








Just keep repeating the Mantra: "Someday I will live alone."
Rusty stank. He smelled like ointment and cheap beer. He smelled like rotting fruit and menthol cigarettes. The smell drove itself up into your nose and pushed your head back. Sometimes the smell woke me in the morning before the Dean Martin records. He played them all day. Every morning before school, I'd force my eyes open before the music started. The ominous crackles before the music starts to play. The sound still brings me to eyes wide open red alert status. Whenever I need to shake a case of the slows I just pop Deano into the CD player. This was one of those times.
No one expects that their long march into a losing battle will be heralded by Volare. . Deanos ghost wails with all the might my pawn shop pioneers will allow and all I can do is pace a cartoon hole in the floor. Today's the day I tell myself. Today's the day and there's no putting it off. I try and wish it away but it won't budge. It's sits on my mind like a gargoyle on a church. I had to lie in court. I had to lie the truth about Rusty.
When the District Attorney holds up the photos of my mother laying on the kitchen floor, her eyes staring straight up through the ceiling of the kitchen. her arms outstretched to greet the angel of death. Her legs still kneeling. She died praying. The blood pooled around her head, like a saint in a stained glass window. Her corpse affirmed divinity.
Bob watched his two children fight non-stop for 30 minutes while he prepared the grill for the Saturday night BBQ. Bob splashed lighter fluid over the charcoals when he heard Bobby Jr's shirt rip. His little darling Susan had ripped her brother's sleeve right off. The two didn't even look up to see if he was mad. They just kept going. “You two stop that now or I'm going to pour this on the both of you and set you on fire.” He tried desperately to sound like he was kidding. They ran a good distance, to the other end of the yard, slapping and snarling at each other the entire way.
Bob was handsome, but not decidedly so. He looked handsome enough to be on cable television. It also turned out that it was the only job he could really do well. He did walk on stuff for HBC. And every other month he made a movie for the Sci-Fi Channel.
Dear Darling,
I write to you knowing that you will never read this. I know I walked away when I shouldn't have. This letter is my attempt at distilling the best times we had into a single perfect moment. It's funny but I always loved you most when you were angry. Angry with me.
When you said “I love you” even when I think you really meant it; it seemed, I don't know, somehow hollow. But the time after we ate at your mother's house and I started a fight in the car. I still remember how you said you wanted to call me a son of a bitch but that would be an insult to sons of bitches. I thought “she must really love me, and she's funny. That's me all over I guess. I'm never really sure that an emotion exists within someone until I see it's polar opposite.
Remember the time when we were standing on that little footbridge near downtown by the newly installed sundial and fountain? Yeah, the time I should have kissed you and I didn't. You craned your neck and leaned against my chest and I just thought you were cold or tired. I could feel your curly hair piercing through my T-shirt introducing itself to my chest hair. My chest hair understood immediately, just took a while for the brain to get the memo. I will never experience a more seductive moment in my life. I still think you knew that when you did it. I was just a coward. I felt like a kiss from me would defile you somehow.
But I'd have chances o' plenty to defile you. You'll never know how much I appreciated your willingness for sexual experimentation. How you helped me handle my juvenile insecurities by allowing me to believe I could fuck the memory of other men out of you. You went through the rigmarole of sexual adventure so I could communicate my desires without the shame of speaking the words. I know this will disappoint you, but those are words I still cannot say. Reminds me a little of our last fight when you hurled the most sustained stream of insults I'd ever heard. That's to this day, mind you. I doubt I could replicate even a few seconds of it. I do remember the last one though.
“You kinky motherfucker.” Nothing you said before or after ever hurt so bad. Those words stab right into the heart of my shame. Still do.
I don't want you to think I need you to apologize, because I don't. I'm simply cataloging my strongest memories of you.