately from right to left for landmarks. The families that were strolling through the streets earlier had all gone home and were surely gathered around their tables sharing a warm meal. The quaint corner stores had all pulled the shutters and locked up for the night taking their comforting chatter with them. The Spanish phrases that I had diligently studied on the airplane over the ocean had all drained from my head. This must be how a deer in headlights feels. The light was rapidly fading so I randomly chose a direction that seemed vaguely familiar and walked as if pulled by a deep yearning to forget. But as I turned each corner only to find a less and less familiar street unfold before me, the sinking knowledge of how incredibly protected I had been my whole life smacked me in the face. How stupid! This proud, independent, free thinker finally facing her own flimsy grasp of the world. I was suddenly a character in a dark novel. Toni Morrison would have a heyday with me, wandering aimlessly with glaring white skin glowing in the darkness like a beacon of naiveté'.
    There were new movements in the streets now. The same space had been transformed. Older men called out to me “¿Estás sola?” and I began to run blindly down random streets as sweat slipped between my young breasts. Flashes of dead ends and turning around desperate as if lost in an endless maze. Time stretched out and bulged around me, having lost all meaning. My mind was on an infinite loop scrolling down lists in my mind, considering possibilities and then crossing them off.
    Just as I was about to give up and curl into a ball until daybreak, I turned a corner and saw a blue glow rising up ahead. Heladería. I stumbled under the awning and swallowed hard as I hesitantly approached the counter jittery, suddenly aware of my wrinkled appearance. A young, vibrant man with sparkling eyes paused to decode my stammering. His eyes registered the dry leaves on my clothes, the sweaty t-shirt. “¿Borracha?” “No. Perdida.” He handed me a phone book, and I desperately scrolled down the list of hoteles hoping something would catch my eye. I was near tears, panic creeping up my spine, but I let myself trust his kindness, his patience. Then it appeared, like a strobe light in the sky, larger than the rest Rincón de Córdoba. The gods had decided to have pity on me, having tired of their cat and mouse game.
    Enrique quietly asked permission of the gentle middle aged woman behind the bar and disappeared, reassuring me “Regreso en un ratito.” I was still shaking as he pulled his scooter around. He put his jacket over me, and I climbed mechanically on behind. Tentatively I stretched my arms around his muscled body. Just hours before this would have been the most romantic moment of my life. But I was numb, mentally on hold. I didn’t know where he was taking me and no longer cared. As we pulled up to the hotel, I realized someone must have called ahead because my brother was waiting in the street, his face sewed up and puckered with worry. I had never seen him like that, my hero, helpless.
    I was speechless as he led me up to our room. His words washed over me but couldn’t sink in. I slid into the bathroom and turned on the shower and cried quiet tears into the hot streams of water like a torrent over me. I stepped listlessly out of the shower and gingerly wrapped my newly sensitive skin after having scrubbed it raw. It was then that I remembered the earring. I ripped it roughly from my lobe and tossed it like a dead thing in the trash. If only I could have removed the invisible scars as easily. I felt them sending down roots, tangling their tendrils around everything I had known, redefining who I once had been. But when I stepped out of the bathroom, I was startled to find a smile on my face and an invented story spilling from my lips to set my brother’s worries to rest before we climbed under the covers to sleep.
    But when I closed my eyes, I was forever running down dead end streets and nothing looked familiar.

Sucker’s Night

    “WHAT DO YOU mean you won’t be here?” Domenic asked into the phone, as he gazed out the window of the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon. “It’s freaking New Year’s Eve. I got us tickets for the rooftop shindig and everything.”
    “I’m sorry, Dommy,” Kim said. “They aren’t letting any flights out of Singapore because of the storm. I’ll be on the first plane out and we’ll party when I get there.”
    “I may be partied out,” he said. His room looked down over the pool, where a boisterous blonde and a buxom brunette cavorted, tossing their long hair as though auditioning for a beer commercial.
    “Highly unlikely,” she said. “I gotta go. Phone’s about to die. Have fun tonight. Just promise me you’ll behave.”
    He raised his arm and absently drummed his fingers against the window. The blonde looked up. She splashed her friend and then gestured up toward his window. The brunette pulled her sunglasses down slightly and raised her eyebrows as though appraising him through the glass.
    “You promise?” Kim repeated.
    “You bet,” he mumbled.
    “I love you, my darling fiancé.”
    He stepped back from the window and pulled the curtains shut so that he was bathed in darkness. “Love you, too, baby.”
    Dom left the hotel and strolled aimlessly through the humid, teeming streets, expecting to get mangled or killed while crossing the road. A city of eight million motorbikes and scooters, buzzing everywhere, all day and night. Locals said you had to show no fear; just step off the curb and have faith. Problem was, Dom had no faith, but he did have anxiety issues along with weaknesses for drugs and women, and Saigon was a hell of a place to be if you were trying to kick said habits. In thirty minutes, he was propositioned no less than ten times, typically by cyclo drivers.
    “I get you pretty lady,” one driver said. “Two pretty ladies. Sixty U.S. dollar, room include. Very clean.”
    Dom shook his head and moved on. Even though he felt like a scruffy traveller, he felt the eyes of passing women. Ever since Grade Eight swim club, when Maddy Holmstead pulled the crotch of her swimsuit sideways to show him what would soon be his, Dom knew he possessed an inherently primal magnetism. Through high school, while his hapless buddies were busy whacking off or fumbling toward first base, Dom was juggling three or four girls at a time. By graduation, two teachers and his friend’s mother had been added to his scorecard. Then came UCLA, where the women and partying got so out of control that he blew his swim scholarship and flunked out in second year. Now, twenty some years later—with two marriages and innumerable relationships annihilated—his gift proved a depressingly repetitive bane. Long as he stayed away from bars and the temptations found within, he told himself, he’d be just fine.
    Dom went back to the Caravelle and hit the gym. Loped a couple miles on the treadmill, worked his chest, did a couple pull-ups to make sure he still could, and burned out several quick sets of abs. He peeked out onto the pool deck, relieved to find the beer commercial girls gone. He stripped off his gym gear and pulled on his trunks and strolled outside.
    Right beside the no diving sign, Dom did a long shallow plunge, his lanky body knifing through the water. He swam underwater to the far side, surfacing near an obese, grinning, mentally retarded Asian kid wearing purple goggles. The kid laughed at him, pointing a chubby finger.
    Dom smiled. He envied the kid’s simple joy. He high-fived the boy, then turned, kicked off, and swam underwater back to the no dive sign. He climbed out, pointedly ignoring the eyes of several sunbathing women by the pool bar.

    Back in his room, Dom felt the walls closing in. He was about to pop an Ativan, but he only had two left. If he took it only one would remain, and that might pose a problem. One had always been a tricky number for Dom. He took a long shower, progressing from scalding hot to ice cold, where he stayed for exactly thirty seconds.
    When he got out the clock read 5:32. Just got to make it till morning, he told himself. He stretched out on the bed and tried to nap, but was too twitchy. His skin crawled; his hands and feet buzzed and after several minutes, his eyes popped open.
    Damn you, Kim, he thought, getting up and opening the minibar. He reached for a tiny bottle of Jim Beam. After the second bottle, Dom dressed in his new gray bespoke suit. From the room safe he extracted his father’s Bulgari Roma watch, and strapped it around his wrist.

    At six-thirty Dom was sitting at a deuce on the edge of the rooftop bar drinking a beer. He looked at the empty seat across from him, pissed at Kim and her workaholic lawyer mentality. In the center of the table sat a blue horn, a yellow rattling sound-maker, and a goofy tiara sprouting purple feathers. New Year’s was a racket. A sucker’s night.
    Upon finishing his beer, he figured he’d head back to his room, get mildly drunk and watch a bad movie. Better than six more hours of torture.
    Then the waitress brought a flute of champagne. “From the couple over there,” she said. Dom turned. Several tables over sat a Viet man and a blonde with angular features, both smiling, both around his age.
    “Come join us!” called the blonde.
    Shit, Dom thought. But he walked over and sat down, thanking them for the bubbly. “More where that came from,” the man said, who then introduced himself as Bao. His wife was Andrea.
    “Domenic,” Dom said, shaking hands.
    “You looked lonely over there, Domenic,” Andrea said. “Solo traveller?”
    “My fiancé was supposed to be here, but she got called away to Singapore on business.”
    “What kind of business is she in?” Bao asked.
    “International tax law. She travels a fair bit. I occasionally tag along.”
    “And you,” Andrea said, “judging by that suit, I peg you as a lawyer as well.”
    “Nah,” Bao said, “that Bulgari timepiece says hedge fund mogul.”
    Dom laughed. “I run a kayak and paddleboard company in Seattle. The suit was made in Hoi An two days ago. The watch was my dad’s. I’m all about maintaining facades.”
    As one bottle of bubbles became three, the sky darkened and the rooftop bar jammed up with obnoxious tourist families and yawning gray-haired couples. Dom discovered that Bao was Saigon born and raised and that he owned a tour company. Andrea was a teacher. She had been born in Vietnam; her parents were American, father worked for UNESCO. Dom told them that Kim was half-Vietnamese, hailed from Saigon, but that she and her mother had immigrated to L.A. when she was a kid. She returned every few years, but this was his first time to Southeast Asia.
    “What do you think of our country?” Andrea asked.
    “I’m a fan,” he said. “We actually started in Myanmar, hit Angkor Wat, then did Vietnam from north to south. After nearly a month, I’m a little ragged, although I can’t get enough of the pho.”
    Bao asked his favorite part and Dom said the kids in the villages in Myanmar.
    “They broke my heart,” Dom said. “I bought a bunch of junk off them. I couldn’t say no. Kim called me a push-over.”
    “Are you guys planning on having any kids?” Andrea asked.
    “Uh—“
    “Sorry,” she said. “You’re not even married yet. Who knows if you even want kids, right?”
    “Take it easy on the man,” Bao said, leaning Dom’s way. “My wife’s biological clock is ticking away, which, let me tell you, is one powerful urge—“
    “It’s a little more than a fucking urge, Bao,” she said, taking a long drag off her cigarette. “Jesus.”
    “I want kids,” Dom said, surprised that the words came out. “Maybe just one, see how it goes.”
    “I knew it,” Andrea said. “You have the look of a guy who’d make a good dad.”
    “I hope so,” Dom said.
    “Yeah,” Bao said, “but I also think my boy’s also got a wild streak, am I right?”
    “I’m reformed.”
    “No such thing,” Bao said.
    Into the fourth bottle, Dom bummed a cigarette off Andrea and blew the smoke at the hazy moon that had appeared out of nowhere. It was only eight-thirty and it was decreed that this particular rooftop bar was too lame a venue to ring in the New Year. Fine with Dom. No way could he stomach a bunch of amateur drunks belting out Auld Lang Syne.
    Twenty minutes and a cab ride later they were in a packed club called Apocalypse Now, flailing away to thumping house. Dom was a new man, smiling and sweaty and a hiccup past half-drunk, which was one of his favorite places to be.
    A sleazy crowd comprised Apocalypse: a motley assortment of freaks and whores who looked like they were attempting to rival the bar scene from Star Wars.
     Dom, bouncing a good six inches above the crowd, was surrounded by women: Viet, white, black, Spanish, Ladyboy; all dressed in varying degrees of skank, some oozing a distinctly venereal air. Growing aroused, he shut his eyes and thought of Kim. What was she was doing right now? Sitting in front of her laptop in the airport lounge, a glass of wine at her side? Despite being a Type-A workhorse, Kim knew how to party; she could match him any day. Dom found it difficult to believe she was working. He had a fleeting image of her doing the same thing he was doing, bumping and grinding on a dance floor in a foreign land.
    Then his mind flashed to Kim in bed with another man. When he opened his eyes, Andrea and Bao were beside him, making out like teenagers.
    A short time later, Dom had just finished relieving himself in the rank washroom, when he spotted a guy with blond dreadlocks by the condom dispenser, snorting something from a tiny spoon. Dreadlocks appeared very blissful afterward and smiled at Dom.
    “Want a toot, mate?” he said in a thick Aussie accent. “Little bit goes a long way.”
    Seemed rude to refuse, so Dom pinched off his right nostril and snorted the coke.
    Except it wasn’t coke. It was Golden Triangle heroin. Little bit surely did go a long way. Over the next fifteen minutes, Dom had time to ponder this, while on his knees, heaving his guts out in the crapper stall.
    And then he too felt pretty blissful. Floating in a silver cloud of euphoria, Dom drifted back onto the dance floor. Andrea and Bao were history, but his attention was riveted by a tiny Viet sexpot before him. She wore an ethereal gold lamé dress that shimmered like the gold leaf pagodas of Shwedagon Paya in Yangon.
    On account of the nature of the drug he had consumed, Dom didn’t know if they had been dancing for ten minutes or two hours. In truth, he wasn’t so much dancing as shuffling his feet and staring dopily down at the girl, who, in his addled state, looked very much like a younger version of Kim. So much so, that dancing with her seemed the perfectly appropriate thing to do, even as she leapt into his arms.
    “I’m Vung,” she said, her breath hot in his ear. “I like you very much. You like me?”
    You look like my wife, he thought he said, but what actually spilled off Dom’s garbled tongue was: “You look wicked.”
    At some point Dom put her down. Three fiery shooters arrived and ended up down his throat. The girl’s eyes were wide-set and in them Dom could see her soul dancing. Just like Kim’s. And that smile, those perfect little Chiclet teeth. The chin, the hair, the tiny cock-propeller figure. Oh!
    At one point they found a plush purple couch and she straddled him. In a flicker of lucidity, Dom realized that she was a prostitute. But she hadn’t hit him up for any dough, and she seemed to be the one scoring the drinks, so who could complain?
    She brought his hand up to touch her breast but he let it fall back down. She pouted. “You don’t like me?”
    I’m going to be married. “I’m gonna murder,” he slurred.
    “Funny man,” she said, taking Dom’s hand and pulling him toward the toilets.
    Inside a stall in the ladies toilet, she sparked up a short black lacquer pipe with a red dragon running along the stem. She took a small hit, then passed the pipe to Dom.
    He inhaled. Seemed rude to refuse.
    “You like?” she asked.
    Dom coughed, closed his eyes, and felt himself float up toward the ceiling. The house beats thumped slower and slower, and he imagined himself inside the belly of a blue whale, as he listened to heartbeat of the great beast. He nodded, then willed his feet back to the floor. “Saigon,” he said finding his voice. He opened his eyes to reveal microdot pupils. “Shit, I’m still only in Saigon.”
    She laughed. “You funny. You must make women verrrry happy. Here, take some more.”
    Dom took another hit.
    Black.

    Dom opened his eyes.
    Black.
    The room stank of piss, b.o., and the cloying sweet smell of opium. He sat up on the damp, rancid mattress. A rattling wheeze came from his right. His clothes were gone except for his underwear. Wallet, gone. Phone, gone. He grabbed his wrist.
    His Bulgari was gone.
    “Noooooooooooo!” he screamed.
    A string of mumbling Viet came from the corner of the room. Dom stumbled over, grabbing what felt like a skeleton. “Where’s my shit?” he yelled.
    Someone nearby sparked up a lighter, and Dom pulled back when he saw the cadaverous creature. The emaciated and toothless addict looked at Dom with stoned indifference. So did the woman holding the lighter.
    “Where’s the girl?” Dom pleaded. “The one I came in with. Please.”
    The man mumbled something in Viet and began preparing his pipe. Dom snatched the lighter from the woman, stumbled around until he found the door, and charged down the corridor.
    “Hey,” he yelled. “Hey, xin chao! Help me!”
    What was the name of the whore who had lured him here? All he recalled were her eyes and gold dress and the dragon on her pipe.
    Dom crashed around blindly in the maze-like hovel, the lighter scorching his thumb. He ran down unlit halls, into addict-filled concrete rooms, each more squalid than the last. Certain that he was trapped in some sort of subterranean opium den, he felt that he would die here, face down, wearing only his skivvies.
    Dom imagined his father watching from above. His pathetic and hopeless son crashing around a drug lair like a lunatic. After an eternity, Dom was out of breath, and he turned the corner, entered a room, only to see the original junkies, glaring up at him, the woman’s gnarled hand grasping for her lighter.
    Dom shouted and turned and hurtled into the black. He found a crooked flight of stairs and tripped over a body on a landing. The lighter skittered away. He found his feet and the stairs and kept going, up, up, up.
    Dom felt a gust of air and emerged down another hall. He saw a rectangle of gray outlined against the blackness, and, thinking that it was the exit onto the street, sprinted toward it. He would get outside, find a cop—and tell him what? That he got wrecked with some hooker in an opium den and then been robbed blind? He didn’t even have a name. Nearing the exit, he heard the cacophony of horns from the street. The exit was certainly that, but it would have been a final one, because it emerged four floors from the ground. Just a suicidal hole in the wall. Dom stood gasping, looking down, at the rubble and trash-strewn alley. In the moonlight, he could see figures crouched around small cook fires. A pack of dogs fought over a chicken carcass.
    Footsteps behind him made him turn. Dom saw the silhouette of a man, not quite as large as himself, heading for the stairs. Well-dressed.
    Because he was wearing Dom’s suit.
    “Hey!” Dom yelled, running at him.
    The man half-turned, and, in a Southwest American accent, said, “What’s up?”
    “That’s my suit,” Dom said, looking down. “And my shoes.” He gave the man a hard shove, which sent him back several paces.
    “Easy, pal,” the man said, straightening the jacket.
    Dom grabbed the man’s wrist. No watch. Grabbed the other wrist, and the guy twisted his arm away. Wrist was bare. The man looked drunk yet dangerously amused.
    “Where’s my watch and wallet?” Dom said. “You trade them for smack?”
    “Don’t know what you’re talking about, pal,” the man said. “But you really need to get your shit together. You can’t go traipsing around making accusations in a place like this. Liable to get yourself in trouble.”
    “Give me back my suit or I’ll kill you,” Dom growled. “I’ll toss you right out that hole, I’m serious.”
    The man shook his head, turned away and said, “You’re no killer.”
    When Dom gripped the man’s arm, he felt hard, corded muscles. All the same, Dom whirled him around and aimed a right cross at his jawline.
    The thief slipped the punch and grinned. Dom aimed a kick to the man’s stomach, which connected, causing him to grunt and double over. He kicked him again, but the man trapped his foot. The two men grappled awkwardly, moving away from the hole in the wall.
    Dom caught the man with a solid club fist to his right ear. Stunned, he released Dom’s leg. Dom shoved him backward. Another shove and the man teetered, before somersaulting backwards down the concrete stairwell. His flesh made ugly cracking sounds on the way down. It was a long steep flight of stairs and at the bottom, his body looked horribly twisted.
    Dom held his breath a long time before tiptoeing down. Crouching over the body, he saw blood burbling from his mouth. More blood covered the suit lapels. One glassy eye was half-open. He rifled the pockets of his stolen suit and came up dry. He tried to remove the jacket, but found it impossible. He only succeeded in ripping it at the seams and getting the man’s blood all over his badly shaking hands.
    Fighting the urge to puke, Dom took his shoes back and slipped them on his bare feet. He stepped over the body and ran down the corridor, retching.
    He turned a sharp corner and nearly collided with the whore, her face illuminated as she sent a text on her phone. She looked up, surprised to see him. Dom gripped her shoulders and shook her. “You thieving bitch,” he snarled. “You lured me here.”
    She looked alarmed. “You sleeping when I left. Smoked a lot. I went to get pho. You talking in your sleep about how much you love pho.” She held up a white plastic bag. Dom ripped it open and cardboard containers of pork, noodles, and steaming broth slopped onto the concrete floor, splashing up on his shoes and ankles.
    Dom had never entertained the thought of hitting a woman before, but he considered it now. “I don’t care about the money,” he said, wrapping his hand around her neck, “but I need that watch back.”
    Her terrorized eyes made Dom release his grip. “I know where to get,” she gasped, taking his hand. “You come.”
    Dom allowed her to lead him through the labyrinthine corridors of the opium warren and back onto the street. Squatting elders tittered at Dom’s manic demeanor and lack of attire.
    Her scooter was parked on the corner among five hundred other scooters. She slipped on a helmet, then handed him a green army helmet that looked like a relic from the war. It was so absurd Dom nearly laughed.
    “Safety first,” she said, waiting for him to put it on.
    Couples stared at him as the scooter zipped down Pham Ngoc Thach Street in District 3. The clamor of the city blurred past, and to Dom, each insane street looked the same as the last. Above them, a dozen searchlights cut deep swaths into the smoggy night sky.
    By now adrenaline had blown away a good deal of the opiate fog and the wind on his bare skin felt like hope. The whore’s hair smelled like jasmine and coconut. Maybe he’d find some shampoo like that for Kim. The thought made him inappropriately excited.
    The whore turned and smiled, playfully sticking out her tongue. In the distance, on the side of a skyscraper, a red digital clock counted down. 00:36:12...11...10. Dom was baffled. Not even midnight yet?
    A few more twists and turns and she pulled the bike over on a dark stretch of road by the Saigon River. Alarms went off in Dom’s head. This didn’t seem right, but she only smiled again and led him by the hand down a path between some bushes. Flickering moonlight played over the sluggish brown water.
    Not far off, to the left and right could be heard the sounds of kissing and short, choppy gasps. Fifteen feet to Dom’s right was the silhouette of a couple going at it doggie-style, and Dom thought it was like one of those truck stops back home where gay dudes congregated for nocturnal fuck fests.
    “Where are we?” he hissed.
    Now at the river’s edge, she showed surprising strength by shoving Dom backwards and onto a chaise lounge that he had not seen there. She leapt atop him, and for a second Dom forgot about Kim and his watch. She tried to kiss him, but he twisted away.
    “This is lover’s spot,” she explained. “You love me, you get your watch back.”
    Dom lifted her up and dropped her in the dirt by the chaise. His fingers felt sticky with the thief’s blood. He stumbled to his feet, walked a few paces to the water, squatted down and scrubbed his hands together.
    “You get me my watch back,” he said, “and I won’t haul your ass to the cops. How ‘bout that for a deal?”
    The scamper of receding footsteps made him turn, to see the whore disappear back up the path. “Hey!” he called out, just as two men strong-armed him upright.
    “Ban bi giam giu!” said the stockier one, gripping his left arm harder. “You are under arrest!”
    Dom saw the uniforms, the guns at their hips, and in seconds he was cuffed. “But she robbed me,” he said, as the cops frog-marched him up the path. Dom had nearly a foot on each of the cops, and, wearing only his dress shoes, white Calvin’s, and a G.I. helmet, it was no wonder a few locals gawked as he was pushed into the back of a small nondescript black car.
    As they drove away, panic flooded Dom’s chest and he felt faint. “Look,” he said, “I’ll just give you guys some cash. You know, uh, dong. A lotta dong.”
    “Where you carrying dong?” said the cop in the passenger seat. “Up your asshole?”
    The driver scowled in the rearview. “You trying to bribe Vietnamese police?”
    “But I didn’t even know that girl,” Dom pleaded. “She lured me there. I didn’t know she was a hooker, I swear.”
    “Hooker?” said the driver. “You under arrest for murder in illegal drug den.”
    Dom felt like he was going to stroke out. He imagined spending the next twenty-five years in a Saigon dungeon. Did Vietnam have the death penalty? He couldn’t breathe.
    In the rearview mirror, the driver’s eyes were hard. “You think you can come to this country and murder people and get away?” he said. “You kill undercover police informant.”
    “Lawyer,” Dom croaked. “I need a lawyer.” I need Kim, he thought.
    “Ha,” said the other cop. “Good luck. Long way from U.S.A. now.”
    “Embassy?”
    “They’re not going to help you tonight,” the driver said, pulling onto a narrow side street in a warehouse district that seemed suddenly devoid of people.
    “Fellas,” Dom said, his voice rising to a panicked falsetto, “where are you taking me?”
    “Headquarters,” the driver replied. The other cop said something in Viet and they chuckled.
    Dom squinted his eyes, looking for a street sign, some sort of marker. Maybe if he could get to a phone he could let someone know where he was. After a few more twists and turns down unlit streets, Dom saw no signposts, only dark shadowy structures and the odd mangy dog rooting through garbage.
    The car pulled into an alley and parked. The cops hauled Dom out and blindfolded him. He had a sense that he was headed for a Guantanamo-like prison, where there would be no phone calls to lawyers or embassies; only waterboarding and dogs mauling his nuts.
    They marched him up short flight of creaky wooden stairs. A door opened. A whiff of incense tickled Dom’s nostrils. The cop on his left made a call on his cell phone, speaking rapid-fire Viet.
    They stepped into an elevator, which thumped and whirred as it ascended. The cops were silent, but Dom could sense them on either side.
    “I can get you guys a hundred thousand dollars in several days,” he said. “That’s gotta be, like, a trillion dong. Think of how that would change your life. The lives of your families.”
    “Penalty is strong for bribing a police officer,” the one on his left said.
    “Don’t forget who won the war,” said the other, and they chuckled again.
    “I have anxiety issues,” Dom said. “Pills I need to take.”
    The elevator door opened. Left cop said, “We have something for that.”
    Up another flight of stairs. A landing. Right turn. More stairs. A door opened with a whoosh, and a blast of humid night air hit Dom’s sweat-beaded chest.
    Dom heard the bleating of millions of Saigon scooters in the streets below, and he felt himself propelled forward. He resisted, imagining himself being shoved off the top of a building, falling to his death like the thief had earlier.
    Poetic.
    His body splattered in an alley.
    Dogs snarling and snapping over his entrails.
    In two weeks time, maybe a blurb on page five of the Seattle Tribune: Local kayak-shop owner’s body found in Saigon slum.
    Kim weeping over his grave.
    The kiss on his lips made Dom recoil.
    Laughter, much laughter.
    Dom’s blindfold was whipped away the same moment his wrists were unshackled.
    He blinked, his blurred vision taking its time coming into focus. Chinese lanterns overhead. Tables and candles and buckets of champagne.
    And there she was.
    The whore.
    No, wait.
    The whore was grinning in the background. But it was Kim’s face coming to focus before him. Kim, wearing a diaphanous green dress and the silver necklace he’d purchased for her in Mandalay.
    Kim kissed him again and this time he responded. Someone whistled. Tears sprang to his eyes and his lips trembled. She touched his face tenderly, then directed him to face a small crowd, some of whom he recognized.
    “Dom,” she said, “I believe you already met my good friends Andrea and Bao. Andrea and I went to school together as kids.”
    Dom couldn’t speak. “Nice to see you again, big guy,” Bao said, slapping his shoulder.
     “He fills out his Calvin’s nicely,” commented Andrea.
    “And this lovely little thing—whose name you probably don’t recall—” Kim said, “is Vung. Vung is one of the top guides in Bao’s tour company.”
    Vung stepped forward and curtsied. “Thank you for not strangling me back there, Dom,” she said, handing him back his watch.
    Dom turned to the cops, not knowing if he wanted to punch them or hug them. “And you pricks,” he growled, “you’re tour guides, too, I suppose.”
    “No,” said the stockier of the two, “we’re really cops. Also Bao’s cousins. I’m Truong. This is Quan.”
    Away from the crowd, sitting in shadow was a barefoot man in a familiar suit. The man raised a bottle of Jack Daniel’s to his lips and took a glug.
    “Last but certainly not least,” Kim said. “Is my friend Kevin, or as he’s known in the stunt biz, Crash. Kevin was one of my first clients when I did entertainment law in L.A. He had a bit of a falling out with the Hollywood establishment, so he’s working the Asian markets now.”
    “Sorry about the suit, pal,” Kevin slurred, taking another hit from the bottle.
    “I saw you die,” Dom said. “The way you fell—“
    “Fake blood,” Kim said, “Plus, Crash has some serious skills.” She guided Dom away from the crowd. Champagne corks popped.
    “You’re truly sick, Kim,” he said.
    “I had to know,” she said.
    “Know what?”
    “If you could pass the fidelity test. You exercised tremendous restraint with Vung this evening. That’s real progress for a perv like you.”
    “But why the rest of it?” Dom asked. “The opium den? The death and resurrection of Mr. Crash here?”
    “Make a good story for the grandkids one day,” she said. “I’ve been planning this for months. Everyone loves a good surprise party.”
    Dom, aroused yet again, angled himself away from the others and embraced Kim. “You realize all this just took ten years off my life?” he said.
    “But you love me, right?”
    “I must,” he said, kissing her. Seconds later, fireworks erupted from the helipad of the Bitexco tower in the distance. From streets nearby arose a mighty cheer. In the background, Dom’s new friends whooped and raised their glasses.

Buckets

This work of fiction was registered for Copyright with the U.S. Library of Congress on 11/21/17
Cover illustration by Albert R. Lola
Special thanks to Scott Byron and Steven Lowy, ESQ.
In Memory of Allen Loonin 1946-2002. Zichrono livracha...

    “BA-rry FUN-ches, BA-rry FUN-ches”...
    It seemed like that chant continued throughout the whole ballgame, and certainly after Barry would score yet another basket.
    The people doing these battle cries started out as students, but adults joined in as each home game progressed.
    The ones yelling “BA-rry” would wear gold colored shirts and sit it one section. The ones yelling “FUN-ches” wore maroon colored shirts and sat across from each other in the neighboring section, right over the half court line. That assured being close to their beloved home team whose jerseys had the same color scheme.
    It was quite remarkable having so many people stating this phrase with such synchronicity and enthusiasm for so long.
    The escapade grew to where one of the revelers with a gold shirt would then stand and yell (with right arm raised overhead), “The points come in bunches”, and immediately after, another reveler with a maroon shirt in the neighboring section finishing (with left arm raised overhead), “When the ball goes to Funches!”
    It didn’t matter when Barry would miss a shot, the few times that would happen. His supporters would not be deterred.
    The tiny and claustrophobic Brooklyn College gym was rockin’...

    This phenomenon was occurring during the 1982-1983 basketball season, the first that Brooklyn College had been placed into the Division 1 category where they were huge underdogs every game, whether at home or on the road. That ignominy was deserved, since the team was not qualified to be in Division 1, the highest level of competition on the collegiate level. This only happened because of the delusional and egotistical mind of their coach, Marty Reinhart.
    Reinhart had taken over the Men’s varsity basketball program two years prior when it had been competing in Division 3, which is where they belonged due to the skill and athleticism of their ballplayers.
    Within two short years, Reinhart turned that team from an annual also-ran in their conference and advanced them to the Division 3 level National Final Four.
    Because of that achievement, along with Reinhart’s previous failure to secure a Division 1 head coaching job, he somehow coerced the president of Brooklyn College to lobby for placement in Division 1. Their team continued to recruit many of the same quality of ballplayers, meaning no chance of success at that pinnacle.
    Of course that didn’t deter Reinhart. In fact, he stooped so low as to allow some of his student/athletes to remain eligible by not matriculating at the required pace, and therefore very few graduating.
    This didn’t surprise me since I had known of Reinhart from the Brighton Beach neighborhood we both grew up many years before. He was born in 1939, and my birth year was 1946.
    Although we didn’t know each other due to our age disparity, I did know a lot about Reinhart since both he and I attended nearby Abraham Lincoln High School and then New York University, where we had successful careers while playing for some excellent teams.
    The other similarity we had was growing up during the heyday of Brighton Beach on social, academic, creative, and basketball levels. Many famous and eminent people were born and raised in that geographic area during those years, which wasn’t the case anymore.
    After college our parallels diverged somewhat, although we both did remain in basketball. Reinhart played semi-pro ball in the U.S. and then had success coaching at local Canarsie High School. I went to Israel for six seasons to play professionally in that country’s fledgling league.
    Our paths did cross a couple of times during the early 1960s at the 2nd Street Park in Brighton Beach, as well as the more talented and competitive basketball that was played at the bigger courts in nearby Manhattan Beach.
    Although I respected Reinhart’s basketball ability and intelligence, I (along with many others) found him to be arrogant, loudmouthed, nasty, boorish, and disrespectful. I later found out from some of his peers that those characteristics manifested themselves after Reinhart was supposedly molested during adolescence. The pedophile was named Herbie “the Chickenwinger”, a rotund, middle-aged Jewish man who used to hang around the 2nd Street Park in those days.
    After Reinhart’s success at Canarsie, he accepted an assistant coaching job at a high-level Division 1 university in the Midwest, which was like placing “a fish out of water.” Reinhart expected to garner the head coaching job there when the current one retired, but that never happened, so he returned to Brooklyn to coach at our high school Alma Mater for two seasons before moving on to Brooklyn College.
    Out of curiosity, I attended some of those games at Lincoln, as there was a resurgence in prominence on the court since I had graduated. That seemed somewhat odd to occur in such a short time period, so I asked around and found out that Reinhart had hired a bevy of unqualified assistants just so that some ballplayers could say they lived at their residences. Those student/athletes weren’t zoned to attend Lincoln with the addresses they were actually residing.
    That was typical Marty Reinhart behavior.
    This really sickened me, since it no doubt negatively affected some of the ballplayers who were truly zoned to attend Lincoln and would have been members of the basketball team. Never investigated, those legitimate student/athletes didn’t get to play for their local high school.
    Lincoln didn’t win any championships during Reinhart’s tenure, though I did enjoy watching them play, especially a short, skinny, point guard named Adam Schwartz. Schwartz reminded me of myself in height, weight, and the fact that we were both left-handed.
    It disgusted me that Reinhart constantly and consistently berated Schwartz no matter how well he performed. I asked around about that, and was told by reliable sources that Reinhart had become a bitter, self-hating Jew once he had returned to Brooklyn. The same abuse had been heaped on him when Reinhart played for a Jewish coach while attending Lincoln 23 years prior.
    By the time Reinhart was coaching at Lincoln, I was running the basketball program at The Goldstein YMHA in Midwood, a neighborhood approximately five miles away. I ended up there after deciding to finish my basketball career abroad in 1974, when I was 28.
    At the time, I wasn’t sure what to do for a career. I could have played a few more years professionally in Israel, but was tired of having to live in a small apartment there for eight months and then back in my parents’ small apartment the other four.
    I pondered staying in Israel to coach, do something else like working in the psychology field I had earned my undergraduate degree in, or pursue one of those careers back in Brooklyn. I even considered moving to Los Angeles or Ft. Lauderdale, since so many Brooklyn Jews I had known growing up or met through the years had migrated to those cities.
    I was well known and respected wherever I had lived, schooled, or worked, and knew I’d be able to secure something worthwhile. I was truly torn as to which direction to take.
    My father was a junior high school teacher for 30 years, and had just retired. He practically begged me to not get into that profession because of how it had devolved in salary and otherwise. I took that into consideration, especially after witnessing the decline of numerous neighborhoods and public education on all levels when the demographics started changing in most areas of Brooklyn.
    What ended up happening was a rich family surnamed Goldstein contacted me during the fall of 1974 and told me they had just opened a new YMHA and wanted me to run their basketball program. That job sounded great since its days and hours were Sunday-Thursday from 3:30-10pm. The salary was more than sufficient, plus the offer included a 401(k) plan, pension, medical benefits, 10 days annual paid sick leave, and three weeks annual paid vacation time.
    It was perfect for my lifestyle since I enjoyed staying up late, going to the racetrack on weekend evenings (where I consistently won money to supplement my income), getting my own early workouts on weekdays, and playing basketball with my peers on weekend mornings.
    The workouts I’m referring to were a combination of weight training and various styles of self-defense, both empty-handed and with weapons. I was one of the few ballplayers during that time period doing either of those. The weight training and stretching programs were helping me remain strong and flexible since I was neither without constant and consistent diligence.
    I got exposed to self-defense instruction in Israel, when befriended by teammates and other men close to my age with extensive training from their army and Israeli Defense Force experience.
    Upon returning to Brooklyn I wanted to continue that discipline as well. I was referred to a small group who were working out somewhat underground, literally. We’d practice in the basement of a warehouse where the guys laid down rubber mats and scattered the room with various punching dummies and self-defense weapons such as sticks, knives, guns, etc., along with empty-hand protective gear. The basement was dimly lit and either too hot or cold depending on the weather outside. Its ceiling leaked when it rained or snowed.
    Our group was consistently 5-10 in number, mostly my age and older and of varied ethnicities, among them White, White ethnic, and Asian. Some worked in law enforcement, military, or other forms of security, personal and otherwise.
    Regardless, everyone was in excellent physical condition and had some experience in various forms of self-defense.
    The person who stood out in our group was Leo, or as we called him, “Uncle Leo”, mostly because of his easy-going and relaxed outward persona.
    I want to make that clear, since Uncle Leo worked as a hired killer.
    Though my height (5'9"), he weighed 155 lbs., which was 25 lbs. lighter than me. While I had worked hard to become muscular and stocky, Uncle Leo was much more lithe and sinewy, which was more typical of his Filipino ethnicity.
    I got along well with Uncle Leo and we used to eat lunch together sometimes after workouts. Since the building was located in the East Village of Manhattan, Uncle Leo and I walked to the small, family-owned Filipino restaurant nearby which served excellent food.
    Our group training sessions were held twice weekly between 10am-noon, which fit perfectly with my work schedule.
    On one of our regular days the weather was inclement with two feet of snow falling. For me that was no deterrent, even though I had to drive my car into Manhattan. In fact, I didn’t even think to call any of the guys to see if we were still scheduled. I just showed up, as did Uncle Leo. However, we were the only two who were able to get there.
    Instead of leaving, Uncle Leo showed me something I found quite amazing, how to kill someone with an icepick without drawing blood. Furthermore, the victim wouldn’t even feel the incision or any pain, and death wouldn’t happen for 10 seconds after being stabbed.
    The trick was to thrust the icepick into a specific part and angle of a person’s kidney. We worked on this for a couple of hours that day, but obviously could not definitively prove its success. I would just have to take Uncle Leo’s word for its effectiveness and efficiency. He claimed to have utilized this skill six separate times to kill people, all on crowded trains, which seemed like the perfect venue for the technique.

    Once I got underway with my job, I moved into an apartment in Manhattan Beach which was only a 15-minute car ride away. In fact, when the weather was nice enough I used to ride my bicycle to and from work.
    Other than going to self-defense workouts in Manhattan, I almost never travelled there except to see a concert or when I drove through the city’s highways to get to the racetrack on a weekend evening.
    The rest of my time was spent within 20 minutes of where I lived and worked, either playing ball or eating at the many delicious and varied restaurants the southwest part of Brooklyn had to offer.
    The Goldsteins and their investors wanted me to cultivate a vibrant basketball program like some of the other local YHMAs were providing. The Midwood neighborhood that our YMHA was located in consisted mostly of Jews, either observant, religious, or otherwise. By the mid-‘70s, most Jews were no longer able to compete at the highest levels of basketball, struggling to make even the weaker varsity public high school teams. However, we still had a tremendous love and understanding of the game and were happy competing recreationally, whether as teenagers or adults.
    Once I accepted that job, I contacted Israel “Izzy” Orenstein, who had been a varsity ballplayer at the legendary Boys High. I had known Izzy from my childhood days when he officiated some of the league games I competed in. Izzy did good work, and had an interesting way of saying “vio-LAY-shun.” He used to come watch some of my games when I played for Lincoln, and was also somewhat of a mentor to me. I think Izzy followed my career since both of his sons ended up lousy ballplayers, which disappointed him. By now, Izzy was running the basketball program at a rec center in Brownsville, and I wanted to get his advice and expertise, both of which he gladly gave.
    Our basketball schedule at the Y was as follows:
    Open the courts from 4-6pm for free play.
    The teenage league’s game went from 6:30-8pm.
    The adult league’s game went from 8-9:30pm.
    They were both 20 minutes per half with a stop time clock.
    I ran a winter and summer league, with the teenage championship team and runner-up receiving shirts and trophies. The adult championship team and runner-up received monetary prizes from the total entry fee.
    The summer league tended to be played (and officiated) at a higher level because the better ballplayers were playing in an organized setting, i.e., high school, college, and professionally abroad during the winter. My being well known with a solid reputation enabled me to attract some good players who lived in the area.
    The court and locker rooms were kept in excellent condition, and there was car parking both onsite and close by. There were also buses and trains that stopped within walking distance.
    Since I was still competing regularly at a high level, I would sometimes join in pick-up games during free time, play with a league team if they were short a player, or officiate a game if a referee didn’t show.
    The tedious parts of this job were collecting money from the teams, making sure teams had enough ballplayers, making sure I had enough high-quality officials, and breaking up fights between players against each other and the officials.
    However, since my gym was made up of mostly White ethnics I didn’t have much trouble. In fact, the basketball that was played was of excellent caliber because it was Brooklyn White ethnic (especially Jewish and Irish) ball, the best in the world.
    I would take my vacations three times per year, in one-week durations. My destinations were either Los Angeles, Ft. Lauderdale, or Israel. I had numerous friends and ex-teammates living in those places, so I’d get in some ball and soak in the sites and activities they offered.
    Those vacations were planned when my leagues were on hiatus, which would be during holidays or between seasons. I’d get home in time to start setting up the upcoming schedule, and during that week or so our gym would be open until 10pm for free play.
    It was one of those nights in April 1982 that I met Barry Funches.

    I remember it being between 9-10pm on a cold and rainy weeknight after most of the guys playing pick-up ball had already left.
    Barry was 5'11", 150 lbs., a gangly teenager with a disheveled shock of thick and coarse black hair, black-rimmed eyeglasses, a pockmarked face with a bit of stubble, and large feet that walked like a duck. He was also wearing track shoes. Barry had the court to himself, and I watched him work on his shooting, ball handling, driving to the basket, etc. Though hardly an athletic specimen, there was undeniable rhythm in his moves and skill to his game.
    I chose not to approach Barry the first time I saw him, but he kept coming back every night that week and stayed until closing doing the same workouts by his lonesome.
    By the third night, I went to him and introduced myself. “Hi, my name is Alan Lubin.” Barry looked up and the lenses of his eyeglasses started fogging as he said, “Nice to meet you Coach Lubin.”
    I said, “Nice to meet you too, but I am not your coach. What’s your name?”
    Barry replied, “I’m sorry, Mr. Lubin. My name is Barry.”
    Me: “My father’s name is Mr. Lubin. You can call me Alan.”
    Barry: “Ok, Coach Alan.”
    Me: “Fair enough, suit yourself.”
    I began asking Barry various basketball questions. He was a senior at Yeshiva of Flatbush High School, and been a bench player for their basketball team. Since I had attended a Yeshiva for elementary school and knew classmates who ended up going to the same high school as Barry, I started speaking Hebrew. I had that in my background from both my childhood and playing ball in Israel for six years. We conversed for 15 minutes about basketball, academics, and Judaism, and I then invited Barry to work out with me the next evening, which he agreed to.
    Before we left, I asked Barry if he owned any other sneakers, which he said “No.” I then asked him what size he wore, and he replied “11 ½.” I said “Great, you’ll have some basketball shoes tomorrow night.” That was my size and I had an extra pair which I was going to give Barry providing he showed up the next evening.
    Right on time, there he was, wearing his what now seemed customary white t-shirt, plaid four-pocket shorts, high white socks, and track shoes. I gave him a second pair of socks and the sneakers I had promised him. He put those on and we were ready to roll.
    Although I chose to not go into coaching, I did have numerous drills that were applicable to ballplayers at all levels and ages. I started doing those with Barry and he was very receptive. I could swear he was improving by the minute.
    I didn’t bombard Barry with too many concepts initially; I chose to compartmentalize. Jump shots standing, off the pick/screen, and off the dribble. Ball handling with me putting defensive pressure on him. Dribble/drive using a strong first step to the basket. I also made sure to incorporate the intellectual precepts of basketball, along with suggesting which players to watch for their various strong points.
    As time progressed, I gave Barry some basketball-related books to read, ones that had had a positive influence on me. I also got him some basketball shorts, jerseys, and jockstraps. The latter confused Barry on how to wear, I supposed because he’d never seen one.
    What was a bit odd and somewhat funny was when Barry asked me how to put on a jockstrap his glasses fogged up again. In fact, Barry’s glasses would fog whenever we’d discuss any type of social issues.
    Our relationship grew from that first night and we trained together regularly. He was improving greatly, ended up growing to 6'1", and with my weight training, conditioning, and stretching programs filled out to 170 lbs.
    Within a couple of weeks, I took him to the Brownsville Recreation Center, where Izzy directed its basketball program. I wanted Barry to compete against the athleticism of the Black ballplayers on their turf.
    Izzy got him into a game immediately. Barry held his own and was not intimidated in any way. In fact, they started giving him the ball once he showed that confidence, especially after Barry sank a few jump shots and dribble drives.
    I then invited Barry to my private game with my peers. This was a high-level brand of ball with men in their 30s who were in shape. We had a rule to not allow anyone under 25 into our group, but I asked my guys to waive that requirement and they agreed. Barry’s basketball intelligence quotient grew both playing with us and watching when he sat out.
    It was around this time when I asked Barry what his college plans were, to which he said, “I’m going to attend Brooklyn College.”
    Hearing this had me concerned for many reasons. While I didn’t think Barry was ready to leave home, I wasn’t sure that playing for Marty Reinhart would be a good idea knowing the contempt he had for Jews. I also felt that Marty would try to mentally and emotionally pick Barry apart.
    I was uncertain Marty would even take Barry on the team since he never saw him play, and would think little of Barry having been a bench player at a lowly basketball high-school such as Yeshiva of Flatbush.
    However, Brooklyn College was an excellent academic school and it would give his father (who was an avid basketball fan) the opportunity to watch Barry play if he made the team. Even if that happened, I doubted Marty would ever put him into a game.
    I also questioned if Barry could even be a bench player at the Division 1 level regardless of his accelerated progress during that spring. I was confident this growth would continue through the summer especially with me working with him so frequently and Barry competing in high-level pickup games and our adult summer league.
    By this point I wanted to speak with Barry’s parents, and asked to see if that would be possible. The next day Barry said I was invited to Shabbat dinner, which I was honored to accept. Donning the one suit I owned, I bought some mandel bread as a gift, and drove to the Funches’ (nee’ Feinschuss) apartment, which was small and located in a six-story tenement in Midwood.
    Barry’s father, Alfred, was a butcher. In fact, his nickname was “The Butcher”. He was a bit shorter than me, balding, of stocky build with big hands and forearms. The Butcher wasn’t dressed as formally as I was, instead wearing a t-shirt (now I saw where Barry got that custom from), jeans, socks, and slippers.
    Muriel, Barry’s mother, was a regular Ashkenazi-looking Jewish woman and wearing a house dress and flats.
    The Butcher seemed very happy to see me. In fact, he knew who I was before even Barry telling him about me. The Butcher knew so much that he rattled off my high school and college career stats and the success my teams had. He also remembered I had gone to Ha’Aretz to play pro ball.
    The Butcher understood a lot about basketball in general, especially NYC ball and the great players that came from our city throughout the years. He was only a few years older than me so we had some stimulating conversations about many different topics, among them sports, music, Judaism, culture, and NYC history.
    Muriel cooked us a delicious Shabbat dinner and we all had an enjoyable time. The Butcher then wanted us to take a walk outside, just he and I. I agreed, and we strolled through the streets of Midwood on a beautiful spring evening.
    The Butcher heard of Marty Reinhart and asked lots of questions about him since he wanted Barry to make the team at Brooklyn College. I gave The Butcher my honest opinion and suggested Barry attend a different CUNY or SUNY Division 3 school instead, with the caveat it might be too late to get accepted since we were already in early June.
    The Butcher quoted some scripture to the effect of “This is what is planned, let’s see how it goes.”
    I went along and assured The Butcher I would do everything possible to ensure Barry was prepared to give his best at the Brooklyn College tryouts when school started in the fall. I also agreed to speak with Marty Reinhart to put in “a good word” about Barry, although that task was a bit more daunting for me.
    The summer wore on and Barry kept getting better and better. The Butcher came to some of his summer league games and we both kvelled.

    When the fall ‘82 semester started, I waited one week and then visited Reinhart in his office. I knocked on his door, and without knowing who it was, said in his gruff, raspy voice, “Come in.” When Reinhart saw me, he looked happy and said, “Well, well, well, Alan Lubin.”
    It was only a 2 ½ years since I went to a couple of Reinhart’s Lincoln games, where we spoke briefly before tipoff. Since then, Reinhart had gotten infected with Bell’s palsy, which left one side of his face permanently paralyzed and caused him to speak out of only one side of his mouth.
    Reinhart and I never had any issues, so I really didn’t expect any at this meeting, even knowing his difficult personality. We made some small talk and I congratulated him for advancing Brooklyn College to the Division 1 level. I then brought up Barry’s name, telling him everything I knew, and my feeling that Barry could be a contributing member to his team. Reinhart’s initial reply was, “Just great. Another Jew. I thought I was done with them after Schwartz (referring to Adam from Lincoln). I don’t need any more doctors or lawyers, I need ballplayers.”
    I laughed, though I was seething inside having witnessed the emotional abuse Reinhart caused Schwartz for no reason. This made me further concerned for Barry’s chances of making the team, or especially playing any minutes. However, I was persistent and said, “Marty, please give Barry an extra look. I think he can help you, and he’s a great kid who will do what you ask.” I then wished him luck again and left.
    Barry and I kept working hard, and I gave him all the time I could. I also made sure he was competing against as many good ballplayers his age who were living in Brooklyn.
    School started, and tryouts were about to commence. I asked Barry to call me after each day’s scrimmage, knowing he could be cut after any of them. Barry wouldn’t be assured a roster spot until after Day 3, which was the last workout before Reinhart’s team was fully chosen.
    I had a phone in my office at the Y and made sure to be close to it at the time tryouts were over on Day 1. Barry called as planned and the first thing he said was, “Coach Reinhart says hello.” I took that as a good sign, but asked Barry how Reinhart knew who he was. Barry said he went up to Reinhart and told him. I laughed, thinking I had taught Barry more than basketball.
    Barry also called me the next morning to let me know he made the first cut. This went on for two more days, and lo and behold, Barry made the team as a walk on, with no scholarship. That was fine since tuition for an in-state student was negligible, especially with Barry living at home.
    I then got a call from The Butcher who was all giddy and must have been smiling ear to ear when reiterating the good news. He said, “Let’s celebrate. We’ll to go Adelman’s on King’s Highway and have some knadel soup, a steak they’ll cook from my own shop, some kasha varnishkes, and kugel. And, after all you did for Barry, I’m buying.” I said, “You’re on,” and met the Funches (Barry was an only child like me) for a very enjoyable and delicious meal and time well spent.
    It was at this point I started seeing Barry less, since he was now practicing with the Brooklyn College team and then going home to sleep after a long day of classes. However, Barry would call every few days to update me how things were going and ask specific questions about the concepts Reinhart was teaching his team. We’d speak on the phone for an hour or so and Barry would come by the Y on Sundays to talk further and go over some stuff on the court.
    I appreciated his diligence and desire to learn and improve, which was still progressing with alacrity. Barry wasn’t scrimmaging with the first unit, which upset him, but I told Barry to be patient with the adage, “You’ll never know what can happen.”
    Barry also seemed to be doing well in classwork, and enjoyed being in college though I was unsure how socially adjusted he was outside of basketball. In fact, Barry seemed to prefer being alone as opposed to with his teammates and peers.
    Regardless, I was happy with Barry’s progress, and was looking forward to watching Brooklyn College’s home games even if he wasn’t playing much.

    Two weeks before the season started, I dropped off clothes at the dry cleaners located on Kings Highway between Ocean Parkway and Coney Island Avenue. The owner said she’d have them ready within the hour if I wanted to wait. That seemed reasonable, so I walked across the street to the Kingsway Diner to get some food.
    I was sitting in a booth facing the street and ordered a bowl of kreplach soup. While eating and looking out the window, I noticed someone who looked like Barry walking out of the movie theatre next to the diner. At first it wasn’t easy to know for certain if it was Barry since he was wearing a hoodie, but I had to be sure. That was imperative since the theatre showed porn, although that wasn’t the issue. The real issue was that locale was a known haven for clandestine homosexual activity.
    I got so shook up I almost regurgitated my kreplach and went outside to get some fresh air. By now the person was walking down the street away from me, but looking at his gait and build it was clearly Barry, even with a hoodie covering his hair and face.
    I returned to the restaurant, threw a few dollars on the table and left. Initially, I was going to run after Barry to confront him right then and there, but acted otherwise since I wanted to gather my thoughts first. I went home and called Dr. Burt Pomerantz, a psychologist who was one of the regulars in our private game. He knew Barry from the summer after I allowed him into our group, so I told Dr. Pomerantz what I saw. He suggested I confront Barry but in a gentle way. I was going to see Barry that Sunday when he came to our gym, and decided to speak to him about it then.
    That day I just said, “Barry, I don’t want you to think I was spying on you, but I was eating at the Kingsway Diner and saw you walking out of the theatre next door.”
    Right away, Barry’s eyeglasses fogged up. He seemed distraught and replied that he wanted to see what movie was playing and left after only a few minutes.
    I said, “Is that all?”
    He said, “Yes, what else would there be?”
    Me: “Well, to my understanding there is homosexual activity going on in that place. Did you know that?”
    Barry (with his glasses getting foggier): “No, I just watched some of the movie and left.”
    I wasn’t sure if the films shown were hetero or homo, but didn’t press the issue and was somewhat embarrassed to have confronted him. Though not completely sold on his responses, I tried to be positive and said, “Ok, well I know guys your age are curious about certain things, but if you ever have any questions or want me to get you magazines to look at, feel free to ask.” These were the days before videos and VHS recorders, so I couldn’t offer that option to him.
    Barry’s reply was, “No, I’m okay. I was just curious.”
    I let it go, but our basketball workout wasn’t the same that day, so I cut it short. Barry just didn’t seem focused or comfortable, and I didn’t push it.

    Brooklyn College’s first two games were on the road and they got blown out (as expected). Barry didn’t play any minutes (also as expected).
    Their first home game was a bit closer, but another loss. Barry didn’t play in that one either. The Butcher and I attended and visited Reinhart prior to tip off. He was very pre-occupied which was understandable, so I just said a quick hello and left his office. I didn’t think it was smart for us to visit Reinhart again after another loss, so The Butcher and I went straight home.
    Game four was another home game -- I again went with The Butcher -- and yet another blowout was in the making. Surprisingly, Reinhart inserted Barry into the game late in the first half. Barry immediately got into the flow with his non-stop movement on offense (I had already nicknamed him “Hondo” in honor of Celtics great, John Havlicek), and overall hustle on the defensive end.
    With Barry in the game, Brooklyn College’s deficit got cut from 18 to 7 by halftime. Barry hit two jumpers, taking only three shots, and it was clear he had made a positive difference with the crowd taking notice.
    Barry didn’t start the second half and Brooklyn College lost their momentum getting down again by 15. Reinhart was smart enough to insert Barry again which was a big boost to his team as it was in the first half. Barry had another excellent showing and finished out the game with Brooklyn College only losing by 6 points, Barry making 5 of 8 shots and 2-2 on free throws. He got a couple of rebounds too.
    We were all very happy, and this time I visited Reinhart’s office after the game even with the results being on the losing end. I said, “Marty, like it or not, you might have another good Jewish ballplayer!” Without missing a beat, Reinhart replied, “Oh yeah, who was the first?”
    His comment again reminded me what a surly son-of-a-bitch Reinhart was, and instead of saying “Adam Schwartz, you piece of shit,” I again let it go and left, not wanting to jeopardize Barry’s opportunity to get more quality playing time.
    Things started really flourishing after that, with the same expediency as eight months prior when I started working with Barry.
    Though he didn’t start the next game, Barry did get a lot of minutes and finished with 18 efficient points, with Brooklyn College earning their first win.
    The next five games, three of them at home with The Butcher and me attending, were all stunners for Barry. He scored a total of 82 points on 62% field goal shooting and 85% free throw shooting. His defense was solid, got some steals and rebounds, and even a couple of assists.
    By then, Barry was becoming known throughout the campus, and the chants during the games, which I mentioned at the beginning of this story, were going strong. Brooklyn College was more competitive than anticipated, and the enthusiasm was growing around the campus and among Barry’s teammates.
    The fall semester ended and Barry’s grades were high as well. There was a weeklong break from ballgames, and that’s when I received a troubling phone call from him. He said (in a low volume voice), “Alan, I have to talk to you.” This was the first time Barry ever addressed me as Alan.
    I replied, “Ok, when and where?”
    Barry: “At the gym in 15 minutes.”
    Me: “Make it 30 and I’ll see you there”.
    I remember it being cold outside and snow having fallen for two days prior making the driving difficult, which is why I requested the additional 15 minutes. I got to the gym, which was closed, with Barry already waiting. I opened the door, turned on the light, and we went into my office. I sat in the chair behind my desk and Barry sat in the one in front of it.
    Me: “Okay, Barry, what’s on your mind?”
    Barry: (Looking down towards the floor) “I have a real problem.”
    Me: “Whatever it is, we can handle it.”
    Barry: “Not this one.”
    Me: “Just tell me what it is, and it will remain confidential.”
    Barry: “I received a phone call from a man named Irwin Bernitzky telling me that unless I pay him $5,000, he’s going to tell everyone that he saw me at the movie theatre.”
    Me: “You mean that one time that I saw you walking out of there?”
    Barry: “No, I went a few more times.”
    I was now concerned, but had to press the issue to get as many details as possible. “Well, it’s no crime for a man of legal age to enjoy watching porn, even if it is a bit aberrant and unacceptable in mainstream society.”
    Barry: “He saw me doing more than watching.”
    Me: “How much more?”
    Barry: “He saw me sucking cock.”
    I was speechless, but after a few tense seconds said, “Whose cock? Whose cock did you suck”?
    Barry: “His, and other guys too.”
    I slumped back into my chair, not knowing what to say. Now it was Barry’s turn to wait a few seconds to continue, which he did by stating, “And swallowed their cum... buckets of it.”
    By now Barry was sobbing, and I was flabbergasted. I’m sure you’ve been there too, when you just don’t know how to react. Foolishly or otherwise, I tried to use levity to break the tension and said, “Barry, when I told you to make buckets I meant jump shots.”
    My attempt at humor didn’t succeed and Barry picked up his head. With his glasses now totally fogged and lying crooked on his face, cried out, “I know, I’m SO-rry,” and kept sobbing.
    Now I really had a dilemma, and it wasn’t only how to deal with Barry’s behavior. I had to figure out how to handle Bernitzky.

    Irwin Bernitzky, nicknamed “Nitz”, was an older, small-time Jewish bookmaker with Italian mob ties. And he was a big time pedophiliac homosexual. Nitz also worked the same type of job as me at the YMHA in Brighton Beach. I had played ball there in the summertime during my last two years at Lincoln. By then, Nitz had other homosexual pedophiles employed and they all preyed on the 13-17 year-old boys by giving them money and gifts in return for sexual favors.
    Nitz always looked clean cut, with a slim build, short hair, smoothly shaved face, and neatly pressed clothes that fit two sizes too small. He was the most despicable man I ever met, and I vowed to never return to that YMHA again even though it was located so close to where I was then living.
    Although neither Nitz nor his crew overtly approached me, he used to greet me with an odd yet foretelling limp-wristed, reverse palm handshake. Nitz was also always offering me half of one of the bananas he was perpetually eating when I used to get to the gym early prior to summer league games.
    Nitz also took bets on those games, then fixed them to his monetary needs by paying off referees to alter the games’ outcomes.
    Nitz wasn’t the issue. I could handle him. It was the fact that he was so hooked up with the Mafia which concerned me. I had to think this through to ensure I made the correct decision. I told Barry as such, and told him to relax and give me a couple of days to work it out. I also ordered Barry to never go back to that theatre or any other one, and to certainly not suck any more cock.
    After two sleepless nights, I figured out how to deal with this. I did that by myself since I didn’t want anyone to know. Not Dr. Pomerantz, and not Corey Callaway, who was a detective and lifetime friend, and also sometimes played in our private game.
    I called Barry on the phone and asked how he was doing. He still sounded shaken up, but seemed okay otherwise. Luckily, school (along with basketball practice and games) was still on hiatus for another few days. I asked Barry to meet me at the gym in 30 minutes.
    We again went into my office and I told him what my plan was. I instructed Barry to call Nitz and let him know that he is willing to pay the amount of money Nitz is asking. Barry would then tell Nitz to meet him on the B train in the third car from the front, 5:30-6pm on Tuesday between the Kings Highway and Brighton Beach station stops.
    I said, “Tell Nitz that when you see him, you will walk over and hand him an envelope with fifty $100 bills, and then walk out of the car at the next stop.” Barry was doubtful this would work, but willing to try.
    Nitz had given Barry his home phone number, so Barry and I walked to a nearby payphone and he made the call while I stood there in silence. Barry was convincing on the phone and Nitz agreed to those terms. I told Barry not to tell anyone about this or anything else related to it and that I would handle everything. It was Sunday and I had two days to get this done, and knew exactly how to proceed.
    On Tuesday, I got dressed and made sure to be on the correct train in the right car waiting for Nitz to show up without him seeing me.
    It was cold, dark, and during rush hour, so I knew it would be crowded, with Nitz having to stand and hold one of the poles in the middle of the car. I also figured Nitz would remove his jacket and drape it over one of his shoulders or by his side. I knew that, since the trains were heated during the frigid weather of January. In fact, they’d be so hot the passengers had to remove their coats or would sweat too much, especially when having to return outside once they exited.
    For this to work, I’d have to remember to bring the most important item, the icepick that Uncle Leo showed me how to use and generously gave to me. I kept that weapon never knowing if and when I’d ever have to employ it. This was the time and place. I also packed a rolled-up newspaper and put the icepick in there facing forward.
    I walked up the stairs to enter the train, waited on the platform, checked the time on my watch, and entered the third car from the front at Kings Highway.
    I immediately saw the back of Nitz’s head, but he was on the other side of the car. That meant it might not be possible for me to get close enough to him by the time the train arrived at the nearby Brighton Beach station. I had to carefully navigate without pissing off the passengers by bumping into them, since they were already annoyed being crammed into a small, crowded hotbox after a stressful day at work.
    I also had to make sure that I didn’t drop the icepick, stab someone inadvertently, or let it be seen as I was sauntering over to Nitz. I was making my way ever-so-carefully when the train lurched, which almost made me drop the weapon. I gathered myself and got close enough to Nitz’s rear left side without him seeing me.
    I was correct that Nitz would be holding his jacket, and luckily was doing so under his right arm, which was also the arm that he was holding onto the pole. That meant Nitz’s left kidney was ripe for me to attack, which I did just before we pulled into the Brighton Beach station.
    When I say attack, I mean that I was holding the rolled-up newspaper in my right hand with the icepick inside held with my left hand. I thrust the instrument into Nitz’s left kidney and removed it just as fast.
    Nitz didn’t even flinch, which meant it would work without him even knowing he was going to die within ten seconds. There would also be no blood, save for a small mark where the icepick entered Nitz’s body.
    Once I finished my task, I joined the flow of many other passengers from that car, left the train and never looked back. I briskly walked a few blocks, icepick and rolled up newspaper still under my arm. I then tossed them both into a dumpster and kept walking home, which was only another couple of blocks away.
    Approximately two hours later my phone rang. It was someone who knew both Nitz and me, informing me about the tragedy that just happened, specifically Nitz dying of a heart attack while riding the train only two stops from his apartment.
    “No kidding,” I said, “that’s a shame.”
    After some small talk I hung up. I distinctly remember bursting out laughing afterwards. The phone rang another three times that night with more people telling me the bad news, and me laughing every time I hung up the phone.
    The next day’s newspapers had an even bigger story; how Nitz was killed by the Mafia because he owed so much back taxes to the government and was about to turn state’s evidence. Those reports did say Nitz had been stabbed, but had no definitive description of any assailant or when the attack actually happened.
    The punchline to this story is the next time our self-defense crew got together in our abandoned basement, all the guys were enthralled by Uncle Leo since they assumed he was the person who performed this caper. Some of them actually brought the newspaper clipping for him to autograph. Uncle Leo was dumbfounded as to what they were talking about, but the guys just felt he was denying it out of necessity.
    After our workout, I offered to buy Uncle Leo lunch, which he accepted. We visited the regular local Filipino restaurant and while eating our food, I said, “Uncle Leo, let ME sign that newspaper article.”
    Uncle Leo looked at me with the most wide-eyed, open-mouthed, dumbfounded look, which lasted for about five seconds. Then he broke out laughing, with me joining in a second or so later.

    With the Nitz problem out of the way, I now had to figure out how to deal with Barry.
    I still chose not to confide with Dr. Pomerantz, and preferred attempting it on my own even though that didn’t work the first time I went that route. I had no experience with homosexuality and didn’t know what to say. Still, I called Barry and we again met at the gym.
    I told him the Nitz problem was taken care of. Barry already knew that from reading the newspapers, although he didn’t realize it was me who actually resolved it. Barry didn’t ask, but was certainly relieved to be rid of Nitz. He was concerned that Nitz had told other people who would also attempt to blackmail him. I told Barry that was unlikely, which turned out to be accurate.
    I asked Barry about his homosexuality and he said it was just a phase and really liked women, but watching straight porn got him horny enough to “do almost anything with anyone.”
    I again told Barry he could never return to that movie theatre or any other venue that showed porn, and should just jerk off to dirty magazines or photos. I also suggested he start asking some of his female classmates out on dates, and “start eating pussy instead of sucking cock.” Barry said he had tried asking women out but always got turned down. He said that didn’t happen with men.
    I tried explaining to Barry that those men are not interested in him, they just want to get their cock sucked to completion.
    I also started advising Barry on how to approach women and act when together with one. While I never married and had limited experience with long-term relationships, I’d already been with enough women both socially and sexually and at least knew what I was talking about on that end.
    I never paid for sex which meant I didn’t know of any hookers to set Barry up with. Since I didn’t want my friends, Barry’s teammates, or his family to know about this, wouldn’t ask them to find him women either.
    I was hoping this was a phase and would go away... immediately.

    Both the spring semester and basketball practice resumed in a couple of days and I trusted that Barry would immerse himself in those activities again, especially considering his success in them.
    I went to the first game which was at home, and Barry played lousy. He just didn’t seem like himself, missed a lot of easy shots, and was generally lethargic. I chalked it up to the pressure Barry was under during this stressful and burdensome experience, but the same thing happened over the next two games.
    I received a phone call from The Butcher who seemed worried about Barry on every level.
    I then received an unexpected call from Marty Reinhart who asked me, “What the hell is wrong with your boy?”
    I didn’t make an issue of Reinhart’s approach, and just said that Barry had recently been through some tough personal issues and confident he would snap out of it.
    Unfortunately, I was wrong.
    Three days later Barry went missing. He stopped showing up for practice, games, or classes, and then stopped coming home.
    The Butcher and Muriel were frantic. Even Reinhart seemed concerned. I called Detective Callaway to see what could be done, and he suggested waiting another couple of days before proceeding with our options.
    Callaway was right, since Barry called home on the third day after he disappeared. Barry told his parents that he was okay, needed some time to think, and not to worry. However, Barry didn’t tell them where he was, who he was with, or give them any contact phone number. He said he would call them again within a week or so.
    Once that happened, Detective Callaway said this was no longer a missing person issue and foul play would be ruled out. Callaway also said there was nothing he could do at this point.
    Barry called his parents again twice more one week apart, and that was the last any of us heard or saw him.
    The Funches were frantic and started putting up posters of Barry’s face and physical description on every street corner and storefront to no avail. I too was distraught, but never told anyone Barry’s secrets.
    I paid Detective Callaway out of my own pocket to investigate this as a private matter. He contacted detectives he knew in various other precincts around the city, provided photos and descriptions of Barry, but no one came up with any leads. It was like Barry just disappeared.
    We all had to continue with our lives, heavy-hearted as we were.
    Initially, I would call the Funches every week, but they seemed too upset to speak with me, and their responses got shorter and shorter until I realized it was detrimental to keep contacting them. While I didn’t think the Funches blamed me in any way, I felt they wanted to cut ties with everyone who knew Barry.
    My leagues were going strong and my lifestyle was fulfilling, but I’d often think of Barry especially while watching a ballgame or when at work. His disappearance was still eating away at me, and I started wondering whether I could have done something different to have changed his actions.

    It was a warm, humid, overcast Saturday night during the summer of 1986. Thunder storms had already fallen periodically throughout the day, but I wanted to go to the Meadowlands Racetrack that evening anyway. It didn’t rain during the program, but resumed once the final contest ended.
    I met some friends there and we decided to hang out and talk until the downpour let up. That took longer than expected, so I didn’t get on the road until 1am. I took my usual route back home: Lincoln Tunnel, West Side Highway, Battery Tunnel, Gowanus Expressway, and Belt Parkway.
    I got hungry while driving on the West Side Highway and pulled into a diner which was close to the West Village. I sat in a booth, and sitting in the one behind me were two guys dressed in all leather: boots, pants, and vests with no shirt. They both were approximately my age and height, with stocky and muscular builds, hairy chests, long sideburns, goatees, scruffy faces, and close-cropped short dark hair.
    They were already eating when I ordered my meal, and talking about random things loudly enough for me to hear, especially since the restaurant was almost empty at that hour. I was still waiting for my food when their conversation took a turn.
    Leather One: Remember that guy who used to suck our cocks on the pier by the West Side Highway?
    Leather Two: You mean the young, tall, well-built one with thick dark hair, black rimmed eyeglasses, and acne marked face?
    Leather One: Yes, he’d wear a white t-shirt, plaid four-pocket shorts, white socks, and track shoes. When the weather was nice he’d be out on the pier sucking off anyone who wanted head. It was funny how his glasses would always fog up while sucking cock.
    Leather Two: That was in the early days, three years ago. He then started bending over and taking it up the ass.
    Leather One: Right. At first his ass was really tight, but by the end it got loose, sloppy, and wide like the Hudson River running under the pier he performed on.
    Leather Two: Yes, what a shame. Whatever happened to him?
    Leather One: Oh, he died of AIDS a couple of months ago.
    Leather Two: That’s too bad. He really sucked great cock. Do you remember his name?
    Leather One: I don’t think anyone knew his real name, but he called himself “Buckets”.
    Leather Two: “Buckets”, that’s funny.
    Then they burst out laughing.
    By the time Barry’s nickname was mentioned, I already knew who they were referring too. I remember feeling my face was on fire and thought steam was literally coming out of my ears.
    I also recollected driving home on the West Side Highway from the racetrack on weekend summer nights and always seeing a crowd of 200 or so men waiting on line for something on the pier but never knowing what for. Now I did.
    I knew there had to be retribution, but how? I needed to get out of there to collect my thoughts. I threw down enough money to pay for my meal, left the restaurant and walked to my car.
    I wanted to be out of sight when the Leather Guys exited, realizing they were the only ones remaining in that eatery. There was only one car parked next to mine in the lot, which meant there was a good chance it belonged to them.
    I always kept a licensed and loaded gun under my front seat, along with an icepick and escrima sticks within arm’s reach. I knew I could utilize any of those weapons to take care of this, but instead chose to use my bare hands, simply because I believed the Leather Guys had never forced Barry into anything. But they would have to pay for disrespecting his memory.
    The question was going to be how to lure these two guys close to me yet have enough of an element of surprise to attack. As usual, I figured it out. I got out of my car and removed jumper cables from the trunk. I then opened the hood and started looking under it.
    The Leather Guys exited the restaurant and walked towards me. It turned out that it WAS their car parked next to mine. As they were about to get inside, I explained that my car needed a boost and asked them to help, with me supplying the cables.
    They agreed, with Leather Two getting into the driver’s seat and starting his engine, and Leather One taking one end of my cables and hooking it up to their car battery.
    As I was doing the same to mine, Leather One said, “I don’t mind helping you, but it looks like rain so let’s make it quick.” I looked him in the eye and replied, “You’re right. It does look like it’s about to rain, and rain hard, like buckets.”
    Hearing that, both the coloring and expression on Leather One’s face turned ashen as he realized what was about to happen.
    Since Leather One was a bit shorter than me, I head-butted him directly on the top of his snot locker. This caused a loud crackling noise, which was a combination of his bones breaking and his blood squirting into my eyes and mouth, and onto my face.
    He went down in a heap, unconscious.
    Upon witnessing this, Leather Two put his vehicle into reverse gear and stepped on the gas pedal. This caused the jumper cables to dislodge from both our car batteries, but also enabled me to sprint a few steps to open his door and pull him out by his vest.
    I threw Leather Two to the ground, mounted him, and started pummeling his face with my closed left fist. Six strikes were what it took to knock Leather Two unconscious, although his blood continued to spew onto my clothes, fingers, hands, and forearms. I got up, got into my car, and drove away.
    That’s when it DID start raining hard.
    I was so wound up I couldn’t go straight home. Instead, I drove to the gym, parked my car in front, opened the door, turned on the lights, and entered the basketball court. I put on a second pair of socks, my basketball shoes, and removed a ball from the rack.
    I didn’t even stretch or change my bloody clothing. I just began doing full court drills at breakneck speed, all the while imagining it was Barry doing them with me, just like the old days.
    My own life started flashing before me, starting with my childhood in Brighton Beach during such a wonderful time period for Brooklyn and the whole U.S.A., then witnessing such a devolvement in every way.
    Should I have remained in Israel 12 years ago when I had the opportunity? Should I have gone into a career in teaching, coaching, or psychology?
    Should I have migrated to Los Angeles or Ft. Lauderdale, as opposed to remaining in the hellhole NYC had become?
    Maybe more importantly, should I make some of those changes now?
    While contemplating all of this, I somehow made an inordinate amount of shots in a row, and did so for two straight hours non-stop. By then the gym reeked of blood and sweat.
    I finally got tired, put the ball back on the rack and drove home.
    Now truly exhausted, I laid down to sleep which lasted for 12 uninterrupted hours. That was the longest and most fulfilling rest I’d had for years, and certainly since Barry left us. Throughout that extended slumber, I kept dreaming about all the great times we had, and upon awakening found myself uttering, “The points come in bunches when the ball goes to Funches.”
    Barry “Buckets” Funches.

Fallen Times

    Great smelling food made my mouth water. I kept my eyes closed for a little longer. The spices reminded me of holidays I had been on. The smell of the meat took me to barbecues we had had in the back garden when there was the rare glimpse of sun. I took one hearty breath in and as I let it out, I opened my eyes to see a table full of all the food you could imagine. It was like christmas on steroids. All on a long wooden table, like one you see in medieval pictures. I felt like I was at the last supper — although I was in the middle, so clearly there were some major differences. I sat back in my chair and looked around the table to see all of my friends and family — I swear I hadn’t seen them for such a long time. It was amazing to have them all here, with me, now. I began to smile. And I could feel my eyes begin to well. Everyone was having a verbal tennis match; I couldn’t get a single word that any of them were saying. It didn’t matter though. In between breaks I could hear the voices of my friends and that was all I needed. My stomach soon reminded me of why I was there. It wasn’t to enjoy the company of others, oh no, it was to eat all the food I could. In the middle there was a large chicken, or turkey, a bird of some kind anyway and I reached out and ripped off one of its legs — feeling a little bit like a barbarian as I did it, I enjoyed it. I turned it around in my hands for a moment, watching the light glisten off of the crispy skin. There was no point in waiting anymore. I brought it to my mouth and took a great big bite and immediately began to choke.
    I flung myself forward. My right hand around my neck and my other slapping my back — I must have looked like a mad man. A constant stream of sand flowed out of my mouth. And once it petered out, I reached in and scraped all the remnants out with my finger nails. It was grim. There is nothing worse than having sand in your mouth — well, there probably is, but it is pretty bad. I was gagging for water. My mouth was as dry as a desert. I looked around me to see if any of the bottles I had had anything left. One by one I picked them up, shook them about and hopelessly poured the last drop onto my tongue, which evaporated instantly. It was pointless to say the least. Although that didn’t stop me. I ransacked each and every bottle. I threw the last bottle down onto the ground and its emptiness echoed in my ears, reminding me of how hollow it was. My head hit against the wall behind me; waking up my headache that had persisted to reside in my head.
    The wind continued to fly through the narrow alleyway where I sat, bringing the sand with it; coating me in a fine layer of dry dust. There was no getting away from it. Acceptance was the only way. It was clear that I was back where I started. No banquets or feasts where I was. No friends or family to surround me. Nothing but empty bottles of water and a mouth full of sand whenever I slept with my stupid mouth open. My fault really, I guess, you would have thought I had learnt my lesson. Of course though, I hadn’t. From the market stalls, in the centre of the town, wafted the smell of exotic foods — clearly what had inspired my dream. Again my mouth began to water as I fantasied about the foods that they would be selling, or at least the foods that could be made with whatever they had. The smells only added to my predicament. Luckily, I could find some solace in the smells of the dirty animals and people who were walking on by. Not forgetting to mention the general stench of the city, that shouldn’t go amiss. My rumbling belly quickly turned into a churning sickness. Considering my situation, I felt no pain in losing my appetite. My friends’ voices had been lost in the crowded alleyway and were by the mundane mutterings of the people going by. I understood nothing. Not because it all merged into one, but because I had no idea what they were saying. Every so often the sound of a distressed or screeching animal would cut through whilst it flapped its nostrils. To top it all off, there was the sound of multiple tellies that were in every single shop opposite me, and they were also in the flats above; blaring out their nonsensical crap to the brain starved population. The dream was truly over and all that surrounded me was a reminder of what I am missing.
    There was no doubt of what time it was. The sun was high up in the sky, directly over head, making sure that it hit me with every bit of heat it was able to produce. I was sweating like nobodies business— and trust me, that is an understatement. There was no point in moving from my spot since along the entire alley the sun reigned supreme. There was no shadows to hide under and there were no clouds in the sky to defend my honour. I was alone in this battle, and it was certain I was losing. Half of my clothes were laying on the floor, either underneath me or my things. The clothes that I had on had pretty much fallen apart at the seams, with a number of holes dotted about the place. This, you would think to be a blessing, a form of ventilation: it wasn’t. All it did was allow the sand underneath and stick to my sweaty skin. It was a pain. The winds, that were channelled through, gave me some relief, for a brief moment, since along with them came a wave of sand, which, once again coated me. None of this was helped by the fact that I had no water. Despite all of this, I knew all I had to do was sit through it and endure whatever was coming my way, because at nighttime, when all of the market stalls were closing up, they would each pass by me and give me anything that they couldn’t sell. So, the lack of water and food was my own fault. I was never the best person when it came to rationing, and I was paying for it.
    Something tapped my left leg. I looked down to see a football that was falling apart, some of the inner orange ball showing. As I looked around to see where it had come from I noticed a boy dressed from head to toe in white, long shirt, thin trousers and a square skull cap looking hat. He stood on the spot, staring back at me stunned, clearly having no idea what to do. His reaction made me chuckle since there was no reason for him to be as scared as he was. I picked up the ball and with all of my efforts threw it back to him, trying my best to miss the people who were passing on by — of course, some of them were terrified of a crappy leather ball and jumped out of the way, as you would expect. The ball though rolled to his feet. Without looking at it he turned away and carried on through the alley. Between the people he ducked and dodged as he kicked the ball from one foot to the other — I am pretty sure he thought that everyone was a defender and they were all in his way of the goal at the end of the alley. After getting bored of passing numerous defenders who didn’t seem to put much effort into the game, he flicked the ball up and started to bounce it; keeping it in the air for as long as possible. People began to shout at him as they walked by, shooting daggers out of their eyes as they stared at him, shaking their heads and hitting the air once they were completely passed and safe from being hit by the airborne ball. However, the boy carried on, keeping his focus on what he was doing, content with doing his own thing.
    The good times could only last so long. A man fumbled the ball as he tried to grab it out of the air. The boy stopped immediately and stood up straight. He turned to look up at the man in front of him. The man’s eyes tightened as he shouted at the boy; his voice cut through the noise of the city. All life in the boy’s body left him and his shoulders dropped; his head followed. Once the man saw the boy’s eyes had left his, he wrapped his bony hand around his face, shaking the boy’s head as he shouted and screamed at him. When he was done, he threw the boy’s head out of his grasp and threw the ball onto a nearby roof; walking off and leaving the boy standing there, motionless, slumped on the spot. The man rejoined his friends, who had been waiting for him further down, each of them patting him on the back, laughing and looking back as they walked passed me.
    Using the wall I pulled myself up. My arms shook as I pushed against the coarse wall. My legs were tensed and all they want to do was cave in on themselves and fall back on the floor. My teeth were clenched; my eyes closed, beads of sweat ran down my face; burning underneath my skin — it had been a long time since I had done anything strenuous and now it was showing, that and the lack of food and water. Once I was up I fell against the wall, panting, keeping my eyes closed. My body began to sway a little, and colours swirled in front of my eyes. I slowly breathed in and out, counting the length of my breaths, waiting for the reeling sensation to be over.
    I opened my eyes. The world span slightly, but it was nothing that I couldn’t handle. I began to walk over to where the ball had been thrown, keeping my hands out in front of me as I wobbled from side to side, stumbling across the cobbles. Once I was on the opposite side of the alley, and further up by the boy, I looked up at the roofs to see if the ball had been pushed to the edge by the wind: it hadn’t. Clearly, I needed to remember which house the man threw the ball onto — from my experience, it was never usually where you thought it had landed anyway, meaning there was no real point in thinking to hard. I crashed against the side of the building and looked at the flat wall for a moment, trying to figure out how on Earth I was going to get up. All that there was was a small circular window, with a sill a couple of centimetres thick, meaning it was going to be a task and a half to climb up. Annoyingly though, I didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter. I placed my foot onto the wall and rested it there for a moment. My fingertips gripped onto the window, giving me a nice burning stretch in my joints. I whispered 1, 2, 3, and threw myself up. Both legs flailed in the air, hitting against the wall, each trying its hardest to grip onto something. They didn’t. I fell to the ground, a bit out of breath, with the world around me completely white. I couldn’t give up though. I waited for the world to regain its colour before pushing myself back up onto my feet and giving it another go.
    Again I placed my fingertips on the edge: my foot rested on the wall, I breathed in, counted and launched myself up. As soon as I was in the air I threw my foot up and onto the window sill, pushing me up further; I reached out to grab onto the edge of the roof. I made it. On the other side of the roof, the ball hit against the side, rolling up and down as the wind pushed it against the edge. My arms and legs were shaking as if there was an earthquake going on. The tips of my feet were beginning to slip — I kicked the window once or twice each time they did. Putting all of my weight onto my shaky arms, I pulled myself up and rolled onto the roof and onto my back. I spread out like a star. I tried to gather up the energy to get onto my feet, but it was long gone. Instead, I rocked on my back like a turtle until I was on my belly. I shimmied across the roof and over to the ball. It tried to escape my grip, making me want to scream, however, I grabbed it and wrapped my arm around it. At the edge of the roof I looked over. There was no way I was going to be able to climb down. I was for sure going to lose my footing or my legs were going to cave in. My head fell once I thought of my only real option.
    I threw the ball down, not caring if it hit anyone. Bit by bit I rolled myself off the edge, holding on for dear life. First, my left leg dropped down, dangling, putting me off balance, nearly overtipping me completely. Next to go was my right leg. This nearly took me out. I managed to hang on though. Finally, I was hanging there, over the side of the building. There was not much space between me and the floor so I let go — underestimating the gap completely. When I hit the floor, my legs — at long last — caved in. My chin slammed into my knees and my jaw crashed shut. I was knocked back and bounced over to the other side of the alley. I slumped into a ball, trying to breathe, my throat grumbling with each breath. My body ached. I could feel my feet tingle; some blood ran down my arms and my head began to throb. All I could do was lay on my side and try to regain some composure.
    Once my breathing normalised I began to count each breath. Taking in long breaths and letting them out very slowly. A voice came from above me — having no idea what they said. As I looked up I saw a figure all dressed in white. ‘No bother,’ I mumbled before placing my head in my hands and laying back on the floor.
    I carried on focusing on myself and my pains, ‘English?’ his high pitched voice pieced my ears, ‘you speak English?’ There it was again.
    Using my right hand I pushed the ground away from me. I rubbed my eyes incessantly before opening them and trying to focus on the boy. It was all a blur still, ‘Yeah, I speak English.’
    He bowed, ‘thank you for ball.’
    ‘No problem.’
    We stayed in silence for a moment. He began to roll the ball around in his hands and I tried to focus on who was in front of me, other than a white robe.
    ‘What you do here?’ He asked.
    ‘Nothing, anymore.’
    ‘Why you...here?’
    ‘I am trying to earn some money.’
    ‘What?’ he said as he crouched down, turning his head towards me; I moving slightly away.
    ‘I try to get money,’
    ‘You need money,’ he shouted in my ear, ‘what you sell?’ he reached into his pocket, I could hear the change getting shaken about.
    ‘Nothing,’ I waited, ‘nothing for children.’ I shouted as I waved my hand, persuading him to stop.
    The jangle of the coins stopped, ‘why no for children?’
    ‘It just isn’t.’
    He stood back up and looked away into the distance before walking off and over to where I had been sat. I saw him kneel down and move my things around, the bottles scraped against the floor, and then I heard a rattling noise.
    ‘What in orange bo...’ He stopped and looked away. His head turned around as he watched the people in the alley stop everything that they were doing and walk away in the same direction.
    He knelt down and put the bottle back down next to me, ‘I go now. I be back to help, later, yes?’ I could feel his smile.
    ‘Don’t worry about it.’
    ‘No, I help.’ The football fell to the ground and he began once again to hit it between his feet as he made his way through the sea of defenders who were all walking away from where I was. Slowly, I crawled along the floor until I was back with my things. The alley was soon empty. There was no more chatter in the streets, all that I could hear was the occasional animal in the distance. I rested my head in my hands and closed my eyes making the most of the peace that I could.
    When I opened my eyes I was shivering. The streets were completely empty and all of the shops were shut. Along the alley candles were lit. The moon’s glow only made it so far into the streets, creating a blue night above — some of the stars were out, more would have been if it wasn’t for the candles. Despite the cold I stared up at the night sky and lost myself for a moment. My rumbling stomach reminded me of my hunger and with that came back my thirst. Luckily for me, a couple of the market venders had dropped off bits of food and a couple bottles of water whilst I was asleep. First though, I pulled my jacket out from underneath me and popped it on. As I looked down at the feast of cooked meats, various vegetables and fruits, I rubbed my hands together and blew on them to warm them up. It was time to dig in and get rid of any hunger pains. I couldn’t wait to begin.
    As I tucked into my midnight feast footsteps echoed down the alley. I thought nothing of it. It was normal — of course. They began to pick up speed. They began to get louder. I looked left whilst I necked a load of water, but nothing was there. I looked right, but still nothing. The bottle cracking as the air gushed back. I took another bit. It was like the footsteps were coming from someone next to me. From left to right my head shot back and forth until they stopped and I saw at the end of the alley, someone stood dressed in all white completely still, with only his white shirt moving in the wind.
    I couldn’t see for sure, but I was positive that it was the boy. I tried my best to focus my eyes, squinting them to get a better look, however, it didn’t make much of a difference. ‘Hello,’ I shouted — couldn’t think of anything better to say. I waited for a reply but nothing came. The idea of shouting again crossed my mind, but if they didn’t reply the first time, what was to say that they would reply the second? Instead, I put the food down on the pieces of cloth that were beside me, took another swig of the water and placed my hands against the sandy wall to pull myself up. My legs were totally stiff as I got to my feet. I almost fell back down. I stayed against the wall for a moment, rotating my feet and hitting my thighs to try and help. As I looked up, I watched the boy turn to run away. His left foot rotating on the spot as he lunged to the side, pushing himself way. My legs weren’t back with me yet.
    Against the cobbles my feet dragged. My arms were held out, using the walls every time I lost my footing, which happened more often than not. I could feel the food and water dance around my stomach, getting sloshed about with each step. Despite this, I carried on following the foot steps, shouting out every so often, but getting nothing back. My feet started to fly in front of me, pushing off the ground, propelling me forward. My arms left my side and straightened up, leading me towards the echoes. I was back with it, the food was still sloshing about, but my body was no longer dead, that was the main thing. Around each corner I saw his foot hang in the air, thinking I was getting closer, that I was catching him up, only for him to be miles ahead as I got round.
    The night started to get darker. The air was cooler, thinner. The candles that lined the alleys were being blown out, two at a time. I looked up to see the moon covered by a dark cloud. The stars had been lost to the dark night sky. I could no longer hear his footsteps. They were no longer leading me. Instead, I could hear a squadron of boots behind me, marching in unison. I needed to keep going. I knew that if I followed the alley, followed my gut, that I would find where I needed to go. I dropped my head, and tried to pick up speed. Within minutes I was out of breath, my feet scraping against the floor, my arms flailing at my side. I kept my eyes in front of me, willing me to keep going, knowing that I did not have much further to go. The boots were getting closer though. I daren’t look back.
    Around my ankles I could feel a cool breeze. I looked down to see wisps of black smoke wrap around my ankles; spiralling up my calves; pushing up my legs. I kicked my legs in every direction; breaking their grasp. I focused my mind once again. Straightened my arms and leaped from one cobble to the next. However, it was not to last long. The smoke wrapped itself around my ankles once again. Running up the inside of my trousers. Though the holes in my jacket it sneaked in and curled around my arms. I tried to break free, but this time, I couldn’t lose its grip. It had me. The cool wisps wrapped tighter around my legs and around my arms. It reached in through and covered my entire torso. Its grip got tighter. I gasped for air, as each bit of oxygen was being forced out of my body. The smoke raised me into the air, pushing me through the maze, blowing out any candle that was still lit. I kicked and punched. I tried to let out a scream. Although, I couldn’t, and only choked instead. The night became pure darkness and the marching boots faded away.
    Before I opened my eyes, I could feel the cool uneven cobbles against my face as it rested in the cracks on the floor. My forehead was pounding. I took a deep breath in and got a mouth full of sand. As I picked myself up, to give myself a little more space, a sharp pain ran up my arms from my hands, forcing me back down. Under the moonlight I could only see the dark scratches on my palms and nothing more. A throbbing pain came from my knees. I rolled over and sat up. My trousers were more or less in shreds around my kneecaps. Some strands were stuck to my legs. I tried to pull them off, but each strand was determined to stay stuck, sending sharp pains through my legs each time I tried. I gave up in the end. I brushed some of the sand from off my face, although again, not all would come off and I looked up at the moon. It was no longer hidden.
    I looked up to see I was in the market square. There were shops around the sides — closed now of course — flats upstairs and a couple of arched alley ways leading you out on each corner. It was all a dark pale blue, kind of like being under the ocean. Except for the boy. He stood in the centre; not moving, planted on the spot. His white shirt was swaying in the gentle breeze, but that was all. The best I could, I picked myself up and walked over to him, making sure I did not scare him away. With my right hand I reached out, wishing him to come closer, ‘it is going to be alright,’ I kept repeating — I had no idea what else I could say. As I began to get closer, I saw that he was staring out into the distance, never blinking. His mouth was completely straight, as was the rest of him. No emotions, only his wide open eyes. I moved to make sure I was in his eye line, although I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me for sure. But it made me feel a little bit better about the situation. One step at a time, I pulled myself closer, making sure I was a little huddled over, not wanting to look like too much of a threat. He raised his arms. They completely covered his face. His high pitched screams were deafening. The crack of a gun shot flew through the air. Blood splattered out from his chest; knocking him; shaking his body. Another shot cracked. His head was knocked back. His whole body fell to the ground. He was now completely lifeless.
    A drone of voices surrounded me. From one alley to the next, I saw a sea of people, all dressed in long black shirts, some with hoods, others with hats, others with nothing covering their heads or faces at all. Most had their hands held out, as if they were ready to receive something. Through the drones I heard cries, wails and screams. As they moved in towards the boy, I began to walk backwards, through the parted crowd, my head going from side to side, watching all of the people descend on the lifeless boy who laid on the cold ground. The drone became louder the closer they got. All of them muttering in total unison. I couldn’t make a word out of it. They repeated the same words, same sounds, over and over again, as if chanting a prayer. A woman pushed her way through the crowd. Her screams raised above the chants and the other cries of the people. Beside the boy she fell to her knees. Dropped her head into his chest; crying out louder than before. She clung onto his shirt; rocking him on the ground before holding his head in her arms and hugging him as tightly as she could, continuing to rock her and his body. Slowly her eyes looked up. She saw me move away from the boy. Her eyes met mine. Her lips quivered. Her eyes were tight together. Her body was shaking all over. I could feel my mouth open and close involuntarily, making the sign of the cross endlessly, not knowing why, but not able to stop. Around my ankles and wrists the smoke began to ravel itself round again. I did not shake it off. I let it carry on up my legs and along my arms. I was lifted into the air and pulled away. Our eyes locked.

Fly

    I peered through the curtain, curious about the truck backing up next door’s driveway. For months I had watched as the piece of land next door was transformed; day after day work men had returned. For almost a year I’d watched as walls went up, windows were inserted and finally the roofing laid. What had been an empty section for decades was now the most beautiful townhouse I had ever seen. It was two levels, white brick with a little balcony over the garage. A stark contrast to our small run-down cottage.
    “Any children?” my mum asked, peering over my shoulder.
    “No people yet Mum,” I replied, moving the curtain further aside. “Just a furniture truck.”
    I watched the truck open, wondering what kind of furniture they would have. A Mercedes pulled up behind.
    “Very expensive,” Mum said, watching the car. The occupants stepped out.
    “More money than they know what to do with,” Mum said. I turned to her in surprise.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Look at their clothes, must have cost a fortune.”
    I followed her gaze. The woman wore a fur coat worth more than my parents’ pay cheques. It hung over a dress with brightly-coloured triangles, which I thought looked ghastly. The man’s brown hair was short-cropped and his blue full-length suit covered highly-polished black shoes. The back door opened and a girl in her late teens got out, her knee-length dress swayed as she moved, and her blond curls bounced. Any thoughts of making friends were dashed. She reminded me of the popular girls at school; there was no way she would want to hang out with me. I let go of the curtain and picked up my book from the coffee table. I plonked down on the couch, ignoring my mother’s gaze.
    “Why don’t you go say hello?”
    “They will be busy settling in.” I peered over the book to look at her. “I might later.” But probably not, I thought, switching my gaze back to the book. I heard my mother’s footsteps retreat as she headed into the kitchen. The banging of pots and pans told me she was preparing dinner.
    I startled from the story as Dad literally fell through the front door trying to push it open.
    “Damn door is sticking again.” He looked up at me. “Hello,” he said, “I see we have neighbours.” He put his briefcase beside the coffee table. “Anyone interesting?”
    “Yeah, you should see their clothes, straight out of a fashion magazine,” I said.
    “Hi honey,” Mum greeted him with a hug and a kiss. “How was your day?”
    “Same old. I see the neighbours moved in.”
    “Yeah, more money than they know what to do with I think.” She picked up a cup from the coffee table. “They arrived in a Mercedes, wearing flash clothing. You should see some of the furniture. Only the most expensive of everything came out of that truck.”
    “Any children?” he asked, turning his gaze to me.
    “Yeah, a girl, probably a little older than me.” And much more fashionable than me, I thought, looking down at my ripped jeans. I pushed my glasses back up my nose and looked back at my book.
    “Dinner will be ready in five,” Mum said, heading back to the kitchen.
    “Okay,” we said in unison.
    I continued to the end of the chapter, then retrieved my bookmark. I left the book on the couch and went to the table. The three of us sat chatting and eating our meal. I helped Dad with the dishes and returned to my book.
    “Time to take it to the bedroom,” Dad said after a while.
    “Ok Dad, night.” I kissed him on the cheek and picked up my book. I peered into my parents’ room. “Night Mum.” I gave her a hug and went to my room to get ready for bed.
    The next day I woke to the sun streaming into my room. I chucked on another pair of old jeans and hurried downstairs for some breakfast. I was greeted by Chewy, our chihuahua.
    “Can you take her out?” Mum asked. “I haven’t had a chance yet.”
    “Sure, come Chu Chu,” I said, patting my hands on my knees.
    She yapped happily and followed me out. I ran up and down the lawn and she chased me, yapping excitedly.
    “What a cute dog.” I gazed up at the fence. The girl I had seen yesterday was leaning over watching us.
    “Yeah she is,” I replied.
    “I’m Meagan,” she said. “This is Blue Lagoon.” On her arm was the biggest parrot I had ever seen. Noticing my interest, she continued, “She’s a Macaw, I found her when she was a chick and I trained her myself.” She gave a big grin.
    I moved towards the fence. “She’s beautiful. I’m Karla and this is Chewy.”
    “Hello there,” I said to the parrot.
    “Hello there,” it repeated. I giggled.
    “Look at this,” said Meagan, holding her arm out straight. “Blue, wave.” The parrot lifted one claw in a waving action.
    “That’s awesome,” I said.
    Chewy started barking, reminding me that I was supposed to be paying her attention.
    “I have to go,” I said. “Chewy wants her breakfast.”
    “Sure. Come around later if you want, unpacking is so boring.”
    “Yeah I might do that, thanks.” I headed inside. Chewy wagged her tail eagerly as I poured some biscuits into her bowl.
    “I see you met the neighbours’ girl,” Mum said as she put a plate of pancakes on the table.
    “Yeah, she’s so friendly.”
    “You sound surprised.” Mum arched an eyebrow.
    “Yeah, I guess I thought she would be snobby, with the expensive clothes and flash house.” I realised how stereotypical that sounded. “I mean ...” I didn’t know how to explain it better.
    “I know what you mean. I said hello to the woman this morning. She just stared right through me like she hadn’t heard anything.”
    “So, it’s just the girl who is nice then?”
    “I don’t know, I haven’t met the man yet.”
    “She’s called Meagan and she has a pet parrot.” I poured some maple syrup over my pancakes. “She’s invited me to go over later.”
    “That’s nice, are you going to?”
    “Yeah, I think I will.”
    I did my chores and went and knocked on Meagan’s door.
    “Yay, finally,” she greeted me. I stared at my surroundings as she took me into the lounge. Everything was immaculate, it was hard to believe they had only moved in yesterday. Expensive looking artwork hung on the walls, matching sculptures sat on either side of the entranceway. The TV was huge with an entertainment system connected to large speakers. They seemed to have the best of everything. Her mother was in the lounge rummaging through her bag. She barely noticed us.
    “This is Karla,” Meagan introduced me.
    “Hello,” she said, not even looking up from her rummaging.
    Meagan sighed. “Come on, I’ll show you my room.” She headed up the stairs.
    Meagan’s room looked more like a normal teenager’s room. It was full of stuff. Boxes in one corner that needed unpacking. A desk with paper and pens spread across it. A bed covered in pillows and throws. The room was massive, allowing for a separate seating area with a couch, chairs and bean bags. It was the perfect teen hangout spot. She even had a walk-in wardrobe full of beautiful designer-dresses and hundreds of shoes. The sheer amount of everything in her room was more than in our entire house. Blue Lagoon sat on a perch watching us.
    “Hello,” she squawked when she saw me watching her.
    “Hello pretty birdie,” I said.
    “Hello pretty birdie,” she repeated. I laughed.
    I wandered around her room looking at everything. The papers on the desk caught my attention. They were sketches of Blue, in different poses. I picked up one of her flying across the room. It had been shaded in blue coloured-pencil.
    “This is amazing,” I said, holding up the drawing.
    “I love birds. They always seem so free.” She opened the drawer under the desk. “When I die I want to come back as a bird.” She handed me a sketchbook. It was full of drawings of birds. All different colours and species, in different positions.
    “I’ve been studying them since I was little.” She placed the book back in the drawer. “We always travelled a lot. There were lots of exotic birds around. It became a bit of an obsession really.” She handed me a little wooden box; it was full of different coloured feathers.
    “These are gorgeous.”
    “What do you like to do?”
    “Reading mostly and playing with Chewy.”
    “Cool. Could never get into reading. Just my sketches. I did ballet for several years, but we moved so much it was hard to keep up.” She fished around in a box and brought out a photo which she handed to me. It was of her, several years younger, posed in a ballet pirouette, wearing a pale-pink leotard and ballet slippers. “Every studio we went to was doing something different. It became frustrating, so I quit.”
    “Why did you move so much?”
    “My parents’ jobs. They were always hunting for something better.”
    “Do you think you’ll be here long?”
    “This is meant to be the last time we move. Dad owns a corporate business now and Mum has her own fashion company. You hungry?”
    “Yeah actually.” I glanced at my watch. Twelve thirty already.
    We went back downstairs. There was no sign of Meagan’s parents. She saw me searching. “Dad is meeting some new clients today and Mum is going over some details of her new fashion label. She was looking for her memory stick of info when you got here.” She opened the fridge. “Hot or cold?”
    I stared in her fridge. Never had I seen so much food at once. There was so much stuffed in there that it threatened to jump out at me. I was speechless.
    My silence didn’t faze her. She decided for us, pulling out a box of waffles and placing some in the toaster. Then she put them in a bowl and provided a whole range of toppings to choose from. I settled for vanilla ice-cream with chocolate sauce. Delicious.
    She went into the lounge and turned on the TV, flipping through the channels. I stared in awe at the TV screen; never had I seen such a massive home-theatre system. It was almost like being in a cinema. Meagan stretched out on the huge corner-couch.
    “Your TV is ginormous,” I said.
    She laughed. “What’s the point in having all the latest technology if you’re not home to enjoy it.” She popped into the kitchen and came back with a packet of chippies. “That’s what Tina, my nanny, used to say about my parents.”
    “You have a nanny?”
    “Well, not any more. I’m old enough to look after myself now.” The crinkling of the chippie packet interrupted her as she offered them to me. “I had several nannies, one for each place we were in. But Tina was the nicest. She used to help me find feathers. And she helped me train Blue.”
    I watched her stuffing her face with chippies, her blond hair hanging freely over her face. I wondered what it must have been like. Moving from town to town. Everything new: school, house, nanny. Barely seeing your parents as they worked hard for the best of everything. I glanced through the window at our little cottage, the pale yellow paint was peeling off in most areas, there was moss growing on the roof-tiles and our lawn was in desperate need of a mow. My parents both worked hard. My mother was a waitress for a little cafe down town, my father worked in a shop selling technological gadgets to people like Meagan’s family, with too much money. Hard-work jobs with very little pay, was how my mother described them. But despite that they always had time for me. My mother had included me in her household chores, teaching me to cook and sew from a young age. They also both reserved at least a day each week for family fun, trips to the beach, going to the pools, camping. It was the first time I had really felt grateful. We might not have much but at least I had that relationship with my parents. I was beginning to realise that Meagan didn’t.
    I glanced at my watch. It was coming into late afternoon. “I should probably head back home.” I stood, picking up my jumper which I’d dumped on the couch. “Thanks for inviting me.” I headed to the front door.
    “Are you doing anything tomorrow? Would you mind if I came around?” I had a fleeting image of our tatty couch and old-school TV. Monday, Mum would be working, but I knew she wouldn’t mind. I searched my mind for an excuse to say no, I didn’t want her to see how basic our little house was. But I couldn’t think of anything. “Sure,” I reluctantly agreed.
    The next day I was still eating breakfast when she turned up.
    “Hope I’m not too early. I was up at 7am and no one else is home.”
    “Na that’s fine,” I said through mouthfuls of breakfast. “I just have to take Chewy out and do my chores first, though.”
    “Yeah that’s ok. I’ll tag along.”
    Chewy was eager to get outside. Mum had rushed out without paying her any attention this morning. She eagerly lapped up the attention of having both of us playing with her. Meagan watched me with interest as I loaded up the dishwasher and went around the house tidying and cleaning. “Why do you have to do so much?” she asked.
    “I get money for doing it, plus it helps Mum and Dad out.” I picked up my shoes from the lounge and returned them to the laundry. “Do you not have to do chores?”
    “Na we have a housekeeper that does everything. But I look after Blue. My parents were never happy about me having her in the house, so I promised I would do everything for her.”
    When I finished cleaning I led the way to my bedroom.
    “Wow this is so cosy,” Meagan said. I raised an eyebrow at her, but she was busy looking around the room. Studying her face for some sign of sarcasm I concluded she was genuinely impressed. I followed her gaze. My single bed was neatly made with my favourite teddy bears tucked next to my pillow on either side. On one side of my bed was a small black bedside cabinet with two little drawers. My lamp sat on top, its white-lace design casting shadows of flowers and butterflies onto the base. On the other side of my bed was a matching bookshelf, full of books. A few ornaments that I had been given sat on top, they were of dogs mostly. Cosy wasn’t how I would describe it, more like cramped.
    “It’s ok I guess,” I replied.
    “Everywhere that we have lived has been bigger than the last. My parents seem to enjoy it, but to me each one seems less personal.” She gestured around the room. “This feels homely.”
    “But your room is so spacious.”
    “Which is great for lots of people, but a bit overkill when it’s only me and Blue.”
    I nodded, realising what she meant. I plonked myself on the bed. Meagan copied me.
    “Back to school next week. What school are you going to?” I asked.
    “Wakefield,” she replied, still looking around the room.
    I put my hand out for Chewy, who had appeared around the door. “Year 13?”
    “Yeah, you?” She bent down to scratch the little dog’s head.
    “Eleven.”
    “Looking forward to it?” she asked.
    “Kind of. It will be nice to see my friends again, they live too far away to come over in the holidays, but I’m not looking forward to the school part of it.”
    She laughed. “Just another first day at school for me. I don’t even know how many I have been to now.”
    “That must be tough.”
    “Yip, just enough time to get to know the teachers and what they expect of us, even make a few friends, then off to another school, another town. I guess I gave up caring after a while.” She picked up an animal book from my bookshelf and absently turned the pages. “I failed the last couple of years. I spent more time drawing than doing class work. The teachers never seemed to notice, or maybe I was already so far behind that they just didn’t bother.” She stopped turning pages to pause at a picture of a red and purple parrot. “That’s an Eclectus. I saw one once in the forest near where we lived. I still think they are the most beautiful, besides Blue Lagoon of course,” she said with a grin. “Some days I wish I could just turn into one and fly away from here.”
    I showed her some photos of Chewy when she was a puppy, sharing some of my childhood memories. I heard the door crash open. Meagan startled.
    “It will just be Mum on her lunch break. Our door sticks a lot.”
    “Karla, can you give me a hand?” Mum called out.
    I headed into the kitchen, Meagan followed behind.
    “Hi honey,’ Mum greeted me, “Hi Meagan.” She was busy rummaging through the fridge. “Thought I’d make some cheese-and-tomatoes on toast. Can you give me a hand please?”
    “Sure Mum, I’ll grab some tomatoes.” I motioned Meagan to follow me. Chewy pushed past as I opened the door.
    “Chu Chu,” I said, laughing at her eagerness to join us again.
    I went over to our vegie garden and started pulling tomatoes off a plant.
    “You’re so lucky,” Meagan said.
    I looked up at her, surprised. “What’s lucky about growing tomatoes?”
    “Not really the tomatoes,” she said. “Just all these things that your parents taught you: gardening, cooking, cleaning. I wish my parents had taken the time to teach me. But then I wonder if they know how to do them themselves, we have always had other people do them for us.” She leant over and picked a tomato, copying what I did. “I feel like I missed out in a way.” She sighed. “I know people see our expensive house and clothes, they see us as being successful and lucky. But I would much rather have what you have.” She picked another tomato. “Your parents are home when you need them, they spend time with you and teach you stuff.” She wiped her eyes.
    “This should do,” I said, referring to the small pile of tomatoes we had gathered. “Enough for a week here.” I made a pouch with my jumper, placing in the tomatoes. “I can teach you to do those things,” I offered.
    “Would you?”
    “Of course.”
    “Thank you. I keep wondering what will happen when I move out. I will have to learn everything from scratch.”
    “Are you planning on moving out?” I started walking back to the house.
    “Once I finish school I figure I might as well. Get a job or something.” She followed behind me. “What about you?”
    “I always figured I’d go to university.”
    “I’d never get into university, my grades aren’t good enough.”
    We were both silent. Lost in our own thoughts. She didn’t need to say why. We both knew. Too many gaps in her education. Another result of her moving so much. I wondered how her parents could do that to her? Had they never considered what impact it would have on her life? Did they not care?
    I pushed open the door to the house and Chewy raced back in. We followed somberly.
    My mum looked from Meagan to me, sensing our change in mood. “Just what I need,” she said cheerfully, taking a few tomatoes off my pile and leaving me to sort out the rest. She set to chopping them. In no time our toast was ready. “This is yummy,” Meagan declared. “Thanks Mrs Pratchett.”
    “Please call me Anne.”
    “Thanks Anne.”
    “Well I better be heading back,” she said, placing her plate into the dishwasher. “Have fun girls.”
    “Now what?” Meagan asked.
    “Do you like computer games?”
    “I haven’t really played any.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah we have a computer at home, but I’m only allowed to use it for school stuff.”
    “The Sims is pretty cool,” I said, loading it up.
    As we were playing, Meagan resumed our conversation from before lunch. “The silly thing is my parents think they are doing the best for me.” She paused staring at the simulated version of herself that she had just created. The features were different, but the blond hair, green eyes and short dress were a fair representation. “They both grew up in poverty and work so hard to make sure I don’t experience that.”
    “But don’t they realise you need time with them too? And what about your education?”
    She shrugged. “They don’t see education as important.” She tapped the Enter button on the keyboard, placing her character into the world. “Neither of them did well at school. They started off with jobs and worked their way up. I suspect they think I will do the same.” She sighed. “I don’t think it’s that easy these days. And most of the things I’d have to do in a job I’ve never had to do. I’d be better getting an education. But it’s too late for that now.”
    “Have you told your parents this?”
    “Yes, but they don’t listen. They think they know best.”
    We spent the rest of our afternoon creating our Sim families and thinking of cool names for them. Mum was back before I even realised it was so late.
    “I suppose I should go,” said Meagan, getting up to leave.
    “You’re welcome to stay for dinner, if your parents don’t mind?” Mum said.
    “They won’t be home till much later. I get my own dinner.” She sat back down. “Yes please.”
    “Can we help with anything?” I asked Mum.
    “I need a spud peeler and a cheese grater,” she stated.
    “What would you prefer; peeling potatoes or grating cheese?” I asked Meagan.
    “Cheese please.”
    I handed her the grater and started on the potatoes.
    Not much later, Dad arrived. “Got some helpers tonight?” he asked, walking into the kitchen.
    “Yeah Meagan wants to learn to cook,” I said.
    “Do you not help at home?”
    “No, my parents usually eat at work.” She shook the cheese out of the grater. “Our housekeeper makes meals and leaves them in the freezer for me.”
    I noticed my parents exchange a look.
    “You’re always welcome to have dinner with us,” my dad said. “We’re not too bad company.”
    Meagan chuckled. “Thank you.”
    We all contributed to the shepherds’ pie and enjoyed the companionship it created. After dinner Meagan headed home to feed Blue and get ready for the night.
    The week continued with us taking turns at each other’s houses. Meagan showed me some new tricks she had taught Blue and I taught her some simple meals I had learnt to make. It was Monday morning before we knew it.
    “Ready yet?” Mum asked. “I have to get to work.”
    “Yes Mum, think I’ve got everything.” I picked up my bag and followed her to the car. I glanced over at the neighbours’. I guessed Meagan had already left.
    At school I hunted out my friends from last year. Kate, who had been my best friend for years, was in my form room again.
    “This is awesome,” she said. “I can’t wait to tell you about my holiday!” She looked different I thought. Must have been her trip. She was wearing more sophisticated clothes than I had ever seen her wear before, and her long brown hair was plaited into a braid with little gems throughout it.
    At lunchtime we all gathered in our favourite place on the quad, talking and exchanging holiday experiences.
    “Woah, look at the new girl,” Kate said suddenly.
    I glanced over to where she was looking. There was Meagan in the middle of the most popular girls in our school. She had on a red designer-dress that showed off her cleavage, and strappy scarlet sandals.
    “She looks like a Barbie doll,” said Rose.
    “A bit overdressed for school if you ask me,” said Sophie.
    Great I thought. There goes that friendship. She had been swallowed up by the in-crowd. “Her name is Meagan, and she’s actually really nice.”
    All three girls turned to stare at me. “You know her?” said Kate.
    “Yeah she’s my neighbour,” I continued, filling them in about the holidays.
    Later in the corridor I walked past her. “Hi Karla,” she gushed. The girls next to her glared at me. Either she didn’t realise that at our school you couldn’t be friends with the popular crowd as well as the nerds, which we were labelled as, or she just didn’t care. I decided the latter. “Hi Meagan,” I said, smiling back at her, ignoring the other girls.
    Things continued much the same. I hung out with my friends at school and she hung out with the popular girls. After school and in the weekends we would hang out at each other’s houses.
    Then one day I was sitting in the lounge reading a book, as I often did if I didn’t hear from Meagan, when the noisy motor of a car brought me out of the book. I went to the window and peered outside. A bright red Ferrari was parked in front of Meagan’s house. A tall dark-haired man got out and made his way up the steps to the front door. Meagan opened it, greeting him enthusiastically, then followed him to the car. Her dress was low-cut and short, but very sophisticated, in black, with black knee-high boots. She looked extremely grown up.
    “Off on a date?” my mum asked, looking out the window to see what I was staring at.
    “It certainly looks like it,” I replied. She hadn’t said anything to me. But then I had hardly seen her all week, what with school, homework and chores. I wondered how she had met such a good-looking guy.
    That was the beginning of many. She only dated him for a week before a yellow Lamborghini showed up. This man wasn’t as tall, but just as handsome. She wore a fitting red dress and red heels for that date. Week after week it was a different man, with a different flash car, and another skimpy dress. I saw less and less of Meagan as men started to take over her interests.
    “I don’t get it,” I said one day to Mum. Meagan had just left with yet another guy. “What is the point in dating all these guys?” I flopped down on a chair at the table, watching Mum chop carrots. I thought about the only relationship I’d had. Jack had been the sweetest boyfriend. We’d been together for about seven months before mutually agreeing to break it off. We had moved slowly and I know I had freaked out about where it was leading. It still hurt. But I had gained a friend. I couldn’t imagine having relationships like Meagan’s. There was no time to get to know each other.
    “Maybe she’s searching for something,” Mum said, pausing her chopping. “Could be attention she’s after, or companionship.”
    “I thought that was what we had.”
    “It’s just my opinion but I think maybe the attention she’s getting from these men is replacing the lack of attention her parents give her.”
    I thought about it for a moment. “So it’s not really about the relationships but about feeling wanted?”
    “Yeah I think so.”
    “But that’s just silly.”
    “From what you’ve told me of Meagan’s parents, I’d say that’s what it is. A desire to feel needed.”
    “That’s so sad. There is so much more to her than her looks.” I took a piece of carrot off the plate and popped it into my mouth. When I had finished chewing, I continued. “She’s smart and talented. You should see the sketches she did of Blue. She just adores that parrot.”
    “That might be so, but she’s missed out on a lot of love and attention from her family and that has to have some impact on her.”
    One day I was getting out of Mum’s car when I noticed a Ute pull up next door. The man that got out was ruggedly handsome, but different to the other men I had seen. Even Meagan seemed to have toned it down, wearing a halter top and knee-length skirt, with her knee-high boots. She looked much more casual than I had seen her for a while. After three weeks the same Ute was still showing up in front of her house. Maybe she had finally met someone worth building a relationship with, I thought.
    I was outside exercising Chewy one morning when Meagan stuck her head over the fence.
    “Morning Karla, how’s it going?”
    “Hi Meagan, I’m good thanks. Yourself?”.
    We chatted for some time and she told me she was going away with her boyfriend, Michael, for a week.
    The day she returned I heard Michael’s Ute pull up. He gave her a hand to take in her luggage. All was quiet. I was flipping through the pages of my book when I heard screaming. I looked through the window and could make out figures in Meagan’s room. I strained to hear what they were saying.
    “You killed her,” Meagan screeched. “You couldn’t even do that for me. I hate you both.” My heart sank. Blue Lagoon, I realised. That bird had been her world.
    A few minutes later she came storming out the door with her luggage again, Michael following behind her carrying some other items. She let him through the door then slammed it hard. Tears were streaming down her face. She got in his Ute and they drove away.
    I saw her a few days later when she came by to collect the rest of her things. She told me she had moved in with Michael and she gave me his address. I didn’t see her much after that.
    I should have gone to see her sooner, but I wasn’t sure how I fitted in to her new life. She had quit school and she never went to her parents’ house. Then some rumours started to surface about her getting involved in drugs. It had been three months since I had seen her, when I decided to take Chewy for a walk and visit her one Saturday morning.
    Meagan’s new home was at the far end of town; the houses around this area were further apart, with more land and trees than in town. The address she had given me was isolated from the other houses. As I approached it I entered a canopy of trees. A little cottage was tucked away in the trees. There were several colours of paint on the main body of the house as if the owner just couldn’t be bothered matching the paint. A little track continued down to the river. I could just make out the water glistening through the trees. I looked around the forest, several birds chirped and flittered through the trees. Meagan would love this place, I thought.
    I went up the stairs and knocked on the door. After some time, a girl answered. I almost didn’t recognise her. She looked gaunt and skinny, I could see her cheekbones. Gone were the designer clothes. Instead she wore grey track pants that barely clung to her hip-bones, and an over-sized tee shirt. The bubbly energy I remembered was now replaced by exhaustion, as if just walking across the room was a huge effort. A lump formed in my gut. This was not the Meagan I remembered. Her home was messy and unkempt. I felt sick to my stomach as I looked around. Our conversation was awkward as if we no longer knew what to say to each other. I left feeling empty, cheated in a way, as if someone had stolen my friend and left behind an empty shell. Tears filled my eyes.
    Still, I endeavoured to go back the next weekend. She was like a lost puppy that I felt compelled to look out for.
    The next weekend Michael’s Ute was in the driveway when I arrived. Meagan seemed confused at first as if she didn’t know who I was. Michael came into the room, his brown hair was shaggy and his beard was unkempt. He disappeared with Meagan. I waited in the quiet for a while. I could hear them messing around in the other room and I wondered if I should just go. They returned just as I got up. Michael had a needle in his hand. I could see track-marks up Meagan’s arm. I felt cold. Meagan was giggling and seemed to be in some private world with Michael. I said goodbye and walked out. She wasn’t the same Meagan who had moved in next door. My friend had gone. I thought about the times we had spent together as I walked home. Playing with Blue, creating Sim families, cooking. My heart was aching, and the tears were flowing freely down my cheeks by the time I arrived home. I didn’t bother to hide them.
    “What an earth happened to you?” Mum asked.
    I told her about Meagan. “I don’t know what to do.”
    “There isn’t much you can do,” my dad cut in, “except let her know you are there for her.”
    “But it’s unfair. She’s wasting her life.”
    “Yip it is. Life can be very unfair sometimes.”
    Just then there was a bang on the door. Michael was standing there. “Where is she?” His voice was strained. His pupils looked smaller than usual and there was fear in his eyes.
    “Meagan? I haven’t seen her since I left your house.”
    “We fought, and she stormed off.” He was pacing up and down the path. “I figured she might come here.”
    I thought about the bush around their house filled with birds. “Did you see which direction she went?”.
    “No, I figured she would head to you.”
    “So, you didn’t see her leave your place?”
    He shook his head.
    “I think I know where she would go.” I turned my gaze to my father. “Can you give me a ride to Meagan’s.”
    He nodded.
    When I got there, I headed straight into the bush, going in the direction of the most birds. I was about to give up when a red and purple parrot flew in front of me. It squawked and flapped its wings then headed towards the river. I recognised it as an Eclectus, Meagan’s favourite bird. I followed it. I came to a clearing by the river. Once my eyes adjusted, I saw her body lying on the river bed. Her lips were blue.
    “My baby,” Michael cried and ran to her side.
    My dad came up behind me. “Do you have a phone?” he asked Michael.
    “Yeah in the house.” He tossed him a key.
    Soon the medics arrived, but there was nothing anyone could do. She had overdosed. The police assessed the situation and took our statements, then it was time to go home. Michael headed towards the house.
    “I’ll meet you at the car,” I called over my shoulder to Dad. Then I followed Michael to the door.
    “Do you mind if I look in her room?” I asked him. He nodded.
    Her room was a mess, like the rest of her life. There were needles and other drug paraphernalia beside the bed. Her desk sat at the foot of the bed and I rummaged through it till I found what I was looking for. I pulled out Meagan’s sketchbook and the pictures of Blue, plus her little container of feathers. I knew she would have wanted me to have them and I doubted Michael would care for them. I walked back to the car.
    The Eclectus appeared in front of me again, fluttering and squawking to get my attention before landing on my arm, as I had seen Blue do to Meagan. Her voice echoed through my head: “When I die I want to come back as a bird.” I wasn’t sure I believed in reincarnation, but it did seem coincidental. “Meagan?” I asked the bird. Fighting back the tears. It squawked and appeared to nod. “Bye my friend. Enjoy your freedom.”
    It squawked again then flew into the treetops and disappeared. I hoped she would be happy now, I thought, as I joined my father at the car.

No Preacher Man

    Bobby and Ginny were in shock. They could hear the choir belting out the chorus to God, but the tones were muddled, sorta like the echoey shouts they heard whenever they played in the railroad tunnel on the outskirts of town.
    Oh happy day (oh happy day)
    As the age of long seconds passed, the words of the choir became sharper, but the driver of the Caddy showed no sign of turning back for Davey’s bloody unresponsive body.
    Oh happy day (oh happy day)
    The church was located alongside one of those popular thoroughfares that travelers were always using to go somewhere from somewhere else. The picturesque town reminded those passing through of the beauty of small town lives. How easy it must be to live in this simple community.
    When Jesus washed (when Jesus washed)
    He washed my sins away (oh happy day)
    The long stretch of road was straight and flat as far as the eye could see, and drivers were overcome by the illusion that both time and their cars moved like bubbles through molasses. To compensate, the pedal went to the metal and that small Iowa town flashed by like the flickers of an old projector, only screeching to a halt when drivers saw something of particular beauty or ran down a child in the street, both of which would be observed and promptly forgotten.
    Sing sing sing, oh happy day!
    Inside the church, the gospel song ended after the soloist drew out the longest ‘day’ Bobby had ever experienced. The choir would be sitting while Bobby’s father, the Preacher Man, would begin the sermon, and when Ginny opened her mouth to scream, Bobby clamped his hand over her mouth and leaned real close.
    “We didn’t do nothing, Gin. Nothing,” Bobby said, and he started walking toward Davey’s body in the street. Davey was facedown, a thin reservoir of blood drained from a battered lip to a pool of bloody mud beneath it. His arm was bent backwards, a bone busted through the skin, and that too poured blood on the dusty ground. The baseball Davey had leaped out to catch lolled beside him in the dust.
    “Go getchur pa,” Gin yelled. She stared at her brother’s bloody body with tears in her eyes and her fists balled at her side. “The Lord’ll save Davey.”
    “I ain’t gettin no preacher man,” Bobby said as he looked over Davey’s wounds. “’Sides, Dad’d belt me raw if he knew I snuck outta his sermon.”
    Bobby bent down to Davey and saw his dust-covered eyes. He brushed blood from the broken boy’s lips and Davey gasped and coughed out blood.
    He looked up to Bobby, his savior, and coughed out one word. “Preacher...”
    Bobby’s dad wasn’t gonna like this one bit. Call it God’s punishment, he would. Bobby could hear him right now, ‘Sneakin’ off during one o’ my sermons, boy? Y’ever read the—’ and then he’d slow down to spit every letter at Bobby, ‘—Old Testament?’
    “Ain’t getting no preacher,” Bobby repeated. He grabbed his friend’s good arm and started dragging him out toward the wheat fields. “We gone get you better, Davey Boy. You gonna be fine.”
    Gin ran after him. “Bobby, where you takin’ my brother?”
    “We gonna take care o’ him, Gin. Keep ‘im safe in the ol’ toolshed, ya hear?” And when Bobby started to pull again, Gin ran alongside him and grabbed Davey at the shoulder, inches away from the protruding bone. Davey whimpered and spittle dribbled down his chin mixing with blood and further staining his deep red shirt. The tie he’d worn to church, a thin black line, had gotten tighter around his neck and to Gin looked like the devil’s black hands pulling Davey down to Hell.
    “I don’ wanna die, Gin,” he coughed, and blood spattered on the golden wheat. Gin looked down to see that he was gone, or at least a little gone.
    “Stop, Bobby!” she shouted. She dropped Davey’s shoulder and put her hands on his chest and then his neck and then his wrist. There was something, a slight bump, but Gin didn’t know what that meant so she slapped him. He coughed again and his head lolled forward.
    Davey groaned, but the other children ignored him and dragged him quick as they could out to the abandoned toolshed. Only folks came out here was appraising land, the preacher man told.
    Gin kicked the front door and fell inward, accidentally dragging Davey’s bloody body into the wall. Davey let out a grunt and emerged with a new bloody cut across his forehead.
    “Gin, careful,” Bobby let her know. They heaved Davey through the door and found a wall to press him up against.
    “Davey, hey Davey, you gon’ make it. We gonna get you some water and you’re gonna be fine. Baseball and everything. Pray. Just pray, Davey.”
    Bobby grabbed Gin’s hand and they ran back out to the golden fields while Davey oozed out of himself in the abandoned shack.

    The building was twisted by age, perhaps built sometime in the four decades prior to Ginger, David, and Robert’s births. Rotten grain scattered its floor and gained a revenant spark under Sunday’s golden rays. The building had a slight tilt, and as the preacher man told it, could fall at any moment. Those children were not welcome to play in the tool shed, but words are just words and children are the beasts of men. Amidst the golden fields, it had become a tourist destination of sorts. Those travelers passing by on the road would stop to gaze at the beauty of abandonment. Some would take pictures, and others would just absorb the air that lived ‘round those parts.

    “We gonna need Band Aids,” Bobby told Gin as they ran toward the church, “but you’re gonna need to be all quiet like, ya hear? Preacher’ll beat me if he hears what happened. Davey shouldn’ta been playin’ in the street nowheres anyways.”
    “You threw the ball—“
    “Shut up, Ginny. Yer my friend too, aintcha?” Bobby said. At the church, the children jumped when wind rattled the front double doors before they snuck around the side. The windows were coated with a thick dust, but fearing that their slinking shadows would be spotted, Bobby gestured for Ginny to crouch as they rounded the building. The AC unit tilted out the window nearest the congregation and rattled something fierce. There was a bolt loose and it’d be by the grace of God if it could last out the dog days, or so the preacher said. Bobby peered around the back of the barn and saw the discarded cigarettes the truckers left behind when they were telling dirty jokes in the dusty lot by the back door, back where Jesus wasn’t watching. But service was still going and everyone was inside getting their fill of the Good Lord’s grace.
    The door knob creaked when Bobby turned it, and little Gin shushed him, so he put his other hand on the door and eased it open.
    “Now Jesus... where did Jesus write his words?” came the Preacher’s voice.
    “The sand,” the congregation said back to him.
    “And Sharon, can you tell me why Jesus wrote his words in the sand?”
    Bobby froze but felt Gin push him. Her eyes were starting to water.
    “Hurry,” Gin hissed.
    They entered through the back door and Bobby pointed Gin toward the bathroom for bandages. He was going looking for water.
    “Er,” came Sharon’s voice from the sanctuary. “I don’t know, Preacher. I’d sure like to have known what he said.” The congregation laughed in agreement.
    A new voice piped up in the back. Bobby recognized it as the trucker who called his truck Doggy on account of its style, or so the man had said. “Preacher, I think the Good Lord wanted to show us the temporary nature of our living here on this Earth. Seems to me like he was showing about how we get washed away to Heaven.” The congregation murmured at this.
    Bobby finished filling his glass of water and started thinking about what John Wayne would do, so he decided to grab the church’s bottle of sacramental wine on top of the broken fridge to pour on Davey’s wounds. He pulled up a stool and climbed on top.
    “Maybe, Clyde. Maybe,” said the Preacher. “Personally, I think Jesus was a smart man. I think he knew, I think he knew the kind of power his words, the words of the Son of God, would have over his flock. And I think the Good Lord wanted—“
    There was a scream from near the sanctuary. Gin was crying.
    “Davey,” she wailed, the congregation shifted in response. “He gonna die.”
    Bobby tried to run but he slipped off the stool and landed on his back. The sacramental wine shattered to his left and seeped into his dusty clothes. When he tried to stand a shadow fell over him. When he looked up, his father, the preacher man, looked him dead in the eyes and Bobby felt only sadness.
    The Preacher wrapped his arms around Bobby and picked him up from the ground. “It’ll be okay, boy. Now where he at?”
    The congregation, the choir, Bobby, Gin, and the Preacher Man ran across the church grounds and through the golden wheat fields to the abandoned toolshed. Preacher stepped in first and looked down at Davey. The boy’s head was smashed above the jaw and his arms lay limply beside him.
    Gin tried to run past Preacher, but he stopped her with a strong arm.
    “Preacher,” she shouted. “Preacher, is Davey gonna live?”
    “No, Gin.” He pulled the girl tightly against him and looked at Bobby with eyes so deep with love that the boy cried. “He’s gone.”
    The parish left. The police came. The children provided details about the car, and Gin cried a lot. But the next day, the trampled crops rose back up and the blood was absorbed by the indolent Earth. Around noon, a falcon landed on the picturesque toolshed and screeched. A passerby driving a dusty red Volkswagen pulled off to the side of the road and walked to the edge of the field. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She could smell the Earth. She could hear the call of the bird. And she could feel God all around her.

The Secret Life of Milo Wakeman

    “Why don’t you check out this model?” he said. “I think it’s what you’re looking for.”
    The salesman led me to something resembling a large white metal Pac-Man which he clamped around my skull, gobbling up the top half of my head. I imagine I looked like a giant mushroom, though for a moment I couldn’t see, hear, or even smell anything at all. Then he switched on the device, and I was in a video simulation of the showroom I’d been standing in a moment earlier. The resolution was crystal-clear. If I hadn’t known I’d just strapped on a virtual reality machine, I doubt I could have told the difference.
    “It’s top of the line. Bet you’ve never seen one this advanced before, huh?”
    He was right. But a 360-degree recreation of a room that already exists is a far cry from a world of pure imagination.
    “Can I try it out?”
    “Of course, Mr. Wakeman. Let me show you how it works. If you reach just underneath your right ear, you’ll find the switch. That’s right... don’t turn it on yet until I finish explaining. That will bring your brain waves to a state approximating REM sleep. You will then be in what is essentially a lucid dream. Your subconscious will be generating what you experience, though you can control it consciously if you really concentrate. When you’re ready for it to end, reach back up to reset the switch. I’ll be waiting here.”
    I reached up under my ear, and looked over to my guide, I guess for permission.
    “Go ahead,” he nodded.
    “I’m not sure yet where I want to go.”
    “Turn it on,” he said. “You already know, even if you’re not aware of it.”
    I hit the switch and immediately felt... well, “sleepy” isn’t exactly the right word. Disoriented? The room flickered in and out between multiple realities, but I could only liken the feeling to a very intense daydream where you become oblivious to what’s actually going on around you. Eventually my environment stopped fluctuating and seemed to settle on a crowded, messy apartment. It was a house party. A room of loud music, dusty shelves, and endless red Silo cups. Everyone was slightly older than college age, but still younger than me. Of the infinite possibilities of time and space, this is where my mind opted to go? I didn’t even like these things much when I actually lived through them.
    “Hey!” came a voice from somewhere. “You look like you need a drink.”
    I turned to find one of the red cups being held out in my direction. The guy offering it was about ten years younger than me, dressed in all the latest styles. He looked like he stepped out of the glossy pages of a magazine. If I hadn’t created him myself, I would’ve assumed he wouldn’t want to talk to me.
    “Thanks. I’m Milo.”
    “Hey Milo. I’m Max. Nice to meet you.”
    “I always wanted a friend named Max,” I blurted out, before realizing how incredibly stupid that sounded. But he laughed it off.
    “What a coincidence. But listen, Milo, if you’re sticking around for a bit, we’ve gotta do something about this look. Remove the bowtie please.”
    I started undoing it as he continued looking me over. “Let’s lose the glasses too. If you’re gonna do hornrims, you need everything else to look just right.”
    I started protesting that I needed them to see, but he removed them over my objections, and my vision remained 20/20. He looked me over once again.
    “That’s a start anyway. Come on, let me show you around.”
    We circulated the room, popping in and out of conversations. Social gatherings had never been easy for me, but with Max’s help the experience was effortless. The men were nonthreatening and interested in what I had to say. The women were attractive and mildly flirtatious. It was the most fun I’d ever had at a party. At one point I casually mentioned to Max how the hours were simply flying by, and that triggered in me a panicky awareness.
    “Oh, fuck, how long have I been here?”
    I fumbled around the back of my ear until I found the button, and the world again began swimming before my eyes. A moment later, I was back with the salesman.
    “Is it still on?”
    He unlatched the device, and my field of vision transitioned from the video simulation to what I could only assume was the actual showroom.
    “Oh no, I think I left my clothes there.” I felt around my face and neck. The salesman chuckled.
    “Heh, heh, heh... I don’t know what you were doing in that world, but in this one your clothes never came off. Now let’s talk pricing.”
    I took a deep breath before opening the door, still uncertain of what I planned to say. When I finally came in, the table was, of course already set, and Martha was headed to the kitchen. She must’ve begun moving at the sound of my keys.
    “You’re late.”
    “I’m sorry. Lost track of time.”
    She got the roast from the oven and began fixing the plates.
    “What is that?” she asked, regarding the box in my arms.
    “It’s...well, I stopped at mall and got... it’s the new VR2500.2. Have you seen the commercials?”
    She had mastered that look of teachers who think you need to try harder, librarians who want you to take the conversation outside, and doctors who think you should quit smoking.
    “You know, there are plenty of things this house needs much more desperately than another overpriced toy.”
    I didn’t know if this was an invitation for me to defend my decision, an instruction for me to reverse it, or merely an expression of disappointment being stated for the record. I chose to proceed as if it were the latter. I put away my new machine and sat down to eat. At the first bite I complimented her on the meal, followed by the obligatory period of tense silence, then I attempted to break the ice.
    “How was your day?”
    “Busy.”
    Busy doing actual work rather than hanging around stores making frivolous purchases. Busy because our home was not equipped with the sort of gadgets needed to make household chores easier. Busy preparing food that will end up overcooked when inconsiderate people don’t show up on time. In an unhappy relationship the language is sparse but dense, intended for the sort of scrutiny scholars give to the Talmud.
    After dinner we went to separate rooms, both finding things to occupy our time and avoid one another. Every hour or two I’d venture close enough to her area to determine whether or not she was still awake, then go back to my made-up tasks. Around 1 a.m. I confirmed she was finally asleep, so I got out the VR2500.2.
    I expected to return to the party, right where I’d left off, but instead I found myself at some dingy bar. Max was at the pool table.
    “Been waiting for you. Weren’t sure you were gonna show.”
    “Yeah, well... anyway I’m here now.”
    “Grab a cue. It’s us against Nick and Kyle.”
    “I’m no good at pool.”
    “Just do it. You’ll be fine.”
    Turns out I was good, of course. The perfect amount of good. Good enough to hold my own, not so good as to make the game boring and lopsided. In some sense I knew I could be as good or bad as I wanted to be. I knew, for that matter, I could furrow my brow and turn the table into a motorboat and everyone in there into squirrels if I wanted. But I was never tempted to do any of that, and it was easy enough to forget, for very long stretches at a time, that what I was experiencing was anything other than real.
    After a few games we sat down and just talked. Nick and Kyle were both writers on the same TV show. Max had been doing some temp work, having quit his old office job to go on tour with his band. It was pretty successful, he said.
    “I mean, I can’t support myself fully with it just yet, but it’s getting there. You’ll have to come see us play some time. What do you do, Milo?”
    The real answer to that question is tech support. The company I work for sells printers, and if one of our clients is having minor problem—not so severe that they want to pay to have someone come out—they give me a call and I try to talk them through it.
    “I’m a video librarian.”
    It felt just boring enough to be believable, but not so boring as to be embarrassing. My three friends nodded their heads and said affirming things such as “cool,” or the like.

    Friday night we had people over for cocktails. These were my least favorite nights. Martha was always in a stress-induced huff several hours ahead of time, trying to make things right. Nothing was ever clean enough, our furniture was old and embarrassing, and the things that I put away weren’t put away correctly. The tension between us was an unexploded bomb, relieved only by the sound of the first doorbell, from which point on, she could be counted on not to make a scene.
    It was three other couples in all. Some were neighbors, some friends from work, all were at that beginning stage of friendship where we were trying to make it take. Several conversations were going on at once, and they all blended in to one another. I found myself staring at these people from time to time as if they were re-attached fingers and I was wondering whether or not my body would ultimately reject them.
    “Milo.” It was Martha’s voice. “Milo, you’re being rude.”
    “Hm?”
    “Sean asked you a question.”
    I looked around the table and everyone was staring at me. “Oh.” They all had puzzled expressions. “I’m sorry.” Except for Martha, whose eyes shot daggers. “I didn’t hear you. My mind was wandering. It was a long day at work.”
    “It’s OK,” said Sean. “I was only asking how your mom was doing. It was no big deal, really.”
    “Thanks for asking. She’s great. Everyone is great.”

    The next day Max and I went surfing. I fell off a few times, but all and all did pretty well for someone who’d never tried it before. Those handful of times I did manage to catch a wave were like nothing I’d ever felt before, this pure exhilaration of man conquering nature, if only symbolically, for a few seconds, floating above it on a little board. Afterwards we stopped off at a little place beside the beach and had margaritas. Max gave me an elaborate handshake to congratulate me on a job well done, and I faked my way through its various iterations as best I could.
    “Sometimes I wonder if there’s a higher power out there,” Max said. “But then I feel that sun beating down on me, and that ocean breeze, that saltiness in the air. And the palm trees! Fuck, yeah, the palm trees!” He slammed his fist down, as if that was the missing piece that clinched it. “You look at all that, and you try and tell me there isn’t somebody up there watching out for us.”
    I took a large swallow of my drink and took a good look around and let out a contented sigh. “I guess I can’t argue with that. This could be heaven we’re staring at right now. I mean, it’s really dank, you know?” I looked for some confirmation that I’d used the word correctly.
    “What are you doing now?” he asked. “Do you have time? Let’s go back. The waves still look good. The weather’s still perfect.” I hesitated. I knew that I shouldn’t. But moments like that are fleeting, when everything in your life is exactly as it should be, and you want to hold onto them for as long as you can.
    When I finally switched off, removed the machine, and looked over at the clock, the numbers made no sense to me. I didn’t know if it was a.m. or p.m., or even for sure which day it was. I was exhausted, and there was just enough light coming through the window to show me how greasy and dirty I was. With a sense of dread I opened the door, hoping against hope that Martha wouldn’t be waiting in the next room, but of course she was. When she saw me, she started to cry. It hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. I had been seeing her for so long as an obstacle or an adversary, I had forgotten what it was like to see her as a human being with real feelings. A wave of guilt overcame me.
    “Do you know what time it is?”
    “I don’t even know what day it is,” I answered honestly. That made her cry even more.
    “It’s our anniversary,” she said between sobs. And what can you respond to something like that? I had fucked up in such an over-the-top manner, anything I might have said or done would only make things worse. We stood like that for a mini-eternity, wallowing, respectively, in sorrow and shame.
    “Tell me. I think I deserve that much. Where do you go when you’re in that... in that THING.”
    “Oh, you know. It’s fantasyland stuff. Stupid things. I don’t know... I’ll go on quests, or fight dragons, or whatever.”
    Of all the looks of contempt I’ve ever gotten from her—and there must be more variations I have catalogued than there are Eskimo words for snow—I’d never seen anything to match that one.
    “Do you know how long you’ve been gone? Can you smell yourself? You’ve pissed yourself, do you know that? You don’t even know, do you? And you want me to believe you’re somewhere fighting a dragon?”
    “Look...” I started, without any idea of where this sentence was going. I was only saying words to buy time. I was holding my spot, making sure that I kept my turn to talk, while I figured out what I wanted to say. It was a lost cause, because what I was searching for was something that would get me out of trouble, and there were no words for that. Martha, on the other hand, wanted to talk about what was pissing her off, so naturally she had plenty to say.
    After the fight, it was weeks before I even looked at the VR2500.2 again. The days dragged on at a torturously slow pace. I did my best to be an attentive husband, bringing flowers and candies and letting her choose the TV shows. We didn’t fight, though it was evident she was still angry. I was absolutely miserable.
    Finally the evening came when I knew she would not be home. She had a girls’ night out planned. Wouldn’t be home until late. I dusted off the virtual reality machine and turned it on. Within moments I was standing outside a small club. The marquee over my head said, among many other names, “The Easter Eggs.”
    Max stepped out the door and immediately lit up a cigarette. My heart, upon seeing him, felt 100 times lighter. I ran up to him excitedly and pointed up at the sign.
    “Hey! That’s your band, right? Are you guys playing tonight?”
    He gave me a cold glare and took a long drag before answering. “It is,” he said. “And we did. You missed it.”
    “Oh.” I didn’t know how to respond. I wasn’t used to him being mad at me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
    He didn’t respond to that. He smoked some more as people came and went and the gray cloudy wisps formed a sort of curtain between us. Finally he snapped at me. “Where the hell have you been?”
    “I’ve got a wife!” I defended myself. “I’ve got to make time for her too. You don’t understand cos you’re single. You don’t have the same responsibilities.”
    “So now I’M irresponsible? I thought we were friends.”
    “We ARE friends.”
    “It’s been three fucking weeks. You just dropped off the face of the earth. That’s not what friends do.”
    It went back and forth like that for a very long time without anything new being said. By the end of the evening we’d become tired of fighting, though he still thought I was inconsiderate and I still thought he was unsympathetic. That’s how we left it when I logged off.
    When I unlatched the metal cage from my head, tears were still streaming down my face. Martha was there, sitting in a chair, watching me. She was still dressed up from her evening out. She had a look of fear and sadness.
    “You weren’t fighting dragons. What the hell have you been doing?”
    That’s the point when I came clean. I told her about Max, Nick, and Kyle. Told her about all of the things we did. I held nothing back. She was absolutely horrified.
    “That is the saddest, most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard of in my entire life. I am... I don’t even know.”
    “Martha, I think you’re blowing this...”
    “You are a fucking middle-aged man! It would be embarrassing enough if you were actually doing these things in reality, running around pretending you’re in college again. But that you had to waste our savings on a machine to do it for you... These are imaginary fucking friends, you know that right? My husband is a goddamned child.”
    “Martha, calm down.”
    “I WILL NOT CALM DOWN. You need to make a decision right now. You can get rid of the machine, or you can move out. You decide. If you pick your imaginary friends, I hope you conjure up an imaginary wife as well who will put up with all your bullshit.”

    Of course I agreed to get rid of the VR2500.2. As much as it was an amusing distraction, it wasn’t worth getting divorced over. That would be crazy, right? I took it right back to the store. Well, almost right back. On the drive over, the more I thought about it, the more it didn’t seem right to leave without saying goodbye. Of course, I needed somewhere to plug in, and I couldn’t very well turn around and take it back home. I found a very cheap motel where I could rent a room for a few hours.
    The clerk behind the desk eyed me suspiciously. No one rents a room in a place like that unless they’re up to something shady, and the respectable-looking customers are usually the ones with the shadiest intentions. But I paid cash and signed in under a false name (I chose “Nick Kyle,” because I thought that would be clever), and I got my keys.
    The room was as disgusting as I would have imagined. I stayed clear of the sheetless bed for fear of bringing home bedbugs. I found an outlet, which was cracked but functional, and I plugged in.
    At first I thought the machine was malfunctioning, maybe the outlet was providing an inconsistent electric supply, because it didn’t seem to be taking me anywhere. I wasn’t at a house party, or bar, or the beach. I was still in this disgusting hotel. But then the door opened and Max walked in.
    “Really?” he said. “This is where you brought me?”
    “It wasn’t a conscious choice,” I told him. “Here, if I concentrate I should be able to change it. Where would you like to go?”
    “No, no. This is perfect actually. Just the right place for what you have in mind.”
    “So you know?”
    He rolled his eyes and shook his head and took out a pack of Camels.
    “I don’t think you’re supposed to smoke in here,” I protested, but he continued anyway.
    “You’re seriously going to choose her over me?”
    “You know it’s not that simple...”
    “It IS that simple!” he has furious now. He slammed his fist against the wall.
    “I love her.”
    “You don’t even LIKE her! You don’t like anything about your life. But you keep sleepwalking through it anyway. Why don’t you grow a pair of fucking balls and do something about it?”
    “I came here to say goodbye. And I think I’ve done that now. So our business here is over.”
    Max got a crazed look in his eye, and for the first time since I’d known him, I felt frightened. He stood up, and moved in closer.
    “I should do you a fucking favor and put you out of your misery.”
    He flung his cigarette at the closed window, and the desiccated curtains instantly went up in flames. I grabbed a pillow and rushed to them, hoping to smother it, but the pillow was flammable too, and the fire grew larger. While I was occupied with this, Max tackled me. He pinned me to the ground and began to strangle me.
    I tried to fight back, but he was more powerful. I couldn’t pry his fingers from my throat. I could barely breathe, and it took all my strength to keep him from collapsing my windpipe. Right as my arms were about to give out, I managed to jerk my head to the side, close enough to get my fingers under my ear. I flicked the switch, and instantaneously the blaze vanished. So did Max, though I kept looking around, fearing he would jump out again from somewhere.

    We had a lot of people over for New Year’s Eve. It’s a big event for Martha. One of her favorites because people get dressed up and drink cocktails. She always has a new variation on a Martini she wants to try out—this year it was something with lavender. We usually get half-a-day off work, so there’s extra time to vacuum and scrub and get the place looking great.
    The thing I like about the New Year is it means a fresh start. My resolution this time around is to work on my marriage. It’s not perfect, by any means, but that’s what resolutions are for.
    Everyone there seemed to be having a blast, so I guess you could call the night a huge success. I went out on the balcony to watch the smokers smoke. There’s a nice view from our place. You can see downtown pretty well on a clear night, so I got to people-watch from afar as well. I wondered where all they were going.
    There was a bit too much starch in my collar and it was a little hard to breathe. I wanted to undo the top button, but I knew it would make my tie look not-as-good, so I put up with it.
    I turned and looked back inside our place. Martha had on a very tight dress and she didn’t look uncomfortable, so I suppose I couldn’t complain. She had the shaker and jigger and bucket of ice. She was mixing up some concoction of bitters and vermouth. I like to watch her at events like this because it’s when she looks the happiest.
    One of the guests on the balcony began telling me something about the Dow Jones. I don’t know anything about it. But if you nod at all the right places and agree with them, no one can ever tell.
    At midnight, of course, when the countdown was over, Martha and I kissed. I realized as it was happening that it was the first time we’d done that in a very long time. I’m sure no one watching would’ve had any idea. It was a very nice kiss. I thought, as it was happening, about how stupid I’d been. I had been hiding myself away in some sort of make-believe land. But you can’t hide away forever. This was reality.

The L-Word

    “What in the hell is that?” Dalton asks.
    “Three Cheese Lasagna Hamburger Helper.” I plunk down the steaming Pyrex bowl at my usual spot.
    “People really eat that crap?”
    “Please suggest alternatives that a professor of Information Systems at a second-tier university can afford.”
    “Pshhh. Spare me. Full professor, kids raised, living alone — you could be eating fillet instead of that Betty Crocker silage. Same for Aaron.
    Across the big, circular table, Aaron raises his head from his Tupperware container of salad — iceberg lettuce, grilled chicken and vinaigrette, just like the prior thousand lunches — and grins before dipping head and fork to his food again.
    The door from our office anteroom to the corridor of the third floor of the business building is open. Students wander past, thumbing their phones. Dalton probes a Styrofoam tray from the first-floor cantina with a plastic fork.
    “Where’s Phoebe?” I ask Samir, who completes our lunch quartet.
    “Our department chair is with the dean,” says Aaron. A bit of crouton clings to his lower lip, then falls back into his salad.
    “Direction for the new hire,” Dalton adds.
    Shit. I look around for the thought police before I give vent. “With the low-ball offer he’s authorized we’re not going to get a woman. Good women in tech command a premium. With what we can pay we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for male candidates.”
    “A department with two women, eight men.” Dalton frowns in mock distress. “HR is not happy. The provost is not happy.”
    “The women we want, we can’t afford. The women we can afford, are functionally illiterate,” I lament.
    “Once again, the academy imitates life,” Aaron observes.
    Samir grins, but the corners of his eyes are anxious. He’s our most recent hire, untenured, and is low man in what he probably senses is about to become a very un-PC free-for-all.
    Dalton notices Samir’s malaise and asks “Are we making you nervous, buddy?” He takes his tray to the trashcan in the hall. “Guys, lighten up. If you want our Internet security expert to make tenure, don’t be dragging him into your Title IX bashing.” He gives Samir a grin from the doorway and leaves.
    Aaron presses closed the lid on his Tupperware bowl. “Samir, our sincere apologies if we’ve made you uncomfortable.”
    “Not at all,” Samir says, a bad liar, but always game.
    “Beyond tenure,” I say, “I think he was afraid our relationship war-stories might threaten your recently inaugurated domestic bliss.”
    “Ah. Much as I respect the two of you, I doubt anything could move me from the adoration of my new bride. Surely you remember love before your wars, before the battles and the scars?”
    With my tongue only part-way in my cheek, I shake my head. “The L-word. I never use the L-word. A medieval scholastic would call it a surd.”
    “So love is ab—surd.”
    “In my experience it’s chimerical. A placeholder women use rather than to simply say: I’m disappointed that you don’t do X. The X that you’re not doing in a given relationship defines love in that context. The word has been weaponized and we use it at our peril.”
    “So . . . your relationships have no tenderness? No caring?”
    I rise willingly to the bait. “Of course they do. But if tenderness is the behavioral modality you wish to invoke, use the word: tenderness. If it is caring you wish, say: caring. The L-word is simply an obfuscation. Frequently deliberate.”
    “Hmm. I will bring that up with my wife tonight at dinner.”
    Aaron makes his naif-face, as disarming as a shot of pentothal, and asks, “How much does she make?”
    Samir’s eyebrows raise as he considers. “Microsoft pays their data analysts well; with benefits, about fifty percent more than I do.”
    Aaron and I exchange genuinely surprised glances. “Very good,” I say.
    “Excellent,” says Aaron.
    “What do you mean?” asks Samir.
    Aaron turns an open palm to me, ceding the right to explain. “Even as estrogen-soaked as the courts are, with that kind of salary differential, you’ll be financially safe when things go south. With a good lawyer you might even get to keep the house, instead of having to give it away as Aaron and I were required to do. Multiple times.”
    Samir makes a kabuki face of dismay. “Has it been that bad for you, my friends?”
    “Yes, it has been that bad,” I confirm.
    “It’s a testament to human endurance that a man can be so abused and yet press on,” says Aaron.
    “I’m so sorry. And as you are my academic exemplars, you’ve made me a bit frightened that it could happen to me. It all seems so cold-blooded.”
    “Speaking of cold-blooded.” I turn to Aaron. “I know you suspended your search for companionship after your heart attack. Are you still on sabbatical de amor?”
    His eyes brighten. “I have several prospects.”
    “Nothing like the thrill of a right swipe,” Samir opines. Aaron’s brows drop.
    I translate for him: “Do you use Tinder?”
    “Oh, no,” says Aaron, relieved. “I stick with Kettle of Fish.”
     Now I must translate for Samir: “Kettle of Fish is an ancient, PC based, free dating app. Kettle of Fishwives is a more appropriate name, though I don’t wish to appear elitist. How can I describe this objectively?” I pretend to ponder. “Since his divorce Aaron has only dated women who are awed by the fact that he lives in a dwelling that can’t be towed and that he has no car payments. They also tend to be foreign born, but I think that is explained by the requirement that they be tiny. How tall are you Aaron?”
    “Five-feet-four. I leave the Amazons for Willem.”
    “And I appreciate that. Still prefer to stalk from a distance?”
    “One’s in Sacramento. The other, a better match I think, is in Vegas.”
    I arch my eyebrows at Samir who keeps a straight face throughout our performance. “As calculating and relentless as Jack the Ripper. Now we simply wait for a pea-soup fog.”
    I am truly interested in more information on these unfortunate women, but a student appears behind Aaron, with the anxious demeanor of someone desperate to pee.
    “Do you need me,” Aaron asks, swivels to the clock and sighs. “Time to impart knowledge.”
    The student tries to slip into a crack in our conversation, but Aaron stops the young woman in mid-plaint with a raised index finger. “Why don’t you head over to the lab. I’ll be right behind.”
    The student leaves, Aaron excuses himself from the table and when he emerges from his office, he’s wearing his infamous Goodwill couture: a ski jacket in 80s pastels that’s two sizes too big and one of his assortment of knit watch caps. He tows a chrome luggage cart from the dim times, before luggage had its own wheels, to which a cardboard box of student assignments is bungeed.
    “Coming back?”
    “Man plans, God laughs,” Aaron replies. “With that caveat, yes; another class at 5:00. Gentlemen.”
    Samir and I return Aaron’s two-fingered Cub Scout salute.
    When I hear the elevator ding I ask: “How does a guy like that get women?”
    “Would you date the women he does?”
    “Not on a bet.”
    “There, you see. He seems to handle his personal affairs very much the way he chairs the Selection Committee meetings.” Samir gives a reasonable imitation of Aaron, swiveling his head across the room like a mechanical figure in a Christmas window display, and says, “Let’s begin by considering our ideal hire. Then we can factor in our constraints.” He drops out of character and smiles. “You, Dr. Markham, refuse to acknowledge any constraints in that arena.”
    “A stubbornness that’s gotten me a trunkfull of wonderful memories.”
    “I quite understand. But surely you realize selectivity puts you at a quantitative disadvantage to Aaron.”
    “Hardly seems fair, does it?”
    Straight-faced pseudo-analytic discussions of emotionally-charged topics are, to me, the pinnacle of academic life. It pleases me that Samir feels comfortable enough to have this conversation. I need to bring him in on my A-list paper, a last mentoring effort before I retire.
    But I’m still oddly pissed at Aaron. A Freudian residue of teen angst, perhaps: all the Friday nights when, between girlfriends, I’d call a guy to hang out with and find he had a date.

    “Aaron, I swear to God, you sleep here.” A rectangle of florescent light barely brighter than the overcast February morning falls from Aaron’s office onto the anteroom rug. At 8:00 AM my eyes are still scratchy. My MBA midterm is tonight and a student, desperate to be reassured of her understanding of the Netflix case, claims she can meet only at this unholy hour. I tack from my door to Aaron’s to poke my head in and harass him. Damned if he isn’t in a rumpled, face down pose on his desk, and I know instantly, indubitably — maybe from the fierce, gelid stillness of the room — that Aaron is not sleeping but dead.
    It’s the same call I make when I can’t start my car: “University of Argenta police dispatch. This is Kerry.”
    “Kerry, this is Professor Willem Markham. I’m in LB 318 and Professor Aaron Semmel has had a heart attack.”
    A short pause. “Have you called 911?”
    “No. Shall I?”
    Scuffling, faint voices. “Do you know CPR?”
    “No.”
    “Stay with him. We’ll be right there.”
    Stepping behind Aaron to his PC, to clear it of any compromising information accessions if necessary, the screen is free of flesh; just the desktop. The tap of a teardrop on a test booklet near the keyboard startles me. After a moment of reflection, I’m forced to conclude that the tear is mine, and to realize that my breathing is ragged, that this hurts terribly and that I may still have something to learn about the L-word.

Weighing on my Soul

    I worked as an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator a number of years ago. And periodically after the fact I would get phone calls or messages from people who knew the earlier work I did, to either console people or give guidance to other women. And over the years I would hear terrible stories, all third-hand, but knowing they were real puts a little weight on my shoulders too, weighing on my soul too, hearing so many stories over so many years.
    I told my husband that I recently got a letter from a woman who I knew years ago, back when I worked for a university acquaintance rape education group, and the woman tried to feel better, years after being raped by a man who she was dating. After everything she learned because of the rape, and her fight to overcome it, ended up making her a better person. When I explained this to him, he told me that I should publish the letter. I didn’t want to do that to the woman, and I didn’t think it was a good idea, but he explained to me that there may be women out there who want to hear that they can be strong again, and this letter may be the impetus they need.
    I told him that if I did this, I would not reveal the woman’s name who wrote this, and I do this now not only in an attempt to protect her privacy but also to make it clear that every woman can feel this.
    I got in touch with her and she said it was okay as long as I left any information about her out. I hope this helps.

Janet Kuypers Editor in Chief

 

    Dear Janet,

    Hi there, I know it’s been forever since we’ve talked, but I remembered you back at U of I doing acquaintance rape flyers, ads and workshops, so I hope you don’t mind me writing this to you. I couldn’t think of anyone else I could share this with though.
    Something occurred to me the evening of the anniversary of the day I was raped — yes, I remember it, how could I forget. It’s been years, and I’ve grown a lot since that night. I could talk about how I was young then. I could talk about how I didn’t know how to stop what was happening — but that would be more victim blaming, wouldn’t it? What I did want to say is that for the first time in years on this day, I wasn’t angry. All I could think is that even though what I went through was terrible, even though I spent years crying about what happened to me... it occurred to me that if this didn’t happen to me, if it didn’t force me to learn about sexism so first-hand back then, that I might not have worked as hard in my life to be as strong as I am now.
    I’m not saying I am glad this happened to me — far from it. But if I remove all of the bad elements in my past I might have ended up becoming a different person from who I am today. I believe that I have gained strength from the battles I have had to fight because of this. For the first ever of all the anniversaries of this rape that haunted me, I have to say that this bad thing helped me grow. I might not like who I’d be today if I didn’t have this terrible thing happen to me, to change the way I think.
    I don’t know if what I’ve written makes sense. For some reason though I wanted to share it with you. It’s so easy to dwell on rape, because the memories are so powerful and consuming, for so many years. As I said before, if I remove that from my past, I unravel the tapestry of who I am. If I like who I have become, removing that might make me someone I wouldn’t recognize and someone I’d rather not be.

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), KOOP (91.7FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images. Starting at this time Kuypers released a large number of CD releases currently available for sale at iTunes or amazon, including “Across the Pond”(a 3 CD set of poems by Oz Hardwick and Janet Kuypers with assorted vocals read to acoustic guitar of both Blues music and stylized Contemporary English Folk music), “Made Any Difference” (CD single of poem reading with multiple musicians), “Letting It All Out”, “What we Need in Life” (CD single by Janet Kuypers in Mom’s Favorite Vase of “What we Need in Life”, plus in guitarist Warren Peterson’s honor live recordings literally around the globe with guitarist John Yotko), “hmmm” (4 CD set), “Dobro Veče” (4 CD set), “the Stories of Women”, “Sexism and Other Stories”, “40”, “Live” (14 CD set), “an American Portrait” (Janet Kuypers/Kiki poetry to music from Jake & Haystack in Nashville), “Screeching to a Halt” (2008 CD EP of music from 5D/5D with Janet Kuypers poetry), “2 for the Price of 1” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from Peter Bartels), “the Evolution of Performance Art” (13 CD set), “Burn Through Me” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from The HA!Man of South Africa), “Seeing a Psychiatrist” (3 CD set), “The Things They Did To You” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “Hope Chest in the Attic” (audio CD set), “St. Paul’s” (3 CD set), “the 2009 Poetry Game Show” (3 CD set), “Fusion” (Janet Kuypers poetry in multi CD set with Madison, WI jazz music from the Bastard Trio, the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and Paul Baker), “Chaos In Motion” (tracks from Internet radio shows on Chaotic Radio), “Chaotic Elements” (audio CD set for the poetry collection book and supplemental chapbooks for The Elements), “etc.” audio CD set, “Manic Depressive or Something” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “Singular”, “Indian Flux” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “The Chaotic Collection #01-05”, “The DMJ Art Connection Disc 1” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “Oh.” audio CD, “Live At the Café” (3 CD set), “String Theory” (Janet Kuypers reading other people's poetry, with music from “the DMJ Art Connection), “Scars Presents WZRD radio” (2 CD set), “SIN - Scars Internet News”, “Questions in a World Without Answers”, “Conflict • Contact • Control”, “How Do I Get There?”, “Sing Your Life”, “Dreams”, “Changing Gears”, “The Other Side”, “Death Comes in Threes”, “the final”, “Moving Performances”, “Seeing Things Differently”, “Live At Cafe Aloha”, “the Demo Tapes” (Mom’s Favorite Vase), “Something Is Sweating” (the Second Axing), “Live In Alaska” EP (the Second Axing), “the Entropy Project”, “Tick Tock” (with 5D/5D), “Six Eleven” “Stop. Look. Listen.”, “Stop. Look. Listen to the Music” (a compilation CD from the three bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds & Flowers” and “The Second Axing”), and “Change Rearrange” (the performance art poetry CD with sampled music).
    From 2010 through 2015 Kuypers also hosted the Chicago poetry open mic the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting weekly feature and open mic podcasts that were also released as YouTube videos.
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the three collection books from 2004: Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound ISBN# ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, Prominent Tongue, Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the shutterfly ISSN# ISBN# hardcover art book life, in color, Post-Apocalyptic, Burn Through Me, Under the Sea (photo book), the Periodic Table of Poetry (with poems written for every element in the Periodic Table), a year long Journey, Bon Voyage! (a journal and photography book with select poems on travel as an American female vegetarian in India), and the mini books Part of my Pain, Let me See you Stripped, Say Nothing, Give me the News, when you Dream tonight, Rape, Sexism, Life & Death (with some Slovak poetry translations), Twitterati, and 100 Haikus, that coincided with the June 2014 release of the two poetry collection books Partial Nudity and Revealed. 2017, after her October 2015 move to Austin Texas, also witnessed the release of 2 Janet Kuypers book of poetry written in Austin, “(pheromemes) 2015-2017 poems” and a book of poetry written for her poetry features and show, “(pheromemes) 2015-2017 show poems” (and both pheromemes books are available from two printers). In 2018, Scars Publications released “Antarctica: Earth’s Final Frontier” and “Antarctica: Wildlife” (2 Janet Kuypers full-color photography books from the first passenger ship to Antarctica in 2017), performance art books “Chapter 48 (v1)” (2009-2011) and “Chapter 48 (v2)” (2011-2018), the v5 cc&d poetry collection book “On the Edge”, and the interview/journal/poetry book “In Depth”.
    Some of her past publication credits include 24-7 Artzine, a Gypsy compilation, A Room Without Walls, About Him, Aldebaran, All My Tomorrows, Amulet, Angelflesh, Aquarian Dream, Arbitrary Random Thought, ART:MAG, Art/Life Limited Editions, Ashes to Ashes, Backspace, Beatlicks Newsletter, Beet, Bizara, Black Cove Tradesman, Blind Man’s Rainbow, “Blue Hole” book for the Georgetown Poetry Festival, “books of honou” (hardcover book), Bootleg Press, Breakfast All Day, Breakfast All Day #8, Britches Publications, Brouhaha, Casper’s Poetry Gallery, Cat Machine, cer*ber*us, Challenges Magazine, Chiron Review, Chronicles / Chronicles of Disorder / Chronicles of Fiction, Circuit Traces, Coal City Review, Common Sense almanac, Compost Newsletter, Conflict of Interest, Connections, Cotton Gin, Crimson Leer, Cultural Capers, Curmudgeon, Dan River Anthology, “Dandelions in a Vase of Roses” book, Dark Bizara, Dark Rooms, Darkwave Society, dccr, Discover U, Dog Tired Synopsis from Old Erie Press v1#3, Down Peaceful Paths, Dream Network, Dream Scene Magazine, Driver’s Side Airba, Dusting off Dreams, Dusty Dog Reviews, Eclectic Woman, Eddy’s World of Poems, Ending the Begin, entelechy, @ezine, Feelings, Female 6, Fiction Online, Fine Arts Press, Finnish/English (USA/Vlaanderen) chapbook “Janet & Jean For the First Time together”, Fireside Poetry Review, Flower, Found Street, from Behind Glass, from Noble House folio book “Centres of Expression”, front page of “home and hearth”, Frontiers, GAD publishing, Gin Mill Productions, GirdeR, God’s Bar: un*plugged, Gotta Write Network, Green Cart Magazine, Gypsy Blood Review, Haiku Dailu, Happy Kitty, Heavy Hands Ink, Heeltap One, helena wolfe, Helianthus, Hellp! Hot Calaloo., Home and Hearth, Howling Dog, Idiot Wind, Iliad press, Ilya’s Honey, Impetus, IPM (Internet Poetry Magazine), JMW PublishinG, Joey and the Black Boots, Juicy Britches Magazine, Juicy Britches Publications, Juicy Magazine, Kaspah Raster, “Keepsakes” book from illiad press, Korpo Radio, Lacunae, Lamar University Literary Press BOOK “Unlocking the Word”, Larry’s Poetry Page,, Lasting Moments Poetry Guild, Late Knocking, Lazy Bones Review, Licking River Review 97-98 issue, Linden Lane Magazine, Linsey Woolsey, Lip Service Magazine, Liquid Ohio, Listen Up, Listen With Your Heart, Living Jewels, Mad Blood, Madness web page, Maelstrom v 2 no. 1, Malcontent, Muscling Tenses, Musea, Musing Magazine, Mutant Renegade zine, My Shoes, Mythic Blue Corn, Napalm Health Spa, Nashville Poetry Newsletter, Nation, Naturally, Nature’s Echoes, Negative Capability, Netera, New Orleans Poetry Forum, New Thought Journal, Newhouse Publications, Nite-Writer’s, NitTwitts: A Collection of Twitter-Length Poems from Heavy Hands Ink HHI, Nomad’s Choir, North Chicago Review(www.northchicagoReview.com), Nowhere Magazine, oh! zone, Omnific, On The Road, One Dog press, online! The Chicaho Poetry Renaissance (book), Opossum Holler Tarot, Opus Literary Review, Out of a/Maze, Pacific Coast Journal, Pegasus, Pemmican, Penny Dreadful Review, People’s Culture, pif, Pink Pages, Plain Brown Wrapper / PBW, png poetry online, Poems & Ponderings (A host of poetic posts - for better or verse), Poet’s Park, Poet’s Sanctuary, Poetic Expressions, Poetic Realm, Poetic Soul, #Poetry #Love Arts (via paper.li), poetry Card Series from Holy&intoxicated Publications UK, Poetry Lifetimes, Poetry superhighway, Poetry Visualized, poetry.com, Poets All Around the World, poets2000 at www.poets2000.com/kuyperswriting, Political Correctness and Creativity, Potomac Review, Purple Patch, Rain City Review, Ralph’s Review, Randie and the Festive Gorilla, Read Magazine, Renovated Lighthouse, Report to Hell, Reuben’s Kincade, Reverie, Rhyme and Reason, Rolling Paper Review, Sane Poetry, Santa Barbara Review, Saying I Love You (from Poetic Realm), Seeds, sest side, Shockbox, Short Fuse, Silhouette Magazine, Skywriters, Slugfest, Snakeskin, So it Goes, Someone is, Songs of Honour (hardcover nook) with by Janet Kuypers poetry on page 1, Sparkle, Sparks, Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum, Speer Presents, Spilled Ink, Spiral Chambers, Spirit, Spring Fantasy, Spunk Magazine, Stale Alfalfa, Stray Poets, Stripped of Everything, Stuff! Magazine, Subconscious Soup, Sweet Annie & Sweet Pea Review, T. R.’s Zine, Taggerzine, Tand, tc[r], Tears of Fire, television: the Lake County Poets Society in Lake Country, 4 times in December, TEMA, Terbang, the 2005 Chicago Poetry Fest Anthology, the 2018 Write Well Award Anthology winner, the Affiliate, The Angel Scratch Project (CD, Pointless Orchestra), the Avant-Garden, the Basement Magazine, the Blank Page, the Blue Skys reporter (and Vault), the book “Best of Chicago Poetry” by ChicagoPoetry.com Press, the book “From the Mountaintop” from the International Society of Poets, The Bridge, The Cafe Radio Poetry Circus (live radio show 12/7/03), the CD “the sound of poetry”, The Cherotic (R)evolutionary, the Closet, the Droplet Journal, the Echo, The Enigmatist, The Entropy Project on the “Music of the Universe” radio show, the Flying Dog, the Glass Cherr, the Heretic’s Corner, the Higginsville Reader, the internet herald, the kithara, the Licking Rive Review, “The Missing of the Birds” book, the morpo Review, the National Library of Poetry books “Dance on the Horizon”, “the Best Poems of 1995”, “the best poems of 1997” “A Celebration of Poets: showcase edition”, “the Best Poems of 1998”, “the Best Poems of the ‘90s”, “the Colors of Thought”, “Mists of Enchantment”, “A View From Afar”, “Between Darkness and Light”, “Eternal Portraits”, “The Best Poems and Poets of 2005”, “Poetry’s Elite Book of Poems of 200”, “Dance on the Horizon”, “Immortal Verses”, and “Nature’s Echoes”, the Neverending Page, the New Moon Review, the Open Scroll, the Owen Wister Review, the Pink Palace of Poetitude at Peacock’s Paradise, the Plastic Tower, the Plowman, the Poems Gallery, the Poetry and Jazz Retreat, The Poetry Exchange, the Prose Garden, the Road out of Town, The Scrivner, The Sound of Poetry (3 CD set), through poetry.com, The Sow’s Ear, the Starlite Cafe, The Sun Williamson County newspaper, the Symposium, the Underground, the Unspoken Word, The Village Idiot, the Wooden Head Review, Theme Stream, They Won’t Stay Dead, ThinkerMonkey.com, Third Lung Review, Throwing Silverware Downstairs (CD, Pointless Orchestra), TLR, Tomorrow Magazine, Treasured Poems of America, Tunnel Rat, Uno Mas, Unseen, UrbaNation, USA Today, Victory Scars, Visions, Vivo, Vox, What About Me, White Crow, wind, Window Panes, Wish Women, Woman/Woman=Power Magazine, Women and Language, Women and Recovery, Women in the Arts: spring fantasy, Wordsalad radio show in Madison WI, Working Title, World Poets, Worldnet Publishing, Writer’s Exchange, Writer’s Gazette, Writers In Paradise, Writing Talent Search Special Commendation (signed off from the director of the Region I-South Area Service Center for Gifted), Ya See I Got This Turtle, Ygdrasil, Ying + Yand from X-it press, You Are, you Can’t Take it With You, Your Dad Is, Zap Inc., and ZZZ Zine, as well as online through www.allaboutlovepoems.com/, www.allpoetry.com/, www.artvilla.com/, www.authorsden.com, www.authorsden.com/, www.everyauthor.com/, www.everypoet.net/, www.ilovepoetry.com, www.listentoear.com/, www.mem.writing.com/, www.mishibishi.net/, www.monkdogz.com/contest.htm, www.poetry-today.com/, www.poetryarray.com/, www.poetryboard.com, www.poets2000.com, www.roswellartsdigitalmedia.us/, www.splinterswerve.com, www.story.com/seex.htm, www.thinkermonkey.com, www.world-class-poetry.com, www.WriteBay.com/, www.writebay.com/JanetKuypers, www.writing.com.