Organ donor

Beer shits, dehydration and gout toes. A normal way to wake up now.

Old creeps up on you. One day your sunning on the beach, watching bikinis and drinking cold beers. The next morning, you can’t get out of bed due to the pain inside.

Staring at the hair on my shoulders and the lines on my face, I don’t want to believe it. But I do. Golden teeth and white pubic hairs are now standard.

I don’t feel old otherwise. It may have more to do with lifestyle than fact. When you don’t change the way you live – except no longer eating frozen pizzas for just about every meal – it’s tougher to emotionally change. Which for this character, is probably a good thing.

If I was wearing a suit and tie, sitting in a cubicle, hating my job … oh wait, that has happened.

If I was DVRing every television show that I’m told is “hot”. If I was listening to modern jazz or Ray Lamontague. If I felt the urge to vote for Mitt Romney. If the contents of my 401k worried me. Then, I’d be worried about myself.

Death comes easy if you let it in. Guess there are many ways to do that. The way I’ve chosen seems to be nicer. I enjoy most of my life. Just those moments of too much reflection get in the way. Yeah, I’d love to have money in the bank. That way I could go buy some new underwear that the waistband isn’t saggy, but I’m OK. They still do the job. Just have to pull them up every so often.

That my friends is getting old gracefully.

Ha.

It’s good to have a sense of humor. When all around you crumbles. Who wants to be the guy huddled in a bomb shelter, hoping it doesn’t cave in on him? I’d rather be the guy with a bottle of gin and some Robert Johnson playing while I sit in my lawn chair and watch. Are they really going to take aim at one guy in a lawn chair? Or a bunch of  townhomes full of folks huddled in basements?

The sound of a fan blowing is soothing. The fan itself is what keeps me cool in this un-air conditioned house. Yeah, I could turn it on. But then I’d have $150 to $200 to pay the electric company every month. $58 or so is much better. And, you get used to the heat. Just like you get used to the cool. Heck, when the A/C is on, I sleep more. Which isn’t necessarily a good thing. You miss life sleeping too much. It’s why I don’t take naps. Some of the best things in my life have happened when I was sleepy. If I’d taken a nap, I would have missed them.

Like right now. I’m going to open up the window and see what’s going on outside.

No people. Heaven.

An empty Pepsi can saunters down the street. It’s windblown and makes a slight clanking sound as it moves slowly down the road. In the big city, that can would’ve been swooped up by a homeless guy looking for a little cash, an environmentally driven hippie or maybe even a giant behemoth of a street cleaner – spraying dirty water on the road and sucking it back up again with whatever garbage it can.

Here it’ll get to go on a journey.

It could get buried by a freak storm in a dune, preserved for years until a hurricane comes along and exposes it to the world again.

Maybe it’ll roll into an abandoned yard, slowly making its way under an abandoned house. Safe from the elements and content to have a spider move into it.

Or it could be picked up by a kid, stared at intently and then tossed back into the world.

Or another kid may kick it down the street, over and over again.

Still another kid could shoot bbs at it.

But, most likely it’ll make it to Fort Macon Road and get run over by a car. Flattened, it’ll sit there crushed over and over again until it rains. The rain will float it down to a drain. The drain will dump it in the ocean. There, it’ll get eaten by a fish or shark if it’s unlucky. If it’s lucky, it’ll float to Cuba, where some kid will find it on the beach, pick it up and put it in a bag. To be recycled for money.

I guess the life cycle of an aluminum can is pretty depressing. It’ll always end up the same – melted back down and sold for scrap.

Sure am glad I’m an organ donor.

too soon?

His girlfriend was looking at her phone, Twitter most likely, he thought as he stared at her fingers. He moved up to her tits and then her face. Of course, the then went back to her tits. He wasn’t really a boob guy, but he just wanted to look at her tiny ones. He definitely liked ‘em smaller. Asses? Completely opposite.

“I can’t believe that happened?” she exclaimed.

He yawned. The Twitterverse was in a breaking news mode, obviously. He just wished the baffoons of the internet would just let professionals do the news breaking. Nowadays, everyone’s a journalist. So why isn’t there any respect for the profession, if everyone wants to be one? Guess it’s like athletes. Everyone thinks they can play. Everyone thinks “Hey, I could make at least one shot in an NBA game.” Or “Hey, I could at least complete one pass.” Fuck those dolts.

He looked at his girlfriend. She seemed truly upset.

“What is it babe?” he finally asked, more out of duty than true care. He knew it was probably just another oil spill or terrorist attack.

“Someone killed a bunch of people at a movie theater. Twelve of them. They were all just watching the premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises.” So sad.

“Another reason to not go see a movie on the opening night,” he said rather coldly. He was cold and callous now. Too many years of cynicism from being a journalist and seeing murder, death, rape, famine, AIDS every day and night of his life.

“You’re an ass,” she said giving him a mean stare.

She was right. He was an ass. To say something out loud like that will never be “acceptable” behavior as his third grade teacher told him after he called a girl a “cunt” to her face. He’d heard his dad use the word, didn’t know what it meant, but it seemed powerful. He realized that day that sometimes restraint was necessary. Even when you didn’t want to use. It.

Over the years, that ability had been eroded. Now, his face always told the tale and his mouth usually followed.

It cost him many things. Chances at getting laid. Telling a girl you think she’s stupid in a crowded bar usually won’t lead to blow jobs. More likely, it’ll lead to a punch in the face by some other clod. And that guy will end up getting his dick wet.

Jobs? Ha. If you tell a boss what you really think, it should get you promoted. And a good boss will do so. However, the problem with that theory is most bosses are not good bosses. They just lasted the longest. Or made friends or were members of the “Lucky Sperm Club.” This was more evident in newspapers than most places, he found. Yet, he kept going back to them. Until Twitter finally killed most of them.

“Too soon?” he asked.

She glared again.

“Guess so.”

It reminded him of the Virginia Tech sniper killings. He had plenty of friends and “Myspace friends” at that time who went to the school, worked for the school or just liked the school.

Later that day, after the news broke – more on television and newspaper web sites at that time than citizens, but not wholly at all – he put up a gif as his profile picture. Of a turkey in the crosshairs of a gun.

It was amusing to go to friends pages. Many dotted, some covered, with ribbons of “support” for the victims. A really nice gesture, I guess. But if he was a “top friend” there was the turkey in the sights, surrounded by ribbons. It was laugh inducing.

“Too soon?” was response to the criticism.

It got Howard Stern fired. “How much is a ticket to the 14^th Street Bridge?” Ha. That’s funny. And pretty damn daring.

But he had mojo. Getting fired didn’t hurt. It helped.

Being a douchebag to friends and such? Not much of a gain to be had there.

“My goal is to get as many people to follow me, then unfollow me,” a sort of friend posted on his Twitter feed a day before. He messaged him to say “then make fun of the movie shooting victims.”

His reply?

“Too soon.”

Who the fuck are these people. You are either a satirist who isn’t scared to offend, or you’re just another brick in the wall. Another wheel in the machine. Another cliché in a small town sportswriter’s shitty column.

“Guess we have a critic!”

Bad headline idea?

“Too soon?”

Amen

The day started off like most other days, me popping open a beer and taking a couple of pills. After that, it usually got a little bit better. Or at least tolerable.

She came by my place at 10 a.m. It took some doing, but I was able to convince her that coming inside wasn’t too bad of an idea. She’d been there many times before. Most of the times late at night. Most of the times as drunk as me. But she was never there in the morning when I woke up.

Most guys would think that was paradise. All of the glory, none of the fight.

But I wasn’t most other guys. And it pained me every morning when she wasn’t there as I rose. It’s why the pills started. They put me in a better mood and made it easier to face the mundane tasks that the day would throw at me.

I was a copy editor at a shitty newspaper now. I used to be an editor. Used to be a reporter. But I’d lost the fire to chase after it anymore. It happened while I was unemployed. Laid off by a newspaper that I thought I was doing a good job at. Won some state press association awards, covered some shit no one else wanted to. Shot photos. Shot videos. Laid out pages. Read other people’s stuff. Just a little of everything. But, I wasn’t friends with the folks I worked with. Most of ‘em at least. And I guess that wasn’t part of the plan.

Anyways, while unemployed I wanted to do something else. Anything else. So I applied and applied for jobs. Public relations jobs. University jobs. Business and even furniture sales writing ads. Jobs at recreation departments. Jobs at super markets. Jobs in different states. And I didn’t get any of them. In fact, only a couple even bothered to send me rejection emails or letters. Those days of actually contacting folks interested in your jobs are long gone I guess. I once had an opening that over 200 people sent in their resumes for. I sent a message to all of them.

Finally, I had to bite the bullet and interview for newspaper jobs again. I was broke and my time on the dole would eventually come to an end. So, I did it. And immediately I got interviews. At first, I was rejected for the job but only after they hired a friend. Then I got offers. But I couldn’t pull the trigger on them. I didn’t want to move to some shit hole in the middle of nowhere to work at a job that would barely pay my bills.

So, I called a friend and got a job where I’m at now. A shithole little newspaper, but I live at the beach. And that was enough.

For a while.

Now, it’s not anymore. I want to do more. I want to write. I want to get out of my cubicle. I want to interact with folks. Will it happen? Yes. Where I’m at? Only if they let me. And I’ll find out soon if they will.

She looked at me.

“You’re always somewhere else,” she said.

I looked at her and smiled. She got me. But didn’t want anything to do with me. Well, the me that was me now. She’d met me before all of this. Before depression and hatred took their toll on me.

We used to go to the bars downtown and just laugh and smile and have a good time. Then one day I changed. It wasn’t because of her, but it was because of a she. And that she killed me for a long time. I’m not fully recovered from my death yet. But I’m working on it.

That’s why she still comes around. She’s seen the other side of me, and knows it’s closer to being back than it has been for years.

“Did you write last night?” she asks me.

“Of course not,” I say. “I did scribble some, but it’s not much.”

“How many words?” she asked.

“About 3,000.” I stated with a yawn.

“What did you write about?”

“You really have to ask?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “One day you’re going to do it.”

“You’ve been saying that to me for years,” I replied. “And maybe I’m just another one like so many. I’ve only got one story to tell. And I just haven’t figured out how to tell it. Once I do that, I can become the Sparks of my genre.”

“Fuck that,” she said. “You could write about kittens with machine guns and it wouldn’t be funny. It would be awesome.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

She frowned at me. It made me feel small. She was good at that. I slinked over to a cooler I’d left on the porch last night. I kicked it. The lid fell off and inside were two Lone Stars. I reached in and plucked them out. The water was still cold, and so were the bottles.

“To a great day,” I said handing her one of the bottles.

“Amen,” she said, taking the beer and popping the top off.

“You working today?” I asked.

“Yes. Are you?”

“My drive starts in an hour,” I replied pointing at my beat up car. I bought that thing new and it already had over 120,000 miles on it. In three years and seven months. “In my chariot.”

It was a Hyundai Accent. Three doors and a busted air conditioner. I liked going to work all sweaty and gross. It kept the bosses from talking to me. And I liked it that way.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later tonight?” I said in the most hopeful voice I can muster.

“You know you will,” she said with a smirk.

“Amen,” I replied.