the truth as we know it

The Truth As We Know It


On about the 1st of the month or so, my co-habitator, Sara Clare Ellington, (no relation to the Duke, actually Jewish) pulled the proverbial rug out from under my precious existence. It was the beginning of slip-sliding away. Seismic upheaval. Pangaea splitting off into disparate parts. The earth, my earth would never be the same.
Just when commonplace boredom had become something desirable it was ripped out from underneath my grubby little fingers. You wait your whole life for satisfaction, every living, breathing moment a means to that end and just when all seems monotonous yet comfortable the uprooting of everything becomes a somber reality.
Being an affirmed astrology buff, and then some, she let me know that, the planets’ coordinates were coordinating in such a way that they were extremely uncoordinated for us. Our co-mingling. Our co-existing. Calmly, I asked her if it was that time of the month. Brazenly aghast, she thought not. She proceeded to spew venom about her Gemini exiting my Libra and how everything we had ever stood for seemed like a bad dream. To me if it wasn’t that time of the month it was a reasonable facsimile thereof. Put it this way, I had been in the firing line of her furious feminine rage before. It was so-out-of-this-world that maybe to quote her, “It was interplanetary.” All I could think of was, Heaven Help us. Spewing the serpent’s oil or not, she sounded eerily similar to the blue-light-special announcer at a certain convenience outlet. As cold-blooded as she sounded and as eerily sick to the stomach as I felt, the image of some chunky big-breasted woman yelling out toothpaste and lipgloss specials to everyone so inconsequential that they were to the fate of the universe, truth and happiness and all, made me cheerily incoherent to the seriousness of her mouth transit. To keep one’s sanity sometimes one must remember the man code, only listen to what is absolutely necessary. Entire kingdoms have gone under when the code has been explicitly denied its place in the kingdom. Exactly why the man code was invented.
Sara Clare and I had been an item for quite some time now. Never did we appear in the society pages but that was most likely my fault. She came from a high-falutin’ family. They had it all, deep pockets, a most powerful group of allies, exotic palatial estates set up in several strategic points around the universe, personal guides and gurus that never left well enough alone and the feeling that anything was attainable if the laws of physics weren’t compromised. She was a member of the bourgeois. The ruling class. She had followed her dad, a prominent judge, a man with a scolding heart, deep penetrating eyes, the kind that ate right into your soul with their insatiable appetite, and classic highbrow unibrows, down the ivy league path and was still contemplating a life of jurisprudence, echoing her dad’s path though she disagreed wildly with some of his archaic political views. She loved him dearly. Her dad had painted her as an outcast when she hooked up with me. I was of the ostracized type. My music lorded over me. She had once loved me for it. But sometimes common sense overtakes the sanity of one’s soul as time meanders aimlessly through its cycle and it didn’t matter that they were multiple universes, chaos theory won out especially if you didn’t sit down long enough for the anxiety to pass. And I knew it as well as I had known it before, people that love, that really love, usually in the long run, get screwed.

In a time of incoherence, lightning struck! The dam burst! Floodgates dissolved! Falling into my arms, she cried inconsolably, her head draped over my shoulder, like the great hoary noggin of the albatross. The great squawking image of a flesh eater in all its glory. As she brooded I became her nesting place. Her calm in the storm.
What seemed like eons later when she calmly lifted her head and moved it away, relieved of her burdensome skull, I dryly commented on the news I’d heard about the salmonella scare. I was trying to ease her tension, set right the distraught applecart. I was trying to bridge the distance between us.
“Sara Clare, have you heard about the salmonella?”


Wide-eyed, her pupils dilating, she managed a horizontal bop of her head.

I continued. “It seems salmon, yes, salmon, as kooky as it sounds is

drumming up support for salmonella.”

Diligently I was attempting to take up time and space with scientific

meanderings which tied into the fate of the universe. In some way, sensing her

psychological disrobing of me, I suddenly realized, with an epiphanic leap of faith that 2 + 2 no longer equaled 4. I thought that what if in life and mathematics there were no absolutes. I shuddered at the thought. I imagined Newton disrobing with me. I wished that I had hardened my soul, as well as my flesh.

She sat silent. Catatonic. I wondered if I was losing her. I chuckled,

looking for a response. “Salmonella spawning, distributing p-o-i-s-o-n

to unsuspecting humanity.” And damn, the notion of global warming was

just becoming comfortable.
We both decided to sleep on the couch but it was too crowded (too close for comfort).

To the bed I marched (in playfully indignant repose) not as much mad as lonely. During a relentless dream about conformity, which included Michael Jackson, the pope and myself, a terrifying vision appeared in my cerebral cortex. A Roman dude blowing his trumpet, Michael Jackson dancing his soul away and the pope reading from a scroll about affairs was my REM reality. Through my unconscious mind raced the words, business affairs, art-a-fairs, foreign affairs…until out of the cool blue vast wasteland of neuron activity I screamed or so I thought…Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah. I rolled off the bed, inadvertently hitting my elbow on the sturdy oak floor. Damn that hurt. My mind raced like a madman. Before I could lift my body back up to higher ground, Sara Clare stood over me. There was evil in her eyes, or was she just extremely concerned about my health?

“You b - ch, she said!” Lightening flashed, a harmonic convergence of light and bolt lit up the sky; there were sure to be floods all over Manhattan.

“You what?” Puppy dog eyes and whatever else upwardly young mobile women were made of, stared back at me. Like a body—and—soul-- piercing laser beam.

“It’s okay Roger.” She ran her elegantly painted nails, the epitome of bright—bright-- magenta through her meticulously coiffed brown curls, the ringlets that cost more daniro for upkeep than many third world countries annual budget outlays. She seemed composed. Her storm had passed. As I neared consciousness I felt a dark cloud passing overheard. For a moment the music died like Don Mclean had rhapsodized.

“It was fun while it lasted. A real blast. You should get some sleep now.” She rolled her eyes, eyes that to me once seemed magical were losing their sexy cat shape, their luster, their appeal, their any and everything good, right in front of my face. All I could think was, my God, I hope I’m dreaming. And if I’m not, may I never wake up.

What was she telling me? This from a woman who said she was
more man than I’d ever be. I remembered thinking, I hope not, let me re-check your equipment. Damn, she had gone on to say about how she wore the pants in our family. I blamed it on women’s lib, suffragette in 1920, Gloria Steinem, the whole kit and caboodle of crazed
women’s - righters. Too much freedom. I blamed everything on too much freedom. She’d said she had more testosterone in her little finger, or pinky. Whichever it was. My mind was failing me. I’d said, like shit howdy, she didn’t. “Are you willing to be tested, I’d asked her? “D-O-C-T-O-R office in the morning.” I’d prove I wasn’t her bitch.
Of course when the morning showed itself, all had been forgotten like a bad dream. Still, I wasn’t exactly living nirvana.

Now half-awake, half-asleep, half immobile and totally zombified, I lay underneath my manly woman as she caressed my head. She took it into her hands like a baby’s bottom, tenderly caressing, rubbing her Flo-Jo fingernails through my receding brown follicles. I remembered heart and soul. I remembered solid gold. And then, I woke up. The bitch was heavy. Sweat beaded into little ringlets and dripped from my body. The phone rang. Unconsciousness absurdly rolled into a conscious storm.

“Hey baby, it’s Sara Clare.”

“Who? Who is this?”

“It’s Sara (I double D) Clare.” She giggled. I remembered her

effervescence. Her beauty. Her love for me. (Something about the rain in Spain.)

“Sara Clare? Really?”

“Rog, remember, what we talked about…like last night? You know?”

Memory wasn’t my strongest suit. Playing poker in the high school bathroom, fueled by marked cards had been my strongest suit until I had been emasculated by strong motherly women shortly after puberty had set in. The closest I came to a strong suit now was my Calvin Klein triple-breasted dark black suit that with a baby blue shirt in tow annihilated all pretenders to the throne. The truth hurts sometimes. Now I was enveloped by reminisces that mercifully my failing memory base would soon wipe out. Still tears closed in, remembering what can now be categorized as wasted time. Most of my misspent hours had been wasted on cooking flambé, Brie and salmon and pleasing her. The albatross diva squared. She had soared into my life with a dynamic flair and now I was the epitome of rotting flesh in her book. Big bird soar away.

“Vaguely. Is there something I need to know? “

“The ride’s over, baby. You see, I got me a new driver. Get the
concept?” I know it may be hard to fathom but Sara (I double D) Clare is moving on. Saying sayonara. Adios, amigo.”

I was the inventor of concepts. Was she kidding? I racked my
brain holistically day after stupefying day trying to turn water into wine, intent at upsetting the applecart, replacing string theory, its 13 dimensions or so and Galileo’s round earth hypothesis by the next time the sun rose, showed its face in the galactic mirror. I was a man on a mission. Unfortunately my magic wand wilted on the vine. My potions were impotent. And over time, geniuses become madmen, monsters with no luck, no money and nowhere to go. Still a concept was a concept.

“I’ll send someone for my things. Ta ta.”

A new chauffeur? Was my limo pushing up daisies?
Long had the Milky Way been my friend. In its circular, gaseous embrace, I’d been a pretty avid collector of earth dust. Some people had baseball card memorabilia. Not me. My psyche collected quickly-to-be-forgotten memories like a radiation belt eats and breathes earth dust. New York City, my home, my paradise, had become my prison. My penitentiary. My big house. I needed to exit the planet. Get out of Dodge. Six quadrillion miles from the nearest galaxy, and gas prices were breaking long-standing records I was in heartbreak state. Exxon was on the up and up (in profits). Cataclysmic. What was next, Superman didn’t love Lois Lane? Protector of the universe was really a welfare cheater?
Reconstructing myself, picking up my sanity piece by piece, I gulped down two pots of coffee. Into the New York night, I screamed from my 15th floor balcony. Bloody Murder! Certain that the cops would be knocking on my door any minute with intent to bust heads, I took my caroling back inside. Concepts, Superman, Hegel’s concept (in my view) was dead. Now the mother of all tragedies (thanks, Saddam) was doing its symbolic and putrefying dance around my head like a motherf –r. The albatross would be dining tonight. Existence (mine) was going through a cruel phase. Otherwise, things were looking up. I was a free man.


I had spent years being overly mothered, downright smothered by overbearing bosomy types. Mary Sue Angelides, after what she’d done to me, with such fervor, a religiosity, I’d simply and unequivocally referred to her as the anti-Christ. Back in junior high, she’d tricked me into the girl’s bathroom. All you need to know, it was a set up. The feminine mystique had done me in. It’s a wonder that more men don’t contemplate suicide or maybe they do. Maybe the doing is the hardest part. My college girlfriend Amoeba Ray Thompson, she of the notoriously hippie parents, left me for her own gender and a few oversexed professors. She bombed—out my world kinda like her hippie parents and their Molotov cocktails had done to establishment locales back in the time of peace and love. My history of love had been unnecessarily brutal. Romantic gentlemen might ring a bell in a girl’s heart, but ostensibly chivalry was dead; at least as much as Nietzsche’s God.

Men were the weaker sex and whenever they chimed in with veritable nonsense owing to such platitudes as courtesy, kindness and overbearing love it didn’t take a Rorschach test to figure out the results of such encounters. The brothers were doomed. Doomed from the start. And, amen, that’s the history of love, a four-letter word that can invoke miracles or crush you at the extreme essence of being and shit you out without a care.


The office, Gladstone and Bryant, interior snob decorators, informed me that Ms. Ellington had gone home for the day. I wondered, home, was it where the antelopes roamed? What did Ms. Ellington consider home?

I used to do comedy in the privacy of my home. My home. Laughed at my corny jokes. Booed. Hissed. Heckled myself. Seemed it was about time for Othello. Romeo and Juliet. Et tu Brute?

Once we had been two sensually and mentally entwined lovers, we had
leapt from innocence to nonsense and back again effortlessly like nomadic swans moving from lake to lake, flying the trapeze, laughing at fate, mockingly serene while hanging as trapeze artists are wont to do, upside down meandering from the Brooklyn Bridge of our sensibilities, our youthfulness never-say-die bravado emitting poetic singsongs to long-dead lovers who superimposed on the scene before us. Now was this episode of our life dead? Was our passion play finished? Dried up? Dried up like the prunes my grandmother ate to hasten indigestion? I think not. I dare not. We who embark into summer on heaven’s wings shall be there into winter as our sunset nears. Yes, I felt that in my heart. That was something I had read long ago and I held it neatly to my breast. I would not go calmly into the night. Dylan Thomas provided me inspiration.



Downtown at the 1st City café, a hip avant-garde, starbucks clone with mobsters, gangstas and radiant ladies, I mingled. Drinking my café latte. I soared. Like the eagle I flew. Not on major drugs but caffeine was calling out my brain cells, reveille, one by one. I’d ingested so much coffee. Essentially I was a coffee pot transporting a human likeness around. Life images flashed before my eyes. The neon lights of Broadway. I laughed, impervious to pain, energy had trumped pain moved it out of the defining light. Yet like most smoldering beasts, it boiled under the surface.

Ebony eyes floated my way, sashayed into my world. “Hey, man, you look like the man on the moon. You discovered the jitterbug? Some kind of human insect?”

My mind raced. Surveying the brownsugarlady, I noticed her full lips, her precious white teeth, her kinky fro (a testament to 70’s soul) and her body. It was packing. My mind raced. Sara Clare and buffaloes roamed, did the neutron dance inside my skull. “Funny (hesitatingly). Are you the definitive expert on cockroaches and other insidious bug types?”

“Man, you gotta be fool.” She sneered. Black mamba venom replaced her genteel, sexy-as-hell aura. “Just asking, why you so doggone fool jumpity.”

Pointing to the sign, tilting my cup toward her, I hoped that she got all of the fresh roasted correlations.

“Now you ain’t got no mumbo-jumbo. What ails you?”

Overtaken by pure knowledge of the universe we live in, Sara Clare and a faulty sense of exasperation, I removed myself from my stool and knelt in front of the god of the whole shebang. “O heavenly father, who thou art be in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”



When I awoke, I was knee deep in the excrement of a police holding cell. My arrest report said something about offensive religious artifacts edifying the general public in a secular society. Remembering the ebony queen like a lucid dream on the history channel, I barked like a dog.

“Shut the fawk up! Are you crazy, little ol’ man?”

Laughter reverberated in my consciousness. Are you crazy, little old man?

“Yeah dumb little ass, pumped up on coffee,” said another man of the law. He laughed.

“The new drug use, hey Sid?”

“Yeah, next thing you know, we’ll be sending a search party for Juan Valdez.”

“Yeah,” Sid’s buddy laughed.

My only concern was escaping prison time. I wasn’t superman. I was bleeding reality. I was wondering what happened to get me here.



“That’ll be $450. Four and a half clams.”

“You sure that’s what I need?" I held the 45. It felt good. It felt snug in my hand.

“Listen! Are you killing somebody or just shooting at white rabbits when you’re at Alice’s?”

“Shooting white rabbits of course.” I played along with his reference to Jefferson Airplane.

“Well do you wanna blow them to smithereens? Or have soup?” He laughed.

“I guess, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Okay, four and a half clams and the baby’s yours.”

She was a baby all right. Silver metallic. Rabbit killer. What had I bought myself into?


When the dude with the mojo showed up, I was constitutionally ready to take up arms. Read him his rights.

“I don’t want no trouble, dude. Are you, Cayce? Roger Cayce?”

“Spitting image. In the flesh.” I cocked my rabbit-killer. “Wanna see a profile? My myspace is a dousy.”

“Sara, just wanted me to remove her things.”

“I’m sure you already have.’

“Hey, dude, Rog, she said you two were completely over. Really, that’s what she said. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“The shit comes out in the wash. Ever heard that old wife’s tale, uh? Excuse me for asking, but who the hell are you?”

“Dave, Dave, David Geffbron.”

“One of those Daves, huh. Damn sure, I’d killed them all. Damn sure.”
I blew on my virgin gun barrel and rotated the chamber. It was as fresh as an unspoiled flower. “Okay, what the hell, she’s gonna be on my history channel, Dave. Get her stuff. It’s yours. All yours. I sincerely hope that you have testosterone on back order.”

“What?”

“Never mind, you’ll get the picture.” I had a theory brewing about him getting the picture. For sure, the level of difficulty would be low. No, Ansel Adams would he have to be. He would get the picture.



A few weeks later, I know because the man on the radio called it the 21st of June, Dave rung me up. It was the first day of summer. Love season. Birds and bees time. And Sara Clare now possessed my 27-inch surround sound Zenith. And I was a bird without a bee. “Yeah, what is it? Wanna purchase the Roger Cayce love guide.”

“What in the blue-fucking-moon, are you talking about?”

“Calm down sadist, and tell me why you are further wasting my time.”

“Your girl, I mean, my, you know, what I mean, Sara, I think she’s doing me wrong.”

“Well, brother, she has a track record you might say.” Under my breath I sneered and giggled.



Somewhere on the dark side of Jersey, where the seediest of the seedy plant their seed, Dave Geffbron, a card-carrying member of the Jewish nation and I something less desirable in humanity’s version of the Oscars, of the high and mighty, of the princes and princesses caste waited on a JAP, a Jewish American princess and silently swore that she and he (whomever he be) would rot in hell.

“Never in my wildest dreams, did I think, we would be in this together.”

“Yeah, Dave, you’re definitely a rocket scientist.” We were so close like two peas in a pod. I was missing good TV, being here with him. She had dumped me long ago. What was I doing here? I guess one night off the couch, no matter how seedy this place was, wouldn’t kill me. And my virgin 45, was ready to pop its cherry if need be.

“Oh, shit, lookee here, see that, “ said Dave.

“Yeah spongebob, I think I do.” I had no idea what good ol’ Dave was looking at, alluding to. As the hoary mist oozed in like an uninvited ghost
on musty sea-salt legs, I really believed that Dave’s mind was sort of an alter-ego to its regular self. Heaven help me if I’m wrong, but I believe that his mind was hallucinating. A smorgasbord of dark smoky bitter-sweet Heinekens, white wine shooters and the taste of marijuana lay heavy on his breath, giving me the inkling. Was I in the clutches of a madman?

After an eternity-like ten minutes had passed, we ran with soft, furry rabbit feet and stealthily climbed the stairs to an old shanty of an apartment. I could have sworn that the earth rotated around the sun two or three times or maybe it was the company I was keeping. The building looked like something out of the dark ages. I had a fear that a bubonic rat was going to appear. I surmised that I had been visited by enough plagues to write the book on them. At the door, we listened. Our rapt ears stood at attention. Male bonding in the time of imminent threat to pride was at our disposal, was our destination. Whether we liked it or not? We were in this together.

“What do you think they’re doing in there, Rog?”

Giggling interrupted the silence. Sea salts sailed from the cumbersome sea. Out in the deep ocean depths, sea cucumbers, seahorses, sharks, jellies and a mind-bogglingly large number of other creatures went along on their merry way all unaware of our place in the Universe. A chill settled over my bones.

“Shit, Rog, what the hell’s she doing in there?”

“Probably knitting sweaters.” Long ago the chastity belt had been removed. Innocence had been tarnished, tarred and feathered. Princess no more. The shift into overdrive had come all too sudden. But the shock had worn off.

Upon my last facetious remark, Dave, on his own, with little or no corroboration on my part, smashed the door in. It flew from its hinges, a flightless bird. We leapt over it.

“There.”

“There.”

We rolled to the sounds. Breasts of Sara Clare stared hard-core into my eyes, a titman’s dream in a better place, a grander time.

“Holy shit, Rog, that guy…”

The presently encumbered lover stood naked before us. One hand clutched his privates undignified; the other was on his head.

“Don’t shoot. She told me it was over. You guys were in the book.”

“No shit, Sherlock. How long did it take you to solve the mystery? " I queried.

“What? Holy shit.”

Into the wall, I sprayed some chicken pellets laced with salmonella.

“Damn, don’t shoot!”

“Damn, cowboy, you aren’t a scared little wussy after all, are you?”

Laughing uncontrollably, we, I, almost split a gut.

“Now get the hell out of here and take your tee-pee with you, “ exhorted Dave.

“Sara Clare, don’t you think you need by this time, a whorehouse license or a pipe-fitting inspector?”

“Are you guys, crazy? Roger, have you gone bonkers? Got a screw loose?”

“You could say he’s got a screw loose. Ha ha ha.” Sara Clare grabbed her clothes and ran off naked into the night. Her pale round white butt was blindingly beautiful as she lit from the house.

“Let’s get outta here.”

“Okay, Dave, whatever you say. Ha ha ha ha.”

Sara Clare’s luminous derriere had illuminated the moment and sprinkled cosmic dust on the whole shebang connecting the parts which are essentially space, past, present and future. It had been a welcome surprise to see her ass even if the moment came with her running from the scene ass-backwards. It beat loneliness to a pulp. And all my virgin barrel did was watch her naked ass run away into the deep, distant night, keeping its virginity intact and my ass out of deep shit. In my universe chicken pellets burst no cherries.



One hell of a nightmarish week it had been. Time to get back to the business of selling a little real estate as well as pan handling for joy. It would be easier than ever to sing crippling love songs as true love or so I thought had become hellaciously unrequited. You just never know, the truth one day may be unfashionably so not the truth after a night’s sleep. Still I hoped to wake up after a hard night’s sleep and realize that it’d all been a dream. A ghouly, ghastly affair, nevertheless a dream.

Looking for some Cubans underneath the bed to smoke my cares away, I discovered some official looking paperwork and a DVD. “What’s this?” I muttered.

(1) I, Sara Clare do solemnly swear on this day July 1, 2006, my freedom from Roger Cayce.
(2) No longer will, Roger Cayce touch me physically, mentally, or bind me to him in any way.
(3) No longer will I be referred to as his baby.
(4) Under the emancipation act of this date I declare myself a totally unencumbered individual living in this here, our United States.
(5) Rog, our relationship is absolved.
(6) And if you don’t like it, it’s tough doo doo.

All I could think was, I gotta call the sanitation department. I’m knuckle deep in this. Maybe I would’ve killed the suckers involved if I would’ve read this (Philadelphia) New York freedom riot act before embarking to a seedy New Jersey location. But I hadn’t. God spared me, I guess. Hallelu-jah!

After grabbing some chips and caramel soda, I plopped myself down onto the couch and turned on my new black Motorola. The DVD from under the bed was just more of Sara Clare. Sara Clare griping. Sara Clare beefing. Sara Clare stewing. Sara Clare personified. Take a listen.

“Rog, if you have already read my emancipation proclamation, this is all I got to say, babe, the reiterating blues, it’s over baby. Get over it! Get on with your life. Stop wasting yourself. Once, we had something. Now, in retrospect, I sure as hell don’t know, remember, or even care what it was that something we had. It’s over, baby. Kapoof. No more Batwoman and Robin.” She laughs. “No, Superman you’re not. Maybe you can find a bitch to wear the pants for you, maybe not? But remember this, it’s not me.”

It occurred to me, the Abraham Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation echoed in my brain. Guess the bitch was a tad too unoriginal. At least, Abraham’s dig at justice freed the slaves. Hers was a tad immoral. And in essence, it freed no one.

“But remember this, but remember this, it’s not me. We might’ve had something but whatever it was, it isn’t. Get on with your life. Get on with it. BITCH OUT!”

With that she raised her fist in a black power salute, maybe in effect, an affectation of the recent power outage, and then saluted me with a devilishly-evil shit-eating grin, taking up space on a elusively sardonic face. She sure as hell would live in infamy. Yes, infamy, damn right! I gave my own black power salute to her screen presence and morphed from there into the proper military salute with the middle finger exposed (for all to see) and mouthed, my own creative ending that had burned like a raging inferno in the depths of hell for a considerable amount of time.

“BITCH OUT!”

work in progress - comments

the internal pool affair

Sean Grayson liked, no more like loved to sit out by the old city pool on East Elm Street on the northeast corner of Lake Lock and imagine what it would be like to be a high-roller, a man who commanded attention, beautiful girls, and the finest things money could buy. Sean was a thinking man. He was a dreamer with both eyes fortuitously positioned in the future.

Sean had tired, become downright weary of video games. He’d skied, both slalomed and free styled. He’d maddened all of the Maddens. Played catch the froggie with his baby sister, Harmony Delight.

He’d tried to play the beginning-teen role. Even though he was a male and his sister the opposite gender, Mars to her Venus, he’d provided her a good role model. Once high on raspberry Kool-Aid and caramel-butter-scotch ice cream he’d tried on mom’s gowns over his overalls of course both impressing and delighting his little sister. Her squeals of delight proved that she had liked the show. Yet he tired of such things. Entertaining baby sisters was hard work. Still his mom had him babysitting every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday night; his imagination, his creativity once had proved par for the course but it was now stretching thin. During these times, he learned something more important than life itself, it was hard pleasing a three year old. Harder than digging ditches he figured. Digging ditches didn’t require your ultimate undivided attention. Ditches didn’t require a new routine every 15 seconds. They were just ditches. Little sisters weren’t ditches.

Sean tired of the neighborhood kids. J.D., the jock that could both chew gum and talk at the same time was a triple threat, obnoxious, rude and conceited. In his mind’s eye, Sean saw a lucrative future in professional sports for J.D. If anything he had all of the attributes necessary for mega-stardom. He would be a perfect role model for naïve little innocents who hung on every superstar’s word. Kenny was deceitfully kind. In essence, he was always on the take. He would sell his own mother for a new X-box. He was the most likely to succeed. Ironically he was the type that grew up to be a politician, a used car salesman or a mobster, always on the take. The kind that every community dreamed of installing a sign in reference to which you would first notice upon entering the town that such and such was born here. It was a shame but deceitful types ruled the world. But you loved them anyway, always vying for their attention, their approval. Shrinks, he knew, owed their living to these inglorious humans. The signs didn’t care whom they promoted, not being living, breathing things; they just didn’t care. Kenny was due his sign, his universal cause for being.

Such sign would seek to placate the viewers of such a symbol, to ease the indignities of all who did live/had lived or might live within the small town and who had never amounted to anything. And the sign would keep on propping up the inglorious ones' fame making it easier for him to withstand the coming—down—to earth—stage that foreshadowed death. It was kind—and slightly evil to say—the sign had a dual purpose.

Small towns had to build up their egos in some way; that was a fact of life.

Signs they never proclaimed, 999 dispossessed citizens, 14 lunatics, 698 child molesters, assorted pedophiles and countless losers and whatnots. Towns had their pride and then their identities, which usually tended toward the dark side because as you know, from the hairs on their heads to the soles on their feet they had more secrets than 1,000 television movies could ever hope to unfold even if given many lifetimes to do so. And that’s a given. A certified fact of life.

Back to the friends, Ben was likeable but usually would brainfart something out too honest for his own good. Sean figured Ben, he wouldn’t make too good of a politician.

Politicians were like most people but then some, their will to please the people, as unknowing as the citizenry were, was just a cool and calculated ruse to get what they wanted while the getting was good, the opportunity was ripe for ignominious behavior as the citizenry with their hearts and minds out to lunch were sitting ducks on the fault line; the politician man was never out to lunch, was always on the take passionately pleading his case all as a part of a master plan which fed his evil and sadistic egotistical makeup. Ben would’ve never been able to keep a secret, keep his trap shut to save his life so accustomed he was to brainfarting. There was hope for him though if his Achilles heel became an Olympic sport.

Until some new more savory kids moved to Lake Lock, Sean knew that he would rather be alone more than anything else in the whole wide world. Being with yourself, surrounded by your lonesome, content with your thoughts, wishes and desires made life one magical mystery tour.



One Sunday after church, Sean had hurriedly changed into his Hawaiian print shorts, a favorite tee-shirt, grabbed a p & j sandwich and high-tailed it out the door. Absentmindedly thinking, he plopped-down onto his beach cruiser . Sean considered himself a thinking man. Maybe that’s why he felt more comfortable being alone?

People were like obstructions; they hindered your reality, if you stopped yourself long enough to notice them and their associated quirks, assorted idiosyncrasies and illogical patterns of behavior you often lost sight of who you were. Losing sight of who you were was a tried-and-true, not-so-novel concept to the myriads of people that schlepped their way through everyday-existence hanging precipitously close to the edge of losing everything including their minds' at just a moment’s notice. It was a shame that they didn’t notice it, just like it was a shame that they continuously swept global warming, world hunger and urban blight under the rug. Disease and pestilence and all of those other horrific things were not laughing matters. It was a shame. A crying shame.

It was no mystery to him, like it was to others; Sean’s mind maneuvered around the universe and all of its wonders and its sad tragic stuff, too.

Tracking the lives of others didn’t make the earth spin on its axis, didn’t make the whole ball of wax go round and round but too many people thought that it did. Too many people thought so much about the lives of others that they never had time to invent a life for themselves. And they died, regretting that they had ever lived because they really hadn’t. Sean, by contrast, was cloaked in self-awareness.

Losing sense of who you were he knew was not a good thing. Without direction and focus you could find yourself eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in cardboard boxes on oil-soaked streets and quoting Shakespeare without an appreciative audience in areas where humanity (aware of its so-called creature comforts), feared to tread. His mother, Adelaide Geneva Johnson always preached these truths to him.

She walked around saying, and that’s the gospel truth. If you lose focus and direction, what have you got? You’ve got nothing! No-Thing. And that’s the gospel truth.

Adelaide, he liked to think all grown-up and call her by her given name, (at least in the privacy of his own head), probably knew a lot about focus and direction? Doesn’t losing yours make you some sort of inner Guru? The Gospel Truth anyone? Adelaide had lived through a brief failed marriage with Ted Sanders, Sean’s biological dad. Whatever that meant? He felt that the telling of that story was better left to science. When time came for Ted to pick Sean up (not literally lift, mind you), Adelaide would say, your biological dad is coming to get you. Whatever that meant? Always at that time like clockwork, Sean would fantasize about biology, DNA, dominant and recessive genes, Mendel’s butterflies, Crick and Watson, but he wouldn’t know it. The subconscious world just had a way of bending your ear, coercing you into listening. And it’s listening was better rumination if left untouched by logic. He just wondered if biological was a good or bad thing. And he would try to sort it out, by lock, stock, or barrel or by some other rudimentary algebraic equation. The logical mind unfortunately was always fighting the subconscious part of the mind and since the beginning of mind had done so. Sean, he had a reputation to uphold as a thinking man, even if the reputation’s only solid foothold was mired in the recesses of his cranium.

Adelaide cleaned houses for rich old ladies and their rich old husbands, too if the husbands were just old and not yet having a meeting with their maker. She wiped arses if they, the owner of such arses, were in decrepit shape. A shape where the bones were no longer enamel-tough. A shape that required a cement mixer theoretically and its namesake to bring them back to operational type condition. A shape that hopefully needs no further defining here. Adelaide, she cooked their meals, washed their clothes and wiped their arses if it was outlined in the addendum further defining, detailing and augmenting the job description.

It was just funny about Adelaide and her, ‘gospel focus,’ because She (oftentimes) wiped arses for a living. And besides she couldn’t mapquest her way out of the bathroom. She was like the pokey little puppy except it wasn’t the time gene that was malfunctioning but the directional gene.

Removing the sights and sounds of dilapidation, Sean rolled his $5 special beach cruiser, the one outfitted with the rusted, burnt and bent back chrome through his hood. The cruiser, he’d purchased at some old-dope-fiend’s garage sale, it (the sale) being a preamble to the dope-fiend’s nodding out, was essentially a true and trusted friend, his pony and accomplice in a adventure, both real and imaginary.

Funny, but black people he thought had planted hood in his mind. They were still working the fields, tilling the soil albeit in a much more desirable way. They were good at shortening things, making up words, starting trends; at least that’s what Adelaide said the newspeople reported. They said it like the gospel truth she said. Sean knew nothing about black people as far as he knew. Most likely they were from another planet. Once he thought he caught a glimpse of their planet on the television. It was called Soul Train. He had tired of X-box and Madden and the usual suspects, J.D., Kenny and Ben as usual were in his doghouse so the TV had become his escape of sorts.

So he had watched these black people get down on the TV. He often wondered if they were really black. He correctly knew that he wasn’t white. Paper was white; he wasn’t. He would argue with you to the death on that one.

The day was kinda hot. The kind of day where it seemed you had layers of sweat. If you bothered to wipe away the existing layer of sweat, another one cropped up and on and on down the sweat-happy line, the line disappearing somewhere into infinity, kissing the horizon, and doubling back just in time to not miss a beat. Like clockwork, perspiration was a given and like shark’s teeth, there was nothing irreplaceable about it. He figured it was a sure sign that evolution was still in operation and was sharpening its teeth in anticipation of more of the same as it traveled down destiny’s highway.



The pool was cracked, dried up; it looked withered, weathered; undeniably it was on its deathbed, badly in need of resuscitation. Old lady Johnson, his grandmother, had said that a couple of kids died there in the sixties. She’d said, it was a shame that no one knew mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, those sorts of things.

Sean thought that old lady Johnson’s DNA was mighty strong. She’d passed down the gospel truths to Adelaide. Quite possibly she’d passed down the inability to get from one side of the town to another (she was called wrong-way Johnson). She knew just about everybody. It’d been rumored because of her comings and goings that she’d ended up on the doorstep of most every family known to God and man simply due to her ineptitude in remembering from what direction she’d ventured; gaining a lot of friends in the process plus a reputation for being about as direction crazy as a blind goose without any noodles to speak of.

According to old lady Johnson, the LakeLock pool sitting not-too-pretty on its northeast corner had an illustrious past. Kings and queens had bathed there. Basked in the glory of the almighty sun. She’d said tanning contests were huge there in the fifties and early sixties. Back in those days you’d have been laughed out of town if you had a farmer’s (redneck) tan, even if you were otherwise cool. Attending Sunday school, raising money at the bake sales for starving children or recovering alcoholics, even coming from a prestigious family could not remove the stigma afforded such ill-conceived tans. There was just no honor in the tan associated with narrow minds and even narrower hearts, even if most occupiers of such tans were just humble denizens of the land tilling its soil and sowing its benefits.

He wondered if his grandmother knew much about civil rights? Of course all of the tall tales about tanning contests and undesirable tans could’ve just been a thing of legend. Idle gossip could have transpired, been transformed into truth, feeding on imagination and boredom, two entities that in separate but equal measures could create certainty out of far-reaching speculation. Beauty parlors, barbershops, bastions of truth or places where imaginations ran wild, where hair was curled and clipped, where many a reputation was soiled or stripped, therein lays the answer to truth as we know it.

Old lady Johnson said back in the heyday of the hippie movement (obviously at a time when people waved a lot), a couple of small children drowned while their flower child parents were off experimenting with illicit drugs. Spacing Out, she called it. She never failed to mention that these types of people didn’t live in Lake Lock. She thought they had come from StoneRidge, a snooty rich enclave from across the county line, which separated rich from poor, money from no money, haves from have-nots. Sort of our own personal line of demarcation, by necessity borrowed from Pope Alexander VI, whoever that was. As far as she was concerned, they were illegal immigrants. They needed, she would say, to take their sex-loving, drug smuggling, flower powers to ‘Frisco’ or some other weird enclave where strange people congregated and thought with poisoned drug-addled minds that living was all about pleasure and deranged hippie-making love. She wondered about the dysfunctional parents who had contributed to such a fine mess of young individuals----------lost souls, who participated in socially- inept lives, who lived distortions of proper living and celebrated free love like it was their personal Jesus.

These people she went on were so loved-in, peaced-out and stoned-out-of-their minds that logical things like personal responsibility, paying bills and capital punishment never entered their thought process. These types of people were so brainwashedly sick that war as a means of effecting peace never entered their equations. Memories of those insidious peaceniks she would say burnt at her soul. God knows that was true. Her aura was half-fried. Adelaide (bless her heart), always concurred. What else was she to do; she wiped old people's arses for a living?

She would say these hippies all free-loving and doing their illicit drugs had spaced out while two of the young 'uns' were losing their right to lives, liberties, and their own pursuits of happiness. Theoretically it was believed that one tried to save the other. End result was that both perished while their parents sashayed to the high heavens in their drunken stupor. That's what the paper, The Golden Globe and Chronicle had said.

When someone pulled the pair from the water, it was told that the hippies meditated. Prayed to some of their pagan Gods. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation might as well have been a foreign language because history says that no one initiated the action. With those unfortunate events coming to pass, the pool was closed; the luxuriousness of it all lay waste to a sordid past. Its waters were now considered cursed.

In the seventies some skateboarders were seen cavorting inside of its dry walls. They too were presumed to be visitors form StoneRidge. They were run out on a rail. Quite literally they were chased down the railroad tracks. The citizens of LakeLock had memories such as elephants did.

Legend has it that the pacific citizens of LakeLock had exacted vengeance on StoneRidge and its residents for their prior misgivings and so the skateboarders high-tailed it like screaming banshees. Their hairs stood up and saluted as they ran in shit-fear down the tracks. The thought of the re-invention of tarring and feathering ignited their travels. It nipped at their heels. Like mad dogs they yelped. Like consumed prey they saw their outlaw lives flashing before their very eyes.


Sean lay there on one of the rotted out chaise lounges, relics from the tormented sixties, still in existence, though unwieldy shaped. He imagined the raucous parties. He imagined the drunken free-loving longhaired illegal immigrants. He imagined the hippie girls strung out on flower power, daisies in their hair, beaded earrings strutting down their lobes. He pictured them wearing native-American clothing. Clothing that Pocahontas and her fellow Indian maidens would wear if they were in a western or a Disney movie. Images of dead children did not enter his mind. Images of that ghastly sort were off limits. The elephants were held at bay.

LakeLock's pool, both its location and entity had been dead and buried long ago. It's ghosts presumably haunted the perimeter; even swam in the waterless pool. He figured ghosts don't need no water. It was a no-man's land. It was off limits. Its exterior consisted of a shiny, new, chain link fence as high as a basketball goal. The fence's intent was to keep out intruders. Immigrants. Ne'er do wells. Triangular signs with big black lettering, with the haunting words Keep Out spelled out for all the world to see were affixed to the top of the chain-link. Another sign ominously spelling out Danger-Beware juxtaposed itself to the keep-out-ones. Some signs speaking the same language in Spanish also posed on the chain-link. This narrator doesn't speak Spanish so no translation is available.

Sounds of reverie, beautiful young ladies in pool wear lounged around Sean as he took in eyefuls of delights. Their giggles permeated the warm, tropical air. Their cocktail glasses clinked their armor. Hanging above the estate was a sense of camaraderie and belonging. A belonging that was a preamble to free love. At least in the sense of good will toward men.

Sean on the spur-of-the-moment had renamed himself Dabney Duchryche for this occasion. Dabney bathed, utterly basked in the (after-effect), glow of his own personal paradise. His fantasy island. Hula girls, sporting seductively slanted eyes and soft, sexy hips adorned by native dress, smiled and shimmied to their shake, rhythmically beating to the dance of the 'Sun Gods.' Sean, 'the Dabney Duchryche version', or short, ;The Duke, ' smoked a Cuban and toasted the fine, rhythmically dancing creatures. He toasted those who had exquisite DNA combinations. My, I would guess he was thinking, if he could think in such a manner, how he would, he'd like to (see), become acquainted with one of the marvelous double helix configurations.

Here in this vast wasteland of sun, Dabney, 'The Duke', could be anything that he so desired to be. And that was the gospel truth. He could be away from the neighborhood, that year by passing year slipped further into the abyss of small-town urban decay. Away from the one factory that still remained (standing), the others stripped bare, robbed of their dignity, their rightful place in history. The one that remained alive; standing, in all its haughty grandeur belched smoke incessantly and ill-willingly like the dinosaur it was. Sean figured from all the smoke it exhaled that it must smoke Cubans by the cartful. Out here he could be somewhat detached , away from its insidious, noxious odor. Out here he was free. Out here he was the summer's breeze.

Those twin monsters of family and neighbor, both friend and foe alike, had no say about Sean while he pranced his wares as 'The Duke'. Inside he laughed at the thought of old lady Johnson, up in years, yet still sharp enough to lay claim to the spotting of an illegal immigrant. Sean knew at precisely this moment that he was that illegal immigrant.

Party girls toasted to the sun and its killer rays. They giggled like innocent, little girls who haven't yet felt the weight of the world on their shoulders. They smiled at Sean. 'The Duke' returned the favor.

Internally he knew that it was all a momentary illusion. He would grow out and up. He would forget the cheeriness, the carefree nature of childhood. He would come home every day to a wife and 2.5 kids. He would without hesitation and with no reservation and extreme determination pay the mortgage. Bringing home the bacon would be his motto. On his forehead it would be inscripted in bold yet invisible typeface. Possibly Blue Highway. He would grow fat (pot-bellied) and weary. He would tire of the world, its pathetic losers and its insouciant people. He would unknowingly join their rank-and-file.

Driving down indifferent highway, the insouciants, himself included, wouldn't bother to inform or if you will educate themselves of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and its proletarian technique. In their haste and waste, they wouldn't give a rat's arse about anything. Living the haunting melodies of a life-unfulfilled, he would grow tired of sex, love and unadulterated kindness. And not necessarily in that order. Eventually things such as everything, the whole kit and kaboodle would come to a head. And stand on it. He would figure out how to mapquest his existence. To leave his legacy. How to leave no stone unturned. Then he would die. But not before, time willing, he would figure out that without a straight-and-narrow course, a rock-hard focus and a sharpshooter's direction that getting done what needed to be done in the right way was virtually impossible.

In his haste but wise meandering he would sign up for self-help seminars and trumpet their objectives and honor them with platitudes. Entering yoga poses uninhibitedly he would start to chop away at the unhealthy duo of body fat and mind inebriation. Vegetables would become his primary palate. He would enter vegetarianismhood. He would do without/disavow people in the hood that disagreed with his views on this and that. He would espouse and announce to the world that everything he believed in at this day and time was the gospel truth. He would lament the fact that the last dinosaur, (the candy-making, i.e., confectionary) factory would close and urban blight would further darken the local economy.

After four days, Sean had advanced from beet-red to crab reddish-brown to brown as a pinto bean, His neck wasn't a redneck variety, more like a special exotic brand of premium roast chocolate. It now was the pedigreed version of the noble, exotic cocoa bean that caused shoppers to gasp and gawk awkwardly at their outlandishly high price.

For four marvelous high-heaven days, he had dined with kings and queens. Girls had showered him with more-than-sisterly affection. Honors had come his way. He was the most tanned of the most tanned. A member of the outdoor tanning hall of fame. The tanned elite inducted him into their brown-as-a-bean circle. He'd never run into the hippies who lost themselves in bliss with such a blast and utter ferociousness that they forgot about others and the safety of them. The utopia he had discovered was all his own.

All of the neighborhood, J.D., Kenny, Ben, his sister, Harmony Delight, Adelaide, old lady Johnson and Ted Sanders had scoured LakeLock with a fine-tooth comb leaving no hair unturned. Tire tracks had been sampled. Witnesses had been enlisted for their testimony as to his whereabouts. Still no one had seen hide nor hair of Sean. No one knew that he had fallen off into the deep end, waded into the pool of self-obscurity and/or self-discovery, totally destroying Sean for a brief sacrificial moment in time and re-surfaced for a brief moment as 'Dabney The Duke.'

Hope was virtually given up and placed back on the shelves in the useless abstraction category. The townspeople were already planning a funeral, a last rites event for Sean. Old lady Johnson wanted to meditate on the matter first. Hold a prayer vigil. Leave no stone unturned.

On the 5th day, Sean scaled the 10-foot chain-link, brown as an illegal alien from across the border who made an obscure living in the fields of plenty, intending to metamorphisize back into everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, no-one-would-ever-notice-me, Sean as if nothing had ever happened. Yet his whole being, his every last molecule would disagree with the assumption that he was the same being as before. By the pool, he had experienced a life-changing transformation. Same DNA. Different Sean.

As he climbed onto his rusty, trusty, cruiser, his stallion in waiting, a police officer walked up. With intensely red eyes and coffee-stale breath the inquisitor looked at the boy and then looked down at a picture that he held in his hands. Sergeant, O'Dooly'han looked back and forth from the picture to the boy to the picture to the boy to the picture. Sean stared back at the stare-crazy officer in blue.

"Your name, sir?"

"Dabney. Dabney Duke." Sean swallowed. An enormous lump had gathered in his throat.

"Excuse me, have you seen this young man?" The officer pushed the picture too close to Sean, violating his personal space, he believed. "Name of Sean Grayson, I believe. Been missing for days, possibly weeks?" Sounds of desperation echoed in his voice.

Dabney (Sean), didn't crack a smile or even take in oxygen. He held his breath. Like he was thinking. Thinking real DEEP. He painted the most elegant stroke of nonchalance that had ever been painted in the universe. The universe's. That's what he was thinking.

"Don't reckon I have."

The man's eyes peering out from the steely blue uniform questioned Sean or Dabney if you will, for all he was worth. Sean wondered if he was a human lie detecting machine.

"Well if you see him..............you best run along, your folks probably looking for you."

Dabney didn't know if that was true or not. On the northeast corner by the rusted-out pool with cracks in its crust he had become a man. He had outlived IF. The boy in the picture no longer existed. During his poolside sabbatical, the madly-yellow Earthian sun had blessed him with immigrant-brown skin. It had fried his youthful brain showing no MERCY. In his pseudo spiritual awakening, realization after realization had whapped him up side the head. Enlightenment, nirvana, something new and pure and wholly wonderful had occurred out there in his personal wilderness. His Shangri-La.

In a few days he had learned what it takes most men lifetimes to comprehend. It was like the defiled pool air so distraught with its own memories had done him in. A rite of passage had taken place. Man had replaced boy. And still as strange as it seemed and probably because life was so utterly bizarre, yet inordinately fascinating, he still didn't know in which direction he was headed or what adventure he was taking up next. He just knew that boyhood and lounging by the pool, smoking Cubans and hitting up pretty ladies in their poolside best was a relic of a very distant past. If he knew one thing, it was that.

Somewhere as sure as night and day encompasses 24 hours of a typical Earth day he could hear the shrill yet melodic voice of old lady Johnson in all of her dotage say, and that's the gospel truth.

You

Used to stare at you across the gymnasium, eyes locking, smiles connecting; a thing of beauty.


The cultural divide flows between us like a river never crossed. I'd never been in love before, okay recently, I'd tried out the puppy version; the one everybody says isn't real. It passed, but concerning you and my love it took some time some pain no one should ever have to feel. Not being able to let you in on the secret for so long, that's a shame. The psychiatrist couldn't unlock the secret to my pain. (He talked biorhythms; his personal mumbo-jumbo. I'd read of them. I doubted his intelligence. ) Over time I did the trick myself; unlocked the chamber of secrets.





Oh how I wish we could go back in time, you and I, youthful again, the whole world bright and new again. Things would be different now or would they be? The world has gotten a little bit kinder but still there are barriers, strongholds to be defeated, (overturned). They relish my pain. Don't they know it? Would they curse me or would they feel my pain? Say it's ok?





Simple pleasures like seeing you in your athletic attire, the little fold of fat on your legs, fat has never looked so sweet, checking you out in your leopard print dress, oh that was too much (laughs). ( I am a man of simple pleasures).



Seeing you in the theater on Main street it'd been a while, tried to touch you but you held me at bay forgot to tell you I'd loved you or I did love you, the memory fades now. The elephant takes a backseat.



Finally in the prime of our lives, no longer wet behind the ears, you, husband, 2 kids, getting you alone for a brief second, making up for lifetimes never shared it's simple, you make do with what you have, that's the way of the world. Couldn't we ever learn they kept us apart for so long, my life has been embittered, my life has been one long, strange, faulty dance, in that moment I tell you, remember when, you listen closely, back then in the famishment of youth I loved you, you smile, you ask me if I still do, for a moment disregarding the hub and kids, you're curious, we're still young. Is there a plan behind your question? Do you want out? What are you feeling? I tell you how much pain and suffering I went through holding this in so many years; I know that's all water under the bridge. Why couldn't I have been revolutionary? Was I born too early or too late? No one, including you, could understand the pain I went through, how it redirected my life put my (existence) on a false course.



Hey, it's even hard for me to fathom how sick my body felt, how I would rather lay on the bed, than go outside and play. The illness wasn't a Godsend, more like the devil's macabre medicine. It wasn't something you'd want to send anybody. Anyway I'm here, I see you, it looks like you're doing well. Does anybody ever really know how someone else is doing? It's often hard to figure out how you're doing, yourself.





Which brings me to this conclusion: Oh so long ago I told you how I'd felt. Now in my aging state I wonder how you took it all in? How did it make you feel? Did it awaken the little girl in you? I hope that you were happy then, happy now. Happiness is a good thing, not the surest or easiest thing to accomplish but it's mighty damn good when you get it right.



Yes, I loved you, more than you'll ever know, just like you'll never understand the pain I went through, you'll never really understand how much I loved you; comprehension is a weird thing, comprehending the strength, vitality, power and pain of such love is a herculean task, it would take centuries, it would take undivided attention, it would take tapping into another's soul, so I don't slight you because you don't understand, you just wanna know if I still love you.



I guess a piece of me always will, a portion of heart was taken away secretly in the night back when it all began, never did I know it, did I realize it but it must've happened, if dreaming about you now is any indication, there must be a reason, forgive me, I won't ask for my heart back, I don't take back what I give, a gift is done, don't call me a thief, call me human, with watchful eyes, checking out your chesire smile, your natural floating hair, you were so pretty then, so youthful and free, guess I could say I was lucky to have known you in that time, no matter how shallowly I knew you, how interminable it was, I had a slight knowing. Life must be filled with slight knowings? Most are just strangers passing, a smile, a glance, not a second thought but some cut to the core, leave their imprint, change a life. Wouldn't it be nice to get back a moment, time wasted, discard the pain, going backwards in time? Discarding the pain could become a pasttime of mine. You only get one shot at this life, you gotta make do the best you can , reliving the moments, if you could change them reverse the course of your years on the planet. But in the here and now, we both know things such as time are so irreversible. Time heals all wounds, they say. I say, give it time; you ask me back then in the midpoint of our knowing, do you still, (love me)?



Out of the presence of your husband, your kids, on the surface, I have to answer no. Yet, don't think that I haven't, even if now a part of me doesn't want to go there for psychological reasons. If here and now, face to face, your lips moments away from mine, memories leaking from the subconscious flooding all semblance of rhyme and reason, chaos inventing chaos is possible if I answer, "Yes, I do." Just think of all the pain that would still be percolating inside of my soul, desire burning out the last vestiges of my sanity. Just think. Just think it would be unbearable. Maybe it would have been better if you would have been my puppy love # 2? It would've been easier this traversing of the universe. No telling if I would've had the same amount of inspiration but I ask you what has it gotten me, (procured) me anyway?



Pain without matyrdom is too much pain, (laughs). Really if I still loved you in the way that I'd loved you, when our eyes locked back when we were pupils, when our smiles and laughter connected, it would be so unbearable to be standing here now. I grant you a (pardon). I had to release myself. It took some time, screwed my life up, confused, distorted my path. When it, the love ended, it was good, a miracle blessing, because a body, mind and soul can only take so much pain, so much abuse. And you know what they say about psychiatric pain, no one knows how you feel, what you're going through, you're just labeled a slacker, so good riddance to that ill will.



And yes, if I loved you in that way any longer, believe me, write it down, I would either be dead or certifiably insanely crazy. Maybe I am certifiably insanely crazy. My legacy might be the volumes of craziness' literature that shrinks write about me. Guess you can see why I had to give it up, the love of you, you, because of the implications, the situations, the confrontations beyond our control back then in our tender years full of unsavory fears, now in our middle years, they, (the implications), still lurk and we've added more but yes I still love you enough to picture you in my dreams, think of you at this very moment, wondering what might've been how our lives could've better been captured on film and I hope you understand what it was that brought me here, I had to tell you and I hope you'll understand.



You'll never know what I went through and God Bless You that you don't. You'll always have a sliver of my heart and please I ask, protect it, keep it safe, out of harm's way. It's been there before in harm's way; it's felt the wrath of the uncaring. So in this moment of thought and sincere reflection, I guess I Love You and because of all of the years and tears, I hope and pray that I don't wake up tomorrow dreaming of You.