By BG © 2005
I let her go with everything I had left, which is to say, it took next-to-nothing to let her go. It was a moment that was dry, devoid of subtext and utterly clinical - at least on my end.
It's ridiculous in a way to use two simple letters, "IT," to refer to the singular moment of my adult life when everything stopped swinging, spinning, or twisting itself up in my head, but there it was. I had known for months that she had been cheating on me, I even knew with whom it was happening, not that I knew the guy. It was enough to know, and if I wasn't retreating from her steadily before that point, it was happening then. Steadily.
I had even broken through from "I miss you" to "I'll remember you" weeks before I told her I was leaving. As a matter of fact, the exact words I used the day I left were, "I'm leaving now." I spoke them calmly, softly, and without adornment. She returned to me a look which at that instant I couldn't read. In her eyes was some mixture of puzzlement, understanding, relief, sadness, and joy, the quantities of which were fluctuating by the second. Despite my confusion, she had never before been so nakedly honest with herself in front of me, which should have depressed me even further.
"I'm leaving now."
"I know... What do you know?" It was a legitimate question. I knew about Scott, knew about the cover stories her friends were providing, knew about the emails and the instant messaging. I knew he professed to love her, that she was steeling herself for the moment she felt right about leaving, and that for six months and probably longer she thought I was oblivious. I knew she had misread my seeming ambivalence.
"Enough. Scott. Everything, I guess. I can't keep this going." I wasn't taunting her with the knowledge, and actually I never did. I was resigned, accepting. Every ounce of vitriol I’d had six months ago when I overheard something I shouldn't have--"I'll tell him I'm out with Kim"--had either been spent or buried, totally alone.
"What exactly do you know about Scott?" She was looking for a fight, one I wasn't about to give her. I was done, I knew enough that I wouldn't trust her again, and knew it was time to go.
"I know enough. Look, I signed a lease on a place and..."
"You what!?! What the fuck Langston?" She was boiling, which was completely in character for her. She wanted to be the one to have things set, to walk away first. It wasn't in my machinations to trump her on that effort, it was simply the point where time and depression had passed the point of silent resignation and had moved me mentally straight into avoidance.
I sighed. I was tired. "I've been moving in slowly over the past couple of weeks, and..."
"Couple of weeks? Goddammit Langston, I knew I couldn't trust you." Another phrase, just trying to bait me into the middle. That was Filet Mignon on a string, but I wasn't hungry.
"I've got what I need, you obviously haven't missed what I've taken so far, and I loaded up the rest tonight. Our lease here runs out end of next month. Rent's paid, and I've left you a check made out to Two Men and a Truck to help you move. It should be plenty. Everything left in here is yours." She was searching me quietly, trying to find something to build on. I could see her run through the options, seeing if she could taunt me into an argument, cry me into shared tears, or run the guilt-trip from her old Catholic school playbook.
"Fuck you Langston."
"Good luck Marnie, I'm sorry this didn't work out." I turned for the door, stopping to grab the duffel bag at the end of the couch.
"Fucking pussy. Yeah, run away! You're no man! Why the fuck do you think I've been fucking Scott for almost a year now? You couldn't give me..." I never turned around, shut the door behind me, and climbed into my car feeling just horrifyingly empty.
Should I be crying? Pounding the dashboard with my fists cursing the fucking slut that ruined my life? I didn't know where people found those moments in their life, where passion was the only motivating factor driving their actions. I remember my grandfather's funeral, Italian, from "The Old Country." I sat stoically next to Marnie as she dabbed tears from her eyes. I saw my great-aunts, enormously sturdy women built for the men of the iron mines they loved and outlasted, throw themselves on the mercy of God with insurmountable rage in one instant, only to be shaken to their foundation, knocked prone with their weeping jags of sorrow in the next. I used to tease my grandfather about his mob ties, an absurd notion considering his three decades hauling iron ore from the depths of the earth in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. My dad, his son, had passed when I was young, so unofficially I became his son by proxy. We talked every week, I brought him down for holidays, and he quickly became the only relative of mine Marnie could stand.
I loved my grandfather, and felt guilty I wasn't sobbing and trembling, screaming and cursing, something to show I loved him like his sisters did. That I always would.
I never found that inside of me, and I wasn't crying now. I pulled out of the driveway of the duplex my wife and I had shared, and never again came within two blocks of the place I once called home.
BG is a writer from a small hamlet in Western Michigan.
Showing posts with label BG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BG. Show all posts
October 22, 2005
August 27, 2005
Langston Unemployed
By BG © 2005
One of the few immutable truths that applies to nearly every lifelong resident of small town life in the Midwest is that we don't have any use for the big city. We're perfectly content to disappear into the fabric of our own communities, sharing the tight-knit feeling of solidarity with our neighbors of being a true neighborhood, even if we just leave each other to our own devices behind closed doors anyway. City life, or at least my perception of it, is that of a white-noise solitude. It's not small talk with the neighbors, it's keep your eyes on your shoelaces pal - if you know what's good for you. It's not giving a shit who the sirens are for that wake you at 3AM, and not feeling like a friendly hello is an appropriate way to greet the mailman. I'm not a city kid.
I've retreated far enough socially at this point of my life, that were I dropped into Lower Manhattan, I'd likely devolve my ability to converse into the point-and-grunt method of choosing a deli meat or pack of cigarettes, just to avoid calling further attention to myself as an outsider. Yeah, I'm saying I'd miss the small talk in the grocery store, or the less-than-lively banter with a high school girl pushing Chicken McNuggets.
I've got no need for the city. But here I am anyway, making the three hour drive down to Chicago for this meeting. I mean, I am unemployed, and I could probably use a job, but couldn't we have set this lunch up somewhere in-between? Hell, even Michigan City, Indiana would have been better than having to head all the way downtown just to have lunch. But, my mom did set this up... and I haven't seen Shelley in years anyway.
It was about two weeks ago when my mom called. That was about three days into my strenuous regimen of Dawson's Creek reruns on the SuperStation in the morning, followed by a light lunch, and then pouring myself back into the manuscript until I couldn't keep my eyes propped open another minute. The phone rang, and I tossed out a terse "Hello" when I saw my mom's name on the Caller ID. I figured the busier she thought I was at the moment, the more she would stay off my ass about the job search.
"Langston, how's the job hunt coming along?" She knew damn well I hadn't so much as cobbled together my resume since college. I had been with the agency for so long, it hadn't been necessary for a while.
"Fine, mom. I quit on Tuesday, it's only Friday, and I'm feeling pretty good about my situation right now."
"And what situation is that? What are you going to do with yourself now? That was a good job you left there, Langston. Advertising isn't big around here, and you know you don't want to start from the bottom again with an agency somewhere else, do you?" Fucking hell. I guarantee you I wouldn't have to start from the bottom, but it was also pretty obvious that I'd be lucky to find a spot anywhere reasonably local doing the copy for ads, no matter how high on the totem pole they wanted to put me.
"Mom, I'm fine. I've got enough money in the bank to last me a while, so it'll be months before you need to go into full panic mode for me. Jesus, it's been two-and-a-half days since I walk out the door. I need to decompress a little bit."
"Well, I talked to Shelley today, and she expressed her concern about your situation..." I missed the last half of that sentence when a flurry of f-bombs came charging through my head, miraculously not flying out of my mouth in recoiling horror. "You're going to meet her for lunch. She'll email you with details."
Shelley was my mom's contact at her publishing house, but more to the point, Shelley and I were paired up about twelve years ago in our sophomore year's Creative Writing class, which my mom taught. She and I had been paired in nearly every group project or circle of feedback/criticism across two semesters, and had been so at odds in debate that I can no longer remember having taken that class with anyone else. She had incredible taste, an ear for reading aloud like I've never heard, and as many opinions as she had brooding artsy boyfriends.
Like most of the female pseudo-alternative crowd of writers that signed up for my mom's class, there was absolutely a starfucker element to the adoration Shelley heaped on her. My mom's book really appealed to the not-quite-as-depressed-as-Plath, but not-quite-as-romantic-as-a-Bronte type, and like A Separate Peace, was nearly required reading in every twelfth grade English class across the country. I had developed a natural distrust for anyone who seemed more than a little impressed that my mom was who she was, and naturally Shelley figured out the connection right away. Mix that distrust in with a natural attraction I had to any woman who could call me out on my bullshit with a smile, and I really had no idea how the hell I felt about that girl.
Until later, that is. I spent too much energy early on discounting the girl, thinking she was just using me to get in good with my mom, or didn't really give a shit about me because of the rotating cast of bad poets and fingerpainting pretty boys she consistently trotted out. It was absolutely insane. Well, I was absolutely insane. She used to talk these guys into driving her to our group sessions and even just to meet me for coffee so we could tear each other's latest piece of shit to shreds, and every one was so "unique" and "alternative" and "artsy" that I couldn't stand it. They were all fucking troglodytes too. Not a one of them could keep up when the she'd lug them along, and the guys who stuck near her the longest figured out pretty quick they weren't going to be engaged in the conversation. They didn't feel the least bit bad about dropping her on my doorstep and peeling out, rather than face two straight hours of short story deconstruction at 110 decibels of animation.
Shelley invented the art of conversation for me, so far as I was concerned. I was so used to the hushed tones and urbane bullshit of my mom's cocktail parties that I thought adults only talked in half-whispers and backhanded compliments. Shelley changed that for me entirely. Our constructive banter could turn to ego-maniacal posturing or chest-thumping proclamations of grandeur at the flip of a phrase. She wouldn't ever let me get away with a jab without throwing a counter-combination, which I'd return with a flurry of punches that would leave us both swinging wildly and grabbing at each other's last dangled words to dip in our own deadly venom for the next volley. Where I had learned to throw darts sideways from the curled corners of my mouth, purposeful words behind innocent eyes, Shelley was a full-frontal Panzer assault. You always knew where you stood, how far your line of bullshit had taken you, and could always expect something in return, in kind, and amped up for everyone within earshot to hear.
Goddamn, I loved that girl.
She just didn't know it then. Neither, really, did I. I resented the maudlin artists' convention she tracked through her bedroom, but it didn't seem at the time to be because I felt I should be between the sheets with her myself. It was really because I felt she was shorting herself by not dating her equal (who I figured out - far too late - was probably me). We were only really one thing to each other at that point - sparring partners. She was my only excuse for conversational gymnastics or any sort of mental calisthenics that didn't involve throwing more of myself into the book. She and I were friends, but never lovers. Close, but never confidantes.
And I'm absolutely positive that that was my fault entirely. She and I had drifted badly after I chose the path of least resistance in the English department, and her ambition chased her into different circles. I think we really found it hard to cross paths again without any reason to break out the vitriolic aggression, and I never really knew how to manage dredging a real friendship out of the brand of passion we shared. Or worse, how to translate that passion into a more productive place. I always felt she couldn't possibly have had feelings for me. She always had a boyfriend, or in the rare moments where she was between men, she probably didn't see me like she saw the sullen and goateed Cure fans she kept running through.
At least that's what I had talked myself into.
BG is a writer from a small hamlet in Western Michigan.
One of the few immutable truths that applies to nearly every lifelong resident of small town life in the Midwest is that we don't have any use for the big city. We're perfectly content to disappear into the fabric of our own communities, sharing the tight-knit feeling of solidarity with our neighbors of being a true neighborhood, even if we just leave each other to our own devices behind closed doors anyway. City life, or at least my perception of it, is that of a white-noise solitude. It's not small talk with the neighbors, it's keep your eyes on your shoelaces pal - if you know what's good for you. It's not giving a shit who the sirens are for that wake you at 3AM, and not feeling like a friendly hello is an appropriate way to greet the mailman. I'm not a city kid.
I've retreated far enough socially at this point of my life, that were I dropped into Lower Manhattan, I'd likely devolve my ability to converse into the point-and-grunt method of choosing a deli meat or pack of cigarettes, just to avoid calling further attention to myself as an outsider. Yeah, I'm saying I'd miss the small talk in the grocery store, or the less-than-lively banter with a high school girl pushing Chicken McNuggets.
I've got no need for the city. But here I am anyway, making the three hour drive down to Chicago for this meeting. I mean, I am unemployed, and I could probably use a job, but couldn't we have set this lunch up somewhere in-between? Hell, even Michigan City, Indiana would have been better than having to head all the way downtown just to have lunch. But, my mom did set this up... and I haven't seen Shelley in years anyway.
It was about two weeks ago when my mom called. That was about three days into my strenuous regimen of Dawson's Creek reruns on the SuperStation in the morning, followed by a light lunch, and then pouring myself back into the manuscript until I couldn't keep my eyes propped open another minute. The phone rang, and I tossed out a terse "Hello" when I saw my mom's name on the Caller ID. I figured the busier she thought I was at the moment, the more she would stay off my ass about the job search.
"Langston, how's the job hunt coming along?" She knew damn well I hadn't so much as cobbled together my resume since college. I had been with the agency for so long, it hadn't been necessary for a while.
"Fine, mom. I quit on Tuesday, it's only Friday, and I'm feeling pretty good about my situation right now."
"And what situation is that? What are you going to do with yourself now? That was a good job you left there, Langston. Advertising isn't big around here, and you know you don't want to start from the bottom again with an agency somewhere else, do you?" Fucking hell. I guarantee you I wouldn't have to start from the bottom, but it was also pretty obvious that I'd be lucky to find a spot anywhere reasonably local doing the copy for ads, no matter how high on the totem pole they wanted to put me.
"Mom, I'm fine. I've got enough money in the bank to last me a while, so it'll be months before you need to go into full panic mode for me. Jesus, it's been two-and-a-half days since I walk out the door. I need to decompress a little bit."
"Well, I talked to Shelley today, and she expressed her concern about your situation..." I missed the last half of that sentence when a flurry of f-bombs came charging through my head, miraculously not flying out of my mouth in recoiling horror. "You're going to meet her for lunch. She'll email you with details."
Shelley was my mom's contact at her publishing house, but more to the point, Shelley and I were paired up about twelve years ago in our sophomore year's Creative Writing class, which my mom taught. She and I had been paired in nearly every group project or circle of feedback/criticism across two semesters, and had been so at odds in debate that I can no longer remember having taken that class with anyone else. She had incredible taste, an ear for reading aloud like I've never heard, and as many opinions as she had brooding artsy boyfriends.
Like most of the female pseudo-alternative crowd of writers that signed up for my mom's class, there was absolutely a starfucker element to the adoration Shelley heaped on her. My mom's book really appealed to the not-quite-as-depressed-as-Plath, but not-quite-as-romantic-as-a-Bronte type, and like A Separate Peace, was nearly required reading in every twelfth grade English class across the country. I had developed a natural distrust for anyone who seemed more than a little impressed that my mom was who she was, and naturally Shelley figured out the connection right away. Mix that distrust in with a natural attraction I had to any woman who could call me out on my bullshit with a smile, and I really had no idea how the hell I felt about that girl.
Until later, that is. I spent too much energy early on discounting the girl, thinking she was just using me to get in good with my mom, or didn't really give a shit about me because of the rotating cast of bad poets and fingerpainting pretty boys she consistently trotted out. It was absolutely insane. Well, I was absolutely insane. She used to talk these guys into driving her to our group sessions and even just to meet me for coffee so we could tear each other's latest piece of shit to shreds, and every one was so "unique" and "alternative" and "artsy" that I couldn't stand it. They were all fucking troglodytes too. Not a one of them could keep up when the she'd lug them along, and the guys who stuck near her the longest figured out pretty quick they weren't going to be engaged in the conversation. They didn't feel the least bit bad about dropping her on my doorstep and peeling out, rather than face two straight hours of short story deconstruction at 110 decibels of animation.
Shelley invented the art of conversation for me, so far as I was concerned. I was so used to the hushed tones and urbane bullshit of my mom's cocktail parties that I thought adults only talked in half-whispers and backhanded compliments. Shelley changed that for me entirely. Our constructive banter could turn to ego-maniacal posturing or chest-thumping proclamations of grandeur at the flip of a phrase. She wouldn't ever let me get away with a jab without throwing a counter-combination, which I'd return with a flurry of punches that would leave us both swinging wildly and grabbing at each other's last dangled words to dip in our own deadly venom for the next volley. Where I had learned to throw darts sideways from the curled corners of my mouth, purposeful words behind innocent eyes, Shelley was a full-frontal Panzer assault. You always knew where you stood, how far your line of bullshit had taken you, and could always expect something in return, in kind, and amped up for everyone within earshot to hear.
Goddamn, I loved that girl.
She just didn't know it then. Neither, really, did I. I resented the maudlin artists' convention she tracked through her bedroom, but it didn't seem at the time to be because I felt I should be between the sheets with her myself. It was really because I felt she was shorting herself by not dating her equal (who I figured out - far too late - was probably me). We were only really one thing to each other at that point - sparring partners. She was my only excuse for conversational gymnastics or any sort of mental calisthenics that didn't involve throwing more of myself into the book. She and I were friends, but never lovers. Close, but never confidantes.
And I'm absolutely positive that that was my fault entirely. She and I had drifted badly after I chose the path of least resistance in the English department, and her ambition chased her into different circles. I think we really found it hard to cross paths again without any reason to break out the vitriolic aggression, and I never really knew how to manage dredging a real friendship out of the brand of passion we shared. Or worse, how to translate that passion into a more productive place. I always felt she couldn't possibly have had feelings for me. She always had a boyfriend, or in the rare moments where she was between men, she probably didn't see me like she saw the sullen and goateed Cure fans she kept running through.
At least that's what I had talked myself into.
BG is a writer from a small hamlet in Western Michigan.
July 27, 2005
Langston
By BG © 2005
Roger popped his head in my cube and told, more than asked, "Langston, can I have a minute?" I tossed the copy on which I was working to the far corner of my desk and pushed away from my desk to chase Roger back to his office.
Corner office, for what it's worth. Roger was the Aardema in "Aardema and Vanderschultz," West Michigan's premier ad agency – which I think is akin to being the best regional bi-monthly magazine covering the Greater Des Moines area. Roger Aardema wasn't my boss exactly, but he was the type of Partner who didn't feel the least bit bad rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty in the creative process. He also had a habit of taking nearly everyone in his small agency "under his wing," in a manner of speaking. As such, a low level hack such as myself trailing a top dog to his office didn't cause eyebrows to raise. Hell, he spent ten minutes behind closed doors with our sturdy receptionist Tina just last week telling her how much he values her politeness and efficiency, and how she's the voice of the company, and in many ways the heart and soul so far as our customers are concerned.
Exactly.
Still, there's always that little feeling of dread that hangs over my head. Every day I'm here I try to work hard and work smart, but all I want is to be left alone. I just assume that someday someone is going to notice what I'm doing and point me out as a fraud. My own personal Sword of Damocles I guess.
Twenty-five yards tops from my quasi-futuristic style-conscious cubicle to the corner office, and every step behind Roger is loaded with assumptions. I figure it's fifty paces past my peers in their Aeron chairs and their Mac computers, five steps to sit and face the executioner, and ten minutes being informed of the various reasons the blade is swinging across my neck today before I can just pack my shit and try to leave as quietly as possible.
I take a mental inventory of my possible transgressions, and I come up empty. Still, I'm sure there's something and my irrational fear will be proven true in just another twenty paces...
Roger circled behind his desk and eased into tall plush leather. Unlike the rest of the office, which was hyper-intentionally designed to show how uber-cool and "with it" we all were to our clients, Roger's office looked freshly plucked from any high-end attorney's grasp. Mahogany desk, high back leather chair with a look equally imposing and rigid, and volumes from floor to ceiling on the south wall, which I'd never seen even momentarily out of place. The bay window behind Roger looked out west over the river, and with the late afternoon hour cast a glow into the room which thoroughly surrounded Roger as he sat. I've always wondered how intentional that was.
Roger beamed and gestured towards one of the two tub chairs in front of me. "Get the door if you would, and grab a seat." It was Father-Figure Roger, the hangman would have to wait another day to get me. I clicked the door closed and sat down. "Langston, thanks for coming by. I've got some good news, and I wanted to be able to share it with you." Roger tugged at his collar, pulling his tie loose and popped the button on his shirt open. The "end of day" signal combined with "I'm your buddy, let's chat." I always found these slick guys in nice suits to be a pretty easy read.
"You've been doing great work on Amanda and Ryan's team, and they've let me know how invaluable you've been to them on the Eagle Ridge Country Club campaign."
Bullshit. I've been with this agency for seven years now as a Copywriter, and now as a Senior Copywriter, and I know full well Amanda and Ryan were the type of young gun Account Executives I'd seen time and time again. They get in the door with a prospect, land a big account for the company, and take complete creative credit for the efforts of the team. I guarantee you Roger wouldn't have noticed my efforts if I hadn't have been writing for his agency for so long.
"They – and I – really wanted to express our appreciation. The client loves the campaign, and besides the print ad being visually striking, the copy was just dead perfect. It's exactly what the client wanted, and I'm glad you were able to help Ryan and Amanda deliver."
"Thanks Roger, I appreciate it." I took the compliment quietly, no need to talk about how bereft of writing talent Ryan was, or how it took quite a bit of time to convince Amanda my ideas were her ideas, and therefore the right choices on this project. It's been like this ever since I got here. Ryan and Amanda were the latest sales team to which I had been assigned, and were typical of the people with whom I've had to partner during my tenure at A&V Agency. Roger hires a young, charismatic Account Exec with good fashion sense and hair, tosses them out in the field to land clients, and puts them with back room talent like myself whose ideas and hard work are co-opted time and again for their own career advancement.
"Now, for the news. Ryan is leaving us. He was recruited out to one of our competitors in Chicago." By the way, by "competitor," he means "bigger and less regionally focused agency." "Ryan's departure is going to mean we're shuffling things up a little bit here."
Whoa. Was I about to get promoted to Account Executive? Could I work side-by-side with Amanda as equals? Without wanting to throw her under the bus every time she had a bad idea? And were there enough buses around for as often as that happened? Hell, at minimum, maybe now I'd start to get some credit for all the creative effort I've been putting in.
"We're going to move Amanda into our Internet Strategies group, I think she's earned it. Langston, we're going to make you Lead Senior Copywriter. Basically all the same things you've been doing before, but focusing completely on print copy, with dotted line management to the Senior Copywriters on the other teams. Basically, if they get stuck, you're the go-to guy now. How's that sound?"
How's that sound? Like not only a life sentence of getting no credit for my work, but also adding a lifetime of doing the work of others on top. Fucking fantastic Roger. Of course, that's not what I say out loud.
"Thanks Roger. I, um... Well, I have a question."
Roger smiled and nodded. "Sure, anything at all Mr. Lead Senior Copywriter. What's up?"
"I feel like I've been doing a great job for you for over seven years now." Roger was nodding eagerly. "I guess, well, I'm just concerned. That's all. I really think if you gave me a shot as an Account Executive, I know I'd be really good at it. I feel like I've been waiting for my shot, and it hasn't happened yet, and I don't know what I can do to help you see that's what I want."
Roger pulled in closer to the desk, obviously mixing a little Boss Man in with Father-Figure for this discussion. "Langston, the wheels around here don't turn without you, you know this right?" I nodded, reluctantly. "There are two reasons you've been passed over for Account Executive. The first? You're so good at what you do I just don't want to take that focus away from you. I need you putting the blinders on and punching up those ideas into usable copy. That's your niche, that's where you excel. We're all a team here, and I don't think anyone can understate your importance to our deliverables here. This is why I want to make a gesture here to give you more responsibility here too."
I'd heard this part before. "And the second reason?"
Roger audibly sighed, kind of one of those "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you" conversation stoppers. "I don't know how to tell you this Langston, so I'm just going to come out and lay it on the table. I don't feel you're 'Account Executive Material.' You're disheveled, you don't have that style and panache I'm looking for. I need a guy who's going to get out in front of our clients and sell the image we're trying to tell them we can bring to their business. Langston, how old are you?"
"Twenty-eight." I muttered.
"Are those Dockers? I'd bet your shoes didn't cost you more than $40. Your shirt's collar won't lay down properly. Bad haircut, slightly overweight, I could go on. I'm not going to varnish the truth here Langston. I need you, your talent has helped us immeasurably over the past seven years, and you've really grown into your role. You should be proud of that. But Ryan and Amanda are who I want walking in the front door of our clients' offices."
Roger paused, letting this sink in. I don't know how long the uncomfortable silence lasted, but I think the look on my face was enough to let the guilt settle in for Roger. As an attempt to salvage he threw me a bone on my way out the door.
"Did I tell you that you get a raise too? 3%. I'll even make it retroactive to January. I'm sorry Langston, but I want to make sure you know where you're headed here. There are plenty of places you can go in this company, and I want you to feel like you're working towards something on my watch. Account Executive isn't it."
Well shit, I get promoted and I feel just about as lousy as I would have had I gotten fired. Terrific.
BG is a writer from Western Michigan.
Roger popped his head in my cube and told, more than asked, "Langston, can I have a minute?" I tossed the copy on which I was working to the far corner of my desk and pushed away from my desk to chase Roger back to his office.
Corner office, for what it's worth. Roger was the Aardema in "Aardema and Vanderschultz," West Michigan's premier ad agency – which I think is akin to being the best regional bi-monthly magazine covering the Greater Des Moines area. Roger Aardema wasn't my boss exactly, but he was the type of Partner who didn't feel the least bit bad rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty in the creative process. He also had a habit of taking nearly everyone in his small agency "under his wing," in a manner of speaking. As such, a low level hack such as myself trailing a top dog to his office didn't cause eyebrows to raise. Hell, he spent ten minutes behind closed doors with our sturdy receptionist Tina just last week telling her how much he values her politeness and efficiency, and how she's the voice of the company, and in many ways the heart and soul so far as our customers are concerned.
Exactly.
Still, there's always that little feeling of dread that hangs over my head. Every day I'm here I try to work hard and work smart, but all I want is to be left alone. I just assume that someday someone is going to notice what I'm doing and point me out as a fraud. My own personal Sword of Damocles I guess.
Twenty-five yards tops from my quasi-futuristic style-conscious cubicle to the corner office, and every step behind Roger is loaded with assumptions. I figure it's fifty paces past my peers in their Aeron chairs and their Mac computers, five steps to sit and face the executioner, and ten minutes being informed of the various reasons the blade is swinging across my neck today before I can just pack my shit and try to leave as quietly as possible.
I take a mental inventory of my possible transgressions, and I come up empty. Still, I'm sure there's something and my irrational fear will be proven true in just another twenty paces...
Roger circled behind his desk and eased into tall plush leather. Unlike the rest of the office, which was hyper-intentionally designed to show how uber-cool and "with it" we all were to our clients, Roger's office looked freshly plucked from any high-end attorney's grasp. Mahogany desk, high back leather chair with a look equally imposing and rigid, and volumes from floor to ceiling on the south wall, which I'd never seen even momentarily out of place. The bay window behind Roger looked out west over the river, and with the late afternoon hour cast a glow into the room which thoroughly surrounded Roger as he sat. I've always wondered how intentional that was.
Roger beamed and gestured towards one of the two tub chairs in front of me. "Get the door if you would, and grab a seat." It was Father-Figure Roger, the hangman would have to wait another day to get me. I clicked the door closed and sat down. "Langston, thanks for coming by. I've got some good news, and I wanted to be able to share it with you." Roger tugged at his collar, pulling his tie loose and popped the button on his shirt open. The "end of day" signal combined with "I'm your buddy, let's chat." I always found these slick guys in nice suits to be a pretty easy read.
"You've been doing great work on Amanda and Ryan's team, and they've let me know how invaluable you've been to them on the Eagle Ridge Country Club campaign."
Bullshit. I've been with this agency for seven years now as a Copywriter, and now as a Senior Copywriter, and I know full well Amanda and Ryan were the type of young gun Account Executives I'd seen time and time again. They get in the door with a prospect, land a big account for the company, and take complete creative credit for the efforts of the team. I guarantee you Roger wouldn't have noticed my efforts if I hadn't have been writing for his agency for so long.
"They – and I – really wanted to express our appreciation. The client loves the campaign, and besides the print ad being visually striking, the copy was just dead perfect. It's exactly what the client wanted, and I'm glad you were able to help Ryan and Amanda deliver."
"Thanks Roger, I appreciate it." I took the compliment quietly, no need to talk about how bereft of writing talent Ryan was, or how it took quite a bit of time to convince Amanda my ideas were her ideas, and therefore the right choices on this project. It's been like this ever since I got here. Ryan and Amanda were the latest sales team to which I had been assigned, and were typical of the people with whom I've had to partner during my tenure at A&V Agency. Roger hires a young, charismatic Account Exec with good fashion sense and hair, tosses them out in the field to land clients, and puts them with back room talent like myself whose ideas and hard work are co-opted time and again for their own career advancement.
"Now, for the news. Ryan is leaving us. He was recruited out to one of our competitors in Chicago." By the way, by "competitor," he means "bigger and less regionally focused agency." "Ryan's departure is going to mean we're shuffling things up a little bit here."
Whoa. Was I about to get promoted to Account Executive? Could I work side-by-side with Amanda as equals? Without wanting to throw her under the bus every time she had a bad idea? And were there enough buses around for as often as that happened? Hell, at minimum, maybe now I'd start to get some credit for all the creative effort I've been putting in.
"We're going to move Amanda into our Internet Strategies group, I think she's earned it. Langston, we're going to make you Lead Senior Copywriter. Basically all the same things you've been doing before, but focusing completely on print copy, with dotted line management to the Senior Copywriters on the other teams. Basically, if they get stuck, you're the go-to guy now. How's that sound?"
How's that sound? Like not only a life sentence of getting no credit for my work, but also adding a lifetime of doing the work of others on top. Fucking fantastic Roger. Of course, that's not what I say out loud.
"Thanks Roger. I, um... Well, I have a question."
Roger smiled and nodded. "Sure, anything at all Mr. Lead Senior Copywriter. What's up?"
"I feel like I've been doing a great job for you for over seven years now." Roger was nodding eagerly. "I guess, well, I'm just concerned. That's all. I really think if you gave me a shot as an Account Executive, I know I'd be really good at it. I feel like I've been waiting for my shot, and it hasn't happened yet, and I don't know what I can do to help you see that's what I want."
Roger pulled in closer to the desk, obviously mixing a little Boss Man in with Father-Figure for this discussion. "Langston, the wheels around here don't turn without you, you know this right?" I nodded, reluctantly. "There are two reasons you've been passed over for Account Executive. The first? You're so good at what you do I just don't want to take that focus away from you. I need you putting the blinders on and punching up those ideas into usable copy. That's your niche, that's where you excel. We're all a team here, and I don't think anyone can understate your importance to our deliverables here. This is why I want to make a gesture here to give you more responsibility here too."
I'd heard this part before. "And the second reason?"
Roger audibly sighed, kind of one of those "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you" conversation stoppers. "I don't know how to tell you this Langston, so I'm just going to come out and lay it on the table. I don't feel you're 'Account Executive Material.' You're disheveled, you don't have that style and panache I'm looking for. I need a guy who's going to get out in front of our clients and sell the image we're trying to tell them we can bring to their business. Langston, how old are you?"
"Twenty-eight." I muttered.
"Are those Dockers? I'd bet your shoes didn't cost you more than $40. Your shirt's collar won't lay down properly. Bad haircut, slightly overweight, I could go on. I'm not going to varnish the truth here Langston. I need you, your talent has helped us immeasurably over the past seven years, and you've really grown into your role. You should be proud of that. But Ryan and Amanda are who I want walking in the front door of our clients' offices."
Roger paused, letting this sink in. I don't know how long the uncomfortable silence lasted, but I think the look on my face was enough to let the guilt settle in for Roger. As an attempt to salvage he threw me a bone on my way out the door.
"Did I tell you that you get a raise too? 3%. I'll even make it retroactive to January. I'm sorry Langston, but I want to make sure you know where you're headed here. There are plenty of places you can go in this company, and I want you to feel like you're working towards something on my watch. Account Executive isn't it."
Well shit, I get promoted and I feel just about as lousy as I would have had I gotten fired. Terrific.
BG is a writer from Western Michigan.
May 18, 2005
Members Only
By BG © 2005
I had the lunch special at the Chinese takeout joint with the surreal Chinese hotties running the counter today. They're the ones you'd call "Americanized," as much for that neva-gonna-get-it look they're rocking as for their lack of thick Mandarin accent.
I had the combo plate. Orange chicken, teriyaki chicken, fried rice, and lo mein. Add in an egg roll, toss sixty six cents worth of tip in the egg drop soup takeout tip cup at the register and see the gone little girl with the cornrows and the first generation parents unlikely to pry that Eminem CD out of their daughter's fingers manufacture a sixty six cent smile to send me on my way.
I had to bring lunch back today, as I do most every day, and I had to eat it at my desk while reading ESPN Page 2 and desperately looking for national validation on the Lions free agent signings.
And I had to laugh at the subtle irony freed for my pleasure from the inside of an almond cookie. Wisdom and truth chases fried foods down the hatch: Good health is a man's best wealth.
===
So I've got this bruise on the back of my hand that I can't seem to explain. It just seems to be another one of those signs that I'm edging closer and closer to decrepitude in my young middle-age.
Shit, at the rate I'm going, I am middle-aged.
I don't think I'm quite like the Charlie Kaufman character in Adaptation - yet. But I am tending to believe the worst when any and all of these spooky pseudo-health issues rears its ugly head. For example, I have this tooth thing going on right now. It doesn't hurt exactly, but feels funny when I chew something in the right front side of my mouth. I can't replicate the feeling by chewing on my finger or gritting my teeth, so I'm curious really what it is.
Except that I'm pretty sure it's an abscess, and I'm going to lose the tooth. I'll end up with a big gap in the right side of my mouth, and be forced to spend my money on Polident and Super PoliGrip. That cup of "water" by the bed? Don't drink that, I promise you don't want a gulp.
See? This is how you play Fatal Hypochondria.
I'm convinced that that bruise, which has gotten worse over the last couple of days, is probably either gangrene, leprosy or scurvy. Either way, I'm not getting enough vitamin C. Regardless, it's as if my hand is turning into an overripe peach just hours away from the shift from edible to rotten. Soon, the bruise is going to overtake my whole hand, making my palm, wrist, and fingers tender to the touch. Then it'll just turn black and fall off.
I'm not growing old gracefully.
I was at the grocery store on Sunday, and had an interesting encounter with one of our nation's cat food-eating elderly. He was impossible to miss, as I patiently waited behind him while he shuffled his way up over the curb and into the eye of the automatic doorway. He didn't look like my grandfathers did. My grandfathers were veterans, the type of guys that to a boy my age looked as if they could crush your windpipe in their bare hands, and would if provoked. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't lay money my dad's dad hadn't.
This guy was gaunt and disheveled, wearing discount green corduroy pants, a light blue Member's Only jacket, and those cream colored khaki Velcro slip-ons the Sunday circular trumpets in all their glory. He didn't grab a basket, didn't grab a cart, but instead gravitated directly to one of the nearly-senior citizens manning the hot plate full of marinated vegetables each speared with a toothpick.
He had a red pepper.
I saw him another aisle down, still no basket, still no cart, collecting another toothpick bearing Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage.
I don't think he noticed I was watching him. Not yet, at least.
I caught up to him again in the back of the store, ambling over with hands in coat pockets towards the bulk bins. He twisted, painfully, over each shoulder twice, three times, and teetered a crooked path to the Voortman cookie display.
Pink wafers #4037, $4.99 a pound.
He pulled his hand from his coat pocket and reached out, steadying himself on the side of the display to begin the mechanical process of winching his addled frame low enough to pluck a pink wafer from his bin of choice.
My grandfathers ate G-rations and came home to sturdy wives with families hardened from sugar rations. My grandfathers survived the coal mines, high voltage electrical work, Krauts, Buffalo-like frequent snowfalls in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and only the glory of raising big families in disadvantaged conditions as men.
Not a thing was fucking free for my grandfathers.
Member's Only had his hand fixed to the display, thumb twisted perpendicular to the pole around which it was wrapped. He slid - carefully - each foot out an inch or two then three, and bent at the waist - slightly.
And I was aimlessly staring through the vacant tops of the Jelly Belly chutes, fixated on this old man's quest for a free cookie. Staring, not ten feet away.
Somehow, he knew. He pricked his ears and wheeled his head around - easily the most catlike move I had seen him make in the ten minutes or so I had trailed him unintentionally around the store. He looked at me, then through me, but definitely still at me. I had closed my eyes slowly and cast my gaze back towards the bottom of the Technicolor jelly bean bins as he slowly cranked his neck around the other direction to see if anyone else might be spying.
I took that chance to move directly behind him. Dog biscuits, plausible due to the 20 lb bag of Iams in my cart. But I was still observing. I wanted to see him take the goddamn cookie.
He wasn't ready. Now I knew he was a veteran pilferer, as his radar was attuned so sharply that he simply couldn't be caught by human eyes. I couldn't tell, as he turned to look right at me, whether or not his eyes were fearful, desperate, or annoyed. He wanted the cookie, something in him felt he needed the cookie. But he didn't want a complete stranger with a chagrined smirk of gleeful intrigue pegging him a petty thief. You and I both know what I'm doing, why don't you just leave me alone to do it already.
There was one thing I recognized in his eyes though. This was a man who was profoundly alone. His gait wasn't that of a sick or injured or recuperating man, it was that of a person nearly doomed to wander his earth, his turf, with no purposeful meaning. I thought at first he was the antithesis to my grandfathers, both men's men, both scrapping and clawing to provide for their families, thievery and shiftlessness far from their ideal of America.
That wasn't it at all. A tuft of grey hair and huddled shoulders under a decades- old styled jacket is enough in this world to turn a man invisible, and by doing so, enable his disconnect so thoroughly that his every and any action is only of matter in his own mind and shaken off with just a shrug of his shoulders. Loneliness breeds a solitary set of ethics, one that owes nothing to anyone, not even oneself. My grandfathers weren't like this man, not because they were necessarily better men, but because by surrounding themselves with family they were no longer alone. They were purposeful men, men of consequence - and by consequence, I mean to say that the simple act of pilfering a pink wafer cookie had consequences far beyond a shakedown in the break room and a scolding by the local law enforcement. Their actions mattered. They were examples, pinnacles, for a select few. By design, they were most certainly not alone.
I moved along, slowly, behind a tall stack of paper towel rolls, and emerged on the other side in time to see an invisible man in dime store corduroys and Sunday circular loafers, hands in pockets, shuffling his way under fluorescent lighting back to wherever it is invisible men live to amble quietly through another day that won't matter to anyone else in the wide scope of things - ever.
I'm pretty sure he was chewing.
BG is a writer from Western Michigan.
I had the lunch special at the Chinese takeout joint with the surreal Chinese hotties running the counter today. They're the ones you'd call "Americanized," as much for that neva-gonna-get-it look they're rocking as for their lack of thick Mandarin accent.
I had the combo plate. Orange chicken, teriyaki chicken, fried rice, and lo mein. Add in an egg roll, toss sixty six cents worth of tip in the egg drop soup takeout tip cup at the register and see the gone little girl with the cornrows and the first generation parents unlikely to pry that Eminem CD out of their daughter's fingers manufacture a sixty six cent smile to send me on my way.
I had to bring lunch back today, as I do most every day, and I had to eat it at my desk while reading ESPN Page 2 and desperately looking for national validation on the Lions free agent signings.
And I had to laugh at the subtle irony freed for my pleasure from the inside of an almond cookie. Wisdom and truth chases fried foods down the hatch: Good health is a man's best wealth.
===
So I've got this bruise on the back of my hand that I can't seem to explain. It just seems to be another one of those signs that I'm edging closer and closer to decrepitude in my young middle-age.
Shit, at the rate I'm going, I am middle-aged.
I don't think I'm quite like the Charlie Kaufman character in Adaptation - yet. But I am tending to believe the worst when any and all of these spooky pseudo-health issues rears its ugly head. For example, I have this tooth thing going on right now. It doesn't hurt exactly, but feels funny when I chew something in the right front side of my mouth. I can't replicate the feeling by chewing on my finger or gritting my teeth, so I'm curious really what it is.
Except that I'm pretty sure it's an abscess, and I'm going to lose the tooth. I'll end up with a big gap in the right side of my mouth, and be forced to spend my money on Polident and Super PoliGrip. That cup of "water" by the bed? Don't drink that, I promise you don't want a gulp.
See? This is how you play Fatal Hypochondria.
I'm convinced that that bruise, which has gotten worse over the last couple of days, is probably either gangrene, leprosy or scurvy. Either way, I'm not getting enough vitamin C. Regardless, it's as if my hand is turning into an overripe peach just hours away from the shift from edible to rotten. Soon, the bruise is going to overtake my whole hand, making my palm, wrist, and fingers tender to the touch. Then it'll just turn black and fall off.
I'm not growing old gracefully.
I was at the grocery store on Sunday, and had an interesting encounter with one of our nation's cat food-eating elderly. He was impossible to miss, as I patiently waited behind him while he shuffled his way up over the curb and into the eye of the automatic doorway. He didn't look like my grandfathers did. My grandfathers were veterans, the type of guys that to a boy my age looked as if they could crush your windpipe in their bare hands, and would if provoked. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't lay money my dad's dad hadn't.
This guy was gaunt and disheveled, wearing discount green corduroy pants, a light blue Member's Only jacket, and those cream colored khaki Velcro slip-ons the Sunday circular trumpets in all their glory. He didn't grab a basket, didn't grab a cart, but instead gravitated directly to one of the nearly-senior citizens manning the hot plate full of marinated vegetables each speared with a toothpick.
He had a red pepper.
I saw him another aisle down, still no basket, still no cart, collecting another toothpick bearing Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage.
I don't think he noticed I was watching him. Not yet, at least.
I caught up to him again in the back of the store, ambling over with hands in coat pockets towards the bulk bins. He twisted, painfully, over each shoulder twice, three times, and teetered a crooked path to the Voortman cookie display.
Pink wafers #4037, $4.99 a pound.
He pulled his hand from his coat pocket and reached out, steadying himself on the side of the display to begin the mechanical process of winching his addled frame low enough to pluck a pink wafer from his bin of choice.
My grandfathers ate G-rations and came home to sturdy wives with families hardened from sugar rations. My grandfathers survived the coal mines, high voltage electrical work, Krauts, Buffalo-like frequent snowfalls in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and only the glory of raising big families in disadvantaged conditions as men.
Not a thing was fucking free for my grandfathers.
Member's Only had his hand fixed to the display, thumb twisted perpendicular to the pole around which it was wrapped. He slid - carefully - each foot out an inch or two then three, and bent at the waist - slightly.
And I was aimlessly staring through the vacant tops of the Jelly Belly chutes, fixated on this old man's quest for a free cookie. Staring, not ten feet away.
Somehow, he knew. He pricked his ears and wheeled his head around - easily the most catlike move I had seen him make in the ten minutes or so I had trailed him unintentionally around the store. He looked at me, then through me, but definitely still at me. I had closed my eyes slowly and cast my gaze back towards the bottom of the Technicolor jelly bean bins as he slowly cranked his neck around the other direction to see if anyone else might be spying.
I took that chance to move directly behind him. Dog biscuits, plausible due to the 20 lb bag of Iams in my cart. But I was still observing. I wanted to see him take the goddamn cookie.
He wasn't ready. Now I knew he was a veteran pilferer, as his radar was attuned so sharply that he simply couldn't be caught by human eyes. I couldn't tell, as he turned to look right at me, whether or not his eyes were fearful, desperate, or annoyed. He wanted the cookie, something in him felt he needed the cookie. But he didn't want a complete stranger with a chagrined smirk of gleeful intrigue pegging him a petty thief. You and I both know what I'm doing, why don't you just leave me alone to do it already.
There was one thing I recognized in his eyes though. This was a man who was profoundly alone. His gait wasn't that of a sick or injured or recuperating man, it was that of a person nearly doomed to wander his earth, his turf, with no purposeful meaning. I thought at first he was the antithesis to my grandfathers, both men's men, both scrapping and clawing to provide for their families, thievery and shiftlessness far from their ideal of America.
That wasn't it at all. A tuft of grey hair and huddled shoulders under a decades- old styled jacket is enough in this world to turn a man invisible, and by doing so, enable his disconnect so thoroughly that his every and any action is only of matter in his own mind and shaken off with just a shrug of his shoulders. Loneliness breeds a solitary set of ethics, one that owes nothing to anyone, not even oneself. My grandfathers weren't like this man, not because they were necessarily better men, but because by surrounding themselves with family they were no longer alone. They were purposeful men, men of consequence - and by consequence, I mean to say that the simple act of pilfering a pink wafer cookie had consequences far beyond a shakedown in the break room and a scolding by the local law enforcement. Their actions mattered. They were examples, pinnacles, for a select few. By design, they were most certainly not alone.
I moved along, slowly, behind a tall stack of paper towel rolls, and emerged on the other side in time to see an invisible man in dime store corduroys and Sunday circular loafers, hands in pockets, shuffling his way under fluorescent lighting back to wherever it is invisible men live to amble quietly through another day that won't matter to anyone else in the wide scope of things - ever.
I'm pretty sure he was chewing.
BG is a writer from Western Michigan.
March 18, 2005
Doc and the Dream
By BG © 2005
A note from the author: McGrupp has encouraged me to write something a little bit bigger than what I've been chipping away at here. Actually, he's been on my ass about it, but that's a good thing. This is the first draft of the first chapter I've written in that "something a little bit bigger" I want to tackle. The dream is mine (and rather fucked up), but Langston is a guy who's been writing and re-writing on the same manuscript for nearly fifteen years, and only his shrink knows he's been writing. He's never told anyone else. Oh, and his mom is a well-respected novelist.
It was, as it usually was, a mercifully short wait for Dr. Meyer. In those minutes prior to our sessions alone in the waiting room, I had moved well past my initial inclination to sprint for the exit doors and now was content to leaf through three month old issues of Architectural Digest, even though I couldn't tell Doric from Ionic without a cheat sheet.
Not that people are utilizing Roman columns the way they used to, I mused with a sideways smirk. If you can't get them at Home Depot, or buy them out of the box at Crate and Barrel or IKEA, America doesn't want them anyway. Of course, all it's going to take to bring them back is for one rapper to show up on MTV's Cribs with a Gladiator fetish (as opposed to the usual predilection to Tony Montana), a pool surrounded by a mock-up of the Coliseum, and the words, "Russell Crowe, now that's my nigga."
Maybe instead of iced out platinum chains and medallions, you'll see brothas rockin' gold plated olive branch crowns and trading their gats for broad swords.
Not likely.
"Langston, sorry to keep you waiting. Why don't you come on in and grab a seat." Doc's office was large and comfortable, outfitted with couches, chairs, his desk, books - all the things you expect and desire from your shrink. As usual, I took one of the two low-slung leather chairs with the ottoman right out of the picture in the Pottery Barn catalog. Doc took the other.
I always took this chair. It faced the back corner of Doc's office, in which a tall and colorful metal sculpture was placed. Actually, it was more fair to say it was perched over there, as it seemed to both hulk over and cascade down and around a single fulcrum point where its shape and perceived bulk gave an illusory nod to the forces of gravity. It looked like it should be falling off of the base - as a matter of fact it looked as if it were in mid-topple - but was always balanced in the same position.
I've never been one to truly understand art, but I loved this piece. I asked Doc about it in one of my early sessions, and he brushed me off. "You can tell me what you think about that whenever you're ready."
It had been nearly five years of weekly sessions, and I hadn't given it a lot of thought since.
"So, Langston... How have you been doing this week? Is there anything in particular you wanted to talk about today?"
"Actually, I had a dream." Dr. Meyer smiled. I rarely had dreams I remembered in the morning, and the "dream journal" idea he had proposed years ago had been a colossal failure.
"Wow, great. Throw me a curveball this week, why don't you? I'm ready, let's dive in."
"Are you familiar with the game Cutthroat?"
Dr. Meyer nodded and started jotting notes in his spiral. "Billiards - pool, right? That Cutthroat?"
"Right. I was playing against two guys..."
"Guys you know? People you know?" I shook my head. "Who were these guys then?"
"This is the weird part." I shuffled up in my seat, eager to get this dream out in front of the Doc. "It was obvious there was a lot riding on this game. So much so that we all were playing incredibly defensive pool - playing not to lose, if you will. Shot after shot was executed to simply make the next guy's shot that much harder."
Doc jumped in, "You were guarding something. So were they."
"Yeah, so were they. It went on like this for a little while, and I finally relented and laid my cue down on the table. I gave up, declared a stalemate - which I guess meant I was the loser. So the guys come up to me and grab me by the shoulders..."
"Violently? Or gently, as if they're taking you somewhere?"
"Gently, I guess. One of the guys says, 'You know you're done, right?' I nod and he adds, 'We're going to put things back the way they should be, and there's nothing you can do about it now.'"
Dr. Meyer perked up instantly. "There's nothing you can do about what?"
"Time. They were going to wind time back. The guys locked me in a bathroom, and I took a seat on the toilet and looked out the back window."
Doc was scribbling furiously in his notebook. Without looking up he said, "I'm not sure what the bathroom means, if anything, but what were you looking at out the window?"
"There was a convenience store. Or, rather, a building that used to obviously house a convenience store. The building was boarded up and run down, and weeds were growing all over the property."
"Do you remember what you were thinking while you were looking out the window?"
"Nothing - not yet at least. I'll get to that. But I can remember feeling defeated. Well, defeated, and that when things started to get reset that I'd be wiped away with them."
"Wiped away?"
"Like everything I had ever done in my life was going to be nullified."
Doc paused to let that last sentence sink in. I'm not sure if he wanted that to sink in for me or for him. "So when everything was all said and done at the end of this - reset of time - you'd be operating with a clean slate?"
"No. Like when everything was all said and done at the end of this, I'd cease to exist at all."
Doc was absentmindedly nibbling on the end of his pen. The silence was loaded. "This isn't quite the same thing as when one dreams about their own mortality, is it? You're not falling out of a plane, you're not jumping off a tall building - none of those things that people do purposefully or accidentally when they dream about death. This isn't a fetishization of death in any sort of sense at all. You played a high-stakes game where your existence - not just your life, but the whole of your existence - was on the line."
I nodded. "Everything I am, everything I've done."
"And what's interesting is that you didn't lose, did you?" I hadn't thought of it that way. I didn't lose. I gave up, resigned, called a stalemate when I knew that doing so was an acquiescence to this fate. I sunk a little lower in the chair and shook my head in agreement. No. I didn't lose. "What happened next?"
"I was sitting on the toilet - just sitting, mind you - and was watching the convenience store out the window. That's when time started rolling backwards. Slowly, at first. The weedy overgrowth started to back down, and then signs of life at the store started to appear. The boarded up windows came down, and there was a sign - a clock - that was one of those red digital scrolling message boards on the outside of the building, and all of a sudden it was on and the time and date on the board kept rolling steadily backwards."
Doc nodded. "Do you remember thinking or feeling anything as you saw this store come back to life?"
"'Stop.' That's one thing. I just wanted everything to stop. Then I started to see landmark dates pass by."
"Which dates? What did they signify?"
"It started as I began to recognize the significant dates. The date of my divorce. The day I left my ex-wife. The day I married her. They kept rolling past me and I just wanted time to stop, just for a minute."
"Why?"
"My first impulse was so that I could fix things. Make things right, or at least more right than they had turned out. But I was locked in the bathroom, sitting on that toilet, completely defeated and unable to do anything. I wanted so badly to get out there and fix things."
"What would you have done to fix them?"
"See, I don't know. It's a different question than if you were to ask me 'What would I do if I had the chance to go back in time to those days?' In the dream, there's a different context."
Dr. Meyer obviously agreed. "I'm glad you understand that. Sometimes what we're thinking and feeling inside of a dream can be taken at face value, sometimes it's thick with subtext, and sometimes there's no sense in trying to break the code at all. What do you think 'fixing these things' meant in the dream?"
"I thought it was a dream about regret, but I'm not so sure anymore. See, the milestones I mentioned already are the most recent ones. Over the last seven or eight years, they're the ones that have most impacted me. But then I started to notice more dates rolling by on that digital board, but they weren't exactly milestones. The last time I was fired from a job... the other time that happened... the day I wrecked my car..."
Dr. Meyer interrupted, "All mistakes? Every one of these dates you noticed in your dream. They're all mistakes." He let that marinate for a moment. "What were you thinking as time continued to roll back?"
"That I was completely powerless to stop the ride, get off, and do anything about anything." I looked over and saw Doc rocking slowly back and forth in his chair, which was what he did when he was waiting for me to fill in the rest of the blank. "I guess this dream wasn't about regret, was it?"
Dr. Meyer set his pen and pad down to the side and leaned forward into the conversation. "We've established this isn't a dream about death, and this isn't a dream about regret. Why is it you chose to only mark mistakes as signposts through your past? Why is there no mention of the day you lost your virginity? Or the days you come back from the track having doubled or tripled your stake? Why aren't you recognizing a first date, a first kiss, first time you tasted success on the job, first time you had five figures in the bank? Why is it you focus so pointedly on mistakes?" I shrugged and shook my head. "Something one of your Cutthroat opponents said to you..." He leafed back a couple pages in his spiral. "'We're going to put things back the way they should be.' What do you suppose you mean by that?"
I huffed and threw away, "That I'm a colossal fuck-up and everything is my fault?"
"Get serious, would you Langston?" Dr. Meyer hated it when I did this. In this room is the only place I felt comfortable getting personal, but sometimes the walls would come up, even in here. "Why do you think things needed to be reset?"
"I don't know Doc, I don't know... I am confused though. Why, if I was so resigned to defeat in this case was I even willing to fight to keep these guys from turning back time to begin with?"
Dr. Meyer began, "You were playing defensive pool, right?" I nodded. "Then you just laid down your cue and gave up, correct?" Again, I agreed. "That's hardly a fight. That's really more of a situation where you're looking to preserve the status quo - a stalemate is essentially a conflict that ends in status quo, isn't it..."
I hated it when the Doc was right.
"You've got a tenuous relationship with your own past. 'The way things should be' is a myth. The past exists as it is, or rather, as it was. And you have a curious way of resigning yourself to the past without accepting it." We sat there in silence for thirty seconds, a minute, while Dr. Meyer let his statement wash through my head. "Answer me out loud this time, first thing that comes into your head. Why is your life's story told through mistakes and failures?"
I took a single beat and answered, "I'm never going to be as successful as my mom, am I?"
Doc grinned and asked me the only question that had survived each and every one of our sessions over the past five years, "So how is that manuscript coming along Langston?"
BG is a writer from Western Michigan.
A note from the author: McGrupp has encouraged me to write something a little bit bigger than what I've been chipping away at here. Actually, he's been on my ass about it, but that's a good thing. This is the first draft of the first chapter I've written in that "something a little bit bigger" I want to tackle. The dream is mine (and rather fucked up), but Langston is a guy who's been writing and re-writing on the same manuscript for nearly fifteen years, and only his shrink knows he's been writing. He's never told anyone else. Oh, and his mom is a well-respected novelist.
It was, as it usually was, a mercifully short wait for Dr. Meyer. In those minutes prior to our sessions alone in the waiting room, I had moved well past my initial inclination to sprint for the exit doors and now was content to leaf through three month old issues of Architectural Digest, even though I couldn't tell Doric from Ionic without a cheat sheet.
Not that people are utilizing Roman columns the way they used to, I mused with a sideways smirk. If you can't get them at Home Depot, or buy them out of the box at Crate and Barrel or IKEA, America doesn't want them anyway. Of course, all it's going to take to bring them back is for one rapper to show up on MTV's Cribs with a Gladiator fetish (as opposed to the usual predilection to Tony Montana), a pool surrounded by a mock-up of the Coliseum, and the words, "Russell Crowe, now that's my nigga."
Maybe instead of iced out platinum chains and medallions, you'll see brothas rockin' gold plated olive branch crowns and trading their gats for broad swords.
Not likely.
"Langston, sorry to keep you waiting. Why don't you come on in and grab a seat." Doc's office was large and comfortable, outfitted with couches, chairs, his desk, books - all the things you expect and desire from your shrink. As usual, I took one of the two low-slung leather chairs with the ottoman right out of the picture in the Pottery Barn catalog. Doc took the other.
I always took this chair. It faced the back corner of Doc's office, in which a tall and colorful metal sculpture was placed. Actually, it was more fair to say it was perched over there, as it seemed to both hulk over and cascade down and around a single fulcrum point where its shape and perceived bulk gave an illusory nod to the forces of gravity. It looked like it should be falling off of the base - as a matter of fact it looked as if it were in mid-topple - but was always balanced in the same position.
I've never been one to truly understand art, but I loved this piece. I asked Doc about it in one of my early sessions, and he brushed me off. "You can tell me what you think about that whenever you're ready."
It had been nearly five years of weekly sessions, and I hadn't given it a lot of thought since.
"So, Langston... How have you been doing this week? Is there anything in particular you wanted to talk about today?"
"Actually, I had a dream." Dr. Meyer smiled. I rarely had dreams I remembered in the morning, and the "dream journal" idea he had proposed years ago had been a colossal failure.
"Wow, great. Throw me a curveball this week, why don't you? I'm ready, let's dive in."
"Are you familiar with the game Cutthroat?"
Dr. Meyer nodded and started jotting notes in his spiral. "Billiards - pool, right? That Cutthroat?"
"Right. I was playing against two guys..."
"Guys you know? People you know?" I shook my head. "Who were these guys then?"
"This is the weird part." I shuffled up in my seat, eager to get this dream out in front of the Doc. "It was obvious there was a lot riding on this game. So much so that we all were playing incredibly defensive pool - playing not to lose, if you will. Shot after shot was executed to simply make the next guy's shot that much harder."
Doc jumped in, "You were guarding something. So were they."
"Yeah, so were they. It went on like this for a little while, and I finally relented and laid my cue down on the table. I gave up, declared a stalemate - which I guess meant I was the loser. So the guys come up to me and grab me by the shoulders..."
"Violently? Or gently, as if they're taking you somewhere?"
"Gently, I guess. One of the guys says, 'You know you're done, right?' I nod and he adds, 'We're going to put things back the way they should be, and there's nothing you can do about it now.'"
Dr. Meyer perked up instantly. "There's nothing you can do about what?"
"Time. They were going to wind time back. The guys locked me in a bathroom, and I took a seat on the toilet and looked out the back window."
Doc was scribbling furiously in his notebook. Without looking up he said, "I'm not sure what the bathroom means, if anything, but what were you looking at out the window?"
"There was a convenience store. Or, rather, a building that used to obviously house a convenience store. The building was boarded up and run down, and weeds were growing all over the property."
"Do you remember what you were thinking while you were looking out the window?"
"Nothing - not yet at least. I'll get to that. But I can remember feeling defeated. Well, defeated, and that when things started to get reset that I'd be wiped away with them."
"Wiped away?"
"Like everything I had ever done in my life was going to be nullified."
Doc paused to let that last sentence sink in. I'm not sure if he wanted that to sink in for me or for him. "So when everything was all said and done at the end of this - reset of time - you'd be operating with a clean slate?"
"No. Like when everything was all said and done at the end of this, I'd cease to exist at all."
Doc was absentmindedly nibbling on the end of his pen. The silence was loaded. "This isn't quite the same thing as when one dreams about their own mortality, is it? You're not falling out of a plane, you're not jumping off a tall building - none of those things that people do purposefully or accidentally when they dream about death. This isn't a fetishization of death in any sort of sense at all. You played a high-stakes game where your existence - not just your life, but the whole of your existence - was on the line."
I nodded. "Everything I am, everything I've done."
"And what's interesting is that you didn't lose, did you?" I hadn't thought of it that way. I didn't lose. I gave up, resigned, called a stalemate when I knew that doing so was an acquiescence to this fate. I sunk a little lower in the chair and shook my head in agreement. No. I didn't lose. "What happened next?"
"I was sitting on the toilet - just sitting, mind you - and was watching the convenience store out the window. That's when time started rolling backwards. Slowly, at first. The weedy overgrowth started to back down, and then signs of life at the store started to appear. The boarded up windows came down, and there was a sign - a clock - that was one of those red digital scrolling message boards on the outside of the building, and all of a sudden it was on and the time and date on the board kept rolling steadily backwards."
Doc nodded. "Do you remember thinking or feeling anything as you saw this store come back to life?"
"'Stop.' That's one thing. I just wanted everything to stop. Then I started to see landmark dates pass by."
"Which dates? What did they signify?"
"It started as I began to recognize the significant dates. The date of my divorce. The day I left my ex-wife. The day I married her. They kept rolling past me and I just wanted time to stop, just for a minute."
"Why?"
"My first impulse was so that I could fix things. Make things right, or at least more right than they had turned out. But I was locked in the bathroom, sitting on that toilet, completely defeated and unable to do anything. I wanted so badly to get out there and fix things."
"What would you have done to fix them?"
"See, I don't know. It's a different question than if you were to ask me 'What would I do if I had the chance to go back in time to those days?' In the dream, there's a different context."
Dr. Meyer obviously agreed. "I'm glad you understand that. Sometimes what we're thinking and feeling inside of a dream can be taken at face value, sometimes it's thick with subtext, and sometimes there's no sense in trying to break the code at all. What do you think 'fixing these things' meant in the dream?"
"I thought it was a dream about regret, but I'm not so sure anymore. See, the milestones I mentioned already are the most recent ones. Over the last seven or eight years, they're the ones that have most impacted me. But then I started to notice more dates rolling by on that digital board, but they weren't exactly milestones. The last time I was fired from a job... the other time that happened... the day I wrecked my car..."
Dr. Meyer interrupted, "All mistakes? Every one of these dates you noticed in your dream. They're all mistakes." He let that marinate for a moment. "What were you thinking as time continued to roll back?"
"That I was completely powerless to stop the ride, get off, and do anything about anything." I looked over and saw Doc rocking slowly back and forth in his chair, which was what he did when he was waiting for me to fill in the rest of the blank. "I guess this dream wasn't about regret, was it?"
Dr. Meyer set his pen and pad down to the side and leaned forward into the conversation. "We've established this isn't a dream about death, and this isn't a dream about regret. Why is it you chose to only mark mistakes as signposts through your past? Why is there no mention of the day you lost your virginity? Or the days you come back from the track having doubled or tripled your stake? Why aren't you recognizing a first date, a first kiss, first time you tasted success on the job, first time you had five figures in the bank? Why is it you focus so pointedly on mistakes?" I shrugged and shook my head. "Something one of your Cutthroat opponents said to you..." He leafed back a couple pages in his spiral. "'We're going to put things back the way they should be.' What do you suppose you mean by that?"
I huffed and threw away, "That I'm a colossal fuck-up and everything is my fault?"
"Get serious, would you Langston?" Dr. Meyer hated it when I did this. In this room is the only place I felt comfortable getting personal, but sometimes the walls would come up, even in here. "Why do you think things needed to be reset?"
"I don't know Doc, I don't know... I am confused though. Why, if I was so resigned to defeat in this case was I even willing to fight to keep these guys from turning back time to begin with?"
Dr. Meyer began, "You were playing defensive pool, right?" I nodded. "Then you just laid down your cue and gave up, correct?" Again, I agreed. "That's hardly a fight. That's really more of a situation where you're looking to preserve the status quo - a stalemate is essentially a conflict that ends in status quo, isn't it..."
I hated it when the Doc was right.
"You've got a tenuous relationship with your own past. 'The way things should be' is a myth. The past exists as it is, or rather, as it was. And you have a curious way of resigning yourself to the past without accepting it." We sat there in silence for thirty seconds, a minute, while Dr. Meyer let his statement wash through my head. "Answer me out loud this time, first thing that comes into your head. Why is your life's story told through mistakes and failures?"
I took a single beat and answered, "I'm never going to be as successful as my mom, am I?"
Doc grinned and asked me the only question that had survived each and every one of our sessions over the past five years, "So how is that manuscript coming along Langston?"
BG is a writer from Western Michigan.
February 13, 2005
Super Bowl
By BG © 2005
So Super Bowl Weekend is coming up, and since my Lions have never made the big game, I don’t have many memories at all that center around the big day.
Except one.
A few years ago, before the ex and I were married, we went out to her uncle’s ritzy apartment building where they always threw a lavishly catered private party in the residents-and-guests only bar. Not only did I end up winning something like $200 on my squares, but the ex got hammered, twisted her ankle badly, threw a whole bunch of Vicodin on top of the Jack Daniels, and then basically goaded me into this bizarre role playing scenario when we got home. Had we videotaped it, the only shop that would have carried the footage would have been the one Nic Cage visited in 8MM. She was so drunk/high off of the booze and meds that I would bet she wouldn’t and couldn’t possibly remember how weird she asked me to get. I actually feel just a little bit dirty just thinking about it. I think I was about half a step away from putting on a codpiece, a bowler hat, and calling a few of my droogs over to help me out.
You know I only bring that up because I’m fairly certain she stops by here periodically. She’s knocked up again (which is more fun to say about your ex-wife than “she’s pregnant with her third child from her husband of a few years”), so if she reads the above, I’m sure she’ll be annoyed or wistful. I’m not sure which. It’s not like sleeping with me has ever left anyone feeling “wistful” in the end, so I’m going to figure on the former.
“Annoyed,” yes.
“Bored,” sure.
“Unfulfilled,” absolutely.
“Wistful?” Probably not.
By the way, ex-wife of mine, please do stay out of the comments widget. “Plausible deniability” is what I’m able to use to put the blinders on and pretend like you’re not actually stopping by. I’m really not that dumb though.
I only play dumb on TV.
BG is a writer from a small hamlet in Western Michigan. Visit his blog: Random Thoughts and Thoroughbred Selections.
So Super Bowl Weekend is coming up, and since my Lions have never made the big game, I don’t have many memories at all that center around the big day.
Except one.
A few years ago, before the ex and I were married, we went out to her uncle’s ritzy apartment building where they always threw a lavishly catered private party in the residents-and-guests only bar. Not only did I end up winning something like $200 on my squares, but the ex got hammered, twisted her ankle badly, threw a whole bunch of Vicodin on top of the Jack Daniels, and then basically goaded me into this bizarre role playing scenario when we got home. Had we videotaped it, the only shop that would have carried the footage would have been the one Nic Cage visited in 8MM. She was so drunk/high off of the booze and meds that I would bet she wouldn’t and couldn’t possibly remember how weird she asked me to get. I actually feel just a little bit dirty just thinking about it. I think I was about half a step away from putting on a codpiece, a bowler hat, and calling a few of my droogs over to help me out.
You know I only bring that up because I’m fairly certain she stops by here periodically. She’s knocked up again (which is more fun to say about your ex-wife than “she’s pregnant with her third child from her husband of a few years”), so if she reads the above, I’m sure she’ll be annoyed or wistful. I’m not sure which. It’s not like sleeping with me has ever left anyone feeling “wistful” in the end, so I’m going to figure on the former.
“Annoyed,” yes.
“Bored,” sure.
“Unfulfilled,” absolutely.
“Wistful?” Probably not.
By the way, ex-wife of mine, please do stay out of the comments widget. “Plausible deniability” is what I’m able to use to put the blinders on and pretend like you’re not actually stopping by. I’m really not that dumb though.
I only play dumb on TV.
BG is a writer from a small hamlet in Western Michigan. Visit his blog: Random Thoughts and Thoroughbred Selections.
January 21, 2005
6-3-8
By BG © 2004
I walk with an uncertainty, except at the track, where the templates of coiled tension in gait are personified in the jocks – little men to be certain, but sinewy and aggressive in their stance, in their stride, carrying a bravado that is often as much machismo as it is the understanding that on every day and on every mount they ride straddling the bounds of daring and mortality to urge these behemoth beasts from which they might easily be thrown into a plaster cast, maybe traction, even a casket.
I watch the jocks all cool and Napoleon and self-assured and corporeally aware and carry myself with that same swaggered precision into my place in the arena - mano y mano and mano y beast-o and beast-o y beast-o on parade in trot and cantor down the center of the circumference of the dirt oval with the colorful and silky costumed pilots of these significant machines a competition of Mardi Gras colors and jackpot numbers from exotic best estimations spinning through my eyes.
It all happens and it happens in my mind first, with ten in a row behind steel bars that spring open and turn these creatures loose with jock and tack held fast but chestnut brown and muddled grey and black with white socks faster and faster out of the chute eating up lengths and fractions – and the Three and the Five are there first, passing the quarter pole, the Eight and the Six inhaling the dirt thrown from their hooves in close pursuit – and I manage a cockeyed grin because I know the crowd is in favor of the One, a beautiful and contentious gelded roan, but I can see the One breaking sharply and laboring significantly running through the soft patch trench at the rail, finding no room to move and each stride laboriously difficult in comparison to my Three, my Five, my Six, my Eight...
...The One is not the One, not here, not today.
The Three can hold steady and stride true, but my Five cannot as he pushes through the backstretch and holds his lead to that final turn but will – must – give way to those in close quarters and around the turn into the stretch it will be the Six and it will be the Eight who will close with furious fractions on the Three and Dominguez will glance under his arm atop that Three and go to his whip, insisting the brindle grey give him everything he has left in that last half furlong, but Gutierrez will have the Six at top speed in top form about three wide from the soft ground at the rail and will have enough to close on Dominguez and the grey with Cabrera and the Eight just good enough to outlast the rest for the show.
My old man used to say that running the race on the reel to reel in his head to divine the winning combination was as “complex as calculus computations with a Cracker-Jack code key” and I know he wasn’t kidding when he tried in all his efforts to partner our long afternoons in my youth at the track, digesting every last piece of arcane and useless and useful data in the form and watching these regally bred thoroughbreds pick each other off time and time again around this oval, with the one single wish I’m sure he had but never was able to adequately articulate to his son whose eyes gleamed with fascination at nine, ten, and thirty years old at the shiny strong horses and the rolling numbers on the tote board – “Son, don’t grow up to be a horseplayer.”
It couldn’t be helped.
I walk through those doors with my racing form tucked neatly under my left arm, glyphed heavily with the notations made this morning, all computations and calculations necessary to prove pace and power true and unlock the solution to each of the eleven conundrums circling the oval today – and I’m one, and there’s two, three, five dozen of us that know the faces of our brethren, but work in solitude with our systems on speed, on pace, on class, on time, or on best guesstimation lucky names, numbers, and hot jocks to isolate the winner, find the overlays and the best plays and toss together the exotic bets and the pick threes, fives, and sixes to take our shots at glory, cash and pride.
Never, ever, in that order.
I play for pride and then cash but never glory, because the old man would have wanted it that way and whatever I’m doing here it’s because of him and his singular love of the game – but don’t confuse the game with the sport, because the sport is the effort of the beast to circle the track and the effort of the jock to make sure he arrives home ahead of the others, but the game is in the numbers and the divination, and the game is played in the heads and from the wallets of the five dozen of the regulars sitting with binoculars and forms and file folders full of past performance data, digging through the arcane, the useless, and the useful to adapt a number – pace rating, Beyer figure, percent in the money – to whatever system is in play in their head today.
Make no mistake, this is war – a war in logical proportions between men and women behind their racing form, scribbling madly or watching intently or casually sipping coffee from a foam cup as they await the call to post, each of whom has already run the reel to reel in their head, unfolding the fractions in stop-motion daydream imagery, most too clouded by desire and greed to allow the images to take absolute shape and focus.
I’m smarter than all of you is the satisfaction I have as I lay the bets, taking every single combination of my Six-Three-Eight certainty I can muster, blinking back the image of the Three trying to hold off the favored Gutierrez on the Six in the final strides and the satisfied grin I’ll be wearing when I watch my Six-Three-Eight prediction perform precisely to the form, the speed, the post, and the pace I dissected hours ago.
The shooter holds the dice in slick and sweaty fingers when he needs to make his point while the blackjack player waits with an adrenaline fueled nervousness for what the dealer might toss his way when he doubles on an eleven – but the moments before they open the gates treat a true horseplayer differently than a true gambler, for they are the last moments of perfection that I can expect before the gates swing free and ten tons of brute finesse try to find daylight at forty miles an hour, they are absolutely the last moments where everything makes sense, and where the solution to the conundrum I’ve worked mightily to solve has a reasonable solution, which is – in some combination – Six-Three-Eight.
Six-Three-Eight. Dreams won’t be fulfilled with Six-Three-Eight, and Six-Three-Eight won’t bring glory to my name, but if and for the wake of Six-Three-Eight crossing the line, I can walk with the little Napoleons and carry their bravado to the window, cashing in the big bills to the envy of two, three, five dozen of my brethren who insisted on following the One that was not meant to be the One today down into the mire on the rail and chasing the dream off the wrong reel to reel, because with Six-Three-Eight I play for the pride of being the one to solve the riddle and know these creatures better than they know themselves.
My old man, against his better judgment, sired himself a horseplayer. And I’d like to think he’d be proud.
BG is a writer from a small hamlet in Western Michigan.
I walk with an uncertainty, except at the track, where the templates of coiled tension in gait are personified in the jocks – little men to be certain, but sinewy and aggressive in their stance, in their stride, carrying a bravado that is often as much machismo as it is the understanding that on every day and on every mount they ride straddling the bounds of daring and mortality to urge these behemoth beasts from which they might easily be thrown into a plaster cast, maybe traction, even a casket.
I watch the jocks all cool and Napoleon and self-assured and corporeally aware and carry myself with that same swaggered precision into my place in the arena - mano y mano and mano y beast-o and beast-o y beast-o on parade in trot and cantor down the center of the circumference of the dirt oval with the colorful and silky costumed pilots of these significant machines a competition of Mardi Gras colors and jackpot numbers from exotic best estimations spinning through my eyes.
It all happens and it happens in my mind first, with ten in a row behind steel bars that spring open and turn these creatures loose with jock and tack held fast but chestnut brown and muddled grey and black with white socks faster and faster out of the chute eating up lengths and fractions – and the Three and the Five are there first, passing the quarter pole, the Eight and the Six inhaling the dirt thrown from their hooves in close pursuit – and I manage a cockeyed grin because I know the crowd is in favor of the One, a beautiful and contentious gelded roan, but I can see the One breaking sharply and laboring significantly running through the soft patch trench at the rail, finding no room to move and each stride laboriously difficult in comparison to my Three, my Five, my Six, my Eight...
...The One is not the One, not here, not today.
The Three can hold steady and stride true, but my Five cannot as he pushes through the backstretch and holds his lead to that final turn but will – must – give way to those in close quarters and around the turn into the stretch it will be the Six and it will be the Eight who will close with furious fractions on the Three and Dominguez will glance under his arm atop that Three and go to his whip, insisting the brindle grey give him everything he has left in that last half furlong, but Gutierrez will have the Six at top speed in top form about three wide from the soft ground at the rail and will have enough to close on Dominguez and the grey with Cabrera and the Eight just good enough to outlast the rest for the show.
My old man used to say that running the race on the reel to reel in his head to divine the winning combination was as “complex as calculus computations with a Cracker-Jack code key” and I know he wasn’t kidding when he tried in all his efforts to partner our long afternoons in my youth at the track, digesting every last piece of arcane and useless and useful data in the form and watching these regally bred thoroughbreds pick each other off time and time again around this oval, with the one single wish I’m sure he had but never was able to adequately articulate to his son whose eyes gleamed with fascination at nine, ten, and thirty years old at the shiny strong horses and the rolling numbers on the tote board – “Son, don’t grow up to be a horseplayer.”
It couldn’t be helped.
I walk through those doors with my racing form tucked neatly under my left arm, glyphed heavily with the notations made this morning, all computations and calculations necessary to prove pace and power true and unlock the solution to each of the eleven conundrums circling the oval today – and I’m one, and there’s two, three, five dozen of us that know the faces of our brethren, but work in solitude with our systems on speed, on pace, on class, on time, or on best guesstimation lucky names, numbers, and hot jocks to isolate the winner, find the overlays and the best plays and toss together the exotic bets and the pick threes, fives, and sixes to take our shots at glory, cash and pride.
Never, ever, in that order.
I play for pride and then cash but never glory, because the old man would have wanted it that way and whatever I’m doing here it’s because of him and his singular love of the game – but don’t confuse the game with the sport, because the sport is the effort of the beast to circle the track and the effort of the jock to make sure he arrives home ahead of the others, but the game is in the numbers and the divination, and the game is played in the heads and from the wallets of the five dozen of the regulars sitting with binoculars and forms and file folders full of past performance data, digging through the arcane, the useless, and the useful to adapt a number – pace rating, Beyer figure, percent in the money – to whatever system is in play in their head today.
Make no mistake, this is war – a war in logical proportions between men and women behind their racing form, scribbling madly or watching intently or casually sipping coffee from a foam cup as they await the call to post, each of whom has already run the reel to reel in their head, unfolding the fractions in stop-motion daydream imagery, most too clouded by desire and greed to allow the images to take absolute shape and focus.
I’m smarter than all of you is the satisfaction I have as I lay the bets, taking every single combination of my Six-Three-Eight certainty I can muster, blinking back the image of the Three trying to hold off the favored Gutierrez on the Six in the final strides and the satisfied grin I’ll be wearing when I watch my Six-Three-Eight prediction perform precisely to the form, the speed, the post, and the pace I dissected hours ago.
The shooter holds the dice in slick and sweaty fingers when he needs to make his point while the blackjack player waits with an adrenaline fueled nervousness for what the dealer might toss his way when he doubles on an eleven – but the moments before they open the gates treat a true horseplayer differently than a true gambler, for they are the last moments of perfection that I can expect before the gates swing free and ten tons of brute finesse try to find daylight at forty miles an hour, they are absolutely the last moments where everything makes sense, and where the solution to the conundrum I’ve worked mightily to solve has a reasonable solution, which is – in some combination – Six-Three-Eight.
Six-Three-Eight. Dreams won’t be fulfilled with Six-Three-Eight, and Six-Three-Eight won’t bring glory to my name, but if and for the wake of Six-Three-Eight crossing the line, I can walk with the little Napoleons and carry their bravado to the window, cashing in the big bills to the envy of two, three, five dozen of my brethren who insisted on following the One that was not meant to be the One today down into the mire on the rail and chasing the dream off the wrong reel to reel, because with Six-Three-Eight I play for the pride of being the one to solve the riddle and know these creatures better than they know themselves.
My old man, against his better judgment, sired himself a horseplayer. And I’d like to think he’d be proud.
BG is a writer from a small hamlet in Western Michigan.
December 27, 2004
Strippers, Lesbians, and Fanny Packs
By BG © 2004
1125 PM, Saturday
Do "dancers" smell like whores, or do whores smell like "dancers?" Either way, it takes a lot of mid-priced perfume to cover skank adequately.
I was downtown with my friends from Arizona, Jen and Steve, and another couple from Arizona (let's call them "Dave" and "Dave's wife") along for the ride, and somehow the neon schmaltz of Glitter Gulch was irresistable. To the women. Neither Jen nor Dave's wife had ever been in a strip club before, and they were intrigued. Part curiosity and certainly part "No Cover Charge" advertised outside. Me? Not as intrigued. There are somewhere between eleven and umpteen places to see naked women in Las Vegas, and the girls are gravitating towards the joint across from the place that's served upwards of thirty million discount shrimp cocktails.
I'm not sure if anyone's made the connection between bad strippers and underpriced seafood before, but here we are.
Far be it from me to suggest "gambling" or "gaming" as an option to the girls that were probably more "Rhino" than "Spearmint." These girls were probably gyrating uncomfortably behind chicken wire and ruing that they had skipped "Pole Trick Day" at stripper college and were forced to take what was left when the job placement people were handing out assignments. At least that's how I imagined it. Dave and Dave's wife preceded Jen, Steve, and me into the club, and were effectively lost within seconds. Jen and I made it to a table, where a waitress immediately took a drink order, and told us there was a two drink minimum, and that it'd be $35 for the two of us.
Uh, no thanks. Free boobs? Sure. $9 beers? Not a chance.
Jen followed me out of there, where Steve was still outside the front doors, watching some Galaga-themed show going on overhead. Some "experience" this Fremont Street was. Can I just play blackjack now? Jen, Steve, and I decided that we'd split up for a bit. Jen would join the Daves in the club, and Steve and I would go tackle the $5 blackjack table inside the Las Vegas Club casino next door. Neither of us had seen a dancer yet, but Jen was hoping they weren't going to be "as skanky as that waitress" we had seen. I advised her that only the dancers would be skanky. The waitresses were more likely to be skeevy. Whatever. I figured blackjack was more my speed for awhile.
Bad move. Instead of two $9 beers inside a cut-rate strip club, I was the one left feeling naked and exposed after about 45 minutes at the tables. The Twin Thai Dealers Joy and Fran were tag teaming dealing duties at our table, and were throwing the high heat. It was surreal. It's not as if I have a long history with blackjack, but I've never in my life seen a dealer throw nothing but fourteens, fifteens, and sixteens to everyone around the table on consecutive hands, turning easy twenties both times herself.
It was like this all night, and by "all night" I mean "consistently for the next forty-five minutes." I tried to combat the dealer luck by moving to two spots and increasing my bets to $10 per. No dice. I'd get an eleven, double, land a four, and be out $20. My doubling didn't work, splitting "by the book" didn't work, nothing worked. Joy and Fran just fucking kicked our asses. Down by $200 in three quarters of an hour, and I'd had enough.
By this point, Jen had arrived fresh from the Gulch, and was parked at a roulette table waiting for us to finish destroying my bank account and little Ivan's college fund. We dragged her out of there and across the street to the Golden Gate to try to make our money back from Downtown by eating some discount cafe food. Dave and Dave's wife showed up, and we managed to make it to the table without Joy or Fran taking my cab fare back to the Excalibur from me at gunpoint.
"How was the club?" Steve was interested to hear his wife's story. I think his brother, the same guy who at 32 was making out shamelessly with a seventeen year old girl at our party sophomore year of college, had taken him to enough strip clubs in his time that they weren't exactly "special" to him anymore.
"It was fun. We were sitting next to the nicest lesbians."
Ahh... lesbians have always loved Jen. She's this big, curvy, beautiful girl that has an unbelievable magnetism about her. She gets along with everybody, and even when she's having a little fun at your expense, you almost feel good that it's coming from her. Steve's a lucky guy.
"You know what I hate about lesbians?" I'm not sure, but losing $200 as quickly as I did may not have made this sound as sarcastic as maybe I wanted it to. "I hate how they're always making out and playing with each other's breasts. You know what else I hate? Those women-in-prison movies on Cinemax. I hate those."
Dave and Dave's wife exchanged a quick look of puzzlement. Steve jumped in on it too. "I just hate the mullets and the flannel. I can do without that."
Unfortunately, just at that moment, a couple of women - one semi-mulleted in a plaid shirt - were seated in the booth behind. Dave's wife had a look of horror on her face for a second, as if I was going to somehow not notice the brutish swagger on the hair helmeted woman seated nearby.
Vegas might be the best place on Earth to press your luck, but I know better than to pick a fight with a lesbian that can kick my ass. God knows what she was carrying in that fanny pack.
BG is a writer from a small hamlet in Western Michigan.
1125 PM, Saturday
Do "dancers" smell like whores, or do whores smell like "dancers?" Either way, it takes a lot of mid-priced perfume to cover skank adequately.
I was downtown with my friends from Arizona, Jen and Steve, and another couple from Arizona (let's call them "Dave" and "Dave's wife") along for the ride, and somehow the neon schmaltz of Glitter Gulch was irresistable. To the women. Neither Jen nor Dave's wife had ever been in a strip club before, and they were intrigued. Part curiosity and certainly part "No Cover Charge" advertised outside. Me? Not as intrigued. There are somewhere between eleven and umpteen places to see naked women in Las Vegas, and the girls are gravitating towards the joint across from the place that's served upwards of thirty million discount shrimp cocktails.
I'm not sure if anyone's made the connection between bad strippers and underpriced seafood before, but here we are.
Far be it from me to suggest "gambling" or "gaming" as an option to the girls that were probably more "Rhino" than "Spearmint." These girls were probably gyrating uncomfortably behind chicken wire and ruing that they had skipped "Pole Trick Day" at stripper college and were forced to take what was left when the job placement people were handing out assignments. At least that's how I imagined it. Dave and Dave's wife preceded Jen, Steve, and me into the club, and were effectively lost within seconds. Jen and I made it to a table, where a waitress immediately took a drink order, and told us there was a two drink minimum, and that it'd be $35 for the two of us.
Uh, no thanks. Free boobs? Sure. $9 beers? Not a chance.
Jen followed me out of there, where Steve was still outside the front doors, watching some Galaga-themed show going on overhead. Some "experience" this Fremont Street was. Can I just play blackjack now? Jen, Steve, and I decided that we'd split up for a bit. Jen would join the Daves in the club, and Steve and I would go tackle the $5 blackjack table inside the Las Vegas Club casino next door. Neither of us had seen a dancer yet, but Jen was hoping they weren't going to be "as skanky as that waitress" we had seen. I advised her that only the dancers would be skanky. The waitresses were more likely to be skeevy. Whatever. I figured blackjack was more my speed for awhile.
Bad move. Instead of two $9 beers inside a cut-rate strip club, I was the one left feeling naked and exposed after about 45 minutes at the tables. The Twin Thai Dealers Joy and Fran were tag teaming dealing duties at our table, and were throwing the high heat. It was surreal. It's not as if I have a long history with blackjack, but I've never in my life seen a dealer throw nothing but fourteens, fifteens, and sixteens to everyone around the table on consecutive hands, turning easy twenties both times herself.
It was like this all night, and by "all night" I mean "consistently for the next forty-five minutes." I tried to combat the dealer luck by moving to two spots and increasing my bets to $10 per. No dice. I'd get an eleven, double, land a four, and be out $20. My doubling didn't work, splitting "by the book" didn't work, nothing worked. Joy and Fran just fucking kicked our asses. Down by $200 in three quarters of an hour, and I'd had enough.
By this point, Jen had arrived fresh from the Gulch, and was parked at a roulette table waiting for us to finish destroying my bank account and little Ivan's college fund. We dragged her out of there and across the street to the Golden Gate to try to make our money back from Downtown by eating some discount cafe food. Dave and Dave's wife showed up, and we managed to make it to the table without Joy or Fran taking my cab fare back to the Excalibur from me at gunpoint.
"How was the club?" Steve was interested to hear his wife's story. I think his brother, the same guy who at 32 was making out shamelessly with a seventeen year old girl at our party sophomore year of college, had taken him to enough strip clubs in his time that they weren't exactly "special" to him anymore.
"It was fun. We were sitting next to the nicest lesbians."
Ahh... lesbians have always loved Jen. She's this big, curvy, beautiful girl that has an unbelievable magnetism about her. She gets along with everybody, and even when she's having a little fun at your expense, you almost feel good that it's coming from her. Steve's a lucky guy.
"You know what I hate about lesbians?" I'm not sure, but losing $200 as quickly as I did may not have made this sound as sarcastic as maybe I wanted it to. "I hate how they're always making out and playing with each other's breasts. You know what else I hate? Those women-in-prison movies on Cinemax. I hate those."
Dave and Dave's wife exchanged a quick look of puzzlement. Steve jumped in on it too. "I just hate the mullets and the flannel. I can do without that."
Unfortunately, just at that moment, a couple of women - one semi-mulleted in a plaid shirt - were seated in the booth behind. Dave's wife had a look of horror on her face for a second, as if I was going to somehow not notice the brutish swagger on the hair helmeted woman seated nearby.
Vegas might be the best place on Earth to press your luck, but I know better than to pick a fight with a lesbian that can kick my ass. God knows what she was carrying in that fanny pack.
BG is a writer from a small hamlet in Western Michigan.
October 15, 2004
Hurricane
By BG © 2004
I don’t know why they do it. Floridians, that is. I don’t know why they insist on living right in the paths of turbulent and destructive storms that cruise through and demolish everything in their wakes.
It just seems so easy to move to San Diego or Reno or Duluth, or just anywhere that can’t be touched by the angry winds and torrid rains of these hurricanes.
It just seems so easy.
“Easy,” somehow, is never the easy answer.
I’ve never lived in Florida, and would never want to. But I did survive Hurricane Jeanne. Barely, by the skin of my teeth, with the clothes on my back, with nothing left to show but what was left of my sanity and bank accounts on the tail end. Her winds were punishing, her downpour relentless.
And I’m here to tell you that the worst part of it all is when you’re right in the eye.
It’s a ridiculously powerless feeling to have known the rage, having fought through the initial push of the storm, and to all of a sudden be in an eerily calm period of sedentary serenity. You can still sense the uproar and turmoil all around, threatening to crush you from any side, but she’s quiet, cool, collected. Waiting for you to blink.
The screaming and wailing stops in the eye, but so do the whispers and insinuations. It’s the prolonged uncomfortable silence where she just waits for you to catch your breath before thrashing you mercilessly with everything she has left.
The calm, in and of itself, is its own form of attack. As any boxer can tell you, dealing with fury is the easy part. Put your guard up, don’t let go until she’s too tired to swing anymore. You’ll end up bruised, beaten, and bloodied, but still standing, still consciously aware of the fight that’s yet to come. When she withdraws however, you catch yourself looking over your shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop, preoccupied by the thought that there is another battle left in you, in her, and it could come at any time.
But when?
In the eye of the hurricane, it’s every man for himself. Rationale is useless against primal rage and I had few options against this storm that was either surging into her purpose and resolution, or menacing herself free of anything that could possibly have been holding her back. This is what keeps you looking back, keeping watch on the horizon behind. If she had just given a hint, a small clue of her intentions, I would have been much more able to prepare myself for the onslaught.
This is the unpredictability of nature at work. At her core, Jeanne’s uncertain course is what defined her. What initially looked like a narrow escape, a thankful pass off the wide side, instead turned directly into everything I had, everything I with which had been secure and comfortable. She decided, somewhere mid-course, to choose the path of chaos and destruction rather than to let a hard rain be a simple hard rain. And I was completely unprepared.
In retrospect, I can remember seeing the flags offshore, red flags with that ominous black square, but I continued happily unaware. Even when the rains started, and the wind moved from breezy to unstoppable, I always felt like things would calm down, that the sunshine would return, and that life could be shifted back to blissful normalcy.
It wasn’t until halfway through her first push that I started to get confused.
I was out of my element. Darkness descends quickly when the clouds are spinning and collapsing into themselves, and I was driven into retreat by the powerful bedlam crashing and gusting in every corner of my world. It’s not difficult to find a place to hide from the storm’s obvious fury, but the windows in my bedroom still rattled, and I lived in constant fear that the roof might at any time collapse under the sheer strain of her unrelenting power.
That’s how she raged, with absolute will and power. And it was in that first night, under the covers, crying uncertain tears, that I lost my power.
I closed my eyes, pulled the covers over my head, and pinched what remaining tears I hadn’t spent in the hours before out of the corners of my clenched eyes. It was dark, and I was in darkness, and there was no one by my side to reassure me that the lights would someday come back on.
The storm heaved and seized, gusting through with enough clout to topple oaks and uproot entire lives. And I lay in my room, quietly, eyes safely shut, waiting to hear something, nothing, anything other than the madness of the storm’s swath.
April 2001:
”Let’s go get tattoos.”
She was serious. There was barely a hint of a smile on her face as we drove through Saturday afternoon traffic, and I could tell she wasn’t remotely close to kidding.
“You know how I feel about needles,” I said, “I’m not getting anywhere near one of those joints.”
“But you can get my name tattooed on you, and I can get your name inside my other tattoo. I’ve been saving that space for you.” She was eager, and imploring me to reconsider.
“No. Nuh-uh. Needles freak me out, he’ll poke me once, I’ll run out of there screaming, and we’ll be out $200.”
“Why? Is it because I asked you to get my name tattooed? Is it me?” Was she panicking? I wasn’t close to being able to understand what was going on in this instant. It was as if I flipped a switch in her somewhere. Deep in her eyes, there was this inexplicable fear, or maybe it was just uncertainty. Either way, I was confused.
“I can’t... I mean I won’t do it,” I was treading lightly, I knew I was in a delicate situation, but why? “I just can’t stand the thought of being poked with a needle. You know I’m a wimp. I don’t like tattoos anyway. We could go to dinner instead...”
Instantly, she became at once furious and deeply wounded. “You NEVER want to do anything fun. You’re so fucking lame. All I want is to go get fucking tattoos, and I want to do it to show you I LOVE YOU. And you can’t even return the goddamn favor.”
She was huffing back what threatened to be more serious tears, and was staring straight out in front of the car, desperately trying to appear less hurt than she obviously was.
I drove another couple of blocks, completely bewildered at the range of emotions I had witnessed over the last three minutes. Where was this coming from?
“This isn’t about tattoos, is it?” I was trying to throw her an olive branch, trying desperately to understand what it was she was really talking about.
“It’s ABOUT the tattoos, and it’s ABOUT every other fucking thing too.” The tears were raining heavily, but still were unable to flood the spite and anger from her eyes. “It’s about you being NO FUCKING FUN anymore. Remember when you were fun? When we were fun? Well, I don’t anymore. You’re an old man Tony, an old man.”
We drove in silence for a few more moments, the tension heavy as she debated whether to play her final card.
“I don’t even fucking know why I’m still with you.”
And then the eye, calm. Dead, silent, calm. It’s as if she’s looking at you, but right through you, concentrating intently on anything but you. By this point, you’re past the point of action, well beyond any feasible solution. But still, you try to make sense of the storm. Try to understand how to ride her crest, well out in front of whatever doom she’s threatening to lay down in her next go-round. Try to divine how to buttress what was left of what might have been before irrational disaster crushes everything that remains.
Try to figure out how to get out, flee.
It’s useless. I cursed the storm, threatened the elements that had brought her into my life. I gave offerings, penance to the driving forces, trying to even her keel.
I took the extended silence she offered as hope, and began to believe she wouldn’t rage in my world again.
But all the while, I was looking over my shoulder at the horizon behind. Storm clouds were looming again, and this time I understood that promises in the light mean nothing against purpose under a veil of clouds.
August 2001:
“He’s coming. I didn’t ask him to, I swear to god.”
In the past two months, I had finally figured out what the late nights on the computer, and the refusal to come to bed at a decent hour meant. It meant that she was on the phone, or chatting over the PC with Mick.
I didn’t actually catch on fully until I put a piece of software on the computer that tracked her keystrokes. I saw a one-sided conversation between my wife and some English guy named Mick on the Instant Messenger, and I was stunned to see phrases like, “I love you,” “You’re who I’ve been waiting my whole life for,” and “You make me feel whole again.”
My wife. Mine.
I tried every angle I could when confronting her with this infidelity. I played nice, I offered my love and support, I wailed with sadness and screamed in tortured anger.
Nothing.
She wouldn’t blink, and she wouldn’t fight anymore. The girl I spent countless nights telling every secret I had, talking about everything and nothing to ensure I wouldn’t miss a single moment, had almost completely shut me out.
And it’s not as if there was nothing more to say. Each moment we spent silently sharing space was thick with every problem, every issue that remains to this day unspoken.
“He’s coming. I didn’t ask him to, I swear to god.”
“Who’s coming? When?” The first question was almost rhetorical.
“Mick. You know who. He’s flying into Detroit the Thursday before Halloween. I don’t even know if I want to see him.” She couldn’t have played this any better at the time. Very matter-of-fact, extending that ray of hope that I needed in order to not leave her, which was what she needed to gather time to turn her fantasies into realities.
I was tired. During those times, I was always tired. I didn’t have the strength to challenge her advances, so I faced these circumstances with quiet resignation, and always just a little bit of hope. “If you see him, I’m going to leave you.” I’m not even sure I convinced myself.
For the first time in what seemed like months, she seemed to open up and gave me the smile I had fallen in love with in the first place. “Honey, don’t say that. I don’t want to leave you, and I don’t want you to go.”
“Then I need you to cut it off with Mick. I can’t take this anymore.”
“I’ve got a lot I need to figure out, and I’m sorry about that. I asked Mick not to come, but he bought his ticket. I won’t see him if you ask me not to.” She seemed sincere, and every instinct I had told me to take the deal.
“OK, I’m asking you. Don’t see him.”
She didn’t come home the Thursday before Halloween.
Or the Friday.
She spurned every advance, every peaceful hand I tried to extend. She brought the darkness back swiftly, and drove me back behind the walls, into the blackened house, under the covers. She pounded on the doors and windows, threatened to lift the roof off and throw me out homeless into her fury. I stayed silent now, as a man who shouts into the wind is unlikely to recognize his own voice in return.
I let her punch and rumble and shake my foundation with constant pressure. It was in this darkness that I knew I could rely on no one but myself. She was going to pound every inch of my life flat if given the opportunity, but she would also blow over at some point. And it was in the genesis of that thought that I knew I could no longer live in her wake. Trapped, as it were, alone in my house, powerless, unable to bring myself to shed a single tear further, I relented.
December 2001:
“I need some time, a break... I bought the ticket today.”
She had told me she wanted to get away. At first, it was a weekend, then a “week or two,” and eventually it bubbled over into “a few weeks.”
I didn’t want her to go, but if she was going to leave, I only had one condition. Anywhere but England.
“You bought the ticket with what money exactly?” With rent and two ridiculously big car payments, we were already well behind in bills.
“I have some money due from some of my contacts.” Self-employed, I didn’t have a grasp on how little or how much. “I bought it with my business account.”
“So you bought the ticket to where? Tell me you’re going to Denver. California. Where are you going?”
“England. I’m leaving two days before Christmas, and I’ll be back in mid-February.” She paused to let that sink in. “I really want you to be here when I get back. I want to make this work.”
“If you want to make this work, don’t go to England. You can go anywhere else you want. You’ve got friends all over. Why does it have to be England?”
“I have to see... I just have to see.” She got that wistful, faraway look in her eyes, as if she was already nibbling a scone sitting on the banks of the Thames in her mind.
“Fuck you and your ‘have to see.’ If you want me here when you get back, you’re not getting on a plane to England.” After nearly eight months of living outside the center of my wife’s world, I had one simple request. Take a break if you need to, but don’t expect me to stick around if you are factoring Mick into the equation.
“Don’t you care at all about me?” Her voice was starting to rise, trying to make the emotional plea while keeping her obvious frustration couched behind. “I have to do this FOR ME. Maybe I was too young to get married, maybe we aren’t supposed to be together. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we ARE meant to be with each other forever. I don’t know any other way to find this out than to see what’s in England. I have to go, and you have to understand that.”
I wasn’t understanding.
“You need to let me find this out for myself.”
I was livid. Absolutely fucking livid. For about a month following her disappearance during Mick’s visit, she seemed to be trying. On the surface, she was doing everything I asked of her, or so I thought. I didn’t catch her talking to Mick, and I started to see glimpses of the beautiful and vibrant woman I married instead of the sullen girl that could only find her sunshine outside her spiral of depression.
She had played me for a sucker, planning her next steps in seclusion, giving me almost no time to react and plead my case along the way.
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” I started, with venom lacing each word for full effect, “you get on that plane, I pack my shit and leave. I don’t give a fuck about the rent, about the car payments, anything. If you get on that plane, everything we have here is fucking over. You understand that?”
Tears came quickly for her, and for the first time I think she understood that she was at a point of no return. “Don’t you trust me?” was the only thing she could muster.
I started crying. Lightly at first, still trying to feel more angry than anything, but then was bawling with a purpose. I took her around the waist and pulled her close. “How can I trust you with everything that you’ve done to us, everything you’ve done to me?” I was sobbing, and for the first time I really knew she was leaving.
And for the first time, I think she really knew I was leaving too.
“I’ll call you every day out there, and I won’t do anything to ruin our marriage, I promise.”
Promises, promises.
“I’m not going to take your calls. If you go, you can do whatever you want because you’re not going to find me here when you get back.”
Less than two weeks later, when her father came to take her to the airport she pleaded with me one last time to let her come back to our house, our life, and what love we might still have left together. It wasn’t the last time we would shed tears together, and certainly wasn’t truly our final separation, but that night is marked in my mind as a point of closure, the night I knew with absolute certainty that I had to be the one to leave. I didn’t have an airplane, a European destination, or anyone waiting for me on the other side. I was the one whose future was obscured by clouds, and on whose shoulders the rebuilding would ultimately begin.
I let her go, and never have regretted keeping my final promise to her.
I rode out the storm and watched her carry herself out over the ocean, surveying the damage left behind in her path. As I look over what’s left, my life was not littered with true rubble or visible scars and bruises. Where Hurricane Jeanne took her toll is in my inability to see the light. Because of her, I keep one eye always over my shoulder, looking and squinting into the horizon, doing everything I can to fashion storm clouds out of thin air. She took that away from me. The serene and quiet moments of my life are now shrouded by an irrational fear of impending doom and failure.
October 2004:
She created all of this. Jean.
Despite it all, I really do miss her badly.
BG is a blogger from Michigan whose favorite color is blue, enjoys long walks on the beach, and hopes to use this platform to promote world peace and awareness of nut cancer.
I don’t know why they do it. Floridians, that is. I don’t know why they insist on living right in the paths of turbulent and destructive storms that cruise through and demolish everything in their wakes.
It just seems so easy to move to San Diego or Reno or Duluth, or just anywhere that can’t be touched by the angry winds and torrid rains of these hurricanes.
It just seems so easy.
“Easy,” somehow, is never the easy answer.
I’ve never lived in Florida, and would never want to. But I did survive Hurricane Jeanne. Barely, by the skin of my teeth, with the clothes on my back, with nothing left to show but what was left of my sanity and bank accounts on the tail end. Her winds were punishing, her downpour relentless.
And I’m here to tell you that the worst part of it all is when you’re right in the eye.
It’s a ridiculously powerless feeling to have known the rage, having fought through the initial push of the storm, and to all of a sudden be in an eerily calm period of sedentary serenity. You can still sense the uproar and turmoil all around, threatening to crush you from any side, but she’s quiet, cool, collected. Waiting for you to blink.
The screaming and wailing stops in the eye, but so do the whispers and insinuations. It’s the prolonged uncomfortable silence where she just waits for you to catch your breath before thrashing you mercilessly with everything she has left.
The calm, in and of itself, is its own form of attack. As any boxer can tell you, dealing with fury is the easy part. Put your guard up, don’t let go until she’s too tired to swing anymore. You’ll end up bruised, beaten, and bloodied, but still standing, still consciously aware of the fight that’s yet to come. When she withdraws however, you catch yourself looking over your shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop, preoccupied by the thought that there is another battle left in you, in her, and it could come at any time.
But when?
In the eye of the hurricane, it’s every man for himself. Rationale is useless against primal rage and I had few options against this storm that was either surging into her purpose and resolution, or menacing herself free of anything that could possibly have been holding her back. This is what keeps you looking back, keeping watch on the horizon behind. If she had just given a hint, a small clue of her intentions, I would have been much more able to prepare myself for the onslaught.
This is the unpredictability of nature at work. At her core, Jeanne’s uncertain course is what defined her. What initially looked like a narrow escape, a thankful pass off the wide side, instead turned directly into everything I had, everything I with which had been secure and comfortable. She decided, somewhere mid-course, to choose the path of chaos and destruction rather than to let a hard rain be a simple hard rain. And I was completely unprepared.
In retrospect, I can remember seeing the flags offshore, red flags with that ominous black square, but I continued happily unaware. Even when the rains started, and the wind moved from breezy to unstoppable, I always felt like things would calm down, that the sunshine would return, and that life could be shifted back to blissful normalcy.
It wasn’t until halfway through her first push that I started to get confused.
I was out of my element. Darkness descends quickly when the clouds are spinning and collapsing into themselves, and I was driven into retreat by the powerful bedlam crashing and gusting in every corner of my world. It’s not difficult to find a place to hide from the storm’s obvious fury, but the windows in my bedroom still rattled, and I lived in constant fear that the roof might at any time collapse under the sheer strain of her unrelenting power.
That’s how she raged, with absolute will and power. And it was in that first night, under the covers, crying uncertain tears, that I lost my power.
I closed my eyes, pulled the covers over my head, and pinched what remaining tears I hadn’t spent in the hours before out of the corners of my clenched eyes. It was dark, and I was in darkness, and there was no one by my side to reassure me that the lights would someday come back on.
The storm heaved and seized, gusting through with enough clout to topple oaks and uproot entire lives. And I lay in my room, quietly, eyes safely shut, waiting to hear something, nothing, anything other than the madness of the storm’s swath.
April 2001:
”Let’s go get tattoos.”
She was serious. There was barely a hint of a smile on her face as we drove through Saturday afternoon traffic, and I could tell she wasn’t remotely close to kidding.
“You know how I feel about needles,” I said, “I’m not getting anywhere near one of those joints.”
“But you can get my name tattooed on you, and I can get your name inside my other tattoo. I’ve been saving that space for you.” She was eager, and imploring me to reconsider.
“No. Nuh-uh. Needles freak me out, he’ll poke me once, I’ll run out of there screaming, and we’ll be out $200.”
“Why? Is it because I asked you to get my name tattooed? Is it me?” Was she panicking? I wasn’t close to being able to understand what was going on in this instant. It was as if I flipped a switch in her somewhere. Deep in her eyes, there was this inexplicable fear, or maybe it was just uncertainty. Either way, I was confused.
“I can’t... I mean I won’t do it,” I was treading lightly, I knew I was in a delicate situation, but why? “I just can’t stand the thought of being poked with a needle. You know I’m a wimp. I don’t like tattoos anyway. We could go to dinner instead...”
Instantly, she became at once furious and deeply wounded. “You NEVER want to do anything fun. You’re so fucking lame. All I want is to go get fucking tattoos, and I want to do it to show you I LOVE YOU. And you can’t even return the goddamn favor.”
She was huffing back what threatened to be more serious tears, and was staring straight out in front of the car, desperately trying to appear less hurt than she obviously was.
I drove another couple of blocks, completely bewildered at the range of emotions I had witnessed over the last three minutes. Where was this coming from?
“This isn’t about tattoos, is it?” I was trying to throw her an olive branch, trying desperately to understand what it was she was really talking about.
“It’s ABOUT the tattoos, and it’s ABOUT every other fucking thing too.” The tears were raining heavily, but still were unable to flood the spite and anger from her eyes. “It’s about you being NO FUCKING FUN anymore. Remember when you were fun? When we were fun? Well, I don’t anymore. You’re an old man Tony, an old man.”
We drove in silence for a few more moments, the tension heavy as she debated whether to play her final card.
“I don’t even fucking know why I’m still with you.”
And then the eye, calm. Dead, silent, calm. It’s as if she’s looking at you, but right through you, concentrating intently on anything but you. By this point, you’re past the point of action, well beyond any feasible solution. But still, you try to make sense of the storm. Try to understand how to ride her crest, well out in front of whatever doom she’s threatening to lay down in her next go-round. Try to divine how to buttress what was left of what might have been before irrational disaster crushes everything that remains.
Try to figure out how to get out, flee.
It’s useless. I cursed the storm, threatened the elements that had brought her into my life. I gave offerings, penance to the driving forces, trying to even her keel.
I took the extended silence she offered as hope, and began to believe she wouldn’t rage in my world again.
But all the while, I was looking over my shoulder at the horizon behind. Storm clouds were looming again, and this time I understood that promises in the light mean nothing against purpose under a veil of clouds.
August 2001:
“He’s coming. I didn’t ask him to, I swear to god.”
In the past two months, I had finally figured out what the late nights on the computer, and the refusal to come to bed at a decent hour meant. It meant that she was on the phone, or chatting over the PC with Mick.
I didn’t actually catch on fully until I put a piece of software on the computer that tracked her keystrokes. I saw a one-sided conversation between my wife and some English guy named Mick on the Instant Messenger, and I was stunned to see phrases like, “I love you,” “You’re who I’ve been waiting my whole life for,” and “You make me feel whole again.”
My wife. Mine.
I tried every angle I could when confronting her with this infidelity. I played nice, I offered my love and support, I wailed with sadness and screamed in tortured anger.
Nothing.
She wouldn’t blink, and she wouldn’t fight anymore. The girl I spent countless nights telling every secret I had, talking about everything and nothing to ensure I wouldn’t miss a single moment, had almost completely shut me out.
And it’s not as if there was nothing more to say. Each moment we spent silently sharing space was thick with every problem, every issue that remains to this day unspoken.
“He’s coming. I didn’t ask him to, I swear to god.”
“Who’s coming? When?” The first question was almost rhetorical.
“Mick. You know who. He’s flying into Detroit the Thursday before Halloween. I don’t even know if I want to see him.” She couldn’t have played this any better at the time. Very matter-of-fact, extending that ray of hope that I needed in order to not leave her, which was what she needed to gather time to turn her fantasies into realities.
I was tired. During those times, I was always tired. I didn’t have the strength to challenge her advances, so I faced these circumstances with quiet resignation, and always just a little bit of hope. “If you see him, I’m going to leave you.” I’m not even sure I convinced myself.
For the first time in what seemed like months, she seemed to open up and gave me the smile I had fallen in love with in the first place. “Honey, don’t say that. I don’t want to leave you, and I don’t want you to go.”
“Then I need you to cut it off with Mick. I can’t take this anymore.”
“I’ve got a lot I need to figure out, and I’m sorry about that. I asked Mick not to come, but he bought his ticket. I won’t see him if you ask me not to.” She seemed sincere, and every instinct I had told me to take the deal.
“OK, I’m asking you. Don’t see him.”
She didn’t come home the Thursday before Halloween.
Or the Friday.
She spurned every advance, every peaceful hand I tried to extend. She brought the darkness back swiftly, and drove me back behind the walls, into the blackened house, under the covers. She pounded on the doors and windows, threatened to lift the roof off and throw me out homeless into her fury. I stayed silent now, as a man who shouts into the wind is unlikely to recognize his own voice in return.
I let her punch and rumble and shake my foundation with constant pressure. It was in this darkness that I knew I could rely on no one but myself. She was going to pound every inch of my life flat if given the opportunity, but she would also blow over at some point. And it was in the genesis of that thought that I knew I could no longer live in her wake. Trapped, as it were, alone in my house, powerless, unable to bring myself to shed a single tear further, I relented.
December 2001:
“I need some time, a break... I bought the ticket today.”
She had told me she wanted to get away. At first, it was a weekend, then a “week or two,” and eventually it bubbled over into “a few weeks.”
I didn’t want her to go, but if she was going to leave, I only had one condition. Anywhere but England.
“You bought the ticket with what money exactly?” With rent and two ridiculously big car payments, we were already well behind in bills.
“I have some money due from some of my contacts.” Self-employed, I didn’t have a grasp on how little or how much. “I bought it with my business account.”
“So you bought the ticket to where? Tell me you’re going to Denver. California. Where are you going?”
“England. I’m leaving two days before Christmas, and I’ll be back in mid-February.” She paused to let that sink in. “I really want you to be here when I get back. I want to make this work.”
“If you want to make this work, don’t go to England. You can go anywhere else you want. You’ve got friends all over. Why does it have to be England?”
“I have to see... I just have to see.” She got that wistful, faraway look in her eyes, as if she was already nibbling a scone sitting on the banks of the Thames in her mind.
“Fuck you and your ‘have to see.’ If you want me here when you get back, you’re not getting on a plane to England.” After nearly eight months of living outside the center of my wife’s world, I had one simple request. Take a break if you need to, but don’t expect me to stick around if you are factoring Mick into the equation.
“Don’t you care at all about me?” Her voice was starting to rise, trying to make the emotional plea while keeping her obvious frustration couched behind. “I have to do this FOR ME. Maybe I was too young to get married, maybe we aren’t supposed to be together. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we ARE meant to be with each other forever. I don’t know any other way to find this out than to see what’s in England. I have to go, and you have to understand that.”
I wasn’t understanding.
“You need to let me find this out for myself.”
I was livid. Absolutely fucking livid. For about a month following her disappearance during Mick’s visit, she seemed to be trying. On the surface, she was doing everything I asked of her, or so I thought. I didn’t catch her talking to Mick, and I started to see glimpses of the beautiful and vibrant woman I married instead of the sullen girl that could only find her sunshine outside her spiral of depression.
She had played me for a sucker, planning her next steps in seclusion, giving me almost no time to react and plead my case along the way.
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” I started, with venom lacing each word for full effect, “you get on that plane, I pack my shit and leave. I don’t give a fuck about the rent, about the car payments, anything. If you get on that plane, everything we have here is fucking over. You understand that?”
Tears came quickly for her, and for the first time I think she understood that she was at a point of no return. “Don’t you trust me?” was the only thing she could muster.
I started crying. Lightly at first, still trying to feel more angry than anything, but then was bawling with a purpose. I took her around the waist and pulled her close. “How can I trust you with everything that you’ve done to us, everything you’ve done to me?” I was sobbing, and for the first time I really knew she was leaving.
And for the first time, I think she really knew I was leaving too.
“I’ll call you every day out there, and I won’t do anything to ruin our marriage, I promise.”
Promises, promises.
“I’m not going to take your calls. If you go, you can do whatever you want because you’re not going to find me here when you get back.”
Less than two weeks later, when her father came to take her to the airport she pleaded with me one last time to let her come back to our house, our life, and what love we might still have left together. It wasn’t the last time we would shed tears together, and certainly wasn’t truly our final separation, but that night is marked in my mind as a point of closure, the night I knew with absolute certainty that I had to be the one to leave. I didn’t have an airplane, a European destination, or anyone waiting for me on the other side. I was the one whose future was obscured by clouds, and on whose shoulders the rebuilding would ultimately begin.
I let her go, and never have regretted keeping my final promise to her.
I rode out the storm and watched her carry herself out over the ocean, surveying the damage left behind in her path. As I look over what’s left, my life was not littered with true rubble or visible scars and bruises. Where Hurricane Jeanne took her toll is in my inability to see the light. Because of her, I keep one eye always over my shoulder, looking and squinting into the horizon, doing everything I can to fashion storm clouds out of thin air. She took that away from me. The serene and quiet moments of my life are now shrouded by an irrational fear of impending doom and failure.
October 2004:
She created all of this. Jean.
Despite it all, I really do miss her badly.
BG is a blogger from Michigan whose favorite color is blue, enjoys long walks on the beach, and hopes to use this platform to promote world peace and awareness of nut cancer.
June 16, 2004
Anna and the King Queen Suited
By BG © 2004
“Who’s winning?”
If the question hadn’t come from a six year old with moon pie eyes and no concept that the mountain of chips in front of me at the moment meant more in the context of the game than the piddling little stacks of the others hunched over the coffee table playing Hold 'Em, I might have been prone to give the question the ol’ roll-my-eyes-and-sigh-audibly treatment.
“He is honey,” Anna’s father, Joe, replied. “Look at how many more chips he has than all of us.”
It was true. Even a kid who couldn’t go from ten to eleven without taking her shoes off should be able to see that. I was easily holding a three-to-one chip lead over any of the other five people playing at that moment. As a matter of fact, in the span of the first ten minutes of the tournament, I had knocked out Mr. Seventh Place when he called my lowly pair of fives with his lowlier Ace high, and had completely suckered another player into an unspectacular sixth place finish when my pocket fives flopped a set.
You give me a lead like this one, and I’m not likely to lose it.
“I wanna be on his team.” Joe gave Anna a look of mock devastation as she sidled up next to me on the ottoman on which I was perched. “He’s gonna win,” she announced. She climbed up to my ear to confirm, “You’re gonna win, right?”
“Naw kiddo… we’re gonna win. You’re on my team now, right?”
She smiled and picked up the cards I had just been dealt: a ten and a deuce. Off-suit. She gave a furtive glance around the table to make sure no one would be looking when she peeled them off her chest to take a peek. One look, and she whispered back to me, “Are these good cards?”
“No Anna, I would say those cards pretty much suck.” Joe shot me a quick, we-don’t-want-her-saying-‘suck’ look. “I meant, stink. They stink. These cards are terrible. Throw them in the middle.”
She obliged and asked again, “Are we still winning?”
I nodded and asked her back, “What’s your favorite game?”
She thought about it hard for a moment, finger scratching her temple to prove to me it wasn’t an easy decision. She finally replied, “Chutes and Ladders. That’s my favorite game.”
“Well, you know that in Chutes and Ladders there’s only one winner, right? That’s the one that gets to the finish line first.” Anna was nodding her agreement. “Well, in this game, I try to take everyone else’s chips. That’s how you win here.”
“And are we going to win?” She was talking in a hushed voice again, making sure no one could hear our secret “let’s try to win” strategy.
“We have to take your dad’s chips to do that. Should we beat your dad and win the game?” Joe smiled and asked Anna, “Don’t you really want to play on Daddy’s team?”
“No Daddy. I want to win.”
Smart girl.
So smart, in fact, that I gave her a chance to prove her mettle on her own terms. After she had taken my hole cards and given them a good look, I asked her, certainly loud enough for anyone at the table to hear, “Do I throw two chips in the pot, or should I throw those cards away?”
She picked up the cards again and studied them intently. “You tell me,” she said. “You look at them.” It was obviously a decision of tremendous magnitude for her.
“I don’t want to look,” I told her. “You’re on my team, right? I trust you. Go ahead. Do we throw two chips in to play, or do we throw them into the middle?”
She grabbed the cards off the table for the third time, sweeping them up and clutching them to her chest in one quick motion, lest anyone get a glimpse of anything on the other side. She peeled the corners back and saw the cards again. Her brow furrowed, and she looked back to me for an answer. I hadn’t seen the cards, so all she got was an encouraging smile.
Still protecting the hand, she came right to my ear and whispered secretively, “I’m going to throw them away. They’re not very good.”
I grinned. “Go ahead, throw them away.” She carefully slid them underneath another set of discards in the middle as she had seen me do previously.
When the hand was complete, Dan, the dealer at the time, couldn’t resist. He fished my cards out of the muck to find my hole cards, which he proudly showed to the rest of the table.
5-8. Unsuited.
I poked Anna in the ribs and gloated, “Good move! You’re good at this game!” She giggled and was beaming proudly.
A few hands later, we pulled the same trick. I was under the gun, and hadn’t yet looked at my hole cards. She had already swiped them off the table for a glance, as had become her habit.
“What do we do with these Anna? Should I put two chips in, or throw them away?”
She only thought for a moment before asking, “Can we throw more than two chips in if we want to?” There was an audible groan from the table. If a six year old knew to raise, what kind of trouble were they in?
“Sure Anna, how about six chips? Sound good?” She nodded and sat back to watch how the others were going to counter her brilliant strategy.
Joe was next, and knew he was playing his hand directly against his daughter. “I’ll call you Anna.” She smiled and clapped when she realized someone was going to lose money to her. Everyone else had the good sense to get out of the way.
Flop came out KQ4 rainbow, and I was first to act. I’ve played blind before, and I put out a fairly strong bet to get a feeler for where Joe was at. He took one look at my bet, saw his daughter beaming eagerly, and didn’t need Caro’s Book of Tells to know he was beat.
I turned over KQs, and high-fived my teammate.
As the next hand was dealt, Anna was curious. “Did we win?”
I mussed up her hair a touch and replied, “Just that hand Anna, but with your help, we’ll beat these guys yet.”
At that moment, she got that look in her eyes like pure ice water was flowing through her veins. She glared the table down, swept the hole cards to her chest and only gave them a cursory look before confidently letting me and the rest of the table know who was now in charge.
“That hand sucks. Throw it away.”
BG is a writer from Michigan who still dreams of one day seeing his ex-wife naked.
“Who’s winning?”
If the question hadn’t come from a six year old with moon pie eyes and no concept that the mountain of chips in front of me at the moment meant more in the context of the game than the piddling little stacks of the others hunched over the coffee table playing Hold 'Em, I might have been prone to give the question the ol’ roll-my-eyes-and-sigh-audibly treatment.
“He is honey,” Anna’s father, Joe, replied. “Look at how many more chips he has than all of us.”
It was true. Even a kid who couldn’t go from ten to eleven without taking her shoes off should be able to see that. I was easily holding a three-to-one chip lead over any of the other five people playing at that moment. As a matter of fact, in the span of the first ten minutes of the tournament, I had knocked out Mr. Seventh Place when he called my lowly pair of fives with his lowlier Ace high, and had completely suckered another player into an unspectacular sixth place finish when my pocket fives flopped a set.
You give me a lead like this one, and I’m not likely to lose it.
“I wanna be on his team.” Joe gave Anna a look of mock devastation as she sidled up next to me on the ottoman on which I was perched. “He’s gonna win,” she announced. She climbed up to my ear to confirm, “You’re gonna win, right?”
“Naw kiddo… we’re gonna win. You’re on my team now, right?”
She smiled and picked up the cards I had just been dealt: a ten and a deuce. Off-suit. She gave a furtive glance around the table to make sure no one would be looking when she peeled them off her chest to take a peek. One look, and she whispered back to me, “Are these good cards?”
“No Anna, I would say those cards pretty much suck.” Joe shot me a quick, we-don’t-want-her-saying-‘suck’ look. “I meant, stink. They stink. These cards are terrible. Throw them in the middle.”
She obliged and asked again, “Are we still winning?”
I nodded and asked her back, “What’s your favorite game?”
She thought about it hard for a moment, finger scratching her temple to prove to me it wasn’t an easy decision. She finally replied, “Chutes and Ladders. That’s my favorite game.”
“Well, you know that in Chutes and Ladders there’s only one winner, right? That’s the one that gets to the finish line first.” Anna was nodding her agreement. “Well, in this game, I try to take everyone else’s chips. That’s how you win here.”
“And are we going to win?” She was talking in a hushed voice again, making sure no one could hear our secret “let’s try to win” strategy.
“We have to take your dad’s chips to do that. Should we beat your dad and win the game?” Joe smiled and asked Anna, “Don’t you really want to play on Daddy’s team?”
“No Daddy. I want to win.”
Smart girl.
So smart, in fact, that I gave her a chance to prove her mettle on her own terms. After she had taken my hole cards and given them a good look, I asked her, certainly loud enough for anyone at the table to hear, “Do I throw two chips in the pot, or should I throw those cards away?”
She picked up the cards again and studied them intently. “You tell me,” she said. “You look at them.” It was obviously a decision of tremendous magnitude for her.
“I don’t want to look,” I told her. “You’re on my team, right? I trust you. Go ahead. Do we throw two chips in to play, or do we throw them into the middle?”
She grabbed the cards off the table for the third time, sweeping them up and clutching them to her chest in one quick motion, lest anyone get a glimpse of anything on the other side. She peeled the corners back and saw the cards again. Her brow furrowed, and she looked back to me for an answer. I hadn’t seen the cards, so all she got was an encouraging smile.
Still protecting the hand, she came right to my ear and whispered secretively, “I’m going to throw them away. They’re not very good.”
I grinned. “Go ahead, throw them away.” She carefully slid them underneath another set of discards in the middle as she had seen me do previously.
When the hand was complete, Dan, the dealer at the time, couldn’t resist. He fished my cards out of the muck to find my hole cards, which he proudly showed to the rest of the table.
5-8. Unsuited.
I poked Anna in the ribs and gloated, “Good move! You’re good at this game!” She giggled and was beaming proudly.
A few hands later, we pulled the same trick. I was under the gun, and hadn’t yet looked at my hole cards. She had already swiped them off the table for a glance, as had become her habit.
“What do we do with these Anna? Should I put two chips in, or throw them away?”
She only thought for a moment before asking, “Can we throw more than two chips in if we want to?” There was an audible groan from the table. If a six year old knew to raise, what kind of trouble were they in?
“Sure Anna, how about six chips? Sound good?” She nodded and sat back to watch how the others were going to counter her brilliant strategy.
Joe was next, and knew he was playing his hand directly against his daughter. “I’ll call you Anna.” She smiled and clapped when she realized someone was going to lose money to her. Everyone else had the good sense to get out of the way.
Flop came out KQ4 rainbow, and I was first to act. I’ve played blind before, and I put out a fairly strong bet to get a feeler for where Joe was at. He took one look at my bet, saw his daughter beaming eagerly, and didn’t need Caro’s Book of Tells to know he was beat.
I turned over KQs, and high-fived my teammate.
As the next hand was dealt, Anna was curious. “Did we win?”
I mussed up her hair a touch and replied, “Just that hand Anna, but with your help, we’ll beat these guys yet.”
At that moment, she got that look in her eyes like pure ice water was flowing through her veins. She glared the table down, swept the hole cards to her chest and only gave them a cursory look before confidently letting me and the rest of the table know who was now in charge.
“That hand sucks. Throw it away.”
BG is a writer from Michigan who still dreams of one day seeing his ex-wife naked.
March 22, 2004
Ten Warning Signs That You Might Be Married To My Ex-Wife
By BG © 2004
A Public Service Announcement...
1 – You find yourself in at least week three of your stand-off on who's going to clean her cats' litter boxes.
2 – You've been sleeping with the woman for at least six months, and you're still unsure of what she looks like naked in a reasonably lit room.
3 – You/re home from your ten hours at the office, she's unshowered, in her pajamas, presumably having occupied the same space on the couch since "waking up" at noon, the house is a disaster, and she asks you what you’re making her for dinner.
4 – The second the topic of capping her unbridled spending is broached, your manhood and ability to provide for your family is assailed with soul-crushing speed and intensity.
5 – The only thing you begin to have in common is a mutual contempt, but unwillingness to be the first to walk away.
6 – The parts of yourself that you dislike the most are open season for constant dissection, even in conversation with family, friends, and in front of strangers.
7 – Your lack of energy after an hour drive to work, ten hours in the office, and an hour drive home becomes her excuse for getting fatter (not just fat, fatter).
8 – Her fuzzy math and lack of logic makes discussing household budget concerns with her pointless. However, when told she can't afford to do something, her excuse becomes supporting you for the two months you were unemployed eight months ago with the job she used to have, even though she’s technically unemployed (er, "self-employed") currently.
9 – She doesn’t find anything the least bit wrong with surreptitiously dating other guys, and even asks you to wait for her to visit one overseas for a month, just to let her come back to you to figure things out in the "marriage" (uh, no thanks).
10 – When a nice old lady in a restaurant tells her she looks like Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, you have to bite your tongue before blurting out, "No, she just looks like she ate Tiffani-Amber Thiessen."
If warning signs persist, please consult your attorney. That is all.
BG is a writer from Michigan who still dreams of one day seeing his ex-wife naked.
A Public Service Announcement...
1 – You find yourself in at least week three of your stand-off on who's going to clean her cats' litter boxes.
2 – You've been sleeping with the woman for at least six months, and you're still unsure of what she looks like naked in a reasonably lit room.
3 – You/re home from your ten hours at the office, she's unshowered, in her pajamas, presumably having occupied the same space on the couch since "waking up" at noon, the house is a disaster, and she asks you what you’re making her for dinner.
4 – The second the topic of capping her unbridled spending is broached, your manhood and ability to provide for your family is assailed with soul-crushing speed and intensity.
5 – The only thing you begin to have in common is a mutual contempt, but unwillingness to be the first to walk away.
6 – The parts of yourself that you dislike the most are open season for constant dissection, even in conversation with family, friends, and in front of strangers.
7 – Your lack of energy after an hour drive to work, ten hours in the office, and an hour drive home becomes her excuse for getting fatter (not just fat, fatter).
8 – Her fuzzy math and lack of logic makes discussing household budget concerns with her pointless. However, when told she can't afford to do something, her excuse becomes supporting you for the two months you were unemployed eight months ago with the job she used to have, even though she’s technically unemployed (er, "self-employed") currently.
9 – She doesn’t find anything the least bit wrong with surreptitiously dating other guys, and even asks you to wait for her to visit one overseas for a month, just to let her come back to you to figure things out in the "marriage" (uh, no thanks).
10 – When a nice old lady in a restaurant tells her she looks like Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, you have to bite your tongue before blurting out, "No, she just looks like she ate Tiffani-Amber Thiessen."
If warning signs persist, please consult your attorney. That is all.
BG is a writer from Michigan who still dreams of one day seeing his ex-wife naked.
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