Audience of One

I'm no good at telling stories.

I give everyone the cliff notes because I'm bad at punch lines.

Stories get told to me. They find me, floating around like live music through your floorboard late at night. Weird voices live in my ears, strange ghosts walk through me, reality splits in two; what I'm living and what I can use later.

I hear conversations in black and white font. Things spill out of his mouth and I can't even see anymore. I read life as it happens.

His words crawl the walls in Times New Roman.

"But what's the plot?"

I wish it was that controlled. I don't know the Rising Force. I don't understand the Climax. What's Resolution? Have you ever had one?

"But, what's the hook?"

I don't know how to explain that to you. Just trust me when I say the hook's in me, dug deep in my back.

I'm more tender by the second.

Attachment Theory - Black Sheep a Novel

I open my mouth to say something more but she’s evaporated.

People, alive and dead, come and go, whenever they please. It’s a phenomenon that taken over as I’ve gotten older. My past blends into my present. There is no separation between then and now. It’s crowded in here.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice. It’s been turning over in my mind ever since. He told me, “time rushes towards you like your wife when she’s told you she’s pregnant. Terrified, expectant and saddled with growing responsibility.” I thought life was like watching the baby grow, monitoring her stomach expanding every second. Tick, tick, tock. One moment after another, after another, after another, like pearls on a strand.

We really are sold a lot of lies in this part of the physical universe.

Once it happened, my wife, the third one, Laura, would visit me pregnant whenever she wanted to break my heart.

“Dad, who are you talking to?”

My daughter is here. No, actually here. She’s let herself in. She likes checking on me.

“No one.”

“I heard you talking to someone. Who do you see?”

“Stop treating me like I’m losing my mind.”

She looks at me. She has spent her young life concerned, which is probably my fault. Or maybe her mother’s, I know they are close. I can smell the fear around her. Men watch her as she walks and have since she was very young. She is frightened of the attention, shrinking under their gaze.

Last year, I told her that people come to visit me. I shouldn’t have. It was a moment of weakness, born of living in the past more often than before. I guess I thought that maybe people came to visit her, too.

They don’t.

She touches my arm. A blue surrounds her and has since the moment she was born. I love blue. When her blue is near me I feel safe. I don’t know why. It has always been difficult for me to trace the genealogy of feeling. Where is anything born, if everything that’s happened exists before you at once?

Five minutes later, Marla leaves quickly.I am very tall, and I have to lean down to embrace her. For a moment, I see her mother in her eyes. She left quickly, too.

When I head back to the kitchen, I see Marla as a four year old, hiding in the corner, laughing. I love children. They are much easier than adults.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“What a wonderful surprise!”

“Sorry for hiding. I miss you.”

Don’t envy me. Just because my memories are just three-dimensional doesn’t mean I get to choose the pace at which life happens. Death comes fast or it comes slow. Time will, one day, end it.

Frank, by the way. My name is Frank.

...

The Oakley family was accustomed to Frank performing during mealtimes. Some nights, he literally sang for his supper.

“You need to sit down, Frank. Listen to your father.” Catherine, his mother, forty, was old for a mother. She was overweight and came from money. No matter how she tried to hide it, she was charmed by Frank, even if looking after him meant she had to vacuum with one hand on the machine, one hand gripping the collar of his shirt.

At night, as she would tuck Frank into bed, she whispered in his ear, “You’re a terror, you know that?”

He’d nod.

“But that’s why you’re my favourite. That’s the reason I fell in love with your father. Women are always attracted to terror. Never forget that.”

...

"I can see time!" yelled Frank.

There was a loud moan from the other side of the table.

The oldest Oakley son, John, after his father, had cerebral palsy. He was difficult. It was Paul and Frank’s job to take him for his daily walk after dinner. He was getting restless and wanted to go on his walk now.

Frank took that to mean that John believed what he was saying. His oldest brother saw, like him, as plain as the nose on his face, that he could read time like a book.

As Frank grew, he learned to keep it between himself and his oldest brother. Just because he heard the future, first as a voice that was not his own and then saw it, painted like murals in the sky, didn’t mean he could tell people. He was sentenced to a life of lonely secrets, guarded by one sick brother.

“How did John get sick?” Frank asked Paul once, when he was about four. Paul was eight.

“Dad was painting his room and left him alone. He was about two and he crawled to the paint and drank it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Poor Pops.”

“Yeah.”

It was the one moment in Frank’s memory that Paul had not made him feel stupid.

There was some upsides to having a sick brother. They were the first family on the block to get a TV. John spent his days inside, not moving, watching three channels in black and white.

“You can’t predict the future, you just got lucky,” said Paul.

“Our big brother believes me,” Frank whispered.

“My son, the storyteller. You can’t make any money doing that,” said John.

That night, Frank stayed up in bed, under his covers, writing a story about an Indian who killed people and let the world know by releasing smoke signals above the town he lived in. They acted as a warning of what was to come, making the murderer sympathetic.

Frank believed you could do anything, so long as people could sympathize.

He read it to his mother the next morning.

“That’s beautiful,” she told him.

At that time, the strongest influence on his life and work was whomever he loved.

"Why do you move around so much?"

My aunt Rafy was my Mom's best friend. She was one of those surrogate aunts that ends up being of more significance than most of your family. She has wild red hair and remembers things I forget.

"I never feel like I have a choice. He lived there so I had to visit. A movie shot there so I had to follow. Opportunities were... I don't know, I don't really have a choice."

"Do you feel like it's a way to avoid being committed? To anything?"

Now, that conversation echoes. I want to stay still.

Genes Repeat

She rolled into Nazareth and was feeling about a half past dead.

“I find her very tragic,” she told me.

“What was she like when she was young?”

“We were close. Very, very close. That’s hard to believe now, isn’t it?”

“What else was she like?”

“She was so smart. She was a great actress actress. Hard, hard worker. She would get up in the morning and work, work, work. You two are a lot alike in that respect. She didn’t drink much, but when she did, she got drunk. Also like you."

"And what else?"

"She was beautiful but she tried to look bad. She would wear headscarves and glasses and no make up. Not when she was on stage, but in real life. She was a militant feminist. Everyone was then but she was always pretty fucked up with men. She was book smart.”

“When did she become like she is now?”

“Like all illnesses, it was progressive.”

"We'll Meet On Edges Soon," said I.

Things change.

In society today, images have replaced words. We remember things with a picture, not a sentence. Torn pieces of paper, taped up on some wall that exists in our stomach. Flash. His face in the morning. Flash. My hand on his. Flash. The way he moves in the dark.

At first, I'd always wonder if I was doing okay. I watched myself, watching him, watching me. All the pictures molded together. They'd play in my head like a movie.

"Don't fuck this up," a voice said.

The pictures were close-up, but slowly became wider. The movies left, frame by frame, replaced by infrequent flashes in a big, white place. Lying next to him, I sink some place between dimensions. There's a lot of room. There's quiet.

Once an image exists, etched inside you, it never changes.

Your understanding of the people in the picture does.

As they grew, Caroline and Oliver spent every second together, no matter how anyone tried to keep them apart.

“You have a strange imagination.”

They spent hours, days, weeks, months in bed. Oliver had wondered if they tallied up all the time they spent lying in bed it would equal years of his life. One summer, he was sure they got bedsores.

“I do?” he asked.

“Yes. Whenever I speak to you in made up languages, you know how to speak back. And I get the feeling you are using the past tense and future perfect.”

He had no idea what she meant.

“Are you ready to have sex yet?”

They were fourteen.

“Are you ready to be that intimate?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re always asking me what I mean.”

“You’re never telling me.”

Her face changed a lot and sometimes the way she looked at him made him think they were strangers.

“I guess...sometimes I worry about being so close to you.”

“Why?”

“Do you think that being close to people slows you down?”

“No. I think being close to you is nice.”

“I know, it is nice. Do you ever think it’s dangerous?”

“I still don’t understand what you mean.”

“You’re right. Being close to people is the point.”

He held her because he was scared she might not want him to. Then he kissed her until his lips were too sore to talk. A hard-on will make you do strange things.

The next day, she let him make love to her, only, she wasn’t really there.

From the moment she was born, Caroline had a racing heart. It didn’t matter if she was lying down for hours and not moving, her heart banged against her ribcage and there was nothing she could do to fix it. Her heart was always three steps ahead of her; telling her to hurry up, to not miss anything, to keep going. She worried that one day, the machine inside her chest was destined to overheat.

For as long as Caroline loved Oliver, he could hear her heartbeat, strong and steady, like his own. He heard her heart marching on in his ears, with his two steps behind.

He got used to hearing the world in double-time.

...

When they were ten, Caroline and Oliver sat in a tree.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked him. She always asked him that.

“I don’t know. I don’t really think about when I grow up.”

“Yes you do. Tell me what you want to be.”

“A hockey player,” he lied.

“No, you don’t.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Why do you always bug me with this stuff?

“Because I saw this bird yesterday. He was outside my window and he sang so loud and so clear. He was singing about my life, about what I can be.”

“No he wasn’t.”

“Yes. He was. Trust me, he was. I know it.”

Oliver put his hand on her thigh.

“My heart beat’s slowing down.”

“I know. I hear it slowing down now.”

“Did you know I’m only happy with you?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because you don’t worry that much. You are like a blanket of don’t worry.”

“Why do you worry so much?”

“Sometimes I think that I’m just too young and just too smart. That makes me the best candidate for a broken heart.”

People that fall in love as children are damned. Once you’ve been together like that, you are never really apart.

“I’m a feminist and everything, but the thing is, when I look at you, I want to take care of you. I want to have your babies. I would stay home and do everything, for you. I would sand the floors for you.”

“Is that a good thing?”

She said yes but she felt no. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how pitiful being a woman really was.

“What do you want?” she asked him.

He thought for a long time.

“I just want you to notice when I’m not around.”

"Why is it so hard for you to be happy?" I asked her.

"Who told you it was supposed to be easy?"

As I fell asleep, I thought that outgrowing me might be the best thing for her she's ever done. She fell asleep and she dreamt of this billboard, this big, blank billboard, with black letters that said, "You can have it, too." And then below it, in smaller letters that only she could read, "Why don't you want it, too?"

She told me years later that she dreamt of that billboard every single night of her tumultuous and beautiful youth. I asked her how she knew her youth had ended.

"I stopped dreaming of the billboard."

"But how did he know that he didn't love her?

I never understood how it could be so black and white. I was never sure if I loved someone. I can love a lot of things about anyone. He might look back later and realize that he did love her. He might like her more than he knows. And she might realize that she never loved him at all, even if she was sure she did. How do you know, in the moment? He'll find out that this whole crisis has nothing to do with her.

Trust me when I say that everything is always all about you."

Sternum - Short Story Excerpt Two

I watched this thing on the Discovery Channel. It said that in the 6th Century, some theologian decided there were three kinds of angels, whose only shared gift was the ability to see beyond a mortal timeline.

If that's all it takes to be an angel, where is my halo?

Anyway, the three kinds broke down like this.

The first kind is represented by wavelengths of light and force fields and frequencies of sound. These kind spew vibrations. Like, waves of devoted love into the universe. The devil was this kind of angel before he fell. They are the most powerful, to be feared, and kind of like God, only less of a fucking show-off.

The second kind live between the heaven and human world, like a go-between. They strike a balance between matter and spirit, good and bad. Its a lot of work jumping between the worlds, but someone has to do it. The coolest part is that they take orders from the angels above and convert them into miracles for the deserving. That's cool, right? Like Jesus.

The last kind are guardian angels, which apparently, we all have. Mine's out for a smoke, I'm sure of it. But these ones are pretty badass because, like us, they're vulnerable to sin. They look like humans, too. Some are Archangels and they deal with human rights issues. You could argue Martin Luther King was an Archangel. You could maybe make a case for Dave Chappelle.

When I turned off the t.v, I thought two things.

One, who died and made that theologian king? Like how do we know there are only three kinds?

And two, what kind was she?

New York

The light in New York was beautiful.

The sun was different there; diving through the leaves, shaking the branches, falling like snow everywhere she looked.

She sat with her mother waiting for the train to arrive. Something about her mom seemed older than before. Softer, slower, sadder.

God, my mother's beautiful, she thought.

Looking at her felt totally new. She didn't understand why. Leaning against a tiled wall that said 56th Street, she watched her mother's face like stop-motion animation. Was she okay, now that she and her brother were getting older? What would she do? How would she spend her days, with more time and more space than before? Was she lonely?

Then a voice broke out, echoing amongst the tracks and cement, hitting her like a shot in the dark. She turned to her left, and saw a middle-aged man with long hair and worn shoes, singing. He had a sorrowful voice but it was hopeful. He held his guitar like a woman and with such aching tenderness, that she knew he'd been lonely for years. She could hear it in the high-notes.

She turned back. They were both crying.

"Life is so beautiful," her mother said.

They held hands until the song finished, until he started another, until the train came, until they were all the way home.

The Summer I Lost My Mind - Personal Essay Excerpt Four

While walking from Evan's 20th birthday, obliterated, I ran into my brother at a convenience store.

"MIKEE!" I yelled.

"Holy shit," he said to his friends. I walked closer to him. "Kate, why are you shoeless?"

"You win some you lose some. Walk me home," I told him.

"No shit, Sherlock."

He told me if I didn't put my shoes on that he'd carry me home. I finally gave in. We passed some girls Michael's age on the way home who I was friends with on Facebook.

"BE CAREFUL!" I screeched at them.

What did I mean, be careful? Be careful or you'll end up like me, a crazy, drunken lunatic who had her shit together in high school and then lost it in the real world?

"Go to bed," Mike told me as he dropped me off on the corner of our street.

"Enough outta you!"

I walked down my street. I saw Rebecca, a girl who I had gone to high school with that I’d always liked but had never really known. She seemed cool; hipster and self destructive. She had long blonde hair in high school and since shaved one side off and wore printed tops with leggings. She was sitting on the curb outside a local bar, O'Malleys, known for an infamous coke ring, a clientele of local welfare recipients and not carding seventeen year olds.

When dawn broke, I realized that every gathering has its moment. You, and whoever else is attending, will repeat themselves one too many times. You'll run out of dope or liquor and quite suddenly realize that’s all you ever had in common.

I was permanently stuck in the moment when you realize that the party is over.

The Hottest State

She liked being pretty; she wore lipstick and painted her nails, she thought about her hair, she was always wearing a new dress and rarely ate; but there was something she didn't trust about it, I could tell. Every time I called her beautiful she looked at me like I was lying.

It made me think of my mother. She always called me a handsome bullshitter. She said they were the saddest creatures on earth because everything came easy to them, then they did nothing with it.

...

The Hottest State by Ethan Hawke

"Well, trust her instincts. She's probably right. First of all, you're not exactly a piece of cake to be with."

"What'd you mean?"

"You're pretty skittish. You just don't seem like the kind of guy who would stick around."

"I don't like when people say things like that - everyone telling you something's true about yourself so much that you start believing it. I have to stop seeing her."

"Why?"

"Because...I'm scared out of my mind."

"Smart girls are tough. They're a pain in the ass," he said. He wasn't grasping the situations urgency.

"There's a difference between a someone who's smart and someone who doesn't like you."

We were silent for a while.

"Sometimes I think if I could get her to love me, then that would mean everything I don't like about myself would've disappeared."

Do you ever wonder what people aren't telling you?

What they're keeping to themselves? What they think, lonely, when you're not around? What image floats past them with you on their mind?

Do they look at you when you aren't looking back? What do they say that you don't hear? What do you say, without any intended effect, that echoes and reverberates and matters long after you don't?

When you're asleep next to him, what races through his mind?

What's in that furious silence, living between you and another person, when you're both thinking things you can't share? What do you think of him when you're alone, having conversations no one else can hear?

It's more important; what people don't say. What they can't, or don't know how to, or don't want to, because you become what's left unsaid. Who knows what anything is until after? Until it's given time to grow?

Until you look and decide that all this happened, more or less.

"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."

Pedestrian Poetry

“If you don’t know death, you don’t know life. Maybe it’s just me, but is this the most beautiful fall you’ve ever seen? The colours are so vibrant. Yesterday, I stopped and stared at a tree. The red was just so red. That's life, man. So beautiful. I’m talking about stopping the car and staring at this tree, arrested by colour. I guess fall is a lot like death. To me, there are two things that matter; beginnings and endings. You remember when things began, and then you remember when they ended. Yeah. You never forget the last time. Death is just one moment. Life is so many of them."

Lessons From an Old Man - Entire Essay

Ours is a strange and wonderful relationship.

I called my grandfather on the phone earlier this week and told him that I wanted to interview him.

“Why, yes, my darling,” he said in a John Wayne voice.

When I walk into his house, cold from November’s endless afternoons, I realized he didn’t understand what he was agreeing to.

“Don’t ask me how long have I been married. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s a mighty, mighty long time.”

“No, Pop, I just want to talk to you about life. No specifics,” I smile, trying to show him there are no wrong answers. “It’s to conclude my book of personal essays.”

He nods but I think he’s nervous and unsure; he doesn’t know what a personal essay is. He looks and acts younger than he is. I have to remind myself of his age.

The truth is, I want to talk to him for selfish reasons. He is the most eccentric man I know, and I need him and his colourful world. He’s smart, in the way that often, I’m not smart. I think if anyone I know can give me guidance, can remind me of what matters, it’s him.

I’m all over the place. I awaken, every night, in the dark, with an aching back and crippled hips. There is little comfort anywhere. My heart won’t stop banging against my ribcage.

“I like your rings and fingernails. You go in and show your Nan,” he tells me. I look down at my blue nails and turquoise ring, tapping the white table.

“Where’s my cat? How’s your brother Mikey?” Pop asks.

“His ankle is still broken, but he’s okay.”

“He’s walking on it? Your Dad come up to see him?”

“Yeah, Dad’s helping him a lot. It’s nice.”

“How are you Mom and Dad making out?”

“Eh.”

“Comme-ci comme-ca,” he says in an accent that is not French. He grew up in Newfoundland, and if you didn’t grow up around him, you have a hard time understanding him.

“Speak slow for the camera, Pop, okay?”

He nods and dances across the floor while winking at me.

“What do you want to know? I’m a male. Eighty-years old. No, eighty-two! Christ, I forgot. That’s how old I am. I listen to that woman, she’s eighty. She was ninety yesterday,” he motions to my grandmother, far older than him in her outlook and now also older in her body. She spends her days lying on the couch, rarely moving.

...

Theirs is a crazy love. It’s not a secret that, in their youth, their marriage was tumultuous and unhappy. It was a strong glue that held them together.

She looked like Ava Gardner. He looked like Clark Gable. She was mentally ill. He was an alcoholic but with star quality that got him out of as much trouble as it got him into.

Pop should have been famous. He was a country and western singer, like Hank Snow, only better. He spent weeks in Nashville, had a fan club and got Christmas cards from Elvis. But rock and roll happened, and then, so did life. My grandmother became pregnant with my mom. Soon, two more children were born and quite suddenly, there was no room for cowboy songs. I grew up never hearing him sing. Some things are too painful to love.

“Are you giving up on acting for this?” he motions to my camera and pad of paper.

“No, I just do this too, now.”

“Good. Never give up acting.”

I feel guilty. He was so talented and unable to pursue his dreams and I complain about mine. I can tell he wants me to make it because he should have.

...

“Pop, what’s love?”

“Love is when you quit drinking. And you realize you can’t have a beer. And smoking. Them are all bad habits which is a good thing that it’s gone.”

“What else?”

He smiles.

“I don’t know, what is love? I love my wife, I love my family, I love the cat. I love everything. Not flies. I go around in the day and killing them all the time. In life, my wife and my family are close to the best things that’ve ever happened to me.”

He relaxes in his chair and I know I need to keep the questions coming furiously or he’ll start performing, hiding behind his generation’s idea of what a man should be.

“How have you changed since you were young?” I ask.

“I’m better. I know more. I was always sick when I was young, on the way out. My childhood was real good, though. The first few years I was sick all the time, I go no schooling on account of it. I was sick with everything, my heart was supposed to be eighty-years old and I was about seven or something like that.”

Now, at eighty-two, he has the heart of a seven year old.

“How else have you changed?”

“I got old. I got almost grey sometimes, until I dye it. I feel healthy enough. I think I’m smarter, but sometimes I play a lot of Lotto. Then I’m a dummy.”

I lay my head on the table, laughing.

“How are you able to be so, I don’t know, funny? Happy?”

“Well, I couldn’t answer that. I don’t think that much about it because I enjoy every night and day. My outlook and Lottos allow me to enjoy life so much. I don’t worry so much. I don’t see nothing to worry about and if I can’t do something about it, I say 'fuck it.'”

“I should say 'fuck it' more,” I tell him.

“You should. Don’t get married again until you’re old enough to take the blame for it. You’re free, like a bird, enjoy it. See, my philosophy in life now is that I married a good woman. You don’t need to marry no good man right now. But I’m still in love with your Nan after fifty-odd years. To me, she’s a goldmine. Every time I get broke or go bust she says, ‘Are you sure you got enough money?’ and if I don’t, I say, ‘No, darling, I don’t,’” he whispers and slyly looks away.

He has never gone ‘bust’ and if he did, my grandmother would never give him money. He’s heard that line in an old movie, and thinks it’s charming to say in front of a camera.

“I love my wife regardless. I give her all the credit for everything I’ve ever done. I haven’t been a perfect angel all my life, but I’m trying to be now.”

I see what he’s getting at. My grandparent’s marriage really is old fashioned in that, they stayed. Whatever happened, the commitment and closeness they have now seems worth it.

Will I commit to anything long enough for it to be worth it?

...

“How do you get over heartbreak?”

“Get another woman or man. I think when you got lot of troubles and you get more troubles.”

“Is that a mistake, though?”

“Not actually. Nothing is. I might have made mistakes at the time, but today, they aren’t mistakes because I got this far with them so I’m on the right track. Look at my family, I got three lovely kids and grandchildren, I am quite pleased with them. You’re one of them. Mikey’s one. Then my great-grand children. Jesse is only two years old I think. Goddammit and I’m eighty-two!”

That’s what I love about my grandfather; he is always surprised that he’s old. In that way, I’m like him. Forever surprised by what happens, by the life I’ve lead, the choices I’ve made. It’s like I was never there to begin with.

“What’s wrong with the world today?”

“People are not having enough fun. Too much pressure. A lot of people, the government are screwing them out their money, left and right. I worked a place for almost twenty years, the union insisted we went on strike for two months and now I can’t get no pension. $14.19 cents per month! Not even enough to feed the cat. I think about it, hard on the brain sometimes. Hard on the wallet, too.”

He blows me a kiss and I look down at my paper. Why don’t I spend more time with him? Will I read this when he’s gone and be happy I spent today with him? That I made him feel important, even for just an hour?

It's not enough, is it?

“What advice would you give young people?”

“I could say enjoy yourself, be good to other people and they’ll be good to you. When you’re kids, you think you know everything and you don’t realize that sometimes, you’re stupid.”

I nod. He’s right. I never realize I’m stupid until way after the fact.

...

“Do you believe in God?”

“I’m a great believer in God. From the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my granddaddy was religious and my grandmother was religious. My mama was at one time a preacher. I was taught it all up through the years and it carries me a lot through life. You get any trouble you ask the good Lord to carry you through, and he do.”

I’m surprised. I’ve never heard him speak of God before.

“Do you think everything the Bible says is true?”

“To me, I think they all had a party and got the commandments, just when they were all drunk. Don’t do this, don’t swear, don’t commit adultery. The way life is today, you can’t do that.”

“Do you believe in your own version of God, then? One where you can swear?” I laugh.

“I believe in a lot of people’s versions of God, but I am a religious man within myself. I could be more religious, but I ain’t doing too bad.”

“No, you’re doing great.”

I look down at my paper once more. All the questions are gone.

“Okay, all done, Pop.”

“Fantastic, my darling.”

He puts the kettle on. I want to stay but I’ve agreed to something, someone, somewhere, just to fill the space I don’t want to spend alone. I wish I’d cancelled. When I hug him, he feels smaller in my arms than he ever has before.

“You are a gem, Katie. Never forget that,” he tells me and then spins me around the kitchen.

...

On my way home, I think about my grandfather, about God and men and love and every word that’s filled this book.

Maybe men will just float in and out. Maybe one will matter permanently, one day. Or maybe they will all matter permanently, just occupying different spaces and places that live and die in me. Maybe all love has conditions, but happens and finds you, whether you want it to or not.

Maybe God is what you believe in because you need to feel you aren't alone. Maybe God is that part of me I never touch but always feel, always there and always strong, even when I'm not.

Then I think of my Pop once more.

“Just be happy,” he yelled at me from his porch, as I walked away from him, dressed all in black, with my hair whipping every direction, with my hands in pockets, with my shoulders shaking.

I walk farther.

I pay my three dollars to get on the subway. I walk down to the platform and a great gust of wind swallows me. The train barrels towards me. I look around and I watch people move in and out of the doors and I decide that I can wait for the next train, glued to the ugly tile and concrete walls.

I think of endings.

Finality is strange, isn’t it? I can feel the goodbyes coming now. I look in my mind’s eye into a collage of people, of places, of things I thought I knew for sure, for some clue of what to let go of.

That’s the thing about endings. When you know one’s coming, for better or for worse, you always want to hold on, just so it can hurt a little bit more.

Like Father Part Three

He's wearing a stained red sweatshirt, a trench coat and a black Indiana Jones hat. In the diner's morning light, I can see that he was handsome once and, in some ways, is still. His features are shaded by age and a life disconnected.

No matter what, he always says yes when I ask him to have breakfast with me. There is always time but I make none for him. Looking at him, I feel touched and like something is stuck in my throat. I can't find the words to explain why.

"Where'd you learn to write?" he asks me.

"You."

"I'm taking no credit for it."

"Of course I learned from you."

"I suppose I was always careful in how I spoke. I never felt successful, though."

"You didn't?"

"Not at anything."

"Really?"

"You're the same. Do you feel successful?"

"No. Never. I hope one day."

"You probably won't. I never did. Well, I had a few moments, at the Gazette and later at The Star, but they were fleeting. A ballplayer told me once, never think you have it made. He was right, you never do. Nothing is ever made."

I watch him eat his pancakes. He's too old for that much syrup.

"I was like your brother though, I was basically unemployable until I was twenty-one. Never tell him that."

"Why'd you always get fired?"

"I would oversell myself."

"You did?"

"Yeah, and being a drunk. But the gap between what I said and what I could do eventually narrowed."

"Dad, I feel really confused."

"About what?"

"Life. I'm losing people all over the place."

"Yep, you are. That's growing up, kid."

After we get the cheque he walks home too slowly, always five paces behind me. When I close the door, I watch him go where he lives now.

He's lost to me, too.

Saturday - Short Story Excerpt Two

There we so many phone calls after the news spread.

When he first got sick, people came in droves. They were all so willing to give advice, to tell them it would be okay. Like every great tragedy, this one’s first act was crowded with supporting players. But then, when he got sicker, the court jesters and kinsmen silently slipped away, without phone calls and without visits. As the curtain fell, only Meryl and Joe were left standing.

People scatter like cockroaches in the light when death gets too close. Anyone will come to your funeral. Not everyone will sit with you when you’re on the way out.

Meryl didn't remember having many long conversations with old friends. She remembered the absence. The loneliness.

She had come to realize that death and dying are silent. 

Tragic Hero - Short Story Excerpt Two

“You have to start sticking up for yourself, Maggie. You’re better than that asshole.”

“But I still love him.”

“Jesus, Maggie, you shouldn’t. He’s a worthless shit. What you need to do is stop showing people how you feel.”

“But I’m not real good at hiding how I feel.”

“Well, you got to get better at hiding it, kid. You can’t go around showing every asshole how much they upset you. Then they think they won.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Show them that you won. You have to act like you don’t care. You can’t ever let people know they got you. Not ever, hear me?”

“Really?”

“Yes, kid. Really. That’s the only way they know not to fuck with you anymore. You can never show people you care.”

“But why? What’s the point of lying, if you do care?”

“Because people prey on weakness. You can’t show them that you’re weak. You can only show them that you’re strong. You do that by showing them that you don’t care.”

“You aren’t always going to be strong, though.”

"Nobody needs to know that.”

She sighed after I said that, and she looked up at me. She looked so small on my couch. Then a wash of tears came to her eyes, but I could tell she was trying to fight them. I put my arm around her then, just instinctively. I just wanted to put my arm around her. I don’t know why.

“Why are men so mean?” she asked me.

“Listen, every asshole that isn’t good enough for you is going to be mean to you. Because you scare them. You are beautiful and smart and you have a lot going for you, kid. You don’t need to wear a dress like that to look beautiful. You look beautiful right now, just normal.”

“You think I’m beautiful?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Really?”

“Truly.”

She smiled after I said that. I think it meant a lot to her. And she was beautiful. Well, once you really got looking at her anyway. I thought it was real nice of me to be building up her confidence.   

“You need to know how much you got going for you, Maggie. Until then, nobody else is going to know.”

She moved in closer after I said that. She rested her head on my shoulder.

“Yeah.”

Then she went quiet for a bit. I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep.

“Are you mean to women?” she asked me in a real quiet voice.

“No. I tell them what I’m like up front. They know what they’re getting into.”

“They probably fall in love with you anyway, though.”

“No. I don’t let that happen.”

“You don’t let love happen. It happens, whether you want it or not.”

She was always coming at me with corny shit like that. And she said like she just knew it to be true, like there was no convincing her otherwise.

“Oh, the ignorance of youth,” I said.

“It’s true! I bet they all fall in love with you even though they don’t want to.”

“Well, if they are falling in love with me it’ s because they really want to, trust me. I make it real hard for them to think I’d ever love them back.”

“You don’t think that’s mean?”

The Falling Action - Short Story Excerpt Two

There's a joke we tell up here, and it gets us all pissin' laughing 'cause it's so brutally true.

"Wha's tha difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? The side you're on."

I'm sittin up here with men with fucking turbans on their heads, the lads that starved themselves and painted their jail cells with their own shite, and we are all crying with laughter because we did no fuckin' good.

I think we all missed the flamin' point, to tell ya the truth.

Catholic, Prod, God doesn' give a flyin’. He's na even sure He's right, He was just thrown inta this position and now people are dyin' for Him all over the place. He doesn' even exist, not how they told me growin' up. He's more just real because we all collectively live life believing in him. It's hard ta explain unless ya see it, like, but is na what ya think. It's really a lot more abstract than ya think.

And the laugh that He's havin' on us is that life isn't what ya think either. Life is the most precious fuckin' gift because things can change. It's tha worst part of life, too, but it's also tha best.

Things are changin' every day and nothin' can be predicted for certain, and about a million things will happen in your lifetime that'll shock the Jesus outta ya, but that's the really cool bit. Up here, everythin's always the same, and nothin' changes, not really, because nothin' has any weight now that it's all over. And surprising change, tha’s what makes life bigger than us, and that's what makes us all small, but small together.

Up here, it's like you only got the same ten records to play all the time, and let me tell ya, even if they're great records, you are left bustin' for a radio station. Even a shite one, because the great thrill in life is not knowin' what's coming next. Even if it is shite.

And I think His only point, that I well missed, is to love the shite out of everythin' ya can, because that's what you think of when you're up here, alone but not really alone, if ya get my drift.

There are some perks, like. I get ta meet famous people. I met Elvis. I met John Lennon. I met Jesus, he's got gross hair in person. But ya know what they all said?

"I wish I wasn't fuckin' dead."