Optimist

Been to a lot of funerals
hoping for resurrections.
None yet, maybe
I will be the first.

our lady of humility’s hypocrisy

saw hypocrisy in a bumper sticker today:

“Proud Parent of
our lady of humility
Honor Student”

Check out Janet Kuypers twitter-length poems
(with added video and book links)

Survivor

His buddies died. But he survived and
returned with all his body parts.

Doesn’t talk much now but his shriveled,
emaciated body speaks for him. When

he tries to be normal, he fails, especially
when he takes his wife and kids to the
beach.

The endless sand and wind sweep him back
to the war.

His traumatized flesh shakes.
His hands tremble.

Tonight, he wanders in the streets, carrying a
gun, searching for the enemy,
living in the past.

BIO

    Dr. Mel Waldman is a licensed New York State psychologist and a candidate in Psychoanalysis at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (CMPS). He is also a poet, writer, artist, and singer/songwriter. After 9/11, he wrote 4 songs, including “Our Song,” which addresses the tragedy. His stories have appeared in numerous literary reviews and commercial magazines including HAPPY, SWEET ANNIE PRESS, CHILDREN, CHURCHES AND DADDIES and DOWN IN THE DIRT (SCARS PUBLICATIONS), NEW THOUGHT JOURNAL, THE BROOKLYN LITERARY REVIEW, HARDBOILED, HARDBOILED DETECTIVE, DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, ESPIONAGE, and THE SAINT. He is a past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis and was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature. Periodically, he has given poetry and prose readings and has appeared on national T.V. and cable T.V. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers of America, American Mensa, Ltd., and the American Psychological Association. He is currently working on a mystery novel inspired by Freud’s case studies. Who Killed the Heartbreak Kid?, a mystery novel, was published by iUniverse in February 2006. It can be purchased at www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/, www.bn.com, at /www.amazon.com, and other online bookstores or through local bookstores. Recently, some of his poems have appeared online in THE JERUSALEM POST. Dark Soul of the Millennium, a collection of plays and poetry, was published by World Audience, Inc. in January 2007. It can be purchased at www.worldaudience.org, www.bn.com, at /www.amazon.com, and other online bookstores or through local bookstores. A 7-volume short story collection was published by World Audience, Inc. in June 2007 and can also be purchased online at the above-mentioned sites.

The Seven Deadly Colors: Gold

Bob Johnston

It is a comfort to know that I
will never be completely destitute
because Uncle Heinrich left me
some valuable souvenirs
from Auschwitz including
some that he personally
extracted from the Jews
now in my safe deposit box
as insurance against a rainy day
not that I expect to go bankrupt
in the immediate future
but you never know
what might happen
in these uncertain times
even though I have prospered
and bought up most of the property
in this city and hold mortgages
on the rest and the only thorn
in my side is that bastard
Cliffordson my next door neighbor
whose house is bigger than mine
and he laughs in my face
when I offer him twice
what the house is worth
but I will get him yet
squeeze him out of his business
tie up all his assets
ruin his reputation
then he will have to sell
at my price.

The Seven Deadly Colors: Gray

Bob Johnston

The world outside my window is grimy
with fog dripping from tired trees.
The window has never been washed
and all the dirt is on the inside.

There is work to be done,
poems to write, books to read.
I sit at my supercomputer
and play solitaire.

Two flies are trapped in a web
woven by a weary spider.
I kneel before the telly
and worship the faded colors.

Bob Johnston Bio

    Bob Johnston is a retired petroleum engineer and translator of Russian scientific literature. He waited until his sixtieth year to start writing fiction and poetry, and over the next thirty years he has been trying to catch up. He lives in the original Las Vegas, New Mexico with his wife, three cats, and some hope of completing his memoirs and the Great American Novel.

Poem from
The Hartford Epic
(Landscape)

Rainbow:
neon adult
video sign
wrapped
in barbed wire

Dawn:
lit cigarette
in a mouth
black and blue
like the eyes

Sunset:
reeling in
a clothesline
pinned with
bed sheets that
for a few moments
of this brief
incandescent day
rippled & radiated
like the wings
of angels

Signs

The fools were holding placards
On the corner where I turned.
“Honk if you love Jesus!”
And the idiots were honking.
Honk if you love faggots.
Honk if you love niggers.
And not a single motor made a sound.
And everyone who honked has plans for heaven.

After Watching The Last Act Of “Don Carlos”

The ultimate authority - The Church!
Whether deviation or submission,
Everything relates back to The Church!
In truth or madness - an imagined god!
The Grand Inquisitor! Is in control
Of good and bad. For kings. The minds of all.
He’ll die. But will not rot as normal men.
Miscreants! Obeisance! Even Wilde -
Hardly the iconoclast he seemed -
He merely stood convention on its head -
Deriving from, returning to convention -
Requested sacraments before he died.
Nothing has the power of The Church!
God himself is in the congregation.

When Dick Cheney was our president

When Dick Cheney was our president,
Al Qaeda was ignored too long.
Now that Obama’s president, what’s changed?

We’re at war with everybody.
Al Qaeda’s everywhere, which all started
when Dick Cheney was our president.

We still think we police the world.
Isn’t the murder of Bin Laden proof?
Now that Obama’s president, what’s changed?

We’ve increased our efforts. Now add Libya.
Al Qaeda’s among the rebels, like
when Dick Cheney was our president.

The world still crumbles under Obama.
What will we do next to help Al Qaeda grow?
Now that Obama’s president, what’s changed?

Shall we insert George W in there too?
All are sleeping in the same blood like
when Dick Cheney was our pesident.
Now that Obama’s president, what’s change ...

?

Memorial Day 2011

Memorial Day 2011,
much to remember like George W Bush
starting the war against Iraq

& standing on the carrier to
tell us we won & 8 yrs later we’re still there.
Memorial Day 20ll,

& we’re in Afghanistan & Libya too,
but nothing quite like George W Bush
starting the war against Iraq.

We say we’ve won with 50,000 troops still there.
Otherwise the nation would explode.
Memorial Day 2011.

Like the Trojans saying they won & opening the horse,
which can be remembered like George W Bush
starting the war against Iraq.

All our wars remembered as horible,
but none more stupid than the one in Iraq.
Memorial Day 2011,
starting the war in Iraq ...

!

The Wisest Man in Oak Park

I walked up to
a homeless man
on Harlem
and told him that
I’d give him
50 dollars
if he could tell me
the meaning of life.
He looked me
in the eye
and replied,
“I don’t know, but
it sure as hell
ain’t money.”
He walked away
50 dollars
richer.

Jacob Kreutzer Bio

    Jacob Kreutzer is a young poet from Grand Island, NE. He is currently a student at Concordia University Chicago where he is majoring in Secondary Education. His work has previously appeared in Heavy Hands Ink, The Cynic, Daily Love, and numerous other publications.

Red Slice of Moon

I ran a splinter under my nail.
Now there is a crescent rim of blood
like the lip of an Acoma jar.

The hot cup of coffee is a comfort
to my cold hands
except it makes my finger throb.

About Virginia Fultz

    A Merit Award in 2011 Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition

    Virginia was born in Shattuck, Oklahoma, grew up in Laurel, Mississippi, lived and taught English in El Paso, Texas, and California, where she earned two M.A.s in English literature, finally moving “home” to New Mexico. When not traveling, she and her husband Ed who have been together a wonderful long time, thrive on the clear air and stunning vistas from their home in the Sandia Mountains foothills in Albuquerque, NM. Virginia knows it’s true that happiness grows beautiful flowers, one pound tomatoes, and good friends.

Pushed

You rode in the elevator with me
until the top.
Then you pushed me off,
watching as I drop.
Laughing at me.
I hit the ground hard,
but you didn’t feel a thing.

Leaden Necklace

A single blast
and a hole
nine mm intersection
The model’s body
collapses inertly
without
a single objection

I come close
and admire
the strength
of lead’s destruction
I remove it
with finesse
from brain’s
matter construction

It’s still warm
shapely
suits fine
my collection
I’ll assemble
at its sight
the wearer
will get an erection

Only a few
are missing
the necklace
will soon be there
Original
as
one might say
down
to earth

I’ll speed up
the creative process
and shoot’em all
as such
Hoping
not to have them
deformed
too much

That’ll save
my models too
so costly
My
leaden necklaces
precious
priceless mostly

Wounds

The knife cuts deep – rending skin and tissue
Blood squirts out covering the body
Time they say heals all wounds
But does it?

Day after day the tissue melds back together
Healing till there is naught but a slight
Scar left as a reminder
A month and a jagged pink line is the only
Reminder of the great pain
A year and you barely know how it happened
But what if that knife tears into
Your soul, wrenching a piece of it right
Away from you?

Do the edges really meld back together
A voice on a phone tells you he’s gone
The pain is intense, sharp and mind numbing
You don’t think the tears will ever dry up
They do – at least on the outside
You cope, you go on
What choice do you have?

Each day, month, year passes and you think
I’ve got over it or I’ve handled it
But you know you lie
The memories flood you of his laugh
His smile, his temper, his love
And the tears come again, the pain
The loss are as horrible as they were the day it happened
The day the damn phone rang and broke my heart.

Before I can Put
a Smile on my Face Again

when the people who organized
your high school class reunion
found out you had ALS

and for the past six months
you were bound to a wheelchair

they moved up the reunion date
to the fall
because they wanted to make sure
you were alive
long enough
for all your high school friends
to see you once more

and I thought,
wait a minute
Steven Hawking has ALS
and he’s lived for decades
while bound to a wheelchair

they’re really jumping the gun here

you’re not about to die

#

since I didn’t go to school with you
I wrote our band name on my name tag
at your class reunion
held at your favorite local bar

saw you there
in your wheelchair
now unable to speak

but still holding court with all the girls
from your high school days

(yeah, in your high school yearbook,
you were rated the Biggest Flirt)

the girls still swooned
as you periodically played
pre-programmed messages
in the computerized
Steven Hawking voice

when you saw me,
you told me
that I looked really beautiful today
and I blushed

(what am I supposed to say?)

and I heard you later on
with other swooning women
telling them
one by one
that they looked really beautiful today

and it made me smile,
and then John was there
when you complimented
one more woman
that’s when this man responded
(loud enough for the group to hear)
“stop complimenting me like that
in front of everybody”

and everyone had a good laugh,
reminding me
of how you always
put a smile on people’s faces
how you’d crack jokes
and make everyone smile

later in the evening
I saw your buddy
ask you if you wanted a drink

you agreed on rum
so he got some in a syringe
and injected it into a tube

it’s hard to see you like that,
you know

#

you were always the one
cracking the jokes
driving to my place in Chicago
to practice music with me
or joining me at bars for our performances

you drove to central Illinois with me
to perform music live
at a local radio station
and before we appeared on the air
you kept singing a once popular song
because it repeated your wife’s name

so yeah, I’m far away
and it’s hard to see you like that now
when there’s nothing I can do for you

#

after that reunion
I couldn’t call you
to tell you how I feel

if you could have answered
you wouldn’t want to hear it

no matter what you were going through
you didn’t want to hear others tell you
of how seeing you made them suffer

how selfish of them

they’re not the ones knocking on death’s door

everyone else
needs to keep on their happy face

it’s the least we could do

#

when I heard you just died
I had the hardest time not crying

but if I started crying,
I’d stop myself

what am I doing
he’s no longer in prison
while his body is destroyed
cellularly

I have to keep telling myself,
look, I know this hurts
but you knew it would eventually happen
and now he’s no longer in pain

I’d be living at that point
where I’m always about to cry
until I was asked,
What Would Warren Want?

and I’d stop
and then I’d say
he’d want me to laugh
he’d want me to be happy

just give me a minute
because
after seeing such bad things
happen to such good people
I need to pull myself together
before I can put a smile on my face again

It’s Someone’s Job

it’s someone’s job
to stitch the eyes and lips
of a corpse up

it’s someone’s job
to take a generic beige powder and concealer
to give my friend the color of life

it’s someone’s job
to trim the facial hair
that extrudes after death

it’s someone’s job
to style a corpse’s hair
so it still looks like the one you love

it’s not my job
to think of these things
when you’re the one in the coffin

it’s not fair
that we see the powder along your face
that we see the powder on your hands

is also on your nails

it’s not right
to see you like this
why must we make you up this way?

it’s not the way you lived
and this shouldn’t be you
after you died

it’s someone’s job
to staple you shut,
to make you look more alive

it’s someone’s job
to cosmetically placate our fears
to make us not see

what your body has become

it’s someone’s job
to keep out fantasy going
because even though you’ve stopped living

we can’t cope with your dying

You Carried It

the priest said
before you were interred
“you shared the cross of the lord”

Jesus carried that cross
in his walk before his mortal death
and you carried that cross for years

as that cross became heavier and heavier
you could no longer lift that cross with your arms
but still, you carried it

you never forsook the ones
who gave you this death sentence
and still, you carried it

you never spoke to me of the pain
you never spoke to me of the injustice
and silently, you carried it

for months, you could no longer
even speak of the cross your bore
and still, you carried it

you spoke only light-heartedly
you brought out true love
from everyone around you

and how you made people love,
how you made people good
only now reminds me

that with you, like our teacher, like out friend
that I can only continue to pray
that the world will be a better place

because you were a part of it

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), 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 and chaoticarts.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.
    Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the weekly Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
    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 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, and the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook . Three collection books were also published of her work in 2004, Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art).

Summer Variety

    She had defied nature all her life. Her occupation was defined by qualification, not certification. There were no obstacles based on age, sex, race, or education. In fact, cultural preconceptions made Louise Reilly an unlikely suspect in case she had to make a quick getaway at the end of her contract.
    She was whiter than white, and it was July, so her sun hat, a child’s size because she was so little, helped her anonymity. She took her time and walked South on Western Avenue. About a half mile according to Google Maps, Western Avenue came to a Y-shaped junction meeting Ocean Avenue.
    Her tiny feet stepped up and stepped down curbside on the sidewalk, bleached white by the white-hot sun blazing the azure Atlantic Sky. The sidewalk was dotted with dried, sun-baked dots of chewing gum and other items fresher, and less attractive. The sidewalk clearly postdated the rest of the region; she stepped around a bright yellow fireplug, dead center, which resembled a little man with a funny hat like hers, white, except hers was smaller.
    Louise Reilly arrived at Summer Variety Store down at the convergence of Western Avenue and Ocean Avenue. She was one of the Progressives, a subspecies of the Human Race.
    She thought that Cross-Cognitive was a more appropriate description, as her kind seemed to be very good at multi-tasking, a popular description. The Progressives, and their counterparts correspondingly known as Regressives began populating Planet Earth in the mid-forties of the prior century.
    The two appellations sounded like human political parties, but that wasn’t intentional. It related to the way they saw their world, and what they ate.
    Her mental processing was vast, but her memory not much larger than the mainstream group of the species, humans, on the planet. Louise employed audio clips both as background music and as mental index locations, bookmarks she called them. “Summer In The City” by the Lovin’ Spoonful had been playing in her head, walking down heated Western Avenue. Then, it segued into The Beatles’s “Me And My Monkey” when she came to the Summer Variety Store. Why, she didn’t know.
    Outside the Summer Variety were two white circular tables with glass tops, they were superficially clean. The plastic chairs, the same degree of cleanliness, passable, were the white flexy ones which, unless you were a man, or a woman with a size-zero butt, bent and grabbed your ass in a friendly, neutral sort of way.
    It must have been a hundred Fahrenheit at that corner. She went inside.

    The man looked tan compared to Louise, most folks did. Louise was a ghost, translucent with a trace of pink. The man was large, which might be a tipoff. She was hunting Regressives.
    He had finished building a pair of sub sandwiches with ham, swiss, mustard, onions, and some sort of peppers. The scents were splashing colors across her field of vision. Synesthesia was universal in Cross-Cognitives. The peppers were green, pickled, and sliced. The two customers, lean and tan construction-worker types, took their food, chips, and cola drinks, paid the man, courteously nodded to Louise, and left.
    The proprietor had been eating well, and that was the problem, the need for Louise’s investigation. He was aware, alert, in their narrowly focused way. He came from humans, but he has not a part of their destiny. Louise, being a Cross-Cognitive was equally unique. They were two sides of the evolutionary coin. Louise often wondered how it all would play out.
    The burgeoning human diversity began in the 1940’s. It seemed to be a combination of mutated recessive genes, a solar event that over a half-century later was “discovered”, and... No one was sure. The short story is Regressives and Progressives, the subspecies, were both gaining in numbers.
    The situation was awkward. A silent civil war had started on Planet Earth. A Darwinian conflict with an unpredictable outcome. Either way, the mainstream Homo Sapiens varieties were shrinking. The only variable was the degree of dignity involved, the nature of necessity.
    “Good day lovely lady, it must be a hundred out there.” In spite of the AC cranking full-bore, the proprietor was sweating. She was not.
    “Powerball, please, one pick, 5-6-11-21-42-19.” She grabbed a tiny 3 Musketeers Bar from a bowl marked “10 Cents.” It was thumb-sized like the ones children get for trick-or-treat. She put a dollar and a dime on the counter.
    “Keep the dime.”
    “Thank you.” She left.

    Back at the Embassy Hotel, top floor, she got on the cell phone to William Blake, after wiping the candy residue off her mouth.
    “William. He’s eating well, too well, even for his kind. It’s after Memorial Day, an influx of people, mainly inland day-trippers. That makes it difficult to track them when they’re gone missing.
    “The store in general is haphazardly arranged but fairly well lit. For some reason the rear section, about one-fourth of the square footage, is not so well illuminated, and filled with incoming products, like a stockroom. I’m not sure if it’s part of his cover: lots of non-perishable stuff, beach towels, souvenirs, wiffle balls, plastic wiffle bats, kites, string.
    “It’s cluttered, disorderly, but not dusty or disgusting.”
    Louise Reilly paused. The impromptu stockroom filled with stuff reminded her of an old house she lived in as a child, in North Carolina. She had been rocking in her crib; it began to glide, the hard little wheels traversing the hardwood floor smoothly, gliding...
    Back at the Embassy Hotel, in Louise Reilly’s suite, Ben E. King, front man for The Drifters, was singing “Stand By Me,” accompanied by his R&B Soul Band. It was another one of Louise’s mental audio clips, of course. They were always with her, except in her dreams. She remembered about twenty years back, actually seeing him perform live in Manchester New Hampshire. There, she touched his hand, it was soft.
    “Louise...” William wasn’t finished.
    “The deli section, spotless, right? Stainless steel, quite a bit of refrigeration for a couple of sandwiches, what fifty, on a good day?”
    Louise, whose mind had been run through a genetic blender, bombarded with solar particles from that big flare in 1944, then barely surviving a premature birth, perceived life differently. Once more, she was back in that child’s crib in North Carolina. At last the combined forces of her rocking motions and gravity and the bent floor brought the crib to the edge of the stairs, and then it went down...
    William Blake still on the cell phone. She hadn’t missed a word. “What else,” he wanted the full story.
    “Yeah, a lot of refrigeration for a Mom & Pop Store. The Mom today was a different Mom than the one there last week, submissive, deferential, but prettier. She smelled human, clean. That’s Mom number two.”
    “Louise, go back on Wednesday, this could all be circumstantial, remember that politician, a blood disorder? He was big for a human, and nearly scent-free, close to the profile. We caught it in time. We mustn’t get off-track. We’re still in beta phase.”

    Wednesday, around noontime, Louise decided to take Ocean Avenue which ran parallel to Western Avenue, down to the Summer Variety Store. She looked cute in her capri pants, t-shirt with white iron-on-transfer butterfly, and her customary brimmed hat, a child’s size with a chinstrap so the wind wouldn’t blow it away.
    On small white sneakers, she moved gracefully. Except for the sneakers and the butterfly, both white, she was dressed in pastel shades of blue. She passed as a tiny grandmother, which she actually was. She considered her work a duty. There was no downside to eliminating the Regressives. They were inconvenient.
    Today, Louise was hearing The Travelling Wilburys’s “End Of The Line.” Her numerous layers of thought precluded the need for an iPod, or any other audio device. Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison. Brother Roy, angel voice with a three-octave range, was performing his lines. Concurrently, she was reviewing the layout of the Summer Variety Store, while she was being careful of the traffic, and studiously monitoring the seasonal summer crowd.
    Humans were a mixed lot. Why did the good ones like Roy Orbison seem to have such short lives, while others didn’t deserve any life at all? Directly ahead appeared a perfect example.
    She was following a couple of young men, boys, actually. They were barely out of their teens. One was wearing a Black Sabbath Band T-shirt. There were far worse people than Ozzy and Black Sabbath she thought. Why were they given such a bad rap? In fact, Sabbath’s “War Pigs” really rocked.
    The second boy, marginally human, reeked of sweat, tobacco, vinegar, and oily distress. He too, was wearing a t-shirt, same color, Dawn Of Ashes. She had never heard of Dawn Of Ashes. Another, slightly more obscure Metal Band? What caught her gaze was the Ashes Boy was smoking a cigarette, bad. She knew what was next...
    The swine-boy finished his smoke, and tossed it on the pavement of Ocean Avenue, in the midst of the mostly bare-footed crowd.
    Cross-Cognitives were capable of subtle time manipulation, but only to a minor degree. It generally wasn’t of much productive use. Just an oddity.
    Louise Reilly reversed time, just a little, levitated the red burning ember back into the Ashes Boy’s hand. Then she willed that hand shut tight. Now, that Ashes Boy was smokin...

    The Beatle’s song, the mental bookmark clip, “Me And My Monkey,” indicated she was at her destination, Summer Variety Store.
    Louise Reilly paused for what was a split-second externally, but about ninety times that to her own internal clock-speed, and played back her childhood crib-ride down the stairs one more time.
    Yes, that explosion of joy and rattling and flashing like fireworks, the far end of the stairway a looming black hole ready to consume her and divide her into a thousand tiny fragments of blazing sentient light, that was a rush, wasn’t it?
    She spliced in the Ozzy Osbourne Black Sabbath “War Pigs” soundtrack, copied the crib-ride data file into a memory which was properly managed, therefore measured larger than any Homo Sapiens’s. The hardware was similar, but the firmware, the organization, made the difference.
    The ride clip with the Ozzy soundtrack was a keeper.
    Louise Reilly went inside for the Wednesday Powerball Ticket.
    The same man recognized and greeted her. He looked a little cooler, the AC was still maxxed, but it was only in the eighties today.
    The second Mom, the pretty one who looked like an Italian Actress, was gone today. Instead there was a young, teens, blue-eyed girl, equally dramatic, but nearly as white as Louise. She didn’t seem related to either of the hypothetical parents. Also, a slightly more mature, maybe twenty at best, very thin, very dark young man was there, training for work? He nearly blended, merged, into the background quasi-stockroom area.
    That little Mom & Pop Store was turning into a veritable United Nations get-together, one big virtual family. Equal opportunity cannibalism, Louise Reilly thought wryly.
    She bought her Powerball Ticket, skipped the dime-candy, and gave the man a dollar. She pretended not to notice he was still getting bigger, not like a typical human being, although. He still looked soft, as if he had been working out, gaining muscle, yet still over-eating. Scary. It fit the pattern.
    There were no other customers today, and she sorted through the scents of the luncheon meats, spices, the new seasonal products made of plastics, chemicals, and cloth. The young girl and boy smelled natural, not like that sweaty swine-boy she had passed on her way down.
    The proprietor, Pop, remained predictably scent-free.
    She thanked him pleasantly and left.

    “William, I’m certain. Mom Number Two was gone, I knew it; and there’s fresh candidates, two young ones, and they do look tasty... He’s growing, there’s a disposer there of course, 15-Inch Rotor it looks like, in the deli section. We’re talking steer-rib capability here, not sub sandwich and deli scrap cleanup.
    “He doesn’t smell, he’s efficient even for a Regressive. Of course the grinder is for backup, for interruptions, inconveniences. Mostly the cops just drive around looking for break-ins; it’s the ocean, lots of rentals, for-sales, some of them well on the way to abandoned-stage; especially on the Western Avenue Side... with the economy, the jobs gone.”
    “Louise, the Missing Persons Database shows that South from Route 99, down to where the suspension bridge crosses over the inlet, lost people are up twenty percent; summer’s just started.”
    Her ears were beginning to ring, as they did when everything came together. The ratio of Regressives to Cross-Cognitives was getting smaller. Relatively speaking, for her kind, the Progressives, they were gaining.
    For the rest, the majority, Homo Sapiens, the narrow comfort zone was still there for a while.
    She continued her report. “There’s an alley, too, and a Food & Spirits place next door. It stays open as late as code lets them, Midnight.
    “There’s a subtle but intentional arrangement of dumpsters, fences, vegetation, and minimal lighting, so crossing from the food place to the store is handy and unobtrusive, particularly late in the evening. Oh, and the smokers... Well, it would be easy to become careless especially just before closing time, after food and drink. A single one wouldn’t be missed.
    “I’m going in this evening,” said the tiny grandmother. Louise terminated the call from the top floor of the Embassy Hotel.

    Louise Reilly took Ocean Avenue, the busier route, to its junction at Western Avenue, where Food & Spirit and Summer Variety Store stood. It was 23:30, nearly midnight. The store was closed, and Food & Spirits was winding down; which meant many last-minute food orders, drinks, and smoking excursions outside to the sidewalk and narrow drive separating the restaurant and the corner store.
    She was wearing her best color, blue, but darker shades. She didn’t want to stand out. The town law officers were gearing up for closing time, Midnight, and after that the subsequent drunk-patrol. Louise had no concerns; she was small, and almost as quick as the comic-book hero Superman when needed.
    Cross-Cognitives did possess human foibles, as did the Regressives, who were soon to be history. That was Louise’s mission. She, William Blake, and others were the new wave, the latest version of life on earth, inevitable as a summer rain. Their agenda contained elements of observing, planning and social manipulation, didn’t it always? She considered the Regressives to be worse than her kind, inferior. Someone always had to lose.
    Still, she felt empathy with those humans, the mainstream species. She recalled that in the twentieth-century, the sixties, her own country’s MKULTRA program, purported to be a mind-control experiment on an eager and unwitting public youth, hippies. MKULTRA fed them LSD-25, which made for very strange days in the 1970’s.
    Yet, MKULTRA was a ploy, a distraction. A conspiracy within a conspiracy. She recalled the reports that some of the drug-crazed hippies were committing particularly heinous murders, they called them cult-killings.
    People with names like Vito and Charlie and Ojay, innocents by no stretch of the imagination, yet they were just the fall-guys for the newly hatched Regressives. Like the Vampires, the Werewolves, the Wendigos of legend, they were the bad people, and had to be dealt with. Good public relations and protocol counted a lot.
    The Regressives were the worse. They were a refinement of horror unprecedented. They killed for pleasure, and fast. They were tidy, meticulous to the extreme. They seldom left behind any messy evidence. Even horror deserved a re-spin occasionally.

    Since Western Avenue and Ocean Avenue joined into something like a U-turn and Y-configuration, Food & Spirits had two front entrances. Louise Reilly walked past the first one on Ocean Avenue, the original, primary main entrance. It was well lit, outside there were live potted plants, and inside a live band was performing a highly original rendition of the The Searchers’s Hit Song “Needles And Pins,” circa 1964.
    According to her eidetic memory, Sonny Bono and Jack Nitzsche, who had died at ages 62 and 63, wrote the song.
    The house band was wrapping it up, “...The tears I gotta hide... Ah, Needles And Pins...Ah...” The lead singer had suffered too many house drinks; his lyrics were slurring into something like “...Nino Comprinza...” Louise rounded the corner past the white tables and white plastic chairs.
    She entered the secondary front entrance of Food & Spirits on Western Avenue. Climbing up the reasonably clean red carpeted steps, she studied the bland but intentional arrangement inside the narrow zone between the food place and the variety. There was a pair of conveniently aligned but discretely situated delivery entrances, both of the solid doors had white steel security grids which were not yet shut for the evening.
    Inside the band was winding down. Comprinza, the lead singer, managed to exit vertically, simulating dignity. Matters were improving, as the daytime proprietor of the convenience store was moonlighting in the restaurant.
    It would be easy. She wondered if there was a God. The same one for Regressives, Humans, Cross-Cognitives? How would that work?
    “Lovely Lady, you’re out late, its past last call.”
    “I don’t drink, for some reason, I couldn’t sleep, I forgot the Powerball, it’s silly. I don’t even need the cash, I’m just hooked on my two dollar a week gambling habit,” said the petite, pristine grandmother who was named Louise Reilly.
    “The draw isn’t until tomorrow, you’re here, come on over, I don’t think the law will mind...” She knew it! The large man didn’t even care if it was a sting operation, although unlikely. From his point of view she was already gone, comsumed. Inconsequentials such as clothing, State ID... well these were just dessert, a source of dietary fiber to his kind, a hungry Regressive.
    “We can cross over,” he nodded to the pair of gridded white security gates she had noticed. “Powerball, 3 Musketeers, bottle of water? I don’t drink either...” That was something they had in common. The Regressives and Cross-Cognitives were teetotalers.
    “I can walk you back. Even though it’s pretty safe if you go along Ocean Avenue.” She nodded.
    He took the bait.

    They crossed over to Summer Variety Store. The improvised stockroom area followed the real stockroom area. Louise wondered if the original proprietor, already devoured by his revenant replacement had been a bit more organized. Probably. The new guy, shark in man’s clothing, was smart enough to know his cover would soon be discovered, then he would vanish. He was, after all, not crazy, just a people eater.
    The Regressive, to Louise’s trained vision, was shimmering, growing. For different reasons, they both wanted to finish the night.
    Louise was pondering the God Question again. The Cross-Cognitives, they were logical, versatile, and possibly infallible. Godlike one might say. She always wondered, wished, and doubted. Was that Regressive mentally saying grace before his dinner?
    He was looking like that Indian guy on the Internet, World’s Widest Mouth, except instead of a Coca-Cola can engulfed, longitudinally; she was fixated on the proprietor’s perfect teeth. The teeth looked too small for the mouth. Did a Regressive “...gum them to death?” It was surreal. She was crazy. Too much LSD-25 nearly a half a century back.
    The Regressive bit down on her white forearm.

    Louise felt the teeth like knives, and the gums were hard rubber like the hockey puck that had hit her in the head when she was small. Cross-Cognitive’s ability to control the flow of time and circumstances helped her not to panic. Plus, healing to them was more regeneration rather than repair and patchwork.
    She wasn’t in trouble yet, but would be. Something had to happen sooner rather than later...
    Suddenly she felt the Regressive’s grip of teeth and gums release. Her flesh was already pulling back from where it was torn, like time-lapse photography in reverse. The Regressive, like a felled tree, tipped and toppled to the tidy flooring in the deli section within the Summer Variety Store.
    “I warned you not to aggravate the animals,” said a dark figure. “Did you smile at him? They react like dogs a bit; he was already hungry, but when they see teeth, it makes them worse.”
    “He was already committed, William. Nice uniform.”
    Her partner, William Blake, was flattered. “I travel well equipped. The uniform is a little closer to Sheriff’s Department than the Local Force, but nobody’s going to remember. I need to get their cruiser back, or the new kid is going to have teeth marks of his own from getting his ass chewed out.”
    Blake looked down at the proprieter, who had irreparably blown his cover and was now a very guilty and very dead Regressive.
    “They are a bit like canines, the feral type. Thick skull, but a broken neck seems to clarify the distinction between life and death.”
    William Blake, for a Cross-Cognitive, was large. Smaller than the dead guy but not by much. He grabbed the proprietor’s right arm, and snapped it, like a turkey drumstick. The bright, thick arterial blood made a coppery stream to the floor drain in the middle of the white ceramic tiles.
    “Want some?” William Blake had an annoying habit of talking with his mouth full.

    Louise Reilly ate, too. The 15-inch commercial disposal capable of grinding everything from artichokes to rib bones, waited its turn for scraps.
    She and Blake were no different from their supper; except they were polite enough, kind, she thought, not to indiscriminately consume family and friends first.
    While she chewed, Louise Reilly ruminated on the concept of angels, buddhas, and gods.

The Thief

    Everyone loved Marylou Scott. Her employers loved her because she was totally reliable, always early for work, no sudden health problems when asked to work late, and her appearance when she greeted clients in the little waiting room of their law offices was pleasant but appropriate. She had a pretty face, auburn curls, clothes that were attractive but subdued and perfect for her law office setting.
    One and all, her co-workers absolutely adored her. In that office with several legal secretaries, in a place where there could easily arise resentment, or feelings, imagined or otherwise, of discrimination in work, everyone admired her. She came in early, worked as late as anyone wished, but best of all, there was nothing on the computer that she couldn’t fix. She saved the firm hundreds of dollars by not having to call in a professional to fix the computer or help with the copier. These machines, whose inner workings could be a total mystery to the others immediately and graciously offered up their secrets to Marylou. Her knowledge of English punctuation and spelling, her familiarity with every legal phrase that had ever been thrown at her—her office skills were phenomenal. Yet her modesty when another secretary thanked her in overwhelming relief at what she had been sure was a total disaster, was genuine.
    So when things began disappearing in the office, Marylou was the last person in the world anyone would think of blaming. Small amounts of money went, inexpensive pieces of jewelry disappeared—nothing really large—but irritating to lose when you had plans for it. The secretaries had all known each other for years and nothing like this had ever happened. But one day when the other secretaries were out celebrating a birthday, one of them had come back early to get a present she had forgotten. She could hardly believe it when she actually saw Marylou dipping into the cash drawer kept for small emergencies. And in her hand was the new brooch Dorothy had bought to go with her Easter outfit. After that, Marylou was soon let go and sighs of relief were felt by everyone when they no longer had to be careful about leaving things around. For a few days, everyone congratulated each other on their decision to let Marylou go.
    But a funny thing happened. Everyone began missing Marylou so much that it affected the whole office. Computers broke down in ways they had never done before. To get the computer adjuster they sometimes had to wait two or three days. The copy machine had a fit of pique and refused to print anything that was more than one page long. It also refused to print with the new toner—it wanted the old one back even though it was almost twice as expensive. Sometimes clients came in at a quarter to five in the evening and just “had” to see their attorneys right now. And you had to stay, even though you had to get home to pick up your kid, or make dinner in time for your family.
    Finally, the secretaries had a conference among themselves, and decided that, thief or not, they had to get Marylou back. They devised an almost perfect plan. When Marylou was finally convinced that she was really wanted, things got back to normal. The copy machine took any kind of paper that it was fed, and the computers exhibited model behavior.
    The plan was a simple but effective one. Just as everyone would contribute to a fund for a Christmas party, each day one girl in turn would carelessly leave something small out on her desk—a dollar bill, a small piece of jewelry, a paperback best seller—nothing valuable but something desirable in some way. Each day this “gift” would disappear but they all felt it was worth it—it was like giving to the office pool. This went on for several weeks and everyone went back to the pleasure of knowing that whatever went wrong, Marylou would know how to take care of it.
    But then one day Marylou up and left. Just like that. No reason, no subtle indications beforehand of dissatisfaction—she had been as pleasant as ever. One Friday at 5 p.m. she just announced that she would not be back. And she left.
    It soon became apparent where Marylou had decided to go. She now worked in one of the law offices that was nearby and where the secretaries knew each other well and often had lunch together.
    Dorothy, the generally accepted head of the secretaries, due to her longevity and knowledge of the workings of the office, decided one day to have lunch with Cynthia, a long-time friend from the other office. For weeks the girls in the original office had been going mad trying to figure out why Marylou had left. Since they all knew everything about each other’s jobs, they knew she was getting the same salary. In fact, the conditions “over there” had to be almost the same. Why did she leave? Why? Why?
    The attorneys were very upset and tended to blame the other secretaries. Papers that had to be gotten out yesterday had to wait till the intercom was adjusted and the paper feed on the computer fixed.
    “Oh, she is the greatest,” said Cynthia when she met Dorothy for lunch, “there’s nothing she can’t do. And she is so wonderful with our clients that I think even the law practice may have improved. I don’t know how your firm could ever have let her go.”
    “We didn’t let her go. We did everything in our power to keep her,” sighed Dorothy, thinking of the many “gifts” that had accidentally been left about, “but she just up and left one day and we never knew why. You wouldn’t know, would you?”
    “Well, I don’t know if this will help, and I feel a little uncomfortable having to say this, but there is one thing she did say about why she left your firm.”
    “Oh,” said Dorothy, “please tell me what it was. There was nothing we would not have done to keep her.”
    “Well, at the employment interview, she said that she was interested in working somewhere more exciting. She said that working in your firm had lost its challenge, that every day she knew what to expect, that there was nothing different to look forward to.” Cynthia bowed her head, “Sorry, but that was the reason she gave. She obviously finds our office more exciting.”
    Dorothy swallowed hard. Suddenly Marylou had found that there was no challenge? After weeks of donations from everyone in the office?
    As they were leaving the restaurant, Cynthia reached into her handbag to leave a tip, but frowned for a moment and said, “That’s funny. I was sure my change purse was in here. I must have left it on my desk in the office—strange, but that never happened to me before. Oh well, I guess there’s a first time for everything.”
    Dorothy looked at her, and to Cynthia’s surprise, began to laugh uncontrollably.
    She never told Cynthia why she had laughed but the irony of the situation tickled her fancy so much that she could never think of it again without a sudden amused smile lighting up her face. Cynthia was hurt, “I don’t think this is funny.”
    “Oh, I am sorry,” said Dorothy, ”it just reminded me of something that happened to me once. Anyway, the change purse is probably on your desk right now waiting for you to come back”
    Dorothy didn’t want to jeopardize Marylou’s job—not yet. Marylou might still have changed her ways. After all, the change purse could actually still be on Cynthia’s desk. Yes, it could, yes, it could, Dorothy grinned to herself, but she wouldn’t bet on it, not in a million years.
     Not long afterwards, Marylou was dismissed from the other office, and it was pretty obvious what the reason was. Dorothy’s firm welcomed her back with open arms.
    But her behavior had changed in small subtle ways. Things could now be left out in plain sight, until nothing but old age claimed them. However, this change was accompanied by another less welcome change. Marylou’s behavior, although she was as competent and accommodating as ever, was now what one might call more “normal”. Like the others, she worked hard but, unlike her past behavior, she offered nothing and waited to be asked for help. Instead of being outgoing and cheerful in everything she did, she became reserved and quietly reflective.
    However, the attorneys were still delighted with her skills, and, in fact, one day a young attorney who had just joined the firm said, “You know, Marylou, I think you know almost as much about the law as I do. Too bad, you never went to law school”.
    Something happened after this. Marylou was no longer instantly available on evenings and weekends. It appeared that she had decided to act on the young attorney’s observation and was now attending law school. Her grades were so high on graduation that she was immediately offered a position as an assistant district attorney in the federal court, and it soon became apparent that her knowledge of criminal law seemed to be unparalleled by anyone in her division. When asked how she knew so much about the criminal mind, she never seemed to be able to find an answer—it was something that just came to her, like second nature, she said. In due time, as the leading prosecutor in criminal cases for the government, she wrote the definitive book on criminal law and invited everyone in her old office to the book signing. Although Dorothy and the other secretaries in the office knew exactly where Marylou got all her knowledge, they never said a word except among themselves. They just grinned to each other, sort of like honor among thieves.

Birth Plan

    It was Maya who first suggested we open a bottle of wine when her contractions started. “The red,” she said. It was supposed to calm her down and loosen up her body.
    “Not the white? We have that one in the fridge.”
    “Red,” she said. “Here comes another.”
    I stood motionless, unsure whether to go to her or go back for the wine. I went for the wine. The case sat in our office closet under a stack of manila folders. The bottles stood upright, as they had for the eight months since our wedding. I held the bottle up to the window, wondering why wine had to lay flat and what we had lost by standing it up. In the afternoon light it looked like blood.
    “Ok,” I heard Maya say in the living room.
    “You’re doing great!” I called.
    “You should be timing them,” she said as I hurried into the kitchen. By the time I found the opener in the rag drawer instead of the utensil drawer and then popped the cork and found two clean glasses, Maya was calling another one. “Time it, Chris!”
    “Ok,” I said. “Hold on, let me find the stopwatch.” I ran to the office but couldn’t find it.
    “Hold on?” she said when I came back out. “Are you kidding me? How long was that?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I couldn’t find the stopwatch. Here.” I handed her a glass and she raised it to her lips before I could make a toast. It was her first drink since the champagne flute at our wedding, and as far as she knew, only the second since then for me, the other coming on our honeymoon at Maya’s insistence. She had sighed at the taste of rum on my lips and we laughed when she ordered a virgin.
    “Call Cinci,” she said, not even acknowledging the wine for which we had waited so long. It tasted great as far as I could tell, so at least I could stop worrying about laying bottles sideways. I dialed Cinci’s number off the birth plan, stuck to our refrigerator by magnets shaped like football helmets. She picked up on the fourth ring.
    “It’s on,” I said.
    “Really? Let me talk to Maya!”
    “Let me talk to her,” Maya said.
    I handed Maya the phone and went out on the balcony to shiver in the spring chill, smoke my last cigarette, and drink my wine. Cinci was Maya’s best friend from Michigan State, what I imagined a girl from Cincinnati would look like: blonde and big-boned with a snaggletooth and a snake tattoo wrapped around her ankle. Her real name was Jen or Jane or something. She moved west to Portland a year after they graduated and begged Maya to follow. It took Maya two years to talk me into it, though by then she would have gone with or without me.
    I went back in to find Maya laughing and saying, “Holy shit, it hurts!” More laughter, then, “Get your ass over here, bitch!” Maya reminded me of the Jack Russell terrier I grew up with, small and spunky with a bark out of proportion to body size and a big heart to match. She handed me my phone and said, “I love that girl.”
    We drank, my glass empty and hers half-full. “Want more?” I asked.
    She stared at me.
    “Do you mind if I do?” I asked.
    She tucked her head and rocked her pelvis. “Let’s watch The Princess Bride,” she said.
    “Ok.” I carried my second glass over to the dvd rack. Watching the movie was on our birth plan, wedged between Sex and Go for a walk under Things to do to pass the time. I knew sex was out; walking might be an option later because it was supposed to get things going. The movie would be a solid hour and half right there, maybe three glasses of wine for me, maybe ten contractions for Maya.
    “Inconceivable,” I said, shuffling through the movies.
    Maya made her grunt laugh but quickly said, “What?”
    “It’s not here.” Billy had borrowed it over a week earlier for his sick girlfriend. I had told him I needed it back right away, but that’s Billy for you. “Did you put it somewhere?” I asked.
    “Where would I put it?” Maya said.
    “I don’t know, but it’s not here. How about Lord of the Rings?” I held up The Fellowship of the Ring, the extended director’s cut, but Maya only stared at me. “I’ll see if it’s On Demand,” I said. She started another contraction before I found the remote, so I was right there for this one, rubbing her back and telling her she was doing great. Maya moaned and I reminded her to breathe. I brought her water when it was over.
    “How long?” she asked.
    “About thirty seconds? Let me get my watch.” I found it and turned on the television. Familiar courtside commentators appeared on the screen. “Game 7,” I remembered.
    “What?”
    “Nothing.” I scrolled through the On Demand choices, but no luck. Just above where The Princess Bride should have been was another title that caught my eye: Orphan. I clicked on it. “How about this one?” I said. “Orphan. A husband and wife who recently lost their baby adopt a 9-year girl, but there’s something wrong with Esther.”
    When I turned to Maya, her eyes almost looked like I remembered Esther’s in the trailer. “What the fuck?” she said.
    “Just kidding.” I clicked back to the main selection screen.
    “Kidding,” Maya said.
    “Yeah, joking. It’s in our birth plan, Maya. Remember?’ I walked to the fridge and read off the sheet. “Try to make Maya laugh, whether she gets the jokes or not.”
    “And joking about watching a fucked up movie about dead babies is supposed to make me laugh?”
    “Ok, my bad. I’m sorry, all right?” I drank my wine. “Wanna watch another movie? Or I can go out and rent The Princess Bride.”
    “Forget it,” she said. “Just put on the TV.”
    I clicked back to a beer commercial.
    “Here comes the next one,” she said. “Time it!”
    I used my watch and gave her the time, 43 seconds, just as a young pop princess started overdoing the national anthem. “For Christ’s sake,” Maya said.
    “I know, right?” I hit the mute button.
    “Are you seriously putting on a basketball game?”
    “It’s Game 7.”
    “I don’t care if it’s the fucking Super Bowl! Turn this shit off!”
    I flipped to a nature documentary and should have kept my mouth shut and watched the lions lope across the savannah. I should have remembered everything from the birth class about not taking Maya’s emotions and hormones personally. Maybe it was the wine.
    “You don’t have to curse so much,” I said.
    “What?”
    “You sound like that fucky-fuck neighbor of ours.”
    Given that we had vowed to call Child Services if we heard one more tirade upstairs, I turned expecting Esther from Orphan, not Maya staring down at her swollen belly.
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    She looked up at the lions, now stalking a water hole. “Go get the movie,” she whispered.
    “As you wish!”
    No reaction.
    I quietly gathered my things, swallowed my wine, and swooped in for a kiss on my way out, but Maya retracted her cheek. Downstairs, I put my key in the Camry and paused. I would walk to the video store instead of driving to Billy’s in case Maya needed the car. Such chivalry on my part made me feel better as I stumbled down the sidewalk, half-buzzed and debating which was the greater shame, that I was half-buzzed off two glasses of wine or that I had just picked a fight with my pregnant wife.
    I hurried down the backstreets through a misty drizzle and tried not to think about Maya having contractions without me. Cinci would be there soon. I considered calling but kept my phone in my pocket. Maya was fine. If there was one thing we learned in class, labor could take a long time. I hadn’t visited the video store in awhile, and my surprise at finding a vacant hole in the shopping center quickly vanished. A casualty of the digital age, of course, and one less way for a guy to meet a girl. No more bumping in the aisles to share opinions or debate directors. I passed the beauty salon, the wireless store, and the insurance office before stopping at Game Time, where I cupped my hand to the darkened window. A fast break ended in a foul and the bartender poured a shot. I thought of Maya hugging Cinci, told myself I would only have one drink, and stepped inside to the smell of stale beer and popcorn.
    The sticky black floor grabbed at my sneakers as I walked to a barstool wedged between a middle-aged couple and two old timers. The bald bartender adjusted his nose ring and asked what I was having. I scanned the rows of bottles, figuring if I was only having one drink I might as well make it a good one. “Knob Creek,” I said. “Double on the rocks.”
    I loved how getting a drink was that easy. Five years legal, I still marveled at the simple freedom to catch a buzz whenever I wanted. For all the wrong reasons, the pregnancy had come at a good time. My body had been saturated when Maya handed me the news that morning, my head fuzzy and fingers puffy, shaking as I held the pregnancy kit with the pink + staring back at me. After an hour of discussion laced with arguments and tears, we still couldn’t decide, so Maya decided for us. We would keep the baby and get married. I told Maya I needed one shot and then I would go sober with her. “Sobriety solidarity,” I called it.
    “You’re so sweet!” she said.
    Turned out I needed most of a Jim Beam bottle stashed in our storage space. Now I let the Knob Creek simmer beneath my nose for several long seconds, the sharp smell carrying me back to my father’s workbench. I rattled the ice and sipped, closing my eyes. The taste sent a shudder through my system, the whiskey sliding down my throat and through my middle to where it settled like a spark in my belly.
    “That’s good,” I said.
    I watched the game and nursed my double and tried not to think about Maya. I timed it so I would finish the drink at halftime and hustle home. When the buzzer sounded, just like at a game, everyone started moving. The old timers set cash on the bar and left. I savored my last iced-down sip with my eyes closed, fished out my wallet to leave a tip, and looked up to see three girls claiming the empty stools. The one closest to me, blue-eyed with blonde hair in a ponytail, flashed me a smile that I tried to return. Her ring finger was as tan as the rest of her. I slipped my ring off beneath my wallet and tucked it into my pocket, relieved that I hadn’t spent any time in the sun lately.
    The bartender was on them right away. “Welcome, ladies! Can I see your I.D.s, please?”
    They were maybe of age and maybe not, and I didn’t bother checking the ring fingers of the other two, a tall redhead and a stocky Latina. The blonde got carded first and then turned to me. “Who’s winning?” she asked.
    I looked up at a car commercial. “Um, I’m not sure. It’s close, though.”
    “That’s all you can ask for,” she said.
    Really? Was it possible that this young, hot woman actually enjoyed watching sports? Inconceivable. Lost for words, I nodded and stared into my empty glass, then pulled out my cell phone so it looked like I had messages to check. There were none. The bartender got their drinks and asked me if I wanted another.
    “Sure,” I said. “Same thing.”
    “Double?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Alright,” the blonde said. She raised her red cocktail with a nod at me and clinked it against her girlfriends’ glasses. When my drink came she asked what I was having.
    I told her and she clinked my glass. I still hadn’t said anything particularly witty. The words on the tip of my tongue were, My wife is in labor with our first child right now. Instead, I said, “You rooting for anyone? In the game?”
    She shrugged. “As long as it’s good, I don’t care. We play, me and my girls. That’s Kendyl and that’s Maria.” They nodded at me and I could see it now, athletes all of them. Kendyl’s features were too rigid and defined for my liking, and Maria had already turned to scope out the rest of the bar.
    “And your name and points per game?” I asked.
    “Savannah. Fourteen.”
    “That’s pretty good,” I said. “Chris. Averaged ten if I was lucky back in high school. Who do you play for?”
    “U.P.,” she said. “University of Portland.”
    My first thought was that I could look these girls up on the computer and find out their ages and everything about them. I could probably get a team poster, but where would I put it with Maya wondering where I got it? “That’s awesome,” I said. “I’ll have to come to a game.”
    “You should,” Savannah said, and we continued talking, my words coming easier as we drank. We talked about hoops and booze and the store where I sold furniture, our voices rising in stride with the volume of the bar. Maybe I did most of the talking. The bartender gave us waters and I spilled mine in my lap. We talked right through the third quarter, until the bartender asked to fill us up. I was dangerously close to drunk and my wife was in labor with our first child.
    “I should probably go,” I said.
    “Oh yeah?” Savannah said. “What’s so important on a Saturday afternoon?”
    I wrinkled my brow and looked down at my phone. Still no messages. “Ok,” I said. “But just a single.” I knew I was drunk halfway through texting Billy because I was trying to spell everything correctly and taking so long to do it that the battery icon started flashing. “You watching the game?” I texted. “Im coming over for the Princess Bride.”
     Watching the 4^th quarter with Savannah, I started projecting our future, which of course started with sex. I couldn’t tell if her boobs were fake or perfect. I couldn’t imagine a serious athlete taking the risk of altering her body. Fake boobs usually turned me off, but the possibility of hers being fake somehow excited me. I’d heard it had practically become normal for girls to get boob jobs as high school graduation gifts.
    “Take a picture,” she said. “It’ll last longer.”
    “What?” I looked away but suddenly felt brave. Maybe it was the whiskey. “Ok,” I said, holding up my phone to take her photo. I framed her chest and noticed the battery icon flashing as I pressed the button.
    Savannah threw up her hands. “What the fuck, dude? I was kidding!” There was a sharp edge to her voice, her face severe as she hopped off her stool and grabbed my phone, backing away as she checked the image. I smiled when she turned the camera on me. She threw it in my lap and left for the bathroom. Her friends returned to their conversation.
    I ignored the flashing battery and scrolled back to the photo of Savannah, just a blur of hands reaching out to block the shot. I felt like a pervert and scrolled ahead to the photo of me, my eyes half closed and my smile crooked. The lean of my head made my hairline obvious, and the wet spot on my pants made it look like I’d peed myself. The room spun and the phone vibrated in my hand. A text from Billy came up: “Ok.”
    I threw all my cash on the bar and asked the bartender to call me a taxi. I hurried outside and stood beneath the drizzle, catching my balance with my hands on my knees before stumbling back to the overhang and scrolling to Maya’s number. During the time in which I paused, wondering what I would say, the battery died.
    Savannah did not come out. I pictured them in there laughing at me. I spun at someone staring, but it was only my reflection on the dark glass. When the taxi arrived, I directed the weathered woman reeking of cigarettes to Billy’s house. I asked her for a cigarette and she said we couldn’t smoke in the car. I told her we could smoke in Billy’s driveway and leave the meter running, so that’s what we did. I didn’t mention the news to Billy, just grabbed the movie and told him Maya was in one of her moods. I had the driver make one more stop before taking me home, at a convenience store for a pack of gum, a pack of Camels, and cash from the ATM. I stuffed three sticks of spearmint in my mouth, tipped the driver with a handful of cigarettes, and ran up to the apartment.
    They were gone. Instead of lions on the television there were dogs being trained. The wine bottle stood where I had set it, and beside it a note in Maya’s tiny handwriting. The room spun as I focused to read. Where are you? We left.
    I ran outside. Cinci had driven Maya, leaving the Camry for me, but there was no way I was driving. “Wait!” I yelled, racing down to the taxi still idling where she dropped me.
    The window slid down. “Sorry, man, I just got another fare.”
    “My wife’s in labor,” I breathed. “Please.”
    She twisted her face but met my eyes. “Alright,” she said. “But if you’re bullshitting me, I’m taking the rest of your smokes.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I ran upstairs but had to pause from all the spinning. What did I need? I hadn’t packed my bag and couldn’t remember anything until I remembered the birth plan, which I pulled from the refrigerator, helmet magnets tumbling to the floor. The phone numbers were useless to me, and I assumed Maya and Cinci had everything listed under What Maya needs. I had my Coaching strategies and the chart I had drawn with all the labor stages. I folded the birth plan into my pocket and grabbed the movie, noticing the wine bottle sitting where I left it. I picked up the remote, let my thumb hover over LAST before pressing POWER, and bolted down to the taxi. “The new midwife center by Providence,” I said.
    The driver’s sudden ability to make good time didn’t help my spinning, and I almost threw up my Knob Creek in the backseat. I pulled out the birth plan, soft with sweat and rain, and had to focus to study it. We were probably in late first stage, the time-to-go stage. Maya’s contractions would be longer, stronger, and closer together. My job would be to help her relax and find comfortable positions. I could do that. I looked out the window to try relaxing and immediately saw the sign for Groovy Smoothie. “Stop!” I said.
    The driver hit the brakes. “What?”
    “We need to stop at Groovy Smoothie,” I said.
    She muttered under her breath, circled around, and dropped me in front. I found myself stuck behind a gaggle of soccer moms and their uniformed little girls. “Excuse me,” I said. “Can I cut? My wife’s in labor.” The moms spun and parted before me, their daughters clinging closer to their pant legs. “Thanks,” I said. “I need a double tangerine with a protein boost. Large.”
    Now I was ready. The driver cut short her cigarette and whipped us to the midwife center. I tipped her the rest of the pack. The receptionist did a double take when I burst through the door, wild-eyed and drunk, clutching a dvd and a smoothie and soaked through with sweat and rain. She edged back when I ran up but recognized me from earlier appointments and pointed me back to the last birthing suite on the left. I burst through that door in similar form, realizing as I did that I should have stopped for a moment to gather myself and put in fresh gum.
    Maya kneeled on the floor leaning on Cinci, who glared at me. Maya wore her blue bathrobe and nothing else. It fell away from her, untied. She was all curves, swollen breasts and the giant egg of her belly. Cinci’s hair was pinned beneath a black bandana. The midwife lightly touching Maya’s back smiled calmly, skeptical. She was the only midwife at the center I hadn’t met yet, having missed that appointment. Maya looked up with eyes that must have been as glazed-over as mine. I swayed in the doorway and watched her try to focus on what I held.
    “The Princess Bride,” I said, holding up the dvd.
    “Is that a double tangerine with a protein boost?” she asked.
    “As you wish!” I ran to her. “I’m so sorry I took so long, Maya.”
    She grabbed the smoothie and started sucking it down.
    “You’ve been drinking,” Cinci said.
    “A little,” I said. “Awhile ago. I can do this.” I introduced myself to the midwife but immediately forgot her name. She was a slight woman with clear blue eyes and long brown hair streaked with grey. She asked if Maya felt comfortable having me there. Maya just sucked on the smoothie. With my fate as a father hanging in the balance, my wife was letting me have it. When no one spoke, I unfolded the smeared birth plan and asked what stage we were in.
    “Late first stage,” said the midwife.
    I looked at my chart. “Do you need to use the bathroom, Maya?” She nodded. Cinci and I helped her up. “I got her,” I said, and Cinci reluctantly released her arm.
    “Thank you,” Maya whispered as I helped her onto the toilet seat.
    “Let’s have a baby,” I said. “Just not right here in the toilet, though.” She smiled and gave me a weak smack. “I know we want a water birth, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
    “Stop,” she laughed, but I didn’t stop. It said so right on the birth plan, and for me personally, humor was the best way to cope with seeing and hearing my wife in pain.
    Three cups of coffee later, the vicarious adrenaline rush of labor had siphoned my buzz down to a headache. The midwife monitored Maya’s contraction lengths and cervix widths and finally announced transition stage. For Maya, the transition was from human to animal, her moaning and groaning now primal roaring. She drifted between worlds, vaguely aware of us but also at home in her happy place, which I envisioned as some misty grove of whispering, ancestral women. When Maya unleashed a howl that they must have heard in the parking lot, the midwife announced that we had reached second stage and it was time to get the tub ready for pushing. “You’ll be our first water birth in the new center,” she said.
    Getting Maya in the tub took some work, but once she reclined into the water, her body visibly relaxed. She gripped a handle with one hand and my hand in the other, drawing blood where her nails dug in. After two more contractions, her blood began turning the bath water pink.
    “The baby’s coming,” the midwife said. “I can feel the head.”
    “Maya, you’re doing it!” I said. “Our baby’s coming!”
    We had talked about me catching the baby, something Maya always seemed more confident about than me, and the conversation with the midwife had elicited another skeptical look, but now she invited me to leave Maya’s side and get ready. I squeezed Maya’s hand and slid by a control panel to take my place beside her legs. Cinci replaced me at Maya’s side.
    “Look,” the midwife said, pointing. “Can you see the baby’s hair?”
    I peered through the murky water, and sure enough, I saw a swirl of black hair on the crown of a head. “Maya! I can see his head! You’re doing it!”
     “Go ahead and touch it,” the midwife told me.
    I hesitated. The midwife nodded and I slowly reached down, my hand trembling in the warm water. I wasn’t prepared for the softness beneath my finger. “Oh my God!” I said. “Maya, I feel his head!” It was like a sponge.
    Maya roared.
    “Push!” the midwife said. “Push, Maya! This is it!”
    “It hurts!” Maya yelled.
    “The head’s out! Take a deep breath and get ready for one more push!” In a lower voice, she said, “Give me your fingers, Chris. Feel the chin? Just guide it out.”
    “Are you sure?” I whispered.
    Maya roared.
    “Push, Maya!” the midwife said. “Go ahead, Chris.”
    With my fingers under his tiny chin, I tugged as gently as I could, but the baby didn’t come. His shoulders were stuck or something. I saw a burst of blood in the water and froze.
    “I’ll take it from here, Chris,” said the midwife. “Go back to Maya.”
    I did with relief, sliding back down the tub, which suddenly came to life. With a roar of their own, the jets fired up and broke the water into a bubbling cauldron of blue light. Maya screamed. I realized that my elbow had hit the control panel. I pictured my baby down there, half in and half out of his bleeding, screaming mother and getting pummeled in the face by twenty pounds of pressure. I turned to the midwife, but she was feeling around in the tub with both hands. Cinci was holding Maya and yelling, “It’s OK! It’s OK!”
    I looked at the control panel but saw no obvious OFF button. Helpless and desperate, inclined to do nothing for fear of making it worse, I randomly started pressing buttons. The light flashed from blue to red just as the midwife lifted our crying baby out of the cauldron and into Maya’s extended arms. Suddenly serene, Maya cradled the baby to her breast and pronounced what we all could see. “A girl!” she said, breaking into tears. “My beautiful baby girl.”
    And she was beautiful. Wrinkled and coated in vernix like a yogurt-covered raisin, with a cone-shaped head and a contorted mouth screaming at the world, she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She brought tears to my eyes.
    The jets suddenly stopped and the midwife turned off the red light. “I guess we need a cover for that panel,” she said. We laughed and stared at the baby. “Do you have a name?” the midwife asked.
    Maya looked up and smiled at me. “Grace,” she said.
    After my grandmother. I hid my tears in a bathwater hug.
    Cinci joined us. “That was incredible, Maya,” she whispered. “I want your autograph.”
    Our birthing instructor had always compared labor to an athletic event, which made me think of Savannah, a strong and beautiful Division I athlete who at the moment had nothing on Maya. “Yeah,” I said. “Who knew you could kick so much ass?”
    Maya winked. “Better watch your language there, Dad.”
    “Someone should get a picture,” Cinci said.
    “My phone’s dead,” I quickly answered.
    Cinci got a picture and Grace continued crying as the midwife lifted the birth cord out of the water so we could literally feel it pulsing with life. Translucent and nearly as thick as my thumb, it weaved like a rope and felt strong enough to hold my weight. When it stopped pulsing, the midwife guided me through cutting it.
    When it was time to move Maya, I took off my shirt and held Grace to my chest, the vernix sticky like double-sided tape. Suddenly I was a father with a wailing baby girl to protect. My future with Maya was anyone’s guess, but I vowed to always be there for Grace. She would need me when she skinned her knee or fell during a recital. I would protect her from unscrupulous boys and walk her down the aisle, and when she had a baby of her own, if the father ditched her in the middle of labor to go drinking at a bar, I would have his balls. If I had to, I would even go to one of those AA meetings where you stand up and say, “Hello, my name is Chris and I am an alcoholic.”
    With Maya safely in bed, I leaned forward and handed her Grace, whose wailing had settled to whimpering. “She’s got all her fingers and toes,” I said.
    Maya smiled and counted for herself before taking Grace to her breast.
    I remembered my wedding ring in my pocket.
    “Ready for third stage?” the widwife asked.
    “Third stage?” I had my hand in my pocket but had lost track of the birth plan.
    “Delivering the placenta,” the midwife said. “Don’t worry, Maya, it’s cake compared to what you just did.” She gently started tugging on the birth cord that went inside Maya, and at the first sight of blood, I turned away. I had seen enough for one day.
    “What are you gonna do with it?” Cinci asked.
    “With the placenta?” Maya asked.
    “Yeah, like I hear you can bury it under a tree that you plant.”
    “In some cultures,” said the midwife, “they even cook it and eat it.”
    “No thanks,” Maya said, and in the silence that followed, as Grace latched onto Maya’s nipple, I imagined a sizzling placenta and wondered if it would go well with our wedding wine.

Once, I Found
That I Might Be a Good Friend

    Once I turned eighteen, I realized that Petaluma High School could no longer force me to sit through class, that the truancy laws no longer applied. With this in mind, I chose to shirk my academic responsibilities in the most responsible way I could think of: I wrote myself off campus passes every day. I told the school that I would be missing this or that period ahead of time, thereby insuring against expulsion or some other unpleasant punitive measure. I was a charming kid, I thought, although never with the purest of motives. More than one parent had commented on my uncanny similarities to Eddie Haskell Jr. And Eddie had it right: crimes are forgiven those blessed with the gift of gab. At least I’d adopted the Eddie Haskel Jr. model of noncompliance, charming my way through disobedience rather than opting for angrier forms of rebellion.
    And it wasn’t as if I was committing any crimes during my forays away from campus. Needless risk was as far from my purview as tomorrow or the next day, and, more often than not, I was just leaving campus to get a cup of coffee, maybe a late breakfast. But, in the spirit of full disclosure, senior year wasn’t a great time for me. I had, by then, developed the thirst, and I often drank the school days away. Despite my charm, my affability, I was as selfish a teenager as they come, and kindness was a stopgap measure to ensure that I could achieve my aims as painlessly as possible. But, that said, there were moments that all the blind chatter in the world, the most calloused and benumbed of all vocal chords, couldn’t produce the language that would rectify a situation exceeding the limited intellect of one who relies on the wink and on the smile.
    When I waltzed into the office grinning like I worked for QVC, the office ladies weren’t at all surprised to see me. “Hello there Mr. Leib,” Miss Thompson said, with a dramatic roll of her eyes.
    “Hi Miss Hannon. Hi Miss Thompson,” I said. Seeing me approach the office counter, one might have thought it was my own place of business, thought that the two middle aged women to whom I addressed my salutations were, in fact, my own employees. “How are the most beautiful office ladies on earth today?”
    “Get a load of this kid.” Miss Hannon gestured with her thumb in my direction. “No need for the fireworks, we’re going to give you the off-campus pass.”
    “What is it today, Mr. Lieb, a cup of coffee?” Miss Thompson asked.
    “Invariably,” I said with a bow. “Am I really that transparent?”
    “Invariably,” Miss Hannon echoed.
    “Now that’s a disappointment. At the least, I’d like to retain a bit of mystery in the presence of such lovely ladies.”
    “Did you bring us a note?” Miss Hannon demanded. As a protocol, confirming the sanctity of school rules and the bureaucratic underpinnings of any well-lubricated institution, I was required to provide a note to the office before being granted permission to leave campus. Just like the student who needed to leave school early in order to attend a dentist appointment required written permission from their parents, I had to provide some form of documentation before I was given the official off-campus pass. Because I recognized the note writing routine as a formality, I made light of it. The note I’d brought in that day stated, “I am writing to request permission from the loveliest of lovely high school employees, that I be allowed to leave campus and get some coffee, without which, I may fall asleep in the honorable Mr. Wright’s calculus class, thereby upsetting said teacher and disrupting said class.”
    “He’s starting to write novels,” Miss Hannon said to Miss Thompson. “Thank God our little truant here is still attending English.”
    “English is one of my favorite classes.” It was also the first period on A days, and therefore held before I succumbed to the daily thirst.
    “All right Shakespeare, here’s your pass.” Miss Hannon handed me the little slip of paper.
    Needless to say, all my thoughts were, at the moment, self-focused. Would I return to campus and attend my final period? Did I need to hear that day’s lecture on functions, derivatives, and integrals, or could I get by without it? Would my buddy Hector still have that half bottle at his house? Would I be able to shoulder tap this early in the afternoon for a pint or so? So when my banter with the office ladies was interrupted by Jeanette, who sulked into the office, a wan, sallow shadow of her typical vibrancy, it was difficult for me to know just how to respond.
    As far as I was capable of kindness, of reciprocal and genuine caring, Jeanette was one of my best friends. But what defines a high school friendship? We spoke daily, hung out together every weekend, drank together at parties, and nursed each other through overindulgences. Jeanette was one of the few people in my life who’d had the time and opportunity to make a thorough study of my character defects, who had seen my selfishness in all its manifestations, and who, in the end, had ruled that my friendship was worthy of reciprocity, had not found me wanting. And Jeanette was one of those rare female companions with whom sex was not the motivating drive in maintaining friendship. Certainly, Jeanette was an attractive girl, cute and slender, pudgy cheeks and a toothy smile. More than her physical appeal though, it was Jeanette’s personality that made our shared time such a curious pleasure, that elevated her in my esteem to such a degree that I looked forward to our time together, that made me want to be a friend to her unconditionally. Jeanette had a laugh so severe it could break glass. She was loud and crass, had the mouth of a drunken sailor. Despite that, Jeanette retained a ladylike innocence that helped her to stand out. She could banter and drink with the boys, but as soon as the conversation turned too graphically lewd, Jeanette didn’t have a problem telling the boys how sick and disgusting and freakish she considered them. She was no delicate kitten, but, unlike some of the drunks with whom I’d wiled away the good drinking hours of the day, she wasn’t a bobcat either. Furthermore, Jeanette was genuinely funny, and there were few women, or people for that matter, who could arouse the level of hilarity that she evoked effortlessly.
    So, knowing her as well as I did, it was clear that she was troubled. She wore that subdued melancholy like a flak vest, armoring a more profound hurt that may never be allowed see the light of day. Before Jeanette got a chance to state her business in the office, I grabbed her in a bear hug. “Jeanette!! What’s up, Lady?”
    She wriggled from my grasp in a tremor of urgency. “Get the hell off me,” she said under her breath, “dude, you’re always up in my business.”
    “Shit, sorry, what’s wrong?” I asked.
    “Just give me some room, dude, I’ve got to talk to Miss Hannon.”
    Upon noticing Jeanette, Miss Hannon said, “oh my, darling, what’s the matter? What can we do for you?”
    “I’m just feeling really bad right now. I think I need to go home.” The vagueness of Jeanette’s statements made me all the more aware that something was urgently wrong. Having been rebuked, feeling helpless, I wanted, felt I needed to have some agency in righting the situation.
    “Are you feeling ill?” Miss Hannon probed.
    “Not exactly. I just don’t think I can handle class this afternoon.” Jeanette looked more aggrieved with each spoken word.
    “Well, let’s see if we can get in touch with your mom, okay? Let’s see if we can’t get you out of class for the day.” As Miss Hannon spoke, she approached the counter and placed her hands on Jeanette’s. Jeanette started to sob. Her emotion was audible, but not yet hysterical—her pain still willfully subdued. “My dad’s in the city, at the office. We won’t be able to reach him.”
    “What about your mom, Dear?”
    “She’s visiting my aunt today. I don’t know how to get in touch with her.”
    I dared to put an arm around Jeanette’s shoulders, and she didn’t shrug me off this time. She turned into my side, covering her face to hide her emotion. In the years that I’d known Jeanette, I couldn’t think of another time at which she’d cried openly in front of people. I had seen her cry twice before: once after an argument with a girlfriend, and on the other occasion I was driving her to the emergency room to get stitches after she’d accidentally cut herself while we drank together at Randy’s house. In the second instance, it was overwhelming fear that compelled the tears from her, and, because of this, I chalked it up as a rare and circumstance-specific exception. Despite an ingrained streak of feminine innocence, Jeanette was tough, hard even.
    “Come back here, darling. Come sit with me while we try to call your dad.” Miss Hannon beckoned Jeanette behind the counter.
    Once Jeanette made her way into the office proper, Miss Hannon grabbed her tightly. Miss Thompson had approached the counter and tenderly consoled Jeanette, rubbing her shoulder and speaking in uncurious maternal appeasements that bespoke of years of experience with daughters of her own. Jeanette didn’t shy away from the affection. She defenselessly submitted to it. Miss Hannon dialed her father’s work number. “No one’s answering, Jeanette.”
    “I knew we wouldn’t be able to get him.” Barely recovered from the first break down, Jeanette fell back to helpless sobbing.
    “What else can we do for you, Sweetie?” Miss Thompson inquired, “Do you need to talk to someone?”
    “No, I just don’t think I can take sitting in class this afternoon.”
    “Look,” I spoke up, “everyone deserves a sick day. It’s clear that Jeanette’s not feeling well. If someone’s sick, then it’s really not healthy for them to be in the classroom. It’s obvious that her parents wouldn’t want her to stick around, feeling this bad. Maybe she just needs to get something to eat, to get some rest. I’d volunteer to take Jeanette home, if you’d be willing to let her leave campus without her parents’ permission.”
    “What do you think, Miss Hannon?” Miss Thompson asked her colleague.
    “Shakespeare’s got a point. There’s no use forcing a sick student to stay on campus, especially if they have a ride home. I think we could make an allowance in this case. What do you think Jeanette? Would you be willing to accept a ride from our chivalrous truant here?”
    Jeanette nodded.
    “All right then, we’ll write out a pass for you.”
    “Thank you.”
    “All right, Girl, what are we waiting for?” She took her off-campus and thanked the office ladies again, and together we walked into those unpopulated hallways, the mark of the American high school, lined with rows of lockers, each sheltering a personality, as if the hallway itself were the repository of teenage identity, in all its strange and secretive manifestations.
    “Thanks, dude,” she said to me once we were alone.
    “Hey, no problem. I’m just sorry you’re feeling this bad.”
    “I’ll be fine.” We continued through the halls.
    Because I was so used to relying upon something approaching charm, approximating wit, a self-conscious simulacrum of extroversion, and because I was used to achieving my aims through the effort of gab, I felt something approaching crisis when I didn’t know what to say. “Did you go to your first two classes today?” I asked.
    “Yeah, but I was just feeling worse and worse the whole time.”
    “So you’ve been having a bad day?” I asked. “It’s not like something awful happened at lunch, or something, right?”
    “Yeah, just a bad day.”
    “Well, I’ll take care of you, Lady, okay?”
    Jeanette nodded.
    “You hungry? Did you have any lunch?”
    “No.”
    “I’m gonna get you something to eat too.”
    She nodded again.
    As we stepped from campus, we walked up B Street, where I’d parked in the lot of an old shopping center. The paving of that old parking lot was rutted and cracked, and, around its perimeter, was falling inch by inch back into a void of dirt and weeds. Most of the storefronts were vacant, but a little donut shop persevered, scraped by off of the unhealthy appetites of teenagers.
    “You got any herb?” I asked, looking for something more that I could offer.
    “No.”
    “I do. Maybe that’ll help, smoke a bowl or two?”
    “Maybe.”
    “It’ll be okay, Girl. Whatever’s going on, it’ll be okay.” I looked down at her as she rolled her eyes.
    I was driving an eighties model Ford Crown Victoria the size of a small barge. Because of the dull, fish-scale blue of that mammoth vehicle, my buddy Orion called it The Tuna Boat. The Crown Victoria was a hand-me-down from my grandparents, who had proclivities for over-sized American cars. The bench seats were as good as couches. I jumped in the driver side, unlocked the doors. Jeanette pulled herself into the grand vehicle and fell into the passenger seat. She looked diminutive in the great automobile, as if a prevailing misery were outwardly manifested in her diminutive stature.
    I started the car. “You gonna be all right, Girl?”
    She smiled at me a bit, “I’m fine. Thanks again, dude. I’m just having a rough time. There’s nothing to do about it.”
    “No more crying, right? No crying in the tuna boat.”
    “I wasn’t crying.”
    “That’s what I like to hear.”
    “Seriously, though.”
    “I didn’t see you crying.”
    “What are we waiting for?”
    “Where you want to eat at? Keep in mind, I’m on a fixed income.”
    “Taco Bell?”
    “Sounds good to me.”
    Jeanette put on her seat belt.
    “My herb’s in the glove box. You got a pipe on you?”
    She nodded.
    “Pack one up, Girl. Might not take your mind off things, but it’ll at least slow it down a bit.” She handed it to me once she had it packed. “You go ahead. I’m good right now.”
    Jeanette smoked while I drove into town. I took D Street down to the Boulevard, and drove through downtown Petaluma. We looked out the windows, scanning for any friends who might be loitering at Helen Putnam Plaza or Deaf Dog Coffee. Jeanette hit the pipe while I drove. I rolled down the window, lit up a smoke. “See anyone?”
    “No, it’s too early for anyone to be out.”
     “What’d you do last night?” I was trying to get a hint as to the nature of Jeanette’s melancholy. I thought that maybe, could I get a sense of the source of this prevailing misery, somehow comprehend the thing that had so transformed my friend, I could help, I would know how to behave, what to say in such a situation that I would be able to make things better. I had a fantasy that through language alone I could solve all of life’s problems, and that the only thing preventing me from doing so in this case was the inaccessibility of the problem at hand.
    “Nothing.”
    “I worked the dinner shift, but I went over to Hector’s when I got off. We didn’t hear from you. I thought you might come over to hang out.”
    “I went to bed early last night.”
    After pulling into Taco Bell, we decided to get drive through and eat in the parking lot. For most of the meal, we sat quietly, listening to music, enjoying the living room-like comfort that the Crown Victoria provided, watching traffic sail by.
    “You feeling any better?”
    Jeanette nodded.
    “The hell’s going on, Jeanette? You’ve got me worried about you.”
    “I told you, it’s nothing, dude!”
    “Should I be worried?”
    “It’s fine. I’m fine. You don’t need to worry. I’m not gonna do anything crazy. I’m just not feeling good. Is that all right?”
    “Totally all right.” I changed the subject, “Is there any weed left in that bowl?”
    “Un uh.”
    “You want to pack another one?”
    “Sure.”
    We smoked while we sat there, and I gazed sidelong at Jeanette, coming to an understanding within myself that I could not force the information I sought from her, and then questioning the nature of friendship in general. Where did the efficacy of words meet its terminal endpoint, after which meaning was drained absolutely so that language there becomes sound alone? And at what point does disclosure become harmful, terrifying? I gathered all our trash and jumped out of the car. When I got back in, Jeanette was leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed. “You want to go home and get some rest?” I asked.
    “I don’t want to see my mom right now.”
    “I thought your mom was out with your aunt.”
    “I just didn’t want to have to talk to her, you know, and try to explain myself.”
    “So what do you feel like doing?”
    “Are you going back to class?”
    “Nope, that ship has sailed, Girl. If I’m more than fifteen minutes late, I don’t make an appearance.”
    “You want to just drive around for a bit?”
    “I can’t think of anything better to do. Is there some place you want to go? We could grab some beer or something, head over to Hector’s house?”
    “No, I don’t feel like drinking right now.”
    I looked at Jeanette and she met my gaze. I was hoping for some sign, some indication of what was going on, as if I might clairvoyantly decipher the encrypted traumas Jeanette was guarding. Here was this person, one of my best friends, so different from me as to be barely understandable. Would I ever find out what had happened to make Jeanette so uncharacteristically downtrodden? And, what was my desire to know? How could I have possibly helped her? Was there some tormentor, some perpetrator toward whom I could direct the wrath that might recompense Jeanette’s heartache? And, if such a villain existed, would I have the heart, the audacity to confront him? How noble, how chivalrous could I possibly be? I was a sweet talker, not an avenger. Possibly, my eyes betrayed the confusion, the rage, the helplessness. And Jeanette, with her miserable countenance, seemed almost to apologize.
    I took her hand without breaking my gaze, “I’m sorry.”
    “Thank you.”
    With that, I started up the hefty Ford and we drove.

Tracks in the Snow....

    .....Where there should be no tracks. Ever.
    It was one of our rare East Texas snows. More a sheet than a blanket, it covered Dallas, Mesquite, and the area below. My land, with its bunches of trees and hollows, would hold the snow in pockets for a while. The road was dirt, leading off a blacktop; so no snow machine would come by. It suited me to be inaccessible.
    And it was only because of the snow that I knew he was there.
    I was going out to the shed where I performed my experiments when I saw the tracks. He had trampled around in front of the door trying to get in. Adrenalin shot through me. It had been so many years since I’d had to think of discovery that I was in shock. Not that anyone could break in; the door had three locks. After the door, he had tried the windows, which were boarded over. I followed the tracks around the shed and saw where he had sheltered himself on the south side. His tracks led off toward the tall growth bordering the road. A tramp, a drifter who had somehow strayed so far off the beaten path; that was all. Relief then coursed through me, and I trembled.
    These strong physico-emotional reactions perturbed me. It was necessary for my success that I remain in complete control of myself on another plane than that of the common human feelings.
    I went into the shed and checked on the vats. The first experiment had completely dissolved in the solution and could be discarded. The flesh had fallen off the bones of the second. It would be a few weeks yet before that vat was free. The third experiment had gone into the vat only three nights ago and was still relatively intact. This had been a street person from South Dallas, a young black of tawdry beauty, willing to go anywhere on the promise of free crack cocaine. I perform my experiments only on subjects who will not be missed.
    The laboratory area was tidy. A fresh rubber sheet was already spread across the padded table. I took my saw, drill, scalpels, shackles, and other necessary equipment out of the pan where they soaked in disinfectant and put them away. Because the shed was never wired for electricity, I have a powerful medical lamp and a small generator which I use when I am conducting my experiments. At other times, there is enough light for my purposes from the slits between the boards.
    I went back to the house to organize my notes on the last experiment. The administration of crack cocaine to the subject created a variant response which should be investigated further.
    I feel as if I am on the edge of a breakthrough. I began my experiments years ago in a city known for medical research. However, I realized almost at once that in order to continue my experiments without detection, and thus bureaucratic interference, I would have to seek isolation. This remote, overgrown farm filled my needs. I never sought acquaintance with my neighbors, so I could come and go anonymously.
    Another light snow sifted down overnight. You who live in northern climates would hardly consider this a snowstorm, but it is enough to close up everything down here.
    When I went outside, I was aware of the tracks around the shed, now blurred by last night’s powdery snow. Then an anomaly caught my eye – a sharp track crushed down on top of the powdery snow. I looked more closely. There were clear tracks on top of blurred tracks. It appeared the same boots had made all the tracks.
    He had come back. Why?
    Yesterday, I had gone only to the shed. I needed to look over the entire farm to learn where he had been, what he had seen, whether he was here by chance or for a purpose.
    The holding pen was in a hollow. This was a rusty tin tool shed where the subjects were contained until they were ready for the experiment. Part of the original farm buildings, it had needed only a system of double locks and alarms to be perfect. The snow on the slope had slid overnight, possibly covering tracks. I scouted around, hoping he had gone only to the shed. That would indicate merely a need for shelter, not curiosity. The snowdrift lapped against the door, so I could not discover whether tracks had been left.
    I climbed the hillock. There was a growth of bushes and brambles at the top and some trees just thick enough to catch the snow on their branches. There, right where a man could look down directly at the door, his tracks churned the mud as if he had stood around there for some time. In the cold. He had to have a purpose.
    I saw the tracks leading from the holding pen to the old brick smokehouse. I walked in them quickly. The smoke house was probably the oldest structure on the farm and in perfect working order. I let myself in and fastened all the locks again even before I reached for the flashlight. The hooks where they had hung whole hams and sides of beef hung unused, of course. I flashed the light over the rack of shelves. The brains were all there. The latest one was still grayish, but all the others had smoked to a golden brown hue. I kept all the brains from my experiments in order to test my most recent findings against the earliest.
    Walking back to the house, I reflected that if someone were looking around the farm, I had better go armed at all times. Even drifters could be dangerous.
    He was in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove.
    “I’m Jay. Hey,” he said.
    He put on a broad smile that did not go with his eyes or his manner or anything in the circumstance. Though I sensed danger, I distanced myself from any related emotion and maintained the control which is necessary to my life.
    “You are welcome to coffee,” I said. “And a meal. Then go.”
    “I ate already,” he said; and grinned.
    He seemed to be alluding to something he assumed I knew about.
    I recognized him. This was the blond, dull-looking bubba who hung around the general store on the farm to market road. He had taken to staring at me when I came in for provisions. This was the only reason I noticed him apart from the other loiterers.
    “I value my privacy,” I said pointedly.
    “I know why.”
    I let the silence hang in the air between us. Silence is intimidating; but I refused to be drawn, even so much as to say, What do you mean?
    “People notice things,” he said. “When someone like you lives so far out, people wonder why. People see your car on the road at odd hours. They figger there’s some kind of weird goings on out here.” He then spaced his words distinctly. “I figger you got a life in another dimension that coexists with the present reality dimension most people are in.”
    That this clod could have such a thought, more than the thought itself, astonished me.
    He read my mind. “People know more than you think.”
    “Who are you?” I asked hoarsely.
    His smile drifted all over his face. “I could tell you my name, but that’s not me. There’s a kind of shadow of me from my own other dimension on the news now.”
    My mind went dark. Then intuition streaked aross it. The bodies of teenage boys have been found all across Dallas and Tarrant Counties. The events occurred in different police departments, so it was some time before the police were able to connect certain occurrences according to the nature of the death and proclaim the presence of a serial killer. A new body was recently found in Pleasant Grove. The precise details of the death are being withheld from the public to prevent copycats. However, the police nickname for the killer did get on the news.
    “You’re Charlie Chopper.”
    So then we talked.
    Later I showed him around. It was in my mind that perhaps the loneliness of my life was over, that here was someone who could understand my experiments, possibly even help with my work.
    He looked into the vats.
    “Why not save something to eat later?” he asked.
    A cannibal. I was disappointed. The intellectual nature of my work could not be fully grasped by, let alone shared with, a creature so gross.
    In the holding pen, he examined the bed, the wall shackles, the box, all the other furnishings so very carefully that he ought to be able to duplicate them from memory.
    He looked into every corner of the smokehouse. When I saw him break off a piece of a brain and put it in his mouth, I considered whether or not he should be allowed to leave the farm.
    Walking back to the shed, the scales in my mind tipped this way, then the other. I glanced at him with each shift in my thoughts. He grinned the loose grin that seemed to drift all over his face.
    I secured a tight cover on the vat that was ready for disposal. He helped me load it onto a wooden sledge. We dragged it by ropes to the outhouse. One wall was falling in, it was covered by kudzu; but it was entirely suitable for my purposes.
    I wrestled the empty vat back onto the sledge. A sudden movement crossed the edge of my vision. I turned. He lunged at me with a jagged tree limb. I staggered back and reached for the gun in my coat pocket.
    “I unloaded it in the house,” he said. And laughed. His face, even his grin, had become rigid.
    I pull the trigger repeatedly. I come up empty every time.
    I throw down the gun and run. He is behind me. The tree limb clubs my back.
    We are at the top of a hollow. I lose my balance and fall. I roll down the slope in the snow until I come up against a tree. I struggle to my feet. Pain flashes up from my knee. I go down again.
    “Why....why are you doing this? I am a scientist. I must know.”
    “There can’t be two alphas in one territory.”
    He is half-sliding, half-walking down the slope. He holds the tree limb over his head. His eyes turn to black slits. His face is no longer a dull bubba but a raging fiend.
    How can this be happening to me?

Bay to Breakers

    One year ago:

    I was twenty five, and I probably wouldn’t have gone were it not for my roommate, who was appalled to learn that I had been on this earth for twenty five years and had never participated in San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers. At the time, I was an employee at the Jamba Juice on ninth and Irving, which is directly next to Golden Gate Park where a significant part of the footrace passes through. On the morning of the Bay to Breakers, I was called at seven and told my shift was cancelled, as it was foggy. Since Jamba Juice’s wellbeing depends on sunny weather, almost all of their scheduling decisions are based on weather forecasts. My manager dedicated herself religiously to Google’s weather updates to determine the amount of hours she cut everyday (which pleased the higher ups and saved her job but fucked all the lower employees that actually made the company function). She did not dedicate herself nearly enough to current events, however. Consequently, what she did not know, which was something I knew and elected not to tell her as she cancelled my shift, was that Bay to Breakers was going to bring unstoppable amounts of strange business to Jamba Juice for the entire day regardless of the exposure of sun. Not only were there going to be Willie-Nelson-looking prehistoric naked men lining out the door ordering Mango-A-Go-Gos and paying from a wallet which came from no kind of cloth pocket, but there were going to be drunken obese girls bursting from their spandex, stumbling in to heist the bathroom key and spray the bathroom walls with midday chunky Gyro vomit. Not to mention dudes who were going to come in and, at the peak of their immaculate shroom high, skid into the bathroom and manage to miss the toilet entirely with their rancid mound of human dung. Then leave. If anything, my manager should have been calling in all the forces and lining the walls of Jamba Juice with employees who were prepared for an eight hour shift on one of the most hellish customer service battlefields in America: Jamba Juice on the course of a drunken footrace in San Francisco, on a fucking Sunday. But here she was, feeling quite strategic as she looked outside at the slight 7am San Francisco fog, shed my hours, and saved her franchise sixty dollars.
    “Sorry,” my manager lied. “We’ll try to get you a full day later this week.”
    “Oh alright,” I said, hung up, and laughed triumphantly. My roommate, Chase, heard this. He was already up. He only woke up before seven o’clock once a year, and that day was today—Bay to Breakers. Now it was about a quarter past seven and he was stampeding up and down the stairs spanking the walls of the house with an extra funky broom, chanting loudly the title of the race and slamming his second Sierra Nevada of the morning with his other hand. After a belch, he invited himself into my room and was unfortunately able to pry from me the news that I had just been called off of work for the day.
    “Then what are you doing in bed right now?” He then reached into his pocket and proceeded to bomb my bed with an unopened beer. “Get the hell out of your bed. Don’t even let me come back up here in five minutes and see you still here fiddling with your morning wood.”
    If I didn’t get up right then and start drinking my breakfast beer, there might have been a physical confrontation. The doorbell rang and it was Chase’s friend, who invaded the house and also commenced to marching around and chanting “BAY-TO-BREAK-ERS!” He was perhaps more amped than Chase. His name was Tom. He was drinking a tall boy, while already lamenting over the fact that he had to go to work at three, which was eight hours away, an obligation which foiled his dreams of binge drinking.
    On the way to catch the 71 Haight-Noriega, we stopped at a liquor store to re-up on beer. Chase and I split a twelve pack of Tecate. Literally while Tom was bickering about not being able to drink alcohol, he bought a flask of vodka.
    “I thought you were working later,” Chase said.
    “I am.”
    “Don’t you need to not have liquor on your breath?”
    “That’s why I bought vodka,” replied Tom. Evidently, he felt no reason to explain this theory further, as the conversation stopped there.
    When we arrived at the panhandle, at 8:00 am, we were there just in time to watch the actual racers pass through. Most of them were foreign and had come from their home countries to compete in the world-famous race. See, Bay to Breakers once served a purpose, which was to lift San Francisco’s spirits after the ruinous earthquake of 1906. People took it seriously, and eventually it became an international event. But these days, Americans took this race seriously for entirely different reasons, and now hordes of them, I guess you could call them the early birds, were staking out their territory by unfolding their lawn chairs, tapping their kegs, and applauding the Mexicans and the Kenyans for their efforts.
    About an hour of that passed. We drank beers and pissed on trees. The Panhandle was getting more and more crowded. With the coming of more people, marijuana smoke tagged the air, so did the joined smell of lawn grass and warm piss. The shriveled old naked men and women were beginning to enter the picture. I stared aggressively at their weird anatomy, wishing that college girls shared the same eagerness with their bodies as did these doughy old hags and dinosaurs that were shuffling into the mix. These people were for some reason comfortable in their bodies, and felt the whole world needed to know this.
    I was drunk by late morning. Chase too was drunk. No one was drunker than Tom, however. Shattered on the ground next to him was his empty Seagram’s vodka flask. He had moved on to some light beers. He had also moved on to a phony afro wig. He was acting like such a ding dong, a typical Bay to Breakers caveman. When people passed by him, he high-fived them and retched loudly into their faces. Then he laughed, hysterically. His shirt came off at some point, unveiling a shaved and flabby chest. The horrors of his figure were no match to those of the unclothed relics, however, who moved slowly about the race path, hand in hand, smiling and nodding under the terrific and accepting San Francisco sun.
    It was about one in the afternoon when Chase and I decided that Tom had successfully blacked out. We asked him if he thought he should still go to work. He looked at us like an infant looking into the eyes of a horrifying stranger.
    “You remember how you have work in two hours?” Chase asked him.
    “YEA!” he cried madly. “I know!”
    Apparently, he couldn’t be bothered with this matter, for his solution had already been figured out.
    “All I will need is a burrito, from that El Panchoria, up the block. Sober me up, good to go.”
    There was no restaurant called El Panchoria in existence.
    Sometime later, while Chase and I were laughing at old man balls and all the women that were demonstrating by example that it was still ok to sport a huge raunchy bush, we realized Tom was gone. The day sort of fizzled out from there. I got separated from friends and found myself walking home by myself. I stopped in Jamba Juice, which was a flourishing nightmare as I had predicted. There were soggy paper towels encrusted into the floor and walls like paper mache. Frozen fruit chunks were melting everywhere on the floor. It seemed as though juice had been sprayed into the wall on a number of occasions. The workers had flushed faces with hair matted to their cheeks from constant sweat. Their terrible Jamba Juice visors were crooked and disheveled. The line of customers was out the door. In the line was a guy with ass-less chaps, a team of fat girls with destroyed, arguably electrocuted hair, hungover and grumpy in bathing suits (with water wings), there was a dog that was bigger than most of the humans and not bashful about sticking his nose into everyone’s genitals, and about five strollers full of babies retching turbulently over the fact that they had just been forced through a day of thudding bass music, rupturing celebrations and the stench of constant evaporating urine all under a roasting sun, for no good reason.
    I got my smoothie and fucking left.
    I napped.
    I woke up when Tom arrived from work. My door was open, and when he walked by it I asked him.
    “Did you make it to work?”
    “Yea, I made it.”
    “How was that?””
    “It was alright, I guess.”
    “Were you still pretty drunk?”
    “Pretty.”
    “So I take it you didn’t get fired?”
    “No, I did.”
    I stared at him.
    “My life sucks balls,” he finalized.

    (You can’t make this stuff up.)
    For some time after that, Chase and I would remember tidbits of Tom’s sloppiness that day, and Chase would say “what a dumb turd,” or something comparable. I would agree. Bay to Breakers was for idiots.
    I went to the Bay to Breakers again, today.

    Exactly one year after a year ago:
    Chase let me sleep in this time. He left by himself at 7 with a case of Sierra Nevadas in a box under his arm. Tom was not in attendance. I woke up next to my girlfriend at around ten and asked if she wanted to go. Now she was the one who had never been, and I was the one telling her she needed to check it out. I was a veteran. Her name was Penelope.
    I told her about all the things to expect, like drugs, kegs, loud noises, old dingles and frat boys in sombreros.
    “It will be a human circus,” I described. “And just about all of the animals, in some way or another, will prove to be very fucking stupid.”
    “Sounds like harmless freedom of expression to me,” she said. She had a way of simplifying things.
    “You’ll see, and you can be the judge.”

    Penelope and I took the N Judah and ambitioned to get off at Stanyan to walk right into the Panhandle and meet up with Chase. When we got to our stop, we pushed the hand rail on the sliding door, which was San Francisco Public Transit’s high-tech system for opening doors. The doors didn’t open. The train continued. At the next stop, people were interested in getting off the bus; again, the doors didn’t budge. Women started hyperventilating and clawing the sliding doors, claiming the oxygen on the train was contaminated, and limited. (You can’t make this stuff up). The train lumbered through one more stop, then inserted itself into a tunnel and when it emerged on the other side, which was about a mile from where Penelope and I had hoped to get off, the doors finally slip open. People raced off and up to the front train, where they commenced to pounding on the driver’s window and flipping him off and notifying him to prepare for lawsuits. The driver did not pay them attention; in fact he seemed to have fallen asleep during their drawn out complaint. The angry civilians began walking onto the tracks to really make a statement, but then the driver rang the bell and put his train into gear. They fled.

    Penelope and I saw a couple of aspiring thugs littering trash across the street. They were smoking swishers, whistling at girls and not realizing that whistling at girls is the strongest vagina repellant there is.
    They left all their crap on their street. I wanted to say something to them, to tell them that this city didn’t need people making it uglier. But soon their crap was camouflaged with all the other crap on the street from Bay to Breakers, like glossy advertisements for gyms that no one was going to join, coupons for grand openings of creperies that would be out of business in a month, Power Bar rappers, water bottles, confetti, beer cans, foil from bacon-wrapped hot dogs, flattened party hats, and literally horse shit.
    Penelope held my hand, and it made me feel important, as if I provided a brand of security for her that nothing else could. Her hair was in pigtails, which for her meant she was feeling goofy. She had a purse full of beers: Coors light cans. Penelope liked beer, and she also liked baseball. She didn’t like to flaunt it, but she knew more about baseball than me, an ex-college pitcher, and all the other fools in the world who spent a third of their day updating their goddamned fantasy team. Unfortunately, that was what technically constituted a modern day baseball fan. She was probably the only legitimate baseball fan I knew. And she was hot. She made things simple. And she was wearing pig-tails. And she liked cheap beer. And she wanted to hold my hand.
    She held my hand all the way from Steiner street towards the race, which at this point in the morning, had ceased to be a race and had become more of a slow parade with floats and aimless rejoicing. We drank Coors lights and pissed on car tires when necessary. Penelope was a pop-squatting phenom; she could piss between two running cop cars at a red light without anyone noticing. I admired the skill. I also liked her name. Penelope.
    Taking back roads to drink beer and avoid cops, we ended up on Divisadero, which was another feeder street right into the mania. As we approached the thick grassy divider between Fell and Oak, also called The Panhandle, we began to smell pot smoke and hear the faint thumps of dubstep parties.
    The first thing we saw was a stout porpoise woman with wild black witch hair who had either stripped herself of her spandex throughout the course of her drunken day, or had outright gone to the parade wearing damn near nothing for pants. Which would not have been uncommon.
    “I’m gonna get some fresh air,” she barfed to her friends, and staggered away from them. They were so drunk and melted by drugs that they looked around, and up in to the sky, wondering if the atmosphere they were presently in was not fresh air. The witch porpoise made it about four steps in her high heels before her ankles quit and she collapsed. Not tripped, or even lost her balance, but expired right into the grass. Her chubby cheeks exhaled some agonizing “hum.” She was already snoring. Out of her skirt spilled her gross ass, and out of her gross ass spilled a tampon string, looking like a short wick sticking out the side of an enormously lopsided and blubbery candle. Some people laughed, hysterically.
    (You can’t make this stuff up.)

    Her hangover was going to be epic.
    The girl’s friends started telling everyone on earth to call 911. One of said girls used her cell phone— which was fully capable of calling paramedics— to take a picture of her passed out friend with the short skirt, no underwear, and a tampon sticking out of a sexual organ as flabby and whiskery as a manatee’s muzzle.
    It was confirmed that the girl was still breathing. Penelope and I moved on. Ahead there was a large congregation of humans cheering. It was a shindig, a gathering. Their energy attracted us. Eerie electronic music resonated around them like sound wave yellow jackets. It was a group of people simulating gladiator battles. Fighters were equipped with padded sticks. They stood on top of big wooden boxes with their shirts off and dueled until one was knocked off. There was sweat and good-natured sportsmanship in the air. There was also hatred in the air. People were riveted by the competitions.

    Little dwarf-looking men with peace signs painted on their cheeks and beers in paper bags screamed “FIGHT! FIGHT! FUCKING KILL HIM!” Then they looked around to see if their tough, alpha-male enthusiasm was attracting any drunk women, but it wasn’t, because nothing could change the fact that they were dwarfs, and even if they wanted to, they could do no physical battling themselves, so they were left to yell “FIGHT! YEA! FUCKING KILL EACH OTHER!” with their beers and peace signs. Penelope and I watched a battle. One guy got his skull rattled by the paddled mallet side of the weapon, and then he proceeded to crumble off of the platform. All the hippies roared with approval.

    (You can’t make this stuff up.)

    We continued.

    Every once in a while a sweet little dog would come up and sniff us and invite us to pamper him with light pets. The dogs squinted and had battle scars here and there, like gashes over their eyes or across their shins, and patches of hair missing. All of their eyes were bloodshot and had gook stuck to their eyelids. But they were such pretty little sweet dogs, confused by the human melee surrounding them but open to the excitement nonetheless. I loved them. That’s how I could tell that I was starting to get drunk. Beer made me love and trust animals, more than anything else. More than humans, that’s for damn sure.
    Penelope loved balloons. After more beers, she saw a nice balloon man beginning to back up his helium tanks and balloons for the day, and she could not help but to run over to his operation, and ask him kindly for two of his balloons. Penelope has a great ass, and the balloon guy seemed cordial, old, and horny, and a man with those three attributes can never deny a pretty girl a damn thing, especially if all she wants is two lousy balloons. She gave the nice man a hug and came galloping back to me with a yellow and a purple balloon tied to her wrist like daddy’s innocent little girl at the town carnival. Only this was not the town carnival with the ferris wheel and cotton candy. This was something else.
    Down a ways those same sweet mangy dogs were surrounded by a group of dudes. The dudes were wearing identical superhero costumes with the built in Styrofoam pectorals and six-packs and huge biceps. They were fat, in real life.
    “You thirsty, poochy?” asked one guy. His friends laughed, hysterically. “I bet you’re reeeeeeal thirsty under this sun huh?”
    “Don’t do it man. Ha!” his friends cried.
    But the guy did it, and what he did was take a bottle of rum, pry open the mouths of the dogs and channel rum down their little throats. The dogs cowered and snorted, but did not run away. Instead, they stuck around, hoping that the guys might have something a little less harsh to give them to drink. The guys walked away. The dogs followed them, but were admonished and told to fuck off.
    “I told you these people sucked,” I said to Penelope. She grabbed my hand. I chugged a couple more beers.
    Later on we made it to Stanyan street, where we had originally planned to get off of the train before it started calling all the shots. We found Chase with a wad of chewing tobacco in his lip. He was an ex-college baseball player. I was an ex-college baseball player. I was beginning to feel real drunk. I asked him for a chew. Soon he and I were spitting all over the place, swigging tequila and really feeling the burn in our intestines, all the while laughing, hysterically.
    Penelope began giving me weird looks.

    Everywhere there were cowboy hats, fake mustaches, fake tits, political signs with overused and understudied statements, superhero costumes, kegs on wheels, shopping carts holding sound systems that imploded any beating heart within a thirty foot radius, Elvis impersonators, flower girls, and SPANDEX. It was a serious party.
    We laughed, hysterically. I drank more of everything.
    Chew spit was dribbling down Chase’s chin. I didn’t realize it, but chew spit was also dribbling down my chin.
    “You might want to fix that, there, guy,” said Chase, about my chin. I took his tequila and washed my chin with it, then swallowed a shot which was peppered with slivers of fiberglass and mint-flavored tobacco.
    “Who cares. It’s Bay to Breakers!” I rationalized.
    “That’s right!” laughed Chase.
    “Where’s my girlfriend?” I coughed.
    “Baby!” I heard her call from a distance. “Look at this!”
    Penelope was standing next to a man sculpted with raw, bulging muscles. He looked like a Russian Olympic lifter. There was a grin on his face like he knew something I didn’t. It was a grin of pure everything. Pure. It pissed me off.
    “Hey,” he said and extended his hand to me. “How’s it going, I’m Troy.”
    Also: he was wearing nothing, except a shower cap. (You can’t make this stuff up.) His cock was as long as a normal cock is with a tube sock hanging off of it, as long as a Christmas tree limb with a banana peel ornament. And of course, all of Troy’s pubes were shaved to eliminate those few squiggly centimeters that might lead someone to suspect that his cock wasn’t huge. He was the only young human that had the balls (and cock) to walk around in front of thousands of people purely naked. A specimen of flawless human perfection. When I reached to shake his hand, I was half afraid he would sling it into his hand, much like a cowboy quickly drawing his gun from his holster, and force me to shake his cock as a neat prank. I was pissed.
    “Hey, pal,” I said. “Great to meet you.”
    “Will you take a picture of me with Troy?” Penelope asked me. “Is that weird? Is that ok?”
    “I guess so.”

    Surrounding civilians were visually absorbing Troy and his circumcised boa constrictor. Penelope smiled for the picture. Her balloons were so big and round that they should have somehow been muscles on Troy’s body.
    “Bro, would you mind taking a picture with my camera as well?” he asked, and produced a camera out of a small satchel tied to his wrist.
    “Jesus anybody checking out that guy’s dong?” asked Chase, in the background.
    “That won’t be a problem, I guess,” I winced.
    Again, Penelope wrapped her arms around Troy’s pectorals and had no problem beaming for the camera. I was praying Troy would not accidentally get excited— praying he was gay. I snapped the photo, handed it back to him and tried to get away with Penelope as quickly as possible.
    “Have a nice day!” Penelope called to him as I dragged her. His shower cap winked back at her.

    Troy walked off and was intercepted by girls in spandex who were interested in doing photo shoots with he and the skinned gopher hanging between his legs.

    “Just harmless expression,” Penelope noted, then she grabbed my hand.

    I walked up to Chase and stole the tequila out of his hand. He watched me FUCKING CHUG it. He laughed, hysterically. Time elapsed. I was hammered, and becoming delusional, and more pissed. What void is filled for a girl by taking a picture with a man whose cock is throbbing? I wandered off for a while, with the tequila. More time elapsed. Everywhere smelled like a fart. I sat under a eucalyptus tree.

    Penelope approached me with her balloons. She had a pretty smile. She reached for me. When I tried to get up, I fell. Once I was on my feet I decided it would be best to shadowbox one of her balloons, the purple one. She giggled, then I actually got a good punch off on the balloon, and it was promptly detached from its little band of tinsel that had fastened it to her wrist. The balloon was already out of reach, floating away. Penelope made a pretty little sad face. I said sorry, I think.
    “Oooh BUDDY!” laughed Chase from afar. “No chitty-chitty bang bang for you tonight!”
    Chase, whether he knew it or not, had a remarkable knack for saying phrases that made vaginas completely evaporate into sawdust. Penelope looked at me sourly.
    “Sorry,” I said again to Penelope. I drank beer and she looked disappointed.
    “Let’s just see how long we can watch the balloon,” she said.
    It started out like a juicy purple cantaloupe. In its flight it hit streams of air and was propelled swiftly in different directions. When that direction was up, the balloon drastically shrunk in our eyes. Now it looked like a purple upside down pear. It was traveling over a nearby tree. It was a purple thumbtack. Wind carried it up higher and higher. It was the purple glitter under Penelope’s eye. The sky was opening up its cottony arms and welcoming the infinitesimal purple speck into its home. The purple balloon was now a figment of our imagination. We couldn’t tell if we were seeing it or seeing things, seeing floaters and other tricks that our eyes play on us on pretty days when we look directly into the sun. The balloon was gone.
    She had a yellow balloon left.
    “Well, that’s that,” I said.

    Suddenly, something spectacular was happening. I looked for Penelope.
    “Babe, look at over there!” I slurred.

    She was gone.

    Suddenly I was laughing, hysterically.

    There was an actual gopher stiffly poking his head out of his tunnel, quickly, in and out, in and out. I thought of Troy. Whatever caused gophers to go to the tip of their hole, the gopher was presently feeling that urge. Humans were surrounding the gopher, attempting to lure it out, and since they were flicking shredded carrots and hot dog bun crumbs at it, the gopher felt no fear about bringing its whole body out of the hole.
    “Theeeerre you go little buddy. Just like that,” said a bearded little hipster with a weird grin. He was wearing an Obama “Yes We Can!” shirt. A fanny pack was strapped to him. He took out his i-phone and gave it to his friend to document this unfolding event. The gopher was poking half of its body out. The hipster pulled out a cigarette and began putting it in the gopher’s buck-toothed face.
    “Look, Penelope, get over here babe!” I shouted, riveted, losing my balance. The gopher assumed that this hipster was its friend, that it was being fed a delicious paper stick from its giant human chum.
    “Anyone got a lighter?? Quick!” the hipster reached his hand out and shook it urgently as if it had been dipped in hot glue. He was treating the prospect of lighting a cigarette in front of a gophers face very seriously. In moments, people would cherish him for his boldness. His satirical genius would be of a potency never before seen in the long and creative history of Bay to Breakers. He felt in charge. He needed that goddamned lighter. And I was hammered, drooling in preparation for the event. A GOPHER BEING FORCED TO SMOKE A CIGARETTE!
    “Penelope, get over here! Watch this fuckin’ GOPHER take a drag!” I hollered, without taking my eyes off of the blindly ambitious rodent, the fearless piece of meat.

    “Nobody’s got a lighter? How about a matchbook? You guys are a bunch of bummers.”
    “I’ve got a lighter!” someone stepped up.
    “Over here!” demanded the hipster in charge.
    “Penelope!” I yelled. “You’re going to miss it!”
    I stood on my toes, and looked around in a circle. Penelope was nowhere.
    “Did you see Penelope?” I asked Chase, who was giggling.
    “You seeing this gopher nibble a fuckin’ stogie?” he returned.
    “Yea, I see it. It’s legitimate.”
    The cigarette was lit in the gopher’s proximity.
    “Penelope?” I called. “Penelope?”
    “Hey why’d you let her take a picture with that ape dick?” Chase asked. He passed me the tin of tobacco and I filled my mouth up with it even though I was already queasy. Fuck it, it was Bay to Breakers!
    “Bad call?” I asked, drooling.
    “Probably,” he said, and drooled.
    The gopher sniffed the cigarette then got the hell out of there, which caused everyone to go ballistic with praise to the hipster. They LAUGHED. HYSTERICALLY. I went over and sat down under a tree. The sun was directly overhead and I was experiencing a hazy disorientation from being intoxicated in the early afternoon. Soon it would be time to sleep. Penelope did not want to be found. I called her of course, a thousand times the way drunken people do.
    I looked at the eucalyptus trees, long and thin, climbing hundreds of feet into the air on Mount Davidson, waving in slow motion like American flags in light wind. It felt good in the shade.
    Penelope. It was a sweet, pure little name.
    Something was rising over the eucalyptus trees, floating like a corn kernel, like a gold capped tooth. Tiny gusts accelerated it this way and that. It looked miles and miles away from me. Rising towards the sun it steadily shrunk until it was a staggering bread crumb, a daylight star, and then there was nothing.
    Chase asked me what I was looking at. I told him Penelope. He walked away. Under the tree, I laughed, hysterically.
    (You can’t make this stuff up.)

Emil DeAndreis Bio

    Author Emil DeAndreis received a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Hawaii at Hilo in 2008. Currently he is a substitute teacher and high school baseball coach in San Francisco. In his free time he plays the drums, listens to music to stay sane and wrestles with big puppies to stay young. He has had short stories and articles published in Apollo's Lyre, Conte Literary, Curbside Quotidian, FortyOunceBachelor Journal, OCHO Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Windsor Review among other publications. He has been nominated for the Pushcart prize, and recently received the Editor’s Choice Award for New Writer from Bamboo Ridge Press.

Henry

    The town was hell on wheels, the height of the tourist season, Christmas and New Year. All the hotels, bungalow complexes and even the small Thai-style bungalows outside the small town of Lamai on the island of Koh Samui were full for the eight or nine weeks of continuous celebrations. After sunset, even the beaches began to fill up with backpackers who had been foolish enough to not plan ahead. The town was a throbbing sardine can.
    Business was good, everyone was thriving. The bars were so packed that tourists stood three deep trying to get a drink. The bar girls, usually competing for a customer’s attention had their pick of the bunch and business was brisk. At a minimum of five hundred Baht a night, plus a share of the customer’s bar bill and any drinks she could con him into buying, the girls were set to earn real money. Some would get lucky and please their customers so much that they would be retained throughout the whole of the customer’s holiday and very probably wheedle a substantial leaving present out of him at the end of it all. Maybe a gold bracelet or necklace, the preferred present, or at least, a few thousand Baht as long as the punter hadn’t completely run out of money. Sex at supermarket prices! Whatever, the girls were going to make a bundle of money this season, along with the bars, the restaurants, gift shops, clothes shops selling fake label clothes and Indian tailors producing smart suits and dresses based on famous designers but at a fraction of the price.
    To Henry, however, this was just another year. Just another high season where one had to make enough during this short period to support the business during the slack period, supplement the leaner months after the majority of the tourists had gone and only a trickle remained.
    Henry had seen so many high seasons come and go that he’d forgotten just how long he’d been on this island paradise. He remembered Lamai when it was simply a one-horse town with a dirt road running through it that became a sea of mud when the rains came. He remembered when it was nothing much more than a fishing village the gloriously cream-coloured beach simply a parking lot for the fishing boats. The surrounding hills of coconut groves and the more fertile lands beyond had been inherited by the favourite sons of the families, the less valuable land at the seashore given to the black sheep or less fortunate family members. Now, times had changed. The once useless land beside the sea was now valuable real estate upon which had been built many hotels and bungalow resorts, bars, restaurants, shops, all of which the now wealthy Thai landowners rented out to those whose entreprenurial spirit could be matched by their bank accounts. Lamai was at its peak of development.
    First had come the backpackers in the sixties and seventies, travelling from one country to another. They spent little money but performed a much more useful function – they told of the glories of Thailand, its inexpensive life-style and stunning beaches and it didn’t take long for the travel companies to latch onto this new unspoiled territory. The package tours boomed and soon the island, particularly Chaweng, its largest resort area, began to blossom.
    The Europeans were not slow to see the possibilities of this developing trade. Many restaurants and bars were opened by Germans, Swedes and English. The real beneficiaries were the Thai landowners. They alone could build and own the supermarkets, the groups of bars that were rented to Thai Mama Sangs and the odd Europeans and populated with willing young girls from the rural hinterland as well as the more polished professionals from Bangkok, Pattaya or Phuket. In the eighties and nineties such places became the destination where those who craved unbridled sex, ever open bars at supermarket prices and cheap accommodation came. It was a time of excess with no recriminations to suffer – just hangovers and broken hearts.
    Henry had lived through all the growing pains of Lamai and was now considered to be the old Guru among both the European community and the Thais alike. He had many friends and few enemies.
    Henry’s bar was off the main road, away from the madness of ear-splitting music and screaming girls. His clientele were mostly ex-pats of one country or another who’d wanted none of the brassy, boozing of the bars on the main tourist drag. He only had two girls working for him, both of whom were ‘unavailable’ for anything other than serving drinks and chatting to the regular customers.
    There had been a time when Henry had owned one of the largest bars in the centre of the tourist high-life and had fifteen or so girls working at his bar – all ‘available’. He’d rented a large house in which all the girls lived rent free as part of their package deal, which also provided for three meals a day. However, Henry found that he was also expected to act as father confessor, banker, and policeman during the frequent arguments, squabbles and even fights between the girls. Being a beneficent pimp-cum-bar owner was a tedious occupation and one, which Henry soon tired of. Besides, he was getting to old to cope with the daily hassles. His idea to corner the ex-pat market had paid off. He had a constant, if small, group of regular customers who preferred the peace and relative solitude of ‘Henrys’. They could go and chase young girls at any one of a dozen other bars within spitting distance but only at Henry’s could they relax, not be pestered by screaming bar girls or have their ear-drums perforated by blasting Thai music.
    Most of Henry’s customers however had a permanent Thai girlfriend or ‘wife’ who looked after their daily needs, cleaning, cooking, doing their laundry and, more often than not, carrying the unsteady burden back to the bungalow to ‘sleep it off’. Servicing their sex lives was a small task since most of them were too old or too drunk at the end of a session at Henry’s to consider such activities.
    So, Henry’s club flourished. It wasn’t exactly a wildly profitable business but it had the advantage of having a low rent and overhead and suited Henry down to the ground. He had a small pension, which supplemented any shortfall and really all he needed was an occupation which provided companionship and drinking partners because Henry was also known to enjoy a little of the amber liquid on a nightly basis.
    Apart from his bar he had little or no personal life. He lived very modestly at the far end of town in a primitive Thai-style bungalow with a ‘squat’ toilet and a water tap connected to an antiquated pump outside. The bungalow had one room, which served as living, and bedroom accommodation and a small lean-to, which housed the toilet facilities, such as they were. There was a mattress, an overhead fan which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. No kitchen. Primitive but sufficient for Henry’s needs. An old cardboard suitcase contained all the clothes he owned, a few T-shirts, mostly free gifts from other bars and restaurants, two pairs of dung-coloured slacks, one on, one in the wash and assorted flip-flops.
    Noi, one of the less aggressive bar owners and a long-time friend of Henry’s looked after his daily needs. He ate with her and the girls in their communal bungalow. They did his laundry for him and put him to bed when he was too drunk to climb the steps to his bungalow. In return, Henry wrote their letters to their foreign boyfriends whom they would cajole for money for one spurious reason or another. Henry had a number of ‘form’ letters, which he would adapt for each particular missive. “Have accident motor-bike. Go hospital. Need money, No have...” or, “Mama me sick. Need money for Doctor...” or, if any of those didn’t work, “Maybe I have baby you. Need money get rid of or maybe you me marry...” He tried to phrase the letters as the girls themselves would speak and all wold begin, “You very good man, good heart, that’s why I go with you. I know you love me...” and end, “I never forget kindness you to me. If can not send money I no know what I do but will understand. Love you...” and so on.
    One such correspondence, which Henry had instigated, had blossomed into a full-blown relationship and the boy had returned to marry the girl and spirit her off to Sweden. The boy had never known the crucial part that Henry had played in this romance and every year, at Christmas, the girl sent him a Christmas card with some small gift of money.
    His current literary project was for a girl named Dee. She had four such prospective customers, each one visiting the island once a year, each one, fortunately at a different time. Dee was a smart girl. For some time now she had kept all four suitors happy, with Henry’s help, and they each sent her money regularly each month. Dee therefore didn’t have to work too hard at the bar and only did so when nagged to by the easygoing Noi.
    Very often, as on this night, she would walk arm in arm with Henry to his bar. This took some time, for inevitably Henry would stop and chat on the way, accepting a hospitable beer from one of the other bar owners in exchange for a little friendly advice about some problem or another. Henry knew everyone and everyone knew him.
    Dee was unusually quiet this night and eventually Henry asked her what the problem was.
    “Peter, him come Lamai tonight,” she pouted.
    “But I thought Charlie came at Christmas – or was it John?” Henry had trouble keeping track of Dee’s complicated love life.
    “Charlie, yes, him come Christmas. Peter him come February, now him come Christmas. You read letter for me for February – you no remember?”
    “Sure, sure, February, Peter. So he’s changed his mind?”
    “Him telephone. Come Christmas. Big problem. Can not sleep in two bed at same time.”
    “Perhaps you could spend the first half of the night with Charlie and the second half with Peter?” he teased, enjoying the farcical possibilities of the situation.
    “You no joke!” she reprimanded him. “This serious. What I do?”
    “Who would you rather spend Christmas with?”
    “Same, same,” she said. ”Both nice. Both love me too much. Both send same-same money each month.”
    “Ah...” Henry considered the conundrum for some moments before he said, “Go home.”
    “Can not!” she almost shouted and eyes turned on them from the nearby bars they were passing.
    “Why not?” asked Henry. “Say your mother’s sick or something. If you go home they can’t catch you out, can they?”
    Dee considered this possibility for some moments then replied. “But can go with other lady.”
    “I thought they loved you dearly,” said Henry with a grin.
    “You no joke,” she wagged an admonishing finger at him. “I know they look lady more if I no here. Other lady jealous me. They tell story, make lies. Want take for boomsing. Want steal Dee man! No, can not!”
    “I don’t know then Dee,” he shook his head, still amused by the situation. “It was bound to happen sometime.”
    “Oh, “she moaned, “Dee in deep shit!”
    Later that night, when Henry was propping up his bar, listening to one of his regulars tell a story for the third time that night, he caught sight of a young man hovering at the entrance to his bar.
    “Hang on, Jock,” he patted the Old Faithful on the arm and left his stool and approached the young man.
    “Looking for someone?” he asked the young man, who was looking very uncertain of himself.
    “Well, yes, er ... Henry, actually.”
    “You’ve found him,” Henry extended his hand. “Welcome. Get you a beer or something?”
    He still had the young man by the hand and led him towards the bar. Jock was still continuing with his story, unaware that he was talking to thin air as Henry led the young man to a stool at the bar.
    “Carlsberg or Heineken? Or the local mouthwash?” asked Henry.
    “Yes, thanks. Carlsberg.”
    Henry nodded to one of the girls behind the bar. “So, why’re you looking for old Uncle Henry, mate?”
    “Well, actually I came here hoping to find my friend. She told me about this bar and mentioned your name when I came here last October.”
    Henry’s eyes glazed over for a second. “October...” he mused. “You wouldn’t be looking for Dee, would you? Name of Charlie?”
    “Charlie? No, my name’s Rob. I wanted to surprise her for Christmas.” He frowned. “Who’s Charlie?”
    “Ah, right, Rob.” The name clicked. He’d written one of his letters to him just recently. “Rob, yes, I believe Dee’s mentioned you. She’s ... she’s not around at the moment. Have your beer and I’ll see if I can find her for you.”
    He gave Rob a fatherly pat on the shoulder “Here, this is Jock – Jock, Rob.”
    Jock turned slightly towards the youth, nodded and continued his story as if nothing had happened. Rob, somewhat bemused, tried to listen as Henry bustled off into the darkness of the road beyond his bar.
    Dee was seated on one of the barstools at Noi bar, her head thrown back in laughter and her arms entwined protectively around the neck of the young man seated next to her. She waived cheerily at Henry as he ambled towards her.
    “Henry, you remember my boyfriend, Peter. He arrive tonight.” She hugged and kissed the happy youth who raised a friendly hand to Henry.
    “Yes,” said Henry, “Peter, you came last...?”
    “February,” said the smiling lad. “Decided I couldn’t wait this year so I came early to spend Christmas with Dee.” He smiled lovingly at her.
    “Right, er...Right,” said Henry, taking Dee gently by the arm. “Dee, slight problem.”
    He smiled reassuringly at the young man and gently eased Dee away from the bar out of earshot.
    “Remember that deep shit you said you was in?” he asked, whispering in case the young man could overhear them.
    “You find answer?” asked Dee, he face brightening up immediately.
    “No, sweetheart, you’ve just sunk deeper into it. October’s at my bar.”
    “October,” she frowned, not understanding.
    “Rob? Remember him? October!”
    Her mystified frown turned to a look of horror. “Rob? Him only just go home!”
    “Well, he’s back!” said Henry, “Seems he couldn’t stay away from you - wanted to surprise you for Christmas.”
    “Surprise! Yes, him surprise! Oh Buddha! What to do?”
    Henry scratched his head thoughtfully.” Christ knows! Does this Rob know you work at Noi’s?”
    “No. Yes! ... I don’t know. Yes, we meet here October.”
    “Well, please God he doesn’t come looking for you here. If I were you, I’d take young, whatshisname there, young February, and tuck him away somewhere nice and quiet. I’ll try and head young Rob off until tomorrow. Then? Christ knows! You’ll have to think of something.”
    He patted her pert behind and headed her back towards the bar and February.
    “Try Dominic’s up on the hill – nobody ever goes there except to play pool,” he said as he walked away.
    With that parting shot of advice, Henry disappeared into the milling crowds of tourists back towards his own bar.
    Dee turned on her best toothy smile and returned to Peter, glaring daggers at one of the other girls who had begun to move in on him.
    Rob was still seated at the bar where Henry had left him, still being bored to tears by Jock.
    “Sorry it took so long,” apologised Henry, “Had a job finding her. She’s gone off to Naton hospital apparently; one of he mate’s had a bad motorbike accident. Some drunken Thai prat smacked right into her. Happens all the time here. You look done in mate – flight getting to you?”
    “Just a bit. I’ll be all right when I see Dee,” said the young man sorrowfully.
    “Yeah – well, that could be some time. Her friend’s pretty bad so she could be there all night. Tell you what, have another beer on me, go back to your pad and get a good night’s rest. I’m bound to see Dee in the morning so I can tell her you’re here. Where’re you staying?”
    “The Galaxy,” Rob said hesitantly, “But...”
    “Believe me,” smiled Henry in his best avuncular manner,” It’ll be better if you get some kip, get your strength up for tomorrow night, eh?” He winked knowingly at the disappointed Rob.
    “Oh, well, if you think that’s best.”
    “Two more Carlsberg’s please Mo...”
    He patted the young man on the shoulder again in his best mine host manner. “Now, where d’you say you come from...?
    Henry got back to his bungalow at five that morning and at eight was woken by a frantic banging on his door.
    “Papa Henry!” Papa Henry, it’s Dee!”
    “Oh Christ,” muttered Henry, “What now?”
    Dee pushed the door open and entered the dimly lit room. “What happen Rob?” she asked as she squatted on the floor next to Henry’s untidy bed.
    In-between yawns, Henry told her.
    “But what I do now?’ asked the forlorn girl.
    “Go back to bed until mid-day. It’s too bloody early! I can’t think straight.”
    “No, I go breakfast Peter. I come back for shower, clean clothes.
    “Then shower, eat and come back later. Let me think!”
    Henry turned gruffly away from her and buried his head in his pillow.
    “I come back,” said the girl and moved towards the door.
     “Yeah, later – much later!” groaned Henry.
    “Papa, you good man, good heart...”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah – I wrote the book, remember? Now, piss off!”
    Henry turned over as Dee left, thumping the rickety door closed behind her. He wouldn’t sleep now. He knew it. What a situation! Two boyfriends already here, one due to arrive all convinced they’re the only one in her life, all in town at the same time!
    “There’ll be blood...” he muttered to himself, “Blood and tears!”
    The island of Koh Samui is small and each township not much bigger than an English country village with one main street running through it, except Chaweng which is one sprawling mass of unplanned buildings. In Lamai however, it was a sure thing that if one stood in one spot on the main street one would be bound to meet every other visiting tourist at some time or another. For Dee to keep three eager suitors from meeting at some point was, therefore, an unlikely scenario. Her options were few if she wanted to keep her secrets. She could leave town suddenly but she’d rejected that option for fear of losing any one of her boyfriends to other “predators”. She could choose one and reject the other two, but she wouldn’t do that either thought Henry. She’s worked hard to maintain her income from all three and would be loathe to diminish it by two thirds. Suicide, he thought, the only answer!
    Henry was a resourceful man and had extricated himself and many of his friends from difficult situations over the years but he’d never faced a problem such as this. He was stumped! He finally got up and joined Noi for a bowl of moden soup and some rice and together they pondered the problem.
    “She stupid girl,” Ventured Noi,” No good have four boyfriends.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” replied Henry philosophically. “She’s done all right so far. She gets fifty quid a month from each of ‘em plus whatever else we can con them out of. That’s about twenty thousand Baht a month. Then she gets more from the occasional punter at the bar in-between time. How many of your girls make that kind of money?”
    “True,” said Noi,” But she no can do you no write letters.”
    “Now, don’t blame me!” protested Henry. “I’m in deep enough as it is. If I had any sense I’d bugger off to Phuket for Christmas! And let her sort her own bloody mess out. Greedy bitch!
    “You no do that,” said Noi, “I know you. You true Papa to girls.”
    She nudged his shoulder affectionately.
    “I was just thinking,” pondered Henry.

    “What we got to do is keep these three blokes apart. They don’t know each other so unless they meet with Dee unexpectedly, there won’t be a problem. So, we need to keep her isolated but keep each one of them on the hook separately.”
     “How you do that?” puzzled Noi, such problems too much for her simple brain at the best of times.
    “Maybe ...It’ll cost a few in backhanders and I’ll have to call in some favours but it might just work. I’ll have to find my friend Num.”
    “The policeman?” asked Noi; slightly alarmed at anything that involved the law.
    “Mm...” nodded Henry. “Exactly. The policeman.”
    Rob had spent the morning lounging around the swimming pool at his hotel and was now sipping a cold melon shake on the restaurant terrace overlooking the beach impatiently waiting for Henry to arrive.
    “Sorry I’m so late,” apologised Henry, “Sitting on the bench opposite Rob with a heavy sigh. I didn’t get home until late – one of the disadvantages of owning a bar.”

    “Right,” said Rob, obviously eager for news. “Did you see Dee?”

    “Not actually see,” said Henry.” I spoke to her on the phone. She’s still at the hospital. I don’t know when she’ll be back. There could be a complication.”

    “Is her friend seriously injured?” asked Rob. “Maybe I can help?”

    “No, no – her friend’s OK but there’s a problem about the motorbike. It belonged to Dee, you see but it wasn’t exactly legal – no papers, no insurance.”

    “But she’s not in serious trouble, is she? “ worried Rob anxiously.

    “Well, a bit early to say. They’re still trying to sort the problem out.”

    “I must go to her,” said Rob, “She may need my help.”

    “Steady on, son, steady on.” Henry put a restraining hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Nothing you can do that isn’t being done already.”

    “But she may need me. She may need help,” protested the distraught young man. “ She may need money!”

    “She may well, indeed, later,” said Henry, the possibility of another ‘touch’ looming in his mind. “It’s good of you to offer and I’m sure she’s appreciate it later, but not now. It’s better if tourists don’t get involved with the police – better for the Thais that is. I’ll keep you in touch with what’s happening and let you know.”
    “But when can I see her?” implored the young man.
    Ain’t love grand, thought Henry. “I’ll make arrangements if I can. Now, just try and relax.”
    With that he left the hotel and hurried up the road to a bungalow complex. He found Peter lounging in the sun on the seaside terrace, reading a paperback novel.
    “Waiting for Dee?” he asked pleasantly.
    “Oh, hello,” said the slightly pink young man.
    “I’d get out of the sun if I was you,” advised Henry as he sat in a chair in the shade of a coconut tree.
    “May not seem very bright behind them clouds but it’ll still cook you just as bad.”
    Peter nodded, put his book to one side and joined him in the shade.
    ”Thought I’d just pop in and see if you were here. Dee asked me to. Been a bit of trouble...”
    He went on to explain his story about the accident, embellishing it somewhat as he grew more confident of its affect. He left the pink youth with the same promise he had made to Rob, that he would arrange for him to see Dee as soon as possible.
    Now, just one more to take care of, he thought as he strode up the road to borrow a motorbike from his friend at the hire shop. Dee had said that the third friend was arriving today on the three o’clock flight from Bangkok. Charlie, the Christmas punter. Dee was safely tucked away in the nick, courtesy of his mate Num, the policeman. She didn’t like being banged up but it was the only way Henry could think of to get her out of the way and at the same time allow her three punters to see her every day, independently, so there’d be no chance of them meeting. He was rather proud of his nifty arrangement and fortunately Dee saw the sense of it.
    Harry didn’t much like motorbikes, there were too many accidents on the island. Largely through ignorance and inexperience and more often than not through drink. However, it was the only cheap way to get around the island and the drive to the airport was really quite pleasant along the sea road.
    He arrived just as the passengers from the three o’clock flight were disembarking from the aircraft and he studied them all, looking for a likely Charlie amongst them. He was sure he’d met Charlie before but then he’d seen so many young men come and go that eventually they all began to look familiar. He chose saw two likely looking “Charlies” and Henry chose the one who looked most at home with the arrivals procedure. He thought that the one who looked a little confused was probably a new and unfamiliar visitor to the island.
    “Charlie?” he enquired hopefully of the likely one.
    The young man looked briefly at him then muttered something that sounded insulting in German.
    Henry turned away, affronted and himself muttered, “We did win the bloody war you know”
    He looked anxiously around the rest of the arrivals mob who were by now trying to sort out their baggage.
    “Did you say Charlie?” a voice behind him asked.
    “Right,” said Henry. He turned to see a large bottomed girl grinning at him.
    “Charlotte, actually, but Charlie to her friends. Dee send you?”
    “Right,” said Henry, his jaw dropping slightly.
    “How sweet,” said Charlie. “She’s such a thoughtful child.”
    “Isn’t she?” said Henry. Was there no end to Dee’s talents?
    “Met her last Christmas, actually,” said the butch one. “Such an enchanting girl struggling so hard to extricate herself from that ghastly bar. You a friend of hers?”
    “Yes,” said Henry, “Name’s Henry. More of a father figure, actually.”
    “Splendid,” said the large one giving Henry a slap on the back. “Good to meet you Henry. Can’t wait to see Dee.”
    “Well”, stuttered Henry, still trying to get over the shock of the hefty thwack on the back, “You might have to. There’s a slight problem...”
    Henry went into his now familiar story about the hospital, the motorbike accident, the insurance foul-up and the police and so on.
    “No problem that can’t be solved, right?” said the butch baggage forcefully. “Sort it out later.”
    After dumping Charlie at her hotel, fortunately not one either of the boys were staying at, Henry repaired to his bar early. It had been a busy day and he needed reviving. He also needed to plan the sequence of visits, a task that would demand immaculate timing.
    Henry was on his fourth beer and a little more relaxed as Rob arrived on the dot at seven. Henry downed the last dregs of his beer and seated Rob on the back of his motorbike and they sped off towards Naton and the police station.
    They arrived a little before seven-thirty as planned to be met by the stern-faced Num, Henry’s friend. Rob was led to a small room and an emotional reunion took place between a suitably sorrowful Dee and her October lover.
    Henry kept his ear close to the door and heard Dee have Rob swear that despite her incarceration he would wait for her and remain faithful. He, of course, swore his undying love and left offering to pay whatever fine would release her. Num almost spoiled the whole thing by mentioning a sum but Henry quickly saved the situation by suggesting that this might be unethical and actually harm Dee’s case. He glared at the policeman. Num shrugged – worth a try.
    Rob left reluctantly and Henry took him back to Lamai, to Henry’s bar to drown his sorrows again with the promise to keep him in touch with the situation and return with him the next night if necessary for another visit.
    Next stop, Peter and the same performance but without the final stop at Henry’s bar. Instead Henry spent and hour at Peter’s bungalow, downed four large G and T’s promising as with Rob to meet with him the next day and bring him up to date and so on.
    Now for the ballbreaker, thought Henry, as he prepared to himself to pick up Charlie and go through the same procedure as before. But Charlie was different. Charlie was a tough feminist who took no shit from anyone, whether he be a politician or a Thai policeman. Nothing daunted her. Confronting Num at the police station she started quoting feminist threats like they were printed on the back of a conrflakes packet. Num’s eyes glazed over and he looked to Henry for support against this fearsome tirade. Henry finally persuaded Charlie that threatening a Thai policeman would only serve to aggravate the situation. Dee, in her brief meeting with Charlie, substantiated this and begged her not to interfere. Henry finally got Charlie out of the police station but she was still muttering about repercussions from her friends in Bangkok in the feminist movement.
    Henry was never more relieved in his life to get Charlie away from the police station. Num was beginning to lose his cool and it wouldn’t have taken much more for him to throw Charlie into the slammer, that is if he could have moved her at all.
    With great relief Henry dumped the feminist harridan back at her bungalow and repaired to his bar once more to ease the pain. He was well into the stage of passing into a delightful alcoholic oblivion when a voice behind him alerted his defensive system.
    “Somebody called Henry, here?” asked a very posh London voice. “Noi bar said I might find him here friend of Dee’s.”
    Mo behind the bar giggled. Henry silenced her with a glowering look and turned his attention to the newest arrival explaining the situation and agreeing to meet with the young man the next morning.
    Henry then got very drunk and, as always in such circumstances, fell asleep at the bar, or rather under it!
    The morning was uncommonly bright and punctuated by the morning cock crows around Lamai. It seemed to Henry, whose head was bursting, that every cockerel in Lamai had to talk to the other. After their morning’s work of waking up the entire population they seemed to give up their territorial exhortations and retire, either to sleep, eat or copulate. Henry considered every chicken to be his enemy, particularly this morning, as his head seemed to be singing a tune in a different key – something akin to a thundering diesel engine.
    He staggered from beneath the bar, groped his way to the toilet and threw up a stream of vomit that seemed to be pure Gin.
    “I’ll never forgive you for this Dee,” he muttered between heaves. “Never!”
    It took two large draft Carlsberg’s, a full greasy English breakfast and several more visits to the loo before Henry could even stand up straight and breathe with ease. By eleven o’clock he’d recovered enough to relax, review the situation and ignore the pounding diesel in his head, which had fortunately moved on a few miles, its thumping diminished.
    He had four of Dee’s lovers in suspension. Dee incarcerated safely and relatively comfortably in his friend Num’s nick. He was buying time but not solving the situation that was complicated enough without the ballbreaker’s threatening behaviour. He took a nearby menu, turned it over onto its blank side and began to make a table of who was here and for how long, with their departure date if he knew it. The two first arrivals would be leaving immediately after Christmas, their bucket-shop tickets fixed. Christmas was only a couple of days away so he would have to accommodate all of them with visits to Dee, at least until after Christmas. He hadn’t yet sussed out how long Alan was staying and could only vaguely remember talking to him last night. Charlie, he was sure, was going to be the problem.
    He could keep Dee holed up in the police station for no more than a week. Num was going bananas as it was and it was going to cost an arm and a leg to appease him. Assuming that Charlie didn’t call in her “Hell’s Angels” from Bangkok and cause a diplomatic incident, he thought he could probably just about get away with it.
    He met with Alan as arranged and after giving him the same story as the others offered to make similar arrangements for him to see Dee. Surprisingly, Alan declined. He’d come here for a holiday and certainly didn’t intend to spend it visiting someone in the police station. He’d either wait for her to be released or...
    Thank God, thought Henry, one of them sensible enough to let himself off the hook.
    This was Dee’s third day as a guest of the local constabulary and she was becoming stir crazy. The news that one of her so-called lovers had decided to look elsewhere for his pleasures didn’t please her either.
    “Him no care I in trouble! Him no good heart. I no go with him any more!” she sulked. ”Maybe I just leave here. I no like!”

    “Listen,” admonished Henry,” I wish I could change places – it would be a welcome rest! I’m going through hell here trying to get you out of this mess and all you can do is moan! If you don’t behave yourself I’ll just bugger off and leave you to sort your own mess out!”
    His outburst stunned her and she acquiesced, thanking him for being such a good friend and begging him not to desert her in her hour of need.
    The days wore on, with Henry juggling visits so that the two boys could meet with her and make sure that Charlie could do so without confronting Num again and stirring up trouble. He saw the foot-loose and fancy-free Alan around the bars and was happy that he needn’t worry about him any more. The stayer was Charlie. She was becoming more and more fractious and actually wanted an apology from the police and compensation for wrongful arrest! Henry had to promise Num five thousand Baht more to keep him from reacting to the harridan’s barrage of insults. This was becoming expensive.
    Christmas thankfully came, and went but Henry didn’t enjoy it one little bit so much on tenterhooks was he all the time. The two boys, October and February left as per scheduled, leaving a fair chunk of money between them with Uncle Henry to get Dee out of trouble. As soon as they left Henry arranged for Dee to leave Num’s ‘hotel’ but Charlie’s feminist ego was not assuaged by this and it took Dee’s feminine wiles to keep her from creating mayhem.
    Charlie too finally left just before the New Year and Henry was at last able to breathe a sigh of relief. Dee sought out Alan who’d been having a jolly old time but came back to her like a lamb and treated her to a splendid gold necklace to compensate for his MCP behaviour. So, all was sweetness and light once more.
    Dee had Henry write letters to Rob and Peter thanking them for the money they’d left and asking them to let her know at least a month in advance the next time they came in order that she might devote her entire time to them.
    Henry celebrated New Year’s eve at his bar, happy that he had circumnavigated disaster for Dee. All in all, Dee hadn’t come out of the experience at all badly. Ten thousand Baht from the two boys, a gold necklace worth at least that much again from the recalcitrant Alan and even the formidable ballbreaker had left her five grand. Even after paying Num five grand for his trouble she was still well ahead. She wanted to split her ill-gotten gains with Henry but he would hear none of it.
    “It was an...Experience,” he finally found the word he was looking for. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!”
    He lounged on his bar and supped his tenth large Gin, listening to the firecrackers ‘crack and crackle’ in the New Year, his mind full of nothing but relief from tension.
    “Is there someone called Henry here?” asked a voice from the dim portals of his bar. “I’m Hans. I was told at Noi bar that...”
    Henry’s head sagged onto his chest. “Bugger off! he yelled and sank into the welcoming arms of Mother Gordon’s.

Jim Maddocks, GLASGOW, via the Internet     I’ll be totally honest, of the material in Issue (either 83 or 86 of Children, Churches and Daddies) the only ones I really took to were Kuypers’. TRYING was so simple but most truths are, aren’t they?

what is veganism?

    A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don’t consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

    why veganism?

    This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

    so what is vegan action?

    We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
    We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

    A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

vegan action
po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353
510/704-4444

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies)     cc&d is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist.     I really like (“Writing Your Name”). It’s one of those kind of things where your eye isn’t exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked “knowledge” for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film.

    Children, Churches and Daddies no longer distributes free contributor’s copies of issues. In order to receive issues of Children, Churches and Daddies, contact Janet Kuypers at the cc&d e-mail addres. Free electronic subscriptions are available via email. All you need to do is email ccandd@scars.tv... and ask to be added to the free cc+d electronic subscription mailing list. And you can still see issues every month at the Children, Churches and Daddies website, located at http://scars.tv

Mark Blickley, writer     The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

    We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town (on the Children, Churches and Daddies Web Site)     I just checked out the site. It looks great.

    Dusty Dog Reviews: These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding.

John Sweet, writer (on chapbook designs)     Visuals were awesome. They’ve got a nice enigmatic quality to them. Front cover reminds me of the Roman sculptures of angels from way back when. Loved the staggered tire lettering, too. Way cool.     (on “Hope Chest in the Attic”)     Some excellent writing in “Hope Chest in the Attic.” I thought “Children, Churches and Daddies” and “The Room of the Rape” were particularly powerful pieces.

    Dusty Dog Reviews: She opens with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus (on Children, Churches and Daddies)     The new cc&d looks absolutely amazing. It’s a wonderful lay-out, looks really professional - all you need is the glossy pages. Truly impressive AND the calendar, too. Can’t wait to actually start reading all the stuff inside.. Wanted to just say, it looks good so far!!!

    Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA
    Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

    Mark Blickley, writer
    The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

    You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.

    Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book or chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers. We’re only an e-mail away. Write to us.

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

    The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
    The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST’s three principal projects are to provide:
    * on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
    * on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST’s SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
    * on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
    The CREST staff also does “on the road” presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

Brian B. Braddock, WrBrian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     Brian B. Braddock, WrI passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

    Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
    “Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family.
    “Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

    want a review like this? contact scars about getting your own book published.

Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!

    Okay, nilla wafer. Listen up and listen good. How to save your life. Submit, or I’ll have to kill you.
    Okay, it’s this simple: send me published or unpublished poetry, prose or art work (do not send originals), along with a bio, to us - then sit around and wait... Pretty soon you’ll hear from the happy people at cc&d that says (a) Your work sucks, or (b) This is fancy crap, and we’re gonna print it. It’s that simple!

    Okay, butt-munch. Tough guy. This is how to win the editors over.
    Hope Chest in the Attic is a 200 page, perfect-bound book of 13 years of poetry, prose and art by Janet Kuypers. It’s a really classy thing, if you know what I mean. We also have a few extra sopies of the 1999 book “Rinse and Repeat”, the 2001 book “Survive and Thrive”, the 2001 books “Torture and Triumph” and “(no so) Warm and Fuzzy”,which all have issues of cc&d crammed into one book. And you can have either one of these things at just five bucks a pop if you just contact us and tell us you saw this ad space. It’s an offer you can’t refuse...

    Carlton Press, New York, NY: HOPE CHEST IN THE ATTIC is a collection of well-fashioned, often elegant poems and short prose that deals in many instances, with the most mysterious and awesome of human experiences: love... Janet Kuypers draws from a vast range of experiences and transforms thoughts into lyrical and succinct verse... Recommended as poetic fare that will titillate the palate in its imagery and imaginative creations.

    Mark Blickley, writer: The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing the book.

    You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.
    Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book and chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers - you can write for yourself or you can write for an audience. It’s your call...

    Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA: “Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family. “Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

 

    Dusty Dog Reviews (on Without You): She open with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.
    Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

    Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada (on Children, Churches and Daddies): I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer’s styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.

    Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA: Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Children, Churches and Daddies the unreligious, non-family oriented literary and art magazine Scars Publications and Design ccandd96@scars.tv http://scars.tv Publishers/Designers Of Children, Churches and Daddies magazine cc+d Ezines The Burning mini poem books God Eyes mini poem books The Poetry Wall Calendar The Poetry Box The Poetry Sampler Mom’s Favorite Vase Newsletters Reverberate Music Magazine Down In The Dirt magazine Freedom and Strength Press forum plus assorted chapbooks and books music, poery compact discs live performances of songs and readings Sponsors Of past editions: Poetry Chapbook Contest, Poetry Book Contest Prose Chapbook Contest, Prose Book Contest Poetry Calendar Contest current editions: Editor’s Choice Award (writing and web sites) Collection Volumes Children, Churches and Daddies (founded 1993) has been written and researched by political groups and writers from the United States, Canada, England, India, Italy, Malta, Norway and Turkey. Regular features provide coverage of environmental, political and social issues (via news and philosophy) as well as fiction and poetry, and act as an information and education source. Children, Churches and Daddies is the leading magazine for this combination of information, education and entertainment. Children, Churches and Daddies (ISSN 1068-5154) is published monthly by Scars Publications and Design. Contact Janet Kuypers via e-mail (ccandd96@scars.tv) for snail-mail address or prices for annual collection books. To contributors: No racist, sexist or blatantly homophobic material. No originals; if mailed, include SASE & bio. Work sent on disks or through e-mail preferred. Previously published work accepted. Authors always retain rights to their own work. All magazine rights reserved. Reproduction of Children, Churches and Daddies without publisher permission is forbidden. Children, Churches and Daddies copyright Copyright © 1993 through 2012 Scars Publications and Design, Children, Churches and Daddies, Janet Kuypers. All rights remain with the authors of the individual pieces. No material may be reprinted without express permission.