THE WRIGHT RANTS

20 Days & 20 Nights - Day I (Part 1)

2008-05-07T21:09:00.003-05:00

The first chapter of 20 Days & 20 Nights (my previous post) was "In the Beginning" and takes place late Saturday night. This is the first half (maybe the first third) of the next chapter. In the final version, there will be 21 chapters, with the last chapter taking place the day after the rain stops.

Hopefully, there will be more of this soon but I am also working on a follow-up to Haint Blue so I'm kind of splitting my time between the two.

- Lee

____________________

DAY ONE

- Monday -

A BAND OF INTREPID (BUT DOOMED) ADVENTURERS

The great emerald dragon rose from the black water of the bottomless lake and towered nearly half a league above the small band of intrepid adventurers. Showing a mouthful of glistening, ivory teeth, the dragon roared and the sound shook the walls of the immense cavern. Yellow smoke, reeking of sulfur, poured from the worm’s wide nostrils while his eyes glowed brilliant crimson in the shadows.

Undaunted, Malachi Gemstarr, the six hundred year old Elf, stepped forward and quickly nocked an ebony shafted arrow into his hand-hewn longbow. “Fly true!” he called as he released the string, but the dragon merely chuckled as the arrow bounced harmlessly off the glittering green scales of its underbelly.

“Never,” Brutus Razorshield said as he stepped forward, “send an Elf to do a Dwarf’s job.” And, with a mighty howl, he sent his gem-encrusted battleaxe flying toward the serpent.

“You fared no better, my friend” Malachi said as the axe tumbled into the water.

“Age and experience are no match for brute strength,” said Uga the Barbarian, drawing the five foot long broadsword from the leather scabbard strapped to his muscular back. “Stand aside and watch a real warrior at work.” He hefted the sword and strode valiantly toward the water’s edge.

As the other two watched in breathless anticipation, the dragon smiled and lunged for the Barbarian. In less than a second, it was over and Uga was sliding down the gullet of the thousand year old worm.

“Bullshit!” Uga said bitterly. “I d-d-didn’t even get a s-s-shot at him.”

“And what did you think he would do?” the Dungeon Master asked, the thick lenses of his glasses barely visible above the tri-fold Dark Knight notebook that shielded his notes and maps from the view of the other players. “Did you think he’d just wait for you to swim out to him? Fuck no! He’s a dragon!”

“Okay then,” Malachi said. “While the dragon digests Uga, I’m taking another shot.” He scooped up one of the oddly-shaped die, shook it a few times then bounced it across the table. “Ha!” he said. “That should do it.”

The Dungeon Master shook his head. “Just a flesh wound... And, in retaliation, he breathes fire on you... Both of you.” The DM scooped up the die and tossed it. He smiled. “And, with the bonuses for magic figured in... You’re both dead.”

“Bullshit,” Malachi said. “There’s no fucking way. I had the shield of T’Mko and the armor of Mykler.”

“Still not enough,” the DM said, his voice almost sounding sad. “You have no specific resistance to dragon fire and this is a level ninety-five mage-spawned dragon.”

“Level ninety-five?” Malachi asked. “What the fuck is a level ninety-five mage-spawned dragon doing at this point in the game?”

“Yeah,” Brutus said, “I’m just level twenty-two. I never had a chance.”

The DM sighed and shook his head. “The Oracle of Opus warned you to stay out of the Cave with the Emerald Door.”

“Revive us,” Malachi said.

“I can’t do that,” the Dungeon Master said. “This is a hardcore game. When you die, you die.”

Malachi’s face was starting to get red and his left eyebrow was beginning to twitch with his heartbeat. “There’s no way,” he said, “That I’m going to let you kill off a level thirty-nine Elf with some bullshit like that.”

The Dungeon Master ignored him.

“Clarence,” Malachi said. “Revive my Elf.”

The Dungeon Master made a note on one of the pads behind his screen.

“Goddammit, Clarence. Revive him!”

“He’s not going to answer you, Leonard,” Brutus said to Malachi. “You know how he is. When you’re dead in the game, you’re dead to him.”

“The game’s over, Bruce” Malachi said to the Dwarf. “We’re all dead.”

“N-no,” Uga said. “There... there... There is another.”

Bruce/Brutus dropped his sheaf of papers back onto the table and smiled. “Right. Darkraven. It’s been so long since she did anything that I forgot about her.”

“Darkraven attacks using an ice storm spell from the Ancient Book of Arcane Secrets,” the Dungeon Master said, rolling a pair of dice. “And the beast is stunned. Frozen.” He rolled a second time. “She attacks again, with lightning. He’s hurt but still frozen.” The DM gathered the dice and rolled once more. “Magic missile, plus fifty.” He smiled when he saw the numbers. “And that did it. The beast sinks beneath the waves and Darkraven collects the Lost Treasure of the Goonies.” He turned to his notes. “Let’s see what she gets.”

“Bullshit,” Malachi said again. “Bullshit. You’re either the DM or you’re a player. You can’t be both. It’s not fair.”

“That whole character is not fair,” Bruce said.

Uga the Barbarian took a deep breath and said slowly, “I’m... telling... M-M-Mel.”

Clarence, slipping out of DM mode, laughed. “Yeah, right. Like you’d actually talk to a girl.”

Bruce—he of the recently vanquished dwarf—said, “He’ll write her a note, slip it in her locker, anonymously.”

“This is your last game as Dungeon Master,” Malachi said, his voice low and even.

“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Let someone else be DM for a change.”

“Who’s gonna do it?” Clarence asked. “Stuttering Milton over here? It’d take a month to finish one attack.”

Milton the ex-Barbarian turned away from the table.

Clarence turned to face the Dwarf. “And you Bruce... I think we all remember the last time you were DM. Every character was naked by the end of the first battle. There’s too much camping and talking in your games and not enough fighting.”

Bruce’s ears reddened and he began shoving his assorted papers into his backpack. “I just like to explore the inner workings of the team. They’re all very complex characters.”

“What about me,” Malachi said. “I could do it.”

Clarence studied him for a long moment. “You Leonard? No. It takes too much prep time. Your mom would find out.”

Leonard looked at the floor. She would. He knew that.

“Let’s face it,” Clarence said, “I am the only viable Dungeon Master in this group.”

Leonard stood, crumpling Malachi’s character sheets in his hand. “I still say the Darkraven character isn’t fair.”

The other two boys nodded and mumbled in agreement.

“I have to play that character,” Clarence said icily. “I have to keep it going for her.”

Leonard sighed and tossed the ball of wadded paper—thirty-seven levels of ass-kicking elf—into the waste basket by Clarence’s desk. “She doesn’t even know you’re doing it.”

“She will,” Clarence said. “One day.”

Clarence laid the tri-fold notebook down and began stuffing it with the various notes and maps from the game.

Leonard looked at his watch. “It’s just as well it’s over. I have to be at practice in about four hours. I’m going to try to get a little sleep.”

“You have to be at practice at eight in the morning on a holiday?” Clarence asked. “Dude, that’s harsh.”

Clarence slipped one sheet of paper from his notebook and stood. “You can have the top bunk but,” he told Leonard, “but, if you whack it, don’t splooge on my sheets. Aim for one of these guys.”

Still fully-dressed, Leonard climbed into the bunk while Bruce and Milton stripped to their tightie whities. They would take the pair of sleeping bags on the floor of Clarence’s bedroom while the Dungeon Master himself got the bottom bunk. But first, as was always the case following a marathon game, there was other business to which the DM must first attend.

“I gotta drop the kids off at the pool,” he said, moving toward the door. “Don’t do anything too gay while I’m gone.”

He flipped off the overhead lights on the way out and they could hear his footsteps receding down the hallway.

“Hey,” Bruce said. “Do you think he thinks we didn’t see him slip Darkraven’s sheet out of the folder and put it in his pocket?”

“I don’t know,” Leonard said. “I’m not sure he cares.”

“What do you think he does with it in there?”

Leonard slipped under the covers and pulled them up tight around his chin, glad he couldn’t see what might be staining them. “I really don’t want to know.”

II.

CLARENCE

The Dungeon Master closed his eyes and slumped against the sink, his breathing ragged. Above him on the shelf above the toilet, held in place by a small wicker basket full of sample size shampoo and mouthwash, hung Melpomene Darkraven’s Dungeons and Dragons character sheet, complete with a small, grainy black and white image he had downloaded from the real Darkraven’s web site.

Mel frowned crookedly at him, the thin, black lips barely visible through the narrow gap in the long black hair. She had no idea what Clarence Brookshire, the world’s greatest DM had been doing in her honor for the last few months but, one day, she would find out and she would love him for it.

Until then...

Clarence closed his eyes and slipped into a frenzied rhythm.

It was over in two minutes.

III.

GEORGE PICKETT CRUNK

George Pickett Crunk awoke in a cave on Memorial Day, just as he had for—what was it now?—eighty-two days? Eighty-three? He really should have been keeping track of that somewhere, maybe by making marks on a tree trunk or the wall of his cave. But that kind of mark would be a sign and that was something he simply could not risk.

He yawned and stretched the stiffness out of his back then got up and went outside, naked, to take a leak. Crunk took only a few seconds to make sure the coast was clear before leaving the safety of his cave. According to the radio reports, the FBI had finally given up on its “exhaustive manhunt” a couple of weeks earlier. They still had an agent or two up at the regional office in Chattanooga and, if they got a credible report of a Crunk sighting, they’d descend on Ensign County like a plague of black-suited locusts but, for now, he felt safe enough.

He had grown somewhat used to the cool mornings, but was grateful that the days were at last warming up. The morning air was crisp—a good ten degrees or so cooler than in the valley he figured—and Crunk’s junk reacted accordingly.

Twenty yards or so from his little cave, Crunk coaxed his member out of hiding and pissed on a pine tree for a good minute and a half. He had always been a champion morning pisser and his nearly three months on the run only seemed to have added to the volume of his urine. He didn’t understand that. Perhaps it had something to do with the change in his diet, or maybe it was part of some sort of divine purification. Whatever the reason, he enjoyed the extra time. There was something about relieving himself that Crunk found immeasurably relaxing. When you took a shit, you could at least read or, if you were fortunate enough to have a TV in the john, you could watch a show—maybe even a ballgame. But, when you were pissing, you just stood there for a bit and thought about things. It was as if the act of emptying the bladder filled the brain.

It had, in fact, been while pissing away the second half of a Bud twelve pack that Crunk had realized what he was meant to do with his life. Somewhere between unzipping his fly and giving it a couple of finishing taps, his purpose crystallized. In the space of just a few seconds, he saw it all: every step, every word, every benefit, every consequence. The world was just waiting on him to change it.

The vision was so clear in fact that that very night, he celebrated his newly realized destiny by going down to Major Ink for his tenth tat. The Major spent all night on the initial design—and three more six hour sessions for all the coloring—and it cost Crunk a cool five hundred bucks even with the buddy discount but, when finished, it was fucking magnificent. Stretching from Crunk’s waist to his neck and covering more than ninety percent of his back was a vibrant depiction of the Grim Reaper wrapped in a Confederate battle flag. The massive scythe appeared to penetrate the flesh of Crunk’s right shoulder while crimson drops of inked blood dripped down his side. Barely visible under the deep hood of Death’s black cloak was the brim of a Confederate soldier’s cap emblazoned with a pair of tens separated by a slash. These numbers represented the date of Crunk’s epiphany, more than half a year distant now. The tattoo as a whole represented the essence of his mission.

His only real regret was that it was on his back and he couldn’t actually enjoy it. In the Major’s shop, there was a trio of full-length mirrors angled so that customers were able to see posterior images as they appeared to others but, on his own in the wilds of the Appalachains, the only mirrors he had were the lakes, pools and streams and none provided a view of the Major’s masterpiece.

He took solace in the knowledge that, one day, the tattoo would be famous. It would perhaps be his trademark and people would forever associate that brilliant rendering with Crunk and his deeds.

Crunk smiled. It wouldn’t be long now. The days of living on the run were almost over. By the end of the day, the wheels of Crunk’s would be in motion and the ghosts of his ancestors would rejoice.

IV.

MELPOMENE DARKRAVEN

Melpomene Darkraven, being a creature of the night, had a profound aversion to sunlight but she knew from experience that it would not kill her—at least not instantly. If she absolutely had to be up and about during the day, she preferred to remain in the dimly lit confines of the Black Sanctorum; however, between dawn and dusk, she could sometimes be seen milling aimlessly about the long dark halls of Hades or lurking in its various chambers of ultimate despair. Though she could function perfectly well during the day, it was only at night that Melpomene lifted her pale face and allowed her wide emerald eyes to shine with delight. For it was in moon shadows that she felt most alive, most powerful. It was in near darkness that her aura shone brightest and the dark being that possessed her came alive to scream its ragged song of pain and hopelessness.

Needless to say, Melpomene was particularly pissed that Mr. Shaft had scheduled a band practice at eight in the goddamn morning—and on a fucking holiday! Didn’t they practice enough? They’d been playing these same three songs all semester and they hadn’t gotten noticeably better in weeks. It wasn’t like one more practice was finally going to get everyone in tune and on the beat. There’s just so much one should expect of a high school marching band in Cousin Fuck, Georgia.

Shaft’s gnarly old bony-fingered hands went up and started to bounce. Melpomene put the clarinet’s black mouthpiece to her full, black lips and inhaled through her prominent nose. She held the air and waited as, behind her, the drumline began to beat out the intro. I should have played drums, she thought for the six thousandth time. It’s so primal, so sexual.

Drew Hasher was beating the ever-loving shit out of his bass drum and, though he was about half a bar out of sync with the rest of the band, Mel didn’t mind because she could feel the vibrations from his instrument at the base of her spine. As the song crescendoed, her sphincter tightened pleasurably around the tip of the baby cucumber shoved up her ass.

She’d been on vegetables for a few weeks. They didn’t keep as long as the latex and metal dildos she’d started with back around Christmas, and reusing them was pretty much out of the question, but they had a much more natural texture. She particularly enjoyed the irregular bumps on the cucumber and its slightly off-center curve felt nice when she marched.

For about the six thousandth time, Mel found herself wondering if anyone else in the band—or anyone else in Ensign County for that matter—had vegetables up their butt at that very moment. Surely, in a county of nearly five thousand people, she wasn’t the only one with an anal insertion fetish. She might be the only one that favored vegetables but, without conducting a truth serum and polygraph verified poll, she would likely never know. And that’s what bugged her.

More than anything, Melpomene Darkraven longed to discuss ass toys with someone who existed outside of cyberspace but, in places like Ensign County, people typically weren’t inclined talk openly about their sexual proclivities—especially not ones that involved special lubrication.

“Darlene!”

Mel’s head jerked toward the sound of the voice. Shaft was glaring at her. “Left!” he yelled, jabbing his baton at point somewhere behind her. “Left! Left! You’re a star!”

Mel spun around quickly and, breaking march stride, caught up with the other clarinets. She slipped into her place in the line that formed one arm of the slightly-misshapen star and began to march sideways as the formation rotated. She could feel her cheeks reddening and, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Patti Reddan give her a nasty smirk around the mouthpiece of her horn.

“Don’t you fucking look at me like that, bitch,” Mel mumbled around her own mouthpiece. “You better wipe that smirk off your face P.D.Q. or I’ll take that goddamned clarinet and shove it right up your...” Mel’s voice, no more than a whisper to begin with, trailed off into silence as sinister grin spread slowly across her face.

THE MAYOR AND THE METEOROLOGIST

“The storm’s gonna miss us,” the fat man in the rumpled white suit told the mayor. “It’s gonna miss us to the north just like I said yesterday at six and eleven.”

“You’ve been wrong before,” the mayor said, retrieving a gold-plated Zippo lighter from the breast pocket of his coat.

The fat man glared at his old friend. “I have. But I’m right about this.”

The mayor took a fat, hand-rolled Dominican from an ornate humidor on his desk and lit it. When it was burning satisfactorily, he said through a puff of smoke. “You’d better be.”

The two men stood on the mayor's private balcony, overlooking the Ensign County Commons. Below them, the Ensign County Marching Mosquitoes were warming up on the grass, not yet in their black and silver polyester dork suits. Beyond the bandstand, colorful tents ringed the gently sloping field and a few boats—bass boats mostly—were already out on the calm, sparkling water of the lake.

“I feel like a turd that's been stepped on by an elephant,” the weatherman said.

The mayor nodded. “Same here”

The two old friends had spent most of the previous night drinking, smoking cigars and playing poker down at the Rolling Thunderbird and the long evening of excesses showed in their faces. Typically, they skipped the Bird on Sunday nights but, although they would both be acting in official capacities that particular Monday, Memorial Day was officially a holiday so, to them, that meant an extra night at the Bird, regardless of the consequences.

“We could use the rain," the Mayor said. "Just not today."

"It won't rain. Not here anyway."

"I heard thunder earlier."

"I looked at the radar. There's a system northwest of us but it won't rain here. I give you my word."

The mayor looked at the other man with no trace of humor on his face. "The word of a television weatherman? What exactly is that worth?"

The weatherman smiled, showing a wide swath of brilliantly white teeth. "Buck fifty."

The mayor turned back to the Commons and puffed on his cigar. "The parade starts at eleven."

"There's not a cloud in the sky, Al. It won't rain. Trust me."

20 Days & 20 Nights: Chapter I

2008-04-06T16:41:00.002-05:00

This is the first chapter from a work in progress. I'm going to try to post a new chapter (or at least a big chunk of a new chapter) here every week or so. I'm hoping that writing with a deadline will motivate me to finish this fucking thing.
- Lee

______________________

20 Days & 20 Nights

Why Naked Jesus Came Down from the Sky and Flooded Ensign County

A work in progress by

Lee Wright

THE RIGHT REVEREND ELIJAH J. HOGG

The Right Reverend Elijah J. Hogg was thoroughly shitfaced the night the chariot of fire came to him. Of course, by that point in his life, Hogg was thoroughly shitfaced every night. A teetotaler for nigh on to forty years, Hogg had gotten drunk for the first time the night his wife drove off with his truck, his dog, his best friend, his home and his church. From that point forward, he had harbored absolutely no interest in seeing the moon and stars through sober eyes. On the night of the holy encounter, Hogg was doing exactly what he had been doing every evening for five years—sitting in a sagging lawn chair on the narrow back porch of his ratty old trailer, smoking off-brand cigarettes, listening to a distant clear channel gospel station on his old AM radio and drinking George Dickel Tennessee Whisky from a cheap souvenir shot glass.

The shot glass had a brightly colored caricature of a bearded elf that stood beneath a boldly printed command to “SEE ROCK CITY” and above a promise that, from said attraction, one could “SEE SEVEN STATES”. But Elijah Hogg had never seen Rock City. What’s more, he’d never seen seven states. In fact, except for one short trip down to Atlanta back in 1969, he’d never been more than twenty miles from the shores of Mosquito Lake. Although the Tennessee line was barely a half hour drive away, Hogg had never even been outside the state of Georgia. He was inherently sedentary and proudly so. Even the sight of migrating birds made him vaguely uneasy.

Hogg had been born to an unemployed coal miner and a part-time cleaning lady in a little two room shack on the north side of Mosquito Lake, near Hooper’s Creek and he had lived most of his life on that same piece of land. Before he was called to the Ministry, he had worked for a spell at the Jernigan plant just half a mile down the road—walking distance in a place like Ensign County. And, although he had reluctantly relocated to Golden Pines Estates shortly after the unexpected loss of his wife, truck, dog, best friend, home and place of worship, he rather looked forward to spending his afterlife interred among the rolling hills of the placid little lake’s northern shore. After all, his family was there, and, love ‘em or hate ‘em, a man should be with his family in death. And Hogg was utterly convinced that his death wouldn’t be long in coming.

He was sure that, after nearly a decade of hard nightly drinking, his liver had to be permanently pickled. What’s more, he would swear on a stack of Bibles (and Elijah Hogg was a man who actually had a stack of Bibles) that he could literally feel his lungs atrophying from abuse and general neglect. Elijah Hogg was just shy of his forty-ninth birthday but he looked sixty and felt seventy. Not a spry seventy like that couple of perky ex-hippies who lived just across the street (if you could call that rutted, gravelly lane a street). For the once and future reverend, every day was a series of physical challenges and unbroken misery. Every night, however, thanks to the Dickel, was a smooth slide into a waking dreamland where he was still the man he had been at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Once, not so long ago, the Right Reverend Elijah J. Hogg had been a Bible-thumping blowhard of the first order. He could sermonize for hours on end and only bothered to cut himself off after two hours because that was all his bladder could take at a stretch. For a while, he had tried introducing a brief intermission to the service but he found that he was routinely losing about half his flock while he peed. They were faithful but they had things to do and were quick to scoot if given half a chance. For a few sermons, he had enlisted Sisters Clara and Juanita Seagraves to sing an uplifting hymn or two while he relieved himself, but even then he lost more than a few of his thirty odd parishioners. One Sunday, he even lost Sisters Clara and Juanita. Eventually, he came to the uncomfortable realization that any sermon over two hours (not counting praise and worship, offering, announcements, altar calls and such) was just too much for the lay person—no matter how full of the Holy Spirit he or she might be—to absorb in a single sitting, even given the benefit of a short, hymn-filled intermission.

But two hours of preaching just wasn’t enough.

The problem was that God routinely gave Hogg far more than two hours worth of Sunday sermon yet rarely offered editing suggestions. Try as he might, Hogg just couldn’t pray the messages down to a reasonable length. This left him with a sermon surplus that did to his soul what urine did to his bladder. It filled him up and made him uncomfortable, fidgety and anxious. He felt—no, he knew—that, if he didn’t get the Word out in time, the consequences would no doubt be both dire and embarrassing. He needed a place to relieve himself and, one fateful Sunday afternoon, he found it in the form of a bush behind the church.

The bush was part of a thick hedge formed by a row of rhododendron. Hogg was trimming it with an old pair of manual garden shears in anticipation of imminent flowering. The work usually relaxed him but he’d never done it on a Sunday. Sunday, after all, was the Lord’s day—a holy day, reserved for doing the Lord’s work but, since the hedge marked the boundary between the church grounds and the cemetery, its maintenance was clearly work for the Lord so a little bit of pruning wasn’t likely cause his eternal damnation.

Three weeks had passed since he’d officially given up on the idea of ever delivering a complete sermon and the Spirit was bubbling violently deep inside his gut like a bad taco. As he clipped, he began to talk—first under his breath then gradually louder and louder, with steadily increasing fervor and conviction. By the time he reached the last bush in the row, he was shouting, praising God, stomping his foot and twitching his left shoulder exactly the way he did at the pulpit. Hogg dropped the clippers, wiped his brow with a sleeve and began to pace. He quoted the Prophets, the Disciples, the Apostles, the Son and the Father Himself. He spouted scripture and lapsed briefly into traditional song then into the Tongues of the Holy Spirit. He spoke to the bush as if it were an old friend. He chided the bush for its backsliding and worldliness. He begged the bush to pray with him and let Jesus into its heart. He wept and laid hands on its leaves to cast out the red mites that infested it. Two hours later, spent, drenched in sweat and desperately in need of a good long pee, he casually mentioned to the rhododendron bush that tithes, offerings and charitable donations were what kept the church going. But there were still a few drops of the Word left clinging to him that had to be shaken off. He asked the bush to remember the other bushes in its prayers and said that it should come back later in the evening for the prayer meeting. It should also bring a friend who wasn’t familiar with God’s plan for shrubbery. After all, a church that wasn’t growing was a church that was dying.

Hogg sighed and unzipped his fly. He closed his eyes and prayed silently while the bush received its golden anointing.

Finally drained—physically, emotionally and spiritually—Hogg sat on the ground and stared at the bush. The bush stared back. I did not burst into flame or even ripple its leaves in the April wind. It just sat there, ready for more. The bush was infinitely patient and open to the Word.

Hogg smiled.

Watching from the window of their mobile home, some thirty yards away, Hogg’s wife, Betty, frowned.

When the Reverend repeated the scene the following Sunday, Betty dug a stale cigarette out of the back of a kitchen cabinet and lit up in the trailer’s cramped laundry room. By midsummer, Hogg was tossing Communion wafers into the hedge and watering the bushes with the Thunderbird they used to represent the blood of Christ. That was when she added to her now two-pack-a-day habit by swigging directly from the backup bottle of Communion wine.

By the fall of that year, Betty Hogg was convinced that her husband was possessed by some sort of demon and, since she’d heard somewhere that possession is nine-tenths of the law, she turned to the local sheriff for help.

Sheriff Douglas Van Hooten had been friends with Elijah Hogg since they were kids and Van Hooten was a founding member of Hogg’s church, the Glory Glory Glory House. As it turned out, Van Hooten, being a good friend, helped Betty in quite unexpected ways. He never spoke to Elijah about the fruitlessness of ministering to flora but he did speak to Betty about her own needs. In the beginning, she was reluctant to discuss such matters, but after a couple of hours in his office and half a bottle of the Blood of Christ, the kindly lawman took her to Heaven. And she never wanted to go back.

The next night, Van Hooten’s brother, Carl, hooked his wrecker up to the double-wide trailer that served both as a home for the Hoggs and as the Glory Glory Glory House and towed it away. Carl was followed closely by Betty, the sheriff and Revelation the Dog, all of whom were crammed into Hogg’s fire-engine red 1962 Ford pickup. They parked the church behind Carl Van Hooten’s filling station and turned it into Ensign County’s first member’s only honky tonk, the Rolling Thunderbird.

News travels fast in a small, close-knit community like Ensign County so, the very next afternoon, Hogg’s congregation convened at the Mosquito Coast Diner to discuss their options. The Right Reverend himself was not invited.

Over hash browns and apple pie, it was decided that, if Elijah Hogg couldn’t keep his own house together, then he surely couldn’t keep God’s House together. In the end, it was decided that the flock would be better led by another shepherd. Just who that shepherd might be was a matter of serious debate. The meeting had started promptly at seven and, by half past eight, voices were being raised. At a quarter of nine, Sherriff Van Hooten and both his deputies were called to break up the resulting brawl. The Mosquito Coast would be closed two days for repairs but, since its octogenarian owner, Lila MacAfee, had thrown the first punch—as well as the first plate, the first glass and the first cash register—no charges were ever filed.

The following Sunday, half of Hogg’s former congregation attended Ensign Baptist and most of the rest joined Ensign Church of God’s Holy Light. The few with tin ears joined the music-free Ensign Church of Christ. Only four members—Sheriff Van Hooten, Betty Hogg, Carl Van Hooten and Carl’s best friend and roommate, Eric—decided to give up on church altogether.

Due to convoluted state, local and federal tax laws in association with a poorly thought out and fairly antiquated bridewealth agreement, Betty Hogg actually owned the trailer that had housed the church so Hogg had no real recourse for getting it back. Furthermore, Hogg’s Uncle Barney held the deed to the land and decided that, without the church junking it up, it would be a great place to build a few duplexes as well as a new office for his real estate business.

Elijah Hogg suddenly found himself utterly destitute and devastatingly despondent. His Uncle Barney, being at least a moderately kind soul, took pity on him and offered him one of the unrented trailers at the back of Golden Pines in exchange for doing a little landscaping and general maintenance. In less than a week, Elijah Hogg had gone from pastor of one of the small county’s fifteen Protestant churches to an unemployed loon living between a chubby hooker and a couple of sixteen year-olds with a newborn and a meth habit.

Eventually, word got out about Hogg’s shrubbery sermons and, mostly out of curiosity, a former member of his congregation offered to pay him for a little hedge trimming work. Hogg knew what the man expected from him and he didn’t fail to deliver. Even though Hogg no longer had a churchhouse, God was still giving him sermons and the bushes were still mute, patient and immobile. So he clipped and he preached and found a new vocation. By the following summer, he was getting fairly steady work doing landscape maintenance. Preaching to bushes, trees and flowers wasn’t as satisfying as preaching to people and the money wasn’t great but the work kept him in cigarettes and Dickel.

So Elijah Hogg drank. And drank and drank and drank. Each night, he faced the moon with bleary eyes and a heavy heart but was spared the bittersweet agony of God’s glorious sunrises. It had literally been years since he had seen the end of a night. That’s why he at first, thought the spacecraft was the sun and that he had somehow not consumed enough alcohol to knock himself out. Of course, had Hogg not been plastered like a broken arm, he might have realized that the light was rising and intensifying considerably faster than was typical for a dawn on Earth. What’s more, the light was rising in the west. The crest of Snipe Mountain went brass then deeply golden as the sky behind it transitioned from cobalt to vermillion to crimson. A wave of warmth, uncommonly strong for a night in late May, fell on Hogg’s face and he lifted his bloodshot eyes to the heavens for the first time in months.

Humming a low, harmonious, three note angel song that rattled Hogg’s teeth and rather pleasantly tickled his tailbone, the magnificent ship came into view and slid across the mountaintop. It hung above him, a great golden Star of David haloed by fiery red light that pulsed in time with the hummed hymn.

Hogg dropped the bottle of Dickel, pissed his overalls and slowly stood, knees and back creaking loudly with the effort. He raised his arms to heaven and closed his eyes, unworthy of bearing witness to the magnificence of the Father’s return.

The old lawn chair, in which he had been sitting before the Coming of Jesus, skittered across the narrow porch, off the edge and into immaculately trimmed bushes. Windows rattled, the porch swayed and a strong, dry wind came from the east to swirl madly around his tiny backyard. The county issued garbage danced across the thin brown grass before falling over and expectorating its contents directly into the heart of the maelstrom. Cigarette butts, paper plates and scratch-off lottery tickets filled the air, redneck confetti in celebration of the Rapture.

Eyes still closed, Hogg descended the three concrete block steps to his backyard. At the exact moment his left foot touched grass, the angels sang six new notes in rapid succession then finished their hymn with a single, sustained note so low it made the backs of his eyeballs ache.

The ship hovered for a moment, rippled ever so slightly then shrank from a massive form that filled the night sky to one just slightly smaller than Hogg’s backyard. This new, smaller form allowed it to settle gently onto the grass not more than a few feet from where Hogg stood waiting. Gradually, the angel song faded and the glorious golden light dimmed. For a moment, everything was perfectly still and perfectly silent. Then, somewhere across the lake, a dog barked once, whimpered, and was silent.

Hogg knew he shouldn’t look, but he just couldn’t help himself. He slowly opened one eye halfway and stared at the magnificent vessel that loomed before him. The ship was now not much taller than a semi truck cab, but it was still the most impressive thing he’d ever seen. Its skin was smooth gold with a deep, reflective luster that seemed to flow ever-so-slowly across the angled contours of the ship. Hogg opened both eyes and his jaw dropped.

Something rattled inside the ship and a previously unseen door slid open, revealing the backlit naked form of Jesus himself. Jesus smiled, waved casually to Hogg with his left hand and stepped out into the warm Georgia night.

The Messiah was tall, swarthy, thin and extremely hirsute. He sported long, curly hair and a ZZ Top beard that reached halfway to his navel. His eyes were wide, dark and gentle above a disproportionally large nose. If you’re someone like Elijah Hogg, you know exactly what the Bible says about Jesus’ background, family, homeland and even appearance but, for some reason, you still really don’t expect Him to look... Well... So Jewish. You also don’t really expect Him to be hung like a world class porn star. But hung Jesus was. Flaccid, the Divine Pecker reached halfway to the bulbous Holy Knees and was blessed with the girth of a large print Bible. And don’t even get me started on the magnificence of His balls.

Hogg closed his eyes and dropped to his knees, crying with a mixture of joy at the Rapture and fear that he might be just a little bit gay for being so impressed with the size of the Holy Junk.

Jesus chuckled softly then said: “Arise, Elijah.”

The Lord’s voice was surprisingly nasal; however, due to the considerable size of the nose through which He spoke, His words were sonorous and commanding.

Hogg rose unsteadily amid further sounds of creaking and popping. As he did, he tried his best to keep his eyes off the Fleshy Scepter of the Son. Jesus smiled beneficently and placed His hands gently on Hogg’s bony shoulders. Something moved beyond Jesus and Hogg’s eyes were drawn to the ship. Two naked, Rubenesque women disembarked and stood flanking the Savior. One was tall and pale, with long red hair, breasts like well-played softballs and multiple tattoos inked primarily in shades of lavender. The other was dark as the night sky, with breasts like ripe watermelons and an ass like a basketball. Both wore copious amounts of turquoise jewelry and sported enough pubic hair to hide a small dog.

“Jesus,” Hogg whispered, blaspheming for the first time in his life.

Hogg intended the word as more of a concise comment on the appearance of the women than an actual greeting but the Messiah said, “It’s pronounced Hey-Zeus.”

Hogg turned his eyes back to the Son of God and cocked his head to one side. “What?”

“I said, ‘It’s pronounced Hey-Zeus.’”

“Hey-Zeus,” Hogg said reverently.

Jesus smiled. “And you are Elijah Hogg, a teacher of the Word.”

“Yes, My Father. I am Elijah. And I am ready. Oh, Lord Lord, I am ready!”

“Patience, my son,” Jesus said. “Two fortnights and two days will pass before I return for you.”

The pale woman giggled while the darker one rolled her eyes and shook her head. Jesus smiled, showing yellow, uneven teeth.

“The world is wicked and has forgotten me,” Jesus said.

Hogg nodded. “Yes. Yes, yes.”

“But you, my son,” Jesus said. “You are pure of heart. Not so much pure of liver and lung these days, but your heart is good.”

“I’m afflicted with the curse of drink,” Hogg said, casting his eyes downward, “and with the sin of smoke.”

Jesus cupped Hogg’s face with both hands and raised the fallen minister’s fallen chin. “This night, my son, I set you free,” Jesus said. “I set you free.”

Hogg began to cry. “Thank you, thank you, oh thank you Jesus—I mean Hey-Zuse. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Amen and hallelujah.” A snot bubble formed on Hogg’s nose. “Hallelujah!” The bubble burst. Jesus wiped his left eye with the back of his right hand.

“The world is wicked,” Jesus said again.

“They have forgotten You,” Hogg said.

“They have.”

“Wicked, wicked world,” Hogg said.

“Yes. Anyway…”

“Wicked backsliding worldly world full of church stealing heathens!”

Jesus looked at His gold Rolex, the only thing He wore. “Listen, Elijah…”

“Wicked and blasphemous! They have turned from Your face and forgotten Your Word!”

Jesus nodded. “I know. I have that whole omniscience thing, you know.”

Hogg backed up and shuffled his feet. He put his right hand high in the air and his left shoulder twitched. “But Glory is upon us! We shall cast off of the yoke of wickedness and we shall march into Heaven singing Glory to God on the Highest.”

Jesus sighed. “Elijah.”

“The evil shall be trodden under our feet-ah. Hallelujah, amen and praise His-ah Holy Name!”

“Elijah.”

“The Day of Redemption is at hand and all shall see the—”

Jesus smacked Hogg hard across the right cheek. The Reverend staggered to his left, turned around once and sat down hard on the ground. His back came to rest against one of the trailer’s rotted, airless tires. The cheek stung like a hornet’s sting.

“Forgive me,” Hogg said. “I sometimes get carried away by Your Glory.”

“I understand,” Jesus said. “I am pretty glorious. But I don’t have all night. We need to talk.”

“Of course,” Hogg said.

Jesus spoke faster now. “As I was saying, the world has become wicked and forgotten me.”

“Amen,” Hogg said. “Wicked.”

“Don’t interrupt.”

“Sorry.”

“The world has become wicked and forgotten me. My patience grows thin and my nerves grow raw. The hour of my divine retribution is at hand.”

Hogg’s jaw dropped again but, this time, it betrayed a hint of a sly smile. “You’re going to destroy the world.” It wasn’t a question.

“The world? No. Just most of Ensign County… Am I pronouncing that correctly? In-Sine?”

“Yes. In-Sine.”

Jesus looked at the dark woman. “You owe me five bucks.”

“I told you crackers talk funny,” the pale angel said.

Jesus turned back to Hogg. “Elijah, I have a job for you.”

“You want me to build an ark?”

“A what?”

“An ark,” said the dark angel. “He asked if you want him to build an ark.”

Jesus sighed. “No, Elijah. I don’t want you to build an ark. I’m just going to destroy Ensign County, not the whole world. The animals will be fine.”

“Then what would you have me do, Father?”

Lightning flashed as Jesus gave Hogg a lopsided grin and gestured toward the door of the great ship. "Step inside, Elijah, and we'll talk about that."

As the door slid closed behind them, thunder rumbled through the night.

The storm was coming.

II.

THE BEAST

The nostril of the Beast twitched ever so slightly. Half a human lifetime later, it twitched again. Eventually, one great eye opened slowly and searched the inky darkness. The nostril twitched yet again. The wind carried a familiar scent, pungent and ripe. The Beast smiled. She closed her eye but did not sleep. The pace of her breathing quickened ever-so-slightly. The wait would soon be over and there would be much to do. Much to do indeed.

The storm was coming.

"This Is the First Day of My Last Days"

2007-05-15T12:04:00.000-05:00

It’s been quite a while since I added anything to the Wright Rants but, if Christie’s actually posting blogs now, I should too. So, why have I been lax with my postings? Well…

Recently, I started taking classes online through Ashford University in an attempt to finally finish my BA. Last night, I finished my first five-week class, Psychology 202: Adult Development and Life Assessment. This class is required for all Ashford students in the online Bachelors program. It’s intended to ease adult students back into college with easy papers and a curriculum that focuses on learning, aging and dealing with the various stages of life, including death, dying and bereavement.

Online discussions via bulletin boards are a big part of the classes at Ashford and one of the assigned topics for our discussion was to write about how we would handle our own impending demise. In her instructions for the post, our professor said:

If you knew that you were going to die in six months, ideally, what would those six months include?

This was my post:

“This is the first day of my last days”

If I were to find out today that I only had six months to live, the first thing I would do is get my lawyer working on an appeal. Then, while he was trying to get a stay, I would also have my family and friends write personal letters to the governor, begging for a pardon. They would all insist that, regardless of what the six witnesses said, I was not drunk, I was not wearing a belt of human finger bones and I certainly wasn’t waving a salad fork around while I ranted about how I could understand the language of groundhogs and they are not happy. I tell you, it was all self-defense.

Anyway, if possible, I would spend my last six months traveling with my wife. I would really like to go to London and Amsterdam. That was the trip we had planned for our honeymoon but we had to cancel it the week before the wedding. We have been talking about taking that trip for our fifth anniversary but, apparently, I only have half a year to live.

I used to think that, if I found out my death was imminent and I couldn’t bargain my way out of it, I would spend my remaining time writing twenty hours a day just to get out all the ideas that are trapped up in my head. I now realize that I probably would write very little and, if I did, it would be letters to my wife and friends. I want to be a writer because that’s something I would enjoy doing for a living, not because I particularly want to leave a vast written legacy.

More and more, I am finding that my wife and my family and my friends are what I live for. So I would probably spend my last days the way I enjoy spending my days now: Going to the movies with my wife, having dinner with my friends, playing with my dogs, etc…

Or I’d rob a bank and hightail it south of the border to a country without an extradition treaty.

- Lee

C257H383N65O77S6.

2006-11-13T19:07:00.000-05:00

Every now and then, things happen that aren’t totally unexpected but that still make you do a philosophical doubletake. My recent diagnosis of Type II Diabetes was one of those moments.

I know it’s not a huge deal, really. We caught it early and it’s treatable and no serious damage has yet been done, blah, blah, blah. Millions of people live with it every day. And at least I don’t have to give myself injections. But the lifestyle changes necessary for me to deal with it are going to be a royal pain in the pancreas.

Let me just say that this whole thing is totally my fault. I’ve been a fat fuck for a good twenty years or so now and I’ve never really seriously done much to change that. I like my burgers and sandwiches and fries and greasy fried things. Eating, for me, is more than just a way to nourish my body. It’s a social event, it’s a religious ritual, it’s something to do when I’m bored. And exercise? That’s for masochists and professional athletes. I’m a wannabe writer. As long as my eyes and fingers work, what more do I need?

Of course, advanced diabetes will ruin my sight and, possibly my fingers. It will also cut short my life which seriously limits the amount of writing I can get done. Then there’s the whole potential impotence thing. Strangely, that’s one potential affect that doesn’t seem to worry Christie as much as it worries me.

You can read more about my somewhat circuitous path to diagnosis on my MySpace blog but here’s the short story. I went to the doctor about a week and a half ago for some random pains in my side. Turns out, that was mostly likely just a strained muscle but, while I was there, they did some other tests and, last Thursday afternoon, the doctor called to tell me that my A1C, which should not have been above 6 was 10.5. That was worse than he expected and certainly worse than I expected. I figured I’d be diagnosed as what they call “pre-diabetic” or be told that I was trodding dangerously close to diabetic territory. I never expected that I would actually be diabetic.

But I know that I am (and have been for some time) a large tub of sedentary goo. I’ve always known that such a development was possible. I’ve just always assumed that, at some point, the Health Fairy would appear to me, wave her wand and--POOF!!--I’d be thin and fit and hung like a camel.

So now here I am at 37, happily married, with a great job, a fantastic home, back in school, everything is going great and then this. Again, I know it’s not that big a deal and I don’t want to sound like I’m whining but it pisses me off because it’s my own fault. Because I have no willpower, I now have to make major changes in my diet and lifestyle.

Five years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered to even try to change. I would have let the disease eat me alive because I had nothing to live for but now… Now I have Christie. She, alone, is worth living for. I want to be old and cantankerous with her. I want to make sure the number of times she’s heard all my stories reaches into the millions. I want to spoil our grandchildren and have yippy little dogs that we treat like our children. (Okay, so the last one is already ongoing but I want to outlive a few more dogs.)

I am fiercely resistant to change--particularly changes involving food--but love truly does conquer all and I know that Christie will be my inspiration to get through this and get back into shape. Without her, I would be utterly lost. And I’d probably still have a mullet and dress funny.

What's Wrong With Me?

2006-11-05T21:59:00.000-05:00

I recently got an email from my friend, Susan, which contained one of those personality survey things that gets passed around the Net. Most of the questions were typical trite stuff (“What’s your favorite color?”, “Do you make the bed?”, “What’s the last book you read?” etc…) But one of the questions intrigued me. It was: “What’s your worst personality flaw?” I was thinking about this and sorting through my nearly infinite list of remarkable personality flaws when it occurred to me that I didn’t really know how to answer. I could probably give an answer that feels honest to me but there’s a really good chance that I would be wrong. I’ve noticed that most people can’t correctly identify their own worst personality flaws.

There are countless people who piss me off to no end but it’s abundantly clear that they have no idea their actions are offensive and/or irritating. This self ignorance seems to be a trait common to nearly everyone on the planet. And, if that’s the case, then, most likely, I am also unaware of my own worst flaws. So I started wondering exactly what I do, without realizing it, to make the world a far worse place?

It’s not that I want to know my greatest flaw so I can correct it; I want to know so I can more thoroughly generate tension and enjoy the unease of others. I guess that means that my biggest flaw is that I’m an unapologetic misanthrope.

Or maybe I’m just a real asshole.

Most likely though, I’m fine and it’s the rest of the world that has a problem.

This last possibility seems logical. Misanthropy implies that I have an innate dislike for all mankind but I don’t. I like some people. There are even a few that I actually love. In fact, in addition to my wife, I can think of about ten to twenty other people that I’m proud to call my friends and don’t mind spending time with every now and then. But outside that group… Fuck ‘em.

Christie and my old friend, Jenny, have both said that no one who likes pets as much as I do can be as big of a badass as I want people to think I am. It’s true that I am a lover of nearly all non-delicious creatures; however, that doesn’t mean I have to like people. Dogs and cats and creepy crawly things don’t piss me off the way people do. A dog has never, through its own negligence and laziness, made my work day harder and more stressful. A cat has never cut me off in traffic. A spider has never broken my heart. And a deer has never talked about me behind my back (at least not that I know of). An orangutan once grabbed a fistful of my hair and wouldn’t let go (true story!) but I think he assumed, based on looks, that we were closely related.

In general, the casts of Madagascar and Babe have never given me any trouble and I don’t expect them to do so in the future. Though I do have a recurring nightmare where a bunch of cows and pigs and sheep drag me out of my favorite restaurant and eat me. But, hey, that’s only fair. I’m probably delicious when served medium rare with a mushroom glaze and caramelized onions over a rice pilaf.

People, on the other hand, scare the blue bejesus out of me with their stupidity while, day in and day out, pissing me right the fuck off. It’s really quite surprising that I haven’t already snapped and killed someone.

At least if I went to jail, I’d have time to write (in between being beaten and raped).

But I still probably wouldn’t get anything published.

You see, another of my flaws is that, when it comes to my writing, I’m too much of a perfectionist. For example, I don’t like to post anything to this blog if I can’t tie it all up at the end with some nice, neat, witty and philosophical conclusion. I want these blogs to be more than just updates about my life (mostly because, although I’m ridiculously happy, nothing much of interest is going on in my life). I want these entries to be autobiographically inspired essays but, if I don’t have time to find a good subject, explore it, deconstruct it and fashion it into a good story, I don’t usually bother.

Occasionally, I will break from the traditional essay format to throw in some little bits of personal information that don’t directly contribute to the overall flow of the piece. Like how I originally planned to use my MySpace account for more of a general Life of Lee blog and this one for deeper musings. But that hasn’t really worked out. As Christie and Jenifer have frequently pointed out, I’m not writing much on either. In fact, I’m so out of ideas that, for a Halloween post on MySpace, I just posted an old short story.

See how that broke the flow of the piece? I started with a thing about my own flaws and now I’m off on a tangent about why I don’t write more on my blog. Which leads to a story about a writer I like.

A couple of weeks ago, Christie and I (along with Ben & Wanda) went to a David Sedaris reading in Atlanta. A few thousand people paid to watch this guy read for an hour then talk about random stuff and answer questions for about half an hour. And it was fucking great! He was funny, intelligent and unlike anything I’ve seen before.

His stories (for those of you who haven’t seen him, heard him or read any of his books) are nearly all autobiographical and all but a few have a real resolution--a point that makes the journey of the story totally worthwhile. This is amazing because it often seems to me that life has no point.

But there is a point. At least there is in the lives and stories of some people. The trick, I think, is to figure out the point of your own life and your own story then do something--anything--with it. And what Sedaris does with it is amazing.

He has a nearly unparallel talent for starting at Point A and venturing off on hilarious tangents that, until the last page or so, seem completely unrelated to the first part of the story. In the end, however, he always brings the story full circle so that every paragraph fits together like a literary jigsaw puzzle. The tangents are amazing (and, on their own, worth the read or the price of admission) but the endings are always tight and the payoff is never lame.

This is the standard to which I aspire. It’s also the standard that I seem to have no chance whatsoever of matching.

Sometimes, when we go to plays or when I finish reading a book, I think: “I could do that! I should do that!” Then I see people like David Sedaris and plays like Thief River and I think, “I can’t do that! I shouldn’t even try!”

I keep telling myself that I’m going to start writing every night and finish one of the two novels and/or the play that I’m currently have on the back burner But I never do anything with any of them. I write and I write but very little ever gets finished. I let depression rob me of drive. Maybe that’s my worst flaw.

No. My worst flaw is that I’m allowing myself to end this post with no resolution whatsoever. Maybe I should just go write.

Falling Is Like This

2006-08-20T19:32:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a slacker and haven’t posted on this site in quite a while. This was pointed out to me frequently this past weekend as Christie and I celebrated the end of the home remodeling with a big (for us) party. We invited many friends to “help us celebrate and get hammered.” Many people responded, some traveling fairly impressive distances to spend time with us. Four folks (Ben & Wanda, Rania and Jennifer) came up from Atlanta, two more came in from Greenville, SC. My good friend Susan even flew down from the D.C. area (the nation’s capitol, not where they make the comics) just for the party, so she gets the award for longest distance traveled. Unfortunately, that prize was just a leftover FOX61 antenna ball.

Anyway, much food was eaten and enormous quantities of alcohol were consumed. There was even big-screen karaoke. I’m not sure exactly why there was big-screen karaoke but there was.

After the first song (who knew that Tim McGraw had even covered “Tiny Dancer” and, if you’re going to have that song on the Karaoke thing, why wouldn’t you have it “in the style of” Elton John instead of some country doofus? But I digress so let me get out of this parenthetical and return you to the thought in progress, which, in case you’ve forgotten began: “After the first song…”) I escaped from the “media lounge” to the newly-covered patio area out back to converse with the rest of the non-singers. Although, to be accurate, there were certainly a truckload of non-singers participating in the karakoing.

So, anyway… I was sitting out back, talking to friends and Susan pointed out that I should be careful as the back of my chair was only inches from the edge of the patio and a very steep drop down the hill in our backyard. That lead to me telling the story of the bushes.

Wait? You don’t know the story of the bushes? I know it was almost four years ago but everyone has heard this story. No? Okay….

In September of aught-two, I was still living in my little house on Weaver Street in East Ridge. I had been working for Mike & Jinger for less than two months and I had yet to meet Christie. At that point in my life, things were mostly pretty good. I loved my job and, except for being chronically broke and only about a month from having to move on very short notice, things were pretty damned fine in my world.

Furthermore, on that particular day (the tenth, I think it was), I had experienced a rather good day at work followed by a very pleasant dinner with my old friends Janet and Mike at Provino's, my favorite restaurant at the time. They even paid formy meal. By the time I got home, I was relaxed and happy. But I was still fat.

I had planned to meet another friend--Ted Draper--at the YMCA at 7:30 for a workout but, as is so often the case, I was running a little late. I went quickly into my house, fed the five critters (I had just gotten a new dog whose stay with me would be ended by my sudden change of residence) and changed into my workout clothes. The workout clothes consisted of black sweatpants and a tee shirt. I was wearing black socks because, as I’ve said, I had not yet met Christie and, therefore, not had the complete wardrobe makeover that people so often comment on.

So I decided not to waste time changing the socks. I figured that, with long, black sweatpants and semi-hightop cross-trainers, no one would see my socks anyway. So I sat down to put on the shoes. My two dogs and at least one of the cats took this as an invitation to play. My shoestrings immediately the center of everyone’s attention and, clearly, there were not going to get tied.

I decided that, in the interest of time, it might be best if I went out onto the front porch to finish the process of dressing for the gym (from the ankles down, anyway).

For those of you who never saw my house, let me take a moment to explain the setup to you. My front porch was about three feet above the lawn and ran about half the length of my house (or is that the width?). The front of the porch was edged by a fairly thick wall of bushes, with only two-foot wide gap providing access to the three steps that led down to the walkway. The hedge-like-thing (“We’ll call it Steve!”) was actually made up of six large bushes--three on each side of the stairs. I have no idea what kind of bushes they were but they were but they were thick and healthy and effectively hid most porch-related activities from my neighbors (thus the rise in popularity of Nude Grilling).

I had an old lawn chair on my front porch and, since the hedge blocked the view of the street, the chair was facing back toward the door. The chair was one of those kind with the bands of plastic woven together in such a manner as to imprint your ass and back with red and white plaid (the plaid may, of course, appear differently depending upon your skin color). The chair had normal front legs but the back legs were the kind that are joined by a bar across the bottom, forming a U-shaped support. In theory, this should be pretty sturdy.

I sat in this chair (where, it’s entirely possible, I had never sat before) and began the act of putting shoes on my feet over the aforementioned black socks. Perhaps, if I had unlaced the shoes rather than trying to cram them on still tied, this whole incident (which I am about to describe) might have been averted. But, as my father often said, “If a frog had wings, he’d be a fly and then he’d have to eat himself.” Or something like that. I really stopped listening once he started talking about flying frogs. I mean, how fucked up is that?

Anyway… I tugged on the back of the first shoe (probably the right one as I always seem to start there) to get it over my heel and ankle. As I did this, I leaned backward in the chair--for leverage maybe? At that point, the single-piece back leg thing slipped over the front lip of the porch (there were no rails) and, with no chance to flail, grab, bellow or even gasp, I followed the chair over into the bushes.

Had the bushes not been there, I might very well have snapped my neck or broken a water main with my giant cranium (as you know, I have a giant head--thus the nickname “Buckethead”). The bushes were there, though... And they caught me. Like some giant, lazy but extremely carnivorous plant, they caught me. And held me there,flat on my back in a folding lawn chair with my black-socked feet in the air, soles to the clouds.

The rush of panic faded, replaced by thankfulness that I wasn’t seriously injured. The latter feeling was fleeting, however, as I realized that I was still at least a foot or more off the ground. The bushes had obviously been there for a long time and the lower trunks were quite sturdy. I had come to rest in the heart of the middle bush on the left side (if you were facing the house) and was being held aloft like… Like… Uh… Like some thing that's held aloft… Maybe as in Ancient Greece or someplace like that where the liked to hold things aloft and deliver soliloquies. “Alas, poor Buckethead…”

So I was on my back but not on the ground. I looked to my left and saw bushes. I looked to my right and saw bushes. Ahead of me was only sky. Above me were the oddly inverted homes of the two old ladies who lived across the street from me. None of the limbs of the bushes (except the ones I was lying on) seemed suitable for pulling a 270
pound (Okay, 290 pounds but I was on my way to the gym so leave me alone!) body up out of the embarrassing predicament.

It was at about this point that I began to laugh. I continued to laugh for several seconds before it occurred to me that I should attempt a… What would you call it? Dismount? Extrication? Escape? Whatever you call it, I knew that I had to do it before one of the neighbor ladies saw me there.

Of course, my luck does not work that way. They had seen. And were, I found out later, discussing my situation.

Neighbor Lady #1 had been watering her lawn when Neighbor Lady #2 came over from next door and said, "I think Lee's fell.”

NL1 said, “No. He’s just probably moving that big cabinet off his porch… Finally. Or maybe he’s just dropped something back behind there and he’s trying to get it.”

NL2 said, “No! I thought at first that he was just down there behind the bushes but then I saw his feet. They was in the air!"

They decided that someone needed to check on me so NL2 came into my yard, saw me lying in the bushes and said, “Lee… Did you fall?”

I had a Terminator moment where various possible answers flashed across my internal response screen. I went with, "No! I just like relaxing in the bushes!"

I guess she thought, “Well he is pretty fucking weird. Maybe he does like relaxing in the bushes so she went back over to hang out with NL1.”

They both kept watching my house where, to use NL1's words, "The bushes was just a'shakin'! It looked like a tornado was goin' through the middle of them." Then, without warning, the bushes spat me forth like Jonah from the belly of the great fish.

The only method I could discern to extricate myself was to was to execute a backflip and dump myself headfirst onto the ground. I managed this with roughly the grace of a stoned elephant rollerblading during an earthquake.

I quickly dusted myself off, threw my shoes in the car and promptly got the hell out of there because I was convinced that I could outrun the embarrassment.

I was, as you might expect, wrong.

So that’s the story I told at the party. Ben followed with a pair of spectacular bike crash stories (the bikes weren’t spectacular but the stories and crashes were). Susan told her story about falling down a poorly-paved hill at a barn party and the one about falling down the hill at her old apartment. Mike told of building up speed while stumbling down a hill in Ecuador and charging like a rhino into the bus. Jinger told us about when she fell through the floor of the attic and her leg was dangling two stories above the floor of their foyer. We finished the falling stories with my tale of how my mom fell on the ice and…

What? You haven’t heard that one? Well…

A long time ago, in a Rossville far, far away… My mother got up at about five in the morning to make breakfast for my dad and pack a lunch for him. The previous night had been bitterly cold and that morning wasn’t much better. But, looking outside into the pre-dawn murk, they didn’t see any snow on the road. That’s because you can’t see black ice.

My dad got into his old ’62 Ford pickup and started down the very steep hill in front of our house. Almost immediately, he began to slide across the road.

Across from our driveway and down just a bit was a huge dip. We never liked him. But, anyway, the dip’s house sat at the bottom of a very steep hill that began its descent at the edge of the road. And Dad’s truck was headed right for it.

He floored the brake. He put on the emergency brake. He prayed to Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha and that Indian god with all the arms. The truck came to rest with one of its front wheels up on the curb of the precipice. As long as he kept his foot on the brake, it was okay but, every time he eased up, the truck shifted closer to the plunge.

Dad honked his horn and, Mom, being the only one awake in the neighborhood, went to see what was going on. Dad rolled down his window and yelled, “Bring me a brick to put under the tire!”

Now, a word about my father and bricks. He’s one of those old school guys who never really trusted brakes on cars but used bricks under the tires religiously. I don’t remember a time when his truck was parked in our driveway (which was on a hill) that there wasn’t a brick or two chocking the tires. Sadly, my generation never fully appreciated the miraculous chocking power of the common red brick.

Mom, sensing the danger, rushed outside. She was wearing only her slippers and one of those long, nylon nightgowns that mothers wore back when I was a kid.

On a side note, it kind of creeps me out to know that my mother wasn’t wearing anything under there but it makes the story funnier. So…

Mom grabbed the tire brick and rushed out onto the street. Onto the black ice.

As she neared the truck, she got a good, close-up look at all ten of her toenails. Her nightgown billowed up and she landed bare ass to black ice. Her left hand went down to break the fall and the other went to her head--to protect it, I guess. The problem was that the other hand still held the brick.

So Mom, bare-assed on the ice, whacked the purple bejesus out of the right side of her head then, thoroughly dazed, slid right past dad and on down the street. Dad, his foot jammed onto the brake pedal, could only watch her slide past.

Mom’s ice-enhanced momentum petered out several feet past Dad’s truck so she had to crawl back up the hill and jam the miracle brick under the tire before he could even get out of the truck and help her back into the house, where, ironically, the put ice on her multiple bruises.

So this story was told as well. In general, the falling stories were fantastic. We laughed, we cried, we ached empathetically.

It wasn’t until later that it occurred to me that the great unifying force in the world isn’t love or compassion or even a shared love/hate relationship with that “My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the Yard” song. It’s clumsiness that binds us.

We’ve all fallen. And we’ve all fallen often enough that, at least once, the act of falling was really fucking funny and makes a hell of a good story for parties.

That made me think of Ani Difranco. Not because she’s particularly clumsy or has a falling story that I’ve heard (though I’m sure she has one). But it made think of her song “Falling Is Like This”. (Christie put that on a mix disc for me once and I think it was even on our wedding mix.) Love really is like falling. It’s not always graceful, it’s not always pleasant and it’s never planned but, if you survive it, it makes a hell of a good story.

Chaos and Creation in the Basement

2006-06-13T20:45:00.000-05:00

Some of you know the story of our remodeling nightmare. Some don’t. So here it is, finally posted on the day that the whole thing is actually supposed to be finished.

Last October, we began remodeling our house. We left for a cruise on the first of October and the workers started while we were gone. The job included stripping and re-finishing the floors in our living room / dining room, adding crown molding to every room and a pretty serious remodeling of the kitchen. There were a few other things but they were really minor. The whole project was supposed to have been finished by the end of October as we were planning on having Thanksgiving dinner at our house.

The contractors, led by a guy named Bill, did the floors while we were gone (or, actually, had them done by a subcontractor). The rest of the project stretched on and on, missing the end of October deadline. When Thanksgiving came around, we had no kitchen. No appliances were hooked up and the kitchen was a wreck. This was a condition we lived with for about a month. Christie was, understandably, upset. And still the work went on.

After much yelling by Christie, Bill and his guys managed to finish most of the work the week before Christmas. There were a few minor things they never bothered to finish (no thresholds in the den) and a few things they screwed up and didn’t fix (we still can’t shut the door between our den and hallway and the kitchen sink was leaking) but it was all relatively minor stuff and we were able to host Christmas festivities at our house.

Then…

In early January, my boss, Mike, came in to work with a guy who had been working on the bathroom at Mike and Jinger’s new house. This guy, David, said he could give me an estimate on turning our unfinished basement into a large den, office, laundry room, storage closet and bathroom. So he came over and gave us an estimate and a list of references. He even came back with a written estimate and a very detailed plan.

We got some other estimates and we checked David’s references. He wasn’t licensed, bonded, insured or any of that but his price was about the same as all the others, he was the only one to give us such great detail about his plan, and he could start right away. In addition, he asked us how early he could be there every day. He said he liked to put in ten, twelve or even fourteen hour days. That sounded great to us so, on January 9th of this year (probably less than three weeks after the completion of the upstairs work), we wrote a fairly large check to cover the first batch of supplies and first bit of labor. The project was supposed to take six to eight weeks so we bought some new furniture and scheduled it for delivery the last week of February. We even began to plan for a party in mid to late March to show off all the new work.

We wrote the check on a Sunday, I think. On Monday morning, before I had even gotten to work (but I was probably running late (I usually am)), David called and said that our bank wouldn’t cash the check. Well, of course not. Since we had just decided over the weekend to hire him and he was really eager to start, the money we’d transferred into the account to cover the check hadn’t gone through. We had expected him to deposit the check into his account and use his credit card to buy the supplies. And that’s when things started to go wrong.

According to David, his checking account was new and he didn’t have checks or a check card yet. He was going to pay for all the supplies with cash. That’s fine, we said. Just bring us the receipts. He kept asking if there was someway we could get him a bit of his “draw” so he could get started but I told him that we didn’t have money in other accounts to cover that.

So, Tuesday, he bought a bunch of supplies from Lowe’s (which, for some odd reason, he always calls “Lowel’s”, with an extra L) and had them delivered on Wednesday.

I’m a little fuzzy on the timeline here because so much has gone wrong but I think it was that Wednesday that he said he had to find a new place to live because his girlfriend had kicked him out. He said, “She’s very vindictive and I’m going to have to get a restraining order. Don’t worry, though. I don’t think she knows where your house is.”

What?!!! What the fuck, dude?! We’re supposed to be worried about your girlfriend now?! Holy shit.

But she never burned our house or anything and life went on. David got a new place to live and began preparing to actually work on the house. Then he disappeared.

We didn’t see him for a day or two and the never fun process of panicking began. He finally called one night while we were out to dinner at Amigo but he sounded drunk or something. He said he was in the hospital then hung up. We promptly began the process of shitting bricks and throwing up. By the next morning, we were in Full Oh-My-God-We’re-Fucked Panic Mode.

Finally, David called and, in a more coherent voice, said that his blood pressure had spiked to some unholy level and “She” had taken him to the hospital but they had him on new medicine and he was feeling better.

On a side note, “She” is Tracy (I’m guessing at the spelling and I don’t know her last name). He almost never referred to her as anything else. Given the way he pronounced “Lowe’s”, I wonder if that was even her real name. Though, at the time of his hospitalization, we didn’t know that “She” was the same “She” he had been dating when he was working on Mike’s house. This confused us because we didn’t know if he was living with another girl and dating her or what. We wanted to ask but, more than anything, we wanted him to finish and get the fuck out.

And here’s another side note. David, as it turns out, was free to do this sort of work because he was on disability for a heart problem. About six months earlier, he had had heart surgery and, when the doctors put his chest back together, they did it wrong so he has a weird abscess that has to be drained periodically and he’s in constant pain. His medical problems would prove to be a huge problem for us as well.

So David was out of the hospital and feeling… different. He was sweating like George W. Bush on Jeopardy and shaking like Dan Quayle at a spelling bee. He looked like shit but, since we were about a month in and nothing had been done, we didn’t really care too much. Then he started asking for more money.

He said that, because of moving expenses and unexpected medical bills, he had already spent most of the huge advance we gave him. He tried to convince us that he couldn’t get his medicine until he had paid for his hospital stay. We knew this was bullshit but what could we do? We decided to just pay him the rest of his labor cost up front and not give him anything on completion.

We should have just eaten the loss and dumped him then as this was only the beginning of a disturbing and draining cycle.

He would show up sometime in the morning (never early) with Her/Tracy and work for two or three hours--maybe five or six if he really needed money. He’d work a bit and demonstrate just enough progress to keep us paying for supplies. Then he’d disappear for days at a time with only minimal contact. Every week or so, he would task for more money and, after enough badgering, we’d give in because, by that point, we were in too deep and only getting in deeper.

I could write several thousand more words about this Iowan Dipshit but, after more than eight months of living amid the chaos of construction, I just don’t feel like it. So, in the words of Inigo Montoya, “Let me explain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up.”

1. David never once worked the 10-14 days he promised. In fact, in the full four months that he worked for us, he never did a full forty hour week.

2. He smoked in the basement. Christie hates smoke in the house with the same passion as all former smokers.

3. We gave him our Lowe’s card so that he could buy supplies and we’d have a record of what he bought since he only rarely brought us receipts. He used our card to buy tools. This should have come out of his end, not our materials expenses. When he left, he left behind a couple of small things but I’m sure it wasn’t all we’d paid for.

4. One day, when he didn’t come in, he said he had been in court because a game warden had caught him with an under-sized bass. Yeah, right.

5. We got a call from the bank one day to approve his cashing of a check since he had an out-of-state (Iowa) driver’s license. He hadn’t always been using the Iowa license. He had been using a Tennessee license but he said he “lost” his license, strongly implying that he misplaced it, not that it had been taken from him by a guy in a black robe.

6. He drank the Cokes we kept in the downstairs fridge.

7. “She” bought flowers using our Lowe’s card (she didn’t call it “Lowel’s”) and kept them in our downstairs fridge where the cokes used to be.

8. He was always telling us how broke he was an how he needed an advance but then he told us how they paid several hundred dollars for a pit bull that came “from a line of champions”.

9. He missed a few days because his pain specialist had him on Methadone and, when David found out what it was, he decided to take himself off it. (For the record, I don’t believe any of that.)

10. We bought furniture and carpet right after we hired David and arranged delivery for late February or early March. We obviously had to reschedule. David gave us a new completion date so we added a week or two and rescheduled. We missed that deadline and another. We finally had to have the furniture delivered and shoved into my office. The carpet was just delivered today.

11. Okay, this one probably isn’t David’s fault but, because of all the sheetrock sanding, everything in our house, upstairs and downstairs, is covered in a thin layer of white dust.

12. And speaking of sheetrock… This is typical David. He would put up a bit of the sheetrock mud and then take two or three days off for it to dry. Apparently, he couldn’t be doing plumbing or wiring or anything else at all while the stuff was drying. He was not a multitasker, even when one or more of the tasks were essentially just waiting.

13. After dealing with his constant lies about how much he was working, we got a webcam and installed it in the basement. It pissed him off but at least we were able to cut down on the lies about how much he'd been working. When my new office is finished and furnished, the webcam will become the Opus Cam. You'll be able to log in any time of day and watch the world's cutest Chihuahua sleep.

14. He… Oh, fuck it. He screwed us royally and got away with it. We can’t file criminal charges because, technically, it’s illegal to use an unlicensed contractor and, even if we sued him civil court (we did have a written contract and a couple months worth of Lowe’s records), we’d never get anything out of him because he had nothing and could disappear pretty easily.

So, finally, in early May, we fired him and found someone else. The new guy was licensed, bonded, insured and had done a lot of work for Christie’s friend, Whit. It was going to cost us a lot more to finish but he said he could get it all done in two or three weeks. The only problem was, he couldn’t start for two or three weeks.

So we waited… And, while we were waiting, Satan sent a flood.

One Friday May morning at about 7:15, Christie got out of the shower and went to the living room. I was just waking up because I had to be at work early but I was still in bed and not fully awake. Christie came back into the bedroom and said, "We have a huge problem."

At some point in the night (probably not long after we went to bed at about 11:00), the filter for our fridge's icemaker ruptured. There was a pool of very clean and quite cool water, about an inch deep, which covered most of our kitchen floor. We used every towel in our house to soak up the water then we wrung out some of the towels and used them again but still couldn't get it really dry. We did get enough of the water up to see that the new (about six months old) wood laminate floor was already bubbled and warped. And then...

I went downstairs and HOLY SHIT! There was a massive pool of water in our basement and water was coming pretty fast through the sheetrock ceiling. It was dripping out of light fixtures and running down the wall near the backyard. The only good thing about it was that, thanks to David’s incompetence and slothfulness, nothing down there had been painted and the carpet and furniture were yet in place.

I took the day off to meet with contractors and repairmen and emergency cleanup crews. The insurance people sent an "emergency clean up crew" up from Rome to suck up all the water and try to prevent any further damage. They had to rip out a huge L-shaped chunk of our new ceiling in the basement and install a series of industrial strength fans and dehumidifiers which had to run constantly for four days. They also had to rip up about two feet of the carpet in the den and remove the pad because, apparently, the pad, once soaked, will never dry.

The clean up crew was supposed to be back on Tuesday but it was Thursday before they got there. They had to rip up the kitchen floor and, when they did, they found there was still water under there. So the fans and dehumidifier had to stay until the weekend. Christie is very sensitive to noise so this did not make her happy. And, when Christie is unhappy, I’m unhappy.

After everything was fixed, we actually ended up with a much nicer floor because Connie and Whit gave us some leftover hardwood from their recent remodel and it looks really great. The really crappy part was that, with the flooding, the drying out and the new floor, there was about three weeks where we had no usable kitchen and our stove and refrigerator were in the upstairs den (which is very small). Now, while I think a urinal in the den is a great idea, I wasn’t thrilled to have my view of the TV blocked by refrigerator magnets and the fridge to which they were attached.

So now all that’s done and everything is in place… Almost. Since I started this entry (I started it at about 9:00am and it’s now 9:38pm), the carpet installer guys showed up but they couldn’t put it in today because there were still some spots in the floor that needed to be filled in or else the carpet would stretch and sag and wrinkle and, apparently, end life as we know it.

So we wait again. There is still a leaky sink to be fixed and carpet to be installed and a few little things to be touched up but it’s almost there. We can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. And, now, the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a speeding freight train. Today, the light at the end of the tunnel is a 50” plasma HDTV.

In Defense of Marriage

2006-06-10T16:52:00.000-05:00

Marriage, we are told, is under attack. Just this past week, the United States Senate voted on a measure to officially define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. Meanwhile, two state legislatures (both about a two hour drive from my home) were dealing with the same issue. Down in Atlanta, Governor Purdue is vowing that he will work to ensure that his state’s gay marriage ban is allowed to become law even though the state court overturned it just a short while ago. Up in Nashville, a group of Tennessee state senators are working hard to push through a similar law. Even our president has been very vocal about his support for laws to place restrictions on marriage in the U.S.

I’ve been listening to and reading about the debates for years but, in the last few years, this issue has gradually become one of the main topics of discussion in every political arena. And, without fail, laws banning gay marriage are referred to as “Defense of Marriage Acts” or something in the same vein. Apparently, if men are allowed to marry men and women are allowed to marry women and people are allowed to have multiple spouses (okay, the last one isn’t as big a deal but, I’ve been watching Big Love), heterosexual couple marriages will become a thing of the past. Marriage, it seems, is being destroyed by godless liberals.

This has prompted me to speak out in defense of marriage. I, too, feel that the sanctity of marriage is being undermined and our rights are being threatened. Marriage, as an institution, is in grave danger and we must fight to save it! The time has come to stand up to these insane groups of raging nuts that want to force their twisted and sick version of love on us! We must defend marriage and the only way to do that is through the courts and legislature. That’s why I’m calling for a true defense of marriage act--one that makes marriage open to anyone who is in love. If we let the Right Wing nutjobs rob us of our right to express our love, we’ve lost one of the most basic of human rights.

Christie and I have been married for almost two years now (our anniversary is the 26th of June) and I can’t imagine my life without her. Marrying her was the best thing I ever did (and I can say that with all honesty because I’ve never bought a multi-million dollar winning lottery ticket). Of course, since I’m a man (though she frequently disputes that assertion) and she’s a woman, there were no real barriers to us officially solemnizing our vows and reaping the legal benefits of marriage. (And, by “reaping the legal benefits of marriage”, I mean that I now have health insurance and someone to take me off life support. Plus, she can’t testify against me in court!)

In the back of my mind, the raging activist in me (a part of me that is vehemently vocal but extremely lazy) said that we shouldn’t get married until marriage is a right that everyone in this country can enjoy. But I love her. Goddamn, I love her! And I wanted everyone to know it and I wanted to make it official! (Plus, I really needed to see the doctor but couldn’t afford it. Prozac ain’t cheap, people.) So I married her and I’ve never regretted it (though that’s another assertion Christie would likely dispute).

It is the fact that I’m so happily married that makes me want that right for everyone regardless of sexual orientation or taste. I still believe there should be some licensing process for parents buts marriage, when it’s a product of love, is the most amazing institution on the planet. It’s beyond anything I ever imagined it would be and I wouldn’t trade a second of it. I just don’t understand how one group of people could deny such feelings to another group of people. That’s just selfish and mean!

Let me digress for a second and say (for those who might not know me well) that I am a hardcore atheist but I’m not necessarily anti-Christian. I was deeply indoctrinated into the cult of Jesus as a child but I no longer believe in that particular religion and I can assure you that I never will again. Still, I know that, for some people, religion is an extremely important and valuable part of their lives. Furthermore, I actually understand why it is. What I don’t understand is the paranoia and hatred that religions often seem to engender.

The so-called “Defense of Marriage” acts are a great example (or a scary example of how hatred and bigotry can make otherwise fairly intelligent take something that should be good and pure at heart and twist it into a weapon in a political war.

Here are some open questions to those who would ban same-sex and/or multi-partner marriage:

Do Christians have a trademark (or copyright or patent or whatever) on the institution of marriage? Do you think you invented marriage and, therefore, have the right to define and limit it?

What is gained by prohibiting same sex marriages? What have you personally lost if a man marries a man or a woman marries a woman? Does the fact two people of the same sex love each other diminish the love you feel for your spouse?

Love is the one thing in life that should be truly limitless and open. Maybe I’m less intelligent than I think I is but I’ll never understand how putting limits on love is a good thing for our society.

Writers and Rockers

2006-05-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

Although I’ve never published a novel or even sold a story to a major magazine, my life as a writer has brought me great pleasure. Still, I must confess that, secretly, I’ve always wanted to be a rock star. Go ahead and laugh if you like but what young boy hasn’t dreamed of standing there on stage amid the smoke and the lights with the echo of the amplifiers ringing in his head? Since the first time I stood pressed against a stage and felt the rumbling throb of the bass rattling my teeth, I have known to what form of expression I wished to devote my life, my love and my energy.

Countless teenage hours were spent alone in my room lip-synching to no one while, in my head, I saw ten thousands eyes (I was playing a small arena) glazed with wonder, staring up at me as their mouths moved in time with my own. Oh, how the busty and supple young girls in the tight tops and leather skirts would swoon when I punctuated a gritty guitar line with a nasty pelvic thrust against the mic stand, giving them a leer that made it clear I alone knew the secrets to unimaginable ecstasy.

Unfortunately, this noble dream, like oh so many others, was destined to fall far short of fruition.

Now, with my thirtieth birthday well behind me and the inevitable fear of old age starting to blossom in me, I must regretfully accept the fact that I will never be the next Jim Morrison, the next Bono or even the next Lead Singer from the Crash Test Dummies or That Guy from Phish Who Looks Like Chuck Norris.

Accepting my shortcomings makes me sigh heavily with regret but, even as my youthful hopes for a career on the rock ‘n’ roll road began to fade, I heard another calling. Yes, in the deep despair of my failure, I found another muse: writing.

So far, this avocation has not paid a single bill and I’m beginning to doubt that it ever will. But, paid or not, I am a writer. So, now, I pass my free time not with addictive melodies, sublime harmonies, infectious rhythms and a cornucopia of groupies and coked-out models but, rather, with carefully wrought sentences and studiously crafted stories. Instead of a Stratocaster, I wield a Bic pen (or, to be more accurate, a rather bulky and not-at-all-portable desktop PC). I weave my magic not before screaming throngs of adoring fans but sitting in my boxer shorts, alone in a dark room with only my cats and one Chihuahua to offer encouragement. And, most days, my pets are rather disinterested in my work.

In spite of all this, I do not despair for, as pathetic as this all sounds, I really enjoy what I do and I haven’t yet stopped dreaming of success.

The only thing that really depresses me about writing is that, even if become the next Stephen King, I’ll still never have the rush as even the lowliest rock star.
I’ve been to readings and book signings and I’ve seen rabid book fans but I’ve never seen a girl throw her panties onto the stage while David Sedairs reflected on his years living abroad and struggling with a foreign tongue. (But, to be fair, that’s a bad example. Throwing your panties to Mr. Sedairs probably wouldn’t accomplish much.)

I’ve listened to hundreds of audiobooks but I’ve never found myself talking along with the author or narrator, matching him word-for-word. I’ve never spontaneously started quoting chapters from a novel or had a paragraph stuck in my head for days. Even poetry, stripped of music, just doesn’t have the staying quality of a good guitar hook or catchy bass line.

Knowing that such things would never be a part of my life as a writer had never really bothered me until the day I accompanied my guitarist friend, Chase, to a local music store. There, I learned what it truly is to be a musician and what it isn’t to be a writer.

Upon entering the shop, I was struck at once by the variety of equipment available to those in the music field. Guitars of all shapes, sizes and colors adorned the walls while shelf after shelf was devoted to a seemingly infinite array of accessories. There were wah-wah pedals, fuzz boxes, amps, speakers, strings and many items whose purpose I could not readily discern.

I was awed by this vast selection because, though I had shopped rather carefully and conscientiously for my computer, I had never even dreamed of so wide a range of choices in tools of the trade. Looking at a long glass case full of nothing but strings, I found myself wondering how it would feel to experiment with a different kind of paper or printer cartridge. Would it make a difference in the quality of my writing or prevent blisters on my fingers? Would a new chair or desk lamp make me look sexier? Would smashing my keyboard at the end of a chapter be cathartic, juvenile and artistic all at once? Could it be that I’d been waiting only for a change in medium to free the great art that’s been lying mostly dormant within my subconscious?

That day in the music store, Chase had his eye on particular guitar of considerable repute and the proprietor invited him to try it out. So, taking a seat on a stool, he plugged into an amp and began to strum. Soon, he was cranking out familiar Rolling Stones tunes and experimenting with Mark Knopfler inspired riffs. While shopping, Chase was creating! I was both stunned and openly envious, for I had never sat down at a keyboard in a computer store and wrote a story in order to determine the worthiness of a particular PC or word processing software. Maybe I should do more writing at Best Buy. I found myself wondering how they felt about me writing in my underwear to test out the computers.

This thought led me to another observation. Unlike writing, music is an immediate art. You pick up the guitar or sit down at the keyboard and you simply begin to play. Instantly, you are expressing yourself with only instinctual thought to style or form. Sure, such doodlings are not necessarily representative of a musician’s best work but I rarely warm up for a writing session by paraphrasing a Robert Frost verse or a Tom Clancy action scene or by simply hitting keys at random because it “feels right”.

As I was marveling at the perks of musicianship, another hirsute young man entered the shop and greeted Chase with the familiarity of a former band-mate. The friend, it seemed, was a keyboard player who was in the market for something called a MIDI but, when Chase started playing an old Joy Division song, the guy slipped behind a keyboard and joined right in.

I had to be greener than the Hulk’s nut sack because the envy was really flowing in me at that point. While I have, from time to time, collaborated with other writers on various projects, never have we shared such an immediate and intimate flow of ideas. Never were we able to lose ourselves completely in reconstructing the work of our heroes. Never would such a thing even be allowed! When one musician reproduces the work of another, it is called a “cover”, an “homage”, a “tribute even”. When a writer does that for more than a line or two, it’s called plagiarism. Cover prose just hasn’t caught on with the writing crowd.

I’ve had some great experiences as both a writer and a lover of music but that experience left me shaken. It made me question the nature of art and expression. Was what I had been doing a real art? If so, was it as valuable an art as music? Did writing contribute as much to the human experience as music? The answer to all those questions seemed to be a resounding NO and, for a while, I lost interest in writing.

Of course, that was a long time ago. More than a decade has slipped between me and that day at the music store and, as you can clearly see, my interest in writing has returned. But I never really got over it and, no matter how successful a writer I might one day become, I will never feel like a true artist.

So I sit in my room, drink my beer and type my silly little tales of rednecks in trailers. And I wait patiently for the day when the writers of the world will unite, rise up and kill every motherfucker who ever played three notes in a row. For, only when music is dead will writers ever be cool enough to get laid.

Homoerotic Fifth Grade Epics

2006-05-29T22:22:00.000-05:00

Over on his blog,the Atlanta Chronicles, my friend, Ben, talks about how he came to be a writer. Take a few minutes to read that post because this one started as a reply to his but got out of hand. When you’re finished with his, come back. I’ll wait…

Finished? Good post, wasn’t it?

Anyway… I had a very similar experience to Ben’s--minus the part about being outdone by the young Hemingway in my class.

Let me start by saying that I didn’t see Star Wars when it came out in 1977. I saw it the following summer at a drive-in theatre. I got the novel for Christmas that year and, though I had always been a voracious reader, up until that point, I had only had the patience for short stories and comics. So Star Wars was my first novel.

This was fourth grade and, the previous year, my teacher had sent home a letter to my mom telling her that I had a real talent for writing. She (the teacher) even bought these little comic book ink stamp things with blank word bubbles to encourage me to write. I think I was mostly unaware of all that praise and subtle encouragement but I was beginning to develop a serious interest in writing. (And, on a side note: That teacher now lives right down the street from me. Or, rather, I now live right down the street from her since she’s been here since Jesus was an infant.)

Anyway, by my fifth grade year when my Star Wars mania was at its peak and the interest in writing was heightened by the announcement of the Young Authors’ Fair. I decided to write a wholly original space epic.

Fast forward for a moment to the present day. We are, as you know, having tons of work done on our basement and things on the garage side are a mess. Because of this mess, one of the rubber tubs full of writing-related stuff has been opened and nearly dumped out. There in that box is the epic from fifth grade. It is typewritten (my mom did that) and bound (in the style of the Young Authors’ Fair) in contact paper over cardboard. Throughout the story, there are parts that have been covered with White-Out and corrected by pen. The story is 41 pages long (not including title page and illustrations) and features 16 chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue. At the end, before the “About the Author” page, there eight pages of illustrations, rendered in what appears to be colored pencil. The title of this grand epic is SPACE ADVENTURES.

The story is set in the 55th century (the “universe date is four-forty-four and one point two” for those of you keeping track) and begins “…on a small planet known Lak,” where “a man of twenty-two years, who was six feet and two inches tall, and had a muscular build and black hair that was parted, walked into a rocket port” to purchase a ticket to Zale.

By the top of the second page, this man , Mark Smith, has foiled an attempted robbery and received a reward of one “Zanoi”, which, we are told, is a lot of money.
So Mark sets off for Zale on a “cargo and passenger cruiser” called the Flant, piloted by Captain James Rogers and his green, reptilian, cyclops co-pilot Tway. But, along the way, the ship is attacked and captured by Space Pirates. Captain Rogers hides his crew and the 25 passengers, only to ambush the boarding party. In another wholly original twist, they dress in the uniforms of the pirates so that they can move about undetected on the pirates’ ship. Many firefights and much carnage ensue.

Eventually, the heroes encounter the main villain, Captain Comet. He is captain of the Pirship, the pirate ship (get it) that attacked and captured Mark and the others. Captain Comet “…was a husky man wearing solid black clothes. His left hand had been replaced with a special metal hand. His right eye had been replaced with a large gray one. His nose and mouth were only metal breath screens. He wore a large black glove his right hand and he wore a large utility belt. He had rockets on his back, also.”

I didn’t read the whole thing again. (I mean, it’s 41 for Christ’s sake! Plus illustrations!) But, skimming through it, it seems that: Captain Rogers is killed and some other character seems to take his place. There are more firefights and more bad prose and a McGuyver bit where Mark turns a light into an electro magnet to disable the “electro alarm” in a crawlway. There’s another villain--this one named Super Skull. In the end, Mark goes through a black hole and ends up in the galaxy of Micron where he becomes a member of the Space force and marries “a beautiful red-haired girl” named Cindy Matthews. He, of course, went on to have many more adventures.

Re-reading this (or skimming through it), I can’t help but laugh.

My attention to detail was absurdly developed, particularly when it came to describing the spaceships and the clothing of the villains. Remember the nearly homoerotic description of Mark Smith mentioned above?

Then there’s my prose. Things like: “quick as a laser flash could shoot” and “I saw a room with a good, good lock on the door,” are just brilliantly bad. But my favorite bit of all is this bit from Captain Rogers, following the death of his co-pilot and best friend, Tway:

“I hate the idea that my best friend, Tway, is dead,”
sobbed James. “Oh, well. I’ll get over it. I hope!”
he added sadly.

That raw emotion in that scene makes me tear up a bit even now.

In his blog, Ben talks about how his long story bored everyone and how he didn’t want to read it because the girl before him had been so good. I didn’t follow anyone with any particular writing skill (at least not that I remember) but I do remember that I didn’t want to read it because it was so long. I started skipping through it and editing on the fly because, as with Ben’s story, people were bored almost immediately--though I can’t imagine why.

Anyway, no one was particularly impressed with my story and it didn’t open the doors to an exciting career in place of junior high but, reading it aloud before the class left me with one solid memory.

As I mentioned earlier, my mom typed the thing from my handwritten manuscript and, along the way, she made some (okay, many) mistakes. Most of them were corrected but, as will happen, she missed a few. Most of these mistakes were really minor and didn’t throw me off too much in my verbal presentation. Then I got to the line where the hero disarms one of the bad guys. In my typed version, the line read:

“With a swift motion, Mark grabbed the bun belonging
to the guard who was about to handcuff him.”

There’s more homoeroticism there but that one was inadvertent. Not to say that, with the others, I was trying to turn on gay guys. I digress…

Fortunately, I didn’t actually read the line as typed. I caught the mistake but I started laughing and never fully recovered. It was fifth grade and buns were fucking funny. But they were also dirty so I couldn’t tell anyone what was wrong. I didn’t want to have to explain to the principal why I was talking about buns in class. But I couldn’t stop laughing. If anyone had been paying attention (I think even the teacher had nodded off by that point, as this bit of interstellar grab-ass happened on page 33), they must have thought I was a fucking moron.

But my point (and, as Ellen Degeneres says, “I do have one”) is that I think this experience put me off writing longform stuff for quite a while. The next couple of years, I submitted only short story collections to the Young Authors’ Fair and, for a while, that’s all I would write. Eventually, after reading some damn good novels in high school, I came round to writing longer pieces again.

By the time my interest in epics was rekindled, I had developed an intense love for short stories and the art of streamlined storytelling. That, I believe, is why my novels tend to be on the short side and my short stories are barely stories at all. I’m a short story writer trapped in the body of a novelist.

I sometimes think that, perhaps, if that fifth grade class had gazed me in rapt awe as I rambled on and on about space pirates and laser battles, I would be writing deeply complex novels of distant worlds and alien cultures instead of twisted novellas about a one-handed ex-con living in a trailer park.

But there’s more to it than that. I love the construction of fictional universes and I can go into great detail about the minutiae of Star Wars, Star Trek and the Marvel Universe. Furthermore, my own writing (most of which takes place in the same small, southern town) is full of intricate details that flow from story to story. In my head (and, to some extent, on paper) Winnepesaukah County is just as richly constructed as the Star Wars universe.

I think the reason I’m so attracted to the redneck denizens of my own little world is that the characters there could very easily be real. The people I write about are people you might actually meet at work, at the store or in the park. And, for me, that makes them all the more strange and frightening. I just need to learn to write fewer scenes involving bun grabbing.

I'm A Writer

2006-05-24T10:18:00.000-05:00

I don’t much care for people and I’m not a big fan of reality.

This is not to say that I dislike all people or live entirely in a world of fantasy. I love my wife, Christie, more than anything in the world. I also love my family and a small but loyal group of friends. I have a good job (populated by good friends) and, for the most part, I’m fairly grounded.

But I’m pretty sure I have Asperger Syndrome. I’ve never been officially diagnosed and, unless there’s some sort of court-ordered evaluation, I probably never will be. Still, Christie is convinced, and has convinced me, that I’m AS. I’m low-level AS, to be sure. Or is that high-level? Whatever it is, I’m high-functioning but still exhibit most of the characteristics of someone with AS.

I won’t go into all the details here. (If you don’t know about AS, you can look it up on Wikipedia which has a pretty good article on Asperger Syndrome.) Suffice it to say that, apart from a very small group of family and friends, I prefer to be alone, I don’t like to be touched and I hate social gatherings.

This, I think, is why I’m a writer.

Let me digress for a moment and say that I was inspired to write this partly because my friend Benjamin mentioned on his blog that a friend had challenged him to "Write about writing and your vision of yourself as a writer". That sounded like an interesting challenge and the rest of this rant just sort of flowed from that.

As I was saying...

I was a freshman or sophomore in high school when I decided that I wanted to be a novelist. I’m not sure when I’ll actually get the proper motivation and dedication to finish the three or four novels I’m working on and actually set about trying to sell them. But I still aspire to be a professional writer of fiction. I want to be Robert B. Parker or Christopher Moore. One of those writers that has both a loyal fanbase and a fair degree of anonymity.

When I close my eyes, I can see myself as a full-time writer: I’m not wildly successful but I make enough money for Christie and me (along with a child or two and a plethora of dogs and cats) to live comfortably on a little farm that sits conveniently near several fast food restaurants and a Best Buy. I sit out on the back deck (well out of the sun to preserve the pastiness of my skin) with a laptop and a bottle of Beck’s Dark. Christie and the child/children are playing in the pool at the bottom of our yard. Opus the Chihuahua sleeps on the chair beside me. My agent has called but I never answer the phone. If he wants to reach me, he’ll have to send an email and then, if I’m feeling particularly communicative, I’ll consider responding. Later, we’ll go out to a nice Italian dinner then over to the Theatre Centre where they’re premiering a production of my latest play in the Circle Theatre. It will get decent reviews but, hey, I can’t do anything about the quality of the acting, now can I?

can picture myself as a writer so well, I think, because, deep down, that’s really what I am.

I’m a pretty good video editor and I’m not bad with graphics but everything I do is done from the perspective of a writer. I listen to music as a writer, I watch TV as a writer. The writer in me overrides everything else. I’m always looking for flow and development and conflict and resolution. When I meet people, I find that I care very little them as individuals but I’m frequently fascinated by them as characters. For me, life is about the story and the conflict. I can appreciate the static beauty of life but only as background detail to set the mood and tone.

I’m always writing in my head. If I could find a way to get what’s in my head onto paper in a coherent way, I’d be one of the most prolific writers of our time.

I leave meetings at work and, in my head, the clients are morphing and acting and reacting to new and interesting situations. I drive down the road and picture a thousand interactions for the people I pass on the road. I watch a movie and, regardless of whether I liked it or not, I develop sequels, prequels, alternate endings and more. Everything leads to a story and then another story and so on until I finally have to fall asleep.

Reading is one of my great passions but I think I read slowly because I get distracted by the art of the writing and the storytelling. I pause to absorb the method and the style then I get lost in my own variations and interpretations and revisions.

Sometimes, I wish I could stop being a writer and just be a person. I wish I could, at least temporarily, silence the voices in my head that keep me awake long into the night. I wish I could meet someone and not imagine him or her as a Jedi or the scantily clad victim of a vampire from beyond time.

Sometimes, I wish I could be normal.

But how fucking boring would that be?

Guard Shacks and the RDC

2006-05-22T15:18:00.000-05:00

About twenty years ago (I think it was spring of '85), a friend of mine accompanied his brother and a small band of mischievous honor students to the Rossville High School Sports Annex. There, under cover of--well I don’t suppose there was much cover really--they proceeded to paint the small, concrete block guard shack that sat next to the main gate.

Now, I'm not sure why there was a guard shack there to begin with. There was never a guard in there. There was never a guard anywhere around the school. Not that one was needed. The whole parking lot was always pretty much open because the gate on the backside, by the bandroom, was never closed and the one in the front was only closed on very rare occasions. I'm still not sure why they even bothered with the fence in the first place, much less a guard shack. Maybe it was used for the parking lot attendants at basketball games but, if that was the case, I have no recollection of it.

The point is, there as a small, gray, boxy guard shack right there by the front gate which served no noticeable purpose and, one night very near the end of their senior year, these honor students (observed but not assisted by my friend) painted that extraneous structure using alternating horizontal bands of purple and pink. Of course, being honor students and future leaders of the free world, they did a damn fine job. There was no coloring outside the lines or sloppy brushwork. It looked really good and would have looked even better had the redecoration not been interrupted by the local Pork Department.

Apparently, someone who lived near the school (and it’d been a long, long time since that was a good neighborhood) called to report the vandalism. I picture it thusly:

A pair of beady, gray eyes beneath cheap mascara and thick blue eye shadow, peers out from behind floral print drapes. A mouth drops open, exposing yellowed, uneven teeth and a mossy tongue. A phone is grabbed and a call is frantically placed. 911. There is no time for looking up the regular number. This is an emergency! Screw the people whose houses are burning or who are being beaten to hamburger by their drunk husbands! This is a real crisis! The guard shack is being painted by hooligans with absolutely no regard for the school's well-established blue and white color scheme! Something has to be done--and quickly!

So the Pigs arrived and all but one of the hooligans were rounded up and carted off to jail. Parents were called. School administrators were notified. And the first pungent whiffs of the inevitable shitstorm wafted into town on an otherwise pleasant spring breeze.

You must remember that this happened in the mid 1980s. It was a simpler time. A more backward, head-up-the-ass kind of time. A time when shit like this was still sort of a big deal--particularly when honor students were involved.

And these were REAL honor students. In an era when Rossville was graduating salutatorians who had never even read a full novel, these young men were actual geniuses. In a world overflowing with Pinkies, they were a band of Brains.

The hooligans' level of intellect made their crime all the worse. How could good students do a thing like that? And using those colors! It was openly speculated that they were the first wave of a Gay Communist plot to destroy Middle America (which, thanks to the televised Oliver North trials, Rossvillians now knew was quite different from Central America). If these thinkers could be corrupted by the Godless Left, how could the football players resist the ever-growing anti-American forces of temptation and freewill?

So they were punished. There was talk that they would not be allowed to graduate. This would have meant the first four or five seats at graduation would be empty and, aside from the guest speaker, not much would be said.

Eventually, it was all resolved. The hooligans gave their speeches, graduated with the honors they so deserved and went off to fine colleges and fine careers and, in at least one case, a fine wife.

The student most punished was the one who was least involved. My friend, being a freshman at the time had a suspension that carried over into the next school year. He ended up in a great private college and eventually went on to a great career and a great wife but this hurt his quest for the perfect GPA and is probably what kept him from being Valedictorian three years later.

The important thing is that these students, in spite of their “station in life”, were punished for desecrating school property. The community must be preserved!

For two or three more years anyway.

In 1989, Rossville Comprehensive High School saw its last 12th grade graduation. Beginning the following year, high school students in that part of Walker County attended the brand new Ridgeland High School, a few miles away. The old high school building became the new Rossville Middle School since the old Junior High had burned a few years earlier.

Although I continued to live in Rossville for several more years, I slowly lost touch with it. It became background scenery on the way to work then, eventually, that place across the ridge with the good burger joint (that would be the Dream Cream). I lived not more than five or ten miles away but I completely lost touch with the city that had once been my home.

I went to college, found a career, got stuck in a boring loop of that career, broke out of the dead end cycle, met Christie, got married and moved to Rossville.

The worst part of all that was moving back to Rossville. And I resisted it with great surliness and much whining. Christie had a very nice home but, for the first several months, I was just not happy there. We live in what is, far and away, the best neighborhood in Rossville but that didn’t matter. I lived among a type of people I can’t stand and, to top it all off, I was back in Rossville. I was nearly 35 and, in my mind, I should have been living in Atlanta, New York, Amsterdam or a place with padded walls. I should have been anywhere but Rossville.

Eventually, I came to love the home almost as much as I love Christie. It’s really a nice little neighborhood, it’s a pretty good location and, apart from some stupid taxation policies and a dangerously right-wing governor, Georgia is a fairly decent place to live.

The actual city of Rossville, however... Not so great.

When my parents were kids and teenagers, Rossville was hoppin’. There were theatres and shops and restaurants and lots of things to bring people over from Chattanooga. By the time I was in junior high, though, it was all going away. There were still some decent little mom and pop restaurants and Rossville still had some high-dollar dress shops and a few other nice little stores. But it was fading fast.

I think it was around that time (this would have been the early ‘80s) that the Rossville Development Corporation (or RDC) was formed. It was led by a group of Rossville bigwigs (mostly members of families who owned or had owned the many textile mills in town) and its mission was to restore Rossville to its former glory.

For a while, there were RDC signs all over the place. Old, faded walls were painted bright white and emblazoned with the bright blue and red RDC logo. It seemed to me to be sort of a promise of things to come. Either the factories would re-open or there would be urban renewal and we’d get snazzy new shops and restaurants and condos and artists and all the things that make for great little towns.

Of course, none of this ever happened. The reasons for this are many and I won’t go into that now. While I was a few miles away living my life, hope slowly evaporated and the town died. Shops closed, minds closed and the town became a rotting shell of what it had once been. The lottery, which could have helped tremendously, only served to further eat away at the body and soul of the little city. By the time I moved back, the town was so far gone that I doubt it will ever recover.

But, as they say, hope springs eternal.

And, one day a few weekends ago, I went out wandering Rossville with my trusty Canon Rebel and a few rolls of black and white film. (Remember film? It’s cool stuff.)

Anyone who’s ever looked at my photography knows that I absolutely love decay and chaos. Entropy is my muse. I figured that Rossville would be a great place to indulge my thirst for old buildings, cobwebs and moss. It was. But it was more than that.

That day depressed the shit out of me.

I had noticed, of course, that the old RDC stuff was fading but I’d never really realized just how far gone the city is.

It was the water tower that, to use a bad pun, brought it all home for me.

There’s an old water tower next to one of the factories. For a long time, it was bright white with the colorful RDC logo. Now it’s rusted and scarred and the RDC is barely readable. No new company has plastered promises on that tower or anywhere else in town. No one has graffitied hope. Rossville is that patient that’s been shoved to the side to die while the doctors operate on the ones that have a chance.

And, two blocks over from the water tower that marks the site of Rossville’s demise, there’s the old Rossville High Annex. And its guard shack.

The little, gray building looks like it’s been hit by two tornadoes and a heavy truck. The concrete blocks are askew, the paint is long gone and it looks like a bug landing on it would knock it over. This little building whose honor had been so vehemently defended during my high school days was now a forgotten wreck.

I took a picture of it and, later, sent it to my friend, Ben--the one that had been along for the ride but hadn’t actually participated in the “redecorating”. He didn’t even recognize it at first. We were talking about it, though, and he said that, although they had to repaint the sides, no one ever bothered to look on the roof and, unless the years had weathered it away, there would still be the names of the guys who had desecrated the building so many years before.

These four future leaders, in a moment of tame rebellion, had put their mark on the visible part of Rossville and it was covered up posthaste. But their signatures remain (I didn’t actually check to see if they’re still there. I just like to think that they are), out of site and, very nearly, out of mind.

It made me wonder where my signature was on the town. On lives. On anything. Where have I secretly written my name? And who will ever know it was there?

Depressed beyond all reason, I put my camera away, went home and kissed my wife.

That night, I decided to start this blog.