The Incomplete Writer

 I struggle to complete things. I am the kind of writer who often gives up just before an ending. I have written numerous incomplete short stories, essays and novels, leaving them for dead right before the end. It is a strange affliction that causes me a great deal of envy towards writers who are able to complete their works. It’s a muscle I lack. In order not to retire certain writings to the dump yard of all my other unfinished works, I have decided to collect below several of my most recent unfinished writings before I forever let them go.

 

So This Is What Grief Feels Like

How does a person’s childhood home live inside of them as an adult? I have just returned home after spending several days visiting my childhood home, where my parents still live. I’m sitting on my couch looking out a window into the backyard. The clock, which hangs on the wall, is making a sound that mimics my heartbeat. Or my heartbeat is mimicking the sound of the clock. My eyes feel slightly swollen from a few short-lived bouts of crying. I miss my childhood home in the same way that a person could miss a pet or a recently lost lifelong friend. I am aware that in my absence my childhood home feels emptier. Quieter. I know that it too is sad that I am gone.

The Beard

One morning he awoke and his beard was gone. There was a note on the pillow beside him, which read:

The Tunnel

A man, who cares about his age, needs to move out of the city, who cares about why. He moves to the suburbs, for reasons that I don’t want to understand. The only real problem here is the tunnel, which divides the suburbs from the city. After several weeks of living in the suburbs, the man, like most men, wants to go visit friends in the city. The suburbs are long, flat and lonely and for more reasons than I am wanting to go into here, the man desperately needs to spend more time in the city. Lets just say his mental health depends on it. Ok? But the problem that I previously mentioned is that he has a terrible fear of going through the tunnel. Maybe he is claustrophobic; I am not a medical professional so it is not for me to make that judgment. All I know is that the man’s inability to go through the tunnel is causing him to become trapped in the suburbs. It’s not a good situation for anyone.

The Insomniac

Five o’clock, Sunday morning, is the quietest time on earth. Everything is still. No one is up- except for the insomniacs.

JTimothy’s mind was a web of noise. Solitude was not bliss. Instead it was an uncomfortable collar that felt too tight around his neck. His feet were like ship anchors dragged along his apartment floor. What use was flossing his teeth when all he did was grind them? The only way that JTimothy could get some semblance of sleep was by putting clean, white tube socks on over his bare feet. And even that was not sleep enough.

Rewind. Three years before. JTimothy slept as much as you and I. A dream filled sleep in the nude. Back in those days the mountains outside his window were still skyrockets filled with opportunity and mystery. They had yet become the claustrophobic walls that trapped him. The washing machine and kitchen table were still inanimate objects. Three years later they would become his best friends and chess partners. The insomnia set in before he consciously realized that his adult life had become intolerable. A constant steady flow of deteriorations, disappointments and humiliating defeats. As is often the case with most diseases, JTimothy’s insomnia knew more about JTimothy than JTimothy knew about himself. His tube socks could attest to this .

JTimothy’s apartment was once an alarmingly beautiful space. It was clean and looked like the kind of space that you could tell the tenant enjoyed taking care of it. From the outside you would never know that inside was a well-curated showroom for mid-century modern furniture. Most of his money from his often-suffocating job went into these objects of good taste. The black Eames chairs in the corner were his favorites. What use are the most stylish and aesthetically pleasing objects when you can’t sleep? The insomniac gradually loses the ability to see beauty.

Fast forward to where this story began. JTimothy in tube socks and yesterday’s clothes. It’s 5 o’clock on a Sunday morning and JTimothy is the only person awake in a sleeping world. Macaroni noodles are boiling on the stove. The kitchen table is already hungry. The washing machine is not yet ready to eat. Just the other day JTimothy had to take the washing machine’s drivers license away from it. The washing machine is currently engaging in a hunger strike against what it feels was an unfair decision to strip it of its autonomy. JTimothy became feed up with the washing machine not being around every time he needed to do his laundry. Ever since the washing machine received its drivers license it had been going out constantly with other washing machines. JTimothy knew that the washing machine had been going to parties and he was concerned that the washing machine would drink and drive. Or even worse- what if it fell in love with a dryer and ran away? He could not admit it but JTimothy was jealous. Deep down he was annoyed that his washing machine was having more fun than he was.

The insomniac can become very possessive. There were times that JTimothy believed that even the mountains belonged to him.

JTimothy paced around his apartment. What had happened to him? He listened to the hot water boiling on the electric stove. JTimothy’s insomnia knew that the reason he could not sleep was

The Driver

The only place that the Driver feels safe and in control is in his car. This is why the Driver drives around and around and around. Day after day.

The Novelist

I know what your thinking. “Forty three years old and he has just written his first novel?” Before you jump to any unfair conclusions with regards to my ambition or will power please allow me to explain. But before I explain allow me to give you this brief list of novelists who made no money from writing before the age of 45: Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Tomas Espedal and I know there are many others but I can not come up with the names now.

If by the end of this short autobiographicalish story you do not think that I deserved to be called a novelist, fair enough. If you still think it is too late for me, that I have reached the expiration date as far as being a legitimate writer is concerned, fair enough again.

You see I have been determined to write a novel since the age of seventeen. No, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start where I am at now. The past is the past even though I understand that the past is as important to a writer as the present is to a Zen Buddhist. So let me begin from right now.

The Bathroom

Waiting in a bathroom stall, after having had an impressively large bowel movement, for a man to finish washing his hands and doing his hair because I am too embarrassed to walk out because of the odor I have created. The man is taking forever.

Walls

I built a small space in my backyard where I can be alone. It’s just one small room- no hallways, no bathrooms, no furniture, no windows. Just six walls made of pinewood and a pillow for sitting. I enter the space through a hatch in the roof.

Bad Bosses

I wish I could invent a device that would make all bad bosses disappear.

The Collector

My wife thinks I have a shopping addiction (even though I do not have enough money to have a shopping addiction). She thinks buying things helps me to feel empowered and in control. It’s a momentary substitute for the general sense of helplessness and lack of control that I feel most of the time, she tells me. I’m not sure I agree with her, even though in the end she is almost always right. However, for the purposes of this autobiographical essay, I will pretend as if she is always, completely wrong.

I don’t see myself as a shopping addict. I think the diagnosis is completely missing the point. Through years of study and exploration, I have developed a sensibility for the finer, more alternative things in life. In the same way that the archeologist has spent years studying so that she or he can identify and collect important objects, I have been refining my ability to

One more:

Chronic Pain (a memoir about a son’s life long struggle with a difficult father)

I was having a difficult time breathing. It felt like something heavy was resting on top of my lungs all night. As I sit up from a restless nights sleep, I struggle to breathe air into my lungs. It feels like trying to pump air into a bicycle tire that is almost full. My wife is still sleeping. She is wrapped up in heavy blankets, like a sausage inside a sourdough bun. I don’t feel rested but it’s 6:20am and I am ready to go.

My wife and I drove for six hours to visit the house were I spent my childhood and grew up into an angry young man. After thirty-five years my parents still live in this aging mansion, which sits on two acres of beautiful Northern California land. The house sits on top of a hill overlooking the affluent country club, which it is apart of. Twenty years ago I remember how upset my father was when the country club association started building larger houses in the oak tree filled hills behind his house. No longer would he be on top of the world- now more successful and wealthier people would be looking down on him.

It’s a cold November morning. Wet leaves cover the damp concrete ground as my wife and I load our suitcases into the back of our financed Prius. I’m too tired and sad to talk. I just want to get this over with as quietly as possible. Once we have loaded up the car with all our stuff we return inside to make sure we have not forgotten anything. As I look around I’m feeling a deep sense of grief. It’s been a difficult weekend visit with my parents and a part of me feels like this may be the last time I will ever return home again. I try to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake my parents. We have already said our goodbyes the night before.

Before retiring to bed last night my father came up to me and in his strange way tried to make amends for the fight he had started the day before. “We should talk on the phone once a week so we can improve our relationship son. I am who I am and I’m not going to change but I want to be your friend,” he said while standing a bit too much in my personal space. I admit, I felt threatened and annoyed. We were standing in a hallway that was filled with a history of my childhood battles with my father. “I don’t need you to be my friend, I need you to be a father,” I replied. “Son I’ve already done the best I could as your father. You’re a grown man now and it’s time to be friends.” I felt slightly confused and uncomfortable, like my father was once again trying to make me agree to something that was good for him but inherently bad for me. He gave me a hug goodnight. I told him to sleep well and with his signature negativity he said, “yeah I’m going to go die.” I knew that indirectly he was trying to imply that our dynamic had worn him out.

I stood at my old bedroom window and looked out into the expansive backyard, where I had spent so much of my lonely and unhappy youth. The same backyard furniture that I sat on as a child was still there and so were all the dangling bushes that I used to sing to while pretending that they were the hands of adoring fans reaching out to touch me. How can one be so sad, angry and unhappy in the midst of such beauty? I thought to myself. Did I even see the beauty when I was growing up? I turn around, turn out the bedroom lights and say to my wife, “Ready to go?” We have a six-hour drive back to LA ahead of us. Before I close the front door behind me, I take one final listen to the sounds inside the house that I love so much. I can hear the subtle sounds of the house settling. I can also hear the hallow sounds that a large house makes when everything inside is still. Upstairs, I can hear my father snoring and I imagine that my mother is laying in bed with her eyes half-open, tears on her cheeks while she listens to me leave.

The Climbing Tree

When I was a very young boy, maybe six or seven, I used to love it when my parents would bring me to the park by our house. It was not all the grass, open space, wild life and swing sets that I loved. It was the climbing tree. When my parents and I would arrive at the park I would run away from them as fast as I could. In the distance I could hear my father’s voice yelling “slow down kid!” But I did not. I ran towards the climbing tree and then once I got to it I would climb up the tree as quickly as I could. The reason why the tree was called the climbing tree was because it was easy to climb. Everyone was always climbing on it. It looked as if it was bending towards the ground because so many people had climbed on it. The top of the tree was only about ten feet off the ground and the length of it was around thirty feet. I would quickly make it up to the top of the tree and straddle one of the trees branches. Beneath my feet, which were hanging in mid-air, I could see the top of my fathers balding head. I would stretch out the tips of my feet and try to touch his balding spot. He would always look up at me and with a perplexed grin say, “Knock it off kid.”

As a teenager I spent a lot of time in that park. Girls would jump on the guys backs and we would have a race to see who could get to the climbing tree first. The girls would laugh out loud and kick the sides of their male carriers and yell, “faster, faster!” The rule was that whoever lost the race had to tongue kiss in front of everyone. We would all climb quickly to the top of the climbing tree and sit around in the shade of the branches and leaves. It would take a half hour or so to convince the shy losers that they had to make out in front of us but when they finally did we all watched as if we were studying for some kind of exam. It became so silent that you could hear the interaction of their tongues. We would spend hours mingling in the climbing tree. When someone brought it, we would drink alcohol and smoke weed. We carved our names into the branches. Sometimes we would couple off towards more private areas of the climbing tree. It was up in the branches and the leaves that I had my first contact with bare female breasts (I remember thinking that they felt like water balloons). At some point during the day or early evening a parent would always come, stand at the foot of the climbing tree and shout out, “Time to come home lovely children!”

When I returned home during college breaks I would see a few high school friends of mine who were also home. We would meet in the climbing tree, smoke weed and spend hours in the branches and leaves gossiping about what happened to various people we knew in high school. We had no idea then that those were some of the final times we would spend together before going our separate ways.

After graduating from graduate school I returned home to live for a year or so. I was unable to find a job so I spent a lot of time reading novels and writing in my journal in the climbing tree. The sound of the leaves rustling in the wind would often lull me into a restful sleep. I would look up into the blue sky and contemplate eternity. What did it mean to be alive? What did it mean to die? Was there any meaning at all? I would look for various familiar names carved into the branches. My name was still there. It had a heart next to it and under the heart was the name of the girl who let me touch her breasts. The last I had heard about her was that she was married and in a medical residency program. I still had no idea what I was going to do with my life.

After living in Portland, Oregon for a year I returned home for a visit. I was in need of a break from my impoverished life and despite my parents frustration with me, I needed some love and financial support from them. I was working as a bartender in a seedy little bar in downtown Portland. I hated the job. Between the constantly gray weather in Portland and the fact that I had no idea how to improve my life situation, I had fallen into a deep depression. One evening after my parents had gone to bed I decided to walk over to the climbing tree. I brought with me a fifth of whiskey and a joint. I climbed to the top of the climbing tree and straddled one of the branches in the same way that I did as a little boy. I wondered if the branch was high enough and strong enough to hang myself from. I felt like a complete failure and I hated myself for not being able to accomplish more in my life and I hated my parents for giving me so much anxiety and grief about my failures. My friends all seemed to be independently finding their way in life but when it came to independence it felt as if I was constipated. Stuck. In a moment of despair I carved “FUCK LIFE” into the branch I was straddling. The next morning I awoke on the grass, directly under the climbing tree. I had a painful bump on the side of my head and the left side of my body was sore.

A few years later when my father died, I returned home with my wife. After the funeral my wife and I went to sit in the park. While sitting on a park bench we got into a fight. Rather than being sad about my father’s death, I was still angry at him. I took my anger out on my wife. After our fight, my wife and I were not getting a long very well so we never ended up going to the climbing tree. The day after the funeral we returned to Portland.

When my mother died a few years after my father, I returned home with my daughter. I had been divorced from my wife for over a year. After my mother’s funeral I brought my daughter to the climbing tree. I let her make her own way up towards the top of the tree and I followed slowly behind her. As I climbed I could feel my heart palpitating in my chest. I was short of breath and I felt tightness in my chest. When I finally was able to make it to the top of the tree my daughter and I sat silently together in the branches and the leaves. My daughter asked me why her grandmother did not move or talk at the funeral. I did not want to fill her with anxiety about mortality, so I told her that her grandmother loved to sleep. “All those people were there to watch grandma sleep?” she asked me. I told her that grandma was really good at sleeping her way through life and sometimes people like to come and watch her. Then my daughter asked me if I had played in the climbing tree when I was her age. I told her that I had. Together we straddled one of the branches and watched our feet dangle together in the air. I held her tight to my chest and when I looked down towards the ground I could vaguely see the top of my father’s balding head. The day that my daughter and I were returning to Portland, I quickly went to visit the climbing tree with a sharp kitchen knife in my pocket. I slowly climbed the tree and had to concentrate hard in order to maintain my balance. When I found the branch where I had carved “FUCK LIFE” into it, I used the kitchen knife to scratch it out.

After selling my parents home I bought a house in the suburbs of Portland. I had fallen in love with a woman who was a psychotherapist and together we had two children. Even though I was much too old, I returned to school and became a psychotherapist. My wife and I started a private practice a few blocks from our home and for the first time I was beginning to feel good about my life. It had been almost a decade since I had last returned to the climbing tree but my wife and kids wanted to see the tree that I was so often talking about.

My three kids, my wife and I returned to the park for what I knew would be the final time. That day was sunny and I could swear I smelled the far away ocean in the afternoon breeze. All kinds of multicolored bugs hovered all over the grass as my family and I walked to the climbing tree. The tree looked as if it had aged so much from all the years and people who had climbed around on it. One by one my family climbed up the trunk of the tree. The climb was not so easy for me anymore. My back hurt, my temples pulsated and I felt like my chest was going to cave in. Halfway up the tree I looked up at my wife and kids who were all waiting for me at the top. They yelled down, “Common old man you can make it!” I put my head down and continued to climb. When I made it to the top I felt one of my daughters use her hand to pat the balding spot on top of my head. Short of breath and slightly wheezing I looked up at her and said with a smile, “Knock it off kid.”

We all sat together in the branches and the leaves and I told them about various memories that I had about hanging out in the climbing tree. We all found my name with the heart carved into the branch. Strangely the girl’s name had faded away. When I told them about the first time I kissed a girl in the tree my daughters all yelled out, “gross dad!” My daughters then climbed around on the branches and I sat silently with my wife. We observed all the names carved into the branches as if we were looking at art work that was centuries old. I saw a lot of my high school friend’s names. It had been more than thirty years since I had seen any of them. My wife put her arm around me and I cried a little. I noticed the spot where I had scratched out what I had written in my moment of despair and I decided not to tell my wife about it. I watched the birds and the squirrels and then climbed over towards one of my daughters when she  yelled, “Look! A butterfly cocoon!” We studied the cocoon and then we all carved our names into the branch, just under the cocoon.

My wife and kids climbed down the tree and I told them that I just needed a moment alone. I maintained my balance by holding on to a branch and I looked around. I could see the vague outlines of a lifetime of memories. I saw myself as a little boy, I saw myself in high school and I saw that young man drunk and deliberating over hanging himself from a branch. I could not help but think that if it was not for that tree I would no longer be alive. I leaned over and gave the climbing tree a kiss. I put my aging face up against one of its branches and I thanked it for everything it had given to me over the years. I told it that not a day would go by where I would not think about it. I felt stupid saying these things out loud to a tree but I believed that someplace beyond my human ability to perceive, the tree understood me. I then looked down and saw my children and wife running around in the grass. Slowly I climbed down the tree. Step by step by step until I had made it firmly onto the ground. And then just for fun and without purpose I yelled out, “Time to come home lovely children!”

It was not long after that day that I heard that the climbing tree had fallen down.

 

 

Profile of a Young Rampage Shooter

i’m so angry. this world is a prison from which I long to escape. all around me I see people being turned into zombie’s by the world of bills, money and jobs. i don’t want to become a zombie like what the world turns all adults into. it disgusts me. how could adults give up their freedom like that? how could they allow themselves to become so mediocre? this society is sick and people just go along with it. they follow the law, they do what the police say, they listen to their corrupt government, they allow corporations to make tons of money off them, they show up for work on time- they do exactly what they are told. i can’t stand it.

my parents are always so stressed out. they are always so angry. how the fuck do they expect me to be happier in my life, to do better in school if they are always so unhappy? every day my mother worries about stupid shit. every day she asks me questions about my day, “how are you doing?” “did you do your school work?” “you cant do this or that before all of your homework is done, you know this right?” “did you clean your room?” “why do you not put more effort into things?” “who do you think you are just sitting around while everyone else works?” “how do you expect to do anything with your life if all you do is day dream, play video games and surf the net?” it is constant questions like this all day long that make me hate her. i wish she would just shut the fuck up, leave me alone and get her own life in order rather than focusing on me so she does not have to focus on the fact that her husband is an abusive dick and she is stuck in an unhappy life.

my father is so obsessed with work and money that if he is not working he is stressed out from how much he has worked. america turns adults into pigeons scurrying around for any available crumbs. work, work, work and work more- it disgusts me. why are adults so afraid of being different, of not trying to appear like they have money and influence? my father is obsessed with his reputation. everyone thinks he is a nice and successful guy. people look up to him because he has a job where he makes a lot of money. he knows how to paint the picture of success and people love him for it. but at home he is a miserable dick. sometimes he hits his kids, he yells a lot, he is mean to my mother and he always expects us to do what he wants. it is like he takes of his mask and becomes the unhappy man he truly is deep down once he comes home. he is like one of those villains in the video games I play- on the outside he looks good but once you do not do what he wants you to do, or act like he wants you to act- he becomes filled with rage.

and they tell me I have a MENTAL ILLNESS. what the fuck!!?? i have a mental illness? you bastards should try growing up in a house like mine. try living under the same roof with my parents all the time and then going to a school where I am always told what to do, am on lock down and forced to do work I hate. try it mother fucker. you think you would not start to not give a fuck? you think you would not lose focus and concentration? you think you would not have little interest in following rules and doing your work? you think you would not become quiet and resigned? you think you would not do stupid things? you think you would not want to blow up the world? come on- you jerks can not tell me that I have a mental illness until you have lived in my shoes for a few days. i don’t have a fucking mental illness- I have fucked up parents and live in a society that stresses them out beyond belief. the problem is not in my head- it is in your head and in the institutions that all these ignorant adults have bought into. i am not the cause- I am just one of the many symptoms of the world adults have created.

and they want me to take medication? are you kidding? they need the medication. it is like taking an anti acid pill when you have just eaten a bunch of acidic food. STOP EATING THE ACIDIC FOOD AND THEN YOU WILL NOT NEED THE ANTI ACID PILL! these people are so fucked up. my school counselor and parents want me to take medication so that I can focus more, so that I can follow the rules more, so that I can be less depressed, so that I can be easier to control. yeah that is the quick fix- give me the drug, make the drug companies even richer and don’t bother looking at the root cause of what is wrong with me because what is wrong with me is YOU.

so you wonder why I hate this world. you wonder why I am so angry at everyone, especially all of the kids in my school who seem to blindly go along with what adults say. don’t they see how they are being manipulated, conformed and indoctrinated into the very system that is the problem in the first place (and how if they don’t go along with it they get put on mind numbing drugs!)? they are like undigested food for this fucked up society we have created. dont they realize that the adults who are the problem are the ones turning them into the conditioned drones just like the adults are? i cant stand watching this happen everyday. it disgust me. i have no respect for them. in video games we destroy anything that is a threat to our survival. we do it in an instant without any hard feelings because it is the right thing to do. it is what we have to do to free ourselves from the hell that is all around. it is how we get our honor back and restore harmony to our inner and outer world. why the hell should the “real” world be any different than the world of video games? the world of video games makes so much more fucking sense than the world that adults have made. in video games when there is a threat to my survival I am able to annihilate it. but in the real world when there is a threat to my survival I am put on medication and told I have a mental illness. what the fuck!!!

i am SO angry.

Interview #5: Difficult Parents, Anger Towards a Father, Economic Woe and the American Dream.

I am seated at my kitchen table. It is a round vintage table from the 1950’s. I spent a lot of money on this table and every time I see it I think about that. It is 9:49am and I am dressed in a t-shirt, sweat pants, slippers and I have a blanket draped over my shoulders. My hair is a mess, my eyes are swollen, I feel lethargic and bleak and I did not even drink alcohol last night (I did have a pint in the afternoon). My wife just walked into the kitchen and asked me if I was “filled with the love of the universe.” I replied, “No I am filled with the dread and worry of the American dream.” Not so sure where that answer came from. I am about to eat a muffin and drink some green tea as this interview begins.

Interviewer: Good morning Randall.

Randall: Good morning.

Interviewer: Good morning.

Randall: Good morning.

Interviewer: Look I just want to apologize if you feel that the last few interviews have not gone so smoothly.

Randall: I appreciate your apology. I’m not feeling hung up about it at the moment. It is in the past.

Interviewer: Good I am glad to hear that. I will do what I can to make sure that this and following interviews are much more pleasant for the both of us.

Randall: Sounds good to me.

Interviewer: How are you feeling this morning?

Randall: I am ok but I suppose a bit grumpy. I did my thirty minute morning meditation and my mind was racing with all kinds of thoughts.

Interviewer: What kind of thoughts?

Randall: Well thoughts about my anger towards my parents, thoughts about my childhood and how much I have aged, thoughts about all the bills and economic worries I have, thoughts about my difficulty breathing in the mornings- all kinds of thoughts.

Interviewer: Do you mind if I delve a little deeper about some of these thoughts that you speak of.

Randall: Sure.

[Randall eats his muffin and sips his green tea]

Interviewer: Do you still feel like you have a lot of anger towards your parents?

Randall: I do not know if it is a lot but it is in there and it comes up at various times. The anger that comes up seems to be more directed at my father.

Interviewer: And what are you angry with your father about?

Randall: It is hard for me to fully understand but I think I am angry at the way he has treated me all of my life. For me he was a monster while I was growing up and still to this day he gives me the creeps. I do not trust him and I never know if he is really trying hard to be nice to me or if it is an act. I am often very uncomfortable with my relationship with my father. I have all these past resentments that I feel never get resolved and I have current resentments towards how he shows up in my life even though I really don’t want him to show up anymore.

Interviewer: How does he show up in your life?

Randall: To be honest he plays a small roll. If I really need it he will throw money my way, I get a phone call once or twice every two weeks from him, which I admit I try and avoid. When we talk it is very superficial, uncomfortable and we both try and pretend like everything is ok. I know he is making an effort to be nicer, to be a better father but the problem is that I don’t feel like he takes much responsibility for what he has done to me nor does he acknowledge the pain that I live with that is a direct result of our relationship.

Interviewer: I also know that you are angry at him about money issues. Is this still true?

Randall: It is, as much as I would like to admit that it is not. I do feel that he is very greedy and selfish with his money and am resentful that he does not help me out more economically. You and I both know that I have a lot of worry about money. A lot of my self-worth issues revolve around money (I can thank my parents for this). I currently have a lot of economic worries and wish that he would help me out more instead of build his mansions in Idaho and take long vacations in China. I feel that some of that money can be put to better use (his children’s well-being) but this is not my parents priority. They feel that we should make it on our own, work hard and that economic struggle is a good thing. I think deep down they believe that if you do not work hard enough you are going to struggle economically. In their mind it all boils down to- I have earned my economic struggle because I don’t work hard enough. I don’t slave away at a job, so I have earned my economic struggle. My dad is a republican- what did expect?

Interviewer: But you also know that it is not a good idea for you to take money from your father. That taking his money in the long run can make your life much more stressful, unhealthy and it is not good for both of your relationship.

Randall: Yes, I am aware of this. I suppose I am resentful that my parents have allowed for money to become such a big issue between us. It just should not be that way. Money is there to make life easier not more difficult.

Interviewer: It seems to me that you are a bit confused by exactly why you are resentful or angry towards your father.

Randall: Hmmm. I suppose so. I suppose there is so much water under the bridge that it is challenging to sort it all out. Fundamentally I am resentful about the fact that he does not love me the way that I need to be loved, he does not meet my needs for trust, authenticity, safety, care. Ultimately he has made my life much more difficult than it has needed to be and I am resentful towards him for this. But I am an adult now and I am trying hard to let all of this go. To become independent of him and all the emotional garbage I carry around. I feel this will be a lifelong process.

Interviewer: Yes it will.

Randall: Yes.

Interviewer: Well this brings me to wanting to know more about your economic worries. Can you tell me a bit about this?

Randall: Well this is complicated also. One thing that I have learned about myself is that when I have more money I feel much more confident and good about myself. When I sink below the economic worry line and start to feel like I do not have enough money and then feel like I need to rely on others for financial help I no longer feel so good about myself.

Interviewer: What do you feel like when you are in this economic red zone?

Randall: I feel like a failure. I feel embarrassed. I feel stuck. I feel like a loss of independence.

Interviewer: I see. This loss of independence must feel terrible.

Randall: It does. I also feel like others judge me because I am 41 and not in a position in life where I am making a lot of money.

Interviewer: Hmmm. I understand this.

Randall: Yeah.

Interviewer: But you have a nice life. You have your own house filled with beautiful furniture and a remarkable backyard. You have a wife who has a good amount of money and is willing to help you out. You have a beautiful dog, a nice car, a painting studio, computers, a refrigerator filled with delicious food- you really have it all.

Randall: Yeah in a sense I do and I appreciate you focusing my attention on these things but I suppose I am someone who looks at the glass as half empty. All these things that I own I can barely afford. I have never had more bills than I have at the moment. I also have financial aid loans that are over $80,000. My employment is not bringing in any money at the moment and I really have no idea how the hell I am going to afford my current lifestyle. All the good things that I have in my life just do not feel like enough to assuage my economic worry. What if I have car trouble or my dog gets ill? I have no idea how I am going to afford these things and that worries me. How am I going to pay my bills and have enough money to live? It is thoughts like these that run through my mind and yeah I am resentful that my parents are traveling around China in luxury when they could be doing more to help me out of this financial worry.

Interviewer: Yeah but you understand that you are trying to become independent from your parents, to separate yourself emotionally from them and if you take money from them it is damaging to you on so many levels.

Randall: I know. I know but why do they have to be so fucked up around money?

Interviewer: The American dream does this to the best of us.

Randall: (silence)

Interviewer: Look, it is just the way it is. It is not that they are bad people- it is just what they have learned from their parents and it is who they are. You need to accept that they are not going to change. They have their karma to live out and you have yours. Don’t allow their karma to mess up your karma more than it already has.

Randall: I am working on this. Do you know that when I got married my wife’s parents spent way over 40 grand on the wedding and my parents gave no more than a thousand dollars towards our wedding?

Interviewer: Be happy they gave anything at all.

Randall: I know but it just does not sit well with me. If they had no money it would not bother me but because they have so much and give so little it just feels selfish.

Interviewer: I understand but don’t let their negative karma become yours. You need to find ways to let go of your anger and resentment towards your parents before it corrupts any more of your life.

Randall: Yeah I know. I am working on it. I have been working on it for years. I try to be kind to my parents, be there for them and be a good son- but it is tough when I have all this rage towards them. I know I need to let it all go and trust that if I do let go- things will work out. It helps talking with you about all of this.

Interviewer: Good I am glad it helps. I am glad that you trust me enough to be so honest and open with me. It always amazes me just how much power a parent has over the life of their children. Unfortunately most parents are not aware of how their behavior affects their children and as a result generation after generation passes down these emotional wounds. You can look at it as a kind of inheritance.

Randall: That is a bleak thought.

Interviewer: I know but the only way to disown your negative emotional and psychological inheritance is to distance yourself emotionally and financially as much as you can from your parents and also to continue to work on yourself and cultivate the qualities you needed from your father and mother but never got. Be generous, be honest, be loving, be kind, be grateful.

Randall: Yes. Thank you for the reminder.

Interviewer: Not a problem. I think that pretty much wraps up our interview for now. I know it was a rather serious interview but I hope it was helpful.

Randall: It was. I enjoyed this interview much more than the last two.

Interviewer: Good I am glad. Well have a pleasant, worry free day and go get dressed. You look terrible.

Randall: (giggling) I will.

Floating Around Limbo

Sometimes I wonder about my contributions to this world. What am I doing? What is my reason for being here? For the last month or so I have been in a kind of limbo. This limbo is a comfortable place. There is no rent to pay, no ambitions to fill, no reason really to do anything at all. Day upon day looks the same, feels relatively similar (with some occasional sharp divots in the road). The interesting thing is that in this limbo I float about two feet from the ground. Why I find this interesting is because for most of my life my mother and father made me feel guilty about not having both feet firmly planted on the ground. They have often used the metaphor of floating to describe the way that I exist in this world. Now in my middle age, the mid-afternoon of my life, day after day- I am actually floating. Take that mom and dad.

Did I mention how comfortable this limbo place feels? Imagine jumping inside of the softest down comforter. No even better than that- imagine spending the day lying face up on the softest of white sand beaches. This is what this limbo that I am in feels like. Love materialized. Would you want to leave this place? You float around all day, get tanned by the sun, read in the evenings and watch as the ambitious world runs by. It is really not a bad deal- but like most deals, it does have its downside.

I sat with a ninety-two year old Zen master the other day. To my surprise he was floating as well. Except the place in which he floated he would never refer to as a limbo, instead he likes to call it eternity. Why was I floating around with a Zen master the other day you might be wondering? Feel free to ask. Well, I will just tell you. I went to this specific zendo where I knew that this Zen master could be found. I went to him because of the thoughts that I began this story with. I was wondering about what my place in this world was. If day after day I was just floating around in limbo then what real point is there to my existence? If I was doing nothing constructive in this world, had no ambition to get both of my feet firmly planted on the ground- then how was I going to survive in this ambitious, both feet on the ground kind of world. To be blunt- what the fuck was I doing with my life?

When I asked the Zen master these questions (I am sorry to use the cliche name of Zen master to describe this remarkable man but this man does not have a name. I am not even sure if he exists in the same reality that all of us other mortals do. As he likes to say- “he is here but not here at all.”). What was I just saying? Oh yeah- when I presented the Zen master with my inner conflicts he just smiled at me. I thought that he was going to laugh but instead he smiled and floated, smiled and floated. As we floated together there in the zendo, me in limbo and he in eternity, he kept saying “Weee!! Weeeee are floating!!” He expressed this sentiment in the same way that a child swinging on a swing would express joy. “Weeeee!!” “Weeeee!!!” he kept saying as if he was ignoring the very reason why I had floated over to see him. And then like a sudden earthquake or a stroke of insight he said “when floating just float, be floating– nothing else to do. When not floating then act accordingly.” At first I did not know what to make of his strange statement. I knew there was some pearl of wisdom that I needed to fish out from what he said but I was not sure yet how to get the fish off the fishing line. So I thanked him for his time and I floated back to my limbo.

Today the temperature has been in the 90’s. There is not a cloud in the sky. I have drawn a bit in my sketchbook, I have read a bit and I have been listening to some music. I have eaten lunch and breakfast and even found time to meditate. No one goes hungry or gets bored in limbo. I can hear the rumblings of the outside world in the distance. All the people moving quickly to get things done creates a certain vibration that can not only be heard but also felt in limbo. Sometimes this vibration makes me nervous- as if I too should be marching a long, moving quickly and getting things done. I too feel like I am possibly missing out if I just float around here all day and night in my quiet and relatively safe limbo. It is a strange feeling to wrestle with all day in limbo. On the one hand I feel so blessed to not be apart of that endless march to the finish line to get things done. I feel so blessed to get to just float around my house and garden without any real, pressing worries. But at the same time I feel like I am missing out. That there are important things that I should be getting done now. This strange tension between satisfaction and dissatisfaction is the force that often makes limbo a difficult place to remain in.

Weeeee!! Weeeee!!!! I shout out as I float around the house and backyard. Weeee!! Weeeeeeee!!! I shout out as I listen to music or eat my lunch. The thrill of this satisfaction lasts a minute or two but then, on a normal day, I am left feeling like something is missing. What a pain in the ass. Maybe the Zen master is without a name because in truth- he does not exist. The other day I was not speaking to an actual man as much as I was speaking to a state of being. The Zen master dwells in eternity, which is where we all dwell forever if we just sit down and shut up for long enough to realize this. Why not start now? Granted he is a master and we are not- he got there quicker than most mortals ever will but still Zen master eternity is a place, a state of being in which I strive to dwell. To float around and just float around. When/if the time comes that I am no longer floating around in limbo- then I trust I will act accordingly. Maybe. Weeeee!! Back to my book.

The Nose Picker

My grandfather was a nose picker and so was my father. Most of my memories of both my father and my grandfather is of them picking their noses. My grandfather used to roll his boogers up in to small balls and flick them across the room. My father would continually pick his nose while talking on the phone, reading the newspaper, having a conversation or while watching television. As a child I would watch him pick his nose and swear that I would never be like that. I imagined how repulsed my mother must of been while watching her sexual mate go fishing into his swollen nostrils. The other day when my girlfriend said to me, “you are such a nose picker,” you can image the degree of shame and disappointment that I felt upon realizing that I had become the kind of man I swore that I would never be.

You know that saying that the fruit does not fall far from the tree? Well, the entire theory of genetic inheritance is based upon the idea that we acquire many of the same biological and character traits as our parents. Shit. I thought that I could somehow out run this reality. I spent the majority of my teenage years and my adult life working hard at being nothing like my grandfather and father. I spent hundreds of hours in therapy, read hundreds of books that I hoped would implant into my brain a thought process that was antithetical to the ideas of my father. I constructed my entire life out of using my father as a model of what not to be in this world. I have even spent hours looking at myself in the mirror trying to make sure that my facial expressions and my posture looked nothing like his. But I realize that when there are cracks things slip through- and I have a lot of cracks so it was destined to happen someway, sometime. For years I have been a chronic nose picker. What scares me most is that nose picking is so deep in my DNA that most of the time I am unaware of the fact that I am indeed picking my nose.

However, with all of this said, I recognize that having a genetic predisposition to nose picking is not entirely to blame for my chronic nose picking habits. I blame a lot of my nose picking on environmental conditions and stress/anxiety. I realize that I live in a dirty world. The air is dirty and so are most other things that I come into contact with on a daily basis. Dirty, dirty, dirty. Also I do have a rather large Jewish nose, which makes it easier for the snot to get in and collect. Nose picking is not just some mindless act that I am doing because my father and grandfather conditioned the act into my mind. I pick my nose to clean out the pipes, to relieve the pressure that the booger build up creates. I pick my nose for the same reasons that a person sweeps dust off of the kitchen floor or scrubs grime and grease off of the kitchen sink or bathtub- I want to keep things clean.

I have recently also realized that I pick my nose to distract myself from symptoms of anxiety that I am feeling. Nose picking takes my mind off of whatever anxious thoughts that I am having. I preoccupy myself with my finger in my nose. Nose picking allows me to become grounded in the present moment and to distract myself from the fear of impending doom which often causes my body to go into fight or flight mode. I have learned to use the act of nose picking as a kind of ant-anxiety medication. Having my finger in my nose calms my mind, rolling my boogers into nice rounded balls gives me something to do other than worry. Nose picking gives me much needed relief.

I have found that one of the more difficult things about growing older is coming to terms with who I really am (behind the chronic day dreams). Having to make peace with the fact that I too pick my nose when driving, watching television, reading and having a conversation has not been an easy undertaking (the other evening my girlfriend caught me picking my nose while having sex with her. I am so concerned and bothered that I did this without any awareness that I do not want to discuss it any further here. I mean when else am I picking my nose and unaware? What if I do it while working with clients? Or while in other public places? Very concerning.). I am trying to accept that when it comes to nose picking my fruit does not fall far from my father and grandfathers tree. I know that I need to do something about this ailment because I am starting to find boogers lying around the house. This feels very unsanitary. Plus my girlfriend is starting to become concerned about my habit. She bought me a Neti pot, which is supposed to help with cleaning the sludge out from my nasal passages but I am uncomfortable running salt water up my nose. Makes me feel like I am drowning. I do confess to enjoying the act of nose picking. It is a simple pleasure and I need all the simple pleasures that I can get. However, I realize that it is a simple pleasure that has gone a bit too far. If some day I ever end up having a son or a daughter, nose picking is not a disorder that I want to pass onto him or her. So I realize that it is of utmost importance that I break this negative and often disturbing family cycle now. I just picked my nose as I wrote that. Shit.

My Brief Love Affair with a Pool Sweep

I am currently going through a separation from my wife. I moved out from our small home in the country and have moved back into my parent’s large home in the suburbs. I am almost forty years old, living again in the room where I experienced my first erection, my first kiss and my first alcoholic beverage. There is even the first pornography magazine from the eighties that I diligently used as a teenager, still stuck in between the mattress and the box spring. My parent’s home sits on top of a solitary hill and is surrounded by century old oak trees, rolling hills, birds and skittish deer. In the backyard there are palm trees (air lifted from Hawaii), a plethora of native flowers and plants, a lot of stones and a large white-bottomed pool.

For six months out of the year my parent’s home is a ghost house. No one lives here. They pack up and go to live in their second home that is situated somewhere in the Idaho mountains. Other than a caretaker who shows up a few times a week to check on things, no one steps into this house. When I moved back in a little over a month and a half ago, I felt like I was moving into a space devoid of life. The furniture was covered in white sheets. The house creaked constantly. I cleaned up cobwebs, killed numerous mosquitoes and turned on the refrigerator and the freezer, both of which had nothing in them. I felt like a middle aged prodigal son coming home to the cruel tricks that time often seems to play on me. What was once my childhood home, filled with life and fervor had become nothing but a four walled remnant of what once used to be. I also could not help but feel like Thoreau returning to his solitary sixty-two acre pond. Except my pond was not a large pond in Concord, Massachusetts- my pond was the pool in my parent’s backyard.

Every morning I would wake up at eleven and rain or shine, the first thing that I would do is go out into the backyard. When I began this minor ritual a little over a month and a half ago I was an emotional mess. I would pull a chair up besides the pool and in the clothes that I had fallen asleep in I would cry. I would cry and cry and feel gut churning sadness for losing the life that I had with a woman whom I deeply loved. I cried for all the grief and suffering that I had caused her. I cried for days on end and after three or four days of continual grief, my grief began to ebb and flow in unpredictable tides. I would be fine one moment and then a thought or something that I noticed reminded me of my wife and I would fall into grief again. I felt like (and still do to a lesser extent) my heart strings were being played by a careless, manic musician.

In my parents backyard the silence is so palpable that I often could not help but to talk to myself. I would console myself out loud, talk to my disappearing wife and push slightly beyond the borders of sanity. Then one afternoon while I was lamenting my fate, a stream of cold chlorinated water sprayed directly into my face. Up until that point I had not noticed the small, amphibious pool sweep that spent its days rummaging around in the pool. With its four wheels, and two long hoses that danced around the pool floor, the pool sweep selflessly had been keeping my parents pool clean for years and I had barley noticed it. With chlorinated pool water stinging my eyes I watched the pool sweep makes its way around the pool, joyfully diving and surfacing, as if my grief meant nothing at all to it. By the end of the day I had forgotten all about the solitary pool sweep and once again was lost in my grief. The following morning while I was sitting besides the pool in what must of looked like a near catatonic state, the pool sweep again sprayed me directly in the face, mixing my tears with chlorine.

I’m not proud of what happened next, but please understand that I was not in my right mind. It is strange how quickly grief can turn into rage and turn a man from sweet to sour. At that moment a rage came over me so strong that I lost all logical reasoning. I was convinced that the pool sweep was mocking me, disrespecting my grief and making a target out of me for its own fun. My rage took over control of my body and caused me to jump head first into the pool, where I proceeded to swim after the pool sweep. But the weeks of grief had weakened and atrophied my muscles and the pool sweep out swam me into the deep end where I was unable to reach. I cursed the pool sweep and told it to stop fucking with me or else I would break its hoses and wheels. I then waded my way out of the water, short of breath and cold. I dried off in the sun- a man defeated by love and the world. A middle-aged man who could not even catch a pool sweep.

I sat there for a while on one of the pool chairs with my wet clothes sticking to my body and watched the pool sweep dance around the bottom of the pool floor. It looked so happy and carefree. It reminded me of distant times where I had felt a similar way. I thought about some of the more meaningful times that my wife and I had shared. The time that we bought our first dog together, the day I proposed to her by a pond in the graveyard, the time we went to an old bathhouse in Spain, the walk on the beach in Australia that was shortened by my fear of the wild dingoes and all the pleasurable times we spent sun bathing in my parents backyard and swimming in the pool. I remembered our days gardening and drinking coconut water in our backyard, the time that I taught her how to ride a bike and the five-course meal that she made for me on New Years Eve. I cried as these memories filled my mind but as I watched the pool sweep make its way around the pool, I felt the thorny edges of a smile crack the rusted sides of my lips. My tears gradually dried and dissipated and I spent the rest of that afternoon falling in love with a pool sweep.

Something about watching the pool sweep made me suddenly feel less alone. I gave it a name as all people do to things that make them feel less alone. I decided to call the pool sweep R2D2 and I even began to anthropomorphize it by asking the R2D2 questions. I told myself that when R2D2 sprayed one time that meant yes, when it sprayed two times that meant no and any more than two sprays meant stupid question. I would ask simple questions, being sensitive to the fact that R2D2 had not had the same opportunities as I for a good education. I would ask questions such as: “would I ever be free of this tormenting grief?” “In the long run are my wife and I doing the right thing by getting a divorce?” and “will we be better off in the future because of all of this?” I specifically asked questions that required more of a heart than a head but I never received much of a reply. Then one morning a few days later while I was sitting by the pool feeling the heat of the early afternoon sun dry my tear agitated eyes, this realization came into my head: Emotion is an energy. It is right to feel pain. Embrace it. Learn. Life is but a blip and time shows the way. I did not need to think about this very much because it immediately made perfect sense to me. Immediately grief seemed to be blocked from colonizing my soul. I felt a sense of unfamiliar calm come over me and when I looked at R2D2 it was resting in the center of the pool staring straight at me. It was then that I realized that my sudden realization had come directly from a pool sweep.

For the first time in months I was overcome with joy. R2D2 communicated to me a wisdom that seemed to patch the holes that were causing love to leak out from my heart. I stood up, walked to the side of the pool and dove head first into the unheated, over chlorinated water. With a smile on my aging face I swam over to R2D2. I lifted R2D2 and held it in my arms. I thanked it profusely for the insight that it had given to me while kissing it from head to hose. Never underestimate the power of a much-needed insight to unite man and machine. Together we swam around the pool until I was not strong enough to swim any more. For the first time in weeks I felt a sense of relief, I felt the possibilities of a new life and the reassurance that my broken heart was not going to kill me. The idea that I could have a new life, the potential to feel good again imbued my body with a detoxifying energy that was slowly bringing me back from the dead. Now looking back on this paradigm-shifting afternoon, I cannot help but attribute it all to my beloved R2D2.

The following day I felt the motivation to begin re-building my life. For the first time since I had moved back into my parents home I did not get out of bed at eleven and go sit out besides the pool for the rest of the afternoon. Instead I would get out of bed at around eight in the morning, do a thirty-minute meditation and then take a long walk. I would go out and get something to eat and then come home and begin looking for a job. I started listening to music again and took daily showers and shaved for the first time in months. Sadness would still come up in me at unpredictable moments but rather than allowing myself to fall into a near catatonic state I simply followed and embraced the energy that was moving through me. Days went by in this semi productive state. I went on a few job interviews, took some yoga classes and went into San Francisco where I began visiting a few friends. I was slowly getting back into a less grief filled life. I was embracing my heartache and learning from it- but while doing all of this I forgot about R2D2.

A few weeks passed by and the bouts of grief were getting less and less. I was smiling more and crying less. I had found a job working as an after school tutor for inner city junior high students and the solitude of my parents home was no longer as frightening as it once was. One morning I awoke early and after my meditation I decided to go sit out by the pool and check on R2D2. I looked forward to visiting with R2D2 and thanking it for healing wisdom it had imparted to me. When I walked out into the backyard the first thing that I noticed was that R2D2 was not moving. I walked over to the side of the pool where ten feet underneath R2D2 sat lifeless. I got down onto my stomach and looked deeply into the water where I noticed that one of R2D2’s hoses was wrapped around its wheels and net. I did not notice any of the usual bubbles that spewed forth from R2D2’s happy head. Immediately I stood up and dove head first into the pool. I do not know if it was the absence of chronic grief in my life and the healing that was resulting or the adrenaline that is released from a person in crisis situations- but I was suddenly strong enough to swim down ten feet to the bottom of the pool, undue the hose from R2D2’s lifeless body and swim back up to the surface with the R2D2 in my arms. I was not hyperventilating or gasping for air but instead I was begging R2D2 not to die, to hold on and to breathe. I swam over into the shallow end where I placed R2D2 on the side of the pool and cleaned out all the leaves that had collected in its net, blocking its air passages. I used both my hands to move its wheels hoping that I could somehow re-simulate life into R2D2. Minutes passed and I felt a few tears begin to fall down the side of my face. I still remember the rhetorical question that ran through my head at that moment: how could God be so unfair as to so cruelly take the life of the one thing that gave me life? I blamed my grief and guilt on a God that not even I believed in. I tried to do everything I could to bring R2D2 back, I even asked this illusive God for help. But the more time that passed the more I realized that R2D2 was never going to swim again.

For those of you who have never fallen in love with a pool sweep before, the ending of my story may sound a bit ridiculous to you. But how can I expect those of you to understand something that you have never experienced before? I understand that I run the risk here of being perceived and judged as a man who has become mentally ill as a result of the grief caused by getting a divorce. I expect some of you to conclude that I am not fit to be functional member of society. But I have always spoken honestly in my writings and I do not want my fear of how you may think of me to get in the way of being brutally honest here at the end of my story. So despite my concerns, I will proceed. After I realized that R2D2 had passed I sat in one of the pool chairs and held R2D2 in my arms. I cried like a child who has just been abandoned by the only two people he knows in the world. I cried out all the grief that could ever exist in the world. I cried so loud that I scared all the birds out of the trees and all the deer out of the surrounding hills. In losing R2D2 I now realize that I was also deeply mourning the loss of my wife. When my wailing seemed to subside, I put R2D2 down on the pool chair and went inside the house and changed out from my wet clothes. I put on black jeans, a black t-shirt and did not have the energy to put on any shoes or socks. I then grabbed a towel from the closet, a shovel from the garage and went back into the backyard. I covered R2D2 in the towel and then I walked into the hills where I began to dig a deep hole underneath an old oak tree. While I was digging my tears fell onto the ground and seemed to moisten the earth, making it less difficult to dig into.

Once I finished digging a hole that would be large enough for me to place R2D2 into I walked back down to where R2D2 lay covered in a towel. I picked R2D2 up into my arms and walked back up into the hills. I placed R2D2 into the dark hole and then stood there for a moment staring at R2D2. My tears momentarily ceased as I thanked R2D2 for its wisdom and friendship. It has never been easy for me to let go of things and people in my life and burying R2D2 felt to me like I was also burying a very important part of my past. I took a few deep breaths and remembered the times that I would watch R2D2 happily and carelessly swim around in the pool. I remembered the time that I tried to chase R2D2 down but it successfully out swam me. I remembered the time that R2D2 gave me a sudden realization and freed me from the shackles of chronic and crippling grief. I felt very grateful for R2D2’s existence in my life and as I took the shovel in my hand and began to bury the R2D2 into the earth I felt at peace with the truth that nothing lasts forever. Once I had completely covered up the whole, I smoothed out the dirt with the shovel and then stuck a large boulder onto of the spot where R2D2 was buried so that I could return to this spot whenever I needed. A few tears leaked out from my eyes as I looked down at my bare feet and toe nails that were covered in dirt. I then looked up through the branches of the old oak tree and stared into the sun that hung in the sky. I closed my eyes for a minute or two and felt the suns warm breath heat up the skin on my face. I could hear the sounds of wind chimes and dried leaves rustling in the light breeze. It was at that moment that I knew that everything would eventually be okay. My wife and myself, eventually time would show us the way. With the shovel in my hand, I avoided looking at the pool and walked back down the hill towards my house. I imagined that it was mid-afternoon and I needed to get dressed for work.

The Birthday From Hell.

I’ll be honest- my birthday sucked. It was not anything in particular that took place but rather an over all mood. Their was languor or torpor in the air- the kind of feeling that you get when you are in the room with a group of people that you would rather not be around. Even though my entire family gathered together, I felt under appreciated, un- loved, uncomfortable and annoyed. My family is a group of people who suffer deeply. My 97 year old grandfather drank a good amount of red wine and kept telling me that no matter how “crummy” my father was- he loved me. My father tried to smile as he stuck expensive pasta in his mouth but I could see through that smile as if I was staring through glass. He does not like me, nor does he care for my wife- but he gave me $500.00 for my birthday. It is as if he is saying “go buy your self something nice so that I don’t have to feel bad.” He buys off most things in his life- including his son.

All through dinner I felt tense and suffered from chest pain. I dropped my pizza in my lap and drank much to much red wine. My mother kept making sure that my wife was going to take me home and put me to bed. I swore that I was not drunk and that I would go home and do meditation to recover from my birthday, which was filled with a pain so deep that I feel like I could scream. My mother and my wife did the best they can to smile and look appeased but no body talked to me about my life but rather it seemed as if we were all pretending that we live in a pretty world where appearance counts for every thing.

I do not know what I am going to do. If I could explain with words the feelings that I have within me I would have mastered the art of writing. But I am no master. On the outside the birthday was beautiful. Wine and cheese at my house with the family before dinner. My grandparents, parents, sister and wife all present. Then off to the restaurant for a six o’clock reservation where I met friends who would join us for a beautiful feast. We are alive and this is what matters most- I kept telling myself- but deep down I felt like I was stuck in the birthday from hell. Like I was on a ride that no body wanted to be on. I stuffed my face to take away my sorrow but I tried my hardest to smile, say cheers with every sip of wine and make sure the entire gathering was enjoying their time. Now I am home where I will now take a shower in my tears.

Stuck In High School!

After 37 years, I am still in high school. It is a mystery to me how this has become my life. After all I do not know if being stuck in high school is the epitome of the American dream or a nightmare. Maybe I am repaying a karmic debt from a past life or maybe I am paying penance for the things I have done in this life- what ever the case may be, I am still stuck in high school.

I am currently sitting in a history class while students are taking a written examination that I designed with the intention of making test taking entertaining. Occasionally I hear small explosions of laughter as students read some of the more comical questions that I have inserted in between the more serious ones- “how many times a day did Abe Lincoln masturbate?” For the most part the room is so silent that I can hear the hum of the freeway which sits just behind the school. I am the Teacher of these students but at the moment I feel like them- stuck in a place that I do not belong. I am always perplexed by the similarities that I find between myself and my 15 and 16 year old students. It is true- I am twenty years older than most of my students but like them I am still pre-occupied with sex and what I am going to do with my life. It is as if a large part of me is yet to grow into this thing I often hear referred to as maturity. I feel as if I have never left high school, my body has aged but my spirit or soul is still stuck at 16. It is a difficult phenomena to explain- but as I sit here writing in my notebook and my students are taking their examination- I feel strangly equal to them. It is as if we should all just be friends and ditch school.

When I was in high school, the first time, I was an apparition. You could see my physical body but my soul was some place else. I was stoned most of the time and Teachers only knew my name because I was the tall lanky guy in the back who never spoke and was seen by all as being weird. At school dances I would get drunk on liquor that I stole from my fathers bar and stand in a corner trying to spy on couples who were making out. Sometimes I could be found lying in the school hallways, broken down into an agitated state of tears crying out “get me out of here!” I did not read a single book nor did I do more than was asked of me. I was preoccupied with blow jobs and death and not once did I get a grade that was higher than a C. My father had to pay off the principle to let me graduate after 6 years of high school.

Now some 20 years later I am still stuck in high school. Somehow the fury of the fates or divine consciousness has managed to transform me into a Teacher. It is like a great magic trick that has been performed in front of my eyes. The trick is on me and I stand there trying to figure out how the magician has created the desired effect. I am perplexed and can not seem to come up with an answer. I am in a state  of absolute dis-belief. How did they do it? It just makes no sense.

The Man With A Moving Nipple

I know this may seem strange but I am suffering from a moving nipple. It is my left nipple and it gesticulates and twitches like a firecracker. At the moment, the uncomfortable movements of my nipple have become chronic with little intermission in-between. This discomfort has become a part of my life, another bewildering ailment that I must learn to live with.

My nipple began to move after I was in a very upsetting argument with my father. He was in a hospital bed recovering from a surgery and we managed to fight with one another about what, I cannot remember. Consumed with guilt for upsetting my father during his darkest of hours- I left the hospital in a terrible state of mind. The stress was causing my chest to constrict and I remember having difficulty breathing. It was when I turned on my car engine that I noticed my left nipple beginning to twitch. I placed my right palm upon it, as if I was trying to comfort my broken heart. I drove off into the night trying not to think about my moving nipple. Little did I know then that this was the beginning of what would become a full-blown dis- ease.

As the days passed my nipple picked up speed. The twitches would come in unpredictable spurts and I was often forced to have to sit down and try and relax when the episodes would begin. The twitches turned into strange gesticulations that would wake me up at night and force me to place an ice pack on my chest. The moments that my nipple would not be moving became like tropical vacations for my weary mind, which was being over worked by the torment of my moving nipple. The sensations were like aggravating tickles combined with what felt like pinpricks that seemed to leave me feeling like I was a man being slowly crucified from the inside out.

As the weeks passed my moving nipple became more chronic. It rested little and began to control my every waking hour. I had read some where in Greek mythology of a character that had suffered from a very similar ailment as I was. His moving nipple became so violent that it slowly began to make its way onto his forehead and announce all of his private thoughts to whomever was around. Not only did this character suffer the humiliation of having a talking nipple on the center of his forehead but also he was unable to think without the nipple revealing his every thought! Of course it is not difficult to understand why this character took his life by forcing his lover to cut off his head. Once he was decapitated the nipple did not stop talking for over an hour- it told his lover of all his previous affairs!! Ever since I have read this tale I have been terribly worried that my chronic gesticulating nipple is going to break free from its root and make its way onto my forehead!! If the world were able to hear my every thought I would certainly loose everything that I love!!!

Last week I visited a Doctor who knew not what to make of my condition. He told me that he had never seen anything like this before. He recalled reading in a medical journal many month back about someone who had suffered from a similar ailment for most of his life- but he could not remember which medical journal it was in. The Doctor wanted to put me on some medication to see if he could relax the tissue but the side effects for the medication seemed to great to take the risk. My Doctors conclusion was that I was suffering from a stress-induced ailment that was causing calcium build up around the nerves of my nipple tissue-, which is putting pressure upon my nipple. The ensuing twitching and gesticulation is the result of this pressure. If it did not go away in a month he recommends surgery.

In the mean time I still have to live in this world. I have to make a living so that I can continue to have a roof over my head. As much as I want to hide away in my closet and write poetic lamentations all day- I cannot. I have a mouth to feed.

It is not difficult for you to see my ailment, or what I have come to call my crucifixion. There is what appears to be a constant vibration and rotation under my left shirt pocket. When people notice this they immediately ask me if I am okay. I tell them that I am fine, that what they are witnessing is an annoying muscle spasm. My high school students make fun of me and refer to me as a freak. They all want to touch my nipple and when I let them there are loud uproars of “EEEEEEWWWW,” or “That’s so disgusting!!!!” Whenever I go out into public people stare at my nipple as if they had never seen anything like this before. I feel like an aberration, like all eyes are condemning me to constant judgment. Now I know what it must feel like to be a big-breasted woman.

The only thing that I can do is learn to live with my ailment. Every night before bed I put a chamomile cream upon my nipple, which seems to relax it a bit. I also wrap my chest in a towel before bed, which seems to reduce the annoying vibrations of my moving nipple, allowing me to get some sleep. There is nothing that I can really do (besides having my nipple surgically removed) other than accept my current situation. I see this condition as an opportunity for me to deal with the various causes in my life rather than the effects. If I can learn to change the stressors that have caused my moving nipple than maybe over time my nipple will stop moving. I believe it was Pascal, Socrates or Emerson or maybe Nietzsche- who said that an unexamined life is a life not worth living, so I am examining my self- trying to understand the various ways that I have caused my own dis-ease. Maybe, through this process of self-examination, I will eventually become the only man who can set myself free.

Sex Life Of A Man Without One #6

Boredom has been tugging at me like a strange ache which refuses to let go. The days have been filled with a sharp cold and my will has dissolved into a kind of lazy melancholy. If you would of asked me a year ago- I would have told you that there was no way I could suffer from boredom. I would have told you that people who are bored lack true wonder for life and that I am fully occupied in my life just sitting by a window and watching the clouds drift by. Boredom had no grasp upon me then, but now a year later it is threatening to put its nappy little hands around my neck- and cut off the air supply.

It is my belief that boredom causes men and woman to do certain things that normally we may not do. We want to feel alive again, and are desperate for anything that will make us feel this way. So I did what I do best, I called a very attractive escort and told her to meet me at my parents house. It was time for me to take a small vacation.

My parents were out of town for a few more days and they lived in a rather decadent home not to far from where I am struggling to live. The add that I responded to on the Internet said “XXX Erotic Massage By Young Nympho….p.s. no full service.” This was perfect for me since I was uninterested in the sex part but wanted some small element of a sexual encounter. I was basically horny and wanted to see a young beautiful woman in the nude. If I could get her to take a shower and let me watch, even better. I had been stuck in a world lately that was heavy in disappointment and failure. After getting sick I was plagued by the what am I doing with my life? syndrome. This ridiculous blog that I keep repelled me like blue cheese and I was in need of an erotic holiday.

I arrived at my parents home with enough time to get the place comfortable and looking like it belonged to me. I took down a lot of the pictures and changed into my fathers silk bathrobe. Then directly at ten p.m. she promptly rang the doorbell. I was shaking a bit because of the anxiety that always seems to overpower me when I am about to do something that maybe I should not be doing. What life is worth living if you are not constantly breaking the boundaries that you have set up around yourself? I opened the door and before me was one of the most beautiful women I had ever beheld with my eyes.

“Wow, what a beautiful home!!” she said with her hands over her mouth, making her way through the marble and mirror filled entry way. I took her long blue coat from her, under which she was wearing a one piece very tight fitted blue dress that stopped right beneath her butt. She took off her heels and allowed her long brown hair to fall down by her shoulders. “So this is your house,” she asked. I nodded my head in the affirmative. “Wow, you must make a lot of money?” “I have my days,” I said knowing full well that I only had less than a thousand dollars left in my bank account. I showed her into the sitting room where I had lit a fire and had a glass of vintage port waiting for her. “Oh thank you but I do not drink, I am allergic.” I could relate I told her because it seems like lately whenever I drink I get palpitations and chest pains for the entire night. “Ouch,” she said.

“So what do you got on your mind?” she asked me curiously. “What do you mean,” I said surprised by her question.” “You know, what do you want me to do for you?” she said crossing her legs and letting me notice that she was not wearing underwear. I always felt uncomfortable about this question because I was afraid that my reply may make the women feel as if I could be a pervert. You see, most men want to have sex- but I just like seeing the girls naked and maybe orgasming by my own hand. When I tried to explain this to the escort, whose name was Rain, she could not of been more willing. And she suggested that I take a shower with her to get comfortable.

The hour we spent together could not have gone away quicker. We showered together and then I watched her petite yet substantive body dance around my parents bedroom and mimic acts of orgasmic bliss upon their bed. She at one point even did a head stand while playing with herself, followed by a back flip right into my lap. I was like a kid in a candy store and there was no trace of my boredom to be found.

A few days later my parents returned. This morning I received a phone call from my mother who was in a very frantic state. “I think your father is having an affair. After all I have done for him, the ungrateful son of a bitch is having his way with younger slutty girls!!” I tried to interject. “Mom…mom, what happened….calm down and tell me what happened?” Once she was able to calm her fury she told me that some strange women by the name of Rain had just come to the house and told her that she was here the other night and left a very valuable earing in the bathroom. My stomach dropped. “She was not older than twenty five and I know your father likes them petite brunettes with poppy personalities, and all this after we took that wonderful vacation together in India and shared so much love together.” My mother was now in tears.

I did what I could. I told my mother not to worry, that my father would never do anything to intentionally hurt her. “Oh I know he would that son of a bitch,” she kept responding. I was unable to confess my crime for sheer embarrassment of telling my mother that I had called a prostitute over to their home. The guilt of admitting this to my mom is too great. So now my father is sleeping in a motel, furious about the false accusations that are being leveled against him, and I am sitting here at home, uncertain what to do next.