Simple Gifts

Of the three gifts Granny Hart left her granddaughters, the stick was perhaps the most lackluster. Being the youngest, Katya was last to choose from Granny’s things, which is the same as saying that she had no choice at all.

Annabel, the oldest, chose first. She selected the mule whose talents were beyond question. As soon as she could, she placed one kitchen towel before and one behind the creature and commanded, “Bricklebrit!”  Each of the women could remember the first time that Granny had demonstrated the mule’s ability. She had allowed them to take turns pronouncing the command one night in the barn long ago. It had been an evening of unbelievable and giddy delight full of laughter and clapping and girlish squeals.

Shrouded by the passage of years, they might have begun to believe it was only a strange dream if not for the gold coin they each received in a card on the anniversaries of their individual birthdays.
Now, as level headed adults, they watched gold coins shower from both ends of the mule. Annabel merely bore a small satisfied smile, raised an eyebrow to her sisters and gathered up the towels full of loot.

Second to choose was Lise. Without hesitation she took possession of Granny’s table. The strange powers of this item had also been demonstrated to the girls in their youth, in this case more than once. Lise went around the table and pulled out a chair for each of her sisters inviting them to sit before seating herself. She hesitated a moment, biting her top lip and looking at both Annabel and Katya before clearing her throat and speaking,
“Table be laid!”

There was a momentary shivering of the air above the table before items began to materialize; a vase of fresh cut flowers, a bottle of wine, delicate long stemmed goblets, three place settings. First a plate of appetizers appeared, calamari frites with a sweet thai chili sauce. The three sisters sighed with pleasure with the first bites.
Before they could finish this the salads appeared;  Endive, Pear, Prosciutto, Blue Cheese, and Roasted Spiced Walnuts topped with a walnut vinaigrette. Their eyes widened as they chewed and issued more sounds of appreciation.
The main courses materialized as the salads were nearly finished. For Annabel Glazed Duck Breast with Poached Pear and Baby Carrots under a Vanilla-Cinnamon Glaze, for Lise Grilled Hanger Steak with pomme maison in a red wine mushroom sauce, and for Katya grilled Chicken Paillard with artichokes, tomato and olive tagine topped with grilled vegetables.
When the women thought they would burst Chocolate Pots de Crème appeared before them. This consisted of a Belgium chocolate custard topped with white chocolate whipped cream accompanied by steaming cups of fragrant coffee.

The sisters took their time recovering from the feast. They recollected that the fare had been simpler in their youth, consisting often of macaroni and cheese or fried chicken drumsticks. They could now conclude that part of the table's magic involved perfectly suiting the appetites of those it served. Lise outlined her plan to open a gourmet restaurant using the table as an exclusive highlight to be reserved for the highest paying patrons. Annabel agreed to help finance the operation until it could stand on its own reputation.

At last  Katya collected her inheritance, the stick in its long burlap bag with a strap that could be worn over the shoulder. None of them had ever seen it used, though grandmother had described the method of application and the situations in which it had come in handy for her. Those had been frightening stories. If not for the table and the mule the girls would have believed Granny Hart was merely spinning yarns for them. As it was, Katya knew better.

Lise’s restaurant, The Enchanted Table, grew to be a tremendous success. She married her head chef, Jorge St. Jorge, an already famous man with his own magazine and cooking show. Likewise Annabel had been enjoying the benefits of the mules special ability. Though the mule could only do so much, it was no small amount and Annabel’s wise investment strategies made good use of it. She became part of the jet set, sampling the best of what the world had to offer. She opened a chain of successful hotels and as her wealth accumulated she turned her attention to philanthropic enterprises.

Meanwhile Katya backpacked Europe with her stick in its sack over her shoulder. Emboldened by its particular magic and guided by her inquisitive nature she found herself soon bound for more dangerous treks. While Annabel flew the bright skies and skimmed through glittering hotel lobbies Katya became better acquainted with the world's entrails.
After returning to the states she hoboed  for six months before at last settling in Granny Hart’s house, of which she was one third owner. She dusted off an old Smith and Wesson typewriter and sat down to chronicle her misadventures, relaxing back into the quiet life.
One afternoon as she was hard at work on her manuscript, the doorbell rang.

It was Lise, suitcase in hand, red faced and puffy eyed. It seemed that Jorge had divorced her and as the face of The Enchanted Table had managed to win sole ownership of the establishment. Worse, though it had been awarded to her, Granny’s table was missing. When she tried to bring it home from the restaurant it’s magick no longer worked. She was certain that it was a clever forgery placed there by Jorge so he could keep the original. Yet for all this, she cried hardest of all because she was heartbroken.

Katya knew what had to be done, but poor Lise was in such a terrible state she was afraid to leave her alone. On her third day home Katya found her unconscious in the bathroom beside an empty pill bottle and half drunk bottle of wine. Thinking quickly she turned Lise over the side of the tub and thrust her fingers down her throat, gagging her until she vomited up the sleeping  pills and booze. After this she hardly left her side and tried to keep her spirits up with chocolate ice cream, funny movies, and walks through the hills..

She tried without success to contact Annabel and left her several messages. Nearly a month had passed and Lise was showing small signs of improvement when the doorbell rang again. It was Annabel, looking pale with blood shot eyes, her driver in tow with several suitcases. Unlike Lise, who was perhaps the most sensitive of the three women, Annabel did not cry much. She took off her long black gloves and laid them on the coffee table beside Lise’s tissues.

“Where’s Lise?” she asked Katya after her suitcases were in the house and the driver was gone.
“Asleep in her room.”
“Good.” Annabel said and sat on the couch putting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “I’ve been very foolish.” She said when she at last looked up at Katya sitting in the easy chair across from her. “You know, I knew Jorge from the beginning when I first helped Lise set up The Enchanted Table. I introduced them. In the early days I was there a lot, helping Lise, writing checks to cover her expenses, bringing in my rich new friends to sit at Granny‘s table.

That’s why it didn’t seem too far fetched when Jorge showed up a month ago, before the divorce was finalized. He said he’d married the wrong sister. That he’d been secretly in love with me for years. I don’t know why I did it Katya. He can be so charming. He convinced me that it really was love. I wasn’t checking my messages, you know, because I was hiding from Lise. I didn’t know what he had done. I just thought that after a decent amount of time passed I could talk to her, let her know that I was with him… or maybe the whole affair would be over and I’d never have to mention it.”

Annabel sighed. “Then last week  he talked me into taking him to my place upstate. You visited me there once after your Appalachian trek. Well, a strange thing happened right away. The barn was left open that first night and a number of the animals were missing in the morning, including my mule. It seemed like a wild dog had gotten in, killed a few chickens and scared the other animals away. I was so furious. I fired my groundskeeper because I thought it was his fault. The goats made their way back but not the mule.
I called the police and the game and wildlife commission. Jorge kept saying it was crazy for me to fuss over some farm animals, he made a fight out of it, over how I wanted to search for a missing mule rather than spending time with him. Of course I thought he didn’t know about the mule’s talent and I didn’t want to tell him. The fight got bigger and bigger and he broke things off between us  and left.  I paid for a big search for the mule. People up there think I’m certifiable now, but no mule.
And then I had some time and realized I was so relieved that Jorge was gone, and that I could check on Lise now without trying to hide from her. I listened to all my messages. I should have been there for her, I feel so guilty. I heard yours too. Pills? Really?” she asked.
Katya nodded.
“I am such a terrible person.” Annibel said and her voice cracked. She reached for the tissues. “I’m the one who should die.” her tears at last started falling, “Not poor Lise.”
Katya got up and came to Annabel’s side, wrapping her arms around her.
“Shhh,” Katya soothed, “She’s better now. I can’t handle two suicidal sisters, so please don’t think like that.”
Annabel  sniffed.
“Do you think I should tell her? I want to, to apologize, but I don’t want to hurt her more.”
“I don’t know.” Katya admitted. “Probably. It would be better not to have a secret.”
The two sat in silence for a while. Then  Katya  asked,
“Do you think he took the mule?”
“Definitely." Annabel answered. "It’s all he wanted. Lise must have told him about it.”
“Do you know where he is?” Katya asked.
“Probably back at the restaurant.” Annabel answered helping herself to another tissue and blowing her nose.

Katya stood up and went to the hall closet. She took out her leather travel jacket and put it on.
“I need you to keep an eye on Lise.” she said and pulled out the sack with the stick in it. “I’ll be back in a few days.”

Jorge was not in the restaurant but Katya left a message for him saying that she had just come back from a three month trip in the amazon and couldn’t get in touch with either of her sisters. She left the number of the hotel where she was staying and went back there to wait. It wasn’t long before Jorge called and asked Katya if he could cook her dinner. She came to his new apartment on the upper east side at the appointed time.

“Have you heard back from your sisters?” he asked her as soon as she was through the door.
“No.” she said, “Is Lise here? I can‘t wait to tell her about my trip.”
Jorge brought a hand to his head and began to ckoke back a sob.
“Are you alright?” Katya put a hand on Jorge’s shoulder.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I guess you haven’t heard. Lise and I are divorced.”
“What?” Katya feigned shock.
“She left me, for another man.” he began crying again. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. It’s still too much for me.” He headed for a chair to sit down, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as if to stifle an anguished cry. Katya shut the door and came to his side.
“I’m so sorry Jorge. I had no idea. I can’t believe it.”
“She was my sunshine.” he cried, “The world has been so dark for me without her.”
Katya patted his back ,
“I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have bothered you if I knew. I should go.”
“No, no.” Jorge protested. “I promised you dinner. Forgive my outburst and stay. It will be so nice to have some company again. I‘ve been very lonely since Lise left.”

He served her Wild Mushroom Ravioli with arugula, sundried tomatoes and fresh herbs and kept the wine flowing. All the while he kept up his heartbroken act.
“I’m ruined without her.” he said after sufficient wine seemed to have been drunk. “She took her magical table with her. What is The Enchanted Table without the enchanted table?”
“You’re a wonderful chef. You don’t need it.”
“Thank you.” he said, “But the world is hard for those of us without enchanted tables or magical mules. I suppose you know.”
Katya cleared her throat,
“Well actually, I don’t know. I have something even better than those things,” she said and patted the sack concealing the stick which she had brought and hung from her chair.
“Really?” asked Jorge. “What is it?”
“Never mind.” Katya said, “I’ve had to much to drink and am talking silly.”

They moved the drinking into the living room for a while and Jorge cried some more burying his face in Katya’s shoulder, then apologizing some more. It might have been a very successful seduction technique if Katya had not known it was all an act. At one point he kissed her, then apologized, then tried again,
“If only I had met you before Lise.”
Katya said, “It’s getting late, I should go.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you should stay here where you’ll be more comfortable. I have a guest room. You can stay as long as you need to get settled back in the states and get in touch with your sisters.”
Katya accepted and made a show of carrying the sack into the bedroom with her and setting it against the night stand. She said goodnight to Jorge and lay down on the bed and waited.
An hour passed before the door swung quietly open and Jorge crept into the room towards the nightstand. Katya smiled in the darkness and waited until his hand was tugging on the drawstring of the sack. Then she said, “Let me help you Jorge.” clicked on the bedside lamp and cried, “Stick out of the sack!”

Jorge’s face was a comical mask of surprise and pain as Granny’s stick flew out of the sack and delivered the first blow to his groin. It continued to administer sharp thwacks all over his body until he cowered on the ground trying to escape the vicious attack.
“You didn’t suppose that an all you can eat table and a gold shitting mule were all that there was to the Hart legacy did you?”
Jorge could do no more than scream with pain.
“Stick be still.” Katya said and the stick paused in the air over Jorge’s crumpled form. “It can go on all night, but you can’t. It will beat you to death if I let it,” she pulled the collar of her blouse to the side revealing a scar, “as it did to the man who gave me this. A thief in Cuzco.”
She slowly unbuttoned the blouse revealing another  hideous scar across her middrift.
“And the one who did this. Somali pirate.” She began to button the blouse back up. “And I will let it do the same to you if you don’t tell me where to find the table and the mule.”
Spitting blood Jorge whimpered,
“Something’s broken. I need to go to the hospital.”
“Well, we’ll see about that when I have what I want. First where is the table?”
Jorge merely groaned.
“Stick fall to.” the blows resumed harder than before until Jorge cried,
“Stop, stop, I’ll tell you, please stop!”

The news of Jorge St. Jorge’s hospitalization after a brutal mugging reached the two elder sisters before Katya‘s return. When she at last arrived in a moving truck they embraced her and helped unload the table and lead the mule to the barn. That night the three sisters once again feasted together upon the enchanted table in Granny Hart’s kitchen. They talked deep into the night and it was agreed that both the table and the mule should remain at the house and be kept a secret under Katya’s care. Whenever her sisters needed money, a meal, or protection they came to Katya’s door.

Of the three gifts Granny Hart left her granddaughters, the stick was perhaps the most lackluster, but Katya was rarely seen without the long burlap sack slung over her shoulder. It could be seen in the photo of her within the dust jacket of her book after it was published and even at the Tokyo launch party she wore it slung over her shoulder and exchanged nods with Japanese gentlemen covered in tattoos. The best parts of her stories always had to be left out of her books, but she had the scars to remember them, and miles more to go with her stick slung over her shoulder.

What Is Seen

Friends and parents were warned to stay inside
by the whispering in the walls.
Those without wooden structures were left to read the clouds
and the dust that began to swirl
and looked like pale dragons preparing for flight.

I knew the day would be thick with smoke,
and the rain would be hidden away
and locked in a room behind our five suns.

In interviews the men in hooded robes
spoke of the ancient fires,
the smoking coals,
the chalices of semen.
Most did not understand. 

We could see them entering our space,
passionately delivering their address
as we munched on tubers and meat
and felt the suns across our shoulders burning spots and rings
and tales we could spread across the darkness of time.

I was surprised by the reports,
the newspapers are rarely so emphatic
and I realized it was as it had been
during the coup of ‘062.

I remember we left the midnight concert early
to watch the fireworks as promised. 
The lawn had been cool
and full of balloons and starlight promises,
but from high on the cliff overlooking the city,
I could feel the ocean and the sister planets
already aglow with a steady stream of taxies
and bordellos.

We stung our feet
and munched the stale popcorn nearly forgotten in Mr. J’s leather bag.
He pointed to the darkened space between Roxinata 5 and Obitatha. 
He had seen the Red sun and spoke of the signals,
the whispers, the refugees entering orbit.
Our orbit. 

He said the wolves howled for months,
Then sung no more.
Is it the same as then?
There was a touch of ceremony,
and a few words to tamper the fear
but no answer.

Construction

Nothing inside, nothing outside. The construction continues.

There is really only one space that we occupy, it is our relationship to the flow of energy through ourselves and the space which gives the space shape. The form comes from within, from a certain nothingness that hides itself in endless dancing.

A night not too long ago. She was awoken from the silent sweetest of dreams. It was precisely when the first bomb struck the earth, only a block from her house.

She lies now on a hospital bed with her arm nearly severed. Her nervous system recurrently informs her that something has gone drastically wrong. Somewhere, something has gone wrong. It is difficult to place it, difficult to ascertain the nature of the problem. But it's there. Palpable, close.

On the corner of the hospital complex a re-construction project is underway. If she lifts her head up onto the pillows, she can see it from her window.
A flimsy chain link fence surrounds the dusty site, the worn woven metal providing little more than a psychological barrier between the hospital and this budding new project.

She can not recall the details of that night. A night not too long ago. Certainly no details of the day after. No details there. Only dust and clouds and a kind of nothingness full of expectation.
No details.
But she remembers waking in the middle of the night. She remembers smiling, she remembers the feeling of lightness and air. Something rising, something expanding and seeking freedom.
As she was pulled into waking consciousness by sirens and the sound of splintering metal, she felt the softness drain from her mind. Some things can only be felt at certain times, some times are more rare than others. The smile was gone before she knew where it came from.

There is a big gap in the fence, making it easy for the workers to enter and exit. If she lifts her head up onto the pillows, she can see it from her window.
The enclosed area is large, big enough to contain the planned 5000 square foot clinic that will sit here in the near future.
She watches them from her window every day, hour after hour. They provide a kind of solace that she can't find elsewhere, not in the words of the doctors, not in the voice of her relatives through the phone, not in flowers, not in light.

The boy no longer cries. She may feel despair, fear, anger, or more likely a sensation that escapes definition but is nonetheless extremely unpleasant. Her eyes are certainly wide open, watching the strange movements outside. The construction continues.

The ground is made of dirt and the 12 inch boot imprints of construction workers poke the dusty surface. A small handful of construction workers are present, all looking identical in their uniform of blue jeans, white sweatshirts, tan boots and white hardhats.

The crucifix hanging over the bed seems awful, like a foreshadowing of impending punishment. Sacrifice, death, pain, sudden change, sacrifice, punishment, pain, change. The entire mood is sinister.

A night not too long ago. The sound of sirens, a loud explosion, a smile that vanishes.
Before her brain could catch up to her movements, she was already running for her son. The loud echoes of the bomb were still in her ears. There was nothing to do but run, run for him.
A bomb, so close, too close.
After gathering the crying infant in her arms, she ran once again for her husband. She asked what was happening.
"It's them..." was his only reply, and then he left to turn on the TV.  The news sounded like the singing of birds, the words didn't make sense but it seemed as if they were saying something.

Construction has just recently begun, only a dozen metal beams have been put in place to create the foundation of the building. Three steel beams, each almost four hundred feet tall, stand vertically. If she lifts her head up onto the pillows, she can see it all from her window.
Despite the size of the proposed project, there is a quiet calm within the construction site, like the relaxed mood of a warm Sunday afternoon.

She may feel despair, fear, anger, or more likely a sensation that escapes definition but is nonetheless extremely unpleasant.

The small group of men work efficiently with the instilled knowledge of their craft. They move confidently and smoothly, knowing all the necessary steps needed to complete the project. Hardly a spoken word is heard throughout the construction zone, every man knows his role and performs each small task with an effortless ease.

A night not too long ago. The night before the day. The day she can't put together, the missing pieces she can't remember. The day she tries to build within her mind and yet fails, over and over again.
She spent the rest of that long, black night alone in bed, trying to console her crying son and failing once again with the sound of a new explosion. One after another. Sooner or later the sound would be too near, sooner or later the sound would be so near that she would no longer be able to hear, no longer would be able to see, no longer would be able to remember.

Four of them are working on raising a metal frame, the dark metallic frame looks purple in the sunlight and the huge square piece of welded steel rises vertically into the air, forming the skeleton of the new building. With only a couple of men, they manage to lift a thousand tons of metal, there are no cranes or mechanized machines in sight.

Her nervous system recurrently informs her that something has gone drastically wrong. (Memories, flashes of insight, understanding that fades as soon as it announces itself with finality.)
She lies now on a hospital bed with her arm nearly severed. The boy no longer cries.

The form comes from within, from a certain nothingness that hides itself in endless dancing.
There is really only one space that we occupy, it is our relationship to the flow of energy through ourselves and the space which gives the space shape.

The cries of the little boy lasted through the night, never ceasing, never slowing. It was as if he already knew what was coming. As dawn broke, the sounds of explosions continued.
Eventually she got used to the sound. It took a long time. She got so used to it that she forgot all about the danger, all about drastic possibilities of irreversible change.

The boy. A construction worker every so often descends from the top of the highest metal beam.
No longer. His toes are tucked into a groove in the small metal beam and he slides down to the earth slowly, like Dracula with his arms crossed at his chest and still wearing a hardhat.
Cries.

Nothing inside, nothing outside. The construction continues.

The Lecture

Fall was touching the ‘city on the hill’, interspersed between the mountain’s thick evergreen and redwood forests were yellow and red trees shedding their thin leaves. In the air was the ever-present smell of fireplaces alight and the crisp bite of the air required a thick cozy sweater and, just for pure tactile pleasure, a warm cup of hot coffee.
The sun was just beginning to fade as the doors of the lecture hall were closing for the 6pm class. It was an amphitheater-shaped building where two hundred students could comfortably fit. Pale gray metal chairs with dark gray cushioned seats and backs were arranged in a semi-circle that rose above the narrower main floor, which is where Professor Habiman stood at the wooden podium with his lecture notes. Isa chose a seat in the far back right corner, just four rows back from the wall in an aisle seat where she had a perfect view of the professor.
As the class began, his scrawny teaching assistants handed out the multiple-page syllabus which was stapled in the left hand corner. Isa flipped through the list of required reading and assignments as Professor Habiman outlined the material and course work for Drugs and Society as well as what they would be expected to learn.
Twenty minutes in, Mr. Habiman began the lecture with an overview about the roots of addiction; being a sociology class, he mentioned societal factors including poverty, class, gender, and education. It was then that Isa had something to say. Without thinking, wondering, or waiting, she raised her hand.
Professor Habiman called on her, though it was not the custom (unbeknownst to her) for lectures to be interrupted with questions or comments, which were either asked at specific times designated by the instructor or after the bulk of the lecture. As he raised his eyebrows and waited for her to speak, the full attention of every student in the amphitheater turned towards her. Projecting her voice so everyone could hear, she said:
“Also, I’ve found that Pisces tend to have addictive personalities.”
The class was silent. Mr. Habiman, a man in his mid-50s, with a slight paunch protruding from his button-up white shirt, a neatly trimmed 3-inch white beard and combed back gray hair, stood quiet for a second, seemingly stunned, as though he was still processing what he had heard. Then he found his words.
He looked around the class, gathering the confused attention like a good stand-up comedian, his eyes sparkled and drew the audience into the folds of his emerging joke. Through a faint smile tinged with anger, he replied:
“Astrology? That’s not science. In this class, within the discipline of sociology, we study science.”
He shook his head slightly, shaking off the pitiful comment like unwelcome rain. Isa heard chuckles reverberating around the room as though in stereo sound, echoing without end.
“As I was saying,” he continued, “there are various roots of addiction…”
She sat there, her cheeks burning with embarrassment and anger, her body suddenly more aware of the creaking folding metal seat cradling her form, her feet acutely aware of the cold cement floor. She shrunk slightly and stared straight ahead, hearing nothing but bass tones, seeing nothing but yellow light and muted colors on the periphery of vision. Her cheeks were beyond blush, she was red, sweating and covered in the odor of failure.
Isa sat there for five minutes, for what seemed like hours pushing back stinging tears. The laughter, the quick rebuttal to her theory, the anger in his voice, it swirled through her like a tempest of hurt, gathering speed and fury as she thought about it more, as she fed it with her rage.
As the tears were just about to break the surface walls, she gathered her purse and scarf from the empty chair beside her and quickly climbed the few remaining stairs to the back of the amphitheater. With the raw, aggressive force of her burning body she pushed into the long metal bar (which was the ‘knob’) and heard the quick blunt sound of metal hitting metal.
Beyond the door was a cement stairwell that led to the ground and the night air, now completely black and dotted with stars. She felt a sting as her hot cheeks met the cool air like a slap and she screamed ‘FUCK!’ as she quickly descended the twenty-five stairs. On the last few steps she heard the door close behind her and the yellowish light from inside the lecture hall disappeared.

* * *

The following Wednesday night, Isa went back. Without meaning to, but following a mechanical tendency, she sat in the same place, towards the back right, not too far away from the exit door, in the aisle seat with a clear view of the professor.
The class quieted as Mr. Habiman began:
“Before we get into the material, I wanted to ask, is the young woman here who made the comment about astrology on Monday?”
A girl with short dark hair sitting just one row in front of Isa turned towards her. Isa met her eyes quickly and then looked straight ahead, saying nothing while everyone in the room turned in the general direction of the back right corner and waited. When there was no raised hand they looked around the rest of the amphitheater blankly, searching for a recognizable face. Isa stared straight ahead in silence and was thankful the girl in front said nothing, playing along with Isa’s mute example.
“Well,” he continued, “if anyone knows or sees her, please give her my apology. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

The House That Jack Built

People who could be frightened, people who were insecure, people who admired us; these were our prey. We brought them to her house and invited them to play a game with us, a game they had never heard of. It was a game they could not win, a game they could not loose, a game they could not stop. It was The House That Jack Built.

It began sometime in 1990. I had only just become aware of the passage of time, that there were numbers assigned to years. I had found a newspaper in the garage and read a headline about the gulf war. A strange electrical sensation coursed through my body. War. I had heard of war. I changed schools that year and entered into the fifth grade in a program for gifted children. That was when I received my first phone call. That’s when it began.

Other children had called in the past to arrange play dates or invite me to birthday parties. But no one had ever called just to talk to me before. I sat on the dark steps leading into the rumpus room with the black rotary phone between my feet. Brow furrowed, I believe I asked her:
“What do you want?”
“Just to talk.”
“I should go now.” I said, wishing to return to my own inner world, to the sanctity of home and hood.
“Why?” she asked.
“My friend Sarah is coming over.” I told her.

Sarah lived across the street. Sarah and my sister and I had eaten and bathed and played and slept together since I was three years old. There was very little separation between myself and Sarah, myself and my sister, myself and my parents. Just as meals appeared three times a day and bath water ran once after dark, Sarah would appear before noon and we would all play dolls or house or ride bikes up and down the streets or run through the fields playing freeze tag or dance to a Paula Abdul cassette. Other children from the neighborhood might participate or not, but Sarah would be there like sunshine, or spring, or inhalation. It was pre-ordained, habitual, mechanical, natural. I had almost no sense of self. I was the accumulation of these many daily rituals, the appearance and disappearance of these other characters, the texture and variety of landscape, of house and hood.
“Sarah who?” she asked.
“Butler.” I told her.
“The earwig. Tell the little earwig I said hi.” And hearing that sentence uttered in that particular tone, nuanced as it was, changed everything. That phone call was the beginning, although at the time I didn’t know it. That was the beginning of my fall, my descent into the outer world.
Suddenly someone from outside had just created a conspiratorial connection with me. With that utterance, she plucked me from unity and bliss. Sarah was no longer a part of my self. Sarah was an earwig, and she and I could have a laugh at Sarah’s expense. Sarah’s presence in my life diminished. My interest in her as something other than an object of ridicule waned. When her mother remarried and they vanished from the neighborhood a year later, I stood in front of her house feeling the loss, realizing she had been gone for a long time, I had banished her, and now she could never be retrieved.

By 1993 my experience of self had become inverted. My family had moved. There was a new house, a new hood, new kids, a suburban landscape, all alien to me. My parents were strangers as well. Even my own body was unfamiliar. By then I was in middle school and she and I were no longer in the same class. Nonetheless I still received the phone calls, now via a cordless phone that I could carry to my room.
She came to my house to “hang out” or I visited hers. We invented a language composed of two words, “Giba” and “dumbass.” We would converse as if we understood one another perfectly, making observations about those around us, including my sister, most of which were concluded with the word “dumbass”. If my sister attempted to join the conversation and play along, we looked confounded, as though we could not understand her, but we could still communicate with one another, and we would discuss this creature making its attempts to establish contact with us, but we would never speak back to it.

The houses in the new neighborhood were identical. I would marvel over the fact that the boy three doors down was living in a structure of precisely the same shape. As I moved through my own house I was moving phantom-like through his. I would imagine going into his house, which corners I could duck into to go unnoticed as he passed, how I could give him a push down the stairs, his stairs which were identical to my stairs. Or how I might enter his room, identical to my own, while he slept and simply be there, uninvited.

1995. We were high school freshmen. We had some classes together. Sleepovers abounded. She was given the basement floor of her house as a bedroom. It had an exit into the backyard. Our fusion reached its peak. I was now distinctly “I”, a separate, confused, and lonely entity, but together there was a “we”, just “she” and “I” together, and we were ready to unleash our games upon the inferior masses.

We would invite them to her house and pull out a deck of cards.
“Have you ever played the house that Jack built?” we would ask. Invariably they answered “no” or “what’s that?”
Now came the fun. We would invite them to play with us, would shuffle the deck and deal out cards. Then we would play. The only rules in The House That Jack Built were that there were no rules other than those that she and I invented as we went along. Naturally, only she and I knew this, and we would confirm the validity of one another’s plays and confuse and shock those we were playing with.

Gradually, our playmates might begin to suspect that they were the butt of some joke, but we would continue to play with such passion and sincerity that they would doubt their own perceptions. If, smiling, they accused us of making things up, we would assure them that we weren’t, that they’d get the hang of it soon enough, it was really quite simple…
Frequently a card play would be accompanied by a loud pronouncement:
“And this is the house that Jack built!” or “Gone fishing!”
At that point we would collect all the cards that had been “played” in the center, or take away the hand of the other player, or some equivocal gesture of triumph that would leave our victim with the sense of impending defeat. The game would go on endlessly, however, and we’d take pains to steer it away from any form of completion.

Eventually our victim would beg to end the game, insist that they had to stop and we would inform them that there could be no stopping until the game was finished. We would lean in on them, glare menacingly, grin sardonically. Something in the air would change. They could not win, they could not loose, and they could not stop. Desperately some would insist that they had just lost the game, trying to join us in the rule defining, referring back to some similar situation earlier in the game for which we would always have an exception,
“Yes, but you only give up your cards if you have no clubs in hand.” or “No, all the cards must be reshuffled and re-dealt when the eight of spades precedes the queen of hearts.”
Afternoon would turn to evening. Our victim would sweat, grow quarrelsome, or cry.

There were no adults left to monitor either of us at this point in our history. We would decide as school let out to take the bus to her house. On the bus we would select who we would or would not invite for our games.
One night as we walked home from the bus stop we asked a bony acne scarred girl from her neighborhood to come over. Nicole was the kind of innocent who hadn’t learned yet to conceal her emotions. Nicole told us in her high nasal voice, that she would go home and do her homework first, then tell her mother and finally come by around 4:00. She arrived at 3:45. That was the kind of girl Nicole was.

In the basement we sat atop the washer and dryer with Nicole between us taking turns playing with a small hunting knife I‘d coerced from a boy in my Math class. I would pass it to her and she would pass it to me, but we would never pass it to Nicole who watched the blade while talking in short nervous bursts and fingering the hem of her skirt.
Suddenly She grabbed Nicole by the hair and ran the dull edge of the blade along her throat. Nicole gave out a small startled cry. As she was released, Nicole touched her throat, finding it intact, and started to sob. We smiled mockingly. Without a word Nicole grabbed her sweater and pounded away up the stairs and out the front door.

People who could be frightened, people who were insecure, people who admired us; these were our prey. We brought them to her house and invited them to play a game with us, a game they had never heard of. It was a game they could not win, a game they could not loose, a game they could not stop. It was The House That Jack Built and it wore them down, made them loose their hopeful grins, their sycophantic giggles, their pathetic displays of wit or humor.
In the end, they usually begged, especially when we lay the dull edge of the knife against their throats. Most of them believed we would do it by then, after the hours of suspicion turned to self doubt returned again to suspicion. After we had whittled away their trust in us and any tidbits of faith that they had in themselves, they would see the knife, then feel steel sliding against their flesh, and they would believe for a moment that their throat had just been slit. They would sit there wide eyed, waiting for their lives to bleed out.
For some of them, this was the moment when they lost unity, bliss. For others it was just one more crippling blow. And for just a few, it was the first time in a long while that they had lost themselves, completely and utterly vanishing in the moment, only to re-emerge into singularity a moment later, blinking and breathing and staring into our houses, identical to their own.

Peril At Sea

White shirts and water and old men and old jokes and leather shoes and a long white wall and I found myself on a boat, a ship rather, a huge traveling machine that embraced me in metal arms. It was noisy and busy in there. The noise startled me out of the strange thoughts that had just been running through me. Dislocated fragments of words and images, visions of correspondences and breaking points, twisted thoughts, mangled thoughts, thoughts I immediately forgot.
I looked around myself and I quickly found my place within the crowd, I quickly found my allocated purpose, my duty, my role in the scheme of things.
I was on a large transatlantic ship, an elegant old ship heavy with history and tall tales lost in the deep blue waves of the high seas. There was a feast happening in the main salon, a sumptuous chamber which invoked a kind of luxury that I had rarely experienced directly. The floor was cushioned by thick red carpets that made you feel as if you were walking on clouds each time you took a step. The elegant round tables were all covered with white or pink table cloths. There was an enormous chandelier hanging over the center of the dancing floor, twinkling with golden light.
I was tired in the middle of all of the frantic movement, tired and slow and hesitant. So many people surrounding me and yet I felt all alone, totally separated from the celebration that was happening all around me. My hands trembled slightly but I wasn't really cold, my eyes watered but I wasn't really sad. I wouldn't want to say what I felt because I didn't have a word for it, I still don't. I didn't know why this was happening, that was clear. But then again, I didn't know why anything was happening at all, why anything had ever happened.
There were people everywhere, all of them enjoying themselves in a way that spoke of certainty and financial security and a kind of carelessness that came with it. Laughter came from all directions, waves of laughter that washed over me with such strength that they nearly pushed me over. They seemed to insist that I should set aside my thoughts, these waves of merry washed in champagne.
It was definitely hard to think clearly with so much noise, so many bits and pieces of unknown conversations, so many scattered statements, so many loose words. My mind would try to grab onto one phrase but it had soon been displaced by another, and my own chains of thought would be broken by the collective mental discharge.
I was removing the dirty white dishes that constantly piled upon the table tops. I saw several of them in my hands and noticed there were more to be picked up. I was wearing a black and white uniform that clearly distinguished me from the guests. The uniform was simple and standard: a white dress shirt, a black vest and a bow tie. To clear the tables was my job aboard this ship. At least one of the jobs I was meant to fulfill.
I looked around to catch a glimpse of my fellow workers. I could see other men and women wearing the same uniform I had on, each with a job to do, each with their hands full of dirty plates and utensils or walking back from the kitchen with freshly washed plates full of hot food.
While we worked, the crowd feasted, it moved as one large being of many heads and many arms. I spotted Vicky among the workers walking out of the kitchen. She was a quick glimpse of recognition among so many faceless strangers. Of course she was here. Where else would she be? I tried to catch her attention but there was too much happening and it was all moving too quickly. I soon lost her in the haze of movement.
I continued to clear away the unwanted remains. I felt so separate from these people, from the feasters, from the workers, from everyone. I felt clearly marked as someone to be ignored until needed, a part of the rumbling machine, a kind of moving breathing furniture.
"They are the Other. All that is not me. All that I can see and everything I cannot." The thought went through me as I looked at the guests laughing, eating, drinking. I could feel the floor weaving slightly under my feet, more than I was used to, more than seemed reasonable or comfortable. "There's no use in asking for a reason. They are that which you cannot control. They are that which moves beyond your grasp."
There was soft music coming from large speakers at one end of the room, a kind of soft jazz without claws that could be easily ignored and set aside as sonic wallpaper.
There was the tinkle of clinked stemware and the scrip scrape of knives scratching plates. Little ribbons and pearl centerpieces adorned the tables in a fixed simulation of living flowers. Round men in tuxedos bared toothy grins as I passed them by. Maybe they intended to flirt with me, maybe the alcohol had robbed them of their skills of distinction and they now thought I was their friend, their wife, their mother.
Women in satin and taffeta wore tight hair buns and white gloves. They never looked at me unless they had a particular request. Some of them danced with a cultivated air of nonchalance, some of them lightly swayed as they talked to each other. Their shoulders were bare and tanned, their faces were painted. Artificial flowers, like the ribbons and the pearls.
I scrambled to keep up with the pile up of dirty dinner ware. At least that was something clear for me to do, a task I could understand. I carried a toppling stack back into the kitchen area, wrestling with my own turbulent feelings which threatened to take me over, thoughts that slid down the side of my cranium like avalanches of words and letters spilling away from their original container. I avoided the steady stream of workers which all came in and out through the same door. I looked for Vicky among them but she wasn't there.

* * *

As I crossed the kitchen doorway, I was greeted by a rush of warm moist air. It could have been a relief from the aimless confusion of the party, a direct rush of heat that was clear and distinct in its manifestation. It would have been a relief but it wasn't. It felt heavy and uncomfortable. As soon as I walked in, I wanted to get out, I wanted to escape the sense of suffocation, the oppressive weight of the hot air.
The cook was a middle aged man wearing a huge white chefs hat, white pants, shirt, and apron. He had a clean looking thick mustache and large black eyes. He was leaning against a counter, sweating profusely and talking to a smaller man with brown skin and narrow shoulders. The smaller man mostly nodded to whatever the cook had to say, with an obvious subservience that made my skin crawl. I was not sure if he even spoke the same language as the rest of us. It didn't matter to the cook. He just kept on talking in his loud boisterous voice.
I felt very small next to him. Without realizing I was doing it, I stopped to look at the two of them talking, to listen to what it was that he had to say in such a loud strong voice that made the kitchenware vibrate in resonance.
He glowered down on me when I looked up at him, he stared directly at me while complaining boisterously about the incompetent level of help on these journeys. I immediately blushed intensely and moved away. He was obviously talking about me. He had to be. He had looked right at me as he talked. I felt afraid of him, afraid of his opinion, of his judgement. I was afraid and yet I would have given anything to have him like me. Obviously he didn't and there was nothing I could do to change that.
I heard louder laughter coming from the main room, even louder than before. I suddenly knew that in the dining room the situation would soon be getting out of hand. Intoxication would breed further intoxication and shameless acts of debauchery. This was the kind of party that could go on all night, growing wilder and wilder as time went on. A mad celebration of wealthy decadence. More than expected and yet somehow understood. I knew these things happened. I didn't look forward to them but they were somehow unavoidable. They could be surmounted, they could be dealt with. This knowledge lived within me in a place I couldn't pinpoint.
I walked away from the cook who was still talking loudly, his voice travelling like a strong committed melody over the grueling rhythm of the crowd. I felt his eyes on my back like heavy cables of steel that reached invisibly from his mind into my muscles. I didn't like it. I wanted to get away. I wanted all of it to disappear.

* * *

Without meaning to do it, I found a metal door that led me to the outside. It was an oval shaped door on the side of the kitchen, the kind of door you only find on a ship. I found it behind the shelves where all the supplies were kept. I had never seen it before. I had been in this kitchen many times and yet I had never noticed a door right there. It seemed unlikely that I would have never seen it, that I would have missed it each and every single time I had been in here. And yet there it was, waiting for me to open it.
I made a sudden decision to walk through it, without having a clear thought of what waited on the other side, without a clear anticipation of what I would encounter. I had no real expectations, no urge for discovery. I simply wanted to get away, I wanted to go elsewhere and that was exactly what the door promised. Elsewhere.
I stepped through it and I let it close behind me with a loud clang that resonated in my ears like a gong. I found myself outside, on the edge of the ship, under the dark cloudy night sky, looking at thick ominous waves that battered the ship like amorphous giant demolition rods. There was a hard rain coming down and a strong wind that made me shiver as soon as I stepped out. It felt somewhat good for the cold raindrops to hit my face harshly, tiny water projectiles propelled by the raw force of the wind that seemed to make the entire world shake around me. I shivered and the whole ship shivered with me. It reminded me of something but I couldn't quite place what it was. It wasn't something exactly pleasant, and yet I welcomed it. It was the change I had been hoping for.
There were two men outside with me, standing by the railing, their silhouettes framed by the night and the waves. One was about my age and the other one was much older. As soon as I heard them talking it became clear that they were father and son. It was also clear that they had some kind of official capacity aboard the ship, some kind of authority that lived in the structure of their spoken sentences. It was as if they carried their certifications on their voice and their demeanor. There was no need for badges when you could carry yourself this way.
Like the door I had just walked through, I had never seen them before. It was a large ship, full of strangers, but it still struck me as odd that I would never have run into them. And yet they seemed to be where they were supposed to be, they were in charge of a situation, a situation that involved me.
The older man was dressed in an elegant dark suit. There were golden cufflinks on his sleeves and his shoes were polished to perfection. He had undone his tie and unbuttoned the white shirt underneath it. In the twilight darkness of the outside, I could see a bit of his hairy chest, long white strands of hair that betrayed both his age and his old fashioned masculinity. I found it oddly attractive. I wanted to lay my head on his chest and go to sleep.
The younger man wore a thick white sweater. His pants were a light beige color and they were splotched with water. He seemed just slightly less sure of himself than his father was. But there was a hint of the same elegance in his movements, there was a touch of the same hard earned stability in his stance. His longer hair was a shambles from the wind and the water. The older man's hair didn't seem to move at all. It was as if the whole world couldn't touch him, as if he stood invulnerable no matter what came at him, no matter what violence transpired in the immediate vicinity of his personal space.
They turned towards me as soon as they saw me. Almost as if they had been expecting me, or at least expecting someone from the inside to show some level of interest in what was going on outside.
"We will have to sink the ship. There's no way around it." The old main said it with an air of finality that seemed beyond question. I nodded slowly, unsure if I was understanding correctly, unsure if I was even meant to hear this. Maybe they were confusing me with someone else?
His voice startled me when it erupted above the thunder of the waves. I sensed that I would be ready to believe anything that vibrated in those resonant timbres.
"Don't worry," the younger man said, looking at me with an air of tender nobility, "it's common practice. It's the only thing we can do in this situation. We have done it before. Many times. Everything gets wet but we survive. It's the only way. It's certainly not pleasant but it's the only thing we can do."
"When the boat goes down," the old man said, again with a thick deep voice that seemed the very incarnation of authority, "you will feel a pull on you...a very strong pull. The ocean will rise up around you and pull you down. You will have to swim very hard towards the surface, harder than you have ever swam before. You have to make sure you don't get pulled down. Do you understand? At that point it's important to resist the force that will be pulling on you. Just swim towards the surface as hard as you can, don't follow any impulse to give up. You will be tired, a voice in your head might say that it would be good to surrender to the force all around you. It will seem like a pleasant option. Don't listen to that voice. Set it aside and continue to struggle. Don't surrender. Don't give up. At this particular point, giving up is not a good idea."
Again I nodded slowly. I wasn't sure if I could even swim that hard. I looked towards the tall waves that slammed against the sides of the ship. In the middle of those waves, I wasn't sure that I could swim at all. I wanted to ask questions but they all accumulated at the tip of my tongue and refused to make the final jump out of my mouth. Instead I just looked at the two men and they looked back at me. Our conversation was over. I turned around to go back inside.

* * *

I ran back to the small cabin I shared with Vicky. I felt dizzy with apprehension and a sort of aimless confusion that didn't give me a firm footing on which to stand. As soon as I had changed out of my wet clothes, I started to put my papers and jewelry into plastic bags so they would not get lost or ruined. I sealed each one carefully, moving as fast as I could manage. I tried to not get bogged down looking at these things, but every once in a while I would stop to focus on one, a ring, a necklace, a tiny photograph, a little clay figurine. I would remember where I got each one, who gave it to me, who sold it to me, who was there when I got it. I would remember the incident that surrounded each item like a cloud of blurry images circling around an empty sun, a tiny thing that couldn't be grasped, a vortex of longing that didn't have a clear conclusion, a distinct end. Most of these things were basically worthless from anyone else's perspective, and yet they still held some kind of value for me, some kind of weight. I wondered if this would be the last time I would ever see them, the last time I would ever see anything at all.
I put all these little bits of property inside a small blue backpack which I placed next to my bed. My mother had given it to me when I was preparing for this trip. At the time I couldn't think of why I would need it. Just as I finished arranging the backpack and all the things inside of it, Vicky walked in. She was still wearing the uniform we had all worn for the party. Her long blond hair was a mess and there were raindrops on her face and jacket. She had been outside like me, maybe she had walked through the same oval door I found on the wall of the kitchen. I didn't ask her about it.
She closed the door behind her and started to undress. As she changed, she talked to me without turning in my direction. She talked in an exaggerated whisper. I looked at her naked back as I listened and I felt a mixture of worry and excitement coming from her voice.
"They are digging a grave for the boat on land. The captain radioed ahead to let them know what is happening. This is probably the last time we'll be together in here. Anything you want to save, you better hold on to it."
I pointed to the backpack and she nodded. I wanted to say more but it all seemed pointless. She was putting on a tight rubber outfit, the kind used by divers and surfers. I didn't know she had this kind of equipment. I had no idea where she got it from. There was obviously a lot of things I didn't know. Was my whole life a long line of avoided questions? A pattern of avoiding obvious clues even when they sat right in front of my face?
Up to this point, I hadn't uttered a single word while Vicky explained the procedures we would follow. She was being very detailed and methodical in her explanations. I listened as carefully as I could but suddenly I couldn't hold it any longer.
"I was not aware that there was even a remote possibility that I could die on this trip..."
She turned around and looked at me with wide eyes. She stopped in the middle of getting dressed, and just looked directly at me. I looked up at the few rain drops still shining on her cheeks. The yellow light of the cabin made them shine and shiver, like tiny stars on her face.
"There is always a remote possibility, at least a remote possibility. There's no such thing as total safety. Nowhere. Never. You should know that already. You should definitely know that from now on."
Again I nodded. These things seemed so self evident, things a child should know, things I should have been taught when I was growing up. But who would have taught me? I had never thought about the underlying possibilities before. If I had, I didn't remember. I had certainly never confronted them face on, I had never looked into the bottomless abyss that lurked under all my seemingly innocent choices.
"Did you give your parents a way to call you?"
I shook my head.
"Maybe you should call them. Just in case..."
I looked at her and then at my cell phone resting on my night table. I hesitated. Maybe it was better to not call. Maybe it was better to not know what was happening, maybe it was better to remain innocent just a little longer. Maybe it was better to find out until the crisis had passed and a resolution had emerged, whether good or bad. I couldn't imagine listening to my mother's voice while those huge waves kept crashing against the side of the ship, reminding me of the imminent presence of radical change. To hear her voice against that background would break me somehow. It would make me weaker and I needed to be strong.
She shrugged her shoulders as if she could read my thoughts.
"There's another suit in the closet behind you. You should put it on. We might have to swim for hours if we are still out on international waters. There's always a chance we might get picked up fast, but we shouldn't count on it."
I went to the closet and opened the door. I took out the suit that I found there. I had never seen it before. Again, it seemed strange that I had never noticed it. I ran my hand over its contours as if to convince myself that it was real. Were they distributed while I was working at the party? Had it been there all along and I had simply ignored its presence?
I had already changed into jeans and a T-shirt as soon as I came back to my room but now I undressed once again to change into the rubber suit. I felt somewhat embarrassed to have Vicky standing there, looking at me naked. We had both seen each other naked countless times, and yet this particular night I felt more naked than ever before. I felt as if she could look through my skin straight into my insides, straight into the inner forms that I would forever want to hide.
I could hear the waves outside getting louder, the waves beyond the walls of the cabin, beyond the edge of the ship. Outside was the Other. Everything past this wall of pale skin and this head of short dark curls was the Other. Everything. I was scared to be outside, I was scared to lose my limits, I was scared to lose my self. I was scared of it all. I felt small and weak and completely vulnerable, naked in front of the world which looked at me through Vicky's eyes.
All the stories I had ever heard, all the years of memories that I would never have access to, they were all trying to flood into my shaking mind. I didn't want to go outside to meet the Other. I didn't want the Other to come into me, to turn me inside out like an old sock and change me forever, damage what I had come to know as my world, twist it beyond recognition. I wanted to close my mouth tight so the Other wouldn't find an open doorway in the middle of my face, I wanted to close all the gates and tell it to go away, to come back when I was ready. And yet I wasn't sure that I would ever be truly ready. Not for this. Not like this. Not for something so utterly final.

* * *

I was standing next to Vicky, overlooking the open grave that would be the final resting place for the ship we had lost at sea. People had gathered around the dark moist hole, waiting for the broken bits to be moved in, broken remains of what had been a proud seagoing vessel not too long ago, a place to dream, a place to wonder, a place on which to stand and look out at the vast blue emptiness.
"It was a hard choice, to sink the ship, but it had to be done. There was no other way around it... you know? It could have been some other ship, it just happened to be ours. That's the way things are."
Vicky said it offhandedly, as if she knew I needed her to talk and she just grasped at the first thing that came into her mind, regardless of whether she really believed it or not. I felt vaguely grateful for her words, even if I couldn't understand them, even if I couldn't walk straight into them and make them my home.
I looked at her and she looked at me. Her blonde hair was still wet. My own curly black hair was wet as well. I could feel cold drops of sea water running down my neck, slipping over my shoulders to slide down my back.
Her blue eyes were even clearer than I remembered, as if they held the essence of hope within them, a kind of gentle hope that drifted easily over calm waves of doubt. We were both shivering even though the sun was already shining high in the sky, already slowly burning our skin, already slowly evaporating the remains of our cold midnight swim.
We looked at each other intensely for a moment, two sets of eyes wide open and staring, each looking into the Other, each exploring the wide open mystery that was hiding behind the Other's eyes.
What is it even possible for me to stare into the reality of her and not the illusion created by my memories? The question seemed more urgent than ever. The moment in the cabin, the moment when I stood naked before her as the ocean battered our ship into submission, that one moment had opened up wounds that I didn't even know I had, it left me with burning questions I couldn't quite formulate, doubts I couldn't raise past the boundary of my eyelids.
Was there really a Vicky out there or would I soon wake up to find that she had only been a dream? If there was no Vicky, was there a "me"? Was this "me" the thing I most cherished? The ship that took me through the oceans of reality until I came to let it sink into the turbulent vortex of the void?
And when it was finally gone, what would be left behind? Would I know when it was time to sink the ship, or would it surprise me like a little open door I had never previously noticed?
Vicky smiled at me as if to tell me to give up my questions. I smiled back but the questions persisted, even as she put her arm around me, even as I smelled her sweat, even as I momentarily believed that she was real, that she would remain steady and firm and I would continue to smell her presence as the years went by. I rubbed my nose against her skin and she giggled. A tear rolled down my cheek but she didn't see it.

* * *

That night I dreamt I was in the middle of a big feast but I was not a waitress. I was walking among all the guests completely naked. They all stared at me with big invasive eyes in the middle of blank faces that said nothing. The fact that they all looked at me without any clear reaction made me even more embarrassed, more humiliated to be so completely naked in front of all of them. So many strangers, so many people I didn't know, so many people I didn't want to know.
If at least one had tried to say something, if one had approached me with interest, wanting to caress my body, wanting to kiss my lips, if some of the women had laughed, if they had made a comment, any comment at all no matter how mean or off-handed... but there was no reaction at all, not even a whisper, not even a sigh. I just walked naked among them, unable to even cover myself with my hands.
I wanted them all to go away, I wanted them all to disappear and take away their wide open eyes.
I wanted them all to stay and talk to me, I wanted them all to be my friends, to love me, to want me, to cherish me, to hold me.
Their presence and their absence, both frightening, both desirable, both recurrently impossible.
I wanted to be gone but I was afraid to leave.
I wanted to vanish but I was afraid of the emptiness.
I woke up alone and covered in sweat, the wet sheets stuck to my skin. I looked up at the ceiling and thought about the waves that I had been so afraid of, the waves that surrounded me from all sides no matter where I was standing, the waves that would eventually take everything away. I could hear them crashing against the walls, I could hear them eager to come in to release me.
I was naked in my bed surrounded by water. No shirts, no old men, no jokes and no shoes, not even a wall. Just water everywhere, getting everything wet, taking all forms away and leaving me with nothing.

Ecstatic Fury

It all begins this night, a night of fright and terror, this night when everything descends into a lethal silence, a silence in which all things are paralyzed, everything has stopped due to what has happened on the other side, the other side which on this particular night has come into this side, this side which is afraid to lose everything it has ever known, everything it has ever seen during its forty something years of life. (I remember being unafraid of loss, unconcerned with either living or dying, but this too I lost eventually.)
Nothing was forever, that was the simple rule to remember, everything was temporary and without sense, it was others who gave it sense, others speaking, others looking, others pointing things out, all the other things that in one day or another could be found along the path, a path full of life or full of nothing. What could it matter if everything was made of nothingness to begin with, if everything is and was an essence of nothingness and came from nothingness and to nothingness would return?

The things that happened on that night are indescribable and heart wrenching at once, because of the fear and the accent on horror, life had horrified itself. In a matter of seconds nothing that life had accumulated for years and centuries, none of it had any more importance nor substance. None of it was real, none of it was worth anything, everything was garbage and shit. It was all the worst hypocrisy in which a spirit could get into so that it might get away with what it could, to escape from whatever it would be, from whatever it was. Here nothing mattered anymore, it was a life whose only purpose was to observe a particular situation, an event, a something, a nothing, and that turned everything into a loss. It made life from what it wasn't, but nothing was what it could be. Everything had lost its brilliance, the color that it once possessed. In everything there was a sense of agony, of darkness, of harshness, of laziness, life in full degeneration. A slow decay of things that would never again return, things that would never be happy with themselves, the things that happened on that night.

“To hell with so many expectations! To hell with life itself!” it said.
Who said it? It didn't matter if it died, it died all the time. Badly born, recently deceased, thoughts weighed down by irony and by this life which had cracked like an egg, it had fallen from an unknown distance. What difference could it make? Everything was the same. It was all the cursed agony of an ancient being, covered in tumors, having repeated this agony so many times, this weakness, this same foolishness of dying from lack of skill at living.
“Life and its heaven,” it said, “what a disgusting prison! How large it is! And how narrow is heaven!”

More confused, more painful, is that blue expanse which laughed at us at every moment. With its pretentious greatness, perpetually showing us its unreachable dexterity in being able to be anywhere. And we are down here, unable to move away, unable to emerge from under its damned sphere of cursed power. We are unable to escape its cowardice and refusal to show us its liberator face, the face that could free us from so many sins, sins which we have been subjected to during all these years of being newly born in an egg that is dead and rotten, broken by the damned beak of a bird that flies over us, reminding us that up there is a heaven of sheer agony. A heaven dying every single day in all the tones, in all the colors, in all that could be a single stumble, a single moment of union. Whatever it is, it is everywhere and it ends everywhere.

This is a snack for gods of the void, of whatever is and whatever isn't, whatever manages to be what it can't be, whatever manages to truly be what it is. I don't understand anything. It is simply life which talks about itself and says whatever it wants to say, as if it's asking me to fuck it, to make love to it, asking me to throw it from a window, from a corridor, from the fifth floor of an empty building, from something that is also made of everything and nothing. Asking me to kill this agony inside of me and kill the rats that are part of your glory and your desolation. Your fears are your gods, your gods are your loves, and the rest is not important. The demons don't matter. My tomb will be in the nothingness some day. Deep under the earth I will sleep.

I go through the dying during a long period of tenderness and of eternity. What matters is to sleep and nothing else. It is the same to me, the state that is the agony of living and of dying. Nothing matters, not anymore. Life, death, they are both here. They have always been here and they will always be here. It's the same to me; a monkey, an elephant, some other thing that tries to jump, tries to die, tries to achieve something in which it might find a way to live, to feel, to really feel, to feel anything at all. To feel hate, real perfect hate and not that garbage that they show us on the radio and the TV, on the Internet, in these words of 'who knows what this man is trying to say here', this imbecile that is writing to try to say what he doesn't dare to say in his own insides, this damned idiot that is just barely learning to say a half truth that he learned somewhere in his country of El Salvador, The Savior, as if this was the savior of that fucking word that is hell, in which everyone burns and then remains confused. The fucking fear of burning playing for eternity among the heretics which were burned alive and crucified so they could reach the endless glory of hell, where they would never be able to understand their own martyrdom, waiting to sense that everything that is, everything that can be achieved, could come one day to liberate them. Something else would come to do the hard work of sacrifice, so they could keep on fooling around and making trouble with the gun powder that one day was in their words. The fire that they picked up from a virtual garbage can in which man found himself due to the thousand speeches of centrifugal language. It all begins this night, in the things that happened on that one night, the things that I will forever be at a loss to describe.

Valley In The Sun

Ferdi, sitting on the hill smoking little brown cigarettes held between fingers that had been painted with black polish. He wore the black hood too, eclipsing his face, hiding his ordinary charcoal hued sweater and cut off jeans, a trick, like when they projected images of the Virgin Mary on banks of smoke in an effort to spook strangers. His face was really quite young, cherub-like with ruddy round cheeks. Far from intimidating, brown curls hung over his brow and small even white teeth hid in the trenches behind soft rosy lips.
He could not have functioned very well as a guardian if his face had been allowed to come out like the sun to light up the hillside with its innocent charm. The magicians were under the hill and the believers still awaited the coming of bubble-headed saviors in saucers. The world was really composed of those two kinds now, believers and magicians, the hordes of uneducated human animals that wandered the wasteland and the keepers of the last bastion of technology and civilization.
This particular post was mostly unthreatened, an unknown entrance to the kingdom under the hills. Nothing elaborate was required to keep the unwashed away, just this boy in his frightening black robe. Any person wandering far from home, herding sheep or searching for plunder would think twice before approaching this sinister apparition smoking on the hillside, black boots pressing into the tender green grasses. They would see a magician, a sorcerer, a demon, or a ghost. The cloaked form would inspire the imagination.
These were dark times. It was a new dark age, made dark, paradoxically, by a bright sun. Less than 10 years ago the world had been a veritable Atlantis, a place where you could speak instantly to anyone you wished, send them a photograph or video with your cell phone, hold a library of thousands of books in the palm of your hand, transfer currency you would never see from one bank account to the next, obtain goods with nothing more than a small card fashioned of plastic.
The end of the world had been anticipated and delayed time and again, the last time as the Mayan calendar approached its end and the followers of Christ, as usual, expected his return. One of the most heavily trodden alternate dimensions of online obsession revolved around such predictions of destruction. The seas would boil, the dead would rise from the grave, the son of God would return to deliver his followers to the kingdom of heaven.
There were blurry lines, points of deviation arising from a common fixation on the year 2012. Where one audience subscribed to the predictions of the old testament, another awaited a race of alien Gods that would return on a planet with an irregular orbit, or a reversal of the magnetic poles would cause a shift in consciousness that might restore humanity to the aboriginal dream time.
Theories abounded, were espoused upon web pages and in videos posted to popular media sites, in electronic books that swam in the ether ready to be downloaded into your portable hand held device. Then in 2010, a good two years too soon, a real force intervened in the destiny of the human race. The good old sun, center of our solar system, the star once worshipped by primitive humans, had been quite forgotten by modern man. It was hardly considered by the civilization whose nights were electrified with artificial luminescence, whose food came on trucks from nowhere having been grown by professionals in far flung provinces.
Its behaviors had been well observed and documented by scientists. Grab any astronomer out of his observation tower to ask him and he could have told you that the sun experienced cycles, periods of relative peace and periods filled with wild solar storms. It had at times affected the earliest radio broadcasts when sun spots erupted into flumes of charged particles that interfered with the signal. Then the sun slipped back into low gear. During that time, the years in which the sun slumbered, the people of the 21st century came to rely heavily on new high-tech systems for the basics of daily life, systems which were highly sensitive to solar activity, but which thrived in its absence.
Years passed and the sun continued its existence quietly until 2010 when it entered a predictable but unconsidered period of stormy weather during which its molten surface and the civilizations of Earth were thrown into turmoil. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications were all knocked out by intense solar storms that erupted on October first of that fated year.
All of those who had been anticipating an end found it at last. A civilization that had been in the works for hundreds of years was deconstructed in a matter of weeks as panic and desperation took hold. It was the fall of Rome all over again, but this time the barbarians were the Romans themselves, tearing their own homes and lives apart in a frenzy of uncontrolled hatred and fear.

Ferdi, with his cherub cheeks and chestnut locks had been ten years old at the time. If the system had failed a week earlier he would now be a member of the horde rather than a magician. His father had been a physics professor at UC Berkeley, his mother a young artist come cult member after their separation.
For two strange years after the divorce he had lived with her, with rituals held in the living room once a week where strangers in lavish costumes paraded around barefooted. It was their feet that he was most acquainted with, peering out at them from under the locked bedroom door where he would lie petrified and curious.
At first it had seemed quite tolerable as he had loved his mother, but after he learned, (through a Google search conducted with his Iphone) that the notorious Order of the Solar Temple told its followers that the highest levels of initiation involved meetings with extraterrestrial beings, and that children had been murdered under suspicion of being the antichrist, he begged to be sent to live with his father.
That decision had shaped the course of his life. It was the sole reason that he lived now in the decaying bosom of science rather than at the thriving heart of superstition. It was the reason that he knew what had happened to the world he had known, unlike so many other ten year olds who had come home to be roped into mass suicides by their parents, or who had possibly barely escaped starvation and the brutality of others to become citizens of the new earth, never knowing what had happened, or suspecting that the rapture had come and gone and they had been left behind. He knew what had happened because he had been able, as a ten year old, to grab a weeping astronomer by the arm.
Nate Fisher, with his alpaca wool sweater and coarse red beard shook his head mournfully over a shot of whiskey,
“We knew this could happen, I helped write the report. We knew this could happen. And nobody listened.” Tears fell into the drink so that the small glass overflowed slightly. They were in the depths of Professor Ashton’s astonishing green home built into an Alameda county hillside. It had been designed to blend in with the shape of the land and most of the house interior was nestled underground.
Ferdi felt safe within this home whose off the grid power supply kept it warm and lighted and whose design made him feel like a rabbit secured within its hole. In the next room his father and Professor Ashton were talking quietly with Able Strong .
“..motors that use liquid metal for liquid contact…” Able’s trebly voice carried through the wall.
“…would have to be quite hot...” came fathers reply and after his the high feminine voice of Professor Ashton cut in.
“…done with Mercury…”
“…get a hold of him?” father asked
“…transistor…a week or so…luck…”
“We knew.” Nate Fisher sniffed morosely.
And then Ferdi had asked him that all important question.
“What did you know?”

Sitting on the hill smoking little brown cigarettes held between fingers that had been painted with black polish. Under his dark hood, Ferdi let his mind drift. Out along the green horizon a figure emerged. He watched it, ready to radio for assistance if necessary. As it drew nearer he rose to his feet so that he would be more visible.
He thought he saw the figure look his way. It stopped and then turned sharply away and slowly vanished again. Ferdi sat back down and sighed.
The world was really composed of two kinds now: believers and magicians, the hordes of uneducated human animals wandering the wasteland, one of them his own mother, and the keepers of the last bastion of technology and civilization. Grab any astronomer out of his observation tower to ask him and he could have told you… but now it was much too late for that.

Ride

The ride. I tell you, it’s numbing. My ass has been bouncing around on this hard back seat forever. Jeff has us listening to Ennio Morricone, which is somewhat enjoyable, but Reed keeps trying to talk over it, so he has to shout to be heard and everyone else screams, ”What?” and he repeats himself even louder. Meanwhile the windows are rolled down so the wind too is roaring in my ears and blowing my hair back. To make matters more difficult Dean keeps drinking out of my water bottle and I can’t tell if he means to or if he’s just clueless.
Twenty minutes ago we were paused by the railroad tracks of some little town, I think it was called Crows Landing. Mostly dirt and fields and sagging houses. The main street had a taco place with those round tables with the permanent umbrellas stuck in their middle, the kind that are made out of plastic or something else hard so they look more like flying saucers than umbrellas. There was also a barber shop, no barber pole or anything so quaint, just a white sign with a head of hair on it, a picture that seemed like it too hailed from 1976 or maybe 81.
Jeff had taken out the map and spread it over the steering wheel and after a few moments of examination he’d said, “The way I see it, we can keep going this way, or we can cut over this mountain right here and hit the 380 which is what we want to do eventually.” Somehow or other we decided that the mountain would be a nice change of pace since we’ve been driving all over the San Joaquin valley for two days straight, looking at fields and orchards and a lot of flat land. All this is Jeff’s idea, a road trip for the band, full of dusty ghost towns and farmland where we can stop and pose for photos to fill the sleeve of our next CD, which of course, we haven’t even started recording.
So here we were bouncing up this sub standard road, the sun gleaming like brass as it sunk, tall wild grains waving around, positively golden under that hot sun. Suddenly there are long horn cattle everywhere, grazing in the rolling hills, standing in the road. I reach my hand out the open window. They are so close I can almost touch them, but I always pull my hand back the instant it seems possible.
I start to shout, “I want to get out and pet one!” Jeff just laughs from behind his mirrored shades but I keep insisting, shouting over the sound track of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, “I really want to touch one!”
Reed is looking at me in the rear view mirror, wisps of dark hair hanging over his brown eyes. The nostrils of his banana nose flair a little, which I know means he’s annoyed or disgusted or something. His gaze shifts from me to Dean and I catch a really strange look in his eye, but he quickly turns his attention back to the road ahead before Dean notices he’s being observed.
I stop shouting to give Reed a break. After all, we’ve still got a long ride ahead of us and I myself am not all that happy with the close quarters. Reed’s been moody all day, looking at all of us as if this was the stupidest God damned bunch of fools he’s ever been stuck with. It doesn’t bother me too much because Reed is generally a little snobby, a feature that I, as a west coast native, attribute to his upbringing in New York. In the last year and a half that I’ve played with him I’ve come to be fascinated with his mannerisms, including his manifestations of annoyance.
Dean is another story. He’s only been around for a month or so. I’m not sure if we’ve ever had a drummer that I did like, but if so, it definitely isn’t Dean. I can’t even say why. Maybe it’s because he’s too tall and gangly and has those pale freckles all over his face, but today the problem is that his breath is atrocious. It’s the main reason I’ve been willing to cope with the added noise of rolled down windows. That and his cracked and peeling lips malingering on my water bottle are wearing on my nerves.
“Look at that.” Reed bellows over the din.
That’s our cue. We all shout, “What?”
“I said LOOK AT THAT!” Reed’s pointing out his open window ahead of the car. Jeff starts slowing down.
“Holy crap.” Jeff yells, “Look at that.”
I do. We’re approaching a little turn off whose main feature is an outcropping of stone covered with swastikas. The thing is at least three times as tall as I am and completely covered in paint. There are even swastikas spray painted in the middle of the road. Jeff pulls over and we all get out to look at the bizarre monument.
I grew up in a semi rural area and there you’d see rocks covered in graffiti along the road, stuff like ‘L.M. heart B.G’ or ‘Fuck’ or even ‘God Bless’, but I have never seen anything quite like this. There’s nothing else visible on any surface of the massive body of stone. It’s swastikas all the way.
“That’s weird huh?” Jeff says and I just shrug. The turn out drops off into a little valley and some cows are down there grazing happily. I go over and look at them and Jeff gets out his camera and takes some shots of the Nazi rock while Dean takes a piss on some bushes and Reed lights a cigarette. After a minute Jeff comes over and stands beside me taking pictures of the animals meandering below.
“What’s that?” he asks pointing at something big and white resting on the rolling brown grass of the little valley.
“A boulder.” I tell him.
“Are you sure?” He asks.
Even though I am sure, I’ve got to prove that I‘m right. I start making my way carefully down the slope. I’m still wondering what would happen if I tried to approach one of the cows but their long horns urge me towards caution. They are all pretty far out of my way and I head straight for the boulder. I slow way down when I‘m about 15 feet away and begin to realize that I am wrong.
My heart starts beating rapidly and I can barely breath. I have a feeling, like I want to run away, but I keep walking right into the stench, because there’s this other urge propelling me, the urge to be sure of what I am seeing. I come right up on it and try not to throw up. It’s a dead bull, solid white, except the head is completely gone and maggots are pouring out of the open neck.
I start waving frantically to Jeff and Reed and Dean. While they scramble down the embankment I make a careful study of the corpse. I look around first of all for the head. I keep thinking it could have died of natural causes, but where is the fucking head? I walk slowly around it and see that its anus is gone and in its place is a burnt out hole, big and perfectly round. The genitals are also gone and there are burns on its back. I wonder where the blood is. It seems like there should be some, but there isn’t. I’ve heard of things like this, but I never dreamed I’d ever encounter it.
By then Jeff and Reed show up, covering their noses and exclaiming things along the lines of
“what the…” and “Holy Shit.” and “Fuck.”
I’m feeling a little out of it, really dizzy, trying to make reasonable scientific observations because it seems terribly important to do so.
“This shit is beyond bizarre...” I hear Jeff say.
“If animal mutilation scares you, then I hate to burst your sense of security, but human beings are being mutilated as well....” Reed announces covering his nose and mouth with his arm. His chest is heaving and it seems like he might be about to hyperventilate.
“What?” Jeff looks at him. Dean has just caught up and joins us near the neck where we are watching the maggots wriggle.
“Gentlemen, some of these alien scum are hostile....” he tells us shaking his dirty blonde head.
I am trembling but I take Jeff’s camera out of his hands.
“Nothing proves aliens did this.” I tell them and start taking pictures. I’ve got this feeling like it’s my responsibility to document this. I can almost picture it being analyzed by the cattle man and the local Sheriff and agents Mulder and Scully. I’m freaking out, but I move as slowly and calmly as I possibly can, trying to stay in control of my shaking. Trying with my critical attention to make it less terrifying
“You seem so sure of that…” Reed challenges, “You do know that it is not only cattle being mutilated, but an entire variety of animals, including humans?”
“It’s not aliens. It's humans with nothing else better to do. Think about it. Bored people do weird stuff. Especially red neck neo nazis.” Jeff says it, but I’ve been thinking it. I just can’t imagine it being that easy to cut off a bull’s head. I wonder what they could have used, and speculate that the bull could have died of natural causes and the skinheads might have come along after the fact and done the mutilating… my head is swimming.
Now Dean clears his throat and tells us,
“I’m an abductee.”
We all stare at him. Even me. This is the guy I’ve been sitting in the back seat with all day, watching him eat my pork rinds and slurp my water. You think you know a guy.
“Nothing bad has happened to me.” He continues. “My girlfriend at the time was impregnated though, somehow.”
“What?!” Jeff erupts, sweat pouring over his brow, “You fucking moron! ‘Somehow’? She was your fucking girl friend! It was probably your baby! I’ll tell you what got the cow, it’s those mother fucking maggots, not hogus bogus aliens!”
Jeff’s face and neck have turned all red. He looks like he wants to strangle Dean, or maybe Reed, but can’t decide which one. This doesn’t surprise me. Jeff’s got a temper. We’ve been recording music together for seven years and have gone through dozens of bass players and drummers. Our deal is that he gets to be an asshole to everyone but me. What does throw me for a loop is Dean’s response.
“You’re the true moron. They’ll take your daughter, your son, and at the end of the day, all you’d do is call your own children morons. You deserve to have your adrenal glands eaten as if it were cocaine! Aliens don't eat our adrenal glands, right? Bunch of bullshit.” He kicks the ground and shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Yup. Luckily I got a chip in my head,” he withdraws one hand to tap his temple then puts it back again, “that prevents me from spoiling when it hits. This oil spill in the gulf, is just the beginning...” he stalks away from us in the direction of the sinking sun.
Jeff seems to be stunned, because he doesn’t do any more shouting. He waits till Dean is out of ear shot and whispers,
“He’s nuts.”
Even Reed is rubbing the stubble on his chin and eyeing Dean nervously.
“Yeah.” He says quietly, “I mean, this cow could have been mutilated by Aliens, but Dean… he’s just plain psycho. You remember when we stopped in that grocery store in Escalon yesterday? I couldn’t tell you because we’ve all been jammed together in that piece of shit car, but he got into a fight with the butcher over the price of ground sirloin. He’s about to pull the guy over the counter, he actually reached out and grabbed his collar! I’m like, what are you doing buying ground beef anyway? We aren’t grilling. He just took the meat and stormed off, so I finished getting drinks and snacks and stuff and when I came out of the store he was standing out side, EATING THE RAW HAMBURGER. He tried to throw it away so I wouldn’t see what he was doing, but I saw it.”
Now I’m really nauseated. We stand there looking at each other and at Dean’s back.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Jeff says, then he looks at me and Reed meaningfully and adds, “Without Dean.”
“What?” I say, “We’re just going to leave him here? With that?” I gesture to the mutilated cow. Jeff nods slowly.
“Don’t worry.” Reed says, “I’m sure ‘that’ is a picnic as far as he’s concerned. He’ll probably eat it, maggots and all.”
I consider it. Dean might really be an abductee. If he is, maybe the cow really was mutilated by Aliens. Maybe the Aliens are Nazis. Maybe they’ll give him a ride home. I’m feeling really altered, as if I just swallowed a handful of pills or something. My heart is racing and my skin is crawling. My mind lurches. Maybe there are no aliens and Dean is a homicidal maniac. He craves raw meat. He doesn’t respect boundaries. Just like the red neck Nazis, he’s going to cut our heads off and… I mean, we all know Dean is weird, we just don't’ know how weird...
”Right now,” Jeff says, “We’ve got to go right now, come on.”
We three start to walk hurriedly away from the headless steer. The valley is full of shadows and the sun is out of sight leaving the sky streaked with pink. I’m not sure what I’m afraid of anymore. Nazis? Aliens? Dean? Somehow, all of us moving quickly together sets me off. I start to run and Jeff and Reed start to run too. We three climb frantically up the hill and scramble into the car locking the doors as if something were about to get us.
“Hurry up.” Reed is saying as Jeff fumbles getting the key in the ignition.
Dean hasn’t even missed us yet. Jeff starts the car up and takes off up the incline. Within a matter of minutes, trees are lining the road and we’re in a whole new terrain. The stereo is silent now and we’ve rolled up the windows and none of us says a word. I look over at the empty seat beside me covered in crumbs and half emptied water bottles and I think ‘We left Dean.’
The forest outside is growing dark around us and I shiver. Nobody says a word.