Drive by

I had to pee. So, I stood up from my computer, leaving the silly game story I was writing about a girls basketball game that I couldn’t even remember the score from to be finished whenever I was done.

Walking past the empty cubicles, I thought about the people who used to sit there. I never worked in this place when they were filled. The day I started, they were all empty. Never to be filled again. Yeah, every so often one of us sits in one of them. To chat, to grab election-night pizza, or to watch election returns on the television. But for the most part, the sit empty.

But that thought passes. I continue walking.

I notice that my vision is a little blurry. I’m seeing double a little. Nothing new, I think, just staring at that

computer screen too long.

I pee.

As I’m walking back to my desk, I stumble. Then I stumble again. Eventually, I have to use the wall to walk.

“This is strange,” I think, going back to me desk.

I sit there for a moment.

I get back up, stumble to the break room. I call my fiancée.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I’m seeing stuff. I can barely walk.”

After a few minutes of chatting, she tells me she’s coming. It’s 44 miles from our house to my office. I drive this every day. I can’t think of a job when I didn’t at least start out driving 40-plus miles to work – one way.

Just sort of became what I do.

For girls, mostly.

For the beach once.

I go back to my desk and finish my story. Just like me. When I got laid off, I asked my by-then old boss if he wanted me to finish my story.

He said not to bother.

Still, the one I’d written the day before but had not run yet, it ran the day I was shit-canned.

Love the biz.

My fiancée arrived. She checked my pulse. She checked my eyes.

By then, I was feeling better. Not good. But better.

“You should go to the emergency room,” she said. Wise lady.

“I’m feeling better,” I said. “I think I just want to go home.

Unwisely, I drove home.

It was dark out. Being March and all.

We took the long way.

I made it home. Ate some food. Went to bed.

The next day, it was back to normal.

A few weeks later, I was at home. The same stuff started to happen.

I drove to Wilson. 44 miles away. And then I went to the doctor.

They sent me to the emergency room.

After a bunch of tests, I was told “Well, we know you didn’t have a heart attack. And you didn’t have a stroke.”

A few weeks later, my neurologist told me “you had a stroke.” This after telling me there was “no way” I’d had a stroke.

Doctors.

They sure as hell all didn’t mind billing me for their wrong diagnosis.

Should’ve sent some paper instead of money…

Instead, I’m more in debt.

I still eat frozen burritos.

I don’t eat frozen pizza as much.

I don’t go to fast food places. Except for Hardee’s for a hot ham ‘n cheese and Andy’s, now Highway 55, for a cheeseburger. Guess it’s good I don’t live in New Orleans anymore. I’d be dead.

If I’m not already.

Maybe watching “Raising Hope” is my hell. If it is, I know I’m dead, because it’s on right now.

Banality. Yep. That’s what this is.

The written word isn’t coming like I want it to. It’s just shit oozing out of a tightened ass. A tightened hairy ass, at that.

I wonder what that dude, can’t remember his name, from my Arizona days who shaved his ass is doing right now? Not that I really care. But for the first time in probably 15 years, I just thought about that guy. And his shaving his ass.

I couldn’t imagine shaving my ass. First, I’d probably cut myself. I cut off a mole shaving my face as a youth. Still use electric razors to this day.

And David Bowie is dead, and the people have already turned on him.

It doesn’t take long anymore. Hero today, shit bag tomorrow.

I now wonder if I truly do need to drink to be creative. I know I don’t, because I write for a living and sometimes, not all the time, but just some of the time, I do it pretty well.

Getting a phone call tomorrow in the A.M. from a temp agency. Never thought I’d utter those words. I’m considering working for a temp agency instead of trudging (or driving, whatever…) 44 miles to work. Could this be a new start? Or just another misguided stupidity fix?

At least I’m not paying rent on a house in Florida. For three years. That I got to spend at best 2 months in.

A house I drove past in 2009. Three-plus years later. And still cried.

I wonder what would happen if I drove past it today?

Who am I kidding…

blood red '74 Ford Ranchero

I pulled up to the house. My ’74 Ford Ranchero sparkled in one place still – the hood.

I found myself staring at that shiny place a little too long.

“What you want?” a little black kid yelled into my window. I hadn’t noticed him standing on the sidewalk seconds before. I’m slipping, I think to myself.

“Looking for Lovey,” I replied. Hoping that actually telling the truth instead of lying to the little shit – and I could tell he was a little shit because of the way he wore his sunglasses, upside down and without lenses – would get me somewhere.

“That bitch moved out yesterday,” he said before walking over to the Circle K across the way.

I pondered that response. It made little to no sense to me. How could anyone call Lovey a bitch? She was the most awesome woman I’d ever met. She had Pam Grier’s body and Maya Rudolph’s looks. And anyone who knows me will tell you that the only thing better than that is a redhead.

Anyway. I stop pondering that when I see Jeff Knight.

He played fullback for Arkansas for three years before blowing out his knee – not playing football, but tossing cornhole in my backyard three days before the Cotton Bowl his senior year. If there was one person who I did not want to see today, it was Jeff Knight.

But there was no way I wasn’t going to see him, as my car kind of stuck out in this neighborhood. Well, it sticks out in any hood. Fucking great car it is.

“Son of a muther fucka!” Jeff Knight yelled when he saw me. “You got a lot of nerve showing your stupid face in my block.”

“What are you talking ‘bout Jeffrey,” I replied. “I come here every damn day.”

“Yeah, but usually I ain’t ‘round, muther fucka.”

“Agreed,” I said with a flick of sarcasm and fear.

I think he sensed that. The fear.

“Lovey ain’t coming out for you, man,” he said. “The bitch told me the other day what you did.”

“What I did?”

“Yeah, what you did,” he barked. “Told me you fucked that redhead that works at Food Lion.”

“In 2006, yeah, I fucked her. What can I say, I was drunk. She was drunk. And I just happened to need a box of Frankenberry. It was destiny.”

“Fuck that shit.”

“Well, it’s true. All of it.”

“So you fucked the bitch almost 10 years ago? Damn, that’s fucked up. What Lovey said ‘bout you.”

“Damn skippy.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Peanut butter, jelly time, Jeffrey. Peanut butter, jelly time.”

“You a dumb ass, man. A real dumb ass.”

“Yes, but I’m in love. So here I’m going to sit until Lovey comes out. Just like fucking John Cusack in ‘Say Anything.’”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. Kickboxing wasn’t the sport of the future.”

“Fuck you.”

“See you Saturday?”

“Of course. You know I don’t miss cornhole over at the Three Leg, man.”

Fucking Jeff Knight. Still plays cornhole. I fucking hate cornhole. Throwing a beanbag into a hole. What fucking fun. Beats horseshoes, I guess. But I fucking hate horseshoes too.

I look at my flip phone. It says it’s 4:22. I look outside, the sun is almost gone.

“Fucking winter,” I mumble.

“Why you so depressin’?” I hear a familiar voice say from behind me. I look in the rearview mirror and there she is … Lovey.

“Damn, you’re beautiful,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says, throwing her left hand in the air, making a motion that says both fuck you and keep going at the same time.

“Why’d you tell Jeff Knight that shit, I think he was going to fucking punch me.”

“Oh, bullshit. That guy loves you, baby. He didn’t punch you when you caused his blown knee did he?”

“No, but it wasn’t my fault.”

“You’re the one who kept feeding him Abita’s, hun. He never woulda slipped and fell playing Marcus in that damn hole game if you’d been feeding him Coke Zeroes instead.”

I stared at her in the mirror. I didn’t dare turnaround. She had a knife at my throat.

“Lovey, why you doing this?” I asked, knowing she would probably tell me.

“Because I love you, baby. But this, this us? It ain’t neva gonna work. You know that.”

“No, I don’t know that. You’re the one that knows it.”

“What’s the rule, baby?”

“Never lie. Ever.”

“Yep. And you lied.”

I looked at her in the mirror. It would be the last time I saw her.

She stuck the knife into my chest. The blade was cool as it sliced its way through my skin, then my lung. I felt woosy. I felt alone. Lovey kissed my neck before she got out of the car. I slumped down in the seat, blood filled my mouth. It tasted sweet. It was very red. It had been that way ever since I started taking aspirin every day. Doctor’s orders after I had a stroke at work. Hadn’t been able to interview someone since. I lose my train of thought and start stammering for what was just there seconds before.

But my writing improved.

Strange.

I passed out, expecting to die.

But I didn’t.

The next thing I remember was Jeff Knight, standing over me. Fucking naked. His balls touched my chest when he lifted me out of my car – a blood red Ranchero that Lovey gave me for my 40^th birthday. Now the interior matched the hood.

“Hang on, buddy,” Jeff Knight screamed. “I’ve got you.”

“And I’ve got your balls on my chest,” I spit out, laughing just enough to send pain to every pore.

“Chest nuts!” Jeff Knight said with a cackle.

Three days later, I was in Florida. Trying to find out what exactly went wrong.

sad flaccidity

People are cruel.

All of us.

There isn’t a one of us that can say they aren’t. At least for a moment at some point in their life we’ve all done it. Crushed someone’s hopes. Broke another’s heart. Taken someone for granted. Stolen a possession.

I don’t care who you are. It happens.

Most of us don’t admit that about ourselves. We only see the victimization part of it. “There’s no way I’d ever do that to someone,” we say. Then we turn around and do it.

Life’s funny like that.

It’s why sad songs sell a hell of a lot better than happy ones. Disco, notwithstanding, and even some of those damn songs are hella depressing.

My thoughts drifted to this feeling while I was driving back to Florida. The second time in two weeks I’d done the nearly 1,000-mile trip to Gainesville. The couple of times I’ve been back to Florida since, I can’t help but think about this same feeling. It’s an empty feeling. As empty as it can get, I think.

She dumped me on the phone one night after work. I was ready to tell her I was ready to follow her. Instead, she told me not to bother. I felt the walls close in on me. The cliché became my world. I stammered into the phone for what seemed like days, but when I got the phone bill a few weeks later, found out it was 51 minutes. That was what six years was worth to her now, not even another hour.

I cried for days after that. Trying to talk to her each night, each call having less and less said. The second call was 33 minutes. The third was 11. The next time, she didn’t answer, so it went down as 1 minute.

“How could someone be this cruel,” I howled into the air. “I’d never do something like this to her,” I cursed into my pint glass at the local hole.

Yet all along, I knew that wasn’t true. I’d done the same to someone else. I killed someone’s ability to function, just like mine was now dead. This revelation didn’t come quickly. It was tapping me on the shoulder over and over, but I didn’t look back.

I wasn’t ready to admit that about myself. That I too was just as self-centered as everyone else. That the only time you truly can find “it” whatever “it” is, you have to give up on that. Maybe that’s why I’m still alone. Still scared to ask a girl for her phone number. Go up and say hello. Or even tell the girl that I like that I actually do like her.

Sitting alone some nights, I think about her. The girl that took my heart. And I try to wonder what she’s doing. If she ever thinks about me. If she has even an inch of regret. Then it dawns on me that she most likely doesn’t give a shit.

That, I guess, is what I don’t understand. I still give a shit. About them all. Even the girl who was my first kiss. At the ripe old age of 19. Her name, I have no idea. I just know she was wearing an N.C. State sweatshirt and jeans. She had brown hair. Was short. And went to Midlothian High School outside of Richmond.

We kissed in front of a fraternity house. I was in Charlottesville last year and I walked around. At one point I flashed back to that night. I was drunk. Very drunk. But I remembered that moment when we saw each other. I got her a beer and we started talking. Soon, we were outside. Holding hands. We kissed. I have no idea if I made the first move. But I doubt it. We made out in the streets, friends saw me, giving me the thumbs up.

I don’t remember how we got back to my dorm room, but we did. Made a beeline for the bedroom. Soon we were naked. I was quite nervous.

I tried, unsuccessfully to put my dick in her. It was soft, so it wasn’t going to happen. She pulled it away.

“You have a condom?” she asked.

My roommate walked in as I was grabbing her tits, she was sitting on top of me. I remember she had large nipples and a bit of a belly.

I started laughing. Riotously.

She got up and left.

That was my first attempt, and failure, at sex.

But you see, even in my failure, I was the asshole. I was rude.

Then I found out she propositioned one of my other suitemates on the way out.

Ha.

I wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

Or at least I could tell myself that.

Hard on. Apply directly to the penis.

It’s a moment etched in the brain. It’s not wanted in there anymore, yet it insists to exist there.

Drinking till stupid didn’t get rid of it. Yelling and screaming at it doesn’t work much either. Writing about it endlessly doesn’t help much, but the pain seems to subside a bit. Talking to others about it just gets perplexed looks and uncomfortably bad advice.

Why this memory is so much more vivid than, say, that great night in Texas or the first time I kissed someone, I have no idea.

Instead, this one stays there. It’s just a short memory, but it’s awful -- me, driving my sister’s SUV. The smell of her dog everywhere. Her, standing there with no emotion on her face at all. Tears running out of me like ants attacking a dropped Push Up. Everything so bright as the late Spring sun is high in the air on Memorial Day in Florida.

I watch her stand there, making sure I’m not going to stop and come back. I watch the entire length of the driveway, finally reaching the road. I put the SUV in drive and go. Soon, the house is gone from view. So is she. The next 12 hours are nothing. I have one vague memory of the drive back to North Carolina. I remember making a phone call or getting one, I don’t remember which it was. My best friend who is an ex-girlfriend calling me or me calling her. I didn’t kill myself that day/night because of that phone call. Although I definitely thought about it.

Funny how that sticks. Two endings meeting up, but not allowing for another end.

Why fucking Dokken brings that one flooding back, I’ll never know. I guess the line “I told you I had to leave, I had my reasons. I said that it’d hurt to stay, the way I’m feeling.”

Eh. Whatever.

I could go grab a beer. Like I did so often when this memory flooded up my mind. Clogged it may be the better descriptor. Other things just don’t exist when that memory is there. Damn, has it really been four and a half years? What the fuck am I still haunted by that ghost for? Normal people don’t do that, do they?

Enough bad writing (including my own) has been dedicated to the longing that won’t leave. The longing that you think is gone when you find someone else, but when that person goes away, it comes right back. I guess I just need to find someone that’ll stay. Is that the key? Is that the solution? Is it really that fucking simple?

Probably.

***

“You fucking listen to this shit?” she said after my jukebox selection of “Dream Warriors” by Dokken started playing.

“I saw them live once,” I replied. “Still the loudest show I’ve ever been too. I couldn’t hear right for three days after. It was even on the local news just how loud the show was.”

“Still, this song. It sucks.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t remind me of anything.”

“Well, that’s as good a reason as any. My name is Michelle.”

“Michelle, pleasure to meet ya. My name is Randy. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Nah, I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”

“Figures.”

“Why?”

“You’re the first woman to speak to me in three months that I didn’t work with or who wasn’t at a cash register.”

“It’s no wonder.”

“Huh?”

“Shave once in a while.”

“Cheers!”

***

Lights flickered in his eyes. Bright colors all of them. He felt a little heavy on the left side. Every bit of picked up medical knowledge told him he was either having a stroke or a heart attack.

But he had more important things to worry about. Mostly, the 14 hours left in his drive to New Orleans. He was depending on this trip to end some melancholy. She was depending on him to get her there. Basically, it was do or die, and maybe even do and die.

The lights stopped flickering after a couple of hours. The numbness in the arm about an hour after that.

“Survived another one,” he thought to himself as he guzzled some Dr. Pepper and ate a Slim Jim. Yeah, there was no reason to think, at 40, he’d be having those kinds of troubles. Just the mind playing tricks on him.

“Sure. But when the dick stops getting hard, that’s when you might want to get it checked out,” the sensible voice inside his head said.

“Not like I’d know,” he chuckled. Was that out loud, the definitely thought as he looked at her sitting in the seat next to him.

“You say something?” she muttered, digging around in the bag of cds he’d brought.

“Just thinking about my not having sex in a long time,” he thought.

“Nah. Just mumbling to myself.”

“You do that a lot. You know that?”

“Yeah, you live by yourself as long as I have, and you tend to not notice,” he said.

“I’ve lived by myself for most of the last 10 years. I don’t do that.”

“Well, I guess I’m insane. And you’re going to be a car with me for the next 15 hours. Buckle up!”

“Joy.”

I looked at her. Got a hard on.

“Ha. Guess, I don’t have to worry about that yet.”

***

wet fart in a sleeping bag

The cold is penetrating my sleeping bag. I fart a drawn out, almost wet fart. I’m inside the bag, and it’s so potent it makes my eyes water. However, for just a brief instant, I feel a bit warmer. Maybe from the fart, but I doubt it. More likely it’s because of the smile on my face. Farts do that.

***

I walk by this guy on the street corner every day. He’s got a beat up cardboard sign. I guess, actually, he has two. One says “Laid off. Need money to pay my rent.” The other says “Bush lied to me. And to you. I need money. Now.”

His old lawn chair is frayed and torn. It probably doesn’t have a lot of life left in it.

He knows my name by now. Eight months of passing and saying hi, dropping some coins in his jar and swapping chit-chat can do that. It still startles some folks when he says “Hey, Randy!” to me.

His name? Joe Riggin. He calls himself Dirt because he’s dirty. Which of course allows folk to playfully call him Joe Dirt. One time someone gave him a truckers hat with a long wig attached. He laughed it up, then tossed it in the dumpster next to the old fish market that he’s staked out as his territory.

***

My feet stink.
I’ve worn the same socks for three days in a row now.
With old dirty shoes.
I can’t remember the last time anyone swept or vacuumed the floor.
Anyone?
I do live alone.
Burnt down match sticks also litter the floor, along with aluminum foil and playing cards.
No drugs, however.
Just empty candle jars, microwave dinner boxes and notepads.

***

What the fuck? It’s daylight? It should be night.
Sleep comes sometimes 16 hours a stretch. Or just fits of one hour spurts.

***

I watched he when she came into the bar. Light green dress on. The kind that lets you see up her leg for a second, then covers itself right back up before showing you too much.

Damn she has good legs. Anyone who doesn’t like a good set of sticks on a lady is a fool. If the legs hold up, you know everything else will too.

***

I found an old notepad. I opened it up because I didn’t remember where it was from. It was in a folder with some handouts and such.

As the words unfolded from the paper to my brain, I couldn’t comprehend ever having written them. But it’s clearly my handwriting. Clearly my scattered way of taking notes. And it’s about my profession. The one I gave up a life for. The one that has died and gone to hell. The one that seems to be so close, yet impossible to reach again.

Finally, I realize this is the notepad from the seminar I went to in April of 2006. A month after one of the worst moments of my life. Which, looking back, really wasn’t so god damn awful after all. If you put it in perspective of other folks’ worst moments.

I don’t remember much of that seminar. It should have been a chance to mingle with the “greats” of my profession. To network. Hobnob. Get my name out there, so to speak. It started with me in line for my hotel room. There was Woody Peele. There was Jim Litke. There was Susan Brennan. And then there was me.

I said hello. Love your work. They made pleasantries. Then I went blank. I started to wander back to my depression. And I just sunk back into line. Didn’t say a word.

Later, at a meet and greet, I saw a familiar face. We shared laughs. We got a drink. Then I slipped back into my coma. He ended up going off to talk to Stephen A. Smith. Me? I went to a table and just sat. I don’t remember much else.

Eventually, I must have gotten tired or bored or paranoid.

I woke up the next day having drank two Red Stripes and started crying.

I cried a lot in 2006. A lot in 2007. A whole lot in 2008. A little less in 2009. A whole lot less so far in 2010.

It still “matters” to me. But I don’t care as much. I guess that’s as good an explanation as there is?

I put the notepad back in a box. The words are unfamiliar and not at all reassuring. But, I still have it, and that’s a rarity. So, I keep it. Stash it away for the next time I stumble upon it.

***

Brazil

Walking down the street, the cold air burnt right through my small hoodie. Never was one to buy a coat, hadn’t owned one half a decade now. My mom bought the last one I had. Think it got worn three times. Left it in Florida. Left a lot of things in Florida.

I couldn’t help wonder if this might be the place that I finally just lay down and quit. It’s been a long journey. A good portion of it was damn fun. A small fraction certainly wasn’t. Now, I’m cold. What’s left of my teeth hurt like crazy when the wind blows like this. Imagining a sunny beach doesn’t help much anymore. The mind can help you, but even it knows when the cards have been dealt the wrong way.

Down the street is a beacon of light. An oasis of it. All the stores here went out of business years ago, I reckon. It’s why the bums come here. It’s not a self-applied title, it just sort of comes with the territory. At one time, hoboism seemed like a good alternative. Living on the free. Just going wherever the mind decided it wanted to go that day. It started off relatively well, too. Hopping a freight train in Richmond. A gal actually said she’d go to.

That train went to Jacksonville, Florida of all places. There, it was cold. An early freeze they called it. Sleeping in the orange groves didn’t sound so appealing anymore. Soon, she got on a Greyhound. Using the only money we had brought with us to get the heck back to Virginia. I don’t blame her. What the hell were we thinking. Hit the road. Be hobos. Make love under the stars.

Soon, I sold my harmonica. Got three dollars for it. Used that money to get bacon and eggs. Left the 66 cents left as a tip. Couldn’t really feel bad about it. It was all I had.

The light was orange in color. It made it seem warmer. So, I ventured on up to the window of the shop. It was clean. Freshly painted. With a sign that simply said “Always open.”

Wonder how long that’ll last in this neighborhood, I scoffed.

I looked at myself in the reflection of the glass. I had a white beard now. I was 44 going on 74. My teeth, what were left of them were yellow and cracked. The last time I had a shower was at least a month ago. Couldn’t smell myself, though. That urge passed a long time ago.

Staring at the lights, it finally dawned on me what this place was -- a travel agency.

“Pretty fitting, I guess,” I thought. “A dead street. A dead business.” No one used travel agencies any more. Hell, they stopped when I was still a productive member of society. When there was society. Then the internet came. First, it was a great place to find trinkets and collectibles. Then a place to watch television shows and movies. Finally, it just became life.

That’s when I hopped a train with her. We didn’t want to work for the internet anymore. We wanted to see reality.

She lasted just that first two weeks. The cold finally got to her.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said. That was 19 years ago.

The door knob is silver. And old. It’s the only thing that isn’t shiny and new. Well, the door knob and me. I reach for it, but at the last second I recoil. “What could possibly be inside there? What could be in there that I would need to see?”

I stare at the other window. A picture of a lady looking out into the see. Too fucking much. It’s the Barton Fink painting. But only if it was set in 1977. Ugly-ass “groovy” font. Then, the door opens. A lady leaves.

“Pardon me,” she says, walking past.

I take a whiff of her perfume. It’s subtle. I like that. And I usually despise perfume.

“Ma’am?” I say meekly.

She turns to me. Looks me over and says “yes?”

“What kind of perfume is that? It’s wonderful.” I can’t believe I’m saying this. The door behind me is still open. The song “Brazil” is playing. I start to wonder if I’m imagining all of this.

“You know, I don’t know,” she sort of giggles. “I just picked it up at Wal-Greens. Go figure. But thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I stammer as she hops into her car -- a 1987 Pontiac Sunfire. She starts the engine and is gone.

The song is still echoing in the background. The door, still ajar.

“Well, I guess I’d better go in,” I say out loud.

On the mat just inside the door is one slogan: “Focus on what you can do, not on what you could’ve done.”