The Fiction of Jon Fish

NEWS: Falling Behind

2006-08-09T19:48:00.000-05:00

Its been awhile since I've posted anything here. I know, it sucks. But that doesn't mean I haven't been writing. I've spent the majority of the summer working on a new novel and its coming along quite nicely. I dunno when I'll get around to posting anything new with grad school and moving and everything else, but otherwise as soon as I get some inspiration I'll be sure to post whatever comes out. Until then!

~Peace

Insomnia

2006-04-09T04:08:00.000-05:00

I've been lying here for over an hour now. You fell asleep long ago, curled against me, the curvature of your back fitting neatly in my embrace, my arm draped across your side.

You're beautiful in your sleep. You're beautiful when you're awake, too, but when you fall asleep at my side, I see in you a beauty that only the serenity of pure contentment can make manifest. When awake, I see the same hurt in you that you must see in me. Its the hurt of knowing that soon you and I will part ways; that our lives are inexorably spiraling toward a continuing to exist without one another. Its a subtle wounding, but it cuts me to the very core, and the hurt that I see reflected in your eyes every waking moment we spend together acts as a constant reminder of how painful our parting will be.

I don't want to get up, but I can't lie there anymore. I wish I could stay beside you, watching you sleeping peacefully, the moonlight coming through my bedroom window resting lightly on your skin and illuminating your sweet, carefree expression until the sun wakes you at first light, as it always does, before you smile sweetly at me and turn over to return to sleep.

But I cannot. Tonight, as I lay against you, breathing in the scent of your hair and lightly stoking your stomach with my fingertips, I am overcome with grief at the impending loss of you from my life.

Noiselessly, I kiss you on the shoulder before escaping the bed at its foot and I move toward the door. It is cold without you against me, and I pick up a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt from the open dresser drawer. I turn to you again and see that you have not stirred, and I smile weakly. My melancholy is deepening with every second spent in your presence, and I force myself to turn away and leave you to your peaceful respite from our shared pain

I close the door to the bedroom and turn on the hall light. It casts a yellow din in the small hallway that spills out into the modest living area of my apartment. Everything is as we left it: the dishes remain unwashed on the table, the candles from our dinner have burned themselves out, and the single red rose in the vase remains undisturbed. But by this time it has been cut for nearly twelve hours, and despite the water its severed stem has been submerged in, the first signs of wilting are beginning to show.

I put the shirt and pants on, and pick up the dishes with the small bits of leftover pasta and the drying, clotting remains of my primavera sauce sticking to them, and I move toward the kitchen. I place the dishes in the sink with the full intention of washing them, but as soon as I get the water running I find that I've lost my motivation. I lay them flat and drop a dab of dish soap on them, content to leave them soaking instead.

I return to the living room and sit at my desk in the corner. I go through the usual routine: checking my e-mail, seeing if any of my friends are online, and glancing at the news. But its four-thirty in the morning - nothing interesting is going on, nobody is around to talk to.

And I sigh, because if ever I needed someone to talk to, it would be now. I know I could come and talk to you about anything. You'd help me, you'd listen, but I think that you and I are the only people that cannot help each other with what we are going through together. Really, I think all we can do is hurt each other, because as the day where we will move to two different parts of the world draws ever nearer, we become that much closer.

It scares me when I think about what we've become, and what's happening to me as a result. I've never felt this way before - so weak, so vulnerable. I keep playing it off in front of our friends, joking and laughing with all the guys, flirting with all the girls, and acting as if I'm on top of the world, but at the end of the day I come home exhausted from the charade and wishing I could sleep.

Or cry.

The latter desire scares me the worst. I haven't cried since I was in high school, almost five years ago now. A part of me hates myself for my weakness, and another part just pities me for letting myself get so involved in something that could never work out.

Its weird, ya know? We've both worked hard our entire lives to get to where we're going, and everything we've ever wanted is finally coming within our grasp, but we couldn't be more depressed about it. In five years, you'll be Dr. Marist, and I'll be Dr. Cardin. Its what we've always wanted, and now its finally becoming a reality. We should be exuberant. But then I'm forced to wonder: how many times will we see each other in that half-decade? Even when we do have breaks, will we have time to visit one another? Will we even want to? And my grief returns to me with renewed vigor.

I leave the desk and cross the room to the couch, where I sink into it's leather embrace as I reach for the television remote. For a few brief moments I flip through the channels mindlessly, not even taking in the myriad of infomercials and televangelists who dominate the airwaves at this time of night. Bored, frustrated, and no closer to finding fulfillment or resolution, I turn the television off and rise again.

I pick my iPod up from the charger on the bookshelf and place the headphones in my ears. I turn on the device and move back toward my computer, retaking my position in the well-worn desk chair. I pick my ska playlist, the most upbeat, cheerful list of songs I have ever compiled, and set it to random play.

Then I turn my attention to the computer. I feel compelled to write about something, but there's only one thing on my mind tonight, and I cannot draw any motivation or muse from any other topic as I stare at the screen with the word processor open, the cursor blinking monotonously on the blank page.

Finally, I resign myself to the feeling, and my fingers spring to life, clicking away at the keyboard in a delicate but passionate fervor. Suddenly, deeply intimate memoirs of my feelings for you burst onto to the screen. I am consumed by our history, and pages upon pages of our story begin to appear from nowhere.

I am so engrossed that I do not realize that two hours have passed and the sun is beginning to peak up over the horizon. Nor to I notice you entering the room until you lay a hand upon my shoulder and kiss me lightly on my neck.

"You weren't in bed," you explain. "I was worried."

I take my earphones off and turn from my place at the desk to face you. You've put on my black cotton jacket that I'd left on the floor the previous night and zipped it up to keep warm, but your legs are still bare, and goosebumps have already begun to appear on your calves and thighs. You look beautiful with the sleep still weighing heavily upon you, and I smile at you warmly, but weakly.

"I couldn't sleep," I say to you, placing an arm around your waist and drawing you to me. You sit on my lap in the desk chair and wrap your arms around my neck. I kiss you deeply and you moan lovingly before pulling back and smiling at me, keeping your eyes closed for a moment longer, savoring the transitory feeling of shared oneness.

"What are you writing?" you ask, taking your arms from around me and using one foot to rotate the chair back toward the desk so that you can look at the monitor.

"Nothing in particular," I say, trying to suppress my sadness as I hold you by the waist, enjoying your warmth and the familiar contours of your body against mine yet again.

But you are not dissuaded by my half-hearted defense of my privacy. You find this letter that I've been writing these past few hours, this debacle that has become a declamation of my pain, an admission of my deepest fear, and a treatise on my irrepressible suffering of every moment spent with you, borne not from our time together, but from the coming time that we will be apart.

You read these hastily written and unedited pages silently, your eyes fixed upon the words on the screen as I hold you. I'm afraid of how you're going to react. You always get angry with me for not sharing my feelings, and I fear the reprisal for never expressing my anguish to you.
But as you reach the end, I notice a tear has formed in the corner of your eye, and I watch it streak down your cheek, leaving a wet trail on your face. It reaches the side of your chin and hangs suspended upside down for a moment before slipping off and splashing silently on your bare thigh.

"Are you mad?" I ask, tightening my hold around your waist as I lean forward, resting my chin on your shoulder.

"No," you say, stifling a whimper as you wipe at both of your eyes with your fingers." I can't blame you for not talking about any of this." I kiss you on the shoulder then rest my forehead on your back just below your neck.

"It hurts," I say. "It hurts so much that some days I dont know what I'm going to do without you in my life." I know that there will always be the phone and the internet and visits home and the like, but we are both aware of the fact that such communictions won't be able to make up for what we have right now, at this very moment, and I feel you tense slightly as I speak the words.
"It hurts me too," you say with a sigh. "That's why I can't be mad. I can't talk about it either."

I feel that long forgotten stinging at the back of my eyes, and a salty liquid from some heretofore unknown reserve begins to empty into my vision, blurring my world into a misshapen haze.

We sit in silence, unmoving. You dont realize what's happening to me until I'm unable to choke back one of the sobs. Upon hearing it, you leap from my lap and turn to face me. You've never seen me cry before. In all the time you've known me, you've never seen tears in my eyes, and you are surprised and frightened. The look on your face, still blurred by the tears, is one of confusion and anguish. You don't know what to do.

But then clarity seems to come to you, and fear is replaced by affection, confusion with sympathy. You pull me to you, wrapping your arms around my neck. I sob into your breast for what seems like ages, and you hold me, rocking me gently back and forth, silently trying to comfort me.

Countless times I've held you as you've wept over the years, and now, for the first time, you are able to return the favor, and I can feel nothing but gratitude for having had the joy of knowing you. My fears of losing you are swallowed by an overwhelming gratefulness for the time we have had together, and for the love that you have made me feel for you. I am keenly aware that I will never hurt more than I will when we part ways, but I know that the happiness that you have brought to my life has been worth every bit of it.

Getting my tears under control, I look up into your beautiful green eyes. "I love you," I say, holding you tightly. You bend town and kiss me sweetly.

"I love you too," you answer as you pull back, your face less than an inch from my own as you echo these beautiful words.

I rise, and together we return to the bedroom. The sun has made it's full presence known over the far horizon, and the room is bathed in yellow and orange light as we crawl back into the bed and under the covers. You are against me again, the curvature of your back fitting neatly into my embrace once more as we drift quickly and quietly into the world of peaceful respite together.

Live and Learn

2006-01-28T18:37:00.000-05:00

Jane slammed down the phone and left Aaron alone to try and figure out what the hell had just happened.

“Fuck!” he yelled into the now disconnected receiver.

Faye knocked on the door. “Aaron? Did I get you in trouble?”

Well…not totally alone.

“So ya finally dumped her, eh?” Paula asked as he motioned to the bartended for another bottle.

“Not exactly. We had a fight. But I’m pretty sure it’s over,” Aaron said, taking sip from his rum and coke.

“So what happened exactly?”

“Well I’d been pretty frustrated by this whole shy, wounded-pigeon routine. I mean you couldn’t touch the girl without her getting all tense and nervous. I didn’t do any of this crap to her and I’d been nothing but compassionate ‘til yesterday and she still refused to trust me even a little. Aggravating as all hell. ”

“Oh what a nice guy you are; relationships aren’t worth working on are they?” Paula asked contemptuously. She wasn’t really mad at him so much as she was trying to press his buttons and make him think. She was good at that.

“Don’t give me that crap. You know how I am. I’m more than willing to work on it; the problem was that she wasn’t willing to work on it,” Aaron said.

“Yeah whatever. That’s not exactly something to get all pissed off about. I’m guessing she had a good reason to be mad at you too, right?”

“In her mind, maybe. In mine she’s batshit crazy.”

“Let me guess: the sexbuddy? What’s-her-name?” Paula asked, chewing absently on a plastic drink stirrer.

“Faye, and yeah,” Aaron sighed.

“So she found out about her I guess?”

“Well she knew I was dating other people but…”

“Psh, dating. You said yourself you weren’t dating Faye. That you guys were just fucking,” Paula countered.

“Still, it’s not like we were being exclusive or anything. It shouldn’t matter if I go out and sleep with someone else, especially since Jane and I weren’t sleeping together. Faye and I were just lonely and having a good time; meeting mutual needs I guess you could say. Purely functional, nothing more.”

“You really don’t get women do you?”

“If I did, do you think I’d let you berate me mercilessly about my myriad of flaws and my incapacity to deal with them appropriately?” Aaron asked rhetorically.

“True enough. So what happened?” Paula discarded the now-mangled stirrer and, for the first time, seemed genuinely interested in the story.

Tom sighed and looked into his drink. “Well we went out to dinner and we were supposed to go see Charlie’s band afterward. They got that gig at The Underground and it was supposed to be their big break. Anyway, halfway through dinner she gets a call and one of her drunken bitchy friends calls her up and begs her to come pick her up and take her home. Now why her friend is trashed by 8:00 is beyond me.”

“Aha, the catalyst,” Paula said, finishing her second beer in ten minutes and motioning for another.

“So I’m kinda pissed. I tell her surely there’s some other person that can pick her friend up and how these tickets cost thirty bucks apiece but she doesn’t even seem to care. But I keep quiet and don’t antagonize her or anything 'cause I know the second I confront her she’ll clam up and never speak to me again. Ya just can’t talk to her about anything.”

“Again with the lack of understanding and the emotional insensitivity,” Paula mused.

“Maybe I’d be more sensitive if she’d told me why she’s this way. Right now it just looks like extremely irrational emotional baggage. But as you love to point out, I don’t understand women.”

“Ayup.”

“Anyway, she goes on home and I’m stuck with an extra ticket and a night of potential loneliness. So I called up Faye. She’s a ska fan and I figure ‘Hey, at the least the night doesn’t have to be a total loss.’”

“Heh, can’t get any emotional satisfaction, so we’ll settle for the physical, eh?”

“Sounds about right,” Aaron said, finishing his first drink and ordering a second. “So we got out, have a good time, come back, have a really good time, then I nod off. Bout half an hour later or so my phone goes off and wakes me up. I hear Faye in the shower and I sluggishly struggle to find my pants and then the pocket where my phone is.”

“Uh oh,” Paula mused with a smile. She asked for a straw from the bartender which she put into her beer. She began using her tongue to fish for the end of it and bring it lightly to her lips.

“Oh, gee, that’s nice. Thanks for that.”

“It’s not for you,” Paula said. “There’s a guy behind you about four seats away that’s been staring at me since we got in here. I’m trying to get him to buy my next one.”

“I think it’s your laser-like focus that endears me to you the most,” Aaron said.

“Oh shut up, I’m listening. You’re about to get caught. Keep going.”

Aaron sighed. “Anyway, I pick up the phone.”

“Hello?” Aaron asked weakly.

“Aaron, where are you?” It was Jane.

“I’m, uh,” Aaron started. He heard the shower shut off in the adjacent bathroom. “I’m out with a friend.”

Faye opened the door and walked into the room with a towel around her hair. “Damn that feels better. Oh hey, sorry didn’t know you were on the phone.”

“Shit,” Aaron sighed under his breath.

“Who was that?” Jane asked.

“Just my friend. Look I, uh, can’t really talk right now and I…”

“It’s a girl, isn’t it?” Jane asked dourly.

Aaron got up from the bed and slid past Faye, trying not to touch her, but still collecting some of the errant water that she had missed resting on the small of her back on his shoulder and arm. He motioned for her to give him a minute, at which Faye started to protest, but he closed the door behind him and sat on the edge of the bathtub.

“Look, I was pissed off about you bailing on me, so I called up a friend we went to the concert. It’s no big deal,” Aaron said softly, trying to make sure his words would not extend beyond the bathroom door.

“So where are you really?” Jane asked, a hint of anger creeping into her voice. Aaron decided it was time to give up the ruse and try to take the high ground from her.

“I’m at her apartment alright? Is that what you wanna hear?”

“Figures. Guys are all the same.”

“Look, I don’t know what reason you think you have to get mad at me. It’s not like we were being exclusive or anything, and it’s not like you and I were sleeping together. If we were, it’d be different, but without those conditions, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on.”

“I don’t put out so you go and get your thrills elsewhere. I hate men,” Jane hissed.

“I hope you don’t really think that. Do you think I’d have been this patient and put up with all you’re waiting and pushing me away if I was only looking to score with you?” Then something dawned on him. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Why you never open up, never talk to me? Jesus Christ woman.”

“Why would I tell you my biggest fear? You’d only end up using it against me.”

“Look you’ve clearly got some issues that, had you mentioned earlier, might have prevented this. Far as I can see, you did this to yourself.”

Jane slammed down the phone and left Aaron alone to try and figure out what the hell had just happened.

“Fuck!” he yelled into the now disconnected receiver.

Faye knocked on the door. “Aaron? Did I get you in trouble?”

“Sigh, that sounds like a fun one. I’m sorry I missed it,” Paula said as the bartender handed her a fourth beer, this one paid for by the man behind Aaron.

“Yeah, I’m sorry you missed it, too. I coulda really gone for a threesome after that,” Aaron said with a grin.

“I told ya: fuckbuddies are a bad idea,” Paula said, ignoring his comment.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. So which one of us was wrong?”

“Well, technically you’re right: you did have the “high ground,” as you said, in that you weren’t in a relationship with her or anything. But you really fucked up in not taking her feelings into account. Sex is very emotionally intense for most women, and when you went off with this other girl and Jane found out, she felt cheated and cheapened because you don’t take it as seriously as she does.”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing. I don’t really care about Faye, and she doesn’t really care about me. We’re just friends. But I care about Jane; or at least I did ‘til she, like every other woman on earth, revealed her crazy side.”

“You’re such an insensitive jerk,” Paula said mockingly.

“You know that’s not true. It’s my penchant for letting women walk all over me that gets me in trouble, remember?”

“Yeah, well, ya live and ya learn, then you buy yourself another beer,” Paula said, raising her drink and tilting it toward him.

“Amen to that,” Aaron said, clinking his glass against her bottle and downing the last of its contents.

how to tell a girl you Lust her

2005-12-18T05:01:00.000-05:00

Nice Guy Syndrome: a folk psychology term describing an adult male who seeks intimacy but only finds cordial friendship and platonic love. The term originates from a platitude often heard by such men (e.g. "You're a really nice guy and all, but…"). The "nice guy" is typically a pleasant, intelligent male, lacking romantic success and usually has low or misguided romantic confidence. The man may be a very good listener, and is often articulate and expressive in his manner of speech. Such men are often frustrated by, if not indignant about, their romantic trouble.

     “Two pair,” Tim said, tossing his cards down on the dining room table.

     “King high straight,” Beth replied, flashing him her own cards.

     “Damn,” he said absently.

     “That’s five hands in a row,” Beth said as she stood and stretched. Tim could see the contours of her lithe figure as she reached skyward, straining to awaken the muscles that had sat long dormant as the hours passed in which Tim had effectively given her the contents of his wallet. He fought desperately with the urge to reach out and run his fingers across her taut stomach as it was revealed to him from under the too-short t-shirt by her raised shoulders. “And it looks like you’re out of money now.”

     “That about sums it up,” Tim said, trying to stifle a quiver in his voice as she brought her arms down and moved behind him. She placed her hand on the back of his neck with the fingers pointing up, and ran them through his buzzed hair, making him shiver involuntarily, which elicited a giggle from her.

     “You’re so damn cute sometimes I just can’t stand it,” she said.

     “Um, thanks?”

     “It’s a compliment, Tim. Don’t be naïve.”

      She smelled faintly of lilacs. The aroma radiated off her body as she leaned into him, her abdomen pressed into the back of his head, and continued to caress his hair. Normally Tim wouldn’t have been able to identify such an arcane aroma, but he knew what it was this time because that was the image on the bottle of shampoo that had recently taken up residence in his bathroom. Something else was in her scent too, something not artificial, and Tim found it was far more alluring than some pretty flower could ever be.

     “Damn it’s four in the morning; it only feels like midnight,” Beth said, looking at the wall clock.

     “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

     “Yeah, let me tell ya,” she said, “Two–player poker games on a Friday night. You sure know how to show a girl a great time.”

     You have no idea, he thought.

“Tim,” she said, he tone turning meek, “why did you let me stay with you?”

“I dunno…” Tim said, “You needed a place to stay. I couldn’t let my best friend drop out of college and go home simply because she had nowhere to live.”

     “Yeah, but I mean you’ve been doing so much more than just giving me a place to stay. After I lost everything in the fire, you gave me money to buy clothes, food, gas…”

     Don’t forget lilac shampoo.

     “You’ve let me crash here for almost a month now without expecting anything from me. You even gave me your bed while you’ve slept on the couch for the last four weeks for God’s sakes. You’ve given me more help in the last month than my own parents have given me in the last year. Why?”

     “I guess I just felt like I needed to help you.”

       I guess I just felt like I needed to hold you.

     “And you’ve been a perfect gentleman the entire time. You’ve never ‘accidentally’ walked in on me in the shower just happened to need something out of your room when I was changing clothes. You haven’t made a single snide remark about what we could do whenever I’ve bitched about being bored. You haven’t even tried to liquor me up since I’ve been here.”

     She continued to caress his scalp as she spoke, and with each movement, the
underside of her breasts would graze the back of his head or the tops of his ears, sending electric shocks throughout his body.

     “Hasn’t stopped you from liquoring yourself up,” Tim said. “Speaking of which…”He slid his chair back and stood up. Getting a drink served the dual purpose of calming his nerves and keeping her from inadvertently sending his hormones into a rage.

     “I swear,” she said, turning to him as he pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels from the cabinet in the kitchen, “if I hadn’t found that stash of porn in your bottom dresser drawer I might start to think you were gay.”

     “Gee, thanks for that,” Tim said over his shoulder. He pulled two glasses from the cupboard and poured a couple of shots in each. He turned and walked back into the dining room, handing her one of the glasses, which she managed to down in three large gulps.

     “Oh come on, I’m just kidding. Besides I’ve probably watched ‘em more than you have lately, which reminds me – you need to get a detachable shower head.”

“Yeah, because I want to pay good money so that you can leave footprints on the wall in my shower.” She was wearing a tank top and a pair of boxer shorts, her usual sleep attire, and Tim’s eyes kept drifting from the bottom of his cup back to her soft thighs.

“Well, I’m gonna leave ‘em regardless; at least this way I don’t run up your water bill too. Besides, you don’t have any ‘good money ‘left. I’ll be using my poker winnings to pay for my new toy.”

Tim sighed. “I guess we’re going to Target tomorrow then.”

     In her time since having basically moved in, Beth had also commandeered the thermostat and was keeping Tim’s apartment at a frigid sixty-four degrees. The air conditioner had kicked on again and upon the realization of the effects it was having on her physical anatomy, Tim found that his restraint was no match for both Beth’s bare legs and steadily hardening nipples.

“Tim, it’s okay – look before your neck snaps. Hell, I think the least I can do is not get offended when you check me out. I mean what am I gonna do, leave? Besides I know you’re not gonna do anything.”

I bet I could rip that shirt off with one hand.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m only human.”

“But you’re still the best human I’ve ever known.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for being so sweet.”

Take her in your hands and melt her like a popsicle.

“You’re welcome.”

“I think I’m gonna hit the sack. Need anything before I go?” she said as she stood and began walking toward the bedroom door.

“Yeah, actually,” he started. She turned back to him

“What?”

I love you. I want you. I need you. Say it!

“Just…wondering what time you wanna go to the store tomorrow.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Whenever you get up is fine. I guess considering the time, we’ll both end up sleeping in tomorrow.”

“Yeah, alright.”

“Goodnight, Tim,” she said, flashing him a smile as she closed the bedroom door.

“Goodnight, Tim,” he sighed.

Commentary: I like this story. This is basically the way I used to be around women. Though never to this extreme, I used to be pretty inept back in the dark ages. Anyway, I love the playful distance here. She’s basically throwing herself at him and he has so little self-confidence that he can’t even grasp the meaning. He wants her, she wants him, but he’s too paralyzed by his perceived flaws that he can’t make a move.

And God forbid that the girl just come out and say it. If there’s anything I’ve learned about women, she is ten times more likely to act like a near-psychotic tease than she is to just simply come out and say what she’s thinking. She expects the man to catch on to her hints, but men don’t catch hits. Men are stupid. Subtlety is not in our vocabulary.

I’d really like to play with a companion piece to this one that goes inside her head while this is going on. I think that would be just as funny, trying to listen to her agonize over his apparent thick-headedness. I might play with that later. Until then,

~Peace

Illogical

2005-12-18T04:18:00.000-05:00

Hello. My name is Tom, and I am addicted to ethics.

I have been cursed with the ability to see each and every side of an issue, and it has become so ingrained in my being that I have found it increasingly difficult to even function in everyday life.

Let me give you an example: I volunteer at a non-profit organization dedicated to finding homes for abandoned children. We spend thousands of dollars on supplies each month to house and take care of these children until we can find a place for them to stay. Now, I know that I can purchase the supplies at discount rates at Wal-Mart, but if I do so I hurt the American economy, further entrap the people working there, and help to exploit the children working in overseas sweat shops to produce the goods. So it’s either help our kids at the expense of, well, pretty much everyone else; or spend more money on fewer supplies for abandoned orphans. Who do I choose? Who gets to be a victim of this cold cost-benefit analysis?

This kind of crap keeps me up at night.

This “gift” is not something that I was born with, though. It was something forced upon me during my more formative years. I can actually pinpoint the day that I started embracing all this ethical bullshit. How’s that for fucked up?

Now, I’d be lying if I said it’s because I knew then that the events of October 27th 1989 would shape me into the pathetic, self-hating narcissist you see before you. Na, it’s nothin’ quite like that. I remember because it was the day that Dad kicked Janice out of the house. It was also the last day that I called Janice “Mom.”

I was seven then. I’d been fighting the flu for a couple days, but my father was one of those types that said if you weren’t passed out, coughing up a lung, or vomiting ‘til you were dehydrated, you didn’t get out of school. It took all of two hours for the latter to happen, and all over my teacher’s paisley dress, too.

She sent me to the nurse’s office where I was only running a 101 degree fever. Yes kids, believe it or not, there was a time when America funded public schools well enough to afford nurses and text books printed in the same decade they were being used! Anyway, she tried calling both my parents, but neither answered their phones at work. I might’ve found that odd had I not been both sweating and freezing at the same time.

Fortunately, I only lived a few blocks from the school, and after forcing a double dose of Thera-Flu down my throat, the nurse sent me home.

I remember the walk home well. I keep this memory protected because I always want to be able to recall what it was like to be normal, to be human. It was so…serene. The world would function as normal one last time for me, and this was it. The crisp fall air smelled fresh and clean and the cool temperature felt good on my hot skin, though I knew it would only be a few minutes before I would be freezing again. There were a few children not quite old enough to be in school playing on the sidewalk. Some girls were drawing hopscotch courses in chalk and challenging each other to do it faster than the last one. A couple of boys were playing “Cops and Robbers” in the front lawn of one of their houses. My neighbor, an elderly man, was mowing the fallen leaves in his yard with his big red riding lawnmower.

When I think about this, I want to think that I smiled at these people as I passed them, but I don’t think I did. I was sick after all. But every time I remember this day, I’m not seven years old anymore. I’m as old as I am when I remember it: fourteen, seventeen, twenty-one, or, like today, twenty-four. I pass them and I see their smiling faces, and I smile back. But it’s not a happy smile. It’s a sad smile, an envious smile. The kids love their games and are able to enjoy them and excused from the destructive machinations of the real world. My neighbor has everything in his life planned out. Nothing will ever surprise him.

I hate them all for it, even now.

By the time I get to my front door, though, I’m seven again. Nothing can quite make me feel younger or smaller than what is about to unfold. It’s tragic, really.

I put my key to the latch, only to realize that the door isn’t locked. It wasn’t even closed all the way, just pushed up to the frame. When I try to push my key in, the door swings open, and that’s when I hear the yelling.

“How the fuck could you do this to us, Janice?”

I knew something was wrong. Dad never cursed. Today would be the last time I would hear him do so until I turned nineteen and told him I had dropped out of engineering and was majoring in English instead.

“Because of you, Michael! Because of all this! Do you think I wanted to be married, living in the suburbs, raising a kid of all things before I was thirty? I had my whole damn life ahead of me and you took that all away when you knocked me up!”

“When I knocked you up?” Dad shouted. “As I recall, it was you who told me you were on the pill. You think I wanted to be a dad at twenty-two? But I did the right thing. I married you instead of leaving you to raise him by yourself. I got a good job and gave you a home and a life. I even got you a job after Tom was born. I basically handed you the American Dream and you’d throw it all away for some zit-faced high school dropout mail clerk at your office? You’d fuck this seventeen year-old and ruin everything we’ve built together just so you can feel young for a few minutes?”

“Fuck you Michael!” Janice screamed.

“No, fuck you Janice,” Dad said resolutely. “Get your stuff and get the fuck out of my house.”

I remember my Mom dashing from the kitchen and running upstairs. She didn’t even notice me standing in the doorway. Dad did, though. He was taking a long, slow drink from newly opened bottle of beer as he left the kitchen. He nearly choked on it when he saw me standing there, spilling some on the floor.

“Tom? What are you doing home? How long have you been there?”

I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, stunned. I remember hearing the kids playing across the street. One of the boys was shouting at the other. “I shot you! I shot you! You’re dead!” One of the girls was crying, too. She had fallen and skinned her knee on the sidewalk. Her mother had rushed out and was trying to get her daughter’s bawling under control. “Let me kiss it and make it all better,” the mother said. I hated them both just then.

“Tom? Did you hear your mom and I arguing just now?”

“What happened?” I’d asked.

“Your mother…your mother lied to us. She told a lie and now she’s going to be leaving and never coming back.”

“Fuck you, Dan,” Janice had said as she came back down the stairs with a suitcase in each hand. She shoved me out of the way and slammed the door behind her. Dad had taken the beer bottle in his hand and thrown it at the door. The bottle had shattered against the wood less than a foot from me.

That was seventeen years ago now. At the time, of course, I hadn’t understood that my mother had been fucking some mail clerk at the insurance agency where she worked. I didn’t even know what fucking was. But what I did understand is that a lie had ruined my parents’ marriage.

From that day forward, I endeavored to never lie again. For a time, it worked. I mean I was a kid what was there to be deceptive about? Whether or not I ate a cookie before dinner? But as I got older I learned that not only does everybody lie all the time, but that it is a necessity for survival.

God damn human nature.

For a while I was able to rationalize “white lies” and “partial truths,” as necessary to function, but I can’t even do that anymore without pangs of guilt and regret. I remember with a fondness the days where I could tell a teacher, “Oh yeah, I did that assignment,” or say to a girl, “The last thing I’m interested in is sex.”

I can’t lie anymore because I’ve seen how people rationalize their own unethical behavior, and it just disgusts me. It’s a goddamn mindfuck to see Bible-thumping fundamentalists go out of their way to tell people that they’re going to hell, yet ignore the not judging lest they be judged thing or doing nothing about the motes in their own eyes. I laugh out loud when I see Michael Moore, who must weigh close to three hundred pounds, preach about the excesses of American society. It is absolute madness.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I am often torn between being tactful and being truthful. This is especially prevalent in my job. I work in the writing center for the English department as part of my work-study financial aid for grad school. I wouldn’t mind this job usually. I mean I like working with people. Unfortunately, it isn’t the people who come to college to get an education that come and get my help. Mainly, it’s the people getting paid to sleep through class and lift weights that need assistance.  These supposed college students come in to my office with some of the most absolutely god-awful writing that I have ever seen. How they even make it into college without some modicum of competency in wielding the English language is beyond me.

So, what is the ethical choice here?

I can be honest, tell them that they suck and that there’s nothing I can do to turn their tripe into something a professor won’t vomit on when he/she reads it, because these guys always wait ‘til the day before the assignment is due to bring it in and get help. Or I can lie to them, do my best to help ‘em out, and pray the professor is hopped up on a healthy dose of Paxil. Because if the kid comes by, gets help from me, and still fails the assignment, guess whose fault it is. Not that they would fail anyway; the athletic department always manages to find a way to keep their worst students on the field. It’s like fucking high school all over again.

God, I sound like such a narcissist. I don’t really think I’m better than anyone else. In fact, I envy most everyone else. They don’t have to go through this crap like I do. My friend Brandt still gives me hell over the situation with Erin.

Erin was a friend of mine for years. We’d gotten close as the years passed, and she’d apparently developed some secret attraction to me. God knows why; I mean listen to me for Christ’s sakes. Would you want to fuck this?

Anyway, she finally comes out with all this crap about how she loves me and wants to be with me and all this other junk and I sit there, absolutely serious, and say, “Well, that’s great and all, but you’re just a friend. I’m not really interested in a relationship with you. Nothing against you or anything; it’s just how I feel.”

Brandt kicked my ass for that one. “You said what?!” he shouted when I went to his apartment later that night.

“I told her I didn’t love her,” I said.

“Dude!” he yelled. “That doesn’t matter! She basically threw herself at you! Erin is fucking fine! You don’t have to love her! You hit that, you idiot!” He sighed. “What happened next?”

“We talked for the next twenty minutes or so and she basically came up to saying she didn’t care if I loved her or not, she just wanted to come over.”

“I’m going to say this as nicely as possible, given the situation: you are a goddamn motherfucking idiot. What are you doing here instead of being over there knocking that against the headboard?”

I didn’t really have an answer, at least not one that wouldn’t have seen me suffer more ridicule, from him or myself. Hell, I didn’t say no because I didn’t want to fuck her. Like Brandt said, Erin is fucking fine. Besides, she said she didn’t care, so what was the problem?

The problem, so to speak, lies in the fact that, despite how hot Erin might be and how much I would love to take that home for a few hours, I still didn’t think of her as anything more than a friend and I’m not stupid enough to believe that she really doesn’t care if I don’t love her back. I knew that she was lying the instant that she said it, even though she seemed to believe it herself. If I’d gone through with it, the immensity of her feelings or whatever crap she’s drudged up for me from God knows where would eventually crush her ability to keep our adventures at the sexscapade level. It would destroy the friendship between us, which I really did cherish. As you can probably imagine, it’s hard for a person like me to make many friends.

Not like it mattered, the friendship was destroyed anyway. Apparently people don’t respect frankness and honesty anymore.

Damn it, why can’t I just be normal? I could be sleeping soundly in my bed with an incredibly beautiful woman lying next to me. Instead, I’m sitting here at three in the morning with a keyboard and a half-empty bottle of Jack agonizing over how many Pilipino children had been enslaved by my volunteer group’s check to Wal-Mart.

I just can’t help but wonder if, in this quest to be this great person, I’ve lost sight of everything that makes a person good to begin with.

Commentary: I’m really proud of this piece. I think I’ve been able to capture a very real, very visceral look inside the mind of a person definitely marching to the beat of a different drummer.

What I’m particularly proud of is how much one wants to both shake this character’s hand and punch him in the face at the same time. He has so many admirable qualities and always does what is the right thing. He does what everyone wishes they could do. But now that someone sees what doing the right thing all the time does to a person, it makes him pretty despicable.

I think the strongest point is how I was able to make this person’s extremely complex and very linear black and white logic not only evident, but easily comprehensible. The background story sets up his complexity, and the subsequent scenes and commentary play out why he is the way he is and how his mind functions rather than merely trying to explain it to the reader. He doesn’t tell people that he has a flawed perception of what doing the right thing is, but he shows it through his opinions and his actions and they are rather easily understood in the end.

I’m also pretty proud of the language. It’s gritty and dark and shows a severe distaste for how he feels and who he is. It really helps to capture the anger and frustration that he finds himself perpetually immersed in.

I’m not sure about the ending. I added this line to make the point more manifest, but I’m beginning to wonder if I destroyed the reality.

In general, though, I’m very happy with this story.

~Peace

Welcome! -A word from the Author

2005-12-18T02:42:00.000-05:00

Hello and welcome to my fiction blog.

Why did I create a fiction blog?

Well, for one it's way easier to post writing here than it is to turn a document into a pdf then upload it then update the webpage then make sure the links all work. That's about as fun as a calonic irrigation. All I gotta do here is copy and paste, and I like that.

But the real reason was to facilitate feedback. Several people have read the stuff on my webpage, but I get very little feedback. Not only is it much easier to post a comment here than it is send an e-mail, but you can also do it anonymously, so feel free to berate at your leisure.

Actually, I hope that for the most part you'll like my work. I mean of course my stuff isn't for everyone, but if you do like it, be sure and let me know that to. I'm also very happy to listen to criticism. If you think something would work better a different way or there's a problem with the way the story flows or whatever, let me know. I want to hear about it. Why else would I put this here. Of course just because you think something should be changed doesn't mean I'll agree, but I'll still listen and if I disagree I'm happy to talk about why.

So basically this is an open forum for my work. I write, you read and respond, and we all have a good time. I only really do this as a hobby, though. I don't plan on being a professional fiction writer or anything. That doesn't mean that if theres a publisher out there that really likes something I'm gonna say no to him/her, heh. But it does mean I don't take it too seriously, so you're not gonna offend me if you have something to say about it.

Anyway, enough of that blather. Let's get on to the good stuff.